This one's early Carina, trying for something realistic here, so it won't be nice. No fluffy bunnies or happily ever afters here, if that's what you're looking for you better look elsewhere.

Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters portrayed.

Rio 2001

Carina perched on the railing of her hotel room's balcony, looking down at the ground and playing her usual game, Why the fuck not? Generally she only got to this point maybe once or twice a month, but lately it seemed to be once or twice a week, maybe it was time to just let go and do it? This had been her life for the last nine or ten years, and it was pretty fukn sad when managing to hide from her mother's sleazy boyfriends as a kid were some of the high points of that period.

When she'd just about psyched herself up to do it, her phone rang back in the room. She debated whether to answer it, as she knew who it was from the ringtone. The caller was about the only good thing she could think of from the last four years or so, but she was so fukn tired, maybe it would be better to ignore the call and just do it. Obviously the caller wasn't going to give up though, as the phone just rang, and rang, and rang, so she swivelled around and stepped down from the railing to go into the room to answer it.

"Hey Blondie, what's up?" "I hear you're in Rio, feel like meeting me down in Lapa to go clubbing?" Carina wandered back out onto the balcony and looked down as she said "I'm kind of in the middle of something at the moment, maybe some other night?" The person on the other end of the call knew Carina well enough to recognise that flat, emotionless voice she was hearing (and know what was going through Carina's head at the moment), so HER voice changed to a tone of undeniable command as she said "No, you have to be briefed on your new mission tonight, so I can fill you in at the club, or you can report to the Consulate in thirty minutes, which is it?" Carina just looked down at the ground without speaking for about five minutes, then asked "Why can't you just let me go?", to the response of "Not happening Red! We're depending on you, I'M depending on you, so which is it?" This time the wait for a reply was less than a minute before she said "I'll meet you in 30 to 45 at Arcos da Lapa." The only reply she got was "Great!", but the voice at the other end was notably relieved. It only took her five minutes to do her make-up and hair, shimmy into panties (it wasn't going to be one of those nights) and a dress, step into a pair of heels and head out the door (years of experience of bolting in the morning before the guy had a chance to wake up paid off sometimes).

In the back of the cab on the way over, her thoughts went back to where they'd been before she was interrupted, and unfortunately the traffic was a bitch so she had a lot of time to think. She'd been on her own since she was twelve, and that night when her mother's boyfriend had managed to catch her and do what he wanted, then her mother accused her of trying to seduce him to steal him away from her. She never knew if she'd killed him when she hit him in the head with the iron, she hoped so, but she'd never gone back to check, she just threw a few things in a bag and left (with her mother still huddled on the floor, crying, in the same place she'd been since Carina almost knocked her off her feet with her open hand after she'd called her a little whore). Carina hadn't worked the streets (well not that way, anyway), she'd taught herself to pickpocket, how to safely break into places (and even crack safes), how to handle security systems, run cons against people, whatever she needed to do to support herself and lead a reasonably comfortable life on her own. For nearly five years, it wasn't a bad life most of the time, she'd had the cards turned on her a few times and got beaten or worse, but playing up to the dirty old pervs long enough to lift their wallets and then clear out their accounts and cards could give her enough to live well for weeks. Cleaning out the high and mighty's houses usually gave her a better haul, though, a pretty girl in a tiny dress could get into any parties she wanted, and once she was in, it wasn't too hard to slip away to case the place, picking up any cash and jewellery she could find and hopefully managing to get into the safe to really clean them out.

Everything went to shit the night she picked the wrong party, though, she'd been caught by that trust fund jock and his frat buddies, and the bastards took turns for a couple of hours before she got a chance to grab that cork screw. Why hadn't she traced the security system back and removed the recordings? She may have managed to get away with it if she'd remembered to do that. She should have known when she was picked up by those guys in suits that they weren't cops, but she didn't realise how deep in it she was until she came up against Langston Graham, he showed her the video of what she did to the frat boys with the cork screw (he had the video of what they did to her, too, but of course he didn't care about that), and then he took her on a road trip to visit that prison. The sick bastard seemed to be getting off on what he was telling her about what happened to the women in there and how long they would last before they succumbed to the abuses they received, or killed themselves, and the look in the women's eyes gave her nightmares for ages, so when he gave her a choice of being sent there, or coming to work for him, well it wasn't really a choice, she would have done anything to stay away from that place.

She should have known that nothing was going to get better for her. As soon as she agreed he owned her, any time she didn't throw herself into it and do whatever she was told to do, he'd threaten to send her to that place, and fear of that was enough to make her comply. She did better than most at nearly all of her training, but the slimy bastards at the Farm handling the "special" training were as bad as (or worse than) anyone she'd encountered before (including those frat boys), they enjoyed everything they did to her when they were "teaching" her, and if she said anything she'd get a call from Graham. The only upside to the time at the Farm was Blondie (and mentally painting the faces of the bastards who had abused her on the targets, she rarely missed when she did that). She could tell from the look in Blondie's eyes that she was going through the same "training" that she was, and that frightened her, because she had to do her best to stay out of that place, but if she was being measured against Blondie she was fukd. When it came to her training Blondie wasn't human, she excelled at EVERYTHING, there wasn't a day that she didn't hear some instructors talking about a new all time record she'd set in a new area. She didn't knew what Graham was holding over her, but if anything, Blondie seemed even more motivated than she was to succeed.

When she wasn't being the perfect robot, though, Blondie was something else, sweet, caring, supportive, she was the only thing that got her through that place. They both got through, and then the missions started, she HAD to succeed every time or Graham would send her to that place, so she did whatever she had to. Even when Graham had her re-assigned to the DEA, he kept control over her, as she found as soon as she tried to complete her assignments without sleeping with the marks all the time, because she immediately got a call from him to say that her new superiors had contacted him about her not completing the assignments as ordered, and remind her that the previous conditions still applied if she didn't perform as expected. After a while she didn't feel much of anything inside as long as she was working, but when she was alone it would all come back to wash over her, so she tried to make sure that she was never alone when she was between missions to keep the demons down, because otherwise she'd start playing why not? Luckily it wasn't hard to ensure that she rarely slept alone.

Sarah was waiting when the cab pulled up, as hot as ever of course. She greeted her with a hug as she got out of the cab and they took off arm in arm for the clubs. They would see the doormen drooling as they strutted up and they'd be waved past the lines to be let in for a smile. Sarah filled her in on the mission details over drinks before they got into things, but she didn't really care, it was a given that if Blondie was running the operation, it would be well organised, they'd have the best chance of succeeding and getting out alive (and in one piece), and they wouldn't have to screw everyone in the place, missions with Sarah were the high point of her life nowadays, they would do what they did best and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, WITHOUT having to do the things that were expected of her on every other mission. With the "formal" part of the evening over, they spent the rest of the night drinking (there were always drinks coming) and dancing until they poured themselves into a cab to get back to Carina's hotel.

The next morning Carina woke up, crying in Sarah's arms. They'd obviously only just managed to get back to her room as they were both laying on top of the bed, fully dressed aside from their shoes. If it was anyone else Carina would have thrown them out or tried to cover things up with sex, but Sarah was the only one she felt safe enough to show the real Carina to, so she just kept crying and Sarah stroked her hair until she was cried out. When she was OK they ordered breakfast sent up and had it out on the balcony while they admired the view. Sarah didn't refer to the incident, other than to ask "Not getting any better?" Carina just looked down and shook her head, neither of them speaking for a while after that. They hung out for the rest of the day until it was time for the mission meeting, Carina knew that it was probably as much Sarah giving her a chance to get her head together as it was a couple of girlfriends catching up, and she appreciated both parts of what she was doing.

The team spent the next week and a half setting up the mission parameters and scoping out the site and opposition, then spent another week waiting for the optimal time to go in. When they finally did go in, things went to plan (as they tended to do when Sarah was doing the planning), they disabled the security systems, got in, extracted the mission objective from the safe and got out again, yeah, they had to fight their way out of the compound, but that was 50/50 on whether that was because someone slipped up, or whether Sarah had planned it that way because given her opinion of the male of the species she was usually quite ready to make her views known with guns, knives, fists or feet (or any combination of the above). Carina couldn't say that she was too upset about that as she shared Sarah's opinion and was usually up for jumping into the gender wars in a very direct fashion. But anyway, they got in, extracted the mission objective and got out without any casualties on their side, so that counted as a success in Carina's book.

It took another week or so to wind up the mission, and then (all too soon) Sarah had to hop on a plane to head off to her new mission. Within days of Sarah's leaving, Carina was assigned to her next mission, and once again, it was back to the type of mission that made her want to scrub herself with Lysol from head to toe repeatedly. There was one change after they caught up in Rio, though, from that point Sarah called her (or she called Sarah), when they had the chance between missions for a quick "Hey, how are ya?", While rarely more than five minutes at most, those calls made all the difference to Carina's (and Sarah's as well to a degree) ability to hold it together, as it gave her something to hang onto. The fact that she mattered to someone meant that she was a person, not a disposable resource, and that was enough to drive the "Why not?" game down far enough that it rarely reared its ugly head.

A/N: OK, Short but definitely not sweet. Those who have read my stories know that these ones about struggling with demons are usually short as I don't like the subject matter. I always felt that Carina was a much maligned character, there were glimpses of something more to Carina from both her and Sarah in the series but they seemed happy to portray her as the Whore of Babylon (though effectively a female version of Bryce, Shaw or whatever) rather than show any background to explain what happened to make her the way she was. (NB: That's another thing that always gets to me, a guy that sleeps with anything he can is portrayed as a stud while a woman who does the same is portrayed as a slut, really? It's time that the majority of the world's population woke up to themselves and accepted that the same behaviour merits the same tags and attitudes, irrespective of gender. And before you guys get on your high horse, I'm not the rabid feminist that you've probably just tagged me as being, I'm a guy FWIW.)

And for the anonymous "guest" reviewer, yes, Carina was in the DEA at the time of the series, six years AFTER this, who's to say that she didn't transfer between agencies like others in the series?