Other than the brief fear that neither of them might be left alive to return home to her daughter, the worst part of the whole outer space war adventure was watching the faces of that skrull family who’d waited when their waiting finally ended. Because there was no question in those faces. There was bittersweetness: they remembered the waiting, and the hardship they’d gone through that the other parent couldn’t possibly understand, but they knew who they were, they all understood who they were to each other and what this homecoming meant.
Looking at them in that moment, Maria stopped seeing them as aliens. They were just people – not intrinsically good or bad people. Just people who loved each other.
And people she envied.
It was the simplicity they shared in that moment which got to her. She wanted to see that expectation and recognition and joy shining in Carol’s eyes when they looked at each other, but it just wasn’t there yet. She knew that Carol might have remembered she cared, or had cared, but that wasn’t the same. Though Carol might have fought and killed her way across the universe before making it home, all that had been incidental. It hadn’t been because she loved what she was coming home to.
Maria had never waited for Monica’s father. She’d told Carol once that though joining the force herself was far from ideal that at least she was flying and at least she wasn’t stuck waiting for someone else to come back to her. But then Monica had changed her perspective on that, just like she had on so many things. She’d turned Maria into someone who was always going to owe someone else a homecoming, whatever the circumstance.
They didn’t get much chance to speak alone, but Maria knew what the tensing of her friend’s shoulders meant even if Carol didn’t yet, so she knew that Carol didn’t remember everything. She was being far too awkward for that. So Maria kept her touches tentative, even after their return to Earth to Monica. And just as she wasn’t sure what Carol was ready to accept, she wasn’t sure yet how much she herself was ready to want. It was all still very uncanny, like having a ghost in your home, and so Maria didn’t know if she was ready to finish waiting yet.
Monica was. She was so excited to keep giving updates on everything Carol remembered about their old lives, all these moments retrieved that she was handing out, the same way she’d once kept sweets in her pockets. All her pockets. And then she’d never remembered to take them out – at least not when it was Maria’s turn on wash day.
“She remembered to call me Captain Trouble,” Monica told her with a beaming smile, and Maria tried to be happy for her little girl – who’d been so much littler when Carol went missing from their lives, who remembered so much despite that.
So she knew that Carol remembered a few of the names she’d had for Monica – did she remember any of the private ones she’d kept just for Maria? Would she remember what they meant? And would she remember that even ‘Best Friend’ had always been used between them with the most knowing and fond of smiles.
And if she did, would she still soften her edges at the thought? Or would the thought of them together be disgusting to her now?
It was hard to make herself believe. Of the two of them, Maria had always been the more cautious. Maybe it was because she had more family approval she still cared about losing. Maybe she’d just seen a bit more, understood a little better, about how infrequently the world ever rewarded something different. So Maria couldn’t believe that Carol, who would have fought the whole world for looking at her or someone she loved in the wrong way, would reject them now.
But the not knowing, the waiting, was driving Maria crazy. And how did you go bringing something like that up to someone who, for all intents and purposes, didn’t know you anymore? Much as Maria had meant what she’d said when she’d called Carol unchanged as the strongest person she’d ever known, Carol had changed, just not in that way. And even if she had remained trapped in a time capsule, ready to re-enter their lives just as she was, Maria was far from the same either.
It had been frightening at first, motherhood, but she’d never needed to doubt she’d have someone by her side all through it. Until that someone had gone.
The idea of having Carol back still made her feel giddy if she thought on it for too long, but it also didn’t seem real. And the fact was that she’d built a life around not having her in it. She had grieved, and it had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done. But she’d also rebuilt something – she’d rebuilt her life - and it didn’t have a gaping hole in the middle waiting to be filled.
So when Carol announced that she was leaving, leaving to write her adopted nation’s wrongs in the vastness of a galaxy Maria had only seen a glimpse of, it was almost a relief.
Almost.
Or, it would have been a relief if she’d ever thought Carol would return home to her again. But she didn’t. She recognised that glint in Carol’s eye – she’d found herself a fight, and she wouldn’t leave until she was dragged out or until the fight had ended. Except that this time it wasn’t some dumb brawl in a bar that Maria could comfortably pull her away from - this was a war. And this wasn’t the same woman who’d started those scraps – this was someone, something else entirely, something that could talk about ending wars without a trace of arrogance in her voice.
Carol made no promises. Maria wasn’t sure if that made things worse or better.
But Maria made one to herself as they watched what had once been her best friend blink out of sight: she wasn’t waiting this time. And she just hoped she wasn’t lying to herself.