Title: The Eye In Team
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Rating: T
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Summary: Long before a certain hammer had fallen to Earth in New Mexico, Nick had believed Phil would be the Director SHIELD would need when the age of heroes returned. 1000 words.
Spoilers: Post-Avengers, with foreshadowing for Cap 2 and Agents of SHIELD Season 1.
Notes: Originally posted to LJ on 10/31/14. 24 Days of Ficmas 2013, Day 18: for pronker. Prompt: "Nick Fury and Phil Coulson have differing criteria for what personalities make a good team. How to resolve their ideals, and how do they form sort-of a team of two, themselves." I am not familiar with the comics, so this mostly turned into an exploration of my headcanon for Fury's motivations in the MCU rather than reminiscing about the Howling Commandos or other agents.
Nick Fury stared through the window at the medical team working over the body of his friend, hands clasped behind his back. Phil would have a hard time forgiving him for what they were about to do, he had no doubt.
But Phil wasn't around right now. He didn't get a vote. He'd leveraged his own death for incentive, damn it, and left Nick to carry it through. Fury was the one in need of motivation, now.
He'd known Phil Coulson for a long damn time: since before joining SHIELD. Since before the last of the agency's founders had retired and left the organization they'd built on the bones of the SSR to tick on on its own. Since before Fury had rescued Alexander Pierce's daughter, eventually leading to his nomination for the Directorship, and set the current wheels within wheels in motion.
He'd suspected for most of that time that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. The intelligence world was a maze of twisty passages, more than a few of them disturbingly alike, and the stench had only grown worse since Loki's invasion had brought SHIELD into the limelight. Unless Fury missed his guess, events would come to a head sooner rather than later; and SHIELD would need all hands on deck when that day came. Including the hands belonging to the man on that cold metal table.
Fury knew what people said about him. To sum it up in the words of SHIELD's most notorious consultant: he was a "lying liar who lied". The "spy of spies", whose "secrets had secrets". Fair enough; he'd spent a lot of time cultivating that image. Especially as seen through the skewed lens of a man who'd been given ample reason to prioritize honesty, and those who would give it to him, over any alternative.
What Stark and the idealists in his superhero boyband didn't realize, however, was that in the world SHIELD operated in, given the constraints it had to deal with, contrasted with the vast power at the agency's disposal... a little shady dealing was exactly what the doctor had ordered. And not just in his own opinion: in that of every agent worth a damn who'd danced the edge of the abyss opening under humanity's feet and knew what could happen if the World Security Council decided Fury's leash had stretched too far. There was realism, and then there was privileged arrogance, but there was only so much Nick could do on his own without inviting unacceptable casualties, and too few people he could trust to back him up. The Council cared far too little about the little guy, and the last of the Howling Commandos who'd helped the elder Stark and Carter build the organization and might have had the clout to challenge their definition of 'building a better world' had either passed or retired decades ago.
The world was darker than it had been in the SSR's day, in any case; grittier, tainted with corruption everywhere Fury turned. Even, he suspected, within the ranks of SHIELD's own assets. God knew people hadn't been perfect back in the old days either, but any way one looked at it the last Just War had been a vastly different environment from the modern day web of shadows. The sort of world that called for a spy's spy to guard it, not a stable of heroes. No white or black, just endless shades of gray.
The thing was- nothing lasted forever. The current status quo wouldn't hold, either. Couldn't. That was the way the world worked. And long before a certain hammer had fallen to Earth in New Mexico, Nick had believed Phil would be the Director SHIELD would need when the age of heroes returned.
Phil Coulson had been an idealist, stamped in a much older mold. Fury liked to say that SHIELD took the world as it was, not as they'd like it to be. But Phil had somehow managed both. He could do the necessary thing with a bland smile and a smartass remark and leave the worst messes efficiently cleaned up behind him. But he'd also carried vintage Captain America cards, looked the Black Widow in the eye when his asset dragged her in alive against orders and then backed his man's play, and rather than dismissing Stark as anyone with sense would have, dressed the man down like a nanny who expected better of his charge. And got it. More than Fury had ever managed, at least.
Fury knew where realism without idealism led; it was the face of the World Security Council. And that was why Phil Coulson had been his One Good Eye. He'd often told new agents that a team of people who shared a conviction could change the world; even people who came at that conviction from very different angles. And at its most fundamental level... he and Phil had made a very effective team of two.
He'd been the most incorruptible man Fury knew; and each of the Avengers, in their own way, had responded to that calm strength. He'd stood in the presence of a god, an ant faced with a boot, without shitting himself or turning his back on the concept SHIELD had been founded for. Protection. And he was one of the few men whose loyalty Fury had never had cause to doubt.
Phil had even studied the procedure he was about to go through himself, intended for use on 'a fallen Avenger', before the Avengers Initiative had ever made it off the drawing board. The possible side effects might have led him to recommend it not be used... but the thing was, it worked. Phil Coulson had absolutely proven himself an Avenger, and he would damn well take his medicine and deal with the consequences.
Down below, one of the doctors filled a syringe with blue liquid, then looked up at the window.
Fury inclined his head. Whatever consequences he faced- he'd deal with, too.
-x-