Suppliant

Yon-Rogg stares pensively at the waning gibbous of C-53 - no, Terra - hanging low in the dark expanse of space. The blue, cloud-streaked sphere looms silently before him as he feels the various emotions rolling through him. He considers each one in a slightly detached way, as if each feeling is a stone he picks up and turns over slowly in his fingers before reaching for the next one. The guilt. The self-loathing. The loss. The anger. The sorrow. The fear and the anxiety. 

In the four years that have passed since he last came to this planet, he’s thought of little else than the spectacular and utter failure of his mission here. Not just his mission, his ability as a commander and a soldier, even just as a Kree. Or at least, what a Kree was supposed to be, according to the lifelong indoctrination and servitude the Supreme Intelligence instilled in It’s people. 

He no longer subscribes to that belief system. He wants to be something else; he must be something else. He cannot bear the alternative. This, the destructive and cruel instrument of a destructive and cruel empire, cannot be all that he is meant to be. 

He takes a deep breath and pulls out his communicator. He types out the words that have been swirling endlessly in his mind since he last saw her. Glowing and glorious and absolutely lethal. 

Carol.

If he truly had a death wish, he’d have landed on her home planet directly and then attempted to contact her. As it is, he had decided to wait on Terra’s moon instead. Close enough to get her attention, undoubtedly, but not so much of an immediate threat that she needs to neutralize him on sight before hearing him out. Maybe. Here’s hoping, he thinks wryly. 

I'm sorry, Carol. 

He stares at the words glowing dimly on the screen for a brief moment before he presses send. No going back after this, he thinks. He takes a deep, bracing breath as he types and sends the second message.  

You were right. 

He closes the communicator and waits. His eyes move over the irregular craters and ridges in the barren landscape around him. The entire surface shines eerily with the muted, refracted light from Terra’s sun. It’s not unpleasant. No wonder some of the Terrans worship their neighborhood cosmos. 

The quiet ping of the communicator sounds from his side. He opens her reply.

?????

Her wordless confusion coaxes him to a huff of laughter; he can picture the face she wears when she’s completely bewildered and he smiles a little to himself. In answer, he copies his coordinates and fires them off without further explanation.  

Well, he’s done it now. One way or another, this is the point of no return. Either she kills him, ignores him, or allows him to join her. None of these options include him going back to his life from before. He wonders how long it will take her to get here. He idly does half-formed calculations in his head, trying to guess how far she is from him, how fast she’s flying, and how she might hurry once she realizes how close he is to her home planet. 

He doesn’t hear her approach, just feels the radiating heat of her powers glowing behind him. She’s arrived much quicker than he’d thought possible. A not-so-faraway corner of his mind notes how it feels so much easier for him to draw a full breath with her so near. He hadn’t noticed how much he’d missed that sensation until now. He takes one last bracing inhale and turns slowly to face her, hands empty and raised in surrender. 

Seeing her again after so long, powers flaring around her in wide, bright arcs, it’s like staring into a sun. Carol hovers several inches above the ground, frowning deeply. Her eyes are a solid, blinding white as bore into his. For the space of two, maybe three heartbeats, they just stare at each other. 

"What is this?” she spits out furiously, fists balled tightly at her sides. “Why are you here?" 

 "I defected,” he says simply. When she doesn’t interrupt, he goes on, “Because you were right. About all of it. The lies, the propaganda, the… genocide. It is all so clear now and I hate myself for the part I played in it.” He chokes down the fresh surge of guilt.  “I want to help."

She tilts her head skeptically. “Help with what exactly?”

“Ending it. The wars. The lies. The empire. Everything.”

The energy around her lessens slightly; only her eyes dim enough to show the familiar brown irises. She considers him for a long moment. He gazes unflinchingly back and silently prays for her to believe him. 

"How do I know I can trust you? How do I know you won’t go running back to your precious Supreme Intelligence and - "

"Because you're who I see." Another silent heartbeat passes. Two. Three. "Saw," he corrects, swallowing thickly. "Ever since the day at the lake, I saw you.” 

Her eyes narrow dangerously and he knows he has to give her more than that. 

“Before you, it was… myself.” He emphatically spreads the fingers on his still-raised hands, wincing as he tries to head off any (deserved) derision. “I know, I know. Before that, it was my brother.” He chances the slightest smile. “So, you were correct on 2 out of 3.” 

The corner of her mouth just twitches, an almost imperceptible movement. Anyone else would have missed it, but not him. 

“But all this time, it's been you, Carol. It would stillbe you, if I planned to go on being its puppet any longer."

She considers him. Her powers dim a bit more as she lands lightly on the ground, but her fists still flare as she crosses her arms over her chest. 

"But you don't." It’s a statement. Not a question. 

"No,” he agrees. “I cannot undo all the things I have done. But I give you my word to do my best to right the innumerable wrongs I've committed." 

Another long moment passes as she stares at him. 

“Well,” she finally says with a slight sigh, “what happened?”

You, he wants to answer. But he’s not entirely sure how she’ll respond to that. And it’s surely not enough to convince her. Instead, he gives her a brief rundown of what happened when he arrived back on Hala, disgraced and defeated and bringing her promise of destruction. The Supreme Intelligence had been so disgusted, so furious, that It believed death to be too lenient for him. Instead, he was stripped of his rank, his honors and his citizenship. Expatriated and exiled, he was sent to what amounted to a prison colony in a backwater corner of the star system. As a way to further humiliate and condemn him, he was denied any further conveyance with the SI, now or in the future. But that tantamount punishment had backfired.

“Without It constantly tormenting me, I was able to think freely for the first time in,” he raises eyebrows as it hits him, “decades. I began to know the other prisoners and their offenses. I learned what the empire had actually done to people. And, of course, I already knew what it had done to you. It was not hard to imagine or believe the other brutal and ruthless things it had done.” 

He tells her how he had reexamined every mission, every task, every briefing he’d been given through this perspective. And how his entire belief system came crashing down. 

“I know that my sins are many,” he says quietly. “But I will not open my eyes to the truth just to turn around and wallow in self-loathing for the rest of my existence. I will help you, if you let me.”

“And if I don’t?” 

“Well, my next plan was to offer myself to the Nova Core on Xandar,” he says with a shrug. “Assuming, of course, that you hadn’t killed me first.” 

She grins a little. “Yes, getting killed would really stunt your redemption arc.”

He grins back at her and inclines his head. 

“If I take you back with me,” she begins, “the others are going to be way more skeptical than me. They’ll want to sim you, at the very least, to make sure you’re not here as a spy.” 

“Whatever they need.” The old prejudice he’d been taught since birth bristles just slightly at the mention of being simmed, but he easily pushes it aside; he’s not that person anymore. Carol cocks one eyebrow at his unperturbed answer but goes on. 

“I’ll need to search your suit and your gear. Make sure you didn’t bring any trackers or bugs with you.” 

“After everything I taught you, I would be disappointed if you didn’t,” he says. “I know what I am asking. I know you cannot possibly trust me, maybe ever. I will do all you ask of me to try and change that.” 

Her face is sober again. His thoughts turn to the last time they saw each other; her fury and betrayal had been simmering just under the surface of her bravado. He has gone over and over in his mind all the ways he has hurt her. 

“You have incredibly valuable information and expertise. As long as Talos and the others agree, I am willing to put our personal history aside and give you a chance to do what you say you want to do.” 

He nods. 

“But,” she warns, “the very next time you lie to me, the first time you piss me off, or the first time you say some racist Kree-propaganda shit to any of the Skrulls, or just because I feel like it, I will vaporize you into ash before you even knew what happened.”

She’s not kidding, not even a little, and he knows it. He nods again. She must hate him. Despite this relatively warm welcome, she has to. After everything he’s done to her. The guilt and shame swell within him again and her eyes narrow slightly, as if she can sense it. 

“I’m not some tool for you to manipulate this time,” she says firmly. His gaze flits between her eyes for several seconds while he tries, and fails, to keep the words bubbling in his chest from tumbling out of his mouth. 

“I am so sor-” 

The photon blast hits him squarely in the chest and launches him several hundred meters backwards. He lands in a shallow crater, cracking several boulders with the force of his impact. He groans and stares up at the stars for a moment. Of all the things he’s missed about her, getting blown off his feet isn’t exactly one of them. 

She hovers into his line of sight, gliding over to where he lays sprawled in the dust. He doesn’t even try to stand and defend himself. If she wants to kill him, even now, she has every right. 

“Sorry,” she says, smirking archly. “Couldn’t resist. Old times’ sake.” 

He chuckles faintly and closes his eyes. He groans again as he shifts a little. 

“It’s nice to see you, too,” he says wryly. 

She laughs, a clear and open sound, and offers him her hand in a tentative truce. He takes it, feeling the peculiar deja vu of the last time she had him like this. Surely she won’t drag him to a ship this time, though. She does however, yank him roughly to his feet and then swat his stomach with the back of her hand in a chummy sort of way. 

“Well, let’s go see what Talos wants to do with you.” 

Here goes nothing, he thinks.