Excused Absences

Everything started with a card.

Almost a post card but neither glossy or big enough, an unconventional business card of sorts, thick white paper sent through the mail without postage or a return address. No name penned into the corner, just Fury, Nicholas J and a series of numbers in faded ink. There was nothing else.

He had initially thrown the card in the trash but curiosity killed that damn cat and it’d kill him too.

Nick had been a young and stupid Literature major with a scholarship to NYU. He’d had a knack for trouble and where to find it, and he’d had nothing better to distract him from writing a paper on postcolonial discourse in modern literature than a mysterious card in the mail. He’d just been a kid that was up for a challenge, that’d watched too many spy flicks and owned a mysterious business card. And, he just really didn’t want to write that paper.

Coordinates, he realized.

After a few hours, a book of maps, a comic that wasn’t his, and the realization that the list of numbers was encoded using an old Allies code presented in the first edition of Captain America and the Howling Commandos comic book. A time, a date, and coordinates that led directly to the campus bookstore.

Specifically, with the use of a compass and too much wasted time, he knew the exact coordinates of the only red chair in the sitting area of the bookstore.

He threw the card in the trash.

That was it – the beginning of his very end.

When everything laid shattered and broken at his feet, when he was left to pick up too many pieces, he’d be able to trace it all back to a mysterious white card with coordinates to a campus bookstore and the stupid childish impulse to not leave well enough alone.

There were cons and there were cons that were long, that lead to destruction and certain death for all parties involved, or at least something as equally inconvenient. These kinds of things had a way of starting with something that seemed harmless, trivial and a little fun, and so vastly unimportant in comparison to due dates and finals.

You don’t realize the gravity until you’re sucked into its’ orbit.

He should have left it at that, the code within the code that told of a meet time and date. All he had wanted to do was just figure it out and move on with his life but he still found himself standing in the middle of the crowded store on a Tuesday afternoon.

He stood back, standing in the stacks between physic and philosophy books, and watched the red chair. He was curious, not a fool.

It could have been a prank, a set-up, or maybe some kind of trap. Nick did not have the best track record with making friends and he’d made his fair share of enemies. He didn’t have enough to work with to sit himself out in the open so he waited and hid out of sight, and he watched.

His grandfather had always told him that his curiosity would get him into trouble, that his willingness to not back down from a challenge would end him up in hot water or worse, a grave. But really, it was just that which got the attention of Margaret Carter.

Peggy, she called herself in a voice as warm as melting chocolate from just over his shoulder. Nick had spun – he’d remembered that moment because he’d never spun before, no one had ever got the drop on him until that moment. She’d smiled, more for pride than greeting, and stuck out a hand.

She was an older woman in her mid-forties, he though, graying at the temple but doing so gracefully. Pretty and stylish with a stance that was all too telling that she was no professor – military, if Nick had to guess. It was her eyes that was most captive, guarded but telling of unspoken stories that he could not begin to imagine.

He returned her handshake, nodded when she inquired, “Nicholas Fury, Nick, I presume. You were waiting.”

“I don’t remember mentioning my name, ma’am.”

“No, you didn’t,” She replied before tilting her head towards the chair. “You cracked the code.”

“It was an old Howling Commandos code,” He told her, there was no pride in his voice. It was as firm and formal as her own, it was fact that he was stating. “It was printed in a Captain America comic book, wasn’t that hard to find.”

“A needle in a stack of needles,” She said, the barest hint of a smile was the only giveaway that she was impressed. “What is hidden in plain sight is often the hardest to find.”

 “Tell me,” He said, arms crossed over his chest, “What is the likes of Peggy Carter doing harassing me in the campus bookstore?”

It was a full smile that time, showing off pretty white teeth, and she laughed with an ease of someone among friends. She made him an offer. An opportunity like no other. An opportunity of a lifetime.

The opportunity of a lifetime, as it turned out, was not cozy beach trips or Parisian summer adventures. It was the honor and privilege – the same was it was a privilege not to be brutally murdered – of being groomed into something better, to fight for something more. The privilege of a shortened lifespan for people that looked at you and decided your sacrifice was worth it.

Conditioning, she had called it, training. For the military, combat and intelligence gathering, for spying for S.H.I.E.L.D. and protecting those that couldn’t.

She told him that somebody that was clever enough and determined enough to figure out the code, that stood there and talked to her as an equal and demanded he be taken as the same was perfect for her organization. She told him that somebody with his intellectual skills – both in class and on the street – and confidence showed a promise that she saw in very little.

He had narrowed his eyes and asked if she had been spying on him. She had raised an eyebrow back and told him with an unreadable amusement that the government was always watching. She told him that she admired his skills. He told her he was going to class.

Nick was no stranger to the military and organizations like she described. He was a son of an Air Force pilot and he’d lost his father in all the ways that counted to the horrors of that war. He had no intention of following those footsteps.

What he had was a five year plan that ended with writing for the New York Times; S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t factor into that at all.

He told Peggy that, and the guy in the S.H.I.E.L.D. issued jacket on the street that had repeated the offer to him, but in a less polite way.

It was starting to become annoying.

He was being followed, he knew it.

He didn’t have to turn around to know, a quick glance in the glass of a passing shop window or the mirror of a parked car told him that the guy in the black sunglasses and the ‘I-pay-more-for-my-haircut-than-you-do-in-rent’ haircut had been following him since he’d split from his roommate, Red, three blocks ago.

And really, really, it was dark.

Could he look any more conspicuous? The slap of his expensive leather shoes, too expensive for this part of Hell’s Kitchen, was too loud, too close to be trailing somebody on a nearly empty street.

At this point, Nick was sure that Peggy was sending halfwits to follow him just to get on his nerves.

He took a sharp turn into an ally, sped up and then disappearing from view until he launched himself out from behind a dumpster and slammed the shitty spy so hard into the wall that his sunglasses hit the asphalt. He was even wearing a S.H.I.E.L.D. pin on his jacket.

“Why are you following me?” He demanded, absolutely done with this whole charade. He was done with the following and Peggy Carter, with all of it.

The guy offered him a deal.

If Nick beat him in a boxing match at the gym he was heading too then they’d all back off. If he lost, he’d sign up for S.H.I.E.L.D.

Nick took the deal.

Twenty-six minutes later, he told the guy to fuck off.

And that was that. Or well, that should have been that but then…

“I signed up for the army.”

It was said with the passing of a ham and cheese sandwich and all the nonchalance of someone who did not have a fucking clue of the severity of what they’d just did.

“What the fuck?”

“Well, not the army, army but like, some strategic planning place,” Red said, sitting down across from Nick before tucking into his own sandwich. “The spiel sounded a lot like the army recruiter one though.”

Nick was not in the habit of making friends, naturally suspicious of everybody and a no-nonsense attitude made it a bitch to keep people coming around but Red was the exception to that. Nick liked Red.

Red Hargrove was a goofy business major with a sad attempt of the Beatles’ hairdo and the coordination of an idiot. Nick had met him during freshman year orientation when Red’s big mouth got the best of him and Nick stood between him and the possibility of losing his front teeth. They had remained friends for reasons Nick never truly understood.

He rolled his eyes at Nick’s raised eyebrow.

“This woman, okay,” He began, talking around a bite of a peanut butter and banana sandwich. “Old but seriously, really pretty, right? And she’s talkin’ to me about the military, uh, S.H.I.E.L.D. or S.W.O.R.D. or something, I dunno. It appealed to me.”

“Well, unsign up!” Nick demanded.

“Can you even do that?”

“You are!”

“Man, calm down. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“You could die.”

“I think if I can survive Professor Aigner’s class than I can survive a war, Nick.”

It was that reason, that statement, and the deep down knowing that Red would not survive a war, that had Nick staring daggers into the bruised face of the guy he beat up and Peggy Carter. He found himself offering conditions, demanding that he be with Red every step of the way, found them agreeing.

Peggy Carter was smart and clever, and she knew damn sure how to manipulate the odds to her favor.

Loyalty was a blessing and a curse, she would say later in a voice hard and clipped and eyes distant and sad. Loyalty was hard to find, hard to hold onto. She knew he was loyal to Red the way he would be to S.H.I.E.L.D.

He was good. Hell, he was the best.

Director Carter – because she was no longer Peggy when she was his superior – told him never lose his cleverness and he never did. The curiosity and stubbornness that his grandfather had endlessly worried would get him into trouble managed to save him, his team, and countless civilians along the way as he rose through the ranks.

He was a skilled and experienced solider with a leather jacket and a glare that could bend metal. His work with the army, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the C.I.A. was legendary. He was the definition of ‘don’t-fuck-with-me.’

Things didn’t just happen to Nick Fury, they came with debriefings and signatures, and forms upon forms. If he said no – if he said that this wasn’t going to work then it didn’t happen because he was Nick Fury, and life happened when he gave his direct orders for it to.

That was how it worked.

Except when it didn’t.

Except when his months of cat and mouse with the leader of a terrorist organization overlapped with a case of the newly appointed Director, Alexander Pierce, and he disobeyed direct order from his superiors to ‘sit tight’ while they failed to win a no-win situation through negotiation. He didn’t so much as disobey orders as he elected to ignore them on the basis of it being a stupid ass order; and rescued the hostages in Bogota, including the Director’s own daughter.

Except when Red, being the clumsy klutz that he had always been, tripped and sprained his ankle, leaving Fury tasked with dragging his ass back through the sewers behind everybody else. Except when he let his guard down because they said – his men said – that the guards were all dead. Not just injured, armed, and very, very pissed off.

Except when a grenade went off a bit too close to his face and he had ninety-five percent less vision in his left eye, a ruined career, over forty get well cards cluttering his hospital room, and a comatose best friend. Then a dead best friend, a missed funeral, and all those damn cards.  

After some time, some anger and grieving, and a bit of work, Nick found himself an eye patch and a new leather jacket to go with his new degree and teaching job as principal of Marvel High School.

Marvel High School was a state of the art building halfway between two U.S. Arm Bases and the New York S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. It was a school that educated children of government officials and assets, future recruitees, proteges, and kids who’d grow up to be adults that the government would rather have on their side than against it. Built with the purpose of turning the potential of smart clever youth into sharp doubled edged swords that could be wielded by S.H.I.E.L.D. There were three levels of well-equipped labs, flexible curriculum, and a gymnasium that could withstand nuclear fallout.

A school ran by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, essentially.

It was a downgrade to the S.H.I.E.L.D. version of a security guard (oppose to actual S.H.I.E.L.D. security guards who had guns and better pay), a frontline for children if somebody was smart enough to connect the pieces. It was a punishment, essentially, for fucking up, going against orders and saving the day.

Marvel High School was where you dumped the agents that knew too much but got people killed with incompetence, or misplaced nuclear missiles. Or, in Nick’s case, went against the direct orders of Director Pierce and saved his daughter.

The protection of children, of the legacy and future of S.H.I.E.L.D. was up to the rejects and fuck ups of government agencies. Nick seemed to be the only one to find something extremely screwed up about all of it.

Nick Fury was a skilled and experienced ex-solider with a leather jacket and a glare that could still bend metal. His work to improve test scores and graduation rates were legendary. He was the definition of ‘don’t-fuck-around-in-my-hallways.’ Things didn’t just happen to Nick Fury because he was Nick Fury and life happened when he gave his orders.

And that was how it worked.

Except when it didn’t.

Except when he opened the door to an old C.I.A. buddy who found a bruised and beaten blond circus performer that he was supposed to turn over to S.H.I.E.L.D. for questioning and then possibly to foster care. A small dumb kid too deep in too much shit and needed a hand, needed a home and much too slippery for any foster care, too damaged. Even when his ‘oh, hell no’ and ‘do I look like a fucking babysitter’ were met with ‘you’d do him good’ and ‘I know you have a damn degree in social work for some goddamn reason, Fury.’

So, after some time and a lot of work – it took the social worker all of three weeks to figure out that the reason Barton barely responded to her was because he was partially deaf. It took Nick two minutes. He found himself the foster parent to one Clinton Barton, the most sarcastic pre-teen to ever grace the planet.

“Are you winking or blinking at me?” He asked, tossing an overstuffed duffle bag full of neon colored spandex and oversized hoodies onto the floor and putting his dirty boots on Nick’s glass coffee table. “I can’t really tell, Agent Plankley.”

Nick didn’t like him – his stupid faded yellow bruised face or the Iowan twang in his voice.

“You know from Lilo & Stitch, Agent Plankley? I’ve watched that movie like twelve times in the past week, and let me tell you, I’m totally seeing it. You’re what, C.I.A? Something like that, maybe. Definitely government, got that C.I.A-y look to you, Agent. And the whole one eye thing…and not being very good at your job because, obviously the one eye thing. What happened to your eye?”

He was going to need to take the boy to the mall for new clothes and a haircut…which make Fury like him even less.

“Can we get a dog?”

He really, really did not like this kid.

Nick Fury was a skilled and experienced ex-soldier and a somewhat retired international spy with a leather trench coat and a glare that bent metal. His work as principal of Marvel High School was legendry. And as he found out, he was a half-way decent foster parent – strict and occasionally demanding but Barton had stopped shooting arrows into the neighbor’s windows and started using the targets set up in the backyard.

Fury got him into hearing aids and on the honor roll (and the archery team). Even if Clint would rather watch Cake Boss than talk about his last foster home, his escape to the circus and entrance into the criminal underworld, or why he shoved Tony Stark into a locker last week, things were good. Stable

And then there was a knock on the door.

He got Natalia Romanova – Natasha Romanoff, she told him in a way that reminded him of the day he met Peggy Carter – in a flurry of red tape, and agents, and paperwork. This skinny little curly haired red-headed Russian with a nearly undetectable accent came into his life. She had been allegedly raised by scientist Ivan Petrovich, allegedly affiliated with the KGB and the Red Room, and allegedly escaped and showed up outside of a safe house.

She had appeared at the door, managing not to trip a single intruder warning, told them that they’d been compromised and gave a sob story that could not be corroborated. She was suspected of having participated in a KGB smuggling ring, espionage, and a hell of a lot more.

She gave just enough to get protection, it was Nick’s job to figure out the rest of what she knew just like it was Nick’s job to figure out what went down with Barton and his former mentor “The Swordsman” that left him gasping in a puddle of his own blood.

The first words out of her mouth was to ask if he actually bought that rug or found it in the trash before stealing the remote from Barton.

Fury liked her.

He learned early that Natasha was a skilled fighter as well as the best damn gymnast he’d ever seen. He got her enrolled in ballet over a suspension – she broke Damon Dran’s arm and a confrontation with Tony Stark almost resulted in her being in a S.H.I.E.L.D. lock up facility – and put her on the MHS dance team as punishment.

It took him a little longer and a few temporary children to realize that he’d become a babysitter for S.H.I.E.L.D., the C.I.A., and any other government agency with wayward orphans. The only constant being Barton and Romanoff’s bitching.

He found that even if Barton and Romanoff could be difficult pains in the ass and his second-floor apartment had become increasingly littered with ballerina slippers and broken arrows, he didn’t mind all that much

When he had lost his sight, his friend, and his career, he had thought that life was done for. It had felt like his life was over and meaningless. But much to Nick’s own surprise, his school and his kids were doing well, and he was doing okay.

And then there was a knock at the door.

Nick Fury was a retired solider and an ex-spy, paranoid was a state of being.

A knock at the door after midnight gave him every right to be paranoid so he grabbed his gun from the safe. Instead of facing down any number of less-than-desirable faces, he found himself shoving a gun into the bruised face of a familiar friend.

“Sam?” Nick asked, dropping his arm down to his side and clicking the safety back on. He didn’t miss the way Sam’s eyes lingered just a little too long on the eye patch. “Happy Sam Sawyer, you’re not looking so happy right about now.”

Nick couldn’t help but let a little bitterness coat his words because this asshole, this ‘friend’ of his, didn’t visit him once when he was in the hospital. He didn’t even answer his goddamn phone when Nick was struggling to adjust to blindness, to loss, to civilian life.

Sam’s eyes snapped to Fury’s good one, “It’s been a long day.”

“What the hell happened to your face?”

“As I said, long day,” Sam replied, running his hand over the bruised and swollen skin around his right eye, avoiding the stitches running up the side of his face.

“Ah,” Fury replied. Classified.

Nick hadn’t been gone long enough to not see the red tape strangling his old captain’s words. If it was Nick Fury of eight years ago, he might had ripped all the red tape to pieces until he found the truth hidden beneath. Nick Fury of now, with two sleeping teens down the hall and an alarm set for six, could quite frankly not give a damn.

“It has been a long day so I’ll be seeing you.”

Nick might have let the door swing shut harder than he usually would have at this time because Sam was predictable in the way he threw his punches and how he stopped closing doors, and Nick knew this. He knew it well.

The hiss Sam let out reeked of pain but Nick couldn’t be bothered to really care. Some people bruised their knuckles, others lost eyes; he saw no point in pretending like any of it mattered, “Most people use their foot.”

“Nick.”

“What?”

“I…” Sam began, pushing the door open only to trail off while he waited for Nick to invite him in like some damned vampire. When Nick did eventually, with an eye roll and a hand gesture, before he stalked off to the living room. “I need – I have – here.”

“What is this?” Nick asked, looking down at the file that was shoved into his arms. He sat the gun down by his side while opening it. There had once been a time when Nick could trust Same, now was not that time.

Most of the file was redacted, marked up with black markers so he couldn’t read anything of use. There was a picture of a little girl paperclipped to the side of the file who couldn’t have been more than eight years old. It looked like a school picture.

“What is this?”

Nick Fury was a foster parent and a principal, so it was safe to say he knew kids. Nick Fury was also a skilled and experienced ex-solider and retired spy, and he knew that if there was a child’s picture in a redacted S.H.I.E.L.D. file that everything had already gone to hell.

“Her name is Melinda May,” Sam said quietly, like he was testing the waters. “She’s sixteen now, that picture is old.”

“Why is she-?”

“It’s classified.”

“Then why the hell are you here?” Fury asked because there was a time and a place to deal with this level of bureaucratic bullshit and 12:54 A.M. on a Tuesday night with an alarm due to go off at six was not it.

“Her parents were agents, both of them. Level six.”

“Were.”

“Yeah,” Sam commented. “They died, looks like they had been tortured, murdered. I don’t know. We don’t know how or why or when they were taken but she does.”

‘Compartmentalization,’ Nick thought offhandedly. Nothing got out because no one knew the whole story. Nick would be annoyed by it if he hadn’t been the one that pushed the need for it first with Carter and then later with Pierce.

“She was there,” He deduced.

“Yeah, the only survivor and she’s not talking.”

“This says there were hostages,” Nick pointed out. “What happened to them?”

“We don’t know,” Sam admitted. “Theory was that she let them go. We didn’t know who they were, it had only been radioed in that there were hostages a day before all of this went down. We can’t track people we don’t know, so. She’s not exactly being helpful, not talking and all.”

“I bet.” And Sam wasn’t talking either so Nick had to. “When did it happen?”

“She was placed into foster care.” Sam eyed Fury, not answering the question because it was classified for some goddamn reason. “No family outside of her parents or at least, none that we know of and she’s obviously no help.”

“What are you getting at?”

“We need to know what she knows.”

“But she’s not talking.”

“Exactly,” Sam agreed. “We were… I don’t know – and you’ve done a lot with traumatized kids, I was just thinking.”

“What were you thinking, Sam?”

Nick had become acutely aware that Sam had been sent for a reason – a familiar face from the faceless agency that practically dumped him on his ass after doing what he swore to their oath to do. It was a tactic, an obvious one and one that Nick was offended that they thought would work.

“She was attacked in her first foster home,” Sam admitted, rubbing his neck. “Not by agents or anything like that, some girls that didn’t like Asian-Americans or something. She’s not talking about that either. She’s not talking about anything. I’m not even sure if she speaks English, honestly. Her parents were multi-linguals, Chinese, they homeschooled her after third grade.”

“Sam, I’ve got to be up in five hours so could you get to the point?”

“They sprained her wrist.”

“The point, Sam.”

“We know how good you are with kids,” Sam explained. The word ‘we’ said like there was a big damn hanging sign in HQ that read ‘send all your traumatized youths to Fury’s.’ “And what you’ve done with the two you’ve got and well…”

“Well?”

“Would you like another one?” Sam asked meekly which was pretty goddamn funny because Captain Samuel Sawyer was 6’4 and built like Captain America shoved into a too tight Army Strong t-shirt.

“I’m not going to rat on a kid for you, Sam,” Fury replied because he doesn’t trust these people and he was not going to be a part of the added trauma of a sixteen year old child.

“You think that you have a choice, Nick?”

He set his jaw because, no. No, he didn’t.

In the same way that he knew it was an obvious tactic, he also knew who he worked for and knew that he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He was still an employee of S.H.I.E.L.D., a low ranking one.

“She needs a home,” Sam said, clasping his hands. “I’m not saying record her every word” – that was exactly what S.H.I.E.L.D. would like – “But the kid just saw her parents killed and by the bruising… well, she needs somebody and no one who has talked to her has gotten through to her.”

“And you think I can?”

“I’ve seen your work and your school,” He shrugged. “The higher ups want knowledge, they want answers and they want them from her but I knew her parents.”

Sam looked down when he said that, something akin to guilt passing on his face.

“They were good agents, good people, and I’ve got a youngster of my own. If that was my kid, I’d want to know that she was getting what she needed. You’re qualified to do both, Nick. So, what do you say?”

“Does it really matter?”

Nick Fury was a foster parent and a principle so he knew kids and he knew as he flipped through the mostly blacked out two inch thick file – which included a medical report that made him want to shoot bullets into the wall – that she was not going to be an easy one.