Work Text:
2003
When an alert popped up just as Fitzroy was finishing the report on Sierra Five's first mission, he actually sighed out loud in annoyance. The mission had been a success, but an unnecessarily loud one, with collateral. Five was just as skilled as he'd hoped, but more erratic than he liked in an operative. All of the Sierras were effective – but Christ, they were a pain to ride herd on.
And now, some fresh bullshit.
He clicked the alert, and was not pleased to see it was a flag on the record of a potential recruit for Sierra Six. He scrubbed his hands over his face.
He was beginning to second-guess their strategy with the Sierra program: it seemed like no matter what the inmates had gone in for or what their capabilities were, prison turned them into something else, something feral and selfish. He didn't expect them to be as loyal and disciplined as real agents, but they needed to have some kind of integrity. He'd hoped, perhaps idealistically, that more of them would grow into the job.
Maybe he should reprioritize the list based on years incarcerated, see if someone less broken would suit the program. But then again – the less time they'd been locked up, the less desperate they were to get out, whatever the cost.
Fitzroy pulled up the flagged file to refresh his memory on this particular candidate. Courtland Gentry, 23, sentenced to life in prison at age 15 for the first degree murder of his abusive father, which he claimed was in defense of his younger brother. Given the physical evidence, Fitzroy was inclined to believe him, but the judge and jury hadn't. No living family now – the mother had cut ties, testified against Gentry in an ugly display of protecting her late abuser, and then gotten herself and her younger son killed a few years later in a drunk driving accident. A real All-American tragedy.
He liked the kid's story, though: the core willingness to kill a bad man to keep them from hurting others, and the strategic way that Gentry had stolen his father's pistol from a gun safe in advance of the kill. But after Five's volatile first performance, Fitzroy was having doubts about recruiting a kid with shit parents who'd spent half his adolescence in prison.
So what the hell had happened with him to cause this alert?
The prison's servers took an age to load the full incident report, but it turned out Gentry had been in a fight and gotten stabbed. A cliche ambush in the showers. Charming.
Florida didn't give a shit about privacy for inmates, so there was video. Fitzroy had to argue with the system for a few more minutes to get it to cough up the footage, but 9/11 sure had done wonders for what he could get his hands on.
The video was grainy and a crappy angle, but he watched Gentry get cornered mid-shower by three guys with shivs. Bad situational awareness to get caught out like that, but the kid put up a creative fight against the odds: blinded one guy with a wet washcloth and knocked him out fast, tripped up the second with a bar of soap and kicked him unconscious while he was down, then got into it close and dirty with the third. Gentry was mostly untrained but fast, good at using his environment to his advantage even when everything else was against him. There was potential there.
On the recording, Gentry took a stab to the outside of his shoulder with impressive stoicism, used the opening to get his hands on the third attacker's throat, and slammed the guy's head into the wall until he dropped. Then – Fitzroy's eyebrows shot up – he pulled the shiv out of his own arm and stabbed the guy in the dick several times, even as guards burst in and started pulling him away.
The other guy had survived, according to the report – not guaranteed with stab wounds in the groin, Fitzroy knew very well – but that kind of deliberately targeted injury had some ugly implications.
Fitzroy pulled the new castrato's record: Lionel Anderson, convicted of the rape and murder of a college girl five years earlier. He'd been accused several times of assaulting his fellow inmates...yet everyone had mysteriously recanted. A predator, but one who was connected and under protection, clearly.
Gentry wounding him instead of just killing him outright might be an attempt at avoiding reprisal – but Fitzroy didn't give him great odds of success. At the very least, Anderson sure wasn't going to be raping anyone ever again.
He rewound to the start of the fight, but landed too far back, watching a scrawny Hispanic kid rinse off. Rather than struggling with the controls, Fitzroy let it run and took a second to rub his eyes tiredly.
He lifted his hand away in time to watch Gentry stroll in, his body language relaxed. He reached for the shower controls – but suddenly went still, cocking his head as if to listen. He turned to the Hispanic kid and said something sharp, making the kid jump and scramble for his towel. The kid made it out the far door just as the gang of attackers entered, angling for Gentry, who had casually turned on the water and grabbed his soap and washcloth. This time, Fitzroy could see that he was just holding them ready, not actually using them.
He ran the video back more carefully to watch Gentry speak to the kid again. Fitzroy could only see his profile, but it looked like he said Get out, it's Anderson.
Fitzroy sat back in his chair heavily, rubbing a hand over his beard. Huh. Better situational awareness than Fitzroy had thought, and a protective streak that had survived eight years in prison, half of them as a teenager himself. Self-control in the face of danger and pain, and a sense of justice, however bloody.
He had just found his Sierra Six.
Gentry was nervous when the guard pushed him into the interview room, and hid it badly. The guard had barely pushed him into his seat and locked him down before he started babbling: "If this is about Winky's Cantina, I didn't have anything to do with it."
Fitzroy wondered if Anderson's protectors had gone after him yet, if he was expecting this to be some new ambush.
"It's not about Winky's Cantina," Fitzroy said neutrally, waiting for the guard to clear the room.
"I like honey buns as much as the next guy. I'm not gonna gouge your eye out for one. You gonna write that down?" Gentry's eyes flicked nervously up and down, examining Fitzroy in his nice suit, and the file on the table. He had a new tattoo, fresh and dark on his left forearm. Σίσυφος, Sisyphus in Greek. Classier than most prison tattoos – and telling about his mindset.
"I'm not gonna write anything down," Fitzroy said calmly, and broke the ice by offering Gentry some gum.
Gentry's hands stilled while unwrapping the first piece, though, and he put the gum down. "If you think I'm gonna rat someone out for Bubblicious, you got another thing coming to you. Watermelon or not." He said it like a joke, but his eyes were steady on Fitzroy.
Fitzroy suppressed a smile and flipped open the file, holding Gentry's attention by refusing to repond. "Courtland Gentry. Born 1980. Incarcerated 1995. Eligible for parole in 2031,” he said, closing the file again without actually reading it. “You got a long way to go, son."
"There's an upside to sleeping so close to your toilet," Gentry said flippantly, shoving a piece of gum in his mouth in a burst of movement that let him avoid Fitzroy's eyes, but didn't quite hide the flicker of discomfort at hearing the decades in front of him laid out like that.
"I get it, you're glib," Fitzroy said. "Well, I'm just gonna cut to the chase. My name is Donald Fitzroy, and I'm here to commute your sentence."
"You're gonna commute my sentence?" Gentry asked, in clear disbelief.
"Yes."
"Just like that?"
"When I get up out of this chair and walk out of this prison, you'll walk with me."
"Who are you, my fairy godmother?" Gentry said, laughing, short and strained. Not a man who believed in fairytales. "No offense, I thought you'd look different."
"I may be. We'll see," Fitzroy said, meeting his eyes steadily.
Gentry sobered, the mask of his grin falling away as he studied Fitzroy. "What's the catch?"
Smart boy. There was always a catch. "You work for us."
"Who's 'us'?"
"The CIA. We're gonna train you to kill bad guys. And since you've already killed one, it shouldn't be too difficult."
Gentry's face closed up a bit. "What makes you think I wanna do it again?"
"You seem like the type," Fitzroy said, thinking of the deliberate way he'd castrated Anderson. He would have killed him if he could get away with it, Fitzroy thought, with as little hesitation. Some people needed to die.
Gentry pursed his lips, sitting back in his chair.
"You'd be part of an elite unit, the Sierra Program. You would exist in the gray."
"Disposable?" Gentry asked, with a resigned face that said he knew the answer.
Instead of answering directly, Fitzroy said, "I've studied your case, I know why you pulled that trigger. I would have done the same thing myself."
Gentry ducked his chin, his eyes going a little wide and lost. No one had told him that before.
"Now I'm here to help you become a value-add instead of a value-lost. So why don't you take all the pain or whatever the hell got you here, turn it around, and make it useful."
Gentry broke eye contact, then looked down at the file and its symbolic weight of years. "How long do I gotta work for you?" he asked quietly.
"Let's just say you'd be indefinitely useful," Fitzroy said.
Gentry's folded hands tightened, his knuckles going white. "Another life sentence, then."
"Beats being on the wrong side of the bars," Fitzroy observed. "You'll have freedoms, once you've earned our trust. And a purpose."
Gentry watched him for a long moment, moving the gum around in his mouth, then flashed him a broad cocky smile. "Yeah, okay. I'm in. Wasn't gonna make it to parole anyway. I'm a little too good at pissing people off, you know?" The smile was fake, but his eyes were sharp and sincere.
Keeping his face blank, Fitzroy said, "The upside to killing people instead of castrating them is that it's a little harder for them to stay pissed off at you."
After a shocked moment, that won him a huff of laughter from Gentry. "You heard about that, huh?"
"Sure did," he said, cracking a smile in return.
"Not a bad day's work," Gentry said, grinning.
"Seems like he earned it," Fitzroy said, standing to wave the guard back in.
"Oh, he did," Gentry said, his eyes going hard again as the guard unlocked his cuffs.
“How's the shoulder?”
“Fine,” Gentry said, unconsciously rolling the one that had been stabbed. The wound had to hurt, but he didn't show it at all.
"Alright, then. Let's go get your things, kid. We've got a plane to catch."
Gentry had a single plastic bag of books and scattered items from his cell; from the bin of belongings he'd come in with, he pulled only a necklace, a battered copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology, and a letter. At Fitzroy's raised eyebrow, he waved at the pile of clothing and said, "Not really my size anymore, huh?" and dumped them all in the trash with a bitter twist to his mouth.
He was quiet in the car until they cleared the fences, like he didn't want to break the spell. His foot bounced nervously. They'd have to train that out of him.
"So, Donald," Gentry said finally. "Can I call you Donald? Don? Donny?"
"Fitzroy," he said flatly, before Gentry came up with a more obnoxious alternative.
"Fitz," Gentry said, predictably, just the way Fitzroy wanted. "Any chance we could stop for a burger? I'm starving, we missed lunch. It was gonna be mystery slop again, so that's a real tragedy."
"Sure," Fitzroy said, and Gentry's foot stilled.
"Yeah? I mean, great."
Fitzroy stifled a smile and pulled into the first burger joint with a drive-thru that he spotted. By some miracle, it wasn't a chain, but a local place – Max's Grill. Fitzroy wondered idly if there was actually a Max, as he ordered two burgers with fries. At the last second, he added a chocolate shake, because ice cream had never hurt a situation yet.
Except that time in Ecuador when he'd used a pint as an improvised weapon. But that hadn't hurt him.
He set his own food aside as he drove on, but out of the corner of his eye, he watched Gentry devour his burger with a fast, desperate urgency that spoke to more than hunger. At a stoplight, Fitzroy watched him scrape melted cheese off the wrapper, licking the last bits of grease off his fingers with a blissed out look on his face. The kid hadn't had a decent burger since he was fifteen, after all.
Turning for the airfield, he reached out and handed the shake to Gentry. "I'd take this a bit slower, kid, or you'll get a headache."
A long pause, and then Gentry took the styrofoam cup from him. "...Thanks," he said, oddly quiet.
Fitzroy glanced over quickly as he made another turn. The cockiness had fallen off the kid's face, and he was holding the shake in both hands like it was something shocking and precious. Had he thought Fitzroy had just gotten himself a shake and was gonna drink it in front of the kid as some kind of...demonstration of his place? Fuck, probably. Prison power play bullshit.
He thought back to the look he's seen on Gentry's face when Fitzroy told him that he'd have killed his asshole father, too. The kid was starved for approval and kindness – and while the professional side of him filed that away as leverage, the part of him that was a man just wanted to help.
He was helping, Fitzroy reminded himself. They were going to train this kid to lethal perfection, and teach him to kill bad men and critical threats around the world. He would travel and learn and eat more burgers, and not get stabbed to death in a mildewed prison shower.
He might get stabbed to death somewhere else, to be fair, but at least he'd have a chance to live first.
Fitzroy was making the right call.
2020
Six entered Fitzroy's office with habitual quiet, the door barely making a sound as he closed it behind him.
Fitzroy watched him move with a bittersweet pride. The cocky defensive facade of the early days hadn't lasted long, as Six got into his training and shifted into a more natural steadiness. He was still a quippy little shit at times, but he knew who he was and what he was capable of, and it showed. He trusted Fitzroy, and Fitzroy trusted him.
Which was why this was gonna hurt so badly.
"Sit down, kid," he said, preempting Six's attempt to stand at attention. "I've got some bad news." No sense in fucking around about it.
Six sat without looking away from him. His poker face was pretty good these days, but his gaze was fixed, and his hands fidgeted a little on the arms of the chair – his little tell when under stress.
"I'm retiring," Fitzroy said, and Six relaxed infinitesimally.
"That's not usually bad news, Fitz," he said, quirking an eyebrow.
"Well, it wasn't really my idea," Fitzroy admitted.
"Ah," Six said, his mouth tightening. "Carmichael?"
"You got it," Fitzroy sighed.
Six flicked his eyes away, his fingers flexing, then looked back. "Maggie just retired last month," he said, steady, but his eyes were searching Fitzroy's face. "Not a lot of faces left from the old days."
"No," Fitzroy said sadly, "There's not." He had another funeral on his calendar next week.
Six closed his eyes briefly. "Are they terminating the Sierra Program?"
"No," Fitzroy said emphatically, and Six's eyes opened again. "You and Sierra Four are still reliable assets. That's not changing any time soon." He didn't mention the others: the dead, and the failures.
The whole program was worth it, anyway, to have found Six. He was probably the most skilled wetwork operator in the world, and he had grown into a quietly principled man who fiercely objected to collateral damage, and liked to know exactly who he was killing and why. And Fitzroy always made sure he got that information, even when the locals tried to keep things need-to-know.
He wished he could stay and keep doing that for him. And he wished more than anything that he could promise Six would be safe – but he was never able to promise that.
"I'm keeping the Max's Barbecue line up, if you ever need help," he said, which was the best he could offer.
Six smiled, lopsided. "Sentimental of you." It was their oldest private line, with a silly little call-and-response that Six had made up just after his training, twenty-four and thrilled at the chance to make up dumb jokes on company time.
"I hear it's traditional to be a little sentimental when you retire."
Six huffed a laugh. He paused, his fingers tapping, then said, "Claire will be happy to see more of you."
Fitzroy snorted. "She's heading into her teenager years, so I'm not so sure about that."
"Good luck," Six said, smiling fondly. As much as Fitzroy had hated the necessity of bringing Six in to bodyguard Claire, he was happy they'd gotten to meet. Claire had complained about the 'robot' for weeks afterward – but she also asked about Six at least once a month, overly-casual and pretending not to care, the way only a pre-teen could. And Six didn't have many people that he could trust, much less that he could let himself care about.
Six opened his mouth, and then closed it without speaking.
"Just spit it out," Fitzroy said.
"What if I don't need help?" Six said, lacing his fingers in front of him and looking down at his hands so he couldn't look at Fitzroy. "What if I just want to call?"
"That's fine, too, kid,” Fitzroy said gently. “I'll be happy to hear from you.”
Six squeezed his eyes shut, then met Fitzroy's gaze. His face was composed, but his eyes were sad. "It'll be weird not having you around."
I'll miss you, he didn't say.
"It'll be weird not being here," Fitzroy said, and meant the same thing Six did.