Title: Mortem Cantor: Behind the Shield

Summary: It was a good thing the new scientist, Dr. Harry Evans, was working out so well. Because nothing else was going Fury's way. And that was before Loki made off with the Tesseract and some of his people. Maybe AU to Mortem Cantor by Kyandua.

Characters: Nicholas Fury, Harry Potter

Rating: T for Fury's language, lots of it

Disclaimer: Merely borrowing the characters and plot lines. The Harry Potter series belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (Avengers, Thor, Ironman, Hulk, Captain America, etc) belong to Marvel. Mortem Cantor (excluding parts that belong to the Harry Potter or Marvel Cinematic Universe) belongs to Kyandua. You'll also find occasional references to other movies, which belong to their respective owners.

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Chapter 5: The Fork Proposal and The Spork Incident

[Companion to Mortem Cantor Chapters 9 and 11-and-a-half]

Sometime during his career, Fury had learned how to translate scientific gibberish into mostly understandable English. A vital skill that had served him well. And Evans' proposal for the Tesseract? Looked suspiciously like a bunch of science dressing up the desire to poke at the Tesseract the way children poke at electrical outlets with a fork. On the other hand, at least it wasn't another request to create sentient life out of cellphones and X-boxes. Sometimes, he hated that all of his scientists were sci-fi nerds. And that most of his agents were just as bad.

ooo

Writing up proposals to stick the Tesseract with a fork was one thing, Fury thought incredulously, actually carrying it out was entirely another. The footage of the subsequent explosion and Evans standing in the middle of it laughing like a loon played to the end, then looped back again. Did he mention that Evans was standing in the middle of the blast radius and didn't have so much as a scratch?

Fury grimaced, unable keep up his usual facade in the face of this idiocy. No, he thought, Evans wasn't a spy. He probably couldn't manage a secret agenda without letting it slip either. Evans lacked subtlety. And he wasn't disciplined at all. Really. Revealing his ability to survive conditions that would kill anyone else because he wanted to poke at a MASSIVELY POWERFUL ALIEN ENERGY SOURCE with a GODDAMN SPORK? What the FUCK did he THINK would happen? (And how the hell did this kid survive to adulthood?) Evans was lucky S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't capture and experiment on super-humans (as a first resort).

At this point, Fury was actually considering decreasing the threat level on Evans. Granted, surviving an explosion like that made him powerful. But he wasn't dangerous. Evans lacked the personality to cause damage. And he was being cooperative so far. He seemed content in where he was and what he had. Scientific knowledge and discovery were the only things that seemed to motivate the kid. (To the point of trying out dangerous experiments on himself with a fucking SPORK. A GODDAMN FUCKING SPORK! This was not good for his blood pressure.) And while Evans tried ineffectively to hide his powers, he hadn't hesitated to use those abilities to save Fury's life, even at the expense of bring down suspicion on his head. (Or maybe the kid was just that fucking naive.)

Evans might even be perfect for the Avengers Initiative. Ironman had weapons that were dangerous for any ally caught in the crossfire. The Hulk was a massive bruiser. Anyone on the team would have to be good enough to stay out of the way, or hardy enough to survive incidental damage. On the other hand, putting fork-in-electrical-outlet Evans and Tony Stark on the same team seemed like a bad idea... oh well. No worse than hair-trigger-Banner and Stark on the same team. Handling them would be Coulson's problem.

Stark had been marked as only-a-consultant for the Avengers for two reasons. One, to take Stark down a peg or three. And two, to con Coulson into accepting the assignment as handler for the potential Avengers team under the mistaken impression that Stark would not be on it. (Fury was going to continue to abuse his agent's Captain-America-fanboy-tendencies until the man stopped falling for it. He was doing Coulson a favor, really. And maybe Fury was still a little pissed about the video recording of him ordering Stark to "exit the donut". And pissed about that other recording.)