A/N: Contains reference and/or allusion to: depression, alcohol abuse, sex (non-explicit)
After Everything
After the cliff, after Maine and Tex, after — after everything, Carolina makes her way to a tiny planet on the other side of the galaxy to lay low. She finds a big city and a cheap apartment in a rundown neighborhood. She doesn't have much, afterwards, so she finds a job at a call center, where they pay in cash and don't look too closely at IDs.
She cries herself to sleep most nights, a soft-edged photograph propped on the nightstand beside her bed. She listens to the comm radio and pays attention to the news, hoping to hear about— well, anyone. This is how she finds out the fate of her team that was once closer to her than family. This is how she finds out that Wash and Wyoming are in prison, that the Director is on the lam, that no one can find Maine and Tex, that no one knows where South ran off to or whether North went after her, that no one knows where— where he is.
This is how Carolina finds out that she herself is presumed dead.
She's thankful for the under-the-table job she was able to find, thankful that she can keep her anonymity.
She falls into a routine: wake up, go to work, return home, eat a simple dinner, listen to the day's news or the comm radio in hopes someone found one of her teammates. Repeat. On weekends, instead of working, she spends the mornings running, still loving the feel of the ground flying beneath her feet. She spends the afternoons doing chores, running errands, paying bills. But when night comes, and she's alone, she can't help but remember. It hurts, so she cries. But eventually she can't even do that anymore, so she just lies in the growing darkness, listening to the radio, begging sleep to come.
—
She doesn't bother making any friends at her job. She's polite enough, but keeps her distance. She finds it hard to trust anyone after—everything.
Her first birthday there, no one knows. She has no friends, so who would she spend it with? It's a weekend, so she doesn't even have work to go to. Instead, she just spends the day at home, alone, crying over the memories of birthdays on the Mother of Invention: the parties they'd throw, the jokes they'd share, the laughter ringing down the halls for hours. The silence in her apartment is deafening in comparison.
She welcomes the distraction of work the following Monday with open arms.
It's simple work, mind-numbingly dull, but it's a paycheck. Not much, but enough to keep her in her dingy apartment and to buy her food—and drink. Oh, plenty of drink.
She starts frequenting a bar a couple of blocks from her place. She left work one night and couldn't bear the thought of going home to her empty flat and the news that never changes, no longer mentions her former teammates. On an impulse, she stops in at a dark, low-ceilinged bar and orders a drink. She nurses it awhile, pays, and goes on home, where she crashes on her bed and waits for sleep to come.
Eventually it's developed into a habit; every evening after work, she walks back to her neighborhood and stops in the bar on her way. At first it's just one drink. Then one becomes two. Then two become more.
The bartender learns her face, learns what she likes best. Learns when she needs another without her even saying a word.
She's not sure when exactly she gave up on the news entirely.
It far less painful to simply let go. It's easier to just let herself forget.
—
Her first Christmas there is like any other day off. With no one to buy gifts for, she treats herself to a new pair of running shoes. The only gifts she receives are the obligatory work card signed by all the managers, and a card from her sweet older landlady, who made cards for everyone in the building.
Earlier that week, she had swung through her local grocers and picked up a frozen dinner and one—no, two, bottles of wine. So Christmas morning, she wakes up, goes for a run in her new shoes, and returns to her cheerless flat. She figures she might as well do some cleaning, since she's home. The evening comes and finds her with the microwaved meal and a large wine glass close by. After the first bottle, she foregoes the glass entirely, choosing instead to drink straight from the bottle. It's beyond dark now, but she didn't bother with lights. What was there to see? She nurses the wine until she falls asleep on the couch, hand draped down to brush the bottle lying on the floor next to her.
—
Her second birthday there she spends at the bar. She's three drinks in when the bartender places one in front of her. Odd, because she hadn't yet ordered another. She looks up at the bartender with a confused frown. Did he know it was her birthday?
"Guy over there wanted to buy you a drink." The bartender gestures across the room to a man sitting alone. She looks over to him, and when he notices her looking, gives a cocky half-wave and a smile so presumptuous it's more like a smirk.
She pauses. Normally, she just drinks what she wants and leaves, without interacting with anyone. But it is her birthday, after all, and she wants to avoid a repeat of last year. She nods her thanks at him, and picks up the drink.
He makes his way over to her and strikes up a conversation that she shallowly participates in.
It's not long after that they're in the alley next to the bar, mouths pressed together, hands roaming everywhere. Somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks this is a terrible idea, but she's four drinks in and it's her birthday and for once she can't find it in her to care. At her word, he takes her right there in the alley, pressed against the cold brick wall. It's not until she's lying in her bed later that night, quite alone in the pitch dark, that she realizes she hadn't thought of him all day.
When she wakes up the next morning, her pillow is wet from tears.
A few nights later, another drink is placed before her. She looks at the bartender, questioning; he merely nods to a table a little ways away. She looks to the table and gives the man sitting there a small half smile.
They make it back to his apartment before they're ripping each other's clothes off. She silently sneaks home around 3 in the morning for a few short hours of sleep before work the next day.
The next week, she locks eyes with someone across the bar. They only make it as far as the bar bathroom.
It's not long before this works its way into her regular habit. She finds herself with someone new once or twice a week, whether back at his place or in the bathroom of the bar, a cheap motel room or the back of a car. She doesn't much care. Her only rule is she never takes anyone back to hers.
It's just easier, that way. No talking. No questions. No need to flip down the photograph with fraying edges, the one that hurts too much to look at sober but would hurt even more to put away.
—
It's some fifteen months later when she hears. She's in a convenience store; not her usual one. The one closest to her apartment was out of her shampoo and her favorite brand of gin, so she has to go to the corner store a couple blocks up.
This one has a tv on inside. She's standing in line, holding a basket filled with the shampoo, gin, and an assortment of other items. She's not listening to anything, really, when something the newscaster says catches her attention.
Wyoming had broken out of prison. Wash had been released, for some shady reason they didn't bother to share. And—
Tex had resurfaced.
That's when she makes a decision. She sets her basket down and walks out of the store without buying anything.
She immediately returns home, and, without a second thought, begins emptying all her cupboards of all the bottles she'd collected over the past couple of years. She pulls bottles from her kitchen, from her nightstand, from her coffee table, even one from the bathroom cabinet. She opens them, one by one, pouring it all down the sink, even the bottles she had yet to open. She dumps it all, depositing the empty bottles in a big cardboard box. She carts the box down to the recycling bins. Coming back upstairs, she takes a quick look around her apartment before launching into full cleaning mode.
She stays awake until 4 am, cleaning furiously, scrubbing everything regardless of whether it needed it or not. If anyone had been there to see her, they would have seen a fiery determination in her eyes for the first time in a very long time. Carolina was back.
She changes and climbs into bed with a look as always at the tattered photograph on her nightstand. Her heart constricts, just a little, looking at the young man in the photo. It was snapped mid-laugh, smile wide, one hand running through his sandy brown hair. His left eye is clouded and a scar runs over it, but there's a look of such pure joy in his right that more than compensates.
Carolina smiles at the photo, a smallish smile, full of pain, but also of hope. Tex was Tex, but if she was still around, then maybe, just maybe—and that was enough of a reason to go on. She lays a light kiss on the corner of the photo and snuggles under her covers. As she drifts off to sleep, the last thought she remembers is that she never did get that shampoo bottle. Oh, well. There's always tomorrow.
A/N: Wow, this felt a lot longer on my phone than it does on my computer! Haha. I've had this story concept hanging out in my google docs for a few months now, recently rediscovered it and figured I might as well share it. This is actually only half the idea, really; when I originally came up with this story it was like 1 AM after a shower (which is when my best ideas percolate IMHO) so I wrote down as much as I could. I got this far but I was just way too tired to keep going then. I never ended up writing the rest, but I had wanted it eventually to cover basically all the way through Carolina going back and tracking down Wash and meeting the Reds & Blues, and sort of just giving existence to what could have happened...after everything (ha ha sorry I couldn't resist). We never got an explanation for what happened while Epsilon!Church was trapped in the memory unit during season 9, or where Carolina disappeared to after Maine threw her off the cliff while everyone thought she was dead. So this was just my idea of what could have been. Maybe I'll keep writing, if anyone is interested - if so, give it a follow, just in case. I marked it complete in the meantime, since I'm not sure if I will continue it. If I do, it probably won't be for a long time yet. I am at the mercy of my creativity. Anyway, this note is already too long so I'm gonna sign off, I hope you enjoyed it, reviews would be lovely, & have a wonderful day!
Xx Lady R