Author's Note: I got into identity politics in Sam's POV. I tried my hardest to be respectful, but I am not African American. If I've fucked up, please let me know, so I can fix it.


The King had ordered every spinning wheel in the kingdom destroyed. But Fate cannot be outrun…

Overhead, freewheeling clouds dance, playing with the golden sunbeams. Below, a panther chases a falcon through the dense, lush jungle.

They meet quite by chance. This keeps happening, lately. Sam would not have expected the King of Wakanda to have so much free time, but he will not complain. Now that they are no longer actively warring against each other, Sam finds he greatly enjoys the King's - no, Samuel; friends call me T'Challa - company. Beneath the royal dignity and T'Challa's own natural reserve lies an incredible intellect to rival Tony Stark, a shrewd judge of character equal to Steve Rogers, and a dry sense of humor which is entirely his own. Sam does not know how many people get to see this side of the man or who even gets to see the man beneath the mantle at all, but he is honored and grateful to be one of the chosen few.

"C'mon, Kitty, you can do better than that!"

Sam cackles as he puts on a burst of speed, adrenaline twining with enthusiasm in a potent mix. After so long at Steve's side it is nice, he thinks, to pit his skills against a normal human. Yes, T'Challa has been in training his entire life in preparation for taking on the Panther's mantle. But he has no magical potion flowing through his veins or mythical, Inhuman abilities; like Sam, T'Challa is just a man. After so long among the Avengers, the normality is refreshing.

Not far behind him, Sam hears T'Challa growl. "Ngelixa wena unako, intaka encinane."

Sam is willing to go out on a limb and assume that was not especially complimentary.

He keeps running, relishing the burn in his thighs, in his lungs. The summer warmth - enveloping, but not oppressive - chases away the cold horror of the nightmares, grounding him in the present moment. He is not hovering helplessly in the air; Daedalus watching Icarus tailspin, a murderer watching a man of iron plummet. He is on the ground, and he is not fighting inevitability.

He is going to have to return to the mind healers, he knows. He is stubborn, but he is not an idiot. The nightmares are returning; he is jumping at loud noises; he cannot bear the weight of his wings. He needs to get his head on right… But not here, not yet. Right now, he is grounded, he is safe, he is running.

A heavy weight rams into him, knocking him off-balance. Sam pitches forward, tenses, rolls with it. T'Challa laughs as they roll and roughhouse like children, smug when he pins Sam down, victorious.

"Fuckin' dick," Sam grumbles, but there is no heat in his curse.
"Panthers always catch their prey," T'Challa smirks.

Sam is very, very aware of T'Challa's weight pinning him, pushing him into the warm earth. It should feel stifling; it feels safe. His heart is pounding. He feels T'Challa's breathing. He is wonderfully, entirely present in this moment. The world is silent and still, holding its breath.

Sam is in trouble.

"You got me," he says, and he hardly recognizes the low, husky voice as his own. "Now what?"

There is a pause, a moment. Heavy with possibility, with magic, with a burn in his gut that Sam has not felt in years. A beat, a breath, and Sam dares to wonder-

"Now, we swim."

T'Challa leverages himself up, and Sam is dizzy with the sudden loss. His head spins, his brain reels, and he stumbles as he scrambles after the man striding blithely ahead of him as though he has not just pushed Sam's entire world off-kilter.

Oh sweet Lucille, Sam is in so much trouble.

By the time he reaches the crystal clear pool, T'Challa has already stripped off his running clothes and dived into the water, which… Sam is completely fine with and not at all affected by.

Once upon a time, Sam remembers being able to lie to himself. He wonders what happened to that ability.

[Steve. Steve is what happened.]

"Are you coming?" T'Challa asks.

Sam hopes it is not obvious that his is choking on his tongue.

He strips with military quickness and dives into the water, blissfully cold against his heated flesh. For a time, they paddle around each other, enjoying the cooldown after a long, hard run. Eventually, they lay side by side on the arm, flat boulders, drowsy and at peace.

"What do you think of my Wakanda, Samuel?" T'Challa asks lazily, rolling onto his stomach and pillowing his head on his arms.

Sam is not distracted at all by the way T'Challa pronounces his name. Samuel. Softening the vowels, slurring the syllables until the word is smooth and warm, a caress. He wants to be the kind of man who might belong to that name. Wants to be soft, and smooth, and grounded in the warm earth of a country that looks like him. Wants to yield, to turn liquid, to draw his shards together into this sound of T'Challa's mouth - this Samuel.

Sam might deflect T'Challa's question. Sam might joke, might make light, might mask his true thoughts in flippant charm. But Sam is not here; to be honest, he is not sure if that person even exists anymore.

What, he dares to ask himself, might Samuel think?

"Do you know much about how Wakanda is seen in black America?" he asks.

T'Challa shakes his head, his dark eyes warm and soft but intensely focused.

So he talks in what he imagines Samuel's voice to be; honest and direct, thoughtful and solemn. Talks about the pain and emptiness and rootlessness of diaspora, of the loss of voice and name and history. How, in the absence of a personal homeland, cultural myths were built - we were all kings and scholars in Mali; we were Zulu warriors; we were Wakandan. He talks about his daddy's experience as a Black Panther. Talks about how Wakanda has become Timbuktu and Shangri-la and Atlantis; an idealized paradise of and for black bodies where they could lay down the shackles that were their American legacy.

"We are all this to you?" T'Challa asks, thoughtful and solemn.
Samuel nods. "And I'll tell you what, man. The reality? Lives up to the hype."

The warmth of the boulder beneath him cannot compete with the heat of T'Challa's smile.


Outside, clouds dance in a beautiful blue sky, freewheeling in beautiful golden sunshine; unburdened and free.

Inside, the conditions in the healers' ward are strictly regulated - temperature, noise level, potential for proliferation of disease, access. It is funny, he thinks, that he is more comfortable in this place that drums up so many bad memories than anywhere else in the palace, or the country.

"I don't know what I'm doing, Buck," Steve confesses, sinking into the unexpectedly comfortable armchair that lives beside the icy coffin. "There's… I've never been good at doin' nothing, ya know? And there's nothin' for me to do here. I'm not Captain America, I'm a fugitive, I'm… I've got nothin', right now. And I dunno what to do."

It is strange, he thinks absently, that the longer he remains exiled, the more strongly his homeland bleeds into his voice.

Sighing in frustration, Steve stands, pacing through the small chamber like a caged panther. He tosses an agitated glance out the window, perversely irritated by the lush jungle vistas.

He turns back to his friend, asleep in his coffin. Steve always was in awe of Bucky's sniper stillness, of the profound quiet and focus Sergeant Barnes could call upon in the heat of battle. He wonders if, somewhere in the cold, his friend is calling upon that same patience now; holding himself still and waiting for a miracle.

Steve wishes, desperately, that he could perform that miracle; wishes that he could punch his way out of this mess. Clint had jested once about cognitive recalibration and oh how Steve wishes it was that easy. But there is no place for a knight in this battle. This is a war for magicians; molecular biophysicists and chemical engineers and neurosurgeons. Steve does not even fully understand what the struggle is; he only knows that he cannot do the fighting this time.

He can never do the fighting when Bucky is involved, it seems. He wonders sometimes what the point of him even is, if he cannot fight for those he loves.

"I don't know what to do, Buck," he says again, staring blankly out the window. "The doctors have been running tests on your blood samples. They think they can make some kind of hormone that'll stabilize somethin' or other in your brain, and they think once they do that they can unfreeze you enough to deprogram the triggers. T'Challa says his people have your full file. I dunno how, Nat must've helped… But I guess the point is, they're makin' progress. They're gonna get you back. I just… I just wish I could help."

He feels the familiar urge to punch something. He takes a careful step away from Bucky's coffin, clenches his jaw, his fists.

"Wish I could feed you the serum," he sighs. "But they said - the doctors, I mean - that it's bonded to my DNA, and they don't know how to extract it." He laughs, sharp and bitter. "Story of my life. I've never been able to save you."

He leans against the window, lets it take his weight as he slumps under the grief and guilt. His heart pulses in time with the refrain that has been his constant companion since October, 1944 - my fault my fault my fault

"Why'm I still alive?" he whispers.

The question falls from his lips before he can reel it in. He should be horrified with himself for voicing such a thought, and in a way he is. But it is a relief, too, to let his shameful question out for once.

"I grew up knowing I'd never live long. You remember. Pretty sure I only made it to twenty six because of you. I guess that's why I was so dead set on the Army - at least then my death would mean somethin'," he confesses. "But I kept failing to die. And then you fell, and…"

Steve takes a deep, shaky breath as the guilt surges up and swallows him whole. He stares at Bucky's sleeping face, pierced by twin pangs of profound sorrow for his brother's death, and overwhelming awe at his resurrection [was that blasphemy, even though Bucky was the only sacred thing that made sense anymore?].

"I think I must've died with you," he confesses, barely able to speak, unable to stop this horrible confession. "It was a relief, puttin' the plane down, letting go. The serum was a miracle, but what the hell good was it, if I couldn't keep you from falling?"

Steve sighs, runs a hand through his hair as he stares at his best friend's face. It is strange, he thinks, how peaceful Bucky looks in his frozen sleep. He wonders if his own death was that peaceful.

He thinks he remembers, sometimes. He knows this must be a morbid fantasy. The healers explained it to him, shortly after he woke from his own enchanted sleep; long medical terms that meant he'd been frozen solid, essentially dead. To think that he remembered dreaming had to be a flight of fancy.

And yet.

"You were there," he says, sure that this is real even if it is not true. "We sat on the edge of the Grand Canyon and watched fireworks. And it was the end of the line, but it wasn't so bad." Steve bites his lip. "And then I woke up."

He shudders, thinking back on those awful first months in his new world, his new life.

"SHIELD threw me right back into it," he tells Bucky. "I didn't mind. Anything was better than thinking. And I had the serum, and I was needed… It was okay. That's what Captain America was made for, right? To fight, to serve. But now… What now? There is no more Captain America. And without Cap… What do I do, Bucky? Who the hell am I?"

Steve hunches over, resting his elbows on his thighs as the voice of a robotic nightmare whirs to life in his mind once again, parroting his own worst fears back at him.

God's Righteous Man… pretending you can live without a war…

Despite the sun-drenched afternoon, Steve shudders, ice blooming in his chest.

He knows this is the truth of himself. He was created – a lab experiment, just as Tony had sneered – for war, for fighting. Without that purpose, what was he? Was there any reason for his existence at all?


Once upon a time, the Asset's memories were burned away.

And then again.

And again.

Again and again, innumerable times, until even the attempt of thought caused an echo of white-hot pain to sear the Asset's brain; until it was nothing more than a mindless automaton for its masters.

When the Asset finally broke free, it had to relearn how to think. It was not easy. Images would flash through his head, contextless and meaningless. Unverifiable images he did not understand.

A dark-haired boy in a too-large frilly apron, standing on a kitchen chair beside his tall, elegant mother; a gap-toothed grin on his face as he helped her knead dough and listened to the folk songs of her homeland.

Two half-grown boys curled around each other in one small bed; huddling for warmth and trying not to feel the hot ache of longing for more in his chest.

White-hot pain arcing through his head, shooting through his limbs; screaming as he was erased.

Laying in a snow-filled trench, the wooden stock of his rifle tucked firmly into his shoulder. Slowing his breath, his heartbeat; falling into razor-sharp instinct and terrifying mental silence as the Target's car navigated the curve.

The former Asset could not say what the images were or what they came from. The mounting pressure of so many images crowding in his skull caused terrible, debilitating headaches. He had begun writing the images down in a desperate attempt to purge them, make sense of them. He could not trust that any of them were real or true, but perhaps he could make himself less dangerous if all the images were gone.

With time and the ability to conduct research, he had learned enough about his former life to make sense of some of the images. Sergeant James B. Barnes. American; Brooklyn. Son and brother and best friend. Bookworm, intrigued with science, liked to work with his hands. Non-Commissioned Officer; sniper; second in command of one of the most highly regarded commando units in the second world war.

The images, he eventually realized, were memories. He had not sprung full-formed from the cold or the pain or the Hydra lab. He had had a life. He had had a mother, a family, hobbies, dreams. He was not always a thing, an Asset; he had been a man.

Protecting those memories had become Barnes' most sacred and primary objective. He could not say whether he was truly free of Hydra's control, and until he knew for certain he could not go home. But he could protect these precious pieces of himself, could try to fit them together again into a whole that resembled who he used to be. And he could learn to be a man again.

Perhaps he should have figured that Steve would never consent to leaving him in the cold.

The Shadow glances to his right, terrified that perhaps he will lose grip of his Light, will be left alone in this hurricane of notebook pages and electricity.

"I'm here, Buck," his Light says reassuringly, that beautiful sunshine smile lighting up his whole face. "We'll get through this together."

The Shadow nods, swallowing nervously. He hopes his Light knows where he's going; certainly the Shadow can see no path through the whirlwind of flickering images.

"We're gonna make this stop," his Light says, his Patriotic Jaw of Determination jutting out like a ship's prow as the Eyebrow of Righteousness furrowed righteously. "It's like building a bridge. You find one good stone, and you build off of that."
The Shadow looks at the Light askance, overwhelmed. "How?" he asks helplessly. "How do we find a good memory in the middle of all this? I don't even know if any of these are real!"

His Light is right there. Close enough to fill the Shadow's entire visual field; close enough to disappear into. His Light lays tender hands on his cheeks, refuses to let him focus on anything else.

"Close your eyes," his Light commands. "Ignore everything else. Even me. Somewhere inside you, there is one thing you know is true. One fact you can't question. What is that?"

He closes his eyes. He wonders idly if it is a bad thing, that he finds such solace in the black nothing as opposed to the chaotic, disjointed hurricane of his mind.

For a timeless time, he drifts in the darkness. There is no anchor, here; no direction or hint as to what this great central truth may be.

But at the depths of the darkness… Well. He really is not all that surprised at what he finds.

"You," he whispers. "The one thing I can't question is you. It's always been you."

Hesitantly, he opens his eyes to see his Light staring at him solemnly.

"You never told me," his Light says quietly.
"How could I?" the Shadow asks helplessly. "It wasn't clean, what I felt for you. It was dirty, twisted, wrong. You remember."

The notebook pages flutter at the Shadow's words, and images begin to draw themselves among the white arcs of electricity. A black-robed priest screaming fire and brimstone from the pulpit. Hard-faced men beating a waifish boy bloody for daring to enter the wrong part of town. Snide rumors about the Navy docks, the dance halls. Half-muffled moans in barracks showers; the constant threat of a blue discharge. His Captain, beautiful and determined; and a gnawing, white-hot ache in his gut as old as time itself.

"So that's your core?" his Light asks, and his voice is amused. "You want me?"

The Shadow shakes his head, cradling his Light's dear face in his hands.

"My core is, I love you," he declares. "Every way one person can love another."

His Light smiles; that beautiful sweet smile that softens him from a scowling menace into a damn angel.

"That's enough to build on," he nods. "Look."

They stand side by side and watch as softly glowing golden threads spread out from where they stand. The threads meander and wind through the chaotic swirl of notebook memories. Some are caught by threads and tied down fast; touchstones to build on. Some are batted away; implanted lies or mistaken impressions, things he doesn't need to keep. Those memories are gobbled up by the greedy, ravenous electricity; burned away until nothing remains.

When all is done, the Shadow can see the outline of who he was before he was made a monster. He wonders if it is possible to become like this again; can he remake himself into a man?


Additional Author's Note: Once again, I'm using Google Translate here, so apologies to any native Xhosa speakers.

Qalisa ngeli xesha unako, intaka encinane - Run while you can, little bird