The Night Riri Williams Died
pairing: shuri udaku x riri williams
summary: a late-night date in chicago takes a tragic turn when shuri and riri are ambushed by namor.
warning: major character death, descriptions of death (nothing gory or too graphic, but still could be found triggering to some people)
a/n: in case it’s not already obvious from the title, this is based off gwen stacy’s iconic death scene in the amazing spider-man. inspired by this beautiful piece of artwork. sorry if this ruins your day 🫶🏽
The hum of the city had softened to a lull as the jazz club doors swung open behind them, letting out a final sultry chord and a trail of laughter. The lake breeze brushed along the street, warm against Riri’s bare shoulders. She glanced up at Shuri, who was walking beside her in a deep purple jacket, trimmed in gold.
“I still can’t believe you made the sax player do a Wakandan scale run.”
Shuri gave a smug grin. “He wanted the challenge.”
Riri laughed, her hand slipping into Shuri’s as they stepped off the curb and crossed the street. They strolled under the dim orange glow of the streetlights near Wabash Avenue, the L train tracks rattling softly overhead. Shuri loved this part of Chicago. Not because of its prestige or polish, but because it felt alive. Riri was alive here — her stride loose, her laughter easy. They moved like dancers — shoulders brushing, conversation seamless. For once, there were no meetings. No royal duties. No tech deadlines or schematics to review. The night belonged to them.
“I love this,” she whispered.
“Me too,” Riri said, slowing to a stop in front of a shop window. “Feels like everything else fades out when I’m with you. Especially like this… not in a lab. Not saving the world.”
“Yeah,” Shuri sighed, a softness in her eyes as she slowed to face her. “You make the world feel… smaller. And safer.”
Riri leaned in on her tiptoes, her hand curling behind Shuri’s neck. The kiss was gentle — brief but warm. A promise, not a possession. When they pulled apart, they both had that dazed half-smile people get when they forget about the world for a second.
Then the world remembered them.
A sound like thunder detonated behind them, followed by a violent wave of pressure. A sudden rush of air and a hiss of bursting steam. Then came the water — raging, cold, and fast.
It was like a shockwave had spilt the air, creating a violent cyclone that sent cars skidding and people screaming.
The explosion hurled them off their feet, ripping them apart. Riri was thrown backward into a metal bike rack. Shuri hit the pavement and rolled, instinctively shielding her head.
“Shuri!” Riri gasped, soaked and dazed as she coughed out the water in her lungs.
Shuri forced herself up onto her knees, vision blurred and ears ringing. “Riri?!”
She spotted her, about twenty feet away, stumbling to her feet. Their eyes met.
Screams erupted all around them. Pedestrians scattered in panic. Horns blared. Water flooded the intersection in roaring torrents. Smoke hissed from the center of the blast.
Then the wind shifted again — sharp and sudden — and the screaming reached an even higher pitch.
Shuri turned just in time to see the shadowy silhouette descending from the sky.
He hovered on winged ankles above the smoky intersection, water clinging to his skin, eyes burning with cold, unwavering intent.
He wasn’t here for diplomacy.
His gaze was locked onto Riri.
“No,” Shuri breathed, the word torn from her chest as she struggled to stand. “No—Riri!”
Riri coughed, shaking, halfway on her knees. Her gaze flicked up.
Namor’s expression didn’t shift. He looked past Shuri as if she wasn’t even there.
“RUN!” Shuri screamed, voice hoarse as she propelled herself forward. “Riri, run!”
Riri pivoted — just one step — and that was all she got.
Namor shot down like a spear from heaven, snatched her by the arm, and soared back into the air before Shuri could even scream.
Shuri’s hand flew to her chest, activating her kimoyo beads. The nanotech swirled from her bracelet and coated her skin like smoke and mercury, forming the sleek lines of the Black Panther armor.
Within seconds, she leapt onto the side of a delivery truck, used it as a springboard, and launched herself into the air. She climbed buildings with impossible speed, scaling windows and signage, leaping from rooftop to rooftop with only one thought in her mind:
Namor rose higher, Riri dangling in his grip, thrashing and kicking, her fingers scrambling toward the necklace beneath her top: the summoner for her Ironheart suit.
And with a cruel flick of his wrist, he ripped it from her neck and tossed it into the wind.
“No!” Riri cried, watching her last defense fall into the night.
“You won’t be saved by machines.” he growled.
Below, Shuri scaled rooftops, sprinting along ledges, her claws slicing into stone. Her heart thundered in her chest. She leapt, pushed harder, firing grapple lines to gain altitude.
“NAMOR!” she roared. “Put her down!”
He stopped, hovering high above the face of an old clock tower near the river’s edge. The building was abandoned — empty of life. Riri dangled from his grip, her body weak from the altitude, the cold, and the weight of panic.
Shuri landed hard on the rooftop of a high-rise, panting, her heart pounding in her ears.
“Release her at once!” she said, her voice steady even as it trembled inside. “This is madness! We had a truce.”
Namor looked down, face unreadable. “We did.”
“Then honor it!” she called up into the air.
“The truce,” he said calmly, “was between Wakanda and Talokan. This girl? She is neither. Your love does not shield her from consequence.”
“She’s with me!” Shuri shouted, hands shaking uncontrollably. “You know that. She is under Wakanda’s protection.”
“She was never part of the agreement,” Namor said, his tone turning colder. “She built the machine. She brought the surface world to our door. She violated the ocean’s sanctity. Her blood is not sacred.”
“She is not your enemy!” Shuri screamed. “She’s a child. A student. She didn’t know what she was building! Let her go, now!”
High above her, Riri continued to struggle in his grasp. She looked up at Namor, fear all over her face.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, a mixture of desperation and defiance. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. You want justice? You’re looking in the wrong place!”
“You represent the same danger,” Namor said. “Whether you intended to or not.”
Then he looked back at Shuri.
“You spared a threat. I eliminate it.”
And Riri Williams dropped out of the sky.
The instant Namor’s fingers opened, time fractured.
Riri plummeted like a stone — flailing, helpless, her eyes wide with fear — and Shuri didn’t hesitate. She didn’t think. She didn’t breathe. She just moved.
She kicked off the rooftop with all the force her suit could muster, the vibranium-lined boots unleashing a shockwave that shattered concrete beneath her. Air screamed past her helmet as she soared upward, kinetic energy propelling her higher than she’d ever gone. Her arms stretched desperately into the void above — reaching, reaching — as the space between them closed by feet, then inches.
Riri spun midair — limbs wild, breath stolen by the wind. For one perfect, horrifying second, their eyes locked — and Shuri reached her. She caught Riri in midair, wrapping her arms around her and pulling her in tight against her chest. A heartbeat later, they hit the rooftop dome of the old clock tower.
Shuri twisted her body mid-fall, taking the brunt of the impact. Glass exploded around them like a thousand jagged stars. They plunged through a web of steel beams and rusted gears. Shuri curled protectively around Riri, the world blurring into chaos.
Shuri struck the metal catwalk, her back taking the full force of the fall. Vibranium absorbed most of it, but pain shot up her spine anyway. She grunted, breath ripped from her lungs — but her arms never loosened. Riri lay cradled tightly against her chest, her head tucked beneath Shuri’s chin.
Shuri gasped, groaning, her arms still around Riri’s body. She opened her eyes.
Riri lay still on her chest.
Shuri sat up, fingers trembling as she cupped Riri’s cheek. “Hey. I caught you. You’re alright.”
Riri blinked once, dazed, breathing shallow. “…That…sucked.”
A laugh bubbled out of Shuri, half-hysterical, half-sobbing.
The far wall exploded in a flood of pressurized water. Namor entered like a storm, spinning his spear with deadly intent.
Shuri stood fast, placing herself between him and Riri.
“Don’t,” she growled, voice low, murderous.
They clashed across the collapsing tower — vibranium claws against spear. Sparks flew. Stone cracked. Shuri fought with everything — every ounce of rage, of love, of desperation.
Riri crawled behind a gear column, coughing, vulnerable and unprotected.
Namor roared and hurled a second water bomb toward the mechanism behind them.
It detonated with a violent hiss—
The floor beneath Riri collapsed.
She screamed as she fell backward into open air.
Shuri’s heart stopped. She ran.
She reached the edge of the clock tower as Riri fell through moonlight, curls whipping wildly in the wind.
Riri’s lips parted in a silent scream.
The air was cold up here. Sharper than she expected.
It roared past her ears, ripped through her curls, and filled her lungs in short, panicked bursts. Her stomach lurched violently with each second of descent. She couldn’t scream anymore. Her throat had gone dry from the first cry she let out when the floor disappeared beneath her.
Wind, fear, and the weightless, spinning horror of falling.
In the space between the seconds, Riri Williams knew this was it.
Not in battle. Not in her suit. Not in the lab. Not even in control.
Just her body and the air and the night sky.
All because of a war she was never supposed to be a part of.
God, she thought, eyes welling with terrified tears, I’m not ready. I’m not ready—
But something flickered past the edge of her vision.
Sleek. Black and gold. Fast as lightning.
Her eyes locked with the woman she loved.
And suddenly — just for a second — the terror cracked.
The fear didn’t vanish. But something else bloomed underneath it.
Shuri was diving with everything she had. Her arms stretched, her face stricken and focused and alive with desperation.
She wasn’t going to let her go.
She remembered the jazz club — the music. The kiss outside. Shuri’s laugh. The way her fingers had fit so perfectly between hers. That tiny spark of electricity when they touched.
She remembered Shuri saying: “You make the world feel smaller.”
And now the world was falling away.
A strange calm settled over her chest, warm and cold all at once.
At least Shuri was with her at the end.
She let her limbs relax. She stopped fighting the air. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel her final thoughts:
Tell her thank you… for loving me back.
For one impossible moment, Riri felt arms wrap around her. Strong. Protective. So fast, it rattled her soul.
The world tilted. The sound of her scream echoed through the shattered ribs of the old clock tower, a sound so raw, so desperate, it split Shuri’s heart wide open. One second she was watching Riri recoil from the blast of Namor’s second water bomb, her silhouette framed by the cracked wooden beams — and the next, she was gone.
Gone through the broken floor.
Shuri’s body moved before thought could catch up. Her heart launched into her throat. She sprinted to the jagged edge where Riri had vanished, and without hesitation, dove. She surged downward like a missile, the skyline blurring around her, the Chicago night full of screaming sirens and the low hum of shattered peace.
Riri, who had sassed her way into the princess’s heart with nothing but raw intellect and dreams bigger than the stars. Riri, who laughed loud, talked back, and never waited for permission. Riri, who challenged every wall Shuri built around herself and kissed her like she belonged in Wakanda, in her life, in her future, in her world.
Riri, whose small figure was falling further out of reach, lips parted in a soundless cry, eyes shining with unshed tears.
Shuri’s HUD tracked Riri’s velocity.
She rerouted power to her suit’s thrusters, forcing an extra burst of kinetic energy to launch herself forward. Her claws extended.
The ground rushed up like a monster waiting with open jaws.
Shuri’s arms stretched — fingers trembling from the precision needed. She couldn’t afford even a centimeter of error.
Shuri reached out, screamed her name—
Their bodies collided with a brutal force, Shuri’s arms locking tightly around Riri’s waist. She twisted, rolling midair, using her own momentum to take the brunt of the impact as they smashed into the pavement. The kinetic charge stored in Shuri’s suit exploded outward, absorbing a portion of the energy — but not all. The ground cracked beneath them, glass and concrete spraying in every direction. Shuri’s back hit first, her armor groaning under the force. The nanotech absorbed most of it, but the blow still rattled through her bones. Shuri’s back scraped violently against the ground as they skidded for several feet before finally halting.
Shuri gasped, coughing violently. Her ears rang. Her heart pounded so hard it made her dizzy. Her vision blurred from the pain shooting through her shoulder and ribs. But she didn’t care.
She felt the weight in her arms.
She was holding Riri close, wrapped around her like a shield.
For a breathless second, it was quiet.
“Riri,” she choked out, barely above a whisper. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. I caught you.”
The only response was more silence. Not even the sound of her breathing.
Shuri’s helmet peeled back as she leaned forward into a sitting position, her breaths ragged and sharp in the heavy silence. As she shifted, Riri’s body — still cradled against her — began to slump backward, her head lolling, limbs slack. Panic surged in Shuri’s chest.
“No—no, no, stay with me,” she whispered, quickly adjusting her grip.
She hooked an arm beneath Riri’s knees and the other behind her back, lifting her into a soft, trembling bridal carry. Riri’s head fell gently against Shuri’s shoulder, the dead weight forcing her to clutch tighter, as if her arms alone could anchor her to life.
Shuri pulled her closer, settling her in her lap, and gently repositioned her limp form with care, brushing back curls from her face. “Come on, sthandwa… please,” she murmured, voice barely holding itself together as her thumb gently traced Riri’s jawline. “You’re okay. You have to be okay.”
But Riri didn’t move. Didn’t stir. Didn’t even flinch. And that silence began to crush Shuri from the inside out. Her hands trembled as they cupped Riri’s face, thumbs stroking over cooling skin, searching — begging — for any sign of warmth, any flicker of breath, the smallest twitch behind closed lids. Her own breathing was shallow now, jagged, a tight rhythm fighting against the dread curling in her chest.
“Riri,” she whispered again, firmer this time as she began to gently shake her, as if her voice alone could coax her girlfriend back. “Hey. Hey, wake up. You’re okay. I caught you. I got you.”
But Riri’s head only lolled further against her shoulder, her curls brushing against Shuri’s cheek, soft and weightless in a way that felt wrong — empty.
Shuri pressed two fingers to the side of Riri’s neck. Waited. Counted. Pressed harder.
“No,” she breathed, shaking her head in small, sharp motions as if denying it would make it untrue. “No, no, no—Riri, don’t do this. You hear me?” Her voice cracked. “Don’t do this to me!”
Her fingers found Riri’s wrist.
She pressed her ear to Riri’s still chest.
Panic, sharper than anything she’d ever felt, surged through her. She activated the biometric scan in her kimoyo beads — shaky fingers hovering above Riri’s body.
The HUD blinked. A soft chime — then the devastating words:
“NO!” Shuri screamed, voice raw, eyes wide with horror at the flickering red words. “No—no, that’s wrong. That’s wrong!”
Quickly, carefully, she shifted Riri’s weight from her lap, laying her down gently on the wet concrete. She started chest compressions, her palms slamming into Riri’s sternum with just enough force — not too much, not too little —
“Breathe, baby. Come on. Please. You’re strong. You’re stubborn. You don’t get to leave me like this.”
Each push felt like a plea. Her shoulders trembled with the effort. She tilted Riri’s head back and breathed into her mouth. One. Two. Then more compressions. Over and over. Again and again.
“Riri, please!” Shuri cried, tears streaming freely down her cheeks. “Stay with me, okay? I caught you. I caught you—how can you—”
But as her eyes scanned Riri’s still form, the truth became clear. Her body had no visible wounds, but her limbs hung unnaturally, slack in a way that didn’t make sense. Her neck tilted back just slightly off-center. A telltale sign of high-velocity trauma.
A sick sensation washed over Shuri as her mind understood what her heart could not, what it refused to.
The way she’d caught her.
The force of the deceleration.
The sudden stop after a terminal fall.
The second her arms whipped around her waist too tight, too strong — the physics did what the fall couldn’t finish. She’d pulled her in too fast.
No heart-shaped herb had ever been ingested by Riri, endowing her with inhuman strength and durability. She was just a girl. A normal girl. A normal, brilliant, beautiful, perfect girl with a normal, fragile human body that had just plummeted twenty stories and jerked to a stop. Even with the suit absorbing the impact, the velocity had transferred into Riri’s unarmored frame. She’d whipped forward in Shuri’s arms — like a snapped rubber band — too fragile to survive the violent deceleration. A broken neck. Internal trauma. Her spine likely severed. Quiet. Unseen. Instantaneous.
She hadn’t survived the catch.
The scream that left Shuri’s throat was primal —shredded by grief before it ever touched the air. It tore through the night sky.
She gathered Riri back into her arms, pulling her close, rocking her gently like a child.
“I had you!” Her voice cracked, shattered by disbelief. “You were in my arms—I had you!”
She didn’t notice the sirens in the distance. Didn’t hear the people screaming. Didn’t even feel the pulse of Namor disappearing back into the sky. There was no roar of vengeance. No vow of retaliation.
All she could feel was the unbearable stillness of Riri’s body in her arms. The silence of a future that had just collapsed around her.
“I saved you,” she sobbed in broken bursts, arms tightening around the girl she loved. “I saved you. I was in time. I was right there—”
But reality did not flinch. All the brilliance in the world couldn’t bend gravity or unbreak what had already shattered.
In that moment, she wasn’t the Black Panther.
She wasn’t the protector of Wakanda.
She wasn’t even the Princess.
And she had just lost everything. Again.
Riri, who told her “I love you” like she meant it. Who pushed her. Teased her. Believed in her. Riri, who danced barefoot in her lab and stole her clothes and played her music too loud. Riri, the girl who called her out before anyone else dared and never let her hide from the truth. Who challenged her tech, her ego, her grief — and somehow taught her how to laugh again through all of it.
Her love. Her light. Her joy. Her reason.
Because even with all her genius, all her power, Shuri couldn’t rewrite the laws of physics.
She bowed her head, forehead resting against Riri’s, as if sorrow could bridge the distance death had drawn between them. Her tears dripped onto Riri’s skin like they could thaw it, but the cold didn’t lift.
And for the first time in a long time, Shuri let the pain collapse her. She wept. Not the composed tears of a queen. But the shattered sobs of a girl who had tried too hard to be strong for too long.
She sat in the middle of the cracked pavement, grief heavier than gravity as she cradled Riri Williams in her arms, whispering broken apologies to a heart that would never beat again.
The headlines spoke of a “terrorist attack” in downtown Chicago. Damage to infrastructure. Dozens of injuries. Unconfirmed sightings of a “flying man” and an unidentified “black-armored vigilante.”
There were no names. No monuments.
In Wakanda, deep in the palace’s underground labs, Shuri stood alone, clad in a rumpled MIT hoodie that still smelled like Riri.
Not Okoye. Not M’Baku. Not Aneka.
Years ago, in a different time and place — perhaps even in another life — her mother, Queen Ramonda, had once told her daughter to hold the world without letting it crush her.
But now, the world had fallen. And Shuri had caught it.
Only to lose everything she loved in the process.
And high above Wakanda’s skyline, every night, she looked to the stars. Not for comfort.
But for a girl who once fell like one.
