He didn't fully understand why Clementine would be worried about him. They barely knew each other, and it seemed strange that she would already be invested in where he went and what he did. It made him examine her in his mind a little more closely, a flare of suspicion that made him look more carefully. But not - if she was Hydra, she would have already made her move. It wouldn't do her any good to wait around long enough to tell him how worried she was.
"I will," he said. Checking in. The last time he could remember doing that, it was with handlers. He wondered if he had checked in with Steve more, if Steve would still be here. But that didn't make any sense - it was an irrational thought with nowhere to go. They hadn't had much to say to each other, that was all. He didn't feel anything about that, and it was best not to.
He noted how Matthew was making an effort to correct his speech. Good progress, too, for a man who'd gotten lost so far into the future.
The hand found his arm, and it was a mark of progress that he didn't tense when it did. "Someone always does," he said. In time, the idea of loved ones weeping over the corpse of someone he killed might move him to stop, or to do factor in the people that might see the body. He hadn't been trained to consider the human factor, except how it might jeopardize the work. And if they wanted clean deaths, there were others paths they might have taken than the one that led through Hydra.