verb.
To fall back under pressure. To shrink back physically or emotionally.
noun.
The kickback of a gun upon firing.
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It takes a stubborn mind to cling to their humanity when the world seeks to strip it away.
It takes a desperate soul to reach f...
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Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2015
She had adjusted. Adapted. Survived.
She had awoken in a completely different world to the one she had left. Had someone told her she had arrived on an alien planet, she wouldn't have believed them at first, but then several months later she would have sat in a grotty hostel in Moscow, watching news reports showing a rift in the sky over New York, an army of aliens pouring forth and a team of superheroes fighting them off... Then, alien planets would have sounded a little more plausible.
As if this new century wasn't jarring enough, she now had that to wrap her head around.
She couldn't stay in Russia though. Despite the fact that it was her home, and it was all she had known, she belonged to a different time in her country's history. The Iron Curtain had fallen and with it the world had opened up, allowing people from both sides of that divide the freedom of choice; to stay or to go.
And so, she left. She left Russia, and she left Katrina Ivanov behind. She couldn't have kept that identity, even if she wanted to. That name was splashed across HYDRA and KGB records and was tied to things she didn't want to remember. Things she couldn't face. Guilt. Shame. Fear.
It was easier to let Katrina die in the ice in Siberia, she would never have survived this new world.
Katherine Irwin though, she had a chance.
Katherine had a shiny new passport and birth certificate, even a driver's licence – all things that were surprisingly easy to come by once she learned the right questions to ask – everything she needed to live a life free of the shadow of any organisation. Fictional details that might just give her the chance at having something real.
It had taken a year or two, time to find her feet and build this identity, but eventually she had found her place. A little corner of the world that was safe, where she didn't need to think about HYDRA, or her father, or even the Winter Soldier. That corner had come in the form of the capital city of the Netherlands, where no one looked twice if someone spoke English, Dutch, or any language under the sun, where there were bustling markets and a flower stall on every other street, and where a bicycle rental shop on the edge of a canal was looking for a resident mechanic.
It wasn't glamourous, or particularly taxing, but it was honest. The little Dutch lady who owned the building smiled at her when she arrived in the mornings, the tourists that she adjusted saddles and handlebars for would excitedly explain where they hoped to explore that day, and she would give them directions to her favourite haunts – because she had those now, strangely enough. The Australian guide who led fleets of cyclists on tours every day called her 'Katie' and brought her coffee some days. Some days she would bring him a coffee instead, and it was nice.
She felt safe here, with her little job, her little attic apartment above a bar. Some weekends during the tourist season her landlord would let her pull a few shifts clearing tables to drop the price of her rent, she spoke enough languages to keep the customers happy and that meant decent tips. Some days it even felt like she belonged here, a thousand miles from anything she had left behind. Some days she woke up in a cold sweat with the image of tortured blue eyes seared into her mind, but most days that was a distant memory. One that she intended to never confront.
