All I ask

Soft, careful footsteps were approaching his position, stopping uncertainly on two occasions, and he wondered if she was unsure of the doctors’ assessments, therefore afraid of him, or if she simply didn’t know if he wouldn’t want to be disturbed.

He shifted his body slightly and turned his head toward her in a silent invitation.

“Have you been enjoying your stay so far?” he heard the somewhat timid voice as she came closer to stand beside him.

Bucky teared his eyes away from the beautiful sunset in front of him and looked at the small princess. Shuri was wearing civilian clothes, unlike the first few times he encountered her before.

“It’s kinda hard not to when you have this view” he replied, once again looking out to the field.

“There are always a few things that can dampen one’s mood”
At that, he arched an eyebrow and considered her more carefully. “What do you mean?” he asked, not even bothering to conceal his suspicions.

These days it was easier to let his emotions show on his face, he understood his need to remain with a blank expression was based upon the instinct of survival, if no one knew what he thought, no one could predict his next move. But, he wasn’t just the Winter Soldier anymore, even if that part of himself would always remain with him, he was also Bucky Barnes, and he was slowly but surely coming to terms with that. Being in this place, away from fights and people hunting him down, it was easier.

“Oh, nothing” she shrugged with a half-smile and looked ahead to the sun, orange and big hiding behind the hills of Wakanda. “Some people say the greatest views aren’t even that great if you don’t have someone to share them with” her voice is soft and, to some extent, knowing.

His mind briefly wanders to a pair of baby blue eyes, delicate mouth and rough hands. When he looks at Shuri again, she is definitely smirking at him; he narrows his eyes at her and she giggles.

He knows where this conversation is headed, and his first instinct is to shut it down before it even becomes a thing. He hasn’t talked about it and honestly, he doesn’t even know what he thinks, or how he feels. There’re so many encountered feelings surrounding that one person, and so many years have passed since… since he started thinking that maybe…

“You don’t need to read minds, you know? The yearning stares speak for themselves” the girl says with a pointed look, pulling him out of his thoughts. He hadn’t realized his hand was balled into a fist and his body was tense. “I only wonder if… you’re as blind to his eyes as he is to yours”.

“It’s complicated” he grumbles out. Shuri shakes her head gently.

“Thermonuclear science is complicated, Sergeant Barnes, love isn’t”

Bucky’s head snaps away and just like that, his brain takes him almost 80 years back in time when stupid Chad Hills accused Steve and Bucky of being in love while he and four other dudes threw stones at them both. He was pretty good when it came to defending himself (and Steve) from punches but this was different, all he could do was shield the small kid off with his own body, gritting his teeth at the pain of multiple rocks hitting him everywhere.

Shuri walks to stand directly in front of him and hesitantly puts her small hand on his right shoulder.

“It’s not like that these days, Mr. Barnes … not anymore”

He knew that, of course he did. He had all this information of the world changing as the years went by, he knew of all the revolutions and wars, he knew of the laws and decrees, he knew everything was different. He knew being gay was no longer frowned upon, at least not by the entire world, he knew they’d somehow be supported. Hell, he even learned he was as gay as they come, but still…

In the few months he passed running away from Hydra and Steve, he had lots of time to remember quite a few things about how life had been before the war, before he fell, and while he knew his friendship with Steve wasn’t the most conventional, what with them living together and the way they saw each other, he knew it hadn’t crossed the line, and he knew Steve liked girls.

There was this one time, during the war… but it could’ve meant anything. He wasn’t sure he wanted to share it with the princess yet.

So, he just sighed and shook his head slightly. “Well, it’s still complicated, princess… He doesn’t feel the same way, so.”

“How do you know that? Something tells me you haven’t asked, so you can’t know” she suddenly drops to the floor, legs crossed under her tiny body.

Bucky feels weird standing above her, so he sits down as well. “I don’t need to ask, he was in love with Peggy 70 years ago, and then he fell in love with Peggy’s niece, of all people, 1 year ago” he explains reluctantly.

He said it ‘matter-of-factly’ but the truth is he hasn’t really let himself think about the kiss he saw Steve share with that blonde agent. In that moment there were infinitely more pressing matters to be occupied with, and in the few days since waking up here, he pointedly stayed away from thinking of him. It hadn’t been easy, and the princess wasn’t helping.

“Did the Captain tell you he was in love with either of them?” she asks after a while.

“Shuri, he didn’t need to, okay?” his tone is sharp and final, so she doesn’t reply.

He doesn’t mean to be so rude to her, she’s been nothing but welcoming and helpful, but this subject is just throwing him off and… he doesn’t feel ready to deal with this.
They sit there for about half an hour, both looking up as the stars begin to appear in the deep blue sky. When Bucky finally speaks, his voice is just above a whisper, but he’s sure Shuri can hear him.

“There was a time when I thought… maybe Steve felt something for me, something like what you mean” he says, his eyes are glued to the soft grass under his body, the gentle sway of the strands to the wind, “It was during the war, a few weeks after the rescue in Azzano, we were twisting around in the tent, I was cold as ice and he was a living furnace” he smiles when he remembers that months before that moment, it was the other way around with them, “so, we were wrapped up around each other, alone in the tent, and after a long time of silence, I swear to god I heard him say ‘I love you, Buck’ ”

Shuri gasps quietly and he turns to look at her, a smile immediately forming on his face when he sees her completely invested in his story, she would only need a tub of ice cream and some tissues to make it look like she’s watching a tragic love story. Which… it kinda is, a least to Bucky.

“What did you say then?” she asks, urging him to go on.
Bucky swallows around the lump in his throat and looks down again before answering “Nothing. I pretended I was asleep.”

Shuri groans and he chuckles lightly. “Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t know what to do with… you know…” he’s serious once again, brow furrowed as he tries to navigate through all his memories “We were fighting in a war, and as much as I denied it to Steve and even tried to deny it to myself, I knew something had happened to me while I was captured, I could feel it” he stared down at his own hand and made a fist with it again, this time out of frustration “I couldn’t deal with what Steve said, on top of everything else. I guess I just thought once we were back home, we’d…”

He couldn’t finish, his eyes started welling up and he quickly looked away, but Shuri knew anyway. To say Bucky was surprised to feel a tiny pair of arms carefully wrap around him would be an understatement, he was frozen in place for a few seconds before slumping against her a bit, his head leaning on top of hers.

“Thanks, princess” he murmured.

She hummed back and let go after a few more seconds, taking his face between her hands and looking him straight in the eye. Bucky thought for a moment that he didn’t know how an 18-year-old could look so wise, only to reprimand himself two seconds later, when a pair of blue eyes under a fringe of blond hair looked at him the same way in his mind.

“I think… now that you’re both sort of okay, it’s worth a shot” she looked so sure with those words coming out of her mouth, he couldn’t help but feel that same confidence.

He nodded slowly and watched her cast the biggest smile he’s ever seen on her. “Perfect. Then you’re ready to call him, yeah?”

“… huh?” he eloquently said. She laughed softly and went back to just sitting shoulder to shoulder.

“I was actually sent here to tell you you’re officially discharged from medical attention; your last scans are clean” she fist-bumped him “and you’re ready to receive visits”

Bucky mulled the news over for a couple of minutes. He knew, technically, that he was okay or they wouldn’t have let him wander off for the past three days, and also he felt different, he didn’t feel like there was a dormant part of himself deep in his brain like he had all that time from the fall of the triskelion to the moment he went under cryo in Wakanda. He didn’t need to worry about the triggers anymore, and a lot more memories were coming back, more that he thought he could regain in such a short period of time. Not all of them were good, but they’d never been.

“Also, you get to officially become part of this century and all the technology it carries” Shuri tossed a small black thing at him and he didn’t even turn as his right hand catches it on the air.

Bucky inspects the Stark phone she handed him as the screen comes to life and as his screensaver… a picture of Steve sitting on the floor, cross-legged, in front of Bucky’s cryo tube, a sketchpad on his lap.

“When did you take this?” he almost whispers, his eyes fixed on Steve’s soft and focused expression, the one he only gets when he draws. Bucky suddenly feels the crushing need to know what was on that piece of paper on the blond’s hand.

“I don’t know, on one of the gazillion days he did that” she shrugged easily. He whips his head to look at her, incredulous, and she chuckles lightly. “The first three days he didn’t even leave the medical ward, Bucky… T’challa had to promise him he’d have unrestricted access anytime, so the Captain would finally go to his room and shower”.

“It’s not even hard to believe” Bucky grumbled, shaking his head “Fucking stubborn jerk”

“After that, he pretty much visited every day, asked for updates, talked to you. Once we realized the process really was far from finished, T’Challa contacted Sam and Natasha and they came here, tried to persuade him to go on missions with them” she shrugs.

That explained it, then. That explained why Steve wasn’t there when Bucky woke up.
When they took him out of the cryo tube, his body has limp, unresponsive, but his mind had been almost fully awake and even though he felt a bit sluggish and wasn’t really able to focus on anything for a couple of hours, he knew who was moving around him, he heard the sliding door open and close several times, heard someone typing next to him, felt the tubes being drawn out of his veins, even heard king T’Challa come in and ask for the report on his status. But he didn’t hear Steve, he knew from the moment he was taken out that the blond man wasn’t there.

A part of him knew it probably was for the best, in those first hours he didn’t know if it had worked yet, and he wouldn’t have been all that surprised to hear a doctor tell their king their efforts had been fruitless. He also knew seeing Steve there the moment he opened his eyes would’ve made him feel a bit guilty, knowing he’d waited in that place for weeks, months to see him out of cryo.

Then, something Shuri had said draws his attention and he looks at her, confused. “On missions? So he’s good with Tony again?” he asks. Maybe, if Tony forgave Steve, he could forgive Bucky too. Maybe.

“No” the princess grimaces slightly “the three of them go on undercover missions, mostly small undertakings that the accords don’t think require the Avengers”.

Well, there went his chance of redemption. Also, fuck the accords.

“Do you happen to know where they are right now?” he asks her, trying to sound nonchalant, but the princess just smirks and nods to the device on his phone.

“No, but his number’s already on your new phone” with that, she gracefully gets up off the grass and starts to walk the way she came. A moment later, he hears her stop so he turns to look at her. “You’ll never know unless you try, sergeant.”

“You should write inspirational quotes” he snarks at her without bite, but a second later his smile turns into something sweeter. “Thank you, Shuri”.

She bows slightly and resumes her walk back to the castle. Just when she’s about to disappear behind a hill, she speaks again, not even raising her voice, but he has no doubt she knows he’ll hear her anyway. “I wanna be invited to the wedding, that’s all”. He groans out loud and she disappears cackling.

Alone once more, Bucky lets himself fall back on the grass, now looking up at the darkening sky. The phone on his hand feels like it’s boring a hole through his skin, and he knows he’s not strong enough to fight the urge to talk to Steve. And the thing is, he doesn’t want to anymore. It doesn’t feel like the time after the fall of the triskelion, when he knew Steve was better off away from him. This time, Bucky was no longer a threat, and even putting his own complicated feelings aside, he knew Steve missed his friend.

So he took a deep breath and unlocked the phone, once more feeling like his whole body was being flooded with something warm at the sight of Steve on the screen. His heart was beating faster and faster with every passing second as he opened his contacts, seeing Steve’s name right on top of the unsurprisingly short list; only Sam, Natalia and Shuri were saved there too. He knew stalling was not gonna get him anywhere, so he took another encouraging breath and with a single tap of his finger… He called the man he loved.