Erik was just a kid, playing basketball, when the ship came down from the heavens and landed, like angels coming to wreak justice, like aliens coming to prospect the Earth, to look over the projects and raze it to the ground. He was just a kid playing a game in which losing didn’t mean lost or gone.
He was just a kid when his family went up to the room where his dad was waiting and planning. When his dad asked, how will we heal their pain, our pain? and they answered nothing, then spit ‘traitor’ and took his heart, spilled his blood, their blood, on the floor.
They looked down on him, these avenging angels, these devils, and then looked away. They looked at him and flew away, leaving him below them, beneath them. The first of their virtues was not mercy.
So, Erik found his father with claws in his chest, his blood on the floor. He came home still sweaty from basketball and cradled his father in a pool of blood. He cried and screamed and shook, but no one was there to hold him, to tell him it was all right.
You’ve taken everythingfrom me, he screamed at the world. What will you give me?
The world considered and told him I will give you blood. Blood running thick and warm in your veins, the sting of bleeding, your blood, your father’s blood, your family’s blood, your people’s blood. I will give you the feeling of losing it, of taking it.
What kind of gift is that? Erik screamed, and the world relented.
I will give you hunger and thirst. I will give you every moment to want, every moment to long to be filled, to be quenched.
What kind of goddamn gift is that? he sobbed, and the world was quiet.
Then he grew, alone, hurting, blood pounding in his ears as he realized that the world took from Black kids and gave them only pain in return.
Maybe that was what did it, that his father was right. That his father saw the pain and knew blood was the cure.
He grew stronger and harder and hungrier, and no one ever gave him anything. The world took and took from him- no, not the world. The world was cruel, cold, and unfair, but the world was blind. It looked above and beyond petty human concerns; it gave and it took in a cavalier way. People took from him. The world may have been random, but the artificial world that had been built around him, the walls to keep the world out, to keep the inside rigged, was anything but random.
Look at me! he shouted at people. I’m smart! I’m strong! I’m here! People looked on.
If they wouldn’t give him anything, if they kept on taking, he would take it back. He would take his gift, snatch himself back right out of claws and snapping jaws. He would take and take until they had to beg at his feet, beg for a sliver of pity, a morsel of remorse. They would be given none.
He learned about Wakanda, about his legacy. Some gift, a signet ring was, a kingdom he wasn’t allowed to wield. But the world never gave him gifts.
He learned how to fight, how to kill. He took blood and lives, relishing the feeling, fanning the hunger. When he took a brother or sister’s life, sometimes he felt sorry, and then remembered that the world never apologized to him. He learned how to take and take, but he was still hungry.
Anyway, no life was lost in vain. He killed to learn how, to train to kill T’challa so his people could be free, so he could be free. His legacy was blood and pain and a ring; his cousin got a kingdom and a cat suit.
He took their blood, took his blood, until some men looked up and recognized him as a man who knew how to take. They helped him (well, moved with him towards their own goals, their own prizes) until he was as close to Wakanda as he had ever been before. His soul growled after the vibranium, the power and the blood that followed, and he thought this is my gift.
T’Challa had a palace full of toys and weapons and precious metals, and yet he never threw a cent at his brothers and sisters suffering around the globe. Instead, he propped up an isolationist monarchy. If he could pay for that, he could pay for the revolution, for everyone suffering around the world, for the pain, he could pay for what they had done to Erik’s father, to Erik.
All Erik had to do was win, and he did. T’Challa became another mark on his skin. He won fair and square, but no one said (his supposed family didn’t say), you won or welcome home, son or sorry. Fine, because no one had ever apologized to him, had never given him anything. While he had been learning how to fight, how to kill, how to bleed, he had also learned to take and to keep what he had taken.
And if victory was still hungry, if victory meant blood, that’s okay, because that was his gift. He loaded the ship with gifts for his people, with the tools to take everything back, and still he bled, but this was his (and his father's), he knew this. If winning still felt like losing, at least it was familiar.
He would collect his debts if it killed him, and eventually it did, because even now he bled, even now everything was taken from him once more. If Wakanda and T'Challa could stay untouched by the world's pain, Erik took it in their stead, took on his pain and his people's pain besides.
As he died, watching the sun set over the pile of spoils that was Wakanda, Erik was still hungry, still bleeding.