"Mr. Eric is the technical advisor we hired." Coulson quickly placed Eric's file in front of Howard, "But one thing is very strange, we could find out almost nothing about him before he accepted his father's inheritance."
Howard took the information and flipped through the pages carefully, looking slightly grave, "Tony, what do you think of Eric as a person?"
"He's an asshole!" Tony blurted out an expletive, but then felt bad about it, and after a moment's thought, his mouth dropped, "Well, apart from always stealing my limelight, he's a nice guy."
"A nice guy? Hmph!" Howard snorted, silent, and continued to look through the information.
Howard was one of the founders of S.H.I.E.L.D. and naturally had extremely high authority, this information covered almost everything S.H.I.E.L.D. could learn about Eric, including saving Pierce's daughter, controlling Solar Storm to destroy the vampires, controlling the Tesseract to transfer the Skrulls, fighting the Kree, and so on.
"The Chief said he claimed to be from a special branch, but we still don't know exactly what kind of special branch." Coulson shrugged, spreading his hands wide to show his helplessness.
"A special department? Where are all the special departments!" Howard shook his head, "Is the director still Pierce?"
"No, it's Nick Fury, Director Pierce retired six years ago."
Howard nodded and closed the file, "Coulson, get the car."
"Yes, sir."
Coulson bumbled to the car as Tony tossed his glass into the ruins of the cottage and clapped his hands together, asking, "Where are we going? Your agent's lair? Or to find that guy who plays with magnets?"
"It's not us, it's me and Coulson!" Howard stared at Tony and reached out a finger and tapped it heavily on the Ark reactor on his chest a few times, "And you, keep working on the new element for me! Your palladium poisoning is getting worse, so if you don't want to die, finish reading the information I've given you and get the new element out as soon as possible!"
Tony scratched his father's hand away, "Hey! Pops! Even after nine years of sleep, you're still the same as ever, always trying to interfere with my decisions! This is a little bit of work, I just need to work a little overtime."
"I'm doing it for your own good!" Howard frowned.
"Oh! 'I'm doing it for your own good!' You always say that! Don't you have any fresh lines?"
The atmosphere between the two men froze, with both father and son staring at each other, not letting up.
Eventually, it was Howard who gave up first, sighing and shaking his head, "Tony, you're thirty-two years old, why do you still act like a child? Never mind, you want to come, so come on!"
"Oh look, the benevolent Mr Howard Stark, who has finally graced his son with the right to follow in his footsteps!" Tony mocked grimly, waving his hand as he turned away, "Unfortunately, the humble Tony Stark has no time to follow in his footsteps."
Howard looked at his son's distant back, shook his head with a bitter smile and shouted, "Tony, get your battle armour built as soon as you can! That's the most perfect piece of work I've ever seen!"
Seeing Tony frozen on the spot, Howard gave a small smile and murmured, "If you don't count you!"
...
"You want to see Eric? That'll have to wait, he's in the lab working on a very important experiment and he said not to call him for anything unless emergency happens."
Knowing the two had come, Skye turned them down with a depressed look on her face, she still had more to say to him, only for him to lecture her and then go back to the lab and not even answer his phone, it was so irritating!
"So how long will it take for Mr Lehnsherr to get out?" Good old Coulson asked patiently with a smile on top of his face.
If Howard had asked, Skye would have said she didn't know, but Coulson was different, his smile gave her a very reassuring feeling, just like Eric gave her. The two hadn't met much, but she had always felt an inexplicable familiarity between them, and sometimes she even wondered if he could be her biological father.
"Wait, I'll ask for you!" Steadying the two, Skye jogged all the way to the next door, probing to see that the two weren't coming after her, before summoning the future and asking for the time.
"Twenty-seven hours to go until the time set by Sir."
"A day or so?" Hearing Skye's relay, Howard stretched his furrowed brow, he was really afraid that Eric would stay in the lab for a year and a half, something that was all too common for people involved in research, "Coulson, let's go, we'll come back tomorrow."
"Yes sir, where are we going now?"
"To our agents lair ... Aww shucks! To our headquarters!"
...
At the Triskelion, the first person to greet Howard was not the current director, Fury, but someone he very much did not want to see.
"Howard! Jesus Christ, you're really alive! That's great! I couldn't believe it when they told me!" A very burly man came running quickly and took Howard in his arms in a bear hug.
"Hello, Steve." Howard smiled a far-fetched smile, then quickly realised that he would show his face and hastily put on a businessman's fake smile and patted him enthusiastically on the shoulder, "I was the one who couldn't believe it when I heard you were alive!"
"Ha ha! We get to fight side by side again! I really miss fighting Hydra back in the day." Steve, or rather Captain America, looked at his old friend with great excitement, chattering away about old times, and Coulson, watching the two icons chatting animatedly, hurried to help disperse the onlookers and keep order.
"Steve, I've just been to England." Howard suddenly interrupted Captain America, his face seeming a little guilty.
"You went to see Carter?" Captain America's excited look quickly cooled and he even looked a little downcast.
"I'm sorry." Howard did go to see Carter, but it wasn't just Carter, and for that he felt very awkward and guilty....
"No, that was my choice, how can I blame you!" The two men weren't even talking about the same thing, Captain America had no idea what Howard was sorry for and just kept on comforting his friend.
...