verb.
To come or go back to a place or person.
noun.
The firing of a weapon to counter a shooter's shot.
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They recoiled from their pasts, and in doing so found each other.
But the universe isn't kind enough to let a moment of peace last.
It took se...
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The low roar of engines rumbled through the metal body of the aircraft, making the steel bench beneath Kat judder in a constant, now-familiar motion. If she tilted her head back slightly to rest against the wall behind her, that reverberation would rattle through her skull, creating an all-encompassing blanket of white noise that had lulled her to sleep more times than she could count over the last few months.
How strange it was, that a vehicle that had once been so unfamiliar, so foreign and associated with conflict and fear, had now become the closest thing she had to home. For that was what the Quinjet was, to all of them. Between safehouses and their never-ending vigilante crusade that had dragged them across continents, the Quinjet was the one constant factor, the place they always returned to.
Not the same one that they had fled Leipzig in, of course. Too easily tracked by those that sought to capture them, that aircraft had been abandoned in favour of the one Natasha had turned up in, before their breech of the Raft. The layout was entirely the same, and most of the valuable equipment from the one that had served the Avengers had been scavenged, but this one was clean, in every sense. This Quinjet's benches weren't encrusted with Bucky's blood, nor was it stained with any other reminders of that awful day in Siberia – but neither was it the place Kat had finally confessed her love to him. Neither was it a place where he had wrapped her in his arms and whispered comforts before they turned to face a past that terrified them both. It wasn't the place where he had cradled her face in his palms and kissed her like it was the last thing he might ever do.
Only shadows of those memories existed here, and even those only dwelt in Katrina's mind. Revisiting those memories only served to sharpen now terribly she missed him, but it was a wound she was willing to reopen, over and over again.
It was just a jet, really. There was no connection to Bucky here, but there were other artifacts Kat could cling to. Other precious ties to him that provided a solid foundation to her memories. The metal dog tags that hung from her neck, visible now that she had unzipped her leather jacket and tossed it onto the bench shortly after take-off, the cool weight of the vibranium Kimoyo beads that circled her right wrist, and the black, leatherbound notebook that her hands had sought once they were safely in the air – those were the ties she clung to. As sacred as any religious artifact, those three objects were all that lessened the distance between them and softened the ache of time apart. Time without even the sound of his voice to tide her over, time spent knowing that she was the only one feeling this constant tug of absence, because right now, Bucky couldn't feel anything. Her daily checks of the projection from her Kimoyo bead that was linked to his stasis chamber confirmed that. His readings never changed. They hadn't since the day he had chosen to go under.
Sighing out a soft exhale at the thought of that day, Kat absently ran her thumb over the worn leather of the notebook's spine, turning it in her hand to let it fall open to whatever page it deemed worthy of her attention in this moment. She knew every page within its covers intimately by now – at first she had been unwilling to look, there had been some barrier in her mind, something telling her that it would be an intrusion to open that cover, but it had taken less than a week without him to break her. Less than a week, and the echo of his reassurance; every word in there was for you anyway.
