ᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴜᴀʟʟʏ, ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴄᴏɴɴᴇᴄᴛs - ᴀ ᴄᴀʀᴍᴇɴ sᴀɴᴅɪᴇɢᴏ ғɪᴄ

Chapter 1

"She doesn't need me complicating her life"

Gray took a sigh. He woke up lying on the soft bed of a hospital room with pastel-coloured walls, the white light emitted by the lamps in his room had blinded him for a moment, the memories of how he had arrived in this place still clouded. The last thing impressed in his memory was that, with a device given to him by ACME, he was trying to "help" Carmen recover her memory.

Carmen

How can a name contain so many memories? She was the girl who, under the name of Black Sheep, had met at the V.I.L.E. The one with which he had enjoyed breaking rules and performing the most reckless acts, earning every time a lecture from Coach Brunt.
The one who had abandoned him on a remote island in the middle of the ocean, leaving him with the rest of his colleagues, but with an empty hole in his chest that only she could have occupied. Carmen was too good to harm innocent people, she always had been. Inside Gray knew that the young woman was not suited to be a cold and ruthless criminal, inside her there was always a vein of love and compassion that she could not let go. And that suited him, really.
The companion of adventures, and then the enemy, who had urged him to be and do better, even when his memory was erased.

And Gray had fallen in love with her.

After all, he had always known.

The bond the two had was too strong and ingrained to be so easily ignored, but the boy had somehow rejected it, for fear of not deserving it. In his belief he had been blind, adamant that there was no chance for him to be forgiven for the crimes he had committed in all the past years. And then they captured her.
The ghost in red that seemed capable of escaping out of every difficult situation was in V.I.L.E. 's arms, and like Gray, she had been brainwashed. For six months she had worked with him, Tigress, Le Chevre and El Topo, as in the old days. They had successfully completed hundreds of Capers without ever being discovered, but the boy was less and less convinced that it was the right thing to do: he had chosen to continue his career as a criminal, but Carmen did not. She had been forced by what Dr. Bellum had stuck in her head, and that wasn't fair. So he finally decided to act.

He had been found by ACME, and had explained the whole matter to the Chief. They had decided by mutual agreement to use the same device that had helped him to recover the memory (with considerable pain) on Carmen, hoping to be able to recover that glow of the old her that was sure still existed. Then they set a trap for her, in order to have a chance to save her.
Gray was there too, pretending to collaborate with Carmen. At some point he had to make a choice: he could free Tigress, who had disguised herself as Carmen to distract the ACME support agents, ensuring that she was not captured by the police. Or he could take the device, and try to bring the femme rouge back into herself. Gray chose the second option. The boy had grabbed the device, and ran inside the building.

Arriving there he found Agent Devinaux and Agent Argent (were they called like that? He didn't have time to think about it) lying on the floor, probably knocked out by Carmen, who at the moment was standing in front of the case with the precious stone on the verge of stealing it and slip away. Gray managed to slip the device around the girl's head with great difficulty, but Carmen was free almost immediately, and they started fighting. The girl in red despite having failed to get her degree had always been the best of her class, but her natural skills combined with the total fury and ruthlessness that had been implanted in her mind had made her a lethal enemy. Gray didn't want to hurt her, as he had previously told her the only thing he really regretted doing for V.I.L.E was hurting her. Thus, when the girl had managed to take the weapon that emitted lethal electric shocks that had been provided to him as usual before making the Caper, and had turned it on pointing it at him, the young man had not tried to physically defend himself. Then, after saying goodbye, Carmen hit him.

Gray knew he wasn't going to die. Before the mission he had tampered with the weapon, making sure that it could not reach such power as to kill someone and that using it on another person would only make the victim faint. So when his vision had darkened and his limbs refused to respond to brain and nerve impulses, Gray wasn't frightened. His last thought before he lost consciousness was the hope that he had saved Carmen and that he had finally done a good action.

He woke up in the hospital, sensing the presence of someone next to his medical bed. He had opened his eyes, and had found in front of him none other than the Chief of ACME in flesh and blood. The dark-skinned, short-haired platinum-coloured woman, dressed in an elegant white suit, had complimented him on his efforts to save his life, and told him that the electroshock had deactivated the localizer microchip they had previously implanted in the arm. The woman was heading for the door of the room, when Gray instinctively sat down and asked her: "What about Carmen?".

The Chief had turned and gave him an eloquent look
"Shall I pass along your contact info?"

The boy froze. Did he want Carmen to be part of his life? Yes, yes and yes again. Was it the right thing to do?

No.

Carmen's life was complicated, it always had been. He didn't want to get in the way, and he didn't want to put her in a position to risk her life to save him from a difficult situation.
"She doesn't need me complicating her life"

Gray roused himself from his thoughts of the past, realizing that he had left the sentence hanging. "I just need to know she's alright", he continued. If Carmen was happy and safe he was too, it had been like that since their academy days.
Gray returned to his reclining position, looking up at the ceiling with a distraught look: he knew he had made the right choice, but the thought of never seeing her again hurted him. The young man turned on his side, giving a small smile.

In the end, fate had always found a way to bring them together