Suppliant

Yon-Rogg sits, head bent low and elbows resting on his knees, and studies the lines in the tiles on the floor. Talos and Carol have been going around and around on how to suss him out for upwards of half an hour. If he’s honest, he lost the thread of the conversation several times. His mind keeps conjuring the image of Carol smiling appreciatively at his praise while she escorted him to the Skrull base. 

It’s only a handful of kilometers away from where he had waited for her on Terra’s moon. He’d been impressed at the ingenuity of hiding in plain sight, especially in the shadow of her home planet, and he’d told her so. Her answering smile had knocked the breath from his lungs for just a moment. He can’t stop thinking about it, even as she debates his fate right in front of him. 

The sudden sharpness of Carol’s voice, cracking like a whip at whatever Talos had just suggested, snaps his attention back to the present. 

“Absolutely not,” she says hotly.

Talos makes an impatient noise and turns away from her. Yon-Rogg replays the last bit of their conversation in his mind. Talos wants to put him in the fracking pod; it would allow him to dig through any memory, not just the most recent ones. They’d also be able to simultaneously assess any and all emotions tied to those memories. It’s thorough. Invasive. Smart. 

“No,” Yon-Rogg says calmly. “Let him.” 

Carol whirls and locks eyes with him. She knows how repellent the very idea of the fracking pod is to the Kree. He’d told her himself. She hadn’t exactly understood; she hadn’t been raised on the prejudice as he had been, but she’d gotten the idea well enough. She stares at him, mystified at his assent. He nods reassuringly, trying to allay as much of her alarm as he can. 

She still watches anxiously as he’s strapped into the machine. The sensation from the purple current that flows through both of his temples is unpleasant, but not unbearable. He looks on curiously as Talos configures the machine and boots up whatever hardware he needs to operate it. Yon-Rogg knows surprisingly little about how the fracking pod functions. The massive projection screen takes up nearly an entire wall when it flares to life. He’s intrigued by the smallish, rectangular panel that Talos explains will relay a synopsis of sorts of his emotions. Even with Talos’ cursory explanation, he’s not exactly sure how that bit works, just sees dozens of keys that light up in a myriad of combinations. 

They start with his most recent memories and work backward over the last few months. Him making his way to Terra’s moon. Planning his escape from the prison colony. Then, flashes of his life there and his connections with the other expatriates. They confirm that he was telling Carol the truth about that, at least. They come to this conclusion faster than he’d thought they would. Surely though, that can’t be all they wanted to see? He should have paid closer attention to their argument, he thinks. 

But the screen still fades to black. He waits. Talos still looks suspicious; Carol fidgets slightly with the hem of her shirt and doesn’t meet his eye. He takes a deep breath to steady himself a bit.

“If there is more you need to see,” he says slowly, “before you can allow me to join your cause, please, by all means.”

Carol’s anxious eyes flicker to his, then away to Talos, and then back to his again.  “Are you sure?”

He shrugs. “You’ve already got me strung up on this thing.”

Talos laughs. “He’s got a point.” He turns and adjusts some controls on the control panel. The current between Yon’s temples intensifies, making the back of his eyes ache dully. 

“Let’s go back to the beginning?” Carol asks. He nods. She hesitates again, unsure of how to begin.

“It works better when you ask leading questions,” Talos offers. “Answering you will activate the recall that brings the memory to the front of his mind where we can examine it.”

She nods and turns to face Yon-Rogg, planting herself like a tree and squaring her shoulders, her timidity suddenly gone.  

“What happened after I absorbed the Tesseract's energy?” 

The screen behind her blooms with the memory. He answers her verbally anyway, even as his old ship and the examination table in its med bay into focus.

“Minn-Erva and I brought you onto our ship and set out to return to Hala. You were still unconscious. The Tesseract’s energy was too powerful for a human to contain. There was a close call.” 

She follows his gaze over her shoulder and sees the image of herself lying limp and unresponsive as massive, erratic arcs of lightning-bright energy whip around her body. The strands of her hair poke out in all directions, alive with static electricity. Her back is arched, bowed as if the arcs of light were dragging her upward by the heart. Her eyelids flutter and her eyes roll back in her head as she begins to slightly foam at the mouth. 

“It would have consumed you,” he murmurs. “I acted to stop it from doing so.”

In a vaguely detached way, he watches his own calm, measured movements as he stabs the needle and tubing into the vein at his elbow. He sees himself attach the other end into the prominent vein in the back of her left hand. He thinks fleetingly of the cursory medic training all new Kree soldiers receive. Slow is smooth; smooth is fast. He remembers the absolute panic roiling inside him as he willed his fingers to cooperate. He watches his blood flow through the tubing and into her veins. Sees the purplish tinge blooming just under her skin as his blood mingles with her and spreads through her circulatory system. His anxious eyes track her vitals. The slope of his shoulders slump with relief when the energy recedes and her pulse evens. He breathes a satisfied sigh but then registers the presence in the doorway behind him.

Minn-Erva stares, utterly aghast. He mutters something about how he had to act quickly before the Terran blasted the ship apart and killed them both. In the present, Yon-Rogg knows he’d only thought of that excuse once he saw his second’s expression. At the time, all he could think was ‘not her.’

The next thing he remembers is convening with the Supreme Intelligence. He’d put it off as long as he dared, checking and rechecking Carol’s vitals with the same excuse he’d given Minn-Erva ready on his lips. 

He’d barely opened his eyes before the avatar of himself had him pinned by the throat, cutting off his air supply completely. He remembers feeling the twin sensations of pain; the SI choking him in its bizarre dimension and the physical tendrils tightening around his throat outside the simulation. 

“What have you done?” the Supremor demanded, voice bristling with fury. “How could you dare?”

Carol twists to meet his eye over her shoulder, utterly bewildered at SI’s palpable anger. 

“I was nearly executed for saving you.”

The memory on screen begins to fade as black spots appear in his vision. The avatar bears its teeth, inches from his face, and hisses a string of insults at him, trying to inflict as much pain as possible in his final moments. 

But then It breaks off mid-word. It’s deathgrip on his windpipe, both projected and tangible, slackens just enough for him to draw a ragged breath. Only then does he see what shocked the Supremor into stillness. 

The avatar is changing. Its new form begins on the hand pinning him to the wall and spreads steadily down the arm and across its chest before completely encompassing itself and transforming into… her. Vers. 

Carol. 

The Yon-Rogg in the memory waits, frozen in fear and shock, as the SI stares in disbelief. Then it laughs. A cold, cruel, unforgiving laugh. 

“Oh,” It murmurs dangerously, “this is too good.” 

The present Yon-Rogg watches as the Supreme Intelligence decides, again, not to kill him. Instead if would inflict a more creative punishment instead; Vers would be his problem, his responsibility entirely. Every inch of honor and achievement he’d worked and scrabbled for would be hinged on the successful assimilation of this volatile, unpredictable, simple Terran. 

The screen fades once more as he focuses on Carol’s face in the present. She’s scowling with a deep, deep crease between her brows. His twitch upward in question. 

“The Supreme Intelligence said it was on their orders that you saved my life,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “They said that their benevolence,” she sneers, “allowed you to share your blood with me, when they could have just let me die.” 

Yon-Rogg shakes his head sympathetically and holds her gaze. It was such a cruel lie. So petty. But then, he thinks, every lie he and the SI had told her was cruel, one way or another.

“Of course it did,” Talos snorts derisively. 

She nods a little to herself. “It wanted me to feel indebted. A cage within a cage.” 

Unbidden, the next memory glows to life. He stands outside the door to her quarters, forehead pressed against the cold metal and his fists balled tightly at his sides. This was from the early days, when the SI had ordered her to stay in the spare room of his flat while she was “reoriented.” It’s late at night and he hears the muffled sobs coming from her room. She’s crying again. Her jagged grief had always been more overwhelming at night. 

Carol’s cheeks flush at the memory and he knows why. He’d always pretended he’d never heard her. He wants to tell her that he thought she was owed space to mourn the loss of her previous life. 

Before he can, the memory changes again. He kneels before the Supreme Intelligence again. He’s pleading with the twisted, cruel avatar version of Carol. He lays out his suggestion yet again; harvest the core’s energy without harming her, wipe her memories of Mar-Vell or plant false ones, and release her back to her former life. 

Avatar-Carol pinches the bridge of her nose and scoffs, just as it had every time he’s asked this. 

“You asked It to send me home?” the real Carol asks, voice cracking a little on the last word. 

He nods again, inclines his head at the screen. He raises his voice slightly to talk over the SI shouting at him. “Many times. They always refused. And you kept suffering. I’m sorry.”

She says nothing, just flicks her gaze back and forth between each of his eyes and frowns. 

“What about when you realized I’d found out the truth?”

The shabby little shack on Carol’s friend’s property comes into focus on the screen. He remembers the relief and barely suppressed joy at seeing her in person for the first time since Torfa. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the lights on the emotion panel change as his suspicion grows. Then his fury spiking as he shoots the Skrull. He hadn’t even known his name. 

And then, when the Skrull had confirmed what he dreaded most, the icy, paralyzing fear that slices through him. Spearing through his guts. The beginning of the destruction of his personal universe. He stares down at the tiled floor in shame as the memory shows him contacting Ronan and summoning his forces to Terra. 

There’s an uncomfortable silence. “Norex,” Talos sighs unhappily. “He was a good man.”

“I’m sorry.” Yon answers. He cannot offer any defense. Only his remorse. 

Talos shrugs a little. “Such is war,” is all he says in reply. 

At his words, snippets in a blurry montage of the fight on Mar-Vell’s ship play behind him. It leads to how he’d watched Carol break free of the Supreme Intelligence’s dimension and unleashed the full strength of her powers. How the ship’s electricity had gone haywire. How she had glowed like she contained a sun within her veins. How, for one shining moment, he feels as if he’d seen a real goddess and how the SI had paled in comparison to her. 

And then all hell had broken loose. Again.   

Carol is quiet again. His headache intensifies. He closes his eyes against the growing discomfort. 

“You told me the Supreme Intelligence said your failure was so great that you were undeserving of death,” she murmurs in a subdued voice. 

He nods, eyes still closed, but he sees the light of the screen from behind his lids. Hears the SI decreeing his downfall and punishment. He knows what they’ll see next; a blur of a thousand memories condense into the same general themes of grief, remorse, and longing. Always the longing. But beside it, a growing determination to become a creature deserving of life , since he was apparently so undeserving of death. Still, the yearning for her had never gone away or even ebbed. He meant it when he said he wants to work to undo all of his wrongs. But the possibility of being in her life again gave him the strength to try. 

His head throbs viciously. Suddenly, a hand cups his cheek with a nervous, feather-light touch. His eyes snap open to find Carol standing right before him, brow furrowed and crowding in as close as the fracking pod will allow, blocking the screen and Talos from view. The current between his temples fades, but the restraints do not loosen. 

She looks deep into his eyes, searching. Tears begin to gather at the edge of her lashes. She tentatively strokes the length of his cheekbone with her thumb. He sighs a little and leans into her touch.

Several long moments - or possibly several lifetimes - float by as they stare at each other, lost in memories, dreams, and regrets. He ought to say something, he thinks. But he can’t think of what. He itches to free his hands and cup her face and then - what? Where does that lead? Before he can follow any of those thoughts, a heavy sigh from the other side of the room startles him; he’d forgotten they weren’t alone. 

“Well,” Talos says heavily, popping the moment like a soap bubble, “let's get him down from there.”