[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]

"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."

[from_the_outside]

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.

[nerves_of_ice]

"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.

[from_the_outside]

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.

[nerves_of_ice]

"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.

[from_the_outside]

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.

[nerves_of_ice]

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."

[from_the_outside]

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?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"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."

[from_the_outside]

"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."

[nerves_of_ice]

"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."

[from_the_outside]

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?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"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."

[from_the_outside]

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.

[nerves_of_ice]

"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."

[from_the_outside]

"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."

[nerves_of_ice]

T'Challa gives her a steady look, followed by a nod. "You are welcome. Sharon."

Bucky finishes putting the notebooks back in the backpack and walks around the other side of the table to Nakia. Murmuring something to her under his breath so that no one else will hear, he passes over a package wrapped in undyed linen. Nakia accepts it, flicking one quick glance to Sharon as she does, but says nothing more than "Of course."

Shuri has reached the door and is bouncing up and down with impatience. Once she sees the others look her way, she claps her hands together.

"Well? Let's go!"

[from_the_outside]

Sharon, focused on T'Challa, misses the exchange almost completely, only noticing after a second that Nakia is saying something to Bucky. She opens her mouth to ask a question, but Shuri's impatient voice rings out and she turns that way, instead.

"Shuri, please, I ate so much and I haven't had that coffee yet," she half groans, half laughs, and gives Nakia a despairing look that her friend only answers with a bright smile and a wave.

"Have fun!" she calls, and then adds, strict: "Sharon, do not make a mess!"

"No promises," Sharon says, but it's mostly to herself as she waits for Bucky to catch up before following Shuri down the hall.

[nerves_of_ice]

He reaches them easily, swinging the backpack up to his shoulder as he takes long strides down the hallway. Shuri leads the way to the Citadel's platform, tapping one of her Kimoyo Beads as they all arrive.

"Stay back from the edge," she cautions. "You are not used to the sonic stabilizers yet--"

The maglev train that whooshes into place in front of them in response to her summons is both efficient and quiet. Shuri steps on as the doors open and turns to grin at Sharon.

"This one tells me," she says, with a wave of her hand at Bucky, "that our trains are far superior to New York's subway. How do they compare to cities you have lived in? Tell me!"

The train begins to move smoothly, leaving the Citadel en route to Mount Bashenga - ten minutes away, according to the discreet display overhead.

[from_the_outside]

Sharon steps back in surprise as the train appears, and blinks, startled, at Shuri's questions.

"They don't," she says, stepping aboard and looking up and around. When the train accelerates, she can hear almost nothing; it makes a faint sound like wet silk over glass. "I don't think any of the trains in any of the cities I've ever been in compare even a little."

Just like the architecture, the engineering here is a feat of unparalleled skill, design, and technology. "I thought the trains in Europe were pretty good. Shows what I know."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Turns out you can do a lot more with vibranium than use it as a shield," Bucky says, and Shuri rolls her eyes.

"It was a very good shield, I am sure," she says, with condescension clear in her expression. "But I can make better."

[from_the_outside]

The smile that had started at Shuri's expression fades into faint confusion, and she frowns at Bucky.

"'Was'?"



...Exactly how much did she miss over the last six weeks?

[nerves_of_ice]

"Ended up leaving it in Siberia," he answers, quietly. "With my arm."

Shuri sniffs again.

"I will make a better arm, too," she says, but more gently. "When you are ready."

Bucky nods, then looks back at Sharon.

"Steve's okay." He'd said that before, he thinks, but it bears repeating.