One Wild Ride (A Marvel Fanfic-Complete)

What is Precious

Just like the web of his complicated personality, Erik Stevens had spent most of his life going by false names. 

After a few weeks in the village, Tamika finally learned Erik's true name. His birth name. N'Jadaka.

Sitting with Preyy on the porch, she smiled inside as she thought about what the name must mean to him. She knew automatically that he took great pride in his Wakandan name. The name that his American mother gave him to honor his Wakandan father. That's why he had kept it close, safely tucked away in a place where he could keep watch over it. That's what Killmonger did when he cared about something. Guarded it. Like a tyrant brooding over priceless treasure.

After she got past her initial anger, Tamika also recognized this was why Erik had not let her leave the valley with Shuri. Why he constantly stayed by the door to his hut while she lay unconscious, and why he always kept Preyy close to her side now that she was awake.

Despite falling in love with the valley, Tamika continued to try to hold on to her hate for Erik and he still did nothing to convince her otherwise. He took care of her and expected nothing in return.   Then one day she remembered Jay. The very serious and aloof young man from ten summers ago who said his name was N'Jadaka. The memory just smacked her right in the face.  It couldn't have been a coincidence. But up until that point she had not put two and two together... that Erik was Jay and Jay was Erik. Now she could finally see her first crush in Erik's face though he had changed and matured significantly since then.  She realized that he gave her his real name back then.  The one thing he valued more than anything else. And everything started to make more sense.  Why he had given her that book, why he saved her after running her off the road, why he chose her in Boston, and what he meant in his final letter.  She started to think maybe his words were true. That he was sincere when he told her that he loved her. And that caused her emotions to fly all over the place. She was not sure how she should feel about this realization.

Though he never confirmed this out loud, Tamika guessed long ago that Erik's father was born and raised in Wakanda. She later learned that his father had been the previous king's younger brother. And like Shuri, his father had struggled to find his place in the world from within that very large shadow.

Despite King Azzuri's discouragement, N'Jobu, known in America as Travis Johnson joined the Hatut zeraze as a teenager. And very much like his son in ambition and talent, he set his sights on a position across the Atlantic Ocean in the United States. While he was stationed there, he met and fell in love with an American woman named Sabria Brinson who was a black activist in the Oakland area. She was the other half of Erik.

His mother died in jail when Erik was only a few months old under suspicious circumstances. Nothing became of the case, which left Erik's father angry and feeling powerless. He had been unable to protect her if but he surely wasn't going to let her death go in vain.  He began to militarize the Hatut zeraze, plotting to use Wakandan technology in order to forcefully change the oppressive system that his wife had fought so hard against and ultimately lost her life to. He taught Erik from a young age about Wakanda and all of his country's secrets.  About his true lineage and to keep it well hidden.  He engrained the importance of recovering Wakanda's priceless vibranium stores in his son before Erik could read and write.  Then N'Jobu was ultimately betrayed by a spy among his loyal war dogs and was subsequently killed by King T'chaka.

Even after being orphaned and abandoned at age eleven, Erik quickly grew into an extension of both his father and his mother. His fiery will was a combustible combination of their wills, easily drawn to anyone and anything who could make him into Erik Stevens aka Killmonger, the harden soldier who he needed to become in order to bring his fathers plans to fruition. Tamika saw this clearly after she finally heard the entirety of his story. And this only acted to breakdown the wall around her heart even further as she was finally now reintroduced to N'Jadaka.