nerves_of_ice | [Virginia AU] we rose up from the falling waters

The way she looks, he honestly wouldn't be surprised if she pulled out that spear of hers and stuck Ross in the gut with it. Bucky shifts position, clearly ready to act if necessary, and makes an effort at diplomacy.

Again. Natasha's going to laugh herself sick when she hears, he just knows it.

"Ma'am, please," he says, neutrally. "Deputy Commander, if you'd oblige me?"

It's a sad day when the damn Winter Soldier is a relative beacon of diplomacy and manners. Ross looks askance at the woman. "Does she speak English?" he asks T'Challa, and her lip curls.

"When she wants to," she says, and Ross bristles as they eye each other. "Right, Sergeant," he answers Barnes, finally, and looks at T'Challa. "I'm going in. And when we're done, you're up."

He turns away, only to turn back as T'Challa calls him, before the king puts a friendly hand on his shoulder. "Agent Ross," he says, warmly. "I do appreciate your help here in Busan."

Ross looks at him, then at the glowering woman. "You see that?" he says, nodding to T'Challa's hand on his shoulder. "That's called diplomacy. You're welcome," he tells the king, and nods to Barnes. "Let's go."

He's fairly certain that grip was a demonstration of power, if not a challenge to see if any of Ross's people would defend him the way T'Challa's own had, but Bucky doesn't rise to the bait, if bait it was.

Silently, he follows Ross into the interrogation room and takes up position against the wall, staring intently at Klaue, who's singing again.

Ross settles in the metal folding chair across from Klaue, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hands, and doesn't allow any of the exasperation he's feeling to come across his face. Off to the side, Barnes is staring Klaue down like he thinks blinking might be against the law, but Ross has to admit it's effective.

He lifts his eyebrows at Klaue, waiting until the man finally stops singing and grins cheerfully at him. "You know," Klaue says, almost conversationally, "you really shouldn't trust those Wakandans. I'm much more your speed."

"I don't trust anybody, not in this job," Ross tells him, not allowing himself to get dragged in. "But what I am interested in is that arm cannon out there. Where'd you get that?"

Klaue smiles. "It's an old mining tool I made some adjustments to," he says. "But I can get you one if you like."

“Why don’t you give me the name of your supplier and I’ll ask them,” Ross counters.

Bucky watches as Klaue looks past him and at the window. “He’s right outside. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“T’Challa? You’re telling me that weapon on your arm is from Wakanda?” Disbelief paints Ross’s words.

For his part, Bucky’s not so sure. He thinks of an impossible spear, of a car that repelled bullets as harmlessly as rain, and narrows his eyes the slightest bit.

"What do you actually know about Wakanda?" Klaue pitches his voice low, like they're conspiring together, but Ross doesn't lean in.

He shrugs. "Shepherds," he says. "Textiles. Cool outfits."

"It's all a front," Klaue tells them. Ross frowns as he goes on, luxuriating in each word, like a storyteller with an audience. "Explorers searched for it for centuries. El Dorado. The Golden City. They thought they could find it in South America, but it was in Africa the whole time. A technological marvel. And all because it was built on a mountain of the most valuable metal known to man."

He must see Ross's skepticism, but it doesn't stop him. "Isipho, they call it," he says. "The gift. Vibranium."

Edited 2022-08-12 20:24 (UTC)

“Strongest metal on earth, right?” Ross asks. Bucky’s pretty sure he’s trying to lead Klaue down the garden path, pretending to know less than he must. Seriously, ‘cool outfits?’

It seems to be working. “It’s not just a metal,” Klaue confides. “They sew it into their clothes, it powers their city, their tech, their weapons… makes my arm look like a leaf blower.” His glance shifts. “Yours too,” he informs Bucky, then looks back at Ross. “Strong silent type?”

Bucky manages not to roll his eyes.

"You don't get to ask the questions here," Ross tells him. "And anyway: that's a nice fairytale, but Wakanda is a third world country, and you stole all their vibranium."

"I stole – ?" Klaue dissolves into astonished giggles, then lunges forward, shifting the chair he's restrained to by a few inches as Ross sits up and away from him. "All of it?" he growls. "I took a tiny piece of it. They have a mountain full of it. They've been mining it for thousands of years and they still haven't scratched the surface."

It's impossible, of course, but it's a strange story to tell, and Ross frowns, slightly, as he thinks about that arm cannon. "If you don't believe me," Klaue continues, "you ask your friend what his suit is made of. What his claws are made of."

He doesn't want to believe it – and he doesn't – but Ross hasn't gotten to where he is without a healthy dose of skepticism. He turns it over in his head, then glances back at Klaue and leans down to pick up his coffee before standing. "Keep an eye on him," he tells Barnes, and turns for the door, his expression grim

Bucky nods to Ross and turns the full weight of his regard on Klaue, who looks back at him.

“Gonna beat up a helpless cripple?” he taunts. “Or is it supposed to be a fair fight because you’re a cripple too?”

As far as anyone watching could tell, Klaue might as well be speaking a language Bucky doesn’t understand. Taunts like this mean nothing. He watches him in silence, his empty-eyed stare unwavering, and waits.

Nakia's a little distracted, she thinks. They're in the back room of the black site, looking out the window while surveillance huddles over a desk full of screens. A white van drives slowly by, then turns behind the building, and Sharon frowns as she sees Nakia watching it. "What's up?"

Nakia shakes her head. "Perhaps nothing," she murmurs, but tips her head toward the agent on monitor duty. Sharon follows as she goes and studies the different camera inputs. "Where's this?" Nakia asks the agent, pointing to an empty alleyway.

The agent gestures with his thumb over his shoulder. "Back there."

Nakia glances up and as their eyes meet, Sharon knows the same worry written on her friend's face is etched into hers, as well. "That van just turned in back there," Sharon murmurs, and Nakia nods.

"Come," she says, and heads into the main room.

T'Challa had watched him approach with nothing more than mild curiosity, but Ross isn't buying it. "Your father told the UN that Klaue stole all the vibranium you had," he says, bluntly. "But now he's telling me you have more?"

T'Challa looks mild. "And you believe the word of an arms dealer strapped to a chair?"

Ross studies him, not wanting to believe what he's beginning to think must be true. There's no doubt in his mind that Klaue is lying... but he's beginning to think T'Challa is, too.

"How much more are you hiding?" he demands, only to whirl around as the other Wakandan woman bursts back into the room with Carter at her side, both of them tense and alarmed, and his stomach suddenly empties into a pit.

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

Even if he’d wanted to answer, he wouldn’t have had the chance, for it’s at that moment when the wall explodes. Bucky goes down under a murderous weight of concrete debris. Even through the bursts of gunfire that follow, he can hear Klaue cackling.

Metal whines as he punches straight up, then sweeps his arm forward and down, unearthing himself. He’s in time to see someone carrying Klaue through the wall, chair and all, and bolts after them without hesitation.

Nakia snaps a warning in Xhosa, and the next second an explosion rocks the building, sending them all off their feet. Her ears ring and dust billows into the interrogation room; she can't see what happened to Bucky. The one-way glass fractures and then explodes inward as a man in a tribal mask pushes in, firing bursts of bullets from a semi-automatic weapon nudged against his shoulder.

There's no time to think. She sees Nakia stand; the man move forward; is in motion in the next heartbeat. "Get down!" Sharon shouts, and leaps to tackle her friend as the man squeezes off another scattering round of bullets. She feels a hand push, hard, between her shoulder blades as they drop, but it's not until they hit the floor and she finds she can't get up again that she realizes one of those bullets, spattered so indiscriminately, had found purchase deep inside her back.

Nakia curls over her, protective, murmuring something Sharon can't quite make out. Beyond her, a figure in black springs through the broken glass and shattered wall. T'Challa, probably, an she thinks, a little hysterically, that she's going to be just so pissed if she dies before finding out what the deal is with that suit of his.

Edited 2022-08-12 21:16 (UTC)

There are three of them, Bucky notes, as he races down the alley. Two are loading Klaue into a white van, while the third, in a tribal mask of some kind, fires another series of bullets which Bucky deflects with his hand. The attacker follows that up with a grenade, but a flicker of black at the corner of his vision announces the presence of T’Challa, who smothers it with his suit before starting to run again.

The two of them keep pace with each other, which just means they’re neck and neck when the man in the mask hits them with a blast from a RPG. The explosion slams them backward, airborne, smashing them into the alley’s walls and dropping them to the ground.

T’Challa stares after the man as the van pulls away. Bucky pushes himself to his feet in time for the other man’s ally to run up to them. She gasps something in that other language, and T’Challa spins and runs back toward the safe room.

Whatever it was, it must be serious for the man to abandon the chase after Klaue. Bucky races after him.

For a second or two, he can’t understand what he’s seeing. The other woman, Sharon’s friend, kneeling on the ground; Ross beside her, and a crumpled figure—

The noise he makes is raw and agonized. Bucky doesn’t exactly know how he gets across the room, just that one second he’s by the hole in the wall and the next he’s pushed past Ross to kneel by Sharon, reaching for her. “Angel,” he begs. “Baby, please, no.”

There's a curious lack of pain that comes with dying, apparently, but it does nothing to keep animal fear at bay. Horrifying numbness spreads through her arms and legs and torso, and it's all she can do to keep breathing, to try and push away the gray film that's trying to sweep across her vision.

She can hear Nakia and Ross talking, but can't tell what they're saying, can't feel Nakia's gentle hands on her back. The fear coils up around her, tightening a little more with each terrified gasp for air. The cement floor is cold against her forehead, but she can't lift her head. She can't do anything at all; she can't even feel her hands or feet or legs or arms.

There's a scuffle of noise, and then a dear voice that sounds so frightened it makes her want to cry. "Bucky," she says, or tries, but though her lips move, she can't seem to force the word past them. Sharon only manages a whimper, low, her breathing just a series of labored gasps, feeling cold all over. She can't even turn her head to look at him.

No, no, no, she wants to say, to scream. No, she won't die. No, she won't leave him behind. No, she's not going anywhere. Any second now she'll be able to pull in a full breath and laugh and smile and tease him that she's fine, that he's worried over nothing, like always.

Any second. Any second. Any –

Nakia keeps her shaking hands on Sharon's back, horrified at how still her friend is laying, and looks up to meet T'Challa's eyes. "She just jumped in front of me," she says, distressed.

The other man, the one with the metal arm, has shoved his way past Ross and is lost in wild fear and grief, and Nakia feels the icy spike of guilt drive into her chest. There's anguish in her eyes as she looks up at T'Challa once more.

"I don't think she'll make it here. It hit her spine."

I don’t think she’ll make it, he hears, and it hit her spine. In that moment if he could rip the serum from his own cells and give it to her, to save her, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

He shouldn’t have left her. He shouldn’t have - he should have protected her. Better him than her, he could have healed it —

“Damn it, Carter, don’t you give up!” Ross orders, and Bucky vaguely notes that the man’s voice is shaking, but he can’t bring himself to care. He bends closer, touching her shoulder, her cheek, leaning over her. “I’m here, baby. I’m here. Sharon, please, please baby please, hold on, don’t go, you can’t—-“

“Give me a Kimoyo bead,” he hears T’Challa demand behind him, and ignores whatever’s going on to focus on Sharon.

Edited 2022-08-12 22:20 (UTC)

Ross says something, and she wants to react to whatever order he's giving her, to be the quickest, the best, the most efficient. Everything he's counted on her to be, since he made her his right hand. All that comes out is a strangled, wheezing whimper that she can't even hear herself make.

She's so sorry she'd disappointed him. She's so sorry she won't get a chance to make it up to him. She's so sorry she's going to wind up disobeying him, again, two seconds after he reinstated her.

But worst of all is Bucky, who sounds desperate and broken, his voice rough with anguish. His shadow falls over her, blocking what little she can see of the wrecked room. She badly wants to hold his hand, but she can't move her fingers and everything seems to be shutting down in a horrible, final sort of way. Her thoughts are dust, her head full of a hollow, rushing sound, and it takes more than she has left to try and form anything comprehensible. She's simply filled with a deep and terrible sadness at the thought of leaving him, and even that is getting fuzzy around the edges as her vision begins to tunnel.

He knows, without her saying it, what Nakia is asking him to do, the rules and traditions she is asking him to break. He doesn't know this woman, although he has learned that she does, that she considers her a friend – but is that enough?

Enough to throw over generations of tradition, of law?

But she saved Nakia's life. If she had not – he looks to the man bending over her head, begging her not to go, and feels the echo of his anguish in his own chest. But for this woman, it would be his pleas, his tears, his heartsick pain.

Nakia meets his eyes with her own clear, anguished ones, and he holds out his hand, asks for a Kimoyo bead. Okoye, behind him, stiffens, but says nothing, and T'Challa meets Ross's gaze, lifting his free hand in a gesture of assurance. "This will stabilize her for now," he murmurs, and gently but firmly pushes the bead into the wound. The woman groans and tenses, then relaxes into unconsciousness, the bead glowing gently as T'Challa lifts his hand away.

Edited 2022-08-12 22:37 (UTC)

Sharon goes limp and boneless, and for an agonizing frozen moment everything in him just stops, sure that she’s gone, before he sees that she’s still breathing. Shallow, but steady.

“How?” he hears Ross demand, and looks up at T’Challa, who shakes his head. “Give her to us,” Wakanda’s king says. “We can save her.”

Bucky looks down at Sharon, who was dying and now isn’t, and looks back up at T’Challa. “Take us both. I’ll carry her.”

Ross stares at the other man for a moment, then looks back at T'Challa, his jaw set. "Take her," he says. "But I'm coming, too."

Behind him, he hears Okoye's hissed breath. "My King – " she begins, but he shakes his head, sharp and abrupt.

"Would you ask me to leave you?" he asks, in Xhosa, and she subsides. He doesn't have to look at her to see the expression on her face. He looks instead at Nakia, and waits for her mute nod before he looks back at the dark-haired man, who is pale with fear and pain.

This may be the mistake that mars his reign for the rest of his life, but if they are to save this woman, there is no time for arguing who else may come. He looks the other man in the eye, and when he speaks his voice is firm. "Lift her," he orders. "Carefully. The bead will keep her stable, but she must be moved as little as possible. Do you understand?"

“Yes.” Bucky gathers her into his arms, supporting her against his body, and rises to his feet.

She’s so light. He can almost hear the echo of her teasing him for the way he picks her up, like she weighs nothing, but she’s silent now and all too still in his arms.

"Then come." T'Challa's glance flickers down to the woman's pale, unconscious face. "We must not delay."

He turns for the door, followed by Okoye, while Nakia rises to her feet and puts a gentle hand on the dakr-haired man's shoulder, coaxing him to follow. He can hear Ross snapping orders to his agents before the man trots outside to join them, as Okoye opens the door to a large SUV parked in the next alley over. Nakia goes to the driver's seat as T'Challa gestures for the man to set the injured Agent Carter across several of the passenger seats.

"Is there a hospital nearby?" Ross asks, but T'Challa doesn't answer him, only gets into the front seat when all are settled and nods for Nakia to drive.

His gaze meets Okoye's in the rearview mirror for a moment's silent communication before he looks away once more.

He lays her gently down and gets in beside her, cradling her head in his lap. It's obvious to him that the spear-wielding woman - Okoye, he thinks, he'd heard them call her that and made a note of it - is opposed to this for some reason, but she isn't arguing with her king and that's all Bucky cares about.

If they can do what T'Challa said, if they can save Sharon, Bucky'll give them anything and everything he has to give.

Ross braces Sharon from the other side, and together they keep her limp form steady as the car moves swiftly through the streets. He doesn't know Busan that well, but it only takes a little for him to realize they're headed for the outskirts rather than deeper into the heart of the city.

Ross and – Barnes, the man had said his name was, Bucky Barnes – hold Agent Carter steady as Nakia drives them out from the city, and it's almost certainly a testament to how shocked Ross is that he seems to wake as from a dream and realize that they've stopped, not at a hospital, but just outside a large field ringed with trees. "Wait," he says, leaning forward. "What is this? Where are we?"

T'Challa doesn't answer, only exits the car as Nakia does the same. She goes to the passenger door and opens it, gesturing for Barnes and Ross to remove Carter. "It's alright," she tells them, more gently than T'Challa might be able to manage. "You will see. Come. Bring her."

He feels Okoye come to his side and cuts a glance her way; she looks less disapproving than resigned. "We cannot bring them," she murmurs, in Xhosa. "My king, let us take the woman from here."

It's tempting. He could carry the woman as easily as Barnes can, and it would mean only one outsider instead of three.

Nakia, overhearing, glances at Barnes and Ross and hisses at Okoye in Xhosa. "Where is your pity, General?"

Okoye gives her a hard glance. "All of my concerns are for Wakanda. Let the outsiders take care of themselves."

Edited 2022-08-13 10:40 (UTC)

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