#eva x kukulkan

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 17

Gif by @unicornspwnall

Taglist: @thegreatdragonfruta @v3d3rl1cht @urgonnaneedabiggership

“They say yuum wants war with the surface.” Itotia is strangely quiet.

Her teenage daughter was brash and outspoken even in ways Eva had not been at her age.

Took after her husband in that, she thinks. That man was raised to believe himself a god and even age had not bothered touching some of his arrogance.

“The surface wants war with us, we are just ensuring we have allies.” Eva corrects.

Humanity was always greedy, when the Abrahamic God placed Adam and Eve in Eden they decided it was not enough and ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Even gods were greedy.

“By kidnapping the Wakandan Princess and the American engineer?” Itotia asked thinking it was a stupid idea. “Did yuum even think before he acted so stupidly?”

“Totia, watch your words.” Her mother warned. “The Queen of Wakanda refused to work with us and now we have to force them into doing as we asked.”

“Why didn’t you do it, mamá? Even yuum knows you are better at talking.”

Because I am dying.

If she could bring herself to say it, Eva would and stop this headache from turning into a full-blown war.

Then she sees it, the Black Panther tearing K’uk’ulkan’s wings from his ankles in a deserted island.

They fight, Eva feels her throat as dry as his in his weakened state and feels his spear go through her abdomen as if she were both contenders.

Shuri will not die, instead her technology allows her to make herself equal to Namor.

Namor who for all his strength and experience, has never fought someone who could bring down gods even without the vibranium flower.

“Mama, Na’, wake up!” Itotia cries as she holds her mother who is gasping for air and water.

For a brief second, the glamour falls and the girl sees the truth only for the Witch Queen of Talokan to rise from the cenote as healthy and beautiful as she always looks.

“Is Na’ dying, yuum?” Itotia asks after her father joins her at the edge of the water.

She was the most like him, in temperament and appearance.

For all her strength and invulnerability, she is still the little girl who would come to him when she had nightmares.

Eva’s death would hurt her just as his mother’s death did centuries ago.

“She is ill, but she is not dying. The Wakandans will cure her as part of our alliance, ki’ichpan.” Ch’ah holds his eldest, his firstborn child whom he met and loved even before she was conceived.

“You kidnapped their princess; how will they help us now?” Itotia looks at him in earnest, anger in her dark eyes because they both know Eva’s life depends on Wakanda and in her mind, he’s killed her already.

“She demanded to come here, your mother foresaw it and I acted accordingly, Itotia.” He answered disliking how quickly his own heir has turned against him.

She had changed after the chasquido.

His little dancer questioned him at every turn, thinking herself grown even if she was denied five years of growth and remained sixteen while her friends and her ba’al had matured into adults.

Why didn’t you avenge us, father? Why didn’t you fight Thanos like the Avengers did?

Were you too much of a coward to leave the ocean?

Two years ago, he had been faced with the truth, he cannot pretend the troubles of the surface no longer stay there.

To protect his kingdom, he had to sit on his hands and let the surface-dwellers avenge their fallen and try to fix everything.

His own people were loyal, but even then they questioned why their god and king had not fought for them.

Coward.

His own child, the child he met in a vision and sired on his throne had said then and said it now with her eyes identical to his.

She stalks off in her anger and Ch’ah Toh Almehen goes to his wife.

“Give her time, in kuxtal.” His wife looks better than she had in days, and yet the shadow of death lingers on her like a fine cloak.

Namor has lived alone for centuries and K’uk’ulkan ruled by himself for just as long, but Ch’ah Toh Almehen does not think himself strong enough to be in a world without her.

“She is right, you know, had I faced Thanos then you would not have been gone for so long.” I was a coward, he meant to say, but he could not make himself speak it aloud.

He was no coward, even if he had fought the Titan, his people would have suffered.

“It was not your destiny, the time will come when you join them, but it wasn’t then.” She extends her hand to him and he takes it gently, kissing it with the love and devotion he only has for her.

Whatever she saw made her melancholy, worried enough to send for him in the middle of a meeting.

Eva’s commands were never ignored.

His people knew their lives depended on what she sees, when he heard her calling to him, he knew whatever she has seen is not good.

“What did you see?” he asks, coming close, taking her face in his hands, and seeing the truth written there before she can voice it.

“War, you against Shuri, Wakanda against Talokan. If you do not yield to her---” her voice breaks off as a tear slid down her cheek.

She had seen him die.

It would not happen, of course, the Lords of Xibalba took pity on her and gave her a chance to outwit them like the Hero Twins did.

“Ye of little faith.” He tries to assure her, Shuri of Wakanda was too young, too grief stricken and lacked the one thing her brother had: the vibranium that made him the Black Panther.

“The cure to my disease is the flower, she will make it and take it herself as well.” Eva shook her head. “She will be as strong as you and she will tear off your wings even after you drive your spear through her.

Promise me, Ch’ah, promise me you will yield.”

He cannot do that, Shuri is a child. Like the Surface dwellers like to say, the devil is wise by age not for being the devil. Five hundred years of fighting and training have made him unstoppable.

Eva with all her magic could not come close to him, what makes her think a fucking child younger than their youngest daughter would be able to defeat him?

“What makes you think she can kill me? I am as powerful as a god, in watan, even if she were as strong as me, she does not have the experience I have.” He argues, softly in hopes she doesn’t move away.

Eva stands her ground and steps away slightly, making sure he is aware how dire the situation is.

“Your arrogance will be the death of you, Namor.” She warns and he knows she means it.

He hates it when she calls him Namor, he makes exceptions from time to time, but he loathes it when she goes against him like this.

First, Itotia now her.

“Tell me why I should deny myself the chance to die in battle?” he will yield, of course, he is not an idiot and knows too many people depend on him to let himself die.

Besides, if being defeated by a mere child of twenty is a shame amongst them, then being killed by one would dishonor his bloodline forever.

“Because I cannot live in a world where you are dead, Ch’ah. Because you have three children who need you alive. Do you need more reasons, because I have them, in wíicham!” she answers with tears, not caring if anyone hears them.

“I know you do, wàay, I will yield to her.” K’uk’ulkan relents without a fight. After a century, the king of Talokan should know better than to argue against her.

Notes:

Yuum: father/dad

Na': mom

In kuxtal: my life

Chasquido: the snap (technically its Le Chasquido

Ba'al: boyfriend, male companion

Lords of Xibalba: twin rulers of the underworld/gods of death, Hun Came and Vucub Came who in the Popul Vuh were defeated by twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque aka the Hero Twins

[evita-shelby]

evita-shelby turns 1

So today this blog turns 1 year old yay!!

To celebrate, i will be giving out gifts to all who wish to participate.

You can be specific about what you'd like for me to give you(moodboard, blurb, headcanons, whatever), or you can ask me to suprise you and hope for the best. (Here's some prompts if you want to give them a try: Addams Family 1991, birthday themed prompts, unplanned themed prompts)

If you wish to give a gift, i won't stop y'all, i just want y'all to have fun as we celebrate this blog's 1st birthday.

Thank you all for making this a great year despite yknow everything irl.

All my love, Julyzaa

Gif by @hellomadelene

Masterlist

[evita-shelby]

Devilry dancing in her blood

Or Evas adventures in the Eva-verse

For @raincoffeeandfandoms blog birthday OC celebration 🎂

Enjoy!!!!!

It is strange how she got here.

To this place she knew was her destiny and she pretended she could avoid it.

Eva was born to rule high society, marry a great rich man and ensure they could rise as high as far as Saint Peter’s Gates in her generation or the next.

She drinks the tequila quickly before she lost her nerve.

The witch still gets nervous before these events, you know.

When she was fifteen her mother introduced her to the secret passed down to them from Lydia Chapul de Aramburu who took a shot of tequila before receiving her lover at the home she rebuilt from scratch.

Eva takes one last look at the mirror and sees the nervous fifteen year old girl so hopeful in a pink ball gown that once belonged to her grandmother.

To think all the hell that broke loose when she became a woman in the eyes of society.

To think how she came to discover who she was and what she would never be during those dark years between her fifteenth birthday and her twenty-first.

That she would leave and start over in a strange country that hated her for being different and yet rise just as she her great-great-grandmother did when she chose to change her last name from Aramburu to Arambula after sending Emperor Agustín to his death.

“They are ready for you, Mrs. Shelby.” Tommy says from outside the dressing room door.

There was probably something bad about drinking so early in the morning, but she needs it.

Besides it just one measly shot.

Just to settle her nerves and keep her from being nauseous or worse throwing up on Tommy during her vows .

Could you imagine if it went viral?

Mexican heiress vomits on English groom.

No, señor, she is not letting that happen.

There can’t be anything going wrong today.

It can go to shit tomorrow, today is her fucking wedding day.

After one last look in the mirror, Eva reaches for the door.

She keeps a bottle of tequila for emergencies such as these.

The first true meeting between Wakanda and Talokan to cement their alliance.

Maybe if K’uk’ulkan had not killed Ramonda thinking they had killed her or not have Wakanda declare war in revenge, this wouldn’t be making her so nervous.

She is dressed in Talokanil regalia, the only difference is that her headdress is a replica of Montezuma’s and black as squid ink with pearls and silver white vibranium holding it together.

She wears the pearls Ch’ah Toh Almehen , or as his enemies know him, Namor, gave her that magical night they met and te pearl bracelet woven for his mother with the fibers of the plant that save him and his people.

She has been the Witch Queen of Talokan since 1920 and yet this meeting has her biting her nails from the anxiety.

When she opens the curtain door she will be where she needs to be, she tells herself after fixing the endless ropes of the most perfect pearls the God King of Talokan could find.

It is over.

The last of the Shelbys are dead or hiding and now begins their reign.

The rubies are as red as the blood on her hands and the dress as black as her soul.

The Empress has completed her transformation and tonight she comes to stand by her Emperor as they celebrate their victory.

The black velvet is fine and warm, but the chill in her bones creeps in still.

The tequila does enough to quell it, but it’s there.

Something is going to happen the moment she opens that door.

But she must open it and see what’s behind it.

“You said you only needed a minute, maga, it’s been ten.” Her husband said impatiently.

“You can’t hurry perfection, Luca.” The witch laughed despite the pit in her stomach and opened the door.

She shouldn’t have been drinking.

She is pregnant with their first and second.

Twin boys.

Perfect little boys with their father’s looks and her desire to fight for what is right.

Eva can’t wait to tell Jack.

He has been great, sure there were some close calls and she’s had to threaten his secretary, but he wouldn’t stray.

Eva won’t let him.

But he could, her magic has been acting strange since she conceived.

And some men don’t like fucking their pregnant wives and after because the body changes for the occasion.

Will he still find her desirable?

Will he stop being her devoted husband who can’t go a day without her?

There is only one way to find out.

“Next time you want to fuck with magic, Evie, count me out.” Tommy said and she laughed at his words.

Fuck?

Fuckity fuck fuck.

Fuck!

Not again.

Eva Shelby, formerly Eva Smallwood opens the door of her dressing room to step into her old house in Veracruz and sees five other Evas walk into the courtyard as confused as her.

“Did we play with magic again?” an older Eva asks her, and it takes her a moment to realize that this was the Eva she switched places with.

“Why are you old, we are the same age?” she asks herself and her lookalike scoffs.

“Forty isn’t old, Smallwood.” Eva Shelby answered.

“Neither is 129, Lady Smallwood.” The fae looking queen who isn’t a day over twenty-five says with a glare.

“What is going on?” an Eva ,with a more pronounced American accent says wearing a baby blue day dress and having the aura of twin baby boys, asks the one question she might be able to answer.

But the sixth Eva beats her to the punch.

Somehow there is a darker, bloodier aura to her. The cold of death sticking to her like perfume.

“The Multiverse has been broken."

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 20

Cw: terminal illness, death, acts of war

Gif by @mattoidmeerkat

Taglist @thegreatdragonfruta @v3d3rl1cht @urgonnaneedabiggership

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Eva asks the queen after she was moved to a hospital in Mount Bashenga. Shuri wasn’t here, staying up all night trying to figure out how to make the plant at her laboratory further into the mountain.

“We are prepared for such things.” Ramonda says underestimating her enemy.

No one had faced one like her husband and his people. How can you go against someone who could hypnotize your guards into opening every door for them?

“No, you aren’t. Wakanda will suffer if you do not let me handle this.” Eva begins. “My husband has prepared his people for battle since he became king four hundred years ago.”

The only way to get him to stop is if she summons him and calms him down. If anyone could get Namor to stand down, it was her.

“Wakanda would not survive this.” Eva, knowing fully well how easy it was to exploit the weaknesses the first time, has seen this place flooded out of existence.

Namor does not seek to conquer, he seeks to destroy.

“You do not know that.” The queen says ordering for security to be tightened around her and the women of the Dora Milaje assigned to her nod in understanding.

“I know him.” The witch cautioned. “He won’t stop until you’re dead and your city destroyed. What you did was an act of war, he will respond as such. Please, listen to me, let me go to you and stop him from ruining your country.”

But the queen is deaf to her pleas and leaves the hospital room to find her death waiting for her in the throne room.

“How could you stop him, you are too weak to be moved. I have seen this illness before, your injury won’t heal and the heart shaped herb refuses to return.

If you leave your bed, you will die.” There is a note of pain in her words. No one was sure how T’challa died so quickly of his illness, now Eva knew why.

An injury.

“The Herb can resurrect the dead.” Eva reminds her and the woman shook her head.

“She couldn’t make the herb then and she can’t make it now. What makes you think my daughter will succeed?” Ramonda asked already braced for failure as she left.

“Because I’ve seen it. She will learn to reconcile magic with science and Shuri will make the Flowers bloom again.”

No matter what she does the witch cannot tap onto the bond she has with her husband.

The medication numbs her to it, trapped inside her body like an ordinary woman.

“Ch’ah!” She calls out to him, tries everything ---not involving sexual acts as there are people here--- to get him to see she is alive. “Ch’ah!”

But he is deaf to her pleas for him to stop as he flies to the glass palace.

He is consumed by his grief, his rage and thinking he has lost her again.

A queen for a queen.

He means to kill Ramonda, that is his objective. To bring Shuri to her knees thinking she was in on it.

“You have to let me speak to him, I can make him stop!” Eva shouts at the doctors and the guards in here with her.

“It would be too dangerous, you cannot be moved.” The head doctor shook her head and considered other options only to find it was all too late.

The palace groans and begins to collapse from the hydro bombs and yet only one person was killed in the act.

Eva can see in her mind’s eye as Shuri and the warriors Nakia and Okoye try to resuscitate her dead mother.

“You did this!” Namor shouts, still thinking he had a just cause. “I came with only a few warriors. “Bury your dead, mourn your losses. In one week’s time, I will return with my entire army.

May your next ruler be wiser and not betray Talocan again.”

“A queen for a queen.” Eva gasps in horror as she watched the wrath of her king bring Wakanda to it’s knees.

“And you will either join us against the surface world, or we will wash Wakanda from the face of the planet.” The God King of Talokan pronounced and Eva knew why he was going so far as to make such warning.

If he remains unaware of her being alive, he won’t yield when he fights Shuri.

He intends to die.

This line 'May your next ruler be wiser and not betray Talocan again' was ommitted and you can find it on the official script.

Sorry for taking so long i wrote myself into a corner and then took forever to write myself out of it.

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 13

Gif by @crushondonald

Taglist: @v3d3rl1cht @thegreatdragonfruta @urgonnaneedabiggership

They leave and go to the Hacienda. Easier to erase the cenote and the Talokanil out of their minds if they aren’t there.

Flores del Mar.

He scoffed at the name, until Livia Drusilla told him the name had been given to it by her late sister-in-law and to insult the name she gave her home is to insult the late woman’s memory.

The place had changed over the years and yet it was stuck exactly as it had been when he first crossed paths with Benjamin Riley, the red-haired father-to-be who Namor had almost killed by scaring his horse.

He had gone riding through the land to clear his head and nearly lost it had he not cursed in Nahuatl.

I bought this place for my wife. Her mother was a maid here when she was little and now my Nicte is the lady of the house. I never want her or our children to think they are not worthy of the life she deserves; Benjamin had said as he asked what he was doing there.

“Eva says you are a mutant like us, but the villagers say you are a god. Which one is it?” Santiago asked the king as they settled in sitting room they had entered.

He had never set foot inside this place, he had only stood beside his mother’s grave and dealt justice to those who had enslaved his people.

There were some similarities between this place and Eva’s home, but it didn’t stop the hairs on the back of his neck from rising in warning.

But his witch squeezed his hand assuring him there was no danger here, reminded him that the people here with him were more like him than the people who had erected this fucking place.

They needed to discuss things, who could know she was still alive, which of them was allowed to know he was a mutant king of a mutant kingdom for safety reasons and about how many times would Eva make an appearance here to let them know she was well.

Ignacio had met two Norse gods, but Santiago had been trying to find if there were more people like them.

And he had found them, most of them had been wrangled into working for some government or secret society or independently like him because what else were they supposed to do with their powers.

If one could know about his existence ---for all but one would leave here thinking K’uk’ulkan is just a normal human man Eva had eloped with after staging her own suicide--- he would choose Santiago.

“My people believe I am a god, but I am a mutant, similar to them.” He answered the spy’s inquires.

Santiago was more subdued than his two cousins, Ignacio the more vivacious of the three and Eva was a pleasant mix of the two.

“I’ve met others like us, you would be surprised to know how many of us exist.” Us, he says, other mutants.

“Two brothers, Victor and James. One can make claws appear from his fingertips and the other bone claws from his knuckles. There is one in Europe who consumes the life and power of those he touches, nearly got me during a mission that went wrong---” Santiago continues, but K’uk’ulkan interrupts.

“Eva is a witch, not a mutant, how do you explain that?” he asks. Things were missing, not enough information kept around for safety purposes and even then whatever he had gotten his hands on was scarce.

All peoples had magic wielders too, but some argued that the gods and magic did not exist therefore magic wielders were simply mutants.

And now here there were people like him, but not like him who seemed to know the answers to his questions.

“Not all magic wielders are mutants, some like me and Itza just happen to be mutants.” Eva answered his question, still daring to hold his hand despite her aunt’s grumbling about it being improper.

“Eva’s father knew a woman who’s mutation allowed her and her sister-in-law to communicate with their deceased, one of her sons is a brilliant man with above average intelligence and a strange sort of invulnerability---'” Santiago went on to explain further and was cut off by his aunt who sat there drinking something he assumed was wine.

“Unfortunately, they use their gifts for criminal purposes, and somehow Enrique’s brother thinks one of them would have suit with Evita. Thank God you came along.”  The wine had loosened her tongue, and he preferred this woman over the one who accused him of doing heinous things to her niece.

Livia Drusilla was everything a lady was supposed to be, but to compensate for her lack of supernatural abilities, the gods were kind enough to give her an honest, but clearly forked tongue.

“Oh, so now you approve of him, mama?” Nacho taunted and took the wine glass from her. “First you hate him for taking our dear and deranged Evita and now you think he might be the only one on the list worthy of her.”

“Don’t call me that, Nacho.” Eva warned her cousin.

She had told him how the first time she lost control was because the girls in her boarding school had started calling her Eva la Loca and suddenly the quiet rain outside turned into a furious storm that broke every window in the classroom she had been in.

“Sorry, prima, I forgot you don’t like those words.” Nacho apologized and somehow that prompted his mother to apologize for her scene at the cenote.

“I must apologize for getting off on the wrong foot with you, but do understand I love Eva as if she were my daughter and you can’t expect a mother to act rationally if they believe their child has been hurt and taken against their will.” She apologized genuinely and Ch’ah found himself accepting it not just because of Eva who hoped the two of them to call a truce for her sake, but because that was a sentiment he understood well.

“I understand.” He had no children ---yet--- but anytime one of his people, who are like his children, were hurt by surface dwellers, he rained hell on them in revenge.

Namor loved as deeply as he hated and his wrath was as great as the ocean itself.

Something he and the red haired woman across from him had in common.

----

“Now that we know I’m not dying, I feel so embarrassed about telling you everything about me.” She said as he led her in the basic dance steps she had taught him in Veracruz. "I don't know if i should marry you or kill you."

Eva had splurged on music in his language and hers, and what better time to show him her gifts for him than tonight.

The witch had taught him how to use the gramophone, and the radio and even the piano. She had also tried to teach him a simple dance, but at some point, they’d given up. They had stood in the music room skin tingling and hearts beating in tandem as both witch and god fought the urge to devour each other.

“You told me I was getting the bad end of the deal by letting you know my name, now my name will live forever with you, and you will live forever with me.” He nuzzled against her cheek before kissing her in that addictive way of his. “In watan.”

“In wíichan.” She said in between kisses.

They were to marry in the presence of his mother’s stone later tonight and her family would wake up in the morning thinking Eva eloped with a human Mayan man. Well, everyone except Santiago who would be given a conch shell to summon them here.

Eva and Ch'ah had wanted a proper courtship, to have time to truly get to know and love each other, but the moment Livia asked if she was living in sin with Ch’ah it was decided they would marry where she could see them.

She’d die if she knew Eva and her soon-to-be husband had thrown caution to the wind and stopped being careful when they fucked this past week in Tlalocan.

Who knows, Eva may follow her mother’s footsteps and have a baby born seven months after the wedding.

“You aren’t too keen on marrying me, ki’ichpan.” As always, his powers of observation are unparalleled even when faced with a practiced liar like her.

“We have only known each other for three weeks.” She admits, resting her head against his as they stopped slow dancing to a soft and romantic song in Yucateco. “There’s a saying, marry in haste, repent at leisure.”

Ch’ah as usual, doesn’t ridicule her for her thoughts and feelings and heard her out. “Are you afraid you’ll regret it?”

The witch loved this intimacy, this closeness, being able to just be with him like this and know she’s not alone anymore.

“Talokanil law permits divorce, if one day you wake up and decide it’s over, you can divorce me.” He said, hiding the pang of hurt he feels at the thought of it, but saying it anyways.

But that wasn’t really what was worrying her.

She is mortal, she will grow old and die.

“I won’t live as long as you do, Ch’ah.” The witch feels sorrow well up in her throat as she says it. “I. I---”

“You don’t want to hurt me.” He finished the sentence she can’t bear to say and the hands on her waist came to hold her face as if she were his greatest treasure. "To that I ask you, in Eva, what is grief, if not love persevering?”

And so they marry, with Itza and Kinich, with her family and some of K’uk’ulkan’s soldiers and some others to serve as witnesses.

Eva Smith dies and in her place stands the Witch Queen of Talokan.

----

notes: I will probably be doing a time skip so we can get into Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and filling in the gaps through one shots

Victor and James are Victor Creed(Sabertooth) and James Howlett (Wolverine), the european who sucks peoples likves and powers is Sebastian Shaw who was also Dr. Klaus Schimdt who was the Nazi scientist experimenting on Jewish people and Magneto. Charles Xavier and Erik Leshner(Magneto) aren't born yet.

yes, i also made the shelbys from peaky blinders into mutants lol

and also borrowed vision's line from WandaVision

translations:

in watan: my wife

in wiichan: my husband

ki'ichpan: beautiful woman, pretty girl, precious, etc

in Eva: my eva

tlalocan: nahuatl spelling of Talokan

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Rated: M

Cw: mentions of mental health issues, death, alcohol abuse,murder, racism, colorism

Summary: In 1920s Mexico a bored witch named Eva decides to summon the Aztec God, Quetzalcoatl, only to summon K'uk'ulkan instead.

Taglist: @v3d3rl1cht @thegreatdragonfruta

One shots: Árboles bajo el mar

Discontinued 4/29/2024, kinda just lost interest

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 7

Taglist: @v3d3rl1cht @thegreatdragonfruta

Gif by @wiha-jun

He finds her packing things.

He feels stupid, holding the strange parchment paper in which Itza wrote the spell on and knowing that she will unravel the paper to find his mother’s bracelet there.

K’uk’ulkan comes bearing gifts and she is leaving.

“Where are you going?” He asks as she hums along to some song in Spanish in a long black skirt and flowery lilac blouse.

Every time he comes to see her Eva is wearing more clothes than the previous time.

They dress so oddly, he thinks. She would look better in Talokanil clothes, no strange undergarments, no rows of buttons or clasps to get past of.

Her hair is braided and tied with a black ribbon. Ch'ah prefers it loose, to see her dark brown hair fall down her back, to brush it aside as he kissed the freckles on her neck and shoulders.

“If I get my way, Yucatan, a certain hacienda by the sea under a false name. If my family overrides my wishes, England in a landlocked city where I only know three people and will be married off to a man I've never met.” His witch answered and carefully put books in a box.

The mention of anyone else having her displeased him.

He was a selfish man when it came to love; he could admit to it.

He didn’t love her, and yet the idea of another man touching her and loving her angered him.

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Ch’ah.” His witch, his woman says bemused as she pauses and takes out a book from the box and setting it back on the table.

It was her favorite, a novel she knew by heart.

There is a file on the table by her. The information of the man they want her to marry.

A white man, a white man who is a proven warrior and would provide her with a home and security.

The man who will live life knowing he will be second best.

Or the man who will make her forget you, a voice said as he tossed the file back in its place.

“In Talokan it is treason to take the king’s property.” He is possessive of her, not jealous. No why would he be jealous of surface-dwelling mortal man across the sea.

“Am I your property now, oh great K’uk’ulkan?” She turns to face him, not indignant of the word he used, but teasing him about his sudden possessiveness of her, a woman he has only known for six or seven days.

“You aren’t, Eva. I would never reduce you to chattel.” He answered honestly.

No, Eva could never be that. For a surface dweller, she was almost equal to him.

A soldier, a witch, a spy.

She thrived no matter how impossible her circumstances became as they changed because of the revolution.

Had she been Talokanil she would be one of his advisors, perhaps he will make her an advisor, her skills could be put to good use.

And you would get to be with her in the open with no one to stop the two of you, he can hear Itza say.

“I know,” the witch assured him she wasn’t insulted by his words. “Besides, if you ever do consider me property, I will demand that I would be able to say the same.”

K’uk’ulkan, God King of Talokan and maker of the sun, is left stunned by her words.

-----

Oh shit.

She made it weird.

Eva could laugh and say it’s a joke, but she knows she won’t get away with it.

No, how can you take back coming onto a man you truly like knowing your relationship is based on her being shamelessly vulnerable with him and earth-shattering sex.

“I have a gift for you.” He says, nothing except a slight flash of surprise in his eyes betraying his reaction to her words.

She takes it with great care, unfurling the roll and barely catching the ancient bracelet as it falls to the ground.

It is his mother’s bracelet, made with the fibers of the plant that made him and his people the way they were. She wore it until she breathed her last, removing it from her own wrist and giving it to her only child.

This is more serious than her coming on to him.

He may as well be proposing marriage to her.

“It is beautiful, Ch’ah. I can feel the love your mother had for you and your people in every bead, every stone. Your name is carved here, isn’t it?” she lovingly studied the bracelet, loving every detail of it. Whoever made it had known his mother very well.

“Ch’ah Toh Almehen.” The witch pronounced his name just as he taught her as she read the carvings and the tips of his ears turned red.

Eva wouldn’t mind marrying Ch’ah, she thinks.

Handsome, thoughtful, better than any man she’s ever known.

“May I?” he asks and she nods, extending her wrist so he may fasten it.

The gesture is intimate, more so than the nights they have spent together in a tangle of limbs.

He is gentle, so gentle and sweet with her that the young witch knows she will love this man till her last breath.

And he knows it too, she can tell as they stand there just breathing the same air, his warm hands tenderly holding her wrist and leaning in as if to kiss her.

And just like that first night, she takes the initiative and kissed him like she might die if she doesn’t.

-----

K’uk’ulkan knows for sure that Itza never intended for Eva to try this spell wearing only her strange undergarments, the bracelet and his pearls.

She has a tub, a porcelain thing big enough for two. He sits beside it and stands by in case the spell fails.

And it has, four times. Eva tweaks the runes and casts them on her skin again before submerging herself completely in the ocean thinking it was the water.

Just like the four times before it only works until the runes fall apart from the water.

“You’re going to kill yourself.” He points out the obvious as she resurfaced and held onto him for dear life.

“I’m going to die anyways, Ch’ah. This is my only chance.” She says stubbornly. “Tell me about Itza, are her runes on her skin or over something else?”

“Jade necklace around her gills.” He answered as both king and witch came to the same conclusion.

The sixth try is unsuccessful when cast the spell on his pearl necklace and he refuses to let her try again.

“Would you let me cast the runes on your mother’s bracelet?” Eva asks once they get back to the beach and tries to convince him to let her try one more time.

Sure enough, on the seventh try Itza’s spell works and once again the bracelet saves the life of its wearer.

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 19

A/N: so imma be going on hiatus for a while and we know the reason why. So until the situation with Tenoch Huerta is resolved, i will be putting off updating this fic as i cannot write it without feeling a bit 😬 about it all

Enjoy, anyways

--

Gif by @kukvlkan

Taglist: @thegreatdragonfruta @urgonnaneedabiggership @v3d3rl1cht

Eva has never considered herself cowardly, but then again, she has been lying about her health for the past two years to avoid the talks that come with it and those looks of pity she loathes so much.

So, after Ch’ah shows Shuri the beauty of Talokan’s main city-state and the sun that rises over it, she finally answers the young woman’s burning question.

“You are not a mutant like him.” She points out when they return to the hut and find her giving Itza to her nanny.

They usually do not employ a nursemaid for the girls, but Eva’s waning health does not allow her to keep up with her five-year-old child anymore.

Once this is over, she will make up for lost time.

“Yes, and no. I am more like the woman called the Scarlett Witch, in that I am both capable of magic, but also have genetic mutations passed down to me from my ancestors.

Despite how great I look; I am actually quite old. You see I was born in the year 1896 in a period known in Mexico as the Porfierato and grew up during the Second Revolution. When I was twenty-two, I was put under house arrest for sedition and due to the immense boredom, that came with it, I decided to try my hand at summoning Quetzalcoatl.” The witch decides against a detailed story about her life, there will be time for that later and while, Shuri seems to have done research on Post classical Mayan artefacts, she likely has no knowledge of Mexico’s history.

“Instead of summoning the true Feathered Serpent God, she somehow managed to summon me.” K’uk’ulkan said with a rather nostalgic smile and a firm squeeze of Eva’s hand. “I saw her dancing on the beach outside of her home and felt a connection to her as if I had always known her.”

“Later I would discover the spell I had found was to summon one’s soulmate but by then we had met, fallen in love and been married for several years.” This was the story they told everyone.

And yet all those details that they hold deep in their hearts occasionally manage to be found in murals, novels and stage productions of how Talokan came to have its queen.

“How did you manage to live underwater, if you don’t mind me asking.” Shuri, who has no real interest in romance asks the question they needed her to ask.

Eva answers by showing her the bracelet.

“The chief sorceress of Talokan taught me the runes that allowed to appear as human in the surface without the need for a rebreather. K’uk’ulkan, as a token of his love, gave me the bracelet made with the fibers of the plant that saved the life of his people, but most importantly, his mother.

I was able to cast the runes on it due to its significance and origin and live just as he does.”

And because it is all that is left of the vibranium flowers, she will have to give it up to live like him in truth instead of dying like the Black Panther did.

When Namor gets summoned onto the surface by the queen, Eva takes her chance.

“There is something else, Shuri. Something I need you to swear you will do no matter what happens.” The seriousness in her face causes worry in the young princess.

Her eyes widen thinking she is asking her to protect her children and the Talokanil, something Eva knows she doesn’t even have to ask for.

“I give you my word, as Princess of Wakanda.” She says readily.

And yet it doesn’t stop her from gasping when Eva removes the bracelet from her wrist.

The glamour fades away and Shuri is presented with a ghost of her past.

Her brother.

“The key ingredient to the cure lies in the vibranium flowers. I cannot make it grow, the soil here does not allow it to, and I cannot risk the surface world.” Eva begins explaining. “You are my only hope.”

“What do you wish me to do?” she asks, and Eva just gives a grateful smile as she gives her the bracelet.

“Take it and recreate the flower in your laboratory. Your people need the Black Panther just as my disease needs a cure.

One flower is all I need to live.”

Eva had not expected the Wakandan warrior woman.

Nakia, mother to Prince T’Challa son of T’Challa, she could see it even as the guards hurried to protect the queen and prevent her from freeing their prisoners.

“Let them go.” She orders the guards who no longer think she is as powerful as she had been.

“My queen, what has she done to you?” the guard holding a knife to Shuri’s throat asks thinking the worse.

“We must kill them.” The senior guard overrides her command due to her sudden change in health. “They have hurt our queen!”

And when Eva lifts her arms to cast a shield on the girls, Nakia fires her weapon and doesn’t miss.

Eva sees the blood on her chest as she slumps forward, and all hell breaks loose.

They took her.

It was a trap.

All there was left was a dying soldier and blood.

So much blood.

This was an act of war.

“Our people invoke my name when they pray for protection. Their deaths will not go unpunished.

Gather the city.”

They took his wife and mother of his children and Wakanda will pay the price.

He had been blinded by the hope of finding an ally in the Wakandan Princess.

To find a way to keep Talokan safe and know there would be someone out there to aid him in that.

And they had killed his wife the moment his back was turned.

If the queen wanted war, Namor would give her what she wanted.

Eva hates the cold white of modernity.

Hates the pastel colors of hospitals and the thin papery feel of the clothes they make her wear.

Her queen’s regalia is replaced by bandages under a loose button-down shirt and pajama shorts.

These too were white.

She’d kill for something darker, like black.

Black is such a nice color.

The nurses and doctors speak in a strange language, Wakandan or Xhosa, she cannot quite place it.

She is awake, she is alive, that much she can understand.

“Easy, your grace, your injury has been giving us a challenging time. Your illness complicates the healing process I am afraid.” One of the women, a bald one with an overly sweet nature, said as they helped her sit up.

Fluffed her pillows and offered her something to drink and everything.

“Where am I?” she asks in English.

“You are in Wakanda.”

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 2

Cw:some light racism, mentions of death, mentions of alcoholism, mentions of suicide attempts

Gif by: @unicornspwnall

“I hate speaking in that language.” He admits once he has gotten comfortable in the cushions she had placed around the low table.

“I’m glad you speak Nahua, but I suppose I should invest on lessons in Yucateco.” Eva took a small colored glass bowl of nuts from the table. “Again, I apologize for calling you Quetzalcoatl, you must think I am the stupidest witch in the world.”

“I heard your voice through the waves, you sing terribly, but then I saw you dancing and decided to stay.”

Drawn like a moth to a flame, a witch could bewitch someone just by being seen.

Eva knows she has that effect on people, it was one of her greatest assets. And her most used weapon.

Served her greatly during her time in the war.

And now she had summoned a god like man here.

K’uk’ulkan was not the God K’uk’ulkan. He was named after him and had the usual origin story of a god, but apparently that does not make him a god.

Strange thing to learn.

“I am flattered, K’uk’ulkan, to know my meager looks were able to summon a man out of the depths of the ocean.” Eva offers him nuts and he offered her the bottle of Balché as a trade.

She had prepared with some Mayan delicacies and drinks, had she known she would be entertaining a man born some fifty years before the Spanish conquered Mexico, she would have had a traditional Mayan feast laid out.

She shouldn’t be drinking, Doctor Pereira said it was imperative that she avoid a relapse now that she’s sober.

Eva has been sober for the past six months, and yet she drinks straight from the bottle just like he did.

If she were feeling poetic, she’d say something about sharing a bottle being almost like kissing.

But the witch is still embarrassed about failing her own fucking ritual.

It wasn’t her fault, her mother was supposed to train her, but she was dead. Shot in the back by some cowardly American soldiers who panicked when mother's hands started glowing.

“What did you want Quetzalcoatl for?” he asks putting the glass bowl between them.

“To kill my enemies, hence the small feast and the clothes I am wearing. I’m not above bribery, just so you know.” She likes him. Therefore, something was deeply wrong with him.

Eva has a thing for cursed things, but he wasn’t cursed. She’d know if he were.

“You’d give yourself to a god to see a man dead?” he asks looking almost surprised.

“You see the man by the window?” she gestures slightly to the man dozing off by the hammock.

Eva had drugged him, she could have killed him, but she is not that desperate yet.

“What about him?” he asks intrigued.

“He just got orders to strangle me before the week is up.” Eva answered in a whisper. “His superiors decided that instead of giving me a fair trial, it is better if the world thinks I committed suicide.”

“Why don’t you kill him yourself?” he asks leaning closer to her.

“I will, but I need to cut off the head of the snake or they won’t stop sending people to kill me. He is the third or fourth person the president and his cronies have put in my household to do their dirty work.” Eva takes one last drink of the bottle promising herself it will be the last thing she drinks tonight. “Need Venustiano Carranza dead and unfortunately, I cannot do that myself. Even the assassins my family employs for these sorts of things have refused me.”

“I won’t kill him, surface-dweller.” He takes back Balché and drinks the rest of it.

“I think I preferred Chilan, Kukul,” she shortened his name and he bristled. Eva supposed he is not the type to like nicknames.

Plumed, feathered, she calls him and he is annoyed at how comfortable she finds herself with him.

He doesn’t scare her, takes more than that to do the trick now.

“My enemies call me Namor.” there is something about him that strikes her like lightning striking a tree.

Sparks that will burn a forest to ash, but what great fire it will be.

“Enemies don’t drink together while watching the ocean, so I will use the name your mother gave you.” She reminded him. Eva doesn’t care, she only has four days to live, if is offended than fuck him. “Besides if you meant to kill me, you would have used that thing you and your people do and have me walk into the water and never be seen again.”

She’s heard the tales, heard about sailors dying or survivors who could not do more than speak nonsense about blue skinned Mayan ghosts and their deadly siren song.

“It’s bad luck to kill a priestess, even a surface-dwelling one with the blood of those who hunted and enslaved our people.” He points out and wrinkles his nose as he mentions her mixed blood.

It makes sense that a god king would be racist, a shame it had to be this one.

“My great great grandfather liberated our country from Spain, my great grandmother descends from Moctezuma himself, my grandfather’s country was invaded like ours was and my father came from a nomadic tribe of people who aren’t exactly accepted everywhere.

They are white, but not like the white people you encountered.” She said defending her family from his cruel assumptions. “Besides, it doesn’t matter if my father was a white man, or that my mother had the blood of the last Mexica Emperor and the first President of Mexico, my family is all dead.”

“I am sorry for your loss, wàay.” He said offering her the last of the Balché.

Sorcerer, he calls her and yet it doesn’t sound insulting like surface-dweller does.

“Thanks.” And she feels a spark when their fingers brush against each other on the bottle. “But I shouldn’t be drinking, last time I drank I ended up trying to fling myself from a balcony in my melancholy.”

“I was a boy when I lost my mother and stepfather. I age slowly, you see. They died of old age by the time I turned twelve.” He intimates and both find common ground: grief.

“Hmm, you cursed with immortality, and I cursed with luck.” The witch reaches out for one of the crystal glasses with water on the table.

“I think we are the only two people who think of it that way.” K’uk’ulkan hides his pain well, but she can feel it still, makes her shiver even.

“No one else has lived the lives we have. How would they know how it feels to outlive everyone you love?” Eva pointed out as she brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them for warmth.

He was warm, but he got a little angry at her using the nickname his mother gave him and was prejudiced against people of mixed races, so she wouldn’t try leaning against him for warmth. He would feel nice, she thinks. His hands were warm when he helped her to her feet.

“To curses then.” He lifts the bottle in a toast and she clinks her glass with a quirk in her lips.

“May all who envy us never know how we suffer.” She said and both drank in silence.

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

chapter 5

Taglist: @v3d3rl1cht @thegreatdragonfruta

Gif by @azianxpersuasionwrites

Cw: mentions of past alcohol abuse, mentions of death in childbirth, accidental death in horse riding accident, sexism and racism

The witch is sitting with her feet on a low table when he sees her.

He has heard and seen how surface dwellers live and yet he is always surprised whenever he sees it again.

There is a fine quality to everything, K’uk’ulkan could tell the large gilded mirror over the fireplace was just one of many.

She wears more clothes this time, make up on her face that covers her pretty freckles, her long dark hair pinned at her nape with blood red roses and his pearls on her graceful neck.

She’s a beauty, with and without all she wears.

“I’m not drinking.” She stares at a bottle of something on the low table and speaks his tongue perfectly.

Can’t drink, I’ll lose control and we’ll both be sorry, she had said that night.

Her lips are painted a dark red, like the velvet furniture sits on, her dark eyes lined with black, but it’s the fire in her eyes that captivates K’uk’ulkan.

“I’m not drinking.” She repeats and it becomes clear to him that she is not saying it to him, but to herself.

The glass by the bottle cracks and breaks as she stares at it in anger and before he knows it, she has used her abilities to toss the bottle into the fireplace where the clear liquor makes the flames jump.

The witches and sorcerers of Tlalocan had been consulted about her.

They could teach her if their king asked for them.

A surface-dweller she was and of tainted blood, but their readings told her she descended from the last Mexica Emperor, the great Moctezuma, and the last Seer of the Mexica.

Royal and divine.

Warrior and healer.

If you wish for a strong heir, you could keep her as your concubine, his advisor had suggested before K’uk’ulkan had dismissed him.

She would like Tlalocan, once they figure out a spell to allow her to live underwater of course.

But Eva is still a surface dweller, one with the blood of those who eradicated his and so many other people.

And yet the god king of Tlalocan desired her in a way he hadn’t desired his previous lovers, he dreamt of her these past nights.

Heard her sigh and cry out in pleasure, felt her stroke his wings and her warmth as she lay with him.

It wasn’t love, but it wasn’t ordinary lust either.

“I can hear what you’re thinking, Kukul.” She uses the nickname to annoy him. “I thank you for considering a teacher for me…and that other thing.”

“Does it happen often?” he asks looking at her embarrassed face.

He doesn’t understand her sudden mortification at knowing he has considered taking her to his kingdom and keeping her as his lover when he has felt and kissed every inch of her.

“Only when the universe allows me, its nearly always when someone is having less than gentlemanly thoughts about me.” She said avoiding eye contact with him and can’t help but laugh awkwardly. “You are not the first, but you might be the last, K’uk’ulkan.”

“Ch’ah, my mother named me Ch’ah Toh Almehen.” He has not allowed anyone to call him by that name since his mother died.

“Hm, your true name will die with me, and I will live forever in your memories. A bad deal if you ask me, Ch’ah.” The witch leaned on his shoulder.

What was the use of distance when you know you will die?

“I will be the judge of that.”

----

She gives him a tour of the house, Eva wants him badly, but she wants to savor every second he is with her.

She hates being alone, figures the worst punishment the universe could give was dying completely alone.

Even her significant others tended to die young. Diosdado had died six months into their relationship, Lourdes from Tijuana died of consumption after they parted ways in, and Pedro from down the street had gotten shot in the head during the american occupation.

Except for her former girlfriend, Antonia. No, Antonia lives happily in America with Francisco, Eva’s cousin by her uncle Patricio, the head of the Riley Arambula Family and their shipping company.

Eva leads K’uk’ulkan, no, Ch’ah, through the various rooms of the large house.

He knows more than she had assumed. He laughs and thanks her when he hears Eva’s wireless radio play one of the handful stations in Yucatan that talk and sing in his language.

She likes his laugh, his smile, to see the burden on his shoulders soften as he enjoys this new thing he had only heard about.

A shame this came so late.

He looks at Gabriel’s paintings, all kept in his studio where her brother dreamed of being like Jose Maria Velasquez Gomez, his friend Diego Rivera, or even the Spaniard, Francisco Goya.

He finds the ones made when Gabriel stayed in Yucatan in the hacienda that Tio Benjamin had restored and died in.

The one where Ch’ah received his third name, Namor, as he buried his mother.

“This is my mother’s stone,” he says as he touches the canvas where the ancient stone that used to fascinate her brother is painted on with all its details.

“I know. I’ve been wanting to show you since you left.” She said softly as he stays there. “One of my uncles bought the hacienda for his Mayan wife, Nicte. We used to visit at least once a year.”

Benjamin had come to Merida and met Nicte Balan, the witty daughter of the company lawyer.

The family had been divided about it, worse than when mother married her piss poor lover.

Abuela and grandaddy hadn’t cared, happy to know their youngest son found a woman he loved and loved him.

But the aunts and uncles who had chosen to accept the views society had on people who were not white, or rich had gone as far as insinuating Nicte had bewitched the adventurous Benja.

Half and half, seven who married to keep the status the family had, 7 who married for love.

Eva was expected to marry Leopoldo Carranza ---son of Venustiano Carranza, the current President--- to ensure their family would once again have the power and status they had during Benito Juarez’s presidency ---and lost during Porfirio Diaz’ dictatorship.

But she had ‘ruined’ everything when she took the offer the English spy gave her when she found her numbing her agony with booze and pills.

“The world is a small place, don’t you think?” He tears himself away from the vivid painting  and looks at her beside him.

“We used to camp out in hopes of seeing if the Mayan Warrior who visited the grave every winter solstice was real.” She whispers and Ch’ah shook his head with a quiet chuckle.

“What happened to your aunt and uncle?” he moves to the other paintings, still life ones depicting strangers, relatives, and people they met during their time north.

“Nicte died in childbirth with their baby, Benjamin broke his neck falling from his horse a year later.” The price they pay for love, everyone who marries for love is destined to die young in her family. “It was supposed to go to my brother, Gabriel, but he is dead as well.”

“So now you own the land my mother’s tribe was originally in.” he concludes almost impressed.

If she asked for it, she would have the remaining living siblings her mother had vote on whether she can have it.

They had thrown a fit when she demanded her inheritance and freedom to spend her dowry ---who the fuck has dowries these days--- as she saw fit.

So what if she bought very expensive Russian furniture stolen from some noble to decorate her sitting room in Mexico City?

So what if she bought a sports car and crashed it into lake Chapultepec because she can barely drive when she’s sober let alone drunk on absinthe?

Eva’s better with money now that she’s sober for good.

“My family does, they refuse to hand over all the wealth be it in money or land I have inherited from my parents and brothers because ---” she clarifies and he finished the sentence for her.

“Because you are a woman, in my kingdom, we have no such issue. My mother ensured women had the same rights as men when she served as my regent.” He loved his mother, treasured her memory like Eva does with hers.

“I suppose the cubanos were right when they said, en el mar la vida es más sabrosa.” The witch said, remembering he is still holding her hand as she tugs it a little to let go.

She likes the Sonora Matancera, even if she only heard the fucking song in her visions while she was on that peyote pilgrimage with the Huichol shaman she met in Chihuahua. They are not even La Tuna Liberal now and the song is yet to be written.

Not that Ch’ah knows or cares the Cuban band doesn’t even exist yet.

He laughs, it’s a nice laugh, she will miss it when she dies.

“Will you tell me about your underwater paradise, Ch’ah?” She asks quietly.

----

notes:

so the supposed og script says his true name is Ch'ah Toh Almehen, until disproved i will be using it.

the phrase en el mar la vida es mas sabrosa was made by a Cuban band called La Sonora Matencera in 1928, Eva can occasionally hear and see things that haven't even been made yet. also she used her magic to find the one yucatec mayan radio station in during a mexican civil war just because she wanted to do something nice for Kukulkan.

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 15

Taglist: @v3d3rl1cht @urgonnaneedabiggership @thegreatdragonfruta

Gif by:@unicornspwnall

He tries not wake her when he returns, just tucks her under his chin and holds her like he has always done.

His witch has taken to wearing her glamours to bed, he remembers a time when he’d rub away the enchantments that hid the scars left by her time as a soldadera kiss by kiss.

She was vain, taught to see her beauty as a necessity, taught to cover anything that reminded you she was not the storybook queen you see.

Now Eva used that to shield him from the truth.

“How was it?” she asks still mostly asleep, but alert enough to tell him even in her weakened form, nothing gets past her.

“I threw the helicopter around like a rock in a yúuntun.” The humans hardly proved to be more than a nuisance. Eva has always disapproved of his extreme measures, but she knew they were necessary.

She chuckled at the imagery and settled with her head on his chest, Cha’h had missed her painfully those five years.

For the better part of the past century, his witch was always within reach, even when they quarreled, they had never been truly apart.

Whenever she used to go to the surface he’d go with her, steal into her room like a thief in the night and relive their whirlwind courtship.

“I will leave for Wakanda in the morning in yaakunaj.” He said softly and traced patterns on her back. He cannot see how her mysterious illness has affected her physically, but he can feel it with every touch.

There are bruises, sometimes a rash and a certain fragility to her skin that was not there before.

Just because he cannot see it, doesn’t mean K’uk’ulkan isn’t aware of what is going on.

She had never truly recuperated from her last pregnancy even after fifteen years.

Six-year-old Itza had been born powerful, developed flight without the need of wings, with the strength of a Talokanil like her sisters and a magic that surpassed her mother’s.

Their little water witch had unfortunately required far more than her mother could give her, making the pregnancy difficult, and the birth far worse.

Eva had seemed fine before Thanos and his Snap, even the doctors both in their kingdom and out of it had not noticed something amis.

Then when she came back, she did everything in her power to make sure he didn’t know about that illness that had evaded detection for so long.

A cancer in the blood, the head doctor and healer had whispered weeks ago.

Nothing is working, the treatments only seem to make it worse, they had said before he had dismissed them from his presence.

But he needs to hear it from her, to have her admit she is sick and has been for the past two years.

“So you know then.” She raised her head to look at him and gave a defeated sigh, with that sigh the glamour dissipated.

His heart breaks when he sees the color leave her, to see her dark eyes sunken in her face and her luscious dark brown hair be brittle and lifeless.

It was her, but at the same time the woman sleeping with him was a stranger he could barely recognize.

“You should have told me, we could have shouldered this burden together, in Eva.” He stroked her papery skin with great care.

“You have had your hands full, in kuxtal. I didn’t want to worry you when you already have so much to worry about.” she avoids his eyes by returning her head to his chest.

Two years ago, the surface world had discovered Wakanda and its vibranium.

Two years ago, the Mexican government had begun investigating every place and crevice where a meteor had fallen.

In Puebla, a fragment of vibranium had been found, a young man in Merida had inherited ancient ring made of the metal as well and just last year, the current president had given the green light to the Americans for all vibranium investigations on Mexican waters.

We don’t know what was said, but we can guess, Santiago’s great-grandchild had reported.

Not SHIELD, not the supes, it’s the government.

She has been sick for two years; she has been dying every second of each day and he had not seen it until it was too late.

“I should have noticed, what sort of man does that make me?”

The sort of man who is still going to leave her tomorrow morning even after this revelation, a voice that sounds like Eva’s long dead aunt reproached him.

“A busy one, the king of the world’s best kept secret.” She answered trying to assuage his guilt at his neglect to her. “And before you ask, no, I don’t want you to postpone your trip to Wakanda. The queen and her daughter will react badly, but they will agree to do your bidding.”

“You make me sound like the villain.” He points out stroking her hair.

“A strange man breaks into their country, interrupts an important ceremony by the river and asks them to kill a girl of nineteen exploited by the fucking gringos.” The witch spoke with her usual snark, as if nothing was wrong. “Even if you have good intentions, it won’t be seen like that.”

“Then I will be their enemy, they fucked everything up with their naivety anyways.” The king could live with such a reputation, eternal damnation in Xibalba is a low price for Talokan’s safety.

“Namor, we can’t afford to be their enemies, not now.” the witch cautioned him softly.

Wakanda was the only civilization as advanced as them, almost equal to them. But the first Black Panther had been shrewd and kept the power of the vibranium flower to himself and his heirs instead of sharing with his followers.

Ten Wakandans could barely match the strength of a Talokanil child. Sixteen-year-old Itotia could wipe out their army if he allowed her to.

But his wife advised for peace, to avoid needless violence because the fabric of the universe has been altered since the snap.

Something had changed, the threads in the fabric had snagged and pulled or so the witch tried to explain.

We cannot be at war.

“You never call me that.” No, he is always Ch’ah in private, K’uk’ulkan in public and Ch’ah Toh Almehen when she is annoyed at him.

“You want a child old enough to be ours dead, no one would agree to that.” Eva said sternly. Standing her ground and letting him know this crossed the line.

He loves her for her strength and humanity and even now Namor cannot fault her for it.

“Let me guess, wàay, the universe has need of the child?” he asked with an irritated sigh. Always has a card up her sleeve, somehow the universe dictates she must have her way.

“Ironheart, a genius African American girl with a metal suit to replace Ironman.” She said as giddy as a child, coming to lean on her elbows over his chest.

How can he say no to her?

“I won’t kill her,” he gives her his word and demands she reward him for such mercy.

“You won’t regret it.” His witch of a wife promised and kissed him as if she might never seen him again.

yuuntun: slingshot

mcu atlanteans have a lifespan of 150/170, but Namor and Eva don't age like either humans nor talokanil and expect some errors because i didn't do good enough math.

so to summerize, Talokanil live twice as long as humans(aging 1 year in 2 human years), but Namor is 500ish so he would age 1 year =12 human years(making him like 40/41 to match Tenoch Huerta's age), Eva is 30-35 and his daughters with Eva would age 1 year=6 human years

Itotia is 16 (101/96 b.1924), Ixchel is 12 (77/72 b.1948) and Itza is 6( 36/31 b.1989)

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 11

Taglist: @v3d3rl1cht @thegreatdragonfruta

Gif by @unicornspwnall

Thank you youtube for existing!

Eva had been taught to swim at the age of exactly thirteen months. The moment Eva mastered running was deemed perfect to learn how to swim by her father, Harry.

Henry Absalom Smith could swim like an Olympian in the sea or in the rivers and lakes, a skill he vowed to pass on to his four living children. He and his brothers and sisters loved swimming so much that Daj called her children the matchai, or the fishes.

Her Romani Traveller father had been born in a marigold yellow vardo but raised in a bright yellow river boat called the Marigold until his parents decided to live in a brick-and-mortar house in Small Heath, Birmingham.

But he never felt at home in Small Heath, found it constraining and eventually when he knew every nook and cranny in Great Britain and Ireland, he snuck aboard a ship called El Botón de Oro where he met the enchanting Miss Isabel Riley who had been expecting him.

By the time they arrived in the Port of Veracruz, they were El Senor y La Senora Enrique Smith and ten years later Eva Leonor Smith Riley was born a week early in the Sistine Chapel.

And twenty- one years after her first swimming lesson, Eva feels as clumsy as baby foal as she tries to keep up with Ch’ah.

But Tlalocan is beautiful, and she likes his laugh, so she cannot complain.

He holds her hand unashamedly, showing his people his clear intentions with this strange woman with him.

Itza had warned of the suspicion his people would have of her, of how people would believe she had bewitched him with her love spells to ruin them all.

They will love her, they will accept her as queen and see their suspicions were unfounded, K’uk’ulkan had argued.

The people greet them with the same salute, one Ch’ah had taught her back in Veracruz.

Like the open jaw of a great shark.

Líik'ik Tlalocan, rise Tlalocan. A battle cry that stuck around after several chieftains and generals rose against him a century ago.

The people look at her with mixed feelings, some in excitement because she is like their king, others are wary because they know she came from the surface.

“The Vibranium changed everything it touched, the things we grow are the same as they are in the surface.” Ch’ah had explained as he guided her on a tour of Tlalocan.

The life here reminds her of the life above, the ruins above are restored here and adapted to the growing city. People bustling here as they did in Veracruz or Mexico City.

Everything is perfect, and K’uk’ulkan tells her excitedly how his immortality allowed him to fix every problem that arose.

There is no over crowdedness and inadequate housing like in the cities she’s lived in, the city is clean, the design elegant but not as gaudy as the ones she’s seen, everything here is just perfect.

“I never want to leave.” Eva said when he asked what he thought of his kingdom.

“You won’t have to, ki’ichpan.” He assured her. “No one will hurt you here, not while I live.”

And he lives forever.

Even La Huesuda won’t get her here.

----

“She will need clothes, and her things.” Livia had said as she ordered them around.

“I can’t believe you were going to trick her into going to leaving Mexico, tia.” Santiago said as he carefully loaded the suitcase onto his car.

“That K’uk’ulkan ruined my plans, Eva could’ve been Queen of England!” she huffed.

Livia had pulled strings to secure a place in Mayfair, an introduction to English high society and ensured Prince Edward of Wales was intrigued by the thought of Eva.

It had taken her everything to put a wrench in Enrique’s brothers’ plans to settle Eva with her grandmother in Small Heath, Birmingham.

There was a young man, a fucking gangster, who despite his ambition and good looks did not stop being wholly unsuitable for her sweet and beautiful Evita.

Now there was some Mayan nutjob who had seduced her and taken her like the thief he was.

“Mami, we’re Catholic and Edward of Wales is infertile.” Nachito pointed out amused.

“So, she can convert, fuck one of his relatives and destroy the British Empire from the inside.” She explained her schemes.

The Rileys were schemers at heart, ambitious enough to thrive and smart enough to get what they want.

Livia Drusilla Riley Arambula wanted to be the Lina Astor of Mexico and she had almost done it.

Except Francisco Madero died when the Americans and the Germans backed Huerta and the Rileys were scattered to the winds.

She would be leaving for New York with her eldest son, Andres who goes by Andy, with Alba who hates her for letting Aurelio marry her to some rich American breaking into politics, with Nacho who goes by Izzy because the fucking gringos can’t say Nacho without laughing.

And Eva, as always, only thinks of herself and not the agony she puts them though with every disappearance.

Livia will not plan another funeral; she’s had to bury to many of her loved ones. She will die with her niece if she has to plan Eva’s.

----

They call her Chilan Eva and Ch’ah thinks his people, at least the average citizens will accept her as their queen sooner than his advisors and other members of the court and his family.

Eva had taken in the beauty of Talokan with a childlike wonder. Asked questions until she had felt satisfied with his answers and was left speechless by the sun.

Eva had been gawked at, approached by curious children and given gifts by the time they reached their destination.

His palace, something that took almost half a century to build and that housed his throne and the sun.

Itza had counseled him to get it over with, if he was upfront with his intentions towards the surface-dwelling witch, K’uk’ulkan could nip most dissent in the bud.

Ch’ah had wanted to wait, to have Eva understand what they were up against first, but Eva had surprised him by agreeing with Itza.

I survived three dictatorships, nothing scares me anymore, she had said.

No, just the idea that you could live forever does, he had pointed out.

But Eva was easy to love, he thinks, clever, kind and resilient like vibranium.

“She’s pretty, I suppose,” his cousin, Kinich, said with as much interest as a new pet his elder daughter, Atziri, brings home.

“But not good enough to be my wife, you mean.” The king narrowed his eyes at his cousin and advisor.

Kinich was related to him by one his mother’s many sisters. Kin, one who was four years his senior and died at the age of ninety-seven surrounded by his nine cousins, their children and their grandchildren.

The first two generations did not live long, their bodies had yet to adapt to their new life and lived only a handful of years more than their air breathing ancestors.

It was then that K’uk’ulkan ventured above in search for answers and met Phastos who came searching for a place he once knew.

The Vibranium Sun gave them longer lifespans, seasons, nutrient rich foods and lit the way to make them as good if not better than their enemies.

“Some wonder if she bewitched you, feed you toloatzin to make you love her.” He whispers as they observed her with the other women of his family.

“It doesn’t work on me, remember.” K’uk’ulkan reminded him.

Once, a Talokanil had tried that trick only for her to realize that his unique physiology made it impossible for her to try a surface-dweller’s love potion.

“She’s a witch, K’uk’ulkan, you said it yourself, she is as powerful as Itza or more. She may not know it either.” Kinich tried to convince him, but the king refused to listen.

No, Eva would never do that to him. She had told him of she’s vowed to never use one again after hastening a man’s death by bewitching him. His only crime had been being Venustiano Carranza’s son and she would be the reason he would put a gun to his head.

But Kinich would not understand, he would think her a liar and him a fool who believed her.

“That is where you are wrong, Kinich, Chaac destined her for him and him for her, their souls were bound to each other even before humanity was made from the corn.” Itza coolly explained why he was wrong to accuse Eva of such sins. “She will be Queen of Talokan and mother to the king’s heirs.”

“I can’t argue against Chaac, I suppose. Congratulations.” Kinich congratulated him genuinely if a bit begrudgingly. “May your children have her good looks and give you as much trouble as Atziri and her little sisters give me and my good lady wife, Ch’ah.”

---

Translations:

Daj: mother, grandmother in angloromani

Matchai: fishes in angloromani

Toloatzin: Nahuatl for Toloache

[evita-shelby]

Wind

Namor/K’uk’ulkan x Eva Smith (OC)

When you know you have only days left to live, there is no such thing as controlling impulses.

One of those impulses had led to her summoning K’uk’ulkan from the depths. Another to telling him about her entire history from her youth in this house to how she came to be on the president’s hit list and then throwing herself at him because she didn’t want to die without knowing sex with man.

He is human, but also not human.

K’uk’ulkan can live underwater with his people, he can breathe through his nose and yet absorb oxygen through his skin like an amphibian and he can fly with his winged heels.

He wants to take her to Tlalocan, to his underwater city where witches can teach her how to properly hone her magic. To live with him as his guest, as his lover and eventually wife.

K’uk’ulkan thinks she is unaware of his intentions, but he feels this connection they’ve had since that night stronger than Eva dares to admit. He wants a life with her, an eternal love who won’t age and die as he can’t.

“Are you ready?” he asks she held on tightly to his neck while he carried her like a bride.

“As ready as I will ever be.” The witch said and before she knew it, they were flying in the summer wind.

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 8

Taglist: @v3d3rl1cht @thegreatdragonfruta

Gif by @frankcastled

Patricio Riley will never admit this, but every time something happens to his niece, his sister’s ghost visits him.

Isabel looks at him with disappointment as she sits across his desk wearing the last clothes he ever saw her in. She had been forty when he last saw her, a streak of gray in her pompadour, laugh lines around the same pout his willful niece and his daughters have.

Chabelita who used to follow him around asking questions when he was twenty-five and she was seven.

She doesn’t speak, just glares until the damn telephone rings with bad news.

The first time it had been Eva joining the nursing corps in the Northern Division under General Doroteo Arango ---or as he was known, Pancho Villa--- and the famed Captain Nonaka who once saved the life of the late president, Francisco Madero.

The second was to tell him the girl had walked into the desert with nothing more than the clothes on her back and the third was to tell him she had insulted President Carranza to his face, tried to commit suicide and was arrested on the charge of sedition on New Year’s Day.

The telephone rings and he can feel Chabelita’s stare as he answers it.

“What do you mean missing?”

----

“Let me change into a swimsuit at least.” She said after he asked her to run away with him to his kingdom.

“What you’re wearing is perfectly fine, when we get there, you will be dressed in the finest clothes Talokan can offer.” He said not wanting to waste any time.

She is the only other surface dweller besides the Eternal Phastos to ever visit Talokan. Phastos had made a suit for him and his superior, Ajax, but Eva needed no suit, the spell allowed her to live as if she were Talokanil.

“I am in my underwear, Ch’ah. You may not have any complaints, but other people will.” She tugged him back to the shore.

“Does it have laces and hooks like that contraption you had on earlier?” he asked. Ch’ah had grumbled as he helped her out of the thing, she called a girdle earlier.

“No. Just sturdier than this.” She gestured to the ruined wet satin clinging to her skin.

If it was up to him, he would take her as she is and waste no time, but he concedes either way.

Besides, Itza would have foreseen it and have suitable clothes for her at the outposts of Talokan. They were expanding now, no more the small tribe that left the land for the sea. They were a city state the size of Mexico City, or as it had been known to his mother, Tenochtitlan, the famed white city of the Mexica.

Fifteen million Talokanil who needed protection, hundreds of generations he had seen come and go and depended on him for leadership and safety.

And here he was risking all of them for the affections of a surface-dwelling witch.

It is Friday, June 13th, 1919, when Eva runs away for the third time in her life.

She wears black, just as she did those previous times, but this time it isn’t black for her late sister, Felicidad or for her parents or even her brothers.

“When we get to the outpost, you will be treated and dressed like a queen.” Ch’ah assured her as he took her in his arms like a groom takes his bride.

“I will hold you to it.” The witch wrapped her arms around his neck as he took flight.

She loves him, she comes to realize without the dread she had felt all those times before him.

Eva had never been slow to surrender her heart, but the witch knows this love is not like the rest. No, this one had a feeling of eternity, of destiny, as if she had always loved him and their meeting had been orchestrated by some higher power and not her fucking up a ritual.

A shame it has come so late in her life.

To know you have found your soulmate just as he is about to see you die.

“Have you ever seen a whale up close?” Ch’ah asked as he took flight.

-----

“What do you mean she walked into the ocean with a man?” Patricio asked the maid tasked to spy on his niece.

Mercedes was a plant put in place by the Federalists, but she reported to him as well. As far as Carranza, Obregon and Calles know, the head of the Riley-Arambula Family is very worried for Eva’s fragile mental health.

“A man she has been seeing for a week now, she met him on the beach. He is a maya called K’uk’ulkan, he is her lover. I swear to God he came out of nowhere and had wings on his feet.” The maid said frantically.

Whatever tricks Evita had played on the woman had fucked with her head. K’uk’ulkan haunted Benjamin and Nicte’s seaside hacienda, the place Eva begged for them to hide her in.

Could it be?

No, it couldn’t, the gods had deserted them when the Spaniards conquered México.

“She summoned him, and from the depths he came.” His sister whispers with a smirk. “You wouldn’t save my Evita, so Quetzalcoatl sent someone who did.”

This was the first time Chabelita’s ghost speaks to him, but when he turns, Patricio finds the chair empty.

----

Her wool swimming suit by a huipil when they get there. It is beautiful and embroidered like the ones in Yucatan, but the undergarments made with the same elastic material as Ch’ah's strange knee pants.

They feel odd, like a rubbery second skin, Eva hopes she won’t be wearing them for too long.

The outpost is as big as one of the villages she has seen, but more like an army camp and less like a village.

There is a cavern that is dry and has air and rooms fit for royalty. Has cells like a dungeon too, and luckily, the food is as same as in Yucatan even if the colors are a little off.

The Talokanil treat her with reverence, calling her Ajaw or Chilan and answering all her questions nicely.

They were polite and kind, but wary. Reminds her of the people in the villages and cities they took in the war.

There were whispers, some good some bad, especially when their king made it clear she would be sharing his hammock for the night.

She supposed it was because they are technically ancient Mexicans, and people all were the same deep down.

“I think I prefer you in Talokanil clothing.” Ch’ah dismissed the guards and servants who had brought them breakfast.

He is dressed differently as well, wearing a cape and different jewels.

Their clothes complimented each other, something that made Eva feel like blushing. Thankfully, Eva had been broken out of it by the time she was in boarding school, so all he saw was her give a small smile in return.

“This time you are the one wearing more clothes than me.” She was unsure of how to proceed now.

Ch’ah was not shy when it came to affection, he was loving and benevolent with his people, but she wondered if K’uk’ulkan would be different with her.

Had they been in her house, she wouldn’t have hesitated to kiss him and stay in his arms, but they were not.

“So, what do you think of all this?” he asked gesturing to the strange cave lit up by glow worms.

“You described it well, but I think seeing it is entirely different from hearing about it. This place is beautiful.” She kept a respectable distance. Despite what Ch’ah has seen, Eva is reserved. She wasn’t always this way, but she had to learn to walk on eggshells and remember her place after Huerta and Carranza came into power.

The witch had enjoyed not having to do that with Ch’ah, but now she is faced with the reality that he is the God King of Talokan. A kingdom as big as Mexico City, a kingdom his mother and the first of the Talokanil built from the ground up and that he has ruled for nearly half a millennium.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg, you will love Talokan. My words are not enough to describe the beauty of it.” He tells her with such pride and excitement that Eva feels silly for thinking he would be different. “Once you see it, you will never want to leave.”

But I will, I will die, her pessimistic self reminds her.

“I cannot wait, Ch’ah.” She said instead.

----

Notes: yes Pancho Villa was just an alias, Jose Genaro Kingo Nonaka was the Captain of his Sanitation Corps (aka the doctors, surgeons and nurses).

Calles, is Plutarco Calles who was president after Alvaro Obregon and both men orchestrated Carranza's, Pancho Villa's and several other murders to 'end' the war and keep power by starting the first political party in which they controlled every president for the next decade or so.

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 12

Taglist:@v3d3rl1cht @thegreatdragonfruta

Gif by: @mndvx

He hasn’t felt young in the longest time.

He had been Namor and K’uk’ulkan, but not Ch’ah.

The Talokanil king feels as nervous as he did when he gave her the bracelet.

“You know, I can feel what the artist felt as they painted them. It’s almost as if I had been there when you painted them.” The witch had said as had shown her the murals back at the outpost they came through.

These here were different than the ones he kept in his real home. These depict his lineage, his family, his important milestones, all the things that were deeply personal to him and somehow this strange witch had become part of it.

“I think you’re the first man who’s remembered my freckles.” She comments breathlessly as he embraced her from behind and she grew warm and aroused by the very real desire he feels for her and the one that lingers in every brushstroke of the mural in front of them.

“As if I could ever forget them, wàay.” He kissed the one below her ear reverently, as if she were Ixchel herself.

“Fuck me.” She said in that breathy tone of hers and he readily agrees. Ever since that night, neither can’t get enough of each other, Ch’ah knows he won't ever get enough of her even if they live a thousand lifetimes.

“As you wish.” And as if by command, Eva collapsed in his arms.

This time he doesn’t see the vision, he just holds her as she muttered something in Spanish, then English, the Nahuatl and eventually his language.

“In Ajawo, we have captured two men!” his head general finds him with an unconscious witch gasping for air and eyes white as the pearls she wears.

“They have come for me.”

---

Santiago Rosales was fourteen when he discovered his uncanny abilities to blend in with everything and everyone also included finding everything he thought about.

These two gifts also included, being the only person who could find Eva at any given moment.

The villagers near the cenote had warned him of K’uk’ulkan's wrath.

He took my virgin sister; he had told the curandero whom he paid handsomely in blood. Three drops for three questions.

Your cousin, the curandero had corrected, not a virgin, he took that too.

Only I can summon K’uk’ulkan, he is a god, you coming to take his bride away and he will be offended.

“You didn’t have to come, Nacho.” The Mexican-Catalán spy reminded the complaining man trailing behind them.

The shaman set up the ritual summoning altars and unwrapped the conch shell passed down by generations.

He freed us from the Spaniards, the curandero had said, we protect his secret in eternal gratitude.

“Eva is my cousin just as she is yours, be glad mamá didn’t come.” Nacho huffed and looked around with his flashlight.

“Who said I needed your permission, Nachito?” speaking of the devil.

Tia Livia appeared dressed as of she’d be going on a safari in Africa, like she’d go and try to spread the good word of God like a dimwitted missionary and guided by the curandero’s plucky fifteen-year-old grandson, Eduardito.

“Why did you bring her here, Lalo?” his grandfather asked in shock.

“She gave me one hundred pesos, nool, and said she would pay for me to go school in Merida!” The boy said excitedly, thinking he’s gotten a great deal.

They were too liberal with money, Santiago could admit. They spent as quickly as they earned, and no company in the world could profit like them and treat their employees like human beings nor could any charity compare to theirs.

They were rich assholes, but not that type of rich asshole.

“I am the blood of a great witch, nagual. Your tricks did not work on me. Now summon K’uk’ulkan or I will do it myself.” The red-haired queen of Mexico City threatened.

And so, the man blew the shell.

-----

“Let me go with you.” Eva pleaded, and he refused once again. “They are my family, if they know I am safe they will leave, and I will make sure they forget the cenote even exists.”

A tempting deal, but one he is against.

Who is to say she will choose to leave with them than stay with him?

They are her family, and blood comes before a stranger who spirited her away without giving it much thought.

“Please.” She begged prettily, nothing she did was unattractive, every cell of her was designed to be alluring, like the voice of the Talokanil and the grace with which they swam.

“What makes you think the people we captured are your family?” he asks her, her vision had said her aunt and two of her cousins would find the village and the witchdoctor would bring them to the cenote.

He had not been given much detail except for three chilangos that Eloy said came looking for someone they claim he took.

For all they know, it could be some rich people from Mexico City or America who have bribed and coerced Eloy, the waay of the village they protect.

“My aunt has red hair and wore that same odd clothing when she visited Marruecos last year with her husband and my cousin Santiago who owns a house there, Santiago is the only one I know who may put up a fight against a Talokanil, and Israel’s battle cry might as well be not the face.” She explained and he laughed a little at her accurate summarization of his three ---five if you count Eloy and the teenage boy--- prisoners.

“It’s my fault, I should have left a note or called one of them, so they wouldn’t assume I was in danger.” She added as she chipped away at his resolve.

K’uk’ulkan could order her to stay, but Ch’ah knows the moment he does that he loses her forever. He doesn’t want to risk the chance of losing that future he saw with her.

Terrible thing to know how the story ends and yet knowing the ending can change at any moment.

“You can come, explain what happened and erase this place from their minds for my people’s safety and theirs.” He gives in and brushes the fly away hairs that have broken free from her braid. “If you wish to leave with your family, I won’t stop you.”

“Who said I wanted to leave, Kukul?” Eva reached out to caress his cheek and used that nickname that he used to hate and now doesn’t really bother him. “I want that life we saw in my vision just as much as you do, Ch’ah, and as much as it scares me to admit it, I want it more than anything the surface has to offer me.”

-----

She loves him, she doesn’t know how it happened, but she does.

Maybe it’s because she knows how it ends and that gives her the certainty to make sense of her feelings without the feelings of dread and horror that she usually gets when it dawns on her, but Eva Leonor Smith Riley knows she loves Ch’ah even if she has only known him for a fortnight.

The way back up the cenote is different than the one they arrived in was by Playa del Carmen in Campeche, this one was in that village an hour drive away from Merida. Eva should tell him that even blind and missing his arms, Santiago could find this place again.

Nacho even with a map in broad daylight, would never find it again, however. But where Tiago goes Nacho follows.

The Mayan shaman and his grandson bow, begging for K’uk’ulkan’s mercy while her cousins look at them in relief and her tia is as angry as her famed red hair.

“Are you the fucking pendejo who took my niece?” her aunt asked fuming.

You are intruding on my lands, and I will not take any disrespect from the likes of you.”

He may have been speaking to a wall, as her aunt continued berating the God King of Talokan as if he was just another young man who did something stupid.

Even worse, she is doing this in Spanish which angers him more.

Even much much worse Livia accuses him of kidnapping her and taking advantage of Eva’s questionable state of mind.

Calls him a shameless Don Juan and her a naïve mocosa in the same breath.

K’uk’ulkan dismissed his soldiers to lower their weapons and squares up with a woman that somehow looks down on him despite barely reaching his chin.

“I didn’t take Eva by force; she willingly came with me.” He is imposing, not like he has ever been with her. No, even that night she summoned him, Ch’ah had treated her with gentility and as if they were equals.

Here he is the King K’uk’ulkan, not Ch’ah Toh Almehen who was too horny and comfortable with her to care about things like rank.

“I want to hear it from her, I do not know you and I do not trust you.” Her aunt crossed her arms and had no fear in her rich brown eyes.

“He didn’t kidnap me, tia, I left with him because I wanted to.” Eva reminds her and adds a sincere apology.

“I am sorry for making all of you worry, especially after saying I wouldn’t disappear again, but I didn’t want to risk everything with a telephone call or a letter.” The witch apologized to her aunt who was still mad as hell.

“She’s always been selfish, you know, always thinking about herself first and then remembering she has people who care and are worried sick thinking the worst has happened to her.” Livia doesn’t accept her apology and complains about her to Ch’ah.

“Eva is safe with me; I would never let any harm come to her. As Queen of Talokan, she would have no reasons---”

Livia makes a noise that is somewhere between shocked gasp, an incredulous scoff and a bitchy laugh. “My father is turning in his grave, a king, Eva?”

Livia asks her incredulously. “A king?!

“I told you the real issue they would have been you being royalty.” Eva whispered as her aunt rambled almost nonsensically. Something about her plans to take down the English empire using Eva and how Eva finds the one monarchy their family would wholeheartedly support.

“How did you find us here?” K’uk’ulkan asked Santiago who’s nonchalant enough to try and smoke a cigarette only to have Livia take it for herself after finally running out of words.

“I can find my cousin anywhere; it is one of my specialties along with espionage and murder.” He took a second cigarette and offered them and Nacho who refused. “I am Santiago, this is Israel who prefers Ignacio and his mother, Livia.”

“My people call me K’uk’ulkan, but my enemies call me Namor.”

---

notes:

waay: mayan,witch (genderneutral word)

curandero: spanish, witchdoctor

nool: mayan, grandfather

nagual: nahuatl, male witch

chilangos: spanish, Mexican slang meaning person from Mexico City

marruecos: spanish for Morrocco

pendejo: spanish, dumbass

mocosa: snot nosed brat

tia: spanish, aunt

[evita-shelby]

Of Gods and Witches

Chapter 14

Taglist: @thegreatdragonfruta @v3d3rl1cht @urgonnaneedabiggership

Gif by @diver5ion

1919

“She’s married, she’s possibly pregnant, but at least the baby will be born on the right side of the blanket.” Livia tells her brother when they meet up at her fifth avenue palace she now owns. Belonged to the Astors before Livia made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

He is one of us, Santiago had said in a coded telegram. He may be immortal.

Not a god, but a mutant who she fell in love within the course of three weeks.

You would think her immortal lover could have waited.

But, for all intents and purposes, Eva drowned, and the man Meche saw was just Jesus Christ coming to collect her soul to heaven.

Her body disappeared as if by magic and in five years ---in accordance to the clauses in Dominga's will--- it will be the sign the church needs to make her a saint.

Saint Eva of Veracruz.

He wants to scoff. She killed several priests and at least one nun, not counting that she had been recovering from all that pill popping, smoking and drinking and that her peers assumed she was on the verge of insanity.

“No, she’s too cautious to get pregnant, Eva’s impulsive, but not stupid.” Patricio shook his head as they went over the lost of specifications of everything on Eva’s list.

They were covered for the next four business quarters with a book worth of shipping schedules for all legal and illegal ventures.

Signed ‘all my love, Eva’.

----

1923

“Fatherhood suits you, in kuxtal.” His witch kissed him in greeting and made no attempts to take the baby from him.

“You know any other man would be more than happy to ignore their child.” Eva points out as he held their infant daughter instead of finishing his work for the day.

He was never this distracted by anything, and now the God King of Talokan will use any excuse to be with his baby daughter and his wife.

“I think we’ve established I am not any other man, yaakunaj.” Ch’ah had waited more than a century for a child of his own blood. A child he didn’t have to return to their mother and father, a child he loved ever since he held her and heard her in that vision four years ago.

Itotia, whose name means dancer in Nahuatl.

Itotia, who has little wings on her ankles and dark curls like his.

Princess Itotia of Talokan.

“Sometimes I can’t believe this is all real.” He admits to his wife.

“Neither can I. Sometimes I wonder if this is all a dream.” She said running her fingers through their daughter’s hair.

“I love you.” the words come unbidden now, she had said them first and then he struggled to say them.

And then one morning, after she had sucked him into one of her visions again, he said it the moment their souls were slingshot back into their bodies.

I love you, but please don’t do that, in yatan, he had been out of breath and nauseous and yet all that was forgotten when his wife asked him to say it again.

“In every universe in which you and I exist, I love you too.”

----

2025

“Come back to me.” she said putting the pearl necklace he once gave her on him.

This was their deal; he wears them to battle and returns them when he comes back to her and their girls.

“In every universe in which you and I exist, I will return to you, in kuxtal.” He kissed her like he may never do so again. A stupid fear, but a real one.

When half of the life on the planet disappeared in 2018, Ch’ah Toh Almehen was left with just the pearls in his hands as his life was snapped out of existence.

His wife and children gone and he had not been able to stop it.

Half of Talokan had died with them, and many had been killed by the consequences of that sudden disappearance.

The ocean was filled with dead in ways it had never been before, those didn’t get resurrected, those who were only died in watery graves as people scrambled to remember where the others had fallen in 2018.

The thing about magic is that you must be careful on how you word things and these Avengers did not think about consulting witches or sorcerers or even someone who had remembered those old stories.

But they had come back and yet the signs are all there. Something is coming, something worse than Thanos the Titan and his infinity stones.

K’uk’ulkan's worst fears had come true in the meantime. Wakanda had tried to be as noble as its dead king and now the Americans had discovered how to track vibranium.

They kept getting closer and now they were too close for comfort.

The smaller cities and outposts had been able to move out if harm’s way, but Talokan was too large to move now and it would never move again.

He cannot lose more people he loves because of the whims of the surface dwellers. He needs Wakanda to clean up the mess they started or pay the consequences for their so called good intentions.

Vibranium could not be shared to all.

Countries had been enslaved and pillaged for centuries because of lesser resources, if only someone had reminded T’Challa that when he foolishly showed those greedy leeches his hidden kingdom.

And yet, that is not the only thing threatening those he loves and holds dear.

“Will you tell me what you’re hiding when I return?” The king of Talokan whispered softly when they parted.

“Maybe.” She said. No, her eyes said.

She is hiding something; something is wrong with her and Eva thinks he wouldn’t know when she lies after a century together.

When her husband leaves, Eva removes the glamour.

His witch is ill and it kills him to know she refuses to let him help her. To save her one more time.

----

She hates lying to him, but him losing them seven years ago nearly destroyed him.

He can’t know she is dying.

The thing about magic, is that sometimes there are limits to it.

She can pretend she is well, but the magic can sometimes breed a certain type of cancer that no one can cure.

King T’Challa had died of it, Jane Foster as well and now Eva, the Witch Queen of Talokan will join them.

The witch is running out of time and has played the last card up her sleeve, and like the coward she is, she doesn’t have the courage to tell her husband the truth.

But she must, she must prepare him and their daughters for the inevitable.

She will tell him when he returns, the witch tells herself as she lies down in the hammock and ensures her daughters cannot see her like this.