"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.
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."
"You're going to school." her mother said firmly. "You have to learn. You're an overcomer, Grace. You have to fight for what's yours- you must go to school!"
So Grace had gone to school that day, though she was late-it wasn't until the next summer that she had her fateful encounter with a certain James Buchanan Barnes.
It was those happy days when he would cross the chasm just to be with her. To him, it was just another road that separated him from his beloved sweetheart's apartment. Nobody threw rocks at James- just gave him dirty looks, Grace had noticed.
Hatred and bitterness could cut deeper than any knife or bullet. Hatred had consumed her- not just hatred for HYDRA, but the hatred that had come from HYDRA had consumed her. All of this death and destruction- the killings that had been committed using her hands, her body as the weapon, were a bitter testament to that hatred.
But why? Grace wondered, as she felt a change. She wasn't in a half-conscious state anymore, she was back in a prison cell, like the one she remembered from her time in SHIELD. The darkness lifted, and a harsh light made her see spots for a moment.
Then she heard a voice that made her heart stop for a second:
"Hey, doll, why'd they put you in here?" a man asked her in a low voice. It was James, Grace saw tears in his eyes, his voice quavering.He was on the other side of the bars, they were both on the floor, right in front of each other.
"I don't know." she said, her fingers reaching though the bars, touching his face.
"What happened to your arm?" she asked
"I fell." he said.
Then the horror washed over him.
"Why are there scars on your hands, Grace?" he asked her. "Who did this to you?" he half-asked, half whispered, his hand shaking. Grace bit her lip.
"I don't know." she said. "I can't remember anything- except you."
He gave a small smile, and an even smaller laugh, looking at her up and down.
"Thank God for that- I remember it all."
Grace burst into tears, and Bucky kissed her hands, trying to kiss her through the bars, trying to take away sixty years of unconscious pain.
"You're all I have." she said. He was an anchoring point, the only memory she had- something about a pink dress and a dance and them wanting to get married, but they couldn't. James' hair was long now, not as long as hers had become, down her shoulders.
"Your hair is long." she said, running her fingers through it.
"So's yours." he murmured. It looked so good now that she had it even longer, though she was gorgeous with shoulder-length hair, too. This must've meant that a long time had passed since they'd been awake.
Grace heard the clank of steel, and stiffened. No, no, no!
"Grace," Bucky said, his voice low, urgent. He was trembling, tears falling down his cheeks. She felt him being pulled away from the bars, saw the dark, black-masked figures pulling him away,
"GRACE!" he roared, ripping away from the figures, whom he shook off like they were made of straw. He grabbed at the bars and pulled on them as hard as he could, tearing one off with his metal arm. In seconds, Grace felt someone pulling her away. More men had come to drag her off.
"James!" she screamed- and he called out for her, kicking the men aside on his side of the bars when they tried to get up. One had fallen with his neck at a strange angle, Grace noticed, the other wasn't breathing. Both men were dead, and something wasn't normal about Bucky anymore- and it wasn't just the metal arm. Enraged, Grace tried to break away from her captors as Bucky ripped the bars apart. Much to her surprise, Grace was successful. A ghostly green energy came from her hands, and from her whole body, pushing the men away from her.
Just as they were about to embrace each other, when all of a sudden, there was a new set of bars, falling in place of the old ones that James had just torn away.
James threw himself at the new bars, but it was useless. He kicked and thrashed, but they didn't budge.
"Grace." he said, slowing down, unable to break through.
"Take him away for reconditioning. The time has come." a raspy voice said. Grace couldn't tell if it was male or female, and in the seconds that followed, she didn't care. the voice spoke in what she guessed was Russian, as many burly men came in, and tied him up with some sort of chain, dragging him away.
"GRACE!" he screamed as they took him away.
"I love you!"
His words echoed painfully in her ears as she collapsed in a heap on the cold stone floor, sobbing. He was gone all over again, and now she was alone. Her head hurt and all of it was so confusing. Surely, she thought, this was all a horrible nightmare, and she'd wake up in Brooklyn now that the war was surely over, and James would be sleeping next to her, his chest rising and falling slowly, calmly, as they slept side by side in their own home, married at long last. This must be, she thought, not this terrible confusion.
She was an overcomer, wasn't she? Her own mother, God rest her soul, had told her she was. James wasn't here, and it was just a memory. A memory like everything she was supposed to have control over, she thought.
It wasn't control. Grace could only see what was presented with- something that everyone else couldn't normally see. She was a pathway, a portal, a tipping point. With her, all things could change, and all things that were forgotten could be remembered.
That was what made her ability so terrible. HYDRA, she noted, had put failsafes, trips and a 'cocoon' system to dam up her ability- so that it wasn't a constant flood of information overdose, of memories and of commands. She wasn't in charge, not always. She did only what they wanted her to do, saw only what they wanted her to see, and did only what they wanted her to do.
It had been over seventy five years since she had last been in control of herself. Seventy five years, and the whole world had gone to hell. She wasn't in soldier mode anymore, she thought- she had jarred herself out of it through sheer willpower- overcame it. No more fog, not as long as no one said the trigger words.
Even so, as she commanded it, she was once again aware that she was trapped in some sort of holding container. A face was at the little porthole window, that man in the glasses.
"I would kill you." he said, his voice muffled through the glass.
"But I have further uses for you. They are looking for you, you know. Soon, they will be here, little ghost."
He turned from the porthole, and then Grace heard a gunshot, and then another, and another. Using her powers, she broke the bonds that held her arms, but didn't escape from the container. If he shot her point-blank, she would probably die, she thought. Nor could she take the risk that he would do something dastardly now. She broke the latch on the container, and took in her surroundings as she realized where she was.
A house of horrors- she was in the launch bunker in Siberia.
...................
T'Challa had confronted Romanoff, who had shot him with her tasers when he had approached her, as Rogers and Barnes made their escape. Siberia, of all places. This, T'Challa thought, was where it all had to end.
Enough was enough
.......
* Okay, you guys, I'm so sorry that I couldn't update earlier. This chapter was super-long and hopefully that makes up for it in some way. I wrote this with the recent #BlackLivesMatter tragedies, of both the police and the citizens in mind. This breaks my heart- especially as I see life through Grace's eyes, even more so in the 1940's. Differences don't need to be set aside or addressed, not when it comes to our backgrounds. Differences should be considered and appreciated, in the fullest sense of the word. To appreciate something is to see it for its full value, and to be fully aware of something. Humans are beautiful, and we need to look through the eyes of those who struggle so much, and for nothing.
Love each other, okay? Love you guys! thanks for all the reads and the votes!!!! Sadly, this book will soon be coming to a hiatus until the Black Panther movie comes out. Looking at 25 chapters as my stopping point.
Peace- xo.
- Ella *