The Road To Boston
Title: The Road to Pittsburgh West Boston
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Hardison/Parker, Eliot
Verse: AU
Summary: During the time of Jim Crow laws and the Great Migration a young boy flees for his life to try to find a new start in Pittsburgh. He never actually gets there.
Notes: Written for the "What Time is it Mr. Ford?" Challenge over on LeverageLand. I got the prompt Migration/Immigration. My brain immediately jumped to the Great Migration north. Now I did a little bit of research for this but most of my knowledge of the period comes from classes on African American Lit. While I did my best to gracefully juggle potential hand grenades if there are any mistakes/offensive bits please just let me know and I'll happily fix them.
Also about a page in I realized there was no way I could properly imitate the speech patterns of the time period without offending someone by accident/sounding like an idiot so I didn't try. Sorry. I willingly admit to failing at accents.
Also I slipped in a Casablanca reference in here. I'm kind of proud of myself. Also blatant Firefly refference is blatant.
WarningsRacism, mentions of lynchings, mention of rape (false) allegations against main characters, abuse of my African American Lit class' notes.
The thing is he always knew it would come to this.
He was fifteen when he first saw her. Her Daddy had hired him to do some work around the house and she’d come back with her sisters looking bored and uncomfortable but then she’d looked at him and actually seen him and he’d known there was no way this could end but badly.
It was the south. He was the poor black foster son of similarly poor and black share croppers and she may have been the product of her Daddy’s indiscretions but he’d made her one of his daughters and more than that she was white.
Alec didn’t need to know what Anti-Miscegenation laws were (though he did, Nana always said his smarts would get him killed some day) he knew what lynching was.
Still somehow he’d gone from there to two years later, his littlest sister finding him in the field, crying about how someone had seen Her and him together and that was it.
He knew how this story ended. By dark whispers would turn into rumors. If he was lucky she would hold out under the pressure and not cry rape until tomorrow. It might win him another night.
He almost wished she wouldn’t hold out, it would only make this harder for her. No one he cared about would believe her and no one who mattered would care what she said. The only chance he had really had, from that first moment when she snuck in to watch him paint the ceiling of her Daddy’s study and caught him looking over the law books and talked to him…
Well the only choice he really had now was to hope that he could get clear from here before a mob showed up at his Nana’s door and pray that mob didn’t take their frustration at finding him gone out on her.
He ran for his life back home, his Nana meeting him at the door with a packed bag and tears in her eyes that he knew wouldn’t fall until later. She’d lost her husband and a son like this. The Hardisons had a willful streak, she’d always say.
“Head for Pittsburgh.” She told him. “Last letter I got from John was from there. He said a lot of us were passin’ through. There’ll be places for a boy like you to find your feet. You might even find your brother.”
Alec nodded. He wanted to say something but numb cold terror had settled around his heart and was trying to strangle him. Nana just hugged him tight and told him to go with god and use that brain of his and then…
Next thing he really remembered was crossing the county lines by night. He’d heard the stories and songs from back before the war about the underground railroad. Nana said her mother had seen Mosses once. It had taken Alec a couple years to be old enough to realize Nana wasn’t old enough that her mama had known the bible’s Mosses but that was the nickname for a conductor.
Still, remembering Nana’s voice singing helped ease the blind terror enough to remember to wade up river for as long as he could stand the cold to lose any pursuers.
The numbness stuck with him through another state. The rage that came after it powered him through two more. The grief arrived just as he was out of money and food, Pittsburgh still a long ways away.
But he was strong and he was smart and there were always jobs for someone who was both but didn’t complain. He found day work loading cargo on a train and used his first pay to send a letter home and then buy something to eat. He hoped it got there, and that Nana would be able to get it.
While he worked he listened to the others talk. The way they talked it seemed like all the south was coming north looking for better work and better wages and a chance to not spend their lives waiting for the day they end up rotting fruit hanging from a tree.
But some said they were all heading to the wrong place. One of the men Alec worked with would tell the most wondrous stories about his time out west. There you didn’t just work someone else’s land, a person could get their own. They could set up their own little homestead and live like a real person, not bothered by anyone. He’d talk about the sky, the open space, the freedom.
Freedom.
Alec waited there long enough to get a letter back from Nana before writing one more time. He was going west. He would work his way as he went and once he was there he’d find land to make his own and send them money to come and live with him. Then they could all live like real people.
He turned eighteen somewhere along the railroad heading west.
It was after work a couple months later, in yet another town in the long line of towns he’d passed through looking for work for a little while before moving on, that his mad dash “west” changed.
Well. By then he’d worn himself down to a frantic stumble.
It was later than he liked to be out, and he was farther from his night time lodging than he liked, when he heard angry shouts with words like the ones he’d been fleeing from.
Except they weren’t the words he was used to being flung at him.
He would never be sure why he turned back or went to look.
Hell, maybe his Nana’s childhood lectures on helping those in need had sunk in after all.
He found four rather drunk men in a back alley surrounding, from what Alec could guess, the first Indian Alec had ever seen. He had the hair and beads and sure he dressed like a real person and wasn’t actually red but he counted. Right?
He was wondering if he should step in. He was going to leave in the morning anyway. He had gotten pretty damn strong and this guy was short and outnumbered.
Of course that was when one of the men stepped close enough to yank on one of the beaded braids in the Indian’s hair and before Alec could really understand what had happened the offending arm had been broken and the furry of hell was being unleashed on the other three.
He was too stunned at the violence to run and then suddenly the Indian was in his face. “You got a problem?”
Blue eyes? When did Indians get blue eyes?
Hardison shook his head. “No.” The In… heck, he was a man, the man turned to walk away. “You’re leaving town tonight right?” The man stopped. “When they wake up they’ll get their friends and be out for your head. Best you can do is clear out of here.”
“What’s it to you?” The man asked.
“I’m on my way out in the morning. Road’s a dangerous place.” The man looked back at him. For the first time Alec read the humiliation at what had just happened and rage at the world in his eyes and a question. “And if you weren’t around they woulda just found me.” The man let out a long slow breath.
He’d said the right thing.
“The roads pretty damn lonely too.” The man stated. “I’m… Eliot.” He seemed to not be familiar with his own name.
“Alec.” Alec responded.
They left town that night. For the first time since he’d left Nana the pain of loneliness didn’t dig so damn deep.
They didn’t talk much at first but as days passed into weeks and months they’d open up bit by bit. A story here, an old joke there. Alec discovered Eliot had a great singing voice and liked to use it. Alec taught him every song he knew and when they were on the road or had managed to snag work together and far enough away from other workers they’d sing to pass the time. It felt like back home. Eventually Eliot got the story out of him of what an overgrown boy like him was doing out here.
That ended up getting him the reason Eliot had left the reservation. His father was a white man. When his mother had fallen sick some years ago she’d given him a letter from his father. He was living in Boston now and, if ever Eliot chose to leave home…
Eliot had been carrying that letter for the better part of a decade. He’d left to go to Boston but he’d never really been able to make himself get there.
He’d gotten lost out on the road. Like Alec was getting.
The next night Alec made Eliot an offer. They’d start working their way towards Boston. A little bit more money and Alec thought he might be able to buy some land and get himself started. They’d work their way to Boston and find Eliot’s father. After that Alec would buy a train ticket west and buy the land he’d worked so hard for and if Eliot wanted he could come with Alec when he did.
Blood and skin aside they were brothers now.
It took them another few months to make it to Boston, celebrating Alec’s nineteenth birthday on the way. The closer they got the more Alec babbled at Eliot about the history of the city and Eliot started calling him a “Smart Alec” out of annoyance. Bickering over the nickname, and Alec’s discovery of Eliot’s father’s last name, eventually resulted in Eliot taking to calling Alec Hardison.
Hardison liked it.
Of course the last challenge came where they both most and least expected it. Out on the road they’d gotten so good at staying on the edges and fringes and where they could be they’d almost…
The Whites Only sign hanging on the door of the bar felt like more of a slap in the face than it should have.
“Go on in.” Hardison said to Eliot, trying to keep his voice even. This far east Eliot could pass for white. “Find your father. I’ll wait out here.”
The look Eliot gave him, like he had to be crazy if he thought he was going to leave Hardison waiting out here like a dog or something, eased the sting a little.
“There’s a bar over there, no sign in the window.” Eliot gestured down the street. “Lets see if they’ll serve ya. If they will then how bout you wait there?”
It was a little hole in the wall place in the basement of the building. They got looks, coming in together, but mostly the folks just looked then looked back to their drinks.
The bartender didn’t bat an eye once their money was on the bar.
Hardison couldn’t really remember when they’d last been able to drink together like this.
If he thought about it what waited for him out there probably wasn’t the only thing that made Eliot stay with him until they’d both downed their first beers.
It took a little bit of prodding and Eliot suddenly getting paranoid that Hardison would be mobbed the moment Eliot left but eventually Eliot got out the door.
Half a beer and more brooding about losing Eliot than Hardison liked to admit to later a voice he never thought he’d hear again shattered… everything.
“Alec?” Joy and fear. “Is that… that’s really you?”
He turned around and saw her there, a ghost and a miracle in a dark blue dress. She crossed the bar to him and he saw her stop herself from flinging her arms around him. “I…” He went to say her name, wishing he could breech the gap between them but not daring to.
“Parker. They call me Parker now.” She told him.
“How?”
She looked to the side. “I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to leave and then I met you. After you left there was nothing to stay for. I remembered you said you had family in Pittsburgh so I went there but there was no… I met someone there.” His heart fell. “He took me in. Taught me that there was more to this world than…” She sighed. “He was like a father. But… I had to leave, there wasn’t enough work for the both of us there. So I came to Boston. I live upstairs.”
Of all the bars in all the cities of all the world…
She sat at the bar next to him, the others of the bar seeming to disregard them the moment she appeared and Hardison knew something weird was going on but…
She told him about her trip to Pittsburgh and he told her about his flight from home.
He’d just mentioned Eliot when the man reappeared at the bar.“Hardison. Who’s th-“
He’d barely started when another voice came from the back door, strange accent and commanding blue eyes drawing Hardison’s attention. “Parker?”
A man came from behind the woman and the entire bar seemed to hold it’s breath for a moment before.
“Sophie!” Parker was on her feet and across the bar to the woman without her feet ever seeming to touch the floor. “I found him! It’s Alec! He’s alive!”
“Well then.” The man stated. “I guess we all have some catching up to do.”
Several hours later Hardison found himself sitting in the man’s -Nathan Ford’s- apartment above the bar. What had started as an awkward first meeting had soon tightened into something more. He and Eliot had been invited upstairs and Parker had all but blurted out that Nate was pulling together a crime crew and had recruited her as his thief.
That had done a bit to actually diffuse the situation as Nate had stopped skirting around the edges. There were people he could hire but they didn’t feel…
Either they didn’t want to work with him because he was Irish or because Sophie wasn’t or they were involved with the mob. Or maybe they would work with him but they didn’t respect Sophie, which Hardison could figure out right quick that she demanded all sorts of respect and anyone who didn’t give it to her was an idiot. That problem had only doubled when he’d taken on Parker.
He needed someone who could fight, which made Hardison pretty damn sure Eliot would have a job the moment Nate saw him in action. He looked at Hardison a moment before adding. “And we could use someone who can move in circles we can’t.”
“Someone black.” Hardison stated.
“Frankly? Yes.” Nate said. “Between the three of us we can con, grift, or steal our way through the white population of Boston but the moment we even talk to someone like you everyone’s suspicious.”
“You’d be a member of our team.” Sophie said. “An equal to us.” The disbelief must have shown on his face because her voice softened and expression saddened a little bit but she glanced between him and Eliot including them both. “As far as we’re concerned skill rates above skin color. Or gender. We can’t change what happens out there but in here, in the bar… we’re criminals.” She shrugged. Hardison had already guessed as much but she seemed so nonchalant about it. “It’s not just laws against theft we break. You work hard, you do your job, and as far as we care you’re a part of the team. Same cut as the rest.” Her gaze slid over to Parker and back to him. “And as long as no one gets hurt we don’t care what laws you break.”
Hardison glanced toward Eliot. It seemed too good to be true but at the same time…
He wanted to go west. He wanted to go live like a real person and give Nana and the others that life. He’d worked so hard. Yes, it was so damn tempting to say yes. To stay here with Parker and these people who looked at him and actually seemed to *see* him but…
“Stealings a sin.” Hardison said, hearing Nana’s voice in his ears. “And I won’t help you rob people who don’t have anything to start with.”
“I’m not sure you understand what exactly we do.” Nate said, taking a seat across from Hardison. “Out there, out in the world, there are people and ideas with power, money, hate… and they use that to make people like you.” He looked from Hardison to Eliot and back to Hardsion and towards Parker. “people who want something more, dream of something more, go away. Right now this world is suffering under an enormous weight.”
His heart beat into his throat. Parker’s hand wrapped around his own.
“We provide… Leverage.”
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Hardison/Parker, Eliot
Verse: AU
Summary: During the time of Jim Crow laws and the Great Migration a young boy flees for his life to try to find a new start in Pittsburgh. He never actually gets there.
Notes: Written for the "What Time is it Mr. Ford?" Challenge over on LeverageLand. I got the prompt Migration/Immigration. My brain immediately jumped to the Great Migration north. Now I did a little bit of research for this but most of my knowledge of the period comes from classes on African American Lit. While I did my best to gracefully juggle potential hand grenades if there are any mistakes/offensive bits please just let me know and I'll happily fix them.
Also about a page in I realized there was no way I could properly imitate the speech patterns of the time period without offending someone by accident/sounding like an idiot so I didn't try. Sorry. I willingly admit to failing at accents.
Also I slipped in a Casablanca reference in here. I'm kind of proud of myself. Also blatant Firefly refference is blatant.
WarningsRacism, mentions of lynchings, mention of rape (false) allegations against main characters, abuse of my African American Lit class' notes.
The thing is he always knew it would come to this.
He was fifteen when he first saw her. Her Daddy had hired him to do some work around the house and she’d come back with her sisters looking bored and uncomfortable but then she’d looked at him and actually seen him and he’d known there was no way this could end but badly.
It was the south. He was the poor black foster son of similarly poor and black share croppers and she may have been the product of her Daddy’s indiscretions but he’d made her one of his daughters and more than that she was white.
Alec didn’t need to know what Anti-Miscegenation laws were (though he did, Nana always said his smarts would get him killed some day) he knew what lynching was.
Still somehow he’d gone from there to two years later, his littlest sister finding him in the field, crying about how someone had seen Her and him together and that was it.
He knew how this story ended. By dark whispers would turn into rumors. If he was lucky she would hold out under the pressure and not cry rape until tomorrow. It might win him another night.
He almost wished she wouldn’t hold out, it would only make this harder for her. No one he cared about would believe her and no one who mattered would care what she said. The only chance he had really had, from that first moment when she snuck in to watch him paint the ceiling of her Daddy’s study and caught him looking over the law books and talked to him…
Well the only choice he really had now was to hope that he could get clear from here before a mob showed up at his Nana’s door and pray that mob didn’t take their frustration at finding him gone out on her.
He ran for his life back home, his Nana meeting him at the door with a packed bag and tears in her eyes that he knew wouldn’t fall until later. She’d lost her husband and a son like this. The Hardisons had a willful streak, she’d always say.
“Head for Pittsburgh.” She told him. “Last letter I got from John was from there. He said a lot of us were passin’ through. There’ll be places for a boy like you to find your feet. You might even find your brother.”
Alec nodded. He wanted to say something but numb cold terror had settled around his heart and was trying to strangle him. Nana just hugged him tight and told him to go with god and use that brain of his and then…
Next thing he really remembered was crossing the county lines by night. He’d heard the stories and songs from back before the war about the underground railroad. Nana said her mother had seen Mosses once. It had taken Alec a couple years to be old enough to realize Nana wasn’t old enough that her mama had known the bible’s Mosses but that was the nickname for a conductor.
Still, remembering Nana’s voice singing helped ease the blind terror enough to remember to wade up river for as long as he could stand the cold to lose any pursuers.
The numbness stuck with him through another state. The rage that came after it powered him through two more. The grief arrived just as he was out of money and food, Pittsburgh still a long ways away.
But he was strong and he was smart and there were always jobs for someone who was both but didn’t complain. He found day work loading cargo on a train and used his first pay to send a letter home and then buy something to eat. He hoped it got there, and that Nana would be able to get it.
While he worked he listened to the others talk. The way they talked it seemed like all the south was coming north looking for better work and better wages and a chance to not spend their lives waiting for the day they end up rotting fruit hanging from a tree.
But some said they were all heading to the wrong place. One of the men Alec worked with would tell the most wondrous stories about his time out west. There you didn’t just work someone else’s land, a person could get their own. They could set up their own little homestead and live like a real person, not bothered by anyone. He’d talk about the sky, the open space, the freedom.
Freedom.
Alec waited there long enough to get a letter back from Nana before writing one more time. He was going west. He would work his way as he went and once he was there he’d find land to make his own and send them money to come and live with him. Then they could all live like real people.
He turned eighteen somewhere along the railroad heading west.
It was after work a couple months later, in yet another town in the long line of towns he’d passed through looking for work for a little while before moving on, that his mad dash “west” changed.
Well. By then he’d worn himself down to a frantic stumble.
It was later than he liked to be out, and he was farther from his night time lodging than he liked, when he heard angry shouts with words like the ones he’d been fleeing from.
Except they weren’t the words he was used to being flung at him.
He would never be sure why he turned back or went to look.
Hell, maybe his Nana’s childhood lectures on helping those in need had sunk in after all.
He found four rather drunk men in a back alley surrounding, from what Alec could guess, the first Indian Alec had ever seen. He had the hair and beads and sure he dressed like a real person and wasn’t actually red but he counted. Right?
He was wondering if he should step in. He was going to leave in the morning anyway. He had gotten pretty damn strong and this guy was short and outnumbered.
Of course that was when one of the men stepped close enough to yank on one of the beaded braids in the Indian’s hair and before Alec could really understand what had happened the offending arm had been broken and the furry of hell was being unleashed on the other three.
He was too stunned at the violence to run and then suddenly the Indian was in his face. “You got a problem?”
Blue eyes? When did Indians get blue eyes?
Hardison shook his head. “No.” The In… heck, he was a man, the man turned to walk away. “You’re leaving town tonight right?” The man stopped. “When they wake up they’ll get their friends and be out for your head. Best you can do is clear out of here.”
“What’s it to you?” The man asked.
“I’m on my way out in the morning. Road’s a dangerous place.” The man looked back at him. For the first time Alec read the humiliation at what had just happened and rage at the world in his eyes and a question. “And if you weren’t around they woulda just found me.” The man let out a long slow breath.
He’d said the right thing.
“The roads pretty damn lonely too.” The man stated. “I’m… Eliot.” He seemed to not be familiar with his own name.
“Alec.” Alec responded.
They left town that night. For the first time since he’d left Nana the pain of loneliness didn’t dig so damn deep.
They didn’t talk much at first but as days passed into weeks and months they’d open up bit by bit. A story here, an old joke there. Alec discovered Eliot had a great singing voice and liked to use it. Alec taught him every song he knew and when they were on the road or had managed to snag work together and far enough away from other workers they’d sing to pass the time. It felt like back home. Eventually Eliot got the story out of him of what an overgrown boy like him was doing out here.
That ended up getting him the reason Eliot had left the reservation. His father was a white man. When his mother had fallen sick some years ago she’d given him a letter from his father. He was living in Boston now and, if ever Eliot chose to leave home…
Eliot had been carrying that letter for the better part of a decade. He’d left to go to Boston but he’d never really been able to make himself get there.
He’d gotten lost out on the road. Like Alec was getting.
The next night Alec made Eliot an offer. They’d start working their way towards Boston. A little bit more money and Alec thought he might be able to buy some land and get himself started. They’d work their way to Boston and find Eliot’s father. After that Alec would buy a train ticket west and buy the land he’d worked so hard for and if Eliot wanted he could come with Alec when he did.
Blood and skin aside they were brothers now.
It took them another few months to make it to Boston, celebrating Alec’s nineteenth birthday on the way. The closer they got the more Alec babbled at Eliot about the history of the city and Eliot started calling him a “Smart Alec” out of annoyance. Bickering over the nickname, and Alec’s discovery of Eliot’s father’s last name, eventually resulted in Eliot taking to calling Alec Hardison.
Hardison liked it.
Of course the last challenge came where they both most and least expected it. Out on the road they’d gotten so good at staying on the edges and fringes and where they could be they’d almost…
The Whites Only sign hanging on the door of the bar felt like more of a slap in the face than it should have.
“Go on in.” Hardison said to Eliot, trying to keep his voice even. This far east Eliot could pass for white. “Find your father. I’ll wait out here.”
The look Eliot gave him, like he had to be crazy if he thought he was going to leave Hardison waiting out here like a dog or something, eased the sting a little.
“There’s a bar over there, no sign in the window.” Eliot gestured down the street. “Lets see if they’ll serve ya. If they will then how bout you wait there?”
It was a little hole in the wall place in the basement of the building. They got looks, coming in together, but mostly the folks just looked then looked back to their drinks.
The bartender didn’t bat an eye once their money was on the bar.
Hardison couldn’t really remember when they’d last been able to drink together like this.
If he thought about it what waited for him out there probably wasn’t the only thing that made Eliot stay with him until they’d both downed their first beers.
It took a little bit of prodding and Eliot suddenly getting paranoid that Hardison would be mobbed the moment Eliot left but eventually Eliot got out the door.
Half a beer and more brooding about losing Eliot than Hardison liked to admit to later a voice he never thought he’d hear again shattered… everything.
“Alec?” Joy and fear. “Is that… that’s really you?”
He turned around and saw her there, a ghost and a miracle in a dark blue dress. She crossed the bar to him and he saw her stop herself from flinging her arms around him. “I…” He went to say her name, wishing he could breech the gap between them but not daring to.
“Parker. They call me Parker now.” She told him.
“How?”
She looked to the side. “I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to leave and then I met you. After you left there was nothing to stay for. I remembered you said you had family in Pittsburgh so I went there but there was no… I met someone there.” His heart fell. “He took me in. Taught me that there was more to this world than…” She sighed. “He was like a father. But… I had to leave, there wasn’t enough work for the both of us there. So I came to Boston. I live upstairs.”
Of all the bars in all the cities of all the world…
She sat at the bar next to him, the others of the bar seeming to disregard them the moment she appeared and Hardison knew something weird was going on but…
She told him about her trip to Pittsburgh and he told her about his flight from home.
He’d just mentioned Eliot when the man reappeared at the bar.“Hardison. Who’s th-“
He’d barely started when another voice came from the back door, strange accent and commanding blue eyes drawing Hardison’s attention. “Parker?”
A man came from behind the woman and the entire bar seemed to hold it’s breath for a moment before.
“Sophie!” Parker was on her feet and across the bar to the woman without her feet ever seeming to touch the floor. “I found him! It’s Alec! He’s alive!”
“Well then.” The man stated. “I guess we all have some catching up to do.”
Several hours later Hardison found himself sitting in the man’s -Nathan Ford’s- apartment above the bar. What had started as an awkward first meeting had soon tightened into something more. He and Eliot had been invited upstairs and Parker had all but blurted out that Nate was pulling together a crime crew and had recruited her as his thief.
That had done a bit to actually diffuse the situation as Nate had stopped skirting around the edges. There were people he could hire but they didn’t feel…
Either they didn’t want to work with him because he was Irish or because Sophie wasn’t or they were involved with the mob. Or maybe they would work with him but they didn’t respect Sophie, which Hardison could figure out right quick that she demanded all sorts of respect and anyone who didn’t give it to her was an idiot. That problem had only doubled when he’d taken on Parker.
He needed someone who could fight, which made Hardison pretty damn sure Eliot would have a job the moment Nate saw him in action. He looked at Hardison a moment before adding. “And we could use someone who can move in circles we can’t.”
“Someone black.” Hardison stated.
“Frankly? Yes.” Nate said. “Between the three of us we can con, grift, or steal our way through the white population of Boston but the moment we even talk to someone like you everyone’s suspicious.”
“You’d be a member of our team.” Sophie said. “An equal to us.” The disbelief must have shown on his face because her voice softened and expression saddened a little bit but she glanced between him and Eliot including them both. “As far as we’re concerned skill rates above skin color. Or gender. We can’t change what happens out there but in here, in the bar… we’re criminals.” She shrugged. Hardison had already guessed as much but she seemed so nonchalant about it. “It’s not just laws against theft we break. You work hard, you do your job, and as far as we care you’re a part of the team. Same cut as the rest.” Her gaze slid over to Parker and back to him. “And as long as no one gets hurt we don’t care what laws you break.”
Hardison glanced toward Eliot. It seemed too good to be true but at the same time…
He wanted to go west. He wanted to go live like a real person and give Nana and the others that life. He’d worked so hard. Yes, it was so damn tempting to say yes. To stay here with Parker and these people who looked at him and actually seemed to *see* him but…
“Stealings a sin.” Hardison said, hearing Nana’s voice in his ears. “And I won’t help you rob people who don’t have anything to start with.”
“I’m not sure you understand what exactly we do.” Nate said, taking a seat across from Hardison. “Out there, out in the world, there are people and ideas with power, money, hate… and they use that to make people like you.” He looked from Hardison to Eliot and back to Hardsion and towards Parker. “people who want something more, dream of something more, go away. Right now this world is suffering under an enormous weight.”
His heart beat into his throat. Parker’s hand wrapped around his own.
“We provide… Leverage.”