Title: I'll Find You, Cooper
Summary: Carmelita spends a night thinking about her favorite criminal.
Author's Note: This is the first Sly Cooper fic I've ever written, and also the first fic I've ever written involving animal characters. I had no idea how to approach this story, really. I guess I can just say that I will not refer to hands, but paws, and not feet, but back paws. I'm not very familiar with Spanish, but I wanted Carmelita to curse in Spanish every now and then, so I had my friend tell me some Spanish curse words! I hope I used them correctly.
'Hello gorgeous.'
A familiar voice causes Carmelita Fox's fur to rise up and make her body freeze its movements. '…Sly?' She asks hesistantly, taking a long second to turn around. Her eyes meets Sly's playful ones. He is dressed in his black and white tux and wearing his infamous boyish grimace.
'Who else could I be?'
Her jaw drops while her mind is racing for words to say. But they don't come to mind, and before she can even realize what she's doing, she's by his side and wrapping her arms around his neck. His response to that marks nothing but surprise, but he soon gives in by placing both his paws against her back, pulling her in tighter. Her instincts instantly turn on and tell her to pull away, to cuss at him for touching her in such a way, and then to argue with herself about why she always ends up lowering her guard for him. But of all times, today is the day she decides to listen to her heart instead, and she accepts the way he slowly runs his paw up and down the fabric of her leather jacket, his steady breathing a comforting sound in her ears.
A minute passes, and Carmelita decides that it's time to pull away. She pushes him back softly. 'What happened, ring tail? You vanished on me- On us. On me, Bentley and Murray. We were worried sick.'
Sly's lips curve up into the slightest hint of a smile, noticing the way she awkwardly changes her words and puts her wall back up. A long moment passes before he answers. 'This isn't real, you know.' There's a gentle, almost apologetic look in his eyes.
Carmelita frowns at him in confusion. 'What do you mean?'
Sly smiles again, stepping forward to her. He places a paw on the side of her face. 'This isn't real.'
She wakes up with a jolt, immediately faced with the harsh reality. She's alone in her bed. A cold wind breezes through her forgotten open window and it sends a shiver down her spine. More importantly, she didn't just hug Sly. He didn't just touch her face. He's not here at all. Her eyes fall down to her lap, where a pillow is held tightly in her arms.
'Aye…' Carmelita sighs deeply, running her fingers through her long, blue hair. 'I'm going loco.' She flings the sheets off of her body, causing the pillow to fly across the room and crash against the wall. She closes the window, but it has no effect on her uneasy feeling.
She decides to pour herself a glass of water in the kitchen. She knows that it won't be an easy night for her. She spent the majority of her day with Bentley and Murray, watching as both the turtle and the hippo lost their hope to find Sly. It's been exactly 6 months since he vanished.
She tried to reassure them, telling them that there was no clear evidence that he died in the crash. But as she rattled on and on about the possibilities, she started to realize that she was trying way too hard to convince herself.
She sips her water. Unsurprisingly, it serves no consolation at all. She doesn't know for how long she will have to spend her night in an empty bed. Maybe a few more months, maybe the rest of her life. That thought makes her shudder. 'Sly can't be dead,' she thinks to herself, 'he's way too stubborn to simply be killed.'
'I promise I won't trespass.' He whispers with a wink that she can barely see in the dark of night. She starts to blush a little at that, but fortunately for her, he doesn't notice.
'Okay.' She tries her best at making her voice sound firm. 'Goodnight, Cooper.'
'Goodnight, beautiful.'
His words give her a warm feeling, not even entirely because of his use of words, but because of the ease with which he said them. His compliments to her feel natural to him and it makes her feel wanted.
He has already turned around to lie on his side, possibly as a sign of him respecting her privacy. After all, he did just basically crash her apartment in the middle of the night, practically begging for a place to sleep. He had also spent 30 minutes trying to convince her to let him sleep with her in her bed. If he was any other guy, she would've slammed the door in this face. Preferably literally, in his face. But Sly Cooper has never been 'any other guy' for her, that much she knows. She has learned to accept this about herself. No matter what she does, no matter how hard she tries to hate him, he managed to sneak his way into her life and occupy a precious place in her heart, whether she likes it or not.
He groans ever so softly, trying to curl up into his thin blanket. His back doesn't quite help him out though. He is suffering from an awful backache he'd gotten after an unfortunate crash with Murray (in which the hippo had landed on top of him, which is all she knew. He didn't want to go into any further details, and for some reason, neither did Murray.) and the cold wind makes things even worse.
Carmelita sighs on her side of the bed, feeling guilty as her thick blanket covers her entire body and yet, still has enough material to cover someone else's. 'You know, Sly… just for tonight, I might be okay with you breaking your promise.'
Her use of his first name makes him turn back around to face her. He is now lying on his other side, the two of them facing each other from each side of the bed in what many people could consider an intimate position. He smirks. 'I'm a Cooper. And Coopers don't break their promises.' With that, he turns his back to her again, missing the way her face forms a genuine smile. But he knows. He always knows.
She is startled by the sound of a crash and it forces her back to reality. Her eyes shoot down to see her glass shattering in all directions, the remaining water wetting her back paws. 'Oh, mierda!' She hisses, stepping away from the broken glass. She is in no mood to clean it up though, so she simply turns off the kitchen lights and returns to her bedroom.
She is greeted by the sight of her empty bed covered in rumpled sheets and it makes her stomach twist a little, her mind dragging her into another memory with her favorite criminal.
'Are you scared?'
There's a long silence that hands in the air before she reluctantly slides her shock pistol back in her holster, breathing out a long sigh. 'I'm not scared.'
She can almost feel him approaching her. Her body instinctively shoots up a little when he places a paw on her shoulder, but her shocked reaction has no effect on him. 'I mean… are you scared of what'll happen?'
Carmelita's eyes bore into the dull, grey wall in front of her. It's true, she iss at least a little scared. She has spent almost an entire year putting the pieces together of a culprit responsible for at least 2 deaths. One of them was a fellow Interpol agent who she could often confide in, something that is rare in her world. And that criminal had taken their lives just to steal an artifact that couldn't be worth more than 100,000 dollars. 50,000 each. That is the value of the lives Dr. Porter took, according to the crazed doctor.
Carmelita knows that their lives are worth way more than that and she talks about it with Sly more often than not, their conversations often lasting deep into the night. Sometimes they go on for so long that at some point, Carmelita's sleep-deprived body just suddenly gives up on her and she finds herself the next morning awkwardly leaning against Sly's chest.
Despite the fact that he has nothing to do with the case itself, he does provide a certain source of strength for her. His calm and reassuring words are the ones that reminds her to keep her cool, to keep her personal feelings out of it, to just catch the killer and put him to justice. If it wasn't for him, she'd most likely spiral out of control and cause herself a whole lot more trouble than Dr. Porter caused himself.
This leaves her wondering where said villain gets the audacity to go after Sly Cooper.
Perhaps he knows exactly what Sly Cooper means to her, that he is her weak point, her voice of reason. He thinks it's necessary to take Sly down so that she can go into a deranged rampage mode and he could use the commotion she'd cause to slip away.
But despite Sly's amnesia, he is still very much capable of taking care of himself. He's fighting for his life, but when the sirens of cop cars close in, Dr. Porter is quick to swing his sword at Sly. Sly staggers to the floor in shock, blood spurting out of the wound on his face, barely realizing that Dr. Porter makes his escape
'Apparently it takes a lot more than a simple sword to take me out.' He tries to keep the situation light-hearted when Carmelita finds him, blood dripping from his face.
'Oh, Cooper, you culo. You're losing blood.' She falls to her knees besides him, putting his head into her lap. She rips off her jacket and presses it against the side of his face, desperately trying to stop the bleeding.
He starts breathing heavily, his usual confident exterior draining from his face. 'This is kinda painful, Carmelita.' His eyes briefly flutters shut before opening wide again, until they flutter shut again. His ears that are usually standing straight up, now fall down to the sides of his face, which is never a good sign.
'Stay with me, Cooper! Stay with me!' She shouts, placing her unoccupied hand on the other side of his face, forcing him to look back at her. 'Oh, he shouldn't have attacked you at all!'
Sly grimaces a little, though the action causes him immense pain and he groans a little. 'Nobody… nobody hurts your criminal, right Carm?' He breathes out through a few painful coughs. Carmelita feels the her eyes water at the mention of what she had said a year ago and she curses inwardly, doing her very best not to let any tears escape. He is in a great deal of pain, and God knows, he might even slip into a shock. 'Nobody.' She simply speaks softly, a smile forming on her lips for the first time that night.
She remembers everything that happened that night. She brought him home to her apartment, put him to bed, and silently vowed to avenge what Dr. Porter had done to him. Hell, if she hadn't found Sly in time, he could've been killed. And she would have never forgiven herself for it, because technically he was just an innocent outsider in regards to this case.
Her eyes fall unto the pillow she had previously discarded on the floor. She bends over to pick it back up, placing it against her chest, her eyes gazing out the window to the pale moon.
She sighs deeply, clutching the pillow a little tighter. 'I'll find you, Cooper.'
Author's Note: I simply wrote this for the sake of writing something. I love Sly/Carmelita, and I hope that Sly Cooper 5 will be just as awesome as I thought Thieves In Time was. Thoughts? Please let me know!