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SHE WAS TRAPPED, UNABLE TOMOVE as she flew further and further into nothingness.
It was an oppressive nothingness, one that felt as if everything was pressing in on her, absorbing her into the darkness until there was nothing left.
Her skin began to feel deathly cold, and when she opened her mouth to scream her lungs filled with water and she was spluttered back to consciousness.
Drowning.
She was underwater, and the darkness of the night made it impossible to tell up from down. She'd never learnt how to swim, and her arms and legs moved in an uncoordinated mess as she tried to find her way to the surface.
Her lungs felt like they were on fire, and her thoughts were a frenzied chaos. How did she get here? What was she supposed to do? Was she going to die? All alone, underwater?
As her body involuntarily opened her mouth to breathe in something, anything, another wave of water entered her body, and she screamed at the lack of oxygen until she couldn't scream any more, and her mind slowly faded to emptiness.
• • •
Drowning. That was the last thing Milenka Popova remembered, and when she regained consciousness that was what her body immediately responded to. Her eyes snapped open and she sat upright in her bed, taking sharp, shallow breaths and flailing her limbs about until a pair of gentle hands lowered her back onto the mattress.
"Hey, hey, you're okay. You're okay, just lay back." Nat reassured, sitting back down in the seat beside Lenks' bed and rubbing comforting circles on the girl's hand.
They did nothing to calm her panic, nor her breathing, "What's going on, Nat? What happened?!" she tried to make sense of her memories, but they were all muddled up.
Nat took a deep sigh, staring worriedly into Milenka's eyes as she spoke solemnly, "You were in the lake, Lenks. You drowned."
Suddenly, everything came back and, despite Natasha's complaints, Lenks stood up from her bed and stepped over to the windows, placing a hand on the glass and staring down at the glossy water below. It was midday now, by the looks of it, but the dark waters looked just as threatening as they had the previous night when she was trapped under their surface.
"Oh God, it happened again." she realised aloud, fingers scratching the glass in her distress. Lenks had thought that she had the nightmares under control. She hadn't had one since the night she spent with...
"What happened?" Natasha urged, voice full of concern, "Milenka if this has happened before you need to tell me."
Lenks paused for a moment before slowly saying, "Maybe you should get Steve... and Tony, I think they need to hear this too."
