When Sparks Fly

Ayo

The flight to Riga, Latvia, takes us a couple hours, so Phebs takes the time and sleeps, leaning against my chest as she does, I can tell she wakes up every now and then, but I don't move so she can go back to sleep. When we land Zemo leads us through the beautiful streets. "I heard what became of Sokovia. Cannibalized by its neighbors before the land was cleared of rubble, erased from the map. I don't suppose any of you bothered visiting the memorial?"

Phoebe looks around and nods, "I did, a few summers ago. It was very moving."

"Ah," Zemo looks back to her, "what about you two?" Sam and I stay quiet, "of course not. Why would you?" Zemo stops outside of a building, "we are here."

I slow down as Sam, Zemo and Phoebe start toward the entrance of the building, "I'm gonna go for a walk."

Phoebe turns and walks back to me, "you want me to go with you?"

"Nah, you should stay with Sam and Zemo. Give em back up if they need it."

"Are you sure? Is everything alright?"

"Yeah. I'll see you in a bit," I kiss her forehead.

She shrugs as she turns back to Sam and Zemo, before the three of them head inside. I wait until they're inside before I pick up a bead on the ground. Not just any bead, but a Kimoyo Bead. I look around, hearing a small beeping noise which leads me to another bead, I to look around to make sure Phoebe hasn't decided to join my little walk even though I asked her not to. If it means making sure I'm okay that girl would go to hell and back and I don't deserve her. I pick up the second bead and look around again, before heading down the alley it leads into. "You dropped something," I hold up one of the beads. It doesn't take me long to find who had left them, Ayo, one of the Dora Milaje. "I was wondering when you were gonna show up."

"I'm here for Zemo," Ayo answers me in Wakandan. Ayo had been one of those who had helped me leave the life of the Winter Soldier behind. She walks up to me, this time speaking in English, "how could you free him?"

"We need his help."

Ayo begins to walk around me, "with time, will, and the resources, the Winter Soldier programming was removed from you like a rotten fur."

"And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for everything you and Shuri have done..." As I say this my mind drifts back to when I first saw Phoebe. It wasn't on a battlefield or when she rolled up with Steve. It was while she was spending the afternoon with a few of her Wakandan friends after one of them just had a baby. The three of them were sitting in a field, close to my hut, the two mothers playing with the older two children, while Phoebe held and played with the baby. I remember her smiling down to it, mimicking it's facial expressions and laughing when the baby would smile, while her dark locks flowed in the wind. Over the next few weeks, before she went back to the states, I would watch the Dora Milaje train with her, both doing everything they could to help better the other. Even though most of what Phoebe was doing was upping their pain tolerance. Shuri had told me about her after she caught me watching her from a distance, but I never got the guts to talk to her, not until she came back with Steve and by then she was looking at him the way Peggy looked at him, like he was the only man in the world.

Ayo brings me out of my day dream with a rough and angry tone, "Zemo murdered our King T'Chaka at the U.N. The man who chose us. Who chose me to protect him."

I look back over my shoulder to Ayo, who hasn't quite made a full circle around me, "I understand."

"Very little, if anything, of our loss and our shame."

I look down, taking a deep breath, when I speak again it is in Wakandan, "he's a means to an end."

I look back up to Ayo, who is now finishing her circle around me, she nods, "eight hours, White Wolf. Then we come for him." She holds out her hand and I return the beads she had placed in my path. Once I return them Ayo turns and leaves.