Inimitable

Nakia sighs, handing Tony the plate of fruits she brought with her. “I don’t understand the resilience to helping people,” she says.

Tony does- the concerns people brought up aren’t entirely baseless. It’s just that their worries may not apply to the current situation at hand. “I had a conversation with Everett the other day that gave me an idea,” he says. Nakia raises an eyebrow so he continues, “intellectually you can understand something, but if you don’t see it or experience it all you have is your imagination. And human imaginations kind of suck. If you really want to change T’Challa’s mind about Wakanda’s resources maybe we should just show him what everywhere else looks like.”

“How do you think you’ll convince him to do that?” Nakia asks, frowning.

Tony grins, “ye of little faith. I’m American- I’ve spent all this time learning about Wakanda so I figure it seems like a fair request to ask T’Challa to learn about my country. The fact that I have an alternative agenda is somewhat irrelevant. Beyond that I think T’Challa will make the choice you’ve been trying to get him to make for years.” He’s a good man, and a smart one too. He’ll find a way to solve the problems that absolutely will arise from Wakanda extending help to other countries.

Nakia smiles, nodding, “I knew you were a good choice for this. That’s actually a good idea.” And not his only idea either. T’Chaka certainly wouldn’t like his backup plan but someone had to clue T’Challa in on the cousin Tony found when he tracked down N’Jobu’s record in America. Its not something he’s going to tell T’Challa without telling his father first, but its not something Tony is willing to keep to himself anymore. One dead man is bad enough, but a dead cousin too- that’s a little too much for him. That and he suspects that T’Chaka doesn’t know about Erik, or at least his death.

“Thank you. I know that there’s going to be problems, but I have enough faith in T’Challa to figure it out. And you’ve got those war dogs around the world to test the political climates around the reveal in other countries and monitor what’s going on so that’s a bonus at least,” he says.

His words startle Nakia and she frowns, “you know about the war dogs?” she asks, clearly surprised.

No, he hadn’t until he looked into N’Jobu’s records, but there have been hints of them before now. Tony just put the pieces together. “Yeah- I uh… was doing some research and found the information,” he says. It’s not really a lie anyways but Nakia clearly doesn’t think he’s telling the truth.

“You just stumbled upon information like that?” she asks, suspicious.

“No. But I wasn’t actively looking for it either. Look, I’d say more but its not really my place to out the King’s secrets,” he says.

“What secrets?”

He sighs, “I’m hoping he’ll tell you that.” If not he has a sneaking suspicion T’Challa will. He doesn’t like secrets and playing games- its part of why he dislikes diplomacy- and keeping a secret like this is not something he’d be willing to do. That and politically speaking it might do some good to give the border tribe a real explanation as to why T’Chaka never went after Klaw anyways. This outraged the entire country, but especially the border tribe, and T’Chaka skated by on the amount of faith and trust people put into his rule. In America that never would have gone as smoothly and the border tribe probably would have turned into a militia. It still amazes Tony how things run here.

*

T’Chaka looks pleased to see Tony for about ten seconds. “N’Jobu,” he says and the king’s face goes sour.

“You can’t leave well enough alone, can you? Nosey American,” he mumbles the last bit under his breath in Wakandan. Too bad for him that Tony understood that.

“You should have guessed that any American you brought here would be nosey, but especially one that’s straight up known for playing in all kinds of sandboxes I have no right to play in. I hacked the Pentagon for fun in my teens, T’Chaka. You probably should have considered that. And N’Jobu’s kid. You just left him in America?” So much for Wakandan interconnectedness, the kid was just left to die. His mom had been in jail and died there and T’Chaka killed his father. He had no one else left.

“I had no choice,” T’Chaka says and Tony rolls his eyes.

“Bullshit, T’Chaka. You just left the kid to die for your own mistakes, how cruel is that? Imagine if N’Jobu did that to T’Challa. How would you feel then? Would you think it was just as necessary to leave your own kid to die?” he asks. He hadn’t intended to sound so pissed off but he’s always had a soft spot for kids and thanks to Howard he has a special kind of hatred of people who endanger them. On the whole T’Chaka is a decent man and a good king, but in this particular instance he was unspeakably cruel and Tony just doesn’t know how those two people could exist in the same body.

“What are you talking about?” someone else asks from the doorway and Tony turns to find T’Challa and Shuri both standing there. He sighs and looks back to T’Chaka.

“He asked,” Tony warns. “Either you answer or I do. You might want to come up with a better explanation for what happened to their cousin too because your current excuse fucking sucks,” he snaps.

T’Challa looks between Tony and his father, frowning but its Shuri who speaks first. “We don’t have a cousin,” she says slowly, obviously confused.

Tony looks back to T’Chaka, who looks pained but eventually nods to Tony. “I’d say sorry but I’m not. Your actions resulted in the death of a child- N’Jobu might have made his mistakes but at least he didn’t do that.” Tony shakes his head and walks away, leaving T’Challa and Shuri with their father.

*

When T’Challa comes to find Tony he’s pissed off and hurt and Tony doesn’t really blame him. “I’m sorry,” Tony says genuinely. It’s not the kind of thing he intended to happen, but when he digs around in places most don’t he finds things people don’t know about.

“He killed our uncle because he wanted to help poor black communities in America,” T’Challa says, disgust coloring his tone. Tony winces, knowing how much T’Challa cares about his father- that must be painful to admit out loud.

“Yeah. The community he picked is pretty awful too, not the worst America has to offer, but it’s not far off.” In an interesting twist of events Tony has actually tested things in the general area N’Jobu used to operate in because of how bad the environment is there. To test to see if things were working it made sense to test them in areas that needed the work. Everyone else had called him an idiot for it but Tony didn’t see the point of testing environment saving devices in areas where the difference would take weeks to notice instead of days and, on one occasion, hours. Its like those shaving commercials that show some dude shaving a smooth face. If they really wanted to impress Tony they’d shave a damn bear. Except he dealt in tech, not razors.

T’Challa sits carefully next to Tony. “What exactly does your environment look like? My uncle must have seen something awful if he thought betraying Wakanda was the only option to fix it,” he says softly.

Lucky, or maybe unlucky, for him Tony has pictures. Most are from his own neighborhood but the fact that things are still pretty awful relative to Wakanda. He hands over the tablet he’s been working to fix, or more accurately make more like Shuri’s superior designs, for T’Challa to scroll through the pictures. Most of them have Tony taking up most of the frame but the look of the sky alone is an indication of the environment around it. There are other pictures of him on boats though and the water is… well, disgusting to say the least. When T’Challa gets to the first one of the water, a picture of Pepper Tony had taken in her neighborhood, which has a far nastier environment than his own, he gasps.

“Is this even safe to be around?” he asks, zooming in on the water in the background.

Tony shrugs, “technically yeah.”

T’Challa frowns, “‘technically’?” he asks.

“I mean if you live too close its risky, but property in the area is cheap because of the risk. Obviously people with less money live there because they can’t really afford to move elsewhere. This was taken just before I started testing some water purifying designs I was working on- they improved things somewhat but they’re all prototypes and prototypes mean problems. I’d bet our marriage that no one has gone back to see what they’re doing and the chances of anyone but maybe Pepper knowing how to fix them or design something better is like zero.” Pepper might have the knowledge on how to fix his designs, but not the skill, and he doubts many people in the area would have the skill and even if they did they wouldn’t have the tools. Vicious cycle, that.

“And this is what my uncle saw?” T’Challa asks.

Tony snorts, “no what he saw was that on crack. Squalor is a polite way of describing the area he briefly lived in and I can see why he drew his conclusions even if his plan was stupid at best. But I don’t really have pictures of that. I grew up rich and in one of the cleanest areas America has- I got lucky. Here,” Tony says, pulling the tablet from T’Challa’s grasp and finding the right pictures. The fact that he had any is sheer luck but when he finds them he hands them over. Its clear that T’Challa is shocked but Tony is only half sure why. Nakia has been telling him for years about conditions outside of Wakanda so he must have some idea of what the rest of the world is like. “Nakia told you about all this,” Tony eventually points out.

“Nakia told me things were bad, not that these areas are biohazards,” he says.

“You do realize that’s what she meant, right?” Its weird being on the other end of this discussion. Usually when it came to environmental problems Tony is the one with less knowledge on what things really look like thanks to his being from a rich and generally clean area. Granted after living in Wakanda for the last few months his definition of ‘clean and safe’ is now at a much higher standard. N’Jobu must have been horrified when he got to America let alone once he got to the particular area he was in after spending his whole life in Wakanda.

T’Challa sets the tablet aside. “And what would my father have done if I listened to her? If I decided that Wakanda should extend its resources? Kill us too?” he asks softly but Tony already knew the answer to that.

“He might consider Nakia more expendable but he’d never hurt you. He’d just try and talk you out of it,” Tony says. T’Chaka has his issues certainly, but Tony has serious doubts he’d ever seriously harm his son. Its just other people’s children he deemed expendable, apparently.

“I don’t know if I believe that,” T’Challa murmurs. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” Tony wraps an arm around T’Challa, pressing his face into T’Challa’s neck in an instinctive act of comfort and scent marking that he doesn’t think much of until he’s already done it. Strange, he thinks, because he’s never really done something like that with anyone else. Probably because it requires a certain level of trust that he’s never had in a romantic partner aside from T’Challa. Funny how that worked out.

*

So far T’Challa has not been particularly impressed by America, which Tony finds more amusing than anything. He’s used to the country and all its environmental disasters and it’s almost nice to be back home. Its nostalgia speaking, not reality, but Tony appreciates it nonetheless. T’Challa, however, has decided that even Concrete shouldn’t be allowed to walk on the ground he considered contaminated. Concrete had not been happy with her booties and since she kept trying to shake them off and almost falling over he decided to just leave her in the hotel. Tony is sure the hotel staff is right pleased with the yowling animal.

“So that is a dog?” T’Challa asks, pointing at a Chihuahua. Tony nods and T’Challa points at a particularly large Newfoundland dog, “and that is a dog?” he asks and Tony nods again. T’Challa gives him a somewhat annoyed look, “I am not stupid Tony, they are not both dogs. One looks like a large rat and the other vaguely resembles a bear, they cannot be the same.”

Tony lets out a loud snort at that. “What, does Wakanda not have dogs?” he asks. He hasn’t seen any but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. He’s not seen flamingos but he knows they’re in the area.

“Yes but they look more like that dog over there, except with shorter hair and more red. Like those wolves you read about some time ago. They don’t like people and they don’t come in variations as wide as large rat to small bear,” he says.

“Well in America we have a lot of breeds,” he explains.

T’Challa looks around, “that is a dog?” he asks, pointing to a German Shepard and Tony nods. T’Challa points to a pug, “also a dog?” he asks and Tony sighs.

“We’re in a dog park, they’re all dogs,” Tony tells him.

T’Challa looks skeptically over his shoulder, “you mean to tell me that that is a dog?” he asks and Tony turns to see what he’s pointing at.

He sighs, “no, that’s an iguana and I don’t know why its here.”

“If you think that’s weird I saw a man wearing a snake as a scarf,” Okoye says, appearing beside them holding a Starbucks cup. T’Challa frowns at it and she gives him a look, “what? I wanted to see why the Americans liked the brand so much. This is much better than our version of coffee,” she adds. Tony’s surprised considering her water tastes infinitely better but he’s not going to mention that.

“Americans have a weird obsession with demented animals that they have widely labeled ‘dogs’ and reptiles,” T’Challa says and Tony shakes his head.

“Americans definitely don’t have a thing for reptiles,” he says.

“A man wore a snake as a scarf,” Okoye says, clearly confused. Apparently keeping snakes is not something Wakandans typically do. Technically Americans don’t either but it must be more unusual for Wakandans if Okoye’s and T’Challa’s confusion is anything to go by.

“Yeah, some people are weird, that’s not reflective of the whole country,” Tony says.

“Okoye,” T’Challa says, “that is a dog, and that over there is also a dog.”

Okoye gives Tony a confused look and he sighs. “The small one is a Pomeranian and the large one is a husky,” he explains.

“They’re the same species?” she asks. “What kind of genetic mutations did Americans give them?” she asks and Tony sighs.

“Yeah okay selective breeding is still a thing but there’s always been a wide range in dog species. Do you seriously not have dogs?” he asks.

“Not ones that are so different that one could be mistaken for a mop head while the other could be mistaken for a wolf,” Okoye says. “Do you have this many variations of cats?” she asks.

He sighs, “technically there’s some variation but they’re all called cats regardless of breed,” he says. T’Challa and Okoye look offended, probably because Wakanda painstakingly divides cat breeds the way Americans do with dogs.

“This country is terrible,” Okoye says. “But they do know how to make good coffee and strange dogs.”

“I can’t believe you are eating or drinking anything from this country- have you seen the water? I would not even let Concrete drink it,” T’Challa says and Okoye gives her cup a newly shocked look before trying to hand it off to Tony.

“Uh, no. I don’t like Frappuccinos, I have taste and class, thanks,” he says.

“Are you implying I don’t?” Okoye asks and Tony sighs.

“You just didn’t know any better. Point is I don’t drink fake caffeine,” he says, wrinkling his nose at the sugary lie in that cup.