Chapter Text
The cafe is quaint, an old mum and pop shop that has been passed down for a few generations safely. Resting just on the border of Jersey City.
Carol Danvers sits picking at an apple pie with her fork, there is nothing wrong with the food, it is warm and the flavours are perfectly balanced, her mind is just too conflicted to appreciate it.
It’s been months since Kamala Khan and her family helped renovate Monica’s home with her and for the first month everything was good. Reconnecting with humanity helped but as the days dragged on the house became darker, the walls whispered with contempt, the ceiling creaked with displeasure and the basement howled with rage. How dare she stay there in the home of a woman she failed, it whispered, attempts to get out there into the wider world only stalled the guilt eating at her heart.
And that has led Carol to today, to a crossroad a decision that she cannot make alone.
The distinctive chime of the door takes her out of her thoughts as Kamala comes almost skipping in, a bundle of energy that could move even the biggest of mountains out of the way.
It’s hard to stay upset around her, she makes it easier to see things for how they really are. It’s why Carol asked to see her just before she made her decision.
The next thirty or so minutes are a blur as the two catch up. Carol asks how her family is, Kamala goes off on a tangent about family get-togethers and the antics of her parents with a smile on her face. All in all her life has been going well since she got back to earth but she does stutter a bit when she brings up the day of darkness.
The first thing Carol did once she heard the news was call Kamala who has stated over and over again that she wasn’t affected, that the wave of darkness receded before it could reach her or most of her family. But it isn’t hard to see that it has affected her in other ways.
Carol can’t even imagine how hopeless it must have felt staring that down, watching helplessly but Kamala pushed through it and acted saving as many as she could from what some have called a fate worse than death.
But heroism isn’t always rewarded.
"How’s Kate?” Carol asks. She’s only met Kate Bishop once when Kamala introduced the two but she has seen proof of the twos work, they complement each other well. She hopes they still do.
Kamala gives a strained smile. “She’s doing better.” It’s not entirely a lie, Kate is talking like herself again, sure a little bit more harsh but that is to be expected. The bitterness following the introduction of the New Avengers on the other hand not so much.
Yes Kamala is a bit annoyed about the announcement but she hasn’t made that a facet of her personality going forward and attempts to ask Kate about it haven’t gone fantastically.
“Never mind about that, how are you doing?” Kamala changes the topic, hoping Carol doesn’t notice.
Carol sighs as she mumbles. “Not great.” She wrings her hands as she continues. “That's really why I asked to see you today.”
“Okay, what’s going on?” Kamala asks.
“I am planning to leave the planet again.” Carol looks to the side gazing out the window to the busy street outside.
“But,” Kamala follows her gaze and hopes she isn’t overstepping. “You just came back.”
“I know but I can’t stay when Monica could still be out there.” Carol says passionately. “I just, I just can’t help feeling responsible for her even if that is only to confirm if she is alive or…” She trails off.
“Or not.” Kamala finishes.
“Yes. I need to go.” Carol states, feeling more confident than before finally getting the words that had been chained up deep inside off her chest.
Kamala nods. “If you feel like you need to do this then you probably should.”
“Thanks Kamala.”
“Just when you both get back you need to tell me first so we can throw a big celebration.” She jokes.
“I will.”
Kamala waves Carol off, she will miss her but if going into deep space to search for Monica is what she thinks is the right thing to do. Then it is the right choice.
She wanders through the streets, meandering in and out of markets as she makes her way home. She is not needed anywhere today so there is no need to rush.
The sun is shining and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. She almost misses her phone buzz in her pocket calmly pulling it out her eyes widening as she sees who it is from.
”Kate?” She asks worriedly for her friend.
Kate’s voice is a mere whisper as in hiccuping sobs she says. “I-I just need to talk.”
###
On the stage sits the apartment that she once lived in. The door is ripped off its hinges open to nothing Kate blinks and she stands inside the walls pulse and breath like flesh as the floor is covered with the echoes of long gone things that shuffle and walk along the groves in the floorboard. She hasn’t been here in so long that she can’t really remember where anything went.
Roars of giants shake the building kicking up dust and something worse as she is pulled off of her feet. The sounds are deafening but not deafening enough to drown out the gurgling wheezes of someone choking.
She squeezes her eyes shut and covers them with her hands, mumbling over and over again that this isn’t real but it is.
Her hands are violently ripped away, eyelids pried open by a force she can’t best no matter how she shakes her head in protest she can’t stop looking forward staring at her father and little girl kneeling next to him.
His head lolls towards her his dead eyes glazed over yet he sees her clearly, she doesn’t want to look down, she is not given a choice, invisible claws pull her down, hold in place to see everything.
When her father first died she was too young to truly understand what was happening but she isn’t young anymore, memories of his death overlap with other horrid things she’s seen.
He is no longer just impaled or crushed she doesn’t remember, no the wounds are festering, rotting before her eyes, flies flock around the carcass as in defiance of life it rises to its feet. Lurching towards her rotting hands outstretched to caress her face and the corpse tries to smile but it lacks lips.
Wind rushes from his throat curling around her neck in a mockery of love. “I told you not to look.”
Her mothers voice spills like waves from the rotting man.
And like clockwork the ground falls away and they drop. The stage lights snuffed out one by one until the only bit of light that remains comes from the corpses’ pin prick eyes. She hits the ground hard as the play’s stage resets for a new scene.
She is in an empty street, it is night but it isn’t dark no the stage lights all at once switch on blinding her as she is illuminated for an invisible audience to gawk at.
The painted sky is bleeding rot, spilling its pain onto her. Kate hears a chuckle behind her and she spins around. Her mother stands before her flanked by the corpse. The two walk hand in hand as they grow or she shrinks. Taller and taller they grow until as giants they stare down at her with hatred in their eyes.
“Why did you betray us?” Their voices are of thunder. As they echo and echo growing louder and louder, blotting out the rain and the heaving of her lungs.
I didn’t she tries to scream the words logged in her chest. They come out as a whimper slicing up her tongue.
The giants screech like old floorboards as they reach down and Kate finally gets out a scream as her eyes fly open, tears pouring down like rain.
“Just a nightmare.” She heaves out, eyes darting around her room searching for an invisible enemy.
Kate stumbles to her feet out of her unmade bed past dirty clothes left abandoned on her floor and makes her way to her bathroom.
The harsh fluorescent lights flicker on bathing her in sickly white light. Falling to her knees she makes it to the toilet and hacks up phlegm spilling out of cracked lips while the room lurches.
Rising to her unsteady feet she reaches for an anti nausea pill.
Despite her best efforts she catches a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror and suppresses the urge to smash it. She looks terrible, dark circles having taken up permanent residence on her sallow face.
She feels the desire to return to her room and collapse on her bed but she doesn’t want to waste anymore days rotting beneath her sheets.
She hasn’t truly slept in a month, every time her body fails her and her eyes slip close she is back in a nightmare, back in that darkness.
The day It happened was like any other day, the sky was clear and blue, there were no warnings and no way to prepare. It was a rogue wave forming around a lost vessel. Perhaps that’s why she still hurts.
She and Kamala had finished stopping a robbery and she felt at the top of her game, when they first heard the piercing screams followed by the sudden haunting silence. The wave reached them not long after, civilians pulled into the ground, into deaths waiting arms for all she knew.
Kate wishes she could go back and time and shout at her past self to run to save herself the pain. But that would never work, she is a hero and heroes act regardless of how bad the danger they face truly is.
She took charge that day directing people away from the darkness into safety but there is only so much a human can do in the face of well… a god.
Kate in one tiny insignificant in any other time mistake stumbled on the uneven ground and so couldn’t get away from the darkness herself. It was freezing cold seeping through her clothes, past her skin and stabbing her heart. The last thing she heard before the darkness claimed her was Kamala yelling her name.
Then nothing. She floated for what felt like eons drifting in emptiness in the embrace of nothing.
Before light invaded her mind and for a brief second she felt relief unaware of the situation she had just been forced into.
The memories were hard but should have been manageable, Kate thought she came to terms with them. Her fathers death, her part in her mothers imprisonment and having to be near Fisk. But they never stopped. She could never leave, it didn’t matter what she did or how many walls she broke down, they never stopped.
Maybe if It was just that, just her worst shames, regrets and trauma maybe she’d have bounced back easily. Maybe if It didn’t hate her.
The darkness was a monster, a being who hates and hated her and wanted everything to suffer even before she saw the photo before she knew It was alive, Kate knew It hated.
The darkness amplified her pain, It shuffled and remixed it into new horrors to slam in her face on repeat. It stifled and clawed at her ripping past healed wounds to bleed her out, to crack past her shell and leave behind nothing but suffering.
She only saw It once. Two twin points of a dead star submerged in a pool of dried dark nearly pitch black blood watching her, she knows deep down that It was smiling the whole time she was in her own personal hell.
She was trapped in that dark room for years. It felt like until true light bleed through the pain and she woke up still standing on that same street like nothing had happened, just one part of a weeping crowd.
Kate pushed the pain down, wiped her tears away and led the crowd, organising the hurt masses. Kamala found her not soon after and she put on the bravest face she could for the younger woman.
“I’m… fine.” Kate remembers forcing out, brushing off Kamala’s worries.
She kept the ruse up for the day and excused herself the first chance she got. Returning to her home she barely had time to lock the door or even greet Lucky before she started yelling. Crying out her pain in the safety of home. Crying and crying until her throat bled from exhaustion.
Kate got a call from Clint not long after and even today she still has no clue how she managed to convince him that she was alright.
She spent the night curled up under her sheets like a child trying to hide from a monster in the closet. While Lucky stood guard at the foot of her bed. Everything was just too much. The only consolation of the ordeal was on the news the next day.
Fisk’s queasy pale face and murmuring words was funny but her smile faded when she saw the interviewer clinging on to something to chase the darkness away. He deserved It’s attention no one else did.
Kate, like any New Yorker who could afford to, spent days in pure light. Casting shadows away as if It might strike again if night was allowed to rein free.
She missed much and ignored the outside world when she could, isolating herself. And it would’ve worked if not for Kamala who showed up at her home one day with food and DVDs and refused to leave no matter what Kate tried to do to assure her that she was fine.
Then she came back the next day and the next. At her pace Kamala slipped past the walls she erected and coaxed her back out into the word. Doing smaller things at first like making a journal, organising a group therapy session with others going through the same thing and finally bringing Kate over to her parents house where she was welcomed like she was always part of that family.
With her friendship and steady support Kate re-immersed herself back into the world. And soon she was back doing hero work, the anti vigilante laws be damned.
The thought gives her strength as she makes it to her living room. Collapsing on her couch spent, she turns on her TV to a news feed to just function as white noise. She remains still until her eyes start to flicker close, panicking when she notices the dark creeping in.
Pushing herself up she decides to work on her equipment. Restringing bows and replacing missing arrows in her quiver. Simple but time intensive work perfect to keep herself busy and awake.
Lost in the rhythm of the repairs Kate ears prick when the news anchor mentions the New Avengers and she makes the mistake of looking up at the screen.
Her eyes flicker past the anchors, some middle aged duo, past the glamour shot of the New Avengers and lock on with the shadow. Kate knows that it sounds crazy but she swears that It looks back at her.
Her ears ring as she scrambles for the remote and shuts the TV off. Grasping at her phone she rushes through her contact list. Finding Kamala’s name and calling her. Her heart is in her throat as she sits through the agonising rings.
What if she’s busy, the thought is like lead in her stomach as the rings repeat. Lucky jumps up on the couch as Kate absentmindedly runs one hand through his hair.
I can’t keep pulling her away from her life, the shame hisses.
I-
“Kate?” Kamala’s voice is like that of an angel diving from the sky and clearing the stormy clouds away.
Kate could shed tears of joy as she says. “I, I just need to talk.”