Chapter Text
When Carla was nearly 6, she and Rob were playing in their room, doing anything to avoid the hunger pains they were both feeling, when it went dark. She heard her mum shout into the ether with a string of words Carla had already learned weren’t very polite. When she asked her mum about it, she’d ranted about some man named Charlie (Carla did not know who Charlie was), though she’d figured out later that her mum had just not paid the leccy bill.
She had been scared and hungry, worrying that she’d spend the rest of her days in the dark. Surely the other kids at school didn’t have to live in the dark, a belly always empty. But she never let it show. She didn’t want Rob to worry. She wouldn’t let her conditions define her life. She knew that even when she was little, even if she didn’t have the words for it.
And while it was not a particularly happy memory, it’s that thought from her childhood that keeps her going now. If 5-year-old Carla could survive the darkness and neglect, so could 50-year-old Carla. She’d be damned if she was going to let Becky win.
From the moment Becky grabbed her and shoved her into the closet, Carla was determined to stay alive. Even if Lisa no longer wanted her. Even if Betsy thought she was the only thing standing in the way of getting her family back. The brunette needed to live long enough to see Becky get her comeuppance. And that was fuel enough for her fire. Watching Becky go down would be the highlight of her life.
That woman had been pure mischief from the moment she entered number 6, and, over time, Carla came to see that it was actually something much darker than mischief. It was the kind of evil she’d seen before. The kind of evil that disguised itself as love. It was something she was very well acquainted with, having seen it in her brother’s eyes and actions for so many years.
The thought of Rob made her laugh out loud. A muffled chortle, really, around the crude gag Becky had stuffed in Carla’s mouth. Kidnapped twice in one year, Carla thought. Ha!
The days of Rob’s terror had seemed like a lifetime ago, washed away by a house move and a perfect (if not clumsy) engagement. But now, it was all bubbling back to the surface. All the pain, misery, and distrust she felt then, served up by someone she loved, now being handed down to her by someone Lisa loved.
Rob and Becky would get along swimmingly, she decided.
Maybe this was the way the universe worked. Tit for tat, and all that. They’d been terrorised by someone from Carla’s past and escaped it, only to be terrorised by someone from Lisa’s past. At least with Rob, for the most part, she and Lisa saw him for what he was. Yes, Carla had her hesitations about his motives; he’s her brother, after all. But she knew better than to blindly trust him. To always assume guilty until proven innocent.
But with Becky, Carla was iced out immediately because she could see just how twisted the whole situation was. She knew better than to trust someone who all too conveniently came back from the dead just as her widow was finally moving on. But for Lisa and Betsy, it wasn’t just innocent until proven guilty. It was innocent even if guilty.
After the first couple of weeks, Lisa, her beautiful, blonde ponytail of justice-wielding Lisa, had seemingly acquiesced to the situation. And rather than fight to find the truth (as she had done every day at her job since Carla had met her), she simply believed every single word that came out of her (ex?) wife’s mouth. No questions asked.
And when Carla began asking questions, she was the one who was being difficult or trying to cause trouble. At first, it angered the brunette. Realising that the woman she thought was going to be her wife could push her away so easily.
Quickly, however, Carla realised that it wasn’t just Lisa siding with Becky. Nothing was black and white. Nothing as it seemed.
Becky had put these puzzle pieces into place long before Carla had met Lisa. Early on in their relationship, Carla had begun to think Lisa and Becky’s marriage wasn’t all it seemed. Lisa always tried to paint a picture of sunshine and rainbows, but it almost sounded robotic, as if it were rehearsed. A well-oiled response to a question about Dead Becky.
Not only that, but Carla was always slightly disturbed by the way Lisa talked about herself. The way she berated herself for making a mistake at work, or for her crumbling relationship with Betsy. The way Lisa never asked for help, the way she rarely even spoke about what was going on in that beautiful head of hers. Something had always felt a bit off. As if Lisa had heard these words from somewhere before. That they’d been beaten into her (emotionally, if not physically) over time. Perhaps over a 20-year marriage.
Getting Lisa to go to even one therapy session had been a Herculean effort. (And now, given that Costello had ordered it, she was sure Lisa was never going to step foot in therapy again. A problem for another day, she supposed.) Carla had pushed and pushed Lisa to go to therapy, offering support and a listening ear. It had taken such a toll on their relationship that she dare not speak ill of the (supposed) dead. So she never pressed Lisa about the little inconsistencies of her marriage that kept coming up. May as well let the dead rest easy. Carla was here now, Lisa was ready to move forward with her. That’s all that had mattered.
But Becky hadn’t been dead, and now, stuffed in the closet, Carla wished she had pushed harder about Becky when she had a chance. If she could have helped Lisa see how manipulative Becky was before she rose from the dead, perhaps Lisa, too, could have seen right through Dead Becky.
She couldn’t go back now, and that line of thinking wasn’t particularly helpful in her current situation.
After about a week (maybe more, she’d lost track of time) into the hostage ordeal she found herself in, Carla finally heard Lisa’s voice memo, saying that it was her and only her, and it gave her a renewed sense of fight. Becky hadn’t meant to let her hear it (she thought Carla was sleeping), and it seemed to rattle her deeply. Becky became more unhinged (if that was even possible) afterwards. Perhaps she’d thought she’d won but was now realising she was never going to truly win. She could remove Carla from her life, but she couldn’t remove her from Lisa’s heart.
There was a lot to unpack, even if she did escape this thing alive, and even if Lisa figured out who Becky really was. Carla was fairly certain that Becky wasn’t completely lying when she’d said that she had slept with Lisa. It made the brunette sick to her stomach. But Lisa had broken up with her, and she knew how deeply conniving and manipulative Becky could be. It probably took no time at all for her to coax Lisa into bed with her.
She couldn’t bear to think about it any further than that. She’d known, from little comments that slipped out after lovemaking, that Becky had probably been assaulting Lisa for a long time. Though Lisa would never admit that’s what it was, and Carla wouldn’t comment for fear of pushing the blonde away. She’d been in Lisa’s shoes before, and she knew that the blonde would have to talk about it her own time. But now, Carla cursed herself once more for not speaking up. It may have cost her relationship with Lisa at the time, but maybe it would’ve saved Lisa and Betsy from Becky’s manipulations now.
The voice memo proved to Carla that no matter what had happened, and no matter how hard it was for the blonde to get out from under Becky’s spell, Lisa was choosing her, even now. And that gave her hope that maybe one day they’d find their way back to one another. The brunette had long given up the prospect of living her life without Lisa.
There was much to mend and trust to earn, but if Carla could just get out of here alive and save Lisa from whatever fresh hell Becky was surely putting her through, then they could work on it together.
—
Not long after hearing the voice memo, Becky lashed out, throwing a plate at Carla while she cowered in the closet. The brunette didn’t even flinch. She knew she was winning. Slowly but surely chipping away at Becky’s facade. Teasing her, even, about her inability to kill the brunette. She didn’t have it in her, she’d told Becky.
But even Carla knew Becky wasn’t above hiring someone to do the job. After all, it was Costello’s beating that had finally pushed Carla over the edge. Had pushed her to dig deeper into Dead Becky’s goings on. How she’d ended up kidnapped by the ghost of Lisa’s past.
Rather than wait for Becky to do her in the same way she’d tried with Costello, she cut herself free with the broken shards of plate and knocked an unsuspecting Becky unconscious (or so she thought). Unfortunately, after days without food or water or her meds, Carla wasn’t fully herself and was once again overpowered by Becky before she could escape.
Even as she felt the road bump beneath her, the darkness of what was likely Becky’s boot around her, she refused to give up. Refused to let Becky take her life from her. She hadn’t given it to Rob. And just like with Rob, she wouldn’t give Becky the satisfaction of seeing the life drain from her eyes.
So many people had tried to take her life from her in her half-century on this Earth. And if not her life, her dignity. But she was The Carla Fucking Connor. And it’d be a cold day in hell before she’d let this mullet-sporting demon be the one to beat her.
And as the doors of the room she was in finally opened, and the light streamed in, a clear outline of none other than DC Kit Green towering before her, she knew she’d won, and that soon enough, Becky would realise she’d lost.
She only hoped she’d get to her girls in time, before Becky did something she couldn’t undo, and that she’d be the one there to watch the fight go out in Becky.