Fic: The Tunnelling Out Job
Fic: The Tunnelling Out Job
Author: LMX
Artist: jelly_head91
Fandom: Leverage
Pairing: Sophie/Nate, Paker/Hardison
Rating: PG-13 (one F word)
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Slightly cracky situations with characters trying to be serious about it. My inability to STOP FIC ever.
Notes: For the leverageland Team Up challenge. Give the artist some love HERE
Summary: When the apocalypse hits, where will the team be, and will they survive the days that follow? Sophie and Eliot find the world closes in around them as events separate the team.
AWESOME ART BY jelly_head91
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By the time they got free, everything was over. But they hadn't known that was going to be the case. For all they knew they were going to come out of the collapsed building that had become their home and threatened to become their grave to find the world overrun by apes, or under eight feet of snow. Or something.
They really could have done without Hardison laughing at them. Or Parker looking at them like they were the crazy ones. They probably had looked a bit crazy, wielding a crow bar and a dented exhaust pipe between them, going on for nine days unwashed and the both of them covered in dirt and rubble and engine grease.
Sophie put it down to another adventure survived with Leverage and Associates, and made Nate help her home. Eliot could find his own way. She'd seen enough of him to last a couple of years. They ignored the rubble of buildings and the discarded alien corpses on the way home. Sophie didn't ask, and Nate didn't offer. It was strange what one could become blasé about.
-
This was part of the job that Sophie found most boring. With the job all done and everyone safe, there was nothing to do until Nate found someone else in need and planned some new suicidal run into the maws of death for them. Hardison, of course, would be working well into the night clearing up any digital messes they might have left behind from their most recent almost-disaster; video cameras, police reports and all other evidence they'd been anywhere close to the area would be gone by the time the rest of them woke up.
Still, at this point - with her and Eliot in the truck on the way back from their part of the heist - there was a chance of *something* exciting happening before they joined the others in the bar for the gloat. Nate did so love his gloat.
Sophie was driving because she'd lifted Eliot's keys and he'd conceded on this rare occasion. She thought he might have wrenched his neck, he was walking fairly stiffly and she couldn't think of many other reasons he wouldn't demand to drive.
Hardison's voice, when it came across the earbuds, sent a thrill of anticipation down Sophie's spine. He sounded tense, nervous, and upset all at the same time.
"Guys, there's something coming." His voice was hesitant, and the sound of frantic typing was continuous. "Something bad on a global scale. Apocalypse bad. Do either of you have an underground safehouse you can get to in the next..." There was an uncomfortably long pause, "Twenty five minutes?"
There was a second pause as Eliot and Sophie glanced at each other, their disbelief mirrored.
"What?" they asked simultaneously.
"I'm serious, this is not a drill, this is the end of the world calling. Parker's got a place, we're headed there now but you're on the wrong side of town, you won't get here in time." The sheer fact that Hardison had given them the facts in such an unembellished way made them take note.
Sophie looked out of the window at everyone going on about their lives on the streets of Boston. It didn't look much like the apocalypse. "No one's panicking, Hardison," Eliot put voice to her thoughts. "Shouldn't there be panic?"
"I don't have time to explain. This isn't exactly public access information." Hardison went quiet for a minute, the sound of an engine and more rapid typing. "Get underground and I'll explain," he finished, voice strained.
"I've seen the details," Nate cut across Hardison, voice artificially calm. Sophie could hear the tension vibrating through him. "I've seen it and it's real."
"I don't have anything underground!" Sophie shot back, the severity of the situation sinking in.
"I have a garage," Eliot started, "But it's not sealed or supplied for any kind of..."
"It'll do," Hardison interrupted. "Can you get there in time?"
"Twenty three minutes," Parker added, sounding rather a lot like she was sporting a huge grin.
"Yeah, I think so." Eliot shook his head disbelievingly, and then winced. Sophie put a mark up against 'wrenched neck' and filed it to worry about later. When the end of the world wasn't happening. "Sophie, take a right."
"Shouldn't we be warning everyone else?" Sophie asked as she followed Eliot's terse directions further into the city. "They might have time to get into the subways or something."
"We're here! This is it." Parker's voice sounded tinny and distant. There were the sounds of the others hustling out of the car, Nate organising and corralling.
"Tell me you're safe and I will," Hardison answered sharply, as Parker demanded he put down the computer for one second and come and help.
"I'll be too late by then," Eliot shot back. "Turn left, you're heading down..."
"I see it." Sophie turned left, heading into Boston's central business district, huge towerblocks looming over them.
"That's not how we work, Hardison." Eliot finished, voice low. "We protect people."
"If I tell them now the panic will jam the roads. You won't get safe in time." Hardison sounded more than a little strained, voice dipping in and out as they passed through and in between the skyscrapers.
Sophie shot Eliot a nervous look. "We have to warn them," she said under her breath.
Eliot growled. "Hardison, we're less than five minutes away, that gives people ten minutes. Do it. Now."
And then the comms went silent.
-
They pulled into the garage with seven minutes to spare, despite the sudden rush of traffic and baffled looking pedestrians. No one really knew what was going on, everything was spreading by word of mouth and changing into something new with every retelling. The newscasters on the radio kept repeating that nothing had been confirmed by any national or international authority, that this was more than likely some cruel prank, but the reaction on the streets had been visible.
There had been nothing from the others on the earbuds. It was totally silent.
"They're underground," Sophie said, more to reassure them both than to try and explain. "That's why the comms can't get through. We've had issues underground before, right? I mean... there's no reason to panic." She pulled her phone out and frowned at the no signal sign. Eliot handed her his, displaying the same sign.
"We don't even know what's coming. Whether it's a tornado, or a nuke or an asteroid or ... fucking zombies." Eliot shrugged expressively as he stepped out of the car. He pulled the outer door closed against the street and followed the car down the steep tunnel into the garage. They were down two floors where it opened up, and he pulled the inner security door shut behind him, locking and bolting it as Sophie parked the truck.
The space wasn't huge, but for somewhere so central it was big enough. It fit four cars easily with space for a wall of tools and repair paraphernalia, there was the car the team had raced, a classic soft-top MG, a converted ambulance with a camper in the back, and the truck they'd just driven in.
Sophie could see a little bathroom in the back, which she guessed had running water and plumbing, but that was just adding to her concerns right now.
"If it's chemical or biological... we should shut off the running water." Sophie's heart was pounding with panic, the realisation of what they were about to face hitting her.
"The doors aren't airtight. There's only so much..." Eliot grit his teeth, shaking off all the issues they couldn't do anything about. "Right, the water's drinkable. Fill containers with water now, we'll go all the way up to the deadline Hardison set, then we'll turn off the water."
Eliot pulled two ten litre barrels out of the camper and rolled them towards Sophie as she headed towards the taps with all of the bottles and cups from the back of the truck.
"Do you have food?" Sophie asked as the water started running. "Anything?"
"We've only got five minutes. Concentrate on the water, we'll worry about that later. I'll start closing up vents and blocking off the gaps around the door."
"If this is some kind of prank," Sophie mused as the first of the barrels started to reach capacity. "I'm going to kill him."
"You can have what's left once I'm done with him," Eliot growled, walking over with a couple of washer fluid bottles. "Here, fill these too. We can't drink from them, but we can use it to wash with."
Sophie glanced at her watch as she finished filling the last barrel and moved on to all the smaller containers. "One minute left." She took the two buckets Eliot handed over and started filling those as Eliot moved to wedge damp cloths under the gap in the garage door.
"Ten seconds," Eliot updated, heading back over. "I'm turning the water off."
There was a sudden quiet as the rush of water stopped, both of them internally counting down the seconds. Sophie was surprised at her own calm as they waited, half expecting the walls to fall down around them, or the sounds of screaming from the street.
It stayed quiet, and Sophie started to worry about biological weapons. Chemical agents. Things sneaking in to her lungs and killing her without her even realising it.
"Keep breathing, Soph," Eliot grinned reassuringly.
"We should put this water somewhere," she mused absently, screwing down the tops on the two barrels and casting around for something they could use to cover the top of the buckets to keep it clean. She pulled a tarp out from the back of the truck and was most of the way back to the sink before the first tremble under her feet started, fading away quickly.
"You feel that?" Eliot asked, before she could manage the words.
"Hardison wouldn't have put us underground for an earthquake, would he?" Sophie asked tremulously.
"Feels more like shelling," Eliot frowned as another vibration started and stopped just as abruptly.
Sophie didn't give him the satisfaction of leading him into his catchphrase, but Eliot didn't look too bothered. There were three sharp rumbles in quick succession, and this time Sophie imagined she could hear the explosions that went with them. She wasn't sure if they were getting stronger or if she was just paying them more attention, but she didn't have time to work it out before Eliot grabbed her and dragged them both into the back seat of the truck.
For a moment it felt like the world was falling in, the shocks rolling through her system and beating at her ears, dust billowing in through the windows that had been open for the hot summer day outside and clogging up her throat, leaving her choking hoarsely.
It felt like it went on forever, that moment as Sophie waited for the roof to collapse down on them and trap them in the truck. Maybe even crush them entirely. She had time to think that they really should have brought at least one bottle of water in to the truck with them and then everything stopped and settled. The roof stayed where it was and the dust slowed to a trickle from the ceiling.
They coughed until they felt they could breathe again and Sophie realised that - with the immediate emergency over - she really was far too close to Eliot.
"You alright?" Eliot managed, squirming a little until he could sit up without headbutting Sophie.
Sophie made three attempts at words before she managed to get past the dust in her throat and answer, "I think so?" rather tentatively. She sat up herself, the both of them feeling entirely out of place sat in the back of a truck side by side while the world tried to fall down around them. "Do you think it's over?"
Eliot opened the back door of the truck and stepped out into the garage. "Shit."
Sophie's heart rate skyrocketed at that simple word, scrambling out of the truck to look at what Eliot had seen. The first thing she saw was the layer of dust and plaster on the two buckets of water, and half relaxed before she stepped up along side Eliot and saw the garage door.
From the way it bulged inwards, concertina-ed metal almost buckling off its hinges but still apparently bolted in place, it looked like the tunnel leading down to the garage had collapsed.
-
Sophie tried to ignore Eliot's grunting as he threw his shoulder against the crowbar for the nth time. Apart from the garage door and the thick layer of plaster dust coating everything, the space itself seemed to be holding strong. There were cracks in the ceiling and down the walls, but even the light fixtures hadn't fallen. She was busy raiding the vehicles for food.
The little fridge in the corner had a row of beer cans and a couple of browning bananas, but it was still on along with the rest of the electricity. Which was a good thing, Sophie realised a little belatedly, because if they had have lost power the lights would have all gone off and she wasn't sure she could have stood that extra pressure on her nerves.
The converted camper van had yielded two cans - one canned tuna and a vegetable soup, but the canister of gas for the stove rang emptily when she knocked against it. Out of the cars she'd pulled a high protein post-work-out bar and a half finished shake, and one half-empty box of breakfast bars, four in total. Her own handbag had two different packets of mints, one of gum and a very crushed chocolate bar. All in all it was a fairly sorry looking picnic. They could probably make it last four or five days - especially if they were willing to eat the soup cold and go hungry.
"Will you stop that," Sophie finally snapped as Eliot threw himself at the garage door again. "It's obviously not working."
"You got any better ideas?" Eliot stalked back to where she'd set up a temporary camp around the arrayed foodstuffs. "If that was bombing, we've gotta get out there. This is Boston, these people don't know how to handle that kind of..."
"Can you conceive for a second," Sophie interrupted, "Of a world where looking after yourself is as important as looking out for everyone else." She shook her head at his look of disbelief. "No, of course not. Eliot, if there has been bombing in Boston then something serious and global has happened. Hardison saw it coming, which means other authorities saw it coming and they will be working on the problem."
Eliot seemed to flounder for a moment. "You think they're alright?" he asked in a small voice.
Sophie sat down in front of the pile of food and started sorting it carefully before stacking it on the top of the little fridge, shoving the shake inside. "They were on the other side of the city, maybe they weren't bombed like this area was." It sounded small and hollow, even to her. She steeled herself. "Right now, we need to work out how we're going to get out of here before we starve to death or I have a nervous breakdown."
Eliot looked over the food, pulling himself together. "Was that all you could find?"
"That's all of it," Sophie confirmed, nodding.
"We can make that last ten days if we ration carefully," he determined. "We can't wait, Sophie. We can't assume someone's coming to find us."
Sophie startled a little at the declaration. "There's a towerblock worth of rubble sitting on that tunnel entrance. Even if you got the door open..."
"We'd have to dig," Eliot confirmed. "And we'd have to dig carefully, we can't risk it collapsing further, or filling the garage if it all starts to shift."
Sophie sighed. "My nails aren't going to survive this experience, are they." She smiled self-deprecatingly, reassuring herself that at least she was wearing a sensible pair of shoes with a slightly hysterical note.
"Woman," Eliot growled. "World war three could be going on up there. Your nails aren't my priority."
"Oh my god, we're being so stupid!" Sophie bolted up and jumped into the truck cab. "The radio!"
She flicked the radio on and waited. Waited long enough for Eliot to get up and come and stand at the truck door. "Nothing?" he asked.
"I don't understand it," she frowned. "There has to be... Unless things are much worse up there than we thought then..."
"Wait..." Eliot interrupted, and then leaned past her to jack the volume up. There was nothing but a distant rhythmic hiss. "There's something jamming the radios. They must be stopping the ground troops communicating. It's probably what took out the earbuds. Maybe the phones too."
"So there's still no way of knowing what's going on?" Sophie visibly deflated.
"Look, it's not like knowing what's going on up there is going to help us get out of here." Eliot gave her an awkward one-armed hug. "That's gotta be our priority right now, Soph."
"Alright." Sophie rolled up her sleeves and started taking off jewellery. "Let's get to work."
"I don't know about you, but it's gone eleven and I spent today kicking the shit out of Venezuelan ex-Special Forces." Eliot hesitated, and this time he looked disappointed when Sophie didn't give him the lead in and just smiled blandly back at his expectant expression. He scowled. "I'm gonna get at least a couple of hours sleep before I start on the digging."
Sophie's bland expression turned shocked. "How can you possibly sleep right now? We're trapped, there could be some kind of war going on in *Boston* and we've got no idea whether the others are even alive!"
"You learn to sleep in any situation, else you just don't sleep at all." The way Eliot said it made it sound like something that had been recited to him at some point in the past. It only made Sophie angrier.
"Well screw you, I'm not trained to sleep in any situation," she yelled, the contained space making her sound louder than she'd intended.
Eliot just stepped over to the shelves against one wall and pulled down a heavy, clanking toolbox. "I guess you can start work on the door then," he shrugged.
Sophie fumed for a minute and then tugged the toolbox away from him, trying to hide the jolt as she underestimated how heavy the thing was going to be, and lurched across the garage with it to the distended door.
"Keep moving, Soph," Eliot called across at her as he climbed into the back of the van, "Put more layers on if you need to. It's gonna get cold in here once night sets in."
She left the toolbox and walked over to the back of the van, watching Eliot settle on the pull out bed. "Can't we just use the car..." she cut herself off and looked over at the door. "We don't have any ventilation," she realised for herself, shaking her head.
Eliot just smiled and shrugged, pulling the blanket over his shoulders and leaving Sophie to shut the door behind him.
-
Eliot hadn't been kidding about it getting cold, and Sophie was starting to realise that the adrenaline wasn't going to last her in the long run. She was shivering and the adrenaline crash had her eyelids drooping, even as she wedged the screwdriver in to the next reinforced hole and started working out the screw.
The door was a serious construction, and the way it had been misshapen by the weight behind it had made a lot of the screws harder to loosen rather than easier as Sophie had expected. She'd avoided the powertools so far because however annoyed she was, she really did want Eliot to sleep, especially if he was hurting. That said, when the whole thing had shifted and screeched sharply when one set of screws had been removed she had checked on him and he'd still been soundly asleep.
He'd looked unnervingly calm, with Sophie's stomach twisting itself in knots. She'd reassured herself by listing all the ways in which the others were better equipped to deal with this situation. All the ways in which they'd be safe. Be fine.
She went back to the door and started removing screws more evenly, not taking too much support away from any one area at a time. When the cold and exhaustion started to get to her she pulled the blanket out of the back of Eliot's dust-filled truck and crawled into the back seat of the car with it.
She tossed and turned for what felt like hours, unable to get warm again or push away the imagined weight of the building above her head. Frustrated, she shoved her way back out of the car and walked over to the van.
She'd expected to wake Eliot by stepping in behind him, but hadn't expected - after a brief narrow-eyed glance - for him to lift the edge of the blanket he was covered with and invite her into his body-warm bed. She fell faster than she might have expected, given she was sharing a narrow bed in an unfamiliar place, and that weight over their heads hadn't been lifted.
It seemed even she could sleep in any situation, when the situation called for it.
-
When she woke again it was to that same screeching sound, and she dug herself out from under the blankets - finding that Eliot had somehow wrapped his own tightly around her along with the one she'd brought out of the truck. She wrapped one around her shoulders, the cold biting as soon as she opened the door of the van. She ached from the exertion the night before, but at least she wasn't so exhausted any more.
Eliot had most of the buckled metal pulled back, the rubble behind it a huge and imposing mass. It felt - looking at it - as if it had the weight of all the material behind that just waiting for the chance to push into their little sanctuary.
There was already a little pile - mostly of chunks of concrete - forming just inside the doorway on top of a tarp. Sophie wondered if they were going to have space for all the rubble that was in the tunnel inside the garage, or whether they were going to end up closing the tunnel up behind them once they ran out of room.
She yawned, pulling her hair back and straightening out her clothes as she folded the blanket and laid it over the end of the camp bed. Eliot shot her a wolfish grin. She didn't bother saying anything, just stepped into between the door and the tarp and started taking concrete off Eliot as he handed it out of the hole.
-
"Do you think Nate's killed the others yet?" Sophie asked, putting aside the crowbar she'd been using to pry bits of rebar out of the wall of rubble and accepting the bottle of water and tiny morsel of breakfast bar. They were well into their second full day underground and Sophie's stomach complained at the size of the meal as she nibbled at it as slowly as she could.
"You mean because they pissed him off," Eliot asked, "Or because he's come up with some ridiculous and suicidal plan without considering that's he's two men short?"
"I was thinking the former, though now you've mentioned it I'm not going to be able to stop worrying about Nate leading them all to their doom." Sophie grimaced and shook her head to clear the image. "Thank you very much for that."
She watched Eliot haul the tarp full of building materials back into their little cave, dumping it out in the corner that was already filling. They hadn't risked turning any of the engines on to move the cars - too wary of suffocating them both in the fumes with no way of escape - instead Eliot had carefully tarp-lined the bed of the truck and they'd started filling that with materials they had been using to shore up the sides of the tunnel they were digging out.
Sophie used the minute he wasn't watching to examine the blistered wounds on her hands - already wrapped once by Eliot with the surplus of first aid supplies he always seemed to have to hand. She was trying to hide the pain from him, it wasn't as if there was much he could do for her.
"They'll be fine," Eliot continued when he came back to join her. "So long as they don't try to get involved in the fighting, they've got a good skill set between them to survive pretty much anything."
"I can't imagine spending any amount of time exposed to Parker and Hardison's unique version of flirting whilst trapped in a small space," Sophie considered.
"Parker is whole new levels of crazy. Don't get me wrong, I love her like a sister, but Hardison is seriously sticking his neck out there."
"Young love is so sweet," Sophie mused. "But only if you're the one in love."
"Would you rather have Nate? There's alcohol here, but I'm betting Parker's safe house is dry." Eliot shrugged. "We don't know if they're even trapped, they're probably miles from all this shit and working on saving the world."
"You haven't been too bad company," Sophie observed with a half-smile, finishing the very last of her lunch regretfully.
"I've been in worse situations, in worse company," Eliot grinned grimly. "We're going to have to take a torch to that rebar though." He gestured at the offending rods which were forming the newly exposed bars of their cage.
-
Mostly they worked in silence. The sounds of shifting rubble had them both backing quickly out of the tunnel and then waiting tensely for any further movement. There was a strange desperation in their work, not so much from the feeling of being trapped but from the feeling of been isolated from the people who might need help. Separated from their friends and loved ones, without any idea what they might be facing up there.
Every time the torch came out they cut one line at a time and then waited breathlessly for the sound that might signal everything coming down on them. When they stopped to rest they shared stilted remembrances of jobs that had gone badly, situations that had been escaped with life and limb, reasons why this wasn't the end of them. They fell into silence every time something shifted above them and dropped a small waterfall of dust and plaster. Every moment felt expectant.
There were no further shellings, no distinctive rumbling under the ground, but the interference on the radios and comms didn't abate.
They dug out the first body on the fourth day, and Sophie had to go and sit in the back of the van until Eliot had finished moving it... him... it. She'd been working so very hard not to cry about this, but there were some situations she just wasn't ready for. Eliot wrapped... he wrapped the body in another tarp, the last one, and laid him on the back seat of the truck. In the next three hours they added two more - another man and a teenaged girl, piled in irreverent disarray in the small space they had.
-
"I think you and Hardison would make a good couple," Sophie said, feeling she might go crazy if she worked in silence any longer. She was rewarded with Eliot turning fast enough that he nearly hit his head on the uneven ceiling, his face red and expression apoplectic in the spotlight they now needed to light the furthest limits of the ever narrowing tunnel.
"What?!" he demanded. "Where the hell did that come from?"
They hadn't found any survivors, but they hadn't found any bodies today either. Sophie was taking that as a good sign. They had started piling rubble around the little MG now, Eliot trying not to make it obvious he was worried about scratching the classic car. The back end of the truck was all but buried.
"I'm cold, I'm stopping for a minute." She winced as she worked her hands out of the cramped hold they had on the cold metal tubing she'd been using as a pick.
"You don't get away that easy," Eliot growled, wrapping his inexplicably warm hands around her cold ones as he pulled her back in to the garage. "I hate Hardison, he pisses me off all the time and he thinks I'm some kind of ape. He only likes me when I'm saving his ass. Or losing to him at one of his crappy games."
"None of that's true, you care for each other greatly, and he respects your abilities. You would balance each other out nicely, his laid back energy and your aggressive calm..." Sophie accepted the water she was handed, trying not to miss the warmth of Eliot's hands. "If I was writing a play I'd like that symmetry. And I notice you don't raise the issue of sex."
"That's never been an issue," Eliot replied with a teasing grin, blushing just a little around the jaw.
"Ha! I knew it!" Sophie smiled, "Nate never believed me."
"You've been talking to Nate about me?" Eliot looked rather horrified at the concept. Sophie chuckled at the expression.
"How far from the surface do you think we are?" She asked when silence fell again.
"Looks like we're about half way there." Eliot's gaze went to the mouth of the tunnel they were slowly opening. "We're finding the support for the next floor. If we're lucky some of the driveway might be clear and we can walk the last bit. Maybe."
Sophie looked over their food stockpile - an ever smaller pile - and made an estimate. "We're going to run out of food before we hit the surface if it's blocked all the way," she determined.
"Why Nate, Sophie? Why is it always Nate for you? Is there a play there too?" Eliot smiled in a soft kind of way, and Sophie resisted the urge to tell him about the play she'd been writing for the last few months. She hadn't told anyone, and she didn't want to. Not yet.
"Some things just aren't that simple," she let Eliot herd her towards the van. "Are we stopping now?"
"I just checked the time, it's eleven."
Sophie just nodded at that assessment, suddenly deeply tired. "We'll get out of here tomorrow," she decided groggily, crawling into the little camp bed and letting Eliot take his place next to her.
If it felt strange to be sharing a bed with another man after talking about her lover, Sophie was too tired to let it interrupt her sleep. The garage was cold, Eliot was warm, and Nate wasn't here right now; and it wasn't as if they were doing anything untoward. They were still wearing all their clothes, and they both stank. Sophie had higher standards.
-
They broke through to the first signs of the surface - long evening sunlight and a faint distant breeze - the night of the eighth day underground. There was still a days digging left to do and they had no idea what they would face when they got out, but that first tantalising taste sent them back underground to the rubble-filled garage. They needed to be ready to meet whatever was on the outside.
They shared a beer and the last of the tuna in a sorry attempt at a celebration, used the last of the dirty water to make some vague attempts at washing the stench of their containment off of them and went to bed hungry and cold.
In the morning they moved like they hadn't before, with a fervour and energy that they didn't feel. They chewed on gum and ignored the sick feeling the sugar left in their empty stomachs, driving on through the rubble, not bothering to shift it back into neat piles behind them, preparing themselves for what they might find at the surface, ready for anything.
-
Four hours later, Sophie curled closer in to Nate's side, relishing the warmth of the apartment with the central heating turned up high. Her hair was still damp from the extravagantly long bath she'd had earlier that evening and her stomach was full from the carefully bland food.
Another adventure survived by all five of them, and she was looking forward to hearing the full story from the others.
Tomorrow though.
Tonight, she just wanted to sleep.
Author: LMX
Artist: jelly_head91
Fandom: Leverage
Pairing: Sophie/Nate, Paker/Hardison
Rating: PG-13 (one F word)
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Slightly cracky situations with characters trying to be serious about it. My inability to STOP FIC ever.
Notes: For the leverageland Team Up challenge. Give the artist some love HERE
Summary: When the apocalypse hits, where will the team be, and will they survive the days that follow? Sophie and Eliot find the world closes in around them as events separate the team.
AWESOME ART BY jelly_head91
---
By the time they got free, everything was over. But they hadn't known that was going to be the case. For all they knew they were going to come out of the collapsed building that had become their home and threatened to become their grave to find the world overrun by apes, or under eight feet of snow. Or something.
They really could have done without Hardison laughing at them. Or Parker looking at them like they were the crazy ones. They probably had looked a bit crazy, wielding a crow bar and a dented exhaust pipe between them, going on for nine days unwashed and the both of them covered in dirt and rubble and engine grease.
Sophie put it down to another adventure survived with Leverage and Associates, and made Nate help her home. Eliot could find his own way. She'd seen enough of him to last a couple of years. They ignored the rubble of buildings and the discarded alien corpses on the way home. Sophie didn't ask, and Nate didn't offer. It was strange what one could become blasé about.
-
This was part of the job that Sophie found most boring. With the job all done and everyone safe, there was nothing to do until Nate found someone else in need and planned some new suicidal run into the maws of death for them. Hardison, of course, would be working well into the night clearing up any digital messes they might have left behind from their most recent almost-disaster; video cameras, police reports and all other evidence they'd been anywhere close to the area would be gone by the time the rest of them woke up.
Still, at this point - with her and Eliot in the truck on the way back from their part of the heist - there was a chance of *something* exciting happening before they joined the others in the bar for the gloat. Nate did so love his gloat.
Sophie was driving because she'd lifted Eliot's keys and he'd conceded on this rare occasion. She thought he might have wrenched his neck, he was walking fairly stiffly and she couldn't think of many other reasons he wouldn't demand to drive.
Hardison's voice, when it came across the earbuds, sent a thrill of anticipation down Sophie's spine. He sounded tense, nervous, and upset all at the same time.
"Guys, there's something coming." His voice was hesitant, and the sound of frantic typing was continuous. "Something bad on a global scale. Apocalypse bad. Do either of you have an underground safehouse you can get to in the next..." There was an uncomfortably long pause, "Twenty five minutes?"
There was a second pause as Eliot and Sophie glanced at each other, their disbelief mirrored.
"What?" they asked simultaneously.
"I'm serious, this is not a drill, this is the end of the world calling. Parker's got a place, we're headed there now but you're on the wrong side of town, you won't get here in time." The sheer fact that Hardison had given them the facts in such an unembellished way made them take note.
Sophie looked out of the window at everyone going on about their lives on the streets of Boston. It didn't look much like the apocalypse. "No one's panicking, Hardison," Eliot put voice to her thoughts. "Shouldn't there be panic?"
"I don't have time to explain. This isn't exactly public access information." Hardison went quiet for a minute, the sound of an engine and more rapid typing. "Get underground and I'll explain," he finished, voice strained.
"I've seen the details," Nate cut across Hardison, voice artificially calm. Sophie could hear the tension vibrating through him. "I've seen it and it's real."
"I don't have anything underground!" Sophie shot back, the severity of the situation sinking in.
"I have a garage," Eliot started, "But it's not sealed or supplied for any kind of..."
"It'll do," Hardison interrupted. "Can you get there in time?"
"Twenty three minutes," Parker added, sounding rather a lot like she was sporting a huge grin.
"Yeah, I think so." Eliot shook his head disbelievingly, and then winced. Sophie put a mark up against 'wrenched neck' and filed it to worry about later. When the end of the world wasn't happening. "Sophie, take a right."
"Shouldn't we be warning everyone else?" Sophie asked as she followed Eliot's terse directions further into the city. "They might have time to get into the subways or something."
"We're here! This is it." Parker's voice sounded tinny and distant. There were the sounds of the others hustling out of the car, Nate organising and corralling.
"Tell me you're safe and I will," Hardison answered sharply, as Parker demanded he put down the computer for one second and come and help.
"I'll be too late by then," Eliot shot back. "Turn left, you're heading down..."
"I see it." Sophie turned left, heading into Boston's central business district, huge towerblocks looming over them.
"That's not how we work, Hardison." Eliot finished, voice low. "We protect people."
"If I tell them now the panic will jam the roads. You won't get safe in time." Hardison sounded more than a little strained, voice dipping in and out as they passed through and in between the skyscrapers.
Sophie shot Eliot a nervous look. "We have to warn them," she said under her breath.
Eliot growled. "Hardison, we're less than five minutes away, that gives people ten minutes. Do it. Now."
And then the comms went silent.
-
They pulled into the garage with seven minutes to spare, despite the sudden rush of traffic and baffled looking pedestrians. No one really knew what was going on, everything was spreading by word of mouth and changing into something new with every retelling. The newscasters on the radio kept repeating that nothing had been confirmed by any national or international authority, that this was more than likely some cruel prank, but the reaction on the streets had been visible.
There had been nothing from the others on the earbuds. It was totally silent.
"They're underground," Sophie said, more to reassure them both than to try and explain. "That's why the comms can't get through. We've had issues underground before, right? I mean... there's no reason to panic." She pulled her phone out and frowned at the no signal sign. Eliot handed her his, displaying the same sign.
"We don't even know what's coming. Whether it's a tornado, or a nuke or an asteroid or ... fucking zombies." Eliot shrugged expressively as he stepped out of the car. He pulled the outer door closed against the street and followed the car down the steep tunnel into the garage. They were down two floors where it opened up, and he pulled the inner security door shut behind him, locking and bolting it as Sophie parked the truck.
The space wasn't huge, but for somewhere so central it was big enough. It fit four cars easily with space for a wall of tools and repair paraphernalia, there was the car the team had raced, a classic soft-top MG, a converted ambulance with a camper in the back, and the truck they'd just driven in.
Sophie could see a little bathroom in the back, which she guessed had running water and plumbing, but that was just adding to her concerns right now.
"If it's chemical or biological... we should shut off the running water." Sophie's heart was pounding with panic, the realisation of what they were about to face hitting her.
"The doors aren't airtight. There's only so much..." Eliot grit his teeth, shaking off all the issues they couldn't do anything about. "Right, the water's drinkable. Fill containers with water now, we'll go all the way up to the deadline Hardison set, then we'll turn off the water."
Eliot pulled two ten litre barrels out of the camper and rolled them towards Sophie as she headed towards the taps with all of the bottles and cups from the back of the truck.
"Do you have food?" Sophie asked as the water started running. "Anything?"
"We've only got five minutes. Concentrate on the water, we'll worry about that later. I'll start closing up vents and blocking off the gaps around the door."
"If this is some kind of prank," Sophie mused as the first of the barrels started to reach capacity. "I'm going to kill him."
"You can have what's left once I'm done with him," Eliot growled, walking over with a couple of washer fluid bottles. "Here, fill these too. We can't drink from them, but we can use it to wash with."
Sophie glanced at her watch as she finished filling the last barrel and moved on to all the smaller containers. "One minute left." She took the two buckets Eliot handed over and started filling those as Eliot moved to wedge damp cloths under the gap in the garage door.
"Ten seconds," Eliot updated, heading back over. "I'm turning the water off."
There was a sudden quiet as the rush of water stopped, both of them internally counting down the seconds. Sophie was surprised at her own calm as they waited, half expecting the walls to fall down around them, or the sounds of screaming from the street.
It stayed quiet, and Sophie started to worry about biological weapons. Chemical agents. Things sneaking in to her lungs and killing her without her even realising it.
"Keep breathing, Soph," Eliot grinned reassuringly.
"We should put this water somewhere," she mused absently, screwing down the tops on the two barrels and casting around for something they could use to cover the top of the buckets to keep it clean. She pulled a tarp out from the back of the truck and was most of the way back to the sink before the first tremble under her feet started, fading away quickly.
"You feel that?" Eliot asked, before she could manage the words.
"Hardison wouldn't have put us underground for an earthquake, would he?" Sophie asked tremulously.
"Feels more like shelling," Eliot frowned as another vibration started and stopped just as abruptly.
Sophie didn't give him the satisfaction of leading him into his catchphrase, but Eliot didn't look too bothered. There were three sharp rumbles in quick succession, and this time Sophie imagined she could hear the explosions that went with them. She wasn't sure if they were getting stronger or if she was just paying them more attention, but she didn't have time to work it out before Eliot grabbed her and dragged them both into the back seat of the truck.
For a moment it felt like the world was falling in, the shocks rolling through her system and beating at her ears, dust billowing in through the windows that had been open for the hot summer day outside and clogging up her throat, leaving her choking hoarsely.
It felt like it went on forever, that moment as Sophie waited for the roof to collapse down on them and trap them in the truck. Maybe even crush them entirely. She had time to think that they really should have brought at least one bottle of water in to the truck with them and then everything stopped and settled. The roof stayed where it was and the dust slowed to a trickle from the ceiling.
They coughed until they felt they could breathe again and Sophie realised that - with the immediate emergency over - she really was far too close to Eliot.
"You alright?" Eliot managed, squirming a little until he could sit up without headbutting Sophie.
Sophie made three attempts at words before she managed to get past the dust in her throat and answer, "I think so?" rather tentatively. She sat up herself, the both of them feeling entirely out of place sat in the back of a truck side by side while the world tried to fall down around them. "Do you think it's over?"
Eliot opened the back door of the truck and stepped out into the garage. "Shit."
Sophie's heart rate skyrocketed at that simple word, scrambling out of the truck to look at what Eliot had seen. The first thing she saw was the layer of dust and plaster on the two buckets of water, and half relaxed before she stepped up along side Eliot and saw the garage door.
From the way it bulged inwards, concertina-ed metal almost buckling off its hinges but still apparently bolted in place, it looked like the tunnel leading down to the garage had collapsed.
-
Sophie tried to ignore Eliot's grunting as he threw his shoulder against the crowbar for the nth time. Apart from the garage door and the thick layer of plaster dust coating everything, the space itself seemed to be holding strong. There were cracks in the ceiling and down the walls, but even the light fixtures hadn't fallen. She was busy raiding the vehicles for food.
The little fridge in the corner had a row of beer cans and a couple of browning bananas, but it was still on along with the rest of the electricity. Which was a good thing, Sophie realised a little belatedly, because if they had have lost power the lights would have all gone off and she wasn't sure she could have stood that extra pressure on her nerves.
The converted camper van had yielded two cans - one canned tuna and a vegetable soup, but the canister of gas for the stove rang emptily when she knocked against it. Out of the cars she'd pulled a high protein post-work-out bar and a half finished shake, and one half-empty box of breakfast bars, four in total. Her own handbag had two different packets of mints, one of gum and a very crushed chocolate bar. All in all it was a fairly sorry looking picnic. They could probably make it last four or five days - especially if they were willing to eat the soup cold and go hungry.
"Will you stop that," Sophie finally snapped as Eliot threw himself at the garage door again. "It's obviously not working."
"You got any better ideas?" Eliot stalked back to where she'd set up a temporary camp around the arrayed foodstuffs. "If that was bombing, we've gotta get out there. This is Boston, these people don't know how to handle that kind of..."
"Can you conceive for a second," Sophie interrupted, "Of a world where looking after yourself is as important as looking out for everyone else." She shook her head at his look of disbelief. "No, of course not. Eliot, if there has been bombing in Boston then something serious and global has happened. Hardison saw it coming, which means other authorities saw it coming and they will be working on the problem."
Eliot seemed to flounder for a moment. "You think they're alright?" he asked in a small voice.
Sophie sat down in front of the pile of food and started sorting it carefully before stacking it on the top of the little fridge, shoving the shake inside. "They were on the other side of the city, maybe they weren't bombed like this area was." It sounded small and hollow, even to her. She steeled herself. "Right now, we need to work out how we're going to get out of here before we starve to death or I have a nervous breakdown."
Eliot looked over the food, pulling himself together. "Was that all you could find?"
"That's all of it," Sophie confirmed, nodding.
"We can make that last ten days if we ration carefully," he determined. "We can't wait, Sophie. We can't assume someone's coming to find us."
Sophie startled a little at the declaration. "There's a towerblock worth of rubble sitting on that tunnel entrance. Even if you got the door open..."
"We'd have to dig," Eliot confirmed. "And we'd have to dig carefully, we can't risk it collapsing further, or filling the garage if it all starts to shift."
Sophie sighed. "My nails aren't going to survive this experience, are they." She smiled self-deprecatingly, reassuring herself that at least she was wearing a sensible pair of shoes with a slightly hysterical note.
"Woman," Eliot growled. "World war three could be going on up there. Your nails aren't my priority."
"Oh my god, we're being so stupid!" Sophie bolted up and jumped into the truck cab. "The radio!"
She flicked the radio on and waited. Waited long enough for Eliot to get up and come and stand at the truck door. "Nothing?" he asked.
"I don't understand it," she frowned. "There has to be... Unless things are much worse up there than we thought then..."
"Wait..." Eliot interrupted, and then leaned past her to jack the volume up. There was nothing but a distant rhythmic hiss. "There's something jamming the radios. They must be stopping the ground troops communicating. It's probably what took out the earbuds. Maybe the phones too."
"So there's still no way of knowing what's going on?" Sophie visibly deflated.
"Look, it's not like knowing what's going on up there is going to help us get out of here." Eliot gave her an awkward one-armed hug. "That's gotta be our priority right now, Soph."
"Alright." Sophie rolled up her sleeves and started taking off jewellery. "Let's get to work."
"I don't know about you, but it's gone eleven and I spent today kicking the shit out of Venezuelan ex-Special Forces." Eliot hesitated, and this time he looked disappointed when Sophie didn't give him the lead in and just smiled blandly back at his expectant expression. He scowled. "I'm gonna get at least a couple of hours sleep before I start on the digging."
Sophie's bland expression turned shocked. "How can you possibly sleep right now? We're trapped, there could be some kind of war going on in *Boston* and we've got no idea whether the others are even alive!"
"You learn to sleep in any situation, else you just don't sleep at all." The way Eliot said it made it sound like something that had been recited to him at some point in the past. It only made Sophie angrier.
"Well screw you, I'm not trained to sleep in any situation," she yelled, the contained space making her sound louder than she'd intended.
Eliot just stepped over to the shelves against one wall and pulled down a heavy, clanking toolbox. "I guess you can start work on the door then," he shrugged.
Sophie fumed for a minute and then tugged the toolbox away from him, trying to hide the jolt as she underestimated how heavy the thing was going to be, and lurched across the garage with it to the distended door.
"Keep moving, Soph," Eliot called across at her as he climbed into the back of the van, "Put more layers on if you need to. It's gonna get cold in here once night sets in."
She left the toolbox and walked over to the back of the van, watching Eliot settle on the pull out bed. "Can't we just use the car..." she cut herself off and looked over at the door. "We don't have any ventilation," she realised for herself, shaking her head.
Eliot just smiled and shrugged, pulling the blanket over his shoulders and leaving Sophie to shut the door behind him.
-
Eliot hadn't been kidding about it getting cold, and Sophie was starting to realise that the adrenaline wasn't going to last her in the long run. She was shivering and the adrenaline crash had her eyelids drooping, even as she wedged the screwdriver in to the next reinforced hole and started working out the screw.
The door was a serious construction, and the way it had been misshapen by the weight behind it had made a lot of the screws harder to loosen rather than easier as Sophie had expected. She'd avoided the powertools so far because however annoyed she was, she really did want Eliot to sleep, especially if he was hurting. That said, when the whole thing had shifted and screeched sharply when one set of screws had been removed she had checked on him and he'd still been soundly asleep.
He'd looked unnervingly calm, with Sophie's stomach twisting itself in knots. She'd reassured herself by listing all the ways in which the others were better equipped to deal with this situation. All the ways in which they'd be safe. Be fine.
She went back to the door and started removing screws more evenly, not taking too much support away from any one area at a time. When the cold and exhaustion started to get to her she pulled the blanket out of the back of Eliot's dust-filled truck and crawled into the back seat of the car with it.
She tossed and turned for what felt like hours, unable to get warm again or push away the imagined weight of the building above her head. Frustrated, she shoved her way back out of the car and walked over to the van.
She'd expected to wake Eliot by stepping in behind him, but hadn't expected - after a brief narrow-eyed glance - for him to lift the edge of the blanket he was covered with and invite her into his body-warm bed. She fell faster than she might have expected, given she was sharing a narrow bed in an unfamiliar place, and that weight over their heads hadn't been lifted.
It seemed even she could sleep in any situation, when the situation called for it.
-
When she woke again it was to that same screeching sound, and she dug herself out from under the blankets - finding that Eliot had somehow wrapped his own tightly around her along with the one she'd brought out of the truck. She wrapped one around her shoulders, the cold biting as soon as she opened the door of the van. She ached from the exertion the night before, but at least she wasn't so exhausted any more.
Eliot had most of the buckled metal pulled back, the rubble behind it a huge and imposing mass. It felt - looking at it - as if it had the weight of all the material behind that just waiting for the chance to push into their little sanctuary.
There was already a little pile - mostly of chunks of concrete - forming just inside the doorway on top of a tarp. Sophie wondered if they were going to have space for all the rubble that was in the tunnel inside the garage, or whether they were going to end up closing the tunnel up behind them once they ran out of room.
She yawned, pulling her hair back and straightening out her clothes as she folded the blanket and laid it over the end of the camp bed. Eliot shot her a wolfish grin. She didn't bother saying anything, just stepped into between the door and the tarp and started taking concrete off Eliot as he handed it out of the hole.
-
"Do you think Nate's killed the others yet?" Sophie asked, putting aside the crowbar she'd been using to pry bits of rebar out of the wall of rubble and accepting the bottle of water and tiny morsel of breakfast bar. They were well into their second full day underground and Sophie's stomach complained at the size of the meal as she nibbled at it as slowly as she could.
"You mean because they pissed him off," Eliot asked, "Or because he's come up with some ridiculous and suicidal plan without considering that's he's two men short?"
"I was thinking the former, though now you've mentioned it I'm not going to be able to stop worrying about Nate leading them all to their doom." Sophie grimaced and shook her head to clear the image. "Thank you very much for that."
She watched Eliot haul the tarp full of building materials back into their little cave, dumping it out in the corner that was already filling. They hadn't risked turning any of the engines on to move the cars - too wary of suffocating them both in the fumes with no way of escape - instead Eliot had carefully tarp-lined the bed of the truck and they'd started filling that with materials they had been using to shore up the sides of the tunnel they were digging out.
Sophie used the minute he wasn't watching to examine the blistered wounds on her hands - already wrapped once by Eliot with the surplus of first aid supplies he always seemed to have to hand. She was trying to hide the pain from him, it wasn't as if there was much he could do for her.
"They'll be fine," Eliot continued when he came back to join her. "So long as they don't try to get involved in the fighting, they've got a good skill set between them to survive pretty much anything."
"I can't imagine spending any amount of time exposed to Parker and Hardison's unique version of flirting whilst trapped in a small space," Sophie considered.
"Parker is whole new levels of crazy. Don't get me wrong, I love her like a sister, but Hardison is seriously sticking his neck out there."
"Young love is so sweet," Sophie mused. "But only if you're the one in love."
"Would you rather have Nate? There's alcohol here, but I'm betting Parker's safe house is dry." Eliot shrugged. "We don't know if they're even trapped, they're probably miles from all this shit and working on saving the world."
"You haven't been too bad company," Sophie observed with a half-smile, finishing the very last of her lunch regretfully.
"I've been in worse situations, in worse company," Eliot grinned grimly. "We're going to have to take a torch to that rebar though." He gestured at the offending rods which were forming the newly exposed bars of their cage.
-
Mostly they worked in silence. The sounds of shifting rubble had them both backing quickly out of the tunnel and then waiting tensely for any further movement. There was a strange desperation in their work, not so much from the feeling of being trapped but from the feeling of been isolated from the people who might need help. Separated from their friends and loved ones, without any idea what they might be facing up there.
Every time the torch came out they cut one line at a time and then waited breathlessly for the sound that might signal everything coming down on them. When they stopped to rest they shared stilted remembrances of jobs that had gone badly, situations that had been escaped with life and limb, reasons why this wasn't the end of them. They fell into silence every time something shifted above them and dropped a small waterfall of dust and plaster. Every moment felt expectant.
There were no further shellings, no distinctive rumbling under the ground, but the interference on the radios and comms didn't abate.
They dug out the first body on the fourth day, and Sophie had to go and sit in the back of the van until Eliot had finished moving it... him... it. She'd been working so very hard not to cry about this, but there were some situations she just wasn't ready for. Eliot wrapped... he wrapped the body in another tarp, the last one, and laid him on the back seat of the truck. In the next three hours they added two more - another man and a teenaged girl, piled in irreverent disarray in the small space they had.
-
"I think you and Hardison would make a good couple," Sophie said, feeling she might go crazy if she worked in silence any longer. She was rewarded with Eliot turning fast enough that he nearly hit his head on the uneven ceiling, his face red and expression apoplectic in the spotlight they now needed to light the furthest limits of the ever narrowing tunnel.
"What?!" he demanded. "Where the hell did that come from?"
They hadn't found any survivors, but they hadn't found any bodies today either. Sophie was taking that as a good sign. They had started piling rubble around the little MG now, Eliot trying not to make it obvious he was worried about scratching the classic car. The back end of the truck was all but buried.
"I'm cold, I'm stopping for a minute." She winced as she worked her hands out of the cramped hold they had on the cold metal tubing she'd been using as a pick.
"You don't get away that easy," Eliot growled, wrapping his inexplicably warm hands around her cold ones as he pulled her back in to the garage. "I hate Hardison, he pisses me off all the time and he thinks I'm some kind of ape. He only likes me when I'm saving his ass. Or losing to him at one of his crappy games."
"None of that's true, you care for each other greatly, and he respects your abilities. You would balance each other out nicely, his laid back energy and your aggressive calm..." Sophie accepted the water she was handed, trying not to miss the warmth of Eliot's hands. "If I was writing a play I'd like that symmetry. And I notice you don't raise the issue of sex."
"That's never been an issue," Eliot replied with a teasing grin, blushing just a little around the jaw.
"Ha! I knew it!" Sophie smiled, "Nate never believed me."
"You've been talking to Nate about me?" Eliot looked rather horrified at the concept. Sophie chuckled at the expression.
"How far from the surface do you think we are?" She asked when silence fell again.
"Looks like we're about half way there." Eliot's gaze went to the mouth of the tunnel they were slowly opening. "We're finding the support for the next floor. If we're lucky some of the driveway might be clear and we can walk the last bit. Maybe."
Sophie looked over their food stockpile - an ever smaller pile - and made an estimate. "We're going to run out of food before we hit the surface if it's blocked all the way," she determined.
"Why Nate, Sophie? Why is it always Nate for you? Is there a play there too?" Eliot smiled in a soft kind of way, and Sophie resisted the urge to tell him about the play she'd been writing for the last few months. She hadn't told anyone, and she didn't want to. Not yet.
"Some things just aren't that simple," she let Eliot herd her towards the van. "Are we stopping now?"
"I just checked the time, it's eleven."
Sophie just nodded at that assessment, suddenly deeply tired. "We'll get out of here tomorrow," she decided groggily, crawling into the little camp bed and letting Eliot take his place next to her.
If it felt strange to be sharing a bed with another man after talking about her lover, Sophie was too tired to let it interrupt her sleep. The garage was cold, Eliot was warm, and Nate wasn't here right now; and it wasn't as if they were doing anything untoward. They were still wearing all their clothes, and they both stank. Sophie had higher standards.
-
They broke through to the first signs of the surface - long evening sunlight and a faint distant breeze - the night of the eighth day underground. There was still a days digging left to do and they had no idea what they would face when they got out, but that first tantalising taste sent them back underground to the rubble-filled garage. They needed to be ready to meet whatever was on the outside.
They shared a beer and the last of the tuna in a sorry attempt at a celebration, used the last of the dirty water to make some vague attempts at washing the stench of their containment off of them and went to bed hungry and cold.
In the morning they moved like they hadn't before, with a fervour and energy that they didn't feel. They chewed on gum and ignored the sick feeling the sugar left in their empty stomachs, driving on through the rubble, not bothering to shift it back into neat piles behind them, preparing themselves for what they might find at the surface, ready for anything.
-
Four hours later, Sophie curled closer in to Nate's side, relishing the warmth of the apartment with the central heating turned up high. Her hair was still damp from the extravagantly long bath she'd had earlier that evening and her stomach was full from the carefully bland food.
Another adventure survived by all five of them, and she was looking forward to hearing the full story from the others.
Tomorrow though.
Tonight, she just wanted to sleep.