myownface | Toronto, Saturday (Reply)

Okay, last night had been nice. It had been nice. Sparkle had spent some time with Raine, who he hadn't spoken to in it felt like ages, and got a feel for how the kids were settling into the new home. By the time the morning rolled around, the cops were gone, apparently satisfied that the group home kids were too busy stuffing their faces with pizza to stir up trouble down their street, and he'd explained to Raine what it was he was doing in town, even if he was kind of wanted for arson and assault and breaking and entering and...

"I need to go and find Carla."

"Carla?" Raine had sounded surprised. She certainly looked surprised.

"My sister."

"You mean you weren't just making her up?"

Sparkle hadn't been about to either confirm or deny. He didn't want to invite more questions. Really, he had wanted to get this over with.

So now Sparkle and Parker were standing in front of the address that Hardison had found for them, and Sparkle was having difficulty making his legs work. It was a nice house. There was a car in the driveway, and a smaller, ride-on toy car in the front yard that suggested that there was at least one kid living inside. Carla's kid? Did Carla have kids? Oh, shit, was he an uncle? He pulled in a breath, opened his mouth, and just kind of... kept standing there. Awkwardly.

"Oh god this was a stupid idea."

Parker	Parker's back-patting was kind of mechanical, and definitely awkward. But it was constant, so that was something. "No, not stupid," she denied. She frowned. "Do you not like kids?" She gave him a sideways look. "Or are you worried she'll make you babysit?"
Sparkle	"I love kids," Sparkle sighed, leaning into the back-patting all the same. "It's just, you know, if this doesn't work out, now I know she has them."
Parker	Parker winced, and looked from the door, then back to Sparkle. She wanted to be ridiculously optimistic, and encouraging, and confidence-building, and all the things that people had tried to be for her at different points. But her grifting skills had never become that good. "One step at a time?" she offered. "We can't know anything until you knock on the door."
Sparkle	"One step at a time," Sparkle agreed, shaking his head and giving a messy little exhale that was meant to be a laugh. "I guess, like, worst case scenario she freaks out and calls the cops, and we book it, right? I end up with nothing less than I had before." He made his way up to the front door, raised his hand to knock, and--
Carla	"Hello?" The voice came from behind them, belonged to a young woman who looked tired, and a bit frazzled, like she'd just put in a night shift somewhere. She also happened to look a little like Sparkle, and a lot like the woman in the picture that Hardison had found.
Sparkle	Sparkle froze. Just kind of stood there with his hand held up and poised to knock, as though maybe if he just stayed like that forever this moment would just sort itself out and he could skip right over right now, on into the easy bits.
Carla	"Sorry, can I help either of you?" The young woman, Carla, was sounding faintly concerned, now. Confused, mostly. "Look, I don't want to buy a newspaper subscription or a new religion, and I'm too tired to hear your pitch for anything else, but if you come back later I'm sure my husband will-"
Sparkle	Oh shit. Shit shit shit this was actually happening. That was her - she had a husband?? Of course she did, of course - standing right there, and... "Carla?" Sparkle lowered his hand and chewed his lip and tried not to look like he was about to just wet himself and run or something. "Uh. Hi, sis."
Parker	Parker looked from Sparkle to his sister, and nodded. "You guys do kinda look alike." She waved to Carla, and said, "Parker. We just got here."
Carla	This... this was a lot for one Carla to process. She gave a vague sort of wave to Parker, glancing at her briefly before turning her attention back to-- "Sparkle?" She didn't sound thrilled to see him, but she didn't exactly sound horrified or anything, either. Overwhelmed, maybe? Or confused. "What are-- how did? I mean..." She looked between the two of them again, and then cast a furtive look up and down the street. "Maybe we should go inside."
Parker	"Good idea," Parker said, making shooing motions toward Sparkle. No reason why the police would be here this weekend, but you never knew what someone might see and report. "Nice house." See, she could do small talk. Kind of.
Carla	"Thank you," Carla replied, pulling out her house key and making her way for the door with a sigh. This was one way to wrap up a long night shift, she supposed. A few moments later, the door was open, and she was waving the pair inside. "Take a seat," she said, shrugging out of her coat and gesturing to the sofa in the living room. "The kids are with their grandparents this weekend-" She paused at Sparkle's immediately stricken look, and then quickly clarified, "His parents. And their father is with them. So you don't have to worry about waking anybody up."
Sparkle	Sparkle kind of shimmied into the living room, stepping out of his sneakers at the door, and navigated a small maze of toys between the doorway and the sofa. Yep. Kids. Okay. Plural. More than one kid. And these were their toys, and this was their home, and that was their mother, who was his sister. And he was totally breathing. For real. "Gotcha," he replied, and then kind of slid bonelessly into the couch. Okay. This was happening, then. "Uh. Hi." Funny, he always figured he'd have more to say.
Parker	Funny. Parker had thought there'd be more from him too. She looked between Sparkle, and Carla, and then collapsed down into a half-yoga pose to play with one of the toys on the floor. "Sparkle just found out where you were. My boyfriend did some computer searching. And then we came here." Nerves on Sparkle's behalf were stealing any social graces she had. "From Baltimore."
Carla	"And that," Carla noted, "would explain why the police haven't been able to find you. Baltimore? How in the world did you--" She stopped herself, frowning a little. "Actually, no, I probably don't even want to know." She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, looking between Parker - a total stranger - and Sparkle - who she hadn't seen in so long, he might as well be. "Why are you here?"
Sparkle	Sparkle was looking down at his toes. Weren't toes interesting? His toes in particular were great. Of course Carla knew about the police looking for him. He'd called that one. He wondered just how much of the story she knew. Wondered if she'd heard about the mess with Lewis, or if the cops had just listed off his distinguishing features and his list of crimes. Yep. His toes were super interesting. "Like Parker said. I mean. With the computer searching and the... the coming here? I mean, I'm not here to cause trouble, if that's what you're asking." Yeaaah. The words out of his mouth were coming out in one roiling ball of syllables that weren't saying anything at all. And normally he was so much better with them than this. "I just... You know like how they do in all those stupid feel-good television specials or whatever? I wanted to, um. Reconnect."
Carla	"Reconnect." Carla sighed, and then paced around the room a little, arms wrapped around herself, picking her way through the scattered toys with ease. "You never did do things the easy way, did you? You know the police were by here looking for you, last year? After the arson, and you disappearing on them. They thought that maybe you had found me then, wanted to know if I had any idea where you were. The first I hear about any of you in ages, and it's the police, after everything on the news, wanting to know if my little brother is hiding in my spare room or something." And now here he actually was, looking... different. So different. Like he'd grown into himself and then buried himself under something else entirely. Like the little brother she'd tried her hardest to keep safe, small and vulnerable and-- "You burned down a house, Sparkle. What on earth were you thinking?"
Sparkle	Sparkle flinched, hissed between his teeth, and found himself swallowing down a ball of dread that was trying to force its way up his throat. It was a fair question. Of course she'd want to know the answer. And he didn't have a good one. Not something that could justify the list of charges brought up against him. "I... guess I wasn't, so much," he muttered, eyes still on his toes. "I mean, at the time it made sense. I just had to do something, and that was all I had." He really didn't figure this was going to thrill Carla so much, no. But he couldn't lie to her. Maybe she was the one person in the multiverse that he couldn't bring himself to lie to. "I got hurt, and I wanted to hurt him back."
Parker	"He wasn't thinking straight," Parker said from the floor, giving Carla an intense look. "Nobody got hurt when he did that. But he just lost his home, and all his friends were being split up. It wasn't smart. But it wasn't malicious." She kept her gaze on Carla, possibly a little more steadily than was comfortable for the woman. "He hasn't done anything like that since. And he got us to help set up the new shelter for Raine and the others." Also, if he'd been thinking straight, he would've had an alibi.
Carla	Carla did not enjoy being looked at that way. In her lifetime, intense, steady looks like that never meant anything good. Which meant that she was stiffening a little, finding herself very much wanting no part of any of this. "How do you burn down a house and not have it be malicious?" She sounded the faintest bit strained, herself. "You don't just non-maliciously commit hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage. And then run off? He's a fugitive. You can't just..." She pulled in a deep breath, and then blew out a sigh, trying to relax. It wasn't entirely working. "I don't even know if there's a way to say what I'm thinking that isn't cruel," she confessed, a little more quietly. "But I hear 'he wasn't thinking straight' as an excuse for him lashing out, and that hits a little too close to home."
Sparkle	Sparkle actually curled into himself a little at that. He knew exactly what Carla was referring to. Of course he did. He had the scars from him, just like the rest of the family had. And she'd taken it worse than any of them, stepping in whenever their mother wasn't around to shoulder the brunt of their father's abuses. She'd taken a lot of hell before they'd been taken away, because no son of their father's was going to grow up wearing make-up or playing with dolls. And Sparkle had been too fucking young to even understand what he'd done wrong. "That's not what it was like," he mumbled. Even he didn't sound terribly convinced.
Parker	Parker flowed to her feet, and took a step in between them, keeping her hands open and at her sides. There had to be something to say here. Something that wouldn't make it worse. But what? He's a good kid, he was having a rough time, it's not an excuse, but he's doing better... She'd said that stuff already, and Carla had heard something else. But the way Sparkle was hunched in on himself-- "This, this is not what he came here for," she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. "He just wanted to see you. He missed you."
Carla	"I missed him too," Carla replied, softly. "I miss everyone, not just Sparkle. But that can't be everything that matters, now. Maybe if you had found me a few years ago... maybe before everything that happened. But... arson, drugs, breaking and entering, theft, assault? Sparkle, I have children. They have to be my top priority, and everything I know about the man you've grown into, the police read to me off of your rap sheet." And some of the items on it were more frightening than others.
Sparkle	"But I-" Sparkle went quiet. He had nothing. Nothing that he could defend himself with. He'd been hurt, he'd lashed out. It had made perfect sense to him at the time. "I..." Okay. Big, shaky breath. He wasn't sure how he had expected this to go, but he was finding that he wasn't terribly surprised by this particular outcome, either. Angry, maybe. Not at her. God, not at her. Maybe at himself, for not doing things right before. Or for trying this at all. Hell, everything hurt. "I can go," he said, quietly.
Carla	"I think..." Carla paused for a moment, and blew out a shaky breath of her own. "I think maybe you should, yeah. Go back to Baltimore, back to whatever you were doing, there. There's nothing here for you, Sparky. Just prison time. A lot of it. You aren't doing yourself any favours being here."
Parker	Parker's fingers hooked into the back of Sparkle's collar, in order to tug at him, give him an excuse to stand up, and maybe remind him that she was there. She wanted to yell at Carla. But she also wanted to yell at herself, and the guys. Stupid, stupid... A lot of should-have's and would-have's were cycling through her head, and she couldn't even say Carla was wrong. Harsh, maybe. Wrong, maybe not. The thing is, Carla was a citizen. And Parker hadn't expected that. And it made the whole visit go differently than she'd thought it would. "If you need anything. You can contact him through us." Parker's jaw set. "Just not the police." That wouldn't work out the way they'd expect.
Carla	"I don't intend to call the police." Carla didn't want to ask. No, she knew she shouldn't ask. The less she knew, the better. The less she knew, the less likely she'd be to do something stupid later on. But here she was, asking. "And who is 'us?'"
Parker	"Me and my partners. Leverage, Inc. We run a consulting firm, investigation, some legal help, in a place just outside of Baltimore." Parker paused, knowing that sounded way more normal than it was, then added, "And we teach vocational classes at the nearest high school, sometimes. We met Sparkle there. He graduated. He's got a real job in retail. He has friends. And no record in the States." She rushed to get all that out, because Carla might want to know that. Because maybe it would help her to want to stay in contact, later. Because Sparkle looked so beaten down, like he couldn't defend himself at all, and he'd so, so been hoping to get his sister back. Because as long as the door didn't slam closed, maybe it could open up again. Someday. She held out one of her business cards, hand still on Sparkle's neck. "Keep it. If you change your mind."
Carla	"If I change my mind," Carla echoed, but she reached to take the business card all the same, pausing for a moment to look at it before tucking it into her pocket. "Okay. I can do that much." It was a piece of cardstock. She never had to look at it again, if she never came around. Easy as that. Never all that easy. But easy as that. "But now... I really need you both to go."
Sparkle	"Then we're going," Sparkle said quietly, not entirely steady on his feet, but at least giving 'making his way back to the door to collect his sneakers' his best effort. Parker's hand on the back of his neck was a lifesaver right about then. He was pretty sure he would have just died there on the couch, otherwise. Melted into the cushions and years from now people would be able to swear they could hear mysterious crying from somewhere in among the realm of lost goldfish crackers and loose change. "Sorry for just showing up like this." His shoes weren't even on his feet when he made his way back outside, holding them in hand as he walked down toward the street. He didn't care. He couldn't breathe, but he didn't care. He needed to get back to the car. Get himself into the passenger seat and maybe just have a total breakdown in a fit of hysterics while he was at it. But Sparkle didn't care.
Parker	Parker didn't let go of him until they were all the way to the car. Then she turned to stand in front of him, watching his face. "What do you need me to do?" 'Cause she'd do it, you bet.
Sparkle	"I don't know," Sparkle mumbled, only somewhat coherently. "God, I don't know, I'm just a stupid kid. I just want to go somewhere, somewhere, like... Fuck. I don't..." He pulled in a shaky breath. Exhaled. Okay. Something. Something. "Ever try to go back home, even after home is something long gone?"
Parker	"No." Parker's face was set, expressionless. "I was never that brave."
Sparkle	"Doesn't feel like bravery. Feels like... Like fucking masochism. Like sticking my hand in the garbage disposal and laughing it off and I want to puke and throw things and get way too fucking drunk and maybe give it a try anyway. Why the hell not? Can't have my sister in my life, might as well go back where it started and kick in few windows for old time's sake." Sparkle gave a hollow little laugh. "Maybe tomorrow. I probably will puke if I go there right now anyway."
Parker	Parker took his hand, because that was meant to be comforting. And nodded solemnly. "Just, with an alibi. Because you don't need more charges." She took a breath. "And I'll be there to help." Her expression cracked. "I'm so sorry. I should've-- I'm sorry I didn't figure out it might be like this." She took a breath. "And she's missing out. Maybe someday she'll realize it."
Sparkle	"Maybe," Sparkle sighed, giving her hand a bit of a clinging to. "I don't blame her, though. Not really." He got it. What Carla knew was what she'd been told, and none of it really painted him in glory. "Don't care about charges either. I'm not coming back." There was nothing left here that was worth his freedom. Not one thing.