Sharon Carter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
from_the_outside) wrote2021-05-14 11:58 am
from_the_outside) wrote2021-05-14 11:58 am
Entry tags:
[oom] the rules have changed since I learned to play
Five days has never felt so goddamn long. Fortunately, there's a lot to do.
She throws herself into mission prep, spending hours strategizing with Steve and Nakia and T'Challa and Ayo, going over the exit paths Bucky had outlined, discussing their bid, their timing, their plan, their back-up plan, their back-up to the back-up.
She works with Shuri on the newest iteration of her suit: improved, stab-proof, and locked away inside a chic gold bracelet. It takes a little while for her to get used to how it responds, but after a few hours of testing and adjusting, she can call it into being with a second's thought.
She and Steve have long calls with Fury, going over the intel he's collected on the other guests. There's only one Fury's really concerned about, a representative from the crime-soaked island of Madripoor. The rep's name is Kwan, but it's the person he's representing that has Fury worried.
"This guy calls himself the 'Power Broker,'" he tells her and Steve. "Word is he takes it literally. If someone out here is looking to merge Chitauri tech and vibranium, it's this asshole."
But even she can't be in meetings all the time, and at least once a day she packs her laptop and intel into her tote bag and heads down to the little hut by the lake where she checks on the goats (all doing just fine under K'Senge's care), the hut (untouched), and more often than not sits for an hour or more under the shade tree, trying not to picture Bucky lounging next to her.
Steve sometimes accompanies her. He's doing his best, she knows: he always seems to be nudging her to eat something or reminding her when it gets late that she should sleep. And he's good company. It's not his fault he isn't his best pal.
Who is absolutely everywhere she looks: in her room, down by the lake, in the meeting rooms, in the lab; everywhere.
She'd been sitting beneath the shade tree the afternoon after he went under when Anwuli, the little girl with the pretty beaded bracelets, came shyly up to her, holding out a small bouquet of wildflowers. "From the White Wolf," she told Sharon, who took the flowers, wordless, as everything she'd tamped down in the lab threatened to spill right back out of her.
"Thank you," she'd said, and the little girl had flushed and run off.
That had been five days ago. She's received four more bouquets since. They sit in water in her room, filling it with a faint sweet fragrance as she looks at herself in the mirror, putting the final touches on Irma and waiting for Steve to arrive.
Nearly time.
She throws herself into mission prep, spending hours strategizing with Steve and Nakia and T'Challa and Ayo, going over the exit paths Bucky had outlined, discussing their bid, their timing, their plan, their back-up plan, their back-up to the back-up.
She works with Shuri on the newest iteration of her suit: improved, stab-proof, and locked away inside a chic gold bracelet. It takes a little while for her to get used to how it responds, but after a few hours of testing and adjusting, she can call it into being with a second's thought.
She and Steve have long calls with Fury, going over the intel he's collected on the other guests. There's only one Fury's really concerned about, a representative from the crime-soaked island of Madripoor. The rep's name is Kwan, but it's the person he's representing that has Fury worried.
"This guy calls himself the 'Power Broker,'" he tells her and Steve. "Word is he takes it literally. If someone out here is looking to merge Chitauri tech and vibranium, it's this asshole."
But even she can't be in meetings all the time, and at least once a day she packs her laptop and intel into her tote bag and heads down to the little hut by the lake where she checks on the goats (all doing just fine under K'Senge's care), the hut (untouched), and more often than not sits for an hour or more under the shade tree, trying not to picture Bucky lounging next to her.
Steve sometimes accompanies her. He's doing his best, she knows: he always seems to be nudging her to eat something or reminding her when it gets late that she should sleep. And he's good company. It's not his fault he isn't his best pal.
Who is absolutely everywhere she looks: in her room, down by the lake, in the meeting rooms, in the lab; everywhere.
She'd been sitting beneath the shade tree the afternoon after he went under when Anwuli, the little girl with the pretty beaded bracelets, came shyly up to her, holding out a small bouquet of wildflowers. "From the White Wolf," she told Sharon, who took the flowers, wordless, as everything she'd tamped down in the lab threatened to spill right back out of her.
"Thank you," she'd said, and the little girl had flushed and run off.
That had been five days ago. She's received four more bouquets since. They sit in water in her room, filling it with a faint sweet fragrance as she looks at herself in the mirror, putting the final touches on Irma and waiting for Steve to arrive.
Nearly time.
no subject
"We will be home in only a few hours," he says. "Less than you may expect. You have not seen Ayo handle a flyer."
"My king!" Ayo protests, from the front, and Nakia laughs. "What? It is true!"
no subject
The mission is over. Her part in it is, anyway, for now. Weeks of work, of worry, of planning, all finished. If she lets herself, she'll be looking down the barrel of who knows how long before another project comes along, and in the midst of her relief and triumph, there's just the faintest niggling of trepidation.
Back to Wakanda. And Steve will head back out again, until –
She's going to have to find something to do with herself. And soon.
But for now, there's nothing to do but enjoy the flight.