The sudden sound of Leander's voice was like a physical jolt to the room. Dr. Banner, whose hand had been propping up his chin, jerked as his support slipped. His head bobbed down, and he scrambled to regain his dignity, blinking blearily through smudged lenses.
"Wh—? What? What happened?" Banner stammered, frantically patting the floor for his fallen glasses. He shoved them onto his face and squinted. "Leander? When did you get here? I didn't hear the elevator."
Tony looked at Banner with the expression of a man who had just poured his heart out to a brick wall. "Did you hear any of that, Bruce? Any of the deep, soul-searching revelations?"
"I... I might have drifted off for a second," Banner admitted, rubbing his jaw.
"How far back did you lose the thread?"
Banner thought for a moment, trying to find a landmark in the sea of Tony's words. "The part about the elevator in Switzerland? 1999?"
Tony let out a long, theatrical sigh, pouting like a rejected child. "So you missed the entire third act. Wonderful."
"Tony, look," Banner said, his voice regaining its usual gentle, weary tone. "I'm not that kind of doctor. I have seven PhDs, and not one of them is in psychology. I'm not trained to unpack the 'Stark family baggage.' I don't have the temperament for it. If I get too stressed out by your childhood trauma, the other guy might decide he wants to join the session, and nobody wants that."
Tony slumped back into the sofa, rubbing his forehead. Leander watched them from behind the chair, an amused glint in his eyes. He realized that this was Tony's new normal—trading the noise of the arc reactor for the noise of his own thoughts.
"This reminds me of my biggest trauma," Tony muttered, staring at the ceiling and ignoring Leander entirely as he slipped back into his monologue. "It was 1983. I was fourteen, and my parents still insisted on a babysitter. Can you imagine the indignity? A genius with a babysitter. It was a very strange time..."
Banner shook his head and sank back into the upholstery, closing his eyes again. Leander didn't interrupt. He stood there and listened as Tony described the long shadows of his childhood, the cold distance of Howard Stark, and the lingering, raw ache of his parents' sudden death. It was the first time Leander felt he was seeing the man behind the iron, not just the mask.
After a shared lunch where Tony and Pepper spent most of the time arguing over shareholder meetings and hospital discharge papers, the couple headed out to Stark Industries. Leander and Banner stood on the balcony, watching the sleek Audi pull away from the tower.
"What do you think, Doc?" Leander asked.
"He's changed," Banner said softly. "But it's a good change. He's not even obsessing over 'Veronica' today. I used to think his focus on the suits was a symptom of a deeper illness—an addiction to being a hero. Now? It feels like he's finally stepping out of the armor instead of hiding inside it."
"You know about Veronica?" Leander asked with a smirk. "I thought you two just named the project last night."
Banner froze, scratching the back of his neck in confusion. "Wait... we did. How do you—? Never mind. I've stopped asking how you know things."
Leander laughed and waved a hand as he walked toward the exit. "Keep working on her, Bruce. You know the Hulk better than anyone. You're the only one who can make him a partner instead of a passenger."
While things were domestic in the Tower, the atmosphere on the "Airbus"—the mobile headquarters of Agent Phil Coulson's team—was considerably more strained.
Skye, the civilian hacker with a chip on her shoulder, had officially joined the crew, but the reception was frosty at best. Agent Grant Ward, the team's combat specialist, was particularly vocal about his disapproval.
"A Rising Tide member? Phil, she's a security breach with a laptop," Ward argued, leaning against the cold metal bulkhead of the plane.
"She's an 'Advisor,' Grant," Coulson replied calmly, not looking up from his tablet. "SHIELD has a long history of utilizing outside talent. Tony Stark is technically an advisor, and we seem to tolerate him."
"Stark isn't actively trying to dismantle the RSA encryption system for fun," Ward countered. "She's cracked our systems twice now. From a van."
"Exactly," Coulson said, finally meeting Ward's eyes. "Imagine what she could do with our resources instead of against them."
The team's first real test came with Incident 084—a code name for objects of unknown origin. They were dispatched to Peru to recover a mysterious artifact embedded in an ancient temple. What started as a recovery mission quickly devolved into a chaotic shootout with local rebels and a betrayal by Peruvian military "allies."
For the first time, the team had to rely on more than just their individual skill sets. Melinda May—the woman the Academy still whispered about as 'The Cavalry'—showed why she earned the name, moving through the rebels like a silent, lethal shadow. But it was the 'science twins,' Fitz and Simmons, who saved the day, rigging the 084 device to blow a hole in the side of the plane during flight to depressurize the cabin and eject the hijackers.
Skye proved her worth in the chaos, using an inflatable emergency raft to plug the hole in the hull while the plane was at thirty thousand feet. It was messy, unprofessional, and completely brilliant. After the "Peru Incident," the ice began to melt. Skye was given the unofficial title of Field Agent-in-Training, with Ward assigned as her "S.O." (Supervising Officer).
The training was brutal—shooting drills, disarming maneuvers, and grueling physical exercises. But Skye found a different way to contribute. During a diamond heist investigation that left the rest of SHIELD's analysts chasing their tails, she used her "Rising Tide" sensibilities to find an alternative digital trail.
They were hunting Akela Amador, a former protégé of Coulson's who had been presumed dead for seven years. Coulson was haunted by the mission; he saw in Akela the same potential he now saw in Skye.
"She's not just a thief, Phil," Ward noted after Skye intercepted a high-frequency signal. "She's seeing things we can't."
They discovered that Akela's eye had been replaced with a high-tech prosthetic—a monitor that gave her X-ray vision and night vision, but also acted as a kill-switch. She was a slave to a mysterious organization called 'The Eye.' Every move she made was watched by a 'handler' who could detonate a charge in her skull with the press of a button.
The mission ended with a frantic surgery performed by Simmons to remove the eye-bomb while Ward wore a pair of synchronized glasses to spoof Akela's perspective, tricking the handler into thinking she was still on task. They caught a glimpse of the handler, only to see him die instantly when his own eye-bomb was triggered from even higher up the chain.
The clue was gone, but the team was finally a team. May, Fitz, Simmons, and Ward welcomed Skye into their circle, a shared bond forged in the shadow of 'The Eye.'
A few days later, the Airbus was cruising over the Pacific when a high-priority alert pinged on the center console. Coulson walked into the briefing room, his face more serious than usual.
"Director Fury just sent this over," Coulson said, swiping a file onto the main screen. "Incident Report from the Hong Kong bureau. A gifted individual on our Index has gone missing."
Melinda May looked at the screen, her eyes narrowing. "Chen Haoran. Pyrokinetic. He's been under observation for three years."
"He was snatched off the street in broad daylight," Coulson added. "No witnesses, no CCTV footage. Just a localized heat signature and then... nothing."
May and Coulson exchanged a glance. There was a subtle tension in the room, a feeling that this wasn't just another kidnapping. This felt like a targeted harvest.
Coulson looked at the data on Chen Haoran—a man who just wanted to perform street magic and was now likely being dissected in a lab somewhere. The thought of 'The Eye' or whatever organization was behind Amador made his skin crawl.
He turned away from the group, stepping out onto the quiet gantry of the plane. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He didn't dial a SHIELD extension. He didn't call the Director.
He scrolled through his private contacts until he reached a name that wasn't supposed to be in any official database.
Leander.