Archive of Our Own

Four months, sixteen days, and seventeen-or-so hours after his escape from high-security found them in Nepal. Non-extradition and palm trees. And yeah, it was nice. He’d gotten them to Lalitpur, ranked high in Nepal’s most popular cities, where they could probably stay for a few weeks without being noticed. With the tourist traffic, maybe even a month. It was important that they were careful; four months, sixteen days, and seventeen-or-so hours wasn’t nearly enough time for Brewer to get tired of chasing him. He was used to playing the long game, staying on the move, sacrificing the now for a better chance at the later. 

He wouldn’t say that Claire wasn’t used to this either, in a less extreme form. She’d moved around a lot with Fitz, and she was a tough kid with a personality that made him forget, sometimes, how young she was. She kept up with him better than he’d anticipated, and he wasn’t sure if he was glad for that, or concerned. Was pretty sure his concept of normal was too warped at this point to get a clear read on the situation, anyway. So he tried not to worry about her too much and instead focused on all the other things that were his responsibility to worry about, like if they were being tracked, if they pinged on anyone’s radar, where they were going next, the fastest route out of the city, the nearest vantage points that could be used against them, anything that might be hiding in the shadows, and so on; an infinite glitch of danger. That was just his life. 

Everything taken into account, it wasn’t much harder to adjust so that Claire fit into the strategy. 

“Hey, can we go to that place on the corner again? I've been craving their dal bhat.” 

Two alleyways on either side of them; one an escape route, the other hiding two potential threats. Or just tourists. 

“‘Sure, Claire, I would love to take you for dal bhat. Me personally, I'm partial to the fried momo, but maybe we can split the appetizers.'" 

Six glanced at her and raised his eyebrow almost imperceptibly. 

“Maybe we can get takeout,” he said. 

“Takeout.” The corners of her mouth pulled back as she nodded. “By that you mean out of the country, don't you?” 

“Dal bhat for the road,” He confirmed, scanning the street to the left and behind them. Five moving vehicles, seven more parked along the street, four of which could act as cover from any of the many windows along the tall stone buildings. Those he scanned every thirty-ish seconds, but as usual, there was nothing to see. 

“I'll miss Mrs. Clark.”

The apartment next to theirs, on the right. Sixty-two year old woman, widowed, smoked a lot, just as sharp as Claire. Most likely not a threat, unless he counted the times they ganged up on him. 

He said, “She'll probably be on her way back to England soon enough.” 

“Hey, we could--” 

“Nope.” He shook his head and scanned the alleyways again.

“You're no fun.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

Snapping a bubble between his teeth, he checked the windows next. One had opened and he could hear voices from the room beyond; conversational and not concerning. He checked the street, noticed two new cars that-- 

A sudden, deafening pop exploded out of the low hum of traffic and Claire hit the ground so fast that the animal part of Six's brain was sure she'd been shot. But her arms were hugging her head in a way she couldn't if she was dead, and Six was doing a full, rapid scan of everything -- the alleys, the street, the buildings, the sky, her -- and detected no threats. But he did see what had happened. 

“Claire.” 

Her breathing was loud and her eyes were squeezed shut so tight her nose wrinkled.

“Claire.” He reached for her shoulder, pausing when she curled tighter and made a wheezing sound.  

They were hidden between a van and a brick building. No one was coming down either side of the walkway. Six stepped in to lean slightly over her, a final wall of protection. 

“Claire,” he said steadily. “A car backfired. That's all." 

The start of a sob got caught in her throat. It sounded like it hurt. 

He glanced at the street again, and then at her shaking hands held over her head. Her forehead was almost skimming the stone. 

“We gotta go.” He took her arm gently, and the touch automatically pushed her into motion. Like his touch meant the presence of danger; a danger she'd gotten so used to escaping that it forced her out of her helpless panic. 

She scrambled up, head bumping into his hip before he hauled her the rest of the way. Keeping his hold on her upper arm, he let her hunker into his side as they walked the last two blocks to their apartment. She moved fast, because she'd been forced to learn how. How to keep her head down, how to keep her feet under her while he maneuvered her faster than she could keep up. She could do this because she'd been forced to learn how. 

But this time he walked only as fast as he knew she could, and he kept his grip on her arm light until they made it to the apartment building and she stumbled on the stairs. Then his hand tightened just enough, and she grabbed his belt. He unlocked the door and did a visual sweep of their apartment before shutting the door with his heel. He didn't lock it. Instead, he gently pried himself out of Claire's grip. Her hands were shaking, and he allowed himself the small gesture of squeezing them briefly before stepping out of her reach. When he'd checked the two bedrooms, the bath, and the closet, he re-emerged to find her standing in the center of the living area, expression pinched, looking around the room. 

Her breathing was still elevated. Six watched her. 

“Claire.” 

It took her a minute to look at him. Her expression was questioning. He felt something like a tic beneath the hard surface of all his training. 

“How's your chest?”

They could make it to the nearest hospital in thirty-five minutes. They could make it to a below-board clinic in less than ten. Six was already feeling the twitch of energy hum through him, ready to grab her and bolt if her pacemaker had another malfunction, when Claire furrowed her eyebrows at him. 

“Fine,” She croaked. “It's fine.” 

Okay. This was just your run-of-the-mill PTSD, then. 

Six pushed any feelings he had about that deep below the hard surface that was meant to keep them in check. 

“Sit down,” he told her, nodding to the island in the kitchen. 

He secured the exit -- their front door -- checked the window, then leaned back against the counter across from her. 

He watched her take a few deep breaths with some effort. Then she looked up at him. 

“Was it really just a car?” 

A hair-thin crack formed in the wall of his training. 

“Yeah.” 

Her face did something complicated, mouth opening but eyes screwing up. Then it all closed off shutter-fast. 

“Well don't I feel stupid,” she said sardonically, pressing fingertips to her eyelids and scrubbing them. 

“Don't say that. Hey. Look at me.” 

She opened her eyes, met his through steepled fingers. 

“You're not stupid.” 

“... Maybe not. But, I mean… way to overreact, am I right.” 

He glanced away with a small shake of his head. 

 “Would it have been an overreaction if someone had been shooting at you?” 

“But no one was, it was a car.” She flicked her hand away from her face, palm up. 

“But that's not what you thought.” 

In a rare display, she said nothing. Just looked at him with big, desperate eyes before glancing away to stare blankly at the toaster. 

“Claire,” he murmured, drawing her back to him. “You were just reacting to what you thought you knew. That's all.”

Her forearm thudded softly onto the table. She stared after it, bottom lip pinned between her teeth. 

“Hey, you want some ice cream,” he asked, already turning to open the fridge, because her eyebrows had knotted up tight enough that those little wrinkles formed between them, and he hated seeing her upset like this. 

When he turned back around, she was smiling sadly. He took a deep breath through his nose and sat a quart of chocolate in front of her. 

Looking down at it she said, “You're just like Fitz.” 

He tilted his head like he was bracing himself, lips parting in a frown. Trying to hide the way he was thinking about Fitz and how the version of him Claire had gotten was the kind of man Six might not mind being, he turned and opened a drawer. 

“Get two spoons.”

He shot her a reluctant look, but passed one over and kept the other. She held hers up expectantly, elbows shifting across the table. He sighed and clinked the utensils together. 

Claire pushed ice cream around into little crescent scoops in the carton, more playing with it than eating it. She waited until he had just taken a bite to say, 

“He didn't know how to deal with this kind of thing, either. Nightmares, or… bad Thursdays. So he'd give me ice cream and try to distract me.” She shrugged. “Guess it kind of worked.” 

Six really wished Fitz was here right now. He wished that more often than he should. 

“It's not ‘dealing.’” 

“Huh?” 

“You.” He swallowed. “This. We're not ‘dealing’ with you. Makes it sound like a bad thing.” 

She watched him, eyes rounded and expression open, but thinking. What, he couldn’t tell. In a lot of ways, Claire was hard for him to read, and even harder to navigate. That was fine; she was good at picking up his social slack. 

But this time she just gave a weak, soft, “Okay.”

Claire was strong. She was tough, and wise for her age, and smart. But she was also just a kid. She had been through too much, and all she had left was Six. He had this sinking feeling that he was already failing her. 

“We’ll order in,” he said, licking ice cream off his spoon and then moving to toss it in the sink -- stopping himself and setting it down silently instead. 

“Still for the road?” she asked skeptically. 

“Yeah. We’ve been here long enough.”

This she accepted with forced resignation. She knew they had to keep moving to stay safe. At the beginning, he'd offered to take her somewhere she could stay, somewhere it would take a long time to find, where she could go to school and make friends and live as normal a life as possible. 

“But… you wouldn’t stay?” she’d asked like she already knew. 

And, no, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t, he’d told her. He would always have to keep moving. Even if things had gone differently with Brewer and Lloyd, there was no retirement plan for him. It was keep moving, and then eventually die. 

“Then I don’t want to,” she’d decided, and all he'd heard was her by the fountain, begging him to come with her as she realized he was all she had left.

He had failed her even before now. 

But she got angry any time he brought it up again, them separating; any time he tried to convince her -- half-heartedly, because she was steadfast about what she wanted and what she believed -- to let him find somewhere safe for her. To get away from him before his life ruined hers any more than it already had. And every time, she fought with him like she thought he was an idiot. 

He was worried that she was just afraid of being alone. 

But he stopped asking if she would be happier without him and just started adjusting his plan to fit her into it. Staying in places longer, finding locations near hospitals and schools, finding apartments or houses with two bedrooms. All predictable things. All things anyone trying to find them would be looking for. But Claire didn’t want him to leave her, so he wouldn’t leave her. He couldn’t do that, after everything she’d lost. It just meant he had to keep her alive. 

And she knew this. She knew he made exceptions for her, and she also knew that every time he put his foot down, it was for her own safety. 

So, even when she probably wanted to argue with him, she just asked, “Where to next, robot?”

He sighed, but it didn’t feel as heavy as it could have. 

“Systems processing,” he replied, crossing his arms and watching out the window.

“Open to input?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m tired of sweating.” 

He looked back at her and smirked. 

“You want somewhere your ice cream won’t melt?” 

“Maybe.” She grinned slyly. 

He nodded. “Input received.”

They ordered in. Dal bhat and fried momo, because Six was actually partial to the fried momo. And they split the appetizers. He had a thought, brief and entirely foreign, that he probably should have made her wait on the ice cream until she ate an actual dinner, because that was something you were supposed to do with normal kids, he was pretty sure. 

But normal kids didn't hear a car backfire and think it was a gunshot. Normal kids didn't have experience hitting the ground so the bullets didn't hit them. 

Besides, Six was no parent, and Claire didn't have to listen to him about that sort of stuff. When he told her not to leave the house alone, or give her secure phone number to anyone else, or to go hide because he thought he'd heard the door open, or to get behind him and stay low, then she had to listen. But not about stuff like ice cream, or how late she stayed up, or what kind of music she listened to. 

As she liked to tell him, “I make better decisions than you, anyway.” 

He couldn't give her normal. So he could give her ice cream before dinner. And when he told her she should go to bed, it was a suggestion, not an order. 

She was watching TV, and he'd just walked the perimeter again. Claire wanted to go somewhere cold; he'd be content if wherever they lived next had cameras. 

“I think I'm finally starting to pick up the gist of what they're saying.” She nodded to the show -- some reality thing. 

He said nothing. 

“How many languages can you speak?” 

He watched her twist around on the couch, tugging the blanket wrapped around her legs to look at him expectantly, and with a note of tolerance for his conversational abilities. 

“Two,” he said. “And some change. Bed?” 

“Which one?” 

“Probably yours. It's a little late to swap rooms, don't you think?”

She blinked at him. 

“I already put up my James Bond poster--”

“You're so not funny,” she grinned. He gave her a small smile and glanced at the ground. 

“German. A little French. And English.” 

“No, really?” 

He raised an eyebrow at her sarcasm. 

“Say something in German.” 

“.... Es ist Zeit, ins Bett zu gehen.”

She scoffed, entirely too impressed. “Will you teach me?” 

“I'm not a good teacher.” 

Another scoff, this time with a roll of her eyes as she heaved herself up. She wrangled out of the blanket and then folded it as an afterthought. 

“You're not a lot of things, aren't you?” 

“Brush your teeth.” 

“How do you say that?” She was backing down the hallway. 

“Putz dir die Zähne.” 

“Putz dir die…” 

“Zähne.” He bared his teeth with a click.

“Right,” she nodded, and she wasn't looking at him like her heart was about to give out, so he took it as a win. 

He heard her muttering “Purtz dir die Zähne” on the way to her room, then listened for the sound of the bathroom door latching shut. When the sink started running, he slipped a piece of gum out of his pocket and pulled the curtain aside with a finger. The apartment only had one window facing the street. There were seven cars parked along the curb, all the usuals, belonging to each apartment number. He had a car parked three blocks away in a storage unit. They would ditch it on the way to the next location and trade it for a new one. 

While she was in the bathroom, he checked her room briefly. Her records were spread across the floor, but her clothes were still packed in a duffle bag. He lingered on the sight a moment longer than necessary, and with a level of guilt that probably should have been beaten out of him at some point in his life. 

He cleared his room, next. The bed was made -- Claire had been insistent that he put sheets on it -- but that was the only sign it was being occupied. And, realistically, it wasn't; he slept on the couch most nights. 

That was where he'd taken up post by the time Claire came out of the bathroom. He glanced over his shoulder as she slipped into the kitchen to put the leftovers away. The fridge shut with a faint thump, but there were no retreating footsteps. She was hovering. 

“Are you going to bed?” she asked. 

“In a bit.” 

“Okay…” 

He turned around, smiled at her; tried to make it reassuring. 

“Good night, Claire.” 

She was back to looking worried, to looking slightly sick. But for a moment, it all disappeared as she smiled back at him. Only for a moment. 

“Night,” she whispered.

He turned his smile towards the ground, then listened for the sound of a record starting before opening his laptop. He'd gotten it second hand, paid with cash, and would throw it in the first substantial body of water they passed on their way out of the city. It was as secure as he could make it, which was admittedly a level of security he wasn't happy with. 

He relied on paper maps. Some of them were outdated by several years, but it worked. He spread them out across the coffee table, tapped at the keyboard, and worked gum against his tongue. 

He knew a guy in India who might be willing to fly them out of the country. They could head North, into non-ice-cream-melting territory. He lingered on Germany, traced Norway up to where it met Russia, blew a bubble. 

They had fake passports that would last a little while longer, and he had a contact in the U.K. who could make them new ones. It could work…

The bubble popped. He scraped a layer of gum off his lip with his teeth, then got to work planning routes, assessing risks, identifying all possible obstacles. He'd have to make a few calls, but those he'd do in another city, so if the call was traced, it gave them a little extra time. He'd check the car over, and as long as his contact in India worked out, they would leave within twenty-four hours of those calls, which further lessened the chances of them being traced and found. 

He'd chewed his gum into something stale -- the mint ones were always like this; it was why he preferred classic bubble gum -- so he added another stick and wrote a few notes in shorthand on a takeout napkin. After an hour, he spit the gum onto the ink-covered napkin and leaned back into the couch, hands braced on the back of his head. 

He felt tired (He always felt tired). Probably wasn't sleeping enough (Probably never slept enough). He'd had eighteen years to become tired. Claire had told him something about how you never get back all the sleep you lose. It probably wasn’t looking good for him, playing eighteen years of catch-up.

Six exhaled and closed his eyes. Even that felt like too big a risk, like the second he let himself relax, danger would storm the building. 

Claire might be the one who flinched at nonexistent gunfire, but Six was the one not sleeping because of invisible guns.

He found himself thinking of Fitz again; wondering if he'd been the glue that held this whole thing together. The Sierra program. The concept of a family. 

Something in his chest started to ache like stuck shrapnel. It was probably the sleep deprivation. There was a reason it was used in torture; eventually your body started to feel like it was trying to eat itself. An ouroboros. A rock you had to push up a hill. Six rubbed his closed eyes and dragged both palms down his face. He scooted down the couch a little and propped his legs on the coffee table, crossed at the ankles. He still had his shoes on, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked around the apartment with them off. 

Because this isn’t an apartment, it’s a safehouse. 

Yeah, that wasn’t really helping his sleeping problem. 

So he tilted his head back into the stiff cushion and forced his eyes to stay closed. He would just listen -- he could still hear, even after all the gunfire and explosions and hits to the head. He’d listen for danger. With all the blind spots in this apartment, it would probably be more effective. Then he could rest his eyes for a few minutes. Get back to work for a few hours more. 

At the sound of a door creaking his eyes flew open, and he’d already disengaged the safety on his gun when he turned and saw Claire. The single light above the kitchen sink fell into her bedroom through a ribbon crack in the door. She was in her pajamas, and her hair was a mess, and the expression on her face was empty around the edges, but ragged when she stepped out of the shadows and he could look at her better. 

He re-engaged the safety and slipped the gun into his waistband before she could notice it. And then he waited. 

“You said you were going to sleep.” She sounded disoriented. 

“Yeah. In a bit.”

She blinked. “It’s one in the morning.”

“... Is it?”

Claire hummed vacantly. 

“You feeling okay?”

She didn’t answer. He scanned her, and he’d just started to sit up when she came around the couch, stepped over his legs, and sat down on his left side. 

He could be patient, so he was patient. Her eyes wandered over the table, the map pinned under his shoes, the still-open laptop. And then she leaned back with a heavy exhale. 

“My chest feels weird. But not in a pacemaker way--”

Six, who had nearly gotten up again, reluctantly leaned back. 

“It’s just… I don’t know. My chest feels hollow. Like a pumpkin when you scoop all the guts out.”

He stayed still, hands folded in front of him, trying to assess the situation; feeling uniquely out of his depth. 

“That probably sounds really dumb.”

This kept coming up. He tilted his head half an inch and said, “You gotta stop that.”

She looked over at him.

“Don’t ever feel stupid for being afraid.”

“... Do you ever feel afraid?”

He raised his eyebrows blankly and thought of his father. 

“All the time.”

A little furrow had returned to her forehead. The contemplative one, not the panicked one this time. The one that meant she had about a dozen questions locked and loaded. 

“But… how do you always seem so… not?”

It took a few measured breaths before he could respond. When he did, it was faintly. 

“I don’t think I’m the one you wanna be taking advice from.”

Claire gestured to the empty room. The corners of his mouth pulled into a grimace of acknowledgement.

“Seriously. You never seem even slightly phased by anything. I mean… you hardly even react.”

She called him a robot, sometimes, and she didn’t mean anything by it, but that felt closer to the truth of him than she realized. Six didn’t want her to know the truth. It was ugly, and awful, and in it he played both the victim and the monster, and he hated being either of those things. Would rather she think of him as a robot, because she said it fondly, now, or with that childish annoyance -- only ever over silly things, never the ones that counted. 

And violence was a blood-related thing. Not always the same, but adjacent. Every time he threw a punch, every time he wielded a weapon, he was afraid it made him like his father. He didn’t even want to think of his father with Claire in the room. 

“Six?” 

“Yeah,” he took a deep breath. “Well. I’ve had about thirty years of it being conditioned out of me, so.”

“Of… what?”

Everything, he wanted to say. Anything you could ever need that’s not protection. 

“Reactions.”

That was just the way things had worked out for him, and he tried to make it sound as such. Like just another Thursday. 

But Claire was watching him with a pinched expression. 

“I thought you were with my uncle for eighteen…”

He ran his tongue over the black of his teeth and tried to swallow the truth she'd caught him in. 

“How's your chest? Sure it's not worth a hospital trip?” 

“You can't just ask me about my health to avoid a conversation.” 

“Mn, I can. Pretty sure I just did.” 

She scoffed, but she was no longer looking at him like he was a ghost, or a monster, or a victim. 

“You suck.”

“I know.” 

“Usually people argue against the claim that they suck.” 

“I'm not arguing with you.” 

“You love arguing with me.” 

“No, I don't.” 

She opened her mouth expectantly. 

“I don't love it, it comes with the job.” 

“You have very self-deprecating tendencies, are you aware of this?” 

He stared at her, at a loss. 

“Of course you aren't.” 

“Does your chest feel better?” he asked with mock impatience. 

“You love to deflect, too. Wow, it's like you're a court jester dodging tomatoes.” 

“Tomatoes?” He frowned. 

“The fact that you take issue with the choice of projectile and not the jester part proves my point.” 

“See, it feels like you're trying to argue with me.” 

She looked up at the ceiling and laughed. He smirked at her until she turned back to him, then smirked at the wall. 

Claire settled into the cushions and tossed her legs onto his, stretching them across his shins. He let the back of his head rest again, at risk of danger sneaking in. 

She was picking pieces of fuzz off her sleep pants when she said, “I couldn't fall asleep.” 

Ah. 

“And then when I did, I kept waking back up. It's s--” 

He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. 

“It's a totally normal thing I'm dealing with?” she tried. 

“Something like that.” 

He stared at the ceiling. Thought about how wrong this was, that Fitz had trained him to kill, and hurt, and never let his guard down, and then he’d asked him to take care of his niece. And then he’d kept asking. And then he’d gone and died, and not only had he left Six, but more importantly he’d left her. 

Six had no idea what he was doing, beyond keeping her alive. He could keep her alive. But he of all people knew it wasn’t enough to just be alive.  

“Hey.” He tilted his foot to get her attention. Her shoulder bumped against his arm. 

“What?” 

“No questions, okay?” 

This was something they'd agreed on, in an unofficial way. He was direct about the things important enough to warrant directness, and cryptic -- her word -- about everything else. He could understand, though, a need to be less cryptic with her. To give her more than just alive. So they compromised. And the no questions condition was a way for him to do that. Compromise. 

So when she nodded, it was almost reverently. 

“My dad was a real… piece of work. He had… certain ideas about what I should feel, what I shouldn't. Tried to teach me--” His chest did something abnormal at the word. Like a pumpkin without its guts. “--how not to feel anything at all. So, I know that what you're feeling is normal, but I don't know how to make it better. All I know for sure is, you don't wanna turn out like me.” 

She watched him with her lips parted slightly, not too far off from chewing on the bottom one. She was dissecting him, and he really did feel like a robot; mechanical parts cracked open and not operational. Not for this. 

He could kill for her -- had and would kill for her. The caring part, he was still figuring out. 

“You say that like you can't ever change who you are.”

He exhaled heavily and stared at their legs. 

“I don’t know.”

How could he? He’d lived the first fifteen years of his life on a knife’s edge, and then they’d put that knife in his hand and trained him to wield it. To kill without flinching, without his heart racing or his hands shaking or his lungs trying to crawl up his throat. They’d trained all of that out of him, and put back in whatever was most useful. If you took all of it away, he wouldn’t be a person anymore. 

“Hey.” Her heel hit his shin. 

She was assessing her dissection of him, now, and the slight squint of her eyes, the tension in her mouth looked so much like Fitz that Six felt the hollowness inside of him flip. Maybe it was trying to grab onto something it could hold. 

“I’ll try if you try.”

“... Try what?”

She shrugged. “To turn out better than we are now.”

He frowned at his lap. 

“It would be pretty hypocritical for you to tell me I’m not stupid for having feelings and then beat yourself up over the same thing. Just so you’re aware.”

“I’m… aware.”

“Okay, well, you should tell your face that.”

He narrowed his eyes. Tilting her head into his shoulder, she lifted her pinky. 

“What’s that?”

“Come on, man. It’s a pinky promise.”

This whole thing seemed childish, in an uncomfortably innocent way. But when had he ever been allowed to be a child? 

He glanced away -- couldn’t help scanning their surroundings, an instinct written into every bit of his programming -- and then he hooked his pinky around hers.

“You have to mean it, though, or it’s, like, bad luck or something.”

“Okay,” he insisted, slightly defensive. 

She shook their hands firmly, then leaned back to smile at the ceiling. 

“My chest feels better. I’m sure you were wondering.”

She sounded better. It made him relax, which was hard to notice when he constantly forced his body to be in a state of calm, even if it wasn’t real. Anxiety killed you. Restlessness killed you. But even if his body was still steady, even if thoughts of his father hadn’t closed a vice grip around his lungs like they used to, something inside of him, on a cellular level, released.

It washed through him. He let it. 

“You should go back to bed,” he murmured. 

“Mm. Can I stay out here with you?”

Apparently the illusion of “in a bit” had shattered.

“Okay.”

He had to pull away from her to sit up and shut the laptop. Bumping her legs aside, he stood and did another sweep of the apartment, checked the street, and then turned off the kitchen light on his way back to the couch. 

“Are you ever going to stop doing that?” Her voice was faint and her eyes were half-closed. Still, she squinted up at him.

“No.” Not for a long time, at least, and especially not while she was with him. 

If she ever changed her mind about that, well… then maybe he would. If he could. He wasn’t sure. 

She leaned left a bit and patted the couch. He settled down with a very un-robot-like groan. 

“You sound old.” She was definitely falling asleep. 

“I am old.”

“No,” she hummed. Her head tucked against his shoulder again with an ease that the hollowness in his chest grabbed hold of. 

He slouched sideways to make it more comfortable for her. She’d curled her legs up on the couch this time. Six thought about taking his shoes off but didn’t.  

“Hey, Six…”

“Yeah.”

“I know Fitz wasn’t your dad, or anything, but… you really do remind me of him. You’re both… nice.” 

He thought about Fitz and kindness with teeth. He thought about his father, tried not to, but couldn't stop it. He didn't know what it meant, if Claire saw more of Fitz in him than that man. 

But Six could live with that. 

He took a deep breath and looked down to find Claire's eyes closed. The wrinkles of her expression had smoothed out, and she'd turned her nose into his collar. She was warm, and it was proof of life, and he itched to get up and check the perimeter again, but she wouldn't stay settled if he did. 

Trying to exhale this tight-coiled tension, he let the couch take his weight and opened the secure phone he used to monitor news feeds. Not that he thought they'd go public with their determination to get him back, but better safe than dead or captured. 

He'd just finished clearing the local news when Claire tensed against his shoulder. He looked down, but her eyes stayed closed. Balancing the phone on his lap, he slowly unfolded the blanket and spread it over her. She mumbled something incoherent that sounded annoyed. He almost smirked, and tapped the phone back on. 

A few minutes later, she tensed again. This time, she half sat up. More mumbling. Her breathing seemed normal, and when she blinked at him, it was blankly. He turned his head slightly, but before he could say anything, she sunk back down at an angle that was definitely going to hurt her neck. He readjusted, and when her body did that startled jolt again, he put his arm over her. When she didn't wake, he let the full weight of it rest against her back. 

She didn't move after that. He was pretty sure she started drooling, actually, which felt so much like secret intel that he did smirk. 

By the time he'd scanned through national news, she'd settled completely. 

An hour later, against the will of all his conditioning, so had he. 

Even robots need sleep. 

“Oh my god. Did I get hit by a bus while I was out?” 

“Good morning.” He pulled the pot from its burner and filled a mug with the coffee they'd found in the cupboard. The mug was chipped, and the coffee was bad; they weren't working with a lot, here. 

“You didn't answer the question. Suspicious.” 

“You didn’t get hit by a bus.” 

“Excellent.” She wobbled into a seated position and winced, rubbing at her neck. “Must have been my pillow, then.” 

He nodded and took a sip. “Sorry about that. My shoulders are built for hand-to-hand.” 

“‘Oh jee, my name's Six and I'm just burdened with all these muscles. Gosh, how'd they even get there?’” She rolled her eyes at him. He smiled sweetly at her. 

“You look like a murderer right now.” 

“Well.” 

She scoffed. “I mean like a murderer who enjoys it. Can you make eggs?” 

“I think me and my muscles can handle that.” 

“Fantastic.” She smiled sweetly back at him, not at all like a murderer, and left the blanket in a crumpled pile on the couch to head for her room. 

Through the cracked door, she called, “If we're fleeing the country, can we do it after lunch? I don't wanna have to throw out my leftovers.” 

He almost argued that it wasn't fleeing the country, but… yeah, that's exactly what they were doing. 

“I've gotta make some calls, so. Probably, yeah.”

She popped her head into the hall, and then the rest of her followed, dressed in the sweatpants she always wore when they fled countries. 

“Super secret mysterious calls?” 

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah.” Then, “We've only got two eggs left.” 

“Hm.” She stopped behind him and moved the fridge door from where he'd been using his shoulder to keep it open. “Any potatoes? I love your hashbrowns.” 

“I burn my hashbrowns.” 

“I think that's why I like them. Fitz never did know how to cook a vegetable.” 

Six looked down, smiling faintly. Sadly. 

“Okay,” he said. “Burnt hashbrowns and two eggs. Scrambled?” 

“Sunny side. Try not to break the yolks with your biceps.” 

She let the door shut on him again, then hurried off to the bathroom. She didn't stay there for long. With her toothbrush hanging from her mouth, she headed back into her room. 

“Do you know where we're going yet?” 

Six shut the fridge and started digging for potatoes. 

“I was thinking Denmark,” he called softly. “Or Germany…” 

She appeared in the hallway, grinning a mouthful of toothpaste. 

“Does that mean you'll teach me?” 

“You should probably go spit that out.” 

She tilted her head back and ducked back into the bathroom. 

“So you'll teach me?” 

“Maybe.” He should get her a tutor. 

“Oh, you're so teaching me.” She grinned, skipping through the hall to slide her upper body onto the counter, stopping just in front of the stove with her chin in her hands. 

She was always so amusing in a way that fit easily between his ribs, and he always had the knee-jerk reaction to repress it. To stop the reaction before it had a chance to manifest, like a flinch. But she saw the twitch of his mouth, the spark of reluctant life in his eyes. He could tell because her smile always turned pleased, and maybe a little surprised. It was a lot like the way she'd looked at him when he'd retrieved her and Fisk. Like she could count on him to be reliable. Predictable. 

Not something he wanted, in his line of work. 

But he wasn't existing in the gray anymore -- not officially. Claire brought shades of color to whatever his life was now. 

“How do you say… egg?” 

He raised his eyebrow at her and dumped the potato slices into a scratched-up pan. 

“What? Maybe I want to order breakfast as soon as we get there.” 

“Ei.” 

“Ei.” She drummed the counter, then suddenly seemed to go far away. “Hey, Six…” 

He stopped stirring the potatoes and turned to her. She turned half away before leaning back, both hands braced behind her on the counter.

“Thanks.” 

A word that had a lot of heft to it. A word she'd held carefully, had passed to him with just as much care. 

“... It's just German,” he said after a moment. 

She gave him the look he'd been expecting. That's not what I'm talking about. 

He allowed his expression to soften slightly. 

“You're welcome.” 

I would do anything, he didn't say. Whatever you need. Even if it means caring instead of killing. Even when killing is all I know. 

It was all anyone had ever wanted from him. Except for Claire. Claire, who had wanted a conversationalist; someone kind of like family. Who wanted to learn German and stay with him at the expense of everything else, everything safe and comfortable and normal. 

He didn't know how to say all of that because he had never said it to anyone. Anyone but his brother, maybe. But that was a long time ago, and too much about him had changed to say it now. He still meant it, though, maybe in the same way he'd meant it before. Which was scary.

In that case, they could be afraid together. 

All this, Claire seemed to know. He felt that she knew, felt it in the way she smiled at him and the way she relaxed into the process of fleeing another country. Pack their bags, watch him make mysterious calls, ditch the tech, check their passports, rehearse their story, look over their shoulders, switch vehicles, look over their shoulders again. A new place, a new alias, the same girl calling him “robot” like she found him amusing, like she liked him. A voice in his chest, under all that conditioning, that told him he could be more than what they'd made him. 

I'll try if you try. 

But first, they'd eat their leftovers.