Thankful Hearts
By Cybra
A/N: A somewhat-belated Thanksgiving fic. Here's a post-"Back in Black" family story which is slightly AU since Knight has been re-infected and can be out of the box. Inspired by the ending to the 2010 season of TheNextIronChef. Hope you and yours had a happy Thanksgiving!
Disclaimer: GeneratorRex belongs to Man of Action.
Six hadn't had the opportunity to experience the holidays before One had taken him off of the street. After that, there had been no real time to do any sort of proper celebration. In any case, he couldn't remember if over the past six years his habit of generally ignoring the holidays except when they were convenient enough to distract targets had changed any.
So when Knight had handed over some extra cash from their emergency fund for the groceries this week, the action had been greeted with a blank look.
"What's this for?" he asked.
"Thanksgiving's this Thursday," the white-haired man answered.
The blank look didn't vanish from Six's face.
"…And…?" he asked cautiously.
Knight stared for a moment before sighing, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. "I keep forgetting you don't remember." He looked at his partner again. "We used to celebrate it every year at Providence. Well, 'celebrate' isn't quite accurate. We'd have a special meal in the cafeteria, but it was largely a 'grab it if you can get it' thing. Holiday asked if it'd be all right if we had an actual sit-down meal this year since we're all back together now."
Holiday. Now it made sense.
Though he suspected that Knight wasn't telling him the whole story. Knight had probably wanted a touch of normalcy as well after being sealed away for two years. The other man had seemed to get a kick out of being able to sit down for a meal like a regular person. Still, Six gave his partner his privacy and never asked.
"I'll head off in half an hour," Six said, heading back farther into the base.
"Where are you going?"
"I need to look a few things up before I put something together."
Six wasn't sure if that half-hour delay had made any sort of difference. When he got to the grocery store, it was a nightmare.
He stared, stunned, at the way people were hustling about, carts practically plowing into one another as each tried to get the biggest turkey, the perfect stuffing ingredients, and so on and so forth. He'd thought EVOs could be vicious but, in some ways, this was so much worse. These were normalhumanbeings acting like out-of-control monsters.
He looked at the harassed employees whose carts of turkey were emptied before they even got to the display. He watched one woman literally steal a can of cranberry sauce out of another person's cart.
"…These people are insane," he muttered mostly to himself.
"Out of the way!" one guy shouted from behind him, shoving him aside to join in the crush.
Six stepped out of the line of fire, trying to wrap his mind over how this time of year could turn perfectly rational humans into crazed psychopaths.
He mentally reviewed his list of the traditional Thanksgiving feast items. Oh there was no way he was going to pull this off. He was the sixth deadliest man on Earth, but he preferred to keep a low profile. Slaughtering these lunatics would defeat the purpose of that.
He tapped a foot on the ground, frowning. It looked like this called for a change in menu.
He slowly paced around the worst pockets of the madness, trying to think of something. Even the turkey roasts were gone.
As he passed by the seafood counter, the lobsters caught his eye. He backed up a few paces to stare into the display. Clams…mussels…cod…In some ways, they were staples of Northeastern food.
Wait. Didn't the pilgrims land in the New England…?
"Can I help you, sir?" the man behind the counter asked nervously. He probably expected Six to make some sort of unreasonable demand that he fetch some imaginary hidden turkey out from behind the counter.
"…As a matter of fact, you can."
Rex snuck into the kitchen, sliding cautiously closer to his target. Closer…closer…
Smack!
"Ow!" He shook out his stinging hand, looking at Six who was giving him the sternest glare he had to offer. "What was that for?"
"I told you to wait," Six said simply, returning the hand he'd used to strike Rex to his side.
"Well, how much longer? It all smells so good," the teenager asked.
The amnesiac assassin's face was hard as he went back to peeling the sweet potatoes. "I said 1300. I meant 1300."
"A little early for Thanksgiving dinner, don't you think?"
"Well, we could wait until later tonight since you're not that hungry…"
Rex flailed his arms. "I take it back! I take it back!"
"Good." Six sliced up the sweet potatoes before dumping them into a stew pot.
Giving his mentor a quizzical look, he asked, "What're you making anyway?"
"You'll see."
"Holiday said you couldn't get a turkey. Did you manage to go back and get one this morning?"
"No."
"Then…what're you making?"
"Like I said, you'll see. Now go keep that monkey out of here. He's been trying to get into the pies all day."
Rex shoved his hands in his pockets as he watched Six fill up the larger stew pot with water. "What's that for?"
"Rex. Out."
"Fine."
He walked out, grumbling. Rather than trying to find Bobo, he flopped down on the couch, determined to catch a nap before dinner.
A few minutes later, he jumped when he heard a sudden shriek from the kitchen. He sat up to stare back at where Six was working on the meal. Should he go back and see what happened? He started to slide off the couch…
…only to jump again at another shriek.
"…Y'know what? I don't wanna know," he decided.
Just before one PM, Holiday started setting the table, Rex babbling at her.
"There was screaming, Holiday! Screaming!" he said, arms flailing about.
"Screaming, Rex?" She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Yes, screaming!" He paused. "Okay, it was more like a high-pitched squeal but—"
"It was probably the lobsters he brought back."
Rex stared in horror. "Lobsters…scream?"
"Well, no. It's just the gasses under their shells being released."
The teenager relaxed. "Oh. Well, that's okay. That was just…creepy." He shuddered.
"You have a problem with my cooking, Rex?" Six asked as he walked out with a platter of lobster tails. Knight followed behind him with the stew pot he'd tossed the sweet potatoes in. "Make yourself useful and get the baked corn."
"The what?"
"The cornbread casserole in there."
"Oh. Got it." Rex gave Six a salute before entering into the kitchen.
Holiday put the last plate down, stepping aside to let Six and Knight unload their offerings. "All right, I bite. What have you been up to all day?"
"You'll see soon enough."
"Hopefully taste it, too," Knight grumbled. "I'm starving."
Bobo loped into the small dining area, grinning from ear-to-ear as he hopped up in a chair. "This should be interesting: A Thanksgiving dinner without the turkey."
The doctor looked at the monkey before looking back at the green-clad man. "You didn't get one?"
"I improvised."
Before she could ask, Rex called from the kitchen, "Man, what're these sausage things? They smell awesome!"
"The baked corn," Six reminded.
"Yeah, yeah!" Rex came out with a dish filled with the golden, cornbread-like casserole. He was licking his lips.
"You better not have sneaked anything," Knight said sternly.
Six muttered, "Particularly since you've been unsuccessful in doing so all day."
Knight attempted to look innocent while Holiday snickered. Busted.
"You all sit down. I'll just get the venison sausage."
"Venison? As in deer meat?" Holiday asked with surprise.
"There was some available so I grabbed it before anyone else noticed it was on sale." With that, Six disappeared back into the kitchen.
Holiday looked over the offerings at the table. Lobster, some sort of cornbread casserole, and—if her nose was telling her correctly—some sort of chowder. Now a venison sausage. Tasty, true, but was it Thanksgiving?
Six returned with the plate piled high with the sausage.
"Interesting route you decided to take," she mentioned.
"It was that or murder my fellow shoppers. Not that some of them didn't look like they would do so to one another already," Six said dryly. He set the plate down. "Besides, this is a bit more traditional than the turkey."
"How so?"
"When I was looking up what to make, I found out that back at the first Thanksgiving—the harvest festival—there was no turkey. Since that took place in New England, I decided to change tactics and go with what they would've had available. That and I didn't have to fight for as many of the ingredients."
That earned a smile from the doctor. "You put a lot of thought into it then."
"Actually I threw together the idea at the last minute based on what was available," Six corrected with a shrug.
Holiday reached out to either side of her, smile widening.
Everyone stared at her.
She turned pink and retracted a hand to rub at the back of her neck. "Sorry. It's a family tradition of mine. We'd gather around the table, hold hands, and say what we were thankful for before eating. The last couple of years, we haven't had the opportunity to sit down together, so it never really came up…"
The males looked at one another before Bobo turned towards the kitchen and said, "I'll be right back."
"You're actually gonna wash up?" Rex asked with a smirk. "Are we sure we don't have Robobobo?"
"Funny, kid, but just this once won't kill me."
Holiday beamed. Trust Bobo to do something nice and make it sound like it was some huge sacrifice.
When they were once again all around the table, they reached for one another's hands.
Knight raised an eyebrow as he took hold of Holiday and Six. "So how is this supposed to work?"
"We just go around in a circle and say what we're thankful for this year."
"Sounds simple enough," Bobo said. He cleared his throat. "How's this? I'm thankful for good food, good company, and not having one of those collars around my neck."
Rex grinned. "I can totally get behind the first and last one of those. Though change the middle to being with my family."
"That's sweet of you both," Holiday said.
"Yeah, well, whatever," Bobo said with a huff though there was the slightest twitch of an embarrassed smile.
"Your go, Doc!" the teenager said, bouncing on the tip of his toes.
"I'm thankful for having the family together again," she said honestly, "and having all of us together around the table for the first time." She gave Knight's hand a small squeeze. Then as he started to grin, her smile turned a bit wicked. "I'm also grateful this place has such thick walls for when Knight snores like a buzzsaw."
"I don't snore!"
"You do!"
"I don't! Six, we roomed together. Tell her I don't snore."
"I exercise my Fifth Amendment right."
"What?"
"Children!" Rex laughed in a deliberately-crackling voice, trying to sound old. "Do I have to separate you two?"
Knight gave a snort as the woman continued to snicker. "Love you, too, Holiday." He then cleared his throat. "Well, I'm grateful to be out of the suit and able to sit down for something like this with good people. Even if I do have to put up with so much more snark."
Holiday gave a cheeky grin to her former boss. "You know you wouldn't have it any other way."
Knight gave her a small shove before turning to Six. "All right. You're up."
Six stood quietly for a moment, thinking it over.
"Partner?" the white-haired man asked, concerned with the other man's silence.
"Home," Six decided at last. "I'm thankful for home."
Home. In general, that meant a roof over their heads and meals on the table. However, Holiday sensed that it wasn't simply the physical aspects of home he was referring to, but the people that made a living space a home, people that mattered, received the bulk of his gratitude.
Which meant he was grateful for being with them.
She smiled, mirroring the looks from the others around the table who'd been waiting for Six's response. "Come on. Let's eat."
They spent quite a while eating, laughing, and talking. It wasn't standard Thanksgiving fare in the slightest but it was still delicious.
Most importantly, however, they were all just thankful to be home.