Chapter Six
Soroya

"How was it?" Ana asks me, taking a bite of a turkey sandwich. It's lunch time at the prison, which consists of a sandwich, apple juice, and a chocolate chip cookie. She's given me the other half of her sandwich, it's actually not half bad. Bucky and the kids are at home trying to get some sleep, because we barley got any last night because of the party. I couldn't sleep though, so I decided to pay my friend a visit. I'm supposed to only come every six months, but the past few years I've been coming a bit more.

"The ceremony was beautiful and so was the party, Shuri outdid herself. I'm just so happy for Khari, he deserves this." I say, taking a bite out of my own sandwich.

"I bet your kids loved going back home. You said you haven't been back there in a few months."

"Both of them are so busy with school it's been hard to find time to go back. We all loved it, I miss Wakanda so much, Long Island doesn't compare even in the slightest."

"When Steve goes to college will you move back?"

I shrug, picking up the cookie off her tray and splitting it in half, giving one of those halves to her. "I don't know. I'd love to move back but I don't want to leave my kids...I guess I'll have to eventually, they're growing up."

I eat part of the cookie while I fish for my phone in my pocket, scrolling through the photos I took last night. I show some of them to her, which makes her smile, pointing out what I already know: "They definitely aren't kids anymore. How old are they?"

"Olivia is eighteen and Steve is sixteen."

Ana looks back and forth between a photo of Livy, taking another bite of her sandwich. "Your daughter looks just like you, except the eyes."

I smile at the picture before putting my phone back in my pocket. I haven't shown Ana pictures of the kids in a little while, and her reaction makes me say with a sigh: "I'm so proud of her and Steve, they are so smart and so wonderful, they have so much they want to do...but after this visit I'm really worried about them."

"Why?"

I'm not sure if she's seen the announcement on the news, so I decide to tell her everything in case she doesn't know. "Ross retired his position as Secretary of State, we met his replacement just before Khari's coronation."

Clearly Ana doesn't know, and she has the same reaction I had: "Holy shit. What's the new guy like?"

"His name is Daniel Fai. He has an extreme hatred for the enhanced, even more than Ross did."

Ana scoffs, eating the rest of her sandwich and dusting the crumbs off her hands. "I didn't even think that was possible. Do you know why?"

I nod. "Shuri found an old article that explained why. His wife and child were murdered by two enhanced individuals over a decade ago."

A sense of clarity rolls over Ana's features, her tone more serious as she follows my thought train: "You're worried about what Fai being in power will mean for your kids."

I nod again, leaning my head back against the wall. I've been sitting on Ana's bed with her, and when she sees my distress she places her hand over mine, her tone growing graver, darker as she says: "You're right to be worried about him. Because of what happened to his family, he thinks that every enhanced person is a demon sent from hell. He thinks you're all evil, he thinks that you're no different from the people who killed his family. And when you think that someone is pure evil, you can justify anything, you can justify doing the worst things imaginable in order to stop them, because in your mind you're doing what's right and they're the ones in the wrong."

I roll my head to the side to see her face, seeing it glazed over in deep thought. I know that when she says this, she's saying it from experience. "That's how you felt about me."

She didn't have to say it, I know that's what she meant. She squeezes my hand, letting out a sigh through her nose. "I did. I mean I had my powers that contributed to my blindness, but it was really my vengeance. I spent two decades obsessed with you, wanting to watch the life drain from you, wanting to make you feel a semblance of the pain I did. I justified doing horrible things in the name of killing you, things that will never leave me. In the name of revenge, I become the monster I thought I was trying to get rid of."

"You changed, Ana. You're not that person anymore."

"Because I got to know you," She explains. "After all the people I killed, after I hurt you, after I threatened to kill everyone you loved, you still helped me. No matter what I did you believed that there was good in me. The more you did for me and the more I got to know you, the harder it was to see you as the evil I thought you were. That forced me to work through my pain and confront what the real issue was, and it forced me to see that I was the evil one, not you."

"You're not evil."

"Tell that to the families of the people I slaughtered in order to get your attention. Tell that to the people who died during the experiments I put them through in HYDRA. But all that I did, I did with a limited amount of power, power I couldn't even control. Fai is the Secretary of State, he has five times the power I ever did, and probably twice the rage. I only targeted you, he's targeting an entire race of people."

"You saw the error of your ways, maybe there's a chance he will too."

"But how many people had to die in order for me to see the error of my ways? It took me years to realize that I was never angry at you, I was angry at Julian, and that I didn't blame you for his death, I blame HYDRA...and myself."

I shake my head, pushing myself off the wall and turning my body to face hers. "Julian's death wasn't your fault."

She nods slowly, her eyes growing misty. "Yes it was. I made him stay in HYDRA, I forced him to stay your trainer and tried to guilt him into kidnapping you so he could experiment on you and find a cure for me. I knew his heart wasn't in any of this and I didn't care. I was too selfish and he was too selfless. I was the one that gave myself the serum in the first place, and instead of trying to solve my own problem, I dragged Julian into this and blamed an innocent girl for what I caused."

"Listen to me," I plead, bringing my finger up to wipe a tear from her cheek. "Julian stayed in HYDRA and helped you because he loved you. HYDRA is all who is to blame for his death, not you. All these years and all of us are still trying to place blame on ourselves for what happened to him. What matters is that he saw what he was doing was wrong and tried to fix it, just like you did."

She sniffles softly and wipes her nose with her free hand, trying to take in a deep breath. "You have to ask yourself if you're willing to let countless innocent people die in order for Fai to come to his senses, because that's the only thing that will. How many people had to die for me to figure my problems out? How many men, women, and children did I slaughter to see a different path? How many will Fai go through before he does the same?"

"I have hope that he'll realize he's wrong before he gets too far."

Ana shakes her head, chuckling darkly to herself. "I know you see the good in everyone, but sometimes that good just isn't there. Feeling guilt and regret isn't enough to erase what I've done, it doesn't make me a good person, and having hope isn't enough to stop him from doing whatever he had planned."

"I've faced a lot," I assure her with a half smile. "I've been fighting since I was twelve, and I've never failed. In some of those fights all I've had is hope and I still triumphed. Sometimes hope is the best weapon we have against evil, and sometimes it's what we need to win."

Ana stares at me for a long pause, probably thinking I'm insane, but after a moment she reaches down and grabs onto the half of her cookie, taking a large bite, making her voice muffled as she says: "I have no room to argue with you, you defeated me after all."

I tilt my head and hum, beginning to shake my head. "Defeat is a strong word. I feel weird saying I defeated you."

"Why? You did," She says, gesturing to the room we sit in now. "I've been in a prison cell for twenty one years to prove it."

"You're my friend, I just feel weird saying that I defeated you."

"You and I have the strangest friendship that's ever existed," She says with an ironic shake of her head. "You realize that right?"

I shrug. "I guess, but I wouldn't have it any other way." I say, reaching forward and grabbing onto the apple juice, poking the straw through the top and holding it up towards her.

She bumps her half eaten cookie against the juice box, saying with a small smile. "Neither would I."