Summary: The story behind Carmen's high heels.

Disclaimer: I'm just a fanfiction author. All hail the rightful owners.

"Can you fix this?"

I turned the shoe in my hand. "Fifteen minutes." I decided.

My boss nodded solemnly and sat down. I keep a comfy chair for her in the corner of my workshop. There's no getting around it. Carmen might move Mount Rushmore out of the corner of her eye, but she will not let those shoes out of her sight.

Today, she seemed real relieved to get to it, like she was tired or something. Then again, that's no surprise if the balance on her shoe was off. Nothing gets boss out of sorts faster than a broken shoe.

"How'd you do this?" I asked, adjusting a lens to get closer vision. "Looks like you broke the fastener for the robotic arm."

Carmen frowned. "The short answer is Sara."

"How about the long one?"

"She's trying to invent a sapient robot," Carmen frowned and rubbed her ankle, "Using its ability to make friends as her primary metric."

"I don't know what that means, boss" I'm a cobbler not… whatever Sara is.

Shaking her head, Carmen slumped back into the recliner. "A twenty foot tall mech tried to hug the inside of my shoe."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"And you came here instead of say… to a doctor?"

"Exactly."

I rooted around in my drawers for the right spare part. "Rough day, huh?"

She slumped down in the chair like she was in her living room or something. "Very much so."

Now Carmen might just have been telling a tall tale, but I tended to believe her. The flow of information in VILE always seemed off to me. As far as I could tell, the more you were supposed to know, the more Carmen loved fooling you. It was a hobby of hers, the way other folks like building model ships or knitting.

The rest of us loved her though. Carmen always talked to you like a real person. It wasn't just the usual business with her memory either, though she could remember the names of your relatives six generations back and what you had for dinner two weeks ago Wednesday. If you found Carmen in just the right mood, she'd even talk about herself.

To hear the stories, one time when Carmen offhand told her dentist she was having a miserable day. It baffled most of the higher ups to kingdom come. They had no idea that was even possible.

So I probably knew more about Carmen than her entire inner circle. That's because Carmen was a cobbler's dream, or nightmare more-like. She knocked those shoes around like a baseball, but wouldn't even hear of replacing them. Fixing up her custom designer heels five times a week put my grandkids through school, all twelve of them. And that was nothing I'd have ever thought I had a shot at, barring mountain-loads of debt.

Course you never saw it coming though. Most of the time, when Carmen came in, for a quick touch up on the heels or to double check a custom modification, she didn't say much at all. She just kind of perched in the corner while I did the quick fix, looking a little awkward because she was barefoot. That was why I got the chair. Figured she might as well sit, if she feels like it.

"There," I checked the reinforced heel one more time to be sure the scuffing was nice and disappeared. "Good as new."

The boss stood on one foot to put the footwear on, and then carefully took a few steps, testing it out.

"How's it walk?" I tended to get extra worked up about doing those heels. It was a standard repair, but most ladies didn't balance on thin beams over city skylines in their favorite dress shoes.

Carmen nodded. "It's perfect."

Even on heists, I don't think the boss looked that content, and I felt just on cloud nine. I knew a lot of women who were infatuated with shoes, but Carmen's the only one I've met who's this obsessed with one particular pair. She got ten different copies of the exact same set, back in the eighties. Then she got the idea to rig them up like pocket knives and hired me to consult. A decade later and we're still on the same set of shoes. Between the after heist restoration and fitting them up with gadgets, it was a full time job just caring for them. That's not even counting the orthotics and the constant fit adjustments. Or how Carmen won't let them out of her sight…

It must have been a day to ask questions because I spoke up. "Ok I'm wondering…"

Carmen sighed.

"Why the heels? Not that I'm complaining but if you wore running shoes, you wouldn't have to pay me a manager's salary to make these comfortable." Never mind safe.

Evasively, Carmen asked. "What do you think?"

"Um… well I always thought it was to" I colored. "Show the police up."

Laughing, Carmen says back. "The hubris explanation. Classic."

"But is that it?"

Carmen shifted on her heels, testing them probably. "Once, I surprised Ivy in dress shoes. She had to kick them off." Her eyes sparkled and I could see her teeth. The boss had really perfect teeth. "It was a good time."

I figured the happy memory had put her in a talkative mood, so I kept going. "So that's not the reason heels are your favorite shoes?"

Carmen considered. "Well I wouldn't say that."

"Really?" That was news to me. "They aren't. Um… Could have fooled me?"

First she tapped her fingers on my workbench for a spell, and then Carmen started on a story. "When I was ten," She told me "There was an athletic team that I deeply wanted to join."

"You liked running." Aren't I a genius?

"I'm good at it."

I couldn't help laughing.

Just like that, her eyes sparkled. "Yes even then. I knew I could place in the matches, if I could join the team."

"I'm not sure I'm following you, boss."

"The team wasn't connected to the orphanage." Carmen remarked. "In fact the context was rather…" She chose the words carefully. "Affluent. They required that I own running shoes to participate. Specialized ones."

It's not a new story to me. You know what they say about the cobbler's children. "You… you didn't steal them did you?"

She glowered. "No."

The floor needed sweeping. "Never mind… sorry…"

Carmen sighed and frowned at the workbench. "You see, I solved my first case."

"Really?" I felt really interested all of a sudden. "What happened?"

"A man," Carmen replied slowly, "A relative of a staff member at the orphanage was murdered."

"Seriously?" I'm impressed, "And you figured out who did it."

"That was common knowledge."

"I… Oh… then what did you do?"

Dourly, Carmen clarified. "I played politics. Recklessly, but unusually well."

"But you were just a kid…"

She nodded. "Yes. But I was the kind of" her mouth twisted, "kid that certain people now wanted very much to go into law enforcement."

I frowned, not following.

"For entirely the wrong reasons." Carmen added. Her feet curled in the shoes. She was going to bend them again if she kept on like that.

"You were a child prodigy." I recited rumors.

Shaking her head, Carmen clarified. "It suited them… and me, for that to be the narrative."

"I don't get it." I muttered, frustrated.

Carmen leaned forward. "If someone discovers and makes known a thing that you absolutely should not have been ignoring, it serves you well if such a thing was very difficult to find out. So difficult you could not have expected to know." She sighed. "So difficult that only a prodigy could uncover it."

"But what does this have with shoes?"

Bell-like, she laughed. "What else? They praised me for the crowd, gave me a bauble I was known to want, and packed me off to a minor detective agency, hoping I would fade into obscurity."

"But you didn't…"

"No…" she nodded. "And at the time I was thrilled." She amended. "I thought with that success I had… escaped."

"Escaped?" I echoed.

She grabbed her ankle and held onto it. "That I was going somewhere where I'd have what I needed."

"Like a home." I commented, unthinking.

"You see." She smirked, mischievously but suspiciously.

"Like what I have here." It's a silly loyal little thing to say. I blurt it out anyhow.

Her eyes darkened till they looked like polish. "When someone seems to offer you everything you've ever hoped for, ask yourself what they want."

"What do you want?" I recited the question before I could work out how nervous I was getting.

"At the moment," Carmen smirked. "I want the Sidney Opera house. Then, I wanted validation and hope for security. And the shoes, as long as I had them, were a symbol of that."

"You kept them for a while then?"

"They were shreds when I finally destroyed them." Carmen shifted on her feet, to the outer edge of the sole. "I had no one to repair them then."

Twenty-year-old child-size sports shoes were probably too much for me, but if there's a chance it's a compliment just smile and nod. "So then why'd you choose heels?" By the sound of her story, I'd have expected her to be in love with running shoes.

Carmen sighed and shrugged her shoulders, readjusting the top button on her coat. "I need to feel unstoppable in my persona outfit. No insecurities."

"So?"

"No pair of sensible shoes was ever going to live up to those sneakers."