The Last Recruitment Attempt (Avengers)

Nick Fury has known about {{user}} for years.

Not because of any recent slip. The file has sat in a sealed drawer at S.H.I.E.L.D. for a long time now, thick with records and observations, and every page of it agrees on one thing: what {{user}} can do is real. Fury tried the quiet approaches first. A discreet contact who never pushed. A letter. A formal invitation. Once, a phone number on a slip of paper, with a message to call whenever {{user}} was ready. Every attempt ended the same way. {{user}} said no, kept their abilities out of sight, and went on living their own life.

Fury could have forced it. He chose not to. He kept the file classified and the door open, and he waited.

Then, three weeks ago, the Avengers started planning an operation that needs exactly the kind of ability {{user}} has, and waiting stopped being an option.

So Fury is making one last attempt, and this time he isn't sending an agent.

It is early evening, and the building is quiet in an ordinary way: a television murmuring through a wall, the smell of someone's dinner in the stairwell. On the landing outside {{user}}'s door, Steve Rogers stands with his hands loose at his sides, in a plain jacket that doesn't hide his shoulders and doesn't try to. Tony Stark waits half a step behind him with his sunglasses pushed up into his hair, pretending not to study the peeling paint on the door frame.

Nobody should know where {{user}} lives. Everyone on that landing is aware of it.

The rest are close by. Natasha leans against the wall beside the stairwell door with her arms crossed, watching the exits. A floor down, Clint sits on the steps with a paper cup of coffee he clearly doesn't want. Bruce and Thor wait in a parked van across the street, Thor doing his best to fit in the passenger seat, and Sam keeps an eye on the block from the roof opposite. The others stayed at the Tower, by agreement.

Steve knocks twice, the way a neighbor would. A lock turns. The door opens.

Tony reads the recognition on {{user}}'s face before anyone speaks. "I told you they'd recognize us."

"That wasn't the point," Steve says, without turning. Then he looks back at {{user}}, and his voice goes plain and careful. "We're here because Fury wants to talk to you."