[oom] the rules have changed since I learned to play

[from_the_outside]

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.

Comments

[from_the_outside]

Anyone looking would see two figures – one tall and broad-shouldered, the other small and slim – bolting from a garden-level door towards a small side street. So much, so usual: where it turns a little odd is how they slip into a shadow and just...

Disappear.

"This cloaking tech is the best," Sharon tells Nakia, seated at the wheel of the car they've piled into. Light spills from its exterior like water off a duck; it's nearly impossible to see in the dim light of the Prague evening. She only grins and hits the accelerator, taking them away from the fray and towards the quiet location where T'Challa and the others wait with the flyer that will take them home. "Package secure," Sharon tells the earpiece. "We're heading your way now."

Update complete, she grins at Steve. For the first time in five long days, she feels amazing. "Nice job. You may graduate spy school yet."

[marvel_npc]

"You had the harder job," Steve says, with absolute sincerity. "How you and Nat get such a kick out of this is a mystery to me." Nakia laughs and whirls them around a corner, down another street, and then whips them into the narrow alley that leads to the abandoned square they'd set up in.

T'Challa steps forward as they get out of the car. "Well done," he says. "And thank you."

[from_the_outside]

She hands him the briefcase containing the precious prototype and plans. "Kwan is dead," she says, without preamble, "and Ross was in position to apprehend Gray. The good news is I think he'll roll on the prototype designer, the bad news is somebody out there really, really wants this stuff."

They head into the cloaked flyer as she says to Steve,

"Looks like you and Sam and Nat have a few new leads to track down."

[marvel_npc]

"Looks like," Steve agrees, as T'Challa secures the briefcase for the flight back and turns to them. Ayo is already at the controls, ready to take off, and Nakia comes to stand beside T'Challa. She touches his hand lightly, and he gives her a quick, slightly rueful smile before looking back at Sharon and Steve.

"I will follow up with Ross later," he tells them. "You have done a great kindness for Wakanda, for my people, and for me. We are no strangers to those who would steal and misuse our vibranium, but this is more. I am in your debt."

"You're not," Steve says, a little more sharply than might be expected. "If anything, it's the other way around."

[from_the_outside]

"Definitely not," Sharon agrees, taking a seat and slipping off the heels with a sigh as Ayo lifts them into the air with a barely perceptible hum. "You've already done more for us than we could ever pay back."

With Fury in the mix she's sick to death of the 'who owes who what' game. T'Challa is a proud man, she knows... but he is also someone who understands the give and take tidal push and pull of the world.

"We were happy to help. You owe us nothing."

[marvel_npc]

T'Challa studies them both, then simply nods, accepting.

"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!"

[from_the_outside]

Sharon smiles at their teasing and leans her head back, closing her eyes as the flyer glides smoothly through and then above the clouds.

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.