The Occam's razor job - Chapter 34 - 4
Title: The Occam's razor Job
Characters: Nate Ford, Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, Parker, Sophie Deveraux, Patrick Bonnano
Fandom: Leverage
Spoilers: The Lonely Hearts Club Job, The Boy's night out Job
warnings: Dead people, language, violence, medical bullsh*t, extreme violence in later chapters, and extreme angst
Disclaimer: I do not own blah blah blah
Special, special, special, special thanks to trappercreekd for Betaing :D
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***
.
“When they are planning to stop?” Betsy asked after the second hour passed, and Hardison showed no sign of slowing down. He was in the middle of a monologue about the hours and hours of his research on the Chileans, and he repeated every step of it.
“Irresistible forces don’t get tired,” Sophie smiled. She noticed that Hardison haven’t left the hospital yet, and when he was near Eliot’s leaving, he would turn around and find something that was left unexplained in previous days. She noticed it twice, then started to pay attention, and soon figured out that Hardison was pretty correctly reading Eliot’s reactions. He was getting silent every time they were near that border, and his replies were shorter. She knew that night, and his doings, wouldn’t be mentioned in this conversation.
After one hour, Parker got tired so Hardison let her have his place, pulling a chair near the bed, next to pillows. She curled herself into a ball, and she was pressing the keys on the laptop while he was continuing his explaining.
She went to take them tea fifteen minutes ago, to check how Eliot was doing under the siege, but he barely had strength to raise his head to look at her. He was completely dumb already, and he stopped to yank Hardison’s chains with neutrally formulated remarks about the details of their doings that they so carefully hid from him. After the first one, about the hazmat suits, a little smile appeared on Nate’s face, and it hadn’t left since then.
“That kid is cleverer than I thought,” Betsy continued. “He is sorting things out, and at the same time killing him, slowly. I give Eliot ten more minutes before he passes out. I must say this isn’t the way I would choose to put someone to sleep.”
“Let him be, Betsy, Nate said quietly. “If he wasn’t doing it, we would just find an empty bed in few days.”
“You’re sure it would be a bad thing for Eliot?” her question was light, but Sophie had learned that Betsy never spoke lightly.
“For three days, you have been analyzing if we are good enough to take care of him.” Nate turned to her, he too knew she was serious, and testing again. “What’s the verdict?”
“When tonight passes, I’ll decide, according to that, if I should go home tomorrow or stay longer.” She avoided the answer with a smile. “He won’t need 24/7 care anymore, and one visit a day would be enough.”
“I can answer your question,” Sophie smiled. “We all have found something important in this… team. For all of us, this is an anchor that keeps us on track. We all need it. He needs it now more than anything, that can help him get through this. If he leaves, he will be dead in two weeks. Our seas are different. Some of them are stormier than others, without the anchor they can’t be survived.”
“I see,” Betsy sighed. “But I also see you have unreal expectations - he isn’t going anywhere for a long time.”
“Define long,” Nate said.
“Weeks. He is spent, Nate, and he will soon figure it out. He simply won’t be able to do anything. No, let me rephrase that… he will collect all his strength and do everything he wants - once. He’ll try to stand, and succeed, just to find out that he has to recover from that for two days. He’ll sit in the chair for fifteen minutes, and after that sleep ten hours to recover from it. His condition has nothing to do with his will, and you’ll have huge problems when it hits him.”
“I see Star Trek marathons in near future,” Nate rubbed his forehead.
“I suggest a good rehabilitation center. It will speed up his recovery.”
Nate darted a dark look at her. “Out of question,” he said shortly.
She smiled, and Sophie knew that Nate gave her the answer to her doubts without noticing it. That woman was a better grifter than any professional.
.
.
***
.
Eliot remembered, vaguely, that Hardison continued with the briefing long after Parker fell asleep. He wasn’t trying to stop him. His babbling was giving a useful and sometimes very disturbing insight in their doings, though he had to put a mask on his face several times. His blood ran cold when the hacker casually explained their dance through the dozens of Chileans attacking the hospital. When Hardison mentioned his going into the street with a gun, while Sophie was retreating through the Chileans, he was grateful he that wasn’t connected to any beeping shit anymore.
Yep, he definitely wanted to kill them all, one by one, but not kill them, just… sort of grab their heads and slam them into the wall, while yelling and cursing. He didn’t send them away for nothing, for god’s sake!
Betsy came shortly after Hardison tried to explain what exactly his gnomes did with his Arabic and Hebrew letters and numbers, and how important it was to have a loyal and loving community all over the world, and she suggested a ten minute break.
Finally. He needed it desperately - Hardison was in fact entertaining him, but he had to concentrate on much darker things to pull it through, and that was exhausting him. Ten minutes of silence would help him to get it together and continue.
It was the last thing he remembered.
Waking up was a slow process, and that surprised him - he was usually completely awake in a second. The light was coming from the wrong side, and female voices were speaking Spanish. The ‘S’ sounds were regular and there wasn’t any soft pronunciation, it wasn’t Chilean Spanish.
He kept his eyes closed and just listened. Hardison’s typing was relaxed, he wasn’t doing anything important. Two different sounds of paper located Nate and Sophie at the table, with the newspaper and a heavier magazine, and soft but quick clicking of metal told him that Parker was practicing lock picking somewhere near him.
Nope, something was wrong with that sound. Either she was doing it blindfolded and with one hand in three gloves, or… he opened his eyes and looked at the chair two meters from the bed. Betsy was sitting with a few locks in her lap, watching a Spanish soap opera on the screens and opening the locks without looking at them. Damn. And he didn’t even feel delirious again.
He closed his eyes again, trying to remember what happened. This was obviously morning, and he had lost the entire night, and a good part of yesterday. Where the hell was Parker? She was sleeping just a few inches away from him, and if those fools let her stay- light steps above his head gave him the answer and he slowly exhaled.
He remembered a few blurred images from the evening; the dimmed light from the kitchen and Hardison’s quiet humming. The bed had been lit by the blue light from the laptop - and Parker had been cuddled under his arm. Fuck. That must have been the effect of Hardison’s speech about the attack on the hospital - he remembered his own distorted thoughts about keeping them close.
Whatever. That was a mistake. He allowed himself to trust himself again, and that was reckless. The memory of his thinking about killing Nate just for fun was still fucking clear in his head, and he could recall that feeling in full strength without any effort.
“Good morning, Eliot. Good morning, George,” Betsy said.
So, would they all continue to wave George before his face? He refused to look at the plant. Betsy snapped her fingers and Hardison trotted in with a tray.
“Breakfast. You may watch Isabella, the Rose of Guadalajara while you eat.”
“I won’t…” eat, he almost said, but her eyes were calm, and he sensed a creepy smile emerging. “…watch Isabella,” he finished quietly.
“I can’t understand why anybody watches that stuff,” Hardison glanced at the screen where two women were screaming at each other, almost hitting him in the head with the tray. “Oops, sorry,” he lowered it and put it on the table. Eliot glanced at him, wondering why he smiled, and then realized he didn’t flinch or freeze at the threat. He suppressed his annoyance and looked at Betsy again.
“Me neither. I don’t watch these kinds of shows, it’s a revelation to me.” Betsy clicked the last lock and threw it on the floor with the others. “I watch Sons of Anarchy.”
Hardison raised his both hands in the air, and ran back to his computer.
“I’m going home,” she said when he closed his eyes again, thinking about how to avoid eating, and that stirred him. He looked at her and suddenly realized he was going to miss her. Jesus Christ, that must have been some sort of twisted Stockholm syndrome - he barely suppressed the laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing… just, thinking about how repaying everything you have done will be a full time job.”
“In fact, I know what you can do for me.” Her smile was innocent, he noticed with growing worry. “Besides not allowing yourself to come before me in a horizontal position ever again.”
“Listening.”
“I want you to make a Facebook account.”
He looked at her for a few seconds, then blinked. She smiled. Calmly.
“Did you just say…?”
“Yep. I hate phones.”
“But that’s-”
“Take it or leave it.”
“May I suggest-”
“No.”
Jesus. He sighed, contemplating banging his head on the table, and shifted under her steady gaze. “Okay,” he finally whispered.
“There, there,” she smiled. “You're gonna love it. Now, stop looking so lost; you still need surveillance, and I’ll come by once a day for awhile. This is not a goodbye.” She reached into her jacket and pulled a piece of paper from it. “And I have a present for you.”
He took the paper, only then noticing that she was fully dressed, obviously waiting for him to wake up. “What’s this?”
“Do you know why I called you a idiot all the time in the hospital, while I was watching your three day long struggle to run away from there?”
“I can think of few reasons, yes,” he said carefully.
“The next time you want to escape from a hospital, you don’t have to collect stolen things under your pillow, you just have to sign this paper - it’s your statement of accepting the full responsibility for your actions and health, and even the Chief Nurse can’t keep you in the hospital.”
Fuck. Double fuck. He could have spared himself of all the trouble by-
“And that reminded me of something. Sit, please.”
He obeyed without thinking, still looking at the paper and silently cursing.
Betsy removed the pillows and took both scalpels he had hid underneath them. Triple fuck.
“Just in case,” he murmured. “A habit. I was practicing. You never know when you’ll have to cut the tubes, wires, IVs, or open a beer…”
“Idiot.”
He squinted and just smiled, knowing very well how much impressed she was.
“They have all my numbers for emergencies,” she continued after a sigh. “They also have a description of all the possible emergencies, just in case. It’s better for you if they don’t have to call me. Try not to do anything stupid this time, okay?”
That sounded familiar. “Yes, of course,” he murmured again, thinking about how getting shot ended with a Facebook account; karma was a bitch. An insane bitch. On heavy drugs. Jesus, what a mess.
He really, really didn’t want her to leave. She was a constant in this confusing shit that his life had become, something unchangeable, solid. He knew her reactions and thinking, there were no surprises, and without her… fuck, he was feeling secure with her.
“I don’t like that sinking look. Stop looking so helpless, will you?” she said quiet. “It doesn’t suit you, and it’s making me nervous. Besides, it won’t save you from the breakfast. Second, things are getting better.”
He noticed she said things, and not you.
“You saved my life twice,” he said trying to keep his voice steady. “You’re a fool if you think that one account can deal with it.”
“That’s what I do,” she said. “And you, of all people, don’t have a right to question that. Because, if you dare do it, you would have to question everything you have done. Are you ready for that?”
He just shook his head - his throat was strangely clenched and no words came.
She smiled and got up. “Take care of them while I’m gone. They are very…very…” she trailed off and smiled. “Adorable.”
“Shit, Betsy, I’m not-” she stopped his desperate words with yet another smile.
“The strength of the pack is the wolf,” she leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek. She stayed close, and whispered, “But the strength of the wolf is the pack, Eliot Spencer. Remember that… because, at the moment you forget that the next time, you are all dead.”
He froze, unable to say anything, and when he was able to breathe in again, she was gone.
.
.
Characters: Nate Ford, Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, Parker, Sophie Deveraux, Patrick Bonnano
Fandom: Leverage
Spoilers: The Lonely Hearts Club Job, The Boy's night out Job
warnings: Dead people, language, violence, medical bullsh*t, extreme violence in later chapters, and extreme angst
Disclaimer: I do not own blah blah blah
Special, special, special, special thanks to trappercreekd for Betaing :D
.
***
.
“When they are planning to stop?” Betsy asked after the second hour passed, and Hardison showed no sign of slowing down. He was in the middle of a monologue about the hours and hours of his research on the Chileans, and he repeated every step of it.
“Irresistible forces don’t get tired,” Sophie smiled. She noticed that Hardison haven’t left the hospital yet, and when he was near Eliot’s leaving, he would turn around and find something that was left unexplained in previous days. She noticed it twice, then started to pay attention, and soon figured out that Hardison was pretty correctly reading Eliot’s reactions. He was getting silent every time they were near that border, and his replies were shorter. She knew that night, and his doings, wouldn’t be mentioned in this conversation.
After one hour, Parker got tired so Hardison let her have his place, pulling a chair near the bed, next to pillows. She curled herself into a ball, and she was pressing the keys on the laptop while he was continuing his explaining.
She went to take them tea fifteen minutes ago, to check how Eliot was doing under the siege, but he barely had strength to raise his head to look at her. He was completely dumb already, and he stopped to yank Hardison’s chains with neutrally formulated remarks about the details of their doings that they so carefully hid from him. After the first one, about the hazmat suits, a little smile appeared on Nate’s face, and it hadn’t left since then.
“That kid is cleverer than I thought,” Betsy continued. “He is sorting things out, and at the same time killing him, slowly. I give Eliot ten more minutes before he passes out. I must say this isn’t the way I would choose to put someone to sleep.”
“Let him be, Betsy, Nate said quietly. “If he wasn’t doing it, we would just find an empty bed in few days.”
“You’re sure it would be a bad thing for Eliot?” her question was light, but Sophie had learned that Betsy never spoke lightly.
“For three days, you have been analyzing if we are good enough to take care of him.” Nate turned to her, he too knew she was serious, and testing again. “What’s the verdict?”
“When tonight passes, I’ll decide, according to that, if I should go home tomorrow or stay longer.” She avoided the answer with a smile. “He won’t need 24/7 care anymore, and one visit a day would be enough.”
“I can answer your question,” Sophie smiled. “We all have found something important in this… team. For all of us, this is an anchor that keeps us on track. We all need it. He needs it now more than anything, that can help him get through this. If he leaves, he will be dead in two weeks. Our seas are different. Some of them are stormier than others, without the anchor they can’t be survived.”
“I see,” Betsy sighed. “But I also see you have unreal expectations - he isn’t going anywhere for a long time.”
“Define long,” Nate said.
“Weeks. He is spent, Nate, and he will soon figure it out. He simply won’t be able to do anything. No, let me rephrase that… he will collect all his strength and do everything he wants - once. He’ll try to stand, and succeed, just to find out that he has to recover from that for two days. He’ll sit in the chair for fifteen minutes, and after that sleep ten hours to recover from it. His condition has nothing to do with his will, and you’ll have huge problems when it hits him.”
“I see Star Trek marathons in near future,” Nate rubbed his forehead.
“I suggest a good rehabilitation center. It will speed up his recovery.”
Nate darted a dark look at her. “Out of question,” he said shortly.
She smiled, and Sophie knew that Nate gave her the answer to her doubts without noticing it. That woman was a better grifter than any professional.
.
.
***
.
Eliot remembered, vaguely, that Hardison continued with the briefing long after Parker fell asleep. He wasn’t trying to stop him. His babbling was giving a useful and sometimes very disturbing insight in their doings, though he had to put a mask on his face several times. His blood ran cold when the hacker casually explained their dance through the dozens of Chileans attacking the hospital. When Hardison mentioned his going into the street with a gun, while Sophie was retreating through the Chileans, he was grateful he that wasn’t connected to any beeping shit anymore.
Yep, he definitely wanted to kill them all, one by one, but not kill them, just… sort of grab their heads and slam them into the wall, while yelling and cursing. He didn’t send them away for nothing, for god’s sake!
Betsy came shortly after Hardison tried to explain what exactly his gnomes did with his Arabic and Hebrew letters and numbers, and how important it was to have a loyal and loving community all over the world, and she suggested a ten minute break.
Finally. He needed it desperately - Hardison was in fact entertaining him, but he had to concentrate on much darker things to pull it through, and that was exhausting him. Ten minutes of silence would help him to get it together and continue.
It was the last thing he remembered.
Waking up was a slow process, and that surprised him - he was usually completely awake in a second. The light was coming from the wrong side, and female voices were speaking Spanish. The ‘S’ sounds were regular and there wasn’t any soft pronunciation, it wasn’t Chilean Spanish.
He kept his eyes closed and just listened. Hardison’s typing was relaxed, he wasn’t doing anything important. Two different sounds of paper located Nate and Sophie at the table, with the newspaper and a heavier magazine, and soft but quick clicking of metal told him that Parker was practicing lock picking somewhere near him.
Nope, something was wrong with that sound. Either she was doing it blindfolded and with one hand in three gloves, or… he opened his eyes and looked at the chair two meters from the bed. Betsy was sitting with a few locks in her lap, watching a Spanish soap opera on the screens and opening the locks without looking at them. Damn. And he didn’t even feel delirious again.
He closed his eyes again, trying to remember what happened. This was obviously morning, and he had lost the entire night, and a good part of yesterday. Where the hell was Parker? She was sleeping just a few inches away from him, and if those fools let her stay- light steps above his head gave him the answer and he slowly exhaled.
He remembered a few blurred images from the evening; the dimmed light from the kitchen and Hardison’s quiet humming. The bed had been lit by the blue light from the laptop - and Parker had been cuddled under his arm. Fuck. That must have been the effect of Hardison’s speech about the attack on the hospital - he remembered his own distorted thoughts about keeping them close.
Whatever. That was a mistake. He allowed himself to trust himself again, and that was reckless. The memory of his thinking about killing Nate just for fun was still fucking clear in his head, and he could recall that feeling in full strength without any effort.
“Good morning, Eliot. Good morning, George,” Betsy said.
So, would they all continue to wave George before his face? He refused to look at the plant. Betsy snapped her fingers and Hardison trotted in with a tray.
“Breakfast. You may watch Isabella, the Rose of Guadalajara while you eat.”
“I won’t…” eat, he almost said, but her eyes were calm, and he sensed a creepy smile emerging. “…watch Isabella,” he finished quietly.
“I can’t understand why anybody watches that stuff,” Hardison glanced at the screen where two women were screaming at each other, almost hitting him in the head with the tray. “Oops, sorry,” he lowered it and put it on the table. Eliot glanced at him, wondering why he smiled, and then realized he didn’t flinch or freeze at the threat. He suppressed his annoyance and looked at Betsy again.
“Me neither. I don’t watch these kinds of shows, it’s a revelation to me.” Betsy clicked the last lock and threw it on the floor with the others. “I watch Sons of Anarchy.”
Hardison raised his both hands in the air, and ran back to his computer.
“I’m going home,” she said when he closed his eyes again, thinking about how to avoid eating, and that stirred him. He looked at her and suddenly realized he was going to miss her. Jesus Christ, that must have been some sort of twisted Stockholm syndrome - he barely suppressed the laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing… just, thinking about how repaying everything you have done will be a full time job.”
“In fact, I know what you can do for me.” Her smile was innocent, he noticed with growing worry. “Besides not allowing yourself to come before me in a horizontal position ever again.”
“Listening.”
“I want you to make a Facebook account.”
He looked at her for a few seconds, then blinked. She smiled. Calmly.
“Did you just say…?”
“Yep. I hate phones.”
“But that’s-”
“Take it or leave it.”
“May I suggest-”
“No.”
Jesus. He sighed, contemplating banging his head on the table, and shifted under her steady gaze. “Okay,” he finally whispered.
“There, there,” she smiled. “You're gonna love it. Now, stop looking so lost; you still need surveillance, and I’ll come by once a day for awhile. This is not a goodbye.” She reached into her jacket and pulled a piece of paper from it. “And I have a present for you.”
He took the paper, only then noticing that she was fully dressed, obviously waiting for him to wake up. “What’s this?”
“Do you know why I called you a idiot all the time in the hospital, while I was watching your three day long struggle to run away from there?”
“I can think of few reasons, yes,” he said carefully.
“The next time you want to escape from a hospital, you don’t have to collect stolen things under your pillow, you just have to sign this paper - it’s your statement of accepting the full responsibility for your actions and health, and even the Chief Nurse can’t keep you in the hospital.”
Fuck. Double fuck. He could have spared himself of all the trouble by-
“And that reminded me of something. Sit, please.”
He obeyed without thinking, still looking at the paper and silently cursing.
Betsy removed the pillows and took both scalpels he had hid underneath them. Triple fuck.
“Just in case,” he murmured. “A habit. I was practicing. You never know when you’ll have to cut the tubes, wires, IVs, or open a beer…”
“Idiot.”
He squinted and just smiled, knowing very well how much impressed she was.
“They have all my numbers for emergencies,” she continued after a sigh. “They also have a description of all the possible emergencies, just in case. It’s better for you if they don’t have to call me. Try not to do anything stupid this time, okay?”
That sounded familiar. “Yes, of course,” he murmured again, thinking about how getting shot ended with a Facebook account; karma was a bitch. An insane bitch. On heavy drugs. Jesus, what a mess.
He really, really didn’t want her to leave. She was a constant in this confusing shit that his life had become, something unchangeable, solid. He knew her reactions and thinking, there were no surprises, and without her… fuck, he was feeling secure with her.
“I don’t like that sinking look. Stop looking so helpless, will you?” she said quiet. “It doesn’t suit you, and it’s making me nervous. Besides, it won’t save you from the breakfast. Second, things are getting better.”
He noticed she said things, and not you.
“You saved my life twice,” he said trying to keep his voice steady. “You’re a fool if you think that one account can deal with it.”
“That’s what I do,” she said. “And you, of all people, don’t have a right to question that. Because, if you dare do it, you would have to question everything you have done. Are you ready for that?”
He just shook his head - his throat was strangely clenched and no words came.
She smiled and got up. “Take care of them while I’m gone. They are very…very…” she trailed off and smiled. “Adorable.”
“Shit, Betsy, I’m not-” she stopped his desperate words with yet another smile.
“The strength of the pack is the wolf,” she leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek. She stayed close, and whispered, “But the strength of the wolf is the pack, Eliot Spencer. Remember that… because, at the moment you forget that the next time, you are all dead.”
He froze, unable to say anything, and when he was able to breathe in again, she was gone.
.
.