notbecauseofvictories:

The sound of the ball against the backboard is like thunder, and it rolls over the plains.

T’Challa doesn’t flinch at the sound. Neither do the panthers lazing at the edges of the basketball court. In truth, “court” is a bad word for it—not much more than a clearing of packed earth amid the grass, lines drawn in the dust. But the hoop is a great tree, tall and straight and true, with a rim glittering gold as a crown. Impossibly high.

Erik moves like he still has the strength of the black panther in his blood. Like he still has blood at all.

“I don’t remember this being here, last time,” T’Challa says, and Erik twitches, but does not turn. The ball pounds an easy rhythm, against the earth.

“Little bit of your people, little bit of mine,” Erik says. His voice is a study in disinterest, but his shoulders have gone tense—even now, beyond the concern of such things, Erik carries himself as though he’s daring T’Challa to strike him. As though he’s itching for it, trying to draw attention to the spot between his shoulder blades and tempt T’Challa into burying his spear there.

(Bast had a sister, T’Challa knows. Sekhmet. The lioness, whose wrath burned the desert sere; giver of disease, bringer of war. Bast had to trick her into sleeping, once, before she drank up all men’s blood and brought the world to ruin.

T’Challa wonders if Erik sleeps here.)

Erik does something quicksilver sudden with his hands, his feet dancing through the dust, and then the ball is arcing, a sun high in the sky over the world-beyond-the-world. It is so bright that T’Challa looks away. 

When he looks back, Erik is close enough for T’Challa to reach out and touch him. In Erik’s hands, the basketball pulses with light, bright-dark-bright-dark steady as a heartbeat.

Erik is grinning. “Plus, this place is boring as shit, cuz.”

“Ah. Nothing to kill, when everything is dead.”

This is not said with any bitterness. It is not. But Erik must—know it, anyhow, because his smile sharpens into a sickle. “Believe me, I tried,” he says, and he is watching T’Challa’s face like an animal stalking its prey. “But you know, after the third time I was torn apart by panther claws, I decided to stop trying. Dead and bored is better than undying agony, you know?”

T’Challa cannot quite keep the horror from his face. He looks past Erik, to where the ghostly black panthers prowl the edges of the court, laze in the nonexistent sun. Their eyes are stars in the purple-dark. “You—”

Erik’s sickle-grin looks brittle, suddenly, and T’Challa cannot help but wonder how many times Erik tried to kill their forebearers. He doubts it was only three. “Relax,” Erik says, and T’Challa blinks. “Ancestors taught me my place. Now I shoot hoops.”

T’Challa exhales. “How do you play? I’ve witnessed others play it in America, but never—”

Erik’s face does something strange, or perhaps too many things at once. T’Challa doesn’t know what to read in it, how to answer. But then Erik’s eyes go cold and hard, and even the brittle grin vanishes. 

His chin comes up, another dare to strike. “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend to be stupid. This is—I don’t know, the afterlife or whatever. I’m dead. You’re beyond lying to me.”

Erik does not have Killmonger’s scars here in the afterworld. Instead they are open wounds, wet-looking and ugly. They weep. But then, T’Challa supposes that is the sort of honesty Erik means.

“Best two out of three, then?” T’Challa asks, and Erik grins.