Chapter Text
Courtland Gentry is fifteen when he kills his father with a single gunshot wound to the back of his head. When he's nineteen, he meets Donald Fitzroy and spends a staggered week undergoing tests to become inducted into the Sierra program. After that, time flies in a different pattern. He lives by mission rather than by the passing marks of a year.
In the middle of it all, his mother gave birth to twins.
Court hadn't known. Of course he didn't know. He was busy rushing through assessments to get himself thrown into black op missions across the globe. His parents had divorced the night before his father tried to kill them both. Court had put a bullet in his skull, and his mother had vanished from his life that very night.
The fact that he should have known about the twins sooner is the problem.
Fitzroy has decades of CIA training compared to Six, but when it's just the two of them in the dimly lit office, it's easy to see the cracks in his carefully composed facade. He's bothered by something that can only mean a mission involving the direct well-being of children.
Six settles his face into its calm facade. He hates missions with children. It makes him sick with rage: only a coward raises his hand to a child. His father had been the type of man to beat him until he was unconscious, dragging him from his room while he tried not to beg for mercy. The weakness only wrought more horrors upon his head.
It takes time for Fitz to speak, but it's a sucker punch right to the soft flesh of Six's belly to hear it all the same. "There is an extraction that needs to be done."
"Sir," Six says shortly. He knows Fitz too well to be fooled by the calm demeanor. It takes a lot to shake the seasoned vet enough to prompt a brief bout of nervousness.
"Tallahassee, Florida."
That tracks with the searching look Fitz levels at him. Six's throat goes dry. He's far less annoyed now. Now there is only the dread stirring in his gut like acid.
"Sir?"
"Two boys," Fitz says. "Eight years old."
Then he opens the file tucked aside on his desk. The papers are already flipped around to face Six, so he gets his first glimpse of his mother's face in twelve years. Dirty blond hair curling over her shoulders in waves, deeply set blue-gray eyes, and sun-freckled skin. She looks exactly how he remembers her, despite the aging lines forged into the corner of her eyes, and yet he feels as hollowed out of emotion as he would with a stranger.
Her portrait stares back at him impassively. It’s only an image printed on glossy paper, but the effect of her blank gaze is eerily similar to the night she watched the police cuff him and shove him into the back of a cruiser. She had felt like a stranger, then, too.
"Oh," Six says dumbly.
"Yes, quite," Fitzroy grimaces. "Colton and Ryland Grace. They were born to Lila Seavers and John Grace in April of 2003."
Six can't muster up enough strength to respond to that. His mother had taken on her maiden name after the divorce and subsequent murder. Of course, even Six would be able to make sense of why she did. What had the Gentry name given her? An abusive husband and a murderous son.
Despite himself, Six gravitates closer to the file spread out before him.
Fitz toys with the rim of his glass of whiskey, eyes softened in a way he only manages when it's the two of them alone. He has known Fitz for twelve years by now. When he was pulled from that prison, he was given a chance to distance himself from that house of horrors and the curse of the Gentry name.
His mother made it out, too. She even has a new family to share her newfound freedom with.
Six traces the pictures laid out, his fingertips gliding across the glossy resolution. There are candid shots of two blond-haired boys climbing on playground equipment, splashing in the beach's foamy surf, and eating cartoon-shaped popsicles next to an ice cream truck. Above the collage of photos are their names, date of birth, blood types, known allergens, home address, and the name of their elementary school.
They look nearly identical. Six studies the line of their brows, the brightness of their blue eyes, the soft curve of their chins. There is another school photograph, more recent, and the twin named Ryland has wide plastic-rimmed glasses pushed up his little nose.
Even their haircuts are styled as the same floppy locks. Like mirrors reflecting off into a pair.
“Jesus,” Six says softly. “They look just like her.”
“Not just her,” Fitz counters. He sounds far too sympathetic for Six’s liking.
Six doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t have an answer for that comment, either, so he runs a finger down the lines of bullet points to absorb what little information is gathered there. They have clean medical records through their regular pediatric clinic. A glance at their report cards, stacked side by side and dated for the last year, shows Ryland as the high-scoring student, though Colton earns more favorable marks for behavior.
He pauses at the bottom of the school’s emergency contact list. His mother’s name is crossed out.
“Why are you showing me this?” Six asks, still staring down at the paperwork. He can’t bring himself to look up and see the pity in Fitz’s face. He doesn’t need this. He has work to do for the Sierra program, and he has nothing to do with her anymore.
That’s exactly what she wanted, after all. Their path split and cleaved off the moment she screamed for him to wake up, and he found her being strangled in the hallway. It had been his first real job: his first kill of a human.
“I won’t waste your time with pleasantries,” Fitz allows. “The husband died in a work-related accident in ‘08.”
Six raises a brow and shoots him a look. In their line of work, an accident is a generous term that alludes to a not-so-generous set of conditions for murder. His handler, who has taught him about all the ways to conduct a realistic accident, dips his head in acknowledgment.
“Yes, a real accident by all accounts. He was a straight-laced fellow with a clean criminal history,” Fitz shrugs. “Lila Seavers passed away two weeks ago today.”
He feels braced for a blow, his muscles tightening with the anticipation of action, but there’s no gut-punching surge of grief. He is hollow. He has nothing left for his mother, not even the false promise of tears welling up beneath his lashes. It is simply a fact of life.
Fitz doesn’t look alarmed by Six’s blank patience, even if he pauses to let Six express any curiosity or offer any other comment. He continues, uninterrupted, “I don’t like the circumstances of her accident.”
That gets his attention. Six stiffens. “What sort of accident?”
“She rented a boat over in Jacksonville and took the kids with her. She missed her return window by three hours, and the owner reported a lost vessel. When the Coast Guard tracked the boat’s GPS, they found the kids with their life vests on with no sign of Seavers.”
“The kids are alright?”
“Sunburned. Other than that, just fine.”
“Weather?”
“Clear skies with no reported storm systems.”
“You said she died recently,” Six points out. It comes out flat. Just stating the indisputable facts of another mission. “They find her body in the water?”
“No,” Fitz grimaces. “Looks like she just washed up on shore. Her lifejacket was slashed. Authorities are reporting that she had a faulty floating device when she went on the water and drowned. Apparently, Greene Boat Rentals has some outstanding complaints for that sort of failure.”
“Slashed,” Six repeats. “Doesn’t explain why she would go in the water.”
“This could turn out to be nothing,” Fitz says. “There are rumors of some de facto splinter group of the West Coast mob running interference in the area. If they’re chasing women out into open waters and killing them, then there’s an issue. Langley is concerned this whole thing will blow up their operation in the Panhandle if the press stirs enough panic over it.”
“I’m not a mob hunter,” Six says. It’s a lie. He kills anything that Fitz points him at and lets the rising tide of the aftermath surge in later to replace his flood of adrenaline. There hasn’t been a moment in twelve years when Six has hesitated to act.
“You’re something else,” Fitz agrees. “That’s why I need you in Tallahassee before it goes to shit. Check if Seavers was involved in anything. Dig around. If she was a mob hit, then I would sleep better knowing those kids are taken out of there before it's too late.”
“Why me?” Six asks softly.
It’s not a proper refusal, not quite, but he’s wary of the undertones of this mission. Just last week, he completed a high-profile assassination of a Russian dignitary with deep ties to a terrorist cell rumored to be building a chemical weapon to deploy in the United States. He took the dangerous missions with complicated intel.
He does not serve as a glorified babysitter.
He does not care if those kids share half of his blood. There is nothing between them to tie them together besides a little maternal DNA. The last thing those kids need is him wandering into their lives and bringing the scrutiny of the CIA into this mess.
“Who else?” Fitz shrugs. Six stares on, unimpressed. “Look, kid, I know it sounds shallow. There’s a nonzero chance that Seavers was involved with some of the mob operations in the area. Langley wants their guy without collateral. I trust you to get the job done to make everyone happy.”
“What about the extraction? You said it was for the kids.”
“If the kids are targets of a mob, then I have arrangements to bring them into witness protection. No reason to unroot them and cause more trouble.”
“That’s it?” Six asks dubiously.
“All I have,” Fitz agrees.
Unsurprisingly, Fitz remains full of shit.
The Florida heat is stifling as thickly as Six remembers it to be. His memory gave it less justice than it deserves. Every moment he spent living here under that roof felt like choking on air, stifled by the presence of his father haunting the hall outside his room every night. The fear that still claws into the back of his mind means nothing when the plane touches down in Jacksonville, and he steps out into the crowded terminal with growing trepidation.
He hasn’t been this close to Tallahassee in years. It itches beneath his skin, insatiable. Part of him wonders if the house still has the same overgrown backyard and wide bloodstain on the hardwood floor. If he took a car and found his way back to that unsuspecting neighborhood and opened the front door, who would be waiting there for him? What remains there, now that he has severed the rot that crawled through the rooms and let new life grow unfettered?
Maybe it’s just him after all, to live as the last Gentry. Part of him wants to go back to that house, just as a trial to make sure it’s true.
The more reasonable part of him calmly flags down a taxi and climbs in the back. His gaze quickly combs over the driver, dismantling him piece by piece as he examines the remains. The driver is not much younger than Six. Short blond hair, slit dark eyes, a broadly unkind face. He’s muscled but lean. He sits as if there isn’t a gun strapped to his hip or tucked in the back of his jeans beneath his uniform’s canvas jacket.
Not a threat at all, Six decides.
Even better, he doesn’t plunge straight into talking about the weather or ask how the flight was. He simply stares at Six in the rear view mirror, waiting. Even through the mirror, he shows no agitation, simply patience.
Six likes him already. He rattles off the address Fitz gave him, then adds as an explanation, “Extended Stay Suites.”
The taxi pulls off from the curb and dives into traffic without another word spoken. Six leans his head back against the headrest and stares out at passing traffic. Suddenly, the exhaustion washes straight through him as tiresome lethargy. He would love nothing more than to shed his travel clothes, take a shower, and collapse into the hotel bed.
No, not quite. He would love to get the fuck out of here altogether. There’s no way that this mission could go smoothly.
Six blinks. He lifts his head and stares at the driver’s side mirror. The same car has been behind them for ten minutes now. He flicks a glance at the rear view mirror, but the driver is staring resolutely ahead, his gloved fingers curled tightly over the steering wheel. Six notes the gloves with a newfound interest. The Florida heat bakes his skin even through the tinted windows with the air conditioner blasting up front. How does the taxi driver stand the heat all day while wearing leather gloves?
Fuck this, Six thinks to himself bitterly. Nothing ever fucking works out in Florida.
He gives it a moment to wallow in despair for his lost shower. He keeps an eye on the side mirror, tracking the car following them, but the driver maintains a steady distance despite the slowing pace of traffic ahead. Within a few minutes, the car behind them disappears from view entirely.
Six glances to the rear view mirror to meet the driver’s dark eyes. They hold eye contact for a moment, then his focus pulls away to land on the road once again.
Interesting. Six decides he does like this guy, even more so when they arrive at the hotel five minutes sooner than Six figured they would. He tips as much as would be appropriate, gives a short nod of thanks, and grabs his bag to head into the hotel.
The driver idles there for a moment. He can feel eyes on his back, tracing his path, but when he looks over his shoulder, the taxi is already peeling away from the curb.
Fitzroy has the best intel, even if it leads him to an apartment building when he was expecting a single-family home. He doesn’t have an apartment number. Judging by the building's exterior, it has three stories, with enough windows for at least six units per floor.
Six considers it for a moment, eyes sweeping across the front of the apartment building, and lingers on a second-story window with a toy truck sitting on the sill. It’s as good a place to start as any.
He presses the button he assumes is the correct unit based on the building’s directory and waits. There’s a low buzzing as the line connects through to the unit, then a woman’s voice crackles through the tiny speaker. The traffic on the street behind Six nearly drowns out the soft crackle-whine of her voice.
“Hello, how can I help you?”
“This is Six.”
The door clicks open with a high-pitched buzz. Six double-checks the number he called in for and carries on up the stairs to the second floor. He notes the windows, the exits, and even holds the stairway door open for a middle-aged woman walking her dog down the hall. She offers him her thanks and compliments his outfit. The dog looks up at him balefully.
Six ignores them and continues down the hall until he reaches Unit 210.
It swings open the moment his hand reaches up to knock. He pauses, hand still raised, and stares down at the child blocking his path. This one has no glasses on. His blond hair curls over his ears in damp locks, and he peers up at Six with cautious wonder. Six isn’t sure what he is looking for: his hair is carefully styled into place, his clothes are unwrinkled and free of sweat, and he knows for a fact that his gun and his knife are hidden from view.
The child blinks, then steps back to let Six in. Six takes the silent invitation with a respectful nod and scans the room. It’s a small apartment. Even from here at the front door, he can see the entirety of the updated kitchen layout and modest living room beyond it. He can even catch a glimpse of the two rooms branching off down the hallway. There’s movement and soft voices in one of them. One sounds like an adult woman based on her voice's pitch, but the other is too quiet to decipher.
“It’s the number guy,” the child who opened the door calls out into the apartment. The door shuts firmly behind him, and then the child is right there in front of him. He is still staring, unabashedly interested.
“Thank you,” Six says to him. “Where is your social worker? I need to talk to her.”
“Are you taking us home?” The question bursts out so quickly that the child blinks, surprised. He adds, a little sheepishly, “I don’t want to share a room anymore.”
“I’m here to talk to your social worker,” Six repeats softly.
From this close, he tries to catch some glimpse of their mother in the child’s face. He thinks, perhaps, there’s a softness in the furrow of the boy’s brow that echoes her worried grimaces when his father would yell. The comparison slips through his fingers just as quickly. The boy himself has a softness that is entirely foreign to Six.
The children are eight. It has been a long time since Six was an eight-year-old boy. It has been even longer since he felt young enough to pretend to be his age without looking over his shoulder for a cuff to the ear and a harsh word.
“She’s busy,” the child tells him seriously. “I can’t go in there.”
Six nods. “She’s in the bedroom?”
“I can’t go in,” he repeats. His face brightens suddenly. “Do you want to see the sandwich I made?”
“I really need to—”
The child seizes him by the hand and tugs relentlessly, face scrunched up in concentration, and Six lets himself be led to the kitchen. There are two paper plates on the island, each with half a sandwich and a handful of potato chips. One half is decisively more misshapen, with a leaf of lettuce and a slice of turkey hanging off the crust, but the other is stacked neatly.
“That’s mine!” It’s the neater half of the sandwich. It does look impressive compared to the other one.
“Looks good,” Six says. “You should eat it while I talk to your social worker.”
“I don’t like turkey,” the child tells him seriously. “Only Colt likes turkey.”
Six hesitates for a beat. He thought he was talking to Colton based on the twins’ dossier. Didn’t the other boy wear glasses? He recovers with ease and says, “I see chips on that plate.”
“They got waves an’ I don’t like those.”
“Waves?”
“They have bumps, but Miss Leah calls ‘em waves.”
The child, whom he presumes to be Ryland rather than Colton, points to the plates. The island counter is just low enough that he can reach over and single out a chip as a demonstration. Six offers his polite attention and nods in a gesture of understanding. He does not understand. A chip is a chip.
Ryland stares up at him gravely. Apparently, it is not just a chip.
“Oh, did Colton let you in?”
Relieved, Six turns from the lunch debacle and faces the agent Fitz sent to pose as the boys’ social worker. Specialist Agent Leah Murphy looks frazzled. For a moment, Six tenses, concerned that the security of the whole operation is compromised, but then he notices the other boy trailing behind her with a pleased grin on his face.
“We get McDonald’s!” The twin behind Agent Murphy crows happily. He’s wearing glasses, but he’s squinting at the other boy strangely despite the joy. As if he can’t see well despite his prescription.
“It’s been a morning,” Murphy mutters for Six to hear. “These two tried to climb out the window.”
“Tried to?”
“I hauled that one in by his shirt collar by the time he was halfway out.” She points to Ryland, the one who opened the door for Six, and shakes her head, mystified. “They only got that far because they were too quiet. I thought someone broke in.”
The twins are speaking over one another now, excited about the change in lunch plans, and neither seems very interested in the Sierra operative or the FBI agent. Six watches, now thoroughly bemused, as the twin with the glasses picks up the messier half of the turkey sandwich and takes a huge bite.
“I see,” he says. “Colton?”
Mid-bite, the boy with the glasses turns to look at him. He freezes up the moment their gazes meet, his chewing halting to a sudden gulp. Murphy gives out a long-suffering sigh as the twin switch dawns on her. He can only imagine how long she spent calling them by the wrong name. Based on the way she offers Six a pitying look, he figures it was far too long.
“Good luck with this op, Six.”
“Thanks,” he says grimly. “Do you happen to have a car I could use?”
“No car to spare, but I could call you a taxi. I have their booster seats stashed away in the hall closet.”
“Good enough, thank you.”
“Um, excuse me, Miss Leah,” one of the boys interrupts, “I’m really, really hungry.”
Murphy shoots him a look, questioning his itinerary, and he nods in acquiescence. She turns to the twins and gives them a polite smile that makes Six sympathetic to her waning patience. Nobody signs up for the FBI special task force with the ambition to babysit a pair of eight-year-olds. He certainly didn’t kill his way into Sierra’s good graces just to end up doing the same.
“Mr. Six is going to take you guys to get lunch, okay? I’m going to go back to work.”
“You said we were work!” Ryland cries. It looks like Colton relinquished the glasses when Six wasn’t looking because now they balance tediously on the right twin’s nose. “Do you haf’ta go, Miss Leah?”
“Yes, boys, but don’t worry, Mr. Six is very good at his job. He can keep you company.”
Colton eyes him distrustfully. “He doesn’t have a car.”
“Ever ridden in a taxi before?” Six asks. He remains staunchly unbothered by the tone the kid used for his lack of transportation. No reason to fight with a child about owning cars when the child in question can’t legally drive.
“Uh-huh,” Ryland lights up. “Mommy took us to the beach and we had’a taxi.”
“I don’ wanna to go to the beach,” Colton tells Six.
“No beach,” Six agrees. Despite himself, despite the distance he’s wielding in front of himself as a loaded weapon to keep from growing too involved, he thinks about these two sitting in an empty boat with no hope of returning to shore. He wonders if their mother was dead when she hit the water, or alive when they watched her go overboard.
He wonders what would be better, then decides that it is a moronic line of thinking. The best-case scenario is far from their reach: if Lila Seavers were still alive, they would never have met face to face. He would have never known they even existed. The kindest reality is the one that can never be lived in again.
“We’re going to get lunch at…” He reels back his mind to fish for the right promise. He will just have to make this the best-case scenario for these kids. He knows how lonely it can be to be left behind by your parents in more ways than one. “McDonald’s?”
Their faces light up in tandem.
“McDonald’s!”
Murphy calls the taxi service, and Six rounds up the twins and their belongings to clean house in the staged apartment. After this, Leah Murphy is gone to the wind, and Six is going to take them to the hotel until he figures out what the fuck is going on around here.
For two orphaned kids, they have a disturbing amount of junk. Six watches them pack their toys, a handful of clothes, and some books into their backpacks. Colton has a bright red Spider-Man bag, while Ryland has a matching bright red Superman bag. Six grimaces and tries to remember the key differences for future reference. If they insist on switching identities, then he wants to be prepared.
“Double-check your drawers,” Six warns them. He checks his watch and bites back a curse. The taxi should have arrived nearly five minutes ago. “Never mind, you both did a good job. We have to catch our ride.”
“Taxi!” Colton sings happily.
Six trails behind the twins as they run down the hallway to where Murphy is standing with their car seats in each hand. They wrap their arms around her waist in a hug she can’t properly return, but her face softens all the same. Both of them are chatting at her in their full volume, and Six only catches snippets of their one-sided conversation. It’s a mixture of rambling about a television show he doesn’t understand and something about going to visit an arcade for a claw machine.
“Taxi,” Six cuts in to remind them. Just like that, the boys tear away from Murphy and storm over to the door, impatiently bouncing and tugging at the doorknob.
Once again, the FBI agent offers him an apologetic look. He takes the booster seats, offers her a nod of thanks, and lets the twins lead him out into the hallway.
At the very least, they take directions well enough. Both of them change paths from the elevator to go to the stairwell when he insists, and both of them only linger for a moment to pet the dog that appears at the door just as it opens. The woman whom Six held the door for earlier smiles at the boys and offers Six a different sort of pitying look.
“Good luck with those two, Dad,” she laughs. “It’s like wrangling cats!”
She passes him before he thinks he should bother to correct her. The twins are already taking their time to descend the stairs, gripping the handrail tightly and yelling at him to catch up. He regrets insisting on the stairs after just one flight.
By the time they reach the ground floor, the taxi is already waiting for them at the curb, the engine idling roughly. Six herds the boys out and rushes to the taxi door.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he tells the driver’s unimpressed profile. Six slides one of the booster seats across the backseat, and gets to work fastening in the second one. He feels a little body press against his, and a face peers into the car, watching intently as he focuses on his work.
“Hi, Mr. Taxi Driver,” Ryland says brightly. To Six, looking troubled, he adds, “I think you did it wrong.”
He did, and he can tell because the words directing him for installation are backward. He sighs and flips the seat around to face the correct way. “Thank you, Ryland.”
The driver’s side back door across Six opens suddenly. Six tenses, prepared to haul Ryland back and out of the way, but he relaxes when he recognizes the driver’s uniform. It’s not an attack at all. Fitz wasn’t even sure if the mob was involved, but the business with Agent Murphy and the lingering despair of being back in Florida have his senses going haywire.
“Thank you,” Six says to the driver. He finishes clicking the seat in place and draws back with a sigh. The driver silently installs the other seat, pulls out to shut the door, and climbs back behind the front wheel. Six gestures for the twins to climb in, supervising as they wiggle into their seats and buckle themselves in. He gives Colton’s belt a tug to test the slack and finds it satisfactory.
He slides into the front passenger seat. He tries, and fails, to stifle a soft sigh. It’s been ten minutes, and he's already sketched out his emergency exfil plan for a quick getaway. He hopes this mission goes quickly and smoothly for everyone’s sake.
Six turns to the driver, then pauses. Leather gloves. He hadn’t noticed those earlier, but he hadn’t been looking. The driver from earlier stares back at him, silently waiting for a direction to start heading. From this close, Six realizes his dark eyes are blue, and his sharp jawline is clean-shaven. This is a man with a particular set of habits if the gloves and steady mask of blank acceptance are any indication.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Six says again. There is no anger there, no accusation, nothing more than a simple apology.
“You took only four minutes,” the driver says. His voice is gentler than his expression betrays, but Six isn’t fooled. He has a feeling this guy could give him a hard time if he felt so inclined. “At five minutes, I would have been gone.”
“Fair enough,” Six replies coolly.
“Mr. Driver,” Colton chirps up from the backseat. “Can we go to McDonald’s, pretty pretty please?”
Six watches the driver’s attention slide to the rear view mirror, taking in the sight of the twins strapped into the backseat. His face is impassive. Even Six, with his Sierra training, finds himself tracing the lines of his expression for any slight change. There’s just a hint of softening in the corner of his eyes. Or perhaps Six is simply dreaming it.
The driver looks back at him. He says nothing, but he doesn’t have to. Six can see the question in his eyes alone.
“McDonald’s,” Six concedes. The driver nods, shifts into drive, and pulls off from the curb without a single word of complaint. He doesn’t even flinch when the twins start up an improvised song about their excitement to visit the fast food restaurant for lunch.
Six decides he would have the perfect poker face for a Sierra operation, but instead amuses himself with the assurance that driving a taxi around is the far easier gig of the two of them. There’s only so much death a taxi driver would be exposed to in comparison to Sierra Six.
Hell, Six would bet this guy couldn’t tell the pointy side of a knife from the dull handle if push came to shove, and the mental image alone made him look away with a jolt of amusement. He keeps his eyes on the mirrors to check for a tail on the car.
He hopes lunch goes by quickly. He has a lot of work to do.