INFERNO │ Marvel

2.5 the cure

Back at the mansion, Amelia had done some cleaning up. She had moved a bunch of rubble into larger piles that would be easier to move later when they did a full sweep out of the place. Now, she sat on the balcony with Tony and Fury, a glass of wine in her hand.

"That thing in your chest is based on unfinished technology," Nick said.

"No, it was finished," Tony disagreed. "It has never been particularly effective until I miniaturised it and put it in my..."

"No," Fury shook his head. "Howard said the arc reactor was the stepping stone to something greater. He was about to kick off an energy race that was gonna dwarf the arms race. He was on to something big, something so big that it was gonna make the nuclear reactor look like a triple-A battery."

"Just him?" Amelia asked, topping up all their drinks. "Or was Anton Vanko in on this too?"

"Anton Vanko is the other side of that coin," he explained. "Anton saw it as a way to get rich. When your father found out, he had him deported. When the Russians found out he couldn't deliver, they shipped his ass off to Siberia, and he spent the next 20 years in a vodka-fuelled rage. Not quite the environment you want to raise a kid in, the son you had the misfortune of crossing paths with in Monaco."

"There's always a sob story," she sighed, looking out to the ocean. "But, as annoying as it is, I can't blame the guy. Not for the whole trying to kill us thing, but for being angry. Having him deported? Dad could've done something other than that."

"You told me we hadn't tried everything," Tony inquired. "What do you mean we haven't tried everything? What haven't we tried?"

"He said that you were the only person with the means and knowledge to finish what he started," Nick told them.

"He said that?"

"Are you that guy? Are you? 'Cause if you are, then the two of you together can solve the riddle of your heart."

"I don't know where you get your information, but he wasn't my biggest fan," Tony said.

"What do you remember about your dad?" Nick asked them. He looked to Amelia first.

"I didn't know him long enough to give you a proper answer for that," she grimaced. "A ten-year-old doesn't exactly know how to read people. As far as I knew, he was too busy with his work to care about his children."

"He was cold, he was calculating," Tony spoke next. "He never told me he loved me. He never even told me he liked me, so it's a little tough for me to digest when you're telling me he said the whole future was riding on me, and he's passing it down. I don't get that. You're talking about a guy whose happiest day was when he shipped me off to boarding school and abandoned Amelia to daycare."

"That's not true," Fury said simply, shaking his head at the pair.

"Well, then, clearly you knew our dad better than we did," Tony scoffed.

"As a matter of fact, I did." Fury placed his glass down as two of his agents placed a large box down in front of the siblings. "He was one of the founding members of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"What?" Amelia gasped. Fury stood from his chair, glancing at his watch.

"I got a 2 o'clock."

"Wait, wait, wait, what's this?" Tony questioned, pointing at the box, labelled 'property of H Stark'.

"Okay, you're good, right? You've got this?"

"No, we're not good. I don't even know what we're supposed to get."

Fury put on his coat as Agent Romanoff appeared at his side once more. "Natasha will remain a floater at Stark with her cover intact. You remember Agent Coulson, right?"