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It happened slowly, in bits and pieces, their healing. The physical healing, of their cuts and scrapes, and his bruise from where the bullet hit his Kevlar vest, came more quickly than to unaltered humans. Of course, they had far more to heal than just physical wounds.
At first, neither of them really knew why they continued to stick together after leaving Singapore, but they kept traveling together, sharing hotel suites and moving from place to place as they continued their journey and their mission. Something kept them tied to the other in a way neither would, or even could, explain.
He didn’t try to change her. He continued his tests, but those she accepted as enhancing and expanding her skills rather than changing who she was. He continued to call her Katia, he didn’t call her 92. Any sleeping pills she managed to scrounge up vanished, but he didn’t stop her from being who she was, with her instincts, her fears, her often tangential thought process that routinely proved to make a connection that would have been impossible to see otherwise. He encouraged it in his quiet way, pushing her to improve and allowing her moments of weakness, although he always expected more from her after those moments. She delivered. She always delivered.
She didn’t try to change him. She didn’t try to get him to pick a name, a normal name, she continued to call him 47, although she occasionally shortened it to Sev and he didn’t stop her. It had been an accident the first time, said in desperate warning, but his expression, the surprised near-pleasure as he dodged the thrown knife, had her doing it again on occasion. It warmed her to see that expression, any expression really, in his eyes. He was still ruthless and calculating, but there were moments when a smile would flash and a thread of humor wound its way into his voice.
He had picked up on her distaste of physical touch and refrained from any but the most necessary of touches, during training, wound care, and to wake her from nightmares. Katia’s disturbed dreams were more frequent without the sleeping pills, jarring her awake gasping for air and struggling to reorder her mind. At first, she would wake to find him at the edge of her sleeping area, watching her, and she knew he had made some noise to wake her. Why he bothered she didn’t know, but she was grateful not to be trapped in her fears. Gradually, he would sit closer on the bed to her, silent and oddly soothing, until one night she erupted from a dream, a memory of her mother’s death, bolting upright and into his arms as tears streamed down her face, terror shaking her entire body. Cautiously, slowly, 47 closed his arms around her, hesitating before softly rubbing her back until she fell back asleep, her head cradled on his shoulder like a child. Neither mentioned it the next day, but when her dreams disturbed her, a gentle hand on her shoulder woke her from then on.
There were nights when Katia didn’t dream, yet she couldn’t sleep and she found herself wandering their shared suites. 47 still slept sitting upright on the hotel sofas, he never took the second bed, even on the few occasions he was injured, and his guns were always next to him. She wanted to take the guns apart again, but she resisted. She had learned that lesson too well in the first hotel. Instead, she would watch him as he slept, although not for too long, as she discovered that if she watched him for any length of time, he would wake up, one eyebrow raising in question. More and more often, 47 would wake to find a blanket settled over him and Katia curled up on the opposite end of sofa or in the chair across from him.
They argued as frequently as they agreed, their fights occasionally escalating to the point of both of them walking away. They always returned to each other, sometimes not for a few hours, once not for two days. On that occasion, 47 had allowed himself to be ambushed on the second day, intent on working out some of his irritation. Instead, Katia had dropped down like the scythe of Death Itself, taking out four of his seven attackers before they had realized the tides had turned.
He had broken twelve bones of the man who had laid an inappropriate hand on her in the subway when they traveled through New York. Despite their arguments and tension, each was instantly, immediately, defensive and protective of the other. Despite his training and her years of isolation, a relationship bloomed and they became a true brother and sister team, ruthlessly cutting down every possibility of the Agent program restarting. They grew.
They healed.