Chapter 2
With Rhodey gone Tony feels ten times more uncomfortable, his skin feels hot and sticky and his head hurts with the quickly forming migraine over his right eye. He stands up and walks a few paces away to try and out some distance between himself and T’Challa, rubbing the space over his eye as he goes. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the brief flash of hurt on T’Challa’s features but Tony didn’t abandon him first, he had no right to look hurt. “Tony,” T’Challa says softly, reaching out slightly. Tony shies away even though he’s several feet away from T’Challa’s hand. This time when the hurt crosses his features it doesn’t go anywhere. “I don’t know why you look so upset, you already made your disinterest clear, you don’t get to look at me like I hurt you.” It comes out harsher than he intends but he doesn’t regret it. The statement was true and that wasn’t his problem. If T’Challa didn’t like it than maybe he shouldn’t have dropped Tony like a hot potato only to look sad when Tony didn’t like him much.
“That isn’t-” T’Challa starts and Tony cuts him off.
“Yeah, it is whether you want to acknowledge it or not. I don’t hear from you in over a month and the first sign you’re even remotely interested in me is one of your Dora Milaje breaking into my house. No offense but none of that makes me feel particularly warm and fuzzy inside,” he snaps. And he gets it, sort of, T’Challa had a country to run and he would have been far more understanding if he didn’t go out of his way to make accommodations for Steve and his Marry Band of Assholes. Whoever said that soul mates were supposed to be the people who understood you the best were clearly delusional because T’Challa had the opposite of a good understanding of Tony.
“There were things I needed to settle-”
“Like Steve? Wakanda I get, I’m not an idiot, clearly I’m not more important than a country full of people. But you went out of your way to settle Steve and the rest of the Avengers so clearly you had some time to do things that didn’t necessarily pertain to your country’s safety. Actually considering the fact that they’re all wanted on international charges of treason it actively puts Wakanda in danger. I mean come on; you’ve proven you’re more willing to put your country in danger hiding criminals than contact me. Then you show up looking hurt and upset like I’m the one who’s done something wrong. So, please tell me where in that I’m to draw any sort of message that I have any importance to you?” He wasn’t wrong and he wasn’t going to accept T’Challa’s bullshit excuses either. If he had an interest in his soul mate he had ample time to show it and instead his Dora Milaje showed more interest than the actual king.
That stung more than Tony would like to admit. Sure, maybe he never thought he had a soul mate and maybe he didn’t think he deserved one but fuck, he didn’t need to know his soul mate felt the same way. “I admit my priorities were not where they should have been,” T’Challa says, drawing Tony’s attention back to him, “but I promise you that isn’t a lack of interest.”
He considers this for a moment, considers the events that led up to this moment. “I don’t believe you,” he says bluntly, “now get out.” For a moment Tony is sure T’Challa is going to open his mouth to argue but instead he deflates some and nods, turning on his heel and walking away. Tony lets out a sharp breath, trying his best to ignore the pain in his chest and arm as he slides to the ground, wrapping his arms around his legs and resting his head on his knees. He feels hallow and empty and he doesn’t know why because T’Challa only did what Tony told him to.
Sometime later he feels a hand on his shoulder and he looks up to find Rhodey leaning over him somewhat awkwardly considering the chair. He drops his head back to his knees and Rhodey rubs small circles on his back like he used to when Tony was too young to be playing adult.
*
Since finding Tony T’Challa has found so much beauty in the smallest of things, entranced by the new technicolor of his world. Everything was new, fresh, even things he’s grown up with for years. He had no idea that the floors in his home, for example, were red granite. They looked stunning and he’s spent a lot of time staring at them. The trees outside were so vivid in their green, Natasha’s hair a bright orange; his clothing was an array of colors. When he first noticed the colors it was Tony that was the brightest, the metal of his suit gleaming bright red and gold but in that moment he hadn’t care about much else but killing Bucky Barnes.
He could see that he was being foolish now, childish. He should not have tried to exact revenge on Barnes in the first place and when he saw Tony he should have said something. Maybe not in that exact moment but he stuck around afterwards to see his friend safely off, and even with Rhodes off to the hospital he stuck around to see the damage he caused at the airport. He paid for the all the damage and T’Challa was not certain what happened after that because he had left to complete his mission. He had only stuck around as long as he had because he had allowed himself a few moments to observe his soul mate, to see what he was like. And then he attached himself to the man knowing that Tony had a far better chance of finding Barnes than he did. He very much doubted that Tony would approve of his methods.
What he saw, though, informed him that there was something wrong with the image of Tony Stark as others saw him. He watched as Stark sat with Rhodey, talking to him the whole time until the paramedics showed up. He watched as Sam sat off to the Side, quietly observing the two before flying away as the siren lights became visible. Tony did not speak to him but he did not do more than hit him with the repulsor once after he landed. It would have been easy to blame Sam for Rhodes’ fall, and to kill him for it considering Sam stuck around but he did not. Instead he made it difficult for Sam to follow Steve by hitting him with the repulsor and ignored him afterwards. Then he helped the paramedics carefully pull Rhodey from the suit to properly assess the damage.
T’Challa expected him to leave with Rhodes but he didn’t, instead he stayed to evaluate the damage and paid for damages that he was not the sole cause of. None of his observations lined up with the image of the selfish, crass billionaire who had no interest in the safety of others. That was not even considering that at no point until the bunker did he observe Tony using excessive force. But he did not have the knowledge to properly assess what happened in the bunker. Whatever Tony might have been before Iron Man was irrelevant now, and whoever he had been before Ultron seemed to matter little now too. What was left was a broken man that T’Challa got to see in full color reject him and that hurt.
Perhaps it was foolish of him but he thought that Tony would be… he wasn’t sure exactly what he was expecting but he hadn’t expected to be met with such suspicion and vitriol. Steve had been certain that he had smoothed things over though Okoye had given him a look that suggested he was delusional. Like a fool he had assumed that the Captain was right only because that suited his needs better than Okoye’s obvious distrust in that statement. Now he was paying the price for it. Maybe he bought too much into those stories he was read as a child where the soul mates lived happily ever after always. Shuri had always been suspicious of the tales, always asking question like ‘what if one died before they met?’ and ‘well what if one was colorblind?’. Maybe he should have been suspicious too, Tony certainly was.
It had hurt to see the way Tony flinched away from him even when he was so far away, eyes focused on his hand like he might manage to touch him despite being several feet away. He was tense and hurt, T’Challa could see his restricted breaths, but what was worse was that Tony didn’t seem to notice this himself. Like he was so used to being hurt and in pain that it was commonplace in his life. T’Challa did not want that for his soul mate, or anyone else really, but especially not Tony. The biggest source of pain, though, was knowing that he had caused much of the hurt that Tony felt. When he had found the Captain and Bucky he had asked about Tony but he was informed that Tony had found a way out and he had no reason to disbelieve the Captain. Now he wondered how true that was if Tony felt so betrayed.
Logically he knew that he should have checked himself, that it would not have taken long. But he had been preoccupied with Zemo and his guilt over having tried to kill the wrong man for some time. He felt he owed it to Bucky to help him and by extension the Captain too. When he was informed that Tony was fine it was said with finality and sureness that T’Challa had believed for what he now recognized was no reason. He had been too caught up in his own emotions, his grief, his guilt, and his hurt. It had not occurred to him that Tony must have been feeling at least some of those things too, that he needed the same kind of care and support that T’Challa had when he went home. Now he realized that he left his soul mate hanging in a near support-less environment, and worse, Tony assumed that he cared about everyone but him.
The rest of the Avengers coming to Wakanda had not been his initial plan but they were battling the law and he did not see their imprisonment as lawful. Regardless of what Hawkeye said T’Challa did not believe that Tony found it lawful either. Signing the Accords was not meant to sign away the basic human rights of the Avengers or Tony would not have signed. Besides, T’Challa himself had read the Accords all the way through and while he did not, like the Captain, like the politics that surrounded the situation he was not enough of a fool to assume that he was without politics and agendas himself.
The Accords also made no mention of jailing the Avengers in an underwater prison should they break the law, of course the corrupt government system broke their own laws to do that. There was no mention of Wanda at all, which T’Challa had not initially made any note of until he learned of her conditions in the prison. Of course the law would skirt around what to do with an enhanced person, he had assumed the vagueness of the law was because of the various special accommodations each Avenger would require. Tony in particular should not be allowed access to any technology, for example. The man managed to blow himself out of a cave with nothing but scrap metal and a broken heart, he would break out of a jail in far less time with any sort of resources at all. Of course the government used that vagueness as an excuse to violate Wanda’s basic human rights and while T’Challa was disappointed he was not surprised. It had not made Tony wrong, it made the system wrong and the Avengers were not making the distinction.
But then it was clear from Tony’s reaction to him that this was not new, even within the Avengers. T’Challa was aware of the abuse Tony suffered with his father, the abuse his mother suffered too. He could not imagine what that was like as his own father was very involved in his life, always supportive. He nurtured T’Challa and Shuri always, and Hunter for the brief time he was around. It was difficult to imagine any other life but the one he had and he was glad for it. But Tony, he had suffered greatly and T’Challa was not certain anyone saw how damaged he was. Wanda once pointed out that Tony had everything she never did, a family, a home, money, power.
The problem with that line of thinking was that Tony had no home, he had a space he was forced to share with an abuser. When he was at school he was in a space where he was forced to be an adult, and when he was in public he was in a space where he was forced to put on a show. Wanda thought he had power and maybe he did now, but he did not when he was young. Howard Stark had all that money and power before and T’Challa would be unsurprised if it was used as a weapon against Tony. So Tony used it as a weapon too, because he knew nothing else and had no one to teach him otherwise until Afghanistan. All it took was contact with one person who cared and seeing, feeling, the effects of his weapons for himself for Tony to change his tune. He has abused his power yes, but T’Challa had to wonder how much of that was Tony and how much of that was his business partner.
Clearly Tony had no interest in the care of others, at least not by Wanda’s standards, before Iron Man, but it wasn’t hard to look at his interviews. Tony was a dreamer of the highest caliber if he truly believed his weapons were never used in faulty wars by a corrupt government, but he seemed to believe his own words nonetheless. His suspicion of authority was curious in that respect given that he seemed to have unwavering faith while also remaining heavily skeptical. But T’Challa knew that people were often contradictory, he himself spent a lot of time running in circles reconciling seemingly opposite opinions. It was not that Tony was uninterested in helping, he had plenty of interest, it was that he had no clue how. This is something that becomes a reoccurring theme as a hero, but he was never unwilling to help. And he was rarely unwilling to listen, at least so long as he trusted the source. The problem with that was that he was given no reason to trust anyone and it showed. Unfortunately people assumed that was arrogance rather than some very clear and obvious trust issues.
Another seemingly obvious problem in the logic he has encountered of Tony so far, particularly pre-Iron Man Tony, was his obvious alcohol addiction. Later this is replaced with PTSD, but in both cases everyone around him was obviously lost of how to deal with his mental health issues and what was worse was that the media treated his alcoholism as a funny quirk. Someone so unused to positive attention was likely to repeat a behavior that garners positive attention again to get the same effects. Tony repeated the pattern so much that he became dependent on the substance and by then he treated his problem as a personality quirk too. But that disappeared after Afghanistan; at least until he started dying and people reacted badly to that too.
T’Challa understood why, Tony was acting like a moron and an ass but one had to wonder why when his life was seemingly better than ever before. His business was fully recovered and had the highest profits he had ever seen, he was in a stable romantic relationship, his visits with Rhodes were frequent and regular, and he was a well-respected hero. There was no obvious reason for him to go off the rails and instead of finding the stressor that sent him into a violent relapse people punished him for being an addict. It was T’Challa’s firm opinion that they could have addressed Tony’s out of control and stupid behavior without chastising him for his addiction, in fact that was the only way to go about addressing the situation in his opinion. He understood why people reacted the way that they did, but their reactions required them to completely overlook Tony’s mental health issues, and then shame him for having them. That did not fix the problem, it exacerbated it.
Knowing all this it was not a surprise that Tony was suspicious, that he had trust issues, and that he was unwilling to think anyone cared about him. Even his closest friends abandoned him when he needed them the most, leaving only his machinery for him to lean on and Ultron ruined his faith in that. So Tony put too much faith in a corrupt government and that failed too and now he had nothing, not even his own mind because he lost that too. A few times, actually. T’Challa rubs his temples and sighs because the chances of Tony trusting him at all at any point were almost none.
But, no, Tony was a dreamer of the highest caliber. Every time he got knocked down he got back up again, and again, and again, and as many more times as he needed to in order to succeed. T’Challa marvels at the strength it must take to get back up after losing everything you thought was certain in life several times over. He lost his father and his mind once and he had had a hard time coming back from that. It was still difficult to leave his bed, to run his country like he was supposed to because some days the grief was too much still. He could not imagine how Tony managed to not only to leave his bed every morning, but how he managed to achieve such high success, and how he continued to grow with such hostile conditions.
It was his hope that one day he could grow to be even as half as strong as Tony Stark must be to not give up when he believed he was doing what was right.
*
Tony was eating the left over pizza when FRIDAY informs him that Peter Parker is at the door and that she went ahead and let him in. He thanks the AI nicely because she was finally starting to pick up on cues and learn. It’s been so long since JARVIS was first made that he can’t remember if he took this long to learn things or not. All he had was a dead companion that knew his every need at all times and adjusting to FRIDAY had been difficult. She was doing well though; she picked up patterns in the suit fast and was very helpful in the field. It was the home that she had problems in because his moves were far less predictable for her. She was getting there though, learning to read his body language and interpret it like JARVIS had before her.
He vowed that he was going to hate FRIDAY with a vengeance but she was growing on him, and she was learning to sass back. Honestly it was exciting to watch his progeny learn and grow, he forgot how nice it felt because it’s been so long since he made a project like this, one that would benefit him more than anyone else.
“Uh, hey, Mister Stark,” Peter’s nervous voice pulls him from his thoughts. “I uh, sort of broke the goggles fighting Villain of the Week, you know how it is,” he jokes, shifting around nervously. “So… could you fix them? I mean you don’t have to I guess, I could maybe do it myself. Probably. Actually probably not I have no clue how they work I tried to take them apart to figure them out and almost busted them myself so I just left them, I am so sorry. Uh, gunna stop talking now.”
It was amazing how the kid was so confident in the middle of a fight and so nervous everywhere else. Tony grins though, “of course you wanted to know how they work, that makes sense. I wouldn’t have been mad if that’s how they ended up broken anyways, taking things apart and putting them back together fosters imagination. I’m not to type to crush that,” he says, sliding off the stool to take a look at the goggles. Peter lets out a breath, releasing some of the pent up tension in his frame and Tony was glad for it. He didn’t want the kid to feel uncomfortable around him and having a nasty case of hero worship would do that. He’d know, his own childhood hero had turned out to be a colossal disappointment that nearly took off his head because he kept things from Tony. So he figured he should be a less disappointing hero to this kid because realizing the person you looked up to was a fucking liar and a cheat sucked.
“The hell did your villain do?” he asks, examining the mangled goggles.
“I don’t even know man, there was a lot of being thrown around and, at some point there was a subway car, and birds. It wasn’t pretty,” Peter says, shaking his head with wide eyes.
He snickers, “well then. Guess at least you haven’t run into Doombots yet, those things suck. I actually have a new design I’ve been working on for these so I can hand those off while I fix these, if you want,” Tony says.
Peter lights up and Tony almost flinches at the kid’s excitement, “that’d be great!” he says enthusiastically. When he first found the kid he’d been in a panic, trying to find a way to bring Steve in without hurting anyone, least of all Steve himself. He’d been keeping an eye on the kid for sometime before that but it had taken time to connect Spider Man to Peter Parker and then he fucked up on his age too. He assumed, for whatever reason, the kid was in college and it turned out he was a tad ten years younger but he was already there and Peter’s skills were useful. Of course he hadn’t anticipated that Steve would drop a fucking metal box on the kid without having any idea what he could handle. Ironically that’s probably the only time Tony could think of where Steve had total faith in him- why else would he have done that? Clearly he assumed that Tony picked up a kid that could handle himself.
Granted Peter shouldn’t have been there to begin with, he was too young and while Tony had no say in what the kid did in his spare time he shouldn’t have gone around dragging him into shit. But, in his defense, he thought that Steve would have Barnes and maybe Sam with him. He had no clue that Steve had called in Clint, who had gone and got Scott and Wanda. Tony figured it’d be him, Natasha, Peter, Steve, Bucky, and maybe Sam. Vision was there with Peter for backup, both of them with useful but untapped powers so they were meant to be last resorts. Had Vision not joined them late he could have anticipated the extra people but he hadn’t so Tony had no idea. So instead they ended up main fucking players and Peter nearly got hurt, and Vision accidentally paralyzed Rhodey. And then there was the added addition of T’Challa that Tony hadn’t been expecting and with Steve running at him with three unanticipated people and then Natasha siding with Steve out of fucking nowhere he had no time for soul mates.
Natasha had called him arrogant for not siding with Steve too, acting like he should have put any sort of faith in the word of a brainwashed man who had just reverted back to his Winter Soldier state. What kind of idiot would put any faith in that? Steve, he got Steve, of course he would do anything, believe anything, his old best friend had to say. Tony knew he was having trouble adjusting to life here in the modern age given that everything he loved was gone now, Tony knew what it was like to lose everything, and he knew how hard he’d cling to what little he had left too. But Natasha? What the hell was that? A lack of faith in him because she assumed that that one party she was at when he had been dying and panicking and out of control defined him. He hated her for that, really, for being a world class spy and she still couldn’t see through his shield. He had no idea if that made her a bad spy or him a really, really good actor and at this point he didn’t give a damn.
Peter squints at him a little and he realizes it’s taken too long for him to respond, “sorry, thinking of designs,” he lies smoothly and bless him, the kid falls for it easily. They needed to have a talk about not believing everything you heard but he’d do that later. “I’ll grab the goggles and you… eat some of the left over pizza or something, you’re too skinny,” he says, gesturing to the pizza. Peter spies it and practically attacks it with a level of enthusiasm that only a hungry fifteen year old possessed. Tony leaves him to it while he goes down to the lab to get the updated goggles. So he had no control over what Peter did as Spider Man, and Tony wouldn’t even try to tell the kid to stop, he had good motivation and he was fifteen. He remembered, vaguely, what it was like to be fifteen with all this potential and motivation and he had loathed when people acted like he was a kid.
Didn’t matter than he was a kid, he didn’t see it that way and he doubted Peter did as well. He was a good kid and he was doing good things, so Tony figured instead of trying to play the role of ‘I’m The Adult So I Know You Better Than You Know Yourself Because Reasons’ he would make sure the kid was safe doing what he did. Or about as safe as he could be. With all that potential and goodness the kid was bound to do great things and Tony wasn’t going to squash that on him by trying to control him. He’s been there and it wasn’t fun, so maybe Peter was far too young to be playing hero and maybe he couldn’t make an accurate prediction as to how this was going to affect his life long term, but he did know how he felt now and that was important. It wasn’t his place, or anyone else’s, to try and tell Peter how he should be feeling now or ever just because he was young. He could figure that out for himself.
When he returns with the new goggles Rhodey has exited his room, probably drawn out by the noise, and he’s sitting with Peter at the table surrounded by books. Homework, probably, because Peter was young enough to care about such things. Rhodey was helping him with it and that was just wholesome. Peter looks at his books in confusion and Rhodey is gently explaining things to him, pointing to different things on the page and Tony’s heart squeezes a little seeing Rhodey look so invested. Since the accident depression has hit him hard and Rhodey had no clue what it was. He wasn’t outwardly affected by the loss of his legs; he had accepted it faster than Tony would have, but he was still having trouble with his newfound dependence on people.
Rhodey has always been very independent, his mother used to have so much pride in that before she passed. She had always been so proud of how her son almost never needed help, and more than that he helped others too. Boy had she hated Tony when he first came around. Her independent, smart, and talented Rhodey had been arrested within a week of knowing Tony and she had not been impressed. But she grew to love him once she seemed to clue in to his home life or lack thereof. And of course she couldn’t possibly chide Rhodey for finding someone who was falling behind in so many ways and trying to help him out just like always.
But he didn’t have that now, not in the way that he felt mattered, and his dependence on Tony rather than the other way around was throwing him so far off his usually steady-minded game. It was worse because he had no clue that the feeling he had was depression and that it wasn't about to go away any time soon. Tony knew better than to bring it up. Rhodey didn’t exactly have a comprehensive knowledge of mental illness like Tony did, and Tony has had more than enough discussions to know that Rhodey halfassed didn’t believe mental illness was a real thing. That was probably why he’s always reacted so negatively to Tony’s own problems, because Rhodey’s solutions were clear-cut and obvious to him and he didn’t understand Tony’s compulsive self-destructive tendencies. Only now the mental illness was his own and he was so lost in that feeling of despair and his usual ‘work hard and get over it’ method wasn’t working.
He was working hard, very hard, and sometimes he even managed to take a step or two without assistance. But it wasn’t making that feeling go away and he didn’t understand why. Tony figured he’d leave that for Rhodey to figure out, or for him to talk to Tony about later. It was only a matter of time before Rhodey mentioned it to him anyways and Tony knew to tread lightly. In the meantime it was heartwarming to see Rhodey helping Peter out with his homework and laughing when Peter made some snarky comment to cover his frustration at his inability to get whatever was in front of him. Tony could relate.
After a few moments Peter spots him and jumps a little, covering the nervous tick quickly with a joke. “I can, uh, go if you want,” he says and Tony doesn’t miss the dejected look on Rhodey’s face.
“Nah,” he says, setting the goggles on the table beside Peter’s books, “finish your homework at the very least. If you want I can call your aunt May and tell her where you are,” he says with a wink.
Peter wrinkles his nose, “eww, please stop hitting on my aunt, it’s painful to watch,” he says.
Rhodey laughs, shaking his head, “good luck getting him to stop now,” he says, grinning. Peter lets out a long drawn out groan, throwing his head back dramatically like a proper teenager. Tony can’t help but smile at him, astounded that a kid that young could have his shit together so much. He was an impressive kid and Tony felt lucky to know him.
They end up ordering Chinese and watching some cheesy eighties horror movie and Peter accidentally webs the T.V when a jump scare freaks him out, causing him to apologize profusely while Tony and Rhodey pissed themselves laughing.