Chapter Text
Waking up is a surprise.
Erik opens his eyes and finds himself staring at an unfamiliar metal ceiling. Shimmering hexagon tiles stretch across his field of vision, shifting and flipping the distinct way he has only known Wakandan technology to do. Nothing hurts, even though the last thing he remembers is piercing agony. His breaths come easily, though he recalls with clarity the feeling of drowning, the taste of copper on his tongue.
This is inconvenient, he thinks. This is real fucking inconvenient. Bitter frustration hits the second he recognizes his situation, and it surges even higher as he discovers the restraints shackling him to the bed. Straining against them does nothing. They’re made of vibranium, just like almost everything else in this country.
So much for his magnanimous goodbye speech to his cousin.
-
The only response the doctors and nurses have for his questions is the king will see you soon. They regard him with something between fear and pity, scurrying in and out of his room like mice, intent on spending the least amount of time possible with the predator in their midst.
It takes barely half an hour for T’Challa to show up. When the King sweeps through the door, Erik is sitting on his bed, his legs dangling from the edge and his hands in chains. He waits in silence as the king orders for them to be left alone, taking the moment to study his captor. Already, T’Challa is back to his former glory, dressed in fine royal garb with no sign of the struggle he had gone through just a day before.
The door clicks shut, and then a clunk sounds as the locks engage themselves. T’Challa turns toward him, wariness written on his face.
“I’m pretty sure I asked for you to let me die.”
“You did.” There’s an odd look of contrition on T’Challa’s face, and it makes Erik suspicious, uncertain. Yet the show of regret is a comfort, somehow, it soothes some part of him that is screaming still for all the things the world deprived him of.
“Was I… unclear?”
T’Challa lets out a breath, his shoulders sagging. “You have the heart-shaped herb to thank for your survival.”
Erik remembers, then, the ceremony. Enhanced healing, survivability, they’d mentioned it to him at the time, even if he had been barely listening, high on the thrill of victory. “Did the plant carry me to this room and treat my injuries? Sing me a lullaby?”
T’Challa’s lips press quickly together in what is almost a smile. “No,” he says, studying Erik carefully. “That was Shuri’s work.”
The sister? Erik had almost killed her, had delivered what would have been a killing blow if it wasn’t for T’Challa’s intervention. He has a hard time believing she would do something as generous as save the life of her own would-be murderer, not when he had come so close to killing T’Challa too.
Erik’s confusion must show on his face. T’Challa ducks his head. “She may have said something about bringing you back to life so she could kill you personally… if necessary.”
A smirk flashes across Erik’s face before he can stop it. That girl has one hell of a spirit. He honestly likes her. Shame they will never be friends.
“But I will not allow it to come to that,” T’Challa continues, his expression softening. Erik’s show of amusement, unfortunately, seems to have put T’Challa more at ease. He looks at Erik with something disturbingly like hope in his eyes, and it sets Erik on edge, knowing he has done nothing to earn this apparent benevolence.
T’Challa speaks like a true king, like someone used to having the world bow to his whims. Trust a man like him to sidestep all blame, as though Shuri could get away with saving Erik’s life without T’Challa’s implicit permission. He should have, could have, finished the job.
Erik refocuses with a frown. “I don’t get it,” he says. “Why let her save me?”
“Your deeds were terrible,” T’Challa says. “But your death resolves nothing.”
Erik raises an eyebrow, waiting for the punchline.
“You will face trial for your actions.” T’Challa continues, nodding at his last words as though to reassure himself that it was the right decision. “I will do everything in my power to ensure that you receive fair judgement.”
“A show trial,” Erik murmurs with dawning realization. “Yeah, I’ve seen those before.”
T’Challa stiffens, and steps forward. “This will not be a show trial,” he says, urgency in his voice like it actually matters that Erik believes him. “You have my word, you will see due process of law.”
“You know… I’ve been promised a lot of things in my life.” Erik says, staring across at T’Challa and smirking at the flinch he sees. The man wears his father’s shame so openly it’s almost sad to watch.
T’Challa takes a deep breath. “I’m just trying to do what’s right.”
-
Of all the things they arrest him for, it is for the murder of Zuri, son of Badu.
Erik hadn’t even known the man’s full name until after he had killed him, hadn’t even recognized him until the moment he made himself known. To him, he had only ever been Uncle James, the person who bought him comic books and took him for ice cream on Sundays, the person his daddy had told him to go find if anything bad ever happened and he needed help.
N’Jobu had never told him what to do if Uncle James was also gone.
Aside from that unjustifiable murder, Erik discovers to his great amusement that he had seemingly fully behaved within his authority as the King. The original challenge had been lawful, and his rights as the (former) King of Wakanda absolves him of all transgressions which followed. Even his battles against the Dora Milaje and T’Challa’s allies are dismissed as acts of self-defense.
Erik has no idea how many people T’Challa must have paid and pissed off to get his charges reduced so dramatically. But he has to admit, Wakanda’s new king is putting up the perfect image of fairness by demonstrating such mercy toward his former deposer. It speaks to his people’s absurd traditions which allowed an untested outsider to so easily claim the kingdom’s highest seat of power. Murder is acceptable if it was in contest for the throne, if it was committed in ‘self-defense’ with the king’s authority. No wonder T’Chaka had gotten away with so much for so long.
They lock vibranium shackles around his wrists and throw him in a cozy cell. With the herb garden in ashes, Wakanda has no antidote for his powers. And so, at least until they find more herbs growing in the wild, Erik gets to keep his enhancements. His guards are members of the Dora Milaje and among the kingdom’s finest warriors. Erik rapidly becomes familiar with the presence of sharpened spear tips at his back each time he is taken from his cell.
Hours, then days pass. Erik is idle, waiting for the powers that be to determine his fate. Every fiber of his being tells him to fight, to reclaim his freedom and claw his way back to the top. But he understands improbable odds when he sees it, didn’t survive this long without knowing the value of patience. In time, an opportunity will come.
It always does.
-
Princess Shuri shows up three days into his captivity and greets him with a withering glare and a frown. Even behind a thick layer of vibranium-enhanced glass, her animosity is so strong Erik can feel its sting from the far side of the room.
“I was wondering where you’d gotten to.” Erik says, putting down his book. He stays leaning against the wall, legs stretched out on his bed, and regards the princess curiously.
“Fixing your messes, that’s what.”
“Yeah,” Erik nods, he face serious. “I heard about the lab, shame what happened to it.”
“I don’t need your crocodile tears, outsider.”
Erik hides a smile. Swinging his legs to the floor, he finally leans forward. “Why are you here, princess?”
For a moment, Shuri is silent, staring at him in unspoken judgement. “I want to know,” she says. “Did you really think you were going to get away with it?”
Looking for reassurance, then, if not the chance to gloat. “Can’t fault me for trying, baby cousin,” Erik replies with a smirk. “I very almost did, didn’t I?”
The reminder of how close she came to losing everything has Shuri’s expression shifting into fury. She is still a child in so many ways, with no awareness of how little her feelings matter in the eyes of the world. “You know, I’m still not sure if it was the right decision to save you.”
“Well, it’s not like I asked you to do it,” Erik shrugs.
Shuri frowns, and cocks her head at him in disbelief. “You’re not even the slightest bit grateful, are you?”
“That I’m now locked up here like an animal?” Erik made a face like he was thinking about it. “I have to admit, it’s hard.”
“T’Challa told me you wanted to die.”
Erik’s expression darkens. He’d thought the king would at least respect the confidence of a dying man. But these siblings seem to share everything, despite what basic manners might expect.
“So I’d say it’s right to make you suffer the consequences of your actions,” Shuri continues, a devious glint in her eyes.
“The same way T’Chaka suffered the consequences of murdering my father?” Erik replies without missing a beat.
“My father was trying to save Zuri!” Shuri snaps, eyes alight. “He only did what was necessary.”
“You know, as much as I’d like to believe that, baby cousin,” Erik says. “I’ve killed enough people to recognize murder when I see it.”
Shuri freezes.
“See you, for example.” Pushing himself to his feet, Erik begins to close the distance between them. “You never wanted to kill me. Even that day on the battlefield, your weapons would only disable and stun. If not for your brother, you would never have lived to save my life.”
The girl barks out a laugh, trying to mask her fear. “So what? You’re proving my point. If my father hadn’t intervened Zuri would have lost his life! Your father pulled out a gun!”
“And the king had a bullet-proof suit?” Erik is sure he is stating the obvious, yet his points seem unfamiliar to the young princess. “Are you telling me that your father, the Black Panther, with his enhanced speed and strength and decades of combat training, couldn’t have disarmed his brother if he wanted to?”
Now that Erik has felt the power of the heart-shaped herb flowing through his veins, has worn the mantle and sat on that throne, he will never believe that T’Chaka was ever at the mercy of his human brother that night. Circumstance may have meant nothing to a child, but twenty-four years later, Erik understands. The claw-marks in his chest, the intact surroundings – it was a swift, intimate killing. His father never had the chance to fight back.
He watches as Shuri blinks rapidly, torn between defending her father’s honor and discrediting his prowess. He can see the mask of idolatry in her eyes. The only way she will see the truth is to have it laid out in front of her.
“The parallel is not between you and Zuri, cousin,” says Erik, “but you and your uncle.”
The cat, and the mouse. Here was a human, hurt and desperate. And here was the panther, readying for the kill. T’Chaka had taught Erik the most important lesson of all, that trust and brotherhood means nothing in this world. There is only the strong and the weak, those who take what they want and those who have everything they care about forcibly ripped away.
Erik had long since decided he would be the one doing the taking.
Anger and confusion flicker across Shuri’s face, and her brow furrows as she searches wildly for a retort. “My father did what was necessary to stop my uncle, to defend his people.”
“And yet...” Something occurs to him, and Erik hesitates. “Your brother tried to save me.”
Restage the scene and reset the perspectives, and all of their roles shift and change. Shuri sees her own father in her beloved brother, and her own life, in danger, is Zuri’s. Erik is the monster, so N’Jobu must have been one too.
“I was trying so hard to kill him, and yet his spear still missed my heart,” Erik murmured, letting himself confront an unacknowledged fact for the first time. T'Challa took him to see the sunset when he had never even asked. “He said that he could still heal me.”
Shuri’s eyes are wide. And Erik, strangely, feels something inside of him echoing the uncertainty that rises in her eyes, her wavering resolve. He can imagine the arguments that are taking place inside her head. Perhaps N’Jobu asked for death like Erik. But why would he? He had a son. Even then he surely he would have asked T’Chaka to take him in? And yet her father had done no such thing, had lied about what happened that day and hid all evidence of Erik’s existence from those closest to him. There is not a single plausible scenario where T’Chaka emerges the paragon Shuri so desperately wants him to be.
At last, Shuri’s jaw tenses. Even if the tears in her eyes tell a different story, there is nothing but contempt in her voice when she speaks. “You can twist my words as much as you want, Killmonger, but you are a nothing more than a monster and a pretender.”
“Your father chose to murder his brother, the same way T’Challa tried to spare me.” Erik says quietly. Standing at the edge of his prison, Erik leans forward, and rests his elbows against glass above Shuri, watching her carefully. “Here’s a lesson for you, baby cousin. Men like him always have a choice.”
-
Shuri flees before long, leaving Erik trapped alone with his thoughts. His victory, though earned, tastes sour. What does it even matter to win a verbal match with a teenager? It has changed nothing about his situation.
T’Challa is not T’Chaka. The distinction was not so clear before. But now, Erik begins to comprehend the true meaning of the fact. Despite all of his strength and power, despite the mask and the mantle and a lifetime under his father’s influence. Somehow, T’Challa chose the closest thing to mercy, stood by and watched as his naïve sister healed his greatest enemy. Was it simply youth? Inexperience? That same false confidence that almost let Erik kill him in the first place? Or does he have a more sinister use for Erik’s life that Erik himself cannot yet fathom? What is he supposed to make of him – King T’Challa, son of T’Chaka?
The irony of comparing himself to his father’s killer in front of Shuri doesn’t escape Erik in the aftermath. Strength and power is what tips the balance between need and want when it comes to the decisions they make. And claiming that position of power meant accepting responsibility for the intent behind his crimes. By his own words, Erik had become the monster that once haunted him in the night.
In his field, having a conscience doesn’t get you very far, and intelligence work has a way of weeding out those who hold onto it. In Erik’s business, the readiness to ruin innocent lives is almost a prerequisite for excellence.
And Erik excelled.
It would be worth it in the end, he had thought. His murders became sacrifices to a noble cause. If he became strong enough, cunning enough, if he could take the throne and liberate the downtrodden, the cost would be worth it, it would be justified.
But he had lost.
So what does that make him now?
-
A monster and a pretender.