Post Fic Scene - October
“The skrull who was pretending to be me, was a woman?” Rhodey asked as he read over some of the reports from the events over the year. Maria was sitting across from him holding her coffee. She nodded.
“Yeah, Raava.” She said casually as if she knew her well.
“Did you know her?”
“Only at the end.”
“No one could tell I was a woman for ten years?” Rhodey tried to joke.
“I don’t know, you were rocking a pretty hard feminine energy. I had never been more attracted to you.” Maria snarked and Rhodey coughed and laughed from the shock of it.
“That’s what I want to hear..” He mumbled to himself a bit embarrassed but Maria laughed and Maria rolled her eyes.
“I doubt it helps, but she did save me and Nick in the end. She sacrificed herself and took out Gravik because he wanted her, well you, to kill all the skrulls here.”
“I saw that in your statement.” Rhodey said matter of factly. “I don’t know why she was so drawn to you.” He shrugged wondering what kind of things the skrull version of himself revealed to Maria.
“Access to Nick.” Maria responded quickly which quelled Rhodey’s fears as that was the most obvious answer.
“Yeah, okay, but …” Rhodey paused “why not replace you and put you in a skrull pod machine for years?”
“Honestly, I think about that all the time.” Maria admitted rather quietly. Given that she knew Gravik, Talos, and Soren for years, and about the skrulls for decades it seemed like Maria’s relationship with Nick would have been a prime target for the skrulls. Maria could only think that maybe Priscilla had been influential in choosing targets that were not so close to Nick.
“You or Fury didn’t get any insight on that one?” Rhodey asked in a bit of a snarky tone that surprised Maria, although she could not blame him for being bitter at being targeted for his associations and access when Maria and so many others were also pivotal targets and somehow escaped the skrull pods.
“I am really sorry this all happened to you.” Maria repeated, what did she say about this? It had been awhile and still as reports and information came out about what happened the far from healed wounds reopened for Rhodey.
“Maria. I swear to god if you tell me you are sorry one more time…” Rhodey said in a jokingly threatening tone. Maria was the last person who need to apologize for anything and yet, this did all fall on her. That really was how it ended for all the messes made by powerful, connected men.
“How are you … uhm adjusting?” Maria tried to ask thoughtfully.
“Terribly.” Rhodey nodded with a laugh taking a sip from his coffee and Maria pressed her lips together.
“Yeah.” Maria nodded she remembered how miserable that was and it would be for awhile. “Well, I have to go to work, but if you ever want to hang out again, even at 7 AM… just let me know.” Maria smirked as she grabbed her coffee and an extra one and put it in a cup holder tray. Rhodey and Maria embraced kindly and then she left.
As Maria headed to her office at Stark Industries in New York City, she hustled along the sidewalk with busy commuters. Everything seemed so normal now, people were just trying to live their normal lives unbothered by uncontrollable events that surrounded them constantly. It was a gorgeous summer day, far from the drab cold winter day when she had walked to the White House to meet skrull Rhodey forever ago and she couldn’t get over the parallels.
As she got into the building and scanned her ID she took the elevator up to the floor with her office. On her way she ran into Kamala Kahn.
“Kamala.” Maria nodded as she handed her the coffee she was carrying. Kamala’s eyes brightened up, she needed a coffee so bad and Maria always knew how to order her coffee just right. Maria always got her order perfect, even better than when Kamala got it on her own, which Kamala did not understand. How did Maria know how she liked her coffee more than Kamala knew how she like her own coffee?
“Maria! Thank you.” Kamala smiled. “And… I have good news, I have found all the flerken that were roaming the earth after they saved everyone on S.A.B.E.R.” Kamala said as she walked next to Maria as they both walked back to Maria’s office.
“That is excellent work. The human species is not very kind extra terrestrial races roaming the planet carefree right now.” Maria replied.
“I also have some other news…and depending on your affinity for flerken it could be good news or not so good news…” Kamala started after she took a sip from her straw.
Maria stopped walking and she turned to look at Kamala as the got closer to Maria’s office. Suddenly, Kamala moved in front of Maria and smiled not elaborating any further on what she just said. Kamala was blocking Maria from going down the hallway and Maria looked at her inquisitively and then Maria started to walked around Kamala and toward her office.
“Uhhh…” Kamala said as she again stepped in front of Maria stopping her again.
“What is wrong?” Maria said looking down with a serious concerned face.
“Do you want to go the Tony Stark memorial room with me?” Kamala asked as she feigned a smile.
“I do not.”
“Actually, my coffee, it’s not quite right.” Kamala lied and Maria tilted her head at her and pressed her lips together.
“You are not good at lying.” Maria snarked and Kamala groaned.
“I know! Can you please help me with that?” Kamala asked trying to distract Maria.
“Wait, do you think I’m a good liar?” Maria turned her head.
“Yeah, so good. Like you probably beat everyone at poker. If I ever released an album of musical parody songs I would want you to listen to it first to give me your honest opinion because I think you would be very .. either brutally horribly honest or lie convincingly enough to give me the confidence to post it on Spotify.” Kamala smirked.
Maria laughed a little under her breath from that quirky comment and then she checked her watch and started to walk toward her office again.
“Okay, just wait, so about the flerken….” Kamala said as she placed herself between Maria and the door to her office.
“As long as they aren’t in my office I don’t care.” Maria said with a low toned grunt and Kamala made a face.
“Uhhh… “ Kamala rubbed the back of her head.
“They’re in my office!?” Maria gasped.
“They’re in your office, yeah.” Kamala confirmed and then she slid herself away from the door.
“Why are they in my office?” Maria asked.
“Uhm, well I’m not allowed to say.”
Maria turned her head and looked at Kamala with a sharp but intrigued look and Maria made her way to the door of her office and she could see through the glass walls and door what looked like 100 flerken taking over her office.
“Are they eating things?” Maria made a face.
“They’ll spit them back out…” Kamala grimaced.
“Why would you think this was a good idea?” Maria asked
“Oh, I thought it was a terrible idea.” Kamala nodded and Maria stared at her. “I just didn’t know how to say no to him…..” Kamala added with a mumble.
“Who is he?” Maria asked astonished and Kamala made a face biting her lip and glaring at Maria like it was obvious.
Maria whipped out her phone and called Fury immediately he picked up the call on the first ring like he was waiting for it.
“There’s 100 fucking flerken in my office!” Maria yelled into the phone.
Fury’s laugh billowed as he heard Maria yell at him, Maria rolled her eyes dramatically.
“Wow, that was worth the wait.” Fury laughed into the phone.
“Nick, let me just say this to you, very clearly: come get your freaking cat aliens off of this planet before they turn themselves into super flerkens and try to take over the world. Okay?” Maria growled into the phone and Fury laughed again.
“Yeah, it’s very funny.” Maria scolded like a mom and Kamala tried to hide her laughter.
“I mean, well now, I kind of want to see if they do start a rebellion and try to take over the earth by making themselves the most super powered flerkens of al time and are secretly just hiding on earth as cats."
“Yeah, that sounds like a really good time for all of us.” Maria pulled the phone from her ear and huffed into it.
“Actually, I would think a super savvy and high up person at Stark would want to keep some flerken around and see how they could be useful for future projects.” Fury half suggested.
“That’s not really my thing.” Maria said giving side eye to no one but Kamala caught it.
“Ha!” Fury laughed at her dig to him.
“You are going to come clean this mess up and not just leave it to fester for 30 years right?” Maria clarified directly.
“I don’t know, you’re right there, you’re good at cleaning up my messes.” Fury laughed to himself.
“I retired from that job.” Maria reminded.
“Yeah…. I heard that one before, so we’ll see about that.” Fury mumbled to himself as she hung up the phone and Maria just stared at Kamala as the stood in the entrance to her office looking at all the flerkens making themselves at home.
“So, he’s probably not coming, huh?” Kamala bit her bottom lip.
Maria just sighed to herself.
“Well…. if you had adopted that fake simulation dog it would probably could have cleaned up this mess real fast.” Kamala laughed at her joke and Maria couldn’t help but laugh too.
Maria navigated around the flerkens in her office and sat down at her desk, Kamala sat down across from her and she was now carrying a flerken in one hand.
“Can I keep this one?” Kamala asked holding up and brown and black stripped flerken.
“Uhhh…” Maria made a face. “I am not the authority on who can keep alien species on their person.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Kamala smirked.
A tortoise shell colored looking flerken crawled onto Maria’s desk. It was mostly black, with but it had a large orange patch right between its ears going back down the side of is head for a bit and stopping at the neck. It had big bright yellow eyes, and the fur down its back was a mix of black and bright orange. Maria was particularly sensitive to cats with a mix of black and orange fur, but she never knew why. This one was especially scraggily looking, which drew her to it even more.
Maria held her hand out to the flerken and it came forward and rubbed its head against her hand and purred just like a cat.
“I mean, even Fury had a flerken for a long time and no even knew.” Kamala reminded and Maria smiled to herself as she pet the flerken.
“That’s true.” Maria nodded trying to suppress a smile as warmed up to the flerken on her desk and ignored all the other roaming around.
“What would you name it?” Kamala asked as she cuddled her flerken in her arms.
“October.” Maria mumbled to herself.
“Aww because it’s black and orange?” Kamala grinned because she loved that name. Maria smirked to herself and nodded, but really it was Natasha’s secret code name at SHIELD.
“That’s cute.” Kamala smirked.
“Okay, and what about you?”
“I get to keep one!?” Kamala was ecstatic.
“I mean, if I can’t tell you that you can keep one, then I’m also not the authority to tell you that you can’t keep one, you know what I mean?” Maria shrugged.
“I know exactly what you mean.” Kamala nodded. “I think I will name him…sloth.” Kamala smiled.
“Sloth?” Maria questioned.
“Fury named his Goose….”
“Well, the woman who had Goose before Captain Marvel and Fury…” Maria started to explain but stopped herself. “I always thought it was a Top Gun reference.” Maria mumbled to herself.
“What’s Top Gun?” Kamala asked and Maria paused and bit her bottom lip.
“Can you just add that to your running list of things to look into for yourself.”
“Got it.” Kamala said as she pulled out her phone and added Top Gun to a list in her iPhone notes of things that came up in conversations with Maria that she needed clarification on. The list also included:
Furby
Crossfire (game not tv show)
The Pagemaster
Alien
Aliens
Rainbow sand art
Moon shoes
Practical Magic
Enron
The Fugitive
Fargo (movie not place or tv show)
Short Circuit
Masters of the Universe
Ecto Cooler
Into Thin Air (book)
Journey to the Ants (book)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (book)
The West Wing (TV show)
Maria scraped right between the ears on October’s head and he purred loudly and nuzzled her arm. God, Maria was turning into Fury, wasn’t she? Well, maybe just a little.