Chapter 50
“You will leave these halls.” The group of Dora Milaje told Teddy insistently.
"No, I'd rather not."
“Why are you here." Shuri demanded of her brother’s enemy in their own palace.
“I was simply curious about the girl who could out-hack both my father and sister and very nearly out-hack the one and only Skyenet.” He said, leaning on the doorway of her lab.
“I’m twenty six, not a teenager.”
“So you are.”
“Teddy, we have Wakanda under siege, yet you go there nearly every day.” Hermione asked her older brother. “What exactly are you doing there? They haven't moved from their stance and their people, for all they’re rationing supplies, are still well supplied.”
“I’m trying to figure something out.”
“Something or someone?”
“You come here so often, yet you have yet to demand we submit.” Shuri noted as she heardTeddy walk into her lab yet again.
“You don’t have that power and your brother is even more stubborn than I am. He won’t move until you're all starving.”
“And you’re alright with causing my people to starve?!”
“You’re a scientist. Each action has an equal and opposite reaction. Politics is still a science in itself.”
“Then what do you come here for? To figure us out? If you wanted to burn Wakanda off the face of the earth, I know you could do it. We all do.”
“I won’t harm my own citizens for missteps of their direct leaders. I can afford to wait it out until you realize you don’t have the option of insubordination.”
“Or until your mother gets tired and starts drafting from my people for war.”
“There will be no unwilling soldiers. Asgard is in the process of surrender and my father is quite enjoying outdoing himself with the weaponry being sent to Vanaheim.”
“So then what do you want with Wakanda?”
“Earth is unified, and a throne can't stand on shifting sands. Earth is unified, a rebellion of a single state won’t change that.”
“Why is it that my lab is the place you come to every time?” Shuri asked.
“It could be the lack of passive aggressive Dora Milaje, or the fact this is the only place here I can find a person with a decent intelligence level.”
“So I have been downgraded to decent?” Shuri still disliked Teddy for what he was doing to her country, but she had started to see him as a person, a person whose goals were not only understandable but who she would even side with if Wakanda had not entered its third week of heavy rationing.
“If you stopped resisting you wouldn’t be,” he started, plopping down at one of her spare desks, “or if you actually opened your eyes to what you’re resisting other than the principle of it.”
“And how would I do that when you’ve locked down our borders.”
“Come with me, check out what you’re missing.” He offered, as he stood up, leaving her lab, stretching out his hand. Shuri knew he teleported, and that skin to skin connection was necessary to come with. His hand stayed stretched out for her to follow, and in the moment, Shuri decided to finally take a risk.
“There is a distinct pack of lavish extravagance here.” Shuri noted at her first view of the entrance hall of the place.
“There’s no need for it, this isn’t Asgard.” Teddy said. She let go of his hand. “Come on, I think there’s someone you’d get along a bit too well with.”
He led her to a lab where there was a biochem and engineering setup. They skipped that, because deep in the lab there was a very extravagant computer setup, where a young asian-looking woman was relaxing.
She saw Teddy and stood up, not too fast, but not slowly in the least. “A new assignment?” She asked.
“No. Just a fellow hacker that might actually challenge you.”
“Last time you said that your dad and sister teamed up with JARVIS to out hack me.”
“They didn’t get that far, you still have your darknet network. This is Shuri of Wakanda.”
“Skye Nikaia.” Skye stuck out her hand for Shuri to shake, which she did. “Also known as Skyenet.”
“You’re Skyenet? Second gen, I take it, given Skyenet has been active for 19 years now.”
“No, I started when I was 9, albeit clumsily.” Skye said. “And your servers are the first ones to give me a challenge in years.”
“I would say thank you but you got through anyway.”
“It took me four months for a single hack. I hacked Hamnertech when I was 12, it’s standard hacker trial by fire thing, and even considering they make weapons for the government, that hack only took me eleven weeks.”
“You Americans are strange.”
“We’re all Earthers now.” Teddy said. “Well, I’m sure one of you can initiate contact. You wanted to see exactly who you’re opposing.” Teddy told Shuri.
“You’ll take me into the belly of the beast?”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Have you never heard of a Trojan horse?”
“We’re not actively at war, and this isn’t ancient Troy.”
T’Challa walked into his sister’s lab to see her furiously working on something.
“What is it this time, Shuri?” He asked.
“Running a simulation.” She said, “Trying to prove the probability chances.”
“To whom?”
“Another hacker,” she waved him off.
“So are you still resisting?” Teddy asked, breaking off a piece of chocolate and popping it in his mouth.
“Are you doing that on purpose?”
“Eating chocolate in your palace when your stocks ran out over a month ago because your brother is too stubborn to give in?”
“That.” She huffed. “We’re all craving chocolate and you know it.”
“Yet neither Brazil, Switzerland, or America will sell to you because nobody sells to rebels.”
“You’re doing it on purpose.” She accused.
“Yes, yes I am.” He smirked. “Want some?”
She struggled to keep her face blank, but quickly gave in. “Yes, please.”
He broke off another small piece, popping into his mouth, and gave Shuri the rest of the bar, which was about half of the original left.
She smiled at him as she ate it, slowly and carefully. “It has been so,” she said, something Teddy assumed was a curse word in Wakandan, and would not be translated by the Allspeak implants Peter Quill made a fortune sourcing for Earth until FitzSimmons had managed to recreate them, “long.”
“It’s been a month. My little siege is only approaching its third.”
“Little?!” She glared at him. “Do you know how much your little siege is hurting the country?!”
“Yes, that is sort of the point.”
“Ugh! And you are simply standing there like that’s the best thing to do.”
“Would you rather I call in one of the Order’s legions and take examples from the Mongols, I’ll destroy your place until you give in? That’s not a good way to foster loyalty.”
“A large shipment of food was supposed to come in the day after you started, so we’re two weeks from the more financially strapped people dying from hunger!”
“I won’t let that happen. If it does, we’ll start an active siege, feed the people if they switch loyalties, or just get them to overthrow your brother. You’ve studied the art of ruling, you know how these things are done.”
“And I know you do not come to visit me simply for the pleasure of enjoying either intelligent or female company, you have plenty of either of those or both combined.”
“That I do. But your brother is too stubborn, and too much like,” he paused, thinking for a good comparison, “Thor.”
“But has he not been a successful king for many years now?”
“His reign won’t last much longer either, at least not as the head honcho. Both him and your brother are unsuited for a throne, for all both were raised for one.”
“And you are?”
Tedy gave her a smile that would put Mona Lisa to shame, such was it’s enigmatic nature. “It’s in my blood.”
“So it is in T’Challa’s as well.”
“You and your brother have the blood of a king who has served a peaceful nation, albeit one in hiding. I am living proof that it doesn't last.”
“Because someone like you always comes along.”
“Have you ever heard of another metamorphmagus?”
“That’s latin and greek and some other mish-mash in the roots.” Shuri paused to translate it. “Shapeshifter sorcerer?”
“Something along those lines, though not quite. You’re too young to remember, so am I, but there used to be a civilization quite like Wakanda. Hidden. Peaceful. Advanced. Removed from the rest of the world. They fell, I was an infant, my mother a teenager. There are some trials by fire where a person cannot escape without becoming a leader or falling. My mother didn’t fall, and I would rather not have a recreation of that to show that I can step up too. Your brother would not make it through such a trial, although even I won’t go so far as to orchestrate one.”
“And me?”
“You, I feel, are exactly the type of person who would not only survive such a thing, but come out stronger in the end. Your brother is suited to passive ruling. Like both my parents, unsuited for the nonstop attention, work, and distinct lack of freedom a throne requires. Like your father. For your father, that age of Wakanda lasted. Not anymore.”
“You want Wakanda to give in, and you're trying to set me up as a puppet ruler.”
“I don’t like the term puppet ruler. You’d be more like Tsarina Natalia. She rules her own lands on her own, with some orders from me once in a while, but overall, she can handle her own people.”
“Like Brant did.”
“Like Julia Brant did.”
“Is Dudley Dursley also a puppet ambassador, along with Hope Van Dyne?”
“Oh no, Dudley, that’s my mother’s cousin. He’s on a long-term vacation.”
“You trust me.”
“I took you into the belly of the beast, remember?”
“The Trojan horse.”
Teddy bent down to whisper in her ear. “Just remember, Lady Shuri, ruler of Wakanda sounds a lot better than Princess Shuri, chocolate-starved rebel against the rightful crown.”
He smirked, and she shivered at the warm breath on her ear. Then he tilerted her face, to meet her eyes, faces centimeters from each other. She was the first one to dive. Shuri had always been a risk-taker.
“Lady Shuri, ruler of Wakanda does sound quite nice.” Shuri agreed, when Teddy came around the next day, her hands still briefly touching her lips once in a while. Sure, Teddy's playboy phase had been plastered over all the tabloid headlines, but he also sure did know how to have her melt in his arms from a single kiss.
Okoye of the Dora Milaje pressed her spear to Shuri's throat as soon as Teddy popped out for the day.
Shuri didn’t speak, her throat barely catching enough air to stay conscious and thinking. “You are a traitor to Wakanda and to your brother.” She hissed.
“Okoye. Remove the spear from Shuri’s throat.” Ramona commanded, sweeping in every inch the Dora Milaje commander, instead of the Queen Mother she usually was.
Okoye reluctantly obeyed, the butt of her spear thudding against the floor. “My Queen.”
“Okoye, leave us.”
Yet again, the Dora Milaje reluctantly obeyed, as she left the Queen and Princess alone in Shuri’s lab.
“Shuri, why was Okoye calling you a traitor?”
“How am I to know? It is your own fault for making sure all the Dora are fanatically loyal to the throne rather than the people or Wakanda as a whole.”
“What do you mean by that, Shuri? The throne represents the nation and the people in it.”
“Does T’Challa? He is not flawless.”
“No, but he is your King, and he is my King, and he is also your elder brother, so you would do well to obey him.”
“I also know him. Very well, as do you, mother. And I know that he will never see that he is wrong until someone shoves it in his face with consequences that cannot be denied.”
Ramonda sighed. “You are not wrong, Shuri.”
“I’m right, and you know it.”
“You are right about T’Challa, but you can get those silly ideas about Wakanda bowing to the dictator who breaks into our palace on a daily basis.”
“He is not nearly as bad as you make him out to be. Teddy is a genuinely good person!”
“It’s Teddy now?”
“That’s his name, isn’t it?” Shuri asked, hands crossed over her chest.
Two weeks later, when Teddy brought Shuri with him to a feast, she realized it was in her honor. For her birthday. It would have taken T’Challa another few hours to remember.
“Thank you, Teddy.”
“Your welcome.” He paused. “Shuri, you know how you said Lady Shuri, ruler of Wakanda sounds nice?”
“Yes? But not at the price of T’Challa. I have no qualms about replacing him, but he will not be hurt.”
“Of course not. However, I was thinking, Queen Shuri of Earth sounds even better.”
A smile grew on her lips. “Yes, yes it does. Are you proposing we make that happen?”
“Lady Shuri of Wakanda, would you do me the honor of one day becoming Queen Shuri of Earth, right by my side?”
“Yes, that sounds like something to look forward to.”
“Shuri, since when is there a diamond ring on your ring finger?” T'Challa asked at dinner the next day, confused.
“Since yesterday.” She replied bluntly, then went back to swirling her soup from a can around in her bowl. She missed the feast from the day before.
“And where did you get that ring yesterday?” Ramonda asked.
“From Teddy.” Shuri said, taking a gulp of the soup and grimacing at it's tastelessness.
“And Teddy would be…” Ramonda asked, to confirm her suspicions. She noted Okoye's spear lift off the ground.
“Edward Stark I, King of Earth. Do we know any other men who go by Teddy?”
“He is no King of Earth and you are a fool if you acknowledge that. A naive fool, because words have power.” Ramonda admonished.
“I know, mother.” Shuri replied, her hand on the table. "why do you think I'm wearing his ring?"
T'Challa's racing thoughts finally caught up with him. “You… you're…. He…” so his mouth had not quite caught up with his mind.
“Why does a woman wear a diamond ring from a man?” The ring was a gold band, with a large diamond in the center, surrounded on both sides by two smaller, red diamonds, separated from rubies by their deep color and much higher price and rarity.
“Under ordinary circumstances it is to denote an engagement.” Ramonda started.
“Well yes,” Shuri agreed.
“That's not possible.” T'Challa insisted.
“Why not?”
“Because he's the dictator who wants to destabilize our nation, that's why!”
“He's also a man, and he also, unlike you, a person willing to use his vast resources for the betterment of the greater good.”
“Shuri, and where do you fit within that greater good?”
“According to when he asked me yesterday, right at his side. You know, it would be interesting to have a last name as per western traditions, especially one so that my initials match.” Shuri mused.
“Shuri, this is insanity.”
“Much worse has been done for the allure of a crown, T’Challa, surely you would know that? Or were you not the one who killed our cousin when he threatened to take the crown out from under your feet over Baba’s grave?”
T’Challa froze. “That is in the past.”
“And this is in the future.” Shuri said calmly. “Starks have always been said to be the world’s best, or first, depending on who you ask, futurists.”
“Shuri, I forbid you from going through the insanity of actually marrying Edward Stark!” Ramonda exclaimed, for the first time voicing what exactly Shuri was going to do.
“You know me, mother, T’Challa. I’m going to do it anyway. Good luck trying to stop me. You’ll need it.”
“Well, nice to meet you, Lady Shuri.” Lilith greeted her future daughter-in-law.
“Pleased to meet you too,” Shuri didn’t add a title because she didn’t know which one to use.
After meeting her future mother-in-law, Shuri enjoyed mingling at the party with Teddy, as all the people congratulated them on the match.
When Peter was checking the mail arriving at his dorm room, he froze.
“What is it, Bro?” Ned asked.
Peter slowly, carefully peeled open the envelope made of parchment so smooth and ancient it looked like it belonged in a museum. “Invitation…” his eyes widened, as he continued reading, “To the wedding of King Edward I of Earth and Lady Shuri of Wakanda. Dress Code: Ultra Formal. In 6 months. Make sure to RSVP. Plus One Allowed.”
“Dude.”