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I v y -- unspoken soliloquy
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The C-5 had a reputation for getting people within the geographic border of the city they were trying to reach, but nowhere near anywhere useful. Touching down in the middle of the tourism district of Mont Saint Michel, Ivy thought to herself that no reputation had ever been more deserved.
Here it was just coming on sunrise, and the streets were gray and empty of everything except the eerie sort of half-light that always precedes the rising of the sun. Zack swung his keen gaze up and down the cobblestone-lined boulevard they had landed on. "Unfortunately, Carmen forgot to tell us where in Mont Saint Michel she's staying. Wanna check the tourist traps?" the younger boy joked.
Ivy exhaled frustratedly. "Yeah, let's start with the Holiday Inn."
"Actually, I've got a pretty good idea of where Carmen would go," Zack said. "One of Europe's architectural wonders is here -- La Merveille. It's an ancient cathedral. It's been written about, painted....Any self-respecting master thief would make a beeline for it."
"Yeah, but..." It wasn't usual for Carmen to be so non-specific in her clues. There had to be more. "Wait a minute. When she sent us the last clue, didn't she say 'cavalier?'"
"Yeah. She also said the words 'it' and 'some.' What's your point?"
"I think I remember reading something....there's a famous house here. It was owned by the wife of a famous medieval knight, Bertrand du Guesclin. He was a chevalier."
"You've lost me, Ive."
She made a small, exasperated noise. "Another term for a chevalier is a cavalier!"
"But La Merveille is the place to go in Mont Saint Michel," he argued.
"Then we'll just have to split up," she declared, swiftly losing her patience. Carmen could have been getting away at that very moment.
"Uh, well there's a problem. We don't know how to get to either Du Guesclin's pad or La Merveille."
Ivy smiled faintly, looking at something behind and above Zack. He turned, and saw a cluster of large billboard signs indicating directions to many tourist attractions...including La Merveille and Bertrand du Guesclin's house.
"If you're right breakfast's on me," Zack called out doubtfully into the cold morning air, as he and Ivy parted and sped off to their respective locations.
- - - - - - - -
The house of du Guesclin had been converted into a kind of museum. It was fully furnished in the style of the era it was built in, with certain areas roped off or cased in to draw the visitor's eye. But as it was closed now, the large structure was unnervingly still and quiet.Ivy prowled around the dark rooms cautiously, waiting for someone or -thing to jump out at her, as though she were in a carnival fun house. And in a sense, she was. The young girl had learned to expect everything when tracking Carmen Sandiego. It wouldn't have been unusual for the master thief to leave some big, hulking henchmen behind to menace the detectives. 'Hired goons,' Ivy had always called the non-descript, blue jumpsuit-clad beefcakes in her head.
She ducked into a shadowy corner to give her racing pulse a little time to calm. Straining her ears for the faintest creak or click, she wondered how many more cases she would get to work.
The sheer enormity of the realization that this could be the last closed museum she ever wandered, the last clue she ever unraveled, knocked the breath from her lungs. The dark news that the Chief had dropped on them yesterday had never been far off her mind during this case, like a mean little parrot sitting on her shoulder, constantly pecking at her. When he had alerted them of Carmen's first theft, around four in the morning, she had not been to sleep.
Ivy loved being a detective. More than anything else in the whole world. Wanting to be an Acme detective was her first memory of life, and being discouraged and reprimanded for this desire was her second. But nothing could keep her away from Acme. Not even the crushing irony of the fact that the person who had inspired her dreams was now on the top of Acme's most wanted list.
And on top of it all, she and Zack were going to be dismissed because they were suspected of having sympathies with V.I.L.E. Putting Carmen away had been Ivy's only real goal in life for the past decade, and while she could not deny that she had at times cast that goal aside for a greater good, it had never been an easy or guiltless decision.
And now she regretted those decisions so much, she was physically weakened by the weight of it. After we rescued her from Professor Bellum, after we helped her keep her good name as the "honest crook" when Maelstrom would have tarnished it, after all we've done for her...
It didn't work. That was the long and short of it. After all we've done for her, she's still a thief and now I've sacrificed my own dream for a lost cause.
Ivy crept out of the shadow she had been sheltering in and continued on toward the north wing. In some unfamiliar corner of her heart she had implicitly believed that showing leniency and mercy for the master thief would earn her something in return. Ivy swallowed hard. As illogical as it was, she still clung to the hope that one day Carmen Sandiego would return to Acme, would turn back into the detective that had made her want to be one too.
And maybe that was Ivy's deepest, darkest secret, the thing Otto Bernarde was snooping around in old case reports trying to find. Even though Ivy was Acme's most focused, most dedicated agent, there was something she wanted more than to bring Carmen Sandiego to justice, and that was to bring her back to the right side of the law. The Chief would find a way, too, if Carmen wanted it so. Somehow he could. Although they had never seriously discussed it, never talked about it at all really, she and Zack both understood how deeply he still cared about his former agent. The wounds Carmen had inflicted when she left Acme were few and deep, and the scars would probably never completely heal.
The young detective kicked angrily at a buckle in the carpet underfoot, not liking the turn her mental monologue was taking.
Something gleamed in the pale morning light to Ivy's left. A slow grin spread across her face as she recognized it. An Ogata Korin lacquer box. A definite anachronism in the house of a 14th century chevalier, especially considering it was supposed to be residing in the Tokyo National Museum. Ivy perkily tapped a button on her wristwatch communicator, and chirped, "How does Denny's sound?"
The cheer-enhancing effect of Zack's groan was only slightly diminished by the static of the comm-unit's tiny speaker. "I can't believe you were right. I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that; never is a very long time. Call for some back-up. Over and out."
Continuing down the north wing corridor, Ivy found all thirty-six of the stolen items, each displayed formally on marble pedestals of various sizes. Ivy paused a beat to admire an original printing of the 1737 Poor Richard's Almanack. She closed her eyes briefly; the weight and size of the old tome in her hands were the same as another old book, one which was reposing eternally in a rented storage unit in downtown San Francisco.
She unceremoniously dropped the almanac back onto its pedestal, suddenly repulsed by it. Ivy shook her head as if to clear it and moved onward, a little faster. It had been awhile since she had thought about the scrapbook she had made as a little girl.
She couldn't remember exactly what had been her four-year-old self's motivation for collecting newspaper and magazine articles about her favorite detective. Maybe she had just wanted something to hold on to, something to hope for. Maybe she had wanted to prove to her father that she could indeed read. The girl smiled faintly, remembering. In any case, at some point she had gotten her hands on a blank book, and had pasted her collection into it, both to organize it and hide it from her mother, who would have probably burned the scraps of paper if she had known how much they meant to Ivy. Becoming an Acme detective was not on the short to-do list Vanessa Evans had written up for her daughter.
Ivy ran a brisk hand through her fiery hair, grinding her teeth. She had been unfocused and off her game ever since she stepped foot in the old house. She might as well have gone trotting off to La Merveille with Zack, for all the time she had wasted. Get a grip, Ivy. You can feel sorry for yourself when you get back home.
The north wing corridor ended in a grand set of double doors; they were wide open, and beyond them stretched a wide, grassy terrace. The flat, well-kept lawn ended abruptly at a cliff's edge. Carmen Sandiego stood there, watching the sea.
Options and possibilities raced through her brain. She had the element of surprise -- something she was bound to lose if she waited too long. But she would need Zack if something went wrong. Could she afford to wait until he came? Ivy imagined herself explaining her case report to Otto Bernarde. 'Having sighted the suspect at a vulnerable moment, I then proceeded to wait because my little brother wasn't there, sir.' That helped the detective make up her mind considerably. I'm going for it, she thought with grim certainty.
Carmen had chosen a good spot to do some whale watching, strategically speaking, Ivy realized as she crept onto the terrace. There was nothing to hide behind or in; the terrace was completely devoid of shrubs, or trees, or anything else. It was impossible to make a covert strike. As soon as she detects my presence Carmen's going to pull out a jet pack, or signal for a speedboat, or something, Ivy thought grumpily. But there was nothing to do but creep forward, step by anxious step.
Ivy felt the familiar butterflies in her stomach and silently cursed herself. She was as nervous as if she were going to ask Carmen for an autograph, rather than put her under arrest. There was another reason she would have preferred to wait for her brother: she suddenly realized that she did not want to confront Carmen alone.
Ten years had been enough time to change the world's greatest detective into the world's greatest thief, and a disheartened baby girl into a spirited teenager who was as independent as most people twice her age. Ten years had been enough time to turn ardent admiration into a bitter grudge. But when Ivy met her adversary face to face, she felt the years melt away like April snow, and she was just a child again. A child who did not want to de-throne her hero.
She was close now. The edge of the terrace where the master thief stood was only several yards away. If not for the roar of the waves and the soft, dew-drenched grass underfoot she would have surely heard Ivy by now. The girl was now left with the puzzle of what to do next. If her spirits were higher she might have called out tauntingly to her nemesis, but as it was she was simply too drained to even try to affect esprit or vigor. On the other hand, an unannounced flying tackle seemed banal to the point of being unprofessional.
But then Carmen Sandiego spoke, and solved the problem for her.
"Welcome, Ivy, and good morning." The tall woman turned around to face her, wearing a self-assured smile, and Ivy suddenly had the dreadful feeling that Carmen had been aware of her approach ever since she dropped out of the C-5 corridor.
She peered over the young detective's shoulder with a look of amused curiosity. "But where's Zack?"
"We had a slight...difference of opinion," she replied stiffly, hoping she sounded less sleepy than she felt.
"Ah, La Merveille, right?" the raven-haired thief intuited, then laughed softly when Ivy's expression affirmed her. "Yes, you always did have a gift for perceiving subtleties which your brother does not possess, at least in the capacity of solving my clues."
Carmen leaned against the railing along the cliff edge, as casual as though she were chatting with an old friend. "I've always been especially fond of Mont Saint Michel. I have a lot of history here..."
Ivy almost drowned under a wave of frustration. How could Carmen act like this? And more to the point, how was she supposed to react? It was as if they were supposed to be pals until the detectives got within lunging distance, at which time they were just cops and robbers again. Carmen didn't have the right to act so familiar. To pretend we're not enemies. The unexpected punch of melancholy that last thought delivered spurred the detective to stay focused.
"What's your game this time, Carmen?" she demanded, even harsher than she had intended to sound. "Why the extended shopping spree?"
Her eyes glinted like sea glass from the shadow of her fedora, and she raised a gloved finger to rest above her crimson lips, clearly bemused. "Why have you been so pensive during this case, detective?"
Ivy did not flatter herself to think that she understood Carmen's thought processes at all, but even she could see that the gears in her unfathomable mind were turning -- there was a point to the question. Perhaps it was to throw her off guard, because it certainly did. Carmen had been noticeably absent during her own crime spree, showing up more on grainy surveillance tape than in person. How she had been able to glean anything of her spirit or mood during this case was totally beyond Ivy.
The young detective faltered, opened her mouth to reply, but couldn't find anything to say. Carmen smiled again, but there was nothing taunting in her demeanor. "You know, I've always wondered why you bear such a deep grudge against me," the tall woman added lightly, as if not expecting an answer, and turned once again to the sea.
It seemed to Ivy that she had fallen into Alice's wonderland, and that she couldn't have had a more unsettling dialogue with the Cheshire cat himself. When the thief said no more, she finally found her tongue. "Y-you're...a criminal," she managed to choke out in her own defense. She sounded weary and disingenuous even to her own ears.
Suddenly Ivy was very aware of the fact that she hadn't slept in two days. Adrenaline could keep her eyes open, but it could not erase her exhaustion. She just didn't have the strength to deal with this scenario, to have this conversation right now. Her legs started to tremble violently, and Ivy feared her knees would buckle under her. Hurry up, Zack! She felt her body tumble to the ground; she simply had no more strength to hold herself up, a marionette whose strings had been cut. A muffled cry escaped her throat as she fell. It was a tiny sound, but Carmen must have heard it. In an instant, she was there; the tall woman gently hoisted the young girl by her upper arms back to her feet, maternal concern slightly distorting her flawless face.
For an instant, the environs of Mont Saint Michel flickered and faded, before peeling away altogether. Beneath was a scene from a distant time. There was a little girl, her titian hair tied back in pigtails; she was with her family in a cold, alpine place, and her breath became a misty vapor as soon as it left her lips. Someone had shod her small feet with bladed shoes and put her out on the ice. She had never skated before. Many, many times she lost her balance and fell on the hard ice. An angry shadow blocked out the sky; it was the child's mother. She watched her efforts with an increasingly annoyed expression. At last, her eyes stinging with tears, the little girl reached out towards her mother and begged for some help. The woman slapped her hands away and glided off into the distance.
"Ivy." The panic that laced Carmen's tone brought the detective back to the current page of her life.
She straightened as best she could and tried to remain in control of her face, to not look as shaken as she felt. "I'm okay," she assured, as much to herself as to Carmen.
She suddenly wanted very badly to thank her adversary, even though she knew she shouldn't. Mothers were supposed to be kind and wise; thieves were supposed to be hard and cruel. And heroes weren't supposed to become villains. Ivy didn't understand any of it, but she didn't want it to be recorded on the pages of her life that, when someone had finally helped her to stand, she had been ungrateful. She looked up at the raven-haired thief, and would have probably uttered her thanks, but her expression was so kind and sad that even the crying shorebirds seemed to be hushed.
"It seems I've pushed you too hard this case. My apologies, child." Carmen softly stroked Ivy's flaming hair, and once again turned her back to her, setting her gaze loose to roam the surrounding waters. Ivy shook her head dumbly, now thoroughly and completely at a loss for words. The silence didn't last, however. "Well," the woman began, a hint of the taunting tone she was accustomed to returning, "I can't deny that you've got me cornered this time, detective."
Excuse me? Ivy thought incredulously.
"Hold it right there, Carmen!"
The detective and the thief turned in unison to see Zack striding quickly across the terrace. The blonde boy looked to his sister for some kind of cue as to what he had missed, but her tired eyes conveyed nothing.
"Ah, Zack, it's about time you showed up," Carmen called out brightly, all traces of her momentary somberness gone, and Ivy thought to herself that although the thief always wore red, she had some decidedly chameleonic abilities.
"I always try to be fashionably late. So what's with the eighteen-hour shopping spree?" he queried, almost mirroring his sister's question, though in a considerably lighter tone and manner.
Carmen shrugged slightly. "What better way to let you detectives know your vacation is over?"
"A postcard would have sufficed."
"Perhaps. But this way is so much more fun." The woman smiled slyly.
Ivy saw a doubt scamper across Zack's face, and exchanged a subtle glance with him. They were both thinking the same thing: Carmen wore her fatigue well, but she was as tired as they were. The master criminal was known to steal things on a lark, but there had been a hard edge to her work this past caper. There was a purpose to this crime spree, and the fact that it was not readily apparent and that Carmen seemed unwilling to divulge it, even now at the end, was disturbing.
"Unfortunately, I didn't count on you two being so on the ball. You've caught me without a trick up my sleeve," the thief admitted, as graceful in defeat as in victory.
"You're never without a trick up your sleeve," Zack corrected skeptically, now serious and analytical.
Ivy glanced rapidly from her brother to her adversary, feeling that she should be taking part in the repartee, but her brain felt slow and soggy; it was all she could do just to mentally compute the words they were speaking.
"I'm flattered, Zack. But the fact is this case is over, and I'm still here." As if on cue, the cacophony of myriad police sirens drifted into audibility. The sacred quietude of the morning shattered and fell around them. There would be more than just cops, Ivy knew; there would be CIAs, and secret services from several nations, as well as a truckload of hyperactive Acme agents.
Ivy looked to Carmen, and instantly understood.
Later on, when discussing the case with her brother, she would learn all the reasons why she was right. She would even receive some high praise from him for her 'brilliant deduction,' which she would deny and shrug off, saying that she did nothing clever, only followed her gut feeling. Later on, Zack would laboriously describe his own hunches and extrapolations: how the business card at the first location felt forced and directed at a third party (the Acme executives, as it turned out), and how the last clue that led them to Mont Saint Michel was set up to deliberately create a false sense of urgency that would ensure they set off quickly and alone. But at that moment, all she knew was the meaning of the slow, apprehensive gleam in Carmen's one visible eye as she gazed in the direction of the nearing onslaught.
"You...you're turning yourself in," Ivy muttered, swaying slightly where she stood.
Carmen and Zack both snapped their heads around to look at her in astonishment. The younger boy's jaw nearly hit the ground, but Ivy just continued to pin the thief with her hard stare. Carmen had been anticipating the police cars' approach for a long time, had waited patiently for them and the ride she was going to take.
The sound of the sirens was loud and coarse now; they must have been at the front of du Guesclin's mansion. But still Ivy stared motionlessly, unblinkingly at her greatest adversary, silently demanding an explanation. The tall woman's expression of consternation faded into mild surprise, and then a ghost of a smile. Ivy finally broke the gaze, closed her eyes and shook her head in dismay. No, not like this...
Footsteps, clamorous and quick; they were in the house now, searching every room. "You don't have much time," the thief prompted softly.
"You know," Zack breathed, the pieces finally falling into place for him. "You know about Bernarde and-"
"And it won't help you to be caught chatting with me," Carmen interrupted.
Time seemed to stop for a moment as they all weighed the immensity of the transaction taking place. The irony was exquisite: the criminal had set herself up in order to prove that the detectives were not in league with her, but in so doing she was forever cementing the bond between them. Zack took out his handcuffs, and Carmen extended her wrists as docilely as a lamb.
Suddenly the police were upon them, a stampede of black and blue and rapid French. Zack handled the requisite conversation, being fluent in the language, and Ivy was grateful for the luxury of being silent. And then they were marching as one group back through the mansion, the cops trying to maintain an air of professionalism despite their excitement, the detectives trying to look happy, and Carmen Sandiego standing tall and proud through it all. Then they were out of the house of du Guesclin, and Zack and Ivy broke away from the entourage and hung back in a shadow by the main entrance. They knew their fellow Acme detectives would be among the throng assembled at the large cluster of police cars that were parked in front of the mansion's lawn, and didn't feel like receiving kudos just then.
"So why that whole charade then?" Ivy questioned after a moment, still gazing distantly at the retreating crowd.
"The eighteen hour shopping spree? Well, what would you expect her to do? Carmen can't help but do everything she does in a big way. If you were Carmen, would you rather be caught after your longest, wildest series of heists ever, or in a botched Seven-Eleven hold up?"
The older girl silently nodded her understanding, watching the scarlet figure who was now getting into a black-and-white police car. It's all wrong, Ivy thought dizzily. Just like the lady in her dim, icy memory, Carmen Sandiego was supposed to always glide away at the end, as graceful as the shadow of a gull on the water.
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A/N: The whole premise of Ivy being a Carmen fan when she was little and keeping a scrapbook of her adventures is not my idea at all. It was something the good folks of the Carmen Discussion Forum thought up a long time ago. I'm a big supporter of this theory, and I couldn't help but incorporate it into my fic.