Chapter Text
It’s not easy to fight without someone having her back, and she spends far more time peeking around corners and ducking gunfire than she’d like, but she finally makes it to the central room. The alien that had been outside snaps their jaws at her before sneering.
“You are weak . What can a single human do?”
“You must never have met a mother before.” Maria practically growls. “There is nothing that I can’t do to save my baby.”
“You are foolish to believe that you can save anyone . This world will burn, just as ours did, and it shall be justice . You deserve this.”
“We did nothing to you. We prevented a slaughter from happening in front of our eyes. The Kree were killing children !”
“And the Skrulls killed our children! It is equivalent exchange now.”
“We’re not responsible for what the Skrulls did afterward, and they weren’t the ones that we rescued, I can guarantee that. We had good people that we saved that day, ones that laid down their lives to help others.”
“Then that makes your crimes even worse . If you believe them to be good people and they come to murder us, what does that make you ?”
Maria makes a frustrated noise. “Let’s say you’re right and we — Carol, Fury, and I, because there were no other humans involved in this — accidentally and unknowingly saved the lives of some Skrulls that went off and wreaked havoc on your planet. How is that the fault of all humans? You showed up here to wipe us all out as if every person down there, every kid, every animal, every plant, everything was at fault, and I’m supposed to believe that you’re the good guys in this situation? To hell with you.”
In her peripheral vision, an arm moves, and a weapon aims. It’s so reminiscent of the drills she does with S.W.O.R.D. that she automatically drops into quick-time, falling into a roll to avoid being hit. It brings her right to the base of some sort of podium that she uses for cover and then lifts to throw at two more attackers coming from behind. Her biceps threaten to spasm under the heavy load, but she manages to block them, knocking one out entirely while another lets out a strange gurgling howl.
The sound catches her off guard, making her brow furrow even as she searches for a way to take out the alien leader and those gargantuan mouths. She slams into yet another assailant, this time completely on accident, and goes sprawling across the floor. She yelps in pain, the back of her skull throbbing where it hit the ground, and looks up at the approaching alien fearfully.
For a moment, she can’t even move, and then suddenly she finds herself in an army crawl, then rolling towards the corridor that she came from, before finally getting back onto her feet. Frantically, she grabs a weapon from one of the guards she’d knocked out earlier and shoots at the one that’s closing in on her. It takes only two tries to blow its head off.
She stares at the energy gun in her hands, slightly horrified, before jumping back into the fray.
By the time she makes it back to the main deck, though, she is no longer alone. The room is awash in golden light, and her heart leaps at the sight. An all-too-familiar woman hovers in the middle, shooting bursts of energy from her fists. The enemy leader writhes under the force of the attack.
This should feel cruel, Maria thinks. I should feel bad, but I really don’t. Nobody gets to hurt the people I love and get away with it. I’d tear the whole world down for them. She takes aim and fires.
Carol wears down one head and Maria manages the other, sometimes alternating their blasts and sometimes firing in tandem. The alien shrieks and howls before its voice comes to a gurgling halt, and they breathe a sigh of relief. They watch it for several more seconds before Maria practically leaps into Carol’s arms.
“You’re okay? Tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.” Carol laughs at Maria’s switch from absolute badass mode to her frantic and compassionate self.
“You’re not lying to me?”
“I would never.”
“ That’s a lie.”
Their lips meet for a long moment, and then they look around them. The ship must be on autopilot because it’s still maintaining its position. Which means…
“We’ve got to see if this thing is planning on dropping a nuke or something,” Carol mutters.
“Roger that,” Maria says, then presses the button on her radio. “Monica, you there?”
“Mom! What happened? You weren’t replying!”
“Sorry, sweetheart, turns out that you can’t do a lot of that when you’re being attacked by aliens in person. It’s easier from a plane.”
“You’re not hurt or anything?”
“I’m fine.” She’s got some scrapes and bruises, sure, and a nasty burn on her arm, but she’ll survive. She walks while she talks, searching for any screens or documents that might tip her off as to the ship’s intentions. “Right now, we’ve got to get this thing deactivated.”
“Mom, what if I… can you come back to the plane?”
“What? Why?”
“Because I think that I absorbed the energy from the ship, so I can probably use that to move the ship somewhere safe. We’ll still have to take it down or whatever, but at least it won’t be near the city.”
“Then land the plane and get up here.”
“But mom! You’ll be stuck up there!”
“No she won’t.” Carol’s voice chimes in. “I can carry her down when we’re ready, you know that.”
“But you’re already tired, Aunt Carol.”
“Then you can carry me down, Monica.”
“It’s too dangerous!”
“Says the girl who stole a jet?”
They all go quiet for a second at that, and then break into laughter.
“Okay, okay. I’ll be up in a sec!”
“This better not be the ‘in a sec’ that you say when I call you down for dinner!”
“No, ma’am!”
Maria and Carol continue scouring the alien ship for any indication as to its purpose, and Monica manages to use her powers to trigger the thrusters and fly the ship over to the ocean, so at the very least, it won’t crash into a skyscraper if it falls out of the sky. There’s still no clue as to what the end goal was by the time that the girl makes it indoors, and Carol has started talking about potentially dragging the whole thing up into the atmosphere and letting it burn up, just in case.
The sight of them, after all the upheaval, suddenly has Monica tearing up. She races over to her mother, burying her face in Maria’s shirt. Sobs wrack through her, and the two women share a glance before enclosing her gently in their arms.
Children shouldn’t have the burden of saving the world, Maria thinks heavily. That’s our job. And with weird cosmic energy changes to boot? This should never have happened. We shouldn’t have let it. She can see the same sentiment in Carol’s eyes.
“We’re okay, we’re all fine,” Maria murmurs. “You did well, baby.”
“You kicked ass out there,” Carol agrees. “Saved us too. We’re proud of you.”
“And we’re almost done, okay? This is the last thing for us to figure out, and then we can go home.”
Monica nods. Home, that sounds nice. I’m going to sleep for three hundred years and not think about weird aliens or powers or even planes for a long while.
Finding out that there is a self-destruct button on board — not even an automated program! — that hasn’t been pressed is massively anti-climactic, but also somehow terribly sad. This alien race had lost everything, and without being able to lash out at their attackers, had reached back to try to hurt the only people fragile enough to point a finger at. And they still lost. They were willing to lose their lives in the struggle just to take out some nameless faces and hope for some amount of vindication, and…
Carol sighs, a sensation halfway between guilt and grief squeezing in under her ribs. What else has she been indirectly responsible for?
They don’t have to ponder it long. Fury shows up in a plane small enough to land on the outer deck and takes charge of the ship. S.W.O.R.D. will maintain full rights to it, but they trust Fury enough to keep it safe and out of reach until they’re ready to tackle it. Maria would do it herself, but looking at her little family, she simply doesn’t have the energy. They need her now, far more than anyone else.
Carol carries them both back down to the car waiting for them back at shore. Maria tucks herself into her partner’s side, heart rate finally returning to something resembling normalcy. Monica is exhausted enough that she passes out almost as soon as she sits down. They head home, all more than ready for some rest. The bed is big enough for three, and it calls to them desperately.
It’s the middle of the night when Maria wakes. Monica is still fast asleep, but Carol’s side of the bed is empty, and worry fills her. She quietly pulls herself to her feet, body still aching from the fight, arm stinging from where she forgot to ice it. She tiptoes down the stairs and spots Carol standing on the back porch, staring out at the stars. Maria comes up behind her and wraps her arms around the other woman, tucking her chin over Carol’s shoulder.
“Hey. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Just thinking.”
“About?”
“About what else is out there. Who else got hurt because I —”
“You know this wasn’t your fault,” Maria interrupts softly. “You’re not responsible for the actions of other people. If they chose to be cruel to others, that’s on them.”
“I helped them live. And now others are dead.”
Maria feels the jaw against her cheek tense the way it always does when Carol is upset, so she detaches herself so she can come around to face her lover. She places a gentle hand on Carol’s cheek, thumbing at the skin that no longer ages.
“Tell me, would you have been able to watch them die?”
Carol flinches. Of course she couldn’t have, she knows that. It doesn’t make this easier.
“And if you hadn’t tried to save the Skrulls, you wouldn’t have gotten your memories back either. Then where would I be, hmm? Where would we be?” Maria’s voice is so sad, so endlessly kind.
Carol’s breath hitches. “No.” It sounds like a whimper. “No, please, don’t say that.”
“Then stop thinking about it. You did what you felt was best. And now you’re home with me.”
The hand on Carol’s face slips to the back of the neck and Maria draws her into a gentle kiss. She cannot bear her lover’s burden. All she can hope to do is ease it. Despite what has happened, she still believes that Carol did the right thing. She always does, Maria has faith in that.
When they part, Carol wears a strangely resolute expression.
Maria nearly laughs.
Maria nearly cries.
“You’re going back out there, aren’t you.” It’s not a question. “You’ve got people to save the whole universe through —”
“— and I’ll always have a home with you.” Carol cuts her off. “Besides, I can’t leave just yet. Monica’s just come into some crazy powers that we need to figure out, make sure she’s not a danger to herself or anyone else.”
“They look a lot like yours.”
“They might be. We’ll find out. And yeah, I might have to hop off-world for a bit here and there, but I’m not leaving, I promise. Not anymore.”
Maria smiles. For all that they had tried to get the Air Force to let them out into the sky to fight the good fight, Carol has now been deployed into the vast expanse of space. She protects a planet that told her that she had no place in war, and they’d all be dead without her.
“We should go back inside,” she says warmly, grabbing Carol’s hand and kissing the back of it.
“I could do with a little rest.” Carol looks up at the stars one more time, then towards the house, and finally smiles right back at Maria. “It’s good to be home.”