Shuri doesn’t know why she keeps wearing the fucking bracelet.
Well, she doesn’t really know why she does a lot of things these days, but wearing his bracelet is something that torments her for many days and most nights. She’d agonized over it and picked and prodded at the beautiful jade stones so many times, one might call her obsessive. Its beauty was something morbidly taunting. It mocked her for a path that could never be. That would never be. It made her eyes watery from staring at it and made her chest feel heavy and stifled, but she couldn't bring herself to untie it from her wrist.
Every part of her felt heavy, to be honest. Every inch of her just hurt. Her body was sore and aching with grief and a unique, dangerous form of heartbreak that she loathes to analyze. Subconsciously, she recognizes that supplementary pain as the crushing grief associated with the loss of a lover and the pain of betrayal. Which is just stupid because Namor and her were never together, they were never lovers, and he’s a homicidal maniac who murdered her mother in cold blood while proceeding to taunt her about it.
You are Queen now.
What a fucking jackass. And yet, she’d seen something in his eyes that proved that assessment false. He looked at her and she knew that he’d felt…something. That same something that she felt. She was sure of it in a way that she had never been sure of anything in her life. She’d meant something to him and now…well now it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was her dead family and her stupid, stupid broken heart.
She’d never been interested in romantic affairs much-too content in the provable, the quantifiable safety of her science, but he awakened some deep-seated desire in her that allowed her to consider, at least briefly, what it’d be like. The death of her beloved brother sent her into a fog of hot rage and hazy grief and his introduction and her subsequent stay in his beautiful kingdom had awoken her from feeling anything other than that awful daze she’d been trapped in. So, when everything fell apart, it was hard to readjust.
Bast, he had broken her heart so much. She was almost disgusted at how trivial it was in the grand scheme of things. Shuri was alone, well and truly alone with nothing to keep her company but the shattered pieces of a heart that was still in the process of mending itself back together. It’s been so hard to not think of all that had been taken from her, but she was still in disbelief at the fact. Namor had broken her heart and somehow, she’d let him. That’s what she deserves though, for tying her heart to a man without love. To a snake, the most deceitful and traitorous of creatures. She was only asking to get hurt.
Even so, Shuri sits there by herself for hours at a time. Nakia worries and Toussaint is often impatient to spend as much time as he possibly can with his auntie, but here on the beach, she can wallow in her sadness. She can cry for what is and what will never be. She can be here with the sand and sunset and that beautiful water that is so much a part of him, and she can just be a woman who let a man break her heart and not have to feel guilt about pining after the murderer of her mother. She cries more than she ever has in her life and allows herself to miss him and his brief kindness, that beautiful warmth he had provided her after such a long year of the inescapable coldness her brother’s ascension left her with. Shuri thinks often of that awful shell, sometimes holding it to her lips but never having the courage to blow on it. Riri says it's like trying not to text an ex that you know is no good for you.
Riri understands her in a way she is sure no one else will now that her family is gone. Riri doesn’t judge her and for the first time in her life, she almost feels like a normal girl with friends her age whenever they have the opportunity to speak over the kimoyo beads. Her humor, her compassion, her kindness are reminiscent of T’Challa in a way and while Shuri clings tightly to that, sometimes it feels like a hollow imitation and that gratefulness is echoed by a hollow ache. Still, Shuri loves her and is so thankful to have her. She tells Riri this one night, under the oppressiveness of the Haitian heat, when the room is just as dark and vacant as she feels. Riri pauses and for a moment Shuri is embarrassed for being too open, too fast. Riri tears up, however, and tells her about how until she met Shuri, she’s never felt quite settled in the world.
“You and me, girl. I don’t know, I feel like we’re twin souls,” she laughs as she wipes her eyes. “I love you too, Shuri. I can never replace your family and I’d never try to replace your brother, but if you need a sibling- if you need a sister, I’m here. I’ll always be here. You’ll always have family as long as I’m around.”
They’d cried like babies afterward and Shuri had fallen asleep feeling slightly lighter than she had in a while. She supposes that’s another thing she can thank Namor for. In some convoluted sense, he’d gifted her a sister after the loss of her brother. He gifted her a lot of things, but oh how he’d taken so very much in return. For some reason, she knows she’ll always associate that with him. His blessings, his warmth, his gifts, and everything about him will always be followed by irreversible anguish. It enticed her once and maybe it still does, but she’s wiser now. She knows only heartbreak is waiting for her. And so, she’ll sit on this damn beach, and she’ll mourn him and what could’ve been and all the potential love that is forever closed off to her. That thought leaves her more distressed than she expected.
She thinks of the battle on that vacant beach that ended in so much exhaustion and pain that rage had no place left between them. She remembers his eyes, how they still looked at her so tender as she held the spear to his throat. She remembers her heart-wrenching sobs as she pulled him to the water. How he cradled her after he healed and how he kissed her wrist where he saw she still wore the bracelet. She can still feel how he held her up as she collapsed under all the disappointment and grief that colored her life now. He would never apologize for all that he’d stolen from her, but his eyes did. They told her that in some other time, things would be different, and they’d be able to experience all the love that circumstance had robbed them of. In some other time, they would be inevitable.
She looks down at the bracelet again. Gifted to her by a beautifully cruel man, who she’d so foolishly given her heart to. Under the heat of the sun and the presence of the sea, he once told her it could have been different. Shuri tears up at that thought, but there’s no point. It’s not like she’ll ever know.