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Nakia takes his hand and he follows easily, accidentally hitting his knee against his throne. She taps her fingertips lightly on the back of his hand in response. She doesn’t look at him, but T’Challa knows her smile is for him.
He pauses a moment to memorize it. The way the low sunlight glances off her forehead is something he wants to remember for as long as he can. When he’d fallen from Warrior Falls, he’d had just enough time to realize he couldn’t bring it to mind as clearly as he’d wished.
Through the grand windows before them, the Golden City calls upward and outward in a celebration of life. Three lines stretch from the palace a little ways; T’Challa knows the moment Nakia sees them too, because her forehead relaxes just slightly enough that no one who didn’t know her well would be able to tell her relief. T’Challa kisses her fingers. Nakia’s next breath seems freer than before.
<<Look at them,>> she says, and she takes his elbow with her other hand. <<Change.>>
It’s more applicants than he’d thought to hope for. Their new embassy will, interviews permitting, soon be fully staffed.
T’Challa says, “I should have listened to you before now,” and now Nakia turns to him. He knows her well enough by now to know this look she’s giving him.
“You should have.” T’Challa bows his head. Beside him, she sighs. “You’ve listened now. Maybe things could have been different, but it is foolish to think that way.”
A silence falls between them. In it, T’Challa almost believes he can hear the city itself calling to him, too; it seems to extend its fingers in an invitation to join in the celebration. He wants to. He wants to share it beyond themselves.
He presses his palm to the glass. It’s cool under his skin.
<<So much has happened.>>
Nakia taps her fingers on his hand again and says, <<There is still so much to do.>>
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Shuri drags him to her lab to help carry materials and schematics and who knows what to her aircraft. T’Challa doesn’t understand all of what she does down here, but he’s sure the bag of pet food she made him grab was a ruse designed so she could post a picture of the king of Wakanda carrying cat food.
“Delete that,” he says, when the flash goes off.
“Don’t think I will,” Shuri says. She pulls up the picture with sand and grins at his expression. “Don’t be upset, brother, you look just fine.”
“Yes, like a royal porter.”
Shuri laughs and types something. T’Challa waits, exasperated, and the text bounces into place at the bottom of his photo.
He says, “At least pretend you aren’t trying to poke fun,” and she shrugs.
“There’s no fun in that.”
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“When do you leave?”
T’Challa’s words hang quietly and sleepily in the air between them. He adjusts his pillow, stretching his arm; it’s fallen into that tingling shifting-sand sort of emptiness. Nakia watches him, he thinks. It’s almost too dark to make out her face, but the slope of her nose catches the faint glow cast from vibranium set into the wall. T’Challa memorizes the way the light sits on her skin while she thinks of a reply. He knows when she leaves.
Her voice is a little sleep-hoarse when she speaks. “Just after breakfast.”
“You have to go so soon?” T’Challa whispers. He knows what she’s going to say to this, too.
The blankets whisper as she stirs and then her head is on his chest and her fingers lightly trip up and down his face. She presses lightly as she goes, and he imagines paint trailing from her fingertips. He trails his own fingers up and down her back and feels it when she shudders. She props herself up, her nose bumping his in the dark.
“I have to go,” Nakia whispers. “This is too important for me not to go.”
“I know.” Her skin is so soft under his hands. He says, <<Thank you.>>
The vibranium glow kisses her teeth when she smiles. <<What for?>>
“For helping me. For guiding me,” T’Challa says. “For being—” he kisses the corner of her mouth “—stubborn, and right.”
Nakia outlines his bottom lip with her forefinger. “This is going to work,” she says. He rests a hand on the side of her face, and she leans into it. “This outreach is a good idea.”
<<Change,>> he says, and when she kisses him, it tastes the way he felt earlier. It tastes like sharing the celebration.
Nakia says, <<Change,>> and she is a little breathless when he kisses her back.
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In his dreams he is young and running with his father through the Border Tribe lands. W’Kabi rides a rhinoceros, and this time, when they meet, they run side by side.
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The morning comes too quickly. T’Challa’s leg is asleep where Nakia’s rested her thigh, but here, too, is a moment he wants to hold in his hands. The discomfort is centering; it proves she’s here in his bed, that when they have to wake up, the scent of her hair knots will linger on his pillow. He never thought he would have this again.
“It is too early for you to be looking at me like that,” Nakia whispers. Her eyes are still closed.
T’Challa says, “I’ll look away,” and she flops over to face him.
“If you want to,” she says, her tone too serious for this time of morning.
There’s a line of tension between her eyebrows. He smooths it with his thumb and lets his fingers linger on her cheek, and she doesn’t push him away.
“I don’t want to look anywhere but here,” T’Challa says. He keeps her gaze until she believes him. He kisses her fingers. “Even if you leave in four hours.”
“Three.”
“Three and a half?”
Nakia says, “T’Challa,” and he smiles.
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Three and a half hours later, his mother takes his elbow as Shuri crosses her arms and bows. Nakia kneels beside her on the tarmac. Ramonda reaches out for them both, tilting their chins up.
“Our hopes go with you,” she says.
<<Thank you,>> Nakia says, solemn. She meets T’Challa’s eyes, and behind him, Okoye pokes him lightly between his shoulder blades. “We will make Wakanda proud.”
Shuri crowds them together for a photo, saying, “This is going on the wall.”
“You’re painting my walls?” T’Challa asks.
“Our walls,” she says, “you’ll get the photos when I tweet them,” and pulls him in for a hug. Ramonda kisses her forehead.
T’Challa takes Nakia’s hands and kisses them both. She laces their fingers together and she is so much, standing in the daylight. He wants to go with her.
“Good luck,” he tells her quietly. “Let us know when you land.”
Nakia runs her thumb over his eyebrow and cheekbone. It strikes him that she’s studying him; he stills, letting her memorize his face in the sun.
“I will,” she says. He kisses her cheek, and she touches the spot before kissing him full on the lips.
She pulls away first. Nakia crosses her arms to both him and his mother, and they watch her and Shuri disappear into the aircraft. They wave until they can no longer see it. It cloaks, but it is not the border that causes the camouflage.
<<Change,>> T’Challa says.
<<Change,>> Okoye echoes, and she nudges him with a wink. “You didn’t freeze.”
He laughs. “I did not.”
Ramonda says, “What is next, my son?”
T’Challa does not respond immediately. He soaks it in, all of it, the sun on his back and his mother’s hand on the crook of his elbow and Okoye, still winking. There is a country and a world waiting for them. He has accepted his invitation.
<<A celebration,>> T’Challa says. He turns toward the palace, intent on calling a meeting with the Tribal Council, and he knows without looking that they are both following. <<And then there is still much to be done.>>
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