His hands were everywhere. He was wet, she was wet, his hands were wet where they intertwined at her back, tangled into her hair, pressed into her neck and her undercut. They were rough. The staff had fallen somewhere on the floor along with her Kimoyo bead, and she couldn't breathe. Her senses were flooded with salt and soap and sweat and Namor.
Shuri had never been kissed before, and Bast, she never understood the appeal. But then his tongue swiped over her lips and they parted traitorously, her hands grabbing at his back like she'd done with her claws all those months ago except now she pulled him in instead, willing him to stop, to keep going.
His hot mouth stopped biting at her lips and he dragged his tongue from her jaw to her ear. "Who," he rasped, "gave you the right to greet me like this?"
She panted, her face inhaling the scent in the hollow of his neck, the jade in his ears tickling her forehead. A dozen sensations flooded her body simultaneously, igniting every nerve in her body like the force of a thousand tons of vibranium. Every limb of hers was wound around him so tightly that she felt as though she would break if they were to part as two instead of move as one. How did his mere presence set her on fire and then mold her like mud, when she had to summon a reservoir of energy just to still her turmoil?
One of his hands pulled at her face, cradling her jaw and forcing her to look at him and his dark irises. His forehead lowered to touch hers in the quietest of whispers. "Answer me, Shuri."
It was at that moment that she realized who he was, and who she was.
She shoved him away and ran.
She wasn't a coward. Yet she entered her lab and worked long into the night, only the danger of oxygen running out forcing her back to air.
Her mother did not come to her that night. Or the next. If Queen Ramonda used to visit infrequently, then she did not now at all.
Namor had worked so slowly, to show her bits of the mercy she'd shown him in the subtle ways of a serpent. To work her carefully, bashful when she asked for more and more pieces about him, his people, and their way of life. But he gave them to her without hesitation.
He'd shown her the room of the spirits, hoping to quiet her soul. He left her to her inventions to reignite her passions. He gave her the space a woman of her caliber needed, leaving himself to sleep across an old water hammock in discomfort. Somehow, he'd taken to needing more and more air but kept himself submerged just to let her fire roam. She once asked him "what do you need?", as though he could answer with anything but her name a prayer on his tongue.
But in the end he was also feathered — showy by nature, and unable to keep his feathers silenced for long, he struck.
She won a second time in a different kind of battle and dance. Her tender fingers at his hips, concern shining in her eyes, thin eyebrows softening her angular face, her witty jests and merciful offer to restore what she'd once torn off and held with scorn.
If only the Americans had not stuck their noses here. If only that woman hadn't brought her technology and killed his handmaids. If he hadn't drowned her mother. If Shuri hadn't spared him.
He had never doubted the gods, but wondered if they finally saw him as he truly was, as others of land did: unloved, damned to swim in an eternal dance he could never escape.
Nakia returned to Wakanda frightfully cold but happier than she'd seen them last.
"It was mostly useless," she announced. T'Challa burrowed into her shoulder.
"Where did you go? Did the wing man fly you around? Did the metal man fight anyone?"
"Many places, no and yes." Nakia ruffled the boy's hair. He laughed and Okoye was flooded with overwhelming warmth and an ache for his father.
Time was running out with less than twenty days left. The CIA was in shambles, apparently, with their missing director, but Ross kept them at bay with a promise of exposing the name of the attackers of the expeditions by the end of the month. Bucky and Sam were on a road-trip across the U.S. trying to find old compatriots to find clues to White Vision's location.
"It was hard, Okoye. They found traces of this android in New Jersey, New York, and all of Stark's old residences, but nothing substantial. It is like he does not exist, but falcon-man insisted his sources in the FBI are dependable."
Okoye nodded gravely. "If Shuri were here," she started by reflex. If Shuri were here, she'd rig up some device and have the man tracked down in days.
At the Princess' mention, Nakia placed a hand on her arm. "Okoye, please tell me. Tell me what deal you and Ross made."
She did. It sounded uglier the more she said it.
"I don't know, Nakia, I don't!" Okoye hung her head in her hands. "I had to do what I could for the best of Wakanda and Shuri. We cannot win against them without her. They know this."
"Bast protect you, you are the best of Wakanda." Nakia twisted away from the sleeping T'Challa and pulled the former general into a hug. "I did not mean to blame you. You did what you could. Shuri is an adult now, we must trust her."
"Her earring is still on, but if only there were some way to communicate with her and ensure she is all right."
"Princess," Fen coaxed her out of bed, "you need to eat."
"I'm fine," Shuri insisted, clutching the golden cloak closer. This was the first time she wore it but she didn't have the need to before. She was cold, her body the coldest it'd ever been down here. She was sick of it all—the damp air, the corn and the stalagmites. She wanted to see the sun, the real sun.
She steeled herself for another day in the lab. "I heard that there's something going around. You're needed elsewhere. I can take care of myself."
"Juana told me you have worked long hours. She called me here. Let me at least check your body temperature. K'uk'ulkan excused our meetings today—"
"I'm fine, Fen." Her voice raised an octave as her hands unwittingly went to her lips. "Please. I'm sorry, I need to be left alone today."
Annoyance crossed over the Talokanil's face but she nodded. "As you were."
An hour passed before she summoned the strength to resume the day's activities. Emotional turbulence, Shuri thought again. No matter how much she wanted to stay the day in bed, only sleep would distract her, and it was a hard-earned relief these days. Distraction it is, and the faster she could recreate the flower, the faster she could leave and never look back.
The swim down the whirlpool no longer scrambled her stomach. With a startling swiftness that she hoped no longer resembled the bumbling of a newcomer, she arrived at the city within minutes and navigated the waters with ease. A group of Talokanil transporting a net full of fish waved at her. One of the metal workers gifted her a strip of seaweed from their freshest batch.
She was sick of seaweed, too. Once she returned to Wakanda, never touching a water weed in the rest of her life would still be too soon. After accepting the gift graciously, she promptly handed it to Totl upon arrival to the lab, who in turn shared it with Juana. It was cute, actually, watching their burgeoning romance. Yesterday she overheard him collaborating with other men on which areas carried the nicest, juiciest fish.
Shuri poked the girl, grinning. "I hope you like fish."
Juana's face contorted with confusion. Shuri was quickly beginning to prefer meeting her friends under water because she could see their full faces. The above water blue tinge of Talokanil skin was human-like pallor below.
"I am happy you are back to making bad jokes. If we didn't like fish, we'd die." Juana fiddled with a vibranium tank.
"I'm funny! My jokes are hilarious!"
"They are full of surface world references and they sound unfunny."
Shuri rolled her eyes while using her Kimoyo beads to scan the lab's progress. The two worked quickly, checking the vibranium levels and safety seals. After an hour, it was clear that any more work would be repetitive.
"Juana," she started, "I need a favor."
"Anything, Princess."
She forced a smile. "We can't do anything else unless I have surface world equipment. I mean no disrespect, but I grew up with it and am limited down here without it. I have an idea but it involves equipment left over from the American submarine, but I don't know what happened to it."
"Oh," Juana nodded thoughtfully, "K'uk'ulkan and the warriors destroyed most of it, but the scraps are still all out there. We have no need for foreign technology. Except yours," she hastily added.
Relieved, she bit her lip. "Could you ask him if we can use it? I think the two of us can handle hauling the equipment down, but he probably would never let me go, so then I'll have to explain to you what to look for, if it's even there, but you wouldn't know if there were other things we could use, and I won't escape and endanger everyone—"
"Princess, it is alright. I can make a request through Tozi." Juana looked alarmed at her rambling, but lowered her voice so the others chattering about outside couldn't hear. "He would be more likely to listen if you asked, however. Is something on your mind?"
"It's nothing." Shuri was glad the watersuit covered her face with thick glass. Her strained breathing left a foggy haze, so no one could see her crumple and fall apart. "He doesn't listen to me."
Juana came back during Shuri's lunch time with mixed news. Her request to scavenge old parts of the "Americans' unsavory technology" was granted, but she herself could not go.
"I am sure that if you asked him directly and explained—"
"No need," she chuckled. I would rather stab myself. "If you can go with whoever's going up there, it'll be enough. Just be very careful."
Shuri explained the specifics of the submarine, but without knowing how damaged it was, the information could be rendered moot. All she knew was that it hadn't been turned into ash, at least, if a team was being gathered for this.
"One more favor, I'm sorry to ask." Shuri typed quickly into her Kimoyo beads. The vibranium network around Talokan was a tightly-knit fish net, protecting outsiders from coming in and trapping inside signals from leaking out. Even a second above, however, would be enough time to link to Wakanda's high-speed network and send any pending messages.
"Here," she held out her bracelet, "Wear this. I recorded my voice when I explained the different parts to you. If you forget, just tap here and it'll replay it."
Juana looked at it like it was the last scrap of seaweed in a two-day old shipment but relented.
My sisters and brothers,
I am fine. I am working on rebuilding their flower. Okoye, don't blame yourself. You did the right thing. If I succeed, the Talokanil will owe us much and we can avoid the world's unjust wrath on us, though I fear we will always face their antics for having something they don't.
Agent Ross is a sly man, tell him his ex-wife sends her curses (really, colonizer? of all the women? ask Okoye to set you up with one of the Dora).
Tell Toussaint I love him and not to bother his mother. Tell M'Baku I am defending his carrot-munching furry-faced honor so he better thank me when I'm back. When you get this message, just send me an okay. I don't know how long my Kimoyo beads will be active and just want to know you all are in Bast-good health.
Love you all.
Regent King M'Baku peered over Okoye's shoulder. "She is right, my beard is furry."
Be careful, Shuri. We are doing all we can from our end. Still cannot find Vision. Wing and Arm are working to track him down. Colonizer is keeping Americans appeased with promise of accountability if they hold off until month ends.
I am so sorry. We love you.
Juana, a group of two engineers, and three warriors were gone for the rest of the afternoon which was more than enough time for Okoye to tap a message back. Shuri nearly cried seeing the Kimoyo bead glow, her words scrawling across the holographic screen. She could hear the words read aloud in Okoye's voice—rough like a Dora, unbending and dependable as a loyal Wakandan, and warm like a sister's.
She was thousands of miles from home, deep in a society unknown to most of humanity, but she still had a family and people to live for.
We love you. Three words, inscribed on her pounding heart, kept her going.
She resumed work with renewed vigor, directing Totl to place that scrap there, a frayed wire here, and that machine above the vibranium storage. Bast had mercy on her, for one machine remained fully intact. The team had hauled every scrap they could find except those obliterated into ashes and soon the lab was overflowing with a random assortment of pipes, wires, and the smell of burnt chemicals from equipment that crumbled at this pressure level. There was too much to sift through and Shuri was pressed for time, functioning purely on adrenaline.
Val's general description of the functional unit matched the one in front of her. With the help of vibranium, it could generate enough power to preform clonal amplification and start sequencing Juana's DNA.
Feeling guilty for having taken advantage of Juana's trust, for as noble a cause it was (if only I could go myself, damnit), she divulged the nature of her project to her in compensation. Juana's eyes rapidly expanded to the size of saucers, her head piece bobbing as she paddled excitedly in the water. "That is unbelievable! How do you simply recreate nature?" She frowned. "Are you not playing god?"
Shuri shook her head. "I don't think so. I'm not very spiritual, but my brother asked me to rethink my inventing simply for the sake of inventing after I made him a pair of sneakers—a type of shoe—that turned to ice whenever it sensed Nakia around. 'Just because you can, doesn't mean you should'. What we're about to do, it's for a reason." Her fingers itched with what she was about to do. The genome would be sequenced by tomorrow, then followed by a couple days of analysis, and lastly, with the help of a 3D printer, she would be done.
She would be free.
Juana nodded, deep in thought. "Progress is not using the world to shape it to your will. We are painters, using what the gods gave us to make a more beautiful world. This changes everything, Princess. The huacalxochitl has been revered for centuries. It saved us. We grow up singing and dancing in ceremonies to honor it, paint blue flowers into our homes and braid it into our hair for celebration. To see it with my own eyes..."
"I'm going to try my very best," Shuri grasped her hand, "I promise."
The machine whirred to life. Numbers scrolled across her Kimoyo bead screen. It indicated a sluggish connection but it was better than what she could have built with raw vibranium.
"What now? Should we wait until tomorrow?"
"We could, but sequencing takes time." Adrenaline pumped through her veins. "Let's start now."
Shuri was a genius and not a god, and so very, very human. She made many mistakes. A number of her synthetic heart-shaped herb attempts had often ended in toxic gas, or a minor ("Mother, the palace can live with a power outage for an hour") problem.
In her haste, she failed to run system checks and clean the machine's primitive coiling. She hadn't filtered through the other waste. She was human, she was tired and homesick and sleep-deprived and trapped by a violent water-king who dared make her want him.
So it shouldn't have been a shock when a small explosion sounded in the scientific dome in the capital city of Talokan.
The last time her inventions injured someone was when Okoye came too close to a spear Shuri was trying to improve. The general was sent twenty feet back after being electrocuted, but she was the general of an elite group of warriors and was familiar with Shuri's shenanigans. The Princess had pulled her fair share of pranks in her pre-teen years too, so a day in the medical ward was akin to nothing, business continuing as usual (Okoye later stole her makeup in retaliation).
Juana was strong and well-built. But she was of water, a trainee engineer, and just a teenager. Her instincts were hardened for defensive battle, not scientific mishaps. So when she ducked around the corner, her arms flying upwards to shield her face, Shuri moved to cover her at the last second as she instinctively knew that her watersuit would survive.
The Talokanil's arm did not.
Shuri blinked back tears the whole way to Fen, ears ringing and clutching at Juana's peeling skin and unconscious body.