Chapter 208: Coulson: I Get It. I Get All of It.
"Matthew Lawrence..."
Nick Fury shoved through the crowd, covered in filth, grabbed the hem of Matthew's jacket.
A sharp, foul smell radiated off him and hit Matthew's nose directly.
If Matthew's neutral expression management hadn't been what it was, his face would have looked exactly like every other student standing nearby.
As it was, the moment Fury's hand touched the jacket, Matthew quietly generated a thin repelling gravity field between them — maintaining a millimeter of distance without making it obvious.
A new application of the same general principle as a ward, just inverted.
"Nick Fury. What happened?" Matthew looked at the man who appeared to be running on fumes. Without waiting for an answer, he extended the psychic sense he'd taken from Apocalypse and swept the full length of the surrounding street in an instant.
He locked onto a figure on a nearby rooftop, holding a sniper rifle.
Bucky. Or, more specifically — the Winter Soldier.
Matthew registered who it was and let a small, quiet understanding settle in his mind. "Run into some trouble?"
Fury gave a slow nod and went straight to it. "There are moles inside SHIELD. I need your help."
"Help how?"
"You want me to take out the moles directly? Or just clear out the people currently following you?" Matthew said, lifting his gaze toward the rooftop where Bucky was standing.
Fury shook his head slightly. "Neither."
"Then why come to me?" Matthew raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected the man to be this complicated about it.
"I know perfectly well that with your ability, clearing out whoever's behind me would be trivial. But that only buys time."
Fury glanced over his shoulder. His gaze found Bucky at the rooftop edge, reloading the rifle.
"More than eliminating them — what I actually need is to find out who's behind them. Who planted the moles inside SHIELD."
"And?" Matthew continued.
Fury dropped the framing and said it directly. "I need to fake my death. Completely. To get a clear look at who exactly is operating inside SHIELD."
"So —"
"So you want me to make sure it stays a fake death and not a real one."
"Exactly." Fury nodded.
"If that person goes for my head directly, I'd appreciate it if you used your telekinesis to nudge the trajectory slightly off." He looked at Matthew, then pulled the USB drive copied during the Lemurian Star incident from inside his jacket and tried to put it in Matthew's hand.
"And hold onto this for me."
Matthew didn't reach for it.
Fury clocked the pause immediately. He understood the gap in his approach.
"Help me with this and I'll give you a hundred million."
There it is.
Matthew quietly gave him an internal OK the moment Fury worked out the arrangement.
While they were talking, the Winter Soldier on the roof had finished reloading. The barrel settled on Fury's skull.
Going for the head over the heart was the more reliable choice. Hearts had been known to be on the wrong side. Skulls didn't relocate.
He read the wind, let the cold in his eyes settle, and pulled the trigger.
The shot.
The supersonic round arrived before the sound did.
In the fraction of a second before it reached the back of Fury's head, the trajectory shifted left by the smallest possible margin.
What should have been a clean headshot punched through Fury's ear instead.
"...Oh — mother —" Fury's neck jerked sideways. He clamped his hand over the ear that was bleeding steadily.
On the rooftop, the Winter Soldier's brow drew together.
That didn't make sense.
Humidity, wind speed, wind direction — all correct. The rifle had been calibrated before the op. Why had the shot only hit the ear?
The thought surfaced and he pushed it aside. Not the time.
He looked through the scope at the chaos at the university entrance and reacquired Fury, who had taken cover behind a trash can.
This time he moved the barrel slightly lower — off the head, onto the torso. A smaller target was harder to hit. A bigger one compensated.
As long as enough shots went in, it achieved the same result.
He pulled the trigger again.
Three rapid shots.
The rounds punched through the trash can and drove through Fury's liver, kidneys, and lung in sequence.
Fury sprayed blood and collapsed to the ground.
It spread fast, soaking through his clothes, staining the concrete beneath him.
The Winter Soldier watched the body on the ground and, to be safe, put in two more rounds.
Two dull impacts.
Lying on the ground, Fury registered two new holes in his body and started swearing under his breath again. "Damn it. Damn it. Damn it."
"Does Lawrence not know how to use his telekinesis to ease up on the injuries at all?"
"Two kidneys. Both shot to pieces."
Gunfire. Chaos at the scene.
Through the crowd, Matthew crouched down and checked Fury's injuries.
Fury had lost enough blood to be sliding toward unconsciousness. Matthew directed a student to call an ambulance, and had someone fetch the school's medical officer to start emergency care.
The medical officer arrived quickly. Then he got a look at the wounds.
He was a school doctor. This was a person who had nearly been turned into a colander by a sniper. Even with campus shooting procedures drilled into American school medical staff, there was a line between "shooting victim" and this.
"You just need to get the bleeding under control. The ambulance is on its way."
The voice reached the medical officer and pulled him back from the blank space he'd been standing in.
He did as Matthew said. Emergency compression. The bleeding slowed.
By the time that was done, an ambulance bearing the Umbrella Corporation logo pulled up and stopped at the school gates.
Matthew and Fury knew each other. The ambulance was Umbrella's. When the medical staff loaded Fury, it was natural enough that Matthew came along.
What followed was a long and difficult procedure.
Outside the operating room, Matthew stood with his hands behind his back, watching through the glass at the man who was currently attached to more tubes than seemed reasonable.
Before the doors had closed, he'd quietly told Victor Gideon: if Fury genuinely couldn't hold on, inject a weakened Extremis variant. Buy him more time.
Matthew had no real concern that Fury was going to die in his hospital.
"Lawrence! How is Nick Fury?!" Steve, Peggy, Coulson, and Natasha arrived in sequence and pushed through to the front.
Matthew glanced at Steve, whose face was taut with worry. "Rogers. Nick Fury is in surgery. How he's doing — you're going to have to see for yourself."
"This private hospital is under my ownership, but I'm not a doctor. I'm not in that room."
"...I'm sorry, Matthew. The Captain is just worried." Natasha smoothed the tone over, then looked at Steve. "Captain, rather than asking questions, let's wait. I trust Umbrella's medical team."
Steve took a breath, nodded, and went quiet. He stood outside the glass and waited.
Time moved slowly.
After a while, Victor Gideon came out.
Steve took several quick steps forward. "Doctor — the man inside. How is he?"
Victor looked at Steve, then slowly removed his surgical mask.
"Regarding the patient — I have one piece of good news and one piece of bad news. Which would you like first?"
"Bad news first," Peggy said.
"The bad news is that the patient is no longer in any pain."
"No longer in pain? Does that mean he's recovering?" Steve's face lit up.
Victor was quiet for a moment. "No. What I mean is that the patient passed away very peacefully."
"And the good news?" Natasha asked.
"The good news is that you can have him buried wherever you'd like."
"What the — what the — what the —"
"Are you seriously messing with us right now?!" Coulson, almost never the one to lose composure, went several decibels louder than usual.
Victor saw the reaction and produced a small smile. "That was just meant to lighten the mood. Things felt a little heavy."
"So — he's actually fine?"
"No, he did actually die."
"I'm not joking this time. I'm completely serious."
"WHAT THE —"
Coulson threw a punch at Victor's face.
While throwing it, he was shouting: don't hold me back, I'm going to knock out the man who thinks a dead patient is comedic material.
Victor Gideon received a thorough beating.
The good news was that the company classified the beating as a workplace injury. The bad news was that he was docked a month's salary for making jokes about a patient during an active procedure, and was required to provide a written apology to the patient's associates.
A bar, somewhere nearby.
Matthew, Natasha, Steve, and the others sat around a table.
Coulson drank in silence, still visibly furious. His hand still carried the marks from hitting Victor.
"Lawrence, I don't understand." Coulson looked at Matthew. "Your company's medical capability is supposed to be exceptional. How does it fail on something as straightforward as a gunshot wound?"
Matthew set his whiskey down and leaned back into the sofa. "A straightforward gunshot wound?"
"Nick Fury had penetrating injuries to the lung, spleen, kidneys, and liver — all at varying severity. Several broken ribs. A fractured arm. Total blood loss of approximately two and a half liters."
"If that qualifies as straightforward, then nobody in a war zone would ever die."
"I can only say that our doctors did everything possible. That he didn't make it is genuinely something I regret."
Coulson went quiet.
He was right. By any honest standard, that was not a straightforward wound. Nobody came back from that combination. Not under normal circumstances.
But.
Drinking in silence, Coulson let a thought surface. He looked down at his own chest — at the spot where Loki's blade had gone through.
Loki had driven a blade through his heart. There was no medical logic under which he should have survived.
But he had. Because Matthew had put a needle in him.
So why exactly was Fury dead?
He raised his head slowly and found Matthew already looking at him.
Steady. Slightly deliberate.
It took one second for Coulson to understand what that look meant.
The frustration unwound from somewhere in his chest.
I get it.
I get all of it.
This was what it meant to be the only one who could see clearly while everyone else was lost.
Coulson leaned back into the sofa, mirroring Matthew's posture, and helped himself to his beer.
The expression on his face had changed. No longer tense. No longer defeated. There was even something at the corner of his mouth that was almost a smile.
Steve noticed the shift in Coulson's face and his brow came together slightly.
He didn't understand how Coulson could go from genuinely distressed to quietly amused after a single sip.
Was the beer that good?
Steve raised his glass and took a drink.
Hmm. Not particularly. It was just beer.
So why was Coulson smiling?
He turned it over a few more times and reached no conclusion. Eventually he filed it under "stress response" and left it alone.
"By the way, Lawrence — the last time you saw Nick Fury, did he tell you anything?"
"Or give you anything?" Natasha looked across at Matthew.
Matthew sat up straight, his gaze moving across the group. "He did tell me some things. But do you all actually want to know what he said?"
"If he didn't tell you to keep it from us, then yes — I want to know." Steve spoke first.
"Same," Peggy added.
"Coulson. Natasha." Matthew glanced toward Coulson, who appeared to be thinking about something. "Are you not curious?"
Coulson looked up, drew a slow breath. "To be honest, Lawrence — what he said to you? No. I'm not particularly curious."
He stood and straightened his suit jacket. "I've got an assignment. I'll leave you to it."
He walked out of the bar without looking back.
Natasha watched his retreating figure and something moved behind her eyes.
Something was off with Coulson. Distinctly off.
Had he picked something up?
Years of field work had trained her to catch exactly this kind of shift.
Peggy had caught it too, her gaze lingering briefly on Coulson's back as he walked away, but she didn't say anything.
"Coulson has found something we haven't."
"And it's something he can't say out loud."
"So. What exactly has he figured out?"
If you're enjoying the story, toss a Power Stone or drop a review — it helps more than you'd think.
Advance chapters → patreon.com/Eatinpieces