Work Text
She knew better. She knew she had no business being in his bed, swimming in his seas, living in his dreams. But here she was, in his quarters once again, making love to him on the outer banks of the river village where the Talokanil were housed when they were in Wakanda.
It wasn’t forbidden, but that’s what it felt like, sneaking to see him so often. He would give her a look in passing and she would find herself on her knees for him that same evening. She’d seek him out after a particularly charged council meeting and he would have her on her back within seconds, coaxing moans from her lips, pulling orgasms from the pit of her cervix.
She knew better than to fall for him. She never hoped for more than these quiet moments pressed beneath his hold. It was toe curling, mouth watering. But it was just sex. She never wanted more. He took pride in how often she sought him out. He wore a smirk every time she greeted him by falling to her knees and loosening his loincloth.
It was always so good. How could either of them ever want more?
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“You’re doing so well,
Angel.”
Okoye shivered at his words. She’d have never thought he’d be so… encouraging. She sucked him deeper into her mouth, seeking his release. It made her feel good to feel his cum trickle down her throat, dribble down her lips.
It made her feel claimed, desired, depraved. She closes her eyes, pulling his hips flush to her face so there’s not even a crevice for her to breathe.
“Damn,” he moans. He can feel the pull of his orgasm in his balls. He tries to pull back, but she clutches his thighs, keeping him in place as she swallows around him. “Oh, you want it?”
She moans her affirmative.
“Take it then,” He says. Somehow, as close as they are, he still manages to fuck her face. He holds her neck in place as he rocks into her lips.
She can’t breathe but she doesn’t care. She could die like this, held in his firm grip. She doesn’t care. “You’re such a fucking slut,
Angel.
Take it! Take it!” She squeezes her eyes shut tighter, curling her toes as he calls her a filthy whore, cumming straight down her throat.
She swallows it all like the good little slut she is. He pulls back and this time, she lets him, coughing and inhaling as much oxygen as she can. He rubs his dick over her lips, pumping out the last few drops of semen onto her face.
Her tongue flicks out to lick up the rest. He follows the movement with his eyes, before bending to kiss her.
“Can you handle yourself or do you want me?”
She moans. “You!”
“Show me. Show me how much you want me.”
She leans back onto the floor of his bedroom, pulling her vibranium threaded spandex down her legs.
He can see she’s soaking wet through her underwear before she’s even removed them and shown him.
She spreads her folds, rubbing her clit and massaging her labia in circular movements. She’s already close, but it’s him she wants.
He puts a pausing hand on her wrist. “Go slow,” he commands. He’s enraptured by her. Her scent, the color of her pussy. This woman. This warrior.
“I’m so close,” she complains. “Touch me.”
“Be good,” He says. “You
can’t come unless it’s around my dick. You said you wanted me, and you’ll have me.”
“Now!” She begs.
“When I’m ready to go again.” He’s firm. “For now, I want to watch you tease yourself. Finger yourself.”
Her breath hitches. She inserts two fingers, fucking herself. It was torture. It felt so good.
With her other hand, she reaches out to him, jerking him firmly. She needed it, knew he would be ready sooner if he wasn’t so damn focused on her.
“You’re impatient.” He laughs, moving his hips out of her reach.
“If I knew you’d keep me waiting, I’d have handled myself.” She bites back.
“Hmmmm, spicy. I could leave you like this. Make you walk back to your own quarters untouched.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” She glares at him. He laughs again, reaching for a condom in his bedside table.
Finally.
“I suppose you’ve earned it, haven’t you?” She watches him jerk himself off. With his other hand, he slaps her thigh.
She yelps, “Yes! Yes I earned it!” She’d forgotten herself.
He laughs again, positioning himself. “Slutty little Angel.” He slides in. He watches the clench of her abdomen as she takes him. Her hands come to his shoulders unsure if she’s pushing him back or pulling him closer.
“You’re so weak for me, aren’t you, Angel?”
She knows, pressed beneath him on the floor of his river bank quarters, that she is weak for him. So fucking weak.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
She tosses the blue stick in the trash beside her toilet. Sitting on the edge of her tub, she puts her face into her hands. There’s no way this is happening to her right now. She’s thirty eight years old, she’s been on birth control for twenty years, they always wore condoms. How could she be the less than 1% of women?
She takes another stick out of the box, moving to the toilet. She needs to be sure.
Two minutes pass.
Positive again.
Fuck her life.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
He doesn’t answer her calls. It’s like he disappeared off the face of the planet, deep into the depths of the ocean. In fact, they’re having trouble reaching any Talokanil. The river bank quarters have all been abandoned.
It’s worrying, with the alliance still in its early phases of development. They haven’t set up enough communication channels to feel safe in their sudden radio silence.
The only response is to defend their borders. A silent ally is a potential threat, they can no longer take chances.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
She goes to work in a daze. She counts down the weeks until it’s too late to decide anything and he’s still not answering her calls. She’s laid it out for him, plain and simple. She’s pregnant. It’s his. But if he has his beads, he’s not listening to her messages. He’s not reading her texts. He’s not responding.
And worst of all, they can’t reach a single Talokanil. It’s not like she can ask Namora what’s going on, if he’s okay. She’s just here, waiting. Until she’s forced to decide for herself.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
She listens to the tone of the kimoyo beads ringing, expecting the voicemail chime when it comes. “I did it.” She says. Her voice feels like razor blades clawing their way out of her throat. But she’s tearless now after days of listless sobbing. “There’s nothing left in me. No reason for me to call you again.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They’re fighting in the Atlantic. Her body feels bruised for all the torture she’s put it through in the last week, but she kept her secret to herself. She has no excuse to beg off. And anyway, how could she when she was one of two elite agents, protectors of Wakanda, guardian angels?
She and her partner, Aneka, flew into the Atlantic on a simple reconnaissance mission. It wasn’t suppose to come to blows. But here they were, taking down an entire fleet of researchers and body guards on a ship that shouldn’t have been there.
She feels the hair stand up on her neck. “Earplugs,” she says to Aneka who clicks a button on her suit enabling the noise canceling feature.
Then the fight is taken out of their hands. Every person on
the boat’s deck is struck still, drawn to the edge of the ship. One by one they all fall into the water, heedless of any danger, completely unaware.
She and Aneka watch with bated breath, wondering what will come next.
Namora and Attuma leap onto the high deck of the large ship. They land in a crouched position before them, weapons drawn. She and Aneka keep their sonic spears drawn, but they don’t point them at the Talokanil. Not yet. It’s a waiting game to see where they stand, if things have changed.
“Wakandans.” Namora speaks. “Ready to join the fate of your allies?”
She turns to Aneka to find her own confused expression mirrored. They look at the bodies littered around them of the body guards they’d put down before the Talokanil appeared.
“Allies?” they question at the same time. But it’s too late.
Attuma is stepping forward, swinging his battle axe in a wide arch attempting to both disarm and slice off Okoye’s arm in the same swooping motion. She blows him back with a sonic boom from the tip of her spear.
“What do you mean allies? We don’t know these people.” But it’s too late, Namora and Aneka are already engaged. Namora’s swinging to kill. Aneka’s completely on the defensive. Attuma won’t stay crumpled for long.
“Aneka, we need to disarm them but don’t hurt them.”
“I’ll do what needs to be fucking done.” Aneka blocks another one of Namora’s blows, taking hold of her scythe and yanking her forward. The flow of their fight changes, and now Namora’s on the defensive. Okoye’s trained with Aneka enough to know she’s about to deliver a killing blow.
It’s all spinning completely out of hand. Okoye knows this will end badly if even one of them doesn’t walk away from this fight. She steps into their fight, blocking Aneka’s final strike and at the same time, injecting Namora with a serum she was sworn only to use if they were truly under attack.
“I’ll explain,” she says to Aneka, running to Attuma who’s just got to his feet only to watch his partner crumble. “We need to talk.” She says, jabbing the second syringe into his throat.
Her only thought as he crumbles into her arms, skin turning brown, is that she hopes she’s made the right decision.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They watch through the one way window as the Talokanil duo wake from their comas.
“What do you think?” Aneka asks.
“I think we’re fucked.” Okoye says. Her fingers grip the window sill tightly. “They’ll never listen.”
“We have to try. That’s what you said. That’s why you stopped me from killing her. Which, thanks for that by the way.”
Okoye nods, just as Namora sits up in her hospital bed. The machines beep quicker and louder as she looks down at her brown skin arms and shackled hands. Her face screams panic as she weakly pulls at her restraints.
Attuma awakens in the bed beside her. Where Namora had been quiet, Attuma all but roars as he fails to break the cuffs shackling him to the bed.
There’s a flurry of movement as doctors and design group scientists come into the hospital room. Nothing they say calms the Talokanil, and while they’re weakened by the serum and shackled, the brainiacs nevertheless keep their distance.
Okoye summons the Black Panther. No matter how hopeless it seems, it’s time they spoke face to face.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They’re flying back over the Atlantic, transporting their Talokanil passengers back home. It’s the least they could have done after kidnapping them and rendering them powerless.
“You still haven’t explained what you’ve done to us? Why are we this color above water.” Namora presses herself into a center facing seat so that she can watch all the Wakandans from one perch.
The Black Panther responds. “It’s a serum. It neutralizes the herb in your blood that gives you superhuman strength and abilities. It’ll wear off on it’s own, not permanent, but we do have an antidote to give you to speed up the process. We just won’t administer it until you’re in your own domain.”
“You don’t trust us.” Attuma says.
“How could we? You’ve kept secrets from us, secrets that could have invariably destroyed our nation. You fought two of my agents, attempted to kill them. And now your domain has been discovered. What is there to trust?”
“Your agents kidnapped us.”
“It was the only way you’d listen. They made the right decision given the circumstances. How do you think this would have played out if any one of you had died by the other’s hand?”
Attuma turns to look at the back of Okoye’s head. She’s piloting the ship but she can feel his eyes on her.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The Black Panther tosses a pair of Kimoyo beads into Namora’s lap. “Now that Talokan has been discovered, I’m sure there will be more to discuss. Tell your king I’ll be awaiting his call.”
Okoye steadies the ship, enabling GRIOT to hold the talon flyer in place before she stands from her seat.
She hands Aneka a syringe. “This may sting a little,” she says as she bends before Attuma, tilting his head to the side to access his jugular.
He inhales sharply at the injection though his eyes attempt to find Okoye’s. She avoids his gaze, righting herself.
She trades syringes with Aneka, bending to administer the antidote to Namora next. “You shouldn’t have any side effects but your neck may be a little sore from the first dose. I wasn’t too concerned with hitting the vein right when you were trying to kill us.”
She shrugs.
Aneka hands her the other empty syringe to be disposed of properly. The Black Panther opens the floor of the ship. Their Talokanil passengers are already turning blue which is a good sign. She gestures them off the flyer and then they’re gone into the depths of the sea.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Do you think they’ll listen?”
“I hope so. Surely taking on the entire surface world was an exaggeration.”
“I don’t think the Talokanil have a precedent for exaggeration.”
“Then I don’t see how they’ll realign themselves with us when they can just attempt to burn the world.”
Shuri’s Kimoyo beads chime.
“Well there’s our answer.”
M’Baku shakes his head.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They meet the Talokanil at the very edge of the river border. They’ve since updated their security measure to keep out even water fairing, superhuman, blue people. Now, no one gets in without authorization, not even feather footed serpent gods.
“Chah’ T’oh.”
“Princess.”
“Queen, now. Or have you forgotten?”
His jade pierced nostrils flair. “I’m here as you requested.”
“Still planning to burn the surface?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
She bends over to administer the serum. He grimaces at the injection. “You’re one to talk. You avoided me for six weeks.” She tosses the needle into the red lined receptacle. “Ready?”
“We were preparing for war.”
“Didn’t have time to check your messages.”
He lifts his untarnished wrist. “I destroyed the beads. We were cutting ties.”
She shrugs. “Let’s go.” She grabs her gear and opens the gate to the talon fighter.
He yanks her back, turning and kissing her in one fell swoop.
In an instant she has him pressed against the wall of the ship, dagger drawn and pressed against his jugular.
Her words are cinched behind her clenched teeth: “That part of us was destroyed when you destroyed the beads. Anything I had to say to you I said while you were cutting ties. We’ll be enemies or allies. But we will never be anything else.”
She withdraws her knife, turning and leaping out of the ship.
“Let’s go,” she orders, not looking back.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“What did your messages say?”
She ignores him, continuing to wrap his wounds. When she’s finished with the tourniquet on his thigh, she goes to a different bench to begin treating her own.
He hobbles over to her, attempting to take the bandages and assist, but she shakes him off.
“I don’t need your help. You’re the one who's never felt pain before. Sit before you hurt yourself further.”
He sits on the bench beside her, close enough to touch her but smart enough not to.
“What did your messages say?” He asks again.
She rips the tape with her teeth before holding her other arm still enough to wrap.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” His frustration leaks into his voice.
She doesn’t even turn. “It didn’t matter when you were cutting ties.”
“I—“
She interrupts him. “Whatever was between us is over now. Being with you, sleeping with you was a mistake. I won’t make it again.”
“I disagree.” He’s fuming.
She stands, walking toward the door to the infirmary. “I don’t care.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Anything else of note on your mission, Angel?”
“No general. All desired outcomes were met.”
“And your partner, how is he healing?”
Okoye pauses. He’s not her partner—Aneka is. He’s just a nuisance. “General Attuma healed completely once we were back in Wakanda and able to administer the antiserum. No lasting scars or lacerations either.”
“Very good. You’ll be working very closely with the Talokanil general over the next few weeks. You should work out a system for administering the serum and anti serums to avoid any potential losses of life or limb.”
Okoye freezes. There’s no way the general could know how much she despises the man. Nor could she, Okoye, protest her general’s order in a council meeting. She was trapped. Again.
“Of course, general.” Her training alone coaxes the words out of her mouth.
“You’re dismissed. Rest up.”
Okoye nods. One thing’s for sure. She won’t be getting any rest anytime soon.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“What are you doing here, Okoye?”
He’d spotted her three wheeled rover cresting the hilly border terrain several miles ago.
“Hello, W’Kabi.” She pulls a 750 ml handle of aged palm liquor from her sidecar. “Fancy a drink?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer, walking up the steps of his house and into the kitchen for two glasses. Yes she plans on getting drunk, but she’s not a heathen.
She slams out of his screen door, two glasses balanced in one hand and the bottle in the other.
She sits, pouring them both several fingers of liquor. He’s clearing up from the yard work he’d been doing, doesn’t even glance at her as she sucks down a third of her own drink.
“Am I supposed to get used to you coming and going as you please?”
“Why not? It’s not like you’re going anywhere.” She should feel bad but she doesn’t. He can’t go more than 1000 meters from his house without his ankle monitor shocking him. He’s a homesteader now, exiled to the very edges of Wakanda. Any food he can’t grow or slaughter on his own is delivered. And no one—save Okoye when she wants to—ever visits him.
“You’re in a fucking mood tonight. Why have you come? Is it sex you’re after?”
“You wish. Shut the fuck up and have a drink with me.”
“Eeee, woman! What’s gotten into you?” He finally looks up at her, turning off the hose he’s used to wash his hands. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You!” She says without thinking. “This is all your fault, I’ll never forgive you for leaving me like this!”
“You left me!”
It was an old argument. They’d had it a thousand times but it never got overdone. The wounds never healed.
“You betrayed Wakanda!”
“You could have stood by me.”
“And been a traitor, too? Stuck on this wretched homestead pretending farming is the life for me? Fuck that, and fuck you for landing here.”
He stands in front of her, impatient. He’s fuming but the last six years have taught him self control if nothing else. “Why are you here, Okoye?” His voice is firm.
She hates that her first thought is how sexy he looks with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed, standing between her uncrossed legs.
She takes his glass, handing it to him. “Have a drink with me.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When she’s finished her glass and half of the next, she finally starts talking.
“Do you remember when I got pregnant and you freaked the fuck out?”
He inhales, sharply. His eyes scan her side profile, the slight curve of her belly as she sits, the slump in her shoulders.
“You had another miscarriage?”
Her snide laugh is a bitter little thing. “No. That would have been a better outcome but I couldn’t risk it. No, this child died by my own hand.”
“You had an abortion.” He’s incredulous. “Okoye, all you’ve ever wanted was to have kids, start a family!”
“I know. But I’m forever cursed with shitty ass fathers who aren’t ready to raise kids.”
He shakes his head. He’s no room to point fingers. The two weeks of their marriage when Okoye found out she was pregnant were the rockiest. W’Kabi himself suggested she abort it. He just wasn’t ready yet. It didn’t matter that were thirty and married and that he knew from the start that she wanted kids.
Somehow those two weeks of constant arguing, her threatening divorce and saying she’d raise the child alone, were easier than the following four weeks of depression and tiptoeing he’d done after Okoye had lost the child.
Wasn’t really either of their faults, just happened sometimes. But their marriage was never the same afterwards. Eventually Okoye went through the motions of being a wife, but she didn’t love him anymore and he knew the reason why. To save herself the future
heartache, she got the birth control implant and never thought about it again.
“Who’s the father?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“He doesn’t want kids, though?”
“Oh I wouldn’t know. I find out I’m pregnant and suddenly he’s completely unreachable. Couldn’t find him and tell him or see what his thoughts were. And I refused to have a child by someone who didn’t even have the guts to tell me it was over.”
“You love kids.”
“Who cares what I love?”
He says nothing, just downs the rest of his drink.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Okoye, you can’t drive home like this.” He holds her wrist as she tries to get on the motortrike.
“I need to be in Birnin Zana tomorrow morning for work.” Her words are slurred, bad.
“Shit.” He thinks fast. “Okay, you need to get some water and bread in your system. At least three hours of sleep before you hit the road. You might make it on time. But you can’t drive like this.”
He tugs the keys from her hand and she doesn't really even put up a fight.
“Fine,” she says, stumbling off the bike. “But don’t try to fuck me. We’re not together anymore.”
He shakes his head at her ridiculousness. “Because too drunk to stand on your own is definitely your hottest look to date.”
She laughs. “Shut up. You know you used to have me however I offered myself to you.”
He shakes his head. “And are you offering yourself to me now?”
“No.”
“Okay, then.”
He
guides her inside his bedroom, tossing her one of his shirts and a pair of his boxers to change into.
She drops trou right in front of him. They used to be married, so oh well.
He takes off his shirt and trousers, too, not giving a fuck since she doesn’t seem to give a fuck, before going to take a quick shower.
When he comes out, skin slightly damp, with a fresh pair of boxers on and nothing else, Okoye is already curled beneath his blanket though she’s still awake.
He turns the light off before climbing in beside her. He curls up right around her, arm slung across her waist, his hips to hers.
This close he can feel the slight shivering in her bones.
“I’m sorry, Okoye. I want so badly for you to get what you want.”
“That makes one of us.”
He pulls her even closer to himself.
“Did you name it?”
“Why would I have done that?”
“I read once that it was a way for women to grieve their lost child, give a name to their hurt.”
“I save my grieving for the darkness of my bedroom when I can’t sleep at night. The most precious thing I could ever call this child is mine. My baby. My child. Mine.”
He doesn’t respond. What’s there to say? He couldn’t give her this even when they were married. There’s no making it better now.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“What’s going on with you and big blue?”
Okoye is spectacularly hungover. No amount of hydration tablets and espresso shots could negate the fact that she polished off an entire handle of palm liquor last night. She doesn’t have time for Aneka’s intrusive ass questions.
“Nothing.”
“Used to be I could cut the sexual tension between you two with a butter knife. Now I’d need an ice pick to hack at the frostiness when you two speak.”
Okoye shrugs, finishing adjusting the straps to her suit.
“Listen,” Aneka shifts so that they’re face to face. “You don’t have to tell me. I know we aren’t particularly close outside of work. But I know you were sleeping together.”
“Were.” Okoye rolls her eyes.
“Shall we.”
Aneka bites her lip. She clearly has more to say, but holds it. Tightening her own suit, she says “Let’s go.”
They activate their angel wings, setting course for the Atlantic. Again.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“General.”
“Angel Okoye, welcome. Attuma’s waiting for you in the design group lab.”
“Oh.”
“Just a moment. I wanted to ask if you were okay with the current arrangement.”
“What do you mean?”
Ayo shifts in her stance minutely. Okoye clocks it immediately, categorizes it for what it is: discomfort at giving orders to someone who used to be her boss. Rookie.
“Aneka told me relations between you two might not be as amenable as I once thought.”
Okoye’s voice hardens. “It’s fine.”
“If you would like reassignment, we could work it out.”
She’s not a coward. “It’s fine.”
She tracks the swallow of saliva through Ayo’s trachea. “Very well.”
Okoye salutes and takes her leave. She feels the stiffness in her own bones as she walks out without looking back.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When she enters the lab, her steps are hesitant. The atmosphere is all wrong.
She comes in to the sound of her own lifeless voice saying “There’s nothing left in me.
No reason for me to call you again.”
She freezes, eyes coming to meet Attuma’s, to find him already watching her, blue face open for her to read all his disdain.
She is a coward. She runs.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It’s Shuri who finds her. She’s hidden in the cavernous tunnels that lead to the Jabarilands from Warrior falls.
“So is this what we do now? Run?”
“I told the general I needed time off.”
“So she said.” Shuri comes to sit beside her in the cavern behind the waterfalls. “We’re running from our problems now.”
“Shuri—“ she pulls her knees closer to her chest, eyes still staring into the white water rapids of the falls. “I don’t need to hear how much of a fuck up I am from anyone else. I’ve told myself enough over the last three months.”
Shuri whistles low and long. “Three months is a long time to be wrong about something. I’m sure had you brought it up to any of us, we might have been quick to correct you. Of course we support you in any choice you make as it pertains to your own body. Political implications be damned.”
Okoye takes a shaky inhale. “Every Talokanil life is sacred to them, born or unborn.”
“I know.”
“This could mean war.”
“I know.”
“Why are you so calm about this?”
“You’ve already thought every single Thing I could have thought about this situation. What could I add?”
“That I’m completely idiotic to have ever lain with him let alone to have gotten pregnant. Especially in a time like this.”
“Have you thought that before?”
“A million times.”
“Then what would saying it again add?”
“Doesn’t make it any less true.”
“We have different definitions of truth.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Was he angry?”
“More confused than anything. You ran away before any of us could say anything.”
“What, and watch my life fall apart all over again. I can’t seem to catch a fucking break.”
“Okoye.”
“I was so relieved when he said he’d destroyed the beads. Is that so horrible? I was relieved he didn’t know. It was better that way, better than him knowing and not caring.”
“Okoye.”
“And now he knows and I can feel the ground crumpling beneath me. I was so careful, but it didn’t matter. Nothing matters.”
“Okoye!”
“I’m just so sick of being trapped. I’ve never been so helpless in my life. Why now? Why me.”
Shuri shakes her. “Okoye! Look at me.”
Okoye’s gaze breaks from the trance of water falling. She hadn’t realized she was spiraling.
“None of this is your fault. You did the best you could with the resources you had and I stand by you and the decision you made.”
Okoye shivers.
“It’s not your fault.” Shuri repeats. “But you can’t run from this. You have to face it head on.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“He’s outside, isn’t he?”
Shuri nods. “Probably listening to every word.”
Okoye rolls her eyes, wiping both hands over her face.
“Well you might as well show yourself instead of creeping in the shadows.”
Attuma steps through the falls, drenching himself before he’s paused in front of her.
“Warrior.”
She inhales sharply at the nickname. “Okoye. Call me Okoye.”
He kneels before her, pressing his palms into her spandex clothed knees. Shuri tries to stand and make herself scarce, but Okoye grabs her hand and holds her there.
She looks at the contrast of Attuma’s blue fingers against the black of her suit.
“You should have told me.”
She interlaces her fingers with Shuri’s. Shuri who seems to be not breathing from the sheer awkwardness of the position she’s in.
“I tried to tell you.”
“You know what I mean. I had the right to know I had a child. We had a child.”
“We had a bundle of cells growing unbidden where it wasn’t wanted. I got rid of it.”
He squeezes her the flesh above her knees sharp enough to bruise, pressing his nails into her thinly clothed flesh. “We had a child.” He grits out.
She lets go of Shuri’s hand to yank the thumbs of each hand off her thighs, breaking them in the process. She kicks him away from her, sending him skidding backwards across rock, scraping his forearms in the process. She doesn’t care. He’s blue. He'll heal.
“You didn’t care.” She stands above his sprawled body. “You didn’t give two shits about me. Didn’t deign to even say goodbye. I called you for weeks, begged you to respond to me, say anything. If you cared about me at all, you would have said something. But you just destroyed the beads. Destroyed your only connection to me.”
“We were cutting ties!”
“Well consider them cut.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“I didn’t know.”
“What life would our child have had if I had kept them? Would we force them to walk the line between your world and mine feeling like they don’t belong to either? Would they stay with me in Wakanda, feeling not quite normal but never knowing why? Would you take them from me, take them to Talokan to live a life I can’t be a part of? What kind of life would our child have had?”
She sits back on the ledge of the cavern. “Maybe I was hopeful in the beginning,” her voice is quiet. “But the weeks went by without a word from you and I knew I couldn’t bring a child into that. What kind of life—“ her voice breaks. She shakes her head, swallowing down the sorrow. “What kind of life would that child have had?”
He sits up, fingers healed from the breaks she inflicted. “That’s the beauty of children. They get to decide the life they live.”
“Don’t tell me the beauty of children. I know! It’s the one thing I’ve wanted but can’t have.”
He comes back to her knees, pressing kisses into her thighs. She’s frozen in his touch.
“We could try again.” He whispers into her lap. “I could give you what you want.”
It’s the exact wrong thing to say. She pushes him away, pulling her legs back up to her chest. “No.”
“Okoye.”
“No! It would never work between us. I’m not going to fool myself into thinking it’ll be fine when it won’t. I know it won’t.”
“Give us a chance.”
“I already did.”
She stands, abruptly. Glancing at Shuri who’s pressed against the cavern wall near the entrance, then looking back at Attuma who’s still knelt before her.
“I can’t.” She says, voice breaking for the third time.
“I won’t.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
She knows she can’t beat Shuri with the blessing of the Black Panther streaming in her blood, but she has to try.
She leaps toward the entrance, expecting Shuri to step in front of her when she does and curling backward, around her, hoping to dodge her.
Shuri still catches hold of her wrist, pulling her close into an almost embrace.
“Let me go!” Okoye screams. “Please, let me leave.”
“Shhhhh,” Shuri replies. “I’ll let you go in a second. But just, say all you need to say. Don’t run.”
The sobs break at last. Okoye feels powerless like a caged elephant jostling the confines of her cell. She just wants to leave, go as far away from here as possible. Farther than W’Kabi’s homestead. Out of wakanda.
She wishes she never existed, that she was never born. She wishes…
“I wish I never met you!” Her face is pressed into Shuri’s neck, her tears spilling over into her shoulder.
“I wish you had killed me on that bridge in Boston”
“Why’d you have to go and apologize, convince me it was just following orders. Why’d you have to court me? I wish I wasn’t so goddamn weak for you.”
He doesn’t respond. He watches her sob into her friend's arms, watches her take comfort in someone other than himself.
“There can never be anything between us again. Too much of me is gone. I have nothing left to give and I don’t want to.”
She hears him standing behind her, expects his touch when she feels it. He rubs her back above Shuri’s arms at her waist.
“There’s nothing I can do to convince you to try? Try for me, warrior. We could be amazing together.”
She keeps her face pressed in the crook of shuris shoulder. “Look at where your convincing led me. You’re better off with some Talokanil woman. I’m better off alone.”
“I want you.”
They’re going in circles. “You didn’t want me enough to talk to me. I saw the way you looked at me on that ship. You were aiming to kill.”
“I thought—“
“I know what you thought. What I’m saying is a relationship can’t be built on something so tenuous and I’m unwilling to try.”
He removes his hand.