Chapter Text
“I’m sorry, what did you just ask me for?”
Shuri huffs; she does not have time for Bruce Banner’s drama. “You know what I said. I need to borrow the time machine you used to send Captain Rogers back with the infinity stones. My brother is dying and what I need to save him is in the past. Are you going to help me or not?”
Banner lets out a long sigh. “Look, kid--”
“I am not a kid, Dr. Banner.”
“--I don’t have the time machine anymore. I destroyed it after we put the stones back. Look, both times we’ve messed with time travel, bad stuff has happened - the first time, we ended up fighting an alternate Thanos, and Tony...he died, and then the second time we as good as lost Cap.”
Shuri can’t believe this. “Time travel was what allowed you to bring everyone back! Billions of people are alive because of it. I am sorry you lost Stark and Rogers, but this could save my brother’s life. Please, at least give me the files on it.”
There’s a long pause, and then Banner says, “I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m done with all that. I know that you can find a way to save T’Challa without time traveling - if anyone can, it’s you.”
“But--” She doesn’t get the chance to go on, though; Banner hangs up the call.
For a moment, Shuri wants to light something on fire. Preferably something precious to Banner - he is a doctor , how can he not want to help someone who is dying? And no matter what he says, she knows that time travel is the solution here.
T’Challa needs the heart-shaped herb to save him. Killmonger destroyed all of it that they had, but there was a time when he hadn’t yet. There are so many points in the past where she could sneak in and retrive just one plant - if she could only get there.
It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need Banner’s cooperation to get the files.
“Griot?” she calls out. “We’re moving to plan B. Start running a hack on Dr. Banner’s servers.”
***
The files on the time machine aren’t in Banner’s servers, but they are in Stark Industries’. It’s a little harder to run that hack, but definitely still within her and Griot’s capabilities.
She doesn’t tell any of the scientists under her that she’s working on this, and she definitely doesn’t tell her mother or T’Challa. They would only think that she’s crazy, and tell her to pursue something less extreme, or worse, make her peace with losing her brother and do nothing at all.
If - no, when - it works, she can let them know. Once she has the herb and T’Challa is all right.
So she shuts herself up in a private lab that no one else may access, and builds herself robots to help with the heavy lifting, and works long hours of the day and night to recreate what’s in Stark’s blueprints. It takes her nearly a fortnight of little sleep, of people whispering that the princess has lost her mind, of her mother pleading with her to please come out of the lab, come be with your brother while we still can...
But she gets it done.
Shuri just stares at it for a long, dazed moment, the hulking platform and apparatus that crouches in the middle of her space, and the “time GPS” cuff in her hand. It’s done. She did it. She can go.
“Princess,” Griot comments, “under the circumstances, you may wish to take some time to rest before initiating use of the machine. Readings show that you are significantly sleep-deprived, and--”
“I’m fine, Griot,” Shuri interrupts. She can feel weariness in her bones, maybe a little fuzziness in her head, but she doesn’t have time to rest. T’Challa could take a turn for the worse and...and be gone in the space of only a few hours. She needs to get going. It should only be a short trip. Just get to the cave, grab the herb, bring herself back.
“Get the machine ready. I’m going.”
This isn’t how science is supposed to work. Science is supposed to involve checking and rechecking, running carefully controlled tests until you know everything is perfect. But she can’t afford that right now. She might have already taken too long.
Slipping on the cuff over the sleeve of her protective suit, she jogs up the steps and into the center of the platform. Her fingers fly as she sets the destination coordinates for the “GPS”. If all goes well - and it has to - she’ll return to this exact moment, so she won’t even be missed.
The machinery under and around her starts to glow and whir. “Initiating time jump,” Griot says, a faint but definite dubious edge to his voice. “In three...two...one...”
Then she’s shrinking, being sucked downward and then flying through tunnels of the quantum realm. Shuri had known to expect this - it had been in Banner’s notes, and Scott Lang had waxed verbose about it in the press. Under other circumstances, it would have been exhilarating, and even as it was, she was fascinated enough to nearly forget the weight on her shoulders that had brought her there.
Then the GPS beeps, and she’s out, falling a short distance before hitting...
...not solid ground, that’s for sure.
It takes her a shocked half-second to process that she’s been plunged into freezing, choppy water. The coordinates, she thinks, as she fights to keep her head above the surface. She’d entered them wrong, in her hurry, and now she’s ended up not anywhere near the heart-shaped herb, not even in Wakanda, but out in the middle of the ocean. She can’t see land anywhere, and she doesn’t think it’s just because she’s arrived in the middle of the night.
She glances at the GPS to confirm her suspicions, and to get herself out of there, but a huge wave smacks into her at that moment, and once she surfaces again, she sees that the cuff’s display is blinking and shorting out. She’d made it water-resistant in case of an encounter with rain or the river, but clearly that hadn’t held up against full, violent submersion.
She’s stuck, in this time and in the sea. She’s going to fail and never come home and no one will ever know just what happened to her, although the time machine in her private lab will likely give them a decent idea. Mama, I’m sorry.
I’m going to drown out here , she thinks, still fighting to stay afloat and moving because it’s not in her to give up, but sensing the increasing futility.
I’m going to die.