95 Sneaking Out

When Harry and Natasha popped into the hospital, there was pandemonium everywhere. Doctors were shouting for equipment, nurses sprinting down corridors, and SHIELD agents barking into comms as they cordoned off areas of the building. A sea of bodies moved as they were barely keeping pace with the gravity of the situation, and for a moment, Harry and Natasha just stood there, scanning the madness.

“Looks like everyone and their handler showed up,” Natasha muttered.

Harry shut out the chaos around him and cast a point me charm. Pulling Natasha along, He followed the invisible pull through the crowded corridors to a heavily guarded wing, cordoned off with security. The guards recognised Natasha and barely hesitated before letting them through.

They reached a dimly lit observation room that had a large window overlooking the surgical theater. Inside, a full team of doctors surrounded the operating table under the harsh glare of surgical lights. Blood-stained gloves continued to operate on Fury as the lead surgeon barked orders as they worked to keep the man on the table alive.

Harry and Natasha stepped in silently, as they found two familiar figures already inside.

Steve Rogers stood by the glass, fists clenched at his sides as his jaw set in a grim line. Beside him, Maria Hill stood stiffly, her arms crossed, eyes fixed on the chaos in front.

Hill turned her head as they entered, nodding once. Steve’s expression barely changed, but his eyes flicked toward them in a silent acknowledgement.

“You get the shooter?” Harry asked, and he too focused on the operation.

“No. He got away.” Steve replied as his fingers curled into fists at his sides.

Natasha’s gaze didn’t waver from the operating table. “Tell me about him.”

Steve’s jaw tightened. For a brief moment, the mask of composure cracked. “Fast. Strong. Metal arm. He’s enhanced, I think. Kept up with me in speed and strength when he caught and threw my shield. Could have been the mechanical arm, though.”

"Ballistics?" Natasha questioned.

Hill’s answer came without missing a beat. “Three slugs. No rifling. Completely clean.”

Natasha didn’t blink. “Soviet-made.”

“Yeah,” Hill confirmed.

Their conversation had to pause, however, as suddenly, everything inside the operating room shifted.

The calm, steady rhythm of the machine was gone, replaced by a frantic energy that radiated through the observation glass. Movements grew more erratic. Monitors screamed with shrill, insistent tones.

"He's in V-tach!" a nurse shouted.

"Crash cart, now!" someone else barked.

Harry’s breath caught in his throat as he watched a doctor rip back the sterile drape, hands working fast.

"BP is dropping!"

"He's crashing—"

"Defibrillator!" the lead surgeon snapped.

Everything felt like it had slowed. The team outside the glass, Steve, Natasha, Hill, and Harry, could only watch, frozen in place, as the paddles were charged with a rising whine.

"Clear!" the doctor yelled.

The jolt slammed through Fury’s chest. His body jerked violently on the table. Even behind the glass, they flinched.

A second of silence. A beat too long.

"Pulse?" the doctor demanded.

"No pulse," the nurse replied, dread thick in his voice.

"No pulse," echoed another. The words were a death sentence.

The doctor didn’t stop. “200 joules. Again. Go.”

"Clear!" Another shock. Another jolt.

Harry felt Natasha shift beside him, just barely. Steve’s jaw locked. Hill’s arms were crossed so tightly against her chest that her knuckles had gone white.

"Give me epinephrine!"

The chemical was pushed through the IV. Another pause. A long one.

"Pulse?"

"Still negative."

Harry clenched his fists nervously.

"Time?" the doctor asked, voice quieter now, the desperation burned out into grim finality.

"1:03," a nurse whispered, almost afraid to speak.

The lead doctor took a breath. "Call it. Time of death, 1:03 a.m."

On the other side of the glass, no one spoke. No one moved.

The frantic energy of the emergency ward began to drain away, the buzz of urgency slowly giving way to a solemn stillness. The crash cart was wheeled out. Monitors were switched off. Nurses cleaned instruments in silence. One doctor pressed a hand briefly to the window before turning away, a silent apology for his failure.

Maria Hill had left immediately, following Fury’s body, as it was wheeled away beneath a white sheet. She didn't speak as she passed, just met Harry’s eyes through the glass for a heartbeat.

Now, it was just the three of them.

They sat in a tucked-away waiting room off the main corridor. Harry sat forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles had gone white. His eyes weren’t focused on anything, not really. They stared through the floor, through the walls, far away. Every part of him was still, but you could almost feel the magic simmering under his skin, restrained by will alone.

Natasha leaned back in her chair. Her foot tapped lightly against the tiled floor. Her face was expressionless, but her jaw was clenched tight, and her eyes flicked between Harry and Steve, as if waiting for something.

Steve sat straight-backed, hands on his thighs, eyes fixed on the floor. He was holding himself together with discipline alone.

No one cried.

There were no dramatic outbursts, no breaking down.

They didn’t need to. They were soldiers. They knew what this was. They knew what it looked like, what it had to look like.

Quietly, each of them ran the same math in their heads: who would make the next move, what lies would be told, what surveillance was on them, and how best to play the part.

"I know who killed Fury," Natasha was the first to break the silence.

Steve looked up, eyes narrowing. "Who?"

She didn’t blink. “Most of the intelligence community doesn’t think he exists. The ones who do… they call him the Winter Soldier.”

Harry exchanged a glance with Steve, but neither spoke. Natasha continued, her voice growing colder.

“He’s credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years. Always clean, always vanishing like smoke.”

“So… he’s a ghost story,” Steve said, sceptical.

Natasha’s expression shifted. “He’s real.”

She paused, jaw clenched. “A few years back, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. We were near Odessa. Someone shot out our tires, and we ended up going off a cliff.”

Steve leaned forward, listening intently. Harry didn’t move, he knew how the story went. He was there to save her after all.

“I dragged us out of the wreckage, bleeding, half-conscious. And he was there. The Winter Soldier.”

Her voice dipped, “I shielded the engineer. He shot him anyway. Right through me to do it.”

She lifted the hem of her shirt, just enough to reveal a small, puckered scar near her ribs.

“Soviet-made. No rifling. Same M.O. Every time.”

A ghost of a smirk touched her lips. “Bye-bye bikinis.”

 Though…” He nodded toward Harry with a smirk. “I don’t think he’s losing sleep over it.”

Natasha huffed a soft laugh, the tension in her shoulders easing. “Going after him’s a dead end, Steve. Trust me, I’ve tried. He disappears like a shadow.”

Harry added to what Natasha is saying. “We’ve got a lead on a SHIELD base in New Jersey. One of the oldest facilities they’ve got. Bruce and Tony traced the algorithm's root back there. Seems like that's where it was born, or at least where it mutated.”

Steve straightened. “And you think there’s something still there?”

Harry gave a small, knowing smile. “We’ll find out. Sometimes, the old-fashioned way works best, doesn’t it? Boots on the ground and all that.”

Steve nodded, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Well, I guess it’s boots on the—”

Knock knock.

The door creaked open like it regretted being part of what came next. Brock Rumlow, decked out in full tactical gear that screamed ‘I do CrossFit and read Sun Tzu once’, poked his head in with all the subtlety of a frat boy crashing a faculty meeting.

“Cap. Romanoff. They want you back at SHIELD,” he announced, like he’d practised it in the mirror while flexing.

Steve didn’t even look at him fully. “Yeah, give us a second,” he said, tone so casual it bordered on dismissive.

Rumlow didn’t get the hint. He stepped in, chest puffed like a prize rooster trying to start a fight with a bulldozer. “They want you now.”

All three of them turned to look at him in perfect unison.

Eyebrows raised.

Blank stares.

The air vibrated with a single, shared thought: Who is this overcooked action figure trying to give orders to us?

Harry’s lips parted, locked and loaded with what was surely going to be the kind of verbal evisceration that’d make grown men cry, but Natasha stood first, one hand gently pressing on Harry’s shoulder like a safety catch.

“Easy, tiger,” she murmured, a glint of amusement in her eyes. Then she leaned down and kissed Harry’s cheek; soft, warm, and loaded with don’t start a magical war while I’m gone energy.

Steve rose beside her. His full height settled into place like a monument deciding it was time to move again.

Rumlow tensed. Just a bit. The kind of flinch you pretend wasn’t a flinch.

The Captain and the Widow gave him the kind of look that would send any warlord scrambling out of interrogation rooms. The kind of look that said we’ve taken down gods, kid; don’t tempt us into adding you to the list.

Rumlow cleared his throat. Straightened. And failed spectacularly to look confident.

“Right,” he mumbled, spinning on his heel with the speed of someone who just remembered they left the stove on. He left the room like a man who absolutely didn’t want anyone to ask him if he still lived with his mom.

As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, Steve muttered, “Since when do field interns get to issue summons?”

Natasha didn’t respond. She just smirked and rolled her shoulders like she was shedding the last bit of tension.

They walked out to the hallway, where they found Jasper Sitwell barking orders like he thought volume equalled authority. Steve and Natasha exchanged a look that said exactly what they thought of that.

It was going to be a long day.

“STRIKE team,” Sitwell barked, waving his hands. “Escort Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff back to SHIELD immediately for debriefing and questioning.”

He didn’t even finish the sentence before Natasha moved.

She didn’t walk, she cut through the air like a blade unsheathed. Every agent who heard Natasha’s boots click instinctively stepped back without realising it.

She stopped inches from Sitwell, so close he could see the reflection of his own fear in her eyes.

Her voice came out soft.

Too soft.

The kind of calm that came after a storm, when all that was left was the wreckage and the silence.

“Let me make something crystal clear, Sitwell.”

Her words hit with the weight of a loaded gun placed on the table, cocked.

“You are not in charge. SHIELD is not your personal sandbox. And if you think playing petty little war games while people are dying makes you powerful, I promise you—” she leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper of razors, “—I will redefine the word powerless for you.”

Sitwell opened his mouth.

He shouldn’t have.

She was on him in an instant. Not touching, but her presence loomed, overwhelming, like the air got heavier when she spoke.

“And if you think I need a disciplinary committee to deal with you?” Her smile was ice. “Try me. One broken bone for every order you give that I don’t like. I’ve got 206 bones, around 300 joints and all night.”

Sitwell involuntarily took a step back.

Then a second one.

And that’s when Steve stepped up beside her and rolled his shoulder. Just enough to look like he might really enjoy punching someone tonight.

He half-cocked an arm like he was warming up for it.

Sitwell flinched so hard he nearly tripped over.

Every agent nearby pretended to check their gear so they didn’t have to make eye contact.

Without another word, Natasha and Steve turned and walked away, their footsteps the only sound in a suddenly silent hallway.

Sitwell stood frozen, his spine locked, his ego in tatters.

Rumlow appeared beside him like a ghost, hands in his vest pockets, smirking.

“Told you not to poke the hornet’s nest,” he muttered just loud enough.

Sitwell didn’t answer.

Rumlow tilted his head. “You good, man?”

Sitwell exhaled slowly and muttered something that sounded vaguely like “I hate my job.”

Rumlow turned back to the hallway and ordered. “STRIKE team, move out. Let’s not make this any more embarrassing than it already is.”

The agents fell in line behind him as Steve and Natasha disappeared down the corridor.

Meanwhile, Harry quietly stepped out of the room while a Notice-me-not Charm. Unnoticed, he made his way to the quieter wing of the hospital where Maria Hill was already pacing like a caged wolf just outside the small morgue suite.

“What took you so long?” she snapped as soon as she spotted him, her voice low but tense. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Waiting for the parasites to make their move,” Harry said calmly as he cast a silencing charm and confundus charm over the room. “Steve and Natasha have been called in for questioning.”

Hill’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”

“They were polite about it,” Harry muttered as he started to levitate Fury’s body off the gurney. “Didn’t want to make a scene. But the STRIKE team is treating them like detainees, not agents. It’s starting.”

Hill moved swiftly, tucking a pillow into place on the hospital bed. “Why were you were certain they'd target Fury?”

“In their position, I would’ve,” Harry explained as he transfigured the pillow mid-sentence into a near-perfect replica of Fury with the same battered, bandaged, eerily lifeless form. “Fury’s either with them or against them. And we both know Nick doesn't roll that way.”

Hill watched him work with a flicker of awe in her eyes, her usual no-nonsense demeanour softening just a touch. “It’s good to have a wizard on our side,” she murmured. “This would be a nightmare without you.”

Harry gave her a faint smile as he carefully lowered Fury’s real body into his arms.

“You do your job,” Harry said, shifting his grip on Fury’s body, “while I get him to Coulson and the medical team.”

Hill nodded, stepping back. Then, after a beat, she straightened and gave him a crisp salute. “Aye aye, Captain.”

Harry gave her a half-smile before vanishing with a soft pop.

He reappeared in a dim, sterile medical facility deep underground. Phil Coulson stood at the ready beside a group of doctors already in scrubs. The moment Harry appeared, the med team moved swiftly, carefully taking Fury from his arms and transferring him onto another gurney.

Harry and Coulson stepped aside, watching in silence as the doctors got to work. After what seemed like a lifetime for some, one of the doctors looked up and gave a nod.

“He’s stable.”

Coulson exhaled slowly. Harry’s jaw unclenched.

“Alright,” Harry murmured. “Now for the next part.”

Harry stepped forward and waved his hand. “Enervate,” he intoned.

For a moment, nothing happened, then Fury's body jerked violently as if shocked by a defibrillator. The machines monitoring his vitals spiked in alarm, shrieking warnings as his heart rate surged.

The lead doctor jumped into action. “Stabilise him.”

Within seconds, the machines quieted, Fury’s vitals levelling out. His eyes fluttered, then snapped open. He looked around the room, immediately assessing, cataloguing.

“Don’t push him,” the doctor said with a warning look to Harry and Phil. “Keep it short. He needs rest.” With that, the doctor explained the injuries that Fury had suffered while the team cleared out. By the time everyone left, Harry and Phil were the only ones alone with the resurrected director.

Phil stepped forward with a wry smile. “Welcome back from the dead, Director. For a second there, we thought you might actually make retirement permanent.”

“Potter, your plan sucked,” Fury muttered, voice raspy but unmistakably annoyed.

Harry grinned. “Good to see the near-death experience didn’t kill your attitude. How are you feeling now that you are declared dead?”

“How am I feeling?” Fury repeated with as much irritation he could muster. “Well, let’s see. There is the lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, collapsed lung, and a headache that feels like Thor used me for hammer practice. Other than that, never better.”

Harry smirked. “Hey, look on the bright side. At least now we know the Winter Soldier exists. And that he’s working for the parasite.”

Fury gave him a long, unimpressed look.

“You were the only target big enough to draw out their best assassin,” Harry added with a shrug. “Congratulations. You didn’t disappoint.”

Fury snorted. “Next time, pick someone else to use as bait.”

“No promises,” Harry said, not missing a beat.

“Where are Rogers and Romanoff?” Fury asked raspily. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, not to Harry, not to anyone, but he knew the truth. If their positions were reversed, he’d have done the same thing Harry did. Or something even riskier. There was no point complaining about what had happened today. At least with Potter in charge, there had been contingency plans and magical fail-safes in case things went south. Not that Fury had needed them.

Still, it was a strange kind of comfort, knowing Harry had his back when things got too hot even for Nick Fury. He didn’t say thank you. He never did. But the way his gaze lingered on Harry for a heartbeat longer than necessary spoke volumes.

“Called into SHIELD for questioning,” Harry replied,.

Fury gave a grunt. Not a surprise, not a concern. Just understanding. That low, world-weary sound of a man who had seen this coming before most people even knew there was a game being played.

He shifted slightly in the hospital bed, wincing through pain that would’ve knocked a lesser man unconscious. Slowly, deliberately, he leaned back and pulled the thin blanket tighter over his chest. “Just tell me when everything’s over.”

Harry tilted his head, an eyebrow raised. “No updates? Mission logs? Weekly bulletins?”

Fury’s lips quirked, not quite a smile, more a crack in the usual steel façade. “This has always been an Avengers mission, Captain.” His voice was softer now, like the edges had dulled just enough to be human. “That’s way above my pay grade.”

He closed his eyes.

Not because he was tired, though he was. Not because he was weak, he never had been.

But because he trusted Harry to carry the weight now.

And Harry stood there, not as a soldier, not as a wizard, but as a leader.

The Director of SHIELD was out of the game.

But the board was still set.

And the next move belonged to Captain Harry Potter.

The game was on.