If there had been any sign of White Vision at all in Sokovia, he was long gone.
Bucky crouched near the small fire Nakia started, grilling a stray rabbit they'd found hopping around the outskirts of the desolate city. Nakia fiddled with her kimoyo beads, more anxious as the night darkened. They'd wasted over a day here and there were no other leads. For all they knew, White Vision could've been off-planet. The idea he'd joined Thor and his band of ruffians was starting to seem more plausible.
Bucky grimaced, remembering the talking bear pursuing his metal arm.
"The Americans are stubborn," Nakia announced. "We must bring them back something. Ayo is worried the next attempt won't just be a warning. France and Germany are preparing to join them."
"Maybe we're thinking about this too hard," Sam finished folding his wings. "He's been spotted in areas that were meaningful to him. What other places would he go?"
Bucky looked up, an odd feeling rising in his throat. "If a man loses everything but his memories, he'd try to visit them again." He would know. He thought of all the apologies he had given over the past few weeks by traveling across the U.S., and of the weeping mothers and sons and wives, some who held his hands and cried in forgiveness, others who kicked him out with a litany of curses. The sorrow, the solmn joy of closure, the damnation — he deserved all of it.
"Then make a list. Places he went, places that were important." Nakia tossed a chunk of the rabbit into her mouth. It was easier said than done. The years before the Blip, Vision and Wanda were on the run. While Sam and Steve had occasionally checked in with the weird duo, for the most part, they had wanted to be alone. As if they'd known they would be short on time one day.
Nakia had made this point throughout the day, and as much as Bucky loathed to admit, he was quickly arriving at the same conclusion: he would have to touch base with old acquaintances. Hawkeye was close with Wanda. Pepper probably had access to Tony's old files, the old man's habit to track everyone and know everything well-known.
"Why are you helping us?" Sam straightened his legs out. The shadows of the fire's flickering flames gave the amiable man an unusually ominous look. "Not that we don't appreciate your help, Nakia."
Bucky's muscles tensed, prepared for when Nakia struck. But she only shot Sam an impatient look.
"I had my time to rest, to be away from all this. You knew T'Challa, yes?"
Sam nodded. "We met a couple times." Bucky didn't miss his omission that it was usually with the king's claws at his neck.
"I must do my duty to restore Wakanda and create a beautiful world for our son."
"In Wakanda, even royalty don't bother with political marriages."
Namor thought he was overdue for a session with Fen, because surely, his super-powerful, all-knowing ears had misheard. Or maybe Shuri had damaged them while they fought, and he was only now suffering the consequences.
She was curled into her chair, fire in her eyes. They were narrowed to a point sharper than his staff. She wore the look of what he imagined when he thought of panthers: in the moments when they pulled back, before they unleashed their claws and pounced. If he wasn't positively flummoxed, he would've been thrilled to see her engaging in new ways of challenging him. Every time he thought he was beginning to understand her mind, she quickly reminded that although he knew her soul better than she herself, the machinations of her hyperactive brain remained a mystery.
Except, he was unprepared for this shift in tactics. He'd expected her to demand an answer for abandoning her with the Americans (the call of a disgruntled council member pulled him away), not an abrupt comment about surface courtship rituals that sounded more like it was meant for private conversations with her burgeoning group of Talokanil friends.
At his long pause, during which he could only swing his eyes between her and the murals around him as he settled into his seat, Shuri seemed to take his hesitation as a sign to escalate.
"It's stupid." She laughed weakly. "Wakanda and I would never agree."
She rendered him speechless. He'd never run out of words in his life.
Was she…propositioning him?
An odd feeling washed over him. He knew his pupils were blown into black voids without needing to look at the scrap of metals Talokanil used as mirrors.
He considered potential responses. One would be to ignore it, but he was Namor. He always had the final say. Second was to turn around and begin interrogating every guard and quash whatever gossip kept his people from duty and had clearly reached her ears. Or third —
"They prefer to fornicate, then?"
If Shuri had been mildly annoyed and confused before, she was downright furious now.
Another realization. Did she think he was propositioning her now?
Well. If he were to be honest—
"That is not—" he started, then winced. He rolled his shoulders back, something he did before every council meeting. Shuri was his subject, and he could be her King. There was no need to indulge her whims. Except, he wished to touch her face again. Graze his fingers over her lips, her smooth legs, press her against him —
Something low in his belly twitched and purred.
She was yelling now. "Isn't it? You gave me your mother's bracelet and all these gifts, put me in your room, and now you won't tell me why I'm still here and you promised me, what am I—"
Namor stood up, swiveling on his heel to face the mural of his mother and the baby. He held up a hand. "I will explain, and then you will tell me what possessed you to start our conversation like this."
If Shuri was honest with herself, which she wasn't, she would admit she found his back…nice. For a back. If her body wanted to curl itself up against it, it was the hysteria of not seeing the sun in days.
She wasn't sure what made her to hint at him something that was surely, clearly, so downright ridiculous that it was impossible in every universe. Suddenly, that she'd ever gone down that lne of thinking and make this conclusion made her cringe. There could be other explanations. Perhaps kindness had suddenly seized him. Or giving her his mother's bracelet was a strategic maneuver. And she was a Princess, of course she couldn't be treated the same way as other prisoners.
Alas, no one told Shuri to be silent and expected her to put up with it. "No, you answer me. You asked me to trust you. Well, I don't. What do you," she inhaled, "what do you want from me?"
"You ask me difficult questions, Princess, but as I said, I will generously explain." His voice was steel. He held a hand up to the mural so his fingers could rest on his mother's visage. He was too slow, damnit. Months didn't matter to an immortal, but every day here cost Shuri a lifetime. "I told you about our blue flower, a variation of huacalxochitl. Our shaman saved us with it. We could never find another one after we went under water."
He turned to look at her, his hand still hovering over the painting. "But now we finally have a chance to restore it."
She watched his eyes flicker to the bracelet. The one she'd exploited into restoring the heart-shaped herb. The one she kept on her, Bast knew why, all this time later. Realization came faster than she could stand up.
The floor dropped under her.
"You—you knew," she said in a strangled voice.
For a feathered serpent, his smile looked rather like that of a cat: mischievous and sharp. "That I gave you the power to make me yield? Yes. Not intentionally, but you were no Black Panther when we first met, Shuri, or you would have fought me when I first came to Wakanda."
"Don't say my name," she snapped. "Who told you?" Not that someone had to have told him. Namor was a genius of a different type. He'd carved a vibranium sun and ruled a vibranium nation.
"I had some theories but your blue warrior confirmed it. Unlike your mother, who could not offer me anything to tempt Talokan to break its half a millenia long promise to leave foreigners alive, she offered your skills. To restore our flower like you did your herb."
Okoye would never. "You're lying."
"I do not lie, Princess, and you don't believe that, or you would be in your panther suit right now—"
She leapt over the table and had him slammed against the wall before he could finish his sentence. "You don't know me."
He wasn't scared, and he knew she knew it. She felt like a puppet again, him wielding the knowledge of five hundred years and his brutal strength to support his reign over her. She had miscalculated; he wasn't an archaic fighter, unlearned in the refined art of modern international politics and negotiations. He was a serpent, and had wound his slippery way around them all.
"I know you very well, Princess."
One of her hands tightened against the smooth rock of the wall. Her other hovered above his right side, her Kimoyo beads ready to burn holes into his flesh. But what else was so valuable to make him negotiate for it, the logical, rational part of her brain asked. If Okoye had indeed divulged it, it meant she was desperate. But it did not sound like her at all.
"Were there others with her?" Shuri grit out. Namor's head was tilted up towards the lone source of light in the room hanging from the ceiling. He wasn't looking at her. Her forehead came up to his lips. Her eyes traced the even trim of his beard, barely tickling at her skin.
"A man in a metal suit. Agent of some kind."
"You know my ex-husband too." That annoying, nasally prisoner had taunted.
"Agent Ross," Shuri breathed. This sounded more like his doing. If he had indeed mediated a deal between Okoye and Namor, what did Talokan promise in return to receive such a great offer from Okoye? "What did you promise them?"
At this, his face shifted down, his nose coming to rest in her curls. If she leaned just a millimeter closer, his lips could meet her forehead.
"Talokan will release the American prisoners," he murmured, "who will confirm to their government that Wakanda did not attack them, neither then nor now."
She inhaled a sharp breath. Her hand lowered from the wall, releasing him from her confines. She didn't step away.
"One month, princess. Recreate the flower, and you may leave."
That—that seems too simple. There had to be another ploy. Some deeper contingency plan that let him get everything he wanted. He would never concede an inch.
Except, he had. When she made him. Namor's moral compass was his people. He surrendered to Wakanda when it meant protection from the rest of the world. The blue flower was to Talokan like the heart-shaped herb to Wakanda. She was ready to give up a limb if it meant perfecting the herb before her brother had passed away.
"Just like that?" she whispered.
"If I'm feeling magnanimous."
One of his arms circled her waist. The movement jolted her forward.
He was damp. It was humid. Half his face was buried in her hair. And his lips were very, very warm on her skin.
She lifted her left hand to his chest, tracing the edges of the gold and jade plate enclosing his long neck. "I still don't...trust you. A part of me wants to," she admits, "but this is madness. I don't know if I can fix the flower even if I tried, and I don't have my lab here. Your DNA, minerals, everything is different."
His voice lowered an octave. "Are you saying no?" A threat, a challenge.
"No!" She pushed away from him, her back hitting his desk. "No...not yet. What happens if I say no?"
"I kill the Americans," he responded, with far too much of an undercurrent of glee.
Damnit. It should be uncanny how he knew a threat on her life would make no difference. She was the Princess of Wakanda, yet hadn't hesitated for a moment to offer herself in place of Riri.
She lied. Her knew her. And she was terrified what that implied.
"Alright." She acquiesced. "I need a lab and your best engineers."
Of course, he wasn't surprised. "Juana will join you tomorrow and introduce you to them. And your other terms?"
The words tumbled out of her, careful not to insult their customs or sound ungrateful. "I appreciate all the accommodations, truly, but I don't want any more gifts or clothes. Don't bother Fen so much. Also...don't touch me without permission."
If she could take another step back, she would. But the desk was in the way, and he was close, too close, his face and stupid chest and hands making her want to pull close like a panther in the night.
A strange emotion enveloped his face, one Shuri couldn't place. His mouth was tilted up into a small smirk, like he was simultaneously annoyed and enjoying this tête-à-tête. Enjoying messing with her.
"Ah," he drawled. That couldn't be good. "What, Princess, prompted that earlier comment?"
Shuri blanched. "Cultural exchange. I was informed of your culture, it's only fair I share mine." Bullshit.
"I have hundreds of years worth of information in my head. Royal courting practices since Talokan is the only empire of the seas and is the business of rotten surface politics is not one I need to sacrifice headspace for. And, as you said," he bent forward, "Wakanda would never agree."
She wanted to punch him. Bast, just give me one chance. I've been good.
He looked smug. "'Without permission'. Interesting qualifier."
She lifted a hand but he caught her wrist like it was a practiced move. He slid his fingers up until they met her Kimoyo beads. His mouth opened to reveal a set of gleaming white teeth.
"If I were to touch you, it would be when I make you want it." He said softly.
Her heart hammered in her chest. She wrestled out of his grip with ease. "I just said I didn't want you to touch me," she seethed.
"You are young, Princess. Words are not the only way to communicate want."
She was a fish in a shark tank, and he would consume her.
Fen apologized to Namor later that day. She didn't think explaining courtship and marriage rituals in detail were necessary because Shuri had only asked her about sleep, but there was an odd look on her face. Namor was starting to care less about what his subjects thought him to be doing in relation to a particularly mesmerizing human visitor.
"I don't know where she got that idea, but K'uk'ulkan, you must know what some of the younger guards have been saying."
Namor knew. Patli must have said something. If some of the Talokanil didn't understand Shuri's status, independent of all else, they would in time. He, too, would have never accepted a foreigner into his home and led her into the city. His words had been planned by the gods themselves when he agreed to bring her down her. And her gods must have done the same, for her to ask him to see it, with those curious eyes and soft voice before her people sent everything aflame.
"These issues should not concern them. Tozi will scold them. Assure her so she can focus on her work. She is only here for a month."
"Understood, K'uk'ulkan."
He didn't want Shuri's submission. He wanted her to set him ablaze. It was true; the idea that their sacred flower could be restored was a dream beyond their means. He'd never expected the gods to open up an opportunity like this. But that was only the strongest reason. The others...
His enemies called him Namor because you could not fight an enemy you had any sympathy, love, for.
Yet his first surface-dwelling enemy in centuries knocked him off his feet, burned the flesh off his back, and then stopped because she loved his people. She had sympathy for him, leveled him with eyes that said she wasn't sure she wouldn't have done what did, had she lived his life.
He'd approached her first because he overheard her saying she wanted to burn the world. Now he wasn't sure if he could burn anything, anymore, if it meant burning her with it.
And that was a problem, indeed.