Command • T'Challa

Siberian Overture

And then it was too late. The first of the two quinjets rumbled out of the hanger at breakneck speed, heading due east, before breaking the sound barrier, shooting far away.

She was gone, and to where, he knew not. Nobody even seemed to notice, nobody except for Rogers, who was shouting.

"Grace!" He heard Barnes shout, his calls echoing through the airport, the sound coming through one of the smashed windows.

T'Challa turned to chase after Barnes. He'd capture him, bring him to justice, and somehow, he'd have to find Grace, before it was too late- though he wasn't sure if it wasn't already.

He was all out of time.

.............

Oh, the dark lady of magic.

Baba Yaga had been very old and very ugly- of which, Grace was certainly neither, but that wasn't the insult, she realized. It was a realization- about the color of her skin, and that accused ugliness, that she was only afforded in her sane, waking moments. Somehow, by some cerebral transference, she was hovering in-between sanity and insanity- in control, and out of it. No, the color of her skin did not make her ugly, even among the Russians who worked for HYDRA. It only made her different.

"Hey, get outta here! Negro girls like you can't be on this sidewalk!" she recalled hearing that one boy yell at her when she had first mistakenly come to the segregated neighborhood in Brooklyn. She had only been trying to get to school, and didn't know that she couldn't take a shortcut through that neighborhood, but the rock that struck her in the shoulder, stomach, and the top of her forehead served as a nasty reminder. She had turned and ran, all while the boy, joined by other children who had come out of their yards, yelled terrible slurs at her as she clutched her books to her chest and ran. She ran as fast as she could, as they continued to hurl rocks at her, rocks that could've killed her if they struck her in the head.

Different wasn't ugly. Was every flower that grew in Central Park the same color? That would be ugly, she had thought, as she kept running, her lungs burning in the cool fall air, towards home. Different was beautiful, she thought, noting the various colors of the leaves on the trees that lined the sidewalk- the same sidewalk, she noted, that was the same in the white neighborhood as it was in the black neighborhood. Only a road and some street corner store separated the neighborhoods physically.

Prejudice and hate, however, separated them by an unfathomable chasm, she thought. The black asphalt of the newly-repaved road might as well have been the abyss. Of people could only change their hearts and minds, it could go back to being just an ordinary road, not some invisible boundary of pride and hatred.

Hot, angry tears rolled down her face as she stomped up the steps of the apartment. She closed the door quietly behind her, setting her books down on the end table.

"Grace, is that you?" she heard her mother saying. Normally, her mother was busy working at this hour.

"Yes, Momma." Grace answered.


"Baby, why aren't you at school?" her mother came into the kitchen, which was where the apartment door opened to, and where Grace was.

"I can't." she burst. "I just can't."

She turned to face her mother, who gasped. Her mother reached out and touched the spot on her forehead where the rock had hit her, and a little bit of blood was oozing.

"Who did this to you?" she asked.

"I took a shortcut to school through the white neighborhood. I didn't think anyone would care. Some little kids came out and started yelling at me."