Nick Fury was not a man who had patience for childish behavior. He'd had to deal with it so very much over his life. From his fellow agents, from the people under his command, from stupid politicians (but he repeated himself) and from random strangers who thought the color of his skin had a damn thing to do with anything. There was nothing Nick enjoyed more in life than to smack down some fool who thought he was the center of the universe. Nick had been to the center of the universe. (Or at least what was at one point the center of the universe, because it was constantly expanding.) There was nothing there but empty space, certainly not some asshole with an ego the size of Nebraska.
With this known distaste for childish behavior, with his legendary temper and refusal to suffer fools, it would be a logical assumption to believe Nick despised children. But like many assumptions, it would also be wrong. Children had a good excuse for childish behavior. They were children; it was what childhood was for. It was all the damn adults who acted like ten year olds who annoyed the hell out of Nick.
Nick had always had a soft spot for kids. A part of him had always fantasized about becoming a father. But even if he'd found the right woman for it – far easier said than done – he could never countenance bringing a child into a universe filled with his very, very ruthless enemies. Nick would never be able to recover if any child got hurt because of him. Children suffering had always been a sore spot for him. He'd once blackmailed a senator into committing suicide after his investigators had discovered that the senator had been abusing his children – even though the senator had been one of the fiercest advocates for increasing SHIELD's funding.
So when Kamala Khan had literally crashed into SABER because of some weird quantum entanglement shit (seriously, why did this stuff keep happening?), Nick hadn't been pleased to say the least. His business was no place for children. It was especially no place for a child like Kamala, a child brimming with hope and optimism and light. A child whose idealistic viewpoint was diametrically opposed to Nick's incredibly cynical viewpoint.
People thought being a superhero was cool. Nick had once thought that himself, back when Captain America was dismissed by most people as an invention of wartime propaganda, back when he was a kid reading Superman comics and wishing he could fly in the air like his idol. Fly away from the racism and hatred and childishness of the world. Nick had to admit, the coolness had been in the back of his mind when he'd created the Avengers. He'd hoped, desperately, he could create a team of Supermen. And he had…for a while. Before politics and personal vendettas had torn it apart and left Earth defenseless against an invasion that turned out to be just the appetizer for mass murder that made HYDRA's ambitions look like playground bullies in comparison.
Superheroism was messy and complicated at the best of times. Because superheroes lived in the real world. Er, the real universe. Multiverse. (Damn, this stuff kept shifting on Nick.) When you tried to be a hero, sometimes you succeeded. And sometimes people died. It wasn't an either/or thing. Sometimes, you succeeded and people died. Good people. For no reason at all. Things would never be as simple for Iron Man and Captain America as they had been for Superman and Wonder Woman. Never. The universe – multiverse, goddamn it – didn't work like that.
Kamala hadn't understood the essential truth of heroism: that you can't save everyone. But now she did. She understood it in the same way everyone learned it, the only way anyone could ever learn it: by losing someone. Monica had been a good and devoted agent, and, if Nick was being honest with himself, a friend. And she ended up getting blasted through some portal to who knows what universe. Nick may not have been a spymaster in that universe. Maybe he was a criminal enforcer or a crazed Bond villain or even a Jedi. There were so many universes out there and Nick despaired of ever finding Monica.
Another far more mundane truth Kamala hadn't understood was that heroism as a teenager had consequences, namely dealing with parental punishment. Kamala had been grounded for three weeks. Nick approved. Kamala had put herself at risk when she didn't have to. Sure, you could say the same thing about a lot of the superheroes Nick had worked with, but they were full grown adults. Kamala was a child. But as much as he thought the Khans were doing the right thing, Nick did sympathize with Kamala. He was not a person who liked being stuck out of the action either. So Nick figured it couldn't hurt to swing by the Khan residence and say hi. After all, she had saved the world. Not everyone could say that.
"OH MY GOD, YOU'RE NICK FURY!" Kamala screeched the moment Nick walked into her room. "I can't believe you're really here!"
Nick couldn't help but smile. Kamala's enthusiasm was so infectious. "I'm not sure why you're still so surprised. We've spent a good deal of time over the last few days together."
"Yeah, cause I crashed into your space station, but you're here! In my bedroom!"
Nick coughed. Yeah…he could see how some people might get the wrong idea there. "I promise you, Miss Khan, your parents are well aware I'm here."
"What? No, no, it's all cool! And, dude, you've gotta call me Kamala. We saved the world together, didn't we?" She practically leaped over to her desk and rummaged around in her papers, which appeared to be haphazardly organized with little to no rhyme or reason. It brought back memories of Nick's own desk as a child. "Here! I drew fanart of you!"
This was simply not computing for Nick. "You drew…fanart of me."
Kamala looked at the floor, her cheeks red with embarrassment. "I know…it's kind of weird. And creepy."
It wasn't so much that Nick found it creepy as he found it to be confusing. He didn't understand why anyone would draw fanart of him. Carol? Sure. She'd played a big part in killing Thanos, not once but twice. He totally got why people drew fanart of Rogers or Stark or even Romanoff. They were famous. They were powerful. They'd kicked the asses of bad guys and saved the world. But Nick worked in the shadows. He didn't even realize people knew who he was, much less that he was so famous a random teenager from New Jersey made fanart of him.
But sure enough, there he was, blasting away at the Chitauri invaders on the helicarrier when they'd broken Loki out during the 2012 invasion. Kamala would have been just three at the time. She'd grown up never knowing a time when superheroes weren't around to help protect her. And she'd also spent five of her most formative years in a time when the world had broke from the Blip. And she hadn't lost hope.
"This is damn good," Nick said, honestly. He still thought it was very weird that someone looked up to him as a superhero on the same level as Iron Man, but from an artistic standpoint, the drawing was unquestionably excellent. If she hadn't gotten entangled in superheroics, Kamala could have become a professional artist. Maybe she still would one day, if she lived long enough. "I have to ask, though…why? Why me?"
Kamala laughed nervously. "Well, I mean, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable, Mr. Fury."
"It's okay," Nick said and put the drawing back on the desk. "We're cool. But why did you draw me? I'm not exactly a hero."
Kamala looked at him like he'd started speaking in tongues. "Uh, hello? You created the Avengers Initiative? Without you, we'd kinda all be dead." She cleared her throat. "'There was an idea,'" she said in a dramatic tone clearly intended to emulate Nick's with absolutely no success whatsoever. "'To bring together a group of remarkable people so they could fight the battles we never could.'"
"How do you know I said that?!" Nick demanded.
"Iron Man's posthumous memoirs," Kamala explained. "They just came out last year."
Nick rolled his eyes. Of course Stark had no problem releasing a plethora of details that should have been classified for longer than Kamala would live. If, you know, she was an average teenager. "Well, it wasn't as glamorous as I'm sure Stark made it look. I've had to do some very dark things in my time. And I'm not a hero. I'm a lot of things, a hero isn't one of them. I've had to make tough calls and hurt people, Kamala."
"Someone has to do it, right?" Kamala said, totally unfazed by it. "I'm just glad it's not me." That was one thing Nick could fervently agree with. Seeing a bright spark of light like Kamala dimmed like Nick had been by the relentless forces of corruption and cynicism would be an unthinkable tragedy. "But you saved the world! You keep saving the world! And that's awesome!"
Nick hadn't really thought of it like that before. "I guess it kinda is. But I don't know if I made the right calls, Kamala. The Avengers didn't last too long. And I just ran off on them."
"Because of politics," Kamala spat like it was a dirty word. Which was fair. It more or less was. "And you didn't run off on them, you faked your death to hunt down HYDRA."
Nick had done what he thought was necessary. He was always and perpetually looking at the bigger picture. The Avengers were just one tool in the arsenal of the world's defense. And that was how he had seen them in the end, as a tool. He was a man who saw the angles, who had moved beyond childish notions of right and wrong in favor of doing what would save the most people as possible. At least, that was what he told himself when he laid awake at night thinking of all the people he couldn't save. Was that how Pierce had started? Had he walked the same path, only to end it with HYDRA and Project Insight?
Maybe. But Nick wasn't a goddamned Nazi either, not like Pierce. It may have been more convenient to kill 20 million people in the name of peace, but Nick didn't believe in taking the easy way out. Nick didn't bury his guilt with an ironclad sense of certainty. He was constantly second guessing himself. And, sure, maybe it meant that he wasn't acting as decisively as he should have, but the consequences of not doing it would be far, far worse.
"If I'd been there," Nick said slowly, tasting the words upon his mouth, "then maybe the Avengers wouldn't have broken up. Maybe they'd have been together to fight Thanos. Maybe so many people wouldn't have died."
"Yeah, you're saying maybe a lot," Kamala pointed out. "We can't know these things, Mr. Fury! Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. Like, this one time I failed my driving test because I backed into the instructors car, and, like, maybe if I hadn't done that, I'd have passed, but we can't really know." Nick was pretty sure this was, in fact, one of those things they could know, but who was he to burst Kamala's bubble?
Kamala sat down on her bed, her face filled with earnestness, an earnestness that had once graced Nick's own face in a mirror a very, very long time ago. Back when he thought he, too, could fight for truth, justice, and the American way. "In the end, the Avengers were there when we needed them. They resurrected half the universe. Do you not understand what a miracle that was? That's like some water into wine level shit!" She let out a squeak. "Please don't tell my parents I swore!"
"My lips are goddamn sealed, Kamala," Nick said and Kamala giggled. "Sometimes, I think I did the right thing when I formed the Avengers. Other times, I think I opened Pandora's Box. Alien invasions, evil robots, crazed supervillains, this sort of thing didn't happen before."
Kamala shook her head. "It happened more than we think. You just brought it into the light. HYDRA was there all along, remember?" Nick couldn't help but flinch. It was his greatest regret, not seeing what had been in retrospect entirely in front of his nose. He'd delved so deeply into shades of grey that pure evil had been able to blend in seamlessly. "You showed us a world of wonders. And Pandora's Box brought all the evils into the world, but one thing remained because it was stronger than all that. Hope. You brought hope to this world. To the Avengers. To me!"
Kamala's eyes were distant. "I was nine when the Blip happened. I lost friends. Family. And everyone broke. Some people couldn't take it. But others… they took their pain and they saw how everyone was hurting and they had to do something. They emerged stronger from it. The Avengers taught them that. You taught them that! You showed this world that if you can't protect the world, you can avenge it! By living well. By bringing hope."
Nick was thoroughly alarmed to find a tear threatening to burst out of the corner of his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he cried. Tears were weaknesses enemies could exploit. He turned around and wiped it away. "Yeah. Maybe you're right."
"You're darn right I'm right!" Kamala shouted. "You didn't make this world worse, Mr. Fury. You ushered in the age of the superhero. What I am, who I am, I am because of you."
"You're what you are because of yourself," Nick said firmly. "You always will be."
Kamala took a deep breath, clearly steeling herself to ask Nick a question. "I want to follow in your footsteps. I want to create a new team of Avengers. A team of remarkable people, remarkable young people like me."
It took all of Nick's self-control not to laugh. Or cry some more. The idea was absurd on the surface. Nick hadn't just brought leadership to the team: he'd brought in the resources of SHIELD. One teenager, acting alone, couldn't do the same. And Kamala wasn't anywhere near as experienced as Nick. She still wasn't wise in the ways of the world. She never would be, with any luck. Could Nick allow that darkness to envelop her like it had him?
The idea may have been absurd, but if there was one thing Nick had learned in all his decades of being a spymaster, that was not alone a reason to reject it. The Avengers had broken up. Stark and Romanoff were dead. Barton retired. Rogers was…well, Nick was still unclear what had happened to him. Banner was devoted to science. There was a void and it was one, in theory, Kamala could step into. But it wasn't without serious risks. There was a legitimate chance – more than a small one – she could get her team killed.
"I know it sounds silly," Kamala said. "I mean, I'm not as cool as you. But I really believe in the Avengers. Not just the people, but the idea. And I can totally get Captain Marvel to vouch for me, so people will take me seriously!"
"Why young people?" Nick asked, stalling for time.
"Uh…" Kamala said, looking very awkward. "I want a…fresh perspective?"
"Or maybe it's because old people have screwed up the world?" Nick asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.
Kamala looked faintly disappointed actually. "That's a generalization! There are a lot of older people trying to do good in this world. Like my parents! Like Captain Marvel. Like you." Nick would definitely dispute that last one. He was trying to save people. He would hardly classify the methods he used as good. "But…sometimes, older people get stuck in their ways. They've seen all the bad things for so long they just got used to it. I don't want to get used to it! I want to make this world better! When bad things happen, I want to be the one who avenges them."
A sensible person, Nick knew very well, would refuse. Kamala was a civilian and, more relevantly, a child. It would be the height of irresponsibility to give her the slightest amount of aid in this lunatic quest to create Young Avengers. It would probably be a crime of some description honestly. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor or something.
But Nick looked at Kamala and he couldn't help but see the boy he used to be. It was almost eerie. That boy had turned into a hardened cynic, obsessed with exigency and the greater good to the point where he'd thought of himself as above everyone else. That boy had become the man the world needed him to be. And there was no doubt the world needed Nick and people like him. Idealism was all well and good, but the bad guys did not play fair. Sometimes, a dozen people needed to be sacrificed to save a thousand. And it would always be that way, Nick feared.
But that didn't mean Kamala's approach, her perspective, was invalid. It didn't mean there wasn't room for idealism in this world. Maybe, just maybe, a superhero team led by an idealist instead of a cynic would be better for the world than the old Avengers had been. Maybe Kamala's endless hope would make the world a better place. The multiverse was vast. There was room enough for the both of them.
"There's a woman named Kate Bishop," Nick said and the horrid risk he was taking was almost worth it there and then to see the light shining in Kamala's eyes. "She lives in New York City. And she's the new Hawkeye."
Nick instantly leapt towards the door upon hearing the fire alarm go off, but a second later, he realized the alarm was actually Kamala squealing in excitement. "YES! It's happening! It's REALLY HAPPENING! This is going to be so cool! Any tips? How did you do it the first time? Iron Man was always kinda vague about your first meeting."
Nick's lips twitched. "Well, that's because I broke into his house."
"So cool," Kamala breathed.
"I had to wait for him for two hours, so not as cool as you think," Nick recalled. "But he finally showed up and I still remember what I said to him." He cleared his throat and tried his best to imitate the expression he had on his face during that fateful meeting. "You think you're the only superhero in the world? Mr. Stark, you've become part of a larger universe. You just don't know about it."
Kamala gave an even more high pitched squeal. "Awesome!"
"And then he asked me who I was, and I told him," Nick recalled. "And I said I'm here to talk to you about the Avenger Initiative. Then he threw me out of his house and called the cops on me and it took weeks to actually get a proper meeting with him."
Kamala deflated. "Oh."
"But I think your approach might work the first time," Nick reassured her. "I really wish you good luck, Kamala. But you understand, I'm not going to help you beyond this. This is something you have to do on your own."
Kamala nodded. "Yeah. I get it. Thank you so much. Uh…do you think we're going to find her?"
Nick was confused for a second before realizing she was talking about Monica. "I'm not going to lie to you, Kamala. There is a very good chance we won't. But it won't be for lack of trying."
It was time for him to go, but he had one last thing to say. "You remind me of him, you know?"
"Captain America?" Kamala guessed.
"No. Stark."
Kamala laughed. "Oh, come on! Stark was a genius and I'm just me."
"Yes, Stark was a once in a generation genius," Nick admitted. "But that wasn't what made him such a good superhero. It wasn't because he didn't get scared or because he didn't make mistakes. He never, ever stopped fighting. It's how he brought everyone back. It's why he sacrificed himself to save us all. You have that spirit, that light that not even the darkness of space itself can extinguish. I bet he'd be proud of you."
As Nick walked out of the Khan house, he reflected on Kamala's chances. They were miniscule. She was a young girl with no training, a poor understanding of her powers, and a naïve idealistic attitude. She couldn't even drive. And yet despite that – perhaps because of that – Nick really believed she could do it. She could surpass Nick and make the world a better place in her own way. A way that mattered as much as Nick's way. Maybe one person could make a difference.
'Nuff said.