Author's Notes: Thank you all so much for the feedback! Please keep it coming!
Canon Notes: This chapter marks the end of the overlap with Civil War, concluding with the after-credit scene of Bucky going into cryo and Steve's conversation with T'Challa. I'm following the comic canon that T'Challa ultimately joins the Avengers - this fic explores how and why.
Chapter Six
Wanda came into the research center exam room in time to hear Dr. Kelile say, "We need to see how the trigger words affect you, Sergeant Barnes."
Aloud, Bucky didn't say anything, but Wanda felt the wave of sheer terror roll through him. His eyes darted to Steve, and then past Steve to Wanda in the doorway. He knew the doctors were right...but he was afraid of the words. He knew abstractly what they did to his mind, but more terrifying was the vagueness, the otherness of his memories of when those words were spoken, and everything he did while under their control.
Bucky knew it should be done. He knew the Wakandans wouldn't try to harm him - or wield him. What they learned might be valuable.
Steve restrained himself from weighing in. He knew Bucky needed to make the decision on his own.
After a long, painful silence, Bucky gave a curt nod. "What can we do?" Steve asked.
"The king will be here," said Dr. Kelile. "He will want you to be close as well."
Steve opened his mouth to say yes, then caught himself and looked at Bucky. In spite of his distress, Bucky smirked.
It was one of the last times Wanda saw him smile for the next three days.
She stayed as inconspicuously as possible nearby while the medics and psychiatrists questioned Bucky for everything he knew about the trigger words and how they were used. As unpleasant as the questions and the answers were for Bucky, Wanda sensed he preferred that vastly to the prospect of hearing the words spoken. She also sensed she wasn't the only one who realized he was stalling.
It couldn't last.
When they finally decided there was nothing else to learn by word of mouth, Dr. Kelile and the other senior medics led them to a sealed, soundproof bunker several miles away from the city, with King T'Challa, six of his formidable female guards, and all of the available Avengers.
At the urging of Dr. Damaris, Wanda and all the Avengers apart from Steve remained on the opposite side of a wall of two-way mirror along with the medics who were observing. Only T'Challa, his guards, and Steve were permitted to be in the room once the medics finished placing recording devices around the room.
Neither the vibranium-reinforced glass, nor the steel and concrete walls shielded Wanda from the fear and shame coming off Bucky in waves, or the anxiety and pity of the watchers. T'Challa had a dual nature like a more natural version of Bucky and Bruce Banner - only he'd taken on his two selves by choice. T'Challa the king was prepared to see this done to safeguard his people and honor his debt to Bucky. T'Challa the man loathed the necessity of it.
They'd decided T'Challa would say the words. Steve was prepared to do it if Bucky asked, and Bucky knew it, but neither he nor any of the others wanted to put Steve in that position.
In the testing room, once the doctors and monitors were ready, T'Challa told Bucky, "Tell me when you're ready to begin. If you feel you must stop, you must tell me. I will not do this to you against your will."
Bucky swallowed and nodded. After several deep breaths, he focused all his attention on the floor and muttered, "Go."
T'Challa inhaled and began. "Zhelaniye."
It stung Bucky like a hornet. Some of the doctors on the monitors hissed in alarm.
"Rzhavyy."
A hand reached into Bucky's brain.
"Semnadtsat'."
The hand began to squeeze. Wanda gasped.
"Rassvet."
Otherness, something was creeping like scalding amber over Bucky's mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting with ever-flagging willpower not to shout for it to stop. Wanda bit the edge of her hand to keep her own mouth shut.
"Pech'."
Steve stood rigid. Bucky shuddered. The plan had been not to fight it, to know he was safe, but he was forgetting the plan, and all his instincts screamed against the thing that was rising up and smothering everything that he was. T'Challa's conscience railed against doing this; it was wrong, wrong, wrong - Wanda stifled a sob and took a step back.
"Devyat'."
The guards tensed; Bucky jammed his knuckles against his teeth. Have to let it can't let it no yes no yes stop it finish it can't have to can't can't can't... T'Challa's voice wavered. He didn't want to watch, but felt that he must.
"Dobroserdechnyy."
Wanda couldn't breathe. Bucky couldn't breathe. Steve shifted his weight; every instinct screamed to lunge forward and stop this. Darkness, otherness, was drowning Bucky; his breathing grew more and more ragged.
"Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu."
STEVE - Bucky whirled away, turning his back on Steve and T'Challa - the guards jumped, but Bucky stayed in place, his foundering self still hanging on to what he remembered: they had to do this. Not worth it, he wanted to shout for it to stop, but what if there were still others...and I owe it to Steve...Steve...God...
God had died for James Buchanan Barnes a long time ago. He couldn't even remember when or how. Wanda swallowed a strangled cry and stumbled back without meaning to, both hands clapped over her mouth - don't scream - someone caught her elbow - horror, horror, horror surged like endless echoes against the walls - the doctors gazed at the readings on the screens and horror at what it must feel like - Clint remembered and horror - Scott and Sam imagined and horror - T'Challa inflicted it and horror - hell was crawling and oozing over Bucky's brain and he fought to remember...
"Odin."
Ending...ending, teetering on the precipice, Bucky choked out a groan, but held on, held out...
"Gruzovoy vagon."
Gone.
Something hurt, and Wanda found herself on the floor, clutching Clint's arms as a lifeline against the sucking, drowning tar. Bucky was gone, and she was going...
"Wanda! Wanda! Hey! Come on, you're okay, look at me." Clint tapped her cheeks, and Sam was at her other side, talking in her ear.
But all she could focus on was...him on the other side of the glass. The blank, empty other standing in front of Steve and T'Challa, lowering his hands from his face without any recollection of why he'd been hiding his face to begin with.
The Wakandan doctors whispered to each other, sickened by the sight in the room and what the monitors were showing them. "He's someone else now. That is another man, with no memories, no power of choice, no will. Blessed gods, this is monstrous."
T'Challa and Steve stared at the stranger before them, searching in vain for some recognition in his empty, dead eyes. He only met T'Challa's gaze.
T'Challa stared back, astonished, appalled, and finally glanced over his shoulder toward the mirror glass, at a loss. What to do now? What to say now? "You are...the Winter Soldier?" he asked slowly.
"Gotovy soblyudat'."
"Jesus. H. Christ," Scott breathed.
Clint muttered to Dr. Damaris, "We need to take her out of here."
"- no," Wanda croaked. She leveraged herself against Clint's bulk to get back to her feet. "No. I need to see." Need to feel it. To understand. That's why we did this. Or else it's for nothing. She swallowed her gorge and made herself concentrate. The mobile scanners in the room could relay electrical signals from Bucky's brain to the doctors, but Wanda could do something else. She could feel it and understand it as even their best neurologists could not. Focus. Study it. Understand it. Help him.
T'Challa glanced at the screen on one wall, where one of the watchers wrote the translation of the Soldier's words. He looked at the Soldier and asked, "Do you speak English?"
"Yes."
Steve was a whirlwind of anguish. In a small voice, he asked, "Bucky?"
Who the hell is Bucky? The Soldier didn't say it aloud, but the complete lack of recognition of the name was plain on his face.
Wanda sobbed.
T'Challa swallowed hard and took a deep breath. To ask the question that occurred to him was repugnant, because he knew it would break Steve's heart. But he had to know. He forced himself to gesture towards Steve Rogers. "Do you know this man?"
Everyone watching caught their breath as the Soldier's dead gaze darted at once to Steve, meeting his friend's eyes, searching him...but it was only a few desperate heartbeats before the Soldier answered: "No."
Steve's breath caught. He had known immediately what the Soldier would say, seen it in those empty eyes, but it went through him like one of the Dora Milaje's spears.
"What is your name?"
The Soldier returned his attention to T'Challa without hesitating. "No name."
"What are you called?" Steve breathed.
The Soldier didn't respond. T'Challa swallowed again and ordered, "Answer him."
"Soldat." It was a name. It was a function.
One of the Wakandans quietly spat an obscenity that roughly meant "spawn of the swine of hell." Similar sentiments darted through every mind in Wanda's range - apart from the empty one in the center of it all. Monsters. Bastards. Scum. Who does this to someone? What does this to someone?
What now? The plan flitted through T'Challa's and the doctors' dazed minds, stifled by their horror and loathing in a weak parody of the otherness that had smothered everything that Bucky Barnes was. An order. The man who had spoken the words to awaken the Soldier had to give him an order.
T'Challa didn't want to do it. It was grotesque. It was a violation of all human decency, to command someone so utterly empty of will and choice. He and Steve could see it in Bucky's eyes. If T'Challa ordered the Soldier to kill everyone in that room, the Soldier wouldn't hesitate.
At a loss for how to proceed in a situation so far beyond the boundaries of humanity, T'Challa glanced around the room and focused on the leader of his guards. At another time, Wanda might have spared the mental energy to be impressed by their rapport; all of the Dora Milaje caught his aim, and the woman in question, Okoye, gave a barely-perceptible nod. All of them would follow any command he gave, but her consent was important to him now, in such a situation where he faced the result of men robbing another of all shreds of agency.
T'Challa braced himself, then pointed to Okoye. "Without causing injury. Disarm her."
Okoye was one of the best fighters of the Dora Milaje, and in stance and prepared for the attack. It was fortunate for her, because the Soldier sprang into combat so fast that even Clint and Wanda could barely keep track.
The other guards, T'Challa and Steve drew on all their self-control not to lunge into the fray. The Soldier and Okoye were a blur of flying limbs and Okoye's spear that was his objective. Had he been ordered to kill her, she would have had to resort to deadly force, but it hampered both of them, having to try to avoid harming their opponent.
So severely wounded so recently, without an arm, the Soldier was at a severe disadvantage. Had the Soldier possessed his metal arm, he might have challenged her more. She pinned him, but as soon as she loosened her grasp, he went for her again, unhesitating. And again and again, and after several minutes, T'Challa called a halt. "Stop."
The Soldier stopped so fast that he was vulnerable to Okoye's last blow to the solar plexus before she registered her king's command; she straightened and bowed in apology. The Soldier rolled away from her and came up at attention to T'Challa again.
They would have kept going until one of them was down. Everyone knew it, even the Soldier. To him, that was simply reality: compliance.
What now? T'Challa considered the familiar stranger and finally asked, "Do you understand Wakandan?"
"No."
Letting out a breath, T'Challa looked at the nearest camera. There was no point in trying to hide the observers; the Soldier would know, but he clearly wouldn't care. "Do you have enough information?"
Dr. Damaris took a deep breath, and said reluctantly, "My king...he must be given a command that...a rational man would not follow. He must be ordered to do what...his real self would not do."
They all knew what she meant. They'd talked about it before. T'Challa hadn't really forgotten. He was just hoping that it wouldn't be necessary.
T'Challa's eyes glittered. Duty and humanity warred in the Wakandan king, and for a few moments, he now considered refusing. Observations be damned. No decent man would do this, even for a greater good. He looked at Steve, but now Steve tore his anguished eyes away from the Soldier and met T'Challa's bleak gaze. He nodded.
Do it. Like we planned. Do it so we can figure out how to save him.
Bucky had told them not to tell him how they were planning to test him, so that nothing would be at risk of carrying over into the Soldier. But that worry was unfounded, Wanda could have told him. Inside Bucky's mind now, there was just...nothing.
Steve caught T'Challa's eye and nodded again. Just get it over with.
T'Challa closed his eyes for a few breaths, until his resolve returned. It might save Bucky's life. It might save other lives. They'd decided before. He couldn't falter now. So he opened his eyes and pointed at Steve. "Cause him pain."
Wanda reeled backwards from the avalanche of revulsion that swept both rooms, but the Soldier was oblivious. He went for Steve and slammed him to the ground. T'Challa barked, "No severe injuries," before he could check himself, even as his mind chanted, Forgive me forgive me forgive me...
It wasn't Steve's forgiveness he needed; it was Bucky's. For the Soldier's one hand forced the unresisting Steve face-down, dug into a nerve bundle in his flesh and twisted - Steve Rogers was arguably the most enhanced man on Earth, the strongest who could still be recognized as human, but the Soldier knew his work, and a cry of shocked pain burst out of Steve. The Soldier chose nerves that radiated, maximum pain with minimal damage as ordered, and the mission's shouts and groans soon gave way to a scream.
"SHIT!" Sam shouted, palms against the glass.
Steve, trying not to resist, trying to focus through expertly-applied pain, cried out. "Aah...god - damn - it - BUCKY!"
And Wanda felt it. Like the swipe of a nettle across her brain, a pinch from deep within, so fast that none of the visual observers saw it, not even T'Challa or the Dora Milaje saw it. But she felt it from Bucky, and the Wakandan medics gasped in unison.
Hearing his name, from Steve's voice, in distress... someone reached back through the darkness for the surface.
The Soldier's mind was only the mission, the command he had no power to do anything but obey, but something was prickling like stinging splinters, pushed up from deep inside. "He's there," Wanda rasped.
Barely. It faded almost at once. But over the doctors' shoulders, there were lights flashing, and the graphs that represented his brain activity suddenly shifted.
Teeth clenched, growling against the pain, Steve twisted in Bucky's grip just enough to turn his head and meet his eyes..."Buck?"
It stung the Soldier again, sharper and harder. This time, he wavered, and T'Challa saw it. Dr. Kelile gasped, and Sam hissed, "Okay, enough, enough..."
T'Challa wouldn't have heard him, but obviously thought the same. "Enough." The Soldier withdrew his hand...but even as he tried to focus back on his commander, his eyes darted back to Steve, confused, distracted.
It wasn't much, but enough that Wanda felt elation burst to life in the two Wakandan doctors nearby. Dr. Kelile was beaming. "It's not absolute," she breathed. "He's already fighting it."
We can save him. We can undo this. We can free him. We can end this.
T'Challa looked at Steve and asked Bucky softly, "Do you know this man?"
The Soldier hesitated. "I...don't..." Confusion, little stings of recognition prickled through his mind as he leaned away, shifting his weight like he might lunge for Steve again...or considering that maybe he should lunge for the handler instead. Where am I...what is...who are...
Wanda sucked in her breath and turned to the doctors. "Stop it now, he might hurt the king!"
Dr. Damaris dove for the microphone. "Sputnik!"
The Soldier dropped so fast that even T'Challa and the Dora Milaje jumped. Steve dove for him and pulled him into his arms, trembling, eyes squeezed shut. "Captain, are you all right?"
Steve actually shook his head, then realized what T'Challa meant and croaked, "Yeah, I mean yeah, 's not that bad, I'll be okay. God...God, Buck."
T'Challa looked toward the glass. "What happened?"
Dr. Damaris eyed the readouts and said, "This suppression of his reason and memory seems to have begun to destabilize. Miss Maximoff feared he might become aggressive towards you."
The medics watching the monitors muttered to each other, and one of them called Dr. Kelile over. "These readings suggest the collapse did not remove the Soldier personality. He may awaken as the Soldier."
"What?" Steve looked up, still cradling Bucky against his chest.
Okoye stepped towards the king. "Then he must remain in the bunker until it can be reversed."
Sam peered over the medics' shoulders at the monitors. "That doesn't make any sense. Last time, in Berlin, he woke up and he was Bucky again."
Steve sighed, tightening his grip on his friend. "On the helicarrier...in DC, when we were fighting...I put him under with a choke hold. When he woke up, he was still the Winter Soldier."
"Maybe," said Clint. "It may take a little more than losing consciousness. You told me he'd crashed a helicopter in Berlin, right? Steve had to pull him out?" Steve nodded, searching Bucky's face as if there was some explanation there. "Cognitive recalibration. Hit him really hard in the head." He shrugged as they all blinked at him. "It worked for me and Erik Selvig. Knock out the Hulk and Bruce Banner wakes up."
Dismay rippled through the medics, but Okoye said, "Until we are certain, he cannot leave this room."
T'Challa shot Steve an apologetic look. "Then make him comfortable. Captain Rogers may stay with him."
"Thanks," Steve murmured.
The medics were still setting up two cots when Bucky stirred, and the Dora Milaje barked an order that sent them all scrambling for the exit. T'Challa left the two medics and rejoined Steve standing over Bucky. Several of the Dora Milaje hissed protests in Wakandan, but he waved them off - though he did acquiesce to Steve's urging that T'Challa stay behind him.
When Bucky opened his eyes, there was no missing it: this was still the Soldier.
And yet...he looked at Steve with the slightest furrowing of his brow, confused, visibly trying to hide that he was trying to place him. "Soldat?" asked T'Challa.
The Soldier's gaze snapped to the king. "Gotovy soblyudat'."
Steve sighed. Scott looked at Clint. "You said you and the other guy got brainwashed - like this?"
Wanda deliberately avoided looking at Clint, but she felt him shake his head. "Dunno. I doubt it."
To all their surprise, T'Challa tried to be direct about it. "How does your compliance end?"
The Soldier blinked. "I don't understand."
Steve stepped forward. "Your mission. How do we cancel your mission?"
"No current mission." The Soldier frowned.
Wanda leaned toward Dr. Damaris. "He won't know. He doesn't remember anything when he's under their control. Only his training." Dr. Damaris whispered it in Wakandan into T'Challa's earpiece.
"Is this enough for me to try to bring him out of it?" T'Challa asked.
"I believe so, my king. We should try to end it before placing him in stasis."
"All right. Close your eyes and hold still," T'Challa ordered in English. The Soldier obeyed without hesitating, and Steve cringed, but didn't try to stop T'Challa as he stepped forward.
To Wanda's relief, T'Challa took the time to measure exactly where his blow would fall, and his aim to the skull was precise, bringing on the full force of his vibranium-reinforced fist. Bucky dropped as fast as he had at hearing "sputnik," and Steve caught him.
Several medics yelped, and the lines on the monitors pitched down, then up. "I, uh, think that worked," said Scott.
T'Challa bent to help Steve lift Bucky back onto the nearest cot. "He must stay here until we're certain. Do you wish some food to be brought?"
"No, I'm not hungry, unless..." Steve eased Bucky's head down and looked toward the glass. "You guys okay?"
"Yeah, we're fine, man," said Sam. He looked at Wanda. "You okay?"
She nodded. "May I come in? I think I can help be sure."
T'Challa looked at Okoye, who nodded, and he beckoned. One of the guards outside the room unsealed the door so Wanda could enter. Dr. Damaris trailed after. "You were in some distress during the process."
"I'm all right now," Wanda murmured, kneeling at Bucky's side and putting a hand to his cheek. T'Challa had left a bump on his head, but both Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier had experienced worse. It wouldn't leave permanent damage. In his unconscious mind was Bucky again. "It's Bucky," she said, stroking a finger on his temple. She looked up at T'Challa, who nodded and motioned the Dora Milaje back.
"I don't understand," said Steve. "I hit him in the head - probably Sam too - when we fought in Washington. It was over an hour of fighting him until he started to remember, and even then, I hadn't hit him."
"We can't expect all the answers with a single experiment," said Dr. Damaris. "We now have data on this process which I'm quite certain is unmatched anywhere in the world except by Hydra itself. Sergeant Barnes has asked to be in stasis for the safety of others while we continue to study it, and his wishes should be respected."
"Yeah," Steve muttered roughly. "Yeah, I know." He put a hand on Bucky's good shoulder, the turmoil in his heart making Wanda light-headed.
"I could still read it," she told him. "I think I'll be able to help."
T'Challa returned to the bunker when Barnes came around a few hours later. At first, he didn't remember anything. "D'it work? What happened?"
"Yeah, it worked," said Rogers.
Barnes caught on at once and looked at T'Challa. "What'd I do?"
"Only what I ordered you to do, and for that, I apologize," T'Challa answered.
Barnes swallowed hard, staring hard at his friend. Rogers shook his head. "It's fine, Buck. We had a plan. We stuck to it. You didn't hurt anyone."
"And you started to remember Steve," Maximoff added. Barnes' eyes widened.
"It's true," said Dr. Kelile. "The effect of those triggers on your brain is powerful, but we recorded it. We will determine how to break them."
If Barnes had changed his mind at that point about going into cryostasis, T'Challa would have abided by his choice. He had no doubt that Rogers was hoping Barnes would do just that, but in the end, Rogers held his peace and left the decision to his friend. As much as T'Challa pitied both men for facing such a hell that was in no way their fault or doing, he had to agree that Rogers had made the wise decision to keep silent. Bucky Barnes could be certain of very little about his own mind, and had even fewer choices of how to act on it. Better to let him keep the few choices he did have.
T'Challa surreptitiously stayed nearby during the last day and night before cryostasis was ready, and observed the Avengers.
Barnes mingled with them after seeing the chamber being made ready, his fear diminished by that knowledge. Rogers, on the other hand, was withdrawn and quiet, trying and failing to put a brave face on his distress. Maximoff and Wilson were tag-teaming the pair with distractions; Wilson with Rogers and Maximoff with Barnes, while Barton and Lang stayed at a remove and chatted, pretending they weren't observing from a distance.
T'Challa worked nearby that last evening with Shuri, but stayed within earshot of his guests, and on occasion, looked in on them to find himself making inadvertent eye contact with Barton. The archer smirked. T'Challa smiled, if a bit sheepishly.
"I'm Clint."
"I don't care." Perhaps I should have cared. If I'd learned more about who I was fighting and why, perhaps it wouldn't have come to this.
Barnes was required to stop eating and drinking for twenty-four hours before entering stasis, and the team joined him in solidarity. "They make you do that in Siberia?" asked Barton.
Lang and Rogers winced, but Barnes was untroubled. "I wasn't really aware of it. After missions, it was...dunno, nothing but IVs. Or I just don't remember."
Dr. Kelile huffed. "Cryostasis has been initiated in emergencies, but if the digestive tract is not clear, revival can be risky, not to mention a painful process. I suppose Hydra cared nothing for such things." Barnes actually smiled at her, but there was a wry, bitter quirk to it that told them all they needed to know.
Much to T'Challa's interest was that Wanda Maximoff seemed to be growing very close to Barnes, and he to her. He spoke Sokovian, and the two of them murmured to each other in the brief moments when the doctors (and Rogers) left Barnes alone.
The morning that the cryo unit was ready, Barnes said a calm farewell to the rest of Rogers' team, and muttered to Wilson, "Keep an eye on him, will you?"
"Been doing that, no plans to stop," Wilson replied. He gave Barnes a small, sly smile, not unlike the ones that T'Challa found himself exchanging with Clint Barton, as if to acknowledge their old conflict and the change in his opinion. Perhaps there had been conflict even among Captain America's followers. "Don't sleep too long. He misses you."
Only Rogers accompanied Barnes into the self-sustained wing. Powered by an uninterruptible source somewhat similar to Stark's arc reactor (only perfected more than twenty years earlier), it housed the stasis units and life support for patients still in long-term care.
A few hours later, T'Challa pulled rank to meet Rogers in the outer waiting area alone. The American was composed and gracious, but something in his manner reminded T'Challa of himself and his siblings as they accepted blessings and condolences for their father. His friend is not dead, but they're separated again. All because of another man's lust for vengeance.
"You know, if they find out he's here, they'll come for him," said Rogers.
T'Challa did not need to think long about his answer: "Let them try." T'Challa had no fear of any foreigners trying to take Barnes back by force. Others had tried to take far more from Wakanda by force, with far more to gain from the efforts, and still failed. Wakanda and her people - and her kings - were well-practiced at defending what was under their protection. The great basalt Black Panther loomed over the foggy valley of the capital, reminding all of its power and protection. "The same extends to you, and the rest of your team, so long as you need it."
"And the same risk extends to us being here," Rogers countered.
"I know." T'Challa smiled thinly. "I won't claim that it's mere generosity. My father and forty other innocents were murdered by a man whose aim was to destroy the Avengers. I can't undo anyone's suffering, let alone my own, with vengeance against Zemo, but there is some justice in thwarting his goal. That means the Avengers must survive this."
Now Rogers betrayed dismay and looked away from the window, directly at T'Challa. "I...your highness, every one of us're outlaws now. A hundred seventeen countries, including mine, they voted that we could choose to be under government control or stop altogether. Nobody's going to take kindly to any of us staying in action."
"For now," T'Challa agreed. "But I believe that will change before long. The Accords went unsigned because of Zemo, and I have heard that several nations, including your own, are beginning to question whether they are wise. I agree, and Wakanda is now among those taking a second look in light of these events." Rogers stared, and then dropped his eyes. T'Challa could guess what he was thinking about. "I haven't forgotten Lagos, Captain. Nor have my people. We wanted accountability, but these last few weeks have exposed some flaws in the model that was developed." He smirked at the understatement, and even Rogers gave a small, weak laugh in response. "I'm not advising that you return immediately to fighting international crime. Only that you not allow your skills to become rusty."
Rogers smiled absently. "You know...a few days ago, after he decided to go into cryo...Bucky said that."
"Then trust his judgment. As it is," T'Challa beckoned him from the window. "The Dora Milaje pride themselves in being prepared to challenge a threat from any corner of the world. They'll be very disappointed if I never give them the opportunity to test themselves against Captain America."
Obediently following him from the room, Rogers smiled more fully.
To Be Continued...
Coming Soon: The fugitive Avengers encounter a Wakandan boy who has something to say about Lagos, and the effect falls hardest on Wanda, who struggles with the toll of her past.
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Translation: "Gotovy soblyudat'." – Ready to comply.
Original Character Guide
Dr. Kelile: Senior physician of Wakandan medical research and hospitals. Age 50ish, five-foot-one.
Dr. Dahab: Chief of medical technology research, doctor and engineer. Age 50ish, six-foot-three, wears wire-rimmed glasses. Specializes in uses of vibranium for medical purposes (looks like his job is part of what Shuri does in the Black Panther movie and prelude comics.)
Dr. Damaris: Psychologist/psychiatrist keeping an eye on the Avengers at T'Challa's instruction.