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Everyone’s heard of the aptly dubbed ‘Kitchen Meet and Greet” with Queen Shuri.
The morning after that entire kitchen incident—and again, the fact there was a morning after to think of? That the foreign dignitary of one of the most powerful nation’s in the world would rather have a sleepover in the tower? Sure, it wasn’t not cozy, but the tower was no Ritzy five star hotel befitting of royalty, Bucky! — had led to Barnes opening up just a bit more about his time before Congress.
He had told them, in his own seemingly straightforward yet completely unrevealing way, of his time in Wakanda: Of the friendship he had built with members of the Dora Milaje, of the time he spent tending to fields and herding goats, of the moniker ’White Wolf’. He had told the team of peaceful memories; an existence marked by the rising and setting of the sun, of the bleating of goats and the laughter of children.
But John knew better, can read between the lines of everything Barnes’ offering to the team. It doesn’t necessarily take a genius to put the two and two together. Each innocent memory offered is another piece of that pre-Congress, rogue war hero, technical prisoner of war story that most of the general public never really spliced together. Each recollection was just another way John pieced together his understanding of their de-facto leader, of the man’s history and life and the genuinely vile hand he’s been dealt with.
So of course, when Alexei asked just where Captain America was in all of this story-telling, Barnes’ clams up and decides to abruptly end his relative openness there, picking up the empty plates scattered around the dining table and walking towards the kitchen.
John couldn’t help but catalogue Barnes’ expression, filing it away in his mind for later. Because there’s no way he wasn’t going to keep himself up at night when the same expression that shadowed Barnes’ face was the same one he made when he thought of Olivia. Barnes making that expression sent him straight back to the days after Olivia left, their son in tow; of the combined grief of losing his family and any right to serve the American people—of the right to do better by them.
On him, it felt a lot like hopelessness. On Barnes’ though? It looked a whole lot like something expected.
While Alexei steamrolled straight through Barnes’ sudden and not so subtle departure with another unrelated but slightly related story, John found himself meeting Yelena’s gaze, a sudden understanding of the implications of what everything that just occurred on their breakfast table might have meant. After all, he and Yelena were the only ones sorely invested in the comings and goings of Captain America at the time, albeit for vastly different reasons.
But he and Yelena never really found the time to discuss all that was Bucky Barnes and Wakanda-adjacent, what with the sudden influx of rogue incidents popping up across the states taking up most of their time. Any other down time they had to discuss (read: gossip, really, who was he kidding) about it was eaten up by other team building exercises that Barnes insisted they do. He was definitely grateful that Barnes at least had half the mind to try to wrangle them all into something slightly less dysfunctional and something closer to a proper team.
So a few weeks had managed to pass by without neither him nor Yelena sharing a conspiratorial look about anything Wakanda-adjacent(!), or even Captain America-adjacent(!!), and John was honestly beginning to forget about that lookand the grief held behind it as something he and Barnes could relate to until, well—
“But, and answer me honestly here, what’s going on between you and Sam? Has the litigious process finally managed to break you two down and get you two to communicate like big boys and talk about your feelings and how you guys are one big Avengers family?”
“Well last I checked, everything is still just as messy as before the entire custody battle for the damn name.”
A gasp, and then. “What happened to all the progress the two of you had been making? Last I checked you guys were having family dinners and saving the world from one rogue evil at a time. You were invited to their cookout! You’re literally Uncle Bucky to his nephews!”
—Until he wound up by the common areas and found Barnes with Queen Shuri. Again.
In his defense, it’s the common room for a reason. He had left a bunch of board games he left by the console table and was really only planning on bringing them up because Bob insisted that he needed them nearer their rooms. Then Ava had piped up about leaving a book behind and suddenly his trip back to the common’s for those bunch of board games had turned into a fully fledged errand run with the promise of snacks from Yelena.
And now, the laws of social convention would have you proper skeedadling out of the place the moment he heard between you and Sam, because as laws of social convention would have it, he and Barnes were not remotely close enough for him to be privy to these sorts of conversations. But, the laws of social convention also said not to interrupt important conversations, and well, he was just stuck here, waiting for it to hopefully simmer out so he can swiftly get back to Bob’s rooms.
He knew Barnes and Wilson were close, even begrudgingly respected Wilson because he carried the mantle of Captain America leagues better than anyone on the planet. So of course, he’s a bit curious about what went down between them—how the Bucky and Sam that honest to God beat the asshatted righteousness out of him could be so divided over the name of a superhero outfit.
“I’ve talked to him about. I’ve given him my reasons. I believe in this, because it gives them a chance to do what’s right.” Barnes started, his tone even, as if he’s rehearsed this particularly turn of phrase.
“And I’m pretty sure your laws would define what’s right as you holding your entire team accountable for the adult decisions that they made, without any outside interference of loss of agency. Not allowing them to parade around with the names of the people who saved the entire universe. Or at least, that’s what I’d assume was what Wilson told you when he found out about this.” And didn’t that sting? That their predecessors loomed a shadow large enough to swallow their fledgeling efforts whole. That they were right to call almost every single one of them out on the horrible decisions they’ve made. Who were they to have the audacity to be named after Earth’s Mightiest Heroes?
“And I get that, right. I’ve told him that I get it. It’s just, my hands are tied here, but everybody else’s? These guys are stuck here from the waist down. I’m trying to keep us afloat, because the least I could do is give them that.” Barnes replied, and John could hear something familiar in his voice, that same tinge he felt in that split second from the breakfast table weeks ago. Expected hurt.
“But you know how it is, sometimes talking it out isn’t enough.” Barnes said, and the clipped tone is enough to bring Walker right back to thoughts of Olivia, his mind reeling in on that tone of hurt and betrayal and throwing him right back into that empty house once full.
He remembers that clipped tone echoing through his phone speaker. Words aren’t enough, John. He remembers the way his son pulled away from his hand. America didn’t need you, John! But we did! He really shouldn’t have gone down to the common room, to hell with their board games.
“This is so much more than the name isn’t it?” Queen Shuri sighed, as if she’d expected it. “You’re saying that you and Wilson don’t see eye-to-eye because of the Captain?” And let it be known that John had never heard any titles of Steve Rogers spoken with such caution, as if Rogers was something they didn’t talk about.
“That’s not…” Barnes began, and John can’t help but hear that tone, can’t help but reconcile it with the way Olivia had talked, had cried, had argued. Can’t help but parse out what each pointed word meant.
“Oh, this is about the Captain, isn’t it? It’s about your interpretations of his legacy, his relationship with you and Wilson.” Shuri asked, prodding, as if she had carefully considered each bit of wording, treading through the murky waters of their unclear thoughts of Steve Rogers.
“It’s not about the legacy. It’s about Steve.” Barnes practically bit out the sound around the name, and that’s a tone he’d never thought he’d hear from Barnes. Like an animal, ready to retaliate, expected hurt.
“And what about him, Bucky? It’s been years. You can’t possibly be holding him martyr in you head, trying to piece together the bits of his life interspersed with yours? Is this why…no—“
“Oh, no. Whatever you’re thinking…” Barnes startled into some sort of realization, but Shuri ignored him.
“You’re not doing this because you think you’re doing what’s right, nor are you doing it because you think this is what Rogers wanted you to! No, you’re doing this because you want answers to a question both you and Sam have been asking for years!”
“Shuri.” Barnes said, this time much firmer, as if steeling himself. Olivia, steeling herself, placing the divorce papers on the table in front of him, her name stamped across the underline.
“And maybe! Maybe, once you’ve finally gone through the motions that the Captain did in this century, you’d finally understand what it was that made him leave.”
That sentence is enough to let all the air punch out of his lungs. It’s enough that it left John’s ears ringing at it’s familiarity. Barnes stands there, wounded—Olivia, stands their, head hung low, done. The entire floor feels like its frozen over with tension, no where for it to escape from the high perches of the Tower.
Expected hurt? No, this was grief.
He really shouldn’t have gone down into the common room. This, this was just too much. Too fast. Too familiar, and—
John felt the hand on his shoulder first, startling him out of his spiralling thoughts. Yelena stands beside him, a questioning look on her face, her other hand holding onto a large bag of chips. He wanted to tell her something, anything, to spill his guts out to her right at that moment. But then she went and patted him on the shoulder, ushering him towards the center of the room, towards the console—towards the board games he was supposed to have gotten a good few minutes ago (no wonder Yelena came down already, they were probably tired of waiting for him).
“Sorry, excuse me and Walker here, we’re just going to get some board games and a few snacks. It’s game night, you see.” Yelena announced to room. She picked up the dogeared book underneath the console (for Ava, he remembered), and shoved the tray of games towards John. He mindlessly picked at it, grabbing games without really looking at any particular ones.
“We actually came down to invite Bucky to join us, but you can too if you want, Your Majesty!”
That seems to startle both Shuri and Barnes out of their silence—at the very least, it got Barnes away from the couch. “I wouldn’t want to impose, besides I think I’ve far overstayed my welcome tonight.” Queen Shuri replied.
Yelena turns to Barnes expectedly, as if daring him to say no.“I’ll…go up in a bit, sure. Just give me time to send Shuri off.”
Yelena seemed to be content with his answer. She has John finish sorting through the games and arranging them into his hands before she shoves them both of the out of the common room as she waves a polite enough ‘bye!’ for the both of them and towards the elevator.
“What took you so long back there Walker?” She asked John the moment the elevator doors closed.
John sighed, pressing his forehead against the elevator wall. “Something I shouldn’t have heard.”
Bucky watched Yelena and John enter the elevator, and let out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding in.
He turned to look at Shuri, who had taken to looking down at her lap, her hands on top of it.
These visits of Shuri always had a tendency to turn heated, something that they’d been really trying to avoid given the stressful nature of both their roles. But God, Bucky can’t help but look at Shuri and be reminded of just how young she was, of toll of the weight of a nation.
His mind drifts back to Becca, of how he would never want her to suffer under the weight of the world the way Shuri was—the way he is, right now.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Shuri began, her voice drained of all the sudden conviction that had spurred her to make that claim in the first place.
He knew how Shuri’s mind tended to jump from detail to detail, the way she pierced it together to get the whole picture, and how she never hesitated to show that finished product. Let that be said that while this was usually great for inventing, and great for problem solving, matters of the heart don’t apply to those rules.
So he understands, as well, that Shuri approached it the only way she knew how. And in a way, she’s right. He’s had years—he and Sam have had years to come to terms with it,. It’s why Sam carries the shield now, it’s why he ran for Congress, it’s why he wakes up every single day, wondering how he could piece these ruly bunch of misfits together.
“I know you didn’t.” He says, crouching down in front of her. He takes her hands and cups it in his own, squeezes it gently. “But I need you to know that there’s so much more to it than just that, alright? Can you trust me on this?”
Can you trust me to make this right? He had asked Steve. Can you trust me to make my own way of healing? He had asked Sam.
Shuri smiled at him, soft. “Of course, I trust you. Just don’t get yourself hurt. You’re our only White Wolf, you know?” And she knows what she means when he calls him White Wolf now. Friend. Brother. Shared loss. Shared return.
He squeezed their hands one last time before letting go. “I’ll take you to the helipad, be sure to tell Okoye you’re ready to go home.”
Shuri nods. “Alright.” She stands from the couch and follows Bucky towards the helipad. They walk towards it in silence. Okoye has already parked the helicarrier by the time they get there. Okoye acknowledges Bucky with a nod.
“These group of people are not the easiest to deal with.” Shuri seems to pause for a moment before puling him into a hug. “I mean it, take care of yourself, alright?”
He doesn’t reply, just nods at her words. He watched as she boarded the helicarrier and waited until it cloaked itself in the clouds, soaring through the Manhattan skyline.
He breathed in, then out. He’ll think about their conversation again later, but for now: Game Night.