Wednesday, September 1st, 2004. Newly rebuilt Bureau Headquarters.
Beth sat on the staircase of Tango’s memorial, the white marble statue of her friend was a poor representation. It did not have the thick black fur that she could bury her face in or the glint of curious, nearly blind eyes peeking through. Still, everytime she crossed the lawn from the parking lot to the entrance of the newly rebuilt headquarters, she rested her forehead against the stone and closed her eyes.
She was on her lunch break now, having ordered two burgers and a medium serving of fries from the local McDonalds. Usually, she preferred to eat her own cooking, but the last time she’d attempted to make burgers at Damien’s parent’s house the barbeque had caught on fire. Despite Damien’s dad’s attempts to teach her how to properly cook through red meat she always ended up with the heat on too high. So, she figured that she could give herself a pass today, since it was a special occasion. It wasn’t a particular date, or anything, but she’d just signed the orders to name a building after Tango as well. It was a lab for Laura to begin the rehabilitation program for creatures that had been kept in confinement due to their unknown origins. Instead of treating every unidentifiable organism as a potential threat, Beth had decided to give Laura supervision. After all, she trusted the woman’s judgement.
With the documents signed, it only felt right to commemorate the building’s naming by sharing the burger she’d promised Tango. She pulled one out of the white paper bag and set it on the base of the memorial before grabbing her own and unwrapping it. McDonald’s burgers were always thinner and limper than they looked in the commercial, but she couldn’t deny they tasted good. Fatty and fake, she took a bite into hers and leaned back against the statue’s base. At her feet, Ranger whined. He was a master at begging for food, and Beth was a sap. But she was able to hold out as he rested his head on her thigh and gave her very puppy dog eyes. He was growing old now, and she knew he didn’t have much time. But he was the only real piece of Addy she had left. She’d lost her two best friends that night and despite how she’d buried herself in work in an attempt to drown out the grief, it was hard not to cry at the thought of them.
The past year had been a blur. It seemed like she was in the hospital for eons. First she got the news about Addy and Tango, and through her hypothermic haze she’d almost thought that evening’s events were a terrible nightmare. But then she found herself back in America, in the room as Vincent updated Eve on HQs situation. Keller was the only person to survive the attack, and he only was able to get out because of Benji. It was a rhythm all too familiar to Beth now. Addy died for the team, Tango died for the team, and Benji died to save the bright young scientist. Beth almost considered making ‘don’t sacrifice yourself’ one of the new rules of the bureau, but she knew better. After all, that was what made her friends heroes. And the bureau was in charge of making heroes.
The memorial services passed in days. Then Vincent retired, and Eve retired. Damien returned to New York to be a private investigator and a father again. Then Edie left. And finally Will and Zia. Soon the original team was just Beth and Laura. With no one else to turn to to rebuild the bureau, Beth stepped forward. She’d always wanted to be a mother, to take care of people and protect them. She wanted to make something. As bureau director, she could remake something. She could make the bureau kind and benevolent, no longer a hand sweeping issues under the rug and using puppets as distraction. She’d seen what people could do when they cared about each other. So she resolved to take a step back from her pursuit of love, and instead chose to give her love to the world. She thought maybe one day she would find someone to love her and she could start a new family.
But she already had a family, and now she could create a system that helped mutants and aliens find their own families here on earth. The Exemplar’s legacy would be to create new teams that could learn about their power and abilities, and protect the world from real threats. She’d seen how the most unexpected people could shine under pressure so she was going to give these new recruits a chance to prove her right.
Sitting on the cool marble pedestal next to the walkway, she stared out over the construction zone. As head of the bureau she would be overseeing every building that would be rebuilt. Except for the Exemplar’s living space. It had been destroyed too. But she had no interest in bringing it back. It was not a home if it was going to be empty. She hadn’t decided what to do with the space yet, so for now it was just the cleared cement foundation. It gleamed in the sunlight, full of possibility.
Sitting there, reflecting on the work she needed to do, she finished the last bite of her burger and stuffed a few more fries in her mouth. She wiped on her hands the grease off on her black pencil skirt and sighed. Patting Ranger’s head she unwrapped the second burger and told him to go ahead. It was for Tango, but she wasn’t going to leave a burger there to rot next to the sidewalk. The gesture was purely symbolic after all. Ranger wolfed it down into two swift bites and looked up at her expectantly.
Rubbing behind his ears, she smiled down at him before reaching up to read just her new glasses on her nose. They kept falling down. In doing so she left a smudge mark on the right lens, and sighed. Beth did not notice when Ranger whipped his head to the side, his ears perking up. She was too preoccupied digging in her pocket for the glasses’ cleaner. She squinted down at her lenses, cleaning them impatiently, before sliding them on back over her nose and looking up.
Drawing in a sharp breath of disbelief she uttered the name of the creature standing before her, the last person she expected to see here, “Tango?”
