Summary: No one knows.
Standard Disclaimer: I'm just a fanfiction writer. All hail the rightful owners.
Note: This fic is a birthday present for Green Lion. It's based on a reblog on her Tumblr of "I just want female characters to have nice things."
"Could I steal you for a moment?" Carmen asked, with a smirk.
"Alright." That sounded a little ominous, but it would probably be fine. True, humor tended to act as a harbinger of Carmen's recklessness, but she'd just finished her second glass of wine and Hannah knew that meant no heist just now. Carmen took her capers as sober as a temperance worker. She would mutter something about mixing poisons if one asked about it, which Hannah usually didn't .The master thief didn't need any more encouragement when it came to unpredictability.
Either way, Hannah shrugged, acquiesced, and followed her boss away from the rest of the henchmen. They were having what Lars liked to call the "we didn't destroy the world this year" party. It was a fairly good time for the food, if not always for the company.
Hannah hung back slightly, walking behind her employer as they passed through an increasingly secure series of corridors. As far as Hannah could remember, she hadn't participated in any egregious misbehavior lately. So she probably wasn't in trouble. Unfortunately that didn't make reading Carmen's mood any more expedient.
At some point, the henchwoman lost track of their location in the maze of VILE's corridors. Eventually, however, the click of high heels on tile paused. She watched Carmen key in a code on the last security door, observing both the relaxed smile and the tightly wound shoulders.
"My apologies for the dry air," Carmen intoned as the door clicked open. "But you know how moisture is with books."
Hannah's blood pressure jumped and then fell as she walked into the room. "Wow." She whispered. "You have a really nice library."
The place was overflowing, not just with books, but with scrolls and tablets, both in and out of protective cases. Hannah could scarcely make out the walls, which seemed to be wooden, with the same deep red varnish as the floor.
"I thought you might like it." Carmen walked over to a shelf and stood, in a wide semi-protective stance, in front of it.
Hannah knew better than to touch anything. She smiled and lowered her shoulders, hoping it might put Carmen more at ease. Over the years, she'd become accustomed to this central contradiction of her boss, that a person who was completely deliberately nonviolent, so often gave off this aura of narrowly suppressed wrath. Intimidated though Hannah usually felt, something about that was a little reassuring. An innately daunting person who was actively trying not to harm you was better than the other way around.
Nevertheless, antagonizing Carmen was never ever going to be a good idea. Even if Hannah had no particular idea how she was doing that this time.
Carmen pressed her hands together for a moment, and then walked along the displays, gesturing. "These are from Lisbon, 1755," she recited. Stepping along another shelf, she pointed, "Vilna, 1942 and Buda, 1526."
Hannah swallowed.
Walking elegantly to the case farthest front, Carmen breathed, "Alexandria, 48 BCE."
Hannah flushed "These are lost books?"
Carmen nodded, guarded and unreadable.
"All of them?"
"Of course."
"Wow…" Hannah whispered. "Who else knows?"
The master thief folded her arms dismissively, "One archivist and two preservation experts."
"And now me?" Hannah's heart was racing. She couldn't figure out why Carmen was involving her. She had no special expertise to apply, and she wasn't important enough in the hierarchy to be privy to need to know information. It was not as though she was second string, but they usually just showed her the alarm and told her to unhook it. However high a value VILE placed on her expertise, it didn't make her one of the big-picture people.
"Now you."
"How long have you," Hannah stammered, "How long have you had these?"
Carmen smiled," Since I got the chronoskimmer working."
"I suppose that answers the how. But Carmen, that's been years. What are you going to do with them?"
For once, her boss hesitated, "Read them." She said quietly. "With some translation technology Acme doesn't know I have."
"That's it?" Hannah frowned.. "You mean you aren't planning some sort of big reveal or…"
Carmen's body language had gotten altogether dangerous, "Or what?"
"You're not going to share?"
The master thief exhaled and slowly swallowed, "There are people who like to call me selfish." She mused. "In this case, they're right."
"Oh…" Hannah muttered.
"If I hold on to the loot from a conventional heist, law enforcement will try to get it back and they will never let me rest. No one knows these still exist." Carmen shrugged. "I can just keep them."
"But you've left instructions right? They'd be able to find this if you died or something?" Hannah blurted out.
Relatively unbothered by the reference to her mortality, Carmen mused. "I suppose, you could tell them."
"Assuming I outlive you." Hannah said bravely.
"Yes, assuming that." Carmen smirked, and then touched her temples, adding quietly. "I thought I only wanted these books as an exercise, an impossible thing to find. However there's something to lost books, beyond the puzzle, that I'm not ready to give up yet."
"So err why involve me?"
The master thief shifted her eyes, looking over Hannah's shoulder somewhere, "This has," She hesitated, "not been a good few years. Mason, Lee," she winced, "Sara."
Yeah, not a good few years. Those incidents had been terrifying from Hannah's vantage. With a new boss, the last thing you wanted to be was the old boss's cowardly lackey.
"I can accept the occasional attempt to overthrow me," Carmen continued. "It's natural. However this many so close together," she shook her head, "Is a pattern, probably one I'm causing."
Hannah had been worried about that, but then again Hannah worried about a lot of things.
"So I am trying, for a new year resolution, to be more" Carmen coughed, "open."
"So you're showing everyone this?" Probably not a great idea, if she intended it to remain secret.
"No." Carmen paused.. "I'm showing you." Sighing, she amended, "Lars or Contessa is probably actually more likely to go rogue, but I would manage."
More likely was an understatement.
"However if I consider this less from a structural stance," a shallow breath, "and more as whether I personally would be hurt if it happened," Carmen sad flatly. "That's you."
Was Carmen serious? True there had been a lot of late nights and a lot of alarm systems, but Hannah had always figured if the entirety of world law enforcement and the criminal underworld couldn't make Carmen have emotions, no one could.
"Wait let me get this straight. You're sad that everyone seems to be betraying you, so you're showing me a library."
"A library of the lost literary wonders of civilization" Carmen flushed, "But yes."
"Alright," Hannah conceded carefully, "I promise that if I ever get the idea, from god knows where, that I'm smarter than you, I will challenge you to a strategy game or something, rather than trying to take over your company."
Carmen nodded formally.
"So um," Hannah cracked a little smile, "Is this just about making sure I didn't go Sara on you, or did you want to start a lost literary masterpieces book club?"
"I would love to start a book club."
THE END
Citation: Skimming Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections since Antiquity Ed. James Raven was very helpful to me as I wrote this fic.