Chapter Text
The first thing he feels is blood in his mouth, coating the back of his throat.
Then comes the pain.
Carrying a gun is an instinct for him. He knows the feeling of its weight in the curve of his palm. His fingers click the magazine to check his ammo supply and flick off the safety in a single fluid movement. He knows trigger discipline and doesn’t aim at anything he doesn't intend to shoot, if he must.
He knows these things as an instinct, as innate to him as breathing, and he finds that he can hotwire a car in under a minute even when he’s being shot at. His mind helpfully points out that his getaway vehicle of choice from the warehouse is a Volkswagen Passat, and that the license plate he passed while rushing to the driver’s seat has the Croatian coat of arms. He also makes the mental note that he ran up to the wrong side of the car at first and was dully disappointed to find it was the passenger side rather than the driver’s.
These are interesting things about him. Weird, but interesting.
He doesn’t have time to dwell on it as fifteen men open fire on the parking lot, hoping to strike him with a bullet to the back, as he crouches down in the lot as uselessly as a sitting duck. Forty-five seconds may not seem long in terms of hotwiring, but it is an eternity when he is forced to keep ducking from bullets impacting the pavement and wall next to his head.
Despite his speedy grand theft auto, his driving skills leave something to be desired. He hits a curb on his way out of the parking lot and hears a quiet voice give him firm admonishment in the back of his mind to triple-check his mirrors in case he spots flashing lights before he catches on to the sirens.
He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, so he listens to that voice. In fact, he spends so long checking each of his car mirrors, staring back at the four trucks following him with all of them packed with gunmen, that he doesn’t notice the fifth one pulling up in front of him until he’s already close to being completely cornered in. Most of them are tinted-out sedans, much like the Passat he stole, but one of them is an SUV that barrels down towards him with efficient dedication.
He does not want to be T-boned by that thing, but the driver seems intent on nailing him right in the driver’s side door.
Asshole.
The voice in his mind sounds just as tense as he feels right now: leave enough room to reverse out of here if you have to.
So he hits the brakes just as he shifts into reverse with a quick jerk of his hand. The car’s engine growls in agitation at the rough handling, but he manages to spin the steering wheel quickly enough to change directions and avoid being boxed in. He does clip the back panel of one of the sedans hard enough to send it peeling off into the roadside ditch from its high speed, but he counts that as a win.
The biggest problem is that he has no fucking clue where he is supposed to be going other than away from the guys shooting at him.
The second-biggest problem is that he has no fucking clue who he is, why he is here, or how he can do any of the things his body knows how to do without hesitation.
With the men shooting at him, a quick escape is the most pressing matter for him to resolve. As quickly as possible, that is. Afterward, he can focus on the little details such as remembering his name and why the fuck he’s getting shot at.
He thinks he knows why his mind can’t make sense of those things, at least. The adrenaline from the gunfight and the breakneck pace he’s keeping as he tears through the streets and creates distance keep him occupied enough. In addition to that, however, is the slow trickle of blood crawling down the nape of his neck and staining the back of his head in a thick matted paste.
It’s a head injury. He must be suffering the effects of a serious one if the pain pulsing through his temples and the blood coating his hair are any indication.
“Merde,” he mutters to himself. The words feel thick in his mouth, and he turns to spit a wad of blood-soaked phlegm out the window without taking the time to slow down. Then, he hesitates, his ears finally catching up to his mind. He tries saying it again and finds that the swearing brings the same result as before.
“Do I speak fucking French?”
He does speak French.
He also speaks Russian, German, and Spanish. He finds that English comes naturally to him when he’s thinking to himself, so he assumes that to be his native tongue. He isn’t sure why French is the first language he chooses to swear in, but it slips out when he’s frustratedly slamming his palm on the steering wheel to get himself to remember anything else about his life. It’s not as cathartic as a good old-fashioned ‘fucking bullshit’, but he feels a pang of shameful guilt when he swears it in English so he doesn’t try to experiment again.
So he knows how to shoot a gun, drive a getaway car, and swear rigorously in French.
What the hell is his problem?
It takes an hour and a half for him to lose his persistent pursuers down a long volley of side streets and crowded city lanes. As soon as he feels confident he can walk without being shot in the back, he abandons the sports car in the parking lot of a grocery store and tries to dissolve into the sparsely crowded groups of city-dwellers around him. He is more than aware of the fact that his bloody head and dust-caked black clothes make him look suspicious as hell, so he slips into the restroom of the first convenience store he finds and gets to work washing himself up.
He’s fortunate there aren't many people in the store as he ambles past the aisles to head into the bathroom because he looks half-dead. The stark lighting of the one-person room darkens the lines of his face and shadows his eyes into grim exhaustion. His hair is limp from sweat and falls into his eyes, and he impatiently wipes it out of his way to duck down over the sink and start scrubbing.
As he slowly uncovers the layers of grime and dirt, he takes in his own unfamiliar face.
He definitely looks like an unremarkable average man. He’s probably around six feet tall, with dark blonde hair and blue eyes, and he looks like he could use a shave. He takes it all in with shallow, pained breaths, letting the details filter in one by one.
Dark blond hair, matching dark beard, blue eyes, and a shallow-lined scar cutting from his right temple up into his hairline. There are bags under his eyes and wrinkles at the corners. He can catch speckled lines of gray in the roots of his hair, just a little, but he doesn’t look old, so it must be stress-induced.
Granted, if he’s the type of guy who runs from armed men all day as a career choice, the gray hair makes sense.
When he pulls off his shirt to inspect the fabric for holes or tears, he finds that his body is muscular and scarred to hell. The worst is a deep gash along his left arm that he runs his fingertips over with a grimace. He doesn’t remember getting that, but he isn’t sure if he wants to know. He also has some tattoos, but he doesn’t know their meanings or remember having them inscribed on his skin.
By the time he washes the blood out of his hair, carefully prodding the edges of the deep cut on the back of his skull, he has more questions than answers. It’s fucking annoying, but he has the sinking feeling that he is used to that sort of thing. Running blind into his next step feels less like a burden and more like a familiar weight on his shoulders.
He must be good at improvising, then.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” he mutters to his reflection. He chooses to speak in English without thinking. He still can’t figure out why he chooses to swear in French, but that’s a problem for the future.
Right now, he’s going to get himself out of here.
He takes three steps out of the convenience store before a black sedan with dark windows squeals up to the curb alongside him and the back door swings open.
Gun.
It’s his first thought, clamoring in his mind with panicked fervor.
He has the horrible memory of a car door opening and bullets pelting his surroundings with a deafening roar of automatic fire. He even feels an echoing sting of impact on his shoulder and the pain shuddering through him in waves. It’s just a quick flash of memory, but it’s enough to kick-start his adrenaline rush anew.
He takes off running down the street, cutting into alleyways and through yards. He climbs through an open window of an apartment building’s laundry room and makes his way through the winding hallways up to the roof.
He doesn’t have a plan in the slightest. All he has is his feet leading him away from street level to afford him a better vantage point. The buildings here are clustered close enough together that he can scale from one to the next if he has to.
The problem is that he has no idea where he’s supposed to flee to. He can run as long and far as he likes, but where would that get him? He does not know if there is a single friendly face in the world waiting to see him come back. What if his life is nothing more than shooting at strangers and hiding in bathrooms to wash away blood?
It’s a depressing thought, and the very last thing he needs to worry about.
By the time he reaches the roof, he is ruminating on that thought more deeply than it requires. It had seemed that he was working alone back at the warehouse he woke up in. He did not have a team of fifteen men there to pull him up out of the dirt and dust him off. It had just been him, choking on saliva and blood, scrambling up despite the headache tearing through his skull.
Just him, the gun, and the blood.
He stalks to the edge of the roof, grimacing against the pounding in his temples. The longer he thinks about it, the worse his migraine becomes. He can see a halo around the city lights below him, the aura pricking across his vision in starbursts. He needs medical attention, but he has no fucking clue if he can trust a single person here.
He doesn’t know who or what he is, and he’s fucking terrified of figuring it all out just to realize that he is a monster lurking among the sheep. What makes him so different from the men that chased him down in the warehouse?
“Merde.” He’s still swearing in French.
There’s no time to think about that, any of it, so he eyes the street below him. The sedan from the convenience store is out of sight, but that does little to reassure him. He doesn’t think it was one of the cars that chased him from the warehouse. Is half of the damned city trying to hunt him down? He is starting to feel less optimistic about his earlier assumption that he is only exaggerating about being an actual monster.
He’s starting to wonder if he deserves to sit and let the consequences of his unknown reputation catch up with him. He plants one of his boots on the edge of the roof, eyeing the drop and the surrounding buildings. There’s a window ledge wide enough for him to lunge for if he has to, but the four-story drop to the pavement below makes his stomach roil with nausea.
Maybe he’ll save his pursuers the trouble of shooting him if he falls to his death. The mental image makes him grimace. No, he doesn’t want to die in the side street gutters of Croatia.
The roof maintenance access door behind him swings open with a whine of the hinges. He tenses, prepared to leap for the window, but the voice that cuts across the space between them makes him freeze.
“Six! Stop for a damn second!”
It’s a woman. She has short dark hair that curls around her jaw at a sharp angle, but it’s her dark eyes that cut across the roof with deadly precision. She’s holding a handgun at the ready in her hands, but the muzzle is pointed to the roof tiles at her feet, not at him. Her clothes are black and tactically sound for a covert operation, with no distinct labels or logos to make her stand out in a passing glance.
Yet it’s the way she says that word that makes him halt from a quick getaway.
Six.
That’s him. His name is Six. He can feel the acceptance of it wrap around him like a shroud. He has answered calls of that name before. He has taken it as his identity, and it feels worn and familiar to him. He has been Six for a long, long time.
Well, he decides, that’s a stupid fucking name.
No wonder he didn’t remember it. Were numbers one through five taken?
He pushes out a rush of air between his teeth in a muted hiss of annoyance. The chase through the streets and hauling up to the roof rages through his veins in an adrenaline-fueled rush. Watching this stranger who chased after him, whom he does not recognize and cannot call by her name, does little to lull him back into a sense of security.
His head hurts, his body hurts, and he doesn’t remember anything except the fact that he is nothing but a number to this woman. He turns his back to the drop and faces her, his hands spread wide with defeat.
Not so much defeat. He can think of nearly a dozen ways to safely egress from this situation, and nearly a dozen more unsafe ways to escape on top of that. He can be a spontaneous tactician without trying. Good to know. He feels mildly concerned for what that means for his line of work, but still good to know.
Right now, he could stand to get a few more clues about what the fuck is going on. This woman is as good a starting point as any.
“What do you want from me?” Six sighs.
“That’s it?” She looks away from her observance of the rooftop to shoot him an incredulous look. ”That’s all you have to say?”
He shrugs, a touch too defensively. She stares at him as if he is purposefully being impossible to reason with. Her eyes rove across his face, narrowing in annoyance. He lets her look, if only because he doesn’t have a better idea that doesn’t involve jumping off the side of the roof. She’s still holding a gun, but he’s feeling less worried about that the longer they talk.
He has the feeling she won’t shoot him until he pisses her off. He hopes that gut instinct is right.
“You’re the one running through the city like a maniac. You missed your exfil by over two hours.” She still has her gun lowered to point at the ground, and she releases one of her hands to hang by her side limply. So, he did have a way out of the warehouse planned. That would have been useful to remember long before this point. It would have saved him from a lot of shooting.
Right now, that’s not looking so good. Even from here, with twenty feet between them, he notices that her finger is still poised on the trigger. Maybe she will shoot him regardless.
She shakes her head at him in disbelief. “I thought you were dead until the cameras picked up an eighty percent match for your face at a convenience store.”
Cameras. He feels a familiar sinking in his gut. He is normally very good at avoiding cameras. Not keeping his head down was a big mistake. Men like him don’t like to show their full faces on cameras. He doesn’t know if that makes him some sort of secret superhero hiding his true identity, or an internationally wanted criminal with a lengthy record evading arrest.
“Not dead,” he says. He hedges with, “Just a little confused.”
“Confused,” she sighs. “It’s always something with you, Six. The recovery went as planned, and there are no loose ends because you stole the car and dumped it. What is wrong with you?”
He watches her holster her weapon and feels a thin thread of trust weaving between them. His gut instinct tells him he can trust her with the truth. He isn’t sure what she has done to earn that trust, or whether he’s being a naive idiot for giving in to the small connection he feels, but he doesn’t have many other good options.
“Well,” he says slowly. “I have no idea who you are, who I am, or what I’m doing here.”
Her brow furrows. She stares at him, long and hard, and he just takes her scrutiny with a defeated slump of his shoulders. It’s all out in the open, now. He can’t turn away from that reveal, so he hopes that she’s one of the good guys on his side.
After a long moment of disbelief, her mouth twists up in a grimace. Whoever she is, she can read his expressions well enough to tell if he is lying or telling the truth. Luckily, she seems to realize that this is not a lie he is maintaining for cover or as a distraction.
“Fuck, Six,” she says, almost in awe. “You really do have the shittiest luck in the CIA.”
Her name is Dani Miranda.
She leads him back downstairs to the street level where the sedan sits idling. He hesitates, but she merely rolls her eyes and slides into the passenger seat. He doesn’t have many other options, so he climbs into the backseat and stares at the driver as if the man’s face will become familiar to him with enough staring.
The driver shifts, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. Six has the ability to stare with unnerving attention, evidently, which he uses to his full potential. He doesn’t trust this man, and he barely trusts Miranda. He can’t gleam any ill intent from the driver’s demeanor. He’s an older man, much older than Six, with graying hair and a matching beard. His dark eyes are shrewd as he eyes Six back just as warily. He looks like he could be Croatian, which is helpful, since Six does not look local and thus has no reason to know this man personally.
Six narrows his eyes back at the driver in the rearview mirror. His mind helpfully supplies eight different ways to overpower the driver and escape the car in under a minute. It gives some measure of comfort, but he isn’t sure if Miranda is on his side, or someone else’s. Does Six have his own side? Is he just a puppet for the whims of another?
Is Miranda telling the truth when she jokes that he has the worst luck in the CIA?
Does he really work for the fucking CIA?
“That’s Matej,” Miranda tells him flatly. She’s staring out of the window, looking impassive, but the driver gives him a mute nod of greeting and returns his focus to the road. The tension between them dissipates like mist. Just like that, they are both focused on work in their own ways.
He stares out the window and tries to think past the pounding in his temples. Miranda is content to let him sit in silence, but Matej has the radio playing low, quietly humming along to a song Six does not understand the words to.
The city passes by in a blur. Six doesn’t know when it happens, but his eyes slide shut, and he falls asleep with his temple pressed against the glass, still tasting blood and smoke in the back of his mouth.
A new stranger is waiting for Miranda and Six when they reach the tarmac where their exfil is located.
Matej had left them next to a bus stop without warning, and Miranda had hauled Six through four different transfers in opposite directions before they finally settled into the back of a taxi to come here to the privately owned airport. He can appreciate the fact that she was conducting a personal security run to check for anyone following the two of them, but he is mostly annoyed by the pain and exhaustion weighing him down.
His foul mood only grows sour when he spots the white-haired older man waiting for them next to a small twin-engine plane parked on the runway. This man is one of them, Six assumes, based on the bespoke suit and the braced stance he takes on as he waits for them to approach. He looks prepared for bad news, and he’s looking at Six as if he is the root of all his troubles.
“Fitzroy,” Miranda calls out in greeting. She sounds agitated to Six, but the man, apparently named Fitzroy, looks unfazed.
She sulks past Six and holds out a closed fist to the older man. Fitzroy holds out an upturned palm. She drops a small golden chain into his hand that looks to be a plain piece of jewelry, but the old man closes his hand and slides it into his pocket before Six can examine the contents too closely.
He catches Six staring, and he smiles just a little. It softens the harsh lines of his face. He does not seem like the type of man accustomed to smiling, but Six can tell it isn’t fake. He’s truly happy to see Six.
“Hello, lad,” Fitzroy says. His British accent is posh. Six isn’t sure what to make of that, just like he isn’t sure how to reconcile the fact that he apparently works for the CIA with Dani Miranda and runs covert operations in Croatia, of all places.
“Uh,” Six says finally, wondering if there’s some code word he’s forgetting before settling with, “hey.”
Miranda and Fitzroy are staring at him. She looks almost pitying, nothing more than the subtle downturn of her mouth, but the old man is unreadable. His smile has eased back into a flat, impassive line. He must truly be working for the CIA if his poker face is that impressive, able to turn on a dime.
“Something on my face?” Six jokes weakly.
“A little blood,” Miranda muses. She isn’t laughing, so he reaches up and wipes his thumb against his cheek, self-consciously. He thought he had gotten it all in the bathroom earlier, but perhaps not. Her mouth twitches in a faint smirk.
“Lad,” Fitzroy says suddenly. His tone is serious, as grave as the expression etched into his aging face, and Six reluctantly stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “We have… much to catch up on. The after-action report can wait for now, but I will need to know everything you have done while on the ground here. Every single detail.”
“Sure,” Six mutters. “I’ll get right on that.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve been updated about your condition.” Fitzroy waves a hand dismissively. “We will catch up on everything. I can promise you that much.”
“Everything,” Miranda repeats. She huffs out a laugh, shaking out her short dark hair, but she won’t look Six in the eyes. He can see a crack in her expression, but he doesn’t remember her well enough to know how to properly decipher it. “You better keep your promise on that, Don. I think he’s late for his nightly phone call.”
An echoing pang of guilt lances through Six’s stomach. He is missing his daily phone call.
He braces for a wave of pain to crash through his temples, sweeping in with an echo of a memory, but there’s nothing. He just feels the gut-punching guilt, none of the memory of why it is so important to him to never miss one of those phone calls. Who does he talk to every night that matters enough to warrant a daily phone call? Who is this person to him, for whom the thought of missing it alone makes him feel sick to his stomach?
“Well,” Six says dryly. It’s a weak attempt to cover up his unease. “I’m not going to be much use to you while I’m sitting here blind. Let’s get going.”
Fitzroy turns to lead him up to the aircraft waiting for them, but Miranda doesn’t follow. She just watches, her face drawn low with passing emotion, as Six lets himself be led away. Every step he takes to the plane twists his gut with apprehension.
He isn’t sure whether he is anxious to leave Croatia or terrified of what awaits him at his next destination. He just feels sick.
On the plane, Fitzroy hands him a manila folder containing four sheets of paper.
“I had to write these out for you in a rush,” he explains to Six. His voice crackles through the static of their headsets, but Six is already thumbing open the folder to start reading. “The original documents were destroyed by your request. I apologize if I am missing anything, lad.”
It’s not as if Six knows well enough to correct him if he is missing any information, so Six merely acquiesces with a silent nod and stares down at the pages in his lap. The first page he opens is sparsely typed, extending no further than halfway down the document. At a glance, it's a dossier with basic answers written as bullet points.
Across the top in bold letters is a name: COURTLAND JAMES GENTRY.
He closes the folder and turns to vomit across the floor of the aircraft. All that comes up is bile.
Only his mother called him Courtland.
His name, for most of his life, by the worst person he has ever known, is simply Court.
His father’s hand is rough and unyielding. It pulls him by the back of his hair, those thickly calloused fingers yanking hard enough at the roots to blind him with pain. He’s scrambling along the carpet for any traction, wheezing through bubbles of blood and saliva dripping down his chin. His nose must be broken; the pain is so blinding, and he can barely breathe.
While he is still suffocating from the pain of the unexpected punch, his father drags him into the bathroom to a bathtub full of cold water. Court closes his eyes just as he is pushed face-down into the murky water.
He remembers the water, the panic-induced inflow flooding his lungs and filling his mouth, but he doesn’t remember the gunshot that killed James Gentry. He only knows that he committed that act because it condemns him in a single line on that paper.
Fitzroy is watching him, but Court simply stares down at the ink. He was fifteen years old. He doesn’t remember being fifteen, but he remembers that water. He remembers the sensation of resolution settling into the marrow of his being.
It was either killing, or being killed.
He doesn’t know whether he is relieved that he can’t remember the murder, or disappointed. Was his father fearful in those last moments? Did he ever feel a shred of that same panic that stifled Court’s lungs before he was finally put down?
The rest of the dossier is sparse, but he skims through it with distant interest.
His code name is Six because he comes from the highly controversial Sierra asset singleton program.
Donald Fitzroy is his handler in the CIA, and the same man presiding exclusively over the Sierra assets. He manages Court with a wide berth, giving enough space for Court to flourish without going full rogue. His training gives him enough knowledge to get out of grim circumstances. He can change tactics on the fly. He can kill as fast as he can run.
Court remembers this the longer he reads, then rereads. There are no details of his work printed here, but flashes of memory slip through his fingers in quick succession. He remembers feeling uncomfortable, slick with sweat and covered in dust, crouched in the dark, lying in wait for his target for hours. He can remember going hungry, going thirsty, going insane.
He flips to the next page in the folder, feeling sick again, and he goes preternaturally still.
Two bright-eyed young faces beam up at him from a Polaroid photo clipped to the corner. The film surface gleams in the sunlight, but Court cups his hand over the image and ducks his head low to study it carefully. At a first glance, the children look identical. Both of them are dirty blond with bright blue eyes and toothy grins. One of them has a pair of glasses hanging over his chin, and Court presses his fingertip to the tiny detail, wishing he could reach over and adjust them back over Ryland’s face.
Ryland.
He sucks in a deep breath and closes his eyes. He can feel his heart clogged in his throat, but there is barely any bile left for him to bring up anymore. He is wrenched apart. There is nothing else his body can give except the squeamish lurch of his gut.
Court hardly notices. His pulse is hammering in his temples with renewed vigor. How does he know that name? How does he know that boy with such abject clarity? How does he know the intimate exasperation of having to reach over and fuss with those glasses so they don’t break again?
When he opens his eyes again, he softens, studying the photo more closely now. Ryland in the photo is an inch taller than the other boy, his gangly limbs slung over a fence post. Both are posed in a spot that looks like it belongs on farmland, and the twin has a cowboy hat dangling from a loop around his neck. Their clothes are rumpled and streaked with dirt.
It’s the smiles that dismantle him. He just presses his fingers to the wide curve of their little smiles and stares at it. Those are unburdened smiles. He has never seen such unrestrained delight in his life.
The plane shudders briefly with turbulence. Court presses his palm to the photo to hide their faces and turns his gaze to the dossier listed alongside it. He feels strangely protective. He wants to destroy this file and any mention of their names, to cast them into obscurity, but he has no clue who the hell they even are.
What was it that Fitzroy had said? Hadn’t Court requested that the original files be destroyed?
He understands why. Simply reading this document tears him apart from his hip to his sternum, splaying him as wide open as neglected carrion. Their names are the knife that slices him open.
RYLAND J. GRACE & COLTON S. GRACE
The first page is about Court, but the remaining three pages are about the twins.
He memorizes it all and wishes he could remember it. He became their legal guardian two years ago, shortly after their mother passed away, and he can see her resemblance in the curve of their little noses and wry smiles. He does not remember her face, but there is a photo of her staring blankly at the camera for him to study. It’s nothing more than a shell-shocked moment stolen in time. A life shadowed by tragedy to be nothing more than a lone photograph in a classified dossier.
There is only one picture of his mother posing with the twins. They are much too young to do anything more than stare up at the camera, wide-eyed, as she tucks them into her sides with a shining grin. Her hair cascades over her shoulder in dirty-blonde waves, and one of the twins has their fingers tangled around a stray lock of her hair, holding onto her tightly with a pudgy little fist.
They were only eight when she died. He wonders what the hell he told them, if he ever did, about the circumstances of his childhood in comparison to them.
He doesn’t think he would feel very appreciative to have a much older and damaged brother emerge from nothingness and take custody of him. At the very least, it would be a poor substitute for the mother who once dried their tears and packed their school lunches.
How does Court care for them? How does he show them even an ounce of the love they deserve?
He can’t imagine it. Even as he reads through their pediatric health records, school reports, and affiliated interests and hobbies, he has no idea how to imagine them beyond the snapshot of their smiling faces in a Polaroid.
Does he call them by their names? Nicknames? Do they consider him an older brother, or do they see him as a father figure?
The thought alone makes him dizzy. He has forgotten his entire life, but nothing frightens him more than the thought of forgetting their lives, too. What is he returning to? What will he bring with him that could burden these two innocent kids?
What else is he forgetting that could explode in his face when he gets back to where he belongs?
Court can’t even imagine what he will walk into if he cannot get his memories back. He doesn’t think he could stomach watching those kids stare at him with disappointment when their legal guardian comes home with no memory of them. The only thing he carries with him to prove they even exist in his life is three pages chronicling their lives in short bullet points.
Fitzroy steals long, evaluating looks. Court can tell from the way his head shifts over to Court’s direction in his peripheral vision, but Court makes no effort to strike up a conversation.
He spends the flight staring at the pictures of his younger half-brothers and tries to imagine a life worth remembering, for their sakes.
He doesn’t remember anything.
Fitzroy lets him keep the folder. Court shoves it into a black canvas backpack that fits only a spare change of clothes and some modest toiletries. It feels impersonal, but it feels familiar. He is used to traveling as a blank face in a crowd, and he owns nothing more than what he can carry in this bag.
From the plane, they transfer to a sleek black town car. Court stares out of the window as the CIA handler makes calls beside him, and he mutely follows behind Fitzroy when they arrive at a nondescript office building an hour later.
It’s covert, but Court supposes that it must be. He isn’t supposed to be here, if the redacted file bearing his name is any indication. He’s a covert mission operator working in the gray. He is not welcome to step into a public hospital for treatment.
The single nurse that he meets does not speak much, but his soft accent is kind as he takes Court’s vitals and scribbles notes down on a chart. He prods the back of Court’s head and clicks his tongue in disappointment.
“Matted,” the nurse mutters. “Needs a wash.”
Court almost smiles. “I used a bathroom sink.”
“It did nothing to help,” he scolds. Court takes the chastisement with a nod. He tries to stifle his wince of pain at the movement. He is fortunate that the nurse is turned away from him, but he catches Fitzroy staring at him with a displeased frown.
“How long has it been, lad?” Fitzroy prompts.
“Since?” Court is too tired for this.
“Since your fall.”
Court picks at one of his cuticles with the tip of his thumbnail and resists the urge to fidget under the sudden scrutiny. More than anything, he wants to be spread out on the couch, a pillow tucked over his eyes to muffle the sounds of the twins playing video games at full volume.
He blinks. The twins often play video games in the living room, and he is there to keep them company.
Good to know.
He doesn’t think he can play any of the games they like, but knowing the twins have a specific hobby he is familiar with is enough for him to contend with at the moment. He thinks they like Minecraft. It has blocks in it, and the sound of their virtual axes splitting apart trees and striking stone is a soft echo in his ears.
Court hisses out a tense breath, spitting it between his grinding teeth, and buries his aching temples in his hands. It’s worth it to remember the way their little voices pitch up with excitement when they find gold or some other rare mineral in the game and want to show it off to Court.
They like him enough to want to impress him, he thinks. He hopes so at least.
He hopes he can impress them when he comes home with a broken head and so little left in him to share with them. It’s a pathetic offering, but he’s trying his best at the moment to keep from throwing up again, so he lets the nurse prod at the back of his skull without complaint.
Fitzroy just watches him as if he can peel back the flimsy layers of Court’s addled mind and inspect each one for damage.
Good, Court thinks a little defiantly. It borders closer to the line of petulance, but he does not care how petty he looks in the moment. He has a head full of empty spaces. Let Fitzroy see the damage.
If Court is the one forced to carry the consequences of the damage, then he should at least get the muted pleasure of watching someone else clean up the mess alongside him.
“Would you believe me,” Court says as casually as he can muster, “if I told you I don’t remember?”
The blank expression Fitzroy gives him, paired with the brief shake of the nurse’s head, tells him he does not come off nearly as casual as he intended.
The mess in question, which needs to be cleaned up, is officially referred to as retrograde amnesia.
Court gets wrung out, over and over, as he persists through the same series of tests and questionnaires. He feels like a butterfly pinned to a hobbyist’s cork board for inspection. The nurse looks grimmer by the minute, but the doctor is a stern-faced woman who shows no particular concern either way as she listens to his results.
The results are about what he expects: he doesn’t remember his past.
It is a case of temporally-graded amnesia, in which his recent memories are the most impacted, but he is slowly remembering more about his childhood. His clipped responses when the doctor asks about those memories do not phase her.
All he knows for certain is that his father beat and drowned him, over and over, just for the satisfaction of watching Court go more and more limp as time passed. It had been an exercise of utter control on his father’s part, and it was a cycle that Court had ended himself.
He is almost disappointed that he cannot remember the gunshot that finally took him down, but he certainly doesn’t tell the doctor about that. He would like to leave the facility entirely, not become intimately familiar with a room lined by white padded walls. It’s stifling enough to have to sit through a third round of MRI brain scans and listen to the rhythmic pounding of the machine around him. His skin itches with the desire to run and seek shelter from scrutiny, but he makes it through with only a few outward signs of sulking agitation.
Mostly, he just frowns deeply at the people who make brief eye contact with him.
“In this case,” Fitzroy says upon hearing the diagnosis, “I would like to hear what you suggest we can do to help Court regain his memories as quickly as possible.”
“I’m right here,” Court mumbles, even though he wholeheartedly agrees. He feels untethered from his own being. Empty in an all-consuming sense. He is missing too much to function as a human being, never mind attempting to function as the man known as Courtland Gentry, but he has the sinking feeling that it won’t be as easy as reading a handful of bullet points and just thinking about the place where past memories used to reside really hard.
“The greatest treatment is proper time for a complete recovery,” the doctor says.
At least she’s looking at Court when she says it. He is still slumped in defeat in one of the hard plastic chairs reserved for family members after his latest CAT scan. It’s closer to the door, which soothes his anxiety about being stuck in the same four walls for hours on end, and it doesn’t crinkle incessantly as the paper on the examination table does under his weight.
When the doctor speaks to him instead of to Fitzroy, it makes Court feel less like an unruly pet dragged in for a vet check-up. He likes that. He gives her his undivided attention as she talks in a gesture of his silent gratitude.
“There is cognitive rehabilitation therapy that uses drills to help recover some prior function, as well as occupational therapy to cope with any tasks you are struggling with in the future. Memory aids such as taking notes and photo albums may help as well.”
Court thinks about the Polaroid of his younger brothers’ bright faces and closes his eyes. Of course, it will take time. It is a lifetime’s worth of memories missing from his head.
He had just hoped, despite himself, that he could be normal by the time he saw them again.
When he opens his eyes, he finds the doctor staring at him. The severe impassivity on her face softens into understanding, but not pity. She’s giving him the space he needs to contend with his newfound diagnosis of being an absolute fuck up. He finds his own frown softening into neutral displeasure. She is only trying to help him. He does not intend to make her feel threatened by his own foul mood.
“Most importantly,” the doctor adds softly, “is the presence of a support system to help manage your symptoms. Do you have someone waiting for you at home?”
“He has support,” Fitzroy interrupts. “Thank you for your time, Doctor Lutomska.”
“Yeah, thank you, Doctor,” Court echoes. He doesn’t mention the fact that he has no fucking clue where his home is.
“There is one more thing I wanted to tell you, lad,” Fitzroy says, apropos of nothing.
The town car weaves through traffic with practiced ease. Court checks the side mirrors for signs of a tail, then realizes he’s doing it and averts his gaze to the floorboard at his feet. His mind goes on autopilot in the strangest of moments. Is part of his CIA training to always be this alert? Does he always feel like he is one minute away from being pinned down by gunfire and shot through the head?
The anxiety rankles him. Fitzroy’s voice makes it no better.
“Sure,” Court says. “There’s probably a hell of a lot more than that you need to mention. Am I right?”
“Not this,” Fitzroy gestures dismissively. “This is personal.”
“It’s all personal,” Court says without heat. He’s too tired to argue, but not tired enough to stop being a smart-ass. Maybe that’s simply his natural state of being. “It’s my memory.”
“Spot on,” he concedes. “This is quite something different than an operation in Panama, or something of the sort.”
Court raises a brow and shoots him a dubious look. “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“Panama?” Fitzroy tries. Court doesn’t laugh. In the wake of the flat joke, the older man sighs and jumps right into his explanation. Of course, as Court is quickly learning, Fitzroy is typically correct when he knows something will rattle Court’s nerves.
He wonders if it’s a side effect of working with him every day since he was a young inmate with nowhere else to turn.
Then he stops wondering about something as insignificant as their handler-and-asset relationship and focuses on the story Fitzroy weaves for him about a man on the run from the mob, who now apparently lives with Court and his brothers in their small house in West Virginia.
“Yeah,” Court admits when Fitzroy finally goes quiet. “You were right. That is something completely fucking different than Panama, and I don’t even remember that shit.”
“Small blessings,” Fitzroy says, and that does not sound like a joke at all.
The house is unassuming upon first glance.
Nothing more than the average suburban ranch-style that already crowds the tree-lined street. The neighborhood is sparsely populated, with some modest acreage spread between each home, but it’s not completely isolated from society, either. It is quiet without being eerily abandoned as a whole.
Most of the neighbors are elderly, he had noticed, or at least the ones who are likely to be at home during the early afternoon on a Wednesday are. The suspiciously tinted and armored SUV that Langely had loaned out for Court to be led home in garners plenty of stares. A retired couple, walking reluctantly with an obese beagle, slow and wave at the driver of the car as it passes, and Court watches their expressions morph from a pleasant greeting into concerned amusement.
He has the feeling that if he does live here, he probably doesn’t want these people seeing him step out of this SUV. It doesn’t do justice to a friendly neighbor reputation.
Is Court a good neighbor to have around? Does he get invited to any of their block parties and the summer cookouts? Maybe. He likes barbecues, he thinks, or he can at least remember the fond nostalgia of sitting in a backyard with the scent of roasting meat drifting through the air. It sounds like it would be nice.
Within the next minute, the SUV glides to a stop in front of one of the houses.
The house with his name on the deed looks like the others. White vinyl siding, a black shingle roof, some bushes lining the walkway up to the red front door. It’s cute, he supposes, and he can see that the lawn needs a fresh cut soon. Does he mow the lawn? Does this neighborhood have landscapers?
He’s never had to tend to a yard as a weekly chore in that way. It’s early May, and a speckling of dandelions cluster around the lawn in rough patches. Those are weeds, aren’t they? Should he be pulling those up and shoving them into those brown lawn bags?
Court feels utterly out of his element. This is painfully domestic. He can even make out a pair of bikes leaning against the garage, but otherwise there are no signs of life.
He’s too far to make an accurate guess, but he assumes those are the kids’ bikes. Both of them are red, but it appears that the handlebars on one of them are bent out of perfect symmetry. He wonders which twin crashed their bike and bent the frame in that way.
He wonders if it was bad enough to hurt them, and then he stops wondering about it because he feels sick just speculating over it.
“Here we are, sir,” the driver finally prompts.
The house and its bright red door look completely foreign to him. He doesn’t argue with the driver, but he does feel his heart rate spike when their eyes meet in the rearview mirror, and a pair of brown eyes meet his. Those eyes should be blue.
Why would they be blue, Gentry?
Court sighs and pushes open the car door. He hopes none of the neighbors are standing around to notice him climbing out. His hopes are dashed the instant he shuffles out and hears his name called out across the lawn. His head shoots up, eyeing the neighboring yards, but there is no one there staring him down.
His eyes turn back to the house. Anxiety curdles in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t even feel half as nervous back when he was being shot at in Croatia, and yet the sight of that red door and neat lawn makes him want to curl into himself and hide.
What the hell is your problem, Gentry?
Defiantly, he slams the door shut and makes his way down the driveway with quick, relentless steps. He isn’t going to be scared of a house in suburbia. He has been shot at, chased, and lost all of his memories with no guarantee of when they would return. This is the least frightening obstacle he has encountered in the past four days, as far as he can remember.
He’s got this. He works for the fucking CIA, after all. There is nothing in this house that he cannot handle.
He lifts his head from the walkway to the door, his target, and comes to an abrupt halt.
Casey Daley is waiting for him on the threshold of the open door, standing stiffly.
With a sweeping look, Court takes him all in. He’s just a few inches taller than Court, but his body is leaner, with more muscle tone than brute strength. He’s wearing a loose button-down jean shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing his oil-smudged arms. He must have been working on a car, Court assumes, and he feels a pang of longing. He used to tinker with an old '88 Chevy when he was younger, and it was one of the few times his father did not hurt him while teaching him something.
He’s getting really fucking tired of remembering his father, so he focuses on Casey again.
His eyes are bright blue, and that sends a different sort of pang through his lower gut. His gaze is sharp, knowing, as it prickles down the length of Court’s body. He feels that stare like a lingering touch, stroking over his skin with slow patience. He doesn’t shift from his spot in blocking the doorway, but he stares as if he wants to draw closer and signal Court to retreat back to the street where he came from.
Court initially assumes that Casey must feel irritated by the tardiness of Court’s sulking to the front door based on that unyielding stance alone. He was told that this man had been warned of his impending arrival, which was scheduled for sometime between now and the next hour. Being slow walking up to the front door is a poor sign of good faith, surely.
Until Court draws closer, and he finds that Casey’s eyes are reddened from crying and his mouth is twisted into a despairing grimace.
He simply stares as Court shuffles his way up the walkway. The silence prickles along the back of Court’s neck. It’s frightening in its depth. He wants to bridge this strange abyss sprawling between them, but he has no fucking clue what he is doing. He doesn’t know who this man is, other than that they live together under witness protection and share custody of the twins.
They are co-guardians for the boys; this much he knows for certain. He decides that perhaps an apology may be in order. It’s best to keep up a good impression with the man who has been taking care of the boys since Court has been wandering Europe with a brain injury.
How is he supposed to approach a man he apparently trusts so intimately, enough to live with him in witness protection?
“Uh,” Court says, stuttering a little. “Hey, man.”
Way to fuck that up immediately, Gentry.