Chapter Text
Through no impressive scientific method, she had deduced that the United States seemed to be comprised wholly of muted colors. The green grass, not as green. The blue sky, more of an irritable gray. Even the sun seemed like it was dimmer here. Shuri could blame that partially on the glasses that were hiding her eyes. But still, she chose to add the bland palette and the biting Massachusetts air to the growing list of reasons she didn’t like leaving home anymore. She hadn’t stepped foot out of Wakanda in a year, and she was only doing it now because she was desperate. She hoped it didn’t show. Shuri scanned the campus for the second time, leaning back against her motorbike, her hands sliding further down into her pockets. She closed her eyes, rolling her head on her neck and waiting to hear it crack. Logically, she should have brought Okoye. She knew that. Okoye would have known it too, that’s why Shuri had snuck out in the dead of night, muting her tracking software and deactivating the older woman’s kimoyo beads. It would take her a while to locate her, and by that time, she would already be back. It would be simple. Easy. Real easy. Shuri had no powers. No faith. She wasn’t strong or agile, like Okoye. She wasn’t a seasoned diplomat like her Mother, or a sensual and skilled manipulator like Nakia. Shuri was smart. Technology was her god. But technology alone couldn’t solve this. It had been a hard lesson with T’Challa, that her one gift could fail her so easily. So she’d sent up a half hearted prayer to Bast that she would briefly grant her the powers of the women she knew best. And the strength to do what needed to be done. Alone.
When she finally spotted the girl in the distance, Shuri smirked. Watching as she appeared to verbally eviscerate a tall white boy, and then turn on her heels like a dancer. Or a fighter. The girl walked quickly and with a clumsy kind of determination that reminded Shuri of a newborn animal stumbling through its first few steps. Her gray t-shirt hugged her small body and her light wash denim stretched against thick thighs. Shuri lowered her glance as the girl walked by her, and then she turned her head to watch her leave. She wasn’t half bad at this spy shit, she thought. Only two people had stared at her for more than a second. And she didn’t know if that was due to her shaved sides, tattooed hands, purple jumpsuit, or the stoic way she was monitoring her target. The first, a wisp of a girl with skin the color of milk and bangs sitting so high up on her forehead that they barely existed. And the second, a girl the color of caramel with brown curls spiraling down her back. She’d looked at Shuri, looked away, and then looked again with a slight smile. Shuri couldn’t stop herself from dipping her head with a smirk. In another life, maybe. She could imagine it. Going to university. Dancing in sweaty bars with sweaty teenagers. Maybe she would learn to like the taste of alcohol. Maybe she already knew she’d like the feel of someone’s hands gripping at her waist. The girl turned to look back one more time, her books clutched to her chest. Shuri smiled, with her teeth, sucking in her bottom lip and then releasing it as the girl disappeared down the winding path. She was gone, and so was that vision of a future never to come. Now, her focus was shifted back to the girl she was here to see. Shuri waited a few inconspicuous moments before she followed her, keeping the swing of her long braids within view. And Shuri, keeping her balled fists buried in her pockets.
She cleared her throat before knocking on the wooden door, deepening her voice and putting on her best interpretation of an American accent. “Riri Williams.” It wasn’t perfect. Nakia would’ve judged it harshly. Okoye would’ve asked why she hadn’t simply kicked the door in. Their voices and judgments bounced around in her head like an American pinball machine. The voice of her Mother rang through the loudest. That one, she muted. Letting the ball drop through the dark hole without resistance. The door opened quickly, the girl staring down at a phone in her hand. Without looking up, she opened her mouth to say something but Shuri pushed her back inside of the room.
“Who the fu–” The girl finally released her eyes from their focus on the screen below, and they widened. “You’re—you’re princess Shuri.” Shuri held a finger up to her lips, nodding as she closed the door behind her. The girl’s previously unimpressed face had melted into a childlike expression of awe, and Shuri took notice of the fact that she was pretty. It was inconsequential. Just a note. One that she would try to forget. The girl lowered her voice to a whisper as Shuri looked around the room.“What the hell are you doing here?” She asked, to Shuri’s back. The dorm room windows were arranged strangely. They reminded Shuri of a beehive. She imagined all the little MIT students in their rooms, buzzing around in strange patterns. Not taking notice of their cramped and unimpressive surroundings. Not knowing the grayness of their sky. “Wait…am I being recruited?” She was brought back to the conversation by the girl’s mouth opening wide. There were ways to handle this question. Ways to handle this confrontation in total. She had run through them all. Calculated them with Griot as the jet had passed over the ocean. She thought of them for a moment, and then discarded them to the back of her mind. Shuri breathed.
“Yes.” The girl’s eyebrows raised into her forehead, a dumbstruck expression taking over her face. Her mouth, still open. Her mouth was pretty too, Shuri noticed. Full lips underneath the gentle curve of her nose. It wasn’t important. Shuri was just cataloging her for remembrance as long as it was useful.
“Wait forreal?” Shuri took a step closer to her, feeling the slight sun on her back coming through the small, square windows.
“I am here about the vibranium detector you built for the CIA.” At that, the girl’s head turned to the side, and her brows furrowed.
“I ain't build no machine for the CIA.” She folded her arms across her chest, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She shrugged, a smirk coming to her lips.“I did that for my metallurgy class.” Shuri felt her expression betray her. She was impressed. She didn’t know why. And it sent a twisted feeling to her stomach. She swallowed down spit to satisfy its movements.
“We need you to assemble another one, for Wakanda.” She paused. “How long did it take you?” The girl looked up, her long, black eyelashes framing her brown eyes.
“I don’t know, a few months maybe.” She shrugged. Shuri stopped her expression from shifting, though she wanted it to. If they’d had more time, she would’ve sat her down, and asked when she’d known she was different. Special. She would’ve asked her about her first invention. About what pushed her to build things. They would’ve made their way to the floor, tinkering with spare parts that had been collecting dust underneath the girl’s bed. They would’ve laughed together, shoulders knocking and bolts spinning to the floor. She could’ve been a friend.
“Do you still have the plans?” Shuri asked, reminding herself that there was no time for fantasies. She had to stay the course. Okoye was good for keeping her on task. Without her, her mind wandered. Shuri wasn’t made for the field. She was too easily distracted. Her head in the clouds, as her father and brother had said to her, often. She wondered now if she’d been staring up all that time to try and see the spot from which their faces would look down on her one day.
“Yeah, they’re at my—“ The girl’s eyes grew wide again and her arms parted from where they’d been hanging loosely on either side of her body. “—wait, am I going to Wakanda ?” Shuri nodded, twisting the kimoyo bead of her earring to summon the jet to the top of the building. She hoped no student was using that spot to smoke. Otherwise, they were in for a rude awakening when the empty sky started to crush them from above.
“Yes, and we must leave now.” The girl’s face twisted into confusion and she turned her head to the side.
“Uh…I got differential equations in like 15 minutes.” At this point, she knew Okoye would’ve put a stop to any protest, with her words or her spear. The thought of the taller woman knocking the small girl out with one flick to the side of her head made Shuri shiver, and she exhaled the thought away. There were ways of doing this too. She could lie. She could say that they could leave right after her class, and then shove the girl into the jet without her even knowing. She could knock her out with a shock from her kimoyo bead bracelet. She could wrap her arms around her neck and squeeze until she passed out. They were all violent options. Ones that would be saved for further desperation. So she breathed in, and resolved to tell the truth.
“My mother, she has been…” She swallowed. “...lost.” The girl’s eyebrows knitted together and a softness came to her eyes.
“Lost?” There was something behind her expression that suggested an intimate knowledge of loss. Shuri would press that soft spot, if she needed to. “What do you mean lost?”
“Taken.” She looked down, twisting a kimoyo bead on her wrist, landing the jet softly and triggering a countdown to the takeoff sequence. She would give the girl two minutes to agree and pack her things. Two minutes before she was forced to do something she knew she would regret.
“By who?” The girl asked, softly. Images of water came to Shuri’s mind. The deep black-blue of the river at night. Her mother’s brown hands, only beginning to wrinkle with age. And a fire crackling by the edge of the sand, making the two women creatures of shadow and light. Shuri could smell the burning wood. She could feel the tall grass swaying behind her in the light breeze. Her mother’s patient stare. She could hear the animals moving through the water, their thick bodies refusing to bend to the whim of nature. And then there was the stillness. The moment Shuri held onto the tightest. The peaceful moment before she first saw his head rise above the water.
“I don’t know.” She kept her head down, fidgeting with the coordinates to keep her eyes from betraying her lie. She hoped the other girl didn’t notice her straining to keep her voice from shaking. Her trembling throat oscillated between swallowing down tears, and anger. There was no discerning which of the two was causing her current inability to speak. She ran through her short list of women who held the powers she would need. Okoye’s forceful nature was specific to her, and the strength of the Dora. Her mother’s diplomacy hadn’t worked in reasoning with him. So Shuri was left to think of Nakia. “The only way we can find her is to follow the path of the vibranium.” She explained, her voice steady. The girl looked at her, nodding. She had her. “Wakandans are gifted this when they are of age, for identification.” Shuri lifted her fingers to her lips, pulling on her bottom lip to briefly expose the glowing, blue tattoo of the War Dogs. She didn’t have time to explain the significance of the mark. Nor why it was near heresy that she possessed one. But once again, it was thanks to Nakia. Who had carved it into her mouth when requested, a long time ago. Asking questions that Shuri had refused to answer. And doing it anyway, because that was what you did, for family.
“Woah.” Shuri released her lip, putting her hands back into her pockets.
“We can track her unique signature from her marking using a vibranium detector but we need the person who built it.” If Shuri’s mother could hear her lying through her teeth. She took a step towards the other girl, who looked up at her like a child. She was so young, Shuri thought. Too young to be so brilliant. Shuri knew how that felt.“Will you help us?” She looked at the girl in front of her, taking in the color of her eyes. Not brown, but amber. Dark honey. Deep like the water she was desperately trying to forget. The girl looked up at Shuri, genuine innocence still in her expression. There was another twisting in Shuri’s stomach, confusion and doubt hanging there, and below. The girl in front of her, or her mother. She was standing in an MIT dorm room and she was standing in the sand by the river. Restrained by a woman with blue skin as a man with winged feet dragged her mother into the water. She was split between the present and the past, and there would be no reprieve until there was resolution.
Shuri straightened her back, ready and resigned to his request. Riri Williams would die. She looked up at the other girl, through her eyelashes. Softening her voice as much as she could without whispering.
“Will you help me, Riri?”