The King: T'Challa.

Chapter 6: James Buchannan Barnes

The apartment was spare, almost austere. Bare walls, a table pushed against the window, the faint trace of metal polish and gun oil hanging in the air. It looked less like a home and more like a place someone passed through—a man on the run, never quite stopping long enough to unpack his ghosts.

Emily's eyes wandered to the refrigerator. A handful of photographs clung to the door, curled at the edges. Most were impersonal—landscapes, grainy prints that could have been lifted from a magazine. But one photograph stopped her cold. Black and white. Faded. She knew it immediately. Bucky and herself, caught on film just before the mission to Wakanda. His arm around her shoulders, both of them unsmiling but standing as though they belonged together. She touched the edge of the picture lightly, the air caught in her chest.

Sam's voice crackled over the comms. "Heads up, Cap. German special forces are approaching from the south."

"Copy that," Steve murmured, though his attention wasn't on the warning. He was watching the man seated across the small room.

"Do you know me?" Steve asked, his voice low, cautious.

Emily turned, her heart kicking. The reply came, voice roughened with distance, but still his.

"You're Steve." Bucky's tone was flat, deliberate. "I read about you. In a museum."

Sam again: "They've set the perimeter."

Emily studied him, the man she had once known so well. His words were steady, but his eyes betrayed him. They shifted too quickly, wouldn't hold hers. It was the same look he used to give before a lie. She knew it instantly.

"You don't believe that yourself," she said quietly.

For the briefest moment, his gaze met hers—sharp, startled, like she had stepped too close to a wound he thought hidden. Then his mask returned.

"I wasn't in Vienna," he muttered. "I don't do that anymore."

"They're entering the building," Sam reported.

Steve stepped forward. His voice was calm, but his body was coiled, ready. "The people who think you did are almost here. And they're not planning to take you alive."

Bucky gave a small, humorless laugh. "That's smart. Good strategy."

Emily felt her chest tighten. The way he said it—like it was inevitable, like his own death was an acceptable outcome—hit her harder than she expected.

"Don't," she snapped, sharper than intended.

His head turned toward her, confusion flickering in his expression, something almost—recognition? But before anything more could pass between them, the door buckled under an explosive charge.

The room erupted.

Special forces poured through, weapons raised. The apartment was suddenly too small, the walls echoing with shouts and gunfire. Bucky moved with terrifying efficiency, catching one soldier and hurling him through plaster as though the man were weightless.

"Buck, stop!" Steve's voice rang over the chaos. His shield caught a bullet mid-flight. "You'll kill someone!"

"I'm not killing anyone!" Bucky's answer was quick, fierce, as he drove another soldier to the ground.

Emily ducked a strike, twisting her body against the stairwell railing as the fight spilled downward, each landing a crash of bodies, steel, and splintered wood.

By the time they broke into the street, Bucky was already vaulting to the opposite building with inhuman agility.

Emily landed hard, forcing herself to keep pace. Steve was close behind.