REUNITED ~ STEVE ROGERS [4]

Chapter Twenty

The next few moments were chaos. Nakia quickly pulled Shuri and Mama towards the cave exit.

"We have to go now! Queen Mother, lets go!" Nakia gripped her arms and pulled her along.

"Princess, we must go!" Nakia urged me, but all I could do was stare at him. He smirked and pointed at me.

"Stay, Princess." He commanded. I turned to Nakia and nodded.

"Get them out of here. I'll find you." I said blankly, tasting salt and iron on my tongue. They staggered away, Shuri giving me one last look before she disappeared.

"Good girl," Eric said with a grin, then turned his eyes to the shaman walking towards him with the necklace, the gold one that T'Challa had refused.

He placed it over Eric's neck, and when he stepped away they all saluted him.

The new King.

I didn't salute him, instead I lifted my chin as my hands started glowing, my grief threatening to blow over. It hadn't hit me yet, not really, and I tried to distract myself from the image of T'Challa going over the edge with the thought of killing Eric.

"Nah uh, none of that, Princess. Not unless you want me to kill your sister too." Eric tutted at me like I was a child who had been caught with their fingers in the power socket, and it just made me even angrier. But I stood down, letting my hands cool, staring at him. He stared back, and licked his bottom lip.

"I want her with me, all the time. Gotta keep an eye on my best weapon, right?" He smirked as he ordered the Dora, and I felt Ayo and another grip the backs of my arms, securing me in position. The whole crowd knew if I didn't have this cast on, and didn't walk with a limp, I would have destroyed Eric already. But I also didn't want to risk being banished myself for killing the King, so I kept my rage simmering as we made our way away from the challenge pool. There was no grief, not yet, because I wouldn't allow myself to be distracted. I knew that even one moment alone would cause those feelings to crash in, and that's what I feared the most. Mama and Shuri needed me at my best, my most focused if we were to get out of this, and I had learnt that grief was a hell of a distraction.

And Steve? I didn't even want to think about that, or I really would lose it.

***

The Shaman threw dirt over Eric as he lay in the pit, drinking the elixir made from the Heart Shaped Herb. It was all around us, growing and glowing in the dim light. The very essence of my being, my creator, the soul of which pumped through my veins at that very moment. I wasn't supposed to be in here at all. This was a sacred place meant for Shaman and kings alone, and my very presence here was blasphemy. I could feel it in the shocked looks of the Shaman, unaccustomed to outsiders, especially women, being in there. I was in the back, two Dora a few feet away, watching me. I fiddled with my Kimoyo beads, glancing at Eric in the pit. I could go, I could leave. But the Dora were loyal to the King, no matter who it was, and they wouldn't let me go without a fight, and I wasn't going to hurt anyone, not them.

Eric would be in the ancestral plane by now. That's when it started, the cracking in my chest. Tendrils of grief snaking up through my diaphragm, infecting my very core. Then the tears, streams of them dripping down my cheeks and into the soil beneath me. My vision was blurred but in my head all I saw was T'Challa in his final moments, how sorry he looked before he was thrown-

I was quiet, no sounds of sorrow escaping my lips. Only my shoulders trembled, eyes bloodshot, hands clasped together so tightly I felt my bones shift and crack beneath my skin. I wanted to retreat, wanted to curl up inside what was left of my soul and disappear, to go to sleep and never wake up. I slipped a hand into my pocket and felt the picture of Steve, held it in my fist. Now I needed him more than ever he wasn't here, he wasn't with me. Fate or God or whatever the hell made the decisions in this dimension had gone too far this time. I was at breaking, I could feel rage like glowing embers in my chest, mixed with sorrow and whiskey. I felt my hands burn with that familiar feeling, scars in the middle of my palms illuminated. And then hands on my shoulders, strong hands holding me down, a reminder of humanity and that now was not the time for rage, but to keep my head down.