The Eyes are the Windows to the Soul (1.)
M'Baku saw it. Knew exactly when her gaze turned towards him a few weeks ago. The first sign was always in the eyes. They were too soulful not to spill their truth. Maybe he should have acknowledged it earlier.
Shuri's eyes were dark brown jewels. No longer so dead-looking. Renewed with purpose. With interest?
Closeness bred intimacy.
Hanuman forbid. The mere flicker of her interest would send that fish man off-kilter in wrathful passion.
Shuri was telling him about her latest invention, smiling and excitedly pointing to a sketch on the paper in her hand. Her lips were a deep red, and her mascara was cat-eyed. She had made an effort to dress in something other than hoodies or lab gear.
The evidence was adding up, and it curled something in his stomach. The sun was merciless all over Wakanda but the worst in the Golden City. He wiped his sweaty brow with his arm and registered her lingering gaze.
After another sip, she put her freshly squeezed mango juice down. It was custom to make and offer a drink to guests in Jabariland, so he brought this tradition to the palace. Shuri had thanked him as if he hung the stars in the sky or had no knowledge of a mango before.
"M'Baku, see you'll be able to store your furs without them gathering mold. Once I have a bigger version, you'll wave the ball like this, and—bam! It's like a pocket dimension. Except it will fit in your pocket. You will be able to store anything except—"
He held up a hand.
They often met for morning talks on one of the many royal family home patios, and he admittedly enjoyed them. M'Baku had eight sisters, four older and four younger. Most days he felt as if he inherited Shuri as a ninth. On others, she was more like a good friend.
"I've wives that clean and store my furs."
Her face pinched, but she held her tongue.
"You're traditional to a fault." She rolled her eyes. "I know Maryam and Chioma take pride in cleaning, but this will make life easier. It's like a mini dry cleaner and a closet all-in-one."
There was a brightness in her eyes. She was waiting for his approval. A young beautiful woman in her twenties wanted an old dusty man's praise (he was nearly forty years old).
He faked a stern frown as if he could truly be cruel to her. "Do you wish to be my wife? I keep my women barefoot and pregnant, and I'd need at least three children from you. I'm a lot to take. No more lab work for you either."
Her eyes went wide and she stuttered. But no smart-mouthed tongue or gagging noises. She was thinking mostly.
"What are you talking about?" She squeaked. Everything confirmed his suspicion.
"You're here trying to clean." He gestured to her planning sheets and prototype drawings spread across the table near their finished meal. "And cook and care for me. The palace servants and my wives already do this. You want to be the fourth?"
His expression wasn't unkind, but he had to put an end to this before her feelings further bloomed. Her incessant need to meet more often hadn't been a concern before, but now he knew the majority was an excuse to see him.
Shuri was highly intelligent, so she tried to maneuver the conversation elsewhere. "Stop joking. Lord M'Baku cannot clean for himself, eh? Are you trying to recruit me into the cleaning crew? Your wives are just maids, huh?"
M'Baku shook his head, needing to wrap up the conversation. As the current ruler, there were many things to oversee, and their morning time was running over.
He told her, "Enough. All my wives were former warriors or homemakers. Don't minimize them into one thing. I'm careful not to do so myself. They've served on the battlefield and now prefer the mundane. Two of them at least."
She sighed. Steeled herself. Her eyes were recalibrating and searching his. The furrowed brow showed she was opinionated but didn't want to offend him.
"Let us be on something else then. I just wanted to help you. Besides, I've other inventions. You won't have to use a knife anymore to skin your carrots. My kimoyo beads can precisely cut your carrot at a slant just the way you like," she said sweetly. Pretty smile.
M'Baku rubbed his forehead. It was so obvious to him. Shuri, who could barely stand to be in his presence before without mocking, was meditating on ways to make his life more convenient. This went beyond being his confidante.
"Wakanda needs your "busy" but bright mind elsewhere," he said gently, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"M'Baku—"
He didn't relish in gore, so he made his next cut clean. "I know with T'Challa gone ..." Her face fell as if he punched her. "You've had to fill the empty space. I'm honored to care for you, but I cannot return your affection."
Despite her automatic scoffing, he wounded her. And it hurt him terribly, but he liked to get to the point. He had wanted his wife Chioma to let her down, but she convinced him to do it himself. His wives loved Shuri. No wonder she thought she was apt to join them.
He saw a line of water in her eyes, but her voice was steady. She folded her hands in her lap. "Whatever, M'Baku. I'm a scientist. I just like figuring things out and sharing my ideas. Nothing more."
"Shuri, you've never shown them to me before. Always you'd just pop into council with what you've already created and expended Wakandan resources for." He didn't want to drift off into the usual financial argument. "Don't think me naive for noticing the change in your attention."
Her eyes were round and soft. Blinking rapidly, she pretended. "I could never. With you? No, I already know you like your women beautiful, thick, and strong. Why would I have a chance?" She laughed with no humor.
He reached across the table easily with his stature. He cupped her face in his hands. She tried to bite one of his fingers.
This girl! But the watery eyes didn't lie.
"Sister, it's nothing of your beauty, and no fault lies with you. You're looking for love, and I have some to give. But not in that way. I promised your brother—"
Shuri ripped away from him. She flung the patio chair away from the table, and it tumbled onto the ground from the ferocity.
"Save it!" She gathered her things, trying not to look at him. And he almost preferred it. Let them go back to something more manageable—even if it was anger. But he saw so much in her eyes. She had created a future with him it seemed, or he was just a placeholder. A future where she wasn't alone and cared for. A ready-made family.
He reached for her wrist, choosing humor. People often considered him funny when he wasn't trying to be. But how else to reach her emotionally now that he had preemptively turned her down?
"Besides, you talk to me with another man's jewelry on? Call yourself having a roster?"
The jade bracelet shifted on her wrist. It was rare he saw her without it except in the presence of Namor. If she knew he was coming to a council meeting, her wrist would be bare.
She blinked, confused.
"Seeing you with that bracelet would probably please him. It's expensive, no?"
Shuri shrugged. "It's more sentimental value, I think. It was his mother's bracelet but surprisingly still holds up well." She picked at it for a moment, having fully calmed down.
"That fish man gave this to you, yet you look to me." He wagged an eyebrow.
Namor's eyes when they weren't raining down terror were very telling. M'baku was no fool. He was perceptive. You had to be as a father, husband, and ruler. He oversaw too many to be clueless.
"That fish man knocked the wind and who knows what else out of you."
Damn woman.
M'Baku frowned, getting up from his seat. He motioned for her to follow him into the garden. The Dora Milaje stood stationed at the front entrance of the garden door. They seemed ignorant of their conversation.
"Touché. And he'd kill me before he allowed us together."
"I don't need permission to be with anyone. Why would he care? As long as our 'alliance...'" Shuri told him, making finger quotes. "Is active."
Why didn't she understand?
"Let me make it plain for you, Wakanda's brightest mind. The feathered serpent god? Gods are jealous. We should love no one more than them."
Shuri touched a flower petal and accidentally plucked it. "He's no god. Just a man who bleeds like everyone else." She clenched her fist.
"He's a smitten one, also." M'Baku walked ahead of her. Doubly letting her catch up.
Her footsteps were light and quick. Only from youthful days of hunting expeditions with his father can M'Baku notice her stealth. She stared at him closely. Searching for gaps in his logic. Clinks in the armor of this truth.
Patting her head infuriates her and a spark of flame lit in her narrowed eyes. "Recollect your thoughts. Prove I'm wrong. His eyes and how they look at you. He hides it well, but I see it."
Her eyes were deep brown caverns now. Too many ways to turn and search. Conflicted. They had become unreadable or rather had too many emotions to interpret.
Shuri wanted to reject it, but her mind still whirred. Whatever memories she has confirmed something with her soft gasp.
"I'll really kill him this time," she said in a strained whisper.
M'Baku handed her a flower to smell. He sniffed one of his own but blew away the petals with a powerful sneeze. She jumped back from his germs.
"For his fondness for you?" He rubbed his nose on his fur coat.
She slammed her hand into her palm. "He has no right!"
M'Baku knew as well but steered her back on track.
"My point is you're small-minded. You preoccupy yourself with my gloriousness in your heart because you know not of the other men who desire you—despite your obstinacy, head in a computer, and devil child ways."
She leveled a look at him that seemed to say she was rethinking her attraction to him. Good!
"But yet he desires you. Surely, you don't think it's a coincidence those betrothals from Prince Olu or the merchant tribe head's son David fell through recently. That Nay-mor makes my life difficult. The council and I are trying to secure a good groom for you, but he meddles. Pining away on the sea floor for a woman he cannot have." M'Baku laughed a boisterous laugh. So hilarious it brought a tear to his eye. "What a pathetic schoolboy! Those fairy wings cannot bring fantasy and love into his life, aye?"
Shuri simply sniffed her flower, then tucked it into her hair. Her face was framed by thick symmetrical twists.
"Oh, I didn't want them anyway." Finally, she said. "One wanted us to be a doctor power couple. I'm a woman of science, not a healer. And the other ..." She trailed off.
He led her back to the patio after their walk in the garden. Everything was growing nicely, fruits, plants, and baby insects.
"You're very inexperienced in the ways of men. Wakandan men especially are persistent. They wouldn't have stopped without you formally turning them down."
She bit her lip.
"I … I need to go, M'Baku." She turned away, her long wrap skirt fluttering behind her, but came back. She placed a round ball in his hand from a bag. "This is the prototype I was working on for the pocket dimension thing. You should still have it as a thanks."
He smiled cheekily and rolled the ball in his hand.
"Thanks for?"
She blew out an annoyed breath. She played with her kimoyo beads, reviewing her next scheduled task. "For nothing. And you were wrong about earlier, anyway." Only placing a twist behind her ear showed any residual embarrassment from her crush's exposure. She would get over it soon enough.
"You speak in your head, Shuri. Try speaking aloud."
The Dora Milaje saluted them (him) as he walked by. He helped Shuri up the stairs by extending his hand.
"Do you believe that stuff about the eyes? I mean body language can be rigged if one knows the signs to look for."
"Some things cannot be faked. Science, at times, can confirm things, but so can experience." M'Baku relented.
"Before everything," she said, not explaining what. "We connected. His eyes were so dark and piercing. I felt danger and safety in them at once."
"And you. What were your eyes saying to him?"
"I told him—"
"No, your eyes, Shuri."
She paused for a considerable time. Halfway turned from him. Wrestled with words that may have been easier for her to tell Maryam, Chioma, or Patience than himself.
"They said … 'I want to understand you. Maybe you and I are the same.'"
They stood on the palace's last step for the longest. His arm itched. He grew tired of this discussion of feelings and love, and Shuri frankly. Sometimes, he needed her in doses.
"Did you think he was handsome?"
She glared.
He held his hands up in mock surrender. So easy to rile!
He rubbed his beard thoughtfully. "Well, I'm trying to see if you have a type. Maybe there's a Jabari man who is willing to risk his life for you. Or, another fishy man will catch your eye. We need to strengthen ties. Finding a marriage offer for you would be easier then. The council has listed me as a temporary husband candidate until we can finalize one. Who would've thought you'd seriously have feelings for me." He began to laugh again, slapping his knee.
Shuri's expression was neutral, and he couldn't get a read on her feelings again. How quickly she had learned to shield her emotions. "If what you say is true, then shouldn't you be afraid of Namor? He may think of you as a serious contender for me. Or worse, hear those things you said about him."
M'Baku hissed, closing the palace door behind them. "Don't put it in the atmosphere! Do you wish to bring that type of wrath upon me? Thank Hanuman, he'll never know of our conversation or the council decision."