Chapter 9
“I never should have pushed you like that,” Pepper says but Natasha isn’t worried about it.
“Maybe not but it doesn’t bother me,” she says honestly.
“Natasha-” Pepper starts but Natasha cuts her off.
“Look, I don’t like when people claim perfection,” she says. “You pushed me knowing you shouldn’t have because sensuality freaks me out when it actually involves me instead of someone I’m pretending to be, we both know that. But its… its comforting, in a way, to know that you aren’t infallible.” It always set her on edge when people pretended that they were infallible, that they never hurt people or that they would always do the right thing. It was what had set her on edge with Stark- the man had a habit of assuming he was always right.
Pepper doesn’t seem to know what to do with her words, frowning in confusion. “You’re… comforted by the fact that I blatantly ignored limits I knew existed?” she asks skeptically.
It sounded far more disturbing phrased like that but Natasha has long since given up on pretending that her mind worked like other peoples and Pepper was considerably normal as far as mental health went. Actually she was quite ahead in the mental health department with a high degree of stability and dependability. Her record as Stark Industries CEO was almost as impeccable as Tony’s though his near perfect tract record has always confused her. Aside from his antics sometimes affecting stocks and the massive crash his company took right after he announced his stopping weapons production the company rarely suffered. Pepper had the same near spotless track record though Natasha had a far easier time seeing how she managed than Stark.
“Somewhat, yes,” she says, answering Pepper’s question. “See, I don’t really develop relationships and I don’t maintain them when I do. Relationships are a means to an end most of the time, which was how the Red Room intended it to be. I was never meant to make connections but in my attempt to break that part of my conditioning I have noticed a strange trend in people assuming they’re good. People are content to believe that they never hurt people, even get offended when people tell them that they’ve been hurt. So I’m leery when people pretend that that’ll never happen. You can’t make that claim now without me knowing that’s a lie,” she explains. There would be no promises that Pepper would never hurt her, that she was somehow incapable of it, because they both knew that to be untrue. Natasha would settle for the much more realistic promise that Pepper would do her best not to push her like that again.
Real people make mistakes, only fools thought themselves above that. She disliked when people promised her the world when they could only give her a globe. She would have been perfectly happy with the globe but instead people were intent on lying to her to make themselves seem better than they were.
Pepper frowns, opens her mouth, and then shuts it again. She seems to consider what she was going to say for a long moment before speaking. “I understand your reservation in having any desire to develop a relationship with someone who isn’t prepared to be realistic. But you have no problem with people who think themselves infallible. If you did you wouldn’t like Steve Rogers much at all,” she says.
“As apposed to Tony? Yeah, he’s never assumed he was right when he wasn’t before,” she says sarcastically, rolling her eyes. Steve at least took a second to think things through before acting, and he did his best to do the right thing. Stark rushed into everything with only his own assumptions in mind.
“Don’t you start that with me. I have known Tony Stark for nearly two decades and dated him for a quarter of that time, I know him far better than you claim to so don’t you dare suggest I don’t know about his many shortcomings. But he didn’t ignore sixty percent of the world’s countries telling him to slow down before invading them with only his own agendas in mind. I don’t necessarily agree with Tony’s solution, but it was Steve that told him to work as a team. I’m sure you can see where he got understandably confused when he got screwed for trying to work as a team with the rest of the world,” Pepper says and Natasha clenches her jaw.
The Accords weren’t the best solution and she doubted Tony was unaware of the flaws- he did have plans to ratify several sections to better accommodate for their varied powers and of course their rights as a team and as people. But ignoring the information Steve brought from Bucky was negligent at best and he only did so because he didn’t like Steve in the moment and he couldn’t see it. Arrogant. “Steve was doing the best he could with what he had. And we had no choice but to deal with the five other Winter Soldiers, we couldn’t just leave them there for a team of ill equipped baseline humans, they’d be torn apart,” she says. She knew what kind of training they had; she fought Bucky on several occasions and got shot by him once. Five more people with that kind of training and actual willpower would have been nothing short of a disaster that Tony was just content to ignore.
“Steve barely had an argument to begin with and what little he had was lost to Bucky. He talked a big game about agendas for a man who allowed eleven people to die at the hands of a rookie Avenger because someone said Bucky. Not to mention the rest of the damage he caused looking for the man He should have kept his mouth shut about agendas when he is so clearly clouded by his own,” Pepper says fiercely. “And of course baseline humans would have been torn apart by the Winter Soldiers, that’s why Tony risked his ass to help only to have that thrown in his face- once he had actual evidence, mind. The word of a brainwashed man is no word at all, but FRIDAY’s evidence was solid- more proof that Steve’s judgment was clouded.” Pepper shakes her head sharply, her jaw clenching in annoyance.
Natasha has no argument for that because Bucky was Steve’s biggest weakness, always has been. But she still thought he was right. “So you agree with what happened to the team in the end? Being tossed into a supermax prison like that?” she asks, curious to see how Pepper would twist that. There was nothing right about being shoved in a prison to be out of sight, out of mind. They all knew damn well what that was code for in regards to the government. She’s been on both ends of the supermax prison and it was never fun.
Pepper raises an eyebrow, “do I, a baseline human, agree that throwing a team of ‘heroes’ with no intentions of thinking about my life into jail for breaking a laws Steve knew the consequences of is a good idea? You bet your ass I do. I may not agree with the specifics exactly, but I do agree with my right to be kept safe from people like you thinking you’re doing something good for people like me when you aren’t,” Pepper says sharply. She takes a deep breath then but something tells Natasha to keep quiet because Pepper wasn’t done. And Natasha, admittedly, hadn’t considered Pepper’s position as a baseline human either. But she didn’t agree with Pepper’s assessment exactly either. That prison was a great front for doing whatever the government wanted to the people inside of it. Nothing about it was a good idea, she knew from extensive experience.
Pepper takes a deep breath, “Look, I never wanted to get into this debate but maybe it’s best to get this out of the way now. One of Tony’s many shortcomings is his temper. He’s always concerned about doing the right thing but sometimes he cares in very stupid ways. Like threatening terrorists and then ending up surprised when they nearly kill me blowing up his house. That isn’t the only example of an Avenger going wrong and I am rather annoyed that your right to nearly kill me is outside the law when it shouldn’t be. If I almost kill someone I’m held accountable. Why should you get a free pass just because you think you’re a hero? From where I’m standing all of you are fighting for yourselves, not me. But at least Tony knows to admit when he’s being selfish.”
Natasha didn’t know how to argue with Pepper’s last statement because it hits too close to home for her. Her words all that time ago to Loki come to mind- that she’d like to wipe out the red in her ledger. Her reason to fight has always been selfish, but she liked to think that her attempts at heroism didn’t stop being good simply because she had a selfish reason to fight. But Pepper’s argument is still flawed, “you think that we should be tossed into prisons if we don’t agree with how the law is enforced? That no matter how unfair a particular set of laws are that we should just follow them?” she asks because Natasha didn’t much like the sounds of that. The RAFT is a place that shouldn’t exist and it makes her uneasy to think Pepper agreed to any part of it. Jail for lack of compliance to the Accords was obvious- it was a law put forth and breaking the law tended to result in punishment. How Ross decided to go about that, though, made her skin crawl.
She shakes her head though, “no. There’s a difference between saying you should have laws on your actions and that I agree with the huge misstep in the Accords that resulted in the Avengers’ presence in the RAFT. But you are not so special that you get to risk the lives of people like me just because you think you’re doing the right thing. The Accords were designed to protect people like me and I know they weren’t perfect, but I believe in my right to be protected even if I disagree with a lot of what the Accords came to represent.”
*
“Okay seriously, you used to be good at this,” Hope tells Tony, throwing a piece of popcorn at him. “You need to up your game,” she says.
Tony snorts because it’s been years since he’s sabotaged anything of Pym’s, sue him for being a little rusty on how to do it. “Excuse you, Miss ‘I drop dead ants into his coffee with the help of other ants’, my idea was way better than that,” he says. “What kind of monster makes ants throw their own brethren into coffee?” T’Challa looks completely lost on the conversation but Tony isn’t sure if it’s due to his not knowing certain slang phrases that were popular in America, Tony’s and Hope’s relationship, or the ant thing. In all fairness it could be any of the above, especially the ant thing because Tony was lost on that too.
“Was not,” Hope says, “you’ve lost your edge.”
“So have you, ants, seriously?” Tony asks, offended that Tony was being insulted when Hope’s creativity was Scott Lang level bad. That friend of his Tony ended up looking into, Luis, now he was creative. Pym should have picked him for the next Ant Man because he’d at least be interesting. Tony half wanted to toss him into the field just to see if he and Peter would start a full-on conversation about something ridiculous like flower arrangements or something.
“You want to hold Scott Lang hostage, ants are better than ‘you can’t have Lang back’,” Hope says, rolling her eyes at him.
“Since he is in my country I would prefer if you remove him,” T’Challa says, throwing his own opinion into the conversation somewhat hesitantly. The words themselves were confident, but the way he went about saying them makes Tony frown.
“You know you aren’t being held hostage down there, you’re allowed to speak. Especially since holding Lang hostage is kind of pertinent to you due to his current location. I don’t really keep my subs on their knees to shut them up; I just think you look cute like that. So feel free to contribute,” Tony says. He probably should have remembered some of what T’Challa said about Wakandan expectations for subs and explained what he expected in place of that.
“I’ve never been fond of Lang. He shrinks too small and he drinks all the coffee,” T’Challa says, clearly annoyed with this. Tony didn’t want to be the one to break it to him that he wasn’t exactly known for putting on a new pot of coffee either so he keeps quiet.
“I’m not fond of Lang because he told me I didn’t have a conscience despite having never met me. And he snatched Rhodey out of the air and started waving him around like a god damn maraca,” Tony says, waving a hand around. Why Pym thought he was worthy of being Ant Man Tony had no idea. Hope was a better option because she was intelligent, resourceful, creative, and she could punch the hell out of things. Tony was only good at most of those and he did okay.
“I’m not fond of Lang because I trained him to be as good as me to be Ant Man because apparently I wasn’t good enough,” Hope says bitterly. Tony had heard about Lang’s stupid ‘I’m replaceable’ theory but Tony called bullshit. Hank Pym has never cared about his daughter, he didn’t care that she was irreplaceable. He didn’t even know Hope to know she wasn’t replaceable.
“Okay great, so we’ve concluded that we can make a show called ‘Everybody Hates Scott Lang’,” Rhodey says, “but that doesn’t really have anything to do with Pym. Why do we hate him again? I’m a little lost on all your history here,” Rhodey admits.
T’Challa looks relieved, “me too, I do not even know how Hank Pym is let alone why anyone dislikes him. It is nice to know I am not the only one.”
Hope frowns, “the guy who found the Pym Particle?” she asks.
Recognition sparks on T’Challa’s features and he nods, “ah, so he is related to that. Do not look at me like that, for all I knew the man had no relation to the Pym Particle at all and I would look like a fool if I said something.”
“How else did you think Scott got the suit?” Hope asks, still frowning.
“He told me he stole it, which is why I am confused about him being an Avenger now. Americans have some very loose heroing standards,” T’Challa says, a slight bit of judgment to his voice. Well, in T’Challa’s defense Scott could have stolen the suit from anyone, not just Pym, which was likely where the confusion happened.
“In all fairness they let me in,” Tony points out. He had a very uh… colorful past, far more exciting than Scott Lang’s relatively boring past. His entire life could be summed up by ‘Scott don’t break that law, aw you’re in jail because you broke the law’. Tony liked to think he was more accomplished than that.
“In all fairness to you once you stop being a jackass you’re actually pretty excellent. And you own up to being a jackass, always a bonus,” Rhodey says.
“I do not think you are half as bad as people claim you are. I am not an inaccurate judge of character most of the time- so far you are the only person I have ever met that has not acted confused by me,” T’Challa says, leaning into Tony’s leg some.
“That’s because I don’t think ‘submissive’ equals ‘weak’ or ‘subservient’ or ‘lacks all basic personality traits and lives to serve’. I’m not sure it occurs to people that a sub can have a dominant personality,” Tony says honestly. People were often confused by Rhodey too, and Pepper if she was in the submissive role at that time. People seemed to be more confused by his acceptance of this fact.
Rhodey nods, “I can attest to that. People always looked at me weird when I told them I was a sub, now I don’t really get that confusion but I think that’s because of the chair,” he says, looking down at his current seat and mobility tool. Tony noticed that too but he didn’t say anything, not sure if Rhodey would appreciate brining attention to the chair. He didn’t like when Tony tried to help him or otherwise drew attention to his injury so Tony tended to leave things as they were unless Rhodey was really struggling.
“Thankfully you have a brain, Tony. I do very much appreciate that you do not assume that my being a strong person and a king somehow makes he an unworthy or unmanageable sub,” T’Challa says meaningfully. “Perhaps you can get back at your father by stealing the Wasp suit. It worked for Lang,” he adds to Hope, who looks like she’s considering it.
Tony reaches out and places his hand on T’Challa’s shoulder, squeezing a bit and leaving his hand there. It was a simple gesture but he can feel T’Challa relax a little bit against him and it makes him smile. For all of T’Challa’s worry about being a difficult sub Tony found him relatively easy to deal with if he just accepted T’Challa for what he was. Tony didn’t much prescribe to the notion that a sub had to have less power than their Dom to be a decent sub because he felt it undermined the dynamic. If a person was going to submit to you it didn’t matter that they were a king, so there was no reason to be threatened by it.