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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"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."

She keeps a hold of his hand but moves to sit up so she can look at him. She bites the bottom of her lips. Was this as rhetorical question that he was trying to talk through himself or should she answer him. She decides to go for something that's in the middle cocking her head to the side a little bit as she looks at him.

"People who they wanted to become great assassins?" She offers in return. She knows that is the answer but she cants her voice a little bit at the end to still indicate the question in return.

"If you were the best they'd want others to learn from you."

"Yeah, I guess," Bucky says. "Maybe...God, I can't even think of anyone who would be sketchy enough to use the Winter Soldier except the Red Room but I don't know anything about the Red Room and this had to have been before you would even have been born. I was more stable before I got wiped so many times so I assume it would have been earlier along."

Still, he can't shake the feeling that he knows the people in that room, knows them well, just like he knew the woman in his dream. It's a lot to go through, these thoughts, and he doesn't know where up or down is to navigate himself.

"We'd have to get their records and I'm sure the Red Room isn't exactly on the internet in a document dump. I know a lot of HYDRA stuff got dumped after the Triskelion fell but...as far as I know, the Red Room would still be active and has always been separate. Do you even still know anywhere we'd start to even look?"

"I brought down the Red Room by killing Dreykov, it was part of the conditions of my defection to SHIELD, Clint and I did it..." she says thinking about it. She doesn't know yet that it didn't work, that the Red Room is working right now. Controlling girls right now using a program that her mother derived from the Winter Soldier program.

"When you're feeling up to it we can go to Russia and see what we can find, I'd go with you, if it's something you really want to know details about. If you don't want to remember, that's okay too."

She adds the last bit trying to add clarification to herself incase he ever asks her anything directly.

"I need my head straight first. I can't do anything with one arm and my thoughts all mixed up. I need to be in good physical condition again and capable of handling a fight if I need to. It's not something I could run off and do right now."

Bucky gives her a look that's more determined than anything else.

"But when that time comes, I think you need to be there. You know more about this stuff than anyone else. You were in there. You know how they work. No one else has that advantage and tactically it's smart to go in with knowledgeable backup. I'd be comfortable with you covering me."

"What, you don't think Sam and Steve's loud burst in and punch things first ask questions later style of playing Rambo is the way to go on this one?" she teases him softly and before dropping his hand.

"I'll go with you but let's get one thing straight," she says.

She reaches down to brush some hair out of his face and gives him a wicked grin.

"The Black Widow is no ones back up. We can be partners though."

"Yeah, I'd like to not cause international incidents that I'm actually responsible for and those two are a good way to start one," Bucky says dryly. He doesn't think Steve or Sam are the guys to go on this mission with him. They'll want to burst in with proverbial guns blazing and use brute force and Bucky thinks this calls for more subterfuge, subterfuge that he and Natasha are far more capable of accomplishing.

When she brushes his hair out of his face, he can't help the slow smile that blooms but he snorts when she says she's no one's backup but they can be partners. He rolls his eyes playfully.

"Oh, well, partners of course. I just always think of myself alone. If you wanna be side by side, though, I don't think I'm gonna complain one bit. You're good at what you do and I don't need to comb through your records to know that. You just have that...sway to you. That confidence. You don't have to fake it. You can't fake it."

"You're going to find out that the twenty-first century term for that is big dick energy," She says with a grin and fluffs his hair playfully before removing her hand from his hair.

"And yes, I absolutely do, because I am the best at what I do," She reassures him. What exactly does she do? Honestly it's gotten more and more complicated over the years since the Avengers official formed and it wasn't just a SHIELD thing anymore, but hopefully he wouldn't ask that question.

"Just because you think of yourself as always alone though, doesn't mean that you are. I'm sure if you work on that a little more you'll find memories of loved ones."

"I don't know if I'm comfortable with anyone saying I have big dick energy if they haven't seen my dick," Bucky says. "Of course, that would require me acting like it, so I guess it might never be an issue for me. But you, though. You couldn't be incompetent if you tried."

She fluffs his hair and he leans into it before she pulls her hand away. He suddenly wants her hand back as soon as she takes it away but he doesn't know if he's allowed to ask for things like that. Maybe she likes giving touch on her terms but asking for touch is something else.

"I like you being here. I know you can't stay because you have stuff to do but if you came back sometimes, I would really like that. This has been really nice."

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