The Flu

Fury looked down when his phone rang, and for a moment debated not answering it. It seemed like every time he did, it was to receive word of some new disaster. But Barton's name was flashing on the screen, and he dared to hope that this call might be good news. "Barton, please tell me you talked to Victoria's family!" He demanded as soon as he answered the phone.

"Good news, really bad news. Which do you want first?" Clint said.

He debated asking for the really bad news and getting it over with before deciding it would be nice to hear something good. "Good news."

"Good news is that as of two hours ago, Agent Hand's grieving family was fine." Clint said. "A reporter fell and broke his neck trying to climb up a tree. That's what the coroner was here for."

"Fine." Fury let out a sigh of relief. Victoria's family hadn't dropped over dead of shock. Good news. Very good news. "So you let them know that she's okay?"

"That's the bad news." Clint said. "The very bad news. As of two hours ago, they left to head to Agent Hand's funeral. I finally found a neighbor who I was able to convince I was not a reporter who let me know where they were. And they are not happy with you and the fact that they were notified about Agent Hand's death through the newspapers and waking up to reporters on the lawn. I believe lawsuits might have been mentioned."

Lawsuits. Perfect. He wasn't sure what Victoria's family thought they could sue him for. She wasn't dead and she was an adult. It was up to her to call her family and let them know she was sick with the flu. But a lawyer could probably think of something. Still, maybe they would be easier to get through to if they were in a hotel so he could let them know Victoria was okay.

"And speaking of people who aren't dead," Clint said. "Natasha had something very interesting to share with me about Coulson. Would you like to give me one good reason I shouldn't put an arrow in a place where the sun doesn't shine the next time I see you? I would kill you, but I think there are a few ladies who have dibs on that."

Fury paused. His first instinct was to lie or twist things, but…. As strange as it felt, maybe the trust or at least part of the truth might work better this time. And now that Stark knew, he would be poking away at Shield until he found out. Better people heard it from him. "What we had to use to save Coulson hadn't been perfected yet. It has some potential serious side effects. We tried to get around that with a memory modification, but encountering the lot of you might have broken through that."

"You used a drug that wasn't perfected on Coulson? A drug with side effects? What side effects?" Clint demanded.

"Metal breakdown. Possible insanity." Fury said.

"But he's fine?"

"As far as we know he is right now thanks to the memory modification." Fury said.

"Okay, but you still used a drug with side effects on him? And did it never occur to you that Banner and Stark are GENIUSES? Stark's even got a tattoo that says genius on his rear end! If they knew about this and about the side effects, here's a wonderful idea, maybe they could FIX IT! I'm not sure if you should be in charge of something like Shield if you couldn't figure that one out. I'm not sure you should be in charge of operating the ice machine at a hockey game if you can't figure that one out."

"Thank you very much for your opinion." Fury muttered. And why did he think he was going to be hearing that opinion four more times, or possibly five more if the rumors that Thor was on Earth somewhere were true?

"Just repeating what everyone else is going to be telling you, and Fury, if there's a chance, any chance at all that Coulson could get those side effects, stop with the lying. I know he can be annoying and will gloat forever, but tell Stark everything, and let them FIX IT!"

"He's probably right." Maria said from the door as Fury ended the call. "We probably should have done that from the beginning."

But doing that would have meant that Coulson would find out everything, including the fact that he had wanted the GH project stopped, and Fury had ignored him.

"Did I hear you right?" Jasper said. "You gave Phil something that might make him go insane?"

How did Sitwell keep doing that, popping up at his door without making a sound? That bell had to be defective.

"Sitwell, what are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be working on getting someone from that funeral home on the line so we can pull the plug on this thing with Victoria!"

"I was. The lines are jammed. And I thought you might want to know that someone from Britain's royal family is rumored to be planning to be at the funeral tomorrow. I hope one of the good ones, not some count that they dug up out of the mothballs for funeral attending duty. Victoria deserves someone important."

"Victoria isn't dead. You remember that, right?" Maria said.

"I know, but still, she deserves for them to send someone good." Jasper said. "And about Phil, Director, if you thought he was about to lose his mind, why weren't you on the phone to Stark to try to fix it? Or Banner? He's smart too. And for someone with a green rage monster inside him surprisingly well mannered. If something's wrong with whatever you used, wouldn't it make sense to get them in, to fix it?"

"Let's focus on fixing this thing with Victoria first, and then I can think about consulting Banner and Stark. Jasper, get back on the phone. I don't care how long it takes, get someone at that funeral home on the line and tell them to call everything off! Maria…."

"I'll start calling hotels and try to find Victoria's family." Maria said.

"And I'm going to try to get someone at the White House. At the rate they're going, they're going to shut down everything and declare a national day of mourning next!"