Back to you || A Redcrackle Story

1-Alone

Song: Carmen by Lana Del Ray

****THIS STORY IS AN AU! In here, the caper with Gray from season 2 takes place after Carmen discovers the truth about her dad.

Carmen POV:

It was a night like any other, the streets bleached of the life that thrived during the day. Lights flickered from windows in buildings she passed, taking attention from the vast space dotted with diamonds of stars.

The moon was at half full, the creamy semicircle ebbing into the blackness of the sky.

It wasn't ideal. Stealing was a practice best done by darkness, yet that never stopped her before.

She was strolling down a street in London, England somewhat leisurely, despite being all too aware of the weight in her jacket.

There was nothing heavy in the pocket, of course. The weight was only metaphorical, as the object was merely a slip of paper.

Sighing, she paused before a corner shop and picked the slip from within her jacket. It was a photograph, old and taken by one of those Film Cameras.

It was of a man with bronze skin darker than her own with perfectly manicured black hair. His nose hooked out, bent a little, as if it had been broken a few too many times. And his features were gruff and a bit weathered, suggesting he'd been through things the average human had not.

Dexter Wolfe.

Her father.

She compared the image to herself. Cinnamon skinned, small lipped, elven nosed, brunette.

Not exactly groundbreaking similarities.

Yet those irises of Gray were astonishingly familiar, glimmering in a way that hers often did. And something in the way those thick black brows settled over them felt like de ja vu.

Carmen let her attention wander to the other subject in the picture. Shadowsan. Far younger and free of the wrinkles that seemed set in his face now, his spiky jet black hair growing thick and long. Yet there was no mistaking it was him, for the same brooding expression rested on his face, the same strength sat in his hunched shoulders, and the same determination rested in his midnight gaze.

Wolfe has his arm around the man she now considered to be her mentor, laughing. Shadowsan's mouth turned up with a tiny smile.

They seemed.......happy.

It must've been taken before the faculty ordered Shadowsan to.....to......

Carmen swallowed. He didn't do it. It wasn't him. And with chief—it—it was an accident. She was trying to forgive the woman but to be honest? She wasn't the best at letting go of grudges.

She turned back to Wolfe. "Father." She sounded out. "Dad. Daddy? No. Papa? Papa." She settled on the last phrase, thought it still felt weird to say.

Wolfe might've been her father but she didn't know him. And she never would.

Never

Ever.

She swallowed, feeling a poorly healed wound reopening. Shoving the picture back into the pocket of her red jacket, Carmen stopped walking and blinked her eyes over and over, trying to get a hold of her emotions.

She was alone, all alone. And it seemed that it was destined to be that way till the end of time.

Without meaning to, her thoughts wandered to.....him. He, the bou who betrayed her. He, the boy she was in love—had loved once.