Els…? Baby…? Wake up…
Elsa did not need to open her eyes to know that she was not in her own bed. Or even the bed in the apartment. No, there was something far more practical and impersonal in the sterility of the crisp linen that warmed and secured her as she waded back to wakefulness.
"Doctor Barnes?" Somewhere in the darkness, a voice, a gentle male voice, guided her back to consciousness through her uncertainty. "Doctor Barnes? Can you hear me?"
"Yes…?" Was that croak, that horribly parched croak, her own voice? She chanced a fluttering of her eyelids in a bid to answer her own imminent question but still disorientated and sensitive, Elsa promptly shut them again lest she blind herself with the flash of piercing white of her surroundings. "Where am I…?"
"You are in the medical wing of The Citadel, Doctor. On the King T'Chaka Memorial Ward."
"Medical wing…?"
"Yes, I am afraid so." With the same gentility carrying from the voice into the genial grasp on her wrist to check her pulse, her fellow medical professional was clearly well suited to his chosen vocation and embodied the requirements for patient care perfectly. "What is the last thing you remember?"
The little vet had to think. What was the last thing she remembered? Was it kissing her husband goodbye that morning? Was it scanning an overdue cow to assess if a caesarean section was a viable option or would it be better to wait it out? Was it stopping for lunch or being summoned back to The Citadel then being redirected to the farm…? Wait…
"The lab… I was with Shuri in the lab…"
"You were found unconscious at your farmstead." The kind tone went on from beyond the blackness of her shuttered lids and the examination continued with the monitoring of her blood pressure. "How you managed to get there with the severity of your concussion, we're still not entirely sure but-"
"I'm remarkably stubborn. Ask my husband." Had Elsa been able to endure the glaring brightness of her single suite, she might have noticed the twinge of regret in the doctor's features. There was no one unaffected, not even him, but most people (the vast majority of them) knew by now. This poor woman did not. She had no idea that her husband of only three weeks was gone and only a pile of ash left in his place without much of an explanation of how or why.
"Doctor... Has anyone spoken to you about what happened...?" Before Elsa could question the bite of cautious hesitation from her physician's general direction, a throat cleared from somewhere else: The doorway.
In a sudden stroke of inspiration on her mystery visitor's behalf, the intensity of the beam beyond her protective shutters lessened to almost nothing; only then could Elsa finally open her eyes, albeit with a few adjusting blinks.
"Ramonda?" Illuminated only by the light streaming in from the hallway, there was no mistaking Wakanda's Queen Mother in all her stylish glory; even in a time of crisis, she maintained her trademark dedication to fashion. And surely that made sense? To lift her chin in defiance, stare down her adversary and keep going? If her people saw it, they at least had the comfort of knowing their queen had not given up and so, neither should they.
Beyond her royal visitor, Elsa could just about decipher the pristine whiteness of her hospital room; undeviating from any other hospital room she had ever been in. A door to the left of the bed suggested a private toilet; one where she assumed she would not need to tut, roll her eyes and put the seat back down when she needed to use it. Those colourless walls had reflected the glare of the light, spat it back and bounced it in a seemingly endless assault on the little vet's sensitive eyes and dazed brain; hence the near impossibility of opening her eyes. Turning off the lights had been a simple if ingenious, solution.
The gracious incline of Ramonda's head was enough for the medic to excuse them without question; the trust with his patient and the Queen Mother running deep.
"My child…" An adopted daughter in law, to some, might not seem like much of a connection. But to Ramonda, who had always valued family (however obscure), there was no distinction. Even if she wasn't all she had left. Noiselessly sweeping to the bed, the semi-darkness swallowing the sounds of her feet, the sag on the bed when she perched herself upon it was minimal.
Up close, wrapped in a garment of resistant red, Ramonda held lines in her face that Elsa had never seen before. Exhaustion. Distress. Pain. Helplessness. Dressing to her usual standard to portray strength was one thing but keeping it out of her air when it weighed constantly, inescapably, on her mind was very much another.
The questions started to clamour. Why was her mother in law here, but not her husband? She had a concussion, yes, but how? Why did everyone insist on tiptoeing around what happened but negate to expand on what that actually was?
The door clicked shut behind the doctor and confirmed they were alone.
"Something terrible has happened." Ramonda croaked before Elsa's bewildered spew could start; the fresh anguish in the Queen Mother's beautiful face enhanced by the less-than-flattering florescent light trickling in from outside the window. And in that instance, the little brunette only had one word blaring in her frazzled brain. A word so precious that to align it with tragedy would massacre her and all she held dear.
Bucky.
"Where is my husband…?" The tremble in Ramonda's lip should have been enough; the same with the sniffle and the sudden glassiness of her eyes. For anyone else to force her to relive it would be cruel. But Elsa… Elsa was still oblivious and for every second she remained so, Ramonda envied her.
The Queen Mother took in the strong, pragmatic young woman in the bed and felt her heart crack a little more at the sight of little more than a wandering child, innocent and naive, looking back at her. The temptation was there to simply get up and leave without another word to mercifully spare them both but… as hard as this would be, doing just that would be worse. And she had asked for the heart-breaking task anyway; for Elsa to hear it from someone she knew and trusted.
"We do not know." Ramonda finally choked the words out, but these were the easy ones; even if they did require a steadying breath afterwards. "No one knows."
Naturally, buzzing silence followed and poor Elsa, as expected, had trouble processing that information before she could use it. Dazed, and not quite understanding (be it the concussion or disbelief), she did not outwardly react. To react would imply she knew what to do with it.
"What happened…?"
"The same thing that happened to T'Challa. And Shuri. And millions… billions of others."
"But… What happened…?"
Had Ramonda thought this through? Re-hashing something that she herself still had trouble digesting? Not just because it had taken not one, but both of her biological children (and her adopted son) from her, but because it remained outlandish, bizarre and utterly unbelievable even now.
But… She had to try. In Bucky's name, for his beloved wife. In Shuri's name, for her dear friend. In T'Challa's name, for his wise ally.
So Ramonda, the sudden and unexpectant new ruler of Wakanda, took a breath and gave her daughter in law the dignity of eye contact when she dealt the wicked blow that she had witnessed herself on the security monitors of the lab. That had then been substantiated by the loyal Okoye.
"They… disintegrated." What else could she call it? Through no fault of her own, Elsa's brow furrowed; her sweet features screaming incomprehension that forced Ramonda to continue in a desperate bid for clarity. Not only for Elsa, but her own mind too. "Reduced to nothing but ash. Ceased to exist. Removed from the face of the Earth. Like they had never been."
"But…" The little vet choked on the stutter, the words attempting to sink in but her brain forbidding them and leaving them in limbo. The brunette sank into befuddlement, a classic side-effect of such a severe concussion. Was she even still talking to Ramonda? Did she realize that she was, in fact, not alone and not speaking to herself? The glazing over of her eyes suggested as much and the rambling surely meant she had still not grasped what Ramonda painfully revived to try and tell her. "That makes no sense… We… We were going to win. Steve said we were going to win... We had the Avengers… We had the King's Guard… We had the Dora Milaje… Shuri…"
"Get some rest, child." The Queen Mother (her title extended to more than that now) soothed with a gentle hand to Elsa's forehead, guiding her back down to the pillow; perhaps this wasn't such a good idea after all. She was still raw, unwell and such a mammoth weight when she was unready to process it could be the thing to tip her over the edge; irreparably so. Rising to take her leave when she was comfortable that Elsa had calmed enough to diffuse something worse, Ramonda took one last look at the pitiful reduction of her daughter in law in the bed; a different kind of victim to be claimed by what they were calling The Snap.
"I will send someone in with something to help you sleep. But if you need anything, or you need me, tell them and they will send for me."
