Chapter Text
Carol's fourteen when she sees a kaiju attack Seattle. She's with her family, visiting an old aunt. It's the third one, but she can't be sure, now. The memory is weak.
She's sixteen when she sees her first jaeger. She's sixteen when she falls in love with metal and fire. She's sixteen when she decides that piloting a jaeger is all she wants to do. She's read the stories and watched every interview and she knows -- she's more than cut out for it.
Carol Danvers is eighteen when she leaves home and joins the program. She easily out-lasts the others in every challenge, beats them at every match, out-fights every last one of them, until Nick Fury hand-fucking-picks her to co-pilot one of his Jaegers.
Carol is twenty when Fury brings her on board. And a week later, she meets Steve Rogers.
She doesn't understand, at first, what's so terrifying about the Drift. Everyone talks about it, scared of it, before they've experienced it themselves. The first few days after she's on the base, she hasn't met anyone she's Drift compatible with yet. And no one will tell her when she's supposed to. Fury brushes her off, orders her back to her room or to training. And she should know better, really -- the world is falling apart around them. Carol needs to blow off some steam, get this Drift shit out of her system, just for a while.
She hits the gym, goes at the bag for twenty minutes before it makes a wide swing and she catches it. Someone whistles from the back of the room.
"That's pretty damn impressive." Carol turns on her heel and catches a beautiful hunk of man walking toward her, his hands coming together in a condescending slow-clap. "Nice work."
"Can I help you?"
"Steve Rogers. I heard we had some new recruits. Just thought I'd see what that academy of yours was spitting out these days."
Carol balks. She's heard stories about Steve Rogers. Co-pilot of the Queen Albatross, seven kaiju kills since he joined up. She looks at her gloved hands and feels small. Steve extends one of his own. She takes it.
"Feel up to a match?"
"With you?"
He deadpans, "No, I wanted to watch you wrestle the bag for another hour. Yeah, me. Unless--" He pauses as he turns around, throwing a grin over his shoulder. "--you don't think you're up to it." Carol nearly growls, grinning honey slow and following him out onto the mat.
Carol wins the match, which seems to take Steve by surprise, before his face splits in a grin and he has his hands around her shoulders. "Did you feel that? You did, didn't you?"
"I--"
"We gotta talk to Hill. Right now." Steve drags her out of the gym and down a series of halls she's never been through before, shoving the other rangers out of the way before stopping in front of a door twice as big as the one that opens to Carol's own room. "Lieutenant! Lieutenant Hill, we--" The door swings open, revealing a severe woman with short, dark hair. Carol swallows.
"Yes, Rogers."
"Lieutenant Hill, I've found my co-pilot."
Hill looks Carol up and down, inviting them into her quarters. She does a quick search of Carol's name and turns back to them. "Miss Danvers hasn't completed her preparations, Rogers."
"When she's done, then. She'll be my co-pilot."
"Fortunately, that's not for you to decide." Hill sits in her desk chair, brushing some of the holograms at her desk aside. "But I will put Miss Danvers's file at the top of the stack, for when that moment comes, if you'd like."
"Yes, ma'am, I would."
"Very good." Hill looks away from them. "You're dismissed."
The preparations include a lot of things Carol doesn't have the patience for. There's meditation and breathing control and she already took these classes, but Fury watches them with a solitary eye, the other covered by a smooth, dark piece of metal. Carol knows if she complains, if she sets one finger out of line, she's going back to Boston, back to the academy, back to whatever nowhere life she had before this.
So she blows the other rangers out of the water.
Carol is twenty when she meets Steve Rogers. She's twenty-one when she climbs in their Jaeger, a beauty called Nomad, and Drifts with him for the very first time.
"Neural handshake holding strong." Sitwell's voice hits Carol's ears as she falls out of the Drift, gasping and sputtering for breath. "Someone tell Barton he owes me fifty bucks."
"First one's tough," Steve says, looking over with a grin. "But you did good."
"Danvers." Marshall Fury's voice sounds over the speakers. "Talk to me."
"Thought you said this was gonna be hard, sir."
Fury huffs over the speaker. "Don't get ahead of yourself, Danvers." Then, "Good work, you two. Show us what you can do.
Nomad hums almost happily under Carol's feet, and she can feel every movement along every nerve, feel Steve thrumming in her veins and his memories in her head. Their arms, legs, hands, minds move together and Carol feels like she could fly if you asked her to. They shake out Nomad's shoulders, walk backwards, forward, load and unload their weapons. They move in perfect, elegant harmony. Carol has never felt so at ease in all her life.
Finally, she has found the place she is meant to be.
"Up, up, up!" Steve is brutally shaking Carol awake from her bunk. "We got a category three, let's move that ass, Danvers!" Carol blinks and throws herself out of bed and onto the floor, dressing in a flurry. Her stomach is in violent, jagged knots, cutting up her insides and threatening to spill out. They tumble into the elevator. Steve puts an arm around her. "You're gonna be fine."
"We have a category three kaiju approaching San Francisco Bay. Category three, codenamed Redskull." Sitwell's voice sounds over the intercom, shaking Carol to her core. "Angelfish is in position. Nomad, you may proceed."
"Hey." Carol looks over and Steve is beaming. "You got this. You've trained for this. You're ready for this."
Initiating neural handshake.
"Get ready, Carol."
Memories flood her mind. The park by her house when she was a kid, driving across the country, school, her father, her brothers, her aunt's house in Seattle, watching the city burn to the ground, her mother shouting, her first day at the academy, her first kiss, seeing Nomad for the first time and Queen Albatross -- Steve's memories flood in alongside her own. A sickly boy, orphaned and trying to stay strong, growing up and growing big and hitchhiking across the country, seeing the first kaiju land in San Francisco, touching the swift, cool metal of the Queen's foot, piloting it with Sam, watching Sam move through the ranks, saying goodbye to Sam, saying hello to Carol--
"Neural handshake holding strong. You're ready to drop."
Nomad's head drops down and Carol feels her body shake. She's going to be sick in her helmet, she--
"Carol." Steve's voice brings her back. "You can do this." She looks at him. "We can do this."
The next forty-five minutes are a blur. Angelfish has its crossbow aimed, but ammo is running low. Carol can here one of the pilots, Barton, over her intercom, swearing up a storm. His wife and co-pilot, Morse, isn't any better.
"Fuckin' waste of fuckin' ammu-fucking-nition, I fucking--" Redskull finally staggers, and Steve and Carol move in, Nomad's shoulder cannons charged. Angelfish's crossbow retracts, fists curled. As Nomad brings it down, Angelfish crushes the back of its skull.
Carol can see the signatures for the kaiju's blood on her screen. Angelfish rattles next to her and she and Steve extend a hand, keeping it steady.
"You're all good, let's head back in." Sitwell orders the evac and they head back to base. Carol's on edge, tasting blood in her mouth where she's bitten her cheek.
"Go easier on yourself next time, yeah?" Steve's voice is a song in her ear and she almost weeps. "You did really good. I'm serious." Carol nods. "We'll get a beer after this. Put it on Barton's tab."
"Yeah, I heard that, Rogers." Barton's tired voice sounds over the comm. "Hear that babe? He's trying to bankrupt us."
Morse laughs weakly. "Cute."
Steve buys Carol a couple beers after, and they sit in a comfortable silence, only talking to make fun of a table of jaeger fans. She can see their fight on the news, but they're not doing any press tonight. Tomorrow, they'll be out, Ranger uniforms on, smiling and waving. But tonight, it's just them and a couple glasses between them. Steve reaches out and covers Carol's hand with his own, and she knows she's going to be just fine.
"Why did Sam leave the program?"
"He didn't really leave, he just...moved up. He was good at fighting, you know. Really good. Me and Sam, we were good together. Drifting for us was like surfing. You ever surfed?" Carol shakes her head. "Me and Sam used to go. He's in New York, monitoring the Atlantic now, you know that? Says there's no surfing. No kaijus over there either. But the government's so spooked now, you know. He wanted to be Air Force. Always did, when we were kids. I dunno, he was just made to be in charge I guess." Steve leans back, downing his beer. "He made the right choice. You know, me...I don't...I don't have much, I guess. Sam's got a great big family, he needs to be there for them when this is over."
Carol nods, staring into the foam. "You think it'll be over?"
Steve looks at the bottom of his glass, silent for a while. Finally, he looks up at her, and his smile is sad and tired. "Yeah," he says. "I think it will."