Chapter 8.
Rotten Things.
Bucky wove through a few hanging vines, careful not to knock the flowers off.
He set up in a small clearing that hedged on a boulder. On the other side, the mountain dropped into a series of inhospitable, cascading cliffs, and behind him, there was nothing to be seen apart from the dense, unbroken rainforests that dominated this part of the country. Khemba was over twenty miles away. One boulder stood between him and the true border of Wakanda – between what Steve wanted for him, and what his desperate mind told him to do.
He had been awake for almost four months. It had been a while since he heard the words. It was as peaceful and quiet as ever in the Borderlands – but not for him.
He sat on his knees, laying out a thick cloth that held an array of knives.
Bucky picked the smallest knife, flipping it in his hand, falling into a familiar rhythm. Vibranium. It was a remarkable material. He was glad Hydra had not given him a vibranium arm. He would have done a lot more damage.
He chose a larger knife, bumping it along his knuckles, shifting from a front hold to a back hold, and then tossing it, catching it. He made a few fake jabs. It was a much more dangerous toy than the ball Ayo had ruined in the city.
Bucky picked up the biggest knife, tied a string around it, and threw it at the nearest tree, severing a melon from its vine. A'di had told him the name. It translated roughly to light-stealer. A master of crawling up trees, choking them, and stealing the canopy light to grow their fruits. She said she never felt guilty for eating them.
He hated the taste, but he had walked two days to get out here and he ran out of bread that morning. He could only take so much from Imo without feeling guilty. He ate everything but the rind, which he spent some time studying. Light-stealer had patterns on its surface. Green, with little white dots like starbursts. Ebara told a story about voyagers using the melons as star charts.
"What are you doing out here?"
Bucky stayed perfectly still as Ayo arrived, saying nothing.
She came around to his front, eyes narrowed, spear in hand, "I said, what are you doing? Why did you leave the village? You know I am meant to be-"
"I wanted to be somewhere else."
"I do not care what you want, James," Ayo said, pressing the spear tip close to him. "It is the order of the king that I watch over you."
Bucky said, "I don't care."
She flipped the spear and jabbed him in the chest with the blunt end, knocking him off his knees. "You should be grateful for his mercy. He could have put you back in stasis."
"I told him to," Bucky pointed out.
"Why are you so miserable? Is it because you hurt that doctor? He has recovered. You have been sulking for weeks over something silly."
Bucky pulled himself up, going back to the tree with the light-stealer vine. He yanked the string on his knife and caught it as it fell.
"What are you doing with these?" Ayo said, nudging the packet of knives on the ground, appearing weary of the one in his hand.
"Why? Are you afraid I'm back to my old antics?"
Ayo had the eyes of someone prepared to talk a jumper off a bridge. "I do not like the way you are behaving. I want you to put that down."
"I can see that." Bucky rubbed his chest, sure that if she had pushed a little harder, it would have broken his collarbone. He went back to sit in front of the knives, on his knees, facing the boulder. It was still light out, but the sun was going to be setting soon.
Ayo said, "You have given up again?"
"No."
"Then why are you out here, if not to kill yourself?"
"I could have done that five feet from the village."
Ayo ventured closer. She was showing that rare concern, making herself human. The Dora Milaje rarely showed any emotion, any doubt, any fear. It was their training, or their nature. Bucky had never asked if they were born into it, or if they chose that path for themselves.
She had been acting differently since the wedding, the cold parts of her muted. She stopped pushing him, stopped criticizing him. Bucky had started to hate having her around. She had seen the worst of him, so her presence made him feel vulnerable. It made him feel weak, exposed. He had been ignoring her, avoiding her, withdrawing until even the lakeshore was too far to walk.
He was not doing it to spite her, to lash out for what she said to him that night, but because it felt like he had finally lost the last pieces of himself.
He was empty, drifting, purposeless.
"What are you thinking?" she said.
Bucky cleaned the blade and returned it to the cloth pouch. "I didn't steal them, if that's what you were thinking. Imo gave them to me."
"You are not meant to have weapons."
"She doesn't know that."
Ayo studied the darkening canopy. "It will be dark soon. Do you intend to stay out here, permanently? Because if you insist, I will drag you back to Khemba."
He said, "Do what you gotta do."
Bucky sat there, facing the boulder, knowing he would have never gone over it. Wakanda could have been anywhere – a small room, under the sea, on the moon. Bucky could run for the rest of his life and never escape the rotten things inside of him.
She was quiet, not following through on her threat.
Bucky let slip what was on his mind, like he did the night of the wedding. "It's been worse since the last one. It's been worse." He choked on the words, the thoughts finally becoming coherent. Maybe she was right. Maybe he had to say it out loud.
Ayo laid her spear down and sat on her knees beside him. She said, "Shuri is working on a solution."
"How would you know?" his tone was sharper than he intended.
She narrowed her eyes, a clear threat, and said, "Shuri is true to her word."
"What am I to them?"
"I do not understand what you mean."
Bucky was getting worked up, letting more dark thoughts solidify and surface. "What am I to you? What am I to Wakanda? You know what it feels like? I'm your pet. I'm Shuri's science project. Sometimes I think she just…"
"I am loyal to the Golden Tribe. Choose your words carefully."
He found solace in her return to form. Threats. He could handle threats. It was much easier to speak his mind to someone who did not look at him with the sympathy that Shuri did, or the affection that A'di did. Someone who was not afraid to tear apart what was left of him.
"She doesn't get it," Bucky finished.
"Poor Wolf, so misunderstood."
"You're awful, you know that?"
"Come. We can at least make it down to a path by nightfall."
"I'm not going."
"I was not joking when I said I would drag you."
"You don't get it, either." Bucky tapped his stump reflexively with his right hand, like he did whenever it came to mind. "It's not just the words. It's not just… mechanical. It's not just… in here," he touched his head.
Ayo sighed, tapping his chest with the butt of her spear. "Are you going to say it is also in here? I have seen very many films that say such things."
Bucky pulled the dog tags out of his robe, studying them. "Maybe."
"What is that?"
"Something I wore before I was… this. It's not that Shuri doesn't care. I know she does. But when I look at this, I can remember the person I was back then. Decades ago. And I remember everything that happened since then. When I was the Winter Soldier I was… I was still me."
"You were being controlled. In Wakanda, you have a chance for peace."
"I was still me," he repeated, as if that would explain the way he felt. "Every time it was the same thing. A mission. Stasis. Reset. Over and over and over again. There was the table, the tank, whatever. I have nightmares about it every night, every time I close my eyes. There is no peace. I'm in paradise and I can't even… I can't feel anything. I can't feel anything."
It fell quiet.
The sun set.
Ayo crafted a torch and set it up near the boulder, giving the clearing a soft glow, giving the surrounding forest a sinister darkness.
She sat against the boulder, facing him. "Your doubts have surrounded you. You are not a science project, and you are not a pet. You are a person. I think you are experiencing PTSD, and it is poisoning your mind. No matter what you think, it does not matter to us what you have done in the past." Her voice was the softest it had ever been, the gentlest. She said, "You are not as alone as you believe yourself to be."
It was the first thing that touched the fog in his head.
Bucky joined her against the boulder, watching shadows in the forest.
Ayo said, "You can have this place for tonight, but we are returning to the village in the morning."
Bucky pressed his hair back, finding that if he looked straight up the boulder, he could see the star-soaked sky. "Thank you."