Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

From the air, Oakland appeared largely unchanged to Steve’s eyes, even though he knew the Wakandans’ influence was already noticeable to anyone familiar with the area and spreading outward as the rest of the world woke up to their existence. He steered the quinjet to the coordinates T’Challa had sent for the private airfield their Talon jets used, where his squad could be hidden from U.S. security, registered as a Wakandan plane with diplomatic privileges.

He’d been to the Bay Area only the once anyway, a lifetime ago, and the USO show had been in San Francisco proper then, but he’d seen plenty of updates from the Wakandan contingent over the past months about the rapid progress they’d made. The area residents must have felt a bit like he had upon his resurrection when confronted with the pace of the alterations to their world—like those citizens who’d lost eleven days in the change from the Julian to Gregorian calendars, going to bed on September 2 and waking up on September 14.

At least here they were gaining something from these mysterious new guests, Steve thought, instead of losing everything they’d known and loved.

Under the intense luster of the California sun they landed, and he went to the back of the plane to change into civilian clothes. Sam and Natasha had been in theirs since they’d taken off in Canada; neither of them enjoyed wearing their uniforms unless they were actually on-mission and relentlessly mocked Steve for usually wearing his, mostly because he didn’t believe in it anymore. Which wasn’t entirely true, but far too complicated to explain.

The two of them were heading off in one of the cars T’Challa had left for them, so they could drop in on Scott Lang; Sam still felt guilty about everything, as though he’d roped an unwilling Scott into the whole Leipzig disaster and gotten him stuck on the Raft, and Natasha insisted Sam was better off if she went along, what with Lang being under house arrest and all. The notion that the FBI could thwart Natasha Romanov from contact with him or Clint by means of surveillance and an ankle monitor was hilarious, but cute that they tried, Steve supposed.

The other car was for him, so Steve punched up the GPS and got on the road. It was beautiful here. The outreach center was situated in a long-neglected area for a multitude of more meaningful reasons to the royal family, but it didn’t hurt, to Steve’s eyes, that they’d chosen a shining, singular landscape, even though it was here within this bleeding and broken country.

But Steve always saw things through clearer, less clouded eyes now, as though some veneer glossing over all that was wrong here had peeled away, first with Hydra inside SHIELD and then with the events of the Accords. Everyone—city, state, country—wanted a piece of what this small African country could provide, and maybe the worse thing was that they thought they deserved it, that embracing the future Wakanda offered meant they had erased the injustice of the past.

Still, he wanted to hear how Shuri and Nakia and T’Challa were finding it, now that they’d spent more time here. He appreciated seeing things through the eyes of his new friends, the clarity of the view.

Steve tried not to let the anxiety of the catalyst for the visit chip away at his mood: Princess Shuri hadn’t been willing to divulge much about her reasons for bringing him to Oakland as soon he was able to come; she’d only given him a distant “yes” when he’d asked if it concerned Bucky and the cryostasis. Her gaze had shifted to the side in the projection rising up from his kimoyo bead, before offering him a conciliatory smile, and the lurching sense of uneasiness that had given him left him a bit shaken.

Even without the actual street number, Steve would have known the outreach center as soon as he’d climbed the hill and seen the soaring shapes of the roof line: there were no buildings like this anywhere in the U.S., he was certain. It was startling to see that they’d finished transforming all three derelict apartment buildings already, but he supposed it shouldn’t be—it was the Wakandans, after all.

The old church across the way was no longer boarded up and appeared to be completely revitalized, and Steve heard the hour’s silvery ring and shouts from young men playing a pickup game in its newly lush parking lot carry through his open window. He parked in the visitors lot, now shaded by trees and looking nothing like the condemned property it had once been, and went up to the main entrance with its familiar Wakandan letterforms welcoming visitors and the transliterated English below them. The doors parted with a soft whoosh to reveal Ayo waiting to greet him, wearing not her uniform but a vibrant magenta dress and tiered gold rings stamped with geometric shapes around her neck, the top one of which broke away to snake up along her neck and around her left ear, ending in a perfect pink matched gemstone drop. Bands around her wrists and arms matched the neck rings, but he knew that there were weapons hidden inside them. Ayo was from the Mining Tribe, he recalled, and they usually wore elaborately made jewelry. She smiled and said, “Captain,” grasping his shoulders and pressing her cheek against his.

“Ayo, it’s good to see you.” Steve returned her embrace, put his fist to his chest and bowed slightly. “You look at home here.” Where Shuri or the king went, Ayo went, but it was no secret she’d been fairly unhappy about the whole venture, as were most of the Dora Milaje: they viewed this country as barbaric and unsafe for their monarchs, and he couldn’t really blame them, although T'Challa could certainly take care of himself. Well, Shuri too—all of them, really.

“I am...learning to relax my standards,” Ayo said with a wry grin. “Come, let me show you the inside as we go to the princess.”

The three separate apartment buildings had been brought together through landscaping and structural changes to the building, creating one large campus of sorts, which extended to some of the nearby houses and apartments that now housed many of the students’ families. Different architectural and design styles from all over Africa were represented throughout the buildings; they hadn’t restricted themselves only to Wakanda. The atriums and seating areas on the ground floor felt like microcosms of the continent, from dry, flat savannas to lush green jungles, snow-capped mountains to vast lakes and rivers. And dotted everywhere was the rich, vibranium-infused wood of the Jabari. It was truly a marvel.

Steve wasn’t sure which area was for science and technology and which for the social and community outreach Nakia was spearheading, but when they walked into the last building, in the shape of a sort of ziggurat, he knew they were in Princess Shuri’s dominion. It reminded him a bit of Steptown in the Golden City, busy and bright and colorful but with that sheen of technology and futurism laid over it, and he found his shoulders relaxed a little, lifting some of the exhaustion of the past six months. He wished now that Sam and Natasha had come with him to see this.

“Come. The main laboratory is on the top floor,” Ayo said, ushering him into an elevator that was almost ridiculously science fiction-y. There was that familiar twinge of grief for the life he’d left behind when he became a fugitive, for Tony’s technology that had been so integral to the Avengers’ buildings and their gear, to Steve’s identity in this modern world. “Princess Shuri enjoys the view,” Ayo said kindly, as though she was aware of this burst of melancholy in him, even though she didn’t know him well enough for that. As warm as she was being, though, Steve couldn’t help the feeling creeping around the edges of his mind that there was something…darker, for want of a better word, which concerned her.

The space Ayo led him to was as gleaming as the princess’s lab at home, but filled with young kids, distinctly American in dress and behavior. They stood at the elevator for a few seconds, Ayo letting him take it all in. It made him smile to see how busy the kids all appeared to be, working away at the couple of huge tables full of vibranium modeling sand or playing one of the foosball games sprinkled around or running some problem on the glass readout panels along the wall. You could see part of the Bay from here; Wakanda was a landlocked country so he imagined the vistas must be particularly appealing to someone raised there.

“Captain Rogers, there you are!” Shuri chirped from his left, startling him out of his reverie, and Ayo stifled a laugh. “So good to see you. Thank you for coming—it makes me feel so powerful that I can command an audience with you.” She grinned and hugged him, then pulled back to look at him critically, and he half expected her to wet her thumb and rub some dirt off his forehead like his mother used to when she’d looked at him like that.

Steve said, “Before you ask, yes, I work too much, no, I’m not taking as good care of myself as I promised Bucky I would, and yes, Sam and Natasha are all right.” Everyone had assured him there were no ill feelings toward Wanda anymore, but Steve tended to minimize discussing her with them if it wasn’t vital, and she had yet to meet formally with anyone from the royal family. He knew T’Challa didn’t hold Lagos against her, especially after he found out about the Raft, but Steve was always careful in these situations. Besides, his visits to Wakanda had always given her an excuse to run off for some time with Vision.

Shuri laughed. “I will text my brother with a full report.” She wore a bright purple dress that complemented Ayo’s well, and he could see black threads of vibranium woven throughout the fabric, giving it a shimmery texture.

“Where is he?”

“He sends his regrets—there was some sort of trouble at the western border and he had to leave before you arrived. He was very put out.” That probably meant yet another attempt by someone to sneak in to Wakanda—or maybe to try to invade. While T’Challa was confident no one would succeed, the pressures on the throne, on the guardianship of the Border Tribe, had increased exponentially now that the world knew about the treasures within its boundaries.

“I’m sorry to miss him…and Nakia?” Both Shuri and Ayo made faces at his sad attempt to discern where their relationship status was at. But dammit, Steve just wanted someone, somewhere to be happy and in love and together, and T’Challa and Nakia were pretty much the only candidates for that Steve knew of right now. If he was honest, he envied them their future and their happiness, how very star-crossed they weren’t.

“She went with him as far as Europe, where she went on to Amsterdam,” Shuri said, working hard at not laughing at him. “You know, for a TED Talk.”

He glanced up at the ceiling; the princess loved to troll him. “So, what did you want to talk to me about? The fact that you wouldn’t tell me much even over encryption left me a little…”

Normally, she’d have called her audience in the Golden City, but Shuri had been in Oakland and he and the team had been in Alberta, north of Edmonton, taking down a remote location for AIM, who seemed intent on picking up from where Tony’d left them.

Shuri cocked her head sideways, glanced around the lab at all the kids. “Let’s go to my office,” she said, in the same slightly discomfiting way Ayo had spoken before. “Excuse us,” she said and Ayo inclined her head in acknowledgement.

Her office was nothing like anyone’s he’d seen before, naturally—an eclectic mix of laboratory like she had at home, what he’d learned was called Afropunk décor, teenage pop culture stuff, and multiple spots where it looked like the kids could crash or do things like...play video games, he supposed, because he wasn’t sure what else kids did these days. He walked over and gazed out the window while Shuri closed the door behind them, taking in the city spread out before them.

“For a while, I’ve been working on the problem of how we can remove the triggering words from Sergeant Barnes’s mind,” she said, standing next to him, solemn in a way he’d never seen her before.

“That’s very… Your Highness…” So many horrendous things had happened in her life recently, and she’d never really had a chance to breathe before she’d had to put together this technology outreach center—that Shuri herself would take the time for such a pursuit was truly touching. Anyone else would have left it to an associate or the doctors.

But Shuri pulled a face. When Steve didn’t apologize for using her title, she rolled her eyes and moved on. They were fairly evenly matched in the stubbornness department, Sam had pointed out a few times.

“A few years ago, I developed a virtual world concept that I thought might be useful someday. It wasn’t perfect and needed more work, but my brother gave me some ideas and I filed them away for the future.” Most people forgot that T’Challa himself was a talented scientist, because the lineage of Black Panthers had always been deeply connected to science and the technology of using vibranium. “I’d been doing some testing with it after Sergeant Barnes went into the cryofreezing chamber, refining it till it was ready. I thought it would be the most effective way to rid his mind of those words for good.” The anger in her voice almost made him smile. Though she’d only known Bucky for a few days, they had appeared to instantly forge a bond.

“I know what virtual reality is, but, um…how would that deal with the activation?” He’d heard Tony talk about BARF, back before everything had gone to hell. He’d even shown Steve a prototype, and Steve had to admit it had, as Tony was fond of saying, wigged him out: the uncanny valley aspects, certainly, but as someone who’d passed through time to an unrecognizable world that had seemed built out of whole cloth, seeing the past re-created and remade like that had been disturbing in a way he couldn’t articulate at the time. Maybe that was the heart of it: this actual world seemed “virtual” enough to him, even six years on.

“What you’re thinking of is…I believe it’s more external,” Shuri said patiently, but there was an element of derision in it, too. “This is more fully an immersive virtual world, almost indistinguishable from reality. What it does is provide a way to truly go inside your mind, because there is a computer-brain interface at its core—the computer is integrated with living tissue and implanted in the body. You are thinking things and feeling them. They are not programmed from the outside, in that sense. You control it when you’re inside, so it can be anything there you want it to be; it’s not like… Well, it wouldn’t be Mr. Stark creating an artificial world through his AI, or even someone like Ms. Maximoff, externally controlling it through a power. My brother told me you had spoken with her about taking those words out of the sergeant’s mind.”

They’d had that conversation not long after the rescue from the prison, Steve asking if it was possible for her to tackle removing the sequence the same way she’d entered the Avengers’ minds. Using that power was an option of last resort, though, he’d quickly realized: she was still shaky from what had happened in Lagos and with the Accords, the Raft, and the thought of manipulating anyone’s mind again made her apprehensive, to put it mildly.

The princess’s gaze searched his face, maybe wondering if he was struggling too hard with her explanations and she should dumb it down a bit. “The impossible becomes possible—you could do anything you wanted with the right inputs, including possibly creating a state where that sequence of words never had any power in the first place.”

“You mean like…” That sounded almost magical, more than anything even Tony’s program could do. Wiping out decades of suffering, of Hydra’s brutality. Giving Bucky back control. “That’s incredible.”

“There is a great deal of science we are still discovering, even in Wakanda, especially of the brain. I can bore you with all the details later.”

“So if we hook Bucky up to this—this—”

“I called it by a word that means a sort of…waking dream, daydream, I think, in English.” She tapped on a kimoyo bead to search for a more accurate translation.

“Like a reverie?” Steve asked and she looked up with bright eyes.

“Yes! Reverie, let’s call it.” With a flick of her wrist, the translation program went away.

Yet there was a reason she was discussing this with him here and now, in Oakland, instead of sending him to the Golden City to see a freshly recovered Bucky. He raised his brows, waiting for her to deliver the bad news. With a grimace, she said, “But you see, Sergeant Barnes is already using it. And that is where the problem lies.” Now he understood why they’d seemed so tense, urgent.

His stomach plummeted. Here Steve had been concerned about the things that could go wrong merely with the cryofreezing process—not because he doubted the Wakandan doctors or Shuri’s genius, but because there were still so many unknowns about Bucky’s mental and physical health. As much as they’d uncovered about the Winter Soldier program and about Zola’s experiments, as much as Bucky was remembering, it was still a big fat zero compared to what they were in the dark about, particularly with regard to the conditioning process, the way they’d broken him down and remade him in the first place. And Steve had never wanted Bucky to go back into suspension, anyhow, but Bucky’d been so damn cavalier about everything. “Anything they do here is a walk in the park compared to before,” Bucky’d said, shaking his head at Steve’s fussing.

“So he was out of the cryo chamber?” Steve asked, trying not to sound petulant—Bucky had never contacted him. Why wouldn’t he have contacted Steve if he’d been awake?

Shuri sat on one of the couches and motioned for him to sit down, too. “He wanted to test it out—he felt very hopeful about it, but he didn’t want to bother you until he could tell you himself that he was all right.” Bother me. For Christ’s sake, he thought. She sighed, and some of the light seemed to go out of her. “I think, in his way, he wanted to do this by himself, to prove something, perhaps.”

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” Steve said in what he hoped was a comforting tone of voice. This was too much responsibility for a young woman her age, Steve thought, not for the first time. She should be having fun with the center she’d helped design and going to concerts and traveling the world instead of trying to fix “broken white boys,” as she’d called them.

“You see, another reason I held on to the program was that the more I have seen of the outside world, the more I know how badly it could be abused. There would instantly be hacks posted everywhere, governments, especially militaries, would misuse it, anyone who believes the ends justify means. And individuals, too. I made it for therapeutic purposes, yes, but…most of the drugs that people become addicted to were developed for therapeutic reasons first, no? If your life was terrible, would you wish to limit yourself to a few hours inside a perfect world of your own creation?”

Such a device would definitely not have had the same response outside a place like Wakanda, Shuri was absolutely correct. They had their own problems, like any country—even aside from what had happened with the king’s cousin and his closest friend—but their society was vastly stronger than any other he knew of. “So you’re saying Bucky got in there okay but he doesn’t want to come out.” All this time and he’d thought Bucky was safe, secure, not…trapping himself in a virtual reality program.

“I don’t think it’s on purpose,” she said, as evenly as she could, and that only added to the shock. “I think something’s gone wrong, and he’s trapped because they—Hydra—did something to his mind we couldn’t anticipate. Didn’t anticipate.” Her hands clenched into fists. “He is unconscious, almost like a coma.” With a tap of her bead an image came up, of Bucky in what looked like a hospital bed. He appeared as peaceful as he had when he entered into cryo, but it left Steve unsettled. She sent the image away.

“If there’s an interface, as you said, couldn’t you just…remove whatever it is? Cut him off, if he can’t do it himself.”

“I won’t waste time with the science just now, but that’s a good question—it’s only that I am afraid severing the connection when someone is that deep within it could cause neurological damage. No one who had tested the versions of…Reverie has experienced something like this. His first few times inside it went fine.”

It made sense: they hadn’t known about the Soldier’s activation triggers until Zemo had spoken them; Bucky himself hadn’t even known for sure that they were still rattling around the dark corners in his brain after he’d first broken free of the conditioning that day on the Potomac. He’d said he was always awakened from the machines and stuck in that chair, and after a process, then he was fully the Soldier—without always knowing how that had been achieved, and made to forget it when he did. They hadn’t wanted Bucky to know where the on/off switch was. God only knew what else was buried inside his mind, waiting to be detonated.

“It’s not your fault,” Steve said, putting his hand on Shuri’s arm. “You’re the only ones offering him hope, and I’m sure he thought this would be a solution. Even he doesn’t know everything they did to him.” He swallowed, his throat tight. “How do I help?” She’d called him here for a purpose, put the Wakandan delegation at risk if the State Department found out he and the team were in the US again.

“Thank you, Captain.” With a ragged exhale, Shuri said, “I’ve developed a new interface that will allow two users within the same program at once, a—a 2.0, if you will. I was hoping you would be willing to come to Wakanda, enter the program, and find a way to bring him back.”

“Of course.” He was so accustomed to people knowing his history, that there was literally nothing in the world he wouldn’t do for Bucky or that he was afraid of, but she hadn’t been brought up with those stories. It was sort of refreshing to be treated like anyone else. “But I have to ask—why not you? You developed it, wouldn’t it be easier than teaching me how to do it?”

Shuri looked at her hands. “I know how arrogant this must sound… I’m not used to having something so significant go wrong. Even if he simply didn’t want to come out more than a few hours, if he was happier in the virtual world and more comfortable there, that could be all right if his body outside the program was all right. He would still have some control over his connection to reality, but this is perhaps like the way Hydra exerted control over him: his vital signs, his brain patterns are all altered. His physical body is endangered without any connection to this world.” When her eyes met his again, they were so sad it broke Steve’s heart. “And Sergeant Barnes doesn’t know me beyond our few meetings. Aside from the issue of whether he could trust me when he doesn’t really know me, if it’s a glitch from a conflict with Hydra’s programming, you might be the only person alive who could overcome it.”

“I see.” He could do this. If there was anyone he’d trust to make it possible and to keep them safe, it was Princess Shuri and the scientists in the Wakandan Design Group, their medical personnel. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for Bucky, nothing he hadn’t already been willing to do; this was as easy as falling off a log. “I just have one condition before you count me in—you have to promise to stop calling me captain.”

She gave him a watery smile. “I will if you stop calling me highness.”

“It’s a deal. How soon should we leave?”

“As quickly as possible.” That didn’t sound good at all.

Chapter Text

Her mother was waiting when Shuri and Steve landed at the Citadel, dressed not quite as formally as she had been the first few times he had come to Wakanda. Maybe that meant she was getting used to him roaming around loose or something, and she didn’t feel as though she had to greet him quite the way she did the other visitors. Shuri’d tried to convince her to come with them to Oakland again, but after her first visit there, Mother had decided she preferred keeping an eye on her children over the internet to spending her days in such a “depressing” place.

There was so much to do at home, she’d insisted, welcoming all the delegations making their first visits to Wakanda, representing her country at the African Union. “What better role for the Queen Mother,” she’d said, and honestly, Shuri got that—it hadn’t been till the center really started coming together that she’d been able to see something more hopeful in the place of what had once been hopeless and empty, where she hadn’t simply wanted to cry.

Crying didn’t help anyone, least of all her brother and Nakia, so she’d buckled down and done the work. She kept it to herself, though, that sometimes she still wished that she could just be carefree and young in Wakanda, creating wondrous new toys and finding solutions to much more mundane problems. Wished she could have shown off her creations to Baba and T’Challa the way she had before, and then gone out with her school chums to a club and dance all night. Such thoughts felt selfish, however, now that she’d seen more of the world.

As they walked down to the platform, Shuri smiled at Steve. She’d felt a little smug on the ride home: Steve had seemed quite amazed at the jet, the way the Talons interacted with and responded to their pilots. Where she’d spent much of the flight time sleeping, he’d apparently been geeking out over the controls, enough that Indali and Ayo were very happy when he did finally nod off and left them alone, even though it didn’t last long. They would have to give him a chance to try it out. “Don’t worry—that won’t be the only time we take you for a ride,” Shuri said, which seemed to please him.

“Shuri,” Mother said, hugging her close. It felt so good to be in her arms again, so much more than she’d expected. This had been her longest stay in California; she’d stepped into a wider role, taking meetings with officials, doing some interviews with journalists, and overseeing presentations from different foundations that wanted to work with the center. “I am so glad you’re home. I hadn’t realized the captain wasn’t taking his own transportation here?” Mother said in Xhosa, so Steve wouldn’t feel offended.

“Mama, don’t,” Shuri answered in a low voice. “You sound like M’Baku.”

Her mother sighed and turned her attention to Steve, who crossed his arms over his chest. “Queen Ramonda,” he said in Xhosa, “thank you for allowing me to come along with Princess Shuri.”

“Ooo-ooo!” Shuri squealed in delighted surprise, switching to English. “Listen to you! You have either been studying behind my back or you memorized what you found on your kimoyo bead. That was very, very good.” She wondered if he’d understood what Mother had said to her or come up with that on his own. “You were not kidding when you said you have a facility for languages, if you did learn it.”

“Don’t worry—my abilities are embarrassingly rudimentary. You’ll have plenty of chances to mock me still.”

Just then, T’Challa came out, striding toward Steve with a smile on his face. “Welcome back,” he said to Steve, and they clasped forearms because that was the manly thing to do, and it made her want to laugh out loud. Oh, just hug, she wanted to say. Still—she was glad that her brother was filling in a little of the emptiness W’Kabi had left in his heart through some new people, cultural differences aside.

Since it was just coming on evening, T’Challa offered to take Steve to his quarters so he could rest, and her mother hummed in agreement, adding, “You should sleep, and work on your problem tomorrow.” She wasn’t sure if Mother meant that for Steve or for her.

But she wound her arm through Shuri’s and steered her in the direction of the palace halls, as T’Challa and Steve walked ahead, talking quietly with their heads lowered, and Ayo and Indali behind them. “But Mama, I should really check on Serg—” and Mother tugged on her arm.

“There is no need—he is being well taken care of, and his condition is unchanged.”

“But I haven’t seen him yet. And I know Steve would like to see him, there is no way he will sleep without seeing him.”

Her mother gave her that long-suffering look, the one she’d perfected through all the times Shuri had run off with friends when she was supposed to be doing lessons or princess stuff. “It’s good of you to worry over others, my daughter,” she soothed, “you do it because you have a kind heart. But these men are not your pets.” Like she would treat them as stray puppies! What a thing to say. Shuri held her tongue, though, because even after all this time away she was not disrespectful. “It’s not for you to take care of them, especially at your own expense. You are working too hard and trying to do too much.”

They headed in the direction of the residences, arm in arm, as Shuri explained what she’d been doing just before they’d left Oakland. It felt good, to lean against Mother, smell the fragrance she wore, listen to her reassuring, calm voice. Going to California might be a lifelong dream, but there was nothing like coming home. It was just after monsoon season in the north and you could smell it down here, that heavy, wet, ionized air, and if you listened you could hear the birds screeching in the highland forest that rose up behind the city.

Her rooms hadn’t changed—they were just neater, and the Dora had already brought Shuri’s things in. Mother began to say to the attendant at the door, “Please have them send a light meal of—” but Shuri flapped her hand and interrupted with “I’m really not hungry, I ate many times on the trip.” Shuri wasn’t going to admit that much of that had been snacks her mother wouldn’t have approved of.

Mother gave her a speaking look, knowing her daughter’s tastes but letting it drop for now, and pushed her into the seat in front of the dressing table with its old-fashioned mirror, fussing at her hair. “Who is taking care of you?” she asked as Shuri swatted lightly at her. “Look at the condition of these braids.”

“Oh, Bashenga’s tears, Mama! It’s fine,” Shuri insisted. “I promise I will let you work on it later.”

“And your skin! So dry. You are sacrificing too much of yourself. Are you even taking the time to eat properly?” Mother continued as though Shuri hadn’t said anything, reaching for a jar of mango butter that had somehow conveniently made its way to the table though Shuri hadn’t been here in weeks.

“I take care of myself, Ayo makes me,” Shuri protested in a weak joke, because she had to admit this felt nice and she hadn’t made any time for pampering herself, let alone being pampered. There was also some coconut water that had magically appeared on the table and she sipped at it while her mother continued to dote on her. Her whole body was getting rubbery, letting go of some of the tension she’d had since she found out about Sergeant Barnes.

“This is not the same as making it part of your daily routine,” Mother said. “You cannot simply come home and make up for lack of care in one night.” She looked into Shuri’s eyes, warm and fond, and added, “It is the nature of young people, when they become adults, to chafe against their parents. Your father and I did to ours, and they did to theirs—it has always been this way. You have more things to rub against than most because of your position, and the traditions we impose. M’Baku believed we scoffed at traditions, but young people always challenge what went before. The important thing is that we keep the ones that count.”

Shuri frowned. “I am pretty certain there is a point that you’re making, which I am missing.”

“Your father is very, very proud of you for everything you have accomplished,” Mother said with a sly smile. “He has told me that many times. Even if he might have disagreed with your brother about all of this”—and she waved a hand toward the window, gesturing at all of world, which was hilarious to Shuri—“I know he is watching and so very proud of his children for how they’ve chosen to create something new.” She put the lid on the jar and stood. “But you cannot bring him back by being so devoted to others that it means letting go of yourself completely. Now sleep. Tomorrow you can worry about the sergeant and the captain.”

At first, Shuri opened her mouth to protest, but then stopped herself because her mother was one of the wisest women she’d ever met, could see things few could see: she knew the ways of the priests and priestesses, the rites of all the different healers of all the tribes. If she was telling her that something should change, well, then…Shuri ought to listen to the meaning underneath the words.

So Shuri let Mother help her change into sleep clothes and wrap her hair—okay, maybe Mother was right, it could use a little help, but she wasn’t saying that out loud—and got ready for bed. Shuri’d gotten used to the accommodations in Oakland, the differences in all the little things, but there was nothing like sliding into her own familiar bed, the sounds and smells of her own familiar rooms, and her limbs felt heavy now, as did her eyelids.

Mother kissed her forehead and smiled, gliding from the room with a quiet admonishment. “Try to rest a little before you throw yourself into this project and get lost again.”

“I will, Mama.” Pressing the bead for the lights, Shuri lay back, running her fingers over her much softer skin, her mind a million miles away from trying to sleep, though, and fixed instead on how she would build the module for training Steve to use Reverie.

“Princess Shuri said you were having some trouble at the western border?” Steve asked conversationally as T’Challa walked with him to his guest quarters. “Hopefully nothing too serious.” T’Challa really didn’t have to take the time; Steve’d been back a few times and had gotten the lay of the land reasonably quickly. Maybe T’Challa just enjoyed having some different company once in a while, now that so much of his time at home was spent in conferences or meeting with dignitaries or the Tribal Council. Steve also had the sense that T’Challa missed having a good fight now and then, and if the Black Panther got to suit up to handle an attempted security breach, well, all the better.

“I think we will be facing it for some time,” he said, waving his bracelet at a sensor and opening the door to the rooms Steve always stayed in. “We have told people just enough to entice them to test us, to see what they can get away with. Eventually, they will understand that it does not work, and our presence in the world outside Wakanda will have less novelty.”

“I doubt that may ever happen.” Steve grinned, though. “I do know a little of what that’s like. After word got out about me in the war, it seemed like everyone wanted a piece of me, not just the Red Skull. I think they believed they needed to test if I could even be real. They were usually pretty surprised when they got handed their asses.”

That made him laugh, which Steve always liked to see. T’Challa explained that the Border Tribe was now spread thin after the affair with Killmonger, many of them now under guard themselves for supporting T’Challa’s cousin. The country was focused on redemption for crimes rather than punishment, but it would be a long time until W’Kabi and the others were allowed to return to their former roles.

Steve nodded to the king and dropped his duffel as they stepped inside, the Dora taking up stations at the door. It still felt strange to not have his shield with him; his hand always moved toward his back reflexively, and he’d catch himself going for it and then rub his neck a little, embarrassed.

The rooms were more of an outbuilding in the Citadel complex rather than part of the palace where the royal family lived, almost like a small, beautifully appointed cottage. The doors and windows opened on to a gorgeous private courtyard with a small pool fed by a waterfall running through the dense, humid garden. T’Challa said, “It is a long flight, even in the Talons, and there’s also the time difference and adjusting to the heat.” When Steve started to protest that he was fine, T’Challa held up a regal hand and said gently, “Sergeant Barnes is being well taken care of, I promise you. He’s not in immediate danger. I’ve seen the Reverie program and I think it would be wise to get some rest—it might be a little…taxing. Even for you.”

Steve’s eyebrow shot up; the words were meant to be reassuring, but it was like Shuri’s “as quickly as possible” in that it only made Steve more worried. But he assented, because it would be rude to do otherwise. T’Challa had a funny look on his face, kind and contemplative, maybe, like he knew all Steve was capable of thinking about was Bucky, and not for the first time Steve wondered how much other people guessed of his feelings for him.

T’Challa had a conference with a prime minister in a different time zone, so he told Steve he’d come in the morning to take him up to the Design Group. On his first visit back to the country, T’Challa had taken him up there on foot, giving him a chance to see the beauty of the land around the mountain—and maybe he’d been feeling Steve out just a little, trying to get the measure of him, and certainly there were few people with a stamina that could match his own. But now on his visits Steve took the little planes or the hoverbikes, because the king was so busy. Steve thought T’Challa might be lonely these days, being apart from his family so much now, Nakia often being in different parts of the world, too. And he missed his father still so very much, a grief that was hard to shake, Steve knew. They clasped forearms, and with an apologetic smile, T’Challa left.

Steve opened the doors and stepped out into the courtyard. The most startlingly blue bird he’d ever seen shot up from the foliage and took position in a towering tree, glaring down at Steve. It had a brilliant red crown and a long tail, very regal and quite different from the duller partridge-like birds poking around in the underbrush, who didn’t seem as perturbed by his presence. Steve apologized for interrupting, pulled out his phone, and sat down to text Sam about his arrival. It was still yesterday where they were. Life was a constant series of adjustments now, bouncing among time zones as though they were short-term time travelers, staying in places with no differentiation, so you felt like you lived inside an underexposed photograph. Jet lag hadn’t even existed when Steve took the Valkyrie into the water; now it was the one overarching characteristic of his life.

It wasn’t sustainable, he knew, not for Sam and Nat and Wanda, not even for himself; even nomads settled down for a little while occasionally. All he’d wanted was a home, and yet here he was now, perpetually on the run, running near to empty. He had to work harder all the time to push his own losses into the background, to not want to throw in the towel on…whatever it was they were doing now, just so he could stay in one place that he could call home—but there wasn’t space for him to get maudlin about losing the Avengers, about losing Peggy and that last connection to a vague concept of where he belonged. There was only work to be done.

If he’d had Bucky with him, though, none of that would have mattered. Steve would have had everything that counted. Bucky had always been home, anyway.

The bird flapped down to a stone wall and cocked its head at him. “Sorry, bud,” Steve said, holding out a hand, “I’m afraid I don’t have any food for you. I’ll leave you to get back to what you were doing.” He took his boots off and lay down on the bed, trying to will himself to relax, but his body was too tightly strung, thinking about Bucky. Despite Shuri’s explanations on the trip, it still felt maddeningly vague and slightly incomprehensible. He just wanted to see what he was up against.

After lying there for a good long while, Steve huffed in exasperation and got up, went to the bathroom and washed up a little before trying again to relax and sleep. But that still accomplished nothing, and by now the sky was dark. He put on a fresh T-shirt and jeans, grabbed a baseball cap, and stepped out into the breezeway, where his Dora Milaje guard was standing at attention. He held his hands up. “I can’t seem to relax. Thought I might just walk around the city for a little while till I could feel tired.” The heat alone usually knocked him flat when he first returned.

“I’m called Wanuri. Allow me to send for a sedative tea,” she said. “It is very effective.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing a little walking won’t cure,” he said. “I’m all right on my own, I know the way.”

She gave him an arch look, like she was insulted by his attempt to get rid of her. “This is my duty.”

“Right. Okay, then.” He let her walk ahead to lead him out past the landing area to the entrance of the Citadel grounds, flanked by its huge panther statues, where she then dropped back, as unobtrusive as possible considering she was a Dora Milaje. They followed the main road stretching to the heart of the northwest part of the city, which sprawled around the Citadel and the neighborhoods that climbed up the hillsides. Market stalls had closed up now so the streets were the province of young people heading from food stands and cafes to nightclubs and bars, couples walking hand in hand to restaurants or performances; Steve felt a kind of energy even from far away, a buzz that grew more distinct the closer he got to the main streets.

Whenever he walked around Birnin Zana—by himself or with a member of the royal family—he half expected someone to point an accusatory finger at him and call him out for what had happened in Lagos. They never did, of course, at least no one had yet, but he wasn’t deluding himself that it couldn’t happen, that someone whose family member had died in the accident wasn’t going to confront him and demand he pay for the crime. No matter what the royal family said now about their forgiveness, King T’Chaka’s words echoed in the back of Steve’s mind: “Victory at the expense of the innocent is no victory at all.” As much as he had come to love this place, what had brought him here was a tragedy no one should forget.

But Wakanda was growing used to outsiders—on their first few visits, people had kept a friendly but slightly wary distance from him and the team, but reception had grown friendlier after the decision to open the country up. Tonight, he wasn’t even remarked on as he threaded his way through the crowds. Despite the country’s isolation, most people, at least in the cities, grew up learning another language, usually English but sometimes French, and they threw him a “hello” as he walked past.

While it was dark, the city was bright with the omnipresent faint purple or bluish glow of vibranium light: on the hover-tram cars, the street lamps, from people’s kimoyo bracelets, all punctuated by neon signs. It enhanced the otherworldly feel of the city, gave him a sensation akin to waking in the future that he’d had back in 2011: everything was familiar, but not.

The aromas of cooking food surrounded Steve, bringing his stomach awake. He hadn’t eaten much on the plane, he realized now, so he stopped at a grilled meat stand whose smoke was making his mouth water. The woman cooking had a couple of sweet-smelling blooms tucked in among the twists of her hair, fragrant even above the smoke, and she asked him what he wanted as though he were Wakandan himself and not an obvious outsider. He was pretty sure most of it was goat; Sam had laughed his ass off at Steve’s displeasure when he’d tried it the first time, because Sam had developed a taste for it in Afghanistan, he’d claimed, but to Steve it was too close to the cheap mutton that was all they could afford much of the time growing up.

Steve asked what she had cooking and she laughed, like she could tell he was afraid of her answer, but she pointed at some of the skewers and said, “Chicken,” so he smiled and held up two fingers, saying, “It looks wonderful.” He didn’t know if there was a formal name for the dish, but he loved the intense, bright spices and the sauce that accompanied it, and she added some red rice and a spongey bread that reminded him of injera. Possibly it was injera—Ethiopia was the one other African nation that hadn’t been colonized, and the two places shared some interesting similarities, possibly developed over centuries of trade when Wakanda hadn’t been quite as closed off. He offered to get some food for Wanuri, but she begged off.

“Sit, please,” the woman told him, waving a hand at the little tables scattered nearby, “enjoy.” Somehow there was always Wakandan money on his kimoyo bead—he thought some poor functionary in the palace must be tasked with topping it up every time he came back to the country—and he pulled it from under his shirt and pointed it at the little reader on her stand. He motioned to Wanuri to join him. She looked reluctant, of course, but eventually angled her spear against the other chair and sat, ramrod straight, humoring him.

“Don’t eat on duty?” Steve asked.

A shake of the head. “If I were hungry, I would join you.”

With a smile, he said, somewhat sheepishly, “I hadn’t realized how hungry I actually was. The past thirty-six hours have been a bit…wild.” He took a sip of the fizzy tamarind drink he’d bought. “I keep forgetting, every time I come back here, how long it takes me to adjust to the elevation and the heat. Seems to work up an appetite, and maybe that’s why I can’t sleep.”

She gave him a kind smile. “There are also many things weighing on your mind.”

It made him chuckle. “Got that from General Okoye’s daily briefing, did you?”

He was startled that he’d actually made her laugh. “It is easiest to do our jobs when we know what our guests are doing.”

“I’ve never been able to convince them that I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.” He finished eating as she kept an unnecessarily watchful eye, and then he got up to stroll around a little more. Outside one cafe he stopped to listen to the music filtering from inside, enjoying the beat even though he couldn’t hear a lot else, and caught Wanuri’s amused smile again. “Don’t expect the foreigner to appreciate Wakandan music?” he teased.

Shaking her head, she said, “It is more that you’re close to one hundred years old.”

He belted out a laugh, causing some passersby to cast curious glances. “Only by a technicality.” They wandered idly a little while longer, occasionally stopping so she might explain something he was curious about, before he decided it would be best to head back up to the Palace. He was hoping they’d get an early start in the morning—the faster he learned how to use Reverie, the faster he could get Bucky out.

But despite his best efforts, he still couldn’t sleep, and after flopping around like a landed fish, turning on the television and trying to find something mindless, and attempting to read, Steve gave up and pulled up the Citadel’s grounds schematic on the glass tablet in his room. Shuri had said that Bucky’d been taken out of cryosleep up at the medical labs where he’d gone under, but after that had moved down to his own quarters within the complex while he used Reverie. They’d brought him to the medical facility attached to the Citadel a few days before their arrival. Steve sent the path to his bead, poked his head out the door, and told Wanuri apologetically, “Still can’t sleep. I think I’m going over to look in on my friend. Really, I can find the way myself.” He held the bead up as proof.

“I will lead you there.” Tough crowd.

Wanuri led him through the soft, cool gray of the hallways to an area with patient rooms, spacious and open, where a nurse was attending to something outside Bucky’s room. The walls were the glass ones he saw everywhere, controllable by voice commands, and the artistic patterns on the floors and walls were more subdued here. Steve stopped, staring at Bucky in the bed, an arched panel behind him bearing lighted symbols that changed color every few seconds—probably blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygen…the usual vitals. The nurse obviously knew who Steve was, and she cast a glance out to the hall at Wanuri, where some unspoken communication between them occurred. She came toward him with an understanding smile, then opened the glass door into Bucky’s room with a wave of her hand; he went in, his heart pounding.

It had been months since Steve had seen Bucky beyond images of his sleeping form, glimpses in a lab behind glass walls, and he found it strange and distressing and exhilarating all at once. “Captain Rogers, please sit,” the nurse said kindly, pulling a chair over beside the bed before leaving him alone.

“Well, this is another fine mess you’ve got us into,” Steve said, wrapping his fingers around Bucky’s hand, pressing his thumb to the pulse that beat softly under the skin of his wrist. There was no glass in between them anymore, he could touch Bucky and see the way the air stirred the fine hairs along his neck, and he’d never seemed more beautiful to Steve, save the time he’d found him alive in Austria against all hope. “I don’t know if you can hear me, Buck, but Shuri tells me things have gone wrong in there and you’re having a little trouble getting back out. So I came to help.”

He wasn’t sure what he’d hoped for, maybe that the readings would beep and Bucky’s eyes would flutter open at the sound of his voice, or maybe that he’d squeeze Steve’s hand to let him know he’d heard. But none of that happened; nothing happened, as far as he could tell, and the nurse didn’t move from her position across the hall.

“I’m gonna learn how to use the same program and join you in there. So you’ll be seeing me, and you won’t be able to get rid of me till you decide to come on back out. I got you out of the Winter Soldier, I’m pretty sure I can do this.” He laughed softly. “I suppose that sounds cocky, but you know me. I love a good challenge. This is—well, I’m not giving up on this one.” Colonel Phillips had told Steve Bucky was most likely dead in Austria, Sam had said Bucky was the kind you couldn’t save. He was going for three for three now, and he wouldn’t lose.

Still no sign of life. That was okay, Steve could stay here a while. For Bucky, Steve could do anything.

“He’ll want to try to fly,” Shuri said to herself, “because who wouldn’t. So that’s one thing.” She’d been compiling a mental list of all the things she’d have to address with Steve in the morning, and it was now two hours since she’d last got out of bed and paced restlessly before getting back in and trying to sleep, and she was no closer than before. The reason she couldn’t sleep wasn’t because she’d napped a little on the trip, she was just anxious about the way this would go, and frustrated that they couldn’t have started as soon as they’d landed.

With a final huff, Shuri threw her blanket off and got up. She could drink some silverfern tea and try again, but it wasn’t that long till sunrise at this point, anyway. She put on some leggings and her Oakland A’s T-shirt, a gift from her favorite student at the center—she just needed to see where Sergeant Barnes was, what things looked like for him. Make sure he was all right. Everything had been so good when she’d left for the US. How had it gone so wrong as soon as she’d left?

“It’s all right,” she told the Dora guard, “I’m only going over to the medical complex.” Of course she started to protest, but Shuri just waved her back. In the hallway outside the sergeant’s room, she spotted Wanuri, standing farther back from the patient areas, and then she saw Steve inside, sitting next to Sergeant Barnes. “Oh,” she exclaimed. Shuri stepped back into the dark wedge of shadow, looking through into the room. The nurse who would be here, Oni, was not anywhere Shuri could see. Everything seemed all right, though, the sergeant didn’t appear to be in any danger, but from the look on Steve’s face you would think Barnes was on his deathbed. Steve’s hand covered the sergeant’s, and he was talking softly to him, probably hoping his friend could hear him.

For a while, Shuri watched in silence, until she decided to leave, and as she turned to go, she found T’Challa there, a wry smile on his face.

“Apparently, no one can sleep tonight and we have all decided to come stare at Barnes,” he said.

“Like the bunch of weirdos that we are.” She sighed, feeling like an idiot. “I just couldn’t stop thinking of what I need to do, and whether it will work, and what he—”

Her brother shook his head. “Don’t let yourself obsess about those things. This is not your fault, how many times must we say that?”

“I know that in my head, but my heart is not listening.”

Her mind wouldn’t quit whirling with all the possibilities of what she’d missed, what could be happening inside Barnes, how they could fix it, and never coming up with any answers. She could feel her throat getting tighter, the tears warm behind her eyes.

“Mother says I am trying to bring Baba back by helping all these men. But I don’t think that’s it.” The tears spilled over, and she wiped at her eyes, sniffling. T’Challa pulled the sleeve of his tunic tight and dabbed at her cheeks.

“It might be, a little,” he said tenderly. “But it is also that you have a kind and generous heart.”

She glanced over at Bucky, and whispered intensely, “It’s also because I helped you find him. It’s because of me that you were there at all, and perhaps Steve would have got Barnes out of there safely and you would not have almost killed—” and she choked off the words on a hiccuping breath, wiping at her eyes again. “I shouldn’t have done it, but I just hurt for Baba, so much.”

T’Challa took her face in his hands. “Stop that. Stop. I am the one who asked you to find him, those were my mistakes—and that’s why they are here. They know you are trying to help.” He wiped her tears away and took her hand in his. Yes, Steve’s guilt over Lagos was every bit as acute as what she felt about Barnes, but knowing that didn’t change a thing. None of this would have happened if she’d said no to T’Challa, reasoned with him to not do something he’d regret. They were quiet for a while, leaning against one another.

Once she’d stopped sniffling so much, she said softly, “I think that he is in love with Sergeant Barnes.”

T’Challa’s eyebrow went up, the corner of his mouth tugged up too. “Possibly, but that is none of our business. Our only concern right now is to find out what’s gone wrong with Barnes and to help Captain Rogers help him.” He was right, of course, her brother was usually right.

“Steve,” Shuri corrected quietly, squeezing her brother’s hand tighter. “He prefers to be called Steve.”

Chapter Text

T’Challa arrived promptly in the morning, just as he’d said, and despite the lack of sleep and the jet lag, Steve was ready and eager to get started. First, though, was taking time for the breakfast the king had brought, and then they went off with his Dora Milaje retinue to Mount Bashenga and the Design Group lab. Steve could tell from the almost imperceptible way his demeanor shifted that T’Challa missed being here in his own little corner, tinkering with things. “I will leave you to my sister’s devices,” T’Challa said with a frightening grin, “and attend to a few duties. If she is not done with you by afternoon, I will send out search and rescue.”

The lab rooms were just as he remembered them from his visits to see Bucky in limbo behind the cryo chamber doors, but Ayo took him to a different part of the building, deeper into the mountain, where Shuri was waiting for him. This wing almost looked like offices, in a way, less researchy and more like the design of the Outreach Center: smaller rooms with glass walls, computer stations, chairs, nooks for sitting and doing work in or having meetings.

There was a glass tank in one corner of the room they entered, like some sort of hi-tech aquarium. It held one lone occupant: a tiny round white orb with a black dot in the center, anchored to the bottom by a squiggly tail, pulsing gently in the liquid. Steve had to bite back a laugh, because it looked something like a microscopic balloon but also—and he wasn’t saying this out loud—a very round sperm. So he cleared his throat and said, “I take it this is the, what’d you call it, the bio-computer interface?”

“Yes, this is it,” Shuri said, as a tall man wearing a white lab coat came up alongside her. Not all the medical personnel wore coats the way medical people back home did, but many tended to, something that had surprised Steve a little bit in those first few days in Wakanda, when they were trying to stabilize the damage to Bucky’s metal arm and heal a few of Steve’s own injuries. It had seemed very Western, but he’d learned that Wakanda’s isolation didn’t always mean completely ignoring the customs of the world around them. “This is N’Deme, a neuroscientist, who helped design the brain interface.”

“Doctor, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” They shook hands.

“Please, N’Deme will do.”

“Here’s hoping I can figure this thing out quickly and get Bucky back out.”

“I am sure of it, Captain.” He waved a hand toward the tank. “It does not look like much, but that is a very powerful chip in there.”

“You will have to get the implant first.” Shuri wrinkled her nose and pointed at a small tray of implements next to a reclining chair, the largest of which was a gun that reminded him of one of those video game things you used for first-person shooters. “It is much scarier than it looks.”

Steve knew this drill, and slid into the seat, getting comfortable and turning his elbow around on the chair arm so he could offer up a vein. “This doesn’t even faze me. You should have seen what they stuck in me to get this”—and he motioned at his torso—“back in the day. To say nothing of the oven they cooked me in with Vita-Rays.”

“If you say so,” Shuri said with smirk, picking up the gun and pressing a button—a very long needle shot out. She poked it into a membrane, breaking the rubbery seal with the needle and drawing the little thing up inside; it detached from its wiggly tail and disappeared. The needle must have been more for pulling the thing into the gun than pushing it inside something else, because he never felt even the slightest of pricks, just heard a little “fwoop” and then Shuri set the gun back on the table. “Brave boy,” she said with a grin, patting his shoulder.

“Do I get a cookie, then? I feel like I should get a cookie.”

“Hm.” Shuri made a thoughtful face. “I should see what I have stashed away from Oakland.”

“I mean, I’ve never had a computer injected into me before. Especially one that’ll attach itself to my brain.”

“Well then, you deserve your cookie, I suppose.” She leaned toward him and said conspiratorially, “I think I am becoming addicted to those Biscoff cookies. I have some about somewhere.”

“I’ll take ’em. They didn’t give me anything back in the war, you know,” he said, pretending to be sad.

“No, only a superior new body, good health, and the ability to survive being frozen for seventy years.”

Steve enjoyed her sarcasm. One of his favorite things he’d discovered here was how little…well, reverence wasn’t the right word, but maybe formality, there was generally, and how much delight they took in teasing each other. His friends and family regularly seemed to roast T’Challa, as Sam put it, and everyone, especially Shuri, showed a remarkable ability to mix respect and tradition with impertinence to anyone, regardless of their role. It made Steve feel more at home here than almost anything else could; if he couldn’t have Bucky, Nat, or Sam around to flip him shit, he was grateful to have the Wakandans.

N’Deme wasn’t letting himself be distracted by their banter and held his kimoyo bracelet near Steve, moving it up along the curve of Steve’s arm. A small holographic image projected in front of the bracelet showing the BCI’s dot traveling up through a color-coded system of veins. It was fascinating, but it also made him think of Tony, who’d have been bouncing up and down over this tech like a kid at Christmas, and that sense of sorrow for what he’d so recently lost passed through Steve again.

But that was a long time ago. He shook his head and looked at Shuri.

“I will set up the module and see how many cookies I am willing to share,” Shuri said, patting his head and disappearing around the corner, while N’Deme continued to monitor the BCI’s path toward his brain. He suppose he should feel a little apprehensive about this, but he didn’t—Steve always liked being at the Design Group, with its beautiful patterns everywhere and artwork and bold, printed textiles, the gleaming glass surfaces, and the fantastical shapes of the modeling sand for various weird projects scattered about. It was nothing like Howard’s labs in the war and yet it made Steve feel safe, somehow, comfortable in its familiarity.

He was lost in studying the room’s intricate artwork when N’Deme said, very pleased, “There we are.” Was Steve supposed to have felt something when it attached? He hadn’t, he wouldn’t know that anything had happened at all, in fact, and he rubbed his arm where the thing had gone in—not even the tiniest of marks. “Let me enter in the data,” N’Deme said, so Steve got up and wandered into the large open area between the primary labs and these rooms.

On one of its huge glass walls was a beautiful, elaborate piece of video art—or no, it was a mandala, Steve recalled. It swirled and morphed like an orange, yellow, and pink kaleidoscope, and he found himself somewhat hypnotized.

N’Deme came up beside him. “Mandalas are meant to represent the universe.”

“It’s beautiful. Is it here as art, or…”

“It is a part of the program. A gateway icon that allows you to exit back to the real world. You will find it showing up in many places: a window, a door handle, a mirror or clock…any place you can use it to return here.”

“Good choice. My eye will go straight to it.”

With a chuckle, he said, “One hopes. Of course it won’t be that large.” He motioned for Steve to follow him. “Princess Shuri and I have built your cortical interface using your SHIELD medical files. Things may have changed since your last evaluation there, but I think for the most part, it will be fine. While you are using the training module, I will monitor your vital signs—the program was designed so that users would choose from a prebuilt interface and then add their own experiences, desires, and interests as they went along, building their perfect universe. But Sergeant Barnes did not have much to build from—few photos of himself in his previous life, no online or recorded history to download into it, beyond some of the newsreels from the war. We took most of his interface from the books written about you both, and tried to avoid anything regarding Hydra or the Winter Soldier.”

They went into a large room with multiple stations that looked like futuristic computer terminals, holoscreens projecting in the air above them, and glossy black tables with lighted holographic keyboards, like Tony’s interfaces back home. A couple of chaise longue-type chairs were scattered about, and N’Deme motioned to one. “Please, make yourself comfortable and I will set this up for the princess.”

N’Deme swept his bracelet over one of the stations, where a purple light glowed beneath the surface, picking up the data from his scan of Steve’s body, he surmised. “All right,” Shuri said as she came in, holding a large glass pane with two rubber grips on either side, “here we go.” She pulled up a chair next to him as he leaned back. “No cookies here, but I’ve sent out for some treats for you.”

“Thanks,” Steve said.

“So, since the sergeant didn’t have much history to build his Reverie from, he created most of it himself on his own time, which means we don’t really know what will be in there. But you, on the other hand, oh my, are you famous!” This appeared to delight her. “I will put so many Easter eggs in your program.”

“Yikes.”

“It will be fun, I promise. But for now, this first one is kind of standard, with some things you will recognize to help orient you faster.” She set the glass on her lap and asked, “What is your favorite memory?”

That was such a complicated question, especially since so many of his most meaningful moments were with Bucky, or because of Bucky. And then there was Peggy, and the people he was closest to in this century… He wasn’t certain he could really share what he held most dear, so he picked something generic. “The first night game at Ebbets Field, June 1938.”

“Tell me all about it,” Shuri prompted, as she began typing things on the glass.

“Uh, well. There hadn’t been many other night games anywhere yet at that point and none in New York, so people were skeptical—it drew a huge crowd because they wanted to see how the players would perform, I think they hoped it’d be a fiasco. We—Bucky and I, I mean—were way up in the stands, far enough away that we couldn’t really see Jesse Owens racing with some of the players in a little pregame show. But when the lights came on, it was just—spectacular, it seemed so futuristic at the time. We lost, of course—the Dodgers—though the Reds’ pitcher made history that night by being the first fella to pitch two no-hit, no-run games in a row. So the fans spilled onto the field afterward and I almost got trampled in the crowd. It was worth it, to be a part of history like that.”

After a minute, Shuri looked up from the tablet. “Okay, I understood some of those words individually, but not the way you put them together in that order.” He laughed. “I have an Oakland A’s shirt, though, so I do know what baseball is.”

“It’s a start.”

Shuri handed the tablet to him and turned to N’Deme, who nodded that they were ready. She took a deep breath. “You enter the program by holding this device, this one’s now yours. Do you want to use English for ‘open,’ or Xhosa, now that you are so fluent”—he gave her a look and she smirked—“or even something else like, I don’t know, French, Latin?”

She was teasing, but he thought that sounded funny, so he said, “Yeah, why not Latin?”

Touching something on a projection from one of her beads, she said, “Okay, then, Latin.”

“Once I’m in there, do I just…I don’t know, walk around?” Steve was attempting to race out in front of them, he realized, instead of giving them the chance to go over it step by step, but he was thrumming with energy now that things were really moving. Bucky had always given him a hard time about that: he’d often chastised Steve for finishing people’s sentences if he thought they weren’t speaking fast enough, or snapping at those Steve felt weren’t keeping up with his thought processes.

“Your brain tells your limbs what to do,” N’Deme said from his station, “and those signals are connected to your body in Reverie. Other than a few stray reactions to powerful stimuli, your body will remain perfectly still here in this seat while you do walk around.”

“So…I could theoretically do anything I want?”

“Physical laws don’t necessarily apply, but they will be subject to the limitations of the code,” he explained, as though Steve would understand.

“You cannot just take off and fly,” Shuri interjected. “Not yet, anyway.” Her eyes scrunched up a little. “Humans don’t really have the mental understanding needed to fly, so it’s not a thing that would work for most of us. But perhaps Mr. Wilson can give us information we could use to build that into Reverie in a way it might work for regular users.”

Now that she mentioned it, Steve really wanted to try to fly on his own. He’d been carried enough times by Sam or even by Tony that it would drive him crazy if he couldn’t be the one to do it on his own in a virtual reality world. Still—eyes on the prize. “Disappointing, but okay. So, can I get hurt, is that why I shouldn’t try to fly?”

“You can teach yourself to disarm certain triggers, like pain, for example,” N’Deme said. “Over time, you might learn to override your natural instincts and deprogram your fear response.” It sounded, though, like that might be time they didn’t have.

She picked the tablet up again and tapped it. “You hold up this device and say ‘apertus,’ and that will take you inside, and there you’ll find yourself in the box.”

“The box. Sounds ominous.”

“It’s not, not for a brave boy like you.” She cackled at his sour face. “It’s just where the training module really begins. Once inside, there is no way to communicate with us out here. So when you’re ready to come back or if it gets too intense, look for the gateway icon—”

“The mandala,” Steve cut in.

“Yes, but if you can’t find one or you simply wish to leave, at any time you should just say ‘exitus’ and you’ll be right back here. This first run is very simple.”

“How many are you planning?”

With a deep breath, Shuri said, “It depends on how you pick it up. When you finish training, there’s a treat. Better than a cookie.”

Huffing a laugh, Steve held the Reverie tablet up. On its face were multiple little boxes containing text and some stock-type photos, a few Wakandan symbols alongside the boxes, and the readouts of his vital statistics with other text about himself; in the center top was a pulsing, swirling mandala of purple and blue. Behind the glass panel, Shuri’s tangerine tunic and trousers made a brilliant backdrop. “Here goes nothin’,” Steve said and took a deep breath. “Apertus.”

When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his back in the jungle, birds shrieking in the canopy high above him. Tropical flowers scented the air, and he smiled, sat up, and looked around. Shuri hadn’t been kidding: there was nothing about this that felt fake, the humid, thick air and the feel of the damp soil and vegetation under his hands were as real as the chair and cool office air had been before he said ‘apertus.’ Steve stood up, taking a few tentative steps, absorbing the sensations—a slight breeze across his skin, the dappled light flickering past his vision. His feet did exactly what he told them to, his hands moved in front of his face just the way he wanted, his eyes blinked—everything worked. With a deep breath, he set off, stepping through the bush, feeling the sunshine that filtered through the trees. Parrots and other brilliant birds zoomed through the air. “Wow,” he said aloud, turning around and around.

A few feet in front of where Steve stood was a tree stump, and on top of it a small fire burned, sending embers up into the air. It seemed too random to just be background, so he decided it had to be a test. Steve focused his mind, thinking of what N’Deme had said about overcoming his fear response, and he stepped forward, tentatively stretching his hand out. It’s not real. I won’t feel pain because it’s not my real body. He stuck his hand all the way inside the flames, but nothing happened, and he closed his fist, turning it around and around as the flames curved over his flesh. With a chuckle, he took his hand out, looking at his untouched skin. But then the whole canopy of the jungle burst into flames and Steve drew his head back, startled. Was it reacting to him sticking his hand in the fire, some kind of weird displaced result of what he’d done? He turned and ran in the other direction, starting slow and then running faster and faster, crashing through the understory.

In the distance came the sound of rushing water, so he oriented his trajectory till he found himself running right through the jungle to the edge of a river. Just as he pulled up to the bank, his footsteps took him inside an iron box, barely big enough for him at only a few meters wide, and a door clanged shut behind him. Steve tried it, bashed at it with his fists, but it didn’t open. Shit. It was almost pitch black in here. He wasn’t entirely sure this was “the box” she’d referred to, because Shuri’d said that was where you entered the program and he’d already been in it for a few minutes now. But it sure as hell was a literal box. The floor was a metal grid; underneath, water began to rise, faster and faster, flowing over the grid and filling the box. Bracing his hands awkwardly against the sides, Steve lifted himself up and kicked out, certain he could knock the wall out by brute force alone, but it held fast, the water almost to his waist now. “God dammit,” he barked as he looked for a weakness and the water rushed up, covering his chin.

Right. This was meant to invoke a fear response, to panic him. So he took one last deep breath as the water covered his head, looking for the gateway somewhere within the dark iron cage, but he couldn’t find it. Steve pressed his hand to the wall and said, taking in water, “Exitus.”

Sucking in deep, ragged breaths, Steve clutched at the sides of the chair, trying to remind himself he could breathe, that he wasn’t drowning. Shuri’s face loomed in his field of vision, eyebrows up. “Intense, yeah?”

Holy shit. She had not exaggerated when she said it was nearly indistinguishable from reality. It was nothing like he’d seen in Tony’s program, he’d felt the water going into his lungs, just like when he’d taken the Valkyrie down.

N’Deme came over beside Shuri and tried to reassure him. “All your vital signs are good. You are all right.”

Steve wiped his hand over his eyes, working on getting his heart rate down. “I thought I was drowning again.”

A look of horror came over Shuri’s face and she put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, Bast’s heart. I cannot believe I didn’t think of that. I...”

Steve’s hand closed gently over her arm, and N’Deme glanced between the two of them, confused. With a slight shake of his head, he closed his eyes for a second. “No, it’s okay. I have to be able to control my responses in there, expect the unexpected, since it’s Bucky’s reverie. And you don’t have a responsibility to remember every detail of my untimely demise.” He’d hoped to get a laugh out of her to soothe her distress, but she only looked more upset. “It was seventy years ago to the rest of the world, Princess. It’s only me who feels like it’s seven.”

She offered him a weak smile and put her hand over his. “We should take a break, I think. Let me rebuild some of the simulations to be less…awful. I am so sorry, Steve. Please forgive me.”

At least she hadn’t stopped calling him by his first name. As kindly as he could, Steve said, “Hey, at least the water was warm.”

But her tiny laugh was only pretend. “Maybe eat something for lunch, and then I should have the battery of testing modules redone.”

He shrugged. “I’m not that hungry, to be honest. But I’ll give you some time.” It would have been nice for Sam or Nat to be here, to joke around with him and make him feel less like Bucky’s entire life didn’t hinge on his dodgy performance right now.

“Come,” N’Deme said, “I’ll show you where to go. I, at least, am hungry and you may keep me company.”

The area N’Deme took him to reminded Steve a little of the common areas of the tower and the upstate compound the Avengers had used. It was wide and comfortable with full kitchen facilities, and lots of places for relaxing for the people who worked in the labs. You didn’t really feel like you were underground in the bright, colorful space, and at one of the tables sat a few men and women, sharing some food and red tea, who switched their conversation to English when N’Deme introduced Steve and they joined them. It was kind of them, but Steve wanted to tell them to continue in Xhosa, so he could have a polite reason to tune everything out.

He pretended to listen to the conversation, which sounded like it was about the design and implementation issues of the high-speed rail they were hoping to build with a few neighboring countries, allowing easier access as Wakanda slowly widened its welcome to outsiders. Wakanda had never needed an international airport, and building one now was a very complicated issue, one that would take a long time to decide, T’Challa had told Steve. Delegations went to other countries first and were brought in by Wakandan shuttle planes with their ability to do vertical takeoff and landing.

There had once been an airfield, T’Challa had also said, a small thing out on the plains toward the southern border, but it had gone away once Wakanda created their first Talon jets. It fascinated Steve that previous Black Panthers had been flying around the continent at one time, superheroing. That was when he’d found out that T’Challa’s great-grandfather had sold vibranium to a number of countries as a way to create Wakanda’s university and offer free education for every citizen.

Which was how Howard Stark had come to have just enough to create Steve’s shield.

“I’d always assumed that it was just…I don’t know, ill-gotten gains or something,” Steve had said. “Stolen, like so many things had been stolen from the continent.” That’s the rarest metal on earth. What you’re holding right there? That’s all we got.

“They didn’t fully appreciate it enough to steal, to see that its value could extend beyond its rarity,” T’Challa had said with a laugh. “The world was more focused on what it had already valued: platinum, gold, diamonds, and such. Which was to our benefit—vibranium’s strangeness and difficulty meant all those governments treated it first as a curiosity and then mostly ignored it when they found it hard to work with, but a few wanted more to see what they could do. Stark was possibly the one scientist who understood its properties and true value. He and my grandfather had a brief correspondence about it, in fact. You see, you and Tony Stark had connections to Wakanda long before our encounter in Europe.”

Steve had been utterly astonished; Howard had never shared any of that history with him—or Tony, possibly, either. “Wait—did your great-grandfather give some to South Africa? Was that how Ulysses Klaue found out about it?”

T’Challa had looked not a little sad. “Not to their government directly, but the territory that is now Lesotho.” And then he’d asked, “You miss it, don’t you? Your vibranium shield.”

At first, Steve had wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t. “Yes. It has…a lot of memories for me.”

Abruptly, Steve realized the conversation at the table had quieted while he was reminiscing. They were polite enough to try to re-engage him and he played along until he could respectfully excuse himself. He went out to a large open area with an entire wall that showed a feed of the plains to the north of the labs and to the mountains that rose up farther behind that, their peaks still dusted with snow.

It had been a very long time since Steve had been as taken by surprise as he had when he’d felt like he was drowning. He watched the peaceful view on the screen, drawing in a deep breath. For just long enough he’d forgotten their instructions of how to leave the program and when he couldn’t find a mandala, he’d panicked. After the serum, he’d always been in control of his body and his physical responses, even when he’d driven that plane into the water. He’d been in control except twice: when he’d been unable to save Bucky on the train, and when he’d let Rumlow detonate the explosion and watched helplessly as Wanda sent it ripping through the building in Lagos. Every time his responses got the better of him, it went right back to Bucky.

Whatever the next training modules were, he had to regain his self-control, because Bucky’s life depended on it.

On his kimoyo bead, Steve pulled up the image of Bucky in his hospital bed and watched it for a while, reminding himself that this was what he was fighting for.

As if she knew what he was thinking about, Shuri came up next to him and said, “I should not have been so careless.”

He pressed his lips together in a tight line. “Really, it’s all right. I’m all right. Maybe I just hadn’t realized how many things like that I’ve still got rattling around in the cage, you know?” and he tapped his temple.

“You can wait until tomorrow to run the rest of the training simulations. Sergeant Barnes is doing okay, his vitals are all still holding well.”

Steve shook his head. “I want to make sure I’m ready for anything, because who knows what his program could throw at me.”

“The sergeant would—”

“Would hate it if you called him that. He was… Well, he wouldn’t want people to still call him Sergeant Barnes. He was always just Bucky.”

She rolled her eyes. “You two.”

“You’re not the first person to say that.”

“Well, when he’s back with us, then I will bring it up with him.”

“Fair enough.” He put his hand on her shoulder and they headed back to the room. “So, you ready to put me back in the box?”

Her mouth twisted up, she looked stricken. “There are so many other test runs, you don’t need that specific example...”

“Now that I know what to expect, I’m fine. It was just momentary surprise, an unfamiliar environment. Trying it again will help me prepare for everything, right?”

“I suppose.” Shuri wasn’t convinced, but she picked up her glass panel and typed in some things. “We don’t need to wait for N’Deme, he is making some other adjustments to the program. And if you make it through all the levels, there’s a surprise in there for you at the end.”

“Oh yeah? What is it?”

“It’s not much of a surprise if I tell you now, genius!”

Steve chuckled and lay back, settling into the chair as he took his tablet from her. At her nod, he said “Apertus,” and was back in that forest clearing again, only this time he could hear big cats rumbling around, something else he couldn’t see moving quickly through the forest. Gorillas, maybe, because that would make a pretty solid test for a supersoldier.

And it was gorillas and they were a great test, so were the cats—a very different type of fighting and a little frightening without the shield, but he succeeded as if he were jumping up through levels like a video game, with something he couldn’t wait to tell Sam and Nat about. There were no fires this time but he had to jump off a waterfall to get away from one of the enormous leopards chasing him, and that was definitely…intense, especially not knowing what awaited him in the churning water beneath. Shuri had also programmed more mundane tests such as how to move through buildings by directing the simulation to where he wanted to be—which took him a few minutes to figure out—and simpler skills like evading being run down by a car or taking fire in combat. Plenty of it was lifted from World War II history—battles, weapons, and the like. He was glad that those elements were old hat to him, comfortable, and once he’d completed most of the tests, he found himself stepping from an elevator into that iron box once more.

This time he needed neither the mandala nor the exit word. As soon as the water filled the chamber to his neck, Steve drew a deep breath and waited until it covered his head, eventually breathing out. The water rushed into his throat, his lungs, but instead of drowning he could pull in his breath. His body tried to fight it—that thing Shuri warned of where the brain knew it was not natural, even dangerous—but he breathed in again and it didn’t hurt.

Instead of flailing he smiled and slowly leaned forward, continuing to breathe in the water, finding the handle in front of him, and he turned it. The water spilled from the box and he stepped out along with it, and Steve found himself in the center of a baseball diamond, breathing air once again.

Now he was laughing, no water in his lungs: he stood on Ebbets Field, a night game judging from the floodlights lit up above the stands. He turned around and around, taking in the stands and the people and the familiar old advertisements along the walls—Gem Razor Blades and Esquire Boot Polish and the Shaefer Beer scoreboard—and the scent of the fresh-cut grass. By the time he’d done a complete 360, he was facing the pitcher’s mound, and standing on it was Bucky. He looked like he had when he was home for leave before shipping out to Europe, his hair cut short, and lithe and trim, and his smile was as brilliant as the lights above them.

Since this was just Steve’s training reverie, he knew Bucky wouldn’t really be able to interact with him, and that was all right. Just to see him young and smiling, before the war and Hydra and years of torture had stolen his light, was enough for Steve, but he still stepped forward and took Bucky’s hand. People began spilling out to the field as they had after the Reds game, everything in slow motion, and the wind stirred the small pieces of Bucky’s hair at the edge of his cap, just as slowly. He turned slightly away from Steve, grinning at the swarm of fans on the field, before looking at Steve again. For a while Steve was content to just bask in the sensation of touching him, looking up at the night sky through the gap in the floodlights, holding his hand, in this place that had once brought them so much joy.

Every once in a while, Shuri poked her head around the doorway to check on Steve and see if he’d left the program. The training period was as close to real time as she could make it, but there was room built in on either side for exploration. She had no idea if he was actually enjoying the different experiences this time, now that he knew what to expect. When she’d entered before on her own during testing phases, Shuri had spent a lot of her session’s time making mental notes of areas for improvement, but that was definitely not Steve’s goal here. They’d spent enough time by now to know each other better, so she’d figured he’d probably enjoy trying to outwit some panthers and engage in hand-to-hand combat with a giant silverback gorilla—Steve was enough like T’Challa that he would appreciate a good fight in testing, especially when it meant he didn’t have to worry about hurting someone real.

It was hard to focus on her work, though, because Shuri was eager to hear how he was doing. Eventually, when she looked in he was sitting up, rubbing his face but obviously pleased, so he’d seen the baseball diamond simulation. She wished she could have given him more than merely an image of Bucky that couldn’t respond, but with any luck he’d have plenty of interaction time when Steve joined Bucky’s own reverie.

“Better this time?” Shuri asked.

“Better.” He stood up. “How did you do that?”

“Same way we design all of it until the user adds their own inputs—photographs, videos, written backgrounds. Usually it’s found in people’s digital histories, these days. Most of the pictures of your baseball field were black and white, though I found some color footage from the 1950s, before they tore it all down.”

“Yeah. The greedy bastard who owned the Dodgers sold the team to Los Angeles while I was under the ice. Two years after they’d won the World Series!” His disgust was palpable as he flung his hand out in an angry gesture, and it made Shuri smile. It was rare to see him get that worked up over anything.

“How rude of them to win something big while you were gone.”

He favored her with a look. “I don’t know which was worse: finding out I was an unwilling time-traveler, or hearing those bums won a Series finally and then landed all the way across the country.” The corner of his mouth curled up. “So. Do you think I’m ready to jump into Bucky’s reverie now? How’d I look out here?”

Checking his readings on her bracelet, she said, “Very good: consistent heart rate with a few spikes—I assume you were fighting something—no unusual blood pressure, brain waves nice and…wavy.” But Shuri paused and scrunched up her face. She hated to throw cold water on his excitement to get started. “But, um, well. First off, we don’t know that it’s a good idea to jump in so soon after just being introduced to it. This is new territory. And there’s something else.”

“Uh-oh. Sounds dire.”

“It is—Mother would like you to join us for supper tonight.” Shuri grimaced.

Steve shook his head, but he seemed amused. “Not what I expected you to say.”

“I know you would like to start using Reverie tonight. You are not the type to wait around for things, and I have read the books about you, as well—you don’t have much of an instinct for self-preservation. Which may be good when you dive in, but perhaps this is a blessing? I tried to tell Mother it was not good timing, but...”

He held out a hand to stop her. “I’d be honored.” Shuri really hoped Mother wasn’t planning to try to make Steve feel unwelcome in some way, to pressure him into feeling that he should just get Bucky better and then they should both get out. It was hard for her to tell if Mother thought they were overstaying their welcome or not. She was usually much more diplomatic than that, but these were the strangest of circumstances and Steve was still a wanted fugitive, to say nothing of Bucky.

Studying Steve’s face but finding it unreadable, she considered that he might be thinking the same thing. He was always somewhat…regretful, maybe, about their visits, and he’d apologized more than a few times for involving Wakanda in his troubles. It had prompted her brother to remind Steve that he was the one who’d asked Steve and Bucky to come here in the first place.

“If you wanted to look in on Serg—Bucky, we have a little time,” Shuri offered. She motioned for him to follow her, and they headed toward the landing pad where the shuttle was, Ayo walking behind them.

“I might do that, but I think first I want to check in with the team, see how they’re holding up without me.”

“Dinner is not formal or anything. No one from the Council.” She didn’t know why she was trying to convince him; he admired Mother, and even got along all right with Okoye, which was more than you could say for Ross.

After the discussion with Mother last night, though, Shuri wondered if they were concerned all of this Reverie stuff was too great a distraction, that her work on more important projects was slipping. She’d never had something go quite so wrong, not since she was a little girl, and it left her feeling somewhat unmoored. Or maybe Mother was trying to get a sense of just how long the captain’s visit would last, because Shuri shouldn't have allowed Bucky to try the program out in the first place and they wanted this project to be over with.

Shuri kept watching him as they returned to the Citadel, and she and Ayo walked with him to his rooms, because she’d made a decision: it was time to tell him what she’d confessed to her brother last night, before he got started in Bucky’s reverie. Outside his door, she stepped closer to him so no one else would hear and said, “Steve, there is something I must tell you.”

He stopped and turned to her, his face open and trusting, like Bucky’s had been when she was describing Reverie and what it might mean for him. “What’s that?”

Shuri stared down at her feet. “Don’t you ever wonder how my brother found you and Sergeant Barnes that day?”

“I just assumed it was your superior tech, or that someone in his retinue had been in communication with some official or another.”

Shaking her head, Shuri looked up at him. His brow wrinkled in confusion. “The superior tech was me.” His face didn’t change at all, he didn’t get angry, but she could see that his shoulders tightened a bit. He knew that Wakanda’s version of an internet didn’t play all that well with the rest of the world’s—not at the stage of development they were at—but he didn’t know how easy it was for her to exploit that advantage. “It took very little for me to get past every bit of security, and at the time, I was eager to do it. I knew T’Challa wanted to kill him, and I didn’t care.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and she wondered if she would finally see what he was like when he was angry, when his tightly self-contained exterior slipped. Shuri wasn’t afraid of him, but she was afraid of losing his respect. “Do you want me to be angry at you for that, or distrust what we’re doing here? Because I can tell you that won’t happen. Princess Shuri,” he said, and she thought he was calling her that because he wanted to underscore the gravity of his response. “You were reacting to terrible loss—first because of what happened in Lagos, and then the next time someone from your country went out into the world, your father was killed. If you want someone to blame you for helping your brother, you’ll have to look somewhere else—and not to Buck, because I’m certain he won’t, either.”

“He might not feel that way after he finds out, though, and after everything that has happened to him because of my program.”

“No. I know him better than I know myself. I promise you, we won’t.” Steve sighed. “Listen. Someone I care for very much told me something a while ago. She was talking about my being out of time, not knowing my place in this world I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be in, but it seems to fit here, too. She said, ‘The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best we can do is to start over.’ So. Let’s put that in the past and consider this doing our best and starting over, all right?”

“She sounds like a very wise woman,” Shuri said, trying to find a smile.

“She was. I think you’d have liked her very much, and I know she’d have been smitten with you.” His own smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, and Shuri realized that he must be referring to the person whose funeral he’d been at before the explosion in Vienna—she’d seen that in all the news reports after T’Challa, Steve, and Bucky had been arrested.

“‘Smitten.’ I like that word a lot.” Shuri waved a hand toward Ayo and turned to go. This had gone better than she’d had any right to expect, but it was definitely making her feel some kind of way, and she needed a little time to herself before being around her mother. “See you in a little while.”

Chapter Text

Dinner with the royal family had allowed Steve a little distraction, and so did connecting with Nat and Sam after his evening visit to Bucky’s room. They’d left North America for refuge in Montenegro, thanks to some connections of Natasha’s, planning to rendezvous with Wanda, who was back in Sokovia working with the ongoing rebuilding efforts, very much off the radar thanks to her powers—and apparently Vision’s at the compound. Steve always felt a little guilty when he slipped away to Wakanda solo, but Sam and Nat were adamant that he absolutely shouldn’t be, not this time.

“It’s a freaking four-star luxury vacation here,” Sam said with a laugh. “This pal of Nat’s has a freaking giant estate on the Adriatic—it’s practically its own little island. Didn’t even have to worry about the jet because there’s a damn helipad big enough to accommodate it here.”

“Must be a high roller,” Steve said, acting impressed. He intended to make a crack about Russian oligarchs and their money, but Natasha popped her head into view at a sideways angle, smirking.

“Not organized crime, not Russian, and not nefarious, before you get on your high horse. Speaking of high rollers, how’s the king?” Natasha and T’Challa seemed to have an entertaining friendship that Steve hadn’t ever really been able to figure out.

“He’s well. Overwhelmed, I think,” Steve said, leaning back in his chair and taking a sip of his tea. This time he was taking Wanuri’s advice to try the sedative tea so his nerves didn’t get the better of him and he was up all night, heading in to the first Reverie exhausted. He had mostly acclimated to the heat and elevation, but his internal clock still needed another day or so. “But he’s kind of happy about it, if that makes sense? I think after the coup attempt, he’s had so many ideas to implement and there’s a lot to do, both in Africa and in Oakland.” That was how it had sounded at dinner, at least. “You know, he said you guys are welcome to join me here. It might be a few days before I finish.”

Nat took a seat next to Sam and Steve realized then that the two of them were sitting on a big old-fashioned bed, leaning against an elaborately carved wooden headboard. The screen he was talking to them on was ultra high definition, so Steve could see what looked like Sam’s watch on one nightstand and Nat’s Widow’s Bites bracelet on the other. It made him raise his eyebrow, but he said nothing, because they would probably laugh at him whether he was right or wrong. Natasha had been right there when Steve messaged Sam through his kimoyo bead, and Sam hadn’t called her in or anything. So now they were sharing rooms and beds?

“We’ll see how it goes,” Sam said, and there was a ghost of a smirk there, like he knew what Steve was thinking about. “How was the test run?”

“Interesting,” Steve replied, choosing to ignore things for now. There was enough to do with his own situation. “There were a few moments of…well, unpleasantness”—Natasha snorted—“but once I got the hang of it, I thought it was an amazing device. Shuri wasn’t kidding when she said it’s almost indistinguishable from reality. For good or bad.”

“We talkin’ grimdark Black Mirror episode or more like Inception?” Sam asked.

Steve lifted a finger and cocked his head. “I…do not know how to answer that.”

On the screen, Natasha burst out laughing, and there was something about the utterly delighted way Sam responded to it that made Steve think okay. Yeah. This is definitely a thing. Had this been going on for a while and he’d simply been oblivious to it, or was it more like while the cat’s away? Well, if they had something to say, they’d tell him.

Steve rolled his eyes. “Don’t mock the pop culture afflicted. At the very least, I can see now how something might have gone wrong because of what Hydra did to Buck—now that I’ve been in one version, I feel more prepared for the possible ugly things I might find. I just want to get in there, figure it out, and get him out.”

“Do you think he’s in any danger?” Nat asked, and her face became melancholy, the way it did when she was talking about the Red Room. “Not that I want to add to your stress, but do you think they could have put some kind of kill switch inside his mind in case someone tried to erase or re-engineer those activation words? They were like that, I hate to say—destroy the thing before it can be turned against you.”

Steve huffed out a breath. “Well, I hadn’t thought so before, so thanks for that.” It set him wondering if Bucky could have been kicked into that coma by design—not Shuri’s, of course, but someone like Zola anticipating an attempt to rewire their precious assassin, way back when. The princess had thought of it more as a possible bug in the code, that something she’d done had interacted poorly with Bucky’s damaged brain, when maybe it was more that Hydra, and Department X, would rather have destroyed the asset and burned the project than have anyone else make use of it or fix it. Christ.

They both stared at him with their wonderful faces, showing their supportive concern. He missed them already—it was such a hard life they were living now. He owed them everything. “Steve,” Sam said quietly, “don’t go down that rabbit hole. You’re with the best people on the planet for this. If anyone can help him, it’s you and Shuri. It’ll be okay.”

They ended the call, Nat urging him to contact them if he wanted them there, and Steve finally stopped trying to turn every possibility in his mind over and over again to find some side he hadn’t yet examined and went to bed. The tea—made from a fern, Queen Ramonda had told him, related to the heart-shaped herb that gave the Panthers their powers—proved mildly effective and he was able to get at least some rest.

The morning brought with it a case of nerves Steve hadn’t felt since he’d walked into the antiques store in Brooklyn for the Project Rebirth test, however. Excitement about the prospect of being able to help Bucky, of course, but there was the undercurrent of anxiety about exactly what he’d find inside Bucky’s reverie. The unknowns were just too unknown.

He was back to being as tense as a bowstring while he got dressed and finished breakfast, tossing out some pieces of fruit for his brilliant blue bird friend, who seemed to have taken a shine to him and now hung around the pool. Wanuri knocked and entered, reminding him that she was going off her shift and his daytime Dora guard, Dyani, would take him up to the Design Group.

“There you are!” Shuri chirped when he arrived, waving N’Deme over. “Hey, I have you all set up with a room now, you can call it your office,” and she walked them inside it. There was a reclining chaise like he’d used before, but the wall was lined with a long, contiguous couch that had tons of pillows and cushions scattered everywhere, a few more straight chairs, plus a low coffee table with a bowl of fruit on it, and a desk near a station for N’Deme to monitor Steve from. There were some beautiful paintings on the warm wooden walls, and lots of rugs in bold prints to help soften the sounds. Peaceful, Steve thought, in that particularly Wakandan way, and he felt a little of the tension ease out of him.

N’Deme handed him a glass panel that had Bucky’s photo centered on it, with all kinds of details about the program in those tidy little boxes. “This is Barnes’s reverie, which you will use to enter it. There is usually a central starting point built in to the program, a sort of library with many connecting doors to different subroutines, but depending on what he built, you may enter at a point we know nothing about.” It was N’Deme’s way of saying, “Expect the unexpected.”

“Understood.” Steve settled in the chaise as Shuri scanned him with her bracelet. “Ready, coach?”

With a dry laugh, she said, “I feel like you are unnaturally calm, but I suppose that is the supersoldier in you. The captain.”

He held the panel up. “Then that’s one of us who’s fooled.” Steve drew a deep breath. “Wish me luck.”

“We have our own way of wishing good fortune in Wakanda.”

“Oh yeah?”

Holding her hand up, she spread her two middle fingers apart. “Live long and prosper.” Shuri broke out in a fit of cackling.

Steve gave her the side-eye but he couldn’t help laughing; she was such a goof and he loved that about her.

“No? Okay. It’s actually May Bast’s light shine on you.”

“I like that one better.” He stared at the glass. Here we go. “Apertus.” There was that weird sensation like being hit with a gust of wind that he’d had in the first trial, and then it was dark.

When he opened his eyes, Steve was at the edge of a wooded area, no place that he recognized. Brooklyn, or somewhere else Bucky had had memories of, maybe even Indiana? Steve had arrived where the stands of beech and ash and cottonwood trees gave way to a field, and he could see up the gentle slope ahead of him to where a woman and a toddler sat on a bright blue picnic blanket. Though he couldn’t see them well enough to discern what they were doing, they might have been playing peekaboo. To his left in the shade of the trees was a brook, running along further inside the woods where it grew too dark for Steve to see, and a dark-haired little boy was playing at the side of the stream, under the flickering sunlight. He wore the knee-length trousers and pinstriped, collarless shirt of the early 1920s, a newsboy cap perched on his head—Bucky, when he was around five or six, shortly before they’d met in Brooklyn.

The dappled light danced as the leaves shimmied in the breeze, and Steve watched him for a moment in silence, rapt: this was most likely Indiana, and that was Mrs. Barnes with Becca, the next oldest child. It must have been late summer as it shaded into autumn, judging from the mix of golden and red and still-green leaves that had yet to turn. He hadn’t thought someone could transform into their child self in here, he’d thought their appearance inside Reverie was limited to fixed constructs of them as they were outside the program, and he wondered if Bucky was capable of recognizing him as adult, and post-serumed, Steve. There were no sounds here other than the bubbling of the brook and the stirring of the leaves, and Steve stepped closer, hoping not to spook him.

Instead of startling or being confused, Bucky said, “Hey Steve, come look at this.” He didn’t look up at Steve, though, somehow knowing he was there without making eye contact, and for a second he was disoriented himself, glancing down at his body to see if he’d somehow become young or small again inside the program, but he was the same as ever. What was Bucky seeing? It was a while before they would meet in Brooklyn, yet Bucky knew who was standing here.

“What is it?” Steve asked, moving closer, yet Bucky still didn’t look up at him. He splashed his hands into the running water, then held up what he’d been aiming for: a salamander, about the size of his palm, black and white, its wet skin gleaming in the filtered light. It was beautiful here, peaceful. Pastoral, almost like a storybook. Just the kind of place you’d want to make to heal yourself.

“If you cut its tail off, it’ll grow back,” Bucky said, without any show of emotion, and it chilled Steve—that was not the way Bucky was, even as a little boy. He’d never wanted to hurt anything, not even when other boys egged him on.

“You shouldn’t do that, it’s cruel,” Steve said, trying to sound neutral, because this did not feel like a real conversation at all. More like something constructed, staged. “It’s a myth—they can lose their tails when they try to get away from predators or from injury, but you can’t just cut it off and it grows back.”

“I don’t know. I’m gonna see.” He pulled his jackknife out of his pants pocket and Steve wasn’t sure if he should try to take it away or let this play out and see what was happening. When Bucky flicked the knife open, Steve took a few more steps toward him. There was no effort on Bucky’s part to look at him; it was as though Steve was here and yet not, as though he was part of Bucky’s mind and the experiences he was reliving in Reverie yet without understanding who Steve was or why Bucky should pay attention to him.

“You’re not a cruel person,” Steve said, and saw a shadow shift at the corner of his eye, at the top of the slope. Winter Soldier Bucky was standing up there, dressed in the tac gear he’d worn when Steve had first encountered him in 2014. It filled him with some kind of inchoate dread; Bucky’s mother and sister were directly between Steve and the Soldier and he didn’t know what that Bucky would do.

Steve wanted to break through to the young Bucky holding the salamander, but he felt an overpowering sense of danger for Mrs. Barnes and Rebecca—even though he knew they weren’t real. It felt far too real in here, and he forced himself to take deep breaths, remember to keep his heart rate down and his fear response controlled so Shuri and N’Deme didn’t worry. When he looked down again, the salamander slipped out of Bucky’s grip and splashed into the stream, but Bucky didn’t pursue it, merely squatted there with his shoes and socks getting wet, almost frozen, as if the program was stalling. As if it was a video that tried to buffer, and failed. When Steve turned toward the Bucky in the field, he was staring back at Steve, the breeze moving his long hair, and then he abruptly turned and sprinted away from the woods, over the top of the slope.

Steve bolted after him.

He lost sight of Bucky as he crested the ridge, searching wildly for a trace of him. But next thing Steve knew, he was stepping into a bar, where Steve spotted him leaning against the bar, warily surveying the room. He wore an army uniform and jacket—early 1950s-era, if Steve recalled correctly, and he had gloves on his hands, his left holding a pint of beer. His hair was cut similar to how it had looked in the war, and he was clean-shaven, no stubble like the Soldier’d had—but he was absolutely the Soldier here, Steve could see it in the predatory cast to his eyes, the tight forward angle of his shoulders. Bucky’d been just like that on the helicarrier.

In the first years of his captivity they’d called Bucky “the American”; their first test of the brainwashing’s success had come when the Soviets sent him to a bar frequented by US and UK soldiers. It was to see if he’d be caught entering from East Germany to West, if he could pass for whatever they wanted him to be, if he could kill without being caught. They’d so thoroughly hollowed out Bucky’s mind that he hadn’t even realized the reason he so successfully passed that test was because he had always been an American. There was no doubt about the veracity of his accent or his behavior because it all fit him like old clothes, and it had killed Steve to read that in the file and think how cruelly they’d twisted him up.

Hopes are high that he will be a successful operative. I believe, because he walks and talks just like them, because he exudes “America” with his every breath, that the enemy will never see him coming.

Steve stood here now in Bucky’s program, watching from the door, just to see why he’d chosen to come here. What could revisiting this do for him? It seemed almost counterintuitive that Bucky’d have built something so terrible into his Reverie program. And maybe worse, why would he build this to relive experiences as the Soldier? The answer was obvious: he hadn’t. His mind was a fractured fun-house mirror and the program was picking up the shards.

Steve watched as Bucky eventually struck up conversations with other soldiers over rounds of beer and darts games—no one in this re-creation seemed to notice he didn’t take the gloves off, almost the way child Bucky hadn’t noticed Steve’s appearance. Though he stayed well out of the line of sight, at one point Bucky clocked him, blank-faced but with just enough suspicion in his eyes that Steve realized he knew Steve didn’t belong here. Then he slipped out the door into the cold night. A sharp, cold unease crept into Steve’s gut: Bucky had the Soldier’s instinct to know something was wrong but didn’t care enough to do anything about it.

The farther away from the bar they got, the faster he moved, darting through dark, rubbled streets still in ruins from the war. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to his course, like he was just jumping from spot to spot the way a video game character would. Steve kept losing him—not like in a foot chase but in that gamelike way, at random places and intervals—only to catch up, as though Bucky’s avatar was just stuck there until Steve’s presence pressed some key that got him moving again. Eventually, though, Steve recognized the klieg lights of Checkpoint Charlie cutting through the murky night, helping to orient him, and then he rounded another random corner behind Bucky, fully expecting to see him crossing over the border into East Germany.

An overturned Jeep lay in the center of the street, flames billowing from the engine, three bodies hanging partially out the doors. Bucky was walking away from the wreck, not even concerned about whether Steve was still there. He’d killed three American soldiers that night as a way for the Soviets to verify their new asset was capable of getting away with it, the earliest evidence of the Winter Soldier’s calling card.

Report — Codename: Winter Soldier Field Test, 5 November 1954.
All objectives achieved. Codename: Winter Soldier encounters no difficulty on mission.
As predicted, Americans and allies mistake him for one of their own. Allow him unimpeded entrance into West Berlin. Winter Soldier spends evening in Berlin nightclub among many U.S. and U.K. servicemen, unsuspected.
Jeep overturns at 02:45 killing three soldiers en route to base from nightclub. Crash not investigated. Assumed drunken roadway accident.

Steve ran to the Jeep, even though there was nothing he could really do to help or change the circumstances. Instead of reaching it, however, he found himself flat on his back in a room somewhere. No, not a room—a hallway, dingy grey concrete dotted with industrial, cold lights hanging above him. He was passing rapidly under them like a car under streetlights and then he realized he was on a gurney, men on either side wheeling him down the hallway. They all wore grey surgical gowns, masks and gloves, prepared for…the operation on Bucky’s arm, most likely. In all the photos of the group of scientists who’d worked on Bucky, they were outfitted exactly like this. Steve tried to rise off the gurney but he was strapped down. The gurney finally stopped, dead center of an operating theatre.

In the corner of the room stood Bucky, partially undressed, just like the photos in the files that were taken in the earliest days of his captivity, when they’d had him on a table for study, covered in electrodes and hooked up to various machines. His left arm was missing, still unhealed.

This shouldn’t be happening. Bucky as a child being observed by Bucky as the Soldier; now Steve somehow in Bucky’s place being wheeled into an operating theatre—this was all kinds of wrong. For some reason, there was a sort of transference happening with the other figures inside this reverie. Steve should exit the program immediately and find out what was going on, but he also wanted to see how far it would play out—would Bucky stop them from harming him?

When they began hooking him up to wires and IVs, as if this was deliberately part of Bucky’s program in some way, Steve had to focus and remind himself that they were constructs of the program. They didn’t really see him, see the actual person on the table, because it was Bucky’s memory.

But the sound of a saw started up and Steve surged hard against the straps, coming up on the table in a fighting stance. The men kept coming toward him as though it hadn’t happened, one with a syringe in hand, the other with the saw, like they were programmed. They couldn’t even comprehend that Steve wasn’t their intended victim. And Bucky had disappeared again; the spot where he’d been standing was pixelated, that part of the room appearing like a download that gets stuck, stuttering, and the colors bled into a dark, indistinct negative image.

Steve threw the gurney into the scientists’ way and rushed to the door, running headlong into a huge, cavernous room, one of the largest spaces he’d ever seen. It looked like…a missile silo. Cyrillic letters everywhere—this must be the Siberian location they’d started keeping Bucky in by the early 1980s, just before everything began falling apart and Hydra moved away from the USSR. Before they’d sold Bucky off to Pierce and the Western factions. It hadn’t been abandoned for long before they put him here; it was still relatively clean, well-lit, with equipment that no doubt functioned, at least in this Reverie simulacrum of Bucky’s.

The stasis tube he’d been frozen in stood in the center of the space, glowing eerily green-gold. This time, Bucky was inside, not watching from a distance, and Steve stepped tentatively toward the cryo tube. All of a sudden Bucky’s metal arm shot up from his side, through the viscous fluid, and his eyes opened; he pounded on the glass with his left fist, and Steve thought he was screaming something but there was a black mask on the lower part of his face, tubes connected to it every which way. All Steve could tell was that his eyes were desperate enough that he didn’t need words.

He grabbed a support strut holding the machine’s platform up and broke it off, beating at the glass with all his strength until it shattered and Bucky fell forward out of it, where Steve caught him in his arms. But the metal hand closed around Steve’s throat, Bucky’s right hand coming up to punch him on the side of the head. Steve desperately tried to speak and reason with him, but there was such a fury in his eyes he heard nothing, as though he believed Steve was one of his torturers and he wasn’t going to pass up this chance to kill him. Shit, shit, shit.

If the Steve in here was separated from his conscious self out there, he might very well end up in the same state as Bucky, or maybe even die. The room was—the only word Steve could think of was disintegrating, chunks of it blackening and falling away, other parts of it crackling with red lightning around the edges as though something electronic was fritzing out. The floor shook beneath them as Bucky continued to squeeze the life out of him and Steve fought to pull him off. “Who are you?” Bucky demanded, his voice ragged behind the mask, as a huge chasm opened up behind them and everything slid toward it.

All Steve knew was that as desperately as he wanted to connect to Bucky and save him, he had to get out of here. Live to fight another day. “Exitus!” Steve shouted, slamming his hand against the cryo door although no mandala was nearby, and suddenly he was on the chair in his room, gasping. In this world.

Steve lowered the glass to his lap and looked up at Shuri. His heart was beating way too hard and fast. “You were right,” he said, sitting up. “He’s glitching. I don’t know if I can get him out.”

“Tell me everything,” Shuri said, leaning across the table from Steve, pushing some coffee at him and motioning for him to drink up. He absolutely loved Wakandan coffee, but she could tell he wasn’t really tasting it. She’d found the cookies she’d promised and he was already through half the packet, his mind racing in a distracted way—he was barely paying attention to her.

When he’d exited the program, he’d been gasping for air, and she’d tried to soothe him, reminding him to breathe, everything was all right. But Shuri’d felt such a cold knot in her stomach, wondering what had gone wrong that he looked so afraid and so defeated. Steve hadn’t even been inside Reverie all that long.

His mouth twisted up and he glanced from N’Deme to her. “I entered in a really peaceful setting, Bucky’s mom and his sister on a picnic blanket, and he was a little boy, playing in a brook. It was strange, because I didn’t realize you could become something other than what you are—at this age, I mean. I didn’t know you could make yourself into a kid like that.”

Shuri shook her head. “You could build yourself an avatar of someone else—like, if you were disabled in some way, you could create a reverie where you no longer have that disability. But mostly, those of us who tested it only created other people. His mother and sister, for example. We stayed as we are.”

“They made sense, it was exactly what I would have expected. The oddest part was he knew me, or at least, he called me over to see what he was doing, like we were kids together. As if he was seeing me as a boy, not a grown man.” N’Deme brought over some bread and a stew, because he tended to think food solved everything. She poured some more coffee while they watched him shovel his food in; his metabolism was fascinating, something she wouldn’t mind studying when this was all over. “After a few minutes, though, I realized someone was standing uphill from his family and from me, and it was the Winter Soldier. There was something…I don’t know how to describe it. But he didn’t react to me—then he ran away.”

“Interesting. The creation of his child self as an avatar that reacted to you, but then Bucky as his most recent identity watching from afar. Did the others interact with you?” N’Deme asked.

“Nope. It was just like you’d described, they were constructs. I was a little startled by his child self talking to me, though, at first, and he wasn’t quite the Bucky I knew around that age.”

“What happened when you followed him?” Shuri said, raising her eyebrows at N’Deme, who gave her a slight shrug. No one had reported the test versions creating scenarios like this. But then, none of them had had their minds manipulated by evil mad scientists, either.

“Well, I guess that’s where it gets interesting.” Steve told her about Bucky’s first tests as an assassin, and how he had essentially watched the events contained in the files play out before him inside Reverie. No one in the bar had noticed him there, either, he said—which was good, she thought. Then he’d followed Bucky into a new scenario, where he was essentially experiencing what Bucky had when they’d given him the metal arm, as though he was in Bucky’s representation inside the program. Steve had rubbed his eyes when he was finished recounting it, looking away. “How is that even possible, for me to basically end up on that table in his place, where he should have been?”

She and N’Deme stared at each other. “None of us have seen anything comparable,” N’Deme said. “That is a disappointing answer, once again, I know. But we spent many hours inside it, trying various scripts, in both 1.0 and 2.0. I simply do not know how that would happen.”

“He is glitching, as you said.” Shuri rubbed her forehead; she never should have let Bucky use the program. Bashenga’s tears, what an arrogant fool she was. “This is something unique to him, and to his own reverie, creating some kind of cascade damage to the failsafes inside Reverie.”

“I might have a theory about that.” Steve looked a little sheepish, like he wasn’t allowed to have theories about technology or something. He wiped his mouth and set the napkin on the table.

Shuri got some coffee for herself, her head and heart both hurting, and waited.

“Okay, so. We know from records that Hydra programmed his responses to the trigger phrases after they’d had him already for a number of years. At first, he was a blank slate, and they used his damaged memory and not knowing who he was to create the impression he was Russian, a willing operative working against his own country. But he was unstable and unpredictable from the very beginning, dangerous at times, and even once they’d figured out how to control him, things could happen. He killed a number of their own people.”

“He said that the longer he was out of cryo sleep, the more unstable he became.” She’d thought that heartbreaking at the time; while some degree of this project had been academic and a way to see if she could build something useful, revelations like those were the emotional core of what had driven her to try to perfect it. “What is your theory, then?”

“The first time I encountered him as the Soldier a few years ago, it only took me saying his name to cause something like a short-circuit. I could see it on his face, as stunned as I was to find out he was alive, and they had to use the chair to wipe his mind, make him function again. And in Berlin, all we had to do was basically knock him unconscious after his rampage. He woke up knowing who he was.” Steve made a face. “When you mentioned failsafes—my thought is that maybe part of Hydra’s programming in the later years was to have him break down if anyone tried to override the conditioning. If he fell into enemy hands or couldn’t complete a mission, someone trying to basically…well, hack him would end up with a fractured, useless, unstable killing machine who’s nevertheless still dangerously unpredictable.”

And if that was the case, you would just kill it, like a wild animal, she thought. How could anyone be so evil? “But he’s been out of their control for so long, the failsafe might have failed. So removing the trigger phrases may not even be our main goal here,” Shuri mused.

“I don’t know. But maybe that will happen once we figure out a way to put the fragments together, and he comes out of there.” Steve shook his head. “As terrifying as it felt to be on that gurney watching those bastards come at me, once he appeared inside the room, it felt different, like he had shown up because he knew it was the right thing to do. So I followed him into what I recognized was the facility where he was kept in Siberia.”

“Where T’Challa found you,” Shuri said. Glory to Bast that he had, too, so he’d been able to learn the truth about Zemo’s plan.

“Yeah. But this was before it was mothballed, and he was still active. There was no one else around, just him, desperately trying to get out of the cryo chamber. They left him in stasis sometimes for years, the files indicated.” He closed his eyes, the muscle on his jaw twitching, and though he slid his hand under the table, she caught a glimpse of him making a fist.

“Mothballed?” N’Deme asked.

“It’s like…I guess putting something away, decommissioning. As soon as I pulled him out of the chamber, he tried to kill me. He knew I was a threat, somehow.” Steve ate the last cookie in the packet and smiled at Shuri, not at all the behavior she expected after such a fraught story. “And this is what I think is a good sign, despite him seesawing back and forth on knowing me or not knowing me: the room began disintegrating in a way, chunks of walls and equipment and floors turning black and vanishing, and there was this red sort of electricity crackling around the edges. As though all the things he was creating as he went along were suddenly falling apart.”

Shuri narrowed her eyes. “And you think this is good because…?”

“Look, I’m not like you guys, I don’t know a thing about the science. But I do know what a fighter Buck is, I know how damn hard he’s worked to free himself from them.” Steve spread his hands wide. “His behavior, it was like I was violating his space, even if he didn’t know he’d set up that space to begin with. Whether he thought I was familiar or not. The program’s reflecting what’s happening in his mind, correct? If he’s creating the glitches, I don’t know that he’s trapped so much as his brain is working this out in the program. He might not be aware of it, but his brain is trying to override those failsafes Hydra could have built.”

Ah, she saw what he was getting at. “Okay.”

“Maybe,” Steve said, “I just help steer those things he’s trying to work out or overcome in a safer direction. He can’t guide it himself, because he’s fighting the conditioning, so I do it for him. Eventually, he’ll come back.”

“Yes, I see,” N’Deme said. “Control the environment, so it’s less harmful to him. Rebuild his reverie without him knowing.” He rose from his seat, lost in thought. “I have some adjustments to make to your own controls which I think may help you.”

Shuri wasn’t necessarily convinced that any of this was accurate, but Steve’s confidence in his interpretation of the events was all they had to go on, and if it worked for N’Deme, then it would work for her. Unless she herself wanted to go in, Steve’s belief would have to suffice—and from the sound of it, she wouldn’t fare well in Bucky’s splintered virtual reality.

“Before you try to blame yourself again,” Steve said, reaching across and squeezing her fingers, “I want to remind you this is not your fault.”

“I know that now. It’s just…we all thought it would be so useful as a therapeutic tool when we were working it out. I just can’t account for...” and she trailed off. The sharp prickle of tears was threatening behind her eyes again. “How could you have such scientific capabilities seventy years ago and do something so horribly cruel?”

His face softened. “Come on,” Steve said, and took hold of her elbow, helping her up and steering her to the corridor that led out of the building. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

The sun was almost in the west when they got outside and she followed him to one of the rocky outcroppings that looked down toward Birnin Zana and her home. In a few hours there would be a beautiful sunset thanks to the cloud striations forming on the horizon. The sky over the ocean was her favorite thing about the Bay Area—they had the gorgeous sunsets but with the added bonus of water, and she hadn’t yet grown tired of gazing at the ocean, thinking of new things to do and teach. But this was home, and all the more beautiful for it. They sipped at the coconut-lemon drinks he’d grabbed on the way out, as she waited for him to speak. Shuri knew him well enough by now to know when he was working up to something.

“One of the things about all this running around on our own the past year has been that we’ve been able to uncover a lot of the detailed histories of the Winter Soldier project. Natasha’s translated and digitized all of them, and some of it might be useful to you and N’Deme, if you think you can handle reading them.”

She nodded, although she wasn’t certain she could or even wished to. “All right.”

“And I want to be clear here: I’m not saying I’m right about this. I could be wildly off base. It probably won’t be quick, either. So I want to be clear about this as well: you have all done a lot already. You don’t owe us anything further. The longer I’m here, the more dangerous it becomes, the more likely it is every country that wants justice or punishment for the Winter Soldier’s crimes will know where to go to achieve that.”

She nodded again. It might be that she was projecting a little bit, but Steve looked as though he were expecting the worst from her, that she would agree it might be best for them to go. Then she touched a kimoyo bead and T’Challa’s face appeared in front of them.

“Were you successful?” he asked with a smile. Okoye was watching from behind him; she usually pretended to be disinterested in their guests’ problems, but her curiosity was getting the better of her.

“Well, you know, no plan survives first contact,” Steve said.

T’Challa laughed and Okoye’s left brow lifted. “No, it usually does not.”

“But I think we learned a lot for the next time, if that happens. And it gives me a baseline to work from.”

“Brother,” Shuri interjected, before T’Challa might understand what Steve had said. “The solution may take some time, more time than we anticipated because of Hydra’s complicated mind control.”

Steve cleared his throat. “I don’t want to see this become more of an international incident than it already is.” Did the captain think he would be able to safely move Bucky by himself and find someplace he’d be as welcome as he was here, and then use Reverie on his own? She almost shook her head at how stubborn and silly he was. Ey, Sam Wilson was right—Steve was hopeless.

Her brother looked thoughtful, as though he was weighing options, but she knew it was just so Steve would think he’d given the idea due consideration despite its idiocy—he’d made up his mind long ago. “We could not be in a better position for this right now. Everyone is interested in what Wakanda may offer them. They are more distracted by what we have here than who we have here. It will take as long as it must take.”

With a long-suffering glance at Steve, Shuri said, “The Black Panther has spoken,” and cracked up at T’Challa’s and Steve’s sour faces. Men were such drama queens.

Chapter Text

Waking early for video conferences had rapidly moved up from near the middle of Shuri’s list of Least Favorite Things to a spot in the top three; it was especially tiresome when her mind was on her other projects and most of the meeting was devoted to hand-holding. The only old white men who needed her help that she was interested in at this moment were Steve and Bucky.

She was pretty sure that Nakia was equally annoyed by the conference, but you’d never know it, because a War Dog’s face never told. This particular man, a leader of the European Union’s task force on new technology, wasn’t necessarily a bad guy, nor were the rest of the delegation sharing the screen, it was just that everyone was so dramatic about vibranium, its reputation for instability in raw form, the resources coming from Wakanda to learn to work with it, and how and why and where and on and on…it just gave her a headache. It seemed as though they never read past the first few lines of the fact sheets she’d compiled, never truly listened to the Wakandan advance teams for technology in the exchange programs… Why is this so hard? Shuri always wanted to ask. Well, she knew the answer, but it was too depressing and enraging to think much about.

Shuri was supposed to get up to the lab and start Steve on his next Reverie session, but instead she was explaining for the hundredth time that they would not be setting up refining processes anywhere else—and yes, Wakanda would still have total control over allotments.

Out of the corner of her eye, Shuri saw Desta poke her head through the door, and she motioned that it was all right to come inside. Yes, she was running late, she didn’t need a Dora to tell her that. But then she saw that Steve was right behind Desta and she snapped her eyes back on the screen, quickly minimizing it so no one else could catch sight of him. Of course Nakia knew he was here, but they definitely didn’t want an EU official spotting an international fugitive lurking in the princess of Wakanda’s private rooms. Ugh, Mother would never let her hear the end of it.

She made an apologetic face to Desta and Steve and shrugged dramatically, angled away from the screen’s view, and Steve nodded once and turned to go. Her stomach lurched, anxious that now he might think she was blowing him off or that Reverie—and saving Bucky—didn’t matter to her.

For the next fifteen minutes Shuri and Nakia repeated all their talking points—how was this her life now, using stupid jargon like talking points?—until finally, blessedly, the minister or chancellor or whatever his title was which she’d quickly forgotten thanked them and went away, and she was left with only Nakia facing her on the screen.

“Did I catch a brief glimpse of Captain Rogers?” Nakia asked in a light tone, after she’d apologized for the length of the meeting. Shuri so did not envy her the social outreach position—or her brother’s responsibilities, for that matter—when it was exhausting enough just being the tech goddess. She wasn’t required to attend half the events and meetings they were.

Mother had reminded her repeatedly that it was important to keep in mind the shock the rest of the world was going through, that the reveal of Wakanda’s gifts—and of the Black Panther himself—had stunned outsiders much the same as Shuri had been stunned by the alien invasion of New York and the discovery of Asgardians.

“Yes, I forgot to tell him that I had this conference. I believe he expected to go to the Design Group with me.” Shuri glanced toward the door, even though Steve was long gone.

Steve had promised her once that Thor would be back eventually, and she’d be able to pick his brain—a dream come true, if so. The way things were going, she feared she might never be able to sit down with Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark and Dr. Foster, unless someone could bring their team back together.

“Should I ask?” Nakia gave her a hopeful smile.

“No change yet. But it is early, the captain only just made contact with Sergeant Barnes yesterday, and it was…difficult, from what I heard.” Perhaps sharing more about the problem could be valuable, because Nakia was brilliant at coming up with strategies others often overlooked, but Shuri also thought that it was only Steve’s story to tell and not her place to say anything—ey, it was so complicated. “There are things the sergeant seems to be able to do with the program I didn’t think were possible, so it will be challenging.”

“Ah. T’Challa says you are spending all your time on it.” It wasn’t a judgment on her, Shuri knew—Nakia was not that type of person. But it ate at her again, this need to solve it, this knowledge that she’d never failed something before. If Bucky could make things happen in Reverie without even intending to, how would Shuri maintain control of the process so Steve was safe in there? How could she ensure Bucky got out before his health out here deteriorated? It was a conundrum, and Shuri had never been particularly fond of conundrums.

Her frustration must have shown on her face because Nakia laughed. “You want to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. But you are too skinny for that.”

Shuri shook her head and scoffed. “Not the world, just this little corner of it.” She pressed the fingertips of her right hand into her bottom lip, the nails digging into the skin. It was her go-to method of refocusing, a holdover from the days when she’d worked to cure herself of biting her nails.

“My meetings are almost done here and I can skip returning to Oakland. I haven’t been home in a while.”

Shuri knew what she was trying to do, and it was appreciated. “My brother would like that. And I know the captain would be pleased to see you.” Even if this was beyond her control—it was up to Bucky’s mind and Steve’s determination, really—having her friend here to talk to wouldn’t hurt, either.

As though she knew what she was thinking, Nakia said, “Shuri—when did you last spend time with your friends? When did you leave your work for a few hours and go into the city, to a club or a meal or something? And I don’t mean in Oakland—I mean here.”

“Oh, you are just like Mother.” But she couldn’t help smiling. All her life Shuri’d wanted a sister, and now she had the very best one. She could not complain.

“I think the captain and the sergeant would both prefer knowing you were not putting your life in a holding pattern for them.”

“I know.” Though she dipped her head in acknowledgement, it was easier to agree with such things than to truly accept them. Since Baba’s death she’d hardly even spoken to any of her old friends. Life was so different now.

They talked about other things for a little while longer and then ended the call, and Shuri raced her hoverbike up to the lab as fast as possible. Ayo chased along behind her, warning her about being reckless as Shuri just laughed. She was breathless by the time she reached Steve’s room only to find he was already in Reverie, the panel lying on his lap and his hands still gripping its sides. N’Deme greeted her. “How long?” Shuri asked, possibly a tiny bit annoyed that he’d started without her.

“A few minutes. He felt confident that he would not need to interrupt your work, he said, and he seems very comfortable now with the program. I would not have allowed him to enter it if I disagreed.” He offered her a respectful smile—she hadn’t meant to make anyone feel they had to defer to her own desires, so she waved her arm. It was fine.

“I know he is in good hands,” Shuri said, “I just wanted to make sure he is okay. I did not expect the meeting to take so long. But the captain is very capable, even when he is not okay, you are right.”

“For outsiders, they are not bad.”

She burst out laughing. “And they are so old, too! Which makes it even more impressive that they can learn new things.”

So. Now she had some time on her hands while Steve bounced around inside the program, doing whatever he would be doing today under N’Deme’s watchful eye. Anyway: whatever happened in there, neither she nor N’Deme could do anything about it out here, so she might as well get to work on the myriad projects waiting for her attention. She was already turning over in her mind what Nakia had said—and what Mother had been harping on for some time—about seeing her friends. Shuri had been putting it off since before that first trip to California, when T’Challa had told her of his plans for outreach.

Her avoidance was simply fear, she had to admit as she began pulling up her triaged list of stalled work: afraid her friends would now find her, well, princessy and a little stuck up, the kind of girl who believed the reports that she was important because she was jetting around the globe and meeting with heads of state. Being royal. Not someone you’d want to see a movie with or hang out in the park together. And that would be soul-crushing, if she found out it was true, because she’d fought like mad to never be that kind of person, to the point of driving Baba and Mama crazy with what they often saw as disrespect for her birthright. She was proud of her intellect and her abilities, proud of what Wakanda was accomplishing now, but she could not abide it if the people who’d known her best all her life thought her arrogant or smug or entitled.

But how did you approach people you’d allowed yourself to fall out of communication with? You couldn’t really just say “Hey, sorry I lost touch, I’ve been busy being one of the most important people in the world, you know how it goes. When can I fit you into my schedule? I’ll let you know what works for me.”

It took everything in Shuri’s control to concentrate on work now and not constantly get up to look in on Steve. She kept pulling up his room on her bead—sometimes N’Deme was in there, sometimes not, so she’d sneak a little peek at Steve’s vitals if he was out of visual contact. For tracking purposes. That was all.

After a few hours of it being much too quiet, she brought some lunch to N’Deme and they sat and talked quietly about general programming aspects of Reverie. When Steve still hadn’t exited and they’d finished eating, she reluctantly went back to work, saying “Please let me know the instant he comes out.” To his credit, N’Deme didn’t roll his eyes, though she could tell that every molecule in his being wanted to. She was being a mama panther, but she wouldn’t be ashamed of that. There were so many scenarios she’d concocted in her mind, all the things that could go wrong now that they knew how messed up Bucky was in there. How was she expected not to stress over that? She stabbed a screwdriver into her modeling sand and huffed.

Huh.

N’Deme had told him before that “the box” wasn’t actually the iron box Steve had been trapped in during his practice runs: it was an arrival point they’d built in as a default. It looked like a library space with many doors, something that seemed comfortable and familiar for a starting point. A user could build as many worlds as they wanted, and then use the doors to enter them. Once they were familiar with the program, they could skip it if they chose to, or build their own portal. Steve had expected to land in the box this time—beginner level in the library, basically. Instead, Steve had opened his eyes to find himself in the lobby of a posh hotel; Bucky must be here right now.

The spacious lobby looked European, possibly in the post-war era; he always had trouble distinguishing specifics about those midcentury years, but the seating and the telephones and the clothes spoke of the early 1960s. He’d seen photos of Peggy wearing smart little suits and low-heeled shoes like some of the ladies buzzing about this lobby; the men’s suits and ties reminded him of the photos of Howard Stark from then, too. No one, though, noticed him at all or appeared aware of him watching them, and the low conversational hum was indistinct, because they weren’t really talking at all, not in recognizable words anyway. He’d have to ask Shuri about that: did the computer create dialog for the other people in the reverie, or did the user build all that on their own?

Steve was about to make his way through the lobby to look for clues of where Bucky might be when the elevator went ding and out stepped Bucky. He was wearing a thick black turtleneck sweater under a teal peacoat not unlike the one he’d worn in the war, with charcoal trousers, dress shoes instead of combat boots, and of course black leather gloves on both hands. In his right hand he was carrying a long canvas bag, the kind most people used for skis but which Steve knew carried a rifle. He looks…hip, Steve thought, like some cool young European guy heading off for a ski weekend in the mountains. His hair was short still, a clue that allowed Steve to tell where and when they were: Madrid 1964, just before the week of a major political conference that could have brought some of Europe into the escalating US war in Southeast Asia. It took him a moment because he’d been so focused on Bucky, but Steve realized a young woman who’d stepped off the elevator with Bucky was also a Soviet agent—a Black Widow, in fact. Tall and willowy with auburn hair, she had a quality about her that felt familiar; he wondered if he’d seen her photo in those Hydra files he and Nat had pored over after DC. She was the very picture of the swinging, chic girlfriend a guy like Bucky was playing would have.

Natasha’s stories about her early assignments had given him an idea of how these operations ran: she was either a honey trap to lure a target in for a kill, by her own hand or another agent’s; a girlfriend or mistress who extracted secrets from a subject during an affair; or the messenger to deliver kompromat and blackmail a subject into doing Russia’s bidding. But Steve knew from the Soldier’s files—and the bag with the rifle confirmed it—that this woman had brought their target to a hotel, and Bucky’d shot him through the window. It had seemed unnecessary to Steve, to have a long-range assassination when close-up work by a Widow would accomplish the same goal, but he supposed there was an element of control in it for their bosses, too. They had both been things to be used.

After watching Bucky and the woman for a few beats, Steve tried to blend in with the other people moving through this reverie, but he was too late: Bucky clocked Steve just as he stepped into the crowd, his head whipping around with that preternatural awareness the Soldier had, glaring directly at Steve. He put a hand on his companion’s arm and said something to her; she hesitated, looking around, but then nodded slightly and slipped back into the lift. At no time did it seem as though she was aware of Steve at all. Bucky began stalking toward Steve, fully aware something was askew, so since the jig was up, Steve darted around the people passing by him and said, holding his hands up, “Bucky, it’s Steve. You remember me? It’s Steve.”

That stopped him in his tracks and he shook his head sharply, as if to shake out the confusion. He seemed cognizant of the fact that he was somewhere it was wrong when someone spoke directly to him of their own volition, and once over the shock of it, his eyes narrowed, his mouth drew in a tight line, and then he bolted. Grabbing the Black Widow’s arm and hauling her out of the elevator, he beelined for the far exit and Steve dashed after him. Shit. I forgot how fast he is. Steve had blown it, so he might as well just go for broke now, he thought. He’d shaken Bucky out of dissociation before a few times, maybe he could do it again.

Tailing him out of the hotel, Steve found himself on an unexpectedly crowded street at night, where there seemed to be a…parade? He would have sworn it had been daytime when they were inside the hotel. Yes, he realized, it was a festival, and after a few seconds he figured out it was Carnival time. Steve looked up at the skyline: definitely Madrid. Why this job, of all things, and why suddenly Carnival revelers clogging the streets? What possible significance could this have had?

Dodging the sweating, dancing bodies, Steve wove through the crowd, picking up speed, almost losing Bucky twice. After seeming to understand that he couldn’t shake Steve, a tense Bucky and the Widow veered down a side street, Bucky looking over his shoulder repeatedly. It wasn’t as crowded here, so Steve just barely caught sight of him as he slipped inside the industrial-style metal door of a modern steel and concrete building. The door wasn’t locked so Steve opened it, and then somehow he was in an elevator car which clearly did not belong to this building—it was the hotel’s, judging by the fancy, old-fashioned dark wood walls, red patterned carpet, and gold and brass fixtures. None of the buttons worked for him; he had no choice but to watch the floor numbers light up as he rode to the top.

When the car stopped, he found himself in a round room with an enormous ceiling—it looked Wakandan in many ways, but not entirely: there was something a bit western in it, from the old books on the gleaming shelves that looked as though they’d come from a Brooklyn library to the carved wooden doors with brass knobs that resembled early 1900s American decor more than modern East African. But there were also glass panel viewscreens set into the walls, bold white geometric lines on the shining black floor and ceiling—“the box” at last, he thought. Did the odd mix of elements here mean that Bucky had been building his own portal before things went haywire? Steve wondered what kind of other reveries were behind those doors.

Which door to open? Steve tried the handle closest to him, opening the door on a bunch of the Carnival revelers just standing there, pieces of costumes in their hands. They all turned to stare at him, sweaty faced with brash makeup running down their skin, staring at him as though he were an alien, and he backed out and closed the door, muttering “…oh-kaaay” under his breath. Six more doors ringed the room, but only one, he noticed, had a shimmering red mandala on the handle. It might be an exit mandala, or it might mean Bucky was behind that one. Steve went for it but stopped, distracted by a door that seemed to be…dripping something—no, not dripping, Steve saw on inspection, there were snowflakes swirling in front of it, the way flurries will sometimes dance in an updraft. Frost rimed the door knob. Well, surely that’s a sign. Ignoring the door with the mandala, then, he put his hand on the frozen handle and turned it, slow and cautious.

Steve stepped out onto a rooftop terrace, where there was a table set with fine crystal and china, a champagne bucket next to it. Had his subject been having dinner on the roof when the Soldier had murdered him? That wasn’t what the file had led Steve to believe.

The setting was oddly personal. The mission report had made it sound like the Black Widow had brought the target to her room, where Bucky’d shot him—not an intimate dinner for two on a rooftop terrace.

Behind Steve came footsteps; he turned. Bucky stared darkly at him. “Who are you?”

“Steve. Remember? I’m Steve Rogers, your best friend. I’m here to help you, Bucky.”

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

Not that again. “There’s something you need to know.”

Shaking his head, he said, “You’re not supposed to be here. You don’t belong here.”

Steve drew his head back, frowning. That was a strange thing for him to say. Somehow Bucky knew who should be in this program and who shouldn’t. He even seemed to grasp that Steve shouldn’t be able to interact with him. If he knew that, why the hell was he unable to control the rest of it? “There’s a way for two of us to be in here now.”

He batted that aside as though it meant nothing to him. “What do you want?” Bucky snapped, the way you’d say it to a co-worker who wasn’t telling you why they were bothering you about a project. He was gathering intel, not making conversation. He wanted to know how to get rid of Steve.

“Something’s gone wrong in here and you’re in danger if you don’t come with me. I’m Steve. You know me, you used to trust me. We have to get out of here, all right?” Come on, man, Steve wanted to say. You always remembered me before, no matter how fragile the memory. There had always been some tiny thread to pull on that would bring Bucky back.

“You don’t belong here. You’ll wreck everything.” He glanced toward the doorway when he said that, as though he was expecting someone to come through who had the power to harm him.

“No, I—” and then before Steve could finish, that weird fracturing thing happened again: red energy crackled along the edges of huge portions of the building and the skyline as they broke apart into pieces or cracked, gaping black fissures opening wider and wider as segments crashed down. The sky and the cityscape pixelized and blurred, then began collapsing; it reminded him of the way the Triskelion buildings had been destroyed. Steve tried to reach for Bucky to take hold of him and haul him out, but instead Bucky twisted sideways, grabbed Steve’s arm, and hurled him through the balcony’s half wall. He was sailing off the building into empty sky before he could get hold of anything to stop his fall, the chunks of plaster wall plummeting with him. He flailed his arms, helpless. “Exitus!” Steve shouted, just before he crashed onto the taxicabs in the street below.

“Breathe,” Shuri said, her voice gentle and coaxing. “Remember to breathe.”

Steve clutched at his chest. “Got the wind knocked out of me again. Or I mean, I thought I did.”

She read his pulse and other vitals. “Now you’re learning. Keep telling your mind that everything is normal.” After a few minutes, he sat up, and she asked, “Did you make contact, then? I take it this didn’t go well either.” Her face was twisted up, though she was trying her hardest to appear casual.

“Yeah, I made contact, and it was…just as disappointing as before. This time it didn’t start with childhood flashbacks, though. He was the Soldier, all the way through. Like he had some modicum of control.” Had he built in all the Winter Soldier stuff before he got stuck in there, or was all that—the table, the terrace, the Widow, the snow flurry at the door—coming from the program somehow? How much was Bucky and how much was Reverie?

“Do you feel up to giving us a briefing?”

He nodded, rubbing his wrist, feeling his pulse slow and letting him calm himself. The three of them went over to lounge on the long, sprawling couches so he could describe what had happened. N’Deme took notes, seemed to find it fascinating, theorizing that Bucky could be simultaneously aware of being in Reverie and unaware of his own situation, somehow.

“Because his mind is split,” Steve said, not certain if he was asking a question or verifying that he understood. All of this was so utterly foreign to him. “Like each side has vague awareness of the other but can’t pull them together, and the program is just…trying to put it in one narrative.”

“Or the part that built the world has been squashed down under the Soldier part that is using it to deal with something. Some particular trauma or even many traumas.” N’Deme circled a few words on his paper; Steve was always a little amused when someone from Wakanda used what he saw as old-fashioned tools, things that he himself was more comfortable with.

“But what? That’s what I can’t figure out. He’s bouncing from thing to thing—place to place, event to event. So far I haven’t seen any logic to it. How does that help him?”

“I don’t know that he chose it,” Shuri said evenly. She was probably right, and that’s what hurt the most, perhaps. He’d been carrying the guilt of not going back to find Bucky for seventy years and this was just bringing it all back up and pushing it to the front: none of this, not one single second of it, would have happened if Steve hadn’t let Bucky fall. Bucky’d never chosen any of it.

“I want to go back in right now,” Steve said, and the two of them looked at each other the way parents do when their kid has said something upsetting but they won’t discuss it in front of him. “I’m ready, and I don’t want—look, I know what he was like, at the core of him. It might be better if I can keep him off balance for now, find out more of what’s going on before he has a chance to patch things over and erase his mistakes. Whatever his mind’s doing with the program…I shouldn’t let it get ahead of me. If I can’t pull him out right now, at least I can gather more intelligence, right?”

He still remembered that gut punch when Colonel Phillips had told him Bucky was dead, the way he’d felt instantly hollow and empty and cold, as though he might just float away. Even struggling against that sensation, even knowing Bucky was most likely gone and there was nothing for it, Steve had simply made himself resolute—if he couldn’t save Bucky, his unfocused mind had insisted, he could save someone else. So what did it matter if he couldn’t actually pull Bucky out of Reverie just yet? There was still something else he could do. Some other difference he could make.

“Indefatigable,” Shuri said, her brows going up.

“What’s that?” Steve cocked his head and gazed at her quizzically.

“The word I kept seeing over and over again in the books I read about you. When it comes to Barnes, you are indefatigable, they said. They were not joking.” She reminded him intensely of Peggy at that moment, the almost condescending amusement on her face. The peculiar mix of disapproval and tolerant support.

“Yeah. I suppose I am.”

When Steve opened his eyes this time, he was slouched in a chair in the same hotel lobby, facing the elevator area. Everything else looked the same, too—the waiters bringing drinks, the people carrying luggage, the early afternoon sunlight slanting through the high windows. Somehow this was important to Bucky; he had come back to this starting point, even after his construct had been invaded by Steve.

He stood, looking around to see if he could spot Bucky; a man wearing a gray suit and tie and hat bumped into Steve. For a moment, Steve’s inclination was to think it deliberate, possibly one of the handlers monitoring the operation and Bucky’d put him here to test Steve’s presence, but then the man moved on, seeing him yet not really seeing him.

When the elevator dinged loudly, Steve whirled around and once again was face to face with Bucky, wearing the same clothes as last time. Had Bucky purposely reset the entire program and Steve was just arriving during an ongoing reverie by accident, or was he starting the program at this specific moment in time? How long had he been running this? It was strange that Steve kept arriving at this particular fixed time.

Bucky was already alert, though, and zeroed Steve more quickly than before, as if he’d been expecting him, and he nearly shoved the Widow back into the elevator as the doors closed on them both. Before Steve could reach them, he made some sort of urgently worded instructions to her, almost as though she was a person with her own agency rather than a character he’d programmed, and Bucky’s angry eyes met his before the elevator swallowed him up. Steve tried to pry the doors apart, but even with all his strength, he couldn’t get them open.

“Shit.” Steve slammed his fist against the metal and then turned toward the lobby to regroup.

“Hey! You!” Bucky barked, shocking the crap out of him and stalking up behind Steve with that loping, almost terrifying gait he remembered so well from the causeway in DC. “I told you to stay away from me.” Steve had not expected that.

Another interesting data point, Steve realized: Bucky remembered the entire previous encounter, not merely that Steve was an intruder. He remembered enough conversation to know what he’d wanted and not wanted inside this place.

“I can’t do that.” Steve tried to keep his voice neutral.

Clearly, he hadn’t anticipated a response because he froze, his mouth open. Still pissed off, though, and Steve thought good—maybe if Bucky were off guard enough, Steve could get through to him.

“Your table before, up on the roof, the Black Widow—it all means something to you.”

It was like he could see the gears turning in Bucky’s head as he tried to figure out how Steve was able to be here, going on the offensive when this shouldn’t be possible in the world he’d built. The entire lobby went silent as everyone stopped in their tracks, like a freeze-frame. Even the small dog carried in one woman’s arms did nothing more than blink. A waiter was paused in mid-lean over a table, pouring coffee from a huge silver pot into a china cup—but the coffee didn’t stop as the people had, it cascaded over the rim of the cup and flowed across the table, onto the carpet, as the waiter stared at Steve. They all stared at Steve, and it gave him such a case of the heebie-jeebies Steve had trouble focusing on Bucky. It felt as creepy as when he’d opened that library door on the Carnival revelers.

“Why the hell are you here?” Bucky snarled. Without a sense, now, of how to play offense with Steve, Bucky was trying to play defense. Steve punched the elevator button but he didn’t have to wait; the next thing he knew they had left the eerie lobby mannequins and were back on the rooftop terrace, the same lone table set with fine dinnerware as he’d seen last time, the same evening sunset view of Madrid spread out before them.

Bucky’s irritation radiated off of him, yet he made no move to try to harm Steve again. Maybe he wanted to see what Steve would do before he tried anything. “This place is obviously important to you,” he repeated as evenly as possible to see if he could jog some response loose.

“What business is that of yours?” Angry, but not I’m-gonna-kill-you angry.

“Was this where you completed your Spain mission? Your target was an official at the talks here, wasn’t he?”

His eyes narrowed, he seemed almost…bitterly amused. Steve could tell Bucky wanted to ask how he knew that, but he wasn’t interested in giving Steve the satisfaction of his curiosity. And then it hit Steve: this rooftop wasn’t about where he’d killed his target. None of this was about the target at all. This was about him and the woman.

Of course, Steve thought. Missions like these were the only times the Winter Soldier was allowed to act like a human being. To wear regular clothes instead of tactical gear, to eat fine cuisine instead of nutritional supplements, to sleep in a bed instead of an ice-cold coffin. To smile and talk and feel the sun on his face. To have a companion. It didn’t matter if they were each playing a part or that they barely knew one another, they were, for a little while, living a life.

The mission in Spain was one of the earliest where the Soldier had been allowed out this way, trusted as an agent of Hydra in the USSR—not monitored for every little deviation, not handled and ordered and snitched on. The 1950s had been up and down for the Winter Soldier project, according to the files: for every success in controlling and manipulating their asset, there was a disaster or malfunction that brought into stark relief how shaky their Soldier still was. It wasn’t until the end of the decade that they’d perfected the machine used to wipe his mind. Spain, however, and the Soldier’s previous mission in Greece—that was where they’d believed their project really shone, and for the next fifteen or so years, he’d been activated more often. No wonder this was the mission his fragmented mind had needed; it was the beginning of a simulacrum of freedom, and it hadn’t lasted very long.

If Steve left right now, would the Widow appear in the reverie, and they could finish out their time together? “Did you create this scenario for the reverie on purpose, or was it accidental?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Bucky responded, irritated.

“I mean…once you get what you need out of this, would you be willing to leave after you’re done?” Steve held his hands out, feeling helpless. It was impossible to gauge just how much Bucky was aware of and how deliberate this fantasy world was. The last thing he wanted was to send Bucky in deeper.

“Still don’t know what that means.” His temper was fraying; he looked like he was going to make this collapse again. Shit, Steve wasn’t certain what the correct play was here. Bucky knew Steve didn’t belong, that he was ruining things, yet he didn’t seem to know what those “things” actually were. No, Steve thought, that’s not quite right…

His mind was giving him some kind of respite, some taste of happiness. The program didn’t care if this was playacting or not. Maybe the kindest thing Steve could do was to let Bucky be alone with that for a little while, stop trying to pull him away from the first relief he’d had as Hydra’s captive. As long as he was all right on the outside and not in immediate danger, maybe Steve should just let him have this. Try again later.

“I know you don’t believe me, but I’m a friend. I’ll prove it to you in time. For now, though, I’ll leave you be.” There was a door to the little elevator alcove, and Steve noticed the doorknob was now a glowing red mandala, waiting for him to leave. “I’m coming back for you, Buck.”

Bucky stared at him, blank-faced, as Steve put his hand on the mandala. When he opened his eyes, Shuri was standing at the foot of his seat, anxious and tense.

“You know,” she said ruefully, “I think I am too old to take this. My heart is just not up to it.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I learned that I was wrong. I’ll let you make fun of me for a while after I tell you about it. That should make up for things, right?”

“Maybe,” she said. “But this better be good.”

Chapter Text

Steve blinked into bright light. Sounds of passersby and traffic faded after a moment and all he could really hear was Bucky barking orders, in Russian, it sounded like.

Out of all the things he had expected when he got in here, catching Bucky playing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had not even occurred to him, let alone made it to the top of any list. But as he stood across the street from an enormous old Zurich bank building, that was exactly what Steve clocked Bucky and a small black ops team doing—they were barreling out the gilded doors carrying giant duffel bags and an alarming number of guns. Bank robber fantasy. Okay.

They tossed the bags and some of their arsenal into the back of an armored truck, and after a few took positions in the truck and the rest jumped in a follow car, Bucky gave a hand signal and slapped the side of the driver’s door a few times. Then he leapt up to the top, kneeling on it just like he’d knelt on the Hummer that day in DC.

No one came out of the bank after them, and Steve wondered briefly if that meant the avatars of the bank’s employees had been murdered inside or if Bucky simply hadn’t bothered building any personnel into his reverie. He was torn between following the truck and checking inside to see if he could get a sense of what was happening here; when he’d entered Reverie this morning, he’d arrived right in the middle of this street to find the robbery in progress. Which meant this had been going on for a while.

There was little to distinguish this program for him, Steve had no sense of what year this was taking place. He knew it was Zurich only because a few businesses had the name in their storefronts and he could see the spire of what he recognized as the Fraumünster Church poking over the tops of buildings a bit further away.

The truck, however, wasn’t exactly speeding, so Steve decided to poke his head inside the bank. It was devoid of human avatars now, but it looked like there could have been some when Bucky had been inside: shell casings littered the polished marble floor, there were dropped cell phones and a purse, the old-world staircase’s elaborate wrought-iron railing was partly torn off, papers were in disarray behind the open door to an office area. Two of the four elevator doors were open, and he saw at least one handgun on the floor—Steve had never been inside one of the famous Swiss banks himself and it amused him to find this really did look like the one in that Jason Bourne movie he’d watched. He had a feeling that if he went into one of the vaults with safe deposit boxes, he’d find all of them open; he also assumed the central depository would be wide open. So he jogged back to the street, following the direction the truck had gone; he caught up to them easily.

It was all so weird that Steve was more intrigued than concerned, and he stood off to the side, watching.

Bucky jumped down from the top of the truck and signaled to the others. There was something about seeing him in black tactical gear—which looked a lot like his Winter Soldier kit—that threw Steve for a loop, and he pondered whether this was as purposeful as Spain had seemed, or something accidental. Steve moved nearer to them, staying within the angle of the truck so Bucky couldn’t spot him. The team took some of the bags inside what looked to be an old watch-repair shop, but when Bucky came back out, the others didn’t, and he stripped off his jacket, tossed it and the rifle he’d been holding inside the car, just as casual as could be.

Now Steve knew what this was: Zurich was one location where Hydra’s financial resources were stashed. Their assets included enormous stores of cash, bearer bonds from countries where they were still in use, jewels, and even art that they’d stolen, all tucked away in tax-havens around the globe and ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

The files Nick Fury and Natasha had dug up had led them to most of the accounts, but many had been depleted by the time they’d discovered them. All this time they’d assumed Hydra had been salvaging what they could in order to rebuild—but now Steve understood something else entirely was responsible.

While he was considering this, Bucky swiveled his head left and zeroed Steve. He locked eyes with him, once again understanding that Steve’s being here was somehow wrong but not comprehending precisely in what manner. Before Bucky could get his rifle—or make a getaway—Steve bolted across the street and grabbed his arm to hold him in place, and Bucky stared at him with a look that said how the fuck are you doing that? First shock, followed by a flash of killing rage at anyone stupid enough to put hands on him, then mild curiosity, and finally boredom. He looked away, but Steve didn’t let go of his arm; in fact, he pulled tighter as the segments moved and locked in and out of place.

“You again?” Bucky said, voice dripping with scorn, but Steve could tell he was rattled enough under the act.

“So you do remember me,” Steve responded.

“I don’t know what you want,” he said, “but you’re not gonna get it.” A knife appeared in his right hand and he quickly flipped it, all the better to strike at the center of Steve’s throat. Steve blocked him easily, which irritated him, but before he could do anything else, the rest of his team came out of the building, carrying the bags. This whole pastiche was so bizarre, and it caught Steve just enough off guard that he was delayed in reacting when one of the guys started toward him, as though he were Bucky’s bodyguard or something. They shouldn’t have been reacting to him at all. What the hell?

It only added to his shock when the guy snarled in English, “This doesn’t concern you.”

He reeled backwards. “Oh!” Steve said, attempting to recover his equilibrium and letting go of Bucky’s arm when he yanked it hard. “I…wasn’t talking to you. This is between me and him.” Were they even aware of who “him” was? They were merely characters Bucky’d created, after all. When the guy instead grabbed Steve by the throat and slammed him into the car, he’d had enough, especially when he caught the smirk on Bucky’s face.

All of the avatars inhabiting this version of Zurich stopped what they were doing now, most of them frozen in mid-stride, silent. Yet Bucky’s team was coming at Steve, and much as he hadn’t wanted to fight in here, he thought needs must. He made short work of them—they might not have been fully aware beings but they gave a good showing—although the fight gave Bucky plenty of time to start an escape: helo rotors coming up from the left. The helicopter zoomed over to hover above Bucky and a ladder dropped down through the swirling dust; Bucky jumped on the bottom rungs, dumping the contents of the bag. Marks, francs, dollars, pounds—all the cash carried on the wind becoming a perfect diversion for the avatar characters to kick back into motion and create chaos so Steve couldn’t catch Bucky. He was not in the mood to pull another helicopter out of the sky, so Steve simply stood in the midst of the busy crowd, glaring as Bucky rode out of sight. Steve was pretty sure he was laughing.

He shook his head as the melee swirled around him. “You prick,” Steve muttered. An orange and pink mandala glowed softly on the window of Bucky’s car, so Steve placed his hand on it, and then he was back in his office.

“And well…something weird happened before he pulled his helicopter stunt,” Steve said, looking at Shuri with an anxiety-pinched face.

“You are inside a virtual reality program interacting with a man in a coma,” she said. “I think the bar on ‘weird’ is incredibly low.”

Nakia, N’Deme, and T’Challa smiled and she felt pretty pleased with herself. Steve poked at his food some more, and Shuri added, “Define weird.”

“Some of the characters on his team spoke to me. The last time, they just froze when Bucky focused on me, but this time, it was as if they knew where they were and who I was. As if they had agency.”

That intrigued N’Deme, but it honestly didn’t surprise Shuri. They’d built it with heuristic principles, after all. And Bucky was clearly using the program in ways that enabled him to learn and adapt with it, to problem-solve, whether he’d intended to or not. “What else did they do?” N’Deme asked.

“Threatened me, tried to strangle me, fought with me.” Shuri would almost swear he’d thought it was fun.

“Oh, that’s great!” Shuri said, smacking her hands together.

“…Thanks?” He squinted at her.

On the screen, Sam Wilson laughed out loud. While they were all eating a midday meal here in the Citadel, Sam and Natasha had called in from what looked like some chic little European cafe, though you couldn't see anyone else around. Steve had lightened up considerably the moment they’d shown up on screen.

“They ignored you before because the program didn’t know you, but now it does,” Shuri explained. “The more it knows you, the easier it will be for you to work with.”

“Okay,” he said, in a tone that didn’t sound confident. “How exactly does it get to know me?”

“The same way people do,” N’Deme said cheerfully. “By watching you. Listening.”

“Oh, Steve hates that,” Natasha said slyly, and he gave her a sour look.

Nakia seemed to pick up on something he wasn’t saying, though. “You are worried there’s too little time for it to learn enough from both of you, because you need to pull him out.”

Steve nodded, pushed some more of his food around on his plate. Someone with his metabolism shouldn’t eat so little, she thought. Maybe she should put Mother on his case; he would never insult her by telling her not to worry and stuff his face to satisfy her. “If he was fine out here in the world, it’d be okay to let these reveries play out, but if he keeps finding ways to avoid me… This could go on forever if he wants it to.” Steve had said Bucky was pretty indefatigable himself even before they’d turned him into the Soldier.

“Then we must find a way to change the path of the program,” T’Challa said, looking hopefully at Shuri.

Before she could get cranky with him—like she hadn’t thought of that before! Like she wasn’t aware of her failure!—Natasha put her enormous coffee cup down and leaned toward the camera. “Have you thought about red teaming him?”

“Since I don’t know what that means, I’m gonna go with no,” Steve answered.

“Oh yes, brilliant!” Shuri and Nakia both chirped at the same time.

“It’s a method of testing security in tech,” Natasha explained with a patient smile, “but in this case, think of it as using a counterintuitive approach to overcome the obstacle of getting through to him.”

“The opposite of what logic suggests you do,” Nakia added.

“Spies,” Steve grumbled.

Sam scrunched his face up. “So like…the logical approach is what Steve’s been doing, trying to reason with Barnes until he finally listens and goes home. But you’re saying don’t do that. Don’t try to make him listen to Steve.”

Holding his hand up to get them to slow down, Steve said, “Wait. So instead of…chasing after him, I get him to come to me. Is that right?”

“Exactly,” Natasha said and leaned back in her chair with a satisfied smile.

“It’d make him more inclined to listen when he’s the one making the effort to contact you, rather than avoiding you,” Sam agreed.

Shuri could tell Steve’s mind was already leaping ahead to his next session. “Nat, can you get me that file with all the Hydra accounts that were cleaned out after 2014? I might be able to figure out where his next move could be and cut him off at the pass.”

“Then what?” Nakia asked.

“Hell if I know, but maybe it’ll come to me when I look through the files.” His response seemed to amuse her brother—they were alike in so many ways, Shuri was learning, not the least in how much they enjoyed strategizing.

Shuri wasn’t the only one who noticed Steve’s mind was racing ahead—Sam was shaking his head on the screen. “I can see the gears turning in your head—something’s bugging you.”

“Nothing.” Steve scowled. “I mean…I don’t know, I guess I’m just wondering what he gets out of robbing banks.” He trained his gaze on Sam. “The reverie before, it took me a while to figure out what he was up to, but it made sense once I did. This one…did he build this to re-create events he’s already experienced, and if so, why? Or if it’s not, is it an accident of the program, picking up on something and twisting it?” He shrugged.

“Need more data,” Sam said with a chuckle. “I can make a bunch of wild guesses based on his behavior outside the program, but that doesn’t really help someone inside of it.”

With a deep, resigned sigh, Steve said, “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of.” He looked around the room. “Well, time’s wasting, so I’ll see what else I can discover in there. Maybe I’ll answer my own question.”

Natasha promised him the files right away and they signed off; T’Challa and Nakia went off to their own work. While N’Deme went on ahead as they walked to the hover-lifts, Shuri dropped back to reassure Steve. “You are doing well,” she said. “You believe you aren’t, but trust me in this. There is something else on your mind, though, I think.”

“I know I can bring things like what I’m wearing into the program. Can I bring something larger in, something separate from me?”

“Of course. What did you have in mind?”

“I’ll let you know after I read those files.” His smile was maddeningly mysterious and she laughed at him. What could his imagination be coming up with?

“You are a tease, Captain Rogers.”

Steve shouldn’t have been surprised that Nat had already shot him the files by the time he’d returned to the Design Group; even on holiday, she was still the most efficient person he knew. He scanned the list of Hydra secret stashes as he walked with Shuri, and then immediately pinged Nat on the kimoyo bead. “So do you think this was all him, then?” Steve asked her as Shuri and Ayo veered off toward her main lab.

“Nick and I’d just assumed it was them cleaning house, but look at the trajectory: it’s a perfect path from DC to Zurich to where we found him in Bucharest. Every city we identified hiding Hydra resources no longer hid any as he made his way east. He stopped in Romania for something, but his pattern wasn’t to stay long.”

So Steve had encountered him in a Zurich reverie, which meant… “Next stop, Kiev.”

“There’s a slight chance he could have gone to Istanbul, but yeah, my money’s on Kiev. Ukraine’s a perfect place for someone attempting to…repatriate resources.”

“Not one of these places were physically held up, though. They were emptied electronically.” Maybe Steve wasn’t reading this right. Bucky would have been skilled at cracking systems, of course, but not to that degree—the Soldier was more battering ram than cyber-lock pick.

“But the physical goods were carried away by someone, especially the gems and the bonds—those would have to go to their countries of origin. We don’t know that he didn’t hire local help—did you ever ask him about that?”

“Nope.” Funny that Bucky’d never kept any of the largesse for himself, judging by his flat in Bucharest. He was Hydra’s greatest victim, after all. Instead he’d siphoned off what he could to Hydra’s victims—individuals, institutions—wherever he went. “So he’s re-enacting the operations this time, with himself in the middle of them, for some reason I can’t really guess at.”

“Does this help you figure out your next step?” she asked.

“It’s a start. Thank you. And hey—I miss you,” he added, with an uncharacteristic surge of emotion that left a lump in his throat. He had no clue what the hell he would have done this past year without her and Sam, and he did miss her like crazy right now. But he was glad she was having a nice vacation; god knew she deserved it.

Her crooked smile was like a shot of medicine. “You call us if you need us down there. We’ll be in Wakanda before you can hang up.”

When Steve found Shuri, her fingers were flying across her keypad, probably writing whatever code would be required for him to bring something into Bucky’s reverie. “Are you ready?” she asked.

“Yeah. I think what I should start with is something he’ll notice if I catch him when he rolls up to Hydra’s Kiev bank. And if I do get his attention, then it’ll be easier to keep it if I have my shield. It’s worked for me before.” He described as much detail as he could of what he wanted. “Is that something you could make?”

Her face crinkled up in that dismissive way only teenagers were true masters of. “Please.”

“I know, I know. I just didn’t want to presume.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Shuri said, rising to follow him to his office. She sat next to him while he settled on the chaise, his gaze lingering on Bucky’s image in the corner of his tablet screen, motionless in his bed. How many more days of this failure could he afford?

“This is a fun challenge,” she said distractedly. “We never built anything like it for the test versions, though it is somewhat similar to the remote vehicles I created for my brother and Okoye and Nakia in Seoul. You must tell us everything when you come out.”

Picking up the tablet, Steve smiled at her and said “Apertus.”

He was standing on a cobbled high street on a sunny, cool day, enough people walking by that it seemed realistic while still giving off the vibe of a manufactured reality. All the businesses featured Cyrillic lettering on doors or windows—he’d never seen Kiev in person, but that was all the proof he needed that he’d picked the correct stop.

Parked in front of the bank stood the truck he’d had Shuri make—it looked exactly like the SHIELD trucks the Strike teams had used, so Bucky would absolutely notice it and that it didn’t belong. Might even mistake it for an armored car, which wouldn’t hurt; whatever sparked his curiosity was good, was how Steve saw it. He hopped inside the back and latched the door. Resting on the bench that ran along one wall was his shield—or rather, a replica of his shield, since it didn’t have Panther-claw gouges or the well-worn leather grips. He picked it up and tossed it up by the edge, catching it, rolling it around. This one felt even lighter, and his heart ached a little as he tested it out. While he didn’t regret giving the shield up—not after everything Tony’d said and done, not after the Accords and Zemo and Leipzig, and not after having a choice forced on him between saving Bucky or being Captain America—he couldn’t deny that he missed this part of himself. Bucky’d said on the way to Siberia “I’m not sure I’m worth all this,” but when Steve had dropped the shield there in the place that had witnessed so much of Bucky’s suffering, he’d been refuting that statement. His friend was worth all of it, and more.

He sat down and waited. Bucky could be inside the bank already or on his way here, it was impossible to know, since Bucky was in control. All Steve needed was for him to spot the truck and be suitably intrigued—Steve was fully prepared this time to fight him if he had to, whatever it took to get him to listen.

There wasn’t much of a wait: Steve heard a commotion outside the truck, a voice snapping out orders in Russian, and it sounded like passersby reacting in shock to something. But the noise stopped abruptly, then he heard a muffled, scratchy, familiar voice; a moment later, the outside handle was ripped off the door and flung open. Bucky didn’t bother using the runner board and just jumped in, landing on his feet with a heavy thump that echoed in the metal space. His gaze raked over the truck’s interior, finding nothing of interest, before landing on the shield. Maybe it was Steve’s imagination, but he thought he saw a flicker of recognition, behind the veil of messy hair.

“You’re a hard guy to get an appointment with,” Steve said cheerfully.

Bucky glared at him, full of disdain, but said nothing. Now was so not an appropriate time, but all Steve could think of was how incredibly hot he looked: the new tac gear and the unkempt long hair, the attitude and the swagger. Maybe Steve just liked a challenge.

He shook it off and continued. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. I had to get you to stop long enough to listen to me.”

Bucky heaved an exasperated sigh and narrowed his eyes.

“Haven’t you wondered how I keep showing up in your life? You obviously recognize that I’m not like all the other people you see in here.” When he still got no response, Steve snapped, “I’m trying to get you to listen to me because your life is in danger.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” His body shifted, as though he intended to jump out, but his eyes kept flicking back to the shield and Steve caught the way his pupils were dilating a little, his blinking speeding up, because he was trying to access a memory. He didn’t want to be interested in the shield, or in Steve, but he was.

“This is a program, a computer simulation. I think deep down, you know that, you know these scenarios and the people inside them aren’t real, they’re manifestations of your mind.”

“Nice try.” His metal arm made that shifting noise Steve remembered from their fight on the helicarrier, the different segments realigning and tightening. The fingers curled into a fist.

Damn, he was going to lose Bucky again. “It’s a virtual reality. How else could I keep appearing in all these different places when I’m not with you? Think about it: you saw me in Spain decades ago, now I show up in Zurich and Kiev right when you’re stealing Hydra assets.”

“If it’s a program, and it’s my program, then why the hell would I bring you into it?”

“Out there—in the real world—you’re in Wakanda. They built the program, Princess Shuri built it.” There was a minute twitch of Bucky’s head at the mention of her name. “She was trying to help you with Hydra’s programming, but you’ve become stuck in here. Shuri figured out a way for me to come in and help you get out.”

Bucky rolled his eyes so dramatically Steve thought they might fly out of his head. Yet…something about her name stirred him to action and he moved for the door, but Steve grabbed his arm. “Get your hands off me,” Bucky warned, his voice a low growl.

“Not until you listen. All I’m asking is that you listen.” Steve repeated his previous points, emphasizing, “If you don’t leave this place, you will die out there.”

Bucky wasn’t even bothering to argue that the concept was ridiculous; he went straight to “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Not in here, but out there, yeah, there is. The longer you’re in here, the more you get disconnected from the body that’s lying in a hospital bed.” Dammit—he should have thought about bringing video proof. “Why—why the hell would I lie about that?”

Steve was totally startled when Bucky actually laughed. “If you know so much about me, then you know lies are all I’ve heard for the past few decades.”

That was a fair point, much as he hated to admit it, and Steve dragged in a ragged breath. “Not me. I will never lie to you. You’re my friend. And I think you know that or you would have beat it when you saw I was in here.” He tapped the shield and Bucky’s eyes focused on it again; he was wavering and Steve fought the urge to give a triumphant smirk. How much should he press this point? Maybe he should ask why Bucky was choosing to relive this robbery spree when he’d already done it in real life. Keep hammering on the information that this was imaginary.

Bucky’s arm went slack, finally acquiescing, and he cocked his head sideways. “I don’t have friends, I have targets.” Steve loosened his grip. But as soon as he did, Bucky threw Steve hard across the interior to the far wall of the truck, his back hitting the metal cage over the cab window. He leapt out and threw the door closed, breaking the handle off, then slapped his metal hand a few times on the side of the truck—somehow, while Steve had been focused on Bucky, one of his crew had got behind the wheel and the guy started the engine as Steve tried to rip the door off its hinges. Before he could succeed, the truck was in gear, the driver cackling maniacally. So Steve tore the bars off the window, smashing through the glass and reaching for the driver’s throat, but he was too late—they were heading straight for a brick wall. “God dammit,” Steve muttered to himself. “Exitus,” he shouted, just as the truck smashed into the wall.

Gasping, he opened his eyes to see Nakia sitting in a chair next to him, reading something from her kimoyo bead screen. She looked up at him with a smile. “That doesn’t sound good,” she said.

“Nakia. Hello again.” He wasn’t sure which had startled him more—Bucky trying to crash him into a wall or Nakia waiting for him.

“Princess Shuri had a date with a friend in the city, and I was in the lab, so I volunteered to stay and and allow N’Deme to go home.”

“That’s very kind.” He sat up, ran his fingers through his hair, trying not to let yet another failure get to him. But he wasn’t succeeding very well.

“I take it Barnes didn’t want to come home.”

“The…red-team approach seemed like it might work—definitely got his interest. But he’s not buying the reasons for my presence in there.” Steve shook his head. “I know it’s outlandish, so I can’t entirely blame him, but it’s hard to make headway when I can’t figure out why he’s doing this.”

Nakia twisted a finger around one of the circular knots of her hairstyle, contemplating something, and gave him a mischievous grin. “Come with me.” He blinked a few times in surprise, but fell into step behind her as they headed aboveground; on the way out he noticed the clock and that it was now late afternoon. When he was in the program, he lost all sense of time, and he wondered if that was a feature or a bug. They took hoverbikes heading northwest—he would never not love riding these things, he thought, they were fast and agile and fun, but he had to admit that he missed the loud rumble of his Harley’s engine. Well, Steve missed his Harley, plain and simple; he wondered if he’d ever be able to retrieve it, if he might be welcome in his own country again.

They stopped at a cliff on the other side of Mt. Bashenga, the far edges of Birnin Zana spread out below and behind them, and the jungle that would stretch north all the way into their neighboring countries. The heat was coming up off the plains, colliding with the swelter from the forest, and Steve wiped sweat from his forehead and neck as he sat down next to Nakia, their feet dangling over the rock outcropping. She passed him a miraculously icy vacuum bottle of water and said, “T’Challa and I used to come here, when we were young. I like this view because you can see where he comes from, and where I come from.” She pointed to the serpentine river, one side bordered by the plains and the other by deep green foliage.

“You’re from the River Tribe, if I recall.”

Nakia nodded. “I believe sometimes you have to leave behind all the things you are used to seeing in order to clear your vision. When everything familiar is out of sight, you notice the new.”

He smiled.

“Also I am gathering intel so T’Challa and I might be able to come up with a better strategy to help you.”

That made him laugh out loud, which seemed to startle her. Sam had once told him that seeing him actually laugh instead of merely smile was like seeing snow in the Sahara or something—an event so rare no one believed it was possible. But he used to laugh like that all the time: with the Commandos, with Bucky, with Peggy. The past was another country, like they said, and he’d done things differently there. “What secrets can I unburden myself of?”

Her subtle smirk reminded him a lot of Natasha’s, riding up to New Jersey in the truck they’d stolen in DC: reevaluating him with every sentence. “The only times I really get frightened are the times when I have no control.”

“So you think that reliving some of his past experiences is just a form of gaining control over his fears?”

Nakia gave an eloquent shrug. “I have been thinking…you know you can at least make him pay attention to you now. But what might provoke him to act? Sometimes subtlety is counterproductive.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Make him bring a fight to me? Provoke the Bucky out of the Winter Soldier?” He thought he understood what she was getting at, but he felt a little thick-headed these days. “Or just piss him off.”

She rocked her hand back and forth. “Or simply…make Barnes think he has to do something to stop you, instead of simply reacting to you when you show up. He does not need to know that it will be exactly what you want him to do.”

For a few minutes, he chewed his bottom lip, and then he grinned at her. “You know what, I might just have an idea of how to make that happen.” If there was one thing Steve had always been good at, it was irritating the fuck out of Bucky. Even before either of them had known he was Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier had been furious with Steve—and Nat, and Sam—in Washington. “That could be good. Thank you.”

They stayed there for a while, as she told him about what T’Challa was like as a boy, about the history of the River Tribe, and about how she got started as a spy. She pulled stories from him, too, about life in the early 20th century and the history he remembered, and he knew she was filing things away just like Nat would, but he didn’t mind. It was a beautiful sunset to watch with lovely company, and when it was dark, they followed the faint purple beacon of the vibranium lights back to the mine and the Design Group. He had a call to make to Shuri, and then he would do one more session in Reverie—Nakia had sparked an idea, and he wasn’t ready to call it quits.

It was so strange, being in the city again and just…hanging out with two of her school chums. The last time Shuri had done this had been in what she’d begun to think of as The Before: before Baba had been killed, before Captain America and the Winter Soldier had come to their country, before Kilmonger, before Oakland. In The Before, her picture of the world had been painted largely through videos and articles and stories Baba and Mama had told her about visiting other countries on diplomatic tours. She couldn’t have imagined then that in The After, she’d be central to Wakanda’s reshaping of the world.

She drummed her fingers on the table, keeping time with the rhythms of the band playing, listening to Zozo tell her about the project she was working on for one of Mother’s committees on Pan-African development. It was exciting work—focused right now on building continent-wide transportation with minimal environmental impacts—and Shuri was thrilled to hear about it, yet she still had to fight with herself to keep her mind from wandering back to possible solutions for Reverie problems. Yanna could tell she was having trouble focusing—he’d always been the most observant one of her friends, so she wasn’t surprised when he eventually said, “I think you are solving problems in your head again instead of relaxing.” Her two friends laughed at her confused look, but not at her, they were too kind for that. Still, she cut her eyes sideways, made a sheepish face.

“Maybe we can help,” Zozo offered, and stole some of the spicy plantain chips from Shuri’s plate. “Especially if it’s a love problem…have you met someone in America?” She seemed ridiculously hopeful.

Shuri pushed the braid she’d been twisting around her finger back up into place. “It’s kind of secret,” she said over the sound of the music, scrunching up her face. “So if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

Yanna rolled his eyes and favored Zozo with a look. “This is what happens when you’re friends with a princess, I guess. The paranoia of the palace.”

“We will need a security clearance to come hang around in your rooms! They will make us sign nondisclosure agreements and threaten us with jail if we tell anyone what kind of toothpaste you use.”

“But on the other hand, the paparazzi will pay you handsomely to make sure you maneuver me into the right spots so they can take awful photos of me and sell them,” Shuri said. “The money you make from the stories about what Wakandan palace life is like will be so much better than from your current positions.” In fact, Shuri had spent the first part of their evening out trying to convince Yanna to come join her in the US so he could put his artificial intelligence research to work on some of their non-governmental organization projects, but he liked his new teaching position at Wakanda’s university—he was the youngest they’d ever had—too much to leave. For now, anyway; Shuri was undaunted and wouldn’t give up easily.

“Oooo. Does your secret project involve the outsiders?” Zozo asked, her eyes glittering a little. “I heard he’s in Wakanda again.” She didn’t need to say Captain America or name any of T’Challa’s new Avengers friends, they all knew who he was.

Yanna shook his head. “Bast’s sake, this again? She thinks he’s sooo handsome. For a white guy, anyway.”

Oh, Shuri thought, someone is jealous, but she couldn’t help laughing. Well, good—if two of her best friends got together romantically, it would be very lovely indeed. “Him? No, you should see Sam Wilson up close. Everyone in Oakland thinks he’s dreamy.”

Zozo made a noise in her throat; she wasn’t buying it. Shuri would die to tell Steve about this, but it wouldn’t be fair to Zozo.

“Are they even allowed back in their own country yet?” Yanna asked. Apparently, everyone was keeping up with all the gossip these days, and it made her shake her head. Well, it was the company she kept, Shuri thought, and they were popular topics. Not much she could do about that.

As if he’d had panther’s ears, Steve contacted her, his image appearing when her kimoyo bead beeped with an alert, and she held her finger up. “I think he knows we are talking about him,” Shuri said, a little flustered. She wanted to unpack this crush that Zozo was nursing for old white American guys. Instead, she pressed the button and his hologram popped up, though she angled it a little away so the crowd around them wouldn’t see.

He blinked, hearing the music, realizing that she was with other people than just her Dora guards. “I… I apologize, Princess Shuri, I didn’t realize you were still out. I didn’t mean to interrupt, I can reach you again later.”

She could see his hand move to the bead he still kept around his neck with his dog tags, but she stopped him and said, “No, please, what can I do to help? I have a moment.” She pointed the image to her friends and introduced them, and she thought Zozo might faint at the table, as cool as she was trying to act. Yanna was absolutely jealous; he was polite but distant.

“I had limited success with our previous…uh, plan for the…project,” he said, trying to be cagey, but he was really very bad at it. “But I had a new thought, and wondered if I could get something else to…bring with me.”

“Yes, of course. I will make sure you get anything you need.”

Her face must have expressed her curiosity because he gave a knowing nod and said, rather mischievously, “Good. In that case, I’m gonna need a can of gasoline and a lighter.”

“What?” her two friends yelped in confused surprise, while at the same time, Shuri said in her best Oakland style, “Hell yes!”

Chapter Text

“Wait—hold on,” T’Challa was saying when Shuri finally stopped shaking her head at the ceiling and focused on him. “What does he want with gasoline there?”

She heaved a put-upon sigh. “Well, I would know that if Mother would let me go up to the lab. As it stands now, I cannot say, and I have not spoken with him since he asked for it.” Oh, she knew she was being pissy, but she sort of didn’t care. Now both her mother and her brother were giving her narrow looks, and Okoye was keeping her eyes trained on the ground, trying not to smirk. Ugh, family drama. You couldn’t escape it, even in the royal house, even when you were one of the greatest scientific minds in the world—well, she supposed being royalty practically guaranteed family drama, she’d learned that with the Kilmonger fiasco. But that wasn’t this: Mama was treating her like she was a little girl with a bedtime curfew.

Her mother pursed her lips. She’d been finishing up the evening meal with T’Challa and Nakia’s family when Shuri’d come home, just to quickly change clothes before seeing what Steve was up to. But her mother was a witch of some sort, because she knew Shuri was going back out to do work, and then, to use one of Steve’s phrases, lowered the boom. No more lab time today. It’s late. This project is occupying too much of your time. She wasn’t sure if it had helped or made things worse that T’Challa had stepped in, attempting to mediate, as always. “You can find out what he wants tomorrow morning, my daughter,” Mother had said. “It will keep till then.” Like she was a little baby!

“I did not intend to stay!” Shuri protested, trying not to sound petulant but failing, if she were to judge by the way Okoye raised her head and glanced to the side, watching Mother’s reaction. “I only wanted to set up his request, he’s fine on his own now and it would be a few minutes of coding, nothing more.”

No one was buying that. “You are investing too much of yourself in the captain and his…requirements,” Mother said, and Shuri caught the way T’Challa’s eye twitched a little at that. Ha! So he felt the same way about Mother’s attitude toward their friends. Surely Mama wouldn’t try to poison the relationship that had developed between Steve and her brother?

Shuri could guess why he wanted the can of gas and the lighter; for the same reason he’d wanted the truck and his own shield: to get Bucky’s attention. Whatever his specific plan was, she was on board. Yes, they needed Bucky out of there, yes, she was worried, but at the same time there was a thrill at the adventure of watching Steve play this thing out. How inventive he was, and determined to test the limits of Shuri’s own creation. She never wanted a repeat of the disaster with her cousin, that was not the kind of test she craved, but Shuri hadn’t been this excited by a project since the trip to South Korea.

Not to mention, Mother simply did not understand how devastated Shuri would be if Bucky’s health declined further. She was simply too blinded by her dislike of their white guests. “I don’t know why you hate them so much,” Shuri complained, and instantly regretted it.

Her mother gasped; Okoye and Ayo both blinked. Because he was always the peacemaker, T’Challa held up a hand before anyone could say anything else. “There is no need for ill tempers.” She remembered times when T’Challa had clashed with Baba like this, despite how much they had loved each other. Maybe it was, as Mother had said a while ago, the nature of mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. But she was eighteen now, running an entire organization in a foreign country while overseeing project development here, and she deserved to make her own decisions about who she would help and how much. She deserved to make her own friends, even if they were two old white men from the previous century. T’Challa was staring at her as though he knew what she was thinking. “I will speak to the captain and explain that you will not be returning to the lab this evening,” he said, giving his sister an understanding smile. He knew what Mama’s fussing was like, though it was never as bad for him as it was for Shuri.

Despite her fuming, Mother seemed willing to accept his offer for the peace negotiation it was.

“And I will ask Wanuri to escort the captain back,” Okoye said evenly, “in the event that he wishes to go ahead without you.” Shuri nodded, though she didn’t attempt to explain that Steve had already used Reverie without her. Not having the things he’d asked for tonight didn’t mean he couldn’t just drop back in and keep trying to reach Bucky. It was all down to him, anyway, Shuri was just the coder at this point.

Mother took hold of her elbow and steered her toward her bedroom as everyone else filed out of her quarters. What a rotten end to a wonderful evening.

They wordlessly went through the same motions they had the night when Shuri’d first come home, her mother helping her get ready for sleep with grim determination. Eventually, when she was wrapping Shuri’s hair, Mother said, “I have nothing against these men, they are the friends of my beloved children. That you both care for them speaks greatly of their characters.” Mother patted her shoulder. “I am simply concerned that you do not see how…consumed you have become with this project. You are not Bast, nor any kind of god. You cannot control destiny, you cannot change the path that this must take—certainly not by worrying and working yourself into the ground.”

Shuri exhaled loudly. “I know that. And I am sorry, especially for everything disrespectful that I have said.” Turning her head, she looked up at her mother. “But Mama, I put Sergeant Barnes there, and if Steve can’t bring him back…”

“No, my darling child. No. You didn’t put him there. Hydra did.” It was so strange to hear her mother say the name of those evil monsters. Mama put her hands to the sides of Shuri’s face, kissed her forehead. All this time, Shuri’d thought Mother didn’t care about Steve and Bucky’s histories, the events that had led to her finishing Reverie for Bucky’s condition, because they were outsiders. But Mother had been filing it all away, taking note of the people her children cared about. She had been listening, and Shuri had never given her credit for it. “If I thought he was in danger at this very moment, I would not have asked you to take one night to yourself. You had such fun with your friends tonight, didn’t you? I want more of that for you, too.”

“Yes, Mama, I know.” She thought she should say more, perhaps, offer a better apology, but Mother pulled her into her arms and began stroking her head, singing her favorite song from when she was a child.

“She’s pretty sneaky,” Steve said agreeably, after Shuri pointed out that Nakia would always find a solution to a problem—so you could never tell her something unless you wanted her to steer you towards one and leave you thinking you’d discovered it on your own. “I liked how she let me believe it was my light-bulb moment.”

He’d been telling her about his day yesterday as they rode up to the lab, his mixed response with Bucky and why he’d asked for the gas and lighter. Through his story, he’d hoped Shuri would see that everything was all right and he was fine about her not being able to come back last night. She’d been far too apologetic, seemed almost ashamed, and he was pretty sure that whatever happened that prevented her from returning was the reason he’d been invited to breakfast with the family. Queen Ramonda was proving a point to her daughter; he wasn’t a total dummy. So he couldn’t help feeling awkward when the princess had told him what had happened—he’d never want to come between a mother and her daughter—but honestly, he couldn’t blame Ramonda for worrying about Shuri.

Ramonda’s first priority was her family, but she’d been thrust into the position, when Wakanda began opening up, of dealing with the nations that had stolen the ancestors of her fellow Africans and enslaved them, tortured them, murdered them. Dealing also with modern nations that had murdered Africans who’d led the fight against colonialism, like Patrice Lumumba and Stephen Biko. And dealing with people like Steve himself, in Lagos. And she had to do it all with a smile. No one could blame her for her priorities, for wanting to put her family, her country, her continent, ahead of anything else, least of all him.

“What was your light bulb?” Shuri asked, distracted, still entering information on her tablet so he could take more items into Reverie. Though he wasn’t taking actual gas and a lighter—she’d laughed at him for believing he needed something like that to start a fire: Please, this is Wakanda, and I’m me. There are much better options.

“That I was so hung up yesterday on why he was doing this, and thanks to something she said, I realized it was about control.”

“Over what?” she asked, puzzled.

“Everything. Anything.” He scratched his temple. “When we were young, he was pretty much the one in charge of everything. An excellent student, an excellent athlete, and pretty much the handsomest guy around, so all the girls wanted to date him, and everyone wanted to be his friend. He’d walk into a room and take it over without even intending to.”

She glanced up at him with the funniest look, and he couldn’t quite parse what the expression meant. Not quite skeptical, not quite amused…but something.

“And you know,” Steve continued, “I was this scrawny guy with an enormous chip on my shoulder and a string of constant illnesses, so he was also kind of a caretaker. The oldest of four kids, too, and he went to work in his early teens to help support his family. Promoted to sergeant before he even shipped out in the war. Not even the torture in Austria changed that—I still looked up to him even after the serum.”

“You admired him very much.”

He let out a breath. “I did. Everyone did. And then boom! Everything was taken away from him and he never had control again, till he knew who he was. That’s what I couldn’t see at first, though—how reliving something he’d begun in those first weeks of being Bucky again was part of taking charge of his life. He started stealing Hydra’s resources back just a few weeks after DC. But he never finished—we interrupted him when we got too close, which is why he went to ground in Romania.”

Shuri stopped typing. “So part of his plan in Reverie might have been to finish what he had started. Even if he doesn’t know that’s what he wants, it has become important to his process of shedding Hydra’s power over him…” She trailed off as if she wasn’t certain of the hypothesis.

“I think so. Maybe.” Whether it was intentional or not, Steve wasn’t sure, but it didn’t really matter. Steve would have to do whatever he could to shake some understanding that he was in danger into Bucky’s head. “He was strong and confident and smart, as Bucky, as the Soldier…maybe Reverie is the one place he gets to feel like that again, even unconsciously.” He didn’t want to say “especially after what happened in Bucharest and Berlin,” because Steve knew how guilty Shuri felt over that. But he thought she might perceive what he was thinking.

“Hmm.” She swept a hand toward the chaise to let him know she was done coding and he could enter Reverie. “May I ask you a question?” Shuri said, more timidly than he’d ever heard her. “It’s very personal, so I do not demand an answer—although I suppose that might be an answer in itself,” she added with a laugh. I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don’t answer it, though, you’re kind of answering it, you know? He really hoped it wouldn’t be about kissing.

“What’s that?”

“I enjoy hearing you talk about Bucky like this. But I have been wondering—and I know my brother and my mother would die if they knew I was asking you this—but were you and Bucky romantically involved?”

Whatever he’d expected her to ask, it was definitely not that. Steve was glad he wasn't drinking anything at the time, because he was having enough trouble not choking on his own spit and it took a minute to get himself under control. “Um. Why would you—what would make you—” His face was getting red, he could feel it.

“It seems as though you are in love with him. I wondered if it was mutual.” Her face was…hopeful? Oh—maybe it wasn’t prurient interest so much as a young woman’s love of romance. Not for the first time, Steve wondered if, with all the stuff going on in Shuri’s life and the fact that she was a princess, she’d had any chance for a romantic life, could enjoy being young and single and brilliant and pretty. It was none of his business, of course, but he wanted her to be happy.

How to answer? To refuse an answer seemed churlish when she was putting so much of her life on hold to be at his beck and call, but he also had never thought to discuss this with anyone, let alone a princess from another country. “It’s…a complex story. When we have time, maybe I’ll tell you some of it.” He swallowed. “But you’re not wrong, although as far as I’ve ever known, any feelings are one-sided on my part.” No details, but it made her smile crookedly and more than a bit sadly.

“Well, that just will not do.” He felt the corner of his mouth tug up; for a second, he looked at Bucky’s image in the corner of the Reverie tablet, still peacefully asleep, and then he patted Shuri’s arm a few times.

“I’ll see you in a bit.” Steve knew she wouldn’t let it drop, and that was all right. Maybe by the next time they spoke, he’d have good news and it wouldn’t matter whether or not he was pining over Bucky.

Since he found himself in a different city from the last session, Steve figured Bucky must be doing a new robbery: judging by the wall of heat that hit him in the face, Bucky’d made it to the Middle East on his Hydra asset repatriation world tour, which would take him next to Singapore and finally to Hong Kong. The spot he’d landed in was a fairly generic business district, but when Steve squinted into the horizon, he spotted the Burj Khalifa in the distance: Dubai. It was incredible how vague these reveries were, and yet how many distinct details Bucky had managed to squeeze into them. The sun was quickly setting, but a few people still wandered here and there on the streets, going from luxury cars into businesses. It had been only a couple minutes but he was drenched in sweat; his blue T-shirt was almost navy now and plastered to his torso, and in his head he could hear Sam laughing at him and calling him a show-off. He wiped his forehead and strolled around, searching for signs of Bucky and his squad. It was hard to tell which building was the private banking target this time since Steve couldn’t read Arabic, but when he saw the car, he knew where Bucky was: if he’d made it back from the war, Bucky’d have been a total muscle car guy, Steve knew that with absolute certainty, and among the European luxury sedans and stretch SUVs lining the street, the brilliant blue ’66 GTO stood out like green in a desert.

He flicked the little bit of powder Shuri had given him in a line along the hood, roof, and trunk of the GTO and touched the igniter to it; the flames jumped high, burning purple and orange and blue like some crazy pop-art stegosaurus. The paint job bubbled and melted under the fire; it was lovely in the waning light of evening. Behind him, he heard commotion, and Steve darted off to the alcove of a building. Bucky skidded to a halt in front of his team, holding his big-ass gun and staring, dumbfounded, at the fire on his car.

“What the hell happened to my car?” Bucky hollered, not at all Winter Soldiery.

“Got your attention?” Steve said, trying not to laugh as he darted up behind Bucky and grabbed the bag out of his hand. The entire team turned their guns on Steve, but he dug into the bag and pulled out what felt like a necklace.

“What?” Bucky said, angry as hell, trying to grab it back.

Steve danced backwards on the sidewalk, holding the necklace up—holy shit, that was a lot of gemstones—and taunting Bucky with it. “How ’bout now?”

The sound of guns cocking followed, along with Bucky’s snarled “That belongs to me. Give it back.”

“Make me,” Steve mocked and sprinted away, pulling things out of the duffel and throwing them—wads of banded dollars and pounds, more jewels, a brick of gold—off to the side as he ran.

Bucky was almost as fast as he was, but Steve knew he had the edge on him, and he could hear Bucky panting as he tried to keep up. Steve had no idea where he was running: the backgrounds did not appear to have been prebuilt into Reverie and were filling in as he ran, pixelizing, and the sky had grown darker, possibly reflective of Bucky’s anger. Finally, as Steve turned down an alley of cobblestones that looked distinctly old Brooklyn—definitely not in Kansas anymore, he thought wildly—he hit a dead end and stopped, turning toward Bucky, taking a few deep breaths. Neon from the back of the bar and restaurant on either side of the alley reflected on the wet ground. Bucky skidded to a stop on the slick stones, sidestepping the little stream of water running through the middle; steam was coming from a grate by the building near the street. It was a remarkably accurate simulacrum.

“Nowhere else to go,” Bucky said between heaves. “Give me back my stuff.”

“Not yours, though, is it? You’re stealing it, after all.” Just to piss Bucky off, he tossed what felt like a bag of coins into an overflowing garbage can. Probably all gold, all rare.

Bucky looked around, stunned, as though he hoped to find someone who’d be as flabbergasted by his idiot antagonist as he was. “What the hell do you want from me?”

Steve watched him for a while, then set the bag down on the ground. “To talk to you and get you to realize I’m telling you the truth, that you’re in danger here.”

Rolling his head around on his shoulders, he finally threw his head back and let out a guttural, enraged “No more talking!” Yet Steve could see his resolve was weakening, that there was enough of a tiny crack forming in his walled-off psyche Steve might be able to worm his way through. He held his hands out helplessly.

“I think somewhere under all this, you know I’m right. You know this world isn’t real.” Bucky was staring at him the way he’d done on the helicarrier gangway, head down slightly, suspicious eyes, calculating. “But it’s just real enough to let you take control, away from them. That’s what you’re doing by robbing these banks, isn’t it? You get to control what happens to them by giving their spoils away to people they’d wronged. But then we interrupted you, out there. You’re finishing the job, now, sticking it to them for good. And I know that’s really hard to let go of.”

The low amber light filtering down the alley from the street corner made it hard to see Bucky’s features, but he caught an almost imperceptible shift in his face: brows drawing together slightly, the faintest downturn of his mouth.

“You remembered enough of who you truly were that you wanted—needed to do the right thing. To be your own person again.” Steve took a few steps toward Bucky, stopped when he could see him pull back. So instead he lowered his voice enough that Bucky would have to lean a bit forward to hear him. “See, I know that about you. You were the kind of guy who took care of your family, your best friend. Me, you took care of me. You were the kind of guy who would always strive to right a wrong. They tried and tried, but they couldn’t kill that in you. The first thing you did when you broke free was attempt to help people who’d been hurt by them. Because you were a good man.”

His eyes were glistening. Steve was finally, finally getting through to Bucky.

“But something went wrong out there, Buck. I think you know I’m telling you the truth, you can feel it. You know I wouldn’t be so desperate to keep coming back if it weren’t true. Maybe you think you’re all right, and you don’t need to come back—but I need you to come back.”

As Bucky shook his head and turned away, Steve could see a tear spill from his eye and then he swiped at his face, ashamed and angry. The crack in the wall had opened up now and Steve decided to go for broke. “You don’t have to relive these things. You’re almost completely free of Hydra. Let me help you the way you always helped me. Just come out with me, let me take care of you.” He held his hands out, a supplicant. “Let’s just leave together.”

Steve didn’t know what he’d done, but Bucky snapped out of it. God dammit, I lost him.

He pressed his hands over his face, fingertips digging into his forehead, and after a moment, he dragged them down like he was trying to rip his own face off.

Snow began falling around them and Steve looked up to see where it was coming from. No—it wasn’t snow, it was something else he was making happen. Bucky turned to walk away, so Steve followed, out of the alley as it shifted into some sort of hellscape: broken, mangled buildings, flames, debris everywhere.

Ash fell from the sky, floating down onto his eyelashes and hair, and in the distance the sky burned orange and red, angry and sinister. Bucky strode through it as though it were nothing special or troubling, shouldering his big gun, the bag he’d wanted with all of his Hydra plunder forgotten back in the alley. Steve rushed to keep pace with him till they stopped abruptly. They were in the ruins of a bombed-out city, a giant crater in front of them that stretched for hundreds of meters. The skeletons of nearly obliterated buildings hunched over the streets. “I don’t know what this—where are we?” Steve asked.

Bucky didn’t deign to look at him. “Dresden, Coventry. Hiroshima. Cambodia, Dubrovnik, Kuwait, or Fallujah or Aleppo… What difference does it make?” He was dispassionate, clinical.

Those were all places destroyed by aerial bombings dating from the war—their war—on to the present day, hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Did Bucky think that’s what he was—some annihilating angel bringing death dispassionately, surgically, the way a bomber did? Was he trying to say he was just as guilty, equal to the men who’d ordered the extermination of the people in those cities? Steve couldn’t believe Bucky would ignore, once again, that he’d had no say in the matter.

Steve was about to remind him in no uncertain terms that none of those things were his fault when he heard a noise, faint underneath the sounds of the fires. Bucky heard it too, because he cocked his head, a little confused, perhaps. Headlights flickered in the distance, coming closer: trucks, SUVs.

“Is that you?” Bucky demanded, agitated. “Who else is with you?”

“That’s not—it’s not me.” Steve shook his head, a frisson of alarm rippling through him. “I didn’t bring anyone.” There were four pairs of headlights, and the vehicles screeched to a halt in the rubble-strewn street, Strike teams pouring out of them. He couldn’t see faces behind their helmets and visors, but he felt as though he recognized the way some of them moved, people he’d worked with before like Rumlow and Rollins. The ones in the elevator at the Triskelion. All of them had had contact with the Winter Soldier.

If Bucky hadn’t made them, where the hell had they come from? Steve stepped forward to stand next to Bucky, glancing at him. Bucky was raising his rifle, and he was obviously afraid.

Steve had to do something, even if it wasn’t his program. “Hey!” he yelled, “get away from him,” but they paid him no mind. He struck out at the one standing nearest, but two others came up behind to hit Steve’s head with the butts of their rifles, dropping him to his knees. As he tried to stand up, he was forced down by a whole team and they swarmed Bucky to clamp magnetic shackles around his wrists, disabling the metal one with a zap from what looked like the type of current Nat’s widow’s bites gave off.

Steve hurled a couple of the avatars off of him as he rose, but again and again they whacked him on the head, and he heard Bucky’s gun clatter on the pavement. Steve had to shake the ringing in his ears out from the blows to his head, attempting to orient himself and peel the Strike teams off so he could reach for Bucky. But they were already dragging Bucky away before Steve could get any purchase on him. They hurled Bucky in the back of a SHIELD truck—exactly like the one that had carted Steve, Sam, and Nat off that day in DC. Steve punched his way out of the center and chased after Bucky, but the rest of the Strike team avatars piled into the last vehicle and roared off, nearly running him down. “Bucky, you can get out of this! Just say 'exitus'!” he yelled, but he had no idea if he could hear.

“God dammit! Fuck!” Steve bellowed, unable to catch up to them despite pouring on speed. He should have been able to match their pace, they could not have been faster or more powerful than he was, but this was Reverie, after all, and somehow they’d been both. “Bucky!” he shouted. He slowed, at last, punching a concrete wall in futility as the vehicles vanished into the horizon. It was too late, he was gone again.

On one of the shattered, almost melted windows of a building a pulsing red mandala glowed. Somehow he’d managed to screw this up again, and now Bucky’s fears were in control once more. Steve put his hand on the mandala to leave.

“You should have seen his face…” Steve twisted the cup of red tea back and forth on the table, shaking his head. He looked at Shuri and N’Deme and, standing behind them, Ayo. “The Strike team—he didn’t build them into his reverie, he was terrified of them. Why would the program do that to him?”

The science kids glanced at each other, and Shuri wrapped her hands around her own cup, considering her words. “The program is complicated. It reads the users on a chemical and neurological level. Sometimes it…what’s the word? Unearths things.”

That sounded a lot like the explanation they’d given him before about how the program filled in Bucky’s memories based on what he’d initially programmed into it. Yet it didn’t explain enough, not to Steve’s mind. If it wasn’t coming from something Bucky’d created intentionally, then where did something so violent and terrifying come from? “What things?” Steve asked, a little snappish.

N’Deme took a breath. He’d been distressed to hear what had happened, but Steve wondered if he was telling it right, because no one seemed as distressed as he was. Everything was spiraling out of control, and he might never get Bucky out of this, the way he was going. “Let us say you wish to go to Paris. We would build that basic matrix, and the algorithm in the program then fills out the world. But the program takes it further—it watches your reactions, figures out that you do not simply want Paris—you want Paris in May during the war, on a crisp night after a rain, with the scent of lilacs and coffee in the air and the sounds of conversation and music everywhere.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying not to lose his cool. “So you’re saying Bucky wants to be tortured again? That’s just—”

“No,” Shuri hastened to say, stopping Steve before he could say anything else. “Not wanted, but possibly needed…for reasons he may not be able to fully comprehend yet. His mind is still working toward reconciling everything that happened, for instance, or perhaps he’s reasserting his own control by fighting them and winning when before he could not.”

“He wasn’t doing much fighting and certainly not winning. They overpowered him completely, where normally he’d wipe the floor with them.”

“Did they use the control words on him?” Ayo asked.

Now that she mentioned it… “No. No, they didn’t. Only physical force. But his fear was palpable. It felt so…” Steve tried not to let his gaze wander to the Reverie tablet sitting next to his arm, checking on Bucky’s perpetually sleeping image, like that would clue him in to what was happening inside his troubled mind.

“It is not real,” Shuri reminded him. “It’s merely tapping in to his fears. And believe it or not, that is exactly what I designed it to do to erase the power of those conditioning words.” The reasons behind Shuri’s decision that Reverie could never be allowed out in the general public were clearer and clearer.

“Captain,” Ayo said with a slight smile, “take heart that even in his fear, those avatars did not use the words to overpower him.”

She was right, of course; the program possibly realized it was futile. It showed that somehow inside there, Bucky had broken at least some of their hold. Yet he was still stuck there, some piece of the Hydra jigsaw puzzle that had crucial information keeping Steve from seeing the whole picture that might pull him out.

“Well, in that case, I’d best get back in there and see what happened to him.”

Chapter Text

After everything that had happened within the last session, Steve had decided it was vital to get back inside Bucky’s reverie and find out where his nightmare avatars had taken him. With any luck, a traumatic event like having Hydra operatives haul him in might be the thing that finally cut through his denial—and Steve was now just desperate enough that he had no issue taking advantage of anything he could use to get Bucky out.

But this day had grown so late that he attempted to encourage both N’Deme and Shuri to go home. He only had some luck with poor N’Deme, who kind of got double-teamed by him and the princess, despite a few game tries to stick around.

“I will be keeping an eye on you,” Shuri said primly, sounding remarkably like his mother when he’d been little and she’d known he was itching for trouble. “One never knows what you’ll get up to.” Her distress was obvious underneath her smirk, at least to Steve—she was wrestling with the guilt that this program she’d developed, that she’d offered as a way to help someone, could put them in as much distress as Steve had been in after Bucky was taken. Despite their enormous age and cultural differences, Shuri was remarkably tuned in to Steve’s wavelength; he was growing pretty confident in his take on her, as well. But maybe they should stop trying to outsmart each other in how they dealt with the other one’s issues, he thought, and just, as Wanda had once said to him, let one another feel their feels.

But in all honesty, he didn’t mind her concern. Maybe it felt kind of good. “I’ll take it. I like having brave, smart ladies watching over me.”

As she set up his tablet—he didn’t need her to do that anymore, but wasn’t going to fuss if it made her feel more comfortable—she rolled her eyes dramatically. “I might still be in the lab when you come out. T’Challa wants to see a few things I have been working on.”

“Another suit?” Steve asked, surprised. It had only been a few weeks since she’d updated T’Challa’s most recent iteration.

“Not yet, thanks be to Bast, but the stealth tech for some of the Black Panther weaponry that is deployed outside the transport.”

It sounded complicated, but then, probably everything she worked on these days was. He had to finish this Reverie thing once and for all so she could cut away at least one big problem hanging over her head. “I’ll check in, then, when I’m out.” He had learned not to say anything hopeful like “maybe I’ll have Bucky with me.” He wasn’t going to jinx himself.

“Apertus,” Steve said, and before he could blink, Shuri’s face was gone from his vision and he was standing at the end of a long corridor. Interesting—it wasn’t the library, which he’d expected to enter inside of this time, since Bucky might not be controlling the program, but something else entirely. And he knew instinctively that it wasn’t a scenario Bucky had invented but one Reverie was supplying, the way N’Deme had explained.

The corridor looked like it was situated in your standard building from around his time: the wall to Steve’s right was painted an off-white, dingy color except for the series of metal doors every ten feet or so, the floor was a checkerboard linoleum of blue and white, and the wall to his left was primarily dirty windows that let in a gray, sickly light, set into concrete and cinderblock. Out of one of the doors on the right stepped a woman in an old-fashioned nurse’s uniform—the specific style unfamiliar to him, though, until he realized that it was probably Soviet. As she backed out of the room, she took a key hanging from around her neck and leaned over to lock the door—the one that Steve now could hear muffled screams coming from. He watched as the nurse turned away from him and walked down the hall, oblivious to his presence.

It was a strange tableau—the screams no doubt belonged to Bucky, but Steve and the nurse should be essentially outside Bucky’s awareness, and so was this setting. He couldn’t know about them being out here in the hallway, especially not Steve—but Reverie could. She opened a door at the far end of the corridor and let it clang shut behind her. As soon as he started walking toward the room the nurse had come out of, Steve realized the shine on the linoleum was actually water—the floor was covered in it, which somehow made the tableau more sinister, weirdly enough. The windows were leaking, as well, a thin rivulet of water that trickled down the concrete, adding to the pool on the floor.

The screaming had stopped as he got closer. Instead, the soft plink of droplets falling on the floor was all he could hear now. Steve reached for the door handle to tear it open, but…funny, there was a mandala swirling on it. Not the typical red or pink one, slowly swirling—this one moved rapidly, pulsing and glowing, as though it wanted him to do something. If he touched it, Steve was afraid it might shoot him out of Reverie; however, the door hinges must have been located on the inside, so he needed something to grip in order to get it open. He moved to turn the knob and the mandala darkened, pulsating faster.

The door didn’t seem to want to open—so punching his way in it would have to be. When he pulled his arm back, the lights flickered, and the walls did too, almost as though the program knew what he was about to do and absolutely didn’t like it. A snapping noise started up—no, it was more of a sharp crackle, like one of those bug zapper things, but a little more threatening—and he watched as some of the wall disappeared to be replaced by a red grid, almost like what he’d seen on top of the hotel back in Bucky’s Madrid simulation. The matrix of the simulation, Steve remembered Shuri explaining it, the framework this was all built on.

The entire door turned black as Steve watched, and the mandala was angrily spinning around and around. But it did not open the door, no matter how much he twisted the handle. Nor was it sending him out of Reverie. It was just…taunting him. He turned around to see if there was anything else that looked like a way out or in, and all the windows had disappeared; he was facing a solid wall of cinderblock.

“… the hell?” Steve mumbled, whereupon the entire corridor shifted to the red grid, sections of wall disappearing, edges moving like paper slowly burning, framed by crackling red energy. Should he exit Reverie? He didn’t want to leave Bucky here, not again. Couldn’t leave Bucky here.

There were other doors here, though, each with a red mandala spinning on the doorknob. If he opened one, he might not be able to find his way back here. But on the other hand, it wasn’t like he was accomplishing his task, either. He took hold of one mandala and turned—nothing happened.

Fucking hell. Steve drove a fist into the door, succeeding only in denting it a little. So was he stuck here while the entire program melted? The walls kept disappearing and re-forming on the grids, fiery red edges moving and shifting, as though someone was burning it away and rebuilding it, burning and rebuilding. Where the fuck was Bucky and what was happening to him that Reverie was malfunctioning this way? He should not have been able to destroy Shuri’s whole program, only his parts of it.

“Shit,” Steve shouted, just as the entire wall disappeared and the lights went out. “Exitus!” At first, nothing happened. “Exitus,” he said, louder this time, banging the side of his fist on the door as the walls melted and the sound crackled around him. He pounded on the door. “Exitus!” he shouted once more, trying to get the mandala to respond at the same time. Finally, the undulating movements of the framework stopped, and he opened his eyes in Wakanda.

Steve was giving Shuri what she had heard Bucky describe, when talking about Steve in situations like this, as the hairy eyeball. Bucky insisted it was something only Steve had uniquely perfected, and it made you feel like you had massively screwed up and severely disappointed him. Everyone knew that disappointed was worse than angered. She curled the fingers of her left hand around the ones on her right to keep from chewing on her nails.

She had not expected him to leave the program so quickly, so she hadn’t even really started working when he found her in the lab, appearing a little confused and shaken. Shuri was not accustomed to seeing him like this; even the moment when he’d come out of the program the first time, afraid he’d been drowning, he was still…calmer than he was now.

“And the other mandala turned black when you touched it?” she asked as she flipped through diagnostics on his tablet; devices couldn’t tell her what he’d seen in there, but this could show her any issues with the code or glitches, especially in the timestamps. Everything appeared normal, though. She scratched her neck and grimaced.

“Yeah, right before the…I don’t know, red burned-edge thing was going haywire. It was sort of spooky, I have to say. Like someone was setting it on fire from somewhere else. A little bit like the Madrid simulation, but…maybe weirder somehow, like it was upping the ante.”

“I can imagine. I’m not seeing any disruption in the code or the feedback from Bucky’s bio-computer interface—or yours. If anyone looked at this, they’d think you were just going for a stroll in the park together, holding hands.”

He rolled his eyes. “I mean… He was screaming, at first. Well—someone was screaming, and I’m pretty sure it was him.” That was a sound he would never forget for as long as he lived, she knew; Steve had heard Bucky’s scream as he fell from the train every night for the entire time he’d lived in this century, and for those few weeks he’d lived without Bucky in the last one. He didn't share a lot about the event, but he had shared that. “But either it stopped or the bug-zapping sound drowned it out.”

“Which is not showing up, either—oh wait,” Shuri said, hesitating, not sure if she was certain what she was looking at. She pinched the line, twisted it, then enlarged it. “Bug zapping. Hm.” There was something like a…yes, it was a second line, right under the first line, mimicking all the same peaks and valleys in the timeline, but as though someone was sneaking in another user to this specific reverie. Or it was a fragment of other earlier reveries, possibly even ones that had been abandoned by Bucky for some reason. But maybe it was… “An echo,” she said, and looked up into Steve’s worried eyes.

“A what now?”

Rubbing her fingers over her mouth, she considered it for a moment. “If I enlarge this, what do you see?” She threw the image up in front of them.

“”There’s…it almost looks like an artifact or something. Like an afterimage.” Steve and Bucky had seen the first televisions at the World’s Fair, how ghostly images would remain on the screen sometimes for a while after the person or object was no longer there. It was quaintly fascinating.

“Yes, exactly. This line is somehow doubled, and I have no idea how. It’s an echo of the program’s pattern. Something is layered underneath.” She couldn’t even fathom how that might have happened. Ugh—this was exactly what Mother had been on her case about so much—she would have to look into this at a time when she was supposed to be doing things for her brother and for the Pan-African Technology Council’s gathering, and getting stuff ready for Oakland, and just…

Steve must have grasped that her stress level was rising, because he put his hand on her shoulder. “This is because of his programming by someone else.” It wasn’t even a question, and he wasn’t saying it to throw out his own hypothesis. He was just reminding her of the situation for Bucky and telling her that she couldn’t have predicted any of the disasters that had happened. Which he’d already done multiple times before.

She let out a huge gust of breath. “Yes, you are right. I know, and you keep reminding me. But I still feel like I should have expected the situations that have gone wrong. I should have been better prepared for a user input that was so unstable.” She’d been aware that Bucky’s mind was not stable; he’d been consistently anxious about his ability to harm someone. She’d known better.

Steve squeezed her shoulder gently. “Shuri. His programming was screwed up long before he ever got to Wakanda, and you resurrected your tech for this just to help him out. I know how appreciative he would be about that. He told me once that one of the major reasons they let him off the leash in Washington when I first saw him again was because Project Insight was done and they had no more need for a pet killing machine. He’d been glitchy for a long time. They wanted something with greater capabilities, something more programmable. No human component at all. ‘My days were numbered anyway,’ he said. If Buck knew you were blaming yourself for all this, he’d lose his mind.”

Baba had once told her that we never grant ourselves the kindnesses we bestow on others. If Bucky heard her talk about herself the way she wanted to right now, he would probably lose his temper, Steve was right about that. Nevertheless…

Leaning her head back against the wall and trying to relax her shoulders a bit, she took a deep breath. “Can you convince T’Challa to take you somewhere or show you something or…I don’t know, maybe go superhero fight for a while and keep him from my office? Just a short time, and I will cook up something in the code to ensure you can at least get out if any shenanigans happen again.” He grinned at that word. “And ensure whatever’s in Bucky’s brain that’s causing the echo won’t affect the code, if it’s causing some kind of signal interference to his reveries.”

it seemed that made sense to Steve. He nodded at her and said, “May I?” and put his arms around her, tucking her face into his massive shoulder. Of course he gave great hugs, she shouldn’t have been surprised.

Bast bless him, Steve waylaid her brother before he reached the lab, so she hastily pulled everything out for the equipment she was working on so she could start on it the instant she recoded an exit in Reverie. With any luck, Steve would keep her brother occupied long enough she could at least run an extra beta test, but she also knew her brother well enough to know he would get antsy and make a big deal out of how busy he was with kingly business. Before she set her Reverie tablet aside, though, Shuri looked at it one last time, at the echo’s spikes and dips, and twisted her mouth up.

Not being able to figure out what Bucky’s brain was doing to her program really rankled her, which made her think of how frustrated a lot of the kids in Oakland got with some of the more advanced tech they saw… And then she had that cartoon light-bulb moment, where the whole lab seemed illuminated. The kids in Oakland will give me some perspective. How silly that she hadn’t thought of them before.

Shuri pulled up Bucky’s monitor on her screen. The numbers for some of his brain functions had dipped a bit, and his vitals were less robust than they had been yesterday. She pressed her finger to his image, in the center of his forehead, and mumbled to herself, “What is going on in there that’s making this so hard? Please let me help you, Bucky.” Maybe she could come up with some kind of fixed mandala that would be attached to Steve inside Reverie, and Steve would be able to drag Bucky out…and her students would help her design it, and… She sighed.

Just a few minutes of a session with them, then she could get to work and tackle all of her pressing concerns. “You are still a genius,” Shuri added to her self-pep-talk, and pressed her connection to the Oakland servers.

They’d been kneeling in the deepest part of the northern rainforest for a while now, up near the border with the DRC. A meager bit of light filtered through the trees above Steve and T’Challa, bouncing off the wet leaves or brightening the feathers of astonishingly pretty birds. Okoye and their other guards stood a ways behind them, cautiously scanning for anything that moved, of the threatening variety, at least. On the way here in the hovercar, T’Challa had pointed out a slow-moving herd of elephants, then a few miles behind them some giraffes loping along the plains, and finally enormous herds of antelope and gazelles that covered the ground like black and brown ocean waves; it was Steve’s own personal safari, conducted by the monarch. But whatever they were looking for here in the shadow of the forest, T’Challa was keeping it a surprise.

He’d created a transparent blind from his kimoyo beads, one that didn’t merely hide them but let them see everything and dampened their voices. Eventually, T’Challa became alert to movement, tapping Steve’s arm, and then Steve looked to where he was pointing and saw a large, beautiful okapi moving cautiously through the brush. Following behind her was a juvenile, as wary as its mother, and he couldn’t help himself, he let out a gasp, and both animals turned in their direction. Fortunately, the technology prevented the animals from seeing anything that would frighten them away and they didn’t spook, but still only seemed inclined to stay long enough to munch a few leaves. They were close enough he could hear them chew. Steve was so rapt, he had no idea how long these gorgeous creatures were there, nor how long he hadn’t remembered to breathe.

When the okapis eventually slipped through the trees on their way to find new browse, T’Challa looked over at him with a smile. “They do not call them the ghosts of the forest for nothing.”

“I’ve seen pictures of them before, but I never imagined seeing one in the wild. I didn’t know you had them here.”

“Like so many things, they have suffered from the effects of colonialism.” He stood and pulled Steve up, motioning to the Dora to follow. “They have remained undisturbed in the wild in the north here for some time, so we did not keep numbers. We mostly left them alone. But when Wakanda began developing relationships with our neighbors, we realized we had to create a program to help replenish the species that had become endangered, including okapis.”

As they hiked back toward where their hovercars were parked, Steve could hear the grunts of great apes farther in the distance and shivered a little, reminded of where he was, how special and unique this place was. T’Challa added, “They have always been solitary, mysterious animals—outsiders to this part of Africa did not even know they existed until the early part of the last century—but constant war and poverty have made it…” He trailed off, shaking his head. It sometimes seemed impossible for T’Challa to let go of the desire to take responsibility for all the terrible suffering that had been visited upon this continent. For him, it was as much a part of his lineage as the Black Panther; it was unsurprising how much he wanted Wakanda to connect to the rest of the world because of that.

“You’re helping to preserve something beautiful and also making a difference to a country that’s been ravaged. You’ve already made a huge difference and you’ve only been an open country for a short time. Give yourself some credit, my friend. And give yourself the gift of time.”

T’Challa gave a small smile. “Yes, you are right. Time.” He breathed in the humid, scented air. “I knew that you were stalling for time so that my sister could do…whatever it is she is doing, and I had read in my briefing for the day that the forest giraffes had been seen in this area. So I thought you might enjoy something even very few Africans themselves ever see.”

“I’m honored.” He tilted his head and lifted a shoulder. “I think the princess was looking for a couple minutes’ reprieve, to be honest, but I was too intrigued by the possibility of an adventure with the king to stop you.” And Steve was glad he hadn’t, because seeing an elusive okapi with her calf might just be the highlight of his adventures here. Not to mention that it had taken Steve out of his head.

T’Challa laughed. “She is always telling me that I am ‘extra.’”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that a few times myself.” Dyani ushered him into the hovercraft—he always wanted to drive, but the Dora were pretty strict about not letting him kill himself getting the hang of their vehicles. He’d battled for a few days with Okoye the first time he’d come here, trying to convince her he could drive the hoverbike just fine—it wasn’t all that different from a regular motorcycle. But this was what they expected with all their guests, he supposed.

On the way back to the citadel, T’Challa filled him in about the different programs he’d mentioned for bringing back critically endangered animal populations using stock from within Wakanda’s borders, or if they themselves couldn’t do it, throwing their considerable financial resources at countries like Madagascar with their unique wildlife found nowhere else. Once again, Steve marveled at the sheer volume of crucial work resting on the king’s shoulders—the world was a mess, and they were all looking to Wakanda as the solution to make it less of a mess, however grotesquely unfair that was, especially from colonizers. Yet here he was, taking time to show Steve something rare and beautiful, to offer his resources to help save Bucky, to give them both friendship.

When they got back to the lab, they clasped forearms and said goodbye, and T’Challa went in search of Shuri. Steve decided to get something to eat before he went back inside the program—as guilty as he felt when he took time for himself, a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt, and letting himself go hungry was pretty asinine, exactly the kind of thing Bucky’d bean him for once he came back to himself.

He had to come back to himself. He just had to.

Steve wasn’t surprised that Shuri had not been able to let the mystery of the echo go. He was a bit surprised, though, that she’d roped some of the kids in Oakland in to help. But what she was saying seemed logical—Bucky had put markers in when he was initially building his program, each one related to the trigger words, and they would help him move past the conditioning related to each word. “They just did not account for any of the things Hydra must have put inside his mind, and now everything is scrambled.”

“It makes sense. They would sort of follow him, wouldn’t they?”

“Or he would follow them. One of the students told me a folk tale that is popular with the West, about Hansel and Gretel?” She looked as though she thought it silly and quaint, but wasn’t going to trash their customs. “So he left bread crumbs to help him along the way, but now… From everything you have said, and like Ms. Romanov said the other day about kill switches”—Steve had not called them that himself, but Shuri had—“I think perhaps it is all fighting in his head. Or something ate those bread crumbs.” She made a little grimace. “Which unfortunately means it is probably even more up to you to drag him out.”

He nodded.

“Anyway, now I have built a bread crumb myself, which will not be eaten—that sounded very silly to me, to leave a marker in a forest where animals could eat it. It is a black mandala, it should follow you wherever you go, though it might not always appear exactly at arm’s length.”

“That’s pretty clever. Makes sense.” Maybe that echo was the real Bucky, the one before the war, who Hydra had tried so hard to root out and destroy but who they had never got their hands on. He’d said something like that once, about feeling like he’d been a passenger in his own body sometimes, that there was often a thought scratching at the back of his brain which reminded him he desperately wanted off this ride. Some small, elemental fragment they’d never erased. Even when he’d been fighting Steve in the street, he’d said, there was some fraction of a person who was desperate to stop it.

“Remember—he is in control, even though he is not in control,” Shuri warned. Steve huffed in response to that. “We don’t know what kind of roadblocks he will throw in front of the mandala. If you can figure out what the markers he set are and move past them, even better. I’ve done everything I can to guarantee you a way out, but you may have to improvise.” She grinned. “Though I have read that you are very skilled at that.”

Steve squeezed her hand. “See you on the flip side.”

When he entered Reverie, he was surprised to be in the library—it seemed like for the most part, Bucky’s programs rarely put him there first. True to her word, Shuri had set a black mandala to float alongside him, this one surprisingly small, on a door handle. It was spinning fast, almost glowing with intensity. Taking a deep breath, Steve put his hand on the knob and turned it.

The door opened inward to a long corridor, in what looked like a derelict old warehouse. More cinderblock walls with peeling paint, a sickly green stripe running along them at chest height. Pipes and tubes ran the length of the ceiling, with rusty water dripping down to the pitted concrete floor, already covered in almost an inch of filthy water. What’s with the water in all these reveries? Steve wondered.

The place was dark, with only a few working lights—old-fashioned swinging lights with a circular wire covering—and the one above him flickered and swayed. Everything about this place seemed to scream “End-Stage Soviet” and it made Steve’s skin prickle.

Metal doors with speakeasy grills lined one side of the corridor, waiting sinisterly for him to look inside. He paused and tried to listen under the sound of dripping water: there was the indistinct sound of chatter, like a police or military radio-band, but he couldn’t make out words. Which door was it coming from? And did it have anything to do with Bucky, or was it just background?

Only one way to find out. He stepped up to the first door and slid the grill up—nothing to see but a vast, empty room, even bleaker than the corridor. Same thing with two more rooms, but in the third, he spotted a figure in black far to the rear, strapped to a metal chair. As far away as he was, Steve knew it was Bucky.

It wasn’t water that soaked the leg of Bucky’s pants, dark and shiny in the low, greenish light—that was blood. With his head bent, Bucky’s dark curtain of hair dripped down on it, washing a rivulet of it to the floor. He’d been tortured, obviously. A few seconds after he’d heard the speakeasy creak open, Bucky finally tilted his head up, looking into the low light. Why was he allowing himself to be tortured inside the reverie? The program was so wildly fucked up if he hadn’t even tried to stop it.

“Bucky,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice calm.

He didn’t meet Steve’s eyes, exactly, but his gaze was trained in Steve’s general direction. While he wasn’t obviously going to engage with Steve, Bucky’s metal hand curled into a fist where it was tied to the side of the chair. Almost as though he was thinking not this fucking guy again. Bucky could break the zip ties with a flick of his little metal finger, yet somehow he was still here.

“I’m gonna get you out of there.” He wanted to tell Bucky that whoever was hurting him was merely a construct, that he could end it all if he wanted, but right now, physically removing him seemed easier and perhaps more important—so far Bucky hadn’t believed anything Steve had said about Reverie, so playing along might be the better part of valor.

It took him longer than he’d have expected to smash through the heavy metal door, but when he eventually bent it back far enough, Steve slid through the opening and dashed over to Bucky, who was looking at him like he was nuts. “What the hell are you doing here?” Bucky asked in a tone not all that unlike the one he’d used when Steve had rescued him a few years—and decades—ago.

“I’m rescuing you, jackass. Though if you would just believe me that this is all a simulation you’re in control of, I wouldn’t have to go to all this trouble and you wouldn’t look like that.” Steve snapped the zip ties around Bucky’s legs and hands in half and started in on the metal bands around his chest and waist. He wondered idly as he did if this grotesque metal chair was anything like the early versions of the contraptions they used to wipe his mind—maybe there was some sort of current that disabled his metal arm. None of this made any sense—why would Bucky put that in here?

“You keep saying that.” Bucky shook his head, and Steve just stared at him, wide-eyed. He remembered Steve every time, and yet he refused to accept who he was and what was happening. It defied imagination. It made Steve wish to strangle him. Bucky rubbed the wrist of his real arm and touched his face, then sourly examined the blood on his fingertips.

“What is this place? Why is it in your program?” He helped Bucky stand. “I assume the guys who put you here and took you the last time are all Hydra.”

He took hold of the shield and pulled it out of Steve’s hand, looking it over. “If I’m in control of this, why would I let them work me over like that?”

Oh my god. “Are you hard of hearing?” Steve asked.

Bucky seemed stunned. “What?” he asked, testy.

“How many times have I told you this—you just now said it yourself, that I keep harping on it.” He held his hands out. “The program is picking up on something they used to condition you with, and everything’s haywire. Look, you have the power to get out of here. But Shuri built us a failsafe”—and at the mention of the princess’s name, Bucky’s head snapped up and he seemed suddenly very aware—“so I can bring you out whether you believe me or not. Let’s go before anyone you’ve conjured up returns.” He took the shield back. “You recognize her name, don’t you? You know I’m telling you the truth because you remember her trying to help you beat Hydra’s control out there in the real world.”

That was met with a sharp laugh, though Bucky was definitely not smiling. “The real world.”

“Where you’re dying. And if you don’t come out of this goddamn simulation, you will.” Maybe a little shock was needed here. Steve put his hand to the side of Bucky’s face. While he flinched a bit, he didn’t move away or otherwise negatively react. “You know I’m telling you the truth, at least, some of it—you know some of it’s true.”

“Let’s say I do. How could they really do this kind of damage or fight either of us off, then?” He pointed at the lacerations on his face, the wound on his leg.

“Good question, pal.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Shuri has a bunch of theories, but it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is getting the hell out.”

Bucky’s dyspeptic scowl was actually kind of hilarious. God, how many times had Steve seen that look on his face back in the war? He wanted to pull Bucky to him and kiss him with a kind of feverish desperation. “So I just click my heels together three times?”

Steve had to press his lips tight to keep from bursting into laughter. Jesus, he’d missed this guy. “And say ‘there’s no place like home.’”

For a few heartbeats, Bucky stared at him, his eyes sparkling, and then he nodded and started toward the door. Finally, Steve thought.

Steve put his arm in front of Bucky at the door, holding him back so he could scope out the hallway and see if anyone was still left who’d been holding Bucky captive in that room. “Clear,” he said, though he saw no sign of a black mandala—although, maybe “exitus” would work this time, if Bucky was going willingly. He said it out loud, holding on to Bucky’s arm, but nothing happened except Bucky looking at him like he was an idiot.

He shrugged. “Shuri made a failsafe for us in case the normal exit command didn’t work,” Steve explained again, heading briskly for the end of the corridor where he’d first landed.

“So you said.”

“You reacted to her name back there,” Steve began, “so you must be remembering what happened before—aw, hell.” As they reached the end of the corridor, on the opposite side of the cavernous room it led to, was the black mandala. But in front of it stood a bunch of Hydra operatives, fully armed. “You can make them go away. You can make all of this go away,” Steve said.

“With your magic spinny wheel there?” Bucky said dryly, and that was when the guards noticed them. They immediately began firing, but before Steve even got his shield up, Bucky had moved in front of him, metal arm upraised, protecting Steve. Yeah, he didn’t remember who Steve was to him at all.

“No, with your brain, stupid,” Steve shouted over the gunfire. He didn’t know how to explain that right now, so he signaled for them to backtrack to one of the rooms they’d just passed. Hydra chased after them, bullets flying, as Bucky found an open door and hauled Steve inside. Would have been nice if they could have grabbed one of those guns, but at least these doors would hold them off maybe long enough that Steve could get through to Bucky and they could blow this fucking place.

On the other side of the door, there was a hell of a lot of commotion, but Steve almost didn’t care. They were both out of breath, there was high color in Bucky’s cheeks and his eyes were doing that sparkly thing again, and Steve could have stayed here forever in this moment. Shake it off. There wasn’t time for mooning over Bucky like he was a Looney Tunes character with hearts floating over his head.

“So, you were saying before the shooting started…” Bucky said, smirking.

Bucky glanced toward the door, where they were still pounding. Since the avatars only had so much agency in Reverie, they probably wouldn’t have the knowledge to go get themselves a battering ram or something. But that didn’t mean they’d disappear without Bucky expending some effort.

“You can make them go away.” Steve looked at Bucky with all the seriousness he could muster. “You obviously know me. You’re remembering. You know you can control how this program operates.”

“Afraid you’re getting ahead of m—” Bucky stopped. “Shit.” His right hand shot out, landing on Steve’s belly. “You caught one back there.”

No wonder Steve felt so out of breath. A round had somehow got him just under where he’d held the shield, probably from a ricochet, judging by the angle. Blood had already bloomed across his T-shirt. He reached around to his back, where there was an exit wound and more blood. It had hit at least one of his ribs, judging from the intense dull ache under the sharp stab of the gunshot. “Jesus.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t real,” Bucky said.

“It isn’t,” Steve responded. It shouldn’t be. It couldn’t be. But he was getting dizzy now, feeling pain, and he couldn’t seem to get it under control. This is not real.

Steve looked at Bucky, panic setting up inside him. It wasn’t real but he couldn’t breathe. Bucky grabbed him under the arms just as Steve’s legs gave out beneath him.

Chapter Text

There was only a moment where the room went white and the floor and walls vanished, and Steve’s head was filled with glittering shell fragments, but it was enough to leave him legless and hollow. He might have fallen straight to the floor if not for Bucky catching him and gently settling him on a hard-backed metal chair, sagging into it like a loose sack of potatoes. He shook his head, trying to yank himself back to reality, only to realize Bucky was peeling away Steve’s Henley to get to the T-shirt underneath, pressing on the wound.

“Thought you said this was all some kind of magic dream. This thing looks pretty fucking real to me,” Bucky grumbled.

Blinking a few times, Steve settled his thoughts, tried to control his breathing: in for four, out for three. He’d been hit much worse in the real world, so it was baffling that his construct could do so much damage to him. In between breaths, he tried to explain it, almost as much for himself as for Bucky. “I think this must have more to do with how haywire your original programming from Hydra is, the way it’s fighting like hell with the reverie you made in Shuri’s program. She thinks it’s layers deep, and that there are echoes of…well, the things they did to you that you might not even know about. Which is why this whole thing went FUBAR in the first place.” There, he was starting to catch a little of his breath now, and the blood seeping between Bucky’s fingers was slowing. “It probably doesn’t help to have me in here—more stuff to go wrong, I suppose—but it’s the only way we could think of getting you back out before your body…”

Steve had no idea how to end that sentence.

There was a flicker of that mix of fondness and annoyance that Bucky had so often looked at Steve with: suddenly he was in an alley in New York, after a fight with a jerk at a movie house, and Bucky was in his uniform looking down at him and saying, “Seriously, Paramus?”

More and more, Bucky was finding himself, and maybe it was simply because he was so irritated by Steve’s dogged persistence. Whatever it took.

“You really believe all this insane shit, don’t you?” Bucky said, and there it was again, the ghost of his smile, the crinkles around his eyes, the tilt of his head.

“You have a metal arm that’s wired into your musculoskeletal system, functions just like a superpowered real arm, and you have a serum running through your veins that makes you more powerful than a normal human. You’re a hundred fucking years old. Give me a break with this I’m the one who’s nuts bullshit.”

“Good point.” He took his hand away from Steve’s belly. “Looks like it’s slowing. Think you can move? Seems like you’re the one who really needs to get out of here, so let’s find your magic black spinny thing.”

He let Bucky haul him up and sling his arm over his shoulders, and it felt so familiar Steve was almost lightheaded again. Absolutely no chance Steve would say it out loud and risk Bucky getting riled up, but he was certain that being able to tend to Steve was helping shake out Bucky’s memories.

They cautiously crept toward the corridor, Bucky’s gun at the ready. He’d handed Steve another gun they’d taken off one of the avatars that had shot at them, but he was feeling less than competent with a firearm right now. The surreality of how lifelike this was—down to the weight of the gun and the smell of the leather Bucky wore—despite its artificiality reminded him of filming the ridiculous Captain America movies. Now he just wanted to get off this soundstage and get Bucky safe.

With none of their opponents in sight, Steve felt like they might actually make it across the cavernous space the corridor led into—the mandala was on the farthest wall, huge and swirling, waiting for them. Then he saw the chasm.

The walls on either side of this huge building—seriously, what was going on in Bucky’s brain that these weird prisonlike spaces kept materializing—had that same burning, crimson-edged, space-being-ripped-apart look he’d already seen so many times now, where you could see the matrix of the Reverie program on the other side. It didn’t exactly lend a sense of confidence that you’d find your way out before it killed you. But before, it had only been the walls that seemed to burn away; now it crept down and extended across the floor, creating a giant chasm with undulating red edges. Deep, deep inside, he could see shards of black and red shooting up and down, like deadly crystals. And it was far too wide for Steve to jump over in his present condition.

“Well, ain’t that a thing,” Bucky said, dry as a desert.

He pushed Steve gently up against a pillar and then to the floor.

“Now do you believe me? That wasn’t there before.” Could Bucky remember the time they’d crossed a space like this before? He didn’t show any recognition of it.

He glared sourly at Steve. “That I’m causing this? I’ll tell you, I’m trying very hard to make that thing go away with my brain right now, but I don’t see it happening.” His fingers opened and closed a few times, and then he made a fist. “And we ought to go now, in case those guys come back, whether they’re real or not.” Bucky knelt in front of Steve, pulling his long hair back off his face. After all this time of Bucky fighting not to believe it, he was slowly accepting the situation, but he still didn’t know how to control anything. Still couldn’t accept he had that power. Layers and layers of damage were in there, and Steve couldn’t figure out how to dig down deep enough.

“You can control it, or at least some of it, I think. Even if there are a bunch of Hydra monkey-wrenches in the works, it’s still your construct.” He didn’t want it to sound like a plea. But he was beginning to feel like pleading was all that was left.

“Said the guy who’s bleeding out in front of me. That’s not something I’m dreaming up—I don’t want that. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

Pressing his lips together, Steve said, “Yeah, I know, I know. I’m not sure why I can’t seem to get my mind to override the pain signals, but I will, I just have to”—he gritted his teeth—“catch my breath.”

“I could carry you. I think…I carried you before once or twice. In a—in the war.” He sounded almost hopeful.

“Even you probably can’t jump over a giant hole full of deadly stabby things with a heavy guy on your back.” Not that Steve didn’t want to try. And the concept appeared to almost make Bucky smile.

He didn’t put up an argument, though. Then he abruptly surged forward and kissed Steve, full on the mouth. When he pulled away after a few seconds, Steve’s head snapped back. “What—what do you think you’re doing?” Why was he saying that? Why was he questioning one of the things he’d always wanted most in life? For Christ’s sake, Bucky had just kissed him.

“Why else are you in here, trying so hard to save me? Wasn’t that something we did? Weren’t we--?”

He could feel himself freezing up a bit. “No, we never were.” At Bucky’s disappointed look, Steve shifted up, caught his breath. “It’s not that I didn’t want that. We just never…”

It wasn’t a letdown on his face, or amusement, or anything Steve could identify—maybe just curiosity. But then Bucky jerked his chin, stood up, and held out his hand. “Made you stop thinking about the gut wound, though, didn’t it?” Oh, so that’s what they were doing. Well, Steve was more than game.

“You’re a bastard.” The blood had stopped flowing completely.

“You noticed.” He turned. “Let’s get out of this lousy place. I’ll tap my heels together three times if needed.”

His heart rate sped up: this was the Bucky he loved. He was back. And Steve had the lingering imprint of his kiss to prove it.

Steve pressed his hand to the wound, grabbed Bucky’s arm, and stumbled to his feet. They held on tight and took a sprint toward the chasm, leaping almost as one, crashing and rolling at the very edge of the other side, burning hot. Footsteps echoed behind them—the avatar constructs were still there, but Steve held fast to Bucky as they ran to the wall.

“Wounded first,” Bucky said with a smirk, nodding at the mandala. Steve didn’t want to touch it without him, but he did.

“Exitus,” he said as he pressed his hand to it, even though he didn’t have to say the activation words. He could feel the heat of Bucky right behind him.

***

Or so he thought. He came up with a start, safe in his office on the chaise, the glass on his lap and his hand resting there. Wanuri had been sitting across from him, her coffee cup in her hand, halfway to her mouth, clearly startled.

“You have only been gone a short time,” she said, fumbling for words. But she could see he was breathing funny and holding his side. “May I?” Dull and a little slowed, he nodded, and she leaned over and pulled his shirt up, revealing a large bruise. No blood, but the evidence of a wound nonetheless.

She recognized the gravity of that. “I will go find the princess.”

After she left, Steve inspected the bruise. You couldn’t tell what had caused it, but…there should not be a bruise there, or any sign at all that he’d been inside the program. That gunshot couldn’t have carried out into the real world, could it? But then, he could carry things inside Reverie, so maybe…

There was something much more important here, Steve reminded himself. The glass still showed Bucky’s face in the hospital room, passive, as though nothing was happening inside the program. No change in his vitals except that Steve noted another sharp drop in heart rate had occurred at some point in the past twenty-four hours. Hadn’t Bucky come back out with him? What the hell had happened?

“He was right behind you,” Shuri repeated, for possibly the fifteenth time since he’d told her. Her head would not wrap around this.

They were in the medical facility, staring grimly at the still sleeping Bucky, with Ayo and Wanuri behind them. There shouldn’t have been anything to prevent Bucky waking up just as Steve had; the black mandala wasn’t like a circuit you could overload with more than one user at a time. And yet Bucky wasn’t awake with them. Just…none of it made sense. She’d checked and rechecked before they came to Bucky’s room, and the mandala was still there in Reverie, still functioning just as she’d made it.

And here Steve was—wounded as he apparently was, which was also troubling to her—and there Bucky lay, as though nothing had happened. What in Bast’s name…

“Yes,” Steve said, distracted, and she brought her attention back to him. “He’d said ‘Wounded first,’ so maybe he was planning to stay behind. Knew I wouldn’t leave him in there.”

“For what purpose?” said a voice behind them, and they turned to see T’Challa and Okoye. Oh wonderful, now everyone was getting in on this. If Mother showed up too, she was going to hide in the lab and never come back out. She sighed.

Steve’s gaze went to Shuri, however, rather than to her brother; he was afraid she would bristle at this attention, like someone who’d failed a test. That was such a Steve thing, she had learned so quickly: he paid attention to the tiniest, most granular details of a person. And he would give someone he liked his unwavering support. So she focused on the problem, and pushed the growing crowd out of her thoughts. Bucky’s life would depend on her ability to ignore all the external rubbish.

“I wish to hell I knew,” Steve answered her brother. “He was back to himself—he was. I think the shock of seeing me injured and not being able to just…I don’t know what you’d call it, but imagine it all away, finally truly pushed him over the edge he was holding on to for so long. Why he wouldn’t accept that this was something his mind could control. Maybe there was some last thing that control was telling him to do, but I don’t know why he wouldn’t just tell me that.”

“Do you think he fully understands that out here, his body may not be able to withstand him staying inside the program much longer?” Shuri tapped a few things on her kimoyo bead screen, shaking her head. No, this just didn’t make sense. There was no barrier to his exiting. He’d created one purposely. Oh, when he finally did wake up, she was going to give him such a piece of her mind.

“Yes, I impressed that on him multiple times.”

“How is your side?” she asked aloud. It wasn’t that Shuri wanted to embarrass him, but it wouldn’t hurt for everyone to know what had happened.

“Better now,” Steve said, and pulled up his T-shirt a little to show T’Challa the already almost completely faded bruise. “Got shot in there,” he explained, and they all looked so puzzled that it almost made Shuri laugh. Honestly, this whole situation kept getting weirder and weirder, and it was all her fault.

“You, or he, could not control it at all?” T’Challa asked. It wasn’t his king voice, he was just genuinely surprised.

Steve ran his fingers through his hair. “It was so strange. I couldn’t get my breath, couldn’t seem to override the bleeding. And Bucky’s mind seemed to keep throwing up new and worse obstacles, till he finally gave in. He wanted to protect me because of the gunshot, but for some reason, he simply didn’t…come out.”

Her brother nodded, then gave the slightest smile. “Do you remember how successfully he fought all of us off in Berlin? One after another, even with our abilities and tools, and in the end, what brought him back?”

Shuri glanced at Ayo’s sour face; she well remembered how angry Ayo had been that there’d been a threat to her king the Dora had not been able to handle.

“Yeah. A knock on the head, basically,” Steve said with a smile. “Still, if me being shot in there was enough to get that much of him back, why didn’t he actually come back? Out here.”

Bowing her head, Ayo said, “Princess. My King. The sergeant’s greatest fear was that there would be a repeat of Berlin. That someone would activate him with the trigger words, and we could not overpower him.” Ayo had spent more time with Bucky than even Shuri or N’Deme had. She was not his assigned Dora, but because she was Shuri’s, Ayo had always been there once he’d come out of cryosleep. They had seemed to enjoy one another’s company, and Ayo had a natural curiosity about the past of Bucky’s world, enjoyed hearing about the things he’d seen—minus the killing, of course.

Shuri brightened. “Oh! Yes, now that he knows about the echoes and the interference, he’s concerned that if he does come out, it could be in full Winter Soldier mode and we wouldn’t be prepared.”

Ayo favored her with a sly smile. “I assured him there was no place in the world more capable of dealing with that, if it were to happen. Perhaps he does not yet remember, in there.” So that meant Steve would have to remind him.

“The echoes?” T’Challa asked, frown lines on his forehead. “I can see I have missed a few things.”

Steve interjected, “We found some of what could be evidence of Hydra’s programming, deep underneath the layers in the Reverie program. Probably controls that no one even remembered were there, especially Bucky. The way it’s been fighting to maintain itself inside his head, we thought if we could just pull apart the random fragments, maybe, the Winter Soldier that had been stuffed inside him and would do everything to ensure its continued survival could be beaten back. I like to think it finally worked, but, well.”

Her brother and the general shared a look. Shuri was never certain whether Okoye’s look of disgust was how she felt about Bucky being here or if it was for what Hydra had done to him.

Shuri fixed Steve with a look of her own, one she hoped conveyed her worry and her care. She touched his arm. “His heart rate has continued to drop.”

“Yeah. I know I’m going back in, don’t worry. I’m ready.”

The nurse who had been overseeing Bucky’s care, Oni, had been hovering around the edges of the area since they’d come in, and she said quietly, “Perhaps he knows, too,” and pointed to Bucky’s arm. His hand, lying outside the blanket, was raised slightly, fingers outstretched. Almost like he was trying to reach for something, or someone.

Steve’s face was inscrutable to Shuri, she couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. But Shuri felt as though her heart had leapt into her throat and her hand involuntarily went to her chest, pressing. She knew they could get him out now, if only Steve could get to him in time. This was a sign, at last…

T’Challa motioned at her. “Go, go.” He and Okoye turned to leave, and Ayo and Okoye tapped their spears on the floor, crossed their arms over their chests.

“Let’s not waste time going back to the lab,” Shuri said and picked up a tablet on the table. “There’s no need.” Her fingers flew across the tablet glass, checking inputs, and then she handed it to Steve as he sat down. It was probably silly, but she wanted him to be as physically close to Bucky as possible right now.

With a shy chuckle, Steve held his hand up for a second. “I was going to tell you something when we were alone on our way over there, but I’ll tell you now, because I know that you will go nuts. In the program, he kissed me.”

“Whaaat!” She tried to keep her voice down, but that was extremely hard to do. “Bashenga’s tears! You are telling me this now when I can’t grill you?”

His face shaded red and he bit his lower lip. It must be excruciating for him to say this, and she absolutely loved it. “He said he did it to take my mind off the being shot thing. But that was kind of when I realized he truly was coming back to himself, because he has always been that kind of wise-ass. And…well. Maybe it makes a difference.”

“I know you wouldn’t tell me this if we weren’t in a challenging situation,” Shuri said, narrowing her eyes. “You would make me pull it out of you with forceps. But I intend to make you give me every detail when this is over, no matter how excruciating you find it.”

Putting his hand on the glass, he said with a very cocky grin, “We’ll see.” Then with a shyer smile, “Apertus.”

There was no sign of Bucky in the program when Steve got in. He was in…something, he wasn’t sure what it was. An incredibly large warehouse? Outdoors? It was impossible to tell, there was no sky or horizon, no walls, either. It reminded him a bit of the enormous soundstages where they’d filmed the movies back in ’43. If there were no sets in a given part of the building, you could walk for ages through the dark, cavernous spaces and get completely lost. Walking forward seemed the best course of action right now, so that’s what he did.

It didn’t take long to find something—he came upon some automobiles that had been in a fiery wreck, still smoking, pieces of the frames lying helter-skelter all around the cobblestoned streets in front of bombed-out buildings. This was familiar, too; it looked like the aftermath of the wrecked Jeep from Bucky’s first test mission, the exact same one Steve had interrupted in Reverie when Bucky had made him in the bar.

Why would he relive that night yet again? Steve stepped closer, wondering if Bucky was still here, watching and hoping Steve might be coming back for him. “Bucky,” he called, glancing around. “I’m here. I’m back.”

Farther away, beyond this scene, it looked like the setting had changed slightly. As though maybe there really was a wall, and this was just a soundstage. Steve continued past the smoking heap of metal and that was exactly what he found—a wall that stretched in every direction. No sign of a door, or any kind of entrance or exit. It didn’t matter: when he pushed his hand against the wall, it went through. So he walked straight through the wall and into another setting.

It was the aftermath of a politician’s assassination. Obviously the work of the Soldier. Was this going to take Steve through all of Bucky’s past actions? Was this a way for him to confess more of his sins?

Steve was a bystander in here, no one in the chaos saw him, so he walked around the edge, still looking for Bucky. If Bucky needed him to see these things, why wouldn’t he be here?

Another wall, another room—or, well, maybe it was more of a scene, little movies or plays, each one somehow separated. But this one made Steve’s blood go cold. It was the ravine in the Alps, where Bucky had fallen.

Now Steve understood. If he continued to walk through these rooms, he would see events that were connected to the activation words for the Winter Soldier. Bucky had told him that his handlers had begun using that method much later in his captivity; the trigger words had only been worked up because of his instability, and after his two escape attempts. They’d learned by then how fragile mind control was, that the longer they left him on ice, the more that control degraded.

Instead of coming out of Reverie with Steve last time, Bucky must have panicked, scared that the words could still overpower him and he would hurt the people he loved. Maybe re-creating these scenarios was his way of discarding them, forever. Steve kept going, through scenes of terrible violence, through places that looked like Brooklyn in their childhood, through winter landscapes so isolated and harsh it made Steve shudder, and there, in the final one, was Bucky.

It was the surgical room Steve had seen that first time he’d encountered Bucky in Reverie, where he had essentially been seeing through Bucky’s eyes before they’d put on the metal arm. But Bucky wasn’t lying on the operating table now, instead he was slumped on the floor, back against the grimy wall. There were no bodies here, only the instruments of his torture littering the space.

The choice of the activation words had never made much sense to Steve, some of them seemed perverse when used for what they did. He wondered now if this horrifying operating theatre was what “homecoming” had been: the return of Sergeant James Barnes to the mad Nazi scientist who’d tortured him, who’d created the first part of the Winter Soldier all the way back in Austria. And now Bucky had thrown himself back here again, but this time, they didn’t exist at all. He was shedding himself of them.

Bucky pushed the curtain of hair from his face and stared up at Steve. Neither of them spoke as Steve knelt next to him and held out his hand, and Bucky pushed his fingers through Steve’s, squeezing tight. Steve put his hand to the side of Bucky’s face.

“Are they gone?” Steve meant the words, but he supposed Bucky could think he meant all the avatars of his tormenters.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. Well, of course, they couldn’t know until someone used the words on him. There was an almost regretful tone to his voice.

“I thought you were right behind me. That you finally believed me and knew who you were.”

“As soon as I put my hand up to the mandala, that feeling slammed into me—helplessness at knowing what I could do. The dread.” He leaned in to Steve’s touch, closing his eyes.

Steve gave a gentle smile. “I promise you, there is no better place in the world to test it than where we are now. We won’t let you hurt anyone.” The space between them felt different now, there was a charge in the air, and Steve knew Bucky could feel it too.

He slid closer and pressed his forehead to Bucky’s, feeling the sigh that shimmered through his body. “I think it’s time to go back, don’t you? I want you to come home to me.”

“I will. I’m ready. I am.”

They wouldn’t need the mandala now, Steve thought. All they needed was to hold on to each other. So he gripped Bucky tighter and whispered, “Exitus.”

When he opened his eyes, Bucky was staring at him from the bed in the medical facility, a look that Steve would almost describe as wonder on his face. Steve put the tablet down, reached over, and took Bucky’s hand here in the real world.

Bucky had opened his eyes and Steve had come awake, both of them leaving Reverie at the same time, and Shuri was finally able to let go of the breath she’d been holding. Her eyes were filled with tears of relief, and she swiped at them with her hand while trying to check all of the vital signs and make sure nothing was left inside the program that needed attending.

“Welcome back,” Shuri said, dropping the glass and putting her hand over both of theirs. “We are so glad to have you back.”

Chapter Text

Bucky was swinging his new metal arm around, testing it out. It made interesting science fiction-y noises, Shuri thought, even though she hadn’t purposely built that in. But then, she had never designed an actual appendage for a human being, so everything about this felt a little science fiction-y. Which was funny, when she thought about it: people the world over had been calling Wakanda and its technology science fiction since they’d gone public, much to her amusement, and now here she was, creating strange new tech for a time-traveling, brainwashed, occasionally frozen assassin.

He was already up and active, anxious to leave, whereas most humans would still be struggling after being in a coma-like state for so long. That super serum may have been a knockoff of Steve’s but it was still pretty incredible—one of these days, she would look into figuring out what made it work, because it could come in handy with her attempts to synthesize the heart-shaped herb.

And too, anyone else would have been fatigued solely from the steady stream of visitors to their room, but Bucky was not: Steve was here nearly every waking minute, of course, but T’Challa and Mother had come by many times, Nakia and Okoye, and half the Dora Milaje, it sometimes felt like. Shuri remembered Steve telling her how beloved Bucky was by almost everyone who met him, and she could see it here. Sam and Natasha were on their way to reconnect with Steve, as well, though Bucky rather drolly reminded Steve that the last time they had seen him, he was fighting with them in an airport in Germany.

Bucky took all the attention and fuss with good humor, but Shuri really thought he should rest some more while the serum worked its magic. There could still be glitches again, things they’d never considered, and she was still nervous about any repercussions, artifacts. She found herself biting her lip, thinking about all the booby-traps Hydra had left.

“How does it feel?” she asked, trying to refocus on their success instead of the initial failures. “I hope more natural than the previous one.” Anything should be better than the atrocity created by those Hydra monsters. But she’d only had a few brief chances to work with Bucky on the design before he’d been caught in Reverie, and all her scans had been no substitute for his actual, moving form.

“It’s great. Light, moves easy.” He inspected his wrist. “This scrollwork or…filigree? whatever the word is—it’s incredible. Really beautiful.” He looked at her with that same somewhat apologetic face he had kept giving her when he’d first awakened from the cryosleep. It seemed like a lifetime ago, with all this drama of the past weeks.

This whole moment reminded her so much of that time, when they were still learning about each other. She’d mostly been consulting with the doctors who were caring for him before they put him in the freezing chamber, and only talked to him a little bit. It wasn’t really until they’d pulled him out that they became easier around each other, able to develop a friendship. Shuri’d asked him almost the same question then.

“Good morning, Sergeant Barnes,” she had said when he’d come out of the hut, almost completely back to normal. He’d been resting quietly for those few days, watched by the villagers near N’Deme’s home outside the city, where he could be away from everything that might remind him too much of being in a laboratory. That had been her mother’s idea—how waking up in a medical unit, however different it was to the ones he’d known in his awful captivity, being poked and prodded, could set him back badly. Shuri’d had to admit, it was a brilliant insight. She should never forget to give her mother the credit she deserved.

Unfortunately, there had been no respite or rescue from the village children, who were all entranced by Bucky—even some of the elders were overcome with curiosity at first. As foggy as Bucky’d been, though, he wasn’t deterred by the kids’ attention, he’d perked up immediately when he’d seen them and most of her, and the doctors’, worries had vanished. It wasn’t that they’d worried the Winter Soldier would be let loose to do some damage, but they all knew things were tricky with him, they were all in uncharted territory, especially Bucky himself.

But he’d given her a soft smile. “Bucky,” he’d corrected her then, not for the first time.

It was hard to get used to calling these white men by their first names; things were changing so fast for her, for T’Challa, for Wakanda, and it would be a long time before anything felt normal and they weren’t living inside some kind of movie. In a matter of weeks she’d gone from never being around any white men at all in person to having a few living in their guest quarters.

But she liked the sergeant, and she liked the captain. Before Bucky went into the cryogenic chamber, she’d naturally had to spend time with them, but having to literally invent cryostasis on the fly meant so much work—she didn’t want to inadvertently kill Bucky or something—so she’d never really had enough time to just sit with them and breathe. To talk and share histories, the way you should when someone put their life into your hands. It had been nerve-wracking to say the very least, but in some way, she’d seen it as a chance to make amends for what happened in Europe, in her own mind.

She knew if she even brought it up to him, however, Bucky would chastise her for thinking that way. He was consistently adamant that everything that had happened was no one’s fault except Zemo’s. Shuri felt like Hydra should be blamed as well, but she wasn’t going to throw that in.

“Come,” Shuri had said, “much more for you to learn.” She’d wanted to show him everything she was doing—designing the arm, working with the doctors to figure out a new way of integrating it with his spine, how they might remove and repair the remainder of that evil Hydra technology—but her brother had stepped in to remind her that Bucky needed rest still. For the next few days, Bucky would come to the lab with her, and then go back to the hut with T’Challa and sometimes her mother or Nakia for the evening meal and what she eventually realized were long discussions about politics.

They were essentially debriefing him, gleaning all sorts of information from his years as the Winter Soldier, and it had made her more than a little cross. Here she’d been, trying to fix the physical (and, all right, maybe a little of the emotional) damage that Barnes had been subjected to for decades, and they were possibly adding to it under the guise of hospitality. It did not fit with her vision of what Wakanda should be doing.

Bucky had shrugged it off, though. “Everything they want to know to better protect your country from potential enemies is at the top of my list, too, Princess. You didn’t have to extend a welcome to Steve, and especially not to me, so anything I can do to help…” She could tell that it still weighed so heavy on him, the day in Berlin he’d been triggered back into the Soldier. It was the spark which ignited her desire to revive her old virtual reality program, to use it to obliterate those evil words from Bucky’s mind once and for all.

Shuri didn’t quite get, though, why Bucky hadn’t wanted to tell Steve that he was out of cryosleep. Although she did understand his anxiety about being out in the world again: so many countries would be gunning for the Soldier; he had a target on his back.

T’Challa had eventually confessed Bucky’s secret to her: before going into the chamber, he had asked T’Challa to wake him if they thought up a way to “deprogram” him, but not to tell Steve until it was successful. When Shuri had mentioned her virtual reality application to her brother, shown him how it might work for Barnes, he’d decided to pull Barnes out of cryo and kept his silence (and made her keep silent, too). Typical: men were always making secret plans, weren’t they?

What might have happened if the Reverie program had gone smoothly, and everything had worked as planned, no comas allowed? Would she have given more serious consideration to making it publicly available? It made her shudder.

She realized she’d been zoning out (Steve always called it “woolgathering,” which was such a bizarre word to her) while Bucky was checking out all the bells and whistles of the arm, and snapped back to attention.

He was looking at her with tolerant amusement. “How much of that did you hear?”

“I am sorry,” Shuri said. “I was just remembering the last time you woke up from a long sleep.” She hoped her smile would make him feel less ignored.

“You got a lot on your mind, Princess.” She was going to chastise him for calling her that but then he patted the arm and disengaged it as she’d shown him, putting it back in the case she’d presented it to him with. Then he pulled the cloth over his left shoulder. “I was getting used to the one-armed life, I guess, so if there are tweaks you need to make, I’m doing okay without it.” He flexed his real arm for show.

It felt so odd to be talking about an arm like you were just talking about an app you’d built for your phone. He was always so strangely philosophical about his suffering, almost blasé. Steve too. She supposed that was an element of why he’d been so instantly likable to her. There was a philosophical acceptance to them that was so novel to Shuri among most of the white people she dealt with in Oakland or in her duties as princess. Perhaps it was their ages, the era when they were born. Or something—certainly they were the only people of that age anyone would deal with anywhere, so it wasn’t as though she had anyone to compare them to.

“I think the arm is mostly done,” Shuri said, “but I would like to make a few small adjustments. And then will you promise to wear it for more than a few minutes? That will be the best test for me. Or maybe lift a cow or something. A baby elephant.” Talking about testing her work made her flinch a little. She was going to have to get over her twitchiness if she was to do her job decently.

“I hope that little wince there wasn’t about this program snafu,” Bucky said. He sat on the bed and gave her a piercing look.

“You caught me.”

With a deep sigh, Bucky said, “Listen, Shuri, I meant what I’ve said every time you’ve done something for me: thank you. I can’t ever thank you enough. No one here has any obligation to help me, to help us, and yet over and over, you’ve done anything for us you could. Just because my brain went haywire again in your program doesn’t mean that it was wasted effort, or a disaster, or…whatever it is that’s making you frown like that. If those words are really gone for good, then you’re a fuckin’ miracle. Pardon my language.”

She laughed. “Oh, I hear much, much worse in Oakland every day.”

With a grin, he said, “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

She gathered up the case and her pad. “I think you should rest a little before Steve comes to take you to his rooms.” Shuri hesitated. “Although, would you prefer to go back to the village? Your hut is still open. The children would love to see you. And…well, Steve could stay there with you if he wants.” She wondered if they were ever going to admit their feelings for one another. Her mother had scolded Shuri to mind her own business about that, but she couldn’t help it. What a wild, century-spanning romance they’d been dancing around. It was better than any book or movie.

“I’ll ask him. I did like being there.” His face looked a little wistful.

“Bucky,” Shuri ventured, unsure if she should bring this up without her brother and Steve and Okoye and Ayo around. “When you are ready to test yourself against the words…” She wasn’t even sure how to end that sentence.

“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing.” He heaved another sigh, full of uncertainty and regret. “Let me talk to Steve first.”

When Steve awakened, most of a giraffe’s giant head was poking through the high window of Bucky’s hut, taking something out of Bucky’s hand. He’d heard about their black tongues, but seeing it…well, up close and personal like this was really quite unbelievable. “Well, that’s something you don’t see every day,” Steve said, clearing his throat. They reminded him a lot of the okapis he’d seen in the forest that day with T’Challa.

Bucky patted the side of the giraffe’s face and turned to Steve, which the giraffe seemed to understand was the end of snack time and withdrew its enormous head, snake-like on its long neck, and then loped away past the window. “Their herd comes through this plain a lot, and they seem to know who’s dumb enough to feed them some treats and who’ll shoo them away. You definitely don’t want them trampling crops and devouring all the trees, but it’s hard not to fall in love with them when you haven’t grown up around them. Everyone teased me about what an easy mark I was when I stayed here before. But I mean…they’ve lived with this their whole lives. It’s kind of stupid exciting for the old white guy.”

There was a moment where Steve saw Bucky hesitate as he moved back toward him, as though he didn’t quite believe he was allowed to get back on the pallet bed with Steve, but then he shook it off and lay down next to him, face to face. Maybe Bucky was as disbelieving as Steve was about this change of circumstances.

When Bucky’d first received the okay to leave the medical center from the doctors, Steve had thought he might come stay in his guest rooms—which at first, he said he was okay with. Steve had introduced him to the huge blue bird that had taken such a shine to him, fussed and dithered and rather pathetically tried to make Bucky feel at home. They were each of them nervous as hell to be alone together; they had kissed a few times in Bucky’s hospital room, when all the visitors had gone, but they still hadn’t really talked about what had changed after being in Reverie.

That evening, they’d had dinner with T’Challa and Nakia, since she was in the country for a change, but they both knew they could only avoid talking about it for so long before it became kind of absurd. “We slept side by side in a crummy barracks and a smelly tent for years, you know,” Bucky said, when Steve showed him the extra bedroom. “We lived in a one-room apartment. C’mon, pal.” The “don’t get coy on me now” had been loud and clear, Steve thought, without Bucky even saying the words, but he supposed he did need to hear it.

Steve pressed his lips together tightly, trying to hold back a smile. “True. I guess I just didn’t want to assume.”

“I think those last few hours in Shuri’s program have taken us the long way around assuming. I think we already did that for most of our lives and it didn’t exactly serve us all that well, you know?”

“True again.” Steve shook his head. “I’m nervous. That’s all it is. Just nerves.”

Bucky had looked thoughtful, making a concerted effort to find the precise words. Eventually, he said, “Do you think it might help if we were somewhere else, maybe outside the palace? I wouldn’t mind going back to the hut.” Steve had heard about the place he’d stayed in the village, but hadn’t seen it yet. It sounded kind of primitive, but he supposed even a hut in Wakanda would be full of more tech luxuries than an apartment in a city.

“You know, that’s not a bad idea. I’d like to see where you were staying, before.” Even though it had been dark out, they’d had the kimoyo beads to show them the path to the village, although Steve had had to argue with Wanuri about going alone, just the two of them, when they reached the Golden City’s boundary. The walk had given them both time to settle their nerves. Bucky was right, though—they’d always been at the edge of this thing, and now, thanks to what had happened inside Reverie, they knew what direction to go. They knew what it was like to finally move toward each other, instead of away.

Bucky’d shown him around, not that there was much space to show, but it was perfect in its own little way, shaded in the soft amethyst-colored lights embedded in the walls. All the other subtle cues of Wakandan tech were hidden here and there, and beyond the walls, the inky black, star-filled sky filled the view from the small windows. He’d pointedly tried not to notice the pallet to one side—someone had already been here, making sure it was clean and tidy after Bucky’s time away, and Steve thought this had the Queen Mother’s hand all over it.

Bucky was starting to explain things to him, how the pallet was unlike anything Steve had ever slept on, but by then Steve’s desire had won out over his nerves and he couldn’t wait any longer, practically hurling himself at Bucky for a kiss.

“Oh…okay,” Bucky’d said, amused, when he’d eventually pulled away. “We’re not waiting anymore, I take it.” Bucky was truly a world-class kisser.

“No, we are not. We are very much not.”

They hadn’t really talked much after that, all the years of suffocated longing finally allowed out in the open. He’d waited so long, and one night hardly made a dent in his desire, but he had to keep reminding himself: there’s time.

Now Bucky was looking at him with that drolly amused face Steve remembered so well, a look reserved solely for him. Bucky slid his hand along Steve’s bare arm and gave a little shake of his head. Steve loved the way his hair moved; he wasn’t sure if Bucky would want to cut it to look more like his old, pre-Winter Soldier self, but he hoped not. It had been such a sensuous pleasure, pushing his fingers through it, taking in all the sensations of knowing Bucky now.

“First question of the day. When did you get so comfortable making it with fellas?” Bucky asked, and Steve couldn’t help a little chuckle. “I mean, not that it’s all that different, but I’m still sort of…impressed. What secrets were you keeping?”

“Well, while I was carrying a torch for you but utterly convinced you could never reciprocate, I briefly went with one of the models in my life drawing classes. It was short-lived, but it led other places. You know art school: full of homosexuals and socialists.”

Bucky was utterly delighted. “I can see that—they’d probably be all over the cute little hothead with the progressive politics and the incredible artistic skill.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “Not to sound like the jealous boyfriend, but is that the whole truth?”

“I always tell the truth,” Steve said, feigning offense. “And yes. His name was Louis, and he made decent side money doing the art modeling on top of his regular job. Which worked out nicely for me, being broke all the time. He had a…certain je ne sais quoi, I suppose, and he seemed very worldly to me at the time.” He took a breath, shifted closer to Bucky. “Worldly enough, anyway, that he could tell I was pining horribly for someone. Someone male.”

“Even before the war?”

“Yeah. Okay. Your turn: where did you get to be so…gifted? You were the one piling up all those broken female hearts all over Brooklyn.” Last night had definitely been a bit of a revelation, and that wasn’t just because Steve wasn’t super experienced.

“What do you think a lot of guys did on those long voyages by ship? When they’re stuck on base with no one else for company? When they’re out in the field?”

“So practice made perfect?”

Bucky had such a soft, sad smile. “Yeah, you know.” He waved his hand. “If I’d had the first clue you were thinking about me that way… After you found me in Austria… Jesus, what a couple of dumbasses. What a lot of wasted time.”

He couldn’t argue with that. “Was that what finally got you out of Reverie? Having your feelings for me awakened?” Steve teased. Funny to think a virtual reality program going wrong was the only way two morons could get their shit together to admit their feelings.

“I don’t know, maybe.” Bucky sighed, and circled Steve’s wrist with his metal fingers; the polished vibranium of his new left arm felt cool but not cold like the old one, and the gold in it glinted in the daylight that filtered softly inside. He pulled Steve’s hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles. “Question number two. Listen. I know you won’t want to talk about this…”

Steve rolled his head around on his shoulders and he moved to sit up, but Bucky gripped his hand tighter and held him back. “Yeah, no, you’re right, I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Steve.” There was the Sergeant Barnes voice he hadn’t heard in so long. It threw him for a loop, hearing it again. “We have to do this. You said it yourself, back in the program. And I’m scared of it too. But we have to know if all this shit you just went through to pull me out was worth it. We have to see if it worked. Otherwise, I’m still just a malfunctioning killing machine and it’s back to the drawing board. I’ve already talked to them about it.” He gave Steve a speaking look. “Don’t pull that Disappointed Captain America face with me.”

Closing his eyes, Steve pressed his forehead to Bucky’s collarbone. Of course he was right. But. Now that he was faced with it, he didn’t want to do it. Bucky knew damn well he was the most stubborn man on earth. What if something went wrong? What if it sent Bucky into some kind of weird coma again, or worse? What if it brought out the Winter Soldier and this time, they had to kill him to stop him?

Bucky’s hand came up to the back of Steve’s head, stroking. Maybe Steve should have minded being petted and soothed like he was a twitchy horse, but he never could when it came from Bucky. He whispered in Steve’s ear, “I have high hopes for our Wakandan genius friends.”

Steve grudgingly let out a shaky, scoffing laugh. “Me too. Okay. Okay.”

“You know it will be all right,” Shuri said, for maybe the fifth time. Possibly she should have thought ahead and found some other phrases to use, just to mix it up. She put her hand on Steve’s left forearm and he engulfed it with his giant paw. On the other side, T’Challa was giving his best steady, strong king energy.

The test had been discussed at length, and Steve had valiantly made his case for being there when Ayo read the trigger words to Bucky. Shuri was kind of glad, however, that everyone had been unanimous in discouraging him from that course. It wasn’t that they didn’t appreciate having him nearby—nearby being the operative word there—it was just that it was more than a little offensive to Okoye and Ayo that someone would believe a Dora Milaje couldn’t handle the Winter Soldier, if indeed he made an appearance. And Bucky had chosen not to wear his new left arm, so Shuri felt confident he would not be able to match the damage he’d done in Berlin. Anyway, she was pretty sure the trigger words had been removed. Steve, though, was a much harder sell.

Thankfully, T’Challa and Bucky had been able to calm Steve’s worst fears, and this spot in the forest, close enough in case of emergency and far enough away that Bucky could forget they were there, was a perfect compromise. Shuri didn’t have super hearing like Steve and her brother did, but she could hear most of what was going on.

Ayo had made some fires, illuminating the area they’d picked. They were far into the hills along the red cliffs, the Golden City in the distance. She and Bucky had sat for a while, just talking. Shuri could hear the confidence in her voice and hoped that it would wrap around Bucky’s heart. No, there would be no repeat of Berlin, she felt certain, and when she glanced at her brother, he nodded, as though he thought the same thing.

Eventually, Ayo had stood up and said, “It is time.”

“You sure about this?” Bucky asked, and all the doubt he’d pushed aside seemed to have forced its way back into those words. Shuri looked at Steve, and he at her. If Bucky had lost his confidence…

But Ayo said in her kindest voice, “I won’t let you hurt anyone.” There was a long pause, and then Ayo said “zhelaniye.”

Steve seized up a little next to her. Shuri had never really seen the Soldier in action, so she supposed she couldn’t blame him, but she also knew it was more than that: this was his and Bucky’s future, right now. All riding on this. T’Challa put his hand on Steve’s shoulder.

Ayo paused again for a few seconds but continued, pronouncing each word slowly, until Bucky broke in with a voice drenched in anxiety, “This isn’t going to work.”

But Ayo pressed on, not stopping to reassure him—and that was the right choice, Shuri thought. As soon as Ayo reached “gruzavoy vagon,” the final word in the chain, Shuri turned to Steve, and in the darkness she could tell his chest wasn’t rising or falling—he was holding his breath, waiting. She squeezed his hand again.

The only sound they could hear was the crackling of the fire. Then Ayo said, perhaps more warmly than Shuri had ever heard her speak, “You are free. You are free.”

It took all her control not to burst into tears. “Should we…?” she asked her brother.

T’Challa and Steve nodded and stood, waiting for a moment just to make sure they wouldn’t be intruding, and walked around the trees to Bucky and Ayo.

Bucky stood in front of her, holding tight to her hand, and they were staring intently at each other, smiling. Streaks from tears marked his face. They both turned, and Bucky seemed so young to Shuri suddenly, almost as young as herself. His whole youth had been stolen from him, first by war, and then by the Russians and Hydra. It was hard for her to even fully comprehend it, so different as it was from her life.

“You did it,” Bucky said softly. “I know I turned it into a disaster, but…you did it, Princess.” Ayo’s smile was mischievous, because she knew how much Shuri hated it when they called her that, but she too was proud.

“I just wrote a program. You did it, you and the captain.” Oh, T’Challa would probably scold her for that later.

He hugged her. “You’ll just have to accept that I’m never going to stop thanking you.”

It seemed like a fine trade-off to her. Shuri wiped at her cheeks. All the stupid smoke and sparks from the fires were making her eyes water.

T’Challa held his arms up in triumph, though M’Baku didn’t seem too put out at his loss—he grinned and slapped T’Challa on the back hard enough to make him stumble forward in the water. Steve and Bucky cheered along with the rest of the Wakandans arrayed by the thousands across the falls and cliffs. The noise was unbelievable. “He had to know he didn’t have much of a chance,” Steve said, and Bucky nodded in agreement.

Though Bucky pointed out, “M’Baku knows he’s closer than anyone who’s not enhanced at getting the drop on T’Challa. But I’m pretty sure he believes he can beat you. White man’s enhancements and all—you’re just using the crappy Western stuff. You can’t compete with a true Wakandan Jabari warrior.”

Steve took a sip of his chilled coffee. He could never get enough of the coffee here. “He’ll always be left to wonder. I’m never going to do it.” They’d been invited to the combat rituals, multiple times by multiple people, but neither of them were budging on their gentle refusals. This was to celebrate the anniversary of T’Challa’s ascension to king, and even though T’Challa had encouraged them to join in—“we are a warrior people, we like a good fight”—Steve refused to believe that it was for them to barge in, and Bucky had agreed. No matter how much the Wakandans liked a good fight, they were still Steve and Bucky’s hosts.

Although Shuri had pointed out that they were also celebrating something else today which was only tangentially related to ritual combat: one of the Jabari tribe’s scouts, exploring an area they usually only ventured into every handful of years, had discovered some of the heart-shaped herb, hidden within a humid cave in the lowlands. The royal family and the council had feared they would never see it again, Shuri had explained to him, and so far, she’d had no luck synthesizing a replacement, so it had seemed as though T’Challa may be the last of the enhanced Black Panthers. But now they had enough to propagate it again. She had been almost breathless when she’d told Steve and Bucky about it.

It was such a study in contrasts of their worlds, Steve mused: scientists in the West had tried to re-create Dr. Erskine’s serum, mostly to no success, but the few times when they had, they’d used it to destroy a good man and turn others into killing machines. Here in Wakanda, though, rediscovering the plant that gave the Black Panther his powers had been cause for celebration and joy, knowing the future of their successive protectors was assured.

The past few days had been a celebration in themselves, anyway. Sam and Natasha had arrived; they had apparently been visited by Steve’s blue bird friend in their guest quarters, so Steve was happy knowing someone was looking after it.

Earlier that morning, sitting outside Bucky’s hut and looking out at the river, he’d mentioned how much he’d missed his friends, and Bucky had asked him if he was ready to leave Wakanda. To restart his nomadic life doing…whatever it was they would be doing now.

Steve was sitting on a carved ebony chair, Bucky on the ground between his legs as Steve hard-combed his hair dry in the dappled sunlight, and he’d been baffled enough that he didn’t find an answer for a little while. Bucky’s fingertips roved over Steve’s bare knee while he waited for a response.

“I guess… I guess I haven’t wanted to think about it. It was easier to be so focused on you. But I suppose now that you’re well and free, maybe it’s time I got back to it.” Though he wasn’t sure anymore what “it” was. What was he fighting for now, and who? He supposed the four of them—and Wanda too—needed to figure those things out before they left. At least, if Bucky wasn’t staying here and going with him. They’d had the luxury of time these past few months, where they hadn’t when they’d started living as fugitives. They’d gone straight from the Raft to being on the run. And maybe that might have been fine for him once, his whole life had been one long fight in a way, but it wasn’t fair to Sam or Nat or Wanda. Being here had given him a whole different idea of how to live.

But he absolutely didn’t want to shine the spotlight on Wakanda and the royal family, either, no matter how cavalierly they treated that idea. “Who is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla now?” T’Challa had said with delight when Steve had first broached his concerns, and of course, yes, Steve knew no one wanted to be on the wrong side of this country now, but he couldn’t imagine abusing their kindness or turning the UN—or any single country—away from them.

Looking around him now, at the joy and beauty and exuberance of the people here, Steve wanted nothing more than to stay. Bucky loved it here, and they even had a name for him, which Sam had teased him about mercilessly: “Why White Wolf? What did you do that was particularly wolf-like except try to kill their king? And anyway, they don’t even have wolves in Africa, do they?” Or maybe this could be a base they returned to for as long as they were banished from the States, as Ayo had suggested. He would have thought they’d want Captain America and his cohorts gone as soon as possible, and yet they seemed to want to find ways to keep them here.

Shuri and two of the Dora Milaje were in the water now, demonstrating new weapons in a low-stakes fight. Her brother and the Queen Mother cheered her on from the edge of the pool, and the drumbeats echoed up along the walls of the cliffside, not quite drowned out by the majestic falls. Steve squeezed Bucky’s hand and looked over at him, and they both waved at Shuri as she gave them a little salute.

“I’d lean over and kiss you if I didn’t know how flustered you’d get at a public display of affection,” Bucky said in a wry voice.

“If I didn’t get flustered, I’d let you.”

“You go through hell and back in a weird alternate reality program just to rescue me, we’re in, like, the most advanced society in the world, and you’re still blushing like a schoolgirl even at the thought of someone laying one on you in public.” There was such fondness in Bucky’s bewilderment that it made Steve’s heart skip a beat. He still couldn’t believe that after all this time, they were together.

“Shuri says she ‘ships’ us. Whatever that means.”

“Man, you really need to keep up with the kids these days.” He winked. “Maybe she’ll write some stories about us.”

“Oh god, I hope not.” Though he could absolutely see her doing it and laughing the whole time as she forced him to listen to her read one aloud. Steve sighed.

He’d never felt like this before: complete, at peace. Happy all the way to his core. Even if he wasn’t certain what his next steps should be, he knew he would figure that out. Steve had Bucky next to him, Sam and Nat and his Wakandan friends—and now that Bucky was free, they had all the time in the world.