The White Wolves

Adorning

Okoye

T'Challa had me by the princess' side constantly, and while he insisted he only wanted to make sure no one attacked the princess following the step of Wakanda into the eyes of the world, I knew there was more than that. Everyone in the palace could see the princess was different. Some claimed she was dying of a mystery illness, others that she was betrothed to the current president of a neighbouring country and that she was unhappy with the match. The most daring whispered that she wanted her brother's power for herself, that she was plotting to reason that the mantle of the Black Panther should not accompany the crown for safety reasons. I knew the truth.

The princess was in love.

The princess was in love, and her love was in danger she had no power to protect her from. I could see it in her eyes as they glazed over when you tried to make conversation, I could see it in her tears when they were forced to part only two weeks ago and I could hear it in the heavy breaths of her nightmares.

On the 14th night since their parting I had taken to sleeping in the princess' room, for fear she would wake up in fear and do something rash that she would regret for the rest of her existence. She looked so small in the bed as I watched her, as if the sheets were the entire world and she was nothing even with her title. Her skin seemed almost gray in the light of the room, I had never seen her so thin as she shook slightly in the cold breeze of the night that drifted through her window. She was sick with worry, and I was beginning to sicken myself over her health, if we heard nothing of Maya's fate soon I feared she would slip from this world into the ancestral plain.

Maya

Fear gripped my heart and refused to let go as I scanned the woman over, she was more tattoos than woman and I must have counted more inkings than hairs on her head. What new horrors would this acquaintance bring me? Yet more torture to break me into what these people wanted? Or something worse?

"They tell me you are a rather individual young lady," she spoke, her voice was shaped with a strong accent, English and distinctly a London drawl, someone born in London not someone who moved there for the economy. I had not yet had enough peace to consider exactly where they were keeping me, I knew it was England, but the seething capital was both a worrying prospect and made perfect sense. In London people could hear you scream. They just, would keep walking. "A tattoo of wings and the real thing to match," she spoke with an almost teasing tone, as if it was her only pleasure in life to torment me, even though it was obvious I was being tormented enough by others already from my haggard face.

As she talked she flicked through a folder she had brought with her, so far she hadn't met my eye, as if doing so would make me human. "They also say the tattoo came first... and that the real things were a surprise to them, so I can only wonder," she paused as if dramatic effect was entirely necessary before turning the binder to face me, "what would this do?"

Sketched onto painfully white paper, an image sat that sent disgust throughout my body like a disease. It felt as though my skin was tightening around me, squeezing so tightly that blood must surely begin to seep out through the edges. It was a suffocating disgust, an instant repulsion at its form, though I had never thought it possible to be repulsed by something as simple as a drawing.

A drawing, all harsh lines and angles, of a flame.

Bucky

T'Challa had me at the princess' side constantly after the 18th day.
He had tried to help her with Okoye but she wasn't enough. She was a familiar and comforting face to Shuri but after the incident Shuri needed more than that, she needed someone to keep her under control.

On the 17th day it had all become too much for the poor girl, she had stormed into the throne room, her intentions in doing so are still unclear to everyone but herself but we all know what she actually did. Her hair unkempt, she made her way through the guards to her brother and just as she opened her mouth to speak, perhaps even to yell, she seemed to implode and broke down in her brother's lap. As the king held her close and whispered soothing words that meant nothing into her ear he discovered that her hand was balled tight around something and that blood was seeping from between her fingers.

6 stitches to heal the wound and a white wolf to try and help prevent any more.

By far the hardest thing I had to do was try and make sure she ate enough, she barely left her room and we were cooped up in there together, the one thing I found to work was to insinuate that she wouldn't be able to help Maya if she wasn't strong.

Maya

The ink didn't want to settle. It stirred and squirmed beneath my skin, making my whole form shiver. That was the only movement it allowed, I was paralysed, stuck on my side awkwardly on the floor, supported by my useless wings that seemed to have stiffened when the rest of my limbs went slack. My lips wouldn't even obey my constant command to move and call out for help.

Yet I was still breathing.

Somehow, impossibly I was paralysed in a way that inhibited movement and didn't kill me. What was even more impossible was how much I could feel, I could feel the pain spreading from the site of the tattoo like infection, burning for just a moment before it felt like a cold hand pressed against my skin. I could feel the draft from the door as it opened, even though the tattoo artist had left long ago, not caring about my disposition because she had done her job. I expected whoever came through the door to be someone that terrified me: a guard with the button that could torture me with a single finger movement; the man who's voice I had first heard when I woke in the training arena;the masked things that had beaten me not for information or for insubordination but because they needed me to break; the tattoo artist who had caused this new kind of torture.

I didn't get any one of them.

A kind hand felt my forehead as another pair attempted to shift me into a better position to pick up. I was soon able to see who had come and who was so gentle and kind and yet I could not show my relief, it was the pair of doctors from after my beating, the pair who I had concluded must not want to be here and who were in some ways in a worse position than I was. Their loved ones were being threatened. I had no one left that I loved they could threaten me with... apart from someone who was a long way from here.

A weak smile graced the face of the male doctor as he helped his colleague lift me onto the slab I had been given for a bed, "It's alright," he whispered with a glace to the camera I had long worked out was in the corner, "we've got you." It would have been more comforting if they had got me and I wasn't still in my cell but that was definitely just wishful thinking.

I found the strength to close my eyes as they pressed something cold to my forehead and whispered words like fever and paralysis to each other but this care would soon become something I relished, for we would later begin to talk to each other in these long hours after the visitation of the tattoo artist. Every time she got the tattoo wrong I was left in a similar state, until that was, she got it right for the first time.