It's dark. So damn dark. And utterly, painfully silent.

There are no sounds from others, from the outside world. And more alarming than that, there are no sounds from within either. No heartbeat echoing in her ears, nor steady whooshing of blood flowing through her veins. There's no dull, dependable hum roaring within her, reverberating all around her like an audible aura. Not even the soft in-and-out of her own breath can be heard as she drifts and lingers… alone in the dark.

There is nothing. Just bitter, blinding black and absolute, deafening silence.

And it seems to go on forever.

Time is very different once we're outside of our bodies. Energy is not bound by time nor constrained by the concept of it.

Is that what this is, then? Those words – still wrapped in the soft cadence of Professor Xavier – persist like a nebulous cloud in the dark chasm, a barely there pop and flicker of light in the corner of utter absence.

Am I… outside my body? she thinks, realizing with a sudden thrill that fathoming the question alone may be proof that she's not… gone. Not entirely. But… am I dead?

This darkness – cold and still and silent – oh, yes, it is a familiar one.

It's what settled in around her all those years ago as she slowly bled out on a bathroom floor. It's what slammed into her in a single, terrifying moment, riding the heels of a burning gasp of ice-cold water, anxious – loving – voices still echoing as she slipped away.

Yes. That's it then, isn't it? Dead. What else could she possibly be?

000

He continues to pace a rut into the bright, reflective onyx floor. "How much longer?" he asks with a huff, yet another impatient breath blowing from his nose, lips pinched tightly shut.

The young woman looming over her futuristic-looking panel of hi-tech machines – all flickers of light and neon nonsense – cracks a crooked smile. "Soon."

He spins on her, scuffing heavy boots into the floor as his pacing skids to a halt. His arms fold tightly over his chest and he glares at her disbelievingly. Threateningly. "That's what you said the last time I asked."

She merely shrugs, her thin, tight braids parting across her shoulder with the movement. "Maybe you should stop asking then."

The clip-clop sound of hard-soled shoes taps into the lab, a bright and airy, "How are things going with our guest?" falling from the young King's lips. T'Challa glides over to peek around his sister at the comatose woman encased in the small, glass room in front of them.

"Which guest?" Shuri asks with a raised brow. "Sleeping Beauty or the White Wolf?"

Bucky sighs long and loud behind her, running an exhausted hand down the length of his face. "I really wish you'd stop calling me that."

Another shrug, another quick glance at a reading and swift interpretation from the myriad machines in front of her – all of which are presumably monitoring something on the woman laid out before them – before she finally turns away from her work to face the man. "You are white," she says simply, folding her arms across her chest in a manner matching his. "And you will not stop howling in my ear."

T'Challa lets out a small snicker from beside her. But Bucky is far less amused. His jaw tightens and ticks to the side, a low rumble pulling from his chest as he stares the girl down.

"Do you see?" she asks, elbowing her brother in the ribs. "He even growls at me! And after all I've done to fix his wife!"

"It's been two weeks," he intones through tightly gritted teeth. "You said you could help. You said you could fix her. But we're still here. She's still… there," he mutters, flinging an arm out towards the pale and lifeless-looking woman across the way. "And you still won't tell me how much longer it'll be!"

"Sergeant Barnes," the King utters, his voice smooth and deep as he extends a calming hand. "We all understand how… frustrating this must be. But I assure you, my sister is doing all that she can."

"Thank you, brother," she concludes with a rather smug nod.

Bucky lets out a long, deep breath, the tautness of his shoulders slackening just a bit. "I know," he relents before striding over to the small table in the corner. "I know," he repeats softly as he drops heavily into one of the chairs.

And he does know. Truly, he does.

He knows that T'Challa and Shuri didn't have to do any of this. They didn't have to open their country – their home – to them. They didn't have to give refuge to a group of disgraced superheroes, offer asylum to a mutant who – according to her own nation's recently publicized edict – is a terroristic threat responsible for the brutal slayings of at least a dozen men in Canada. They didn't have to agree to help Steve and Sam, Wanda and Natasha lay low, as the recently outed – newly displaced – former Avengers gathered their wits and came up with a plan. And they didn't have to help – Shuri, this brilliant, young scientist whom he recalls his wife positively gushing about not all that long ago, didn't have to help – to fix whatever had been done to Tessa.

But they did.

Bucky's eyes drift closed for a lingering moment, exhaustion tugging at his lids. Two weeks is no time at all, not really. Not for a man who's lived a hundred years and spent seventy in captivity. Not for someone who toiled for four long months, searching for the woman lying just a room away now. But these two weeks had been different from any others. An entire era had come and gone, time slipping from one age into the next. And each moment had felt like a millennium.

Lives ended. And they had just barely begun to reignite… changed, different from what they had once been… mired in a new now that precluded them from ever shifting back to the old.

The remaining X-Men, Brotherhood, and other mutants – both involved with the raid and rescued from the second location on that day two long weeks ago – had gone back into hiding, Magneto, apparently, having been prepared for a retaliatory outcome all along.

"We have places to go," the Professor had said to Bucky, just before he and the other Avengers piled into Clint's jet to head for home. "Do not worry about us. Just… take care of her," he'd muttered solemnly, nodding at the trembling, feverish body cradled to the soldier's chest. "She is better left with you."

Wanda had worked her magic to help stabilize Tessa, exhausting herself very nearly into a coma of her own by the time they arrived back at the compound. But there was no swift and welcome transfer down to medical, no handing off of the barely there woman that Bucky so desperately clung to. Instead, they all were packed into another jet, Steve taking the helm with instructions from Tony for a rather complex and covert operation to transfer Tessa to Wakanda for care. "You'll have to go too. Or go… somewhere," he told the Captain, his voice cracking at the seams. "Word got out. Ross knows it was you. All of you."

Clint's involvement was easy enough to brush off as he had never even left the jet at that second location – where the rescue of about twenty-five mutants went off without a hitch. So Tony sent him off on a fabricated security op with Rhodey – an alibi he'd made sure to legitimize – before returning him safely home to Laura and the kids.

But the others had all been seen. They'd been made. The whole incident had been splashed across dozens of international news outlets by the very next morning. And with the blood of nearly seventy Canadian soldiers on their hands – and the narrative painting them as compatriots of mutant terrorists – the fallen Avengers had become traitorous villains overnight.

Their world – all that this small and disparate group of heroes had built over the last several years together – crumbled to bits and drifted from their wide open palms like ashes on the wind. And through it all – despite the anger and grief and guilt – Bucky could do nothing but pace these foreign halls and wring his hands, waiting endlessly for Shuri to bring his girl back to him. Because ultimately that was all that mattered. He'd gladly abandon his old life – leave it behind and never look back – just so long as Tessa was by his side to help build a new one.

His eyes slowly blink open at the soft shuffling in his periphery, and he gazes wearily up to see T'Challa approach. "Your friends were disappointed that you did not see them off," he says as he gingerly takes a seat across from Bucky at the table. "Understanding, of course. But disappointed." He smiles, closed-lip but still soft and genuine… and Bucky finds himself offering a sad smile of his own in return.

"I talked to Steve this morning," he mutters, running a hand through his hair and scratching at the new growth of beard. "He said they'd check in soon."

T'Challa nods. "I told him that they were always welcome here. As long as they do not bring any trouble with them."

"Any more trouble, you mean?" he asks with a sardonic lilt.

"Yes," he agrees with a wide grin. "Any more." The King leans back in his seat – even as Bucky falls forward, curling into himself as his elbows fall to his knees, head drooping – and he says, "Ms. Romanov left you with both cats."

He stiffens a bit, recalling only now that Eddie and Phoebe both had been crated up and loaded onto the jet for Wakanda – along with as many of their belongings as Tony, Bruce, and Vision could quickly gather – before they even arrived back to New York. Truth be told, he hadn't given the cats a second thought over the past two weeks… had barely even given a thought to showering. So hearing about them now has him rather befuddled. He cocks his head at the man across the table and questions him with nothing more than a furrowed brow.

He laughs, light and airy. "She said that she could not care for hers while out fighting for the greater good, so you should have them both."

"Great," he breathes out, sitting upright. "Another cat. Just what I always wanted."

"Be careful, Sergeant, cats are quite revered in Wakanda." He glances over at the man, notes – certainly not for the first time – the dark, distinctive circles beneath his eyes and the almost sickly pallor to his skin. "My mother has taken quite a liking to them," he states simply, eyes still wandering over the sad, exhausted specimen before him. "She'd be more than happy to care for them while you and your wife… recover."

Bucky looks over at him, retraining his eyes from their far-off stare into the void. "Thank you."

T'Challa nods, his face slowly shifting into solemnity as he connects with Bucky's gaze. "She will recover," he tells him emphatically. "Shuri says this is so, and I believe her."

"Yeah," he replies, drawing the word out. His eyes lazily shift towards the young woman across the lab, watching as she sways her hips and bops her head to the rhythm of music only she can hear. The corner of his mouth ticks up into a small, crooked smile. "I remember Tessa talking about her… when they first met." He glances back at T'Challa before returning to watch Shuri dance amid her work. "When you went to Seattle?"

He nods, smiles. "Yes. I was quite pleased to meet Dr. Sullivan. But my sister… she was absolutely smitten. I had to threaten her with exile to get her to leave the labs there and return home." He snickers a bit under his breath. "She asked my mother if we could adopt her… Dr. Sullivan. She would've been a citizen some time ago if she had conceded."

Bucky smirks and shakes his head fondly, his eyes roaming over the high-tech equipment spread throughout the room. "When she does wake up… she's never gonna want to leave this lab."

"Ah, much like her husband, I'd say," he jokes, the jest earning him little more than a confused scowl. "You have a room here, you know? Yet I do not believe you've been there more than once or twice since you arrived."

He hangs his head, lips quirking into a sheepish grin. "Yeah. I know. It's just…"

"You do not want to leave her," he finishes for him, tone earnest. Bucky nods, that same far-off stare that he's been sporting for the better part of two weeks – the one that washes over him along with the stinging memories of looming over his wife that day, unable to touch her skin without burning his own flesh, having to wait to lift her slack and unconscious body into his arms until Bobby pumped her full of enough of ice to cool her blood – returning full force. "The electrodes have been removed," T'Challa reminds him, trying to pull the wayward man back from his reverie. "And with additional transfusions from your friend, the Captain… Shuri says that her body is healing."

Bucky nods, stiffly, shortly.

"Perhaps… perhaps you should allow yourself to heal as well," he suggests.

"What do you mean?" he asks, confusion lacing the words as he stares at T'Challa with a wrinkled brow.

"Sergeant Barnes," he says, reaching across the table and laying an open palm on Bucky's forearm. "I think you will find that Wakanda does wonders for healing both new and old wounds. Our science is… preeminent…"

"Because of the vibranium," he interjects, only a hint of question to the utterance.

"Yes," he agrees before grinning slyly. "And do not think that my sister won't be using that precious metal to build you something new." He quirks a brow and tosses a glance down at Bucky's arm, causing the man to shift uncomfortably and tug his raised sleeve down to the wrist. T'Challa shakes his head at the self-conscious display, small, knowing smile still looming on his lips as he thinks about the plans Shuri had already begun to put together for a new and improved arm. "It isn't just that, though," he goes on, letting his gaze wander out to the far wall of windows. "The majesty of this place," he breathes out, taking in the sun-bathed mountains just outside the lab. "It will help. If you let it."

Bucky turns to him then, eyes narrowing a bit suspiciously. "Why are you helping us?"

Without turning away from the view, without even blinking or changing his expression in the least, he replies, "I do not understand the things that come out of my sister's mouth, but it doesn't stop her from speaking to me. I need – we all need – to have someone else for her to talk to here." His eyes are ringed with mirth when they tick over to Bucky, smirk pulling also at the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah, well," Bucky breathes out with a short chuckle. "I only understand about half of the crap that comes out of Tessa too, so I guess it might be a good idea to put the two of them together."

"Perhaps they can tire each other out."

Another small laugh billows out of him, the sensation and sound both feeling so familiar despite the peculiar tightness surrounding it. "We can only hope."

T'Challa rises swiftly and looks down at Bucky with a commanding – but utterly kind and strangely comforting – stare. "You should return to your room, Sergeant. Shower. Eat. Sleep. If I know my sister at all, I would say that she may actually keep your wife in stasis longer than needed just to punish you for intruding in her space and rushing her work."

Bucky's jaw drops, gaping for a long moment before the young King releases a lengthy, languid laugh and extends a hand to his new friend.

000

Wakanda, a year-ish later:

She bends over to grab another giant bag of oats and hoists it up onto her shoulder. Squinting against the bright morning sun, she looks over at the two men sitting casually up on the hill. "Hey!" she shouts, waving her free hand. "If you happen to see anyone with super strength around," she pauses briefly, grunting as she repositions the 50-lb bag, "let 'em know us normal people could use a hand."

As if they'd both been raised by second-rate comedians, the men simultaneously break into a round of applause. Steve even offers a quick woot and wolf whistle as well, earning little more than an eyeroll and a nearly inaudible utterance of, "Assholes," as she turns and heads back into the pen.

"You got this, babe!" Bucky shouts after her, issuing one final, loud clap.

The chuckling slowly dies down on the hill, both men fading into a comfortable silence as they soak up the warm sun and let the dry Wakandan breeze blow back their hair. Steve's eyes hone in on the tanned, willowy woman down by the stables as she gently knees the needy goats out of her way. He watches the way her new sinewy muscles stretch and contract along her shoulders and back as she dumps some oats for the bleating crowd around her. She snipes at one goat who gives her a small headbutt to the shin – her words lost on the breeze, though he's certain it's akin to something he's heard a million times before.

He's missed her snide remarks, her humorous chastisements. He's missed Tessa.

"She looks good," he says absently, still watching her work. Bucky wrinkles his brow as he spares his friend a quick glance, the wary nature of his expression causing a snort of laughter to spill from Steve's mouth. "She does."

Bucky turns his gaze back on the woman down the hill, catching her just as she lets out a loud, clipped squeak and jumps into the air when Daryl – a particularly bitter nanny – nips her in the butt. "That's my wife you're talking about," he issues out through upturned lips.

"She looks…" Steve cocks his head at her, utterly dismissive of his friend's joking warning. "Strong."

Bucky's eyes soften as they drift over Tessa's frame. It's true. She has gotten strong, manual labor forcing her to build muscle like she'd never been able to do before. But that was just one way she'd gotten stronger over the past year, perhaps the least important way. "Yeah," he says with a wistful nod. "She is strong."

A small smile dances across Steve's lips as his gaze bounces between Tessa and Bucky – between the now-laughing farmhand in the goat pen below and the grizzled bearded man with an almost serene expression plastered to his face at his right. "You both seem… happy."

Bucky glances at him and raises his eyebrows. "Yeah, well…" He gives a short shrug. "Can't say this was ever how I saw my life turning out. But…"

Steve lets loose a short chuckle. "What, working as a goat farmer in the middle of Africa with your super-powered wife?" They share an odd, knowing look, prompting another laugh from the blond. "Nah, this is pretty much what I always pictured for you."

Bucky knocks his metal shoulder harshly into him, but chuckles none the less. "That one, though," he mutters, pointing down at Tessa. "Probably never thought she'd be here… doing this."

"Nope," he replies, popping the 'p' with vigor. "I'm pretty sure she's had entire weeks – maybe even months – when she never saw the light of day. Just stayed huddled in an underground lab somewhere. Now she's actually got a tan."

"Farmer's tan," Bucky mutters with an amused psh. "You should see her with her shirt off." He quirks his head over at Steve, a sly, teasing smile on his face as he watches his friend unwittingly blush.

Steve shakes his head – both in admonishment and to shake lose the sudden inappropriate images building in his mind. His eyes drift off over the vast horizons, gaze traveling along the far off mountain peaks, taking in every beautiful shade of green along the way as it all gives rise to the pale blue of what might just be the clearest sky he's ever seen. "You remember when we were in southern France?" he asks, an almost dreamy quality to his voice.

"Cassis," he confirms with a nod.

"I never thought I'd see a place more beautiful than that."

Bucky watches his friend as his eyes dance across the countryside, a sort of comfort and peace causing his features to relax. Even through his newly thick beard, he can make out Steve's soft, crooked smile and it brings a grin to his own face as well. Because he's right, there's no place in the world as beautiful as this. He looks down at his wife below – his wife – and watches as she tends to their goats – their goats. He shifts his eyes to the small house to the right of the pen – their house.

This – and he can hardly believe it still – is home.

"You know," he says after a long silence. "You're always welcome here. You don't have to just up and leave tonight… could stay for a few more days. Weeks, even."

Steve drops his head, his shoulders rocking with a deep chortle. "You gonna put me to work if I do?"

He ticks his head toward Tessa. "She probably will."

"I don't know how good I'd be at herding goats."

Bucky raises a single brow at him. "You could always milk them," he offers with a straight face.

Steve turns to him with an almost stricken expression. "You do that?"

And he just laughs – a light, airy, easy laugh that Steve's not entirely sure he's ever heard come out of his best friend before. Not even back in the day, before the war, before… everything. He's honestly not sure that he's ever seen Bucky so relaxed, so… happy. Especially once he turns his brilliant blue eyes on him, each sparkling with a sort of innocent mischief. "Where did you think the goat cheese that was in your omelet this morning came from?"

He gives a noncommittal shrug. "The store." Then, his brow wrinkling deeply in confusion, "Wait a minute… you make cheese here? Here?"

"It's actually not that hard. And it's better fresh." He rises slowly from the ground, looking down at Steve to indicate he should follow suit. "We make pretty good money selling it at the market."

The blond super soldier gets up as well, his face still scrunched in a look of utter bewilderment. "Bucky Barnes is a goat farmer who makes and sells his own cheese," he states in a breathy tone of astonishment as he follows his friend down the hill.

By the time they reach the goat pen, Tessa has just finished feeding everyone and is about to climb out over the fence. Bucky reaches out and wraps an arm around her waist to hoist her over, depositing her easily outside the pen and dropping a quick kiss on her crown. She swipes her hands along the front of her shorts, transferring a bit of mud to the khaki fabric. "Daryl's being a real bitch today," she mumbles vaguely.

He glances down at her hands and her right forearm – all splattered with mud. "What happened?" he asks with a small laugh.

"You didn't see?" She looks up at him with wide eyes, shifts her gaze over to Steve, who just shrugs a no. With an exaggerated huff, she shakes her head. "Monty and Cecil teamed up on me," she says with a raised, accusatory brow as her eyes narrow at the two brown goats bleating in the corner of the pen. "They surrounded me and brutally knocked me to the ground, where Daryl was able to get at my hair… again." She reaches around and paws at the wide curls in her pony tail, pulling out bits of hay and mud.

"She's got a thing for hair," Bucky mutters as he drapes his arm over her hip.

Steve steps forward and leans cautiously over the fence railing to get a better look at the goats. "She?" he asks plainly.

"Hard to get milk from the bucks," Bucky teases.

Steve turns back to him, a crooked grin on his face. "They're called bucks?" he asks, a bit of excitement to his voice.

Bucky just rolls his eyes in response.

Steve stifles a laugh and looks to Tessa before turning to lean back on the fence. "So why do they all have boy names?"

She steps over by his side and leans into the fence as well. "Because it amuses me," she says with a lilt. Then, her voice dropping an octave, she states, "And he lost all right to name any of them once he starting picking names of his exes."

"Seriously?" Steve asks, craning his neck to shoot Bucky a glare.

He shrugs. "It amused me."

000

Over the last several months, settling into this new life, breaking away from the lab and medicine and research – save occasional jaunts out to visit Shuri for some much needed scientific collaboration – had been hard on Tessa. At times almost impossible. But it was needed. After everything in Canada – after everything – she needed a break. She needed not only to recover, but to recharge. She needed to claw her way out of that thick, silent black and reclaim herself anew.

People like us… we don't get depressed. We get… consumed. Depleted.

The labs back home still call to her, even now. The life she'd left behind – the people, above all else – still call to her in her dreams, playing out memories and never-attained possibilities in painfully vivid detail. But as each day wears on – here in this splendid little corner of the world, so far from New York – she's eased a little further into this odd, new normal.

And odd it certainly is. How exactly they became goat people, she's still not entirely sure. Two nannies came with the house and the land, a gift from the royal family. And they just sort of… went with it. And like so many challenges thrown her way, Tessa both embraced and obsessed over it.

While she may not have had a clue about goats or gardens or farming in general, her propensity for research – for finding and devouring any and every detail about whatever it is she's studying – had managed to turn her into a walking encyclopedia on local agriculture. She spent days scoping out the grazing terrain, inspecting each and every plant she could find to make sure it was edible and non-toxic.

Don't let them near the jackfruit trees, she'd warned Bucky more times than he can count. The wilted leaves can be toxic. He'd wanted to plant tomatoes, but… No nightshade! she'd insisted. Do you want the goats to die?

After intensive research – and soil testing, of course – she'd decided that they'd have the most luck with avocadoes, carrots, and papaya. And plums – though the trees had to be far away from the grazing grounds.

It was her idea to make goat cheese too. And she dove headfirst into figuring out the best way to do it, her scientific brain eager to find its place here in a life of farming and animal husbandry.

Yes, each day eases her further along into this new and wonderful life.

But the days… it's strange how long the days sometimes seem here. Not in a bad way, no. But Tessa had been used to days flying by when work needed to be done. If there was one thing she was truly, always excellent at, it was getting lost in her work, becoming so consumed by it that the minutes, hours – sometimes days – would pass her by in fleeting moments.

This work is different. It's hard and exhausting and… stinky. And while time certainly can slip by unbeknownst, it's very rarely the type of work she finds herself getting lost in. Sometimes she misses that ability to get completely swept away. Sometimes she's grateful to have abandoned it.

Here, now – sitting between Bucky's legs, leaning her back into his strong chest as they watch the sun set together from the comfort of their porch – she's grateful. There are so many worlds she missed seeing because she let the lab consume her. So many places she'd been in her life and yet never really saw. Minsk. Milan. Pakistan. Alberta. Munich. Scotland. Seoul. She simply can't imagine not being able to see this.

Bucky's new vibranium fingers dance up and down her arm, slowly tracing the length of the long bruise just now blossoming after tripping over her own two feet while moving haybales mere hours before. She'd been eager to get just a few more things done before driving Steve off to the airfield for yet another goodbye, and somehow she ended up face down in the mud with the blond super soldier choking on hysterical laughter as he loomed outside the fence.

"You're a danger to yourself," her husband says softly, smile evident in his tone.

He's not wrong, of course.

Despite creating a new life for herself as a farmer and goat hand in the middle of Africa – and despite getting, as she liked to put it, ripped from all the manual labor – some traits hold strong. One thing that had most assuredly not changed about Tessa – not one little bit – was her aptitude for utter clumsiness. She was smart and strong and adept, but there were still days that she couldn't make it through without slamming into a wall or a piece of furniture and bruising like a peach. At least her time in the sun had tinted her skin enough to hide the majority of the discoloration. Though Bucky always seemed able to find the bruises – whether noticing a new purplish bloom from afar or coming across an older green streak as he worked his way around her body while they made love.

"This one wasn't my fault," she pouts as he continues to lightly trace the bruise. "Daryl practically screamed behind me. Scared me to death."

"You get too close to her kid?" he inquires with a small laugh.

She shrugs – "Maybe." – and twists in his grip to face him. "He's just so damn cute." She turns back around and settles her head on his shoulder, scooting back into him just the slightest bit. "Goats aren't supposed to be that protective of their young anyway."

He stops petting her bruise and wraps both arms tightly around her middle, squeezing her to him. "She's a mama bear."

"She's a bitch," Tessa bites out, only a hint of teasing to her voice.

He nuzzles into her hair before laying a lingering kiss on the back of her neck. "That's not nice," he intones lightly.

She shifts just the slightest bit in his hold. "Sometimes I think you love them more than you love me."

He bumps his head into her lightly, urging her without words to bend to his will. She cocks her head to the side, allowing him to drop his lips down to her neck, her shoulder. "Not possible," he mutters between soft kisses.

The sun slowly slides down behind the tree line, leaving thick swaths of pinks and purples along the horizon. Tessa curls a bit deeper into Bucky's chest when a cool gust of wind blows by, a sign that tonight – once the sun has completely set and stolen away with its glorious warmth until morning – will be a cold one.

An almost frail-sounding bleat comes from the pen in front of them, and she looks over to see Marty – Daryl's nearly two-week-old black and white kid – pacing nervously by the fence. "He doesn't like the dark," she mutters with a frown. Daryl struts over and nudges the tiny goat toward the stables, causing him to jump suddenly, all four legs bounding from the ground at once. Tessa leans her head back and lets out a full, wild laugh. "How is he so damn cute?!"

Bucky stops preying on her neck just long enough to look over at the goats and utter, "I don't know, baby."

"I don't want to sell him," she says then, reaching down and twining her fingers with his.

"You wanna be the one to castrate him?" he asks with a lilt. "Cause if not, we'll be overrun with kids."

Her voice is light and breathy as she leans back into him and says with a sigh, "That'd be so bad?"

He feels something twist and pull in his gut, a deep and odd sensation that quickly leads to an excited sort of tingle spreading throughout his body. His kisses stop. He places his chin atop her shoulder and bites down on his lower lip as he contemplates whether or not to say what he's so desperate to say… ask the question he's so terrified to ask. "I was thinking," he mutters finally, voice barely a whisper, his lips so close to her ear.

It's nearly dark now, the sun almost completely set, just a stunning half moon burning brightly overhead. She lets loose with an involuntary shiver despite no breeze blowing their way. "That's good to hear," she murmurs teasingly.

He pulls away a bit, nodding his head as he removes his chin from her shoulder and turns to peer out at the few goats still lingering outside the stalls, each being ushered in tight circles by Eddie, their oddball herding cat. "What if we had our own kid," he utters, his voice far more calm and stable than he imagined it being. "A human kid, I mean."

She stiffens only briefly, a wave of relief flowing through him when she lets out a light sigh in place of a sharp refusal. "I don't know that we could have a kid as cute as Marty."

He drops his forehead to the crook of her neck and laughs, his body jolting with one big guffaw. Slowly, he raises his head again and clears his throat. "Well, we could give it a shot. See what we get?"

"If it's not as cute as Marty, would you be open to selling it?"

"Probably not."

A tranquil silence washes over the pair as Bucky tightens his arms around Tessa just the slightest bit. Her thumbs glide lightly over the backs of his hands. The sounds of insects begin to echo in the distance, but the only thing he can here is her soft, easy breaths as she leans further into him. Her head rolls to the side, nuzzling into his collarbone. She lets her eyes drift shut as she feels his warm, tender, hopeful energy wrap around her. And she breathes out gently, "Okay."

And so, Reclamation ends.

I want to say thank you to everyone who reviewed... and everyone who simply stayed with me throughout this long and sprawling journey. I know this story was hella loooooong, but I just could not stop writing about Tessa and Bucky.

Part of me wants to leave them here, happy in their new life. After all, I think we all know what ends up coming to Wakanda in the end. Leaving them frozen in time like this feels fitting. And kind. But I do still have... thoughts and ideas. If anyone is still willing to read more - if I haven't exhausted you enough with the last 400,000-ish words - let me know, and their saga may continue...