speaksoftlylove | FIC - And If I Die In Raleigh

where on earth is carmen sandiego?; "timing is everything" alternate timeline
2180 words

It's been years since she was deported from Amsterdam.

She's stopped pacing her cell like a caged panther and instead has settled into something else, something equally animalistic but less predatory, sitting on her cot with her long hair framing her face as her fingertips tap out patterns on the cross-support below it. Some days it's messages in Morse, other days it's the beat beneath a particularly moving selection of Bizet, every day it's stereotypy and she hates herself for it, and she hates herself for how "hate" is a part of her vocabulary now, and she hates herself for how that hatred is aimed at her. She hates herself for how her life has become nothing but hating herself.

Maybe that's not entirely true, when she thinks about it; there's a part of her that likes to replay that day with the Rembrandt. Arrogance had been a part of her then; she had listened to her arrogance when an escape route was pointed out to her, one she hadn't seen, along with an oddly worried note in Mason's tone as he'd told her "But I dunno, it looks risky - "

Her fingertips fall rhythmically against the metal. Hate. Hate. Hate.

She tells time by the guards changing stations, by how many movements of Bizet she powers through before someone says something, by how many times she can tap out certain messages in Morse; she's been at it for a while now -

( ... --- -- . .-- .... . .-. . / --- ...- . .-. / - .... . / .-. .- .. -. -... --- .-- /
.-- .- -.-- / ..- .--. / .... .. --. .... /
- .... . .-. . .----. ... / .- / .-.. .- -. -.. / - .... .- - / .. .----. ...- . / .... . .- .-. -.. / --- ..-. /
--- -. -.-. . / .. -. / .- / .-.. ..- .-.. .-.. .- -... -.-- )

- when she hears the shifts, the uneven tread of a guard pacing the corridor. He's probably new, and from the weight of the tread probably a he; he seems to be taking his time getting acquainted with the place, and when he passes by her cell there's a pause while her fingers drum away in cut time.

( ... --- -- . .-- .... . .-. . / --- ...- . .-. / - .... . / .-. .- .. -. -... --- .-- /
... -.- .. . ... / .- .-. . / -... .-.. ..- . )

She wants him to leave. She knows she doesn't have the right to ask. She just wants to be uninterrupted.

And when he finally interrupts her with a heavy Southern drawl, and she makes eye contact for what feels like the first time in months, there's no time in recent memory that she's felt more grateful.

"Well, well, Carmen," Mason says, wrapping his fingers casually around the bars blocking off that thing in the door that's trying to pass itself off as a window. "It's been a while."

She doesn't remember much of the escape, primarily because she's shaking so badly she nearly botches it; Mason doesn't seem surprised, he just chides her for it once, sharply, before he moves on with his life. Somehow, it's worse than if he'd yelled at her; it's a reminder that she doesn't know what she's doing and he does, that he has more important things to focus on than her, that she doesn't even know why he's here to help her, and as soon as they're in his car - a large silver eight-cylinder, made back in the day when cars were made of pure metal and power - she's flopped forward a bit, shoulder straining her seatbelt and letting her hair cover her face, shame spreading through her body as she taps out something against the fabric of the bench seat sprawling between them -

( .- -. -.. / - .... . / -.. .-. . .- -- ... / - .... .- - / -.-- --- ..- / -.. .- .-. . / - --- / -.. .-. . .- -- / .-. . .- .-.. .-.. -.-- / -.. --- / -.-. --- -- . / - .-. ..- . )

...keeping it up until somehow, thankfully, she falls asleep.

She wakes up after they've crossed the Virginia state line; she feels herself flush when Mason notices, hiding her face again at how pleased he sounds to see her awake.

"Aw, come now, Carmen," he says, reaching out across that bench seat to tip her head up; she focuses out the windshield rather than looking at him, but he's not looking at her anyway. "Don't be like that. We've got such a great time ahead of us, now that you're up and about again."

His appearance has changed a bit - he no longer looks like he's trying to be Tom Selleck - but his voice hasn't, middle-of-the-road in pitch but harsh despite the soft non-rhotic syllables that leave him; she doesn't know exactly where he's from, because he's never volunteered it, but the longer he talks to her that morning, the more she becomes aware of. She doesn't reply much, but she listens - to how "year" is two syllables and not one when he says it, to how there's never an R in a carload (nearah, finah, et cetera) and the sound the end of the word "failure" makes is no exception, to the way she can hear a smirk creep into his voice every single time he says her name and she has no idea why.

He's so proud of the base when they arrive; he's so eager to show it to her. And for a reason she can't explain, it's making her eager, too; the strange dull grey of the clothes everyone is wearing tugs at the back of her mind in ways she doesn't like, but there are people in them and those people aren't kept separate from each other - they belong, and maybe, just maybe, she has a chance to belong again, too.

When she's offered one of those uniforms - a pencil skirt and soft turtleneck, just like what she used to wear outside of the color - she nearly snatches it out of the poor lackey's hands, only to realize after the fact that that's probably embarrassing; Mason just laughs, openly and loudly, tossing his head back the way he always has, and it's only then that she allows herself a small smile as well.

Mason is good to her.

She doesn't know how or why, but despite the incident that landed her in prison in the first place, despite the fact that she's still something of a wreck and anxious and she almost always ends up getting caught, Mason is always there for her, and he sends her on missions often. He breaks her out of prison when necessary and he always sits with her afterwards in the car - sometimes the eight-cylinder, sometimes a black pickup that seems designed to handle just about anything, sometimes whatever he managed to hotwire that afternoon - and tells her what she's done. Where she went wrong, but how that led to their success. How her ineptitude allowed the competent people to actually get things done. How it was all right that she was a failure, because at least she was their failure.

And on bad days she hates herself because those words actually mean something to her; on good days, she's just relieved that he's not furious with her, because she's seen him furious, and she doesn't like it.

Mason's temper has always been legendary, setting in fast and hard and often ending in something getting destroyed; if he can still see straight it's not something priceless but he very, very rarely has that much restraint left. It's always behind closed doors, the destruction, something that everyone could hear but for some reason no one was ever allowed to see - and oh, could they hear it, the usual adherence to quaint euphemisms was gone, replaced by a talent for creative swearing that made her ears burn and her face flush when the content of his words really registered, and all things considered she had learned more ways to describe intimate relations with one's close relatives than she had ever wanted to know in the first place. Once that was dealt with and enough had been broken in Mason's private quarters, only then was when they would see him, pale and shaking and trying to keep more of a grip on himself than he actually had the capacity for.

And he would single out the object of his ire, and he would tell them to come away with him.

The first time this had happened it had been her fault; it was a painting that was destroyed then, she knew because no one heard it break and one of the lackeys had spoken later about tatters and broken frames, and Mason was still folding his jackknife up when he'd emerged from the room. That knife had scared her more than anything else at the moment, to the point where she'd obeyed the barked-out order to get in the truck without thinking about how utterly, utterly stupid it was to be alone with him.

The drive was silent and cold and full of the terrifying moments that had drawn her to Mason all those years ago, before Amsterdam and the Rembrandt; she'd liked him because any outward Southern-gentleman act he'd shown her had melted away the second that some sort of opportunity for potential made itself known. He was a hell of a thief and drove like he thought he was Bo Duke, regardless of terrain or what vehicle he was powering over it; he wasn't smart, but he was good, and in the end that'd been what mattered.

That afternoon, the countryside had veered past them so quickly she thought she would be sick; she'd leaned forward so far that she was straining the seatbelt, and the one time she'd tried to get him to talk, to get him to say something that might let her know how to get him to calm down, she'd been given such a harsh command to shut the goddamn hell up that she had, quite simply, shut the goddamn hell up.

The place he'd taken her to had been quiet, secluded; an abandoned shooting range that was surrounded by dogwoods. They hadn't been blooming at the time; she was grateful for it, because she'd come to like the smell of them around the base and she didn't want to associate that with this.

He'd brought her up into the stand with him, and she'd been terrified to see that the guns there were maintained and new and recently-used, and she'd had to close her eyes and remind herself that everyone who went out with Mason when he was having a fit of temper had always come back alive.

He'd spent the next hour very calmly demonstrating exactly how well he could use those guns on what was left of the targets on that abandoned range; he had mentioned that he'd been able to snipe the balls off a mouse at five hundred yards since he was twelve, and then asked her if she had any questions for him.

She didn't.

But for the most part, Mason is good to her; he forgives her mistakes, and the ones he doesn't forgive are her fault and she deserves the drive - sometimes to the shooting range, sometimes to a field where he sits and plays with that knife until she figures out the right combination of words to say to him that will convey exactly how sorry she is, and the worst of all are the times when he simply stops the car on some secluded backroad and tells her that she can get out if she can't stop being such an ungrateful screwup, with all the finality of someone who won't be coming back.

She never does; she sits and she shakes and she hates herself, and even after he's forgiven her, because he always forgives her, she sits and taps out messages in Morse against the seat of the car until they return to the base.

-... .. .-. -.. ... / ..-. .-.. -.-- / --- ...- . .-. / - .... . / .-. .- .. -. -... --- .-- /
.-- .... -.-- / - .... . -. / --- .... / .-- .... -.-- / -.-. .- -. .----. - / ..