ostavil | 001 wakanda

001 wakanda

There's peace in Wakanda. Bucky had spent a little while under the ice while Shuri figured out a way to work on his deprogramming and while it's been a painful process, it's a necessary one and he's glad for all her work on the tangled knot that's HYDRA and the mess inside his brain. It's all wired incorrectly, a bomb that never went off but still needs to be defused, and he's scared every time she goes in there that something will go wrong and he'll attack her; it hasn't happened yet.

When he isn't working with her or Ayo, he has a little hut to himself where there are goats and sometimes children come visit him to see the curious white man who has taken up on the fringes of Wakandan society. Steve has visited a few times but when they announce a visitor this time, it's apparently not Steve. They're still at the palace being received, though, so Bucky takes the time to tidy up where he's been staying as much as he can one-handed; he's neat by nature but he also isn't used to having company come by either.

Who could it be? Sam? Sharon? Bucky isn't sure who would come to visit him aside from those two and Steve. Tony Stark certainly wouldn't and he isn't sure the Wakandan government would even let him in. Would Wanda come to see him? He's not certain. He imagines she's in hiding the same as he is, trying to avoid the Sokovia Accords and their inevitable consequences on her. It seems she's suffering more from them than anyone else, even himself, so he doesn't think she'd risk coming to see him.

He catalogs the other people he knows and he comes up with Natasha. He's got a strange history with her. He's shot her twice while the Winter Soldier but curiously, both times, he'd shot her non-fatally. It's almost as if he'd known that she needed to live even if he didn't know her and that's not what the Winter Soldier does. He doesn't leave loose ends. He kills whoever is necessary, even an innocent bystander, and Natasha has been actively opposing him both times he's encountered her. Even when he'd been activated by Zemo he'd attacked her but didn't take her down. There's something in him that protects her and he wonders why that is and always has. He doesn't know why she'd visit him but he wouldn't turn it down, either, so when he hears someone at the door he calls for them to come inside.

"Come in, I'm not busy." He's just finishing up wiping down a counter in what counts for his kitchen and when he comes into view of the visitor, he sees that it is Natasha. Curious.

"Hi."

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Wakanda can get hot and there is a rainy season but it's neither of those things today so when Natasha knocks at the door, Bucky is more than happy to join her outside to eat instead of cooping up inside and depriving them of the beautiful skies. Maybe he's not the happiest guy but he can appreciate a good view.

"You got educated on local cuisine," Bucky says, giving her a grin. "Gotta appreciate a woman who brings me good food. I have to eat like three elephants to maintain this metabolism."

For some reason, he feels like Natasha knows that. Well, she's been around Steve...

Bucky gets a blanket to spread out on the ground in front of the hut so they have somewhere to sit and spreads it out as best he can with just one arm; he's getting the new one soon, at least.

"Shuri says she almost has my new arm done. Then I'll have to wash my own hair."

"Food always makes things better, James. How are you feeling?" she asks as she starts to take the food out and make him a plate of lots of delicious local foods and fruits handing it over to him before taking another and making herself one just as large as him.

"I always used to love getting to go out on missions during my time in the Red Room, you always got to eat real food instead of the junk that was some sort of bullshit premade perfect nutrient balanced bars that tasted like cardboard."

She explains like she's justifying all the food she's taking. Truth is, she's just really hungry.

"I'm okay. Conflicted, somehow," he admits. He doesn't know why it's easier to talk about the state of his emotions with Natasha than anyone else but it seems to just roll out naturally with her in a way that it doesn't with anyone else. Everyone else, he keeps it closed up tight but not with Natasha. He doesn't feel like ice with her.

"I had dreams but they were all in Russian," he explains. "But they were just confusing dreams, not mission dreams. It was almost like there was someone with me just off-screen and I wasn't upset or being hurt. I was content, for lack of a better word. I didn't think I did any face work as the Winter Soldier, though. I was just an assassin. I didn't see anything in my file about infiltration or cover work."

She listens to him eating but watching him talk. She wants to give him all the space he needs, if he asks her questions, she'll answer them but she doesn't wanna solve things for him when he's wondering. It feels like it's forcing too much into his brain or forcing things.

The dreams of past memories though, that's she sure. She takes a bite of a piece of fruit and look at him like she's considering it for a moment. So she's playing this a bit more as a role, but it's to protect him, that's what she tells herself even if it's also to protect her.

"If you were ever an asset for someone other then hydra, they wouldn't have all your working details. The other group might have tried to keep it away from them, say, if you were a rental or something. Are there any breaks in your files that don't seem like cryo time?"

"I'm sure I was loaned out. I was used for...other things sometimes. Things HYDRA wouldn't need me for but that I remember all the same. They're nothing I want to talk about with anyone, though. They're even more horrible than having to kill people."

Still, the dreams about being content but still clearly under confuse him and he wants to know who the person with him was and how he could find them. Could they fill in the blanks?

"This person, though, they weren't doing any of that. As much as it confused me, I was content with this person. We spoke in Russian but they were kind. It doesn't fit with what I know."

"You don't have to talk about it, I wasn't trying to push you on it..." she says eating some more food so that she can distract herself. She doesn't want him to think she's being pushy, its tricky trying to help someone and not come across like you're trying to dig into their brain.

There is a pause before she looks up at him with a smirk.

"Don't tell me you're surprised by the idea of a kind Russian, James. This isn't the cold war." It's a joke, because she has to say one otherwise she's going to want to yell at him that 'it's me you dumbass' which won't get them anywhere.

"No, I'm aware that there are a wide variety of cultures and ethnicities within the former USSR and satellite states and hospitality is often a treasured tradition among them," Bucky says, meeting her joke with a more laconic one. If they had to pack his brain full of knowledge about any and everything, he's going to use it for his own purposes as much as he can - even if it's for a joke.

"Kindness from a Russian is not negated by my experience at the hands of other Russian nationals. I'm just having trouble reconciling a period of time when they would have let the soldat off his leash to have downtime with someone who seems...friendly. Kind. Loving, maybe. I never saw a face or heard a voice - it was muffled - but I got the sense it was a woman. Something to hunt down, I think."

"You think you'd want to find her?" she raises her eyebrows curiously like this is news to her. She really wants to scream at him even more now. To look at her, to listen to her voice and really see her. She was sure he could sometime even when he was looking right past her.

She sighs.

"I obviously don't know everything about everyone's mind control. But the Red Room liked to use it sparingly, they believed that erasing people could create instability, so it was always saved for the most top secret of things, or the worst of punishments."

"I'd want to find her, yeah. It seems like she gave me some calm and kindness when I didn't have any. I'd want to thank her for giving me that without getting anything back for it."

When she mentions how Widows didn't get mind wiped as much because of instability, Bucky gives a sharp nod.

"Any time I was too erratic, they wiped me. Sometimes it was multiple times a day because I would be stuck on something and they couldn't scrub it out. I remember one space of time that it felt like they were doing it over and over like trying to get blood off linens and they just...couldn't do it. I don't remember the memory but I remember them strapping me down and doing all those wipes over and over and over to blot it out into oblivion. Must have been something important to me."

"Hydra was full of idiots," she says in response to that. It's clear, obvious and strong that she's judging that. "The Red Room would have said that would make someone unstable, unable to fully follow orders, or get lost in their programing."

She explains for a moment before adding.

"You're welcome, James." It's not a direct response to the first comment of wanting to thank her, but after, like she was suggesting she knew better. He might not even connect it but she wanted to mention it.

Natasha has a high opinion of herself so when she says You're welcome, James he just takes it as a quip about how she'd figured out why there might be gaps in his time as the soldier. He doesn't take it badly because Natasha is awfully smart and damn good at reading people and dissecting tangled webs.

"Maybe I should have belonged to the Red Room instead. I'm not the beautiful ballerina they want, though. My dance is a lindy hop and I don't think I could get this body into an Écarté Derrière or À la Seconde. And before you ask, yes, I know a little about ballet. I've never done it but it seems to be packed in with random soldat knowledge. It's like an encyclopedia up there."

"Ah yes, Soldat, a fine lover of the dance," She says with a smirk like it's a joke. It isn't though, he used to love to watch her dance. The way she moved, when they'd sneak away on overnight missions they sometimes even danced together.

She looks down at her food and picks at it some more. It's frustrating, having this conversation and not being able to say anything. The way he acts she wants to smack him sometimes, tell him to see her. To just scream at him 'look at me, please' but it's something she'd never do.

"I don't mean to pry you know, but if you want help unraveling the threads..."

"You're the only one interested in doing it, honestly. Everyone else tiptoes around it like the bombs in my head are rigged to explode at any moment. Trust me, it's gonna be bad when they finally do but maybe we need to try and defuse them and not wait on the timer to count down to the inevitable."

Bucky chews on his lip for a moment before reaching for his glass and drinking a good third of it, thankful that it's just cool, clear water and nothing else because he doesn't think he could handle anything else right now.

"You're the only person who looks at me and sees me as what I am right now."

She gives him a smile when he says that because it takes a lot to say as she sits quietly with her thoughts. She takes another bite of fruit before reaching over to add more to her plate and his, she knows he's hungry and shouldn't have to think about all the food he needs to eat while he's thinking about everything else.

"So tell me, why do you think that is? That I see you for as you are?"

"Because you don't pretend like you know me," Bucky says. "Steve knows the person I was. Shuri and Sam know the person they want to see. You just look at me without expectations. You don't decide who I am before I open my mouth you just...I don't know. You just get it."

Bucky isn't sure why considering he knows her the least of everyone but maybe that's why it's easier with her.

"It's peaceful with you."

"Only those who truly know what it's like to go through the fight, can understand what the peace is..." she says softly in Russian. It's cryptic and confusing and she doesn't know what else to do or say. She reaches for her own glass of water and takes a drink before setting the food down and laying out on the blanket onto her back and just taking in the nice weather.

"You need to feel the cold of the winter to appreciate the sun, or maybe the heat of the sun to appreciate the cold."

"The star that always guides me home, Bucky says quietly in Russian. He doesn't know if they're quoting poetry or just speaking from the heart but it comes to him as easily as his next breath and he feels like he's said before - maybe several times before - and he wonders why he would have such a reason to express that sort of sentiment.

"I really want to know who that woman was," Bucky says. "You'll help me find her, won't you? The one who was so kind to me? Because I need to know who that is."

She's still looking up at the sky, not really concentrating on him when he asks her but she doesn't even turn to look. It's a good thing because the first line might have been enough to have an expression on her face when he said it if she had been. She lifts her arms to set behind her head like a pillow and just takes in the blue sky.

"When you're ready to find her, I will help you find her," she promises him. That's one she can keep, she's sure of it.

"I wish I knew what she looked like. It's just impressions and they're just not clear enough. Maybe I'll get that dream again and not one of the nightmares. I liked that dream."

It's confusing, yes, but the puzzle of that dream is something worth looking into while the nightmares aren't anything he wants to examine any time soon. He wants that feeling of peace that he had in the dream and wants to keep having these moments of peace in Wakanda. There's always a fight, though.

"Do you think I'll ever have a chance to stop fighting a war? Because I just want to stay here."

"The more you think about it the more you're probably likely to see it, at least for me, the longer I was away the more good dreams came. The nightmares never stop, but they come less often."

Her eyes are up in the clouds still but she can almost imagine what his face looks like when he says that.

"Come lay down with me, and enjoy the clouds. I think there's one that looks like the lion -- that is to say, you can stay here for as long as you want. If that's what you truly want."

"I don't think I've ever cloudwatched with someone before," Bucky says. It doesn't take much motivation to get him to do it, though and while he doesn't fold his arm behind his head the way that he would if he had two arms, he rests comfortably next to Natasha all the same.

"Did you know that I love the sky at night? It's so clear here in Wakanda. I can see all the stars here because there's no light pollution. I think about asking for a telescope but I don't want to ask them for anything more when I already ask them for so much."

"Who knows, maybe letting the slow things like clouds set in will let your brain rest a bit, it feels like you've been pushing it a long time, at least from what you're talking about," She says glancing over at him laying next to her. It was familiar and she cant help but give him a soft smile.

"I could bring you a telescope the next time I come to visit, if you'd like that?"

"You don't gotta buy me a gift, Natalia," Bucky says and then wonders why he translates her name into Russian and doesn't use Natasha. Natalia is more formal, if anything, and he wonders why he does it. Maybe it's because she calls him James? He's not sure. There's weird little things he does with her that don't make sense but feel as natural as breathing.

"But if you'd like to bring me one, I would get a lot of enjoyment out of it. Cloud-watching is slowly becoming appealing too, though."

It's easier to talk when he's focusing on the shapes the clouds pile into and start identifying them in his head as cirrus, cumulus, stratus.

"I'm sure I could probably expense it or something, so I don't even know if you could consider that a proper gift," She explains going quite for a little bit before she points up at a cloud passing by.

"That one kind of looks like a lion doesn't it? With the big puffy mane, do they have Lions here? Or is it just like a panther thing?" She asks curiously, figuring it's a less hot topic that can hopefully help him relax a little bit more.

"There are lions but this is slightly on the edge of their range. Lions prefer savanna type habitats and Wakanda isn't exactly that. Plenty of panthers and other large cats here, though, and several species endemic to Wakanda alone due to genetic isolation."

He's doing it again, sounding like a textbook, and he wonders why the soldier makes him do that. Why would the soldier retain things like that? He keeps looking at the sky though because it's easier to talk than if he's looking directly at her.

"It feels good when you touch me and that's selfish of me to want it."

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