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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The coordinates had appeared on Kat's phone just as she hit the inner streets of Berlin. The German capital was in chaos, every set of traffic lights, every streetlamp, anything that ran off the city's electrical grid had been fried – and the word had spread that James Buchanan Barnes had escaped custody. The manhunt was on again.
But the coordinates gave her hope. It meant at least Sam had survived the skirmish with the Winter Soldier – though it still left her in the dark about Bucky's whereabouts. He could be anywhere, loose in the city or worse, under someone's control.
He could be dead, an unhelpful voice in her mind chimed in. He could have been too volatile; Wilson and Rogers might not have been able to subdue him – but she couldn't think like that. She had to believe he was alright, that he was alive.
Cross-referencing the digits texted to the burner phone with the GPS on her smartphone, she at least had a location. A warehouse on the edge of the city. Though with helicopters whirring overhead, it was difficult to shake the feeling that she was being watched as she made her way as inconspicuously as possible to the industrial estate, praying that no eyes in the sky were looking out for a single rider on a motorbike, parking up in the disused metalwork yard.
She felt so sick, with worry, fear, anticipation. She didn't know what she was going to find here. She couldn't even imagine what the worst-case scenario would be because there were so many to choose from. Swallowing back the bile rising in her throat, she dismounted from the bike, shaking her hair out of her helmet and glancing over her shoulder to check again that she hadn't been followed. There was no sign of any life in the yard, save for an unassuming navy-blue Volkswagen Beetle parked under a corrugated iron shelter, but HYDRA agents and Special Forces didn't drive around in vintage cars with less horsepower than a lawnmower.
She was in so far over her head, she wasn't sure what she would do if she had been followed. She wasn't sure what she would do when she stepped inside that warehouse, either.
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Inside the warehouse, scrubbing his hand over his jaw tiredly, Steve cast the unconscious form of his friend a concerned glance before he resumed his pacing. Of course, he wasn't sure if the unconscious man slumped against the hydraulic press that they had locked his arm in was even really his friend. It could still be the Winter Solider. Everything surrounding that man was still so complicated.
