impulselantern
Jet lag was a problem most people could relate to. Going from one timezone to another in a matter of hours, losing days in the sky and landing before you’d taken off… it was enough to send anybody’s mind into a confused, aching mess. Space lag was worse. There were no timezones in space, no real way to know what your watch ought to say, no early morning sunlight streaming through the window to wake you up or moonlight shining to let you know it was time to hit the hay. It made orienting yourself a mess any time you came back down to Earth.
So, living in space? (Or crashing there, at least, on a mattress in a ship where you definitely weren’t supposed to sleep.) It made it a little worse.
Simon’s head was all over the place, and he was barely aware of the words coming out of his mouth until Carol agreed with him with an expression that said she was absolutely just humoring him here. Simon sighed, rubbing at his eyes. “I think my sloop’s seen better days,” he confirmed. He hesitated for a moment at her question, uncertain, before his shoulders slumped. “My sister kicked me out,” he admitted. “Don’t tell the Lantern Corps, but I might be… using the Sector House for more than what they intended it to be.”
&
“Oh,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
Being a superhero had its perks--cool powers, great suits, free dinners, and, of course, the knowledge that your actions were saving people’s lives; that the world was even marginally a better place because you’d been in it. It also came with shitty neighbors. As soon as the Avengers show up on your fire escape, or an alien creature tries to get through the front door, your secret’s up, and the people on either side of your apartment, who just want to lead nice, normal, non-world-ending-threat-infested lives, start to panic. Sometimes it’s just a cold shoulder in the mailroom; sometimes they get you evicted. Sometimes it wasn’t a neighbor; sometimes it was a family member. Sometimes being a superhero just wasn’t compatible with the most basic parts of normal human life.
So how, you may ask, did Carol Danvers come to live inside the Statue of Liberty? Well, her perfectly ordinary third-story walkup in the Village fell prey to exactly that kind of cruel, closed-minded, not-wholly-unjustified (but still a dick) neighbor. And the mayor of the city just happened to like her, and just happened to have a key to an apartment literally no one could rent, and what better way to honor Captain Marvel than with the crown of New York’s skyline?
It was unconventional, but it had its charms. It was quiet, except for the nights Spider-Man and the Human Torch thought they could surreptitiously meet on her roof. The ceilings were high, it had a sort of pre-war charm, and no one was around to care when she flew home at night. It sure beat crashing with her parents in Boston, or couch-surfing between Jessica and--well, mostly Jessica--which she’d been known to do. And it really beat going interstellar when you needed to take a nap.
“If you want,” Carol said before she even realized what she was doing, “I’ve got a spare room. It’s not much, but it’s pretty private, and on this planet, and you’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”











