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ninjathrowingstork · 2 years

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Never Quite Free

Chapter One: Pushed (words: 2309)

Sierra Six|Court Gentry/F! OC. No warnings yet, just canon-typical violence

Like everything in his life for the past- too many years, really - it had started out as just another mission. They told him where to go, what to wear, and who to kill, and he obeyed orders. Every time, without fail.

Sometimes, though, things didn't exactly go to plan, and ended up a little more exciting than he'd have liked. (Still beats going back inside) the man known as Sierra Six noted, ducking around a corner in time for the wall where his head had been to explode into a spray of stone fragments. There were at least a half-dozen of them, he'd counted, and he'd already cut his way through maybe that many to reach his target. His intel hadn't been accurate, and while he'd eliminated his target, (the leader's brother, kingpin in his own ring running. . . something, the details had been vague) the goons were still coming after him. And now, civilians were in the way.

He ran.

There were shots ringing out from multiple points around the open park, and he ran, skidding, through the panicking crowds to the cover of a low concrete wall. The cover wasn't perfect, they'd circle around to find him, but he'd at least have a minute to catch a breath and reassess. And a minute was more than he'd need (there was still that annoying graze across his left tricep where one guy had gotten too lucky.)

Seven. It was almost definitely seven shooters after him now, and some were up on the rooftops around the park, and-

A blur of motion of a body sliding and tumbling behind the wall had him spinning in a crouch as he brought the automatic in his hand up to bear on-

It was a woman. A civilian, maybe early thirties, at the oldest, and unarmed, he assessed with barely a thought.

"Ow, fuck", her skirt had ridden up to show one knee and where the tights had ripped along with the skinned knee beneath. She noticed him and the gun in the next heartbeat. "OH. FUCK."

Eyes widening, she recoiled in shock just as he lowered the muzzle off of her, glancing back out over the possible lines of fire.

"Oh, sorry." (Just gotta keep her calm and alive until I can get her out of here) "You ok?" He gestured to his own chin with his free hand. "

"I-what?" Reaching up to her own chin, her fingertips came away red with the blood dripping from her mouth. "Shit, must have bit my lip. Ow." The woman glared up and through the low wall, in the direction of the shots. "Yeah, just broken skin, I'll manage."

(Good, staying calm and not trying to bolt from cover, I can still get her out of here.) "Ok, just stay down, I've counted seven of them and-" a shot ricocheted off the wall, sending dust flying and his companion in hiding pressing back into the corner further with a muffled yelp. Again, he scanned the angles of fire, watching the flash of light off a scope for an instant that gave away the shooter's hideout. Too fast, couldn't get a clean shot on him now.

"Hey, uh, just catching up here," it was the woman again, She was staring up at him sideways with a slight smirk, the tremor in her voice and the blood she absently wiped from her fingers onto her skirt the only reflections of their situation. "Since they're the ones shooting here, I'm guessing you're the good guy in all this, right"

(The good guy?) He hadn't thought of himself necessarily as the good guy in a long time, just the one who killed the bad guys. "I- I think so?" Better not to start thinking too much about the moral side of the work he'd been given just now.

Her smirk turned into something more serious and considering, searching his face for. . . something. "Ok, guess I'll-" she broke off, focus moving to something over his shoulder. "On your seven." It came out as a rush of breath, only a jerk of her chin pointing in the direction, and he spun to see one of the men in tac gear sighting on them. He fired a second before the other man could get off a shot. (Good girl), she'd spotted the man and kept her head enough not to show she'd seen him, in time for him to get the shot off. (Probability I can get her out of here just went up.) The shot and his realization had happened within the space of two breaths, and he twisted back, crouching on the balls of his feet to see her staring back where the man had been. "You still ok?"

"I- um. Can't say I've gotten someone killed before."

Working with a civilian, he reminded himself. Her calm might just be shock. He raised his gun again to try to peer over the wall, ducking back again when another shot sent dust into the air. "Hey, no, you did good." Working with someone to watch his back was new. She shouldn't be here with him, but it'd kept them both alive.

She grinned a little at that, it was shaky but it was there. Then the grin melted and the focus was back, her chin jerking out again behind him "on your six!"

He spun back, firing at another man slowly creeping towards their position and why did the way she said his number sound so nice? Almost as soon as he'd dropped the second man, her cry, barely above a whisper, came again.

"Three o'clock!"

She was using the wall as their 12, he realized. Smart. He twisted again, pivoting to his left and firing past her to the flash of light on a balcony.

"On nine!"

Again he twisted, and again fired. Another figure dropped.

"Four o'clock, high!"

That one was on the roof, and slid down to fall to the street when he was dropped. Two more down, that left three including the one pinning them down, who'd ducked back into cover when he tried to get a sight on him over the wall. He glanced back at the woman, her eyes were somehow even wider and face as pale as the ash-blonde hair escaping from its tie.

"St- still ok," she gasped out.

"We've got three more left, you sure on that?"

One eyebrow quirked up slightly. "Do I have a choice, really?"

An interesting answer, and he told her so. "Normally," they both ducked again as another shot embedded itself in the wall. "Normally, someone like you would be trying to run away from the guy everyone's trying to kill"

"Nu-uh, I've got cover and I'm by the guy who's said he'll get me out of- " she broke off with another jerk of the chin, "seven again."

This time, he just twisted to the side and fired. "Two left, I had seven on me when I got here."

"Only seven?" Her grin was back.

Somehow, he felt a grin pulling at his lips also. "Only seven, yeah. You wanted more?"

She snorted a small laugh. Amazing that she could laugh in the middle of this. Then again, that she could laugh and stay calm in the middle of a shootout was literally the only thing he knew about her (and that the way she said his number sounded nice and she'd asked if he was the good guy and that little half-smile of hers was cute for someone being shot at.) "I get the sense you could handle more, somehow, but because I'm here you're hold- on four again."

Her chin pointed, and he swung the gun to follow her chin and fired. "One more."

"-Holding back for my sake. Is that the one pinning us down here?" Rolling her head up, she tried to peer over the wall, before he reached out and shoved her shoulder back down just as yet another bullet skimmed along the top of the concrete surface. He tried not to notice how warm her shoulder was under his palm.

"Stay down. Here's what you're going to do, on my count you- what are you doing?"

A heartbeat after he'd moved his hand from her shoulder back to cradle the gun, she'd started shimmying out of her jacket, staying low. "I've got an idea." Reaching out with one boot heel, she hooked a fallen tree branch and began to drag it closer, jerking to one side as a shot cracked into the edge of the pavement a foot from her leg, but a second later she had it and was hooking the top of the jacket on the end. "I'm gonna draw him out, ok?"

Only long years of training and work kept him from staring at her. (This damn woman.) For anyone in his world of covert ops; of spies and assassins, he'd have felt professional admiration for her creativity, but for this civilian. . .

Before that thought could go any farther, she'd swung the coat on the stick up, hoisting it like a flag with a hissed "now!"

The fabric jerked with an impact of the bullet tearing through the material and he caught the motion from the corner of his eye as he sighted on the gunman who'd broken cover long enough to take the shot that was his last. One squeeze of the trigger, and Six saw the body of his last pursuer collapse to the balcony below him. That was it. Somewhere in the distance there were sirens approaching.

A small, choked laugh drew his attention back to the woman crouching beside him. Her hair was plastered to her sweaty face in smoke-dark streaks, and she was holding up the jacket to stare at the single bullet hole piercing through from front to back. "Guess I'm gonna need a new coat." The slight tremor started creeping back into her voice.

"You should go, before the police get here. You don't need to be connected to this." He'd leave as soon as she was clear, and that would be it, he thought.

"Here," she'd dropped the coat in her lap and dug through a pocket to come up with a small white rectangle. "Here's my card, you can send me a new jacket as a thank-you. Burn it after memorizing it, ok?" She told him her size and her smirk almost drew another almost-smile from him. Instead, he wordlessly took and scanned the card and pocketed it as she rose to leave. The address was for a town several hours away. (Tori. It also said her name was Tori.)

"Hey," he'd stood, checking again on the bloody graze on his arm, but her call drew his attention back to where she stood, destroyed coat draped over one arm. "I didn't get your name."

His name? "Six, they call me Six." It had been a very long time since he'd used anything else.Or anyone had thought to ask.

For some reason that got another one of her quick laughs, but the smile this time was full and genuine (albeit a bit bloody from her bitten lip), and he was suddenly reminded just how long it'd been since anyone smiled like that at him. It'd been what, almost two years now?

"Number Six, like in the show?"

"What?"

"You know, The Prisoner? Cult show from the 60's? Who is number one, you're number six?"

He shook his head, "don't have much time for watching anything" which was a lie since he had the downtime, often, but it wasn't really his to spend.

"He's a spy who retires and gets isekai-ed to a resort in Wales, you'd love it"

(He gets what? )

The sirens were getting closer, and she glanced over one shoulder as she took a step back away from him. "I should go, at least before the adrenaline crash hits and I'm really a mess. But stop by sometime and we'll watch the show, it's just seventeen episodes so we can do that in a day."

"I- uh, that sounds . . . fun." It actually did.

She looked back at him with one last grin, then with a curious salute, raising her hand in the "ok" sign to her eye with a twitch of the wrist, she turned to go. "Ok Number Six, be seeing you!" Then she was gone, her trot turning into a run at the edge of the park before he lost sight of her.

He also ran. He ran in the opposite direction she'd taken. It had sounded nice, her invitation. Maybe in a different lifetime, the man he'd been before . . . everything, the man he could have been, would've accepted it and been free to go watch old spy shows. There was a debriefing waiting for him, though, then back to the safe house or hotel they'd keep him at, then the next mission, and the next. He'd accepted that as part of being Sierra. It's what Fitz had promised him, that he'd get to take out truly bad people and maybe make the world fractionally better and he'd kept that promise, but also that his time wasn't his own, he wasn't his own.

Still, it sure as hell beat the alternative.

Three weeks later, the woman, Tori, opened her door to answer a knock, to find a courier from a delivery service asking her to sign for a box. The sender was a vaguely titled export service. Inside the box was a hip-length jacket, similar in cut and fabric to the one she'd sacrificed in a wildly desperate move that day of chaos weeks before. The name on the label, though, nearly made her drop the coat in shock as how much more expensive the replacement coat was than her original outlet one had been. There was no note with it, she didn't need one.

Chapter 2

#court gentry #the gray man #sierra six #my writing #fanfic #never quite free

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