Clint nodded to another pair of guards moving down the Triskelion corridor and kept walking.
The place still looked like a headquarters that had lost a fight with its own electricity. Engineers moved fast with paper files tucked under their arms and the hunted expressions of people protecting the last scraps of a system that kept trying to die under them. Temporary cabling ran along sections of the wall. Doors stood open where they should have been sealed. Voices stayed low because everyone knew the Director had spent the entire morning one insult away from homicide.
Clint reached Fury's office, knocked once, and entered when the rough voice inside told him to stop wasting time.
-
Fury sat behind the desk with his sleeves rolled, one hand flat on a pile of papers, the other gripping a pen hard enough that lesser men would have snapped it. The office had been cleaned just enough to function and not an inch beyond that. Files were stacked in bad moods across every available surface. Two clipboards sat where secure tablets should have been. A printed map of field assets had been pinned to a board because the screens on that wall were still dead.
Fury looked tired, angry, and stretched past whatever his own version of patience was.
His good eye settled on Clint and stayed there. Expectation did not soften the look. It just made it heavier. Clint closed the door behind him and stepped forward.
"We ran into problems."
Fury did not blink.
"That is not a report."
Clint stopped in front of the desk and exhaled through his nose.
"Director, before the report, may I ask you one simple question?"
Fury leaned back by an inch. "No."
Clint ignored that.
"What in God's name made you want to antagonise an unkillable son of a bitch?"
Fury's mouth tightened. He leaned forward again, elbows on the desk now, and answered in a voice worn down to blunt edges.
"Report."
So Clint gave it.
He did not soften anything up. There was no point. He went through the visit from the start, from Natasha's pitch about independent mediation to Noctis calling her by her birth name, to the ceasefire demand being laughed out of the room, to the absurd list of terms Lucius had thrown back at them. He repeated the mansion demand, the sports cars, the public apology, the guarantee, and the soft start line exactly because Fury deserved to hear the full insult in proper shape.
Then he moved to the part that actually mattered.
"He made it clear he wouldn't cooperate with SHIELD under any circumstances. He also said his new potion is going to spread through criminal markets and that we should prepare to deal with superpowered organised crime. He tied that straight to the morning attack. No dance round it."
Fury's eye twitched once.
Clint kept going.
"He called you a one-eyed baldy, a terrorist, and a son of a bitch. Repeatedly. Natasha decided he wasn't leaving that room alive. She drew and fired. One to the head, two to the chest."
Fury's eye twitched again.
"He went down and got back up in seconds. Head and chest wounds closed in front of our eyes. After that, he locked both of us down with telekinesis, disarmed Nat, and asked how much the Red Room would pay to get her back."
The pen in Fury's hand cracked.
Clint watched it and decided not to comment.
"He let me leave, and that is all."
Fury sat in silence for a few seconds, then set the cracked pen down with care that looked more threatening than anger would have.
"Where is Romanoff now?"
"With him." Clint kept his tone flat. "He allowed me to leave, and I left."
Fury nodded once. "Good."
Clint stared at him. "Good?"
"Yes, Barton, good. Bad would be you being dead." Fury looked down at one of the reports on the desk, then back up.
"Now we know at least two things for certain. He has some form of regeneration or healing stronger than what we assumed, and telekinesis strong enough to immobilise trained agents instantly."
Clint folded his arms.
"He's also unstable, arrogant, vindictive, and very interested in making things personal."
Fury let out a slow breath.
"That is not new intelligence."
He closed his eye for a moment, head bowed slightly, as if he were trying to decide whether migraine, homicide, and diplomacy could coexist in one day without violating each other.
Then he stood and barked loud enough to carry into the corridor.
"Coulson, Hill. Come here, now!"
The office door opened less than half a minute later. Hill came in first with a paper folder in one hand and irritation under perfect control. Coulson followed in a dark suit that had somehow survived the last few weeks with his composure intact.
Fury did not waste time.
"He wants me in person, fine. We go in person." He looked from Hill to Coulson to Clint. "No more remote pressure or partial channels through intermediaries. We go to him just like he demanded."
Clint's face did not change much, but his answer came quickly.
"I have other business, and I'm not particularly fond of the idea of walking back into a room with a man who currently hates your guts and is storing Romanoff like expensive luggage."
Fury gave him a long look.
"You volunteering out of the operation?"
"I'm using common sense." Clint pushed off from the desk. "If you need me later, you know where I'll be."
He left before Fury could decide whether to argue.
Coulson watched the door close, then turned back to the desk.
"Sir, I don't think bringing Agent Hill is a good idea."
Hill's eyes moved to him.
Fury nodded. "If it is about the risk, you're in the same boat."
"No, sir, I'm not." Coulson stayed calm, almost mild, which only made the answer firmer. "I never mocked, humiliated, or lied to his face. I don't believe I'm personally high on his list. Hill and you, on the other hand," he gestured lightly towards Fury, then Hill.
"His issues are with both of you."
Hill took that without flinching, which was one of the reasons she remained useful.
Fury looked at her.
She gave a small nod.
Ignoring what Coulson said, her tone stayed clipped and practical. "If Romanoff is alive, then Noctis is still talking. If he's still talking, the meeting matters."
Fury looked back at Coulson.
"Congratulations. You're apparently the least offensive person in the building."
Coulson accepted that with a straight face.
"I've had that impression for years, sir."
Despite everything, one corner of Fury's mouth almost moved.
He grabbed his coat from the chair back.
"Hill, you stay here. Keep paper traffic moving. I want every foreign liaison call logged, every fresh arrest confirmed, and any scrap of information on that new potion on my desk before I get back. Coulson, you come with me."
Fury headed for the door, and Coulson fell in beside him.
As they stepped into the corridor, the Triskelion carried on around them in paper, anger, and bruised pride.
--
In the St. Regis Royal Suite, Lucius had Natasha floating in the air while he worked through her memories with the concentration of a man checking merchandise before purchase and regretting the market.
She hung a few feet off the carpet in the main sitting room, held by telekinesis so thoroughly that even her breathing looked rationed. Her wrists were fixed near her sides. Her ankles were crossed more by his sense of symmetry than by necessity. She had long since stopped wasting effort on jerking against the hold.
Lucius sat in one of the armchairs with a drink on the side table. It amused him to violate SHIELD's better cutlery.
He had never been stupid enough to believe Black Widows flirted for the joy of it. The Red Room had not produced women like her by accident, and it certainly had not trained them to smile, seduce, and disappear out of sheer romantic curiosity. Do whatever it takes had been nailed into her psyche until it became instinct, wearing makeup.
In that regard, she was only slightly better than Bucky, which was not a flattering category to occupy.
Lucius had considered enjoying her more directly earlier. He was not shy about that in his own head. A beautiful assassin floating helplessly in his suite did tend to produce impolite thoughts.
Then he had gone looking through her memories.
After that, he decided he would rather not have sloppy seven hundred hand leftovers from half the intelligence world and their targets on his conscience, not because conscience particularly troubled him, but because the idea had rapidly stopped being appetising. Conditioning had a smell even when it existed only in memory. Fury, the high-quality bastard, had been happily enjoying the fruits of Red Room training with an expandable and highly effective slut. He had never bothered to tell her not to go the extra step to finish her assignments while pretending to have the moral high ground. Natasha was and still is a Black Widow. The only difference was that her new employer knew how to act righteously in the wider world.
Lucius found that disgusting.
Natasha watched him from where she hung and finally spoke.
"If you're going to stare, at least be honest about why."
Lucius looked up at her. "I do have standards. Low ones, admittedly, but not subterranean. "I am honest, and lost interest in this." He gestured to her body.
Something cold moved through her eyes. "Insulting me doesn't improve your position."
"My position is lovely." He took a sip from his glass. "Yours looks slightly less comfortable."
Natasha did not bother answering that. There was no room in the air for sarcasm when one was currently arranged like levitation art.
He went back into the memories again, deeper this time, skimming mission habits, Red Room reflexes, safe word chains, cover identities, emotional seams, and the practical acts of playing sexdoll for Red Room and SHIELD.
The butler knocked and entered just far enough to preserve dignity.
Lucius glanced up. "Yes, Sebastien?"
The butler did a remarkable job of not looking directly at the floating woman in the middle of the room.
"Sir, with respect and for the forty-seventh time, my name is not Sebastien."
Lucius turned towards him.
"Look, Sebastien, butlers in this world have two names. Sebastien or Igor. I could have called you Jarvis, but I refuse to turn you into electronics."
The butler blinked once.
Every guest who rented suites like this had some eccentricity. Some liked impossible flowers. Some wanted ancient wine that tasted like regret. Some wanted staff to pretend not to notice women leaving by service lifts. At least this one was not one of those rich island degenerates with appetites that required prison architecture.
He surrendered the point with the composure of a wise man.
"As you wish, sir. Two gentlemen are here to see you. Mr Fury and Mr Coulson."
Lucius's brows rose.
"Only two?"
"Yes, sir."
That improved his mood immediately.
"Good, bring them in."
The butler hesitated for a fraction, eyes very carefully not dropping back to Natasha.
"Into this room, sir?"
Lucius smiled.
"Of course, into this room. It would be rude to hide the décor."
When the butler retreated, Lucius took out his Nokia, scrolled through the tracks, and selected the one that felt right.
Sixteen Tons began to play through the room in that old heavy voice that sounded like labour, debt, and cheerful resignation to a crooked world.
Lucius clicked his fingers in time.
Natasha's body shifted in the air.
One arm angled out. The other bent. Her torso turned slightly as if some invisible dance partner had just claimed the lead. Lucius rose from the chair and adjusted her position with casual delight, turning the helpless Black Widow into a prop for his music.
Natasha's eyes flashed murder.
Lucius grinned at her.
"Smile, love. We have company."
The song rolled on. He clicked along with it, utterly pleased with himself, while the suite doors opened somewhere beyond the hall and Fury walked in to find exactly the sort of scene that would ruin whatever remained of his blood pressure.