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“Vers!” Someone bellowed across the Promenade.
Carol Danvers resisted the urge to immediately blast him. She’d been Vers for a mere six years with the Kree, and working under her own name -- or sometimes Captain Marvel, named after her Kree mentor and friend -- for almost twenty. You’d think some aliens would get the fucking memo already.
“Vers, hi, how are you?”
“Carol,” she said.
“What, no, my name’s Peter--”
“MY name is Carol.”
“Oh, right, okay, yeah, the-- the thing, with the Kree, yeah, you know, I really hate those guys,” Quill said.
“What do you want, asshole?”
“So, like you’re from Terra and I’m from Terra, and I thought, maybe, one Terran to the other, you could do me a little, tiny favor.”
“No.” That was easy. She started to walk away.
“Look, no, I’ll give you a cut,” Quill said. He was jogging to keep up with her, because her leave-me-the-fuck-alone stride was pretty damn fast. She had to give him credit for perseverance, but out of a perverse sense of humor, she kept walking until he was out of breath and sweating. He still hadn’t gone away.
“Of what?”
“The job,” Quill said. “Look, I got us a job, and then a really sweet opportunity fell into our laps and--”
“You already made a commitment and then something bigger came along, you can’t do both at the same time, even though you’ve already said you would, and now you’re hoping that I’m an idiot and I’ll do your first job for you, for half the price. Keep dreaming, Star Lord.”
“It’s an easy job,” Quill protested. “Look, you can have seventy percent, consider the other thirty a finder’s fee.”
“I’m gonna break your ‘finder’ right off and shove it someplace unpleasant if you put your hand on me, so don’t,” Carol said. “What’s the job?”
“Just drop this girl off on Terra, okay? She’s super lost.”
It had to be a girl, right? It couldn’t be some white male asshole lost in space that she wouldn’t feel a hint of guilt at neglecting. Carol sighed. “Where is she?”
“Great, you won’t regre--”
“Zzzt. Shut up. The only thing out of your mouth better be a location and the amount of units you’re going to be handing me. Otherwise, I’m gonna blast you into next week, and then you’ll miss out on both jobs.”
“She’s at the Collector’s,” Quill squeaked. “And fifteen Asgardian urus. She didn’t have units.”
“Urus will do,” Carol said, practically. Urus had a better trade value in some of the outer rim systems. “And what, do you not like her? Why leave her there?”
“You said not to talk!” And Quill smacked his faceplate down, clicked his rocket boots, and flew off like a slightly paranoid Dorothy Gale. Asshole. Honestly, Carol was never sure if Quill was an asshole on purpose just because it kept people from having expectations of him, or, if like, his emotional growth had gotten stunted at age eight.
Decided she didn’t care, Carol changed her trajectory just enough to be pointed in the general direction of the Collector’s.
At least she was one of the few people who could just barge in on him. He wasn’t exactly afraid of her, but she wasn’t afraid of him, either. They were sort of, not quite, equals in a way where both of them thought they’d win if it came to a throw down, and neither of them disliked the other enough to try it.
“Hey Taneleer,” she bellowed, slipping lightly between the displays. “I hear you got a package for me?”
“Do I? I was just thinking I might keep her. Earthlings are so delicate, they just don’t survive very long.”
“Yeah, yeah, your coat is lovely by the way, where did you get it?” She pushed into Taneleer’s personal space. “Give me the girl.”
“Right, one human woman, coming right up--” the Collector said, brushing down his coat, which appeared to, in fact, be alive. Gross. “Miss Lewis, if you please. This is Captain Marvel. She’ll be taking you home.”
The woman who Taneleer coaxed out of the corner was pretty in a coffee-shop, slam poet, studying to be a CPA on the side, and volunteering at the dog shelter on the weekends.
Oh, I am in so much trouble.
“Miss Lewis,” Carol said.
“Darcy, Darcy is fine, I’m-- yeah, nice to meet you.”
“You can call me Carol.”
Both Taneleer’s bushy eyebrows went up.
So much trouble.
*
“So, you’re a human,” Darcy said. Like when she was walking near Thor -- she never walked with Thor, Thor was a one man show, and sometimes he let other people accompany him -- she had to practically run to keep up. “Do I even want to know how you got to space?”
“I was kidnapped,” Captain Carol Marvel thingie said, not looking around.
“Lot of that going around, that’s the same thing that Star Guy said, and I know Jane’s been to space a few times, but usually Thor takes her. It’d be nice, I think, if there were some humans who got to space by themselves, don’t you? I feel so-- unadvanced.”
“Humans are, compared to the larger galaxy,” Carol said, “rather primitive.”
“Fuck you. We have great margaritas,” Darcy sniffed. “Around here they have random varieties of ‘we distilled this shit next to our power core and it probably won’t kill you.’”
“I’ll give you that much,” Carol said. “I haven’t been to a decent bar in… well, probably longer than you’ve been alive.”
“You don’t look that much older than me,” Darcy said. She was, however, familiar with gods, and their age issues. Thor was something around fifteen hundred years old, or the rough equivalent of a soccer mom. Of course, by that notion, Loki was all of sixteen or so, and the more Darcy thought about that, the more logical it seemed. Loki had all the sense and restraint of an angry white boy with daddy issues and a gun, and the Asgardians did seem to be the primeval angry white boys.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Carol said, “although, not possibly as old as you’re now thinking. I was born on Earth in 1966, standard planetary time.”
“There is exactly no way you’re twenty years older than I am,” Darcy spluttered. “Not with an ass like that.”
Carol looked over her shoulder. “What’s wrong with my ass.”
“Not a damn thing,” Darcy said. “And I’ve seen Tony Stark up close, so believe me when I say, I know a fine ass when I see one.”
“Tony Stark? Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Iron Man? Earth’s greatest defender? How long have you been gone?”
“Since ‘89, with a brief visit in 1995 to deal with some alien issues.”
“We had aliens back in the 90s? Well, that explains some things,” Darcy said. Really, nothing surprised her anymore.
“Quill is half alien,” Carol said, “and his mom popped out that delightful ass in the eighties or thereabouts. So you’ve had aliens on Terra that I personally know about since the mid seventies. And the Asgardians were there centuries ago. Face it, little green men are a thing, and probably always have been.”
“What even is my reaction to that supposed to be?” Darcy demanded, trotting to catch up, because Carol had stopped listening and was striding off toward… well, Darcy hoped it was her ship, or something. She was used to it, though. Being left behind. Forgotten. She wasn’t very interesting, or very smart, or very beautiful. She was a mostly normal-thank-you-very-much human grad student who was going to have a lot of freaking college loans to pay off. Which was why she kept putting off actually graduating, because at least being Jane’s assistant paid some bills and kept her in kitchen and booze funds.
It also ended up with her being accidentally zotted to the other end of the galaxy when one of Jane’s experiments either went drastically wrong, or incredibly right. Hard to say, and she wouldn’t really know until she got home and found out of Jane had just popped off to a different party of the galaxy. And rest assured that Thor probably knew where she was and went after her. Which, it might not occur to them for a while that Darcy also needed to be rescued.
To be fair, Jane often managed to find trouble when she was out of line of sight, and getting popped of, she might have, for instance, immediately have stuck her pen into some swirly goo and gotten infected with Bad Space Things. You know, just saying.
Not like it had ever happened before.
“So,” she said, when she finally caught up, panting for breath, because, damn, in addition to having a killer ass, Carol also apparently had increased lung capacity. Well, Darcy might be able to make use of that if she was going to entertain the idea of getting funky with a space diva. And she just might consider it. “Sounds like you’ve been missing the bar scene for a while, and maybe a drink or two, and cheese sticks? Want to hit the Applebees when we get back? I mean, I know it’s basic and everything, but I don’t get paid all that often and their happy hour is--”
“Don’t you have fifteen Uru? At least?” Carol stopped walking and Darcy slammed into her, and they engaged in a little rocking back and forth before Carol steadied them out.
“Well, yeah,” Darcy said. “I’ve got hundreds of them, Thor gives them to us all the time for stuff. But there’s no exchange rate on Earth for god-money.”
“How many do you have with you?”
“A hundred or so,” Darcy hedged. She’d told Quill she only had twenty because he’d looked very… untrustworthy.
“Right, we’ll hit up the exchange on our way out of the port,” Carol said. “Minus my delivery fee, of course.”
“Of course. Does that mean yes to a date?”
“If you have a hundred uru, you could probably buy the bar,” Carol said. “So, yes. Date. sounds fun. Do they still do karaoke on Earth?”
“Yass, Queen,” Darcy said, holding her hand up to be high fived and after a moment, Carol seemed to recall the custom. “What’s the exchange rate?”
Carol swiped a few gestures over her wrist, popping up a display holograph, which Darcy would think was really cool if she wasn’t actually in Goddamn space and had seen some actual motherfreaking aliens, thanks very much. “About six and a half to one.”
“Six hundred dollar’s isn’t bad, but it’s hardly buying real estate--”
“Six and a half thousand. To one Uru. So, about half a million dollars, or so, after processing fees.”
Darcy almost stopped breathing. “I have hundreds of those things at home,” she squeaked.
“So, yeah. Date?”
“Date.” She could think about the rest of it later. Like, when she was writing a check to pay off her student loans.