When they woke him, he was alone, except for the Wakandan doctors and their king. He stayed as still as death, moving only his eyes to scan for the Chair, the chains. But he lay on a warm, cushioned surface, unrestrained. The people watching him looked concerned, but not frightened, and as his breathing slowed and he looked around more naturally, they relaxed and nodded to each other.

He focused on the man standing at the foot of his bed. "Why?"

T'Challa gazed back at him calmly. "Because you are a human being, not a commodity to be frozen and put in storage."

"I'm no safer than when I went in. I'm a time bomb waiting for the next person who has the key."

The king turned to lift a book off a nearby table. A slim book with a star on the cover. His breathing went fast again, and the doctors looked up from their equipment to scowl. Then he saw the book was wrapped around each corner with metal straps, joined across the front and back cover with heavy cords meeting in a blinking lock. T'Challa held it out to him.

"Press your right thumb to the glowing spot on the front."

He did so; the spot blinked and beeped, then went dark.

T'Challa dropped the book in his lap. "Only you can open that now."

He picked it up. "Or someone with my thumb."

"Your thumb needs to be attached to your living body for it to work. We watch movies, too."

"How many copies did you make?"

"One." T'Challa tapped the side of his head. "And all notes have been destroyed."

"So now you hold my leash." He looked up to meet the king's eyes. "And who will you point me at, Your Majesty?"

"No one. I have my own checks and balances." He slid his eyes to the side, where a tall, silent woman stood, who smirked very, very faintly. "The Winter Soldier will appear only if you choose it. As far as we could manage, you are free."

Clutching the book to his chest, Bucky leaned back in his bed and wondered if his tears were joy or terror.

It wasn't that easy, really. He had many meetings with people who showed him brain scans and body scans and who asked him about his dreams and where his thoughts went when he was sitting and staring out of windows. There were drugs to help remap his brain's pathways and mitigate any triggers they hadn't found yet.

There was a day when he walked into the treatment room to find an arm laying on the table. He walked out. The next day, he walked back in, sat down, and listened. Two weeks later he was eating dinner with two hands, without bending silverware or crushing cups. T'Challa saluted him from the head of the table.

Steve never appeared.

Sam Wilson was the only one to seek him out, though he had little better idea of where Steve was. "He's likely off violating the Accords somewhere," Sam said, leaning against a column on the veranda the exiled Avengers had claimed. "I know he sneaks in and out of this place, and everyone official pretends not to notice. I'm guessing you're going to be a Welcome Home present for the next time he shows up."

Bucky lightly poked a lush bush with his left hand, testing the limits between enough pressure to feel a leaf and to crush it. "Can't anyone call him?"

"Natasha is supposed to have a way, but she drifts in and out more often than Sneaky McRogers does."

"She does that," Bucky said, from some knowledge he did not care to investigate.

Sam gave him a knowing look. "Would you go after him if you knew where he was?"

Bucky nodded. "Which is probably why no one is giving me any hints about that."

"I don't know why he gets to be an international fugitive wandering the world and nobody else does," Sam pouted.

"If it's any comfort, I'm sure he's not enjoying a minute of it."

"Yeah, that boy does like his suffering."

When even Sam Wilson's amiable company dragged on him, Bucky wandered out into the Royal Park. The entire park spread out for thousands of acres, but closest to the palace there were partially tended groves of trees and patches of the tall, wild grass that filled the savanna. Bucky was a creature of the cities, so while he liked getting away from people, he wasn't about to wander out into the veldt where all the big things that could eat him roamed. There was a gnarled tree just on the boundary, where he could still see the top roofs of the palace but only hear the wind through the grass and leaves.

He settled at the base of the tree, leaning back against the trunk. In the distance to his left, he could see a small aircraft flying in to the landing field. The top of the rounded towers rose above the horizon line of grass, tickling at a very old memory that was barely peeking out from under the mountain of awfulness. Something about a wild landscape with an ancient, advanced civilization-

"Barsoom," he muttered, deeply satisfied to recover a clean part of his past. Steve loved the stories of John Carter and the ancient civilizations of Mars. Bucky had scrounged pennies to buy the magazines the stories were serialized in. Sometimes he was able to check the novels out of the library, when he could convince the librarians that a scruffy Black Irish kid could be trusted with books.

He wondered if Steve ever took the time to sit out here and marvel at the world they were in. Did he ever appreciate that he was living in those science-fiction dreams they had had back when horses could still be found working in the streets of Brooklyn? Or was it all just one more thing he grimly carried on his shoulders?

He was just working himself into a good depressive sulk about how Steve would never be happy again and how Bucky was making his life harder when there was a rustle in the nearby grass, followed by a thump, then a squeak. He focused in on a specific tussock just as a tiny bundle of black fur and legs and tail tumbled out and landed on its head on the ground. It wiggled itself into an upright position, turned too fast and fell on its bum, then spotted Bucky. Its mouth opened to reveal adorable little teeth and gave the tiniest snarl he'd heard since Stevie Rogers was five years old.

He giggled.

The kitten reacted just as well as Steve ever did and hissed at him.

He reacted the way he always did. "Yes, you're very fierce, I'm terrified."

The kitten grumbled, then focused very intently on cleaning its paw.

One of the very first things strangers in Wakanda learned was that panthers had right of way. When Bucky had started wandering in the park, he'd been told very sternly that if there were any altercations between himself and one of the royal beasts, it would be the panther's word against his, and most people would believe the panther. Bucky had started to protest that panthers didn't have words, but he'd stopped at the knowing looks the locals were giving him.

He was definitely in their territory now, here at the border of the groomed portion of the park, but it was still quite rare for one of the cats to show up so close to the buildings. In any case, a kitten was still a kitten, even if it was more properly called a cub. Bucky slowly moved his flesh hand towards the little black fluff. "Are you lost, itty-bitty?"

The kitten stretched a suspicious nose out and explored the hand. Before Bucky could get a finger down to stroke the furry head, the kitten sprang and wrapped all its legs around his wrist and proceeded to try to kill his hand.

"Ow! Fuck, damn it!" How could something so small and fuzzy have so many fucking *points*. He brought up his metal hand and tried to wiggle the fingers between the adorable growling thing and his blood supply. "Crap! Ow! Stop it!" He finally got enough leverage that the kitten turned its attention to the annoying thing poking it. "Yeah, gnaw on that, you little hellion. Don't break a tooth." He yanked his bleeding hand out of range, trying not to look at all punctures and lacerations. "Mama's certainly been teaching you how to kill things. She must be very proud."

He had to laugh, though, at the way the kitten growled as it gnawed on his metal thumb, bracing its back claws on the edges of his wrist plates. "I don't think that's going to work, itsy, though I have to say no one has thought to take a kitten to it before." He winced at the screech of a claw slipping on metal, then the kitten twisted around for a better angle and lost its grip. Bucky mostly caught it as it tumbled, then he quickly got his metal hand over his balls as the kitten landed all points down in his lap.

"You OK?" he asked.

It blinked a bit, flopped down into sprawl, and yawned his head in half.

"You can't take a nap there," he tried to protest, entranced by the tiny pink tongue curling up. The little chin dropped onto the back of metal hand, the kitten gave a mighty sigh, deflated, and oozed down into all the space available.

"Crap."

Panther kittens snored.

He chuckled. "OK, itty-bitty, it's not like I've got anyplace to be, anyway." He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree trunk, his flesh hand tucked around the tiny body.

Until he heard a rumble from something with a much larger lung capacity than a kitten.

Without moving his head, he slowly opened his eyes.

A yard away, just past the end of his foot, crouched a grown-up black panther, staring at Bucky with bright yellow eyes, softly growling something that he was pretty damned sure translated to "You're holding my child."

Bucky had seen tigers, they were massive, terrifying beasts. A Soviet oligarch in the '70s had once proposed a fight between his pet lion and the Winter Soldier one weekend at his Black Sea dacha. He'd gazed at the animal lazing in its huge enclosure and had trouble accepting the size of a creature that was lounging across most of the top of a decommissioned Tiger tank. Fortunately, he'd been scheduled for a mission and no one was willing to risk having him get slashed up by lion claws. He hadn't honestly been sure what the result of that fight would have been.

Panthers were half the size of tigers and lions, but Bucky didn't doubt that the creature staring at him could make him just as dead.

As Bucky stayed motionless, the panther flowed forward, head lowering to the kitten in his lap. He tried very hard not to calculate the distance between the presumed mother's teeth and his dick. The kitten fussed and squirmed away from the investigative nose, settling down more firmly into its comfy human nest. The mother huffed and drew back. Instead of moving away, though, she raised her head to study Bucky more closely. He felt her breath on his skin as she sniffed his face, then she went over his torso and spent quite a bit of attention on his left arm. She sniffed the kitten again, then stepped away. Bucky was just breathing a careful sigh of relief when she turned in a circle and dropped to the ground, her back leaning against his leg. She made a weird almost barking noise, then relaxed and gazed off across the landscape.

Bucky stared at her, flummoxed, then another panther stalked out of the grass. This one's eyes were also locked on him as it sinuously walked towards him. It reminded him of nothing so much as his own walk on the battlefield, the Murderstrut, as Sam called it. It was indeed pretty damned terrifying to have aimed at you. The effect was ruined, though, when three more kittens came stumbling out of the grass, fighting and falling over each other as they tried to keep up with the second grown-up.

The two grown-ups touched noses while the kittens rolled on towards Bucky. They clambered over his legs and poked at the one sleeping in his lap,

"Hey!" he said helplessly, which caught the kittens' attention. He thanked god he'd worn long sleeves as they began climbing his arms and torso, stepping on each other and making each other squawk. One made it up to his left shoulder and started rummaging and growling in his hair. The one who had been sleeping woke and batted at the others, which triggered a wrestling match in his lap.

He kept his metal hand firmly over his crotch and tried to wrangle sixteen pointy feet away from his soft bits. He froze as the second grown-up strolled towards him, but then the kitten on his shoulder found his ear lobe with its teeth.

"Ow, fuck! Stop that!" he yelled, then he had to catch the kitten as it tumbled off his shoulder. The second grown-up huffed in what sounded like amusement. She padded up his side and sniffed where he'd been nipped, then she started bathing his ear.

"Uh, hey, I already washed that today."

She ignored him and moved up, licking his hair away from his face.

"Stop that, you are not my ma."

She put a paw on his leg to keep him still.

"No, sister, he is not one of your cubs," said an amused voice. "Perhaps you could give him some room."

Bucky's would-be mum sighed and moved away. He looked over his shoulder and saw T'Challa walking towards him.

The king smiled. "Milna sent word you were being ganged up on."

"Milna?"

"Oh, she will be pleased that the famous Bucky Barnes didn't spot her."

Bucky glared out the woods, looking for someone keeping watch on him.

The panther who was leaning against his leg rolled onto her back and stretched a paw out to T'Challa. He crouched down and put the palm of his hand against her pawpad. One of the kittens fell out of Bucky's lap and stumbled towards T'Challa. Its mother picked it up by the scruff of its neck and dropped it back in with the others.

"Excuse me?" Bucky said to the mother.

T'Challa laughed. "It appears they have decided you are their babysitter."

"No one asked me." He winced as two kittens dug their claws into his right thigh for leverage in their wrestling match. "Unhook, dammit. Look, everybody just fall over and go to sleep, OK?" He petted them into submission till they all dropped into naps.

T'Challa gently tapped the scratches on his right hand. "They have the teeth and claws of hunters. Do these need tending?"

"Nah, they'll heal." Bucky risked extracting his left hand from underneath the fuzzy pile in his lap and stretched his back. He looked at his right hand now that it wasn't quite so bloody and reminding him of things. "They're like Stevie, a hundred pounds of attitude in five-pound bodies. With more pointy bits." He glanced at T'Challa. "Where's Steve?"

"I don't know," the king said easily. "I can't know. It makes things much simpler when the UN asks me politely uncomfortable questions."

Bucky shrugged. "That's fair. Oh, easy, little britches." One of the kittens had slouched too far over and was sliding towards the ground. He caught it with his metal hand and eased it back into position.

T'Challa studied him. "You don't mind holding them with that hand. You're not afraid of hurting them?"

"They're kittens! What kind of monster do you think-" He choked off, abruptly remembering horrible things. He cupped both hands over the pile of babies in his lap, protecting them from any harm, including himself. "I'm probably not the right babysitter."

"Their mothers disagree." T'Challa nodded at the panther next to him, who was laying on her back with her paws flopped in the air, snoring faintly. The other mother had wandered off around a bush. "They trust you."

"Because you're here. The king. The Black Panther."

T'Challa actually snickered. "But I am not *their* king. They are not at all tame, and it's their choice to allow us this close." The second mother came back from the bush, strolling up in no hurry and headbutting T'Challa. He swayed with the contact and rested his forehead against hers. "They know who I am," he said softly. "They know I am just a man."

"I have work to do, he added, getting to his feet. I'm sure they'll be happy if you just want to sit here and hold cubs a while." The second cat went up to Bucky and thoroughly rubbed her face on his shoulder, then dropped to the ground to stretch out, one rear paw shoved against his hip. "Yes, I think they're quite content to have you minding the babies a bit longer."

Bucky blinked, remembering holding little girls to give his mother a breather. "I'm sure catsitter is a noble profession here."

T'Challa nodded. "It is." He paused. "There are cubs in the palace if you want to play with some later." He walked back towards the palace.

Bucky rested his head back against the tree, eyes half-closed, flesh and metal fingers gently stroking warm, soft fur. He let himself listen to the buzzing insects in the grass and heavy breathing of sleeping cats, washing away all those other sounds in his mind.