Carina Valencia

[NebulaCloud]

Carina stood there at the top of the stairway grinning as she watched Rodrigo lock his door behind him, oblivious to her presence. She'd hopped on the first transport back to the Montgomery spaceport on Houston as soon as her rookie class had been given enough days of leave to make the visit worthwhile, and she'd made it back to her old friend's apartment building just in time to catch him as he left for work. Even though it was morning locally, her own internal clock was several hours off, and she had been fighting heavy eyes for hours now. Seeing Rodrigo again perked her right up, however, and she forgot all about her fatigue.

The bear of a man turned, tugging on the thick belt around his grease-stained coveralls and fiddling with his keys as he idly strode down the hall, the familiarity of his regular routine blinding him to the fact that she was blocking his way. She wondered for a second if he would plow right into her if she didn't move. And if he hadn't glanced up just at that moment, he would have.

She grinned even wider when he jumped nearly out of his skin, startled by her presence. Just as quickly his alarm gave way to joy, his face lighting up brightly. "Cari!" he exclaimed, and wrapped her up in a crushing hug, lifting her clear off of the ground.

"Dammit, put me down," she said between laughter. "You're gonna wrench your back, you old fart."

"Bah!" he replied, chuckling as he set her back down, but left his giant paws firmly gripping her by the shoulders affectionately. His eyes were shining as he looked at her, the normally grizzled steelworker's handlebar-mustachioed face looking giddy and childlike. She couldn't stop smiling at how excited he was, far more so than she'd expected him to be. "Yer still just a little mouse, mija. I ain't so old I can't throw ya still." Still with his hands on her shoulders, he looked her up and down, furrowing his brow, noticing her unassuming khaki pants, boots, and white blouse. "Qué haces aquí, mija? Where's your uniform?" He looked back up at her with concern. "You didn't quit, did ya?"

She shook her head. "No, tonto, I didn't quit," she replied with a sarcastic grin. "And LPI don't wear their uniforms if they're off duty."

"Right, right," he said. "And what's with this?" he continued, tossing a handful of her thick black hair that was cascading over her shoulders. "Ain't never seen you with your hair down."

"I dunno," she replied with a shrug. "Just felt like it. You gonna let me go or just keep me pinned here?" she asked him, still smirking.

He laughed again and turned her loose. "So you got some time off, then," he observed. "Back to slum it with us hood rats again?"

"Ay, don't say stupid crap like that," she scolded him, frowning. "It's still me. At least gimme some credit; I'm not about to get high and mighty just because I'm getting a badge."

"Heh, sorry mija," he said, and wrapped an affectionately paternal arm around her shoulders to guide her down the staircase. "C'mon, I'm about to be late, but you can walk with me to the mill."

The two of them walked side by side down the stairs, the narrow corridor barely able to accomodate Rodrigo's hulking frame, let alone the two of them. Carina felt a pleasantly warm sensation being among her own kind again, especially this guy. For all its unpleasant overcrowding and oppressive measures of civil control, it was still home. Manhattan's cities were an entirely different sort of crowded, full of people who fashioned themselves as better than Houstonians, and as intoxicating as it was to see the cosmopolitan cities for herself, it just felt like she didn't belong there. And the drab barracks on Fort Bush during her training were another matter. The walls of the station always felt like they were closing in on her, and it was even more unnerving to know that when she went to sleep at night in the women's dormitory, there was only a wall of steel seperating her from empty nothingness. At least aboard the prison transports she had the constant thrum of the reactors and engines to distract her. Fort Bush was a far more advanced piece of technology, not to mention bigger and emptier feeling.

"How long are you gonna be able to stay, mija?" Rodrigo asked her as they exited his apartment building, stepping out into the smoggy, sweltering streets of Montgomery.

"Only two days," she replied. "I've got to catch a transport in time to get back to New York for our second training stint."

He looked a little disappointed. "Well that's a damn tease," he said. "You staying at home while you're here?"

She blushed a little, but turned her face to keep him from seeing it. "Actually I was hoping I could still crash at your place," she said back. "Still don't think Dad would be happy to see me."

"Felix still being stubborn, huh," he grunted.

"Yeah. Hasn't called once since I left, and never lets Mama answer my waves while he's there."

He shook his head disapprovingly. "Well, cheer up," he told her. "You can go on and see your Mama and Connie after I head to work. I think your sister is off today."

That was good news, and she smiled again. "Good."

"And maybe if I get the chance I'll have a word with your Daddy about this whole mess during one of our breaks."

She slowed her pace and grabbed a hold of his sleeve. "No, Rodrigo, don't frakking do that," she protested, sternly glaring at him. "I don't need you going to bat for me, okay?"

He looked back at her pleadingly. "Cari, he's acting like a damn fool," he insisted. "He's got his panties in a twist because you're grown up now, and he can't boss you around no more."

"No, he's got his panties twisted because I became a cop," she corrected him, holding his eyes. "You'd think I went and joined the Rheinland military." There was still more to it than that, they both knew, but that was certainly one of the biggest reasons she no longer spoke to her father.

He sighed, shaking his head. "Yeah, probably," he conceded. "Still hasn't owned up to his own criminal record. Just shows he didn't learn nothin' in prison." The look on Carina's face must've been apparent, because he immediately turned apologetic. "Sorry, I know that embarrasses ya," he told her calmly.

She looked at her feet and shrugged before looking back up. "Don't make it false," she said back. She knew that Rodrigo was an ex-convict himself, but he was living proof that men could change their ways. He'd served his sentence, and emerged as an example of a fine man, at least in her eyes. That just made the frustration and embarrassment of being Felix's daughter much worse. Her father had been given more than one chance.

Few people knew the details outside of her family, but Felix was actually the son of a particularly vicious Corsair pirate-- Alonso Herrero Alvillar de la Barca. He never knew his mother, as she had been one of the countless women Alonso had enslaved for his own personal pleasure and then discarded when he tired of them. A man named Iván Barros Moreno had fled to Curacao with Felix as his adopted son, giving him the name Felix Ibánez, when he was still young, but he was barely into his teens before he fell in with marauding pirates in Liberty, and from there it was only a matter of time before he wound up in Huntsville. Between her father's chauvenistic mentality and his blatant refusal to accept responsibility for his family or for his own mistakes, Carina had spent her entire adult life trying to prove to everyone and to herself that she was not like him in any way. She even went so far as to adopt only her mother's name Valencia, instead of taking the full name Carina Ibánez Valencia as was traditional among the Hispanic population.

She straightened her shoulders. "Look, if it's an imposition, I can rent a room someplace."

"No, no, no," Rodrigo immediately snapped. "It ain't any more a problem now than it was before. You're always welcome, ya know that. I just hate to see you in this position. Yer like the daughter I never had."

Her cheeks felt hot again.

Rodrigo laughed hard. "Damned if I'll ever get used to seeing ya blush, Cari," he teased. "Sure ain't like you."

"Yeah, well, you're getting all sappy on me, so cut it out," she said dismissively.

Chuckling, he patted her on the cheek and started their walk again, picking up the pace. "Let's get going," he said. "Gonna be late."

"At this rate you'll still be twenty minutes early, ya big ape," she taunted. "You were never late while I was here."

"That's cause I look at being on time as late," he said. "You got no room to talk, ya know."

She chuckled and shrugged, pushing a lock of her hair behind her ear. The two of them chatted idly for the rest of the walk, discussing the details of her training, what she'd learned, who she'd met, the racist and classist overtones she was putting up with, and the money she'd been secretly slipping to her mother to support them. She didn't make too much, but growing up poor she was no stranger to stretching a credit. The other recruits might not think they were getting paid enough, but she was making almost ten times what she was scratching together breaking her back at the steel mill, and since during the course of her training the LPI had been paying for her room and board, she didn't spend a single credit more on herself than she absolutely had to.

They were almost to the mill when she realized that Rodrigo hadn't even once tried to turn the conversation to himself. She remembered right then why she had missed talking to him so much. He was a good friend, and as sickeningly sentimental as it was, he was more like a father to her than her own father ever was in her life.

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