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csi_sanders1129Chapters: 1/1
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csi_sanders1129Genre: Drama. Family.
Ratings: T
Word Count: 2475
Pairings/Characters: Leo Caruso, Vincent Moretti
Synopsis: In which the plane is empty when it lands and Vincent and Leo have a different ending.
Comments: Written for Comfortember 2020, (Alternate) Prompt: Homesickness. Title from 'Folsom Prison Blues' by Johnny Cash. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!
When the plane lands on the runway it is immediately surrounded by dozens of police officers and FBI agents, all ready to finally close this case. It's been a mess all the way through, from the blown sting operation six months back to the chaos Moretti got up to while undercover. They'll all be glad when it's over and done.
Only… the plane is empty, except for its pilot.
"I don't know what happened," Moretti's former partner tells them, "They never showed up to the rendezvous point for extraction. Maybe they got caught or…" she doesn't finish the thought, but they all think it for her. Maybe that scumbag Caruso smelled a rat.
The squad cars dissipate. The captain starts making calls.
"Now what?" Leo asks, the two of them slogging through the depths of the jungle in search of another way out of this mess. "We just keep walking until the bugs finish us off?"
Vincent slaps a mosquito the size of his hand off his neck. "Maybe," he answers, when three more take its place. "But better this than what was waiting back home."
"Sure waited until the last minute to drop that bomb on me, didn't you?" Leo snarks, dodging under a low-hanging branch. Luckily, he's already finished shouting at Vincent about that, they'd gotten that out of the way before they'd left Harvey's compound. "But, seriously, what's the plan here? I am assuming you have one."
He does. The beginnings of one, at least. "We've gotta get out of range of whatever search operations they start up. Emily's probably made it back by now, so we'll have company as soon as they can get in the air," he says, knows the procedures and the red tape will give them a little bit of time to get the hell out of Dodge. "I checked the maps back at the hangar. There's a town a few kilometers to the northeast. Once we get there, we stake it out and see where we can go from there. When we get clear of the area, you can signal to Linda, lay low for a while until she and Alex can meet up with you."
"And you? Is your wife just gonna run off and join you on some jungle adventure with your newborn daughter?" Leo challenges.
"I'd very much doubt it," he answers, can't imagine Carol out of the city under any circumstances, least of all now, with Julie, and with their marriage on the rocks, and with him aiding and abetting this crime spree of theirs. "I'll stick with you until I know you're settled."
"And then?" Leo raises an eyebrow at him as they continue their trek.
A shrug, the part of the plan he doesn't quite know yet. "Turn myself in, probably."
"Seriously?"
"I killed Harvey," he says, can still feel the weight of the gun in his hand when he'd pulled the trigger on the shots that avenged his brother. "I did a lot of things I wasn't supposed to do. I pulled you into it all with me and I'm willing to pay the price for both of us. They won't find out where you are, not from me," he promises, just in case that was the part that concerned Leo.
The other man frowns, nudges him forward, "We'll figure all that out later, yeah? Let's get going."
There's no sign of Moretti or Caruso in Mexico, just the bloodbath they left behind at the compound. No sign of the Black Orlov, either, and suddenly everyone is a lot less concerned about Moretti's survival.
"They're in it together," one of the higher ups has been saying. "Probably have been all along. Moretti played us."
It's all kept quiet, hushed up in the papers. They set a watch on Moretti's wife, Caruso's, too, but there's no sign that either man has tried to make contact in the weeks since they went missing.
A month passes before they make it back into the States. There'd been a lot of close calls, but the two of them picked their way through small towns and eventually into bigger cities, searching out ways to get closer to home. They've both grown out their beards. Leo's begrudgingly cut his hair. They try to look like tourists as much as possible when they get into the more populous areas. They buy a shitty car with the last of the money from the gas station robbery. They end up sleeping in it more often than they don't. They do odd jobs for quick cash whenever they can, eventually save up enough to pay some guy for some fake IDs and documents. Once they're away from the border, driving their shitty car through Texas, they decide it's time to start signaling Linda.
Vincent discovers that Leo and Linda have developed several tricks for staying in contact. He mails in a request for a personal ad to a newspaper back home, coded in a way that only Linda will realize its importance.
With the message sent, they find they shittiest motel they can and Leo waits in the car while Vincent books a room. It's one of those no-tell motel, pay-by-the-hour sort of establishments that could care less who you are or who you're with or why you're there so long as your cash is green and you don't expect the room to actually be clean or comfortable in any way. It's the kind of place you can always find on those long stretches of highway in the middle of nowhere, where the only other businesses around are maybe a liquor store, a tattoo parlor of questionable repute, and a gas station that's more junkyard than anything else. No one here will give a damn if they bear a passing resemblance to two escaped convicts from states away.
"How the hell does this place smell worse than prison?" Leo wonders, upon entrance to the small room, mostly dominated by the large bed in the center of it. It's topped with an ancient blanket that is covered in a wide array of stains and what they can only assume to be a lot of bodily fluids, though it's hard to tell beneath the horrendous pattern on it. They avoid it, heading instead for the small table set in the corner of the room (which is also covered in various questionable stains and is also quite sticky). Attached they find less of a bathroom and more of a small closet with a toilet, sink and shower stall all awkwardly shoved into it; a cockroach scurries across the floor when they flip on the light.
"We won't be here long," Vincent reminds him. Gross as it is, any bed is better than sleeping in the shitty car again. He's too old for that sort of thing.
Leo takes a seat in one of the two wobbly wooden chairs at the equally wobbly table. He sheds his jacket and kicks off his boots, grabs a bottle of whiskey out of their meager supplies and takes a long swig. "When we get closer to Canada, I'll send Linda another message. This one was just a warning, no details," he clarifies.
"Sounds like a plan," Vincent agrees, stealing the bottle for himself. "Another couple weeks and you'll have them back."
"Hopefully," Leo agrees. "What about you? Still wanna give this life of luxury up? Prison won't be nearly as fun without me around to entertain you, you know."
"Entertaining. Was that what that was?" Vincent teases, "All those guys constantly trying to kill you."
Leo flips him off, which, fair enough. "Really, though. What's going back there gonna accomplish? Harvey deserved to die. I woulda killed him if you hadn't. Are you only helping me because you pulled the trigger, or would you have let me get on the plane, then?"
Vincent doesn't answer. He doesn't have one to offer. A part of him, the part that still hates that he's doing any of this, would like to think he'd have turned Leo in, then, but really – would it have been that different? Harvey had a gun to Leo's head when Vincent took the first shot (the rest had been, admittedly, overkill) but their roles could easily have been reversed. If Harvey had a gun to his head, instead, and Leo had fired, had saved his life, there's no way he could have betrayed him. They'd be here just the same. "No," he says, finally. "I wouldn't have let you go."
"Then why let yourself take the fall?"
"What other choice do I have?" Vincent demands. "It's the only way I ever get to see my daughter again. I can't stop thinking about how much I've missed already. Julie's more than a month old. Carol's had to do everything without me. If I turn myself in, yeah, I almost definitely go to prison. At least then Carol might send me pictures, might visit once in a while. If, by some miracle, I don't wind up in prison, than maybe we can patch things up, maybe I can get my family back."
His reasons seem to have gotten through to Leo – the man can certainly understand wanting his family back. Leo slides him the half-empty whiskey and gets to his feet, clearly intending to go collapse on his half of the bed. "If that's what you want, man," he says, "but know you can stay with me, with us, as long as you want."
"Caruso's wife and kid shook their tail and left town last night," a rookie officer has the misfortune of reporting this news to the captain and it does not go over well.
The man throws a mug full of coffee into the wall, drags a hand through his thinning hair. Never should have trusted Moretti. "Find them. Double up the eyes on Moretti's family."
"Yes, sir."
They're in the parking lot of a hotel in Canada, finally.
Vincent watches with a smile on his face as Leo sweeps his son into a gigantic bear hug, lifts him clear off the ground and spins him around in circles. He watches Leo pull Linda into a kiss, the two of them happy and content and together again. "God, I missed you two," Leo says, hugging them both now, nowhere near ready to let go.
"Nice to see you again," Vincent says, while Leo drags their two suitcases into the hotel room.
Linda hugs him, too, and then offers him an envelope. He recognizes the handwriting on it immediately. He opens it carefully, wary of its contents. He finds a letter and several photos of baby Julie. His eyes blow wide and he looks to Linda for an explanation. "They dragged us both in for questioning after they realized you two were on the run. We got to talking. We're friends," she explains. "I've babysat your daughter a couple times, she's cute."
"You told her you were in contact with us?"
She nods. "I didn't tell her everything. Just enough," she assures him, when she catches the flash of alarm on his face, "Nothing she knows could lead the cops here. But, I taught her another of our ciphers," she says, gesturing to the newspaper she has with the coded message telling her it was time to go. "So you can write her if you want, she'll know what to look for."
"I'm not-" he starts, fully intending to tell her he plans to surrender himself to the authorities once he's sure she and Leo and Alex are settled here.
She beats him to it, "I told her you planned to turn yourself in. She doesn't want you to do that. Says as much in the letter, I'd guess." With that, she leaves him to read over the words, scrawled in Carol's swirly cursive writing.
There are some hard truths in there. She loves him, she'll always love him, but it'll never be how it was before. Things are different now. She doesn't want him in prison, she doesn't want him back in the news. She wants him to be happy, even if it's not with her. She promises to watch for messages. She promises to send updates and pictures once they find a safe way to do so. She promises she'll never tell the police any of this. She tells him goodbye.
There's a small park across the street from the hotel and Vincent makes his way there on autopilot, barely aware of his own existence as he walks along the stone paths to a wooden bench and claims a seat there. With tears in his eyes he reads the letters a second time, and then a third, and then, finally he puts the letter and the photos back in the envelope, tucks it into his jacket pocket, close to his heart.
What now?
The sound of Alex's giggling draws his attention, and he finds the little boy sprinting toward him - more accurately, toward the swings just beyond where he's sitting. The kid is clearly eager to burn off some energy after so long trapped in the car on the way here. Leo and Linda aren't far behind.
"Linda told me," Leo says, claiming the seat beside him. Linda goes ahead, goes to join Alex on the swings, the two of them laughing at some silly story Alex is telling. "You okay?"
"I don't know," he admits. Nearly two months of telling himself he'd turn himself in, steeling himself for the return to prison (for real), for the fallout of all of his decisions and now he's not supposed to do that?
"You know," Leo starts, a solid hand on Vincent's shoulder. "You're a part of my family, too. We wouldn't be together again if it weren't for you. The offer still stands," he says, "Stay with us."
Vincent sighs, looks at Leo and Linda and Alex and wonders if this could be his family, too.
The idea isn't one Vincent's let himself consider since the first time Leo proposed it in that one shitty hotel room in a long line of shitty hotel rooms. He and Leo have practically been living out of each other's pockets since they started this adventure. They've risked their lives for each other, saved each other. They work so well together. Even in just the brief time they've spent together before today, Linda and Alex both seemed to like him.
"I think I'd like that," he agrees with a smile.
A year passes.
They've found no trace of Moretti or of Caruso. No trace of the Black Orlov.
The captain takes a demotion in the fallout from the case.
Eventually, someone packs up all the case files, throws the box in a file-room full of other dust-covered boxes, all marked 'Cold Case' and life at the station goes on.
