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Doreen and Nancy lived together for a long time. They lived together through all of college, and before they graduated, Doreen worried endlessly over how much she would miss it. When Nancy asked her if she would be her roommate at her new apartment, she was over the moon. Somehow with her degree in computer science, she couldn't imagine it was possible to keep living together. With Nancy, and her cat, Mew.
It was like having a sleepover all the time.
Doreen received a few e-mails from the Avengers now and again, wondering where she'd gone off to, now that her secret identity was public. Somehow, she managed to stay out of super-heroics since then. It's as if she vanished, or retired.
But Doreen Green wasn't captured by a supervillain or held hostage in outer space. She was living a quiet life, in her New York City apartment with her best friend in the whole world, Nancy Whitehead. That's all she ever wanted. A little apartment with the woman she decided she wanted to spend her life with from the first day she met her. One of the first civilians who learned her secret identity.
She loved New York. She loved working from home; she got a job working for Stark Industries, writing code for Tony's suits. She loved making a life for herself and finishing school, just like Iron Man told her all those years ago, when the two of them fought Doctor Doom.
More than anything else, she loved Nancy.
She loved her so much that she never wanted to tell her. She never wanted anything to change, aside from maybe -- just once couldn't hurt -- being able to lean in and kiss her. Doreen wondered if her teeth would get in the way, and if so, she wondered if Nancy would mind. Doreen wondered if she would ever know the answer.
Doreen thought about it when she made Nancy breakfast in the morning.
Is it okay to do something just to be nice to her? She's my best friend.
Of course it's okay to be nice to people! Especially your best friend...
Yeah, but, if you do something nice for someone, because you like them, and you want them to like you too, are you just tricking them?
What if it bothers her that I'm being so nice?
I don't want to bother her! I want --
"Doreen?"
Hearing Nancy say her name melted all her anxieties away, and replaced them with new ones.
"Whuh?"
"You've been real quiet this morning. Are you feeling okay?"
She's worried about me. Ohh...
"Yeah, of course! Just thinking."
"About what?"
"Uh. Galactus."
Galactus? Why did I say that?
"Really? Why?"
"You know how he, uh, eats planets?"
"That's sort of his thing, yeah."
"Well, I think he eats planets because, to him, they might be very small, and not mean a whole lot, but to the people who live there, they're their entire world. Literally and figuratively, I mean."
"Doreen. It isn't like you to fail the Bechdel test this early in the morning. Are you sure you're feeling alright?"
Curses! Nancy loves Alison Bechdel. Doreen should've seen that one coming.
She knew Nancy was a lesbian. They both came out, just after Doreen was outed the first time, as her alter ego, Squirrel Girl.
"What if there was a big woman who ate planets instead?"
"That would be pretty cool."
"What if there were lots of people living on those planets, Nancy? Women people! Eight billion lesbians. And she ate their planet anyways! And she didn't know how big it was to them. To her, it was just another day, and the lives and troubles of all those little people were all so very, very small. What then?"
"...What?"
"What if she didn't know how much it meant to them? Nancy?"
"If I was a giant who was hungry enough to eat a planet, I'd ask what's for breakfast. It smells delicious."
"Oh, right! I'm making scrambled eggs."