Winter of the White Wolf: Post S1 of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

by KLeCrone

While Bucky would prefer to believe that his time as the Winter Soldier is long behind him, strange dreams and the shadows of missing memories prompt him to explore where the Winter Soldier ends and the White Wolf begins... This story dives into the bonds of friendship, the aftermath of betrayal, and includes a lively mix of banter, action, angst, and globe-trotting adventure.

79. Tattered Pages

This wasn't intended to be the third-longest chapter in this story so far, but there's a lot to cover! Buckle-in, and make sure to secure your tray-tables and stow your carry-ons as we get down to business about that backpack…

We also have a returning artist to thank for contributing yet another illustration to this story (along with my profound thanks of being willing to hold tight on sharing her finished work for so many months)! I had the pleasure of collaborating with Haflacky ("Haflacky" on Twitter) on a piece of art to accompany this poignant chapter we've been steadily building our way to.

Please check out this chapter on Archive of Our Own to see the art and links to Haflacky's social media!

Simply search for: "KLeCrone Ao3 Winter of the White Wolf"

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Winter of the White Wolf

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Chapter 79 - Tattered Pages

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Summary:

While grappling with the disjointed chronology of his fractured life, Barnes and his friends brace themselves to discover what secrets may be waiting for them inside his journals, which have been missing since 2016…

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The worn black backpack and its plethora of restrictive security straps had a way of reminding Barnes of not only his old tactical gear, but the many tight, colorless combat uniforms HYDRA had outfitted him into over the years. The clothing changed, evolved with his handlers and his mission parameters, but each and every time it was the responsibility of others to select his gear. For their rough hands to equip the layers of trappings and armaments, only to later systematically strip them away once he'd fulfilled his purpose.

He didn't understand the nuances of it at the time. It wasn't his place to question the hands and their intentions. He simply accepted it as established protocol that he was to remain compliant to the requests others made of him as they added, removed, and harshly adjusted his attire over and over again until they were satisfied. Voices occasionally sought out responses from him, but he realized now that he couldn't recall ever being asked about his comfort unless it overlapped a possibility that had the potential to impact his mission performance.

They viewed him as an Asset and nothing more.

But even then, he recognized there were ephemeral sensations associated with HYDRA's clothing rituals. And as Barnes sat looking into the gaping hole of the battered backpack resting in the crook of his lap, he found he couldn't help but be reminded of the sensations attached to those rituals. Of people plucking free his weaponry and documenting them, while others dealt with the tight zippers and latches that bound him. Once they were done, he felt lighter in some ways but heavier in others, as if the mere act of shucking away his clothing left him grappling with what remained.

And dreading what came next.

He might not have understood it then, might not have been able to identify and catalogue the complex emotions tightening around his gut or the reasons for them, but he understood some part of it now. How you could desperately want clarity in the unknown and fear it at the same time.

Barnes wasn't sure what he expected to be waiting for him inside the innocuous black bag, but by the heft of it, he knew it contained more than just the three lined journals he'd kept in the months after he'd escaped HYDRA.

He wasn't sufficiently braced for the smell, though.

It was musty. Not rotten, but stale and caked in a primal musk that his mind immediately cross-compared to the insides of the various face masks HYDRA used to muzzle him with over the years. Most latched behind his head, rigid appliances that required other hands to remove the devices so he could do simple things like eat, drink, or take his prescribed oral pain medications. He hadn't understood it back then, he'd simply complied to the apparatus like he was instructed to do, but now his fractured mind recalled the satisfied, often mocking smiles of the people around him when they saw him wearing it. The off-color jokes about his breath or his bite, and the various options they might pursue to make the mask more amusing, intimidating, or permanent.

The inside of the bag smelled like the inside of those restrictive masks. It didn't reek, but it was like the air itself was choking to breathe.

He remembered that sensation too.

The seams lining the main compartment of the backpack were brittle with age, and Barnes quickly realized that the majority of the tattered holes he'd first noticed across the slick, water-resistant fabric were wounds resulting from the rigid journals that were jammed inside. He wanted to imagine that at some point the mass of paper goods were organized, but judging by their current state and what he'd been told about the bag's history, it seemed likely that multiple sets of hands had gone through the contents since his own fingers had last come into contact with any of the cramped notebooks, journals, folders, and torn pages. With a frown, Barnes struggled to diagnose a viable starting point for the unscripted task before him, and resorted to pulling out fist-sized chunks of material which he stacked around him in self-contained piles.

Methodical as his actions were, in practice, Barnes found himself searching for something, anything that sparked familiarity. It didn't take long until he found it: worn, folded in half, and stuffed to one side along the rim of the zipper.

The thick red cover was far more ragged than he remembered. The pages? Yellowed and weathered with grime and curled corners. Although nothing had been transcribed onto the cover, he was certain it was the same journal he remembered writing in only days ago in Washington D.C.

Only days ago to him, at least.

With breathless urgency, he fished the folded spiral notebook out of the side of the bag so he could get a better look at it. His mind may have been fractured in a thousand different ways, but he could still crisply recall every page and every mark he'd transcribed in the fresh reams of paper. But as he shifted the backpack off to one side so he could focus exclusively on the familiar notebook, a strange sensation clutched at his throat. It wasn't simply wanton anticipation or curiosity about what he might find in the entries after the ones he'd last recalled writing. There was something like dread too, because the moment he peeled open the cover, it became abundantly obvious that not only had the contents been tampered with — violated — by new layers of notes that had been added by not just anyone, but by someone with his own handwriting.

By him.

Barnes struggled to control his breathing as his shaky fingers flipped through page after page of familiar text that had been augmented with a variety of bold multicolor inks. But instinctively, his detail-focused eyes focused on what he remembered like it was some sort of critical memory-test to ensure he hadn't already forgotten what he'd so recently jotted down.

Systematically, he took inventory of the underlying contents he'd written in 2014. The records covering his nutritional catalogue, observations on Steve, Sam, and other noteworthy individuals and their routines. His staggering pain management attempts, and the confusing images he sometimes saw in the brief times he permitted himself to sleep. The bulk of the contents were mostly intact and accounted for, but it was impossible to overlook the additional notes made in the margins with colored pens he didn't remember owning. Numbers transcribed in blue, red, and green. Circles, arrows, or text that had been either underlined or struck-through. Pages and pieces were torn out, while others bits were added with tape or paper clips like a makeshift scrapbook.

Clutched between the thin pages were an ever-increasing collection of things he didn't remember. Portions of receipts, small scrawled drawings, and what looked to be diagrams he couldn't make any sense of, and a few he could.

Addresses. Numbers. Dates. Times. Names. Maps.

Geographic coordinates. Medications. Notes after the medications on dosages. On what worked for the pain in his head. In his arm. Where the medications could be purchased.

Where they could be stolen.

He wanted to look ahead to entries later in the notebook, ones after the ones he recalled, but instead he found himself struggling to make sense out of the new markings someone had layered over his initial observations. The lines were pushed deep into the paper like they were important, like he should understand why they were so layered in place for his attention.

The notes emblazoned in his own handwriting.

His notes.

So many languages. Pens. Highlighters. Markers.

Magazine clippings. Recipes. Sizes. Combinations. Areas in the page where he'd used graphite to rub over the cards he'd taken off HYDRA operatives. Expiration dates. Access codes.

Fragments of words. Letters. Bookmarks. References back to other pages, other journals.

Diagrams of the plates and electronics of his left arm, and how to remove panels so he could repair it without toggling the sensitive tampering mechanisms beneath.

Information on the trackers HYDRA had embedded into his arm and his flesh and grim logs of how he'd used them as bait for their operatives.

Drawings of faces. Mouths. Teeth. Eyes. Brows. Expressions he once struggled to understand, but couldn't. But the want was desire to understand this confusing world he'd been thrust into after choosing to forsake HYDRA and their toxic comforts to save the life of his previous mission target.

Parts of the writing were fluid, but many others were scrawled with a sense of raw panic so deep that the urgent marks pressed through the pulp of the paper, piercing straight through in some places.

What had he seen? What had he remembered in those times?

Some part of Barnes was aware of Sam, Ayo, and Yama sitting with him in the present, but he was so focused on the ragged red journal in his hands that he could hardly come up for air. His raw fingers fumbled through the pages with increasing urgency as he was suddenly compelled to flip ahead and seek out the last entry he could remember marking, but his disobedient hands wouldn't stop trembling. Why wouldn't they stop trembling?

A little over halfway in he found it.

| April 23rd, 2014

He remembered that day. He clearly recalled logging the last of his findings as he always did. Just after the cats were distracted with their evening meal. Before checking the perimeter again. He'd removed just enough of his armaments that he wouldn't be restricted when he slept, and then he settled the blankets around him for warmth before the white cat leisurely wandered over to lie against him and groom herself, as she always did.

Barnes could remember closing his eyes, listening for any inkling of displaced sound that might foretell danger before he eventually drifted off… only to suddenly startle awake in the Design Center's lab… ten years later.

His thumb traced the text, feeling for the familiar dents in the paper where he'd pressed the ballpoint pen into the words before filing the notebook away for safekeeping overnight.

And then, his fingers moved over an entry below that, on April 24th, 2014.

And another.

And another.

On and on, the journal continued, unabated, and Barnes tried to take it in all at once. Detailed remarks about his activities, and his ongoing observations on Steve, Sam, and briefly Natasha before she'd left the city, as well as the colony of cats that'd chosen to set up a perimeter around him, regardless of when he apparently relocated to a nearby rooftop. All of that text, written in the same black ballpoint pen he recognized, was layered over with additional notes scrawled in the margins or directly over top the underlying words themselves.

Other pages were torn asunder in part or in-whole. Barnes wanted to believe that it was some future-version of him that had done it, that had been compelled to rip the pages in order to form a more cohesive picture, but he didn't know, couldn't know. He did what he could to put himself in the head of the person writing those new entries or the supplementary remarks and diagrams, but he didn't connect with them, didn't remember them.

"Breathe, Barnes," Ayo's grounding voice floated from over his left shoulder. "Breathe. Listen to the world around you. Let the urgency you feel fall away with each breath."

He closed his eyes and did what he could to heed her advice even though his heart threatened to beat out of his chest. His shallow, erratic breaths seemed intent to thwart his repeated attempts to establish a rhythm.

But he tried. He listened for the steady breathing of the three people seated around him. How Yama and Ayo's regalia would shimmer as they moved, and the leather of Sam's belt quietly creaked. Barnes did what he could to acknowledge that it was unrealistic to believe he could swallow the contents of the journals whole and come away with easy answers to the seemingly endless waves of questions plaguing him.

There was a very real reason for the urgency he felt deep in his gut, for the pursuit of answers to many things, not the least of which was a solution to whatever was plaguing his mind. But he did what he could to remind himself he had days remaining, not mere hours, so there was time yet for hope.

When his chest finally stopped heaving, Barnes took a deep breath and opened his eyes, carving out time to turn his head to each of the people seated around him as a way of acknowledging their presence. Then he swallowed and refocused on the tattered journal lying spread open in his lap. The one that was only weeks old not days ago, but now seemed rattled by years he couldn't remember.

"...I take it that one's familiar?" Sam inquired from just to his right. The other man's voice was heavy with empathy and held not a drop of tease.

Barnes found he had to push his parched lips to form words, "Yeah. There were three. From back then. The one with the black cover's not in the bag."

For a second, it looked as if Sam might've been considering politely debating the claim, since other black notebooks were clearly visible in the neat stacks in front of Barnes, but Sam grasped what he was getting at and frowned, "If we're talkin' one of the ones from 2014, that woulda' been a long time ago. I can't speak for where it ended up, but I can at least tell you I don't recall seein' it in any safe houses from back then. You usually cleared that kinda stuff out long before Redwing and I caught up to you. Sometimes you'd leave behind notes, but that's about it."

Barnes cocked his head, "Notes?"

Sam adjusted his shoulders, "Well while I was doin' my best to track you down, it took me a bit to realize you weren't trying to take me out or set booby-traps or anything. There was sizable reason to play it cautious. But eventually you started leaving notes on scraps of paper. I couldn't be sure it was you, of course. Wasn't like you signed 'em or anything. But they ever said much. Just things like 'Leave me alone.' Had a way of remindin' me of something you said the other day. Back when you were confused and we were tryin' to get away from the Wakandans on that ship you stole."

Barnes remembered. He could know why he'd been compelled to say it aloud while Sam was ailing beside him from injuries he's inflicted, but he remembered:

'I just want them to leave me alone.'

Sam's face twisted a little as he gestured a hand towards the Wakandan suitcase lying against the wall at the far side of the room, "Redwing might have footage of some of those safehouses if you're interested. Well, assuming he wasn't disabled at the time. You had a knack for knocking him out of the air in all manner of creative ways only to leave him behind all duct-taped up for me to find. One time you even drew on him with permanent marker. I was convinced you were just tryin' to piss me off in the most annoying ways possible. Do you have any idea how difficult that shit is to remove from an industrial clear-coat?"

"That does sound like him," Yama remarked, earning her a snort and brief half-smile from Sam that quickly faded.

"You were firmly set on throwing me off your trail, so you weren't exactly inclined to leave riddles about where you were plannin' to head to next or that sort of thing, but maybe the footage can offer somethin' useful? Could'a been that somethin' got left behind along the way that I didn't catch at the time."

Barnes considered the offer, but in the greater scheme, it seemed altogether less urgent than the papers sitting in front of his bare feet, "Maybe later." It wasn't that he was opposed to reviewing the footage Sam was offering him access to, but he was already overwhelmed as it was, and some part of him wanted to tackle one thing at a time before he got lost in the tangle of his thoughts entirely. He adjusted his jaw and returned his attention to the notebook in front of him as he silently told himself that he had to accept that, like many of his other belongings from 2014, the black journal he'd written in was likely lost to the passing years. While he was curious about what had been added to it after the fact, there were more than enough other papers, journals, and notebooks floating around him to keep him occupied. And besides? Unlike the black journal, he didn't know what underlying entries were contained within these new additions, or what revelations they might reveal.

His stormy blue eyes returned to the stacks of papers he'd set out nearby. Many of them had brightly colored tabs sticking out from between the pages. If there was an underlying system to the meaning behind the colors, he didn't know what it was. Would've been nice if past-him at least had the courtesy of making all of this less of a damn guessing game.

Supplementary markings jotted down in multicolored ink and bright highlighters were spread across the loose sheets of crumpled paper lying across the rug they were seated on. But like the tabs: Barnes struggled with where to start. He ground his jaw in frustration and put the tattered red journal to the side so he could reach back into the bag and pull out another handful of papers, hoping that putting more of it in the open might make the collection easier to process. Although there didn't seem to be any apparent logic to how they were organized, he memorized the order as he laid them out in front of him in case that particular element proved important in the future.

Would it have hurt past-him to be a little more considerate all-around?

There were endless notes jotted on margins and numbers scrawled in one color only to be crossed out next to one or more other numbers and question marks. Some beginning in '19' or '20' were clearly dates, but the meaning behind others was far more illusive. To Barnes's best guess, the markings were an attempt to form some sort of broad chronology of his life, but the person working to put things together had visibly struggled to form anything cohesive.

If he could only grasp the meaning behind the words and numbers, it might've formed a jumbled autobiography of his fractured life, but he didn't know where to begin, no less what it all meant. Looking for a change of pace, he picked up the nearest hardbound journal and began to thumb through it, scanning the scattered collection of handwritten notes interspersed with newspaper clippings. This one wasn't even arranged with underlying dated entries, just broad categories like "Lab" or "Extraction Mission."

He frowned, keying into a particular section where he'd drawn what looked to be five oddly-shaped blue bags and a single black, five-pointed star. Beneath it was a horizontal rectangular frame:

| NEW YORK

| HS 586

Just below that in red pen, someone with his handwriting had added:

| License plate registered to Howard and Maria Stark. Publicized car accident on the night of December 16th, 1991. Sleeping images conflict. Details of mission unclear. Extraction? Assassination? Unknown blue liquid contents located inside the containment case found in rear trunk. Handler unknown. Mission parameters unclear.

Sam licked his lips, "That's… uh… this a part you remember" his tone was telling, and not in a good way.

"I don't remember anything about the contents in the trunk, but… it was a mission," Barnes began, "I had a dream about it, an echo of a memory, but it was incomplete. I was ordered to sanction and extract. No Witnesses. I made it look like an accident. I didn't know them. Didn't think I did, at least, but…" he turned to Sam, "The man, Howard, he called me 'Sergeant Barnes.' Those were his last words."

Barnes's statement hung in the air a moment before he added, "He knew me, like Steve, but I didn't understand it at the time. And I killed him. And then her. I didn't even think twice. And I still don't remember him, just that I completed the mission, and then they wiped me when I got back. Pushed it all down." He looked back to the journal entry again, "Far enough that most of these details went right along with it."

An echo of placating words skittered across his mind, devoid of place or time:

"Молодец, Солдат."

"Well done, Soldier."

Barnes kept his eyes downcast, "When I saw his name in the museum, read about the accident that had killed him and his wife, I didn't even know it was me. Not until I started having flashes. Even then, I didn't know their names. I just heard her crying out 'Howard!' and him talking to me like he knew me. Using that name I didn't recognize." He lifted his eyes to Sam, "When they asked about the mission, I told them about it. What they'd said. The names. 'Sergeant Barnes.' They fried me until I couldn't remember it anymore."

Until nothing was left, and they had to restart his heart.

The sound of Sam's breathing punctuated the silence left in the wake of Barnes's words. He licked his lips and took a deep breath in and out, "...That's… that'd beyond awful. And if you want to leave it at that, we can, but there's more to it than that. Beyond what you just said and what's in that journal entry." He raised his amber-brown eyes to Barnes, "You interested in knowin' the parts I do? It's not due to be easy listenin', but it might connect some of the pieces between the lines for ya, if that's what you want."

It was hard to ignore the foreboding way Sam'd phrased his question, but if HYDRA had ordered Barnes to kill Howard and Maria Stark steal whatever was in that trunk, he at least wanted to know why. And more than that: how it was that Howard had apparently recognized him, "Yeah. Okay."

Sam straightened his shoulders and chewed his lip as he drummed his fingers on his pant legs in search of a starting point, "Well, I wasn't alive at the time, so the bulk of this is second-hand information from either you, Steve, or maybe some world history thrown in, but back when you served in the military, both of you knew Howard Stark. He was an inventor, scientist, engineer, businessman, strategist: the whole deal. He helped support the Allied Forces during World War II and was one of the guys responsible for the American branch of the Super Soldier project. Even gave Steve his fancy shield. …Any'a that ring a bell at all?"

"Some of it was in the museum display, but there wasn't anything about me knowing him before HYDRA."

"Yeah, would've been back in the forties, I think. You two were acquainted, like he and Steve. Mostly wartime stuff, I think. I always got the impression he was closer with Steve, likely due to being a recipient of some of his high-end tech. That, and the whole star-spangled 'Captain America' bit. When you, uh… well after you were believed to be killed in action in '45, when HYDRA must've gotten ahold of ya, I don't have any idea if you and Howard crossed paths again till… well… till this."

Barnes did what he could to process that information and file it away into his mind alongside the jumble of everything else as Ayo spoke up from beside him. The Dora Milaje's voice was soft and uncharacteristically tentative, "Is this the true reason Tony Stark and Steve Rogers parted ways after the Accords?"

Sam snorted lightly, "You could say that. I never really pried about how long Steve'd known the truth. I'm guessin' a fair bit longer than he let on. So to Tony, it was a sizable betrayal on a number of fronts. Which, lookin' back? Might explain why Steve wasn't inclined to loop Tony in about the particulars he knew or at the very least suspected surrounding our missing person's case. Why he didn't want to get the Avengers involved. I didn't pry at the time. They were his friends, not mine back then, but knowing what I do now? It pieces together in ways I didn't see at the time. And if I'm bein' honest? I guess I'll always wonder just when Steve found out, and what his reasons were for not telling me too. Wasn't thinkin' he was big on omissions of that nature, especially when he was the one having me do the bulk of the legwork on his missing person's case, but here we are."

Barnes wasn't sure how he felt about any of that. Not good, that much was certain of, "Depending on when you'd located me, I might not have even remembered them," Barnes pointed out.

"Yeah, I gathered that," Sam sighed and looked back to the journal entry that had spawned his particularly weighty topic, "But years later, in 2016 when we finally caught up and questioned you, I don't think you specifically mentioned these." He leaned over and tapped the page where the five blue bags were scrawled in, "Just the broad strokes."

Although the person who'd annotated the journal apparently couldn't identify what they were, Barnes knew, though he wasn't sure how, "Serum. Like what they gave Steve. Maybe like what HYDRA gave me." But why had he drawn a black five-pointed star beside the bags? Did it have anything to do with what he'd seen in the Dark Place, or was it simply a common symbol, sketched with whatever pen he'd had handy?

Maybe even back then, some part of him had remembered the symbol inscribed on the red book that had haunted him for so many years? Or maybe it was just a reflection of the emblem on his shoulder?

Sam looked back at the drawings of those blue bags, "I'm thinkin' maybe that's what the extraction part of your mission was in 1991. HYDRA got ahold the serum Stark'd been working on, and—"

"—Made the other Winter Soldiers," Barnes concluded, regarding the black five-pointed star he'd drawn alongside the blue bags. "You said someone else got to them. That they're dead."

"Yeah. I wasn't there, but Zemo got to them first. In 2016 in Siberia. Shot them in the head while they were suspended in cryo. No idea how long they'd been kept there, but Steve was pretty specific about the fact they weren't comin' back."

Sam looked up at the ceiling as he spoke, "While I was off on The Raft — long story — you and Steve went to Siberia expecting a fight with 'em. Instead? He ended up in a brawl with Tony when he found out who'd killed his mom and dad and thought revenge on you was the best direct course for what he was feelin' at the time. Wasn't pretty. But Zemo'd even found some security footage of you at the scene in '91 to twist the knife in Tony's chest a little tighter. I never saw it. Don't care to. But after that, you came here so the Wakandans could get your head sorted out."

Barnes squirmed his hands together in his lap, "So Howard Stark and his wife weren't just targets then. They were people I knew. That knew me."

"You didn't have a choice," Sam insisted.

His voice was raw with honesty, "But I still did it. If I'd fought it harder, maybe they'd still be alive, and HYDRA wouldn't have been able to make more Winter Soldiers. Hurt and kill more people."

"What happened to you was not brought about by weakness, but by unspeakable cruelty done towards you," Ayo insisted from just to his left.

Barnes wasn't so sure. Some of the details were still foggy, but he remembered being on that motorcycle and tracking their car down on that dark road. His handler wasn't even in the same country. If he'd just been stronger, he could've broken away. Or he could have stopped when Howard Stark said that name. Asked him what it meant.

Maybe Howard Stark could've helped him? Could've helped clear the nails and the code words.

Could've helped him make things right.

But instead he'd kill them and hadn't even looked back. Like so many of the faces he saw in his nightmares, the ones hidden around the dark corners of his memories like the names and descriptions peppered throughout the journals: He'd cut those lives down himself. And sure, HYDRA'd ordered him to do it, but he was the one who dealt the final blows.

While he was staring off into nothingness, reliving the irreconcilable guilt that haunted him, he was quietly aware of soft pressure on the side of his left arm. The sensation wasn't alarming, but a reminder that even the chrome arm he remembered had been traded out for an apparatus that offered a paltry mimicry of what once was from a time before HYDRA. When he moved his head to see the cause of the sensation, he saw Ayo's hand resting on his arm. She pulled back her fingers as he did, clearly worried the comfort she yearned to offer might've overstepped.

But oddly, he didn't find himself bristling at it. The contact didn't cause him distress, and while part of him sought to diagnose why exactly that was, in the moment, all that really mattered was that he found some quiet part of himself he didn't understand longing for the contact and the connection it represented.

The desire couldn't have been further removed from how he'd felt when rough hands had made harsh adjustments to his clothing when he'd labored under HYDRA's watch. He'd been taught not to want, not to have preferences, but deep down, he dreaded those hands and what they represented. How they acted on their own accord, unconcerned for anything but their own objectives.

This wasn't that.

Though he was floundering mentally, Ayo's simple touch and what it sought to convey in some way grounded him. Comforted him. He wasn't sure how to put it into words, but she must've grasped his unspoken plea, because after she met his gaze, she'd simply nodded and returned her hand to his shoulder.

A moment later, Sam moved his hand so that it came to rest on Barnes's nearest knee, as if seeking out a silent show of support as well. The contact didn't solve anything, didn't offer a spark of revelation or a surge of memories, but it had a way of soothing him, like calm after a mouthful of orange marmalade.

Moreover the brief, surprisingly welcome contact reminded Barnes that he wasn't alone, even if he couldn't so easily cast away the underlying distress surrounding his past and uncertain future.

HYDRA always wanted to make more of him. That had to be why they'd had him assassinate the Starks. Not just to get the serum from the trunk for their own uses, but to ensure Howard Stark couldn't make more of it for HYDRA's enemies. It also explained why years earlier, they'd had him retrieve the Super Soldiers in Korea. The ones he brought to Symkaria at their request. HYDRA wanted to uncover how to make more of it, after their repeated attempts from his own blood and tissue samples proved unsuccessful.

There might be something about those captives in the journals too. He hadn't seen anything so far but there was still a lot to go through. He just hoped that the person writing in the journals had more insight than he did. He sighed and turned his attention back to the piles of papers and pulled open a manilla envelope, scanning the contents for something that might prove useful on any number of fronts, "I don't even know what I'm looking for," he confessed, deflated. "When you said he kept journals, I assumed they were just continuing where I left off. And that after a few years, he would've figured a lot out, but… what if he – if I — was still searching for answers too?"

"There may be answer yet within the pages," Ayo sought to reassure him as she pulled her hand back and rested it across her lap. "You once told us that you sought to ensure that you were not set back to the beginning if HYDRA was able to find you and wipe you again. Could it be you left instructions for yourself were such a thing to have happened? Something that might aid you in understanding how to process the collection before you?"

There was merit in Ayo's observation even though he didn't know where to begin. It wasn't as if he'd stumbled over anything that qualified as instructions or a user's guide, but didn't mean it wasn't there. He'd barely scratched the surface of the collection. "Maybe," he acknowledged, regarding the backpack with fresh eyes and reaching over so he could carefully remove the remaining notebooks, journals, and loose papers lingering inside. Reverently, he set them out on the floor in front of them like three-dimensional puzzle pieces. Once he'd removed the last errant receipt, he ran his hands over the padding of the bag just in case there was an outlier or hidden compartment that wasn't readily apparent when the bag was crammed full.

But he didn't find anything. Not even a loose pen. With a frown, he handed the empty backpack to Ayo, who sat it off to one side so he could focus on the stacks of material lying in front of him.

Seeing it all out in the open like that, it was abundantly clear it would take time to go through everything, but trying to figure out where to even begin was a whole different matter. Was the order within the bag important, like thin layers of sedimentary rock, or was it simply happenstance? Or was it instead the result of other sets of hands rummaging through the contents over the years? Trying to make sense of things, as he now was?

His detail-focused could easily log the present order of the materials, but if his mind faltered again…

His eyes traced from the floor up to where Yama sat cross-legged opposite him, just beside the audio-visual Kimoyo Bead she'd sat out atop the comforter to record things for Shuri to review later. Or was she watching it now? Whichever it was, he had to hope maybe she'd be able to put together something he'd overlooked.

Or worse case: Maybe in the future, it would help him if more of his memories continued to slip away to the unreachable void.

Yama's gaze was steadfast and edged with empathy for his plight. How strange it was to think that even two days ago, he'd been unable to grasp what expressions like hers meant, no less that he trusted them enough to permit himself to side-step aside the pervasive fear that she or others merely intended to ensnare him. Use him. The fact that he no longer found himself second-guessing if his own words could be used against him, or if they might be used to hurt others… it was a strange feeling…

…Had the man who'd written on the papers in front of him ever learned that sort or trust? Or had it only entered the realm of possibility once the nails had been removed?

"We are in no rush," Yama assured him. "If at any point you wish me to stop the recording, I can easily do so. You only need ask."

"It's not that," Barned reasoned aloud, "It's just… it's a lot to go through. To take in."

Yama nodded, scanning over the piles, "Were Nomble here, she would likely remark on how such thorough documentation suits you. That, and she would be unsurprised to see you apparently accumulated multiple library cards. It will please her sensibilities to know you were so responsible in your borrowing."

"I returned the books I'd borrowed from the hospital even back when I remember."

"Of course you did," she tutted proudly.

He rolled his eyes, privately thankful for the brief reprieve the exchange offered him from the pervasive weight of the assorted papers lingering in front of him.

For lack of an obvious starting point, he opted to thumb through the nearest journal and search out the dates of the entries. Maybe he could arrange the logs in chronological order, and then separate them out from the shuttered volumes that appeared to be more broadly topic based? There might even be a table of contents in one of them, or something equally helpful. From what he could tell by the colored numbers and letters etched into the margins alongside various entries, at some point along the way, he must've tried to create a frame of reference across multiple volumes.

But considering the mess of pages lying spread out in front of him, it was hard to imagine how that'd all worked in practice. When he'd last held these tomes, he'd had over two years on the run to figure things out. Now? If Shuri was right, he might only have days.

From just over Barnes's right shoulder, Sam chewed his lip like it was the only thing keeping him from running his mouth. Barnes did him the courtesy of prompting him, "Something you wanted to add?"

"Not exactly," Sam defended, "I just wasn't sure if there was any way we could help, short of just bein' here to support you as you go through things."

It wasn't a lie, not exactly, but Barnes got the impression Sam had something else he was working his way towards sharing with the rest of them, but he supposed he'd get there in his own time. With a sigh, Barnes pulled the nearest hardbound journal into his palm. Like the ones he remembered writing in during his months in Washington D.C., the entries in this volume were dated and started about seven months after the last time he remembered being in the city. Like his red journal, there were all manner of extraneous markings scrawled throughout the pages, as well as bits and pieces of torn and taped paper. When he caught Sam craning his neck in a poor effort to be inconspicuous, Barnes remarked, "I don't care if you look over my shoulder, if that's what you were going to ask."

"I wasn't—" Sam sputtered before rolling his eyes as a clear misdirect of guilt, "Anyway. I was just gonna say, I can't speak to the contents, but from the markings on some of those pages, you might be able to figure out which bits came before and after others." He leaned over and tapped a corner of the nearest page, where some text in a red pen had been crossed-out with a stripe of green, "That's not to say you might've been using multiple pens over the years and switched 'em up, but it might track that when you were focused on using the red one, it might've come before the green one, and so on. And if ya can figure out the order of the markings, that might help, since I'm thinkin' maybe towards the end you had more sorted out than early on. Just a thought."

It was a fair observation, and Barnes did his best to peel away his focus on the contents of the entries themselves so he could hone-in on the colored markings surrounding them in case they held any valuable clues. Sam was right about the two pen colors, though. Every example he could find implied red came before green, but those were only two of at least a half a dozen colors, and that was assuming that he hadn't varied his approach over the years.

He wanted to think he would have been consistent, but it was hard to know. Still, Sam's observation had a way of making the sheer scope of the task before him more manageable and bite-sized. He focused on the colors themselves as some sort of organizational key as he thumbed through the pages, "There's a lot of blue pen too," he noted, leaning the book closer to the center of the circle so the people around him could get a better look at what he was seeing. "Some of it overlaps with the notes written in green ink. It's less smudged, so it might mean I was using the blue one later on too."

"And maybe there were different purposes behind the colors. What do you think: If someone asked you to mark up your own stuff now, would you be intentional about the colors?"

The answer seemed obvious enough, "Yeah."

"So maybe pick out just one of the colors and see where it leads. Might be that you can make sense out of what you were tryin' to do with those bits in the margins."

As annoying as Sam could sometimes be, he had a fair point. Having an even tighter focus might not only make the enormity of the task before him more manageable, but if he could sort out the intention behind even one of the colors, it might unlock the purpose behind the others. As Barnes's eyes drifted over the pages, he willed himself to focus on the bits and pieces written in blue ink. It appeared to be a rarer color than red or green, but when it came up, the markings were firm and intentional.

#5 13:05:10

About seven pages later, another entry midway up the page was circled in blue pen with a note in the footer:

#2 27:38:07

All numbers.

His initial instinct was that they might reference times, but the fact the second set of numbers exceeded the number twenty-four meant that it didn't relate to a standard twelve or twenty-four hour clock.

"But what could it connect to?" Barnes found himself asking out loud as he flipped through the pages, doing what he could to ignore any number of notes and diagrams written in other colors of ink in preference for focusing on the markings made in bold blue pen. The exact color of ink changed now and then, but it was always the same number of digits.

But what did it mean?

He tapped his fingertip at the base of the nearest note, "Do these numbers mean anything to any of you?"

Yama craned her head over them from where she sat across from him. She initially shook her head as Ayo postulated aloud, "It might be a sequence, as used on a safe."

"Or on a recording, like a video," Yama added, "though I do not know what they might relate to."

"Are they all positive numbers?" Sam volunteered as Barnes continued scanning through the pages.

"Seems like it so far."

"You said one of your early journals isn't accounted for. Was it your first one? Chronologically, I mean?"

Barnes glanced over to him, "Yeah, why?"

"Well, if you were planning on leavin' instructions for yourself, where would you have put it?"

"Probably there," Barnes admitted, trying not to let his frustration show in his voice. He suspected what Sam was getting at, but he wasn't sure why it mattered, since they'd already established that particular journal was likely lost to the passing years.

But Sam was off and running in a direction Barnes hadn't seen coming when the other man pursed his lips and tilted his head up in thought, "You know… Steve said you had a bag — I'm guessin' that bag — hidden under the floorboards in your last safehouse. I wonder if…" he licked his lips tentatively, but his expression suddenly brightened, as if he'd latched onto a crucial detail. "Hey. I know you said maybe you'd be up for checkin' out some of Redwing's footage later, but he might'a had eyes on whatever you were up to back then. Before we went on a cross-city chase and got taken into custody."

"Wouldn't you have been watching the feed live at the time?" Barnes countered.

"I was kinda occupied during and after the fact in case you missed the 'we' in the chase and custody remark," Sam vollied back, "But Redwing would'a had eyes on your penthouse-level flat, or what little of it he could make out. You'd done an impressive job covering most of the glass with old newspaper for a cheap privacy screen. At the time, I was mostly focused on the x-ray view, but there could be something useful. By the time I got him back, you were already on your best behavior on our little road trip together, so we didn't have a reason to scour through it. Kinda had other priorities at the time after… well…"

Barnes found himself glancing over to the other side of the room and the etched red, blue, and vibranium silver shield leaning up against the black and silver case containing Sam's flight suit and drones. While he wasn't necessarily enthusiastic about Sam's idea, he had to admit that a part of him was curious about what his life'd been like two years after D.C. And maybe there was a chance that the footage might be able to shed light on the present or help him to understand the notes he'd written for himself in his journals.

But before he could respond, he caught Ayo leaning forward to catch Sam's eye. Her expression had shifted, darkened, like she was trying to convey something to Sam with her eyes alone.

"...What is it?" Barnes pressed, sensing the sudden heaviness in Ayo's expression, and confusion in Sam's.

Sam blinked, and a second later, whatever it was must've dawned on him, because he leaned back and opened his mouth, letting out a slow whistle of a breath through puckered lips, "Oh. Right. I uh… probably worth mentioning the context. So it doesn't come as a surprise, I mean. I keep forgetting which are the bits you're still getting caught-up on…"

"...Okay…?"

"So uh, this guy, the Zemo we mentioned…"

"The one that used the code words against me in 2016," Barnes felt his voice tighten at the thought of yet another handler he didn't remember.

"One in the same, yeah." Sam licked his lips, "We didn't know it at the time, but he framed you for an attack on the U.N. A bombing of the Vienna International Centre that killed a lot of people, including—"

Ayo cut him off, and her voice grew thicker with every syllable, "—Including our King T'Chaka. Husband to Queen Ramonda. Father of King T'Challa and Princess Shuri." When Ayo turned her eyes to him, there was a weight in them he wasn't used to seeing. It was as if the neutral mask the Dora Milaje sometimes wore while on duty was inverted and laid bare. There was frustration. Anger. Hurt. Disappointment. Shame. And many more emotions he couldn't easily pinpoint. They weren't directed at him, but there was a depth to them that was haunting as it was complex.

"Wakanda, like many, originally believed you to be the one responsible for this most heinous act. We did not know it at the time, but Zemo not only set the bomb himself but went so far as to appear as your impostor in order to place the blame at your feet and draw you out of hiding. To prompt eyes around the world to locate you. Wakanda's own intel piggy-backed on international rumors until your location was found in Bucharest, Romania. Once it was, T'Challa traveled there himself to…"

"—To put me down," Barnes concluded for her.

Ayo cringed uncomfortably at the remark and swallowed before continuing, "He was misinformed, and later felt deep regret for actions that might've killed an innocent man."

Barnes nodded once as he began to put together bits and pieces surrounding comments T'Challa and others had made not only in the last two days, but in the flickers of memories he had of him. It had a way of providing additional nuance to their interactions, and the reasons behind T'Challa's desire to help him. But it was more than that, too. Barnes briefly glanced up to Ayo, meeting her complex, apologetic gaze before he returned his attention to the journal resting in his hands.

Directly below where he'd left off were a series of descriptions of three people whose lives were brought to a premature end by his own misdirected intentions.

Barnes's voice grew quieter as he added, "I think I'm well past the point where I can call myself 'innocent' from what I've taken part in. Even if I didn't kill King T'Challa's father, I killed other ones. Like Howard Stark."

Sam cringed at his remark, but it was Ayo who added, "T'Challa did not set out in pursuit of you for any crimes you had taken part in during your time with HYDRA. He specifically sought out revenge for a then recent bombing you had no part in."

From just over Barnes's right shoulder, Sam let out a resigned sigh and cut in, "Redwing and I managed to track you down just ahead of some special forces that were tasked with—" he cut himself off, "—I was gonna say they were tasked with 'bringin' you in,' but it was clear from the get-go that wasn't their marching orders, if you get my drift."

Barnes did.

"I'd gotten word out to Steve by then, but we hadn't crossed paths with T'Challa before that. Wasn't a particularly good look for any of us. Steve and I didn't go there with more of a plan than to try to find you before the special forces could take you out of the picture. Make sure no one else got hurt."

Barnes didn't get the impression that the two individuals seated on either side of him were lying, but he got the impression there was a lot of additional history they were intentionally talking around, "And you didn't know each other then? You and Ayo?"

His inquiry pulled the faintest of smiles from Sam, who apparently hadn't seen that particular question coming, "Nah, hadn't had the pleasure at that point."

Yama quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing as she looked directly across to Ayo for comment, "...Not formally," Ayo volunteered, though her words were slow in coming, "but… while our King T'Challa preferred to act alone in the wake of King T'Chaka's passing, and to be the one to extract the final price from his killer, he was not strictly as isolated as he might've believed at the time."

Ayo's Lieutenant leaned forward conspiratorially, "Queen Ramonda asked a favor of you? That is why you were so close by when he was released on what they called 'extradition?'"

The regaliaed warrior seated beside Barnes snorted lightly and casually shrugged, "While many of the truths surrounding Wakanda were not yet known to the world, I would not have allowed him to remain caged when we believed our late King's killer was still on the loose."

Yama's eyes grew wide in admiration as Sam noted, "Wait… you were planning to jailbreak him?"

Ayo didn't acknowledge the claim one way or another, but by the light whistle Sam punctuated the room with, her underlying intentions went remarkably uncontested. "The fallout of bombing cost many lives, including that of King T'Chaka, but it also cast doubt into what had happened and why. The intent behind the bombing was not clear, nor who it was meant to target. While we were of course angered and grieving, even then, something about it did not sit right with me." She turned to her right to Barnes, "And I did not know you then, but when I overheard you speaking to Steve in your flat—"

"—Wait, wait…" Sam waved his hands across one another, "you heard that?"

Ayo merely raised an eyebrow, "Knowing what you know now, you think listening into your comms posed a worthy challenge?"

"Well… when you go and put it that way…"

"When I overheard your exchange with Steve in Bucharest," Ayo's attention returned to Barnes as she continued unabated, "I found your reaction… odd. Out of character for someone who supposedly orchestrated a terrorist attack that indiscriminately killed twelve and injured seventy more. Our own intel had limited knowledge surrounding you and your history, but it was quickly clear that though you desired to run, you were not inclined to kill even those that sought the same for you."

Barnes frowned and turned to Sam, "And you think Redwing has a recording of that?"

"Wasn't the section I was focusing on," Sam clarified. "Redwing and I weren't part of the initial scuffle. We were on surveillance duty. I was referring to maybe reviewing the stuff Redwing captured before, not the… well not the part where you and Steve exchanged words just before guns started firin'."

It was all a lot to process, up to and including the silent stacks of paper goods laid out nearby that clutched tight to their secrets and riddles. From what the people around him were saying, this pivotal encounter that'd happened in 2016 would have taken place after the most recent entries. Barnes remained conflicted about the idea of reviewing the drone's footage, knowing that the encounter had apparently ended in violence, but if there was a chance it had seen something useful… "And you said I didn't kill anyone?"

"You were on the defensive, but no, you didn't kill anyone during the blow-for-blow there in Romania."

Barnes rolled his options over in his head before coming to what felt like a shaky foregone conclusion that laid beside his aching curiosity about who he'd been when he'd finally been found in 2016, "Okay. Yeah. Let's see what footage you have."

Sam licked his lips and bobbed his head, getting to his feet before navigating his way around and over the swaths of papers barring his way to the black and vibranium silver case on the far side of the room. As soon as he'd popped the latch free, he pressed a command into the wrist console to eject the two drones from the top of the flight harness.

They leapt into the air with a light hum, hovering in place on either side of Sam like a pair of matching silver parrots. So the two drones smoothly took inventory of the room and its occupants, Barnes wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that he could immediately tell them apart, and identify it was J.B. that wiggled his side rudder up and down in a little wave.

Yama waved back, and she motioned for Barnes to do the same.

Barnes thought it was ridiculous, but when he raised two fingers and his thumb in the approximation of a return greeting, not only did Yama's smile brighten, but Sam looked perplexed, if a touch amused.

Social conventions really were strange.

He cleared his throat and took over the reins of the conversation as he addressed the drones, "So uh, hey you two," he turned to addressed Redwing, "We were goin' over some things here and I wanted to see if you could pull up some old footage from 2016, back when we were trackin' Barnes down out in Bucharest, Romania. Specifically, I was interested in any visuals we had of the interior of his safehouse. We're tryin' to piece together if there's anything inside that might help us make sense of the mass of paperwork over there."

Barnes continued to find it peculiar how Sam chose to address the drones. Maybe they were the closest thing he had to sentient pets?

Redwing Sam chirped what must've been an affirmative and promptly opened up a compartment on the top of its body, producing a dual-paneled fisheyed projection that reminded him a lot of the holograms the Wakandans used to share video content. But in this instance, the left screen displayed a traditional camera view, while the right panel showed what appeared to be an alternative x-ray view of the same scene using bold red outlines and highlights. The daytime view was at least a dozen stories up, framing the outside what looked to be an aging off-white skyrise he didn't recognize.

…Or did he?

Sam sucked in a deep breath as the recording came to life. The view out the drone's camera pitched left as it slowly approached a window coated with yellowed newsprint. Sam's voice echoed through the drone's on-board speaker, although he wasn't visible on-screen, "Well the good news is, the Special Forces are still setting up outside, and while they're busy watching entrances and exits, I don't think any of them spotted Captain America parkoring his way up and across balconies so he could slip into their perp's apartment."

A shadow fell across the screen. Probably Sam changing scouting positions from a nearby rooftop. Two heat signatures were visible in the drone's x-ray view, "Redwing spotted company in the room just to your right, so stay on your guard. We don't know if this is even our guy, but I'm guessin' there aren't many amputees with advanced prosthetics like his hidin' out of plain sight. I'm not reading any firearms on him, but I'm reading a knife in his left boot, and you already know what that arm of his is capable of. There looks to be some offensive gear and ammunition in a duffle behind the kitchen counter. Military grade stuff."

Sure enough, while Redwing's left display showed little more than dirty glass plastered with yellowed newsprint, the second panel showed an x-ray view focused on the interior of the building the drone was actively scanning. Straight ahead behind the veil of newspaper, a broad shouldered man holding a shield paused and took inventory of the room around him. As he did so, the figure in the adjoining room crept closer to the hallway separating them, though he kept his distance. Although there was limited visual information to go by, the lopsided heat signature he was giving off made it clear just who the figure in the hallway was: It was him.

Sam's voice came through Redwing's speaker again, "They look to be evacuating some of the surrounding buildings now. You have maybe one minute, two-tops before the German Special Forces are liable to bust down your door with a whole host of questions about why you're in their perp's flat."

"Copy that."

Redwing dipped closer and increased the magnification of its primary camera as it struggled to get a clear visual inside the apartment. There was little to be seen between the ragged seams of newsprint and discolored window sheers at first, but it could just barely make out the shadowed form of a couch and the edge of a compact kitchen. The counter was covered with mismatched kitchen supplies and small boxed foods. Stained floral wallpaper peeled up from bare walls that matched the spots they leached through cracks in the off-white tiles. It was discolored by age and anything but tidy, but what struck Barnes was just how lived-in it looked. A tiny analogue clock was built into what looked to be the base of a second hand coffee-maker. Surrounding the appliance was an assortment of bowls, mugs, pots, glasses, a red and white thermos, whisk, and various ladles and spatulas.

Barnes had seen Steve, Sam, and others use kitchen paraphernalia like those, but there was something haunting about the idea that he'd eventually carved out space of his own. That he'd learned to make something edible from the bags, boxes, and cans of raw ingredients, and whatever supplies lurked inside the thin fridge near the door and pale wooden cabinets.

What had he cooked? How had it tasted? Had he learned it from books, recordings, or from watching others?

…Or had he remembered cooking and caring for himself before HYDRA? Barnes had so many questions.

On the far side of the kitchen and living space was a wooden palette as well as a series of cinder blocks and wooden planks that had been stacked to create makeshift shelves. What looked to be books and newspapers laid haphazardly atop them, but as Steve crossed the room and approached first a duffleback and then the refrigerator, he slipped his hand over the top of the appliance and pulled something out from just under a stack of brightly wrapped snack foods.

And from between the tape-ladened cracks of old yellow newsprint, Redwing caught sight of it just before Steve pulled it behind his shield to get a closer look: A black notebook.

That notebook. Or one like it.

Sam's recorded voice came through Redwing's speaker again just as the view out the drone's camera pivoted away and pulled back, "Heads up, Cap. German Special Forces approaching from the south."

"Understood."

Barnes was dully aware of the people seated around him and that they were glancing between him and the playback in search of a reaction, but he couldn't find the courage to stop what was coming. He had to know.

The heat signature of the figure lurking at the other end of the apartment exited the hallway and kept his back to the wall before coming to a standstill on the far side of the room. Redwing scanned his hands for weapons but found nothing.

Barnes found he was no longer paying close attention to the details from the x-ray display. Instead, he was focused almost exclusively on the crackling audio, and the calm way Steve spoke, like he'd seen a ghost, "Do you know me?"

And then, his own voice, but not, "You're Steve. I read about you in a museum."

Sam's warning pierced through their conversation, "They've set the perimeter."

Steve undoubtedly heard Sam's words, but he didn't acknowledge them, "I know you're nervous, and you have plenty of reason to be. But you're lying."

"I wasn't in Vienna. I don't do that anymore."

Distant voices chattered in tense German and Romanian, and Redwing wheeled back as Sam announced, "They're entering the building."

But Steve apparently wasn't ready to heed his warning, "Well, the people who think you did are coming here now. And they're not planning on taking you alive."

"That's smart," Barnes's own voice grimly observed, "Good strategy."

The trained rhythm of heavily armed footsteps grew louder alongside the urgent hiss of voices outside. Redwing's camera caught sight of Sam as the two backed off and wheeled sideways, transitioning to take up position over an adjoining building, "They're on the roof. I'm compromised."

"This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck."

"It always ends in a fight," the x-ray figure of Barnes commiserated as he looked down to his hands and drew one across the other.

"Five seconds!" Sam's voice declared over their shared comms as men in thick tactical vests assembled on the roof, readying themselves to repel into the apartment below.

"You pulled me from the river. Why?"

Barnes felt his chest tighten at the question as the audio stream of his voice responded uncertainly, "I don't know."

"Three seconds!"

"Yes, you do."

But whatever he'd considered saying next in 2016 was cut short as a man on the roof threw a flash grenade through the kitchen window, shattering it. A loud pang sent the projectile back outside as Sam's recorded voice hollered, "Breach! Breach! Breach!"

A second flash grenade crashed through a nearby window, punctuating the commotion outside with a deafening bang. Moments later, heavily armed figures converged on their location from the roof and worked to break down the door leading to the main stairwell. All the while, rounds of gunfire escalated the encounter into an all-out brawl as a swarm of armed figures joined the effort to bring down their target once and for all.

Barnes did his best to follow the flow of overlapping forms and the violence they left in their wake. He willed himself to take comfort in the knowledge that he, Steve, and Sam had apparently survived the encounter, and that the men that were after him did too, but it was a struggle to keep track of he and Steve with so many soldiers converging on them, intent on their own mission.

They looked to be on the ground inside the apartment when Steve's voice punctuated their shared comms, "Buck! Stop! You're gonna kill someone!"

"I'm not gonna kill anyone," Barnes's own voice retorted in a firm tone that he immediately recognized.

There was a sharp crack and the balcony door flew open. Seconds later, Redwing's camera caught a black backpack — that black backpack — sailing out onto the roof of the adjoining building, the drone quickly scanned it, determined it didn't conceal any weapons, and then promptly refocused its attention back on Steve and the brutal fight escalating within the building's cramped stairwell. Frantic voices pierced the shallow spaces between bursts of automatic gunfire.

The sight was deafening. Barnes's mind reeled, frantically trying to scrape together any pieces he recalled from the firsthand encounter, but the bulk of his efforts were lost behind the thunder pounding in his chest. There was so much to absorb at once, and the bulk of it only generated more questions, not less.

He wasn't sure who prompted the playback to shudder to a sudden stop, but when it did, he found himself struggling to catch his breath and try to make sense of what he'd just seen. He had no inclination of denying the validity of the footage, they were far past that point, but at the same time, it was yet one more pocket of time he wanted to remember, but couldn't. "Did I… hurt you or Steve?"

Sam took a deep breath in and out as he regarded the freeze-framed footage and waved a hand for Redwing to close it out, "Nah. You never got hands on me when you were you. But as I recall, you did manage to leverage Steve and the shield as a bit of duo body-shield and battering ram at one point, but he walked it off, and you mostly just wanted to run. When T'Challa showed up out of the blue and went after ya', we ended up in a big chase and comedy of errors that ended up with all of us handcuffs. They put you in containment for safe-keeping, not knowing Zemo was working to infiltrate the joint and do the whole code word thing. None of us knew anything about that particular set of mental cheat codes at that point, so we were in for one hell of a surprise when you went from that guy you saw there in the footage, to one who…well, you know jist." Sam faded off uncomfortably as he ran a hand idly to his throat.

The movement of Sam's fingers was telling in a way that was layered in memory-apparent. It was a callback to when Barnes had taken him for a hostage back at the Design Center, but something else too. Something more deeply unsettling.

Back then, Barnes could acknowledge a flicker of recall that his left hand had been around Sam's neck before, even if the details were hazy. He'd attributed it to adrenaline at the time, and an altogether shaky frame of reference no thanks to HYDRA's tampering, but as he focused on his hand and rolled the joints of his vibranium fingers in sequence now, he knew without asking that Sam's remark about how he hadn't hurt him 'when you were still you' no-doubt mean that he had hurt him when he wasn't.

And Barnes hated, hated that some buried parts of him remembered not useful information, but how his hand had been positioned tight around Sam's throat.

Barnes was well-aware they were getting side tracked from his original questions, but there was something brewing in Sam's eyes then. It was deep and personal, and Barnes caught it clear as anything in the quiet spaces between his friend's words. And even though some part of Barnes didn't want to know the answer, he found himself searching out Sam's expression for clarity, even if it hurt, "What did he ask me to do?"

Sam frowned, using one hand to usher the drones away into the case, "He cut the power, so none of us know for sure. But when I made it down there to check on your holding cell, Zemo'd already let you out and… it wasn't you. But you fought your way out. Killed some people. And once you were more," Sam waved a hand up and down, "... in a talking mood and ramblin' off about the name of Steve's mom and how he used to put newspapers in his shoes, you asked us what you did. Like you didn't remember. Eventually, you told us Zemo'd been pryin' for information about Siberia and the Winter Soldier program. He apparently got what he needed, because he went there personally to put an end to them, and set the Avengers against one-another in the process."

"He is jailed now," Ayo's ice-cold voice conclusively added. "You do not need to worry about him any longer."

But Barnes wasn't ready to let go of that particular thread just yet. He idly ran his hands together, trying to forget the flicker of recall about how Sam's throat had felt in his hands in preference of piecing together one of any number of conflicting pockets of information. But he kept coming back to one unturned stone in particular, "So he used the code words on me, to get information out of me. But how did he know what to ask? And what mission did he send me on after that? Did I talk about that?"

Sam crossed his arms and leaned against the nearest wall. His expression grew more troubled by the second, "What mission?"

"Directive. You told me back before that I'd hurt you. Killed people. But what was I trying to do?"

Barnes didn't get the impression Sam was lying to him, but he could sense that broaching this topic was making Sam's own heart rate tick up, "That was a long time ago, but we just assumed he wanted intel and then maybe some sort of distraction to cover his escape. We know it's not the case now, but at first we thought he wanted his own little private army of obedient Winter Soldiers. But I'm not sure what he wanted with you beyond intel. Steve said you'd tried to steal a helicopter after you fought your way out. Tried to take him out in the process."

"So there was a mission."

"I… I mean I don't think we ever really thought about it that way," Sam looked across the room to Ayo for her thoughts.

"Zemo's commands of you were not framed as relevant in the wake of your recovery since you were no longer acting at their behest by the time you were located."

"But you don't know what for sure," Barnes argued, "it was the last time someone used whatever was in the book, and we don't know how he used it. It could've been that he instructed me to tell you about Siberia. About the other Winter Soldiers."

Sam blinked rapidly at that as Yama looked back and forth between them and spoke up, "...Because you believe you wouldn't have been able to freely recall his request of you? Especially since the nails would have still been in place?"

"Yeah. It should've stayed hidden. Even to me."

"You got socked in the head pretty hard," Sam admitted.

"They tested me for that stuff," Barnes insisted. "They didn't want it that if I got knocked unconscious in the field or someone else got ahold of me, that I'd suddenly be back to square-one. HYDRA made sure there were contingencies. That their information was secure unless someone had the right code words." He looked up to Sam across the room, "I knew, because this Zemo guy wanted you and Steve to know. And something he said back then could be impacting my mind even now."

Ayo remained eerily silent beside him, as if she was still processing these troubling new possibilities, but neither she nor Yama saw fit to argue them outright.

"But Princess Shuri…" Yama finally spoke up.

"We do not know for certain," Ayo gently countered. "It is possible his vile tampering left more lasting impacts than we first believed, regardless of the state of the code words we made benign."

Sam let out a deep breath he'd been chewing on, "I mean, it's possible Zemo wanted us to know, like you're sayin'. But I'm not sure about the rest. He didn't strike me as the type. In that way, I mean. It seemed pretty straightforward how he'd used you in his particular flavor of revenge-play at the time. If it was anything but, I would've thought it would've come up when the two of you…" Sam's voice rapidly faded off, and his eyes shot straight to Ayo.

"When the two of us… what?" Barnes wasn't following, "You said he was in jail."

At his remark, Sam cringed, fumbling the tempo of his words, "Presently, yes. And in a manner of speaking, also yes, but… there's some, uh… 'nuance' that's tricky to explain."

"Nuance?"

Though Yama craned her head around to listen to Sam, something in her rigid posture, and how she sat with her hands on her lap but her eyes kept returning to Ayo… there was more to it. Something they weren't telling them. Ayo's expression had gone cold, tense. Even her Lieutenant's face had followed suit and grown distant in a way he wasn't used to seeing on her.

It wasn't a Dora's neutral, but like the two of them were biting down bile, and had no desire to rescue Sam from whatever trap of his own words he'd inadvertently stumbled into.

Sam chewed on his syllables, spacing them out like he was giving each air to breathe, "I… so the shortest version I can cut to is that he had some information we needed at one point. You and me, I mean. So we sought him out."

Barnes narrowed his eyes, immediately sensing it wasn't close to the whole story, "...When?"

"A few months back. Wasn't a shining moment for anyone, but we got what we needed out of him."

Barnes could practically hear the muscles in Ayo's hand wrenching into the cylinder of her spear in her left hand. What was he missing? He looked across to Yama for support, "What isn't he telling me?"

Yama's eyes went wide at the directness of his question, and she held her palms up, "This is not my story to share. I was not made a part of such… decisions."

Barnes could sense the palpable tension in the air, but before it could grow any thicker, Sam spoke up from his vantage point across the room, "Look, I didn't know what was going on initially, but it's not hard to put two-and-two together that you— other you — somehow managed to help him help himself out of jail so we could go on a cross-continental road trip. It was specifically to get to the bottom of how an all-new brand of Super Soldier was suddenly popping up."

Barnes just blinked. He may have raised his voice a little as he clarified, "You supported letting him, a prior handler that'd made me hurt people, kill people, and who'd murderered people himself… which he'd tried to implicate on me… you supported letting him out of jail?!"

Sam flailed his hands, "I didn't know that's what we were building to originally!"

"So as soon as you found out, you insisted he go back to jail, right?"

Sam flapped his lips as he looked to either of the two women for moral support, but they stayed silent as statues, "Look, you'd have to have been there but—"

"Are you listening to yourself?"

"It was your idea, okay?" Sam snapped back more than a little defensively, "I was assuming if you, of all people were okay with it, that there was a solid logic behind it. That the stakes we were facing made it worth it, twisted as that sounds when I say it out loud." Sam uncrossed his arms and met Ayo's weighty gaze before adding, "Respectfully. Zemo is a very particular sort of head-case, and you won't see me trying to defend him or his methods, but it's somethin' like his life's work to make sure people aren't out there makin' more Super Soldiers. That's what we were trying to leverage out of him. He was a source of intel when everything else'd dried up."

Barnes's head was going a thousand miles a minute as he tried to process any bit of what Sam was saying. He found himself turning to Ayo, "And you knew?"

While Sam's responses were fraught with obvious embarrassment, Ayo faced him openly, though her tone was heavy, as if she found the topic itself distasteful, "We were not aware of these choices until after we learned Zemo had been freed. Only then did we come for him. For he who murdered our King T'Chaka with vile disregard, and who indiscriminately continued to kill under the guise of a morally superior code." As she spat out the last word, Barnes got the distinct impression they were just skimming the surface of a deeper, far more troubling story.

Just how many of those were going around?

His eyes darted back to Sam, "And you said it was your friend's idea?" He didn't get the impression he was lying outright, but he was compelled to make sure, since the whole situation sounded utterly ridiculous.

"You don't need to use that tone," Sam briefly deflected before adding, "But yeah, like I said, we went to see Zemo since we thought he might have a lead for us to chase on our Super Soldier case. Some breadcrumbs of intel. But our friend," Sam put emphasis into the phrasing, "He made it sound like he was just going to talk with him, threaten him, somethin' along those lines. Maybe his therapist had come up with some meditation exercise about 'facin' his demons' head-on? I dunno. But I can tell you as sure as anything that he didn't give me the courtesy of mentioning that it might turn into a hands-off jailbreak. And that yeah, I'm guilty of goin' along with every step of the thereafter. I'll own up to that, even if I'm not proud of it."

"And the code words were inactive at the time?"

"They were," Ayo cut in, her tone still hard and uneven.

Barnes looked between them and back towards Sam, "Were they ever alone together? Zemo and I?"

"I mean…" Sam thought it over, and the defensiveness bled away from his voice, "Yeah. Now and again. Why?"

"If there was something he said in 2016 when he last activated me, he might've been testing me to see if it was still buried. I might not even have realized he was doing it."

Sam shifted his weight and took a deep, uncomfortable breath in and slowly blew the air out through the gap in his front teeth, "...And you're thinkin' it could have something to do with all of this?"

"I don't remember anything about him," Barnes confessed, "but if you're telling me he's the last person that used the book, he might know something we don't. None of you even knew it existed until I told you, so we don't know what was in it, what parts he used, or how long he even had it."

The man standing across from him met Ayo's eyes, "We should make sure to let Shuri know. And I know I've said it before, but sorry… for all that."

Some of the fight Barnes saw in Ayo's eyes fall away as she adjusted her hand around the cylinder of her spear and remarked, "I know. And I choose not to let it stain our relationship, but I will not pretend to agree with the manner in which decisions were made."

"Fair. Fair…" Sam easily conceded, "You think a request with the Raft would be better coming from you, or me?"

Ayo's response was measured, "I will need to reach out for counsel on how best to proceed now that he was to remain there at our request." She turned back to Barnes, "But I will see what we can manage. And if he will talk. Even so, I do not believe his words or intentions can be trusted further than it serves him." The distaste in her voice was palpable, and she made no attempt to mask it with pleasantries.

Barnes nodded and acquiesced to the prevailing desire for a change in topic as he looked back to the piles of papers spread out before him. But Sam must've found he wasn't quite done yet as he addressed Ayo again, "I might be able to get him to talk too. I know none of that back there was a good look, but by the end, we'd managed some amount of common ground. Not sure how you want to play it but… standin' offer. And I'll take your lead."

Ayo's frown deepened, but she didn't say anything out loud. The woman seated beside him simply made a grunt of acknowledgement, distaste, or a bit of both, and turned her attention back to the papers floating at Barnes's fingertips while Sam crossed the room and got seated next to Barnes again. At some point, Barnes would have to ask him what all that was about.

As Sam settled, a soft haptic ping along Ayo's wrist drew her attention. Her eyes briefly scanned the message before she announced to the room, "Princess Shuri is on her way. She will be arriving shortly."

Barnes perked up. Maybe she'd have an update for them about the health of his mind? He could only hope it was good news. At a cursory glance, the latest journal didn't offer anything in the way of insight into his current plight, but the particular volume he'd picked up was littered with quick drawings. One in particular caught his attention.

It was a torn photocopy of a newspaper clipping showing a precipiced skyline. Atop one of the grainy black and white buildings someone — presumably him — had drawn a shadowed figure in black pen. It was a simple rendering, really. Hardly the work of an artist, but he'd been compelled to add a very particular detail: a pelt of ink-red hair falling over and around their shoulders.

Sam must've caught it too. He leaned over to get a closer look, "...That's… You don't think that's…?"

Barnes had a good guess who the other man was thinking of: Sam's friend Natasha Romanov. But that wasn't the only detail he caught. "The journal entry's from 2015, but the clipping looks older. The print around the edges of the article is Hungarian, but the photo… there are towers a lot like that along the east side of Aniana."

"In Symkaria?"

"Is there more than one Aniana?"

Sam shot him a decided look, "No, there's only one. Just makin' sure we were talking about the same place."

"I'm sure your nice new phone has detailed geographical information if you need a refresher."

"—Did you really just…? Well that's a hoot comin' from you, you warranty-breaking smartass."

In the wake of Sam's remark, Yama saw fit to helpfully observe, "Actually, Barnes was quite curious about what boundaries and allegiances had changed in the years since 2014, so we reviewed a fair amount of world history with Nomble..."

Sam waved an errant hand, eager to dismiss the topic as he peered closer at the newspaper clipping. Granted, Barnes was fairly certain by his expression that he couldn't read any of the faded scraps of text, so he offered him a free assist. "Most of the article's cut off, but the section above it mentions 'civil unrest in the wake of a tragedy.'"

"M'yra might be able to search out the original article and place the entry in greater context," Ayo noted.

Barnes nodded once and regarded the rough black and red figure sketched overtop of the skyline. He leaned it closer to Sam so he might consider weighing in, "Could that drawing be…?"

"Nat?" Sam's voice sounded troubled, "I don't think she started working with S.H.I.E.L.D. until 2004 or so. Before that… well. She didn't talk a lot about that part of her life. I know she had a lot of red in her ledger, though I'm not sure about the details. I got the impression there was some heavy history there, but I can't say she ever implied you two'd crossed paths outside of what we'd talked about with that nuclear scientist she was escorting in 2009. The one you shot through her."

Barnes traced the spot on abdomen where he'd shot her, near where he'd shot Steve in the gut too, "...But if she'd known me outside of that, would she have told you?"

Sam immediately opened his mouth to respond, but a second later, his expression shifted and he slowly closed his lips before responding, "If I'm being honest with myself? I'm sure she took some secrets to her grave, so I'm not sure we'll ever know one way or the other. But I guess… I guess I thought if she knew more than she let on about you, that she would've said something."

"Maybe it's not her at all, or maybe she was made to forget too?" Barnes quietly observed, "HYDRA had ways of making people forget."

There was another series of numbers written in blue pen next to that clipping too, just under where he'd jotted down, "Saw her again in a dream last night. Might be a memory. Inconclusive. Date unknown. It was dark out and I couldn't see her face. She shouted something at me, but when I woke up, I couldn't remember what she'd said."

| #2 12:24:56

Who was she?

What had she said to him?

Had the person who'd written in the journal ever figured out if it mattered, or if it was merely yet another ghost of a sensation haunting his addled mind?

For not the first time, he wished he knew.

---

Ayo respected that the contents of the journals would not make for easy reading, but she wished she could provide more than simply counsel for Barnes as he worked his way through the scattered papers at his fingertips. Seeing him carefully scour through the brittle pages made her freshly recall a conversation she'd once had days ago with Shuri. At the crux of it, was a well-intentioned debate surrounding if it was altogether wise to allow this man access to such sacred texts and the unsettling weight behind the echo of their words.

Back when that conversation had first been broached, Barnes was yet an unknown. Merely a fractured, violent piece of someone they once knew. Ayo, Shuri, and even Okoye had discussed at-length if Barnes should be permitted access to them at all, or perhaps if it was more apt to offer him only carefully curated digital selections. Early on, they respected the very real possibility that something within the entries might rile him enough that he could choose to damage or destroy the original texts, but the root of their concerns also spoke to a desire to shelter him from distasteful truths. Yet who among them was qualified to read his private diaries and presume they knew best how to censor the chapters of his life? To feign authenticity in a well-intentioned attempt to make his words more palatable to consume?

No, it was wrong to hold back those belongings as if any one of them had more claim than he did, regardless of if he remembered penning the entries himself. Moreover, while it was ultimately not her decision, Ayo did not think it apt that the entries themselves be freely consumed by eyes that were not his, even if the intention behind such scouring were deemed a noble pursuit. It felt too much like stealing through diary entries of those lost during the Decimation. That it was fundamentally wrong to pursue them without consent of the one who scribed them.

Ayo was of course relieved that Barnes's present manner was respectful of the contents, shaped by a reverence that was clearly well-intentioned. He was many things, but he clearly grasped the gravitas of the texts, and that the mere act of reading them would continue to shape his understanding of the world around him, as well as the years he didn't recall.

Redwing's recording of his exchange with Steve in Bucharest lingered with Ayo too. Their words had given Ayo pause at the time as she listened nearby from with her cloaked Royal Talon Fighter, but what struck her now was how the inflection in the man's voice reminded her more of Barnes than the James she would come to know days later in Wakanda. They were cut from the same cloth, yes, and certainly Shuri's early treatments helped boost his confidence in their being a solution to the code words addling his mind, but now Ayo couldn't help feeling like perhaps there was more to it too.

It made her wonder… about what Barnes had said about Zemo. If this man beside her, who could not even recall crossing paths with him, might in some way have an inkling that James did not.

When James had first arrived in Wakanda they'd discussed Zemo's actions, certainly, but they'd quickly, perhaps prematurely concluded that they had no lasting effects. It was clear that James was no longer acting on Zemo's behest. That his mind, will, and even his dated American humor were his own, so discussions of Zemo were quickly stuttered in favor of more constructive talks towards the future.

But with the knowledge of seven years at her back, Ayo also suspected there was more than that, too. Zemo was a sore subject for all of them then, but in different ways.

The plethora of reasons behind James's powerful distaste for Hemut Zemo were obvious enough, but it was complicated for those around him in Wakanda as well. Perhaps more than any of them admitted aloud at the time.

Privately, Ayo felt certain T'Challa carried guilt for not being able to prevent his father's death, but many of the Dora Milaje and King's Guard did too. Though they had been instructed by King T'Chaka not to place themselves as guards-apparent during the U.N. proceedings, this choice weighed on Ayo firmly alongside her decision to not push back harder against it. She wanted to believe if she'd been closer, she might have been able to act. To shield her King from harm.

No one blamed her, certainly, but she felt the harm toll that obedience had cost her. Had cost them all.

And Zemo was behind that terrible attack. The man that had killed their King. A leader. A husband. A father. And while some in Wakanda took comfort knowing he was now among the ancestors, many days, it did little to quell Ayo's guilt.

In particular? It did even less for Princess Shuri, who clung so tightly to her sciences and technologies that Ayo often wondered if she believed in the Ancestral Plane at all.

So to say that each and all of them likely put aside discussions of Zemo as quickly as possible would not have been an understatement. The choice to speak his name was never forbidden, but it carried a heavy undercurrent that many rightly preferred to keep relegated to the shadows unless absolutely necessary.

As it was, that vile murderer had no role to play in James's recovery. The few words King T'Challa'd apparently exchanged with him only saw fit to further telegraph Zemo's self-satisfied interests, so it came as no surprise that there had never been any desire to approach him on more delicate matters, especially during a time when Wakanda's truths were still hidden from the world, and James's condition and whereabouts were kept a closely guarded secret.

What could someone like Zemo, someone so hell-bent on blind revenge have even offered when he had been eager only to see the world crumble around him and bask in the aftermath of that destruction before ending his own life? It was not as if Zemo's actions were in any way rooted in altruism. T'Challa might've chosen to view them as warped manifestations of grief, but it was so terribly misguided and misdirected that Ayo could hardly call it one in the same.

But that man had been brought to the closest thing they could offer to justice. Jailed and forced to spend the rest of his life caged for his actions and the horrendous fall out they'd caused. And Ayo knew the Tenets of the Dora Milaje had no place for hatred, but privately, she'd seethed at the self-satisfied smirk she'd seen on his face during the trials. How proud he was at what he'd done, and how it had ruined lives and torn apart alliances between those who had sought to try to protect others from harm, even if their own actions had not always been without rebuke.

And two years later in 2018, while Zemo was still jailed and James struggled to recover from the wounds he and others had lashed into him for so long, then, when an extraterrestrial threat returned, they were not ready. Pockets of those who considered themselves 'heroes' and 'protectors' were united, yes, but not whole. They were fractured, even if they ultimately shared the same sweeping desires for a safer world.

As the dust settled after what they would come to call the Battle of Wakanda, and the sheer enormity left in the wake of the Mad Titan's snap leached into her bones, Ayo knew it was not right to place blame at any one person's feet. Yet in the weeks, months, and years thereafter, she couldn't help thinking, wondering about the fallout of an event from years earlier that did her no good in their shattered present. A question that she could not know the answer to, but one her strained mind kept returning to time and time again:

If Zemo hadn't done what he had, might things have gone differently?

Would the tides of battle had leaned in their favor if bright minds like that of Shuri and Tony Stark had sought to unite their efforts? If knowledge like that of the Infinity Stones and their origins had been more freely shared and understood, would they have been better prepared when Thanos and his army had come for them?

Ayo would never know, but when she learned that Zemo had survived the Decimation while T'Challa, Shuri, Nomble, James, and countless others journeyed to rest with their ancestors for an indeterminate period of time, if not permanently, Ayo felt anger rise in her heart. She had heard rumors that those taken by the Mad Titan's will were chosen at random, but it was as if she was in some way betrayed. She wasn't sure by who,but it felt exceptionally cruel that Zemo were to survive when so many others did not.

She hadn't ever sought him out, for she had no words that needed aired. But when she, Yama, and Nomble had come for him first in Latveria and then when they had tracked him to the Sokovian Memorial, she would have been first to admit he was not the same man she remembered. That was not to say those seven years had been kind to him, or that his heinous actions had become anymore palatable with the passing of time. Yet when they arrived to take him captive once more, he neither fought his apprehension nor disrespected their guard. Ayo knew he was not to be trusted, that he'd been trained as a Colonel of the Sokovian Armed Forces and as a commander of EKO Scorpion, but he made no attempts to harm them, escape, or to take his own life.

Weeks later, Yama had privately admitted to her that she had once selfishly hoped he might step out of line so they could promptly put him in his place. Nomble hadn't outright acknowledged the sentiment she clearly shared, but it was one Ayo understood, for she felt it as well. She would never have raised her spear against him without provocation, but she was surprised — and perhaps a touch disappointed — when he gave them no reason to.

In the wake of their remarkably drama-free prisoner hand-off on the Raft, Ayo found herself wondering if some part of him felt regret for the lives he'd taken and those he'd irrevocably changed. If he did, it didn't mark him as less of a monster in Ayo's eyes, but a different classification of monster, perhaps. Even still, it brought her no comfort to think that someone like him might have a breadcrumb of intel that could either aid Barnes's mind or waste what precious little time remained.

She was drawn back to the present by the motion of Barnes putting aside yet another manilla folder full of displaced papers. As much as she'd hoped the contents of the missing bag might've shed new light on matters, it was increasingly clear that it would take time and patience for him to go through everything. While she would not dissuade such an activity, it was often difficult to sit and watch the renewed struggle the contents drew out of him, especially after he'd shown interest in looking towards the future, not back.

Ayo sighed. She found she couldn't help but wonder when last she'd spoken to James, what had he remembered of the pieces of paper stored within the bag? What connections would his eyes have been able to make that Barnes could not?

And how much of it might've been a mystery to him as well?

When Barnes lifted his head and focused on the door at the far end of the suite, it took only seconds until a soft knock punctuated their chosen alcove. At the sound, Ayo was first to her feet after Barnes, and she quickly checked her Kimoyo strand.

"Princess Shuri and Nomble have arrived," she announced, extending her spear and motioning for Yama to retrieve her audio-video Kimoyo Bead and to follow suit so they could receive their Princess properly. Recent events might've made them lax in certain protocols, but the Dora Milaje were not sloppy.

"I was going to get up," Yama quietly defended as Ayo passed by her on her way to the door.

Ayo didn't find it necessary to respond to her Lieutenant's remark, but as she planted her spear and pulled open the door, she was surprised to see not the Princess standing in front of her, but King T'Challa and General Okoye. Princess Shuri stood just to his side wearing a cheshire grin with Nomble at her hip in formation in front of four King's Guards.

The unexpected nature of their arrival must've shown on her face as Ayo quickly snapped to attention in time to return the King's fist-to-chest salute, "My King."

"I hope we are not disturbing you," he remarked alongside a mischievous smile that quirked the corner of his lips. Ayo felt certain his intention had been to catch them off-guard, but Nomble ought to have let her know.

Ayo's eyes quickly went to her more soft-spoken Lieutenant who shrugged apologetically. Someone must've sworn her to keep the ruse of their arrival a secret. Probably Okoye.

From Okoye's bemused expression? Definitely Okoye.

King T'Challa wasn't the least bit deterred as Ayo took a step back so she wasn't blocking the doorway. Once the room was open to them, T'Challa continued speaking, "It is nearly time for General Okoye and I to depart on a mission to the West, and I thought it prudent we stop by and see how all of you were faring before we make our final arrangements."

"He may have been curious to see the interior of the Sun Falcon as well," Shuri added.

"Too crowded," Okoye predictably complained.

"You're only saying that because my brother wished to pilot it."

Out of sight of the King's Guard at her back, the General rolled her eyes in denial but chose not to debate Shuri's claim, but they both knew that given the chance, Okoye would not hesitate on the opportunity to pilot a new high-speed craft.

Though, she probably would have preferred to test the throttle without any of the royal family aboard.

T'Challa smiled at their exchange and motioned for the King's Guard to remain outside while he, General Okoye, Princess Shuri, and Nomble stepped inside the suite. Nomble did the honors of shutting the door behind them and taking a post at the door. Their king's expression was measured, but not strict. Ayo knew that his mission was due to draw him and Okoye away for many days, so there was a chance, if not a likelihood that they would not return before the sand swirling inside in the hourglass of Barnes's mind might fall away to further corruption. That being as it was, their presence now served many purposes, the forefront of which, though unspoken, was that these might be the last words either of them would have for Barnes, or anyone that shared his face.

Her king's eyes scanned the room curiously, not unaware of the piles of paper goods stacked at the feet of the three figures standing in front of the far couch. Yama was doing her best to look resolute in her guard as T'Challa eyed the vase of Queen of the Night Lilies and various travel accessories before turning to address Barnes and Sam, "I hope that the afternoon has been fruitful in more ways than one. Okoye told me of the many sights you toured, and that the backpack that was once yours was returned to you."

Barnes glanced over his left shoulder to where the back bag sat along the corner of the couch. For a moment, Ayo wasn't sure what he was preparing to say, but Sam opted to let Barnes take the reins on a reply as he fidgeted his hands together across his lap, "I did. There's… still a lot to go through. But thank you. For…" the rhythm of his voice faltered a moment as he deliberated on the words he wanted to say, "...For… trusting me. Outside of the shield. Around other people. It's not lost on me that you didn't need to do any of that. But you did. Even after what happened."

Ayo watched as T'Challa faced Barnes and paused before acknowledging his declaration with a slow inclination of his head. She'd been around them both long enough to read into the cracks between the exchange. Barnes's words weren't empty pleasantries or peppered with a politician's skill in the hopes of earning him accolades. They were bare things. Direct and unhued. Not because he didn't know more complex terms, but because he wanted the specificity of his words to matter and not risk getting lost in translation.

"You are welcome," T'Challa said simply, and while Barnes's expression didn't change, Ayo caught the hint of a smile pass over Sam's face, as if he'd also been able to grasp the gravitas underpinning their words.

"It's quite the place," Sam saw fit to add, "Lot to see outside Birnin Zana, the Design Center, and well… our cozy little mountaintop resort."

"I must have missed the 'Resort'-part," Shuri quipped.

"The fact you managed some sort of high-tech pest deterrent was 'resort'-enough in my book. You should see the size of some of our mosquitos back home."

"You might be surprised at the proportions of those in Serpent Valley."

Sam blinked, "Where?"

Shuri's mischievous grin only widened as her brother's attention returned to Barnes, "Before we go, we wanted to give you this, Barnes." Ayo didn't miss that T'Challa chose to use the name he preferred, aware that the distinction was important to him even if he now accepted the complex lives he'd led. At the motion of his hand, Nomble briefly stepped behind Shuri to hand a folded bundle of black and gold cloth to not T'Challa, but Okoye.

"You can of course keep the other garment," T'Challa continued, "but it seemed fitting that as you have taken a liking to the first one, that you should have another option to coordinate as you wish. That, and it is important to me that you know what it is like to be given a gift to remind you that you are among friends and allies. A gift that was chosen for you, specifically."

At his remark, Okoye stepped forward and Barnes looked between them, momentarily at a loss for what he was supposed to do. He grasped the basics of the exchange and opened his hands so they were free to receive what looked to be a folded black and gold shawl that was thinly edged in a trail of dark blue geometric designs.

Or was it Wakandan Script? It was difficult to tell from where Ayo stood.

But rather than hand the silken fabric bundle to him, Okoye, highest ranking General of Wakanda met his gaze before sheathing her spear and placing it into the holster at her side so that both her hands were free. When they were, she used her fingers to tie the ends of the shawl together into a single friendship knot. Satisfied, she lifted her chin.

Barnes blinked like an antelope caught in the headlights. "I… am I supposed to take the other one off?"

Okoye tilted her head, bemused, "It would be more sensible than wearing two at once, yes. Unless you would like to put it on yourself?"

With an eager American energy that was utterly devoid of ceremony, Barnes worked the first shawl free and placed it neatly on the dresser nearest him before returning his attention to Okoye, "No, it's okay," he began before glancing to the holster at her hip, perplexed. He wouldn't break protocol to ask her why she'd put away her weapon, but he visibly struggled to parse the underlying meaning behind her actions, set against the established standards in his own mind.

And if Ayo were being honest with herself? She could count on one hand the number of times she had seen Okoye retract her spear when in proximity to any of the royal family she'd served.

Okoye was a traditionalist, and she lived with intention. This was her attempt to speak a new language with Barnes, one not based in words, but actions.

She would know that he remembered a time when she was a handler, and wielded the power of the words over him, even if it was by his own permission. Ayo wasn't sure if he recalled any moments where they'd fought beside one another in the Battles of Wakanda or for Earth, or the numerous times they'd sparred with one another when he was struggling to find his place in Wakanda, but he'd faced her today, and he'd risen to the challenges and bruises she'd put him through. Both the ones that showed on his pale skin, and the ones no one could know but him.

And her conscious decision to retract her spear, if only briefly, was her General's own way of showing a piece of herself and to Barnes that few saw, but it was ever intentional.

She was still their General in that moment, but she was more Okoye as well.

Barnes searched Okoye's eyes before taking a single step forward and lowering his head so he could accept their gift. The man standing before her might not have known the profound sentiment displayed by Okoye's choice to tie and bestow the shawl upon Barnes herself, but Ayo did not think it was lost on him either.

He trailed his fingers along the edge of the silken fabric as Okoye stepped back into place and waited a measured beat before promptly extending her spear once again. Her General might not have admitted to it, but seeing the act of peace between them, of closure, had a way of uplifting Ayo's heart too, even as she hoped it would not be the last time they crossed paths.

"Thank you," Barnes's quiet words settled over the room as first T'Challa and then Okoye dipped their heads in acknowledgement.

Okoye's attention returned to T'Challa, but it lingered past him for a moment as she caught Ayo's gaze and something passed between them. A very particular sort of understanding of what it meant to have felt the sharp pierce of betrayal of James's actions, and to choose to find oneself willing to move forward despite it.

T'Challa placed his hands over his lap as he stood and addressed Barnes, "Beyond our token of goodwill, I also wanted to personally deliver the news that after much discussion and deliberation, we have chosen to grant you permission to travel to Symkaria."

Barnes's eyes lit up at the statement as their King continued, "This permission comes with the stipulation that such a trip will be under our watch, and that you will agree to obey what requests are made of you for your safety and those around you. And that you will promise to return to Wakanda and the Design Center without delay when it is requested of you."

Barnes was still playing catchup to the unexpected announcement that was visibly taking him for a loop, "Wait, you're letting me go there? In person?"

Their King made a sweeping gesture across the span of the room with his right hand, "Yes, and I wish to make certain you are aware this was not a unilateral decision. I would only permit such a possibility if I believed my chosen council truly grasped the potential risks of such actions, and yet still found themselves in full support. Too much remains on the line for anything less."

Ayo watched as Barnes searched the room for confirmation that they'd each been consulted, but Shuri was first to speak, "'Twas important that such deliberations were not taken lightly, and if there were concerns, they were suitably addressed before a decision was reached."

At that, Barnes glanced over his shoulder to Sam, as if he was worried perhaps the Wakandans had come to a decision without running it by him. But Sam only crossed one arm over the other and returned the look of concern with a genuine smile partnered with a casual shrug, "I said I was okay with it too, yeah. But only on the condition that I'm comin' along with you. Assuming that's still what you're rarin' to do."

It took Barnes a beat to realize it was his turn to speak, "Yeah. I still want to go." He raised his head to address T'Challa, "And I won't run. I'll do whatever I'm told, and I'll return when you say I need to. I get that I'm working on borrowed time."

Their King drank in the candor of his words, "And I choose to believe you. That moreover: your underlying intent is not to merely seek revenge for wrongs done to you in the past."

"It isn't," Barnes confirmed, "I want to help," his voice lowered as his eyes drifted back to the papers at his feet, "...while I can still remember being there. While I can still help."

"You cannot change the past," T'Challa spoke as he regarded the short towers of journals and scattered paper goods, "But you also cannot let it define you. Only you get to decide what kind of man you want to be. Those gathered around you believe you are genuine in your intentions, which is why I now wish you good luck on your quest. I hope you find what you are looking for, and the coming days offer you both peace and purpose."

At that, T'Challa's head turned to Okoye who directed her gaze to Barnes and Sam as she added, "I hope to share more of Wakanda with you when we return. In the meantime…" her attention fell to Barnes, as if she was speaking exclusively to him, "I leave you in the capable hands of those you will protect in the field as you did on the mountain, yes?"

Barnes's cocked his head, confused at why they were debating what he must have considered a foregone conclusion, "Of course." His words flowed into smooth Wakandan, "Ndiya kubakhusela ngobomi bam, General."

I'll protect them with my life, General.

General Okoye looked to be pleased with the candor in his response, and watched as he looked back down at the sea of papers at his feet, "...Can we take my journals with us?"

Shuri smiled pleasantly as she stepped forward, "We can. We have a long flight ahead of us, and we can leave as soon as you're both packed and ready."

Sam blinked, "'We'? You're comin' with us?"

"I am," Shuri brightened at the prospect, but Ayo didn't miss the significant look Okoye cast Ayo's way. The one that said, 'You and your Lieutenants will keep our Princess safe on this international trip. That is your priority above all else.'

Ayo nodded, well aware of the strict order of their priorities, but Okoye wasn't done yet. She turned back to Barnes and added with decided emphasis, "And you are not to pilot any ships."

"...So cars are okay…?"

The General's eyes briefly narrowed as Sam elbowed Barnes in the hip, "He's kidding. Kidding…." Sam side-eyed the man beside him, "...You were kidding, right?"

Barnes rubbed his side and he made a sour face at Sam, "Obviously."

"Such primitive humor," Okoye half-heartedly remarked, though by her King's wide smile, apparently T'Challa had enjoyed the exchange.

"Doesn't hurt to check," Sam defended, "But if you think I'm even letting you within a half-block of a toy steering-wheel, you got another thing comin'."

"You're just salty about the other steering wheel."

"Other steering wheel?" Shuri inquired, curiosity piqued.

"I'll tell 'ya more once we're on the road. That story isn't complete unless you can see the photos I had to submit with my insurance claim."

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[Chapter 79 Chapter Art, by Haflacky]

[ID: A painting by Haflacky showing Sam, Barnes, and Ayo sitting on the floor in front of a yellow couch. Sam is on the left and is speaking and wearing a purple t-shirt and grey pants. He is looking at Barnes and has his hand on Barnes's knee. Barnes is seated cross-legged in the center and is looking down. He is wearing dark grey pants, a medium grey t-shirt and a blue, black, and gold shawl over his left shoulder. He had books resting in his lap and is holding some papers in his black and gold vibranium hand. Ayo is on the far right and is also sitting cross-legged. She is looking at Barnes and her right hand is touching the back of his vibranium arm, as if she is seeking to comfort him. All three have serious expressions on their faces. They are seated in a Wakanda room with various papers, notebooks, and journals spread out on the floor in front of them. Just behind Ayo is the black backpack Barnes grabbed from his apartment in Bucharest in 'Captain America: Civil War.' End ID]

I had a wonderful time working with Haflacky ("Haflacky" on Twitter) on a detailed piece of art she created to accompany this chapter. I love all of the careful thought and intention she put into this piece, and little details like the setting, papers, and even Barnes's backpack! We collaborated on this piece over a year ago, and it feels fantastic to not only finally work our way to this scene, but to be able to share the associated art with you. Thanks again to her for bringing this impactful story moment to life.

Please check out this chapter on Archive of Our Own to see the gorgeous art and links to the Haflacky's social media page to see more of her beautiful art!

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Author's Remarks:

This chapter marks the conclusion of Act 11 of "Winter of the White Wolf!"

Next stop: We're onto Act 12 and Symkaria!

While there are undoubtedly secrets yet to be uncovered in those journals, time is still ticking for our 'Pack!'

- Dress-Up Time with HYDRA- I can't imagine how rough it would be to spend so many years of your life subjected to HYDRA's many atrocities, only to be on the other side looking back and struggling to process the end-to-end trauma, but I appreciate that Barnes is starting to learn there can be positive associations with touch too.

- Howard and Maria Stark - In my head, I wonder how events would have unfolded if Barnes/The Winter Soldier had recognized Howard and spared his life. Imagine for a minute, if he had his help breaking away from HYDRA in 1991, and having the opportunity to be a force for good, all the while: Steve was still on ice... (Well, assuming the HYDRA members that had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn't gotten their claws into him, but I digress...)

- Ayo's Whereabouts during Civil War - While Ayo only ever got one line of dialogue during Captain America: Civil War ("Move, or you will be moved."), it always struck me as odd that she was seen only then, and during one of the closing scenes of the film. I looked back through the film, and I don't see her during the Vienna bombing either, and while part of this is likely because Black Panther wasn't being worked on, and thus the details behind the Dora Milaje hadn't been clearly established, I decided to try to work with what we have and establish some sort of cohesion and connective tissue. It's broadly thus: I imagine that in the wake of T'Chaka's passing, T'Challa wanted to take matters into his own hands, so he was intending to operate on his own (with the intent of revenge and killing Barnes). The King's Guard, Dora, and even Queen Ramonda respected this desire, but the Queen also wasn't about to have him out and about without any sort of backup, because fresh from the grief of losing her husband, she didn't want to lose T'Challa too. So Ramonda asked Ayo to go in secret and observe but not interject himself unless absolutely necessary or T'Challa's life was at risk. Thus when T'Challa was finally released on extradition… Ayo was conveniently nearby.

But again, headcanon: If she felt he was being held against his will… you best bet Ayo was already planning on how she would break him out of jail so he could continue with his quest. That said, there are definitely some continuity gaps in Civil War if you try to trace what everyone is up to and where, so there's definitely some hand-waving involved on who was where when.

- Zemo's Commands in 2016 - An interesting little breadcrumb, this one… It makes you wonder, what DID he ask "The Soldier" to do after he got that mission report from December 16th, 1991…?

- The Red-Haired Woman in the Journals - Another curious breadcrumb… hmmm…?

- Serpent Valley - In the comics, there are dinosaurs in a section of Wakanda called Serpent Valley, so the size of the mosquito is in reference to that. ;) (I don't imagine they mention this area to outsiders, if it even exists in the MCU, but hey? Fun fact!)

I deeply appreciate your continued support, and I hope you know how much every kudo and comment means to me on this epic, multi-year journey we're on together. Thank you again for all of the encouragement. Knowing others are out there reading along truly makes a difference, and I'd love to hear from you!