Mirrors
Title: Mirrors
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg-13
Genre: Nate/Eliot
Verse: BlackKing!WhiteKnight!Verse
Summary: He doesn't like what he sees.
Notes: Timestamp set during the Carnival Job but refferencing the events of season 3
"I don’t like what I see."
Eliot doesn’t like it either. He’s never liked mirrors. He’s spent most of his life not being able to stand the guy he saw in them.
The earth beneath him buckles and rolls, though he knows it’s really still. A concussion will due that to a guy. A lost fight with a fucking carnival ride will do that to a guy.
The mirrors reflect his image back to him, twisting, disconnected. He here’s echoes of Molly’s cries and the team’s voices in his head and in a way he knows all of this, all of it, is in his head.
He can’t focus his eyes right. The world is spinning out of control.
Instincts and training are keeping him calm, stubbornness keeping him functional, but…
From behind him something moves, someone attacks, and he’s nearly taken to the ground.
He catches himself, defends just enough to keep his feet.
He turns, trying to avoid… and there’s a guy.
He lashes out, feeling the shatter and pain of broken glass lance across his senses before it even registers that the guy hadn’t been there.
~*~
There’s broken glass in the sink, on the tile floor, in his hand.
If it wasn’t in his hand he might be able to explain it.
They didn’t even get a month, not really. Four months after the proposal he and Nate had gotten married in what was supposed to have been a small ceremony with just family and no fuss until Sophie stated that if they were going to get married the least they could let her do is plan them a proper wedding.
And she’d said it like she really cared, like she was doing this because they were family and come hell or high water or having to manipulate them she was going to make sure they had a “proper” ceremony.
And so they’d let her do that. And so they’d had a wedding in June, two months late due to jobs and life and at least one ceremony (well, decoy ceremony) being raided by a bunch of what Hardison claimed had to be ninjas.
They’d barely been back from the honeymoon before a job went south, really south, and Nate was arrested and they’d gotten him back and out in record time, in less than a month, and they’d taken down a corrupt Prison system and…
Only they’d come back to the apartment, ready to take some more time out of Boston, on to have the Italian waltz in and Moreau to crawl out from under Eliot closet.
It was the one lie… obfuscation (lie, definitely lie) that still hung between them, something Eliot shoved to the back of his mind and carefully and meticulously banished from his thoughts whenever a reminder arose, the closest to forgetting someone like him could come. It stood as damning evidence against what Nate had told him years ago, that for a while (years) he’d forgotten that, forsaken that.
That even as he lead Nate on a merry chase across Europe that ended in an Italian prison he’d been taking some well earned leave time from Damien.
He’d saved Nate life, he knows, when it was all over. Damien had been waiting for Eliot to get home, to see how badly Eliot had been hurt and hounded, before determining whether to order Nate’s death execution style or slow. Nate was as close to a friend as Eliot had for a while, a worthy adversary. He’d helped make Eliot who he was, and helped Eliot get out of tight situations.
It had been a thin line to walk. Even that briefest of conversations between them had reminded Eliot of a man he thought long dead. Of a boy he used to be.
Damien already knew they played chess by mail, was amused by the idea, but he was wary. So, very, wary.
Nate was maybe the one man on earth in those days who may have been able to gain more sway over Eliot than Damien.
But Eliot had talked Damien down from killing Nate, had walked a few steps farther down that road to hell to keep Nate safe, and ultimately walked away.
With everything, everything, that had happened, after the better part of five years forcing himself to not remember that period in his life when he walked knowingly into the employ of the devil Eliot had almost managed to convince himself he had forgotten. To convince himself it wasn’t the sound of Silent Night playing through a house where no child would wake for Christmas Morning that chased him out of sleep in the holiday season. That the half edited stories about his scars he told Nate (told himself until he believed they) were true.
And for all the hell his childhood coming back to bite his ass had caused it had helped him to forget the rest as much as he could.
Only shit had finally stopped raining from the sky. It had been business as usual. They had been happy.
But they were going after Damien Fucking Moreau and…
He’d held it together. For a week he’d held it together.
The dreams still came and went but it had been awhile since they were bad. Something about taking down Samuel had helped finally lay some of his ghosts to rest and he’d almost believed…
He’d dreamt about silent houses and the haunting song of Silent Night mocking him. He’d dreamt about a time when the line between him and the Black Knight had become blurred. The Black Knight had been created by him shoving the violence and that stone cold calm onto someone, anyone, else.
Damien had taught him to embrace it, to slip into it, to revel in it.
Red mist. He’d dreamt about black knights and the black king he’d served before Nate.
Most nightmares he woke up thrashing, or in Nate’s arms being talked down. He rarely woke from them to stillness and Nate asleep.
But he had that night. He’d slipped out of bed and into the bathroom, and splashed water on his face to dispel the dream. He’d swipped at his nose, their last con at an elementary school had left the entire team with head colds, only to find blood smeared across the back of his hand.
And about thirty seconds later he’d punched the hell out of the mirror and he couldn’t even remember why.
And there wasn’t any blood on his hand… well other than what was appearing due to the broken glass embedded in it.
The door opened and Eliot turned, looking to Nate, watching detached as Nate moved in to examine the damage.
As they stood there, injured hand in hand, Eliot wished desperately that they’d had more than this short time but he shouldn’t, couldn’t, wait any longer.
“Nate.” He said. Nate looked up and Eliot almost felt like those eyes knew what he was about to say. “There somethin’ I have to tell you.”
~*~
He’s turning, always turning. Forces buffet him. The world’s unsteady. He can’t trust his eyes.
It’s like life, his whole damn life, looking back at him through mirrors.
He sees his reflection in a mirror and shifts slightly, watching it become Roper.
He doesn’t like what he sees.
He never does.
~*~
Nate had taken the news better that Eliot had feared, but still pretty badly.
It wasn’t the first fight they’d had since getting married. Sometimes it felt like they argued more on and off the job as they both realized that for better or worse they’d be stuck together for life and the things that pissed them off today would still be there in forty years.
But it might have just been the worst they’d had, maybe discounting Nate’s brilliant “I’ll go to jail” plan.
But all in all it could have been worse. Eliot coming out with it voluntarily probably helped a lot.
The team hadn’t taken it much better.
Though after a week or two to get over it Eliot came into HQ to find Hardison and Parker working out a timeline of his life on one of the boards, their only explanation being that so far they’d encountered three jobs involving his history and they wanted to try figure out if there were any other potential future marks they could take care of before it became an issue.
Despite Hardison’s teasing and Parker’s Parkerness they seemed entirely, disturbingly, earnest in their intentions of wiping out any more “big bads” from his past.
It was strangely touching.
But time had passed and cons had changed and he kept getting pulled down and back. The elephant in the room remained, always, the fact there was a difference between That Man, Samuel, and Damien. That Man and Samuel had victimized him. He’d been a kid and hurting and confused and they’d abused the power they had over him.
Eliot had known what Damien was. He’d walked into Damien’s employ knowingly and willingly. Damien may have messed with his head, it was the nature of men like that, but it didn’t change the fact that Eliot had donned the Black Hat entirely by choice and free will.
He’d been lost and angry and out of control but what exactly was stopping that from happening again?
~*~
He sees himself in a mirror, battered and barely standing, but standing. Always standing.
He’s always standing when the day is done because he’s been forced to his knees too many times in his life.
He won’t kneel. Not again. Not ever.
But before his eyes his reflection changes, white knight morphs to black. He sees Roper.
He turns, lashing out. He stood on the knifes edge. His control was slippery but he couldn’t lose it. The Black Knight was supposed to be dead but if it wasn’t Molly would pay the price.
But if he lost Molly would also pay the price.
Quick bursts of violence and he’s on his knees.
No. Not on his knees. He won’t be put on his knees.
And he’s back. He’s returning to the fight. He won’t stay down. He never stays down.
Only his body gives way and the floor opens up under him and he’s on the ground and he knows…
~*~
Somehow he’d known it would come to this.
Six months. A cluster fuck repeated over six months. His past coming back to…
And then they’d been in that damn warehouse.
It was a year, almost exactly a year, since L.A. and when he laid the Black Knight to rest. When he thought that maybe, finally, he could just…
Only there they were, with a kill box, and nineteen guys with guns, and Nate and the job and everything in jeopardy.
And Eliot had known. He’d known in that damn moment he killed the guy who came at them around the corner, that he couldn’t get them out of there. At least he couldn’t have a year ago. Not without.
There was no time to debate. There was no time to consider. If he hesitated he’d be dead and then Nate and the team and others and Damien Fucking Moreau would walk free.
“Are you sure you can take down Moreau?” He asked, the Italian’s answer echoing in his head and he took the gun and let himself drop. Nate’s words were muted. The concern in his eyes washed over him.
There had been no threat of the Black Knight for a year, but Eliot could still feel the violence and precision waiting to be unleashed. He didn’t know if this would blur the line or how badly. He did know there was no other way they were walking out alive.
He’d just have to hold tight and pretend it was the plan and hope he got through this and lived to give Hardison hell about inserting that line into his head.
Yeah.
Hardison, the team, Nate... That was it wasn't it? That was what kept him from going back.
Just hold tight and tell himself he couldn’t die here. The team needed him. They needed him sane.
He’d picked up the gun and let himself drop into another mindset, another time.
An eternity later he turned, seeing Chapman, actually hearing what he said, and he found he could form words and respond like Eliot and shoot to kill like the Black Knight and maybe that took him a step closer to the hellfire he felt around him.
But he’d survived. The team was safe. He’d take hell if it meant they were safe.
He disarmed the ammo from his guns and walked away.
He was not, he would again become, The Black Knight.
And the white knight still had a few moves left to play.
~*~
He doesn’t like what he sees.
The world beneath him buckles and rolls and his body is caught between white hot pain and the numbness of adrenalin.
But he won’t stay down, staying down meant death and the team needed him alive. Rising to his knees would put him on his knees and he won’t be put on his knees again. He has no choice but to stand and instead of the chaos of the Black Knight an almost tranquil clarity bleeds through his mind.
He has to get up, he has to survive, he has to win this fight, and so he would.
He stands, the throb of his body distant and removed, and closes his eyes. They lie to him.
And he turns and feels the rush of air and hears the shift of cloth and feels in his bones and muscels more than his sluggish mind when to move and dodge. The world is single actions and reactions, disconnected and singular, each moment and movement all that matters and all that can be processed.
The dead calm in the eye of the Black Knight’s storm.
He opens his eyes and knows he’s already won.
In so many ways he has already won.
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg-13
Genre: Nate/Eliot
Verse: BlackKing!WhiteKnight!Verse
Summary: He doesn't like what he sees.
Notes: Timestamp set during the Carnival Job but refferencing the events of season 3
"I don’t like what I see."
Eliot doesn’t like it either. He’s never liked mirrors. He’s spent most of his life not being able to stand the guy he saw in them.
The earth beneath him buckles and rolls, though he knows it’s really still. A concussion will due that to a guy. A lost fight with a fucking carnival ride will do that to a guy.
The mirrors reflect his image back to him, twisting, disconnected. He here’s echoes of Molly’s cries and the team’s voices in his head and in a way he knows all of this, all of it, is in his head.
He can’t focus his eyes right. The world is spinning out of control.
Instincts and training are keeping him calm, stubbornness keeping him functional, but…
From behind him something moves, someone attacks, and he’s nearly taken to the ground.
He catches himself, defends just enough to keep his feet.
He turns, trying to avoid… and there’s a guy.
He lashes out, feeling the shatter and pain of broken glass lance across his senses before it even registers that the guy hadn’t been there.
~*~
There’s broken glass in the sink, on the tile floor, in his hand.
If it wasn’t in his hand he might be able to explain it.
They didn’t even get a month, not really. Four months after the proposal he and Nate had gotten married in what was supposed to have been a small ceremony with just family and no fuss until Sophie stated that if they were going to get married the least they could let her do is plan them a proper wedding.
And she’d said it like she really cared, like she was doing this because they were family and come hell or high water or having to manipulate them she was going to make sure they had a “proper” ceremony.
And so they’d let her do that. And so they’d had a wedding in June, two months late due to jobs and life and at least one ceremony (well, decoy ceremony) being raided by a bunch of what Hardison claimed had to be ninjas.
They’d barely been back from the honeymoon before a job went south, really south, and Nate was arrested and they’d gotten him back and out in record time, in less than a month, and they’d taken down a corrupt Prison system and…
Only they’d come back to the apartment, ready to take some more time out of Boston, on to have the Italian waltz in and Moreau to crawl out from under Eliot closet.
It was the one lie… obfuscation (lie, definitely lie) that still hung between them, something Eliot shoved to the back of his mind and carefully and meticulously banished from his thoughts whenever a reminder arose, the closest to forgetting someone like him could come. It stood as damning evidence against what Nate had told him years ago, that for a while (years) he’d forgotten that, forsaken that.
That even as he lead Nate on a merry chase across Europe that ended in an Italian prison he’d been taking some well earned leave time from Damien.
He’d saved Nate life, he knows, when it was all over. Damien had been waiting for Eliot to get home, to see how badly Eliot had been hurt and hounded, before determining whether to order Nate’s death execution style or slow. Nate was as close to a friend as Eliot had for a while, a worthy adversary. He’d helped make Eliot who he was, and helped Eliot get out of tight situations.
It had been a thin line to walk. Even that briefest of conversations between them had reminded Eliot of a man he thought long dead. Of a boy he used to be.
Damien already knew they played chess by mail, was amused by the idea, but he was wary. So, very, wary.
Nate was maybe the one man on earth in those days who may have been able to gain more sway over Eliot than Damien.
But Eliot had talked Damien down from killing Nate, had walked a few steps farther down that road to hell to keep Nate safe, and ultimately walked away.
With everything, everything, that had happened, after the better part of five years forcing himself to not remember that period in his life when he walked knowingly into the employ of the devil Eliot had almost managed to convince himself he had forgotten. To convince himself it wasn’t the sound of Silent Night playing through a house where no child would wake for Christmas Morning that chased him out of sleep in the holiday season. That the half edited stories about his scars he told Nate (told himself until he believed they) were true.
And for all the hell his childhood coming back to bite his ass had caused it had helped him to forget the rest as much as he could.
Only shit had finally stopped raining from the sky. It had been business as usual. They had been happy.
But they were going after Damien Fucking Moreau and…
He’d held it together. For a week he’d held it together.
The dreams still came and went but it had been awhile since they were bad. Something about taking down Samuel had helped finally lay some of his ghosts to rest and he’d almost believed…
He’d dreamt about silent houses and the haunting song of Silent Night mocking him. He’d dreamt about a time when the line between him and the Black Knight had become blurred. The Black Knight had been created by him shoving the violence and that stone cold calm onto someone, anyone, else.
Damien had taught him to embrace it, to slip into it, to revel in it.
Red mist. He’d dreamt about black knights and the black king he’d served before Nate.
Most nightmares he woke up thrashing, or in Nate’s arms being talked down. He rarely woke from them to stillness and Nate asleep.
But he had that night. He’d slipped out of bed and into the bathroom, and splashed water on his face to dispel the dream. He’d swipped at his nose, their last con at an elementary school had left the entire team with head colds, only to find blood smeared across the back of his hand.
And about thirty seconds later he’d punched the hell out of the mirror and he couldn’t even remember why.
And there wasn’t any blood on his hand… well other than what was appearing due to the broken glass embedded in it.
The door opened and Eliot turned, looking to Nate, watching detached as Nate moved in to examine the damage.
As they stood there, injured hand in hand, Eliot wished desperately that they’d had more than this short time but he shouldn’t, couldn’t, wait any longer.
“Nate.” He said. Nate looked up and Eliot almost felt like those eyes knew what he was about to say. “There somethin’ I have to tell you.”
~*~
He’s turning, always turning. Forces buffet him. The world’s unsteady. He can’t trust his eyes.
It’s like life, his whole damn life, looking back at him through mirrors.
He sees his reflection in a mirror and shifts slightly, watching it become Roper.
He doesn’t like what he sees.
He never does.
~*~
Nate had taken the news better that Eliot had feared, but still pretty badly.
It wasn’t the first fight they’d had since getting married. Sometimes it felt like they argued more on and off the job as they both realized that for better or worse they’d be stuck together for life and the things that pissed them off today would still be there in forty years.
But it might have just been the worst they’d had, maybe discounting Nate’s brilliant “I’ll go to jail” plan.
But all in all it could have been worse. Eliot coming out with it voluntarily probably helped a lot.
The team hadn’t taken it much better.
Though after a week or two to get over it Eliot came into HQ to find Hardison and Parker working out a timeline of his life on one of the boards, their only explanation being that so far they’d encountered three jobs involving his history and they wanted to try figure out if there were any other potential future marks they could take care of before it became an issue.
Despite Hardison’s teasing and Parker’s Parkerness they seemed entirely, disturbingly, earnest in their intentions of wiping out any more “big bads” from his past.
It was strangely touching.
But time had passed and cons had changed and he kept getting pulled down and back. The elephant in the room remained, always, the fact there was a difference between That Man, Samuel, and Damien. That Man and Samuel had victimized him. He’d been a kid and hurting and confused and they’d abused the power they had over him.
Eliot had known what Damien was. He’d walked into Damien’s employ knowingly and willingly. Damien may have messed with his head, it was the nature of men like that, but it didn’t change the fact that Eliot had donned the Black Hat entirely by choice and free will.
He’d been lost and angry and out of control but what exactly was stopping that from happening again?
~*~
He sees himself in a mirror, battered and barely standing, but standing. Always standing.
He’s always standing when the day is done because he’s been forced to his knees too many times in his life.
He won’t kneel. Not again. Not ever.
But before his eyes his reflection changes, white knight morphs to black. He sees Roper.
He turns, lashing out. He stood on the knifes edge. His control was slippery but he couldn’t lose it. The Black Knight was supposed to be dead but if it wasn’t Molly would pay the price.
But if he lost Molly would also pay the price.
Quick bursts of violence and he’s on his knees.
No. Not on his knees. He won’t be put on his knees.
And he’s back. He’s returning to the fight. He won’t stay down. He never stays down.
Only his body gives way and the floor opens up under him and he’s on the ground and he knows…
~*~
Somehow he’d known it would come to this.
Six months. A cluster fuck repeated over six months. His past coming back to…
And then they’d been in that damn warehouse.
It was a year, almost exactly a year, since L.A. and when he laid the Black Knight to rest. When he thought that maybe, finally, he could just…
Only there they were, with a kill box, and nineteen guys with guns, and Nate and the job and everything in jeopardy.
And Eliot had known. He’d known in that damn moment he killed the guy who came at them around the corner, that he couldn’t get them out of there. At least he couldn’t have a year ago. Not without.
There was no time to debate. There was no time to consider. If he hesitated he’d be dead and then Nate and the team and others and Damien Fucking Moreau would walk free.
“Are you sure you can take down Moreau?” He asked, the Italian’s answer echoing in his head and he took the gun and let himself drop. Nate’s words were muted. The concern in his eyes washed over him.
There had been no threat of the Black Knight for a year, but Eliot could still feel the violence and precision waiting to be unleashed. He didn’t know if this would blur the line or how badly. He did know there was no other way they were walking out alive.
He’d just have to hold tight and pretend it was the plan and hope he got through this and lived to give Hardison hell about inserting that line into his head.
Yeah.
Hardison, the team, Nate... That was it wasn't it? That was what kept him from going back.
Just hold tight and tell himself he couldn’t die here. The team needed him. They needed him sane.
He’d picked up the gun and let himself drop into another mindset, another time.
An eternity later he turned, seeing Chapman, actually hearing what he said, and he found he could form words and respond like Eliot and shoot to kill like the Black Knight and maybe that took him a step closer to the hellfire he felt around him.
But he’d survived. The team was safe. He’d take hell if it meant they were safe.
He disarmed the ammo from his guns and walked away.
He was not, he would again become, The Black Knight.
And the white knight still had a few moves left to play.
~*~
He doesn’t like what he sees.
The world beneath him buckles and rolls and his body is caught between white hot pain and the numbness of adrenalin.
But he won’t stay down, staying down meant death and the team needed him alive. Rising to his knees would put him on his knees and he won’t be put on his knees again. He has no choice but to stand and instead of the chaos of the Black Knight an almost tranquil clarity bleeds through his mind.
He has to get up, he has to survive, he has to win this fight, and so he would.
He stands, the throb of his body distant and removed, and closes his eyes. They lie to him.
And he turns and feels the rush of air and hears the shift of cloth and feels in his bones and muscels more than his sluggish mind when to move and dodge. The world is single actions and reactions, disconnected and singular, each moment and movement all that matters and all that can be processed.
The dead calm in the eye of the Black Knight’s storm.
He opens his eyes and knows he’s already won.
In so many ways he has already won.