In the wake of Ultron’s birth and in the face of the subsequent danger Earth is placed in, Nick Fury emerges from the shadows.
He has a team of six he can approach. Captain America would be the most logical first choice. Widow and Hawkeye are both strategic field operatives. Thor, like Cap is a natural leader and tactician. Banner is the co-creator of Ultron. Yet Fury approaches none of them. He goes to the one he has known of and watched since his birth. The heart he knows the team desperately needs. The one who will be needing the most assurance.
Nick goes to Tony.
Since Stane’s death, Tony has no male authority in his life. No father figure. Tony, for all his bluster likes Fury. He respects him. And Fury in turn has a more than passing interest in and respect for Tony. He approaches Tony about the Initiative first. Tony doesn’t tell anyone about that he is dying from the arc and yet Fury not only knows but has a serum to help with the pain and sickness. Fury calls on Tony to lay down his life for him and the rest of New York and Tony doesn’t once hesitate. Fury has known Tony since he was a small child. He is, as Tony himself says, ‘the spy’. Nick would have absolutely known about young Anthony Stark’s home life. Any and all medical records that concerned Howard Stark’s only child, Stark Industries sole heir and SHIELD’s future prime asset would have eventually gone across Nick Fury’s desk.
Fury went to Tony in that barn because he knows this boy. He knew exactly how much Tony would be blaming himself for everything. He knew with an utter certainty that Tony would be devastated to have put innocent people; to have put his team: his family in danger. And so he went not to Cap or Widow or Hawkeye but to Tony. Because at that moment in time Tony didn’t need recrimination and blame, he needed to know that there is still someone who cares. He went to give this man assurance, motivation and yes, the love he knows Tony needs. And Tony does need it. In the face of Fury’s words, Tony drops his masks, ducks his head. He wants this, he just doesn’t believe he deserves it. So Fury speaks slowly, softly and yet with an urgency and authority that Tony will understand and respond to. There is no mistaking Fury in this; he needs Tony to fully understand that there is still someone who ‘cares a great deal’ about him.
Fury slides through the mists of politics. He swims in the sea of rumor and deceit. By this point Fury will have heard about a certain database and seen the phantom ripples of a new Bill making it’s way through political circles. He will know with the instinct of a man who has decades of politics and mystery wrapped around him like a cloak exactly which side his boys will come down on.
And knowing Tony as he does, Fury knows with all the surety in his heart how much upcoming events are going to rock this man’s foundations, shake him to his very core and shatter his soul.
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