Shuri only allows herself few things when she finds out the news.
She’s panting hard against one of the domed buildings that she designed, the battle thrusters broken and thin cuts and bruises making themselves known, wondering at the sudden vanishing of half her enemies. When Okoye finds her, the warrior’s strides are heavy, heavier than Shuri has ever seen them. Battle weary, but something more, something greater, something sadder.
Shuri meets her eyes and she knows what the woman is going to say before the words even leave her mouth.
But the teen can’t stop the syllables from forming, even with the knowing dread forming in her gut.
“Where’s- Where’s T’Challa, Okoye. Where is my brother?”
But the woman is bowing her proud head, eyes low, eyes devastated, and Shuri allows herself to press her fist to her teeth and bite, bite hard- this is her brother, this is her brother and he’s gone and it’s not the first time but maybe this hurts twice as much- but she doesn’t allow herself to cry.
Somewhere, in the distance, someone begins to sing the mourning song.
Later, she’ll stumble past the battlefield, past the bodies- both of friend and foe- and the clean up efforts. People will call for her, but she will shake her head. She can’t deal with this, not right now, not when the night in her heart is so large, smothering her in saddened darkness.
She cannot break. She will not break. Not now, not now, when all that is left is blood and dust and two hands too small to lift the weight.
She’s looking for her mother, she thinks, staggering through the halls of her home, her limbs battle weary and jittery from exertion, adrenaline beginning to slow, grief beginning to fill in the cracks. She knows that the older woman will need comfort, will need a reminder that she’s not alone, that she’s not the last of their small broken family.
She thinks she needs the reminder, too.
But she falls into the council chamber- where her mother and the other leaders unable to fight had been waiting out the battle, plotting strategy, plotting the future- and all that greets her are more sad faces, and four piles of ash on the otherwise pristine ground.
The Queen Mother of Wakanda is not among those left standing.
Her breath hitches in her throat, her eyes stray to the piles. Blood and dust, she thinks, all we are isblood and dust.
The councilors are standing, staring, and slowly, slowly they bow to her, Queen Regnant until the initiation ceremony can take place once more.
Shuri bows her head in turn. Royalty bears no crowns in Wakanda, but she still feels the weight of responsibility falling onto her young shoulders.
That’s okay. She knows responsibility, knows its weight, knows its burden.
Inside her, she buries the grief under layers of earth. She buries it deep, pushes it down, down, down, down until it is hidden beneath sand and stone and not even the shining rays of the Wakandan sun can find it. She builds a metal encasing around her heart, just as intricate and complicated and powerful as any of her inventions.
She raises her head. She straightens her shoulders. She lifts her chin.
Her people need her. She will lead them, she will answer the call.
It is time for hard thoughts and decisions. It is time for her head.
Her heart can wait.
She can wait.
Really, she can.
The funeral is a loud affair. There is wailing, crying, voices rising up, remembering, celebrating the lives that were lost, their greatness, their triumphs, the times they overcame. The great thump, thump, thumping of hundreds of survivors pounding their chests, over and over, physical pain to show the emotional pain that lies underneath.
Shuri cries out with them, pounds her chest with them, and her mother tongue comes falling from her lips like a river, calls on their bravery, on their strength, on how the fallen shall return to their ancestors and watch over them all, even through these dark times.
She thinks of the warriors she knew well and the faces she knew only in passing, the people who did their jobs around the palace and ran her favourite shops and restaurants in the city. One of her chief engineers has faded, has crumpled into nothing. She will miss him.
She thinks of White Wolf, of his struggles and his silence and his friendship. He was a good man, and now he is gone.
She thinks of her Mother, of T’Challa. She thinks of them and something cold and dark curls in her chest, and she pounds and raises her voice with her people, but no tears are shed. Not a single one.
If she starts crying, she doesn’t think she will ever be able to stop.
She thinks she would shatter, some vital pressure point deep inside of her pressed too hard until the machine encasing her simply ceases to function.
After the public ceremony, there is a feast. Shuri is supposed to attend, but she doesn’t.
She allows herself this.
She goes down to her lab, looks around the destroyed room, looks around at the broken tables and scattered inventions and technical marvels, and slowly- her mourning gown still on- she begins to pick it all up, to put it back together, to try and create some semblance of order in her cluttered workshop and cluttered mind.
At some point, she finds the helmet of one of her Black Panther prototypes, the blank eyes staring up at her, the durable fabric gripped tight in her small, strong fingers.
She holds maybe too tight, stares maybe too long.
Anger bubbles up inside her, and she chucks the useless thing across the room.
Fat lot of good you did, she thinks, fat lot of good anything did. Everything was useless, useless, it didn’t do its job, didn’t save anyone, didn’t save them-
She drops her head to her chest, breathing hard, fists still clenched.
Worthless, worthless, this is all so worthless-
What is the point of being smart if she can’t save anyone.
She stops trying to clean up her lab after that, instead doing her best to destroy it, destroy everything, every little useless thing-
She rages, she yells, she cuts and tears and throws and screams-
There’s a hand on her shoulder.
She whirls around, teeth bared, freezes when Nakia’s kind too-knowing eyes meet hers.
It looks like the woman has been crying.
Panting, Shuri shrugs the hand off, crosses her arms, lowers her gaze to the floor.
She digs her fingernails into her skin, digs them in until the sting of it focuses all her attention. She doesn’t want to talk to her, this woman who once upon a time Shuri might have had as a sister, this woman who is probably one of the few left who loves T’Challa as much as she does.
Loved.
Loved him as much as she did .
Nakia hugs her, all lithe muscles and trembling control. Shuri thinks the other woman is crying a bit, thinks that she should say something, do something, somehow make everything better.
But she is not her brother. She can not pull out calm and soothing words from nowhere, is not inspirational and strong and stupidly brave as he is.
She’s not. And even her anger has left her, draining from her own frame like water from a pipe. She is but a husk, standing in another’s grip, waiting for it to be over.
So she just lets Nakia hold her, hold her close, hold her tight. She stands there, numb to the world around her, looking over the woman’s shoulder and staring without feeling at the black panther mask on the floor.
Blank eyes stare back. She wishes they wouldn’t.
That night she dreams that she stands in an empty plain, her brother before her, three steps too close and still somehow just out of reach. His face is calm. His eyes are warm.
Okoye says he had told her This is no place to die , right before he crumpled into ashes.
Why did you die, then!? She screams, loud and angry and fists clenched at her sides. Why did you die!? Why did you leave me alone!?
But he can’t seem to hear her, turning around, walking away.
She tries to follow him, but can’t take a step. In the distance, she thinks she can see her parents, reaching for T’Challa, reaching for her.
They’re so very far away, and she can’t reach them, can’t even begin to try.
Why did you all leave me? She whispers this time, Why didn’t you take me with you?
But no one answers her, and all that there is left is dust and blood, and then she is swallowed alive by ocean water that tastes like salt, that tastes like tears.
Blood and dust. All we are is blood and dust.
She wakes up, breathing hard, leaning over her knees with her eyes clenched tight.
It’s in the middle of the night, but she has work to do, has a million things she hasn’t done, and she knows responsibility.
But she allows herself this, just this, allows herself to take three deep breaths in the privacy of her own room, allows herself to try and commit her family’s faces to memory, the way their mouths tilted when they smiled, the way T’Challa always stumbled around like a drunk impala for the first few minutes of early mornings, the way her Mother looked when she tried to teach her traditional warrior dances, the way her Father had preened when she let him braid her hair, even though the rows always were a little crooked.
Then she gets up and goes back to her lab, back to work. She has a meeting in the morning with the council, but for now she cleans everything up and starts sketching plans for better shields and better weapons, determined that next time Wakanda is under attack their defenses will hold.
She knows responsibility, and this is it. Her people depend on her, and she will not fail them.
Not this time. Not again.
The counselor meetings are long and tedious, and by the end of every one Shuri can always feel a headache building. Machines, numbers, sciences, she can understand them and manipulate them in her mind as easily a child can add two and two, but people and politics and society and economic choices come slower. The councilors argue and put out suggestions and corrections and ideas, and she listens to them, Okoye a steady presence behind her.
They do as T’Challa had wished, refusing to step back out from the world and starting to form steady alliances with the rest of the African Nations. She attends the UN, and she can feel all the white elderly men looking down at her, judging her, seeing her youth and her gender and the colour of her skin and dismissing her or judging her an easy target.
She raises her head. She straightens her shoulders. She lifts her chin.
Shuri allows herself this, just this, to give her sharpest grin, the one that Okoye taught her so long ago, the one she used to send at T’Challa before a particularly nasty prank. The one that was just on this side of wild and perhaps a little too fierce for polite company.
They stop seeing her as so innocent and naive after that. Or, at least, the smart ones do.
Okoye, behind her, is stoic as always when she is on duty, but Shuri can feel her pride, radiating from her like the rising sun.
She wishes she could partake in it, but all she really wants is to go home to her lab.
She knows that her brother would be better at this. Knows that to her brother this had been natural as technology had been to her. Knows that her brother will never be able to do such a thing ever again.
T’Challa’s shadow is very large, and she knows this better than most.
When she is not leading her people, she is working on her inventions. She creates a better barrier, one that will allow her people to shoot out of it but not let any invaders in. She creates stronger weapons, ones that can cut through thicker armour and survive greater attacks. She finds ways to create escape routes for her people if they’re ever placed under siege, constructs repairs and fills out reports and approves ideas for gathering and storing food, of which they have so much more leftover now that half of their kingdom has vanished into nothing.
The Avengers sometimes come to her and ask for help, ask for supplies and a safe harbour. She provides them to the best of her ability, knowing that the time was a quiet before a storm, and not the end of the war, knowing that Thanos will return, that it’s not over yet.
Once, her mother had told her Power is an addictive thing. Do not trust those who promise to take only one step, for there is always another to be taken, and the temptation is so often too great. Shuri holds onto this, grits her teeth and tightens her grip until her hands bleed, because she will not forget this, she will not, she will not.
Everyone is on edge. The world is chaos. Families have been torn apart.
She raises her head. She straightens her shoulders. She lifts her chin.
Shuri knows responsibility. Knows her duty. She does her part to try and fix things as best as she can.
( It’s not enough, it’s not enough, the only thing that could be enough is if she could bring them b a c k-)
Shuri leans over her desk, breathes in deep though her nose and then lets it all go. Her eyes sting with tiredness, but the exhaustion is welcomed, because it means there will be no dreams.
She dreams of empty plains and loved ones three steps too close and still somehow just out of reach. She dreams of words that cut at the insides of her mouth until all that comes out is anger and fear and a sadness that sinks her down, down, down to her very bones.
Why did you die!? Why did you leave me alone!?
She dreams of blood. She dreams of dust. She dreams until she wakes, shaking and heart pounding, and can push everything down.
Shuri will not cry. She will not break. There is no time to mourn. She has no room to grieve. There is a kingdom to lead and a world to save, and death is just a part of a cycle that everyone lives.
She knows responsibility, and it means pushing it all down until you can stand again and pick the rest of the world up.
So she does. She does. She lives and she breathes and she fights and she builds, even when everything seems to be trying to make her drown.
Blood and dust, she tells herself, a mantra, a base to her shaking strength, All we are is blood and dust.
Fingers land on her shoulder, and Shuri tenses all the way up, flips around and grabs the hand, throws it over herself. The figure it belongs to follows through with the motion, though, rebounding on the wall and slamming right back into her.
Shuri goes down, hard, and loses all her breath.
Okoye looks down on her from where she has her pinned, face stern and commanding, small traces of concern to be seen around the corner of her eyes.
“You are not getting enough sleep: it is making you sloppy.”
Shuri shifts, tries to breath through the hollow spot in her chest, rasps, “You took me by surprise,” and lets her gaze filter up and up and up so that she can watch the lights blur into stars.
“I should not have: I was making plenty of noise.”
Shuri closes her eyes.
“It’s you. You never make enough noise.”
Okoye is staring at her, hard and serene and turbulent all at once, and Shuri refuses to look back. She is tired, and there are still things to make and inventions to plan. She needs to organize another council meeting, and prepare for the election coming up to designate the new councilors to replace the ones lost to the battle.
She breathes deep, she lets it go, and she closes her tired eyes and does not sleep.
“Can I get up now?”
Okoye nods, and lets her rise, and Shuri does. She should raise her head and straighten her shoulders. She should lift her chin and face all the world has to throw at her. Her brother’s shadow looms larger than life, and no matter how hard Shuri tries she can’t quite remember the sound of his laugh.
She goes to move back to her desk, but Okoye blocks her.
“To bed,” she says, and Shuri has no energy to argue, and so she goes.
The next day, when the sun dips behind the horizon and the city begins to settle down once more, Okoye blocks her from heading to her lab and instead leads her to the training room, thrusting a spear into her grasp and lowering her own in invitation. Shuri stares, tightens her grip, and charges.
They train until she can’t even think straight, and that night she sleeps and there are no dreams.
There is trial by combat to make her Queen. When her brother had done it, she had been excited and celebrating, cheering with the rest of her people and laughing as her mother completed the traditional ceremonial dance, which she had learned during the cooling evenings around the dining table, laughing and ridiculous and alive, alive, alive.
Now, however, she is tired and numb. She stands in the middle of the pooled waters at the edge of a cliff, and her head is high and her heart is pounding. She is not big nor strong, but she is smart and cunning and fast .
Still, she feels it would be easier to just leap across the waterfall’s great divide and run far, far away until not even the blue skies above can touch her.
But she doesn’t. She is proud and she knows responsibility, and she does not.
She raises her head. She straightens her shoulders. She lifts her chin.
Wakanda needs her. Her people need her. She will lead them, she will fight for them, and she will answer the call.
It is time for hard thoughts and decisions. It is time for her head, for the strength of her limbs and the cunning of her mind.
Her heart can wait.
She can wait.
(Really, she can.)
She stands, heart pounding, and waits.
One by one, the tribes back down.
There is no fighting that day. Not when so much blood has been shed.
Blood and dust, she thinks, and the lump of carefully constructed metal she has built in her chest clenches like it might still be beating.
There is no heart shaped herb for her, all of them burned and lost. She will not have the Black Panther’s might. She will not see her ancestors before her.
(Her brother, before her.)
She wonders how this is fair. She wonders why the spirits have chosen to make her suffer, have chosen her to take on the weight of the world. She wonders if they know she is fracturing underneath it, falling to her knees and being pressed down, down, down into the Wakandan dirt.
She is drowning, but she knows responsibility, and she does her best to swim and keep her kingdom above the water.
She wants her brother. She wants her mother and father. She wants to not be alone anymore, to take this burdened crown off her head and release this task too heavy for her too small hands.
But there is no one else to take it from her, there is no one else, and she is alone.
That night, after the trial, after the celebrations, after everything, Shuri curls under her blankets with an old device and watches old videos from the surveillance cameras she had long since placed around the palace.
She allows herself this, just this. Allows herself to watch the faces of her dead family as they dance and laugh and chatter and play, and wonders how she never realized how good she had it.
Perhaps you can’t, not really, not until all good things are gone and all that is left is dust and blood and the taste of ash on your tongue.
Perhaps you can’t until you’re on the verge of shattering, and all that is keeping you together is the responsibility that glues you piece by piece, even as it takes and it takes and it takes and tries to pull you apart.
Shuri breathes in the spaces in between. She raises her head. She straightens her shoulders. She lifts her chin.
And she lives.
She lives, she lives, she lives.
She builds a shell around herself, as if it was one of her intricate machines, and she functions, and she leads, and she leads well.
She knows responsibility.
She knows.
Days become weeks and weeks become months., and before she knows it half a year has slipped by. Time seems to trickle through her fingers like dust, like sand and ash and all the broken things she has pulled together in the semblance of balance and wholeness.
Shuri leads. She leads. She grows.
T’Challa’s shadow has always rested large before her. She supposes she always just used to think that she would have more time to grow into it before it came her time to step before it.
Shuri is ice. She is the broken shards of glass that lay scattered in the sand. She takes long walks just beyond the city and loses herself to the feeling of warm earth beneath her feet and the burning sun pounding on her back.
Where there was once a battlefield, there is now a grassland. Wakanda is healing, the jagged scars across it’s living back stitching themselves closed. When it rains, Shuri dresses in shorts and t-shirts and stands in it, until she’s soaked and tired and cold, and all those weary old grey clouds fade away into nothing.
The water trickles down in little rivulets. It feels like the sky is crying for her, knowing she cannot cry for herself without falling apart.
Who knows? Maybe it is.
She goes out to the villages, those smaller communities farther away from her country’s heart and soul, her home, and watches the children play.
When the dusty ball comes rolling to a stop in front of her feet, she kicks off her sandals and tears off her finery, takes a sort of exaggerated, angry satisfaction from Okoye’s exasperated sigh, and joins in.
She allows herself this, just this, to pretend for a moment that she has no weight to bear, that there is no responsibility cloaking her skin, thicker than any armour. She pretends she is free, that her family is waiting for her just beyond that sun choked horizon, that the grass beneath her feet does now grow strong and rich and vibrant green from all the blood that has been spilt, from all the fiery ash that it consumed.
She keeps waiting for the pain to stop.
She keeps waiting for things to get better, and they keep not .
She wakes up, and expects her mother to tell her to hurry up and come down for breakfast, or for her brother to stumble into a doorway before his morning coffee and spend a minute staring at it in silent confusion. Sometimes, she even meanders downstairs and expects to see her father, making last minute corrections to some documents before council.
She keeps expecting them to come back, to be there, and they keep not, and everytime it somehow hurts worse.
All we are is blood and dust, Shuri tells herself, harshly, but even this becomes numb at times, and she is left staring at her too small hands and wishing that they had crumbled down into nothing, too.
Nothing is sacred, not really. Everything breaks down into nothing if you wait long enough.
Perhaps, if she just keeps on surviving, her love for her family will break, too, and her heart would stop fracturing down into nothing in her chest.
“Are you alright?” Nakia asks her as they sit upon a cliff and watch the sun drip down into deep oranges and reds and then down into darkness. It is quiet beyond the thrumming noises of the bugs and the winds rustling the trees.
“Yes,” Shuri says, and the lie tears her mouth bloody and tastes like ash on the wind.
Shuri survives, and every day it gets harder.
If Shuri is going to be honest…
If she is going to be honest, she knows that her family would not approve of what she is doing to herself. They would not approve of her working all day and inventing all night, of the way she does not really sleep beyond the necessities of functioning, and sometimes less than that. They would not approve of the way she has pushed those close to her away, has isolated herself in a small bubble and built barriers around herself until even she is unsure how to get through them. They would not approve of how little she allows herself, how careless she is with preserving her own wellbeing.
She knows.
And if Shuri is going to be honest with herself, she knows that she is not alright, that she is not coping. She knows that she has been broken ever since Okoye walked towards her with heavy strides and eyes low and devastated, knows that all that all her pieces are being taped together by necessity and sheer determination.
She knows that her family would be heartbroken, if they saw her here now, the way her edges are crumbling down rigid and sharp and shattered.
But they are not here, and Shuri cannot rely on them, and all the people who are left are those who are depending on her, and so she will keep herself together and functioning well enough to keep her kingdom running even if it kills her.
And she is making it work. Wakanda is thriving and continuing to prosper, even if every day the memorial built for those fallen still receives hundreds of visits, even if lingering fear still clutches at people’s minds and hearts.
But there is time enough for those pains to heal for them. Shuri will make sure of it.
She will.
If Shuri is going to be honest with herself- which she isn’t, because tape can only hold for so long and there is no reason to place unnecessary strain- she knows that there is a difference between surviving and living, and that she is doing more of the former than the latter. She knows that this is not healthy or good, that she probably can’t keep it up in the long run, that something will have to give.
But it works. It works, and Shuri closes her eyes and survives to see the end of each day, and tells herself that she is living.
She turns seventeen alone.
Well, not alone, but alone enough.
Okoye is there, but she is burdened by a responsibility that is settled in her bones, that she can not quite shake, even as they eat cake and tell stories around a table with far too many seats. She is burdened by a lifetime of protecting, of guarding, of vowing to keep safe leaders and friends and allies that died anyways, despite all her efforts.
Nakia is far away, in some other country, working again to dispel yet another human trafficking ring. She had left a card, and a present, and Shuri opens it and smiles and feels numb.
She is the girl of a million wonders, and all she feels is numb.
Enough, she thinks, enough.
She is tired and bruised and sore, and there is nothing helpful about mourning for people she cannot touch and hear.
(But that is the problem, isn’t it? She never really allowed herself to grieve, bottled it all up inside of her, and now she is deteriorating to a nothingness of her own invention.)
She wishes she could have said goodbye, though. Wishes she could have changed her last words, made them more meaningful, somehow, or given her family another hug, or told a joke that made them laugh, so that she could carve it into her bones and remember the sound always.
She wishes a lot of things.
The hallways of the palace are cold and lonely, and she walks them like she is the one who is the ghost, not her mother or father or brother. She walks as if she is hardly there.
Maybe she isn’t. Maybe she is just a hologram, forever circling a circuit that has long since gone out of use.
Her feet guide her, and she finds herself stumbling upon her brother’s room, kept closed and just as he left it by her orders, as if any day he might show up and come home again.
Fool, she thinks, fool, fool-
But she steps in anyways.
The air is musty from disuse, and a thin layer of dust collects on surfaces. She rummages around, feels painfully exposed and raw, as if she had stood too long in front of a ceremonial fire.
She finds a sketchbook, tucked away in some back ended corner, the designs bright and interesting and sleek, the lock intricate enough that it takes even her a minute or so to figure it out.
Her brother has written Happy Birthday! in his loopy handwriting, and Shuri sits on his bed and grips the book tight as something tugs painful and harsh in her chest, breathes and breathes and breathes, and refuses to let her metal walls come crashing down, trembling and shaking and all alone, and refuses tears to drip and splatter on empty pages made for ink.
She does not show for the council meeting later that day. No one comes to find her.
And that night, that night it rains. It pours. The winds howl and the sky rages, and Shuri steps outside, barefoot, and runs until the city lights cannot touch her and all that is left are the Wakandan plains that seem to go forever and a covering of clouds crying for all the world to here.
She screams with the thunder, thrashes with the trees and the grasses. Beneath her feet is blood and dust, and all the spirits feel as if they are watching her fracture under the weight of the world that is too heavy for her small shoulders
And when at last all the clouds fade into distant stars, Shuri closes her eyes and clenches her fists, and puts herself back together.
Responsibility tastes like ash, and it is a taste she has grown to despise.
But she knows responsibility, knows it better than her own two small hands. She raises her head. She straightens her shoulders. She lifts her chin.
Shuri allows herself this, and just this, while her brother is gone.
She faces an ocean of tears of a world split in half, and allows herself to build a bridge to get over it. She allows herself to breathe, breathe until her hollow chest feels full of nothing, and to let it go and try again. She allows herself to rant, to rage, to scream at a sky full of stars that feels three steps too close and forever out of reach.
She allows herself to grin, sharp and deadly, to stare down her enemies like they are nothing to her, like there is nothing left that can touch her stranded heart, encased in it’s metal armour.
Maybe that isn’t so far from the truth.
All we are is blood and dust, and the words fall from her mouth like a prayer and cut her up inside like knives.
The world calls out to her. It presents a challenge. It presents a cry for help. It presents a threat.
Wakanda calls for her. It wants a leader. It wants foundation. It wants hope.
She raises her head. She straightens her shoulders. She lifts her chin.
Her people need her, and she leads them, she answers the call.
She invents a thousand wonders, she attends a thousand councils, she watches every drooping sunset and tastes every drop of salt in the sky’s falling tears.
She does not cry. She does not break.
There is no time to mourn, no room to grieve. There is a kingdom to lead and a world to save, and death is just a part of a cycle that everyone lives. This is what responsibility is, in the end, knowing this, embracing this, inking it into your skin.
And Shuri knows responsibility, it has found its home in her still growing muscles, on the invisible crown resting on her head. It is in the lines of her calloused palms, in her small and steady grip as she pushes it all down and stands again to pick the rest of the world up, over and over and over and forever.
Responsibility thrives under her shaking strength, her fearful bravery, her youth and wisdom. Responsibility tastes like ash, and she swallows it dry like it is foul tasting medicine, and refuses to wash it down with something sweet and false.
She is a body of a girl made of paradoxes and broken parts. She is tragic. She is beautiful. She is fierce and terrifying and alive, and she will not let her people- those that are left to her- down.
Shuri builds herself up like she builds her kingdom: through sheer stubbornness and the grit of her teeth and the use of her wits.
She makes the hard decisions. She uses her head. She builds a shell around herself, as if it was one of her intricate machines, and she functions, and she leads, and she leads well.
She allows herself to survive, to survive and survive and survive and tell herself that this living until she can almost believe it.
Blood and dust, she tells herself, a mantra, a base to her trembling control, to her shaking calloused hands, too small and so strong, All we are is blood and dust.
She knows responsibility.
She knows.
And then one day-
One day-
One day, her family comes back.
She sees him first. T’Challa, battle worn and tired, tears in his costumes where there should not be, a weary hauntedness in his eyes that was not there before.
“Shuri,” he says, almost broken, and she wonders if he can see the aches and pains that haunt her own brown orbs.
He reaches out to her, hands ever so faintly shaking, and Shuri breathes and breathes and breathes because he’s three steps too close, but this time- when she steps forward- he is not out of reach.
He is right here, right here, and his hand is warm in hers, and she squeezes his fingers and breathes and breathes and breathes.
She breathes, because she thinks if she stops she’ll forget how to start again. She breathes, because inside her there are a million things she wants to say, all trying to crawl out of her throat at once. She breathes, because all her hard-won control is crumbling into small fragile broken pieces, and she doesn’t know what to do.
That cold hard thing in her chest is cracking and breaking and warping, and breathing around it just chokes her up.
Her eyes have begun to burn.
T’Challa probably doesn’t expect for her to punch him in the face, but her fist is swinging before she can really think things through, and the sound of her knuckles making contact is both the most satisfying thing and the saddest sound she has ever heard.
And then she starts yelling.
She’s breaking into a thousand pieces, shattering around all her rough edges, she’s so so angry and exhausted and alone, alone, alone, and she can’t even see for all the tears that are finally , finally streaming down her face. She screams, angry shrieks of abandonment and fear and a thousand unnamed things pent up in her chest, breaking through every defense at the sight of her brother’s face.
And her brother, alive and breathing and alive , reaches out and pulls her close, too close, slams her against his chest and rocks her like she’s a child, and she cries and she cries and she cries until all her mourning and grief and exhaustion falls at her feet, catching sunlight like fallen stars.
Her brother is crying, too, silently, and she can hear his heartbeat, can feel every shaking breath filling the chasm in his chest, can feel every subtle movement that reminds her that he’s really and truly there.
They hold each other for moments, they hold each other for eternities, they hold each other until tears become laughter, until grey skies become clear, until they let everything go and learn to live once more.
Shuri memorizes the sound of her brother’s laugh, she lets it fill up the nothingness inside of her, lets it bring her to something like peace.
They do not have forever. She knows this.
She knows responsibility, it is carved in her bones.
But she knows, too, that it is best not to bear it alone.
There is a song of joy thrumming along with the beating of her heart, a song of living, of moving onwards, of new dawns and new horizons.
Somewhere, in the distance, someone begins to sing the rejoicing song. Shuri laughs into her older brother's neck, raises her head, straightens her shoulders, lifts her chin, and all of Wakanda joins in under clear blue skies.