Summary: A personal place belonging to an abstract person.

Standard Disclaimer: I'm just a fanfiction writer. All hail the rightful owners.

Author's Note: Happy birthday to Green Lion!

"This is where you grew up, boss?" Moe asked. "Really?"

"Yes." Carmen's stomach clenched, a sign of her poor mood.

He swallowed.

"What of it?"

"It's just… I don't know boss it just seems a little low end for you."

Looking at her henchman coldly, Carmen provided no further clarification.

"Carmen!" Hannah called, rushing forward over what remained of the ruined floorboards.

Feeling a sense of inexplicable relief, Carmen turned to face her employee. "What?"

"I figured you'd like to know," The lackey muttered to the rotting wood. "They've written the loot on tonight's heist off. The cops I mean. They won't cause us any trouble." Her voice left no doubt that she found trouble, as a general concept, a terribly frightening thing.

"They're not going after me, then?" Carmen said, forcing her voice into laughter.

"No boss," she answered, "The records say they declared it was almost justified."

"Almost justified," the words were imbued with both affection and spite, "well that's almost kind of them, then."

"You think it's…"

"If I start explaining every heist," Carmen said harshly, "it will take an impractically long time."

Hannah shrank back, in what looked like fear, and Carmen soundlessly sighed. "It's alright." She said after a moment. "I do not blame you."

The detectives probably meant to be nice with this letting-be attitude. It meant that if Carmen were ever caught alive today's theft and the nebulous reasons behind it would not appear first on any judge's docket. Or, she suspected, in the fickle media's mindset. History would define it as her Oz-themed heist, and no one would remember any different. However gently meant though, the gesture went down badly. If Carmen wanted the secret kept she would keep it herself. Furthermore, if the detectives expected her to appear impressed that they recognized the basic emotion of homesickness rather than the more complicated one of homesickness for an orphanage, they were in for a shock.

Abruptly, Carmen realized that both Moe and Hannah stood frozen. "What?" she asked. "I had a childhood. As did we all."

By the looks on their faces, she judged they found that passing unbelievable.

"It's just a piece of my past." She couldn't believe she'd told them this much. "Nothing more."

The two stepped closer together and farther away from her.

Slowly, the master thief shook her head. "You both may go." She said, doing her level best not to sound particularly terrifying.

They scurried.

Carmen sighed aloud. Well in the interest of fairness, she usually deliberately trained them to behave like that.

The master thief looked down at the broken floorboards, ineffectively merged with the ground. The flight and impact ruined the ground floor. However, she'd never particularly cared about the entrance room anyhow.

By now, the building should have split to splinters. It was worse than worthless, but it belonged to her. Nothing else (the locket burned against her chest) nearly nothing else did. Carmen took things that didn't belong to her, true, but she always returned them. A sense of ownership over any material thing, let alone anything with this kind of baggage, felt foreign to her, more foreign than any distant land or new dialect.

You can't tear it down. She'd reacted when she found out, though she hadn't recalled the existence of the place in a decade. It's mine. Even to Carmen, her inner voice sounded like a frightened child.

The notion of her old home destroyed pained her so absurdly much that she'd gone and retrieved it.

Slowly, Carmen climbed to the second floor, looked around at the rooms of cheap beds, six to a set. She slept here, and there she saw Jenny's bed, Amy's bed, Melissa's and Kim's and…

Carmen stared at the bed. Who slept there? She couldn't remember. The bed probably belonged to several children, who'd shuffled through as the older ones faced the good fortune of adoption, but the master thief could no longer remember any of their names.

Feeling abruptly ill, the thief sank down on her old cot, to creaks, changed too much to be familiar. She should know the owner of that bed. Why couldn't she? Did it… did it not matter?

Human details abandoned memories all the time. She often told herself that results mattered most, but what could she say resulted here? Carmen couldn't name any harm done to her. She recalled the school as happy, or at least not unhappy. However, she had been vulnerable. Then, the smallest thing could hurt her. Now, nothing could. Nothing dared.

Her memories of the place, for the most part, remained kind. They'd been as good to her as circumstances allowed. Now, there she saw theme of her life if ever a theme it had. Everyone did as well by her as they could. Their kindness could never provide enough.

Maybe it was this never-enoughness that she'd been trying to communicate with her heist. However, tonight the motivations presented as particularly muddled. Usually Carmen showed a range of motivations and a wealth of symbolism behind every caper. This time, her reasons were far harder to pin down. The master thief only deeply knew that she wanted to save her former home from destruction, and she wanted the world to see her do so.

So the refusal to see, their stubborn dismissal, hurt the most. Carmen dared to think her actions might mean something to someone. But no, they would cover it up, forget about it. No one saw any use for the building but junk after all, a mess of wood and nails, about to become even less than that.

Everyone would forget all about it, write the whole thing off as a silly little case of taking out someone's trash. Moreover, they'd think they were doing a favor. It didn't matter that she wanted to her interpretation challenged, wanted someone to tell her this does not define you so she could ask what they claimed did.

No, the world wanted its brilliant enigmatic villains with mysterious dark pasts, not common specific pasts that one could find signed in triplicate on carbon copy paper as a matter of public record. Never mind reality.

It made her angry, furious even. However, for once, the master thief didn't feel like taking action about her frustration. Carmen lacked the energy for it.

Slowly, Carmen reclined back onto the cot, letting her back rest against the ratty mattress. She pulled her knees up, so her feet wouldn't hang off the end. Then, she closed her eyes.