WHAT: Carol and Emmeline have a serious talk about Carol's past with Natasha WHERE: Their Morningside apartment WHEN: Backdated to Wednesday, September 21st, 2022 WARNINGS: Some emotions but nothing too bad STATUS: Complete
Being Captain Marvel came with many marvelous perks. Among them - no sense of temperature, near-endless energy, healing in minutes (a trick that had come in especially handy recently), and an agelessness that she hadn’t quite figured out yet; could be just an extended lifespan, could be straight up immortality, she couldn’t say.
Preventing dry skin, however, wasn’t one of those perks. Vallo had given Carol room to get into a regular skincare routine. Every night, while Emme was still occupying the ensuite bathroom, she’d come out, sit on the bed, and get all her lotions and creams applied and be ready to settle in for the night by the time Emme joined her.
She didn’t always sleep. Used to be she would curl up with her fiancée until she fell asleep, then slip out into the living room for the night if she was too revved up to rest. Now that their living room was essentially Kamala’s bedroom, that option was gone. Hopefully, they’d find a house they liked, something where Kamala could have her own room instead of sleeping on an (admittedly nice) pull-out couch bed every night, and have an open shared space to make use of soon.
Until then, it wasn’t like she was unhappy here. She’d brought a stack of books into the bedroom, and she’d occupy her time reading if she couldn’t sleep. It was nice to be next to Emme, hear her breathing and know she was safe and okay. Her protective instincts had been in overdrive through the darkness and daemons situation, and she was still trying to come down from it.
And now that it was over, she had no more excuses to keep from having the talk with Emme that she and Pepper had discussed. She still didn’t want to – it was a huge thing to omit, especially for as long as she had, and she felt like an asshole to the nth degree – but she knew it had to be done. If their relationship ended because of it, she’d have to accept that, no matter how much she hated the thought.
She swept all of her tubes back into the drawer on her bedside table once she’d finished her application and waited patiently for Emme to emerge, one leg tucked up under her and the other grazing the carpeted floor. She was a little anxious, but she’d never been one to let those emotions get the best of her. She could handle this, and if she was lucky, it would all be fine.
“Babe,” she called out, leaning over to peer through the bathroom door, “you about done?”
“Just about.” The words came out slightly garbled as Emmeline answered while in the middle of brushing her teeth. She quickly finished up, rinsed her mouth and put the brush away. Routine now complete, she shut off the bathroom light and re-entered their bedroom.
She loved their bed. Mostly because it was theirs, but also because it was extremely comfortable. She was ready to pull back the covers and sink blissfully into the mattress when she finally registered the look on Carol’s face. That was a We Need To Talk expression if she’d ever seen one. It made her stomach clench up with anxiety. “Are you alright?” She sank down on top of the blanket, her eyes trained on Carol. “You look upset.”
Did she? Carol frowned, scratching at her chin. She hadn’t intended to, but she knew this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation, and maybe it was reflecting itself on her face more than she realized. Anxiety was making way for a little fear, knowing this could end up going very badly for her – for both of them, really.
Expect the worst, hope for the best, right?
“I’m not upset,” she assured her. “There’s just…something I need to tell you about. And it’s something I should have brought up a long time ago.” She sighed, crossing her legs and clasping her hands together while she looked at Emme. “I’m a little afraid you’ll hate me for it.”
So it was a We Need To Talk situation after all. Emmeline nodded and shifted herself more fully onto the bed. She folded her legs in front of her and turned so that she could completely face Carol. “Okay,” Emme kept her tone as even and normal as possible. Her first instinct was to immediately reassure Carol that nothing she could do would ever make her hate her. Something kept her from saying it, though. Perhaps a bit of the old Emme who had kept her heart so fiercely guarded after years of hurt and betrayal.
“Go ahead. What do you need to tell me?”
Carol had been stewing in this whole situation for a while now, even when it was relegated to the back of her mind during their most recent bout of Vallo drama. She knew it had to be done, that it was only right to make sure Emme had all the facts and was willing to take them for what they were before she kept pushing forward.
That didn’t mean she had a goddamn clue how to start.
“So, you remember asking me if I had any other…loves out there?” It had been joking, teasing through text messages as they so often did, but it had coincided so neatly with Nat’s announcement that it had stuck in her head. “There is one. Someone I didn’t mention because…she was gone, and I was still angry about it. So, I chose to just block it out, which was…a bad move on my part.”
Emmeline could feel her body stiffen in response to those words. The knot in her stomach clenched even more painfully and she inhaled sharply through her nose. Fear crept up the back of her neck that this was it. All their promises of marriage and forever were gone. It whispered to her that Carol was done with her. And was that really a surprise, after all? Emmeline’s carefully crafted neutral expression began to crack a little before she managed to steel herself once more. “Okay.” It was all she could get out without the worry that her voice would betray her emotions.
Carol was attuned enough to Emmeline after this long to see all of that tension rising in her. That instinct to comfort her surged, and she immediately reached out, scooping up her hands and bringing them close. “Hey. I love you more than anything or anyone. That hasn’t changed for a second, okay? But we’re getting married, and you deserve to know the whole truth.” She scooched forward, pressing in close so their knees were touching. “That’s all I’m trying to do here, I promise.”
Emme’s face softened as relief surged through her. Her posture dropped and rounded as most of the tension abated. “For fuck’s sake, I thought you were breaking up with me.” She gave a small laugh that had very little humor in it.
“What? No, absolutely fucking not,” Carol insisted, eyes widening. She leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to Emmeline’s lips. “Shit, I’m sorry, baby.” If she ran back through that conversation so far, she could see how Emme would jump to that conclusion, but it hadn’t been her intention to send her down that thought path. She pulled one hand free and stroked down her cheek. “You’ve gotta know I’m not that easy to get rid of.”
Emme returned the kiss and exhaled more thoroughly. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to quiet her pulse. Carol’s quick apology and assurance that she was difficult to get rid of helped to soothe her jangled nerves. “Okay, okay. I’m good now.” She opened her eyes once more and took Carol’s free hand in her own. “Sorry for jumping to mad conclusions. I should have known better. Just everything that happened last week with the darkness and those horrid things, and Marlene and Kamala getting injured…I think I’m just more on edge than usual.”
“I know,” Carol murmured, sliding her fingers through her soon-to-be wife’s and squeezing gently. They’d all gotten beat up to varying degrees by those beastly daemons; she’d taken a hell of a hit herself, but she healed all by herself. Seeing Marlene and Kamala go down hadn’t been fun for either of them, and it had taken all of Carol’s self-restraint to keep the lecture she’d given Kamala on Friday level-headed and relatively calm.
“Hopefully Vallo’s had its fill of tormenting us for a while now.” They lost enough people around here to Vallo’s whims. Risking losing any of them to one of those things wasn’t something either of them could bear to contemplate.
“Don’t even tempt it.” Emme shook her head slightly. “Now that I’m sure I’ve made this entire situation ten times worse, what was it you wanted to tell me?”
Part of Carol had hoped she’d somehow granted herself a reprieve at this point. But that was a vain, selfish hope. She knew she couldn’t leave Emme without all the information.
“Right, so the reason I even brought this up was because this other person I have history with, she’s here,” she continued. “She’s been here, actually, but until recently, she had a completely different set of memories, but…” She gave Emme’s hand a squeeze and sighed. “It’s Natasha.”
Emme inhaled deeply through her nose and resolved to take whatever Carol said next in a much calmer fashion.
Surprisingly, she managed to do exactly that. As the words “It’s Natasha” left Carol’s lips, Emmeline sat quietly. Natasha had been in Emmeline’s orbit since she’d arrived. They were on Defense together, and Emme had plenty of run-ins with her at various events with Carol’s “work friends”. She was beautiful and strong, and endlessly cool. Of course Carol had fallen for her. “Was it reciprocated?”
Carol didn’t hesitate to answer. She knew any hint of that would only make Emme feel badly, and that was the last thing she wanted. “It was always professional first,” she replied, stroking her thumb along Emme’s where their hands remained joined. “Never anything serious. But yeah, it was reciprocated.”
Emmeline couldn’t deny that the words stung slightly, She had been the one to ask, though. She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she processed all the information. It made sense. Carol and Natasha were so similar in so many ways. They complemented one another.
“I assume you two have talked about things since she got her memories back?”
“Yeah.” Carol nodded, watching Emme with discerning eyes. She knew none of this was easy for her to hear, but she was handling it like a champ. “She’s a part of my life, but she’s not that part anymore. She hasn’t been for a long time. But I get that this is a lot to drop on you, so, anything you want to know, I’ll tell you.”
Emmeline believed that, honestly. She knew Carol, and she knew Natasha, and she knew the both of them were too damn direct and honorable to do anything behind her back. So if Carol said that was in the past, then Emme believed her. She nodded and gave Carol’s hand a squeeze.
“No, that’s…I don’t need to know anything else. I know it probably doesn’t seem like it right now, but I do appreciate you telling me. I’m sure you’ve been agonizing over this for a while.”
Agonizing about summed it up. Right when it happened, especially, it had consumed Carol’s mind. A part of her still couldn’t help but focus on it, think about it. If Nat had been her Nat from the start, she wouldn’t have what she had with Emmeline now. It was a weird cognitive dissonance; she had fallen for Emme so swiftly and easily that she couldn’t imagine having been without her.
She wouldn’t be, ever, not as long as she had any say in it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she murmured regretfully. “I blocked it out so hard, I think I hid it from myself for a while.” It was how she’d learned to deal when she had no time to digest what had happened around her. And losing Nat had been such a rough, unexpected blow at such an overwhelming time. The best she could do was bury it down deep when she had to head back out and help other worlds reacclimate to their revived populations.
It wasn’t a secret what had happened to Natasha back at home. What she’d sacrificed to allow the others to save everyone. Emmeline was acutely aware of the deep, aching hurt that came with losing a loved one suddenly and violently. Just for the briefest of moments, Marlene’s face filled her thoughts and Emme felt a lump of emotion rise up in her throat.
“You don’t have to apologize. If anyone knows about hiding from yourself, it’s me.” It was a strange crossroads to be at. Vallo had brought the two of them together, while simultaneously bringing back women they’d both loved and lost. “Is there anything you need from me? Anything I can do to help while you process all of this?”
There was definitely a level of comfort and reassurance knowing that, of all people, Emme got it. Carol knew her relationship with Marlene had never taken that turn, but the feelings had been there. With her and Nat – well, they’d taken that turn while trying hard to keep the feelings out of it because their priority had to be the world, the universe, not themselves. But that vein, losing someone they’d loved so much and getting them back, was still there.
“You just keep being you,” Carol said, a gentle smile curling her lips. She brought Emme’s hand up to her mouth to kiss her knuckles. “And promise me if you have any doubts how much I love you, you’ll tell me. Don’t stew in it. Okay?”
Emmeline returned the smile and leaned forward to kiss Carol gently on the lips. Sure the situation was complicated, and it would likely come with some bumps and bruises along the way, but they would be all right in the end. “I promise.” She pulled back and kissed the tip of Carol’s nose, then her forehead.
Carol let her eyes fall closed, savoring each kiss she was given and squeezing that hand she’d refused to let go this entire time. They would be okay, she really believed that. She knew it wouldn’t be without its trials and awkward moments, but she meant what she’d said to Pepper, and what she’d now repeated to Emme, too. She loved her, and she was going to marry her, and nothing was going to change that.
“Good.” She tipped her chin up to give Emme another kiss. “Now, come over here and cuddle me. We’ve earned it.”