He hated being touched. It wasn't something he'd expected.

She'd said there would be all kinds of side effects from the healing process. But this one seemed to have come from nowhere.

The Wakandans thought it pretty damned funny. Not because they particularly loved touching or being touched themselves, as far as he could tell they didn't, one way or the other. But just because of who he was. Who he had been.

Among them, his spells of deep, helpless rage, the second phase of what was apparently his healing, had been. . . mostly bemusing. When it had first happened, and successively, they had thrown him out into the wilderness and there he would rage until exhausted. Africa, was, in a word, massive, and out there, they told him, he could certainly feel free. The times it had happened in the beginning, he had dragged himself back, hotter than hellfire and drenched in sweat in places he did not know could sweat, to find a wonderfully cool bath and a big meal waiting. And a party. In Wakanda, there was always a party somewhere in town. And they had thrown him a few when he had repeatedly come back in one piece.

This hatred of touch was not because he hated people, nor because he considered physical touch some kind of evil. It had simply. . . happened to him.

The triggers were gone, Shuri said, explaining again and again what she had done—but it was too complex to understand. His memories were okay, she'd finished, encouragingly. Everything was exactly where it should be. Yes. But not quite.

He could have told her or anyone that the triggers were gone. There was silence in his head. No unknowable impulses like subtle clicks whose source he could never trace. Never root out on his own, even when his self acutely wished it. He could also have told her that his memories were intact; no longer disassociated. Whole clusters of his neurons, in fact. Nothing he could access to cure or save himself, but intact nonetheless. But not in a normal way.

Floating globes now existed before his eyes when he closed them. In them he was somehow the version of himself he could not reach in waking. Bucky from Brooklyn, and he knew who that person was. With an extension of his arm, he could touch the globes—and see a perfect future, a perfect life.

And the nights that went beyond perfection, the ones that left him weeping into the dawn, he reached forward and touched not only the watery things, not only the Bucky he knew, but him. Touched him. Like a membrane of silk between them. Feeling him touching his skin like never in real life, breathing his name and leaving him trembling inside worlds he could not manage to piece together before the dawn.

And sometimes the things simply floated away. As if teasing him. With each extension of his arm, floating farther away.

And on those mornings, in those early days, when he became conscious to the dawn, to himself, he had raged. Anguish, being the first phase of his healing, had given way. Touch startled the hell out of him, and he had let loose. Describe, the Wariza who had been overseeing that first part of his passing from one phase to the next had demanded. He hadn't. Dropped from a Mag Wave-Rider, plummeting head-first from the skies through a bright, shining atmosphere, before a deployed canopy could break it into a gentle fall, suddenly understanding the central plight of Lucifer.

Touch was not evil, not even disagreeable. And had never been a problem for him. Now it hurt him nonetheless. Now he found it careless and inconsiderate. The way people recklessly touched, as though as though all it took was the extension of an arm.

On the mornings after being able to touch the things, he laid weeping—anguish passed, no more raging. Next phase had been an ocean of tears. Globules of neurons severed from his sanity, inside which he could be . . . everything. To him, for him, and all at once. He felt it as real as he could breath.

"Elileh," the Wakandan of the River Tribe who came to buy his goat's milk had called it. For a long time he'd thought it to be the name of something sacred. A god or ancestor. Why wouldn't it be, after the story he had helplessly told her. It had been a bad morning, and she had come slightly earlier than usual. And when the guy who came to buy his goat's leather had heard him reverently mutter it—he'd learned to skin old, passed on goat for leather, would you believe it, and it needed saying that it wasn't as easy as the goatherd who'd sold him his tiny herd had made it sound, damn that motherfucker. But upon the leather buyer brushing hands with him, he'd flown back. Looking probably as startled as he felt, since he was sure as a well oiled carbine that people didn't react this way to grazing fingers with a guy as good looking, the young leather buyer just watched. He'd felt himself blushing, saying hoarsely, "Elileh." Then again, "Elileh."

"Elileh 'ka?" the leather buyer asked, face tightening with both confusion and— what was that, exactly. . . a funny face?

Not sure what the question was—shouldn't the word have been explanation enough?—he quieted further.

"Da' ami," he said slowly, haltingly. Mine. Belongs to me.

"Da' ne rey ?" the leather buyer asked. What's yours?

He took a long, slow breath, swirled his hands in the air, hoping the leather buyer would understand. "Elileh," he said, then realized he wasn't saying to correctly, so maybe that was the confusion. "Da' mini." Not da' ami.

"Elileh," the leather buyer repeated, as slowly. "Da'ana?" The god. . . it's yours?

He nodded. So hard, again and again. Said again in Wakandan, The god. He's mine.

The leather buyer didn't say anything for quite some time, a crinkle still in his brow. Seemingly intent on putting together every stitch of his broken Common Wakanda to find a thread of lingual communication he could understand. He gave him the time. When life itself had become a seventy-year suspension fluid, patience, he had discovered, was to be had in near universal quantities.

"Ka nien kaah—" and the leather buyer stopped, switched to English. "Who told you this?"

"Told me what?"

"Beh Elileh. . ." that Elileh. . . and the young man stopped once more, restarted, still in Wakandan. "That . . . the god is yours."

He named her.

And then the leather buyer let out a cackle so wild and high pitched that it took a moment before he was able to stop himself. But eyes sparkling, and teeth no less so, because in the young man's amusement, he was seeing all of them, the amusement came under check. And had he said young, because if this kid was twenty, he was a day. And he was also seeing. . . Yeah, there appeared to be tears of laughter in the young man's eyes.

"What's Elileh?" the leather buyer asked him in English. "What's . . . your god."

And Bucky Barnes would not say.

For eight months now, ever since Shuri had awoken him prematurely from his emotional salvation, his cryogenic sleep, he had been a seething, writhing whirlwind. Woken him with a smile over him, when he had wanted to shout and cry seeing her, having prayed it would be another seventy years into the future, that they had locked him away, sparing him everyone and everything he had ever harmed or been obligated an explanation—including the frail boy he had loved beyond life itself in Brooklyn. But who had always, always, seemed in his own world. To whom he had so very strangely awoken one day to find a man he could neither face nor comprehend. Whom he had tried to kill. It was not a world he could live in. And when that glass had locked in and that gas had come up, he had prayed to be delivered from all of it. Instead he had woken up to find himself still alive, still in these times, still full of anguish and pain. With no way out.

Woken much too early, later to discover on the instructions of Dowager Queen Ramonda, and with no explanation ever given or received, he'd been in screaming anguish. For days he had wept. Cried and cried, and God, what pain. Only to never have single tear drop. Struggling to get his tears out and frying his already fried brain, succeeding only in excruciating scratches and lacerations to his mind.

Who knew even being able to cry was a sign of healing.

He had almost drowned in his tears that would not come. And shortly after, he didn't mean figuratively.

Led by Shuri—since beside his innate magnanimity, T'Challa had not really fully dealt with his father's death, so that despite assurances to Captain America himself, the King hadn't quite given him the time of day, definitely not ready to sit for tea with the one he had believed for so long had killed his father—the Queen's household had nevertheless out of obligation and pity taken him down to the Waters of the Ancestors. There, he had been told, upon the coming of the Takers from the Lands Beyond Kush, all of Wakanda had consolidated their past. There, they said, he could find cleansing.

The Lands Beyond Kush, he came to know, was their way of explaining who and what lay, and had happened beyond the fall of the Egyptians, over whom the nations beyond and around Wakanda, but not Wakanda itself, had felt necessary at one time or another to conquer. That for millennia Egypt—the place he had only ever been taught as the home of pyramids and ancient tombs—had been the pride and hub of all that was East African. Kingdoms from all over the Continent sending envoys to its courts, pouring into its economy and bolstering its capacity. But once Egypt was taken, once the betrayal of the Kushites, straight north of Wakanda, was known, the Wakandans had declared a firm no to that. And so the Wakandans had not allowed the Kushites, nor the colonizing Phoenicians, nor the later Greeks, Persians, the Macedonians, nor Rome, to make it south beyond Kush. So that Kush became all that was proximate in their history, past the academics they taught their children of the Lands Beyond. So that by the time Portugal and Spain, Magellan and Christopher Columbus, ruled the oceans as they'd been taught in school and later Army training, to the Wakandans that seemed like yesterday, and of little interest. Mere kah'rus—Johnny Come Latelys, as they were called Stateside.

The Waters of the Ancestors were a turquoise bath of the genetic origins of the human race. It had never even occurred to him that such a thing could exist. How could it, for the Polish boy from Brooklyn. But to stand on the cliffs of what he did know was the Rift Valley, and look down and see not merely waterfalls or lapis lakes as were on maps, but waters which appeared to have no bottom and seemed to call his name.

You, the Winter Soldier, the voices said in more Wakanda than he understood in conscious life. You the White Wolf. You will come to us. And we will keep you safe.

And that first morning in the Waters, his tears had come. That morning of his resurrection into their society, just as the sun rose, turning the world blue and yellow and an onyx black, he had finally cried for the boy he no longer was, and struggled so hard to remember. Cried for the wars that had left shattered bodies like his own, for the generations of dead left on its battlefields and in its ravines. For the people whose lives he had taken, for the darkness inside his head that seemed to allow no light. He had cried while Queen Ramonda held him lying limp in her arms, seated on the shores of the Waters and rocking him, far from her own children and subjects, at whom she had hissed, Stay away with your casual approaches! Laughing and partying at a man who needs true help. Stay away!

Crying in her arms because in all the universe, no boy from Brooklyn should have ever experienced the things he had been. "It happened to you," the Queen had whispered. "And you should accept that."

And he had. God knows he had. Whether his frenetic, fucked up brain—scrambled like over-fried, sizzling eggs, impossibly put back together again—had wanted it, he had. Wanted it more than anything in his conscious life. In Wakanda, his conscious life seemed hostage to forces he had never met. Between his dreams he woke, opened his eyes to the ancient women of the Wariza staring down at him, a sight that otherwise might have instigated fear, but here merely made him look on, for they had seen much, and his struggles were but the latest instructions the Queen had stamped upon these women as obligation.

Crying, embarrassed and crying, he had thought, Don't let her down, don't let her down. Find a way to be strong.

He hadn't meant the Queen, in whose presence he didn't know how he managed even to speak, much less not embarrass himself by continuing to cry like a goddamned baby goat all the time. He meant Shuri. In her eyes he had seen the same manic light of blazing logic, science, and human potential as in those of his captors. Except that she had been brought up humanely and could therefore tell when her experiments were in emotional pain, in need, in human anguish. In need of a degewor, a fucking shot of whiskey, and there she could pull back and stop, with a wide, teenage smile. He knew, at this stage, that of assistance to super-powered beings were the geniuses of the Starks, one of whom he could count as a victim of his own destruction, the doctor known as Strange, a "mister" described as Fantastic, and firsthand, a kid from Queens named Peter Parker. Seventy years ago, had he walked into an Army recruiting station—oh, forget that, the Army had been like him, nothing but grunts following orders; had he walked into the Pentagon itself with such information, he would have probably spent the seventy years locked in a room inside the complex being probed.

Degewor administered, liquid courage secured. Newly awoken, post-Queen's personal-administration, and hellishly miserable. A perfect cocktail for the Polish kid from Brooklyn who looked around and merely asked himself where the Staten Island Ferry was. Even if here, he didn't want to know. For when he looked up and saw a giant gyro-craft approaching, crystal loops swirling like a light show at some future-rama fairground, he didn't want to know. Arm likewise secured in a cushy sling, colorful and stylish, and so light and comfortable he seemed to be wearing nothing, making him smile at the opaque wall of uniformly applied chemical that preserved 99.99% of an original wave signal, she explained to him. Whatever that meant. Only, he knew the thing he was seeing himself reflected in made the word "mirror" in the outside world seem like a poor prank. He had never even known his eyes were that shade of blue.

She'd also had an arm awaiting him. He'd tightened his lips and shaken his head. She hadn't argued. Just dropped the lid, indicated that he follow. So he had followed female-Peter Parker out into the wilderness.

That is, if your idea of a wilderness was a Technicolor paradise. Lush, trilling with birdsong. That first morning going in with her, he'd half expected to see fig-leaf covered dames slinking out of the underbrush, whispering his name. Ha, he wished. And there, feeling pleased, more himself to be thinking of pussy in the midst of his internal hurricane, anguished passed, rages past, everything subsiding and phrase three of healing beginning, she had walked him out onto a cliff face. He hadn't even been aware of the rise in terrain.

That day, of his rebirth into their society—for mourning was accommodated into community, but not the potential destructions of anguish or rage, which required isolation—she had laughed at his shocked, skeptical gaze, staring down at the Waters into which he was expected to. . . What had she said? He turned to her.

"Jump!" she cried, twice clapping her hands, hard, and doing a little dance. Then turning, began clambering back down the cliff face, down to the shores. Apparently to witness him resurface? Hopefully resurface. The fall wasn't what would kill him. He'd jumped knowing earth and rock were all that awaited, so water was a fall into his bed. But once down there— he'd been there once, at the beginning, when this healing process had started, when he had heard the voices down there, and their touch was like striking a match against skin. His heart already burned up to his throat remembering. He was going to voluntarily do this again?

Yes he was. Because he wasn't going to let her down. This kid who believed in him when he didn't even know who him was.

And falling, the Wariza had come after him, these old women who didn't know the name of any living Wakandan, not even the name of the King, who didn't speak the common language, and didn't care. Holding him down while he had struggled for life, doing so with as much human dignity as possible. Not wanting to look desperate and pathetic in their eyes—nor in the eyes of the Wakandans gathered above. For his rages had garnered fans, and now warriors congregated to watch him rise of die. His most pressing thoughts after a fifty-year reign of terror—that he not look bad before his colleagues. But already, looking down on him from the cliffs as if at a floundering fish, only deserving care and understanding, the Wakandans had looked worried. Expressed that concern, as the Waters amplified all of life. Was he not a human being and should he not have more courage in the face of destruction—and if he did not, could they not help in finding him a smoother path to peace, a way out into the Serengeti perhaps, where he could be with his kind until he was human once more. For Wakandans were not inhuman and would help if he asked.

But he would have none of that. For while he knew nothing about the East Africans, he was still that Polish kid from Brooklyn and he was gonna rise or die in it.

He loved the memory now. Because what had he truly known of life except what the Wakandans had taught him. Even if it had been a chore locating Shuri afterward, then ignoring her exaggerated shocked looks, and cries of, "White Wolf! You are here! Who'd have imagined!"

His had certainly been and still was a terrible struggle. Yet even baby Shuri could explain to him that his pain and anguish was Nothing but a highlight pen to the ancestors! and that he needed to pipe down about his pain and struggles, which he had never actually vocalized to her. But, she claimed, she could hear his neurons screaming at her all day. She told him to stop his struggle and allow the space, because he was home in Wakanda now, and the Ancestors had already lived through anything either of them could imagine. Worse! because current times were good in comparison to the ancient world in which the Ancestors had to operate.

"People always think it was so wonderful! They show you all those old depictions and make it look so colorful, and cute, and just beautiful. But you, know," she said, turning to him and dipping her head—she was at her consoles. "It wasn't all that. Wireless communication for instance was only discovered in the last five hundred years. So think of it, if you wanted to send a message across the country in those days, you were shit out of luck! Don't tell anyone I said shit, Bucky."

She was among the few 21st century humans who listened long enough to call him Bucky.

"But the Ancestors themselves, you know, they were just like you and me right now! They too saw the world ending and they wondered how?! Why?! And still had to come together and deal with it, even with their limited science."

Calmly, he had asked, "Shuri, is the world ending?"

Then she had shut her mouth. Whatever her mother had told her, for this was almost two years out from the days of Thanos that would later be known as the Infinity Wars, she had closed her mouth. After which, neither come nor go, as the Wakandans would say, she had uttered on the subject.

But he had been Tirade in the days of the assassin; he had been the coming storm. And seeing where she had not looked, at him, he had known.

To her mother, to her brother—to the Queen and to the reigning King of Wakanda—she just a kid. But even if he had never been her, he had loved a kid like her once, a boy like her who could see the world and not fear it but take it on. It wasn't about genius, it was about who you were. And she was that. And so she had somehow, unexpectedly, taken his heart. And with her, he felt it was safe. A reboot of the lives he had taken and not lived.

On that cliff that morning, before turning to scamper down, she had looked at him, and blinked several times, and laughed. High and happy, like all Wakandan young.

"Steven Rojaz will come for you," she had cried in total, absolute confidence, apropos of nothing. "Watch and see if I'm wrong!"

And then, clambering down, "You understand," she called back up. Babal Curonoma, she then seemed to be speaking into his mind. White Wolf. You understand. He will come for you.

And in the Waters the Wariza had placed their tight grips on his forehead and without warning plunged him into the waters—head tipped back, down and down, over and over, until he felt that he was drowning in the blue waters. Drowning and struggling for life. A living terror. But this was what the Wakandans wanted and required of him to be among them. Already he understood.

Done with him, left alone, he had crawled back onto the shores, tired and weak as that floundering fish—not instantly cleansed, for that was not how it worked, but no longer being torn apart from inside as from the start. Instead, feeling a knitting of his soul, which was the start.

Next phase had been his ocean of tears.

Eight months now. He had cried many times in his sleep since. They called it normal, part of the healing process. He hoped that was what it was. He had learned not to cross the Wakandans. Cried into his fluffy sheep's wool pillow. Calling out his name over and over. He only did it when he was crying. When he could convince himself it was somebody else speaking.

Until the goat milk buyer had come to his hut and he had found himself talking when he shouldn't have been, telling her so much. Probably because she had come not only early but on the morning on this worst dream yet, and she reminding him of his girl Shuri. And she had told him of what were dreams of Elileh. "Of the god."

And now he suspected that she had just been some dumbass teenager like he feared and had said some bullshit to him that he had needed so badly to hear, in a language whose nuances he was still trying to comprehend. She had told him that his reality of not being able to touch, and his dreams of hating reality, were Elileh.

And he had believed her. Because he didn't know what Elileh was and it had sounded good and had answered all his prayers.

"Haha, haha hah!" the leather buyer now laughed outright, so hard the kid was having a hard time holding it together. "Was it Ilams?" the young asked, gasping. "Was she the one who came to buy your goat's milk?"

As a matter of fact, it had been. He nodded.

The leather buyer all but fell of the iroko wood stool he had very proudly carved himself. Wakanda was easily two centuries ahead of the rest of the world in terms of tech, even Tony Stark tech, but he would live and die by wool and leather and grass and animal's milk. There was a comfort here he could not put into words.

But this kid was about to literally die on his stool. Gasping, the leather buyer said, "Do you know Akan?" At his shake of head, "Anansi?" Still shaking his head. "Do you know Loki?"

At that he nodded. "I've heard of him. He's the brother— I've heard of him."

"The trickster god?"

"I said I've heard of him," he said tightly.

"That's Ilams!" the buyer cried, lifting and wagging his finger hard. "Do not take anything she says agu-ara." On the surface.

"She wasn't talking about surface matters," he said defensively.

The leather buyer took a breath. "I know," he said gently in English. "I know. But Elileh means garbage. As in, actually. It could also mean your dick. She's just fucking with you. It's what she does. Your dreams are dreams about your dick, is basically what she told you. Which, maybe, correct? I don't know. If there's a question you want answering, you are better off speaking to the Wariza. It's a bit of a haul out to their River sides, but the train will take you there. They will speak universal truth to you. Not," the young man said, "a village girl here to take your goat's milk. She will just take your goat's milk." Then there was a pause. "Especially," the leather buyer said, "because you do seem in need of a wolaneh." A listening to.

He'd been smarting since the leather buyer had begun speaking. Seething actually. That fucking broad. He'd kill her the next chance he got. Up in there, she'd been, hovering her forefinger over his forehead, as if rubbing it, talking about how she could read his dreams and all kinds of shit. Getting all the discounts on his goddamned goat milk.

With a calming breath, he looked at the leather buyer. This kid probably knew as much about. . . well— metaphysics. . . as his goats did. Or that milk girl. But at least the guy knew to keep it real.

And since he was still back where he had leapt when they'd touched, five feet exactly and still rubbing his fist, the leather buyer swept him a look. They were alone together in his hut, and the young man was beautiful. It shouldn't have been rocket science, especially since he was looking at eyes and a mouth and a jaw that reminded him so much of what he had lost. But it was all in his mind. Shuri had been messing with him, and it was all in his mind. His milk buyer had been messing with him, and it was all in his mind. Globes of watered silk that made the world feel too sensitive, too painful to wake up and live inside, had been messing with his mind.

Moments too painful for his recuperating mind and body—things trapped inside him only he could touch. But just barely, when he was being drawn tight, twisting off his bed of straw and crashing onto the floor, never having felt anything close except when getting his mind wiped. But surviving because it was just dreams. Not gods or ancestors, just dreams. Even if of everything he wanted.

"The White Wolf," the young man said, confidently, in English, head tipped to display a physical appreciation. Biting his lip, letting his warm eyes drench him. "You are known everywhere. As one whose heart has been trampled by the beasts of the far Savannah, and survived, you are known. But I would never have expected that the beast was a man."

"He's not a beast."

"But he is a man."

To which he said nothing. If only so. Otherwise, why had he opened his eyes into a dark world and future in which he had seen his boy. . . become a being he could not reach. Was that the trajectory of a man? A bullet fired that did not do what was expected. He was living proof of what happened when you got in the way of such a projectile. Body, heart and soul, shredded. And he had never even been to the Savannah.

"What you are experiencing," this likely idiot told him. "Is not Elileh, but Ab-hara."

He stared blankly. "But you just said—"

"Actually, I didn't say anything. But I'm telling you now. Does it feel as if there are things you cannot touch yet—"

"Yes," he whispered hoarsely.

"And then in your dreams—"

"Yes," he repeated. "Just say it. Please."

The young leather buyer nodded sagely. "What you are feeling is Ab-hara. Not elileh, which as I said, trash. And until he touches you, you will never know joy. This is a cruse."

"It's not a curse."

"But you are not listening, White Wolf. The Queen Mother has tasked us all to look after you. So we do. And I say to you. All of Wakanda, all of Great Mother Africa, will remain a stasis in which you exist. To which your entire life to this point cannot compare. And I say this not knowing a minute of your life, but I tell you in all confidence. If you chose to stay here and close your eyes, you will eventually find peace as you have never known. But joy of existence, of life," and here the leather buyer leaned forward, lifting an eyebrow at him. "Elileh, will never come to you."

"I'll never experience . . . trash?" he asked.

The Wakandan smiled. "Yeah," he said, eyes dimming, voice reduced to a warm croak. "You will never experience the joys of. . . trash."

He waited until the leather buyer left. Not wishing to look completely stupid, he had maintained a hard sale, driving a harder bargain than usual and likely making less currency than he might have. Still, he had gotten enough to care for his tiny herd for several months, of which he was immensely proud, for having kept them alive and thriving for nearly year—much longer than his neighbors had wagered. How many of his kind had lived to even see such a thing—to have sustained life, and for so long, much less claim it as handiwork. Also, ever since Shuri had strolled and skipped him to the bottom of the lush green hills, of the kind he had only ever glimpsed passing through Bavaria in the back of a deuce and a half, to show him the hut that seemed out of a fond fantasy, complete with his own twin goats and the expectation that he would maintain them and increase his responsibilities, he had taken his life as seriously as a person could. So Brooklyn and Dodger, bred, had given him New York and Yankees, all four of whom he kept and would not sell. Barely even milked. But they ran to him whenever he was sad. So much as heard a mag-engine and glanced at the sky. And as for the rest of his herd, he knew he had done a damned good job.

While the leather buyer wandered off with probably much less leather than he'd anticipated, raw hide piled high on a vibranium-powered anti-grav Red Wagon type thing he and Steve would have killed for as kids, he withdrew into his hut. It was already evening and the sun was coming down, and Wakanda was ablaze not in reds and pinks and golds like everywhere else, but in the jewel blue that was lapis, that was the Waters of the Ancestors, in the reds that were the rubies of the earth, strong and eternal, and in the whites that were the alabaster that were the eyes of the Panther—the effects of the Protection Dome over the Kingdom.

Looking up from the hillside toward the setting sun, it occurred to him just then, that lapis, ruby and alabaster were also the colors of the man whom his boy had become.

The beast of the Savannah, caught inside a globule of watered silk.

He didn't go inside. Instead he leaned against the jamb of the only home he had truly known. Waking sometimes to find that the children had painted Ancestral patterns on his face, hearing that the Wolf was in need of healing.

Against the earth-adobe jamb of his home, he leaned, thinking. Every few days, he listened to his communiqués, all of which came from just one source.

That morning he had listened to the latest one.

"How are ya, Buck. Busy runnin' around with Sam and Natasha still. Tons of tesseract-powered weapons out here, kinda stressful, but we're trackin' em. Just done clearin' the Mideast, headin' into Asia. Wishin' you were here." Steve said it as, heeya, even though years of a life neither of them could have predicted had smoothed out the dips and rises of both their native accents. But never when they were alone and talking to each other. "Anyways, know Shuri's workin' hard on fixin' ya right up. Can't wait ta get the news they woke you up. Can't wait ta see ya again, Buck. Later."

His fear of touch, he suddenly began remembering, had not come from nowhere. It had begun on the Quinjet.

He had been sitting there thinking of how often he'd rejected Natasha offering to administer his injured arm. Realizing he was developing an aversion to being touched. He looked at her and just knew it. If he closed his eyes for a bit, he could sort of remember a time when he would have waltzed right into her arms, faked a couple other ailments to keep her smiling a little longer at him while fixing him up. But now, while still trying to maintain a facade, he was finding instead that he was shifting to the back of group meetings more each day, wanting to keep that distance from everyone.

It was easier when they had formal meetings, seated, distanced. And that day it was Sam, Natasha, Clint, Scott, Vision, Wanda. And of course Steve. Sometimes T'Challa would rendezvous with the Quinjet midair and join them, mainly to impart intel or advice on how next to proceed. Steve's concern, once everyone was eventually dropped off and safe, was to track every last one of the tesseract-powered weapons which had since spilled into the wider world, especially since SHIELD was apparently over and Nick Fury in the wind.

The meeting had been going well, that instance, T'Challa on board to deliver an update on the location of weapons which had been traced by Wakanda's intel—Natasha and Sam upfront, arms crossed, all attention on the King, and Steve been seated beside him. And that was what he had thinking looking at Natasha. At T'Challa, at all of them. That he was developing an aversion to being touched. That the thought of even clasps on his shoulder by. . . people who were normal made his heart accelerate in ways only matched by being on the run after a kill. An acceleration that keyed a signal to run. Arnim Zola had programmed him well.

And that time, silently watching them, these heroes among whom he did not belong, he had wondered whether there had in fact been an ever deeper trigger waiting to be set off. Whether the thought of safety anywhere but home base caused a cascade of neurons forming in him a picture of imminent danger and death, even among friends.

He had no way to know. But it did feel like imminent danger and death, so that the mere thought of subjecting himself to their touch seemed about to jack his heart right out of his chest.

Not right then, of course. Right then he felt at peace, calm. Maybe because distanced. After all he was sitting where he was looking at them. Either way, he felt conscious of being safe somehow. Even from an errant brush of skin. And he did hope that every last one of them could respect his signals to keep a distance. As he hoped they understood his apologetic glances after, because who knew what would happen at the trip of a neuron cluster whose function he had not, so far, had to suffer from. But so far anyway, everyone seemed to have gotten the memo, with on evident interest in countering or crossing him to test any theories. He appreciated that.

T'Challa, eyes on Steve, now lifted a finger, indicating he needed a moment of his time. Sighing, Steve squeezed his knee as he got up, turning to him and telling him he'd catch him later.

It was then that he realized that Steve's hand had been on his thigh the entire time.

It must have been for a full hour in which he did not move, but during which his eyes had followed his best friend in the entire world.

They spent a month placing freed Avengers from the Raft into safe places, while he spent the time with nowhere to go expect to look the last fifty years of his life square in the face. He wished no one such an undertaking. After which, at T'Challa's invitation, they came to Wakanda to see about him. The entire time of their travels, he had been aware that his feelings for Steve were altering. Well, maybe not altering, becoming. But that meeting had been the inflection point.

Right after, Steve had come into the infirmary while he'd been cleaning his arm. Getting ready to bandage. A slight struggle, but he always managed. Placing a hand on his chest, calming his beating heart, and gently pushing until he was backing up, sitting on the sole infirmary bed, Steve had entered with full intent at control. He hadn't fought back. Then Steve had taken his time, carefully and meticulously putting together his field dressing, smiling when their eyes met. "Just like old times, eh, Bucks? Ya Howling Commando, you." He hadn't been able to respond, his heart tripping like a target on the run. Like his neurons were firing up. And he had closed his eyes, turning away, hoping that if he was triggered Steve would just put him out for good. But nothing happened.

It had been among the best field dressings he'd ever received. Naturally. Steve continued smiling at him. Then gently leaning forward, kissed his cheek. It was the first time anything like it had ever happened. And seemed to surprise only him. "There," Steven said gently. "All better." And when he could not say anything, Steve had dropped his head against his, rubbed his forehead a little against his, and said, "I promise ya, Buck. It'll be okay."

Something had happened on that Quinjet. After which a mere build up to an aversion to touch had spiraled fast and hard into an outright hatred of it.

Only because, he was waiting.

That night since the field dressing, he had played the moment again and again in his mind, trapped now inside a globe. Steve kissing him, him thinking his heart was going for reasons expect the obvious. Clutching his bed clothes at night, unable to bare his need. Again and again in his mind, in that moment after his kiss, he grabbed him, held him unmoving, because even in his most perfect space, he was shaking too hard to do to him what he wanted.

And even inside his dreams, he ruefully smiled because Shuri would have drop kicked him, told him of the time she conquered some—imaginary—boyfriend or other by simply sweeping a pinpointed look over him, thus making him succumb.

His fear of touch would go nowhere, he knew. This wasn't a passing phase. This was Bucky Barnes of Brooklyn, asserting his right to life.

Waiting for the one who would calm his heart.

When the time came, when he was healed enough, brave enough, he would meet Shuri's eyes and ask her to take him to a Comms Hub, where Wakandans sent messages to the boh'hees, to the Lands Beyond. And he would ask her to put him online. And he would wait until a communiqué started coming through, and instead of letting it go to message, he would answer, saying, I'm awake, Steve.

Speaking of. . .

He turned as his communicator started singing wildly with a truly crazy ringtone, Shuri on the beat, as she would say.

Probably another party. His smile expanded. He did kinda like the light shows.

Withdrawing from his doorway, he went over to the ebony side table he had also carved.

The sun was setting in Wakanda, and turning away from it, he banished the sights outside—of the colors of the shield with the star. Of the movements out of time, yet which still improbably, perfectly, were in sync with his own. Of the blond hair of the avenging Valkyries that he had been taught, in Brooklyn District 15, to believe in. He had believed in it even when he hadn't known what belief was.

His fear of touch would go nowhere, he knew. This wasn't a passing phase. This was Bucky Barnes of Brooklyn, asserting his right to life.

Waiting for the one who would calm his heart.

But those were istrong things for another day,/i as the Wakandans would say.

For now, he merely picked up his communicator and answered Shuri's call.

He no longer wished to cry. And he still hated being touched. And dreams— dreams would never be enough.

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