Chapter 8

The news that Agent Coulson was still alive startled everyone.

"Isn't he dead?" Tony asks. "He was supposed to have died in 2012 in New York; Loki killed him with his sceptre," Tony said.

"He was indeed dead. He was stabbed directly through the heart, but despite Loki's attempts to kill him, we were able to save him by performing a heart transplant and other procedures," Fury

revealed.

"And you didn't think to tell anyone and decided to keep it a secret," Tony says.

"We didn't want anyone outside of Shield to know because the less they know, the less damage they can do and the less impact they can have on us. Plus, it wasn't relevant or important for people to know. He was working on a base in the sky doing very top-secret stuff, so we needed to keep everything quiet, and a lot happened. He was one of the people who was snapped away, so he wasn't here for five years, so technically it's only been six." Fury told Tony.

"Did you know?" Tony asked, looking at Natasha and Clint.

Natasha saw Tony look towards her, and she could see the hurt and feeling of betrayal in his eyes. "Did you know?" Tony asked.

Clint responded just as Natasha was about to say something: "No, we didn't know at all; we had our suspicions, but we never knew for sure."

"I suspected it because Fury had been so secretive, but I never thought he'd actually done it," Natasha told Tony.

"Why didn't you inform them if you told most of Shield?" Tony asked.

"I figured Romanoff would work it out for herself and probably tell Barton, and it wasn't critical information for them to know, so we simply left it to that," Fury told Tony.

Then Natasha watched Agent Coulson hand the documents to each person individually until he reached Loki. Thor took the paperwork out of Agent Coulson's hand and passed it to Loki, so

Agent Coulson didn't have to hand it to Loki.

Agent Coulson then went and stood next to Fury.

"We'd like it if you could read the forms and fill them out before you leave," Fury told everyone.

Suddenly, an alarm went off.