felicity carrow. six.

you don't like telling people that you're from six.

it feels cliché in too many ways, rebel girl with a peacekeeper for a daddy. deadbeat who could never quite commit to being a deadbeat for a mother. it's exhausting to think about, never mind to listen to, so you do your best to change the subject whenever anyone bothers to ask you about it.

which isn't very often.

still. it sits there in the back of your head. someone makes you laugh at a party you weren't invited to but showed up at anyway and your thoughts slap you with the memory of that week your dad hid in the basement and your mom forgot she was supposed to feed you and didn't come home so you just ate cold broth and stale bread to stop the rumbles in your belly. you were seven when you figured you ought to learn how to use the stove. she cooked you eggs fresh when she came home. you took the opportunity to start teaching yourself how to make the stove use less gas.

no one helped you with the burns you got in the process. you blink, clench your jaw still when you notice them turned to scars on the backs of your wrists.

your mom comes and goes, sometimes stays and sometimes doesn't. she's flightier than anyone you will ever go on to meet in your entire life, never even bothers to marry your father despite all the times her mother croaks at her about it.

"viktor and i don't need a marriage certificate," she'd always say, waving her hand. sometimes it was a lopsided grin, sometimes it was a dismissive flick of her hand.

"he deserves one," was usually her mothers response.

you never figured out how your father felt about the whole situation before you left. you're afraid of what his answer might be, you think. fear his reason for staying could only be one thing.

you.

little girl genius, you sidestep that thought over and over and over again. you poke your hands everywhere that you're not supposed to, make friends with the wrong kids at school, build computers and little gadgets and gizmos with scrap metal and bits of crap you convince your friends to help you scrounge up at the junk yard. your favorite thing you've ever built is still the tiny robotic squirrel you made out of thumbtacks and copper wires. rigging it to blow was your first piece of weaponry.

you liked the big boom.

"take that shit eating grin off you face" your friend hector had said to you after you showed it to him. his hands had been clenched fists at his side, even the idea of conflict enough to make him want to burst. "you're scaring me."

"this is fucking awesome!" you'd replied, affronted.

no one ever got it.

no one until abraham, that is. he recruits you for your smarts first. you're a back alley kind of kid, rat scuttling around six, too smart for her own good. it didn't take long for you to find your way in with the wrong crowd, the right one by your standards. it started small, trying to figure out how to build computers out of scrap metal. abraham brings you the bigger guns, the ships, the metasuits. the tech is incredible to you, even still.

biomechanical humanoid mecha suits.

it doesn't get much cooler than that.

and you get to pilot one of them. it had been your only demand out of abraham, and you had pestered him about it from the moment the suits were presented to you. over and over and over again. pausing in helping storm weld metal, mask pulled up over your face, he'd stand in front of you in the workshop and you'd tell him that there's no one who knows these suits better than you. it wasn't optional. you had to ride in one of them. you had to command one.

you understood when he didn't pick you.

you locked yourself in your room for three days and didn't eat or sleep and aren't even sure you remember breathing. but still, you understood.

you visit elliot a lot now, aren't sure why. it makes it so that you can feel your heartbeat in your wrists every time that you show up in front of her, lost in stasis. she was the first person you told abraham was finally going to let you be a pilot. you grit your teeth.

there's an answer to why she's stuck like this.

something in the code.

and you want to fix it. you want to bring her out.