Chapter Text
“Prison’s are pretty much the same all over.”
That was Erik Stevens’ first impression of the place. Towering guard posts, energy fields instead of barbed wire, and the slow, steady heat of Wakanda instead of the oppressive Georgia sun. It looked fancier, sure enough. It was all high-tech vibranium wizardry, but still bent to the same purpose as concrete and metal bars. To him, it looked like overkill. Arrogance, to use force fields where fences would do.
Someone shoved him from behind and he stumbled forward. A guard or another inmate, it barely mattered. He’d lost himself in his own mind, replaying the events that led him here. His ascendancy. The battle with T’Challa. His failure. His attempt to take the honorable way out, choosing death over bondage, but the healing power of vibranium that had denied him even that.
So instead he was here. In another line, waiting to go into another prison. In the back of his head, he knew he had to focus. He couldn’t let the shove go unanswered, or it’d just mean more trouble later. Still, he found it hard to find the urge to care about anything, even his own self-preservation. So instead he just stumbled forward and looked down, at the sparkling blue shackles of energy binding his wrists together
The next few hours passed in a haze. The same dehumanization, the same humiliations as you’d find in any other prison on earth. He’d come directly from his hospital bed, the shackles binding him to the frame of the bed during his convalescence now bound his hands to one another, but the point of his subjugation wasn’t any authentic search for contraband. It never was. It was about the message. You are not in control .
He was vaguely aware of someone speaking. Him and the other convicts had been made to line up in a yard, issued a plain black waistcloth for modesty’s sake. But his hands were still shackled, so all it could do was hang limply from his hands.
It was a warden speaking. Or whatever euphemism for jailer the Wakandan’s had settled on. It was the same old-same-old. Warnings of dire punishments should anyone step out of line. Exhortations to reform, to repay the generosity of their elders and king for showing them the mercy of leniency. For allowing them the opportunity to repay their debt to their betters. Vaguely, Erik wondered what the split was, between regular old criminals, debtors in over their heads, or political prisoners, enemies of the state like him. It didn’t seem like they made much of a distinction. At least formally.
Eventually, the energy field binding his wrists together flickered and died, but the rings of vibranium-infused metal remained around his wrists. A constant reminder that at a moment’s notice, at a flick of some switch, his wrists could once again be bound. The guards and warden left them then, to tie their waistcloths and acclimate, as best they could, to their new circumstances.
Erik did his best to slink away, to some forgotten corner of the yard. He mostly wanted the same thing he had wanted from the moment he had woken up in a hospital bed, to crawl into some forgotten hole and die. But, of course, it wasn’t that easy. Nothing ever was.
A mass of hard muscle and sinew blocked his path. There was a head at the top of it, leering down at him. Two massive arms crossed over a chest and a piercing glare. Erik’s battle sense keyed him into the signs of impending, unavoidable conflict. The other inmates backing away from them. A loose semi-circle forming. A hush falling over the crowd, save for a few quiet whispers and a few bets being placed.
“This is the deathbringer, is it? The ‘Killmonger?’ The man who would be king?” The obstacle spoke, his voice dripping with derision. Erik flinched at the moniker. It had started as an insult. He had made it a mark of respect, of his own destiny. To kill. To conquer. Now, it only sounded sad. Pathetic.
The bigger man continued, “Out there, you tried to kill the king. In here, I am the King.” He jabbed a meaty finger into Erik’s chest, then turned it back to himself, a crude illustration of their difference in station.
“You want to take your shot now, ‘Killmonger’? Try to kill another king?” The King stepped back, opening his arms wide, as if to encompass all of his tiny kingdom. Erik said nothing. Did nothing. Kept his head down. This, too, would pass.
The King clicked his tongue in disgust. “No. I don’t imagine you could kill anything, let alone a king. You have wasted away in some hospital bed. But maybe you think you will wait. Bide your time. Grow stronger. And then , come for the King.” Erik sensed it, the tensing of muscle, the sudden explosion of force, but he did not move. Maybe he’d get lucky and this brute would actually finish him off. Instead, the blow connected with the side of his head, sending him tumbling to the ground.
His teeth rattled in his head and he tasted the familiar iron taste of blood in his mouth. He curled in on himself, reflexively. But he didn’t fight back. The King began to kick him, raining blows into his chest, punctuating each of his words with a blow, “ You. Cannot. Kill. Me.”
As Stevens slowly began to black out, his tormentor seemed to become satisfied. The crowds drifted away, listlessly. Bets were argued over. Had it even been a fair fight? The dust of Wakanda settled over Erik Stevens.
“Get up, N'Jadaka.”
Someone spoke his name. His Wakandan name. A hand reached down, grabbing him by the arm. It felt weathered, old. There was a grunting as someone strained, lifting him up, onto his feet. Stevens slumped onto his rescuer, and they groaned under his weight. As his eyes fluttered deliriously, Erik saw glimpses of the older man. Now, he was his uncle. Now his father. Now a tired old man, a shock of grey hair and a scraggly beard, bent, wireframe glasses perched on a crooked nose.
Together, the two men shuffled off the yard, towards a small assemblage of huts. Erik’s would-be ally half-carried him into one such wattle-and-daub structure, no doubt built by the inmates themselves. At least it was cooler here. The elder man laid him down, on a scant bed of rags in a corner of the hut. Stevens wheezed, trying to say something. Maybe a note of thanks. Maybe an exhortation for the other man to just let him die. The elder man shushed him gently.
“Quiet now, N’Jadaka. Rest now. Tomorrow we talk. Tomorrow we learn .”
The older man’s voice was worn and crooked. It seemed to rattle out of his throat, but somehow, it was oddly soothing. Slowly, the last of Erik Steven’s consciousness faded away.
Later, he would look back and reflect on this day. Erik Stevens would mark it as the day that ‘Killmonger’ died.
But now, he rested.