Ch. 3: fury

Nick Fury does not need to be liked.

He has not built a career in espionage and global security as long-lived as his by needing to be liked. What his coworkers, his superheroes, his enemies think of him matters less to him than the fly that sometimes appears in his apartment. (He's not sure if it's the same fly every time. He doesn't care). He is proud of the fact that his work is so unaffected by the feelings of those around him, because allowing emotions to play into something as volatile and dangerous as his job could be disastrous for everyone. Worrying about his reputation would've led to HYDRA completely consuming SHIELD, and then the entire earth. It would've led to Tony Stark still not being a member of the Avengers, probably. It would've led to not even forming the Avengers in the first place, back when all his colleagues told him it was a terrible idea bound to implode violently and spectacularly. Worrying about his reputation could have meant the end of the world as he knows it.

So, no, Nick Fury does not need to be liked.

Which means there is no explanation for the sheer discomfort he's feeling at the moment, locked inside his office by himself. There is no explanation for the way Steve Rogers's face keeps appearing in his mind, full of grief and anger and something else he can't quite place. There's no explanation for the way Tony Stark's description of the night before keeps replaying itself in his head.

"…practically in hysterics, at least by her standards."

Natasha Romanoff. Hysterical.

His brain, behind some of the greatest world-saving schemes in history, can't seem to comprehend these two things together. Natasha Romanoff, hysterical? You may as well show him a video of a rat driving a car. The most level-headed person he knows, hysterical. In the many years he's known her, she has never, ever lost her cool. She is cold, calculating, and efficient. She was his mentee, and so much like him. Unemotional. Maybe that's what had drawn him to her, had caused him to take her under his wing. He thinks that he saw himself in her, a KGB assassin who had a good heart, who could use her skills to do good instead of bad and could compartmentalize her emotions so that they never interfered with her work.

He has the utmost respect for the other Avengers, but God, they could be so emotional.

Romanoff, though? Nick Fury has never known her to be emotional, which is perhaps why he can't stop thinking about Stark's description of her. Yes, he thinks, that must be it. Not that they might hate me for sending her away.

Because, honestly, he didn't have a choice. Ammo was becoming more and more powerful, consolidating his holdings while somehow simultaneously keeping them spread-out, so that it would have been impossible for the Avengers to just go in and blow things up or beat some people up. No, this had to be taken down from the inside. It had to be a process. And Romanoff, with her extensive undercover experience and the ability to be subtle and unrecognizable, was the only person for the job. She'd done it plenty times before, and even she'd agreed that nobody else could do it.

He thinks that he just can't figure out why she was so upset about it, but even as he starts to ponder the question, Steve Rogers's grief-stricken face swims into his mind. He glances at the briefing room camera in front of him and sees the group gathered around Rogers, concern and sympathy written all over everyone's features.

Oh.

The realization hits him like a ton of bricks, but then suddenly feels like something he should have seen a long time ago. Of coursethis wasn't just like her old missions. Things were different now. She'd started to trust more people, started to open up to the people she'd worked with (or someone she'd worked with, anyway). She had other people to live for, now.

It's something he probably should have realized earlier.

But Nick Fury has never been one to dwell on the past, beyond a cursory composition of a "what I can do better next time" list, and he is not about to change now. Doing so would just lead to a loss of focus on the mission at hand, and that cannot happen. Now that he understands, now that he knows, he cannot do anything that could put her and her mission in jeopardy. He owes it to her, he thinks. She deserves, after all these years, to be happy, and if Steve Rogers makes her happy? He will die before he deprives her of that. Well, deprives her of that again.

As he glances at his security cameras again, he sees Rogers and Stark leaving the briefing room together. A closer look reveals that they're smiling and laughing.

Wait.

Smiling and laughing? The same man who looked like he was about to cry, or punch through a wall, or both, just an hour ago? Something happened in that briefing room after Fury left. Something changed.

And then it clicks. That other emotion in Rogers's face? It was helplessness. And Fury is no stranger to helplessness. He's worked with and against enough helpless people to know that the emotion elevates other emotions like grief and anger, but the opposite, he knows, is also true. When helplessness vanishes, grief and anger go with it, replaced by hope and a bare desire to get things done.

In Stark's and Roger's case, he thinks, this can lead to recklessness.

It doesn't take long for Fury to realize that they've decided to help Romanoff. He knows them well enough to know that they will stop at no lengths to help their friends. But he also knows them well enough that they are anything but subtle, and that their attempts to assist Romanoff's mission will more than likely lead to a blown cover, and even worse, a blown mission. In this case, a blown mission means hundreds of more civilian deaths and that Romanoff may never return alive. And no matter what he says about never making friends, he has come to care for his mentee.

So he makes a decision.

"Under no circumstances are any of you to reach out to Romanoff or attempt to help her mission in any way until she calls for the final bust. Understood?"

The briefing room audience stares at him, the looks on their faces ranging from mild surprise to shock and anger, and Fury takes their silence as an invitation to keep talking.

"This mission is dangerous. You all know that. More importantly, it's a solo mission. And it's a solo mission for a reason. Ammo has caught and killed four spies from other organizations, trying to do the same thing Agent Romanoff is currently doing. Anyinterference from an outside source, no matter how subtle you think you're being, means he finds out that we're behind this and that you'd be lucky to get a strand of Romanoff's hair to bury."

Rogers is on his feet again, and as Fury tells him to sit down with as much force as he can muster, he feels a pang of something he thinks might be sympathy.

"You can't control what I do in my free time as long as I don't use SHIELD resources," Rogers spits.

"Maybe not," Fury says harshly. "But I can control your standing with the Avengers. And if I catch you working that case, you're done. Understand? You work that case, and you're off the team."

"Then we'll do it ourselves," comes a determined voice from the back of the room, and Fury's surprised eye finds Wanda Maximoff raising herself out of her chair. Her words are met with nods and mutters of assent, and as those around her start to stand too Fury feels his patience wearing thin.

"No," he snarls, "You won't. Because if you do, if any of you do, I'm kicking Rogers out all the same. Anyone works this case, Cap is gone. None of you want that, do you?

It is perhaps lucky that everyone starts shouting at him at once, because through the absolute mutiny of voices Fury cannot understand a single one.

"I know that this is not ideal," he says, eye glittering and looking straight at Rogers, "but it's what needs to happen if she is to live through this. And I'd much rather not, but I will force you to comply if I have to."

Steve's grip tightens on his shield and the edges of his face whiten, but Fury pretends not to notice. He needs Agent Romanoff to come back alive. And as he dismisses the meeting and walks out to a cacophony of angry voices, he continues to tell himself that he does not need to be liked.

Wanda Maximoff is good at reading people.

And yes, sure, part of that is her literal ability to manipulate minds, but part of that is also genuine, human emotional intelligence that comes from the mutual dependency she and her brother had developed when they were being experimented on. She's learned to identify emotions easily, even when their owner has repressed them, even when they only appear as a mere flicker across a face or as a quick flash in a pair of eyes.

But it doesn't take an emotions expert to notice that Steve Rogers has not been this distraught since he'd had to fight his best friend to the possible death on a warship. Granted, Wanda thinks, that wasn't that long ago, but Steve has had a rough life and he deserves as many breaks as he can get, which is why she finds herself outside Agent Maria Hill's office immediately after the briefing room meeting.

She's never really talked to Hill before, which is probably the explanation for the surprise on her face when she opens the door and ushers Wanda in.

"So," she says pleasantly, "how can I help you?"

And before she knows it, Wanda has launched into a half-tirade, half-sob-session about the entire situation, and about what Steve is going through, and "Fury said he won't let us help and if any of us try to he'll fire Steve, but we're all afraid she's going to die, Agent, and if she does this team is probably going to fall apart anyway because everyone will hate Fury even more than they do now and nobody's gonna listen to him ever again. I know we'd just ignore his orders and work the case anyway, except we're worried that if our attention is divided on keeping info from both him and Ammo we'll be overstretched and both of them might find out and Nat could die, what if she dies, Maria, what do we do then?"

It's an incoherent, rambling mess, but it centers on a fear that Wanda hadn't even realized she'd had, she'd been so focused on her colleagues.

Maria stares at her for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. "I know this is hard for you, and for everyone, but I really don't know what I can do."

"Can you help us, or something, aren't you her handler?" Wanda asks desperately, "Please, Maria, if we don't act and Nat gets killed Steve is going to be moping around the facility for years, he can't lose two of the loves of his life before he even gets anywhere with them, it just isn't fair—"

"I answer directly to Nick," Maria says, not unkindly. "I'm afraid I can't undermine him so directly. He already has me checking in with her periodically, tracking her progress—"

"This isn't about her progress," Wanda nearly screeches, "it's about her life. We can't just sit here and do nothing while she's out there, possibly dying, and we don't even know—"

"Wanda," Maria interrupts firmly, "I can't help you, no matter how badly I want to. I'm sorry. My hands are tied."

And as Wanda sees her own pain and powerlessness flash in Maria's eyes, she wonders what the point is of being able to read emotions if it can't help her at all.