---
"Don't Think About His Hands"
Carol's bedroom, late at night. Rain tapping the windows. A storm outside—and one inside her chest.
Carol lay on her back, arms crossed behind her head, staring at the ceiling like it owed her answers.
The room was quiet, save for the faint patter of rain and her own thudding heart, still just slightly off-beat.
Her lips were dry.
Her fingers twitched.
And she was still way too aware of how close they'd gotten on that couch.
She turned her head. The other pillow next to her? Empty. Cold.
"Don't think about his hands," she whispered to herself. "Definitely don't think about his eyes."
She exhaled hard, flipping onto her stomach, face buried into the pillow.
God. What the hell was that?
They'd been talking about trauma. War. Her regrets. His pain.
It wasn't supposed to feel... warm.
It wasn't supposed to feel like leaning too far over the edge of a cliff and kind of wanting to fall.
He was Leon. The annoying, brilliant, ridiculous, so-dumb-he's-smart boy she'd half raised.
...Okay. Maybe not "raised."
He'd shown up at eleven, bleeding from three places, wearing a jacket two sizes too big and eyes that didn't match his age.
Eyes that still haunted her.
---
She sighed, sitting up, leaning her back against the bed frame.
The shadows shifted around the room like ghosts that didn't know how to leave.
"Stupid Jesse," she muttered, a reluctant smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
But it faded quickly.
Leon wasn't just some teenager she took in out of charity.
He was something else.
Someone else.
Half the things he could do? They didn't make sense.
She'd seen him break the laws of physics in his sleep. Once woke up to him levitating—not floating. Not hovering.
Levitating—limbs stiff, glowing, whispering names she didn't recognize... that doesn't exist.
The next morning, he pretended he just "had a weird dream about ramen noodles and collapsing neutron stars."
Bullshit.
She knew power when she saw it. She was power.
But Leon wasn't just a ticking time bomb—he was a mystery box wrapped in cosmic duct tape.
And the worst part?
She didn't think he knew what he really was either.
---
Carol bit her bottom lip, chewing on the guilt.
She'd told herself she took him in because of responsibility.
Because Fury asked her to watch him.
Because he had nowhere else to go.
But sometimes...
Sometimes she caught herself staring too long.
Like tonight.
There was a moment—God help her, there was a moment—where she forgot all the reasons she shouldn't.
The way he looked at her with quiet understanding. The way his voice dropped when he got serious.
The way his fingertips brushed hers like he didn't realize how much that single contact made her stomach twist.
She hadn't felt that way in years. Not since—
No.
Don't go there.
She pressed a hand to her chest, grounding herself.
It wasn't that she didn't care.
It was that she cared too much.
And for someone like him—someone whose past was stitched together with blood, fire, and half-truths—love could be more dangerous than war.
He didn't need romance. He needed stability.
A home.
Someone to pull him back when he got too close to the edge.
Not someone who...
Who was looking at him like—
"Stop."
She rubbed her temples.
Aunt. That's what she was. An aunt figure.
Totally normal. Platonic. Protective.
Totally not about to dream about kissing him on that couch.
...
She fell back into bed, groaning into her pillow.
"Dammit."
------
Flashback.
Location: S.H.I.E.L.D. Blacksite Omega—Level 7 Containment. Seven years ago.
---
He was small.
That was Carol's first thought.
For all the fuss, all the alarms and Level 5 clearance buzzwords they threw at her on the helicarrier, she expected some alien warlord or biohazard mutant. Someone matching the strength of even Thanos.
Instead...
She got a boy.
A scrawny, mud-smeared, wide-eyed teenage boy curled in the corner of a containment cell like a kicked dog.
Four heavily guards flanked the reinforced glass like he might explode. One was visibly shaking.
"Is this a joke?" Carol muttered, crossing her arms.
Agent Maria Hill didn't smile.
"We found him unconscious in a crater outside Kuala Lumpur," she said, her voice flat. "No ship. No entry signature. No I.D. Just him."
Carol squinted.
The boy looked maybe eleven. Dirty. Pale. Hands wrapped in gauze like they were still smoldering.
His eyes—
She tensed.
They weren't normal.
One flickered blue, the other purple—not glowing, not visibly enhanced—just… wrong.
Like they didn't belong to the same universe.
"What's the damage report?"
"Twenty square miles of gravitational disturbance," Hill said. "Collapsed roads, blacked-out comms, magnetized water pipes—"
"What?"
"He bent physics, Danvers. Or broke it. Jury's still out."
Carol turned back to the boy.
He looked up. Just for a second.
There was no malice in his stare.
Only confusion. Terror. Exhaustion.
And then he said something—barely a whisper—but she heard it clear through the glass.
> "Am I broken?"
Her heart clenched in sadness.
---
They let her in an hour later.
Hill thought it was a bad idea. Fury thought it was a worse one.
But Carol had insisted. She didn't like watching kids from behind glass like zoo animals.
When the cell door hissed open, the boy flinched, immediately backing into the wall like she was there to kill him.
"I'm not here to hurt you," she said gently.
"You're glowing."
She blinked. She was, just a little. Her Binary charge had flared when he got scared.
"Sorry," she muttered, dialing it down. "Side effect."
He tilted his head. "You're… not human?"
She laughed under her breath. "Funny. I was about to ask you the same thing."
---
They talked. Or rather, she talked. He listened—barely responsive, always watching, like someone waiting for a second shoe to drop that never did.
Then came the twist.
Hill pulled her aside, tablet in hand, face pale.
"You need to see this."
The screen showed internal scans.
Carol stared. Then stared harder.
No circulatory system.
No DNA matches.
His entire nervous system was made of something resembling quantum-laced crystal thread—not carbon-based.
"This… isn't a mutant."
"No," Hill said grimly. "He's manufactured."
Carol's breath caught.
"You're saying he's a weapon."
"We're saying he's a prototype." Hill handed over the next file. "Project Eclipse. One of ours."
Carol nearly dropped the tablet.
"What?"
"Blacksite branch. Defunded three years ago. A think tank tried creating a gravity-reactive humanoid as an anti-celestial deterrent. Every model failed. Imploded. Rejected dimensional physics."
"Except him," Carol whispered.
Hill nodded. "Except him."
---
Later that night, when she returned to the cell, he looked up again—eyes rimmed red but expression calm.
"Did you find out what I am?"
She hesitated.
What the hell do you say to a kid who was built?
She walked in, sat beside him against the wall, close enough for warmth but far enough for space.
"You're Leon now," she said quietly.
He blinked. "What does that mean?"
"It means you're going to get to choose who you want to be. And if anyone tries to take that from you…"
Her eyes burned gold for just a second.
"I'll hit them into another galaxy."
A pause. Then, slowly—so damn slowly—he smiled.
And for the first time that day, she felt like he was real.
—First Night—
Location: Carol Danvers' Apartment, New York City. Seven Years Ago.
Leon sat on the edge of her couch like it might explode.
Shoes off. Back straight. Hands clasped like he was awaiting judgment. His wide golden-and-blue eyes scanned every inch of the room, memorizing it—not with curiosity, but like it might vanish if he blinked too long.
Carol stood awkwardly in the kitchen, holding two bowls of mac and cheese.
"So," she said, clearing her throat. "You eat, right?"
Leon looked up. "I don't know."
She walked over and handed him the bowl anyway. "Well. You're gonna learn."
He took it gingerly, like she'd handed him an alien artifact—which, in fairness, from his perspective, she probably had.
He poked the noodles.
Carol smirked. "You don't stab mac and cheese, kid. You shovel it. Big difference."
Leon mimicked her, scooping a cautious bite into his mouth.
And then his face changed.
Eyes wide. Pupils dilating. Jaw slowly unhinging like the secrets of the universe were made of cheddar.
"…What is this called again?" he whispered.
"Comfort food."
He stared into the bowl like it held the answer to his existence.
"I think I love it."
Carol chuckled. "You and every sad person on the East Coast."
---
After dinner came the hard part.
Sleep.
He didn't even know what a bed was for.
"It's for sleeping," she explained.
"I don't sleep."
"Everyone sleeps."
"I dream things I don't remember."
She paused.
Then sat beside him on the mattress.
"Hey. Leon."
He looked at her like she'd just spoken his name in a sacred tongue.
"You don't have to be okay right away. I don't expect you to… I don't know, bake cupcakes and play baseball."
"…What's baseball?"
"Exactly," she muttered. "Point is, I don't need you to be normal. But I need you to feel safe."
Leon stared at her, then the room.
"I'm not safe."
The words hurt more than she expected.
She leaned back, arms crossed behind her head.
"Well, guess what, kiddo. Neither am I. So we'll cancel each other out."
He blinked.
"…Is that how math works?"
She grinned sideways. "No idea. Failed it twice."
---
Later that night, she found him curled on the floor at the foot of her bed, eyes half-lidded, murmuring softly in his sleep. Not in English. Not in any language she recognized.
But his face wasn't twisted in pain.
He looked… still.
She knelt beside him, brushing a bit of sweat-matted hair from his forehead.
"You're not a weapon," she whispered. "You're a second chance."
She kissed the crown of his head.
He didn't stir.
---
—Present Day—
Carol's Apartment, Now.
Carol blinked herself back to the present—staring at the luxury of a penthouse she reside in due to her connections, where a full-grown Leon had just dropped off his shoes like a teenage tornado and disappeared into the kitchen, humming something off-key.
God, he was tall now. Too tall. Too smug. Too sarcastic for her peace of mind.
Too beautiful for a so-called "prototype."
She still remembered when he didn't know what toothpaste was.
Now he could charm the devil with a lone smile... Sure, he distanced himself this past 3 years but he's still that Vulnerable Leon at heart.
And every now and then… every now and then, he'd say something in that voice—warm, cocky, tired, distant—and it would hit her like a star to the chest.
He was not her blood.
He was never meant to be human.
But he was hers.
Or at least, he had been… until the lines blurred. That was what she told herself.
And she wasn't sure where the story would lead to.
---