Fragments of Decay

6. So Maybe I'm Not Okay

"We can't ask that of people, there has to be another way,"

Despite her best intentions, Carol would not be able to name the speaker if you'd hold a gun to her head. She'd probably survive the bullet anyways, so it really doesn't matter, she muses.

She doesn't catch much more of the meeting, her turn to speak had passed a while ago and she'd zoned out nearly immediately after it was over, actively counting down the minutes until she can go home, back to her not-cat. Back to her bed.

Naturally she's the first out the door, the second whats-his-name declares the meeting is over, the details of the next one can - and will - be an e-mail. She doesn't want to stick around for the slow aftertalk she knows will follow. It's gotten easier over the years, but every now and then there'll still be someone that doesn't know. Someone with the best intentions asking her how little Alice was, or commenting on how their child stopped wanting to spend every second with them around that age as well.

It's been thirteen years, almost to the month, since she last saw the girl. She'd thought it would get easier, and in many ways it has, but sometimes-

Sometimes she gets confronted with something that makes it hurt all over again, almost as if she's back to hovering right outside earth's atmosphere, back to finally allowing herself to break down just once.

A lot of time has passed since that moment, but she finds herself reliving it often. There's still pictures of Alice spread around the ship, the room that had once been hers has been firmly kept shut for over a decade, when a mission takes them close to earth Goose will still start crying in that devastated way that makes Carol want to cry right along with her.

She's fine though.

She smiles down at her flerken upon entering the ship, sliding into her seat and taking off as fast as possible. There's been reports of Kree battleships patrolling around some nearby planets that she's been meaning to check out for a while now.

She makes it there in record time, probably helped along by the new Goose-proof glass she has around the cockpit, turning on the ship's cloaking mechanism before entering the planet's star system.

She spots the Kree ships nearly immediately - they're difficult to miss, hovering closeby one of the gas planets - She opens the hatch and, with a final salute to her grumpy looking flerken, falls backwards into space, revelling in the vastness of being surrounded by it.

She flies the short distance onto the nearest ship, making her way over to where she remembers the comms unit to be. She smiles triumphantly to herself as she finds her memory to be correct. Glad the Kree's horrible sense of security measures hadn't changed in nearly thirty years.

She hovers in the hallway right outside the door. She can't exactly just go barging in and expect them to kindly share their plans, but she knows if she waits much longer she's bound to run into some guards.

Fate ends up making the choice for her as the sound of voices coming from around the corner forces her to slip inside the, thankfully empty, room. She takes a second to catch her breath before moving over to the control panel. She doesn't expect any of her codes to work but-

Paranoia had been extreme among the Kree ranks at the height of the Skrull war. Anyone could be compromised at any time and they did not want any secrets in their enemies hands. They'd found out quickly that DNA could be copied but as it turned out, there was always going to be a slight abnormality in the blood of a Skrull. From there it had been a matter of simply equipping all the ships with the necessary software and-

"Gotcha," Carol thinks as she pulls open a drawer to find the familiar device. Her codes would have been erased from the system long ago and the same would go with her bloodchecks. That would have only been efficient, Carol muses, if the blood flowing through her veins was her own.