WHAT: Carol destroys a mountain cave and Tony tracks her down WHERE: A mountain in Vallo WHEN: This morning, immediately after this WARNINGS: Anger, language, rock throwing STATUS: Complete
After Carol fled the Mansion, she found her solace atop a snow-capped peak. The mountain was tall, easily one of the tallest in Vallo. The altitude was a little higher here, a little more difficult for a human to breathe. Lucky Carol, she wasn’t human anymore – not entirely. She was more alien, more a personification of the Space Stone than either Terran or Kree.
For the first time in decades, she thought back to Hala. To the years she was Vers, a pink-skinned Kree whose memories were stolen by the trauma of war. She could still hear Yon-Rogg’s voice in her head, the same words spoken to her day after day, ingrained in her mind.
“You’ve got to let go of your past.”
“It’s causing you doubt, and doubt makes you vulnerable.”
“Control it.”
“Do not let your emotions undermine your judgment.”
“There is nothing more dangerous to a warrior than emotion.”
She brought down an empty cave with her bare hands, watching her skin rip – her knuckles, her fingertips – and bleed blue blood. It wasn’t a strain, not even close, but she was still breathing like she’d carried a planet on her back. Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks, and her jaw clenched tight as they dripped down her chin.
She had no right to feel this way. No right. But it felt like the first day she’d lost Natasha all over again, and it was too much for her to bear. The wound had been sawed open fresh, salted with that letter dropped off on her bedside table, and her feelings were even messier than they’d been when the day started.
She sank down amongst the snow and the scattered rubble she’d created. Her eyes glowed gold, burning with heat, and her hands melted two holes in the snow around her. She took a slow breath, stretching her hands and flexing her fingers just like she had back in the gym, forcing herself to be calm. The glow faded from her eyes, and she turned her gaze skyward just in time to see a familiar gold-and-red figure above her.
“Not now, Tony,” she called out with a sigh. “I can’t.”
The moment Tony got an alert that footage had been deleted from the training room, he pulled up the security cameras at the Mansion. The feed showed him Carol taking off and looking very not okay. He knew something was up and was out the door a few minutes later. He suited up and took to the sky to find her.
It didn’t exactly take him long to spot her, what with all the punching of mountains and all. He hovered in the air above her before landing with a slight clang. He removed his visor and sat down next to her in the rapidly melting snow. “Yeah, sorry. That’s not going to work. What’s going on?”
Carol knew trying to brush Tony off wouldn’t work, but hell, she had to try. But she didn’t protest when he joined her. Her hands were still pulsing, from pain and from the heat seeping out of them until the snow around them was gone, leaving them seated in a jagged cut out of damp grass. She shook them out until the glow finally dissipated and watched for a moment as her healing kicked in and sealed up all the little cuts, soothed the aches until it was like nothing had ever happened.
“It’s nothing,” she said, although the situation they were in made it clear that was a lie. He didn’t know, though. He had an idea – she had confirmed her worry for Natasha during the timeslip was more than teammate worrying, friendly worrying – but it was Pepper who knew the biggest chunk of the story. Part of her was surprised she hadn’t told him, but of course she hadn’t. She would say it wasn’t hers to tell.
“Just a bad day. The worst fucking day,” she muttered. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, staring straight ahead instead of meeting his gaze. “I’m dealing with it.”
“Mmm.” Tony answered sagely. “Yeah, this is definitely how I handle nothing. All the time.” Tony leaned over and gently nudged Carol with his shoulder. “C’mon Spaceface. Whatever it is, you don’t have to deal with it on your own.”
Carol huffed a protest, but there was a hint of a smile present. Tony had been there for her since the day they met, she knew she could trust him with this. And the nickname softened her a little, too; ‘Spaceface’ wasn’t explicitly hers, carried over from the Carol he’d once known, but it was fitting and fond, and she liked it.
She sighed and decided to start with the most important bit first. “I’m in love with Natasha.”
He could see her softening up a bit, and settled himself in for a good ol’ Bestie Mountain Top Feelings Chat™.
When she spoke, he raised an eyebrow slightly in response. “Natasha.” He paused and took a second to replay some of the things he’d noted as of late. Puzzle pieces started falling into place. “Ah. Okay, yeah. That makes a lot more sense now.”
“Glad to know I’m as subtle as Kate Bishop,” Carol sighed. She’d been moony-eyed over Nat and she knew it. Kate walking into a spiderweb with her eyes glued on her phone probably had been more subtle.
“It happened back home, after Thanos. It was never supposed to be this serious but…it was.” She raked a dirty hand through her hair, the tie that had held it back lost during her flight here. She met his eyes but only briefly before letting them fall again. “When I got here, I had just lost her and I couldn’t deal. I blocked it all out. And then she remembered and–”
She shook her head and there was another downpour of tears. “I’ve been a fucking disaster since,” she growled through gritted teeth. She grabbed the nearest chunk of cave rock she could find and drew back to hurl it as hard as she could. It hit the mountain nearest them (but still easily a good three miles away) with a faint boom.
He was quiet, just letting her talk, and nodding along when appropriate. He certainly knew the sting of being in love with someone you shouldn’t be, and logic rarely played a part in it.
Tony continued as he was when she hurled the rock away from them. He heard it connect and watched the faint puff of dust that rose up from impact. As it began to dissipate into the air, Tony turned back to face Carol. “What happened today that made it the worst day?”
Carol pressed her lips together. “Nothing that won’t make me sound like a whiny teenage girl.” It felt petty and stupid and exactly like something she’d seen the girls she went to high school with complaining about years and years ago. Her ex had moved on. An ex she should have moved on from long ago herself, as she sat here engaged and moved into a new house with a completely different person. Maybe their stages of life elevated it slightly from high school status but not much.
“Believe me, I’m positive that I’ve heard worse.” Tony coaxed her. Bottling things up, ignoring them, it never worked. He should know. Everything always came back up again whether you wanted it to or not.
“We talked at the Mansion a little while ago,” Carol admitted, pushing through despite herself. As much as she’d like to stuff it all away, that was a big part of the problem. She couldn’t unspill the milk, like her mother always used to say. It was out there now, and all she could do was deal with it. “She’s seeing someone else. Which, I know, she has every right to be doing. She told me so we could both let go, and she’s right to do that. But it hit me like a ton of bricks, anyway.”
As she finally admitted it, Tony gave a sympathetic grimace at the news. Of course he was all for Natasha making the most of her life here, but he hated that doing so caused Carol this level of pain. He sat for a minute to try and think of the right thing to say. He was no Pepper when it came to dealing with emotions, but he had his moments here and there. “I don’t think we should worry about what the right thing to do is right now. You’re in love with her, and it’s all messy and complicated, and it fucking sucks. So let’s feel things and blast some mountain tops and just be in it for a while. Best way to let go of things is to go through them, in my opinion.”
For the first time, Carol really looked at Tony, watching him as he spoke. She’d kept her eyes anywhere else for most of this conversation, looking but not really seeing anything. She was too angry, too hurt, too overwhelmed with it all, and maybe a little ashamed. She didn’t feel good like this. It wasn’t a fun experience for her, dealing with this overflow of emotions that she’d hidden from herself, on top of trying her best to be the same partner to Emme she’d always been, that she deserved.
She hated it. She hated all of it.
But Tony was here for her, trying to help her through it. She missed Stephen, but she still had Tony. She still had Wanda and Sam and Pepper. She had plenty of people willing to let her lean on them here. Sometimes, she still defaulted to lone rangering because, for so long, that was all she’d had most of the time. Just her. Sometimes she forgot she didn’t have to take on the universe herself around here.
“Yeah,” she agreed. She nudged his shoulder, feeling the cool armor of his suit against her bare arm, and smiled at him. “Feeling things and blasting mountains sounds doable. Better than not feeling things.” She had been on the brink of that before he showed up, of trying to shut herself down – be emotionless, Kree. It was still probably something she’d struggle with later on, but right now, with one of her best friends supporting her, it didn’t seem so daunting.