Behind closed doors

Locked

Summary:
The Argentinian's face hardens, and even yet she still feels exposed. Vulnerable. Surrounding by hawks encircling their prey with sharp eyes and devious claws. The table is staring at her. Waiting to take more.

That's when Carmen realises what she's feeling. Locked.

Notes:
I Remember by Molly Drake
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The room is a sea of laughter. Unrivalled joy hones shades of gold from rays of sun sharply joining the activity in the dining room. Carmen can see small particles in these gorgeous beams. Little flaws. They reign over the lively flower vases and triumph the smiles on every glittering face. On every priceless creation. The air is warm with a melody of success, of achievement— of that glistening feeling of winning. It was giving her hands blisters just at the sight. Excitement bubbles up and down among the group that did not always see eye to eye, though now joined in an explosion of something short of pure madness. Justified only by their accomplishments. The sunlight festers and weaves through cracks in the open blinds and sneaks its way through that one cracked brick in the room.

The banging of fists against tables and voices between mouthfuls of food echo through her ears, warranting flinches. Riches flourish and eyes burn bright like crystals touched by god. Creativity and light in the form of hand crafted artefacts glisten unbelongingly. Crying under their thievery. The stars twinkle over the dinner table, almost every end but hers...

The greens and golds shimmer and twirl within one another. Carmen can't help but grimace... her appetite is lost, and there's a strange, festering well inside of her. And yet she doesn't know why, but she's been forced here to listen. To hear the clinking of expensive glasses and jovial munching of food from money that belonged to charities of the unfortunate, and the deserving. To acknowledge and remind Carmen that on the other end of her depressing and buried platform, was the tall end of the seesaw— the end that was on cloud 9, that were revelling in everything the bad of the world could ever want at the cost of herself and... everyone. For money. No compassion, no love, and no life. Just filthy, bloody money. Dredged out from under the hands that needed it, that would do good with it. The overlords have turned art into profit.

It made her sick. It made her eyes fog and knuckles bleed. It made her physically sick with disgust, and anger. It made her teeth grind and eyes narrow into slits, it made her tongue burn with atrocities and saliva thicken all the way up her throat. Most of all, it made her miserable.

Everything VILE had was stolen, taken, but not just that; they were robbed from hardworking communities. Every word of that was a rotten, malicious green in her grey eyes. Every sound out of the faculty's mouths made the well in her feel a dark, bloodied red.

Stealing was not a game. She wanted to scream it, so fucking loud.

This was thievery in its most skinned form. It was conniving, it was enraging, it was something blatantly hideous. Thievery was the fire that burned her dolls and cursed her name. Thievery was the tears in her team's eyes when they lost each other. Thievery was the slithering snake that had camouflaged itself in her youth only to explode and snarl into her future. Expecting her to shy away, terrifying as it was and very much still is to Carmen. This was the tyrannical, apathetic, and barbaric evil she loathed the universe for.

It was something she always wanted to relieve of the world; she'd wanted to take stigma directly from the word thievery and put it to better use. Show it was not the act but the actor that could make something good or bad. That thieving was her life, and that did not make Carmen anything like VILE because of it. But looking around at a dining table full of laughing villains and their fresh horrors now, in their after hours, preaching as if simply not registering everything bad they had done in the name of theft... made Carmen realise that maybe it was really too far gone.

"Some things possess value other than monetary... theft would rob the world of knowledge." She'd been told this once by a kind, gentle archeologist. Someone she saw a piece of herself in— someone that saw her and not a weapon through their own eyes. Carmen still remembers feeling that puzzle piece click.

"...and that would be a true crime."

The reminder rings through her head. All of the crimes she was surrounded by— suffocated in. Every breath of luxury here was a loss for those cultures and peoples that desired faith to live off. To know where they came from and what they were honouring... why was that such a foreign concept for VILE? Why did they find it so in their hearts to break anything that was not theirs... Carmen Sandiego exclusively?

It's a fierce, nerve shuddering hand pressing on her back that returns her to the present. Shaken as if in a dissociated daze, Carmen blinks.

"Lambkins." A voice purrs down at her— with green sparkly eyes and undeserving emerald hair... just like when she was eight, "You've hardly touched your food." She complains, though Carmen knew better now, she knew there was not a sliver of empathy around her. The Argentinian's face hardens, and even yet she still feels exposed. Vulnerable. Surrounding by hawks encircling their prey with sharp eyes and devious claws. The table is staring at her. Waiting to take more.

That's when Carmen realises what she's feeling. Locked.

Alone, deprived, caged, enclosed. Like a zoo animal. Like a pet. The hand on her shoulder blade tightens, and Carmen listens with her head down to the taunts overlapping her lack of response that hardly wait for her exhale. Black Sheep is the most painful among them. Because it was the empty keyhole in her heart, it was the mechanics of the lock being twisted and knotted further away from release.

Around this time is when Carmen feels the well in her chest growing bigger, absorbing her, becoming her. Like a fallback, a sorrow mounted over her heart. Something so deeply alone, and vulnerable. Cracked and scared. Lost and locked.

And into the despairing wishing well her heart had become, Carmen throws a coin, and with it a wish. Let it be different. Let what I cannot control be contained. Let the right right itself and the wrong be executed. Let the well in my heart become my heart again.

There is something so empty about being inside a lock. It feels as if you are locked away with nothing. The shadows are drowning and the loneliness is worth her death. It was being locked in this void with no windows back into the life you once knew that was driving her perhaps to ruin. No ideas as to what the opposite of her current situation would be like... would it be nice? Or just as painful?

Did she deserve this lock?

Carmen supposes it is not really about deserving, is it?

Inspired by the AI bots on ao3 (and everywhere) scaring me into locking my fics away on ao3, I hate having to hide Carm, seeing the blue lock over my stories hurts, and I do typically turn my pain into art so that's what this story is.

I'm so sorry to my guest ao3 readers, please consider creating an ao3 account or finding me on wattpad if you do wish to continue reading 🩷

I look forward to seeing everyone through any account.

🔒