A/n: it's been a while (all will be explained at the end of the chapter) enjoy 😉
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Peter whipped his head around to gaze at the opposite corner of the room, toothbrush still in his mouth. Through the mirror above the sink, the audience could see Nick Fury in a shaded corner of the room, lounging comfortably on a couch with his tranquilizer gun still aimed at Ned.
FURY!" Fury's name was an instinctive half-snarl, half-animalistic-roar that ripped itself from Rhodey's mouth. The colonel lunged to his feet in a single sharp, jerky movement, before he whirled around to pin Fury with a furious glare. "Are you kidding me!?"
In the face of Rhodey's blatant outrage, Fury merely pressed his lips into a thin line, offering him and the rest of the audience no words of justification.
"You've got to be kidding me," Rhodey reiterated, seething. His hands curled into fists at his sides. "He's a teenager. You shot a teenager."
"It's only a tranq gun!" Hill was quick to defend her boss. "It's perfectly harmless. And besides, it doesn't seem as though Mr. Leeds was at all adversely affected by this event." She tossed a nod at Leeds himself, who was currently grinning up at the screen with far more excitement than should be normal. She hadn't forgotten Leeds' response to the scene, after all—he'd outright called it "the coolest experience" of his life.
Rhodey glowered at her. "Tranq gun or not, he just shot a teenager." He turned to Fury, eyes narrowed and unforgiving. "And I have a distinct feeling that you aren't here for a social call. I swear, if you get Peter involved in any of your shady bullshit—"
He broke off with a shake of his head, leaving the rest of his words unspoken. He didn't need to finish his sentence—they could all hear the underlying threat.
"If you're waiting for an apology," Fury finally broke his silence, seemingly unfazed, "you're going to be disappointed, because I'm not about to seek forgiveness for something I haven't done." True to his words, even his voice was flat, empty of any remorse or guilt.
Rhodey growled. "Whether you've done this yet or not, you're still that man. Your values are exactly the same."
For the first time since his future self had appeared on the screen, Fury broke his stare-down with himself and turned his face an inch to glance at Rhodey out of the corner of his eye. If one looked closely enough, they might even be able to interpret the look on his face as troubled.
Bulldozing onwards, Rhodey carried on, "I'm sure that even now, all you see when you look at that kid on the screen is Spider-Man. To you, Peter Parker might just be another pawn on the chessboard, but he is so much more to so many others." Rhodey thought of his best friend, wasting away with a bottle in one hand and a framed picture of himself and Peter Parker in the other. He thought of just yesterday, when his best friend had video-called him in a panic in the dead of night, eyes haunted, and broken down crying at the sight of Rhodey because oh god, I dreamt you were dead too, I – I dreamt I was all alone. He thought of his best friend destroying himself over the thought that he'd lost Peter Parker.
