[Fic] Another Chance (Connielina)

[autisticblueteam]

Title: Another Chance
Author/Artist: autisticblueteam
Characters & Pairings: Agent Connecticut/Agent Carolina
Rating: T
Warnings: N/A
Summary: After two days of torture, they were rescued by a familiar face—someone presumed long dead. And all of a sudden, Carolina finds herself with yet another chance to turn her life in another direction.

Read on Ao3, or below (cross-posted to/from tumblr).

“You know, that’s a good look on you.”

Carolina lifted her arm away from her eyes and squinted through the bright lights of the hospital room. The person-shaped shadow—looking small, in the elongated doorframe—raised a hand, before stepping through and letting the door shut behind them.

“Dehydrated is a good look on me?” she said, pushing herself up into a more upright position. Her visitor pulled off her helmet and set it on the table beside Carolina’s bed, next to her own; almost a matching pair, if not for the smaller size and the distinctive shade of brown.

“I was thinking more the resting thing.” Connie folded her arms under her chest, the corner of her lips quirked in amusement. “But you don’t look bad for someone who spent two days in a murder fridge.”

Carolina shook her head. Her voice was still dry and strained, but there was more colour in her face and light in her eyes than there had been only hours ago. “First of all, that didn’t sound at all like you think it did. Second, murder fridge?”

“That’s what the boys out there have been calling it. I can’t say it’s an inaccurate description, if a little… morbid,” Connie said with a shrug. Morbid was putting it rather lightly, Carolina thought, before pushing memories of the smell and the strange heat of the room to the very back of her mind. It was too early to process that experience.

“Of course they are.” Sighing, she rubbed the bridge of her nose. The lights were giving her a headache. “How’s Wash?”

“Dr. Grey’s still doing her evaluation, now he’s a little bit more coherent, but I’m sure he’ll be fine. He always bounces back from these things, he’s just… a little more susceptible to reality breaking around him, as you know.”

“Right. Good. I should go and see him soon.”

“Nope, not for a little while yet. You’re not even fit to stand until you’re properly hydrated, nourished and your leg has had time to recover from being stuck in a strain-heavy position for over forty-eight hours.” The way Connie relayed the instructions was familiar, someone else’s words parroted back in an inflection that was more theirs than hers. Carolina could hear Grey in the upbeat spike in the, “Doctor’s orders!” that ended the statement.

She sighed again. “Right.”

“Sorry,” Connie said, her voice now her own again, “I know you hate being stuck in medical, but again, you did spend two days in locked suit of armour in an attempt to kill you. Looking good or not, you need this rest.”

“I know.”

Silence.

Uncertain silence. Words caught in the air. Carolina chewed on her abused lower lip.

There had been no time for a reunion down in that room, when Connie had disabled the armour lock and helped them out of their would-be coffin. Even if there had been… what were you supposed to say when someone you thought was dead comes back?

With a silent chuckle, Carolina realised she could finally understand Wash’s awkwardness, early on.

“…I thought I was hallucinating myself, when you turned up, you know.” Barely seconds had passed in that silence, but with her instincts telling her to look at the clock on her table every other moment, that felt like an eternity. “When you started talking, I was certain I was seeing ghosts.”

“Legally speaking, I suppose I am a ghost,” Connie said. Finally, she pulled up a chair next to the bed—her hand resting on the mattress next to Carolina’s robotic one. “I’ve been off the grid since I escaped from Charon. Turns out they were about as trustworthy as Freelancer was, but you know that.”

“I do.” Tired eyes flashed to the bedside clock again, only for Connie to shift her position so that her body blocked it. A quiet sigh of relief disturbed the brief silence. “I also know that you were struck twice in the abdomen with tomahawks. You shouldn’t have survived that trip.”

“And you shouldn’t have been able to survive being thrown off a cliff without losing more than an arm,” Connie said, before adding, “But really, biofoam did its job and Charon had a vested interest in keeping me alive, so that I could give them the information they wanted.”

“I suppose we both got… lucky, then. For lack of a better word.”

“For lack of a better word.”

There was another beat of silence, before Carolina’s metal fingers curled around the back of Connie’s hand.

“…I tried to stop her, you kn—”

“Shhhh…” Turning her hand over and linking their fingers, Connie shook her head. “Don’t. We’ve never needed words for things like that before, have we?”

Shoulders dropping, Carolina squeezed her hand and smiled, faintly. “No. No we haven’t…”

“Then I don’t need them now to know what you’re going to say or to know you don’t need to say it at all,” Connie said, looking her in the eye just long enough to see the exhaustion and the relief there. The years showed on her face as clearly as any bruise or scar, when you knew what to look for. When you knew her. “I haven’t seen you in nearly a decade, you thought I was dead… there are more important things.”

“I suppose there are.” Her thumb swept in an arc across the back of Connie’s hand, unable to feel the warmth of her skin but at least able to feel the presence of it. “You saved our lives. I think that means I owe you dinner.”

Connie giggled and Carolina smiled and for a moment, everything felt a little bit more like it was going to be okay. Strange, to think that only days ago she’d been talking about the person in front of her as if she were long-dead; standing on a beach, thinking back on regrets and missed opportunities and a future that never was.

Connie wasn’t wrong that they’d never really needed words, but that only worked when they understood each other—at the time, she simply hadn’t the ability to understand. Not without her world falling apart at the seams.

But she understood now.

“Dinner, huh? You know you’re not getting out of here for a few days, right? Because—”

“Doctors orders!” they both said at once, mimicking the trill of Grey’s voice and devolving into giggles.

“I can ask them to bring another meal in, when I get my rations—” (“They’re making sure you eat exactly what you need to, Carolina.”) “—or see if the boys will risk Grey’s wrath to smuggle us in something a little more interesting?”

“…I’m not going to officially be a part of your—quite frankly, very surprising—” her own faint laugh interrupted her words, “rebellion against Grey’s rules, but I have no power to stop you doing that.”

“What can I say, maybe the guys have rubbed off on me more than I thought,” Carolina said as she typed a quick message on her COM Pad. Her other hand never left Connie’s. “Or maybe not. Remember our first ‘date’? When—”

“—the mess hall was actually making some good pizza for once and we smuggled out almost an entire pie for ourselves? Yeah, I remember making it a challenge to get you to go with it,” Connie laughed, covering her mouth in a futile effort to stop herself. “You just need the right people to bring our the mischievous side, I think. Multiply that by a bunch of rather… unique, sim troopers, and maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“You don’t know the half of it. The stories I have about those idiots…” Chuckling, she set the COM Pad down and brought Connie’s hand to her lips. Connie smiled.

“Tell me those stories. Whilst we wait. The serious stuff can wait for another day. We have the time,” she said, tapping Carolina on the nose, “if you want us to.”

“I want us to if you do. I’ve… missed you, Connie; I know it hardly needs saying,” she gave her a playful look and Connie tapped her nose again, “but this time… I want to say it out loud. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too… and I do, want to be together again. No secrets this time.”

Carolina nodded, gaze following her as she stood from her seat and leaned across the bed. Her lips hovered close enough for her to feel her breath and it made her face tingle. “No secrets.”

Connie kissed her. Her hand cupped the side of her face, brushed her messy hair behind her ear like she used to when it was long enough to create waterfalls in front of her face and hide her expressions from the world. She kissed back. Her metal fingers cupping the back of her skull and holding her there, she let herself relax.

Another chance.

The universe had given her more of those than she had ever expected.