Present Day

Halle

I wrapped my black coat tightly around my torso and shivered as I exited the jet. I smelled the familiar smell of gasoline and metal and it made me feel right at home. Coulson could tell by the look on my face how excited I was and he smiled. I was glad to be back, and I was ecstatic that Coulson was alive. It felt odd to be re-joining a program I had previously been a part of. Ever since I had been to Asgard, I had been thrown into new and sometimes alien situations, whether it was fighting with the Avengers, becoming a historian, or enrolling in mutant school. But this was going to be easy. I had previously been a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for years, specializing in combat. It had always been my first love, which was why when Coulson reassigned me to headquarters to be a historian, I was less than thrilled.

My boots clicked on the concrete as I was lead by a scruffy British man to Coulson's office. I didn't recognize the place where he had taken me, there was no way this underground hide-out could be the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. I knew we had to reorganize after Loki blew up the old one, but I didn't think it would come to this. The surrounding brick wall and lack of adequate heating reminded me more of a tricked-out bomb shelter than a headquarters.

Coulson sat across from me and sat back in his office chair. He didn't look any different from the last time I had seen him, except that he was maybe a little more tired. He was balding still, and he never seemed to change out of that black and white suit. I almost didn't believe my eyes when he showed up at my room at Professor Xavier's and asked me to join his team again.

"I'm sure you have many questions that you would like to be answered," said Coulson.

I rolled my eyes. "Drop the formality, I'm not a snooper." I picked up a paperweight on his desk. "I know that whatever it is you're not telling me must be of the utmost important."

He let out a sigh of relief. "Well you're the first."

"Oh you know me, breaking new ground wherever I go," I chimed.

There was a knock on the doorframe. Coulson and I turned to see a serious, Asian woman perched at the doorway.

She curled her lip into a half-smile. "When Hunter told me he was bringing you in, I thought it was just a rumor."

"Melinda May," I smiled. Agent May was about ten and a half years my senior, but we were pretty similar in combat. We had fought side-by-side in a couple of missions, but I usually tried to avoid the lifeless woman; I had never once seen her show any form of emotion. I didn't particularly dislike her, she just wasn't the friend-making type. I felt like she was judging my every move, which is why I straightened my disgruntle chocolate bangs and tried to look presentable.

"What've you been up to all this time?" she asked, stepping in to Coulson's office. Her thin lips pursed, begging for an answer.

"Oh the usual, kicking butts, taking names." May scoffed.

"May, she's here to help with Skye," input Coulson. May's face immediately went to stone. I was also confused, did Coulson want me to use my mutation to control the clouds?

"She...knows about this sort of thing?" asked May cautiously.

"If you mean mutations," I said, lifting the water from a nearby water bottle and twirling it around my finger, "then yes, yes I do." May's eyes got wide, I'm not sure if it was with either horror or wonder.

"Agent Rhodes, I've told you," said Coulson. "She is not a mutant. If it was something as simple as that, I would've have called you in."

"Yes, speaking of mutants," I turned my back to May and put my elbows on Coulson's desk. "Were you ever planning on telling me about James' mutation?"

His expression remained composed. "I had assumed he was going to tell you."

I scoffed. "Well he didn't. I think it would have been a crucial piece of information to know...I don't know...when he was stalking me?"

"You were kept safe," Coulson countered. "He never found you while you were under our supervision." Those last words struck extra meaning, and Coulson knew it; while you were under our supervision. When I was with the X-men, my ex-fiance, James Sumner, found me and forced me to do his bidding to save my friends. He never forgave me after I left with Loki and after I broke off our engagement, and he had ever since been stalking me and attempting to rekindle a flame long extinguished. He was a tracking mutant, which meant he could find and track down any person or object as long as he was well-acquainted with it. Lucky for me, James knew me quite well. The last I'd seen him, a bunch of metal robots were tearing him apart.

"Has she met her yet?" asked May, breaking the awkward silence. Coulson shook his head.

May smiled again. "Follow me, Agent Rhodes."

May lead me through the twists and turns of the underground labyrinth. We passed rooms filled with weapons and strange science equipment. I saw a blonde man and woman bent over a microscope in what seemed to be a scientific lab.

May noticed my curiosity. "That's Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons. They're inseparable, which is why most of us call them FitzSimmons. They're the head of our science division for the team." I raised an eyebrow, figuring this was the most I had ever heard Agent May talk at one time. "The man you met on the plane was Lance Hunter. He has an ex-wife named Bobbi Morse who you'll probably meet soon. They have another friend named Alfonso Mackenzie, who most people call Mack. You'll usually find him with FitzSimmons."

"They really seem to be rolling out the welcome wagon," I observed. May's voice turned grave and dark.

"The transformation of the girl affected all of us," explained May. "We lost an agent and a friend. The team still hasn't quite recovered." I nodded knowingly. We continued down a hallway and entered another type of lab. I saw a young woman sitting on a bed. She was separated from the outside world by glass walls, and I assumed she must have been quarantined. She looked terrified, and I knew exactly how she felt. Being surrounded by people who didn't understand mutation was the hardest part for me, I had to learn to hide and control my emotions.

"Skye," said May to the woman. She looked up from a magazine on her bed. "This is Agent Halle Rhodes. She's here to help."

Skye looked confused. "Another doctor?" she snarked.

I laughed. "Hardly." I slowly approached the glass. "I'm sort of like you."

Now she just looked at me like I was crazy. "There's no one else like me."

"You'd be surprised." I turned and raised a hand, lifting water from a nearby bottle and levitating it in the air. Skye pushed against her bed in fright, trying to distance herself from the flying blob of water.

"W-w-wha-a-a?" she sputtered.

"I can control water," I explained, feeling unintentionally superior. "I feel the water's energy in my veins, so if I get too worked up, my mutation can go off without me controlling it." I gently placed the water back. "That's why I learned to control it."

Skye said nothing, but instead sat on her bed, staring at the water bottle. May lead me to a room where I would be staying, even though I would have rather stayed and talked more with Skye. I knew I would have to gain her trust before we would have any hope of her controlling her abilities, whatever they were. She reminded me so much of me, scared yet unique. She even kind of looked like I did. She wasn't that much younger than me, probably two or three years, but her wide cocoa eyes contained a childlike innocence I had seen in few agents. Her long, wavy brown hair was almost identical to mine; the only difference we had was that Skye had medium skin whereas I was pasty white. She seemed pretty sarcastic, and I know sarcasm after staying on a plane with Tony Stark, which could be some sort of coping mechanism which she used to disguise the pain she was feeling.

I figured Coulson would probably call me when he needed me, so I set up my laptop and thought about Skype-ing with Steve. He would be thrilled to find out what I was doing now.

Suddenly, my door opened and Skye poked her head in.

"Agent Rhodes?" she asked timidly.

OOOO Skye watchu doin'?

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