The Two Sons Job 6/9
Title: The Two Sons Job: Across the 'Verse
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: gen, referenced past Eliot/Amie, Eliot/Dean
Verse: Steal The Sky
Fandoms: Leverage, Firefly, Supernatural, White Collar
Summary: Concering old friends, past history, father-son relationships, and the Burke Seven.
Notes: For the Trapped Between Realities square on my H/c bingo card.
This is the Steal the Sky version of The Two Horse Job and will, suprise suprise, focus mostly on Eliot's history.
Many thanks and much praise to my beta LMX_V3point3.
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five
Warning: Dub-con and Non-con. These references may actually become depictions depending on how the story goes but I'll change the warnings to refflect that if it happens. A character also spends portions of this fic somewhat suicidal thought there's no depictions of the actual act.
Really Eliot should have known something would happen.
They’d arrived on Manhattan two days ago. He’d introduced the crew to Peter, Elizabeth, and Caffery. Mozzie had shown up later and barely waited for them to be inside before congratulating the Agents for breaking free of the man.
Mozzie and Parker had gotten along disturbingly well. Though if Eliot really thought about it, the odd friendship that had formed years ago between the small man and Caffery almost made sense.
Sophie and Elizabeth had also hit it off, though that he’d at least seen coming. Just like he’d predicted Neal and Sophie were turning casual flirtation into a competition and Peter was barely hiding his distrust for Nate.
It was probably for the best that Sam was stuck piloting Leverage and Dean was stuck on board due to a certain warrant for his arrest still being active in Manhattan. Two less complications.
Yeah. Because that made a huge difference on a normal day.
Eliot should have seen this coming. The job was going ridiculously smoothly with all the hands on deck. Peter’s team was sticking up for him, along with a collection of friends and allies gathered from the planet and beyond. What had started out as the Burke Seven had transformed into the Burke conglomerate.
He'd even heard Elizabeth joke about how it was a pity it wouldn’t last. The crime-solving spree they could go on would be one for the history books.
He guessed with all the talent and skill involved it would have to be the one thing no one could possibly see coming that would throw their plans off kilter.
It was after happy hour, the work was done for the day, and the majority of the Burke Conglomerate had dispersed with a handful of them heading out to a quiet Hole-in-the-wall bar. They’d played pool and traded stories and tricks.
There’d been a game on the TV Eliot had been half watching between his turns. It turned to commercials and he heard the start of a jingle.
“Fruity oaty bars make a man out of a mouse,”
His breath caught in his throat and he turned to look at the screen.
He was Serenity (Midbulk transport, standard radion-accelerator core, classcode 03-K64, Firefly).
“Fruity oaty bars make monsters in your house,”
Blue light. Old men drowning in blood. “Scary monsters.” He could feel his brother searching.
Oh little souls.
Secret echo. Dying Echoes. Protect the Echo. Steal the Echo.
Soft skin smell. Bright unfocused world.
“Watching all the time”
He Dropped, his mind shattering across the void. He reached his fingers out to warn her, to warn them, but the verse cut into him like shards of glass ripping him into mincemeat while she was only a bright burning beacon on the horizon. He strained forward, mangled disjointed fingers almost reaching a wisp of tangled brown hair.
Hands grabbed his shoulders and he turned, automatically grabbing the wrist and twisting. His body knew instinctively how to get the right leverage, how to apply just enough force to wrench the arm from it’s socket and break the wrist.
He turned towards the next foe, ducking blows and attacking with the same detached precision. A third form came at him and he dodged away without striking. The halo of blonde hair stuck in his mind as not a viable target.
“We’re inside your mind.”
Somewhere in the space between heartbeats he heard someone call a name that didn’t belong to him. Words screaming in his silent mind told him he should Fall but they were caught in the blue air and held captive by the heartbeat of a distant echo.
She was crying. He heard the silence within her and knew why. He put a hand on her shoulder and said nothing.
She turned to look toward him, fear in her eyes, flinching from his hand, her own settling over her stomach and he felt embers burn and clash and the faintest echo appearing. He leaned over, placing a chaste kiss to the top of her head swearing to her an oath he had no idea how he would ever fulfill.
Someone was speaking. Words flashing bright red in his mind but he had to keep fighting. It was important. He couldn’t Drop. Not now. Not when she was in danger. Not when he could warn them all.
He reached out through the black, through the chaos, a brush of blue cloth.
The blanket was blue. The same color as his eyes. They might change. They might not. He’d never know.
He clung on for one moment longer, unashamed of his own sobbing breaths or the tears on his face. He chose this. He needed to do this.
Hands took him and he let go. A voice spoke a name.
A soft hand on his cheek and he turned. The bed was soft. The lights were gentle. He could smell incense.
“Mei mei?” Inara asked.
He sat up and smiled at her. “Fine,” he told her. “Visiting a friend.”
“Gun them down.”
He sat up hearing screams, the cuffs reminding him he was on Serenity.
He lay down. He had to lie down. He must not become one who never laid down.
She was curled up now. Shaking. Inara came over. He looked up at her, the gentle of her mind soothing but fading. He could feel fading flowers.
“River?” Simon asked, bursting into the shuttle. Inara backed away as he came closer. “River? Look at me.” He pulled her hands away from her hair.
“Hair is too long,” she said. “I have ghosts in me.” She cried. “一哥 is inside of me.”
“I’m right here River,” he told her. “I’m not…”
“I thought she was getting better,” Inara said.
“She was.”
“Eta kuram na smekh.”
He turned, seeing a tall young black man. He shook his head, feeling darkness sweeping across the verse toward him. He couldn’t stop it. It would hit him too soon. He couldn’t.
The darkness hit him. He had to warn her. He couldn’t lie down. He must not lie down.
The blue was gone. The blue was gone.
Did he still have his blue eyes?
Desperately he reached forward a single word passing through his lips. “Sebastian.”
The darkness swallowed him from beneath. If he hit the floor he never felt it.
He opens his eyes to find himself sitting on top of a set of skylights over a ship’s dinner quarters with the Black opening above him.
His mind tells him he should be dead. The lack of pressure, the cold, the lack of air. He should be dead.
He isn’t.
A sensation dances across his mind like a swish of silk and the whisper of bare feet. She appears not as he last saw her but as he could see in his mind she was meant to be. A wispy dark blue dress billowing around her, combat boots to protect her feet as she crosses the space between them and sits across from him.
She just looks at him, no words needed, and he looks back.
She understands his warning. Something happened when they met. Her frayed mind and his unstable gift and those few brief moments when he pushed through the haze of his mind to touch hers and let her know she was safe now.
He’d left a part of himself there and taken a part of her with him.
And somehow that part had caused…
She nodded. She understood. He was only offering blurred images and mixed up thoughts, his memory of the incident more hazy than the need to warn her.
Something was coming. She’d be on her guard.
He shivers, not from the cold. His focus on warning her is fading. The chaos of his mind, everything triggered and shaken loose hovering at the edge of his thoughts, ready to devour him when he lost his grip and he was losing it so very quickly.
She smiles at him, laughter in her eyes, and she scoots forward to touch his forehead.
Big brothers take so much looking after. She tells him.
He calls her a bratty pipsqueak in Greek and feels her understanding.
Close your eyes. She tells him and he does. Open them.
He feels the heat of sun on his skin before his eyes open. He’s sitting with her in a cargo bay of a Firefly but the walls seem impossibly far away and there’s dirt beneath his feet and little plants and a fake wind and it reminds him of those vague memories of home.
She grins at him. Come play with me, she bids him, standing and dancing away from him. No power in the verse can catch me.
It’s a challenge and Eliot rises to it.
He chases after her, running and jumping through the cargo hold and up the stairs, racing up and down catwalks and through the ship and there are ghosts that they pass by who watch River as she goes, calling out muted words Eliot doesn’t understand and River calls back that the ghost isn’t in her anymore.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: gen, referenced past Eliot/Amie, Eliot/Dean
Verse: Steal The Sky
Fandoms: Leverage, Firefly, Supernatural, White Collar
Summary: Concering old friends, past history, father-son relationships, and the Burke Seven.
Notes: For the Trapped Between Realities square on my H/c bingo card.
This is the Steal the Sky version of The Two Horse Job and will, suprise suprise, focus mostly on Eliot's history.
Many thanks and much praise to my beta LMX_V3point3.
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five
Warning: Dub-con and Non-con. These references may actually become depictions depending on how the story goes but I'll change the warnings to refflect that if it happens. A character also spends portions of this fic somewhat suicidal thought there's no depictions of the actual act.
Really Eliot should have known something would happen.
They’d arrived on Manhattan two days ago. He’d introduced the crew to Peter, Elizabeth, and Caffery. Mozzie had shown up later and barely waited for them to be inside before congratulating the Agents for breaking free of the man.
Mozzie and Parker had gotten along disturbingly well. Though if Eliot really thought about it, the odd friendship that had formed years ago between the small man and Caffery almost made sense.
Sophie and Elizabeth had also hit it off, though that he’d at least seen coming. Just like he’d predicted Neal and Sophie were turning casual flirtation into a competition and Peter was barely hiding his distrust for Nate.
It was probably for the best that Sam was stuck piloting Leverage and Dean was stuck on board due to a certain warrant for his arrest still being active in Manhattan. Two less complications.
Yeah. Because that made a huge difference on a normal day.
Eliot should have seen this coming. The job was going ridiculously smoothly with all the hands on deck. Peter’s team was sticking up for him, along with a collection of friends and allies gathered from the planet and beyond. What had started out as the Burke Seven had transformed into the Burke conglomerate.
He'd even heard Elizabeth joke about how it was a pity it wouldn’t last. The crime-solving spree they could go on would be one for the history books.
He guessed with all the talent and skill involved it would have to be the one thing no one could possibly see coming that would throw their plans off kilter.
It was after happy hour, the work was done for the day, and the majority of the Burke Conglomerate had dispersed with a handful of them heading out to a quiet Hole-in-the-wall bar. They’d played pool and traded stories and tricks.
There’d been a game on the TV Eliot had been half watching between his turns. It turned to commercials and he heard the start of a jingle.
“Fruity oaty bars make a man out of a mouse,”
His breath caught in his throat and he turned to look at the screen.
He was Serenity (Midbulk transport, standard radion-accelerator core, classcode 03-K64, Firefly).
“Fruity oaty bars make monsters in your house,”
Blue light. Old men drowning in blood. “Scary monsters.” He could feel his brother searching.
Oh little souls.
Secret echo. Dying Echoes. Protect the Echo. Steal the Echo.
Soft skin smell. Bright unfocused world.
“Watching all the time”
He Dropped, his mind shattering across the void. He reached his fingers out to warn her, to warn them, but the verse cut into him like shards of glass ripping him into mincemeat while she was only a bright burning beacon on the horizon. He strained forward, mangled disjointed fingers almost reaching a wisp of tangled brown hair.
Hands grabbed his shoulders and he turned, automatically grabbing the wrist and twisting. His body knew instinctively how to get the right leverage, how to apply just enough force to wrench the arm from it’s socket and break the wrist.
He turned towards the next foe, ducking blows and attacking with the same detached precision. A third form came at him and he dodged away without striking. The halo of blonde hair stuck in his mind as not a viable target.
“We’re inside your mind.”
Somewhere in the space between heartbeats he heard someone call a name that didn’t belong to him. Words screaming in his silent mind told him he should Fall but they were caught in the blue air and held captive by the heartbeat of a distant echo.
She was crying. He heard the silence within her and knew why. He put a hand on her shoulder and said nothing.
She turned to look toward him, fear in her eyes, flinching from his hand, her own settling over her stomach and he felt embers burn and clash and the faintest echo appearing. He leaned over, placing a chaste kiss to the top of her head swearing to her an oath he had no idea how he would ever fulfill.
Someone was speaking. Words flashing bright red in his mind but he had to keep fighting. It was important. He couldn’t Drop. Not now. Not when she was in danger. Not when he could warn them all.
He reached out through the black, through the chaos, a brush of blue cloth.
The blanket was blue. The same color as his eyes. They might change. They might not. He’d never know.
He clung on for one moment longer, unashamed of his own sobbing breaths or the tears on his face. He chose this. He needed to do this.
Hands took him and he let go. A voice spoke a name.
A soft hand on his cheek and he turned. The bed was soft. The lights were gentle. He could smell incense.
“Mei mei?” Inara asked.
He sat up and smiled at her. “Fine,” he told her. “Visiting a friend.”
“Gun them down.”
He sat up hearing screams, the cuffs reminding him he was on Serenity.
He lay down. He had to lie down. He must not become one who never laid down.
She was curled up now. Shaking. Inara came over. He looked up at her, the gentle of her mind soothing but fading. He could feel fading flowers.
“River?” Simon asked, bursting into the shuttle. Inara backed away as he came closer. “River? Look at me.” He pulled her hands away from her hair.
“Hair is too long,” she said. “I have ghosts in me.” She cried. “一哥 is inside of me.”
“I’m right here River,” he told her. “I’m not…”
“I thought she was getting better,” Inara said.
“She was.”
“Eta kuram na smekh.”
He turned, seeing a tall young black man. He shook his head, feeling darkness sweeping across the verse toward him. He couldn’t stop it. It would hit him too soon. He couldn’t.
The darkness hit him. He had to warn her. He couldn’t lie down. He must not lie down.
The blue was gone. The blue was gone.
Did he still have his blue eyes?
Desperately he reached forward a single word passing through his lips. “Sebastian.”
The darkness swallowed him from beneath. If he hit the floor he never felt it.
He opens his eyes to find himself sitting on top of a set of skylights over a ship’s dinner quarters with the Black opening above him.
His mind tells him he should be dead. The lack of pressure, the cold, the lack of air. He should be dead.
He isn’t.
A sensation dances across his mind like a swish of silk and the whisper of bare feet. She appears not as he last saw her but as he could see in his mind she was meant to be. A wispy dark blue dress billowing around her, combat boots to protect her feet as she crosses the space between them and sits across from him.
She just looks at him, no words needed, and he looks back.
She understands his warning. Something happened when they met. Her frayed mind and his unstable gift and those few brief moments when he pushed through the haze of his mind to touch hers and let her know she was safe now.
He’d left a part of himself there and taken a part of her with him.
And somehow that part had caused…
She nodded. She understood. He was only offering blurred images and mixed up thoughts, his memory of the incident more hazy than the need to warn her.
Something was coming. She’d be on her guard.
He shivers, not from the cold. His focus on warning her is fading. The chaos of his mind, everything triggered and shaken loose hovering at the edge of his thoughts, ready to devour him when he lost his grip and he was losing it so very quickly.
She smiles at him, laughter in her eyes, and she scoots forward to touch his forehead.
Big brothers take so much looking after. She tells him.
He calls her a bratty pipsqueak in Greek and feels her understanding.
Close your eyes. She tells him and he does. Open them.
He feels the heat of sun on his skin before his eyes open. He’s sitting with her in a cargo bay of a Firefly but the walls seem impossibly far away and there’s dirt beneath his feet and little plants and a fake wind and it reminds him of those vague memories of home.
She grins at him. Come play with me, she bids him, standing and dancing away from him. No power in the verse can catch me.
It’s a challenge and Eliot rises to it.
He chases after her, running and jumping through the cargo hold and up the stairs, racing up and down catwalks and through the ship and there are ghosts that they pass by who watch River as she goes, calling out muted words Eliot doesn’t understand and River calls back that the ghost isn’t in her anymore.