Coulson waited in Stark Industries' Manhattan offices with the patience of a man who had already lost three days and was trying not to lose his temper with the furniture.
The building was exactly what he expected from Tony Stark. Money had been made to look efficient. Security had been trained to smile while refusing people. Every assistant who crossed the floor moved with the confidence of someone who knew there were no second chances for being slow.
He had called, left messages, tried assistants, tried assistants for the assistants, and followed every official path short of breaking into Stark's lunch. Three days of that had earned him a meeting with Virginia 'Pepper' Potts.
Coulson did not mistake that for progress.
Her file had been solid. Long service and held in high trust by Stark. Exceptional tolerance for his chaos. She had lasted in a position that burned through other people. Given recent experience, Coulson had learned not to dismiss the second option too quickly. Even with their stock dipping, there was no chaos here.
Unlike the Triskelion, he muttered.
His current workload had become a collection of headaches wearing human names. Romanoff was back. Barton was irritated. Fury was raw, and Hill had returned to hiding the moment Noctis agreed to narrow the unfortunate accidents without promising to forget the old ones, which meant engineering now treated Coulson as the only man in the organisation who had recently achieved something other than damage.
Coulson could negotiate future restraint. He could not reverse kidnapping, blood theft, public humiliation, property loss, diplomatic fallout, or Fury's talent for taking a bad situation and stamping on it until it developed personal hatred.
That had left him with this assignment.
Recruit Stark if possible, salvage something if not, and avoid being thrown out.
The ideal outcome, according to Fury, was Tony Stark joining SHIELD as a consultant. Coulson had managed not to laugh when the Director said it. He still considered that one of his better professional moments.
A security officer approached and nodded politely.
"Miss Potts will see you now, Agent Coulson."
Coulson stood and followed the guard.
The guard escorted him to a meeting room and left him there with a polished table, a city view, and the kind of deliberate neatness that only existed because somebody important hated mess. Coulson sat, set his folder down, and waited.
Pepper Potts came in a few minutes later with a tablet under one arm, and Coulson looked at it with longing eyes. Days passed after the meeting at St Regis, but the network and IT infostructure was not done. Not even close.
He rose at once.
"Thank you for agreeing to this meeting, Miss Potts. I'm Agent Phil Coulson of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."
Pepper stopped, looked at him, and let the name sit there for a second.
"That is a mouthful."
Coulson gave her a small smile.
"We are still working on it."
She set the tablet down and paused before taking the chair.
"Are you with SHIELD?"
There was no value in dodging it.
"Yes, Miss Potts. I am."
That was enough.
She straightened fully, and all pretence of a normal meeting vanished.
"I'm sorry, Agent Coulson, but Stark Industries has no interest in supporting or working with organisations committing crimes worse than terrorists."
Coulson took the blow without showing much on his face, though inwardly he marked the phrasing. Someone had thought about it, approved it, and waited for a SHIELD agent to be unlucky enough to hear it.
"Miss Potts, if I could just explain why I'm here."
"No." Her tone stayed controlled, which made the answer firmer. "Mr Stark is not taking meetings with SHIELD. Stark Industries is not taking meetings with SHIELD. And after what your people did to a poor Mutant, I'm not interested in hearing a careful explanation about process, misunderstanding, or classified necessity."
She picked up the tablet.
"This meeting is over."
Pepper turned and walked out before he could waste another sentence trying to improve it.
The door had barely closed when two security guards stepped in. They were polite, professional, and clearly under instructions to make sure politeness travelled only one way.
"Agent Coulson, we have been asked to escort you out. You have also been placed on the restricted access list."
Blacklisted, in a clean, corporate, and efficient way.
Coulson let them escort him through reception, past the security point, and back out onto the street with as much dignity as the situation allowed.
He took out his phone before he had gone half a block and called Fury.
The Director picked up on the second ring.
"It failed."
That saved time.
"Yes, sir." Coulson stepped out of the flow of pedestrians and stopped by the kerb. "Miss Potts refused the meeting the second she confirmed I was SHIELD. Stark Industries has blacklisted me."
Fury said nothing for one breath.
Then, "Check your phone."
A live location appeared on the screen.
"Stark's in California. Official channels are done. Make contact directly."
Coulson rubbed his thumb along the edge of the phone.
"Sir, with respect, I think we need to hurry the apology and start an actual public relations campaign. At this rate, every door in the country is going to react like Pepper Potts."
Fury ended the call with a degree of restraint that only counted as gentle because Coulson had heard him do worse.
He lowered the phone.
The Director was still sore on the subject of Noctis, which was understandable. SHIELD had lost infrastructure, money, assets, leverage, sleep, and a great deal of credibility in a remarkably short period of time.
He got into the car, pointed it towards the airport, and accepted that he was now flying to California to ambush a billionaire because humiliation in New York had apparently been the warm-up.
--
Across the country, Tony Stark stood in the workshop and looked at the Mark II platform.
Data crawled over the screens. Flight figures, heat readings, stabilisation curves, all of it waiting to inform him that confidence and engineering were not the same thing.
Tony flexed one hand inside the gauntlet and watched the numbers update.
"JARVIS, sometimes you've got to run before you can walk."
A pause followed.
"Ready? And three, two, one."
-
Lucius walked through the St. Regis lobby.
Business was strong. Fury's visit had been satisfying. Natasha's attempt at murder had ruined one excellent suit but improved his opinion of his own healing yet again. The mansion deed was supposedly on the way. The registrations for the cars would follow. From the delay, SHIELD had finally discovered that an apology could be broken into instalments, which was not dignity but did show the organisation remained capable of basic education under pressure.
He had enjoyed Fury's little brain trick during the meeting more than he probably should have. The one-eyed spymaster had jammed Sixteen Tons through his own skull over and over as if repeating a song could somehow stop a telepath from looking in. That alone was funny. The better part was that while Fury concentrated on mud, muscle, blood, debt, and Saint Peter, he left everything else sitting there for a man with patience and spite.
Nick Fury had embezzled billions from SHIELD.
Not for pleasure, that was the beautiful part. Not for hidden mansions, secret women, or the sort of greasy private luxury lesser men would have chosen. Fury had done it for contingencies. Rainy day money on a catastrophic scale. Secret reserves for the kind of emergency he believed only he could recognise before the rest of the world caught up.
The man had serious problems.
Paranoia in industrial quantities. A mind full of enemies, compartments, and backup plans. He saw threats everywhere, which would have been pathetic if it were not so often useful.
Lucius almost respected him for it.
The funniest part was that Fury had also helped bigger threats notice the planet in the first place by poking at the Tesseract like a suspicious child prodding a dead rat with a stick. The bastard spent fortunes preparing for disaster while also helping invite it. That kind of contradiction deserved applause.
He had also picked up something else from the meeting.
Fury had been in contact with Xavier again.
That pleased Lucius in a mean little way. The bald fraud and the one-eyed baldy were apparently united by shared annoyance, discussing how best to confine, disable, and imprison him in a three-foot cube for the rest of his hopefully very long life. Men only started fantasising about cubes when fear had stopped being theoretical.
He wondered if they slapped each other's bald heads as a sort of secret high five between bald people.
SHIELD had also secured three samples of the strengthening variant through Army channels, and Washington had quietly leaned on the IRS and any other useful parasites to stop asking difficult questions about the amount of cash Lucius kept earning.
That had never worried him much.
Politicians ignored stranger things whenever the right people benefited, and the right people were now discovering that thirty minutes of half-super soldier fantasy made a very persuasive argument. The Army had started sending dozens of soldiers to buy up the strengthening stock before it could get elsewhere. That was excellent business and only slightly depressing for the species.
Lucius had very deliberately not called it Light Strengthening Potion.
If people heard the word light, they would immediately start inventing normal, enhanced, premium, military, black label, patriotic, and every other tier their greedy little brains could cough up. Half an hour of temporary superpowers was already enough to make people act like deranged children. There was no reason to encourage them further.
Strengthening Potion was enough.
Let the rest remain fantasy until he decided it was time to monetise fantasy again.
His share in Stark Industries was climbing nicely, too.
Mercer and Hart were doing excellent work. The first wave had pushed him above six per cent. The continued buying was closing in on ten. There was no need to push harder yet. Stane's betrayal was still cooking, and Mark III was still ahead. Better moments would come.
So yes, life was good.
He reached the office, stepped inside, and let the familiar smell of money, polish, and fake medical concern welcome him back.
Sebastien looked up at once.
Lucius nodded towards the waiting area, where another client sat trying very hard not to look overeager and failing.
"Send in the next cash cow."
The butler's face remained perfectly still.
"Of course, sir."
Lucius sat behind the desk with the same pleased little smile still on his face.
Yes. Life was good.