Chapter Text
PART I: THE BULLET
Chapter One: We Meet Again for the First Time
Flashback
DATE: FEBRUARY 2030
Shuri looked on as the man sat on the tufted bench at the foot of the bed and slipped on his tan-colored leather shoe. His auburn-coloured hair (which was still stiff with product) stuck out in odd directions from the back of his head. She briefly wondered if she should inform him that his once perfectly coiffed hair was breaking the illusion of the urbane gentleman he so carefully crafted, down to his leather brogues and gold cufflinks. It did look sort of ridiculous from behind.
He stood, smiling a sheepish grin that was probably meant to be seductive but only managed to remind her of unwanted male attention.
“I never got your number?” he said casually, taking up his briefcase. She found the pretense pathetic. He was imagining there was going to be some kind of relationship between them, where he could somehow be a part of her life. She definitely was not going to tell him about his hair.
“Yes, I know,” she said wistfully. “I don’t have much time these days. But if we ever cross paths again, I will buy you a drink.”
Mr. Green Eyes’ face immediately grew downcast, she could see the hope drain from his body right before her eyes. But he understood.
“Yes… of course,” he said.
He waved a regretful farewell and made his way out of the bedroom. She listened to him closely to see if he made it out of the suite. The door closed, and he was gone.
Shuri threw the covers off her body and climbed out of bed. She picked up her discarded bra from the floor and fastened it around her chest before she walked to the window. The curtains were drawn closed. They were heavy drapes that looked so traditional they could only be described as very tacky or European posh. She pulled them apart, letting the dreary, cloud-filtered winter light through the hotel room. She looked down at the street intensely. Based on the scan she ran on him, he was expected to head in a westerly direction. And sure enough, moments later, she saw Mr. Green Eyes crossing the street, heading west. Maybe he was not so bad. She even saw him clean up after himself and toss the used condom in the trash.
“No clingers,” she muttered to herself, thinking back on Mr. Brown Eyes III who stood across the street from another hotel, perched on a lamppost two days in a row, hoping to run into her again.
She shuddered at the thought and turned to head to the shower. That’s when she felt it, a sharp, stinging sensation in her shoulder. The pain was unbelievable.
She gasped and clinched the back of her shoulder blade and felt a sticky moisture that didn’t belong there, the pain was more acute as her fingers grazed the spot. She looked down at her hands. They were stained red with blood.
Immediately she squatted to the floor, avoiding the open view of the window. Someone was shooting at her… direction unknown and distance unknown. She listened, trying to hear where the shooting was coming from but there was nothing, only the muffled sound of the city, coming through the double-pane glass. She turned on her stomach and crawled against the low-pile carpet, careful to keep as low to the ground as possible. She wormed her way to the side of the bed in the center of the room. Her hands reached the nightstand and retrieved her cell phone.
She could still feel the screaming pain in her shoulder as her arms stretched out. She bit down hard on her lips, wincing with every movement. Shuri leaned against the bed and held the phone in her hand… blood smeared over the smooth glass screen; her fingerprints, smeared and distorted by the blood, failed to register. “Griot, unlock the phone,” she said through grunts.
“Princess…” the AI responded. “Are you in distress? Do you need emergency services?”
“No!” she screamed…. She would not think of bringing anyone else into this situation. She was an Avenger, she should be able to handle it. She wiped her hands against the white sheet and wiped the face of the phone dry, staining the linen red. “Run a scan in the adjacent buildings for an active shooter. Scan all living beings.”
“Running the scan….”
“I am detecting a few weapons… none of them hot and none of them in proximity to a potential assailant.”
“Run it again,” she shouted, reaching for her kimoyo beads this time. She pulled out the medical bead and held it between her shaking fingers and placed it gently against the wound.
“Griot, run a diagnostic on the wound. I don’t feel myself healing as I should.”
The AI responded. “You are healing but the bullet went straight through. It grazed your clavicle and entered your scapula clean through.”
“How is that possible?” she moaned. “ With my bone density, I shouldn’t be affected by bullets like this. This has never happened before.”
“It was not a regular bullet. The traces of metal and microparticles indicate it’s an alloy of vibranium and gold. It closely resembles the material they produce in..” Griot explained.
“Talokan,” she finished. Her body went cold.
End Flashback.
Date: August 2031
There was a particularly putrid smell that filled the air when it rained. As the murky water rose, pooling in long-neglected corners of his community, the scent of sin tickled his nostrils. It was the smell of refuse strewn about without care, and stale human bodily fluids that mixed to form some perverse concoction that seeped out the pores of the asphalt streets. His mind convinced him that all this must be familiar to him. That he knew nothing else his entire life. Yet, as he looked out the window of his six-story walk-up apartment, his senses only rejected what was presented to him. He never knew what it felt like to breathe in air so pristine that he could feel it enter his lungs and move through his system freely, unlike the air that seized in his throat and produced a coughing fit. Yet, his body remembered that feeling… his body craved it.
He turned his attention away from the deluge outside his window and back to the copy of Time Magazine in his hands and carefully opened it, cautious not to damage the leaves. He sat on the second-hand sofa his roommate “rescued” off Facebook Marketplace and leaned back, and sank into the cushions that were perhaps too soft.
“Nanban, are you reading that again?” Aakash asked as he sat on the other end of the sofa with a beer in hand.
“No,” he said cooly, “Only trying to remember something.” Feeling a slight sting of shame, he placed the magazine on the crammed coffee table and leaned back on the sofa as Aakash, his roommate, turned on the television.
“I swear you’re obsessed with those Wakandans, especially with that Princess of theirs.”
He could understand how he might have come to that conclusion. He did have a small collection of magazines and newspaper clippings or anything he could find about the Wakandans. Since the issue of Time Magazine: Woman of the Year came out with Princess Shuri, he had read the article religiously every night, almost like a bedtime story. The truth was he always felt very uneasy like he was not where he was supposed to be. He was in a permanent state of anxiety and there was this sickening feeling in the gut that made his existence feel almost unbearable. It wasn’t just the rain his senses rejected. It was everything about his life. He constantly got the feeling that his life was not good enough. All of that only quieted when he read her words. The constant racing of his heart would calm, the ever-present sadness would dissipate and he would just be left to imagine her whispering those words to him. His senses latched on to it. He felt like he knew her.
“She’s interesting,” he said plainly.
Aakash laughed, squeezing his cold beer right into a tiny space next to the magazine. Water immediately began to pool around it. He looked at him as he casually flipped through some apps until he landed on a pirated stream of a cricket game he was interested in. His eyes moved from Aakash to the beer and the water that was inching closer to his magazine. Surely he could see how close it was.
“Can you clean that up or get a coaster?” he asked, trying his best to keep his voice even.
“I’m watching the game, India vs. Pakistan, come on,” he complained animatedly.
He could feel his anger threatening to boil over. It felt unearned. He had no reason to be angry at all. It was only a magazine that he read multiple times. He should have discarded it like all the other ones he bought before. Yet, he found himself reaching for his magazine with the pensive face of an African princess filling the frame of the cover, and he held it to his chest, feeling relief at knowing no harm had come to it.
Aakash looked over at him and scoffed in mock disgust, “What is it about them you like so much?”
He choose to highlight the reasons he could articulate. “They are leading the world in technology. Princess Shuri is an Avenger. You don’t think that’s interesting?”
“Not more interesting than this Test Match for sure,” he joked. Aakash took a sip from his leaky beer can and sighed. “Achaa Achaa, it is nice but they are just selfish and spoilt. And that princess of theirs, Shania, I’m sure she is a nightmare.”
“Shuri,” he corrected.
He waved off his error. “Let’s be honest, they don’t care about brown people like us. They hardly care about their own black people. It’s every man for himself. I know you’re not my kind of brown, but still brown, right? You’re Mexican or something like that.”
He blinked.
Aakash chuckled at his response. “Yeah, I know you’re not Tamil. Your Tamil is only okay, but I heard you speaking to those Puerto Ricans and your Spanish is excellent.”
He would never actually talk about where he was from. He honestly didn’t know. Sometimes he felt like he was dropped there without any history of who he was before he came to the city. Even his name didn’t leave much clues either.
He turned to look at the TV in time to see the first wicket fall for a duck. Aakash groaned in agony, cursing the batsman.
Sometimes it was difficult to relate to Aakash. His world was as small as the block he lived and the cricket stars he worshiped. There were conversations he wanted to have about everything that was going on in the world. Their geopolitical landscape was a devolving mess of wars and rumors of wars. Though it seemed like the world was becoming wise to the tactics of the colonizers and imperialists, they continued to manipulate those people he felt most connected to.
The anxiety was returning. The feeling of being trapped in a cage that was too small for him.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said, going to his tiny 9’x7’ room. He placed the magazine on his pillow and pulled out a denim jacket from the tiny closet that held all his clothes.
“Are you going to walk in the rain again?” Aakash complained. “I told you that behavior will make people think you’re depressed. You are brown, you cannot be looking depressed. Someone will jump you. Depression is for white people.”
He shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m leaving for the restaurant in a while. If I see that dark, bald chick again, I’ll give her your number,” he said jokingly. “She seems like someone you would like. She’s very interested in you.”
The woman he was referring to was a frequent customer of theirs. He started seeing her around a few times a week, then she became a regular, learning the names of all the front service staff and eventually asking about the people in the back preparing the food. As far as Rajiv, the owner, was concerned, he didn’t have the right look for the counters so he was trained to help in the kitchen until he became good enough that they trusted him with the simpler dishes. He only got a chance to talk to her when Aakash was so sick that having him at the restaurant would have violated a few health codes. Her eyes lit up when she saw him.
Thereafter she returned every day of the week.
He had that effect on women sometimes. He was not trying, but it happened.
“Don’t go starting trouble,” he warned Aakash.
“I’m helping you; you can’t just be lusting over unattainable princesses your whole life. That is weird behavior, Jay. That is like the time I had a crush on Aishwarya Rai, the most beautiful woman in the world. I believed in my heart that I would marry her. But I was only fifteen and my father was not Amitabh Bachchan, so it didn't work out. Jay, your father is not a King, so... ” Aakash laughed at his story, which was probably told in jest but he could tell there was some honesty in his words.
He nodded and walked through the door, pulling it close behind him.
-o-o-
He walked.
There was a Wakandan outreach center a couple of neighborhoods over. They were recruiting the brightest minds in the borough, young children from the poorest communities with access to things they could only dream of.
That’s why knew Aakash’s assessment was wrong. Princess Shuri was the one spearheading the program. He read how passionate she was about it. They were dotted all over the poorest communities, in countries all over the world. She cared about her vision… not just as an act of charity but as the realization of the philosophy she inherited from her brother.
He walked by that building many times, wanting to witness what she had built and hoping (although there were more outreach centers than days in the year) that one day she would be there to revisit what she had created.
He never lingered long. Though he could not see them, he could hear the quiet mechanisms of cameras following his movement.
He wasn’t sure, but sometimes he felt like his senses were heightened by the rain, which made the smell all the more putrid to his senses.
He turned around, and headed in the direction he came from, walking for two hours, the water seeping through his clothes, drenching him to his core, leaving an uncharacteristic chill for August that felt almost pleasant on his skin.
He walked back up the 12 flights of stairs of the ugly industrial block of a building.
It was just after 4 pm and Aakash would have headed out for his shift at the restaurant, leaving him in peace. He thought maybe he could watch a few streams of foreign news channels since he was not around to hog the TV.
He used his key to get inside and began to undress at the door, taking off his stiff denim jeans and feeling complete relief as the wings on his ankles stretched out and fluttered happily.
Moments like those were rear… moments where he could truly be himself without any worry.
He gathered the heap of clothes, took them to his room, and changed into new clothes, a simple t-shirt and stiff jeans again to keep his wings from moving about involuntarily.
He walked back to the kitchen, which was to the left of the front door and right behind the sofa, and began to put some pots and pans on the stove and prepared his meal.
Then there was a knock at the door.
He groaned in frustration. Aakash would often forget his keys and wake him up in the middle of the night. This was why he never allowed himself to get too comfortable, even in the night he kept a pair of socks close-by that were long enough to cover his wings if he suddenly had to.
He went to the door and pulled it open.
The ball-headed woman from the restaurant stood in front of him. She rose a brow and stared coldly at him, all the warmth of their previous exchanges was gone. “Are you alone?” she asked.
He tried to peek his head past her, to see if there was anyone else with her, but she held up her hand to stop him.
He laughed at her movements, unsure of what to of make this new hostile interaction. “Did you follow me here?” he asked.
All the friendliness of her manner and loquaciousness was gone, now she only looked at him with tight lips. “Isn’t that what you hoped?” she asked coyly.
“That’s enough Ayo,” he heard a softer voice joining in. He heard her footsteps, and he knew they were light… too light for anyone else to hear. He tried to see beyond the woman called Ayo, but again she blocked his path.
“I’ll take it from here,” the second voice said. The woman named Ayo stepped aside, revealing HER.
PRINCESS SHURI.
“Are you alone?” she asked tilting her head to the side, studying him.
There it was, the calmness he always felt when he read her words every night.
The moment should have been overwhelming for him. She had been a point of his focus for so long. Yet he felt calm and something akin to relief.
He nodded and pulled open the door wider, allowing her to pass him.
She walked past him, her fragrance catching his nostril, something floral with hint a of vanilla, bringing on a feeling of nostalgia for something he never experienced so should not miss.
Her eyes did a cursory glance around the room until she turned on her heel and looked at him. “Do you know who I am?” she asked, placing her hands in the pockets of the light black jacket she was wearing.”
“You’re Princess Shuri,” he answered, although he suspected that was not what she was asking him.
She nodded and bit her lower lip. “Anything else?”
“You’re an Avenger,” he added.
She looked at him and she smiled softly. “Anything else?” she asked again.
He knew he was not giving the answer she wanted but at the same time, he didn’t know what it could be. He stammered.
She nodded and bit her lips and considered him carefully, her eyes scanned his appearance, looking at him from head to toe, and rubbed her brow. “Do you know who you are?”
He sighed. It had been on his mind for as long as he could remember, always nagging, like a tick that had attached itself to him. “No, I don’t,” he admitted.
She nodded as if absorbing what he said. She turned her gaze to the hardwood floor, her eyes hidden behind a curtain of dark lashes as she looked down. Her fingers went to her lips as she bit on her nail. The news was clearly distressing to her and his mind immediately began to calculate the reasons why.
“Ayo, can you give us some time? I’ll call when we’ve sorted this out.”
The woman looked hesitant, like she was the one charged with guarding the Princess, and seemed to question the wisdom of leaving her with him. But in the end, she nodded and left the room, pulling the door in behind her.
He stood alone with her now, only the distorted cacophony of the brutish sounds of the city stood present with them. She looked at him and laughed nervously. Her laugh was light, with a slight rasp to it, nervous and unsteady. He never heard her laugh, all the words of hers he devoured could not prepare him for the sound. He found it amusing that someone like her could be nervous in the presence of someone like him. “Why did you ask me that question?” he asked.
“What if I told you we knew each other, and this is not the first time you’re meeting me.”
The words felt like ecstasy. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, almost inhaling her words into his system. “I would say that makes sense. There are missing pieces… everywhere.”
He could hear her voice, speaking clearly and if he listened closely enough he could hear an accelerated rhythm of her heart despite her calm demeanor. He opened his eyes and looked at her. Her browns raised slightly upon catching his eyes. He could see her hands shaking and she quickly shoved them in the pockets of her jacket.
“I have an offer for you?” she said cooly and walked around the room, taking confident strides, like the very air she walked on was imported from her homeland. She came to a stop at a small breakfast table that was pressed against the back of the long sofa. “Can I sit?” she asked.
“Of course.” He felt a smile raising on his cheeks. The sight of her walking about his space was like some figment of an impossible fantasy coming to life. She removed the jacket slowly and draped it on the back of the chair. Underneath it, she wore black trousers and a turtle neck cotton top, with a simple gold necklace resting over it... He knew it well, whenever she was pictured, she was never without it.
“Do you have water?” she asked.
He cursed himself for his lack of manners. She had been there long enough and he had not even offered her anything to drink. “Yes,” he said going into the refrigerator. “Would you like a glass?”
“Bottle is fine,” she answered. He handed the bottle to her and she cracked it open immediately and took a seat on one of the chairs around the table.
“Can I get you anything else?” he asked. Not that he had much to offer. Most of the other drinks in the refrigerator belonged to Aakash. Only the cooking ingredients were his. Then it dawned on him, the entire apartment smelled of the food he had just been preparing for himself. “I was just about to eat lunch actually. I don’t know if you would be interested, it’s probably nothing like you would be used to.”
She turned to him and raised a brow. “You cook?”
“I thought your spy would have informed you of that.” It made sense to him now. Why the woman had turned up and why she seemed more interested in him than anyone else? It wasn’t because she was attracted to him. He was the reason she was there in the first place and she was there because the Princess of Wakanda sent her. It seemed too crazy to believe.
“For some reason, I didn’t think it meant that you actually…can.” The fact that she didn’t deny she had been spying on him didn’t escape him. He felt excited by what it could mean.
“I can,” he assured her as he moved to the kitchen, biting down on a smile that was desperate to come out. He wondered under what circumstances she would know if he could cook or not and why it would be such a surprise to her. Granted, he didn’t always know how to cook, he learned everything he knew from the restaurant but he was at an age where it should be expected, especially as a single man. “You can judge for yourself,” he said, adopting a casual tone with her, testing to see where felt comfortable to her. She only managed to look at him with amusement.
He took a few steps to the stove and began to dish out the plates of creamy corn, herbed potatoes, and wild pink salmon. He walked with two plates of food and placed one in front of her, handed her a fork, and sat opposite her.
“You have an offer?” he asked, taking a bite of the potatoes, satisfied that they were tasty enough to serve her.
She nodded and moved the corn around on the plate before she took the smallest scoop onto her fork and placed it slowly in her delicate little mouth. She chewed and her brows frowned and then her eyes opened and wide.
“You don’t like it? You don’t like corn?”
She shook her head but then nodded. “It is fine…it’s good,” she said and took another bite to prove it. She sat and chewed carefully and then sat up straight. “The offer… one I think you should consider…”
“I accept it,” he heard himself say quickly.
She scuffed. “You haven’t even heard the offer.”
He nodded, trying to calm the excitement and the anticipation of the ‘more’ he always felt his life was missing. “Okay, what’s the offer?”
“I can fill in those blanks for you,” she said raising her chin with pride
“I accept it,” he said.
She held her hand up. “And in exchange… I do need to get something out of this arrangement. I want your loyalty.”
He tilted his head to the side and listened to her heart carefully, it was beating faster than average again. “Loyalty in what sense?”
She blinked. “You were so excited before, now I ask you for loyalty and suddenly you have questions,” she quipped she took a piece of the salmon and placed it in her mouth and she swore under her breath.
He smiled to himself, feeling pride that he had made something that was good enough for royalty to enjoy. “I do accept it. But I don’t know what kind of loyalty you are asking for or what I can offer… you… of all people. How well do we know each other?”
“Well enough.”
“In what sense?” he asked, feeling the uptick in his own pulse.
She sighed. “I know that you have been hiding your… physical eccentricities….”
“Which are?” he asked, he asked cautiously.
She rolled her eyes. “You have wings on your ankles and your ears are pointy,”
He bit his lip and studied her, something about this didn’t make sense. He couldn’t see an occasion when he would ever reveal these things about himself to someone. How did she know he had that certain feature yet no one else did? Unless. Could there be a deeper meaning behind the feeling of being connected to her? “Were we lovers?”
She coughed, covering her mouth. “Why would you ask that?”
He shrugged but her reaction sent a sobering pang of embarrassment through him. “I can’t imagine how else you would know.”
She took a sip of water and looked at him. “We were not lovers.”
“What were we?”
“I will not tell you anything more until you agree to my terms.”
“I have already agreed,” he assured her.
She shook her head. “That’s not the whole of it.”
“Then what is the whole of it?”
She looked around the room. “You have to leave all of this behind.”
“Done,” he said quickly. He was not attached to anything in his life. He felt miserable on most days. He only got relief when he thought of her. If she was offering him a chance to be close to her, the answer was obvious.
“And you will come to Wakanda with me where I will prepare you for the next step,” she said with authority.
“What’s the next step?”
“Your loyalty to me… to Wakanda. You have to do as I say.”
“When do you want me to join you in Wakanda?” he asked… greedy to know more.
“Now,” she stated.
A/n: There you have it, the first chapter. What do you think is going on?