AU. The night on the train goes a little differently. Gray remains at VILE and Carmen remains against them, and that should be the end of the story. Only it isn't.
Lots of EXPLICIT stuff ahead✔︎✔︎ read with caution!! Like seriously i cant have spoil...
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Jan 2
23:45, C.E.S.T
(en route) Paris, France.
"𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆?"
Carmen Sandiego's words rung in the air like a distant echo, the depth within them charging the air. She was offering to tell him her story, after all, and a woman in her line of work couldn't afford to do that with just anyone.
Her companion's answer, in turn, was cold, like a harsh wind that wandered lonely throughout the icy north. Angry and sullen and suffused with resentment, yet, at the end of the day....empty.
"Your clock runs out when we reach Paris." He paused, meeting her eyes. "Make it count."
Carmen swallowed, nodding, nimble brown fingers skirting along the plush cushions of their traincar.
She let herself meet his gaze, forcing herself to keep her face clean of emotion.
Gray was broader now. Tanner too, suggesting he'd been lots of places had seen their fair share of sun.
The features on his face were more pronounced, all chiseled where there had once been a boyish softness. Shadows were harsher to his jaw, and thick brows of brown furrowed together above sharp eyes of honey-caramel.
Carmen let herself meet his gaze and as she suspected, something was missing. The glimmer she had grown so used to back at the academy, the one revealing the morality within his wily, cunning irises, was gone.
Darkness now pooled where there was once a glint of gold in his eyes, and Carmen began to wonder what it was that he had done for VILE that stripped it from him.
Carmen remembered Academy-Gray, how smiles always touched his eyes before his lips, the way he could promise the most wonderful things with just a wink, and how he used look at her.
The memories were too much, and Carmen felt her poker face begin to fall. Immediately, the lady in red blinked furtively, collecting her thoughts before beginning to speak. Her words began to spill out like water, deja vu drenching the air as memories flooded the room.
Carmen told him everything, her lips forming the careful sentences her mind sewed together as she wove her story into one. It had to be a good one, after all, if she wanted him to join her side.
Gray considered what she was saying, taking note of the way one of her cinnamon colored legs crossed over the other with poise. As she spoke, nostalgia swept his system at the mention of the academy and all their antics.
Blacksheep-well, she went by Carmen, now, didn't she?-had grown taller. Out of everything so new and different about her, it was the height that struck him the most.
