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Six hauls Claire through four shipping ports, fourteen trains, three busses, and twenty-one cups of coffee before his body gives out.
Luckily, they make it to one of his personal safe houses and he manages to do one good check for bugs before he collapses. Claire staring at him with wide eyes is the last thing he sees before he’s out like a light.
The next time he wakes up it’s dark outside.
His head throbs like it’s being stabbed. His actual stab wounds burn, and pull taut beneath the skin. He feels like a basted turkey left in the oven several days too long.
With a low groan that gets caught somewhere in his chest, Six starts to roll off the couch before a cool hand stops him, pressed firm but gentle to his forehead, thumb brushing just beneath his brow, coaxing his eyes open. A familiar face ducks into his field of vision before exhausted instincts can even begin to protect against such sudden touch- Claire.
Pale, but dark eyes determined, she looks… okay. She’d washed the grime of travel off her face. She’s glaring at him.
“Don’t get up. Drink this.”
He means to say it’s time for a perimeter check, or how long was I out? or sorry, kid. for getting you into this mess. for Fitz. for everythi- but what really comes out is a grunt that sounds more like a wheeze and he closes his eyes against the dim orange light from the kitchen, counting to five. On five he’ll force his aching body up, he’ll do a perimeter check. He’ll double-check the light fixtures for bugs, also the outlets, and make sure there’s power to the fridge, and check the pipes. And-
“Don’t you dare, Six. You’re- you’re really hurt.”
He loses count, fumbling. When he opens his eyes again the girl looks… well, like she’s trying really hard not to be scared. She looks like she had back in that maze- face set into something grave, but dark eyes a transparent reflection of how unnerved she truly is. Six will have to give her some lessons on fixing up a good poker face. Helpful stuff, really. But… he’ll whip out the textbook version and not… not the way he learned. Of course.
Fitz and his people had turned him into something other. Blank. An asset. A dog. A monster in the shadows. His face was not his own, molded into something a handler could turn in any direction and say “bite”, and he would.
Claire was- Claire- was. . . talking to him.
She snapped her fingers in front of his nose again, the fingers of her other hand brushing from his forehead into his sweaty bangs, pushing his hair back from where it’d been tangled in his lashes.
He’ll need to cut it soon. Not good to stand out. Not regulation.
“Yeah… you’re not awake yet,” she sounds nervous. “Six?”
“Mn- ya’kid?”
“You’ve been asleep for a long time, you have a fever.”
“Mm. Sorry,” he shifts up to sitting and it takes everything in him not to puke the second he gets vertical.
Jesus Christ.
The concussion and overlap of sedative drugs cycling through his system from the field ops and the hospital, and the severe blood loss and wounds and the days of nothing but train station coffee makes itself known all at once by squeezing his stomach in a vice grip, muscles protesting every minute shift on this old goddamn leather couch.
A bottle of water is thrust beneath his nose and he takes it gratefully, ignoring the shake of his hands as he peels it open and sips begrudgingly, pacing himself instinctually as he peels his eyes open and scans the room.
It’s bare for the most part: exactly how he left it. Blank, nicotine-stained walls tacked with yellow wallpaper. A small crucifix nailed above the rusted radiator. Wooden coffee table. A TV in the corner which looked like it belonged to a geriatric stuck in the 70s. The rug is a tangled inch-thick eggplant purple shag beneath Claire’s socked feet.
The teen’s face is washed out by the dull orange glow of the kitchen light.
Six knows there’s only one light- a bare bulb dangling above the oven. He knows the oven doesn’t work. He knows the windows are welded shut and have a subtle reflective barrier so that it’s impossible to see inside. He knows nobody has info about this safe house- including Fitz himself. A failsafe granted to Six alone. A gift. One of several.
He knows that this lack of intel is no longer a guarantee.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep. He doesn’t know who might be tracking them, (when he has his wits about him, he might count who isn’t tracking them. That list is likely shorter). He doesn’t know why he still feels like such dogshit.
Within seconds every rambling thought spirals into a singular, sharp aperçu: Fuck Lloyd Hansen.
Claire taps the base of the waterbottle and he realizes he’d frozen with the bottle at his bottom lip as he considers their current position and their next steps and how fucking ugly Lloyd’s mustache had been. Truly, his death was a boon to the world.
“All of it, okay? And then you sleep more.”
“No,” Six grumbles, already psyching himself up for another attempt to stand. “Need to check the apartment again. Then we need to head out.”
Claire laughs in his face, “drink that. And do not stand up. I’ll be right back.”
“Bossy,” Six grumbles. And it shows how tired he really is, that his tongue is slipping around a handl- Not a handler.
He blinks.
Shit. Somewhere in his scrambled head he’d placed Claire on the hierarchy next to Fitz and his people. She’s…. the principal. The HVI. She’s the scared kid he’s spent years protecting from Fitz’s laundry list of enemies. She’s the closest thing he has to family. And she’s in danger. Because of him.
He heaves himself up just as Claire turns the corner of the kitchen and sighs, frustrated, through her nose. She grabs his elbows and forces him back down onto the couch.
He’s too confused to fight back (or maybe too shaky, too exhausted. His wounds burn.)
“Six,” Claire says it like he’s five, like he’s a little kid who barely understands enough English to follow along. He knows ten languages, thank you very much- “and that’s very impressive,” Claire says, rolling her eyes. He’d said that out loud? “But I need you cognizant if you’re going to get us out of this mess, yeah? You’ve got a fever. Your brain is literally cooking in there,” she flicks his forehead and he glares, “you need to rest.”
“. . . Perimeter check first.”
“God you’re stubborn,” Claire snaps, and lets go of his arms long enough to shove a granola bar into his hands. “Eat that, finish your water.”
“Yes ma’am,” Six mumbles, peaking at the door while he obeys, peeling the wrapper and trying not to choke on dry granola and berries, trying not to make it obvious that he can’t really see the locks from here and it’s kind of freaking him out, on some numb level.
Claire looks from him to the door and sighs again, in that full body way only teenagers can do, and stomps over to the door, poking the heavy bar locks with her finger, rattling the doorknob. “See? Locked up tight.”
It… does make him feel a little better.
“Check the windows and… and the lights. Check for wires. C’n be as small as a rice kernel.”
Claire is looking at him like he’s telling her to go crawl around for rats in the attic. “O…kaaay. Fine, but you sleep.”
Oh. Right.
What is he thinking? She doesn’t know what she’s looking for. She hasn’t spent the better part of two decades combing every inch of a space she’s in for longer than twenty minutes for taps. She hasn’t had to worry about snipers and bombs and traps the same way he has, easy as tying first the left shoe and then the right. Easy as breathing.
“Six I said no- Christ.”
Six can hear her grumbling curses to herself with increasing fervor as he stumbles his way through the apartment, breathing shallowly against bruised ribs as filmy eyes take in every inch of the space, as he runs shaky fingers over dusty appliances and lamp shades and shadowed corners.
Claire has had it by the time he rustles through a junk-drawer in the kitchen for a loose grosz to unscrew the electrical sockets, in an attempt to manually check for the source of his paranoia behind their plastic casings. (Easy as breathing.)
Claire slaps the coin out of his hand and pushes him bodily past the couch and into the bedroom.
“I will sit on you,” she threatens, but her voice is shaky, “you- you’re not okay, Six. You haven’t slept in days! And who even knows how you got away to begin with, but I know you didn’t get good medical attention, and I’m really worried about infection, and this fever. You don’t ever listen and I’m fucking- I’m mad at you!”
Six stares at her, wide-eyed where he sits on the edge of the bed, boots planted firmly on the ground. “I… did get medical attention.”
“I know they didn’t afford you the hippocratic fucking oath, Six,” Claire snaps, gesturing widely at his wrists, where his hands are held loose across his lap. They’re bruised to hell, pretty obviously layered with all the recent bindings he’d been subjected to. Some bruises fresher than others. He doesn’t even try to argue with her. She’d watched him get hauled away in zip-ties and medical restraints, even half-dead.
Claire is a smart girl. She understood enough about what being an asset meant. She grew up with agents crawling around her home but more importantly: she grew up seeing the way they treated Sierra. Fitz made certain there was a clear boundary, that she understood that Six was other. There’s no use lying.
He shrugs.
Claire looks ready to pull her hair out.
“Lay down. Under the covers.”
He hesitates.
“Wait,” Claire crosses her arms, “first take your boots off.”
That, Six will not do. If they need to run in a pinch he’d rather not be barefoot. Sock footed. Whatever.
“Six c’mon, work with me, anybody in there?” Claire waves her hand in front of his face and he gently pats it away, trying for a smile, “my feet are cold.”
Claire glares at him, but concedes, probably understanding his hesitation to get comfortable in any capacity. Smart girl.
“Fine. But lay down and try to sleep. Actually sleep, not just pass out for another sixteen hours.”
That makes his heart jump. “Sixteen hours? I was asleep for sixteen hours?”
“Comatose, more like,” Claire grumbles, uncrossing her arms to push at his shoulders where they’ve tensed up. He grabs her wrists. They’re cold beneath his calloused palms. She… is probably iron deficient. She should eat. With her heart condition he needs to be extremely vigilant about taking care of things like this. She can’t go on for days like he can. He’s already fucked this up so bad. Days of train station junk food and coffee stand muffins and zero rest with her heart must be putting strain on her pacemaker- and she can’t be losing sleep like he can- she needs- she-
“For the love of Jesus, Six- breathe and lay your ass down!” Claire sounds so much like Fitz in that split second of annoyance that it shocks him out of his panic about sixteen hours and several days of neglect of this girl, and he blinks up at her through hazy eyes, breathing hard, “I’m- sorry.”
Several moments of silence buzz between them.
Claire’s hands remain a heavy presence against his shoulders, pressing into one of the inflamed stab wounds beneath his AC joint, as her glare softens.
“You dumbass. You’ve saved me more times than I can count just this month. I can’t even imagine how many times you’ve put yourself in the line of fire for me since we first met. Maybe even before then.”
He opens his mouth and she slaps her hand over it, “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to feel even more guilty about this.”
A crease forms between Six’s eyebrows but he obeys, staying silent while Claire works up the next few words, obviously frustrated. “I’m sorry, Six. I’m sorry for everything my uncle put you through, that you can’t even fucking relax for five minutes in a room that’s locked tighter than a bank vault. I’m sorry that you had to save me again even after being beat nearly to death. And I’m sorry that I’ve been so useless this whole time. I’m sorry that we probably won’t get out of this one alive. I’m- I’m really sorry.”
Six-
Six wants to protest. There’s so much wrong with what she’s just said. So much he wants to defend. He wants to defend Fitz, but he also wants to defend Claire from her obvious self-flagellation about everything happening. He wants to tell her that she’s right, that it is all Fitz’s fault for getting her into this mess. Soft-hearted old fool that he was.
Six wants to tell her that none of this is in her control, and she shouldn’t feel guilty for any of it, least of all the Sierra’s failures.
He wants to promise her that they’ll get out of this. He wants to promise her that they’ll survive.
But she’s not crying, her face is set into a grave, sober expression as she glares down at him, her dark brown eyes intelligent and scared and pleading.
Claire is a smart girl. There’s no use lying.
He gently removes her hands from his shoulders, and with his thumbs pressed to her fluttering pulse points and with sticky eyelids falling heavy he says, “I’ll sleep. You sleep too.”
Claire shakes her head, dark hair falling over her eyes as she smiles, small and sad, “I’ll keep watch. It’s Thursday, yunno?”
Six shoots her a droll look and she laughs, choked. She tugs her hands out of his loose grip and wipes at her eyes. Ah, here are the tears.
Six is laying on top of the covers, and he has no intention of getting beneath them, but he shuffles to the far end of the bed and raises the blanket for her, offering.
She shakes her head and sniffles out a laugh but then climbs beneath the threadbare blanket and lets him curl up next to her, lets him wrap a hand around her wrist and feel the thump thump thump of the tiny heart that has been the center of his life for so long- the objective. Keep Claire’s rabbit-heart beating. Keep Claire safe.
His handlers have become his executioners. Like a working dog that needs to be put down once its instincts become too frazzled and old to be useful.
I mean at least tell me you guys had some kind of exit strategy.
It’s not a lie, when he says the next words. It’s something he’s never been allowed, it’s something he’s never honestly admitted to himself for burying so deep beneath his own ribs, no one can reach it. Not with any amount of beating or burning or sharpened blades.
We never made it that far, kid.
It’s a hope.
And now, probably not.
He presses his lips to the crown of her head, brows creasing as he closes his eyes against the guilt crashing around them in this dingy old safe house, this last gift from that soft-hearted old man.
“We’re going to be okay.”