She’d saved billions of lives in the last twenty years.
Billions.
People used billions as an expression, an exaggeration, a figure so far-fetched that it was more metaphor than number.
But it wasn’t a metaphor for her.
It was reality.
Billions of lives.
But when it came down to it, she couldn’t save the two that mattered most to her in the entire multiverse.
Nebula told her, during one of those quieter nights - all the nights were quiet, actually, after…. after - that the reason Tony broke so hard was because it took the kid, the spider boy, so long to disappear.
He’d known what was happening, and he’d fought it, and he’d begged.
She’d heard - and seen - similar things on other planets.
She knew that others had gone much quicker.
From stories and from personal experience.
She wondered why she’d lived, and she wondered, worse, if Maria and Monica had known, too. Had fought, had cried, had begged, like Peter Parker had.
Or, she wondered, if they’d gone just like that. Not knowing what was happening. Peaceful, almost.
She didn’t know which she couldn’t bear worse, but she had nightmares about both.
When she slept at all.
She barely slept anymore.
She turned Natasha on to peanut butter sandwiches, though, and it looked like the younger woman needed them.
They were what kept her going during those long deployments out saving billions.
A little taste of home, of simplicity, of Maria laughing when Carol swiped the butter knife too hard and tore right through the bread in a mess of peanut buttery goo.
She encouraged Nat to cut the bread diagonally, to honor Fury.
Her own little tribute to the one man she missed more than anyone other than her… her… it didn’t matter what anyone called them.
Her wife, her daughter. Her family.
She was going to kill Thanos.
But not before he could reverse it.
It turned out Thanos didn’t reverse it.
An unassuming scientist who never wanted to hurt anyone did the trick, and she found it extremely appropriate.
But she didn’t believe it until the hoards of people started coming back, started streaming back into life, into their lives, like stitches for her internal bruising that she would show absolutely no one, because there was still a battle to be won.
She had to get to the boy.
The boy whose death had broken Tony Stark.
The boy who’d known he was dying, disappearing, and fought it, begged.
Like she’d wondered, over and over, torture and torture, if Maria and Monica had known, had felt it, too.
But when she flew over that boy - the boy whose mask was ripped off, whose eyes were filled with terror of battle, of full-out war that he was too young to see, curled nearly fetal around the gauntlet, battered but not quite broken - she couldn’t help but smile.
“Hey, Peter Parker.” He could barely speak - and she knew just from looking at him, from the stories she’d heard, that his lack of ability to words was part battle and part endearing small trans boy awkwardness and awe - and she watched as her tone, her cool confidence, soothed him. Watched him breathe, watched him grateful to give her the gauntlet, almost apologetic that he was passing the danger off to her.
He was a sweet child.
All she wanted, now, was to finish this so she could find her own child.
Monica was older now - so much older - she’d been so busy with Thanos’s ramping up in the years before… it… that she hadn’t seen much of her growth. Not nearly enough, not ever.
And even though Maria dated and loved other women, and she slept with and cared for other women - and neither were ever jealous because that was what they’d agreed to, all those years ago, because their love would last through everything, their love was indestructible, even by Infinity Stones - she never could manage to stop feeling guilty about Monica.
Because Maria chose to stay married, if poly, to a woman who was never home.
Monica hadn’t chosen who her mothers would be.
It wasn’t fair.
None of it was fair.
She had to see her.
Because as long as she’d gone, she’d never gone five years. Not even close.
Ever.
It had been the five longest years of her life, these five years without.
But this boy, this Peter Parker, was back. And there was still a spark in his eyes that death hadn’t killed.
She needed to see her daughter.
All her insides bled when the man who’d destroyed everything hit her with the full force of a stone, but she flew right back. She made sure. She made sure Tony could do what he needed to do.
It needed to be him.
Something poetic, something about avenging the earth.
She was glad to pass on her name to him, to this ragtag group.
Now to save Natasha.
Red Skull had nothing on her. The laws of the universe had nothing on her.
Then to see her daughter. Her wife.
There was time between the reunion and the funeral.
Louisiana had never been so close, but it had never felt so far.
They exchanged absolutely no words, because they didn’t need any.
She nearly scalded Maria with her hands, burning with emotion. With need, with desperation to hold her closer, to bring her inside her so they could never be separate again, to collect all the pieces of her that had been broken and never let them go.
She kissed every bit of Maria’s skin she could find, too frantic to be sexual, not yet, and she yelped when Maria took her face between her palms, her hands slipping behind her head into an abundant lack of hair that made Maria even more breathless, and kissed her harder than any reunion had ever warranted.
There was no space between their bodies when Monica came into the room and cleared her throat. Her walkman - she was insistently old-fashioned, something about staying connected to her moms - was in her hand, her headphones resting on her collarbones.
She was older and she had never been so young.
Her eyes were wider than they’d ever been and her eyes were older than Carol had ever seen them.
“Ma,” she murmured, and she sprinted.
It wasn’t a huge space, so she didn’t have too much space to gather speed.
But she still hit Carol’s body with her own at a force that took even Carol’s breath away, and neither of them would later be able to say who started sobbing first.
It might have been Maria, but more likely it was Carol. Or Monica. Or all three.
“I love you, kiddo, I love you, I love you, I love you,” Carol kept muttering, kissing her daughter’s face, her hair, stopping every now and then to pull back, to make sure she was real, that she wasn’t one of the many illusions she’d seen over the years, courtesy of being so far from home, so damn lonely.
But no. Her face was definitely older in ways Carol had never pictured, her body matured in ways Carol had definitely avoided thinking about, because how dare children get older like that.
“I love you, kiddo,” she choked, and Maria settled in next to both of them, holding her daughter and her wife, all of them clinging to each other, hard and desperate and full of promise.
“You know I’m nearly thirty,” Monica laughed, her hands running through Carol’s haircut like her mother’s were - and so not like her mother’s were - and it was only then that Carol took in her NASA shirt.
Not a novelty item.
Something they only gave astronauts.
Her entire body racked with a fresh wave of tears, and she let them fall, because she was, finally and truly, home.