Natasha received the call in the middle of the night. She'd hung up without a good-bye, quickly changed and raced to the hospital, desperately weaving her way through traffic until she slammed on the brakes just outside the doors. There was a no parking sign hanging nearby but she didn't notice it as she scrambled through the doors and half-ran down the halls, pushing past doctors and nurses until she came to the window of the operating room.
Steve was there, leaning against the glass. She'd already been informed that he'd been present at the shooting, he looked withdrawn, and vaguely disturbed. Not shell-shocked as she would have expected, but as though something was nagging at his mind. She couldn't imagine what besides Fury's comatose body could take his attention.
"Tell me about the shooter," she said, trying to blink back the stinging tears in her eyes. Why should she cry? This was Nicholas Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. He wouldn't - couldn't die. It wasn't possible.
"He was fast, strong," Steve said, that vague unsettled look coming out in his voice. "He had a metal arm."
Reeling, Natasha blinked hard, feeling her mouth fell open as a shudder ran through her body. No, no, it couldn't be true. Steve had it wrong surely. It couldn't be him. Not here, not now, not this way.
Agent Hill approached the glass at Natasha's left, her face tight and pale.
"Ballistics?" Natasha asked, ashamed of the tremor in her voice. Maybe Maria's answer could prove his innocence, his uninvolvement. Yet, as much as she denied it and wished it not to be true, deep in her bones, she already knew.
"Soviet slug, no rifling." Hill's answer was sharp, direct and terse. And it came to Natasha like a punch in the gut.
No. She took as step back, feeling her body trembling from head-to-toe. On the operating table, the doctors had covered the bullet wounds with gauze and bandages and were working quickly to fix the internal damage. Fury lay with his head to the side, eyes closed, even in this state he still looked like a commander, she realized with pride.
"Don't do this to me," she whispered hoarsely, unsure if she was talking to Nick or to the one who had put him here.
"Don't do this to me."
The words were still on her lips when his heart stopped and the monitor began to beep steadily and shrilly, the line flat and dead. The doctors scrambled for the defibrillator, desperately shocking him again and again. But Natasha knew he was gone. Dead.
And more importantly, she knew who had done it.