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Ever since her brother got sick, Shuri felt too much.
Shuri had always been logical. To some people she was even called “too logical”, which she found almost insulting. She knew others were more emotional, therefore more sensitive when Shuri’s logic and bluntness could be cutting. She learned she needed to be careful with her words. Logic wasn’t always what people wanted to hear. But logic is what Shuri knew best. Logic made sense. Logic had order. Logic had rules.
Feelings were the opposite of logic. Feelings made no sense at times. Feelings were unordered nonsense. Feelings had no bounds of where it would take you. Feelings were overwhelming. They were suffocating.
Feelings and logic did not connect.
Lately, Shuri has been unable to put herself together because as much logic as she had, her feelings were overpowering.
It was too much.
Shuri felt too much when her brother told her he was sick. So she put all her feelings into creating a cure. Logic and faith failed her, and T’Challa died without a cure. She felt too much and none of it made sense.
After the funeral, she did not want to feel anymore. So all her time went into her inventions, technology. Her logic was supposed to replace her feelings.
Then, the queen mother died. Her mother. By a god—no a man—who Shuri had felt something for. Shuri felt too much again.
She did not want to feel. The last person who had her heart was gone. She was alone. She needed vengeance.
She leaned on logic again. She considered faith, until she saw her cousin in the acestral plane. Not her baba, not her mother, not her brother. She saw a man she barely knew who was so consumed with pain and hate. He was not logical. He was angry and hurt. Maybe Shuri wasn’t as logical as she used to be.
Shuri pushed her feelings away. Any feelings that was not anger or rage, had no purpose. She needed logic to defeat a god. She needed logic to trick him, but her rage was there to push herself to take him down.
Then, he stabbed her. Saying “it could have been different”.
She felt too much. It was all too much!
Shuri removed the spear. She walked to him. She held the spear against him as he lie on the desert as beaten as herself. She is ready to kill him.
Then, Shuri hears her mother. She tells her,, “show him who you are”. She thinks of her brother, of her cousin. Who does she want to be? How will killing him help anything? It certainly will not help her people.
And maybe, like her brother realized logically, it will not help her either.
Shuri lets the tears flow. She makes this god yield. Makes him agree to a truce. She makes the logical decision for her people. Even though, she is feeling too much.
~~~~
Now, it has been months. She has been allowing herself to feel, and to think. She is trying to be better, logically and emotionally.
But as Namor cups her face in his hands in a way far too intimate than he should, Shuri feels too much again.
She should not feel anything, but resentment towards him. After all that he did to her. All that he did to Wakanda, to her people, to her mother, to her.
She was not moved by mercy when she spared his life. She was moved by logic. She was not moved by her feelings when she offered a peace treaty so that both of their people could heal and grow as allies past the tragedy that he caused, that the colonizers wanted.
Shuri understood logic. She did not understand why her heart beat so fast when he was around, why she wanted to spend more time with him, why she had certain feelings towards him that could not be rationalize by any kind of logic or reasoning when she knows he is the man that killed her mother and tried to kill her.
Shuri does not understand why Namor was gentle with her. Why he acted more like he did when she first visited Talokan lately, instead of the boy without love. She did not understand why she kept being drawn to him. Why she wanted him. She did not understand why he did not want to kill her. Why he did not hate her. Shuri did not understand what was happening between them.
So she asked Namor. She asked him why he did not hate her?
“Do you hate me?”
“I should.”
He smiled. He let go of Shuri’s face while remaining close. Looking at her with an intensity that made the Black Panther alert and ready, she matched his gaze. She would not shy away from whatever he might say or do next.
Namor pulled Shuri’s wrist that had his mother’s bracelet on, and kissed her hand while looking directly at her. Then, he told her he could never hate someone that he loved.
Her eyes went wide. She wanted to ask what he meant or how he could love her, but before she could, he continued.
“I know that I have done terrible things to you. To your people, and to your nation. I do not deserve any love, especially from you. But I desire you. I love you, Shuri, princess and Black Panther of Wakanda. I could not hate you. I feel too many lovely things about you, whether you feel the same or not. That is what I feel.”
Namor let go of Shuri’s hand, and brought both of his hands to her face to caress her and hold her. “Now, Shuri, why do you not hate me?”
Shuri was feeling too much. She always felt too much with Namor, especially. It was as if logic could not exist with this underwater god-king with wings on his ankles around.
Yet, logically, Shuri knew her answer would be similar to his. She knew she felt passionately about this god-king. Despite all that he did to her and her people…Shuri was devastated. Because she loved him too.
But she shouldn’t.
She couldn’t.
And yet…
Shuri closed her eyes for a moment as Namor continued holding her face.
When she opened her eyes, she gave him a small smile. “I am not ready to say that, K'uk'ulkan. I cannot say what my feelings are. But I do feel things for as well. Very similar things to what you said.” She looks at the boy with no love, and feels him ready to love again.
Namor pulls her face forward. As their lips meet, Shuri feels just enough.
Shuri feels like she can breathe again. As though, all this time, she just needee to let herself feel and not use logic to escape when she felt too much.
They continued to embrace each other. Holding on to one another with lips and hands. Maybe they both felt too much. But if they felt the same about each other, maybe they should allow themselves this reprieve. Maybe they needed each other to let themselves feel again.
One day, they may even feel whole.