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The first time they talk about it, the war hasn't truly started yet. They're in a guest room Carol has pulled them into at the Baxter Building. The second the door closes behind them, Jess rips her hand out of Carol's and puts distance between them.It starts out stilted, unsure. Jess is angry, Carol is angrier. She tries to avoid the subject because it isn't why she took them there, yet it becomes inevitable. After all, it's her excuse, her justification, her selling point. They are entering dark waters--the friction between Tony and Steve is obvious, the government is struggling to assuage the general public, and in the living room outside, their friends argue about registration and start taking sides even with Captain America absent. What is coming will not be good, but the truth is things are rarely "good" for them, so really, they should just get it over with.Jess does not like that idea. Jess thinks even when things are bad, they can be better than this, and if Carol is going to to support the government's witch hunt, then Jess wants nothing to do with her.You can't be serious, Carol says. Jess, c'mon, don't do this.Jess tries to give her a spiel about standing up for her beliefs and righting old wrongs, but Carol just doesn't care. It's stupid. Jess is being stupid. If the law passes and she opposes it, she'll have to go on the run, hide in the shadows so she doesn't get caught, because if she does, if they find her, they'll throw her in a prison.
I lost everything once already. I’m not doing that again.
Jess remembers, she knows. Remembers what Carol was like before Rogue erased her, remembers what she thought about Carol when they first met years ago, all the way on the other side of the country.Carol remembers what she became after she was left with nothing, how long it took her to get here. Carol sees what this is doing—what this is going to do—to Steve and Tony. She doesn't want that to be them.Maybe, Jess says, you should have thought about that sooner.
The second time they talk about it, it's not really a conversation. They face off in the Negative Zone. Carol would like to think it's the fucked up dimension that makes them lunge for each other without a second thought, but if she is honest with herself, she can admit she is still angry, as is Jess (probably). It's been too many weeks of not seeing her, too many weeks of not knowing where or how she was, too many weeks of what if.I told you this would happen. It could have been different.Jess just punches her harder.
The third time they talk about it, Steve has just died. Jess starts crying almost immediately. Carol doesn't know what to do with that—she can't recall having seen Jess cry before, not this earnestly. She cries with trembling shoulders and heaving breaths, sobbing I'm sorry as Carol wraps her arms around her. They stay like that for a while, until Jess's sobs subside, until Jess lifts her head to look at Carol with watery eyes, one hand brushing the line of Carol's cheekbone. Jess kisses her first, a little hesitant and a little shaky. Her lips taste like salt, the way Carol remembers her own mouth had tasted when she had woken up to a stranger in a red get-up having saved her from drowning. Jess tastes like salt and smells like ozone and feels better than the way Carol had felt when Charles had given her back her memories.Carol kisses back, licking and nipping the hesitancy away. Their hands tangle in each other's hair, and Carol just snaps. At heart, she is a soldier, not a spy; she doesn't like stealth missions or playing hide and seek. She doesn't like waiting, and Jess has made her wait a very long time.They're on a rooftop lined with a wall that comes up to their waist. When Carol trails kisses down Jess' neck, she tilts her head back and her hair spills over the side of the building. When Carol opens Jess' jeans and slips her hand inside, she tilts her head down to watch and her hair spills over the sides of her face.The angle is awkward. Carol wishes they had more space, more privacy, a flat surface that wasn't the cement floor. She wishes she had the time to spread Jess open, to leave bite marks on the insides of her thighs before fucking her with her tongue until she moaned Carol's name.But she doesn't. They can't.So Carol compromises. She presses her body against Jess', leaves bite marks where her hair will hide them, fucks her with her fingers until Jess pulls her in to whisper against her mouth.Carol—Jess is wet and warm and soft, and Carol feels as at home as she does when flying, thinks that, in that moment, she is finally, genuinely happy.It doesn't last.Jess comes with a damp breath exhaled into the space between their open mouths, her cunt tightening around Carol's fingers. Another shared breath, another. Carol hasn't come—Jess has barely touched her—but she's panting just as much as Jess. She couldn't put her tongue against Jess and taste her there, so Carol takes her own sticky fingers into her mouth—sour, tangy, Jess—then leans down to kiss her. Jess turns her head to the side though, letting Carol's lips land on her cheek.It's okay. Not everyone wants to taste themselves. It's all right. They're together, and Carol is happy.Jess, I—She leaves. Extricates herself from Carol's hold, throws a half-hearted apology over her shoulder (Gotta go, sorry. Luke needs me. Too bad about Cap, really. See ya 'round), and leaves, and Carol doesn't quite know what to think or how to feel.
The fourth time is much like the third. Few words, few moans. An insubstantial apology—I'm sorry, I panicked, I'm sorry—Carol's fingers inside Jess—so wet, so good, Jess, I—They're on the same team now. It doesn't make a difference. Jess still runs away, Carol still doesn't understand. Her mouth is too dry and her fingers curl around empty air, and she's abruptly glad that she doesn't know where Tony keeps his emergency stash.
Fifth, sixth, seventh. They haven't seen each other, even passingly, since a few days before Jess left for Japan. Then Lightning Storm tries to take her in, William is dead, William is a Kree spy, her team members are Skrulls, her team members—her responsibility—die. Carol buys a bottle and stares at it until she falls asleep. When she wakes up to Tony's call to assemble, she leaves it sitting on the bedside table.
The eighth time, there is a ship with their doubles, with people they thought were gone, and there is no chance for them to speak. They fight, Tony gets infected, Carol flies him to the citadel. He tells her to find out what's happened, tells her to gather the initiative, tells her to go! Despite her hesitancy, Carol listens to him because he's Tony Stark, because the entire world is in danger. Still, she does a perimeter check from the air. Someone will find him eventually, hopefully one of their own, but if there are immediate threats, she could at least take—A flash of red.It isn't the time. It really fucking isn't. The entire world is in danger, and that means billions of civilians, but—but that means she is in danger, and really, Jess was wrong from the start. There will never be an appropriate time. Not for them, not for Tony and Steve, not for Peter and Mary Jane, not for anyone.From above, she sees Jess approach Tony. Place a hand on his arm. Lean in. Tilt her head just so.Tony doesn't know the details, but he knows there is something, even if Carol couldn't say what, even if they spent more time apart than they did together. It doesn't mean shit now, and Carol wants a drink, the whole fucking bottle in her room, because Jess kisses Tony with the ferocity that she never kissed Carol with. In her mind, she goes through every time Jess said something coy, every time Jess moaned her name, every time Jess pulled away. Even as she stands outside the entrance to the citadel, even as she watches Tony and Jess argue without paying attention to why, even as someone creeps up behind her, Carol just watches, remembering, feeling thirsty and sick, wishing, for a fleeting moment, to be drowning in saltwater underneath a bridge, to be waking up with nothing. Nothing is better than this something.The gunshots break her out of her trance. Jess turns around, Tony in her arms, and her eyes widen when she sees Carol standing there. A moment after, she's gone, and then there's Natasha, asking Carol where Jess went. Carol ignores her though, strides over to Tony, who shakes his head when he notices her, and punches him in the mouth. Natasha fights her over it, then Tony too after he gets injected with adrenaline. Skrull, they say. Skrull, Skrull, Skrull. Queen.I wouldn't, Carol, Tony says. I wouldn't.
The ninth time, Carol isn't interested in talking.She fights, kills, hates, enjoys. It is a war and she fights it like the soldier she is and enjoys it. Every time she makes a Skrull hurt is a victory. She flies the bus full of citizens to the Raft, finds the Super Skrull, unleashes it against its own kind. It's not as satisfactory as doing it herself, but it speeds up the process. She kills that one too, then goes and kills some more with the others.Carol sees her from above. Her chest feels tight, constricted, clogged with the raw anger of knowing that it's not her, not Jess. She doesn't have to think about it—the anger, the volatile energy thrumming through her veins, thinks for her. One moment, she is paralyzed midair, overcome by the ugly monstrosity trying to claw its way up her throat, and the next, she is the monstrosity. The next, she is flying, accreting force and velocity. When her fist connects, it sends the Skrull sailing backwards in an arch that ends with it skidding along the grass.Carol, it whimpers, and it sounds so much like her, like Jess, that it rips a scream out of her throat. She throws another hit and feels something shatter under layers of skin. It should feel like another victory, but she can't feel even that through all the ire. She sees nothing, hears nothing.Where is she, Carol yells. Jess' face is bloody and broken, a darker red than her uniform, exactly the way Carol has never wanted to see her, but she can't even cry because the anger consumes any and every other feeling.The Skrull tells her nothing important. It doesn’t fight back, doesn’t defend itself, just breaks, piece by piece. Expendable. It tries to speak her name, and she punches it.It tries to ask her to stop, and she punches it harder still.
Carol, I—
She can't stop because she still doesn't have an answer, because even though it's Jess' face and Jess' uniform and Jess' voice, it's not Jess, and she doesn't know whether it ever will be again.Where is she, Carol screams. Screams it again, again, again, each time punctuated by a hit or a blast, each time louder, until she feels the muscles of its throat cave under the pressure of her hand, until it stops moving.Where is she, Carol whispers. Her forehead is sticky where it is pressed against its battered one, and her body trembles with the strength it takes her not to break down crying. She's right there.Carol looks up and her hands curl into fists again.Standing there is—not Jess, not Jess, not Jess—another Skrull. Carol wants to shred the costume it wears to bits, wants to set it aflame and watch it burn to ashes. It doesn't have a right to be wearing that uniform. No one does, no one but her.Where is she, Carol snarls.She is right there, it responds. And Carol... for whatever reason, Carol looks down and has to blink once, twice, thrice. Has to inhale deeply and exhale slowly. Has to swallow down the bile rising up her throat with the imagined taste of whiskey.The Skrull hasn't changed shape.The blood is red, darker than the uniform.The fabric is stained and singed.The Skrull doesn't move, doesn't change, doesn't breathe, doesn't answer when Carol whispers her name—Jess—like it's a question, like there is room for doubt, like Uatu isn't watching, like she doesn't know.The Skrull—the other one, the queen, the not Jess—kneels in front of her, tilts Carol’s head up with a nudge to her chin, leans in close.She loved you, it whispers.