nerves_of_ice | [oom] see right through my walls

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.

"...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.

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 –"

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?"

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.

"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?"

"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."

Edited 2021-02-28 22:13 (UTC)

"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?"

"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."

"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."

Sharon's sipping at her water – her mouth and throat are dry from talking and laughing – but at T'Challa's statement she swallows hard and glances first at Bucky, then to Nakia, questioning.

It sure sounded like T'Challa is offering to let her stay, at least for a little while.

"If they're mostly of the 'I dare you to eat this excruciatingly hot pepper' variety, I think I prefer Wakanda's challenges," she says, a little cautiously.

There are plenty of challenges for her on the other side of the border. Giving them up for a little while to worry just about naming goats and whatever pranks Shuri might pull sounds...just about perfect.

"You can help in my lab!" Shuri says, cheerfully. "I am sure it will all go very well with no surprises at all."

"Shuri," Nakia says, and smiles. "I may have to steal her from you. If she will let me."

Bucky says nothing, until Sharon glances at him. Then he nods.

For a second, she can't actually say anything; her heart is too full and her throat works without any words actually coming out. At Bucky's nod, and the look on his face, her own expression goes through something complicated; clearest is exhausted relief mixed with surprised happiness. For a long second, she can't look away from him.

Then Shuri and Nakia break the spell and she turns to them with a laugh, lifting her hands.

"Those both sound great," she says. "Shuri, I have a tendency to dive headfirst into situations I don't fully understand and am not remotely prepared for, that'll be fine in a laboratory situation, right?"

To Nakia, she offers a slow, sharp grin. "It'll be just like Shanghai all over again, huh?"

She chooses to ignore T'Challa's faint wince.

"Do I want to know?" T'Challa asks Bucky, under the cover of Shuri's delighted laughter and her increasingly-more-elaborate descriptions of how Sharon can help test various forms of equipment ("Can you drive blindfolded? Fly a plane? What about--").

"Probably not. Would they even tell us?" he tosses back, a little ruefully. He's going to owe T'Challa for this, and knows that the other man won't hear of it, just as he won't hear of anything for all the help he's giving Bucky.

But the look on Sharon's face when she realized--

"You have a point," T'Challa says, and he pulls his thoughts back from their wandering and nods agreement.

Edited 2021-02-28 23:34 (UTC)

There's this aching, sore feeling just at her solar plexus that's difficult to recognize for a moment, until she thinks: when was the last time this many people were so happy to have her around?

It's not that she wasn't friendly with her colleagues, but she'd always kept them at a remove. Her whole life, she'd been able to count her real friends on one hand, and she'd always wanted to keep it that way.

To have two near total strangers offer her peace and quiet and a safe place to stay...

She has no words for it. She passes a wordless glance with Nakia, her eyes shining, and her friend smiles before giving T'Challa an arch look. "Perhaps I will tell you," she says. "...Someday."

"Maybe once the statute of limitations is up," Sharon agrees, and grins.

Bucky huffs out a rueful breath of laughter at their teasing, and Shuri leans forward to catch his eye while T'Challa groans and gives Nakia a look.

"It is good to see you smile," she tells him. "Try to do that more often, hm?"

"I will," he promises.

"Very good." She studies him for a second. "Do you still want to call Captain Rogers tonight?"

He's careful not to even glance at Sharon as he nods, and she nods back. "After dinner, then."

Shuri isn't whispering, it's not a secret, and Bucky had told her he'd call Steve –

But while she's consciously not looking at him, still smiling at Nakia and T'Challa, she can tell he's just as consciously not looking at her.

Damn. Shuri had told her to be careful, and she'd just thrown that right out the window, hadn't she?

She takes a moment to mop up the rest of the sauce on her plate with a last bite of flatbread, and looks over at Shuri only after she's finished talking to Bucky.

"Okay," she says, grinning. "What was the first thing you invented, and what was the weirdest thing?"

"Ohhh, that is too easy," Shuri laughs. "The first real invention, worthy of the name, was an improvement to our Kimoyo Beads to pull and project remote signals from the Internet without being detected."

"Which you used to study all the 'memes' you could find," T'Challa says, dryly, before he pretends to dodge the slow-motion toss of a napkin that Shuri aims at him. "I was thirteen!"

Nakia shakes her head, eyes bright, and meets Sharon's glance with open laughter in her own.

"The weirdest I am still working on--" Shuri breaks off there, looking very apologetically at Bucky, who shakes his head at her.

"Hey. Don't worry about it. I know my brain's pretty weird." He taps the backpack he'd unobtrusively slung over his chair at the start of dinner. "Sharon brought some things that might help with your project."

"The things I missed out on, not having siblings," Sharon says, dryly, observing T'Challa and Shuri with a crooked half-smile.

She looks back over as Shuri gets up from her chair, wiggling her fingers towards the backpack like a kid running to the tree on Christmas morning. "What?" Shuri asks, afire with curiosity, and looks at Sharon. "What did you bring?"

Sharon glances at Bucky, then looks at Shuri and shrugs. "Open it up and take a look," she offers. "Bucky can explain it better than me."

Shuri's already delving into the bag, and she comes up with one of the notebooks, flipping through the pages. "Ohhhhh!" she says, excited. "Yes. This will help."

"I started keeping those after D.C.," Bucky explains. "Trying to put all the pieces back together. Not sure how organized it's gonna be, but--"

"It is better this way," Shuri insists. "The things that came back first will have been most important. The data will help improve the bio-scan, so we can be sure, absolutely sure, that you will never have to worry about anyone being able to control you."

Bucky's glance flicks first to T'Challa, then to Sharon, and holds. He says, "That'd be good." Very quietly. "I don't want to hurt anyone again."

She looks back at him and even though she tries not to, she remembers.

A split, hanging second where her leg curls over his shoulder and her hand is at the curve of his neck and she can feel the warm skin at the edge of his shirt collar right before he flings her out and down –

She tries for a smile, anything that might be a little comforting, and wishes she couldn't still hear him saying I almost killed you in that desperate, horrified voice.

He's on her right side; she can't even reach to squeeze his hand. All she can do is make her smile a little stronger, fill it with all the faith in him she has. "I'm glad they'll help," she says, and it's probably to Shuri, even though she's still looking at him. "Every little bit, right?"

"Yes," Shuri agrees, flipping through one of the notebooks, and --

"Yes." T'Challa says it firmly, touching Bucky briefly on the shoulder to draw his attention. As Bucky's gaze refocuses on his face, he tells him, "I promised you, in Siberia. You will be free of it. No one will use you like that again."

"I know." Bucky's voice is quiet, but clear. "Thank you."

A faint frown flickers between her eyebrows.

Siberia?

But she doesn't ask. Later. There's –

There's plenty of time, now. She's in no rush. They have a lot to tell each other, and even more to figure out on their own.

Instead, she takes a breath and leans her chin on her palm to look over at Nakia, who watches her with a sympathetic smile that makes Sharon realize she's much more tired than she'd thought. Well, it's been a hell of a day. Week. Month?

It'd take a little out of anybody.

"You guys wouldn't happen to have any post-dinner coffee available, would you?" she asks. It's still early – she doesn't want to be flagging yet.

"I have the best coffee," Shuri assures her. "In my lab. Both of you come with me. We can get you coffee, digitize these notebooks, and call Captain Rogers, all from there."

"That'd be great," Bucky says. "Thanks."

"While I," Nakia interjects, still watching Sharon with that sympathetic smile, "will see to a room for you so that when Shuri brings you back, you have a place to land."

"And I," T'Challa concludes, sounding more resigned than anything, "will go meet with M'Baku so that we can continue our ... discussion."

Edited 2021-03-01 01:36 (UTC)

"Sounds good to me."

She reaches across the table to Nakia, and her friend responds by putting her hand into Sharon's and squeezing it warmly before she pushes back and away from the table.

Sharon pushes her own chair back, too, then pauses and gives Shuri a suspicious look. "When you say coffee in my lab,' do you mean that's just where the coffee maker is, or that it's experimental coffee?"

Shuri only grins brightly at her, which Sharon finds not at all reassuring.

Getting up, she looks to T'Challa, who has stepped to Nakia's side and saying something low to her. "Thank you," she says, when he looks up. "For dinner. And...for everything else."

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