Carmen Sandiego Oneshots

RedCrackle-- Gray's Boyfriend Instincts (His Trauma From The Past)

Post-Season 4

yes, i came back to edit the title from You are a cheeky one

CARMEN'S POV

Meet me in 20 minutes at the café today ---Gray

Sure, why not ---Carmen

I shut the phone off. Stare at the lifeless, dull screen which just stares back at me. Was I ready? I'd nearly killed him with the crackle stick during my forced stay at V.I.L.E. Yet, it would probably do me some good to reconnect with a long-lost friend, in peace since all the V.I.L.E Faculty and Operatives had been thrown into prison. Yet, I feel a tinge of anxiety over my excitement to reconnect with him, remembering how I'd nearly used the stupid crackle rod in an attempt to murder him. If it weren't on stun mode, I'd be weeping at his grave now.

He should be dead, but he isn't. And that fact has been constantly poking me ever since I'd found out about my attempt to murder him.

Maybe I wasn't meant to be with him in the first place.

I leave the hotel room with my keycard, personal belongings, and a dollop of anxiety.

~

"Sorry I'm late, Gray,"

I take my seat opposite Gray at the small table sheltered by a small red umbrella. He smiles at me, "You're here,"

Shifting around uncomfortably in my seat, I try to return his smile with mine, but I think it comes out all unnatural, and I avert his gaze, staring down into the coffee mug with brown liquid swimming inside. My head hurts like hell, and the street lamps all over just make it even worse.

I force myself to look up at Gray, telling myself that I had come to reconnect with him and not to bother him with all my problems, "So, Gray, how's your career at the Sydney Opera House?"

"We had to light up the stage for Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and apparently one of the light bulbs exploded mid-performance, so all the crew, performers and audience in that performance center had to be evacuated immediately while I ran a check on the bulb. It turns out the bulb's filament got overheated since the voltage passing through it was more than what it could handle. So that performance center was closed for a week to change all the bulbs and for a test run before it was opened again," Gray says, confident as if he was auditioning for the role of a narrator in a play, and I force myself to do everything an active listener would do-- nod after every point, smile, occasionally sip on my coffee, pretend I'm interested in his story.

A gust of strong wind blows by, and I pull my red hoodie closer to my body, shivering.

"Carmen, are you okay? Cold?" Gray looks at me with concern in his eyes, and I nod. Liar.

But my body probably doesn't do what my mouth says. I push myself to tell him about how the charity I founded, Black

Sheep Incorporated, raised $100,000,000.00 for families in Africa living in poverty; $500,000,000.00 for the kids affected by cancer, and $600,000,000.00 for orphans all around the world (All funded by V.I.L.E, I tell him, and he giggles, always a good choice). The rest of the meeting goes well with him telling stories and me playing along until I can go back to the hotel room and sleep in peace. Just as we're about to leave, I hear someone trying to mock me. Someone who knows me as Carmen Sandiego.

"Well well, if it isn't Fedora the Explorer with Graham Cracker,"

I turn around, growling, "Tigress, haven't seen you since jail,"