Even before Vallo, her life had been marred with it. The Snap was one of the most prominent, of course, but nearly twenty-five years in space had yielded some stories, too, not all of them good. Of course she focused on the good and suppressed the bad as much as she could. It was what she’d always done – Nat called it stubbornness and she wasn’t wrong, but it was how she’d learned to cope. Captain Marvel couldn’t show weakness, or fear, or regret.
She wasn’t Captain Marvel anymore.
She’d been low power for years now. She’d once been the walking embodiment of the Space Stone – invulnerable until she wasn’t, a lesson she’d learned from the timeline that ran opposite the one she’d hailed from, when Ultron had shoved her into Xandar’s core and destroyed her. It was only her Kree blood that kept her more durable than a human now, but even that protection seemed to be slowly fading away.
It was why, after hearing the news about Sam, she came looking for Steve in the Outpost’s control room with a bottle of tequila in hand. Loss had been cropping up around them for years – James and the kids, blipped away before the First Stand. Bobbi lost in battle. Tony and Pepper just last year, exploding along with the Mansion in the Battle for the Quarry.
Wanda.
(No. No, no, no. Don’t think about that.)
Now, there was Sam. The third of their little group – the Caps Club, Carol had called it, all fun-and-games in a time where, really, none of them were as needed as they’d once been. Vallo had been a different world then, a place with an overwhelming plethora of hero-types willing to do what it took to protect the new home they’d found. These days, with so many blipped or dead or Thralled, it was hard to believe that time had been just seven years earlier.
She plunked the bottle down on the table, a spot free of maps and papers and little battle figurines like this was a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. “Stole it from Kate,” she explained to her friend. It had been one of the younger woman’s indulgences brought back after a raid out into Vallo City, but Carol had no qualms about claiming it for herself. “Figured we could toast to Sam. What do you say?”
Steve had leaned back and rubbed at his eyes when Carol had entered the room. Honestly, he wasn't even sure how long he'd been going over the post-battle reviews. He was determined to never have a repeat of the battle at the quarry in the previous year. Battle for the Quarry, he reminded himself. It had an official name, which he understood from a military standpoint was to give it significance in history. It was just hard to frame something as history when it was still relatively fresh in your mind.
They'd had nearly a year to learn Interitus had improved their ability to enthrall targets to a dangerous degree. When he'd been in Ancient Vallo, it had largely been just those with magical abilities and even then it wasn't immediate. This time around, it could be anyone, at any time. Even just a sudden change in the middle of battle. It wasn't predictable, it wasn't something plans and tactics could work around. It just meant they couldn't really gather en masse to launch attacks and fight back.
Which is what led to situations like this. Losing Sam, his closest friend. He didn't have enough backup because they couldn't risk larger parties. And the only thing Steve could try and apply to this situation was at least it wasn't Wanda.
With a glance at the bottle, he nodded softly. "I can't condone theft, but I think she'd understand."
Carol nodded, uncapping the bottle with a quick twist. She honestly didn’t care one way or the other if Kate understood, but she knew Steve was right – she would. She was a good kid, and they were all feeling Sam’s loss right now, but no one more so than Steve. Carol had loved Sam, but she knew even her inclusion with the boys didn’t top their bond.
She could be there, though. She could be a friend when Steve needed one. She’d done her damnedest over the years, and she’d continue to until she got knocked down too hard to get back up.
“You know it’s not your fault, right?” She offered him the bottle first; they didn’t have glasses, but she’d let him swig most of it if it came down to it. “We were outnumbered. We’ve been outnumbered.”
Since there wasn't anything remotely magical about Steve's abilities, he'd barely been affected by Interitus' siphoning. Or he just wasn't getting enough sleep - he just felt tired. All the time now. It felt like his entire life had been one war after another after another, with just a few joyful years of vacation in Vallo before… this. All that is to say, he still couldn't get drunk, but he appreciated the intent.
He raised a finger up as if to suggest a pause and dug through some papers, locating a collapsible field cup that he'd been using for water. Then he nodded his head that Carol could just pour some in for him and keep the bottle for herself. "I know. And I don't know how this is going to end. It's starting to feel like a hopeless situation for me, too, and I'm supposed to be the one who keeps that hope alive."
Carol did as requested, filling his cup up to the brim before bringing the bottle to her mouth for a drink. Losing most of her powers had made her more susceptible to alcohol; it still didn’t hit her quite like alien liquor would have, but those days were long since past. Even a little bit of fuzziness around the edges from human alcohol was enough on those days she felt like she really needed it.
“It’s not all on you, Rogers.” She kicked at his foot under the table – not hard. “We’re all in this. We all gotta hold on. It’s easier for some than for others, and you’ve held on a long damn time. You’re allowed to feel a little hopeless, especially right now.”
Most of the folks remaining still held onto what little flickers there were left, and that was in good part due to Steve and the other leadership around here. But the battle was still fresh, and losing a friend in it meant there was an inevitable downtick in morale. He deserved some grace. Morale would come back up, always did, Carol wasn’t worried about that.
"Not all on me, no, but people look up to me," he agreed, tilting back the cup and draining it in one go. It didn't need to have a buzz effect for the bite to still be there, leaving him to still suck in some air and wince a bit as it went down. Still, it was a good hurt. The kind that burned quickly, reminding you that you were still alive. And, he imagined, probably helped ease painful memories if the buzz could do its job.
He nodded thanks to Carol, she did know how to handle the mood and he was glad she was around to give him the occasional kick in the ass when he needed it. Or provide a friendly shoulder, like now, because she knew exactly what he was going through. What they were both going through. With a slight tilt of his head in appreciation, he held the cup out again.
"You know Sam would tell us this still counts as a meeting of the Caps Club, right?"
“Yep,” Carol agreed, tipping the bottle back into Steve’s cup obligingly. She knew it didn’t do much for him, but it seemed like the act of drinking might be its own kind of soothing. “Sometimes, you gotta go on without a member. We did it when you vanished on us back in the old days.” She took another swig from the mouth of the bottle. “I never expected to go on without him, though.”
Maybe she should have. Sam was the most fallible of them all – entirely human, entirely breakable – but he was steady, too. Never shook, never wavered, happily took all their problems onto his shoulders, even those that exemplified immaturity (of which Carol had been guilty of more often that she’d like to think about in the early Vallo days). He was never supposed to be gone.
“He was the best of us.”
"He'd argue that. And he'd be wrong," was the response. Steve raised the cup in a bit of a toast gesture. "To Sam, our Captain Vallo. The world was a brighter place with you in it, pal."
Steve left it unsaid that while Sam's presence was dearly missed, heartbreakingly-so, even, it would be an even bigger hole in their hearts when (not if) everything after this was in front of them. When (not if) they freed the thralls, they were going to have no short amounts of PTSD to sort through and no one would be better for that than Sam.
“To Sam,” Carol echoed, her throat tightening and her eyes welling. She forced out a breath as she raised the bottle alongside Steve’s cup. “Love you, buddy. Hope you can rest now.”
At least by dying, he’d been given that kindness. Carol knew she wouldn’t have been able to see him thralled. She could barely tolerate knowing what had happened to Wanda, never mind face it. She knew it had been hard on Sam, too, seeing what their friend had become. But now wasn’t the time to focus on that.
Reaching out, she grabbed Steve’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Kree strength still rivaled his, so the grip was tight, if brief. “Remember when our biggest concern was where to have Thanksgiving that year?”
Steve returned the sentiment, a soft smile on his face for both the contact and the memory. "Yeah, Sam always fighting for having it at the Wilson homestead and using Lola as a bribe. Definitely qualifies as the good old days now."
For all the years Steve could claim for his age, most of those had been in suspension. So he never really felt like he'd been alive for too long, thankfully. Honestly, he acknowledged that Carol herself had been dealing with this kind of thing longer than he had. Which meant that he was thankful she was around, not just as a friend but also as someone who knew exactly what was going through his mind. It pained him that every survivor in Vallo could claim the same, now. Especially the ones that had escaped a horrible situation to be in this place.
"We get this sorted out and I'll host the next one."
“We’ll fight about that when the time comes,” Carol joked. Thanksgiving certainly hadn’t been a priority the past few years, and unless a drastic change was made, she didn’t see that changing in the next few, either. But it was a nice thought, even if this hypothetical would be without so many of the people they’d loved and lost.
“Come on, old man, with me,” she declared, getting to her feet a moment later. She grabbed the lid of the bottle and capped it again. “You’ve done enough staring at reports. Let’s go outside and get some… slightly less stuffy air while we drink.”
Steve opened his mouth to argue, but stopped and shook a finger mostly at himself. She was right, he'd been staring at all of this recon and sitrep for so long, it had been a blur for the last couple of hours anyway. Closing his mouth and nodding, he scraped his chair backwards and stood, adding in a stretch to loosen up his shoulders.