all the stars are closer (do the feelings haunt you?)
The second time Shuri wakes, twilight is creeping closer and her stomach rumbles with hunger from sleeping all day.
Grief still sits heavy as if W’kabi’s rhino, M20, was pressing on her chest. That familiar lump of emotion sits at the back of her throat. Peering around her room, she notices that her environment is still the same. She is still in her bedroom in Wakanda. It was not a dream. Even worse, she is being toyed with by their panther goddess. However, joy and hope bleed into her chest. Hope that she tries to shove down with the reality that her family could still be taken from her at any moment. Umama was alive. T’Challa was still alive. She had a second chance.
Her fingernails dug into her palms and the pain cements the fact that this is her new reality. Her hands brush her earlobes and she clicks her tongue in dissatisfaction that her 18 year old self does not have her ears pierced. Shuri pushs back the panicfearragegrief to the back of her mind and encloses it in a mental vibranium box.
She can not afford to break even more now. She is broken but still able to fight.
Only the most broken people can be great leaders. Shuri shoves Namor’s voice away. Her teeth bite her lower lip viciously, almost drawing blood and the pain grounds her.
Padding toward her closet, she grabs a change of clothes that includes a slightly white oversized jacket that read “Don’t be so salty” with the periodic elements of sodium and chlorine and slightly baggy blue jeans.
Stripping down to her undergarments, she scours her body to see a familiar landmark of birthmarks and scars. Her mind jolts as her hand gently rubs the half dollared sized jagged scar tissue that had healed from Namor’s spear piercing her abdomen. A matching scarred exit wound marred her back. It seems that even though she was in her 18 year old body, there were remnants of her 21 year old self. Scars from the Battle of Mount Bashenga, the Battle of Earth and more recently from Namor and the Talokanil littered her body. Already a part of her mind was racing with thoughts of how to hide or cover up the scars. 18 year old Shuri was still just a soft, spoiled scientist. A genius scientist on par with the most intelligent humans in the world but still not a full fledged Wakanda Warrior. Her combat and martial arts training was enough to survive the previous battles but fear coats the back of her tongue at how outmatched she had been in her battle with Namor.
T’Challa had been trained as a warrior and heir apparent. She had always relied on her technology and had rather use her intelligence and wits to defeat enemies. Her mouth twists into a bitter frown. She never could fathom a future where her brother wasn’t king. Where he was never alive. Anguish bubbles up from her stomach but she clenches her teeth and takes a deep breath, releasing her emotions out. She would have to change that.
The familiar scar on her forehead makes her lips twist in a small grin. She had gotten it when T'Challa was babysitting her when she was 5 and he was 17. She had always been a curious, inquisitive and precocious child and she definitely had T’Challa wrapped around her finger by then. She had managed to convince him to bring her to the Wakandan Design Group labs. He had only turned away from a second but by then, Shuri had managed to trip and cut her forehead open on the edge of a counter. Like any other child that had managed to hurt themselves, Shuri had started bawling. T’Challa completely freaked out and most of it was a blur of panicked adults, attempts to soothe her and it wasn’t until she was in T’Challa’s arms, did she quiet down. Her Baba and Mama had given T’Challa a compassionate but stern lecture of the balance between protection versus indulging Shuri’s demands. T’Challa had felt so guilty and remorseful that Shuri was able to make T’Challa her test dummy whenever she hobbled together an invention. Every since that day, T’Challa had never stopped getting Shuri out of trouble.
Shucking on her clothes, she glances at the weather, date and agenda listed on the mirror and takes a steadying breath. Doing the mental math in her head, it was 3 months until T’Challa returned home after the Sokovia Accords and. . . Baba’s death. Currently, T’Challa was hunting for Baba’s killer. An old grief grips her heart tightly but she soldiers on. 3 months until T’Challa has his coronation ceremony and she would have to fix Broken White Boy #1. Broken White Boy #2 would come later. In those 3 months, she would have to figure out what Bast did and what was the price of her prayers being answered. She would also have to increase her combat training, fortify Wakanda’s defenses, create multiple contingencies for the future and somehow flip N’Jadaka to be on their side. She would have to escape the War Dogs, her royal guard and her fellow scientists notice in order to achieve her mission to save her brother and Wakanda. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
At the thought of her cousin, her blood boils and her teeth clench. A small, rational part of her knew that N’Jadaka was not wrong about Wakanda’s capability. Neither was Nakia in how much good Wakanda could do for the rest of the world. Bitterness twists within her gut. Wakanda was no longer the only nation with vibranium. Was it strong enough to protect itself?
She remembers how N’Jadaka’s ferocious presence stalked toward her in the ancestral plane as his phantom voice rings in her mind.
You chose me. I took it to avenge my ancestors too.
I’m nothing like you, she had adamantly denied. Nothing like the bloodthirsty warmonger and ursurper. False King.
Are you going to be noble like your brother or take care of business like me.
For a second, she sees Namor’s determined, furious and vengeful face threatening to bring back his army as her dead mother lays drowned and broken. You are Queen now. Rage lights her veins and that ugly hatred and darkness erupts.
Before she is even aware of it, her fist punches a hole through the screen and she is staring back at her 21 year old face. Except . . . something was wrong.
Her usual umber eyes are an mix of emerald green and gold, and her teeth are bared in an animalistic snarl. Her pupils had changed from round pupils and were narrowed to oval slits like a cats. Her four canines were now enlarged, prominent fangs and as she removes her bloodied and broken hand from the digital screen her nails were sharpened claws. The most bizarre mutation was the small, furry black panther ears atop of her head.
They remind her of the powerful but delicate wings on Namor’s ankles. When she had shredded through hollow bone, sinew and feathers, she had a stray thought of how soft the feathers were.
What did Bast do? What was she?
Namor’s voice rang in her head. Mutant. Did Bast turn her into a mutant?
Another thing to add to her to do list. Get a dna sample from her mutant form.
For a second, she sees Bast distorted through the cracked and smoking display of the screen. This time Bast is in her human form with a black cat helm, long braided hair with gold beads and a ceremonial dress. She gives an enigmatic smile before vanishing. Fucking Panther God.
She had screamed and raged for guidance and direction for more than a month when they had found out about T’Challa’s condition. Even moreso after her mother was killed. Now, Bast was just being a dick.
As she cradles her injured hand, she adds to her mental list to check the Royal Library and Archives to refresh her knowledge on all of Wakanda’s Gods and history. It would do her some good to understand what she was dealing with.
“Princess. Should I notify the queen of your injury? Or the royal physician?” Griot’s concerned dulcet tones rang.
Alarm shot through Shuri at that, and she glances at her glowing Kimoyo bracelets and commanded, “No. Lock the past 10 minutes of monitoring of my health and vitals to my voice command only.”
“Yes, Princess”. Griot replied though Shuri could have sworn she detected a note of reluctance in Griot’s voice.
“Griot.”
“Yes, Princess.”
“Please debrief me on the last month of current events that occurred in Wakanda and in the world. Pull up records of my messages, calls and projects in the past month or so. Be ready to put your CPU to work, we have TONS to do”.
“Of course, Princess.”
After finishing her orders, Shuri’s heartbeat and breathing had slowed enough that when she glanced back at her shattered reflection, it was back in her 18 year old body. It was disconcerting to feel the usual thrum of power of the heart shaped herb retreat from her body as well as her sharpened senses shift back to her younger body.
She winced as she finally felt the throbbing pain in her fingers and knuckles. The skin was split, bleeding and she was pretty sure that she fractured if not broke a few of her knuckles and intermediate phalanges. If she remembered correctly, though it had been YEARS (not counting the time she was dusted), she had been working on prototypes of the nano tech weave for her brother’s new suit. Grabbing one of her prototype bracelets that her 18 year old self had been tinkering with on her night stand, she grimaces as the nanites forms a black fingerless glove that splints her fingers and stops the blood from flowing. Placing her left hand under her right, the pieces of glass, fiberglass and aluminum are deposited into her hand which she dumps in the waste basket by her bed stand. Thank Bast, that she was ambidextrous. With a quick swallow, she washed down an ibuprofen with some water and the throbbing in her hand turned to a dull ache.
Glancing back at the damage she grimaced at the 10 inch hole in the middle of her cracked display. Shit. She really couldn’t exactly explain that she was a 21 year old version of herself stuck in her 18 year old body and had a whole slew of issues including trauma, grief and C-PTSD. Or that she in a fit of rage and grief had punched a hole through 10 inches of glass, fiberglass and aluminum. With a tap of her Kimoyo beads, a panel of her wall opens up and she grabs a holographic cube and places it on the floor. It melts down and with a flash of light displays an unbroken wall. She’ll fix her wall display later.
In the previous timeline, she had spent those 3 months until her brother returned buried in work as was her usual coping mechanism. By then she had improved upon the EMP beads with an update and had done multiple lab and field tests of the multiple versions of the Black Panther Habit with the updated “sneaker” version. Currently, Nakia was in Nigeria observing the current trafficking rings and trying to dismantle it from the inside with the other war dogs. Okoye and part of the Dora Milaje was with her brother. Her mother was dutifully balancing her role as Queen Mother, Widow and Mother in the next three months with Ayo as Okoye’s second guarding her. The rest of the Dora were split between her and her mother. With a few taps and swipes, Shuri put a reminder in her digital agenda to spend as much time with her mother as she could before shit hits the fan.
She thought about her Umama and there was a flood of gratitude, disbelief and awe that she was alive and breathing just a few floors away. There was a flicker of resentment and petulance amongst those warmer feelings. A spark of bitterness made her lips twist. Logically, she couldn’t begrudge her Umama for being dutiful, loyal and dilligent in the affairs of Wakanda however, Shuri wished to see more of her Umama than the Queen Mother. It was only with her hair down and her eyes melting from a dark onyx to warm quartz, that her mother belonged to them. Not to Wakanda, or her people but to T’Challa, her and Baba.
Exiting her room, she gives a nod and smile to Xoliswa, the only sign of her surprisegriefanger, is a slight furrow of her forehead. She added Xoliswa as another person on her list that she wished to save from death. She had been killed during the Battle of Mount Bashenga by Kilmonger. A treasured member of the Dora Milaje and she always had some Chappies bubblegum and Fiz Pops on hand when Shuri was a small child.
Closing her eyes, Shuri took a deep breath and released it. Ok. Time to get to work.