SHADOW OF DEATH
Chapter 37: Jabari
When Jane was told they would seek refuge with the Jabari, she wasn't quite sure what to expect. She certainly hadn't expected to alight on the glacial precipice of a mountain and be hidden away in a series of round brick enclosures dug slightly into the ground. While the principal residence of M'Baku, the chief of the Jabari, was a rather magnificent glass structure overlooking a small village carved into the edge of the mountainside, the guest quarters they were given were much less ostentatious.
"This is the sacred heart of Jabari," Shuri explained, when they first arrived on the rough landing strip outside the town.
"The Jabari are one of the tribes of Wakanda?" Jane asked.
"Yes, though they will deny it if you ask them," Shuri said with a laugh. "We consider them our citizens, but they say they are an autonomous people who are not beholden to our laws or ways. They keep to themselves and they refuse our technology completely and do as they please. Wakanda is happy enough to let them be, as long as they do not stir up any trouble and they continue to sell their carpentry work."
The door of the plane opened and a burst of icy air swept around them like a plunge into a snowbank.
"It is freezing!" Jane complained, shivering and pulling her thin sweater around her shoulders. When she first arrived in Wakanda, the air had been perpetually warm and humid and she had hardly needed a bed sheet, let alone a blanket. Now, after so many months had passed, she had grown so used to the equatorial climate that she now grew cold in the evenings and even used a blanket again. She was entirely unprepared for the burst of thin, frigid air that met her from their perch on the snow-capped mountainside.
Shuri laughed and pulled a blanket around her shoulders. "It is! This is one reason why no one in Wakanda disturbs the Jabari. Who else would wish to spend time in such a place?" Shuri said, though her teeth began to chatter as she spoke.
"They live here?"
"Not all the time," Shuri explained. "For most of the year, the Jabari work in the forests and grasslands below. Some keep cattle and some plant crops, but nearly all are master carpenters who are sought by all Wakanda for their craftsmanship. It is tradition that it is only the Jabari who can make carvings for the royal house or for any of our temples and churches and civic buildings. Wealthy houses of Wakanda will fight each other to claim next season's carvings for their own homes and offices.
"The Jabari claim it is the spirits which inhabit this mountain which give them the inspiration and skills to carve as they do. That is why, for three months of each year, their entire tribe hides away on this icy mountain. They will do nothing but carve during the day and hold vigils and feasts in honor of the spirits at night. Then they will return to the lowlands for the rest of the year and live in their villages along the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains."
"I suppose this means we are visiting them during their carving season," Jane mused with a frown as she considered the view before her. It was spectacularly beautiful. The grey crags of rock jutted from the snow like tightly clenched fists of earth and the clouds nearly obscured any evidence of the world far below. The setting sun was only now beginning to sink below the horizon, reflecting off the clouds and the snow and making the entire landscape dance with shards of gold and freckles of light.
Shuri nodded. "Fortunately, and unfortunately. No one will seek us up here and so it will be far safer than if we tried to hide away in their lowland villages. Unfortunately, we will spend our entire time here as cold as ice sculptures and I do not think I will ever want to leave my bed. Let us hope our time here is short."
Jane couldn't help but agree.
Their entire party exited the plane and before they had taken more than a handful of steps away, they could hear footsteps approach. Soon, a party of five men clothed in furs and leather appeared. They carried heavy ebony rungus in their hands. Their thick beards were dotted with specks of ice frozen from the condensation of their breath.
They halted in front of the Wakandan party of refugees, pounded their right fists against their chests, and chanted a chorus of barking grunts in greeting. The queen, princess, and Dora Milaje nodded their heads in response.
The men barked out words in a language Jane couldn't understand before looking over at Jane and Sergeant Barnes with obvious humor and distaste. The queen responded and they parried back and forth before beckoning for the party to follow after them.
They were taken around a jutting tower of boulders and to where a narrow passage led between rock formations. It was not a long walk before it opened out into a precipice. Carved out of the ridges and crests of the mountain face itself, the chief's home overlooked the steep steppes below, each holding its own house, glittering in the dark night.
The five guards ushered the party into the main hall where M'Baku sat on a throne-like chair, surrounded by decorative wooden spears. His presence filled the dais. His fur-clad armor and muscular frame gave a decidedly intimidating first-impression.
"M'Baku," Ramonda began, but was interrupted as the men began their chorus of chants again in greeting.
At first, the pair spoke back and forth in what Jane assumed to be the language of the Jabari. It seemed Ramonda could hardly get a sentence or two out before she was continually interrupted by another refrain of barks and grunts and she could not speak again until they subsided. It was not until quite a few rounds of conversation had passed before M'Baku faced the rest of the visitors in the room. His grin widened in way which was neither friendly nor welcoming, and he opened his arms towards them. Then he surprised Jane by switching languages to English.
"You pride yourselves on your mighty city and your great technology and yet you are here now, crawling on your bellies like wounded dogs, asking the Sons of the Sacred Mountain for assistance. I see no enemies attacking the Jabari to steal our saws and chisels."
"You have been kept safe because Wakandan weapons and illusions have protected you from outsiders. Do you think your saws and chisels would have prevented all of Europe from fighting over your mountains?" Shuri replied in annoyance.
M'Baku clicked his tongue in reciprocal annoyance. "Yet, now you desecrate our sacred space by bringing your colonizers here with you."
Ramonda sighed and rubbed her hand across her forehead. "Tosha, bwana. We have not come for your taunts. We seek refuge until our troubles in Wakanda subside. Will you grant us refuge or not?"
"I received a coded message from your king this morning. My wives have seen to your hospitality already. They are preparing an evening meal as we speak," he answered smugly.
True to his word, M'baku's wives had prepared a home for them with three bedrooms with mattresses on the floor and a common sitting room between them filled with chairs and a fire pit in the center to warm the room. Warm water was already prepared and waiting in the adjoining bathing rooms, though Shuri refused, saying it was far too cold to remove any of her clothes, no matter how warm the basin of water claimed to be. Once the visitors were clean and refreshed, the wives brought in bowls of goat stew, maize meal, and steamed green vegetables for their guests to eat. The food warmed them from the inside out, despite the icy white blanket surrounding the world outside their thickly curtained windows.
"So, what do we do now?" Jane whispered to Shuri during the quiet meal.
Shuri shrugged. "We try to stay warm and avoid M'Baku's gloating as much as possible. We will never hear the end of it from him. He will be as proud as a he-goat with the longest horns after this."
Ramonda clicked her tongue at her daughter and gave a long-suffering sigh. "Shuri, be serious. No, we wait and we pray for a miracle, Dr. Foster," Ramonda said. "That is all we can do."
"No, Mama, that is not all," Shuri said with a dimpled grin. "We also try to hack into SHIELD's database to find out just what they know and make sure they cannot surprise us again."
oooooo
Jane tried to eat her lunch, but she found herself without appetite again. Her normally overcharged metabolism had sunk into a lethargy after another sleepless night and she was torn between going back to her room for a nap and remaining on the foam cushion of her chair until night fell.
It was quiet. Too quiet. They were all stuck between listless inaction and perpetually coiled to spring at a moment's notice.
It hadn't been quiet at first. During their early days in Jabari, Jane could hardly sleep simply because of the noise. Jane had tried not to hear the angry arguments between Shuri and her mother that occurred once they had retired to their own room each night. The walls, though, were thin, and the room Jane shared with one of the Dora Milaje guards did not stop the raised voices from passing through to where Jane lay beneath a pile of blankets and furs.
Their third night, the princess had stormed out of her bedroom after shouting at her mother and burst into the common room between the bedrooms. When she saw Jane there, attempting to read a book, she had collapsed into a chair with a furious scowl.
"What am I to think? Baba killed my uncle and we have an American cousin nobody ever mentioned who has turned up to cause problems. Baba told me nothing of this. Now we are locked away from it all and I can only receive the most coded of messages from T'Challa's messenger at the border. Baba has been taken as prisoner in the Netherlands and I don't know how to fix it, especially not from here."
Jane stayed up with Shuri then, long after her anger and morphed into tears, and they had spent the remainder of the night trying to glean information from the servers where T'Chaka was currently held as a prisoner. They gained little information, other than his meal schedule, the rotation of guards, and his impending court date. They both went to bed frustrated and struggled to sleep, even though it was well after dawn by the time they gave it up.
Shuri was back at it again the next day and the next and Jane did what she could, but there was little she could really do to assist. Now, Shuri was back in the glass-lined hall of M'Baku's house – the only indoor space she could get her solar-powered equipment to get enough charge to function. It had taken no shortage of cajoling and downright bribery to convince M'Baku to allow his hall to be 'profaned' with the 'sorcery' of their computers. He still grumbled and complained every time he saw Shuri come and it only put the princess into an even worse disposition to have to spend so much of her day with the Jabari chief.
Jane should have been bored. In her past life, she would have been fairly crawling up and down the walls as the empty hours of their exile lengthened into unexceptional days and unmemorable weeks. She did not know if it was a byproduct of the Mind Stone or her own internal anxiety at just how much uncertainty surrounded them that made her wish for nothing but to sit in the silence. Yet, here she sat, eagerly avoiding all productive tasks and not once pursuing any line of research other than to stare out the nearby window as the light shifted with the path of the sun overhead.
Her mind drifted back to Birnin Zana again and again, even more so when she saw the concern on Ramonda's proud brow that morning and the tell-tale tracks of dried tears on Shuri's cheeks.
While Shuri fiddled with her satellite connection trying to contact her brother without being traced, the Queen had taken her leave to visit some old acquaintances in the next village over. Each had a Dora Milaje guard accompanying them wherever they went. This left Jane and Sergeant Barnes in the common room together with the remaining guard. She contented herself with polishing her spear and sinking into the shadows of the small room and she did not bother to look their way or try to converse with them. Their only other interruption came from a Jabari woman who brought them trays of food at regular intervals and spoke in low tones with their guard in her mother tongue.
Current events were unprecedented, even for the Wakandan royal family, and Jane did not know how to help other than to do her best not to make anything worse. She was a burden now more than she had ever been. With all the royal family had to deal with, they were still stuck taking care of their uninvited American guest. Yet, Jane found a sympathetic ally in Sergeant Barnes. If possible, he seemed to feel even more awkward than she did. He was far less familiar with the royal family than she and his preference for isolation was interrupted by the close quarters he now shared with six women. He made himself even more scarce than usual and rarely left his room other than to take his meals.
Now, his plate of beans and cassava sat empty on the floor before him and he sat unmoving on his cushioned chair. Sergeant Barnes' eyes warily roamed the room. He stared out the window and back to the door. His entire posture was rigid and ill-at-ease, but his eyes were all that paced.
He was silent now, but then again, she had hardly ever heard him speak outside of their obligatory training sessions. In all the hours they had spent together back in Birnin Zana, she had never heard him say a single personal piece of information, despite all Shuri's efforts to pry bits from his locked jaws using her own relentless stubbornness as a crowbar. He never once caved and she admired him for it. He was determined to keep his life to himself and she would not hold that against him. From all she knew of his past, she didn't blame him. If her mind had been stolen and ransacked for over sixty years by a shadow organization, she'd cling to whatever mental autonomy she could with both hands, just to keep her mind her own.
When his wary eyes met hers, she offered him a tentative smile.
"I suppose I am exempt from our training sessions for awhile," she said, trying to draw him out of himself for a moment, and hoping for a break in the constant quiet.
"We could start up again, if you wanted," he answered, though his voice lacked any true favor of the idea. "The cold outside won't bother me."
"No. I don't really want to."
"I didn't think so." He looked away again but he turned back to her when he heard her undisguised sigh. She plopped her head onto her hands and chewed on her lower lip while she debated which of her many questions she wanted to spring on him. She didn't want to discompose him too much, but he was still so much of an enigma to her and her questions burned under her tongue like a hot pepper.
"How did you do it?" she finally asked.
"Do what?"
"Deal with becoming, you know, what you are? This. Super strong and, well, super human and all. Did you choose to become this?"
He gave a dark chuckle and shook his head. He waited so long to answer that at first she thought he wasn't going to.
"I was not given a choice," he said. "I was chosen."
"So, how did you deal with it?"
"Deal?" he repeated. He looked down and watched his fingers as they clenched and unclenched before him. Jane knew those hands had enough strength to bend steel and she wondered if he saw their strength or if he was thinking of all the other more fragile materials they had been used to bend. Then it was his turn to sigh. "I don't think I ever had the chance to deal with it. Till now. It wasn't till I woke here that I, well, really woke. Before, I wasn't really, you know, there. My body was awake, but my mind… well, it was like the thinkin' part of me was locked in a cage. I could watch my body from afar but I couldn't change a thing it did, even though I could see it all. It was like being constantly caught in a nightmare I could never quite wake from. You know, the ones where you feel paralyzed and want to wake but you can't?"
He paused and looked over to her until she nodded. Then he continued. "It was like that. I suppose there's been so much to 'deal' with since I woke and got my mind and body back in the same place at once that I haven't really got around to what it means to be 'super human,' as you put it. I'm still just trying to remember that I'm human."
Her heart sank at that, but she tried not to let it show. He sat forward in his chair, his posture no longer rigid but bent towards her and with his elbows leaning against his knees and his hair falling loosely around his face.
"What about you?" he asked and he motioned to her. "Did you choose to become like this?"
She shook her head. "I guess we are the same in that way. I wasn't given a choice, either. Some sentient alien rock took control of my mind and used me for her own partial suicide, nearly taking me out with her. Yet, here I am. Still alive and trying to figure out what parts of me are human and which ones aren't and what I do from here."
He nodded in understanding and fell silent. Then he shifted uncomfortably in his chair and gave her a hesitant glance. "I can still feel it, you know," he said, his voice dropping an octave lower. "The pull of that, what'd ya call it? That 'alien rock'?"
"You can? What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "I dunno. It's hard to explain. It's just… you know that alien prince of yours used that rock on me to override Hydra's brainwashing?"
"Yeah. I heard about that."
He dropped his eyes and fidgeted uncomfortably again. "Well, I can feel it. Whenever you come into a room. It's like… how do I put it? It's like every time I catch a whiff of cinnamon, I think of my ma's apple tarts and my mouth nearly waters and I remember her smile. Every time I smell rusted iron I am brought back to my cell in Siberia and I wanna scream and break things… it's like that."
"Are you saying I smell like an alien rock?" Jane asked, arching one eyebrow and allowing the edges of her lips to raise into a teasing smile.
He chuckled. "Yeah. I guess I am. It's not that it's a bad thing so much as it's a familiar thing. It's just, when you are around, I am reminded of the rock and it's like…, ugh, I don't know," he said, grunting in frustration and deflating slightly.
"Like we are bound together, in some way?" Jane suggested for him.
"I guess. Do you… can you sense something like it… in me, I mean?"
She hesitantly nodded. "I didn't know what it was at first, but now that you mention it, I think I might. I can feel it with Loki too, but much, much stronger. However, I wonder if that is because he was… more acquainted… with the Mind Stone than you or some other reason."
"So, what is it? Do we have like radioactive poisoning or little slivers of alien rocks stuck in our minds?"
"I'm not sure… would you mind if I, well, search you and see what I can find?" she asked.
He visibly recoiled against the chair and grimaced. "You wanna invade my mind? I can't say I like that idea much."
She quickly shook her head. "I can't. Not like you mean. I can't control or even enter anyone's mind or read thoughts. The most I can do is sense your life force and the energies and processes keeping you alive. I can also test out your motivations and perceptions to see if they are based on falsehoods or realities, but I can't invade your mind."
The struggle was plain on his face and she was about to tell him to forget it when he gave her a terse nod.
"Well, sure, I guess, though I can't say I'm that keen on it."
"I don't blame you. We really don't have to, if you don't want to."
"Will it hurt?"
"Only if I make you explode."
His face suddenly went blank, until he caught her smile and then he gave her a cautious smile. "Are you messing with me?"
"You want to find out?" She answered with a wink and then she withdrew Mjolnir from her backpack.
"You sure know how to bolster a guy's confidence."
"Do you want to see what I can find out our not?"
"Fine, Doc. Go ahead," he said and he sat back all the way in his chair. He clung to the edges of the chair like a cat trying to avoid a bath and he grimaced.
"Relax, Sergeant Barnes. It won't hurt," she tried to reassure. Jane closed her eyes and held the hammer at about eye level and tried to reach outwards to where Sergeant Barnes sat. She let her mind and senses enfold around him and through him as much as she could. The first trace of anything unusual she found was the strange, intrusive power which had forced its way through his DNA like a cancer and made him into the Winter Soldier all those years ago. The serum had transformed him from the inside out and she could taste it like a draught of bitter venom. Next, she could sense the ravaging scars left on both his body and mind from the years of erasing and rewriting his very thoughts. Then, beneath all the organic processes of his enhanced form, she detected the humming electricity moving through the complex circuitry of his metal arm. Then she found it – faint and subtle and oh so familiar. It twisted throughout his mind like a riverbed which once overflowed with water and now all that remained was cracked, dry soil and old footprints of the river.
She opened his eyes then and slowly let Mjolnir sink back into her backpack. Sergeant Barnes sighed in relief and let go of the armrests of his chair. He stared at her for a moment before quickly looking away.
"No matter how many times I see your eyes do that, it still gives me the jitters," he said.
"I can't help it."
"I know. It's still creepy. So, what's the prognosis, Doc? Are my life history and deepest darkest secrets bare before you?"
"You have a wire loose in your prosthetic arm which you should have Shuri look at before it shorts out," she answered.
"Right, well, that's helpful, I guess," he said, glancing down at his arm and clenching the metal fist once.
"It is. It will be something to distract Shuri with and make her feel more useful."
He closed his eyes and chuckled. "You know that's not what I was asking about."
"I know," she said. She fiddled with the handle of Mjolnir and let her fingers trace the now-familiar runes etched into its edges, reveling in the warmth the hum of power gave her whenever she held the weapon. "I can see where the Stone has been… but she didn't want to be there and so it was clumsy and forced. It's kinda like the difference between a door being opened with a key versus a crowbar and the one wielding the tool didn't mind what damage was left before or how much force was needed to pry you open. She's not there anymore, but there are, well, footprints or fingerprints still there from where she was. They won't harm you and can't control you anymore…," she said and then trailed off, unsure of how to continue.
"But I won't be able to forget the presence of an alien entity in my brain," he added.
"Yeah."
"And you've got the same thing in you."
"In a way. Except no one used her on me. She didn't force her way in. I inadvertently let her in by playing with the scepter when I shouldn't have and answering her when she called out to me. She merrily danced her way in and took up residence."
"And now?"
"Well, when the Stone exploded, her power was simply diffused, not destroyed. She can no longer be used by someone else against her will, but she still exists and is still working and active in the universe."
"And part of the Stone lives in you."
"Yeah."
"How do you know she won't take you over again?"
"I don't."
He let out a low whistle. "Jeepers, Doc. You could be a tickin' time bomb."
"I guess. I try not to think about that," she said with a shrug, but she couldn't help but look away.
He chuckled. "I can't help but think about it. Every minute of the day. What if I'm not really fixed? What if my mind gets locked back up in that little cage? Sometimes I think I'd rather end it all now, rather than face that possibility in future."
"But you are still here."
"Yeah, well, the last few times I almost died, it only made things worse."
"I'm sorry if I remind you unpleasant memories," she said.
He shrugged. "You don't. It's not exactly unpleasant as much as it is uncanny. I'd take an alien rock in my brain over Hydra any day."
"I'll take your word on that."
His answering smile vanished as soon as it came and she could see dark musings stir in his mind again. He clenched and unclenched his fist before looking up to meet her, his turquoise eyes blazing with intensity.
"Doc, can you promise me something?"
"What?"
"If I… if I ever… if I go back into that cage, will you promise to end me? If I'm not really fixed, I don't want to try again… I don't want to risk… I don't want to wake up knowing it didn't work and I'm still broken. You are strong enough, if you really tried, with that hammer, you could. Please?" He said, his plea bordering on desperate.
She swallowed much too loudly but she did not look away. "I promise," she said.
He fell back in his chair as if a load of bricks had been taken off his back. Then he smiled in earnest, all evidence of the rigid soldier absent from both his face and form. "Thanks, Doc."
"You're welcome, Sergeant."
oooooo
Jane was restless that night. As if from a nightmare, she woke with a start and sat up. As quietly as she could, she left the bedroom and slipped into the common room in search for water. She drank from the small pitcher on a side table and then began to pace the room. She couldn't shake the deep sense of foreboding that clung to her like a cobweb and she could no more discern its cause than she could make the sun rise.
Something was happening or about to happen or had already happened. She didn't know what, but she could feel it like a tangible weight, stealing the breath from her lungs and sitting on her chest like an anvil. Each of her limbs felt sluggish with the weight of it and no matter how she blinked her eyes, she struggled to focus on the room around her. Instead, her mind was far, far away. Searching the cosmos for whatever It was.
Had something happened to Loki? She bit back the rise of panic in her chest at the thought of him. It had been nearly six weeks since he had left them, yet so much had already changed. She could only imagine all that he could have faced in the same span of time.
And Something had happened. She didn't know exactly what, but she felt its echo reverberate as a warning through her very bones and ricochet off the farthest corners of the universe.
Jane was interrupted from her musings by the very unexpected sound of a bell and a meow. To her surprise, Goose approached her. It pushed open the door to the room and daintily picked its way to sit at her feet and look up at her.
"Hello, Goose!" Jane exclaimed, genuinely pleased to see the creature. "How did you get here?"
She had not seen the Flerkin since the day they fled Wakanda. Already, thoughts of those days seemed like a world away – a happier, simpler time. She was surprised when she knelt down, hand outstretched, that Goose eagerly leaned into it and purred. Then, it leaped into her lap and curled itself up quite comfortably into a ball of orange fur. There it lay. It did not stir till dawn, when the first stirrings of life came from one of the nearby bedrooms. Then, its head perked up, its ears folded back, and then it leaped back to the floor. It trotted across the room, slipped through the door, and Jane did not see it again.
Author's Note: Another bonus chapter for you!