"So you see," said Buffy, "I owe my life to Spider-Man," She felt Joyce hug her harder, and sensed more than heard a sob going through her mother's body. She had intended her mention of Spider-Man to clear the air; in Joyce's cultured world, costumed heroes were mostly regarded as jokes. And on a different occasion, Buffy's line would have gained a smile. Joyce would have reacted as if she had said "I owe my life to Bugs Bunny."
But Joyce wasn't smiling now. The avalanche of horrible news of the last few days, on top of the deadly danger her fragile little daughter had been in…
Joyce checked her own thought. She knew that tiny little Buffy was athletic and quick on her feet. She had seen her performing amazing routines, leading her team. And there was another thing…
"...so I stuck close to Spider-Man, 'cause, frankly, his neighborhood seemed like the safest place to be. And then we picked up a few other guys who wanted to help. We must have made the weirdest security patrol ever… a superhero, a couple retired Marines, a doctor, a lady cop out of uniform, and a cheerleader!"
She was still trying to make the whole thing sound funny and absurd, but what it amounted to was that her ninety-pound daughter had joined… started, even… a self-appointed security patrol in a war zone… something worse than a war zone. Joyce had already noticed that risk-taking, take-charge streak. Her daughter just did not behave like most other people. And she, Joyce, could not help but fear.
…..
The light was pouring in from an unfamiliar window. Colonel Jonathan O'Neill blinked and awoke in the warm summer sun.
"You remember," said a familiar voice, "I loved to have the bed where the sun could strike it." He shifted on the bed, and his eyes took her in: a beautiful, stark naked, familiar blonde figure, approaching him from a doorway.
This was not his home, but there was something familiar about it. And her appearance made sense of that feeling. He was still waking up, but as consciousness came flooding in, he remembered the previous night – and he smiled.
It was the first time that kind of smile had passed on his face in five years.
"If you want to get up, there is breakfast waiting for you."
…..
"Next on the agenda, , is the Kree. Colonel Fury and Colonel Brand are here to discuss the matter."
"Show them in, Louie. Show them in."
On that clue, the Directors of SHIELD and SWORD marched in, more or less in step, stood still at once and together, and saluted. The President neither knew nor cared that among their support staff, left behind in his antechamber, there was Countess Valentina de Fontaine, widely rumored to be Colonel Fury's lover.
"At ease, you two, at ease." The two officers shifted to parade rest. "And do sit down. I wanted your thoughts about this Kree business."
"Well, ," answered Fury, as the senior one of the two, "we have been discussing the issue with our people, and the first thing that is clear is that it is something that we can't just kick down the road."
The President's eyes turned to Alison Brand. "Yes, sir. This is not something that will die down. The Kree are powerful, more powerful than I ever imagined, and now they have noticed Earth. We must prepare to deal with them."
"Deal with them, in what sense?"
"What do you mean, sir?"
"Well, is it attempting a peaceful contact, or preparing for war? Deal with them as in do deals with them, or deal with them as in –deal with them?"
"We think we should take peace as the default choice, Mr. President," said Brand, "but not stop thinking about the alternative. We should start thinking fast about space warfare. The good thing is that, according to our Kree source, the Kree have only one ship in the solar system, and it would take them months to gather enough forces for a confrontation. We can develop a space strategy of our own well before that."
"But we've got other problems," broke in Nick Fury. "We've only got one reliable source on Kree matters, and if anything happens to him, we'll be quite blind. We won't be able to guess, let alone understand, what they're likely to do. We've started to have him debriefed as extensively as we can, but a full debrief might take weeks… months. And to access the Kree records he's taken with him would take even longer…"
Before Fury could conclude his sentence, his phone beeped. "Fury," he said, picking it up. A few indistinct words came from the machine, punctuated by laconic replies from Fury: "Yes," Right," "Mh-mh." Then a longer pause. "Sure, but why call me?" And then Fury's eyebrow could be seen to rise even above his eyepatch. "And she doesn't realize…? No, of course not. OK, Montano, I'm on my way.
"I'm sorry, Mr. President. There is a matter in New Orleans that requires my personal attention. It's not serious enough to bother you, but it needs followin' up now. I should still be here back in time for the hearings."
"All right. I'll see you then, Fury, Brand. And good luck, Fury, whatever it is."
….
Sarah O'Neill looked across the table to her ex-husband. She had awakened before him, and that felt familiar. But she wondered… last night was a kind of crazy affair, powered by a considerable amount of brandy. If anyone else, any of her women friends, had told her of something like that, she would not have approved. Now she wasn't sure how she felt. It was as though she was waiting for something to react to. And if today turned out to be different from last night… if it went back to all those ghastly, guilt-ridden silences… then she would know that she had made a stupid mistake. So there was a certain relief about the way that Jack slept like a rock. The decision was put off, even if only for a few minutes. If her ex-husband's usual flow of silly chatter did not start, if he was embarrassed and tongue-tied when he awoke, then she knew that she would be embarrassed as well, and the reunion would end badly. As it was always likely to.
But it didn't seem to be. Jack seemed happy. Perhaps the sunlight helped his good mood. Perhaps this would turn out to be something else than an impulsive, drink-assisted mistake.
And then they were talking. She had not even noticed that they had started. On the few previous occasions they had met after the divorce, they had never managed to find something to say, and the deadly, agonised silences had been the reason why they had long avoided meeting altogether. But maybe that was a good thing. It had been so long since they had last met, that now it felt almost like a new thing. New, and yet familiar. There was her husband playing the fool as he so often did, not paralysed by fear of saying something out of place, or by grief and unassuageable loss. Yes, poor little Charlie… she would never stop missing him, and she knew that Jack also would never quite heal that hole in his heart. But he seemed to have gone back to being alive; and she told him so.
"I guess… I'm getting some work at last. Until the last few weeks, this place was pretty much a parking lot for knackered officers."
"Work? You mean the kind of thing you can't talk about, I guess."
"I don't know. They haven't actually told me to keep my trap shut, but old habits die hard, I guess."
"I thought so. Well, I'm glad you're feeling like a living being again. But...
"I hate to ask you this, but do you have a relationship? Or have you had one? Because, you know, I'm kind of free now, but I haven't been what you'd call faithful."
"And I what you'd call guessed. And actually, I kind of hoped you might. I wanted you to be happy."
"Well, I had a good time, I guess… But now, being here, just talking, I'm sort of noticing all the things I was missing, and didn't notice when I was. All those things you do, like disrespecting your seniors. Or… like the way you manage to dodge questions you don't want to answer. But I have to know. Do you have a girlfriend?"
"Mmh. It's not that I don't want to answer, but it might sound like I'm bragging. I could have one. Back at base, there is this young second lieutenant, just commissioned from the Zoo, who's fallen for me pretty hard. I've been wondering what to do about her. She's a good woman, and I hate to let her down. And a man might go further and fare worse."
"But you haven't taken her up."
"I guess. You know that relationships with colleagues are a great big no-no. A few years ago I mightn't have cared, but now I'd rather like to stay in the Chair Force. So I've tried to keep my distance. Oddly enough she looks a bit like you, tall and blonde."
To her, it was not a decision, but a realization. Something in her had already decreed that they should get back together. What brought it out was the inner warmth she felt at being told that her ex-husband could have fallen for a woman who looked like her… that, and the fact that he had spent years not letting himself be attracted to women of any kind. He had been faithful to her memory, even though she had tried to be unfaithful to him.
…
Samantha marched into her CO's office and stood at attention. She saluted stiffly, all the while looking like a prisoner about to hear the sentence.
"At ease, at ease, Lieutenant. I have no bad news for you this time."
Samantha shifted as little as she could without seeming insubordinate. She didn't know what Colonel Seirce could have to tell her that would be good. When she first came back to Bird City, she had had to work like a demon to support Iron Man, and that had kept her sane. But since then, she had nothing to do except look outside to the training areas and huts and the machinery and think of Colonel O'Neill and what she could never have. She actually missed what Colonel Seirce was saying.
"… I beg your pardon, sir?"
"I just said you're being promoted. You're going to be a First Lieutenant, and if things go right, you might be a Captain in short order. And you're probably in line for an Airman's Medal."
Her immediate reaction was bewilderment. "Excuse me sir, but how… Why…?"
Then she saw something in her commander's eye, and guessed correctly- "...Is this about the New York City business?"
"And about your collaboration with Iron Man. You impressed a lot of people the right way."
Her first reaction was a sudden vindictive rush of pleasure. She hadn't expected to see it, and certainly not so soon. She had expected to be parked at the bottom of the hierarchy for years to come. And that half-forgotten day of outrage came to her in a flash: the lecherous old four-star, the implicit threat that she would never have a career. Well, the last word on that wasn't said yet, it seemed.
But then she thought of other things. Her recent misery had had little to do with her career prospects, or lack thereof. It had everything to do with a senior officer with graying hair and kind eyes. And that source of grief hadn't gone away. In fact, from what she heard, it might get worse.
Not that she blamed Jack O'Neill. Not even his ex- and future wife. If she had the opportunity to straighten out her life like that, she would have jumped at it.
Meanwhile, Colonel Seirce was still talking. "But this also has to do with some big changes that are coming down the pike."
"Changes, sir?"
"Changes. DST is being made part of SWORD, and the joint authority so formed is going to be expanded. There will be need for more expert investigation into alien races and outer-space realities. That is why you are likely to get more promotion. There will be need for experienced people to take charge, and you have considerable experience for your age and an excellent record."
"I see."
"SHIELD, which is the parent agency of SWORD, will also be enlarged, and there may be changes at the top. The disasters in Manhattan and Las Vegas have brought super-hero defence to the front of the queue as far as politicians and the media are concerned, so Nick Fury is getting pretty much everything he'd been asking for years in vain.
"I think I may as well tell you, I won't be along. I'm resigning. There will be too much responsibility down this path, and too many people to answer to."
"Sir… You'll be missed." This was just good manners, but it was also true. She had come to realize that Seirce took a paternal interest in his subordinates. He was not a man of action or a very ambitious person, but he tried hard to make sure that everything they had to do, they did well. And he had shown confidence in her. Being sent for because she was the one who knew most about orbiting objects was the last and most impressive of a number of occasions when he had shown that he took her talents and hard work seriously. And he had been sensitive in dealing with her unhappy love for O'Neill. She wondered whether his successor would be as good.
"That's kind of you to say. But my guess is that soon you'll be having so much to do, you won't have the time to remember. I've just got a request for your assistance. I don't quite know how he fits in, but you are going to be involved in the debriefing of Captain Philip Lawton."
"Captain Lawton?"
"Yes, him."
"I… I don't understand. Captain Lawton and I worked together in Manhattan, but that means I should be the last person in the world to debrief him."
"I have no idea, Lieutenant. They would not say why they pitched on you. But you will have to go to Washington DC and report to SHIELD head office."
"The same agency that will be in overall control over us."
"Yes. And I don't have to tell you to do your best. I know that, whatever they want, you will make us look good."
….
Buffy looked at her parents' home for the last time. She had not thought she would miss it; not after the increasingly depressing last couple of years. She would miss her dad… a lot… but she did not want to share him with that Spanish skank, either. Mom needed a new start and a place without memories, and she needed her support.
Buffy had grown a lot over the last year. Not physically, alas; she was beginning to think that she would always be a shortie. (But woe betide anyone beside her who used that term!) But sometimes she looked at herself, in a sort of mental mirror, as she had been a year ago; a rather below-average student, a pretty, fashionable airhead, popular with the popular girls and concerned mostly with cheerleading, boys, shoes and make-up – not necessarily in that order.
She got up and entered the house. She was changed now. Even in the last few months – she looked at herself, and didn't recognize herself. After poor Cassie had been butchered, Buffy had listened to her cheerleader friends mock and insult her, and she had cared so much to remain in their good graces that she had said nothing. Today she knew that she would do anything from going into a rage to hitting them. And the house had changed too. The rooms were so empty, she could hardly recognize them. Dusty outlines reminded her where the furniture had been, that was now traveling on a truck to their new home, or had been sold to second-hand dealers. There was sunlight everywhere; and yet the house did not look alive or graceful. It looked like it was, the corpse of what was once a family home.
Corpses… Buffy thought of the things that stood between her and her earlier self. And it was not just her parents' break-up. It was the walking, talking, murderous corpses that she had to slay. It was the memory of a friend's dead body, murdered before her eyes by one of them. It was that whole undercurrent of horror that she saw behind ordinary reality, when no-one else could.
It had occurred to her to wonder whether she was in fact going crazy, seeing things that nobody else could. She knew that paranoia was a thing, and that delusions were dangerous. But then, her super-strength and super-senses were not things she'd made up. And some of her experiences had been with Spider-Man and the other people she had met in Manhattan. And she wasn't deluded about the horrors in Manhattan… millions of people had seen them.
….
"I have a delivery for Lieutenant Carter. Lieutenant ,"
"What is it?" asked the senior of the two camp guards.
"A motorbike. A big one, a Harley."
"OH, yes, she's been waiting for it. We'll call her. You stay here."
The delivery man was himself a motorbike enthusiast and looked lovingly at the big machine, gleaming in the summer sun. And to hear that the Airman who was to take delivery was in fact an airwoman was enough to unleash all his fantasies. A hot blonde, perhaps, in fatigues clinging to her curves, revving up that metal monster… something out of one of the more "adult" biker mags… wow.
And in fact, when the in question came to the camp gate, she was everything he had hoped. Tanned, blue-eyed, a natural blonde, with a smile that lit up her face when she smiled as she saw her motor. The only disappointment was that the fatigues were not in any way clingy, and that they were buttoned up to her neck. And that she did not seem to want to mount her iron horse at once. But, fuck it, you could tell that she had legs and a chest like a Playboy centerfold. And nearly six foot tall. He'd have fantasies to feed tonight.
Sam thanked him nicely, tipped him, and wheeled the bike away. And so it was that she was in the last place in the world she would have wanted to be, at the worst possible moment: when Colonel O'Neill was kissing his ex-wife goodbye – or rather, see-you-again-soon – at the camp gate, after a week-end together. Sam turned away swiftly and nearly raced the bike towards the base parking lot.
…
Meanwhile something apparently irrelevant was taking place online. An obscure blog published a cranky article titled "The statue of Evolution," topped by a handsome picture of the colossus in New York harbor. Nobody gave it any importance at the time, and none of the protagonists even knew about it. Yet it was the start of something that would affect the destiny of the Earth.
