The Kree still call her "Vers."

Throughout the galaxy, they talk about her. They talk about how the ground shakes when she walks. They talk about how her eyes glow golden with a power that no one can stalk. They talk about how she rains down fire and death wherever she goes.

The Kree are proud by nature; not just of culture, but of biology, of physiology, of species. They have built an empire predicated on their own superiority, spreading out in all directions, hungry for more and more and more, bringing war with them.

They call her Vers, call her one of theirs, because they can't stand the thought that she is not one.

The woman who carved a path through Hala, into the heart of their capitol, the woman who beheld the Supreme Intelligence in all its glory, held it in her hands, and crushed it; she cannot be anything less than a Kree.

Vers, they call her, trying to grip a hold of her, of her legend, clinging to her, because the alternative is anathema. Because who else could she be? They had seen her, walking these streets, training with their soldiers, and so she can't be anything less. Nothing lesser than themselves could be their destruction, could tear them down.

They try to bind her, with that name, to make her less than what she is.

Vers, a rogue Kree, powerful by Kree biology, the only one who could ever beat them.

An Emperor rises in the wake of the Supreme Intelligence, drawing military leaders in close to himself, trying to protect what has been shaken to its very core.

Kree blood flows through her veins, the Kree proclaim. She bleeds blue.

She is theirs.

But she knows better.

She bleeds blue, but she is not Vers.

Vers was a lie that has turned to ashes on her tongue, built on fragments and deception. She walked those streets and trained with those soldiers and promised her loyalty and love to an empire that was as hollow as the woman she had been, that was as fake as the name that she had carried with her.

She walks through the Kree Empire now, and she sees what Vers never could. She sees death and cruelty in the name of superiority and order. She sees battlefields and graveyards and refugee camps. She learns of client races and secret experiments and altered DNA, and she throws herself into fighting them all, tooth and nail.

Vers, they call her.

Star Force Vers, of the Kree Empire, rogue, traitor, blue-blooded, and powerful by Kree decree and Kree design.

She keeps walking, and the Empire trembles with every step.

Maria calls her Carol.

There's no pretention between the two of them. There can't be. The two of them are open skies and stars, bad beer in worse bars and jokes so old that they creak.

She comes back from the stars, months after she'd left, and Maria's relief is palpable, but she doesn't say anything.

"I'll always come back," she says, and after six long years, she thinks Maria might just believe her.

She will leave, in the end, because the universe is calling her, because people need her, because somewhere, the Kree still hunt the Skrull and wars still rage and she finds herself incapable of keeping her feet on the ground when she can help.

She will leave, but she will come back, time after time, finding herself on a front porch, where Maria is, the name "Carol," hanging in the air, sweeter than honey.

The two of them go flying that night, Maria in a plane and Carol in the open air, the wind flying through her hair, going so fast that any tears vanish before they can even finish falling.

"Higher, further, faster, baby," Maria laughs over the radio, the words carrying them through the night sky, up towards the stars.

It's always been the two of them, in every permeation, in every form.

"Carol," Maria says, and she will always answer.

The pirates, the Ravagers, those who prey on the wandering in space; they call her "Avenger."

It's painted on the side of her ship; a scrapheap of a thing, like herself, full of bits and pieces from a dozen different worlds, held together with determination alone, but it's the closest thing to home she has, wandering the universe, doing what she does.

The predators learn to fear her, learn to turn tail and flee when they see that battered old ship, which many of them had mistaken as easy prey. Their other victims come to her, seeking the safety in her wake.

She goes after them, and goes after them hard, destroying bases and ripping apart their ships with her bare hands, until the name is a cry of fear, so loud that it can almost be heard in space.

"It's the Avenger! Run!"

And she gives chase.

Fury calls her Danvers.

It's comforting, those precious days on Earth, when she's drinking iced tea on Maria's front porch, scratching Goose behind the ears, to hear that name.

Her parents weren't great, weren't even good. There's not a day that she thinks of them that she wouldn't have handily traded them for… well, just about anyone, really.

But the name was hers, and the Kree had taken it from her.

The years pass, and she doesn't age. Fury does. She watches him; now with an eye patch, now angrier and more cynical, his humor darker and leaner, but still the man who sang to her while they'd washed the dishes in the kitchen. He's still the man who melts whenever Goose climbs into his lap, even though those scratches have never healed.

He's changing, and she's staying the same, at least on the outside.

But he still calls her Danvers.

And she still calls him Fury.

The Skrull call her Marvel, to honor Mar-Vell, to honor the power that hums through her body.

The Skrull don't do multiple names, just like the Kree, and Carol is too personal, and Danvers doesn't make sense to them, because they know that her parents aren't her family, not really, so to them, it only makes sense, to name her instead, after the woman who had changed her life.

Marvel is hardly even a person, it feels like. She's their guardian, their defender, their avenger, their guide through the universe.

The Skrull need a home, and she's there to help them search for it.

Not anywhere near Kree territory, that's for sure. Not Nova, either; the war with the Kree has been going on for millennia, and the Skrull and she have no reason to trust them, with their pretty words and glistening empire. They had never offered help to the Skrull, in the dark, desperate days, and there's no reason to think they would offer them help now, unless it was out of fear of her.

There's Asgard, glorious and golden and distant, but none of them know much about Asgard.

Once, they had been a bloody empire, as bad as the Kree, but it had been different. They had never had interest in worlds where no one gathered; they did not strip the worlds for resources, they never colonized, they never built. They conquered, they enslaved, they took from what had already been built, and then they went back and remade their own cities in gold.

Now, they claimed peace, but the Skrulls don't trust that, and neither does she.

But one thing is clear, the Asgardians have never cared for any world that is not already inhabited. They care about their realms, those precious worlds they deem worthy of attention… and protection.

Earth, she is surprised to learn, is one of them, nestled on the edge of Asgardian space, the border pressing right up against the Kree.

(She wonders if Odin, high on his throne, would have protested Ronan's bombardment, had she not been there to intervene.)

Asgard, distant, golden, expansive…

And maybe, just maybe, safe for this ship full of families and refugees.

The Skrull don't need much to survive; their biology can adapt to anything, and Marvel, they tell her, can survive anything.

They fly into Asgardian space, searching out a planet with resources but no life, a place for the Skrull to make their own, safely hidden away from the rest of the galaxy, tucked away in the heart of Asgard's empire.

She flies alongside them, her hair flowing loose in the vacuum of space, her eyes and face exposed, because her mask and uniform are Kree in form if not color, and this, this reminds them that she is not here to harm them.

They call her Marvel, daughter of Mar-Vell, the savior of the Skrull.

Even Talos, who knows better, sometimes falls into it, awe in his eyes when she brings another ship of refugees to their new home. They call it New Tarnax, after a world now lost, and slowly, they are building.

She walks among them, and they part in front of her, whispering amongst themselves.

She rarely stays long, too busy chasing distress signals across the galaxy, too busy to stay in a place where so few will meet her eyes.

But there is always a place for her in Talos's house; a bed, and a room, decorated for her by his child.

"Marvel," she Skrull whisper as she walks past them, the words clinging to her like stardust. "She's Marvel."

Years after, they meet again in a worn-down town, far away from Georgia, further still away from Hala.

"Minn-Erva," she says, somehow unsurprised. The bar is nearly empty, the afternoon sunlight catching on the dust specks in the air, filling the place with a warmth that seems off, given how the power within her coils and boils within her, at the sight of the woman who has been her comrade and enemy in turn.

The Kree has found a way to hide her coloring, and she looks… ordinary is not the word for her, it never has been, but she seems to fit in here, exhausted and wearing flannel and standing next to a woman who looks, amazingly, impossibly, human.

"Vers," Minn-Erva is not afraid, but she is wary.

"That's not my name," she says.

Minn-Erva growls. "Then what do I call you?" The old hostility is still there, but Minn-Erva is so, so very different than the woman that she remembers. For starters, she's not carrying her gun, and there's no mask to cover her eyes. She is exposed… she is, almost, human.

She tilts her head to one side. "My rank is Captain."

"Captain," Minn-Erva repeats, the word strange in her mouth, and that's how she realizes that Minn-Erva is speaking English, not Kree, even through the universal translator.

"You're stuck here, aren't you?"

Minn-Erva bares her teeth, then her shoulders slump. "Yes."

That there is nothing for her to go back for, goes unsaid. She has failed, and she carried no message from her to the Supreme Intelligence, and so there was no hope for her, back on Hala.

"Do you want to leave?"

Minn-Erva hesitates, fiddling with the label of the bottle of beer in front of her.

"I've always been a soldier. I didn't… it was for the good of all Kree," she says, and for a moment, her skin is blue again. "But… here… I've seen things."

"That happens, sometimes."

"I can't be that again," Minn-Erva whispers, her voice steady but ragged. "No more."

She nods, an easy acceptance, because she too has stood in a battlefield and counted up the lives that her hands have taken and been sickened.

She cannot set aside her fight, cannot allow the injustices of the world to continue unfought, but she can hardly blame Minn-Erva, older than her and more bitter than her, for wanting peace and rest.

"Who's this, then?" She turns her eyes to the woman.

"My wife," Minn-Erva says.

"I'm Anne," the woman says, and there's fear in her eyes. "Anne Altman."

She smiles.

"Well. I'll leave you to it."

The breath seems to go out of all three of them, at the realization that this fragile peace will go unshattered.

"Captain," Minn-Erva says, and she gives her a nod.

Ronan calls her "the woman," the one time they meet.

She punches his teeth in, and he doesn't call her anything after that.

Monica calls her "Auntie Carol," and always will.

"Lieutenant Trouble!" She calls, every time she lands, where she knows Monica will be. The roof of a college dorm, the backyard of a house in the suburbs, the front lawn of a house in Georgia.

The hug comes next, sacred in the ritual, and even when Monica is as tall as she is, even when Maria's hair is going grey, she can pretend that nothing has ever changed, and that she never left home.

Monica is brilliant and bright, a beacon that will always call her home. She takes calendars with her out into space and marks off the days, trying to keep track of important things. Graduations and birthdays, at the very least.

It doesn't always work; it's easy to lose track of time, when she seems to move both faster and slower than the rest of the universe in turn, when there are people who need help and no one but her there to do it.

But in the end, even if she's late, she always goes back to that beacon.

"Auntie Carol!"

The Nova Corps are the ones who come up with "Captain Marvel," in the end.

The Nova don't know how to deal with her. Her DNA is a mishmash; Mar-Vell's ended up fused with her own, in the explosion, the Tesseract warped her further still, but she's also human. Strange, but human, but carrying an impossible force within herself. Human and Kree and pure energy, the protector of the Skrulls and Earth alike.

The Nova call her "Captain," because that's her human rank, and the Nova Corps prefer to think of her that way; as a foreign military representative, someone who is in someone's jurisdiction, even if it is not theirs, unable to deal with someone who falls outside of their careful order.

They call her "Marvel," for the Skrull, because they would rather die than use a name given to her by the Kree, because to acknowledge any part of her as Kree would be to call her an enemy, and they have seen what has happened to her enemies, over the years of her presence in space.

"Captain Marvel," Irani Rael, the Nova Prime says, nodding at her. All around her, her people watch, feared. She has never come to Xandar before, and even though she sent word ahead, even though she has come promising no violence, they fear her, and what her presence means for them.

"I hear you're brokering a peace treaty with the Kree," she says, straight to the point.

Nova Prime nods, but there's suspicion on her face. The soldiers around her shift, nervous. She has, over the years, learned to read all of the different body languages of the various species, but no one but the Skrull know how to read hers.

"I have a request, then."

"Oh?" Rael reminds her of Mar-Vell, now, in this moment, in her caution and her wisdom. She sees more than she lets on, and everything is laid out in front of her like a map, or perhaps a chess board. She is balancing billions of lives in the palm of her hand, and she is evaluating her, trying to see how she will tip the balance.

She leans in, and all of the Nova Corps reach for their weapons but do not draw them, because they are not fools. "The Skrull are not a part of this."

Rael is still, in her guilt.

"I know your people know where they are, where they've made their home. I know that there are a lot of consessions you could get out of them for that information. But Rael… if you give them that, there will be a slaughter."

"Captain Marvel—"

"Do you know what the Ravagers call me?"

"… the Avenger."

"Don't give me something to avenge, Rael." To use her name so directly is an insult, on Xandar, but she does not care. She only cares that they listen.

"I want this war to end just as much as you do." She takes a single step forward, and fear flashes in the eyes of every Nova Corp member, and the bravest among them even draw their weapons.

"But I won't let the Skrull die for your peace."

Irani Rael is a smart woman. She weighs the balance of the universe. She schools her face.

"Understood, Captain Marvel."

Dust floats all around her, and she lets out a guttural, inhuman scream.

The pager—the pager—sings through her communicator, and she stares at the galaxy around her, her ship's computer crying out in every language, from every planet, everyone she knows calling for her, for her help, calling her names and titles in every language.

The names of the dead rattle through her head, casualty lists spilling out into the void of space, a list so, oh so terrifyingly long, just like it has been since the attack on Xandar, an attack that she had been too late to stop.

But Earth is calling her. Earth, where Fury and Monica and Maria and Goose and Minn-Erva and her wife and billions of other people are, or possibly were, because ash has turned to dust has turned to stardust, and she knows, in her very bones, in the very power that is always there, that something is wrong.

She abandons the Avenger, because her greatest secret has always been that she is faster without it, and she flies.

"Where's Fury?" She demands, because there are people here, but none of them are Fury, and Fury would never let that pager fall into anyone else's hands, except maybe Monica or Maria's, and even that seems unlikely.

There's a white woman with blonde hair and a suspicious look, a familiar looking white man with a beard, a white man whose hair is a mess of curls, and a handsome black man who she vaguely recognizes from Maria's stories, and all of them are staring at her.

The answer is the same, the answer that she knew, in her bones, out there in space, amongst the stardust that had once been a ship full of Skrull refugees.

Her shoulders slump, and she wants to cry, she wants to scream, she wants to unleash the full power of Binary, but she holds it back.

"Who are you?" The other woman demands, her hands on a gun, of all things, as if one of those has been a threat to her in twenty years.

But that's the question, isn't it?

"My name is Carol," she says. She looks at these faces, as weary as she feels, as grief stricken as she is, and Carol knows there is only one answer.

"And I'm here to help."

A/N: Okay so, in the comics, Minn-Erva is a pacifist and a scientist? And I refuse to admit that she could have died, because that would be a WASTE, so instead, she survived, wandered the Earth, fell in love, and has now become a pacifist. Her wife, Anna Altman, is a composite of two characters from comics, Princess Anelle, and Mrs. Altman, Teddy Altman, AKA Hulkling's adopted and biological moms from the comics, so YEP! She's a Skrull, and Minn-Erva totally knows it. Look, Mar-Vell died early in the MCU, and so Teddy needs a Kree parent, and if I have to do it myself, I will.