Sir Nicholas Fury

The target is a caravan of people who have been picked up by the President's squads to be tested and cleaned. The world isn't kind to those who have been picked up, even if they are found clean.

The path has been charted out, the number of people (thirteen) has been confirmed, and so have the number of guards. The point of extraction is between two abandoned warehouses.

It's not like that.

It's just.

It's just that you're twenty four, and your friends are all passionate about politics, and tell you that he's done the best job in history.

It's just that you had this cousin, and she had this friend, and her friend's little sister was, you know. And your cousin got swept up in it, and you got a polite little note saying that they were sorry for the mix-up and that you'd be pleased to know that your family was safe.

It's just that you sit in classes about history and you hear about how terrible it was and you think about what people could do, that they can't now.

It's just that you wonder about the definition of the word, when it comes on the media.

It's just that you look at three old, tired faces belonging to three old, tired men and you wonder.

You wonder what happens when the old stop and the new never start.

You wonder what happens when heroes die.

Then you put the last bit of dark green armor on and you check yourself in the mirror. A harshly mechanical voice, which you are pleased to note sounds nothing like you, announces to your dingy little basement room; "Anticitizen Four reporting for duty. Just as soon as I find a way to contact the rest of you."

The tests have been run. Every single test that anyone could think to do with several bits of hair and the blood found where Fury and the other man had fallen. Every single test, duplicated as often as they could. The conclusions were as unwelcome as they were undeniable.

The other man did not exist. He simply...didn't. In all of their files, in all the genetic research they've been doing, there is no one who fits. Subtle things were off, to the point where one horribly unhappy scientist had to explain to the President for Life that there was no way that the man in the orange suit could possibly be a native of this Earth.

Or any of the known near Earths. And he's probably not a mutant. Or a standard-type hero. Alien is unlikely. He's just a man, in an orange suit, who appeared at much the same time as Fury.

The President for Life is not amused. At all.

"Run it again."

"Sir, we've run this five times. It comes up the same every time. A perfect match with the file. Perfect, sir." The analyst has his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his lab coat, where they've been since the second that he handed the papers across to the older, much angrier, man behind the desk. "There isn't an error. I want there to be an error as badly as you do.

"Nick Fury has been dead for sixty eight years." the papers are in a neat stack which is picked up and tapped sharply against the desk, "Dead and buried for sixty eight years. May 4, 2022. Natural causes." He picks up the report again and reads it over again. After the decades of carefully shaping the populace to follow his every whim he's good at reading these sort of reports. The information stares back up at him unflinchingly; Fury. On every page; Fury, Fury, Fury.

"Yes, sir. And he was shot breaking into the Haile building while in the company of a man in a brilliant orange hazardous environment suit."

"Exhume the body. Do what you need to do to make certain."

"Yes, sir. I'll pass the order to..."

"Do it yourself. I want you there at every stage of the operation. Exhume the body, run the tests, I don't want you leaving the side of the sample from the second you personally take it until the results are in my hand. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Get out of here and find out what the hell is going on." The President for Life, old but still spry, leans back in his chair after the analyst is gone and stares up at the ceiling. He'd almost rather Captain America were back than Fury. The man in orange, that's new too. He doesn't like new. New is dangerous.

There are two things that a revolution needs: information and weaponry. Sir Nicholas is distressingly short on both. He has been gaining information as fast as possible, from Rogers, from Gordon Freeman, from books and newspapers and files, but in the end there are still too many things that they don't know which they need to know.

The Haile building is not a terribly important building in the grand scheme of the President For Life's power. It was one of the last things that Emma Frost funded before her murder and was designed to find ways to track movements of money more securely. As a private tool she used it to keep her fortunes growing.

After her death it was confiscated by the government, who used the tools to track mutants instead of money and create files of people who might be carriers of the genes that the President For Life disapproved of. To the normal-looking, weak-willed public it is a building that carries on the task of keeping the mutant menace from disrupting them. To the rare holdouts and those who look different, even more rare since the early 21st century started, it's just another place which occasionally sends out armed soldiers to arrest people for the crime of being too strong-willed to follow the President.

In theory it is also a building which contains a directory of places where information on the dead can be found. Information on the dead, the lost, the mad, and the hiding President. He shows up on the television daily, live, to broadcast his speeches...but his physical position is heavily guarded.

The building is two stories tall, from the outside. L-shaped with a moderately sized parking lot. Two doors in, one at the crook of the L and one at the long end, and an emergency staircase up the other end, darkened windows with the blinds drawn and the occasional small light as someone has stayed to work late into the night.

"They needed me, Fury!" Rojhaz is enraged, has been since the second the girl stepped through the door, "You bastard, you made me leave them!" Sir Nicholas looks on impassively as the tall 'American' storms around, "Who is going to protect them? Teach them? Who is going to show them how to avoid the mistakes we made?"

"Someone else." Sir Nicholas finally says, "Someone who will not tear the world apart merely by existing in it. That is what you were doing. And so now, instead of the end of my world, my people, and my home there are two men against a world." His lips curve, but it isn't a nice smile, "Look on the bright side. Once again you are not alone."

"Tear the world apart? What do you mean?" Sir Nicholas rubs his temples at that, privately wondering just how badly the future man was damaged in his trips through time...and if he, himself, is destined to be the same.

"I mean that you were too early. The storms, the quakes, those were all your fault. Doctor Strange, God rest his soul, found that if you had not been sent back we would all have perished. There would be no America, for there would be no Earth."

Rojhaz is quiet the rest of that day.

The next day is slow, and quiet.

"Why are you going to help me?" the American asks in the early morning. Sir Nicholas looks up from where he was polishing a knife in a meditative state and says simply, "It is what I do." before going back to what he was doing. Rojhaz...Rogers. Steve Rogers. Such a strange name, the more because it is almost normal. Regardless, Rogers contacts a man, who contacts another, and by noon there is a tentative knock on the door. It is Rogers who opens the door, collects the box, and shows the young man in.

He's weedy, with dusky skin and dirty hair, and he looks at Sir Nicholas like a man from 1602 might look at God. "He looks almost exactly like the old pictures of Nick Fury." he informs Rogers, while Sir Nicholas sits straight-backed reading history books. He pretends that he can't hear the conversation behind him, but Rogers' comment is clear, "He is Fury." as is the kid's sharp intake of breath and quick retreat.

"Let me bandage you up better." Rogers says when they're alone again, "I've got a first aid kit here that will help keep it from getting infected." Much of what he says is meaningless to Sir Nicholas, infected being amongst those words, so the other man says, "A physic to keep you healthy."

"Very well." Sir Nicholas says, removing the over-large shirt and allowing Rogers to remove the purple bandaging. His mind is racing with the facts he's found out already, and he knows that he's barely scratched the surface. There is no way that he could walk out in public, even if his face was not apparently widely known even to this day.

He's got a tally running through his mind, a tally of things to learn. Money. Maps. Politics, although that is dreadfully obvious. Speech patterns. The technology, enough to get around if not become a master. How to drive, how to use the little telephone, how to survive in this world.