Chapter Text
Author's Note:
What if someone stripped away the layers of protection and plot armour Tony Stark has in not just movies, but many fics? What if somebody actually finished the sentence and Tony was held accountable for his actions? This is the basis of this series- and its title.
In this story, Tony delivered pardons and related how he'd been ill used and vilified by everyone. I asked myself, what if Team Cap were ready? A little legal and medical knowledge are dangerous things: if you're Tony Stark anyway..
T'Challa had told them, three days before, that Tony Stark was coming to Wakanda.
He had told them in the morning, over breakfast, in the careful tone he used when delivering information that required processing time. He had told them that Mr Stark wished to deliver the pardons in person, and that he had requested a meeting with all of them present.
He had also told them, with the particular quality of neutrality that Natasha recognised as T'Challa being very careful about what he said and why, that he would be recording the proceedings as a matter of standard protocol for any formal meeting conducted on Wakandan sovereign soil, and that they were welcome to have their own recording devices present should they wish.
Sam had looked at Steve. Steve had looked at Natasha. Natasha had looked at Clint.
Three days was enough time to prepare.
The meeting room was beautiful. Wanda had noticed the walls when they'd filed in — intricate patterns she didn't have the cultural context to fully understand, but which felt significant. She'd made a note to ask Shuri about them later.
She sat at the long table with the others and placed her folder in front of her. Sam had one too. So did Natasha. Clint's hands were empty but his expression was not.
T'Challa's recording device sat in the centre of the table — small, unobtrusive, and introduced at the outset of the meeting with the careful formality of a man who wanted everything on record. Tony had looked at it when he sat down. He hadn't said anything about it.
He looked different than Wanda remembered. Settled, in some way that she found it difficult to name. Like a man who had decided something and was comfortable with what he'd decided.
She understood that feeling. She'd had it herself, recently. The difference was what the decision was.
Tony looked around the table at them, one by one, and the corners of his mouth curved in a way that wasn't quite a smile.
"Explain to me," he said, "each one of you, exactly what I did to earn the opinion you have of me. One by one, I want to know what I did wrong to you personally."
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Then Clint leaned back in his chair and said, very calmly: "You told Ross where my family was."
Tony paused. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't that opening.
"I sent people to relocate them," he said. "To keep them safe."
"You told Thaddeus Ross," Clint repeated, with the same deliberate calm, "that I had a wife and three children living at a location he wasn't previously aware of. You gave him that information. I've seen the communication logs, Tony. FRIDAY's external correspondence during that period was subpoenaed as part of the Accords review. Your legal team apparently missed that." He tilted his head slightly. "Did you want to talk about why you thought Thaddeus Ross needed to know my children existed?"
The silence that followed had a different quality than the one before it.
Tony opened his mouth. Closed it. "It wasn't—"
"I'm not finished," Clint said, still calm, still even. "When you talk about my family, I need you to be accurate. You gave information about them to a man who was, as we now know, operating well outside his authorised remit. The Accords review board has some thoughts on that. But please — continue. You were going to explain what you did for me."
Tony looked at him for a long moment. Then he moved on.
He looked at Natasha and said that there was no point asking her because he wouldn't know if she was telling the truth.
Natasha opened her folder.
"I don't need you to believe me," she said pleasantly. "This is the Accords review board's assessment of your compliance during the Civil War period. I've marked the relevant sections. You're welcome to a copy — T'Challa has them." She slid the document across the table toward him without waiting for a response, then folded her hands and said nothing further.
Tony looked at it. He didn't pick it up.
He moved to Wanda.
He spoke carefully, she noticed. He'd prepared this speech, or something like it, and he delivered the part about the bomb with the confidence of a man who had checked his facts.
"The bomb that killed your parents wasn't one of mine," he said. "We checked. It wasn't even part of the shipments that Stane was selling under the table. It was a fake. Had it been an SI bomb, it would have gone off. Not a single one of my weapons was a dud."
Wanda nodded slowly.
"That's interesting," she said.
Tony waited.
"There were two bombs," she said. "In our apartment. The night our parents were killed." She kept her voice level. She had practised this. "One detonated. One didn't. We sheltered next to the one that didn't for two days." She looked at him directly. "I've always been curious about that. If Stark Industries weapons never failed to detonate — if that was, as you say, a simple fact — then how do you explain the one that didn't go off?"
Tony said nothing.
"Were they from different sources?" she continued. "Was one an SI original and one a Stane modification? Because I had the impression it was Hammer Tech that was unreliable, not the weapons Stane was selling abroad. If I've been wrong about that, I'd be grateful for the correction."
She watched his expression.
"Because here's what I find myself wondering," she said, "if one bomb was an SI original that functioned correctly, and one was a Stane modification that didn't — or vice versa — then Stark Industries weapons were present that night. Just not all of them fired." She paused. "Which doesn't quite match the story you just told me."
Tony's jaw had tightened almost imperceptibly. To anyone who hadn't spent months reading the micro-expressions of people who thought she couldn't tell when they were lying, it would have been invisible.
She could always tell.
"I accept your apology about the compound," she said, before he could speak. "I do. That's genuine and I can tell. The rest of it—" she gestured slightly to the space where his explanation had been "—we can perhaps revisit."
Sam waited until Tony suggested he hadn't read the Accords before he opened his folder.
He didn't make a production of it. He simply placed his annotated copy of the Sokovia Accords on the table — every relevant clause marked, the attached amendments paper clipped behind it, the Accords review board's subsequent findings paper clipped behind that — and said:
"I read them. I read the original, the amendments, and the review board's post-Civil War assessment of how they were implemented. Particularly the sections concerning detention protocols."
Tony glanced at the folder. "Wilson—"
"The Raft isn't in the Accords," Sam said. "I want to make sure that's on the record, since we're having this conversation in front of a recording device. The Sokovia Accords, as ratified, contain no provision authorising the indefinite detention of enhanced individuals or their associates without charge, without trial, and without legal representation in a facility in international waters. The section you're thinking of authorises the panel to restrict the operational activities of registered enhanced individuals. It does not authorise an underwater prison."
He turned a page.
"The UN Commission on Human Rights has a fairly established position on detention without charge," he continued. "As does the Convention Against Torture regarding conditions of confinement. I have the relevant sections if anyone wants to review them. Clint had no natural light. I had no communication with the outside world. None of us were charged with specific offences under any cited legal authority. Scott—" he glanced at Scott "—is not an enhanced individual. He wears a suit. Without the suit, he's an ordinary person, and he was held in those conditions anyway."
Scott raised his hand slightly in acknowledgment.
Wanda spoke then, quietly, from her end of the table.
"I was fitted with a shock collar," she said.
The room was very still.
"In the Raft. An electro-shock restraint device. To prevent me from using my abilities." She kept her voice even. "I want that noted for the record, since we're discussing conditions of confinement and what the Convention Against Torture has to say about them. An electro-shock device applied to a prisoner who has not been charged with any offence, in a facility with no legal basis, is not a security measure. It has a specific legal classification."
She looked at Tony steadily.
"I'm not telling you this for your benefit," she added. "I'm telling you because it's on the record now."
Sam turned a page in his folder.
"I also want to note," he said, "that I arrived at the Raft with injuries consistent with my arrest. I left with additional bruising. The Wakandan medical team documented my condition when I arrived here." He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. "That documentation has also been provided to the review board as part of the formal complaint."
Scott, who had been quiet, said: "Same."
One word. It landed the same way Wanda's had.
"The accords council," Sam finished, "has received a formal complaint about the Raft. I understand it's currently under investigation. I thought you should know that, since you mentioned the Raft."
Tony looked at him for a moment with an expression that had shifted from prepared confidence to something more careful.
He moved on to Steve.
But Scott spoke first.
He did it the way Scott did most things — without particular aggression, with the slightly apologetic affect of a man who knows he's about to be inconvenient but has decided to be inconvenient anyway.
"You were going to say something about Hank Pym," Scott said. "Before you decided I was irrelevant."
Tony paused. He looked at Scott with the expression of someone recalibrating.
"Hank has a perspective on Stark Industries," Tony said carefully. "I'd take it with some salt."
"Sure," Scott said. "I also have my own perspective now, having been in the Raft." He spread his hands on the table. "But the thing I keep coming back to — and correct me if I'm wrong — is that Hank Pym is currently on the run because the authorities are trying to seize his suits. His technology. The suits he spent his life building." He tilted his head. "You know why that is?"
Tony said nothing.
"The Accords," Scott said. "The document you signed. Which apparently has implications for every other person on the planet who builds or operates enhanced technology, not just the people in this room. Hank's suits fall under the registration and oversight requirements. He didn't sign. So now there are people trying to take his life's work." He paused. "I'm curious whether that came up in the conversations you had before you put your name on that document. Whether anyone said, hey, this is going to affect Hank Pym, or anyone like him. Whether that was factored in."
The silence suggested it had not been factored in.
"I also heard a story," Scott continued, pleasantly, "about why Hank left SHIELD. Why he's had a complicated relationship with Stark Industries specifically." He leaned forward slightly. "Is that the one where your father tried to replicate his Pym Particle research without his knowledge and weaponise it? Because that one I've checked, and it checks out."
He sat back.
"I'm not saying Hank doesn't have a perspective," he said. "I'm saying his perspective is based on documented behaviour by your family toward his work. That's not the same as a lie." A beat. "Just wanted to get that on the record."
Tony looked at him for a moment. Then he looked at the recording device in the centre of the table.
He moved on to Steve.
T'Challa had been quiet throughout, which was a choice. He had the patience for this kind of thing — had been trained for it, had sat in more diplomatic meetings than he could count where the correct strategy was to let the other party speak first and reveal their position fully before you played your hand.
He waited until Tony got to the part about Siberia.
He always intended to wait until Siberia.
Tony described what had happened — the fight, the video, the aftermath. He spoke of Steve hitting him with the shield until he'd disabled the suit and broken his sternum. He spoke of being left on the floor of a freezing bunker in Siberia.
T'Challa cleared his throat.
"Forgive the interruption," he said, "but I want to make sure I understand the medical claim correctly. You're stating that Captain Rogers fractured your sternum."
Tony looked at him. "That's what I said."
"A complete sternal fracture," T'Challa said. He picked up the small folder in front of him — his own — and opened it. "I've taken the liberty of asking our medical team to prepare a brief summary of the clinical presentation of sternal fractures, since this claim has come up before and I wanted to have accurate information available." He scanned it briefly, though he already knew its contents. "A sternal fracture of sufficient severity to be described as broken produces immediate and severe respiratory compromise. Every breath causes significant pain. Patients typically present with chest wall instability, which can cause paradoxical breathing — the chest wall moves in when it should move out — and are at immediate risk of pneumothorax, haemothorax, and cardiac contusion."
He looked up.
"A person with a broken sternum cannot breathe normally. They certainly cannot, without immediate medical intervention, board a private aircraft and fly from Siberia to New York under their own arrangements. They would require hospitalisation, pain management, respiratory monitoring, and in severe cases, surgical stabilisation."
Tony said nothing.
"I raise this," T'Challa continued, "not to minimise whatever injuries you did sustain, which may well have been significant, but because accuracy matters when these events are being discussed, particularly in the context of a formal proceeding." He set down the folder. "I also want to note, for the record, that according to publicly available information, you underwent a procedure in 2013 to remove the arc reactor and associated shrapnel from your chest. The reactor was subsequently disposed of. This means that in Siberia in 2016, you were no longer carrying that device, and the associated chest wall changes from the original shrapnel wound and earlier surgical interventions would have been your baseline physical state going into the fight."
A pause.
"I mention this only because when this incident has been described previously, there is sometimes an implication that the reactor was present and that Captain Rogers was targeting it specifically. If that was not the case — and the publicly available medical timeline suggests it was not — then that particular framing requires correction."
Steve, who had been very still throughout, said quietly: "He's right. You had it removed. I knew that."
Tony didn't respond to either of them.
Steve looked at the table for a moment. Then he said, still quietly, still without heat: "There's also the argument that you weren't trying to kill him."
Tony looked at him.
"I've seen it made," Steve said. "That if you'd wanted Bucky dead you would have used your full arsenal, and the fact that you didn't proves you weren't trying to kill him." He paused. "I was there, Tony. I want to make sure the record reflects what I actually saw."
He kept his voice level. He had practised this too, in a different way — the practice of saying true things without letting the weight of them pull him under while he was saying them.
"You pinned him to the wall and fired a missile at his face. He pushed your arm at the last second — it hit the wall of the bunker instead of his head. You pulled the trigger. That's the only reason he still has a face. You fired a laser at his face. And then you used the unibeam." He stopped. "Do you know what the unibeam would have done if he hadn't fallen at exactly the angle he did? If he'd been a few inches in either direction when it hit?"
Silence.
"It would have struck him in the chest," Steve said. "Not his arm. His chest. And he would have died instantly." He looked at Tony steadily. "He fell the right way. That's the only reason he's alive. Not because you chose not to kill him."
He didn't say anything else.
He didn't need to.
It was Natasha who asked about Siberia.
She asked it the way she asked most things — not aggressively, simply clearly, as though she were confirming a fact she already knew.
"The Accords," she said, "require authorisation from the UN panel for any operation undertaken by a signatory. You went to Siberia without authorisation. You didn't inform the panel. You didn't file an operational brief." She tilted her head slightly. "Does Secretary Ross know about Siberia? Because if he does and he sanctioned it, there's a question about why the same latitude he extended to you wasn't extended to us. And if he doesn't—" she let that sit for a moment "—then you violated the document you arrested us for violating."
"Attempted to violate," Sam said quietly, without heat.
"The review board," Natasha continued, "has access to communications logs from that period. I mention this because I think it's relevant to this conversation, and I think it's relevant to the fact that this conversation is being recorded."
She let that land.
Then she said: "There's also the question of the minor."
Tony's expression shifted.
"Peter Parker," she said. "He was fourteen years old when you brought him to Leipzig. His birthday is in August 2001. The airport battle was May 2016. That makes him fourteen at the time of deployment." She paused. "The Rome Statute defines the recruitment and use of children under fifteen in armed conflict as a war crime. Full stop. For children between fifteen and eighteen, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes significant restrictions. Either way, he was a child, and he was fourteen." She paused. "I assume Secretary Ross is aware of this. I assume the review board is aware of this. I would be surprised if Mr Parker's aunt is aware of this, but that may simply be my assumption."
She closed her folder.
"These are not rhetorical points," she added. "I raise them because we're in a recorded formal proceeding and I want them on the record."
The door opened.
Not dramatically. Not with the kind of timing that would suggest anyone had been listening outside. Simply — a knock, the door opening, and two people entering who T'Challa had clearly been expecting.
Tony looked at them. Something shifted in his expression.
"Mr T'Challa informed us this morning that Mr Stark would be on the premises today," said the woman in front — she had the careful, neutral affect of someone whose entire professional life was conducted in rooms like this one, in conversations like this one. She wore a lanyard that Steve didn't immediately recognise, though the symbol on it was familiar. The Accords council. "We've been monitoring the review board's findings regarding the Siberia incident and the Leipzig operation. Given Mr Stark's presence in Wakanda today, the board asked us to attend."
She looked at Tony.
"Mr Stark. We'd like you to accompany us, please."
Tony looked at T'Challa.
T'Challa's expression was entirely composed. "As I mentioned when we arranged this meeting, I record all formal proceedings on Wakandan soil. The recording has been transmitted to the review board as a matter of standard protocol."
"T'Challa—"
"You're not being arrested by Wakanda," T'Challa said calmly. "You are a guest here and you will be treated as such. These people represent the body you signed an agreement with. I suggest you speak with your legal team."
Tony looked around the table.
Nobody spoke.
There was nothing hostile in any of their expressions — or at least, nothing he could use. Clint was looking at a point somewhere above his head. Sam's hands were flat on the table. Natasha was watching the two officials with professional assessment. Wanda was looking at her folder.
Steve was looking at him.
It was, Tony thought in the brief moment before he made his decision about whether to make this easy or difficult, the specific look that Steve had always been able to produce — not judgmental, not triumphant, not even particularly sad. Just seeing. The look of someone who was paying full attention and not pretending otherwise.
He made it easy.
He stood. He picked up his briefcase. He walked to the door with the two officials, and the door closed behind him, and from the corridor there was the sound of voices — Tony's legal team, apparently, materialising from wherever they'd been waiting — and then nothing.
The meeting room was quiet.
After a moment, Scott said: "Huh."
Nobody responded to that with words, but there was something in the room that felt, not like satisfaction exactly, but like the release of something that had been held for a long time.
T'Challa reached forward and stopped the recording.
"The pardons are genuine," he said. "Mr Stark's personal situation does not affect their legal validity. I had our legal team confirm that before the meeting." He looked at Steve. "James's pardon is there."
He nodded toward the papers still on the table. Most of them were where Tony had placed them — distributed, waiting. One was still at the far end, set apart from the others.
Steve stood up and walked to the end of the table.
He picked up Bucky's pardon.
It was heavier than it should have been, for a piece of paper. Or maybe that was just the way his hands felt.
He folded it carefully and put it in his jacket pocket.
"How is he?" he asked, and his voice came out quieter than he intended.
"He's doing well," T'Challa said, and there was something genuine and warm in the way he said it. "Shuri says he's been attempting to teach her card games, which she finds both patronising and endearing in equal measure." A pause. "He asked about you this morning."
Steve nodded. He didn't trust himself to say anything else for a moment.
"He'll see you when he's ready," T'Challa added. "And he will be ready. He's—" he paused, considering his words "—choosing things for himself, now. What he wants. What he doesn't. It takes time to learn how to do that, but he's learning."
"Yeah," Steve said.
He sat back down.
Outside, somewhere in the palace, the business of the day was continuing. There would be legal proceedings and review board meetings and communications that Steve would have to think about and prepare for and engage with. There was, as there always was, a great deal still to do.
But for this moment he sat with his team — his people, tired and human and complicated as they were — in a beautiful room with patterns on the walls he'd ask someone about later, and he let himself feel the specific weight of the thing in his jacket pocket.
A pardon.
Bucky was going to get to come home.
Whatever else happened, whatever came next — Bucky was going to get to come home.
Steve closed his eyes.
It was enough.
For now, it was enough.
Author's Note:
The Sokovia Accords contain no provision authorising detention without charge, trial, or legal representation. The Raft was not authorised by any instrument of international law that the author is aware of.
Peter Parker was fifteen years old at the Leipzig airport battle. The Rome Statute and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child have established positions on the use of children in armed conflict.
A sternal fracture produces immediate and severe respiratory compromise. The arc reactor was removed in 2013.
These are not fan interpretations.
They are in the record.