[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]

"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!

[nerves_of_ice]

"Oh?" Shuri looks delighted. "Then you will have to help me test it! And these with it."

She picks up a set of flat circular discs from a table and tosses them at Sharon.

"How well can you climb?"

[from_the_outside]

"Pretty well," she says, thinking of scaling the side of a building after two and half glasses of wine and smiling to herself. Six weeks on the run – and rebreaking those ribs – mean she's not quite up to her usual level of fitness, but she's willing to give anything a shot.

And she's healed, anyhow. She just gets a little stiff and sore.

She sets one of the discs on her right palm and watches as the material expands creeping around her metacarpals and knuckles until she's wearing what looks like a high-tech motorcycle glove. Prodding the palm, she peers at the series of tiny circles woven across the material. "That's cool."

Straightening, she goes to the table and leans her hand onto it, fingers splayed, and grins at the sensation. "What is this...?"

It's like she can feel all the micro-fractures and textures of the table and grip them just like a handhold on a climbing wall; but when she pulls her hand away again, it comes easily.

"Okay. That is awesome. I almost wish I were a cat burglar."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Do not let my brother hear you say that," Shuri warns, laughing. "He has strong opinions on such things, for reasons I think you can guess."

Her eyes are dancing.

"But I admit that is in part where I got the inspiration."

Bucky coughs into his hand, hiding a laugh of his own.

[from_the_outside]

"Well, I am looking for new career opportunities," Sharon muses, but she's grinning as she strips the glove off her hand and watches it return to its previous shape.

Putting them back on the table, she narrows her eyes at another corner of the lab, where a series of mats form an open-center square around what looks like a few square feet of sand.

"What's this?"

"Try it and find out," encourages Shuri, who looks smugly pleased with herself.

Sharon steps onto a mat and almost steps right back off again as the sand shifts and rises in front of her, forming a faceless figure about her own size and weight that settles into a fight stance. "What!" she gasps, and Shuri laughs.

"Go on, throw something."

Sharon shakes her head, but obediently readies herself, then shifts her weight and turns her hip sharply over, delivering a shin-first mid kick to the figure's side –

Which the sand figure blocks with a quick lift of its left leg, stopping Sharon's shin with its own.

"I call it 'sand spar'!" Shuri calls, delighted. "You know, like 'sand bar.' But with sparring!"

"That's amazing," Sharon says, walking around the figure, and Shuri nods, pleased.

"And programmable," she says, touching one of her wrist beads. The sand shifts and flows, and after a second, Sharon is staring at T'Challa, all kitted out in his Black Panther costume.

She turns to Bucky. "I want one!"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Don't ask me," he says, visibly amused, but with something warm in his eyes. "It's her you have to convince."

Bucky looks at Shuri as he adds, "But if it makes a difference, she's a good fighter of a style you may not have seen as much of here. Could help you adapt your design."

He doesn't give any sign that talking about this causes him pain at the memory. Whether that's true or he's just hiding it is impossible to say.

[from_the_outside]

"Please?" Sharon says to Shuri. "Please let me fight your sand people?"

Shuri, for her part, looks delighted at the idea. "The more fighting styles and types of opponent I can use, the better," she says. "Tell me a little about your techniques?"

That kicks off a few minutes of intent discussion of Sharon's martial arts background – mostly Belgian-style Muay Thai with a handful of grappling and other striking styles – and the limitations of the illusory sparring partner. Shuri shows Sharon how the sand dummy can be ratcheted up or down multiple scales representing difficulty and pliability, and flips through a few of the pre-programmed sparring partners to show off their different fighting styles.

One of them, a huge man dressed in white gorilla furs and holding a tall club, stares down at Sharon. She has to put her head almost all the way back to see his face. He's about three times her size.

"Yes," she says, decisively. "That guy. I want to fight that guy."

But before she can, a bead on Shuri's wrist chimes a gentle alarm, and Shuri shakes her head, smiling as the huge man drifts back down into a pile of sand. "Later."

She looks at Bucky. "Shall we give Captain Rogers a call?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Please," he says, straightening from his spot against the wall. Shuri nods.

"This way," she tells Sharon, as Bucky moves to join them. It's apparent he already knows where they're going, as Shuri leads the way through the lab and down a side hallway to a small room. Unlike SHIELD or JTTF offices, this one is set up as a combination working-and-conversation space, similarly to the one in the garden chamber, with the addition of woven hangings on the walls and a table containing a high-tech communications station.

"We could not give him a set of Kimoyo Beads," Shuri tells Sharon as she activates the comm center. It projects a holographic video display of a phone screen in the air above it. "The security risk was too great."

Bucky interjects, "Steve doesn't want any clues leading back here. And no one was sure what would happen if any of the beads went missing somehow; can't compromise Wakandan systems."

Shuri nods. "But I refuse to limit anyone to staring at a tiny screen on a phone or box." She huffs out a breath and starts typing in a code from her wrist, which projects onto the comm center in preparation for the encrypted call.

Bucky turns to Sharon. "If you're okay with letting me tell him you're here first, go stand off-screen." He nods to the side. "Or if not, stay here by me."