I Want To Understand You

Six thought back on the basic definition of family that Claire gave. She said they were based on love. Love was intense affection and affection was strong feelings of fondness or liking someone.

He liked Claire but he didn't think it was strong enough to be classified as affection. He liked her in the way that he liked phone games, anime, or cheeseburgers. All of those things were pleasant or interesting to him.

This sort of emotion was entirely new to him so he wasn't capable of feeling it very strongly. She wasn't like that; whatever emotion she was feeling it always seemed to be of the more intense variety.

She made more facial expressions alone than everyone else he interacted with regularly did altogether. That made watching her rather fascinating.

Six wished he understood her better. Maybe then he could figure out why she was afraid of him and make it stop. This was difficult though since he wasn't currently capable of comprehending her range of emotion.

He should do some research on regular human emotions later. It would give him something to do while Claire was asleep since he was used to functioning on much less rest than she was.

"Is making cookies something of great emotional significance to you?" Six asked, wanting to understand.

Claire looked up in surprise. "Huh?"

"You said you used to do it with your mother but stopped after her death because you had no one to share it with. That implies emotional significance to the action, doesn't it?"

She returned to her task of rolling out cookie dough. "I suppose it is. I have a lot of happy memories from doing this with my mom so doing it by myself made me sad for a while. Why do you ask?"

"I want to understand you," Six confessed. "And emotions and the concept of family. These things are important on the outside but they make no sense to me."

Claire tilted her head. "I get wanting to understand emotions and family but why me? I'm really not that interesting."

Not that interesting? She was the most interesting person he had ever met. She underestimated her uniqueness. No one in his line of work—either agent or target—was anything like her. Maybe she was considered average on the outside but to Six she was something new and exciting in a dull world of rules and restrictions.

"Why not you?" he replied with a shrug.

That was something he saw people do on TV. He was trying to be better about displaying outside-appropriate body language after comparing his own rigid posture to Claire's more relaxed yet expressive movements.

"Answering a question with a question isn't helpful, Six," she sighed. "I seriously want to know."

Oh. Six wasn't being purposely evasive; he genuinely didn't understand why she was confused about this. He thought he had already made himself clear on the matter.

"I'm sorry. I thought it would be obvious since I already said you aren't like anyone else I have met. I want to understand you because you're different…and because you're my friend. I don't want you to be afraid of me anymore," he confessed.

Claire blinked at him in shock. "You…know I'm afraid of you? I mean, I'm really not that—ah, forget it. If you already know, there's no use in hiding it. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to offend you and get myself killed. You're kind of my only hope right now and that's really scary because this protection is so tentative."

Six wasn't offended. That sort of emotion wasn't programmed in him. So she thought he would kill her on a whim if she upset him? He didn't get upset though. She was safe on that account.

He surreptitiously looked up the definition of 'tentative' on his phone and frowned when he saw what it meant. She thought his protection was uncertain? Why?

"I don't get offended," he said honestly. "I have no reason to kill you. Why do you think me protecting you is uncertain?"

Claire groaned in exasperation and threw her hands in the air. "Because I don't understand you either! The way I see it, you have absolutely no reason to protect me and could change your mind on a whim leaving me as good as dead. That's scary, okay?

"I obviously can't protect myself; I'm not like you. I grew up as an ordinary kid with no self-defense skills whatsoever. I've never experienced anything like this before and it's terrifying that you can handle it all so casually.

"I don't get your motives and I don't get the world you came from. Most people are scared of the unknown, you know! I never know what you're thinking either so it's easy to jump to conclusions about what you might do to me if you decide you don't want to help me anymore.

"I put my life in the hands of a total stranger I already knew was dangerous from the moment we met! Of course I would be afraid with all of the uncertainty going on. My life is literally in your hands right now and I don't even properly know you!"

Claire buried her face in her hands once she was done with her little speech, getting flour in her hair unintentionally. She said nothing else and that gave Six time to think.

So this was why she was afraid of him. She couldn't see all of the variables in the situation or imagined ones that didn't exist and that made her uneasy. She didn't understand him any more than he understood her and that only made things worse.

She said she could never tell what he was thinking. This was likely due to his training. In addition to his posture being rigid, his face was usually blank. That was simply the way he had been raised so he hadn't thought anything of it.

But to a normal girl on the outside who was used to being able to read body language and expressions he could kind of understand why his intentions could be misunderstood. He had done a lot of people-watching while Claire was at work and was beginning to realize that her expressiveness wasn't entirely unique.

Six was scary to her because of his profession and the fact that she couldn't read him or understand his motives. He couldn't change the fact that he had been sent to kill her but the other two issues might be resolvable.