Chapter 13
T’Challa does not want to see Tony go but he could not keep the man here forever, it was selfish for one, Tony had his own life and his own business to attend to. He watches as Tony gathers his things, pulling Cleo out of his suitcase four times before she tried jumping in a new piece of luggage. The chatter between them is easy, relaxed. Things came far more naturally now that T’Challa had figured a few things out, now that he knew Tony at least somewhat better.
Unfortunately that does not last long. As soon as Tony walks out of the doorway of his bedroom his body language makes a shift. His spine straightens, his muscles tense and his face goes from looking easy and relaxed to settling into a mask of cockiness and easy arrogance. He slips his sunglasses on and it’s like the final piece of his shield and the man T’Challa is looking at is no longer Tony Stark, instead he was the mask Tony wore to the outside world. Everything about him changes, including the way he spoke. If this was the way he acted with the Avengers he could see why they might have mistaken him for being arrogant, but if he acted like this with the Avengers he had a clear lack of trust in them. That could hardly be counted against him.
“He has been hurt, T’Challa, you cannot expect him to leave all that behind because things went well for a short period of time,” Shuri tells him sometime later when she finds him sulking.
“But I am not the Avengers, and I have no interest in becoming them,” he says. He understood that he could have handled things better in the beginning but he is trying and he thought he was doing well. Perhaps he thought wrong.
“His trauma did not start there and you know it. T’Challa, there has only been one person in his life that has accepted him for him and even Rhodey knows that he has gone back on that more than once. Granted it is abundantly clear that he has no idea how to handle some of Tony’s problems and thus reacted badly to them but my point stands. Every relationship he has ever had has failed except the one he has with Rhodey. Even the one romantic relationship that he had with someone he thought understood him ended terribly. When your life gives you a failure rate that high you are not likely to trust someone, soul mate or not,” she says softly.
Objectively he knew she was correct, he would not likely trust people either but… “but I am trying, Shuri.” He sounds petulant to himself so when Shuri roller her eyes at him he accepts that he probably deserved that.
“So you are, and if you are not willing to continue trying then I suggest you walk away now. The last thing he needs is a whiny soul mate that is irritated that things are not running according to the stupid fairy tales he believed as a child. It is not his fault you are naïve,” Shuri says harshly.
“I did not say I was going to give up on him, Shuri, that is horrible! I am simply frustrated and not necessarily with him. It is frustrating that he has grown so used to people leaving him that he has a difficult time opening up to people, and it is frustrating that I have to deal with the fallout. I understand that he is not perfect but it is irritating to hear the Avengers in particular criticize him for things they do all the time. I just… wish it was easier for him to see that I have no desire to be like the people in his past or his present,” he says softly. Tony was genuinely enjoyable once he got past at least some of that tough exterior; past that blasé devil-may-care attitude he wore like cloak to hide his true personality. It was upsetting that he felt the need to hide himself like that and T’Challa… he had no idea what he was supposed to do here.
“It is never easy to distinguish the people who are different from the people who have hurt you, especially when those people tend to be one in the same,” Shuri tells him.
T’Challa frowns, “what do you mean?” The statement made little sense to him.
“I mean the people in Tony’s life who have hurt him are the same people he has trusted enough to open up to. Howard, to a lesser extent Maria, Pepper, Steve, the rest of the Avengers, even Rhodey at times. All of those people were supposed to care about him, love him, but near all of those people have hurt him the most. Even if some, like Pepper, may have had their reasons, good reasons, he still learned that nothing good ever lasts. That is a hard lesson to learn.” So it was, though he did wonder how Shuri would have learned such a lesson. They had a privileged upbringing, they were well loved, taken care of, Shuri hardly had an opportunity to learn that no one cared for her.
His question must show on his face because Shuri sighs, “I love you, T’Challa, but you only see what you like sometimes. I know you well; well enough that you do not need to ask me how I learned that no one would ever care. The truth is people do are about me, but not nearly as much as they care about you and they never will. It does not matter how much work I do, how much I excel at something, you are always better than I am and everyone loves you more for it. You never noticed, why would you? You are the shining star of everyone’s lives and I have always lived in you shadow. I understand Tony because people dislike me for being human too, they ignore that they do not excel at things like you do either, but they are happy to criticize me for never being as good as you are. I know what it is like to be less than perfect standing in the shadow of someone far more talented than myself and it hurts, especially when you care about that person no matter how much you wish you did not.”
Her words are sharp, earnest. Her jaw clenches and she looks away, her eyes wet but T’Challa knew she would not cry. She has always been far more tough than he was, always more prepared too and… and he had no idea she felt that way. His first instinct is to deny it because she is better at a lot of things than he is but she certainly was not the first one to be upset with being in his shadow. He remembers B’Tumba and their fallout somewhat bitterly, even after all those years of friendship… “Shuri,” he starts but her sharp look stops his words.
“Do not pity me, I do not need it. It took me a long time to accept that I will never be as good at things as you are, or at least no one will see me that way, and that is fine. I am good enough as is, even if no one but me can see that.” Her words are strong and sure, as is her body language, and T’Challa is amazed by that.
“If I were ever able to accept myself the way you have I never would have pushed myself to the extremes that I have in order to achieve such success. My talent is not natural, Shuri, but my ability to become good at things fast is. If I had half the courage you did I never would have felt the need to tailor myself to what I thought other people needed,” he says. Shuri’s head snaps up in surprise, looking at him with wide eyes, “accepting yourself is not easy, and I am not certain I could ever do what you have,” he tells her truthfully.
Had he had any idea that Shuri, or anyone else for that matter, was under any impression that he was perfect on any level he would have told someone this far sooner. “The problem with being good at things, or able to become good at them quickly in my case, is that everyone is looking and everyone expects success. However my success often creates particularly high standards for myself, which leaves me terrified of what will happen when I fail. And I will fail, it is inevitable, and now that I am King I have an entire country of people to feel the affects of that failure. That is scary, Shuri, and because everyone is always watching my every move they will all see it, and with Wakanda’s entrance into world politics the entire world-” his voice cuts out for a moment and he takes a shaky breath. “What will I do when that happens?” he asks more to himself than Shuri.
It was a long time fear of his, he has known since he was very small that he would some day lead the country. If something he chose to do went wrong that could potentially harm so many people…
“Then you will fix it,” Shuri tells him as if that was the most obvious thing in the world, frowning at him as if he should have come to that conclusion before.
“I… what?”
“If you manage to fail at something you will fix it. I have known you my whole life, T’Challa, and I have had yet to see something puzzle you for long. Even with Tony you adjusted quickly, easily putting yourself back on track when you gathered new information. It is what you do and you are good at it. I had no idea you had a fear of failure,” Shuri tells him and her eyebrows draw together as if she was having trouble processing that information.
“Well I had no idea that you think you have been living in my shadow your whole life so I suppose we are even,” he says. The concept was strange to him, especially because he spent much of his childhood wishing he was as shrewd and observant as Shuri. His father had always liked that about her and it was the one thing he had not been able to learn fast. He still had trouble with that now, even, and yet Shuri was jealous of him. At least she could figure his soul mate out, who knew where he would be without her intellect and insight. He tells her that, too, because he had no desire to leave his sister feeling underappreciated simply because people became accustomed to looking in his direction.
*
Peter looked like hell, which was weird considering Spiderman hasn’t been spotted in over a week and Peter had enhanced healing abilities. It was something he had to hide from his aunt if she did happen to notice the bruises, it wouldn’t do to have her think a nasty black eye would naturally go away in a day or two when they took a week at the least to heal. Apparently his makeup skills were impressive by now.
“What happened?” he asks finally. Peter was toying with Dummy, laughing as the bot reacted in various ways, clearly impressed that the bot had a personality of sorts.
“Villain of the week, you know how it is,” the kid lies smoothly and Tony raises an eyebrow. Where did that come from? To his knowledge Peter was a shit liar, which had left Tony wondering how he managed lying to his aunt but he guessed this answered that. If he lied this smoothly to her she’d never know.
“Most be some sneaky villain considering you haven’t made an appearance since last Tuesday and it’s Saturday.” The statement hangs heavy as Peter realizes he’s been caught in the middle of a lie.
“I… uh… um,” Peter sputters, blinking at him like he was lost.
“Are you okay?” he asks after a moment. Peter looks thrown by that too and Tony clenches his jaw slightly. Of course he knew May took care of Peter but old habits died hard and it was hard to let go of the abuse he suffered as a kid.
“I… yeah… no… I don’t really know. I mean I’ll be okay it’s just hard sometimes, like I know I probably won’t care about some stupid kids in high school in like ten years or whatever but it still sucks,” Peter mumbles, looking at the ground.
“Ahh, you’ve been a victim of the ‘it gets better’ speech I see. Never did get that, how’s some fictional place in some far off future where you might be happy, it isn’t like happiness is guaranteed, supposed to make you feel better? Adults just say that so they don’t have to deal with their suffering teenagers because they don’t actually think their teens are suffering. Well, bullying sucks, and adulthood doesn’t make it go away either, but they probably won’t beat you up so you have hat to look forward to. How long has this kid been bullying you?” he asks. At least a few months if Peter has told someone about it, he remembered being so determined to handle his own problems as a kid. Mostly because adults didn’t ever seem interested in helping him solve his problems, happy to look down on him and claim he needed to learn ‘problem solving’ skills. Problem was that he tried that, hence looking for help elsewhere.
Peter’s eyes light up, “I know right? How is maybe being happy later going to stop Flash from kicking my ass now? And it’s so hard because I could just punch him, I could do it, and he’d probably go through a wall but I can’t do that because it isn’t fair. I can’t just use my powers on him like that even if I want to. I’ve thought about it but… but he’s just human, a real jerk of a human, but I’m enhanced. It would be irresponsible to fight back but I don’t know what to do. Plus he loves Spiderman, what a kick in the pants,” Peter mumbles.
He shouldn’t do it because it’s mean but Tony bursts out laughing, earning a rightfully offended look from Peter. “I’m so sorry but seriously? This kid likes Spiderman? God, this is the kind of thing you’d see in a comic book or something, ‘Teen’s Bully Enjoys Teen’s Superhero Alter Ego’,” he says in a ridiculous mimicry of an announcer’s voice. “Wow though, in all seriousness that has to be pretty rough and to be completely honest I don’t have any like fortune cookie advice for you either. I didn’t really know what to do about the bullying when I was your age either and mostly I just learned to try not to care, which bullshit advice honestly.” He remembered that too ‘just let it roll off your back!’ He wanted to go back in time just to deliver a special ‘fuck you’ to those idiot adults who thought that was even remotely viable.
Yeah, he was sure everyone could just let feeling like a worthless waste of space roll right off their back. It helped that he still got that advice given that the media sucked and liked to ride his ass for every little thing he did. If people had something valid to say he’d listen, but yet another article detailing his fucking sex life was useless garbage.
“Wait, you were bullied at my age?” Peter asks, looking genuinely surprised.
“Yeah, I was a fifteen year old doing a Masters degree, people either hated me and let me know it or they used me for my knowledge. And people my own age thought I was a freak and they let me know that too. To be honest I never did find my niche,” he says. The Avengers were the closest he got and that was a piss poor example of a friend group.
“Wow,” Peter says, blinking in surprise. “Iron Man was bullied as a kid, and now you’re a badass. That’s actually so helpful, I guess it really does get better. I mean the only thing you’re missing is a soul mate.”
Tony sighs, letting out a small laugh. “I have one of those actually,” he says, somewhat flattered that Peter thought his life was helpful to his bullying problem, even if he didn’t have much of an idea of what he was talking about. The kid is fifteen though, he gets a free pass.
“Really?” Peter asks, eyes growing wide, “who? Wait, not Pepper right?” he asks somewhat hesitantly than winces.
“No, not Pepper, so you can wipe that ‘I just kicked a puppy by accident’ look off your face. My soul mate is, uh, T’Challa. You know, the King of Wakanda.” Talk about high expectations though T’Challa informed him that, thankfully, he had no rights to Wakanda even if he died. He had looked so surprised at Tony’s relief but shit, he couldn’t even control himself, how the hell could he control a country? Plus he had no clue how they did stuff; he’d just be some asshat American… colonizing them really. Which, yikes. He was more than happy to find out that Wakanda was all Shuri’s in the event of T’Challa’s death, even if thinking about T’Challa’s death made his heart physically hurt like it had after being hit with that shrapnel.
Peter’s eyes practically double in size, “holy shit, you’re basically a fairy tale but in real life, except you’re a superhero too. You’re like… my childhood dream come to life,” Peter says with meaning. Tony snorts and shakes his head, smiling at Peter’s excitement, content to believe just for a little while that maybe he was someone’s childhood dream come to life instead of a mess of a man that flew around in a tin can every once and awhile.
*
Rhodey frowns at him as Tony’s latest one night stand stomps past him and out the door. Tony winces because he really could have handled this whole thing better but sadly he was far more socially awkward than he pretended to be. “What was that about?” Rhodey asks, eyebrows drawing together.
Tony sighs deeply and pinches the bridge on his nose because Rhodey was going to love this. “I uh… accidentally called him T’Challa,” he mumbles, looking at the ground.
For a moment Rhodey is silent but then he bursts out laughing and Tony accepts his fate. “Oh my god this is way better than Tony Stank! I’m gunna text Shuri right now about this because this is priceless,” Rhodey says. Tony swears he has never moved so fast in his whole life as he did to snatch Rhodey’s phone right out of his hand and he runs off with it too. Once he’s across the room and sufficiently sure that Rhodey wouldn’t be able to wheel after him to get the phone back he settles.
“You do not breath a word of this to Shuri or to T’Challa, they don’t need to know about this,” he says very seriously.
“FRIDAY text Shuri and tell her about this hilarious turn of events,” Rhodey tells the AI, glancing up at the ceiling. God, that was such a weird habit and everyone but him had it. FRIDAY was everywhere; she just spoke through the speakers that happened to be in the ceiling, that wasn’t where she was located.
“I already have, sir, completed with a ‘laughing’ emoji,” the AI informs them.
“Fuck you, FRIDAY, you’re supposed to be loyal to me,” Tony tells her.
“I am, sir, which is why I am informing your soul mate that you care about him. In a strange way, I believe, my research has informed me that your behavior is unusual soul mate behavior. But your other behaviors are odd too,” she says.
“Hey, look at that, FRIDAY’s learning,” Rhodey says, grinning. Yeah, too damn well in Tony’s opinion. JARVIS would have pulled some sneaky shit like that too and Tony feels unexpectedly sad about that. FRIDAY is competent but she wasn’t JARVIS, and now she was picking up on all the sass and underhanded tricks JARVIS used to pull and it was like JARVIS was being replaced and he didn’t want that. “Are you alright?” Rhodey asks after a moment and Tony realizes he went silent.
“Yeah, yeah, I just… JARVIS would have done something like that,” he says softly.
“I am designed to be his successor, logic dictates that I would learn to function similarly or the same,” FRIDAY informs him, more AI than human and surprisingly that helps. Because FRIDAY, despite his best efforts and her learning curve, is not JARVIS. They didn’t usually enjoy easy banter, he didn’t confide his secrets to her, and she wasn’t his oldest and most trusted friend next to Rhodey. But most of all she wasn’t even close to the real Jarvis, who was Tony’s lifeline when he was a kid until he died. God, that was awful, and so close to his parents’ deaths.
FRIDAY, though, wasn’t meant to be a coping mechanism to deal with the death of a good friend and an even better man. She is her own AI, free to develop however she wanted to and even if she did have similarities to JARVIS she would never be the same. That’s what he had wanted anyways, a new AI.
“Incoming call from T’Challa, would you like me to ignore him?” FRIDAY asks, interrupting his thought process.
“Yes,” he says as Rhodey says, “hell no.” They glare at each other for a moment before FRIDAY makes the decision for them.
“I appear to have malfunctioned, the call is going through,” she informs him. Tony gives the ceiling a deeply offended look, for once engaging in everyone else’s bad habit.
“Tony?” T’Challa’s voice asks, filtering through the speakers.
“My AI hates me,” he says with more passion than he initially intends.
“I… alright? Well, I am sure you will be able to fix it,” T’Challa tells him. He was being well meaning but it irritates Tony, he didn’t understand, his own AI was conspiring against him. He wrote out her code with his own two hands and she up and betrays him like this? Unacceptable. “Are you alright?” T’Challa asks, interrupting his musings on how to dispose of FRIDAY.
“I’m fine, what makes you think I’m not?” he asks, frowning. It wasn’t like his ribs still hurt, at least not like they used to. They’re still tender, and his arm was still giving him trouble, but he was over all fine.
“Shuri read that text Rhodey sent to me. She found it amusing but I found it worrying, are you sure you are okay?” T’Challa asks, every bit some sort of fairy tale prince, okay king, that Peter decided he was.
“Seriously? You find out your soul mate is sleeping with people that look like you and accidentally calling them your name and you’re worried? Damn, are you like from a fairy tale or something?” Rhodey asks, apparently picking up on Tony’s thought process. He would think Rhodey was a telepath but he’s spent a lot of time mentally screaming at him with no response. The one time he did that to Wanda told him he would have gotten a strange look at the least.
“Wait, is this a habit?” T’Challa asks. And Rhodey, because he is a traitor just like FRIDAY, informs T’Challa that this is, in fact, a habit. “Tony, are you sure you are okay? Clearly this soul mate bond is affecting you more than either of us anticipated, if you need me-”
“I’m good, thanks. I’ll stick with the lookalikes, no need to fly across the world or whatever measly old me,” he says quickly, earning a dirty look from Rhodey at the lookalike bit. Tony shrugs at him, what? It was true; he still wasn’t sold on this whole T’Challa thing.
“It would not be a hardship, Tony, you are worth the effort. If you change your mind though, please let me know,” T’Challa says softly. Tony bites his lip and looks down because T’Challa had told him what he wanted to hear and he hadn’t even known that was what he wanted to hear. He really wished T’Challa would stop doing that.