Work Text:
He looks defeated at the other side of his own spear.
He looks frightened, like a child.
She gulps and keeps hesitating.
“Show them who you are”, she told her, from wherever she was.
And yet…he deserved to die.
But she knows that she does too.
She asks him to yield, and promises help, an alliance, he says yes, and she feels like she can breathe again.
She throws the spear and falls to her knees. She cries, asking her mother, her brother, and her ancestors, for forgiveness.
The Black Panther is supposed to be a protector, not a killer.
She almost…almost failed, she almost become something she wasn’t.
“Show them who you are”, her mother’s voice echoes, at the same time she rises her head and sees him looking at her.
He is still on the sand, but this time he is on his side, looking at her, with unfocused eyes.
His lips move, and a whisper of something arrives to her ears, but it's barely there.
Her heart skips a beat.
Then his head falls completely into the sand and he…he closes his eyes.
“No”, she gasps-groans, before she moves ahead, crawling to him remembering in a bad way that she is hurt too. “Namor”, she calls, while her hands land on his bronze skin.
He doesn’t answer. A wave of panic rushes through her for a moment or two, before she looks up ahead, at the water.
“Water”, she whispers, at the same time that something comes from him. When she looks, his eyes are a little bit open, and he is looking straight at her. He whispers something again before his hand grabs her arm. “Water”, they whisper together.
She feels his hand squeeze her arm before his eyes close again.
She doesn’t waste any more time.
She grabs him by the armpits and then starts pulling him through the debris and the sand.
She groans from the effort and the pain, her wound expands, and she can feel the blood. Yet she keeps on, she keeps dragging him, she keeps pulling until she feels the water on her chest until the water is on her neck until he is floating on the blue until he is having a baptism.
He doesn’t react for a while, not until she pushes him under the water. She waits, her mind racing, her heart beating too fast, and then…then he opens his eyes and the first thing he sees is her eyes looking at him through the blue mass he calls home.
He blinks and he suddenly is seeing his mother again. She is reaching to him, and so he reaches to her.
But then he blinks and instead of holding his mother’s face, he is holding hers.
Her hair is loose and curled again, and since the sun is contrasting it, she looks…she looks like a Queen, a Goddess, an equal tormented soul.
He raises from the water then, like their ancestors raising to protect them, he raises until he is right in front of her.
They stare at each other, not minding the water, or the waves moving them, nor the fact that people depend on them at this moment.
“You’re wounded too”, he says, sounding like the Namor that showed her his nation.
She opens her mouth, to say that it's nothing, but then she stops when she feels something over her abdomen.
She tries to step back, but his hand on her arm doesn’t let her go far.
“Let me help”, he says, stopping her from complaining again.
She looks at him and he knows what she is thinking.
“You just saved me, let me do the same”.
And she wants to believe that her next words are because she is conscious that she needs medical help, that it’s because she feels very exhausted and is bleeding terribly, even if her suit says otherwise, even if there is no logical reason for what he would probably do. And that it’s not because his voice is honey, that his voice has something sweet and persuading in it.
“Okay”, she whispers, before he does his magic.
She hates water since she saw her mother die, but at that moment, water is everything that embraces her, and she lets him.
When he gets her out of the water, she is not bleeding anymore, she feels like she can burn the world; she can save it.
“Just like new, my Queen”, he says with a little smirk.
She tries not to smile…she swears, yet she ends up doing it.
They exit the water, and after she calls for a pickup, they stand beside each other. Then the weight of guilt falls over her for the ripped little wing.
She gulps and looks ahead again to the sea that swallowed them not so long ago.
“I’m sorry”, she whispers, praying that he didn’t hear her at all. “We let revenge consume us”.
He sighs.
“After so many years, I’m still learning”, he responds, looking at her. Their eyes collide for a few seconds, the wind moving her curls, the water still dripping from his skin. “They have enslaved us, our ancestors, yours and mine, and they still deserve to burn. It's them or us, they won’t hesitate”.
“Burning them won’t do. We already talked about this”.
“Well see about burning them not being enough, your majesty”, he smirks, and the atmosphere changes again.
She touches him, and their looks say everything.
When the aircraft arrives, he is leaning on her, his arm over her shoulders, hers around his waist.
“We should go home”, she whispers.
“We will”.