Chapter 7.
A Coward.
Bucky heard voices.
He opened his eyes in a plain room, devoid of furniture. It was made completely of metal – the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the door – and windowless. Every wall was dented and the door handle had been ripped off. A single light fixture gave off a miniscule glow. The remains of a blanket and a pillow lay around him, ripped to pieces.
His last memories flooded back, reality blending with fantasy. "What happened?"
The voices stopped.
Bucky got up, nearly falling over as he leaned on his hand. It was heavily bruised, maybe broken. He registered the details too slowly, one piece at a time. The walls were painted with blood, drips and streaks coming down from the dents. His whole hand was red, the skin split, one of the knuckle bones exposed.
"What the hell…?" he said.
Okoye entered the room with Ayo and another of the Dora Milaje by her side. Ayo's face briefly showed something, but she shut it down masterfully. Shuri and T'Challa came in behind them, somber and apprehensive. It looked like a funeral procession.
Bucky fought back panic. "What did I do?"
T'Challa came closer, waving off Okoye when she tried to join him. "He will live. The blood on your hands is your own." His voice was the most soothing thing about the situation. "What do you remember about what happened, Sergeant Barnes?"
"We were doing the test and…"
"Is that all you remember?" Shuri said.
Bucky found a devastating vein of fear in Shuri – but she should be afraid. He forced himself to take in the scene again, the dented walls, the broken knuckles. The Winter Soldier manifested as unchecked rage.
T'Challa recaptured his attention. "You were comatose for many days. When you woke in the hospital, you broke the arm of the doctor who came to attend to you. We put you in here after that. Be glad the walls are not made of vibranium – you would not have a hand left."
Bucky leaned on the wall, taking the news like a gunshot to the chest.
Shuri came closer, shadowed by Ayo. "It appears Hydra has created more complex programming than I originally believed, perhaps a failsafe to prevent what I am trying to do. Now that I know it exists, I can find a way to work around it."
He felt like he was at the beginning of another long uphill climb. Bucky was breathless, lying at the foot of a mountain he couldn't summit.
It must have shown in his eyes.
T'Challa came closer, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Breathe. I can imagine the way you are thinking, though I can't say that I understand how it feels. I am assigning a permanent guard to you for as long as it takes for my sister to find a solution. We do not know what other traps they have planted in your mind."
Bucky was doing his best not to spiral, to keep his voice steady, logical. It came out as desperate begging. "No. Just put me back under. Please. I'm not worth all that."
"I know of at least one man who thinks you are," T'Challa said, now holding both of his shoulders, as if to prevent him from making a run for it. "It is not for debate. I am the king here, if you have forgotten."
His tone offered no room for argument.
"Good. We are in agreement." T'Challa gestured behind him, to where Ayo stood stiffly by the princess. "I am asking you to fill that role, Ayo. You are a formidable warrior and you are familiar with Sergeant Barnes and the work that Shuri is doing."
Ayo dipped her head, betraying no emotion.
XxXxX
"You are pronouncing it incorrectly."
Bucky studied the word, tracing his finger along the chalkboard as he tried to put meaning to the letters. It came out garbled, a poor imitation of a beautiful language.
Ayo pronounced it for him, adding, "You are hopeless."
"We can agree on that, at least."
Bucky laid his chalkboard down, sitting back against the cool mudbrick wall of his home. Ayo was sitting by the door, as always, her spear nearby. She liked to watch him struggle through memorizing sight words, offering insults and corrections. Bucky was not doing well in that department. He had gone months without a good night of sleep. He assumed the serum was the only thing keeping him functional. His nightmares had entered his waking thoughts, replaying clear memories of the people he had killed, fixating on different targets when he saw something that reminded him of them.
Ayo held out her hand and he passed her the board. "Here. A simple word."
Bucky read it aloud in Wakandan, "Clouds."
"Very good. You even noticed that it was plural."
Bucky copied the word, satisfied that his writing, at least, had improved vastly since he left the city. He knew many of the symbols by heart, even the ones that represented words or sentences in isolation. Working with Imo had given him a few common Wakandan phrases. A'di had been away for a while, across the border in a refugee camp. Ayo was stone cold, spending her time in silent contemplation.
She could be right next to him, and Bucky still felt completely alone.
He kept to himself, baking and reading to pass the days.
Ayo said something in Wakandan.
Bucky still had a hard time with speaking. He simply shook his head.
"Hopeless," Ayo said. "I said, is this all you are going to do? You sit here alone when you are not working. I am depressed, just watching you."
He had no words to explain that lately, everything was bringing up horrific memories, flashes, stabs of guilt and grief. It might get better if he could just have a few hours of sleep, but the darkness was there, too. He was only safe here, in his routine.
He said, "What am I supposed to do?"
Ayo gestured outside. "Perhaps you will be less miserable if you engage with this community."
"I… engage."
She scoffed.
Bucky said, "What about you? I've seen the way they look at you."
She narrowed her eyes, her tone becoming dangerous, "What do you mean?"
"At least they just think I'm weird. They're scared of you."
Ayo drew her spear from the wall, "As they should be. It is not the nature of the Dora Milaje to socialize. We must be prepared to sacrifice anything to protect the Golden Tribe."
"And the Golden Tribe is T'Challa and Shuri's tribe?"
"Yes."
"And the Border Tribe is where I am."
Ayo nodded.
"What are the others?"
"I'm sure someone in this village will know."
Bucky said nothing, his thoughts already elsewhere. He wiped the board and started over. Ayo watched him with sharp, dark eyes, with no further criticisms. Maybe she recognized that he only had a few more feet to fall before he hit rock bottom.
XxXxX
Bucky pressed a lump of dough flat, rolled it again, flattened it. With every cycle, he added a few spices, a handful of nuts, until they disappeared into the mix. It was an artform, the only one he had ever been good at.
Imo was sitting against the wall beside him, sewing a collar onto a flashy piece of clothing. It was the nicest material Bucky had ever seen in Khemba, and when he asked her what it was that morning, she threw her sandal at him. He learned not to take it personally. Imo lived in a constant state of annoyance. She was a lot worse with other people. He spent almost every day with her, baking, cleaning, hiding from the things that reminded him of his past – nearly everything, these days. She was finally used to him, so much so that she came to find him when he was late one morning, when he found himself trapped by the lakeside. She brought him out of his thoughts by whacking him on the side of the head, taking him by the hand, and dragging him back to her home.
If he was going to engage with anyone, it was her.
"What are the tribes of Wakanda?" he asked.
She paused her sewing, "Why?"
"I'm trying to learn."
She said, "Golden. River. Mining. Border." She repeated the names in Wakandan. Language was one of the things they had found a rhythm with. She knew how much he could understand, and he tried to speak her language whenever he could.
Bucky recognized the Wakandan names for the tribes, having seen them in his songbook.
Imo said, "Oven."
Bucky stopped kneading and loaded the dough into the oven. She had both going at once, six loaves of bread in various states of rising.
He gestured to a metal plaque on the wall. It had a large, unfamiliar symbol on it. "What is that?"
Imo glanced at it, "Family."
"Your family?"
"Yes."
She said nothing for a while. Bucky formed another dough, worked through hand cramps as he kneaded the ingredients in. Berries. It was a favorite in the village. Imo finished sewing the collar onto the garment and folded it up, setting it neatly on the table next to the stacks of bread they had baked that morning.
She took the plaque off the wall and sat by him again, holding it in her lap, running one gnarled, dark hand over its unblemished surface.
Imo gave him the story in Wakandan, using simple terms. Bucky understood a lot of it and pieced together the unfamiliar words. She told him she was born in the River tribe and her mother was a widow who married someone from the Border. Her new grandmother passed the art of baking on to her eighty years ago. She had no husband, no children. She concluded the story by saying that she also had no regrets.
She said a word that struck a chord in him. "What does that mean?"
Imo thought on that for several minutes, and then said, "War."
Her plaque told the same story she did. It was not a symbol, but an abstract illustration. Imo pointed to waves, to jagged lines, to figures that stood tall, to lines that dwindled and faded. She came upon the last part, a single line projecting into the corner, and said, "Me."
"You're the last of your family?"
She nodded, carefully collecting the plaque and putting it back up on the wall. She gestured around them, to the ovens, the bread stacked on the table, "I am the last."
Bucky would not have asked for the story if he knew it was going to be such a downer.
Imo didn't seem sad. She gathered the folded garment into her arms and brought it to him. "For tonight," she said. "Celebrate."
Bucky said, "What's happening tonight?"
"Celebrate," she repeated, and went to tend the ovens.
XxXxX
Bucky came out of his house, tugging on the straps of the robe Imo had sewn for him. It was excessively complicated and he would have struggled with two hands. With one, it was impossible.
Ayo laughed the moment she saw him.
"Help me or shut up," Bucky said.
She was too amused to be mad. She switched the orientation of the garment, pressing a few strips of fabric flat over his shoulders. He was covered in zigzags. A red piece of cloth wrapped over his left shoulder, encasing the place where his arm should be, and a white cloth passed around his neck, leaving his right arm exposed. She finished by tying his hair up in a bun, saying that it was not supposed to touch the robe.
Ayo was dressed up, too, forgoing her traditional golden accents, wearing a sleek black dress that had impressions like scales. Her bald head was covered in sparkling golden flecks.
She said, "Did Imo make this robe for you?"
"How did you know?"
"It is in the fashion of the River tribe." For once, Ayo sounded relaxed, almost friendly.
Bucky said, "What are we doing?"
"Engaging."
It was a gathering. Bucky and Ayo walked along the lakeshore, passing clumps of villagers wearing the glowing blue face paint. It was more organized now, more ornate. Each face had its own unique patterns, tight lines or swirls, dots or rosettes. Half of the men were shirtless, their chests canvases. Bucky had learned a lot about the paints from Ushiwoh. The blue paint was made from a material found in the bottoms of rivers, and the white paint was her specialty, made from chalk that she collected in a nearby mudflat.
The patterns represented the history of individuals, their families, their passions.
A few newcomers walked among the villagers, wearing massive headpieces like the one A'di wore when he met her. Some had dazzling sprays of feathers across the fronts. Some were sparkling with gems.
Ushiwoh, Ebara, and N'junta saw him immediately, and their excited squeals drew the attention of the visitors.
"White Wolf!" the boys chanted.
Bucky tried a smile, wondering how it looked.
The boys begged Ayo to let them hold her spear.
"Absolutely not," she said.
Ushi grabbed Bucky by the arm, tugging him down. "I will paint you, White Wolf." She went straight to work, making lines and waves. She surrounded his eyes in white, like the markings on the other men.
When she was done, Ushi turned to Ayo, "I will paint you, Warrior?"
Ayo simply shook her head.
Bucky came out with glowing patterns on his arm, neck, and face that blended into the waves on his robe. Ayo came out with narrowed eyes and a general dislike for children. While the villagers chatter, organized, Bucky and Ayo stood aside. She had been his guard for a little over a week and having her there was no longer the same as being alone – it was almost a comfort. He was not the only outsider in Khemba anymore, and despite how cold she could be, she at least knew who he really was, for better or worse.
Imo walked past them, stopping to put her hand on Bucky's chest and murmur an unexpectedly warm greeting in Wakandan. She joined a group of elders, immediately launching into a series of complaints.
"She likes you quite a lot," Ayo commented.
Part of him knew that was true, but a bigger part could not believe it. No logic about it, no reasoning. Bucky could not imagine he was a pleasure to be around, especially now. He was floating through life, just passing the days, waiting for Shuri to come back and say she had all the answers, that she knew how to fix him.
Slowly, the chatter died, and the villagers gathered in a ring around a flat patch of dirt. Torches were lit, adding an ominous orange to the glowing faces of Khemba. Obeze stepped into the center of the ring, dressed in an extravagant gold smock.
He started speaking in long, drawn out sentences.
"What language is that?" Bucky whispered to Ayo.
"It is Amharic."
Bucky lost focus thirty seconds into the speech, unable to listen to a monotone in a foreign language. He surveyed the gathered faces instead, recognizing everyone from the village, remembering about half of the names.
One of the young women, Zesa, was standing with a male visitor. His face was almost completely covered in paint, glowing like a mask, and he wore notably different clothes than anyone else. He had nothing on except strips of cloth on his ankles and wrists, adorned with wooden beads, and leather shorts which appeared to be dotted with gold. When he moved, the gold shimmered, and the beads on his wrists and ankles knocked together.
"Is this a wedding?" Bucky whispered.
Ayo nodded.
Obeze finished his speech and stepped back. Drums started up. The painted man stepped into the ring and started dancing. His movements were stiff, sharp, until the singing started. Soft, sad notes rang in the night air. Zesa joined her new husband in the ring and they danced together.
A rhythm spawned from the audience and the people of Khemba moved like the waves in the lake. Every second brought an increasing tempo. Soon, the singing was frantic, the painted man spinning and stomping, making the beads on his ankles crash together.
When their dance was done, more people entered the circle, including the village children. Ushi had given herself elaborate markings, with different curves and curls on her arms. When she drew them together quickly, it looked like a snake. Ebara had the wolf paint, his favorite, but he lacked the grace and rhythm his sister had. He howled instead, hopping around between adults. N'junta joined him, and together they stole all of the seriousness from the dancefloor.
"You should dance," Ayo suggested, nudging him.
"You're not dancing."
"I don't dance."
"Me neither." Bucky hesitated, "But I used to before the war. I was pretty good."
Ayo cocked an eyebrow, disbelieving.
It must have been the atmosphere, because Bucky was allowed to laugh. "I was!"
"I would not believe that until I saw it. Go on."
"Our music had a few more instruments in it."
"Music is what you make of it."
Bucky watched the people of Khemba dance, only a small part of him wishing he could join them. He appreciated it, enjoyed it.
For the briefest, sweetest moment, he remembered the person he was back then. He remembered a dark wooden floor, a jazz band swaying on the stage, a pretty girl holding his hand. He was a kid with the world at his feet, a whole future in the works, and there was no storm inside. Everything was simple, easy. He was happy.
Bucky was moved by the memory.
He left the party early, quietly, retreating to his hut to deal with the aftershocks. He sat on his bed, put his hand over his heart, where his dog tags rested, trying to hold onto the memories of the dancehall. But they slipped away, like they always did.
Bucky pulled his hair down, tried to get the robe off. Ayo had done everything but sew him into it. With only one hand, he couldn't get the wrap off of his other shoulder or around his head. The cloth strained under his strength.
Ayo appeared in his doorway, "You are going to break it." She came over, reaching out to undo the button. Bucky pulled away from the touch. "Let me help you."
He balled his first into the sleeve and tore it in half, expecting the tightness in his chest to be relieved. It was still there, making it hard to breathe.
Ayo said, "What happened?"
Bucky rested against the wall. "Nothing."
"Your face says differently. You must talk about it, if you want it to get better."
"I want to be alone."
"I do not think you do."
Bucky closed his eyes, trying to tune her out.
"You are punishing yourself for things out of your control," she said.
He snapped, "Leave me alone."
Ayo became intense, angry, saying what she must have been holding back since the moment she met him. "Out there, you have a village who will embrace you. I have seen it. You say they look at your strangely, but they do not. It is in your head. You are a coward, hiding from your problems in this house! You are weak, and you are a coward."
Bucky got in her face again, like he had in the Citadel, only this time she had a knife to his throat the moment he was close enough.
He said,
"I don't care what you think of me – I don't care what anyone thinks. Nobody can hate me as much as I hate myself."
In the glaring silence that followed, the realization buried itself in him. She was right. He was punishing himself. He was weak. He was a coward. If he had been stronger, all those people would still be alive. He would have stopped himself. He would have resisted their control.
He had never wished more that he had not survived that fall.
He had never felt such overwhelming self-pity.
It crashed over him, disgusted him. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, and there was no taking it back. He could never fix it. He was a twisted, broken thing, standing there and pretending that one day he might be whole again.
Bucky returned to his bed, lying with his back to her. He shut his eyes, inviting the nightmares to come and eat him alive.