I'm weightless. It's the first thing that I register as a conscious thought. I feel like I'm floating. But floating through... what? I can't see anything except for bright, white. I stretch my hands out in front of my face, and I can see them, but they're fuzzy around the edges. There's no sound except for what I can only describe as a white noise. Like a TV that has been left on overnight and the only thing playing is the dull sound of static.
I decide I don't care where I am, I close my eyes and allow myself to drift. I feel... at peace. For the first time in my entire life, I feel peace. As soon as I lean into the static background I feel my feet make contact with something. I open my eyes and I'm standing in my old bedroom. Not the one from Istanbul, or the one I shared with Bucky in New York. No, this is my childhood bedroom. I'm staring directly at the old wooden door that my mom lovingly scrawled my name and height on every year on my birthday. The bed is just as I remember it with a single pillow and a quilt that my grandmother had made for me before she passed away. I run my fingers over the fabric of the blanket and smile. She stitched a heart into the corner of the quilt with my name on it and I trace the letters absentmindedly.
This house was always dusty, no matter what my mother did. I guess that's just a side effect of living in Brooklyn in the 20's. The dirt from all of the buildings breaking ground going up around us migrating into our homes no matter how much we tried to resist it. I'm still holding my quilt when I hear my mom call out from the kitchen.
"Katie!" My mother is the only person in the whole world that called me Katie. My heart skips a beat when I hear her voice. "Katie! You better hurry up, daddy's going to be late for work! Come say goodbye!" I hear my dad mutter something to my mom followed by her ringing laughter. I slowly approach the door and grab the handle, willing this to be reality. Please don't be a dream, please don't be a dream, I chant to myself, a silent prayer of hope. I twist the knob and pull the door open to see my parents embracing by the front door. Behind them, I can see early morning Brooklyn as the borough starts to wake up and people flood into the streets just outside our apartment building. My dad pulls away from my mom and smiles at me.
"Good morning, Kitten," another nickname I thought I'd never hear again. Tears spring to my eyes. "I'll see you later tonight, okay? Have a good day at school." He opens his arms inviting me in for a hug and I rush forward, desperate for contact with him. I wrap my arms around my dad and squeeze him tightly, drinking in the smell of his after shave. This is real, I think to myself. It has to be. I can feel him. My dad releases me too soon and holds me at an arms length. He smiles down at me. "Is she going to make it?" He asks, still smiling. I blink, confused by his question.
"What?"
"How do you have no answers? You've been in here a million times since last night!" He's raising his voice at me now; my father never yelled. I frown at him and turn to my mom. Except, she isn't my mom anymore. A jolt of fear leaps through me as I look at the thing that's replaced my mother. Her face appears to be melting and her eyes, once a clear and bright green, are just empty black pits. I back away from her and bump into my dad. He grasps me by the shoulders and spins me on the spot to face him. A monster has replaced the man I loved and is smiling maliciously at me. "You have to know something! Anything!" His mouth stretches wide and he leans in towards me. I shove away from him, terrified. He's going to swallow me whole.
The peace I felt just moments ago vanishes and is filled instead with despair. A sinking feeling deep in my gut that I try desperately to get away from. My childhood home disappears from around me and I'm plunged into darkness. I no longer feel weightless, I don't feel the warmth that I felt in my old bedroom. Instead it's just pain and fear. I don't know how much time passes, but I can still hear voices coming and going. They talk about me as if I'm not here. And who knows? Maybe I'm not here. I don't feel like I'm here... wherever 'here' is. There's a constant (annoying) beeping noise that grates on my nerves more than anything else.
I slowly become aware of my body over the course of who knows how long. I can feel my arms and my legs, I feel a mattress underneath my body and a light blanket covers me. I'm so cold, and I want to ask someone for another blanket, but my mouth won't cooperate with the commands from my brain. I hear voices drifting around the room, hushed tones like they're worried they'll wake me.
"I just don't understand why there isn't something else that can be done," one voice says. This voice sounds as frustrated as I feel.
"She lost a lot of blood, and she suffered a pretty serious brain injury. Even for a super soldier..." The second voice trails off and doesn't pick back up for a while. "A normal person wouldn't have survived." It says finally. Are they talking about me? "We're lucky she's come as far as she has. At least she's stable now. Why don't you come upstairs? You haven't eaten anything in days."
"I'm fine," the first voice says absently. When he speaks again, his voice is much louder. He's closer to me. "What if she wakes up and she's alone?" I feel the mattress give under my arm just a little bit and then warmth floods my fingers on my left hand. "Jesus Christ. She's freezing in this basement." The warmth leaves and the weight lifts off of my mattress. I want to beg for the warmth to come back, but there still seems to be a disconnect between my brain and vocal chords. Frustration rises in my chest and the beeping that has been a constant in my world becomes fast paced and urgent. "Should we get Vision?" The first voice asks again, his tone worried. I hear a ruffling noise and then I'm flooded with warmth as what I can only assume is a heavier blanket, covers me.
"No, look. It's slowing back down." The second voice is right; the beeping has gone back to the slow, steady rhythm I've memorized by now.
"Told you she was cold." The mattress dips again and my left hand is picked back up and wrapped in heat again. The two men go back and forth for a few minutes about going upstairs and getting dinner and by the time they stop arguing I can feel my toes on my right foot enough to move them. I start small and move my toes, and then my foot. I try to move my entire leg and the moment I bend my knee I'm met with such excrutiating pain that I groan. My left hand falls back to my side and I hear the scraping of a chair as the voice next to me jumps to their feet. "Steve!" He calls out. "Get in here! I think she's awake!" Weight is put on the bed again, this time beside my shoulder, and my torso tilts slightly towards the added weight. "Kit? Can you hear me?" I recognize this voice as Bucky now. Other voices join his and the room suddenly feels crowded.
I try to open my eyes, but the second I do just the slightest bit, the light is so bright that I feel like I'm being blinded. I groan again and turn my head away from the voices that are now surrounding me. Everything got so loud so quickly. Bucky grasps my hand in his and pulls it up to his face. I feel his beard scratching against the back of my hand and I squeeze my fingers around his. As if he can read my mind, he reaches up behind my head and hits a button that dims the lights. I squint open my eyes and everything is still too bright, and a little blurry. Up front and center, I see Bucky's face. Steel blue eyes filled with worry and relief simultaneously. He presses his lips to the back of my hand and smiles wearily at me.
"Welcome back, Evans," he says, his voice thick. "I thought we lost you."
"Thanks," I say. Well, I try to say. My voice is raspy and weak. My throat burns and a glass of water appears out of thin air and a straw pressed against my lips. I drink thankfully, not questioning the floating water. "Thanks," I say again, this time my voice is a little stronger.
"Excuse me, James," I hear Vision's voice from behind Bucky and reluctantly Bucky moves aside, letting go of my hand once more. "Hello, Katherine," Vision says, now speaking to me. "How do you feel?"
"Like I was blown up," I answer simply.
"Yes, I imagine that is how you'd feel. I'm going to just look you over if that's okay." I nod. What else was I going to say? No thanks? As he examines me, he asks me a bunch of questions. What year is it? What's my name? What year was I born? Who's the president? Do I know where I am or what happened to me? After he is satisfied that my brain wasn't too scrambled, he begins to tell me what physical injuries I have. "Your left arm is broken, but healing rather quickly. I had to re-break it when we got you down here because it had started to heal incorrectly by the time you were dug out of the warehouse and brought here. You lost a lot of blood from your leg, a large splinter from a support beam drove straight through your right thigh. No lasting damage was done though, and it is also beginning to heal nicely. We had to get rid of the infection that had set in, but now that that is taken care of, the wound itself is closing up just fine. A few broken ribs... a rather serious concussion..." And a plethora of minor bumps and bruises after that. After all is said and done, this is what I learn happened after I went unconscious:
Peter and Tony dug me and Steve out of the rubble as fast as they could. They unknowingly pulled the wooden beam out of my leg before they realized it was lodged in my body. I began to bleed profusely and they didn't know until we were fully dug out. By that point I had lost enough blood that I should've died. Steve had ripped apart my pant leg and made an impromptu tourniquet that kept me from bleeding out long enough to get me back to the compound. I've been asleep for a little over two weeks in a medically induced coma. Vision started weaning me from the sedatives a few days ago in an attempt to see if I could pull myself back into consciousness. Bucky has rarely left my side, taking his meals in here when they can convince him to eat, and sleeping in a very uncomfortable looking chair in the corner of the room.
After catching me up to speed, I'm greeted by the faces of every single Avenger I've met thus far as they all express their gratitude that I am, in fact, still alive. The hospital bed I'm lying in is propped up which is lucky, because as the others continue to talk to me, I become extrememly fatigued and if it weren't for the hospital bed holding me upright, I would've fallen over from exhaustion at this point. Bucky immediately clocks the lethargy on my face and ushers everyone out. I'm immensely grateful for him. He takes up his seat back at my side and picks up my hand once again. He has dark bags under his eyes and his beard has long moved passed the stubble phase and in places it's so long that it sticks out like he fell asleep on it in a weird position. His hair isn't the longest I've seen it, but it is unruly and could use a good brushing.
"You look like shit," I joke. The same joke I made to Steve before my entire world vanished around me. The joke seems to fall flat given the circumstance. He holds my hand in both of his and presses his forehead against them.
"Have you looked in a mirror?" He says without looking up at me. "I thought you were dead." His voice is heavy and the air seems to shift around us.
"Well, I'm not." I squeeze his hand in reassurance but he still won't look at me. "It's going to take a lot more than being blown up to get rid of me so stop being so dramatic." He finally lifts his head and glares at me.
"Put yourself in my shoes," he says sourly. "I'm not being dramatic. When Steve pulled you out of that car... Kit, you looked like a dead body. You-" His voice cuts off and he breaks eye contact with me.
"I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to make light of it... well, I kind of did. I don't know how to deal with all of this. I'm sorry."
"Please don't apologize for almost dying," his voice is heavy, exhausted. He folds over and rests his head on top of his arms on the mattress beside me and I run my fingers through his hair. He tilts his head slightly to look up at me as I play with his hair.
"I thought I was dead too," I muse, recalling the strange dream land I was in before I came to. "I was with my parents." He sits upright once again as I say this. "Back in Brooklyn, in the 20's. It was early morning and my dad was leaving for work. I was in my bedroom and I went out to say goodbye to him. I got to-" My voice breaks as I relive the moment I embraced my father. "I got to hug him again. It felt so real. I could smell his after shave." My hand had stalled in Bucky's hair and as I come back to the present I see sorrow in his eyes. I smile a little bit at him. "I never thought I'd see them again. Even if it wasn't real." He shrugs.
"Who says it wasn't real?" He leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead. "You need to sleep. Real, unmedicated sleep."
"I've slept plenty. You on the other hand..."
"I'll sleep if you do. We move Reed to the Raft in three days. I figured you might want to talk to him before he's sent off to the middle of the ocean. In order to do that, you need to sleep." He stands up, leaning backwards and stretching out his back as he does so. "I'll leave you alone so you can rest."
"Please don't." I grab his hand. "I don't want to be down here alone. Here, look. I'll scoot over." I shuffle over as much as my injured leg and the wires coming out of my arms will allow me to and Bucky actually offers a genuine smile.
"Fine, but if Vision yells at me, you're taking the blame for it." He climbs into the bed beside me and somehow manages to pull me in closely and position me so that his body curves against mine perfectly in a way that we are both comfortable. Even in a small hospital bed we fit together like two puzzle pieces. And as I drift off to sleep, even with an imminent conversation with Reed looming over me, I feel a sliver of the peace I experienced when I was floating through unconsciousness.