T'Challa and Ororo - Right after Yorkland

[ax_storm]

T'Challa and Ororo find each other right after Yorkland dissipates, and it is time for goodbyes again, much earlier than anticipated.


"Damn saplings don't respect their elders anymore," said the gruff, gritty voice.

Ororo smiled at the Silver Oak's conclusion. She was communing with nature, her hand laying on the bark of the old sacred tree as they talked. Or rather, as she listened to the cantankerous old oak complain about the youths these days. She opened her mouth to reply, when suddenly the entire world changed.

It was like waking up from a very vivid dream, except she had never been asleep. She reeled in place, leaning hard against the tree, which was no longer silver, and very, very silent. This was real, she knew, instinctively. But what had come before... It hadn't exactly been unreal, had it?

She straightened up on slightly wobbly legs and looked around. She was in a park, but she couldn't see anyone close by. Her druid dress was gone, replaced by her usual urban clothes, and... yes, her mohawk was back. Confused and looking for answers, Ororo started walking towards the nearest path, pulling her phone from the pocket of her leather jacket.

It was like waking up from a very vivid dream, except he had never been asleep.

Prince T'Challa had entered the park because that was where the druids practised. He would be so glad to see Ororo again, so far from the continent they had called home. He had not come here for her sake alone, but he could not deny that it would have been reason enough to make the journey.

Which was right, in a way, but also very not right, he began to realize as his head stopped spinning. He remembered...most of it? But when had it started, with the horse carts instead of cars, the knights in shining armor and the ladies in floor-length jeweled gowns, with magic and strange creatures in place of science and mutations? Yet as he looked around the park, and down at himself, it became very clear that the strange fantasy-land changes that had caught them all up had passed just as suddenly.

Shuri. Bast, if anything happened to his sister... And what about Ororo? Was she still here, somewhere? Before grabbing for his phone, he tried it (ironically) the old-fashioned way. "Hello?! Is anyone here?" He called in English, not knowing who might be there to answer.

Ororo had been scrolling through her contacts to find the number for the Professor, when a well-known voice cut through her confusion. Phone still in her hand, she hurried around some trees, to confirm that the voice had belonged to... "T'Challa!" She ran the rest of the way to him and threw her arms around him. "Did it happen to you too?" she asked in Arabic. "My head feels like it's about to explode."

"Ororo!" He caught her up in his arms at once despite the pounding of his own temples, squeezing her tight and answering in her language. "Yes. I do not know what happened exactly, but... It was like being myself, only in another world. I didn't question it at the time. I didn't know what was wrong or even that it had all changed until now."

"Yes," she confirmed, and pulled back to look at him. She forgot all of her uncertainties, in that moment, taking the liberty to cup his face with her hand. She kept wanting to reach for the magic of the elements, but it was closed to her now. "It was like a dream. I heard of royal siblings from a faraway land. I was going to try the palace, to see if it was Shuri and you." Shuri. "Where is she? Is she all right?"

"She was back at our guest quarters in the castle, with-"

"My Prince!" Shoko came sprinting down a path towards them, relief flooding her eyes as she spotted the pair. For the sake of convenience, she kept with English. "Are you injured?" Even relieved, she looked no less wary of the situation. She held her spear at the ready and scouted the surrounding park with her gaze.

"Our heads hurt, and everything is strange, but... I think that is the worst of it. Shoko, do you remember what happened?"

"I remember things that do not make any sense," she reported. "Costume clothes and ancient technology, a colonizer's court. I thought it was a dream or hallucination."

It hadn't occurred to Ororo that the Dora Milaje were nowhere in sight, until one of them came sprinting towards them. Ororo pulled back from T'Challa reluctantly, so reluctantly that she kept a hand on his arm as the two Wakandans talked. "I will call the Professor," she told T'Challa, still in Arabic. She did not know if Shoko spoke it, but she hoped that she did not. She had told T'Challa many things she would not tell anyone. "He might know what's happened."

She turned to make the call, stepping away from the other two.

He was as reluctant to let Ororo go, but he nodded rather than trying to stop her. If she had been a student at another school, her hurry to call the man in charge there would be strange. But her school specialized in the strange, and they all needed a moment to take stock of one another.

T'Challa took the opportunity to call Shuri instead, and put his panic to rest that at least she and Akawe were safe.

After a quick phone conversation (Ororo imagined that she was hardly the only student calling the school right now), Ororo hung up and stepped back towards the other two. "It was all of Manhattan," she said, in English. "Some sort of... reality warp, localized to the island. The news are already blaming mutants." What else could it be ? Mutants, or magic, and the general public did not know about magic.

No sooner had they confirmed Ororo's safety than Shoko was using her beads to communicate that the royal children were safe back to Wakanda, promising a full report to follow after they had a chance to make a more thorough assessment. Shoko had moved to one side to give them each space for their various transmissions, speaking in Hausa and then Xhosa in mindfully chosen words. But she did not bother with trying to hide the glowing holographic and shifting sand displays she interacted with now, satisfied that they were alone except for the girl. And the girl - they had discussed the girl already.

"People will hurry to blame whatever they already fear in a crisis." T'Challa wrapped an arm around Ororo's shoulders as she came back. "My phone says that only a day has passed, but it felt like much longer to me."

Ororo wrapped her arm around his waist, wondering distantly if she should be drawing so much comfort from his presence, all things considered. But the fact was that she did, and she looked up into his face. "It feels like a lifetime has passed," she said, quietly. "Although anything further back than a week feels more... distant. But I knew you there, too."

He nodded back at her, giving her far shoulder a squeeze. "It seems we had similar experiences. If all of the island experienced the same thing... I won't say that it's reassuring, but at least we aren't alone."

"There was a school trip today," Ororo murmured, frowning slightly. Remembering was still complicated, with the double set of memories. This one, at least, felt more real than most of the other one. "I won't even be the only one at school."

She knew that she should go. Check in with everyone. They formed a tight community, after all, and this could not be easy on anyone. But she wanted to take a few selfish moments with T'Challa, first. She turned into him, slipping her other arm around him, too, to give him a proper hug. She wished that Shoko wasn't here, but maybe it was for the best that she was.

"I had magic," she said, quietly, just for him to hear.

T'Challa gave Ororo the first of a smile - not because things were okay (they weren't), but because he was glad to be with her anyway, and leaned to kiss her cheek beneath her mohawk. He gathered what she meant, but he hoped to lighten the tense mood, if only slightly. He could not ignore the thought that he might not see her again for a very long time after this, and he was sure that his father would insist that he and Shuri hurry home at once, regardless of his birthday plans. "How is that different than any other day?"

I could talk to the trees, the animals, the earth under our feet, Ororo wanted to say, to protest, to insist. And now it feels like a part of me is missing, was the conclusion of that statement, however. But this moment would be all they had, she suddenly realized with horrified clarity. So she mustered up a smile for him, leaning back to look at him, and replied, "You are an idiot, T'Challa." Her tone was pragmatic, but fond; she knew what he was doing.

There was so much she wanted to tell him, before he went. That they felt like different people than they had been, but they somehow still fit. That even in that other world, her thoughts had been full of him. That the fact that she had barely seen him felt like a cruel joke. So much she could never put into a text. Maybe, instead, she could put it into a kiss. She did not care if Shoko was watching; she cupped his face again, and leaned up to kiss him.

He both was surprised, and wasn't. He had spent enough time thinking about kissing her again that it felt like a natural conclusion. And it felt so good to kiss her again, no matter the reasons he hadn't before.

She kissed him, and T'Challa kissed her in reply, holding her close to him. He wanted to make a lasting memory of it, to enjoy it absolutely - even though his skin flushed with warmth and he was brimming over with nervous, ecstastic energy, every last thought having spilled right out of his head. ...Maybe he really was an idiot.

This has definitely been the right move, Ororo thought, felt, as he kissed her back. All of the reasons why she hadn't kissed him before, why he might not have kissed her before, were pushed to the far corner of her mind, so she could focus on this moment. T'Challa, warm and strong against her, and the fit of their lips together. It felt like the kind of kiss she had seen in the movies; all the more intense for the intensity of what had come before. Fortunately, the Ororo she had briefly been and the Ororo that she was were in agreement about kissing him, and the slide of his tongue silenced the turmoil inside her, if only for a moment.

A brief, beautiful moment.

She broke the kiss, her breath a little shorter for it, and put her heels back on the ground. She licked her lips, as if it could give her a little more of his taste, and stayed close, a hand over his heart. "You're going to go now," she said, switching back to Arabic without thinking about it. It was the language they had always spoken together. "Aren't you?"

"My parents are worried," he told her, following her words to make the switch. Even though he and Shuri were royals visiting from a foreign country, even though such things had the potential to start international incidents, that was what mattered most in the hearts of the king and queen. "And they have reason to worry this time. We need to reassure them that we're okay, and... I'm not sure how willing they will be to let us travel abroad again once we have come home."

Shoko watched them openly, though most of her attention was focused on the area around them, just in case. She didn't interject, only because she knew that T'Challa already understood the urgency with which they would need to leave. She did not have to tell him that they ought to make haste - just in case. For all that they knew, what had overcome them before could only have been interrupted, not ended, and reassert itself at any time.

Ororo nodded; his words did not come as a surprise. And yet they still caused tears to stick in her throat. How long, this time, until she could see him again? She hugged him, before he could see the shine of tears in her eyes. "Shuri was everything you said."

"She is even more than that," T'Challa could not help but say with pride, love, and a twinge of regret. Ororo was wonderful. But she did not know Wakanda. She could not know Wakanda's secrets. And this was not the time to start telling them.

He hugged Ororo, lingering before he would give her up again. "Will you still text me?"

"I would think you didn't have to keep asking," Ororo said quietly, before she actually replied to his question. "Of course." She swallowed against the lump in her throat, and squeezed him tighter for a second. "It was good to see you again." The words were so weak for everything she meant. She stepped back, as composed as she was going to be. "Tell me when you're safely home?"

"It's always good to see you, Ororo." He let her go gently and straightened his posture, turning to go with Shoko on their way back to meet with the others. "I will. And..." He paused, and the thing he said was probably not what he had first meant to say. "I hope we will not have to wait so long until next time."