[oom] see right through my walls

[nerves_of_ice]

As T'Challa stares at the hologram in the palm of his hand, he can already feel the headache forming. "She what? No. Never mind. Bring her to me in the throne room, when she arrives. I will deal with her myself."

He clears the image, then taps the Kimoyo Bead again. "Nakia. I need you."

* * * * * * * * *

"You cannot be serious."

"I don't see why this is a problem. You brought Everett Ross here--"

"Ross was dying! And he was never allowed to know that the man he was seeking was here! Nakia, I have made a promise to protect him."

"She is not a threat. Not to him."

"I will be the judge of that."

Nakia throws up her hands. "Fine. You will see. I hope it does not bother you that I stay and watch?"

T'Challa smiles. "Of course not."

Comments

[nerves_of_ice]

"It took you long enough." Laughing, Shuri dismisses the holo-projection hovering over her wrist and comes to join them. "Nakia, did you lead them in a circle first?"

Bucky smiles, just a little. "Princess," he says, then, when she gives him a look and waves her hand at the room around them, amends that to "Shuri."

"Better," she tells him, and looks at Sharon. "How was your visit?"

[from_the_outside]

"I met a lot of goats," she reports. "So it was by far the best social interaction I've had for a while."

She was also a big hit with the kids, but why brag?

Nakia moves to a small bar near the windows and pours a glass of water that she holds out to Sharon, who takes it with a grateful smile. She pours another and offers to Bucky, shaking her head smilingly at Shuri.

"We are right on time," she points out. "It is your brother who is late. Again."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I do not know why this should surprise you," Shuri tells Nakia, as Bucky accepts the water with a nod of thanks. He's content to quietly observe the others for as long as he can, which turns out not to be long at all.

"Did you tell her their names?" Bucky shakes his head. "I didn't get to that," he says. "Although Sharon offered to come up with a few names herself."

"Did she." Shuri turns to look at her, eyebrows raised.

[from_the_outside]

Sharon lifts her eyebrows at him. "You told me they didn't have names," she points out.

J'accuse!

To Shuri: "He was not impressed with my past naming performance. I got benched."

[nerves_of_ice]

"They don't," Bucky says, mildly. "I haven't - I couldn't - I didn't get to that yet. I--"

"They will," Shuri breaks in. "When you have thought of them."

To Sharon, she adds,

"This I must hear. What kinds of names did you suggest?"

[from_the_outside]

"None yet," she admits. "All my ideas were terrible. But to be fair, I haven't named an animal since I was six, so I'm a little rusty."

There was that one especially stubborn little white doe. Maybe he should call that one "Sharon."

"And the kids came back, so that was kind of a distraction."

From a lot of things!

[nerves_of_ice]

Shuri laughs. "Of course they did."

"I don't mind," Bucky says. "They're good kids."

"They are fascinated by the White Wolf," Nakia observes, as T'Challa walks through the door.

"Sorry to be late," he says, and Shuri sniffs at him. "You say that every time, brother."

[from_the_outside]

"Yeah," Sharon says, turning to Bucky with a crookedly quizzical smile. "Where did that nickname come from, by the way?"

It's new. She likes it.

But T'Challa arrives before Bucky can answer, and Sharon purses her mouth to keep from laughing at Shuri's disdain.

Nakia leans towards her. "He likes to make an entrance," she says in a stage-whisper, and gives T'Challa an innocent look when he narrows his eyes at her.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Later," Bucky murmurs, as something wry touches the corner of his mouth, and leaves it at that as he turns to T'Challa.

"Nothing wrong, I hope?"

T'Challa shakes his head. "Nothing that cannot be handled. And no threat of violence," he adds, causing the faintest hint of tension to fade from the set of Bucky's shoulders.

[from_the_outside]

Sharon, looking at him, watches the tension thread into and out again from his shoulders and back and glances thoughtfully at T'Challa.

For her part, she's not right at Bucky's shoulder, but consciously or unconsciously has positioned herself near enough to step there, if needed. And when he relaxes, she does, too.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Good," says Shuri, firmly. "That means we can enjoy a nice dinner."

T'Challa shakes his head at her. "You are a bottomless pit."

Shuri laughs at him, and waves the rest of them to the table. "Come, come."
She looks at Nakia. "Do you get her, or do I?"

[from_the_outside]

"Ladies, please," Sharon laughs. "There's enough of me to go around."

It would be easiest to sit next to Nakia. She considers it, then opts to pull out the chair next to Shuri instead.

(Nakia knows her. It's Shuri and T'Challa she needs to put at ease.)

Nakia, no slouch, winks at her and takes her own seat. For a second, Sharon's transported back in memory to a time of posh country club dinners, quiet conversation and impeccable manners, but she shakes it from her head and sits down. "What are we having?"

It's been a while since she's had a really good meal. She's looking forward to it.

[nerves_of_ice]

"A few of our traditional dishes," T'Challa tells her. As Bucky quietly takes the seat on the other side of Sharon from Shuri, he takes his own on the other side of Bucky, between him and Nakia.

"I hope you enjoy spice."

[from_the_outside]

"Oh, I do," she says, cheerfully.

It doesn't always like her, but when has that ever stopped her before?

The food is spicy. It's also excellent. There's spiced rice studded with tomatoes and onions, some kind of savory, curried stew, lentils in a creamy sauce. There's a steaming dish of fresh-baked flat-bread to mop up the sauces with – and to try and save her burning mouth with after Shuri dares her to eat a tiny pepper, an act that leaves Shuri with tears of laughter and Sharon giggling helplessly, pink-faced with her eyes running from the heat.

Nakia takes pity and pushes a glass of some cold yogurt-based drink her way, and Sharon thanks her before downing half of it at once.

"Shuri," T'Challa chides, but it's already resigned, and Shuri's eyes dance at him.

"What? She could have said no."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Sharon doesn't back down from a challenge," Bucky observes, matter-of-factly, and T'Challa turns to him.

"You speak as one who knows."

Bucky shrugs, a small half-smile touching his lips.

[from_the_outside]

It makes her laugh, remembering his face, half-shaded in an abandoned cottage in France.

"You're as stubborn as –"

"And then some, yeah."

"One of my better qualities," she says, arch, and Nakia makes an eloquently is it, though? sort of face at her. Sharon throws the pepper stem at her, grinning, then looks at Bucky, smiling and curious.

"Do they know about Franche-Comté?"

It's one of the better examples of her inability to pass up a challenge, for sure.

[nerves_of_ice]

"...Uh," he says, and stops. He breathes out, then breathes in, and then shakes his head.

"Not yet."

Steve knows, of course. They'd talked about it on the flight to Siberia. They'd had a lot of catching up to do.

He manages a smile - small, wry, but real.

"You can tell them. I'll correct you, if you get it wrong."

"Please do. Now I have to hear this," Shuri agrees, archly.

[from_the_outside]

She holds his gaze for a moment longer, but her unspoken question doesn't seem to change his mind. Her own mouth ticks another quarter-curve into a quirking smile, and she turns back to the table at large, laughing: "Why would I get it wrong? I was there!"

To Shuri, T'Challa, and Nakia, she says: "Franche-Comté was where we met. It's a little town in eastern France I visited one weekend to take a break from work."

Butter wouldn't melt in her angelic mouth. "There I was, minding my own business –"

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky chokes, quietly, on the sip of water he's just taken.

T'Challa glances at him, then slants a look at Sharon. "Are you sure about that?"

[from_the_outside]

If her mouth twists like she's trying really hard not to laugh, it's because she is.

His reaction is enough to make her relax a little, though, so she looks innocently at T'Challa. "Did I say minding my own business? I meant to say 'when I was snooping around sticking my nose into his business.'"

"That sounds much more believable," Nakia says, and Sharon faux-threateningly waggles a piece of flatbread at her.

"Why?" asks Shuri, who appears to be enjoying herself hugely, and Sharon shrugs, lightly.

"Because someone had been taking out lower-level HYDRA facilities all around Europe for at least a year beforehand, and I got curious. And there were enough discrepancies in the production at a manufacturing facility near Franche-Comté that it fit the profile. And he'd been in the wind about the same amount of time, so..."

She pauses. "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time?"

It seemed like a good idea at the time is absolutely what's going to wind up on her gravestone.

[nerves_of_ice]

"So she decided to come looking for the Winter Soldier as a freelance assignment," Bucky says, ignoring the soft hiss that Nakia lets out. "Alone. Without backup."

"I made her in the marketplace. And recognized her." T'Challa's eyes narrow at that, but he doesn't interrupt, only glances back and forth between them.

"And because of that... I invited her to talk."

Shuri leans forward. "About what?"

[from_the_outside]

"You have learned nothing at all, have you?" Nakia says, full of scolding disbelief, and Sharon holds up her hands, mouth open in shocked offense before she looks at Bucky.

"See, you're making it sound like a really bad idea," she complains, but secretly?

She's glad he hopped in. She doesn't want to speak for him, and it feels better to be telling the story together.

"About why I was there," she tells Shuri. "What I was after, who I was working for – which was all very unfair because that was what I wanted to know about him, too."

"And how did that go?" Nakia asks, mouth twitching. Sharon shrugs.

"Well, I was pointing a gun at him, and he thought maybe I was hunting him down to take him in, so...about as well as my conversations with men ever go?"

Nakia gives up and dissolves into laughter, dropping her face into her hand, and Sharon's shoulders shake even as she makes a face. "Thanks, Nakia. Appreciate the support."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I am curious," T'Challa says. "How did you recognize her?"

Bucky's expression flattens a little, but his tone of voice remains easy. "D.C. She was Steve's undercover security detail. Lived next door to him."

"Did you shoot him?" Shuri asks Sharon.

"Shuri!"

"Whaaaat?"

[from_the_outside]

"I did not," Sharon reports, and Shuri looks a little disappointed in a way that makes her laugh.

"He wasn't working for HYDRA! He seemed legit to me. So I put the gun down."

She still thinks about that, sometimes, whatever instinct it was that told her it was safe to put her weapon away and just talk to him. "And once I convinced him I wasn't coming after him for the Task Force, I offered to help take out the Franche-Comté facility."

She puts an elbow on the table and her chin in her hand and tips her head enough to look over at him, her eyes bright and warm and amused and a little...something else. "So we did. It was great."

Sitting back, she spreads her hands: end of story. "The beginning of a beautiful friendship."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I see." T'Challa looks at Bucky, who says, dryly,

"Like I said. Not one to back down from a challenge."

It all seems like a far-away dream now. He suspects T'Challa's going to have more questions, and that's fair, more than fair, especially if Everett Ross is going to be making any return visits, if they'll need to hide Sharon from him, if--

It's been weeks since he's thought about everything that's going on in the world outside, and some of it must show in his face whether he means it to or not, for T'Challa reaches out and clasps his shoulder briefly.

"Do not worry. There are ample challenges here in Wakanda for anyone."