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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"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."

"Do you like it?" She asks curiously, that was as surprise to her. "You frowned when you brought up me doing it, I thought you didn't like it."

She explains, it almost makes her blush, how much she had misread that. She's a spy and confident in her ability to read people, but the version of him she knew was interfering with her ability to read him straight as the person he was now, and he'd made that mistake.

She untucks her hands from her arm so she can slide over closer to him and take his hand in hers giving it a squeeze.

"I don't think it's selfish."

"I was confused as to why you'd wanna touch me when there's a lot of other guys out there worth touching. It didn't mean I didn't like it," Bucky clarifies.

He likes that she's holding his hand and he doesn't let go of it. Instead, he squeezes hers back and keeps looking at the sky.

"Sometimes I frown when I'm thinking about something. It doesn't mean I'm upset. It's just...a thing my face does."

She squeezes it right back. It's reassuring, that he likes that. She's not sure what she would really do if he had actually hated it and not been overwhelmed so she just chuckles at that.

"The serious Soldat must never look like he enjoys anything or anyone..." she says off hand. She's not really sure why she keeps changing to Russian other then it seems to be jogging his memory and hopefully that can really help with it. She doesn't want to push anything too much, but allowing the water to slowly flow through the cracks seems like the right way.

She makes a point not to entertain the comment about the other men. It would just make things awkward to say the truth, that even if she didn't like him, she wasn't only allowed to touch people who she wanted to jump into bed with. It might just confuse him even more.

"Winter Soldier must be immune to pleas of mercy and unable to deviate from mission orders," Bucky says absently in return. He must have been told it a thousand times or more and it's stamped in his brain as much as those horrible words are. Even hearing those words in other languages is enough to make him go cold but Russian is the worst. Weirdly, though, speaking Russian with Natasha does not upset him. He squeezes her hand again.

"Machine more than man. Extension of the weapon he holds. Tactical, brilliant, unfeeling."

The words just keep coming and while he isn't...upset exactly he wonders why he's remembering them now of all times and places. Maybe Natasha just makes him feel more comfortable than anyone else. She certainly doesn't push at him as hard as other people do.

She squeezes his hand back in reassurance. It's okay to say those things, even if they make her stomach churn with nerves. It had been very clear how horrible hydra had been in the last few years. It had been different in the Red Room, like he was more human, it's no wonder he had such a hard time imagining any humanity at all for him.

"The Winter Soldier is the best trained operative we have ever seen, you can learn lots from studying him, girls." She says in a voice that sounds like she's doing an impression of an older woman.

"Wait. Hold on. I remember that."

It isn't the same voice because it's pitched like Natasha's impersonating someone and she's not saying it herself but the words make sense. Everything makes sense that someone said that about him and that he was in the room when it was said. The room is fuzzy, though, and he can't tell who was there other than, clearly, a bunch of women.

"Who would study me? They used to test poisons on me and things like that - loan me out to labs or to other countries to test chemical weapons but that didn't sound like this. This sounds like I was teaching something or demonstrating something. Where would I do that? Who would I even do it for? I was a solo operative."

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