Namor heard the rumbling of the sea above him before the shell's vibration. It was as though Chac filled the sky with rain because his ears perceived beyond the range of the ocean and right up to the edge of land-dwellers.

He felt her fingers dip into the water.

Council members called after him as he stood up with his staff in tow, the telltale sign of his leave. His people loved him, and he them, but he defined the traditions they sought so hard to maintain. Namora's watchful eyes followed him. He tore upwards, tunneling up and out of the throne room. Practiced movements honed over centuries would usually propel him into his private quarters in his air cave in mere minutes, but his injured wing hindered him from his usual fluidity. He adjusted for the imbalance by favoring his left leg and compensating with strong right-arm strokes. Soon, the vibranium sun of Talokan was a glittering orb behind him.

He preferred the cool depth of water, flowing and curling around his limbs as he swayed with the currents. But the air that greeted him was no less pleasurable, and his need to absorb oxygen from air as much as he did water was a reminder that he was a king born of both mud and ocean.

His lips curled, remembering the contraption the Wakandan princess had trapped him in. Ingenious, yes, but she'd forgotten that vibranium destroys vibranium, and their empires were equal in that precious resource. Still, that she had so thoroughly pinpointed his weaknesses after meeting just three times ruffled his wings, as did the idea of him being so powerful as an enemy that he rattled her was flattering.

Another vibration of the conch shell reminded him to move quickly. He tore off his golden tilmahtli, the vibranium fibers of the cloak slow to dry in the damp heat, and flexed his neck, prepared for another flight upwards and towards the waters of Haiti.

The sky was an even, foggy blue when he broke out onto the surface. His sight blurred before it cleared to a vision.

Shuri was dressed in a garish gray and purple suit, not unlike the one his guards curiously murmured about before he'd sent for robes fit for a princess. Her hair was longer, a stray coil framing her angular face in a way that softened it — yet her jaw was hard, her arms tense and eyes narrowed.

She'd only relaxed around him once, but that was before his guard had been murdered and her mother drowned. He once preferred the hardness, opting to break her naivete and hold her to a promise, but a part of him missed the eyes of a curious, compassionate princess who clung to hope. Hope that he was good, that they could be honest and true allies in a world of betrayal. That she didn't need to choose between the options he laid out for her and could carve out her own. She did, eventually. Only too late.

That Shuri of the cavern was gone. He did not know her well, but he knew humans enough that once broken, they never returned.

He'd seen the hollow look in her eyes before, after all. In his mother's.

He ascended towards her. She was not his subject; he was barely even an ally, but he scaled the shore to meet her all the same. It was not their beach — Shuri had seen to it that all evidences of damage on the Mexican coast was wiped out, true to their agreement.

The staff stood tall in his right hand. He raked a hand through his wet, matted hair and spoke in low, gravelly tones.

"You bring a generosity, Princess. I did not think I would see you so soon."

Two months was a blip in the lifetime of an immortal, she supposed. A sheen of sweat and water lingered on his body. His eyebrows had the slightest furrow to them, egging her to answer a question he didn't ask. He looked so different from the first time they met. She reminded herself that the man in front of her now — ambitious, defensive, violent, and loyal to his people — was the real him. Not the one who had been crouched over his desk, gently placed tied bracelet around her wrist, and asked her softly to burn down the world with him. These were his true colors.

She did not fear him anymore. She could've killed him. She let him live, so he would always be in a blood debt to her. She may not have liked all traditions of the elders, but she knew a noble enemy borne from necessity and tradition, and could only hope her assessment proved true.

"We had an arrangement."

"That, we did." He titled his head the slightest degree. Shuri trained her eyes on his chest, as she could swear he was matching his breathing with hers despite having no reason to. In, out. In, out. "I hope we still do."

That was not a question. A thinly-veiled threat, one that said if you say no, I will break our short-lived peace immediately, here and now. He was the Feathered Serpent God, a leader who did what needed to be done without a moment's hesitation; something she desperately wished she could be before she walked away from her own short-lived reign.

He was waiting for her to answer. She could not lift her eyes.

"I am not queen." She heard a sharp hiss, and quickly added, "Right now. But the honorable Golden City will uphold the treaty that we made."

He moved three paces forward, coming so close to her that the water stopped at his ankles. The tides pushed and pulled. "And how will these honorable people uphold a pact made by a ruler who is not there? How can you guarantee my people protection? You would not make a fool of me, yet I feel as though I've been made a fool of."

"No!" She shouted, crossing her arms. She wanted to melt into the sand and never come to air. She wanted to visit her mother on the ancestral plane and cry in her arms. The words burned in her throat. You killed my mother, she wanted to shout. But instead, she thought of Killmonger. "I promise. I will protect your people, I swear it on my life."

A long pause.

"Look at me." He ordered. She bristled.

"I am looking at you."

"Not my chest, woman."

Her head snapped up as heat rose to her face. His dark eyes flickered, one corner of his mouth turned down. Whatever he found on her face seemed to satisfy him because he took another step back into the water and relaxed his grip on his staff.

Did he know how painful this was for her: to uphold a promise that cost her everything to make and would take more from her in ways no one could understand?

"You called me here. If not to break our agreement, then what requires the attention of the Feathered Serpent God?"

Shuri resisted the urge to roll her eyes, her previous embarrassment evaporating into a sardonic laugh. What a fish-head, referring to himself in the third-person. M'Baku had punched a whale, probably, at the battle in Wakanda and he was still familiar with first person pronouns.

Namor frowned at her mirth. She pushed herself forward. "There's a second attack planned. The Americans are sending another expedition to your waters, with a new vibranium sensor."

"Then they are fools." His lip curled upwards and moved to turn back towards the sea. "I shall remind them what happened the previous time they transgressed us."

"Absolutely not," she raised her voice for the second time. A conversation with Namor was like running to catch up with his thoughts before they steamrolled entire populations. And she'd resolved to be the one to reign him in, didn't she? "I didn't tell you so you could start this all over again."

"Pitiful. Here I thought you agreed to my first offer."

Was he teasing her?

"I made you a new one. The whole point of offering our protection and promises of secrecy was to avoid you doing what you want on your own, and then us facing the fallout. The Americans still think we were behind the first attack and want to threaten us into handing over vibranium. I came to you to help defend your city, and possibly even negotiate with them."

"English is not my first language, but I'm certain vowing secrecy does not mean opening us up to something as low as negotiating with surface-dwellers. I did not protect Talokan for this long with negotiations."

Shuri took a deep breath, then chucked the conch shell at his head. Forget it, he could go die in a swimming hole while she went back to Wakanda, reunited with Okoye and find the colonizer to mediate with those blasted Americans.

Namor was in front of her, baring his teeth and peering down his nose. She stumbled backwards, arms outstretched in preparation to hit the ground, but a familiar, large hand curled her right arm. But this time, he didn't shove her down or fling her into the nearest rock formation.

She met his eyes. They were angry, and there was a thin trail of blood trickling down his forehead. She waited for an inevitable fight.

Instead, his eyebrows furrowed. "Your suit, Princess. You are strong without it?"

Yes, because of the bracelet you gave me and the heart-shape herb. You're the reason I had the strength to almost kill you.

Not everyone could throw a shell at a water-king head and cause actual damage, she realized. She wrenched herself from his grasp. "Focus, please. I'm coming with you."

"You were about to leave."

"Nevermind, genius, I'm coming with you. You will not say a word to the expedition. I'm thinking to pass off their detection as a deposit Wakanda left there, but I'm not sure how international law would deal with it since its Mexican waters. Or," she touched a finger to her kimoyo beads, and for the first time in months the panther suit came alive. Nano-tubules crawled over her body in a spider-web like formation, encasing her in a solid suit of vibranium. Namor took a step back, eyes glued to her glimmering claws. "we can fight, but before you get ideas, only if it's a combatant unit. We don't kill scientists."

"We don't kill scientists." He repeated, eyes boring into her.

Bucky was very, very worried about Shuri. It had been a while since he had something to preoccupy his thoughts other than his own failures and life adrift as a man out of time. The only man who'd known him as a real person, at the time he was supposed to live, had been Steve, and look where that got him.

Point was, this was a heavily welcome distraction (especially after the whole flagsmashers thing, Bucky didn't want to see Zemo the rat ever again). That it was Shuri, the young, happy girl that had nursed him back to life, didn't sit well.

The woman they'd found her with, Nakia, was staring outside the Quinjet's side window, hand clasped tightly around her son. He couldn't remember the boy's name but he had a way about him, hunched soldiers and dark eyes, that reminded him of a certain Black Panther their world had lost over a year ago.

So many deaths in such a short time. Natasha. Tony. T'Challa. Half the Avengers team, gone or missing. It felt like yesterday he'd been sitting in ab interrogation cell and then body-slammed into a wall by both Natasha and Steve's old flame.

He grinned, despite himself.

"Sergeant Barnes."

The Quinjet quavered. "Sorry?"

Nakia pursed her lips. "I did not mean to distract you, though a pilot should be far more prepared."

He ignored the jibe. He had a feeling the woman didn't like him very much. Him and Sam had barreled into her home, unwelcome, and she'd still served him the best meal he had this week.

"And this...contraption. Is the military on a budget, or is this the best a world power has to offer?"

Was he any other soldier, he would've bristled. As fate would have it, his love for Wakanda was far more than S.H.E.I.L.D, SWORD, or whatever else damn acronym the bureaucrats came up with. "I'm not their favorite agent, and this unofficial business. We're lucky we're not in a submarine."

"Who's 'their'?"

"Who's them?" He countered. He felt Nakia's glare settle on him and quickly realized why Shuri listened to the woman. "They are the people behind Captain America."

"Who are you loyal to, Sergeant Barnes?"

He had a feeling she was testing him. He'd been tested lots of times, but he'd always known which answers his interrogators wanted him to give.

"The name's Bucky. And Captain America," he said, finally.

Nakia squinted her eyes at him. Her son was asleep next to her, his head lolling onto her shoulder. "How well do you know Shuri?"

"Not that well. She healed me. Visited my hut a couple times to check up on me. I saved an alien from clawing her eyes out at the final battle." He shrugged.

"Then you know her better than most. How did you find her, today?"

Find her? Oh, as in how did he view her today. He stared unblinking into the vast ocean they flew over. Sam had assured them all security protocols were in place, and that they were essentially visible. Two more hours and they'd be safe within the walls of Wakanda. "How anyone expects someone to look after losing their mother."

"She was murdered, in front of Shuri."

This time, the Quinjet lurched to the right. Bucky tightened his hold on the steering controls, forcing his breathing to calm. He remembered his therapist's breathing techniques, and let his mind drift onto the horizon.

It was right after they had met with the weird sorcerers ("I'm telling you Buck, doesn't he look like a wizard without a hat?" "My name's Doctor Strange, not Gandalf" "Sam, he can do magic and he'll singe your wings off, I don't want to drag a dead body home to your sister.") for a security-related issue. Months before that, Wanda had locked an entire city under a spell and people were suing, but she was possibly dead and Wong was already embroiled in some legal troubles of his own. When the Sorcerer Supreme took him out to a cafe to discuss the whole ordeal, the TV spared a whole thirty seconds with breaking news of floods in Wakanda and Queen Ramonda's untimely death.

Their paths had only crossed once, when the Avengers took Vision to Wakanda. She'd greeted them all in passing, too busy with mobilizing troops for an impending invasion. The woman was regal, and had a booming voice that called to attention every person whatever room she found herself in. Everything a kind, just queen should be.

So he mourned the loss of not just a great leader, but a woman who very clearly raised Shuri with the compassion and sympathy to help people like him. To hear she was murdered, and right in front of Shuri too, made a heavy weight settle at the back of his twice-altered brain.

"I'm so sorry. Did they catch whoever did it?"

Nakia looked out the window again. "Yes. And unfortunately, Shuri is with him now."

A flash of white struck the cockpit. Four alarms blared to life, shrieking in the rattling Quinjet. Nakia hoisted her son onto the seat behind her and pulled out a spear. Bucky had half the mind to ask where that nifty weapon was hiding when another streak of white crossed the window, ramming into the left fuel tank.

The Quinjet began to fall.