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Please check out this chapter on Archive of Our Own to see the art and link to her social media pages see more of her gorgeous, evocative art!
Once again: Huge thanks to SunsetAgain for allowing me to share this piece with all of you!
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Winter of the White Wolf
Chapter 65 - Haptic Memory
While Ayo, Sam, and Shuri silently conversed beneath the invisible veil of what Barnes presumed was an audio-dampening field a short distance away, Barnes sat with Nomble and Yama and sampled a variety of colorful breakfast foods. Between bites, he listened to the two of them make what he determined to be 'small talk' while he did his best to not be overt that he was intently following the far more compelling conversation occurring beyond the dome.
After all, no one had explicitly told him he shouldn't.
Even though Ayo, Sam, and Shuri's faces were rarely visible at the same time, thanks to a combination of trained aptitudes in parsing the many subtleties of body language and a hefty dose of lip reading, Barnes didn't find it challenging to keep up with the overall flow of their dialogue. Sam was especially animated. Barnes suspected he could have interpreted his words from half a mile away, if not more.
Somewhere amid another round of flapjacks – which Barnes determined Yama was suitably the most adept at preparing – Nomble firsted keyed into the fact that he was tracking the silenced conversation taking place a short distance away. Surprisingly, she didn't request that he stop his reconnaissance activities. Instead, she simply inclined her head and lowered her voice as she asked if he would kindly pass the apricot jam, which he'd recently cross-compared to peach jam, mango jam, ginger preserves, and orange marmalade.
Orange marmalade remained the clearly superior selection.
Though neither Nomble inside the dome or Yama just beyond it made mention of his secondary activities, Barnes got the impression that their choice to take turns repositioning themselves as they ate was intentional, specifically: so that he could get an optimal view of the three individuals in debate a distance away.
Their expressions remained tight and serious, and they didn't interrupt one another as they exchanged words now. Initially, Shuri'd spoken over Ayo. The younger woman's face had been heated, frustrated, and her soundless words had been critical of Ayo's decisions to not wake her or expand upon the details of the experience Ayo sought to draw out. But Ayo held firm in her resolve. Her commitment was unwavering, and the sight of it on his behalf mattered.
Though initially Yama and Nomble quietly conversed with each other, allowing him the freedom to eavesdrop without being hindered by maintaining secondary conversation, now and then Yama would prompt him with the occasional question so she could keep track of its progression too.
Nomble appeared less-than-thrilled about Yama's inquiries, but she also wasn't beyond asking her own, "Did they come to a verdict?" Nomble managed between dainty bites dipped in shakshuka.
Barnes did best to remain mindful of his expression, which he suspected was layered with frustration. Even though he could follow each step of the reasoning behind Ayo, Sam, and Shuri's comments and their logical conclusions, it was still difficult to not know what future awaited him, especially now that he had every reason to believe that the ailments plaguing his fractured mind were likely to require further intervention.
He kept his voice low as he responded to Nomble, "No. They are at an impasse of how to proceed and question if it's advisable to see me freed. Shuri hopes the medical staff might be able to have any findings that would offer reassurances that it's a wise course to pursue. She wants General Okoye and her brother to weigh in."
"King T'Challa," Nomble gently corrected in what he took as a reminder for his proper title.
"I know that," Barnes quietly insisted. He might not have grasped the significance behind it a day and a half ago, but he did now. At least, he thought he did.
Now he could recognize that T'Challa was not only Shuri's older brother, but also the ruler of Wakanda. It followed that his thoughts held profound weight that could help shape whatever came next for him, so he recognized Nomble's insistence on protocol was spoken with the best of intentions.
The problem was, his mind still felt like a jumble of shakshuka. It was as if flickers of what he presumed were his past, but felt like someone else's life, were jumbled around like loose puzzle pieces in a box without a cover photo. Without any logical progression or or chronology. And in those memories, he rarely recalled addressing the man Nomble referred to as "King T'Challa" as-such. More often it was simply "T'Challa" or rarely, "Highness." It was difficult to ascertain the reasoning behind each variation, but he was coming to realize that whatever mysteries the past held for him, King T'Challa had taken a decided interest in his recovery.
He was present in the memory of when Ayo'd first spoken the code words, and at some point, maybe before, maybe after, maybe both: he'd visited the mountain where they'd trained a little ways down from where they were now. He hadn't just watched or observed, either. On at least one occasion, he'd brawled hand-to-hand with the remarkably agile and athletic man, and had been met with the same heightened strength and focus as when they'd come to blows back on the jet when Barnes had attempted to make an escape.
He sighed, wishing for not the first time there was more he could grab hold of aside from an increasing collection of disjointed muscle memories, sounds, smells, and flickers of any number of uncatalogued images that felt as if he were caught looking into someone else's memory albums.
And the contents within? There were brief flickers of levity he placed here in Wakanda or in Washington D.C., but the vast majority he felt certain were echoes of his time with HYDRA - both the suffering he'd been subjected to, and the many ways he'd been called to act under their twisted orders, unaware of the sheer scope of their depravity.
Barnes pushed the blood-soaked, crystal clear images down and turned his attention back to the silent conversation transpiring a distance away, paraphrasing it for Nomble and Yama's benefit, "They're worried about my instincts. Or how I might react if I'm provoked. That I could hurt someone, even if I didn't mean to."
"Do you share such concerns?" Yama inquired, tilting her head patiently in his direction as she masked her own lips with fresh flapjacks.
As he deliberated how best to respond, he briefly glanced down to his left hand. Even now, it was strange to not be met with the sight of familiar polished chrome and the constant pain that it wrought. It was a reminder that time had passed, even if he couldn't recall the details.
Before he risked being pulled further towards unnecessary melancholy, he raised his head back up so he could continue to discreetly follow the silent conversation from a distance. "If my mind shifts and I forget, yes, I share their concerns. But…"
"But…?" Nomble prompted.
"But, how things are now, it's… hard to explain."
"We are patient," Yama noted, ever-encouraging, and not at any loss for food to keep her occupied.
Barnes nodded once, trying to sort through the jumble of scrambled eggs he called a mind, "They worry that my first instinct would be to hurt people. Based on what happened two days ago and their understanding of what it was like with HYDRA. When they…" his voice faded as he struggled to articulate what it was he was trying to say.
"If it is too hard, you do not need to speak more of it. But we will listen if you wish to." Nomble reassured him while passing Yama a jar of jam. Barnes was increasingly certain the performance was simply meant to further obscure their activities from the group conversing beyond the dome.
He nodded and continued to deliberate, struggling to pinpoint the specific nuance he was trying to get across, "It's not that. Not the… not that stuff. It's… part of why they kept the others in stasis so much, but not me. The ones HYDRA created. The other Winter Soldiers." As he spoke, he did his best to split his attention so he could continue to track what Ayo, Sam, and Shuri were saying, even though it couldn't have diverged more from his own choice of topic, "They were more volatile. Dangerous. To their handlers. To other operatives. They…" he adjusted his jaw, trying to return to his original intent, "HYDRA wanted them to be more like me. But they enjoyed it. They enjoyed hurting people."
"But you didn't?" Nomble inquired, though by her tone, Barnes was certain she already knew the answer.
"No. Not then. Not now. Even then, I could tell I wasn't like them. I only did what was necessary," he lowered his eyes, "At least what they'd convinced me was necessary. Now, I can see how they were holding the strings. I couldn't see it at the time, but the Winter Soldiers HYDRA created… they…"
There were any number of things Barnes wanted to say, but he didn't know where to start, how he could explain that even then, when he'd seemingly been kept on a leash to do HYDRA's bidding, that he wasn't like them. That the distinction didn't nullify the awful things he'd done, but it was important.
The other Winter Soldiers left strings of casualties and willful destruction in their wake. So many awful, unnecessary injuries that no human body could recover from, but were handed out as nothing more than casual entertainment. He didn't have a way of conveying to Nomble or Yama how surreal it was to be sent on a mission with them, to share objectives, only to find himself confused at the reasons behind their decisions and cruel camaraderie. Why they left people on the sidelines to bleed-out rather than ending their lives swiftly, as they'd been trained to do.
But he was trained not to ask questions.
He hadn't seen it then on their faces back then, but he realized now how sickeningly amused some of them were to see him struggling how to react to the destruction they left behind, how much they enjoyed not only the pain they wrought directly, but how Barnes often found himself forced to make battlefield decisions to turn away or offer a clean death to needlessly suffering civilians, or what the other Winter Soldiers often referred to as 'collateral damage.'
Barnes found himself wondering how many more he didn't remember, but Nomble's question wasn't about the other Winter Soldiers, it was about him.
He met her eyes as he struggled to articulate what he was trying to get at, "Their first instinct was violence, but it was never mine. By intention, HYDRA didn't want me to be reactive. From their perspective, it would have put their own personnel at-risk. But their methods–"
Yama pointedly cut in, "-Their methods were immensely cruel and inhumane. We have spoken of some of them with our friend. You do not need to retread on such horrors for our benefit."
Barnes twitched his jaw and nodded once, relieved that he wasn't being asked to recount those many intense trials, "I was punished if I reacted," he concluded simply, hoping that Yama and Nomble grasped the significance of what he was digging around.
There was compassion in Yama's deep brown eyes as she drank in his words, "So you do not share in the concerns of Ayo, Sam, and Princess Shuri in regards to your present instincts?"
He licked his lips, "I don't think so? It's hard to explain, but… it's as if that baseline training with HYDRA is still there, the parts that emphasized calculated restraint rather than brazen violence. The parts they continued to hone-in on, fine-tune, even between the wipes, but…" He shifted his weight, "But even though I only remember flickers from being out here in Wakanda, with all of you. All the training we did... I feel like it's there too. Like my body remembers. That even though I might not consciously remember learning it, it's there, if that makes any sense."
Yama raised an eyebrow, intrigued, but it was Nomble that spoke next, "Like the notes and melodies of a piano?"
Barnes consider the comparison, "Yeah. Like that. Like the lessons are there, under the surface. They're already working knowledge. Instinct." His attention turned to Yama, "I remember the training we did when you were specifically trying to provoke me. Him. Your friend. You know what I mean."
"'Twas always with clear knowledge and consent," Yama was quick to point out, and he might've rolled his eyes at the remark.
"That was the impression I got, yeah. It was nothing like what HYDRA did." He cocked his head, "One time, Ayo reprimanded you for going 'too light' on me. In response, you managed to not only land a blow on my left side, but on Ayo's fingers when she sought to intervene."
Yama grinned a little at that, "You maintained your guard, though. You did not react, even though the pain of a cracked rib, and Ayo's fingers were hardly the first bruises or broken bones from our exploits."
"You recall that?" Nomble inquired, intrigued.
"Bits and pieces, but enough. Enough that if King T'Challa and General Okoye want to test whatever instincts are in play beneath the surface, I'd be up for it. I don't want to hurt people, either," he admitted, arching his neck to get a better look at the undulating orange energy dome surrounding him, "and while this isn't exactly… ideal… I understand why it's here. Why everyone's being so cautious. I don't want to put anyone else at-risk either. Especially all of you."
Yama nodded in agreement as Nomble watched Barnes thread his fingers along the trim of the blue, black, and gold shawl T'Challa'd claimed was a gift to remind him that he was among friends and allies. He didn't remember receiving this particular one, but he remembered others like it, and the familiarity of it was strangely soothing. He felt Nomble's eyes on him as she spoke, "I have hope the dialogue you have with them will be productive. They are reasonable people, but you must remember their concerns are wide-reaching."
"Has someone told them about the soldiers that were brought to Symkaria? The ones I…?" his voice faded off.
He caught Yama's cringe, "I do not know for certain, but I would suspect Princess Shuri and Ayo would have told them of your concerns."
Barnes felt his lips twinge as he returned his attention to where Ayo, Sam, and Shuri continued to converse a short distance beyond the dome. Though their voices were silenced due to Shuri's choice of noise-canceling technology, he focused on their lips, trying to pick up their conversation from where he'd left off. He managed to track only a sentence or two before Ayo suddenly broke with the group and hurried away, jogging directly towards the rear of the nearest ship parked in the far end of the clearing.
Her sudden departure had an immediate effect on the people she'd been in conversation with only a moment before. Sam and Shuri looked utterly perplexed, and both Yama and Nomble looked up from portioning their food to determine what might've caused Ayo to dash away at a pace so quick, it was as if she was barely holding herself back from running.
Yama kept her eyes to the activities in the distance while she whispered to Barnes, hopeful he might be able to supply an explanation for her actions, "Did she say anything just before?"
"I only caught 'Stay here a moment. I will be right back.'"
"Perhaps she received a summons?" Nomble postulated. "Had she glanced at her Kimoyo Beads just before?"
Barnes shook his head, but before the three of them could theorize any further, Ayo re-emerged from the jet, cupping something in her left hand and hurrying towards not where Sam and Shuri stood patiently waiting for explanation, but the orange dome itself.
When Barnes realized Ayo's attention was focused specifically on him, he shifted his breakfast food to one side and dipped his fingers in the nearest bowl of water before getting to his feet. To either side of him, Yama and Nomble did the same. Ayo said nothing as she gestured for Sam and Shuri to join them with her free hand.
Barnes searched Ayo's face, hoping to decipher what this was all about, but there was precious little to go on. She wasn't visibly distressed, but there was a solemn intensity about her that had a way of reminding him of when she'd first thought to test if his body remembered the Guard's Dance, even if his mind did not.
There was a time not long ago he might have been apprehensive about what she had planned, but instead, he found himself oddly curious to find out what he was up to.
…Even if it had interrupted breakfast.
Ayo kept her left hand grasped in a fist as she drew close to the orange barrier and came to a stop just outside. Before she could say anything, Barnes preempted her next question by motioning her forward so she could freely enter the undulating energy dome surrounding him.
She didn't carry any trepidation with her as she stepped through, and Nomble moved to one side to avoid crowding them.
While Barnes's attention briefly flitted to acknowledge Sam and Shuri as they stopped outside the dome looking just as clueless as he felt, Barnes's attention quickly returned to Ayo as she waved two her fingers over her Kimoyo Bead strand. The motion prompted a holographic menu to appear above her left wrist. She made it three screens in before rapidly switching the readout to English, conceivably for Sam's benefit.
A dense wall of tightly-knit text cascaded over the display, casting a pale blue glow over the tight. focused features of her face. But as soon as Ayo tapped a few hovering holographic buttons and finally opened her left hand, Barnes immediately recognized the contents resting in her palm.
The dark, granular particles looked to be the same nanite technology found in the ship he'd borrowed. The highly responsive, programmable material was able to form not only remarkable three-dimensional maps useful in ship navigation, but it could be used for rapid prototyping, like when he'd built an extension to Sam's chair so he could lay down to reduce his chances of losing consciousness yet again.
Barnes was quick to remind himself: Those injuries hadn't come about by accident.
As if reading the room, Yama thoughtfully observed, "...Barnes is already familiar with this technology. He used it in the days before. To aid Sam while they were airborne."
"Yes," Ayo quickly agreed, "But that is not what I am thinking. That he should control it now."
Yama cocked her head, but her expression was beset with curiosity as she and everyone around her watched as Ayo drew the black nanites together into a small orb no larger than an egg. Once they settled and coalesced, she carefully handed it off to Barnes.
He held it gingerly between his fingers as Ayo spoke, "In your Ukuphupha, when you sought knowledge and understanding in your state of dreaming in the Dark Place, do you think your mind has memory of how it felt, like here, on the mountain, even though that realm was not tangible?"
He could tell by the urgency in her voice that this wasn't the time for a rundown on why she was suddenly asking about the Dark Place he and their friend had both glimpsed, but he wasn't inclined to argue. He carefully rolled the dark sphere into his right hand, catching onto what she was potentially getting at, "Maybe? It's not the same… but maybe?"
"You think…–?" Yama began, before being swiftly elbowed into silence by Nomble through the undulating orange barrier.
She'd caught on too: Ayo was trying to help him decipher the transient object he'd held in his outstretched palm…
"How were you poised?" Ayo began, using her right hand to mimic how he'd rigidly locked his fingers in place after coming out of his Ukuphupha the night before. He could remember the terror of it, how it'd gripped his throat as a sudden torrent of frighteningly new memories drowned his senses.
But he did his best to push back from those spiraling revelations and ignore the audience gathered around him. He was not in immediate danger, and neither were they. They were trying to help him remember what he'd experienced each time he'd glimpsed the Dark Place. The first time, he'd been merely a passenger to the experience, but the second, more recent time, he'd felt as if the actions were truly his own. His memory of it wasn't as crisp as it once was, but parts of it were still embedded in his mind, he was sure of it.
When Ayo had first sought to draw out a 'heightened event,' she'd called it, from an experience they'd once shared elsewhere on the mountain, it was specific. Pointed. Something nebulous and difficult to chase, but she, Yama, and Nomble had quickly latched onto not only what she was trying to accomplish, but the precise moment she was set on chasing. Circling. Returning to.
But the Dark Place was nothing like that. He was alone there. Barnes had little to rely on but the fractured fragments of his own mind, and a languid progression of exploratory events that were surprisingly indistinct from one-another.
Even still: He tried.
He'd roamed softly around his corner of the Dark Place, certainly, but was there a particular moment deep within the experience that he could focus on? He frowned, regarding the orb resting in the palm of his hand and tried to think of something distinct he could hone-in on.
A North Star.
Perhaps… perhaps just after he'd touched the object with his left hand? When he was first able to almost catch sight of it using that surreal, golden glow cast by his left hand? He tried to tune out the five pairs of brown eyes focused squarely on him miming shapes with his outstretched fingers while he worked to recall how he'd been standing. Were his legs touching one-another, or slightly parted? Were his bare feet pointed forward, splayed, or split? How high had he been holding his right hand? Were his shoulders upright, or hunched? Had he lifted his hand so he could see the strange object in his palm more closely, or had he leaned forward in a feeble attempt to see it better? How had he been holding his other hand at the time? The one that had been offering a spark of warm light?
Barnes cringed and looked over towards Ayo apologetically, "It's difficult to remember. The experiences there weren't nearly as sharp as that one on the mountain."
She nodded once, shifting her weight as she carefully regarded his positioning. He knew she had little she could offer in the way of specifics since she hadn't been present for his experience, but it was obvious she was trying to help, "Perhaps try closing your eyes? It might tighten your focus on the experience itself."
He did as she suggested, but it didn't feel any different. He knew he was still standing out in the woods, with –
"Perhaps we could adjust the harmonics inside the shield so it more closely matches what Barnes described?" Nomble suggested.
"You said it sounded as if you were under water?" Shuri inquired from a few steps in front of him.
"Yeah. At least, that's the closest thing I can compare it to."
"Were you deep under the water? So that the pressure was noticeable?"
He rolled the question around in his head, "I don't think so? If there was a surface, I couldn't see it, but I didn't feel a change in pressure. It wasn't uncomfortable. But I could feel it against my skin. Like it was all around me. Like I was submerged in some sort of invisible liquid, but I could still breathe."
"What about…?" At the tail end of Shuri's comment, the tapestry of sounds around him shifted pitch and grew muffled and drowned out. He had to force himself to keep his eyes closed through the sudden change.
"Is that any closer?" Shuri's distant, slightly warbly voice inquired.
"Closer," he agreed, knowing there was only so much they could do to physically recreate his experience in the real world, but it was something. "A little deeper?"
"And now?" Though Barnes instinctively knew it was still Shuri that was speaking, and though she had not moved, the resonance of her voice sounded more distant, as if they were trying to communicate with one another beneath a body of water.
"Yeah. That helps." He did his best to still his thoughts and think back to other elements of the experience.
His bare feet and the sand crunching between his toes.
The push and pull of unseen elements playing across his back and bare chest.
The quiet *click* of the dog tags dangling from the thin chain around his neck.
"What about the size of the object in your hand…?" Ayo's cloaked voice inquired from somewhere beside him.
"Smaller." A beat, "Flatter, I think?"
Moments later, the vibranium nanites reconfigured themselves within his fingers. What felt like an egg-sized sphere smoothly transformed into a thick round coaster. It still wasn't what he remembered feeling within that strange realm, but he did his best to try to articulate how it was missing the mark.
"It wasn't quite this solid," he noted. "Can you… maybe if you add some randomized vibration within the individual particles…?"
Seconds later, the solid shape in his hand suddenly faltered and lost cohesion, as if it was beginning to crumble apart, yet stopped before it disintegrated entirely. The sensation was strange and wavering, as if the object itself was caught in some middling state between solid and liquid. Though Barnes's eyes remained closed, he keyed into the presence in his hand, struggling to compare and contrast it with the lingering flickers of those strange, dream-like experiences he could only peripherally recall. He carefully pressed his right thumb into the center of the mass, curious how the programmed nanites might respond to his touch, all-the-while trying to pretend they were anything but. That he was simply back in the Dark Place as he'd been.
"They should be more responsive," he specified, "So the form is more solid where it's compacted. But if I push too hard, it should give way. It was like it didn't want me to map out its shape."
"So to a point it was a…" Shuri began, "...a liquid that does not follow certain laws of viscosity? Like a Bingham plastic? Or is it more like what is called a 'Non-Newtonian fluid' outside of Wakanda?"
"So more like toothpaste, or quicksand?" Sam's muffled voice inquired before adding, "Or oobleck?
Yama chimed in from somewhere just right of Sam, "Oobleck?"
"Cornstarch and water. Way back, we used to do a science experiment where–"
"Might we discuss the recipe later?" Ayo impatiently interjected.
Barnes returned his attention to the weight of the object in his hand and did his best to pretend those weren't simply programmed nanites vibrating within his palm, "It wasn't specifically like either of those." He paused, correcting himself, "It was as if it was in one state when it was just resting on my palm, then sections of it would shift to another when I ran my fingers over it. But if I pressed too hard, or held my fingers in place too long, it would give way."
"So it always faltered before you felt as though you could properly map its shape?" Shuri clarified.
Even though his eyes remained closed, Barnes nodded, "Yeah, and even when I tried to use my left hand to shine light on it, it remained… oddly indistinct. Like most of the light was being absorbed so I still couldn't see it."
"So you felt more than you saw?"
"In a manner of speaking. But there were moments when it was almost solid. But it never stayed that way. Only certain parts. For just a second. Then they'd part and return to that sort of vibrating, indistinct phase."
The particles within his fingers shifted again, seemingly thickening as Barnes's thumb searched for familiarity of form. "More like this?" Ayo's muffled voice inquired from a few steps away.
He caught a sudden wave of familiarity. "Yeah, it was… the grains were finer, I think, but like that." Barnes's face twisted in concentration as he evaluated the undulating object in his palm against some unseen metric in his mind's eye, "The edges were shaper sometimes, but not always. More pointed. Like a pinwheel. And the middle sunk into the center of my palm."
"Was it thicker in the middle?" Ayo inquired from close-by.
His outward expression must've betrayed his intended response, because a moment later, he could feel the center of the shape build as someone made adjustments courtesy of their handheld display.
Barnes did what he could to focus on his intended posture and the object in his hand, peeling back the layers of experience he'd been steeped in within that specific moment in the Dark Place. When he'd tried to use all his senses at once to uncover what was clutched in his hand and why it was so important. He did what he could to try to separate out the dissimilarities he didn't need: the weight, the differences in texture and subtle responsiveness, and instead he did his best to focus on what similarities he could carve out.
He was tempted to look at his hand, but he knew it would only thwart what they were trying to accomplish, so he resisted the urge and re-adjusted the positioning of his hand and fingers, struggling to recreate that key moment from the Dark Place. "The middle was even a little thicker. Not so rounded out. There was a point in the center that stood out further than the rest of it."
"Can you try to trace where you remember coming into contact with it using your right thumb? When you experienced moments where it briefly felt solid?"
He did as he was instructed, but the gears of his mind began to turn faster when something sharp made contact with the center of his palm. It wasn't alarming or painful, but oddly familiar. Like he was keying into a resonance of something just under the surface. His thumb moved to explore the nearest edge that his mind recalled, but he held back, "Can you…? Can you adjust the height to meet just below where my thumb is? That's where the nearest ridge was. I…"
As he moved his thumb, he felt material build up under it as his unseen allies worked to modify the shape of the object in his hand to match the underlying form some buried part of him recalled.
"Like this?" Shuri's voice echoed.
"Was there a matching point on the top side?" Sam urgently interjected, "like the one you felt against your palm?"
Barnes considered his question as his thumb searched out the transient location, "I think so?"
Moments later, he felt a point rise up and press against the pad of his thumb, and a wave of familiarity accompanied it. Some primal part of him flared brightly, insisting this was somehow important, even if he didn't understand why. Slowly, the point receded, and in its absence, he began tracing an unseen line outwards from where it once was in an attempt to map out the nearest ridges.
Like the Guard's Dance and the moment he'd circled with Ayo, Yama, and Nomble, his thumb returned again and again to the center point. His North Star. When it did, the thick material briefly rose to meet the underside of his thumb before it fell away once more. With each cycle, Barnes used that landmark as a starting point to try and map nearby areas before they-too collapsed in on themselves. Slowly, steadily, he roamed his thumb across the outer-bounds of the object, seeking out its peaks, valleys, and edges in short, rhythmic cycles before returning time and time again to the center, and its strange siren's call and haunting familiarity.
The process might not have been precise, but he felt as if he was on the cusp of something.
When Shuri spoke again, her voice was oddly nearer, as if she'd stepped closer, "Was it the same shape both times you were there in the Dark Place?"
The first visit didn't feel like his own, but it wasn't prudent to correct her, "I'm not sure. It never felt entirely solid. It always changed, shifted just enough so I couldn't map it out, but it was more distinct the second time." As he held it in his hand, it felt… close to what he recalled. Close enough that he found himself retracing his memories of it in reverse, like he'd done when Ayo'd asked him what he remembered of the minutes and hours before she'd first said the code words.
He remembered the frightening burst of what he'd seen behind the wall of water. Darkness, shadows. The feel of fluid surrounding him, pressing and moving across his body. A soft push and pull of warm and cool. Without thinking, he turned slightly, positioning himself so the warmth of the sunrise was at his back to better match what he felt in his mind's eye. The cold, it had been in front of him, emanating out from that strange wall of water that stretched out in all directions. The one he could only just barely glimpse once the spaces between his left arm had begun to glow.
"Are you alright?" Ayo's voice gently inquired.
"Yeah just… trying to orient myself. I had whatever-it-was in my hand the whole time I was in my Ukuphupha. I knew it was important. But I'm trying to recall the first moment when I—" At that, his eyes snapped open and immediately went to the object in his hand.
It was rough, unrefined and still shivering with shimmering residual motion from the thick layer of vibrating black nanites surrounding it, but the raw shape was undeniable.
A five-pointed star.
But it was more than that. He remembered when he'd first made contact with it. When he'd first held it.
Barnes lifted his wide eyes first to Shuri and then to Ayo before adding more cautiously, "...I think I might know where it came from. And what your friend did."
[Chapter Art, by SunsetAgain]
[ID: A vertical painting showing Bucky draped in a wide piece of flowing dark blue fabric. He is suspended upside down against a dark brown background that edges towards black along the bottom edge. He is wearing a set of dog tags and his eyes are closed, and his face looks pained, as if he is caught in the throws of a nightmare. His body is partially tucked in a loose fetal-position, and his right hand grips his left knee. He has his gunmetal silver and gold prosthetic arm, the hand of which is clenched in a fist, but the spaces between the plates glow bright gold, illuminating both his flesh and the ethereal fabric draping over and under him. The text 'Mr. Barnes, are you still having nightmares?' is written in all-caps white text along the top center of the painting, and "No." is written just under it. The watermarked text 'SunsetAgain' is printed in light blue along the right center of the frame. End ID]
SunsetAgain ("SunsetAgainD" on Twitter) was kind enough to allow me to include a painting of hers to accompany this chapter.
Please check out this chapter on Archive of Our Own to see the art and link to her social media pages see more of her gorgeous, evocative art!
I love the haunting beauty of this piece and how it reminds me of this entirely "off-kilter" experience Barnes/Bucky have been through over the course of this story, as well as the countless nightmares he's suffered. He's been through a *lot.*
Once again: Huge thanks to SunsetAgain for allowing me to share this piece with all of you!
Author's Remarks:
Well that answers everything, right?
No? Okay, well then…
…The plot thickens…
- It felt fitting to have a callback to the other Winter Soldiers, and how they performed differently from Barnes. I bet missions with them were… not-so-fun…
- Bingham plastics, non-Newtonian fluids, and ooblecks are real things (and really interesting to learn about and watch videos of!)
- It feels wonderful to have certain story beats come full-circle, like those programmable nanites we encountered during that chase sequence, as well as that 'Wakandan sunrise Battle Yoga,' as Sam would put it.
As always, thank you for all your wonderful comments, questions, and words of encouragement. Knowing that others out there are following alongside me truly helps keep me fueled to keep on writing and creating, especially when the world outside can often be a frightening place.