Chapter 10
Tony wakes up to a call from Rhodey and he groans, “can’t you call at a decent time?” he mumbles into the phone.
Rhodey snorts, “oh screw you Stark, you call me at ass o’clock in the morning on a regular basis so don’t come here with that. You might want to find some Wakandan police or whatever it is they have there because I have some pretty big information,” he says. Tony lets out a thin groan and pulls himself out of bed so he could shuffle off to someone important. Thankfully as soon as he opens the door he finds Okoye standing there, probably guarding his door with was more than a little creepy considering it wasn’t his safety she was looking after.
He holds out the phone to her without really looking and walks back into his room and flops on his bed as soon as she takes it. Rhodey was the real MVP for putting up with his shenanigans this early in the morning because he’d hang up on himself.
*
T’Challa resists the urge to punch something, “you are telling me that you did not notice an entire murder that took place weeks ago that resulted in the original man from Poland being replaced? Do you have any idea how big of an oversight that is?” he hisses at Okoye. “How is that even possible?” The security measures were no small endeavor, his father might have been happy to give him away like a cow but he was at least a well-protected cow. The body had not been found until yesterday night but that was irrelevant, all of those measures they put in place to prove that people were who they said they were failed.
“This… this should not be possible,” Okoye says, frowning.
“Well it is because the Polish man is the wrong Polish man. So I suggest you find out who let him in,” he says harshly.
“You think that one of us let him in?” Okoye asks, clearly offended.
“Do you have a better explanation? Because there is absolutely no way that you would have missed this, none of the Dora Milaje would unless they intentionally overlooked it. So figure it out,” he tells her. Lovely, now he was not safe in his own home due to his security looking to kill the King!
“T’Challa-” Okoye starts but he holds up his hand, effectively shushing her.
“Unless you want two dead Kings on your hands figure out who let the Polish man in!” She purses her lips but nods, heading off to figure out who committed treason. This did not mean that he killed the King necessarily but T’Challa highly doubted the events were unrelated. What were the chances someone looking to steal resources from Wakanda by taking the identity of a conveniently murdered Polish diplomat have no involvement with another conveniently murdered King? Basically none was the answer and he was not pleased with all of this.
*
While he did not doubt his investigating abilities T’Challa was not sure that he ever would have caught the responsible party for his father’s murder. These things took time and, as Tony pointed out not long ago, he was ahead of the curve but that did not necessarily mean anything. Being ahead did not mean getting the final result- his father has proved that twice with both of his wives. He located the responsible political group, but never the direct perpetrator. T’Challa has considered that perhaps those were the same people that let the wrong man into the country but the fringe group of Wakandans did not have the political pull or security clearance to pull off such a thing. That belonged only to a select few Dora Milaje, his father, and himself. His father obviously was not the responsible party, nor himself, so that left someone in the Dora Milaje. Okoye was not impressed, and he was certain that she was not convinced that he was right either. They would see.
The Polish man, assuming he was even Polish at all, sits across from T’Challa blank faced. All the time T’Challa has spent thinking about this moment and he was not entirely sure what to do. Murder was high on his list of things he’d like to do but he holds back, unsure if this was the real perpetrator. “I am assuming you know something about the murdered diplomat from Poland at the very least,” he says finally.
“An unfortunate side effect of my plan,” he says and T’Challa raises an eyebrow.
“An unfortunate side effect. Is that what you call murder now?” he asks, head tilted to the side.
“I assume you want to know why I did what I did,” the man says, “motive always seems to interest people”
“I have no interest in why you thought to murder my father, he is dead and that is presumably because of you considering you have all but admitted to the crime. Your motivations will do nothing to make me feel better. I do, however, need the information for my investigative purposes so by all means, explain yourself,” he says in a rude tone.
The man sits back in his seat, “are you aware of Tony Stark’s past?” he asks, tapping his fingers on the table in front of him. The action is only slightly hindered by his handcuffs.
“That is a broad question,” T’Challa says. There was a lot of information in Tony’s past, a lot of things that happened all at once beginning with his mother’s death in his late teens. His father’s murder and his kidnapping, his taking over his father’s company, then the alcoholism and Vanko all happened within the space of a few years. Then there was all of this mess too, and the knowledge that Obadiah had set up his father’s murder and his own too, but the terrorists got greedy and paid for it.
“With weapons, you know he sold them right?” he asks.
“I also know that he fell victim to his own creations and realized the power he had been abusing. Not many people would have come out of that with his conclusion,” T’Challa says. He knew from experience that people did not like their worldview to be challenged let alone completely rewritten. In the not so distant past he went through a rather awful friendship end with his long time best friend B’Tumba, who was not fond that T’Challa challenged near every assumption he had about omegas. T’Challa hadn’t even been aware that he had a bias against them, likely due to his looking past all the obvious signs. He did not want to change his own assumptions either. In the end it was disastrous for them both.
“What does a change of opinion matter when the damage is already done?” the man asks. “Nothing. My family is dead because of him; I don’t care what caused him to change his mind. His falling victim to his own weapons is poetic justice.”
“And you killed my family in the process of failing to avenge your own, what kind of poetic justice do you think you’ve earned?” he asks.
*
“Wait, wait, wait, back up. Where did you say this guy was from originally?” Tony asks.
“Slovakia. Apparently you had weapons there, they killed his family and he set out to kill you. My father got caught in the cross fire,” T’Challa says.
“None of that adds up. We weren’t even remotely close to the same area in the house, how the hell could he have accidentally bombed T’Chaka instead of me? Not to mention that I have never had weapons in Slovakia, the country is overrun by terrorists. I might not have had much moral fiber then but I sure as hell didn’t sell weapons to terrorists. And how the hell did he get to Poland to fake being a Polish diplomat? And how the hell did no one notice that?” he asks. Way too much stuff didn’t add up here and he didn’t like it.
“He claims someone moved the bomb but I am not certain I believe that. As for how he got to Poland- he claimed refugee status and immigrated, then he began plotting his revenge against you. Smart man too, this was the perfect opportunity. Frame you for the murder of a foreign king, send you to jail, or have you suffer the death penalty. He barely had to get his own hands dirty,” T’Challa notes, looking pained to admit such a thing.
“Well, except murdering the Polish diplomat. And somehow fooling the Dora Milaje,” Tony points out. “Still doesn’t explain how he pulled this off.” All that trouble had with jujubes and this asshole fakes being an entire person without an issue. Wakanda needed to get its shit together.
“One of the Dora Milaje had to know, there was no way that none of them knew about this. And Zemo claims he did not murder the Polish diplomat, just that he stole the man’s identity. I believe he has a partner that is covering his tracks,” T’Challa says.
Tony thinks over things for a moment to try and get things straight. “Okay, Slovakian guy’s family gets murdered via my weapons, he blames me and claims refugee status in Poland. Okay. Then he somehow manages to fake a diplomat’s identity doing god knows what with said diplomat, but then he comes to Wakanda to murder me. That’s convoluted but makes some sense considering I’d be without my usual security detail and isolated in an unfamiliar place. Then he somehow fucks up, kills the king, the Polish diplomat he didn’t kill shows up dead in a hotel room, and he supposedly didn’t do any of that. Oh, and some of the Dora Milaje knew about this the whole time and were surprised that the king showed up dead,” he says.
Yeah, okay that was a bit much. But he’d have to hand it to the guy for making a plan that complicated and only ending up implicated because someone else screwed up and some comment T’Chaka made shortly before his death to T’Challa. That left a few things undone though, like who was this Zemo’s partner and who were the Dora Milaje who let him in? And what were the Dora Milaje looking to accomplish? They probably didn’t want him dead even if they didn’t particularly like him. They sure as hell didn’t want their king dead; Tony has seen the reactions T’Chaka’s death was brining about in the country. Political leaders were way more important to Wakanda than America. He couldn’t imagine crying over the president’s death, shit, he couldn’t even imagine doing much more than wonder who did it.
So the Dora Milaje, they had to have some other goal with this whole thing. “This is making my head hurt,” Tony mumbles.
“That makes two of us. Now I cannot even trust my own damn security and that was the only thing I did trust. I have faith in Okoye but that is mostly because she agreed with my father’s decision to open the country up to the rest of the world so she lacks the motivation most of the rest of the Dora Milaje have. And I have known her since I was a child- she would not have an easy time hiding things from me,” T’Challa says. Tony sure as fuck hoped that T’Challa was more observant than he was because he didn’t notice his fucking business partner tried to kill him for years and only found out when investigating some other guy’s murder.
*
Wakandan culture was not exactly displayed for the alphas that came here to court T’Challa and now… now it was hard to imagine choosing anyone but Tony. He was too wrapped up in this to not understand, and he also lost his father suddenly in an explosion. They had common ground he would never find with anyone else. So he chose to share something, a small thing, of his culture with Tony. He looks impressed with the cave and in T’Challa’s not so humble opinion he should. Hundreds of years of history were on these walls- so much history that it was impossible to miss the change of tone when you walked in.
“What is this place?” Tony finally asks, his gaze stopping at the small waterfall flowing into the cave.
“This is a place of Kings, when they are still alive anyways. My father used to take me here but I did not understand his lessons until I took up the responsibility of King myself,” he says. And with it the responsibility of the Black Panther, but he leaves that out for now.
“That’s a lot of panthers,” Tony notes, scanning the walls again.
“Panthers are important to us,” T’Challa says. They were precious, like smaller and less powerful versions of Bast walking around and that was not even taking into account how regal the animal was. Panthers tended to roam wherever they wanted to be and T’Challa has been lucky enough to see the animals frequently. They never approached but animals were not fond of humans and panthers were not different. The fact that he had seen the stealthy animal at all was impressive.
“Yeah I can tell, half of these paintings are people wearing panthers or they’re like… part panther or something. Feel free to tell my what I’m looking at,” Tony adds, looking over his shoulder at T’Challa.
“I told you, this is a place of Kings. This is our history laid out on these walls- the panthers are to symbolize the other mantle I have taken up as King. The role of the Black Panther is to protect the country, literally back in our more… primitive days. Today the role is more political and legal- there is always at least one extremist political group floating around trying to disrupt things and it is my job to get rid of them,” he says. He had been lucky that thus far there has been little fuss from fringe groups that he knows must be dying to take over. There were plenty of people that were not pleased about having an omega in charge- even most of the news outlets seemed to dislike him. They had no reason to but he did not expect reason out of bigots- being unreasonable is how they function. That did not mean he had to like it though.
“Isn’t that what the king would do anyways?” Tony asks.
“Is that what your government does?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Depends on what political group you are so I’d say ehhhh,” Tony says, waving a hand around.
T’Challa snorts, “that is accurate at least. Black Panther is more symbolic than functional now- fringe groups are rather easy to get rid of. Wakanda does not particularly like political unrest, too much bad history with it. But the need for a symbol of protection remains and so does the mantle.” And all the training that went with it. The title might be more symbolic that not but the Black Panther was still a warrior, a fighter, and so he learned to fight. He was naturally good at it too, his ability to figure out how people move and fight against it was impressive or so he has been told. But there were things Tony did not need to know about him at the moment and his knowledge on how to kill a man in several different ways with his bare hands was one of those things.
“Yeah, you guys really don’t like political unrest. You have one hell of a complicated voting system,” Tony says.
“That is because each area of Wakanda has different interests due to different environments. We try to accommodate everyone but that is not as easy as it sounds on paper,” he says.
“Yeah? How so? Because the public is involved in basically everything you do, seems like people have a lot of say in how things get run,” Tony points out.
He nods because that is true, and why people were so connected to their King. It was the King’s duty, along with his council and other advisors, to connect with the people in the deepest way possible to ensure that everyone was being heard. That did not work out as nicely in real life as it did on paper. “Our voting system assumes that people are not biased, that they truly want equality for all. That is not true at all and had I been born just a little earlier in history I would not have been allowed to take on the role of King and certainly not the role of Black Panther. The people voted it that way on purpose, actually I am the first King that is an omega and the first Black Panther too. It is not accident that I am receiving unfair criticisms and backlash because of it. I am blessed to have been born in this time in history nonetheless.”
Tony frowns, “people voted to continue to oppress omegas?” he asks as if this was some sort of surprise to him.
“So did your country until rather recently. Though Wakanda is technically behind by American standards as far as omega rights go. My father was the one who made a push for the unfair laws around omegas to be removed, and before I was born at that. He was subject to a lot of unfair criticisms himself when he was young- namely that he was far too radical. This was not helped by my grandfather, who was extremely conservative. It was a bit of a political whiplash, which he repeated not long ago with his decision to push the country back into the rest of the world. He will likely be remembered as a radical, but a positive one at least.” His grandfather did not have one such fate, his rule was regarded as tyranny thanks to the work his father did to combat prejudice.
“Okay fair point. So you’re the first omega hmm, how’s it feel to make history? I think it’s kind of fun,” Tony says, grinning. Yes, T’Challa supposed he has made history himself a few times in his young life. His business alone was reason to raise an eyebrow, but his work in the technological field was extremely impressive.
“I rather like my place in history. I will do my best to be remembered fondly, though if the media has anything to say about it that will not happen,” he says. He was sure that as soon as the information that he just found was released there would be some other thing to complain about. Something else that he missed, or how he still had not solved the case completely even if he did find the perpetrator, at least in part.
“Fuck the media, they’re assholes. Question though, if this is a place of kings than what am I doing here?” he asks.
T’Challa grins because this was one of his favorite things about Tony; he noticed things others might overlook. “This is also a place for the King’s mate, if you will have me,” he says.
Tony’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, “well I uh… this is not al all how I imagined any proposals for marriage in my life going. To be honest I would have expected a lot more alcohol, a bad Elvis impersonator, and a divorce twenty-three days later but… yeah ok. Why not?”
“To be honest the last thing I expected was any of this so we are both surprised. Though I would rather there not be a divorce twenty-three days after marriage and I would also prefer a long engagement. I can afford to do that now, which is nice, and it gives us both time to back out if need be for whatever reason,” he says. More like it was time for Tony to back out because he was quite sure, he has been since the beginning he just was not willing to admit that to himself.