[oom] while I'm away, dust out the demons inside

[from_the_outside]

 Twelve hours after they've returned from the mission, she already needs something else to do.

The problem is, there's not a lot she can personally assist with, now that Ross is involved. She shows up at Nakia's door with her laptop in tow and a vague idea of debriefing, and is summarily shooed away.

So there's not a lot to do. And that means she has too much time to think. And... feel things.

Look, she's not the type to sit around and pine for a boy, okay? (At least, she hasn't been that type since she was fourteen and in love for the Very First Time.) But she'd told him she would miss him like crazy and, well –

She misses him like crazy.

Steve tries. He honestly does, because he's Steven Grant Rogers and he's probably the single best person she knows, and also because she's reasonably sure Bucky extracted a promise from him to keep an eye on her. She's sure of it because Steve keeps showing up with, like, sandwiches for her to eat, and still gently reminds her to get enough sleep. He didn't resort to drugging her, but she's pretty certain that's due more to a lack of opportunity than personal reluctance.

Because he had to go, after a few days. He'd all but cornered her down at the lake, under the shade tree where she spends most of her afternoons now, and point-blank asked her if she wanted him to stay.

"You have things to take care of," she'd told him, after a second. "Don't worry about me, I'm all good here. Go, chase down the new leads."

He'd watched her carefully for a long moment, then sat down beside her with a sigh that garners him a sympathetic smile. "Do you want to come with me?" he asks, and even though she's expecting it, she's still kind of floored by the offer.

The truth is, she doesn't. I'm not running off with Steve and his team and leaving you behind, she'd said, and she means it now as much as she'd meant it then, but also she doesn't, really, want to go with Steve. 

She wants to be here. Even if there's not a damn thing she can do to help or to make these next few weeks pass a little more quickly.

That's not what she tells him, of course. He's concerned enough already, and she can tell he doesn't really believe her excuses. She could work on the leads with him and the team, after all. She's taking a break from testing things for Shuri anyway. She and Ayo have already figured out a plan for when Bucky wakes up. And the goats have K'Senge.

But he doesn't press her. He's kind. Steve is always, always kind.

After he leaves, Nakia takes over the job of 'making sure Sharon stays alive,' apparently. She accepts Sharon's smiles and jokes with skeptical good humor and doesn't ask why Sharon, who is so often in the lab, often enough that Shuri finally just shoos her out, never goes back into the quiet white chamber where Bucky is sleeping.  She doesn't comment on Sharon's tired eyes in the morning, or the increased amount of coffee she drinks, or how much time she spends sitting down by the lake. She only glances at the increasing number of wildflower bouquets that appear in Sharon's room and drags her friend to the market or to a restaurant or to some new beautiful spot in the Wakandan wilderness.

Sharon accepts it all. During the day she's lively and engaged, although there's a slightly forced air to it, but the afternoons she takes under the tree by the lake grow longer and longer with each day after the first full week.

Nights are a different story altogether. But there's no one there to see them, and she doesn't tell.