"We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated"

Maya Angelou

Seated in the sunshine, Ophelia's skin prickling with sensation, she simply couldn't take her eyes off Bucky. No matter how beautiful Wakanda was, there was nothing more beautiful to her than him. In Wakanda for a few days now, Ophelia started to develop new and old habits, getting back into her way of life before she died. Still a concept she couldn't truly understand, she accepted the chance she was given by Steve. Reaching her hand out, she held onto Bucky's, pulling him out of a dazed state.

"You know, I've been through this before," Bucky said suddenly after half an hour of the silence between them. Only the gentle winds that caused the tall grass to lean made any noise. They were miles away from the bustling city, overlooking a lake from Bucky's small cabin.

"What?" Ophelia asked, hoping to nudge his thoughts from his head because she could not glance in there anymore. It pained her to not be able to use her powers, and yet, she never used them on Bucky unless she had to. Letting him explain things to her, letting him speak, that was worth more than her power.

"This," he gestured, "all of this. You being here, alive..."

She pressed her lips tight together, not understanding.

"Thanos..." Bucky started.

Ophelia remained quiet as to not disturb his train of thought. She had to let him speak, she had to understand exactly what was troubling him. For the last few days of her new existence, she felt a strange distance between them. Something she had never felt before, and it made her ache in ways that no bullet or broken limb could cause. No carvings upon her stomach could make her feel the way this made her feel.

"He got inside my head, O. During that fight five years ago... He looked inside my head and saw you. Even in there, I couldn't protect you, O. I felt like... He invaded my mind, he violated my memories. Now all I can see is... You, waking up from the hospital when I knew you'd died. In my head, I lived out a year with you. I woke up next to you, I made love to you, I felt your hands on my skin... Part of me knew it wasn't real, and yet I clung onto it as if it was. Then I was ripped out of it, but I wasn't free from it. Even though minutes later, I... died... When I came back, when you came back, I still can't wrap my head around it."

Ophelia slowly nodded, taking in every word he said. Knowing that Bucky was conflicted, confused about what was real and what was a product of Thanos, it was the first step in helping him. Though she knew little to nothing about Thanos, she was not there for that fight, she never experienced an existence where Thanos was present, she knew Bucky. She knew his head and how it worked, she knew how to tweak a few things here and there to help him come to terms with what was in there.

"Back in the motel, all those years ago, when you were still trying to figure out who you were, how you knew Steve... There was a point where I thought you'd never remember me. You asked me if I loved you like a friend, like Steve loved you. I knew then that I had to accept that you'd never remember me, that HYDRA had done something to those memories. I hoped maybe if you got to know me from that moment on, you'd fall in love with me, but I knew deep down without you remembering what we went through together it would never be the same.

"But you did. You did remember it. Because you've always broken down those barriers that were put up." She paused to take a breath, composed herself, controlled the flooding of emotion inside of her. "I need you to promise me, like you did before, you'll never put walls up against me... Bucky, you promised me that in the motel."

Looking down at the grass, Bucky pulled his hand away from Ophelia's and wrapped his arms around his knees. Allowing him the time to process her words was painful, because Ophelia was terrified of the distance that he was placing between them.

"I need you to see it," Bucky said. "So that... So that you can tell me when something is real and when something is not."

Ophelia bit the inside of her cheek; the thought of feeling what Bucky felt was too much. Having looked into Steve's head when he brought her back on Vormir using the Soul Stone, she felt pure agony like never before. She was terrified, but if it helped get Bucky back to the person she remembered, she would take that risk.

Rolling over so that she was on her knees before him, Ophelia unwrapped his hands that were tightly grasping his knees. He allowed her to do this, allowed her to do whatever she wanted to him as though he were a puppet and she his master. Close to him as possible, she snaked her hands up underneath his hair line, letting her fingertips tickle his scalp. His blue eyes closed and that's when Ophelia kissed him -it was always the best way to get into his head, when they added that level of physical touch.

What she saw ripped through her in a rapid succession. There was her near-lifeless body being carried out of Siberia by Steve, one-armed Bucky begging T'Challa to save her.

"She's all I have."

Bucky talking to her while she was attached to tubes and machines, the dull pulsing sound of machinery. Then her death, the final moment before those machines went silent. She watched as Bucky rose, touching her face, calling her name, begging for her to come back. She watched as doctors flooded in, as Steve lunged for Bucky to stop him from exploding. But Bucky shoved Steve away, pushed a doctor to the ground, machines and chairs were upended in the skirmish. Until Steve got hold of Bucky, trapping his single arm against his body, pulling him out of the hospital room.

Once away from Ophelia, Bucky collapsed.

Ophelia saw Bucky coming to terms with it a few hours later, after he had to be sedated to keep him calm. She watched as he chose the cryogenic chambers because living a life without her wasn't worth it in that moment -it was too painful. Ophelia watched as Bucky woke many months later, pulled from sleep by Shuri; she watched as he suffered dream after dream, until he was given something to stop those dreams.

Then she entered his memory, the false memory implanted by Thanos. She watched as everything she had just seen now made no sense, as she herself woke from her comatose state. Before her was the life that they had not yet lived, how it all played out, how real it all felt. She felt the pain Bucky felt as he saw flickers of red, telling him it was all fake. It throbbed painfully in her skull until it became unbearable, until it ripped through her.

Then she was pulled out of his head, Ophelia opened her eyes, and she was lying flat on the grassy field again, in real time. Bucky was leaned over her, shaking her, his mouth moving but Ophelia could not hear the words he was saying. The throbbing was so loud, the splitting pain in her head was unbearable.

Slowly the pain ebbed, as it did on Vormir, and she could hear Bucky calling her name.

She blinked a few times, pupils fluctuating to adjust to the bright sun overhead. Moaning in pain, she slowly sat upright and Bucky quickly wrapped his arms around her.

"O, what happened?" His voice was filled with terror and desperation.

"Uhm," she mumbled. "New side effect..."

"To what?" Bucky pulled back to look at her, placing his hand upon her cheek. Ophelia felt the sensation of his love slowly trickle through, easing the pain, making her feel whole again.

"My power... I think... It was the price the Soul Stone demanded," she explained briefly what she knew. What Steve believed.

"Why did you do it then?" he asked, exasperated.

"You asked me," she said, rubbing the side of her head. "Now I know."

"It's not worth it," he pleaded.

"I don't care what physical pain I go through, if it helps you through what you're going through, I'd do it again," she told him. "Now I've seen it, now I can help you, hopefully."

"Come on." He kissed her temple. "Let's get you to Shuri."