The Broken Mirror Job
Title The Broken Mirror Job
Fandom Leverage
Artist Amara_m
Author Moonchildfic
Rating Pg-13
Word Count ~9,000
Summary When the team comes under attack from two of their own and Parker's "Evil twin, Eviler twin" theory is the closet the team has to a logical explanation things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
Warnings Slash, violence, slight off screen torture, abuse of the word Evil by Parker, pg-13 rated non-con if that even makes sense.
Link to Master Art Post Art Here
Link to Master Fic Post You're Looking at it.
Notes In case the weirdness didn't serve as a tip off this is my entry to the Pictures2Words challenge that I've been stressing out about. I'm doing a pitch hitting entry but after which I'll be returning my attention to my other fics.
In retrospect he knew from the beginning that the job was not destined to end well. It was a job not only involving Sterling but going up against Sterling and considering their history that meant it was a job doomed, if not to failure, then at least a lot of things going wrong before they were done.
At the moment Eliot took only a small amount of comfort from the fact that being caught by Sterling had sort of been what he was supposed to do and it wasn’t that the job had gone so far south that the failsafe had failed.
Of course that Nate had made a plan where the failsafe got caught and locked up by a man who knew what exactly he had to do to keep a hitter of Eliot’s caliber locked up… well that had been cause for worry for awhile. Nate was drinking again so…
Eliot didn’t normally question orders, especially not in the middle of a job, but he was well and truly caught and waiting for the next stage of this chess game and it was either listen to Sterling monologue (and even though, ironically, Sterling monologued better than most criminals Eliot knew, it was getting old) , consider how very many things were wrong with this plan, or think about Nate’s rather drunken and bumbling attempt at a love *something* last night while trying to make up to Eliot the fact this plan meant he’d spend far more time than he normally liked in restraints. Nate knew he would do it, but even drunk Nate understood it was something he did only because it was Nate asking.
“You know Eliot.” Sterling said, sliding his chair in front of where Eliot sat on the ground, if the series of pole and iron cuffs they were using to prevent him from moving more than an inch could be called sitting. “I never really understood why Nate seems so attached to keeping you on the team. Yes, you do seem to have a tendency to follow his orders in a way a man like Nate can appreciate… “ There was more than a little implied in that statement. Eliot is going to ignore the fact his tendency to follow Nate’s orders is exactly why he’s in this mess. “And he does seem to like his vices.”
Eliot was the strong silent type but there were times he just wanted to snark at someone.
Unfortunately those times had the annoying tendency to come at times like this when he’d been gagged and could do little more than do that thing with his eyes that scared people.
“But I’m surprised the man hasn’t realized what a danger you are to your whole little crew. I’m surprised he seems to have forgotten what you used to say in the days Nate and I ran after items against you and IYS tried to hire you.” He paused before asking Eliot as if he could actually respond. “What was it again? Oh yes, ‘some things aren’t meant to be tamed. Hold onto them too long and they’ll bite just to remind you they’ve still got wild in them.’ Quite poetic really. But I have to ask Mr. Spencer. How long until you bite the team to remind them about that violence you’ve got inside you.”
There was a mummer of chaos growing between Sterling’s henchmen and Sterling stopped his monlouging long enough to answer his cell phone.
The team was moving into position. The next phase was starting and here came the moment when Eliot found out if the team would be running with plan A or plan B. It all came down to what Sterling did next.
Sterling looked to the guy standing behind Eliot and nodded. He grimly noted they’d be going with plan B when henchman number 2 turned to him.
The first blow caught him in the right eye, whipping his head back. He was dazed, momentarily stunned a little at most, but not quite out. If he wasn’t gagged he might have told Sterling he had amateurs on his payroll and he should have just shelled out for a professional.
When the second blow only caused dark spots to briefly cross his vision Eliot half wondered if they were being intentionally bad at this. He had taken out nearly a dozen of them by himself before being caught. That was likely to make anyone a little annoyed.
Sterling interjected before the third blow. “For the love of, just hit h-“
Something hard connected with the back of his head and darkness finally took him.
~*~
When Eliot started to wake up the first thing he registered was that the chains and pole were gone. He was laying flat, the soft Egyptian cotton sheets of the bed in his apartment lay over him and under him and for a brief moment Eliot just lay still and appreciated that the job had obviously not gone too badly. He highly doubted Sterling would have been delivering him to anywhere besides a maximum security prison.
Slowly Eliot opened his eyes, watching dim lights from the city coming through his window play across the ceiling. It was night, probably late. He’d probably been unconscious for ten to twelve hours. He raised a hand, gently touching his smarting but suprisingly not too badly bruised face just to make sure before moving to feel the bandage on the back of his skull. Professional work. The team had probably brought in a private doctor they paid to keep quiet to check him over and fix him up. Which would explain why he was in his own home and not the hospital.
Eliot approved.
Slowly he sat up, strangely feeling not too bad for all that he’d been given a pretty bad concussion. Maybe his head was just getting hard.
He mentally shook his head in exasperation at himself. He needed to spend less time around Hardison. Which reminded him.
Hardison so owed him ten bucks.
You know there may be something wrong with your life when you have a bet with a co worker about whether or not you’ll make it through the job conscious, and that you take the ‘Sterling will have someone knock me out’ side.
“You’re up. Good.” Nate’s voice said from the chair in the corner and damn that man was getting sneakier all the time.
“The job wrapped up?” Eliot asked, slowly sliding out of bed even as he became aware that the whole feeling the sheets thing had been a somewhat universal sensation for a reason. He was naked. Well then.
At least it was Nate sitting there. After the months they’d been sleeping together it wasn’t like Nate was seeing anything new.
“Yes. The Silverman family got their shop back. Terrance Warrens is in jail. The necklace is back to it’s rightful owner and Sterling has to explain to his new bosses that he wasn’t trying to use an international scandal to further his own career at the expense of the innocent and that all the bad publicity isn’t his fault.” Nate grinned and took a sip from his coffee. “Add in that there was certain footage of him ordering a henchmen to strike an immobilized man and I don’t think his stay in Interpol will be long term.”
Eliot grinned, the nice satisfied feeling of a job well done settling into the pit of his stomach. Even if he’d taken a few hits it was good to know the job had run smoothly without him. He walked over to his dresser, ready to get dressed to start his day since he didn’t seem to be suffering too badly from the blow to the head. It was an oddity, but one he planned to take advantage of.
Nate closed the dresser, suddenly right next to him and all in Eliot’s personal space and switching quickly from team’s mastermind to Eliot’s… well whatever they were.
Nate’s jeans and shirt rubbed against Eliot’s bare skin, hot breath rustling the hair by his ear as Nate told him to leave the clothes and get back to bed. A hand settled around the base of his neck. “You should be resting.”
Eliot half turned to look to Nate, faint smile on his face as he said. “’m not tired.”
The hand around his neck pulled him in to meet Nate’s mouth for a brief kiss before Nate gave that I’m plotting grin of his. “I can help you with that.”
~*~
Nate was gone when Eliot woke up in the morning. It was unusual, mostly because Eliot tended to wake up long before Nate did and Nate tended to at least hang around until Eliot made breakfast, but considering the past few days Eliot didn’t really think anything of it.
He was also strangely neither showing aftereffects from the concussion nor sore from last nights activities. Considering it had quickly turned into life affirming and celebratory sex which could get kind of rough…
But again, considering the oddities of the past few days Eliot didn’t really think anything of it.
As usual he made himself breakfast, did a morning work out, tended his garden, and headed out for Nate’s apartment ready to start the new day with the Leverage team and the pending big celebration for finally one uping Sterling.
The apartment was strangely quiet when Eliot arrived. Soft voices coming from the kitchen. It took Eliot a moment to recognize that Nate, Sophie, and Parker were all surrounding something. There was something wrong here. Then Nate moved and Eliot got a good view of who they’d been surrounding, Hardison. It took a moment longer for the white cast on Hardison’s right arm, the bruises decorating his face, and the brace for a dis and relocated shoulder his left arm was in to register.
When it did Eliot almost saw red. Some bastard had hurt Hardison.
They would be in the hospital for a long long time by the time Eliot was done with them.
The anger must have shown on his face as Eliot stalked into the apartment because Hardison’s eyes went wide and the other three planted themselves in between him and Eliot.
“Who did this?” Eliot asked, his voice tight.
Dead silence.
“Who did this?” He asked again.
The looks in their eyes softened slightly and only then did Eliot register that the anger and fear on their faces had been directed.
Directed toward him.
“You really don’t know?” Sophie asked, her voice soft, almost gentle, almost like trying to coax and calm him. “Do you remember what happened yesterday?”
“We were on the job. Sterling’s guys caught me as we planned. They knocked me out. I woke up in my apartment. Nate was there and he told me the job had gone alright. He didn’t tell me Hardison had been hurt.” Even as he said it their expressions changed. Relief and hurt and sadness and fear and he didn’t even understand the looks passing across Parker’s face. “What?”
Nate came forward slowly, gently placing a hand on Eliot’s shoulder. “Eliot… we finished the job with Sterling three weeks ago.”
His own voice sounded hollow in his ears. “What?”
“The job with the Silverman family and Sterling? We finished that three weeks ago. You were in the hospital for nearly a week afterwards. They were keeping you drugged and you had a bad reaction, you nearly died.”
“But you were in my apartment last night.” Eliot insisted. He rubbed a hand over his face, his heart skipping a beat when he realized the bruising was almost entirely gone.
“I was here, alone.” Nate said softly. “Until Hardison came in.”
“Who hurt him?” Eliot asked again. He had lost three weeks somehow and was possibly hallucinating but he could at least take out whoever had hurt his team mate.
“You really don’t know do you?” Nate said, the hand leaving Eliot’s shoulder.
“No. So could someone tell me?” Eliot snapped.
“You did.”
“I did?” He asked. He couldn’t… it just didn’t make sense. This was Hardison. He just… Hardison could drive him to distraction and make him want to punch something but he’d never actually hurt the guy. He was his crew, hell, Hardison was as close to a little brother as Eliot would ever have. He’d never…
“You did.” Hardison said, just a hint of a slur in his voice from the wounds to his face and possibly a concussion. “I was walkin’ back from the corner market and you were coming in late an’ we saw each other. I started talking to you and you just… you just went ballistic man. Before I knew it you were beatin’ the crap out of me and then you just left. What the hell is your problem?”
He didn’t… he didn’t even have words. He could remember last night so clearly. Everything he and Nate had said and done. But Nate hadn’t been at his apartment last night.
“It was right outside. The security feeds caught the entire thing.” Hardison said, pointing to the screen in the living room Eliot hadn’t even noticed until now. He saw himself, frozen in a stop action picture, halfway through kicking a downed Hardison in the ribs, a vicious looking rattlesnake smile on his lips.
There wasn’t really anything he could offer to refute that. The more they told him what happened the night before the more Eliot realized everything that had happened the night before didn’t add up. All those little moments, everything that didn’t quite make sense…
He could hear his heartbeat pounding louder in his ears.
“You guys are missing it!” Parker interrupted, breaking her uncharacteristic silence. “It’s obvious. It wasn’t Eliot. It was Eliot’s evil twin!” Four sets of eyes turned toward the blond thief who nodded, completely serious. When she registered the disbelief she shrugged. “I mean… eviler twin. But it wasn’t Eliot. He doesn’t remember it. It could have been a doppelganger. Like in the movies Hardison was showing us last month.”
Eliot felt something bitter and broken bubbling up from his throat, an eerie sounding laugh echoing through the room before he realized it was him. A twin. Of course. He had an eviler twin running around hurting his family. Why didn’t he think of this sooner?
Oh yeah, because no matter how insane he was apparently becoming Parker was still a few more pounds of crazy than he was.
“What do we do?” Sophie asked quietly.
Nate said the words they’d never thought they’d, never wanted to, hear him say. “I don’t know.”
~*~
“Tighter. If it’s loose enough I can just dislocate my thumb and slip ‘em.” Eliot instructed even as he fought instincts to fight back.
They didn’t know what was going on, and Eliot didn’t want to consider what was going on, but things were bad. Best case scenario was… he didn’t even know how to explain this situation in a good way. Worst case was he was having breaks with reality and attacking the team.
Which was why they had decided on this course of action, at least until they figured *something* out.
Eliot was a potential threat. If he really was attacking the team they needed to neutralize that threat before he took them all out.
Neutralizing that threat turned out to be clearing out a closet in Nate’s apartment and securing Eliot in there with Eliot providing advice on how to restrain him successfully without causing permanent damage. It was an exercise of trust Eliot was a bit surprised he was willing to submit himself to. He didn’t normally willingly let himself be restrained. To let these people completely immobilize him willingly…
They seemed as surprised as he felt when he told them it was the first obvious step to take.
But they all knew it was impractical in the long term. They could hold him like this for a little while but he was their friend and no one was particularly eager to make him their captive and if he was a danger to them the moment they gave him even a little room to move he could take them all out.
But it bought them a few hours to figure something out without having to worry about him going crazy and attacking them.
And it gave him a few hours of quiet to try to figure out what the hell had happened.
Parker tightened the last cuff a little bit more and gave his knee an awkward pat, like she was trying to be comforting, or trying to apologize for the fact it was her cuff and lock collection that was holding him.
Nate cleared his throat. “If you need us we’ll be right downstairs.” Another awkward moment. “We’ll figure this out.”
Parker sighed. “I still say it’s Eliot’s evil twin. Oh! I almost forgot.” She pulled something out of her pocket and plugged it into the wall socket on the far side of the closet. It was a little wall night light. “There.”
Eliot wasn’t even going to ask why she just happened to have a nightlight in her pocket or how she’d fit it in there.
Slowly she stood up and took a step back, sighed, turned, and left to rejoin Sophie and Hardison downstairs.
Nate lingered in the doorway a moment longer. “We’ll figure this out.” He repeated, the words like a promise, or a prayer. “We will.”
“I know.” Eliot said with a nod.
“Eliot I…” Nate’s voice faltered.
“I know.” Eliot repeated. “Me too.”
Nate closed the door and darkness sank in around Eliot, held at bay by the little nightlight. Eliot let his head fall forward to rest against his knees, closed his eyes, and tried to figure out what the hell had happened.
The darkness pressed in around him and he heard just the faint echo of Sterling’s question. “How long until you bite the team to remind them about that violence you’ve got inside you?”
It was hard to measure the time that past, Eliot felt like he was floating in some void with nothing but the floor, himself, and the little light. Time passed. Seconds ticked by like minutes and hours and nothing made sense.
The nightlight began to flicker. More time passed and it died completely.
Eliot was floating in a void. No light. No time.
He cleared his mind and tried to count heartbeats, trying to use that as an indicator to time but they seemed to blur together and not make any sense.
Reality seemed to blur together and as much as Eliot wouldn’t admit it it felt a little like he was going crazy.
The door opened. Blinding light flooded into the closet and Eliot blinked watering eyes, looking up to try to see who had come to see him.
“Eliot.” Nate’s voice identified the being even as his eyes finally adjusted enough to make the man out.
“Any news?” Eliot asked. His throat was dry. He could really use some water but he wasn’t going to ask if they were about to let him out anyway.
“Some.” Nate said, nonspecifically, kneeling besides Eliot.
Something was wrong. Nate was being non-specific when if he had good news he should be giving straight answers. A hand touched Eliot’s shoulder, running down his arm under the steal pole trapped under his knees and above his elbows to his hands cuffed together over his shins effectively trapping him in this position.
“Did you know this is called putting someone into a buck?” Nate asked his voice oddly cold, oddly distant. Eliot felt a chill run down his spine. “It was sometimes used to immobilize slaves for a beating in the antebellum era south.”
Eliot didn’t say that he knew that, that the information had made it’s way into Sterling’s “hero” monolouging. A sarcastic remark about the similarities between Nate and Sterling never even fully processed in his brain. It was too glaringly obvious that there was something wrong for that.
This was… this whole situation… there was something wrong. No. There was a lot wrong.
A whole fucking lot wrong.
Was this even real? Was he having a nightmare and about to wake up to find Parker poking him to wake him up so she could comfort him with her eviler twin theory.
Nate’s hand settled around the base of his neck before moving up, twisting in his hair and tugging sharply, painfully, pulling Eliot’s head as far back as it would go, pressing a rough kiss against his mouth, already open from trying to breathe against the choking sensation caused from the stretch of his neck.
Dear god let it be a nightmare.
Eliot gasped and gagged, trying to breathe, to protest, to tell Nate that this was not the time and to fucking let go of his hair. Panic was rising in the back of his mind. He was more or less helpless and this…
This was not Nate. At least not one any of them knew.
Nate ended the kiss and Eliot managed to gasp out. “What the fuck Na-“Before Nate’s other hand closed over his mouth and nose, cutting off words and breath all together, smothering him.
“Ssh… wouldn’t want the others to hear now would you?” Nate whispered in his ear. Small, soft, kisses were traced down his neck as Eliot fought for breath, pulling at the restraints, anything to be able to *breathe*. Nate paused, whispering soft and dirty nothings in his ear. Eliot’s body was responding to the treatment and oxygen deprivation even as his mind swung into full panic mode. Pain and pleasure jolted across his senses as Nate bit the skin of the crook between his neck and his shoulders, that same plotting grin of his on his lips when he pulled away and met Eliot’s eyes. “Just to remind you that you still belong to me.” The words seemed to clang and echo, resounding around them despite the quiet tone.
Darkness was creeping in from the edges of his vision but in that brief moment before it pulled him under Eliot’s brain registered something was wrong.
He was flung into oblivion again just as he realized.
There was a mirror hanging on the inside of the closet door. Eliot could see his own reflection but not a sign of this Nate.
There was something very very wrong.
~*~
“Eliot, Eliot wake up!” Someone was patting his cheek.
He’d been unchained though it felt like he was still on the floor.
“I think he’s coming to.” That was Sophie’s voice.
“Come on man.” That was Hardison’s voice.
Eliot opened his eyes slowly. He was on the floor of Nate’s bedroom, just outside the closet he’d been held in. The team minus Nate stood over him. Nate sat off to the side with an icepack pressed against his head.
Still unsure of what the hell was going on Eliot pushed himself slowly to a sitting position, ignoring muscles cramping and sore from the time forced to hold one position. “What the hell?”
He seemed to be saying and thinking that a lot this past day.
“You attacked Nate when he went down to get something to drink from the bar.” Hardison explained.
“I what?” Eliot asked.
“Only you didn’t.” Sophie injected. “Because you were in that closet the entire time. And after Nate came to locked into the hall closet on the first floor he called my cell to come get him out. It had been less than two minutes since he’d left the apartment for the second time.”
“I’m not followin’.” Eliot said, trying to wrap his mind around what the hell was going on.
“I told you! Evil twin, Eviler twin!” Parker said, no longer able to restrain from interrupting. “It’s Nate and Eliot’s Eviler twins that are doing everything.”
Nate cleared his throat. “As crazy as it sounds… that’s really the only explanation I can think of.”
Eliot had to admit it would explain a lot not nearly everything, but more than had been previously explained.
Though how he and Nate had suddenly spawned doppelgangers was an entirely different matter.
“So let me get this straight.” Eliot said, rubbing his temples because really, this was turning into a weirder day by the second. “There’s another guy who looks like me and a guy who looks like Nate running around hurtin’ us?”
“It would seem so.” Sophie said.
“And, okay, yeah, nice ta know I’m not goin’ insane but does no one else find this a little crazy?”
“You’ve been out for awhile Eliot.” Parker said. “We kinda all got over it while we were waiting for you to wake up. You should probably try to catch up with the rest of us.” She nodded, almost sage like.
“What do we do?” Eliot asked.
Nate’s answer was pure steel. “Find them. Stop them.”
~*~
They regathered on the couches in the living room to try to figure out their next step. It was a disheartening sight to see. Parker was doing her best to follow the instructions Hardison gave her, his sling and cast barely allowing him to hold a bottle of orange soda, hacking of any kind was out. Hardison was being as patient as could be expected given the circumstances, and managing to keep his tone kind, but it didn’t take a grifter of Sophie’s caliber to know he was frustrated. Nate was still holding ice to the growing bump on his head and Sophie wasn’t being subtle about wanting to do something about the places where the cuffs had bruised and cut Eliot’s wrists when he struggled.
All in all they did not look particularly up to the challenge of defeating two evil twins.
Not to mention Eliot didn’t know why they were sitting around the couches like they were waiting for Hardison to give a briefing. What kind of briefing could he give them? Their working theory was that he and Nate had spawned evil doppelgangers.
“Have we checked to see if maybe we all were sufferin’ from exposure to some kinda hallucinogen?” Eliot asked. “Like maybe I cooked us all dinner and somethin’ in the food was off?” Eliot would usually insist that nothing he’d served the team even bordered anything less than good but seriously… kind of grasping at straws here. He was willing to set aside his pride if it meant a logical and less potentially dangerous reason for this mess.
“A hallucination kicked the crap out of me?” Hardison asked, sounding mildly irritated.
Eliot was trying not to notice Hardison was staying at least five feet away from him at all times. When this was all over Eliot knew he’d still have to fix that mess. Not that he had any idea how off the top of his head.
“Not to mention all five of us sharing the same hallucination…” Nate didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Eliot knew it would have been nearly impossible. He sighed and stood, walking to stand in his normal briefing spot. “What do we know?” Blank stares. “Alright. What do we think we know?”
Hardison started. “I was attacked last night by evil El-“
“Eviler” Parker insisted. “Eviler Eliot.” Eliot wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about Parker’s continued reminder to everyone that he was evil.
“By Eviler Eliot.” Hardison corrected himself with a ‘there’s something wrong with you’ look toward Parker.
“I don’t remember the past three weeks.” Eliot offered. “So if I’ve been around you guys theres a chance some of it was my…” He caught the look Parker was giving him. “Eviler Twin.” Somehow the small smile on Parker’s face at that made the situation just a little bit better. “The last thing I remember was wakin’ up in my apartment with Nate there an’ him tellin’ me that the job with Sterling had gone well.”
“That never happened.” Nate told him. “After we rescued you we had to take you to the hospital. You’d been drugged and had an allergic reaction to the drugs. So either it was an outright hallucination from the drugs, a dream mistaken for a memory because of the drugs, or somewhat reality with my evil twin making an appearance.”
Eliot felt a small note of comfort when he heard Parker give an exasperated sigh and mutter “Eviler twin.” At least she considered Nate evil as well.
Sophie finished off. “Who made an appearance just over two hours ago when Eliot’s doppelganger knocked Nate out and locked him in a closet while Nate’s doppelganger came in here and went upstairs to check on Eliot.”
Eyes turned toward Eliot. He mentally reviewed what had happened before deciding what was necessary and what he could leave out for the sake of his own and Nate’s sanity. “He told me he was reminding me I belonged to him and then he smothered me until I blacked out.” He said simply.
Dead silence.
“I figured there was somethin’ wrong.” He looked up, meeting Nate’s eyes steadily, trying to broadcast that he neither blamed nor feared Nate. That…thing hadn’t been Nate. It had been just a clone or copy, a poor reflection as in a mirror.
Where did that line come from? His trains of thought didn’t normally get symbolic. He shook it off.
“I think I may have found something.” Sophie said. Eliot turned, surprised to find Sophie had the remote and was reviewing the footage of “him” beating up Hardison last night. “Look here, you can see the side mirror of that car and that window. In both of them you can clearly see Hardison’s reflection. But here.” She stopped the video, showing “Eliot” walking next to a talking Hardison. In the nearby window and the car’s side mirror you could clearly see Hardison’s reflection.
There wasn’t even a hint of Eliot.
“It was the same thing earlier with the Other Nate. These guys don’t have reflections.” Eliot stated, it sounded as weird out loud as it did in his head but it made about as much sense as anything else. Though he had to wonder how the security camera was working. Then again Hardison tended to use digital so… maybe?
“I’ve got someth-“ Hardison started, cutting himself off when Parker glared. “We’ve got something.” He corrected. “Remember the other case Sterling was working on?” Eliot did, vaguely, which was somewhat unusual but he’d found out about it only a few hours before the head wound that had him missing three weeks so, while worrying, there were other *more* worrying things. Hardison continued as they all nodded. “Well apparently the guy Sterling was working with on the case, Dr. Matthias Curtis was a biologist and psychologist and neurologist and… a lot of other ists. I’m pretty good at figuring things out and I can’t make heads or tails of any of the articles he’s published. Seriously. Did you know there are entire different science journals for different parts of the brain?” A chorus of Hardisons later and he was back on track. “The thing is he’s in the city and apparently he’s doing research on the subconscious and conscious processes mixed with Id, Ego, Superego type of thing.”
There was a pause as he directed Parker to a different page and scanned it. “From his grant requests he’s researching separating the conscious and unconscious or something, again it’s hard to translate the “Look at me and my sevenbajillion degrees” babble, to determine the effect something has on the brain and to treat personality disorders.” Another pause. “It says here he’s trying to devise a way to separate and isolate a person’s darker emotions and desires. Good luck with that.”
The room had gone silent again.
“Eviler Eliot beat up Hardison.” Parker said finally. “And Eviler Nate said he owned Eliot. Eliot sometimes wants to beat up Hardison but he doesn’t. Ever since Nate and Eliot started fucking Nate gets really pissed off whenever someone flirts with Eliot but it’s not…”
Dead silence for a full twenty seconds before Sophie said. “Nate and Eliot… what?” Followed only a beat behind by Hardison.
“Oh… right…” Parker said with an exasperated sigh. “Sleeping together. Since they started sleeping together. It’s only fucking if it’s like a one night stand or there’s dirty talk and kinkiness involved. Although Eliot does tend to be very obedient…” Parker’s look was far too amused and Eliot had to wonder if she was purposefully pretending she didn’t realize the shock was not at all about her use of the word fuck. “But when does it become making love? And really who thought up that phrase. It doesn’t even make sense. Love isn’t something you can make. Unless maybe it’s supposed to be making babies?”
“Parker. Eliot and I are not sleeping together or in a relationship as anything more than friends.”
Eliot fought to keep his face straight. He knew that this was practical. That distracting the team with their drama while hell was breaking loose was not the ideal situation.
But it did hurt just a little.
“I know.” Parker said and went back to her screen. “But you do get jealous when girls flirt with him.”
Sophie took a moment longer to recover before pushing forward and back to the case. Eliot was surprised how everyone seemed to forget so easily. Then again Parker was crazy and there were kind of pressing issues. “So… the Other Eliot is violence and rage Eliot suppresses. Other Nate takes his controlling nature to the next level.” She took a breath before saying what they all were considering. “Maybe Dr. Curtis had some success.”
“We need to talk to the good Dr. then.” Nate said, nodding resolutely. “Let’s go steal back our identities.”
~*~
“Hardison’s asleep.”
“Huh?” Eliot looked up from staring at the patterns in the metal of the staircase to the upper floor of Nate’s condo that he was sitting on. He hadn’t even noticed Nate finishing convincing Hardison to get some sleep while he could. The girls were out grifting and stealing their ways to getting more information about Dr. Curtis. Nate and Eliot had been left behind to keep watch over the injured Hardison and try not to get mixed up by their evil counterparts.
They were gathering intel. Hopefully they could piece together some reason behind this, figure out what caused it, and be able to run a normal job to fix it.
Of course that would be simple and smooth and nothing ever went simple or smooth when the Leverage team was involved.
The problem was their information. Normally they had heaps of it but right now they only knew in part, and they guessed, prophesied, in part.
There was that strange *thing* again.
“How did you get on the stairs?” Nate asked.
“What?” Eliot said, realizing he’d zoned out again. “I walked up them? How doya think?”
Nate raised an eyebrow. “I said ‘how about you come downstairs.’ It’s getting late and Hardison’s going to be hungry when he wakes up and he should be eating something besides gummy frogs. You making him dinner would go a ways in fixing things between you two.”
“Oh.” Eliot nodded, standing slowly.
“What did you think I said?”
“I thought you asked how I got on the stairs.” Eliot responded, suddenly wondering that for himself. He only vaguely...
He shook it off. Probably repeated head trauma making his mind fuzzy.
He should be a bit more worried about that. But having a phyco twin running around trying to kill your team tended to put things into perspective.
Absently Eliot went to the kitchen, pulling out ingredients to make spaghetti and tomato sauce. Not from scratch, but Hardison was a freak who truly liked the from the can sauce better. Eliot would indulge the hacker for once after the kind of day it had been for him.
Nate stayed close by, not saying anything, but Eliot could almost feel something left unsaid in the air between them.
“You left a part out.” It wasn’t what Eliot was expecting the words to be. “When you told what the Other Me did you left a part out.” Nate’s fingers gently brushed Eliot’s hair away from his neck, tracing over a faint bite mark left in his skin. “He hurt you.”
I hurt you.
Eliot reached up a hand to cover the one on his neck. Today had been so fucking confusing. But this was something he knew for certain. “That wasn’t you Nate.”
“But it was.” Nate said, hands moving, sliding down to wrap around Eliot’s waist. “Parker’s right. I get jealous. I don’t want to see you with others. I don’t want them touching you. Don’t want them giving you orders or even getting that smile of yours. I have to fight myself every time we have a job to make sure this doesn’t make me make a choice for the wrong reasons. In a way, in my head, you do belong to me.”
Eliot turned. Nate was putting to words what had been running through his mind but even as he heard it… “But that’s in your head. You don’t act on it. You don’t mark me as yours.” An almost flirting grin crossed his face. “’least not unless I ask ya to.”
“That’s very sweet of you two.” A voice, Nate’s voice, echoed through the apartment as the front door opened and shut. Nate and Eliot broke away from each other, moving to try to put themselves between Other Nate and Hardison. “Don’t worry about Hardison. I came to take whats mine. If you two are reasonable about it he won’t have to get hurt. Hell. He won’t even notice the difference.”
Nate shifted again, putting himself between Other Nate and Eliot. “He’s not yours, ours, or mine.” Nate said fiercely, like he hadn’t just been doubting his own belief in that. Like he didn’t anymore.
“I’m not after what I already have. I’m after you.” Nate was shocked. Eliot didn’t have to see his face to know it. “Yes, you. See I’m just a… reflection… of sorts. I can’t gain a solid foothold in this world without you. But if you consent to allowing a… slightly hostile takeover… to go through then no one else needs to get hurt. Your team will barely notice the difference, you’re already controlling as it is. If you continue to resist… well.” Other Nate pulled a cell-phone, Sophie’s Cell-phone, out of his pocket. A moment later he tossed a little clear plastic jar at Nate.
It rattled when he caught it. Judging by Nate’s reaction Eliot had the sinking feeling it was one of Sophie’s fingernails. It was a very distinctive reaction.
“My Eliot is running after Parker and Sophie is in a secure location he picked out. If you continue to refuse I will continue to give her back to you in increasingly large pieces before starting again with Parker. Give in to me and the pain will stop. I promise.” Other Nate came forward, resting a hand on Nate’s arm. “No one else has to be hurt. Trust me when I say I do not want to hurt them, but I will if I must to achieve my goal. Please just give in. You don’t have to have their blood on your hands as well as Sam’s.”
“I need time to think.” Nate said softly.
“Of course you do.” Other Nate responded, sounding almost sincere. “You have four hours. I’ll be back then.”
Other Nate left and Nate turned to Eliot. “You need to find Parker before other you does. I’ll stay with Hardison.”
“How?”
“Don’t think like yourself. Think like Parker. Where would Parker go to hide?”
~*~
Thinking like Parker was harder than he’d thought, yet easier at the same time.
Somehow it all came back to thinking like a child and reasoning like a child. Somehow that seemed how Parker would think and reason.
When he was a child and he was afraid he hid where there were things he was afraid of but was less afraid of than the thing he was hiding from. He reasoned, as a child, that if small spaces and spiders were so frightening to him others had to also be afraid of them and if he hid in a small dark woodshed the older boys trying to hurt him would be too afraid to come in after him.
Of course they’d simply locked him in there, but he wasn’t going to focus on that. It made everything feel smaller and darker all of a sudden.
Parker, he reasoned, made a living off of facing her fears. She, like him as a child, would probably feel safest from a specific threat when surrounded by things she was afraid of.
The was how he ended up in the stables he’d taken her to try to get her past her fear of horses enough to ride. It had been a dismal failure but Parker had liked the loft. There had been a loft above the stalls that she’d gone to observe the horses from a safe distance, there was even a small window she could shimmy out through to keep from being cornered.
“Parker?” He called softly as he crept over the rafters, trying to catch sight of the thief. “Parker it’s me.”
“How do I know it’s the right you?” Her voice asked, though the sound bounced all over the loft.
He thought for a moment before smiling and answering. “Because my eviler twin doesn’t know how to think like you.” He didn’t know that for certain, but that wasn’t what mattered.
Eviler twin.
It was Parker’s words turned back as a password.
A second later she threw her arms around him in a tight hug. “Okay Parker, who gave you happy pills?” He asked, trying to lighten the mood. “Parker… Parker… you need to let me go. The sooner we get out of here the better.”
Without another word she let him go and they started climbing back down to ground level to get out and get back.
That was when it hit him.
This barn? This stable? It was just outside LA.
He didn’t remember taking a plane.
He didn’t remember how he got here at all.
He remembered trying to think like Parker and then he was here, in the loft, looking for her.
And it wasn’t the first time.
‘How did you get on the stairs?’
He didn’t remember that.
There were huge chunks missing from his memories and he kept on just shrugging it off. There were so many oddities he kept suspending disbelief for ever since the job with Sterling that involved interpol.
Interpol. Sterling had become a member of Interpol after the job in Kiev where he welcomed Tara to the team because she shared their hatred for Sterling.
Tara, not Sophie, had been the grifter on this job.
But Sophie had been…
Suddenly Parkers hand was ripped from his. Eliot turned to see himself hold a knife to her throat, face cold, almost emotionless, though there was just a hint of rage in those eyes and that sneer. A reflection of himself, only the violence taken over.
And suddenly things clicked into place.
“This isn’t real.” He said.
Parker looked up, meeting his eyes before slipping other Eliot’s grip and retreating to Eliot’s side. “But you’re still going to get me out of here right?”
He nodded. “That’s my job.” He was pretty sure this wasn’t real and was just some freakish dream possibly because he was unconscious and couldn’t wake up for some reason, but he wasn’t sure, and this was Parker. He wasn’t taking a chance that she was real and could get hurt.
Other Eliot came at him, Eliot dodge the punch and tried to return the blow only to be dodged in return.
The fight, if two people continually dodging and blocking each other could be called a fight, went on, neither side landing a hit. They were reflections, perfectly equal matches. Even as Eliot stumbled back, grabbing a pitchfork, stomping on and breaking the handle and turning it into a weapon the other him did the same.
There was a crash and the sound of thunder and a smell of smoke in the air. Suddenly horses were racing from their opened stalls and out the barn door.
Parker had opened the horse stalls then lit the building on fire.
That was one way of creating a distraction.
Suddenly she landed next to him, tugging on the back of his shirt. He let her pull him back a second before a burning rafter beam landed between him and the other Eliot.
He turned, motioning her to follow him as they ran out the closest door.
Bright sunshine fractured and fragmented and they found themselves not outside but in a strange hallway with mirrors to either side, like a funhouse without the distorted images.
There was definitely something wrong.
He slowed to a walk, motioning Parker to walk carefully. They were in a strange environment and there was no telling what might threaten them here.
He took the lead, trying to use the mirrors to keep an eye behind him for threats, but it wasn’t exactly like the Other Him or Other Nate cast reflections so it was somewhat of a challenge.
“Eliot!” Parker whispered and Eliot turned, seeing her point toward one of the mirrors.
His reflection had turned to face the mirror and was pressing his palms flat against the glass. As Eliot watched the reflection’s hands passed through the glass into the real world.
Eliot didn’t hesitate. He swung the pole from the pitchfork he’d picked up earlier as hard as he could, shattering the mirror.
“He’s over here now.” Parker said, pointing to another mirror where other him was trying to break through before turning to try to use a side kick to break it.
A hand reached through the glass, catching her ankle.
A second later Eliot had shattered that mirror as well, Parker stumbling away to safety, stopping herself before she hit the mirrors on the far wall. “If ever something was going to make you paranoid crazy.” Parker mumbled, her voice disturbingly more interested than scared.
There was something wrong with her, even in his dreams.
“Just stay away from the mirrors.” He said, trying to sound calm. “We need to get out of here.” There were too many mirrors. Too many things and ways for this to go wrong.
“Eliot!” Parker said, pointing toward another mirror. Eliot raised the pole ready attack and then stopped.
It wasn’t The Other Him.
It was Nate.
“Eliot don’t break this mirror.” Nate warned. “The other me took my place. You have to help me through.”
“No, Eliot! Don’t!” Nate’s voice said. Eliot turned. Nate was in the other mirror as well. “He wants to drag you into the mirror. Don’t touch him.”
“Eliot!” Parker said, pointing toward a mirror where the Other Him was coming out.
“Eliot please, hurry.” Nate said from one side.
“Leave! Quick! Get Parker out safe! Do your job!”
“Eliot, Evil you is almost out!” Parker said, backing away slowly, shrieking when a hand reached out of the mirror she’d backed into.
Eliot turned his back to the Nate’s. He didn’t know what to do with that, but he had to save Parker before he could figure it out.
The hallway seemed to stretch as Eliot ran toward her, getting longer between them as another hand stretched out and pulled Parker into the mirror.
And suddenly he was there as the other him held Parker, that same knife to her throat only tighter now, digging in, a thin line of blood already leaking through pale skin.
“This isn’t real.” Eliot repeated, trying to make this stop before what was about to happen happened.
His Other raised it’s eyes to meet his, blue slowly melting into black. “But it could be.” He slit Parker’s throat even as Eliot moved, smashing the mirror he stood in front of.
A hundred fragments of mirrors scattered onto the floor, each showing the image of Parker’s corpse.
“I told you to just get her out of here!” Nate shouted at him, grief making his voice harsh.
“Can’t you just follow orders?” The other Nate shouted.
Eliot turned, lashing out, shattering both mirrors, anger and grief and too much coursing through him, his own heartbeat pounding loud in his ears. All about him the shattered pieces showed not his reflection but Parker’s corpse, and Nate’s, and the rest of the team’s. Dead eyes stared at him accusingly. He looked up, breathing heavy, looking at the remaining mirrors.
Only none of them showed his reflection anymore.
“This isn’t real.” Eliot repeated, almost as much a prayer as a statement. “It’s just a weird dream. Just a bunch of things I was worried about mixin’ together.”
So why wasn’t he waking up?
Well he had been knocked unconscious, he reassured himself, but you don’t normally have dreams when that happens.
What had he been thinking about when he got knocked out? He’d been worried about Nate’s use of him… Other Nate. Sterling had been talking about the violence in him… Other him.
And the words that had been running through his head. Words Nate had stumbled over the night before the job, too drunk to remember but still trying to tell Eliot something.
He closed his eyes, thinking, remembering, piecing bits together. ‘I am but a resounding gong or clanging cymbol.’, ‘For we know in part and we prophesy in part’ ‘when I was a child I thought like a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child.’ ‘Now I see but a poor refle…'
His eyes opened. “Now I see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face.” The pieces of the mirrors moved, twisting, solidifying into the Other Him, standing before him. “Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
He remembered this now, an echo from a long long time gone, not a poem but something else. Something from dusty and dull days of Sunday school as a child, a bit his mother loved, that his sister loved, that a part of him liked. It was romantic but at the same time it didn’t have to be. It was a statement about the nature of a thing he had all but forgotten even as he all but forgot the thing itself in the years between Sunday School and the Leverage team.
“And these three things remain.” He said, taking a step toward the Other Him.
“Faith.” Faith in himself, in his own strength and strength of will and strength of his feelings for his team, his family. Faith that what Sterling predicted and he himself feared would not come to pass.
“Hope” Hope that he and Nate would work things out. That this was only another bump on the road. That their problems, the fact they were both broken, somehow meant they fit together better and maybe even if they couldn’t fix each other they could learn to live with themselves with the other’s help. That one day when Parker did blurt out to the team that they were together the team would accept this.
“And Love.”
And that, though he’d never consciously admit it, was what this all came back to. Him and Nate, him and the team…
“But the greatest is love.”
The other him burst into pieces, destroyed by a blinding light that spread, bouncing off the mirrors surrounding them until Eliot could see nothing besides perfect white light.
~*~
“Easy, easy… I think he’s waking up.”
Eliot didn’t open his eyes right away. His head pounded. His whole body hurt. Gentle hands were moving him, easing him down to the ground.
“Stay still for a minute.”
Eliot wasn’t sure who was speaking but he needed to catch his bearings.
Slowly Eliot forced his eyes open. The entire team was sitting or kneeling nearby, Parker was messing with the series of cuffs and chains that had been holding him hostage.
“What happened?” Eliot asked.
“We got him cold.” Nate said. “Sterling isn’t going to be a problem for us anymore. Or… at least not for a little while.”
Eliot gave a short, shallow, nod. He was glad the job had gone alright, even if he knew Sterling would always be there to antagonize them in one way or another.
He looked up at the team, vague recollection of the dream clearing and fading in turn. He’d think about it, maybe even talk to Nate about it. But later. Right now he was alive and the team was alive and he did not in fact have an eviler twin running around.
He’d enjoy the moment, despite the pounding headache.
But just so he didn’t forget. “Hardison?”
“Yeah?”
“You owe me ten bucks.”
Hardison’s look was one for the ages as he stammered out. “There is something wrong with you.”
Parker interjected about how that was Eliot’s catch phrase to use on her and Hardison had his own and somehow they got up and out of there and back to Nate’s apartment without casualties to start the post job celebration.
He knew Nate was still going to drink himself drunk tonight. Sophie was still away in god knew where. Hardison was still a geek, Parker was still crazy, and Eliot knew there was no such thing as epiphany therapy and a single weirdass dream was not going to somehow enable him to fix everyone’s issues.
But he was alive and they were alive and one way or another he could at least now acknowledge to himself, in his own head, that that was something that meant a lot to him. And maybe Nate and his relationship was bordering unhealthy and maybe he should do something about it before it got *that* out of hand. And maybe he was afraid that it was only a matter of time before he lost control.
But even as he thought that Parker unexpectantly vaulted over the couch’s back to sit next to him, nearly causing him to spill his beer before asking him in a whisper but completely serious tone. “Eliot, is there really such a thing as a good twin and an evil twin?”
He let out a soft laugh shaking his head, biting down the instinctive ‘there is something wrong with you’ response. Instead he told her, matching her whisper and tone. “No, but there’re sometimes evil twins and eviler twins.”
Parker’s face lit up and she vaulted off the couch to go tell Hardison. Eliot knew Hardison would be teasing him about it before the night was up and from the confused look Nate was giving him he’d have to explain later but right then he didn’t really care.
There was no such thing as epiphany therapy. No sudden realization could solve all your issues.
But just like the old verse he’d forgotten over the years he’d been reminded of something he’d forgotten, or had refused to admit to in the first place.
He loved Nate, and for all the issues it caused, and for all the things it couldn’t solve, that much at least would keep them together while they worked through to solve things.
And he loved this team, this family. And for all he’d never admit that out loud he knew that more than any training, and precaution, any planning or careful practice he could do that fact would keep them safe from the wild inside him.
It didn’t solve anything, but that was okay. They’d defeated Sterling and he’d defeated his subconscious and Parker was confusing the hell out of Hardison with her one sided debate about the evil-twin-eviler-twin theory and Nate was giving him the look that promised something as soon as the circus left his apartment. The rest they could take care of tomorrow.
Fandom Leverage
Artist Amara_m
Author Moonchildfic
Rating Pg-13
Word Count ~9,000
Summary When the team comes under attack from two of their own and Parker's "Evil twin, Eviler twin" theory is the closet the team has to a logical explanation things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
Warnings Slash, violence, slight off screen torture, abuse of the word Evil by Parker, pg-13 rated non-con if that even makes sense.
Link to Master Art Post Art Here
Link to Master Fic Post You're Looking at it.
Notes In case the weirdness didn't serve as a tip off this is my entry to the Pictures2Words challenge that I've been stressing out about. I'm doing a pitch hitting entry but after which I'll be returning my attention to my other fics.
In retrospect he knew from the beginning that the job was not destined to end well. It was a job not only involving Sterling but going up against Sterling and considering their history that meant it was a job doomed, if not to failure, then at least a lot of things going wrong before they were done.
At the moment Eliot took only a small amount of comfort from the fact that being caught by Sterling had sort of been what he was supposed to do and it wasn’t that the job had gone so far south that the failsafe had failed.
Of course that Nate had made a plan where the failsafe got caught and locked up by a man who knew what exactly he had to do to keep a hitter of Eliot’s caliber locked up… well that had been cause for worry for awhile. Nate was drinking again so…
Eliot didn’t normally question orders, especially not in the middle of a job, but he was well and truly caught and waiting for the next stage of this chess game and it was either listen to Sterling monologue (and even though, ironically, Sterling monologued better than most criminals Eliot knew, it was getting old) , consider how very many things were wrong with this plan, or think about Nate’s rather drunken and bumbling attempt at a love *something* last night while trying to make up to Eliot the fact this plan meant he’d spend far more time than he normally liked in restraints. Nate knew he would do it, but even drunk Nate understood it was something he did only because it was Nate asking.
“You know Eliot.” Sterling said, sliding his chair in front of where Eliot sat on the ground, if the series of pole and iron cuffs they were using to prevent him from moving more than an inch could be called sitting. “I never really understood why Nate seems so attached to keeping you on the team. Yes, you do seem to have a tendency to follow his orders in a way a man like Nate can appreciate… “ There was more than a little implied in that statement. Eliot is going to ignore the fact his tendency to follow Nate’s orders is exactly why he’s in this mess. “And he does seem to like his vices.”
Eliot was the strong silent type but there were times he just wanted to snark at someone.
Unfortunately those times had the annoying tendency to come at times like this when he’d been gagged and could do little more than do that thing with his eyes that scared people.
“But I’m surprised the man hasn’t realized what a danger you are to your whole little crew. I’m surprised he seems to have forgotten what you used to say in the days Nate and I ran after items against you and IYS tried to hire you.” He paused before asking Eliot as if he could actually respond. “What was it again? Oh yes, ‘some things aren’t meant to be tamed. Hold onto them too long and they’ll bite just to remind you they’ve still got wild in them.’ Quite poetic really. But I have to ask Mr. Spencer. How long until you bite the team to remind them about that violence you’ve got inside you.”
There was a mummer of chaos growing between Sterling’s henchmen and Sterling stopped his monlouging long enough to answer his cell phone.
The team was moving into position. The next phase was starting and here came the moment when Eliot found out if the team would be running with plan A or plan B. It all came down to what Sterling did next.
Sterling looked to the guy standing behind Eliot and nodded. He grimly noted they’d be going with plan B when henchman number 2 turned to him.
The first blow caught him in the right eye, whipping his head back. He was dazed, momentarily stunned a little at most, but not quite out. If he wasn’t gagged he might have told Sterling he had amateurs on his payroll and he should have just shelled out for a professional.
When the second blow only caused dark spots to briefly cross his vision Eliot half wondered if they were being intentionally bad at this. He had taken out nearly a dozen of them by himself before being caught. That was likely to make anyone a little annoyed.
Sterling interjected before the third blow. “For the love of, just hit h-“
Something hard connected with the back of his head and darkness finally took him.
~*~
When Eliot started to wake up the first thing he registered was that the chains and pole were gone. He was laying flat, the soft Egyptian cotton sheets of the bed in his apartment lay over him and under him and for a brief moment Eliot just lay still and appreciated that the job had obviously not gone too badly. He highly doubted Sterling would have been delivering him to anywhere besides a maximum security prison.
Slowly Eliot opened his eyes, watching dim lights from the city coming through his window play across the ceiling. It was night, probably late. He’d probably been unconscious for ten to twelve hours. He raised a hand, gently touching his smarting but suprisingly not too badly bruised face just to make sure before moving to feel the bandage on the back of his skull. Professional work. The team had probably brought in a private doctor they paid to keep quiet to check him over and fix him up. Which would explain why he was in his own home and not the hospital.
Eliot approved.
Slowly he sat up, strangely feeling not too bad for all that he’d been given a pretty bad concussion. Maybe his head was just getting hard.
He mentally shook his head in exasperation at himself. He needed to spend less time around Hardison. Which reminded him.
Hardison so owed him ten bucks.
You know there may be something wrong with your life when you have a bet with a co worker about whether or not you’ll make it through the job conscious, and that you take the ‘Sterling will have someone knock me out’ side.
“You’re up. Good.” Nate’s voice said from the chair in the corner and damn that man was getting sneakier all the time.
“The job wrapped up?” Eliot asked, slowly sliding out of bed even as he became aware that the whole feeling the sheets thing had been a somewhat universal sensation for a reason. He was naked. Well then.
At least it was Nate sitting there. After the months they’d been sleeping together it wasn’t like Nate was seeing anything new.
“Yes. The Silverman family got their shop back. Terrance Warrens is in jail. The necklace is back to it’s rightful owner and Sterling has to explain to his new bosses that he wasn’t trying to use an international scandal to further his own career at the expense of the innocent and that all the bad publicity isn’t his fault.” Nate grinned and took a sip from his coffee. “Add in that there was certain footage of him ordering a henchmen to strike an immobilized man and I don’t think his stay in Interpol will be long term.”
Eliot grinned, the nice satisfied feeling of a job well done settling into the pit of his stomach. Even if he’d taken a few hits it was good to know the job had run smoothly without him. He walked over to his dresser, ready to get dressed to start his day since he didn’t seem to be suffering too badly from the blow to the head. It was an oddity, but one he planned to take advantage of.
Nate closed the dresser, suddenly right next to him and all in Eliot’s personal space and switching quickly from team’s mastermind to Eliot’s… well whatever they were.
Nate’s jeans and shirt rubbed against Eliot’s bare skin, hot breath rustling the hair by his ear as Nate told him to leave the clothes and get back to bed. A hand settled around the base of his neck. “You should be resting.”
Eliot half turned to look to Nate, faint smile on his face as he said. “’m not tired.”
The hand around his neck pulled him in to meet Nate’s mouth for a brief kiss before Nate gave that I’m plotting grin of his. “I can help you with that.”
~*~
Nate was gone when Eliot woke up in the morning. It was unusual, mostly because Eliot tended to wake up long before Nate did and Nate tended to at least hang around until Eliot made breakfast, but considering the past few days Eliot didn’t really think anything of it.
He was also strangely neither showing aftereffects from the concussion nor sore from last nights activities. Considering it had quickly turned into life affirming and celebratory sex which could get kind of rough…
But again, considering the oddities of the past few days Eliot didn’t really think anything of it.
As usual he made himself breakfast, did a morning work out, tended his garden, and headed out for Nate’s apartment ready to start the new day with the Leverage team and the pending big celebration for finally one uping Sterling.
The apartment was strangely quiet when Eliot arrived. Soft voices coming from the kitchen. It took Eliot a moment to recognize that Nate, Sophie, and Parker were all surrounding something. There was something wrong here. Then Nate moved and Eliot got a good view of who they’d been surrounding, Hardison. It took a moment longer for the white cast on Hardison’s right arm, the bruises decorating his face, and the brace for a dis and relocated shoulder his left arm was in to register.
When it did Eliot almost saw red. Some bastard had hurt Hardison.
They would be in the hospital for a long long time by the time Eliot was done with them.
The anger must have shown on his face as Eliot stalked into the apartment because Hardison’s eyes went wide and the other three planted themselves in between him and Eliot.
“Who did this?” Eliot asked, his voice tight.
Dead silence.
“Who did this?” He asked again.
The looks in their eyes softened slightly and only then did Eliot register that the anger and fear on their faces had been directed.
Directed toward him.
“You really don’t know?” Sophie asked, her voice soft, almost gentle, almost like trying to coax and calm him. “Do you remember what happened yesterday?”
“We were on the job. Sterling’s guys caught me as we planned. They knocked me out. I woke up in my apartment. Nate was there and he told me the job had gone alright. He didn’t tell me Hardison had been hurt.” Even as he said it their expressions changed. Relief and hurt and sadness and fear and he didn’t even understand the looks passing across Parker’s face. “What?”
Nate came forward slowly, gently placing a hand on Eliot’s shoulder. “Eliot… we finished the job with Sterling three weeks ago.”
His own voice sounded hollow in his ears. “What?”
“The job with the Silverman family and Sterling? We finished that three weeks ago. You were in the hospital for nearly a week afterwards. They were keeping you drugged and you had a bad reaction, you nearly died.”
“But you were in my apartment last night.” Eliot insisted. He rubbed a hand over his face, his heart skipping a beat when he realized the bruising was almost entirely gone.
“I was here, alone.” Nate said softly. “Until Hardison came in.”
“Who hurt him?” Eliot asked again. He had lost three weeks somehow and was possibly hallucinating but he could at least take out whoever had hurt his team mate.
“You really don’t know do you?” Nate said, the hand leaving Eliot’s shoulder.
“No. So could someone tell me?” Eliot snapped.
“You did.”
“I did?” He asked. He couldn’t… it just didn’t make sense. This was Hardison. He just… Hardison could drive him to distraction and make him want to punch something but he’d never actually hurt the guy. He was his crew, hell, Hardison was as close to a little brother as Eliot would ever have. He’d never…
“You did.” Hardison said, just a hint of a slur in his voice from the wounds to his face and possibly a concussion. “I was walkin’ back from the corner market and you were coming in late an’ we saw each other. I started talking to you and you just… you just went ballistic man. Before I knew it you were beatin’ the crap out of me and then you just left. What the hell is your problem?”
He didn’t… he didn’t even have words. He could remember last night so clearly. Everything he and Nate had said and done. But Nate hadn’t been at his apartment last night.
“It was right outside. The security feeds caught the entire thing.” Hardison said, pointing to the screen in the living room Eliot hadn’t even noticed until now. He saw himself, frozen in a stop action picture, halfway through kicking a downed Hardison in the ribs, a vicious looking rattlesnake smile on his lips.
There wasn’t really anything he could offer to refute that. The more they told him what happened the night before the more Eliot realized everything that had happened the night before didn’t add up. All those little moments, everything that didn’t quite make sense…
He could hear his heartbeat pounding louder in his ears.
“You guys are missing it!” Parker interrupted, breaking her uncharacteristic silence. “It’s obvious. It wasn’t Eliot. It was Eliot’s evil twin!” Four sets of eyes turned toward the blond thief who nodded, completely serious. When she registered the disbelief she shrugged. “I mean… eviler twin. But it wasn’t Eliot. He doesn’t remember it. It could have been a doppelganger. Like in the movies Hardison was showing us last month.”
Eliot felt something bitter and broken bubbling up from his throat, an eerie sounding laugh echoing through the room before he realized it was him. A twin. Of course. He had an eviler twin running around hurting his family. Why didn’t he think of this sooner?
Oh yeah, because no matter how insane he was apparently becoming Parker was still a few more pounds of crazy than he was.
“What do we do?” Sophie asked quietly.
Nate said the words they’d never thought they’d, never wanted to, hear him say. “I don’t know.”
~*~
“Tighter. If it’s loose enough I can just dislocate my thumb and slip ‘em.” Eliot instructed even as he fought instincts to fight back.
They didn’t know what was going on, and Eliot didn’t want to consider what was going on, but things were bad. Best case scenario was… he didn’t even know how to explain this situation in a good way. Worst case was he was having breaks with reality and attacking the team.
Which was why they had decided on this course of action, at least until they figured *something* out.
Eliot was a potential threat. If he really was attacking the team they needed to neutralize that threat before he took them all out.
Neutralizing that threat turned out to be clearing out a closet in Nate’s apartment and securing Eliot in there with Eliot providing advice on how to restrain him successfully without causing permanent damage. It was an exercise of trust Eliot was a bit surprised he was willing to submit himself to. He didn’t normally willingly let himself be restrained. To let these people completely immobilize him willingly…
They seemed as surprised as he felt when he told them it was the first obvious step to take.
But they all knew it was impractical in the long term. They could hold him like this for a little while but he was their friend and no one was particularly eager to make him their captive and if he was a danger to them the moment they gave him even a little room to move he could take them all out.
But it bought them a few hours to figure something out without having to worry about him going crazy and attacking them.
And it gave him a few hours of quiet to try to figure out what the hell had happened.
Parker tightened the last cuff a little bit more and gave his knee an awkward pat, like she was trying to be comforting, or trying to apologize for the fact it was her cuff and lock collection that was holding him.
Nate cleared his throat. “If you need us we’ll be right downstairs.” Another awkward moment. “We’ll figure this out.”
Parker sighed. “I still say it’s Eliot’s evil twin. Oh! I almost forgot.” She pulled something out of her pocket and plugged it into the wall socket on the far side of the closet. It was a little wall night light. “There.”
Eliot wasn’t even going to ask why she just happened to have a nightlight in her pocket or how she’d fit it in there.
Slowly she stood up and took a step back, sighed, turned, and left to rejoin Sophie and Hardison downstairs.
Nate lingered in the doorway a moment longer. “We’ll figure this out.” He repeated, the words like a promise, or a prayer. “We will.”
“I know.” Eliot said with a nod.
“Eliot I…” Nate’s voice faltered.
“I know.” Eliot repeated. “Me too.”
Nate closed the door and darkness sank in around Eliot, held at bay by the little nightlight. Eliot let his head fall forward to rest against his knees, closed his eyes, and tried to figure out what the hell had happened.
The darkness pressed in around him and he heard just the faint echo of Sterling’s question. “How long until you bite the team to remind them about that violence you’ve got inside you?”
It was hard to measure the time that past, Eliot felt like he was floating in some void with nothing but the floor, himself, and the little light. Time passed. Seconds ticked by like minutes and hours and nothing made sense.
The nightlight began to flicker. More time passed and it died completely.
Eliot was floating in a void. No light. No time.
He cleared his mind and tried to count heartbeats, trying to use that as an indicator to time but they seemed to blur together and not make any sense.
Reality seemed to blur together and as much as Eliot wouldn’t admit it it felt a little like he was going crazy.
The door opened. Blinding light flooded into the closet and Eliot blinked watering eyes, looking up to try to see who had come to see him.
“Eliot.” Nate’s voice identified the being even as his eyes finally adjusted enough to make the man out.
“Any news?” Eliot asked. His throat was dry. He could really use some water but he wasn’t going to ask if they were about to let him out anyway.
“Some.” Nate said, nonspecifically, kneeling besides Eliot.
Something was wrong. Nate was being non-specific when if he had good news he should be giving straight answers. A hand touched Eliot’s shoulder, running down his arm under the steal pole trapped under his knees and above his elbows to his hands cuffed together over his shins effectively trapping him in this position.
“Did you know this is called putting someone into a buck?” Nate asked his voice oddly cold, oddly distant. Eliot felt a chill run down his spine. “It was sometimes used to immobilize slaves for a beating in the antebellum era south.”
Eliot didn’t say that he knew that, that the information had made it’s way into Sterling’s “hero” monolouging. A sarcastic remark about the similarities between Nate and Sterling never even fully processed in his brain. It was too glaringly obvious that there was something wrong for that.
This was… this whole situation… there was something wrong. No. There was a lot wrong.
A whole fucking lot wrong.
Was this even real? Was he having a nightmare and about to wake up to find Parker poking him to wake him up so she could comfort him with her eviler twin theory.
Nate’s hand settled around the base of his neck before moving up, twisting in his hair and tugging sharply, painfully, pulling Eliot’s head as far back as it would go, pressing a rough kiss against his mouth, already open from trying to breathe against the choking sensation caused from the stretch of his neck.
Dear god let it be a nightmare.
Eliot gasped and gagged, trying to breathe, to protest, to tell Nate that this was not the time and to fucking let go of his hair. Panic was rising in the back of his mind. He was more or less helpless and this…
This was not Nate. At least not one any of them knew.
Nate ended the kiss and Eliot managed to gasp out. “What the fuck Na-“Before Nate’s other hand closed over his mouth and nose, cutting off words and breath all together, smothering him.
“Ssh… wouldn’t want the others to hear now would you?” Nate whispered in his ear. Small, soft, kisses were traced down his neck as Eliot fought for breath, pulling at the restraints, anything to be able to *breathe*. Nate paused, whispering soft and dirty nothings in his ear. Eliot’s body was responding to the treatment and oxygen deprivation even as his mind swung into full panic mode. Pain and pleasure jolted across his senses as Nate bit the skin of the crook between his neck and his shoulders, that same plotting grin of his on his lips when he pulled away and met Eliot’s eyes. “Just to remind you that you still belong to me.” The words seemed to clang and echo, resounding around them despite the quiet tone.
Darkness was creeping in from the edges of his vision but in that brief moment before it pulled him under Eliot’s brain registered something was wrong.
He was flung into oblivion again just as he realized.
There was a mirror hanging on the inside of the closet door. Eliot could see his own reflection but not a sign of this Nate.
There was something very very wrong.
~*~
“Eliot, Eliot wake up!” Someone was patting his cheek.
He’d been unchained though it felt like he was still on the floor.
“I think he’s coming to.” That was Sophie’s voice.
“Come on man.” That was Hardison’s voice.
Eliot opened his eyes slowly. He was on the floor of Nate’s bedroom, just outside the closet he’d been held in. The team minus Nate stood over him. Nate sat off to the side with an icepack pressed against his head.
Still unsure of what the hell was going on Eliot pushed himself slowly to a sitting position, ignoring muscles cramping and sore from the time forced to hold one position. “What the hell?”
He seemed to be saying and thinking that a lot this past day.
“You attacked Nate when he went down to get something to drink from the bar.” Hardison explained.
“I what?” Eliot asked.
“Only you didn’t.” Sophie injected. “Because you were in that closet the entire time. And after Nate came to locked into the hall closet on the first floor he called my cell to come get him out. It had been less than two minutes since he’d left the apartment for the second time.”
“I’m not followin’.” Eliot said, trying to wrap his mind around what the hell was going on.
“I told you! Evil twin, Eviler twin!” Parker said, no longer able to restrain from interrupting. “It’s Nate and Eliot’s Eviler twins that are doing everything.”
Nate cleared his throat. “As crazy as it sounds… that’s really the only explanation I can think of.”
Eliot had to admit it would explain a lot not nearly everything, but more than had been previously explained.
Though how he and Nate had suddenly spawned doppelgangers was an entirely different matter.
“So let me get this straight.” Eliot said, rubbing his temples because really, this was turning into a weirder day by the second. “There’s another guy who looks like me and a guy who looks like Nate running around hurtin’ us?”
“It would seem so.” Sophie said.
“And, okay, yeah, nice ta know I’m not goin’ insane but does no one else find this a little crazy?”
“You’ve been out for awhile Eliot.” Parker said. “We kinda all got over it while we were waiting for you to wake up. You should probably try to catch up with the rest of us.” She nodded, almost sage like.
“What do we do?” Eliot asked.
Nate’s answer was pure steel. “Find them. Stop them.”
~*~
They regathered on the couches in the living room to try to figure out their next step. It was a disheartening sight to see. Parker was doing her best to follow the instructions Hardison gave her, his sling and cast barely allowing him to hold a bottle of orange soda, hacking of any kind was out. Hardison was being as patient as could be expected given the circumstances, and managing to keep his tone kind, but it didn’t take a grifter of Sophie’s caliber to know he was frustrated. Nate was still holding ice to the growing bump on his head and Sophie wasn’t being subtle about wanting to do something about the places where the cuffs had bruised and cut Eliot’s wrists when he struggled.
All in all they did not look particularly up to the challenge of defeating two evil twins.
Not to mention Eliot didn’t know why they were sitting around the couches like they were waiting for Hardison to give a briefing. What kind of briefing could he give them? Their working theory was that he and Nate had spawned evil doppelgangers.
“Have we checked to see if maybe we all were sufferin’ from exposure to some kinda hallucinogen?” Eliot asked. “Like maybe I cooked us all dinner and somethin’ in the food was off?” Eliot would usually insist that nothing he’d served the team even bordered anything less than good but seriously… kind of grasping at straws here. He was willing to set aside his pride if it meant a logical and less potentially dangerous reason for this mess.
“A hallucination kicked the crap out of me?” Hardison asked, sounding mildly irritated.
Eliot was trying not to notice Hardison was staying at least five feet away from him at all times. When this was all over Eliot knew he’d still have to fix that mess. Not that he had any idea how off the top of his head.
“Not to mention all five of us sharing the same hallucination…” Nate didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Eliot knew it would have been nearly impossible. He sighed and stood, walking to stand in his normal briefing spot. “What do we know?” Blank stares. “Alright. What do we think we know?”
Hardison started. “I was attacked last night by evil El-“
“Eviler” Parker insisted. “Eviler Eliot.” Eliot wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about Parker’s continued reminder to everyone that he was evil.
“By Eviler Eliot.” Hardison corrected himself with a ‘there’s something wrong with you’ look toward Parker.
“I don’t remember the past three weeks.” Eliot offered. “So if I’ve been around you guys theres a chance some of it was my…” He caught the look Parker was giving him. “Eviler Twin.” Somehow the small smile on Parker’s face at that made the situation just a little bit better. “The last thing I remember was wakin’ up in my apartment with Nate there an’ him tellin’ me that the job with Sterling had gone well.”
“That never happened.” Nate told him. “After we rescued you we had to take you to the hospital. You’d been drugged and had an allergic reaction to the drugs. So either it was an outright hallucination from the drugs, a dream mistaken for a memory because of the drugs, or somewhat reality with my evil twin making an appearance.”
Eliot felt a small note of comfort when he heard Parker give an exasperated sigh and mutter “Eviler twin.” At least she considered Nate evil as well.
Sophie finished off. “Who made an appearance just over two hours ago when Eliot’s doppelganger knocked Nate out and locked him in a closet while Nate’s doppelganger came in here and went upstairs to check on Eliot.”
Eyes turned toward Eliot. He mentally reviewed what had happened before deciding what was necessary and what he could leave out for the sake of his own and Nate’s sanity. “He told me he was reminding me I belonged to him and then he smothered me until I blacked out.” He said simply.
Dead silence.
“I figured there was somethin’ wrong.” He looked up, meeting Nate’s eyes steadily, trying to broadcast that he neither blamed nor feared Nate. That…thing hadn’t been Nate. It had been just a clone or copy, a poor reflection as in a mirror.
Where did that line come from? His trains of thought didn’t normally get symbolic. He shook it off.
“I think I may have found something.” Sophie said. Eliot turned, surprised to find Sophie had the remote and was reviewing the footage of “him” beating up Hardison last night. “Look here, you can see the side mirror of that car and that window. In both of them you can clearly see Hardison’s reflection. But here.” She stopped the video, showing “Eliot” walking next to a talking Hardison. In the nearby window and the car’s side mirror you could clearly see Hardison’s reflection.
There wasn’t even a hint of Eliot.
“It was the same thing earlier with the Other Nate. These guys don’t have reflections.” Eliot stated, it sounded as weird out loud as it did in his head but it made about as much sense as anything else. Though he had to wonder how the security camera was working. Then again Hardison tended to use digital so… maybe?
“I’ve got someth-“ Hardison started, cutting himself off when Parker glared. “We’ve got something.” He corrected. “Remember the other case Sterling was working on?” Eliot did, vaguely, which was somewhat unusual but he’d found out about it only a few hours before the head wound that had him missing three weeks so, while worrying, there were other *more* worrying things. Hardison continued as they all nodded. “Well apparently the guy Sterling was working with on the case, Dr. Matthias Curtis was a biologist and psychologist and neurologist and… a lot of other ists. I’m pretty good at figuring things out and I can’t make heads or tails of any of the articles he’s published. Seriously. Did you know there are entire different science journals for different parts of the brain?” A chorus of Hardisons later and he was back on track. “The thing is he’s in the city and apparently he’s doing research on the subconscious and conscious processes mixed with Id, Ego, Superego type of thing.”
There was a pause as he directed Parker to a different page and scanned it. “From his grant requests he’s researching separating the conscious and unconscious or something, again it’s hard to translate the “Look at me and my sevenbajillion degrees” babble, to determine the effect something has on the brain and to treat personality disorders.” Another pause. “It says here he’s trying to devise a way to separate and isolate a person’s darker emotions and desires. Good luck with that.”
The room had gone silent again.
“Eviler Eliot beat up Hardison.” Parker said finally. “And Eviler Nate said he owned Eliot. Eliot sometimes wants to beat up Hardison but he doesn’t. Ever since Nate and Eliot started fucking Nate gets really pissed off whenever someone flirts with Eliot but it’s not…”
Dead silence for a full twenty seconds before Sophie said. “Nate and Eliot… what?” Followed only a beat behind by Hardison.
“Oh… right…” Parker said with an exasperated sigh. “Sleeping together. Since they started sleeping together. It’s only fucking if it’s like a one night stand or there’s dirty talk and kinkiness involved. Although Eliot does tend to be very obedient…” Parker’s look was far too amused and Eliot had to wonder if she was purposefully pretending she didn’t realize the shock was not at all about her use of the word fuck. “But when does it become making love? And really who thought up that phrase. It doesn’t even make sense. Love isn’t something you can make. Unless maybe it’s supposed to be making babies?”
“Parker. Eliot and I are not sleeping together or in a relationship as anything more than friends.”
Eliot fought to keep his face straight. He knew that this was practical. That distracting the team with their drama while hell was breaking loose was not the ideal situation.
But it did hurt just a little.
“I know.” Parker said and went back to her screen. “But you do get jealous when girls flirt with him.”
Sophie took a moment longer to recover before pushing forward and back to the case. Eliot was surprised how everyone seemed to forget so easily. Then again Parker was crazy and there were kind of pressing issues. “So… the Other Eliot is violence and rage Eliot suppresses. Other Nate takes his controlling nature to the next level.” She took a breath before saying what they all were considering. “Maybe Dr. Curtis had some success.”
“We need to talk to the good Dr. then.” Nate said, nodding resolutely. “Let’s go steal back our identities.”
~*~
“Hardison’s asleep.”
“Huh?” Eliot looked up from staring at the patterns in the metal of the staircase to the upper floor of Nate’s condo that he was sitting on. He hadn’t even noticed Nate finishing convincing Hardison to get some sleep while he could. The girls were out grifting and stealing their ways to getting more information about Dr. Curtis. Nate and Eliot had been left behind to keep watch over the injured Hardison and try not to get mixed up by their evil counterparts.
They were gathering intel. Hopefully they could piece together some reason behind this, figure out what caused it, and be able to run a normal job to fix it.
Of course that would be simple and smooth and nothing ever went simple or smooth when the Leverage team was involved.
The problem was their information. Normally they had heaps of it but right now they only knew in part, and they guessed, prophesied, in part.
There was that strange *thing* again.
“How did you get on the stairs?” Nate asked.
“What?” Eliot said, realizing he’d zoned out again. “I walked up them? How doya think?”
Nate raised an eyebrow. “I said ‘how about you come downstairs.’ It’s getting late and Hardison’s going to be hungry when he wakes up and he should be eating something besides gummy frogs. You making him dinner would go a ways in fixing things between you two.”
“Oh.” Eliot nodded, standing slowly.
“What did you think I said?”
“I thought you asked how I got on the stairs.” Eliot responded, suddenly wondering that for himself. He only vaguely...
He shook it off. Probably repeated head trauma making his mind fuzzy.
He should be a bit more worried about that. But having a phyco twin running around trying to kill your team tended to put things into perspective.
Absently Eliot went to the kitchen, pulling out ingredients to make spaghetti and tomato sauce. Not from scratch, but Hardison was a freak who truly liked the from the can sauce better. Eliot would indulge the hacker for once after the kind of day it had been for him.
Nate stayed close by, not saying anything, but Eliot could almost feel something left unsaid in the air between them.
“You left a part out.” It wasn’t what Eliot was expecting the words to be. “When you told what the Other Me did you left a part out.” Nate’s fingers gently brushed Eliot’s hair away from his neck, tracing over a faint bite mark left in his skin. “He hurt you.”
I hurt you.
Eliot reached up a hand to cover the one on his neck. Today had been so fucking confusing. But this was something he knew for certain. “That wasn’t you Nate.”
“But it was.” Nate said, hands moving, sliding down to wrap around Eliot’s waist. “Parker’s right. I get jealous. I don’t want to see you with others. I don’t want them touching you. Don’t want them giving you orders or even getting that smile of yours. I have to fight myself every time we have a job to make sure this doesn’t make me make a choice for the wrong reasons. In a way, in my head, you do belong to me.”
Eliot turned. Nate was putting to words what had been running through his mind but even as he heard it… “But that’s in your head. You don’t act on it. You don’t mark me as yours.” An almost flirting grin crossed his face. “’least not unless I ask ya to.”
“That’s very sweet of you two.” A voice, Nate’s voice, echoed through the apartment as the front door opened and shut. Nate and Eliot broke away from each other, moving to try to put themselves between Other Nate and Hardison. “Don’t worry about Hardison. I came to take whats mine. If you two are reasonable about it he won’t have to get hurt. Hell. He won’t even notice the difference.”
Nate shifted again, putting himself between Other Nate and Eliot. “He’s not yours, ours, or mine.” Nate said fiercely, like he hadn’t just been doubting his own belief in that. Like he didn’t anymore.
“I’m not after what I already have. I’m after you.” Nate was shocked. Eliot didn’t have to see his face to know it. “Yes, you. See I’m just a… reflection… of sorts. I can’t gain a solid foothold in this world without you. But if you consent to allowing a… slightly hostile takeover… to go through then no one else needs to get hurt. Your team will barely notice the difference, you’re already controlling as it is. If you continue to resist… well.” Other Nate pulled a cell-phone, Sophie’s Cell-phone, out of his pocket. A moment later he tossed a little clear plastic jar at Nate.
It rattled when he caught it. Judging by Nate’s reaction Eliot had the sinking feeling it was one of Sophie’s fingernails. It was a very distinctive reaction.
“My Eliot is running after Parker and Sophie is in a secure location he picked out. If you continue to refuse I will continue to give her back to you in increasingly large pieces before starting again with Parker. Give in to me and the pain will stop. I promise.” Other Nate came forward, resting a hand on Nate’s arm. “No one else has to be hurt. Trust me when I say I do not want to hurt them, but I will if I must to achieve my goal. Please just give in. You don’t have to have their blood on your hands as well as Sam’s.”
“I need time to think.” Nate said softly.
“Of course you do.” Other Nate responded, sounding almost sincere. “You have four hours. I’ll be back then.”
Other Nate left and Nate turned to Eliot. “You need to find Parker before other you does. I’ll stay with Hardison.”
“How?”
“Don’t think like yourself. Think like Parker. Where would Parker go to hide?”
~*~
Thinking like Parker was harder than he’d thought, yet easier at the same time.
Somehow it all came back to thinking like a child and reasoning like a child. Somehow that seemed how Parker would think and reason.
When he was a child and he was afraid he hid where there were things he was afraid of but was less afraid of than the thing he was hiding from. He reasoned, as a child, that if small spaces and spiders were so frightening to him others had to also be afraid of them and if he hid in a small dark woodshed the older boys trying to hurt him would be too afraid to come in after him.
Of course they’d simply locked him in there, but he wasn’t going to focus on that. It made everything feel smaller and darker all of a sudden.
Parker, he reasoned, made a living off of facing her fears. She, like him as a child, would probably feel safest from a specific threat when surrounded by things she was afraid of.
The was how he ended up in the stables he’d taken her to try to get her past her fear of horses enough to ride. It had been a dismal failure but Parker had liked the loft. There had been a loft above the stalls that she’d gone to observe the horses from a safe distance, there was even a small window she could shimmy out through to keep from being cornered.
“Parker?” He called softly as he crept over the rafters, trying to catch sight of the thief. “Parker it’s me.”
“How do I know it’s the right you?” Her voice asked, though the sound bounced all over the loft.
He thought for a moment before smiling and answering. “Because my eviler twin doesn’t know how to think like you.” He didn’t know that for certain, but that wasn’t what mattered.
Eviler twin.
It was Parker’s words turned back as a password.
A second later she threw her arms around him in a tight hug. “Okay Parker, who gave you happy pills?” He asked, trying to lighten the mood. “Parker… Parker… you need to let me go. The sooner we get out of here the better.”
Without another word she let him go and they started climbing back down to ground level to get out and get back.
That was when it hit him.
This barn? This stable? It was just outside LA.
He didn’t remember taking a plane.
He didn’t remember how he got here at all.
He remembered trying to think like Parker and then he was here, in the loft, looking for her.
And it wasn’t the first time.
‘How did you get on the stairs?’
He didn’t remember that.
There were huge chunks missing from his memories and he kept on just shrugging it off. There were so many oddities he kept suspending disbelief for ever since the job with Sterling that involved interpol.
Interpol. Sterling had become a member of Interpol after the job in Kiev where he welcomed Tara to the team because she shared their hatred for Sterling.
Tara, not Sophie, had been the grifter on this job.
But Sophie had been…
Suddenly Parkers hand was ripped from his. Eliot turned to see himself hold a knife to her throat, face cold, almost emotionless, though there was just a hint of rage in those eyes and that sneer. A reflection of himself, only the violence taken over.
And suddenly things clicked into place.
“This isn’t real.” He said.
Parker looked up, meeting his eyes before slipping other Eliot’s grip and retreating to Eliot’s side. “But you’re still going to get me out of here right?”
He nodded. “That’s my job.” He was pretty sure this wasn’t real and was just some freakish dream possibly because he was unconscious and couldn’t wake up for some reason, but he wasn’t sure, and this was Parker. He wasn’t taking a chance that she was real and could get hurt.
Other Eliot came at him, Eliot dodge the punch and tried to return the blow only to be dodged in return.
The fight, if two people continually dodging and blocking each other could be called a fight, went on, neither side landing a hit. They were reflections, perfectly equal matches. Even as Eliot stumbled back, grabbing a pitchfork, stomping on and breaking the handle and turning it into a weapon the other him did the same.
There was a crash and the sound of thunder and a smell of smoke in the air. Suddenly horses were racing from their opened stalls and out the barn door.
Parker had opened the horse stalls then lit the building on fire.
That was one way of creating a distraction.
Suddenly she landed next to him, tugging on the back of his shirt. He let her pull him back a second before a burning rafter beam landed between him and the other Eliot.
He turned, motioning her to follow him as they ran out the closest door.
Bright sunshine fractured and fragmented and they found themselves not outside but in a strange hallway with mirrors to either side, like a funhouse without the distorted images.
There was definitely something wrong.
He slowed to a walk, motioning Parker to walk carefully. They were in a strange environment and there was no telling what might threaten them here.
He took the lead, trying to use the mirrors to keep an eye behind him for threats, but it wasn’t exactly like the Other Him or Other Nate cast reflections so it was somewhat of a challenge.
“Eliot!” Parker whispered and Eliot turned, seeing her point toward one of the mirrors.
His reflection had turned to face the mirror and was pressing his palms flat against the glass. As Eliot watched the reflection’s hands passed through the glass into the real world.
Eliot didn’t hesitate. He swung the pole from the pitchfork he’d picked up earlier as hard as he could, shattering the mirror.
“He’s over here now.” Parker said, pointing to another mirror where other him was trying to break through before turning to try to use a side kick to break it.
A hand reached through the glass, catching her ankle.
A second later Eliot had shattered that mirror as well, Parker stumbling away to safety, stopping herself before she hit the mirrors on the far wall. “If ever something was going to make you paranoid crazy.” Parker mumbled, her voice disturbingly more interested than scared.
There was something wrong with her, even in his dreams.
“Just stay away from the mirrors.” He said, trying to sound calm. “We need to get out of here.” There were too many mirrors. Too many things and ways for this to go wrong.
“Eliot!” Parker said, pointing toward another mirror. Eliot raised the pole ready attack and then stopped.
It wasn’t The Other Him.
It was Nate.
“Eliot don’t break this mirror.” Nate warned. “The other me took my place. You have to help me through.”
“No, Eliot! Don’t!” Nate’s voice said. Eliot turned. Nate was in the other mirror as well. “He wants to drag you into the mirror. Don’t touch him.”
“Eliot!” Parker said, pointing toward a mirror where the Other Him was coming out.
“Eliot please, hurry.” Nate said from one side.
“Leave! Quick! Get Parker out safe! Do your job!”
“Eliot, Evil you is almost out!” Parker said, backing away slowly, shrieking when a hand reached out of the mirror she’d backed into.
Eliot turned his back to the Nate’s. He didn’t know what to do with that, but he had to save Parker before he could figure it out.
The hallway seemed to stretch as Eliot ran toward her, getting longer between them as another hand stretched out and pulled Parker into the mirror.
And suddenly he was there as the other him held Parker, that same knife to her throat only tighter now, digging in, a thin line of blood already leaking through pale skin.
“This isn’t real.” Eliot repeated, trying to make this stop before what was about to happen happened.
His Other raised it’s eyes to meet his, blue slowly melting into black. “But it could be.” He slit Parker’s throat even as Eliot moved, smashing the mirror he stood in front of.
A hundred fragments of mirrors scattered onto the floor, each showing the image of Parker’s corpse.
“I told you to just get her out of here!” Nate shouted at him, grief making his voice harsh.
“Can’t you just follow orders?” The other Nate shouted.
Eliot turned, lashing out, shattering both mirrors, anger and grief and too much coursing through him, his own heartbeat pounding loud in his ears. All about him the shattered pieces showed not his reflection but Parker’s corpse, and Nate’s, and the rest of the team’s. Dead eyes stared at him accusingly. He looked up, breathing heavy, looking at the remaining mirrors.
Only none of them showed his reflection anymore.
“This isn’t real.” Eliot repeated, almost as much a prayer as a statement. “It’s just a weird dream. Just a bunch of things I was worried about mixin’ together.”
So why wasn’t he waking up?
Well he had been knocked unconscious, he reassured himself, but you don’t normally have dreams when that happens.
What had he been thinking about when he got knocked out? He’d been worried about Nate’s use of him… Other Nate. Sterling had been talking about the violence in him… Other him.
And the words that had been running through his head. Words Nate had stumbled over the night before the job, too drunk to remember but still trying to tell Eliot something.
He closed his eyes, thinking, remembering, piecing bits together. ‘I am but a resounding gong or clanging cymbol.’, ‘For we know in part and we prophesy in part’ ‘when I was a child I thought like a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child.’ ‘Now I see but a poor refle…'
His eyes opened. “Now I see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face.” The pieces of the mirrors moved, twisting, solidifying into the Other Him, standing before him. “Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
He remembered this now, an echo from a long long time gone, not a poem but something else. Something from dusty and dull days of Sunday school as a child, a bit his mother loved, that his sister loved, that a part of him liked. It was romantic but at the same time it didn’t have to be. It was a statement about the nature of a thing he had all but forgotten even as he all but forgot the thing itself in the years between Sunday School and the Leverage team.
“And these three things remain.” He said, taking a step toward the Other Him.
“Faith.” Faith in himself, in his own strength and strength of will and strength of his feelings for his team, his family. Faith that what Sterling predicted and he himself feared would not come to pass.
“Hope” Hope that he and Nate would work things out. That this was only another bump on the road. That their problems, the fact they were both broken, somehow meant they fit together better and maybe even if they couldn’t fix each other they could learn to live with themselves with the other’s help. That one day when Parker did blurt out to the team that they were together the team would accept this.
“And Love.”
And that, though he’d never consciously admit it, was what this all came back to. Him and Nate, him and the team…
“But the greatest is love.”
The other him burst into pieces, destroyed by a blinding light that spread, bouncing off the mirrors surrounding them until Eliot could see nothing besides perfect white light.
~*~
“Easy, easy… I think he’s waking up.”
Eliot didn’t open his eyes right away. His head pounded. His whole body hurt. Gentle hands were moving him, easing him down to the ground.
“Stay still for a minute.”
Eliot wasn’t sure who was speaking but he needed to catch his bearings.
Slowly Eliot forced his eyes open. The entire team was sitting or kneeling nearby, Parker was messing with the series of cuffs and chains that had been holding him hostage.
“What happened?” Eliot asked.
“We got him cold.” Nate said. “Sterling isn’t going to be a problem for us anymore. Or… at least not for a little while.”
Eliot gave a short, shallow, nod. He was glad the job had gone alright, even if he knew Sterling would always be there to antagonize them in one way or another.
He looked up at the team, vague recollection of the dream clearing and fading in turn. He’d think about it, maybe even talk to Nate about it. But later. Right now he was alive and the team was alive and he did not in fact have an eviler twin running around.
He’d enjoy the moment, despite the pounding headache.
But just so he didn’t forget. “Hardison?”
“Yeah?”
“You owe me ten bucks.”
Hardison’s look was one for the ages as he stammered out. “There is something wrong with you.”
Parker interjected about how that was Eliot’s catch phrase to use on her and Hardison had his own and somehow they got up and out of there and back to Nate’s apartment without casualties to start the post job celebration.
He knew Nate was still going to drink himself drunk tonight. Sophie was still away in god knew where. Hardison was still a geek, Parker was still crazy, and Eliot knew there was no such thing as epiphany therapy and a single weirdass dream was not going to somehow enable him to fix everyone’s issues.
But he was alive and they were alive and one way or another he could at least now acknowledge to himself, in his own head, that that was something that meant a lot to him. And maybe Nate and his relationship was bordering unhealthy and maybe he should do something about it before it got *that* out of hand. And maybe he was afraid that it was only a matter of time before he lost control.
But even as he thought that Parker unexpectantly vaulted over the couch’s back to sit next to him, nearly causing him to spill his beer before asking him in a whisper but completely serious tone. “Eliot, is there really such a thing as a good twin and an evil twin?”
He let out a soft laugh shaking his head, biting down the instinctive ‘there is something wrong with you’ response. Instead he told her, matching her whisper and tone. “No, but there’re sometimes evil twins and eviler twins.”
Parker’s face lit up and she vaulted off the couch to go tell Hardison. Eliot knew Hardison would be teasing him about it before the night was up and from the confused look Nate was giving him he’d have to explain later but right then he didn’t really care.
There was no such thing as epiphany therapy. No sudden realization could solve all your issues.
But just like the old verse he’d forgotten over the years he’d been reminded of something he’d forgotten, or had refused to admit to in the first place.
He loved Nate, and for all the issues it caused, and for all the things it couldn’t solve, that much at least would keep them together while they worked through to solve things.
And he loved this team, this family. And for all he’d never admit that out loud he knew that more than any training, and precaution, any planning or careful practice he could do that fact would keep them safe from the wild inside him.
It didn’t solve anything, but that was okay. They’d defeated Sterling and he’d defeated his subconscious and Parker was confusing the hell out of Hardison with her one sided debate about the evil-twin-eviler-twin theory and Nate was giving him the look that promised something as soon as the circus left his apartment. The rest they could take care of tomorrow.