In Noctem

The train rattles, cold biting from the windows, blowing past an elderly woman, wrapped heartily in rags.
Across them, is a man, asleep as his figure rocks softly.
No one has told them, this is their last mission together. His hand makes it's way onto her thigh, and just sets it there.
She moves her hand onto his, grasping it as Duchess Ghestov.
They hold onto each other, somehow knowing.

Bucky sighs, throwing aside the towel from the gym onto a nearby towel into a cluttered mess. He's feeling a slight bit of cabin fever, as much as he doesn't want to admit it.
He picked up the slow moving metallic orb that's floating on the bed. Shuri gave it to him a few nights ago, as if sensing him. It's a small, circular object, which floated approximately 2 inches above any surface, composed of different parts which continued to move into themselves. The parts, made of vibranium, were tubed and interlinked, shifting into itself, and held an anti matter field which when cupped, would spin whichever way the holder willed it to.
"It only takes one touch to solve it." She teased, before leaving with just a smile.

Since then, Bucky's been picking it back up now and then, softly touching what appeared to be more vulnerable pieces of the orb.
He touched another part, though it remained tight and slowly chiming with every brush against another vibranium piece; like a lullaby or a church bell.

"You ever want to get married?" A redheaded girl with freckles says, sitting in the pews of a large cathedral.
"Need to survive this war first."
He looks up to the cross. A part of his stomach flinches for the 100th time.

His memories have been coming faster and clearer now, ever since he woke up.
All kill codes, triggers, wiped from the map whole he was under. When he came to, before T'Challa had time to talk to him, he somehow knew it. As if his mind had just been freed from a vice, a breath that had been weighed in his lungs since the fall from the train, gone.
He doesn't think he'll ever be able to thank him enough.
He isn't naive enough to believe it all is back, there's parts, pieces blacked out like a classified document, waiting for the right holder to read it. A part of him is glad for it. ...He isn't ready for it, not yet. The feeling is like waking from a fever breaking, that dazed knowledge of fatigue.

"How long have I been out?" Steve asks, attempting to get up out of bed.
"Two days and you're gonna spend another there, so shut up." Bucky says, as he pushes him back into bed.

The room is filled with a light gray, coming in from the wide windows, combining with the already misty cover from the nearby waterfalls.
He hasn't been able to talk with T'Challa much since he woke, Suri saying "He's setting his affairs in order for his reign." But the smallest inclination of worry in her emotion when she said it, makes him think otherwise.
The cabin fever mixes in again with a feeling of ineptitude. He makes a fist with his new arm, another gift from the King. The new vibranium upgrade, complete with a blue star (after he requested), also has a camouflage ability for discreet missions. A small button near the underside of it allows it to give the arm an appearance of what his actual arm might look like. He was so taken aback when they first showed it to him, he didn't know what to make of it. He hasn't used it since, not out of ingratitude, but that he's more comfortable for seeing it as it is. He's never been a bullshitter. And T'Challa knows it, a part of him Thankful again for the placement of the room. It's view obstructs intruders, but gives him a clear view should he need. One of the first things they teach you in army stealth, is to know tells. That you can have the finest equipment but if you don't know when a person is bluffing, the knowledge is useless. And though Bucky has been keeping that facade in tact since he first came to camp, so has T'Challa. A mutual knowledge of being like marble. The sentence turns over in his mind, like the orb he's holding.

The memory is touch. Her hands around his neck as they look into each other eyes.
She kisses him, and the world quiets.

Bucky stands up, sighing as he walks toward the window, one arm leaning up against it.
He knows he doesn't have to worry, that there isn't a need to. But he still does.

He stills, before Thanking God silently his mind was right.
"You're getting rusty." He says to the air behind him.
A small noise of a duffel being set down on the floor, before a voice comes from behind. "You're too accustomed to the environment, so technically you're cheating."
He turns and wraps his arms around Natasha, as they kiss and the world still quiets everytime. They pull apart slowly, her hands behind his neck.
"How'd the mission go?"
She shakes her head. "False lead." Her fingers play with the small, short hairs at the base of his neck, something she does when she's tense or worried. "...It feels different. I don't know what that means yet."
"It'll work out. It always does." He says, holding her closer.
"How do you do that?"
"What?"
"Say that, and make it believable. Even for me."
"You make that possible."
They kiss once more, before she makes her way toward the bathroom.
"I need a shower and a 6-pack."
He looks back out the window once more. "Sounds like a good combination."
She looks out from the archway. "You've been cooped up here so long, maybe I'll let you help me with both." A smirk at the end of her lips.
"You're too good to me." He smiles back, making his way toward her.

The orb remains twirling inside itself.
He hasn't said it, but he's felt it too. There's a strange finality in the air that's been making him uneasy, adding up with the anxiety that's already been pushing up against him. As if the stakes have been raised, more than either of them can ever have guessed.
It chimes, clanging against itself.
And for them, it just means every minute means more, is cherished further. It's all either of them can do. And why neither of them say it.