The Liberty War || Infinity War & Endgame

Chapter One: The Dream Is Collapsing

Music is "Hurricane" by Tommee Profitt feat. Fleurie.

Picture is Tatiana Maslany as Emma Barnes.

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This chapter is dedicated to the amazing CaroDelMonte , who created each of the covers for this entire series, including this amazing cover. Thank you so much, Caro!

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CHAPTER ONE: The Dream Is Collapsing

I wait for the dreams to come.

No, not dreams. Nightmares. The place I go when I'm in a comatose state, hibernating and healing after death. I wait for them for what seems like an eternity, though I can't say exactly how long I wait because time is of no consequence here in my mind.

But they never come, and I realize that I'm not in my usual immortality coma. I'm frozen in stasis, still safe in Wakanda. Just like Bucky.

Bucky.

Consciousness isn't the same here. Here, I live in the dreamworld, a place I haven't visited in many years. It's a happy place where my mother and father never died, where no one was lost to a war, where I got to live the life I should have in Brooklyn with the love of my life. It doesn't matter if I stay here for another seventy years, awaiting Shuri to find a cure for Bucky and I. I could stay here forever.

None of it is real, and for the first time, I'm okay with that.

But nothing lasts forever. I feel something. Warmth. Electricity. A silent shiver that runs down my spine. Hot and cold simultaneously.

And I hear something, too. I hear a buzz in my ears, then the roar of an engine, then after that a rev whir of gears shifting around me. The sound of a fire is particularly upsetting.

I see a light. A fiery blaze across the horizon of my mind. It's sharp and cutting, burning my eyes. But I can't be seeing a light or feel it's sting. My eyes are closed. I'm in the ice, in stasis.

I am ice.

The ice vibrates, shaking the earth that is my dreamworld.

That can't be. I did not feel that. It didn't happen. It's just my imagination running wild after God only knows how long in the ice. I didn't just feel warmth or electricity. I didn't hear a buzz or whir or rev of anything other than what I made up inside my mind. There is no fire. There is no light. There is nothing but ice and dreams and peace.

A click, a creak, a crackle.

My body slips. Just a fraction of a millimeter, but it slips.

The ice is melting.

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The next period of time is spent in a state of mind that can only be described as panic. I am no longer consumed with my dreamworld, of my parents and family that I've left behind. A wave of alertness and anxiety roars over me, consuming me. There's nothing I can do. I can't move, can't fight, can't shout for help.

All I can do is stay conscious and wait. Wait for one of two things to happen.

Either the ice will melt and I will escape, maybe with the help of Shuri who has taken me out of stasis on purpose.

Or this is all some terrible accident, and I will drown as the ice slowly melts.

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