Rogue: Annihilation (An Avengers Sequel)

14. Carol Danvers

For a split second, I forgot how to do the thing where you make words come out of your mouth. But then my brain kicked into gear, and my two brain cells started to warm up.

"You... you're...?" I looked at her costume again. It was exactly the same as the symbol on the pager – this became clearer the nearer to her I stood. "Are-are you?" Of course she was, who else could she be? "You're... her?"

Her cold, stoic look changed to one of genuine confusion. She looked me up and down. "Is Nick Fury here?" she asked, speaking slowly, like she thought I wouldn't be able to understand her.

"Um, no," I said at last, trying to sound at least somewhat coherent.

"Well, I was called here," she said, looking around me to see the inside of the Compound. "Unless I'm in the wrong place...?"

"No, you're in the right place," I quickly insisted. "You're... Carol Danvers?"

She nodded, stepping into the Compound, despite the fact that I'd never actually invited her in. After a quick look around (the place had been a mess since the Snap; no one had bothered to attempt cleaning) she faced me. "Fury called me here. Where is he?"

"Actually, I called you here," I admitted, looking her in the eye. "Fury... he's dead."

There was a flash of anger in her eyes and she walked towards me menacingly. I stumbled away from her, putting up a force field for good measure. Upon seeing the force field, she stopped abruptly, almost looking impressed. But the anger was still prevalent on her face.

"What happened to Fury?" Before I could answer her question, she shook her head. "Scratch that. What happened to the world? Everything's... different."

I sighed, wondering where to start. Thanos was to blame for the destruction of the world, but Kilgrave was to blame for the loss of Fury.

"Well..." I started, filling her in on everything that had happened, from Kilgrave and his release of the five Winter Soldiers that had taken some of the most important members of our team, to everything that happened with Thanos, leading up to today.

She listened without a comment. The only way I knew that she was still listening to me was that her eyes never left mine.

"Where are they now?" she asked. "Kilgrave and Thanos, where?"

"Kilgrave is dead," I told her. "And Thanos... we don't know. We've been looking, but so far we've hit a dead end."

She nodded, as if she expected this, putting her hands on her hips. "The Snap... does your team think they can reverse it?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Maybe. But we'd need the Infinity Stones. Thanos took them with him when he disappeared."

She nodded again. "Great. I'll find Thanos, get the Stones, and reverse the Snap." She started walking, and it was a full 30 seconds before I could put together what she'd said, and another 20 before it made sense.

"Wait, you're gonna just 'find' Thanos? You think it'll be that easy?"

She smirked, giving me a look that was almost pitying. "You clearly don't know anything about me."

Suddenly, we heard footsteps running up the stairs. Carol automatically braced herself. I guess, when you're always saving the world, everything feels like an attack.

"It's okay," I told her, expecting her to instantly relax, but her guard was still up. "It's just..." I trailed off upon seeing Steve's face. For the first time in three weeks, I didn't understand his expression.

"Rogue, you need to hear this," he said to me in a rush. He quickly glanced at Carol, barely looking at her. I was his entire focus.

"What is it?" I asked, my heart pounding in my chest.