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The underground wing spanned many winding corridors, but looked like a normal sterile hospital, except for some South African influences.
It had been almost two hours since Shuri brought them to a kind of waiting room outside the operating area.
Every minute that passed felt like an agonizingly long hour.
They were fine. Except for a few scrapes, bruises, and cracked ribs, neither they nor the Dora Milaje were hurt.
Quite the opposite for Emilia, whose life the doctors were still fighting for.
Sam had positioned himself at the entrance to the room, from where he had a direct view of the swinging doors.
Sitting on one of the two large gray couches facing each other was Wanda, whose head rested wearily on Vision's shoulder.
Steve walked around the room with his arms folded and his eyes downcast. His nervousness made everyone uneasy and Natasha had already asked him to sit down several times. She herself was sunk into a corner of the other sofa, letting a cup move back and forth between her hands.
She regarded the undrinkable brown liquid in it with skepticism before finally pouring it down. Wondering involuntarily if such a multi-functional vending machine came free with every hospital facility on top, she looked to the other end of the sofa.
With his elbows propped on his knees and slumped over, Bucky sat next to her. His hands buried in his hair, he gazed fixedly at the clear floor between his feet.
Why hadn't he insisted on staying with her?
How could he have missed the fact that she had been injured during the fight?
And why hadn't he been able to avoid it?
His fingers continued to clench. He squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could to get the image of her lifeless body out of his mind. Yet he didn't succeed.
For many decades he had been trained, manipulated and forced to do only one thing. To kill - without conscience or remorse.
This sudden pain, this despair overtook and swallowed him without return.
No one had warned him about all this. Neither before Hydra, and certainly not during it. How was he supposed to deal if Emilia didn't survive?
Like a movie, the pictures ran before his eyes. From the moment of their first meeting to the moment when he held her motionless body in his arms.
He wished more than anything to see behind the closed eyelids. Where those enveloping warm ambers were, brimming with curiosity and fire.
Not being able to see them anymore constricted Bucky's chest. That sense of security seemed to dissolve a little more into thin air with each passing second. It made him involuntarily wonder why it was so.
When he was near her, he always felt the trust that Emilia had shown him from the beginning. She was the reason why, for the first time since the 40s, he had a safe anchor, a place in life where he could be himself.
Suddenly he realized that she herself had become that safe place for him over the last few weeks. And at that moment, he was about to lose that exact one forever... he was loosing her.
The approaching footsteps echoed through the hallway. Bucky looked up with a jolt and saw Sam disappear from the doorway.
A few seconds later, Shuri came around the corner with an excited Sam behind her. "Tell us, what's going on with her?"
She looked at each one and stuck with Bucky. Then she started crying. He thought for a moment his heart stopped. Everyone expected the worst, until a liberated smile appeared on Shuri's face among the tears.
"The doctors were able to stop the bleeding. She's out of danger and will be fine."
The tension and fear fell away from them. It was almost as if they could have heard it.
Natasha walked up to Shuri and gave her a soothing hug. Sam fell around Steve's neck, who couldn't help but close his eyes in relief, while Wanda buried herself in Vision's arms.
Only Bucky still sat transfixed. It took him a while to realize what had happened.
The long hoped-for redemption broke through his self-control. Arms still resting on his knees, he folded his hands as if in prayer and pressed his mouth against them.
Hidden behind his dark brown hair, tears streamed down his face.
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A regular beeping sound was the first thing she heard. Emilia tried to open her heavy eyelids to find the source of the noise.
Before her eyes could even adjust to the dark surroundings, she felt the throbbing pain in her stomach. Sharply, she sucked in the air between her clenched teeth so as not to let out a painful gasp.
The first thing she saw was the clock on the opposite wall. It showed shortly after two - whether it was day or night, she couldn't tell.
To the right she recognized the door and next to the bed a small table and the ECG machine that reflected her steady heartbeat.
The dim light came from the left side of the room. She looked over and froze in motion.
Diagonally across from her, in a stuffed chair, there was Bucky.
His jacket lay over the back of the second chair next to the small round table in the corner.
He had his vibranium arm propped on one of the backrests. His head lay in his palm. Emilia saw, despite the dim light, the even movement of his chest under the black T-shirt - he was asleep.
In his lap lay an open book. It seemed that he had fallen asleep while reading. She wasn't able to make out what it was.
For a moment longer she simply contemplated his peaceful face.
Until the heavy tiredness spread through her again. Actually, she just wanted to close her eyes for a few minutes.
Instead, she sank back into a deep dreamless sleep.
When she woke up a few hours later, the chair was empty. Only his jacket and the book were still there.
Emilia moved around and found that the intense pain had subsided. At some point while she slept, the ECG and IV were removed.
She was doing well.
Whatever anyone said about her powers, the best part was still her body's own healing ability, which was accelerated tenfold thanks to Mother Nature and the gamma ray accident.
A normal mortal would probably have been able to leave the bed only after two weeks. She was now standing in the hospital room after not even... yes how long had she actually been there?
"As soon as we let you out of sight, you're jumping around again." Natasha, who was just coming through the door, snapped Emilia out of her thoughts.
She turned a little too quickly and noticed the slight still uncomfortable pain, whereupon her facial expression contorted in pain.
"If you make me jump, I can't help it either", she replied with a wry smile.
"How long have I been away?"
"Almost two whole days."
Emilia's eyes fell on the jacket and the small table. Only now did she identify the title of the book. It was "Utopia."
She had just dropped it in Bucky's bathroom back then and never given it another thought.
The idea that he had it since then and was rummaging through it instead of returning it to her or taking it to the library gave her a comforting feeling and drowned out her injury for a few moments.
Natasha noticed where she was staring and couldn't help but grin.
"Barnes didn't leave your side until a few hours ago. Steve had to literally beat him into eating something and getting a shower. It was his counter-condition that we take turns staying with you. That would have been my shift now, but I guess that became unnecessary."
In disbelief, Emilia looked at her.
"Come on, Carson. The others will be happy to see you. Especially one of them."
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After Emilia treated herself to a cat wash and put on something else, she and Natasha walked to the dining room.
She didn't really care about how hungry she actually was. Somehow, after everything she had heard in the last half hour, she felt nervous about meeting Bucky.
As they entered the small hall, the sun shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows, bathing it in a pleasantly warm color. It was early afternoon, and at the smell of the delicacies on the buffet, her stomach made itself growl so loudly that all of Wakanda might have heard it.
Vision was the first to spot her as she turned the corner.
"Now, if someone hasn't risen from the dead."
At his words, the conversations around the table fell silent. Everyone stared at him, startled, to which he just looked around questioningly in his innocent way: "Did I say something wrong?"
After a few seconds of silence, Emilia laughed out loud. The slight pain restrained her and she held her hand on the place where the wound was.
"No, no. You didn't. In fact, I haven't written my will yet."
She enjoyed Vision's ways very much. He had been trying to understand and learn the characteristics of humans since his 'birth' about three years ago, and usually did better than those in the flesh.
When the others became aware that Vision was trying to expound his still somewhat ill-timed sarcasm, they were all too familiar with Emilia's cynical response to it. They joined in her laughter after a moment's hesitation.
Only one sat sullenly at the end of the table, poking at his food. His eyes seemed to literally scan her, so intently did he follow her every move.
She had made her way to the buffet after Shuri and Wanda's embrace and was shoveling all sorts of delicacies onto her plate.
It wasn't until she sat down at the empty seat across from Bucky that she caught the angry glint that made the blue of his eyes even more intense.
Throughout the meal, he said not a word. Emilia didn't understand how she was supposed to reconcile that with the man who, according to Natasha, was so worried a few hours ago.
Even Steve, sitting next to him, couldn't get a word out of him except for a listless "Mmmh... " or an uninterested "If you say so".
It annoyed her that he had lapsed back into his old familiar grim silence and she didn't even know why. Emilia therefore concentrated on the conversation, which was very serious because of the imminent danger in two days.
When Sam asked her how she managed the aliens, she told him about Josephine's electromagnetic abilities. With these, she could paralyze the nervous system and therefore bring them all down at the same time.
"There you go, the ultimate superweapon for those assholes."
Clattering, the cutlery fell onto the plate, whereupon everyone turned to Bucky, startled.
He stood up, placed it on one of the dish tables, and left the dining room without a word.The others glared after him before Steve also got up and followed behind.
Emilia watched the two men disappear out the door one by one.
She could tell by Bucky's posture that something was upsetting him. It confused her even more than his behavior already did.
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Not even a full day, and her premonition would come true.
Since the first alien attack, everyone had been on guard. But nothing else happened in the meantime.
Emilia had fully recovered in the few hours. Only a small scar testified her almost death. This was something that even her abilities couldn't prevent.
However, more than this small memento on her lateral abdomen, she was disturbed by the fact that Bucky was gone without a trace. They hadn't spoken a word to each other since she left the hospital ward.
The very day he left, she heard from Steve that he had made his way to a small cabin by a lake. Emilia immediately knew where to find the bad-tempered Sergeant.
When she ran into Steve that morning, he got a taste of her anger at Bucky's seemingly huffy behavior.
"What the hell is he doing? We may be facing the end of the world in less than 24 hours and he wants to...what? Meditate? Go for a swim? Roast fucking marshmallows on a campfire?"
Although she knew deep down that a certain James Buchanan Barnes certainly wasn't planning on any of that, she simply vented her sarcastic innuendo.
"Come on, Emilia, that's not fair. He was really worried about you, even more than the rest of us. It really broke him up, what happened to you."
Steve's words only fueled her more. Because they meant that Bucky cared about her, but because of his hiding, he couldn't say it directly to her face, or show it in any way.
"Oh yeah, and that's why one just takes off?! Doesn't exactly speak well for what you just said!"
She just left Steve standing there.
Over the hours, her guilty conscience towards him was building up, which is why she wanted to go find him and apologize.
Now, as she walked back to her room from the balcony, Bucky's jacket caught her eye. Emilia had taken it - just like the book - from the hospital room after he left it there.
It was lying on the wooden box in front of her bed.
With a few steps she stopped before the dark blue leather with only one sleeve and stared down at it. Although it had only been there for a day, she thought the woodsy scent mixed with Bucky's own body smell had spread throughout the room.
Gently, she stroked her fingertips over the cool fabric. She felt her heartbeat quicken at the thought of him.
In the next moment, she shook her head violently for a short second, and brought herself to her senses.
'What is he thinking, just disappearing like that?'
It was late afternoon, but she definitely wasn't going to let him get away with it. Especially not when this could be her last chance to tell him what she was thinking.
"Oh no, Barnes! You're going to listen to what I have to say!"
Furious, she grabbed the jacket and stormed out.
Once downstairs, she ran straight past Natasha and Sam, who couldn't help but say: "Woah, what's the matter with you?"
"Just a little something", she hissed menacingly.
Natasha, remembering their conversation together in the palace park a few days ago and noticing the jacket at her words, knew immediately what it must be about. Whispering more to herself, she looked after the flaring Emilia.
"I don't think HE's just a little something for you, Carson..."
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