Big Bang Fic: The Tangled Web Job, Part 9/10
Title: The Tangled Web Job
Authors: scout_lover and telaryn
Artist: alinaandalion
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no money. I write only from a sad, fannish devotion to the characters created by John Rogers, Chris Downey, Dean Devlin and the amazing writers of Leverage.
Characters/Pairings: Team, Damien Moreau, Director Conrad, Sterling, Nana, all canon pairings
Rating: PG-13 leaning over the fence and shaking hands with R
Genre: Gen, drama, angst, team!fic
Warnings/spoilers: Set after the events of The Last Dam Job, the story is directly drawn from events in The Experimental Job.
Word Count: 50,069
Summary: The threat issued by CIA Director Conrad at the end of The Experimental Job proves to be anything but idle. The team is blackmailed into working for the CIA to help gain control of the major nuclear pipeline into Iran. To accomplish this and keep their loved ones safe, they are forced to work with an old enemy towards a common goal.
What the CIA fails to realize is that catching the Leverage team and holding them are usually two different things.
What Nate fails to realize is that the price for squirming free of the government's grasp is likely to be higher than he expected.
Link to Art Post: Here
CHAPTER NINE
“Hardison,” Nate said, leaning over the hacker’s shoulder and staring into the computer screen at the man they were all assuming was Shiruyeh, “you’re in the embassy’s system, right?”
“Yeah,” the younger man breathed. “That’s gotta be him-”
“It’s him,” Nate said, knowing it with absolute certainty. That was Shiruyeh, and he was closing in. And Moreau was still arguing with Eliot. “No wonder he hates it when I do that,” he murmured, earning a snort from Hardison. “Okay, he’s gonna need some help, some cover. When I give the word, I want you to kill the lights. Parker’s got Sophie, Eliot’s got Moreau. That should give them all a chance to get out.”
“If Eliot and Shiruyeh don’t shoot each other first,” Hardison amended soberly.
“Yeah,” Nate sighed, straightening. “There’s always that.”
*~*~*
Sophie’s breath left her in a rush as she hit the floor under Parker’s weight, but the next moment she sucked it all back in a painful gasp as gunfire erupted. Screams rang out, but she barely had time to register them before the room went dark. Then Parker’s hand was wrapped around her wrist with a tensile strength, the little thief hauling her to her feet, a sudden flare of light shining from the phone she was using as a flashlight.
“We need to get out of here!” the younger woman said urgently, apparently the only one in the room unfazed by the shots. “I’ve got her, Nate, she’s fine,” she reported.
Nate … Belatedly, Sophie realized that she could no longer hear the others’ voices in her ear. “My earbud-”
“Forget it,” Parker said. “We need-”
“Eliot!” Sophie gasped, pulling out of Parker’s grasp. “Where’s Eliot?” Parker said nothing, and alarms went off in Sophie’s mind. “Parker, where is Eliot?” she demanded. People were shouting for security, for lights, around them, a few wrestling Shiruyeh to the floor, but she paid them no mind, focusing on Parker, pale and still in the blue-white light of her phone. All at once, Sophie remembered the times she’d seen Eliot and the girl in quiet conversation apart from the rest of them, their faces grim, and fear ripped through her. “What have you done?” she asked harshly, grabbing Parker’s arm. “What’s he done?”
Parker returned her stare for a long moment, then said simply, “He’s fixing this. For all of us.”
And Sophie went cold inside. No … “Take me to him,” she ordered, certain Parker knew where he was going.
“He said my job was to make sure you get away from Moreau,” Parker said stubbornly. “‘Get everyone out, no matter what.’ That’s all that matters-”
“And Eliot?” Sophie asked her pointedly, digging her fingers into her arm. “Did he mention how he planned to get himself out?” Parker stiffened, her eyes widening, and Sophie knew she understood. “He didn’t, did he?” she pressed ruthlessly. “Because there isn’t a plan for that! The bloody fool’s going to sacrifice himself for us!”
Parker’s eyes were huge. “I didn’t- He never told me that,” she whispered.
Sophie softened and reached up, setting a gentle hand to the younger woman’s cheek and smiling sadly. “I know, dear. He wouldn’t. He thought he was doing this to save us. Now we have to save him.”
Parker stared at her a moment longer, then nodded decisively. “Hardison,” she said, “Eliot said there’s a secure garage here with cars kept ready to evacuate personnel in case of emergency. It won’t be on any public schematics, and he said it would probably have a separate security feed. Get us there.” She looked again at Sophie and, in a mark of just how much she had changed over the years, reached out and took her hand, curling her fingers tightly about Sophie’s. “Follow me.”
Sophie smiled and nodded. “Let’s go-”
There was another shout behind them, and suddenly a man was pushing past Parker, knocking the thief off balance. Shiruyeh. Sophie recognized him by the light of Parker’s phone, and her fury rose. Because of him, Eliot had been forced to wear a gun-
And she’d had it. All these men and their machinations, never thinking out the consequences, the cost, to those who would be left behind-
“You bugger!” she spat, lunging forward and grabbing him with one hand, flicking open her knife with the other. Allowing Annie Kroy to take over, she spun him around and slashed her blade across his chest. “I’ve had it with the lot of you!”
He snarled out something in another language and raised his arm to strike, but, before he could, Parker was there, shoving her taser into his chest just above the wicked gash and pulling the trigger. He cried out and convulsed as the electricity shot through him, then dropped to the floor, useless and bleeding.
Parker gazed at Sophie over his inert body and raised her taser, firing it again and giving her shark’s grin. “Let’s go steal an Eliot.”
*~*~*
“Hardison, I’ve lost Sophie!” Nate said, tapping his ear as her voice went silent. “What’s happening?”
Hardison tapped furiously at his keys, toggling between screens. “Her bud’s stil active. Must’ve just fallen out in the confusion. “Eliot!” he called. “Eliot, man, you still with us?”
And Nate suddenly realized he couldn’t hear the hitter either, though he was fairly certain that particular earbud hadn’t just “fallen” out. Damn it. “Sterling, what the hell is happening down there?”
“My agents would appreciate some light to help them figure that out,” the man snapped back.
“Hardison, lights,” he ordered.
“Ford!” Conrad burst into the room, his face a mask of anger. “What the hell are your people doing?”
Nate spun to face him, impaling him with a furious gaze. “Their jobs!” he spat. “Or have you forgotten that all this was your idea?” He stalked over to the director, backing him into a wall, and jabbed a finger hard into his chest. “Maybe if you’d told us about Shiruyeh from the start, given us information we could actually use, we could have stopped this before it started!” Rage twisted through him as he realized all the ways this could have been so much worse. “That bastard could have killed someone down there!” he shouted. “He could have killed one of my team-”
“Nate.”
Hardison’s strangely quiet voice broke into his tirade and he turned around, stiffening at the look in hacker’s eyes. “What?”
Hardison swallowed, then tipped his head toward his screen. “Moreau’s gone. And so is Eliot. And their trackers have gone off line.”
Nate swore softly as his worst fear suddenly sprang to screaming life. Of course the trackers were off line. Eliot would have anticipated that and found a way to neutralize them. Behind him, Conrad snickered.
“I told you Spencer couldn’t be trusted,” he said smugly. “He’s turned on you, like I warned you he would. He’s gone back to his master.”
Nate’s control snapped. He whirled around and slammed a fist into Conrad’s gut, doubling him over. Grabbing the man’s shoulders, he hauled him upright and slammed him into the wall again, then drove his fist across his jaw, knocking him to the floor. Conrad lay there, gasping and groaning, and Nate knelt down beside him, grabbing his jaw in a hard hand and turning his face toward him.
“No, you stupid son of a bitch,” he rasped, his stomach churning sickly. “He’s going to kill him.”
*~*~*
Damien followed Eliot through the back hallways of the large embassy, trusting implicitly that he knew where he was going. In the years Eliot had served him, he’d never gone into a building without knowing how he’d get out again, had never not had multiple exit strategies mapped out in his mind. It was only one of the many qualities that had made him so valuable, and so irreplaceable.
And yet Damien was worried. Not for himself, not with Eliot guiding and protecting him, but for Eliot himself. The initial fast pace of their escape was gradually slowing and Eliot’s movements, once quick and sure, now seemed heavier, almost labored, as if he were having to force himself to continue. Even his breathing had changed. Damien had tried a few times to catch up to him, to look at him, but Eliot always pulled ahead with a growled warning, avoiding any scrutiny. Even so, Damien noted that Eliot’s right arm, which he held stubbornly across his body, never moved, and that he had switched his gun to his left hand.
And he could have sworn that, here and there, he saw drops of dark red on the floor …
At the end of another hallway, Eliot stopped before a heavy metal door, entered a code into an electronic keypad, and exhaled softly as the door slid open to reveal a small service elevator. “In here,” he breathed, sounding infinitely weary.
Damien stepped into the elevator and, as the door slid shut, got his first good look at the man beside him. Eliot sagged back against the wall and closed his eyes, his face pale, his arm still cradled across his body. Through his jacket, Damien could plainly see the dark red stain spreading across his shirt.
“Still stepping between me and bullets, I see,” he remarked, trying to keep the concern from his voice, knowing Eliot wouldn’t appreciate it. “You need a doctor.”
“Later,” Eliot breathed. “When this is over.” He opened his eyes and turned his head to meet Damien’s gaze. “’Course, if you hadn’t wasted time arguin’ with me, I might not have been shot at all.”
Damien winced slightly, feeling an unusual twinge of guilt. “As direct as ever, I see,” he said with a faint, wry smile.
Eliot huffed out a breath and turned his face away again. “I’m tired, I’m pissed, and I got a bullet in me,” he rasped, his eyes sliding closed. “I ain’t in the mood to be nice.” The elevator reached its destination, whatever that was, with a small jolt. “End of the line,” he said as the door slid open.
They stepped out into what seemed to be an underground garage, with several dark - and presumably armored - sedans parked before them. “Of course,” Damien said as understanding dawned. He chuckled quietly, appreciating more than ever Eliot’s ingenuity. “The embassy emergency fleet. We’ll escape in the ambassador’s own car.”
“Somethin’ like that, yeah,” Eliot breathed. He shifted his gun into his right hand and reached into his trouser pocket with his left, pulling out a key. As he pressed a button on the fob, lights on one of the cars blinked on and off and the chirp of a security system sounded. “Figures it’d be one way the hell over there,” he muttered.
Damien laughed again and shook his head. “I have missed you, my friend,” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets. “No one else has your … delightful personality. Still, perhaps we should speed this up. You need a doctor, and I am eager to escape Director Conrad’s clutches.”
“Yeah, about that,” Eliot sighed. He bowed his head and closed his eyes, as if gathering his strength. He remained that way for several long moments, then raised his head and turned back around-
And Damien’s heart nearly stopped when he saw the gun, once more in Eliot’s left hand, lift and point with a frightful steadiness straight at him.
“Like I said,” Eliot rasped, blue eyes dark and unreadable, “this is the end of the line.”
*~*~*
“Do I want to know how you and Eliot acquired these things?” Sophie asked as Parker entered the code that opened the elevator door. The thief had gotten them through every door they’d encountered, whether by code or key, and Sophie tried not to wonder whether what they were doing actually constituted treason.
Parker frowned as the stepped into the small elevator. “We stole them, duh.”
Sophie closed her eyes and raised a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. Someone really needed to teach Parker the concept of “too much information.”
The thief startled her by speaking again. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I probably should have told you and Nate, or at least Hardison, what Eliot was planning. But he said it had to be this way, that this was the only way it would ever end. The only way we’d ever be safe.” She fixed haunted eyes on Sophie. “Moreau scares him like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” she said worriedly. “It’s like the guy just twists something in his brain!”
“I know,” Sophie sighed, wondering why she and Nate hadn’t paid more attention in the beginning to what now seemed so blindingly obvious. “But killing Moreau isn’t the answer, you have to know that. He has to know that.”
“I don’t think he does,” Parker said softly, sadly.
“Yes, well,” Sophie said, a note of steel creeping into her voice, “then I suppose I shall have to convince him.”
*~*~*
Damien stiffened, the smile draining from his face, his hazel eyes widening in shock as he stared at the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”
Eliot rolled his eyes at the stupid question, certain the gun in his hand made his intentions fairly obvious. To be fair, this was a last-minute adjustment to his plan. He’d originally intended to whisk Damien away in one of the cars and kill him somewhere else, hoping to spare his team from any blowback by making it look like he’d betrayed them by rejoining his “former master,” but Shiruyeh’s bullet had changed things. His shoulder hurt like a son of a bitch and his right arm was all but useless, and the effects of blood-loss were already setting in. If he was going to do this, it had to be here and now.
“What I should’ve done back in San Lorenzo,” he said. “Would’ve saved everybody a lotta trouble. But better late than never, right?”
Damien stared at him as if he still didn’t understand, or just couldn’t believe it. “Are you out of your mind?” he asked sharply, angrily. “You can’t kill me! You need me! Conrad will never let you and your people go if you do this-”
“Conrad’s gonna have enough trouble explainin’ why he was usin’ a bunch of criminals, including one he busted out of prison in another country, to sell nuclear materials to Iran,” Eliot countered. “Treason kinda trumps me shootin’ you.”
“This is ridiculous!” Damien snapped, taking a step forward but stopping abruptly when Eliot raised the gun slightly. “I had nothing to do with any of this! I am as much a pawn as you-”
“Which is exactly why I have to do this!” Eliot spat. “Goddamn it, Damien, you’re too valuable, too useful, to just leave sittin’ in a prison cell. How many more times is somebody gonna decide they need Damien fucking Moreau to help further their interests? And how many more times is my team gonna be dragged into shit like this because of you? Sooner or later, that’s gonna backfire on us. Sooner or later, one of us is gonna get hurt - or worse - because of you!”
Damien blew out a sharp, impatient breath. “That’s absurd-”
“Is it? Tell that to Hardison, to his Nana! All she does is take in kids nobody else wants, and they set her up to take the fall as a terrorist! Just to get us to help them control you! The Italian threatened to kill us and throw Nate into prison! Who’s next? MI6, Mossad, Mexico? I know you’ve got ties to the cartels! How about Russia, China, North Korea? Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if we got a visit from the fucking Mounties! As long as you’re alive, somebody’s gonna want to get their hands on you, and everybody seems to want to use my team to do it.” He shrugged, and immediately wished he hadn’t. “So that just leaves one solution.”
Damien shook his head slowly, shock and horror on his face. “You can’t do this,” he said again. “You won’t do this!”
Eliot laughed aloud in disbelief at the sheer ridiculousness of those words. “Of course, I will! I used to do it for you all the fucking time! How many people have I put in the ground because of you? For you? I was your fucking angel of death!” he shouted as fury ripped through him. “It’s why you had me on the payroll! When I showed up, people died!”
“That was business,” Damien said dismissively. “They were liabilities-”
“And what the hell are you?” he snarled. “Those people are my family! They are all I have left in the world. They are everything to me! And I will do whatever it takes to keep them safe!”
Damien was silent for long moments, and Eliot could see the calculations taking place behind the man’s eyes. Then he smiled, one of his rare, genuine smiles, and Eliot’s blood ran cold. “Then come with me,” he invited softly, seductively, his voice warm. “Take your place at my side again, and protect them from there. You know the power we held once, the influence we wielded. We could take that back, and then increase it to such a degree that no one, no one, would ever dare touch your friends!”
Eliot gasped softly and shuddered as that voice swept through him with a familiar intensity, demanding a response from him. And for a moment, he was tempted. They had been all but untouchable once, could be so again. And he could protect the others in ways he couldn’t now. All he had to do was go back to Damien-
And deliver his soul once more into the devil’s hands.
“I can’t,” he whispered, knowing the price was too high, even for them. “I made that mistake once, I can’t do it again. “
“Not even to protect your family?” Damien wheedled. “Eliot, think! Think of what you could do, what you could be! You don’t want to kill any more?” He shrugged. “Fine. I will have others for that. You can be my personal head of security. Look after me, after my family, and train others to do the dirty work for you.” He smiled again. “Alexander would be so happy to have you back! You are his idol, you know. Jules, of course, worships you, too, and as my heir he could benefit from your unique ‘tutelage.’ Then there is Adrijana-” His eyes shone at the mention of his daughter, whom Eliot remembered as a dark-haired, dark-eyed dimpled child full of sweetness and mischief. “She is almost nine now, and will be even more beautiful than her mother.” He winked and grinned. “You could help me keep all the young men she will attract in line-”
“Stop it!” Eliot said harshly. It all sounded so cozy, so innocent - home and hearth, domestic bliss - but he knew better. He’d been in that home, knew the orders that were given from that hearth.
“Come back to us,” Damien urged quietly. “Be part of my family again. What better way to protect your family?”
“I said stop it!” he snarled. “I’ve been down that road before, remember? I let you bend and twist and break me until I was somethin’ I didn’t even recognize.” He shook his head slowly and stared at the man who’d given him so much, been so much to him … and taken so much from him. “I can’t let you do it again. Not even for them.”
“Why not ask them first?” Damien asked reasonably. He swept his gaze over Eliot, winced as he saw the blood soaking into his shirt and shook his head slowly. “You’re hurt, you need a doctor,” he said quietly. “We don’t have to decide anything now. Let’s just get you some help, and we can talk about all of this later, when you are stronger and thinking more clearly.”
The gun wavered in his hand for a moment as he heard the concern, the genuine concern, in Damien’s voice, saw the worry in his eyes. You’re fond of him. Sophie’s words from the car, words he’d tried not to hear. Shouldn’t I be? Words he’d tried not to believe-
“No,” he whispered, tightening his hold once more on the gun and pushing everything that had ever been between him and Damien, everything he’d ever let himself feel for this man, aside. “I can’t let you anywhere near them. I know you, Damien, I know how you get your hooks into people. Hell, you still got ’em in me,” he admitted. “But I can’t let you have them. I just can’t.”
Anger swept across Damien’s face, washing the worry from it. “So you will kill me instead!” he snapped, his hazel eyes flashing. “Shoot me down like a dog in the street.” He snorted sharply. “You couldn’t bear to kill for me any longer, but you will for them, is that right? How does that even make sense?”
“It doesn’t,” Eliot sighed, tired to his soul and hurting more with each passing moment. He just wanted to get this done, wanted just to give in to the pain, the weakness, and sleep for a hundred years. “I just know that this is the way it has to be. You’re too dangerous, and they’re too important to me. It’s not right. None of this is right. And, no, it doesn’t make sense. But somebody’s gotta put a stop a stop to it, and,” he exhaled heavily as a wave of resignation swept through him, “I seem to be the one holding the fucking gun. Again.”
“Eliot, you- you can’t be serious!” Damien protested, panic starting to creep in as he finally recognized the inevitability of his fate. It was fitting, Eliot thought idly, that the man who had dispatched him to deliver this sentence to so many others now knew how it felt to be on the wrong side of it. “We can work something out-”
“No,” he sighed, “we really can’t. And like you said, I need a doctor, so it’s time to end this once and for all.” He lifted the gun slightly for a head shot, supposing he owed the man that mercy at least. For old times’ sake. “Goodbye, Damien.”
*~*~*
This must be what going mad feels like. The one portion of Nate’s brain that hadn’t gone completely numb with terror calmly noted that this was the second time he’d used that particular phrase in recent memory, and perhaps he should remember to ask Hardison where the quote was from?
Definitely going mad.
“Hardison,” he said finally, blinking in confusion at how normal his voice sounded, “get me something I can work with. Parker’s right - he won’t want to do this where it’ll have a chance of blowing back on us.”
“Nate …” the hacker began, and without looking away from the monitor screens, Nate gripped the younger man’s shoulder - killing the question he knew was about to be asked before it could be given voice and a chance to take root.
“I am not wrong about this,” he said fiercely. “I know how he thinks and the day somebody like Conrad can predict his movements better than I can is the day I hang this all up for good.” He exhaled softly, drawing much-needed strength and reassurance from the words. “Now find me something I can work with. You know how cranky I get when we’re flying blind.”
As jokes went, it was almost unforgivably lame but Nate’s pulse was loud and heavy in his ears now, beating against the white noise of his fear until it began to crack. I can stop him. I’m the only one who can. “There!” he exclaimed, pointing out what he’d noticed almost before he realized he’d seen anything at all.
“Good eye,” Hardison confirmed. A handful of keystrokes later the muted greys and blues of a security feed filled their vision. “Parker, got him. The garage is on the west end of the south side of the embassy; there’s tunnel access about three hundred feet east of where you and Sophie are.”
“Kill the doors,” Nate said quietly - unable to drag his attention away from the two figures on the left side of the screen, half-hidden by the fleet of cars. “Nothing leaves that garage until I say so.” He touched his ear reflexively. “Sterling, I need you.”
“Little busy right now.” His old friend’s voice said that he was clearly distracted; Nate smiled, and it wasn’t kind.
“Yeah, letting your target get away. Listen up.”
*~*~*
Blood loss and his injuries made him slow. Too slow in the end - Eliot had only half squeezed down on the trigger when a familiar voice reached his ears. “Put it down, Spencer!”
Sterling. It took a herculean effort, but in the end he managed to keep from finishing the shot. “Walk away, Sterling!” he yelled. His wound had begun to throb, setting up a nauseating counterpoint to his heartbeat. “This has nothing to do with you!”
“Beg to differ,” the Interpol agent countered. Eliot saw him slowly cross-stepping into position, his gun also positioned for a head shot - trained squarely on Eliot. “That man you have there is my payment for getting you all out of this mess.”
He’d forgotten in all the chaos. Sterling might have helped Nate out of respect for what they’d once meant to each other. He would have helped Hardison’s Nana because it was the right thing to do, and it would have made him look the hero. Making sure the rest of the team walked away clean required something bigger. Nate had already offered him Damien.
“That hand you feel, jerking your leash right now,” Damien said, his voice suddenly poisonous, “it isn’t mine. You know what I’m willing to do for you. I have already given you my word no harm will come to your little band of misfits and you know I can keep my word. Kill me, and the only thing that will happen is you die for your new master.”
“Shut up!” Eliot snapped. He refocused his aim, trying to stop the trembling in his arm by sheer force of will. “Nothing either of you can say is going to change this.” He felt Sterling take another step closer, heard more people entering the garage.
“If you don’t lower that gun right now I’m going to shoot you, how about that?”
The world went calm and slow around him, as Eliot picked up Sterling’s gauntlet one final time. Against all odds, he even managed to smile. “Go ahead,” he answered his long-time nemesis. “Go ahead if you think you’re fast enough.”
*~*~*
They reached the garage just in time to hear Eliot answer Sterling’s challenge; Sophie was barely fast enough to grab Parker’s shoulder and keep her from running into the middle of the scene.
Eliot was badly hurt - he’d been shot in the confusion, just like they’d feared. Even at a distance Sophie could tell there was far more blood than there should have been, and sweat was rolling off him as he struggled to hold his aim. Moreau’s face was angled away from them, but Sophie felt confident that his mask of studied arrogance would have finally slipped under the circumstances.
“I thought you cared about him.” Sophie flinched as Sterling spoke again. “Did you even stop to think about what this is going to do to him?”
Nate … she realized belatedly. He’s talking about Nate. She suspected that Eliot had made the same assumption she had - even though he never took his eye off his target, his confusion was writ large on his handsome face.
“I’m doing this for him,” he countered, and Sophie felt her chest tighten at the pain in his voice. “For all of them. As long as Damien lives, this will never be over.”
It had been his mantra almost since the beginning. Sophie heard a small hitch in Parker’s breathing; proof if she’d needed it that this was how he had won the thief to his cause. You can’t, she thought, wanting to call out to him, but terrified to disrupt whatever fragile balance Sterling had managed to bring to the situation.
“Have you ever tried to picture what he was like after his boy died?” The question, seemingly out of left field, drew Sophie’s focus entirely to the Interpol agent. “I’m sure you have - everybody did. The thing is, I don’t have to picture it.” The grifter’s eyes widened in horror as she realized Sterling’s voice was unexpectedly choked with emotion. “I was there. I was the one who finally convinced him to leave the gravesite hours after everyone else had gone home. Not Maggie, not his mother … me.”
“It’s not the same!” Eliot retorted. He’s losing it, Sophie realized. One way or the other this thing was moments from ending - the hitter was going to have to take the shot or risk having his decision made for him.
“It is exactly the same!” Sterling shouted, his face flushing a deep, angry red. “I’m going to shoot you because it’s my duty to stop you - and, let’s face it, you’re too stubborn to let this go - and it’s going to destroy him. If you don’t believe anything else I’ve ever told you believe that. Losing you will destroy him.”
Sophie only realized she was holding her breath when her lungs forced her to inhale. Eliot’s hand was starting to tremble, whether from emotion or the effects of his wounds she couldn’t tell. His focus never wavered though - now as always, Damien Moreau was the center of his world. “Sophie will help him,” he said at last, his voice cracking under the strain. “She can see him through his grief.”
No matter what anyone said about her talent - or lack thereof - Sophie Devereaux was more than enough of an actress to recognize her cue. “Who will see me through mine?” she asked, stepping forward into the fray.
*~*~*
He hadn’t realized she was there - how had he not realized she was there? “Walk away Sophie!” he called, blinking the sweat out of his eyes. “I’m beggin’ you, darlin’, just this once turn around and walk away.”
She stepped into his view then, a vision even with her veil missing and her careful hairdo in ruins. “If you think I’m going to make it easy for you to commit murder after everything we’ve been through together, then you don’t know me at all.”
”I don’t associate with murderers.” He hadn’t heard her say the words himself, but they’d reached a point in their lives where there was no such thing as a long term secret between them. So be it, he thought, even though his aim was already dropping. “Sophie, I have to do this. You know I do, and you know why.” Tears briefly blurred his vision; of all of them, he suspected he would miss this woman the most.
“I don’t know anything of the sort,” she spat, visibly angry with him now. “All I know is that this is not who you are, a man who takes the easy way out.”
Eliot suspected he could have resisted her pleas and tears, but Sophie had always insisted on seeing the best in him even when he couldn’t see it in himself, and her obvious scathing disappointment cut deep. Besides … “You think this is the easy way out?”
She was close to them now - close enough that Moreau could have made a grab for her and Eliot was no longer sure he could have stopped him. If she realized the potential danger, however, she gave no sign of it. “I think dying for something is always the easy way out. If you want to impress me, Eliot, then live.”
And with that, he was beaten. It was over. Sterling stepped in on his side and closed his hand over the gun; Eliot let him take it without a fight. “For whatever it’s worth,” the Interpol agent said softly as their eyes met, “I give you my word he is never going to see the light of day again.”
It felt strange trusting Sterling - he would later swear it had been the blood loss driving him, but he nodded at the man; acknowledging and accepting his promise the only way he could.
“I had such hopes, such plans for us.” Adrenaline jolted Eliot upright as he saw Damien move out at the edge of his vision. Sterling immediately fell back, aiming at Moreau this time, but Damien had only grabbed Sophie’s arm. “You could have grifted a dozen lifetimes,” he said, looking directly at her this time, “and never come close to the money and power I could have laid at your feet with Eliot at my back.”
Sophie’s gaze as she looked him over one final time was dismissive bordering on contemptuous. "You're adorable." Jerking free, she continued on past him - brushing aside one of the most powerful men in the world as if he was no more than the dust on her outrageously expensive shoes.
Eliot had never been more in love with her in his life.
Part 10
Authors: scout_lover and telaryn
Artist: alinaandalion
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no money. I write only from a sad, fannish devotion to the characters created by John Rogers, Chris Downey, Dean Devlin and the amazing writers of Leverage.
Characters/Pairings: Team, Damien Moreau, Director Conrad, Sterling, Nana, all canon pairings
Rating: PG-13 leaning over the fence and shaking hands with R
Genre: Gen, drama, angst, team!fic
Warnings/spoilers: Set after the events of The Last Dam Job, the story is directly drawn from events in The Experimental Job.
Word Count: 50,069
Summary: The threat issued by CIA Director Conrad at the end of The Experimental Job proves to be anything but idle. The team is blackmailed into working for the CIA to help gain control of the major nuclear pipeline into Iran. To accomplish this and keep their loved ones safe, they are forced to work with an old enemy towards a common goal.
What the CIA fails to realize is that catching the Leverage team and holding them are usually two different things.
What Nate fails to realize is that the price for squirming free of the government's grasp is likely to be higher than he expected.
Link to Art Post: Here
CHAPTER NINE
“Hardison,” Nate said, leaning over the hacker’s shoulder and staring into the computer screen at the man they were all assuming was Shiruyeh, “you’re in the embassy’s system, right?”
“Yeah,” the younger man breathed. “That’s gotta be him-”
“It’s him,” Nate said, knowing it with absolute certainty. That was Shiruyeh, and he was closing in. And Moreau was still arguing with Eliot. “No wonder he hates it when I do that,” he murmured, earning a snort from Hardison. “Okay, he’s gonna need some help, some cover. When I give the word, I want you to kill the lights. Parker’s got Sophie, Eliot’s got Moreau. That should give them all a chance to get out.”
“If Eliot and Shiruyeh don’t shoot each other first,” Hardison amended soberly.
“Yeah,” Nate sighed, straightening. “There’s always that.”
*~*~*
Sophie’s breath left her in a rush as she hit the floor under Parker’s weight, but the next moment she sucked it all back in a painful gasp as gunfire erupted. Screams rang out, but she barely had time to register them before the room went dark. Then Parker’s hand was wrapped around her wrist with a tensile strength, the little thief hauling her to her feet, a sudden flare of light shining from the phone she was using as a flashlight.
“We need to get out of here!” the younger woman said urgently, apparently the only one in the room unfazed by the shots. “I’ve got her, Nate, she’s fine,” she reported.
Nate … Belatedly, Sophie realized that she could no longer hear the others’ voices in her ear. “My earbud-”
“Forget it,” Parker said. “We need-”
“Eliot!” Sophie gasped, pulling out of Parker’s grasp. “Where’s Eliot?” Parker said nothing, and alarms went off in Sophie’s mind. “Parker, where is Eliot?” she demanded. People were shouting for security, for lights, around them, a few wrestling Shiruyeh to the floor, but she paid them no mind, focusing on Parker, pale and still in the blue-white light of her phone. All at once, Sophie remembered the times she’d seen Eliot and the girl in quiet conversation apart from the rest of them, their faces grim, and fear ripped through her. “What have you done?” she asked harshly, grabbing Parker’s arm. “What’s he done?”
Parker returned her stare for a long moment, then said simply, “He’s fixing this. For all of us.”
And Sophie went cold inside. No … “Take me to him,” she ordered, certain Parker knew where he was going.
“He said my job was to make sure you get away from Moreau,” Parker said stubbornly. “‘Get everyone out, no matter what.’ That’s all that matters-”
“And Eliot?” Sophie asked her pointedly, digging her fingers into her arm. “Did he mention how he planned to get himself out?” Parker stiffened, her eyes widening, and Sophie knew she understood. “He didn’t, did he?” she pressed ruthlessly. “Because there isn’t a plan for that! The bloody fool’s going to sacrifice himself for us!”
Parker’s eyes were huge. “I didn’t- He never told me that,” she whispered.
Sophie softened and reached up, setting a gentle hand to the younger woman’s cheek and smiling sadly. “I know, dear. He wouldn’t. He thought he was doing this to save us. Now we have to save him.”
Parker stared at her a moment longer, then nodded decisively. “Hardison,” she said, “Eliot said there’s a secure garage here with cars kept ready to evacuate personnel in case of emergency. It won’t be on any public schematics, and he said it would probably have a separate security feed. Get us there.” She looked again at Sophie and, in a mark of just how much she had changed over the years, reached out and took her hand, curling her fingers tightly about Sophie’s. “Follow me.”
Sophie smiled and nodded. “Let’s go-”
There was another shout behind them, and suddenly a man was pushing past Parker, knocking the thief off balance. Shiruyeh. Sophie recognized him by the light of Parker’s phone, and her fury rose. Because of him, Eliot had been forced to wear a gun-
And she’d had it. All these men and their machinations, never thinking out the consequences, the cost, to those who would be left behind-
“You bugger!” she spat, lunging forward and grabbing him with one hand, flicking open her knife with the other. Allowing Annie Kroy to take over, she spun him around and slashed her blade across his chest. “I’ve had it with the lot of you!”
He snarled out something in another language and raised his arm to strike, but, before he could, Parker was there, shoving her taser into his chest just above the wicked gash and pulling the trigger. He cried out and convulsed as the electricity shot through him, then dropped to the floor, useless and bleeding.
Parker gazed at Sophie over his inert body and raised her taser, firing it again and giving her shark’s grin. “Let’s go steal an Eliot.”
*~*~*
“Hardison, I’ve lost Sophie!” Nate said, tapping his ear as her voice went silent. “What’s happening?”
Hardison tapped furiously at his keys, toggling between screens. “Her bud’s stil active. Must’ve just fallen out in the confusion. “Eliot!” he called. “Eliot, man, you still with us?”
And Nate suddenly realized he couldn’t hear the hitter either, though he was fairly certain that particular earbud hadn’t just “fallen” out. Damn it. “Sterling, what the hell is happening down there?”
“My agents would appreciate some light to help them figure that out,” the man snapped back.
“Hardison, lights,” he ordered.
“Ford!” Conrad burst into the room, his face a mask of anger. “What the hell are your people doing?”
Nate spun to face him, impaling him with a furious gaze. “Their jobs!” he spat. “Or have you forgotten that all this was your idea?” He stalked over to the director, backing him into a wall, and jabbed a finger hard into his chest. “Maybe if you’d told us about Shiruyeh from the start, given us information we could actually use, we could have stopped this before it started!” Rage twisted through him as he realized all the ways this could have been so much worse. “That bastard could have killed someone down there!” he shouted. “He could have killed one of my team-”
“Nate.”
Hardison’s strangely quiet voice broke into his tirade and he turned around, stiffening at the look in hacker’s eyes. “What?”
Hardison swallowed, then tipped his head toward his screen. “Moreau’s gone. And so is Eliot. And their trackers have gone off line.”
Nate swore softly as his worst fear suddenly sprang to screaming life. Of course the trackers were off line. Eliot would have anticipated that and found a way to neutralize them. Behind him, Conrad snickered.
“I told you Spencer couldn’t be trusted,” he said smugly. “He’s turned on you, like I warned you he would. He’s gone back to his master.”
Nate’s control snapped. He whirled around and slammed a fist into Conrad’s gut, doubling him over. Grabbing the man’s shoulders, he hauled him upright and slammed him into the wall again, then drove his fist across his jaw, knocking him to the floor. Conrad lay there, gasping and groaning, and Nate knelt down beside him, grabbing his jaw in a hard hand and turning his face toward him.
“No, you stupid son of a bitch,” he rasped, his stomach churning sickly. “He’s going to kill him.”
*~*~*
Damien followed Eliot through the back hallways of the large embassy, trusting implicitly that he knew where he was going. In the years Eliot had served him, he’d never gone into a building without knowing how he’d get out again, had never not had multiple exit strategies mapped out in his mind. It was only one of the many qualities that had made him so valuable, and so irreplaceable.
And yet Damien was worried. Not for himself, not with Eliot guiding and protecting him, but for Eliot himself. The initial fast pace of their escape was gradually slowing and Eliot’s movements, once quick and sure, now seemed heavier, almost labored, as if he were having to force himself to continue. Even his breathing had changed. Damien had tried a few times to catch up to him, to look at him, but Eliot always pulled ahead with a growled warning, avoiding any scrutiny. Even so, Damien noted that Eliot’s right arm, which he held stubbornly across his body, never moved, and that he had switched his gun to his left hand.
And he could have sworn that, here and there, he saw drops of dark red on the floor …
At the end of another hallway, Eliot stopped before a heavy metal door, entered a code into an electronic keypad, and exhaled softly as the door slid open to reveal a small service elevator. “In here,” he breathed, sounding infinitely weary.
Damien stepped into the elevator and, as the door slid shut, got his first good look at the man beside him. Eliot sagged back against the wall and closed his eyes, his face pale, his arm still cradled across his body. Through his jacket, Damien could plainly see the dark red stain spreading across his shirt.
“Still stepping between me and bullets, I see,” he remarked, trying to keep the concern from his voice, knowing Eliot wouldn’t appreciate it. “You need a doctor.”
“Later,” Eliot breathed. “When this is over.” He opened his eyes and turned his head to meet Damien’s gaze. “’Course, if you hadn’t wasted time arguin’ with me, I might not have been shot at all.”
Damien winced slightly, feeling an unusual twinge of guilt. “As direct as ever, I see,” he said with a faint, wry smile.
Eliot huffed out a breath and turned his face away again. “I’m tired, I’m pissed, and I got a bullet in me,” he rasped, his eyes sliding closed. “I ain’t in the mood to be nice.” The elevator reached its destination, whatever that was, with a small jolt. “End of the line,” he said as the door slid open.
They stepped out into what seemed to be an underground garage, with several dark - and presumably armored - sedans parked before them. “Of course,” Damien said as understanding dawned. He chuckled quietly, appreciating more than ever Eliot’s ingenuity. “The embassy emergency fleet. We’ll escape in the ambassador’s own car.”
“Somethin’ like that, yeah,” Eliot breathed. He shifted his gun into his right hand and reached into his trouser pocket with his left, pulling out a key. As he pressed a button on the fob, lights on one of the cars blinked on and off and the chirp of a security system sounded. “Figures it’d be one way the hell over there,” he muttered.
Damien laughed again and shook his head. “I have missed you, my friend,” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets. “No one else has your … delightful personality. Still, perhaps we should speed this up. You need a doctor, and I am eager to escape Director Conrad’s clutches.”
“Yeah, about that,” Eliot sighed. He bowed his head and closed his eyes, as if gathering his strength. He remained that way for several long moments, then raised his head and turned back around-
And Damien’s heart nearly stopped when he saw the gun, once more in Eliot’s left hand, lift and point with a frightful steadiness straight at him.
“Like I said,” Eliot rasped, blue eyes dark and unreadable, “this is the end of the line.”
*~*~*
“Do I want to know how you and Eliot acquired these things?” Sophie asked as Parker entered the code that opened the elevator door. The thief had gotten them through every door they’d encountered, whether by code or key, and Sophie tried not to wonder whether what they were doing actually constituted treason.
Parker frowned as the stepped into the small elevator. “We stole them, duh.”
Sophie closed her eyes and raised a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. Someone really needed to teach Parker the concept of “too much information.”
The thief startled her by speaking again. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I probably should have told you and Nate, or at least Hardison, what Eliot was planning. But he said it had to be this way, that this was the only way it would ever end. The only way we’d ever be safe.” She fixed haunted eyes on Sophie. “Moreau scares him like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” she said worriedly. “It’s like the guy just twists something in his brain!”
“I know,” Sophie sighed, wondering why she and Nate hadn’t paid more attention in the beginning to what now seemed so blindingly obvious. “But killing Moreau isn’t the answer, you have to know that. He has to know that.”
“I don’t think he does,” Parker said softly, sadly.
“Yes, well,” Sophie said, a note of steel creeping into her voice, “then I suppose I shall have to convince him.”
*~*~*
Damien stiffened, the smile draining from his face, his hazel eyes widening in shock as he stared at the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”
Eliot rolled his eyes at the stupid question, certain the gun in his hand made his intentions fairly obvious. To be fair, this was a last-minute adjustment to his plan. He’d originally intended to whisk Damien away in one of the cars and kill him somewhere else, hoping to spare his team from any blowback by making it look like he’d betrayed them by rejoining his “former master,” but Shiruyeh’s bullet had changed things. His shoulder hurt like a son of a bitch and his right arm was all but useless, and the effects of blood-loss were already setting in. If he was going to do this, it had to be here and now.
“What I should’ve done back in San Lorenzo,” he said. “Would’ve saved everybody a lotta trouble. But better late than never, right?”
Damien stared at him as if he still didn’t understand, or just couldn’t believe it. “Are you out of your mind?” he asked sharply, angrily. “You can’t kill me! You need me! Conrad will never let you and your people go if you do this-”
“Conrad’s gonna have enough trouble explainin’ why he was usin’ a bunch of criminals, including one he busted out of prison in another country, to sell nuclear materials to Iran,” Eliot countered. “Treason kinda trumps me shootin’ you.”
“This is ridiculous!” Damien snapped, taking a step forward but stopping abruptly when Eliot raised the gun slightly. “I had nothing to do with any of this! I am as much a pawn as you-”
“Which is exactly why I have to do this!” Eliot spat. “Goddamn it, Damien, you’re too valuable, too useful, to just leave sittin’ in a prison cell. How many more times is somebody gonna decide they need Damien fucking Moreau to help further their interests? And how many more times is my team gonna be dragged into shit like this because of you? Sooner or later, that’s gonna backfire on us. Sooner or later, one of us is gonna get hurt - or worse - because of you!”
Damien blew out a sharp, impatient breath. “That’s absurd-”
“Is it? Tell that to Hardison, to his Nana! All she does is take in kids nobody else wants, and they set her up to take the fall as a terrorist! Just to get us to help them control you! The Italian threatened to kill us and throw Nate into prison! Who’s next? MI6, Mossad, Mexico? I know you’ve got ties to the cartels! How about Russia, China, North Korea? Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if we got a visit from the fucking Mounties! As long as you’re alive, somebody’s gonna want to get their hands on you, and everybody seems to want to use my team to do it.” He shrugged, and immediately wished he hadn’t. “So that just leaves one solution.”
Damien shook his head slowly, shock and horror on his face. “You can’t do this,” he said again. “You won’t do this!”
Eliot laughed aloud in disbelief at the sheer ridiculousness of those words. “Of course, I will! I used to do it for you all the fucking time! How many people have I put in the ground because of you? For you? I was your fucking angel of death!” he shouted as fury ripped through him. “It’s why you had me on the payroll! When I showed up, people died!”
“That was business,” Damien said dismissively. “They were liabilities-”
“And what the hell are you?” he snarled. “Those people are my family! They are all I have left in the world. They are everything to me! And I will do whatever it takes to keep them safe!”
Damien was silent for long moments, and Eliot could see the calculations taking place behind the man’s eyes. Then he smiled, one of his rare, genuine smiles, and Eliot’s blood ran cold. “Then come with me,” he invited softly, seductively, his voice warm. “Take your place at my side again, and protect them from there. You know the power we held once, the influence we wielded. We could take that back, and then increase it to such a degree that no one, no one, would ever dare touch your friends!”
Eliot gasped softly and shuddered as that voice swept through him with a familiar intensity, demanding a response from him. And for a moment, he was tempted. They had been all but untouchable once, could be so again. And he could protect the others in ways he couldn’t now. All he had to do was go back to Damien-
And deliver his soul once more into the devil’s hands.
“I can’t,” he whispered, knowing the price was too high, even for them. “I made that mistake once, I can’t do it again. “
“Not even to protect your family?” Damien wheedled. “Eliot, think! Think of what you could do, what you could be! You don’t want to kill any more?” He shrugged. “Fine. I will have others for that. You can be my personal head of security. Look after me, after my family, and train others to do the dirty work for you.” He smiled again. “Alexander would be so happy to have you back! You are his idol, you know. Jules, of course, worships you, too, and as my heir he could benefit from your unique ‘tutelage.’ Then there is Adrijana-” His eyes shone at the mention of his daughter, whom Eliot remembered as a dark-haired, dark-eyed dimpled child full of sweetness and mischief. “She is almost nine now, and will be even more beautiful than her mother.” He winked and grinned. “You could help me keep all the young men she will attract in line-”
“Stop it!” Eliot said harshly. It all sounded so cozy, so innocent - home and hearth, domestic bliss - but he knew better. He’d been in that home, knew the orders that were given from that hearth.
“Come back to us,” Damien urged quietly. “Be part of my family again. What better way to protect your family?”
“I said stop it!” he snarled. “I’ve been down that road before, remember? I let you bend and twist and break me until I was somethin’ I didn’t even recognize.” He shook his head slowly and stared at the man who’d given him so much, been so much to him … and taken so much from him. “I can’t let you do it again. Not even for them.”
“Why not ask them first?” Damien asked reasonably. He swept his gaze over Eliot, winced as he saw the blood soaking into his shirt and shook his head slowly. “You’re hurt, you need a doctor,” he said quietly. “We don’t have to decide anything now. Let’s just get you some help, and we can talk about all of this later, when you are stronger and thinking more clearly.”
The gun wavered in his hand for a moment as he heard the concern, the genuine concern, in Damien’s voice, saw the worry in his eyes. You’re fond of him. Sophie’s words from the car, words he’d tried not to hear. Shouldn’t I be? Words he’d tried not to believe-
“No,” he whispered, tightening his hold once more on the gun and pushing everything that had ever been between him and Damien, everything he’d ever let himself feel for this man, aside. “I can’t let you anywhere near them. I know you, Damien, I know how you get your hooks into people. Hell, you still got ’em in me,” he admitted. “But I can’t let you have them. I just can’t.”
Anger swept across Damien’s face, washing the worry from it. “So you will kill me instead!” he snapped, his hazel eyes flashing. “Shoot me down like a dog in the street.” He snorted sharply. “You couldn’t bear to kill for me any longer, but you will for them, is that right? How does that even make sense?”
“It doesn’t,” Eliot sighed, tired to his soul and hurting more with each passing moment. He just wanted to get this done, wanted just to give in to the pain, the weakness, and sleep for a hundred years. “I just know that this is the way it has to be. You’re too dangerous, and they’re too important to me. It’s not right. None of this is right. And, no, it doesn’t make sense. But somebody’s gotta put a stop a stop to it, and,” he exhaled heavily as a wave of resignation swept through him, “I seem to be the one holding the fucking gun. Again.”
“Eliot, you- you can’t be serious!” Damien protested, panic starting to creep in as he finally recognized the inevitability of his fate. It was fitting, Eliot thought idly, that the man who had dispatched him to deliver this sentence to so many others now knew how it felt to be on the wrong side of it. “We can work something out-”
“No,” he sighed, “we really can’t. And like you said, I need a doctor, so it’s time to end this once and for all.” He lifted the gun slightly for a head shot, supposing he owed the man that mercy at least. For old times’ sake. “Goodbye, Damien.”
*~*~*
This must be what going mad feels like. The one portion of Nate’s brain that hadn’t gone completely numb with terror calmly noted that this was the second time he’d used that particular phrase in recent memory, and perhaps he should remember to ask Hardison where the quote was from?
Definitely going mad.
“Hardison,” he said finally, blinking in confusion at how normal his voice sounded, “get me something I can work with. Parker’s right - he won’t want to do this where it’ll have a chance of blowing back on us.”
“Nate …” the hacker began, and without looking away from the monitor screens, Nate gripped the younger man’s shoulder - killing the question he knew was about to be asked before it could be given voice and a chance to take root.
“I am not wrong about this,” he said fiercely. “I know how he thinks and the day somebody like Conrad can predict his movements better than I can is the day I hang this all up for good.” He exhaled softly, drawing much-needed strength and reassurance from the words. “Now find me something I can work with. You know how cranky I get when we’re flying blind.”
As jokes went, it was almost unforgivably lame but Nate’s pulse was loud and heavy in his ears now, beating against the white noise of his fear until it began to crack. I can stop him. I’m the only one who can. “There!” he exclaimed, pointing out what he’d noticed almost before he realized he’d seen anything at all.
“Good eye,” Hardison confirmed. A handful of keystrokes later the muted greys and blues of a security feed filled their vision. “Parker, got him. The garage is on the west end of the south side of the embassy; there’s tunnel access about three hundred feet east of where you and Sophie are.”
“Kill the doors,” Nate said quietly - unable to drag his attention away from the two figures on the left side of the screen, half-hidden by the fleet of cars. “Nothing leaves that garage until I say so.” He touched his ear reflexively. “Sterling, I need you.”
“Little busy right now.” His old friend’s voice said that he was clearly distracted; Nate smiled, and it wasn’t kind.
“Yeah, letting your target get away. Listen up.”
*~*~*
Blood loss and his injuries made him slow. Too slow in the end - Eliot had only half squeezed down on the trigger when a familiar voice reached his ears. “Put it down, Spencer!”
Sterling. It took a herculean effort, but in the end he managed to keep from finishing the shot. “Walk away, Sterling!” he yelled. His wound had begun to throb, setting up a nauseating counterpoint to his heartbeat. “This has nothing to do with you!”
“Beg to differ,” the Interpol agent countered. Eliot saw him slowly cross-stepping into position, his gun also positioned for a head shot - trained squarely on Eliot. “That man you have there is my payment for getting you all out of this mess.”
He’d forgotten in all the chaos. Sterling might have helped Nate out of respect for what they’d once meant to each other. He would have helped Hardison’s Nana because it was the right thing to do, and it would have made him look the hero. Making sure the rest of the team walked away clean required something bigger. Nate had already offered him Damien.
“That hand you feel, jerking your leash right now,” Damien said, his voice suddenly poisonous, “it isn’t mine. You know what I’m willing to do for you. I have already given you my word no harm will come to your little band of misfits and you know I can keep my word. Kill me, and the only thing that will happen is you die for your new master.”
“Shut up!” Eliot snapped. He refocused his aim, trying to stop the trembling in his arm by sheer force of will. “Nothing either of you can say is going to change this.” He felt Sterling take another step closer, heard more people entering the garage.
“If you don’t lower that gun right now I’m going to shoot you, how about that?”
The world went calm and slow around him, as Eliot picked up Sterling’s gauntlet one final time. Against all odds, he even managed to smile. “Go ahead,” he answered his long-time nemesis. “Go ahead if you think you’re fast enough.”
*~*~*
They reached the garage just in time to hear Eliot answer Sterling’s challenge; Sophie was barely fast enough to grab Parker’s shoulder and keep her from running into the middle of the scene.
Eliot was badly hurt - he’d been shot in the confusion, just like they’d feared. Even at a distance Sophie could tell there was far more blood than there should have been, and sweat was rolling off him as he struggled to hold his aim. Moreau’s face was angled away from them, but Sophie felt confident that his mask of studied arrogance would have finally slipped under the circumstances.
“I thought you cared about him.” Sophie flinched as Sterling spoke again. “Did you even stop to think about what this is going to do to him?”
Nate … she realized belatedly. He’s talking about Nate. She suspected that Eliot had made the same assumption she had - even though he never took his eye off his target, his confusion was writ large on his handsome face.
“I’m doing this for him,” he countered, and Sophie felt her chest tighten at the pain in his voice. “For all of them. As long as Damien lives, this will never be over.”
It had been his mantra almost since the beginning. Sophie heard a small hitch in Parker’s breathing; proof if she’d needed it that this was how he had won the thief to his cause. You can’t, she thought, wanting to call out to him, but terrified to disrupt whatever fragile balance Sterling had managed to bring to the situation.
“Have you ever tried to picture what he was like after his boy died?” The question, seemingly out of left field, drew Sophie’s focus entirely to the Interpol agent. “I’m sure you have - everybody did. The thing is, I don’t have to picture it.” The grifter’s eyes widened in horror as she realized Sterling’s voice was unexpectedly choked with emotion. “I was there. I was the one who finally convinced him to leave the gravesite hours after everyone else had gone home. Not Maggie, not his mother … me.”
“It’s not the same!” Eliot retorted. He’s losing it, Sophie realized. One way or the other this thing was moments from ending - the hitter was going to have to take the shot or risk having his decision made for him.
“It is exactly the same!” Sterling shouted, his face flushing a deep, angry red. “I’m going to shoot you because it’s my duty to stop you - and, let’s face it, you’re too stubborn to let this go - and it’s going to destroy him. If you don’t believe anything else I’ve ever told you believe that. Losing you will destroy him.”
Sophie only realized she was holding her breath when her lungs forced her to inhale. Eliot’s hand was starting to tremble, whether from emotion or the effects of his wounds she couldn’t tell. His focus never wavered though - now as always, Damien Moreau was the center of his world. “Sophie will help him,” he said at last, his voice cracking under the strain. “She can see him through his grief.”
No matter what anyone said about her talent - or lack thereof - Sophie Devereaux was more than enough of an actress to recognize her cue. “Who will see me through mine?” she asked, stepping forward into the fray.
*~*~*
He hadn’t realized she was there - how had he not realized she was there? “Walk away Sophie!” he called, blinking the sweat out of his eyes. “I’m beggin’ you, darlin’, just this once turn around and walk away.”
She stepped into his view then, a vision even with her veil missing and her careful hairdo in ruins. “If you think I’m going to make it easy for you to commit murder after everything we’ve been through together, then you don’t know me at all.”
”I don’t associate with murderers.” He hadn’t heard her say the words himself, but they’d reached a point in their lives where there was no such thing as a long term secret between them. So be it, he thought, even though his aim was already dropping. “Sophie, I have to do this. You know I do, and you know why.” Tears briefly blurred his vision; of all of them, he suspected he would miss this woman the most.
“I don’t know anything of the sort,” she spat, visibly angry with him now. “All I know is that this is not who you are, a man who takes the easy way out.”
Eliot suspected he could have resisted her pleas and tears, but Sophie had always insisted on seeing the best in him even when he couldn’t see it in himself, and her obvious scathing disappointment cut deep. Besides … “You think this is the easy way out?”
She was close to them now - close enough that Moreau could have made a grab for her and Eliot was no longer sure he could have stopped him. If she realized the potential danger, however, she gave no sign of it. “I think dying for something is always the easy way out. If you want to impress me, Eliot, then live.”
And with that, he was beaten. It was over. Sterling stepped in on his side and closed his hand over the gun; Eliot let him take it without a fight. “For whatever it’s worth,” the Interpol agent said softly as their eyes met, “I give you my word he is never going to see the light of day again.”
It felt strange trusting Sterling - he would later swear it had been the blood loss driving him, but he nodded at the man; acknowledging and accepting his promise the only way he could.
“I had such hopes, such plans for us.” Adrenaline jolted Eliot upright as he saw Damien move out at the edge of his vision. Sterling immediately fell back, aiming at Moreau this time, but Damien had only grabbed Sophie’s arm. “You could have grifted a dozen lifetimes,” he said, looking directly at her this time, “and never come close to the money and power I could have laid at your feet with Eliot at my back.”
Sophie’s gaze as she looked him over one final time was dismissive bordering on contemptuous. "You're adorable." Jerking free, she continued on past him - brushing aside one of the most powerful men in the world as if he was no more than the dust on her outrageously expensive shoes.
Eliot had never been more in love with her in his life.
Part 10