California Girl, Massachusetts Boy

"Where are you going?" he calls after her from the catwalk, a slight tone of suspicion, maybe even accusation in his voice (It's only been a week since they put a tracker on her wrist).

She stops on the lowered ramp and turns towards him, without wincing, without missing a beat. There's even a hint of a smile on her lips.

"I was just going to take a walk on the shore. I've been missing California" she says, not unkindly, then adds after a second, "Do you want to tag along?"

He regards her for a long moment, his head tilted slightly sideways, considering what she's just said before he replies, "Let me get my jacket."

"Oh, how I've been missing this!" Skye says, closing her eyes and turning her face towards the sun as they walk along the promenade. It's early March, and there's still an almost-chill in the air, but the sand is white and the tide is calm. She takes a deep breath. "The smell of the ocean, the sound of the waves…"

He tries not to stare.

"So you grew up around these parts?" he asks and hopes he's not being too lame. He's terrible at this – having idle conversation, talking about the past.

She softly shakes her head and leans against the low wall that runs along the pavement.

"Oh, no – the Saint Agnes was much more inland, and the nuns didn't have the… let's say capacity to bring us to the beach." She sighs and starts to fiddle with the sleeve of her sweater. "But my second foster family – I barely remember them anymore – brought me to the shore once. It stayed with me." She pauses and looks out to the water; he steps beside her, leaning against the wall as well, waiting for her to continue. "And then when I was sixteen, when I ran away, I…" She lets out a soft chuckle. "I came here, to the coast. I had a backpack full of clothes and two hundred bucks in my pocket and nothing else, and I hitchhiked here, hoping that once back to the ocean I'd… I'd figure out what to do next." She falls silent once again and closes her eyes for a moment, but before he could say anything, she opens them once again and turns towards him, a teasing smile on her face. "And what about you, Robot? Any great connection to the California shores?"

He chuckles in spite of himself.

"No, not really," he says, casting his eyes down for a second. "I'm from the East Coast, actually. Grew up in Boston, mostly."

"Yeah, I figured that."

"Really?" He looks at her.

"Sure. You sometimes skip the r's – that's how I can tell if you're relaxed. You don't pay much attention to how you speak," she tells him almost affectionately; almost as if she was amused by this.

He doesn't know what to do with this information – with the fact the she knows him enough – that she cares enough – to have noticed slight changes in his speech patterns and to be able to tie these to his moods. (Of course he knows how she likes her coffee and which is her favorite spot to sit in the lounge and that she hates plums, but that's completely beside the point.) He doesn't know how to react, what to say to this, so he turns back to Boston.

"I might not have had the California beach at my fingertips, but we did have a weekend house by the sea. And one in the mountain," he says and her eyes go wide.

"You had a weekend house by the sea and one in the mountains? What was your family into, bank robbery?"

"Almost – politics."

She bursts out laughing – that genuine, carefree laugh that he has only heard a couple of times from her, and that makes his heart soar.

"Oh, jeez, I didn't know you had it in you!" she says after a little while, wiping her eyes, still grinning.

"I guess I have my moments," he smiles at her, completely under her spell. "Still, they were – and are – pretty much the pretentious assholes you'd think them to be. The kind with golf clubs and polo shirts on Saturday and cocktail parties on Sunday. I've never liked it, the facades and the games they played, but the place… it had its charm. Not even the sea that much, but I liked the winters, the snow…"

"Of course," she cuts in. "It was home."

"Not really," he shakes his head. "It never felt like home. It was just a place I lived. In fact…" he sighs, "I don't think I've ever felt at home, anywhere." Maybe he's not even capable of that, but he doesn't say it out loud.

"We are in the same boat then," she laments. "I've never stayed in a place long enough to call it a home. But, you know…" She sits on the edge of the wall and pulls her legs up. "Maybe it's not even a place. Maybe it's a person, or people," she says, not looking at him. "And sometimes I can't help but wonder… could this – us – the team – become a home? No matter where we are?"

A part of him wants to tell her yes, just to give her hope (if somebody deserves to have a home, it's her), but the other part of him is too much of a sceptic for that. So, in the end, he simply shrugs.

"I don't know. I guess the best we can do is to wait and see."

She hums in a low voice, considering it.

"Yeah, you might be right," she says, then the next moment she shakes her head and jumps from the wall. "Now let's go! It's getting late, and I wanna have a hot-dog before we head back." And with that she grabs his hand, and starts pulling him forward.

He doesn't say a word. He doesn't pull his hand away. He simply follows her.