Avenger
"So how you coping?"
She shrugged. "Culture gap for me's only around twenty-five years. Must have been much harder for you."
"I guess. Still, I got used to it. Food's better at least."
"And the tech. Still primitive by kree standards, but most stuff in the galaxy is."
"Yeah, I'm going to just nod and give you the impression I know what a kree is."
In spite of everything, Carol smiled. So did the man beside her as they walked across the grass.
Earth hadn't appeared too different from space when she'd entered the Sol system. As a child, she'd seen the picture named "Earthrise," and while becoming a fighter pilot had always been her dream, interest in space had come as part of the package. But of course, Earth wasn't the same as when she'd left it the second time. The galaxy wasn't the same, and based on what the people here had told her, the universe wasn't the same either. Stars still shone. Planets still orbited them, and were orbited by moons in turn. But when half of all life was wiped out in an instant, the dynamics of the universe changed. Empires found themselves on the verge of collapse. Refugee species found themselves on the brink of extinction. And Earth, while being neither empire nor refuge, had changed as well.
Though from what the man beside her had told her, Earth had changed in other ways as well, even before she received Fury's message. Alien invasions. Robot apocalypses. Grey goo apocalypses. For whatever reason, Fury hadn't called for help until now. Maybe he didn't hold her in as high regard as she'd thought. Or, perhaps, he'd found people like the man beside her now. If nothing else, they'd apparently kept her homeworld safe in her absence.
"So," Carol said. "Where do we go from now?"
The man blinked. "You're asking me?"
"You're a captain, aren't you?"
"Was a captain. Now I'm more of a nomad."
She smirked.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just…" The smirk turned into a genuine smile. "I never thought I'd be talking to Captain America."
"Please don't call me that," he said. "Not anymore."
"Oh." The smile faded. "Okay."
Things had clearly changed for Steven Rogers as well, and that wasn't confined to still being alive after his supposed death in the last days of World War II. She'd known about Captain America – what kid in this country hadn't? She'd played with Captain America trading cards, she'd bought the colouring in books (painting the Red Skull green, because reasons), heck, she'd even played the Captain America game on the Atari 2600. Her interest in WWII had been more in the aerial rather than terrestrial front, but still, Captain Rogers had been a hero. Even just from the view of history, there was no denying that. But now? The man before her looked nothing like he had in the history books or on the trading cards (not the videogame either, but at least that had an excuse). He had a beard. His uniform was darker. His shield, slung over his back, didn't carry any symbol at all, let alone the Star Spangled Banner. But more than anything was the way he looked. The way he spoke. The way sadness emanated from his eyes in a manner similar to the skrulls. People who, like him, had lost everything.
"Listen," Steve said, as they started to walk again. "Fury called you for a reason."
"I guess he did," she murmured.
"And, I'm not going to turn down help, but…"
"But?"
"But I asked you where we go to from here. I mean, you're from space. Thanos is from space. Thanos, far as we can tell, is somewhere in space, because he sure isn't here on Earth. So…"
"So you're wondering if I can help you with Space Invaders?"
"I'm guessing that's a reference for something."
"Well, actually-"
"And I'm past caring at this point. All I care about is justice."
Justice, Carol reflected. The Kree Empire had its own ideas about justice. So had the skrulls. But as to the question of the universe's number one mass murderer…
"I don't know much about Thanos," she said. "When I was on Hala, he was never much of an issue. Just another terrorist, or anarchist, depending on who you asked."
"But you knew about him," Steve said.
"Knew that he was targeting planets outside the empire – planets that none of us cared about. He'd cull half of them, but then, what was a few million compared to the trillions within the empire?" She sighed. "When I was with the skrulls, we'd sometimes hear rumours about him – getting a bigger army, targeting bigger planets, but never much. It was only when I saw the skrulls disintegrating before my eyes, that I…" She took a breath. "Well, that was when I got Fury's transmission. That's when I took a ship and came back here."
Steve said nothing. But the look in his eyes told her that he understood.
"It's good to know that he did a good job without me," Carol continued. Her throat was getting sore, and she didn't like it. "I mean, that he found people like…like him, I guess. People who'd defend this world. I mean, maybe he's…" She took a breath. "He's gone, but maybe his legacy endures."
Steve sighed. "I'm not interested in legacies right now."
Carol felt a fire in her breast – she knew what Captain Rogers meant. But the words still hurt. They made her hurt when he and the Russian woman had told her that Nicholas Joseph Fury was dead. They made her hurt when she'd accessed the shared world database on the list of those who'd been declared lost in Thanos's purge, when she'd seen Maria and Monica's names on the list. She said that she'd come back for them. She'd been away from this world longer than she had when the kree first abducted her. And now…now, she'd never see them again.
"So you're not interested in legacies," Carol murmured. She stopped, and looked at Steve, then back to the campus that served as his base of operations. "So what are you interested in?"
"Revenge."
She raised an eyebrow. "Is that it?"
"What else is there? We can't bring back the dead. Genocide didn't end after the Second World War. World's changed forever, and my own country still considers me a criminal. So what left, save vengeance?"
Carol folded her arms. "That's not the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from Captain America."
"Piece of advice – never put people on a pedestal."
"Why?"
"Because when they fall on you, they'll break something."
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Because thinking of pedestals, of Yon-Rogg, of how she'd looked up to him for all those years…his body may have been broken back in 1995. But it was her heart that he'd cleaved in two.
"Alright," Carol said. "I won't. But as someone who never took revenge against the people who wronged me, might I offer some advice?"
Steve grunted. "Sure."
"Avenge the people you lost. Give them justice, not revenge."
He snorted.
"What?"
"I know what you're going to say," he said. "We are, or were, the Avengers. We're meant to avenge the world, not revenge it." He sighed. "Where I'm standing now, it looks the same."
"Where you're standing now is on the grass with someone who wants justice as much as you do. And who's willing to follow your lead."
"My lead?"
"Your lead. As a captain. As someone who knows this world better than I did. As someone who had the privilege of knowing Nick Fury longer than I did."
"A privilege…" Steve looked away for a moment. "I suppose it was."
Carol, picking her words carefully, murmured, "I was an avenger too you know."
"What?" He looked back at her.
"Carol 'Avenger' Danvers. My callsign back in the USAF. And now…" She extended a hand forward. "I guess we're all Avengers now."
Steve Rogers stood there for a moment. A moment that stretched into infinity. A moment that ended, at least, with him taking the hands of the former Starforce warrior and shaking it.
"For Fury," Carol said. "For the four billion who lost their lives on this planet, and the trillions across the cosmos who lost their lives also."
"For them," Steve said. "And the people left behind."
Like us, Carol thought. For Maria. For Monica.
"Come on," Steve said, nodding towards the campus "Think the others want to hear what you have to say."
Carol looked up at the night sky, to the stars, and the worlds that did their eternal dance, before following him.
For everyone.