Chapter Text
- L'Tawi -
“I have a puzzle for you,” his father, K’uk’ulkan, Feathered Serpent God of the seas, says upon his entry in the hut.
L’Tawi is intrigued but has learned not to show it. His Talokanil friends find him stern and taciturn. The Wakandans love him, especially the elders, because although Kaax is the spitting image of their uncle, when they open their mouths it is clear who truly has learned the Wakandan ways.
He wonders what possibly made his father call for him. K’uk’ulkan said puzzle, but there is always something underneath his words, like his layers of necklaces, its complexity in sharp contrast to the man’s near naked appearance. As if to lull the interlocutor into a sense of comfort that what they hear is what they get, only to be netted in serpentine ways.
“Puzzle, Yuum?” The others call him Baba. He makes himself special this way.
“You enjoy your mother’s games.”
So that is why he is here. His father has taught him to look for the why, always.
It is not unusual to see his sister floating after K’uk’ulkan,or Onebu sit quietly in here, the perfect audience for their father’s tales and meditations. Kaax is summoned all the time for some trouble or the other (yesterday he was caught taking a Merchant Tribe girl down the river on the family whale). But L’Tawi, he is wingless. He can swim faster than many Talokanil but his siblings will always outrace him. On their sojourns to beaches, he clings to his father’s arm while the other three rip apart the skies. They have flown above the clouds to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The entire Earth is their dominion.
Except Wakanda. No one knows Wakanda like him, even Kaax whom cousin Toussaint keeps at his side.
The mysteries of Wakanda are his. The riddles and what lies underneath are his.
Six-year old L’Tawi waits for K’uk’ulkan to look at him and motion to the seat at the table before continuing in repeated strokes.
“How are your studies?” K’uk’ulkan asks, as though he doesn’t know every inch of what occurs in the seas.
“Good. Attuma is entering his seventh decade. He has gone from catching three schools of minnow an hour to two and a half.” His mother says exactness is a virtue.
“Ah, and your work with the Wakandan Design Group?”
“Good. Attassa taught me to make a circuit board and I travelled to the hospitals to help in clinic. They are starting a regenerative medicine department.” It is in honor of the brother he used to have.
“How are you?”
L’Tawi falters. K’uk’ulkan pauses in a stroke, he is coloring a logogram with blue, and smiles.
“Your studies are not your spirit. Did you pray today?”
He tugs at his collar. His necklaces are bulky and don’t rest on chest like they do his father’s. Namora says it is because he grows too quickly. “You are asking me because this is a test. Mama said to say I pray to Bast if you are to ask.”
K’uk’ulkan barks in laughter and turns his body fully around to face him. He sets down the paintbrush, eyes glittering. They only glitter like that when Mama is mentioned. When she is around, they go globular like a doe.
“Your Mama doesn’t believe in Bast.”
Hm. Easy to disprove. “She calls on Bast when she’s frustrated.”
“People say many things they don’t believe.”
Now why would they do that? “Why?”
His father smiles that all-knowing smile of his. “Just like they don’t say many things they believe.”
He absorbs this information. Memorizes the words and files it away to dissect the meanings later. With Mama, he is to ask immediately. He may face a sarcastic comment or two if the question is redundant, but she prefers it that way.
With Yuum, it is better to marinate over all that has happened alone. “Is this the puzzle you spoke of?”
K’uk’ulkan dips his brush in a cup of water and wrings it clean. “I am going to tell you something only you will know for now.”
L’Tawi straightens. This may be the most important lesson of the year.
“For a long time, nests of birds are killed by many land animals like cats, bats, raccoons. Some birds escape and make their home high in the trees, far away. The leader finds that one day, a cat is spotted nearing their home. What should he do?”
“Keep the nest protected.”
“How?”
L’Tawi thinks over this. “I would say it doesn’t matter as long as the nest is protected.”
“But?”
He shifts in his seat. “But the cat might not be here to prey.”
K’uk’ulkan continues to observe him with an inscrutable expression. “Even if it is in the nature of the cat and the others? Even if every time before they go after the birds?”
“I…” he pauses. His answer seemed bleak now, but then he hones in on an adequate response. “It only takes one example to disprove.”
“So you believe that until the cat acts, the bird should watch carefully, prepared but not yet advance.” His father leans back in his seat. “What if in this case, the bird previously attacked the cat’s mother, because she preyed on them? Would you still think the cat's tail innocently passes by?”
L’Tawi blinks. “That would depend on whether revenge is part of a cat’s nature?” And then he stops, because asking his father about land animals is as useful as asking Auntie Aneka which shark meat tastes the best.
“Your mother would know better than I.” His father responds, standing. That is it, then.
He understands this to be an instruction to ask his mother about cats. He leaves, not sure whether he passed the test, and years down the line he will look at the this memory, one of many with his beloved father, and wonder if it was impossible for him to have known at the time the double meaning.
-
“Mama, is revenge in a cat’s nature?” He asks when he finally has a private moment with Mama. Their entire family is in Wakanda for cousin T'Challa's official return. They will celebrate for five days, and the pre-celebrations have already begun, but he wants this question answered.
Unlike Yuum, Mama has trouble discerning why he did things at times. “Why do you ask?”
He tells her about the puzzle Yuum gave her. Her eyes squeeze by the end of it and her hands tremble over the Petri dish.
When she opens her eyes, they glimmer. They do that when he mentions his father.
“I am not a zoologist.”
Mama is beautiful. Mama is the most intelligent person in the world. “But—” He starts to object.
“Ask your auntie Okoye. She has seen many an animal.”
-
L’Tawi stands in front of Auntie Okoye’s home, who greets him with a small smile which changes into a frown at Attuma.
His siblings explained that Okoye and Attuma are best of friends, but the warriors make eye contact like they are about the spear the other in half. Has he misunderstood what friendship looks like? Perhaps he should glare more at the tiny Wakandan girl who doesn’t let him near her mama’s spear.
“Are you passing babysitting duties onto me?” Okoye’s Mayan is better than Mama’s.
“He wanted to see you.” Attuma nudges him through the door. His touch is gentler than a warrior his size should be.
“Charming. I would offer food but you can’t, eh, eat. Feel free to roam the fountain while you wait.”
L'Tawi furrows his eyebrows. "But he can't fit into it."
Attuma roars and claps him on the back. It pushes out all the air out of his lungs. Okoye glares again and shuts the door, holding his hand as she leads him into the seating area.
It has changed since he last visited; there is a masculine touch to it now. A man he has only seen once in passing peers out of a doorway. His beard is flecked with gray and there are three arcs of dots around each eye. L'Tawi stills as the man looks at his feet like many do, and then at his ears where he will find nothing abnormal. Nor his skin color, which is on the lighter side for Wakandans. It is his jawline and the simple threads of pearls that he is to wear when outside of Talokan that give him away.
"One of the Princess'?" The man turns to Auntie Okoye. She is busy taking taking food out of the fridge: his sensitive nose smells the fried seabream and jollof rice before its uncovered.
"L'Tawi, this is my husband W'Kabi."
The boy crosses his forearms in an X and bows his head slightly. "Auntie Okoye. I didn't know you were married."
Pausing, she makes eye contact with the man. L'Tawi speaks again before she says something meant for naive children. "That's how Mama and Yuum look at each other when they don't want to say something. You don't have to tell me."
The man, who's expression was stern until now, smiles tightly. "Eh. You are discerning in a way your mother is not."
"Everybody says I am like my grandfather."
"King T'Chaka? Maybe. But there is something foreign in you that is not Wakandan."
"W'Kabi!" Auntie Okoye admonishes. She ushers L'Tawi to a mat on the floor and places the plate in his hands. "Excuse me for a moment, small boy."
He eats properly and silently, thinking about what to ask her. Okoye disappears around the hall with W'Kabi—should he call him uncle? Mama never mentioned him—and she returns when he's almost done, right eye twitching and sighing to herself.
"L'Tawi, you are Wakandan too.”
The boy shrugs. "It was not insulting. I am half." Wakandans are only slightly less wary than some Talokanil can be, but in Talokan he is a king's son. They revere him. Mama told him that there have been very few Wakandans born of foreign blood, and he has learned to take little slight. It can weigh heavy on his heart and there's only so much he can carry. "Is it the clothes?"
Okoye sits for a moment, thinking. He likes her because she spoke to him like he is Izel; older and capable of dignified conversation, despite her nicknames for him. Small boy is better than shrimp boy. "Yes, but I rather think he was referring to something in you."
"In me? Can he see my organs?"
"Your spirit. Foreign is not bad. It may be what Wakanda needs." There is a faraway look in her eyes, like she is entranced deeply by something in the past. She shakes herself and places a hand on L'Tawi's shoulder, two fingers wrestling with the pearls. "The start of the celebrations are tomorrow. Did you have something you need to see me for? I doubt I am reason enough to pull you from the lab."
"You aren't," he assures her. "I have a puzzle. Is revenge in a cat's nature?" He tells Okoye the whole story, and in similar fashion to Mama, her hands twitch. He should report to the hospital that there is an unusual spike in arthritis this season.
"Who gave you this puzzle?"
"Yuum."
She looks up at the ceiling. The lights are powered by electricity here instead of glow-worms. "The bird wounded the cat's heart dearly. The cat's mother never sought to prey on the birds and...what happened was misfortune after misfortune. In fact, the only reason the cat's family accepted the bird at all is because the cat loves the bird."
"The cat loves the bird after what the bird did?"
"Love is a very strange thing." Okoye takes a deep breath and stands. "Come. Let us go to Auntie Aneka’s.”
-
L’Tawi scowls at Izel. She snootily flutters above them all in matching bright green trousers and tank top. She also insists on wearing long loops of jade rather than pearls that the rest of them have to bear the burden of dodging while she hovers so they aren’t thwacked in the face.
Aneka’s daughters ooh and aah at the spectacle they have surely seen a dozen times. Although L’Tawi understands the value of replicating experiments for the sake of posterity, he hardly finds his sister an interesting enough specimen to gawk at.
She settles herself upon a bookshelf, an heir to a god-King looking upon her subjects. “Why are you here again?”
“Mama’s orders.”
Izel crosses her arms. “Oh really? She’s busy.”
“Too busy for you.”
She wriggles her toes and tries to swing a thread of intricate jade at him. He retaliates by shaking the bookshelf. Aneka pries them apart while Okoye grouses.
“Enough. Izel, take Nonwo and Nembi with you.” Aneka shoots Okoye an impatient look. “Okoye, eh, are you thinking of children now?”
“Nonsense. All of this is enough of a headache.” Okoye waves. L’Tawi looks at her, scandalized. “Small boy. It is tough what we all put our parents through. I was once you. Aneka was once Izel.”
“I am sure Auntie Aneka was nicer and prettier.”
Aneka barks a laugh. She is tall and jovial. “What do you seek from me today, L’Tawi?”
He repeats the story for the third time. A stricken shadow falls over her face and her hands clench into tight fists. Only Okoye’s hand on her arm keeps her from shaking.
After a few moments, Aneka speaks with a strangled voice. “The story is all wrong. The nest is not of innocent birds but snakes. The cats never preyed on them. They were fine to live separate existences until this slimy creature came and—”
“Aneka.” Okoye says warningly. The women exchange a long look, the talk of adults again.
Aneka picks at a loose thread on her sleeve. “Yes.” She says finally. “The cat wants revenge. But to do that she made the bird love her so it will hurt him more.”
L’Tawi thinks this puzzle is getting more ridiculous by the second and makes no sense. And then Aneka adds, “She loves the Bast-damned creature too.”
“Aneka!”
“What, I am sure he has heard his mother say a number of curses.”
Okoye tuts and pulls L’Tawi out of the house to Attuma who waited outside. “Did you find your answer?” She asks him.
“Not at all.”
“Eh, you are six. That is enough for today.” She squints into the clear skies. “We should visit the grove. It is been too long since we visited your Umalume and Umakhulu."
It is on the way there, Attuma hulking behind them in tow and breathing heavily through his rebreather, that L'Tawi replays the conversation in his head. "Auntie Okoye. Why did you speak as if the puzzle was in the past?"
She simply smiles at him like her husband did—small and tight—and continues her conversation with Attuma. The grove is similar to when he last saw it months ago except there are more heart-shaped herbs and the grass is thicker. This time of year is cooler; mildew hangs on the petals of the herbs and fewer mosquitos zip around in the air. Any that do never escape Attuma's fist.
He sits at the edge of the grove and listens intently to Okoye's stories. When she's unable to continue with her vivid retellings in Mayan, she switches to English and Xhosa. He learns about Bashenga and the first black panther; the noble warriors that followed; how the Dora Milaje were established near her own Border Tribe; how King Azzuri and his two sons led Wakanda into a new era; tales of the mysterious and ferocious Jabari until they turned out to be 'simple muscle-brains'; and finally his uncle, cousin T'Challa's father, and his battles with the Avengers and trips around the world.
"What about Mama?"
"Beh. You can ask her for those."
"It's more interesting when you tell it."
"Hah! You are a good small boy. In that case, I will tell you about her trips too..."
"Mama fought before she became the Black Panther?"
"Oh yes. She fought in the big war when Thanos attacked..." And on and on. The sun rose overhead and Attuma disappeared into the river by the time Okoye finished.
- Namor -
The racket she calls music stops. “You told him.” His wife says.
Namor lounges on the couch in her lab in Wakanda. He motions for her to come, spreading his legs and raising an eyebrow. He only means for her to curl up on his lap, but if she wishes to give him a gift he would not deny it.
She stays rooted to the floor next to large models of what he has come to know as DNA helixes. The browns of her eyes gleam.
He expects the pounce before he feels it. The sound of his necklaces clattering against the floor, digging into the nape of his neck, echo in the empty lab. The Black Panther suit threads just over her hands and arms. Her knees render his arms immobile.
“You told him.” Her hiss is feral. He waits a beat or two for her breathing to calm, then kicks out a leg that sends her tumbling to his right. She rolls into a table and its assortment of lamps, papers, and metal cascade over her in a violent crash. Undeterred, she runs and leaps, twisting her lithe body to connect one ankle to his face. The other he grabs before it connects with his chest.
They collapse in a heap just as the AI creature hums to life.
“Prince T’Challa, son of King T’Challa, has arrived.”
He thinks it’s completely useless as its announcement comes just as the doors slide open. Into the room steps Ayo, the Dora General, and upon seeing heir lolling heads and assessing gazes, swivels on her heel. Nephew yelps and the top of his head is a blur behind the closing doors.
His wife hisses again. The distraction affords her a kick to his ribs.
He wheezes. “At least kiss me, in ataan. A waste for them to leave thinking we are doing something we are not. You have been too busy these past few weeks.”
Frigid fury rises to her eyes. “Does a cat look like a panther? Belatedly reaching your gray years, in íichan?”
He splays his hand across his chest in an attempt to allay the ache. He hasn’t fully become competent with the beads and his wife doesn’t seem to be in a healing mood. “It is called an analogy. Wakanda’s stories are full of them.”
“Pigeons,” she shrieks, “I will feed you to the pigeons!”
She breathes. She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. Sometimes, he wishes she were not so restrained and cried to him like all his children do. He has never had an equal before. Does equal not mean she cannot come to him?
He remembers flashes of distant memories, tragedy and hurt. Watching generation after generation pass to death, there was a sort of grief he could only experience alone.
This is that for her.
“Why?” Her voice cracks finally. “We decided it was best to—”
“Leave it for someone other than us to explain? That was your decision, not mine. And,” He paused for dramatic effect, “That is…too heavy of a burden to put on any other shoulder.”
Her eyes are wide and haunting. “So you would carry it yourself.”
“As I have carried many for five hundred years.”
“Oh, is that it?” She looks at her feet, and then out the window. The trains carrying vibranium scurry by, their sounds muffled by the thick glass. Her intricate topknot has come loose; two braids fall onto her shoulders. Her dress is tousled.
In a few years, she will look the age he is told he does in mortal years. She is so beautiful and warm under the sun, here in Wakanda around the people she loves. He attends council meetings without fail, even when he can send Namora in his stead, because it is an opportunity to watch the full range of expressions she is capable of: annoyance at two of the tribal elders; respect towards the brute King; warmth at the oldest tribal elder approaching her end days; kindness at Ayo; and most recently love at Nephew, who was announced to be heir to the throne. It is the only time where Namor can soak in all of this unabashedly.
They think he is being shrewd. But he is capturing all this because when they are at home under the sea, she is muted. She loves her children with an edge of sorrow. When he joins her playing with Onebu or running after Kaax or sparring with Izel, she becomes stiffer, less fluid in her motions.
She has been like this since he did what the Americans deserved. Their science failed to sustain Wasar. In hindsight, his aim should have been higher up the coast where that green doctor lived, and that is his only regret.
He does regret the pain it put on her and the scrutiny some leveled at Wakanda, but both their countries have been left alone ever since.
Mostly, he regrets what became of her. She is a dutiful mother and wife. She gives him little to complain about. She reads with him, proposes new ways to help Talokan (adding a potato garden was her idea), joins him on trips to the surface, teaches him about her world, lets him enter her and cries his name in quiet evenings.
But she is not…fully his. Something has broken in her.
I can love you better than they do. Why do you not open yourself to me?
Now, too, the vibrancy of her fire dims. Her eyes flatten and the wrath begins to evaporate. She gives him a cold once-over, pinches the bridge of her nose, and crouches to pick up the fallen items.
He falls to his knees next to her. There’s a small glowing lamp in the shape of a rhino, the animals that roam Wakanda’s borders and charge into battle occasionally. Its nose has broken off. “Do you love me?”
She slows in her movements.
“That's not a question that needs answering.” It’s a careful answer that explains nothing. He prefers her ire to this. At least anger is something.
“Has the assassin spy taught you how to give an answer that is not an answer?”
“Her name is Nakia.” She snaps. Ah, there she goes.
“Avoiding the question.”
“A stupid question.” She takes the rhino lamp from him.
“You tell our cubs no question is a stupid question.”
“They’re children and how old are you?”
He lifts her frantic hands to still them in his. Her teeth grind as he looks at her imploringly. Look at him, kneeling to her. How low he is willing to go. Does she understand that? To spurn his gifts like this? He tempers the irritation threatening to rise and bites his tongue.
She breathes. It never bores him that inside her are organs that will stop her airflow one day. The air and the noises it brings to her are so expressive. A hitch there, a nervous gasp there.
Now, a slow exhale. “I simply…I—don’t.”
“Love me?” he says softly. She shoots him an impatient look and attempts to leave. He tightens his told. “It will disease you to lie to yourself.”
“If it’s a lie, what does it matter?” She wriggles away and leaves him surrounded in the mess. “Far be it me to break their hearts. If you want to tell them, go ahead.”
A sickening thunder rolls in his chest. “Is your worry that I will misrepresent you?”
“No. Unlike me, you never lie.” The door slides shut.
-
He ignores the palpable tension at the dinner banquet, a preclude to the next morning's official announcement to all of Wakanda that a son of King T'Challa lives, and walks to stands with said son. Nephew is all smiles greeting the Tribal leadership in accented Xhosa, wearing a black gold-threaded tunic and black sandals.
"Uncle," he greets, "It is nice to see you here."
Namor lowers his chin in a bastardized version of forehead touch greetings. It wouldn't be appropriate here. "Nephew." The last they spoke was when Namor went to Haiti to forcefully return Kaax back to the ocean. As a lonesome god-king who was raised without siblings, it took time to understand his children having each other was not enough companionship, and they looked up to Prince T'Challa a great deal.
"Are my cousins here?"
"If you are asking about Kaax, the attendant has shot him with a tranquilizer to keep him asleep. Onebu is with him. The older ones," he flits his eyes around the room, "are enjoying the food." Well, Izel is. L'Tawi is chatting up a Mining Tribe leader about primary school educational advancements.
"Auntie hasn't got you to farm sheep yet?"
"I imagine the sheep would drown," he says dryly.
"I'm sure she could figure out a way to fit rebreathers on them." Prince T'Challa waves to Namora. The warrior is busy sniffing a roast lamb in distaste. His laugh garners Shuri's attention, who notices them standing about and scowls. "Is she angry again?"
He sneers internally. Again? Who is she to do this in front of everyone? T’Challa interprets his hesitation as a yes and frowns.
“I’m sure it will be okay, Uncle. She asked me earlier to ensure you were eating.”
“Is that so? Tell her that her husband is most appreciative of being coddled from a distance.”
“Er—sure.” Prince T’Challa shuffles over and intercepts his aunt while Namor wallows in a self-pity parade, saved by Namora running into him with a plate full of boiled cassava. She stuffs the balls of dough in her skirt, eyes gleaming, and stalks off to find other delicacies to unnecessarily steal.
Shuri laughs and pulls T’Challa into a hug. Namor watches them talk out of the corner of his eye as he sips on specially prepared spiced drinking chocolate. Her buns bob as she speaks, the hem of her blue dress only just scraping the floor. The necklace containing her panther habit is the only piece of jewelry she wears.
Her wrists are bare. His mother’s bracelet is gone.
Prince T’Challa returns, rubbing the back of his neck.
“She says her wonderful husband should find L’Tawi and put him to bed. And also that you can sleep in the lab tonight.”
“Convey to my dear wife that I can look after our children just fine and that she is welcome to join me in her lab.”
“Uh—”
M’Baku appears in their little circle and interrupts. Prince T’Challa exhales in absolute relief and flees after hasty farewell.
-
L’Tawi prefers sleeping in the river tonight. He waves his attendants away and is in the midst of clasping his jewelry when the boy speaks in a mumble.
“Yuum?”
“What is it, my child?”
The boy drew a stuttering breath. “I thought about your puzzle.”
He blinks and wraps a blanket around the boy. The bottom of the river is coarse. “Is this cat out for revenge?”
The boy’s eyelids droop. “It depends on whether the cat loves the bird or not.”
“Can love and revenge not coexist?”
“I don’t know. I have not felt revenge in my life.” He pauses and amends, “Except for when Izel stole my jellyfish.”
“Ah. So it is not nature, but circumstance. Why?”
He yawns and his head lolls over. “Sometimes…maybe…no why…”
-
(“I am proposing to you.” Her voice was one of someone who tried to squeeze it of all emotion. It wavered just enough. He heard sorrow.
“The Princess desires me.” It was a wish spoken out loud. For how many months had his prayers gone unanswered, only for Chaac to bring her to these shores?
It was a gift he would pay for one day. The cost? He refused to ponder.)
The goddess Ixchel holds in her hands the soft glowing orb with a chunk missing. The moon used to be a goddess of darkness who was locked in eternal battle with the god of the moon, wounded by its arrows until they left patches scattered all over her body. When it became too much, they sacrificed themselves in penance to keep alight the skies for the lives caught in the cross-fire.
The moon, shaped like the eggs his family liked to snack on in the mornings, bathes the riverbank with an eerie haunt. A ring of amber around his wife’s brown eyes make them look almost yellow. She slinks forward in a black hoodie and shorts, barefoot on the grass.
He has raised thousands of children. There are times when they grow to be exactly who they are in their early years; Namora was a devious child and that grew into a warrior’s shrewdness. There are others that end up exactly the opposite as anticipated. Attuma was a serious, uncouth boy too privy to tantrums. He grew to be a gentle but strong warrior. Most are in the middle: some things change, most things don’t, and he is sure L’Tawi will lead a technological advancement in new ways from his wife. But it is not that future that made him approach the boy first; it is keen perception hidden under forceful technicality that can see what his father doesn’t.
A great leader, one who has lived to see generations, should know his weaknesses. One is that Namor is loyal to a fault.
The other is he understands every child except the one who is not: the cat passing her tail in front of him.
(He stayed away from her on the recommendations of his advisors. Namora already thought him foolish to succumb to easily to this woman both in battle and in bed, though he had not touched her once since they had scrambled towards the ship to carry them to their people, prepared to command them to stop warring. Even their wedding was a pale caricature: an exchange of vows in a temazcal in a cenote, a rush of a tiny procession in Wakanda’s streets, her dressed in white and him in green. There was no hand holding or kisses, only the soft brush of her ivory hood brushing his tunic.
He slept with his nose buried in that tunic for weeks.)
“You were not in the lab.” From her nimble fingers dangle his kimoyo beads,
His lips thin. “You tracked the beads.”
“Only to ensure you were with L’Tawi.”
“I have lost my children to murder only four times in five centuries.”
She flinches and looks away. Her braids fall over her eyes. “Why’d you leave this there?”
“To see if you would check.” And she did, his lovely Princess. Such lies she told herself and refused to seek respite from.
(“I need to see you.” She kept calling him for more, her kisses impressing a stirring in him he had never felt before, until she followed him down under and demanded he take her. So he offered her a choice: Namor or Cha’ah Toh?)
She prowls a few more paces. The uneven ground places her almost at his height. “What are you doing, in íichan? I have given you more than you ever had a right to expect.” There is no petulance in her voice. Only challenge.
(“One more,” is the only thing she begs of him. Centuries he has gone without a woman unable to bear his children —and it is the Black Panther alone who can. Chaac is punishing him for what he has done to this woman.
He wanted it more than she did.)
“Would you rather them not know at all?” He smiles, macabre. “That is impossible. Your own father killed his brother. You would not have wanted to be lied to as a child.”
“Enough.”
“I don’t understand, aatan. After the Americans you stood defiant in front of your council to prevent action against Talokan and me. You continued to borrow my strength to crush your enemies. You attempt to absorb every attack meant for me until I am forced to retreat, lest my war burn you too.” He is not blind. He knows she gambles on his selfish desire for her to outweigh what must be done.
“You’re mine.” She doesn’t elaborate.
“No, woman, speak. Yours to what? What do you want from me? My love? You have had it since the day you came to me with the scientist. My anger? That too, will be with you until you die. Shall I bury you with praise? Dry up the oceans and leave my people for you? What am I to do to pay the cost of having you?”
“You know what I want.”
It is the one thing he will never give her. The wind howls. He presses a bruising kiss into her, one she begins to return until she pounds his chest.
“I can’t anymore,” she breathes, “I can’t.”
"Where is the bracelet?"
Her face crumples. "I can't."
He returns for a second kiss over the edges of her lips.
“Cha’ah Toh, please,” a third, “I can’t live with myself like this,” she presses the flat of her tongue into his bottom lip and sweeps it upwards and makes a delicious noise when it connects with his. Her hands tighten around his bare forearms. Her claws open into his skin, ten pinpricks simultaneously radiating from where the tips pierce him.
“Yes you can.” He murmurs, dragging his mouth from hers and lower and lower, tasting her jaw, inhaling in the hollow of her neck, around the cords of muscle. “Let yourself want this. It is okay. No one faults you.”
She hiccups. “I do. I fault myself. I can’t look at myself, I can’t watch them grow to look like her and know they will never see her—it is my fault, I did this to them—” He kisses her again until her traitorous whispers disappear. He wonders if he should wring her tongue of the words he desperately wants to hear, rob her of breath until she cannot eek out anything else.
It would not soothe her heart, he knows. She has not given it to him for him to help.
“Trust me with this.” He says, it is one of the many things he can offer her. Anything but that.
“I can’t,” her protests become thinner but her grip tighter. Pain radiates up his forearms. He yanks one arm away and presses an unrepentant hand over the back of her head. Her forehead meets his cheek as she grasps at his slipping cloak, her ragged breaths dissolving into a tremble.
“You will.” He licks his lips; she tastes of pepper and wine. “I have ordered it so it shall be. Wear the bracelet again. And this time,” the image of a small baby with twinkling eyes crosses his mind, “I will make it so at every cost. Whatever cost I need to pay but that.”
She stills.
And he—knows.
A wet squelch and sloshing water disrupts them. He keeps her locked in his embrace, acutely aware of the claws lodged inside him, and lowers his head to rest his cheek upon his small wife as their son waddles out of the water, kneading his eyes. The wet blanket falls from his narrow shoulders.
“I woke up and Yuum was not there.” L’Tawi accuses. Shuri makes a sound that is half a burp and half a laugh. Her claws retract, leaving holes that he will need to use the kimoyo beads to heal later. For now, he shrugs his cloak over it. The crepuscular darkness will hide the blood.
“Come here,” she mumbles. L’Tawi puts on the face any grown child does at the prospect of being coddled; that is, a disguise of utter terror. The tight hold around his wife’s neck gives the boy away. She easily lifts him into her hold and the haunting in her face deepens.
The wind slows. Namor’s hair is permanently tousled for the night. Her braids are fraying. He unclips his cloak, setting the side with the thin streaks of blood onto the grass. They settle onto the ground, their heads over the fabric, L’Tawi sprawled between them with one leg thrown over his shin and a fist over her ears, his own life-force trickling into the ground and his wife's eyes trained on the sky, where the moon goddess and sun god will never meet, unblinking. He should ask why. There may never be an answer.