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The plane is going down, Carol knows it; they’re hit and spiraling out of control. She tries to bail out but the mechanism backfires, leaves them both stuck in the cockpit blazing towards the earth.
She grips the joystick with two hands, fights desperately to steady their rapid descent any way she can while she battles against gravity and the constant spinning that has her head rattling around in her helmet.
The ground hurtles up at them, closer and closer and closer. She’s pulling, up and up and up, anything so they don’t nosedive straight into the water. They crash through the trees. The entire plane shakes and comes apart. They skid over the water, everything engulfed in flames and smoke and flying shrapnel.
The impact is hard - she blacks out for a moment but comes to as they careen to a stop in the sand.
Her ears ring, full of a high-pitched, tinny noise that drowns everything out. She hears muffled shouts over the comms - Maria’s voice. She shouts back a response, doesn’t know what she says while she scrambles out of the cockpit as fast as she can. They have to get out of here, have to get away.
Lawson is alive, but her blood is blue and she doesn’t know what to make of that, her head too banged up and foggy and confused for anything beyond basic thought and action. She knows this is bad, but it could be worse. They survived the crash.
Lawson starts spewing words she can barely comprehend - something about other worlds and coordinates she has to remember, the people she has to save. Lawson - Mar-Vell - pulls a foreign weapon from her jacket, desperate to blow the engine, to destroy the power source before whoever is after them shows up.
But then Lawson is gone - blasted backwards by a bolt of something, Carol doesn’t know what exactly, but the shot is clean and fatal. Whoever just shot Lawson is probably going to shoot at her next, so she snatches Lawson’s discarded weapon from the ground and positions herself to fire back at her unseen enemy.
The enemy turns out to be a man, but he’s wearing deep green colors and a suit she’s never seen anything like before. He wants the engine, wants the energy core, definitely wants to kill her and will do it if he has to.
She knows her threat of the para-rescue team means nothing to him. She has no idea how far out they actually are. They could be here in two minutes, but deep down she knows they won’t be.
Lawson’s last words echo in her head - she has to destroy it. She knows there is no other choice. She has no idea what will happen when she does it, but she’s under no illusions as to what the likeliest outcome will be.
She knows she is going to die.
In the moment before she pulls the trigger she thinks of her family.
She remembers Monica’s fifth birthday that they had just celebrated last month - her little face smiling wide as she blew out the candles on her cake, how she had told them she’d made a wish that she could fly like both of her moms.
She remembers the day Monica was born, the way her heart had grown the moment she’d held her in her arms for the very first time.
She thinks of all the firsts and holidays and milestones she will miss, the things she will never get to see - Christmases and kindergarten, school dances and science fair projects, visits from the tooth fairy, scraped knees she won’t get to kiss better when Monica learns to ride a bike, crushes and heartbreaks cured by epic amounts of ice cream and sappy movies, graduations she won’t get to stand at proud and cheering, witnessing Monica take over the world with her brilliant mind and endless curiosity, watching her fly into space one day - an astronaut like she’s always wanted to be.
She thinks of the little hands that pat her face awake some mornings and nights lying out in the backyard showing her the constellations. She thinks of teaching her how to spell her name, practicing colors and the alphabet and 1 + 1 is 2.
She thinks of the first time Monica ever called her mama, how she had cried and then laughed, couldn’t stop smiling no matter how hard she tried.
She remembers kissing Maria awake this morning, how she had reluctantly groaned when Lawson called and forced them from bed. She doesn’t regret that she cheated and took a shortcut and beat Maria to base. She’s glad it’s her who is here right now and not Maria.
She remembers making love to Maria last night, how good it had been, how good it always was.
She thinks of the first time she ever saw Maria Rambeau from across the quad at the Academy. She was telling off some cocky flyboy, really putting him in his place, and she just knew - knew that Maria was going to be in her life, knew that someday, somehow, they’d be together.
She thinks of their tequila-fueled karaoke nights at Pancho’s, their first kiss bolstered by the same liquid courage, their second and third and fourth kisses bolstered by something else entirely - a want and need deeper than she’d ever known.
She thinks of lazy Sunday mornings, the three of them cuddled up in bed together.
She remembers the day she told Maria she loved her, how her eyes had brightened with joy and how beautiful her smile had been when she’d said it back.
She thinks of the ring that hangs around her neck with her dog tags, hopes that it somehow survives what’s about to come and finds its way back to Maria. Like her heart, it has always belonged to her and her alone.
She thinks about how she will never get to hold Maria again, will never again get to tease her or cup her face in her hands and kiss her just because she feels like it.
They won’t get to grow old together like she always hoped they would. They’ll never get to live in a world together where they can proclaim their love for one another freely and openly.
She won’t get to hold Maria’s hand while they watch Monica go off to school for the first time, or surprise her with flowers when she’s had a bad day, or buy her ridiculous anniversary gifts she’ll pretend to hate but secretly love.
She will never get to hear her voice again, feel her skin beneath her palms or the touch of her lips against her own.
She knows she will lose all of these things, but that’s also why she has to do this - for them. For her family.
She hopes Maria will understand, she hopes she will move on one day and be happy. She hopes Monica will be enough to keep Maria going. She hopes they will one day forgive her.
I’m sorry, Maria, I’m so sorry.
She aims the gun.
I have to do this.
She pulls the trigger.
I love you - I love you both so much. I love you, I love you, I love you, I lo -
The engine explodes.