Ward hovered in the doorway, watching Skye glide around the kitchen area. He'd been keeping an eye on her, looking for any sign that the news of Claudia's kidnapping was throwing her off her game, but she seemed to be fine. Her one advantage when they where training was how light on her feet she was, unfortunately, everything about her was light. Her every movement, every punch, every kick felt like she was being blown about by the wind. She moved deliberately, every muscle flex exact, but it never felt like she meant it.
Finally she seemed to feel his eyes on her back, twirling around and frowning at him accusingly, "What are you staring at?"
"I…" Her voice snapped him out of his trance, "I was just thinking about… your training. If you want we could fit in a last minute session before we get to New York. If you want to, you know, calm your nerves."
"I'm not nervous." She insisted, raising an eyebrow and rolling her shoulders back, "What, uh… what did you want to work on?"
"Well, I thought we could try and work on the strength of you impact when you hit." He shrugged, "I've been noticing lately that everything you do is very soft. You move like a dancer."
"A dancer?" She chuckled, "If that's what you want to call it."
"What do you call it?" He wondered, frowning slightly.
She paused, then offered him one of her trademark smirks, "Let's just stick with dancer, alright?"
The girl groaned in frustration as one of the bells rang, "Neal, this is impossible!"
"It is not." He chuckled, wondering back over to where she was attempting the exercise he'd assigned her, "You're thinking about it too much. Two fingers, nice and light, remember?"
"I'm being light." She complained, "I'm just not a thief."
"Hey, if you can learn to hack a firewall, you can learn to pick a pocket." He insisted, seeing the doubt on her face, "Hey, I promised I'd teach you everything I know, right? This is where we start. Try again. Two fingers."
It was Steve's turn to be unable to sleep. Claudia had finally drifted off, tucked under his arm. It had taken hours of humouring her constant theorizing and chattering about her friend and the possibilities of the situation, but eventually she had nodded off. And now he sat awake, holding her, over thinking the situation and worrying that the growling of his empty stomach would wake her again.
"You're starting to sound like Pete."
His eyes darted down to her face, feeling guilty. Her eyes were still closed but a tired smirk played across her features and she give him a light jab in the stomach with her finger. "Sorry I woke you."
"I was just dozing really." She shrugged, sighing, "How long was I out?
"About three hours." He told her, "They have to feed us sometime, right?"
"No." She pointed out, "They could just leave us down here to rot forever. It's already been what? Two days."
"Artie will be looking for us." Steve reminded her.
"That doesn't mean he'll find us."
He frowned down at her, "When did you start being such a cynic?"
"Bite your tongue, Jinksy!" She teased, "I'm not a cynic… I'm just realistic."
"Claudia. We'll get out of this. I promise."
The girl held Claudia close to her as they huddled on the sidewalk, pulling her flush against her to share warmth. The younger girl coughed with such violence that the girl was concerned her hand would come away with blood on it. Her cold was getting worse by the day, in fact the girl was starting to fear it was worse then a cold. Shivering, she ran her fingers though the other girl's auburn hair, "It's okay, Claudia, we'll get through this. I promise."
Neal's heart raced a mile a minute as he heard the sharp sound of footsteps on concrete coming towards him. It was an impossible choice to make and he couldn't take either option lightly. In the end, no matter what, he'd be trading one little sister for another. He knew what he was about to do was unforgivable, but it was out of his hands now. The man stopped in front of him. "Time's up, Mr. Caffery…"
