After Happily Ever After

The Prodigal Son Returns : You Better Watch Out...

Erik stepped onto the dock with a blank expression and a twist in his gut. Outwardly, he was the picture of a sailor at attention. He glided with long legs past families and couples reuniting. His posture ramrod straight.

On the inside, he felt anxiety fill his chest and the back of his throat. The depth of the crowd made it hard to make out any one person until you were right in front of them. The crush was enough to make Erik claustrophobic. Years of training allowed him to maneuver through the crowd without too much trouble.

Erik felt like a voyeur as he passed reunions in progress. He'd gone through hell with these sailors. To see them fall apart in the embrace of their family was too much. The vulnerability made him uncomfortable, and he worried about his reunion. Today, he'd come face to face with the people he'd loved and left behind. A small part of him didn't expect them to be there, but the confirmation email he'd memorized said otherwise.

Erik wouldn't blame them if they decided not to show up. He'd left them with a memory of the worst parts of himself and he was returning a stranger.

This was his first homecoming. He'd had scheduled leave before, but those didn't count the way this one did. This would be the first time Erik had someone to come back to. Years before he'd sworn to never come back, to never see them again. Yet now he felt grimly hopeful for a reunion, a second chance.

The crowd began to thin yet Erik still circled the dock, trying his best not to let desperation show on his face. When families began going home in large groups, the knot in Erik's stomach grew tighter.

He didn't even know who to look for at this point. Erik's aunt had confirmed she'd come to see him but people changed. All he had was the memory of how they looked the last time they met.

Shuri had been three. A tiny, too smart for her own good terror. Erik and T'Challa spent as much time with her as they could. Teaching her their hiding spots and all the things they'd enjoyed while little.

Erik doubted that she remembered him at all. Now nine years old, Erik had been out of her life longer than he'd been in it. He tried to remind the stupidly hopeful part of him that wanted her to remember him that she couldn't. He wanted Shuri to remember him at 18 or any point before the anger took over all his senses.

That Erik had been fun, capable of giving and receiving love, friendship, and affection. Nearly 25, Erik felt like a shadow of his former self. Disconnected from everything and everyone that defined who he'd been then.

T'Challa was already in his 20's and a working member of the royal family. His role within the family saw T'Challa away more often than not. Before Erik left his cousin had been swaddled in a suit and headed to London. He hadn't had time for yet another of Erik's "episodes ".

They didn't part on good terms.

Even now, Erik remembered how much older and mature T'Challa had seemed to him. Erik trusted his cousin more than anyone else but in the end, he hadn't been what Erik needed.

So...Erik enlisted in the Navy. A week before his deployment he told his aunt and watched the Queen of Wakanda's elegant facade fall away. Ramonda looked as if Erik had aged her by thirty years with a sentence.

Erik blinked away tears. He didn't like thinking of how Ramonda looked the last time he saw her.

Erik barely heard his name over the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. He walked with his eyes on the crowd, looking for any bit of familiarity. When the voice calls out a name no one on this side of the Atlantic as ever used.

"N'Jadaka!"

Erik stops on a dime and swivels towards the sound. He saw only pale or light brown skin, nothing near the shade of what he was looking for. He started in the direction he'd heard his name, brown eyes scanning every face it landed on. Erik tries to call out, but the lump in his throat renders him speechless. Hope hits like an adrenaline rush. His steady clip turns into a jog.

"N'Jadaka!"

Erik turns and is almost knocked off balance by a small family of three. He recovers and searches in the direction he'd first heard the sound. Again, he doesn't see what he's looking for. As he turns to try to retrace his steps, a tiny body rams itself into his leg and holds on tight for dear life.

Erik stumbles and prepared to direct someone's confused child back the way they came. But his eyes snag on two figures he'd never expected to see again.

They came.

His eyes burned with emotion. Erik looked down to compose himself only to realize a child was looking up at him with a face he'd know anywhere.

"Do you remember me! Do you know who I am?" she asked in a rush of accented English. Shuri was small for her age, all sharp elbows and knobby knees. But her eyes were big and held a light that drew you into her every rapid-fire word. Her hair, as thick and long as her mother's it seemed, had been artfully braided in swirls on her scalp. The rest was gathered in what looked to Erik like a very big braid.

"I don't know..." Erik crouched so he and Shuri were eye level. This close he could see her little nose, a cuter version of the same nose T'Challa and their father had. He could see the cheekbones she'd gotten from Ramonda without a doubt. All traces of baby fat were gone leaving only the usual doughy, half-baked look all kids seemed to have.

Shuri sucked her teeth, "I remembered you! And I was a baby when you left. The consensus of the articles I've read about toddler memory retention says that memories from the ages 3-4 are a jumble of disorganized information."

Erik sat back, surprised.

A masculine chuckle, deeper in reality than it'd been in his memory, drew his attention above Shuri's head. T'Challa stood just behind her, hands in his pockets and a guarded but warm expression on his face. That was the one thing that hadn't changed about T'Challa. He still wore all his emotions on his face and amazingly, Erik could still read them.

His last memory of his cousin had them both saying things they could never come back from. Words thrown like fists. Erik burned the bridge of their relationship and warmed himself in the blaze. He didn't know when he'd stopped resenting his cousin, but the absence of the negativity feeling was a relief. Erik didn't know how to feel about the closest he'd ever come to a brother.

Smiling at Shuri, Erik stood and saluted T'Challa. The Wakandan way. T'Challa's posture immediately relaxed and he hissed under his breath.

"Bast, don't start."

"But you're the king." Erik protested. Shuri stood at his side and watched their interaction with curious eyes. They flit from Erik to T'Challa with a scary amount of fascination for an 8-year-old.

"I'm not the king and I probably won't be king now that you're..." T'Challa stopped himself and glanced at Erik's reaction.

Erik could guess at what he would say but he didn't have an answer himself. It wasn't a matter of Erik wanting to be back in the family. He cared less about being king now than he had as a teenager. That would never keep him from coming back.

Erik swallowed and broke T'Challa's gaze before one of them said something emotional.

Why he chose then to meet Ramonda's gaze, Erik couldn't say. It certainly wasn't saving the easiest reunion for last. He'd escaped a conversation about his feelings with T'Challa. It's harder to dodge that conversation with the woman who raised him.

"N'Jadaka," Ramonda intoned, her voice as soothing and melodic as he remembered. Erik's throat grew tight.

"Hey, Auntie."