I'm a failure of your Universe | Captain Marvel

When I look at you I see colors

"Dreams again?"

The question was redundant at this point yet she still felt the need to ask even if it was just to say something. Like during the previous four nights he had woken her up again, partly due to the noises and partly due to the movement the nightmares would cause –after all she wasn't used to sharing a bed with someone - so now they were sitting next to each other as Yon-Rogg buried his face in his hands and took a deep breath to calm himself down.

Carol felt his pain, not just due to sheer empathy but because she had gone through the same – however her bad dreams, while frequent, never were her company for every single night. She didn't even know it was possible for your sub-consciousness to be this fixated on a trauma that it's impossible for you to dream of something else. And perhaps the memories themselves really weren't the reason for the abundance of nightmares but rather how the Supreme Intelligence had messed with his mind.

She wasn't a neuroscientist – and if she were probably still wouldn't be able to tell how big the damage was in the end as there were no studies about an artificial intelligence being present in your thoughts for decades – yet she began to understand how horrible the Intelligence's influence must have been, how disgusting the manipulation.

After she had left, Carol often thought about how similar the society on Hala was to a totalitarian regime due to the general structure of the government and propaganda; yet it still couldn't quite compare to the regimes she had known from Earth or even the ones she had seen on her journey through space. All of them could control what the nation saw and even said publically yet none of them were able to control their people's thoughts as they had no means to even hear them. The Kree didn't have this freedom – especially not people like Yon-Rogg who had to consult the Supreme Intelligence quite often. He couldn't hide anything from them, neither wishes nor hopes nor the most private memories or feelings, and suffering under that for some many years was one of the most horrible things she could imagine. Of course she didn't know when exactly all of this had started or if it had always been like that but she feared her mere presence had created the perfect ground for the abuse he had to go through - her reason told her none of this was her fault yet she couldn't help but to feel it was. If she really caused all the pain Yon-Rogg had to experience even before she had sent him back she'd never be able to forgive herself.

It was no surprise Yon-Rogg had woken up crying and screaming each night for the past couple of days and often even fought her off for a moment, when he was still trapped in the state between dreaming and awaking and thought she was about to hurt and not help him. Two nights ago it had been so bad that it caused a bruise that still lasted to this day and it took her very best acting skills to pretend she had gotten it elsewhere. Carol knew he would refuse to further sleep next to her once he realized he had caused her harm and probably even refuse to sleep in general so she had decided to lie to him. She had let him swear to not lie to her ever again and wanted herself to stick to that promise as well but there was a huge difference between a lie being told to conceal a cause of pain and one whose purpose it was to prevent such a pain itself.

Come to think of it, maybe his lie had been of a similar nature. Carol had felt betrayed because the one person she had considered her best friend, who had always been there for her and who, she thought, could never hurt, only protect her, had been the one dissimulating things from her since the moment she had woken up on Hala. She had felt that pain for a long time – or what seemed like a long time to her as a few years were nothing compared to the lifespan of a Kree – but reflecting on everything she knew now made her wonder if she had been too harsh.

Did Yon-Rogg really have a choice in the end? Was there anything he could have done? Assuming he did want to tell her the truth, which she wasn't completely sure of, how could he even have managed to do that? The Supreme Intelligence would have both of them executed and even if he told her on a planet far away from Hala to ensure her escape the Kree would have hunted her down – an easy task with the inhibitor on her neck that also served as a tracking device. And where would she have gone to in the first place? She wouldn't have remembered Maria and Monica and only know Yon-Rogg had found her on Earth, not even the country let alone state or city as he didn't know these things either.