❝And look at you now. Here in the moment, standing strong.❞ She spoke like reading off the periodic table, running off a fact that she saw as just that--a fact. There was a decency in her tone, offering a pensive glance to him and then to the ground underneath her shoes. ❝I can’t imagine how that was. I enlisted on the hopes of escaping my life. Flying away, you know? So for me, it was kind of the opposite.❞ Flashes of her raging heart blaze through her memory, brief and sharp as they depict that of a young Danvers who wanted nothing more than to get what she wanted. Her “family” be damned, for all she cared.
The toe of her shoe was scuffled and turned each way into the cement, letting her gaze drift up to a familiar anchor of comfort, settling into that endless blue rooftop. ❝But I... do know what it’s like, to be forced into something. To not even have a choice in the path of your life. To--❞ ‘
‘To be made into something else’ sliced into her thoughts, rending through the good memories to make room for what still felt like fresh trauma. It caused her to swallow hard, as if trying to gulp down a planet’s worth of problems was anything close to healthy.
The instinct to throw up her usual bulletproof facade arrived like usual, half of her face covered by golden curls as she shined her best at Sam Wilson. ❝--to have that happen to you is beyond cruel. Nobody, not one good person, should be forced into anything that they want no part of. ...Which, I guess sounds sort of obvious, but--well, here we are.❞ Still looking at him, Carol then began to sport a smile, still burying that planet in the spare black-hole that she kept in the back of her mind. This was about him, after all. And how he survived.
❝It didn’t kill you Sam. And you’re here. Flying strong. You survived it.❞