together after the end of the world
Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As a known enemy
Take your time, hurry up
The choice is yours don't be late
Take a rest as a friend
As an old memoria
-Come As You Are, Nirvana
When Carol Danvers took on the mantle, she felt like a ghost was inside her. Moving with her as she flew around the city as high as the jets she once flew. All she could remember was looking at Mar-Vell as the light was draining from his eyes, exhaustion taking over his body. He was sick, that much she told him. Hiding on Earth, knowing he could have helped but it was time for someone else to step up as Captain and that person would be her.
He saved her from the prison she was in on that Kree spaceship months ago, only to come back down to Earth changed. Her DNA was combined with his, an ambitious experimentation the Kree scientists did on her.
Aim high, fight-fly-win.
It was the air force motto that drummed in Carol's head since she first heard of the Air Force to the days when the Kree kept her prisoner. It was all that kept her sane until she was finally on Earth itself. She would never be the same after that. Hence genetics, that's what they told her. Super strength, flying and electromagnetic radiation, which was blasters coming out of her hands. She was a superhero, in her mind at least as Mar-Vell tried to teach her how to fly.
He was a good mentor and friend, reminding her of her older brother Joseph, who passed away years ago. As she flew alongside him, Carol promised herself she would help others, like Joseph, like Captain America would.
"What are you going to do Danvers?" That was something she was asking herself every minute since she buried Mar-Vell. What would she do? She turned to Nick who bit into the raspberry donut. He had brought some, Coulson and his partner, Agent May waited outside as her untouched glaze donut sat perched on her knee. "Save the universe. Maybe go on to live a semi-normal life."
It was something Mar-Vell would have done and the latter would be hers. Maybe this would be what Carol did, save the world and go to sleep. But she knew that as long as SHIELD survived, and Nick still had a means to contact her, she would answer that call. She would be Captain Marvel.
"The Earth will need you one day Danvers." Fury's voice rang in her ears.
"I know, and you'll know exactly how to contact me, Nick."
The memory of that conversation still rang in his ears. Nick Fury felt for the small pager in his pocket. It was always in his pocket hidden from everyone except himself, the only person that had the final ace. Last time he checked in, Carol was out of the galaxy in a plane of exitance called Nowhere. After that, he lost contact but somehow little trinkets would wind up at his doorstep with the initials Love, CM.
As Fury watched the Avengers Initiative come to life before his eyes, he could proudly say that Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel was the person to blossom that idea into reality.
Carol would be the muse for the Avengers, as it came to life before his very eyes.
But that was years ago, now as he watched with panicked eyes as people disintegrated into ashes, Nick fished for the pager that Carol gave him years ago. Turning it on, he sent the SOS, the call that would bring her back. That's when he felt it, he looked at his hand and saw himself turning into ashes. He hoped to god, that once Carol got here, that she would be able to help the Avengers, Nick had a plan in motion. He just hoped Hawkeye can be able to help.
"Motherfu-"
He disappeared.
Clint Barton got the call minutes before he saw someone disappear into ashes. His mind instantly started feeling that something was off. Ever since news broke that Tony disappeared after the aline donut ship left Earth, things just calmed down in New York until this. It was a worldwide panic and all Clint Barton could do was just look around trying to find Fury. There was also the fact that no one was answering his calls from his home, something that kept sinking in his stomach. He found the car blocks down the street, the cell phone that belonged to Nick Fury was left abandoned along with a pager.
He wiped off the dust and noticed the blinking red, blue and gold star blinking.
Who the hell was Fury contacting? was the only thought that ran through Clint's mind before the pager went off with a single beep. He pressed a button to see what it contained, on the message it read: Nick, SOS received. Meet at Massachusets, Cape Cod. 7712, Seige St. -Danvers
Memorizing the message, Clint got the beat up SUV and started to drive off. He typed in the coordinates to his phone, pocketing the pager in hand. He had a feeling, a gut-wrenching one that his family may not have survived whatever this nightmare was. Even if he had hope, it would be futile to go back to an empty house. He would have to meet this mysterious Danvers, whoever this person was would need to provide Clint some answers.
Someone needed to make sure everything wasn't going to shit, it might as well be Hawkeye.
Carol Danvers has not stepped onto her home planet in almost two years, the last one was when Fury contacted her about her father being terminally ill. She rushed back to his side before he passed away after the funeral Carol left. She couldn't be on earth without the memories calling back. Even now as she zoomed past Maine and towards Cape Cod, Carol could almost hear Mar-Vell's voice behind her. But he couldn't be behind her, Mar-Vell has been dead for more than 25 years after they stopped the Kree-Skrull's attempt on using Earth as a battleground. She could practically hear Mar-Vell criticizing her flight pattern. Carol swallowed the lump that was forming in her throat and flew to her destination.
This was no time to weep for the past, it was time to make sure a future was set for her home.
Landing on the soft sand, Carol surveyed her surroundings. Cape Cod's sandy shores hadn't changed since the 90's, as Carol walked towards her family beach house. There she opened the door and stepped inside. She expected Nick Fury to come slowly walking out of the shadows and tell her the Earth needed her, showing her a strategy with Agent Coulson at his side. Instead, she found a man with a bow and arrow, his eyes sharp but filled with silent grief.
"Danvers? My name is Clint Barton, Nick Fury is dead and I need your help."
There were many layers to Nick Fury that Clint didn't know about one of them being that the Avengers weren't the first superheroes that the ex-director of SHIELD met, let alone teamed up. Carol on her part answered Clint's questions and he answered hers. They were strangers with destinies to fulfill, what those destinies were, they had no clue. What they did know was that something happened across the universe, across earth itself that made the population disappear to half.
"It has something to do with that spaceship that came to Earth a couple days ago," Clint explained over coffee. They decided to head out, and get some supplies. It was something they agreed that they could not stay in Cape Cod forever. "After the ship left, Tony Stark who is Iron Man disappeared and that is when it all went to shit Carol. It all went to shit."
In the dark SUV, the American blue skyline looked undisturbed but the roads said otherwise as the duo drove away from Massachusets. People were crying for the Avengers, yet here Carol was sitting with one driving her towards the Avengers compound to find his teammates and answers. She studied the archer who went by Hawkeye, he had told her when they drove past Providence. It would be three days till they made it to the compound, something they both knew as silence overtook them. A song started on the radio, Carol recognized immediately as Nirvana. She hadn't heard that song since she was on the Air Force back in the late summer of 1995.
Humming the tune of Kurt Cobain's song, Carol thought about Mar-Vell, her mind was usually drifting to him now. Her thoughts were interrupted by Barton's horrible singing, which brought a small smile out of her.
"Hello, hello, hello. With the lights off, its lets dangerous. Here we are now entertain us." They sang loudly to the grunge voice of Cobain's voice as he sang Smells Like Teen Spirit, that blared through the speakers. As the song ended, Clint turned towards Carol. "You listened to Nirvana?"
Carol's eyes glazed over as the song came to the next verse. "Yeah, a long time ago."
Fast food, greasy diners and gas station stops were always part of a trip. For them, it was silent, always looking behind their shoulder, as if an enemy might jump and start attacking them. They bought enough food, with the bag Nick kept in the car, (both of them knew that the ex-director wouldn't have minded them taking his credit card but they decided to pay him back... later.) along with other necessities to keep a low profile. Over the course of the trip, they bonded with old classic songs from the decades and new hits that Carol hadn't heard before. It was exciting in a sense, besides the part of facing the monster who did this in the first place. They talked about Star Wars, Clint finally finding someone else who shared his obsession with the films and fought over the last chicken mcnugget. Carol won, grinning as Clint pouted like a child.
They talked about the serious matter, Carol asking questions that he couldn't answer. Clint had no idea who may have done this, only that whoever did this was from space. He bitterly laughed that, "Stark was right," before turning up The Clash to full volume.
The Shareef don't like it, Rockin the Casbah, Rock the Casbah.
Carol could tell that the Avengers was a sensitive subject for Clint, and once he opened up as she was driving through New Haven, it seemed like a lifetime that seemed to press on Clint Barton.
He talked about meeting his wife, Laura, the birth of his children. It went on to how he befriended the deadliest assassin from the then-Soviet Union, Natasha Romanoff and was mind controlled by the Norse god of mischief, Loki. How he felt a brotherhood with his fellow Avengers, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Dr. Bruce Banner, Thor, Sam Wilson, James Rhodey and later on, with Wanda Maximoff. Clint also described the horrific site that he witnessed, how Wanda Maximoff's twin, Pietro died sacrificing himself to protect the archer. After the events in Sokovia with Ultron, Clint told her how the 'Civil War' erupted between Steve and Tony, how that ultimately led to the now dubbed, 'Rouge Avengers' that was on Steve's side on the run from the government and with the infamous Winter Soldier living in Wakanda. It was like seeing an empire fall, from Carol's point of view, something that Clint agreed with.
Wakanda, as Carol would later see, was a refugee for those rouges that would ultimately unite the original Avengers. It would unite an empire that Nick Fury built with Carol Danvers as the muse.
The night skyline of New Rochelle, New York was beautiful but inside Carol Danvers mind it was turmoil. It hit her that as she was bonding with Clint, Carol could feel that this would just end with another body count. The anxiety built up, like a weight on her chest that she couldn't breathe. She could hear Mar-Vell screaming her name, telling her to go.
"CAROL!"
The car stopped and Clint was practically yelling her name, echoing with Mar-Vell's voice. Carol unbuckled her seatbelt, practically jumping out of the car before hunching over on the road. She could hear Clint open the door, footsteps quickly to her side as hot tears started rolling down her face, It was years since she came back to earth but it only took a matter of seconds for her ghosts to come back. Wearing the suite and the title still felt like playing dress up, even as her name outshone his-Carol could still feel his presence lingering, getting louder when she stepped foot on Earth. Her palms dug into the earth, heat burning the dirt but Carol ignored it. Her powers would always do this when emotions came into play.
"It's all my fault." Clint's face swam into view as he asked her if she was alright. Carol shook her head before sitting on the itchy grass. She forgot how the grass was super itchy, and the air was cold, giving her skin goosebumps. She forgot a lot of things from Earth.
The pressure she felt on her chest suddenly burst as Carol shook, words spewing out of her mouth forming the story of how she gained her title as Captain Marvel. Clint, on his part, sat next to her, silently listening to her story. She was grateful for this man, one that she didn't know but was slowly getting to know all the same.
It was a tragic story, that was blunt even for Carol. She described her childhood, her dad never seeing her as an equal, how she defied him by signing up for the Air Force to get a college degree and later went on as Commander. she told Clint about working with Mar-Vell, disguised as Dr. Walter Lawson during her time at NASA as a pilot. She later described being kidnapped by Kree genetics, Minn-Evra who wanted to experiment on her and Mar-Vell's DNA, to try an create the most superior offsprings for the Kree evolution. She remembered Ronan the Accuser's threats of death towards her and her planet. It terrified her 25 years ago and it still terrifies her now. Thankfully, no offsprings were ever created, only her DNA combined with Mar-Vell's as he protected her from an explosion in the ship that she was kept in. It would take some convincing on her part to get Mar-Vell to train her but he did make sure she was ready to defend Earth and later on the universe. But he would help, Carol remembered how.
"If you stop pestering me for five seconds and give you what you want, will you stop?" He sounded annoyed and Carol was somewhat glad she could get under this man's skin. She nodded and Mar-Vell sighed. "Fine. We start early in the morning, bring coffee and food because I certainly won't share." Carol got there on time in the warm, humid Colorado desert with two drinks in hand along with couple muffins. Mar-Vell just gave her a small smile while taking a blueberry muffin. After that, they started to fly, well more like he flew and she fell on her face multiple time, Mar-Vell laughing but always there with a hand to lift her up.
"Try again Carol. You'll get it and then you can touch the stars."
He was her mentor, he was her friend and maybe it could have been something more, but for Carol, that plane crashed years ago.
Her powers were part of the reason SHIELD was called upon to make sure she wasn't a danger to herself or the people around her. How Nick Fury and a then-newbie agent Coulson had helped Carol, Clint realizing that this must have been Phil's 'rodeo' that he would mention. He could see that Carol Danvers was their bridge to the universe, something that even Carol herself agreed. She had powers that only some have seen, binary, as she called it. Something dangerous for the enemy and a state that she had control over. It was brought on during the final attack on the Kree, Doctor Min-Erva made an assault on Mar-Vell, killing him. Carol unleashed the binary state, this power of gravity, electromagnetism and stellar energy, all of this left a blow on the Kree and Skrull making them retreat from Earth.
It would take weeks for Carol Danvers to return to normalcy, hiding in her Cape Cod home. Fury, Coulson and another newbie agent Melinda May, all tracked her down to her home just so Fury can have a chat with her. In that moment of time, Carol could see the wheels turning for Nick, seeing the birth of the Avengers Initiative, the idea right before his eyes. But she would not be Earth's defender, leaving that to Nick. Instead, she would be the universe defender but even as she left, she made sure Nick knew that if anything would happen that even he or the Initiative couldn't defend the Earth, that she could be reached by the pager. She was not contacted until years later, Nick Fury nowhere in sight, just a lone Avenger just as clueless but determined to defend their planet.
"Carol?" His voice was soothing and concerned. She sniffled, the cold air making her nose twitch just a bit. Even with her story now in the open for Clint, there was still that underlying fear that ate Carol. That just like Mar-Vell, Clint Barton would fall trying to defend her and Carol couldn't let that happen. "I can't let you die." The words felt heavy in the cold, night air.
"I'm not going to die. I'm going to live and so are you." He extended his hand, Carol taking it. He pulled her up and stared into her eyes, determination showing. "When this is over, kick whosever ass that did this, you and I are going to go out, drink till we regret it in the morning." Grinning, it made Carol crack a smile. Slinging his arm over her shoulder they looked across the road, cars passing by them.
"Plus, I need a new partner since Romanoff ditched me for Steve." Carol looked at Clint who still had that grin on his face. "What'd ya say Danvers, partners?"
Carol matched the grin on his face as her tears dried and the cool night air whipped through her messy blonde ponytail. "Partners."
Even though the world ended, for now, it was just Clint and Carol, driving towards their destiny while swapping stories and tears, with Nirvana blasting loudly once again on the radio leaving the world drowning behind them.
Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As a known enemy
It took three days and 13 hours but they finally made it to the Avengers Compound. It was empty with echoes of who was here as if the people that walked it's grounds would come back at any moment.
Clint and Carol went straight for the hanger where another ride might be waiting, which to their luck, there was in the form of a Quinjet. Clint sighed loudly in relief at the gratefulness to whoever may have left it here. It was theirs now.
They stashed the beat up SUV in the driveway. Carol questioned out loud how that car could have made it for that long before breaking down, Clint shrugged and said that maybe Thor gave them a blessing of sorts. Caroll just snorted before lugging the rest of their food to the Quinjet.
Closing the door of the Quinjet, Clint turned towards Carol. "You fly, I'll try reaching a message to my teammates." Carol blinked but nevertheless sat down in the pilot's seat, it was so long since she flew a plane but as it took off, it felt like she was back in the Air Force. Clint's eyes were on her, a curious look as he stared at her. "What?" Clint shook his head. "Nothing." Grinning, she flew straight towards their destination while Clint looked on, calling anyone that could listen.
"This is Hawkeye, I need someone to respond. We are headed your way, again this is Hawkeye-" The line was cut off by static and a female voice. "Clint?" The man in question fiddled with the button before answering. "Nat? Oh, thank god, where the hell are you?" After getting word from the assassin, Clint wrote down the coordinates and put them in the system.
"Where we headed Barton?" She called out to the archer. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at her, a serious expression on his face. " Wakanda, Danvers. We are headed to Wakanda"
The Avengers, these heroes that Clint called teammates, family even looked lost, broken but determined. They looked ready to Avenge, Wakanda, the Earth and the fallen from the attack that Thanos did across the universe.
Thanos. It was the Mad Titans doing that had caused populations across the galaxies to disappear in half, killing the Avengers along with many others when he snapped his fingers.
They looked at Danvers with curiosity and wariness, from fighting aliens meeting an earthling with Kree DNA, the alien race that they fought against years ago, Carol couldn't blame them. But Clint wholeheartedly vouched for her.
"Fury trusts her, Coulson trusted her and so do I. Carol Danvers is my partner and our hope to kicking Thanos ass, so let's do our job." He looked at his team, the Earth's mightiest heroes as they were dubbed long ago. He could see it in each of their eyes, just like he saw in Carol as they were lifting off from the compound, that toxic spark that spread like wildfire when they fought against Loki, was reignited.
As everyone scattered to get ready, to find Thanos, Clint looked at Carol. "Suit up Danvers, your an Avenger now," Carol smirked, nodding she went to go change. It was time for Captain Marvel to fight for the Earth once more.
There was once an idea, Nick Fury said. What he did not say, was the origin of that idea came from knowing Carol Danvers. From seeing what she did and what a group could do defending the Earth. Nick Fury knew his idea and that one day the origin and the idea would one day collide to defend the Earth once more.
There was once an idea, Nick Fury said, to bring together the Earth's mightiest heroes.
Notes: I don't own anyone from the MCU or Nirvana's songs and The Clash's songs! Enjoy the story folks!