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He's met her three times, only once without masks. Early days for both of them: before Afghanistan, if just barely. Her chair tips back when she stands too quickly and her hands are shaking. Tony's the only one close enough to see. Parade rest, body relaxed but ready; a decade's worth of discipline put to good use. "My name is Carol," she says. He remembers brazening through his first time with the same mix of desperate and defiant. She says it plain, just the facts, "I'm an alcoholic," and he's meeting her again for the first time.
***
He worked construction, and as much as he could. Benched, he camped out on the couch with a beer in one hand, the remote in the other. The next day he hit the garage and was neck deep in the guts of his car until Mom called him for dinner. Hazard of the business, he called it, the work was good and the hours shit. Over dessert, Carol's brother was deputized assistant mechanic, handyman and man of the house. Carol crouched in the hall outside the garage, back pressed to the wall, neck craning for snatches of wisdom and profanity.
***
Carol had the best stories. She held her cards lightly, just the tips of her fingers and thumb, like she could drop them face up and still win. She bluffed with precision and told the best stories, smiling with too much teeth. The content was typical: I drank this, threw up on that, fought this guy, this time in Yokata. She knew how to tell them, fast or slow, however they needed to be. She said, "I've been telling stories all my life." Ten, twenty, thirty: telling stories so she could live them. But for the best story, no words.
***
Carol's family were never her first choice of shelter. For two reasons: 1) Her secret identity then, was still solid. 2) They were blood, but they weren't family. Jessica and Logan probably came closest; two people Tony was on a kind of terms with, if not good. Not good enough to appeal to. He found Carol with her mother, eventually. A few minutes of talking, many more spent fighting. Later, much later, she said, "I didn't know where else to go." Tony remembered clearly the taste of wet cement and boot soles. So he held her and said, "I know."
***
"What's it like?" he asks. Her face freezes in an ugly grimace until he qualifies: "Space." He's been to space of course, but not like her. Not without the suit. Not breathing vacuum like it was air. He doesn't have the science to describe her nature. No law defines the point where she goes from human - mutant, albeit engineered - to star stuff. There's no magic involved, making it all the more interesting. She shakes her head, no, no. He pulls on all the charm he can manage. "Between us, we've got enough words." Maybe even the right ones.