Work Text:
The lab was quiet, a stark contrast to the controlled chaos of the last few days. The final schematics for the eastern lattice of the Sonic Dome had been transmitted to the fabrication units, and the first of the IMMUNITY armor’s power cores was cycling through its initial charge sequence. The only light came from the soft, persistent glow of dormant holograms and the city lights twinkling beyond the panoramic window.
Riri was sprawled on a low, modular couch, her fingers flying over a holographic keyboard projected from her kimoyo beads. She was coding a new filtration algorithm for the armor’s acoustic sensors, her brow furrowed in concentration. Shuri watched her from her workbench, not for the first time feeling a sense of profound dislocation. This woman, with her MIT sweatshirt and Chicago accent, was now the co-architect of Wakanda’s future. She was here because of a machine, because of Namor, because of a chain of events that could be traced back through grief and pride to a single, poisoned root.
“Hey,” Riri said, not looking up from her code. “This guy N’Jadaka. M’Baku mentioned him again in the briefing today. ‘We must not repeat the mistakes of N’Jadaka.’ Who was he? You mentioned him before.”
Shuri’s hands, which had been disassembling a faulty sonic emitter, stilled. The casual curiosity in Riri’s voice was a world away from the weight the name carried in Shuri’s bones.
“He's… family.”
Riri looked up, her curiosity sharpening into concern. “Family? I thought… I thought it was just you and your mom now.”
“It is,” Shuri replied, placing the emitter down with a definitive click. “He’s dead. My brother killed him.”
The bluntness of the statement hung in the air. Riri sat up slowly, pulling her legs underneath her. “Oh. Damn. Shuri, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
"It's fine." Shuri finished for her, her tone not unkind, but distant.
Riri's gaze is soft. She was giving Shuri an out, but her eyes were asking the question anyway.
Shuri considered it. She could shut it down. It was Wakanda's business. Old reflexes, the protective instincts of a princess guarding her nation’s secrets, rose up. But Riri wasn’t the world. She was… Riri. And she was Shuri's heart now. She deserved to know what shadows lived in the corners of her new home.
“He was my cousin. My uncle's son.”
She spoke plainly about the sordid list of events. Prince N’Jobu, sent to the outside world as a War Dog. His disillusionment, his belief that Wakanda was wrong to hide its power while their people across the world suffered. His plan to steal vibranium and arm them.
“My father found out,” Shuri said, her gaze fixed on a point miles away. “And he confronted his brother and killed him. He left the body and he left N'Jadaka.”
“He abandoned him.”
Riri’s face was a mask of empathy and dawning horror. “Shuri… that’s… that’s awful.”
Shuri continues because she has to. "The Dogs of War who assisted my uncle were… dealt with. The records were purged and the real story would have died with my father and his advisor... So you see, the cycle is rather efficient. My father killed my uncle. My uncle's son killed my father’s friend. My brother then killed my cousin. Our family is very good at killing each other.”
Her words are met with silence and Shuri doesn't know why but she kept speaking.
“You know he was probably a genius. He learned our systems, our technology, faster than anyone I have ever seen.”
A ghost of a smile, bitter and impressed, touched her lips. “He used the suit I designed for my brother better than T’Challa ever did."
She looked at her hands, the hands that had built the suit. “In the end, what defeated him wasn’t my brother’s superior skill or strength. It was time. N’Jadaka didn't have years to grow accustomed to the herb like my brother.”
The room was silent again. Riri was watching her, and Shuri could see the cogs turning in her brilliant mind, trying to reconcile all the pieces that Shuri continued to give her. Then she decides she's had enough and turns back to her work.
As she picked up the sonic emitter, her mind drifted to her dreams. Ever since her terrible trip to the Ancestral plains, N'Jadaka would visit her in her dreams and in those dreams he wasn’t a demon or a monster. He was just a man, sharp and angry and painfully perceptive.
“All that power, and you’re still building cages, princess?” he’d said, his voice echoing in the cavernous, burning space. “You got the same tools I had. You see the same problems. You just too scared to break the world to fix it.”
She’d argued with him. She’d defended her father, her brother, their ways.
“They left me,” he’d say, and the anger was gone, replaced by a hollow ache that felt far more dangerous. “Your daddy killed mine and left me with nothing. No home. No history. Just a name that wasn’t even mine. You sitting up in your golden city, you think you’re different? You think you’re better? You’re just better protected.”
His advice hadn’t been to burn it all down. Not exactly.
“You wanna protect this place? Really protect it? Then stop being what they expect. Stop being the good little princess who makes toys. A panther is a predator. It hunts. It makes the whole jungle afraid of the dark. Be the thing they never see coming.”
After one such dream she’d woken from that visitation gasping, the Panther’s power thrumming under her skin not like a protector’s mantle, but like a weapon freshly sharpened. He was a ghost, a bitter, angry ghost, but he was her ghost. His voice was now a part of the chorus in her head, alongside her father’s teachingand her brother’s compassion. A dangerous, radical counterpoint.
Riri was still watching her, her empathy a tangible force in the room. Shuri could feel the questions poised on her lips, the desire to fix, to heal, to understand the hurt she sensed lurking beneath.
Shuri preempted her. Her voice regaining its usual cadence. “The past is the past. What we should do is learn from it. Now tell me why this thing is refusing to connect properly.”
She can't quite force a smile, but for now it would be enough.