Chapter 7
“So, what stupid thing did you do that got us all arrested?” Natasha asks after the Dora Milaje leave him in his comfy new prison cell.
“I didn’t do anything. One of you assholes killed the king and framed me for it,” Tony snaps, “so I would greatly appreciate if you confessed so I can get out of here and go home in peace.” This was a terrible idea to begun with even if he did like T’Challa quite a bit. He was still confused as to why Obi thought this was a good idea to begin with; it wasn’t as if they were going to gain anything from Wakanda.
Natasha starts laughing, clapping along with her clearly humorless laugh. “Good fucking going, asshole. And I don’t mean you Tony; you don’t have the heart to kill anyone. Not up close anyways.” Yeah, he could have done without the subtle reminder that he was technically a mass murderer but Natasha was funny like that. She was all sharp edges and wit when she wanted to be, and when she didn’t she was actually pretty funny and soft. Not the kind of woman Tony would want to mess with- too much like Pepper. Or Obi for that matter, except Obi was more of an ass than someone with sharp edges.
“Thanks for that. To the fucknut that framed me for murder, though, I really hope you don’t expect leniency. I looked up Wakandan laws and they do not like foreigners on the best of days, let alone when they kill the damn king.”
*
T’Challa literally feels the shift of dynamic as he puts what everyone else perceives as a hold on his father’s murder investigation. Two days, that was how long it took for the respect for his position of King to wear off and for people to remember that he is an omega. Less for Shuri, who questioned him from the beginning.
“I am only suggesting you examine your biases-” Nakia says and T’Challa clenches his jaw.
“Say it,” he says finally, annoyed with her skirting around the real problem here.
“What?” she asks, frowning.
“You do not care about my personal biases- none of you do. I am sure you all remember that you are almost as close to my father as I was. The whole country was, that is how we work. Not one of us can possibly act as if we are completely removed from the situation and none of us would assume that we should be. So unless you have been spending too much time with Americans and adopting their views of objectivity there is no reason for you to tell me my emotions should not be present. Yours certainly are. So say it- you think I am incompetent because I am an omega.” They stare at each other for several tense moments before she finally looks away, clearly embarrassed. Good, she should be. Everyone who was currently questioning why he was trying to conduct a proper investigation should be. He had no desire to prosecute the wrong person.
Plus, as Nakia pointed out, he had reason to not want Tony to be guilty but he is aware of that and he is also aware that he could be wrong. But he still felt that the evidence condemning Tony was too convenient, almost as if it were staged…
“T’Challa,” someone, Okoye, interrupts. “I took your theory on Tony Stark’s innocence into consideration and re-examined his belongings. For one it seems that they were not examined to begin with, which is curious considering I specifically requested that someone go through them. But that is not relevant for the time being. I managed to break into his tablet and find old weapons designs on it, one of the designs closely matched the bomb used to kill T’Chaka but unsurprisingly Tony’s design was far more efficient. Given the construction of each design there is not enough variation to assume the design was different, and if the design was not different there is no reason to assume that Tony would build a lesser bomb. Actually given his design habits he appears to be a perfectionist, which alone suggests he may not have done this.”
Yes, T’Challa knew a little about his perfectionism. He asked Tony about designs once given that they both shared an interest in inventing and he was more than surprised by Tony’s extensive testing process. He tried a few things until his design worked the way it was intended to but Tony did absurd things like throw phones from great heights to test durability. In his defense T’Challa threw Tony’s phone at a wall full force and all it did was bounce off and land on the floor with a flat ‘clack’. It was very anti climatic.
“So what you are telling me is that someone has not taken orders to properly examine evidence in a murder investigation, and that upon going over the missed work you discovered possibly evidence that the initial suspect may not be behind my father’s murder after all. Hmm. I suggest going over all the evidence we currently have to see if we have missed something. I will interview Tony myself,” he says. Both Nakia and Okoye look uncomfortable with that but neither of them spoke out against the idea.
When he has two of the Dora Milaje bring Tony out of his cell for questioning he is more than surprised to find Jujube following along beside him. “She found where I was earlier and decided my lap was a great place to sleep. My ass is sore from sitting in the same position for too long,” Tony complains, wincing when he sits across from T’Challa. Jujube abandons Tony to come sit at his feet, leaning her furry little body against his leg. He would like to pet her but this is an interrogation, he had to maintain some sort of professionalism. The cat choosing to spend time with Tony was certainly something he wanted to know about though, when it was more relevant to him to know.
“After you left me the night my father died where did you go?” he asks, earning looks from both of the Dora Milaje in the room. He ignores the obvious silent judgment he was receiving from both of them to listen to Tony’s answer instead.
“Back to my room. Nothing really eventful happened, I walked back into the house, pissed off that Polish guy, and went to go to bed only to be rudely interrupted by an explosion and being arrested,” Tony says. The Dora Milaje give him disgusted looks but T’Challa knows that Tony is not being insensitive to his father’s murder. He simply has a bad habit of using comedy as a method of deflecting his emotions- something T’Challa has noted long before now.
“The Polish guy?” T’Challa asks, remembering a conversation he had not long ago with his father. I thought I saw a ghost the other night but it turned out to be a small man from Poland. Hmm. It may mean nothing, though, and realistically Tony has had enough time to make something up to deflect suspicion from himself.
“Yeah. Didn’t look impressed when he caught a whiff of you on me,” Tony says.
“Why was your scent on him?” the braver of the two Dora Milaje asks, apparently deeming it appropriate to completely derail the interrogation of a man suspected of killing the King to ask about T’Challa’s potential sex life. He was not having that.
“I am curious, did you ever ask my father about his sex life or did you assume that he was more than capable of picking out his own mate without the input of the Dora Milaje? He had two wives, I am sure that you would have had plenty of time to ask about his mating habits but you did not ask him about why he smelled like an omega did you? Of course not. So do not ask invasive questions about my possible sex life because you deem my actions inappropriate and do not ask such ignorant questions in the middle of an interrogation with the man you have all assumed is guilty of killing the King. In what logical world would my potential sex life take precedence over the assassination of the King?” he snaps. No logical world was the answer.
“He was not capable of murder,” the other Dora says, interrupting the interrogation herself.
“Excuse me?” T’Challa asks, purposefully tempering his tone to sound more pleasant given that he actually wanted to hear what she had to say.
“I am not certain what happened between you but it would have certainly involved scenting. Alphas’ brains basically turn to goo when they scent omegas; they barely have an IQ higher than a particularly stupid goat. He should not have had the focus or brainpower to carry out a under plan, he probably could not remember his own name due to steeping in his own idiot hormones,” she says. T’Challa’s eyebrows lift because she is right- Tony would have been too caught up in T’Challa’s scent to even be useful in a murder plot let alone the driving force. Had he been involved he would not have scented T’Challa, unless of course that was also designed to deflect suspicion… but no, there was no way Tony would have known T’Challa would have shown up exactly where he was.
“I resent that,” Tony says, “alphas do not turn into stupid goats. Scientifically speaking we do lose basically all cognitive abilities but only for a short period of time. Then we’re mostly just… high- it’s the easiest way to describe the feeling. But we do have our cognitive abilities back, they’re just extremely impaired.”
“Are you suggesting that you were capable of killing the King?” the Dora that initially questioned why T’Challa would smell like him says.
“No, I’m just saying it’s scientifically inaccurate to say I’m a stupid goat. I’d be more like Jujube on a good day,” Tony says. “Someone else who was not me killed the King. And honestly, why would I do that anyways? I read your laws, I’d be signing my death warrant and I have no desire to commit suicide by Wakandan law.”
“Good question. You did mention that your business partner had an interest in the country though, you may bot have motivation but he would,” T’Challa points out. Tony could easily be furthering his business partner’s agenda.
“Why would he frame be for the murder? And I’m here; I sure as hell wouldn’t frame myself. I’m a genius and stupid goat mind or not I would not implicate myself in murder. Also that bomb was not something I made. I could tell just looking at the pictures that it wasn’t anything I designed. Someone used a knockoff, probably fucking Hammer tech. That idiot has assumed he can design as well as me since MIT even when literally every piece of evidence does not support that,” Tony says.
All fair points in T’Challa’s opinion. “Out of curiosity how much does he hate you?”
“If you’re asking if he hates me enough to frame me for murder, yeah, he does. But so do a lot of people, shit, there are people here that hate me enough to frame me for murder. I might be a perfectly charming and lovely person but most people don’t agree. It doesn’t help that I have a past of warmongering and profiting off death, but still. Point is a lot of people hate me; a lot of people hate most of the alphas here. People in visible positions like ours tend to be catch alls for any hate because we’re easily recognizable, doesn’t much matter of we did the thing people are pissed about or not. If you’re going to investigate everyone who wants me dead that’s a huge amount of people,” Tony points out.
“The number of people that would be able to successfully infiltrate Wakanda, illegally smuggle in the tools and supplies to build a bomb, and execute an assassination is probably a far shorter list. I will get you paper,” T’Challa says.
*
Tony savors the feeling of the bed he was currently on, happy to have been released from the makeshift prison he was in. A few other alphas have also been cleared, including Natasha, and most were headed back to their own countries. Tony, however, had been asked politely to stay behind given his own sort-of involvement in the crime at hand. The Dora Milaje might have asked but he knew damn well he wasn’t going home so he agreed and figured in the meantime he could hang out with the abundance of cats in Wakanda.
“Sorry about this,” T’Challa says from the doorway.
“Not your fault. Are… are you okay?” Tony asks then shakes his head, “stupid question. Of course you aren’t okay, but will you be okay?”
T’Challa smiles bitterly, “you know you are the first one to ask me that. Everyone else has been too busy assuming that because I am an omega who happens to be fond of you I must be rooting for your innocence. I was not, I simply had no desire to kill the wrong man.”
Tony’s eyebrows shoot up because he didn’t take T’Challa for the killing type. By all means he seemed pretty merciful. “You’re planning on executing your father’s murderer?” It’s a question technically, but it comes out more like a statement. “You didn’t strike me as the type to believe in capital punishment.”
“I am not, but there are exceptions to every rule. I have made an exception,” he says almost harshly and with that he walks away. Tony wants to go after him, to tell him vengeance is a useless endeavor, that it won’t make anything better even if he does kill off his father’s murderer. He’d know, he’s been there and he sent his father’s murderers sky high with the weapons they stole from him and his company and it made him feel worse, not better. But he also knows that when Yinsen tried to tell him that vengeance was useless he shut him down, too caught up in his own hatred and hurt over his father’s murder so he lets T’Challa go.
If T’Challa asked his opinion he’d give it, but if he didn’t he’d leave it because he knew that T’Challa wouldn’t listen if he tried anyways. So he sighs and settles in to enjoy his bed now that he had it, pondering who exactly wanted to frame him for murder. Out of his list Ivan Vankov would be his top pick, but Vankov has been in prison for over a year. When Tony converted the company over to clean energy Vankov popped up claiming Tony stole the design- impossible since he invented it in a cave so he could power a metal exoskeleton weapon he intended to use to escape captivity. But he fought hard anyways, to the point out getting violent and out and out trying to kill Tony. Rhodey saved his ass from him too, now that Tony thought about it.
He was so sending Rhodey a ‘thanks for making sure random assholes don’t kill me’ basket for his efforts. Vankov ended up in jail, he lost his case against Tony, and it turned out his design was different than Tony’s anyways so the whole damn legal battle was useless to both of them. Tony had been some pissed to find out the only reason Vankov even had a vendetta against Tony was because his father stole Vankov’s father’s designs. So once again he was thought of as his dear old dad when hello, he is a totally different person. But unlike Hammer, who is an incompetent twit, or Obi, who was his business partner, Vankov was brilliant and actually capable of framing him for murder. And unlike Obi in particular he had a real motive. He has come to see Tony as the cause of all his life’s problems instead of his really, really bad hair.
Obi… Tony only really added him to the list because technically he stood to gain a lot if Tony off and died, but he didn’t actually think he had anything to do with this and he told T’Challa that. Vankov, for sure, was the top contender. Then Hammer thought Tony was convinced that he was too much of a fool to pull this off successfully. Beyond that there were a lot of other people with weaker motives, mostly annoyed politicians who didn’t like when Tony fact-checked their useless and terrible platforms.