Monica walks into the briefing room and immediately skids to a halt when she sees who is in the room, or rather, one particular blonde dressed in a familiar blue and red uniform.
Carol turns to look at her, offering her a nervous smile. But it only makes Monica’s chest tighten, before anger slowly starts to seep through her bones.
Her thoughts are interrupted by Fury, who greets her loudly and pointedly. “Captain Rambeau, thank you for joining us.”
Monica’s gaze roams around the room, noting the other familiar faces in the room - Darcy, and a few other SHIELD agents she had once served with. But her gaze inevitably slips back to Carol Danvers.
Something about seeing Carol in that suit, the same suit that she had selected the colours for, the suit that represented their relationship, but also fundamentally the same suit that her captors forced upon her. The same captors that had taken Carol away from her and her mom, and something in Monica snaps.
She takes a step backwards. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t. This was a mistake. I didn't know she was going to be here,” she says, her own words sounding foreign to her. She sees the confusion on Sam and Bucky’s faces, and the slow realization on Darcy’s face, as she no doubt must have remembered her less than warm reaction to Carol’s name months ago. To his credit, Fury looks disappointed but understanding.
Carol takes a few steps forward, a pleading expression on her face. “Monica, please - “
“No.”
Monica can’t help the venom and anger that bleeds into her mono-sylllable answer.
But stubbornness is one of Carol’s greatest traits. She fights back the hurt clearly displayed on her face, and tries again. “L.T., please, just hear me out.”
That elicits a reaction from Monica, though probably not the one Carol had hoped for. Within seconds, Monica is in front of Carol. She jabs a finger towards the blonde. “No,” she growls coldly, “you don’t get to call me that, not anymore.”
Carol flinches, and Monica takes a sick pleasure from that. Carol’s throat bobs, and she takes a deep breath before explaining. “This isn’t about me, this is about people who need help. They need your help - “
“Why would they need my help? They have your help, don’t they? Isn’t that what you do? Fly off across the galaxies and help people? Go on, why don’t you go?” Monica snaps at her.
She knows she’s being unfair, but what feels like a lifetime of resentment bubbles up, and she can’t be bothered to fight it. Being in front of Carol seems to deprive Monica of all sense of logic, reason, calm, and professionalism. She doesn’t care that she’s airing their dirty laundry in front of everyone, doesn’t care what they think, what an awkward situation she’s making, but right now, all that matters to her is making Carol hurt.
Carol is stunned into silence, and Monica goes on the offensive. “Why are you even here? There’s nothing here for you here.”
There’s no one for you here, Monica thinks. Another pang of grief strikes her. Mom isn’t here anymore.
Carol shakes her head. “That’s not true, Mon, and you know it,” she says hoarsely. As Monica continues to stare angrily at her, Carol drags a hand over her face in frustration. “Look, if you can’t forgive me, that’s okay. But please, I made a promise to protect - “
That sends Monica spiralling over the ledge she’s already teetering on.
“Promise?” Monica repeats incredulously, almost bordering on mockery. “Your promises don’t mean a thing. Do you remember what you promised Mom? What you promised me?”
At that moment, everyone in the room realizes what was going on - what was the real relationship between the two women, and Monica’s mother. Darcy’s jaw drops.
Carol looks stricken, and it seems to the others that her Captain Marvel persona has utterly cracked, revealing only the tortured woman who’s lost almost everything. “L.T., I tried,” her voice cracks, “I swear - “
Whatever tenuous grip Monica had on her patience snaps, and she lunges forward, shoving Carol backwards, sending her stumbling back. “All those years you were gone, she worried about you! She waited on you! But you abandoned her! You left her! I was gone, and you left her alone! Fuck! She died alone, she had to suffer alone, I - “ her voice cracks, and she claps a hand over her mouth, as all her grief and trauma rushes to the surface. “She said you were the best person she ever knew. But I don’t see that person. I don’t know that person. You weren’t even half the person she deserved.”
Even as the words spill out, Monica realizes that she’s crossed the line.
It seems to her that all the fire has gone out of Carol. Her shoulders slump, and her brown eyes are shuttered and dull.
Monica is contemplating whether to apologize, when Carol takes one step forward. She huffs out a small bitter laugh. “You’re right,” she says quietly, and Monica is taken aback by the admission. “I was never deserving of Maria, and I always knew that. It was the greatest gift to have loved her, and been loved in return. And I’m always going to regret letting her down, letting you down.” She pauses and sucks in a deep breath, now desperately keeping her tears at bay. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Before Monica can register a response, Carol turns to Fury. “Forget what I said earlier, I’ll handle this alone.”
Fury frowns. “No, you need back-up - “
“I’ll be fine,” Carol interrupts him firmly. She turns to face Monica. “I’m sorry for wasting your time, Monica.”
Monica recognizes a dismissal when she sees one. She nods coolly at Carol, then turns to Fury, throwing him a casual salute. "Then I'll take my leave Director," she says shortly, before turning to leave the room. As she nears the door, she hears Carol telling Fury "it's okay, Fury, let her go."
“Hey kid,” Fury greets her as he joins her in the gym.
Monica turns to him, feeling a pang of guilt for ruining his briefing and bringing personal matters into the workplace. “Hi Uncle Nick.”
He hums softly, and looks at the punching bag, then the redness on Monica’s knuckles. Monica flexes her hands, and moves to hide them from his view.
“If you’re here to defend Carol, please don’t - “
Fury folds his hands in front of him, and gives her a wry look. “Look, you know I try not to make a habit of getting in the way of your family matters, but I’ve know you both too long not to say my piece, okay?”
Monica sighs heavily but nods.
"C'mon, let's sit," Fury gestures at the wall, then slides down it, stretching his legs out with a satisfied sigh. Monica sits down next to him. After a short moment, Fury turns to face Monica. “For the record, I’m the one who asked for you to be here, not Danvers,” he says quietly.
Monica frowns. “Why do you need me?”
“She can’t do this alone. We’re going up against the Kree, and they’ve developed new weapons that can take her on, that can cause her a good deal of damage.” His good eye bores into Monica. “She needs you, we need you.”
Monica sighs and presses the palm of her hands against her temples. “Even looking at her just makes me so angry.”
Fury’s mouth twists in sympathy. “I know it’s tough. But have you even spoken to her, and I mean really spoken to her since you got back?
Monica shakes her head, her lip curling in disdain. “There’s nothing to say. It’s not like she’s been around for the last decade either.”
Fury shifts away from the wall to fully face Monica, looking slightly surprised. “You didn’t know.”
“Don’t know what?” Monica asks.
“From what I’ve been told, Carol was here on Earth with Maria, for a long time.”
Monica blinks, not understanding.
“Carol stayed on Earth for at least three years after the Snap,” Fury says quietly, as the truth sinks in for Monica. “She only left after your mom passed away.”
Monica feels like a ten ton brick just hit her. Dazed, she shakes her head. “She was here? Mom wasn’t alone?”
Fury shakes his head once, and for the first time, Monica can see the palpable grief on the older man’s face. She’s not the only one who lost someone dear to her, after all. He ducks his head, catching her gaze. “Monica. You may have lost your mom, but don’t forget you still have someone who loves you very much. Please, just talk to her.”
Despite Fury’s intervention, Monica continues to stubbornly maintain only a strictly professional working relationship with Carol, not speaking to her unless absolutely necessary to get the job done.
But something shifts in Monica towards the end of the mission, when she finds herself staring down the barrel of a Kree blaster. Too tired and slow to react, Monica can only raise her arms to try and protect herself, when she finds herself suddenly and violently knocked out of the way.
Sprawled on the floor, she raises her head to see the Kree fly through the air, courtesy of a photon blast.
"Thanks Car - "
Monica's words fail her, and her mouth snaps closed when she sees Carol. She had turned around expecting to see Carol standing there, cockily smiling, instead, Carol is swaying on her feet, one hand clapped over her chest.
Blue blood is pouring from the gaping hole in her chest, trickling past her fingers.
"Ma!"
Monica rushes to her, just as Carol slumps to her knees. She catches Carol before she keels over, and slowly lowers her to the ground. Carol's face twists in pain as Monica puts one hand over Carol's own hand clapped over the blaster wound. With her other hand, she taps her comms. “I need an extract, and a fucking medic!”
“Copy that,” Fury replies over the comms.
With help on the way, Monica turns back to Carol, who is turning pale as a sheet, as blood gushes out of her. Monica shifts Carol's increasingly limp hands out of the way, and presses down on the wound. “Hold on, Ma.”
Later that evening, Monica pokes her head into the infirmary where Carol had been staying since they returned from the mission, but the bed is empty.
She spends another thirty minutes searching the Compound, before she looks through the windows at the stars, and she claps a hand over her face in exasperation.
There’s one place where Carol will always be when things got tough, or she needed to clear her head.
Monica knocks on the door to the roof before she enters. Slouched on a foldable chair, beer in hand, Carol turns her head slightly to register Monica walking towards her.
“Hey Ma,” Monica greets her softly, and sits down on the chair next to Carol’s.
Carol smiles at her, not missing the term of endearment that Monica had used for the first time in years. “Hey kid,” she answers.
Monica sits down on a chair next to Carol, and she throws a sideways glance at Carol. “You shouldn’t have just disappeared from the infirmary like that. You're supposed to be resting, not walking around, and especially not drinking," she chastises the older woman gently.
Carol’s jaw shifts, and her free hand reaches into her shirt to fiddle at the necklace around her neck. She offers Monica an apologetic smile. “Didn’t mean to freak you out. I just needed to see the stars. Anyway, I'm already feeling better.”
Monica raises an eyebrow skeptically at her. "You were literally bleeding out in my arms less than fourteen hours ago."
Carol's face twists in a grimace. "Yes, I didn't need that reminder, but I heal fast. Just, maybe another hour, please?" She shoots Monica a pleading look, and Monica relents with a sigh.
Monica raises her eyes to the stars, twinkling far above them. She sneaks a surreptitious look at Carol, and sees that the blonde woman has also returned her gaze to the heavens above. Her throat tightens, as she remembers all the times she sat on their front porch with Carol, as the older woman taught her everything she knew about the constellations. But as the stars brought back fond memories of childhood, so did it also bring back memories of staring out alone at the stars, waiting for Carol to come back.
She’s pulled from her memories when she feels a tap on her arm. Carol is holding out a beer to her, a hopeful expression on her face. An olive branch, Monica supposes.
Monica accepts the beer, and checks the label. A small laugh escapes her lips. “Mom’s favourite.”
Carol nods, and raises her bottle to Monica’s. “To Maria.”
“To Mom,” Monica says quietly, clinking her bottle against Carol’s. The two women lapse into a comfortable silence as they take a pull of their beers.
Monica lets her gaze roam over Carol, cataloguing her injuries. Under Carol’s loose shirt, she can see the white bandages poking out, a stark reminder of what Carol had done for Monica earlier in the day.
Feeling Monica’s eyes on her, Carol turns to look at her curiously. Monica fights back the urge to comment on her injuries, and instead points up at the sky. “Do you miss it?”
Carol’s eyebrow quirks up, no doubt clocking that Monica isn’t asking what she really means, but she decides to go along with the flow. She shakes her head emphatically. “No.”
The ease and speed with which Carol answers takes Monica by surprise.
“It’s a lot bigger and more wonderful that good old C-53, isn’t it?” she asks, not even bothering to hide the resentment in her voice.
Carol sighs, and it appears to Monica that for the first time, the blonde looks exhausted. “Nothing ever compared to being here with you and Maria. I dreaded having to leave, every time. Every second I was out there, I wished I was here with the both of you.”
“Then why didn’t you stay?” Monica asks, the hurt bleeding through her tone.
Once again, Carol’s hand goes up to her necklace. She takes another long drag of her beer, then sighs heavily. “For the longest time, I told myself I had to keep going out there because I owed it to the Skrulls, owed it to all the people I had wronged during my years as Vers. Then, I started telling myself I could protect the two of you better by being out there,” she gestures at the stars, then scoffs to herself. “But fat lot of good it did, didn’t it.”
“I thought I was supposed to be out there protecting the both of you, but instead I should have been fucking here!"
She suddenly erupts to her feet, and hurls her beer bottle against the wall, shattering it. Monica flinches, completely taken by surprise.
Carol starts pacing up and down the side of the roof, her anger and grief bubbling up now. Monica watches her, and observes the flash of pain on Carol's face when she stood up, and the way Carol hunches slightly to the right, clearly accommodating for her fresh wound. " Thanos was here, not out there. If I were here, I could have easily defeated him when he didn’t have the stones.”
“You don’t know that - “ Monica says softly, standing up now.
Carol levels a hard look at her. “You know it’s true Monica.”
The younger Rambeau falls silent, and she knows that Carol must see the tacit agreement written on her face. A tiny ragged noise, a mixture of a laugh and a sob, tears from Carol’s throat, and she spins around on her heels. She strides towards the cooler box by the foot of her chair, and pulls out another beer. She swiftly throws back the bottle down in one gulp, opens another one, then resumes her agitated pacing up and down the roof.
Monica just stares at Carol as she paces, and a pang of grief echoes through her chest, as she wonders if these are the same thoughts, same grief, that has tormented Carol over the last five years. And to think that she had added to Carol’s hurt by ignoring her over the last six months since returning….
“Ma.”
That finally gets Carol to stop, though her gaze remains averted.
Monica crosses over to her, and places one hand on her shoulder, gripping it tightly. “You’re the most powerful person I know, but you’re not a god. You couldn’t have known Thanos would have been on Earth.”
But Carol shakes her head, angry tears now welling in her eyes. “I should have known. Almost thirty years of hard work out there meant nothing in a blink of an eye. Thirty years of not being with you, with Maria.”
At this point of time, Monica forgets her own resentment, hurt, and anger. It’s nothing compared to what Carol must have felt, to have rushed home across galaxies, to find her daughter gone.
She steps forward and plucks the beer bottle from her hand, setting it carefully on the ground. She straightens back up and throws her arms around a stunned Carol, shocking her into silence. She holds Carol tightly, and slowly, the older woman’s arms come up to wrap around Monica’s waist.
“No,” Monica says fiercely, tightening her grip around Carol. “What’s important is that you’re here now, and you saved me today, I'd be a goner without you.”
Carol chuckles wetly, and Monica feels her chest rumble with her amusement. “Of course I did. You’re my kid too.”
There’s something in how tender those words are coming from Carol, and Monica realizes how badly she’s missed this, missed Carol, missed having another parent who loved her. She buries her face against Carol’s neck, and Carol holds her all the tighter, her hand rubbing comforting circles on Monica’s back.
After a long moment, Monica pulls back, keeping her arms on Carol’s elbows. She looks Carol in the eyes, and sees that her eyes are red-rimmed too.
“Uncle Nick said you were here with Mom, for years. That you were here with her, when she passed,” Monica says hoarsely, her throat suddenly feeling dry.
Carol looks briefly taken aback, before recovering with a small nod. “I was,” she replies, her voice thick with emotion.
Monica blinks and ducks her head, cheeks burning in shame. “I wasn’t fair to you, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you - “
Carol reaches out, and her thumb lightly brushes the tears away from Monica’s cheek. “You have nothing to be sorry about, L.T. You didn’t know. How could you?”
“Well, if I’d listened to you in the first place instead of yelling at you....”
“That’s okay, I don’t begrudge you for it,” Carol murmurs with a small smile. “Though there’s something you should know.” Taking a step back from Monica, she unfastens the silver necklace around her neck, and places it reverently into Monica’s open palm. Even in the starlight, it’s clear to Monica what they are.
There are three items on the necklace.
She quickly recognizes the golden pendant with her name written on it. The same one that Maria had always worn around her neck. The one that Carol had gifted to Maria when Monica was born.
But it’s the other two items that catch Monica’s attention.
Two matching silver bands.
Her jaw drops open in wonder, and she looks up at Carol, who’s smiling nervously, and tears glittering in her eyes.
“You guys got married?” Monica breathes.
A wistful smile comes over Carol’s face. “We did. It was a small affair, only a few folks there.”
Tears spring unbidden to Monica’s eyes, and Carol claps her hands on her shoulders. “Listen, Monica. I promised your mom a lifetime ago, before you were even born, that I’d always take care of you. I meant it then, but I don’t think I’ve done a good job of that in the last thirty years, and I’m sorry. I intend to keep my promise, for as long as I’m alive, okay? I missed too much of your life, too many milestones, too many graduations, birthdays, Christmases.” She pauses and takes a deep breath, shaking her head once. “I don’t want to miss anymore.“
Monica straightens up and lifts her chin up proudly, staring Carol in the eyes. “Where you go, I go. We’re a team, Ma.”
For a long moment, Carol doesn’t say anything, she just gazes at Monica ever so fondly, as though memorizing every detail of her face. Finally, she leans in and presses her lips to Monica’s forehead.
“Your mom was so proud of you, Mon. And so am I.”