Who knew silence could be quite so deafening.
Wanda looked like she'd taken the worst of it, not yet used to the damage men could do to each other. Yes, she'd suffered and endured horribly thanks to war, but she'd never really waded in hip deep before of her own free will. Battling an army of flying robots could not compare to the blood of innocents caught in the crossfire. Refugees wanting nothing more than to be away from the bullets and bombs and constant fear.
She'd torn off the mask as soon as we'd been on board the quinjet and tossed it aside, her eyes haunted.
Bucky walked to the pilot seat and sat down, powering up the vehicle in preparation for take off, his face unreadable behind the mask he had refused to remove the entire time we'd been on the ground. Four days we'd been there, protecting a group of refugees that had been captured and about to be slaughtered in the name of racial purity.
A stupid reason if you asked me.
Hell, if you asked any of us.
Sam shed his wings and stored them for the trip... not home, but back to our current residence. The dozen Wakandan elite that had come along for the fun had their own way home. We'd repainted the quinjet a matte black with no discernable markings to keep T'Challa from taking the blame for us, but, based on internet chatter, the world had a fair idea we had been hiding out in his neck of the woods.
We didn't much care if they knew and, while T'Challa and his country did not specifically support us, he also didn't bat an eye when we asked for assistance.
Next time he might.
This one had been rough and several of his people had been injured. Okay, most of us had been injured; I would be getting stitches on my leg and back once back and had access to real medical facilities, but there'd been little choice. The refugees with weapons and the ability to use them had been few and far between and had been awake for days by the time we arrived on scene. They had done the best they could but there'd been a trail of death left behind them and they'd been desperate for the assistance.
I wish we could have shoved them into the quinjet and flown them to safety, but there had been far too many to transport and protect at the same time. So, Sam scouted from the air along with a four-person squad of Wakandas on the ground and we walked them to where we knew Red Cross support lay just over the border.
It had been hard travel with children, injured, and the elderly, some of whom not had eaten in days, but we gave up our own rations to them, hunted the local wildlife when we had time and kept them safe. Once we had arrived on scene *not one of the refugees died*. And that, to me, had been all that mattered.
Bucky kept offering to deal with those hunting us; he'd always been one hell of a sniper, but I had refused. Our intent to save people, not kill them, and while we would most certainly shoot back, I did not want to take the fight to those following us.
Even if they did have tanks and mortars and RPGs.
Which is why we looked liked we'd been through a war.
We had.
The quinjet wobbled slightly as it lifted into the air, informing us we would be back to our exile in mere hours.
Wanda took a slow sip of water, hands shaking noticeably.
"You did good," I told her, meaning it in every way imaginable.
With her defensive abilities she'd taken on the brunt of protecting the refugees, able to create entire domes of blocking energy when we'd been attacked from all sides. She'd stopped two RPGs and four mortar strikes that I directly knew of, along with countless bullets fired at all of us. She done more than good, she had saved a lot of people and she should be proud of that fact.
She nodded tightly, pain and exhaustion easy to see on her face and in her eyes.
"They stopped being afraid after you threw that one out of the camp," Sam said as he shifted back into his harness, clearly intending to grab some zzzs while he could.
That one had been an enemy infiltrator, he'd dressed in the clothes of the dead that had been left behind and snuck in, intending to kill as many as he could while they slept. Wanda got to him first.
She hadn't killed him, hadn't hurt more than his pride when she'd used her telekinetic ability to literally throw him from the camp and back into the woods that surrounded us.
He'd been the fool to come charging back into a now fully awake and armed camp. We'd taken him down easily, though for a time those we'd been trying to save had thought we'd been attacking them, until we revealed his face and the insignia he'd been hiding under the stolen clothes.
We'd left him tied high up in a tree where others could find him, packed up camp after far too little rest, and moved on.
No one had questioned Wanda again, nor had there been even the slightest hint of fear anywhere. Far more often than not cheers would go up when she saved them in yet another spectacular display of power.
She gave us a wan smile. "I fear I will never enjoy this type of rescue."
"Good," Bucky all but growled from up front. "If you do..." He trailed off not needing to finish the sentence.
"Kid," Sam mumbled, his eyes at half mast and lowering quickly, "none of us do, but it doesn't change the fact that you... that we did good."
"Did we do enough though?" She looked unhappy and she had a point.
We'd left the refugees in good hands, the UN intending to step in to mediate a solution and hopefully prevent more slaughter and we would have moved on to assist another group, but no others had been seen for days, lost to the wilderness and those that had hunted them with a deadly purpose. Part of me had wanted to go after those who had begun this and stop them, but the lines drawn in the sand these days had been blurred. No clear cut bad guys versus good guys.
It felt painful to long for the days of Hydra and Nazis, for clear targets and goals.
These days we saved who we could and moved on, no longer involved with negotiations to reduce tensions. SHIELD gone and the Avengers all but useless thanks to the Accords. Mankind would just keep tearing itself apart and we could do nothing to stop it... at least not until they asked us.
If aliens from outer space attacked, we would be there defending the world even if not asked, but we could not do their jobs for them any longer.
"What more could we have done?" I asked of her, the snort of derision from the pilot seat let me know Bucky's opinion on the matter. We were still soldiers to a degree, but the war had changed too much for us to be truly effective. The Howling Commandos would be just as lost as we.
She sighed heavily and ran her hands through her hair, still sweaty and stringy from being under the headgear for several days. We hid our faces for obvious reasons, even though it had quickly become obvious to all those we saved had known exactly who had come to assist, they had played deaf and blind, thanked us for the help, but would not be telling others where to find the exiled Avengers.
The ones we saved were smart enough to realize we'd be unable to help others while imprisoned.
"I don't know." She turned to face me. "I miss Stark's tech," she complained.
I agreed with her. We needed a real base of operations, and to not just rely on the largess of T'Challa and Wakanda.
Sam coughed, shaking his head. "She's not wrong. Maybe Lang?"
I hadn't wanted to drag Scott Lang back into this mess, but he clearly had a relationship with Hank Pym, so it might very well be worth reaching out to them. Wakanda had serious tech, but it belonged to them, not us, no matter how generous their King. His debt to Bucky had been met in my opinion and at some point we would need to leave.
We just had no place to go to... yet.
I patted Wanda on the shoulder as I stood. "Get some rest."
She nodded wearily and settled back into the seat, sipping on the water with a bleary look in her eyes.
I went to the front and gingerly sat in the co-pilot seat with a soft groan.
Bucky glanced over at me, face still covered with the mask. He spent a lot of time hiding these days even though it had been three months and the efforts to block the programming appeared to be holding just fine. He waited for that other shoe to drop and nothing I did could assure him it never would.
I stared out at the nighttime sky that whipped past, clouds lit up by the moonlight streaming down.
"Kid's still afraid of what she can do," he finally said after long minutes of silence.
"Sounds familiar." I didn't even turn my head, it remained leaning on my hand, one of the few comfortable positions I could manage at the moment. In my peripheral vision I saw him remove the face mask and set it on the console next to him.
"Well, I would be the resident expert on not trusting one's own mind," he pointed out, tone dry as dust.
"Don't worry, I'll happily punch you in the head to knock you back to your senses." I'd had to do that a few times in the beginning, when we'd been testing ideas to break the conditioning. Even when we'd given him idiotic missions to complete he had not come out of Winter Soldier mode until we'd either shocked him or rang his bell hard enough to give him a concussion on at least one occasion. Awful to think about, but better than Hydra getting a hold of him again.
He snorted and shook his head. "One day that might not be enough."
I shrugged. "Until it is, we'll keep going, it's all we can do."
"Is this really what you want to do with the rest of your life? Babysit," he hooked his thumb over his shoulder at the pair sleeping in back, "and play hero? Don't you want to actually do something for yourself?"
I didn't have an answer for him. At one time, before a war had started across an ocean from my home I'd thought I might be an artist, cartoonist for a paper or something, but that went out the window the moment I'd joined the army. I mean, before this, before Captain America I had just been surviving in a harsh world with the harsher hand dealt to me. Bucky had been my one constant. Little wonder I'd tried everything in my power to be accepted into the military if it gave me even the slightest chance to join him overseas.
"Buck, what else is there? Even if I retired, really retired and chose never to help anyone ever again do you really think they'd leave me alone? That no one would come after me eventually?" I sighed heavily. Doing this had been a compromise in my mind. Even Wanda had felt the need to do something, even if only as penance, to fix what she had broken in Lagos. In my opinion, anyway, she'd paid her dues and more, but she had found some solace in helping others and I doubt she would stop even if I were to walk away. She might very well go back to the Avengers if it would permit her to use her gifts in some way that mattered.
"No. You couldn't stop when you weighed ninety-eight pounds wet, little chance you would now." He chewed on his bottom lip as he pondered his next words. "We need to be more effective. No, we can't prevent an earthquake or a tsunami, but we need better response time." He opened and closed the hand on his cybernetic arm. Proof of the Wakandan's tech level right there. It appeared to be made of tiny hexagonal scales and could change color as he wished and he claimed he had feeling in the appendage, something that had been lacking in the previous models. He'd only had it a few weeks - after we'd been reasonably secure in the blocking of the programming - and still hadn't fully adjusted to it.
He'd only been marginally easier to subdue one-handed, which had been why they'd waited to give it to him. He seemed to like it so far, as well as the built-in tech.
"So, what set up a base and network?"
"It would make the most sense." He drummed his fingers on the arm of the pilot's seat. "Can't hide in Wakanda forever. T'Challa will catch hell for it eventually."
I agreed, in principle at least. "Where? Where do we go?"
He smiled, just a hint mind you, but it was more than he could manage on most days. "Oh, I might know a place."