The White Wolf

IX

Ava kept her eyes on him, her pencil making a light tapping sound on her notebook as she bounced it off the page in thought. Her weight shifted over her feet, her elbows leaned on a table-top while Shuri studied a hologram of a brain beside her. Barnes's brain. 

She peered into the glass through the small crystals of ice at his sleeping form, tracing the curves of his shoulders and chest, glancing back to his face every now and then. He was unchanged from when he went in. His dark hair was tucked behind his ears, and a tiny scratch still flawed his cheekbone. "You aren't much help." Shuri said, her eyes focused on her work.

Ava blinked out of her small trance and looked at Shuri, standing upright and straightening out her spine. "Sorry, sorry." She apologized and looked back at the former soldier again. "I just, uh..."

"I know." Shuri chuckled with a quick glance at her friend.

Before either of them could speak again, each of their bracelets of Kimoyo beads beeped with an alert. "Okoye is calling." Ava said, holding up her wrist to answer the general, Shuri placing her wrist next to Ava's to combine the hologram of Okoye's face that sprung up from the beads. "General." Ava said.

"Princess, and Ava." Okoye greeted, nodding to each of them. "A meeting is being called in the throne room, someone unexpected popped up on our radar." She said. 

Shuri frowned, her brow pulling together. "Who?"

Okoye smirked and ended the conversation, her hologram disappearing from their sight. Ava sighed and looked at Barnes again, biting her lower lip. She wished she could stay there with him, but there was nothing she alone could do to help him. "I suppose we should go." She sighed. 

"He will still be here when we return." Shuri grinned, closing down her work. "I am making progress on his reprogramming." 

A smile graced Ava's lips. "Good." She said, following Shuri through the exit of the lab. "That's good. He and the Captain with be thankful." Ava kept her eyes on the floor in front of her as they walked, her hands fiddling at her sides nervously.

"And I think you will too." Shuri teased, noticing Ava's body language and elbowing Ava in the side. "You have a crush on him, do not even deny it."

Ava's cheeks flared pink and she rolled her eyes, shaking her head. "I don't know." She said. "I hardly know him, and he definitely doesn't really know me."

"So?"

"So it's best I just stay focused on helping you fix him."

***

T'Challa sat in his well-earned throne with his mother at his side, W'Kabi seated at his other side. Shuri sat beside her mother and Ava was across from her beside W'Kabi. The elders sat around them as well, Okoye standing in the middle of the room as she gave her information to the group. "A misidentified Wakandan artifact was stolen yesterday from a British museum." Okoye said as she brought up a hologram image of a grizzly looking man. He was rodent-like in his features, and broad shouldered, weapons in his hands. A man nearly all Wakandans had heard of. Klaue. "We have learned Ulysses Klaue plans to sell the vibranium to an American buyer in South Korea tomorrow night."

"Klaue has escaped our pursuits for almost thirty years." T'Challa said. He stared at the hologram quizzically, gears turning in his mind to decide on his plan of action. "Not capturing him is perhaps my father's greatest regret. I wish to bring Klaue here to stand trial." He declared.

Queen Ramonda shook her head quickly, staring at her son with pleading eyes. Klaue was a very dangerous man, and T'Challa was a new king, and always her son whom she would love with all of her being. "Wakanda does not need a warrior right now. We need a king."