from_the_outside | [Leipzig AU] good for trouble

An hour or so later, Okoye has returned and the Wakandans have changed out of their evening wear – in T'Challa's case, out of his cat suit – and Sharon goes to join Nakia to look out the window as dawn breaks over the city, casting everything into a cool light.

"Any progress?" she murmurs, tipping her head back at the trio of Ross, T'Challa, and Okoye.

"Not much." They can hear the faint sounds of Klaue's taunting from the room beyond. Nakia ignores it, focusing instead on watching the street. Even as early as it is, the city hums with the bustle of people heading to work or other places, focused on their own goals and needs.

A white service van moves slowly down the street, probably searching for an address on the cramped signage for each building, as she glances at Sharon.

"The king will not be moved on this. Klaue must come with us."

"Ross might agree to that, if he gets the information he needs out of Klaue first."

He certainly won't agree to letting Klaue go without any ability to question him. She slants a sidelong glance back at Nakia. "You know we've got to find out what we can about his network."

"Mm. I know." She glances over at the others in time to see Ross tap T'Challa on the chest dismissively with the back of his hand.

"Your boss needs to keep his hands off King T'Challa," she informs Sharon. Okoye looks like she's ready to put the point of her spear through Ross, and Nakia feels much the same way. "Or this will get much more difficult very fast."

Edited 2022-03-31 16:03 (UTC)

She desperately wants to ask if anyone in this room is currently getting their hands on King T'Challa, but that will have to wait.

"You don't know how amazing it is Ross even let you all in here," she murmurs. Ross likes the king, she knows; enough to relax SOP and let him join in on the interrogation, but –

"Hey," she says, quietly, nudging Nakia. "Ross is going in. We're getting started."

She manages to keep a straight face even as Okoye's disgruntled "Americans" reaches her ears, but all hint of humor vanishes as Ross and Klaue begin to speak.

Sharon doesn't know she, T'Challa, and Okoye can hear what's going on in there, she knows. She turns back to the street and watches it as Klaue begins to tell Ross about the secrets of Wakanda that have been so closely guarded for so long, mixing it up with South American and Spanish legend.

The Golden City. How did he learn so much?

At least it doesn't seem like Ross is buying it. "Wakanda is a third world country," he counters. "And you stole all their vibranium."

"I stole – ?"

Klaue dissolves into giggles, then lunges forward, shifting the chair he's restrained to by a few inches as Ross sits up and away from him. "All of it?" he growls. "I took a tiny piece of it. They have a mountain full of it. They've been mining it for thousands of years and they still haven't scratched the surface."

It's impossible, of course, but it's a strange story to tell, and Ross frowns, slightly, as he thinks about that arm cannon. "If you don't believe me," Klaue continues, "you ask your friend what his suit is made of. What his claws are made of."

He doesn't want to believe it – and he doesn't – but Ross hasn't gotten to where he is without a healthy dose of skepticism. He turns it over in his head, then glances back at Klaue and leans down to pick up his coffee before exiting the room, his expression carefully neutral.

One look at Ross's face and he knows what is coming. He has to appreciate the man's directness, at least.

"Your father told the UN that Klaue stole all the vibranium you had," Ross says, bluntly. "But now he's telling me you have more?"

Beside him, Okoye shifts her stance. T'Challa maintains a polite expression of disbelief as he considers Ross. "And you believe the word of an arms dealer strapped to a chair?"

Edited 2022-03-31 17:04 (UTC)

A white van drives slowly by, then turns behind the building, and Sharon frowns as she sees Nakia watching it. "What's up?"

Nakia shakes her head. "Perhaps nothing," she murmurs, but tips her head toward the agent on monitor duty. Sharon follows as she goes and studies the different camera inputs. "Where's this?" Nakia asks the agent, pointing to an empty alleyway.

The agent gestures with his thumb over his shoulder. "Back there."

Nakia glances up and as their eyes meet, Sharon knows the same worry written on her friend's face is etched into hers, as well. "That van just turned in back there," Sharon murmurs, and Nakia nods.

"Come," she says, and heads into the main room.

He's good, Ross realizes, as he scrutinizes T'Challa's features. He's very good, but he hasn't answered the question, and that's because he's lying.

"How much more are you hiding?" he breathes, only to whirl around as the other Wakandan woman bursts back into the room with Carter at her side. "Kukho into eyenzekayo emva," she snaps, which turns out to be all the warning they have before the wall of Klaue's cell explodes.

People are screaming and yelling as dust billows into the rooms. The one-way glass fractures and then explodes inward as a man in a tribal mask pushes in, firing bursts of bullets from a semi-automatic weapon nudged against his shoulder.

There's no time to think. She sees Nakia stand and the man move forward and is in motion in the next heartbeat. "Get down!" Sharon yells, and tackles her friend as the man squeezes off another scattering round of bullets. She feels a hand push, hard, between her shoulderblades as they drop, but it's not until they hit the floor and she finds she can't get up again that she realizes she's been shot.

"Hold still," she murmurs, cradling her friend across her lap. Sharon has very likely just saved her life, and been badly injured in the process.

Ross is shouting orders, sending the rest of his team running, and T'Challa has vanished through the wall. Okoye gives Nakia a searching look and runs after him as Ross drops down by her side.

"How bad is she?" he demands. "Bad," Nakia murmurs, pulling Sharon's ripped shirt aside to reveal the horrific wound in her spine. "Very bad."

Pain is setting in, along with a horrifying numbness in her arms and legs and torso. It's all she can do to keep breathing, to try and push away the gray film that's trying to push across her vision.

Sharon whimpers, low, her breathing rough and labored, feeling cold all over. She can hear Nakia and Ross talking, but can't tell what they're saying, can't feel Nakia's gentle hands on her back. The fear is a distant thing, coiling up around her, tightening a little more with each terrified gasp for air. The cement floor is cold against her forehead, but she can't lift her head.

She can't do anything.

T'Challa sprints out the door, hot in pursuit – and an invisible hand shoves him back and up and into the wall. As he drops, he sees the masked man lowering his weapon as the van careens back out of the alley, a familiar ring bouncing against his chest on a chain as they vanish.

He stares after them and makes ready to pursue, when he hears Okoye shouting. His General runs out to him, spear at the ready, looking grave. "My King," she says. "Nakia."

Nakia. He'd see her dive to the ground; was she hit, is she hurt? He turns and runs back into the remains of the chaos, then draws to an abrupt halt at the scene before him: Nakia and Ross both kneeling by a wounded Agent Carter. He sinks to his knee next to the woman, her rough gasps for breath scraping across his own heart, and looks at Nakia.

"She just jumped in front of me," she tells T'Challa. Nakia's shifted now to lay Sharon on the floor, hoping to ease her breathing, and is gently cradling her neck and shoulder. There's anguish in her eyes as she looks up at him.

"I don't think she'll make it here. It hit her spine."

Beside them, Ross makes a sound like he's just been punched in the gut. "You hang on, Carter," he orders, trying to keep her grounded to the earth through will alone. "Do you hear me? You hang on, goddammit!"

Edited 2022-03-31 19:46 (UTC)

He meets Nakia's eyes and reads the anguished request in them. Even now, even in this terrible moment, she cannot speak it aloud, but it is clear anyway what she wishes: for them to save this woman, to bring her to the only one who can.

She has helped him before, this Agent Carter, and he knows she is dear to his friend, the Sergeant now left behind in Wakanda, all unknowing. He thinks of how he would feel if this were Nakia, lying here struggling to take each breath, to remain in this world, the one of the living, and a wave of terrible anguish rises in him.

At Ross's order, the woman makes a small whimpering sound that's so much worse than if she hadn't tried to respond at all, and T'Challa reaches out a hand to Nakia, the decision made almost by reflex. "Give me a Kimoyo bead," he says, quiet, and takes the one she offers to him.

He looks to Ross, his free hand up with fingers spread, trying to soothe. "This will stabilize her for now," he murmurs, and gently but firmly pushes the bead into the wound. The woman groans and tenses, then relaxes into unconsciousness as the bead glows gently.

He stares in absolute shock as T'Challa pushes a metal bead into Carter's back. He could swear it glows for a second, violet tendrils of light spreading out from her wound, but there's no mistaking the way her breathing eases, the way her body relaxes.

For a horrifying second he thinks they've lost her. Ross presses shaking fingers to her throat only to find that her heartbeat is slow, but steady.

He looks up at T'Challa. "How?"

He cannot possibly explain, here and now, and not only because of the secrets Wakanda holds. "Give her to us," he says, instead, and holds the other man's gaze with his own intent and worried.

"We can save her."

Ross looks back at him, unable to believe what he's hearing, then tears his glance away to look down at Carter where she lies on the floor, unconscious and unmoving.

She'd been about to die, he knows it. He knows it, and now she's not, through some miracle he doesn't understand.

"Take her," Ross says, roughly, and looks back up at T'Challa. "But I'm coming along."

Edited 2022-03-31 20:22 (UTC)

He hears Okoye's hissed breath. "My King – " she begins, but he shakes his head, sharp and abrupt.

"Would you ask me to leave you?" he asks, in Xhosa, and she subsides. He doesn't have to look at her to see the expression on her face.

He looks instead to Nakia, who nods, minute. "Very well," he says, and gently lifts the unconscious Agent Carter into his arms before he stands, cradling her warm weight against his chest. "Come. There is not much time."

Edited 2022-03-31 20:26 (UTC)

He follows T'Challa, Okoye, and the other woman whose name he still doesn't know as they start purposefully out the door. Ross pauses only long enough to snag the arm of the first agent he finds and snap out a few orders for how to process the scene and report back to him later, that he's seeing Carter to the hospital, and dashes after them.

Nothing makes sense. He ignores that and clings grimly to the present as they make their way to the SUV parked in the next alley over. Ross climbs in the back and helps to brace Carter as T'Challa sets her gently into the car. The other woman climbs in after and does the same, from the other side. Hopefully it's not far to the hospital.

Except they aren't going to a hospital, apparently. Okoye pulls the SUV over just outside the city, beside a large field surrounded by trees, and shuts off the engine.

"Wait," Ross protests. "Wait. Where are we going? You can't just--"

The other woman reaches to touch his wrist, shaking her head at him as both Okoye and T'Challa get out of the car. "Watch," she murmurs. "You will see."

Ross starts to argue, but his mouth drops open when the air outside shimmers and an aircraft appears from out of fucking nowhere, parked in the field.

Edited 2022-03-31 20:47 (UTC)

Nakia hangs back by Ross as T'Challa carefully lifts Sharon out of the car. Her friend is limp in his arms, but breathing, and Nakia comforts herself with the knowledge that if they can just get her back to Wakanda in time, she will be alright.

She has to be.

"Come," she says gently, and sets a hand on Ross's arm. "We will explain on the way. Only come."

Inside the flyer, T'Challa activates a sand table and lays Sharon carefully onto it. Her friend's face is pale, but she did not lose much blood and her breathing, though light, is regular.

Okoye grits her teeth as she watches Ross take up a position at the head of the table, looking down at Agent Carter. She remembers the woman from Berlin, knows that she is close to Sergeant Barnes, that now there are also two others besides Klaue outside Wakanda's borders who have gained knowledge of Wakanda's secrets, but this--

She holds her tongue until she has brought them aloft and set the autopilot on its course, then goes to join them. She speaks only in Xhosa, knowing that Ross will not be able to understand her. Good.

"My king," she starts. "Our mission was to bring back Klaue. We failed. These two are foreign intelligence operatives. How can we possibly justify bringing them into our borders?"

"She took a bullet for me," Nakia says, disbelieving. "And she is my friend. We are just supposed to let her die?"

Ross glances between them, over Sharon's unconscious body, still in a state of shock over everything he's seeing. "What?" he demands. "What are you saying?"

"That was her choice," she snaps at Nakia, then switches to English and turns to Ross.

"I am not speaking to you," she informs him. "I am addressing my king. Be silent and wait your turn."

Okoye turns back to T'Challa. "They are Americans! We are already at odds with their leaders from before, and it is their duty to report back to their country! And as king, it is your duty to protect ours."

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