Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it came from the films or the comics, even if I flatter myself that I've put my own spin on things.

Feedback: All constructive comments or appreciative observations are welcome

AN: A relatively short chapter here, but for what it's worth, be assured that after this we get to a more familiar storyline that will culminate in the moment that I'm sure you've all been waiting for…

The First and the Last

Ducking under the latest attack from the Sentry, Carol once again found herself cursing the Kree inability to just let things go. She was still doing her best to try and find a suitable planet for the Skrull refugees in her spare time, but that also meant dealing with any Kree stragglers who had managed to form some kind of power base after the chaos of the Snap. With most of the significant Kree leaders having been lost in the initial Snap, even after the Kree had sorted out the worst of the post-Snap chaos, their remaining leaders lacked the charisma to unite more than a few ships into any kind of fleet. Unfortunately, even if the Empire as a whole wasn't what it was, there were still some larger groups that could do a fair bit of damage when they struck in the right place. This particular trip had just been intended as a standard patrol to follow up on a rumour the Guardians had received from their remaining Ravager contacts about possible Kree activity in this sector, but when she found an old Kree outpost guarded by a Sentry…

Maybe part of it was wanting to make sure this Sentry couldn't be a problem later, but right now Carol wanted something to vent her frustrations on, and this was the best available candidate that she could find. Having left her ship in orbit, Carol had flown down to better assess the outpost, but had soon confirmed it was a standard Kree structure, with the large red orb on the top indicating that it had been set up to receive messages from the Intelligence via the Omni-Wave before the Intelligence had been destroyed. She had been prevented from investigating the outpost directly when the Sentry emerged to confront her, but since no Kree had even tried to join the Sentry in attacking her yet, she guessed that it was unmanned…

"The Annihilator will stand down and accept sentence," the Sentry said, firing another energy blast that Carol only just managed to evade.

"Do you honestly expect that to work?" Carol countered, even as she fired a couple of her own blasts at the Sentry. The armour was tough enough to take most of her standard attacks, but with the right force she could at least leave the machine off-balance long enough to confirm what she was working with. The Sentry's force-field was able to deflect the worst of her blasts, but as she'd anticipated, even after years since her training as 'Vers' the Kree tech still hadn't managed to properly analyse and process the energy of her attacks.

"The Annihilator cannot prevail against Kree superiority," the Sentry stated, pacing towards her as Carol paused her flight to hover in front of the large machine. "Logically, the best course of action for the Annihilator is surrender."

"Maybe for some," Carol conceded with a cool smirk. "Unfortunately for you, surrender stopped being an option once I realised how screwed up the Kree really are."

As the Sentry launched another attack, Carol flew to the side at a rapid pace and then took herself on a curving path that led back to the facility behind the Sentry. She crashed through the door before the Sentry could turn around and stop her- the thing was large and powerful but it wasn't exactly fast- leaving Carol to return to a more normal, albeit still brisk, speed as she moved rapidly through the building. It didn't take long to confirm that this building was just a relatively random Kree outpost, with no sign that it was used for anything more than a staging post for the next big Kree expansion effort, most likely abandoned after the Snap left the Kree focused on maintaining their existing resources rather than claiming new territory.

Satisfied that she didn't have to hold back, Carol crashed out of the wall and blasted at the Sentry as it advanced towards the building, clearly intending to confront her. Despite the power she put into her own attack, Carol wasn't entirely surprised that the blast just knocked the robot back rather than damaging it. As the pinnacle of Kree weapons technology, the Sentries had been designed to take a considerable beating, and the only reason they weren't used more often was that the effort needed to make something this tough was considerable even for a civilisation as vast as the Kree. Even Carol's blasts couldn't do more than knock the Sentry off-balance, and when she got up close it still took a lot of effort for her fists to even cause a few dents on the Sentry's casing.

She was fairly sure she could stop this thing if she went all-out, but the amount of energy she'd need to harness felt like it would be excessive when she was just fighting a machine programmed for a particular purpose. Channelling the Sentry's own power to use against it was an option, but the Sentry's blasts were too large-scale for her to be sure that she could process that energy properly. She had never been clear on the science behind her original transformation, but while she'd determined that she could absorb and channel certain forms of energy since harnessing her tesseract-esque powers, the energy generated by the Sentries was of a different kind that was at least harder to absorb.

If circumstances had been different, Carol might have thought about claiming this facility for her own efforts and finding another way to stop the Sentry, but right now the best way to deal with the thing unfortunately meant sacrificing this particular base. For all their skill, Sentries defaulted to their primary tasks when pushed, so she'd just have to accept the situation and the loss of this facility.

"Is there any chance you can just get over this and move on?" she asked the Sentry as she took up position in front of the large machine.

"The Annihilator must be punished," the Sentry said firmly. "Her actions against the Empire cannot be forgiven."

"Even if I promise you that I had good reasons for doing that and all I ask is that your people just move on?"

"I have my purpose," the Sentry said, raising its arms and generating energy around its fists once again. "The Annihilator must face judgement for her actions."

"OK," Carol said, raising her own hands to imitate the Sentry's energy. "Well, if you're committed, let's do this."

Satisfied that the Sentry was as committed to its programming as the rest of its kind, Carol moved around so that she could blast her opponent back towards the facility. Once it had fallen through the wall, Carol followed it inside the building and raced past the machine towards the heart of the compound, pausing in front of the central power core.

Glad that these particular things were generally easier to destroy, Carol fired a precise energy blast at a key section of the compound's power core, before turning around to fly up through the ceiling as the central core began to rupture behind her. In a matter of moments, she found herself floating above the compound as it continued to explode, the Sentry just visible at the heart of the blast as it strained to keep the compound intact with its inbuilt forcefields. Sentries may have been programmed by the Supreme Intelligence itself (which was the main reason there weren't many of them now; they could be repaired up to a point, but with the Intelligence dead the Kree couldn't make any new ones if they were destroyed), but they were fundamentally slaves to their central programming. With this Sentry programmed specifically to protect the compound but with limited data on how to maintain it, it could do nothing more than wait at the heart of the facility, fighting to stop the potential explosion with its available tools until the power core reached critical mass, culminating in an explosion that reduced the compound to ash and left a sizeable crater around it. Carol only escaped any serious consequences herself as the shockwave of the explosion forced her further upwards before anything more serious could strike her, but once the blast had faded Carol flew down to confirm that the Sentry and the compound were gone.

"And another one bites the dust," she grinned to herself, only to be struck by a sense of regret that a certain someone hadn't been here to see that…

No, Carol told herself firmly. No matter if… the person she was thinking of… had an interest in science and would have certainly enjoyed analysing the Sentry as much as possible (even if he would have been fully aware of the danger and listened to her instructions during such a confrontation), his place was back home on Earth, doing what he did best and making his corner of the universe that little bit brighter… making her feel better about going home… making her feel like she could have a home back on Earth…

"Damnit," Carol muttered to herself, as she returned to her ship in orbit and slumped to the floor in frustration. She oculd keep trying to to distract herself, but it was basically impossible to take her mind off that last holiday to Edinburgh. While she had made it a personal goal to get back to Earth for more regular dates with William, she had to acknowledge that she was less invested in those particular trips every time she met up with the restaurateur.

It wasn't that William had done something wrong, and she still genuinely enjoyed his company when they spent time together, but she couldn't shake the fact that she was the reason she still felt… 'out of sorts' whenever she was with him. She had appreciated the simplicity of having someone back on Earth who wasn't part of the 'craziness' of life with the Avengers and SHIELD and SWORD and whatever else her old friends were doing with their spare time, but she couldn't get away from the fact that William just couldn't be part of that part of her life. She could tell herself that William was strong enough to cope with learning the truth about what she really did for a living, but the question was if he'd be able to properly understand it. She was reminded of an episode of a TV show she'd watched once with Peter when she was taking a quick break at his apartment (and what did it say about her that the person who was the source of these thoughts was the person she kept seeking out), where the main character rejected someone as a partner because he didn't fully appreciate the dangers of her lifestyle.

Peter…

Carol knew that he was a good person, and she trusted him with so much already, but the idea that any part of herself might turn to Peter for…

She couldn't let herself use him like that. No matter how mature he was already, Peter was still young, and even if he was committed to being Spider-Man, he deserved a life that wasn't completely caught up in this kind of chaos, which meant he needed someone who was actually good rather than someone who was trying to make up for her past mistakes.

William was a good man who had his own business and could give her an escape from the wider chaos of everything else going on in her life; Peter deserved someone his own age who wouldn't bring all this baggage into his already complicated life. She'd put more effort into giving William a chance and maybe see about… dialling back on her time with Peter; maybe if she didn't see him for a while she could get past the part of her that wanted to just…

I need to get over this.