Command • T'Challa

Siberian Overture

"I"m Clint, by the way."

The two arrows exploded in T'Challa's hands just as he caught them.

"I don't care." T'Challa snapped. He kicked at the archer, who tried to avoid him, but T'Challa was faster.

He was always faster.

But sometimes, time ran out- or it never caught up. In this mixed up mess that was his circumstances, he was no longer sure of anything. Grace, Barnes, and Rogers were all people who were out of time- out of place.

Grace! Where had she gone?!

"Grace!" he shouted. In all of the melee, she had vanished. Only a moment ago, she had been standing right next to him, hadn't she? He had struck Barnes, and she had shouted at him- he thought he saw her turning away to counterattack someone who was coming down on her- in that instant that the archer had shot at him, Grace had disappeared.

"Grace!" he heard Barnes' voice shouting- T'Challa dashed in the direction of Barnes' voice, thinking that Grace must be nearby. T'Challa still had unfinished dealings with Barnes, at least the dealing of blows. Barnes was running into the airport, Wilson just ahead of him, yelling Grace's name. Apparently Barnes didn't know where she was any more than T'Challa did-

T'Challa suddenly became distinctly aware that he felt frightened- not even because he had lost Grace- afraid of something else. Afraid like the first time his father had let him see a caged panther in a habitat- but it was so cleverly disguised that he couldn't see if there was any thick glass separating him from the hungry panther. It was a childlike fear, he knew, like at any moment, a terrible monster would jump out from the shadows and harm him.

"Sometimes the worst monster is the one within." he heard a voice say ominously, though he didn't actually hear it- he heard it in his head. Grace's voice, though long-drawled out and low.

In a burst of memory fro his childhood, he heard, saw, and felt the caged panther roar in his face, feeling his father holding him steady, making him look at the panther.

"You will learn to respect the legacy that you have been honored with." his father had said, but then, in another instant, his father was gone- T'Challa reliving the explosion that killed his father only days ago.

Fear had a numbing, deadening effect, but then , as quickly as it had come, it evaporated, like it was walking away from him. He suspected that his enhanced abilities helped him to sense where this 'magic' was coming from- and that it was, in fact, walking away from him, quite literally. He shook his head, taking a few steps forward, as the archer fired another shot at him from behind, which he also caught without looking at.

"Where'r you going?" the archer yelled at T'Challa, who ignored him. Clint cursed, wondering why in hell this weirdo in a Catwoman costume would try to kill him, catch his arrows (!!??) and then just walk away, like it was no big stinkin' deal or anything. Like he was done fighting, or whatever.

Clint, in a dash of brilliance, realized that Mr. Catwoman was looking for something, someone- perhaps Clint was too boring to fight, by whatever twisted honor code this strange fellow must have instilled in his probably-pickled head. Oh well, Clint had other people to deal with. Let Catman go find someone else to high-kick.

T'Challa saw Grace, if only for a moment. She was disappearing into the shadows, towards where one of the military Quinjets was parked. She was running, in an odd gait, almost mechanically, he noticed, and then she was gone. She seemed to vaporize into the darkness like she was made of it.

T'Challa was beginning to think that maybe she was, indeed, made out of darkness, through no real fault of her own. It wasn't her fault that she'd been experimented on, he knew, but he had to stop her.