InsaneJournal

WHO Carol Danvers (MCU) and Natasha Romanoff (MCU)
WHAT: Meeting and catching up
WHEN: Late Saturday Night
WHERE: Pancho's/Carol's place
RATING: Moderate (drinking and swearing are likely)



It was late. Very late. And Carol missed having a full wall, especially at night when it was hard to sleep and the breeze and just...everything outside distracted her. Carol was used to space. The silence was soothing, and she needed it sometimes to clear her thoughts. Here, there was never any silence like that. But at last in her room, she'd found some piece. That was until last week when Jan and America decided to have their little scuffle which resulted in half of her bedroom wall is destroyed. She'd put a blanket over it for now, but it didn't help much. And it made sleep almost impossible when her mind was going. Thoughts about what Natasha had said about Fury were racing through her mind. If only he'd called her sooner, the arrogant bastard. Or if she'd checked in on Earth once in a while....

It was useless. Carol rolled out of bed and padded down to the bar. She and Peter had done a decent job cleaning up. Tables were put right, shelves stocked again with what booze they had left, and the floor was swept. But there were still a lot of repairs that needed to be finished, and part of the bar was still broken. She sighed and grabbed one of the last bottles of vodka and took a seat at the bar, reaching for a clean mug and pouring the vodka in until it was almost full. Then, she drank, almost downing half of it before wincing a little at the burn and sighing. Shit. Was this what she'd been reduced to?

"Goddamnit, Fury." Deep down, Carol knew it wasn't his fault. None of this was anyone's fault. Except for Thanos. Fuck that guy. But Carol was trying to find someone to blame for everything, and Fury was the easiest.

---


Natasha didn't feel tired. It would have felt strange, to be tired, probably: she had died, after all, which felt like it had happened only moments ago, but what was that Donne quote? One short sleep past, we wake eternal - well, Natasha had made time for a lot of things in her life, but philosophy had never been one of them. Still. It would have felt wrong, to want to crawl into a bed tonight, to want to shut her eyes and get sleep. It would have felt something like ingratitude.

It was late, when she made her way to Pancho's. Probably later than Carol had anticipated she would show up, when she had extended her invitation, but Natasha figured she could at least...swing by. Check it out. Do something other than walk around and think so goddamn much.

But the light was on, and so she went up to the door, rapping lightly with her knuckles before poking her head around it. Her face went soft. So soft. Dying, it seemed, really put in perspective how many of her feelings she had always kept in check. There was no reason not to show things, now. "Carol? Is it okay if I come in?"

---


She'd heard the knock and glanced over her shoulder towards the door as it opened. The woman who poked her head in was definitely beautiful, but also very tired looking and new. "You're Natasha, right?" She forced a sad, tired half-smile and nodded to the stool beside her. "Come in."

Reaching over the bar to grab another mug, Carol filled it halfway and set it down so Natasha could start off and then Carol finished her own and poured again. The bottle was empty after that, but they still had a few more bottles on the shelf. Carol just hoped it was enough to get her drunk.

"Sorry, this isn't me at my best." She stared into the clear liquid, going quiet for a moment. "So um....how'd you die?"

---

Natasha curled her hands around the mug and almost smiled at the familiarity of it. Booze in mugs and the woman across from her. This was Carol, then, a younger Carol, but not by much; Carol when they'd first met, with her longer hair and her confidence that anything and everything could be put right if she just punched it all the way into the sun. A Carol who hadn't yet been trying to hold the rest of the universe together with her own hands while Natasha had tried to hold the weight of the earth in hers. The last time she'd seen her, she had only been a shimmer over a holo, and she still hadn't looked nearly this worn down.

And her blunt directness. That was there, too.

"We went back for Thanos after a couple years. We needed the stones to do it. One of them required a trade." She lifted her shoulders, dropped them back down and repeated the same thing she'd said when Tony had asked when Clint had. "There was no world in which I was going to let it be Barton instead of me. I don't know what came after. But for once in my life, I think I'm going to assume the best. I'm going to assume they got it done. Brought back everyone in the snap. I'm going to assume that they're all happy and living the kind of lives they wanted to live."

She lifted the mug to her mouth and took a deep, long drink. When she set it back down again, she was sort of surprised to see she'd drained it all, but the burn in her throat confirmed it.

"It's a fair trade, I think. In the end."

---

Carol recognized the name Barton, of course. She Clint the Coffee-owner pretty well. He was a fun, carefree guy who had a good sense of humor, but Carol knew it wasn't that Clint Barton that Natasha had been talking about. Her Clint was still in whatever universe they were all supposed to be from. But he was alive because of her. And Carol could understand why Natasha did it. She'd have done the same for Fury. Or Maria. Or, god forbid, Monica. She took a deep drink and didn't wince this time, but realized she was going to have to get another bottle soon. It was starting to warm her insides, but that didn't mean she'd really feel it. Not even close.

"The Soul Stone?" She'd heard about it. Carol was familiar with the Infinity Stones. She knew that one of them had given her the power she had. There were whispers about what it took to gain something like the Soul Stone. A supreme sacrifice. The woman sitting next to her had been that sacrifice, dying to save the universe. Carol couldn't help but smile a little sadly at the notion.

As Nat finished her drink, Carol was already pushing herself up, passing what was left in her mug to Nat and grabbing Nat's empty one as she walked around the bar to grab another, unopened bottle.

"I don't really think trading lives is fair," Carol said as she opened her last bottle of gin and poured it into what was Nat's cup. Standing behind the bar, now, Carol was leaning on her elbows, still looking exhausted as she thought about her words carefully (for once). "I mean. worth it? Yes. But it's not fair." Then Carol sighed and lifted her cup to her lips for a drink.

---

She nodded her agreement - the Soul Stone. It was nice to not have to work from scratch, anyway, to put a name to the thing she'd given up her life for. It'd be nice not to have to couch it in euphemisms with everyone.

"Maybe it depends on the life." It was sweet, that gesture, Carol passing the mug over to her, and she took it without hesitation. She swirled it around a few times, looking down into the depths of the cup, but there was nothing to read. Just clear liquid, straight down to the bottom of a ceramic mug that bore a couple scratches from where someone had swirled a spoon around inside it. "Maybe you're right, though. Maybe it's not fair."

She took another drink and this time, she sipped it instead of draining it. Like she was giving a toast back to her former self, a ghost ship moving along the shore in a world she couldn't reach. "I think I'm glad it was me, though. The rest of them, they have..." She waved a hand, indicating - she wasn't sure what. Families? Someone who cared? Something. "It's okay. I want it to be okay, at least."

---

Carol shook her head at that one, taking a solid drink of gin and then putting the cup down. "No. Well, not in your case, anyway. Thanos, yeah. The fucker deserves to die. There are a lot of people in the universe that deserve to die, but that's not the same as someone trading their lives for something better. You did it willingly for the greater good. And that's just not fucking fair." She didn't sound upset or angry. In fact, Carol's voice was a matter of fact about the whole thing as she spoke, filling her mug again as she'd almost drained it of gin. Yeah, if Nat hadn't realized it already, Carol drank. A lot. Especially when she got on a roll like this one.

Carol stared at Natasha, her eyes unreadable, but her face looked a little tense. She as thinking. Trying to read something of this woman she'd just met who claimed to know her. "How much do you actually know about me?"

It was a weird question, especially coming after something as personal as what Natasha was talking about. But, Carol had her reasons. "You say we were close. I'm trying to figure out how close."

---

Natasha smiled. Genuinely smiled, because God, that was so fucking like Carol that she could have almost cried; it didn't matter that she hadn't yet evolved to being the Carol that Natasha had worked with for five years. She still knew this Carol, like time had opened up and given her a gift. Another person she hadn't been able to say goodbye to, but here she was.

And Natasha knew how to handle brash, blunt, five-years-younger Carol Danvers.

She took another sip of her vodka, trying to pace it. There were always refills. "I know that when you're trying to show off in karaoke, you sing Guns N Roses, but your actual favorite go-to is Lita Ford, and you get absolutely furious when you go to a karaoke bar and see that Joan Jett gets an entire page of the song choices book and Lita's never anywhere to be found anymore, because, and I quote, 'Joan Jett was not The Runaways all by her fucking self, this is some serious bullshit'. I know that sometimes it surprises you when you find yourself actually attracted to a guy because they are by and large the worst, but that's part of the unfortunate territory that comes along with being bi."

Another sip, and a smile, now, because it was finally occurring to her that the last five years had not been all bad memories. "I know that Yon-Rogg was a real piece of shit and that when Talos and his wife had another child, they named him after you, and you were a little confused that they decided to name a boy 'Carol', but you got what they were going for, so you rolled with it. I know that the day you showed up at the Avengers compound, out of everyone else in the room, you looked at me like I was the one in charge and eventually, that became the truth. Sometimes I think that's why it became the truth. And I know from looking at you right now that you're sad, and you're frustrated, and you're a little tired, but you're sitting up with me anyway because you don't like to drink alone if you don't have to. And because you don't like to watch someone be in pain if you can keep them company inside it. I know that."

---

Her eyebrow rose a little when she saw that smile, and she studied Natasha's eyes trying to read what it meant. It was genuine, and it reminded Carol a little too much of how Maria used to smile. That startled her, mostly because she'd pushed a lot of those memories back these days. It was too hard knowing what she'd left behind for the greater good, and definitely too hard reminiscing about those times. But this was probably why Carol had gotten close to Natasha in the first place. She had that same tough exterior and warm heart as Maria had when they were younger. She cared too deeply, and Carol always felt protective of people like Natasha.

So when she started rattling off facts, even though Carol was shocked that she knew so much, another part of her, a deeper part of her, really wasn't. This woman wasn't lying to her. Everything she'd told her was the truth. It was in her eyes. Eyes that could also hide everything, but would open up on a rare occasion to someone worthy.

Carol's expression might have been stoic to anyone not looking closely, but a little twitch here and a turn of the lip there said a lot. And she was definitely responding to what she was hearing. Everything from Lita Ford right down to the Talos thing. This woman had meant something to her. But, Carol felt a pang of guilt because even though she didn't really know Natasha, she must have trusted her completely at some point. And Carol let her die, or that's what she was thinking at the moment as she suddenly broke her eye contact and stared back into the mug. Her throat was dry and she was clutching the ceramic hard, starting to crack it before she caught herself and stopped. She couldn't have had any idea that she wasn't even aware of what the Avengers were doing while she fought half-way across the universe. She wouldn't have let them go for the Soul Stone without her- or she would have at least told her the legends behind how it was acquired. But, just like with Fury, Carol hadn't checked in.

"Sounds like you knew me pretty well." The words were quiet, almost like stone as she looked back down and finished what was in the cup. "So where was I?"

----