whollyhapa - Tumblr blog

whollyhapa · 1 year

Text

Mutant--A Namor Fanfiction Ch. 5

Summary: You test your wings again, and Namor tests you.

Notes: Up on Ao3!! This one is a doozy of dialogue. Please enjoy if you would loveee

You really meant it before—that flying surpassed any drug in existence. No matter how many times you were strapped down, cut open, sewed up, and shipped back out on your next mission, it was something no shitty scientist holding a clipboard and a taser could revoke from you—that exhilarating high that takes hold, cradling your small body like the world’s warmest blanket in a vast expanse of pillowy sky. Each time you slunk back to base post-mission, your dirty work done, armed personnel shoving you back into a cage—each time you curled up in your little cell, eyes glinting at the thought of your next fix of fresh air miles above the heads of the people who could only hurt you on the ground. Flight was everything where you had nothing.

And it’s hard to describe; but when the urge for flight latches on, it becomes a ruthless itch that fills your hollow bones and drags like needles across every square inch of your limbs. Like poison ivy, but seated deep, deep within your musculature, like every cell in your body is screaming that your feet need to be off the ground now.

You feel that same itch start to take hold now, as you rip the nauseating dress off back in your quarters, and you decide to listen to the call. The jewelry and adornments are dumped unceremoniously at your bedside, sandals kicked off and shiny hair back in its topknot home, braids and all. You step back into loose tapered pants from the modest wardrobe Shuri had graciously provided you during your stay, and a thin undershirt follows. Plucking a long red sash from your closet, you wind it tight around your waist, knotting it at your hip. It’s more out of habit than anything else—you have no weapons to conceal beneath it anyway.

You pause when your fingers linger on the latch binding the gleaming braces to your wings. You peer at yourself in the mirror from your peripheral, turning long and slow. They don’t glamorize your forbidden limbs so much as they accentuate them, you think, and if you were promised flight while wearing them…

You shed them anyway, embarrassed at the thought. They’re a crest to which you don’t belong.

Padding through the royal corridors barefoot, practically trembling with excitement, you finally reach your destination: the capital’s vast concrete aircraft landing base. Giant sleek futuristic airships line the stretch of pathway you stand on, which lead a few hundred feet to the edge of a sheer drop of cliff. The air is cool and clear, and the last of the sun is sinking below the horizon, melding orange on one side with a creeping violet on the other.

You don’t think twice. You’re speedwalking toward the brink, then you’re jogging, and then suddenly you find your bare feet are pounding on pavement—legs and arms pumping, heart racing, the itch getting stronger and stronger the longer your body recognizes it’s still on solid ground. Your powerful legs cross the stretch of asphalt in mere seconds, and the drop is getting closer and closer, and suddenly you’re looking down and the plunge is right below you, and you jump.

You freefall for a moment, tasting the air screaming past you, then twist in midair and unfurl your wings. Twelve feet of white wingspan catch the air instantly and you grunt at the yank upwards. You push down, hard, feeling your shoulder muscles flex with the movement. Then back up, then back down, and before you know it you’re in flight again, surging upward, higher and higher. Cool gusts race over your arms, igniting goosebumps, and the wind sings a holy psalm in your ears. The rush is so intense you can’t help but whoop into the wind as you soar toward the disintegrating sun, the cityscape shrinking rapidly below you.

If you ever had a place to call home, this. This would be the closest thing.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------

One hour and approximately one hundred fifty clicks later, you’ve nestled yourself in the branches of a tree lodged in the side of a rocky precipice overlooking a large lake. Birin Zana and its stunning skyline are out of sight and out of mind, along with its endless noise and political folly—if you zone out hard enough, it almost feels like you dreamed the previous week of new bearings.

It’s night by now, though the hour felt like nothing; You could nearly cross the Atlantic in your sleep with your engineered stamina. But your week’s rest and recovery had left your wings stiff, and after the hour’s warm up your wings are still singing with renewed fervor and you’re still relishing the adrenaline coursing through your body.

It’s just you, in a tree, fifty feet up, swinging your bare feet while your wings dangle behind you. It always turns out to be a tree, you think absently, gripping onto the branch on either side of your legs. Must be the bird in you—that two percent avian DNA definitely had an impact. You close your eyes and feel like a youngling again while you savor the quiet, and you ride the lasting high of your short flight, eyes closed in tranquil comfort.

Something stops you from anticipating the peace to last very long, though. Before yet another awkward departure, Namor had told you he’d hoped to find you in the skies tonight; his eyes had told you he would regardless.

You won’t get rid of me so swiftly.

At this point, you didn’t doubt his resolve—by now you could tell he was a little like you: a bit too, well, relentless, when a stark fixation took hold. Something a bit below sanity, something bordering on ruthless. Locked, like a bloodhound on a scent. The similarity you identify makes you frown as you lean against the column of tree trunk you’re situated against. You think?---You’ve flown far enough away to avoid him? God knows. He did tell you he felt a pull to find you the first time, and you don’t even want to begin to consider that notion. You stare down at your hands, sending a prayer to a deity you can’t name that you’re out of reach.

The devil, apparently, answers, of course, because suddenly every muscle in your body tenses and you receive the all-too-familiar sensation of being watched—like plasma bolting through your blood. Sure enough, something catches your peripheral and you whip your head up to stare out at the middle of the still black lake. If you weren’t so busy cursing yourself for settling near yet another body of water, you’d acknowledge the fluttering deja vu in your chest.

There. A silhouette. It’s rising, up, out of the water, and small. But getting bigger, fast. A second later and you make out a body—bronze torso, wet hair, glinting gems, hurtling straight at you—

You lean back in your tree-branch seat, your sagged shoulders going rigid again.Prayed to the wrong god.

At a hundred feet of distance Namor kicks out his legs, counterbalancing to stop the swift advancement, then leans forward again, floating over to you at a moderate pace. You can see him clearly now, in all his saturated glory, ankled wings moving so fast they’re a humming blur to support his mass. He kicks out again and stops just five feet from your perch, head level at your sitting height, eyes yet again settled, unmoving, on yours.

You will your shoulders and wings to untense—whether to actually relax or to seem more relaxed to the king, you’re not exactly sure. Letting your legs swing again to distract from the way your clutch is knuckle-white on your roost, you tilt your head to the side and decide to come in swinging. He is interrupting and-slowly-killing your private flight-induced high, in any case. Your tone is dry when you speak.

“Should’ve guessed you’d fly like a hummingbird. How dainty.”

Namor’s lips twitch, and he’s quick with a low response as he flutters in midair. “Precise, I would call it.”

“Yeah, well.” You lean forward, realizing the last of the fading intemperance is making your tongue loose. “You look like a bumblebee. Poor things look like they’re in overdrive.”

He raises a knee, wings still a-flutter, and tilts his head down, controlled and level with you. “Like I said—strong. Help to balance. Quicker.”

“Doubt it.” The words slur together and slip from your lips before you can rescind the previously-closed invitation.

Namor’s quirks a strong brow, looking like he’s finally gotten you right where he wants. “So you can prov—”

“I fly alone,” you interrupt the king flatly.

He looks slightly miffed at the surly interruption, but seems to shake it off, his voice light. “Strong words coming from a girl who crash-landed in the water. Seems you still need some assistance in the air.”

He hits home instantly, and you bristle, saying nothing. You keep your legs swinging as you let the silence sit heavy, a warning that he isn’t improving the night’s company.

Some part of Namor decides to relent, because then he’s rising and his wings whir to your side as he settles on your same perch some three feet away from you. The hum of his wings dies, and the branch groans with his massive weight; if you weren’t so tense all over again you’d snicker at the creaking wood and consider the awkwardness of his colossal body dangling in a literal tree. He was much more graceful in the water.

“How did you fall?” His voice holds more caution now as he shifts his burly thighs on the bough, forcing your distance from three feet to two and still proceeding to agitate you to no end.

Once again, you deliver more honesty than you’d like—if not to appease him, then to regale the sub-par night yourself. You look down at your lap and stare at the knot in your sash, feeling his gaze burning a small hole in your temple. “Dunno. Head started hurting and I blacked out. Never happened before.” You cock your head at him. “Won’t happen again.”

Namor hmms. Sure, kid, sure.

Another episode of silence ensues, and you can tell he’s trying to choose his next words carefully. His accent is thick when he speaks again.

“The queen…did not give me much insight into your past.”

You’re sharp with the tone in your counter. “Doesn’t have anything to do with you violating treaties left and right, does it?”

The king discounts your fighting words readily. “Tell me how you ended up over Wakanda’s lands.” It’s cool, collected—but a demand nonetheless.

“Why.”

Namor shrugs. “You are like me. I would like to know about you.”

You glare out at the spot in the lake where Namor had emerged to bother you, pushing down the growing longing to give him what he wants—if only so he’d stop asking questions that make your bones itch. “You’re not like me. And my story’s not worth retelling.”

“I doubt that, in alada.”

He’s goading you now. Bloodhound on a scent. Waiting for your response, sniffing out a viable in.

This could go on forever. Expectant silence as an interrogation tactic is new to you and you’re not liking it. You could be an asshole, could leap off the branch and soar off, but who’s to say he doesn’t up and follow you, and then where’d you be? Certainly not flying alone.

Parts of you had begun to cherish living as a mysterious nobody, stealing solace in a tiny country swathed in mystery, for however long it’d have lasted. But a beast of a king sits before you, boxing you in—willing you to come to terms with him, and with yourself, and where the week has landed you. The truth sits heavy on your tongue, and you swirl it around your gums before you confront it.

“It was…an assignment in Somalia. They’d sent me flying south. Eliminate a couple senators in parliament, set up a banner, pin it on a revolutionary group, start the uproot—the works. Get in, get out.”

“The people that held you?” Namor’s voice is gentle now, deep and serious and immersed in the words slowly peeling off of you.

“Same ones that made me, yeah. In the early sixties.” You try to be casual about it, like you’re not just explaining your whole life’s origin away to a pointed-eared man prodding you to open up. “Couple of shitbags with bloodmoney developed an obsession for gene editing and human experimentation, and I was the outcome. Most other experiments failed---lived short, painful lives. I was their crown jewel.” Turning to the king, you peer up at him through your lashes. “You don’t look like the man-made type of freak, though. You eat a weird fruit or something?”

Namor waves the comment off, unfazed. “Another time. We are talking about you.”

Veering away was worth a shot. You sigh, turning to stare back out at the lake. “Well, leading up to the mission—I noticed safety measures were getting sloppy. They were getting too comfortable with me. Forgot to lock shit, left open documents they shouldn’t’. I never knew how they were tracking me every mission until I caught this glimpse of an MRI scan they’d done, and it was here,” you bring your hand up and run a finger behind your right ear, just beneath the hollow of your skull. Namor’s eyes follow your movements. “The chip was here, the entire time. Feeding them vitals, location, everything.” You bring your hand back down, and the rest of the words surge out with a harsh exhale. “So I flew down to Mogadishu, did the job to buy some time, carved it out of my head right after. Then tried fleeing northwest, toward the Congolian forest—to lay low for a while. Clearly I didn’t get that far.”

You know you’re regaling things you’ve already told Shuri, albeit in less detail; but for some reason, the thoroughness with which the king has to wrestle the information from you leaves your voice cracking by the end of the sentence. You weren’t telling him all this to diffuse a bomb strapped to your chest anymore—you were telling him simply because he was interested in knowing. Interested in you.

When you turn to look back at him, legs no longer swinging, Namor has finally torn his gaze from you to settle somewhere on the black earth below you both. His side profile is strong and begrudgingly handsome in the blooming moonlight, jewelry on every part of him reflecting celestial bodies in the relative dark. He keeps his face stoic, but you don’t miss the way his jaw twitches, like he’s clamping down on something scathing.

“And what of your head?” he asks, steadfast as he continues to press you.

You yield to his nudges again, like he’d poured a truth serum down your throat before inviting himself next to you. “Haven’t felt any different since my fall,” you return slowly. “Guessing I pushed myself to fly west too early, after my little—uh. Removal procedure.” You stop yourself before you voice your heaviest premonition, not wanting to draw a comprehensive line between the chip absent in your mastoid and the brief, harrowing pain you’d endured in the sky over a week ago. You absentmindedly brush the skin behind your ear again anyway.

“And your safety?”

At that, you shrug. Weird thing to ask. “I’m in the world’s most impenetrable nation. Second maybe to yours. I mean, my makers, the organization—they have good money and technology, but they’re not sitting on a mountain’s worth of vibranium. Just hoping they only stuck one tracker in me.” Turning again to offer Namor a humorless smile, you find his gaze now down and to the side, on your hand gripped tight to the branch below. His expression is more taut now, low-lidded, bordering on placid disgust at your situation. In the brink of your vision you catch his muscles tense and untense.

“The surface world’s evil is never lost on me.” His voice drops a register, low and lulling and careful as he continues speaking. “Savages. Creating miracles to enslave them, invading and demolishing everything in sight.” You watch Namor warily as his dark eyes start raking up your arm, up over your bare shoulder, until they meet yours—and you recognize, you know the broiling hatred and damage in them. They’ve been simmering in it longer, way longer, give or take four hundred years. Your demons were different, but your transgressors were one and the same. You could at least concede to that.

“I am deeply familiar with the treatment of our kind, alada.” Namor continues bitterly. “Those made out to be…different. It does not bode well—to be born extraordinary amongst the despicable.” He leans forward, the fire in his eyes dimming as he searches your face for the absorption of the words he’s giving you. “It is our gift and our curse.”

You scoff and avert his gaze—more so to extinguish the heat creeping up your neck than to actually disagree with what he’s saying. He’s right, more right than you’d let on. People were fucked up; it seemed only natural to expect abuse at the hands of those who knew you were different. The wings behind you shudder involuntarily, so aggressively you know Namor sees.

Extraordinary.

Instead of offering another talking point about detesting humankind, you look down to pick at the seam along your pants. “Pretty sure I’m just a bird-girl with a vendetta and a twinge of Stockholm syndrome.”

Namor shakes his head, insistent. “You endured. Survived, and triumphed. You were stronger, and smarter.”

“I know.” You let the following silence linger. You’re as accustomed to sickly praise as you are to the abuse—but the way the heat creeps over the column of your neck and rushes to your cheeks informs you that the praise feels different this time. There were worse sensations to behold.

After another beat of quiet, Namor opens his mouth again, and you find yourself bracing less for the discomfort of his comments than before. One might even call it ease, in the king’s company. You still preferred to call it defeat.

“I appreciate that you shared what you were willing, alada,” Namor tells you gently. “I understand now why you hate the word. I think you are conflicted—about who and what you know yourself to be.”

And there it is. The comfort, the ease, the relaxation, all waltzing out the fucking door. Suddenly you’re beyond irked again, and you kick yourself for…you don’t even know what for. This guy thinks he fucking knows you. It wasn’t the same as finding similarities.

A combination of indignance and searing vulnerability lick white-hot up your spine. Instantly you hoist yourself to your feet, balancing on the bough holding both your weights. “This conversation is over.” You mean to sound cold and detached, but the sentence comes out more like a snarl.

Namor’s still staring up at you, eyes carrying a vague mischief of all things now. He’s not fazed, and it makes you even angrier. You don’t give him the chance to open his stupid mouth again—you step a foot out and let yourself drop from your perch, plunging thirty feet before snapping your wings out hard and letting the night’s currents coast you out toward the lake. Once you’re out of the foliage, you beat your wings even harder, and in a few seconds you’re zipping away from yet another mess of a conversation with a man, a king—a fellow freak---that turns your stomach and leaves your brain in absolute and utter disarray.

Even with the wind yelling in your ears, your sensitive ears pick up a distant fluttering hum.

You know he’s already following after you. You don’t have to look back to check.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Ppl asking to be tagged <3 Thank you so so much for reading the words coming out of my brain.

@gamorxa @gardenof-venus @helloabominacion @violet-19999 @ethereal-athalia @hell-is-mine098 @omgsuperstarg @helios-dios-del-sol

#Namor x reader #namor x you #namor fanfiction #black panther 2 #black panther wakanda forever #eventual smut #wakanda forever spoilers #namor x ofc #Namor #namor of talokan #smut #namor and reader are two sides of the same idiotic sun

62 notes · View notes

whollyhapa · 1 year

Text

Hello fantastic people!

Thanks so much for the love and attention Mutant is getting :) It's my first full-fledged fic ever, and I'm trying really hard to write the best I can for all of you!

I'll make it quick--can anyone let me know how to ensure that replies are turned on when I post so I can interact with you lovelies in the comments? And also what is the proper etiquette in tagging people when I release new chapters? Please enjoy more drawings/paintings I did of Namor recently as recompense <3

Thanks so much again!

@gamorxa @gardenof-venus @helloabominacion @violet-19999 @ethereal-athalia @hell-is-mine098 @omgsuperstarg

#namor fanfiction #namor #namor of talokan #namor fanart #fanart #gouache

48 notes · View notes

whollyhapa · 1 year

Text

Took a shot at drawing Tenoch Huerta, btw. The obsession knows no bounds :)

#tenoch huerta #namor #namor of talokan #black panther 2 #black panther wakanda forever #cuteness aggression #drawing #namor fanart

79 notes · View notes

whollyhapa · 1 year

Text

Mutant--A Namor Fanfiction Ch. 4

Christ, does this feel unnecessary.

Shuri’s attendants did a number on you. From the heavy bands wrapping your biceps and ankles, to the gold ring curled around your bottom lip, to the swaths of shimmery fabric snaking tightly around your body, to the jeweled sandals clasped snug around your ankles—you can’t decide which part of the outfit you resent more. They couldn’t even leave you your hair—you normally throw the top half up in a topknot, but now it’s down completely, shampooed and brushed and glistening down your back, with two tiny braids trailing down your temples.

You scowl and turn around in the mirror for the fifth time. The white dress is too tight, too gaudy, too exposing along your thighs. The jewelry sits too heavy on your skin. The only thing you can’t seem to form an opinion about are the elegant gold and black braces that wrap around the base of your wings and creep like meshed webbing up your scapular and covert feathers. It had taken some convincing, but the queen’s evil fashion attendants had assured you that the 3D printed vibranium design still allowed for flight, at least. You flap your wings experimentally.

You feel like the competition’s finest show poodle.

And you really, really need to take a moment for some self evaluation. How on God’s green fucking earth did you wind up here again? Now you remembered—you’re about to reencounter the same underwater king that had breached an accord to drag you from a peaceful drowning, and it’s the same man you’re about to strive to avoid for an entire day.

You think about the time you could be spending today testing your wings again, touching clouds again, and you bristle.

—-------------------------------------------------

You’re still seething as you pop a candied grape in your mouth two hours later, crunching slowly as you ponder how you possibly let yourself land in this situation.

You’re several hours late to the banquet; introductions and grand entrances are over already, the food’s been whisked away, and multilingual chatter fills the great hall you stand in. A giant Wakandan flag drapes proudly from the ceiling, decorated with glittering strings of pearls and sea netting. Tall curved windows arc over either side of the giant hall to shed ample light over the scene, and you feel like an ant in a bubble.

You haven’t moved from your shadowy corner nestled to the far right of the hall’s only entrance. Scanning the crowd for a hulking bronze god, you realize you can’t see many people from this angle, but honestly the less people can see you the better.

You crunch down on another grape as your eyes follow a blue figure wearing peculiar guards filled with water over her mouth and traps. A Talokanian. You should be more startled by the fishperson, but you think the freakishness you’ve seen in the pits of Serbia’s black-market science stifles your awe.

You pop the final grape in your mouth. God, they’re really blue, though.

The Talokanian turns suddenly and catches you staring, but instead of looking away, you hold her gaze—and you behold each other for a moment, like neither one of you can decide which of you looks weirder. The Talokanian is the first to lose the staring competition, and she turns and slips back into the crowd of textiles and dresses.

You think you’ve just been compromised.

Still, an hour passes uneventfully, with no sight of Namor. Eventually a group of elegantly dressed performers, some holding large drums, files into the banquet hall and starts setting up the instruments near your little alcove of shadow. You take the opportunity to slip along the wall toward the opposite end of the hall’s doors, where a wide stretch of balcony doors are swung open to let in the waning afternoon sun.

You breathe easier once you’re outside. Orange clouds drift high above a stunning, stretching view of the city below. You lean your stomach against the balcony railing, breathing deeply. The sky plus the peculiar architecture makes for an otherworldly scene, and as you watch two distant birds swoop and dive together over the horizon, fantasies of flight tonight over this magnificent city capture your mind again. So much so, you forget your crucial vigilance for a moment—and it costs you.

“Do they not let you fly, in Alada ?” rumbles a thick voice approximately three fucking feet right behind you.

You whirl around instantly, punching out a curse. Sneak attacks were something you carried out, not something that ever happened to you. “Jesus, you’re quiet,” you hiss at Namor.

You have to crane your neck to look up at the king. If you thought the man was flashy the first time you saw him, what he wears now is sensationally fucking opulent. An elegantly patterned loincloth drapes from his hips below a thick golden belt. Even more bejeweled armor wraps his arms and shins. Wide bands of metal and pearls connect the tapered gold pauldrons resting on either of his shoulders. A shoulder cape of thick ornate fabric sweeps across his chest and drapes down his back, and the headdress he dons is nothing short of spectacular—all feathers and stones crowning out of the head of a golden serpent that encompasses his strong features on all sides. You have to search the shadows of his face to find his eyes.

And there it is. That mile-long relentless amber stare boring directly through your pupils and into the back of your skull. He looks at you like he’s halfway between curiosity and a desire to eat you alive.

He repeats the question. “Does the queen not let you fly?”

You press your wings against the balcony railing and squint at him, deciding to give him some truth. You can’t tell him Shuri is very possibly using you as a political pawn in the upkeep of an alliance, but what can you say? The man is intriguing.

“I can, starting today. Queen rules.”

“Queen rules,” Namor echoes, nodding solemnly. You watch as he raises his right hand up to his face to take a bite of the whole unpeeled mango resting in his fist; it looks miniature in his large slender fingers. He chews for a moment, then closes his eyes and swallows. “I still resent the surface world. All that it stands to destroy.” His eyes open and train on you. “But the fruit of your lands? Sublime. It tastes forbidden.”

You shift on your feet, wondering how the hell to respond to a comment like that, when Namor gestures with a sticky hand behind you. “Your wings. The metal. They look…regal. You will fly today?”

Turning your head to gaze out at the tangerine sky again, you give an affirmative nod. You look back at him as he takes another bite, then down to his sandaled feet. Deciding to venture into reluctantly-polite conversation, you let loose a question. “Do your wings grant you flight? They’re…” you trail off, losing the non-offensive word on your tongue.

Namor flashes a short grin, and as he looks down at his ankles you let yourself relax marginally. “Not quite as big as yours, next to each other now,” he admits. “But yes. They are strong. They help to balance in flight.” His eyes flick back to yours once more—like if he tears his gaze away for too long you might disappear. “Perhaps we will fly together.”

You give him a tight-lipped smile while you weigh the notion in your mind. Flying, flying alone, gave you a personal high unmatched by any drug on earth—and your body unwillingly knows a few. To share the skies with someone else, to coast a wind current alongside another? Nothing short of intimacy—and suddenly this guy seems all-too intrusive again.

“Perhaps,” is all you softly say. This time you hold the eye contact.

Namor must sense the way your eyes have shifted. Or the way you square your shoulders. Or the way you press your wings tighter to your body. Because the bastard furrows his brows and looks directly back at you as he brings his arm up again, parts his mouth, and licks a long stripe up his forearm, collecting the sweet juice spilling down his elbow. You flick your eyes away from his tongue and swallow.

What the fuck?

“Perhaps tonight,” Namor adds, his register low and in the back of his throat. Now you feel heat creeping up your spine, spreading through your winged appendages and shooting up your neck and face. It’s a weird sensation, but it feels closest to rage, so you run with that.

“Slow your roll, cowboy. It’s just pleasantries,” you retort, crossing your arms over your chest.

Distant cheering and whooping picks up back in the great hall’s interior, and the powerful beat of drums suddenly fills your ears. Even from this distance it vibrates beneath your feet, and you’re briefly thankful for the way the fast cadence masks the thrumming of your heart. It still doesn’t distract enough from the ongoing chokehold of a stare Namor is still fixing on you.

“Wakanda has granted Talokan’s nobility three days to roam its lands in peace, in alada.” Namor speaks slowly, raising his voice over the rhythmic pounding of drums. “You won’t get rid of me so swiftly. Our kind…our kind is isolated. Forsaken.” He tilts his head back, feathers gliding with the headdress as he looks to the heavens, then back down to you.

“I hope to find you in the skies tonight.”

With another low bow, Namor turns and strides away, back towards the stretch of balcony doors. His shoulder cape billows, gliding behind him. The same blue warrior, the one you had a staring match with, waits for him silently at the nearest open entrance; and when he reaches her, they disappear behind the reflection of the glass and into the rhythmic fray inside the hall.

You let out a breath you didn’t even know you were holding, then shake your wings out of frustration. Something about your second interaction mirrors your first, in the same unsettling, unnerving feeling it leaves you stewing in, deep in your gut. How have you faced relentless torment from such poor excuses for human beings, and yet no living thing has managed to crawl under your skin like this spandexed Hermes?

You think you’ve had enough pleasantries for the evening. That interaction should meet Shuri’s talk-to-a-king quota tonight, right? You hustle off the balcony and once again slip along the sides of the wall to the exit, and as your legs hurriedly transport you back to the privacy of your quarters, you crave a clear sky now more than ever.

I hope to find you in the skies tonight.

Oh, you’ll test your wings again tonight. And leave the man from the Atlantic fluttering in your dust.

#Namor x reader #namor x you #namor fanfiction #black panther 2 #black panther wakanda forever #eventual smut #smut inbound in the next few ch #wakanda forever spoilers #namor x ofc #Namor #namor of talokan

59 notes · View notes

whollyhapa · 1 year

Text

Mutant--A Namor Fanfiction Ch. 3

Thank you so much for the love this fic is getting! Sorry for updating late for the lovies on tumblr. If anyone can let me know how to tag people when I release chapters that would be amazing, as I am technologically challenged. Thanks again!

Ch. 3

You don’t tell anyone about your abrupt meeting with the fishman that calls himself Namor. Shuri doesn’t bring it up.

She also doesn’t make another offer for you to meet your rescuer. So you let the subject fade, though it’s hard to ignore the way your meeting, his face, his stare, has seared itself into your fucking hippocampus by now. You decide to avoid the water entirely each night, opting instead to sit at your room’s balcony and stare at the sky wistfully. A part of you hopes you never meet him again. The other part, your curiosity, you suppress.

And your broken bones heal steadily over the next week.

By the time you’ve regained intact ribs, you’ve shared an amicable meal with the queen, and you’ve stood in the throne room before the royal counsel to awkwardly thank the elders for the stay they’ve granted you. You’ve met M’Baku, the queen’s right-hand man, and he invites you to spar, which you humbly accept for the future. You’ve memorized the footpaths both within and outside the palace gates. You’ve treated each member of the palace with the same stiff, clumsy courtesy—and the Dora Milaje don’t glare at you with as much intensity as they first did, which you would consider a success.

By the time your scapula is fully-fused again, you make a big decision. You accept Shuri’s offer to stay in her city beyond your healing days—in exchange for Shuri’s non-invasive studying of your genetic build. She gives you her word that her intentions aren’t malicious—simply intellectual, and that you’ll fly again soon—and enough of you believes her to acquiesce. Besides, you can find your comfort and solace in your isolation whenever you’re ready, you think. Not many other lands would be so welcoming of individuals like yourself.

So you stay.

And at the end of the week, when you can flex your shoulder with little to no pain at all, you bound into Shuri’s lab for your morning exam. As per usual, you complete the standard tests, but politely reject any tests that require things that make your brain’s alarm bells go off—including needles. After one of Shuri’s secondary lab directors tells you your healing’s reached ninety-four percent, you shoot up from the lab’s medical table and shake your wings excitedly. Good enough.

Elevator doors hiss again and you turn to see Shuri step out into the cavernous lab. The queen dons a sleek lavender pilot’s jumpsuit and hightops, and she carries one of her digital white pens, twirling it around her fingers. Her eyes come to rest on your seated figure, then to the green glow of a hologrammed-replica of your winged shoulder spinning slowly beside you, and she beams.

“Glad to see you well again,” Shuri calls out, making her way down the steps to you. “Even without intravenous treatment your healing has been remarkable to watch.”

You give a slight shrug, not knowing how to respond to that. Your body’s regenerative capabilities…again, you were bred to withstand much worse. Shuri reaches you, places the tips of her slender fingers on the edge of the exam table, and looks at you steadily. You think she knows the next thing you’re about to say.

“I expect you want to fly again.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question.

You nod rigidly. “I don’t think I could stay otherwise,” you tell her candidly.

She nods in return, looking down at the table. “I have a proposition.” She looks back up. “But first, I am trusting you with heavy information. In two days’ time is an annual banquet. It commemorates an alliance of our kingdom with another. Three y—”

“This wouldn’t happen to be a kingdom off the map, would it?” You interject, swinging your legs off the exam table and shifting to lean on the table adjacent to her. “Led by a large naked man?”

Shuri’s irritation at your interruption turns to surprise, and she exhales. “So you’ve met?” she asks incredulously.

“I did have a chance encounter with a soggy guy on your shores,” you say dryly, pushing off the table and straightening up. “Said Wakanda calls him Namor.”

Shuri holds your gaze, like she’s trying to decide how to mitigate your sudden awareness of extremely confidential information before she’d allowed it. You raise your brows. “So there is a secret nation.” Crossing your arms over your chest, you shake your head. “I really thought that guy was insane for a second. What was he doing within your borders? He called the waters his own.”

There’s a moment of silence that hangs in the air, and again you can feel the queen debate how best, how queenly to curate her explanation. Shuri beckons to the lab elevator.

“Walk with me, amaphiko.”

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Namor leads a vibranium-rich nation deep below the water’s surface, a kingdom called Talokan.” Shuri speaks briskly, eyes trained ahead as you both stroll through an open stretch of palace courtyard. You can guess that she’s given this account many, many times. “Three years ago, Namor revealed himself to me, and gave Wakanda an ultimatum. Stand with Talokan through war with the surface world, or be the first to burn. Her voice tightens. “Naturally conflict arose. Rage consumed us. We lost…much. On both sides.”

You catch the way Shuri glosses over the war itself. For someone as young as she is, her eyes hold a maturity and grief that isn’t lost on you. You focus your gaze on the clouds scattering the pink morning sky, listening intently as the queen continues to explain.

“Ultimately, Namor and I both—we chose our people over vengeance, and once Namor yielded to the Black Panther, our nations came to a truce…a compromise. Wakanda would protect Talokan’s mystery so long as peace could be maintained.” You follow Shuri’s lead as she turns into a corridor. “Namor is allowed mitigated visits into our lands, yes. The problem lies in his belief that our waters belong to his territory. It’s a kink we’re working out in the treaty. For being 500 years old he still governs like a teenager.” Shuri is matter-of-fact in tone, and when you both reach the door at the end of the corridor she doesn’t hesitate to wave her kimoyo beads over the silver pad next to the doorframe. The door whizzes open and you follow her inside, through yet another corridor. As you reach what you hope is the final door, because you’re really starting to get turned around, Shuri turns to you and looks at you steadily.

“Namor knew he did not have permission to enter our waters that night,” she emphasizes. “Yet he shows up on our doorstep claiming he found you half-drowned, pleading for us to take you in, to heal you, imploring for us to let you meet. He’s violated the sacredness of our treaty often over these three years, but never like this. Never so outright.” Shuri shakes her head. “And now with the communion banquet approaching…I sense Namor’s growing erraticism may cause obstacles for our peaceful alliance in the future.”

With a final swipe of her kimoyo beads, Shuri leads you into a cavernous space filled with white light and…mannequins?. “This is where you come in. Please, sit.”

You ruffle your wings nervously and take a wary seat on the edge of the luxurious velvet couch Shuri points to. Where is she taking this? You were promised a vacation and some down-time to fly in exchange for a little research, and now suddenly it seems you’re about to be sold off to a god to appease a treaty he can’t even abide by.

Shuri seats herself in the sturdy metal chair across from you, resting her elbows on the armchairs and threading her fingers together. You remember suddenly that you are sitting across from the ruler of a country still recovering from war—what lengths would this queen go to to protect her people? You narrow her eyes at her. You weren’t one to meddle in politics. You weren’t one to meddle in anything anymore, if you could help it.

“Namor arrives with his nobility, with his warriors, in two days’ time. I want you to hold off on flight until that day. And I want you there, in attendance at the banquet.”

You’re kidding. You scoff and immediately open your mouth to protest, but Shuri starkly cuts you off. “You don’t need to do much. Mingle, eat, enjoy the festivities. But I can bet you anything Namor expects you there, and he seems to have a fascination with you, with those.” she gestures loosely to your wings, “And I’m hoping having you there satiates his need to breach any more dire aspects of our already-unsteady treaty. You would be doing Wakanda a great service.” Shuri says the last part loudly, and you realize she’s no longer giving you an option, if you want to stay here for any particular period of time.

“So you just want me to show up and humor the king of an underwater nation?” You throw your hands up, knowing you’ve lost already. “Keeping the peace sounds more difficult to me than just fighting it out like men.”

Shuri gives you a wordless smile, and the friendliness returns to her eyes now that she’s got you backed into a corner.

“Not just ‘show up’, Amaphiko. You must look the part.” She turns to a wall of ornately-decorated mannequins and dread fills your stomach. You stand up and start to back up.

“Oh no. Nonononono. You’re not dressing me up like a doll for the mayor of Talokan. I refuse. Find another freak to entice your king.”

Shuri ignores you, standing up herself and beckoning three assistants forward from the shadows of the fashion pit you’ve suddenly trapped yourself in.

Despite your objections, they descend on you like hawks with tape measures and pins.

39 notes · View notes

whollyhapa · 1 year

Text

Mutant--A Namor Fanfiction Ch. 2

The next three days are a blur of negotiations and new experiences as you heal.

The first day you talk, reluctantly, with Shuri more about your situation and your escape. You tell her of a handful of your missions, when the organization still utilized you—the things you were forced to do, the people you were forced to kill. You tell her some of everything. About your bodily capabilities, your slowed aging, your upbringing, your fights, and finally your liberation. She listens quietly and asks questions sparingly, and you find her surprisingly easy to talk to after lifetimes of solitude and silence.

When you can’t find anything more to say, she tells you of the “White Wolf”, a man in a similar position as you, and how her country allowed him to call Wakanda home for a period of time while his soldier’s programming weaned. She doesn’t add anything relating to you, but offers a wordless suggestion that settles your nerves and cools your apprehension by a small degree.

Afterward, Shuri leaves you with your thoughts to spend the rest of the evening away from her lab, in the throne room consulting with her royal counsel about your fate. Before she leaves though, and before you can react, she places her hand over yours, and reassures you that no harm will come to you if she can help it. It startles you, the abject kindness–however true it may be. So much so you forget to wrench your hand away.

The elevator doors out of the lab hiss close and you curl up on your right side, finally alone, questioning why you shared so much and wondering what might become of you because of it.

The second day is a morning of further lab evaluations with the queen herself. The minute the elevator doors hiss open and Shuri re-enters the cavernous lab, she informs you that her council has agreed to allow your stay while you heal; and when Shuri realizes the progress that your healing has accomplished in just a day, she deems you fit to roam the kingdom’s capital of Birnin Zana under close supervision from some of her female soldiers, which you learn are called the Dora Milaje.

Before you’re led out of Shuri’s lab, one of the Dora Milaje wordlessly clips a blinking band around your ankle–you’re guessing it’s a tracker–and another hands you a stack of clothing, ordering you to conceal your wings. You sigh, to calm your nerves more than anything, and step into the loose red tunic and pants, thankful to finally be clothed. Then you press your wings tightly to your body to wrap the cloak around yourself, trying to be mindful of your sling. You’re sure you look like you’re carrying the world’s tallest backpack beneath the cloak, but it’s better than nothing, you think.

You receive nothing but wary glares from the Dora Milaje as they escort you out into the clear air and sunlight your second day, but you’re too instantly-dazzled by life outside Shuri’s lab to pay them much mind.

You could have called it your first day spent ever feeling truly alive. Two Dora Milaje trail at most twenty feet behind you, but it’s easy to ignore their presence as you wander through marketplaces filled with chatter and tantalizing smells, along glimmering shores lined with boats piled with fish, through lush parks of greenery and botanicals you’ve never laid eyes on. You watch a young Wakandan woman swathed in green textile dip her baby’s toes into the shoreline, watch the baby squeal in newfound delight while his mother giggles above him. You witness a group of teenage Wakandans crowd around a sitting elder, cracking jokes amongst themselves and distributing meat snacks on sticks.

It takes your breath away, the peace of it all. The air is pure. The community is flourishing and jovial, and it all settles in the core of your stomach and slowly relaxes the tensity you’ve been holding in your legs and arms since the moment you woke up with a battered body. People generally stare, at your skin and at the two assuming lumps on your back, but nothing more than staring.

By the time you arrive back at the palace gates, the sun is setting and your cheeks are rosy from the excitement of all you’ve drank in today. Rather than return to Shuri’s lab, the Dora Milaje escort you to your palace “quarters”--- a neat way of saying “suite”, apparently. Your room is filled with futuristic furniture and adorned with green accents, and features an enormous plush bed with green fur throws and three giant green pillows. You’re still staring in awe in the middle of the marble floor when you hear the doors close and lock behind you.

That night you sleep nestled between two giant pillows, and though the bed is the most comfortable one you’ve inhabited, your sleep is fitful and filled with dreams of exile and banishment and shame.

The third day is much of the same excitement, stepping outside the palace to explore until sundown. This time the Dora Milaje grant you with a few pieces of Wakandan currency to purchase some marketplace food, and you accept without hesitation. You can live off little sustenance, but the chicken and vegetables are rich and spiced and you inhale much of it in eagerness. You’ve never tasted food so succulent.

That evening, Shuri meets you in your quarters and grants you an evening to explore alone. When you give her a quizzical look, she waves to the blinking tracker band still wrapped around your ankle and her lips quirk up. “We’ll know where you are.”

The Dora Milaje leave you at the exit of the royal palace, both giving you a stern glance. You know it means Do Not Fuck With Us . Holding your arms up innocently, you turn and hastily depart, making your way away from the palace gates.

At first, you don’t know where your legs take you, but then your sensitive ears hear distant water and something calls you to the shore. You walk in the darkness for a while until your feet touch soft sand at the edge of a wide river. You keep walking along the shore’s edge until the docks and their empty boats disappear, leaving you the peaceful sight of the black river against a black, star-studded sky.

Trying not to look up at the clear sky for too long, for fear of the impulse to soar away, you shift on your sandy feet and stare out at the water. God, the cloak feels like it’s choking you now that you’re alone. You respect the nation’s wishes to conceal your forbidden appendages, but what’s the harm now? There’s not a person in sight, right?

Before you can change your mind, you reach around you and unwind the cloak from your body, dropping it carelessly in the sand. You rip the tunic off too. Now that you’re bare minus the bandages wrapped around your breasts, shoulder, and torso, the cool air makes the hair on your arms and shoulders stand up. You unfurl your wings, stretching and shaking them to get rid of the stiffness. Wiping your hands on your red fisherman pants, you bend down and meander your slim fingers through the sand, looking for rocks. You recover a few—broad, smooth, flat ones—and walk closer to the shore until the icy water laps over your toes.

You tilt your torso sideways a bit, wind up, and flick the first stone over the water’s surface. One, two, three, four, five, six skips, then splash . You inhale deeply, rubbing your thumb over the second stone and feeling the apprehension creep back up your spine. These few days have shown you too much kindness. If Wakanda does accept you within its borders even after you heal, does that mean you stay? Do you stick to what you know—solitude—and simply leave after you’ve finished healing?

You throw the second stone. Eight skips this time, then a splash. You stare out at where the rock disappears and swallow hard. Something in your intuition keeps you staring at that spot, and unease suddenly shoots up your neck. You squint out into the water, taking a few steps closer until the water laps at your shins.

Without warning, something, something emerges from the water. You train your eyes on the shadow, backlit by the moonlight, and realize it’s the head of what you think is a man. Glittering golden eyes just above the surface lock on you, before beginning to glide toward you at a leisurely pace. You immediately scramble back out of the water, adrenaline at full force once more. You flex your fingers at your side and slide one leg back in a defensive stance, curling your lip into a snarl. You push your wings out and back, elongating them and trying to make yourself seem bigger.

The head rises slowly out of the water as it approaches you, to reveal broad shoulders, then a torso. To your disbelief it is a man, sopping wet and adorned with a crude amount of ornamental jewelry. When he gets closer to the shore he stops gliding and starts walking, the adornments around his neck and arms clinking in the empty night. He surges out of the water unhurried and elegant—as though water is all he’s ever known.

Your breath catches. You don’t have time to don the cloak and run back. You don’t know the strength of this man and your intentions, and your shoulder is still weak from your fall. You don’t even know if you can alert Shuri of your situation with your little vibranium anklet. So you root your feet deeper in the sand and stand your ground, ready for the only thing you know — a fight.

The man doesn’t falter as he pushes toward you, doesn’t break his stare. You’re the one that breaks the stare when his feet finally emerge from the water, and you catch tiny wings sprouting from his ankles. Your eyes dart back up to his face, and you also notice pointed ears. He carries nothing in his hands, no weapon. His arms are relaxed at their sides, contrary to yours, which are now up and in a defensive stance. You can feel your breathing accelerate as he strides closer to you, now only at the edge of the water. He can’t be more than fifteen feet from you now.

You can probably take him. Right? You were bred and trained for this. But God almighty is he big and broad—nearly double your size. And shirtless, God knows why, with nothing but tiny green spandex and gold bands on his arms and legs.

At ten feet the man stops. Rakes his wet hair back with his fingers, still staring at you; his muscular figure ripples with the movement. Neither of you say a word, and for a moment the only things you hear are the burbling of the river shore and your heart pounding in your throat.

Then the man tilts his head, and his eyes finally break from yours to take in the wings behind you. They flick back to your glare, and you let loose a wordless snarl, bending your knees to brace for something. Anything.

He clicks his tongue, then opens his mouth, voice thick and low with some sort of accent. He speaks as slowly and deliberately as the way he’d exited the water.

“I see you are healing well.”

You don’t say anything back, arms still out in front of you. But now you’re conscious of your injury even more. No chance of fleeing into the night sky from naked water-man now. Do those flimsy little ankle wings allow him flight too?

He takes your tense silence as an invitation to keep talking, as if you were acquaintances who’d stumbled across one another. “How has your stay been? I hope the queen has not treated you with…hostility.”

“Do I know you?” You snap back. He keeps talking as if you hadn’t uttered a word and doesn’t break eye contact, which unnerves you.

“The queen is…noble. I trust she was welcoming. How is your shoulder?”

“Do I know you?” You repeat more forcefully, curling your fists tighter.

The man blinks, and steps forward. You snarl again. He steps back.

“I waited to meet you, that next morning. The queen said you weren’t to be disturbed.” His eyes search yours, like he’s waiting for you to piece it together. “I guess…” he sighs, “she assumed we would find each other eventually.”

This time you blink. You’d speculated some offhand civilian had dragged you out of the water after your fall. Is this fish man implying he was your rescuer?

“It was freezing that night. I felt…a pull to this river. You were just below the surface. Unmoving. Your blood clouded the water. And I pulled you to shore”. He examines your face from this distance. “You heal quickly. Are your wings alright?”

“They’re fine,” you retort, relaxing a bit. “The queen didn’t fucking think to tell me about you, though.”

The mysterious man’s lips quirk up and he clicks his tongue again. “T’aano, t’aano.” Language, language. “I hope you do not kiss your mother with that mouth.”

“I was fertilized in a lab and born from a cow. I have no mother,” you return bluntly. And you’ve certainly never kissed anyone, you think to yourself.

The man hmms and there’s silence for another moment while you stare each other down again. Then he slowly extends his arm out, and as you follow his gaze you realize he’s gesturing to the heap of drywood and logs behind you. “May I?” he asks politely. You’re probably not going to enjoy this evening's company, but nevertheless you sidestep and let him stride past you to take a firm seat on the closest log. You follow after him and fold your wings, seating yourself stiffly on the same log a generous few feet away. The man immediately shifts toward you, hands in his lap, and leans forward. Still wary, you turn your shoulders in the opposite direction.

To your misfortune, he opens his mouth and starts talking again.

“If I may. What is your name?” His voice is softer now.

You keep your own voice hard and your eyes trained on a small stone in front of your feet. “I have no name given to me. The people that made me—they gave me only a number.”

“Alada.” Winged one . The man makes a rumbling sound in the back of his throat. “You deserve a name. Will Alada do for now?”

You feel your stomach twist up. A name would be nice. Not sure how nice from a random man that just emerged from a river, but it doesn’t feel. Bad<.em>. You nod tightly.

He seems satisfied with your answer, leaning back and testing the name on his tongue again. “Alada. A-la-da.”

“And your name?” You try to convince yourself that you ask it out of courtesy, but by now it’s pure intrigue.

The man straightens his back, like he’s been waiting this entire encounter for someone to ask him exactly that. “The people of my kingdom…call me K'uk'ulkan,” he tells you slowly. “My enemies call me Namor. Or rather, used to.” He corrects himself. “The people of Wakanda call me Namor now as well. Much time has passed since our kingdoms have clashed.”

This man is claiming to have some sort of kingdom of his own rivaling Wakanda’s, and emerges from the water naked speaking a dead Mesoamerican language in the middle of Africa. You’re either definitely talking to a mythical Mayan god, or you definitely just met Wakanda’s local crackhead.

Namor moves his eyes behind you, to the wings neatly folded against your back, primaries brushing the sand behind the log you’re seated on. He reaches his hand out gingerly–-you assume to touch them—but when you jerk away, his hand recoils and he places it back in his lap, eyes trained on you.

“They are beautiful,” he tells you gently, eagerly. It makes you preen more than you’d admit. “Were you born with them? Did you grow with them, as I did mine?”

“They were grafted onto my back when I was a fetus,” you tell him honestly. “I guess I grew with them? They certainly grew with me.”

Namor laughs faintly at that, flashing a bright white smile that glows in the darkness, and he reaches up to rub at his beard. “Amazing,” he breathes. He looks you in your eyes, again, then back to your wings, then your eyes once more. “I just had..I had no idea there were others.”

“With wings?”

“More than that,” Namor exhales, and he leans even closer. “Mutants,” he says softly, intently.

You. Hated. That word. You think Namor can tell almost immediately by the way your brows furrow and your gaze returns to the stone by your feet, and he tries backtracking.

“To be a mutant. It is to carry a gift,” he insists, scooting forward again. By now you realize he’s closed the distance between you by a lot ; your knees are almost touching. “The power and majesty you poss—”

His spiel is interrupted by a sudden pinging sound coming from your leg. Shit, your tracker anklet. You bend forward and smack the deceiving piece of jewelry, but when it continues beeping, Namor seems to get the idea because you both stand immediately. You hear him quietly follow you while you jog back to where you’d tossed your tunic and cloak, and he watches you intently as you throw the garments over you with haste. When you’re clothed again, folded wings wrapped neatly in your little cloth prison, you turn to Namor a final time. When he doesn’t say anything, just keeps his amber eyes trained on you, you suck on your teeth. Cordials were not a forte of yours.

“Well…I guess…it was nice to meet you. Namor.” He tilts his head and his eyes glint when you sound out his name. “Thanks for pulling me out. I guess. Suppose my situation could have been worse.”

Namor bows deeply, gaze never breaking.“The pleasure is mine, in Alada. Be well. Tak ka ‘k volvamos kaxtik. Until we meet again .

In the same unnerving fashion, Namor walks backwards a few paces, like he’s trying to savor the image of you in his head. It’s not until he’s back in the water, ankle-deep, that he turns around again. With a few long strides, he leaps forward, arms over his head as he dives back into the water’s depths with a soft splash. A few ripples, and Namor is gone.

Most of your conversations with other people, typically, historically , end in violence. Facing the awkwardness of this exchange was another matter entirely.

You shake your head, almost regretting the way the returning silence leaves your thoughts so jumbled. You stare out at Birnin Zana’s palace in the distance, and before you can turn back around to glance at the water where he disappeared, you gather your cloak tighter around you and start on the long trek back to your royal residence.

#Namor x reader #namor x you #namor fanfiction #black panther 2 #black panther wakanda forever #eventual smut #smut inbound in the next few ch #wakanda forever spoilers

68 notes · View notes

whollyhapa · 1 year

Text

Mutant--A Namor Fanfiction Ch. 1

Hey ya'll!! First fic I've ever posted, please enjoy! Long-winded romance, contains eventual smut. Making it up as I go along, any recommendations or comments welcome!

You can find me on ao3 with the same username, @ whollyhapa! Thank you aaaaaaaaaa

Summary: Your escape route goes wrong and you plummet into Wakanda's waters. What awaits you?

You hear only a pair of footsteps and soft beeping at first.

A man’s voice. “Her vitals?”

A soft, young, lilting voice. “Stable. But look at this.”

Why are your lids so heavy? It smells like a fucking hospital in here.

“What am I looking at?”

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The tissue and bone are knitting themselves together at nearly nine times the normal rate of the human body.”

“And what about..?” The sentence trails off into dumbfounded silence. The young voice picks up again.

“I…can’t say for certain. It's remarkable to say the least.”

“It’s a problem before anything else.”

The sounds of the pacing circles you like a lion but the voice stays soft and confident. “Let us be already. We’ll find out who she is sooner or later.”

A pause, and then the man’s voice grunts, “If she turns out to be–”

“She needs to turn out alive before she can turn into anything for you to want to use. Now get lost, colonizer, I am working.”

Another grunt, and then the heavier footsteps fade off with an echo.

Are you in a spaceship? Or a cavern? This doesn’t feel like a hospital bed. You’re laying on your stomach on what feels like a cold metal slab and your left side feels like it’s on fire. You want to open your eyes but the drugs pumped into your system don’t let you do more than empty your chest cavity with a low groan. God, your head is killing you.

The pacing footsteps stop and start approaching you, and you use every ounce of returning-strength in your body to open half of one eye. A slim silhouette, backlit by bubbles of futuristic lighting greets you. The shadowy woman bends over to greet you at eye level and you see her face more clearly now that it’s in front of your limp body–a pretty young woman with dark skin and concerned eyes. You open your other eye and hold her gaze, unsure of her intentions and willing yourself to look fierce. You wish your lifeless body would start working pretty soon, or fighting your way out of here is not an option.

“You shattered your scapula,” the woman says bluntly, before standing straight up again and walking out of view. “Along with a few ribs. How does your left side feel?”

Flexing your fingers a bit and wincing, you manage to mumble, “Where am I?”. Thank the gods, some sensation is returning to you. You still don’t know whether you’re speaking to a savior or a captor and you need to be more alert.

Work, body, work.

“Safe,” she quips back, and a whirring sound starts to hum beneath the table you lay on. “And isolated. A better question is, where are you from?” She appears back into your sideways view, fingers thumbing a bead on her bracelet. “We found you washed up on a beach within our borders. Not just anyone can breach our barriers.”

“I fell,” you grit back, slowly slinking your arms up the table and trying to brace your torso up with your elbows. “I didn’t mean to. Where am I?”

The woman walks back into view, thumbing the beads again and staring at some sort of shimmering projection in front of her. “You’re in Wakandan territory. Birnin Zana, to be exact. Receiving treatment.” She turns to stare down at you again, this time her gaze more hardened. “My name is Shuri, queen of Wakanda, and you’re currently a trespasser in my country. I need to know who you are.”

Just your luck. Flee an institution, pass out and plummet into the most dangerous, mysterious country in the world. How honest can you be with this country’s leader while simultaneously hightailing it out of here as fast as possible?

Shuri must catch the panicked look that flashes across your face, because she sighs and decides to change the question, closing the hologram and gesturing to your back. “Can you at least give me some insight as to…” She trails off, gesturing more wildly. “...what you are?”

You turn your head slightly to follow where she pantomimes, realizing what she’s referring to, and you flex your back to further unfurl your wings.

Now, you’ve lived several lifetimes of unpleasantries. You aren’t fond of the many times you’ve been poked, prodded, and tortured to excruciating limits in white rooms with white coats crowded around your whimpering body. And you doubt the sterile stench of the institutions that housed you will ever leave your nose at this point.

But whether you liked it or not, vile scientists in the pits of Eastern Europe sixty years ago had graced you with wings. Long, beautiful, white-with-black-speckled wings, rooting at your traps and extending halfway down your back. It pains you to unfurl them for Shuri, what with your broken scapula and all, but pride surges when you flex them, the wings themselves unbroken from your fall. Shuri’s arms drop as she marvels at them for a moment.

Gauging how honest you can be with this new stranger, who also happens to be the leader of a deadly country, you piece your words together as you utter them, cheek pressing against metal and gaze lowered. “I was…made. In a lab. Many years ago. A project of genetics, by scientists. An organization. They wanted to…improve the human form. Change it. I was…the result.”

You feel more shame than you’d like to admit, although you don’t know why. You just want to leave this place; feel the high of your escape once more, feel the wind whistling through your feathers and in your ears, at an altitude no human could endure. The sterile smell of Shuri’s lab is starting to become unbearable.

“Not hostile,” you add, flicking your eyes back up to meet Shuri’s awed gaze. “Just a freak wanting out. I was pretty high up when I fell. I must’ve landed in your waters. I just need to be out of here.”

“You fell? How can I know that? That you’re not some Western spy looking instead to steal our secrets and plunder our riches?” Shuri narrows her eyes. “Too many strangers have been popping up in our lands claiming innocence as of late.”

You don’t know how else to tell her that you want no wealth, no riches, no secrets. You’ve been kept a secret yourself for far too long. All you desire for the rest of your days, all your yearn for is a cool, clear sky–the finality of freedom. The response you come up with is less than satisfactory, and sounds a little too preachy, but it’s all you have. You turn your head and press your forehead into the cold metal.

“My past is my past. My escape was final. I don’t doubt your past was also blood-filled. Can we not be born anew?”

The conversation ends there, and you think your words strike a chord with the queen. Shuri waves some assistants over who, after some coaxing, you allow to hold you as they help you sit up on the metal table. One assistant gingerly wraps your shoulder and torso in some sort of binding cloth, winding it around your wings. Another tends to the various bruising along your side, slathering a kind of poultice on the open wounds. A third approaches you with a sleek silver needle in her hands, which you frantically reject. The assistant frowns, placing the needle back on her table. As they ease you back down on the table, belly-down once more, you notice Shuri step forward again.

“Would you like to meet the man that pulled you from our waters?” she asks.

“He should have left me limp on that beach,” You grunt in return, lids beginning to feel heavy again. This isn’t the safe space you fantasized, but it’ll have to do for now. For now, sleep and recovery.

Your supposed savior can wait.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Author's note: Thank you for reading!!

#namor fic #namor fanfiction #namor x you #wakanda forever #wakanda forever spoilers #eventual smut #black panther 2 #its a slow burn but trust me

40 notes · View notes