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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He'd tried not to watch. Bucky had told himself over and over that she didn't need him hovering over her. She was strong enough, capable enough. He knew she could take care of herself. She didn't need him keeping one eye on her.
But then again, she had insisted on wearing a gigantic fluorescent yellow jacket.
So, when he had caught sight of that neon form dodging repulsor blasts and running along the edge of a rooftop a hundred feet in the air, there wasn't any way he could actually avoid watching.
And when he had figured out that she was about to put her faith in Sam's ridiculous little flying spy camera? Well – the warning had been out of his mouth before he could stop it. Not that it had made any difference.
She jumped. He watched her jump off that goddamn roof and for that one, sickening moment that she fell through the air it felt like his stomach was falling with her.
Just like it had done over seventy years ago as he deliriously watched his best friend hurl himself over a chasm of fire above a rapidly exploding HYDRA munitions factory. It hadn't been long after that event that Bucky truly experienced that sensation of falling himself. Not above fire though. Ice. Snow. Stone-
Damn it all if he didn't feel the air being knocked out of him in the second her hands closed around the wings of that flimsy little drone – the device rocking precariously in the air under her weight for a beat before steadying itself.
Or maybe the air had been knocked out of him by the sudden kick between his shoulder blades, forcing his mind back into the fight at hand.
Because only Kat could distract him from this bizarrely sticky kid swinging around in his pyjamas.
He knew better than to underestimate his opponent based on appearances though. The kid was strong – that much had been apparent with how effortlessly he had stopped Bucky's punch at their first encounter. A punch from his left hand. Normal humans couldn't do that, hell, even Steve had struggled in the moments when he'd been forced to. Of course, normal humans couldn't climb walls or swing from... What was this guy swinging from?
Dropping to repurpose the momentum of the kick, Bucky rolled across the floor of the terminal, his left hand flashing out to rip up a chair from where it was bolted to the ground and whipping it through the air towards his opponent. He missed, but it was enough to momentarily distract the kid from his pursuit of Sam as the pair flew and leapt through the supporting beams of the terminal ceiling.
Bucky knew he was holding back. Had he been fighting in earnest, had he been under the influence of his programming, he wouldn't have missed. A small part of his mind chastised him for that. If he didn't take this seriously, there was a chance this kid could have him cornered, but another, louder part was still hanging on to the blatant fact that this was a kid. The lively, wide-eyed enthusiasm of his voice had betrayed that, Bucky hadn't needed to see the face under his scarlet mask. He was fighting a child, a teenager at the oldest. A strong one, but a child nonetheless.
