Chapter Text
“Alban wants to see you for a debrief.” Carter looked up to see one of Alban’s many advisors, none of which she knew the name of. Ruby had mentioned to her once that the only way she was able to tell them apart was by calling them names like “Frog Lips” and “Horse Face”. If she was being honest, Carter thought that was pretty damn funny.
“...What? I wasn’t team lead, I don’t-”
“Doesn’t matter, kid. Alban wants you there, so you’re gonna be there.” The man turned on his heel and walked out the door, leaving the girl dumbfounded.
A debrief after such a crucial Op was normal enough, but being personally informed of it by one of Alban's closest men? And in Alban’s office?
Carter arrived outside of Alban's office to see that Ruby and Cole were already there, and Ruby looked less than comfortable with that fact. “...chance to talk on the plane, did we?”
Ruby’s cheeks were red as she looked everywhere but at Cole, which was how she noticed Carter’s arrival.
“Carter, hey. You alright? I saw that you didn’t go to Medbay when we got back.” Ruby made her way over at a slight jog.
Carter shifted on her feet, uncomfortable with the pity she was getting from Ruby. “Too crowded. There wasn’t anything they could do for me that I can’t do for myself, so there was no point anyways,” she mumbled, looking down at her feet.
“Please don’t tell me you skipped out on Post-Op Med-Call again.”
Ruby would make a very good mother, Carter decided. She seemed to have that dissapointed stance down, with the arms-crossed-over-the-chest and the one-hip-cocked-out.
“Again?”
Both girls startled at Cole’s sudden entrance into the conversation. When neither of them answered his question, he repeats his question.
“What the hell do you mean, she skipped out on Post-Op Med-Call again ?”
Carter looked up to meet his eyes, then immediately decided that was a mistake when she saw him looking right back at her.
“Ah, yeah, again. Cate says I have ‘Medical Trauma’, so I don’t really… go to Med-Call. Ever. ”
Carter was surprised her face hadn’t caught on fire with how her cheeks were burning.
Cole stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest. He seemed to study Carter for a moment, taking in her too-large t-shirt and heavily bandaged arm. “Well, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Cole held his hands up in a placating gesture, fingers splayed. He opened his mouth to respond, but Ruby’s beat him to it, knocking on the office door, then opening it to reveal Alban, sitting at his desk, as well as Rob and one of his advisors standing across from him, faces red from some sort of argument they must have been having.
“Sir,” Ruby began. “You wanted to see us?”
“Goodness, sit down, sit down,” Alban said, waving us into the office and towards 3 folding chairs set up in front of his desk. It reminded Carter of a parent-teacher conference (or at least what she remembered of them).
“It’s just a bruise,” she muttered as the group entered the room.
Ruby only frowned in response, unable to argue back in front of Alban, who gestured at the chairs in front of him again. “You all look dead on your feet.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” said Ruby, shuffling down to the seat farthest from the door to make room for Cole and Carter.
Carter let out a shaky breath as she finally sunk down into the chair, positioning her bruised arm awkwardly in front of her. Cole looked with a small frown- so small it was mistaken for a twitch by those who saw it. Alban paid no mind to any of this, beginning his speech as Carter was still shifting in her seat.
“I’d like to have a casual debriefing about the operation to retrieve Agent Stewart last night, if the four of you are agreeable. I don’t think it can wait.”
He waited until Cole had eased himself down into the chair next to Carters before reaching across the desk to clasp his hand. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see your face again, my dear boy.”
“Well luck you,” Cole replied bitterly. “It seems like you’ll be seeing a lot of this beautiful boy from now on.”
“I would never interrupt your recuperation, but after hearing Agent Meadows oral report it seems that there was some, shall we say, confusion. I’m interested to hear what happened from your perspectives.” His question was aimed at both Carter and Ruby, but with all of the mans focus on the still standing girl, it was clear he valued her perspective far more than Carters.
Ruby didn’t respond at first. Rob pushed off of the wall and took a step closer to her. “Are… we waiting for anyone else?” Her voice sounded steady, but Carter had known the girl long enough to her the slight shake in her voice.
Cate, she realized. Of course Ruby would want Cate to be present, she’s her Minder. Carters Minder couldn’t care less about her, so she had grown used to attending debriefs without the man.
“This is just a casual talk, Ruby. The level of secrecy surrounding this Op means that we can’t hold the debriefing in front of the whole organization. You should feel free to speak your mind.”
“Agent Meadows,” she began, “ran through the mission parameters with us on the flight, laying out the objective and what we knew about this particular bunkers layout. He also reminded us of the fallback plans we had discussed prior to leaving.”
“And did any of these fallback plans involve the three of you leaving the bunker?”
Carter frowned at the way it all sounded. She knew she shouldn’t have let Ruby ignore that order.
“No sir. Agent Meadows ordered us to hold our position in the stairwell and cover them from there.”
“Can you explain, then, why you left?”
Carter tried to keep her expression neutral as she hit her foot against Ruby's. If she told the truth, they were fucked.
For all her inability to read minds without skin-to-skin contact, Ruby seemed to understand her desperation fairly well. “The stairwell was… compromised. I gave Vida the order to leave so that we could monitor the situation from outside.”
“Did you agree with this order? As Beta Team lead, you had the authority to challenge those orders.”
Carter blinked in surprise at a question finally being directed at her. “To say the stairwell was compromised is a vast understatement. The ground was uneven, and we had no clear line of sight in any direction. There was no time or way to determine if whatever had damaged the stairwell would not happen again, trapping all of us under more rubble than we already were. My shooting arm was compromised, and Ruby took a hard hit to the head. It would have been suicide to try and hold the area. Had we stayed as we were ordered, I have full confidence that we would not all have made it out of the building alive,” she leaned back slightly in her chair. “Sir.” She added as an afterthought.
Carter could have sworn she saw a faint smirk on Cole’s lips before her attention was taken by Rob, who took another step towards them. “And you didn’t tell me this because?”
“My comm was broken- as was Carters, both of which you saw when we regrouped.”
Rob only grunted in response.
“All right,” Alban said after a moment. “You said the stairwell was compromised. How so?”
This time, Carter was unable to stop herself from looking over at Ruby. He is going to kill us if you say anything. All of us, She tried to say with only her eyes and the tiniest shake of her head.
Ruby studied her, the expression she wore. The desperation in her eyes, the fear. Finally, she looked back to Alban. “It wasn’t… well built, and it collapsed,” she explained. Carter let herself relax slightly. “It couldn’t handle the weight of all of us at once. Crappy construction.”
“All right. Agent Stewart reported that it was actually the three of you who retrieved him. How did that come to pass?”
“They completely ignored my order to return to the bunker, that’s how!” Rob snapped. “I know for a fact that she heard it,” he pointed at Carter. “I know that you were the one who refused to double back!” This was aimed at Ruby, who was pulling at the collar of her shirt like she couldn’t breathe.
Her breaths were in short bursts, panic clawing at her mind. Carter, on the other hand, was only growing irritated by the grown man throwing a fit in front of her. A small scowl made its way onto her face.
“Ruby,” Alban asked calmly. “Will you please answer my question?” She was looking down at the floor now, breathing harder. No response.
Rob took yet another step towards the girl. He was towering over her, and then an actual growl came out of the back of his throat, and Carter was done.
“With respect, Agent Meadows, I suggest you step back and give her some space. We’re both very exhausted, and it would be a shame if either one of us were to lose control of our abilities and put you in danger.”
Rob’s attention shifted over to her, and Carter smiled internally. “Are you threatening me, kid? ”
Carter didn’t even blink in response. Stupid, power-hungry men who couldn’t understand how to apply deodorant were a pet-peeve of hers. “Not at all.” she turned back to Alban, folding her hands in her lap and clenching her teeth at the pain encompassing her arm. “Agent Meadows was correct in his assumption that I ignored his order to return to the bunker. As I stated before, my shooting arm was compromised, and Ruby was still having trouble focusing, most likely due to the hit she received to the head. Due to her state, I determined that we were unfit to re-enter the facility. It was then that we saw that the National Guardsmen were taking the prisoners out of an entrance we didn’t know about. I didn’t ask for permission to proceed, because- “
“Because you god-damed know the only thing you’re supposed to do is follow your Leaders orders!” Rob barked, face red. He was shouting at Carter from over her shoulder now, and her stupid headache was coming back. “You think we would have lost so many men if you were there to cover our escape?”
Carter opened her mouth to respond, but of-fucking-course , Rob wasn’t done. “Good people are dead because of your authority issues, how does that make you feel?”
Carter stared ahead at Alban, jaw clenched as the man said nothing. “You disobeyed a direct order- it wasn’t even a complicated one!”
The metal of Albans desk bent in on itself with a groan, sending a stack of papers to the ground. Everyone in the room turned to look at Carter, who was gripping the sides of her chair with her eyes closed, breathing heavily. Pull it together, she said to herself, repeating the statement over and over in her head as the room stayed silent.
“Well thank god you disobeyed ,” came the sweet southern drawl of the boy beside her. “Otherwise I’d be halfway to hell by now.” Carter turned to see Cole Stewart smiling warmly at her, his split lip still bleeding slightly. She looked down quickly, face reddening slightly.
“I mean, let’s call a spade a spade here,” Cole said, leaning back in his chair. “They got me out. Why would they be in trouble?”
“They disobeyed my direct orders!”
Carters mouth almost dropped open when Cole dismissed Rob with a bored wave. “I mean, Christ, look at these poor girls! They got the shit beat out of them on my behalf. If you think I’m going to stay quiet and let them take the blame for a mission that wasn’t, by the way, a failure, you have another think coming.”
The tension between Cole’s smug expression and Rob’s murderous one was so think it could be cut with a knife.
“I’m inclined to agree with Agent Stewart. Thank you both for thinking so fast on your feet.”
Carter acknowledged him with an awkward nod.
“Agent Meadows, I’ll review your full report in the morning. For now, you’re dismissed.” Rob stood to leave, as did Ruby. “Just one more thing, Ruby, if you don’t mind. I’d like to discuss something with you and Cole.”
“Sir?” Carter asked, standing from her seat.
Alban turned to her with a start, like he had momentarily forgotten she was still there. “Right, yes. Would you mind returning my desk to its proper state before you go?”
Carter grimaced. “Yeah, so um, I don’t… actually know how? I’m good at the destroying stuff part, but not so much the fixing stuff part?”
Alban sighed. “Of course, of course. We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?” Carter nodded. “All right then, you’re dismissed.”
Carter nodded, thoroughly exhausted by everything that had happened in the past day, and left.