They don't leave the Terran homestead right away.

"At least stay the night," Maria insists, her soft, alien features set as though to stave off any argument. And, considering what he's seen of her, it would have to be a very good argument indeed, Talos decides. "You're still healing up, and I think you've bought at least that much time."

By the way she glances at Carol out of the corner of her eyes—and by the way Carol herself doesn't object either—Talos doesn't think they're the main reason behind her offer, but he can't really fault her for that. Not with the feel of Soren's hand squeezing his own gently beneath the table.

"Oh, please?" Monica pipes in immediately.

She's pulled Zaji over to the other side of the table, introducing her to all the new kinds of Terran foods on offer, and now both girls turn wide, pleading eyes on him. Zaji, bolder now in his company, grasps her new friend's hand. "Please, just for a little while?"

(He'd meant it when he'd said they wouldn't have hurt the girl. Never. But with his own daughter back in his reach, he is ever more aware of how much trust Maria has given them, to welcome them into her home after even the implication of the threat. It's humbling in its own way, and it helps tip the scales.)

"All right," he agrees, after Fury only lifts an eyebrow at him and Carol just shrugs, letting him decide as she smiles down at the children. He has to smile himself as the girls cheer together in response. He takes a moment to bask in the rasp of Zaji's chatter and the weight of Soren's head on his shoulder as she leans her cheek briefly against him, careful of his still-tender wound.

He finds himself grateful for the reprieve, despite the risk. Foolish, maybe—one victory over the Kree, however large, doesn't mean they can relax their guard, and just being here puts their new Terran allies in danger as well. But his family is here: Soren and Zaji, safe and whole, and he has spent so many years striving to reach them that he half-fears he might be dreamwalking, even now.

He needs this moment.

Some of the refugees remain in the dropship for the night—there are too many for all of them to fit in the house, and they can't risk staying outside for a whole night where Maria's neighbors might see. But Carol and her steadfast friends make them as comfortable as possible, offering blankets and new clothes after Carol makes a very quick trip into the nearest town. Maria brings in enough food to feed all of them, cutting past any protests with a single look.

She enlists Monica and Zaji to help pass it out and they tumble through the small space, tripping over their own feet and each other like eager cubs in their excitement. Their giggles light up the hold and Talos sees his people respond to it, slowly beginning to relax as the unfamiliar feeling of safety begins to permeate.

He checks in with all of them, relearning faces and meeting those he doesn't know as he makes sure they all have what they need. So many of these refugees are young, still on the last legs of their growing stages or barely into adulthood. There's something...uniquely comforting about that, that new generations have survived long enough to reach that stage, despite the threat always looming over them.

It doesn't take him long to notice that Carol is doing the same walkthrough, talking to each skrull as she passes them blankets, Fury holding the stack behind her and listening from a distance. She has a Terran coat over her altered Kree uniform, but he doesn't think she needs it, really. She's made her allegiances perfectly clear and so they open to her like plants beneath the sun, grateful and awestruck all at once.

"There any more of you down here?" Fury asks, drawing up beside him. "On Earth, I mean. Or is this it?"

The man tucks blankets under one arm as they watch Carol clasp hands with one of the only other children, shy little Toze. He's the youngest, actually born on Mar-Vell's laboratory, but it doesn't take long for Monica and Zaji to sweep him up in their wake when they catch sight, drawing him out of the hold and down the ramp to feel the grass and solid ground. Chran, the last and eldest of the children, sees them leaving and follows them out, youthful adaptability overcoming his wariness.

"Few hundred, maybe. Probably less," Talos finally admits, opting for honesty after a very brief debate. They've already proven themselves worthy of his most important secrets, anyway. "Infiltration onto new planets has to be slow enough to stay under the radar, and Soren says Mar-Vell already picked up anyone she could find. But there's probably still a few cells out of the loop, so I had my guys send out some coordinates. Long as they're paying attention, it'll make it easy to gather them up when we go."

And that message had been even more of a risk than staying put, he knows, but with Carol's support behind them, now had seemed like the best time to take it.

"Huh." Fury looks thoughtful at that, the same, almost bewildered sort of intrigue that he'd shown when he'd first learned of their existence. Talos can't help a spark of amusement as his uncertainty, but he carefully squashes any revealing reaction. Considering that this is, in all practicality, a First Contact that had started on very shaky terms, the man is doing extraordinarily well.

Then Fury's remaining eye narrows. "And how many of my fellow agents are going to mysteriously vanish when that happens?"

To be entirely frank, Talos has no idea. Likely not many. But he can hardly resist an opening like that and so he lets more than a few teeth show in his grin. "Sure you want to know that answer to that?"

Fury whips around to face him fully, and Talos has to laugh now at his palpable indignation. "Oh, relax. If anyone intentionally simmed your coworkers, it probably would've been for this mission in particular, so they wouldn't have planned the switch to be permanent. SHIELD found your boss alright in the end, didn't they?"

A chirp echoes from between his feet before Fury can do more than glower, and Talos looks down just in time for their resident flerken to wind between his boots, serpentine tail twisting up the back of his calf.

He keeps his reaction to a flinch instead of a leap, trying to avoid jostling the monster, but he snags his claws in the soft material of the Terran shirt Maria had given him as he clenches his fists. Fury, who has clearly learned nothing despite the wounds over his eye, smirks at his reaction and then leans down to stoke the damn thing. Talos resists the urge to drag him up and away by his scruff like a child.

"Well, Goose'll keep an eye out for me. Won't you, Goose?" Fury says to it. His voice hasn't quite slipped back into that high, syrupy sweetness he'd used before, but he still looks almost fond as he offers his blanket pile like a throne for the flerken to sit on while he digs fingers into its cheeks. Talos' skin crawls at the sheer audacity and he inches away in spite of himself. "Owe me that much after you clawed up one of mine, and ain't nobody gonna slip past you, are they?"

Talos watches him murmur to the thing for a moment longer, then leaves them to it and considers himself lucky for the reprieve.

Humans. No survival instinct whatsoever.

"I always believed you'd find us one day," Soren tells him. "Even when it was hard for us to hope."

She's looking at the ship when she says it, not him, but she is leaning fully against him, her cheek against his chest as she twines her arms and hands around his. He holds her even closer and breathes in deeply as they lean together on the porch's railing, her presence a momentary balm to every sharp edge lurking inside him.

His wounds throb as his chest expands, the feather-soft inside of his borrowed shirt whispering over the careful bandages still bound over his shoulder. He ignores that rebounding echo of pain and focuses instead on the weight of her against him, on feeling every familiar scale and ridge on the skin of her hands.

He has felt adrift at times, tonight. The reality of it all strikes him at odd moments, when thinks of how she was and then sees how thin she's become, or when Zaji smiles up at him and he remembers how he last saw her, a babe just barely learning to walk. The years have placed some inevitable distance between them, muddied up familiar paths that they will have to relearn, but he doesn't let the feeling linger.

His heart is finally complete once more. All worries pale in comparison.

"I never stopped looking," he promises her. He doesn't know if those words encompass the entirety of those years he'd spent doing so: the hope and despair, the frustration and longing.

But maybe it's better if they don't, he thinks, when he considers the years as she had spent them. At least he'd had the outlet of the hunt, however disheartening at times. She'd been forced to wait. Wait and hope, with the power to reach him at her fingertips and only the spectre of the Kree holding her back. He might have had it easier, in the end. "Soren, I'm so sorry—"

"No," she sighs, a simple refusal of all his guilt as she closes her eyes and leans up. And this— this is how he remembers it, the clean scent of her skin and the gentle press of her forehead, the trails of warmth across his face as they nuzzle and fit into one another.

He closes his eyes and stays in that lovely space for a moment. The humid night air around them is starting to cool, filled with a chirruping chorus of Terran insects and the distant patter of little feet as their small, mixed crowd of children chases up the stairs inside. Somewhere through an open window, he picks up snatches of Fury's voice—singing, of all things. He huffs in humor at the thought and is rewarded by the curve of Soren's smile against his cheek.

It's a while longer before they rejoin their companions inside.

The scouts he'd sent out bring back Norex's body without any trouble.

They carry him out of the woods slung between them, and Talos doesn't need any closer look to know that there's no chance. He's not surprised—the Kree don't like to take prisoners, and certainly not skrull prisoners. Still, he thinks he'd like to be surprised, one of these days. His grim expectations are twice as heavy when his enemies always seem to meet them.

The children are upstairs, at least; he'd checked on Zaji only minutes before and found them sprawled out together on Monica's bedding, hard asleep. Small mercies—he'll spare them from seeing this consequence of the war for as long as he can.

He can feel Carol's unhappiness, even without the telling wisps of star-fire at her fingertips. She nearly vibrates with it, her face full of all the emotion the Kree so disdain: anger and sadness, and almost certainly guilt. He says nothing when she shadows him across the dark yard, lets her see the weight that falls on him as well as he kneels at Norex's head.

Norex had been neither the strongest nor the smartest, and even his position under Talos' command had been more from a lack of other suitable candidates than any true merit. But he'd been loyal, steadfastly so—hardworking, enthusiastic, and so staunchly believing of Talos' ability to achieve their goals that Talos had often turned to him in times of doubt. To die on the eve of all their plans coming together…

Talos will miss him.

He brushes careful fingers around the edges of the vicious wounds, but leaves the rites until morning. The others will want to be present, now that they have the time and safety to do so. He thinks very briefly of the dead still in SHIELD custody, but discards the thought a moment later; it isn't worth the risk of contact, and he's asked enough of Fury.

He leaves the body for the morning and joins Carol at the treeline where she'd stopped, as though trying to give him some semblance of privacy. Her arms are crossed tightly, hiding the remnants of her Star Force emblem, and he leaves her plenty of space.

He has to wonder if she's having those moments of disconnect as well. She knows the truth now, yes, but he'd seen the inside of her head—that sort of mess isn't all sorted out in a night. And the Kree had done their best to make her one of them, her powers and origins aside. It has to be strange for her just to be here, at times, with the last six years still standing in contrast.

It does nothing to diminish his respect for her—quite the opposite—but he's not going to push it any faster than necessary.

"Norex knew the risks," he offers after a moment's silence. "It was never more than a slight chance that he'd be able to fool the Kree for long. They wise up fast."

"Yon-Rogg was already suspicious, I think," Carol agrees, and ah, there's something dark now in her mention of the name. No need to regale her with tales of Yon-Rogg's many distasteful deeds, clearly. "As soon as I told him it was C-53, he must have…"

She stops, scowling past the trees at this planet's pale moon, and he wonders at the history there. She'd been one of Yon-Rogg's specialized soldiers—some of this has to be personal.

"I let him go," she admits. Talos can't stop himself from bristling, but he holds back words until the initial flare of outrage fades. She's the most important ally they have now, and his best chance of getting the remainder of his people out alive. For all that she has been anything but petty, he doesn't want to risk conflict until he has a better handle on how she'll react to it.

Still. This could be a problem.

"Why?" he asks, deliberately neutral, but the glance she sends sidelong at him seems to know all the things he's not saying anyways.

"I couldn't just…put him down, and that's what it would have been, at that point," she says after a moment of thought. Disappointing, but Talos supposes he can respect that, at least intellectually. She's young, yet. "I did send him back to threaten the Supreme Intelligence with destruction, though, so he might have preferred that, in the end."

That startles him.

"Aiming a bit high there, aren't you? Maybe you oughta rough up a few more armies first to build up to it." He tries for levity with difficulty, but she only shakes her head.

"It might not be the only force behind this war, but the Intelligence needs to go," she insists, every inch of her stone-cold certain. "I know what it was supposed to be, why the Kree made it, but it's…gone wrong. Or maybe it just is wrong, but either way—"

"No arguments from me," Talos assures her hurriedly, almost a little dazed at the prospect. "Absolutely none. Let me know if you need any help with that little endeavor, even."

"Let's find you a home first," she says, as though such a goal is as simple as that and not the culmination of decades on the run that might take decades more to resolve. "I'll worry about the details on the way."

"You're the boss," he offers, and the look she sends him as she starts back to the house is as much exasperation as amusement, as though she thinks he's joking.

He's not. He's really not.

It could so easily be arrogance, the certainty with which she speaks and acts, but with the power she wields to back it up, he knows it most definitely isn't. The power and the personality, because while he might have had no real idea of who he'd been reaching for when he'd first stretched out that wary hand for an alliance, she's made her character perfectly clear in the time since.

Carol Danvers will help his people find their home, however long it takes. She'll rout the Accusers, and disrupt Kree plots, and she'll wipe out their leader if that's what it takes, and for all that and more, he'll follow her lead.

Of all the things that might have ended this war, she's beyond expectations. Something extraordinary. He's not sure the universe is quite ready for it.

Zaji wakes him briefly during the night. He's exhausted, and wounded to boot, but after so long spent in war, his sleep is hardly ever sound. Both Maria's guestroom and Soren's weight beside him are unfamiliar enough to keep him only dozing.

The shift of the bed as Zaji clambers up at the foot of it is enough to startle him awake, but she only nudges in between him and her mother, pressing into Soren's chest until she's stretched out on her side, one of her tiny hands slipping half underneath one of his.

She's brought the rest of the brood with her, too. Perhaps one of them had had a nightmare and woken the others—he can hear someone sniffling faintly, likely Toze, and the guestroom is closer than the dropship, easier to find in the dark. Talos blinks his eyes the rest of the way open to watch them, but none of them look overly distressed anymore, if they were to begin with. They slip carefully onto the bed after Zaji's example, regathering into a pile of small bodies and quiet breaths.

One of those bodies is too light and soft, human hair brushing briefly at his hip like the flerken's camouflaging fur, but Monica just tucks her head next to Zaji's stomach, her legs tangling with Chran's longer limbs while Toze pushes up further, curling into a wary ball against Talos' ribs. Talos meets Soren's half-open eyes in the darkness and shifts to make room.

A fool's hope, to think that he could keep their dreams any safer than his own. But if this small thing offers them any comfort in the night, then they're welcome to it.

They don't linger long in the morning. Maria wakes the whole crowd of them up with C-53's rising sun, though Talos understands through the vague references that the early morning is mostly aimed at Carol, for some reason. But she feeds them all again and insists they take all the supplies provided to them the night before, refusing any offer of payment that he tries to make, and nearly all of his thanks.

"You keep her safe out there," she demands, pushing the soft Terran shirt back into his hands when he tries to return it. He has his armor and coat back on, despite the tenderness of his shoulder, but he lets her press it back to him, her hands grasping tight over his for a moment. "She might think she's some kinda one-woman army now, but she still needs someone watching her back."

It's on the tip of his tongue already, the offer to bring her and her daughter along, but he knows better than that, all sentimentality aside. She would already have asked if that was what she wanted, and he knows perfectly well why she can't. She is a mother raising a child, and to follow Carol on this journey would put her family into all the danger that Talos so desperately wants to protect his from. Offering would be more cruelty than anything.

"I'll look after her," he promises instead, the best he can do, "as far as she lets me, at least."

Maria snorts, but nods, clearly aware of the limitations inherent in the task. Talos leaves her to her preparations, seeking out a quick farewell with Fury and accepting a strong hug from Monica, once she and Zaji finally let each other go. Then he rounds up the last of his people and they head for the ship waiting for them in the atmosphere above.

Carol can catch up to them easily, and she'll have her own goodbyes to make. She's given—and giving—up so much for them already. He's not going to pressure her into rushing that.

He gets the refugees onboard and then sends the dropship back with a skeleton crew to check out the pickup coordinates. With luck, there'll be more skrulls there waiting, but even just a few would be welcome. The ship is too quiet around him, empty spaces that should be full of the voices of his people, and the itch in his blood ignites into excitement as he realizes that they will be, and soon. He—they—can finally begin to turn dreams into truth.

"Oh," Zaji breathes when they come to the bridge and find C-53 spread out below them, glorious in the light. Soren, too, is watching the planet with a certain amount of fondness, Talos finds when he looks over, and he supposes he can understand why. All beauty aside, the sight does encourage certain emotions, and as he settles in to take command, he does nothing to quash them this time.

C-53, for all its unfortunate positioning on the galactic crossroads, is a safe world: defended first by its own ignorance, and now by Carol's allegiance. The Terrans will never have to make the choice between Kree rule or desparate war. Their children will never be flung to the four winds, their home planet wiped from existence, their parents hunted down and murdered for daring to be. They are safe here, and that is something so precious, even if most of them will never know it.

It's not jealousy he feels anymore, for all that it might have been only a few weeks past. It's longing, a desperate, aching wish kept hopeful by the drive to see it through and, on the shoulders of all that have shown them kindness, they will finally have the chance to do so.

There's a world like this for us out there somewhere, he thinks, as a woman of fire and starlight rises up to meet them.

It's time for them to find it.