From a young age, you pretty much decided your life wasn't going to be normal. It started because of your neighbor, Carol Danvers. She would babysit you when you were younger and tell you all about the dreams she had of joining the Air Force and fighting for her country.

Given the time period, everyone thought she was ridiculous. You, however, admired her for it. The two of you would play games that involved you running around, pretending to be planes. When Top Gun came out on VHS, that was the only thing you two watched together.

"That's gonna be you one day," you whispered to Carol. On the screen, Maverick was taking out the enemy jets, saving Iceman. The end would always be your favorite.

Carol smiled. "You bet it is. And you know what? You'll do amazing things one day, too. You'll go higher, further, and faster than so many people."

You scrunched your nose. "That was cheesy."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? How's this for cheesy!" She reached over and attacked you with the 'tickle monster,' leaving you both in tearful laughter.

When Carol got the acceptance to the Academy, you were thrilled for her. With the help from your mother, Carol got a going away/congratulations party. What you didn't know was that would be the last time you'd see her again.

The news of Carol's death rocked the small town. You were devastated. The funeral was small since there was no body to bury. Beside her family, you were probably the next most torn apart.

For weeks you refused to do the things you used to, even going as far as to hide the Top Gun VHS.

But something shifted. You were laying in bed one day when you caught a glimpse of a note. Curious, you sat up and plucked the note from where it hung out of your nightstand drawer.

One it were three words.

Higher. Further. Faster.

Carol wrote it. She used to leave you inspirational notes all the time. After reading it a hundred more times at least, you finally felt inspired.

You were gonna follow in her footsteps. In your own special way.

School suddenly became your top priority, especially math and science. You got so good at them that you were recommended to advance to the next level of each course. The challenges were fun for you, and you enjoyed trying to figure out difficult problems.

In high school, despite your school being small, you found a way to make a robotics club. It was you, the president, plus a bunch of guys who didn't like that you were the one to make their nerdy hobbies have a place at school. But you had no desire in getting caught up in petty things.

Your focus turned to light. After Tony Stark became Iron Man, your focus on light found a purpose. The next step was to make a suit that could convert light into energy that you could harness into blasts.

When you graduated high school, you had scholarships for several schools because of your robotics work, even a couple Ivys. You landed on MIT, of course. There, you met professors who didn't care that you were a girl. They cared about your passion and wanted to elevate you.

Nearly ten years after you set your mind to it, you finally got a prototype of your suit. You were able to take light- natural and artificial- and turn it into blasts of energy. The achievement was huge and got you on some different radars.

Despite the offers, you kept on perfecting the technology. It was your life's work. It was going to make Carol proud.

"(Y/n), you've got someone who needs to speak with you urgently." You looked up from your workstation to see your graduate student assistant holding out the phone.

"Can it wait at all?" you asked, looking back down to the things in your hands.

"You're gonna wanna accept this call."

The phrase had you perplexed, and fully intrigued, so you set your tools down and went over to answer the phone. The student handed it over and went back to looking over things on his laptop.

"Hello, this is (Y/f/n) speaking, what can I do for you?" you asked.

"You have a fully operational suit? The one that converts light into energy?"

You furrowed your brows. This was a familiar voice. "I... what do you want with it?" Your tone was very firm, yes, but this wasn't the first investor who tried to take your suit and all the things that came with it from you.

"We need your help. Desperately. A jet will be there in fifteen minutes. I'll be on it to explain, because I don't think you'd believe me over the phone."

Now your eyes were narrowed into slits. Whoever this man was, he was acting extremely suspicious. "Try me," you said. You needed some kind of answer, otherwise you were going back to slouching over at your lab station.

"It's Captain America."

"You're right, I'm calling bullshit."

"I'll prove you wrong in... thirteen minutes."

You sighed, and looked at the student. You'd have to go over how to answer and weed out phone calls again. "Fine. Thirteen minutes. If I'm not impressed, I'm pursuing legal action because you're wasting millions of dollars every minute by taking up my time."

"I assure you, I'm not."

He hung up before you were able to answer. You set the phone back on the receiver and crossed your arms as you looked at the student. "Really?"

The student shrugged. "You never know, Tony Stark did just disappear on a weird spaceship."

You gave him an incredulous look and went back into your lab. As you worked, you forgot about the call. Until you heard a commotion over by the student desks.

"What the hell is going on over there?" you asked, not even looking up.

"Ms. (Y/n), you absolutely need to get the hell over here now."

That got you looking up and you saw the student worker and a couple others that hung around the lab gathering by a window. Now you were curious, so you set your things down again and went over to look out the window with them.

Your eyes went wide at the sight of a jet landing. "Holy shit, I don't think he was kidding," you muttered. As the jet landed, the back door started to open and reveal the motherfucking Captain America. The sight had you running back over to where you kept your suit.

"Oh my god, are you an Avenger now?" the student worked asked you, looking at you in disbelief.

You shook your head. "No way, there's gotta be a... a process, you know?"

"Let me know if they have an application process cause that's a job I'd actually like."

Once you were finished suiting up in your newest model of the suit (nice and sleek, similar to the newest Iron Man suit, just not nano-tech), you rushed out of the building.

"(Y/f/n)? Believe me now?" Captain America asked as you ran over to him. You nodded. That's all you could manage. Words wouldn't form in your head. "Good. We need to get going, now."

You followed him into the jet and it immediately took off. Inside, you looked around and nearly passed out at the other superheroes inside. The Falcon, Wanda Maximoff, the Vision, the Black Widow, Bruce Banner, and the War Machine.

"Take a seat, there's a lot to discuss," Captain America said, handing you an earbud to put in your ear. Again, you nodded and sat down in the closest empty seat, which happened to be right near Black Widow.

You were itching to pull out your phone and record this entire moment. No one would ever believe you.

Finally, words seemed to work again. "Uh, I'm sorry, uh, where are we going?" you asked.

"Wakanda," the Falcon answered.

Your jaw dropped, but you tried to play it cool by nodding. "Cool cool, just curious, n-... oh my god..."

Usually, you were good at keeping up a cool demeanor. Today was not one of those days. Not even close. Might be one of your worst.

The rest of the flight was quiet. The Vision looked hurt and the others were monitoring him closely. Because of this, you were hesitant to try and ask anything. Instead you sat and made sure everything on your suit was in working order.

Landing in Wakanda was amazing. The country was stunning and you forgot about the tension in the jet for a second as you looked out at the beautiful colors.

King T'Challa, Bucky Barnes, and the King's Guard escorted everyone inside. On the way in, the Black Widow walked next to you and gave you the run down on what was going on.

Aliens. A big one named Thanos. He was looking for the infinity stones, like the on in the Vision's head. Iron Man and others went off to space to try and stop him up there. They were going to try and remove the stone and destroy it.

It looked like things were going well enough and that you may not have been needed anyway. Of course, that was wishful thinking. Your heart sunk the second alarms started going off, saying something was approaching through the atmosphere.

Nearly an hour later you were up to you elbows in aliens. They were everywhere, never-ending, and vicious. Your suit was getting the best test run of its life, though. It was nice to know it could be used in combat.

At some point, Thor and a couple other good aliens joined in on the fun. Another thing you wish you could have the chance to fangirl about had you not been fighting for your life. Literally.

Alien after alien fell to the ground after you practically burned their heads right off. Luckily, Wakanda was a very sunny place and you were most likely never going to run out of energy for the suit.

You yourself, however, were nearing exhaustion.

"I don't... I don't know how much longer I can do this," you said over the comms, your voice just above a whisper. All of your energy was being used on the fight.

"We can do this! Vision's almost there!"

That turned out to be a lie. Moments later, you were looking around wildly as Wakandans disappeared left and right, turning to dust. "Oh my god..." you whispered, tears coming to your eyes.

You lost.

Afterward, you decided to go back home- home home. The Avengers were kind enough to take you on their way back to Upstate New York.

When you got there, though, and started to land, things didn't look right. Sensing the fear, Captain America said they'd wait just in case.

In case they were all gone.

With your light-conversion suit put away, you stepped out of the jet onto your childhood street in your professor clothes. But that's not what was causing you to stick out. It was the fact that you were there. You were the only one.

You wandered over to your childhood home, where you knew your family still resided, and found it empty with dust floating around.

Tears filled your eyes and you stumbled back into the street. They were all gone. What were you supposed to do now?

"Are you okay?" You turned and looked at Captain America. "Come with us."

You followed him back onto the jet and left Maine.

~~

"Hey, so that thing just stopped doing whatever the hell it was doing?"

Everyone moved to swarm around the strange pager- the only thing left from Nick Fury before he turned to dust.

They started trying to reboot the signal, to try and figure out what Fury had been trying to do. You sighed, knowing this wasn't an area for you, and turned to go back to the other room and keep watching the "dusted" counter go up.

Instead, you saw a familiar face. A gasp was ripped from your throat and you heard the others turn at your noise. A woman with short, blonde hair was standing there, dressed in a red, blue, and gold suit.

"You're... Carol Danvers," you said. For the first time in forever, you actually felt happy.

She looked at you, confused, but like she was trying to figure out why she knew you. But she did know you.

Finally: "(Y/n)?"

You let out a laugh and collapsed into her, hugging her like she'd disappear otherwise. She wrapped her arms around you, too. "Holy shit," you breathed.

In all honesty, you were content with staying like that for forever. "Care to fill us in?" But the others were there.

You pulled away and stood proudly next to your old babysitter. "Everyone, this is Carol Danvers. She used to babysit me back in the 80s. Before she died in an Air Force training exercise gone wrong. At least, that's what we were told..."

That was her cue. "My jet was taken down my the Kree, and alien race my superior was a part of but was working against. I destroyed the energy core they wanted and absorbed the power instead, so they took me with them and wiped my memory. Told me they rescued me and trained me to be one of their soldiers.

"Then, six years later I crashed on Earth, met Nick Fury, and learned the truth about everything. Ever since then I've sworn to protect the galaxy from the Kree's reign of terror. Fury told me he'd only ever contact me in case of emergencies. That was thirty years ago."

You sighed. "Wow. That's a lot. So... they took your memories?"

She nodded, and the two of you went back to your own world. "I met back up with Maria and she helped put pieces together. About who I was and about the day of the accident. From then, I've been working on regaining all of my memories."

You smiled. "You remember me?"

Carol smiled, too. "Of course, I could never forget the one person who actually believed in me," she said, messing up your hair like she used to do when you were a kid.

Still smiling, you looked back at the others again. "She's gonna help us. She's who we need."

Steve nodded, looking briefly around at the others, then back to the two of you. "Then let's get working."

~Fin~

A/n: here's a little something kind in celebration of The Marvels being in theaters- it's so fucking good please go see it in theaters!!

Also, besties, I have insanely amazing news: I GOT INTO MY TOP STUDY ABROAD PROGRAM!!! I'm literally so excited, it's in London and Northern Ireland and it's all about actor training in the classic tradition and it's just so amazing. I've already convinced myself I'll be walking the streets of London and run into Tom Hiddleston himself, the love of my life. Fingers crossed!

Any who, I will be posting cute little Thanksgiving imagine next week, so I'll see you Lovelies then!!!!!