In which, Gray reminisces the former complications of his relationship with Carmen as she is walking down the aisle.

3,922

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It was astounding how good Carmen looked in white. Red had always been her color. Even back at the academy before she'd so boldly trademarked her particular shade of rouge, Gray couldn't help but notice it as she held a flower he'd picked for her, it's petals a brilliant shade of crimson, up under her small, elven nose.

That was the day he'd begun to fall in love with the elusive lady in red, not understanding the quickening of his heartbeat as she'd smiled up at him in that cunning way of hers, bashfully accepting his gift with a teasing glint in her eyes.

Maybe that was the beginning of it all, maybe that was when the universe decided to punish him, because only a few days later, Gray had found a green check mark next to his name where there was an 'X' next to Blacksheep's.

Gray never considered himself to be a good person, nor a bad one. He danced around laws that held society intact, but he'd always held himself to a line. He was neither a hero, nor a villain. Not a shade of black or a hue of white. His name rather poetically symbolized that: Gray. A shade of gray, a morally ambiguous point between good and evil that he constantly struggled with.

But that all seemed to change when Blacksheep was rejected from VILE.

"Go on, Gray. I'll be fine." He still remembered her voice, threatening to break down and crumble. But she held it together. She held it together for him and gave him a choice. You don't have to choose me. Her words told him. The quiet tremble of her tone gave him a different answer. But I want you to.

He should've stayed. Why hadn't he stayed? Maybe if he had, he could've seen Carmen in her white dress far earlier than now. Maybe they both wouldn't have been haunted by nightmares that would only go away once in each other's arms.

It was like a blur, and the white and black sides of him were both screaming at him to do the opposite thing, causing him to do nothing at all, a docile figure with the toned, pale arm of a certain platinum blonde pulling him away, away from where he needed to be most.

And he had seen it, too, the fall of her tender smile when she realized he was not there, that he was not turning around, that he hadn't chosen her and she was all alone to shoulder her burdens.

It was that moment that the struggle within him--the battle between dark and light--had (temporarily) concluded. He had chosen VILE without meaning to, and he'd had an entire day to change his mind, to find Blacksheep, to be with her in her hour of need. But he didn't, the day remaining a blur and his indecisiveness paralyzing his body.

Gray knew it was too late the moment he had stepped onto that helicopter for the team's first caper.

"Bye, bye, blacksheep." He remembered whispering at the silhouette of VILE island, the only sound in the air the whir of their chopper as their team felt incomplete without the rambunctious brunette there to fill the silence.

He was VILE now. There was no more Blacksheep around to keep him in the Gray. Crackle would be the only name people used for him, and though it had begun as a gag for laughs, it was now synonymous with his darkness.

And still the universe gave him another chance, because of course mischievous and wily Blacksheep would sneak along with them, and of course she would turn to him, her closest ally and confidant.

It had inconveniently only occurred to him after the incident at Morocco that Blacksheep had trusted him entirely in that moment she had pushed him off the open jump area.

"Don't let go!" He remembered the panic in her voice vividly as they spiraled through the air like a wisp of dandelion seeds, the wind battering at their bodies as Gray recovered from his shock just in time to yank the string of his parachute.

And just like that, his light had returned and she was trying to make him Gray again. But this time he no longer remained indecisive. He chose the darkness, he fought back. Gray tried to kill that man. He tried to take his life.

"NO!" Her voice had ripped through the chilly night air as her body slammed hard against his compact chest, redirecting the blast from his infamous crackle rod away from his target.

Gray wondered where that man was, now.

Blacksheep had chosen him yet again despite the fact that he'd abandoned her. She trusted him with her plan of escape, and still, he fought against her. Still, he let the cleaners take her.

Gray could still recall the utter pang of betrayal shining within her stormy gray eyes, her shock culminating into the beginnings of tears that glistened as the darkness took her away in more ways than one.

After that, Gray avoided the isle of VILE as often as possible, taking capers in the farthest reaches of the globe or the unpopular "middle man" jobs that required transporting stolen goods between checkpoints. He did all he could to stay away from her and his guilt, stepping further and further into the black.

Crackle crackle crackle.

That was what he knew himself as.

Maybe because he had become Crackle it hadn't hurt so much when he'd finally returned home a year later to have Bellum break the news to him that blacksheep was gone, that she was someone new now. Maybe the fact that he'd suppressed the dull ache in his heart for so long was why he hadn't resisted when Bellum informed their protege that he would be tasked with taking her out.

Carmen Sandiego. That was her new name, only Crackle didn't think of it like that. Carmen Sandiego was an entirely different person from Blacksheep, and he had to tell himself that as the possibility of killing her loomed on the horizon.

Get to the point, get to the point- his brain screamed when he found her in that Paris-bound train car, yet he let his heart win over for once, his thirst for answers as to why she'd done what she'd done too great.

And then she was telling him her story. They were sitting and laughing and talking and it was so jarringly similar to old times that Crackle wasn't thinking straight. The only unobscured thought in his mind as she spoke had been to note just how good she looked in her ensemble of crimson.

The teasing glint in her eyes, the cunning curve of her lips, there she was, pulling him back into the Gray. But he was Crackle. He was VILE. He was darkness.

"Come back to VILE. We miss you." He said, stressing the underlying meaning of that (I miss you), finding himself using what had been described as an arrogantly charming smirk that had proven quite effective when pertaining to his former flames, all of them beginning with the intention of helping him getting over his ex-best friend and none succeeding.

And then there it was, that same break of betrayal in her slate grey irises. But this time she didn't fade away and crumple out of consciousness. This time, Carmen's expression twisting into a mask of disappointment and anger as he aimed his crackle rod at ger chest.

Blacksheep had always been the best thief at VILE, but normally, Crackle would've put up more of a fight when she had twisted his rod away from him.

He was moving slower, that same indecisiveness holding him back, only looking backing, he was thankful for it. Because this time it was now he who was losing his grip with consciousness, he who was captured and taken into custody. This time it was he who VILE betrayed.

He could still recall the blank expression on Dr.Bellum's face, someone he'd once considered close to a parental figure, as the memory wiping device was strapped to his skull, energy pulsing out from either of it's ends as every little thing in the past two years of his life was taken from him.

But maybe that was exactly what he had needed, because Crackle had nowhere to walk but a darker path. The memory wipe had removed his internal struggle entirely, and there was none of the blackness that crackle held, not even any Gray that left him indecisive. He was now Graham Calloway, a perfectly normal good-samaritan who considered stealing just a dumb thing he had done in highscool as a cry for attention from his foster parents.

He had been reset, given a second chance, and he didn't even know it.

But then there she was, showing up out of the blue and finding her way back into his life. Graham had never known this suave lady in red, Gray had. Yet still, he felt an inexplicable connection to her that prompted that casual invite to that date at the cafe.

A date she'd stood up, of course, but Graham had never thought too deeply of it. She must've just been busy or not into it. He had no problem getting dates, so the rejection didn't bother him too much. Yet months later, the lady in red called again, and he found himself feeling all the exciting things he had first felt that night after the opera house.

"Gray...." She kept insisting, to which Graham promptly corrected her on his name.

Yet again here she was, pulling him back to that place of moral ambiguity he had drowned in back on the island.

She was both his light and darkness, leading him back into the symbolic Gray area of things, because right after her seemingly spontaneous visits had concluded, he had fallen on ACME's radar and received a visit from a certain Tamara Fraser.

And then everything had spiraled out of hand. Graham lost his sense of self as every bit of his reality had been shattered, the waning memories of his thieving past resurfacing, impulses that had long been suppressed aching to be acted out.

ACME took him in. They took him in and when he was paranoid and scared and oh-so confused, those same impulses kicked in, setting him on autopilot. Graham had felt like a stranger in his own body, trapped within himself as he made his escape from the safe house where Chief and her agents were keeping him.

And then in the midst of all of his bewilderment, there they were. VILE, his darkness, his demons. All of it came crashing back until the only thing Graham Calloway could think of doing was contacting them for help. When he'd called, they had answered, and suddenly he was drowning in the black again.

Now, Graham wasn't even Graham anymore. He had never chosen to be Graham on his own, and when he'd become aware of the fact, Crackle became all the more alluring.

It was Crackle, not Graham, in that room in the Himalayas, and he had made sure to tell Carmen so, pointing his rod straight to her neck. But he couldn't do it. She was still there, a lingering shadow that was the only thing that stood between him succumbing totally to evil, because all he could think of now was how things had gone so, so wrong between them. Even though he was choosing them, choosing VILE, he couldn't hurt her. Not again.

"I don't want to be put in a position to hurt you ever Again." He whispered, the cool glow of the dawn shining along the sharpness of his features as he clicked his weapon off, the green glow dying away in the darkness.

What he had come to realize, during that time, was that Carmen was neither black or white, neither innocent nor evil. In that way she was like him, out of place in the light of the law yet not completely shrouded in the darkness of crime. Yet where he was caught between the white and the black, she knew who she was. She had chosen neither.

Carmen Sandiego was red. She was defiant.

For just a moment, her eyes had shined as she processed the depth hidden behind the shallowness of his words. I love you.

But as her emotional turmoil melted away, there it was again, the hurt of betrayal culminating within her beautiful slate colored eyes as they hardened and turned ice-cold, angry black brows drawing together above them.

Her hand was moving. It was slow enough that Crackle's training should've allowed him to disarm her, but all the young aussie could focus on was her angry, angry eyes and how they pierced his skin like a round of bullets, unforgiving and awful and torturous.

Her hand was moving and he did nothing to stop it, locked in a daze as her thumb clicked at a small, red switch.

The world is ending He had thought as Dr.Bellum's lab crumbled down onto him, his entire world crumpling with it.

And just like that, it was over. The explosion had settled and Gray had to shove a block of cement off his shoulder. There Carmen had stood, her red brunette waves flaying in the wind.

"Goodbye, Gray." She had said, her eyes stone cold.

Not a moment later she was gone, disappearing into the icy himilayan air like a ghostly apparition, leaving Gray wondering if any of it had been real. God, even when the world gave him chance after chance after chance..he had screwed it up.

But then-

A light, in the midst of his darkness.

Another do-over.

His fourth one to date, in fact, each one before ruined and fucked up.

In Morocco, he had been too loud and firm and angry. He should've been more docile, playing the middleman for both Blacksheep as well as Tigress and all the others. There was no reason for things to turn out the way they did. Blacksheep was just acting out as one does when hurt and confused.

He shouldn't have reprimanded her so harshly, should've stopped the cleaners from restraining her.

Looking back, maybe he should've been more truthful from the beginning. Aside from all of her moxie and gumption, Blacksheep had always been a bit naive. She had seen stealing as nothing more than a mere game. Her innocent view of things had amused Gray, but maybe he shouldn't have entertained her for so long.

Paris was another story. He had been too arrogant and confident and too unwilling to meet her half way, his pride and anger getting in the way as his thumb flecked over the switch to his crackle rod, wrist twisting up so it was pointed at her. He never had to do that. He never should've.

The Himalayas....well, what could he have done differently there? Go with her? Obviously, no, that was never an option. There was no defying VILE. At that point, things were too far gone and the situation too out of Crackle's own control for anything to end up the way he had liked.

So the offer the faculty was presenting him with now: Resetting Carmen Sandiego and....and bringing her home.....well....it sounded too good to be true.

Crackle had always seen her little charade as the lady in red as a temporary thing. No one could elude VILE's clutches for long, not even her.

This was...for the best.

Carmen would never come willingly, so this would be the safest way to ensure the least amount of collateral and allow for the smoothest homecoming possible.

I'm going to see her again. Crackle had thought to himself. I'm going to see her again and we'll finally be on the same page.

"You will be her handler as you have.....experience with this memory wipe situation." Professor Maelstrom had instructed, his words echoing in the young operative's mind as he walked through a doorway he had been directed to.

The room he entered had been bare of anything except another door and a wide window exposing a dimly lit area, a figure lying on the ground on the other side in a slump.

She had looked so small in that moment, her coat and hat stripped away, her...red...stripped away as she slept, her thick lashes brushing the dark circles beneath her sunken lids, a serene tilt to her red-lipped mouth.

He had approached her tentatively, so tentatively, whispering her name like it was a secret only the two of them shared. "Carmen?"

And then her eyes had flicked open, but they were different. Their shape was the very same, the widely-set, feline-like curve to her lids an exacr match, the same stormy hue in her irises.

And yet....the sparkle was missing, the hint of mischievousness, the glimmer of empathy, it was all....gone, replaced by orbs of gray that were stark and devoid.

It's not her. The "Gray" part of him screamed at Crackle. The young aussie immediately buried the thought away.

Blacksheep, Carmen, was with him again, and she was smiling and she was happy and after so many years they were reunited.

At first it had been so unbelievably wonderful to have his best friend back by his side, to laugh and banter and reminisce about the good old days and trade secret smirks and touches that lasted a tad longer than they had to.

But it all felt...wrong. Even when her lips curved upwards the exact same way that they used to, when she had kissed him like he had always dreamed of, when she'd pulled him into their dorm rooms and let her clothes cascade to the floor....Carmen felt...wrong.

Why?

Because....Because she hadn't chosen this. She hadn't chosen VILE. She hadn't chosen him. Not of her own will.

"Gray." She again continued to refer to him as, and again the aussie had shot her down. He couldn't stand to have her see the complexity within him, the gray within him, dashes of white subdued within his black. He didn't deserve that from her. Not after all he'd done.

He was VILE. He was darkness. He was Crackle.

But seeing her like that, so utterly unlike her old self that he'd fallen so desperately in love with.....it had made his skin crawl.

Ans then Gray, because that's who he was at the end of things, a clash of good and evil tearing against the world, knew what he had to do.

He returned to the authorities, seeking out a certain Chief in particular, his lips moving as he relayed his inner turmoil. "I chose this life. Carmen...she...she didn't."

The hardest part of loving someone was letting them go, wasn't it?

Again and again, fate realigned their paths so they led directly onto each other, and again and again, things had turned just a little bit more disastrous than the last. Morocco, Paris, The Himalayas. They would never work. He had to accept that.

And so Gray did all he could to salvage the remnants of the woman he'd loved before she succumbed to the darkness past a point of no return.

"Please come back!" He had screamed, shoving the memory device on either side of her skull, her slim body writhing against his as she struggled to push him away.

Gray remembered it all vividly, so vividly, in fact, that his nightmares were still haunted by that expression of utter anger and betrayal when she had finally broken free of his hold, her lack of empathy culminating into an attempt on his life.

"No!" He had remembered crying out, begging the universe to stop her, not because he was worried for his own life (it wasn't really worth much anymore, not to him.), but because he knew Carmen would never forgive herself once she healed.

But he had feared the worst, preparing ahead of time, and the jolt from the crackle rod only stripped him of his consciousness, his lifeline remaining intact long enough for the ACME EMTs to shuttle his living corpse into an ambulance and shock his heart back into action.