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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It was the gentle drone of music that stirred Kat from her light doze on the sofa, hours after she had traipsed in from work, and after she had shared an unexpectedly profound conversation on the floor with Bucky. Her tired eyes blinked heavily as they adjusted to the gloom of the room, illuminated only by the lamp in the corner and the end credits of a film playing on her laptop screen.
She didn't remember anything beyond the first half hour. She must have been tired.
"Sorry..." She sighed in apology to her companion, carefully slipping her legs from where they were tangled with his under a blanket. "Should have gone to bed earlier."
It was the lack of reply, and the shallow, steady breaths that alerted her to the fact that she wasn't the only one who had missed the end of the movie.
Smiling softly, she pushed her tousled hair out of her eyes as she glanced at Bucky's sleeping form, seeing the way he had pillowed his head on the arm of the sofa, his left arm draped lazily over the back cushions. She had never seen him sleep before; Kat realised with a curious frown. Seeing him in cryostasis wasn't the same as seeing him asleep, voluntarily at rest. Relaxed, at ease.
She had known he had lived an almost nocturnal existence when he had first arrived in the city, but she had assumed as they had come to spend more daylight hours together that he had shifted to a more normal sleeping pattern. Not that he really needed one, with the extended endurance the serum granted him, but it hadn't taken Kat long to get over the fact that whilst she didn't need an awful lot of sleep, it didn't mean she couldn't indulge in it anyway.
She had a feeling that he didn't exactly share that view. She could tell when he wasn't sleeping well, if at all. The shadows under his eyes grew dark, the lines of his face deepened, his smile became tighter, more strained as he pushed himself to the limits of his stamina. It gave her the impression that he didn't overly enjoy giving in to sleep.
She could understand that reasoning though. She remembered those first months, where every night brought a nightmare. Memories of the cold freezing the breath in her lungs and the blood in her veins, the hiss of doors closing around her, trapping her, her heart racing in her chest, the sheer terror of believing she would die frozen in a glass casket... The order of her father. Metal fingers and tortured blue eyes and screams, gunshots, a whisper in her ear.
It had taken too long for them to ease, those dreams. She had avoided sleeping too, forcing herself to the point of exhaustion just so she could collapse into forgiving blackness, leaving her mind too tired to conjure those images. They had faded though, to once every few nights, every few weeks, months... It was rare now that she woke up gasping for air in a cold sweat, but it still happened occasionally.
Though if her memories were bad enough to plague her even whilst asleep, she couldn't begin to imagine how awful his were. She could understand if he didn't see sleep as an opportunity to rest.
