#reeberry

Vanessa comes back to her apartment not because she’s anywhere near done her work for the day but because if she’s out of the office noone can track her down in person to ask pointed questions or offer security suggestions dripping in condesension. The apartment is dark, mostly, but there’s a light coming from the partly open washroom door. she leaves her gun in its holster, just in case.

It is Carolina, and she’s dying her hair. Vanessa does a double take. The mundane indulgence of the action is almost painfully incongruous on the former Freelancer. She’s still wearing fatigue pants, but her shirt is an old threadbare thing that Vanessa’s been using as workout gear since she was a teenager. She’s surprised at the other woman’s casual boldness –though she still hasn’t got her raincoat back from that morning and has the uncomfortably damp clothing to proove it– but then she realizes the shirt is a familiar shade of bluish green. Carolina must have grabbed it off the laundry pile automatically. Vanessa has, up to this point, never realized that something can be simultaneously adorable and vaguely upsetting. Colour coded, still.

Carolina’s noticed her standing there, but she hasn’t said anything. vanessa says “So we’ve got everyone talking.” As if to demonstrate, her datapad buzzes with another incoming message.

“Are they saying good things?”

Vanessa casually deletes the notification of another scathing comment on her social media feed. “Mostly,” she says blithely. “It helped that Doyle followed my lead, and that neither of us were shot. That should lead to an overall calmer atmosphere, take the edge off if we can be seen in public without the assumption of an assassination attempt.”

“Tell me you’re not going to make this a habit?” Carolina is clearly trying not to sound accusitory. Vanessa appreciates it.

She forces a little laugh, but when she speaks she knows she’s coming across defensive. Carolina is not the first person to ask these questions. “Not right now. At least not like it was this morning. I just couldn’t sit in HQ behind the walls and the guards and risk turning into the exact sort of thing I’m fighting against.”

“I understand that,” Carolina says, squeezing dye onto the top of her head. “but there’s sticking to your principles and then there’s taking stupid risks.”

Vanessa sets her datapad down very gently so she doesn’t throw it across the room. “And you think this morning was the latter, I know.” Carolina has been making this objection in a variety of ways ever since Vanessa told her about her plan to appear in public, and it’s getting insulting. Carolina fumbles the bottle and a drop of dye slides down over the shell of her ear. It looks like blood. Vanessa does not think about the literally hundreds of people she’s seen killed under Fed fire. The shirt hangs too long down past Carolina’s hips. It’s a little too wide in the shoulders, the sleeves too tight over the muscles of Carolina’s upper arms.

“Here,” Vanessa says impulsively. “Let me do that, it’s always tough trying to get the back of your own head.”

Carolina is clearly startled, and vanessa takes advantage of the few seconds of uncertainty to steal the dye and a pair of gloves and step in behind Carolina. The snap of the gloves against her wrist is loud in the small space. Carolina’s skin is feverishly hot under Vanessa’s hand, the muscles of her neck knotted and rock hard. Vanessa can see the scars closer to the base of her skull, sergically precise white lines surrounding two nearly invisible rectangular slots. There are even tiny flaps covering each one, like she’s seen on cloppy disk drives or video casette players in history textbooks It’s deeply unsettling. She sets a hand on the back of Carolina’s neck, thumb and fingers curling slightly around the sides. The ports are body warm and alien under her palm. Carolina’s entire body seems to release under the touch, shoulders dropping, head tipping forward, hands resting limply on the counter. The tension in her neck and shoulders is still there, but Vanessa suspects that’s a permanent state. Vanessa has to take a deep breath before she can start trickling dye onto Carolina’s hair. Something in her pushes toward the surface, some unfamiliar combination of pride and affection and pleasure and… something else, something maybe like the feeling she gets when she looks over an entire army of soldiers waiting trustingly for her decision, but caught up and tangled with caution and fondness and an almost guilty satisfaction.

Carolina’s eyes flutter closed. Vanessa takes another breath. Carolina says “I think this morning was a gamble, and you were lucky that it paid off in your favour. I don’t think you can rely on that sort of luck consistently.”