Chapter 19
“How’d they take it?” Tony asks when T’Challa returns.
T’Challa sighs deeply, clearly irritated. “Well they blamed you for my decision and I do not take kindly to the idea that I cannot make decisions on my own. It is an ignorant assumption at best and racist at worst. I am perfectly fit and capable of making my own decisions about my own country regardless of your opinion. And your opinion almost certainly conflicted with my decision given that you have not been fond of removing the Avengers in the past. So I told them that, and to never assume that anyone but a Wankandan decides what happens in Wakanda. And I docked two hours off their time,” he says, giving his head a sharp shake.
Stupid move, suggesting a foreigner was behind T’Challa’s decisions. It seemed to be a sore point here, the idea of foreignness. It wasn’t surprising with the history of isolation and the suspicion of the outside world, which conflicted with T’Chaka and T’Challa’s plan to integrate Wakanda into the rest of the world. Tony wondered what kind of issues T’Challa had to deal with regarding that, especially since he hasn’t seen any evidence that people disagree with the decision when some must. But Tony didn’t really understand the culture here; maybe they had some other way to complain about things that they didn’t do in America or something.
“Of course they blamed me. I’m the problem with the world don’t you know, just me personally. And then I’m arrogant for believing it,” he says bitterly. Except he has made bad decisions that had worldwide consequences, and those consequences had consequences. Sakovia resulted in the Accords resulted in that ‘Civil War’ resulted in whatever the hell was happening now. That was huge and it boiled down to the bad decisions of three people, he was one of those people. But it was arrogant for him to assume responsibility for his own negative effects on the world, and yet it was arrogant for him to not take responsibility too. Everything was a god damn living contradiction with them and it drove him nuts. How was he supposed to keep up when nothing ever seemed to work with them? It was worse than when Howard was still alive because at least he had his mom, and Howard was one man. With the Avengers it’s a whole team of people.
“I know. I simply cannot see how people can be so blind to their own hypocrisy and stupidity but perhaps that is because my father spent a lifetime training me to always take into account that I might be wrong, and to listen when people tell me that I am,” T’Challa says. He sighs and throws himself on the bed, bouncing a little before he settles. Cleo, who must have been hiding, appears out of nowhere and hops onto the bed, immediately curling into T’Challa’s side.
Tony looks at him for a long time before he responds; long enough that T’Challa fidgets some under his gaze. “You’re good at it you know, admitting when you’re wrong. I really appreciate that you apologize when you are too, truly apologize and you didn’t make some stupid side note about asking for forgiveness either. I get it because I’ve done it, but asking someone for forgiveness is stupid and it makes an apology disingenuous because it makes the apology about you instead of the person you’re apologizing to.” That was a lesson he wished he learned far sooner than he had but whenever people mentioned apologies forgiveness soon followed. The lessons he learned told him to apologize for forgiveness and to forgive those who have apologized.
But apologizing doesn’t mean you deserve forgiveness and if you’re truly sorry you wouldn’t expect anything from the person you’re apologizing to. Hope for forgiveness, sure, ask for it? Presumptuous at best, thinking that person owes you forgiveness.
T’Challa sighs, “yet another lesson learned from my father. I have know idea how he learned most of the things he did. People do not really talk about it but his own father was… not particularly good at being a parent, or a king. He only ever mentioned it once, sort of, when he overheard a man tell his son that he should be grateful that he was not abused the way he was as a child,” T’Challa says. Tony’s face immediately scrunches in disgust and T’Challa nods, “that was my father’s reaction exactly. He was not an angry man by nature and that was the angriest I ever saw him get. ‘Children should not be grateful that they are treated with respect, nor should they be grateful that they are not abused. That is a given, not a privilege.’ The words haunted me for months because I was not sure what kind of conditions inspired them, and I am certain I do not want to know,” he says, looking a little paler than normal.
“Probably not,” Tony agrees, “but bad parents are a pretty good way to learn what you don’t want to do. I have a lot of examples of things I would never do, even if I spent far more time being Howard rather than learning from his mistakes.” God, it was horrible looking back now because he could literally see himself turning more and more into his father all while hating the guy. He guessed he was back to that hypocrisy argument T’Challa made earlier because he hadn’t realized what a hypocrite he was either, not until years later.
“You may have been a selfish, callous ass but make no mistake, you were never your father. Even at your worst you still had plenty of good to offer, your father, however, is an evil human being and you were never anything like him,” T’Challa tells him almost harshly, his words filled with meaning. Tony could literally feel the intensity of the feeling behind that, he could feel how much T’Challa believed that.
But he didn’t know how far gone Tony really was, or maybe he chose to ignore all the evidence. He half smiles, “I wish I could believe that,” he says, “but it isn’t true no matter how much I wish it was. Howard is death and destruction and no matter how hard I try I never really did grow out of the Merchant of Death. Maybe I was just kidding myself with thinking that I ever could.”
*
“So how’s Tony?” Rhodey asks. It was freakishly late for Shuri, but the time was better for Rhodey so she suffered with a phone call in the dead of night.
“Fine, his mental health status not declined from the last time you asked,” she says, poking fun gently. Tony seemed to be a sensitive subject for him and she sensed a long history there that she would like to learn about. Clearly Tony and Rhodey were important to each other and she found that personal relationships were a good way to judge how any sort of relationship would proceed. She disliked walking into things blindly so she paid attention to the way Tony and Rhodey talked about the other and from what she got they thought the sun shone out the other’s ass, even when talking about things that they disliked about the other.
“Well it could have, you haven’t had to deal with the mood swings yet. Just be gentle with him, he tries really hard even if it doesn’t seem like it sometimes,” Rhodey says, concerned. Well, at least he was clearly willing to get invested in emotionally compromised individuals, clearly they were meant to be together.
“Oh trust me, we can all see the effort and the strange mental gymnastics the Avengers have tried to force him into. Honestly the man is arrogant for not doing what they want, he does what they want and then they change it all and call him arrogant still. I would be confused,” she says honestly. She’s been in similar situations herself but nothing to the kind of extremes Tony has had to deal with. Why the man even bothered to try was beyond her. Personally she had better things to do than try and please people who would not be pleased no matter what she did.
“Oh trust me, I know. So how’s T’Challa handling all this? I know Tony can be a bit of a handful but he’s worth the trouble, he just has some problems getting to that point because… well he’s pretty fucked up,” Rhodey says bluntly.
“We know, dear, we’ve seen it. And all things considered T’Challa is handling all of this quite well, I would have assumed he would be more frustrated than he is but he has adjusted well to Tony’s needs. And honestly Tony has been doing pretty well at predicting T’Challa’s needs too,” she says. The last thing she would have expected out of her brother was panic attacks considering how calm and collected he was on any given day but Tony handled the situation efficiently enough that even Okoye was impressed. She was not an easy woman to impress; Shuri never had managed to live up to her standards.
“That’s good then. Tony’s still kind of skeptical about the whole soul mate thing, at least outwardly. I’m pretty sure he’s in love and hasn’t realized it yet but he’s one stubborn sonofabitch, he won’t admit it until he’s good and ready. So I hope T’Challa is prepared to deal with that. Anyways, so how are you?” he asks, almost taking it on to the end.
Shuri snorts and shakes her head, “I see how it is, I am third on your priority list,” she jokes.
“No, that’s not- actually kinda yeah. Wait, no that sounds really rude when I say it like that…” Rhodey says, babbling on in a sad attempt to fix his perceived mistake.
“Relax, I know that you meant to check in on you friend, who just happens to be permanently attached to my brother in some sort of bizarre cosmic way. It makes sense to care about Tony more than me, you have known him longer, it would be unfair and illogical to expect you to put me first. And you only care about my brother because he is attached to Tony,” she points out. Had that not been the case then she would have been upset. She has lived in her brother’s shadow her whole life; she was not going to live in his shadow in her romantic relationships too.
Rhodey pauses for a moment before he speaks. “Damn, where have you been my whole life?” he asks and she snorts again because that was simple logic, not anything special. “No seriously, do you have any idea how weirdly jealous I’ve had exes get over Tony? I’ve had more than one complain that I loved him more and yeah, he’s my best friend. Am I supposed to stop loving him?” he asks. His tone suggests that he thought that was the most absurd thing in the world and she agreed.
“Your culture confuses me. You all seem to be under some strange assumption that love is a zero sum and the more you love and spend time with a person the less you should spend with others. So to be clear I am not threatened by your relationship with Tony and truth be told if you wanted to date him you have had years to do it. Clearly your relationship was only meant to be platonic and it does not matter to me how much you love him, caring about me is a different thing than caring about him. You can do both at the same time,” she says. Wakanda was less… harsh in their standards than others seemed to be in that regard. Community was important to her country, they all stuck together closely and alienating people simply because you started a new relationship was highly frowned upon.
If Rhodey were prepared to leave Tony behind for her she would not be interested in him anyways. It showed a clear lack of loyalty and she found the notion of leaving behind old relationships for new ones, romantic or otherwise, offensive. It was one thing to simply outgrow a relationship but it was something else entirely to simply drop your obligations in all your other relationships to pursue another and that seemed to be a very common thing to do in Rhodey’s culture. Especially if that relationship was romantic in nature.
“I am seriously questioning the universe right now because you were clearly meant to be my soul mate. Every person I have ever dated has assumed that loving Tony meant not loving them. It gets exhausting trying to convince people that I actually do care about them so every time that came up I straight up told them they were right. I’ll probably always love Tony more than them, but they probably won’t ever be there for me the way Tony has been and I’m not just turning my back on all of that because of some petty jealousy,” he says in an annoyed tone. “I know it makes me sound like an ass but it’s true. After all he’s done for me, and all I’ve done for him, we have a pretty special bond and eventually I stopped dating because I was tired of people expecting me to give that up for them.”
Shuri smiles, pleasantly surprised that she found someone outside her own country that thought similarly to her. T’Challa had done very well in schools outside the country but Shuri found the new cultures impossible to adjust to, and personal relationships happened to be the area she had the most trouble with. It was perfectly normal everywhere else to ditch all of your friends for a new boyfriend and her friends did not seem to understand why she was so offended. The very few people she dated also misunderstood why she was unwilling to drop everything for them. She stopped speaking to people to avoid the drama and that was when she got stuck with a bunch of ‘attitude problem’ labels. She did not have an attitude; she found the culture she was in senseless and impossible to adjust to without compromising her values. There was a difference.
“Actually, your thought process is highly valued in Wakanda. Here it is unthinkable to up and leave all of your close personal relationships in the pursuit or romance. Actually it is quite offensive, so if you had left Tony behind I would have left you behind. I am not interested in people who do not know the meaning of loyalty,” she says bluntly. Try as she might she could not wrap her brain around why that would ever be a good thing to do. It narrowed emotional support systems so much and it was unfair to expect one person to be the center of your world, and in some cases that was flat out unhealthy. It was senseless to her to rely so heavily on one relationship to work that she let all others fall to the side. And her friends wondered why their relationships failed when they put that kind of pressure on them. It was a no brainer to her- that kind of pressure is debilitating.
“Seriously? All this time I spent wondering if I was like… weird or wrong or something and there’s an entire country that thinks my way is the right way. What the hell,” Rhodey mumbles, irritated.
Shuri laughs softly, “well, we are a very tight knit country. All we have is each other; it was natural that we stuck so close together when we did not have the outside world to support us. Though I suspect my father’s decision to send us outside the country for post-secondary schooling meant that he had been thinking about integrating Wakanda into the rest of the world for far longer than he let on. Then Sokovia happened and he saw a good opportunity to act, and that lead to T’Challa finding his soul mate, and of course I met you, and then all the politics that has gone along with this. I suppose his plan to integrate Wakanda has gone well, we are smack in the middle of world politics now.”
With mixes results at that. The world was just as suspicious of them as they were of the world though no one here said much out loud. There were whispers, of course, people were skeptical of why her father had chosen to lead them back into a world that had no interest in them, and they wondered why T’Challa chose to follow through after what the world did to his father. But even she had to admit that it was not the world’s fault her father is dead, that was the direct result of the actions of one bad man. As much as she would prefer to remain isolated her father was right in assuming that that was no longer sustainable.
“Wait, you didn’t decide to go outside the country on your own?” Rhodey asks.
“Hell no. I wanted nothing to do with his plans but he is my father, I assumed there was wisdom behind the decision and I remain convinced to this day that that was a terrible idea. T’Challa, of course, was curious and perfectly fine with this and of course he integrated well. I have no clue how he managed to do so well in another culture without sacrificing all his own values, I certainly did not manage,” she says. Not that this surprised her, for every one thing she did wrong T’Challa did three things right and people noticed. He may find the attention difficult but Shuri saw no evidence for his fear of failure. Even when he did manage to screw something up he also managed to fix it quickly- Tony was a good example of this.
“Huh. I’ve never really had any trouble, but to be fair everyone knew I was American and treated me like it too so maybe I don’t get it. You know, it was weird though, how people treated me more like an American over seas than they did at home. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told to go back to Africa. I was born in Michigan but like okay,” he says sarcastically.
Shuri frowns, “where in Africa?” she asks, confused by the statement.
“Good question, but the geography programs here must suck because people like to think Africa is a country instead of a continent. Sometimes if I feel ballsy I’ll ask what country just to watch them get confused,” Rhodey says, snickering.
“That… I do not know to respond to that other than to be confused about your strange form of entertainment,” she says.
“Oh hey, you can’t judge me, you have a pet spider! Those things were meant to be the hell away from people, not to be kept as pets!” Rhodey says and she can practically hear him shudder.
“You leave my spider alone, I am not allergic to it,” she says, eyeing her spider sadly. Rhodey would not allow the poor thing anywhere near him and that was just saddening to her. It was not the spider’s fault that it was born in that particular body. Spiders were useful; she found Rhodey’s fear strange and unusual though most people found her love of the eight-legged creatures strange and unusual.
“Does that have like… cultural significance? Because you Wakandans sure do love your cats, there are statues of them everywhere,” Rhodey says.
“Well, most of the statues you saw were of Bast, one of our gods, she’s a panther,” she says proudly though Rhodey probably deduced that already. He doesn’t interrupt her to tell her that and she gives him brownie points for it, “but yes, we do love our cats. As for cultural significance, it depends on whom you ask. Some people believe it has significance and that it can tell you about a person, and others find that superstitious and illogical. I fall in the latter camp but I am allergic to cats so I am biased.” Most people found the belief that those that were allergic to cats were inherently bad people that were cursed by Bast to be an outdated belief, but it was pervasive enough of a belief that she got flack for her allergy. It certainly was not her fault that she was allergic to cats though, she loved them and they loved her but she did not enjoy sneezing and rashes.
Being around T’Challa’s cat was terrible enough and she disliked Shuri enough to actively avoid her. That did not stop her from getting watery eyes and a runny nose, and if Cleo decided to try and eat her spider again her pet dander gave Shuri a rash. And then there was the sneezing, and it did not stop. That did not stop her from petting the neighborhood cats though, she was going to love every last cat that would allow her to sneezing be damned. Unfortunately the cats have caught onto her allergy and they now avoid her, probably because her sneezing scares them all off. At least she was not allergic to panthers to her knowledge, but then she rarely got close enough to them to tell.
“Huh, interesting. Well, at least Tony will blend in in that respect. Poor guy has always been a cat lover in a dog lover’s world. I prefer dogs; don’t ever tell him I said that, he’d kick my ass. That doesn’t mean your love of spiders is acceptable though, allergic to cats or not you could have picked something cuter and less terrifying to love,” Rhodey tells her.
“I think spiders are very cute,” she says in a mock-offended tone. “Lady Penelope is beautiful.”
“Honey, Lady Penelope is the stuff of nightmares. Specifically my nightmares, I am not even kidding about that. I had a nightmare about that thing last night and I’m real upset because I don’t have working legs. I can’t even run away!” Rhodey says, sounding distressed. Shuri thinks that it’s probably insensitive but she bursts out laughing, doubling over in her seat while Rhodey made scandalized noises.
"Do not worry, I will protect you from Lady Penelope," she finally, managing to squeeze it out around her laughs.
"You better, I'm trusting you with my life right now, don't let me down. And do not let that spider get me." Rhodey's comment only serves to make her laugh harder.