[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

[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.

[from_the_outside]

Siberia again.

She shakes her head, more confused than ever.

"Is this something I can ask about now, or is this more of a 'you're going to have a million questions, Sharon, and it's kind of a fraught topic so why don't we put a pin in it for the moment' kind of topic?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"It is where my brother caught that man. That Zemo," Shuri tells her, and Bucky nods.

"That's the short version. The rest of it's ... a lot. Why don't we stick that pin?"

[from_the_outside]

It goes against every instinct she has – get the intel, analyze it, put it into the bigger picture – but she searches his face for a moment, then nods. She's out of her depth here; best to trust his judgment.

"Okay."

It's a good thing she's staying. This is, she thinks, going to be a very long conversation.

Or conversations.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Thanks," he says, and Shuri beams at Sharon.

"Besides, if you are talking, you will miss everything! Look!"

She points through the window of the train as it enters Mount Bashenga, at the depths and complex workings of the massive vibranium mine.

[from_the_outside]

She steps slowly to the windows, gazing out at a thing unlike any she's ever seen.

The whole mountain is vibranium, shot through with an electric blue glow and extending so far beneath them that she almost gets a sense of vertigo when she looks down. Trains criss-cross the open space and streak into and out of tunnels; graceful machines like huge dragonflies carry loads up to an opening far above them.

"It's incredible," she breathes, fingers lightly touching the glass.

They'd had no idea. No one in the whole world had any idea this was here. Steve's shield had encompassed the sum total of Howard Stark's vibranium.

And here she is, streaking through a mountain made of it.

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky is quiet, letting Sharon absorb what she's seeing.

Shuri is not.

"It is the heart of our technology," she tells her. "Communications, transportations, weapons and armor. Medical applications, as well. Your boss--"

"Ex-boss," Bucky murmurs.

"--ex-boss, when he was shot in the spine? My brother was able to stabilize him at the scene and brought him to me, and he was recovered in a day. We have so much to offer the world, and under my brother's leadership, we are going to."

[from_the_outside]

She starts like a firecracker went off directly under her feet and rounds on Shuri, her face full of alarm.

"What? Someone shot Ross?"

He might be after her now, would arrest her happily on sight –

But he was a good boss. And he'd...trusted her.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Yes, yes, but he's fine now," Shuri assures her, waving one hand in the air dismissively.

"If it's any consolation," Bucky tells Sharon, "I missed all this too, at the time."

"He was trying to buy stolen vibranium in Busan. From Claue. When Claue was captured and the others broke in to get him back, he threw himself in front of Nakia to protect her. So my brother brought him here, to save him."

The train shivers to a stop and the doors slide open at the platform marked "Wakandan Design Group."

[from_the_outside]

It's not much of a consolation. She shakes her head and reaches up to rub her forehead, frustrated. "It seems like I've missed everything."

God. Why even care? Shuri said he was fine. And she knows without question that Ross would cheerfully put her on the wrong side of a cell door.

She's grateful when the train comes to a halt, although she's still a little subdued as they disembark. It won't last: the place they've come to?

It's an intelligence operative's dream.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Welcome to my lab," Shuri tells them, as they walk along gently curved ramps with intricately-patterned walls, through hallways lined with designs and fine art interspersed. The hallway curves out into a large open space with a window that looks out over the mine.

"Coffee first, yes?" She steps toward a machine off to the side and sets a mug in place before pressing a button. The look she gives Sharon is mischievous.

"Vibranium filters are the best."

[from_the_outside]

"God. Yes. Please."

She makes a beeline for the coffee maker and impatiently waits for it to finish brewing, laughing a little at Shuri's comment.

"Vibranium for this, too? Really? Is there anything you don't use it for?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Well, I use it for this. The design is not finished yet."

Behind them, Bucky smothers a chuckle.

[from_the_outside]

"And so the experiments begin," Sharon laughs, and picks up the mug as soon as the drip has stopped, then casts about for whatever version of cream and sugar might be nearby.

She'll drink it black, if she has to, but it's not her preference.

"Okay," she says, once the coffee is doctored to her taste and she's sipped at it in deep contentment. "What's next?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Next, we start the notebooks through the scanner, and then I can show you some of the things I am working on," Shuri tells them.

Bucky follows her over to a different machine and starts unpacking the backpack, passing the books over to her one at a time while Shuri loads them into what appears to be some kind of feeder basket. She presses a symbol and the first book slides forward into a glass-walled box, where a series of automated metal tongs opens the cover and starts flipping pages for light to scan. That done, he turns to watch as Shuri walks back toward Sharon with a smile.

"What would you like to hear about first?"

[from_the_outside]

"God, where to start?"

She feels like a kid in a candy shop. This whole place is R&D, but unlike any Sharon's ever seen before. Shuri's experiments are housed like museum pieces: mounted on mannequins, behind glass, beautifully lit and artfully designed. Sharon walks across the lab to a long white table that holds a bowl of beads like the ones Shuri, T'Challa, and Nakia all wear on their wrists and several yards of richly dyed cloth interwoven with vibranium threads. She reaches out to finger the material, and frowns as the bright colors fade away entirely under her touch until she can see the table right through it, but not her own fingers.

She turns with an expression of total bewilderment. "Are you making an invisibility cloak?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Yes!" Shuri tells her, visibly pleased that Sharon has figured it out. Bucky leans back against a clear stretch of wall and watches in silence, quietly amused.

"We already use this technology in our ships. But there, we have much more metal and a stable frame to work with to generate the necessary energy fields for photorealistic visual deception. Doing the same with cloth is more difficult, but I think I have figured out a way based on some of the work I have done with my brother's Panther Habit."

[from_the_outside]

Sharon drapes some of the cloth over her forearm and stares as it and her forearm both dissolve away like frost melting under sunlight. "That is so trippy."

Putting the cloth back, she huffs an impressed breath of a laugh. "I can think of a lot of ways that would be pretty useful."

And not just as a spy, either. The pranks someone could pull!