A/N: Forgive me if there are any typos, this was written on my phone because my computer is garbage. I gave it like a once-over because I am also lazy and working far too much this holiday season. Pls enjoy.

Contrary to popular belief, space travel wasn't an instantaneous thing, and the trip to Aladnea was going to take them a few hours at least. It presented Monica with an opportunity she'd been wanting for a while. With the kid taking some time to rest up, the SWORD agent looked for the woman she once considered another mother. The questions she had were more on the personal side of things, and she knew Carol would be a little evasive, so she needed to be a little smarter about it. One might consider it manipulative, but Monica still held a lot of resentment towards the hero and couldn't find it in herself to be terribly remorseful about it. "Hey, Aunt Carol?"

The blonde's head jerked up, brow knitting together at the title. "What's up, Captain Rambeau?" Not a great start, but she supposed she'd earned that.

She fiddled with her hands for a few moments, trying to figure how to phrase the question. "Did Mom-," her lips pursed as the question caught in her throat. "Did Mom ever tell you about my father?"

Hazel eyes widened in shock. "Uh- well, that's a tough question, there, LT." Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. "Yes and no. I knew of him, but not much about him. Is there something in particular you were wanting to know? Health concerns or anything? I know she kept his medical records somewhere in those files of hers."

Monica shook her head. "No, nothing like that. I guess I just got curious. She never brought him up, ever, and when I was going through her stuff, I found some things they only gave me more questions. When I- when I came back, all of her stuff was in my name. I don't even know how that worked with the Blip and all."

"Well, that's an answer I have."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," Carol said. "Your mom was adamant that we'd get you back. Didn't give up hope for one second. Any minute that I wasn't forcing her to get some rest, she was researching how to get you back. Because she wanted everything to be as seamless as possible for you, we never told anyone that you'd been blipped. We kept all of your accounts active and made fake reports from you. When people started getting suspicious we told them you'd gone missing on a mission. Since I am who I am, no one really questioned it. When the-," Carol's face shuttered. "When the cancer came back, I helped her get all the paperwork together. Since you hadn't been legally missing for very long, it wasn't a big deal, and everything else was passed to me in the interim. And then, when I had to leave again after, I made sure there was a caretaker to keep the place in good condition for when you got back."

Monica was more than a little stunned, eyes searching Carol's face for any hint of deception. "You never gave up either?"

"Losing hope would mean accepting that I'd lost my entire family. And that was unacceptable. When it became necessary for me to go, when Talos called and told me what the rest of the universe was going through, I told Natasha to keep me in the loop and let me know when they were close to figuring everything out. I was still several days away even by my standards when she called. I begged them to wait for me. Logically I was the best candidate for time travel, but they went ahead without me." She shook her head, eyes trained on a star in the distance. "Just another person I failed."

The conversation has gone quite far from where Monica had wanted, but something Carol had said intrigued her. "What made you a better candidate than the others for time travel?"

"For one, I didn't exist or was in space at every point that they traveled back to. No worrying about running into myself or damaging the timeline too badly. And then, of course, if I got stuck in the past, I could just wait around until we were back in the present. It's not like I could really die. If something went wrong in the travel itself, my powers would most likely protect me, so it would be safer. No one would need to risk themselves."

And thank kind of made sense, she supposed, if it sounded a little like self-sacrifice. But, again, not where she'd wanted to take this conversation. "You really don't know anything about my dad? You never met him?"

Carol shook her head. "He and your mom didn't get along at all. They'd dated for a while before you, but he hated me, so she never brought him around. She dumped him when he tried to get her to cut contact. Realized he wasn't as good a guy as she thought. Little bit later, she found out about you. As far as she ever told me, he was never informed."

That just didn't make any sense. "So, who was Karl?"

The hero's eyes jerked to her own. "Where did you hear that name?"

"Read," she corrected. "I found a bunch of letters in a box a little after I got back. Love letters. They were all signed from Karl."

Carol's eyes were damp, and she ran a hand roughly over her face. "I didn't know she kept those."

"So, you know who he is then?"

The Captain nodded. "I do. Because he's me."

The answer stole the breath from Monica's lungs, leaving her reeling. "What?"

"It was the military in the 80's. They weren't exactly an accepting bunch. Shortly after she had you, we started dating, in secret. And when I was away, I wrote her letters, but I had to sign them from a male name so no one questioned the contents. We had to pretend that we were just very good friends to everyone that was close to us," she smiled sadly at the younger woman. "Even you." She sighed. "It was the only way we could love each other and maintain a career. But I still wanted to express myself to her."

Carol stood suddenly, digging through some drawers next to her sitting area. "I have some of hers around here. I brought them with me after… well, after. They were in that box of stuff you brought out for me all those years ago." A bundle of envelopes appeared from a bottom drawer, a light smile touching Carol's lips as she ran her fingers over the letters on the front. "She signed hers from Mario." She held the bundle out of Monica. "There's nothing gross in there or anything. She talked about you a lot."

Monica took them, seeing her mother's familiar scrawl, perhaps a little blockier than she was used to, but still so Maria Rambeau that it hurt. "Thank you. I'll make sure I put them back."

"I appreciate that. It's just about all I have left of her."

A sad thought, if there ever was one. Monica had her mother's house, her belongings, her pictures. It looked like Carol, the woman her mother had loved and spent so much time with, had almost nothing to show for it, just a handful of papers with words of love written in them.

Over the next few hours, she devoured every word on those pages, learning about herself when she was young, learning about the love the two women shared. There were pictures included with some of the letters, yellowed around the edges and slightly dog-eared from what she assumed to be frequent use. She knew from what "Karl" had written that they loved each other deeply, and this only confirmed it.

While Monica was still furious with Carol, she found that she thawed slightly in that regard. It was very clear to her that she regretted her actions, but that didn't excuse them. The road to forgiveness was a long one, but that conversation had been a start. When Monica returned the letters to the drawer she'd seen Carol pull them from, she saw another picture at the bottom, the two women curled around each other. More recent, probably during the Blip. The thing that caught her eye was the matching rings on their fingers and a quick glance at Carol found the other woman staring out the window, fingering the necklace she wore containing those rings.

Monica couldn't contain the words. "You guys got married?"

Carol jerked in surprise. "What?"

"The rings. You were married?"

"Oh." She pursed her lips. "No. No, we were engaged but we wanted to wait for you."

Something warm spread through the other woman's chest. "We?"

Carol gave her the smallest of smiles. "Like I said, I never gave up hope either."

And it meant the world to her, it really did, but, "I still can't forgive you for leaving us."

"And you shouldn't. What I did was wrong, and selfish. And I have no good explanation for it. And you better believe that your mom gave me hell. I spent the first year after the Blip sleeping on the couch and groveling for forgiveness. I deserved that. And I was fully prepared to do the same with you. Still am, if you'll give me the chance." She sighed. "Just know that I'll also understand if you don't want that. If you just want me to leave you alone. I'll do that, too. I've let you down too many times to disappoint you again."

It was everything Monica had wanted to hear for years and now that she had, she really just wanted to curl into a ball and cry or maybe yell at Carol a little or throw something, but Kamala was still sleeping nearby and she didn't need her have her hero verbally ripped to shreds right in front of her. That could come later. "I'll think about it."

Carol nodded, fingers still playing with the chain. "When you make up your mind, let me know. I've got nothing but time."

Something in Monica's soul hurt, but in a good way, somehow. Like a bone that had grown together improperly was rebroken and could now heal. Maria Rambeau was a much better woman than her daughter- in said daughter's opinion- but she was also very fair, and if she could find it in her to forgive the woman she loved for abandoning their family for thirty years, perhaps Monica could someday forgive her second mother for the same.

.

.

.

Carol would definitely be sleeping on the couch, though.

A/N: I headcannon that Carol has trouble talking about her feelings but writes love letters like Hozier which is where I got the title for this. Saw the movie and got all in my feels about it because Carol is just So Gay and the MCU writers are just cowards. Have a couple other ideas rolling around the noggin that I might post so let me know if y'all enjoyed. I appreciate all who read this, y'all are great. Happy holidays.