Ghoul Characters: Jasper Sitwell, Nick Fury and OTA Setting: New Jersey, New York and Nick's apartment Content: Nick Fury Summary: There are still some loose ends that need tying since Justin Hammer's control of S.H.I.E.L.D., but this one is a mystery.
It would have been naive to believe that time spent lurking in the lightless night was well behind a dedicated agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but Jasper hoped this was one of only a few such nights for the forseeable future. The worst of his curse was behind him and he was welcome on hallowed ground once more, which not only filled him with such a profound relief he might have cried just a little bit as he sat alone in the warm, coloured sunlight of a wood-sweet midday church, but opened some once limited opportunities to him. One such opportunity would have to start with what he told himself was the final sin of his undeath, God willing.
With the engine of his truck still clicking and warm, all lights out making him squint in the dark with the moon covered by a heavy cast of trees, Jasper swung the trunk open to drag out a shovel and smooth by touch the tarpauline that covered the bed. He paused then to listen to the silence around him before stepping back, and only risking the light of his phone screen to search the surrounding tree trunks and get his bearings. A crude scratching in the bark of one that he'd seen in his headlights as he approached was indescernable as any figure except to the artist, who even had to cock his head to assure himself that this was definitely where he had made a terrible attempt to etch a horse. Some of the bark had probably fallen off since, that's why it looked so terrible, the winter was a harsh one, anything could have happened. Hopefully, the winter was as passed as Jasper's curse, because this was difficult enough without frozen ground. He tucked his cell back into his pocket, listened for any movement once more, then began digging while his eyes adjusted to the dark.
The burial itself had not been so morally troubling, but the grave wasn't so deep that Jasper should have still been digging into the spring-damp ground an hour later, wiping his brow on his shoulder and looking up and around at the hole he had put himself in. A few more minutes, then he would concede he was in the wrong place and would have to prolong this suffering. As he stabbed once more into the dirt, he was suddenly met with a strange resistance-- not something hard, but more like a knot of roots that sprung back into place as he pulled away. He wiped at his face again before kneeling carefully and pulling at the mud with his hands, until he found the resistance; a familiar cloth, tangled up in the ground, and coming up from it easily, empty and solitary. Jasper frowned and pushed it aside, continuing to dig on his knees, even more careful this time until long minutes had passed without so much as a pebble to grab, then with more vigour, crawling around in the empty grave until he was sitting against the crumbling wall with nothing but a dirty sheet to show for his effort.
There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. There had to be. Despite no one else knowing that Alex had been buried here in the chaotic wake of Hammer's dethroning, despite Jasper's careful denial and Director Fury's lack of questions, despite the fact that Jasper was sure no one else would go through the trouble of giving the boy a proper burial and there was nothing else to be done with body of a murdered child, there must have been a logical conclusion here. Slowly, Jasper pulled his phone from his pocket again, muddy fingers carefully splayed and tapping as gently as possible to avoid the inevitable smear of dirt across the screen as he dialled Director Fury.