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The day that Shuri is born, there is an earthquake on the other side of the world. Not much- just enough to worry the population and send news reports everywhere fluttering.
Shuri’s father laughs- ha, ha, ha, deep belly laughs. She was born to shake the world, he says, and lifts T’Challa, all wide eyes, to look into the Queen Mother’s arms. Don’t all babies shake the earth, father? The prince asks, and the King laughs again.
No, no. Just this one. New lives cause rain, or snowstorms, or tsunamis.
This one moves the earth itself.
If Shuri could’ve turned around and said it, she would have said, Well, that’s just not very probable. I’d love to be a tsunami! Imagine all the potable water you could make if you controlled a tsunami. Or if you used a tornado for wind energy. Actually, get me a piece of paper, I feel a blueprint coming on.
Of course, they were still living in the 20th century. They still used pieces of paper.
Shuri had still yet to learn to write to be able to design her hologram monitors. Insert joke about the chicken or the egg here- in the end, Shuri always came first.
She grows up. T’Challa grows up faster- and grows old in the process. Shuri teases him that she has been older than him since she was born, and she hopes that with every laugh she gets out of him one more grey hair has been smoothed away.
And also, he’s her brother. He deserves to be teased. Those shoes with that outfit??
He grins, ever the composed one. I happen to like my style.
Yeah, Shuri says, because YOU were born under a rock. T’Challa’s dimples come out at that statement, and he poses even more embarrassingly.
He’s the worst. Shuri loves him so much.
T’Challa becomes a king. But in truth, T’Challa has been a king since before he was born, since the moment he opened his eyes. Kingship is grown inside of him, a truth that has always been there, waiting.
He learns patience- he learns kindness- he learns humility- he learns modesty- he learns forgiveness.
He’ll never be as wise as Shuri- she jokes that she absorbed all of their genes’ wisdom pre-emptively. Her big brother shrugs his shoulders. Our ancestors have more than enough wisdom for both of us, you know.
She grins, complacent in her authority as the Right One.
No, no, I took all of it. There’s a reason I’m a Ravenclaw, and you’re the token Gryffindor, brother.
T’Challa is the heir apparent, and Shuri grows up knowing she will have to make an imprint on the world that has never been seen before. He will too, of course- but hers will be cast farther, brighter, never shaded by wearing a crown.
Shuri knows it is at the cost of T’Challa’s rule that he will never be able to study the world like she does, like she can. She could be a good queen- but she doesn’t have to be. She has a choice in the matter- which makes all the difference. Shuri has always known who she would be, in a far-off someday, in a future she shall carve with hungry hands.
But her brother- T’Challa had his story written for him since before he was born, with a line that extended farther than the horizon, thousands of voices crying out for his wise decisions. Shuri knows a little about pressure (she’s a girl in a world who scoffs, so she doodles on the world’s face to make herself laugh) but that- that is not pressure.
That is fate.
So Shuri will not give up her brother to face fate alone and alone- she will stay by his side, no matter what comes. She shall stay alive, and she will make sure he is not alone.
He is not alone when their father dies, though he might believe he is.
He is not alone when he is crowned king, though he might believe it.
He stands before their ancestors, and his hands are empty, just as empty as he is- but that is how he believes it.
He was never empty-handed, Shuri knows. He always carried the sun in his hands, and his heart on his sleeve, and everyone who ever met him loved him without knowing it.
One of those special souls, Shuri thinks to herself, that will find love in response to his existence, wherever he goes. Not for anything he possesses, but just for what he is, and always will be.
Shuri dedicates her life to the pursuit of wonder, in finding beauty of the world, in its rightness, its stability and equanimity. T’Challa always found it in people, in how they clash and fight with one another. It is exactly what will make him a great king- it is exactly what makes it hard for him to be a great king.
Killmonger comes, and Killmonger goes. He is just another man, wearing his fury as his armor. How messy, Shuri says. Anger is a great catalyst, but even its coolness can’t stand against stronger stuff- like logic!
She doesn’t like his anger, or his fear, or his righteousness. She sees him as a little thing, another pretender in a line of pretenders. She would have thrown him out on his face with her own two hands, if she had the chance. But then, she is not T’Challa. She thinks with her heart and her head in turns, but he must use them both at once, warring and together yet.
T’Challa throws Erik from the throne, but he also loves Erik, with all the force of two decades of standing shoulder to shoulder stolen from him. T’Challa forgives- and because T’Challa forgives, he must make right his father’s mistakes, he must settle the bones of the brother he never knew.
In the morning, the true king rises, at once burning anger and preemptive grief mixed together. All at once, he is righteousness and regret raised from the dead, with its claws bared to protect what is his. Except, T’Challa would not say it was his. He would say-
Ours.
The true king rises from a cold grave, and cradles his wronged brother in his arms. He says that he will not cast them out from his heart- he will enfold those who are lost, draw them in to be known and to be loved.
He will look his choices in the face- he will not run away. He will listen- he will ponder- he will decide. He shall protect those who need protecting, and face those who would take them away from him, from the future he ensures for them.
He looks in the face of suffering, and in response, he throws open the walls of his heart, of his kingdom. He lays down his life to a life of giving, and giving, and giving.
It will be hard for him to be king- but though it might be a long road, full of hardship, he will make a beautiful thing out of something muddy and difficult.
He throws open the gates, and tells the world who they really are. He is afraid, of course- but when did that ever stop him? Or stop your stupidity, Shuri says, trying to figure out how to reinforce their borders. Whatever possessed you to tell the world who we truly are?
He smiles, complacent as ever. They might as well figure it out BEFORE they need us, sister. That way, they know who to ask for help. Shuri sighs. Ah, brother, but the best part is surprising people with help! Their faces get so bright, it’s adorable.
He laughs. She laughs. The world shifts for a moment, the world is only the space between two people who have shared their lives together since before they could remember.
They bury Erik, they bury their father, they begin working out in the world. All is not well, but T’Challa’s smile of pride is enough to make it feel like it’s alright.
Shuri works away, because Shuri was born to work, to create, to draw lines between dots no one else can see. She makes her brother laugh- she makes her brother proud- she smooths away as much of his worry as she can. They tease him, make fun of him, make sure he has no pride to speak of- and Shuri sits secure in the knowledge that she is her brother’s (and mother’s, and father’s) pride.
She will not let them down. (She can fail, too- but she won’t let them down.)
The king brings a man with a missing arm and a broken mind to her. Shuri lets Bucky sit awhile in a cottage by the sea, with children’s laughter filling his ears. He is truly gentle, she thinks, as she watches him try to learn the names of everyone around him. What a tragedy that life broke such a gentle son.
How carefully he shakes hands of other people now belies how much he can hurt with those very same hands, now. What was done to him was wrong, but he seems determined to make it something beautiful, all the same. Birds of a feather…
The king brings an android to her, a man with all-knowing, innocent eyes. He is too young- he is too young. He loves too much, too openly. She says it again, in her head. Birds of a feather flock to a king with open arms.
The end of the world is coming, says everyone. Shuri looks at T’Challa, and thinks-
It is not. Not if I have anything to do with it. Not to him, and not to everything he loves.
If and when T’challa asks, Can you do it? Shuri tells him With as much time as you can give me.
She works in a fury, and falls in a fury greater still. Hell hath never seen a sister with more desperate need to save everything she possibly can, to cling onto life till it grows scarred from her claw marks, to keep looking even when her eyes are full of tears and she cannot read and understand anymore.
He is a good king.
He stands for honesty and truth, sincerity and justice, empathy to the last stand. But more piercingly, he is so much more in Shuri’s heart. He’s family. He’s hope. He’s the future, looking up. He’s faith, and he’s heart, but most of all he’s home. He is so much more than strength, so much more than promise, so beyond everything else that’s always been the domain of other men.
Shuri was always going to be there, ensuring that the future T’Challa was building would always see the light, just as he wanted it.
She was always going to be there, making certain that all the good that T’Challa sees in the world holds steady. She always would be.
They were taking it away.
When the war cries fall silent, she closes her eyes.
They are taking away my life’s purpose- to seek out the good because he believes in it.
They are taking away all that I might give.
And when I wake up, there might not be anything left.
But Shuri falls asleep still, to dreamless panic and unshaded terror and a glimpse of purple sky.
It’s not home for her- her brother is not there.
So Shuri cannot rest--- yet.