Valen: A Collector's Item

Wasted Time

"Hello? Hello? Is this thing working? I don't know if I'm using this correctly. How do I use this? Hello? Please answer." Valen slapped her beaded bracelet repeatedly.

A bead fell to the ground after the fifteenth hit. Valen blindly tapped the floor around her looking for it in the blackened closet.

"Valen? I can't see you. Where are you?" Shuri's accent was easily recognizable. Her hologram showed up the second the bead was in Valen's palm.

"Shuri!" Valen almost cried.

"It hasn't even been a full day and you already miss me." She said a little too cocky. "You're lucky I'm still awake or I wouldn't have answered. But why can I barely see you?"

"I'm in a closet." Valen whispered.

Shuri furrowed her brows. "I need more context."

"I think you were right."

"Still not enough."

"I was upset. I don't know if she's hurt." Her voice was shaky. She looked at the door as the light shining from underneath the door dimmed from someone walking by. "I didn't mean to do it. I don't know how I did it."

"Valen, did you murder someone?" Shuri didn't look shocked or scared as someone might be with unsettling information. She looked like a lawyer wanting the cold hard facts from their client so they could then figure out how to defend them.

"No! No. She was moving when I left. Peter helped her sit up. But-" She shut up as someone walked by again.

"But what?"

"I don't know. All I did was yell and she was in the air ... until she wasn't."

Shuri looked away from her bead and thought about what Valen was telling her. She then looked back with a huge smile on her face. "You threw this person."

"I guess." She said slightly unsettled by the creepy smile her friend was giving her.

"Ah, this is great! Then my theory was correct. I knew it had to be. Oh, I wish you were here so we could test it out. What did you do? I need specifics." Shuri grabbed a notebook and pen to take notes.

"I don't know what I did. I told you I just yelled. This is not a time for celebrating. I need help."

"I am helping." She said as she wrote down something Valen couldn't see. "How were you feeling? Did you feel anything different? Did you move differently?"

She rolled her eyes and pretended to bang her head against the wall a few times. She stopped and closed her eyes as she spoke, replaying everything from leaving the hospital room to going up to the roof. "I was angry and sad, hurt and confused from finding Peter all cozied up to MJ like that and-"

"What did you just say?" Shuri looked up from her notes with narrowed eyes.

"Tony didn't tell anyone I was with you or that I was in fact alive this whole time. So, Peter moved on and started dating MJ." She didn't want to get into too much detail because she genuinely thought she could feel her heart crack. Valen knows what pain feels like, it is no stranger to her, but this was something entirely new.

"That little shit." Shuri knew Valen couldn't talk to anyone outside of Wakanda, but she didn't know the people she loved thought she was dead.

Valen chuckled and opened her teary eyes. She didn't care who Shuri was referring to. She was just comforted that her friend was angry for her. Made her feel happy to have someone to talk to about it.

"So you threw the new girlfriend? Good for you. I personally would've gone after Peter, but hey, you do you."

Valen laughed again. "It was an accident."