The Mara

Prologue

Six months had past since Steve Rogers had put his best friend into cryo. Six months. And he was still no closer to finding a way to reverse the deep behavioral conditioning that HYDRA had implanted in Bucky's mind. With T'Challa's aid, he had talked to a host of doctors, neurosurgeons and psychologists alike, trying to find someone who could do the job right. But no one seemed sure if it was even possible. Each damn professional he talked to would say things like "no guarantee" and "partial rehabilitation".

Steve had promised Buck that he would find someone to fix him. He wasn't about to go back on his word.

He stood in the lab where Bucky's cryo-tube was being monitored, lost in thought. There had to be some way to put his friend's broken mind back together, to give Bucky back what he had lost.

It just wasn't going to be through the medical sciences, it seemed.

T'Challa entered the room, drawing Steve's attention. "Captain," the king greeted, "I have...a possible candidate to assist your friend." He waved a thin brown folder.

Steve snorted. "Another doctor?"

"No. The person I have in mind is something else."

The other man's tone sharpened Steve's attention. He wasn't use to such obvious distain from the Wakandan king. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You would classify her as Enhanced," T'Challa said slowly, his face pensive. "Though I have no knowledge of who, if anyone 'enhanced' her. From what I know of her, she has always had abilities."

"Abilities?" Steve prodded, after a moment of silence. "You mean she's... What? That she's psychic? Like Wanda?"

"Yes. And no." Sighing, T'Challa turned to look out the impressive wall of glass along the west side of the room. "This woman is a mercenary of sorts. Or she was, a few years ago. She's a kind of telepath. Has the ability to work with memories, though I'm not sure of how expansive her skills are. I know that she can rip memories from a man's mind and leave him a vegetable. Whether she can put one back together... I know not."

"But it can't hurt to ask," Steve murmured, continuing the king's reasoning.

"Precisely."

Steven looked at him for a few seconds, then asked, "How do you know about her? Why didn't you mention her sooner?"

"The man whose mind she ripped apart was a Wakandan diplomat." The king's voice was hot with remembered anger. "The man was a good friend of my father's." He opened the file in his hands. "It also appears that your friend Natasha Romanoff has had some dealings with her, has used her before, in her life before S.H.E.I.L.D. She had completed a report for you."

Steve reached out for the proffered folder. "Natasha did this?"

"She did say to tell you that you owe her for keeping it from Stark and the UN."

A small smile pulled at the super soldier's lips. "She would say that." He opened the file and began paging through the limited documents.

The first thing that drew his attention was a passport-sized photograph of a serious-looking woman in her early twenties with dark brown hair, fair skin, and gray eyes. She was attractive in an average way, with not one particularly remarkable feature on her delicately structured face. So ordinary, he thought with a little reproach. Too ordinary. And a little fragile.

Steve continued to the rest of the file. The girl appeared to be a ghost. She hadn't had a permanent address in years. There did not seem to be any reliable record of her birth, of who her parents were, or if she'd ever received medical treatment. After a few minutes of unhelpful skimming, Steve shut the folder thoughtfully. His eyes were drawn to the words printed on the front. Confidential. Classified.

The Mara.

"'The Mara'?"

T'Challa shrugged. "You'll have to ask the Black Widow for why, but I believe it is a kind of old German monster."

"Of course it is. Let's go monster hunting then."

It wasn't every day that Abigail Marshall entertained visits from royalty. Especially since she was very intentionally trying not be visited by anyone. It was times like this when she wished she'd been gifted with clairvoyance or precognition.

Of course, if those had been her gifts, then the king of Wakanda wouldn't be standing in front of her and eyeing her dingy Chicago apartment with such a bland expression.

She wished she hadn't answer the door. But, once she had, how was she supposed to turn the king of a sovereign country, and his entourage, away?

Though he had left his bodyguards outside in the hallway, she felt cornered when King T'Challa finally landed his gaze on her. He wasn't a large man, despite his height, but she could sense that he wasn't above physically preventing her from leaping out her living room window and down the rusted fire escape. But she was sorely tempted to try. Nothing good ever came of someone tracking her down. They always wanted her to crawl into some other person's head, usually for something less than savory. She really, really should not have answered the commanding knock at her door.

But since she already had, Abigail supposed that it was a little late for that train of thought to be leaving the station.

"Miss Marshall," the king began, " You know who I am?" He was not impressed with the woman in front of him. She wore ragged jeans and a cheap gray T-shirt. There were purple smudges under her tired steel eyes, and her hair was pulled into a flyaway mess at the nape of her neck. She was petite in build, and soft-looking.

The woman nodded tightly, crossing her arms defensively under her breasts. "You're not exactly some average Joe, you know."

"Good. I find myself and my allies in need of your skills."

"I'm afraid I don't know what skills you're talking about." Abigail's voice was edged with desperation. The room began to feel smaller by the second. This was what she had always feared happening. It was why she hopped from town to town, never staying long enough to leave a trail. She had wanted so desperately not to be found.

"One of my allies is the Black Widow."

Shit. "I suppose if I told you that I can't do those things anymore, you would believe me?" Her voice was flat, her eyes staring blankly out the dirty window. She could see the lattice of the fire escape. If only, she thought to herself.

T'Challa moved to block her path to the window. Her desire to run was plain to him, written all over her coiled body. "No, Miss Marshall. I would not." The king's voice was firm, and Abigail saw no sympathy in his eyes. She supposed that he knew of her treatment of his country's diplomat a couple years before.

That mission had been a pity. The poor man had not had the information her handler had been looking for.

"Then believe that I am out of that game. I am done."

"I am afraid that in order to fulfill a promise to a man I respect, I will have to insist that you accompany me to my country."

Her fists clenched, and nervous sweat trailed down her neck. "You don't understand what you're asking, Your Majesty. You can't know."

"I think know a great deal about what I am asking of you, Miss Marshall." He pulled a smartphone from his pocket, accessing an emailed file sent to him by Romanoff. "The Black Widow has compiled a full dossier on you and your abilities."

Abigail snorted. "I would expect nothing less, I suppose." Though even Natasha Romanoff didn't know the full extent of what she could do.

"We have a man in need of your particular set of skills."

"Get. Out," she hissed. Memories. Some her own, some not threatened to break through her iron control. It was getting harder to focus when she was awake. Damn. "I will not break another mind so long as I live." Her voice shook, but her resolve was clear. "Not if I have a say in the matter."

The king blinked slowly, almost like a cat. Her outburst did not seem to faze him in the slightest. "Perhaps I should explain further. I am here to ask you to fix a mind, Miss Marshall, not to have you tear one apart."

Abigail's look was full of guarded surprise. T'Challa supposed that no one had ever broached such a topic with her before. After all, her skills were far more useful to certain organizations as a weapon, as a destructive tool, than as a way of healing.

She was stunned, almost speechless. "I ..." She trailed off and hung her head. "I'm not even sure I can do that. Putting something back together would be so much harder and I have no-"

He interrupted her before she could give him a whole list of reasons why she was the wrong woman for the job. "Have you ever tried?"

"No." She crossed her arms tightly over her soft chest. "No one ever used me for that."

T'Challa stared at her for a long, tense moment. The silence ate at her, until Abigail had to turn away from him. She bent down, picking up a journal she had thrown on the floor a few sleepless nights ago. She had thought that maybe writing things down would help her sort through everything in her head. It hadn't.

Watching the psychic closely, T'Challa waited. Patient. Unyielding.

"I will go with you on one condition," Abigail said slowly, piecing together what it could be like to actually help someone, to have a chance of doing something good for a change. It would be nice to be something other than a nightmare.

The king's dark eyes narrowed. "What condition?"

Abigail did not take her eyes off the journal. She simply held out her left hand.

T'Challa did not move. The girl must think he was a fool. "No."

"I promise no harm will come to you," she said quietly, her hand unwavering. "I want to verify what you're asking me to do. Other people have lied to me before." Her gray eyes shifted from the journal to his face, meeting his gaze with an intensity he had not expected. "'Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,' I think the saying goes."

He did not wish to put his hand in hers. He knew what the woman was capable of and nothing he or his armed contingent outside the apartment would be able to stop her from turning him into a vegetable if he let her touch him. But he thought of why he was here, thought of her vehement assertion that she would not harm someone with her gift ever again. Most of all, he thought of the desperation in Steve Rogers's eyes as they searched for someone to bring back his friend from the clutches of HYDRA's conditioning.

Besides, T'Challa had never been a coward.

He stepped forward and firmly grasped her outstretched hand. He had not realized how pale she was in the shadows of the unlit apartment, but the absolute contrast between the skin of their enjoined hands did not lie. But those thoughts were abandoned as he felt something, almost like static, run from where they touched, spreading throughout his entire body. Almost immediately, images flashed before his eyes. He saw everything he remembered about the plight of Steve Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes and everything of how it knew that plight had come to be.

For Abigail, it was a lot like watching a movie. She did not have to delve deep to get what she was looking for. She did her best not to snoop into anything deeper or more private, but intertwined with his thoughts on the Winter Soldier were memories of grief and pain. The death of a father he loved and respected. She remembered seeing the news coverage of the attack on the UN, remembered the announcement over every media outlet that the man who was believed responsible was the infamous Winter Soldier.

As she carefully withdrew from T'Challa's mind, Abigail released the man's hand. Her skin tingled. "I'm sorry if that was...uncomfortable for you," she murmured. She shook her head to try to clear the images from her eyes. "I was trying to be careful."

T'Challa looked at his now free hand impassively. "That was an experience unlike any other."

"Yeah, I've been told something like that before." Her voice was flat.

"I presume you found what you were looking for."

"Yes, I did. Thank you." The last was almost an afterthought. T'Challa thought the woman seemed distracted, lost in her own thoughts. "Give me a few minutes. It won't take me long to pack. I don't carry much."

He nodded, but she hardly waited for acknowledgement. She padded around the apartment in the semi-darkness, tossing a few articles of clothing and toiletries into a black canvas bad. A large according file held together with twine and rubber bands followed. He refused to show surprised when she fished a small stuff animal, a tiger he thought, and also put it into the bag. A small wooden box was the last thing that was packed before she zipped it shut and slung the bag's strap over her shoulders and across her chest.

The whole process had taken approximately five minutes.

"I'm ready when you are," Abigail announced, shrugging into a dark green zip-up hoodie about three sizes too large for her.

He considered asking if she was sure that she had everything, but then remembered the thin paper file that contained everything they knew about her life. He remembered the list of cities and towns, too many to name, and thought that maybe she was too busy running to have kept many possessions. A sad life, he thought in spite of himself. He was determined not to feel pity for this woman who had destroyed so many lives.

"Come," he finally beckoned, heading towards the door. "There is much to do."

She followed quietly, wrapping her hands around the strap of her bag so tightly that her knuckles turned even whiter than the rest of her.

Steve Rogers waited on T'Challa's plane. He had wanted to go to Abigail Marshall's apartment, but T'Challa had made the point that Steve was more recognizable than T'Challa was, as well as less stealthy. A corner of Steve's mouth twitched. Must have something to do with the Panther thing.

Steve spent the time using the plane's wifi hotspot and computer to look up legends about the Germanic boggle known as "Mara." It took him some time as his typing mostly consisted of poking the keys one at a time, but he eventually found a site devoted to such folklore. A mara, also called a "mare", was an evil spirit who sat on the chests of people while they slept and caused nightmares.

An hour and a half of waiting and reading later, Steve finally got a look at the woman called The Mara.

As he had noted when he'd looked at the meager file he'd been provided, Abigail Marshall did not look like a monster. She followed T'Challa on the plane, flanked by the king's impressive looking security detail. She carried only a black canvas duffle and looked incredibly uncomfortable with her surroundings. Steve rose from his seat, closing the computer with a quiet click.

Her gray eyes shifted to him. Steve expected surprise given the last the public had heard about him, he was a fugitive. However, she simply looked him up and down, observing aloud, "You're a lot bigger in person." He estimated that her head wouldn't even reach his shoulder if they stood side by side.

Steve smiled. "I'm sure you're not the first person to think that, ma'am." He waved his hand to one of the seats across from him. "Please take a seat." He glanced at T'Challa, raising his eyebrows in a silent question. The other man shrugged, but dismissed the guards and headed towards the cockpit, presumably to get ready for take off.

Abigail did not move until the Wakandans had retreated, then cautiously made her way to the seat Steve had indicated. As she sat, she stated, "They don't like me much." The bag dropped to floor with a thump. "Not that I blame them. You, on the other hand, haven't made up your mind yet."

"Is this the psychic thing, or are you just making a general observation?" Steve asked, mildly curious. He wanted to get to know the woman before he unleashed her on Bucky. He would have to make up his mind, as she had put it, before the wheels touched down in Wakanda.

Snorting, she pushed a stray hair out of her face. "No, I'm not a some circus fortune teller who picks bullshit up from the air." She took one look at his mildly shocked face and smiled a little. "I'm not a lady, Captain. Don't expect me to be one." Her voice was very matter of fact, though tinged with exhaustion.

He blinked. "I'll do my best, ma'am."

She winced. "Please tell me you aren't going to call me 'ma'am' all the time."

Steve shrugged good-naturedly. "What can I say? Old habits."

"At least call me Abigail. Please."

He wasn't sure what it was with modern women being so adverse to being called "ma'am", but he supposed that whatever made her feel more comfortable was best. "If you insist. Abigail."

"I do insist." She shifted slightly in her seat. The plane's engines had started, and they had started moving down the runway of the private airport T'Challa had commissioned for the trip. Abigail looked out the window. It was almost evening. "How long is the flight?"

"More than a few hours, even with a jet that flies this fast." She said nothing in reply as the plane climbed into the air, leaving Chicago behind. He had so many questions for her about her abilities, about her past. But...she looks so tired. So, instead, he asked the only question he supposed actually mattered.

"Can you help Bucky?"

She thought about it hard. She didn't want to promise something that she couldn't do. She thought about everything she had done, everything she had seen. Most of all, she thought about what she could do with her abilities.

"Yes," she answered quietly, "I think I can. But it's going to be difficult. For me, for your friend... Probably for you, too."

"Whatever it takes," Steve said. "Now, try to get some sleep. You look like you need it." They were now at cruising altitude. Steve rose from his seat and headed to the private cabin section where he assumed T'Challa had sequestered himself. "Thank you," he added softly as he passed her chair.

"Thank me when it's over."

Abigail continued to look out the window as the plane sped through the clouds. She supposed that she should take the Captain's advice and sleep. Though she doubted it would be worth it.

She always had terrible nightmares.