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Carol’s always loved flying.
Even though she’s had the ability to traverse the skies without a plane for over three decades now, the novelty has never truly worn off.
The feeling of wind in her hair, the open sky stretching ahead of her, the rest of the world rushing by in a blur.
Why walk when you can fly?
But then suddenly her smooth flight path is rudely interrupted, and by a rapidly-approaching plank of wood of all things, which she crashes into before registering that it’s just a simple kitchen table.
Indoors.
In a suburban family home.
An utterly wrecked suburban family home.
A familiar utterly wrecked suburban family home.
No no no no no!
Carol can’t help it — it’s been a really long, really confusing day, and she’s officially at the end of her rope.
“Ugh, not AGAIN!” she cries out in frustration, forcing her pissed-off self off the broken table and stomping her feet for good measure as she stands up. The childish outburst does make her feel marginally better, at least.
It’s only after she turns around, though, that she registers that she has an audience.
Oops.
Act first, think second. It’s always been the Carol Danvers way.
Right now, however, all Carol can do is freeze.
—Because not only is she not alone in this destroyed kitchen-slash-living-room, she’s suddenly face-to-face with the one person in the entire universe that she wasn’t prepared to see today.
Or any day…
“Hi,” she finally manages to squeak out, shoulders hunched up basically to her earlobes as she remains paralyzed in shock.
The only surviving member of her family stares straight back at her.
“Hi,” comes Monica’s response, and it’s the first time Carol’s heard her voice in as long as she can remember.
It’s also the most tense and uncomfortable Carol’s ever seen her kid.
Well, I guess she’s not technically a kid anymore…
Carol realizes in shame that she’s not even sure how old Monica would be now.
Do I factor in the Blip years?, she briefly wonders.
She feels her face reconfigure into a small smile, though, as she’s suddenly overcome by the relief at being able to lay eyes on Monica, here, alive and well. The last time Carol had boots on the ground on this planet, Monica was gone.
She didn’t exist.
Thankfully, of course, the Avengers, with the help of Carol, a couple years back had managed to undo the colossal mess Thanos had made.
But she’s never been able to bring herself to see Monica in the years since.
Carol dimly registers the whispered observations of the middle-aged couple whose lives she saved a couple times earlier today.
And whose home she accidentally destroyed...
Act first, think second.
“Nah, they don’t seem related” murmurs the man.
His wife dismisses him. “Whatever Yusuf, families are complicated.”
Fury’s voice punctures the tension that’s settled over the room like a fog.
Oh right, he’s here too, Carol belatedly appreciates.
“Well Monica, you wanna fill Carol in on your working theory?” he prompts her, and it’s almost like he’s playing along with Carol’s hissy fit from moments earlier, treating Carol and Monica like two preschoolers who got into a fight over the same toy plane.
Carol wishes her current relationship with Monica were that simple.
Monica, for her part, keeps her face tight and looks over at Carol a couple times as Fury speaks. Her expression is entirely unreadable, and Carol has no idea what to make of it.
She then somewhat begrudgingly makes her way over to Carol’s side of the living room, awkwardly stepping over the debris littered across the floor.
“Uh, yeah. Um. Hi…Captain Marvel,” she acknowledges with a stilted nod.
Don’t call me that, Carol immediately wants to say. She hates the sound of her formal moniker in Monica’s mouth. I used to change your diapers.
“It is so good to see you…” she starts, because even though this reunion was entirely unexpected, it is still good to see her, after all.
“…Lieutenant Trouble,” Carol decides to add after a moment, risking a dash of playfulness. A dash of familiarity.
It’s a mistake.
Act first, think second.
“You too,” Monica says. It doesn’t really feel like she means it, though. “And it’s Captain Rambeau now.”
Carol feels her eyes grow wide. She quickly nods, swallowing her embarrassment.
“Right. Sorry,” she apologizes, acutely aware she just crossed a line.
Carol’s eyes dart around the room. No one says anything.
“So…what’s new?” she finally asks, because didn’t Fury say something about a theory? Her voice feels foreign in her throat.
A younger bearded man, standing with Fury and presumably his parents, speaks up.
“Where’s my sister?” he inquires, clearly confused.
Wait, who?, Carol wonders, but then Monica’s speaking again, and all of her attention is immediately pulled back towards her.
“I’m thinking that our joint exposure—” Monica gestures between herself and Carol. “—to these unsteady jump points and our susceptibility to electromagnetic energy—”
Wait, “our”?
“—has temporarily entangled our world lines.”
What the hell is a world line?
Fury points approvingly at Monica. “Yeah, that right there.”
The young man from a second ago remains just as confused as Carol as he asks, “Uh…”, and Monica seems to detect that she’s the only person in the room who knows what the hell she’s talking about.
“Entanglement. Our light powers are entangled, so we switch places whenever we use them at the same time,” she clarifies to the group. “Which would mean Kamala—”
A million and one questions are whizzing past Carol’s head at this precise moment, all of which she’s gonna need answers to asap in order for any of this to make any damn sense, but one emerges at the forefront of her consciousness, and she finds she can’t resist for even a second longer.
“When did you get powers?” she interrupts to ask Monica. And how did I not know about this?
What else have I missed??
Monica sighs, and she seems extremely unimpressed by Carol’s inquiry.
“I walked through a radiation shielding barrier of a witch hex and now I can manipulate and see all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum,” she responds dryly, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world and Carol’s either an ignorant jerk or an absolute idiot for not already knowing this.
Or a shitty parent.
The middle-aged woman interjects, seemingly unconcerned with both Monica's palpable animosity and Carol’s brewing inner emotional turmoil.
“I’m very happy for you,” she tells Monica sweetly, before transitioning into a menacing, stern, don’t-fuck-with-me tone. “Where’s our daughter?”
The father pipes up, “Yes, where is Kamala?”
Huh?
The utter confusion is back, and Carol’s temporarily pulled from her sorrow.
Her eyes dart to the right.
“Who’s Kamala?” she asks, staring at the group. She suddenly remembers Monica saying the name earlier.
Monica turns to gesture towards Carol.
“Wherever you were.”
Oh, shit.
The long-overdue, much-needed mending of fences with Monica will have to wait, it seems.
Because Carol loves flying.
And that’s exactly what she was doing before all this happened.
Before she was smacked in the face with the harsh reality that Monica wants nothing to do with her anymore.
That all her time spent away from Earth, trying to save everyone else in the galaxy, might have just ended up destroying the one reason this planet ever felt like home to her.
What’s a few more minutes of estrangement after so many years?, she thinks to herself miserably, and then she races out of the house towards the backyard.
Right now, I gotta go save this Kamala kid.