All the glamour and the trauma and the fuckin'
Melodrama
All the gun fights
And the lime lights
And the holy sick divine nights
They'll talk about us, all the lovers
How we kiss and kill each other
- Lorde, Sober II (Melodrama)
T'Challa is pressed hard against the ground.
The Panther Habit begins to melt back from her face like the peeling of raw, newly grown skin. And, all at once, blood startles her tongue, yells numb her ears. Smoke scratches at her eyes. T'Challa wheezes, and it makes pained tears squeeze out of the corners of her eyes.
Smoke, blood, tears. Baba lifeless amongst shards of glass. T'Challa despairing, and scrabbling for something to hold on to.
The grip on her nape tightens even more. Grass and soil scrape half her face.
"Yield," Killmonger demands. "Yield the fuck now."
Killmonger's voice rings throughout the battle. A hush ripples. The clash of armour and weapons, the pained yells, the rampaging rhinoceroses all fade. Killmonger's voice is doubly loud now, as if it were itself another presence taking up space.
"Yield!" rings Killmonger's voice, and T'Challa's face is once again sharply dug against the ground. Her cousin's voice is raspy, like smoke dragging over shards of glass. With an accent curling around the word in a way nobody's in Wakanda will have done, when demanding of such a thing. When demanding of such a thing from T'Challa.
T'Challa tries to raise her arm. It's grabbed. Twisted. The knee on her back digs in with a force which almost makes her cry out.
"Want to see if you'll die this time?"
No.
No. Mistakes. Shuri. Mother.
T'Challa coils her muscles. She tries to buck up again with only one good leg. But Killmonger really twists at her arm now, yanking upward at an angle, blunt, relentless, until a wet snap sounds and T'Challa screams.
A broken arm.
For a blinding pain-filled moment, T'Challa almost wishes they were at the Warrior Falls again. The rushing waters almost soothed her the last time.
Dimly, she thinks she can hear Nakia's shout.
She gasps out, bites off a whimper.
Think, T'Challa orders herself.
A molten pain is lancing up and down her entire body. Even breathing is an agony.
"I can kill you right now," Killmonger says.
Yes, why does she not just kill me?
"I can make a present out of you," Killmonger continues. Her various holds on T'Challa remain unyielding. "Your sis, she's lonely. Been locked in her room all day. She misses you. Didn't even have the chance to say goodbye, she said. You miss her too?"
The smoke in T'Challa's eyes has turned watery. It stings. "Don't."
"What was that?"
T'Challa snarls. She's seized with the urge to pull back a fist and punch. But she cannot even raise her face from the ground.
The clawed grip on T'Challa's nape loosens before swiftly tightening again, almost a mocking caress. "She wants to see you. I can give her that. Didn't say you have to be alive, though."
And T'Challa is down here once again. Despairing. Scrabbling for something to hold on to.
Think, T'Challa orders herself, even though breathing itself feels like burning.
Shuri in the palace.
Mother up in the mountains.
Why does she not just kill me? Like the last time?
Her mouth is full of ash and blood. T'Challa chokes out the words.
Her cousin stands in front of a full-length gilded mirror. The chamber is awash with morning light, pouring in from the stained vibranium windows in soft yellows and soft pinks, shimmering on the numerous golden pearls embroidered on Killmonger's black robe, on her golden Panther necklace.
The soft morning light also brushes on Killmonger's face. In any other circumstance T'Challa might have thought it a beautiful face: a charm-laced smile, cheekiness tucked deep in her dimples, an eyebrow arched in a seemingly perpetual vague amusement. A face whose curves and planes brim with something almost like astonishing loveliness.
Then T'Challa will meet Killmonger's eyes, and she will be sent reeling. Too sharp eyes. Much too sharp, and too hard.
Killmonger meets her eyes in the mirror now. Her cousin's face looks almost kind as she says, "Come here."
T'Challa moves away from the corner with the potted bamboo plant, where she has been watching Killmonger dress herself.
Her cousin refuses to have anyone dress her. Killmonger sent away the ladies whose tasks require them to assist the queen with her robes and shoes, with her hair and jewelry.
"Tug them for me." Killmonger gestures to the strings at the back of her robe.
Each string has a pearl at its tip. T'Challa carefully pulls until her cousin's robe takes on a shapely silhouette.
"Right, you can stop."
It is still looser than how T'Challa might have worn it, even though it is elegantly shaped enough. But she stops, ties the strings into a droopy bow, and steps back.
Killmonger tilts her head and surveys the hair braided back to her nape. What she sees must have satisfied her. She moves to the lacquered jewelry case, runs her hand over the gems and gold. Without choosing anything, Killmonger snaps shut the case, rattling it.
T'Challa makes herself say, "Shall I send for another case, my queen?"
"Don't call me that."
"I beg your pard –"
"Queen," Killmonger says, a bit impatiently. "Don't call me queen."
But her cousin is the queen. T'Challa is confused. She challenged T'Challa for the title, killed Zuri in the process, and now she refuses to be called queen just as she refused the queen's ladies?
Just beneath T'Challa's confusion, the anger stirs. The taste of ash and blood resurfaces in her mouth.
"You'll address me as Your Highness," continues Killmonger. She is untangling Prince N'Jobu's royal ring from the necklace. "To be honest – King's better. When you hear queen, you don't know if she's a consort or if she's ruling in her own right. With King you know in that instant. You know at once that no one's above the king."
"But we still know," T'Challa says. "When I was the queen, we –"
Killmonger pins her with sharp, hard eyes.
With effort, T'Challa bites back the argument in her. She wants to explain that their people still knew that T'Challa was their ruler and protector. There have been numerous individuals who succeeded in the offices of both ruler and protector, but her people knew that at that moment it was T'Challa herself, not some faceless and nameless queen and Black Panther. There was only one Queen T'Challa, the Black Panther. She was not only the queen and the Black Panther to her people, but also T'Challa of the Golden Tribe, eldest and heir of King T'Chaka, someone they could petition to and talk to, someone they often saw rambling through the market stalls and through the border farms, someone who enjoyed coconut rice pancakes from a terrace café in the city as a small girl. They all knew that. Her people know her.
But T'Challa holds back her tongue and her anger. She clasps her hands behind her back, her nails digging into her flesh.
"Hands where I can see them."
T'Challa stares at her cousin in disbelief.
Killmonger slips her father's royal ring on her left middle finger. "That's an order, Princess T'Challa."
"Am I your hostage, then?" It is not any less than what she expects.
T'Challa immediately thought of it when she woke up yesterday. She opened her eyes, free of any pain, and the first thing she saw was Killmonger's face peering down at her, surrounded by the familiar sight of Shuri's lab. It was terribly jarring. Shuri was nowhere in sight. But Killmonger showed her the footage of Shuri healing T'Challa in that very same lab, and afterwards of the priestess entering to strip her of the powers of the Black Panther.
"Where is my sister?" was the first thing T'Challa asked.
"She's fine. Don't ask that question again, and I'll let you see her."
Now her cousin prowls towards her, face suddenly cold and blank. Killmonger only stops when she is crowding into T'Challa's space, but T'Challa stands her ground. Even if she tries anything she will be too slow against her cousin's herb-enhanced reflexes, but by Bast, T'Challa refuses to be cowed by Killmonger.
"D'you want to be a prisoner?" Killmonger asks. "Cause I could've locked you up, thrown you in the middle of nowhere. Or I could've made sure you're finished this time. Sound preferable to you?"
T'Challa carefully swallows. "No."
"'Course not." Her cousin's face suddenly ripples into a sort of casualness, lips smirking crookedly. T'Challa ought to be relieved, but she is only disturbed.
Killmonger is still crowding her. Her cousin looks her over, head to toe, and tugs at the crushed-silk sleeve of T'Challa's purple robe. "I'm honouring you as a member of the family, ain't I? In fact, I'm making you my cup-bearer."
For a moment T'Challa finds that she has no words.
The vague amusement settles back on Killmonger's face, so T'Challa musters all her courtly manners and grits out, "Your Highness is most gracious."
"So what do you say?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Not that. God." Killmonger laughs lightly. She is too close. A hint of genuine laughter gleams in her sharp, hard eyes. "I let you live. I let you keep your title of princess. I let you dress in fancy clothes, and I let you near me. I appoint you as my cupbearer." She pauses, and her smile looks almost kind. "I will even let you see your baby sis."
Unbidden, T'Challa remembers that night street in Busan. The wreckage of Klaue's car. Klaue's theatrical pleas for mercy, and T'Challa herself spitting out, "Every breath you take is a mercy from me."
"So what do you say?" asks Killmonger.
No, she cannot possibly say it. T'Challa feels her lips tightening into a flat line. The anger in her is stirring again. She felt a crushing sorrow and something close to pity when she stood before Killmonger at the Warrior Falls. But now they dull at the face of disbelief and her stirring anger.
Live, a voice at the back of her mind wildly says. You have to live. It sounds like her own voice from the ancestral plane, when she shouted at Baba and their ancestors. Bast help her.
And T'Challa remembers scrabbling for something to hold on to: mistakes she has to rectify; Shuri who was reportedly seized after T'Challa's defeat at the Warrior Falls and whom she might see again; Mother, who trekked all the way to the Jabariland and whose face was the first one T'Challa saw when she woke up buried in ice. And Nakia, who plucked the heart-shaped herb and managed to escape with Mother and who is now on some vague assignment by Killmonger.
T'Challa's lips are so dry. "Your Highness have my thanks."
"Do I?" Killmonger raises her brows expectantly. "Really?"
By Bast, she really wants to hear it.
"Yes, Your Highness." T'Challa quickly licks her lips. "Thank you."
Killmonger finally moves away from her, and heads for the double doors. T'Challa falls into a step behind her cousin's right elbow.
It is only when they are nearing the dining hall does T'Challa realise that her cousin has not sent for another jewelry case. For her first luncheon with the council as ruler and protector, Killmonger is wearing no other jewelry except for the Panther necklace and the royal ring.
T'Challa politely listens as Negasi, the River Tribe Elder, expounds on the bottle of wine he has brought.
They are sat around the carved dining table, T'Challa next to her cousin, and all the councilors, and Okoye at the spot farthest from T'Challa. The pepper soup has just been cleared away. In the wait for the main course Negasi offered to pour for the queen, but Killmonger declined with a small smile, saying that cantaloupe is not her preference.
"Ah, but Your Highness," Negasi said, with his courtly smile, "this wine is thick with many other flavours. This is our tribe's prime quality liquor, and best paired with seafood."
T'Challa expected a cold reply to end the discussion, for her cousin to declare with finality that nobody should ever offer her cantaloupe wine again when she already said that she dislikes it.
But Killmonger only thoughtfully tapped on the table, and said, "Tell me about this wine. What do you trade it with?"
It has been two minutes now. Negasi is going on about the full-bodied wine, with its flavours of cantaloupe and white peach and yellow apple and jasmine. The main course arrives when he starts on the economics of it.
"All right," Killmonger says. "Sounds like a very interesting wine. You've convinced me. Very convincing."
She shifts her small smile from Negasi to T'Challa. T'Challa tenses her muscles.
"Can't decline again when Elder Negasi's been very insistent, now can I? Princess T'Challa, pour for me."
There is a pause around the table.
T'Challa meets Okoye's wide eyes from across the table.
Then Negasi hands the bottle to a steward, who uncorks it before respectfully handing it over to T'Challa.
"I've made the princess my cup-bearer," Killmonger explains as T'Challa pours. "She yielded. And I can be kind to family."
"Your Highness is most gracious," T'Challa hears W'Kabi say. She keeps her eyes on the pale amber wine pouring into Killmonger's cup.
T'Challa takes the crystal cup in both hands and keeps her eyes lowered to it, the respectful way, and offers it to the queen.
There are three heartbeats during which T'Challa holds the cup aloft.
The silence around the table begins to thicken. T'Challa raises her eyes.
Killmonger still does not take the cup.
"I only just realised," says the queen, "I've only known you for, what, two days, Princess. I mean I've known of you, but we've just met." She looks around the table with that small smile. "I need to be able to trust my cup-bearer."
Killmonger then dips two of her fingers into the cup.
T'Challa does not have the time to be incredulous. Before she can blink those fingers are pressed against her lips. T'Challa's mind blanks. She stares at her cousin, who looks back at her with those sharp hard eyes and says, "Open your mouth."
The cup is still held aloft.
T'Challa is still grappling with her mind blanking, when Killmonger murmurs "Hands where I can see them," and then her fingers are sliding past T'Challa's lips. They drag against T'Challa's tongue, callused and coated with wine, slowly but firmly, relentless, until they reach the back of her throat and T'Challa can feel the cold metal of the royal ring nudging her upper lip and she is desperately swallowing to save herself from choking.
When T'Challa blinks next, the corners of her eyes are stinging and Killmonger is wiping her fingers on her napkin.
The silence around the table swells. It swells and swells and begins to smother, as unpleasantly heavy as wet woolens.
Okoye's voice breaks through it. "I think it is safe to assume that the wine is safe, Your Highness. No one is attempting to poison you."
Killmonger takes the cup from T'Challa's numb hands. "Can't be too sure," she says, and with a cold and blank expression towards Okoye, adds: "I mean, you pointed your spear against me just days ago, General. At the soonest acceptable opportunity."
Without waiting for reactions the queen curves her lips into a wider smile, a dimpled smile for the council, before asking for the steward to clear away T'Challa's plate, cup, and cutlery.
"As I said we barely know each other," Killmonger tells them. "This is good trust-building activity, here. We'll share food and drink. I'm inviting my cousin to share my plate and fork."
The numbness is fading from T'Challa's hands. It is swiftly replaced with a coldness at her fingertips, then a faint tremor, as T'Challa tamps down on her anger and meets Killmonger's expectant – demanding – gaze. Her lips are so dry they might crack, and the taste of wine is fast crumbling before her tongue's memory of ash and blood. "Thank you, Your Highness."
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