The atmosphere in the warehouse was extremely tense. Storm took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She remembered what Professor X had told her before they set off: don't get into conflicts with anyone, just bring back Pyro. She gave Lin Xiao a deep look, suppressing her anger.
"I'll explain this to the professor." Storm was lifted into the air by a whirlwind beneath her feet.
"You're very strong, but your methods are too dangerous. I hope that next time we meet, we won't be enemies."
Lin Xiao didn't speak, he just waved his hand gently.
Storm, carrying the still-smoking Pyro, disappeared into the night sky on a tornado. The warehouse returned to silence, save for the howling wind blowing through the holes and the occasional distant siren.
Lin Xiao watched Storm leave, the smile on his lips never fading.
On the way back, Lin Xiao sat in the passenger seat, his eyes closed. The gloom on his face finally eased a little. He glanced at Natasha and said:
You shouldn't have come along.
"I'll help you collect the body," Natasha said casually, gripping the steering wheel.
Lin Xiao opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Natasha.
"How did you know what I was going to do? You don't need to clean up my corpse."
Natasha rolled her eyes.
"I know you too." Her voice remained calm, but her pace was slightly faster than usual. "You're usually so unserious, always laughing and joking, but today you're all long-faced, like someone owes you millions. I was listening outside when you went to see Fury. Coulson is my colleague and my friend. If you can come, why can't I?"
Lin Xiao didn't speak. He closed his eyes again, but a smile crept onto his lips. Was this woman concerned about him? And she came up with such a lame excuse. How arrogant.
After a long while, Lin Xiao suddenly spoke.
" Natasha."
"Um?"
"Thank you for coming with me under those circumstances."
Natasha remained silent for a few seconds before slowly speaking.
"Because I'm your instructor, I'm also responsible for your safety..."
Lin Xiao couldn't suppress the smile on his lips as Natasha continued to talk.
St. Peter's Hospital, seventh floor, ward 712.
Fury stood by the hospital bed, holding a small glass bottle. The red liquid shimmered faintly under the fluorescent light. He stared at the bottle for a long time, his brows furrowed into a deep frown.
On the hospital bed, Coulson lay with his eyes closed, his face deathly pale. Although he was out of danger, the vital signs monitor beside him beeped slowly, a rhythm that was unsettling.
"Are you sure this is safe for him to drink?" a doctor with a full head of white hair asked.
Fury did not answer the doctor's question, but slowly walked forward.
The doctor adjusted his glasses, his voice tinged with caution. "I... I've never seen anything like this before. According to standard procedure, unidentified substances that haven't been tested cannot..."
"This isn't an unknown substance," Fury interrupted him. "It's medical supplies from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; it just hasn't finished the approval process yet."
Hill glanced at Fury, his lips twitching almost imperceptibly, but ultimately said nothing.
Fury pulled the cork off the bottle. A faint, peculiar fragrance wafted out. The doctor opened his mouth and then closed it again. After all, the person in front of him was the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.., and S.H.I.E.L.D.. was not exactly a reasonable organization. Besides, he was the one who gave the drink, and if there was a problem, it had little to do with him.
Fury gently lifted Coulson, brought the bottle to Coulson's lips, and the red liquid slowly flowed into Coulson's mouth, not a drop was left. Coulson swallowed unconsciously, the sound of his Adam's apple bobbing clearly audible in the quiet ward.
Finally, all the liquid was poured in, leaving not a single drop in the bottle, before Fury gently laid Coulson down.
Fury stood there, his one eye fixed on the pale face on the hospital bed.
After an unknown amount of time, the heart rate number on the monitor jumped. It went from 52 to 61, then 70, 85, and 98. The blood pressure reading was also climbing, slowly returning to the normal range from its previous low level. Coulson's fingers twitched, then his eyelids. His lips moved, emitting a very faint, almost inaudible groan.
Where am I?
Fury was stunned. The doctor was stunned. Hill, leaning against the window, was also stunned. Coulson had actually woken up!
Coulson opened his eyes, his vision blurry. He saw a dark, indistinct thing moving in front of him, so he reached out and touched it. It was round and fleshy, and it was still breathing. When his vision returned, he realized that he had just touched Fury's face.
Fury's face darkened further, but he didn't move an inch. Hill hurriedly stepped forward, his joy this time impossible to hide.
"Chief?" Coulson's voice was still weak, but he could already speak in complete sentences, "What are you doing here?"
Fury didn't answer. He just stared calmly at Coulson's face, which was regaining color at a visible speed, without uttering a word. The doctor had rushed to the bedside, frantically checking various instrument readings, muttering, "This is impossible, my God!" "A miracle, this is a miracle, I need to check again."
Coulson shook his head and, seeing the empty bottle in Fury's hand, instinctively asked a question.
"What's this?"
" Lin Xiao gave it to me." Fury placed the bottle on the bedside table. "He said that if you drank it, you would get better. I didn't believe him at the time, but I didn't expect him to actually mean it..."
Coulson was silent for a few seconds, then chuckled softly.
"That brat..." Coulson leaned back on the pillow, a smile playing on his lips, before his expression turned serious. "Director, the intelligence on the Pyro group of Mutants hasn't been fully handed over yet. And Kingpin's recruitment operation—I've gathered a few new names—" He struggled to sit up, but Fury pressed him back down with one hand.
" The Pyro probably won't cause any more trouble; someone's gone to look for him."
Coulson's expression froze for a moment. He looked into Fury's eyes, trying to read something from that single eye, but Fury's face was like a playing card, revealing nothing.
"Could it be that Lin Xiao went to see him?"
Fury didn't reply, but simply nodded slightly.
"He went alone?"
Fury remained silent. But his silence itself was an answer. Coulson had known Fury for over a decade and knew the director's temperament all too well. If he opposed something, he would directly say "nonsense" and slam his fist on the table to stop him; but if he acquiesced to something, he would simply remain silent.
"... He can't do that, it's against the rules, won't he be in danger alone?"
Fury, after muttering to Coulson for a moment, finally spoke up, " Agent Natasha went along."
After Fury finished speaking, he picked up the small bottle from the table and walked out the door.
"You should get some rest. We can discuss the intelligence matter tomorrow."
The hospital room door closed softly behind him. Coulson lay on the bed, staring at the fluorescent light on the ceiling, the hum of the bulb echoing in the quiet room. He remembered the first time he met Lin Xiao, that 2.1-meter-tall, burly man who punched through the force gauge and the wall, then scratched his head sheepishly and asked, "Does this count as a grade?" He remembered Lin Xiao organizing over two thousand documents in two hours on his first day, then leaning back in his chair, legs crossed, looking at him with an innocent expression. He remembered Lin Xiao spending several months in Afghanistan, returning without saying a word, simply sitting in his office chair, with that familiar, slightly irritating yet warm smile, saying, "Boss, I'm back..."
Now this brat is going to teach a Mutants a lesson all by himself, how dare he? Just because he was injured in the explosion, he's acting so recklessly, what a fool!
Coulson closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"... This is against the rules. What if he gets into danger?" He repeated himself, his voice so soft that only he could hear it.
Early the next morning, the door to ward 712 was pushed open.
Lin Xiao strode in, carrying two large boxes of pure milk in his right hand and half a fruit basket in his left—half because he had eaten his way from the parking lot, and the remaining fruit was just enough to fill half the basket. Most outrageous of all, he also had a bouquet of flowers tucked under his arm. It was a bouquet of red roses! Delicate and vibrant, still glistening with morning dew.
Coulson looked up when he heard the door open. The moment he saw Lin Xiao, his face quickly switched between several expressions.
"Good morning, boss!" Lin Xiao slammed two large boxes of milk down on the ground with two dull thuds. "I brought you some good stuff."
Coulson glanced down at the two cartons of milk. The packaging was simple, with Three Deer printed on it.
" Three Deer, pure milk, Dragon Country." Lin Xiao patted the box, his tone full of salesman pride. "I specifically went all the way across New York to the Chinatown supermarket to buy this. Those foreign brands are no good, they're diluted too much. This one is good, the milk flavor is strong enough, you'll know once you try it."
Coulson opened his mouth, wanting to say "thank you," but his gaze fell on the bouquet of red roses, and the words caught in his throat. The nurse next to him was staring at the roses, then at Lin Xiao, then at Coulson lying on the bed, her expression becoming undisguisedly excited. She was really lucky to have gotten such a juicy tidbit of gossip today.
"This is..." Coulson pointed to the bouquet of flowers.
"Rose," Lin Xiao said, handing the flowers forward with an expression that was almost obnoxiously sincere. "Wishing you a speedy recovery."
"I noticed it was a rose." Coulson's voice was a little dry. "My question is—you, a man, giving another man red roses?"
"What's wrong with roses? Roses represent love and peace," Lin Xiao retorted confidently, then turned his head and glanced towards the door. "Besides, if you don't want them, I'll just give them to her."
Coulson followed Lin Xiao's gaze and noticed Natasha leaning against the doorframe, Natasha arms crossed and a half-smile playing on her lips.
Lin Xiao waved the bouquet of flowers at her. "Do you like it?"
Natasha took the flowers and bent down to smell them. The scent of roses seemed both incongruous and surprisingly harmonious in the disinfectant-smelling ward. When she looked up, her face still held that lazy, indifferent expression, but Coulson noticed that her earlobes were visibly turning pink.
These two are strange, nine out of ten of them are strange.
Coulson decided to stop dwelling on the matter, because he had noticed Lin Xiao's gaze drifting towards his bedside table.
After Fury left yesterday, his colleagues came to visit him one after another. The bedside table was piled with fruit baskets, nutritional supplements, several boxes of high-end chocolates, and a bottle of specialty red wine that Hawkeye brought back from Hawaii. Coulson followed Lin Xiao's gaze, but before he could stop him, Lin Xiao had already picked up an apple and taken a bite, chewing it with a crunchy sound.
"This is nice, which colleague gave it to you?"
"... Johnson from the Operations Department."
"Thank him for me." Lin Xiao took another bite, then put the remaining half of the apple in his mouth, picked up a box of chocolates, looked at the packaging, and his eyes lit up. " Switzerland? Boss, you've got good connections." He said, tearing open the packaging and eating a piece, then breaking off another piece and handing it to Coulson. Coulson waved his hand in refusal, so Lin Xiao handed a large piece to Natasha, Natasha ate it in small bites without ceremony. When she saw the red wine, her eyes lit up even more. She opened the wine bottle, grabbed a water glass from the table, divided it into three glasses, poured one for each of them, and started drinking.
Coulson wasn't angry. He noticed something: as Lin Xiao did these things, those eyes would occasionally drift over, land on him, pause for a moment, and then casually look away. He was checking. Checking if he was still alive, checking if he could move, checking if the potion Fury had given him yesterday had worked.
Coulson recalled that when Fury told him yesterday that Lin Xiao had gone to find the Pyro alone, his first reaction wasn't gratitude, but worry—worry that Lin Xiao would be punished, worry that Fury would use this as an excuse, worry that this always irresponsible and careless brat would one day really get himself into trouble. But now, seeing Lin Xiao standing in his hospital room, munching on his apple and drinking his red wine, those worries suddenly vanished. Because that's just how this guy is—he would never say things like "I care about you," he would only tell you in the most annoying way that he's still here, you're still alive, and life goes on as usual.
Coulson sighed softly, a slight smile playing on his lips, but what happened next made his smile vanish.
"Boss, do you have a cot for a patient to stay with you in this ward?"
"No," Coulson said. "This is a private room."
"Then how do you sleep?"
I'll sleep in this bed.
Lin Xiao looked down at his leg, which was in a cast, then glanced at the weather outside, pointed to the warm sunlight streaming through the window, and said in a self-righteous tone, "You can't sleep now. The doctor said you should move around more and not just lie in bed all the time; that will help you recover. Get up and walk around a bit, whether you're sick or not. I'll lie down for you for a while."
Coulson:...
Fisk Tower, Manhattan
Kingpin stood before the massive floor-to-ceiling window on the top floor, listening to Bullseye's report. His fingers curled slightly, and his eyebrows furrowed sharply, forming a deep frown. Then, as if struck by a thought, his brow slowly relaxed. " Bullseye," he said, "Take some money and go to the Brotherhood of Mutants Pyro. Tell them about Pyro's situation and convey my apologies and regrets for him." Bullseye's eyes lit up, and he pushed open the door Kingpin stared out the window, his eyes filled with extreme malice.