"A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is."

Jim Morrison

Ophelia could see Bucky was holding back from careening through the dining room towards her. She nibbled her lip, glancing at M'Baku and Cebisa before they both gave her a little nod. She rose and walked around the massive table, approaching Bucky. There were a million things he was trying not to say, yet his eyes said everything.

"Hey, I'm here," she whispered so only he could hear, though she suspected that T'Challa heard too, but was polite enough to pretend as though he didn't.

"Good evening, M'Baku, Cebisa," T'Challa said. "I apologize for interfering with your meal, but White Wolf was deeply concerned."

Bucky's facial features twitched ever so slightly; he clearly did not want to be seen as the man who panicked when Ophelia wasn't around. He didn't want to be seen as paranoid, but after all they had gone through, it was deeply embedded in them in ways that could not easily be undone. Ophelia slipped her hand in Bucky's to show him she was there, physically there. After what he went through with Thanos, after Ophelia got inside his head and saw all that, she knew he was struggling to figure out what was real, and what was all in his head.

He had suffered such once before, when HYDRA tried their hardest to make sure Bucky, or as he was known to them as The Winter Soldier, never remembered Ophelia or Steve. His inner turmoil fighting with his hardened exterior, he suffered trying to figure out what was real. But he had gotten through that, Ophelia had witnessed memories come flooding back. If he could get through that, he could overcome what Thanos did to him, she just had to help him through it. She squeezed his hand, hoping it conveyed everything she was thinking, but knowing they would need to talk soon.

"It is late, the children should be getting ready for bed anyways," M'Baku said and both his children groaned and began to protest. He gave them a sharp look and they lolled their heads back in complaint. "Little Wolf and White Wolf can stay the night, if they would like."

"Please, please!" Both the children exclaimed in unison. They rushed to Ophelia and Bucky and tugged at their hands. "Stay!"

"It's a long journey home," Ophelia said, glancing at Bucky. His tense body could be read by everyone in the room.

"We have a jet," Bucky replied, still distracted even as the kids scurried off when Cebisa called to them.

"Bucky," Ophelia said sternly. "Let's rest here, we can walk down the mountain in the morning together. It'll be good for us."

He nodded. Then, as though relaxed, he asked, "Why Little Wolf?"

M'Baku grinned wide. "Because she is little."

"Why White Wolf?" Ophelia asked.

T'Challa and M'Baku glanced at each other. M'Baku said, "Because he is white."

***

Within half an hour, they were set up in a large, open-concept room that overlooked the mountain. It appeared everything in the mountainous home of the Jabari tribe was open to the elements, and yet with roaring fires and unlimited blankets draped over every piece of furniture, it was never cold. Ophelia showered and put on a soft robe that felt as though it was made out of what clouds looked like. She was lost inside the warmth of it, the bulk nearly swallowing her. She watched the stars glittering in the sky when she felt Bucky wrap his arms around her stomach.

His head propped on her shoulder, breath on her neck. Ophelia leaned into him, giving all of her affection to him, letting it swell up in the room and take over.

"The stars were given names, weren't they?" Ophelia recalled a long time ago, reading a book Zola had given her. Astronomy, but she never understood it fully.

"Mhm," Bucky replied. "But these stars, even though I lived under them for a while, they're different than the ones from h-" he stopped himself. America had not been his home for a long time. "From a long time ago."

Ophelia turned to face Bucky, still wrapped in his arms and feeling at ease. She could feel his panic, just swimming underneath his flesh. She knew that she had to do something about it.

"I know what you're going to say," Bucky said, looking into her green eyes. He reached his hand up and brushed her wet hair behind her ear.

She met his gaze and smiled a crooked little grin. "Are you in my head?"

He chuckled, his shoulders losing most of their tension. His hands lowered and he rested them upon her hips. She felt so full, so perfectly shaped in his grasp. He recalled many times when she was thin and sickly, when he first met her, when she suffered through withdrawal on their escape from America to Romania. Now she felt full, she felt so human in his hands. This thought grounded him, made him realize that she was truly there.

"What am I going to say?" she whispered.

"That I'm losing control."

"I've seen you lose control, Bucky," she told him, though not to make him hurt at the memory of all the times he was The Winter Soldier. "This is different."

"I feel different. This feels different."

The words were like jagged nails digging into Ophelia's skin, dragging down her body and shredding her. Her face remained stoic -though she was someone who let emotion guide her, right in that moment she couldn't let Bucky see how much those words hurt her. Ophelia had been gone for eight years, Bucky had endured much of that without her. But Ophelia had never lived without Bucky, and so she did not truly understand what he felt having her back.

"You're scared," she said, "of losing me again."

"Yeah." His thumb grazed over her hip. Underneath his thumb he could feel the bump of the bullet hole. His doing.

"Think of all the times we defeated the odds, Bucky."

"It's not that simple."

Ophelia narrowed her eyes. "I was sent out to find you when you fell from the freight train. Do you want to know what I thought when I first laid eyes on you?"

"What?"

"I thought you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. Maybe somewhere deep down I knew you'd be the one to save me. Wishful thinking, but that was all I had before you. Even that... I was drained of all hope because I never had the chance to understand freedom. Not until you showed up. Over seventy years we were torn apart, broken down to the shells of human beings, and yet we broke through. We always will, Bucky, we have to."

"I know you're right." He didn't make eye contact. "You put me up on this pedestal, O, one that I'm not sure I deserve. I mean, I couldn't keep you safe. I couldn't ever give you a normal life. I feel like I failed time and time again. I broke you in the past, with my own hand, my own fingers pulling the trigger. Sometimes I see you, and I see myself as the Winter Solider in Washington pulling the trigger, gun pointed at your head and O... I can't overlook what I've done.

"I broke you, and when you left, I felt like you broke me in return. I felt like I finally got what I deserved for everything I did, not just to you, but to everyone. To Howard Stark, someone who was my friend, to Maria Stark, to everyone else I killed for HYDRA. But it's more than that. I can't trust myself, and I can't trust that you truly exist because I know you died. I know that you..." his words fell apart.

Ophelia was rigid, terrified of what Bucky was saying to her.

"But... Steve brought me back. I was there, on that place... Vormir... I..."

"Tell me I'm being an idiot."

"You're being an idiot." Ophelia wiped tears from her eyes and forced a smile onto her lips. "Let me prove to you that I am real, Bucky."

"Okay," he breathed.

Ophelia got up on her tippy-toes and kissed his lips as she'd done a million times before. Her hand placed atop his shoulder to hold herself steady. The weight she pushed down onto him was proof she was real. 

The feel of her tongue sliding along his lip proved that she was real. 

When she peeled off the robe she was wearing and revealed her body, scars and age-old wounds on full display, she proved she was real. 

As she wrapped her legs around his body and they collapsed to the bed, she proved she was real.