[oom] something in my mind freezes up from time to time

[from_the_outside]

She hardly has any time to protest when Nakia appears like a vengeful storm sweeping into Shuri's lab and hauls Sharon away like a child who has snuck out of bed.

"Nakia –!"

"I will return her once she is ready," Nakia tells Shuri, who looks like she's barely holding back laughter, and then drags Sharon down the short corridor to the train platform, tapping out an order on her Kimoyo beads as she does.

"Do I get to know what's going on?" Sharon complains, and Nakia gives her a flat look.

"Stretch your arms up as high as you can," she commands, and when Sharon hesitates snaps: "Well?"

Annoyed, Sharon does as requested, but can only get her left arm about halfway up before wincing and letting it drop again. "As I thought," Nakia says, patronizing, and ushers her onto the train.

What follows is a series of tests and scans Sharon submits to with poor grace. "I'm fine!" she protests. "It's been six weeks!" But the Wakandan doctors either don't believe her or are too scared of Nakia to ignore her orders, and Sharon finds herself on the business end of a needle or two and several strangely warm lights that do something uncomfortable to the ribs she'd broken and then re-broken.

"Why does it hurt more now?" she complains, and Nakia smiles peaceably. "Because you did not take care of them before and now they must heal properly. You will be fine tomorrow or the day after."

And whatever arguments Sharon makes, she refuses to hear.

---

Nakia keeps her resting for the remainder of the day, feigning deafness when Sharon asks about going either to the lab or to see Bucky, and the evening and night pass without incident. She does manage to see him the next day, but it's brief: Nakia had swept in shortly after sun-up with coffee and breakfast and informed Sharon she would be taking her to meet several of the different tribes. And that it would likely take all day.

So Sharon contents herself with waving to Bucky from a distance as she and Nakia pass by: the children must have been freed from their lessons because they're clamoring around him. She meets a slew of people whose names she tries her best to remember and returns to the Citadel that evening with a few colorful braided and beaded bracelets around her wrist and several yards of beautiful cloth one of the village women had pressed on her. She doesn't know what to do with it; Nakia takes it with a secretive smile and promises to find a purpose.

But the next morning, she's up and out before Nakia can show up with plans again: the doctors had said she would be fine today, and she has somewhere she needs to be. After she's made use of the coffee maker she'd wheedled out of the kitchen staff, showered, and changed, she's heading down the halls of the Citadel to the station.

Shuri had said first thing. They may already be there.

Comments

[nerves_of_ice]

"Everything's fine."

It's not a lie, he reasons. He just doesn't know how to explain. Maybe once the scans are done he can figure something out.

[from_the_outside]

"Why don't I believe you?"

She watches him, a tiny line drawing between her brows, before deciding to throw him a life line. "Coming in for these scans probably isn't your favorite thing, huh?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Not really, no."

He slants a look at her as the train slows to a stop.

"I'm not ungrateful. Just the opposite. It's just... well, you'll see, I guess."

Bucky stops speaking as the door opens and walks out onto the platform. Shuri's waiting at the other end, looking unusually serious, although she brightens visibly when she spots Sharon.

[from_the_outside]

She follows him out onto the platform, nodding. The last thing she'd think is that he'd be ungrateful for the help, but, well –

He's had enough people playing in his head for one lifetime, she's sure.

"Good morning, Princess," Sharon says, and if it's not quite bright, it's still warm and pleased. "I hope you don't mind if I tag along."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Oh, really?" Shuri says, with eyebrows raised high. Bucky does his level best to ignore the speculative look she gives Sharon, as well as the one she turns on him.

"I do not mind if he doesn't," she adds. "Bucky?"

He shakes his head. "It's fine."

"It will be," Shuri promises. "Today may be harder, but we will make it as easy as we can."

[from_the_outside]

"Really," she says, amused. Whatever Shuri sees when she gives Sharon that peering look seems to satisfy her and amuse her both in equal measure, and she turns with her usual quick motions. "Come, then."

Harder seems like maybe this wasn't a bad idea after all. She knows he's not good at accepting help or support, but that doesn't mean she can't try.

She may not be a naturally comforting person, but...he soothes her. She can only hope she can do the same for him.

[nerves_of_ice]

Shuri leads them through the main lab, past the room where they'd called Steve a few nights ago, and down a hallway into a receiving room. This one's designed with more subtle art and a soothing color scheme.

Bucky appreciates it, even as he fails to be soothed. Shuri waves them to seats and takes one of her own across from them. She sets her tablet on a low table to the side and links her fingers together as she looks at Bucky.

"Coffee after," she promises him, and glances at Sharon with a bright grin. "You, though, can have coffee before and during."

Her attention turns back to Bucky as her serious expression returns. "I want to do more sets today. Updates on the previous ones, as we have done before... and a few with you concentrating on specific memories from the notebooks. It will let me map connections between them and what HYDRA has compromised."

Gently, she adds, "It will be difficult for you. I am sorry."

[from_the_outside]

Sharon smiles at the offer, but doesn't reply, only listens attentively. Her understanding of how Shuri is working to deprogram the HYDRA conditioning is vague at best, and she's not sure she'll actually be able to add any benefit to him during the process.

But neither he nor Shuri would hesitate to tell her to leave, so she shakes off any misgivings and just pays attention as Shuri describes today's procedure.

It doesn't sound fun at all. Maybe there's something nice she can do for him afterwards.

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head.

"I've been through worse," Bucky tells Shuri - tells them, really. His tone is very dry. "It'll be fine. Let's do it."

Shuri sniffs. "Of course it will not be like that! I'm far more talented."

And kinder, Bucky thinks. A small smile flickers, there and gone.

"All right." Shuri gets to her feet and crooks a finger at Sharon. "You come with me. Bucky, you go on through to the scanning room and let us know when you're ready."

He gets to his feet and goes to the door at the other side of the room they're in - then stops on the threshold.

"Sharon." He turns to look back at her. "If you decide partway through you'd rather wait outside, that'll be fine too. Don't worry about it."

Without waiting for her to answer, he disappears through the door. Shuri looks at Sharon, eyebrows raised even higher than before.

[from_the_outside]

It's a second before Sharon looks away from the door he went through, but when she does, Shuri's eyebrows are still pushed right up against her hairline.

Sharon smiles, a little weakly. "What was that you said about coffee?"

A few moments later, coffee in hand, she follows Shuri into a graceful white room lined with the huge windows that seem ubiquitous here. The room is sparse: the only items in it are a couple of consoles with embedded screens and diaphanous floating holograms, and a large white metal and glass tube going from floor to ceiling in the very center.

And in the tube –

He at least looks as comfortable as could be expected, as Shuri ushers Sharon around to one of the consoles. She sets a finger to her lips with a warning lift of her brows, and Sharon nods: she won't interrupt or say anything unless Shuri asks her to.

Shuri taps one of her Kimoyo beads and speaks cheerfully. "Almost ready to start. Just like usual, we're going to be right here, Bucky. I'm going to lower the lights now."

Another tap, and the windows begin to turn faintly opaque. As the room lights dim, Sharon can see a faint blue glow coming from the tube itself. Shuri speaks again. "Are you comfy? Let me know when you are ready."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Ready as I'll ever be," he says, his dry tone altered a bit by the resonance of the chamber. "Might as well go ahead and start the show."

"Baseline first," Shuri reminds him. "Try not to think of anything at all. Keep your mind as quiet as possible."

Bucky almost laughs, but then turns his focus to what he's been doing the past couple of days. He imagines the black night sky above him, filled with stars, and watches the space between them in his mind's eye, with his physical eyes closed.

As he does, blue light brightens, illuminating the chamber, and a thin line of holographic light begins to spin around his skull, passing over it in a complex pattern. The pattern's echoed on the screen in front of Shuri and Sharon, creating a detailed picture of Bucky's brain.

"Bioscanning," Shuri whispers. "When he starts concentrating on different things, we will see the thought patterns themselves appear."

[from_the_outside]

Sharon nods, warming her hands around her mug of coffee and watching closely. The glowing lines spin themselves into a crisply precise three-dimensional model of Bucky's brain, which she should maybe feel weird about seeing, but doesn't. Shuri points out a few different areas she'll be keeping an eye on, and with a few practiced taps of her fingers, brings up scans from the journals in another screen.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Okay, Bucky," echoes Shuri's voice over the speakers. He keeps his eyes closed. "I will play some selections from your notebooks for you. Think about what they remind you of, hm?"

He breathes out and reminds himself not to nod or move. "Got it."

There's a soft click, and a surprisingly kind computerized voice murmurs,

"I didn't remember Steve when I first saw him in D.C. Only later. Not like Azzano. I couldn't believe it was him when I opened my eyes on that table."

"Steve," Bucky whispers, a small smile curving his lips as memories rush in. Disbelief and joy and surprise, a sense of everything being right with the world once more.

[from_the_outside]

She watches as sections of the holographic brain light up like someone touched a lit match to them, and can't help smiling herself.

(It was kind of Shuri to begin with a memory of Steve. But then, Shuri is always kind.)

She can't see his face very well from here, but she thinks she can picture the expression easily enough: there's a very specific nostalgic smile he sometimes gets when he thinks about his best friend.

[nerves_of_ice]

The voice shifts to another memory, from a different place in the journals, the pattern created after detailed analysis of their contents.

"I never blamed Steve for not finding me after I fell," it murmurs. "For a while I was afraid I did. But there was no reason for him to look. I believe that. I know I do."

As his breathing changes, as his left shoulder twitches, another section of his brain lights up, and Shuri frantically highlights the connections that start to flash.

One of them glows a malignant red, like a scar.

[from_the_outside]

She pauses in a sip of her coffee as an angry red line snakes its way through the calm blue surrounding it. "Is that –"

"Yes," Shuri says, quietly. "The programming is connected to his memories. Much easier to embed them that way than to implant something completely new. Now, shh."

Sharon hushes, but the coffee begins to grow cold in her hands as she watches the lights blink and glow in Bucky's brain.

[nerves_of_ice]

The murmured words shift back and forth from easier times to more difficult ones, creating new paths and leading him among old ones in a winding, unpredictable fashion. Sometimes he tenses up, other times he relaxes as he explores each recollection, the memories leading him deeper and deeper into his own mind.

At one point, during a reminiscence of him and Steve together celebrating his birthday in Brooklyn, three of the scarred patches light up at once, and Shuri nearly fumbles the display in surprise. "So that is what those are!" she mutters, her fingers racing over the screen to trace the links between them.

Bucky doesn't notice. He's deep in the mists of his own mind, lost in his own thoughts, drifting from prompt to prompt without conscious direction.

The recorded voice switches again, and reads out, "A long time ago, Natalia Romanova made me remember what it was to feel human. And they punished us both for that, in different ways."

For a single frozen instant, shock halts his thoughts entirely, and everything on the display stills.

--compromised compromised compromised caught trapped Natasha no don't hurt her don't no, no Natasha, no--

In the next, Bucky screams in agony, his back arching violently as his right hand slams convulsively into the glass in front of him.

[from_the_outside]

Natalia Romanova –

He'd only started to trust her when she'd told him they had friends in common. Peggy Carter, and –

That agonized howl chills her right down to the bone, and she almost drops her mug, sets it down with shaking hands at the last second. She can almost feel the shock of his hand against the glass like it's beating against her own ribs. "Shuri –!"

She's gone white to the lips, and even Shuri looks strained, her fingers flying as she works. "I know," she says, grimly, while Sharon looks helplessly on, her fingers clenching and relaxing at her sides.

There's nothing to fight. Nothing to shoot. No one to bully into doing the right thing. There is only Bucky, alone with his thoughts, and Shuri working as fast as she can, and that scream burrowing deep into her ears, into her chest, into God only knows how many nightmares to come.

[nerves_of_ice]

On the display, the image continues to light up, bright white lights flaring to indicate cognitive overload as connections start to form faster and faster with the jagged randomness of lightning. Shuri fights to keep the scan stable so that all of this will be worth something, even as she taps in an override code for the recording and switches another one into play.

"Bucky." It's Steve Rogers' voice, his actual voice, not the smooth and kind narrator who'd been speaking until now. "Shuri asked me if I wanted to record a message for you while you were in cryo, and of course I said yes." A soft chuckle echoes through the room. "But now I don't know what to say. I guess - don't stay under too long this time, you hear me? We've both slept long enough."

In the chamber, Bucky stills, his hand falling back to his side as his expression twists. He's silent, listening, his breathing too rapid but starting to slow.

"I'll see you soon, Buck. Hang in there. Remember - I'm with you until the end of the line."

"It worked," Shuri murmurs, watching the display and the data readouts scrolling across it. "Bucky. Bucky, can you hear me?"

It takes him a second, but then he answers, his voice a low rasp but still clear.

"Yeah, Shuri, I copy. I hear you. That was a hell of a trip down memory lane." He keeps his eyes closed. "Are we done yet?"

[from_the_outside]

Steve's voice is deep and warm and clear; he could almost be in the room with them. Sharon watches as what she can see of Bucky relaxes inch by inch until his hand drops and his breathing slows.

She looks at Shuri at Bucky's question – surely Shuri isn't going to put him under again, not after that – and Shuri nods, faintly. "Yes," she decides. "You did very well, there will be plenty of data for me to analyze. How do you feel?"

Terrible, probably. That's Sharon's guess, anyway. For her part, her hand is closed so tightly she can feel her nails biting into her palm as she holds herself back from going straight to that metal and glass contraption and finding a way to get to him.

[nerves_of_ice]

"I've felt worse," he says, a little wryly. "Don't worry."

"Why would I?" Shuri teases, and a breath of what might be laughter escapes him. "Keep your eyes closed. I am ending the scan now."

Bucky holds still and keeps his eyes closed as the beams of light spinning around his head slow, then stop, then blink out one by one. The faint light in the chamber fades next, and finally the latch clicks and the glass slides back. He draws a careful breath before he grips the side of the metal and steps out. As he does, he opens his eyes and looks across the room toward them.

[from_the_outside]

As the scan fades, the room lights brighten and the windows shift slowly back to transparency. There's a table nearby with a pitcher of water and several glasses; Sharon goes to fill one so that when he steps out of the chamber she can walk over and offer it with a smile.

"That was quite a light show."

With several elements she won't be forgetting for a long while.

[nerves_of_ice]

"I guess so," he says, as he accepts the water. "Thanks."

He downs half of it before lowering the glass.

Shuri locks in the scan, then dismisses the display image and comes to join them. "I am sorry," she starts, and Bucky shakes his head.

"It's okay. It's a mess in there," he says, tapping the edge of the glass to his temple. "We already knew that."

He's going to have to explain a few things now that he hadn't expected. He knows that, too.

[from_the_outside]

Shuri gives him a sympathetic smile. "The good news is that it worked. I was able to capture quite a few connections I had missed before, and that means we are that much closer to finding an answer."

Sharon realizes she's crossed her arms over her chest, and loosens them, slipping her hands into her pockets instead. "You did good," she tells him, with a faint quarter-smile.

He did. Even if it wasn't conscious, he did great.

[nerves_of_ice]

"That is good news," he tells them, and there's no mistaking the desperate relief that lies deep beneath his words, try though he might to hide it. "Shuri, I can't thank you enough--"

She holds up a hand to stop him, turning her head to the side in rejection of his thanks. "Do not start with this again. I have made you a promise, and my brother has as well. Besides," she continues, mischievously, "do you know how long it has been since I had a real challenge? I should be thanking you!"