Chapter Text
When he wakes up, there is nothing. His mind is a blank. It feels like a sheet of ice, thin and clear and strong, that’s stopping him from thinking. He knows what his name is, he knows who he is, but everything that—everything else, it’s closed off.
Apologies, comes a voice, ringing through the emptiness. We didn’t want you to wake frightened, so we shut some things off. Absently, he registers that this would normally provoke him, but he can’t get to his anger. He can’t get to anything, and it doesn’t scare him. They must’ve shut that off too. Means it can’t be Hydra; they didn’t give a fuck about his feelings.
Where am I? he thinks back at the voice.
You’re in Wakanda, the voice says. You voluntarily underwent a freeze until we could be sure we’d shut off the command words in your brain.
That does set off a memory. Seven words, and then, blankness. But nothing happens when he thinks them.
Did you? he thinks.
We did. The voice sounds a little smug.
How?
Very advanced neurobiology, the voice says. Would you like to wake up?
Yes, he says, and almost regrets it when he feels the sheet of mental ice retreating, the turmoil behind it starting to rise to the surface. He is always himself, and he was always himself, and he remembers way too much.
He blinks. He’s in a room. A very shiny room. Lots of machines. He distantly remembers something similar from when he was frozen again, which is also starting to come back, making that decision.
Steve’s face, closing his eyes and not fighting the blankness or the cold.
There’s a man in front of him. He remembers him.
“Your majesty,” he says. His voice is rusty, but not like it normally is after a freeze. Everything, in fact, feels a lot better physically than it normally does. And he’s on a bed, with an IV in, so presumably they’ve given a fuck about his vitamin levels and shit.
“You don’t need to call me that,” the Black Panther says. Bucky remembers fighting him, how fast he was, how strong. Remembers thinking at least you could put me down if it needed to be done, because he’d fast come to the conclusion that Steve would never. Ever. And that - no.
Not right now.
“What do you want me to call you?”
“T’Challa is just fine,” he says. “What do you want me to call you?”
Bucky thinks about it. There could be good things in a new name. But. “Bucky’s fine,” he says. Because there’s only one name his friends ever called him.
“That it is,” T’Challa says. “How do you feel?”
“Not bad,” Bucky says. “Did you—you’re sure they’re gone.”
“Very sure,” T’Challa says. “But I’m very willing to test it out - I understand not wanting to be under someone else’s control.”
“Do you?” Bucky says.
T’Challa shrugs. “Not like you, perhaps. But destiny takes very peculiar shapes and roles in my country, and when you’re the prince, or the king, it is sometimes hard to know whose will you’re obeying. When it always ought to be the people’s.”
“What if the people want you to conquer other people?” Bucky says, mouth twisting.
“Oh, but then the people are being ruled by the worst among them. I have to be ruled by the best of the people’s impulses. People at rest do not want war.” He smiles, suddenly. “But these are heavy questions for a man who just rose from the dead. Come, let me show you around.” He holds out his hand to Bucky, who takes it carefully and then leans into the grip to pull himself up when he feels how weak he is.
“Shit,” he says, panting when he’s finally upright.
“You will likely be quite weak for a while,” T’Challa says. “There is much you can do for someone in a medical coma, but there’s no avoiding the atrophy of muscles and the lack of sufficient nutrition."“Didn’t seem to bother Hydra,” Bucky says.
“Well, perhaps their approach to refuelling you was a little more abrupt than I am willing to loan my facilities to,” T’Challa says, and Bucky remembers T’Challa has read every file there is on him, both before he went looking for the Winter Soldier and after, in preparation for the treatment. His stomach churns.
“Here,” T’Challa says, pulling out a wheelchair that had been folded up in the corner of the room. “No shame in needing support.”
Bucky sits down gratefully. “This is comfortable for a wheelchair,” he says.
“All chairs ought to be comfortable,” T’Challa says. “Perhaps not one you give your enemy, or your most irritating uncle at a family feast, but other than those, all chairs should be comfortable. Especially if someone who has been injured is using it.”
“Makes sense,” Bucky says, trying it out. It’s electric, it turns out, or battery-driven or something, and he has a joystick he can use to — ooops. He nearly runs over T’Challa’s foot.
“Sorry,” he says, reluctantly smiling. “It’s faster than I thought it would be.”
“We made it for you,” T’Challa says easily, and Bucky thought they might have, given the joystick and how well it fit in his hand. But.
“Man,” he says. “I owe you, like. Big. Why—“
T’Challa shakes his head. “Get well,” he says. “I have all I need. It is a gift to help a warrior regain his health and the free use of his mind.”
“You talk a little like you’re in a book, you know,” Bucky says, and it makes T’Challa laugh.
“I suppose that’s true, sometimes,” he says. “There are many ceremonies and a great deal of official business in my day. It does influence your speech."
“What do you do for fun around here?” Bucky says. He recognises the too-serious-for-his-own-good look, but he’s betting that - just like Steve - T’Challa knows how to have fun. No one who rides a car the way he does is without a bit of the devil in him.
“I’ll show you when you get better,” T’Challa says, smiling. “For now, are you content with the science facilities?” He motions at the door, following Bucky out.
“They’re pretty cool,” Bucky says, which is definitely an understatement. They’re high up on a passageway, surrounded by enormous sheets of glass, and he can see floors upon floors of labs just as shiny as the one his bed was in the corner of. “It’s all—what kind of research?”
“This is just, oh, exploratory biology,” T’Challa says. “We have the AI facilities over that way, where I never intend to let mr Stark visit if I do not want all my research stolen, and there’s—there’s a lot of research. We do a lot of it.”
“Huh,” Bucky says. Something about being in the midst of that much science sets off creepy-crawlies under his skin, because oh, isn’t this familiar. It’s brighter than Hydra’s, less dirty, and hopefully less blood, but he can’t help but think—who decides what gets researched?
He doesn’t say any of that to T’Challa, because he’s been kind, and he’s hopefully fixed Bucky’s brain, but oh, what if he’s just waiting to trigger them right back in? And then he’d be Wakanda’s Soldier. His hand tightens on the joystick, which makes a protesting noise.
“Careful,” T’Challa says. “It’s durable tech, but you’re strong, my friend, even in your weakened state.
“I’m a little tired,” he says, instead of any of the things he’s been thinking. “Is there any food in this joint?”
“There’s delicious gruel and more nutrient fluid for you,” T’Challa says.
“Figured you hadn’t found a way to make that better,” Bucky says ruefully. “*s like food for sick people is the same everywhere, and never any good. Steve used to—“ Steve used to throw bowls of soup at Bucky, is what he used to do. He swallows.
“Do you want to contact Captain Rogers?” T’Challa says. “He’s a bit hard to keep track of, but I can get word to him.”“Not yet,” Bucky says. He wants to be sure. Very sure.
He’s wheeled back to the lab where he woke up, and T’Challa presses two buttons and pushes one wall aside, and then there’s an apartment that opens up. He rolls Bucky’s bed in there and says “This can be yours for as long as you need,” and Bucky really hopes he’s for real. His instincts are telling him so, but his instincts are a soup of paranoia and terrible impulses, and even advanced neurobiology can’t fix all that. He might still be in danger. He might still be dangerous.
“Thank you,” he says. “I’m gonna, you know. Eat something. And I*m sure you have things to do.”
“Yes,” T’Challa says ruefully. “A whole long list of people to meet and be stately around. I’ll—may I come back tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Bucky says.
After T’Challa leaves, he realises he ought to have asked him about training. He needs to get back into shape, and he needs to do it fast. He’s officially dead, but. But. That shit never stays secret for long. And even if the words are gone, he could bring so much trouble down on Wakanda.
Which, if they’ve brought him back to be a weapon, if they’ve left hooks in his brain, he’ll be the trouble.