A/N: A collection of "missing" scenes from The Bourne Legacy, Marta's point of view. Word length will vary. I'm not really setting the scenes up for you ... just dropping you into them and assuming you've seen the movie (though possibly fewer times than I have) and will know/figure out where you are, chronologically speaking. :) Warnings: T for blood and suicidal contemplation.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Bourne franchise.

"If I can't keep it together, we won't make it."

Five—Kenneth—shuts the laptop, stands, and paces away from her, nub-nailed fingers laced behind his neck. He stops in front of the window he ordered her not to approach. A deep breath raises his shoulders, and the sigh seeps from his body like smoke. He gazes down at the parking lot, so still he seems to stop breathing.

Marta runs her thumb over the edge of the laptop. He talks as if his motivation for viraling off is simple survival, but she's learned more about Five in the last four hours than most people learn about lifelong acquaintances. She has never met someone so truly unfazed by, well, everything. Everything but the chems.

How much does he remember about his old life? The program wasn't designed to erase memory (was it?). Such a thing isn't possible (is it?).

You don't know anything. Not really. Maybe the program remade Kenneth into Five, a clean slate who merely knows his own history like a case file.

The frown that pulls at his eyes hints otherwise.

"What was it like?" she whispers.

He lifts his head, and a line forms between his eyebrows. "What?"

"Your life, before the chems. Your mind, your thoughts."

He shakes his head and focuses out the window again. "I'm not your science project, Doc."

"I wasn't trying to imply that, I just—"

"You're curious about your lab rat." He turns to face her and crosses his arms, muscle stretching the shoulder seams of his charcoal crew neck shirt. "Oh, science, what could we do for mighty science, if only Participant Five will elucidate the cognitive patterns of the mentally impaired?"

Her cheeks warm. She ducks her head, as if to conceal the armor-piercing-arrow effect of his words. Even if she looks away in time, he's heard her breath pause, maybe even heard her pulse elevate. She forces herself to meet his eyes again. If she provokes him too far, he'll abandon her. In fact, why hasn't he yet? Form a connection.

"I'm sorry, Kenneth, I—"

"Don't."

"It won't happen a—"

"Don't call me that."

Five turns away, braces his hands on the cracking window sill, and stares at the night. Silence reinforces the wall between them. Form a connection? Who's she kidding? When he finally straightens and faces her, shadows still lurk in his eyes, but the pressed line of his mouth has eased. He wears confidence again, not like a mask or a coat. A skin, an essence. The essence of Five.

He holds out his hand. "I'm Aaron."

Marta takes it, his grip firm, his palm warm against hers—the palm that needed seven sutures once. His skin is tough but smooth, unscarred, of course. Aaron. Not a number, not a case study, not an experiment. A name. A man.

"Aaron Cross," he says.

Marta squeezes his hand when he begins to let go. "Good to meet you."