Fragments of Decay

I'm Not Legally Required To Do This

The door thuds to a close behind her. For some reason, the soft dull thud it makes clicking shut infuriates her even more. She stalks back and opens it just to throw it shut again. The satisfying slam doesn't help her calm down, but it does make her feel better.

And if it shows her parents that she's still in fact very angry with them both then that's only a plus.

How dare she?

How fucking dare she?

Where does she get the audacity? To just show up here, in her home, in Alice's home after thirteen years? Thirteen years of absolutely no contact, no phone calls, no cards, no nothing.

She starts pacing around the room. How dare she? She kicks over her trash can. She feels hot, like something right underneath her skin is about to explode. There's tingles dancing around her fingertips and she just really really wants to break something. For good measure she kicks the empty trash can again. It doesn't help.

There's hot tears streaming down her cheeks which she starts furiously wiping away. She's not even sad, she's just pissed. Her gaze finds bingle, discarded on her bed from where she'd left it earlier. Her mom gave her that.

She crosses the short distance over to her bed, grabbing onto the plushie and petting its head for a few moments before rage overtakes her and she's hurling the cursed thing at the wall. She doesn't even like stuffed animals. She's not a child.

Still, as the plushie hits the wall and slides down with a miserable thud her anger quickly makes place for shame. She moves across the room in three strides and just holds the cat for a moment. It's very soft.

"I'm sorry," she mutters, patting his back in apology. "I'm not upset with you." She knows he's just a toy but she does hope he forgives her all the same. Throwing the poor thing across the room was a very poor way of welcoming it back home.

She starts going to the shameful motions of cleaning up the mess her freakout caused, chucking all the papers - including that damned file - into the trash and putting it back upright, straightening out Bingles fur and putting him against her pillow, re-opening the door to gently close it.

She figures her dad will come to talk to her. He always does when she gets really upset about something. Her mom showing up won't change that. It won't.

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It apparently does.

Part of her feels betrayed. So what, her mom shows up and suddenly her dad can't even make the time to lecture her anymore? Fine. No lecture means no punishment and no punishment means Alice is free to do whatever the hell she wants.

Including eavesdrop.

Alice doesn't sneak out of her room. She refuses to act like it's not her house and her room and her - well her dad's but whatever, he clearly doesn't care - hallways.

She is however careful not to make too much noise as she makes her way over to the living room. It really doesn't matter either way because, as it turns out, her parents are both fast asleep. Fucking losers.

She slowly walks closer to the couch. Her parents are curled up on opposite sides of it. She can't make out the coffee table underneath all the papers - files, she notes as she comes closer - it's covered in. Her dad's still holding on to one of them. She carefully nudges at the corner to try and read what it's about. She can't quite make it out without waking him.

She looks back at the files on the table with renewed interest. So they were doing research. She carefully kneels down and grabs the first paper she sees. It's a personnel file, Yon-Rogg, it reads at the top. She recognises the name from her moms file. She looks over her shoulder and frowns slightly. One of her parents - likely her mom, judging by the newly familiar handwriting - had added sporadic notes onto it. Impulsively, Alice reaches over to grab the discarded pen and draw an angry smiley face near the guy's name. Asshole.

She spends at least an hour like that, silently skimming over the different pages, her mom's notes and the carefully crafted ideas her dad had noted down on how to proceed. By the end of it she's drawn a lot of angry smiley's - one on every Kree file she came across -, changed every mention of 'Vers' into 'Carol' - she may not like her mom very much but still, it's the principle! It wouldn't be very fair of her to depend her morals on her perception of someone now would it - and, even if she does say so herself, added a whole bunch of actual intelligent notations.

If only her English teacher could see this masterpiece she muses as she puts the final 'Colony' file on its corresponding pile. - Listen, there had been no organisation anywhere in that mess of piles, she's doing them a favour. -

She looks back over at her parents. During her little investigation there had been plenty of moments where she'd been scared her dad was about to wake up and remember that lecture he owes her but her mom hadn't even stirred once.

Her dads drooling, she notices, barely managing to suppress a snicker. "Take a picture please, Friday," she whispers as quietly as she can possibly manage. The AI doesn't respond but she can feel her phone buzz in her pocket and smiles. Sweet sweet blackmail.

Her smile fades as she looks back to her mom. There's dried tears tracked down her face. Something in her chest feels wrong at the sight. Is that her fault? Wasn't that what she had been trying to achieve? To hurt her mom like she'd hurt Alice? Her gaze snaps back to the file her dad had been holding onto. It had fallen onto the floor at some point, contents clear now, it's the very last page of her moms file.

Carol Danvers could not follow through on her quest for vengeance on the Kree while burdened with the care of a small child. She chose her revenge over her daughter, who has heard nothing from her mother since the abandonment (Source: REDACTED)

Oh. That explains a lot. She looks at her mom. Had the file made her cry? Why would it? It couldn't be new information, right? Surely her mom had known what was in it - hell her mom had lived it - That feeling of wrongness is back. She doesn't like it, doesn't like the way it makes her throat close up or the tears building at her eyes again.

She reaches over to grab a hold of the file and the pen. She crosses through 'a small child', writing her own name above it. She reads the segment again and slowly brings the pen down again.

Carol Danvers could not follow through on her quest for vengeance on the kree while taking care of Alice, who has heard nothing from her mother since (Source: REDACTED)

It hurts less this way, Alice thinks. Maybe it'll hurt her mom less too - then she won't have to cry again and Alice won't have to feel wrong anymore. -

She puts the file on the personnel pile and gets up, stretching her aching back. She's fifteen for christ's sake sitting hunched for an hour should not hurt yet. She's about to leave the room when her dad twists, forcing her attention back to her parents. She moves back to the other couch and grabs two blankets, her top two favourites in fact, draping one across her dad and then, despite some hesitation, the other across her mom. There, she thinks. That's better.

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Authors Notes

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- I refuse to believe I was the only one that would have to reclose the door gently after I slammed it. I wasn't, it's not possible.

- Alice only likes organised chaos, what Tony & Carol were doing is obv wrong

- Short chapter but I'm quite fond of it I love Alice being all soft