Rebellions are built on hope

notbecauseofvictories:

Erik freezes, when he sees Mister James standing there on the edge of the court. There’s a minute when everybody else is shouting at him—Jamaal and Toby and Estee, all shouting for him to pass, pass now, but they go quiet too, when they see where he’s looking. “Oh,” Erik hears Darrell breathe.

Erik doesn’t move, doesn’t—can’t, until Jake comes up puts his hand in between Erik’s shoulder blades, shoves him forward. “Man, go,” he mutters, and Erik does, taking a staggering step forward, then another.

Erik is still clutching the basketball when he stops, just in front of Mister

James. 

Mister

James looks like he’s been crying. “Where’s my dad?” Erik asks in a small voice; his hands are sweaty on the basketball.

“I’m sorry,” 

Mister

James says. Erik drops the basketball, and his breathing stutters—he knows, he knew, everyone dies, that’s just life around here. But he’d thought—for some reason, he’d thought that it couldn’t touch his dad, who was alive, and sang Wakandan songs and also Purple Rain as he made pancakes; who kissed Erik’s mom even when she was crying in that ugly blue jumpsuit and smiled, whenever Erik brought homework for him to stick on the fridge. How could anything touch him?

(Even death would have to turn away, ashamed for having tried.)

Mister James holds out his hand. “Your uncle’s here,” he says, and Erik blinks. He didn’t know he had—any uncles. “We’re going to take you home.”

“Home to where?” Erik asks, but Mister James just looks sad. 

“Come on,” he says, very quietly. “Let’s go.”

Erik’s uncle is dressed like he stepped out of some—Star Trek-looking place, with the skintight suit and an expression like he’s tired and bored and angry, for  reasons Erik doesn’t understand. He looks at Erik and then his expression goes blank, which is somehow worse.

“You are N’Jobu‘s son?” Erik’s uncle asks, and Erik’s blood goes cold and hot at the same time. (He doesn’t realize he’s digging his nails into Mister James’ hand until after, when they board something that looks a lot like the Trimaxion Drone Ship, and Mister James takes his hand away. He’s bleeding, but when Erik says sorry Mister James just pats his shoulder, and tells him not to worry about it.) 

“My name is Erik,” Erik says. “I’m—”

“That is not the name you were born with,’ Erik’s uncle says. He has an accent, like dad did, whenever he talked about Wakanda, or Erik’s grandmother, or how much he loved mama. (Erik tried to imitate him sometimes, practiced with it. He thought it was the way everybody talked about love.)

Erik doesn’t say anything, and his uncle sighs. “Show me your lip, if you do not know it.”

Erik doesn’t—show him his lip. He grits his teeth together and says, “My name is Erik Stevens,” he says, because that’s what his mother calls him, even now, when she calls. He’s not giving it up. “But sometimes my dad called me N’Jadaka.”

Erik’s uncle looks at Mister James, and then nods, once. “Very well,” he says. 

“Is my dad dead?” Erik asks, when his uncle turns away. His uncle stops, and Erik watches him bow his head. Erik can’t see his expression, but he imagines it’s—sad. He sounds sad, when he says:

“Yes. Collect your things.”

That is the last time Erik Stevens—sometimes, not often, called N’Jadaka—sees Oakland, California. Clutching a garbage bag of his father’s things and whatever laundry was clean and in the drawers, he watches his friends turn up their faces at the silver ship slides past into the night. 

.

He cries, the first time he watches the sun rise over the capital city of Wakanda. (The capital city is green and silver and even though his uncle told him its name in Wakandan, Erik doesn’t know what to call it. It’s Silver City, in his head; Silver City, with a lot of green, where the sun rises like gold.) Erik cries when he sees the sun rise over this strange and silver city, and he won’t let anyone touch him, not even the Queen. He screams when she tries.

T’Challa does sit down though; he sits down next to Erik, and he doesn’t say anything. Just sits there, very quietly, as Erik cries for his father.

“Do you like posho and beans?” T’Challa asks at last, and Erik has to scrub at his face, swallow, hard, before he can answer.

“I don’t know what that is,” he says. 

“It is good. Good food for grief.”

T’Challa is older than Erik by at least half a decade, so Erik lets him take his hand. Erik lets him lead—away from the cliffside, down the road to the Silver City. T’Challa is older, and probably sort of charming, and Erik lets him charm the street cart owner until Erik and T’Challa are sitting at the edge of the picnic table (what? it looks like a picnic table) with paper trays of rice and beans and some sort of meat. It smells spicy, and good.

(Erik is hungry, despite himself. His stomach growls.)

“I loved my grandmother,” T’Challa says, apropos of nothing. “My mother’s mother. She died when I was—not much older than you.”

Erik is quiet, staring down at the paper tray of meat, and beans, and rice. 

“A grandmother is not like a father,” T’Challa says. “I know that. But I think grief is—grief. I think you miss your father. And that’s…”

“Yeah,” Erik says.

Erik eats the posho and rich and beans with his fingers, until he’s almost sick with it. (He’s hungry, he ate too quickly and weirdly he wants to be sick, he wants—) T’Challa eats too, and watches Erik in turns. He talks about Wakanda, about the girl he loves and his best friend, and the five tribes, his bodyguards, his mother and father. He talks about music, and art. He says, “You are welcome here, cousin,” and Erik almost believes him. 

Afterwards, they walk side-by-side up to the palace above the Silver City. It is nothing like the European castles that Erik has seen in history books—but it’s beautiful, and it glitters in the high sun. “Vibranium,” T’Challa says, and Erik looks at him, sideways.

“Stronger than steel.” T’Challa says with a half-shrug. “Brighter than diamonds.”

Erik is full, and heavy, and he is tired—he’s so tired, having cried, having eaten and walked all the way to the Silver City and up again. He lets the Queen kiss his forehead, this time, and lets the King look at him dispassionately, as though he is just another carving in the obsidian wall marked with the faces of kings.

That night, he sleeps like the dead, and does not dream. 

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