Author's Notes: Many thanks to everyone for the reviews and discussion! Please keep it coming! This chapter explores some of my theories about Bucky's past as the Soldier and Zemo's motivations.
Canon Notes: Obviously, this is now thoroughly and entirely AU from the MCU, as well as Black Panther. As previously mentioned, this fic assumes that Wakanda's vibranium deposits were more broadly known and that attempted thefts like Ulysses Klaue's weren't isolated. I'm also obviously doing different things with the MCU canon characters like W'Kabi since this fic is AU from the Black Panther movie, although more of the movie will be blended in as we go along.
Chapter Twenty-Five
WAKANDA
Steve and Wanda returned to the bunker with Bucky a few days later, once Dr. Kelile had given Bucky a clean bill of health and devised a new drug regimen to keep his body from simply shutting down again while treatment went on. To Steve's genuine surprise, Tony didn't push him about the Avengers, but Steve made sure Tony saw that when they departed for the bunker, Steve took the shield with him.
Then it was days in the bunker with Bucky undergoing treatment and evenings catching up on the international news while Bucky slept. Bucky insisted Steve fill him in, though Steve suspected that was just a means of forcing Steve to keep up on current events.
"Rhodey accepted a position on the new Enhanced Deployment Panel," he told Bucky during the first week over dinner (paprikish). "Dr. Jane Foster and that former intern of hers - Darcy Lewis - they got recruited too, as civilians who've been up close and personal with enhanced activities. Darcy's not much older than Wanda, but she got her degree in political science; she's had more to say than most of the others, and a lot of people're listening."
"I'm surprised they haven't excluded Foster for bias, knowing she's involved with Thor."
Wanda chuckled. "Well, they questioned her about it, and she said she's not anymore. And Darcy Lewis got all sad-faced, so it sounds like they're no longer together."
"Have you heard from the others?"
"Not much; it's only been a few days," said Steve. "There're a lot of countries looking at standing permission or prohibition against the Avenges crossing their borders. Rhodey and Tony said they'll abide by that, and...I think I will." Steve toyed with his food thoughtfully. "Assuming it's not an alien invasion or something huge and global like the Chitauri. So I've talked to Tony about that a little. Some 'statement of assent' where we agree to abide by foreign borders depending on what the individual governments want. I think I could live with that."
"Some places are putting it to a referendum vote," said Wanda. "Ireland, Denmark, and...Costa Rica, I think."
Once Bucky started nodding off, they quit talking about it, since they knew he wouldn't remember anything they said from that point on.
Steve still felt awkward about trying to interact with the off-duty guards in the barracks surrounding theirs, but Wanda was less so and went outside more often. Later, Steve saw her chatting with them. Some were standing at a remove, but others were engaged in animated discussion wth her.
Maybe it was her power, but Wanda had picked up the language faster than any other Avengers.
The process of undoing Hydra's web around Bucky's brain was a slow one, but Wanda could see and feel it, to an extent beyond the capabilities of the doctors or even Bucky himself.
When the doctors' vibranium fields, electromagnetic waves and drugs failed, Wanda could reach in and gently tease the roots of the conditioning loose - without hurting or terrorizing Bucky, something Hydra hadn't given a damn about. She had to be careful not to make herself angry while tampering with Bucky's mind. She didn't think it would bleed over into his emotions, but she wasn't about to risk it. Not after what those bastards had already put him through.
Sometimes, despite her caution and gentleness, other things did break loose along with the conditioning. Bucky wanted his memories back and probed at those dark places hoping to find them. Wanda tried to ease the stress, but it didn't always work, especially not when what he remembered was horrific.
Some days they only made it through one word, manipulating Bucky's brainwaves to overcome the conditioned reaction. Other times, they made it through as many as five words. The further they went, the harder it was on him, and the Wakandan doctors wouldn't tolerate putting Bucky into distress.
Wanda knew how much it amazed Bucky that there were doctors in existence who cared about things like this. That broke her heart all over again.
Ten days into the process after the Avengers privately reunited, something tumbled loose in Wanda's mental hands, and Bucky's eyes flew open. At his gasp, Dr. Kelile stopped working. "What is it?"
"I - " Bucky broke off with a gasp, staring into the past. Steve grabbed his hand. "I... re-mem..." He trailed off, but pulled free of Steve and tugged at Wanda's wrist. Look at it and speak for him, he meant. Because he couldn't.
So Wanda looked, and even she couldn't hold back a gasp. "Oh my god."
"What is it?" Steve demanded. "What d'you see?"
That face, that hated face. Murderer. So many people here hated him, with good reason: he'd killed their king so callously along with forty other innocents, and suddenly Bucky remembered him...
"Zemo," she breathed. "Helmut Zemo. Bucky - the Soldier - he knew him. They met before...Zemo was Hydra..."
It shouldn't have been so shocking, once everyone had a chance to absorb it. Zemo had been a skilled operative in a barely-functioning state; it stood to reason he might have ties to Hydra. But both Avengers and medics reacted to the news with near-panic and summoned the king.
T'Challa and Princess Shuri arrived, but T'Challa gestured for Bucky not to bother trying to struggle to his feet. "Dr. Damaris reports you have recovered a memory of Zemo. Tell me what you remember."
Bucky took a deep breath and forced himself into the new, all-too-vivid recollection. "I had a mission with him and his team in Slovakia and the Czech... I don't...don't remember what year. It wasn't important for me to know things like that," he added bitterly. "There was...something to do with border disputes. I was to work under the direction of Echo Scorpion's commander. It was Helmut Zemo. It must've been...sometime after 2008, because they worried about Iron Man. We took out over twenty targets - eighteen total targets, we only failed to get three. The primary targets were military - statesmen, opposing Sokovia on the border dispute, but some..." ...some weren't.
Reality drifted away.
"Give the Soldier the dirty work," one of Zemo's men had proposed. "If we must kill women and children, let it be the one who doesn't remember."
"We assign targets for efficiency and no other reason, Varga. If you can't stomach the job, you shouldn't be on this squad." Zemo had said that. "The Soldier takes the targets requiring the most stealth. You haven't been seen in nine years," he'd said to the Soldier. "Maintain that record."
"Understood."
After the sixteenth kill - eight targets, four eyewitnesses, four 'secondary targets' - three wives and one child - most of the team had wanted to declare mission accomplished, due to some announcement that both the Czechs and Slovaks were conceding the border dispute to Sokovia. Zemo...Zemo had insisted that they complete the job to the letter. Every target who could be eliminated, would be eliminated, whether they were a primary target or a secondary target. The warning needed to be well-taken if Sokovia's sovereignty and border was to go unchallenged. They lacked the weaponry and the military force of many other former Soviet states. They needed to make it painfully clear that they could and would still make their enemies cower.
Then there'd been another eleven kills. Most of them were carried out by the Soldier in total stealth. Men, women, children. Two more unlucky eyewitnesses, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and barely had a split-second to realize that they had witnessed an assassination before the Soldier's bullets had silenced them.
" - cky? Buck, can you hear me?" Big, warm hands cupped his face.
Someone made a whimpering sound nearby, a woman. Wanda. Oh God. She hadn't been present for one of these...memory returns before, not like this. Not one that involved so many kills.
Bucky blinked slowly back into a world that was hazy, unlike the vivid past that had slammed into his brain with so much force. Why did it always, always hit like that, powerful and complete, every sight, every sound, every smell, exploding fully-formed back to life in his brain out of the darkness and ripping him out of the present?
Wanda was crying. "'m sorry," Bucky whispered. She reached for him, but T'Challa pulled her back. He was worried Bucky might hurt her. Bucky wouldn't. He hadn't meant for her to see. He'd always been afraid of what it'd do to her if she saw, the way he saw them all.
"It's okay," Wanda croaked, and wiped her eyes. "It's okay. I'm okay."
How could she be okay when she'd seen Bucky shoot four children?
"You didn't do it," she said, and her voice grew steadier, more certain. "You didn't. I saw it. You weren't even...there, not really. He told you what to do, and you did it. He knew you had no choice, no mind except for what instructions he gave you. Your...handlers, they must have explained to him. That's how he knew." She looked at Steve and T'Challa. "I think...I think he knew the Winter Soldier was Bucky Barnes. There's something..." she stared into the distance, frowning to herself. "Something in the way Zemo looked at him. Like he knew something more, something he wasn't supposed to know...he even..." She sucked in her breath. "He had a comic book: an old Captain America."
Steve's grip on Bucky tightened. Bucky didn't mind. "He researched me. He said that, in Siberia. Even if he didn't know who the Winter Soldier really was during that...that 'mission' in the past, it wouldn't have taken him long to figure out after Ultron once he started studying me. There were pictures of Bucky and me."
Princess Shuri was pacing along the walls like an agitated cat. T'Challa sat rigid, though when he spoke, his voice was gentle. "What else do you remember that you can tell us?"
"I..." Bucky needed to remember. These people had a right to know. "I – no." He managed to reach past T'Challa's arm and stop Wanda when she would've spoken for him. "I can do it." I need to do it. I'm the one who did it. Wanda sighed but relented, and T'Challa released her to scoot across the floor and take Bucky's hand. "He didn't care about collateral damage, at all. A few of his men had scruples about going after targets' families, their wives and children. Zemo told them off for it, gave them some of those jobs on purpose, to make sure they weren't too weak."
His arm still around Bucky's shoulders, Steve muttered darkly, "Amazing. He didn't care then, and he doesn't care now. He cared exactly once, when it was finally his own family."
"We've learned all we can from Zemo himself, but there are few records and fewer witnesses," said Shuri, dragging her fingernails along the stone wall. "Perhaps we can place some of his companions if we can obtain pictures that Sergeant Barnes might recognize."
Bucky sat up and rubbed his eyes. "There were seven men on the squad, including him. They went by surnames. I think...the names must've been real. They called him Zemo. The youngest was Varga, but they were all fairly close in age. They spoke Sokovian, they were all nationals...wait..." After. After there'd been others. Rendezvous in Sokovia. An old castle, a fort...there'd been others. And a man with a monocle...oh, shit. "Strucker," he whispered.
Wanda froze, and Steve stiffened at Bucky's side. "What?" asked T'Challa.
"Zemo knew Strucker. We rendezvoused... my retrieval was from Sokovia. A fortress, an old castle. Hydra, they were operating on Sokovian soil and Zemo knew it. There were...not prisoners, but there were 'subjects'. They talked about subjects."
"God damn it," Steve growled. "Zemo knew Strucker after 2008, meaning he probably knew about his enhancement experiments. Zemo must've been part of it."
Wanda closed her eyes, but Dr. Damaris stepped forward. "Now we may better understand his motives, my king, for what bitter consolation it is. Baron Strucker's efforts created the Maximoffs' powers and Ultron's, which in turn destroyed Sokovia and Zemo's own family. Rather than face his own guilt and his complicity in Hydra's activities, he fixated instead upon the Avengers. And his character is as lacking in this as it was when he served Hydra, for he cares nothing about innocent lives."
What about my character? Bucky thought. I didn't care either.
"Stop it," Wanda murmured.
He'd remembered the kills before, but only the kills, no context. Not the mission details or the hours and days before and after. Now it seemed parts of that were still coming back. Maybe it'd be good for something.
Bucky was dimly aware of Dr. Kelile ending their work for the day and urging Steve and Wanda to take Bucky home to rest. It wasn't right, just resting after remembering so much of what he'd done...
"Stop it, Bucky!" Wanda snapped. "It wasn't your fault! You weren't aware of anything."
How could she say that? Of course, he'd been aware. Now he could just remember what he'd been aware of...
"Bucky?"
Winter. It was winter. Everyone wrapped in coats and scarves and blankets. It took longer to identify targets. Once...I got it wrong, turned out it wasn't the target. I never even thought about who I'd killed by mistake.
I thought it was a man, but it wasn't - when she fell, I realized it was a woman.
"Target error. Reassessing." Right back to searching for the right target. Someone ran to her in the street. Too far away, couldn't hear, but saw in my scope...an old woman. She was screaming. Mother? Grandmother?
...It was warm, no, hot and dry in direct sunlight on dry grass. No shade except for the shadows of people kneeling in front of him where he sat, semi-aware on the ground. Big, warm hands. Small, cool hands.
Steve. Wanda. Behind them were a few Wakandans, the men and women who lived in the barracks nearby, hovering with concerned expressions, asking questions. Bucky's grasp of the language wasn't great, but he'd picked up some.
"Is he all right?"
"Does he need a doctor?"
"Should we summon help?"
Wanda shook her head, wiping her face with one hand as she turned to answer them in their own language. "No, Dr. Kelile knows. This is normal. He's okay."
She was crying. Bucky hated that this made her cry. She shouldn't be the one who had to cry at these memories. Out of everything that's happened in the past four years, every time I've remembered, how is it I've never cried?
He needed to not think like that around her. It just made her cry harder. "Ssorry," he slurred, clumsily trying to pat her hand. "'s hard to...control...when this happens."
"Do you want to go inside?" Steve asked. "Or we can stay out here."
"Out here," Wanda answered for him. He vaguely remembered sitting down before they reached the house. The heat felt nice.
The conversation faded to a dull background buzz, like the insects that hummed over the grass and the scrubby bushes. In spite of the summer heat, Bucky shivered. All he could remember was cold wind over his arm between buildings and mountains and blowing snow...
When he blinked back to high summer in central Africa, Romanoff was there, talking to Steve. Wanda was at Bucky's side, rubbing his back. "The ICC and UN are more likely to believe I've been working alone," Romanoff was saying. "So far, the only individuals who've been named as potential defendants are Wanda and Barnes."
"They may still try to charge you, if not with Lagos then with things from...you know, before," Steve said.
"I know. I've been prepared for that possibility for years." Romanoff shrugged. "But the Zemo connection's important. T'Challa doesn't want to wait on releasing that, and I agree with him. Momentum is on our side. We need to not waste it."
Steve sighed. No doubt he knew better than to try to talk Romanoff out of it, but... "I don't like you facing the backlash alone."
Romanoff put a hand on his arm. "You really expect me to believe I'll be alone?" She smiled and kissed his cheek. "You can't be everywhere at once, and I don't want you to be. Get some rest. Be there for him; he needs it." She saw Bucky watching her and gave him an unapologetic smirk. "Well, you do. Do us all a favor and get through this. This guy's a killjoy of epic proportions when you're in trouble, and he gets all the rest of us in trouble."
Bucky had to smile and gave her a mock-salute. A few of the Wakandans laughed. Look, lady, I spent around twenty years trying to keep this guy out of trouble, and all I got was these lousy holes in my brain. Well, that started off funny in his head, but ended less so, so he didn't say it. Judging by the way Wanda first giggled, then winced, she agreed.
A few of the Wakandans left with Romanoff, and the others murmured farewells to her. "They're beginning to like her," Wanda said in Sokovian. "They're glad she'll do this at the request of the king. It will help ensure justice for their late king."
"I guess it'd cause questions if the king himself turned up with this information directly."
"Exactly. Natasha volunteered to deliver it. The king will visit the UN soon after the news breaks and try to further influence the public debate. Most of Zemo's associates are dead, but Natasha will have pictures for you soon."
"That could put more pressure on you," Bucky pointed out. "The criminal investigation into Sokovia was barely halfway through when the Accords were to be signed."
"I know. I think...Stark's lawyers told me that I should wait until I was summoned to appear in The Hague, though I gave many statements informally. If they summon me now...I'll decide."
IRELAND, DENMARK, COSTA RICA SPECIAL REFERENDUMS: AVENGERS WELCOME HERE!
Court cases and legislative arguments proceed in over one hundred nations, but those who put the issue in the hands of the population have received a clear message: the general public trusts the Avengers!
Despite heated opposition from certain members of their legislatures and military, Costa Rica, Denmark, and Ireland's polls all yielded more than a 60% majority in favor of granting the Avengers open access to their soil for law enforcement and civil defense.
Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea have issued statements that the Avengers are not permitted to cross their borders without prior consent, although Iran and Venezuela did include a caveat that if their soil is the target of a confirmed extra-terrestrial attack, the Avengers will be requested for aid. The official spokesperson for the Avengers confirmed that the enhanced team will abide by those countries' decision "except in the case of a global crisis of the highest magnitude." This seems to be satisfactory to Iran and Venezuela, although North Korean president has vowed that any enhanced human who crosses its borders without permission will be detained and/or fired upon.
The current official roster of the Avengers includes billionaire Tony Stark's Iron Man, Wakandan King T'Challa's Black Panther, the android known as Vision, and Colonel James Rhodes' War Machine/Iron Patriot.
Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow has now reappeared in the public spotlight in the Hague, where she presented the International Criminal Court with new findings on the history of UN summit bomber Helmut Zemo and his past connections to Hydra that may have led to his murderous impersonation of the Winter Soldier. Romanoff revealed herself to be the source of the anonymous leaks of Hydra records regarding the imprisonment and coercion of James Buchanan Barnes into becoming the Winter Soldier, employing levels of torture and brainwashing that experts previously believed impossible.
The United Nations has ordered an urgent assembly to discuss these developments at the request of Wakandan King T'Challa, and Romanoff has announced that she will "gladly" appear before their subcommittee on the Sokovia Accords to answer questions.
Steve got the article in an encrypted message from Nat: There, you see? You're not as unique as you think. Millions of others would rather put their faith in people than governments, as long as "people" means you.
Was that possible, that Steve hadn't completely lost the faith of the whole world a year ago?
Do I even want the faith of the whole world?
If not, why had he accepted the shield back from Tony?
Bucky wouldn't have rested after that flashback to his "mission" with Zemo if Dr. Kelile and Dr. Damaris hadn't insisted that they all take a couple of days off. That ended up being the rule each time another flashback hit, because Bucky would lose all track of the present, and while Wanda tried to hide it, everyone could sense it was affecting her too.
"I don't remember any...new people, that I killed," Bucky explained. "The kills were the first things I started to remember. When the flashbacks hit now, they're other details. Things that happened on the missions. Some planning, but not a lot. I don't think I worked with groups much like I did with Zemo's team."
"It stands to reason," said Dr. Kelile, peering at neurological readings. "If you will forgive me for speaking of such things so coldly. The moment of a – a kill, that is the moment of highest adrenaline, the highest focus for you when you were the Soldier. It was the application of your skills. When you were successful, it may also be that those immediate memories were not something that Hydra wished you to lose, so their assault upon your memory focused on older patterns. As more time has gone by and their work has degraded, you are regaining more details that were lost."
"Yeah, that does make sense," Bucky muttered.
Steve didn't know whether to be pleased or not that Nat's investigations hadn't turned up any living Hydra agents who'd been involved with "handling" Bucky or wiping his memories. Quite a few had been taken out by Zemo - more gruesomely than Steve could have stomached doing personally, but he wasn't terribly sorry for any of them.
T'Challa and his coalition were busy whittling away at the Sokovia Accords' membership as Natasha testified, and even Bucky had trouble keeping a straight face when T'Challa questioned Nat about her investigations.
"Is it a moral failing that I'm not more outraged by how easily she lies to the UN?" Steve mused.
"Aw, come on, punk, you lied your ass off as Captain America," Bucky retorted. "Some things are need-to-know especially when it comes to politicians."
Bucky seemed to be trying to make up for the hell Wanda had to eyewitness inside his mind by making her laugh whenever possible during off-hours. And Steve was frequently the butt of their humor. Into the third week of living in the barracks, Steve thought Wanda had to have heard every embarrassing, undignified, or bizarre story starring himself, both before and after he became Captain America.
They were up to eight words "repatterned" in Bucky's brain, as the neurologists put it, before another big flashback hit and brought the process to a halt. This time Bucky remembered the long preparation process for his highest-profile mission: Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963. President John F. Kennedy.
It was one of Bucky's earliest missions too. Hydra had gambled a great deal on his ability to take Kennedy out. "Oswald was their decoy," he breathed. "But he didn't know that. He was just a malcontent...hell, after, he knew it. His rifle misfired, but he left it where they told him; I switched them. After, they weren't sure if they should send me for Oswald...they argued about it in front of me for hours. Zola..."
He trailed off then and Wanda took over, rubbing his hand. "Zola was on the telephone from SHIELD headquarters. He and others insisted someone else would have to finish Oswald. Another shot from a distance would prove the conspiracy. They had enough people in place to maintain the theory that Oswald acted alone, and they could get a man close enough who couldn't be traced."
One of the older medics asked, "Who was Jack Ruby?"
Dr. Kelile and Dr. Damaris glared at him, but Wanda held up her hand. "He's...not sure. He was Hydra's...a man like Oswald, Bucky thinks. They never met. They may have had a hold over him. He remembers his mission commander telling the team that Ruby had agreed to finish Oswald. They said..." she frowned, shifting closer to touch Bucky's temple. He closed his eyes and leaned into her hand. "'He knows the stakes. He'll do the job and he won't talk, but he says...if you gotta do me, do me quick, and take care of my kid.'"
Bucky dropped his forehead onto his arm, and Dr. Kelile said, "That is enough. We'll resume when he has recovered, and he will give further information about these memories only if he feels able. We're here to heal him, not to investigate his past."
"Wait," Bucky mumbled, lifting his head as if it weighed a ton. "No, I want to. I can tell. I want to."
"It will wait," Dr. Kelile said firmly. "You've shown no degradation of memories like these once they return. There's no reason to exhaust and distress yourself recounting them all at once, even for attacks as...serious as your president's assassination. You were not responsible then and you are not responsible now."
"You have your notebooks again," added Dr. Damaris. "Write down what you wish to recall, as you have before. But stop to rest."
Bucky carried his current notebook around with him everyone for the next three days, scribbling like mad, and only put it down to eat and sleep - and to do that, it usually took mild threats by Steve and Wanda to tell on him.
Bucky was having a rougher time with these memories than the ones of Zemo. Steve took to sleeping in his room so he could be there when the nightmares started. Sometimes it was bad enough that he let Bucky come down on the couch and write in his notebook for awhile until he calmed down.
"We prepped for weeks," Bucky murmured, staring at the book. "I never - at least I don't think - they ever prepped for so long for a mission than this one. The President, Steve, the President! Did you know he was Catholic? Kennedy?"
"Yeah," Steve admitted. "That was a surprise, when I was doing my catch-up reading, that we'd had a Catholic President. But Buck," he'd said this so many times it was starting to sound hackneyed, but all he could do was hope that one day it would take. "None of that was you. You didn't kill him. You never had a choice or even knew there was one. Oswald may've been a patsy, but he understood more of what was going on than you did."
"Still," Bucky didn't pause his writing. "People have a right to know what really happened. I need...it's not just about feeling guilty. It feels like writing it down gets it...a little out of my head, at least enough so I can remember where I am again." He sighed and put his pen down, looking at Steve at last. "Not like I've got a right to try and dump it out."
"Yeah you do," Steve argued quietly. "You have a right to live and not carry around what Hydra forced on you. They're the ones who need to pay, not you." He sighed and put a hand on Bucky's good shoulder. "I know, I know, you don't believe me."
Bucky laughed bitterly.
A knock on the door distracted them, and they found one of King T'Challa's senior advisors had come. It was W'Kabi, a tribal leader who was obviously a good friend of T'Challa but less than comfortable about the foreigners in their midst. That he'd come out here to see them was odd, but he addressed them formally, "Good day, gentlemen. I have come to speak with Miss Maximoff on behalf of my king."
Wanda was already trotting down the stairs. "Do you want to speak in private?" she asked, giving Steve and Bucky an apologetic shrug.
Steve was relieved when W'Kabi shook his head. "That is not necessary, provided it will not be spoken of outside this room - even to the other Avengers."
It was T'Challa's call, so Steve didn't need to take too long to decide: "Okay."
W'Kabi explained, "My king remains in New York at the special United Nations session. However - possibly not by coincidence - we have detected a number of intruders crossing our border from South Sudan. These insurrections are rather common, and their goal is our vibranium deposits."
Steve remembered a picture of a brand on a Ulysses Klaue's neck and managed not to cringe. "How do you usually deal with them?"
"Such intruders are detained and deported, and their leaders, when possible, are punished. However, the ringleaders of these groups have learned difficult lessons and rarely try to enter the country themselves. They leave it to the poor and desperate to take the greatest risk of capture or injury," W'Kabi said. "Where possible, we avoid violence or harm to those people, but the same desperation that drove them to smuggling organizations will also drive them to violence when confronted." He nodded to Wanda. "It is this part in which my king asks whether you might be of assistance - and he commands me to be clear that you are not obligated. The choice is yours, and you must make it without fear of his displeasure."
Wanda smiled and nodded. "I understand. He's asking if I can, ah, subdue these people without harming them."
"Exactly, but also only if your presence here can be concealed."
Steve pondered whether W'Kabi was hoping she'd say yes or no. However, Wanda said slowly, "I think so. How many are there?"
"A large group. Three parties have crossed the border, totaling approximately sixty."
"Several miles apart?" Bucky guessed. "They're hoping to overwhelm the defenses of your mines and caches, that maybe one of their teams will get out with the goods while so many of your top people are with the king abroad." W'Kabi nodded. "Or...they're going to wait and then send a stealthier team in while their infantry keeps everyone busy."
"That is also a possibility we have recognized, which is why we must intercept these groups early and as quietly as possible tonight."
Steve shifted - and promptly got Bucky's elbow in his ribs. Yeah, okay. We've reunited the Avengers unofficially, but I'm not the boss of Wanda.
He half-expected her to look to him for advice like she would've done back at the compound. Now, she didn't, just answered W'Kabi calmly. "I can't promise that my power's so completely under control that there's no chance of harm or of my presence here being exposed. But if King T'Challa and you understand that, and you're willing to risk it, I'm happy to help you. You've done so much for us."
If W'Kabi was surprised or displeased by her answer, he didn't show it. "I know that Dr. Kelile will wish to resume treatment of Sergeant Barnes within a few days. We will have you safely returned no later than this time tomorrow."
To Be Continued...
Coming Soon: Wanda assists against a border attack on Wakanda's vibranium, and Natasha is forced to reveal her own past to the UN, but with an outcome the Avengers' enemies don't expect!
PLEASE don't forget to review!
Original Character Guide
Dr. Kelile: Senior physician of Wakandan medical research and hospitals, head of the medical research team treating Bucky. Age 50ish, five-foot-one.
Dr. Damaris: Psychologist/psychiatrist keeping an eye on the Avengers at T'Challa's instruction and heading the psychiatric aspects of Bucky's treatment. Mid-40s, has studied both at home and abroad.