The Truth Comes Out

After several hours, they finally made it to Louisiana and landed nearby where Maria's home was located. The two took off their jackets as they walked up to the house and then around the back to what looked to be a garage for a plane as Rold saw a woman working on something a child was in the plane. Fury stood further back.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for Maria Rambeau." He called out to the woman, catching the attention of both the woman and the child, both with a look of bewilderment and shock upon looking at him.

"Uncle Harry? Mom, it's Uncle Harry!" The child, a young girl, said with a large head of hair and dark brown skin like the woman. She then jogged up to him and hugged him, much to his confusion.

"I knew it! Everyone said you were dead! But we knew they were lying." The girl said, looking up at him, seeing the look of confusion on his face.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are, or who I really am." Rold confessed, feeling guilty for the girl. He then looked up at the woman, who was the same woman he saw in his memories and the photo walking up to him from under one of the plane's wings.

Everyone entered the home, where Rold explained everything about him being with the Kree, the Skrulls and why all of this led him to Earth. Both Maria and her daughter, Monica just stared at him in disbelief as they sat at a table.

"That is the craziest shit I ever heard." Maria confessed.

"Green transforming aliens? There's no such thing." Monica dismissed.

"You are absolutely right, young lady. There is no such thing. 'Cause if there were, we would want to keep that to ourselves." Fury said, looking over at Rold.

"Clearly only words aren't convincing enough." He muttered and walked up to a tea kettle and placed his hand on it, glowing with energy and heating up the kettle as it whistled, shocking both Maria and Monica.

"No way! That's so cool." Monica liked what she saw and Rold removed his hand from the tea kettle.

"Oh, he can do a lot more than make tea with those hands." Fury added.

"Like what? Show us." Monica requested wanting to see some more.

"Later." Rold smirked.

"I kept all your stuff. I'll go get it." Monica said before running off to elsewhere in the house.

"Why don't you give her a hand with that?" Rold asked Fury, who nodded, knowing that he and Maria needed a moment and walked off.

Rold then sat at the table opposite Maria.

"You don't remember anything?" She asked him.

"All I've gotten so far are flashes. Small moments. I just hope they're real. If I can piece together what happened that morning, perhaps it would make sense." Rold admitted.

"*clicks tongue* You woke me up banging on my door at dawn. Trademark move. Back then, we had to get up so early. The Air Force still wasn't letting women fly combat, so testing your mother's planes was my only shot at doing something that mattered. You wanted to race to base in your old Mustang and I wasn't about to argue, 'cause I knew my Camero would dominate. But you cheated, took a shortcut." Maria explained what happened, which made Rold form a subtle smile.

"How is taking a shortcut cheating?" He questioned.

"Since it violates the predetermined rules of engagement." Maria replied.

"Yup, don't remember those."

"Hmm. Of course you don't." The two laughed, Rold feeling like he's gaining something that he lost, which made him feel more like himself.

"When I got to the hangar, your mother was agitated. She said she had lives to save. She was trying to take the Asis up herself, but you said that-"

"If there were lives at stake, I would fly the plane." Rold recollected.

"Yeah. Yep. Big hero moment. You wanted to help her so badly as her son. You were so alike. So unique. And now you're saying that she's from another planet, which makes you an alien." Maria said.

"Yeah. I feel so bad, knowing how hard this must be for you."

"Oh, what? This part right here? No. No. Mmm mmm. Oh, what's hard is losing my best friend in a mission so secret they act like it never even happened, Hard is knowing you were out there somewhere too damn stubborn to die. And now you come up in here after six years with your supercharged fire hands and you expect me to call you… I don't even know what. Rold? Is that who you really are now?" Maria questioned, her eyes watering and voice cracking, the weight of this whole thing now breaking her slightly.

"I don't know anymore. I just want to be whole." Rold confessed, now feeling guilty that he made Maria, who was supposed to be his best friend, break down.

"Come look!" Monica called out and the two walked their way to see her and Fury by the dining table with Rold's stuff from his life on Earth.

"This is me and you on Halloween. I'm Amelia Earhart and you're Michael Jackson." Monica said, showing a photo of her in her costume and him wearing a red leather jacket with metal shoulders.

"Oh, this is you when you were little. It was just you and your mom growing up, your father not wanting to raise you, your mom accepted that. And you both met us and got a bigger family.." She then showed an old photo of Rold as a child with Lawson standing with him with a warm smile.

"This is us on Christmas. I got my favourite bunny slippers."

She kept showing all kinds of photos, ranging from him as a child, wearing a pilot suit, after graduating, him and Goose, him and the Air Force team and many more, giving Rold a greater idea of who he was and he wished he remembered it all now.

"Oh, wait. I forgot. Your jacket. Mom doesn't let me wear it anymore after I spilled ketchup on it." Monica then said before walking off.

Rold looked back at the photos and shifted a few which revealed a charred and splintered dog tag.

"That was all that survived the crash. Or so we thought." Maria said as Rold looked at it and saw that it said 'Ha- Lawson'. He connected 'Ha' to his name and realised that his real name was Harold, or Harry for short.

Then suddenly, there was some knocking on the front door. This made both Fury and Harry on edge.

"Don't answer that." He warned Maria, who was walking to the door.

"It's just my neighbour." She told him.

"Skrulls can change into anyone." He reminded her as he and Fury walked up to the door. Harry then opened it to see a man standing there.

"Hi there." He greeted him.

"Hi. What do you want?" Harry asked calmly.

"Uh…"

"Hey, Tom. This is my friend, Harry." Maria said, walking up behind him.

"Oh. Pleased to meet you." The man said, putting his hand out for a handshake that Harry hesitantly did, not wanting to seem too rude.

"I noticed that peculiar bird you got parked by the road and I was just wondering if you mind if I bring the boys over to get a closer look see?" The man asked.

"Closer look see?" Harry repeated.

"Yeah." He nodded.

"The 'bird' parked out by the road? Hmm. Some other time, perhaps. We're… having a little catch up, it's been a while since we last met each other." Harry said, still suspicious of him being a Skrull but pretended anyway.

"Yeah, I hope you don't mind? I'll come by either tomorrow or the day after, okay?" Maria nodded, agreeing with Harry.

"Uh… sure." Tom agreed and Maria closed the door.

"It seems you can be kind to your neighbours." Xarill's voice came from behind them and they turned to see her and Talos by the doorway to the kitchen.

"After all, you never know when you're gonna need to borrow some sugar." Talos added before he took a sip of a milkshake. Fury had his gun pointed at them and Harry charged up his hands.

"Wait, just please listen before you attack us and make a mess of your friend's home. Which by the way, is a nice house, miss." Xarill said in a soft voice as she and Talos walked up to them in a civil manner. Maria looked out the window to see a worrisome sight.

"Oh my God! What the hell?" She reacted to seeing her daughter interacting with a doppleganger of herself.

"No one's gonna hurt the girl. Just don't kill us. That would really complicate the situation." Talos told them all.

"I'm about five seconds from complicating that wall with some ugly ass Skrull brains." Fury snarled, mad at them for impersonating his superiors.

"We're sorry that we simmed your bosses. But here we are as our true selves. No deception." Xarill apologized.

"Then who's out there with Monica?" Harry asked her, part of him glad that she's fine from his blast as he still felt drawn to her.

"Okay, that's a fair point… but we're sure that you understand we had to take some precautions. We saw you crush 20 of our best men with your hands bound. We just wanna talk." Talos admitted, his sister nodding.

"Last time that happened, you had me hanging by my ankles." Harry reminded them.

"That was because we had to be careful, knowing what the Kree did to you, molding you to go against what your mother wanted." Xarill told him.

"Yeah. I finally accept that Lawson's my mother." He admitted to them.

"Alright. But we also have an audio recording from Pegasus of your voice from a plane crash six years ago on a device we believe you call a 'black box'." Talos then revealed to them, surprising them with this piece of news, especially Maria.

"They told me it was destroyed in the crash. How'd you get it?" She asked them.

"She doesn't understand. Young lady, we have a special skill that kind of allows us to get into places we're not supposed to be." Talos explained, slightly rude, causing Xarill to nudge him on his side.

"Call me 'young lady' again I'm gonna put my foot in a place it's not supposed to be." Maria warned him, though confusing him as he didn't know what she meant.

"Am I supposed to guess where that is?" He questioned. His sister shrugged in confusion.

"Your ass." Both Harry and Fury said in unison, which made Xarill cringe at the idea of that happening.

"Look, we're all on edge right now, that's understandable. But we just want your help to decode some coordinates. So if you sit down and listen to it, we promise it'll be worth your while." She then promised directly to Harry, hoping he listens to her as she herself is drawn to him as he is to her.

"Call your friend in and I'll listen." He replied to her.

"Alright." She nodded as Goose came up to her and Talos, purring and they jumped back in fear.

"Oh my God! Get that thing away. How'd that get in here?" Talos asked, surprising everyone that a couple of Skrulls are scared of a cat.

"What? You're scared of a cat?" Harry questioned how absurd this all is as he held Goose in his arms.

"That's not a cat you're holding. That's a Flerken." Xarill told him, sounding slightly scared as she hid behind Talos, which looked adorable to Harry.

"A Flerken?" Fury laughed, finding the whole thing amusing.

"Mom?" Monica called out from the kitchen, who saw the two Skrull siblings and her mother in front of her, which made her look back and saw a Skrull where her 'mother' was, who shrugged in an apologetic way.

Everyone made their way to a shack that housed Maria's office and she had her daughter sit on a bench outside on the porch.

"Monica."

"Why can't I listen, too?"

"Shh!"

Maria entered as Xarill handed her a disk and she inserted it into her PC as everyone gathered around. Fury looked over at the computer monitor and saw that it was loading, even Harry understood that based on what he was seeing. Eventually it finished and the recording started.

"Punch in the coordinates. 5-2-2-9, negative 4-7, 8.7-6-8, 0.2," Lawson's voice spoke first with a background noise going on.

"Copy that. So, where are we going, mom?" Harry's voice asked.

"My laboratory." She replied.

"What do you mean?" Harry questioned.

"Oh, no."

"What the hell is that? It's not on the radar."

"Go, son. Fly!"

Hearing all of this is causing him to have a flashback to what happened on that day.

He was in the cockpit, getting chased by a ship in Earth's orbit, avoiding getting hit by the barrage of gunfire.

"What the hell is that? That ain't a MiG." He questioned his mom, who sat behind him.

"Those are the bad guys. Fly faster now!" His mom ordered him.

"Yes, ma'am." He replied before he did some barrel rolls and descended back down to Earth.

"What do these guys want?" He asked as he flew through the clouds.

"Me. My work. I never should have brought you along." She told him as he maneuvered through the clouds.

"Some G's are incoming." He warned in advance as he did a spin to get behind his chaser and then he fired some shots but they were dodged as whoever was piloting the ship in front of him was giving him a run for his money. He managed to track onto them when somehow, their guns were firing at them.

"They're firing backwards! Hold on!" He shouted as he spun until a stray shot hit a wing, causing some damage to the jet and they were spinning down to ground level.

"Come on! Bail out!" He then shouted, pulling the eject switch and the glass flew off and they still spun down towards the edge of a lake. Harry managed to even out enough to fly through some trees but then they crashed into the lake and onto the shore, where the jet broke apart and was in flames.

"Harry, do you copy?" Maria's voice came through the comms.

"Yeah, I copy. We hit ground." He replied, hissing as he felt pain.

"Harry, are you okay? Do you copy?"

"Yeah, I copy!" He replied again as he took his helmet off and got out of the pilot seat to check on his mom.

"Mom!" He shouted in worry as he took her helmet off and was taken aback to her bleeding blue blood. He never saw her bleed before and he knew that humans have red blood, not blue.

"Why do you have blue blood?" He questioned her.

"Never mind that, how's my hair?" She attempted to lighten the situation. He didn't find it funny as he pulled her out of the seat.

"I gotta destroy it before they get here." She said before she fell onto her back.

"No, mom!" Harry shouted, scared for her life.

"Remember what I said about our work here? What it's for? She asked her son.

"To end wars." He answered.

"Yeah. But the wars are bigger than you know." She told him before grunting in pain.

"No, stay with , stay with me, please." He said, starting to break down, his eyes watering.

"Son, listen. My real name isn't Wendy Lawson. It's Mar-Vell, and I come from a planet named Hala." She revealed who she really was. This was just too much for him.

"So you're saying that you and I are aliens? So your stories were all true. Why didn't you tell me?" He asked, now starting to shed tears.

"I couldn't bear telling you the truth so young. I spent half my life fighting a shameful war. You were the best thing to happen to me. Now go before I have any regrets."

"No, I can't leave you." He shook his head.

"Please. Just remember the coordinates. You must save 'em without me." Mar-Vell told him.

"No! I can't do it without you! Don't leave me!" Harry cried.

"Please. I gotta blow the engine before they find it." She said, pulling out an alien handgun and leaned up to shoot it but a shot went clean through her heart, killing her.

"NO! Mother! NO!" Harry cried out at the top of his lungs, grabbing the handgun, still shedding tears, now full of sorrow, as he aimed towards a figure he saw walking towards him through some smoke. And that figure was revealed to be Yon-Rogg.

"We have no interest in hurting you." He told Harry.

"FUCK YOU!" He roared, full of rage at his mother's killer.

"You killed my mother!" He then spat. Yon-Rogg for a split second had a look of shock on his face but it went back to his emotionless look.

"The energy core. Where is it?" Yon-Rogg asked.

"Why should I tell you? You'll be surrounded within minutes." Harry warned the Kree.

"Then I see no reason to prolong this conversation." Yon-Rogg said, aiming his gun at Harry, though not taking the shot yet. Harry darted his eyes to the energy core to his right and decided to do what his mother told him. He aimed the gun at it, ignoring Yon-Rogg's yell as he took the shot and while it exploded, a beam of blue energy shot right into his body through his hands and made his eyes glow as the energy core sent everything flying back, including Harry, who was now unconscious.

Yon Rogg looked and saw his body covered in the energy.

"Commander? He's still moving. Permission to fire." Minn-Erva requested, coming up from behind some rocks.

"Hold your fire." He ordered her and then walked up to Harry's form, still covered in the energy from the energy core.

"There's nothing left. The core has been destroyed." Minn-Erva shrugged off as he then picked up a piece of metal that had the name 'rold' on it and he looked back at Harry. An idea formed in his head.

"He absorbed its power. He's coming with us." Yon-Rogg said as Harry's left hand shined bright.

Harry now knew the entire truth about what really happened, both to him and his mother. But also learned that his mentor was nothing but a liar and his mother's killer.

It was all too much for him that he ran out of the shack and fell on his knees, crying but also vomiting.

"He killed her. That lying bastard killed my mother." He broke down as everyone followed him out, concerned for him, especially Xarill and Maria.

"It was all a lie!" He then yelled, so full of grief and sorrow, hitting the ground as Xarill knelt down next to him and stroked his back.

"Shh. I'm so sorry." She whispered to him as Talos walked up to him, feeling so bad for revealing the hard truth to him.

"Now you must understand." He told him, making Harry look over to him.

"Understand what?" He asked the Skrull.

"That Yon-Rogg killed your mother because she found out that she was on the wrong side of an unjust war." Talos revealed.

"Tell me. Please. Tell me why she sided with you and your people." Harry requested, standing back up with Xarill's help, holding onto him due to his slightly weak state. He just had to know the context of the Skrulls.

"Those ruins on Torfa? The Accusers were responsible for them. Our people were living as refugees on that planet. We were driven into homelessness because we resisted Kree rule and as a result, they destroyed our planet." Xarill started to explain.

"And the handful of us that are left will be slaughtered next unless you help us finish what your mother started. The core that she found would have powered a light speed ship capable of carrying us to safety." Talos then explained further, giving time for Harry to sink in the truth behind the war.

"Harry, that core can take us to a new home where the Kree can't reach us. We can prosper and grow to be what we once were." Xarill then said, pulling his head to face her and look at the sincerity and warmth within her voice and eyes. And it worked as he started to feel more calm and finally started to accept the truth, especially since his mother wanted to help them.

"Your mother always told us that our work at Pegasus wasn't to fight wars, but to end them." Maria added.

"So she wanted me to help you find the core. But isn't it destroyed?" Harry questioned.

"No, you destroyed the engine. The core that powered it is in a remote location. If you help us decode those coordinates, we can find it." Talos stressed Harry's importance to help the Skrulls.

"I lost everything thanks to the Kree. Like you and your people. My mother saw them for what they are, and now I do." Harry stated, wrapping his arms around Xarill, wanting some comfort as Maria walked up to him.

"And now you know that you're Harold Lawson. The man on that black box risking his life to do the right thing. My best friend who supported me as a mother and a pilot when no one else did. You are smart, funny, and a huge pain in the ass, and you were the most powerful person I knew way before you could shoot fire from your fists. You hear me? Do you hear me?" Maria explained as Harry and Xarill parted. Harry shed tears once more and nodded, accepting everything fully now and then they hugged each other.