Work Text:
“Final checks.”
Monica can hear Major Goodner address the crew in the tent a few feet behind her, while another soldier helps secure each glove onto her spacesuit.
She’s still grounded, still very much on Earth for this mission — Mom made sure of that before she…, Monica refuses to finish that thought — so is the spacesuit really necessary?
If she asked Jimmy, then yes. Absolutely.
After all, he’d tell her, they still have no idea what they’re actually dealing with here, how dangerous Wanda’s Hex really is…
…Or what’ll happen to Monica when she crosses its boundary for a third time in less than a week.
And that’s not even mentioning the blank scans.
She’s taking an enormous risk even attempting this re-entry plan, they all at least know that much.
But…Monica’s never been one to approach a hazardous situation with any particular abundance of caution, especially not if that caution might prevent her from doing something that matters. Ever since she was a kid, she’s always had a rather distorted sense of peril versus protection.
Then again, so did her aunt.
She does her best to shake what feels like an unflattering comparison from her mind.
She’s an adult now, she’s got a Captain title of her own and numerous spacewalks under her belt, and unlike Carol, Monica will never abandon someone she cares about — someone who needs her.
She’s ready for this mission, even if it is entirely terrestrial.
She’s ready to do whatever it takes to make things right, including trying to protect a grieving hero from those who refuse to consider her perspective.
Monica takes a breath, flexing and extending her fingers while keeping her gaze locked on the pulsing red boundary a few hundred yards in front of her.
I’m coming, Wanda. I’m coming, Darcy. I’m coming, Westview.
“We’re all set, Captain.” Major Goodner’s status update pulls Monica from her musings.
She turns slightly, then, giving her compatriot a brisk, controlled nod. “Thank you.”
“Darcy’s not here to give her stamp of approval,” Jimmy points out as he approaches from the right.
“I know. She’s in there.” Monica gestures slightly with her head towards the Hex. “And I’m gonna go get her out.”
It’s the type of promise that’s often made in the face of an impending rescue mission to bolster the confidence of both those doing the actual rescuing and those staying behind to watch, but Monica’s not sure it has the desired effect for either of them today.
She shifts to look directly at the FBI agent she never expected to form two-thirds of an unlikely trio with this past week, and opts for honesty.
“It’s our last shot, Jimmy.”
I wish it wasn’t, but it is.
“Godspeed, Captain,” he tells her. She gives a tight nod in response, and she’s grateful for him. She’s grateful that, after only a week of working together, Jimmy already knows better than to deliver a pointless platitude. Instead, he says everything he needs to in the expression on his face.
Let’s do this.
Before anyone can stop her — before she can stop herself — she turns on her heel and sets out in the direction of the customized space rover.
She’s exactly what I asked for, Monica can’t help but think, relishing the pleased feeling in her chest as she climbs into the very vehicle whose specs she first envisioned on a whiteboard in the pop-up base.
She shuts the top hatch, sealing herself into the rover, and fastens her seatbelt with a satisfying click. Major Goodner’s familiar voice comes through the comms system a moment later.
“Capcom check.”
Monica appreciates that her friend is treating this like a regular mission, even though it’s anything but. There’s an inherent comfort in adhering to standard operating procedures in any circumstance, and it’s a comfort Monica definitely needs right now.
Back in the seat of a rover for the first time in technically five years, muscle memory kicks in, and she takes a moment to initiate the first set of control sequences on the panel in front of her before replying to Goodner.
Her voice has the same unaffected tone she’s been using all day.
“Good, check.” The engine revs in response.
Just another mission, that’s all this is. You’ve probably done this a thousand times before.
“On your order, Captain,” comes Goodner again, a bit crackly.
Monica grants herself a brief moment to distill her thoughts and focus, before announcing to the crew, “Moving out.”
She cranks the gearshift forward steadily, and feels the rover’s wheels begin their slow rotation.
As the rover picks up speed, all Monica registers is the bump-bump-bump of the dirt beneath her tires. It’s certainly not the smoothest ride she’s ever taken — that honor’s reserved for that one time in her mom’s Camaro in the late eighties — but it’ll do.
The barrier approaches rapidly, and its red glow starts to envelop her spacesuit helmet. Monica hears the semi-distorted countdown from Goodner over comms: “Contact in five, four, three…
“…two, one.”
The rover collides with the Hex…
…and Monica has the wind knocked right out of her.
She chokes out a gasp, a mixture of surprise and acute respiratory distress.
No.
No. I’m not giving up that easily.
She clenches her jaw and grips the controller, forcing the rover ever-forward, inch-by-inch.
“I’m close!” she shouts into comms, hoping they’ll hear her over the static. “It’s gonna give!”
And for a moment there, it really feels like it does.
_______
Static overwhelms her senses, and Monica feels herself get thrown back against the seat. It takes her a beat too long to realize that the heavily-armored rover is about to go the way of her SWORD drone from last week.
And it’s gonna take her with it.
Jimmy clearly realizes this, too, right as she does. His alarmed voice forces its way into the rover.
“Monica, get out of there!”
She grunts in exertion, unable to deliver a proper reply. She yanks a connecting wire to dislodge it from her suit.
A moment later, she hears Jimmy try again.
“Do you copy, Monica? Monica! Get out of there!”
He tries a third time, the panic overtaking his voice.
“Monica!”
She struggles with the overhead hatch, all-too-aware of the advancing red glow of the Hex that’s now mere inches from the boot of her spacesuit. Just as she’s about to join her seat in being swallowed by the sea of static, the hatch pops open and she tumbles out, violently colliding with the rover at least twice on her way down to the grass.
Body aching, she pushes herself up to a stand and turns around, astonished, just in time to witness the crackling, angry Hex pull the massive rover several yards up into the air and then spit it out like a toddler and his peas.
Jimmy and the approaching medevac unit stop dead in their tracks.
“Watch out!” Monica hears him shout, as the rover sails over her head.
But it’s not her rover anymore, not since Wanda’s magic has gotten its hands on it. The front half is better classified now as a beat-up brown junker, while the tail end remains the multi-million dollar SWORD rover, the whole thing like a vehicular centaur. The unholy contraption teeters to a stop on the grass beyond Monica and a few dozen yards short of where Jimmy and the crew are standing, their mouths agape.
For a moment, she can’t believe what she’s seeing — which is ridiculous, because she’s just spent the last week investigating this anomaly with Jimmy and Darcy, so nothing about Wanda’s abilities should come as that much of a shock at this point. Hell, she’s even the only person on this entire case with first-hand experience on the inside of the Hex.
Maybe, then, it’s actually the abject mission failure that Monica refuses to believe. Not two minutes ago, she admitted to Jimmy while standing on this very patch of grass that this was their last shot, and she blew it.
But…
…maybe…
…maybe it’s not.
She considers the Hex again, then turns back to face Jimmy.
Her improvised idea must be written all over her face, because Jimmy, for his part, looks absolutely horrified.
“No,” she hears him breathe out in disbelief. “No.”
“I can get through,” she tells him, decision made.
I have to.
She drops her helmet and sprints towards the barrier once more, completely unprotected this time.
“Monica! No!” Jimmy shouts desperately after her, but she’s not listening anymore.
It’s up to me now.
Her hands make first contact with the red wall, and instantly, the wave of grief she experienced the last time she was in Wanda’s world comes crashing back over her.
She grits her teeth and keeps pushing for what feels like hours, until finally…
She’s in.
_______
Going through the Hex the first time was nothing like this.
That trip was fast and seamless. One minute she was conferring with Jimmy up the road from Westview, and the next, she was sporting a chic sixties-inspired dress and up-do and relaxing on a park bench in the town square.
Now, Monica feels like she’s walking through a vat of quicksand and molasses, while at the same time towing a submarine by the waist — never in her life has she experienced this much resistance. She remembers Jimmy telling her, back when they first met, that he felt like the Hex didn’t want him to go inside and investigate, and the relevance of that sentiment is tenfold now that Monica’s actively opposing the boundary’s resistance.
She struggles forward through the seemingly endless boundary, feeling herself being pulled and stretched and separated out both impossibly forwards and backwards across a spectrum of space and time and memories and emotions, and it’s all too painful, too difficult, too much.
And then suddenly, her mother’s voice fills her ears.
“No, I can’t. I can’t leave Monica.”
Her eleven-year-old self’s response follows, just as the scene played out all those years ago:
“Mommy, it’s okay. I can stay with Grandma and Pop-Pop.”
Monica hears her mother chuckle, then, and even though it’s not real, it’s not actually happening, the feeling is so visceral, so devastating, that Monica’s not sure she can go on.
“There’s no way I’m going, baby. It’s too dangerous.”
The memory switches suddenly, and now it’s a different conversation, a different time.
“Maybe I could fly up and meet you halfway?” That’s her younger self again, only now she’s talking to—
“Only if you learn to glow like your Aunt Carol,” Nick Fury’s voice replies, and Monica’s almost relieved to discover that her aunt’s voice is decidedly not invited to this…whatever this is.
“And you were the most powerful person I knew,” Maria tells her best friend and surrogate sister, but it feels like she’s talking directly to Monica now.
The switching is happening more rapidly now, Monica’s mind barely finishing a resurrected sentence before the next one begins, past and terrible present blurring together into one overwhelming experience of grief and adversity and pain.
“Your mom, she died, honey,” Dr. Highland heartbreakingly reveals.
“She was truly an inspiration. Sorry,” Jimmy politely consoles her.
For the first time since entering this suspended existence, Monica feels herself speak.
“No!” she shouts into the nothingness enveloping her.
No, she can’t be gone.
No, I can’t do this.
No, I can’t go on.
And then there’s input from the one voice she never wanted to hear again.
“Your mom’s lucky. When they were handing out kids, they gave her the toughest one.”
Monica doesn’t need Carol’s words of encouragement, doesn’t need her admiration, doesn’t need her.
But right now? — those simple words are enough to haul her through.
She takes one final, impossible step, wrenching all the disparate parts of herself together.
And then…
She’s something else entirely.
Something new.