The rest of Buffy Season 2 (from Ted to Becoming, Part 2) occurs with minimal changes. This chapter takes place in the summer after Becoming, Part 2.
May 1998
Buffy Summers had asked her Watcher, Giles, about SHIELD (and wasn't she embarrassed when she realized that nobody ever read out the whole name any more than they said Federal Bureau of Investigation?). He'd made some calls and determined two things.
One was that the division had been established under the partial oversight of Captain America's Watcher. That was a whole thing when they found out about Evelyn Rogers, the Slayer during WWII, who'd gone down in history as "Steve." Xander, who had grown up on a diet of comic books including his uncle Rory's vintage Captain America printings, suddenly had very complicated feelings.
The other was that Peggy Carter hadn't really trusted SHIELD with many secrets of the supernatural, despite being a founder. The Watchers Council still didn't trust them. The Council absolutely forbade calling SHIELD in and educating them lest the government stick their noses way too far into Slayer business.
So Coulson's card had gotten shoved into the back of Buffy's sock drawer and forgotten about. It was easy enough: the debacle with Angel losing his soul started not long after she was told not to contact them, so Buffy was very distracted.
If they'd called, SHIELD might have come in handy several times, particularly when Acathla the demon was about to suck the whole world into hell and the entire government of Sunnydale was trying to pin Kendra's murder on Buffy and get in her way. She was really kicking herself about that one. She didn't even remember she had the option until she found the card while furiously packing, expelled, sought by the police, lover sent to hell, and mother making her choose between saving the world and having a home.
She'd had only the vaguest plan about what she was going to do next. Calling Phil Coulson wasn't the worst idea that flickered through her distraught mind. So, at the payphone at the Sunnydale bus station, she did.
He'd said someone would meet her at an airfield in LA. By the time she'd taken the bus there from Sunnydale and found the small commuter terminal, she didn't have long to wait. Wrapped up in her own dark thoughts and pain, she barely noticed the small private jet with no logo touch down. She vaguely recognized the mid-thirties Chinese-American woman in the black jumpsuit as the woman that had helped her and Kendra fight the Taraka assassin at the school. Buffy blinked when she stood, realizing they were close enough in height and build to potentially share clothes.
"Hey, Summers. I'm Agent Melinda May," the woman introduced herself in a flat indeterminately American accent, offering a hand.
The blond Slayer shook but suddenly had a moment of realizing what she'd gotten into, "You didn't send a whole jet for me?"
May shrugged, "I was on this side of the country anyway. It wasn't far out of my way. We're heading back to DC tonight."
Buffy stammered slightly, "I don't know if I should go to…"
"We'll bring you back whenever you want. You're not obligated to anything," May interrupted, suspecting what the girl was worried about.
"Okay, that's…" Buffy took a breath and nodded. She'd initiated this, and didn't have any better options. "Okay." She nodded and May turned and led her back out of the airfield lounge and toward the jet. Buffy offered, as they walked, "My only other idea was finding a job as a waitress."
"From what I saw, and what Barton saw, seems like a waste," May countered, low-heeled boots professionally all but silent against the tile, then absorbed by the mid-morning-warmed runway tarmac.
"He's the archer guy?" Buffy kept up with the conversation, the walking and following keeping her from being absorbed back into her own thoughts.
"He is," May nodded, a slight smile on the corner of her face, "SHIELD is eclectic about fighting styles."
"Came in handy," the Slayer admitted, thinking back to the vampires he'd dusted. A traditional sniper with a gun would have been way less effective against the undead.
"This is us," the SHIELD agent announced, mostly unnecessarily, opening the door into her jet. "Bit of a step up. I assume you don't need me to find the stairs." Up close the small Cessna Citation (not that Buffy was any judge of plane models) was larger than she thought from seeing it at a distance, modified for government use, primer-gray paint clearly covering a number of repairs over the years.
"You get shot at a lot?" Buffy asked, hopping up after May, noticing some patched-and-painted-over bullet holes
"More than I'd like," May admitted, still nonchalant and flat in her affect. She secured the door behind the girl and then moved to the front of the plane to begin checking and starting up the vehicle.
Buffy had found herself in the copilot's seat, and slightly zoned out. It took her a while to realize May had been narrating everything she was doing, and that Buffy had been dutifully following along with a small fragment of her attention. "Wait, is there a test?" she asked, not sure how much of operating a plane she was going to retain.
"Not immediately. But you might decide you're interested, and it's a good skill to have," May shrugged, finishing the sequence and taxiing out for takeoff.
After they were in the air, the SHIELD agent zoned out almost as thoroughly as the teen, not pushing. Buffy was grateful. The lithe woman reminded her of Oz, if the taciturn werewolf musician was a woman. And a ninja.
They were refueling at some government airfield in the midwest (Buffy wasn't sure where, only that it had been a while since mountains had totally given way to farms and the occasional river) when May mentioned, "We'll be getting in kind of late. We can either drop you off to find a room at the SHIELD building, or you can stay at my place tonight. Fair warning, my boyfriend's sleeping over."
"Agent Coulson?" Buffy asked, leaning against the plane, mouth firing before her brain had consciously processed the little she'd seen of the two together at the career fair. They'd seemed coupley.
May shook her head, slight crooked grin at the girl's perceptiveness, "No. That didn't happen. We're just friends. My boyfriend, Andrew, is a SHIELD consultant."
"Should be fine," Buffy nodded, "If it's okay." She didn't want to impose further on this woman, but also didn't want to have to deal with a bunch of new people when she just wanted to sleep.
"It is. Gives me a chance to use my guest room for someone other than my mother," she caught the sign from the technician at the airfield. "Looks like we're all fueled up and ready to go."
The statement rattled around in Buffy's head for a while after they were back in the air, and she eventually surfaced from her reverie to ask, "You get along with your mother?"
"Sometimes," May admitted after thinking about it for a minute. "It's better since I've been out of town a lot. Worse since she got divorced from my father. She really seems to like Andrew, so she's been visiting more. Pushing for a wedding." May shook her head slightly, amused at herself. She wasn't having to use tradecraft to sell the girl, since their backgrounds were so similar. It felt weird to just be honest rather than making up a cover, but the girl was a potential recruit. Easier not to sow lies she might find out if she joined SHIELD.
"Did you ever fight about something serious… when you were my age?" Buffy asked
May wasn't nearly the student of human psychology that others were, particularly her boyfriend, but she thought she knew where this was going. "Blow up with your mother part of the reason you called us?"
"She… kind of found out about what I'd been doing at the worst time. Freaked. Said I couldn't come back if I left. But… if I didn't, the world would have ended."
With a normal teenager, May would have taken that last for histrionics. With this one, she filed it away as very terrifying, very useful information to follow up on later. Taking a moment to adjust her headset and check some gauges, she finally explained, "I never had anything that bad with my mother. But… she wasn't happy when I joined SHIELD. Thought it was too dangerous. She wasn't wrong. Maybe parents that have never been shot at can never really understand why their children would ever take that risk." May thought about it for another few seconds, watching the girl's face fall out of the corner of her eye. "You're the oldest?"
"Only," Buffy corrected.
May nodded, "Same. When you're the first kid, you get all the mistakes. And maybe every parent has moments where they think they still have a child and they realize too late that they have an adult." She took a breath, not used to so much talking, particularly when she was flying, then ventured, "I don't know your mother, but she probably realized she went too far the moment you walked away."
Buffy's face lost a little of its tension, and May sighed. Fury was going to be upset if Summers worked her issues out and immediately asked to go home. But she wasn't good enough at the manipulation game to prefer a broken asset to a whole person. After a while, Buffy ventured, "Maybe. Maybe I'll call her. But I think I still need to be on my own for a while." May breathed a sigh of relief.
The conversation lapsed for the rest of the flight, through landing at the SHIELD airfield in DC, getting into May's division-issue SUV, and driving to her townhouse. It was a calculated risk, but she'd surreptitiously scanned the girl for electronic devices and taken a circuitous route home through the DC evening so she probably would have a hard time finding the place again. If somehow they'd misjudged, and she was a spy, May was due for a housing transfer anyway. It was worth the risk to put Summers at ease.
May showed her the guest room, bathroom, and linen closet, then went upstairs, where Andrew had already gotten home for the night.
The next morning, Buffy was on her second bowl of cereal in the kitchen by 6:00 AM, when a handsome black man in a suit entered, slightly surprised by the girl at the table. "Jet lag?" he asked, warmly, after a moment to get his bearings. "Doctor Garner. Andrew," he belatedly introduced himself.
"Don't need that much sleep," she shrugged. "Buffy Summers."
"Buffy for Elizabeth?" Andrew asked, taking the box of cereal and fixing his own bowl.
"Nope. Just parents embracing the California thing."
"Fair enough," he smiled. "Sorry we only have cereal. Melinda and I never have much time for breakfast."
Buffy shook her head. "Cereal's about my speed. I am pro-cereal."
He poured the milk then sat down across the breakfast nook from the girl. A consulting psychiatrist for SHIELD, he'd received a limited briefing on her. If she was just an unusually-skilled fighter like his girlfriend or Barton, she'd wind up getting head-shrunk by someone else. If she belonged on the Index like Coulson suspected, she'd be one of his. "Ready to head into the machine?"
She gave a faint smile that didn't reach her eyes. "You an agent, too?"
"Consultant," he negated. "I'm a college professor more of the time. But I'm cleared."
"What do you teach?" she asked.
"Psychology," he answered, and noticed the girl close off her expression a bit. "Bad experience?" Coulson had mentioned there was a stint in a mental hospital they'd dug up in Summers' records.
Buffy thought about it for a second, then figured out how to phrase it. "They weren't cleared."
"There are no such things as vampires?" he guessed. He saw the flicker in her eyes that he'd guessed right. "Sorry you went through that. I'm actually doing some research into how so many people can just ignore evidence that the world is way scarier than they think."
"We call that Sunnydale Syndrome," Buffy scoffed into her Cheerios.
"You do seem to be in a hot spot," he admitted. "As I understand it, you're not the first time the town's popped up on SHIELD's radar."
"It's a–" she started to mention the Hellmouth, and thought better of it. "Well, it's a pretty popular vacation spot for uglies."
Andrew nodded, finishing his cereal and rinsing the bowl in the sink, deciding not to push any further. There would be time to get her to open up. "Well, I better get to campus. Finals week. It was good to meet you, Buffy. Melinda should be down in a bit."
"You too. Good luck," she managed. She was off thinking about the end of her own junior year in high school that she couldn't finish since she'd been expelled by that vindictive troll, Principal Snyder.
When May finally made it downstairs, she was once again wearing a tight-fitting black flight coveralls/ninja outfit. "You don't have to wear a business suit?" Buffy asked her.
"You have to wear a uniform if you don't wear a suit," May gave a small smile, "this counts as a uniform and is more comfortable."
"Very power-fighty," Buffy approved.
May untangled that as she grabbed a breakfast bar and a bottled water, eventually admitting, "Fighting the power is satisfying, if not good for your career. You ready to go?" She grabbed her keys.
"Welcome to the machine," Buffy nodded, grabbing her bag.
"You've been talking to Andrew," May gave one of her small smiles as they got in the SUV and pulled out into DC-suburb traffic.
"He seems cool," she agreed. She felt a tightness in her chest, but resolved to be happy for other couples rather than envy that they had what she couldn't.
May detected the way the girl's voice choked slightly at the end, and noted with a side glance that she was sinking back into her funk. Yeah. Summers needed time with Andrew in a professional capacity.
May took a slightly circuitous route through the neighborhood again, just in case, and then onto the highway. They were early enough that the drive in wasn't too bad. Buffy got her first look at the three-skyscraper office high rise, situated on its own private lake, that was SHIELD's DC headquarters.
"Nice," the teen had to admit.
"The Triskelion," May acknowledged. "I'm on the road more than I'm here, but it's a lot nicer than the other offices. Basically new. Some of it's not even done yet."
Security was a little intense as they drove into an underground garage, May having to show papers for Buffy, but they eventually got her a temporary ID badge, parked, and got into the elevators. "My father used to work in an office kind of like this. But I only visited a couple of times," Buffy explained, trying to convey that she was going to get lost if set loose too early.
"Think of it like a high school in a hotel," May explained. "Once you learn the office numbers and how they relate to floors, you're set." They stepped off of the elevator onto one of the lower floors, and she led them to a small office, "Here's Coulson."
"Summers, come in," the man in question said, standing up from behind a desk. The room wasn't large, but had a full wall that was all window, displaying a nice view out over the lake and providing plenty of light. "Thanks for bringing her, May. I'll take it from here."
"I'll be around, if you need anything," the woman told the teen and headed off, leaving Summers with Coulson.
Buffy noticed that every wall of the office that wasn't a door or window was covered in shelves of weird memorabilia. A lot of it looked like normal items that had been folded open to reveal hidden gadgets. She gave a slight frown, recognizing the violin Lothos had played after killing her first Watcher, Merrick. Coulson must have gotten it while investigating Hemery. A glass case held a set of Captain America trading cards. "You know Captain America was actually a girl?" she asked, making conversation as she sat in the offered chair in front of Coulson's desk.
Coulson brightened up and nodded, "That was one of the first things I was cleared to know when I started here. The past is undiscovered country. So many things we take for granted about society, so different in unexpected ways." He sat back down behind the desk and after a moment asked, "How did you know?"
Buffy sighed. She'd thought about how much she was going to reveal, but hadn't planned on being called on it so fast. Fixing Coulson with her stare to try to read how much he was reading off of her, she explained, "She was… like me. Fought things people don't like to know about."
"And reported to the Watchers?" Coulson asked. That clearly rattled Summers, and before she could make a denial, he continued, "They're not as secret as they think. Her peers eventually realized Peggy Carter served two masters. When we checked up on you, based on what Barton saw, it wasn't hard to find the connections between Rupert Giles and the same organization. Let me make some guesses?
"They're kind of like an illuminati or a church: small group, very old, hesitant to modernize, but hanging onto their money and secrets over the centuries. They've known about vampires and the like since the beginning, and kept that knowledge, dedicated themselves to fighting them. They do this mostly by acquiring information and finding and training young people with enhanced potential, who can fight powerful creatures on an even footing." The man's delivery was coherent, and varied. He seemed like he might be more at home in front of a high school classroom than as a secret agent, despite the government-issue suit.
Buffy nodded, mutely, wondering how mad the Watchers Council was going to be when they found out SHIELD knew about them already. She also wondered how much SHIELD could have helped over the past few months, if they hadn't been so concerned with maintaining that already-broken secret.
"So my first question that you can answer as much as makes you comfortable," he continued, watching the girl, "How powerful are you compared to normal humans?" Barton had given a thorough report about how much more capable Buffy Summers and the now-deceased Kendra Young had been against the vampires than their fellow teens, and even than trained adult Watcher Rupert Giles.
Buffy just nodded at the Captain America cards. "She was like me."
Coulson's eyes widened. While likely the capabilities of Evelyn "Steve" Rogers had been embellished over the last half-century, he'd read enough of the old reports to know that the baseline was still exceptional. If this girl was legitimately on the same level… "We have a state-of-the-art gym," he offered.
She shrugged. While she didn't mentally feel like fighting, it'd been long enough since the battle two days prior that her Slayer instincts were ready to get in a workout.
"Let's get you squared away for identification and bunk space, and we'll head down."
They'd been all over the building by the time she'd been assigned a room and permanent ID card, and Buffy was slowly figuring out how to navigate the offices. Since her first name was so distinctive, they'd both agreed on putting her middle name, Anne, on her ID badge, though Coulson insisted pretty much everyone would just call her Summers anyway.
By the time they'd gotten down to a gym space, they'd acquired a small audience. Buffy recognized Barton and May sparring on a mat, and a half dozen other agents were getting in their pre-lunch workouts trying not to look like they weren't there to see how she did. Coulson had found some SHIELD-branded sweats in Buffy's size, so she didn't actually stand out that much from the crowd. That was about to change.
The easiest to quantify, Coulson got her started on the weight bench. And kept adding weights. By the time she was beginning to struggle, even more agents had shown up to watch. Coulson admitted, "I think that blows away the women's world record and is closing in on the men's."
Buffy shrugged, but was secretly a little impressed herself. Giles was always more focused on her fighting abilities when training than testing her strength, simply assuring her that it would improve even further as she got more experience and training. She probably wasn't at Captain America's final level yet, but would be some day, assuming she survived that long. "Neat. We don't have a weight bench. I can only rate myself in the vampire shotput. It's not real measurementy."
"You know how to spar?" Coulson asked, and she nodded. "May? Up for a test?"
May scoffed a little at being called out, but moved back up to her mat and waved Buffy up. "Usually… when I spar people wear padding," Buffy warned her, quietly.
"Just start slowly," May acknowledged. While she thought she probably had the girl on fighting skill, someone that much stronger could hurt her with a solid hit. "I'll let you know if it feels dangerous."
May bowed, so Buffy did as well, and then they began to circle one another. The SHIELD agents weren't even pretending to work out anymore, forming a loose ring around the sparring mat. "Just so everyone knows, all of this is classified level 5 at least," Coulson informed them, to grudging nods.
Buffy threw a fairly slow punch as a test, and May easily sidestepped, her foot going out for a sweep that would take down most people committing to a punch like that, but Buffy moved her own leg out of the way. She followed up with a roundhouse kick with the same leg, flowing out of the avoidance. May dodged back, but it was a much nearer thing than she expected for that move. The girl was fast.
They split back for a moment, then moved back in. May went for a strike, which Buffy grabbed and turned into a hip-throw, but May managed to get a leg around Buffy's torso, pushing the younger woman to the mat where her grip broke and May hurriedly rolled away. She didn't want to wrestle anyone that strong if she wasn't sure of her leverage.
Buffy kipped up, and both women circled again, faint smiles on their faces. May enjoyed a challenge, and Buffy couldn't help it, her Slayer urges pushing through her mental funk. When they moved back in, the series of strikes, redirects, throws, and counter-throws were almost too fast for the onlookers to follow. Buffy was simply much faster than most of them had ever seen. Those that had met Index-worthy individuals who could move that fast (and survived) had been fortunate that the hostiles were generally not actually trained in martial arts. For her own part, May's moves were slower, but she was so well-trained she was able to anticipate what the teen was going to do next and, thus, react to it in advance.
"Enough!" May ordered, extricating herself after a final flurry. Buffy managed to stop moving with a grimace, the Slayer's urge to win making giving up a challenge. Seeing the girl control herself, May said, "Good. I don't think we could have gone much further without one of us getting hurt."
Buffy nodded her agreement, forcing herself into a relaxed stance, and they bowed off the mat. "Discuss?" Coulson asked, then waved the two women and Barton over to a quiet side of the gym while the rest of the spectators grudgingly went back to their days.
"Seems like you've had, what, a couple of years of mixed forms training with regular practical fights?" May asked.
"Pretty much," Buffy allowed. "Giles shows me what he can, but I can't really spar with him like we just did. So most of it's learning from slaying."
Barton put in his two cents, "I think May would take you if it was for real, but she'd come out of it seriously hurt. A few more years of training, and I don't think I know anyone that could beat you without major cheating. You use weapons?"
"We're supposed to work on more of that, but not a lot," she admitted. "I can figure it out easily. Crossbow gave me the hardest time."
"You should learn to use a regular bow. With your strength, you can use one with as much force as the crossbow. If you can get accurate, it's way faster," the archer pitched.
"Makes sense," she nodded, worried that they'd want her to train all summer. But, of course, it's not like she had the other things she wanted to do instead. Maybe it would beat brooding.
"I want to train you more in sparring safely," May added, "but once you are, you could be a big help showing other agents what it's like to fight someone who's stronger and faster than they appear."
"You're not going after…" Buffy worried, knowing how quickly vampires could tear apart normal humans, even trained ones.
"Not intentionally," Coulson said. "But it seems like so many international crime lords have henchmen with powers."
Buffy nodded. Demon henchmen were certainly easy to come by in Sunnydale, so might be in other places as well. But before they could distract her again from her question for May earlier, she asked, "What do you want from me?"
"Are we asking you to sign on as an agent?" Coulson asked. Buffy nodded, so he explained, "If that's what you ultimately want to do, then we could probably use you. But, no, for this summer, think of it as an internship. You have a place to recover from—May said you saved the world? You take the time you need to figure out what you want to do next. We get more experience working with a friendly with special abilities. You'd be surprised how few of those are friendly. And agents ideally need a high school diploma and college degree anyway." Barton smirked, having neither of those things.
"That seems expensive. And like you have better things for your people to do?" she argued.
Coulson shrugged. "It's government. If we don't use the budget, it goes away the next year. We actually have a standing program to offer this kind of thing to anyone with powers who plays well with others. Think of it as your tax dollars at work."
Buffy regarded the three agents for a minute, thinking about it. She was still suspicious that they wanted more than they were saying. But she didn't get any bad feelings off of these three at least. And she still didn't have a better plan. Maybe this would be a good way of keeping her mind off of everything. Grudgingly, she nodded. "Okay. I'll be government-girl. What's next?"
"How about lunch?" Coulson shrugged. "Go get cleaned up. It's pizza day in the cafeteria."