AN: I know I said this story was complete back in 2016. But what meant was, complete for now, until 2018. I've recently done an overhaul edit of this story and replaced every single chapter with an updated version that I think fixes a lot of things. I hope nothing I took out (or added in) makes anyone sad (or mad), but I think they're good changes. :)
SPOILERS for The Black Panther are ahead.
When in Romania
XIV: Outsider
"Is this really the best way to do this?" Wanda asks.
Steve meets her uncertain gaze and nods. "I don't like it…but at this point, it's the only way we all relocate safely."
Sam looks over at the man. He understands why Steve's not completely hooked on leaving, and not just because it'll mean letting go of what little control he has over the safety of what's left of the team.
"If we do this now," Scott says, "and split up, what happens when something happens?"
"You mean if you get caught," Clint deadpans. "Or if another shit storm strikes again?"
Scott gives him a sardonic look and, in a fake Jeopardy style, "All of the above, Stan."
"We've got burner phones for that," Steve says.
"And only use 'em if it's bad," Sam says pointedly in Scott's direction. "Not ya got caught jaywalking, 'bad.'"
Scott rolls his eyes, but after the logistics Steve and T'Challa came up with months in advance are all hashed out, Steve breaks up the meeting in their villa's dining room. The common room empties when everyone filters off to their own devices, except for the two that linger at the kitchen island.
"Are you really sure, Mila?" Steve asks. She nods.
"'S not like I have anywhere else to go," she says, and makes her way around the counter to grab two glasses. "It might be a little too unsettling for him if we both disappeared off the grid."
He grins as she gets two chilly beers from the fridge and pours them. "You might be right."
After the foam rises and settles, he grabs one and she clinks her glass with his. They drink in a comfortable silence for a while, though she feels his reluctance and inner conflict coming off in waves. For how calm and stoic he looks on the outside, it's almost funny.
"Steve, as much as I don't want to overinflate your ego," she teases, "I have to thank you."
He looks back over at her and asks, "What for?"
"Before he and I met, I was…" Milena stops herself, only because she doesn't really know what she was back then. "But I'm here, pretty much with your help…and I've lived more in the last year than I had in twenty."
Steve inclines his head. "I probably didn't have much to do with that, but my ego appreciates it."
"Do you think this'll ever be over?" she asks eventually. Her fingers trace the rim of the glass now that it's half empty. Her eyes met Steve's, and they're probably too honest for her state of mind.
"Hard to say," he says. "I prefer to take things one step at a time."
One step at a time, hm?
She quirks a smile, though it doesn't quite make it. "You're so cheesy."
"I prefer 'classic,'" he smirks back, leaning easily in his chair.
"What you're looking for is—" Milena drops her head onto her arm on the counter and fakes some obnoxious snoring, making Steve roll his eyes heavenward while shaking his head, despite trying not to smile.
"That's nice. You two are made for each other, by the way," he says dryly. She raises her head and laughs.
"That's real sweet of you, Steven. Really." Her grin is infectious enough that the dark colors of Steve's emotions fade to slightly brighter shades.
"I'll be sure to tell him that," she adds, though her own thoughts take a melancholy turn. "When he wakes up."
"I know that I'm an outsider, and I have no real right to ask for more of your generosity," she continues. Her gaze travels the room, to each of the king's council members—one elder for each of the four tribes, T'Challa's mother Ramonda at his left, with his younger sister Shuri, and even with Buhari on the left.
Steve had offered to speak with T'Challa privately on her behalf, but she felt as if this was something she could do to prove her request wasn't made out of some selfish desire to stay in comfortable surroundings, or to stay where safety is virtually a guarantee.
"But I'm willing to serve, and do my part in whatever capacity I'm able." Milena clenches her hands laced together in front of her, which she hopes is her only sign of nervousness. T'Challa himself doesn't make her nervous; her interactions with him in the past, while brief and few, were always easy and respectful. It's the sheer number of eyes on her that has her planting her feet and barely willing to release the air from her lungs.
"I didn't open my home to Captain Rogers and his friends lightly, Miss Malikov," T'Challa says at last. His smile is reserved, but kind. "You've proven to be my ally, and Wakanda has already welcomed you."
She breathes out her relief and bows her head respectfully. "Thank you, your highness."
"There's no need," he says, and she senses as much as she sees the knowing gleam in his eye. "I think I understand well enough why you want to stay."
Shuri shoots her brother a sneaking smile, then discreetly gives her a thumbs up.
.
.
The Council disperses soon after, but King T'Challa notices how one elder's stare lingers on the young woman heading out the doors with his little sister. He falls into step with the older man at a more sedate pace.
"My king," Buhari acknowledges in their native tongue, but it sounds more like a question.
"Do you have an opinion?" T'Challa asks. Buhari smiles marginally.
"Do I seem to have one?"
"Seeing as your stare made her uncomfortable the entire proceeding, I'm inclined to believe so."
Buhari stops then, looking up at his king in resignation.
"She spoke well of your generous nature, my king," he says, and after a moment, his voice lowered, "but haven't we harbored outsiders for too long?"
T'Challa stares back at him with his hands folded securely behind his back. Finally they remain the only two in the throne room.
"If you weren't prepared to see to the task I asked of you, you shouldn't have agreed," he says. "You likely did more harm than good with your antics."
Buhari shakes his head with a mild scoff. "It's unlikely Sergeant Barnes will be rid of what shackles his mind, especially with the company he keeps."
"What do you mean?"
"The women of colonizers," he says, leaning in towards T'Challa, "their very bones are weak compared to that of our people."
"That young woman," comes the exacting voice of the Queen Mother. She reenters the room with the train of her royal blue gown gliding over the floor. "She handled herself well."
Ramonda stares into Buhari's eyes directly, making him lower his slightly. "You would do well to remember, brother, it isn't weakness to bow your head for the sake of loyalty."
"Good luck," Milena says as she hugs Wanda. Having the younger woman as a friend has been like having a sister, and that's a small void Milena never knew had been filled until now. Wanda holds her just as tightly and murmurs back in Russian,
"We'll see each other again."
Sam warns her not to get too comfortable; he's learned that after becoming associated with super-soldiers, you won't be able to stand too long in one place. Scott, on the other hand, just hugs her after a few awkward false-starts. She tells him that she hopes she can meet his daughter someday.
"Yeah, she'll only make you do the glowy-eyes thing about twelve hundred times," he jokes weakly, and she's emotional enough that it gets a laugh out of her.
When Clint hands her a sheet of notebook paper with his wiry scrawl on it, she reads with a combination of amusement and exasperation. It's a detailed list of her old training routine, with some additional points at the bottom for her to work on.
"You're seriously giving me homework?"
Clint shrugs empowers his small smirk. "Unless you wanna get flabby."
"I'll miss your rapier wit," she says dryly, but her snark isn't so effective with her eyes as red-rimmed and glassy as they are. "Thank you, Clint. For taking on one last recruit."
"Kept me busy," he says. There's a certain gleam in his eyes though, that she can't quite figure out. "Don't think you're done though. You've got a long way to go 'til graduation."
She grins a little, letting him go on to grab his things and get onto his waiting jet. Steve is the last to return to the main hangar where Milena stands to see them off. King T'Challa isn't far, making himself a quiet but supportive figure.
"Steve," Milena calls. The Captain goes to her and nods with another one of his reserved smiles. She feels his anxiety and reluctance, pushed to the background by a resigned determination.
"If things change—"
"I know who to call," she promises with a weary smile. She wants to seem strong, like being the only one left on the hangar isn't too terrifying a goodbye.
She knows Steve sees through her when his eyes soften a little.
"Can you promise me something?" she asks.
"That depends," he smirks. Milena smiles back, though her eyes burn with tears. She beckons him closer and he accepts her offered hug, a little stiff but mostly brotherly.
"Find your CIA agent," she tells him. "She'd probably be willing to house you in her basement for a while. Give her that stray puppy look, the one that says you're starved for affection."
"Okay." We're done here, says his tone. Steve pulls away while shaking his head.
"She'll get you a water bowl and everything," she teases, and laughs when he sighs and goes to shake T'Challa's hand one last time.
It's not over, she reminds herself. She holds onto Wanda's words that don't quite soothe the ache in her chest that feels a lot like heartburn.
We'll see each other again.
Days later, after Milena is moved to a single unit in the main palace tower instead of an empty apartment villa, she is able to mollify her boredom when she receives a message from Ayo, one of the Dora Milaje (it's taken a lot for her to keep her composure and not seem so thoroughly intimidated by their commanding presence, especially in front of General Okoye).
She takes one of the large elevators, down and down until it stops at one of the lower levels. She makes her way down a lit metal walkway, though the walls are carved stone. Milena figures the laboratory—in fact this entire building—was likely made by hollowing out the inside of a vibranium-laden mountain. The more she learns about this place, the more it feels unreal as well as completely solid.
"Shuri," she calls to the teen sorting out mannequin displays. The girl looks up when Milena calls in.
"Ooh, sorry. Don't have time for your dead people stories today," she says. And Milena would totally believe her (her attempts to get the girl interested in ancient Greek mythology hadn't gone well in the past), if she didn't notice the little smirk playing on Shuri's face as she arranges some miscellaneous tech on one of her design tables. She gestures to some of it when Milena only quirks a brow at her. "You see? Got lots of Shuri stuff on my plate."
"You asked me to come down here." Milena stands with a hand on her hip while she curiously probes through the prototype equipment.
"That was before my brother came and wrecked my workspace. Now I'm on standby to make sure he doesn't wreck my suit too."
"What suit?" Milena asks. She picks up a beaded bracelet, thinking it must be the same kind as the set Shuri wears on her wrist.
"The new one I designed for him, ungrateful boy that he is." Shuri mutters while fiddling with an old taser gun she still hasn't gotten around to updating, "Hpmh. Causing havoc in my lab."
"Is there something going on?"
Shuri shoots her a glance. Milena senses her hesitance.
"He's dealing with something very important to our people," she says eventually.
"Well, now I'm infinitely more curious," Milena grins and takes a seat at the workbench, across from Shuri. "…May I ask?"
The girl sighs and proceeds to tell her about a man—Ulysses Klaue, who some thirty years ago made a trail of death in his efforts to smuggle vibranium out of Wakanda. He has made a profit for himself in the black-market arms industry ever since, and had virtually disappeared until today, when the Wakandans received a tip that the man would be in Busan, South Korea to make a deal.
"My brother just arrived in Busan," Shuri reads from a screen she brings up holographically on the table, which displays a GPS location blinking in red.
"I see. I hope his mission is successful," Milena says, and she means it. But she also can't help but be more fixated on the reason why Shuri might've called her down here. Shuri must have seen it in her eyes, because she smirks and pulls up another display.
"But here's my progress on our other little project."
Milena's eyes scan the flow of numbers upon numbers scrolling past. It's complete gibberish to her. "What is this?"
"It's a formula," Shuri says. "It will not only map out the deviations in his neurological pathways, but remove what trigger words and memories HYDRA used to reinforce their programming."
Milena's mouth drops open in disbelief. Finally, she looks up at Shuri with new tears in her eyes that she can't altogether blink away. "Can this really be done?"
"This was my one condition." Bucky's right arm holds her gently. She had already promised that she was on board with this, but now that they're standing in the middle of the lab surrounded by beeping monitors and that gaping chamber mere feet away, Milena just can't understand why she's the one falling apart while he's so goddamn calm.
"Back when Steve and I were brought here, I asked them to do this. For everyone's safety, including my own," he tells her. Said blonde stands just outside the room; he can't help but glance discreetly through the large glass walls every now and then. He'll wait until it's time.
Milena nods. "I know."
She understands that the scientists, they need this—a consistent flow of data in order to monitor him consistently. So they can figure out how to help him. She understands this is the only way, but her hand that wants to rest on his shoulder falters. They've already disconnected his left arm, just in case they pull the wrong thing out of his brain.
"I'm sorry." She smiles even though tears are already sliding down her cheeks. She hastens the wipe them away herself as she takes a shaking breath. "I don't know why I'm—"
Bucky stops her by gently holding the side of her face, soothing his thumb against her cheek. He leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead. "It's gunna be okay."
"Look…I can't give you a surefire guarantee, but my calculations are rarely wrong," Shuri says, but her bright smile is a comfort. "I'm optimistic."
Milena offers a small smile back. She doesn't let her hope soar as high as it wants to, out of fear of the alternative. To distract herself, she fiddles with the bead bracelet and traces the runes she can only assume are Wakandan.
"Those are Kimoyo beads," Shuri says, again garnering Milena's attention.
"What are they for?"
"Everything, really. Saying they're multifunctional is an understatement." Shuri comes around the bench and takes them from the woman's hands, only to slip them onto her wrist. With a press of a bead, a host of holographic images appear in front of them. Milena jumps in her seat, startled, but soon she can't take her eyes away.
"Communicator, tracking system, access to Wakanda's public database. Well, public to us at least." She winks.
"So, fancy cell phone and stylish accessory?" Milena grins. "Oh! It tells time."
"Well, of course it tells time! It'd be pretty stupid if I left that off, of all things," Shuri laughs. But her eyes shift nervously, making Milena wonder if she'll find a an earlier design lacking in a few features. "Well, because I like you, I'll let you keep that."
"Really?"
"Yes, lady. Now, you must stop distracting me. I have—"
"Shuri, you're on," comes a voice from a speaker likely built into the workbench, when an image of Busan, South Korea appears like a horizontal, three-dimensional landscape, following a car down a narrow street.
"Yes!" The girl pumps a fist and runs over to a large sandbox filled with what Milena thinks is vibranium-infused soil, and with a single vehicle seat which only just materialized in the middle.
"What is that?" she asks faintly.
"It's about to be the sickest car chase ever," Shuri tells her.
"Focus, we're behind Klaue," T'Challa says from the speaker. Milena can't leave now. She kneels next to Shuri and watches the chase in fascination as Shuri controls an actual car her brother must be riding in Busan. At least, until Klaue shoots a seismic blast from hisvery much machine gun blaster of a left hand which destroys the real-life car, as well as the hologram.
Shuri drops into the sand next to Milena, and they share equal looks of shock for a moment.
"Come on, we can see what T'Challa is seeing through his tracer."
They watch the king of Wakanda corner Klaue's wrecked car on the end of a busy street, surrounded by tourists and locals alike snapping pictures at the destruction in front of them with their phones and cameras. Okoye talks him out of killing the man right then and there, and another woman talks them both into getting out of dodge in the SUV of one CIA agent, Everett K. Ross.
"This is not good," She whispers hotly.
"You think?" Shuri frowns. "But what else can we do?"
Milena stares down at the man who, she now realizes, is the former Joint Counter Terrorism Task Force Liaison. This man had a hand in keeping her detained in Berlin after she was picked up by the German task force in Bucharest.
And here he lies on one of Shuri's tables, which monitors his heartrate, brain activity, internal temperature, and whatever else as their technology heals the bullet wound in his spine. Shuri explained that he took the bullet for one of theirs, a Wakandan spy called Nakia, who also happens to be T'Challa's ex-girlfriend.
Be that as it may, bringing the man here was an enormous mistake. And without Klaue, who managed to escape from an interrogation room with the help of his allies.
"We have taken in another outsider, one who is obliged to report back to his country," she hears Okoye say to T'Challa. "Wakanda will be exposed."
"Not only that," Milena says, earning the attention of all three Wakandans. "If he sees me, he'll know."
T'Challa meets her wide, worried gaze.
"He'll know that you helped us."