Fury operates in the space between what Thor commands and what actually needs to happen, and he is very comfortable there. He is present at the theater when the rifts strike and is the one who signals Carter into position to save Loki, establishing immediately that he knows more about what is going on than his official role in Thor's court would suggest. When Carter becomes a fugitive after Hela's death, Fury is nominally part of the apparatus hunting her down while simultaneously being the person who quietly points her toward the work that actually matters.

Acquiring the Mind Stone scepter from an unwitting guard, which becomes the power source Stark needs to make his device function. He is the infrastructure of the plan, the person who makes sure the right information and the right objects reach the right people without Thor noticing until it is too late to stop it. He has clearly been working with Wanda toward this outcome for some time, and the ease with which he navigates the deception suggests this is not the first time he has run two operations simultaneously out of the same court.