IT'S 4 FEET BAYWATCH

assassins in the outfield

clouberding — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 15:34:42 GMT

of low key domestics and subtle baseball references

She accidentally kicked her phone off the coffee table and it landed face down onto hardwood floor, a foot and some change of a drop and she’s rocked a severely cracked screen for two months now.

A tiny ass accident shattered her phone seven ways to Sunday so, of course, a three story trip down onto a conveniently located dumpster and three arrows to the gut still leaves her phone completely operational with no extra damage to speak of.

(figures her luck would fluctuate so horrendously at a time like this, really)

The plastic covering that catches her fall feels cool on her back as she tries to catch her breath again. It’s futile in a lot of ways, it’s not like she can do more than a shallow inhale as much as she tries but she tries nonetheless; call it survival instinct, if it needs to be called something.

Her fingers drag across the mottled screen, pressing numbers she shouldn't know by heart - she can’t find it in herself to be remorseful for that, at least not with where she’s landed herself now.

(get it - landed! if she does eat it, the world would be less without her humor, let that be known)

It rings once, twice, maybe a third, although by now she feels the blood pooling by her lower back and her eyelids feel like they’re made of lead. When she manages to keep them open for more than a few seconds, the ringing is replaced with nothing and it’s only then her subconscious allows a little bit of fear to seep in. She has enough left in her to note that imminent death shouldn't really be a thing someone’s allowed to get used to, but...

C’est la vie, yeah? (oui?)

(is that even supposed to be used in a morbid sense? ah, fuck it)

God, she hopes there’s really a god up there to help her out one last time; if the Big Ump upstairs calls it a ball and two strikes, she’s still in the game.

She wants to be in the game, needs to be in it still because there’s still so much and there won’t be enough and, please -

- please -

- please, just don’t let her die on a fucking dumpster.

(she knows she’s a little shit but c’mon, man)

A sixteen second call saves her life.

Or so she assumes, the pleasant fall she took may not have done her phone in but the swim it took in a puddle of her blood did. It’s not like it’s not physically there for her to check but she’s managed to borrow a nurse’s phone to check her account details online.

There’s a handful of texts from earlier that month, the one phone call, and a phone upgrade that’s not for another two weeks.

Just peachy, she thinks as she drifts off to another morphine induced sleep.

There are very few things she truly hates and running is at the top of that list, firmly behind olives.

(olives are plain gross, not a thing will convince her otherwise)

She hates running - always has, always will - except it’s about to get bumped from second place to third because walking has been declared the devil’s sport since she got shot off a rooftop. It’s expected, of course, it’s not like she thought this would be easy. She’s been hurt gravely before but this?

This is just torture in its purest form. And she abhors it with a burning passion.

Left, right, left, kind of right, face plant has been her preferred pattern as of late, the only thing saving herself from wrecking the money maker on the daily is the physical therapist that walks slower than molasses slightly behind her.

On this particularly sunny day, instead of the usual hand that grabs her by the elbows to muscle her up, there’s an arm that snakes around her front to grab under her own and another hand adding support by her hip when her legs decide to quit working.

“Mind if I cut in?”

The slight accent washes over her, low and warm right by her ear as she’s pulled back up to standing. She can practically hear the smirk in her voice but when she looks over she’s greeted with a kinder face than she expects.

(if she happens to also lean into the touch, well, she can’t be blamed for that - injured body, tired legs and all)

“If you’re not going to make me walk back and forth anymore, yeah, sure. Be my guest.”

“You’ll still have to walk but I can at least provide a change of scenery.”
-
“Sara.”

She grumbles an affirmation back, stretching out as far as she can without aggravating her body any further. Sarah makes her walk still, though she does good on her promise of a different view and takes her out to the beach Sara’s been taunted with from the private clinic she’s been holed up in for the past however long.

Her first day out and the sky is clear, the water is blue, and the breeze is just enough to keep her from sweating - she wants to savor every moment of it.

Still, Sarah is incessant, calls her name again and pokes her side for good measure. Sara moves the hat back to the top of her head from where it’s shielding her face from the sun, cracks her eyes open to glance at where Sarah’s looming over her.

Sara raises an eyebrow when she doesn't continue on, realizing that Sarah never really planned on saying anything more until Sara chose to talk - if she decides to talk.

“It’s alright, you know,” she tries, “I’m still here.”

She nods in response to that, slowly while the gears in her head are turning loud enough that Sara’s sure everyone on the beach knows she’s thinking hard. Eventually, she decides to lean back next to Sara, propped up on an elbow to continue hovering. Sarah plucks the hat off her head and hangs it on a bent knee.

“You have five minutes of sunshine left,” she says as she leans in close, placing a barely-there kiss to her temple, “I promised to not keep you out for too long.”

(again, if she leans into the touch she can hardly be blamed for this instance either)

Sarah visits her frequently after that, sometimes twice in one day but never with more than a day missing in between. They don’t always go to the beach but they always do something together, be it physical therapy or catered lunch or dip in the pool under the guise of hydrotherapy.

“Seems like you've got a lot of vacation days to waste, Agent Walker,” she says in lieu of asking what she really wants to know. The direct question seems too harsh, too much like Sara doesn't want Sarah around and the simple truth is that she does.

“I’m working on something,” Sarah offers with a small smile.

“No human disaster to babysit?”

She chuckles at that, so low that Sara would have missed it if she wasn’t paying attention. “No more Chuck, not in that capacity,” she clarifies for her. “I get called in when I’m needed.”

“So you’re not needed now?”

(she hates herself for sounding so needy but she likes to think she has a valid excuse. as familiar as she is with near-death experiences, she’s just as acquainted with milking them properly)

“Not more than I’m needed here.”

“Good to know you still think I’m hopeless,” she teases. She bumps her shoulder playfully into Sarah’s from where she’s walking next to her and Sarah’s response is to drape an arm over her shoulders and pull her closer. Another one of those featherlight kisses is dropped on her hairline, though Sarah doesn't move away afterwards.

“Maybe I should keep you around again - save myself the trouble of tracing a phone call in the middle of the night just to find you,” she murmurs right into her ear. It sounds like a promise more than a joke and it’s starting to get difficult for Sara to not be hopeful about it.

She gets a call early-ish on a Sunday morning, sometime after she wakes up but before they start serving lunch downstairs. The number is blocked but she knows the voice from anywhere, the familiar sound rolling over the vowels of ‘good morning, sleepyhead’ through the receiver.

Sara mumbles something unintelligible back at her, failing to keep the sleep out of her voice despite being up for a short while now.

(it’s not a hotel but wake up calls are definitely a thing here - an annoying thing at that)

“You can go back to sleep after this, I was just calling to tell you I had to go out of town. You’ll be alright by yourself for a bit, yeah?”

Another sleepy grumble in response gets her a hearty laugh out of Sarah, who seems to have given up on any chances of having a real conversation by now.

“I have to run but if you need anything they can’t do for you there, then you call, okay. I’ll be back soon as they let me.”

This time she grunts her affirmation back a little too slow, misses the window for goodbye before the line goes dead and she rolls back to settle on the bed again. She follows Sarah’s suggestion and allows herself to drift back to nothingness. In her sleepy haze, she feels something she doesn’t quite want to name but as far as she’s willing to admit, Sara is just sad she’ll have to forgo sunshine and cool breezes for an undetermined length of time.

It’s exactly thirty-eight days before Sara sees Sarah again – not that she’s been counting.

But there’s a calendar in the nurse area and simple addition and subtraction isn't difficult, if anything she keeps track of it because she needs concrete proof of how ‘a bit’ turned into ‘a while’ and how ‘a while’ turned into over a month.

Sarah doesn't call her again after the initial time, the one to tell Sara she was already out of town and she’d be back soon. Of course the actual definition of soon is flexible in their respective lines of work but she wants a chance to make Sarah feel that much worse about leading her on.

(yeah, yeah, yeah, she’s a little shit)

By the time Sarah shows her face around these parts of paradise again, Sara’s new found hobby is putt-putt. Essentially, it’s the only thing the doctors will let her do because it’s least likely to rip open her abdomen again and create more problems. She grows restless inside and if she can’t take her aggression out on a punching bag, Sara will settle for taking it out on a bucket of balls and the hole with the revolving barrel.

She makes it through about a third of the bucket when a shadow appears to mess with her timing. Another ball is lined up on the tee without much mind to the owner of said shadow, the only acknowledgment she makes is a small click of her tongue.

“I hope this is an approved activity,” she finally says to break to break the silence. “I’d hate to see a barrel of monkeys do you in after such a successful recovery.”

An indignant hmph squeaks out of her at that, breaking her silent treatment because – “you’d know if you were around. I’m basically a better Tiger Woods on these here jungle greens.”

“I deserve that,” she concedes quietly, a rare instance Sarah Walker goes without a fight. Her tone is beseeching, searching for some way to make Sara quit imagining each golf ball as Sarah’s head and not be so stubborn. “We had an incident that took longer than I would have liked to clean up.”

When Sara finally turns to face the other woman, the remorse is so plainly written on her face that Sara would be downright cruel to deny her a chance to at least explain.

It would seem that Sarah’s obligation to Chuck is conditional at best, a resource more than a requirement, now. They only demanded her presence in Paris after an entirely botched undercover solo op he’s sent on by his new handler, one who read a lot of files on Computer Brains but didn't retain a lick because he still decides to send him out with minimal training against everyone’s wishes. The job was supposed to be simple if done right, it’s just the fallout that gets complicated – fixing cracks, dotting I’s, crossing T’s.

Her guilt trip immediately dies off her tongue when she notices a wince as Sarah readjusts her bag over her shoulder. Sara recognizes the old injury immediately, the slight catch in the movement that means she’s used it too much, too long. Figures the idiot would rather work through pain than take care of herself.

(she has to learn her bad habits from somewhere: meet prime example numero uno)

For her thirty-eight days worth of anger, Sara’s forgiveness is nearly instantaneous – given with her fingers gently kneading at the tightened muscles that Sarah harbors. She works at the troublesome spots until they’re tender to the touch, lulling Sarah into a well deserved sleep slumped over the edge of her bed.

They don’t get a chance to discuss how Sarah will repay her broken promises, though Sara has a good feeling she won’t be too far away from now on, one man shit storms and his fuckups be damned.

Her accent’s slipped before, the slightest of slights when she gets carried away in her ramblings. She always catches it before it gets any worse, wrestling her native tongue into something more neutral, unassuming. As of late, she doesn't take care to wrangle some of the more fluid Australian speech into something passable as American.

(however many years of this charade and she still hasn't gotten the hang of ‘girlfriend’ and still she’s teased about it)

It feels nice – familiar in the best of ways, like slipping on an old sweatshirt during a lazy day or a favorite blanket on a cold night. It feels like Sarah put an older version of herself back on, reverted to someone Sara knows a lot better than the person playing make believe, like coming home after too long away.

She asks her about it one day, when they’re walking up and down the beach the same lazy way they've fallen into. The cool water laps at her feet, it reaches her ankle and she studies the way the sun glints off the tiny waves so intently she nearly misses the casual shrug Sarah offers in response. “No need,” she says like it’s the most obvious thing, “there’s no one else.”

The answer explains everything and nothing at the same time. On the one hand, Sara knows where she stands and on the other, she wonders when Sarah will be gone for a day that turns into a year.

Sara stops keeping count after a hundred because Sarah hasn't gone a day without her yet and she decides to finally take Sarah’s word.

The other shoe she’s been waiting for may have already dropped by now, all things considered. There hasn't been another incident save the one day Sarah missed lunch and clipped phone calls littered in between. She doesn't Sara anything else and Sara doesn't ask for anything more and they’re content with the crooked foundation they've managed to build on.

(this shouldn't be so hard but trust given too openly is a liability she’s tried to wean out)

It takes an over indulgent ten months before Sara starts to like the world around her is moving too slow. She finally graduated from putt-putt to nine hole rounds but even that isn't enough to satisfy her itch.

“Can we go back?” she asks after a particularly good swing down the driving range. Sara watches the ball land near one of the markers and bounce away while Sarah is still fixing her stance.

“To Starling?”

“Wherever you’re supposed to be right now,” because no, not Starling, not now. That on its own is already a can of worms, adding Sara back into the mix would only make it worse. Dealing with that mess is being left off on her to-do list for the time being.

“I don’t have anywhere I’m supposed to be.”

Her answer comes out short, less from the exertion of her swing, more from the implication that she answers to someone who can barely keep their own life together.

“But you have somewhere that would make it easier than teleworking from the Caribbean all the time,” Sara counters smoothly. There’s a reason they’re not currently living together even if they spend the better part of every day with one another. Sarah has always preferred to keep Sara out of her personal work if she can manage it and recent incidents have only made her even more diligent of that.

“You want to go to Burbank?”

“I want to be where milk doesn't cost ten bucks a gallon and I can watch Vikings on demand at my leisure.”

(seriously though, there is a reason people usually stay here for a week and then bolt)

“I’ll call tonight,” Sarah eventually says when they’re getting ready to leave.

Sara takes full advantage of being allowed to do absolutely nothing but binge-watch her way through a decent amount of Netflix and a good chunk of whatever’s available On Demand that she’s missed flitting around across the world. Under no uncertain terms is she allowed to do more than act like a civilian so she tries her best to assimilate to civilian life despite not actually knowing what that entails.

(try going from teenage brat to shadow assassin to mid-twenties plain jane and see how you manage, alright)

She goes as far as learning how to legitimately cook in her spare time, when sitting on her ass gets boring and it’s too nice outside to not do something that’s not physically exerting. Golf is nice, sure but sometimes Sara just wants to enjoy the weather without associating it with wind that will knock her trajectory too far to the right and into the sand trap on the twelfth hole. Besides, too much swinging and her midsection will act up for longer than it’s worth so heading off to the grocery store for ingredients is a welcome alternative. Sara has only bothered to learn about a dozen or so different recipes for mac and cheese, but whatever it still completely counts as cooking if it’s not Easy Mac.

On a particular afternoon where she’s content to let Netflix dictate her life with new episode after new episode, a thin plastic box comes flying in her peripherals, collides into her face when she turns to where it’s coming from.

“I’m starting to think we need to get your eyesight checked, you've been having trouble with dodging things that are flying towards your face lately.”

Absentmindedly, she rubs at her forehead while examining the box that houses all five Halo games in one, “or maybe we could work on stopping the jackass that throws random shit at me when I don’t deserve it.”

“Well where’s the fun in that, kid?”

“Fun is me watching my shows in peace, not on my guard every second for something to catch with my face,” she huffs. “What is this even for, anyways?”

“You, slugger – gift from the ever so chivalrous, Chuck. He thought a shiny new video game would keep you occupied when you’re on house arrest for the time being.”

“You’re telling me that Chuck, ex-boyfriend, awful excuse for a spy, man-child computer brainiac, voluntarily gave me a new Xbox because he was concerned I was getting bored. How the hell does he even know I’m here, I haven’t seen him since we moved back.”

(lord knows she wouldn't exactly lift a finger to give the guy a gift, let alone one so nice; she's learned to keep her distance from an ex)

Sarah shrugs as she unloads the entirety of Chuck’s odd generosity, stacking various boxes of different sizes on the coffee table. “I told Casey why I was back in town after I made it very clear I had wanted nothing further to do with them. I assume Casey told him about you in some capacity.”

“What exactly is…’some capacity’?”

“Enough that he isn't asking questions. We’ll probably have to tell him about you eventually, though.”

“Maybe wait until he gets me a PS4, too.”

“How about,” Sarah stops in the middle of unboxing the console to raise a reprimanding eyebrow at Sara, shakes her head before she goes back to what she was doing, “you just graciously accept this lovely gift of yours, I will deal with that when time comes, and in the mean time, you can start another one of your culinary masterpieces for dinner while I finish this up, yeah?”

The pillow Sara flings at her head in retaliation as she gets up to go to the kitchen makes an oddly satisfying sound as it connects.

The truth drops before she manages to influence Chuck to buy her a PlayStation from afar.

(it takes a lot of work to get Casey to drop hints for her but she likes to think she was only a handful away from cashing in)

It has something to do with major crisis and someone (someones? she doesn't have all the details) going rogue in Paris and the government flipping their absolute shit because the person who is supposed to be monitoring their ‘best’ asset is said rogue.

“Really? Your replacement babysitter went apeshit over his wife’s murder and now wants to take down the CIA in revenge. None of you are shitting me?”

“None of us are ‘shitting you,’ no,” Chuck chimes in, even though her question was posed to the general area and she was aiming her gaze to Sarah and Casey and decidedly not Chuck but it figures.

“So,” she starts again, “exactly why am –”

“Can I get a minute with you, Lance? Alone.”

Just like that, she gets tugged rather violently away from where they’re all convening at in the basement of the yogurt shop. Castle, they call it, surely some allusion to fortresses and impenetrable and all of that jazz – the government is sentimental like that Sara assumes.

Sarah gets her into a corner that’s out of the way, where she vaguely remembers leading to what they sometimes use as interrogation rooms and the like. She’s been going willingly but she still gets slightly manhandled so to say Sarah’s not too happy about the situation is probably accurate.

“Look,” deep breath in, painful exhale out, “I don’t want to have to bring you into this but I’m running out of options, you do see that. Please, tell me you see that.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” she eases, trying to settle the vein that’s nearly about to explode on Sarah’s forehead back down. Her thumbs run softly across her temple and she tugs her head down to kiss her cheek – reassurance more than anything else. “I’m here for a reason alright, you got me.”

“I know you haven’t been –”

“Don’t worry about me, working on being a pro golfer hasn't left me completely useless.”

She honest to god snorts at that, finally relaxes into Sara a little, “I know about your little detours to the boxing gym conveniently located in between the golf range and home.”

“I—”

“It’s fine, I’m glad you’re getting back on your feet.” Sarah looses a low chuckle before starting again, “I would tell you to take it easy but I realize how hypocritical that sounds with what I've asked you to do.”

“I’m not going to break, Walker.”

“I don’t think I need to remind you how close you were to doing just that not too long ago,” she murmurs close to her ear.

“I’ll try my best to not make it a repeat performance, then, how’s that sound?”

Sara can feel the small nod she gets in response, and now it’s her turn to laugh at Sarah. “Alrighty then,” she says with a light pat on the cheek, “time to go kick some ass, babe.”

(man, she has waited forever to say that again)

“If this is all you do on your fancy government assignments, I’m starting to understand why it took you so long to get back to me the last time.”

It’s simply the truth, not a dig at Sarah – it’s been nearly a year since that whole thing and Sara’s not trying to grudge up past bygones in the least. Truth is, they’ve been in Paris for two weeks with little to show for their footwork outside of a name and a lukewarm paper trail that Casey and Chuck follow up. Since Boy Genius can flash from words and pictures, their improvised team has the luxury of splitting up to cover more ground efficiently.

At least, however efficiently they were lazily checking small leads each day. Sara felt more like a tourist than like she was working but if she’s not footing the bill and this Shaw guy doesn’t actually have a leg to stand on, she can enjoy it for the time being. If there is ass kicking eventually, so be it – if not, it’s not the end of the world.

“I told you, that was different,” Sarah says, leveling a modest glare back at Sara from over the rim of her sunglasses. “I can assure you I was not spending my afternoons drinking coffee at a café with such riveting company.”

“Hey! I am excellent company, you love my company.”

“So I do,” she says before taking a sip from her cup, “it was bound to happen, it does seem like my luck’s been off lately.”

As Sarah’s luck would have it, she hasn't run out of the stuff entirely because she manages to keep all the liquid in her mouth still when Sara delivers a sharp kick to the shin in retaliation. It might leave a bruise but it definitely doesn't hurt enough for Sarah to complain about it, only turns her smirk into a full fledged grin and keeps on drinking.

They fall back into silence at their small table that sits just outside the storefront. Sara is playing with the condensation on her glass, Sarah is idly stirring black coffee, and both are keeping a lookout for one Pierre Valmont who is supposed to be making a drop off at another café just across the street from them.

Follow, intercept, rinse, repeat – such as spy life goes.

(aka boooooring)

Just when she’s about to tell Sarah as much, Monsieur V pops out of a cab and into her line of view in what is probably the most obnoxious suit anyone could be dressed in. He certainly wasn't kidding around when he told his contact he wouldn't be hard to miss. Perhaps he’s taken the whole ‘best defense is a good offense’ thing a little too far.

“Bogey spotted, ten o’clock.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, we don’t actually talk like that – Tom Cruise does. We are not Tom Cruise.”

“And thank god for that because you are way hotter but seriously, Walker, dude we’re looking for is right over your shoulder and about to make some fancy dance moves if we don’t do something quick.”

A long-suffering sigh escapes from Sarah instead of any words and she downs her coffee while dropping a few bills down on the table without waiting for Sara to follow her. She starts walking across the street, to a point a few yards behind their mark and Sara takes the cue for what it is, heading directly for the other café to cut him off.

Sara should probably be more offended that she’s always the klutz in these situations but when else does she get to intentionally spill hot beverages on unassuming douchebags and not get yelled for it?

(not as much as she would like, that’s for damn sure)

One less painful trip than she’s previously been through, one triple espresso, and a well placed hand to catch her fall and Sarah has the package and her dignity in tact. On the flip side, Sara has less dignity from tripping over a curb and ruining what she hears is an expensive shirt that’s worth more than a year’s rent for her and apologizing profusely in the most southern accent she can scrounge up but also his phone.

(the real joke’s on him though because she doesn't pay rent)

“I vote next time you be the ditzy blonde one – I think that fall I took is triggering some lingering PTSD,” she notes when they meet up again on the next street over.

Sarah scoffs beside her, hands her the leather satchel to leave her own free to sling around Sara and pull her closer, dropping her voice low near her ear, “what exactly makes you think there’s going to be a next time?”

There is no second time – least not for Sara or Chuck on this particular job. Turns out Pierre was bigger to this whole thing than either of them were made aware and after they managed to get his intel, it was pretty straight forward from there on, out.

In the words of one John Casey: Leave it to the real spies, kiddos.

While Sara laughs that one off, Chuck spends the better part of the day sulking about how he’s being left behind yet again when he is so clearly a very useful asset (!!!). In fact, he doesn’t stop pleading with either handler to take him along up until they’re on the tarmac and boarding the cargo plane. He goes as far as to volunteer baggage service for two duffel bags that he probably can’t lift at the same time and yells, “I promise I’ll stay in the car,” as the plane takes off, despite the sounds drowning him out completely.

He looks like he’s in his own world of self-pity when Sara looks over at him, slump in his shoulders and sadness in his eyes. Before Sara can think better of it, she takes some ounce of pity on him and makes up her mind. “Think you can stay in the car long enough to go get some froyo? I know the owner of a place not too far from here.”

She’s half thinking it won’t work but Chuck slouches a little less, quirks up a corner of his mouth and says he has nothing better to do so he might as well get something out of an empty day. The car ride from the airport to the shop is quiet; they’re in the Jeep Sarah got for her because she still doesn't trust anyone else driving her precious three-thousand pound, metal baby.

About twenty minutes later and they’re still in a communal silence as they make their own yogurt cups. There’s still a few minutes short of an hour before the Orange Orange opens, so Sara tells him to just take up residence in one of the other stools behind the counter while he eats.

“Thanks, for the game and everything,” she eventually breaks the silence with once she’s halfway through her cup. “I realized I never got around to thanking you for giving me some stress relief when I couldn't do much.”

Chuck looks stunned for a second, thrown off by either her choice of conversation or that she even spoke to him casually at all, Sara isn't completely sure. It’s not like they've spoken much whenever she’s been in town but Sara can act civilized around company if need be – she was a normal kid for half her life, halfway through college and all.

“Yeah, um, yeah, sure thing? I mean I know how much it sucks to be benched, not that you were voluntarily benched or anything but I mean, you know,” and he gestures towards his general midsection area while stammering off.

“Yeah, I know,” she offers. “I appreciate it.”

“Are you done with the series? I could get you something else, if you want. Perks of the Buy More Nerd Herd include new, full length demos for review purposes.”

At this, Sara is the one that’s thrown off now. She’d never expected him to continue their conversation, let alone offer more. She gives him a genuine smile, resolves to continue their light banter even if it ends up being all they get to. As insufferable as he can be, Chuck seems to truly mean well on most levels – Sara can acknowledge a kind heart in their line of work. She knows there’s reasons for why he can afford to be so naïve, though for now she lets him be.

(in the back of her mind she can see what was so attractive about him to begin with)

By the time their hour passes and the open sign is flipped around, Chuck offers to stay the rest of the day and help out around the shop. “I don’t exactly have the right uniform for the job and even if I did, I wouldn't look nearly as good as Sarah in it,” he admits, “but I promise I can make a pretty mean swirl if you gave me a shot.”

To her surprise, Sara throws him an apron and lets him stay the whole day and no one is killed, maimed, or otherwise gravely harmed by the time they close – customers included.

When Sarah comes back from…wherever her and Casey end up going, there’s now two sizable TVs sitting next to each other in her living room and two very engrossed people talking to one another via headsets while furiously mashing buttons on game controllers.

Chuck and Sara have taken to sitting on the floor together because sitting on the couch means they’re not completely at eye-level with the screen and sometimes one or the other will have to squint to see a sniper shooting them from left field. It’s just a better vantage overall and they’re both wearing their glasses, it’s not that bad.

(she’s saving humanity from space aliens with a stupid religious agenda, give her a break)

The pair is currently so preoccupied with whatever objective they’re trying to get through that neither notice the way the door slams or how Sarah drags her feet, nor do they even blink when she purposely drops her gear bag right behind them in the kitchen.

It takes about ten whole minutes before Sara gets an inkling of a feeling that something’s amiss in the house that has little to do with the bullet storm raining down on them while they’re trying to get past this valley of death without restarting all the way back at their last autosave. On a whim, Sara glances back to survey the apartment and while she is surprised to find Sarah kind of hovering behind them with a less than amused look, Sara isn't really surprised that she’s been waiting for them to notice her all this time.

With a sheepish, innocent as she can manage smile, she reaches out blindly with her other hand to knock off Chuck’s headset while quickly taking off her own. Chuck’s about to lecture her on leaving him high and dry when all his words die on the tip of his tongue and he feels the full wrath of Sarah’s glare focused onto him.

“Heeey, Sarah! We were just –“

“Out, now – I’ll talk to you later. And you,” she directs at Sara (who is not at all about to try and bolt along with Chuck), “stay – we are talking now.”

Chuck’s up and out the door, leaving all his stuff where he used to be sitting, with a barely audible sorrycatchyalaterbuddy before Sara even gets a chance to guilt him into not leaving her alone.

(that little fucking fake-ivy-league piece of shit)

“I take it you've saved the world but not without some bit of difficulty,” Sara attempts at levity, standing up and making her way to the other side of the couch. This will probably be easier if she doesn't actively look like she’s been doing something wrong – it was an honest mistake, she can’t be blamed for the noise-cancelling effects of surround sound in her ears.

“Something like that.”

(fuck, unreadable tone is never a good sign)

“I can make mac and cheese?”

(food is always a good segue)

“Not really in the mood for that right now.”

(or not, shit)

“Then what –”

“I think we’re done talking now.”

(no talking it is, she sure as hell ain’t about to argue that one)

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

(yeah, no talking – definitely a brilliant beyond brilliant solution)

After the whole Shaw situation is dealt with, there is a next time. A few next times in fact, and whether it’s because Sarah thinks she’s far enough removed from her initial injury or that she wants her preoccupied with something more useful than playing video games while Sarah’s away, Sara can’t say for sure.

Either way, she’s too happy she gets to do something useful again to dispute it, whatever reason it may be for.

(jealousy is perfectly fine when it works in her favor in a variety of ways)

Sarah assigns her to a position at the Buy More, not at the Nerd Herd (couldn’t pass for a geek if she tried), but she’s a green shirt with Casey and she’s not as hopeless when selling a computer as she would be trying to fix one. Most of the time though, she just surveys the store to find creative ways to stash various firearms throughout the store; Casey certainly doesn’t mind, in fact, he approves of her latest stash of some 1911s in a thin safe embedded in the back of a washer/dryer set that will never, ever be sold because for some reason, it lacks a rather necessary tumble dry low setting.

She’s currently in the middle of pushing a fridge to a newlywed couple when Sarah rushes into the store and all but yanks her arm off to drag her to the break room, citing some vague emergency and apologizing way too sweetly to her customers. Casey moves to join them but after doing some partner silent communication voodoo with him, only nods back and stays put in the video game section.

“Personal space, much, Walker?”

Her shoulder stings and she does her best to rub away the pain. She feels a little better when Sarah turns back to face her and looks more than a bit guilty for what she did. “I’m sorry,” she breathes out. “Sorry, I just – we have a very heavy hitter that’s pinged and if my sources are correct, he’s going to be going down a very, very long list and I need to cap this before it starts if I can.”

“So are you more upset that this guy is walking around killing people or that you’re about to ask me to do something you really don’t want me doing?”

“It’s not that I’m afraid,” Sarah implores, “they say he’s the best but they only say that because they don’t know any better. And I would do this myself but – I just, I don’t want be the one who makes you do this.”

“Well for starters, no one has ever been able to make me do anything. If I do what you’re asking of me, it’s because I chose to go through with it. We got that straight?”

Sarah smiles then, not as on edge as when she came in. “Loud and clear,” she accepts, running a hand through Sara’s hair and tucking it behind her ear. “I don’t have time to properly brief you but you can read what we have on the way to the airport.”

“So just like old times, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Sara chases Raff Gruber across a good deal of Ireland before finally getting the jump on him in London. He is good, she’ll give him that – well trained in hand-to-hand, knows a few styles extremely well and from what Sara can tell, he has steady enough hands to be a good enough shot he claims to be. Pity he didn't have a chance to show that off before she got to him.

Pub brawl is what she decides on, a little bit of creativity on her part is required though it never takes to much to rile a drunken crowd of mostly middle-aged men. No one actually cops a feel to begin with but she’s sure if she let the night drag on a little longer someone would have. At any rate, it causes enough chaos to get Gruber distracted. From there, they make their very fitful way to the back alley and a very literal battle to the death begins.

He manages to throw her into another dumpster – (yes, ironic, she knows) – and that becomes the last time he gets the upper hand on her. Sara has him taken care of quickly and disposed of even quicker, using a local contact Sarah lent her.

She breaks her radio silence once she’s clear to go home, calls Chuck first and tells him to try and keep a secret because she’s on her way back and she wants to surprise Sarah since she takes less time than they anticipated. He promises to keep her updated on Sarah’s whereabouts when she lands back in LA and more importantly, he promises to not say a peep.

Turns out Chuck Bartowski cannot be entrusted with a simple task that involves keeping his mouth shut because he definitely peeps to Sarah that Sara is coming home and when she swings the door wide open and announces, honey, I’m home!!!, Sarah’s reaction is less excited and more good-natured exasperation.

“Computer Brains blabbed it to you as soon as he hung up, didn't he?”

“Afraid so. I’m impressed you managed Gruber so easily but I’m slightly disappointed you didn't see Chuck flipping on you so easily.”

“What can I say,” she shrugs, “I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.”

“Sure you do, sweetheart.”

“I do! Well, I try – most the time.”

A satisfied hum is all Sarah offers before making her way back to the kitchen where something ridiculously good is cooking. Sara kicks her shoes off, runs to toss her bag in their room, and loops back to the other room, spotting the telltale ingredients for spaghetti a la Walker style. After all these years, she still hasn't managed to figure out what makes Sarah’s spaghetti so special but she’s learned to just eat what Sarah Walker puts in front of her without many questions.

“Careful there, Walker,” she teases, coming up from behind to slip her arms around her waist, “someone might think you missed me while I was gone.”

An elbow clips the bruise she got abroad and Sara’s wince is hard to cover up when she’s chest to back with Sarah – it’s fine, nothing serious, although her ribs are still fairly sensitive.

Sarah whips around with so much speed, Sara’s surprised she doesn't give herself whiplash, and not a second later, she’s easing Sara’s shirt up to inspect the injury. The yellow and green discoloration is probably what manages to put her at ease, no array of black and blue to give away any severity that Sara would try to hide.

Her hands trail her abdomen over three distinct scars, each no more than an inch at most. The skin is fully healed, only slightly raised but she’s sure even if they were flat with the rest of her skin, Sarah could still find them. They’re quite important after all.

“The water’s boiling.”

“Hm?”

“Water, spaghetti, might wanna take care of that first. I’ll still be here for you to fuss over but it’ll be a little more difficult if the place catches fire or something.”

“Right,” she says distractedly, moving to turn down the stove and drop the pasta into the pot. She finishes whatever else she can now and then heads to grab a cool gel pack out of the freezer and wraps it in a towel before handing it off to Sara. “Twenty minutes on while you wait for food.”

Sara takes it without arguing, leans back in her seat so the pack can rest without slipping down. She lets the quiet go on for a little longer, maybe ten minutes or so, then reaches out tug at one of Sarah’s hands. “Hey,” she starts, enough to just be heard over the other noises around them, “come here.”

Their fingers tangle together and Sara runs her thumb over rough knuckles that have broken their fair share of jaws. She brushes her lips over the one she remembers being broken once, in another lifetime. Remembers how she felt when Sarah was the one barely breathing and she was the one running around equal parts hopeless and helpless.

(she never said anything then, too young and too afraid to know much better)

"I’m still here.”

“Yes,” she sighs, squeezes her hand and bends down to drop a kiss on the top of her head before going back to cooking.

They surprise her during one of their weekly dinners, at a sushi restaurant Morgan suggested that isn't half bad.

There’s a small cake with sparklers and the entire wait staff for the night singing happy birthday to her while she tries to not look completely murderous at her friends. Sara smiles politely and blows out the candles, thanks everyone for the sentiment that is at least three months off and is happening for no reason she can conjure up.

“Anyone want to tell me what’s going on,” she gets through gritted teeth. “Now?”

“Well, you see it started with Ch—”

“Alllright, buddy! Lemme try explaining in a way that won’t get me killed, okay?” Chuck looks to Sara for approval then, the only thing he gets is a skeptical eyebrow. “Okiedokie, then, so I can see where you’re confused, the birthday song and the birthday cake can be really misleading but this is our way of saying welcome to Team Bartowski!”

“Team Bartowski?”

“Or Team Intersect – the name is negotiable, we can take a poll later.”

“Still don’t see the point, Chuck.”

“What numb-nuts is trying to say is that you’re cleared as a…consultant of sorts, for the future,” Casey explains.

“A consultant?”

“We need your skills, we call you, you don’t get arrested – all pretty cut and dry, Lance.”

"And this just happened?”

“Yeah! Well, mostly because taking out a super assassin kind of helped your case. Oh! And Sarah kind of made a really big pitch to Beckman and, y’know.” Chuck’s hands do something of a flourish around the cake to help emphasize his point better.

“Sarah did, did she,” she asks in the general direction of everyone else but turns to pin a questioning gaze at the woman in question.

Sarah shrugs, her face the epitome of feigned innocence. “All I said was you could be a useful tool to keep our asset preoccupied while me and Casey do the real spy work. If you distract him long enough saving humanity in a TV screen, we might be able to actually get something done for once.”

Resentful hey's are yelled from all around the table – Chuck and Sara for obvious reasons, while she figures Morgan takes offense that it was implied that she’s the one that would occupy his best friend’s time and not him.

Across the table, Casey does his worst impression of all three of them and tells to shut up and eat their cake so he can finally go home and tend to his bonsai garden. He grumbles something else about having to put up with a bunch of idiots as he shoves a spoonful of cake in his mouth and Chuck and Morgan share a perplexed face with Sara.

On her right, Sarah props an arm over the back of Sara’s chair, leans in close to steal the bite she has ready and winks at her while she pulls away, smug as hell.

Sara certainly didn't sign up for any of this but she guesses no one really has a choice for what they wind up calling home – it kind of just happens as you go.

with love, from russia

clouberding — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 07:03:18 GMT

yeah i ripped off a james bond title

She laughs, of all things.

It catches him off guard because how could she possibly be laughing at a time like this but he realizes he’s never truly understood the inner workings of her mind. She has always been his Russia, a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. As such, it stands to reason that it shouldn’t be any different even with the given circumstances now.

He can’t find it in himself to unravel his current logic, anyways.

Oliver has missed that smile and that sound and just about everything else about her so, so terribly much already and he drinks it in like a man who knows he will be caught in a drought with an unknown end. He doesn’t dare waste another opportunity to commit every detail about her to memory, all too careless every time before now to properly do so.

Her voice breaks him out of his reverie somewhere around the tiny knick on her upper arm that she got while they were together on the island. Whether he is startled because he was so focused or because he didn’t expect her to talk is unclear, all Oliver knows is that her voice sounds like coming home. The way she says his name feels like some salvation he doesn’t believe he deserves.

She smiles at him then, bright and cheerful and all the things she shouldn’t be right now and all he can ask is why, the rest of the English language has eluded him.

“The circle of life,” she says easily with a half-hearted shrug – it makes him furious with her, sends a wave of white-hot anger up and down his spine. How can she be so cavalier about the same thing that’s very nearly ripping his world apart, what’s making his chest feel like it might explode from how much he hurts.

“I feel like I’m – (dying is what he wants to say but can’t)”

She reaches out to him, gently cradling his face in hands that are too tiny and too cold and he desperately wants to cover them with his own, protect them from everything that tries to harm them. Her thumbs run soothing lines back and forth along his cheeks, slowly tempering the ire that was lit. Every second she holds on, he loses more of the self control that is keeping him from reaching out to her.

He doesn’t realize what he’s doing until his hands find his way to hers and they are even smaller than he thought now that he is holding onto them. Oliver turns to press a kiss to each of her palms, over and over again until he feels like her cold has fully seeped into his weary bones. His body starts to ache the way he imagines hers does, the pain in his chest more pronounced than it was before, his knees straining to keep him upright.

She forces him to look her in the eye and that’s what does him in -- all the hurt and the sadness and the emptiness finally catch up to him when she whispers that it’s okay, that she’s alright.

Oliver would have believed it if his legs hadn’t finally given out and no one was were to catch him.

The Foundry is quiet when he gets there at some ungodly time in the morning because he can’t sleep despite how heavy his eyelids feel. He thinks that maybe a good workout is all he needs, something to physically exhaust him enough to shut off his brain for at least a handful of hours. It’s a good idea in theory until he actually tests it out, punching a bag feels all kinds of off and nothing feels as satisfying as it should.

Oliver goes through another round on the bag before declaring his current endeavor futile, at which point he thinks some fresh air and an early patrol will do him some good. He pulls on a black hoodie instead of his uniform, not necessarily wanting to draw any attention to him while he jumps rooftops to clear his mind.

He takes his time combing the streets, calm so far due to the day just starting up – surely he’ll have his work cut out for him tonight so for now he indulges in the slow pace.

“Fancy meeting you up here, stranger.”

Her voice comes from somewhere behind him where he’s standing close to the ledge of the rooftop. When he turns around to face her, she’s leaning against the roof entrance in an old frat t-shirt of Oliver’s he didn’t even remember he still had.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Don’t really get cold much, not anymore at least.”

It’s a fair point he thinks, besides it’s only a bit nippy out, a little bit shouldn’t hurt her and he’s been out long enough as it is. Oliver isn’t quite as tired as he was hoped he would be but she provides enough motivation to call it quits sooner than he intended and at least this way he’ll have some sort of company with him.

“So,” he starts since she’s kind of just doing her whole staring fondly bit again, “what brings you out here on this fine morning?”

“I could ask you the same think, y’know.”

“I do – that’s exactly why I asked you first.”

She chuckles at that, a soft, sweet sound he soaks in along with the way his shirt is a little too big for her, nearly reaching the middle of her thighs. The pants she has on are vaguely familiar too, some awkward not-quite-full-length pair of sweats he remembers making fun of ages ago (before the island, before everything was messed up) that he hasn’t seen since.

“Well, I dragged my ass all the way up here to bring you home. You’re not going to fix much up here with my staff, anyways.”

The sun is starting to rise on the horizon and some light glints off the silver in his hands just then to remind Oliver that he didn’t pick up his weapon of choice before he headed out; Oliver’s bow felt awkward in his hands when he held it earlier and he didn’t want to go out empty handed. Her staff seemed like the best choice if anything needed to be done, it’s just he forgot to adjust his patrolling habits to follow suit.

“I’m sorry –”

She cuts him off with a shake of her hand and her head, “nah, keep it. Kind of interested to see what the Arrow can do arrow-less.”

“I’m gonna ignore the lack of confidence and just say thank you. Also, we should probably get going before someone wakes up and finds it suspicious that a guy dressed in black is on some roof waving around a long, shiny stick.”

He nods to where the darkness is lightening up into an array of mute colors as the sun slowly creeps up on them. They leave quick enough to make it back to Queen manor before it comes up completely, leaving his particular neck of Starling still shrouded in a tiny bit of darkness. He doesn’t mind too much anyways, his investment in blackout curtains a few months back have been paying off with his recent bouts of sleeplessness.

As soon as they make it to the room, she wastes no time jumping on top of the bed, declaring something about it being time to tuck ‘big, bad Arrow’ into bed that he doesn’t bother acknowledging while he’s changing into something more comfortable. When he makes his way to her, she’s already curled up on her side, snuggly situated into his bed as much as she can on top of the covers.

“What’d you dream about,” she asks as soon as Oliver has pulled up the blanket around him. Oliver was hoping to avoid this particular conversation, although it seems like wishful thinking now that he truly considers the circumstances. He sighs, deep and long, mingling his answer in with his breath. She immediately calls him out for the attempted dodge, raises an unimpressed eyebrow while she waits for a firm answer.

This time he whispers you just loud enough for her to hear.

She smiles that tiny smile that always gets him, the one that’s caught between two thoughts he was never sure he wanted to know. It makes her look younger than she is and Oliver wish she could have been allowed to stay that innocent, makes him wish he tried to be a better man earlier than he did.

“Stop that,” she chastises softly, running a hand through his hair to get his attention.

“Stop what?”

“Blaming yourself,” she says with an eye roll, “you weren’t the only one that decided to get on the boat that night or the one that joined the League or the one that decided to come back. I know you think that saving the world is your one man show but I made my own decisions, too, Ollie.”

Oliver almost manages to voice a ‘but’ when she pauses, though it seems when she catches wind of his plan, she immediately jumps back into it.

“Go dream of something happy.” She’s starting to run her thumb back and forth along his cheek like before. “I’ll be right here, I promise.”

He wants to tell her that he does dream of something happy when he dreams of her; that he dreams about her and how they used to be and all they (she) should have been.

Unfortunately for him he doesn't get a chance to explain, his exhaustion takes this moment to overcome him completely and he remembers falling asleep feeling whole again.

The whole process is as agonizing as it sounds – spending countless hours to find the slightest bit of a lead and then hunting it down to some dark alleyway that’s a complete dead end. By now it’s starting to feel like they’ve gone backwards more so than they’ve managed to actually get anywhere with all this.

Oliver doesn’t know how they’re going to get through his, he just knows that everything is starting to get to him, all the running around with absolutely nothing to show for it has him nearing the end of his rope.

At the same time, he doesn’t mean to take it out on everyone else, doesn’t mean to be short at Felicity when she apologizes or snap at Diggle when he tries to reassure him or send Roy home when tells him that Oliver’s being too hard on the others.

He especially doesn’t mean to take it out on the one person he’s been doing all this for but it would seem even that isn’t reason enough to bite his tongue when she finds him beating the pulp out of a heavy bag in his basement at home.

Being around the team wasn’t helping his mood and he was far too frustrated to go back out on the streets to do anything productive; self-imposed isolation seemed like a good idea at the time until she showed up.

All she says is quit it, Ollie – he knows she’s talking about berating himself and everyone else about always ending up empty handed, he just doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being right while coming and going as she pleases. Oliver wants her to hurt as much as he does because he’s supposed to be the glue even though he’s tearing apart at the seams the longer this wild goose chase goes on. He needs her to know that this means more to him even if he can’t show it in front of the team, and if he manages to put on a brave face still whenever she’s around.

The words tumble out of his mouth before he has a chance to think twice about what he says, frustration giving out to tactfulness in the heat of the moment. Oliver tells her that he can’t ‘quit it’ and he can’t let anything go simply because she tells him to. That this is the real world now, she can’t expect to have her way anymore like she used to because there are bigger things to worry about outside of what she does or doesn’t want.

He’s half expecting her to stand her ground and tell him she’s not going to let herself be pushed away by him again but he turns back to face an empty room with any frustration he managed to work off returned tenfold. It’s his own damn fault, he knows he more than deserved her walking out on him when he should have just come clean about what was truly bothering him. Oliver should have just asked her for a reason – any reason – to keep fighting for her, any sign of reassurance that someday this would help fix the hurt because he is terrified that this could destroy him before he gets a chance to heal.

There’s a picture of the two of them, from a carnival that they went to on a whim because she wanted to play hooky that day and Oliver was willing to do anything that didn’t involve responsibility.

A decently sized stuffed shark is squished in between them while she’s kissing his cheek as a thank you for spending forty-five minutes and at least that many dollars trying to win it for her. She said her baby shark needed a momma shark and he found it impossible to say no to that smile of hers. Looking back, he finds it a sufficient consolation prize for not being able to keep the thing for himself.

The rest of the day flits through his mind in surprisingly vivid detail, like it was saved for a rainy day when he needed a smile. He remembers the cotton candy stick that left half of his face sticky for the rest of the day after it was shoved in his face and the highly unfortunate brain freezes they ended up with after deciding to race eat too big frozen lemonade cups. There was funnel cake with too much powered sugar, way too much money spent on rigged games, rides ridden half a dozen times in a row until one of them felt like they were about to puke.

There was so much he remembers and so much he misses still.

He doesn’t realize he started crying until she calls him out for it. She wipes at his cheeks but it does little in the scheme of all things, though he appreciates the effort. “Aren’t you supposed to be some broody, tough guy? What will all the bad guys think of you if word gets out that you spontaneously burst into tears?”

“I do not spontaneously burst into tears, thank you very much,” Oliver chuckles. “I was thinking about the carnival.”

“The carnival?” She raises a curious eyebrow until he nods to the picture sitting on the coffee table. “Ah, that carnival. Man, I loved that shark.”

“What ever happened to it?”

“Wish I knew. Probably long gone, last time I remember having it was at school and I never exactly went back to collect my stuff.”

“I should have done something.”

The shift in mood doesn’t go over her head, most likely picking up on the way he tenses up next to her on the couch. Oliver has long given up subtleties when in her presence, enough for her to realize that he’s not talking about getting back the shark or her things. She lets out a labored sigh like she’s been avoiding this all along but he’s too stubborn to let it go because it’s been bothering him from the start. Her hand runs up his arm, through his hair, and ends up playing at the base of his neck.

“You couldn’t have known, Ollie.” She kisses him on the cheek, after her thumb smoothes over his jawline. “None of this was ever your fault, none of this is anyone else’s fault.”

“I wanted,” he starts but the truth is he doesn’t actually know what he could have done differently. His mind runs through scenarios of what-if’s and could-have’s every day, yet he comes up with nothing that would make anything change the past. Part of him thinks maybe he’ll suddenly find something that would have worked, not that Oliver knows what he would do when that day comes. “I should have saved you somehow.”

“It wasn’t saving that I needed.”

He knew that much already; if that statement was ever true about anyone, it would be about her. Still, he can’t shake the feeling he owed her more than simply finding her the morning after.

“I just…wish I could’ve done something for you.”

“You did manage to knock down those bottles for my shark.”

“I didn’t mean like that.”

“I know, but the point was you cared enough to get it.” Oliver’s tears are back again, silently making their way down his face even though she’s smiling at him wide and open. It makes him want to go back to the carnival, keep her safe in a place where nothing went wrong for once in his messed up life. Rubbing haphazardly at his eyes, he looks at her, begging her to understand that he’s been running around in circles but –

I’m trying so, so very hard.

“The point was always that you loved me enough try.”

(his Russia, he thinks, is the one puzzle he was alaways willing to try)

coco cabana thursday night specials

clouberding — Tue, 20 May 2014 08:50:46 GMT

well here goes le nothing~~

At best, it’s a damn stupid idea. At worst it’s a regression into weakness she was supposed to have eradicated years ago.

But here she is, at some dive bar in some tiny ass town that’s somewhere in New Jersey because that’s how far she makes it on her bike before her butt starts hurting from sitting for so long. Coincidentally, it’s also the moment her tank dips past the quarter mark, so really, it’s as good a place to stop as any.

In her defense, Sara didn’t have any set destination in mind after she bolted out of Starling City. She didn’t plan this and if Coco Cabana happens to have a bottomless Long Island special going on this lovely Thursday evening, that’s certainly not her fault either; it’s not like Sara’s going to refuse half-priced tamales just because of some menial sense of pride.

The food goes down easy and the alcohol even easier, although after the second or third mini pitcher she’s had, Sara’s pretty sure they’re not so much Long Islands as they are whatever alcohol they’re trying to get rid of in a pinch with a generous splash of grenadine to bring all of it together.

It takes her until about somewhere around the middle of her fifth one before she starts to loosen up, starts to let her guard down. That’s probably why when Minh the Bartender starts his shift and takes a look at Sara’s tab, she accepts the double of whiskey without thinking twice about it.

He asks her who she’s trying to forget after she takes a sip and she shrugs half heartedly, realizing that she truly doesn’t know.

She thinks about it, tries to dredge up all the memories she’s put to rest over the years. It’s a fruitless endeavor that leaves her just as clueless as when she started. “Maybe I’m trying to remember,” she tells him instead, because at this point, she’s starting to think she’s gotten too good at forgetting.

Case-in-point is when she doesn’t even notice when she emptied her glass.

Sara can’t remember the last time the edges of the world became fuzzy from too much alcohol – she does remember a number too clearly, one she shouldn’t know by heart because it’s not saved in her phone for a reason.

Vaguely, somewhere in the back of her mind, she also remembers knocking back another double and then why they always told her to avoid drinking on the job.

Sara comes to in a hotel room that’s a far cry from the worst she’s ever been in. It’s a little cramped, plain but clean from what she can tell and she slept on the little chocolate they leave on top of pillows last night.

it still looks like it’s dark if that’s a window to the outside which makes sense since she makes out something like 4AM on the digital clock that’s sitting on the dresser. Her eyes take a moment longer than usual to adjust, the world still rightfully fuzzy, and the watch reflecting that annoying green clock light isn’t helping either and –

(there’s a watch. oh. oh shit, there’s a watch.)

“Really? Whiskey and tamales?”

(shit, shit, shit.)

“In my defense,” Sara barely manages to croak out before she’s just cut off.

“Long Islands and half-priced tamales are not a defense.”

“Are they if they tasted fantastic?”

“Are you feeling fantastic?”

The throbbing in her head says haaaale no, and the other Sarah in her hotel room that Sara doesn’t know how she got into seems to agree.

They make it through the complimentary breakfast in a mutual silence, mostly because Sarah doesn’t want to talk to Sara and, well, Sara doesn’t really want to talk to anyone right now.

The only words they’ve exchanged past their less than warm greeting was over Sara’s bike and she was content to leave well enough alone as soon as she found out it was safely tucked away in the hotel garage. She didn’t have to ask where they are, she knows they’re in New York City now after noticing a brochure in the lobby.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” is question one out of twenty that gets fired out once they cross the threshold into the room – alas, all good things must come to an end eventually.

“I wasn’t?” Sara answers flippantly, hoping that maybe, just maybe, if she ticks Sarah off enough she’ll storm off in a huff and never look back.

(no such luck)

“Clearly, because six Long Islands and god knows how many shots of whiskey prove your brain doesn’t even handle self preservation too well.”

And, okay, granted that is a lot but it’s not like Sara chugged all that at once and it’s not like she was drinking on an empty stomach, even she’s not that daft.

“Did you really just come here to yell at me for not waiting an hour in between drinks or something? I hope you’re gonna see the M&M factory or something because otherwise you just wasted a lot of frequent flyer miles.”

Somewhere between the retort falling off her tongue and when Sarah pins her up against the wall with her forearm on Sara’s throat is when she begins to really regret her nasty habit of speaking before thinking. Sara definitely regrets it in its entirety when Sarah puts a very specific amount of weight on a very specific pressure point and knocks her out shortly thereafter.

“you called me”

“i gathered as much”

“you said you had to leave starling city”

“yeah, about that –“

“you said you couldn’t do it anymore”

“i say a lot of stupid shit, it’s not like it means much”

“you asked to see me”

“look i was drunk, you had to have known that i –”

“you said you missed me”

There’s two tickets in business class seats on a 7:15 plane to Rome and they don’t talk anymore because Sarah doesn’t really want to talk to Sara and it’s not like Sara knows what there is to say now.

She follows Sarah’s lead without question, decides to tag along for however long it takes for her to feel less guilty about a drunk dial gone horribly or when she finds something close to the right words to say. It leads her to a tinted Mercedes with a burly driver that seems more fit to keep creeps out of a club than sitting in a car that’s probably too small for him. The driver leads to a speedboat that Sarah navigates to a dock in Venice by memory, and Sarah leads them to another hotel that lines one of the more populated streets close to the center square.

Sara has nothing to unpack because she didn’t bring anything with her when she left and there wasn’t much time in between the other night and this afternoon to do any shopping. She opts to take a shower because she’s starting to feel gross with this whirlwind finally given time to catch up to her.

The room is empty when she comes out again, Sarah’s suitcase is perched on the edge of the bed unopened and there’s a blank envelope with a few hundred euros, a fake passport, and a credit card inside, sitting on top of it.

She takes it for what it is, indulges in the city she loves but hasn’t seen in too long, tries to forget about how she ended up here to begin with.

Words fail Sara more often than not.

It’s why her apology is in the form of a royal blue dress that would make that man-child boyfriend of Sarah’s forget how to breathe on the spot; it’s a small concession she makes in favor of fixing whatever in between them that she broke earlier.

These things are temporary fixes, they almost always are.

She knows she can’t just fix everything in between them with a fancy dress that she could have easily bought for herself but she thinks the point is that she’s trying. It sounds like a lame excuse to her own ears, except Sara is willing to look the other way on this point since this is the only way she knows how to even begin to attempt to fix things.

Sara’s already awful at saying sorry and Sarah just makes everything even more screwy without even trying.

Sara is sitting down at the café in the farthest corner of the square when it’s night time, one that’s away from the middle with all the people and only speaks Italian so most tourists pass it up in favor of somewhere they can order fettuccini alfredo without thinking too hard.

Next to the bag with Sarah’s dress sitting at her feet are three other ones of various sizes with enough clothes to last her for at least a week, so today is categorized into the ‘win’ section of her mental tally.

She’s about to order the lamb chops when she catches a familiar sway of blonde hair that gives Sarah away, who promptly gives up on subtlety afterwards to occupy the seat across from her.

“I hope you left some money over to pay for dinner,” she comments, eying the bags skeptically. “I probably should have left you instructions to spend more conservatively.”

(for that, she asks for a bottle of fairly pricey red wine to go with dinner)

“I’m more interested in what was so important that you were willing to leave me alone with some government plastic in Venice.”

At this, Sarah’s expression hardens, eyes narrowing ever so slightly when she reveals that it wasn’t a government credit card she entrusted Sara with. Rather, it was her own personal one because technically, Sara’s not supposed to be present while Sarah is dealing with a human smuggling ring Chuck, aka man-child boyfriend, tipped them off to.

Sara has the decency to look a little sheepish at that, offering a too full glass of wine and quickly adding in the dress she picked out for her as an apology just as their food arrives. She counts herself lucky that she knows vintage Bordeaux and plunging necklines are amongst the top ways to distract a pissed off Sarah Walker.

Dinner is all the things that breakfast wasn’t, the two somehow managing to find conversational pieces that don’t directly involve their dubious line of work.

Sarah tells her some story about Chuck learning a bunch of the most mundane skills after downloading some huge update to the computer in his head. Apparently, they found out his new skillset includes rhythmic gymnastics just as much as hand-to-hand combat one day at some boardwalk festival in Santa Monica when Morgan volunteers Chuck for a hulahooping contest. He didn’t win the contest but he did do an impressive 2008 Yevgeniya Kaneyeva Olympic routine.

In turn, Sara volunteers the rather uneventful story about how she ended up settling in Starling City as a bartender at a nightclub run by a nineteen-year-old and Sarah tells her she’s a shitty one if she thinks Long Islands are supposed to be doused in grenadine and they kind of end up where they started this whole thing at.

Sure, they’re laughing at it but the lightheartedness they worked up to takes a pretty noticeable exit for the rest of the meal.

Despite that, the boat doesn’t seem to be rocked too much because Sarah takes the check and tips generously once they’re done eating. They haven’t left the café yet, opting to sip on some coffee to stay outside a while longer and listen to the men that have started playing music in the square.

Sara steals a moment to take in the other woman she knows too well and not at all – all hard lines and soft hair that’s tied back in a loose ponytail today, an old college t-shirt she doesn’t recognize under a worn blazer she does, pale washed holey jeans that aren’t factory made ending in still-new red low tops she must have spent the day breaking in.

“I’m sorry,” she says without even realizing she’s said it out loud. Sara’s about to apologize when Sarah simply offers her a sad, sad smile and nods before returning her attention to the men.

Suddenly, Sara wants to say more, to come up with something to get her attention again and keep it. It’s selfish, she knows, but it’s her wont and she wouldn’t be herself if she didn’t try to do something selfish when this would be better left alone. Sara racks her brain for anything, skittering past need, miss, and want because when she’s about to say any of them, she remembers how Sarah looked that other night that got her into this mess and she thinks better of it.

In the end, Sara comes up empty handed; she can’t find anything that’s right and everything that’s wrong would cost her too much to say right now. She lets herself get lost in the soft melody that’s lingering in the air, lost in the person she knows and the one she doesn’t, lost in anything that’s not her brain that’s yelling at her to do something stupid for the umpteenth time.

“i’m sorry”

“you said that already”

“i know but – for everything, i’m sorry”

“you can’t just fix everything with nice dresses and i'm sorry’s”

“yeah but i just, i don’t know how else i’m supposed to fix this”

“maybe that’s because there’s nothing to fix”

“you can’t be serious”

“you were last time, weren’t you”

“He wanted me to be someone I’m not,” Sara offers as a way of explanation.

Because it’s true.

She only knows what she is because he wanted her to fit into some perfect mold of what she isn’t and when push came to shove, she broke it without hesitation. Sara could fit into what he wanted her to be but it would never be who she is – she’s far too damaged to be that and it’s something she never realized she already accepted a long time ago.

This is more selfish bullshit she’s pulling but she can’t bring herself to care anymore. She just needs to say what she has to say for once, all of it.

“I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t keep lying.”

Sarah has a life to get back to, one that doesn’t include Sara ever since she walked away to do what she thought was right. It’s a good one that isn’t anything to complain about, even if it does include feigning attraction to a man-child in the package. She doesn’t have time to keep letting Sara have her way when she throws one of these stupid tantrums but it’s a bad habit, the same way Sara can’t stop being so god damn selfish to save her life.

Sara should have left well enough alone.

It’s just you’re the only one who knows tumbles out of her mouth before she can stop it and after it’s out there in the open, it’s not like Sara can take it back no matter how badly she wants to.

She wants to let Sarah walk away, leave her behind and quit coming back because people aren’t yoyos and they aren’t toys.

But it’s true, it’s the only truth she knows with absolute certainty ten times out of ten. Sara knows it better than she knows herself most the time and if there’s one thing she’s learned over the years that made her, it’s that you hold onto the truth.

(you take it, you keep it, you hold on)

badly kept promises and lies well spoken

clouberding — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 03:47:24 GMT

rating: g?
characters: sarah & sara
a/n: let's assume that sarah actually owns the orange orange because why the fuck would she just be working there while driving a porsche and that she actually has a real place to live instead of a hotel room for two years and only gets actual accommodations that facilitate long term living after she moves in with that man child
summary: in between here and there, they make the best of what they can find somewhere in the middle

They exchanged pleasantries somewhere between the bottom of the first and the top of the second, some time before the foul ball that got caught by left field and after the bad call at third base; pleasantries being a generous word for what it is they actually do.

Sarah is already sitting in her seat when Sara gets there, a huge, mostly full souvenir cup of some cheap beer in hand. She slips into the empty seat next to her and is wordlessly handed the cup after she passes over one of the two hotdogs she’s holding. Neither of them actually look at the other throughout the exchange, despite how fluid the simple actions are they were uncoordinated. Sara figured since she already missed the beginning and the lines were slim, she might as well get something for the both of them considering it was lunch time, anyways. Hotdogs never hurt at a ball game and neither does beer, so she’s not exactly surprised that Sarah already got some.

“I didn’t know you were a fan of Little League, Walker,” she teases. She knows full well the answer she’s going to get but she can’t resist the urge, keeps her eyes out on the field ahead of her and takes a bite out of her hotdog to keep the smirk pulling at her lips from being too noticeable.

Because I'm not is the deadpanned response and it’s pretty much what Sara was expecting. There’s zero correlation between them meeting at a game during the Little League World Series and Sarah’s interest in the sport or league as a whole. She figures it’s the easiest place to meet without raising any alarms, a public place with too many people packed together, and enough excitement to drown out anything they could be talking about. It’s also not a home, not where someone could tag along without some effort because it’s two hours south of Burbank and Sarah definitely came alone.

Still, she laughs because Sarah Walker is trying to fit in at a baseball game and it’s another one of those domestic things she would’ve given up her left kidney to avoid doing it some years ago. “So, if you’re not here because you’re rooting for Chula Vista, what are we doing here?”

“Talking.”

“We’re not doing too good a job of that.”

“Give it some time.”

Some time ends up being close to five innings later, after cheering and booing and drinking more cheap beer than necessary out of a shared cup and Sara finally looks over at Sarah for the first time after their cup gets jostled and she’s trying to miss spilling any on her. It’s the same time she notices that the cap Sarah’s been wearing this whole time is actually her cap, one that she’s lost track of for a year and some odd months. Sara tells her as much but it’s not like that does much for her, all it gets her is her hand swiftly slapped away when she tries to take it back.

“I need your help,” Sarah yells above the crowd. “I have a job, in Burbank, and I could do this without you but if you could stick around for a few weeks, this could go a hell of a lot better with you.”

She’s always amused when she gets asked for help, it certainly never fails to make her day. “Here,” Sara says while handing over the beer cup after taking a sip herself, “you probably need all of that and then some after admitting that you could do better with me. I’ve heard you asking for help from me before and I have never once heard you say anything close to that. Must’a hurt.”

It’s a little while before Sarah talks to her again, she goes back to being involved in the game. When Sara tries to get up to cheer during a triple play, it really shouldn’t have surprised her when Sarah dead legs her and she comes crashing back down in her seat in a jolt of pain. Still, she does so laughing because despite everything, it is funny.

And, besides, there are a handful of weeks Sara could spare for the time being. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt to help a friend out – one of the only ones she has left – for as long as she can. Her own endeavors don’t need immediate addressing and time with Sarah is harder to come by than she’d like, if she was willing to admit that.

“Sure, I’ll do it,” she barely gets out above the noise.

Even so, Sarah seems to hear her. She tips the cup way up in the air and downs the last of their beer just as the bottom of the eighth finishes and Tokyo is leading by four. As soon as it’s done, she drops the empty cup into Sara’s lap, makes to leave before the next inning, and Sara takes that as her cue to follow eventually.

She laughs again as she watches Sarah walk away, at herself this time. Haven’t even started working yet and she’s already getting silently bossed around again.

“Are they really going to buy that I work at the US consulate in Strasbourg?”

“It’ll explain why you’re hanging around for so long. Just put on your big girl pants for once and you’ll be fine.”

There’s a smartass remark that’s hanging on the tip of her tongue that Sara wants to say but she takes all the self control she has and forces the urge into a pretty good glare. Not that it was worth it because when she does look over at Sarah, she’s poring over some stack of documents they’re supposed to be going over.

Her backstory is comical, if not slightly bizarre on some level of practicality. It’s true, no one will really check if she’s actually working at the consulate, though she doubts she needs that much of an elaborate story to begin with. Really, there’s no one so interested in her here to warrant all of this; if anything even came up, she could’ve just made something up on the fly and stick with it. Even so, she keeps it to herself, not having the heart to put a damper on everything Sarah’s already worked out.

A beat later, the bell hanging on top of the Orange Orange’s door rings and Sarah’s geeky man-child boyfriend (Chad?) walks through with an air of smugness that doesn’t seem to suit him too well. He ignores Sara for a second, focusing on giving what he probably thinks is a passable subtle display of affection towards his 'girlfriend.' It would’ve been fine if he didn’t look too giddy throwing an extremely not-subtle wink at Sarah.

Sara fails miserably at holding down the laugh that escapes suddenly and that breaks him away from his attempt to kiss Sarah to look at her. His eyebrows knit for a second, before he says, “Sam?”

It takes her a second to remember that she has a different name here, stumbling a little bit before she nods confidently and extends her hand out towards him. “Yeah, that’s me, and you’re…” she trails off, hoping that he’ll fill in the blank real quick before she has to admit that she can’t actually remember his name. Sara remembers him but she didn’t exactly bother to put his name into the memory bank – that, and she honestly didn’t think that Sarah would be staying around long enough for it to be relevant.

Finally, he takes the hint, shooting his hand out with much more force than necessary to shake hers. His name is Chuck, he reminds her, and that vaguely clicks when she replays breakfast from that day in her mind.

Chuck seems to be buying the whole part where Sara is Sarah’s sister because his indiscrete nodding towards the back door of the store makes Sarah signal for her to wait here, while she heads to the back with him in tow. She doesn’t ask what it’s about, figures she’ll most likely be tuned in later, anyways.

She ends up finding her way to the Buy More, wandering aimlessly through the various aisles of the store, after finishing her second cup of froyo. It’s not the best and it’s not the worst, and she’s hungry but too lazy to make her way all the way across the shopping center to the Subway there, so she sucks it up, fills most of her cups with fruit to get by. As soon as she makes it through the door, a few guys in outfits that match Chuck’s come to greet her and one shorter one in green introduces himself as Morgan after shooing them away, presumably to keep them from violating her in some way given his frantic babbling.

Morgan sets out to help her become acquainted with his store after he asks her what brings her by today and the only answer Sara has that makes sense is that she knew Chuck works here, that she’s not actually looking for anything in particular. He explains that Chuck just went over to Orange Orange to say hi to his girlfriend, the grimace she makes at that enough to get his attention and probe that topic further. Sara introduces herself as Sarah’s sister, here to visit on a healthy vacation that’s long overdue and plans to leave it at that.

As it turns out, Morgan is Chuck’s best friend, thusly the leading expert on his love life and that tidbit helps her keep the suspicions at bay when he supplies her cover name before she’s had a chance to say it; he recounts Chuck telling him about their unexpected meeting over meal he was meant to share with her sister. Truth be told, Sara’s a little more than kind of surprised that either guys are able to remember something so insignificant. When he’s done, he finishes with “I didn’t know Sarah had a sister.”

“Sometimes it feels like a different lifetime,” she chuckles, shoving her hands inside her jacket to have something to do. The statement makes little sense to Morgan, who shoots her a curious look. She simply shakes her head again and says, “no, it’s just we went different ways. We were close once, I guess, but then push came to shove and we wanted different things – it happens. To sisters.”

That seems to assuage his interest in that subject for the time being and she takes the opportunity to find out more about Sarah’s fake love life from a third party who’s none the wiser about who she really is. They stroll around the store together, Morgan pretending to point out items of interest to her along the shelves and displays while mostly focusing on elaborate stories about the famed love that was inevitable between his best friend and her sister since day one. She maintains her composure for the most part, even during the story where Sarah dressed up as Princess Leia for Halloween especially for Chuck. But when Morgan mentions how Chuck dotes on Sarah to the point where he can just know what she wants to order at restaurants when they go out to eat, she starts laughing until tears are close to forming in her eyes and her stomach hurts from the exertion.

He looks at her expectantly throughout, waiting until Sara’s laughter dies down a bit before he tries to catch her eye again. She waves him off, stomping down her great amusement to tell him that she’s only laughing because she would have never guessed that Sarah was into that whole deal. Morgan explains that it’s because Chuck really knows her and he’s so attuned to her that it’s just something that comes naturally, hence the whole love story extraordinaire. Sara eyes him skeptically for a split second before deciding to keep her mouth shut. There’s no reason to blow such a convincing cover relationship by mentioning how Sarah utterly hates it when someone else orders for her despite how many times she’d prematurely decided Sara’s meals regardless of what Sara was actually in the mood for. Maybe she mellowed out with the CIA but if Sarah’s pretending to enjoy this relationship crap, she might be collared worse than Sara originally thought.

Just as Morgan’s about to start telling her another story about a birthday party or something or other, they’re interrupted by a loud ‘hey, buddy’ coming from somewhere behind him. Morgan’s face lights up when he sees Chuck, eager to introduce him to Sara – well, Sam – but slows down a little when he notices Sarah came with him.

“I see you’ve met my kid sister, hopefully she managed to behave like an acceptable adult while you two were hanging out,” Sarah quips, throwing a taunting smirk at Sara while she narrows her eyes at the slight. Almost predictably, Morgan comes to defend her honor before she has a chance to open her mouth to retort and Sara finds him to be a decent enough guy despite his predilections for absurd and excessive delusions about true love or whatever.

For her part, Sarah seems impressed that Sara managed to turn down her sarcasm far enough to keep Chuck’s partner-in-crime on her side. On the one hand, she’s glad she managed to exceed her expectations, on the other she really does not appreciate Sarah messing up her hair and chalking it up to a dumb hair tousle.

“Well, I’m off the clock now and since you’ve been doing such a good job acting your age so far, I was thinking a nice welcome dinner would be a good reward. What do you say, Sammy?”

Wow, Sarah is seriously testing her less-than-the-average amount of patience.

Said welcome dinner ends up being a much larger event than Sara thought it would be when Sarah suggested the idea. Morgan asks to come along on the spot when Sara agrees to it, then Chuck is apparently a given because Morgan is allowed to come and Chuck is Sarah’s boyfriend for all intents and purposes. After that, Sarah’s partner is invited via yelling across the store to where he’s trying to move a washer and dryer set in Appliances and he seems to only agree to get them to not ruin his sale. Later, at the restaurant, an extra chipper couple is waiting for her and Sarah with Chuck in tow and it’s not until after they’ve got her in a rib crushing hug that Sara is told the woman is Chuck’s sister and the guy is her longtime boyfriend.

Getting through the night involves a lot of small talk, like Mad Libs for Assassins: Dinner Edition. There’s blanks during all the conversations that either Sarah or herself fill up that give enough for their answers to be satisfactory enough as to not provoke deeper questioning.

It’s been stupid long since she had to actually uphold any coherent cover and longer since any situation called for her to actually have to remember anything in her cover for more than a few days at best. She’s not so much worried as she is exhausted with coming up with things that would befit a twenty-something year old with a good job in a foreign country. In the middle of their appetizers and their main course, Sara realizes she has almost no clue what someone else her age would be up to if they finished college and found a job and all that other stuff. Luckily, chalking all that up to being a workaholic ever since she graduated college and applied for a job overseas buys her a lot of leeway. She knows Strasbourg well enough placate their interests and her French has been used enough recently for her to be believable.

Even with the night counting as a success, the moment they get to Sarah’s condo, she kicks off her boots and downs the half full tumbler of whiskey that Sarah hands her without preamble.

“It gets better,” Sarah says, nearly a whisper, and she tousles her hair again, this time actually meaning to show some affection for her, “you did good, kid.”

She takes the second glass of liquor as a thank you and Sarah letting her sleep in her bed that night as a promise she’ll take care of her while she’s here so there’s no reason to run.

The next few days go by doing mundane things that come with having a life that’s also dull, one that revolves around a job that’s predictable and people equally so. Sarah tells her nothing of what she’s doing playing along with this charade but she doesn’t push it. To be perfectly honest, she kind of enjoys this kind of downtime. Usually, she ends up in somewhere undesirable or somewhere a little too extravagant to simply relax and here, with Sarah, she kind of gets the best of both in a weird way.

There’s even somewhat of a routine by then, involving running in the mornings with Sarah and eating dinner with her at night and occupying her time doing something in between. She’s actually quite taken to video games, finding she has a knack playing Halo after Morgan mentions that Chuck lent Sarah an Xbox to try and get her into it. Other times, she’s content to sit on the couch playing Cooking Mama or something on Sarah’s uncharacteristically baby pink DS – another lovely gift from Chuck. As more time passes, Sara becomes more inclined to the beach, preferring to hang out there doing whatever.

Unsurprisingly, Sara runs out of things that can actually maintain her interest for more than an hour or so at a time. Her skin starts to itch with the impulse to do something more stimulating than shooting virtual people on a screen or taking a nap on the beach; a week of relaxing proves to be what she needed while simultaneously bordering way too much of it.

Normally, she would leave, kind of sneak away or something in the middle of the night. Her stuff fits in a small enough duffle bag and if she really didn’t want to go through the hassle, she could leave all of it behind without caring too much about it. But this is different, she internally berates herself, she can’t pick up and leave because this is Sarah and she promised.

Well, not really promised with words that are spoken and such, but she might as well have and that’s what counts.

So instead of running away from the Kingdom of Bore, Sara sets up shop in the tiny backyard that’s available putting a makeshift target in the far corner and positioning herself in the one diagonal to it. It takes some searching before she finds the compound bow she was pretty convinced Sarah never had the heart to actually get rid of, hidden safely underneath the couch cushions in an impressive lockbox. The whole thing would be more impressive if Sarah didn’t use the combination she always uses, and if Sara didn’t remember it because it’s her birthday. She should probably talk to her about changing that, then again it’s not like Sara actually exists to anyone anymore so maybe it’s not that big of a deal after all.

Despite all the time since it’s been since they left, her bow is still in impressive condition almost like she still used it from time to time. The string is still taut, broken in not worn out, the cams move smoothly, the bow on a whole look like there hasn’t been any love lost between it and its owner.

A fond smile tugs at her lips when Sara picks up the bow and feels the weigh tin her hand, familiar the way it’s always been, whenever Sarah let her take a hold of it. She never had much need to use it after Sarah gave her one of her own, but this one was her first and it seems like that’s made an impact on her. Her smile widens when the grip doesn’t fit right in her hand, she forgot that Sarah shot with her left although she’s a righty. Good thing at that, Sara thinks, since the target she set up is ten feet away at best and that wouldn’t have been challenging at all with her dominant hand – least this way she’ll get a challenge on top of giving her itching fingers something they like to do.

Her left side isn’t as unpracticed as Sara initially thought, actually managing to hit close to the center of the target with the first dozen arrows she looses. It’s by no means where it was when she first learned but it’s pretty good for not using this side for half a decade. Her bow is safely tucked away somewhere else, ever since she decided a bo staff was easier to travel often with than an actual bow.

Also, arrows are annoying as shit to get back.

Sara has just started shooting again after collecting the used arrows when she sees Sarah leaning on the sliding door that leads outside. Her arms are crossed and Sara can’t really make out her face in the moonlight from this angle but if there was anything wrong, Sarah would’ve spoken up by now. She takes that understanding as permission to keep shooting until her arrows run out again and Sarah finally crosses the threshold outside.

“I’m glad she’s getting some air,” she says warmly, happy to see that someone still appreciates the mechanics one of her most prized possessions even if she can’t indulge herself. “I keep meaning to take her out but something always comes up and it’s really hard to explain why a frozen yogurt shop owner is strangely adept at hunting. She deserves better than maintenance every couple weeks.”

The bow is still in Sara’s hand while she runs her fingers over it, affectionate in a way that doesn’t surprise Sara. She can be all hard lines and scary efficiency when she needs to be for as long as she’s required to, until it’s not anymore and Sarah can let all of that fall to the wayside, suddenly looking like exactly the person she would be had she had a life that was more typical.

(sara envies that – knowing who you were made into and who you were meant to be and being both)

Sarah starts again, fingers still playing with the bow, “I have a lead. Well, more of a hunch,” she amends. “Chuck has this ex-girlfriend he’s been hung up on, one from when he was at Stanford and his life went to shit because of us. He’s been hung up on her ever since she dumped him for Bryce and she pinged on our grid a little while ago.”

From somewhere Sara didn’t notice earlier, she opens up some compartment behind them to pull out a quiver full of more arrows. She takes one out, accepting the proffered bow, and draws back swiftly, hitting a bulls eye seemingly without much effort at all. Sara might be a little envious; in her defense, this is technically Sarah’s dominant hand and her weak one.

“Jill Roberts…I looked into her when she showed up because Chuck never told me much about her aside from the broken hearted stuff I didn’t care much for, I never asked for more.” She explains while continuing to shoot, “she checked out, everything normal, but none of it really sit well with me. It all seemed too –“

“Perfect?” Sara finishes for her. “You think she’s one of you?”

It makes sense, the government for all it’s worth, can’t really put together a good cover for shit. Something is always too pristine, too good to be true, and it raises a lot of red flags along the way. Life is a bunch of ups and downs and people with half a brain get a little skeptical when you have too many ups along the way.

“No, not exactly. I’m headlining here, if another operative was in play or anywhere near me, I would have been informed. Unless she’s in deep cover, I would know but I don’t exactly see an advantage to having a secret biochemist.”

“You can’t ask your boyfriend? I’m sure he could shed some light on all of this, maybe give you a hint about some sketchy past you’re missing.”

“He still loves her,” she sighs, like she’s frustrated because surely, she’s never really had to deal with anyone like him before, ruled almost explicitly by feelings from what Sarah’s told her about him. “Won’t say anything bad about her, let alone something useful.”

“This is where I come in?”

“Keep tabs on her, stay away though. I don’t want her poking around you. Just hang back and tell me if you think she’s who I think she is, we’ll go from there.”

Shadow watching, huh. At least jumping rooftops will be fun.

Turns out Biochemist Jill Roberts is actually Spy Jill Roberts, except that’s not exactly freely given information to most people.

It’s pretty obvious to Sara when she watches her for a few nights, the way she checks her peripherals and how she bolts her lock when she gets home. The way she checks her surroundings real quick before she uses her cellphone and when she orders Thai food but no food ever shows up to her apartment.

There’s subtle differences between ordinary people and spies, even more subtle between spies and assassins. Assassins like to walk around with a grotesque air of confidence, nothing to lose that’s outside of their reputation and they don’t exactly have any hearts they care to win over to catch their mark. On the other hand, spies are made of thinly veiled disguises. Kind of like Clark Kent with his Superman uniform just right underneath his tailored suit. They're secrets anyone can stumble upon, so they try harder than the average to cover their tracks, to be inconspicuous, but if you watch them for long enough, they look behind them a little too much to be kosher.

Apparently, Sarah manages to pull some strings and Spy Jill Roberts seems to be rumored as Rouge Spy Jill Roberts nowadays. That’s all on the down low, though it seems to hold some merit when Sarah hears about the circumstances. She explains that she’s probably a Fulcrum agent, a rogue CIA faction, and that’s all Sara gets about that; not that she minds, the less she knows about all of this, the better off she feels.

“So, what are we doing about this?”

“We are doing nothing. I am going to figure out something to take care of this.”

“Didn’t really take you for the jealous girlfriend type but I guess I can see it now.”

And, if the stars currently flooding her vision are any good indicator, that was the worst thing she could have said because now she’s got a face full of training mat, with her shoulder levered in such a way that it’s probably a millimeter or so away from popping out of its socket. Sarah’s got her pinned down to the mat, her knee on the middle of her spine with enough pressure to keep her from being able to execute any counter maneuver.

Her arm hurts, her face stings, and she’s pretty sure her back isn’t meant to be this limber, but it still doesn’t hurt so bad to deserve the scathing ow she grits out. That snaps something in Sarah’s head and her arm is let loose slightly, barely enough so that there’s no risk of dislocating anymore.

“Chuck, like it or not, is my asset and Fulcrum has been on my ass since Day One trying to get their fucking dirty hands on him, so you’ll excuse me if protecting my own ass makes me look like I’m jealous.”

Sarah leans over to growl that into her ear, taking away enough pressure that Sara can actually move and all it takes is a familiar motion to roll her way out of the arm bar and shove her off her back. As soon as she gets on her feet, Sara lunges directly into the other woman who’s trying to regain her bearings and lands a right cross that makes contact with a satisfyingly good crack before she walks out.

Like motherfucking hell she asked for any of this shit, it stands to reason that she wouldn’t tolerate any of it either.

Half of Sarah’s face is a mottled mess of black and blue for the better of a week. Her shoulder’s a little worse for wear, kind of stiff but not actually bruised. Probably strained a few ligaments a smidge but it’s nothing as noticeable as what she dished out. Even her face is relatively tame despite being thrown down. Lucky for her, training mats are relatively soft compared to her fist.

She doesn’t say sorry though – in fact, refuses to altogether on principle.

She does go to the supermarket and bring Sarah back a sizable sirloin though.

“I need you to bring her in.”

“My way or your way?”

“Bring her in.”

Spies are generally predictable people if someone can pick up the right signals. It’s not hard to anticipate certain things because they have rules to follow, someone to answer to, something that’s bigger than them. It makes them easy targets if someone chooses to hunt them.

As such, Jill Roberts is easy pickings for Sara.

All she has to do is wait for her by the diner where she’s seen her go every afternoon at three to do something – it’s never the same thing but she’s always there doing whatever at the same time. To make things easier still, spies have that nasty habit of being overly concerned with their backsides.

It’s highly unusual for any of them to pay attention to who’s in front of them and that’s exactly how Sara manages to get her in plain sight with the same right cross.

Now, she’s strapped to a chair in the hidden interrogation room at the underground base with a high-tech polygraph attached to her and Sarah staring her down from another chair across from her. The polygraph is probably a prop although it’s turned on and working, Sarah knows better than to trust a machine to tell if someone’s being untruthful and she’s better at reading people than a machine will ever be.

Besides, Jill is kind of awful at playing innocent and even Sara can pick up on that half paying attention while just brooding in the back, leaning against the two-way mirror, arms set across her chest. She probably reinforces Sarah’s prowess by still hanging in the room, sure the two women sitting down have identical bruises blooming on their faces but she’s firmly rooted in Sarah’s court here.

Sarah is pleasant at first, deceptively docile while asking normal interrogation questions until her bullshit tolerance is filled up and she’s had enough of these poorly recited lies. The edges start to fray the more she digs at Jill, slowly breaking her down in a systematic way only someone from where they’ve been would be able to. Knowing she’d bring out this set of skills puts hiding this little meeting into perspective; there’s no way any legitimate government agency would approve of this under their own roof had they known about it.

It’s always eerie to watch when she gets like this, extremely detached in a way that makes her ten times bigger than she actually is when she’s staring someone down – makes Sara extremely glad she’s almost indefinitely on her good side.

At the end, it only takes about five more minutes for Jill to fess up that she is, in fact, a Fulcrum agent and then another five for Sarah to be completely rid of her.

“You can stay longer, you know,” Sarah tells her while she’s packing up what little clothes she brought.

She lets out a humorous laugh, shaking her head, “not exactly a card I have in my hand right now. Don’t exactly belong here the way you do, anyhow.”

“Neither of us belongs here, it’s a choice to settle down and stay – you can make the same.”

Sarah is persistent, it’s usually a more redeeming quality when they’re chasing someone down, less so when they’re talking about life choices she disapproves.

“Maybe later,” and she finds she means it, for the most part. It earns her a hug that could be considered too tight and a Batman key to Sarah’s apartment hung on a Buy More lanyard of all things. For later, Sarah explains, pushing the key in her direction. She takes it despite not wanting to, it feels like making too big a promise she won’t be able to keep.

Maybe on a rainy day, she’ll be able to find her way to another home.

seven scars of a life well fought

clouberding — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 07:52:10 GMT

rating: teenz
characters/pairings: sarah & sara
summary: scar (noun): a mark left by healing of injured tissue

(one) right shoulder; starting at the middle of the arm, stretches across length of shoulder blade; wayward katana swing

The most frustrating part of this entire situation is that this asshat trying to take their heads off might actually succeed in the worst way possible.

Said asshat’s name is Lyle Deacon – someone with too much time on his hands and more money than he knows what to do with. It gets him involved with a small faction of the Yakuza in downtown Manhattan, then another one in Vancouver, and finally to their doorstep in Tokyo, over a blooming obsession with Japan’s Edo period. Shopping on the black market is all fine and dandy, but it seems that Mr. Deacon also possesses a foolish want to revive the samurai outfit in order to compete with their chosen business and, well, things don’t work that way.

Sarah is sent to deal with him, and as her apprentice, she followed suit to deliver a warning that went unheeded and this is how she ended up in a two-on-thirty fight to the death in a warehouse that Deacon turned into his training headquarters.

They call themselves the Heavenly Order, using the gods’ powers that are bestowed to them in their human forms, allowing them to do their bidding on the physical plane, punishing those who have wronged others in the name of a higher power.

In other words, this is all a load of bullshit and their godly powers do little for Deacon’s disciples in empty hand combat and even worse for Deacon who is currently swinging an authentic Edo period katana in the most unskilled ways possible. He lacks so much basic skill in wielding the sword, that he’s managed to injure a handful of his own men of his own volition; his rage makes him even more clumsy, often tripping over the bodies that litter the padded floor and almost impaling himself more times than not.

Even with a fifty/fifty chance of Deacon offing himself before they have to, he’s an extremely unskilled fighter in all aspects and that in itself, makes him even more dangerous to them than the five judo masters that are currently coming at them from all directions. All he does is swing recklessly at anything that moves – despite being two-thousand years old, the blade is in near mint condition, still sharp enough to slice and dice people like they’re vegetables. She’s already seen the damage it can do on the unfortunate fellows that caught the bad end of a swing and it’s definitely not something she wants to try.

Some point between taking down the third remaining guy and working on the fourth, Deacon decides it’s a smart idea to make a run for it – it’s most definitely not. He ends up getting bookended by Sarah, and back to back with the last two guys that she’s busy fending off.

A few haphazard swings to try and decapitate Sarah result in slashing one of the remaining guy’s back, giving her a prime opportunity to take that one out in a swift counter that sets her up in a perfect position to get a good hit on the last guy.

A split second later is when Sarah feints to the side to provoke an attack and throttles Deacon.

The same split second is when she’s now back to back with him because of her previous strike and the last ditch strike he throws finds itself catching her shoulder while she’s pulling back for another final punch.

It takes a few moments for her to realize what just happened, she knew the blade was sharp but it’s really, really sharp, to the point that she doesn’t even realize that it’s cutting through her flesh until the air hits the long gash and it starts stinging like crazy. The pain materializes like someone just lit part of her upper back on fire and instead of caving into it, she lets it all go in a well placed back kick into Deacon’s limp body that finishes their job.

Even after that, it takes a little while for the pain to actually settle in, waiting until after they’ve made a clean getaway to start throbbing and aching instead of simply stinging lightly like before.

“Oooh, that looks bad,” Sarah comments when they’ve made it to the garage and the florescent lights are showing exactly how big a problem her cut is.

“Gee thanks, Sherlock,” she hisses, “you figure that one out on your own, or did your partner Common Sense help you come up with it?”

“Hey, if you want my help with that thing, you’re gonna have to be nicer, Tweety bird.”

She grumbles out something about taking her chances, but it’s only halfhearted at this point, the pain barreling into her all at once and all she really wants is to get this dealt with so she can pass out on the bed until very late into tomorrow. The fight is catching up with her, taking her last bit of tangible strength that she chooses to pour into making it to their hotel room instead of arguing her way into a metaphorical dead end with Sarah.

Her leather jacket conceals the majority of the blood while they walk through the lobby and hop into the elevator, enough to not draw suspicion from anyone who happens to look their way. Underneath, her white t-shirt is thoroughly soaked a bright red that would have anyone else concerned, nearly cut in half from the sword. It takes little effort for Sarah to slip the it off in order to clean it up and work it out.

It turns out the thin gash covers the entire right side of her shoulders, spanning from her arm to through her shoulder to the end of her shoulder blade before it stops. On top of sheer length, the cut is fairly deep and once the blood is washed off, Sarah can see that it’s directly on a bruise; the entire right side of her upper back is already turning an unsightly array of colors from a particularly hard throw she got caught in from one of the bigger guys.

This isn’t the worst situation she’s been in by far – at the very least, all the Heavenly Order had on them was numbers and not skill, so the only actual souvenirs she’s taking home from this fight are those two things. The other injuries she sustained are small, scrapes and bruises that will heal in a day or two. All things considered, it was a good day, the only thing that really bothers her is that Sarah isn’t worse for wear in the slightest aside from being tired out.

“Can you just get on with it?” she asks, her words slurred because she’s half asleep now, adding a soft please when she figures that Sarah has only been prodding at her back to find the gentlest way to go about things. It’s a sentiment she appreciates, she knows how other members treat their own protégés and she’s grateful to be taken under the one that seems to care the most about her wards.

She offers an apology when Sarah starts to stitch her up, saying it half into the pillow she’s made herself comfortable on while she’s laying stomach down on the couch. Sarah hums an affirmative as she continues pulling needle and thread through skin. Surely she’s been in her shoes a hundred times before, doubtfully with someone as understanding as herself, and that’s part of the reason why she learns to push the pain away; if Sarah can forgive her fleeting emotions from the pain, she can do what she can to pretend like there is none.

When her stitches are done, she’s more or less asleep where she is, most certainly unable to move and vaguely aware of a blanket being draped over her back. She catches the end of Sarah saying something about this probably scarring because of the bruise, but she doesn’t care enough to voice anything more than a grunt before shifting a little to find a more comfortable position.

If she said thank you before she completely checks out, she’s not aware of it, although she must’ve done something right because she wakes up when the sun is setting and Sarah is still slumped in the armchair next to her, fast asleep.

(two) back of torso, right side; stretches diagonally from bottom of shoulder blade to mid lower back; broken glass

It’s probably extremely ill-advised to pick a fight wearing only jeans and a t-shirt but when things go sideways because some third party idiot interferes, it’s not like there’s really a chance to call a timeout to change into something more appropriate.

Anyways, it was supposed to be an easy ‘get in, get out’ deal except as soon as she got into the club, someone couldn’t keep their hands to themselves and that just got real messy, real quick.

Long story short, she basically started an all out bar brawl where her guy got flighty and decided to jump out of a closed window into the alleyway next to the place. She followed without thinking twice about it, knocking out some other guy who thought he could backhand her before throwing herself out of the window. A particularly stubborn shard of glass that’s still stuck in the window pane dug into her skin and the beating her runner got was probably a little more than a little over doing it.

Afterwards, she found Sarah still in her car, parked about three streets down. Her shirt was already off because it started to piss her off, and quite frankly, she didn’t care too much about getting any stains in Sarah’s oh so very expensive car at this point. In any case, the seats are black leather so it’s not like any of it could be seen.

The car ride back to Sarah’s place is quiet only because she managed to cut Sarah off before she could say anything smart about bar fights and all that encompasses. When they reached the room she only went in long enough to borrow one of Sarah’s jackets for an undisclosed length of time and then took off.

This is the absolute last* time she does anything nice for Sarah ever again.

*of course that’s not actually true. whenever sarah manages to find her, she goes back without hesitation.

(three) jawline, left side; less than an inch, mostly faded at next to chin; fake engagement ring with real diamond and platinum band

“Is this seriously all I can do this session?”

They’ve been training for two, maybe three hours, she’s not actually sure. She hasn’t seen a clock since she first got into the room and she’s been stuck doing the same exact counter drill since they started, so it could even be less than that.

“If you don’t quit messing around and start concentrating, yes.”

Really, it’s the simplest blocking technique with a following strike to the solar plexus but for some reason, Sarah keeps forcing her to do it for every single thing she throws at her. At this point and time, she’s definitely done it at least a hundred times and has yet to see an actual use for it. There’s at least half a dozen other ways to counter each strike Sarah uses.

“I’ve been doing the same god damn thing the entire time, how am I not concentrating?”

And, she hit a nerve.

Not actually, no, there’s probably no way she could land a blow on Sarah but her sass has just upgraded her from tutorial to okay, tough guy and Sarah stops pulling her hits as much as she was earlier.

“Not helping.”

“Keep going.”

Soon, Sarah is speeding up in addition to hitting harder and it gets more difficult for her to keep up using the same combo each time. The extra movements keep her one beat behind Sarah if they go at the same pace, forcing her to speed up even faster to avoid actually getting hit where it would hurt.

She’s actually trying to focus really hard when she slips – Sarah’s attacks are coming in a fury and only being able to use this combo, despite how simple it is, makes her unconsciously move back to accommodate the onslaught she’s facing.

When it happens, she can see it coming, she knows that her hand is coming up and her fist is going to crash right into her face. She quickly calculates where she has to start her block to avoid getting hit but as soon as she catches Sarah’s elbow, her hand fans out to spear at her face and the ring she didn’t know Sarah had on nicks her jaw.

“Why the hell do you have a ring on?”

Sarah pointedly rolls her eyes, ignoring the question altogether while coming closer to inspect the cut on her face like she’s actually worried about it, wiping away some blood.

“Mmm, that’s deeper than I wanted – probably scar a little. My fault.”

“The whole point of this was so you could maim me?”

“Oh, stop being so dramatic, kid. It was supposed to make you stop overthinking. You were doing fine until you thought I was going to hit you near your blind spot, then you lost focus and tried to make me miss instead of blocking and countering like you were supposed to. If you just did what I told you to, I wouldn’t have had to cut you.”

“Pretty sure you didn’t have to spill my blood.”

“No, but it usually makes things more fun when I do.”

“This is unfair.”

(four) right calf; jagged cut halfway down; arrow

To be perfectly honest, she shouldn’t have been surprised that some crazed drug lord shacked up in the jungles of Thailand would have would have a mini army that uses an array of more traditional, if somewhat impractical, weapons.

– someone just came at her with nunchuks, for Christ’s sake.

For once, she’s thankful for the bo staff training Sarah insisted on when she accidentally let it slip that she had a little too much free time on her hands. All she can manage to get her hands on is a metal staff when the magic eight ball said all signs point to fighting her way out of the compound. It does a good job of hurting things enough so that she can make it to the trees and use the jungle to hide her escape route.

Everything works for the most part, save the archers at the end who are good enough to target her general vicinity but not so good that she’s in actual danger of getting hit if she continues moving. As luck would have it though, an arrow manages to glance off some nearby rock or tree and the arrowhead skims her calf pretty nice.

It’s not as bad as it could be, though it’s bad enough to make her stop for a second once she’s certain it’s safe to do so. The arrow got her in two places, kind of like a zigzag from the angle it hit and how her leg was when it happened. The bleeding isn’t worrisome, it’s nothing that tying part of her shirt around it can’t hold it over.

By the time she makes it to the outskirts of the small village where she’s supposed to meet Sarah after they split up, she has a pronounced limp that she doesn’t even bother trying to cover up anymore. It’d be a wasted effort because it actually does hurt that much and putting weight on her right leg just makes her go slower and that benefits no one.

Sarah notices it, too, almost making a crack about how she let someone get her most likely, before she wordlessly runs to her side to help her, holding her up and practically carrying her back to one of the small houses.

She’s not sure exactly what does her in – she’s not hurt anywhere else that’s worth mentioning and she doesn’t think she’s lost that much blood, but her head feels light and the room keeps spinning. Maybe a combination of running herself silly through the jungles and the exertion from the fighting that culminates in the throbbing pain she feels everywhere. Or something.

All she’s really aware of is the way Sarah keeps looking at her like she’s actually afraid, and the only reason that resonates with her is because she’s never actually seen Sarah scared before, not like this.

That’s her last thought, she thinks, before she feels herself slipping away and she doesn’t fight to keep on opening her eyes; a nap will do her some good, no doubt.

It’s two days later when she finally wakes up and stays awake, she finds out. A blanket is wrapped tightly around her like a she’s a swaddled baby but she doesn’t feel too hot even though it has to be nearly a hundred degrees outside. In fact, if anything, she feels kind of cool which makes no sense at all.

Sarah is asleep in a cot that’s pulled up next to her, body turned towards her and Sarah’s hand is resting on her arm like maybe she was trying to keep her here. When she stirs a little, Sarah eyes shoot open and she notices a flash of panic before it’s hidden away again when she speaks. “you gonna fall back asleep on me, Sleeping Beauty, or have you finally broke the curse?”

She blinks back an answer, unsure of exactly what she’s talking about.

“You’ve been out cold for two days,” Sarah explains, “you woke up a couple times in between but you always fell back asleep in a few seconds – this is the longest you’ve been awake.”

Well, some of that makes sense.

“Whatever got you in the leg was dipped in snake venom. Luckily, the villagers are familiar with Guillermo’s trick, so they made some anti-venom paste and stuck it in your cut. It drew out most of the venom so it wouldn’t kill you but you had to ride out what’s left in your system.”

Now, everything makes a whole lot of sense.

The worst of the symptoms passed during the time she was asleep, waiting for the last of the venom to dissipate wasn’t anything extraordinary. Her temperature fluctuated much too often, she didn’t find much of a voice to actually talk with, and her body felt so weird and light that if she tried to move too much, she felt as if she was going to float away. Even so, she could hold down her food, sleep through the night, and she was feeling stronger with each new day.

What she couldn’t get off her mind was the way Sarah looks at her now – eyes soft with forbidden emotions shown freely, like how her mom used to look at her when she would stay out past her curfew. It’s new and familiar all at once, catching her off guard.

She’s been hurt a million times before, worse than this, and Sarah would shrug it off and say something about it. In turn, she’s always been able to laugh injuries off or channel enough sarcasm to deter anymore comments on her current condition. She supposes passing out on the spot makes it hard to conduct their post-assignment exchange normally.

It doesn’t click until after she’s fully healed and they’re back home again, when Sarah suggests taking the day off for once and take it easy, even going so far as offering to cook breakfast for dinner, too –

(sarah would care if she died)

(five) left middle finger; extends straight from middle knuckle to hand; braces

“this is so nasty”

“you’re the one who decided to punch him”

“because he was being fucking gross”

“still, i could have dealt with it”

“yeah, okay, but he was being a super creep the whole night and it wasn’t sitting right with me so”

“so you decided to punch him to defend my honor or because you just wanted to fight some poor guys who were looking for some company”

“please, like you wouldn’t have decked him if i didn’t”

“i would have gone with something more subtle”

“where’s the fun in that”

“for starters, i wouldn’t have ended up getting my skin scraped off by his braces”

“fair point”

“at the very least, i’m pretty sure you won’t get an infection from it”

“hip hip hooray, it’s a christmas miracle”

“cheeky. oh, and before i forget, i wanted to thank you”

“thought you were saying something about defending your own honor”

“it was for not putting any of them in the hospital, not starting the fight, smartass”

“well you’re very welcome for both anyhow”

(six) left knee; three inches down the center; very sharp belt buckle

She doesn’t stop.

Not once in the past ten minutes has she stopped beating this guy to a bloody pulp and when she starts kneeing him, she knees him hard despite the belt buckle he has that’s most definitely leaving its own mark on her. Still, she has no desire to let up at all.

The rage swells up in her whenever she remembers that Sarah is precariously hanging onto her life in some under the radar medical facility, and it keeps her going and going and going.

It’s probably not this guy’s fault, to be fair. He’s just a lackey – she’s already killed the boss man who’s responsible for putting Sarah in a near comatose state and this guy’s only fault right now is being the last one standing. He’s probably also guilty of more, so she doesn’t feel too bad when she puts everything into perspective.

Everything is bloody and her body starts to ache when she basically runs out of steam. Before tossing his limp body off to the side, she knees him one more time for good measure and then everything finally gets to her.

All the emotions flood through her when the adrenaline wears off, and she’s a million different feelings about one single person.

She doesn’t know what else to do now that everyone that had a hand in making Sarah breathe out of a tube is taken care of and she feels too helpless sitting by her bedside because there’s nothing she can do other than wait.

She just…she just needs Sarah to be okay again ~~and it scares the shit out of her that she might not be~~.

(seven) heart; not visible, unsure how severe; source unknown

There’s no defining moment when her allegiance shifts places, she supposes. It must have happened over time, for whatever reason. She doesn’t suddenly feel different one day and declare that she would much rather follow the person who trained her than the people who took her in but when Sarah refused to murder innocent children for someone else’s vendetta, that’s exactly what she does.

Leaving isn’t so black and white as that, though, and this is where it gets tricky.

Sarah turns to a friend who has pull in covert operations with the government and she trades her skill set for a security blanket. She’s offered the same solace that she nearly takes, except she finds out they tried to go after her family and that seals her fate.

She would follow Sarah wherever she went without question and that’s probably the real reason why she chooses to leave her.

Maybe there’s more to this than what she’s willing to admit, more to her slipping away in the night without saying goodbye than not wanting to be stopped or having to explain herself.

Maybe it’s because Sarah is more than just her something, because she has a family she left in Starling City but Sarah is her family, too.

Maybe the pain in her chest every time she has to walk away and disappear again means she’s doing the right thing.

(or maybe this is the only way she knows how to love which really isn’t at all)

if i close my eyes do you disappear (or am i just blind)

clouberding — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 09:21:32 GMT

rating: there are cuss words, reader discretion is advised and/or ask your parental units for permission before proceeding
pairing/characters: sarah & sara. yes, it is as annoying as it seems.
a/n: lol this is some weird ass crack/fix it/au smushing i just really like black canary in all forms and i can't get away from chuck so nothing is ~canon~ per se from either show other than the characters. actually. even then idk. whatever. i GIVE UP. [zero fucks given.mp3] tl;dr i did a lotta questionable things.

summary: hate and love are two very strong four letter words

(their relationship is simple

they hate each other because they are each other and, because of this, they understand the other more than anyone else ever will

and because of that, the term ‘hate’ isn’t as strong of a word as it could be.)

-

She should have known better than to track down this lead all the way to California on her own, but Sara’s never really been one to look before she leaped. That tended to take up (too much) time that could be better spent doing something more productive.

Besides, what counts is that she got the bastard; a few cuts and bruises are a small price to pay for coming out victorious in the end and it sure beats the alternative by far.

Unfortunately for her, successfully taking out an assassin does little to help with the blood that’s kind of gushing out of her abdomen at a concerning rate. Sara managed to stop it for a little while with a makeshift tourniquet but scaling a building to get to a second story window seems to have aggravated it. Notable mention also goes to the left side of her ribs where she caught an extremely lucky kick that also picked this time to act up against her. She was completely fine until she climbed into the house, and now Sara’s aching all over with even the smallest breath.

(motherfucking league of assassins)

It probably wasn’t her best idea to come in unannounced this way but this entire trip hasn’t exactly been a collection of her greatest hits, so she chalks it up to consistency.

The door swings open abruptly, missing her by less than an inch as she barely gets her crippled ass out of the way. The woman coming through yells a quick, ‘be right back,’ down the hall before turning on her heel to lash out with a right hook, a glint of light gives away the knife she was hiding in her hand, too.

Sara ducks instead of jumping back, letting the other woman lunge directly into her personal space, using her own momentum to turn her around and catch her in a headlock with her own arm. The knife is digging in her shoulder slightly, the tradeoff is that her elbow digs right into Sara’s cut from the amount of pressure she’s using to keep her down. Sara’s leg comes out to kick the door shut and shoves both of them into it, using it as leverage to keep the odds in her favor.

“Aw, come on now, Walker, this no way to greet an old friend who came to visit you.”

An annoyed huff is let out from the other woman, the tension slowly receding from her body when she realizes who the perpetrator is. “We’re not friends,’ is the curt response as she elbows Sara in the gut to get her to back off.

She probably should’ve seen that one coming, but as loathe as she is to admit it, blood loss is definitely getting to her by this point, and she ends up staggering back less gracefully than she’d like. Sara lets out a grunt, more out of frustration for giving herself away rather than out of actual pain. To add insult to injury, when she straightens up again the next breath she takes in is a distinct wheeze she has no chance of covering up.

“Jesus, what the hell happened to you, Lance?”

“Guess I walked down the wrong dark alley tonight.”

Her chuckle is caught in her throat, replaced with a rather violent coughing fit that makes it feel like her left ribs decided to share their pain with her right ribs and they’re having a nice little powwow at her expense. “Look,” she says, taking as deep a breath she can, “Sarah, please?”

“Damn it, I’m gonna regret this,” she mutters. “Get to my house, okay? I’m sure you already know where it is, so get a head start the way you came and I’ll get out of here and meet you there in ten, alright.”

-

“Sara? You here?”

“In the bathtub.”

“Bathtub?”

“Bathtub,” she affirms, “you can wash blood away from porcelain no problem but I have yet to find a carpet cleaner that actually gets blood stains out of carpet.” She shrugs when Sarah pokes her head in. “Didn’t wanna drip anywhere and it was getting a little out of hand so, y’know.”

Sara waves her hand halfheartedly, not really having much strength left to do anything more. It’s definitely hitting her big time at this point but she trusts Sarah to take care of her before any permanent damage happens. Walker was always a hothead, she just never kept a grudge very well.

“This looks bad, kid,” Sarah sighs. She pushes the jacket aside to get to the ripped shirt that’s soaked through, Sara’s skin is slick from all the blood and slipping it off is no problem, it pulls away from the gash without catching. “Serrated combat knife?”

“I think it was a diving knife, actually.”

“Ah, yes, that makes it so much better,” she deadpans. “You hurt your ribs on the left or the right?”

She punctuates her question with a poke to each side respectively, the hitching in Sara’s breath on the poke gives it away before she gets a chance to answer. Sarah feels up and down her left side, checking each rib thoroughly, “I don’t think any of them are broken but you did a hell of a number on every single one.”

“What can I say? Don’t like half-assing things I do, you know me.”

“Unfortunately, I do – so, what else are you hiding from me? And, don’t you dare lie.”

“Nothing else, I’m good as new other than what you’ve already found.” Sara lifts up three of her fingers together, “scout’s honor, ma.” She offers a satisfied smirk in response to Sarah’s eye roll before she walks away to get supplies to clean her up and get her fixed. It shouldn’t have surprised her when Sarah came back and doused her cut in iodine without warning.

Sara lets out a pointed ow but it does little more than make other Sarah laugh while she continues to clean up the wound; stitching up the thing is easy, it’s not jagged and it’s on a flat surface of her stomach that barely stings when she runs the needle through. As soon as she’s done dressing the cut, Sarah moves onto the ribs, although there’s not really much she can do for them outside of wrapping them as tightly as she can to deter overexertion without too much pressure and handing Sara a few oxy pills to take the edge off.

Both of them find their way to Sarah’s bed after changing into more comfortable shirts and pants, sipping on a beer, and waiting for Chinese to be delivered to the apartment. It’s probably not a good idea to be drinking when she’s got painkillers in her system but she figures it should be okay if Sara doesn’t plan on operating heavy machinery or rooftop hopping any time soon.

“Do I even want to know why you’re here, bleeding in my bathtub on a…Wednesday night?”

“I –“ she starts, not really sure how much she’s willing to tell Sarah right now. She shakes her head, laughing quietly at herself, “let’s just say, I ran into another old friend who wasn’t too thrilled about seeing me again.”

“All the way in California? You have a friend in Burbank you had to see that hates you this much.”

“All the way in Burbank, California,” she singsongs. Sara wants to say more, to explain exactly who she was in town for and why and she really would tell her, it’s just easier if she kept this to herself. It’s safer, too, but she knows better than to voice that particular opinion to Sarah's face.

The doorbell rings a second later, saving her from trying to find a way to work around having to explain herself in detail. While Sarah answers the door, she occupies herself with the TV, flipping through the channels until she finds one that’s showing a movie that sounds decent enough to watch while they eat. If anything, it’ll give them a topic of discussion that doesn’t revolve around Sara.

“Your favorite’s still chicken fried rice, right?” Sarah asks, holding out a full container and fork for her. The question isn’t really much of a question, it’s really more of a statement, if anything. She doesn’t even wait for an answer after Sara takes the food, already moving to settle back onto her side of the bed.

In that moment she gives up, Sarah drops everything and chooses to ask about what she picked for them to watch instead like she always does.

She’s reliable like that.

-

By the time they’ve finished breakfast at the diner down the street, Sara knows two things for sure: one, that was the best stack of pancakes she’s had in a while and two, she should’ve sucked it up and stitched up her cut herself.

Details that Sara is currently missing include: why Sarah is dating some geeky man-child, why Sarah said that Sara is her sister, and why they had to bother explaining her presence at all when this guy runs into them at the diner.

(“oh, god, chuck, i completely forgot we were supposed to get breakfast together – i’m so sorry.”

“this is my…sister. she’s just visiting for a little bit.”

“sam. her name is sam, it’s short for samantha.”)

She plays along with it, willing to see where Sarah ends up going with this; it’ll be a good breather in between marks and it’s not like she actually has much of a lead to go on now, anyways. Sara/Sam can afford a few more days hanging out in town, catching up with her newly minted sister.

It turns out this guy’s name is Chuck and Chuck has no car of his own, which makes it kind of awkward when it’s time for him to go to work and Sarah’s Porsche only has two seats. Sara offers to hang back and just walk back to the hotel but he says he wouldn’t want to get the way of sisterly bonding with a hint of an edge to when he speaks. He manages to call his sister in time before she left the house and catches a ride with her, instead.

Her amusement is contained to a small smirk the entire car ride to the same shopping center where Chuck works at the Buy More, keeping her face turned towards the window to absently watch the scenery. It’s not until Sarah hisses a shut up that she starts to actually laugh at this whole situation. “It’s not funny,” she continues, “he’s a nice guy.”

“Yeah, a nice guy for a nice girl who doesn’t use a throwing knife to push the snooze button on her alarm clock in the morning.”

“That was a bad morning, and, besides, Chuck is an assignment, it’s not like I wanted this.”

Sara shakes her head, turning to look Sarah in the eye, “please tell me you lost some sort of bet with the other kitty cats and that’s why you’re stuck babysitting. There’s no way you’d just be okay with this, Walker.”

“It’s complicated,” she sighs, gripping the steering wheel harder than necessary. “It’s more than just babysitting, Sara.”

“Hey, hey, it’s Sam, remember - you can tell your little sister anything, so spill!”

“I knew I should’ve picked a better cover story than siblings.”

“Yeah, not your finest ‘thinking on your feet’ moment there, big sis.”

Sarah looses a loud groan and runs a hand through her hair while they wait at the red light. Her forehead is scrunched the way it does whenever she was trying real hard not to punch Sara in the face for something or other. “I’ll explain everything at the Wienerlicious.”

After a beat of silent confusion, she explains that the Wienerlicious is a glorified hotdog-sausage place and, coincidentally, the same place the CIA chooses to house an operations base thus also making it her cover job.

“You’re fucking shitting me, right,” Sara blurts out when they pull up into a parking space in front of the restaurant.

“Oh man, this is way too good.”

-

Whoever first said, ‘how the mighty have fallen,’ clearly had visions of the future that featured assassin-turned-spy extraordinaire Sarah Walker dressed up in a Wienerlicious uniform – complete with evenly parted pigtails – front and center, she muses. If there was ever a perfect moment for that phrase it would definitely be now. Sara nearly takes a picture for posterity to use it as her background as a reminder that no matter how bad she gets beaten up, it will never be that bad in relation. Ultimately, she decides against it because having to prance around in that outfit all day is embarrassing enough on its own.

The restaurant is open now, and Sara finds herself sitting with a foot long hotdog as she mulls over the new information she’s just received while Sarah is manning the lunchtime rush.

She tuned out the part where Sarah was actually explaining the details of the Intersect, more concerned with trying to figure out whether or not the government actually had any intel on her and her former associates. Apparently, Chuck has this thing in his head and if he doesn’t flash on anything then there’s no dice. If he didn't recognize her at the diner then that’s good, so she doesn’t really feel the need to bother with it anymore; she lets Sarah continue, anyways, pretending to hold interest in what she’s saying – however, the more she drones on, the more Sara is confused about why the other Sarah has stuck around this long.

That whole issue aside, it turns out that Sarah wants to cash in her favor sooner instead of later, hence the whole sister thing. She wanted to keep her around longer to help her deal with a some black market arms dealer that Chuck flashed on a handful of days ago who’s trying to set up shop in town. The job requires a certain finesse that her current partner doesn’t exactly have and Sarah would prefer it if they could take care of this quietly without much fallout from involved parties.

It sounds simple enough and it’d be good to have someone else watch her six again; the times Sara isn’t a one person act are few and far between. Also, catching bad guys in the lawful gray area under the radar is always a super fun pastime of theirs.

-

“Maybe I should've done this one on my own - we just started and you’re looking a little worse for wear there, Walker.”

“You sure, kid? You were the one hacking up a lung when we first got up to the roof.”

“That’s probably because I got a rack of bruised ribs served to me the other night, jackass.”

“Guess our little Tweety bird’s not so tough after all, huh.”

“Kindly do me a favor and fuck off, please.”

-

The arms dealer turns out to be a funny joke because him and his group of followers are feisty but they’re not particularly organized in any useful way. They’re a makeshift gang of thugs that are more annoying to put down because of sheer volume rather than actual skill.

Still, it is fun fight to pick after the other night and it doesn’t aggravate any of her injuries badly enough that a few pills and a cold pint couldn’t fix afterwards which is why the two of them find themselves sitting at a mostly empty billiards bar that seems to favor retirees.

They haven’t done more than order their drinks and a basket of fries, sitting in relative silence, when Sarah asks her how she feels and she answers with ‘like I need a beer’ without really thinking about the sincerity behind the initial question. She feels bad as soon as the words leave her mouth, and she quickly adds, “it’s nothing I haven’t been through before.”

Sarah seems to be satisfied enough with that, humming a neutral sound that she chooses to interpret as an affirmation, then asks “where are you off to after this?”

She uses that to change the subject and she probably meant for it to sound offhanded, like something that’s a filler instead of something Sarah actually cares about. If it were anyone else it would have worked, except Sara can always hear the worry in her voice through even the worst static.

There’s the truth – that there’s a tiny lead that's just as likely to send her to eastern Canada as it is to South East Asia, or she could tell her the other truth – that she has no clue whatsoever.

Both seem like a good idea, because both are answers that Sarah won’t push. In actuality, Sara could most likely get away with telling her anything, true or not, without having to worry about explaining herself. Sarah hasn’t wanted anything to do with them ever since she walked away years ago and them is pretty much all Sara has occupied herself with as of late.

In the end, she goes with neither of those options, picking up her beer that was just delivered and chugging the entire glass after offering a quick, ‘cheers.’ Sarah slides her own beer over once she’s done, and the look she gets makes Sara wish she’d just given a straight answer in the first place.

“Don’t say it,” she starts, taking a swig out of her new glass. “It’s a waste of breath.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“I know what you wanted to say.” She raises an eyebrow in challenge, a silent dare to tell her that she’s wrong and she doesn’t know what that look was about. This has gone on long enough that she knows what it looks like when Sarah wants to tell her to stop being a shadow that goes after old grudges. “You’re a broken record, Walker.”

“I wouldn’t have to be one if you just listened to me for once.”

It’s not that easy to just listen and be over with it. Sarah took the proverbial high road, turned herself over to the government she used to undermine in a deal to save her own skin, and it works for her because she doesn’t have family the way Sara does. She doesn’t have a sister and a mother and a father that she still cares about, doesn’t have anything (anyone) that can be used for collateral.

They tried to hurt the people she loves and Sarah knows that without her having to say it out loud, so Sara doesn’t, to avoid sounding like the same broken record she just called out.

“You did good out there tonight,” she says instead. This is the first time in a long time she’s been able to see Sarah without anyone breathing down her back and she finds she misses just being able to have someone she can depend on. She doesn’t want to waste this opportunity arguing over a moot point.

Thankfully, Sarah allows the shift, “I can still hold my own – what, you thought I’d be washed up already?”

The mood between them lightens instantly, and they’re back to avoiding the darker parts of their relationship in favor of actually having a relationship to maintain. “Nah,” Sara huffs, “more like you don’t belong here, playing house and serving hotdogs to teenagers that like your cleavage more than the food for minimum wage.”

“It’s not like that –“

“I know – well, actually I don’t, but I get it: you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. That doesn’t mean it’s not a complete waste,” she sighs, popping a few fries into her mouth and getting up from her seat. She gets her jacket on while she continues, “and before you get any ideas, I’m not trying to get you to come with me. I just think you deserve better than a lame costume and a boyfriend you have to save from tripping over his own shoelaces, big sister.”

She squeezes Sarah’s shoulders lightly, then drops a small kiss to her temple in lieu of a goodbye; it makes leaving her behind again a little more bearable and it saves her from having to actually fight back the tears that are threatening to fall.

-

(it’s better this way

since she doesn’t really care

and they’re not really the same person at all because how could they be if she’s still sitting at the bar

while she’s walking out the door)

i'm your best friend when you're lonely

clouberding — Sat, 28 Dec 2013 09:44:32 GMT

rating: let's go with t to be on the safe side
pairing/characters: sarah/carina ish~~~
summary: SOMETIMES WHEN WE TOOOOUCH

They meet somewhere in Budapest speaking French at some coffee shop that sells Turkish coffee and Russian pastries.

It’s civil, in public, because they don’t want to attract any attention to themselves, don’t want to give away that they’re anymore than tourists who found a local business to sit down at and have a drink. Neither of them actually knows the other, it’s only a fluke that they’re speaking French since that’s the first thing that came out of one of their mouths.

Information about a place to meet up and at what time is hidden in a conversation about little nothings, their conversation superfluous in a way their fighting isn’t once they meet again at the safe house.

They’re more or less evenly matched and it makes their different fighting styles that much more important, though they seem to compliment each other more than anything. It makes everything drawn out, despite the hard hits and the well timed counters. Their squabble doesn’t end until after they’ve each taken three, nearly simultaneous, hits in a row and are lying flat out on the cold cement floor of the warehouse about three feet away from each other.

(why didn’t you bring a gun, carina asks, and sarah asks back, why didn’t you shoot me

but neither knows the other’s name until three more similar run-ins later)

Given their track records, it’s extremely unusual that Sarah is the one to show up out of the blue with an almost-foot-long gash running down her arm and another one that’s not much shorter on her torso at a safe house in Rome that Carina is currently occupying.

She’s been doing surveillance for the past week and a half, almost ready to put the next step into play when she opens to the door to a very bloody someone falling into her arms because they were previously slumped on the door. It takes every ounce of self control to not kill the person outright and see who it was before deciding what to do with them.

ID-ing the person isn’t hard, considering all Carina has to do is peel away the tactical hood that’s soaked in a good amount of sweat to reveal a ghostly pale Sarah. She’s not sure how she got here, let alone how she knew where to go, but Carina figures there are better times to ponder about that seeing as Sarah is this close to dying from blood loss.

The CIA probably wouldn’t take too kindly if one of their best master assassins died in a known safe house with one of their own present and capable.

Stitching her up is a lot easier because as soon as she lays Sarah flat out on the floor, she’s passed out with no signs of coming to any time soon. Carina does well enough, doing her best to keep the stitches as neat and straight as possible. It’s enough to not be noticeable, she gives up on trying to be next to perfect when she sees the faint outline of old injuries.

After she’s bandaged up and all the blood is wiped off her, Sarah doesn’t look that much worse for wear. Carina sticks an ice pack on her shoulder where it looks like it’s about to turn black and blue, wraps the ankle that’s swelling and props the entire leg up because not sure what’s going on there. She pulls a fresh t-shirt onto her before dropping some heavy duty pain killers on the nightstand next to the bed Carina moved her to.

Carina leaves a sticky note that says, “don’t do more stupid shit,” stuck to Sarah’s forehead and leaves without a trace of her ever being there.

It’s been a year, maybe two since Sarah last sees Carina; her memory is almost always hazy when it comes to her and it’s not like there’s any real reason to keep track. Their profession works alone by nature and doesn’t work well with others by trade, so really, they never have a reason to meet again unless they happen to be in the same place.

This time happens to be Berlin, on a rooftop of some residential building along the outskirts of the city. There’s a nice view of the city skyline that she would appreciate any other time if Carina wasn’t currently hacking up a lung while wheezing in pain from a good number of ribs that are at least bruised from her less than graceful landing earlier.

Sarah is the makeshift extraction team sent in to get Carina out of a mess that happens because her inside man bailed and her window of opportunity to make a clean getaway was compromised as a result. She’s the closest one to where the operation was, the only one in the vicinity with enough skill to pull this off with both of them alive and in one piece, so she’s the one they call. It’s probably a good thing that it’s Sarah anyways, she receives no retaliation from helping Carina when the situation got sticky – somewhere along the lines, Sarah always ends up owing her without the opportunity to pay her back.

For once, it seems like Carina can actually stick around long enough to collect on her debt.

Thanks to a ridiculously high pain tolerance on her part, Sarah manages to usher Carina with little difficulty down the fire escapes, through a jimmied window into an empty apartment, outside and then down the street, into a hotel. They manage to check in and get to their room before Carina starts to actually complain about how much her insides hurt when she breathes and Sarah tries really hard not to laugh at someone in actual pain, even if she’s whining like an eight-year-old.

A quick look at Carina’s upper body shows at least three ribs are definitely bruised, a poke at the spot that’s already a deep shade of purple gives away two cracked ones, and the rest are hopefully alright.

She has to rely on the drug store a couple blocks down for something to ease the pain and knock Carina out. Nothing is actually strong enough to do anything meaningful, which is how Sarah ends up at the liquor store next door buying a handle of whiskey that should fill in where the drugs don’t.

She stays until she’s poured a sixth shot for her, to the point where words are slurred and she can’t tell that Sarah has only been pretending to drink with her.

(maybe we should stop doing this, sarah says, and carina answers, we can’t stop who we are

they’re damaged bodies, broken bone and torn skin – expecting to die and fighting to live)

They part somewhere in Burbank, California after eating Polish sausages and drinking Italian soda at a German hotdog shop.

It’s less civil than their meeting, despite being in public, because the walls of the stores are riddled in bullet holes and the furniture is nearly all broken and smashed. They’re not locals trying to get out of the heat, and nobody does much of any talking while they’re busy fending off skewers and dodging jars of condiments being thrown at them.

Years have passed between them but it does little to affect the way they move easily around each other – blocking, dodging, attacking – without getting in the other’s way. They work together in a raw chemistry that’s never been explored physically, only when one of them shows up beaten and battered and whoever’s on the receiving end says nothing about it, only fixes them and leaves before they see the actual ugly parts.

They work together, they live together, and they die together.

And when they wake up tomorrow morning neither Carina, nor Sarah is there.

a debt left unpaid

clouberding — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 07:17:25 GMT

rating: g
pairing: hg/myka
a/n: we shall pretend that there was never an artifact that showed up in boone and so on and so forth. i apologize in advance?
summary: life is what you make of it, and even then sometimes it falls short

Routines have always been something she tries so desperately to avoid – they’re signs of settling, accepting that life only has so much to offer and the complacency with that being just that.

Having any sort of routine is something she spends most of her youth fighting against.

It works for a little while, with the Warehouse and all. She occupies herself when her brother isn’t looking and she finds a sanctuary that offers everything but a mundane existence. It is truly a treasure trove for endless wonder and she basks in the novelty of every day it brings her.

No two days are ever alike, no two artifacts ever posing the exact same threat – but it would seem that even this, this endless wonder is too good to be true.

Because one day is exactly like the others because it isn’t like yesterday since yesterday she has her daughter and today, she’s lost her.

The days begin to become the same after that; every day starting as a fight to win back what she’s lost and ending in a defeat that she refuses to take sitting down. Everything blends together, the curiosities barely registering with her when they get them. It nearly gets her killed more times than she’s willing to admit while going after them, and even those days feel the same.

It sends her to a dark place, one that’s far greater than she ever imagines she could fall into. As her luck would have it, bronzing isn’t the cure-all remedy she hopes it is for her monotony and she only ends up falling even deeper. She carries her demons alone, not allowing anyone to see how bad it’s truly gotten and for a second, she almost manages to fool herself into thinking she’s not actually that far gone.

Pesky thing about routines is that they’re extremely easy to fall back into no matter how long you’ve been away.

-

She starts writing again because she finds it balances out the order in her new life.

There are no glorious adventures, no world counting on her to find and retrieve an artifact in time lest it turns everyone to clay or something or other. There’s only a quiet existence, in a quiet town, where the biggest thing that’s happened all month is Benjamin from two streets down running over a mailbox or two while learning how to drive.

This is a different kind of tedium, one she finds she’s rather fond of. It makes her life simple in a way it’s never really been and she appreciates that the most anyone expects of her on a daily basis is to cook something that’s considered edible.

Still, she misses it quite often.

She doesn’t dare go back, the thought terrifies her. She’s not confident enough in herself to allow that indulgence. They told her in another world, she gladly gives up her life to save the Warehouse and the others; for them that is enough to wipe her slate clean, however she isn’t so easily convinced.

Perhaps one day, she can see what they see. For now, she settles for this.

Things are better this way.

-

It’s years since she’s last seen her, she would say she barely remembers what she looks like but that would be a lie no one believes. Truthfully, she remembers most everything – her voice, her hair, the exact shade of brown her eyes are. The only thing she can’t seem to remember is what she looks like when she’s happy.

(it’s a shame because she remembers her smile being so pretty)

She holds out hope that one day, they could be that team they speak so fondly of again, but the days turned to months that turned to years until that memory is pushed into the depths of her mind, put on hold in exchange for more pressing matters.

It should be noted that she hasn’t forgotten; forgetting would be too easy and nothing between them has ever been easy.

The universe nearly proves just as much when a young woman walks into the bookstore on a warmer November afternoon. She looks like she could be in college, wearing a simple white button-up, a leather jacket, and jeans that bring back memories that are never too far away.

She finds herself comparing the two subconsciously, their likeness uncanny save the warmer hair color and the colder eyes.

The girl pulls something out of the bag she’s wearing: a package for her, her name and address from the B&B on it but no return address. It’s wrapped in plain brown paper, folded carefully and tied with a loose string a few times. She can’t be certain, though the neat scrawl on the paper is familiar to her.

She’s told that this was one of the things left behind from the girl’s step-mother. In the letter that’s left for her and her father, there’s no mention of the package or what to do with it but she finds it safely tucked away in a place only the two of them know about. She must have forgotten to send it before everything, the girl says, more disappointed than anything.

She asks if the girl knows what it is, she simply shrugs with a familiar smirk tugging at her lips.

“Endless wonder, maybe.”

-

The wrapping paper falls away easily to reveal a medium sized book, the cover a worn dark red and its entire contents are written in the same familiar handwriting; an unused ticket to Rapid City from five years ago acts as a makeshift bookmarker for the dedication.

To Agent Bering,

For it ended up being me who owes you –
I still hope you can forgive me.

jaeger pilot warehouse agents

clouberding — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 04:30:00 GMT

rating: g
characters/pairing: it's like gen with an emphasis on hg and myka
a/n: pacrim au. but okay so. i took a number of liberties regarding the pacific rim universe and w13 in general basically. that said, i considered the jaeger academy more of an actual training academy you'd typically see where kaiju are a pressing matter but not so much in the doomsday type of way in the movie. i guess think of division from nikita but with kaiju and drifting and jaegers, yeah? something akin to that. also, i always enjoy the idea of hg actually being an elemental part of the warehouse family so she's the one that's in the in crowd and myka's the newbie. hopefully no one hates me for that but i always loved pete and hg being bros and claudia hero-worshipping hg was the cutest thing sooOoooOoooOooo i don't really apologize for that. THAT SAID. i have no clue what i wrote honestly, it kind of just came out to be this...
summary: ain't no party like a jaeger academy party cause a jaeger academy party has deadly kaijuuu!! wait what.

It takes approximately two weeks for her to confirm that there’s actually a new recruit coming to the prestigious Jaeger Academy.

News travels fast around here, especially so when it involves someone being brought into the academy. There’s not many of them to begin with and new recruits are seldom ever introduced in the middle of the year. So far, Helena’s managed to hear bits and pieces from time to time, but she has nothing concrete until one rather unassuming lunch.

It’s just her and Pete at the start of their communal lunch break, arriving together after being in Battle Tactics during first block. They secure their usual spot off to the side of the cafeteria after picking their food up. Pete wastes almost no time before digging into today’s ‘turkey dinner extravaganza’ that’s more of a poor substitute for the Thanksgiving meals they’re all missing back home than anything else. Relatively, though, it is better than what they’re used to getting.

Around the third mouthful of mashed potatoes mixed with questionable stuffing that’s shoveled into his mouth, Pete mentions something about ‘the new girl’ that Helena only manages to decipher after knowing him for two years. “Can we try again without the unflattering, half-masticated food in your mouth, please, Peter?”

“I said –” he starts before swallowing completely, “have you seen the new girl, yet?”

“I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure, no.”

She can’t help the small smirk that surfaces when she catches him making a face at her, one that says “you knew what I was saying all along, you meanie.” It only lasts for a second, his face more occupied with inhaling more food than her for the time being.

She sets off to start on her own lunch, trying to figure out just exactly how she’s supposed to begin the process of eating her turkey sandwich without it going everywhere but in her mouth. It takes her a good five minutes or so before she even attempts to actually consume part of it when a fork and knife are dropped ceremoniously on top of her sandwich.

“You’re a Godsend,” Helena declares to the girl looming over her. She shrugs emphatically, short red hair flinging haphazardly with a smug look that could very well rival Helena’s own, “I know, I know, try not to start a fan club for me or something – I’m not really into the whole spotlight deal, ya know?”

Helena only laughs and shakes her head, refocusing her attention on her sandwich because despite its odd appearance, she is quite hungry. This morning, she opts to sleep in to help along a rather sore shoulder so her breakfast is nothing more than half a donut she steals from Pete before class and a very tiny cup of yogurt. To her right, Claudia settles down in the spot between herself and Pete; the youngest of them settling down comfortably in the middle of her older counterparts in their lively trio.

“Speaking of things you know, do you know about the new girl yet?”

“Yeah, me and HG were just talking about her. You see her yet?”

“Uh-huh,” she murmurs, “she’s in my history class for first block. She’s pretty cool. Name’s Bering or something and she’s super smart, caught on really fast – Artie loves her.”

“Is she hot?”

“Peter.”

“What?” Pete shouts, with a mouthful of whatever barely managing to stay inside. The rest of his speech is incomprehensible as he continues, “it’s a legitimate question! You’re the hottest one here and you refuse to kiss me after that one time.”

“Peter – I’ve told you time and again: we do not, under any circumstances, ever talk about that. And, how many times must I tell you to stop talking with your mouth full? We. Are not. Heathens.”

Helena fixes a glare on Pete from across the table as he opens his mouth once more with what’s probably a less than clever retort. Whatever he has planned is halted by Claudia yelling an abrupt, “hey!” and with a pudding cup in each hand.

“Starsky,” a look pointed look at Pete.

“Hutch,” one directed at Helena.

“You guys can find out anything your little hearts desire next block. New girl has hand-to-hand with you guys. Now,” she sets the pudding in front of each of them after some wiggling in the air, “eat pudding and let me finish the rest of my lunch in peace.”

Helena rolls her eyes as Pete scowls as best he can while being ridiculously excited about his new gift. He’s poured most of the cup into his mouth by the time she agrees to call it a truce until next block and he actually takes a second to rethink opening his mouth before answering with a solid nod. “Right, I do believe that’s settled then.”

“And they say I’m the immature one around here.”

-

Helena meets the Academy’s new girl in a three-on-one fight where she’s taken out two more mediocre trainees and Helena is the only one left after a mere three minutes and some odd seconds.

It’s a completely pitiful performance coming from the people who are supposed to be on par with her for a spot as Ranger but for this new girl, it’s rather impressive as far as these things go.

This would probably be more impressive if Helena doesn’t manage to throw a perfectly executed flying arm bar to pin her to the mat – no matter, though. She’s actually feeling her muscles strain, the fight starting to drag on longer than what she usually deals with. It takes her more effort than she cares to admit to fling herself in the air because this new girl is ridiculously tall.

That said, it’s not as if she’s not enjoying herself.

In fact, Helena hasn’t had this much fun in a long while, hasn’t felt this good because no one has been able to keep up with her. A pleasant exhilaration comes from being truly challenged. She almost doesn’t want it to end – but that would leave her superiority at stake and she couldn’t possibly let the new girl beat her on their first encounter.

No, no, give her one more go out of this position and the next time she takes her to the mat, she’ll give a finishing blow.

The girl’s lasted long enough to earn the respect of the others watching on, being handed one by Helena won’t affect that; too many people (read: everyone) have succumbed to this particular fate.

(in any case, pinning her down again to finish the match is easy, however the downside is that she now has a pretty nice shiner she’ll have to explain to Pete)

-

“That is epic!!! I can’t believe she got you.”

For the record, it is absolutely not 'epic' that she catches the receiving end of the new girl’s elbow as she flips her over. The girl is tall and Helena doesn’t dodge quickly enough to avoid her limbs flailing haphazardly while she comes crashing down to the mat.

It’s not so bad when it happens or during the rest of their combat block but by the time dinner rolls around and she sees Claudia sitting at their table waiting for her with Pete, it appears that she's not very well off. She refuses to look at a mirror, judging from how much it hurts if she blinks a little too hard it’s probably five different shades of ugly right now.

“It was crucial, Claud, you should’ve seen it! One second HG's taking her down, the next BAM - one way ticket to Shiner Station.”

“Do shut up, Lattimer. You didn't even see it, you were too busy getting your rear handed to you on a silver platter by Amanda at the other end of the room.”

The face of disdain she makes at Pete is something she instantly regret. As soon as her muscles start moving, a throbbing sensation engulfs her face and she considers actually going to the infirmary for the first time.

“Psh, whatever, slugger – new girl got you good any which way you slice that loaf of bread.”

“Actually,” another voice floats in from above before Helena gets a chance to retort, “I’m pretty sure I’m the one you should be calling slugger.”

The voice is one she’s heard recently, when Claudia turns to its owner her face lights up as she chirps an excited, “Myka!” – which Helena assumes is her name – while Pete has absolutely no tact and simply shouts, “hey, it’s new girl!” She’s actually behind Helena, so she has to contort rather oddly to see; she only makes part of the way before the other girl slides over to the side asking if the empty seat is okay to use.

Peter nods rather enthusiastically, no doubt already trying to think of ways to win her over. Claudia flashes an obscene smile – when Helena raises an eyebrow at this, she finds her shin on the receiving end of a well placed kick underneath the table. “Of course,” Helena grits, “someone should put it to good use. None of us ever do.”

The new girl – Myka – sits down with her tray, getting as cozy as she possibly can in a plastic-metal chair at a standard issue cafeteria table. “You know, try as you might, these chairs and these tables only provide so much comfort,” she teases. Truthfully, Helena finds the process rather endearing than anything.

Myka’s mouth works, trying to find something to say back. Helena catches her off guard and she can practically see the gears turning in her head to find anything to answer with. “Oh! Yeah, uh. Yeah,” is about as much as she manages to get out before averting her gaze to anywhere but at Helena.

In the midst of finding the juice box on Claudia’s tray fascinating, her head suddenly jerks up and back in Helena’s direct. “Hey! Listen, sorry, about your eye. I don’t think I got a chance to apologize before but I’m really sorry for being so rough…great first impression, huh?”

Pete beats Helena to the punch, sending him off into a fury of animation. “Are you kidding? It’s about time someone taught HG a lesson. She’s been whipping everyones’s butt in the Academy since day one – been a long time coming, trust me.”

“Yeah, he’s kind of right, Myka,” Claudia adds in between bites of her cheeseburger. “HG pretty much owns everyone here. Don’t feel so bad, I’m pretty sure everyone is in love with you now cause of it. Personally, I’d milk it.”

“Bu- but, I mean, look at her face! It’s awful! I did that!”

“Thank you, for all the flattery, really - you lot do wonders for a girl’s confidence.” It’s really not as bad as Myka makes it out to be. And, granted, while her face isn’t its best, it’s only a nasty bruise at the end of the day. There’s no reason to further guilt trip someone who’s already thoroughly guilt themselves. “All joking aside though, they are right, darling. It’s nothing to fret over – as they say, all is fair.”

This seems to be enough to placate Myka and assuage her guilt for the rest of dinner.

She doesn’t really have a chance to bring it up again, anyways, because once Helena gives them the go-ahead Pete and Claudia bombard Myka with questions about nearly every aspect of her life. Myka does a pretty good job of fielding everything from “what’s your favorite flavor of fudge” (“I don’t eat sugar”) to “do you have any other specialties outside of giving people black eyes” (“well, I used to fence”).

Helena doesn’t join in the questioning, she prefers to observe and listen for the time being.

What from she gathers so far, it would seem safe to say that their mismatched group has earned a new member.

-

As it turns out, Helena brushing off her injury did little to actually quell Myka’s guilty conscious. In fact, it did so little that sometime after dinner during their free block, she hunts down Helena on her way to the workshop to meet Claudia.

Myka nearly skids into her after running to catch her from down the hall, coming to a jarred stop mere inches from her person; her arms flail in all directions from her sides and Helena can’t fight down the reflex that shields her face from another swinging limb.

The other girl seems to notice the minor flinch and, if it’s actually possibly, looks even more guilty than she already was. “Oh, god, HG! I’m so sorry!”

“It’s quite alright, dear, you managed to miss me this time.” Helena brushes herself off absentmindedly, straightening her jacket in an attempt to regain her composure. “However, I am at a loss as to why you’ve nearly collided into me.”

There’s a bit of stammering before Myka remembers her purpose for seeking Helena out and Helena decides that she might enjoy her ability to make her flustered so easily.

She waits patiently in the middle of the hallway as other trainees pass by until Myka finally gets out a full sentence to ask her if she’s been in to see the nurse about her eye yet. Helena insists that she’s had worse before, that it’s nothing to fuss over but apparently, this girl has a bit of a demanding streak in her and she insists that Helena get it checked just in case she has a concussion or something serious.

Helena is pretty hell-bent on continuing to the workshop until Myka’s face goes from extremely determined to extremely worried in a matter of less-than-seconds. She prides herself in being levelheaded in all situations but she does something akin to panic, finds herself agreeing to go to the infirmary if it will stop Myka from babying her.

(“I’m not babying you! It’s a legitimate concern – your face is like half a dozen shades of black and blue!”)

The nurse only confirms what Helena’s been trying to tell Myka to no avail – that it’s just a very bad bruise and it will heal fine with a little bit of time. Helena swears she hears the nurse mutter something else about “karma biting her in the ass” as they leave the room.

“Well, that was an utter waste of both our time.”

“Yeah, well, I feel better knowing for sure that you’re okay. The way you talk about it, it’s like you got a paper cut or something stupid.”

If only it were a paper cut. Sure they bleed an excessive amount, however they do without the throbbing pain that passes through her face every so often. “I don’t see what you’re so worried about, the way you fight this couldn’t possibly be the first time you’ve clocked someone – albeit inadvertently in this case.”

“I-I mean, yeah! Of course, I have b-but this is different!”

She stops her train of thought despite looking like she wants to continue. Helena turns to face Myka more fully, raising an eyebrow and nodding her head in a gesture for her to go on.

“I…didn’t want to hurt you.”

Helena’s face scrunches up at the confession, eyes narrowing at Myka despite her shorter stature. “What, are you saying you let me win?”

“No! No, of course not – it’s just, that, that you’re HG Wells and everyone talks about you and I just – didn’t want to get on your bad side, is all.”

“My god,” Helena barks out in the middle of a laughing fit. It’s rude, she knows, but it’s one of the most absurd things she’s heard in a long time since Pete asks their history teacher why we never tried to domesticate kaijus and keep them in something comparative to Jurassic Park in the ocean. “Myka, darling, what exactly have you heard about me?”

Myka wrings her hands, bites her lip, finding the floor much more interesting than the conversation they’re having now.

Helena reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, “you can tell me what you’ve heard, I’ve probably heard it before myself. In fact, there’s even a high chance that I’m the one who started some of the them.”

After a few beats her gaze finally lifts from the floor and Myka takes a deep breath, mustering the courage to get it all out.

“They say you’re the best candidate for being a jaeger pilot and that you more or less run the place? The details on that were kind of sketchy, like you have your ways around things because Artie doesn’t really like you a lot but you’re super smart so you never actually get caught. And even though Artie doesn’t favor you, most the other instructors do. And there’s other stuff but –”

This time, Helena manages to withhold the laughing, schooling her face into a mostly neutral mask although there’s a certain glimmer in her eyes.

“Okay, okay, calm down there. I would hate to have to take you back to the nurse, that woman is certifiably dreadful.” She softens her expression, offering a warm smile to put the other girl at ease. “In any case, I assure you that you’re safe from any retribution on my behalf.”

Finally, Myka is visibly relieved and she looks like she’s less likely to run if Helena so much as looks at her the wrong way.

“Yeah? That’s, that’s good!” she squeaks, a little less confident than she looks. “Thanks, HG. That’s really good to hear.”

“Helena, darling – all my friends call me Helena, though the other two here are rather taken with using my initials.”

-

Every so often, the Academy has kaiju attack drills that are supposed to mimic real life emergencies to get trainees used to the sudden attacks that occur if they’re selected to be Rangers.

Trainees are expected to respond to the incoming threat based on their specialization. Techs take care of the equipment, engineers get the jaegers ready, so on and so forth. Pilot candidates, like Helena, are expected to suit up and head over to the mock-pod sim with their partner.

The next drill happens approximately five weeks since Myka joins, just as Helena suspects. Though it’s probably improper form to make an algorithm aimed at predicting when decidedly random occurrences are supposed to happen, Helena can’t be blamed for Artie being completely predictable about certain things. Besides, it’s not so bad because sometimes Mrs. Frederic initiates drills; she’s yet to be able to figure those out – considering her nature, Helena doubts she’ll ever succeed.

For what it’s worth, the situations are always challenging enough, varying in a number of parameters from number and kind of kaiju to how many jaegers are deployed to handicaps placed on specific jaegers.

In fact, during the last drill her and Pete were in a jaeger that was in the middle of maintenance prior to the attack. As a consequence, the left side didn’t function properly, malfunctioning to the point where it’s mostly useless until a kaiju rips the arm clean off and Pete has the mind to use it like a baseball bat. Helena is more or less incapable of doing much with a dead leg and no arm, so desperate times called for bribery of the highest tier with a secret stash of Leena’s peanut butter and chocolate cookies she saves just for these occasions. She promises the whole lot to Pete under the condition that he’ll listen to what Helena has to say before going off on his gut. At the end, it takes them three times longer than usual to eliminate the threat and, all things considered, Helena takes it at a point of pride that they finished the bastard off alone.

She tries to tell Artie as much but Artie doesn’t feel quite the same way because pilots shouldn’t have to bribe their partners in order to be in sync, they just have “feel together in the drift.” It would seem that being mind melded to Pete holds little advantage over not when it comes to interpreting his many vibes – at least it is for Helena.

Which is probably why Artie explicitly instructs her that, under no uncertain circumstances, are she and Pete to ever drift again if she is unable to respect the importance of drift compatibility.

It’s probably also why Myka gets assigned with Pete in their classes and Helena gets stuck with this hunk of jock, Nate, that’s more focused on doing fancy poses than actually doing any effective fighting.

To make matters worse, they’re less than five minutes away from doing the drop and her lovely partner is nowhere to be seen. If he’s not suited up and ready in front of her in the next sixty seconds, they’ll probably miss it altogether and she’d rather not find herself in Artie’s office a third time this week.

Especially not for that poor excuse of a recruit.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, yes?

-

In this case desperate measures include bribing Pete with another secret stash of peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies to allow her to take Myka off his hands and stick him with Nate for this round.

Helena expects a talking to after the drill is over because no way in hell would he ever in a million years believe that she does that well with Nate – as exceptional as she is, even she can only do so much for him.

As it turns out, Myka’s unique charm doesn’t only work on their small group. In fact, she’s found a way to wiggle herself under Artie’s skin in a way Helena couldn’t even begin to imagine. He’s so taken with the new recruit’s exceptional skills under duress that he forgets that’s that they weren’t supposed to be in the mock-pod together.

Well, almost forgets.

Helena’s gets to teach rookies all about why drift-compatibility is so important and why trainees must trust their instructors when they’re assigned partners for two weeks. Myka obviously gets off with nothing barring a stern warning about not letting Helena “corrupt” her in any way.

All in all, she figures it could’ve gone worse.

-

“We made a good team, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, we did.”

“I can see it now: headlines everywhere – Wells and Bering, killing kaiju, saving the day.”

“Bering and Wells.”

“We’ll keeping thinking on that.”

(years later, when they’re finally assigned their own jaeger, she’s proudly revealed with ‘Bering and Wells’ on her chest plate)

of what we could and could never be

clouberding — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 07:14:41 GMT

rating: g
pairing: carina + sarah or carina/sarah, it depends on the angle you tilt your head and how much you squint your eyes
summary: how cruel it is, the fate of two sides of the same coin: always together while always apart

They’re fifteen and three weeks into the sophomore year of high school and just as much into their training.

They’ve seen each other in the hallways and around headquarters but they don’t talk, not really. There isn’t much to talk about, anyways, and when they do exchange words, it’s about something trivial that doesn’t go very deep.

Classes have barely started, she’s pretty sure she completely sucks at chem but when Mr. Martin tells their class to pick partners, she picks her.

She sits down in the empty seat next to her at the station, smiles at her and refocuses back on Mr. Martin – opens her notebook and starts scribbling down notes in handwriting sloppier than she expects. She doesn’t introduce herself or say hi or ask if it’s okay, like they’ve known each other for years and obviously they would be partners, because why wouldn’t they be.

(this is where it begins, but whenever she thinks about it, it seems like the ending more than anything)

When they graduate high school, Sarah goes to Harvard, Carina, too, but at the end of fall semester, she can’t stand the Ivy League types and transfers down to Florida and joins the club rugby team.

Every break for those four years, Sarah visits her. Even though they don’t train together anymore, when they get together it’s like they’re lab partners again.

She could go anywhere she feels like and she always chooses Florida and Thanksgiving with Chinese food burritos becomes a comforting tradition.

(sometime in between the third year and the fourth, they spend more time sitting in silence more than anything)

They pick assignments the day after they’re done with undergrad and Carina goes to the DEA while Sarah goes to the CIA.

It’s unexpected because she’s sure they would at least talk about it, but they don’t and this is where it leads them. Since they don’t fully belong to the agencies, technically loans from Special Ops, they’ll see each other again. It’s not so bad, she thinks, sicne they’re still listed as partners even though it’s loosely so.

At the same time, there’s this nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach that scares her more than she’ll admit.

(she starts to think that each time could be the last time)

Special Ops sends her on a job in Nagata one summer, she’s allowed to make it a two-man op if she wants to – she ends up taking Zondra.

(the call rings exactly twelve times before it goes to voicemail and the answering machine message is in portugese)

She thinks they can finally go back to the way they’re supposed to be when they’re together when Sarah’s stationed in Burbank and she’s given an odd job there with a drug diamond.

The left hook she gets is familiar.

Everything else, not so much.

This guy Chuck is more annoying than she actually cares for and she tells her as much. Being blunt seems to be the wrong way to go about things because she suddenly puts her guard up, defends him to kingdom come. He’s nothing like the quarterback she was in love with in high school, nothing like the pre-law guy she’s enamored with in college, nothing like that partner she has that dies.

He’s nothing like anything she expects and suddenly it all feels so wrong.

She tries to ignore all the signs that are different, tries to focus on everything that’s still the same.

It works for a second but the harder she tries to concentrate, the more she finds that there’s not enough to make it through the week.

(she vows to make it less painful; grab the diamond quick and get out even quicker)

It hurts more than she wants it to – she stays farther away to make it stop.

She takes her name off her partner list and she doesn’t see her again for however long. She doesn’t realize she stops keeping track long before until the two of them run into her at her fake wedding.

The boy thinks he loves Sarah, and he probably does. Not the one she knows but the one he’s been living with. It crosses her mind of a brief second that this idiot doesn’t know the half of what he thinks he knows – then again, maybe it’s she who is the one that doesn’t know.

There’s a beauty in it that she learns to begrudgingly appreciate.

She knows a person that mirrors a part of her that she keeps hidden away after all these years. A person that knows where she’s going before she even knows, herself, and says all the right things at all the right times.

That person used to be someone who made everything better – now she just makes it worse.

(it’s uncertain whether the unease comes from being away from her or being close to her)

There’s immediate regret the moment they’re alone together for the first time in a long time. It’s possible it’s too long, although she finds that she still can’t stop fidgeting in front of her, so maybe it’s not long enough contrary to what Sarah says.

The silence is welcome because the loudness of the place they’re in drowns out the sound of her own voice when she orders another scotch neat. The burn lasts for a second before the warmth seeps in, all the way down her throat and into her stomach and out to every part of her body. It’s comforting in a way it really shouldn’t be, however she can’t bring herself to care.

When she orders another one shortly after and makes it a double, she stops her from picking up the glass with a soft hand that’s deceptively strong on her wrist.

She doesn’t intend on looking up at her but then she throws her for another loop and takes the glass, downing the amber liquid herself in one go. What she finds is a look she can’t place and doesn’t like, moves her eyes to anywhere but Sarah to avoid a talk she doesn’t want.

She tries to find an explanation of some sort except it’s unnecessary.

The look means something but the question never comes and she manages to convince herself that the feeling in her stomach is relief.

(maybe she really doesn’t know her anymore and maybe it terrifies her and maybe it’s okay all at the same time)

One last try.

One last try and this entire thing will be over either way. It’s weak that she waits this long to do anything about it.

She puts those thoughts out of her mind, convincing the smallest part of her that she tries to figure this out but it never works out because, for some reason, nothing she does is ever enough to actually keep them apart. It’s not for lack of effort because she sincerely tries and its not her fault if there’s something that won’t let her succeed.

They get face to face before she gets a chance to walk the other way. As it seems to be their wont, they don’t talk; saying all the things she wants to say but she never can without actually saying them.

For a moment it feels like they’re back in high school, sophomore year, in that old classroom all those years ago. The room they’re in transforms into something more familiar than it has a right to. They’re kids again and the world becomes that much simpler.

She can almost hear the chalk squeaking on the chalkboard and Robby Green whispering jokes at his desk behind them. The face in front of her is a familiar friend and a lost stranger all wrapped into one.

Suddenly, she tries to remember a little too hard – the scenery breaks and they’ve aged far beyond their years, lives twisting and turning until they’re not too sure which way is up anymore.

The look she knows is gone, too.

She knows there’s something in her face, in her eyes, except that’s as far as she gets. She doesn’t know what she wants to tell her, can’t read anything anymore.

(the other foot she’s been waiting to drop finally does and it still manages to take her by surprise)

The feeling that used to always be there behind her chest starts to fade away; she doesn’t know if it’s because she’s gotten used to it or if she’s finally done.

She finds she’s just glad it’s gone.

(he confesses that he’s loved her without knowing who she is –

she never confesses that she loves the person she knew)

summer of spy

clouberding — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 05:42:02 GMT

rating: t-ish for tweenz bc language but not really
characters: carina, sarah, alex
a/n: i was driving to the airport to pick my big brother up and this popped in my head for god knows why because i honestly have no clue where it came from. it would seem i have a gift for absurd crack.
summary:

Camp Little Hawk.

43.7947 latitude, -97.1292 longitude.

Middle of nowhere South Dakota, discretely sandwiched between dinky Minnehaha County and even dinkier McCook county, ten miles west of the nearest town, lining the banks of North Island Lake – population: roughly 317.

Officially, they’re a sleep away co-ed summer camp where kids can be kids without ruining their parents’ houses, reputations, and the like.

Unofficially, they’re a sleep away co-ed summer camp where kids can be kids without ruining their parents’ houses, reputations, and the like while training to become elite spies.

They’re out on the lake during their free block, soaking in some sun on some giant inner tubes, just floating around.

It’s the fifth summer they spend together at Little Hawk and this is a part of the routine they’ve taken to over the years – checking the bulletin board, before coming out to discuss their possible courses of action at their leisure. No one is around to bother them, and the lake is calm enough that they stay in a comfortable spot that’s both close enough and far away enough from shore.

A sigh of longsuffering breaks their brief silence after they’ve paddled out, loosing a noncommittal hum in response, then “are you sure there aren’t any bank heists?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I triple-checked for you, Miller.”

When two super spies suddenly go soft for each other and settle down best they can, the end result is a one Carina Miller who is trained to be a spy practically since day one of her existence. Her parents will attest to letting her “choose her own path,” but for a pair of renown government agents, their lack of subtlety is deplorable.

(Carina’s first summer here a direct result of her asking her parents if she can go to summer gymnastics camp with her friend Mable, which they promptly took as general interest in any summer camp ever.)

As luck would have it, Carina actually finds a reason to finally enjoy the perks of being a spy’s daughter and she’s come back willingly ever since – despite how much of a front she puts up when her parents remind her to pack.

“So, what are we left with then, Walker,” another sigh of almost pure distain fills the void.

The part of their routine where they check the bulletin board for jobs is actually when Carina goes for a popsicle in the mess hall and Sarah is the diligent one.

Sarah Walker is Carina’s designated partner in crime, the one that keeps her in line while also managing to facilitate her whims. Sarah has some irrefutable charm that none of the counselors and directors alike can’t seem to deny; they’ve gotten away with boatloads with some quick talking from Sarah and Carina looking at least slightly guilty for whatever they’ve done.

Carina thinks it has something to do with Sarah’s dad – apparently, he’s some conman and Sarah gets put into the system, ends up here because she’s placed in foster care with the camp’s director. Then again, that could be why she gets away with nearly everything. But from what she tells Carina about her dad, he seems like a pretty cool guy.

It could go either way, really. Probably both.

Regardless, she’s the brains and Carina is…whatever Sarah tells her she’s supposed to be to get the job done (even if it’s not a prized bank heist).

“Uh, some software security thing that’s way too easy, and this little tower heist in the city,” Sarah replies, offhandedly, running her hands aimlessly across the top of the water.

Her tone is feigned distraction, but Carina perks up as soon as she hears ‘tower heist’ and sits up so fast to look at Sarah, she nearly tosses both her sunglasses and what’s left of her popsicle into the lake.

“What city?”

“Big Apple.”

“What do we have to do?”

“Infiltrate a fifty floor tower and get to the thirty-ninth floor to download a black box and release a dummy virus into their server.”

“Well, shit. Sign me up.”

“Way ahead of you, slowpoke.”

“Wait, you’re telling me you’re bringing the pipsqueak along for this?”

Carina knows her area of expertise isn’t exactly in reading the fine print on things, but surely, there isn’t anything anywhere that says that a rookie is required for a three man op. Sarah is clearly lacking the finesse she normally has, and it’s up to her to pick up the slack before this all goes to hell before it even starts. “She’s not even Level 6 yet,” she reminds her, as calmly as she can manage.

It doesn’t seem to register in Sarah’s head that she’s sending them to indefinite failure, because all she does is scrunch her forehead when she looks back at Carina and goes, “so?”, with some half shrug as she throws a thing of bungee cord in her pack.

“So, she’ll slow us down? Duh?”

She’s pointedly keeping her eyes in Sarah’s direction, making sure to avoid any eye contact with Alex, who’s already packed and waiting for them by the door. Acknowledging her would mean that Carina accepts her as the third man for their team and that is definitely not the case right now, or possibly ever, for that matter.

The kid isn’t coming with them – she just isn’t.

Sarah will understand soon.

Sarah doesn’t understand at all.

In fact, she doesn’t understand so much that – despite Carina’s perfectly logical explanation of why Alex McHugh shouldn’t be with them – the pipsqueak is still on the plane to New York with them. Sitting next to Carina.

Actually, make that sleeping next to Carina while using her shoulder as a pillow.

It’s not that the kid is sucky or anything; she’s by no means as good as Carina back then but she’s not a total failure, either, and she has some natural talent from what Carina sees. It’s more the principle of the matter, that a job like this should be done with the best team they could have. There has to be a better techie in the entire camp, or at the very least, someone who’s also Level 8 – going to 6 just makes them look so desperate, it’s leaving a bad taste in her mouth.

The feeling that’s gnawing at Carina doesn’t seem to be affecting Sarah at all, in fact she’s been happily going over schematics and whatever else she uses to prep before jobs on her tablet.

(Carina swears she’s enjoying the distress she’s causing because no one should smile that much looking at elevator shaft blueprints.)

At this point, anymore protest would fall on deaf ears and Carina might as well save her efforts for later because there is no way in hell this tater tot is going to ruin her perfect record. She’ll need all the energy she can get making sure Alex doesn’t royally screw them over within the first five minutes on the ground.

It’s going to be a very long, long weekend and it’s only Wednesday.

If she were anyone else, it’s probably a safe bet her jaw would be touching the floor right now, while she’s listening to Sarah lay out their game play.

They arrive in the city early Thursday morning, the heist planned for Sunday because that’s when the company closes completely and the only people that will be on the floors they’ll actually have to be on are from the security company that belongs to the tower. At this point, it starts to sound like the only actual challenge they’re going to face is that the thirty-ninth floor of anything isn’t exactly easily accessible.

Carina would suggest a drop in but any air support they want is something they’d have to procure on their own. They only get a couple hundred to pay cab fares and the hotel room they’re in with whatever they can scrounge up to help them.

She’s learned a long time ago that she should just leave logistics to Sarah – her ideas tend to never mind the restrictions (mostly because she doesn’t pay attention to them, but whatever).

That doesn’t mean she has to actually like what Sarah logics out, though.

Especially, when it sticks her to van duty.

“Van duty,” she grits through her teeth, practically seething as she shoots a less than civilized death glare at Sarah.

“Yes, van duty. Alex will go in and work up security, I’m taking recon outside, you’ll be in the van monitoring feeds.”

Sarah says it all so nonchalant, like Carina is normally left behind and there isn’t anything unusual with someone else taking point on her job. Someone who is desperately unqualified in comparison. It’s utter bullshit.

She makes sure to tell Sarah such, in less than pretty words when they’re alone. Carina isn’t happy about the kid being here, but she’s not that much of an asshole to make this into a scene in front of Alex. Everyone starts somewhere, this she understands; what she doesn’t understand is why she has to start with her.

There has to be plenty of other jobs Alex can use to prove herself. It’s not like Carina checks the bulletin board often, if at all, but the way Sarah always takes her sweet time looking at the thing before she finds something for them, is at least semi indicative of there being a sizeable collection. Certainly, a tower heist can’t be her first choice.

Also just as certain is that Alex can’t be their first choice for their third person. Carina trusts Sarah’s judgment but at the same time, it would’ve been nice to get a heads up. Maybe even a slight say in the matter, even if it won’t really amount to much after Sarah’s mind is made up.

Besides, the whole thing about “nobody being free this weekend” is utter crap. She knows for a fact that Zondra is lounging poolside, probably flirting with one of the senior counselors who are paying more attention to her cleavage than they are the children they’re supposed to be lifeguarding.

The fact of the matter is that no one tells her everything is going to be flipped upside down and she doesn’t appreciate it. It’s not so hard to tell people what they’re thinking. She does it consistently on a near hourly basis.

As Carina’s luck would have it, telling Sarah exactly what’s on her mind still doesn’t do anything to help her van predicament.

She suspects Sarah has built up a tolerance to this over the years and it’s lost its edge. (She also suspects that Sarah doesn't really listen to her while they unpack.)

Saying this is frustrating would be understatement of the century.

This is stupid.

Utterly, completely, entirely, insanely, indefinitely stupid and unfortunately, it’s nearly all her fault.

She could blame it on Sarah, even Alex for managing to get caught in a compromised position the middle of a laser grid, but there’s a nice place, square on her shoulders that have “blame” written neatly for it to go.

Truth be told, Carina becomes too lax as the job carries on. It’s not that she lets her guard down or anything, more like she gets overconfident with how everything is going.

Alex breaks through security just fine, tapping into the system, controlling their feeds, granting complete override access if necessary. Her skill with tech is actually quite impressive, and she manages to do all of this while whoever she’s conned is out of the room getting her coffee.

It’s enough to make Carina briefly double back on her initial conclusions of the girl but it doesn’t last too long. They’re back later in the night to get their plan into action and shit hits the fan real quick when Alex forgets to check for excess security in place outside of what’s standard for the tower.

Carina berates herself for letting such a rookie mistake slip through her fingers without even noticing and it’s because she starts to think that the pipsqueak is actually capable of being worthy for the job. Obviously she isn’t, and instead of Carina getting to say “I told you so” to Sarah, she’s stuck climbing six floors up an elevator shaft to go save her ass.

She has three more floors to go and currently only herself to tell “I told you so” to.

(she’s loathe to admit that she deserves it just ask much as the other two)

Luckily, the fortieth floor isn’t rigged as much as the thirty-ninth because it’s used by one of those gimmicky infomercial deals that con people in the middle of the night.

She momentarily finds it kind of weird that they’re not working at the times they’re running their shit to field orders and stuff, stopping to observe what ridiculous product they’re pushing here and grabs a jar of some florescent colored goop that’s supposed to be a deceptively strong version of Flubber.

As soon as she picks it up, Alex’s voice is in her ear to tell her to hurry up, which is completely rude on so many accounts. Carina is basically right there and it’s not like they can really do much until Sarah finds a way to switch off the power, anyways.

Besides, Carina has to crawl through vents and she’s sure as hell taking her time before getting into that. Being tall and lithe are useful in plenty of other endeavors but its seems like it’s a complete hindrance when trying to turn and angle through narrow shafts. She entertains the idea of just staying put until Sarah comes through but she’s already made it most of the way, so it’d be dumb to just wait in a ventilation shaft for kicks and giggles.

“Finally,” Alex groans when she hears Carina moving the grate that’s above her. Carina really doesn’t appreciate the attitude because she got herself into this mess in the first place.

Sure, she’ll take the blame for not keeping better tabs on the kid, however, it is nowhere near her fault that Alex is too distracted fiddling with her phone or something to check where she’s walking. There’s only so much she can see from a van.

“You keep it up with that mouth of yours, and I’ll just let you hang out there til Walker gets her ass around to cutting the lights.”

To get her point across, Carina slides up against the side of the shaft, getting as comfortable as she can manage while placing the gear in her lap.

“Seriously? I’ve been here forever.”

“Oh, boohoo, pipsqueak. It’s barely been twenty minutes, you’re fine. I, on the other hand, have suffered a great amount of trouble after you got caught in a trap you learn to disable in arts and crafts during your first summer.”

For a second, she thinks she’s trying too hard to milk it because she’s only met with silence and the occasional fuming sound from down below. Carina is just about to relent when a final sigh of longsuffering stops her movements.

“Thank you for coming to save me,” Alex says, turning her face up so she can see Carina. It has a touch of something when she says it, although Carina doesn’t mind much. She isn’t expecting this, so it’s really only fair if she tries to savor the moment.

“And?”

“And…I’m sorry I made a stupid rookie mistake and needed saving in the first place?”

(Carina doesn’t really blame her much for the uppercut she gets to the solar plexus once they’re clear.

It kind of sucks that it’s harder to breathe now, though.)

The most infuriating thing about summer camp jobs is that they’re all set ups – each and every single one of them.

None of them are actually real, just fake jobs that come from people who hire their cover company to break in and test their security. They think that it’s professionals who come in and break down their systems and outsmart their prized heads of security. In actuality, it’s all the kids that get sent to Little Hawk each summer.

It’s a way for them to prep for their real training later on, when they’re in college or something. The environment is controlled enough that no one will ever be in any serious trouble if they’re caught and it’s okay if anyone ever fails.

The deception is fun and being able to do jobs is even more so, but the worst part of everything is that the camp directors have taken to making job completion huge jokes.

So, instead of downloading super sensitive intel, they downloaded that weird movie about old spies, and instead of releasing a virus into their server, they actually just send out a mass email with a video compilation of puppies falling.

And when they’ve gotten clear out of the tower, there is a limo waiting to pick them up with little cupcakes that spell out “congratulations” inside.

Seriously?

This ruins all her badassery she just got.

“You sure you don’t want to join us?” Alex asks for the fifth time since they’ve gotten back to the hotel room.

Sarah and Alex gleefully decide to change into their pajamas and hook up the laptop to watch the movie they just got to celebrate a (fake) job well done. They’ve put the cupcakes out onto a plate on the coffee table and somehow, one of them manages to make a mini bonfire in the wastebasket without catching anything on fire and they’re trying to make smores.

This is a textbook definition of insult to injury so, no, Carina will indefinitely not be joining them.

(“Yes, I’m very sure. Try not to burn the whole place down while I’m asleep, pipsqueak.”)

It’s against her principles.

Then again so is making a smore the wrong way because right now, Alex is currently putting the chocolate on the top cracker that’s not even a full cracker and Sarah isn’t doing a single damn thing to help her and just –

No.

But this doesn’t mean she’s joining them.

Carina is just helping the rookie out because there should be no one on earth who goes to summer camp – even if it is spy summer camp – for three years and can’t make a smore right. She’s doing the world a public service, not celebrating a fake job.

She’s not.

If Carina stays for the whole movie, it’s because the dumb pipsqueak is a slow learner and she has zero control over that.

“Hey, pipsqueak!” she calls out from the front porch of their cabin.

Alex is across the ways, eying the bulletin board like it’s actually something interesting and not a corkboard with index cards haphazardly pinned up on it. That’s a nasty habit that needs to be dealt with right now.

As Carina makes her way over to where Alex is, she takes her eyes off the board and gives Carina a questioning look while crossing her arms over her chest like she’s something important and Carina has just interrupted something extremely important. The thought makes Carina laugh out loud a little and amuses her enough to reach out a hand ruffle the kid’s hair up before patting her cheek a few times. To her credit, Alex doesn’t flinch or do much in response and just waits for Carina to speak up again.

“Come on, let’s go grab a popsicle from the mess.” She swings an arm up over Alex’s shoulders and pulls her into what’s more of a headlock than an embrace, turning both of them around to face her cabin, “Walker likes doing homework, so we leave that fun stuff to her.”

Alex gives her a skeptical look as best she can from her position, eying Carina’s shoulder more than anything. Obviously, she ignores this, shooting her own smug look to Sarah who’s finally left their cabin.

“See?” she says as Sarah rolls her eyes at them, mostly at Carina, before making a big gesture that more or less tells them to get on with it. In case they’re unsure, Sarah tells them such not long after (“get the hell away from my board, amateurs”) and Carina ushers the kid away to the mess hall.

They walk in together in silence, Alex giving up on trying to get out of the hold Carina has on her. Carina gets them both popsicles and they grab inner tubes, carefully paddling themselves out to the spot on the lake that’s just right, and there they wait in more silence.

After the sun hits just the right angle directly above them, and enough of her popsicle is gone to reveal half the joke answer (“how does the ocean greet the shore?” “it waves”), Alex finally speaks up.

“I was trying to find a job, you know.”

Carina smiles to herself, dumb kid hasn’t caught on yet. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But I have to –“

“Shhh, just relax,” she mumbles around her popsicle. Sarah should be joining them any minute, and the alone time she gets before they talk shop is Carina’s favorite part of any given day. “It’s taken care of,” she reassures with the rest of her popsicle stuffed in her mouth.

Surely enough, Carina hears tiny splashes coming towards their direction, pops her head up and tips her sunglasses back enough to avoid the glare to see Sarah making her way over.

Before Carina can ask what’s on the tip of her tongue, Sarah beats her to the punch and says, “we got a bank heist,” full of satisfaction like she managed to get it through some means other than just pulling the index card off the board and stashing it so no one else can get it. It’s fine though, because Sarah always feels really good after scouring down a pretty awesome job and bank heists are Carina’s favorite – she’s definitely not going to be the one to argue.

Carina’s so wrapped up in her excitement over finally getting a bank job that she almost misses when Alex speaks up again; the kid can be weirdly quiet at times, hence the whole pipsqueak thing. She’s also pretty short which works out in Carina’s favor when decides on the nickname.

“We?” she asks, understanding of why she’s out here finally starting to dawn on her.

“We,” Sarah says, with a nod and a smile playing on her lips. Alex’s eyes quickly dart to Carina, who’s now sitting more upright in her tube, looking expectantly for her to say something, too. Apparently, it’s not enough for the kid to hear it from just one of them.

She still hasn’t figured out that Carina generally has zero say in whatever they do, and when she does, it’s always what Sarah already had to say. Carina finds it doesn’t really bother her as much as she thinks it would, it’s nice being considered a decision maker. No wonder Sarah loves it, the cheeky little bastard.

“Yeah,” she finally sighs, somewhat reluctantly. She shakes her head half-heartedly with a shrug that’s all betrayed by a smile that’s hard to miss.

“We.”

a thousand miles (left behind) & no one's wiser - part four

clouberding — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 04:53:50 GMT

headers are in part one

part 2
part 3

“These are the complete dossiers I’ve managed to put together from the Illusive Man, we’ll be ready to set a course for either once you’ve decided.”

She sets two more datapads on his desk that’s still oddly neat despite being completely covered. She’s certain he reads through everything he gets sent because he likes to be thorough. It’s possible she should actually know if he does but this is the first time she actually talks to him in nearly a week.

He furrows his brow for a second, picking them up to take a better look at the information on them and a drawn out “thanks” while he tries to process.

She doesn’t stick around to talk about it because she still doesn’t want to talk to him about anything, but she will talk to him about work if she has to; the quicker she leaves, the less she’ll have to.

Her track record for avoiding unwanted conversations on the Normandy is stays zero in her favor. This time, though, she only has herself to blame when she opens her mouth and tells him she’s doing her job.

It’s an ill-fitted attempt to put him in his place and she only realizes it after it leaves her mouth.

“Thank you, anyways,” he says, his tone oddly insistent with how polite he’s being. She turns back to look at him but says nothing, accidentally staying around for too long and gives him an opening to ask her what she thinks they should do.

It’s completely irrelevant what she thinks in this case because he’s the one in charge – not her; the Illusive Man made it plenty clear that Shepard isn’t her lackey in any way, shape, or form.

That tone of insistence comes back and she’s still not sure what to make of it, making her way to the door again before she can dwell too much on it. She has plenty more work to do without unnecessary distractions.

He can do whatever he wants.

(later, when she gets to her room she makes EDI steer him towards the doctor – she’ll be more useful the longer she’s on board)

“You know, a dozen showers after full decontamination isn’t even going to make me feel remotely clean after this.”

If her suit wasn’t more or less one of a kind, it’d be a sure bet that she would shoot it out of an airlock faster than you could say “gross.” She has another suit (thank, God) but that’s her only backup and it’s not really a good idea to get rid of what’s technically a perfectly good tech suit.

Sure, it feels gross but it’s not like it’s actually ineffective because such.

So the beginning and end of this mental snafu is that her life is currently a cesspool for who-knows-what and there’s not much she can do about it.

At least it’s over with.

The doctor comes with them, somewhat reluctantly, though that isn’t something she concerns herself with. The matter of the fact is she’s agreed and that’s all she cares for. Despite how she feels, she has to admit that Shepard’s constant need to sooth everyone’s conscience on an hourly basis actually helps them gain the doctor in their favor.

It takes the better half of her day and a firefight through most of the underground slums of Omega rescuing a poor excuse for an assistant, releasing a plague cure through the city’s ventilation system, before their score is settled enough to the doctor’s liking. It’s a round about way to achieve something she could have done in an hour – two, tops. Even so, doing all that (literal) dirty work lands them in good favor with the doctor and that will be more useful in the long run.

She can admit Shepard’s ways are better, she just doesn’t necessarily have to like these ways.

“Aw, come on. You’re telling me you didn’t get down and dirty back on Earth?”

“Oh, I did. I always did. Growing up with three older brothers for the better half of my life assured that,” she quips, squirming even though they’re halfway through decontamination already. “What I didn’t do when I was a child, however, was take leisurely walks through operational sewers that people lived in.”

She’s looking forward now, but she can feel him eying her the way he does when he wants to know something and he’s waiting for answers to be supplied to him rather than actually ask.

(she doesn’t bite)

He resigns with a quick sigh after a beat, “brothers?” he asks casually despite turning to face her more fully like she’ll explain her whole childhood in one fell swoop. Instead, all he gets from her is a curt, “brothers,” in reply as she barely turns her head in his direction to acknowledge him.

There’s a lull in their conversation, if it even counts as that because as soon as it starts, it’s over, and she uses the opportunity to make her way out of the airlock and back onto the main deck of the ship.

She wants out of her clothes now.

Luckily, it actually only takes three showers to make her feel like she isn’t carrying some unknown disease.

She doesn’t put her suit back on, slipping back into that would just undo what she tried for the past hour and a half and that’s the last thing she wants. She pads over to the rarely touched drawer with clothes she wears when she likes to indulge, pulls on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt that’s worn in well past its prime.

For the first time in a long time, she feels relaxed; her bones are soothed from the warm water and her body thrums with an ease that isn’t indicative of the universe possibly ending sooner rather than later.

(for the first time in a long time, she doesn’t bother worrying about it either)

Her reports don’t have to be done immediately since she speaks to the Illusive Man after she gets back on board. They’d be technicalities at this point, she only actually intends to document that they achieved their end goal. It’s something that can wait until later.

She indulges herself for a small moment, making her way out to the kitchen to make herself a sandwich and possibly a strawberry milkshake she’s been craving. The mess hall is empty at this hour, most of the crew already asleep with a skeleton crew keeping tabs on the ship.

The ingredients for her milkshake are laid out neatly on the counter when he leans up against it, stealing a strawberry and throwing it into his mouth.

“Do you plan on having all our heart-to-hearts in the kitchen on an empty stomach, Commander?”

She doesn’t look up to acknowledge him, continues making her dinner while he stands there seemingly content at just watching her. It’s possible this could be unnerving but since it’s him, she just feels this great annoyance at him hovering.

“Maybe. We only ever talk about reports and statistics and…technical things in your room, so I thought I’d try a different approach – maybe loosen you up,” he shrugs, folding his arm and leaning against the fridge now to accommodate her. “Food has a way of doing that, you know.”

A fairly undignified sound leaves her mouth before she can stop it, “no, I can’t say I’m familiar with that particular quality.”

It surprises her that she goes along with this and that she seems more than willing to humor him right now. It catches her off guard a bit, but she rolls with the punches because she can’t really find a reason to rain on his parade just yet.

“Is the great Commander Shepard a fan of milkshakes?” she asks while she starts dropping the ingredients into the blender. She turns over to look at him when he doesn’t answer right away, matching his questioning look with a smirk and a challenge in her eyes. He balks slightly for a second, like he’s completely surprised that someone like her can’t indulge in life’s simple pleasures.

When his brain seems to start up again, he laughs, long and full before making a dig at strawberry milkshakes, calling them “inferior to vanilla milkshakes in every way.”

He obviously has never tasted a strawberry milkshake made the right (her) way then, so she takes pity on his soul and pours him a half a glass after stealing a sip straight from the blender to taste test. Not that she doesn’t know it’s made perfectly, more because she always loves the first sip. To his credit, he eyes her kind of funny but doesn’t mention anything about it before taking his proffered glass, complete with a bendy straw.

The thickness is just right so that it takes a tiny bit before it reaches his mouth but not so much that it’s nearly impossible to get it through the straw. She looks at him expectantly, finding herself actually invested in how he deems her drink of choice. When he finally swallows the first sip, it’s almost embarrassing how quickly she asks, “so?”

“It’s…damn good, Walker,” he finally gets out, softly chuckling and ducking his head in mock shame. “I would seem that vanilla milkshakes are superior in every way to all milkshakes except strawberry.”

She smiles broadly, genuinely smiles, proud of herself for proving another person that doubted her wrong. She opens her mouth to say something but he cuts her off -- “but only this one!” he adds to try and temper her bragging.

“Mmhm,” she hums, picking up her sandwich and her full glass to bring back to her room. She realizes he actually hasn’t asked her anything personal, as is his wont, yet and she wants to avoid it if she can.

As she starts to leave, he calls out for her. It’s soft but demanding all at the same time and she’s not sure exactly what to make of it when she turns back around to fully face him.

If he’s noticed anything about her attire, he doesn’t seem like it’s of any significance to him. Even if it did, he probably thinks it’s normal that she walks around in these clothes all the time when she can. He’s wearing a pair of workout shorts and a zip-up himself, so it’s probably not so farfetched in his head as it is in actuality.

But he doesn’t comment on any of that, when he looks at her with something she can’t quite get and says, “thanks for today.” She’s about to say something about her just doing her job again but it’s like he can read her mind right now because then he says, “I know you’re just doing your job but I also know you happen to despise being on Omega; me asking you to forge through the slums to do someone else’s dirty work probably isn’t on your bucket list.”

She lets the bad pun go when she sees he’s really trying to be sincere and opts for a curt nod and a small smile. She sure as hell wouldn’t thank anyone for what she did but this is something he does, so she accepts it.

“Anyways, I just wanted to say thanks for being a good sport about things today. I know I’m not easy to deal with sometimes and you do a pretty good job of fielding me. But, that’s all. No heart-to-heart today, just that.”

He takes a moment to stand and smile at her for a little while in the silence because she’s not sure exactly how she’s supposed to answer that. Saying “thank you,” comes to mind but she doesn’t actually vocalize that thought.

The moment ends after a beat, and he’s gone as quickly as he appeared and it’s weird for her being the one left instead of the one leaving this time.

(she notices he takes the rest of his glass with him)

“Ma’am.”

She’s working on her reports she neglected last night, getting them out of the way before something inevitably happens and it gets too busy for her to get around to it. She doesn’t forget easily, so she doesn’t like leaving things undone – it’s unprofessional.

They’re supposed to be rounding up some others for their mission. She only vaguely remembers Shepard mentioning Illium or the prison for their next stop, but she zones out at some point in time because he’s droned on longer than she cares for. So long as the ship doesn’t crash and they go anywhere that isn’t Omega, she’s perfectly fine with it.

She’s starting to accept that Shepard isn’t completely incompetent as his demeanor would suggest most of the time.

“I’ve told you before, Hannah, you can just call me Sarah.”

The crew’s yeoman is standing in her doorway, though she only knows this through her voice; she has yet to look up from her desk. It’s not until she hits send on the last report she has does she finally make eye contact.

“Yea, sorry, I’ll work on that…Sarah.”

“Well,” she sighs, getting up and stretching out for a bit. This morning, she’s back in her suit (her other suit – she still can’t shake the grimy feeling from her normal one quite yet) and her relaxation is short lived, but it does wonders. “Formalities aside, what was it you wanted to speak to me about?”

“Commander Shepard is requesting you in the armory.”

“Oh? Have we landed already? That was a quick ride, even for Illium –“

“Well, we, uh –“

“What?’

“We, uh, you see, we –“

“We, what, Yeoman?”

“We’re actually back at Omega.”

The rage she goes into as she marches into the armory doesn’t save her from the predicament she’s in now.

It’s loud and outrageous and borderline unprofessional considering she’s addressing her (technical) superior yet here she is.

Back on Omega.

In literally the worst possible armor they could find in the marketplace because everything onboard is “too high tech” to pass as people desperate enough to freelance for mercs for a quick buck.

The last time she wore a chest plate is in basic training, and compared to the one she currently has on, it doesn’t seem so bad anymore. In fact, she would gladly trade the two right now; at least she could move somewhat fluidly. In this hunk of junk combined with the rest of her poor excuse for armor, she’s lucky if she can walk without tripping over her own two feet – or anyone else’s feet for that matter.

Shepard, for his part, looks completely content to be in scrap metal that would fall apart if a bullet hit too close to a ridge, while Casey could honestly care less when he has all his toys with him. Both seem to enjoy her discomfort and Casey even makes some smartass remark about “finally seeing what it’s like to be a big kid,” which promptly lands him on his ass with the flick of a wrist and a biotic slam.

As the story goes, Shepard receives new intel that puts the recruit Archangel on Omega, pent up in some high rise apartment after being in bad blood with all three mercenary groups that do their best to keep Omega in its dilapidated state. The groups have temporarily called a truce in order to combine forces to take him out (how they’re all so dimwitted they can’t even outsmart one man baffles her), and they’re recruiting freelancers who are even stupider to play their pawns.

And while they are pretending to be these people who are short a few cards from a full deck, she refuses to act like one. Despite her clunky armor, and her amateur appearance, she makes sure none of these dumbasses treat her like one. She proves to be still formidable even outside of her normal element, managing to bank twice as much in a down payment for their services to the mercenaries with the tiniest threat and only one nearly broken bone.

When they’re dropped off at ground zero by the merc shuttle, they do some recon before heading off to the designated front lines. It appears that the mercs are sending all the freelancers into what’s more-or-less a suicide mission to distract the Archangel for long enough to get a tactical team through to his hideout.

Shepard wants to join him up top in his nest, sneak past the mercs and the freelancers on their side and taking out as many as they can without getting taken out themselves by either Archangel or the other mercs.

The plan works beautifully until Casey gets a little too carried away. Thankfully, by then they’re already close enough to make a quick run for it.

(it figures that Archangel would be Shepard’s long lost best friend – it would seem that oblivious hero is a character trait that bonds people to each other)

However many ill trained mercs and a faulty battle ship later, Archangel, also known as Bryce Larkin, is alive and well on the Normandy, save a fairly gruesome head injury that’s a result of a blast going off a bit too close to them for anyone’s liking.

After a brief period where he floats in and out of stability, they’ve managed to bring him back into the clear.

Even so, he hasn’t shown signs of waking up yet and Shepard has neglected most, if not all, responsibilities to be by his bedside, almost as if his presence is vital for his friend’s recovery. Although there’s a voice nagging her in the back of her head to send him on his way, she can’t bring herself to walk into the medbay and actually do so.

Instead, she keeps her distance, observing from elsewhere to avoid a conversation she doesn’t want to have.

For the first time since they’ve brought him back to life, she notices he looks tired. Not so much like the savior of the galaxy, but rather some ordinary man with an extraordinary weight on his shoulders. The slump in his posture, the lines etched in his face that aren’t a product of resurrection, the near void in his eyes that usually hold more emotion than she shows in a year – they’re all signs of a defeated man.

Oddly enough, the sight hard for her to swallow. It should be enough that he’s agreed to their terms, to their unfair bargain with his life. None of this should matter to her. If he’s having issues, he has a multitude of outlets to deal with it. It should be none of her concern.

She knows all of this, tells herself over and over, but it still doesn’t stop her from making a vanilla milkshake and having Hannah bring it over to him, along with a plate of tonight’s meal.

/part 5 (coming soon)

it's funny you think sarah walker is weak

clouberding — Fri, 03 May 2013 03:06:56 GMT

it seems there is a general consensus as to what is stated in this thing here and, while i'm not putting anyone on blast for interpreting things this way, i do want to point out a few things that are neglected in sarah walker's slide. mostly things that are put into black and white despite their nature of being explicitly gray and the like.

but newayz here we go!!!!

first, the definition of fragile as stated by webster is a. easily broken or destroyed and b. constitutionally delicate/lacking vigor. now, i'm not sure exactly what show people have been watching and how keenly they're invested in sarah but i will state now, for the record, that sarah walker is anything but any of these things. considering all this woman has gone through even before her haphazard recruitment into the CIA, there is really no legitimate proof that this woman is easily broken or lacking vigor. i will say that you can argue that she is somewhat delicate to an extent, but constitutionally so? i think not (actually, i know not but you get the point). sarah is strong both physically and mentally and her prowess in espionage is direct proof of such. and if you're going to go into semantics and argue that she was "broken" at specific parts in the show, the only time she was actually canonically destroyed imo was at the end. which took an entire intersect brain meltdown to achieve. if you think that shows her fragility, you are in far deeper than i can bring light to.

i would cite specific examples but literally, her entire existence is contrary to the claim that she is fragile. like, i honestly can't find a way she is. when she was young, sure, but who isn't fragile when they're young. i guess if you were extremely insistent on this, you could pick stuff from season 3 on, but that's just an iffy subject in general because i think the writers completely stripped her character of everything she fundamentally is to fit her into whatever they wanted her to be for chuck and further that romance the way they saw fit. but sticking to explicitly who her character is supposed to be...fragile is not one of those things!!!!!!!!!

and if you're hoping to use those parts when she's emotionally vulnerable like when chuck treats her like a real girlfriend or something, that's not being fragile. that's reacting like a normal human being. feelings are natural, as are the way they're expressed or suppressed by those that experience them. those minor slips are meant to show that she's not completely ruthless and calculating and that she does have a heart. not to show that she's weak. it leans more towards she's still strong despite having the feelings that she shuns -- which, doesn't really play out the way i'd like it to, but that's a different axe to grind.

secondly, sarah does not have trust or abandonment issues. she has daddy issues. completely different things! when bryce left her and supposedly went rogue and became a traitor in her eyes, she wasn't terrified of being alone or lacking emotionally. she was fine. she felt betrayed no doubt, because who wouldn't when their lover and partner just up and was like screw this shit imma commit treason!!! without an explanation or even a hint as to what was going on. but she wasn't wallowing away and making rash decisions or pulling dangerous stupid shit because she was left behind. in fact, the whole premise behind her going to seduce chuck in the first place, was to right the wrongs that bryce did and basically redeem herself more or less for letting bryce get too close and pulling a fast one on her. it was a personal matter. as far as trust goes, she's a spy. i'm not sure what that means to you but her life is lying to people about even the most mundane things - her name, where she's from, her accent, etc. etc. it's not really an issue as it is an occupational hazard. if she's deceiving people on that big a scale, it's only reasonable to assume that everyone else she meets could be, too. personally, that would be enough to encourage me not to trust any ol' person i meet.

furthermore, she does trust when trust is earned and she respects you. take for example, casey. she legit nearly kills him five different times in the pilot. in fact, she really wants to kill him in the pilot and they have a fairly hostile relationship even when they're ordered to work together on project intersect. but then, after they've worked together and he proves that she can trust him not to shoot her in the back, she accepts him as her partner to the extent where she threatens to slit his throat lest he let her help him deal with a personal problem because she won't let him go alone. she's still wary of cole even after the man endured torture twice without revealing chuck's identity and the intersect deets. there's simply a time and a place for sarah walker's trust and it's not something that's cheap.

the whole part being normal is hard for her is just something i've had beef with for a long time. she's a spy that knows how to control her emotions and her personal feelings and can compartmentalize extremely well. that does not mean she's completely incapable of being a 'normal' human being by any means. it just means she's different. the fact that the writers made her completely obvious to pop culture was the dumbest crap ever and i am not even going to go there. it's just stupid. no one is that out of the loop. especially, if they've been undercover in said normal environment for three years and counting. she knows how to play her part in this setting. it's her job. she does this for a living. she isn't inherently socially inept so much as the writers make her to cater to their own whims.

THIS WHOLE THING ABOUT GUYS WANTING HER FOR SEX IS JUST RUDE. bryce cared about her. cares about her. he came back for her, explained things to her, WANTED HER TO GO WITH HIM AND RESPECTED HER WISHES WHEN SHE SAID SHE WOULDN'T, and then told chuck with his (real) dying breath to take care of her. okay. so like. if he really wanted her just for the sex........you put those pieces together. and while cole and sarah had a obvious sexual attraction to each other, he does respect her as a spy and genuinely enjoys her company. sex is obviously a component to why he wants her to run away with him but he also is interested in her. that said, while he is an obvious flirt around her, he knows when to get serious and when she tells him to back off, he does. if you're going to tell me that cole wasn't actually interested in sarah as a person, he offers her a blank slate to get away and do whatever the hell she wants. he doesn't need to delve into her life story because he knows it's twisted and complicated and not something she really wants to discuss because he's in the same boat. he takes her for who she is at face value and accepts what she's willing to give and then he offers her solace. cole understands who she is essentially and because of that, he can offer her this whirlwind romance with no strings attached. with him, she doesn't need to consistently cover her bases or pretend she's something she's not. he knows how exhausting that can be and he knows what he's offering is something she needs. so yes, he offers her sex and is interested in her for such, but look a little deeper into it and you can see that he offers these things because he's attuned to who she is as a person.

i do not even want to talk about shaw because that was just a dark period i choose not to acknowledge existed.

SHE ISN'T BROKEN OR DAMAGED BECAUSE SHE'S HAD SOME ROUGH PATCHES IN HER LIFE.

she's been hurt, used, abused, whatever. and yes, at times these things left her broken and damaged to an extent but what makes sarah so special despite all these things is that she is one resilient bitch ass motherfucker. thus, she has overcome all these things and she comes out stronger because of it. she is who she is, this whole package that is badass and the best at what she does, because of these instances that would leave normal people black and blue and confused. she uses the things that should have broken her to build herself even stronger each time - that's what makes her special.

and the fact that she did, in fact, turn into something much different than this is the saddest part of sarah walker that breaks my heart each time i remember that it happened. i don't exactly understand what parts of sarah at the tail end of the show made people loved to the depths of the earth because by that point, i felt like the sarah i loved was completely gone. which is fine, everyone has their own preference but i'm not going to touch that just because we'd be arguing about apples and oranges.

now finally, the notion where sarah is unsure of who she is beyond her covers is a view that's projected from what we're shown on the show. there's a part of sarah that's locked away, deep, deep inside of her that she keeps to herself. kind of like a set of absolute truths for her. things only she knows and thus are the things that keep her, her despite having hundreds of different covers. this is actually why her real name is extremely important. it's something that keeps her true to herself in her own way. we only know her first name and her middle name; beyond that, sarah's actually pretty neglected as a complex character. we honestly don't see enough of her and her 'true being,' so to speak, to know if she's truly lost beyond her job's objectives and purpose. she never truly does anything for herself, there's always someone else that motivates her to do what she does in the episodes that are sarah-centric. at first it's about bryce, then her dad, then chuck, and so on and so forth. sarah is pretty much a pawn for everyone else's use as a character. even vs the cougar was revolved around a cover during her and her father's conman reign. there was never anything that was truly at the heart of sarah walker like there was for casey or chuck. we find out that casey was a loyal soldier for his country, that he fakes his death to serve the greater good for his country and he gives up his life because he truly believes that it's the best way for him to serve. chuck is completely unnecessary to comment on because being the title character, obviously the entirety of his life is exposed and explained and fleshed out. sarah's story is pieced together haphazardly with whatever writers saw fit. her mother isn't mentioned until the last season and even then it was stupidly introduced. her father issues are left unresolved because she never confronts him head on about what happened as a child, about their past or why her father does what he does and all that fun stuff. they have a heartbreaking father-daughter dance where they share a tiny moment and then her father leaves again leaving her piggy bank behind with a note that makes my heart yearn for more closure. she loves her father but she always held him in contempt because she knew that letting him in would hurt her more and she'd been through that enough. she knows he loves her but he could never love her the way she needed or wanted him to. thinking of him as a bad person she had to stay away from made it easier to convince herself that she's supposed to hate him for what he's done despite the contrary. but like i said, this is all just there because they took the easy way out and made him leave like he always does. and as i mentioned, the mother thing is just stupid and all over the place and poorly constructed so it's not even worth mentioning because there's more holes than swiss cheese in that crap.

anyways, my point is that we don't know for sure that she doesn't know who she is beyond her job. we only catch glimpses and pieces of a larger puzzle that never form a whole. while i believe she's well aware of who she is at her very core that drives her, my view is just as good as anyone else's because we don't get enough to make any definitive conclusion.

but yeah.

that's that.

(i clearly have much too many feelings for sarah walker that i should really look into getting rid of. sigh.)

a thousand miles (left behind) & no one's wiser - part three

clouberding — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 06:35:22 GMT

All headers are on part 1.
part 2 is here.

Getting the commander to join their initiative doesn’t take much convincing on their part. Rather he’s the one spending most of his time convincing them that he’s not actually on their side, that he’s not one of them.

It doesn’t matter much to her, regardless of his reasons the relevant point is that he’s agreed to go planet side with them – so long as he suits up and plays his part, she doesn’t really care much what he thinks.

“Where do you get all this gear?”

She’s preoccupied with checking her own gear, it’s top of the line and she keeps it in excellent condition but out on the field, a minor oversight could mean a major death and there isn’t exactly a line of people waiting to put up four billion credits to bring her back.

Absentmindedly, she hums back some acknowledgement of him talking though she’s not sure what he asked. When she looks up, he’s got his skin suit on, half ready holding up various pieces of armor for inspection. The image is enough to loose a short chuckle under her breath, seeing the great Commander Shepard baffled by something as simple as armor isn’t something she expects to see.

It’s understandable, though – a lot of tech has changed in the past two years, adding to that the amount that they’ve been able to acquire through less common channels; a normal chest plate could be completely daunting to someone who’s been dead for two years.

“This is all…different?”

He’s currently fixated on a particular piece that is complicated in its own right, considering its origin not many people would know what it is either. In this special case, she decides to forgo any comments about his habit for stating the obvious.

“That,” she says, taking the piece in question in her own hands, “is a very rare CIA Intersect tech piece.” It may very well be her favorite one that doesn’t inflict pain, the way she runs her hands over it is something akin to love.

It’s certainly worthy of it, the plate is a beautiful exemplar of craftsmanship. Where other armor is resistant and dense, it gives way with its fluid, mesh-like structure – bending to avoid breaking and woven to have twice the strength with integrated biotic reinforcements throughout. Despite being nearly two inches thick, it makes a t-shirt feel too heavy.

He raises an eyebrow at the way she holds it so tenderly, probably seeming out of place when taking into consideration her usual demeanor. “CIA?” he asks.

“Central Intelligence Armory, makes some of the best gear money can buy. Even better when you have assets that money can’t buy.”

She closes the space between them, invading his space necessarily in order to properly attach the front of the chest place on him securely. He’s bigger than her, so she has to lean in even closer than she already is to do so. When she’s got both pieces on him right, they’re nearly chest to back with her behind him.

She lingers for a second, just until the biotics start to hum – a soothing sound she lets envelope her for the brief moment it comes on.

“This…feels like…”

He could be at a lack of words, or simply enthralled with the armor. His fascination is nearly childlike, poking at it and getting as close to flailing around the room that a grown six-foot-three man possibly can.

The sight nearly sends her into a fit of laughter when she walks over to the gun locker, only just managing to school her face back into neutrality. She picks up a Fulcrum F-25 Perseus assault rifle, the weight feeling comfortable in her hands, metal solid and cool to the touch. It’s not something she would normally choose but she can appreciate a finely crafted weapon when she sees one.

“Nothing the Alliance has ever issued you, I’m sure,” she says, rounding back with gun in hand. She aims at an imaginary target down the room one last time, checking the settings before handing it off, “this should be to your liking, too.”

He only holds it for a less than a minute, yet he looks at the thing like it’s his most precious belonging. His fingers flit over every inch of the body, almost caressing in touch, giving attention that very nearly rivals Casey. When he reaches the clip, his face scrunches up to examine the gun better as he brings it closer to his face, “there’s no heat sink on this.”

“Heat sinks became inefficient, too much overheating. We spent more time waiting around for guns to cool down than actually shooting them. A disposable heat sink,” punctuating her sentence with a click as she snaps a thermal clip into his gun, “solves that problem.”

“So, now, we have to reload?

Once more with the obvious.

She clicks a thermal clip into her own gun, checking everything one last time before making her way to the airlock. It’s decidedly better for her if she doesn’t engage further – they’re on a schedule and it won’t be in their best interests to linger any further.

Still, she can’t find it in herself to resist one last quip. “Is that too much for you to handle, Commander?” she calls back, “I’m sure I could always ask Casey to find something laying around that you’re more accustomed to.”

She hears him fiddle with the gun for a second and fitting it in the holster before she hears him settles up behind her just outside the airlock. Her gaze is kept straight ahead, more aimlessly than actually staring at the metal doors in front of her but she’s waiting for him to take point. The Illusive Man says that he’s supposed to ring lead everything, so she might as well let him start from the very beginning.

He waits for her, too, assumingly for directions or an inkling of instruction that she’s not going to give him. It’s a moment of silence that isn’t heavy or awkward like it should be, in fact, it’s actually quite comfortable if they weren’t wasting time just standing around. So she says ‘commander,’ even toned – not a hint by any stretch of the imagination – and it seems to jumpstart him into action.

He ends up sidestepping her while not actually leaving her space to unlock the airlock, keys in the code and before he pulls back all the way, takes care to linger by her ear.

“Now, see – I think the real question is can you handle me?”

Keeping up with him proves to be something of a challenge, although certainly not one she can’t handle. Even the notion that she – the one in charge of bringing him back to life – couldn’t keep up with him is absurd in the first place.

Especially when he heads in almost gung ho about recon on Freedom’s Progress. It nearly gets them gunned down by a handful of mechs; luckily, Casey isn’t following as closely behind and he gives them enough cover fire to get to their own cover.

After that mishap, he takes it slower, seemingly content with waiting until a more controlled setting to test his new body. It goes smoothly enough, the entire colony seems to be completely abandoned with absolutely no signs of life leftover but the mechs constantly targeting them means someone has to be here overriding the security system. Once they can make their way to the central security hub on the other side of the colony, they’ll be able to actually do some work.

Currently, there’s a small squadron of flying security drones bogging them down, keeping them from crossing a bridge that serves as the connecting point from the main living areas to the control stations.

“Casey!”

There’s a blast that nearly takes his head off when he peaks out to answer her and she hears him go off about her nearly getting him killed for some bullshit no good reason. “Whatever you wanna tell me, it better be damn good, Walker.”

“How about you start being useful for a change by taking out that precious rifle of yours and actually take out some of these guys in my blind spot?”

She’s crouched down next to him, while Casey is farther back with a better vantage point than either of them. He’s suggested falling back to take care of the rest of the drones that have settled in a good spot up in a ridge after they finish with the other half.

Moving is an unnecessary risk when Casey is without a doubt the best sniper out of all of them – she’s sure she can take on him but neither are a match for Casey, though he generally enjoys bashing in heads more than shooting them off. It takes some goading to actually make him take out his “sweetheart.”

“Can he actually make those shots?” he asks, crouching in closer than necessary to avoid using comms presumably to avoid hurting Casey’s feelings. She scoffs, turning around to lean her back against the barrier they’re sitting behind and resting her gun in her lap because this is about to turn into a show she’s watched a thousand times.

“5000 credits says he shoots five for five – a thousand for each shot and every time he misses, I’ll give double that.”

“You’re on, XO.”

[later, when Casey hits them all without missing a beat, he’s baffled and out five grand –

“You played me.”

“Commander, I simply made you an offer. A very good offer with odds in my favor, but as my great great great great grandmother once said, you gotta risk it to get the biscuit.”]

Currently, she has a gun trained on her because the fool of a man is allowing it.

She has half the mind to not send a less than subtle shockwave to prove a point. It’s nearly insulting that this child would think aiming a gun between her eyes would be enough to subdue her. But then again, what else does she expect from an N7 operative still wet behind the ears.

The bar lowers even more when she realizes said operative is the same Alex McHugh that Shepard trains from her acceptance up until the day he dies.

While she hasn’t seen her in action, so far she can tell that the rookie’s picked up some of the commander’s less notable traits. For her sake, she hopes that just means she takes after him wholly. Considering Alex managed to graduate even after he died, she’s pretty sure that puts the vote in her favor.

Regardless, this whole situation with someone wanting to off her isn’t something she likes and if he’s not going to do anything about it, she will.

“Commander,” she manages through tightly pursed lips. At this point, she’s unconcerned about concealing the irritation in her voice. He’s gaped at the girl like she’s the one who’s been resurrected long enough.

“Al –”

“What are you doing with them? They’re the same people that have been trying to get rid of you.” Alex’s eyes are trained on her the entire time she speaks. Her tone is defiant, like she’s better than her because she’s on what she’s decided is the right side of things. It’s naïve the way she lets her own feelings get in the way of assessing how dangerous a perceived enemy can be.

A smirk graces her lips and she cants her hips – she can certainly partake in the obvious game, too. “This time, we tried our hand at bringing him back to life. So far, it seems like we have much better luck with that particular endeavor.”

There’s a distinct satisfaction she feels when the younger operative nearly pops a vein and it helps placate the desire to cause harm to her in the moment.

Of course, leave it to Shepard to finally intervene when she’s just begun to have fun with her current predicament. He places himself between the two of them, standing closer to Alex to push the gun away and whisper something that seems to calm her enough to holster her gun and ignore her altogether. While she is slightly bitter about having her fun interrupted, she can’t complain about being left alone.

Finally, they can get this over with.

So it happens, Commander Shepard seems to be a magnet for all things ridiculously horrible in life because pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone more wrong than she ever thought possible.

Starting with their makeshift truce with Alex’s quad going to complete shit as soon as they split up. She begins to put less and less faith in the top notch Alliance training program when they walk straight into a YMIR and get themselves mowed over.

It nearly takes them out too, if Casey didn’t have an affinity for carrying around a rocket launcher when it’s mostly unnecessary. Shepard manages to get ahold of one himself from a nearby compound to end what Casey starts.

Thankfully, it’s the last obstacle they have to face before reaching the control center – not that it makes any difference because that would be much too easy for all of them.

Once they’re inside they find themselves face to face with a highly unstable nut that somehow manages to lock himself inside when the Collectors hit. It protects him from being taken since the swarms unable to reach him. As a safety precaution, he rewires the entire defensive system to attack anything that so much as breathes near the colony.

The videos he has confirm what they already know so far and he seems far too unstable to be of any actual use to them. As much as she would like to take him back, it’s proving to be much more work than he’s worth to argue with Alex. As it stands, the commander is like a puppy who’s just found his way home.

All she wants right now is to be done with this place

Her personal fortress of solitude keeps her isolated to finish her reports in peace, without interruption and without any discussion about what happened to delay her. She puts off settling the grumbling in her stomach in favor of finishing up so she won’t have to come back and work on it more later. It’s just easier to finish in one go, it’s not like she’s starving or anything.

Gardner has whipped up something that looks like spaghetti for tonight. She’s in the middle of scooping some onto a plate when her luck runs out. It seems she’s too focused on praying to whatever deity that will take pity on her for it to actually taste like something from back home, that she forgets to direct some of her hopes in the direction of being left alone.

Shepard comes strolling over, having just left the medbay for whatever reason – she doesn’t remember him getting hurt but she hasn’t received any alerts, so if he was it isn’t anything serious. She shifts her attention to his presence, praying to the same deities to take pity on her again in the form of directing him away from her.

(she gets no such luck this time even though her spaghetti actually tastes like spaghetti despite the odd texture of the sauce – she figures one out of two is better than nothing)

“You disappeared pretty quick earlier,” he says. It’s a statement that’s phrased more like a question, subtly goading her for an explanation he doesn’t want to outright ask for and she doesn’t want to give.

She ignores the social cue and only answers with a curt, “I had work to do.” Again, she hopes he leaves and again, she is denied this grace. Apparently, that would be too easy.

“Look, if you ran off because of what Alex said –“

“Commander, thank you for your concern but I assure you, my big girl feelings are certainly not hurt over some child calling me names.”

“But I –“

She doesn’t mean to let this get to her because it shouldn’t be something that gets under her skin the way it is right now. All he’s doing is being polite, apologizing for his trainee’s rudeness and it’s something that any decent person would do – in fact, she expects this from him which is why she’s tried her best to avoid him since they get back.

And yet for all her efforts, the feeling that she’s been royally insulted beyond reason surfaces anyways and it’s more her frustration that she can’t keep this part of her in check that makes her snap at him than it is her annoyance at him.

“But nothing, Commander,” she cuts, turning around sharply on her heels. “I’ve been called much worse by much bigger people and I don’t intend on letting it get to me now.”

She hates this feeling. The one that makes her question whether or not she’s good enough.

The times she feels this way are few and far between but ever since she brings this man back to life, he manages to make her feel nearly worthless twice in as many days (she thinks that maybe, if she couldn’t see her worth in her accomplishments, she would actually believe this). It fuels this fire, blowing things out of proportion and instead of trying to keep it down, she lets it go as it pleases.

The glare she fixes on him is meant to deter him from continuing this exchange any further and send him back on his merry way, but for a moment he only stares back at you with something she thinks is understanding. It’s very possible that there’s a degree of hurt mixed in, although she ignores that feeling and the slight slouch in his posture that makes him seem less assured than his gaze would suggest.

Still, he looks like he’s about to say something.

She turns back again to go back to her room before he can get a chance to say anything. Out of the corner of her eye before she’s fully turned his back to him, she can see him start to reach out for her. She anticipates the touch, him grabbing any part of her to turn her around but his hand never makes it.

Before her doors close completely, she pretends she doesn’t hear him say he’s still sorry.

/part 4 ~~(coming soon)~~

a thousand miles (left behind) & no one's wiser - part two

clouberding — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 10:18:29 GMT

all headers are on part 1

Today is a serious test of her patience.

So much so, she forgoes trying to preserve what’s left of the station in light of just blasting through the incessant mechs with pure biotics. She leaves a trail of dismembered parts on her way to the shuttle bay – there’s a failsafe module there that only she knows about.

When she arrives, she seals all the doors from her way in; one last scan shows no one outside the four of them are still alive at this point. If anyone else is healthy enough to make the ride back to Central, they’d be here by now.

She’s pulled up the failsafe on a hidden terminal in the room, activating it and effectively shutting down all the mechs by triggering a full system purge. It takes about ten minutes before the entire station will be fully shutdown.

Her HUD link to the station is useless now, so she has to venture out to find him on her own. Last she sees him is through one of the main bridges that connect the two chief labs. By now he shouldn’t be too far away, she’s only two rooms away from where he was before.

Just as she shuts off the terminal, the opposite door beeps to signal someone opening it from the other side – if it’s him, he takes priority. If it’s Casey or, better yet, Emmett, it’ll save her some trouble.

She’s about to open the door herself after she readies her pistol when it slides open. The first thing she sees is a very much alive, not worse for wear Commander Shepard with Casey right behind him. To his right is a less favorable sight, though she enjoys the efficiency of him coming to her before she even lifts a finger.

“Walker! But you were –“

“Dead?”

Perhaps offing him isn’t the best way to deal with things but she’s been much too tolerant of Emmett in general. He’s nearly destroyed everything she dedicated the last two years of her life to and she’d rather be condemned to the hellholes of Omega for the rest of her life than let that pathetic excuse of a human being get the best of her.

Besides, as far as she’s concerned, Lazarus is a success and Emmett has played his part beautifully up until this point.

Casey is the first to say anything, she expects him to gripe at least a little bit for just flat out shooting Emmett although it’s more because she probably got a blood stain or two on his armor he just polished two days ago.

“Ey!” he yells, “watch where you’re pointing that shit, Walker.”

“Calm down, sunshine, a little red isn’t going to ruin your precious suit. Besides,” she says while turning over to look at Shepard, “I did you two a favor.”

He has his gun trained on her despite her own being holstered away already. The expression on his face suggests he has something on his mind and she’s willing to play ball. She lets a smirk ever so slightly tug on her lips, raising an eyebrow in challenge. He raises his own in response, giving her a slight once over before answering, “I’m pretty sure Emmett would disagree with you on that front.”

“Seems that way, doesn’t it?” She nudges her foot around, thinking about what a waste that brain is on such a foolish little man. “I’m sure he would’ve preferred it if the mechs he sent me were actually capable of killing me but as it stands, I just saved you from death – again – you’re welcome for that, by the way.”

“Personally, I would have kept him alive at least until I was done questioning him,” he says, releasing the empty heat clip with a puff of smoke, “what if it wasn’t him?”

“Then I guess Casey is going to shoot you in the near future, if that’s the case, I’d suggest you watch your back – he tends to enjoy dragging things like that out.”

He brings it up again, once they’re in the shuttle and well on their way, asks if it’s possible that someone else from outside could have been hacking into the station and if that is the case – if there’s someone else who’s after him out there – if she can be okay with killing someone innocent so offhandedly.

The answer is of course she can, because she’s a professional. Because she’s devoted (given) up two years of her life to bring this stranger in front of her back to life, one that doesn’t know an ounce of what she’s done that makes shooting Emmett in the head look placid. Because she knows her shit and there is no way in hell that anyone knows he exists – that he’s the unrecognizable, charred piece of crap they place in the med bay with four extra walls of security.

Because no one knows that except for the three vital personnel and if it’s not the two in the shuttle, the only choice left is the one left behind.

She could tell him this, show her superiority that leads her to headline this project, to deal with him but that same station is what allows her to not give enough fucks to waste her breath. She doesn’t bother proving him wrong so much as she tells him she’s right, looks him dead in the eyes with a stone face and asks “can you feel your heart beat?”

He may be more trusting than she’d like him to be but she’s glad to find that he’s not as dumb as he seems when he picks up on her less than subtle implication. It’s somewhat reassuring that the savior of the galaxy isn’t a complete wash, he may prove to have something to bring to the table, yet, though she keeps her expectations fairly low, still.

“We’re going to run through some tests before we reach Central.”

She grabs a datapad, flipping past diagnostic tests to his bio. The Illusive Man makes it more than crystal clear that he won’t accept anything other than the same man before he died. It’s not that she doubts her work, simply the circumstances are unfavorable. It’s in her best interest to know as much as she can about her final product.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that this will go over as smoothly as she wants, his jaw is set in a stubborn way, a hard gaze along with the scars marring the otherwise boyish nature of his face. “Where are you taking me?”

“To another facility,” she answers curtly. Loathe as she is to admit, the day is getting to her on a variety of levels so if answering needless questions is what it takes to shut him up and do what she wants, then she’s willing to say everything he wants to hear.

“Boss man wants to play with his new toy,” Casey pipes up from the cockpit. Before anyone else can say anything further, she interjects. “The Illusive Man – I’m sure you’ve realized we’re Cerberus by now.”

He gives her a terse nod, one of agreement not acceptance. She decides to take it as permission to continue her business.

His name is Devon Shepard, born July 3, 2154 to Woody and Hannah Shepard, both of whom also served in the Alliance. The oldest of three brothers, he is also the only one to follow in his parents’ footsteps and enlist. He is chosen for the N7 program not too long after, graduating with the highest marks in his class – setting most, if not all records that are still held today. His notability comes mainly from his acts on Elysium, risking his life to save his team while managing to almost single-handedly fend off a Batarian slaver attack.

She’s surprised at how well he knows his own file. He nearly recites the entire thing verbatim from start to finish without being prompted further.

It’s impressive – all of it – him, his heroism, his naïve disposition despite facing some of the worst this galaxy has to offer.

She finds it almost more disturbing he exists like this naturally before he was killed than she does resurrecting him. On paper, there’s no one else like him and there probably won’t ever be. And while this is about him, not her, she can’t help but feel a sudden emptiness at the thought of not being good enough when she’s already more than enough.

(it’s something stupid and frivolous and she stomps it down and locks it away as quickly as it surfaces)

The only thing that’s left is all physical, the tiny transit shuttle is an inappropriate place to conduct such tests to say the least, though she’s willing to forgo the standard tests she’s constructed given him still being in one piece after successfully fighting his way through hoards of mechs.

Besides, Casey is apparently impressed with him enough that he’s fairly enthusiastic when he vouches for the “new guy.”

He’s still in the white shirt and shorts they’ve had him in for the past however long he’s been able to while he’s in the med bay; aside from a few stains from running around the station, the shirt is still fairly white, lacking bloodstains that would indicate something more undesirable. From what she can see, the skin grafts on his face get the worst of it, glowing and angry but serving their purpose. It’s a small relief that four billion credits poured into this man can assure that he at least doesn’t bleed out before he takes his first step.

“We’ll have to get you some new clothes,” she finally says, it’s not meant to be heard, barely loud enough for him to pick up if he his listening and small enough to be denied if he questions her about it.

She’s not exactly sure why she feels a need to try cutting the tension but the air is thick and none of it settles well with her.

It takes a beat before he says anything in response, catching her eye before he simply says thank you, leaving an opening for her again. His face has softened considerably, to the point where if she tries she can make out a ghost of a smile.

It’s enough to coax a whispered Sarah out of her because also it makes it occur to her that he has absolutely no clue who she actually is.

The smile that’s been waiting finally appears across his face, wholesome and genuine and sincere that when he thanks her by name for promising to get him actual clothes, it feels like he’s thanking her for a lot more.

(when she says you’re welcome, she finds she actually means it, too)

/part 3 ~~(coming soon)~~

a thousand miles (left behind) & no one's wiser

clouberding — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 05:27:41 GMT

rating: prooobably t for teenz throughout
pairing: sarah/devon
a/n: mass effect au because sooomeone is so incredibly pushy about it and i guess in some ways, it's a good idea. it also solves the whole devon isn't a competent spy thing because surely he can save the galaxy three times over, i mean. come on now. it's relatively similar, takes place from the beginning of me2 onwards. i'm not sure how closely it will follow but for now it's pretty close. also, sarah is still sarah but devon is shepard because commander woodcomb does not roll off your tongue very well. and pretty much everyone else is replaced by chuck characters. it should be pretty obvious who is whom.
summary: you can take the soldier out of the fight, but you can't take the fight out of the soldier.

As unfortunate as it is for the station to be under attack, it’s nearly poetic that the turmoil that follows him around continues the moment his vitals finally show that he’s breathing on his own.

If she wasn’t held down by mechs in the comm station right now, she’d probably be more concerned with him possibly falling on his face as soon as she lifts the stasis but they’ve targeted the med bay and it’ll be an even bigger shit show if he gets killed – again. Her HUD doesn’t need to be blinking warnings everywhere to know who they’re going after. She might as well give him a chance to save his own skin. The way things are going, by the time she clears them all out and gets to him, it’ll probably be too late, anyway.

So what the hell.

Another biotic blast buys her enough time to work on the terminal without bullets flying at her. It takes her longer than she likes to manually override all the firewalls that have popped up since the security breach is triggered. She barely gets the comm link up and to her omni tool before another mech sends another ill aimed blast that only serves to destroy her personal terminal.

“Wake up, commander,” she says as calmly as she can while slamming the mech in question with an unnecessary amount of force. There’s no answer but her HUD is showing good vitals coming out of sleep. “Commander Shepard, you have to get out of the med bay. The station is under attack and I can’t get to you.”

There’s still no answer, vitals still going strong. She’s wondering if they’ve shut down comms when another group of mechs come in and she hears some static on the other end, then his voice coming through the line, “what’s going on? Where am I?”

It’s unsurprising that his first priority is to find out unhelpful information instead of finding where the gun is kept in the med bay.

She’s never actually known the man before Lazarus, outside of news vids and the extranet. Although after engrossing herself with every bit of information there is about him for the past two years, it makes the man become quite predictable in some ways.

(she sincerely wishes she isn’t always right, if only just this once)

“There’s no time to explain, there’s mechs closing in on your location – you need to get a gun now.”

“I’m in a med bay, I don’t see any guns.”

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Her frustration gives way to a calmer tone when she speaks, “there’s a locker at the far corner, there should be a pistol in it.” There’s no time for restating facts let alone arguing over it. Whoever planned this does a surprisingly good job of picking a time when everyone is isolated into convenient pockets for mechs to corner.

She finally makes her way towards the exit of the room after making sure the link is stable. She’s about to check in again when the feed buzzes in and out before what she assumes is lab equipment clattering on the floor. “Shepard,” she finally says when the noise dies down, “are you alright?”

“I’m fine, the pistol doesn’t have a thermal clip.” His voice is raw and scratchy from being unused. As far as she can tell, he still sounds like all the holograms she’s seen of him – a good sign. Another blast from a mech coming her way and a rather violent cough from him takes her out of her thoughts.

“Shepard, you’ll have to be careful.” One mech. “You’re not fully healed yet.” Two mech. “Get out of the med bay and keep moving.” Three mech. “We’ll find you a new clip along the way to the rendezvous.” Ten mech.

There’s no confirmation that he’s heard her but her HUD isn’t full of blinking red, so it counts for something. She doesn’t know how anyone would react to being woken up after two years of death and he seems to be taking it in stride. At the very least, he’s handling it as well as she could expect him to.

The firewalls prove to be effective when another wave of mechs flank her exit to the armory where she’s set the initial rendezvous point. The bastard behind all of this has to be someone on her team because she makes the announcement over the loudspeaker and not through the comms. There’s no way anyone outside the station would know to cut her off unless they’re physically in here still.

“Are you still there? I’m out of the med bay. No hostiles in this room.”

She’s busy trying to reroute Shepard when his voice comes in again, “repeat: out of med bay, no hostiles sighted.” She locks off as many doors as she can en route to the shuttle bay to filter out most of the mechs before answering.

“Find a thermal clip, there should be a at least one lying around,” she says, adding “you’re in a lab room they’ve tried to barricade to keep the mechs off,” before he has the chance to make a comment about it. Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything other than he found a few clips and – son of a bitch – mechs have already been redirected towards the new path.

She finally gets eyes on his location when she makes it to the server room. He looks as good up and about as he can be with someone hacking the station to try and kill him. When she tells him, he seems almost apathetic about the entire situation. He takes out the handful that make it to him with an ease that makes it hard to believe he was technically dead not even twenty minutes ago.

Unfortunately, despite his quite thorough takedown, he takes more time walking around than she would like with the mechs leaving her position to ambush him.

In a last ditch attempt to give him some more time, she tries to trigger the mechs’ basic threat programming to redirect them back to her. It works for the most part, it doesn’t take long before most of them have diverted themselves on his path to come back to her.

“Shepard, you’re doing great. Just keep going, I’ll meet up with you at the –“

A blast goes off to the right of her, back in the comm station. It’s all smoke and fire right now, the static that’s going off in her ear is indicative of another ill aimed blast that serves to do nothing to her while taking off her comm line in the process.

She tries to pull up the link again, hoping that something will get through to him but all she gets is static and fragments of his voice in return. It doesn’t worry her too much, he’s only a few rooms away from the shuttle bay. He’s handled himself well so far, and if she doesn’t find the root of this problem quick, they’ll all be dead anyways.

She’s had enough of running around in circles in her station and she’ll be damned if the place goes down without her finding him first.

A quick sit-rep scan shows that most everyone is dead – lab workers, technicians, engineers, guards, the whole lot is gone save a handful. Aside from them, there’s a reading on Casey that shows he’s more or less healthy. And…

Emmett.

He’s the only personnel left alive with actual vitals. The rest that manage to not get completely crushed by a mech are bleeding out or suffering from some form of mortal injury. Another pulse scan gives her a read on all the mech activity since the breach. As she suspects, where Emmett seems to be located is also where there’s no mech trace.

Conversely, where she is happens to be where there’s an abundance of them. With more coming. And another blast that’s aimed for her takes out the server room just as she advances out of it to go after the bastard doctor.

Motherfucking perfect.

/part 2 ~~(coming soon)~~

hit the ground

clouberding — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 08:55:59 GMT

rating: g. yeah. i think.
pairing: sarah/devon
a/n: a certain someone gave me a prompt about training for a couple's marathon and i made it the theme of sorts
summary: in between assassinating and spying, there's always time for running and hotdogs

It might be saying something about their relationship if she lands herself in a laughing fit after he’s tripped nearly a half dozen times on the sand.

He runs trails and roads and treadmills all the time, but he refuses to try sand because he hates when it gets in his shoes. It’s not every day she gets to see him tripped up (literally and figuratively), so she lets herself indulge. Maybe it’s a little much except the way he’s got his eyebrow arched sky high at her isn’t helping.

“You done yet, Walker?”

They’ve stopped running now, him a little ahead of her. He turns back with his hands on hips that are ever so slightly canted to stare her down.

She’s sure he’d be intimidating if she didn’t know any better – instead, it just sends her into another round of hysterics. He maintains composure, moving his arms to cross over his chest while he waits patiently for an answer.

Eventually she does, when she remembers she’s supposed to. “Just about,” she gets out between a couple lingering chuckles.

(it’s not much of a surprise when she gets tackled into the water)

-

“Was that really necessary?”

“Was it really necessary to make me run in sand?”

“It’s part of the course for that weird marathon Langley signed us up for.”

They’re in their kitchen attempting to towel dry the rest of the saltwater off themselves. They're put up in a more than decent apartment not too far off the coast in Burbank. It’s befitting of a life they probably couldn’t stand if it was more permanent than a handful of months on assignment – maybe even one they would have if they were different people.

“What exactly is a couple’s marathon, anyway?” he asks, passing her the batter in a silent request.

He’s moved onto making breakfast, cracking a few eggs into a bowl and warming up the frying pan. “It’s a full marathon, divided in half,” she starts. “One of us runs the first 13.1 and the other runs the second, then we’re supposed to cheer each other on.”

She’s sitting at the counter watching him work while she mixes, her clothes mostly dry from the run home so she hasn’t bothered changing. It’s domestic in a way that nearly makes her forget they spend more mornings killing unruly people than making pancakes.

There’s no audible response, rather he turns around with the frying pan of eggs in his hands with a signature eyebrow raise that conveys his skepticism better than anything else.

“I know, but Jimmy says it’s a thing here and we have to be that couple.” This time she gets a decent hum of agreement before adding, “apparently everyone in our complex is signed up, too.”

“Even that boy genius and his little roommate? You know they’ve asked me to play Halo with them five times this week and it’s only Tuesday.”

She doesn’t try to hide her laughter now, placing the bowl down next to him before hugging him from behind. The kiss she drops on his shoulder serves as a makeshift apology because she’s not actually too sorry about it. “It’s your own fault for inviting them over for dinner, Awesome.”

“You know, the gamer tag they made me is CaptainAw3som3. Spelled with 3’s instead of e’s,” he grumbles.

“Oh, I know,” she says while reaching around him to grab a piece of bacon, “I helped them.”

-

She gets a clear head start because he makes sure the oven is turned off and the food is properly covered before chasing after her. She sets a slower pace to make sure she doesn’t get too far ahead.

(not because he doesn’t have a good idea of where she’s going, because she enjoys running with him more)

Their earlier run is short, interrupted by their impromptu swim, so it doesn’t take very long at all before he catches up to her. She’s only a little under two miles out before he gives her a love tap and moves next to her.

“Did you really have to use the 3’s?”

The corners of her lips curl, an amused sound answers him. She normally doesn’t laugh, not really, but it comes easy with him.

“The normal version was taken, had to use numbers and ‘CaptainAwesome69’ was already taken.”

She schools her face into neutrality, keeping her eyes focused on the road out front. She can almost feel his eyes glaring at her when he mutters “what a shame” under his breath sarcastically.

-

It doesn’t take too long for them to reach the hotdog shop in the shopping center near the apartment.

Weinerlicious is a trite name at best, but their food is decent enough and they’re not hungry enough for Subway.

Besides, the Weinerlicious has become their unofficial spot ever since a surveillance op got derailed and they ended up here in black tie attire with no dinner to go to. Corndogs, hotdogs, and sausage from a fast food joint is oddly satisfying at one in the morning when you’re highly overdressed for them.

Presently, she’s ambushed by Morgan and being told about him and Chuck’s last go in space and how they could have “used Awesome’s awesome skills to beat all the alien scum.” Morgan reaches a rather animated part of the story when he comes back with chili cheese dogs for all of them.

It’s just the two of them again once they’re done eating and Morgan leaves to go back to the BuyMore after successfully securing a play date after dinner at their house tonight.

Suddenly, she feels too tired to move – the exhaustion from the run starts to slowly kick in because she starts thinking about their lives right now and how surprisingly normal they’ve managed to be despite everything.

(when he’s piggybacking her home, he says he still finds the whole couple’s marathon ridiculous)

(it must be the fatigue but she finds she kind of likes this whole thing)

forever hold your peace

clouberding — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 07:28:14 GMT

rating: g
pairing: jackson/allison
a/n: it's short. real short. i have a thing for sadness and doomed couples i'm sorry.
summary: sometimes the stars never align

He finds her purely on accident, trying to get away from his own demons when he sees her walking alone in the dead of night.

Her eyes are empty; she’s there but distant as she can be at the same time. There’s a possibility she has a destination in mind, although from the looks of it it’s more aimless wandering than anything. There’s a cool breeze out tonight and she’s visibly shivering with her arms wrapped tightly around herself because all she has on is a light cardigan.

Before he realizes what he’s doing he’s already draping his letterman jacket across her shoulders. She’s only surprised for a moment, stopping to face him when she feels his hands running up and down her arms.

The smile he gives her is easy, unforced – it’s been a while since he’s given them so freely. Instinctively, he feels a sense of pride that she looks at him like she knows he’s given her something precious that’s especially for her.

He stops her when she tries to explain, placing a finger over her lips and shakes his head softly. He readjusts the collar around her, smiles again, and nods to where he’s going before he saw her.

She waits a moment before she catches up to him and falls in line with him. She is patient and doesn’t ask questions. Just follows him silently to wherever he’s taking her. When he stops, they’re on top of a hill that overlooks a decent part of town.

The view isn’t much, insignificant compared to countless others.

This one has always been enough to make him feel better, to become his solace. Out here he feels bigger than he is. His world and everyone in it is small compared to him, so when he feels like he’s losing control this is the place that helps him regain a sense of balance. Some of the tension has already melted away by the time he settles himself on the ground.

When she decides to join him, she leans into him a bit, nestling her body as close to him as possible. They stay silent while they gaze out into the night. He’s trying to push everything out of his mind and he assumes she’s doing something similar as the stiffness ebbs away.

She’s more relaxed against him now, dropping her head to his shoulder, breaths deep and even. Her arms weave around his and it’s almost alarming how easily she finds his hand to tangle her fingers with his. Even more so is the way he drops his cheek atop her head and presses a chaste kiss there.

(and sometimes, when he misses her a little more than too much, he comes out here to remember how close they were to getting it right)

you don't know you like i do

clouberding — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 06:31:09 GMT

rating: g
characters: carina, sarah
a/n: more or less for the summer ficathon...i just failed to get it in on time
summary: fooling yourself can only get you so far

Carina has always had a knack for knowing what Sarah wants before she’s even aware of it.

It’s not luck and it’s not reading between the lines. It’s not knowing her better than anyone else, either. It’s simply that Carina accepts Sarah for who she is, even if she doesn’t. Nothing more, nothing less.

This is no different because when Carina sends her a ticket to Sao Paolo and no note, she comes.

It’s true that old habits die hard but Carina’s been around the block enough times to know that if you really want something to go away, it does. So when she finds Sarah down in baggage claim with nothing more than the clothes on her back and a carry-on duffel that’s big enough, Carina’s knows she’s on the right track.

Carina means to survey the damage first, wade in the water before she takes a dive but when Sarah chucks her bag to her and takes the keys to the jeep, it hits too close to home.

The car ride is a blur and before she remembers everything is not alright with her friend, they’re poolside at the resort into their third mojito. She forces herself to sober up for a second when the nostalgia dies down, says “Walker” nice and calm. It doesn’t fool Sarah for a second, she feels her name laced with a blend of concern and two parts curiosity. She gives Carina a half-assed smile because she’s had this conversation countless times since her ‘accident,’ exhaling sharply as she shrugs it off.

That conversation ends there, not that it needs to go on.

The way she constantly fiddles with the rings on her finger like she’s trying to make them fit just right, Carina already knows they don’t belong.

It’s mostly an accident that Carina ends up calling Sarah when she gets shot in the shoulder during a bust in Miami. Mostly because she’s not completely guilty that she mixes up Sarah’s number with her handler’s, accident because she did mean to call her handler.

She expects Sarah to relay the message to headquarters and that would be that. Carina calls her handler herself after, but Sarah is always really thorough. Being a housewife wouldn’t change that.

The wound is mostly superficial and although her shoulder is quietly killing her, it could be worse if the bullet didn’t nick the edge of her Kevlar. The bullet is gone but the gaping hole is just cleaned with a stinging douse of alcohol and a clump of gauze on top. She’s too tired to try and wrap it up nicely so she settles for sleeping on her stomach to avoid aggravating it more.

What she doesn’t expect is Sarah on her doorstep at the crack of dawn and fussing over her injury like it’s life threatening or something. Even so, the part where Sarah straight up drugs her for the better part of the next day is unsurprising.

When Carina comes to, there’s no sign of the mess she made last night, a covered up plate that’s presumably her dinner on the kitchen table, and a note with “you’re welcome” written on it.

It feels like old times.

She’s going under deep cover indefinitely, until things pan out and she has a viable opening. Before she becomes Tamara Wayland for however long, Carina makes a pit stop in Burbank. The premise is a visit to say goodbye to a friend but it’s planned like pseudo extraction of sorts.

It’s been a solid year since everything happened and if Sarah hasn’t made up her mind by now, Carina’s going to help her along.

Carina knows Sarah’s been trying to make this work, this life that she possibly genuinely wanted at one point. She likes to play hero and sacrifice herself for some greater good but in this case, there is none. Pretending everything’s alright is only going to make things worse.

The reality is that whoever wanted this life then isn’t here now.

Truth be told, Carina’s not even sure who that person was. She looked like Sarah, talked like Sarah, walked like Sarah but she isn’t Sarah – isn’t her Sarah.

Her Sarah wouldn’t want monogrammed towels or movie night Wednesdays or a house with a picket fence. And for the first time in a long time, Carina sees her old friend she lost along the way. Memory loss or not, she owes this much to her Sarah.

So before she goes, she leaves a one way ticket in a sealed envelope on the counter.

Carina doesn’t even make it out the door when Sarah calls her name and chucks her bag at her.

back when we were young and wild and free

clouberding — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:29:46 GMT

rating: g
characters: haymitch and his gurlfran
a/n: written for century_fox for the short and sweet ficathon, prompt was the summer before haymitch was reaped.
summary: once, he remembers, there's a time when it was perfect

The grass is cool on his back, the sun shining bright and warm on the field he’s laying down in.

There’s a breeze in the air that replaces the smell of coal with the a crisp mountain smell that makes him forget where he is for the time being. His hair falls haphazardly around his head. He’s content with watching the clouds float by, picking out the different shapes they make.

It’s as close to perfect as he can get. If time passes by, he’s not aware of it.

He’s trying to decide if the current cluster of clouds makes a dinosaur or a pirate ship when he hears the familiar song echoing amongst the mockingjays that are perched around him.

A smile breaks out across his face, his eyes lighting up when it fills his ears because his perfect day has just gotten better. He hums along to the simple tune, one he knows by heart, until her face hovers over his. She doesn’t say anything at first, just gives him a look that she’s done a thousand times before.

It’s supposed to be stern though it never takes too long before she cracks. He gives her dress a tug once, twice, before she gives in with a sigh of longsuffering and sits down.

She comes out here to reprimand him for hiding away out past the electric fence and not helping his mother do chores this afternoon but when he shifts to pillow his head on her lap, she allows it. It’s a small victory that he doesn’t push. As bad as he is at telling her no, she’s nearly just as bad when it comes to humoring him.

Her fingers run through his hair in a silent rhythm while he fiddles with the fingers in her free hand like he’s fascinated with them. They do nothing except enjoy each other’s company because there’s no telling how much time they have left to do this. Right now, he’s taking everything he can from this moment before it can get taken away from him.

There’s a million different things he could be doing right now instead of this but he can’t find a good enough reason to do any of them because the sun is shining and the temperature is just right and he has his favorite person with him right now.

And besides, he has all the time in world.

(but that was yesterday)

bottles, boyfriends, and bobby bradford

clouberding — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 08:54:32 GMT

rating: g
characters: casey, alex
a/n: i spiraled because someone talked to me about alex and i ended up with some happy father-daughter bonding time because i am a sucker for that kind of thing. clearly took some liberties with canon in relation to alex's backstory but since she really has none other than pie slinger and college graduate and spawn of casey, i feel it's okay. no spoilers less you count revealing that alex is spawn of casey. in which case, i apologize. also, believe it or not...THERE'S NO ANGST OR CRYING OR ANYTHING. so be go on. be happy.
summary: it's not every day you tell your dad you played spin the bottle at your friend's birthday party and kissed your first boyfriend (that you kneed below the belt three months later).

“Do I really want to know about this?”

He tries to glare and make his voice sound intimidating, except it doesn’t quite work because Alex starts to laugh and shoves his arm from across the table. She gets a genuine smile from him in return and her own couldn’t be bigger. It hasn’t been that long but it’s long enough to learn to her call her father’s bluff when she sees it. “Come on,” she teases, “what kind of father doesn’t want to know about his only daughter’s first boyfriend?”

Casey’s back to seething with his arms folded across his chest with his jaw clenching. In the middle of their dinner at a fancy restaurant, it makes him look more petulant than anything – and in a suit, at that.

“The kind that doesn’t want his only daughter dating,” he huffs. Somehow Casey taking her out for dinner to celebrate her graduation leads to a conversation about Alex’s dating life and he makes it more than obvious he’d rather talk about anything other than this.

It makes her happy to see him acting so fatherly, though. She’s gone so long without him, she didn’t realize how much she misses this when she was growing up. For the sake of her dates, she’s glad he wasn’t.

“Well, I’m telling you anyways.”

Alex is determined when she speaks and her tone books no argument, something Casey attributes to himself. Despite his supposed anger, he feels the smile tugging at his lips starting to win.

He wants to say something about how he would rather brave some life or death situation instead of hearing her utter another syllable about this Bobby Bradford. Instead he bucks up and takes another bite of his steak. The right amount of juices that blend so well together in his mouth is enough to distract him from the glaring fact that he can’t exactly say no to Alex – it’s something he still refuses to admit daily.

In light of his best efforts at keeping that fact unknown to the general public, the glint in Alex’s eyes are enough to deem his efforts null. If her smile is indicative of anything, it’s that she knows he’s wrapped tightly around her little finger.

When she nudges Casey a little bit before she starts again, he decides he’s not really mad and gives her a nod to continue.

“So,” she starts, “I was at Lucy Kinkade’s thirteenth birthday party over the summer and this was like, one of the first parties her parents let people stay late and it was a sleepover.”

On instinct, Casey’s eyes narrow and he sits up a little bit straighter. Alex notices his hands tightening their grip around his pointy utensils so she places her own on top of his, squeezing lightly in reassurance.

“Daddy, relax, okay? Her parents made the boys go home at midnight. They didn’t sleepover, too.”

The growl he looses makes her concerned for a moment but when his hands slowly relax underneath hers, she takes it as a sign that she’s tempered the situation enough to keep going.

“Anyways, some time after pizza and before the movie, we played spin the bottle for a bit.” She pauses for a moment, grimacing at the sight of her father’s face after she mentions the game and vows to make it as short a story as possible to avoid any incident.

“Bobby sat across from me and I didn’t think twice about it but when the it was my turn, the bottle landed on him. After that we didn’t talk too much, maybe a ‘hi’ or something in the hallways but when homecoming came around, he asked me to be his date. It was pretty much downhill from there.”

They sit in silence for a little while, after she finishes her story.

Casey hasn’t done much more than continue eating his steak and periodically drinking his wine. His face is a picture of neutrality, though the force he uses to cut his steak is probably unnecessary.

Alex does the same in kind, letting her father process the little information she’s thrown at him. She’s not exactly sure how fathers are supposed to act when their daughters first get boyfriends but Alex is sure this is well within range, even for Casey. She eats patiently, waiting for him to say something.

Finally, after the plates have been cleared and dessert is ordered, he blurts out “so what happened to this…Bobby?” and it takes Casey nearly every ounce of self control to use the boy’s name instead of a number of possible substitutions.

“It didn't last long," she offers, with a shrug. "I found him under the bleachers kissing one of the cheerleaders from our rival school at a football game. I ditched practice to watch his game so I was kind of mad about that."

When Alex mentions that she broke up with him that instant via kneeing him in the groin, he doesn't think he could be any prouder of her than right now. Casey’s grin is almost literally from ear to ear when the waiter brings out their dessert.

He hasn’t stopped looking at Alex like she’s the single most greatest thing on earth he’s ever seen. This rare moment is probably something to cherish, Alex knows, but it doesn’t stop her from having a laughing fit at the sight. She should have known that the ending to the Bobby Bradford story would make him happy and it’s a testament to how much so when he starts laughing, too.

The mood lifts again while they're finishing up dinner, the rest of the time is spent in good nature talking about nonsense with smiles on both their faces and laughter as a constant.

Later, as they leave the restaurant, Casey wraps his jacket around her shoulders before slinging an arm over, pulling her close. His cheek brushes the top of her head and she swears that his lips leave a small kiss before pulling away. Before Casey can completely untangle himself when they reach the car, Alex quickly wraps her arms firmly around his waist, burying her head into his chest.

When she mumbles “thanks for dinner, daddy,” into him because she won't let go, he forgoes a grunt and whispers, “I owe you a lot more,” as he hugs her tighter. She nods aimlessly, readjusting herself, but as she settles in his arms, she thinks that just having him now - like this - is more than enough.

the farther you are, the stronger i am

clouberding — Thu, 24 May 2012 07:55:03 GMT

rating: pg, there's mention of alcohol(ism) but nothing graphic
characters: katniss, haymitch-centric
a/n: so katniss and haymitch's relationship goes to crap in the books when he lies to her and that always makes me sad because i loved them together. and i always felt like haymitch cared more about katniss than to simply lie to her and have it at that, like in the book. so in a moment of weakness, i conjured something up that kind of soothes that wound because i luff him. my heart will go on. and on. and oooooooon. (p.s. the time line is flexible, just go with it.)
summary: you can't lose something you never had

They assume that he is broken beyond repair but they’re wrong.

His reality is that he's merely amongst the broken, free to survey the damage inflicted because he's been left untouched. He isn’t lucky or spared, he’s tortured.

The bottle becomes a reminder that his actions come with a heavy price. Each swig reminds him that he is selfless in doing this because they can’t take away something he doesn’t care for.

When it’s empty, he almost believes the words he’s saying.

Her eyes leave a distinct pang.

It’s a type of hurt that he hasn’t felt in a long time, not so acutely. It’s been dulled and it frays around the edges and sometimes, if he gets lost just enough, it would disappear like it never existed.

It hurts more than he remembers, perhaps because the situation is rather unfortunate, perhaps because she reminds him of a ghost he’s never quite put to rest.

Tonight, he doesn’t find the end of the bottle, or the beginning of one.

If he does, he wouldn’t remember how this feels. How there is a beginning but no end. How this ache surpasses his heart, permeating to every muscle in his body, every fiber of his being. How the pain he feels with every breath is something he deserves.

Tonight, he will let the hurt pay for his sins.

He drinks more than he should once the timer has counted down.

It’s more of a technicality than anything, the burn doesn’t erase any of the pain and the warmth does little to shut out the cold. There’s no escape from the turmoil inside him, but the alcohol on his breath saves him from those around him.

The memories are as vivid as what he sees on screen. There is killing and there are people he loves however there is no fabricated story to cover up the blood that seeps out of various wounds. Just like before, there is blame that fits so neatly into his hands.

If only death took to him as easily as it did everything he loves.

The apologies he tells her go unheard, day in and day out, he says them regardless.

He apologizes for his lies, the ones that have no consequence and the one that he pays for in full twice over. His whispers come without fail, as he remembers them, while he brushes the hair out of her face and changes the bandages on her wound. When he tends to the gash on her temple, his lips touch her cheek ever so slightly.

It’s not affection, no, because he can’t love her – not like he loved everyone else. To do that would be to condemn her to their same fate. This is the only way he knows how to save her.

There’s some hope that if she wouldn’t believe his words, she would believe this.

He prepares for this, the alcohol coursing through his body, extending numbness to everywhere it can reach. Still, it’s not enough when her eyes finally focus on him. They’re wild and uninhibited, full of hurt and anger all at the same time.

It sobers him nearly instantly.

The lunge she takes at him helps, too.

He makes no move to stop her, though. The only act of defense is to catch her wrist, the one with the syringe in hand, applying enough pressure so she drops it. As soon as she does, he lets her continue her assault.

She flails her arms, punching and slapping and scratching, hitting any part of him she can reach. Lines of red are left in her wake, blood trickling down in various amounts, and the signs of bruises already forming where his skin is free of clothing. She swings again and again and again, until her body is too tired to facilitate the fire in her heart and gives way.

When her strikes no longer sting with pain, he gathers her up in his arms before she collapses.

What he has done is unforgivable, this he knows as sure as he does his own name.

The trust he finds before is gone, replaced with a hardness that should not come so easily. The little girl he sees before is even smaller, now, with the weight of the world on shoulders that are far too narrow.

He is the only one at fault, the only one whose hands welcome this burden.

Although he isn’t unfamiliar with this feeling, it’s the only time he accepts it willingly because she is alive.

She will never look at him the same warmth that is different than pity and sorrow, will never say his name with the same softness that manages to surface, but he doesn’t mind because he doesn’t care.

And because he doesn’t care, they don’t take her away.

And because they don’t take her away, he no longer needs the bottle to convince himself that his lies are truth.

101 Days of Alex and Devon

clouberding — Sun, 13 May 2012 06:51:37 GMT

characters/pairings: Casey/Sarah, Alex/Devon
rating: g
a/n: this is legit the crackiest thing ever. college au with these four losers and some weird ass imagination that i'm even surprised i have. really. this is all just pure, unadulterated crack like none other. i don't know how i got here. i really don't. i just have a lot of feelings okay. ~~maybe there is more in the future~~
summary: one semester, two couples, four friends, and a hundred and one days of crazy.

“I’m sorry,” sounds more volatile than actually remorseful coming out of Sarah’s mouth.

If anything, she thinks Alex should be the one to apologize to Devon for Sarah kneeing him in the crotch.

The last thing she wants to do is take a stupid self defense class at the campus rec center but Alex makes her come anyways. If Sarah is left alone to take a nap like she wanted to, none of this would have happened.

It’s also presumably not her fault if the instructor decides to pick her to be the victim in a ‘real life’ exercise and Devon happens to be her attacker. And if he got himself into this mess, he should really make it a priority to learn how to protect his vital organs properly beforehand.

So, really, Sarah should be the last person apologizing to pretty boy.

The only reason Sarah even says anything is because Alex is breaking out all the stops and she’ll be damned if her best friend doesn’t make pretty boy fall big time for her in the next five minutes.

In the middle of telling Alex about how Greek and Roman mythology is probably the worst elective she could take, Sarah looks up from her tray to find Alex making some ridiculous face at her.

No, not her – someone behind her.

When she decides to take a look back, she has a pretty good idea of who she’ll see. The anticipation does little to help her when she finds pretty boy making an equally ridiculous face about three tables back with the other athletes. In the corner of her eye, Sarah can see Casey sitting next to Devon eying him with the same look.

Sarah all but demands Alex switch seats with her so they can finish their conversation and their dinner before Sarah loses her appetite completely – the last thing she wants is to look up from taking a bite of her grilled cheese and be subjected anymore God awful faces.

When she gets up to move, she reminds herself to reward Casey when she sees the pudding on pretty boy’s face that may or may not be a result of the nearly imperceptible nod she gave him earlier.

Psychology class becomes decidedly less interesting when Alex and Devon start passing notes to each other.

Because it’s not like their class is even in a classroom, it’s in a lecture half with an upwards of three-hundred students. Or that their professor doesn’t let them have laptops so they don’t have access to the internet. Or that anyone even cares if they use their cellphones in class.

Apparently, they just do it because they can for no good reason.

Sarah makes a mental note to let them sit together next class after she sends a text to Casey detailing exactly how dumb it is that she’s stuck as their middleman.

The look Casey shoots her when Devon piggy backs Alex all the way back to their dorm from the diner is priceless. It takes all her self control to not burst out laughing right then and there.

Sarah knows well enough her boyfriend is the last person on earth that would carry her without a very good reason and she’s the last person on earth that would want him to – she’s perfectly capable of walking on her own.

Just for kicks, Sarah purposefully falls behind and takes a running jump onto Casey’s back on the last leg of their walk.

Unfortunately for the four of them, Casey is even less graceful with Sarah’s added weight and when he falls, he takes everyone down with him.

Sarah can’t walk right and Alex kind of limps for days after that but least the butt bruises will discourage any more piggy back rides for Alex and Devon – that’s mostly an accomplishment in her book.

There’s three things that Sarah would never be caught dead doing.

One, is making bright pink posters with “GO CASEY” written on them in sporadic puffy paint colors in what Alex called ‘bubble letters’ that just looked like a really obnoxious way to waste lots of paint.

Two, is actually holding said posters she helped make while in a crowded gym in the front row during a wresting tournament against their school’s biggest rivals.

Three, is participating in a home made cheer her best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend made up the night before. While they were making said posters together while doing the special hand clap that went along with it (apparently it’s a ‘motivating clap’ though Sarah was too tired to argue that bats probably couldn’t even tell the difference between it and a regular one).

And yet there she is, front and center having done all three of those things with the same two witnesses each step of the way. At least she’s able to retain some dignity when she puts her food down at painting their faces half navy and half silver.

Sarah decides the glitter that Alex makes her save from the night before is put to good use when she dumps it mostly on Devon in ‘celebration’ of Casey’s win in the gold medal round.

After an all nighter, three cans of Red Bull, and one of some unknown energy drink she probably shouldn’t have let Casey talk her into drinking, Sarah decides Devon might not be a bad guy after all.

It has nothing to do with the fact that Devon makes her and Alex breakfast that includes heaps of bacon, chocolate chip pancakes shaped like Yoda, and orange juice that seriously tastes like he just squeezed them before they woke up after he picked them in his private orchard this morning.

Also nothing to do with him getting Casey to wake up early and bring them over apple pie. According to Casey, he told him to ‘bring something good’ for the girls and that’s what apple pie was. Despite the impracticality of it as a breakfast food, Sarah manages to down a slice and a half before leaving.

No, she decides it’s mostly because she’s delirious from lack of sleep and Devon was kind enough scooter her and Alex to and from their midterm so she doesn’t have to walk – not many guys his size can fit two girls on those things without losing one of them along the way.

Alex picked a relatively decent one this time, she figures.

Their school’s annual water balloon charity fundraiser is probably the most anticipated event of fall semester for Sarah, even if she has to wear these weird tie dye tank tops that Alex insisted on using for their team. She likes tie dye, by all means, but there was seriously something wrong when their shirts look like a neon sign vomited on it.

No matter because all the better to beat everyone in a neon vomit tie dye shirt. It’ll making victory that much sweeter.

Devon and her end up making a really good team after she uses Casey as a shield and he gets eliminated in the final round. She feels kind of bad, but she has to admit that a wrestler’s arm isn’t as good as a lacrosse player’s. Besides she’ll make it up to him later, he can never stay mad at her for too long anyways.

But as soon as they establish a really good rhythm, Sarah should have known he would go and do something stupid. Something like ump in front of Alex and get himself eliminated.

So now, the two girls were outnumbered three to one and a half – because seriously, Alex is the smallest thing ever, if there was even a chance the balloon would’ve hit her, she could’ve just ducked. But Sarah has come too far to be stopped by some misplaced chivalry, even if all she has is two water balloons.

How she takes out three guys with just those and without sacrificing Alex is a secret she’s taking to her grave.

For once, Sarah actually agrees with Devon on what they want to do Friday night.

It’s not that she wants to, it’s just that pizza and board games and rented movies are something they could do any old weekend but this weekend is black light paint party downtown and it’s only hosted once a year.

Alex and Casey seem to think it’s stupid to pay a ten dollar entrance fee to get a white shirt they’re just going to paint in the dark while listening to too loud music. Sarah’s actually quite surprised Alex doesn’t like the painting part. Casey is more predictable, though she plans on just making him go anyways.

The point is, is that it’s two on two and all four of them are tired of arguing.

Which somehow results in them settling their dispute at the school’s batting cage. It’s unorthodox to say the least, but if it helps them solve their problem she’s more than willing to give a go at it.

They agree on everyone getting ten balls, whichever group hits the most properly wins.

Sarah’s almost certain that Devon misses intentionally so that he ends up hitting one shy of her number but she accepts the gesture because even though he does, they still end up winning by far. She also accepts the special handshake he comes up with, because she can rub it in their faces. And she might find it a little cool – only a little, though.

The four of them spend Thanksgiving at Alex’s house. It’s not too far from campus and Sarah’s family has almost always celebrated with Alex’s, anyways. Casey tags along because his family doesn’t really do Thanksgiving and Devon’s parents apparently left him for a skiing trip in the Alps.

When Devon pulls up to the driveway, it seems like they’re not the only ones that decide to crash for the holidays and there’s way more people than Alex’s parents anticipated.

Which means that as soon as they get out of the car, Alex’s mom is yelling instructions at them to help her cook and get more food. Alex and Casey end up staying behind because she has to make her special stuffing and he promised he’d make sweet potato casserole with marshmallows. Since Devon has his SUV, he and Sarah are sent to the commandeer another turkey and some things on a list.

At the supermarket, they split the list of stuff and agree to meet at the back where the turkeys are. It’s far too crowded to try to go down all the aisles together and there’s no way they can just shove their way through the throng of people.

By the time they meet up again, all the turkeys they get to choose from are kind of pathetic, so when Sarah nudges Devon and nods at the huge one in an unattended cart, there’s mischief in his eyes that she highly approves of.

They carry one of the bigger turkeys they could find in the lot over to as they scout out the owner. They’re can’t spot anyone but when they reach the cart, there’s no one empty handed around them and enough people to conceal them for the most part. Devon grabs their prize and Sarah drops in the replacement.

While they race off to the check out line, neither of them acknowledges someone yelling about someone else stealing their turkey.

Finals week has all of them cooped up in the girls’ apartment cramming for their psychology test they should have started studying for last week.

Granted, it probably isn’t going to be that hard and the rest of the tennis team insisted Alex and her take it because it’s the easiest core there is. Still, it would have been nice if they didn’t have to power through a semester’s worth of notes because no one remembered it was going to be cumulative until they get their TA’s last email.

They’re sitting on the floor, surrounding the circular coffee table that sits in the middle of the living room with papers and notebooks scattered everywhere and a couple pizza boxes lying about. They manage to make it until about two in the morning before they start losing people.

Alex is the first to go, because she gets tired so easily. She’s always the first to go. Next is Casey, not really because he’s tired, probably more so because he’s eaten too much pizza and he succumbs to his food coma. When Devon closes his eyes mid-note taking, it leaves Sarah as the last one awake.

She nudges Devon’s shoulder and tells him to take his girlfriend to her room, her own words slurred from drowsiness. As he picks up Alex, Sarah manages to get Casey up and over to the couch to drop him there for the night.

Sarah wakes up the next morning in her bed, although she’s not entirely sure how she gets there.

That mystery is immediately solved when she gets out of bed and ends up stepping on Devon’s crotch (this time she apologizes, sincerely, without being told to, despite the fact that he should be more careful where he falls asleep).

The last tennis match of the semester is played while the sun is setting and the only audience around to watch is the players’ significant others.

It’s not a ranking match and it won’t go towards the team’s score but it will decide what they’re all going to do to celebrate the last weekend before they go home, so it means the stakes are still high.

If Sarah wins, they’ll go to the beach and have a bonfire with some smores toasted just the way she likes.

If Devon wins, they’ll go the lake and for some jet skiing and wakeboarding and swimming and ‘summer camp fun,’ whatever that means.

Loathe as Sarah is to admit it, he’s actually a fairly good tennis player and she’s working up a sweat to keep him on his toes. She’s winning, but not by much. He’s agile and responsive and he adapts much better than she expects him to.

She nearly loses all hope when they’re tied and she’s far too close to the net when he returns her hit with a smash – it’s a bad judgment on her part, she forgot to account for his ridiculously long limbs.

When she nearly considers going to her coach and telling her she doesn’t deserve to be on the team anymore, Alex calls the ball out and Sarah can’t decide if it’s pity, truth, or intentional. To accommodate for all three possibilities, she tells him she’ll settle for a bonfire on the lake and they special handshake on it.

At breakfast the next day, Devon brings over a smore he made at home for their car ride.

(so maybe he’s a really good guy, after all, kind of)

open your eyes

clouberding — Sun, 13 May 2012 01:38:28 GMT

rating: is there really a appropriate age for heartbreak though
characters: alex and casey because duh
spoilers: hints about what happens at the very end of the finale. not that you'll probably care. because it is about casey and alex.
a/n: i hate myself through and through.
summary: sometimes the walls we build keep out the ones we want to stay

I don’t want you to go.

Her head is buried in his chest, her arms are wrapped tightly around his middle like she’s afraid he’ll disappear into thin air if she lets go even the slightest bit. He can’t bring himself to stop his cheek from dropping on top of her head, that fits so neatly right under his chin, to reassure her that he’s real.

This is something he wants to do, something he’s decided on doing and as soon as he lets go of the little girl in his arms, he can pick up his bags and leave like he planned to. He’s been cooped up for five long years outside of his power, so this is something he has to do now that he can.

He can’t break, not just because she’s clutching onto him and telling him she wants him to stay.

But he does, although not just because of those things.

It’s because she’s his, from the way she loves her mother’s apple pie to the way she has a right hook that can knock a grown man twice her size unconscious. The way she brings out something he lost a lifetime ago without even trying. The way she still tries to be strong despite holding on for dear life.

His one weakness will always be how much he loves her, so when she asks there was never any question.

(This is the part she doesn’t know. The part that she doesn’t realize.)

Go, run to her.

When she tells him that she’s happy for him and that he’s done more than enough to deserve this, it’s the exact opposite of what she wants.

She steels herself, replacing the broken feeling with a façade of happiness she hopes he won’t see past and buries herself in his arms just in case he does. If this is what he needs to be happy, she won’t be the one to stop him.

The part of her that clings on misses him already. It doesn’t want him to leave her on her own again, not after she just found him. It wants to be selfish and keep him to herself because she never had this luxury before she’s grown up.

When she rushes him out the door, it’s not because she doesn’t want him to miss his flight or that she’s excited for him – it’s because she’s afraid of crying in front of him and she knows that if she cries, he’ll never leave her. As much as she wants that, it’s everything she can’t let herself have.

So she waits until the car engine covers the sound of her voice before she says everything she has to say and everything she really wants as the car drives away from the house, away from her.

She catches a glimpse of him looking back at her in the rearview mirror but she only lets herself cry when the car is out of sight.

(This is the part he doesn’t know. The part that he doesn’t realize.)

keep warm

clouberding — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 05:45:08 GMT

rating: g
paring: katniss/cinna
a/n: written for gigglemonster for the thg ficathon - prompt was 'i'll leave my jacket to keep you warm'
summary: he breaks the rules just one more time.

The first time he comes to her is when her need is the greatest.

As strong as she is, there is so much even she can withstand before her own flames begin to destroy her. Everyone she trusts has either proven themselves unworthy or they are nowhere to be found. Where they tell her she belongs is nowhere familiar. Who she is, she does not even know.

He feels her hurting because as much as it hurts her, it hurts him, too.

When the hurting becomes unbearable, he breaks the rules just one more time.

(just once more, he tells himself though he knows it is a lie)

There is one time he comes where she is angry at him.

She says that she hates him – hates that he made her believe she could win, hates that he left her, hates that he breaks every rule for her because if he just let them have their way they might not be separated.

His heart breaks not because she says she hates him, but because every time she says she hates him, he hears her say “I miss you.”

This is his last time because he needs to say goodbye before he must go.

He finds her outside in the pouring rain, out in the small sliver of forest she is allowed to find peace. Her knees are curled into her chest and her chin is resting atop her knees with her arms wrapped around tight. There is nothing covering her aside from a thin nylon jacket that only serves to help keep her dry.

There is much he wants to say and only fleeting moments to do so but he says none of them.

She is shivering, skin slick with rain and cold to the touch and he finds himself smiling, of all things, because this is the one thing he knows he can do for her. He holds her in his arms this final time, presses a kiss to her temple more times than necessary though less than she deserves.

As he fades away, his jacket he wraps around her shoulders bursts into flames such is his signature –

Keep warm, my girl on fire.