The Light in The Darkness (Namor x Shuri)

Chapter 8 - Apologies

~ Namor ~

I remember once a few hundred years ago returning to the place where my mother requested we bury her. Then I had known nothing of humans aside from their inept need to take and destroy. Their customs had always been seen as crude and barbaric to me but the more I watched them the more intrigued I became.

I didn't expect the land where she was buried to be vacant forever but as time hardly meant anything to me I was caught by surprise the first time I saw her. A woman with dark skin and equally as dark hair stopped by the grave. I made to remove her but stilled as I saw her place a single flower on the mound. This happened again and again until my mother's grave was covered and over top it a flourishing flower patch. It was hard for me to believe a human would be so kind. It was then I fully registered the human in my mother and by default the human in me.

I thought the world was wicked and every human that resided in it as well. If I could be wrong about her, about all humankind, then I would have to admit I could be wrong about other things. My mother had died from a broken spirit, from being separated from a life that was all she had ever known. How could I hate the people and place which she loved so deeply? I couldn't. Now and then I still thought of the woman who took care of my mother's grave, and more times than not when I failed to recall her image I found myself replacing her with Shuri instead.

Shuri. I sat up with the throbbing ache in my head. What was happening? The lights in the room I was in were dim and cast strange shadows around me. I had a small almost microscopic tube inserted into my arm and there was a rhythmic beating coming from somewhere. This wasn't the room Nakia had taken me to. Had I been captured? No, I could easily stand if I wanted to. The door on the far side of the room was slightly ajar and didn't appear to be guarded.

The events of the night prior came flooding in clearing the ache in my head and instead filling it with panic. The bracelet, Shuri had destroyed the bracelet. I felt way better than I did when it first happened, I could sense my strength and agility more than before. I stood. My balance was returned as well. If I didn't have this underlying need to eat everything in sight I would say I was almost back to normal. I tried the final test, a launch into the air. On the first attempt, I got about an inch off of the ground. An annoying thirty minutes had passed and I couldn't get above a foot in the air. I wasn't completely healed.

"Namor?"

It was Shuri. How didn't I hear her arrive? She was alone and made her way over to where I stood. For a moment we just regarded one another. It was clear she had something to say but still, she stood there in silence. Somehow around her, I ended up always saying the wrong things and simply waited for her to make the first move. Despite the horrible lighting my eyes widened when I saw her dress. It was the one Namora had made for her the day she came to Talokan. I never told her how beautiful she looked in it.

"I should not have broken your mother's bracelet Namor, it was precious to you and I acted badly."

Was she apologizing? I reached behind me for the cot I had just been asleep on and sat.

"Are you feeling any better?"

I nodded.

"I have strange urges, like the need to eat and drink that I seldom felt before. At least not to this intensity."

She nodded coming close to me and looking over me at the monitor. Her expression looked genuinely concerned which puzzled me profusely. Had someone reprogrammed her in a single night? Last I saw her I was sure she was going to try and kill me, but now, she was watching over me like I was someone she would help.

"Your vitals are fine, I just think you need some sun now. Maybe a cool drink and to get back in the water. Are you up for that?"

When I didn't reply she was forced to meet my gaze. The anger that I had grown used to seeing was not there. She looked at me with an emotion I couldn't place. I needed to know what had changed.