WHAT: Talking out options (and some minor Flerken history) WHERE: Vanvers Residence WHEN: January 2028, about three days before this WARNINGS: Not really STATUS: Complete
Carol had expected that. For weeks now, Natasha had been pestering the household to come out to the Compound. After the failure of the First Stand, Vallo City (and the suburbs they lived in) was slowly collapsing. Interitus was taking over; anyone who didn’t support him was being taken care of, unless they were wise enough to flee first.
Vallo was falling apart at their feet, but Carol refused to give up.
Any guilt she felt – and she felt it, this dull throbbing in her chest that kept recurring – she tried to conceal. But she saw the look in Emme’s eyes when Marlene left with Natasha. She knew her wife wanted to leave, and she stayed only because Carol wasn’t ready to give in. She didn’t give up trying to convince her, and Natasha was here on the weekly attempting to do the same, but Carol stayed.
For Marley’s sake, she claimed, and that was half-true. The other half was sheer obstinance in the face of a threat that, once upon a time, at her power’s peak, when she was the walking embodiment of space, she’d have been able to take down with one hand tied behind her back. Now, she couldn’t even save her friends, and every battle they fought, they lost, and it stung.
It was an ego thing, really. A need to prove to herself that she couldn’t be shaken, but she couldn’t find it in herself to say that, to just let go.
The rest of the house had gone to bed, but Carol was still awake. It wasn’t the same as it had once been, staying up sheerly because she just didn’t tire. She slept much more regularly these days, with her powers dampening more and more by the day. But tonight, she wasn’t ready – that was her pattern lately, wasn’t it?
So, she sat on the couch with a bottle of alien beer in one hand and the other stroking across Goose’s fur. When she heard the stairs creaking and footsteps coming her way, she raised her head and smiled at the intruder.
“Hey, you. Couldn’t sleep?”
Ella wasn't trying to be particularly quiet in coming downstairs, but neither was she making all that much noise, so it was a cross between not waking up the upstairs, but her (psychologically-)heavy footfalls being audible to the downstairs. She wasn't surprised to find Carol down here, to be honest. Replacing being a walking espresso with being human was bound to wear on a person. God knows (maybe he didn't, Ella had never been clear on that) it wore on the woman who had once been the reliably positive and hopeful one.
"When do any of us really do that anymore?"
She dropped to the couch next to Carol with a tired slump, rather than any sort of animation, and closed her eyes. She wasn't going to be sleeping like this, but it felt like an acceptable form of denial on the couch of Stubborn Denial.
Carol tilted her head in acknowledgement as she brought the bottle to her lips for another drink. Even though she was more prone to sleep easily, it didn’t mean it was happening. Fear and distress were much more palpable these days, and that didn’t lend itself to much comfortable sleep– for the adults, especially.
“Doesn’t matter where we go, that’s always going to be true,” she agreed. She scratched Goose behind the ears as the Flerken rose and streeeeetched and poked at Ella’s thigh with a paw for attention.
"Where we go?" Ella asked, reaching out without opening her eyes to find Goose's chin, which she scritched affectionately. "Are you thinking of throwing in sleeping outside as an option?"
Obviously Ella knew that wasn't the case at all, but Carol's statement had felt like it was part of a discussion that had started internally with Carol. Well, not only there, Ella knew what the larger issue at play here was, but right now it felt like it had come from a place of Carol versus Carol. Ella didn't mind taking one of the sides from Carol if needed.
“Hah,” Carol replied with a playful nose crinkle in Ella’s direction. She watched Goose tilt her head into her friend’s ministrations and shrugged a shoulder. “At least we’re protected in the house.” They’d be dead outside much more quickly, but she was sure they had a chance of making the house a stronghold if they just stayed.
“What do you think about this?” she asked. She didn’t think she’d really heard Ella’s opinion amidst the constant kerfuffles she was having with Tasha and Emme. And Ella was easily one of her best friends in the world – she valued what she had to say.
It could never be said that Ella Lopez was lacking in opinions. She still had plenty, even as the years turned darker. But this one was more than a little complicated. Still, she had been asked.
"I think that, despite everything I've done and experienced in my world and here, I don't have the answers," she said, not pausing in giving Goose attention, even though she still had her eyes closed. "Logic and emotion are natural fighters, you know? Sure, logic says find the single most secure place and never leave, that's how you survive, but it's never going to naturally bend to hope and faith and nostalgia and needing some control in a wildly uncontrollable situation and, screw it, just regular old spite. And emotions like that are never going to naturally bend to tactical decisions."
She sighed, the sound heavy, and shook her head slightly.
"I can't tell you where we need to go," she said, finally opening her eyes and turning her head toward Carol, though it still rested on the back of the couch. "But I can tell you that even if everyone else goes, you're not going to be alone, because I'm not leaving until you leave."
And the hard part of the opinion had arrived.
"But I have that choice that I get to make because I'm a grown adult and I can fight. Not everyone here has that."
Like Marley.
Carol was self-aware enough to realize most of her mule-like obstinance was fueled by emotion. This was the first home she’d truly had in a long time – since the Louisiana house she’d shared with Maria and Monica, before the Space Stone, the Kree, Captain Marvel. Morningside counted, she supposed, but even that had always felt temporary. This was the house she and Emme were raising their daughter in. It was supposed to be permanent.
She hated the idea of leaving it behind, for all the reasons – emotions, really – that Ella had listed out. It was illogical, sure, and that was a point Natasha had driven home for her hard, but she just wasn’t ready to give in yet.
Her resistance was chipping away, though, slowly but surely. She had her blinders on, but she wasn’t ignorant to how the choice she was making was affecting her wife. It was affecting everyone she loved; Ella might be content to stick by her side and let her work out, always fiercely loyal even when Carol hardly deserved it, but she shouldn’t have to be compromising her safety.
“You’re making too much sense,” she grumbled. She reached out to scratch between Goose’s ears. “I still say we should just try to sic Goose on Interitus and see if that solves the problem.”
"It seems like that might give Goose heartburn," Ella joked, but there was a part of her that agreed with Carol. Goose was stuck in the middle of this nightmare too, should they be letting her make her own decision too? Not just because it could benefit them, but because it was the right thing to do and that, getting to do the right thing, was becoming rarer.
Ella sat up to look at Carol. "I can't believe I've never asked this. Are all Flerkens pets the same way as cats are with humans, or do they have their own homeworld where they take care of themselves? Should we be asking Goose what she wants?"
She looked down at Goose.
Goose looked right back, seemingly unperturbed. Her eyes fell closed, a purr rumbling out of her with both humans’ attention on her.
Carol didn’t so much as blink at the change of subject and smirked at the intrigued look on her friend’s face. “They had their own planet a long time ago,” she replied. “They didn’t have societal norms the way we do, but they got by. Then the Kree found them, sweet talked their way into taking over the planet for the Empire, and started adopting them out to enemy planets, promising them better lives. It worked, too. People wanted them because they’re adorable, of course, and they had no desire to be a self-sustaining species. But once they’d been settled in a while, the Kree sent out this signal beacon that turned the Flerkens against the natives. It was a whole fucking mess.”
She remembered it vividly – it was the first time she’d encountered the Guardians, the second time she’d met Gamora. One world’s cry for help had attracted them both, and while the Guardians had dealt with the Flerken rampage there, it had been Carol’s responsibility to track down the beacon’s origin and destroy it.
“They’ve been pretty content to be pets since then, but they’re more discerning,” she went on. “They’re powerful, but their power has its limits. I doubt Goose could really take Interitus down even if she wanted to, but God knows if she wanted to try, she’d try.”
That was one thing that the world around them hadn't changed in Ella yet – her desire to listen to people's stories. It wasn't about having once lived in a world where so many real people had seemed like fiction, about being a fangirl, it was about wanting to know them the way she would want to know anyone. Even if the world wasn't falling apart, she would want to hear them – but because it was, because they kept losing people, these stories told in someone's own words felt especially important. She hated the morbidity inherent in recognizing that.
"And she hasn't tried, so Goose is not a sustainable plan." Ella leaned to drop a tiny kiss atop Goose's head like it was nothing more than normal feline danger to put her face in a Flerken's. "No offense, no challenge. You do you, girl."
She straightened and regarded Carol with tired eyes, despite the brief reprieve from thinking about the lack of sleep plaguing them.
"What is the sustainable plan?" She squeezed Carol's arm with her free hand.
Carol fell quiet for a few moments. She hated the thought of leaving this place that had become her home – her daughter’s home. But there was no way around it. She had kept Emme, and Marley, and Ella here long enough with her stubbornness. She wasn’t the force she once was; she could convince herself over and over she could face whatever came after them, but even the attributes that came with her Kree blood weren’t enough to face Interitus singlehandedly.
She leaned in to Ella so they were fully shoulder to shoulder and sighed. “We’re gonna have to go,” she relented. “The Compound’s safer. It’s far enough out of the way that we should be able to keep Marley away from the fighting. We’ll have to go.”
She wasn’t jumping up to get moving now. She still needed a little time to process what that meant, and she was sure Nat would be by soon enough to give her another shove over the edge. She wasn’t going to give in easily, she never did, but she knew now there wasn’t much choice left, no matter how much she hated it.
Ella unknowingly echoed Carol's thoughts. "We don't have to go tomorrow. I don't think any of us are ready to leave. I think we can be willing to leave, we can walk out the door, we can get to the Compound and chill, and we still won't be ready to leave here."
She moved her head to Carol's shoulder. "I know I've said it before, but thank you for giving me a home here. We can take the best of it with us and booby trap the whole freaking place to protect the rest."
Carol gave Ella’s arm a squeeze, leaning over to kiss the top of her head before resting her cheek there. “You always have a home with me. We’re attached, Marley especially. Can’t go getting rid of Auntie Ella any time soon.”