The White Wolves

Agonising

T'Challa
There are only two people I love as much as my sister, my mother and Nakia, but love is almost synonymous with fear in many cases. At the moment I fear for my sister more than I fear for anyone in the world.

Normally, even a moment of silence is a relief, but Shuri is only answering direct questions and with the briefest answer possible. When she eats, she picks at her food. When the rest of the palace sleeps, she lies awake.

I have tried to ignore it, to give her space, but it has been less than a week since we left New York and the moment she had cured all the children Maya sacrificed herself for, she seemed to become lost. She loves Maya, of that I have no doubt, as I have no doubt that I must do anything I can to bring her love home, to Wakanda, to Shuri. 

Maya could be anywhere in the world by now, and they could have done anything to her.

Maya
As I woke I was struck with the throbbing pain before I even remembered the reason for my discomfort. My whole body was filled with a dull weight, as if it had become plumbeaous. It took a more sharp pain, one I didn't even notice at first, for me to begin a cursory attempt to remember the events that lead to this pain.

Masks. Shields. Batons. Heavy boots. No questions. No demands. Beatings. Agony.

As I began to recall I painfully attempted to bring my legs to my chest defensively. They had hit me, repeatedly, with hands and stinging batons, building up the abuse until it was all I could do to squirm on the floor as they kicked me. They asked no questions, wanted nothing but to teach me my place, below everyone else in this place.

The sharp pain hit me again and this time I opened my eyes, even that small effort making me feel as if I had climbed a mountain. Dazzleing, the light sent me into blindness for a moment, as I felt hands grasp onto my legs roughly, making the bruises that resided there flourish with pain. Not feeling as velutinous as they should, I was forced to give into the will of the hands.

When my sight returned the reason for the phantasmal texture was revealed, the hands were blue. No. Not blue. Blue gloves.

As my sight refocused the rest of my situation became clear to me, I was lying flat on a bed, no duvet or pillow in sight. My baby wings were pressed uncomfortably against the thin mattress, and everything but my discomfort filled me with fear, discomfort was comforting, it reminded me I was alive.

What had been one pair of hands was now two, both gloved and what had once been a phantom sharp pain now had context. While one of the two pairs of hands were holding my, now unresisting, legs down to the rough sheets, the other pair seemed to be working on my left thigh with a needle and fibril. They appeared to have been waiting for me to come round completely as they had stopped two stitches in.

Now they continued, each stitch sending undulled pain up my leg. They mustn't have given me any painkillers. For an instant I hated them more than people who made me throb and gave me the injuries they were now attending to. This caused me to lash out with my right arm, not really aiming for anything or anyone, just wanting to be doing something to show them I was still human and not their slave.

I immediately hated myself. The movement forced a scream of pain from my lips, the pain from the stitching well and truely overshadowed by the agony now centered in my shoulder. Abandoning holding my limp legs, the doctor moved to my right side, I caught a glimpse of his young face, strangely regretful and concerned. Why would they care about me? They have already treated me like a dog. Instinctively, he glanced to a tray by the side of the bed, a tray that held a prepared syringe. A curt shake from the woman that worked on my leg warded him away.

He took my arm with a surprisingly soft touch and our eyes met, his both reassuring and regretful as he twisted his hands sharply. I didn't scream when the joint slipped back into the socket, I didn't want him to feel he had hurt me. He clearly wanted to be here about as much as I did.

I shifted tentatively, moving away, the normally more than easy action sending aches through my body. "Can you try and move it for me?" the man asked, still supporting my arm gently. Now with the added pressure of the need for communication hanging over my head I nodded and slowly attempted to demonstrate the successful nature of his action. Whoever he was, he was a good doctor.

But that didn't mean he was a good person.

To my relief there was no pain save for the dullness that I was now relatively accustomed to. I nodded sharply that it was okay and felt my lips move as if on English politeness autopilot. "Thank you," a voice said that sounded like a ghost of my own, a horse and broken shadow. Hardly audible.

The kind face moved up and down as he nodded in recognition, "it's alright.. just doing my job." The fact that he too was probably replying on autopilot didn't soften my rage, his job was not to fix up girls who had been kidnapped by their government and turned into something barely human. Hippocratic oath anyone? No? Forgot you took that?

I found myself talking without thinking of the consequences, "but you're not are you?" I snapped, my anger sounding pathetic in this ghost of a voiced "I'm a prisoner here. These wounds are not because I fell down the stairs. This was no accident." I stuttered to a stop the moment I saw the face of the young doctor, furrowed brow, glistening eyes.

Pity. He cared.

"I'm sorry..." he whispered, glancing to a space just outside my eye-line, at the top of the wall, in a corner. Security camera. He was worried about being watched, he was uncomfortable. "I really am..." he continued, "you don't deserve this. We wanted to keep you asleep so we wouldn't hurt you but they wouldn't let us..." He stammered, his youth and nerves getting the best of him, he trailed off after a pointed look from the woman. He paused, "We wouldn't be doing this is they were just paying us," he said carefully, too carefully for there not to be some meaning or hint behind the words. It took my leaden brain too long to work it out.

Threats. They must have been threatened. I knew, first hand, that these people weren't past hurting children, so they most certainly wouldn't be past threatening to hurt anyone, loved ones perhaps? I nodded gently, trying to indicate my understanding as the woman's finished stitching the wound on my leg and moved to wrap it.

Shuri
My brain wouldn't focus, and experience exceptionally rare for me. It felt like I was floating through time, seconds merging into minutes that I failed to sense the passing of.

I tried to take my mind off her, to focus on something else. Anything else. I just couldn't help imagine the things they might be doing to her .

I spent my days wishing to take her place.

Maya
After my time with the doctors they left me alone with my own thoughts for days. The only discernible markers of time was the periodic dispersal of food and water.

Needless to say, it was more than a shock to me, when the door, I had almost forgotten was in the pristine white cell, slipped seamlessly open.

Automatically, I cowered away, expecting masks with batons or guards with the power to chock me as they pleased. Instead I was met with a curious sight, a woman, grinning, her body coated in tattoos. More ink than skin.