Gold Standard

Tony sits surrounded by books in the library. Why he hadn’t thought of this sooner he had no idea but the information he was gathering was astounding. He had noticed one of the Dora Milaje sneak in after him some time ago- probably because they weren’t big on trusting foreigners in Wakanda- but he didn’t mind much. Being watched as he read wasn’t much of a problem for him; it wasn’t like they were going to find anything interesting.

Science and technology was what Tony was most interested in, but he had plenty of general cultural questions and that usually required dipping into some history. He hadn’t much expected to be reading about religion but a lot of the local culture revolved around cats and Bast the panther god so he figured it was relevant information. He hasn’t heard T’Challa mention anything about religious rituals but the books didn’t say much either. Tony figured it was one of those things Wakandans didn’t write down on the off chance a foreigner got ahold of the information. It was something he noticed a lot of, gaps in the history, almost like someone purposefully removed pieces of history in all sorts of areas. Why someone would do that Tony had no idea, aside from not wanting someone on the outside to get that information. But what were the chances? So far his reading suggested Wakanda was pretty brutal when defending itself.

“Tony?” someone asks and he jumps, having found himself lost in questions about Wakanda’s green spaces. “How long have you been in here?” T’Challa asks, looking down at Tony from across the table he was sitting at. Shit, he hadn’t even noticed him until he spoke and Tony looked up.

“I don’t know, a few hours, maybe?” he says, frowning.

“Eight and a half hours,” someone else sys from behind him. Tony jumps again, looking behind him to find some other Dora Milaje behind him, and not the one who initially followed him in.

“You have spent nearly nine hours in here?” T’Challa asks, sounding shocked.

“Enough to notice that there are clear gaps in the library though that could be due to his strong ability to do research,” the Dora Milaje says.

“I just wanted to know about science here, honestly. No need to look so surprised, it isn’t like I get an opportunity to see how an isolated country’s scientific development occurred without the interruption of the outside world and globalization every day.” It was all fascinating information too- Wakanda’s scientific method was quite different than America’s.

“If you wanted to know about scientific progress why is there a book on Bast in your pile?” T’Challa asks, frowning.

“Because technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I had to know what was going on historically and that involves a bit of cultural understanding, which seems to be pretty tied to religion here, so I had to read about Bast to understand what the hell was going on. There’s no sense in only gathering knowledge in one area when all the other stuff going on around it influences what’s happening technologically. Like the atom bomb- you can’t understand why it came into existence without understanding what was going on in World War Two, and you need to know about the background battles to know why the Japanese were targeted with the weapon later. If you don’t do that you just have the knowledge of this horrible invention that spontaneously popped up for what seems like no reason. Technology and science has a history, you have to know about it to properly understand it,” he says. Obviously. Or maybe not so obviously given the look on T’Challa’s face.

“This one is not horrible,” the Dora Milaje says to T’Challa before walking off, presumably to go hide in the shadows again.

“That is incredibly intelligent,” T’Challa says. Tony isn’t sure if he should be offended that T’Challa looked so surprised or not.

“Well yeah, I’m a genius,” he says. People seemed to forget that often and he had no idea why- it wasn’t as if he lacked the proof of his intelligence.

T’Challa sits down across from him, carefully moving some books around so he can still see Tony. “From my understanding of America you do not study knowledge this way. You study things separately, as if they do not intersect, so the fact that you have decided that this is the way you understand technology is surprising to me. Unless I have misunderstood how Americans gather knowledge academically?” he says, voice rising at the end slightly to make it more of a question than a statement.

“You haven’t. I just find it useful to know why things started developing the way they did, I find it gives me a better understanding of technological development. I mean when I make tech now it’s because of the cultural circumstances I’m in. Why would I have focused on clean energy if global warming wasn’t a concern? Why would I have focused on weapons before that if my country wasn’t involved in war? When I invent now I consider how it is culturally useful, so why wouldn’t I do that with the past?” It was a logical way to process information, at least in his opinion. Obi had some things to say about the way he did research, as did his father, but neither one of them had a counter argument to his pointing out that they didn’t just invent things, they invented things specifically to sell in today’s cultural market. Clearly, to him, this indicated that he was correct and they were idiots.

“And what did you learn about Wakanda?” T’Challa asks, sitting back in his seat a little.

Tony sits back in his seat and examines the books in front of him, trying to figure out how to organize the information. “Well, Wakanda used to have a pretty big mining industry, which ended when you noticed environmental change because the panthers started acting weird. Interestingly you guys jumped straight into figuring out alternative methods of extracting resources from the land without messing with the panther’s habitats. And clean energy became a thing too, once you all did more research into how your environment was reacting to your previous mining. And then there was a bunch of green space initiatives, but those seem to be more because someone thought they would look cool because you weren’t that damaged by the mining so. The buildings do look cool, though,” Tony says.

The pictures showed some really cool gardens built into the walls of buildings. He kind of wanted to steal an idea or two for SI because he had ideas and he had walls that were doing nothing else. Might as well make them plant holders, though he’d have to make sure the walls could support the plants. It’d give the secretary on the bottom floor something more thrilling to look at.

“Is that everything?” T’Challa asks, lips quirking up a bit.

“What? No, the panther thing made no sense to me so I ended up reading a bunch of stuff on Bast, which was mostly useless. No offense- I don’t do the religion thing. Anyways, after that and reading on clean energy I ended up reading about your scientific method- way different than what I’m used to in America, so I tried to find out why you tested things the way you do, which somehow led to me reading on politics? I don’t know, but I did learn that despite technically having a monarchy Wakanda runs on a democracy- that’s useful. Oh, and you all have a thing for candied walnuts.” The walnut thing was pretty inexplicably but when he had read some stuff about pop culture candied walnuts were strangely popular.

“They taste good, leave us be,” T’Challa says. “You seemed to have learned a few things. Interestingly you’re the only one who has taken an interest in learning about Wakandan culture outside of what you are being exposed to.”

Tony’s eyebrows shoot up, “really? But you’ve got much interesting stuff to learn about. You have a lot of different environments here, more than I would have expected for a country so small. Please tell me the stuff I read about panthers just roaming around is fake though, I do not want to run into any jungle cats.” The house cats, those were lovely even if Jujube hot herself stuck in ridiculous places. Jungle cats, though, were not on his list of things he was looking to deal with any time soon. Or ever, honestly.

“We generally let the panthers roam, yes. They do not tend to go near people anyways, and when they do they are generally friendly,” T’Challa says.

Tony’s eyes grow wide, “you do what? Jungle cats eat people!” he says.

T’Challa shakes his head, “the panthers are disinterested in people. The only time they have made any attempt at attacking is when they were being forced out of their environment- which we brought on ourselves.”

“Yeah, uh huh, note to self I am never leaving this house ever.”

*

T’Challa shakes his head at Tony’s worry of being eaten by panthers. Foreigners, they did not understand. But he was impressed with Tony’s taking an interest in his culture when no one else has. He was starting to wonder if Tony was really disinterested in this marriage arrangement at all considering he was particularly good at attracting T’Challa’s attention. With a bit more prodding Tony provides a brief history of the country too, including several civil wars that were eventually resolved with the modern voting system. It would not do well to have the country fighting with itself so they learned other ways to resolve their issues.

Tony also seemed to have picked up on how the jail system worked after making the mistake of looking up how laws around foreigners worked. Not well for the foreigner was the answer, though Wakanda could not afford to have much of its population in jail at any one time so they learned new ways to deal with punishment and crime too. According to Tony their system worked similarly to the jail system in Scandinavian countries. T’Challa had no idea what was going on in Scandinavian countries to know if Wakanda’s jail system functioned anything like theirs. He also picked up on the history of the Dora Milaje when he had looked up the voting system and democracy.

Their original purpose had been something like what was happening now with T’Challa. Wakanda would take women from various areas of the country and the King would choose which best suited him- meaning none of the areas quarreled over which area had more political pull because they all had an equal chance of gaining that political power. Of course this did not work well for long- certain areas became more desirable than others and the purpose of the Dora Milaje shifted in purpose to be protectors of the King- balancing power out again. They were still taken from all over Wakanda and typically went through a lifetime of training to gain their positions. They were all volunteers, but the job was prestigious- there were a lot of volunteers. Tony had been surprised that they were all women, which T’Challa figured was fair given the strong history of sexism in his own country.

“They were women before, why not keep them women? They go through almost as much training as I do,” he says, not thinking his words through before they were out. He mentally curses himself in his native tongue.

“You go through training? For what?” Tony asks, head tilted to the side.

T’Challa sighs and sits back in his seat, “that, I am afraid, was information I was not supposed to give out. You have noticed the gaps in the library- they are no accident. There is a lot of information we do not want foreigners to have and that is a bit of information I was to keep to myself. What is left in this library is intended to help any of my supposed suitors to understand the culture here better without gathering information that is abundantly important.” They did not need to know about Black Panther and the rest of the traditions surrounding Bast and their cats. They just needed to know that Bast existed and that cats were important.

Tony frowns, “I think your prison and voting systems are both pretty important- why keep that here? Knowing how a political system works can give a person a lot of power- trust me, the government and I have tangled on more than one occasion and every time the government has been forced to crawl away with their tails between their legs. It’s kind of fun,” Tony says, grinning.

Yes, so T’Challa has read in his research. Tony was quite good at twisting things to go his way- something that would be incredibly useful in politics. He was also quite good at being an out and out ass like he had been when he came back from Afghanistan. The government was not fond of his breaking his weapons contract but Tony played the media and his own image well and they were forced to let Tony out of his contract while Tony literally blew Congress kisses. T’Challa wanted a man like that by his side if for no other reason than his own inability to be so rude himself. He loathed diplomacy but it was necessary to keep things polite given that world politics gone wrong tended to end in wars. The rest of the world was not Wakanda- they did not have the same heavy communication and voting system that they did. Unfortunately.

“That is true- but you are not a citizen. You have no rights here so your knowledge is relatively useless. And the jail system is irrelevant to you too- foreigners are not treated with nearly as much dignity and respect as Wakandan citizens are. Something I disagree with personally- but the country is resistant to change in that area. It will take convincing to get the votes to change our laws in regards to foreigners.” It was unfortunate but true. T’Challa was hoping Wakanda’s exit into the rest of the world would make the country more comfortable with change but that would be slow moving.

“If your country is so resistant to foreigners what am I doing here? And the rest of the alphas?” Tony asks.

The question is more than fair. “You are here because my father briefly made use of a law that is rarely enacted that gives the King the power to override the legal system. The country never would have agreed to this arrangement and he knew it- but we need the rest of the world now as much as we might not want to admit it and so he gave the country no choice but to change.” Wakanda had kept quite about it for the most part but the citizens did not need to speak for him to know they did not approve. The tension was heavy in the air and his father must be feeling extreme pressure to do things right.

“So theoretically T’Chaka could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted? What was the point of making such a complex voting system if your King can override it at any moment? Seems pretty useless to me. But out of curiosity what do you think of your father’s decision to ignore the law and what the country would have wanted?” Tony asks. He leans forward some in interest, clearly invested in what T’Challa was going to way. It was not something he saw a lot of from the other alphas. They spent more time explaining why they were the best option, or their own cultural customs, or whatever else they deemed important. Things like politics, economy, and trade were popular discussion topics and it bored T’Challa half to death.

“He could, in theory, but it is not likely that Wakanda would stand for that. Should he abuse his power he would not be worthy of the- of his place as King,” he says, stumbling over his words slightly as he corrects the information he was giving Tony as it came out. Again- the knowledge of Black Panther and Wakandan traditions around their King was not knowledge Tony was to be privy to. “As for my opinion… that is complicated. I understand why my father chose this route- why Wakanda needs it. So objectively I agree. But morally I do not agree with ignoring the wishes of your entire country without giving them some time to absorb the idea and let them come to the same conclusions he has. We have time; he could have used it to bring the country up to speed without thrusting us all into situations we are not comfortable with.” The issue was complicated but T’Challa still felt that Wakanda would have eventually caught up with his father’s considerably liberal views of foreigners, the country just needed time. They should have been granted that.

Tony nods, “hmm. So you consider moral and objective knowledge different, then? I came across some of that in your science development but I’m not certain I understand it.”

“Yes- we have a few different forms of knowledge. In America, from what I understand, there is objective knowledge and junk knowledge. You are not fond of anything emotional or associated with the body. Personally I find that strange given that body knowledge and emotional knowledge are both very important but I am not from your culture. Of course I do not understand it. Mostly because moral reasoning is often used in law and policy in America- which conflicts with the prevailing notion that objectivity is key. In Wakanda we have three dominant sets of knowledge. Body knowledge, emotional knowledge, and what you would refer to as objective knowledge. We try to incorporate those three forms of knowledge into the way we study things- which is probably where you got confused.” It was difficult for him to follow research sometimes and he is used to the knowledge systems of his country, and he was quite educated.

“Right. You’re also right about America, though I’d argue that capitalism influences how we see things. People don’t like talking climate change because it costs more to be environmentally friendly, for example. But back to you. So to use the environmental stuff from your mining industry as an example, the objective knowledge there would be the actual science and fact of the changing environment. But the body knowledge, would that be like… the panthers?” he asks, frowning a little.

“Yes, the panthers could count. But there were certain areas of Wakanda that were more affected than others- meaning certain populations were more at risk of feeling the effects of the environment than others. They would have also counted in body knowledge,” he says. It had been difficult, according to his grandfather, to convince people that there was actually a problem with their environment- at least until the panthers began to act strange.

“Okay, that makes sense. And the emotional knowledge in that case, that would also be the panthers right? They started acting weird because their environments were being affected and people didn’t want to piss off your god, Bast? Am I getting that right?” Tony asks.

“Mostly. Emotional knowledge would have also been tied to the people in the more affected environments, they were not fond of their poisoned environments and it would have been morally cruel to let them suffer for so that everyone else could live if we could change that. It was a slow process but once the panthers got involved people were far faster.” Tony nods as he takes the information in, processing it for several moments before he speaks again.

“So… people cared more about the panthers than the people? Seems kind of shitty to me. People should have cared before the possibly wrath of a god came into play.”

“Bast is a rather peaceful god- do not confuse her with your Christianity. People were resistant until the panthers got involved not because they were suddenly afraid of wrath, but because people lie and panthers do not. It is easy to deny the lived reality of a person, but the panthers would not have started moving into human cities unless there was something wrong with the places they lived before. And Bast would not be fond of poisoning the panthers however peaceful she may be.” Not that she was used as a tool of fear like he seen in several other places. Historically that has been false, but no one had a clean history.

Tony smiles, “oh Christianity can be plenty peaceful too, it’s just that the loud ones get the most attention. So Bast, tell me more about her. I’ve gathered that she’s a panther- and a woman- that’s pretty odd considering what I’m used to. Women seem to have a lot of power here- historically too, or am I missing the women’s liberation movement in the library gaps?” Tony asks, drawing a laugh from T’Challa.

*

“America?” his father asks, frowning.

“They are a global superpower- they are not a bad choice,” T’Challa says. His father wrinkles his nose more.

“They are nosey- they like to stick themselves into situations they have no business being in,” he says.

T’Challa sighs, “I am one hundred percent certain that America is not alone in that. He read about our culture, and asked questions, including questions about omega history. I appreciate that.” No one else has asked- they’ve all been dancing around the elephant in the room while Tony just out and out asked. Not that T’Challa could give him much- omega history was scrubbed from the library for a reason. Neither his father nor the Dora Milaje had wanted anyone to know the history of omegas in an attempt to use that historical and current cultural knowledge to their advantage. But he still appreciates the efforts Tony put in.

“T’Challa, you cannot just think of your heart, you have to think with your head too,” his father tells him.

He resists the urge to roll his eyes just barely. “I know that. But like I said- America is a global superpower and Tony would know all the right people. And America does make it their business to know what other people are doing- that can be useful. Besides, the next best option is Russia and I am not certain that sends the right political message to the rest of the world considering the political climate there at the moment,” he points out. America, while disliked by a lot of other countries, was still politically and economically powerful. In all honesty he did not know how he felt about Russia considering he was part of a population they were not fond of given his sexuality. He rather liked his rights as a person, and America at least had marriage equality.

His father looks pained, probably because he agreed with T’Challa but angering Russia seemed like a foolish idea. And Natasha was wonderful even if her country was… questionable politically, at least momentarily. She had a lovely sense of humor and was particularly fond of memes- which were a whole new concept to T’Challa. “What about the woman from Ethiopia, they are close geographically. And I like the one from Britain,” he says.

He wrinkles his nose, “I am not fond of the woman from Britain. Are all people from Europe that pale? Even Tony has some color to his skin, though apparently that is because he is Italian. So I suppose some Europeans get some sun. And the woman from Ethiopia is alright, I suppose, but I am not marrying someone because their country is above mine. That is poor reasoning.” Egypt had a thriving economy, at least, so if he wanted political ties to remain in the continent the woman from Egypt was more interesting than the one from Ethiopia.

“Oh, the pale Europeans. The other night I thought I saw ghost but he turned out to be a small man Poland,” his father says, hand over his heart.

T’Challa considers this for a moment before bursting out laughing, “I am glad I am not the only one startled by pale skin in the night. I did not expect them to be so… bright,” he says. Which made sense considering he was not exactly used to seeing pale skin at night in a country of people who were not pale. There was the brief year of school he had done in Britain but even then the pale skin threw him. To be fair they seemed just as thrown by his darker skin depending on the location.

“Well, I suppose if you did marry Tony you would not have trouble locating him in the dark. That might be useful considering how impulsive he is. Do you have to like that one?” he asks, back to wrinkling his nose in disapproval.

“If you wanted to political ties to Ethiopia you should have waited to marry Shuri off, she would have married someone from Ethiopia.” She was not fond of the idea of foreigners, much like the rest of the country, if his father wanted ties close he should have gone with her.

His father sighs, “you always were a bit of a free spirit,” he says in a resigned tone. Good, because T’Challa was going to do what he wanted, seems how he was supposedly allowed to do that. Perhaps that will teach his father a lesson in trying to stick him into situations he expressly told him he was not comfortable with. And besides, there were worse choices than America as far as political ties went. There were certainly a significant amount of better options too, but he wanted to be married to someone he liked and actually wanted to spend time with, not someone who was politically useful and that was it. If that turned into his primary motivation he would live a boring life and he had no interest in that. Like his father said- he has always been a bit of a free spirit and Tony understood that because he was a free spirit too, even if he was a bit uh, freer than T’Challa himself.