So I've watched Endgame and I will be incorporating spoilers from the movie, so if you HAVE NOT SEEN ENDGAME, DO NOT CONTINUE. However I've only seen Endgame twice so the spoilers I'm using are based off my memory of the viewings and any other spoiler videos lurking on youtube so chances are I'll probably get some things wrong. Also, I have decided to make this story part one in my continuation of the alternate ending to the fic Gravity, within my Mirage series, BUT Welcome Wagon can be read as a stand alone, so don't worry. Let's go.
It was several hours before Carol returned to the large building housing Jimmy and his friends. It was nearing the end of the day, a little after four to be exact, and she'd needed time to search out Maria and Monica.
Maria still resided in Louisiana but her home had been deserted, the plants hanging from baskets and nestled in pots around the house completely wilted from neglect or empty with only a layer of gray ash left behind. She'd tracked down the spot where Maria had been lounging in the living room, the only evidence being an empty cup of an evaporated drink on the coffee table and dust particles embedded in the couch.
After Goose's brief stint at the house all those years ago Marie had warmed up to the idea of a cat, so she had gone out and adopted a calico that Monica had named Duckie, to keep up the tradition. Carol had called for the cat after discovering Maria's remains but the feline hadn't appeared. Either she'd been taken the same way as her owner had or she'd gone feral.
Carol's next stop was Daytona Beach, Florida where she knew Monica had last been. The eleven year old had accomplished what she said she'd do and had gotten into Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. It had been one of Carol's happiest memories. The young adult had quickly climbed the ranks, her Mother and Aunt's profession giving her an edge, and she'd graduated with top marks.
Monica had ended up settling in Florida with several trips a month back home, and that was where Carol had gone, visiting the house her niece had bought some five years ago. It too was empty. But Carol hadn't admitted defeat and she'd gone to her work. The whole building had been deserted. She'd had no way of knowing if Monica was really gone or not. She'd tried calling the modified phone again but still nothing.
So she'd remotely turned on the beacon and tracked it down.
To a mangled car forgotten in a lot surrounded by other vehicles that had been destroyed mid-drive. The phone was laying down in the footwell, flipped open and abandoned.
She couldn't get out of Florida fast enough.
Even though Jimmy had said that Fury was gone, Carol couldn't quite accept it. It was the reason she had been calling three numbers and not two back at the main building. And during flight she kept recalling the same number. Finally she'd turned on the beacon.
It was back the way she'd come. The coordinates the same as where she had left. Jimmy and his friends must have grabbed it when they found the pager.
Carol made the decision to head back but did a quick detour. There was someone else she had needed to check on.
And now she was back. To the big building with the giant A on the side and Jimmy waiting for her at the door.
"You check on the Rambeau's?"
She paused. "Did you know?"
He gave a small nod. "Maria faded with all the others but Monica…Monica was driving on the highway when it happened; got side-swiped by an empty SUV. She was okay for a few minutes but then more drivers started fading away and it got bad. At those speeds? The second hit was instant."
Carol gritted her teeth, angry at his tone of voice, angry that he wasn't as upset as her but she pushed it back. He'd had time to process the death of their friends while she was hearing it fresh.
The opened cell phone made sense. Monica must have known something was wrong and tried to call her. Except she didn't get a chance to complete it.
Carol continued through the building, retracing her steps, Jimmy a presence next to her. "What is this place? And the people here?"
He looked around. "Our base of operations I guess. Or it was before everything went crazy. There were more of us but the others faded away when Thanos snapped his fingers. We're not sure what happened to some others."
"Hmm." She didn't quite know what to say to that. She picked something else to distract him. "And I bet the giant A outside is a way to announce yourself. Isn't it?" She raised an eyebrow and let a tiny smirk curl her lips.
He gave a chuckle. "Yeah, Tony loves subtlety. It stands for Avengers."
Carol almost paused. She remembered the pictures from when she first got here. "And who came up with that?"
"Fury. He called the project the Avengers Initiative."
She let out a laugh. Of course he did.
It was quiet for a few seconds before Jimmy spoke again. "I gotta ask…what's with the cat?"
Carol smirked, wondering when he was gonna bring that up. She stopped in the middle of the hallway to place the carrier on the floor and opened the door. Slick, orange fur sauntered out. She looked good for her age. "This is Goose."
Of course, as a Flerken, she lived much longer than an actual cat. By her species' standard, being thirty something was fairly young still.
"Goose?" Jimmy's voice was curious as he watched the disguised creature rub up against Carol's leg, strong purring rumbling through her tiny body.
"Yeah," Carol gave the Flerken a quick scratch on the forehead and under the chin before picking up the carrier and the human pair continued on, Goose walking along on her other side. "She belonged to a friend of mine and Maria's from the old base. She'd passed away and Goose kinda became the office cat. When I came back the first time and partnered with Fury she pretty much tagged along. And when it was time for me to leave Fury took her in. I swung by to check if she was still alive and brought her back with me. Think it'll be a problem?"
Jimmy shook his head. "Doubt it. It'd probably be nice to have her around."
They managed a peaceful silence while walking down the stairs and heading back where she had first discovered everyone but she knew he was gonna be curious and try to ask something else.
"So…that night? The orange glow wasn't just my imagination."
Definitely not the question she thought he was gonna ask. Well, she knew they wanted to know why she glowed but she didn't anticipate him asking about it in that context.
She gave an unapologetic shrug. "I got a little carried away. Sorry if it freaked you out." She turned to smirk at him. "I won't do it again."
Jimmy looked flustered. "No, it was…it didn't freak me out. It's fine. You can…I mean, I don't know if you…never mind. It's fine. Just…I was curious about how you can glow in general. Not just that one time."
"What one time?"
Jimmy gave a start while Carol finally acknowledged the blonde woman who had been around the corner for the past few seconds. The female commander was very good at sneaking around, Carol would never have noticed if Goose hadn't perked up when they got closer to the end of the hall so she figured someone was close by.
Jimmy shook his head at the question. "Nothing. The others around?"
The blonde woman quirked an eyebrow at his deflection, no doubt noticing how ruffled he seemed and Carol smirked as Jimmy fidgeted under the green-eyed gaze.
The other woman hummed under her breath. "Yeah. Just waiting on you two." She looked over at Carol. "I know we had a rough introduction but I'm Natasha Romanoff."
Carol perked up. "Really? The famous Black Widow. I thought you were red-headed?" Natasha tried to hide it but Carol could see how suspicious she became. "Relax, Fury told me about you. About Barton and Coulson. He was pretty proud of you guys. They here too?" It had been many, many years since she'd last seen the agent that had let her and Fury escape that one time. It'd be nice to properly meet him.
Carol must of hit a nerve if the tightness around Natasha's lips was any indication. Of course. "We lost Coulson on the job and…and we're not sure what happened to Barton."
Carol nodded, not sure what to say to that. Fury had been quite proud of the archer, even with the head aches he gave the older man. And he had told her all about how efficient Coulson was and how he'd quickly risen through the ranks.
"I do have one question before we go in." Her voice seemed a touch amused. Natasha's gaze lowered to the floor. "Who's your friend?"
Carol looked down, seeing Goose sitting primly at her feet, head swiveling back and forth between the humans. She smiled. "This is Goose, an old friend of mine. She was by herself at Fury's place so I picked her up and brought her here. I hope that's not a problem?"
Carol wasn't sure what caused the wide eyed look to pass over Natasha's face but she recovered quickly, easing down to scratch under Goose's chin. "I think that'd be fine. We could do with some morale around here. Plus I know it's gonna bother Tony."
With that Natasha turned and led the way to the command center, the same that Carol had spied on earlier. This time it wasn't empty.
The other two men from before were there, Steve and the curly-haired man with glasses. Another stood at the back of the room, taller than Steve with arms crossed and shorn dark blonde hair dressed in jeans and a jacket. And was that a talking raccoon walking on the table?
The anthropomorphic animal glanced over at their entrance cutting off whatever he was saying to the tall unknown man by suddenly reaching behind himself and revealing the laser cannon enlarging in his tiny hands as he took aim, all the while roaring to the room, "What the hell is that thing doing in here?!"
Chaos ensued.
Carol immediately lit up, deflecting the blast that had been meant for Goose as the orange tabby escaped between her legs. The others in the room leapt into action.
Steve was holding up a chair, catching a couple more blasts that were sent Carol's way along with cries of 'Kill it with fire!' Natasha held a gun, aim straight and steady on the armed animal while the curly haired man peaked out from behind a sofa, eyes wary. Finally the larger unknown male ripped the cannon out of the creature's hands telling the raccoon, apparently named Rocket, to stop.
At her side Jimmy had his hands up, a metal gauntlet encasing each arm and glowing with power. He had both aimed at the angry creature. "Let's all calm down."
A weight dropped on her shoulders, claws digging into her uniform, and all Carol could hear in one ear was angry feline rumbling and a hiss directed at Rocket.
The raccoon glared, snarling back. "Yeah, why don't you come over here and say that to my face!"
Steve made to stand between the two camps. "Rocket, knock it off! It's a cat."
The enraged animal pulled at his face in frustration. "No, it's not! It's a Flerken. There is a Flerken! In! This! Room!"
"Rocket…"
"He's actually telling the truth."
All eyes swiveled to Carol. She'd stopped glowing when Rocket's gun had been taken away and was now leaning against the wall, Goose balanced across her shoulders. "Goose is actually an alien creature known as a Flerken. They look like Earth cats but–"
"But they're nothing like whatever you call 'cats.'" Interrupted Rocket. He started pacing, glaring over at Goose. "They're dangerous. We gotta kill it."
"She spent over three decades on Earth and hasn't caused any problems. It'll be fine."
It looked like Rocket was gonna fire off something to Carol's comment but he was cut off by the hand on his shoulder.
"Relax Rabbit." The fourth man, his voice deep with what sounded like a British accent, loomed over the raccoon. Carol was loosing her touch. She hadn't even noticed the steady dual-colored gaze he had been giving her. "I understand that you knew Fury and you know Colonel Rhodes. I'm actually quite interested in how they would know a Kree Star Force member."
"What?" This came from the three humans in the room while Rocket did a double take at her, eyeing her uniform before trying to climb up and over the British sounding man to reach the cannon in the far hand.
"Gimme my gun!"
"Do you want me to tell you or not?" The room grew quiet but she kept her eyes on the large man. "You wanted to know who I am, how Fury or Jimmy know me, right?"
The rest of the group was quiet. Finally Natasha spoke. "I'm not gonna lie. We tried asking Friday to look you up based on what Rhodey knew of you but interestingly she's, for some reason, off line."
Carol blinked. "Oh right." She lifted her forearm and pressed at several buttons on her interface. "That should do it."
The others waited a second before Steve called out. "Friday?"
"Captain, there's an intruder, should I terminate?" The woman's voice sounded a bit put out. The AI she hadn't been expecting but shutting her down had been easy enough. Seems she didn't like that.
"No, but can you look up a Carol Danvers?"
"Right away Captain."
Carol waited for the results. She could tell them herself but she was actually pretty curious what the file would say.
"Here you go Captain." The Irish voice's announcement was paired with various screens coming to life above the table, Rocket jumping off and the rest of the group looking at the display before them.
Carol looked over the photos as they hovered. There was one from her old driver's license and military ID. The picture from her graduation was there. Most of the photos were formal in some way and from eighty-nine or earlier. Except for Monica's Myspace.
Carol had timed one of her visits to correspond with Monica's twenty-first birthday, definitely something she didn't want to miss. The photo of them together amongst the others was one Monica had taken during the celebration. Carol and Marie had taken her for her first legal drink at Pancho's. It was also the night she'd met Jimmy.
"You were in the military?"
She looked over at Steve, nodding. "A Captain in the Air Force."
"Says here you died in a flight test." Natasha was looking at some record, it actually looked like the same one Carol and Fury had found when she first came back to Earth.
"It started as a flight test but turned into a dog fight. See I was born and bred one hundred percent red blooded Earth woman and I had never really considered life beyond our planet until that day in eighty-nine. I was test flying a new engine designed and created by one of my scientists, Doctor Lawson, when we came under fire from an unknown craft. I didn't know until years later it was a Kree Star Force ship that had been hunting down the Doc, who turned out to be a Kree deflector named Mar-Vell."
"She used the energy of something called the Tesseract to create a new light speed engine that would actually end the unjust war between the Kree and Skrulls who just wanted to live in peace and not under Kree rule. But during the fight we were shot down and Lawson said she needed to destroy the engine before the Kree could get to it. Except she was killed by Yon-Rogg, one of the Star Force members, before she could. I talked to the guy for a few minutes, tried to stall, but when he threatened to kill me, I knew he would probably find the engine. So I distracted him long enough to destroy it. Except something happened."
Carol paused in her explanation, lifting a fist and letting the proton energy surge, her hand glowing orange. She looked over the rest of the room. "I was too close to the blast but instead of dying I ended up absorbing the engine's power source. I was knocked out by the explosion and the Kree took me back with them when they realized I sucked up all that raw energy. And when I woke up with no memory, they took full advantage." Carol saw the twitch Steve gave, along with quick glances at him from the others. Interesting.
She continued on. "They gave me a transfusion of Kree blood and made me think my amnesia was a result of a Skrull attack. Once I was recovered enough I was placed on Star Force where they trained me and used me. For years they had me doing their dirty work, making it seem like their way of life was the right one and that the Skrulls were the bad guys, shapeshifters that infiltrated and destroyed planets. It went on like that until some Skrulls got a hold of me, matching my voice on the black box from the crash."
"They were trying to find Lawson and they ended up bringing a few of my memories back, that's when I started freaking out. Started doubting. Then I came to Earth, teamed up with Fury and found out the truth. We defeated Yon-Rogg and the Star Force, booted Ronan back to Hala, and when that was said and done, I helped the Skrulls escape with their families. Who Lawson had hide away in her laboratory which was actually a Kree space cruiser orbiting Earth the entire time. But I left Fury a way to contact me if he needed help, for emergencies. And so here we are."
It was quiet which she expected considering all she had unloaded on them. Natasha spoke first, slight frown on her face. "I need to ask. If you gave Fury a way to contact you, for emergencies, then where have you been? We've had several emergences, did you just ignore him?"
Carol raised an eye brow. It was a valid question, at least from their perspective. "Well, for one, there a whole lot of other planets out there and they didn't have their own special team of fighters to defend their home. And secondly, I know about those emergences. The Chitauri. Ultron. Fury told me afterward each time. And I asked him each time why he didn't contact me to help. You know what he said? He told me what for, he had you."
That seemed to silence them for a second. That second was all it took for another window to pop up on the screens and Friday's voice to return. "Captain, I just received over twenty voice transmissions from beyond Earth."
That was interesting. Carol was quite curious, considering how far behind Earth was in universal communications. Unless it was by chance that the messages just happened to be picked up by the satellites.
"Can you tell from who or what, Friday?"
A pause. "…They're all from Boss."
That sent everyone into a flurry and Carol was able to figure out that 'Boss' was actually Tony, Jimmy's friend and the one who had disappeared into space. There was just one problem.
Natasha leaned forward. "What do you mean you can't play them?"
Friday answered back in her Irish lilt. "They were all messages sent and meant for Miss Potts and as per my privacy directives I am unable to play you the messages without her permission."
"Rhodey?" spoke Steve, turning to Jimmy. "Think you can ask her?"
Jimmy didn't need to ask anything considering the sudden pounding of running feet and soon a red-haired woman came bursting in, tears down her face. She was also hugging a red and gold helmet with one arm against her chest. She completely ignored everyone, instead latching onto one of Jimmy's upper arms in a white knuckled grip.
"Tony! It's Tony!"
Jimmy got her to settle down enough for the woman, Pepper, to explain that the Iron Man helmet had a received an alert a few minutes ago, a backlog of over twenty messages from Tony. The latest one had been created a few hours ago. But there was another problem.
"You can't trace it?"
"My systems aren't quite advanced enough, especially tracking something that far in deep space. Sorry Captain."
"Thor? Rocket? What about you two?" Natasha had poised this question to the raccoon and the unknown male. "Think you can figure out a way to trace the signal?"
The two looked at each other. Thor replied first. "Although Asgard was much more technologically advanced, I was never good at it. I would have no idea what to do."
Rocket waved a hand around. "I could easily do it but all the equipment here ain't advanced enough."
"What about using this?" Carol lifted her forearm, showing off the interface.
Rocket's eyes lit up, a smirk curling his lips. "That'll work."
Sorry about the ending. I'm not really satisfied by it but we need to keep the ball rolling. Probably only one more chapter left. Also, some of you might be upset or have questions about Carol and Rhodey. Now canonically, Carol Danvers did indeed date Rhodey so I wanted to bring that in but if you go back to Ironman 3, when Tony asked 'You ever had a chick straddling you and you look up and suddenly she's glowing from the inside out, kind of a bright orange?' and Rhodey says 'Yeah I've had that.' That's why I wrote about something happening between them one of the times Carol visited Earth. See y'all later. Peace out. -Mez