It was two hours before they let him in. Long enough to pace the length of the jet a thousand times. Long enough to scrub his hands raw in the tiny sink. Long enough to replay the moment her eyes went dead, then lit back up with the faintest flicker of recognition—just for him. When the medic finally stepped out and gave a tight nod, Bucky was already halfway to the door.
Charlie was curled on the medical bed, IVs in both arms, a monitor clipped to her finger, oxygen under her nose. Her face was pale and bruised, one eye swollen, a cut still stitched across her temple. Her chest rose and fell steadily, though. Steady.
He moved slow. Like if he made a sound, the whole fragile miracle of her surviving would collapse. There was a chair beside her bed. He didn't sit. He just knelt beside it, eye-level with her slack hand resting against the sheet. He didn't take it—not yet. He hovered there, flesh fingers twitching just an inch from hers.
"I thought I lost you," he whispered. "And I don't know how to be in this world without you anymore."
Her fingers twitched.
It was the smallest thing. Barely there. But he saw it. Felt it.
He closed his hand over hers—careful, so careful. His vibranium fingers shook.
"I don't care what they put in you. I don't care how deep they buried it. You're you. You're mine. And you came back to me."
He leaned forward, pressing his forehead gently to the back of her hand.
"You're gonna make it. You hear me? You're not done."
Another twitch. This time her fingers curled slightly around his.
A tear slipped down his cheek. He didn't wipe it away. He stayed there, in the dim hush of the med bay, holding her hand like a prayer.
The low hum of the engines was the only sound, a quiet, constant reminder that the world hadn't stopped even though it felt like it should have.
He heard the door open behind him, but he didn't look. Didn't have to.
"You're not gonna leave her side, huh?" Sam's voice was low. Not teasing. Not judgmental. Just... there.
"No," Bucky said simply.
Sam stepped into view, arms crossed loosely over his chest, eyes moving to Charlie with a quiet weight. "She looks better than she did when we pulled her out."
"That's not saying much," Bucky muttered. His thumb brushed over the back of her knuckles. "She's still burning up."
"They've done everything they can on the jet," Sam said after a moment. "Vitals are holding, but... whatever was done to her, whatever this failsafe triggered, it's beyond our scope now."
Bucky finally looked up. Met Sam's eyes. And Sam gave a slow nod.
"We'll be in Wakanda in less than two hours."
Relief surged through Bucky's chest so fast it made his breath catch. Wakanda. If anyone could help her—undo what they did, wipe it clean—it was Shuri. The tech. The science. The care. They'd saved him.
"We're taking her to the compound. Straight to the medical wing. Shuri already knows she's coming," Sam said, quieter now. "She's going to try the same deprogramming method they used on you. Might even improve on it."
Bucky swallowed hard. His jaw tightened. "And if it doesn't work?"
Sam was silent for a long time. Then: "We're not going to let it come to that."
He stepped forward and put a steady hand on Bucky's shoulder.
"I've seen the way she fights to come back to you, man. She's not gone. Not even close. You've already pulled her back once—don't stop now."
Bucky stared down at her face again. So peaceful. So still.
But not empty.
His voice cracked when he said it, but he meant every word:
"I won't."
Sam squeezed his shoulder once, then stepped back toward the door.
"We'll touch down soon. I'll make sure the team's ready."
And then he left Bucky alone again—with only the hum of the engines, the heartbeat on the monitor, and the girl who'd survived everything just to get back to him.
The jet touched down on Wakandan soil with the same smooth quiet it always did—but this time, it felt different. Not a mission. Not a visit. It was hope landing on a landing pad. The ramp opened, warm air rushing in, tinged with the faint scent of blooming flora and vibranium-rich earth. Bucky stood before the doors even finished lowering, Charlie still lying pale and silent on the stretcher beside him, her hand still wrapped in his.
Shuri was waiting with a full medical team. She didn't waste time with greetings. "We've cleared the path to the lab. Bring her now."
The medics moved forward, but Bucky didn't let go of Charlie's hand until the last second, walking alongside the stretcher as they wheeled her out. She didn't stir, didn't flinch under the shifting light or the murmur of voices. If not for the gentle rise and fall of her chest, she might've looked gone again.
But she wasn't. She wasn't.
As they moved through the gleaming halls of the medical wing, Shuri walked beside him.
"You said she responded to programming," she said, her voice clinical but urgent. "And that she had a physical reaction to the keywords?"
"She screamed," Bucky said tightly. "Then she—stopped. I've seen what Hydra's work looks like. This was worse."
Shuri's mouth pressed into a line. "We're going to run a neural map and full genetic sweep. If Hydra used any of the Winter Soldier conditioning, we'll find it. We've improved the reversal tech since we last used it on you. We may even be able to target the programming at the synaptic level."
Bucky nodded, barely hearing her. He could feel the way his heart pounded louder with every step they took, as if the walls were closing in around him. Charlie, still unconscious, was wheeled through a set of vibranium-laced doors, and then—
"Barnes," Shuri said gently, stepping in front of him as the stretcher disappeared through the next room, "I need you to let the doctors work."
"No." His voice was low, but firm. "I stay with her."
"I understand," she said. "But if she wakes while we're resetting synaptic chains, she could injure herself—or worse. You'll only distract her."
He flinched at that. She was right. Of course she was right. But it didn't stop the pain that tore through him as her hand finally slipped from his.
Shuri must've seen it on his face, because her voice softened.
"We won't let her fall back into that place. Not after she fought so hard to get out."
Bucky's fists clenched at his sides. "If she screams again—"
"She won't," Shuri said confidently. "Not this time."
And then the doors closed, and Charlie was gone.
The silence was unbearable.
Not the kind of silence Bucky had learned to find peace in over the years. This wasn't stillness. This wasn't calm. It was the kind of silence that screamed. That clawed down his spine. That rattled in his bones like the ghost of something that should still be breathing.
Charlie should be breathing. Laughing. Rolling her eyes at him. She should've been snapping back when he teased her about how many pillows she kept on her bed or how she always hummed under her breath when brushing her teeth. She should've been okay.
But now she was behind those doors. Hooked up to machines. Wires running into her veins and skull. Her blood likely still carrying the serum some monster had forced into her. Her memories—twisted. Tortured. Tampered with until she couldn't tell dream from nightmare. And she'd begged him to kill her. Begged him like she was already gone.
He pressed his fists against his forehead, leaning forward in the small, dim room Shuri's team had left him in to wait. A private observation chamber. Clean. Empty. A single bench along the wall. A silent screen that fed him nothing.
He couldn't sit. Not for more than a few seconds at a time.
Pacing felt better. Almost like he was still doing something. Like maybe if he kept moving, he wouldn't think about the sound she made when the failsafe activated, or the flatness in her eyes, or the way she smiled after she killed that man like it didn't mean anything.
Like she wasn't her anymore.
He tried to focus on her last words before it all went dark. "I knew you'd come." The whisper, the tiny curve of her lips, the way her blood-slicked fingers touched his face like he was her anchor. That was her. That was Charlie. His Charlie.
She was still in there.
She had to be.
He sat again, this time pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes so hard it left bursts of light against his vision. Every sound outside the door made him jolt. Every absence made him grind his teeth.
He couldn't help her anymore. Not with fists. Not with fire. All he had left was this—waiting.
"Don't die," he whispered to no one. "You don't get to leave me now."
He was still whispering it when the door creaked open softly behind him.
Sam stepped in, quiet for once. His eyes scanned Bucky's posture—curled forward, shoulders knotted tight—and didn't try to joke. Didn't try to fill the silence.
"Wakanda's got her," Sam said after a moment. "If anyone can fix this… it's them."
Bucky didn't look up. "She was in my arms, Sam. And I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop any of it."
Sam took a slow breath, walked to the wall and leaned there, folding his arms. "You've been through a lot of things, Buck. I've seen you take beatings no one should walk away from. But this one's different. I get that."
Bucky shook his head. "No, you don't."
Sam waited.
"She begged me to kill her," Bucky said. His voice cracked around the words. "She knew what was coming. She knew what she was. And she begged me to stop it."
Sam's face didn't change, but his voice did—softer, but sure. "And you didn't. Because you believed in her. That's what matters."
"She was programmed, Sam. Same as I was. What if we're too late?"
"We're not."
Bucky looked at him then. "You don't know that."
"No," Sam admitted. "But I believe it. And right now, that's what we've got. That—and the fact she fought. She came back once. She'll do it again."
Bucky clenched his jaw. His hands. His heart.
Please, Charlie.
Come back again.
It was quiet.
Not silent—there was a difference.
Silence was what came after a scream. Silence was the space where pain had already happened, where everything was waiting to fall apart. But this... this was quiet. Like a lull. Like fog.
She couldn't feel her body. Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. And yet—she was still aware.
She wasn't floating. She wasn't standing. It was more like suspended. A weightless stillness where time didn't exist. Light flitted around her like dust motes in a memory, and somewhere, distant but warm, a voice was calling her name.
Her name.
What was her name?
Something tugged at her chest—sharp and wrong and buried so deep it made her stomach twist. The sensation of missing something, of being something, started to creep in from the corners. Like a shape forming behind frosted glass.
She remembered a door. A wide hallway. Blood. Screaming.
She remembered pain so sharp it cut the world away.
She remembered a man with a gun and a voice that made her want to obey.
And—
A pair of eyes.
Blue. Frantic. Desperate.
"You're stronger than this. You're stronger than them."
That voice again.
It broke through the quiet like a flare in the dark. A tether thrown across space. A heartbeat.
Bucky.
His name slammed into her with a force that sent everything else unraveling.
She gasped.
It was only in her mind, but it was enough. The quiet shattered.
Suddenly, she was in her body. Burning. Her skin was on fire. Her mind was fractured. Every nerve ending was screaming. But beneath it, beneath it, was her.
The part of her they hadn't broken.
The part they didn't own.
"Mirror. Carbon. Delta…"
The words—the code words—rippled through her memory like knives. A voice she hated. Cold. Commanding. The one that made her raise her hands, aim her fists, kill without thought.
But she wasn't moving now.
She was here.
She clung to the sound of Bucky's voice instead. Not the one reading the code. The other one. The one that whispered Don't die like a promise.
She held that like a lifeline as something new began to pulse through the dark.
A memory—
She was on a porch. Her head was on Bucky's shoulder. The sun was low. There were crickets. He was warm. They weren't saying anything. They didn't need to.
Then—
A glimpse. Not of the past, but of the future.
Her hand in his. A ring on her finger. A name that was hers being whispered through laughter. A kiss in the dark. A promise made without words.
Home.
The machines around her whirred louder. A spike. A ripple. She wasn't sure if it was real. If she was remembering or dreaming. But she felt it. Every ounce of it. She wanted to live. And she wasn't done fighting.
