Natasha shook her head, "It can't possibly be him."

"The numbers are right there," Daisy said, pointing at the document. It was an older hard copy of a permission order, the numbers were a classified code system, but they amounted to a green light order on one of the most horrific experiments that had occurred since the Allies put a stop to Hydra and Unit 731. But the numbers meant the order had come from Nick Fury, back in desk job days. An attempt to discover human revitalization, the Extremis Serum without the pain, thirty years early. It was the sort of thing you justify to yourself. "Fury ordered that and then SHIELD ordered me to shuffled around from home to home so that my family could never find me, so that no family could ever find me or want me or allow me to stay. Everything that has ever happened to me is his fault. Can't you see that?"

Daisy had become much more hostile to SHIELD since she had gotten back from her mother and learned her real name was Daisy Johnson and not Skye or (as these documents amusingly showed) Mary Sue Poots, not that Natasha could blame her. If someone had cut her mother open and torn out her organs while she was alive, Natasha would've had strong feelings about that person's place of employment as well.

God, had she gone from the Red Room to SHIELD to end up in the same place? A new orphan-factory, a new doctor without scruples, a new set of assassins and thieves who she could convince herself were doing something that she could pretend was right. This paperwork had to be wrong, it had to be. But they'd stolen it out of a SHIELD base.

"And," Daisy said, plopping down another file. "The signs indicate the same permission was given three days before the gassing of the Twins in Sokovia to Strucker."

"We need to talk to Strucker before we jump to any conclusions," Natasha said. "Maybe someone's been forging Fury's permissions. Maybe this is all a scheme to throw us off Trent's scent."

Daisy shrugged her shoulders, "Trent was seven years old. But whatever, I don't care what order we do this in."

To Daisy, it didn't matter because she was certain there would be no exculpatory evidence that explained what Fury had done. But to Natasha, it mattered a lot. Fury was her friend, her superior officer. Maybe it would turn out that he had signed off on Daisy's mom. That would be monstrous, but Natasha had been monstrous once, she could understand trying to put that behind you. To serve something greater than yourself.

But if the twins were also Fury's work…

—

John Garret was wearing a white turtleneck sweater under his heavy black leather jacket which matched the colors of SWORD but I felt like had to be hot. Maybe the Extremis meant it didn't matter, "Come on, you gotta give me Ward. He's my guy." He was a big guy after the Firefly treatment regimen, though he still showed a bit of his age in his dark hair. But I had given him back his health and, thus, had his loyalty.

"Right, which is why you should tell him absolutely nothing," I said bluntly. "He has an important duty with Captain America and they need to be a long way from Fury when it all goes down. Ward should know nothing, it will be more authentic that way." Plus I needed people to arrest Madam Gao anyway - I'd left that one festering since the invasion and it was past time to make up for it.

—

"Strucker?" Natasha said as she knocked at his office. There was no reason for him to be suspicious her, she reminded herself. He was a colleague, even if officially he worked on the other side of the world. They had kept her out of Eastern Europe for most of her career in SHIELD. Too many operatives who'd she'd exchanged fire with before Clint.

His secretary was missing too. The office was abnormally quiet, although of course it still occupied a SHIELD office building.

"Is he not answering?" Daisy said over the comm in her ear.

"No," she said. Turning around and walking down the hall, she found a SHIELD employee. "Why isn't Strucker in?"

"He got an emergency meet request," the desk jockey said, a guy with a belly and a bald spot, "His secretary hasn't been in since - I wouldn't either, extra time off."

"Do you know where he went?" Natasha asked. This was ridiculous.

"No idea, he said it came from on high and he couldn't explain."

"Thanks," Natasha said, flashing the guy her best smile and making her way back to the office foyer. It was fairly non descript, but she walked up to the door and popped out a set of hand tools to get to work on the electric lock on the door. She would critique the relatively low quality of the lock, but it honestly didn't matter what sort of hard barrier they put on a door like this, she would be able to open it. Plus they were already inside a SHIELD building, so it was too late really.

The door popped open and the door came open. The computer was still alive, so nobody had willfully killed it. Natasha stuck in a jack, "Daisy, can you break this?"

"Consider it broken," Daisy said. Natasha stared at the blue glow of the screen, looking at the SHIELD emblem that she still hoped would represent peace for the whole world. The eery silence of the office settled in around her but eventually Daisy said, "It's open, copying the hard drive now."

But Natasha couldn't resist and she opened the computer and started scrolling herself. Daisy was good, but Natasha was the full-time Spy, so she was quick to start going through the obvious stowing places. It wasn't in any of those places, so she moved on to the more obscure places.

"Natasha, what are you doing?"

"I'm looking for something."

"Why, we can just find it later, get out of there."

Daisy was right, she was definitely right. She had been in here nearly twenty minutes, but nobody had come and nobody was looking, so she kept looking at the computer, parsing it out in her mind, trying to find something on it that would lead her to where she needed to go.

Then she found it, buried deep under too many layers of files, a blank file that was labeled a string of numbers that Natasha's mind automatically converted into GPS coordinates and then dropped onto a map in her head. She had been doing this too long. But it was clear where it was, an old base in Sokovia.

She got up and walked out, "I found it."

——

"Baron Strucker," I said, sitting down in the somewhat rundown motel that was to be our spy meet up. I felt the weight of my vibranium watch and again wished I had two bracelets instead, but it would've looked too suspicious, especially in addition to my emergency charm bracelet.

"Why the covert location, sir?" Strucker asked, clearly nervous. His monocle was attached to his face and his short stubs of hair stretched both over his head and around his face. The long cloak was there.

"I have a… very violent assignment for you," I said in something that resembled the truth. I took a moment to close the blinds. "I want you to know that this mission is absolutely vital to Hydra and I must insist you perform it well." I had him looking at me and a shrunken woman was creeping out of the corner.

"Of course, sir," he said. "I assume it is with regard to Fury?"

"Yes," I said, "Watch how this works." I twisted my watch and the vibranium nanites covered me, "It's a vital trick. It will be important for you in the future," Andromeda unshrunk behind him. Credit where it is due, he spun fast enough to look her in the eye as she shot him in the head. Blood spattered everywhere, including all over the faceplate of my nanovibranium suit. We unshrunk our disposal equipment and got to work cleaning the room.

"This is not how I was hoping spend our engagement anniversary," Andromeda said as we scraped fresh blood and brains of the wall. It smelled hideous, and Strucker had shat himself as he died too. "I wish we hadn't had to kill Strucker."

"I don't like it either, but he exposed me to personal risk. One of us was going down for this and Strucker was too much of a coward to go down for it himself."

That was enough for Andromeda, but she was my wife, "I know. I just don't like it." Keeping the number of Hydra agents aware that wehad killed Strucker to a minimum was vital for precisely this reason. Hydra did a good job of instilling mutual loyalty into its members. The cracks that even the vote had caused would cost me months or even years to fully repair. That was simply how things were, however. Strucker had to die. He was a liability, and someone was going to have to dispose of him.

After we had finally cleaned everything, what felt like a few months later but had to have been an hour at most, we shrunk his body in the now standard spy disposal method, packed up our bags, she hoped into my suit pocket, and we left, me pretending to avoid the CCTV camera as a competent spy would. The nanomachive on the camera that had been replacing my image with Nick Fury's on the CCTV camera in the parking lot crawled its way off and sent me the footage copy after I sent the order from my burner phone. It was good so I order it to detonate itself.

——

They broke into the old warehouse and they weren't subtle about it. Strucker had apparently picked up the new policy of paper files, because there were plenty. Old mission reports and, sure enough, a twin to the one they'd gotten from inside a SHIELD base about Daisy's mom, Fury's number on it and everything.

Stolen story; please report.

"I've got his version of the doctor report. Let me know if you see anything," Natasha said as she started filing through the materials. It was obvious now that Strucker had been doing things that he knew were very, very illegal. All sorts of notes from the past decade, lots of rotten, awful experiments. Most of them, interestingly enough, did not have Fury's name or number on them. That was a relief to Natasha. It seemed like they weren't hitting anything.

"I found something!" Daisy announced and scrambled to the 'safety' computer they'd set up in case there were bugs or booby traps on any of their drives. It was a thin little stick of data and she inserted it into the computer.

It was clearly something from a pin camera. A conversation between Fury and Strucker.

"We have to take the chance to resolve this peacefully," Fury said.

"Sir, this is… This is a chemical agent. A weapon of biological warfare."

"So's tear gas," Fury said, waving his hand in dismissal.

"I just want to know I won't be going down for this."

"Don't tell me you're getting skittish, not after all this time."

"Of course not. But you'll give the order this time?"

"I'll give the order this time."

"We're going after him, right?" Daisy said, her voice somewhere between fear and fury.

Natasha reached out and squeezed her shoulder, "We're going after him." This was illegal. It was immoral. She only hoped that it was all Fury had done. She only hoped he would go quietly.

They would later go on to find the paperwork of Trent transferring the drugs to Fury, with harsh recommendations to never employ the gas, and a variety of other evidence that pointed toward Fury.

Little did she know someone else was already keeping her promise for her.

—

John Garret strode into Fury's office. He looked good. The Extremis and the Super-Soldier serum had done their work on the man. It wasn't as good as Fury had felt when he'd taken the Super-Soldier serum, but it was a good look. The corner office suited them both, the bright light shining from his windows, the desk between them, and the screen on the opposite wall that gave Nick his bird's eyeview of the world.

"John," Fury said, extending a hand and welcoming him into his office. "How're you?"

"I'm not good Nick," John said.

"Is there something wrong with the Extremis serum?"

"No, no, it worked like a charm - You know they had to yank the extra organs out by hand, I was awake the whole damn time, failure of anesthetics, you know how it is but it's been fine ever since."

Fury smiled, he did know. John had told that story more than a few times before. He told his stories a lot, practically lived in them. "Then what's the matter?"

"Nick, we found video of you disappearing Strucker."

"That's ridiculous," Nick said. It was ridiculous. He hadn't done it.

"Come on, Nick, don't bullshit me" John said, rubbing the transponder high ranking SWORD and SHIELD members all wore on their wrists to signal emergency bail outs. It could also release the Quantum Tunneling suit if they needed it. Trent was an asshole in many ways, but his work for SHIELD and SWORD was top of the line. "I think we can clear you, if you've got a good reason."

"I didn't do it. Tell me how you have a video of a thing I didn't do."

"I don't know, Nick," John said, pulling a flash drive out of his pocket and tossing it to Nick. "You tell me."

Nick started watching the video, some grainy CCTV footage. He checked it for Thoth fingerprints, but nothing showed under machine analysis. It did look like him - It could be him. The man kept his face away from the camera and entered a room. The timestamp on the footage jumped half an hour, a bit of convenient editing, and then the man walked out again. He did a good job of hiding his face, nearly as good of a job as Nick himself would've done, until he turned just wrong enough to give an image of Nick's distinctive scars he had gotten from that damn cat.

"You can't really believe this is me," Nick said. "John, how long have we known each other?"

"Long enough I want to give the chance to turn yourself in. Nobody's heard from Strucker since."

"Strucker goes missing for a few days every month, that doesn't mean he's dead," though if someone had gone to this length to frame him, it probably did mean he was dead. "What's your plan here, John?"

"You turn yourself in to me, we explain why you did it, you get two-to-five max."

"I didn't do this. But if I did, how do you know I don't have permission higher up?" This whole thing smelled like a fish straight from the lake of fire and second death.

"Nick, when I said 'we found it' I meant Secretary Pierce found it and gave it to me. We want you to come quietly, Nick, it'll make everything easier."

Nick shook his head, "My own friends believe I murdered one of my own agents. Why would I do something so stupid?"

"We don't know," John said, "If it was a really good reason, maybe we can get you off, an honorable pension."

"I didn't do it." Nick said

"Then you'll have to come in and we'll have to figure it out ourselves. Trust me Nick, please," John held up a pair of handcuffs and tossed them onto the desk between them.

For a long moment Nick really considered handing himself over. This was fake. Whoever had done this wanted him gone. Trent, maybe - He could've given it to Pierce, convinced him it was real. Maybe one of the hundred other enemies Nick had accumulated over the years. Or maybe those growing cracks he was seeing in people like Strucker had finally come to fruition.

No, he was going to have to escape. There was no way to guarantee that he made it to trial, that he got a chance to prove himself innocent. If he were on the other end of this, he'd have a few toughs with shivs waiting for him in the jail cell. That was assuming that John wasn't in on it himself, in which case a pair of burning hands could kill him before he made it to the cell. 'So sorry you resisted, Nick' and a funeral.

How to escape. He could jump out the window - The Super Soldier Serum made that a possibility. But a falling object is a falling object - Even if John thought he might be innocent right now, a leap through the window would be a potential death sentence. Nick's coat was old-school bullet proof, but the fall and new side arm fire would definitely be a problem, especially since Nick would barely be able to dodge as he twisted in the air. That was all assume that the helmet fold out that he had behind his ear even worked against a small arm.

He could try to go through John. The idea of fighting his old friend wasn't appealing, but it was a major problem for him. He had to admit that John might be responsible for all of this. It could be him, specifically, trying to drive Nick into the ground. That would've made it easier - But John was a decent hand to hand combatant and he had Extremis, whereas Fury did not. No telling how much difficult that would be.

He could try to go around John. Just make a mad dash for the door, try to convince a few agents to cover him. That would make him look guilty, but it would also mean he had a chance to clear things without it. But if Nick had been the one planning this, he'd have guys waiting for him outside the door.

He could turn on his Quantum Tunneler, go through it to his emergency bug-out spot. But these were Trent's tunnelers. He had programmed them. He had even programmed this one. It was possible that he had slipped something past Fitz, assuming he wasn't in on all this. It also took about fifteen seconds to get started and Nick could see John tense up.

Alright, simple plan - Make it out the window, turn on the Quantum Tunneler, and program a new destination before he hit the ground. Preferably over something softer than concrete, though it wasn't likely at the speed he'd be falling.

He charted out on his head where was a deep enough part of the water and then he made his move. He lunged toward the window, moving as quickly as he could to turn on his teleporter. But then, the window over him burst and something hard and fast hit him in the leg. Another shrunken person? Damn it, John had thought of everything.

Nick reached up to his teleporter and felt the presence on his leg just let go. For a moment, Nick thought that meant he had escaped, it was all over but the suit closing over him and taking him out of there.

But then he felt a massive explosive go off on his leg, tearing through his body.

--

"Yeah, he's pretty fucking dead," Garret said

I had spent so long on the goddamn plan, every single inch was ready, his tunneler had been compromised both in that I should've gotten its location and in that the standard ports were full of waiting Fireflies, I'd planted a Firefly above and below his window, I'd had super soldiers outside his door. I'd done so much to make sure that Nick Fury went down. I was lucky we weren't having to use. I'd made sure to train Garret to disarm a tunneler in less time than it took to arm one, even across the pit against a difficult opponent. We'd had Rumlowe serve as the dummy.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Nick Fury was dead and the last major obstacle to my control of the global defense systems had hopefully gone with him.