"A girl should be two things: who and what she wants."
Coco Chanel
In the next week, Ophelia took the hiking very seriously. Each walk she took cleared her mind and made that throbbing fade to nothing more than a whisper. Every day she went a new route, never getting lost because Shuri had given her her own Kimoyo beads to map where she had walked.
Some days Bucky came with her, but that day, Ophelia went on her own. She hiked for what felt like hours, the sun moving across the sky slowly, glaring down on her until she realized she was in a new territory completely. The sun was shrouded by clouds and it felt like nighttime by the time she realized she had hiked half a mountain.
She looked before her at snow; something she was surprised to see in Wakanda but knew all mountains could have snow. It was far less than she had seen in Siberia, of course. Looking up to a higher section of the mountain, Ophelia saw what appeared to be civilization. Glittering lights seemed to dance before her eyes, and she continued up that hill, driven by her curiousity.
As she neared, another half hour going by as she continued her hike, she saw three people walking towards her. They wore scarce clothing for such a location; in their hands were staffs with big clubs at the end of them. Part of Ophelia told her that this was threatening, and yet, she allowed them to approach her.
Before her was the tallest man she had ever seen in her life.
He stared down at her, not only over a foot taller than her, but also higher up on the mountain. She cocked her head to the side, not intimidated, but curious.
"What business do you have here?" He asked.
"I... I was just walking, I didn't know this would lead to anything," she admitted.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Ophelia," she told him, offering a small smile. It was that smile that always won people over, from Bucky when he was a prisoner in HYDRA, to everyone else she met along the way.
"I am M'Baku. I ask again, what business do you have here?" He raised his voice.
"I was simply enjoying the beauty this place offers. There is something about mountains and snow that remind me of home." Ophelia had never admitted that to anyone. Despite the horrors she faced in Siberia, it was still where she was raised. Though very few good memories blossomed from that place, she was used to the cold, not the heat of Wakanda, and so the mountains did make her feel both at ease, and with slight paranoia creeping around under her skin.
"You are with the one they call White Wolf?" M'Baku asked.
Ophelia smiled again. "Yes, though I do not know why they call him that."
"Then come, Little Wolf," M'Baku beckoned for her to join him. "You must be hungry after that journey."
Her stomach rumbled as though in agreement. She rushed up to walk beside this massive human being, feeling completely dwarfed by him, but yet somehow so safe. "I should warn you, I do not eat meat."
M'Baku glanced down at her and grinned widely. "I think we will get along very nicely, Little Wolf."
It was the second nickname ever given to her, and she held it close to her heart as she was shown around the Jabari Tribe's home. As M'Baku showed her around, he invited her over for dinner -which was a feast to Ophelia's standards. If there was one thing Ophelia had never really experienced, it was good food. Having survived off of flavourless, sad excuses for food in Siberia, when her and Bucky moved to Bucharest she had to learn how to cook for herself. Her cooking was never quality, Bucky's was only moderately better, and the best food the two of them ate in their time together was the extras and leftovers from the diner where she worked.
Before her now, was the largest table she had ever seen, filled with food. The only thing she could compare it to was images of what the cookbooks called "Thanksgiving Dinner", and this put those washed-out 1980's cookbook pictures to shame. Ophelia stood rudely with her mouth agape, stunned by all the colours, the aromas of spices she couldn't name but wanted desperately to taste.
"Take a seat, Little Wolf," M'Baku suggested. The large dining room overlooked the mountain, which was getting dark now, the sun glimmering over icy snow that remained on those mountain peaks year-round.
A noise to her left startled Ophelia, and before she could even turn, there were two children at her side, pulling at her hands, touching her legs, asking her questions in a dialect that, though she couldn't understand, she could listen to all day and never grow bored of not understanding. It was a beautiful language; Ophelia had a great respect for all languages, and knowing a few of them, she knew she had to take up Shuri's offer to learn this one.
"Thabisa! Jabulani! Mshiye yodwa!" M'Baku shouted.
His two children, a boy and a girl around the age of seven and ten, glanced at their father, then looked back at Ophelia.
"Hello," Ophelia said to them, smiling brightly. "I am Ophelia. You must be... Thabisa, and you must be Jabulani," she said to the girl, then the boy.
"Father, she says our names funny," Jabulani said.
"She is one with the White Wolf," he told his children.
Realization clicked in with his kids, and they nodded in understanding. She would perfect their names, though her accent would always tweak them ever so slightly, just as Bucky's American accent made her name sound so different when she first met him in Siberia.
Ophelia knelt down so she was level with the children. "Tha... Bee... Sa?"
"Yes," the girl beamed.
"Jah...boo... lah...nee?"
The boy shrugged. "It is close."
"I will get it; you have my word. Now try mine," she suggested.
"Oo-fee-lee-a."
"Oh-fay-lee-a," she corrected. "But I like the way you say it."
He grinned, repeating her name a few times, trying out both ways to pronounce it. Ophelia rose, still smiling at the children, when she sensed the presence of someone else in the room. Glancing up, she spotted a beautiful woman she presumed was with M'Baku, and the mother of the two children now saying each other's names all funny, the way Ophelia said them first.
"This is my wife, Cebisa," M'Baku introduced. "This is Ophelia."
Ophelia smiled and nodded her head, wondering if there was more for her to do. Were they royals of some kind? They lived this glorious life- Ophelia still had so much to learn about the culture of this beautiful place, and every day she found something new. She took her seat at the table, included in conversation throughout the meal. Having only experienced this kind of acceptance with a few people, Ophelia realized just how much she missed out on in her life. Now she was given another chance to get it right, to experience things with other people, to trust people and to live as though she was not tied down by anything.
She no longer had to fear HYDRA, not while she was safe in Wakanda, and she could finally live for real.
"So, Ophelia," Cebisa began, looking across the massive table over heaps of colourful foods at O, "tell me about yourself."
O hadn't been asked that question before. Her life consisted of two things; HYDRA, and Bucky. But, Ophelia realized as the question was asked, there was so much more to her than those two things. Yes, they built her to be who she was, but the question snaked into Ophelia's head and she had to come up with a better answer. Who was she? What was her purpose? Ophelia had a new chance to define those two things about herself.
"I'm what some might call an Empath." She had read about this once, during her time in Bucharest. "If I choose to, I can feel everything someone else is feeling. It was gift I was born with, I think. I really like reading!" Ophelia smiled at the thought. "I love learning about history, and culture... Which is why Wakanda is so... exciting for me. It's so rich with culture I've never experienced."
Cebisa smiled. "Reading? I may have some things for you, then, Ophelia."
"Is there a library?"
"In the city, yes," Cebisa said. "And your Kimoyo Beads will also find you anything you want to read."
"I... I wouldn't know where to start. I read everything from Do It Yourself books to Shakespeare when I lived."
"When you lived?" Cebisa cocked her head to the side.
Ophelia paled ever so slightly. So much for not letting HYDRA define her. "It is hard to explain, but I was prisoner for much of my life. There were two years where I lived an almost normal life, until, I uhm. Until I died."
"Were you one of Thanos's victims?"
She shook her head. "No, someone else's."
She did not name Tony Stark, it felt wrong to blame him. It felt wrong to blame anyone for anything. Life was too short to hold on to all those negative emotions, and Ophelia refused to fall into the trap or regret and vengeance.
"Opheelia," Thabisa said, pulling at Ophelia's sleeve. Ophelia looked down at the young girl and say her Kimoyo Beads blinking. She lifted her wrist and studied the beads, trying to remember what to do. Tapping the one that was blinking, she was given a message from T'Challa, saying Bucky was frantic looking for her.
The time stamp was from three hours prior.
When she looked up to apologize to M'Baku and his family, she saw the doors open and both T'Challa and a terror-stricken Bucky stood. Bucky looked as though he had lost her again, the same expression hidden in the depths of his blue eyes as when he clutched onto her hand when she died. Ophelia didn't like defining herself with only HYDRA and Bucky, but when she saw him looking like that, she realized that Bucky only identified himself with HYDRA, and her.