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As she sat there, Carolina made a distinct point of remembering that Charlie had come first.
She did. Even if she didn’t. Even if it was far more complicated of a matter.
So when she gathered her gear and made the call to Wash for a set of less shaky hands, she simply said what she had decided was the truth.
“Charlie comes first,” she told Kimball as she walked out the door.
In reality it had started years before Charlie had been a blip on anyone’s radar. Years before Felix’s maddening return, the kidnap, the pleading of a truly broken man to his enemies for help.
It began when Chorus was rebuilding, literally from the ground up.
Carolina had made it clear to Wash that she wanted Hargrove’s head on a platter. She made it more clear that she wanted the honor of putting it on said platter.
Wash, her rookie turned dearest friend, had far different expectations for life after confronting Charon. He wanted security, a home, and the obligation of the UNSC to support the tiny colony the had once already turned their back on.
It was his far more reasonable terms that were still in her mind as she pushed her way into Kimball’s office.
The general almost looked like she had expected her.
“You offered Wash a house? And a job?” she demanded.
Kimball stared back at her only for a moment before returning to her notes and maps. “Yes.”
Carolina looked at the general. Much like the rest of Chorus, months into the UNSC’s returning reign Kimball was still fully dressed and presumably armed for combat at the drop of a hat. Only the stacks of paperwork seemed to be keeping the general’s helmet off.
Not that the Freelancer troopers and Carolina herself were good to compare to. Caboose may very well have forgotten how to even take his armor off at that point in their lives. But at least in Carolina’s people’s defense no one other than Sarge seemed concerned that the firefight was going to start among them.
Common sentiment on Chorus was the complete opposite. There was hardly anything civil about the war before.
Which suddenly made Carolina realize what very well could have been happening.
“You’re going to placate us and keep us around as a rallying point,” Carolina said, crossing her arms. “As long as we’re around, we can make the former fractions see eye to eye. Stand together. Inspire the people to unify.”
After a small pause, Kimball glanced up from her work. “That’s rather cynical,” she said. “You all did risk your lives and saved our planet – both from each other and from Charon. We are doing the bare minimum to repay that debt by offering you lives here among us.”
Carolina hummed, tapping her fingers against her biceps. “My way would have made it seem smarter.”
The general smirked.
Filing away her papers, Kimball finally sat back in her chair and gave Carolina her full attention. “It’s not just an offer to your friends,” Kimball said as she foled her hand together. “Actually, I have an invested interest in keeping you on Chorus most of all.”
Unable to resist the tug of her lips, Carolina smiled at Kimball and raised her brows. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” Kimball said. Her eyes focused firmly on Carolina. “Can I keep you here?”
Carolina smiled back but forced the shake of her head. “My family’s here… but I lost someone dear to me. And I was not ready to lose him even if it was his time. I can’t sit by knowing I can use that time to go after the man responsible for that.” She paused long enough to wave around the office. “For all of this.”
She expected many reactions from Kimball at that news, but was utterly caught off guard when the general seemed pleased with the answer.
“Then everything will be waiting on you when you return,” Kimball said assuredly.
Confused, Carolina tilted her head. “It… will?”
"Of course,” Kimball nodded. “I don’t think anyone here is going to understand grudges and a need for revenge more than myself and the people of Chorus.”
Carolina couldn’t help but smile at that. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “In that case, I look forward to returning, General.”
“I look forward to having you again, Agent.”
When she laid alone at night, Carolina dreamed of Chorus.
She dreamed of her friends, of the ivy covered house with her name on it, of visits from Kimball and–
Months into the hunt she still dreamed of the incessant buzz of an AI in the back of her mind.
It comforted her to feel that sensation, though there was no voice to carry along with it.
Epsilon’s voice only came to her in nightmares anymore.
She never heard his words as more than whispers.
Let it go.
When she stayed awake, thinking about his lessons, she worried about just how disappointed he was with her current choice. She worried about how somber and pouty he would have been having learned she never let anything go, not really.
The longer she went without her friends at her back, or Epsilon in her head, the more she realized she barely remembered why the revenge was worth it at all.
She came home and, to her everlasting relief, things had never changed between the survivors of Project Freelancer.
They welcomed her home, they quarreled, they revealed what mischief each of them had gotten into with the months since they last saw each other.
Wash admitted reluctantly he had almost gone after her more than once.
Like promised, there was a job, a deed, a bank account with her name on them when she came into Kimball’s office again.
But it seemed like that was all in the office that had waited on her.
“So Hargrove’s going to trial,” Kimball said.
“That’s justice,” Carolina shrugged.
“Is it?” Kimball asked.
Carolina stared at her, hard, for a moment. “I suppose it is,” she finally answered. She nodded to the new plate on Kimball’s desk. “Chancellor. Must’ve been a landslide election, huh?”
Kimball frowned slightly at that. “I won by thirty percent,” she replied. Before Carolina could congratulate, Kimball shook her head. “That’s the total. A good number of the population didn’t even bother to vote after all we went through. And then Doyle’s lieutenant still had twenty-nine percent. And I don’t even know what his name is.”
“That’s nonsense,” Carolina replied.
“They’re restless,” Kimball said firmly, her eyes carrying a heavy weight behind them. “They don’t feel vindicated. And now I have to earn the title they gave me in order to keep it.” Her gaze shifted to her desk. “I can’t be distracted by other obligations.”
Refusing to let the news wind her, Carolina took a breath, gave a curt nod, and started on her way out. “I wish you the best of luck, Chancellor.”
Kimball didn’t offer a further goodbye as Carolina took her leave.
Every step Carolina took after that hurt.
Years passed, and while they never truly lacked adventure – between the Reds, the Blues, a Sangheili religious icon, herself, and wash, how could they? – Carolina found the sensation between such flights of ludicrousy to be the most interesting.
As nonconventional as each one of them were, they provided Carolina with a sense of domesticity she could have never imagined for herself.
When she slept, Epsilon was there for her dreams rather than nightmares.
And it was decent, but she was alone.
Her dreams of Kimball visiting appeared to be more the stuff of fantasy while again and again she saw Chancellor Kimball through television stations rather than on her doorstep.
She remembered once hoping Kimball’s philosophy on grudges had changed when there was a ring of her doorbell.
Kimball was not on the other side of the door.
But Charlie was.
Tucker frustrated Charlie multiple times by introducing them as “Charlotte and Carolina” until Wash finally made him stop for the sake of decency.
“My name is not short for Charlotte,” Charlie would grumble.
Carolina rolled her eyes and nudged the alien girl with an elbow. “He’s making a really dumb joke,” Carolina enlightened her. “Back on Earth, North Carolina has a city named Charlotte.” She smirked even more at the visibly dawning realization on Charlie’s face. “He’s saying you and I are a pair.”
“That is most kind of Uncle Tucker,” Charlie said, smiling as she played with her hands. “I almost feel bad for plotting revenge.”
Throwing back her head, Carolina heartily laughed at Charlie’s words.
Tucker did, in a very round about way, have a point.
Since Charlie had first come to her for training, Carolina had made herself a constant presence by the child’s side. She used one of her dusty dens and made it into the dream room of an ordinary teen. She made a point of having Donut copy over all the easier recipes from his cook book for Carolina and Charlie to learn from. And she doubled the equipment for training in her basement where she and Charlie spent at least two hours every day.
There were times Carolina spent, quietly reading on the couch while Charlie worked on school, and she remembered similar arrangements when a father silently had watched her.
Carolina always assumed those stares were her father seeing the mother that was no longer there. But years later, hair streaked in gray and days filled with this shared presence of a child, Carolina wondered if Leonard Church felt what she felt for Charlie in those days.
No hatred of Locus could make Carolina love the child any less. She did not see Locus, she saw Charlie.
Unlike her father, however, Carolina knew better than to force a child to guess these things for themselves.
“Thanks for sticking around, kid,” she said out loud.
Charlie blinked as she looked up from her books. Slowly, a smile spread across her mandibles and she nodded to Carolina. “Thank you, too, Carolina,” she replied genuinely.
And it was good.
But Carolina still slept alone at night.
It became easier to not follow the politics of Chorus over the years.
From the start they had all decided that they were best left out due to the sway their fame on the planet had, but in their own ways everyone tried to keep up with the community that was their tiny planet. Inevitably that involved the country’s status quo.
For Carolina it took a surprising amount of practice to be opinionless. Particularly after the realization that said opinions tended to favor the twice elected Chancellor.
By the time another election year came to a close, Carolina could honestly say she didn’t have the faintest clue who was in the colony’s governmental chairs by that point.
The one thing she did know was that she wasn’t expecting the door to ring that night – not when Charlie had had her own key for ages, Junior was at some summer camp, and none of “her boys” were bound to be up before noon.
She didn’t know what to think when she opened the door and found a plainly dressed former general, former chancellor, standing in wait.
Carolina’s head tilted slightly. It had been a long time since she had had thatdream.
“I like the garden,” Kimball said, pulling at her new haircut. “It’s quaint.”
“Donut,” Carolina said without context. But, really, Donut was all the context that was needed.
“Am I interrupting anything?” Kimball asked, suddenly aware that there was an entire house behind Carolina’s shoulders and seemingly trying to look it over.
“I… no,” Carolina responded, shifting toward the door. “I was just going to go for a run. Charlie usually makes breakfast so–”
“Charlie?” Kimball questioned just before Carolina and her both heard the distinctive, heavy steps by the stairs.
Charlie’s head popped out from around the corner and her tiny, dark eyes blinked curiously as she looked to the door. Her mouth opened in surprise as she saw Kimball and then she excitedly rushed in.
“Chancellor Kimball! This is a most high honor!” Charlie said in the closest thing to a bubbly tone that she got. Her mouth stretched into a wide smile as she offered a firm hand toward Kimball. “I wrote a report on you just recently for civics.”
Kimball stared at her in awe.
“You remember Charlie,” Carolina said, giving the former general and inspecting glance.
“Of… course I do,” she replied before taking Charlie’s hand and shaking. “And it’s former Chancellor.”
Charlie’s jaws snapped together as she sighed. “That is right. It’s most… unfortunate.”
When Kimball stared at Charlie that time around, her hand slowly returning to her side, it was all General Vanessa Kimball of the New Republic.
The fleeting joy Carolina had felt was immediately brought to a standstill and a deeper, uglier feeling that she had never known before Charlie was in her life appeared in her chest instead.
“You seem dressed for it, Kimball,” Carolina said, ignoring the leisure suit and finely kept hair, “Join me for a run?”
Better at taking a hint than 99% of the company Carolina spent most of her time with, Kimball took a breath and nodded acceptingly. “That would be lovely.”
Aware something was amiss but too proper to truly stir it up, Charlie raised a gentle hand up. “I shall make some coffee? And eggs?”
“Thank you,” both women said as they walked straight out the door.
There were very few homes on their road and most of them (sometimes allwhenever Sarge finally drove the new neighbors away) were the Reds and Blues of Project Freelancer. It wasn’t difficult to see that Carolina’s house was the only one not in color coded war at the moment.
“You’re neutral territory?” Kimball asked as she looked back to Carolina’s gray home.
“It’s the only place we can have Friday dinner in peace,” she replied before glancing toward the splotches of paint from paint balloons thrown at the other houses. “I’m the only one who cares about upkeep most of the year. Charlie’s a big help.”
“When did that happen?” Kimball asked immediately.
“A while ago,” Carolina answered truthfully. “She came to me for help and…” Carolina paused the jog, throwing her head back enough to swing her ponytail back over her shoulders. “Charlie’s a great kid.”
“Alien kid,” Kimball corrected.
“That doesn’t bother you and you know it,” Carolina snapped.
They both drew silent as Carolina looked down to her feet and sighed. “He was a bad man, Kimball. I don’t deny that. And I know your people having to work with him the way you do…”
“Did,” Kimball corrected.
“That couldn’t have been easy.”
“You know what isn’t easy?” Kimball demanded, looking back at Carolina. “Finding out you’ve been raising a war criminal’s child for the last couple of years without so much as a word to me.”
Carolina squinted. “Why would I owe you a word?”
Taking a deep breath, Kimball dropped her head and shook it once. “I’m messing this all up. I’m barely here and I’ve messed it all up,” she murmured to herself before looking up again. “Carolina, I’m sorry. I’m… I feel like I’ve just lost everything I have fought for in the past two terms. I feel like… like my planet is turning back on its own image of itself and… And the worst part of all of that is that for all my accomplishments, I regret the most that I gave up what I really wanted – who I really wanted – for nothing.”
Surprised, Carolina blinked at her. “I… Kimball, I have no idea what to say. I…” She stopped herself and waved back to the house. “For nothing? That teenager wants to run for senator one day because of you.”
Kimball’s mouth dropped some. She collected herself before saying, “Me?”
“You’re the Chancellor who reconstructed Chorus,” Carolina reminded her. “And you’re the one who gave her father a life sentence and the ability to redeem himself, in whatever miniscule ways he can, while getting to watch her grow up. Goddamn, Kimball. You might as well as wear a cape around this house.”
With a small laugh, Kimball shook her head. “How ironic.”
Carolina’s eyes searched Kimball’s features before she shook her head. “Nothing ironic about it. Just… exactly what you’d expect form a kid.”
Taking a stilted breath, Kimball slowly dawned with realization. “You love her.”
“She’s my girl,” Carolina said.
“Then… we should have some coffee. Talk about things,” Kimball offered.”
“I’d like that,” she agreed. “And so would Charlie.”
Charlie loved it.
Between the coffee and the dinner Kimball stayed for, Charlie barely took a breath between her sentences. The girl had Kimball’s military memorized, her election campaign slogans chiseled into her heart, and was furious about the slander in the last election.
She certainly had more to say on any of it than Carolina did.
And by the end of it, Kimball was smiling and just as enthusiastic as Charlie.
For a moment, one of weakness and foolishness, Carolina thought she could have it all, right there.
Every dream she didn’t dare have before was coming true.
She even pinched herself as her back was against the wall and Kimball at her neck.
“What are you doing?” Kimball asked as she paused enough for breaths.
“Just making sure,” Carolina replied cheekily before they hit the mattress.
Carolina wasn’t alone that night.
But Epsilon disappeared from her dreams
Things go well.
Over the years Carolina had made so much fun of the fact that those very statements could break Washington out in hives, but having something of a family herself, Carolina began to sympathize more.
There were nights that Kimball would come home from a few days in the nearest city and would start to help Charlie with some assignment that Charlie certainly never asked Carolina for help on, and it would all be good.
But Carolina’s stomach would twist.
Because Kimball would pat Charlie’s back and brag on her successes to those around them but there were things she could not stand for Charlie to do either.
“Try some different colors,” Kimball would offer advice, unsolicited, on Charlie’s wardrobe.
Tugging at her collar, Charlie would glance to Carolina for a moment then back. “Aunt Kimball… these things are not so easily changed.”
“Colors are important to Sangheili,” Carolina interjected that time, and it seemed to be enough for Kimball to back off.
Then there were the times that speech affectations bothered Kimball.
Especially that word.
“That’s not what that word means,” Kimball said.
“I am… sorry?” Charlie asked, somewhat oblivious.
“Unfortunate,” Kimball explained. “It’s not unfortunate that Grif and Simmons blew their tire because they were off roading.”
“It actually kind of is,” Carolina stepped in again. “Have you seen Lopez’s reactions to these things?”
“I just think there’s a better word to use there,” Kimball continued to offer.
It was little things. Non-things in the grand scheme of two years that were spent with all of them together. If Charlie noticed she didn’t seem to care. Aunt Kimball was still a hero, even grander than that of the Reds and Blues – no matter how offensive or not Carolina found that fact to be.
And if Kimball, general as she might have been, kept Charlie on track to being asenator rather than a soldier, well it was all the better in Carolina’s book.
She would lie in bed at night, a warm body beside her, though, and risk for the first time in years that she could have a nightmare.
Whatever her subconscious deemed Epsilon to be, he was unhappy with her choices.
They’re just little things, she told herself at night, Kimball’s arm across her chest. Little things. I’m letting them go.
No, the nightmares of Epsilon said lowly, disappointed. Not those things. Not with Charlie.
She didn’t sleep a lot that year.
Kimball was furious.
That was something that Carolina could understand – they were nothing if not women with tempers that ran outrageously high – but what she couldn’t understand was it being this.
“She’s scared!” Carolina found herself defending over and over again.
“Swordfighting!” Kimball hissed, nostrils flared. “Are you out of your damn mind, Carolina!?”
“She was having nightmares!” Carolina nearly laughed. The entire argument was ludicrous to her. No one should have understood nightmares more than them (really, more than her, and there was that pang of guilt from never telling Kimball about the depths of her own). “She said the swordfighting helped.”
“It helped!?” Kimball nearly laughed, her voice heavy and dark in a way that was not inviting to compromise. “Learning how to stab things helped?”
Carolina’s entire head moved with the roll of her eyes. “My god, It’s been a school sport for years! The practice blade I gave her can’t hurt anything but a dummy.”
That time Kimball looked at her like she was being ridiculous. “That’s not the point!”
There was that itching, sinking thought in the back of her mind that was all too similar to Epsilon’s sardonic tone. She knew what was coming but she refused it.
“What do you mean that’s not the point?” Carolina questioned all the same, not even entertaining any concept of what was to come.
There was a disgusted way Kimball’s nose and lip have curled. “She knows how to fight. She knows tactics. She knows how to solve complex puzzles – I know. I’ve seen her math homework.” She dramatically waved to the sparring sword in Carolina’s own hand. “And now she knows how to swordfight.”
Her own lip curling, Carolina glared back at Kimball. “So?”
“She’s becoming just like her father!” Kimball roared. “Can’t you see that,Carolina!?”
The words hang in the air for a moment. Kimball didn’t relent, didn’t so much asblink at the hurt in those words.
Carolina let out a small disgusted noise from her throat and looked off, running her tongue over her teeth as she attempted to come up with coherent syllables.
Finally, she glared at Kimball and snapped.
“You despise Locus,” Carolina hissed. “He slaughtered this planet, your people, used you. I get it. Honestly? Not a fan of him either. Big surprise: no one is. But his daughter had nothing to do with that. None of it.”
When Kimball didn’t move, Carolina shook her head and continued.
“You know who else you should blame? Your planet was abandoned by the UNSC, their funds were low in the war and they left your planet to fend for itself, set you all up for disaster and civil unrest,” Carolina said, working into her full rage. “They were spending billions of dollars in resources toward magic bullets for the war. And one of those wells was ran by a sick, twisted man who ended up wasting billions of dollars on his pet program, wasted some of the greatest soldiers to have ever been a part of the UNSC, and all in the name of his personal problems. That’s a motherfucker you should be blaming more than Charlie. And if you’re going to blame Charlie for what her father did,” Carolina said fiercely before throwing a thumb toward her chest, “then you sure as fuck better be blaming the other guy’s daughter just as well.”
They lapsed into silence and Kimball dropped her head.
Carolina was shaking like a leaf.
After a few moments of them both realizing that they weren’t about to change the other’s mind, Carolina took off for their – her – room, feeling like snakes were twisting together in knots in her stomach.
She had barely reached the top of the stairs when something already felt off.
They had told Charlie to go to her room, which she had obediently done.
But the door was open. And Charlie wasn’t there.
Carolina’s mouth hung open for a moment before she nearly vomited on spot.
“God no!”
She immediately began screaming Charlie’s name, but the girl did not come.
Beyond the initial discussion of realizing that they had lost Charlie, Carolina had not even looked at Kimball.
Kimball sat in her chair, hands over her face as she shook her head.
Charlie was gone. There was no telling as to where.
Other than their small, small community, other than her father’s prison block, Charlie had nowhere else even on as small of a rock as Chorus was.
And she hated herself, even as she finished gathering her supplies and picking up her things because the choice was easy. The choice was the one that her father could never make for her.
She chose her kid over the love that was never really hers to begin with.
But the apple never strayed far away from the tree, and it was indeed thehardest thing she had done to stand there, ready to leave the home she had opened up to Kimball for years, and say what needed to be said. For Charlie’s sake.
“Charlie comes first,” she said simply. “No matter what. No matter how I feel or what… we could have been once. She comes first. Not you.” She bit down on her back teeth and lowered her head.
“I still love you,” Carolina said. “You can’t be here when I get back.”
She went through the door and went to meet Wash at the Warthog.
With Charlie gone, and unable to stand being inside her house, Carolina slept on Wash and Tucker’s couch, staring at the ceiling, worried sick.
Every time her eyelids closed there were nightmares.
And every time she opened them she was alone.
She prayed she found Charlie soon.