Chapter 17
Tony wasn’t much looking forward to dealing with Wanda but… well, someone had to and Steve hadn’t in the time since he left him until now so Tony figured he was the one to tell her about her precarious status. Her not being a citizen of the U.S was also a problem and her home country apparently erased all evidence of her citizenship, meaning right now she was as vulnerable as she could get legally. Rhodey hadn’t sounded impressed on the phone and frankly Tony wasn’t impressed either. Citizenship is important in obtaining human rights and everyone was fucking around because of fear.
He got it, Wanda had the potential to be a weapon of mass destruction- but so did he, Steve, Bucky, hell, even Natasha could be considered a weapon of mass destruction. Actually, with her acting abilities and her combat talents she just might be the most dangerous of them but no one made a move to remove her citizenship. No one tried to strip him of his either and he nearly ended the world, Wanda-induced vision propelling his actions or not. The government, or governments in this case, was acting irrationally but thankfully for him he had a lot of paper evidence to point out their idiocy. It would take work but he’s already in pretty deep and he had a good legal team. He won his case with the Avengers he’d be able to win Wanda’s case too, he’s the one who’s right and anyone with a half a brain would see it. Fear mongering shouldn’t win a case and he was going to be damn sure it didn’t.
When he gets to Wanda’s door he knocks even though she had to have sensed his mind by now. She once told him that he was an extremely loud thinker, back when she first moved into the Compound. Wherever that truce went when she moved in it was gone now and he understood that too, to a point. Her parents’ blood was on his hands- he wouldn’t like himself much either- its what came after that confuses him.
“What do you want, Stark?” Wanda calls through the door.
“You’re pretty much fucked legally. I mean you’re technically off for charges or treason and terrorism, at least the ones the rest of the team was charged with too but the government sucks and they’re pressing to charge you for Lagos. But not Steve, Sam, or Natasha interestingly. It looks bad for them, I doubt much will come of it but the citizenship thing is a real problem,” he tells her.
“Citizenship thing?” she asks. Shit, right, he forgot to mention that.
“Yeah, you’re citizenship for the U.S hasn’t been processed and your home country conveniently has no record of you. I mean it was taken over by terrorists so that’s not surprising, but people are suggesting some pretty stupid things as far as dealing with you goes.” Like permanent jail kind of stupid, and wearing a suppressor constantly kind of stupid. Neither would solve the problem they were all looking to solve, plus anyone interested in human rights was ready to tear them apart so Tony leaked as much of her case as he could to make some noise. It’ll distract everyone a little while he worked stuff out.
“And you think your solutions are better?” Wanda asks, sounding closer this time. The door opens, revealing an irritated looking Wanda.
“As opposed to Steve’s? You were pissed off that I locked you in your room and you know what, you were right. I had no right to go making decisions regarding your life without consulting you and that was stupid of me. So I’m sorry for that, which is part of the reason I’m here. Technically you’re free to leave here, Wakanda I mean, if you want but people are looking to tear you apart. If you go it might not be so easy, but being locked in your room here probably isn’t much better so,” he says, shrugging awkwardly.
Wanda narrows her eyes suspiciously at him, “what do you mean ‘as opposed to Steve’s’? And I’m assuming you are not completely out of options, your mind is buzzing,” she says. That had taken some getting used to, Wanda’s ability to read his mind. It wasn’t something she did voluntarily though, and she didn’t usually catch more than emotions and loud thoughts according to Vision, who demonstrated similar abilities thanks to the mind stone. But ultimately no one could fault her, or Vision, for being able to glean information from their minds when neither of them were doing it on purpose.
“Look around, you’re locked up in a room right now and you have been for months. He was looking out for your health like I was trying to- and failed to- and both of our solutions were to isolate you in a place without asking you what you thought first. Unless when he broke you out of the RAFT he sat down and said ‘hey everyone, do you even want to go to Wakanda with me?’ If he did then my bad,” he says. But he doubted Steve did that and he had somewhat good reasons, there were few places where they would be as hidden as they would be in Wakanda. But Bucky and Natasha were master spies; both of them had the ability to hide in plain sight so realistically being seen wasn’t a problem.
Wanda considers the information and Tony sees something flicker there before it’s gone again. “So what are you here to say, other than letting me know what is going on with my life legally?” she asks.
Tony clenches his jaw, looking away. This was going to go badly and he knew it but… but if Wanda found herself in jail again it was a necessary evil…
“Necessary evil? That does not look good for you,” Wanda warns. Shit, of course she would pick that up.
“The suppressor they put on you, it clearly had a negative reaction with you system,” he says and Wanda’s eyes narrow further. “I made something new-”
“I am not interested,” she snarls, slamming the door closed.
He wants to yell at her to stop being a child but that would be insensitive even if it held a nugget of truth. “I don’t know what they’re going to do with you and if you get stuck in jail I can at least make sure you’re comfortable, well, given the circumstances. Vision tested it and said-”
The door flies back open, “you put one of those things on Vision?” she snarls, red energy unconsciously appearing around the hand that wasn’t currently clutching her door.
“He volunteered because his powers are similar to yours. There were no effects but he isn’t a person, well not in the traditional sense,” he adds when Wanda’s jaw clenches. “Point is, the least I can do is make sure that the suppressor you’re wearing isn’t uncomfortable for you. And I can probably make sure the government is forced to use it too, lest they try and slip in their own inhumane crap.” That was a precarious slope though- he had no interest in the government trying to mass market the things to stick on every enhanced person they couldn’t make use of in the name of ‘safety’. Whose safety would become the question there but he has friends in high and low places and they all owed him favors. It was hard to mess with someone with as much power as him and the government knew it.
All he had to do was hope that he was using that power for good this time.
“What does it look like?” Wanda asks, eyeing him skeptically.
That was reasonable, he supposed. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a slim silver band, holding it out to her. “It shouldn’t cut you off from your power completely but it does mean that power won’t extend from you to other things. It was the best way to minimize the effects of essentially cutting off one of your senses but ultimately I have no idea how it will react to you. I figured I’d leave this here with you in case you wanted to test it and if not, well, you’re capable of making sure no one arrests you. And if so you could tell me, or Vision more likely, what it does to I can try and alter any negative effects on you.”
What the suppressor would do long term was a mystery too and with Wanda’s power they didn’t want an explosion or something equally damaging to Wanda and everyone around her. That was another reason he didn’t want it to suppress her power completely- if he did he worried that the long term effects would be devastating for Wanda let alone anyone else.
“That thing, it won’t make me sick?” she asks, giving the suppressor a suspicious look.
“I hope not, but like I said, I don’t know. This is a prototype at best but with the government freaking out over you I wanted to at least get something working that would benefit you and placate any jail guards. Granted if you chose to stay here there’s less chance of you being arrested, but if you don’t and something goes wrong I figured you’d appreciate less surprises.” Plus he sort of wanted something to stick to Ross. He forgot how much he hated government systems but… it was the lesser of two evils, and Steve’s way didn’t prove any more or less effective than his own ultimately. But this way made people feel safe and at the end of the day he couldn’t fathom up a reason as to why he should have no laws when everyone else had to follow some set of legal rules.
Steve, the champion of the underprivileged, should have probably realized long ago that not adhering to the rules everyone else had gave you a large amount of privilege. Though in their case they followed a set of rules that was to fit their special circumstances. It sure as hell wasn’t perfect but if they waited around for perfection they’d be waiting for forever because perfect doesn’t exist.
Wanda reaches out slowly to take the suppressor band, “I don’t think I’m going to risk leaving here, but I don’t know if I’ll test this,” she says slowly.
“That’s fair. To be fair I wouldn’t want to test it either, I mean I did test it on myself but being a baseline human it didn’t do anything at all. But I don’t have the extra senses that you do so that makes sense.” If Bruce was around he might ask to test it on him but he wasn’t and Vision was his next best chance at testing the band.
“You tested it on yourself?” she asks, frowning.
“Well yeah, Vision isn’t organic. For all I knew it worked fine on androids and tore organic people to shreds or something equally terrible. Good to know that it doesn’t react badly to organic matter, but I don’t know how it reacts to powers like yours and organic matter. Theoretically fine, but theories don’t always play out the way we want to,” he says, thinking of Ultron. Technically he and Bruce weren’t even there when that went sideways and the bastard took out JARVIS on his way to ‘freedom’.
“Oh,” Wanda says slowly, looking at the band for a moment before her gaze shifts back to Tony. They look at each other for a moment before Wanda retreats back to her room and Tony goes, recognizing the clear dismissal.
*
Tony wakes up to a tight feeling in his chest and difficulties breathing. For a moment he thought maybe his weird cat had decided to sleep on his face or something again but the cat was giving him a strange look from the other pillow as he struggled to take in breaths. He’s lost for a few seconds before it hits him. T’Challa.
Shit. Tony manages to pull himself out of his bed, dully noting the patter of cat feet behind him as he struggles his way out of his room and starts making his way to T’Challa’s. It takes longer than he would have liked but he gets there, still struggling for breath with his hand pressed to his heart. Okoye is already there, staring at T’Challa with wide eyes, clearly lost on what to do. T’Challa is curled on the ground beside his bed shaking badly and not breathing properly so Tony makes his way over, dropping down beside him.
“T’Challa,” he squeezes out, quelling the panic that was rising now that he was closer to T’Challa. “You need to breathe okay, in and out. Follow me,” he says, reaching out to touch T’Challa’s hand gently. The small touch gets a gasp that interrupts what is clearly a panic attack but it doesn’t pull him out of it completely. “Follow me,” Tony repeats, breathing in, holding it for a few seconds, and letting the breath out. He repeats the action until T’Challa is breathing with him though he was still quite shaky. Okoye watches on, eyes still wide, though she looks less worried now.
“Hey, there you go. You’re doing better, I’ve got you,” Tony says softly, murmuring words of encouragement. T’Challa continues to shake, curled tightly in his ball for several more moments before he all but throws himself at Tony, wrapping his arms around him body and leaning into him. “I- uh, okay,” he says, wrapping his arms around T’Challa back, gently rubbing his hand over T’Challa’s back. Okoye leaves then, apparently deciding that Tony was equipped to deal with this.
“Are you alright?” Tony asks and rolls his eyes at himself for asking such a stupid question. “I mean you aren’t alright, but are you going to be okay?” It was a suitable replacement he supposed, even if he still disliked the question.
“Sorry,” T’Challa gasps out, “I had a dream.” He starts shaking harder and Tony pulls him a little closer, continuing to run his hands over T’Challa’s back rhythmically.
“I figured as much. Sorry,” he says somewhat dumbly. He had no idea what T’Challa dreamed but it clearly wasn’t pleasant if this was the result.
“Do not apologize, you could not help… could not…”
“Hey, shh. You don’t need to tell me about it. Have you ever had a panic attack before though?” he asks, figuring this would be relevant information.
“A what?” T’Challa asks, answering Tony’s question well enough.
“A panic attack, or anxiety attack, either works. That’s what just happened, that shaking, inability to breathe, vision blacking out, heart racing, the whole bit. They uh… might happen frequently. I usually get one at least once a week, sometimes more or less depending on how stressful things are for me that week,” he says. “But I really hope soul mate magic doesn’t transfer that over to you.” That would be pretty damn unfortunate. He hated the panic attacks but he couldn’t help them either, they just sort of… showed up and made plenty sure he couldn’t breath for what felt like hours even though it was maybe a few minutes to a half an hour.
“I certainly hope they do not become frequent,” T’Challa murmurs. “But… can you stay with me, for a few moments?” he asks softly.
Tony holds him tighter, “I’ll be here as long as you need,” he says, surprised that he meant it. They sit there like that for some time while T’Challa calms down more, his shaking tapering off until he was still again. The last thing Tony expected was a loud ‘mrowugh’ to interrupt the silence as Sharkbait took it upon himself to squeeze himself between T’Challa’s bony and Tony’s, clicking away.
“That cat is the weirdest feline I have ever met,” T’Challa says, pulling back some to frown at the furry fluff ball.
“Yeah, but I like him that way. Now you should probably get some rest, you’re probably exhausted,” Tony says, gently nudging T’Challa.
He tenses some and looks away, “alright,” he murmurs.
It takes Tony a second to figure out what’s wrong, “oh, hey, I’m not going anywhere. But get into bed, you need to lie down some and relax even if you don’t sleep.” He rarely slept after a panic attack but he also had insomnia so that was likely why, but he was always dead tired.
T’Challa looks at him for a long moment but he complies, snorting at Sharkbait's annoyed noise as he moves, shuffling the cat around. He stretches out on the bed and Tony stands, lifting the now annoyed cat with him. The cat doesn’t make a break for it though; he just does a lot of grumbling. Tony sets the cat on the bed, which alerts Cleocatra to the presence of another cat so she gets up to investigate.
Sharkbait, for his part, is fine with Cleo sniffing him but he is less then enthused when Cleo lifts a paw and smacks him. He smacks her right back, twice in quick succession and growls. Cleo grumbles and gives a cursory growl back but she wanders off, back over to T’Challa’s side of the bed so she could lay over there and glare at Sharkbait from a safe distance. She was probably plotting her revenge already.
Tony shakes his head and lays down somewhat gingerly, unsure of what the hell was happening here. Sharkbait doesn’t care about his owner’s discomfort, he simply runs over so he could curl into Tony’s side, clicking as he started with his weird purr. T’Challa shuffles closer and Tony half smiles, “beware of cat, if you roll over on him he bites,” he says.
T’Challa snorts, “so does Cleo. Too bad they do not get along at the moment.”
“Yeah, but if they did they’d take over the world,” Tony says. At that moment Cleo decides to prove him right by launching herself over T’Challa and directly onto Sharkbait, who is not impressed with this. Things quickly devolve into ‘no don’t bite!’ and ‘ow, stop scratching!’ with a side of ‘ha, my cat is winning so clearly I have the superior cat.’