Steal the Sky (4/6)
Title: Steal the Sky (4/6)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Team, pre-Nate/Sophie
Verse: Steal the Sky
Fandoms: Leverage, Firefly, Supernatural, NCIS, White Collar
Summary: After Nathan Ford is hired to act as handler for three Alliance Operatives nothing in his 'verse will ever be quite the same.
Notes: This is likely going to develope into a verse of it's own. Many Many thanks and much praise to my betas Deanangst and lmx_v3point3
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Some Backwater Hellhole,
Fourth Moon of Antigone
Eliot Spencer: Soon to be officially deceased,
And possibly dead for real
Eliot didn’t get the message right away. He was running a job, fighting his way in and out of some backwater hellhole when his com unit let him know he had a message waiting.
With half a dozen guys between him and the exit, his left arm out of commission, and Ron, the guy they’d sent in with him, nowhere in sight, he had other things to worry about.
Eliot managed to clear the path to the exit as his “partner” staggered in from a side passage. He was trying to keep pressure on a wound to his shoulder, but Eliot could count nearly a dozen more. If Ron wasn’t a LTO Class like him, Eliot would have never believed he was still standing.
As it was, they both knew Ron would bleed out unless he got proper medical care very soon.
Medical care that their handlers could and would normally see they got now that the mission was done.
Expect that they both also knew that they were classification Delta, sent on a suicide mission. They weren’t supposed to walk out of here alive, no help would come for several hours at least.
Ron collapsed halfway across the room and Eliot went to him. They hadn’t known each other before this job but they were both LTO Class Classification Deltas. They’d lived their whole lives in the same world and that was more shared understanding than they would get from just about anyone else. Ron wasn’t long for this verse and Eliot would at least see to it he left it as comfortably as he could.
Ron tried to shake him off. “Outside…” He muttered, as much blood coming out as words. “Just want to see sun…”
“Alright, butcha won’t make it walkin’ on your own,” Eliot answered, sliding his good arm around Ron’s waist and helping him limp across the last fifteen feet to the door. “Just like the old sayin’.” Ron smiled a little at that and closed his eyes, focusing on limping out as best he could.
It was dusk outside, the sun already almost gone by the time Eliot helped Ron to the ground.
Before night fully fell, Ron opened his eyes for one last look at the blue skies turning to black and breathed his last.
Slowly Eliot took out his com unit, wondering if he should take care of Ron’s body before or after making the call, when he saw Hardison’s message.
Three months since they’d split up.
Two months since Hardison faked his death and went AWOL.
Fourteen years as a classification Delta, one misstep away from death by the sword, or the gun, or the firing squad, or The Operatives.
A lifetime of fighting someone else’s battles and trying hard not to end like Ron.
And another bloody day.
Somehow it all came down to a single wave and two needles full of chemicals he’d kept close at hand.
Carefully, he took them out of the carrying case with the rest of his medical supplies (enough to treat his arm, never enough to save a life). With a field medic’s efficiency he prepared the first and injected himself, waiting two minutes to make sure the full effect was taken before injecting himself with the other.
With one last glance to Ron and a bitter mental congratulations to his handler for finally getting them both killed, Eliot turned around and left, slipping into the underbrush without a mark of his passing.
Through the woods were fields, across the fields was a road, down the road was a town, in that town was transportation, and transportation would, one way or another, get him to the border world where Ford and the others were waiting for him.
As of now he was officially dead. He had officially lost.
But Eliot knew that, maybe for the first time ever, he’d actually won a fight he had chosen.
We part the veil on our killer sun
Stray from the straight line on this short run
The more we take the less we become
The fortune of one man means less for some
Eliot Spencer: Delta Class,
Low Tech Offensive with Covert and Medical specifications
Eliot Spencer was a fighter, a survivor. At age five he’d been told he probably wouldn’t live to see six and now he was closing in on thirty-five. He’d fought through the nightmare that was training and the hell that was the life of an LTO, carrying the scars of battles and beatings and somehow managing to keep his abused body functional. He’d survived the Ares Project, reclaimed his sanity, fought the conditioning, and learned to live with the modifications they made to his mind and body, holding himself together even when his changed physiology rejected yet another medication and old symptoms returned.
He was a fighter. A survivor. Maybe even his clan’s protector, for as much and as little as he could protect them from anything.
He was not sure how he ended up here.
Here was Osiris, with Nathan Ford, two other agents, and a companion.
Here was without a handler, keeping an eye on Parker (because she was insane) and Hardison (because he was young), watching out for both of them because they needed watching and he was older and it was just what he’d been taught to do (not because they reminded him of Jack and Josephine or because he liked them at all).
Here was trying to predict a companion who wasn’t and figure out Nate’s behavior ever since the man had given them the transmitter, for the first time in their lives telling them they could be their own handlers. Somehow this man, so alike but so different from the investigator Eliot had worked with and spent two weeks inside a cell on Osiris’s 9th moon with eight years ago, seemed so… he just didn’t know.
Here was in a park, with Sophie, meeting with The Doctor, a man who’d spent years trying to get subjects of The Academy out, and on whom the team had found information during their last investigation.
He knew, linearly speaking, how and why he’d gotten here, but so much of it was a mystery in the philosophical sense he’d need to be a little more clear headed to consider.
(The edge of his mind was starting to get a little hazy, nothing serious, but it had him worried. It could be the first sign his body was rejecting the most recent round of medication the doctors had him on. Or just that his unstable internal chemistry had been upset by the fact he hadn’t eaten more than Dietary Replacements for three days and barely slept in over a week).
He sat on the bench, pretending to read the day’s newspaper while Sophie sat beside him and looked about the park like she was just enjoying the day.
Eliot saw their quarry approaching, despite not knowing what the man looked like even after contacting him for this meet. He was younger than Eliot had imagined, and looked more together than most rebels. He was going against the alliance, but was by no means a Brown-coat.
But he looked like a doctor. It was a very distinct self-assurance, and he looked like someone who had just casually slipped a tail and was keeping an eye out for another one while looking to make a meeting.
Another all too casual survey of the area and The Doctor passed them, stopping and looking to Sophie. “Anna?” He asked, surprise in his voice, using the alias they’d given him. “What a surprise, I thought you were still off world.”
Sophie and The Doctor made nice, acting for all the world like two old friends meeting in the park, the code phrases they’d given each other during their initial contact slipped seamlessly into the conversation before Sophie introduced Eliot as her personal assistant and, wouldn’t The Doctor (Matt, though Eliot was sure that was as real a name as Anna was) come with them to lunch?
They walked off together through the park to the area Hardison had cleared of the ever watching cameras of the alliance and put his own surveillance in to give them warning of any approach.
And suddenly all pretenses were dropped and the game changed.
Eliot took a step back, watching as the two sought information from each other, getting each other’s measure and Eliot had to grudgingly admit Sophie was the best he’d seen at this.
Unfortunately while Hardison had been able to tell them in no uncertain terms that The Doctor was who they thought he was and his motivations for wanting to get the subjects out were pure and he fit in perfectly for the role they needed him for…
The Doctor was paranoid and had no hacker to check up on them.
And he was getting antsy and Sophie wasn’t telling the truth about why they wanted to get the subjects out, which was okay mostly because revenge probably wouldn’t impress this guy much and Eliot didn’t really feel like explaining that their survival depended on it but…
“I don’t know who you people are,” Simon said finally. “And if you’re doing this then good for you but I need to get he- them out of there and I can’t do that if you get me caught.”
A little stumble, just a little one, but it clicked something into place and suddenly the familiarity of The Doctors face made a little more sense.
Eliot let out a slow breath, the fuzziness at the edges of his mind getting worse, but he let it. This was important and he’d use what he could to get through to this guy.
He could feel the whirl, the pull and he bit down on the surge of nausea before the gathering tension in his mind broke and he heard a soft trill of laughter, a little girl’s voice bubbling with too much intelligence, feet moving with too much grace. A ghost of a little hand slipped into his own, pulling at him to follow deeper into the memories and the stream of subconscious. A surge of knowledge, memories, disorganized and already fading before it took hold.
He pulled back and away from it, trying to suppress the way his body was shaking just a little, the feeling of falling hard and fast and hitting his own body, mind syncing back in and it was all he could do to stay on his feet as the world around him spun.
Sophie had stopped talking but the hands on his arm weren’t hers. The Doctor… well it was in his name that he was a Doctor. A trauma surgeon, his mind provided now, top of his class, a prodigy. Not the only one in his family.
Simon Tam. His mind whispered. River Tam is his sister.
Simon was saying something and Eliot pulled in another breath, forcing away the aftereffect. As much as Eliot might try, and despite a damn lot of practice, he couldn’t completely cover the physical effects of Slipping. The medications he took helped to block and moderate his powers since the tap-dancing the Ares Project had done inside his mind had stripped most of his innate abilities to do that, but it meant accessing those powers was all the more difficult and the havoc it wrecked on his internal chemistry all the more severe.
Simon was telling him to sit down, hand reaching for a bag he wasn’t carrying, and something more of Eliot’s opinion of the man changed. He didn’t need to slip to read that the man had become a doctor to help people rather than for the money.
Some days Eliot marveled that there were still people like that out in the verse.
“You know her,” Eliot stated, meeting The Doctors eyes. “You were close before they took her.” The look on The Doctor’s face said enough. “And now you know they’re hurting her and you just need to save her because that’s your job. She’s your little sister and the Alliance took her.”
The Doctor opened his mouth but no sound came out.
“It’s okay. I get it. I’m a big brother, an’ my siblings are in danger right now too.” He spoke slowly, deliberately. He didn’t talk about himself. He’d never had a need to. Agents knew each other’s stories or knew better than to ask. But he could recognize a brother’s need to do his job, and he knew that connection would make sense to a brother like little else in the verse. “I’ll be honest, we’re not in this on some righteous crusade to save your sister. The alliance is threatening my family, and the families of two of the members of our team. We have a plan that will take out the main threat and get your sister out in the process. If you help us it will go a lot smoother and chances are everyone will be going home safe.”
There was a moment of quiet and Eliot took the chance to take a deep breath, try to stabilize his mind, try to focus on the goal. They needed his help for this.
Simon was looking at him, watching, studying, him. “Surgery to the frontal lobe,” Simon said after a moment. “Repeated,” he amended. “They did a magnificent job on the scars but… I’ve seen enough to notice.” Eliot went very still, realizing Simon was talking about him. “A long time ago. I’m guessing also temporal?”
Did this guy really expect an answer?
“You’re from The Academy?” Simon asked after another moment, sounding insanely calm. Eliot shook his head.
“No,” Eliot answered, took a breath, used what he could. “But somewhere a lot like it.”
“We know your sister is in danger,” Sophie supplied, coming forward, taking over the newly opened line. “They’re trying to implant her with conditioning and alter her mental processes. We don’t know how far they’ve gone or fully what to expect but with your help we can get her out and help you get her off world.”
“And after?” Simon asked.
Eliot shook his head. “Our team has five days before the deadline, an’ I mean dead. We can arrange your transportation off world, but after that you’re on your own.”
Slowly Simon nodded. “Tell me what you need.”
“Funding,” Sophie started. “Your medical skills and knowledge, and you need to be with us when we go in. I’m a registered companion who’s worked this planet for three years. Our team’s leader and I run too high a risk of being recognized to go in and the three other members of our team, as you’ve established, are currently AWOL from a rival project. Sending them in is a risky business. We can walk you in there, but we need a fresh face.” She hesitated before adding. “And it’ll go smoother if you walk her out.”
Simon looked confused at the last bit and Eliot explained. “We believe it’s likely she’s suffering from at least temporary psychosis brought on by the experiments.” He tried to ignore the surge of pain he felt from the other man. “She’s your sister. She trusts you. You’ll have the easiest time of any of us getting her out.”
Simon nodded slowly.
“Come back to our base,” Sophie suggested. “We’ll talk about plans there.”
oOo
The plans were made, Hardison was busy with the preparations, Simon was gone and Sophie with him, Parker was… somewhere (he was almost sure he felt her sleeping in the air vents).
He wasn’t sure what to make of Nate’s offer to play pool.
No, he knew what to make of it. Nate wanted to talk to him.
Eliot just wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
He could say yes and then just win in a single turn. In his minds eyes he could see the angles and shots, wining in a single turn was easy. No need for talk.
But he’d always respected Nate and now that the man wasn’t his handler or another faceless user, now that he was something new…
The man had given him his first taste of freedom, even if it wasn’t more than a brief illusion.
He could give the man a chance to say his bit and ask his questions.
The game started slow. Eliot played carefully, letting the game drag on, not being bad but being only decent.
The first game was nearly over before Nate stopped their casual conversation with a direct question. “Were you ever hurt because of me?”
Of course. Nate always did have a guilt complex.
“Yeah,” Eliot answered. “That time on Dongjing. You pissed off my handler an’ he took it out on me.” He took a shot, his voice as casual as if he was talking about weekend plans. “'Course, my Handler’s always been a sadistic son of a bitch so ain’t like it was anything new.” He looked over to Nate, raising an eyebrow. “You gonna take your shot?”
Nate moved, to his credit hiding the way Eliot had disturbed him well.
“You know on Olympus we say it’s the ultimate game of chance.” Eliot said as Nate lined up his shot. “Pairing with a handler. They ain’t all bad. You ever worked with Neal Cawfry?” Nate nodded. “His newest handler, Burke, is practically famous for how protective he can be. But most see us as tools, not people.”
Nate took his shot and stepped back. “I need you to do something for me.” Eliot nodded for him to continue, glad they’d gotten to the point and curious to find out what it was. “What happened yesterday, with the food and the transmitter, I need you to tell me what’s going on with you three at times like that. What I shouldn’t do. What I should remember to do.”
Eliot could argue, point out that he wasn’t their handler anymore, but it had taken all of three hours for Hardison to start looking to Nate for guidance again. Parker had made it to almost five hours and other than a trip to a grocer Eliot had mostly followed suit. They were used to having someone to look to for direction. Eliot had gone undercover, had spent periods of time working away from a handler, but even he was feeling disoriented at the prospect.
Of course by this time tomorrow the job would be over and they’d go their separate ways, so was there really a point?
“What does it matter?” Eliot asked. “After tomorrow we’ll be back to Olympus and never see you again.”
Nate gave that infuriating smirk of his and simply nodded for him to take his shot.
Eliot sunk another one of the balls and sighed, not wanting to think about the next day.
“You look better,” he commented after a moment, watching Nate’s move. “Than when we started.”
Considering when they had started, Nate had smelled like booze and the haze of a not far gone hangover had felt like it was oozing around the man, this was better. He was barely drinking and he looked… more alive.
Of course the man’s answer was neutral at best. “That bothers you.”
Nate gave him a look and Eliot just smiled his own infuriating grin. He’d worked enough with Nate to know the man’s opinion of criminals. Now they were about to commit more than a dozen very serious crimes and…
But to steal a girl. To save lives. And against a part of the Alliance that was dirty at best.
“You gonna take your shot?”
Eliot sighed and took a drink of beer. It was basic cheap stuff, ironic that the cheaper stuff tended to be the closest to what his body could process. He shook his head, voice gentling a little. “Listen, ‘m sorry about your kid.”
Nate leveled a look at him that plainly said he’d gotten a little too familiar. “You don’t know anything about that.”
Eliot met Nate’s eyes, forcing away the flashback of little Jack, just eight years old and sick. A performance review failure. Eliot, just fourteen, barely human again, finding something to hold onto in working with his younger clan brother to try to get him to pass the next review. A score just a single point below passing. The way Jack sobbed when he was taken to the front of the crowd and the ringing silence after the bullet was put into his skull.
“Everyone knows,” he responded to Nate, his words carrying the ghost of a second meaning as his eyes drifted over to where Hardison was working before focusing on Nate again, letting the hint of understanding fade. “A guy like you goes off the grid and we all notice, and it was a bad story too. How did they justify that?”
Nate bristled a little. “You and I are not friends Eliot,” he stated, since Eliot clearly wasn’t taking the warning.
Eliot brushed off the pushback. “Yeah, cause we both’ve got so many.” The door opened and he felt as much as heard Sophie come in. “Incoming.” He headed off for one of the two small back rooms that served as bedrooms. He could use a break from these people, especially if he was already feeling people again.
oOo
Eliot had been meditating, trying to re-center his mind, when the door to the darkened room opened and he felt Sophie walk in.
He considered ignoring her, not wanting to deal with a companion or anyone right now, but he could sense a hint of something behind her intentions. Importance, a purpose.
And he knew enough about companions to figure if she wanted to talk to him she’d get him to talk to her eventually.
He sighed and opened his eyes, rising from his seat on the floor. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice gruffer than usual when talking to women, but it had been a long day.
“You’re a reader,” she stated, almost casually.
Well then.
He shrugged. “Not a very good one,” he answered, straight forward. Maybe once he confirmed this she’d just go away. “M’ gift was never very strong. I can get little clues, hints, feelings… but nothing like in the stories you hear.”
Sophie sat down on the room’s lower bunk, absently smoothing the covers and dashing Eliot’s hopes she was going to go away quickly. “I have a friend I met on Cairo a few years ago called Ziva David.” Eliot blinked, recognizing the name. She was one of the alphas in the LTO class, pretty well known on Olympus for being all but permanently assigned to help a Naval Outpost in the New Virginia System without an official handler. “We ended up doing some work together and I found out a lot about the agents of Olympus.” Sophie looked up, meeting his eyes. “I have a question, one I asked her, one that may prove important.”
Companions. Always had to go for the drama. “What?”
“If you could walk away from Olympus, free, with no harm done to your clan, would you?”
What?
She stood slowly. “You’re what? Thirty-five years old? Olympus has been your home since you were a child. You probably don’t even remember what life was like before. You’ve always had a home, food, medical care, someone to tell you what to do and make the hard decisions for you. You hurt and kill people but you’ve never had the choice to do otherwise so it’s never been your fault. The only people you know well are other agents, the work you do is the only work you were ever taught. Not to mention with everything they did to you you’re probably reliant on them for the medication and treatment that keeps you alive and sane. On your own you might not last any longer than you will as an LTO before your body just breaks down.”
Eliot bristled. “Is this your way of trying ta convince me to go back to the straight ‘n’ narrow? Salute the alliance, play their game and all that crap?”
Sophie shook her head, the calm but serious expression on her face unnerving. “It’s a serious question. I want to know your answer. Even with all of that would you still walk away?”
“I wouldn’t walk. I’d run as fast as I could.” He looked up to Sophie, not sure why he was telling *her* this, but maybe he just needed to say it to someone. He’d never said it to his clan. He never could. His clan was made up of LTOs and Low Tech Reconnaissance, a class nearly as deadly LTO. Willie was the only one left alive who was older than Eliot, Amiee the only one close enough to Eliot’s age for tradition to allow for anything but a strictly mentor and protector role.
After everything that happened he could barely sit in the same room as either of them, rules, knowledge, and memory of nightmares that made up their lives together forcing a space they couldn’t cross.
Sophie’s eyes were still on him and he looked up at her, as defiant an expression on his face as he knew how to give. “I’m dying. Every year my body breaks down a little more and they stopped trying to fix it years ago. At this point it isn’t a question of if something’ll kill me before I turn forty, but what.” Shock played across her face. “I’m fine with that. I’ve survived longer than most my class does and some days an end to the fight seems pretty nice but if it weren’t…” He shook his head looking away into the shadows of the room, speaking the dream that had played through his mind since he was still a student. “If my clan wouldn’t suffer for it, I tell ya I’d run and keep running and not give a damn when time ran out an’ they caught up with me. I’m a dead man walking already. I’d just like to know what it’s like to live free before I die for real.”
He went quiet and sat back down. Some more meditation, or maybe just some quiet brooding, would help get his head together.
Sophie left without another word.
He opened his eyes after she had gone, the darkness of the room as soothing as a grave.
He was a fighter, a survivor, and he’d managed to live a long life all things considered but he was tired and running out of time.
Maybe once this job was over it was time for him to do what the agents sometimes referred to as the last act of defiance.
Maybe it was time to leave the fighting to the next generation.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Team, pre-Nate/Sophie
Verse: Steal the Sky
Fandoms: Leverage, Firefly, Supernatural, NCIS, White Collar
Summary: After Nathan Ford is hired to act as handler for three Alliance Operatives nothing in his 'verse will ever be quite the same.
Notes: This is likely going to develope into a verse of it's own. Many Many thanks and much praise to my betas Deanangst and lmx_v3point3
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Some Backwater Hellhole,
Fourth Moon of Antigone
Eliot Spencer: Soon to be officially deceased,
And possibly dead for real
Eliot didn’t get the message right away. He was running a job, fighting his way in and out of some backwater hellhole when his com unit let him know he had a message waiting.
With half a dozen guys between him and the exit, his left arm out of commission, and Ron, the guy they’d sent in with him, nowhere in sight, he had other things to worry about.
Eliot managed to clear the path to the exit as his “partner” staggered in from a side passage. He was trying to keep pressure on a wound to his shoulder, but Eliot could count nearly a dozen more. If Ron wasn’t a LTO Class like him, Eliot would have never believed he was still standing.
As it was, they both knew Ron would bleed out unless he got proper medical care very soon.
Medical care that their handlers could and would normally see they got now that the mission was done.
Expect that they both also knew that they were classification Delta, sent on a suicide mission. They weren’t supposed to walk out of here alive, no help would come for several hours at least.
Ron collapsed halfway across the room and Eliot went to him. They hadn’t known each other before this job but they were both LTO Class Classification Deltas. They’d lived their whole lives in the same world and that was more shared understanding than they would get from just about anyone else. Ron wasn’t long for this verse and Eliot would at least see to it he left it as comfortably as he could.
Ron tried to shake him off. “Outside…” He muttered, as much blood coming out as words. “Just want to see sun…”
“Alright, butcha won’t make it walkin’ on your own,” Eliot answered, sliding his good arm around Ron’s waist and helping him limp across the last fifteen feet to the door. “Just like the old sayin’.” Ron smiled a little at that and closed his eyes, focusing on limping out as best he could.
It was dusk outside, the sun already almost gone by the time Eliot helped Ron to the ground.
Before night fully fell, Ron opened his eyes for one last look at the blue skies turning to black and breathed his last.
Slowly Eliot took out his com unit, wondering if he should take care of Ron’s body before or after making the call, when he saw Hardison’s message.
Three months since they’d split up.
Two months since Hardison faked his death and went AWOL.
Fourteen years as a classification Delta, one misstep away from death by the sword, or the gun, or the firing squad, or The Operatives.
A lifetime of fighting someone else’s battles and trying hard not to end like Ron.
And another bloody day.
Somehow it all came down to a single wave and two needles full of chemicals he’d kept close at hand.
Carefully, he took them out of the carrying case with the rest of his medical supplies (enough to treat his arm, never enough to save a life). With a field medic’s efficiency he prepared the first and injected himself, waiting two minutes to make sure the full effect was taken before injecting himself with the other.
With one last glance to Ron and a bitter mental congratulations to his handler for finally getting them both killed, Eliot turned around and left, slipping into the underbrush without a mark of his passing.
Through the woods were fields, across the fields was a road, down the road was a town, in that town was transportation, and transportation would, one way or another, get him to the border world where Ford and the others were waiting for him.
As of now he was officially dead. He had officially lost.
But Eliot knew that, maybe for the first time ever, he’d actually won a fight he had chosen.
We part the veil on our killer sun
Stray from the straight line on this short run
The more we take the less we become
The fortune of one man means less for some
Eliot Spencer: Delta Class,
Low Tech Offensive with Covert and Medical specifications
Eliot Spencer was a fighter, a survivor. At age five he’d been told he probably wouldn’t live to see six and now he was closing in on thirty-five. He’d fought through the nightmare that was training and the hell that was the life of an LTO, carrying the scars of battles and beatings and somehow managing to keep his abused body functional. He’d survived the Ares Project, reclaimed his sanity, fought the conditioning, and learned to live with the modifications they made to his mind and body, holding himself together even when his changed physiology rejected yet another medication and old symptoms returned.
He was a fighter. A survivor. Maybe even his clan’s protector, for as much and as little as he could protect them from anything.
He was not sure how he ended up here.
Here was Osiris, with Nathan Ford, two other agents, and a companion.
Here was without a handler, keeping an eye on Parker (because she was insane) and Hardison (because he was young), watching out for both of them because they needed watching and he was older and it was just what he’d been taught to do (not because they reminded him of Jack and Josephine or because he liked them at all).
Here was trying to predict a companion who wasn’t and figure out Nate’s behavior ever since the man had given them the transmitter, for the first time in their lives telling them they could be their own handlers. Somehow this man, so alike but so different from the investigator Eliot had worked with and spent two weeks inside a cell on Osiris’s 9th moon with eight years ago, seemed so… he just didn’t know.
Here was in a park, with Sophie, meeting with The Doctor, a man who’d spent years trying to get subjects of The Academy out, and on whom the team had found information during their last investigation.
He knew, linearly speaking, how and why he’d gotten here, but so much of it was a mystery in the philosophical sense he’d need to be a little more clear headed to consider.
(The edge of his mind was starting to get a little hazy, nothing serious, but it had him worried. It could be the first sign his body was rejecting the most recent round of medication the doctors had him on. Or just that his unstable internal chemistry had been upset by the fact he hadn’t eaten more than Dietary Replacements for three days and barely slept in over a week).
He sat on the bench, pretending to read the day’s newspaper while Sophie sat beside him and looked about the park like she was just enjoying the day.
Eliot saw their quarry approaching, despite not knowing what the man looked like even after contacting him for this meet. He was younger than Eliot had imagined, and looked more together than most rebels. He was going against the alliance, but was by no means a Brown-coat.
But he looked like a doctor. It was a very distinct self-assurance, and he looked like someone who had just casually slipped a tail and was keeping an eye out for another one while looking to make a meeting.
Another all too casual survey of the area and The Doctor passed them, stopping and looking to Sophie. “Anna?” He asked, surprise in his voice, using the alias they’d given him. “What a surprise, I thought you were still off world.”
Sophie and The Doctor made nice, acting for all the world like two old friends meeting in the park, the code phrases they’d given each other during their initial contact slipped seamlessly into the conversation before Sophie introduced Eliot as her personal assistant and, wouldn’t The Doctor (Matt, though Eliot was sure that was as real a name as Anna was) come with them to lunch?
They walked off together through the park to the area Hardison had cleared of the ever watching cameras of the alliance and put his own surveillance in to give them warning of any approach.
And suddenly all pretenses were dropped and the game changed.
Eliot took a step back, watching as the two sought information from each other, getting each other’s measure and Eliot had to grudgingly admit Sophie was the best he’d seen at this.
Unfortunately while Hardison had been able to tell them in no uncertain terms that The Doctor was who they thought he was and his motivations for wanting to get the subjects out were pure and he fit in perfectly for the role they needed him for…
The Doctor was paranoid and had no hacker to check up on them.
And he was getting antsy and Sophie wasn’t telling the truth about why they wanted to get the subjects out, which was okay mostly because revenge probably wouldn’t impress this guy much and Eliot didn’t really feel like explaining that their survival depended on it but…
“I don’t know who you people are,” Simon said finally. “And if you’re doing this then good for you but I need to get he- them out of there and I can’t do that if you get me caught.”
A little stumble, just a little one, but it clicked something into place and suddenly the familiarity of The Doctors face made a little more sense.
Eliot let out a slow breath, the fuzziness at the edges of his mind getting worse, but he let it. This was important and he’d use what he could to get through to this guy.
He could feel the whirl, the pull and he bit down on the surge of nausea before the gathering tension in his mind broke and he heard a soft trill of laughter, a little girl’s voice bubbling with too much intelligence, feet moving with too much grace. A ghost of a little hand slipped into his own, pulling at him to follow deeper into the memories and the stream of subconscious. A surge of knowledge, memories, disorganized and already fading before it took hold.
He pulled back and away from it, trying to suppress the way his body was shaking just a little, the feeling of falling hard and fast and hitting his own body, mind syncing back in and it was all he could do to stay on his feet as the world around him spun.
Sophie had stopped talking but the hands on his arm weren’t hers. The Doctor… well it was in his name that he was a Doctor. A trauma surgeon, his mind provided now, top of his class, a prodigy. Not the only one in his family.
Simon Tam. His mind whispered. River Tam is his sister.
Simon was saying something and Eliot pulled in another breath, forcing away the aftereffect. As much as Eliot might try, and despite a damn lot of practice, he couldn’t completely cover the physical effects of Slipping. The medications he took helped to block and moderate his powers since the tap-dancing the Ares Project had done inside his mind had stripped most of his innate abilities to do that, but it meant accessing those powers was all the more difficult and the havoc it wrecked on his internal chemistry all the more severe.
Simon was telling him to sit down, hand reaching for a bag he wasn’t carrying, and something more of Eliot’s opinion of the man changed. He didn’t need to slip to read that the man had become a doctor to help people rather than for the money.
Some days Eliot marveled that there were still people like that out in the verse.
“You know her,” Eliot stated, meeting The Doctors eyes. “You were close before they took her.” The look on The Doctor’s face said enough. “And now you know they’re hurting her and you just need to save her because that’s your job. She’s your little sister and the Alliance took her.”
The Doctor opened his mouth but no sound came out.
“It’s okay. I get it. I’m a big brother, an’ my siblings are in danger right now too.” He spoke slowly, deliberately. He didn’t talk about himself. He’d never had a need to. Agents knew each other’s stories or knew better than to ask. But he could recognize a brother’s need to do his job, and he knew that connection would make sense to a brother like little else in the verse. “I’ll be honest, we’re not in this on some righteous crusade to save your sister. The alliance is threatening my family, and the families of two of the members of our team. We have a plan that will take out the main threat and get your sister out in the process. If you help us it will go a lot smoother and chances are everyone will be going home safe.”
There was a moment of quiet and Eliot took the chance to take a deep breath, try to stabilize his mind, try to focus on the goal. They needed his help for this.
Simon was looking at him, watching, studying, him. “Surgery to the frontal lobe,” Simon said after a moment. “Repeated,” he amended. “They did a magnificent job on the scars but… I’ve seen enough to notice.” Eliot went very still, realizing Simon was talking about him. “A long time ago. I’m guessing also temporal?”
Did this guy really expect an answer?
“You’re from The Academy?” Simon asked after another moment, sounding insanely calm. Eliot shook his head.
“No,” Eliot answered, took a breath, used what he could. “But somewhere a lot like it.”
“We know your sister is in danger,” Sophie supplied, coming forward, taking over the newly opened line. “They’re trying to implant her with conditioning and alter her mental processes. We don’t know how far they’ve gone or fully what to expect but with your help we can get her out and help you get her off world.”
“And after?” Simon asked.
Eliot shook his head. “Our team has five days before the deadline, an’ I mean dead. We can arrange your transportation off world, but after that you’re on your own.”
Slowly Simon nodded. “Tell me what you need.”
“Funding,” Sophie started. “Your medical skills and knowledge, and you need to be with us when we go in. I’m a registered companion who’s worked this planet for three years. Our team’s leader and I run too high a risk of being recognized to go in and the three other members of our team, as you’ve established, are currently AWOL from a rival project. Sending them in is a risky business. We can walk you in there, but we need a fresh face.” She hesitated before adding. “And it’ll go smoother if you walk her out.”
Simon looked confused at the last bit and Eliot explained. “We believe it’s likely she’s suffering from at least temporary psychosis brought on by the experiments.” He tried to ignore the surge of pain he felt from the other man. “She’s your sister. She trusts you. You’ll have the easiest time of any of us getting her out.”
Simon nodded slowly.
“Come back to our base,” Sophie suggested. “We’ll talk about plans there.”
oOo
The plans were made, Hardison was busy with the preparations, Simon was gone and Sophie with him, Parker was… somewhere (he was almost sure he felt her sleeping in the air vents).
He wasn’t sure what to make of Nate’s offer to play pool.
No, he knew what to make of it. Nate wanted to talk to him.
Eliot just wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
He could say yes and then just win in a single turn. In his minds eyes he could see the angles and shots, wining in a single turn was easy. No need for talk.
But he’d always respected Nate and now that the man wasn’t his handler or another faceless user, now that he was something new…
The man had given him his first taste of freedom, even if it wasn’t more than a brief illusion.
He could give the man a chance to say his bit and ask his questions.
The game started slow. Eliot played carefully, letting the game drag on, not being bad but being only decent.
The first game was nearly over before Nate stopped their casual conversation with a direct question. “Were you ever hurt because of me?”
Of course. Nate always did have a guilt complex.
“Yeah,” Eliot answered. “That time on Dongjing. You pissed off my handler an’ he took it out on me.” He took a shot, his voice as casual as if he was talking about weekend plans. “'Course, my Handler’s always been a sadistic son of a bitch so ain’t like it was anything new.” He looked over to Nate, raising an eyebrow. “You gonna take your shot?”
Nate moved, to his credit hiding the way Eliot had disturbed him well.
“You know on Olympus we say it’s the ultimate game of chance.” Eliot said as Nate lined up his shot. “Pairing with a handler. They ain’t all bad. You ever worked with Neal Cawfry?” Nate nodded. “His newest handler, Burke, is practically famous for how protective he can be. But most see us as tools, not people.”
Nate took his shot and stepped back. “I need you to do something for me.” Eliot nodded for him to continue, glad they’d gotten to the point and curious to find out what it was. “What happened yesterday, with the food and the transmitter, I need you to tell me what’s going on with you three at times like that. What I shouldn’t do. What I should remember to do.”
Eliot could argue, point out that he wasn’t their handler anymore, but it had taken all of three hours for Hardison to start looking to Nate for guidance again. Parker had made it to almost five hours and other than a trip to a grocer Eliot had mostly followed suit. They were used to having someone to look to for direction. Eliot had gone undercover, had spent periods of time working away from a handler, but even he was feeling disoriented at the prospect.
Of course by this time tomorrow the job would be over and they’d go their separate ways, so was there really a point?
“What does it matter?” Eliot asked. “After tomorrow we’ll be back to Olympus and never see you again.”
Nate gave that infuriating smirk of his and simply nodded for him to take his shot.
Eliot sunk another one of the balls and sighed, not wanting to think about the next day.
“You look better,” he commented after a moment, watching Nate’s move. “Than when we started.”
Considering when they had started, Nate had smelled like booze and the haze of a not far gone hangover had felt like it was oozing around the man, this was better. He was barely drinking and he looked… more alive.
Of course the man’s answer was neutral at best. “That bothers you.”
Nate gave him a look and Eliot just smiled his own infuriating grin. He’d worked enough with Nate to know the man’s opinion of criminals. Now they were about to commit more than a dozen very serious crimes and…
But to steal a girl. To save lives. And against a part of the Alliance that was dirty at best.
“You gonna take your shot?”
Eliot sighed and took a drink of beer. It was basic cheap stuff, ironic that the cheaper stuff tended to be the closest to what his body could process. He shook his head, voice gentling a little. “Listen, ‘m sorry about your kid.”
Nate leveled a look at him that plainly said he’d gotten a little too familiar. “You don’t know anything about that.”
Eliot met Nate’s eyes, forcing away the flashback of little Jack, just eight years old and sick. A performance review failure. Eliot, just fourteen, barely human again, finding something to hold onto in working with his younger clan brother to try to get him to pass the next review. A score just a single point below passing. The way Jack sobbed when he was taken to the front of the crowd and the ringing silence after the bullet was put into his skull.
“Everyone knows,” he responded to Nate, his words carrying the ghost of a second meaning as his eyes drifted over to where Hardison was working before focusing on Nate again, letting the hint of understanding fade. “A guy like you goes off the grid and we all notice, and it was a bad story too. How did they justify that?”
Nate bristled a little. “You and I are not friends Eliot,” he stated, since Eliot clearly wasn’t taking the warning.
Eliot brushed off the pushback. “Yeah, cause we both’ve got so many.” The door opened and he felt as much as heard Sophie come in. “Incoming.” He headed off for one of the two small back rooms that served as bedrooms. He could use a break from these people, especially if he was already feeling people again.
oOo
Eliot had been meditating, trying to re-center his mind, when the door to the darkened room opened and he felt Sophie walk in.
He considered ignoring her, not wanting to deal with a companion or anyone right now, but he could sense a hint of something behind her intentions. Importance, a purpose.
And he knew enough about companions to figure if she wanted to talk to him she’d get him to talk to her eventually.
He sighed and opened his eyes, rising from his seat on the floor. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice gruffer than usual when talking to women, but it had been a long day.
“You’re a reader,” she stated, almost casually.
Well then.
He shrugged. “Not a very good one,” he answered, straight forward. Maybe once he confirmed this she’d just go away. “M’ gift was never very strong. I can get little clues, hints, feelings… but nothing like in the stories you hear.”
Sophie sat down on the room’s lower bunk, absently smoothing the covers and dashing Eliot’s hopes she was going to go away quickly. “I have a friend I met on Cairo a few years ago called Ziva David.” Eliot blinked, recognizing the name. She was one of the alphas in the LTO class, pretty well known on Olympus for being all but permanently assigned to help a Naval Outpost in the New Virginia System without an official handler. “We ended up doing some work together and I found out a lot about the agents of Olympus.” Sophie looked up, meeting his eyes. “I have a question, one I asked her, one that may prove important.”
Companions. Always had to go for the drama. “What?”
“If you could walk away from Olympus, free, with no harm done to your clan, would you?”
What?
She stood slowly. “You’re what? Thirty-five years old? Olympus has been your home since you were a child. You probably don’t even remember what life was like before. You’ve always had a home, food, medical care, someone to tell you what to do and make the hard decisions for you. You hurt and kill people but you’ve never had the choice to do otherwise so it’s never been your fault. The only people you know well are other agents, the work you do is the only work you were ever taught. Not to mention with everything they did to you you’re probably reliant on them for the medication and treatment that keeps you alive and sane. On your own you might not last any longer than you will as an LTO before your body just breaks down.”
Eliot bristled. “Is this your way of trying ta convince me to go back to the straight ‘n’ narrow? Salute the alliance, play their game and all that crap?”
Sophie shook her head, the calm but serious expression on her face unnerving. “It’s a serious question. I want to know your answer. Even with all of that would you still walk away?”
“I wouldn’t walk. I’d run as fast as I could.” He looked up to Sophie, not sure why he was telling *her* this, but maybe he just needed to say it to someone. He’d never said it to his clan. He never could. His clan was made up of LTOs and Low Tech Reconnaissance, a class nearly as deadly LTO. Willie was the only one left alive who was older than Eliot, Amiee the only one close enough to Eliot’s age for tradition to allow for anything but a strictly mentor and protector role.
After everything that happened he could barely sit in the same room as either of them, rules, knowledge, and memory of nightmares that made up their lives together forcing a space they couldn’t cross.
Sophie’s eyes were still on him and he looked up at her, as defiant an expression on his face as he knew how to give. “I’m dying. Every year my body breaks down a little more and they stopped trying to fix it years ago. At this point it isn’t a question of if something’ll kill me before I turn forty, but what.” Shock played across her face. “I’m fine with that. I’ve survived longer than most my class does and some days an end to the fight seems pretty nice but if it weren’t…” He shook his head looking away into the shadows of the room, speaking the dream that had played through his mind since he was still a student. “If my clan wouldn’t suffer for it, I tell ya I’d run and keep running and not give a damn when time ran out an’ they caught up with me. I’m a dead man walking already. I’d just like to know what it’s like to live free before I die for real.”
He went quiet and sat back down. Some more meditation, or maybe just some quiet brooding, would help get his head together.
Sophie left without another word.
He opened his eyes after she had gone, the darkness of the room as soothing as a grave.
He was a fighter, a survivor, and he’d managed to live a long life all things considered but he was tired and running out of time.
Maybe once this job was over it was time for him to do what the agents sometimes referred to as the last act of defiance.
Maybe it was time to leave the fighting to the next generation.