Closed to [Aliit_be_tad]

[make_it_hurt]

He honestly hadn't been expecting the invite back to Wakanda. After everything, he figured there wasn't a place for him anymore. He'd been allowed to be there in the first place because of T'Challa, and then there had been Thanos, and the blip, and then--- Well. He hadn't been waiting for an invitation.

But Shuri had extended one to him anyways. He had finished all his mandated therapy, had made his "amends", had done everything needed to keep him out of a prison cell the rest of his life (and he would have done almost anything to not end up back in a box), and she had turned up at his apartment. His small, underfurnished apartment. And he had just... agreed. He didn't have anywhere else to go. Sam was busy being Captain America, and he was honestly tired of being the sidekick for a while.

Packing took him only minutes, he hadn't yet gotten out of the habit of being ready to pick up and go within seconds, and then they were on their way.

The children in the village were older now, but they still knew him. They showed him the offspring of his goats, gave him back his walking stick, and Shuri had left him there.

It was nice. He could go days without thinking to check his phone, rising and sleeping with the sun, spending long hours sitting on the hillside. Nightmares came, but they also went. There was nothing around him to make them stick, no blaring car horns or flickering street lamps. There was, occasionally, the buzz of jets going overhead, but they were infrequent, this was a calm place of the country with little traffic.

Of course, it couldn't last. It never lasted.

Three months into restful nights and tiring days, he was startled out of his daydreaming by the loud, unfamiliar roar of an engine overhead. It was flying very low, and looked like no plane or jet he had seen before in Wakanda. Was it even Wakandan? It didn't look like it should have been able to fly.

Bucky stood, shading his eyes from the sun. The jet was losing altitude quickly, and the goats were bleating in panic. He whistled to send the village's herding dog after them before they ran into the bush and got lost, then turned to one of the children that had run after the noise. "Get inside," he told her. "Tell everybody to bring the animals in. I'll check it out."

It might be a new jet from another country still wanting to try to claim Wakanda for itself. Or it could be an alien, apparently those were getting more and more common all the time. Either way, he was the only one around equipped to handle it. Any military could arrive quickly, but he was here.

Bucky started off at a jog down the hill in the direction of the sleek metal ship, herding stick in hand.

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[aliit_be_tad]

It was supposed to be a routine trip to one of Mandalore’s neighboring systems. A trip that the Mand’alor probably shouldn’t have been taking alone, but Din Djarin had been surrounded by the same advisors and walls and planet for longer than his nerves could tolerate. A week he had spent coming up with every excuse of why it was better for him to go alone. Part of him wondered if they were worried he’d take off with Grogu and not so much as look back, but that didn’t do much to deter him. No one was happy with it, his riduur least of all. They hadn’t been separated from one another for more than a day since they retook their home world and Bo-Katan set Din on the throne— this trip was meant to take a week at the least, assuming his negotiating skills could be relied on.

But as stubborn as Bo-Katan, all his advisors, Paz, and his riduur were combined, Din managed to out bull-head them all. They were infuriated, but Din was driving himself crazy cooped up like he was.

He managed to bend just enough to allow a couple of escort ships to follow the N-1— the bare minimum he could get away with— and the stipulation that both the boys stay on Mandalore. Letting Grogu out of his sight and out of his reach was still something that didn’t come easy, but the ball of tension in his chest was eased some knowing he’d be with family.

Family.

Another thing he was getting used to. Another thing on the never ending list of things he was trying to adjust to.


The trip shouldn’t have taken more than a few hours in hyperspace.

He’d spent most of his life navigating hyperspace lanes. He knew the ins and outs of it like he knew his own ship, he could (and had) navigate it in his sleep. The first sign of something going wrong was the sudden jarring feeling of something hitting the ship— while still in hyperspace. It wasn’t supposed to be possible, one-in-a-trillion incidents that don’t just happen. There hadn’t been any time to dwell on the improbability of it, it was everything he could do to keep the ship from spiraling out of control. He was off-course, but there was nothing he could do about it, the best he could do was to keep the ship from tearing itself apart and it careened faster than light through hyperspace.

Something came loose, some ridiculous souvenir Bo-Katan had insisted he bring as a diplomatic gift— large, heavy, nearly hard as beskar, and propelled straight at his head.

Din woke up as the ship was spat out of hyperspace, too close to a small, blue and green planet to escape its gravitational pull in time. The ship’s systems were blaring warnings at him, and it was all he could do to keep the ship from falling apart. The descent was messy, sloppy, and the best that Din could pull off with his head pounding. If he’d woken just seconds later it would have been too late to salvage anything of the crash landing, but as it was, it was just barely enough.

The crash was hard. They always were, no matter how much beskar you wore, and this was no exception. His only saving grace was that he had found some soft ground to crash her in, and hopefully managed to avoid any collateral damage.


The moments just after crashing were patchy, not exactly helped by the head injury he already had. He groaned and shifted painfully in his seat, fumbling for the seat restraints, and trying to force himself to move to get out of the crumpled, wrecked piece of garbage.

Dank farrik, Peli was going to charge him a fortune to fix it this time.