Back in 2009, when the casting rumors for season three started to leak and we found out Carina would be making a return to the show, I promised mxpw and Wepdiggy a sequel to Sarah vs The Dreamless Sleep based on Chuck vs The Three Words. But due to a lot of factors—shock over the direction the show had taken, the lack of a long enough interlude in the episode for a fully fleshed-out story, and a hectic personal life on my own part—that story never saw the light of day. It occurred to me recently though that a Sarina story would be better set during Chuck vs The Pink Slip anyway, and, seven years later, this fic was born. See? Who says I don't keep my promises? Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah boys, I hope you enjoy it.
This is a sequel, so while it's probably not necessary to read Sarah vs The Dreamless Sleep first, it couldn't hurt. And all that I mentioned in my author's note there still applies: Sarah and Carina have a long and sordid history based on my Fallout AU, and this is first and foremost a friendship and hurt/comfort piece. But, yes, it is still technically slash, so don't read on if you disapprove of intimacy between two people of the same gender or a Chuck story without Chuck. And as you can probably guess by the time frame, this story is anything but fluffy. I won't lie. This one brings the pain, folks.
I sent this out to one of my favorite authors and all-around great guy Course Jester for a beta, and he seriously did a fantastic job, but was only able to get through the first third or so before the combination of holiday madness and a Transdimensional Killer Cold took over the Jester household, and I wanted to get this out in time for Christmas. So if the first third is a much easier read than the latter two, you have him to thank for it. Thanks again for taking the time to read this over, CJ. Your feedback is always valued and appreciated.
Like Dreamless Sleep, I didn't write this as a songfic, but a few songs came up while working on it that I thought fit well, so I included them in the chapter headings. If you make a playlist and read very quickly in some sections and very slowly in others, they almost fit. And as I'm always looking for new music, I'm happy to take suggestions on alternative playlists.
And I do too own Chuck—the complete series on iTunes. Wait... What? You mean that doesn't count for anything and the time and effort we put into this won't earn us enough for CJ and me to take a luxury vacation to Lisbon? Well… shucks. It looks like a beautiful city. Oh well, I wrote it and my passport is expired anyway, so I may as well share it.
The story opens two days after a certain incident at a train station in Prague...
Lisbon, Portugal
21 May, 2009
Song Cues:
Chandelier - Sia
Something Wild - Lindsey Stirling Feat. Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Pieces - Rob Thomas
"Jesus, Walker. What the hell happened to you?"
Passed out before her, in the honeymoon suite of a posh hotel, was the most breathtaking mess Carina Miller had ever seen. Her old friend and partner Sarah Walker was sprawled face-down on the ornate bed, duvet crumpled beside her, head buried in the pillows, and a tangled mass of blonde curls spread out around her. She was wearing a slinky black mini dress that barely covered a thing, one Louboutin dangling from one foot, its mate on the floor. Stamps and neon-colored bracelets from several night clubs were mixed in with the chunky costume jewelry decorating her hands and wrists.
Damn, Carina thought. Looks like I missed all the fun again.
Carina took a long look around the uncharacteristically messy room wondering what in the hell had happened the night before. She had knocked on the door for a good thirty seconds before losing patience and picking the lock, walked right up to the bed and called her name, and the CIA's finest still slept. The heavy snoring indicated that Sarah wouldn't be waking up anytime soon either.
She's down for the count. Waaaaay down.
Carina lost her patience again and chucked her lockpick at Sarah's head. It hit with a thud and bounced off, clattering onto the hardwood floor. Sarah groaned and turned her head, squinting up from the mascara-smeared pillow she had been drooling into. "Whaa you doin' 'ere?" she slurred.
Wow, Carina thought again. Get a load of that face.
Carina dropped her bag, sat down on the edge of the expansive bed, and rolled the limp blonde over onto her back. "I don't know. You messaged me. Promised me a good time? Remember?" She held up her phone so Sarah could read the text message.
"Wazzn' me," Sarah hiccuped, not looking at the phone. "Mmm not 'avin… good time."
"I can see that." Carina stood up and threw open the curtains covering the room's French doors.
Sarah winced in the sudden sunlight, running her hands over her eyes and further smearing her day-old makeup. The black streaks running down her cheeks and towards her ears spoke of tears at some point in the night. "Han' me 'at, will ya'?" She pointed to a mostly empty bottle of whiskey sitting next to a mostly full ashtray on the night stand.
Carina quirked an eyebrow. "I'm never one to turn down a free drink, but it looks like you've had enough." She batted Sarah's reaching hand away and helped herself to the bottle, taking a swig of liquid fortitude. Haven't seen her this bad in a long time. Cigarettes and everything. They had both smoked off and on as teens, but since joining the CIA, Little Miss Perfect Spy had fastidiously given up any vices that might affect her performance beyond the occasional drink. Or twenty, apparently.
"Please?" Sarah tried for puppy-dog eyes, but only succeeded in watery red bleariness as she struggled to raise herself up on her elbows. "Dog… hair… head… hurts."
"Oh, for crying out loud." Carina slammed the bottle back down on the night stand, making Sarah grimace again. She had suspected from the moment she received the unencrypted typo-ridden message that Sarah hadn't just called her up for a good time, but whatever was going on, she hadn't dropped everything to jump on a red-eye and fly to Portugal only to watch her drown herself in whiskey and self-pity. "Get up."
"Nuh-huh." Sarah fell heavily back into the pillows and pulled the duvet over her head. "Go 'way. I'm goin' back t'sleep." She grasped blindly for Carina's arm, attempting to pull her down next to her.
Carina heaved a dramatic sigh, ripped the covers off of the bed and maneuvered Sarah's protesting arm over her shoulders. The wasted agent put up a token resistance, reaching under a pillow for what was probably a knife, but in her condition she was easy enough to manhandle out of the bed and across the room to the bathroom door—which turned out to be held closed by a pair of knotted thigh-highs looped around the knob and tied to the leg of a heavy antique dresser.
"What the hell, Walker? Are you on a mission?" She certainly didn't look like she was on a mission. Acting like this on missions was a good way to get dead quick.
"Wouldn't stop talking," she mumbled. "Why they always gotta talk s'much?"
Just then, a scrambling sound came from the bathroom and someone started pounding on the door.
"Ei! Ei! Deixe-me sair! Deixe-me sair!" a tremulous tenor voice called frantically.
Carina, giving Sarah a quizzical look, pulled a knife from her bra and sliced through the stockings, throwing open the door. On the other side a tall, lanky man with olive skin and curly black hair jumped backwards, a panicked expression on his face. His shirt and the fly of his jeans were gaping open, both conspicuously missing their buttons. As soon as he cleared the swinging door, he shouldered his way past the two women, startled again as he noticed Carina's knife, and made a beeline for the exit. "Puta loca!" he yelled as he strode out into the hallway.
"Don't you esqueço you what I to you told sobre chamando a polícia!" Sarah called after him in something that was equal parts Portuguese, English, and ethanol.
"You can call me, though!" Carina chimed in, smirking at Sarah. "I bet I could figure out a couple ways to make him shut up."
Sarah pushed away from Carina, aiming for the bed but stumbling into the dresser. As she threw out her arms to catch herself, she knocked over a metal canister roughly the size of a coffee can. "Bryce!" she cried and dove after it as it rolled over the edge. Carina managed to hook her around the waist before she could tumble headlong to the floor.
"His name was Bryce?" she asked, lunging backwards to haul the dangling agent back upright. Walker had packed on a few more pounds of muscle since the last time they'd been together, and Carina grunted at the effort. "He didn't look like a Bryce."
Looked a lot like a Chuckles though. Right down to the shoes.
Carina filed the observation away, spinning Sarah awkwardly around so that they were face-to-face and she was supporting her under her arms, not unlike one would a small child.
"No... that's Bryce," Sarah pointed vaguely and dropped her head onto Carina's shoulder.
"Huh?" she asked, craning her head back to take a look. The canister, she finally noticed, was, in fact, an urn—fancy inscription and everything.
"Chuck and I were s'possed to scatter him here," Sarah hiccupped.
The inscription put Bryce's date of death as April 27, 2009—just over three weeks ago. Hadn't Larkin died back in '07? Carina stored the question in the back of her mind. Now didn't seem like a good time to ask. Knowing him, he had probably faked his own death just to see who would show up at his funeral. She had thought about doing that herself a time or two.
"Where is Chucky?" Carina asked instead. She glanced around again and didn't see evidence of anyone but Walker in the room—and a smattering of buttons.
"Prague. Training." Sarah spit out the last word like it was poison. She flopped back to lean on the door frame, pulling Carina with her. Carina used the momentum to spin them into the bathroom. She walked Sarah backwards step-by-step across the tiled floor and hooked her knees on the edge of the bathtub, lowering her down until her ass was in the jacuzzi and her feet in the air.
Normally a sight like that would get her motor revved up nicely, but now Carina just knuckled her back as she straightened up and kicked off her stilettos. "You ever think we might just be getting too old for this shit, Walker?"
"Every damn day."
"Yeah, I can tell." Carina grabbed the showerhead, aimed it at Sarah's smeared face, and turned on the cold water.
Sarah gasped and sputtered and choked and flailed until she managed to get a hold of the side of the tub and pull herself to the faucet to turn it off. She yanked the hose out of Carina's hands and lay gasping on her back with her head by the drain and one knee draped over the edge of the tub, water running off of her foot and onto the mat. Her dress had ridden up above her waist, and Carina's eyes followed it until...
Damn. That's a surprise.
"Walker? You had a guy locked in your bathroom and your underwear's still on?"
"Told you… wouldn't… stop… talking…"
Carina smirked down at her. "Out of curiosity, when was the last time your underwear did come off in the presence of another person?" It had been well over a year since the last time she had seen Sarah in Los Angeles. She hoped to God that she hadn't been the last person to get her out of her panties too.
"I don't wanna talk about it." Sarah groaned, closed her eyes, and let her head drop to the side, mascara-tinged water dripping off the end of her nose.
"If you say so." Carina wasn't buying it for a second, but still, she reached down, grabbed Sarah's forearm and pulled her up, spinning her around so that she was now sitting at the back of the tub with her other leg dangling over the side. "Just lean forward if you need to hurl."
"Nope." Sarah clamped her mouth shut. "Not gonna puke. Pushing it down. Burying it in a place deep inside." She spoke slowly, still slurring, rolling her head from side to side on the back of the tub.
"Uh huh."
Right on cue, Sarah gagged, heaved, lurched forward… and swallowed forcibly. "See?"
"That's disgusting, Walker." She plucked a package of cosmetic wipes off the counter and lobbed them into the tub. "Clean yourself up."
"You know you want me," Sarah deadpanned, draping an arm over her knee and resting her head there.
Carina snorted and sauntered back into the bedroom. "Not when you look like a bulimic raccoon, I don't," she called back over her shoulder. She picked up Bryce's urn and placed it carefully back on the dresser. "Sorry Larkin," she whispered, patting the top of the cylinder, wondering again about the date etched into the side. She grabbed the whiskey bottle off the nightstand and took another swig, crossed over to the vanity, picked up a hand mirror, and turned back to the bathroom.
"You always want me." Sarah pulled her head out from between her knees and settled back in the tub again, letting her head fall backwards over the edge.
"Almost always."
Sarah heaved and swallowed again. Carina shuddered and gagged a little herself. "Why does it seem like the only time you want me though, is after a three-day bender?"
"Two-day."
"Only two this time?"
"Getting too old for this shit. Damn near thirty already."
Carina pulled the mirror out from behind her back, giving Sarah a view of her face. "And you look every minute of it."
"Ugh." Sarah pushed the mirror away and picked up the pack of wipes. "I get your point."
"Drink some water." Carina snagged a bottle out of the mini-fridge and tossed it towards Sarah who elected to let it bounce off her leg and tumble into the tub rather than summoning the energy to catch or dodge. "And take some of these," a bottle of Ibuprofen followed the water. "And brush your teeth."
"No! Don't throw that."
Carina looked down at the electric toothbrush in her hand. "Why not?"
"It's expensive."
"So?"
"I'm broke."
Carina crossed the bathroom to sit on the edge of the tub and put the toothbrush and toothpaste on the ledge by Sarah's arm. She had turned her face away and was staring at the wall. Carina put a finger under her chin, rotating her head so she could meet her eyes directly. What she found there was something that went beyond mere depression. Walker looked like she was just about ready to give up on the world.
"I don't wanna talk about it." She closed her eyes and turned her head back to the side.
Broke? I don't know if I've seen her this bad, ever.
Like any good spy, Sarah had caches of money ferreted away all over the place, and blowing through it all was something the woman she knew would never do. Sarah Walker had backup plans for her backup plans, always had. It was nauseating sometimes, really. If she had a nickel for every time she had heard Sarah say "let's go over it again," she could put them all in a pair of tube socks and beat the crap out of her with them.
Carina stared at her for a long time, but Sarah didn't open her eyes again. She looked like she was in danger of falling asleep again in the bathtub. That or doing one of her mind clearing exercises. It was hard to tell sometimes.
Carina put her hand on Sarah's shoulder, and when she didn't respond, she shook her gently. "What's the Portuguese word for coffee? You need about a gallon."
"The word 'coffee' is damn near universal, moron," Sarah mumbled with her eyes still closed. "Order mimosas too."
Carina rolled her eyes. Moron? She's been spending too much time around Casey. She walked back to the bedroom to make the call to room service.
"What's the name?" she covered the receiver and called to Sarah when the attendant asked.
"Calderon."
"Calderon?" Carina asked after she hung up and sat back down by Sarah. "That's Portuguese. You planning on staying a while?"
"Not anymore."
"And you don't wanna to talk about it?"
"No."
"Then why'd you call me?"
"Why'd you show up?" Sarah slid a hand up Carina's leg far enough to tease a little.
"You promised me a good time."
Sarah waggled her eyebrows and belched wetly.
"Gross." Carina slapped her hand away.
"You should have been here sooner."
"By the looks of things, you should be glad I was in Germany and not Pakistan or Jakarta. If I had been a day later, I'd be bailing you out on kidnapping charges."
"And destruction of property," Sarah muttered under her breath.
Carina cleared her throat, pointedly, raising her eyebrows.
"There may or may not have been an incident with a chandelier."
Carina cleared her throat again.
"I took care of it." Sarah waved her hand dismissively. "I don't wanna talk about it."
"How about you clean yourself up then?"
"Are the mimosas here yet?" Sarah heaved herself up into a sitting position. "No… wait… bloody marys. Call them back and tell them bloody marys."
"If you want more booze, you're going to have to get up and go get it yourself. There's a cafe around the corner."
Room service knocked on the door. That was quick. Broke or not, Europe or not, Sarah always tipped well.
Carina went and retrieved the coffee while Sarah grudgingly set to work with the makeup remover. Carrying the carafe and two cups in one hand, she dumped the ashtray into the wastebasket with the other and grabbed the cigarettes and zippo. She looked at the gold lighter and its King of Diamonds playing card emblem as she walked across the room and slid down the wall next to the tub, splaying her legs out across the cold tile.
"Isn't this your dad's? The one we were always trying to steal from him?"
Sarah nodded but didn't elaborate. Old mementos like this were strange things for Sarah to be carrying around. Most spies kept stuff like that in secure storage in DC—if they kept those kinds of things at all.
Did Sarah clean out her locker?
She looked at the clothes spilling out of the open suitcase. It was soft leather—not a locking hardside—no spygear, no rope, no weapons, no overabundance of tight black clothing. Sarah had packed for a vacation, not a mission. She looked down at the lighter again. Or a new life.
Carina poured coffee and set it on the ledge by the bathtub. "Here. Black and bitter. Like your face." Sarah took a sip, one side of her face clean, the other still a charcoal and gold mess. "Now you look like the Phantom of the Opera. Seriously, did you use an entire tube of eyeliner?"
Sarah picked up the mirror and checked her results, dabbing at a few places on the clean side of her face with a fresh wipe. "The last time I looked like this was at my high school reunion, except my lip was bleeding too. Did I tell you about that?"
"No." Carina scoffed at the thought of Sarah attending a reunion and poured a shot of whiskey into her own coffee. "Who's? Katie?"
"Jenny."
Carina choked as she lit her cigarette. "Really? Jenny?"
"Mmm hmm. Remember Heather Chandler?"
"I remember how much you hated her."
"I kicked her ass and threw her in detention for the rest of her life."
"Nice."
"Always knew she was an evil bitch."
"Did Chuck and Casey see the yearbook picture?"
Sarah hung her head over her coffee cup. "It's my contact picture on Casey's phone," she muttered.
"I'm guessing you don't want to talk about that either?"
"I won reunion queen," she offered instead, twisting her lip up into a half smile. "Got a crown and everything."
Carina burst out laughing, her coffee sloshing in its cup, and Sarah groaned and grabbed her head as the sudden noise made her headache spike.
"To Queen Jenny," Carina eventually said, raising her mug after her laughter played itself out. "May you never have to be her again."
Sarah grudgingly reached over and clinked their cups together. "To Jenny."
They sat quietly while Carina worked on her coffee and smoked her cigarette. After Sarah finished cleaning her face, she reached over and lit her own. They both leaned back and watched the two trails of smoke drift and intermingle in the spotty beams of late-morning sunshine.
"You awake now?" Carina asked as she snubbed out her butt and put the ashtray on the ledge for Sarah.
"Against my better judgement."
"Good. Shit, shower, shave, and brush your goddamn teeth so we can go to brunch and you can tell me all about why you're broke and alone in Portugal swinging from chandeliers with Bryce's ashes."
"Uuuggghhh." Sarah put her head between her knees and covered it with her hands.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"You don't want to talk about it." Carina recited along with her.
"We could just go back to bed." Sarah looked over her leg pitifully.
"Move it."
"We could fill up the tub, turn on the jets, see how long you can hold your breath…"
"Up. Use your feet."
Carina helped Sarah climb out of the bath, and when she ascertained that the bedraggled blonde was steady enough to tend to her own morning ritual, she poured herself another cup of coffee, grabbed the pack of cigarettes, and headed for the balcony.
"Don't bother with any more makeup. I'm starving."
"Don't smoke all my cigarettes."
Carina opened the pack: three left. She shrugged and lit one. She'd buy Sarah some more. It's not like there was a shortage of tobacco products in Europe.
So what do I know here? she thought as she tapped her fingers on the railing and gazed out over the Rio Tajo. All she was sure of was that Sarah was as miserable as she had ever seen her, and Bryce was dead… again. Every sign pointed to her being off grid. Had she gone rogue? Was she walking away? If she had, it certainly looked like she was regretting the decision. And what could have changed so much in the last year and a half to make someone like Sarah go rogue? It had to have something to do with Bartowski. The way she had spat out the words "Prague" and "training" made that much clear. Sarah had always lusted after that elusive concept of a "normal life," and not so long ago, Carina had hoped that maybe Chuck would be the guy to give it to her. But the buzz in the covert underground suggested that the new facility in Prague was a pretty damn big deal. If Chuck was training there, odds were he wasn't getting a normal life any time soon either.
Carina knew she could push Sarah into telling her everything—she always could. A little misdirection, a few changes in subject, a bit of toying with her emotions, and Sarah would spill like a ruptured pipeline. But she wasn't sure that was the best thing to do with her so close to bottom already. There was no sense in dragging her down farther. Heartache was heartache; the cause wasn't important. She took another sip of her coffee and thought again that she was glad the she, herself, didn't have much of a heart to break.
She leaned against the stone column and watched a small sightseeing plane crisscross the air over the harbor in lazy ascending loops, trying to come up with something to cheer Sarah up. The spring sunshine felt good on her face after the weeks of hibernation in Germany spent worming her way into Karl Stromberg's affections. She really hated long-term assignments and had been itching for action. She had halfway hoped Sarah had called for help on a mission.
Huh, fat chance of that. Her style on missions and Sarah's didn't exactly mesh, never had.
As she watched the plane bank and head inland over the hotel, her thoughts drifted back a decade and more, to a simpler time in their lives...
"Okay, let's go over it again."
Carina sighed wearily as a sweaty seventeen-year-old Sarah swept a handful of Monopoly pieces off of a graph paper representation of the Las Vegas Fremont Street strip. Knowing Sarah, it was probably drawn to scale and everything.
Sarah set the shoe and the dog in place near the edge of the paper. "You'll intercept him here-"
"I thought I was the car."
"No," Sarah glared at her. "You're the dog. Dad's the car."
"You be the dog. I wanna be the car."
"Fine." Sarah switched out the pieces and thudded down the car, making the old laminate table wobble on its uneven legs. "Happy?"
"Ecstatic." Carina fanned herself with a take-out menu and looked at the clock for the tenth time in as many minutes.
"Great. You'll intercept him here, at the exit to the zip line. His reservation is at 10:30. Be there early. He'll be on an adrenaline high, so it should be easy enough to get his room key out of his pocket. But, if he does catch you-"
"I knock him out and take it anyway."
Sarah threw her hands up and leaned back in her chair, exasperated. "Do you want in on this or not? Assault equals cops."
"We've been over it twelve times. I get his key and distract his friends, you flash some cleavage and lure him into the Golden Nugget, your dad roofies his drink, stashes him somewhere and we break into his safe and collect his winnings. He wakes up tomorrow morning in his room thinking he lost it himself. It's not exactly Ocean's Eleven."
"And if he doesn't follow me?"
"We'll wing it."
"No winging it."
"C'mon Natasha, live a little."
Sarah looked disdainfully around the hot, decrepit desert trailer they had been forced to retreat to after her dad's latest antics had gotten them kicked out of Trump Tower. She picked up an ice cube from a bowl on the table and lifted up her dark auburn hair to run it along the nape of her neck.
"Sure. This is really the life, huh?" Sarah was taking her sudden change in circumstances hard. Amongst other things, it had cost her a full scholarship to Princeton.
"Life is what you make of it. Stretch those wings a little. See where they take you. Who wants to spend four years in New Jersey anyway?"
Sarah flapped her elbows in a sad imitation of a flightless bird. "I'm more like a penguin. My wings don't exactly work."
"Even penguins have fun."
"And get eaten by leopard seals. Like you're going to end up in prison if you don't start focusing. We're not kids anymore, Cat."
"You're no fun, Novakov. Have I ever told you that?"
"Never." Sarah put the Monopoly pieces back on the map. "Let's go over it again. You're the dog."
"No. I'm the… Hey! Where's the car?"
"You're the dog. Now what time are you going to be there?"
"Can I at least be the shoe?"
"No."
"Is the car in your bra? I think I need to check."
"Cat! Get your sweaty hands off of me!"
Carina smiled ruefully at the memory. She had knocked their mark out when he caught her with her hand in the wrong pocket, and, as Sarah had predicted, the cops showed up and Carina spent the night in jail. A real jail, not juvie. Sarah and her dad had repeated the con a few days later though—without her expert advice—and some other schmuck went home without their Vegas winnings. Sarah and her dad always got by.
From the bathroom, she heard the sound of the shower starting and she tugged at the neck of her cashmere sweater. It was perfect for cuddling up by a fire in Bavaria with her new mark, but too heavy for the balmy Portuguese spring weather. Let's go see what Walker has in her wardrobe this time.
Boring… boring… boring. After digging through the suitcase a while, Carina found a black tee with a stylized motorcycle and Union Jack that didn't look too lame. She swapped it for her sweater and continued snooping through the the case, finally finding the clasp that opened the false bottom she knew must be there. She let out a low whistle as she saw what it contained.
So that's where her life savings went.
A clear case holding two discs with a red label reading "A.I.R.P." Clean identities. Two clean identities. Rare—nearly impossible to find—impossible to trace, and enormously expensive on the black market. Carina did some quick mental math trying to figure out the cost of two, plus international airfare, transporting human remains, the hotel suite, etc. then gave it up as a bad deal. Unless Sarah had scored a Lichtenstein she never told her about, minus whatever credit she had pulled for the her new identity, she really was broke.
Underneath the discs was a file folder. Carina flipped through it finding hand-written dossiers and notes on personal histories for one Hector Calderon and-
Carina gasped when she saw the name on a printed resume and a single tear slid down her face. She dabbed at it, surprised. Where did that come from? Okay, so maybe she did have a heart buried in there somewhere. And it had just broken a little bit.
The resume was for one Samantha Lisa Calderon.
Carina sank down on the bed and read through the pages of Sarah's looping cursive. She didn't know much about Chuck, but the dossier for Sam Calderon looked like everything Sarah had ever hoped for. The history she had written was as close to the truth as a normal person's could be.
She shook her head and went back to the balcony, lighting the next-to-last cigarette. She was all but quivering with the need for action. Half of her wanted to jump on a plane to Prague, find that stereo store schnook and grind his head into the pavement. What the hell had he been thinking? Did he have any idea what he was giving up? What this kind of decision meant for Sarah? The other half of her wanted to use the identities and take Sarah someplace safe, someplace far, far away from everything. Was there any place far enough? Maybe the moon?
She couldn't give Sarah the moon, but she had to do something. She gazed out over the red-tiled rooftops of Lisbon and racked her brain trying to remember the last time she had seen Sarah happy. Really, truly happy. Those times were rare for her friend.
Still pondering, she returned the file folder to the suitcase before Sarah could catch her snooping. As she was shoving the clothes back in, her fingers closed around something hard. She unwrapped it from the shirt it was tangled in and stared at it in surprise for a few seconds. I can't believe she kept this all these years...
Eight months after the Fremont Street fiasco, Carina leaned against her Camero and watched a yellow Volkswagen convertible make its way down a dry desert road towards a small airstrip, spraying a fantail of dust onto the surrounding joshua trees as it passed.
"Oh. My. God. Sam? What did you do to your hair?" she asked as Sarah parked next to her and got out of the car.
Sarah ran a hand self-consciously through her ragged bob.
"Don't ask. And it's Jenny now."
"Jenny? How… banal."
"That's the point. We're laying low until the heat on Dad dies down. We're trying to be…" she gestured at herself vaguely "...inconspicuous."
"Well it's working for you. Where did you get that outfit? The Salvation Army reject pile?"
"Funny. Maybe I'd have some better options if someone hadn't stolen all of my clothes."
"I apologize for nothing. That blue Dolce mini dress makes my ass look fantastic."
"Well your ass needs all the help it can get."
Carina swept Sarah into a hug and gave her a quick kiss. "It's good to see you again."
"You too." Sarah returned the kiss, lingering a bit longer. "What are we doing out here, anyway?"
Just then, Carina's new boyfriend Rob walked out of the tower and started towards the car. Carina nodded her head in his direction. "He'll explain it all to you." She had met Rob in her DEA training class and sunk her hooks into him six weeks ago, just for this day. Well... maybe not entirely for the day. He was pretty hot… for thirty anyway. And the sex wasn't bad either. Older guys tended to know what they were doing.
"You girls ready?" he called out.
"Born ready, babe. Rob, meet my good friend Jenny."
"Jenny? I thought you said Natasha." Rob raised an eyebrow, eyeing Sarah critically.
"Whatever. Sometimes a girl needs a change."
"Whatever you say, babe," he said, shaking Sarah's hand, then putting his arms around Carina possessively and kissing the top of her head. "Any friend of yours is a friend of mine." Sarah shuffled her feet in the dust, clearly a bit jealous and self-conscious.
"She's all gassed up and ready to go," he jerked his thumb towards a yellow Cessna sitting in front of an open hanger.
Sarah immediately brightened. "Are you taking us flying?"
"No love." Carina handed her a pair of aviators. "You are."
Carina looked down at the little figurine of a penguin in sunglasses and a scarf sitting in a yellow airplane. Sarah had smiled herself stupid that day—braces and all—from the second Carina handed her the sunglasses to the time she pulled her back into her room later that night and put some more interesting expressions on her face. Even during the hour-long lecture on toggles and throttles and checklists and blah blah blah before they took off, Sarah was elated. The weeks of listening to Rob drone on about aviation minutiae between training sessions had nearly driven her to strangle herself, but the look on Sarah's face as she ran her fingers lovingly over each control as she learned its function had been absolutely worth it.
"Did you hear everything he said about landing, Jenny?" she had asked after they spent a few hours circling the desert.
"Mmm hmm" she replied, distracted by the view of the Grand Canyon below.
"Good. Because it was the last thing he'll say before we run out of gas."
"What?!" Sarah reached over and shook the pilot who had dozed off in the his seat. He didn't wake up.
Carina held up a pill bottle. "Same stuff I put in Ritchie's coffee."
Sarah's mouth had dropped into an O for a split second as she looked at Rob's coffee mug and back at Carina, and then the smile snuck back. "You didn't."
Carina grinned. "Merry Christmas, Sam."
"Cat!"
"Help me get him in the back."
Sarah engaged the autopilot. She pushed and Carina pulled until Rob was in the passenger seat and Carina climbed up front to sit next to Sarah. She put a hand on her thigh, pulled off her headset, perched Rob's hat on her head to cover up that awful haircut, and kissed her, long and deep.
"Fly me home, little penguin."
Carina turned the figurine over. The ink on the bottom had faded with time, but she didn't need to read it.
S-
Always, remember that penguins can fly.
Spread your wings and soar on the wind.
Land home safe next to me.
You carry my heart in yours, always.
-C
P.S. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum
When Sarah spent her first night on the Farm, it was waiting for her under her pillow.
Carina grabbed her phone and made a quick series of calls. After she hung up, she continued her snooping expedition through Sarah's things, throwing a bag together, then sat and waited for Sarah to finish her shower.
She's been in there an awfully long time.
"Walker! Get a move on. Daylight's burning here."
Carina stalked into the bathroom and pulled up short at the sight of Sarah sitting in the shower stall with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head down, back heaving, sobbing. She looked so small, curled up in her ball—thin, fragile, utterly crushed by the weight she was carrying on her trembling shoulders.
"Oh Sam." Carina's voice broke a little. She walked to the shower and turned off the spray, causing Sarah to look up. At first she looked abashed at being caught crying, but then her face twisted.
"Take off that shirt," she hissed.
Carina furrowed her brow and looked down at the tee. "Uh… Okay..."
"TAKE IT OFF!" She choked out the words and began sobbing again.
"Okay! Okay!" Carina peeled off the shirt and tossed it into a corner. Heedless of the damage the water pooled in the shower would do to her leather pants, she sat down next to Sarah and gathered the weeping woman into her arms. Sarah buried her face in her chest and sobbed for what seemed a lifetime while Carina stroked her back and feathered the top of her head with soft kisses, whispering quiet assurances into her ears. "Shhhh… just let it all out."
When her tears were spent and the gasping turned to trembling, Carina turned Sarah's face to hers. Their eyes locked for a span of heartbeats, Carina trying to convey the emotions she never could quite figure a way to say out loud, Sarah obviously looking for an anchor in a place where there were no answers. When she felt Sarah begin to relax a bit, she moved her head forward and parted her lips slightly, inviting, and Sarah launched herself upwards, sealing her mouth to hers.
Sarah kissed her as if Carina somehow held the solution for all her years of pain, as if her lips and mouth and tongue held the secret to healing, to the end of her heartbreak, and oh, how she wished they did. Carina couldn't give three flying shits about the entirety of the seven billion people on the face of the planet—except for this one. The girl who had conned her way into her life when she was eleven years old and changed her from a lonely, overlooked gold digger's daughter into someone with a purpose, someone with a friend—her one and only real friend. Someone who would charge through closed borders in a war zone to pull her out of Pakistan when she got in over her head the same way she had snuck up and sprung her out of the back of a police cruiser when she got caught shoplifting at twelve. The girl who's nightmares had woken her more times than she could count, who's raw honesty in a world full of lies had given her someone to protect—someone to trust. Someone who made her feel like a real person and not the series of disconnected false identities she had lived her life as. When people like them found a person like that, they hung on to them. And Carina held on to Sarah now with all she had in her.
Sarah eventually broke the kiss and rested her head heavily on Carina's shoulder.
"Is your head clear now?"
"No," Sarah shook her head.
Carina shimmied around to pull the crumpled cigarette pack out of her pocket. "Here. It's the last one." She lit it and handed it to Sarah.
After Sarah declined once more to talk about it, the two smoked in silence, passing the cigarette back and forth until Sarah put it out, hissing, in a pool of water. "Can we go back to bed now?"
"When was the last time you ate something?"
Sarah thought. "I'm pretty sure there was ice cream at some point."
For the second time that morning, Carina put Sarah's arm over her shoulder and, groaning, lifted her to her feet.
"C'mon. Let's get you dressed."
If any of you need a smile right now, I highly recommend running a Google image search for "penguins in airplanes." I promise you'll say "D'awww" at least once.
Also many thanks out to the Great and Mighty Frea O'Scanlin for patiently putting up with me popping up on messenger to ask her annoying questions about airplanes. If anything above or below is glaringly wrong, it's because of a question I didn't think to ask her. Also my apologies to any Portuguese speakers out there for butchering your language. If the dialogue sounds like it came out of a web translator, well, that's because it did. Carina's bad Spanish in the next chapter is my own though. One of these days I'll be able to have a conversation with a native speaker without them laughing at me...