Chapter 3
Tony eats the soup that T’Challa made for him and does his best to ignore his pain. He’s only had a lifetime of experience with pretending like he wasn’t hurt in a multitude of different ways so he thinks he does a good job. “What are soul mates like in Wakanda?” he asks. He doesn’t usually ask much about T’Challa’s country because he knew that Wakanda was still pretty secretive and apparently only half on board with rejoining the rest of the world. T’Challa was the one catching flack from his father’s decision. That was likely due to the political change in the country with T’Challa’s coronation- it was an easy time to make a fuss.
T’Challa sits down on the bed beside him gently, careful to not jostle him too much. “In Wakanda your soul mate, or soul mates if you have more than one, are supposed to be the most important person to you. In my culture people believe that Bast hand picks your soul mate to compliment you and to help you through the trials of life.” He stops there and Tony frowns, head tilted to the side.
“You don’t sound like you believe that,” he says. Or at least that’s what Tony thought given the somewhat abrupt end to the explanation.
For a long moment T’Challa considers his words, “I… it is not that I do not believe that. I do, I just… I do not know why Bast would have given me the soul mate that she did. Nor do I understand why you would have ended up with your own soul mate. I have faith in my gods, but I do not have faith that my suffering has taught me anything. There was nothing to learn from the pain that I endured, or the pain that I can see you are in. It is just hurt and I do not understand why anyone should have to feel that.” T’Challa frowns a little, lips turning down as his eyebrows draw together and Tony can relate.
“Never was a believer myself. People used to tell me when I was young that if I prayed god would answer but I never got the solution I was looking for. Then people told me that god worked in mysterious ways like that made my father’s abuse and alcoholism okay because I was supposed to learn something from it, or just endure it like it didn’t affect me. I decided that if that’s what god was then I didn’t need a higher power.” If god meant for children to ever be hurt and abused than that was no god at all, not to him. If his childhood was the will of some higher power than that higher power was more akin to what people thought the devil was than any god Tony would accept. No child deserved the kind of home life he had, even if they have all that money and intelligence to get out of that kind of life. Sometimes it was worse knowing not everyone had that.
“I would have thought you’re atheism was due to you being a man of science,” T’Challa says, head tilted to the side.
Tony snorts, “someone has been watching too many of my interviews. No, that’s just what I tell the public because no one ever wanted to hear about how much I’ve suffered at the hands of my father no matter how explicitly I told them. So I started playing into popular ideas, things my father has said, and things that people expected me to believe. Like science and religion being polar opposites. The history of science is actually very tied into religion though so that makes no sense to me. My atheism is a lot more personal than I’ve led people to believe.” Because people didn’t listen to him when he suffered. He knows he’s lived a pretty charmed life by all means, he’s seen Rhodey and Pepper both struggle in ways he’s never had to, but he’s struggled in ways they haven’t too. All that money and power he has and he still can’t buy what he truly needed and no matter how much he gives it never seems to be enough, even when he gives his life like he had in New York. A man with everything and nothing as Yinsen once said.
He and T’Challa remain quiet for a long time before Tony speaks again. “You have a soul mate?” he asks, curious. T’Challa never mentioned one and if Wakanda is as soul mate crazy as America that seemed pertinent.
“I did, when I was younger. He is dead now and it was not a healthy bond- much like your bond and Steve’s though you are far less resentful than B’Tumba was. But he felt that he could never live up to my natural talent, that I truly was his better half and he grew to hate me because of it. At least with you and Steve both of you have failed each other, for the most part all I did to B’Tumba was exist.” Tony winces because that’s harsh. No wonder he had doubts about his Bast, Tony would too if he hadn’t done much wrong to irk his soul mate.
“Ouch. That sucks,” he says for a lack of something better to say.
T’Challa’s lips quirk up some, “that is fine now because I have you. You are the first person I have ever met that understands that your soul mate is not always the perfect person for you, that sometimes your soul mate will fail you more than any other person in the world. Most people think that I exaggerate about B’Tumba but you did not. Thank you for that.”
“Thank you for telling me that I deserve better than my bond with Steve. Most people act like he’s suffering for having me as a soul mate, like he’s doing some sort of charity work by staying with me because I’m just that horrible. I mean it’s partially true but still, it hurts nonetheless.”
T’Challa shakes his head, “no, do not say that. You are a good man, a flawed man, but a good man. Steve Rogers is not perfect, and he is no less flawed than you, he is simply flawed differently. People overlook that because they are happy to believe he is the symbol of a past they view as better than their present. What they fail to recognize was that Steve Rogers was very progressive for his time period- he was more a symbol of America’s future than it’s past. Sometimes I think that is why you two were soul mates to begin with- because both of you are accurate representations of your country in different ways.”
It wasn’t wrong- Tony has heard the stories about Steve in his prime, how much he actually stood for the rights of people no one cared about in his time. It has occurred to him more than once that they were both futurists in their own ways, but they both had very different ideas of what the future looked like. Shit, they both had vastly different ideas of what the present looked like.
“Well I guess America is doomed to fail as a country because Steve and I suck together. Did you know that when we met we didn’t even realize we were soul mates we were so mad at each other? We almost got into a fist fight for fucks sakes.” He remembered Steve being so close to him and how much he wanted to punch him crystal clear in his mind- most people remembered their soul mates pretty clearly. Rhodey, back in college when they first met, had described the feeling to him once. The second he saw Tony struggling to reach some book in the library he knew and walked over, grabbing the book off the shelf and handing it to him. Rhodey has sympathized with him being a young genius in MIT too because he had only been fifteen himself at the time. But he remembered asking Rhodey once what it was like and he said it was sort of like coming home to a house you’ve never lived in before but you knew it was right for you.
In all honesty after all the bullshit Tony put him through after that he wasn’t sure if Rhodey still felt that way but they’ve been together a long time and it worked for them. Steve though? There wasn’t a time where they worked for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Steve told me that you managed to save a helicarrier of people after that,” T’Challa says, “did that not smooth things over for you?”
“Not for long. Nothing between us has ever stayed smoothed over for long and this Civil War thing, as the media has labeled it; this just pushed it over the edge. In such a short amount of time Steve and I proved that we not only knew jack shit about each other but we just about took the whole damn world down in our squabble. It made no sense to keep a bond that was toxic to us and deadly to everyone around us.” Steve seemed to disagree, he was still sending frequent texts and calls but FRIDAY blocked them long ago on her own. She was doing well learning what he needed and when and she was on a faster learning curve than JARVIS but that was partially because he knew what he was doing this time around. She still had bugs of course, but she was doing well thus far in her trial run. She was finally learning the proper placement for sass too.
“I suppose that is true. I remember the first time we met- sort of- at the airport with Steve and the others. I remember the look on your face as you pleaded with him to stop and his refusal. It is so strange, it is so clear in my mind. If I did not know you had a bond now I never would have guessed and if I had I would have assumed the bond was one way on your end. Was that common, for you to try while Steve simply ignored you?” T’Challa asks.
Tony shakes his head, “no. I’ve done my fair share of ignoring too but this time I tried really hard it fell flat on its face. We’re obviously not meant to be and this just confirmed what I have been ignoring for years honestly.” If only Steve hadn’t been in such denial the entire time too- then they could have ended this long before the bond was strong enough to make them both sick. God even knew how it was this strong when there was no real evidence for it. Even with Sam and Bucky, who were pretty much in an enemy bond, still cared for one another. Barely, but the last time Sam was out on duty and someone tried to hurt him Bucky drop kicked the guy off a building. The last time he and Steve had meaningful contact they drop kicked each other.
*
Rhodey sits next to Tony breathing hard after attempting once again to walk again. “Are you alright?” Tony asks, leaning forward in concern. Rhodey gives him a look because they’ve been over this a million and one times. He wasn’t any different than he was before and he wasn’t going to stand for being treated differently either.
“It’s a question, Rhodey. It won’t bite,” Tony says.
“It isn’t just a question and you damn well know it. You wouldn’t be asking this question if my legs still worked,” he says and they both damn well knew it was true. Tony never asked if he was okay, usually Rhodey either told him straight out that he wasn’t okay or Tony just knew. There was none of this crap when his legs were still working and there would be none of it now.
Tony frowns, “yeah, obviously I’m asking you if you’re okay because your legs aren’t working. I’m not asking to be an ass, I’m asking because you just suffered a severe spinal injury and ignoring that because you think I should ignore a serious medical issue seems irresponsible at best. I don’t think that you’re incapable if that’s what you’re thinking, and I know that’s what you’re thinking, I know that you’re capable of doing whatever you need to do. I just need to know that you’re okay while doing it,” Tony says.
Coming from anyone else Rhodey would call bullshit in a heartbeat but this was Tony. His best friend, his soul mate, has never been known for lying and that was partially because he sucked at it. But more than that Tony just didn’t see the point in lying- most of the time it was tied to social niceties and he didn’t understand those either. So he calls things how he sees them and Rhodey knows that if anyone were to truly not treat him differently it would be Tony. That didn’t mean he could shake the feeling that Tony believed all the shit everyone else seemed to. He’s pretty used to people assuming things about him on sight but he usually didn’t give off a vibe that implied he was helpless until he added a wheelchair to the mix. Then suddenly people either ignored that he was there in an attempt to not treat him differently, which he found ironic, or they treated him like a goddamn charity case.
The last thing that he wanted was for Tony to be one of those people because he really needed Tony right now even if he’d never say it out loud. Most of the time he didn’t mind talking to Tony about his issues but this… this was something new entirely. All of the sudden he didn’t have the use of his legs, he lost his military career as he knew it, his best friend managed to piss off the entire country that he lived in and like most things Tony did those actions affected Rhodey too, and he had to relearn how to do everything. There was nothing like realizing you took advantage of being able to take a piss without it being an ordeal and how did you ask someone to help you with that? There was only so much he could expect from Tony realistically and even if he didn’t care about boundaries how exactly do you ask someone to help you shower?
Hell, these days flipping over in bed was a whole new experience, or a lack of experience more accurately. But he didn’t know what to do with any of that and he refused to be treated like a child in need of help for every goddamn thing so he didn’t ask. He’d figure it out somehow while he worked on physical therapy.
“I’m fine,” he says finally because he would be, he just needed to figure things out first.
Tony considers him for a long moment before curling his legs to his chest, an action Rhodey was now irrationally jealous of, and lays his head on his knees. “You aren’t fine, I know you aren’t. You’re handling things exceptionally well because, well, you’re you but you can’t possibly be totally okay. Now normally I would be content to completely ignore how your life has changed dramatically because fuck talking about your feelings, that’s for pussies but I’ve spent my entire life running from my problems and it’s never ended well. So I’m not going to let you run- wheel- away from yours,” he says, adding ‘wheel’ in when he realized Rhodey wasn’t exactly capable of running anymore and likely never would be again. Yet another thing that’s changed for him- his entire schedule that usually started with a morning run and a workout. Now he couldn’t do most of the exercises he’d usually do.
“Yeah? And what makes you think I have any problems I need to sort out, hmm? And all things considered I’d say you did pretty well for yourself,” he says. Tony has been through the ringer more than any other rich kid he’s ever met, it was half the reason he didn’t get annoyed with Tony more than he did. Some of his stupid screw-ups were because he genuinely didn’t know how to deal with things. Despite that Tony is wildly successful several times over, even if his personal life was a little lacking. He was still there for Tony though and he always would be.
“Don’t be dense Rhodey, no one goes through what you did without having a few issues later. I don’t know what it’s like to be in a wheel chair but I do know what it’s like to have your body permanently altered in a way that you didn’t ask for. And I know what it’s like to have that have weird and unexpected effects on your life too. The reactor was pretty heavy in my chest, too heavy actually and it restricted my breathing a lot. That meant that being Iron Man was a pain in the ass for one, but there were other problems too. Showering for sure- I needed to figure out how not to fry myself when wet. I couldn’t move the way I used to without causing stress on my heart and lungs, and sex is a real pain when you can’t breathe. So if you have problems I’ll do my best to help,” Tony says earnestly.
Rhodey frowns because he hadn’t considered what the reactor did to Tony’s life, Tony seemed to react just fine but he supposed he was currently doing the same thing Tony did. Keeping all that crap to himself. They remain quiet for a long time after that until Rhodey finally speaks, “do you think I’ll ever walk again- be honest. I don’t want some sugar-coated bullshit that you think will make me feel better. That won’t solve anything.”
“I think you’ll walk again, but it’ll never be the same. First of all you broke your damn spine, that’s going to cause issues, but even if you get back to your previous state of mobility you’ll notice things are different. With the reactor I still move to touch it, defend it from potential attack even though it isn’t there anymore. I still have heart problems and breathing problems, phantom pains, and that isn’t even getting into the psychological shit. It sounds obvious but I didn’t expect the nightmares and not about things I would have expected. Most of them were about the reactor killing me, not the terrorists,” Tony says.
“That actually happened,” Rhodey points out.
Tony shrugs like having nightmares come true were normal for him- or hell maybe it was. Tony once admitted to him that he used to have nightmares about his soul mate rejecting him and here he was sort of living that out. “So it did. The point is I know what it’s like to have things change dramatically on you without you expecting it and I even know what it’s like to come back and want everything in your life to stay the same because fuck being treated differently just because you went through some crappy things. But guess what, things are different and maybe you need to be treated differently now. It isn’t a bad thing and I’d never think less of you for it. So if you need something, ask.”
He shuffles closer to Tony the best he can and lays his head on Tony’s shoulder, grateful that at least someone was there and that maybe, maybe, he got it more than Rhodey thought he wouldn’t. Tony wraps his arm around his shoulder and squeezes a little and Rhodey is grateful for the comfort.