Archive of Our Own ^beta

Six walked onto the deserted land, bits of lava scorching throughout the sky. The area was purposely isolated, so no one could enter in let alone locate the place, except for a select few. Six made his way all the way up the bumpy rubble until he was in the core of the crater where he was met with a bridge leading up to a lone steel cell being held up by nothing other than four strings of thick wire. He took his first step, walking in silence aside from the bubbling lava. As Six neared the other side of the bridge, he was soon faced by the door. He peeked in through the small window on the door and examined the room.

The room was dimly lit, with the only sources of light coming from the candle in the cell and the lava from beneath. It was mostly empty, save for messily piled up pieces of debris that lay on the floor. He noticed there was a large etching of upper case letters on the wall.

‘I AM A MAN.’

Once his eyes reached the center of the room, he saw a silhouette, sitting with its back turned. The crimson colored figure had spikes protruding out of its broad back and a chain around its neck. It was-

“One,” Six muttered out.

The EVO snapped his head around and let out a piercing roar before running toward the door and slamming it open.

Six lunged forward in a half kneel out of respect. “One, it’s me, Six,” he implied. One’s golden yellow eyes challenged Six’s gaze.

“I heard from Five about the situation a year ago when this first happened, but I couldn’t bring myself to see for myself until now. I’m sorry,” his eyebrows creased together with concern. One’s glare softened, and he let down his defense a little.

The sheer amount of willpower his master had to endlessly fight something like this for months left Six dumbfounded. But then again, he expected nothing less from the single most dangerous person in the world.

“I might have found a solution though. A cure. There might be hope for you, One. I didn’t bring him because he’s not yet ready, but when the time comes, I’ll do everything I can. He’s quite the boy, really.”

Six actually did contemplate sneaking Rex along, but he concluded he was still too young and inexperienced. There was no chance he would let Rex step foot on the island yet—not when One was too dangerous to approach. Six cared for the boy more than he’d be willing to admit. He cared for Rex as much as he did One. Dare he say even more than One?

Six then cautiously stepped closer to One, but One flinched and started to growl again. As a defense mechanism, he charged towards Six, shattering the chain that restrained him.

“One! I don’t want to fight you!”  Six pleaded, putting his hands up. One didn’t listen.

Six side stepped around One’s headbutt, resulting in him ramming against the side of the cold cell, but his mentor was persistent. He charged again, swinging his claws at him in fury. Six propelled himself forward to spin underneath the EVO’s swinging arms.

Six took note of the moves that the EVO was doing. He wasn’t just swinging around mindlessly. They were calculated. Almost as if they were they were restrained. Then it clicked. One was trying to hold back! Six watched the life suck out of his master’s eyes over and over again, trying to claim his body back. But he was slowly losing the battle.

That was when Six realized that training and discipline could only take One so far. Sure he could hold it off, but for how long? How long until he succumbs to the monster trying to take over him? He was bound to have more episodes like this if he kept fighting it. He so desperately wanted to cure his mentor, but he needed Rex, and he couldn’t possibly endanger him. Six was helpless.

And just as Six was vulnerable and lost in his thoughts, One grabbed him by the wrist, effectively snapping it under his aggressive grip as he threw him a whole 180 degrees to the other side, slamming him down, back first onto the ground.

“Agh!” Six rolled around and moaned out in pain as his ears rang from the impact of the ground. That didn’t matter to him, though. That was nothing compared to what the creature next to him was going through. He just wanted to cure his mentor from his misery. Six was able to tolerate the pain to some extent, but he didn’t have to time to escape as One lunged forward with his claws and dug deep inside Six’s skin, piercing through his torso, starting from below his clavicle and and gliding it diagonally down to his abdomen. SIx felt his skin ripping apart in slow motion, his flesh being exposed to the open.

Then Six heard an unknown voice, but he wasn’t too sure. He was too stunned from his injuries to think straight anymore. “One, stop it!” One paused and looked up, glowing eyes widened. The petite figure started swinging something around, careful not to hit the EVO, but enough to put some distance. He immediately retreated, sliding his claws out of Six’s torso. Six fell on the ground, his knees breaking the fall, and he cupped his body. He winced as the pain from the injury settled in his senses. He was sure that was going to leave a nasty mark.

“Shit, we’re gonna need a stronger chain…” the pink figure whined as she scratched her tilted head in disbelief. She then ran over to Six, curled up by the bridge, still cupping his arms around his abdomen.

“Stay with me, love,” the feminine voice said as she elevated his head on her knee and tore a piece of her shirt to wrap around the wound and stop the bleeding.

“Five? Is that—” Six started but groaned in pain as she tightened the grip of the fabric when tying the final knot to make sure it was firm. Five always had a rough touch.

“Yes, love. It’s me. Now shut up before the bleeding gets worse. Let’s get you out of here,” Five stated as she wrapped his arm around her shoulder and dragged his limp body across the bridge to safety.

Although his vision was gradually getting blurrier, Six caught one more glimpse of his mentor, now calm. He was staring back at his two students, and Six noted that One looked almost...regretful? His head was pressed down like a dog, shoulders slumped and gloomy.

That was the last sight Six saw before he slipped out of consciousness.

---

The quarter moon illuminated the sky as dusk started to emerge. Thin chunks of fog danced in the air, overlapping some of the moon. Aside from the slight breeze that accompanied the chilly weather, the night was peaceful.

Providence headquarters was equally as peaceful, with everyone sound asleep. Holiday, on the other hand, frustratingly sat at her desk in the lab at Providence, studying her papers and writing down different equations. She was once again trying to figure out an algorithm for programming the nanites to reverse engineer themselves and possibly have a lead on how to cure EVOs. To cure her sister. So far, no luck. She groaned in annoyance and took a sip of her fifth cup of coffee that night.

“Agh! What am I doing wrong!?” Holiday crumpled her paper and mindlessly threw it in the trash can, not caring if she made the shot or not.

Just as she threw the paper, she heard a faint thump outside the door.

Holiday immediately reached for her pistol, but opted against it and reached for the taser instead. If it was an EVO, she’d want to run some tests on it, so she’d much rather keep it alive unless brutality was absolutely necessary.

Holiday inched slowly toward the steel door that separated her and the unknown figure. Cautiously grabbing the door handle with her left hand, she prepared her taser in the other, ready to strike when needed. She pulled the door open.

Laying in front of her was that all too familiar green-colored suit, stained with crimson red and smeared with handprints all over. His stomach area was poorly bandaged up with fabric that was now soaked and untying itself, but at least it was enough to temporarily keep the flowing blood at bay. He was in a foreign pose, body lying limp on the cold steel ground of the lab.

Holiday froze up, dropping her taser, silence filling the room except the loud clang of the weapon hitting the floor. “Oh my goodness,” Holiday whispered in shock. She immediately ran toward Six, flipping him over face up. She immediately checked his pulse to make sure that he was still with her. It was faint, but it was there. She sighed in relief. However, she couldn’t wrap her head around the deep, gushing, flesh that was exposed from his body. She felt nauseous just by the sore sight of seeing Six like this. Six never lost to his opponent, so there were many questions that filled her head. She couldn’t properly formulate them though, because her head was spinning with panic.

“Ms. Holiday, what are you doing?” a young voice questioned out behind Holiday, drowsiness enlaced in his voice. Holiday jumped at the unexpected voice. Shit . The sound of the weapon dropping must’ve woken him up.

“It’s nothing, Rex. You can go back to sleep,” Holiday muttered, trying to hide the shakiness in her voice but failing.

“You don’t sound well,” Rex pointed out, approaching closer to Holiday.

“Don’t come closer!” the unintentional harsh tone came before she could control it. Rex visibly flinched at her unfamiliar tone of voice. Immediately regretting her response, Holiday slumped her shoulders slightly, making herself less tense. Softening her voice, she said “I’m sorry, Rex. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I’m just very distressed right now because I’ve been up all night. And to make it worse I dropped my contact lense, so I’m trying to look for it,” she lied at that last part.

Holiday wanted to get up and hug Rex to reassure that everything was fine, but hugging him with blood-stained hands was definitely not the right cue to do so. She made a mental note to visit him in the morning and properly apologize.

“Okay. Good night, Ms. Holiday,” Rex said and started walking toward his cell of a room. Holiday waited until his footsteps grew fainter and fainted and his door clicked shut.

“This is going to be one hell of a long night,” Holiday whispered to no one in particular.

---

When Six woke up, he was greeted by the white painted walls of a hospital room. He immediately recognized it as the medical unit of Providence headquarters. To his right was a window, where he had a view of the endless abyss adjacent to the base. Directly in front of him was a television, with a fully equipped bathroom to the right of that. On his left was the door.

After examining the room, he looked at his bed. A heartbeat monitor that made a consistent but annoying sound lay next to him, and an IV drip was inserted in his left arm. His right arm was embraced by a plaster cast, and he took note of the dull throbbing pain in his belly area. He also noticed that his signature glasses were still on his face rather than on the nightstand next to his bed.

Just as he finished accustoming to his new surroundings, the the door clicked open, revealing a certain young lady in a white lab coat holding a few papers and a cup of coffee. Six took a glimpse at Holiday. He took note of her disheveled hair and dark circles under her eyes.

As Holiday noticed the now conscious Six, she immediately ran to him. “Six!” she hugged him out of relief that he was finally awake. That he was okay. She physically felt the weight on her chest lift up. Holiday made sure to hug him lightly, taking into account his nasty wounds. “Thank goodness you’re awake. Oh, and about the glasses, I put them back on. I thought you would prefer it that way,” Holiday said, sheepishly scratching her head.

“What happened to me?” Six asked.

Holiday’s motherly instinct automatically switched on. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight onto one foot, harboring a strong, sassy contrapposto pose. Raising one eyebrow, she retorted. “I should be asking you that. You’ve been out for one week. On and off some days...You suffered from a bruised back, a fractured radius and several gashes along your abdomen. You lost a lot of blood, Six. We almost lost you,” she implied with a somber voice and sad expression. “It’s good we got you when we did. Someone must have helped you back, because you were temporarily patched up already.”

The flood of memories was starting to come back to him. 

“Six, how did you get those injuries?” Holiday asked the golden question, concern evident in her voice. She was stern but careful not to overstep her boundaries for different reasons. For one, he was recovering, so she wanted to keep his talking to a minimum—not that he talked much in the first place anyway—but also because she just barely caught his every so slightly faltering expression straying away from his usual stoic one for a brief moment. That meant that she hit a home run on something. Although his sunglasses concealed his eyes from betraying him, his usually furrowed eyebrows straightened out a bit, almost as if his eyes were widerning from shock. He quickly hardened his expression again right after, but Holiday had already seen it.

Six paused for a split second before replying. “It’s nothing you should worry about,” he cleared his throat and tried to regain his composure by shifting around, causing a jabbing pain all over his torso and earning himself a groan. Holiday immediately stepped forward to support him.

“Nothing I should worry about?” Holiday pleaded, “Six, your guts were threatening to spill out last week. How do you expect any person to react in a situation like this?” 

 “I’m fine. I’ve been through worse.”

“What do you mean by worse?”

Shit. Six was just digging himself a bigger hole. “Nothing. I just...ran into an EVO on my way back. Turned out to be more than I could handle,” Six insisted, trying to answer as vaguely as possible.

Holiday sighed in defeat. An EVO that was able to overpower Six just raised her concern even higher. Even though she had known him just shy from a year, she had seen his skill. He wasn’t an ordinary man—she knew that much—and he defeated pretty much every EVO he encountered with no sweat.

Until now.

Holiday swung around and started toward the door. “Get some rest, Six. You need it. I’ll be back to check on you in a few hours,” she said in a noticeably weak voice.

Guilt washed over Six. He was relieved that the doctor didn’t pry any further, but he couldn’t get her defeated expression out of his face. “Rebecca,” Six started, shocking Holiday that he used her first name. His usual nonchalant and professional voice was evident, but she couldn’t help but feel warm all the same when hearing her name fall out of his mouth. It seemed he only used it when it really mattered. “I appreciate it. Everything.”

Holiday’s tense shoulders loosened. “Same to you, Six,” she muttered mostly to herself, but loud enough for Six to catch it.

Ever since she began working at Providence, she had little to hope for. She didn’t agree with the procedures they did, nor did she appreciate being stepped on whenever she opposed them or proposed ideas of her own. And on top of it all, she didn’t—couldn’t—even have her sister by her side. But doing what she did, whether she liked it or not, ensured Beverly’s safety. She couldn’t jeopardize that. She was just letting life pass by, day by day, doing what little she could for the worldwide plague. But then Rex came, and her whole scope of things changed. That fire in her reignited, and the spark in her eyes could be seen again. She was so grateful to have Rex, and she had Six to thank for that. So when she said that, he knew what she meant. And she knew he understood.

With that, Holiday was out of sight, and Six was once again met by silence save for the heartbeat monitor beside him.

Six let out a small sigh. He needed time to think. Recollect his thoughts.

To his defense, he wasn’t completely lying to Holiday when he had answered her question. He really had been demolished by EVO One. In actuality, he had maybe—just maybe—the slimmest fighting chance against his mentor had he chosen to fight back. But he decided against it. He refused to. He just couldn’t bring himself to.

What in the world was he thinking? That One would automatically be all buddy-buddy seeing his old student again, even if he was an EVO? Six admitted to himself that it was a stupid move on his part. At least he got a chance to see the situation for himself, and now his resolve was stronger than ever.

---

The following weeks dragged on at a turtle’s pace. Six was forced to be bedridden per Holiday’s wishes (demands), so the least he could do was listen to her. That, and he didn’t want to face her frightening wrath. He swore he felt her piercing glare shooting out at him every time he made the slightest of moves, even if he wasn’t attempting to get up. Holiday claimed that she was just “looking out for his well being,” since he so obviously neglected it, proof being his current situation. Deep down he appreciated her concern.

On top of that, Rex came to visit as much as he could. He would never admit it, but he didn’t mind his company at all, since it made his temporary sedentary lifestyle a little more bearable. 

But alas, after a long three weeks, he was finally, finally , able to get up and move around headquarters. He was still far from being fully healed, so he couldn’t go out in the front lines yet, but just being able to work while sitting down and roam around freely with moderation was a wish come true. He still had to take everything easy, moving twice as slow as he was accustomed to, but he had the cast around his wrist and bandages wrapped around his belly to remind him if he pushed things too far.

Six was in his room, attempting to get dressed in his signature olive green suit, but horribly failing. Putting his pants on was no problem, but his torso area was giving him a challenge. Trying to swing around his white button up to his back made his abdomen throb in pain, rendering the painkillers he took ineffective. He’d have to ask Holiday to amp up his prescription.

As if on cue, she mindlessly came barging right into his room, holding a clipboard full of papers and examining them. “Hey Six, can you come straight to the lab room after breakfast? I want to—” Holiday started, but stopped in her tracks as she looked up. She was met with an insanely defined figure. Not the most muscular she had seen—Six was still very lanky by nature—but he was extremely toned. The contour of his muscles danced along his body in harmony, and she subconsciously found herself running her eyes through his body. She worked her eyes up his arms, focusing on his biceps and deltoid, then scanned up to his trapezius and back down to his pecs, obliques, abdomen—No. Stop your wandering eyes, Holiday.

As she tried to look at something else, she caught sight of the many scars that marred his body. She was too focused on his build that she completely overlooked his scars. Sure, she had caught a glance of them each time she changed his bandages, but she tried to pay no mind to it. This time was an exception. She was so transfixed that she failed to hear Six calling out to her numerous times before successfully reaching her.

“Holiday? What did you need me for in the lab?” Six interrupted her thoughts before she got too carried away.

Holiday quickly shook her astonishment away, clearing her throat and attempting to regain her composure. “Um, y-yeah! I need you in the lab so I can run a few more tests on you before you go out and about,” she cringed as she stumbled over her words.

“Oh, okay. Got it,” Six replied. He then averted his attention back to the white collared top he was holding. A visible frown appeared on his face, eyebrows furrowing in annoyance. As he blankly looked at the article of clothing.

“Uh, do you need help with that?” Holiday asked, head tilted to the side like a puppy, genuine confusion written on her face. Now that she was past the flustered stage, she focused on putting all her energy in trying not to get distracted by his body in the most subtle way possible.

“It’s fine, I can handle it.”

“You’re staring at your collared top like it’s going to attack you.”

Six was dumbfounded and didn’t have a reply to that. Before he could form anything in his mouth, Holiday was already grabbing his collared top and helping him. She stood behind him, starting with the right sleeve and carefully slipping where he had his wrist cast. She made sure to move with delicacy and steadiness. Before he knew it, she was done putting on his blazer as well. Six cleared his throat. “Um, thanks for helping. I would have been doomed otherwise,” he sheepishly admitted.

Holiday gave a melodious chuckle that filled the room. “It’s not a problem, Six. See you later in the lab,” she was already walking out the door giving a mindless wave.

---

Breakfast zoomed by, and Six headed to the lab room as Holiday requested. She had just finished running an MRI scan, and she was just finishing up taking some blood samples. “That’s about it. You’re free to go around now!” Holiday smiled at Six as she clapped her hands together in delight. Holiday started to walk away from him toward her Six to do her other business.

“Holiday, wait.”

Six wasn’t ready to tell her about what he did before Providence. He probably never would be, and he intended to keep the information of that side of his life to a minimum. But she deserved to at least know the truth about his injuries.

“About the injuries. My mentor...he did this to me.” hearing the words come out of his mouth stung more than he thought, and it pained him to utter those words out, but that was the reality of things, and he had to accept it.

Holiday visibly winced, “That’s one hell of a strict mentor, huh?” she said in a playful tone to try and lighten the mood. She wasn’t sure if it was successful or not, but she figured that she could at least try.

Six slightly chucked. “Yeah, I guess.”

“And...your other scars?” Holiday asked before she herself was aware of it. That question wasn’t meant to come out, but it somehow found its way to escape. Her hands quickly covered her mouth, but the words were already out. She didn’t want to act nosy, she really didn’t, but deep down inside, she was just so curious, so mesmerized with the side of Six that she was unaware of, and she had no idea why.

“When I was still training under him. Screwed up a lot. I’m not too fond of them, but they’re permanent, so I have to deal with them.”

Six hated his scars. Not because they were unsightly, but because they showed weakness and inadequacy. They were a reminder of his mistakes. His screw ups. And his newfound scars were no exception. They would remind him over and over again about his mentor’s situation. How he can’t save him. How he is completely helpless.

“Well, sure you could see it that way, but hey, they show your compassion and sacrifice, don’t you think? It means that you survived,” Holiday’s gaze softened with sympathy. She lightly placed her petite hand on his chest, where his heart was. The warmth of her hand was surprising. Her hand was so small, but it held so much conviction. Faith. “Everyone has their own scars. Yours are just visible. That doesn’t mean any less.”

That comment caught Six off guard. He didn’t expect her to say that, but then again, Holiday wasn’t just your average person. She was strong and independent. Insanely smart. And apparently now she could be qualified as a professional pep talker or something. He didn’t even know why he was telling her about his scars—it’s not like he was obligated to or anything—but part of him felt like he needed to. That she had a right to know. And he knew that she wasn’t the type to give a pity party or anything.

Six took a moment to clear his mind of everything, only guiltily enjoying the soft touch of Holiday’s hand on his chest. Even if she said nothing, her gesture was enough to communicate to him that everything was going to be okay. That she would be with him to handle the situation from the beginning to the end. He saw the spark in her eyes, an unwavering challenge that conveyed her fire to the world. Even though Six still felt helpless and vulnerable about his mentor, it felt a little more bearable to confide in someone else.

In that moment, despite everything that happened and everything that he was going through, he felt like he could fly.