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Chapter Text

Of course it’s just when Alec has left them to go farther away than he’s maybe ever been, that Eliot gets a call and he gets a look in his eye, and says he needs to go to a funeral. Tomorrow. For a friend. 

This is another one of these things that Parker isn’t as good at helping him with as Alec is. But she can help, she hopes. 

This news has him restless, just a little bit twitchy, like he feels like he should be doing something but knows he can’t. She reaches out, telegraphs, takes his hand and squeezes tight, tilting her head in the direction of the stairs. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, what else’m I…” He shakes his head. Belatedly, he squeezes her hand back. “Couldn’t hurt.”

They go upstairs, to the room he keeps here at headquarters, and she just about has to manhandle him down onto the bed so she can lie down on top of him, make him still. Give him proof that at least one person he loves is still here and breathing. 

She lays her head down on his chest and listens to his heart. 

It takes some time for him to stop fidgeting but when he does, it’s in favor of putting his arms around her, tight, and sighing, long and sad. He holds her like the weight of her isn’t enough, he wants them to be able to sink into each other, dissolve into one. 

And they do their level best, just breathing together for a while. Parker could almost sleep, except she is acutely aware that Eliot is hurting. 

And after a while, he says, “Hey,” just softly. So she shifts slightly so she can look up at his face. “You doing okay? Better?” he asks.

There’s only one thing he can be talking about, the miscalculation she made when she admitted to doubting some of the things she chooses to trust. But the shape of that trust has changed, and, she thinks, it’s become more resilient. 

The three of them, they’re with each other always, no matter what. There’s no expiration date. 

“I’m better,” she reassures him. “Fit as a fiddle.” She thinks about those words. “An extremely valuable antique violin that’s just gotten tuned.” Then, briefly, she closes her eyes, remembering the way Alec’s hands look on a violin, the care he takes. “Mmm. Yeah,” she says. “All good.”

He takes a breath, moving her up and down. “Then that’s all I need right now,” he says. “All I really need.”

“Not everything you want, though,” she says.

“I want a lot of things, you know that,” he says. “Lot of things I can’t have.” He kisses her forehead. “But I love the things I have. Can’t ever say that too much. Thanks for reminding me.”

“Always,” she says, and settles her head onto his chest again to listen to his heart. Quiet and workmanlike as the ticking of a safe. 

They stay like that for most of the night. Parker sleeps. She doesn’t know if Eliot does, but he stays, doesn’t shift her, all night, which means he wants her close, wants to keep being reminded. 

It’s the least she can do, for her Eliot.

When he gets back from the funeral, he looks worse. Parker isn’t sure if that’s just the way things work sometimes, or if something has gone wrong. 

He sits, leaning his elbows on the bar, and looks at her. “Call the team in,” he tells her. “I got a job.” 

Something has gone wrong. 

“Yeah, of course,” she says. “Do you have names to send to H - Breanna, or are you giving the background?” 

She hasn’t made that mistake in a while, and of course Eliot notices, but he doesn’t give her any more than a look about it. “I’ll text her,” he says. “Even if I end up running alone on this one…”

“You don’t have to,” Parker says. “You know that, right? You don’t have to do this alone.”

“Not sure if I wanna get everyone involved with these guys,” says Eliot, wincing. “The PMC stuff, it’s always… messy.”

Parker goes and sits down so close to Eliot that their sides are pressed together, another reminder, and she says, “If it needs doing, I want to help.”

She doesn’t try and tell him that the others will feel the same. He needs to hear it from them. So she just sits there, being close to him, as they contact the rest of the team.

Breanna and Eliot end up each telling the team some of the context, taking turns. Because Eliot’s dead friend was right in the middle of a big mess. 

“Paul was the medic in his unit, and…”

There’s a stutter and a stop, and Parker has never seen Eliot hesitate, not like that, not just a brief reassessing but a freezing. 

He’s hurting. He’s hurting more now, because now it seems like there is something he should be doing, and he’s impatient to be about it. A cornered wolf, snarling, just waiting for the chance to bite.

Sophie is the one who ends up convincing him that this is a job for the team as a whole, and he needs to follow her lead on this one.

“You’ll get what you want,” she tells him. “I can promise you that.”

“Not everything,” he says. 

Because that is the way life is for Eliot, he always wants so much, and the universe keeps letting him down. 

But the whole team will do their very best for Eliot, because Eliot always does his best for them. And that looks a lot of different ways. 

Harry seems to have taken the hint that Eliot needs more friends who are comfortable enough around him to needle him and run with it, and Parker is so glad. Eliot needs a friend with him right now, and the team members who have known him longest are all out working on the job he brought them. It’s good that Harry is turning into the kind of friend who Eliot can start to open up around. 

It’s good, because this job seems intent on bringing up how awful it can be to do the kind of work Eliot used to do. 

They’re hunting ghosts, they’re hunting regrets and evil deeds and classified coverups.

And feelings keep spilling out of Eliot, he’s actually talking now, more than he usually would. More than Parker could have gotten out of him. 

Clever, opportunistic, sneaky, the little raccoon of Harry’s soul is doing its quiet best to learn how the rest of them work. Yes, he was a good choice for family. 

Even if his soul has creepy, manipulative little lawyer hands.

Parker spots someone in the bushes with a sniper rifle. Here! On their job! She tells Eliot and Eliot goes to deal with whoever it is. 

It’s Doctor Paul! “Doctor not-dead Paul!” she tells the team.

She’s been to a few of Sophie’s funerals, she even saw her own ballistics gel corpse once (Alec had gleefully created his own counterfeit corpse, and then when it came to hers and Eliot’s he’d gotten all upset when his forgery looked too real), but she’s never seen someone come back to life after she actually thought they were dead. Apparently it happens sometimes.

Yeah, she’ll go ahead and integrate that into her belief system.

But now Eliot has to get Paul to tell him what the fuck is going on. Because this makes things weird. 

Apparently Doctor Paul faked his own death because he got himself in a tight spot with their mark and thought it was the only way out. Because there were secrets, bad things between Paul and the mark, that Paul didn’t want to get out. 

“Why wouldn’t you tell me? Me!” Eliot yells at him, and yeah, she’s right, Eliot loves like he’s being stabbed. He loves his friend Paul and that is tearing him up right now. 

The way to fix this is for the bad things to come out into the open. 

So they fix it, and they tell everyone, they tell the world, what really happened on that bridge and what kind of men the country has trusted their safety to. And their power crumbles. 

It does hurt some people. But it needed to happen.

On their way back from the Grove, Sophie, Harry and Breanna share a car, which they tend to do if possible because their primary apartments are near each other, in a dense residential area; none of them spend as much time at headquarters as Parker and Eliot. But of course Parker keeps a few places, stashes, warehouses, whatever, and Eliot has a place with a big garden. 

Parker drives Paul and Eliot, both slumped tiredly in the backseat, and she even mostly follows traffic laws, because she figures both of them have probably had enough excitement, at least for today. 

As they’re approaching the city, she asks Eliot, “So where to? Headquarters, your place?” She doesn’t want to suggest Paul’s, Eliot was there earlier and had a lot of feelings happen to him. 

Eliot looks conflicted. 

“Hey,” says Paul. “I get it. You had to go to my funeral; asshole move on my part. You don’t want me in your space right now, that’s underst-”

“Fuck that,” Eliot says, balling his fist in Paul’s shirt and hauling him a few inches closer to glare at him. “That is the opposite of what I want. Right now, I don’t wanna let you out of my sight.”

Paul licks his lips and says, “Yeah, all right, works for me. Your place, then?”

And Eliot’s eyes flick up to meet Parker’s in the rearview mirror, just for an instant. 

“What?” Parker asks. When he doesn’t say anything else, she says, “Eliot. I keep telling you you should go and have fun whenever you want.”

“Oh, okay,” says Paul. “So when you told me ‘The polyamory thing could make things complicated’ you meant you were gonna feel guilty about it around them, huh?” 

“That’s not…” Eliot sighs. 

“I thought you worked that out,” Parker says, frowning. “It wasn’t a problem with Maria, right?”

There’s silence from the backseat, and then Eliot sighs. “Hard to explain,” he says. 

“Wait,” says Paul. “It’s not ‘cause I’m a guy, is it?” 

“No!” Eliot says. “Well.”

“‘Cause that’s not cool,” Paul tells him. “You don’t get to be guilty about the gay thing.”

“It’s not that,” says Eliot. “It’s not. But maybe sleeping with a woman who isn’t Parker don’t feel as much like cheating as sleeping with a man who isn’t Alec.”

“Oh,” says Parker. That almost makes sense. 

“I don’t get it,” Paul says. 

“Because I don’t do sex,” Parker volunteers. 

“Oh,” says Paul. 

“But that’s not…” Eliot takes a breath and starts again. “I was just thinkin’ I don’t particularly want to let Parker out of sight either.”

“Oh,” says Paul again. “Well, I suppose that could make things complicated.”

“Not important,” Eliot says. “I got you close to me all last night, Parker, you don’t need to stick around tonight too.”

“Well, I don’t mind if Paul doesn’t mind,” Parker tells him. “You never let me watch you with anyone but Alec.”

There’s silence again, but Parker feels like it’s a different flavor. She makes the turn to go to Eliot’s house. 

“I’ve certainly had sex in less comfortable circumstances,” Paul ventures.

“I shouldn’t’ve said anything,” Eliot mumbles. 

“No, hey,” says Paul. “It’s really good to see you asking for the things you want, you know? And I want to encourage that.”

“You know,” says Parker, “I wasn’t sure about you after the whole ‘making Eliot think you were dead instead of just asking for help’ thing, but you’re growing on me.”

“I guess we’re about to get to know each other a little better then,” says Paul. 

Parker learns a lot that night, about both of them. 

They disperse in the morning, but all find themselves back at headquarters later that day, to watch the continuing fallout of the job in the news. At some point Paul and Eliot disappear out to the courtyard, and Parker decides that her permission to lurk around the two of them hasn’t expired yet. 

“I said I'd testify,” Paul is saying. “And once I did, I felt the darkness lift.”

“Well, you carried that weight a long time,” says Eliot.

And he knows about carrying things maybe too long. 

There’s something in their conversation she doesn’t have the context for, something Eliot seems to think can’t be fixed. One of his old shadows. But the way he talks about everyone but himself? 

It seems like Eliot knows the truth has to come out if you’re going to really heal.

Parker was a mess after she told Eliot the things she did, but afterwards, she healed, and now she’s more resilient. 

Maybe Eliot thinks he’d be too much of a mess for her if he let all his secrets get unknotted. Maybe he’s wrong. 

Maybe the time is coming when Parker should ask the question that Eliot told her eleven years ago not to ask, because if she asked, he would tell her.

Chapter Text

The minute Eliot sees Hardison’s face on the screen, he breaks into a great big beaming smile, and Parker loves seeing that. 

But then she finds out he’s disappearing. Going somewhere alone, without any of them, for days. 

He’s going to see his father. There are ghosts there. Knots that need to be untied. 

He’s working on the things she set him to working on, and that could be good, but it could be dangerous. Like it was for her, when she tried to show him how. 

“I’m worried, should I be worried about that?” Parker asks, pointing a thumb over her shoulder at Eliot going out to get the food truck ready. 

“I’m a bit worried myself,” Sophie says. “But obviously this needs to happen. It’s needed to happen.”

“He doesn’t have to go alone!” Parker protests. “But I don’t know what to do about it.” She presses her lips together and watches Alec on the screen, floating in space, so high up even gravity can’t reach him. “I can’t do this by myself,” says Parker to Alec’s face on the big screen. “I need you here.”

“You got this,” Hardison says. “You’re good at people, and you’re good at Eliot. But do you know what else you have? You have Sophie, who is good at people in different ways and has known Eliot for the same number of years we have. And you have Bre, who’s known him since she was little, and she’s got that bounce to her, you know, that ability to look the worst of reality in the face and shine on anyway. And you got Harry. Well.” Hardison trails off.  

“Harry is getting good at being friends with Eliot,” Parker tells him. “Even if he has creepy little raccoon hands.”

“I have what now?” Harry asks, flipping his hands over to look at both sides of them.

“Don’t worry about that,” Breanna tells him with a dismissive wave. “It’s not literal. Parker has this thing with, like, people’s inner beasts? You get used to it.”

“Right, right,” Hardison says, nodding in that way he does when he doesn’t really understand what Parker is saying but trusts her anyway. “And you got me, anytime you or Eliot need to call me up to talk.”

“Okay, but what do I do now?” Parker asks. “Do I follow him, like, stay out of sight, just in case?”

“Oh,” Sophie says dubiously, “I don’t think he’d appreciate that, you seeing what he does on this journey without his knowing? No, you have to be out in the open, with something like this. What he needs is emotional support. What he needs is to know that you’re there. And hiding undermines that whole purpose.”

“Emotional support. That’s.” Parker wrinkles her nose. “Alec does that so much better.”

“You can do this,” Sophie assures her. “I know you can.” 

“But hey,” says Hardison from the screen, “you know, maybe Breanna, you could go too? To maybe. Make sure the emotional support bases are covered. Because not everyone has the same definition of that sometimes.” 

Breanna does a little grimace and draws back. “Oh, I don’t think Eliot is gonna be thrilled about my coming with, if he’s going to see his estranged dad? You don’t think he’ll kick me out of the truck?”

“Well, we’re obviously not going to tell him we’re there right away,” Parker tells her. “We’ll hide in the back and then ambush him with emotional support once he’s already too far to turn back.”

After a moment, Breanna nods. “I’m in.” She goes to grab her go bag. 

And soon Parker and Bre are in the back of the food truck, curled in a corner together as Eliot gets underway. 

Breanna has known Eliot since the first time Hardison brought him and Parker to meet his Nana. But Eliot has always been careful about what parts of himself he shows her, and he always seems so at home in Nana’s place in the city, and Parker supposes that Breanna ended up knowing much more about the ways she and Eliot are similar than the ways they’re different. Breanna hasn’t had much chance to see the way the lines of his face go soft and bittersweet whenever the team is in a small town.

Of course this is where he’s from. 

They meet Eliot’s dad in the middle of fighting off a bunch of guys, which makes way too much sense. And of course there’s a job here that he’s right in the middle of. Because the person who gave Eliot the childhood he always talks about, the small town, the community and the interesting little stores, the people who stick up for each other, but also the person who raised Eliot to be a fighter, of course if there’s trouble here he’s going to be in the middle of it, fighting. 

They have to help. But this makes things even more complicated. Eliot is here for his own reasons, he didn’t expect to have to do a job here. 

Parker is glad Sophie is running point on this one, instead of her, but even Sophie looks a little shaky, a little worried about how this is going to work out for Eliot. 

That’s not reassuring, but they have to do their best. This is so important. 

While they’re on their way to do some grifting, she pokes at Eliot, trying to get a feel for how he is. 

Eliot is always solid on the job, he’s Eliot, but today he’s got a strange look about him in between times. Like he’s not quite really there. Which is scary.

She stands up on the desk and puts all her worry into the grift, and says urgently, “Has anyone seen a python?”

It’s so much fun to draw the attention of the whole office, watch them widen their eyes and scurry out. Parker can tell that Eliot is having fun with his part of it too. But the minute everyone is out of the office, he gets that look to him again, like nothing is quite right, like he’s lost. 

“Are you dying?” she asks him. 

He avoids the question. 

“Are you?” she asks.

“No, I’m not dying, Parker.”

Parker mostly believes him, but still doesn’t like the look of him. He looks like he’s vanishing, like he isn’t being seen properly. It must be his dad, because she sees him, the team sees him. But he’s here because it’s important right now that his dad sees him, because that’s what he came here for. 

He’s been trying to get better at letting people see him, and he’s been working hard at that, and Parker is mad at Maria for finally seeing what he was and saying no, and now she is mad at his dad for refusing to look.

“You know, maybe your dad would stop ignoring you if you told him you were dying,” she suggests to Eliot, mainly out of spite. 

She’s still disappointed when he rejects the suggestion. She needs to remind him that they see him, that he is important. So important. To the family he has now. 

“Well, if you are dying,” she says, “please let me know so I can have Hardison prepare your robot body.”

She hopes that helps, but after that they have to get to work, because this town is important to Eliot, too, and this town is in such big trouble. 

He makes breakfast for his dad the next morning. And all of them, but it’s stuff he made because he knows his dad likes it. That gets Billy’s attention, at least. But it’s clear this is still going to depend on how the job plays out. So Parker throws herself into the job. 

Things go wrong, but they recover, and Parker gets to do maybe the coolest thing she’s ever done. Break into a building that’s as secure as a safe, and as dangerous as a bomb, and set it to explode. 

On the way back from the gloat to Billy’s house, Billy takes Parker aside and asks, “So, you and my son. You two dating?”

Parker stalls, gathering more information. “Did he say that?”

“No, he didn’t say anything. I just got a vibe off you two. So am I right?”

Wincing slightly, Parker starts, and stumbles. “It’s.” She takes a breath. “Listen. I’m not always the best at saying things the right way that will make people think everything is normal. Because we’re not normal-normal. We’re our own kind of normal.”

Billy blows out a breath. “I think that’s the longest way I ever heard someone say ‘it’s complicated.’ So here’s what I really want to know. You gonna break his heart?”

This, she can answer. “I am going to do my very best to fix his heart,” she tells him earnestly.

He looks at her for a log moment. “And if you can’t?” he asks.

“I keep trying.”

“For how long?”

“For always,” she says easily. “He’s Eliot.” 

“Even if you find someone else who’s easier to love?”

It’s not about easy. Alec is the easiest person in the universe to love, and it was still hard for her. But. “Once I love someone, I don’t think I know how to stop.” 

She thinks she might have shown a little more of her soul on that one than she meant to. But this is Eliot’s dad. How can she not?

Billy looks at her with sad eyes, and he says, “I can’t say I’m not glad to hear that, for Eliot’s sake. But I get the feeling my boy still sticks himself right in the middle of danger, and even with people who don’t, there aren’t any guarantees.”

“I know,” says Parker. And then she smiles, bright belief in her heart. “But we know the smartest tech guy in the whole universe, and when our bodies stop working, he’s going to replace them with robot ones. So when I say for always, I mean for always.”

“Is that so?” he asks, a speculative look in his eyes.

But then they’re at his house again and the others are all getting ready to go, so she doesn’t get a chance to tell him about all of the plans she has. 

That’s okay. She’ll see him again. 

Sophie was really worried about how this might go, apparently, but as they say goodbye, Harry reassures her. 

“Thanks to you, Eliot was able to do something he hasn't been able to do his entire adult life,” he tells her. “Be happy.”

Harry is getting so good at Eliot. And Harry is right, Parker thinks, there is a better, lighter joy in Eliot now. 

Things are said now, instead of unsaid, between Eliot and his dad, which is better, but now that the job is over, Eliot is letting himself be kind of a mess about it. He’s crying as he says goodbye to his dad, and that’s something Parker is still not the best at. 

But that’s okay, because Eliot’s dad is there to hug him, and Sophie is there to check on him and make sure he has help putting himself back together. And Breanna and Harry and Parker are all there, to support Eliot in all the different ways that they do. 

He’ll be okay. They’ll all make sure of it.

Chapter Text

It’s a very badly kept secret that Eliot likes Christmas almost as much as Parker does. 

He has mixed feelings about it sometimes, but he always likes the fuss even when he pretends not to. Hardison has complicated feelings about Christmas too, but they’re different. Hardison likes celebrating it, but he doesn’t like being made to celebrate it, especially the churchy parts, because that brings back bad memories of being a little Jewish kid fostered by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Anyway, Parker bothers Eliot with festive things because he secretly not-so-secretly really likes it. 

Eliot and Parker and Breanna have to sort through the mess in the back of the truck before they give out presents to the kids, and most of the presents are untouched and some of them smell a little smoky but they’re fine. Parker has bright-colored wrapping paper close to hand of course, and she’s rewrapping the ones that got opened when Breanna was trying to escape. 

Eliot is bagging up the trash, the ripped wrapping and other detritus, and he waves a seriously singed artist kit with colored pencils and other art supplies at Breanna. “Why’d you have to open so many of these and leave ‘em around, huh?” he asks.

“Well excuse me, I was trying to not die!” she points a finger at him. “You’re lucky I knew what to look for at all. Kits, like science and arts and craft kits for kids, they’re usually about that shape and size and they rattle when you shake ‘em, a different sound from cardboard puzzle pieces ‘cause all those little whatever bits and tools in the kit are rattling against the vacuformed plastic case. It’s a very distinctive sound,” she tells him. 

“Huh,” says Eliot, shaking the art kit gently. “Yeah, I’ll give you that one.” He sighs. “Well, we can’t give this one to the kids. Guess it’s trash.”

“Hey, no no no, don’t put perfectly good stuff in the landfill, please and thank you. If no one else wants it we can always just put the pencils and stuff in Nana’s craft corner,” Breanna says. “Although it’s pretty full already, and I’m more of a digital drafter, so if either of you want ‘em? Parker, you and Alec are both more hands-on about drawing and stuff than me, right?”

Parker could add them to her hoard. They might even get used. But there’s something about the way Eliot’s holding the kit that gives her pause. 

“Eliot,” she says.

“Yeah?” He looks at her.

“Oregano seeds?” she asks, gesturing to the kit. 

He squints at the kit for a long moment. “Yeah, maybe,” he says. 

“What? What’s that mean?” Breanna asks.

“Means I’m keeping the kit,” Eliot tells her. He doesn’t explain further, but he doesn’t get closed off or bluster about it, which shows how much he trusts Breanna. 

Later, he’s sitting, with the colored pencils beside him, staring at a blank page.

“How’s it going?” she asks, sitting down next to him and bumping his shoulder with hers. 

“Dunno how to start,” he admits.

“However you want,” she says.

He scowls at her. “That’s real helpful,” he says sarcastically. Then he asks, “How’d you get to be so good at drawing?”

Parker looks up at the ceiling, remembering. “Well, I went to kindergarten,” she starts, “and we were learning stuff like coloring and reading and counting. And I never went back to school after that, and I kind of just figured if I was there, I’d just keep working on coloring and reading and counting. So I practiced them on my own instead, in between thief stuff, and I figured I’d be caught up.” She shrugs. “I just thought that’s what every kid did. And then when I was running with the car thieves, one of them taught me tagging. I never really got into spray paint, too messy, but I liked markers and sticker art. And when Archie was training me, I figured out that drawing stuff helped me remember it, even if I didn’t keep the pictures, and even if I did keep the pictures, they left less conclusive evidence than photographs.” She purses her lips, thinking. “So there’s a lot of. Stuff. With drawing, for me. It’s not really something that can just be a little happy thing. I like it okay. It’s part of the job. But it’s not really fun, not just fun, at least.” She tilts her head to one side. “Nana explained to me later that it’s a thing they teach little kids because it teaches them a bunch of stuff that makes learning other things easier. And because it’s fun.”

Eliot lets a smile quirk the corner of his mouth. “Don’t think I’ve drawn much since kindergarten,” he says. “Since I was pretty little, at least. Got busy with sports an’ everything. Working in the shop.”

“Good,” she says. “We’re not looking for something for you to be good at. You’ve got, like, seventy thousand of those already. Maybe you get to be bad at stuff sometimes.”

“Maybe,” he says. “But it’s hard to want to be bad at stuff.”

“You need to get better at being bad at stuff,” she tells him. “How does that sound?”

He huffs a laugh. “Sorta like a challenge,” he says. 

She kisses him on the tip of his nose. “Good,” she says.

And he picks up a pencil.

Chapter Text

Parker says, “We love you, Harry,” like it’s easy. Like somewhere in all those fights she’s fought it’s gotten easy to do things like love new people and talk about it and forgive and feel things that are good without wonderin’ when the other shoe is gonna drop. 

So, turns out Eliot is gonna be in jail overnight. Waiting on violence they need to hope never happens. 

He’s used to waiting. Used to sitting with his thoughts when there’s nothing useful he can do, when being alert and quiet and out of the way is his only job.

But every jail is full of contraband, and probably after substances (alcohol, tobacco, any number of drugs), the things that get smuggled most are the things used to pass messages along. A scrap of paper scrounged here, a little blunt golf pencil stashed there. And pens, of course, but they got value for other, worse reasons.

He doesn’t usually bother with any of it, but Parker’s scheme has got its hooks in him. Not in a bad way. It’s not an urge he couldn’t overcome, if he needed to. But there’s really no need to. 

Actually, trading keeps him in the loop, helps people trust him with info. 

“Just a nub of pencil,” he tells the guy he’s dealing with. “Just wanna draw a little, keep my mind off things.”

So he does, just cartoony little things, a couple of kids playing ball in a grassy field, a pigeon he saw the other day. 

He’s not good at it. Not yet, maybe never. Not like he’s good at other things. But there’s still something there, something that speaks, something that’s art. 

Parker always likes to say that Eliot taught her how to like things, taught her about art. About the messages people leave for each other when they make something, messages without words. How to watch for them, listen for them. 

Eliot thinks she surpassed him at that a long time ago. 

And now she’s teaching him.

He draws small to save the paper, so it’ll last longer. And then he tears off each little drawing and hides it somewhere different. 

A little piece of just, there was beauty, even here. A little piece of hope he can leave for the next person who’s in here long enough to find the little corner where he’s stashed it. 

That way he can pretend it’s a job, it’s for someone else. But it’s really just for him, a little happy thing, but it’s… That, it’s hard to feel. 

Paper gone, he sighs, and settles in to wait. 

Curled up together on the couch in Parker’s room, because Parker needed cuddles and Hardison is still very much out of reach, he tells her quietly how it’s been going. 

“Yeah, there’s a seed there,” he tells her. “There’s. Well. I think there is.” He squeezes her closer. “It’s something. Light. Like it’s gonna blow away in the breeze.” He looks at her. “It doesn’t, it shouldn’t matter. Why’m I…” he shook his head.

“Terrified,” she guesses softly. 

She isn’t wrong. 

“Yeah,” he admits, closing his eyes. 

She leans into him, and she talks slowly, like she’s figuring it out. 

“Being happy without any other feelings mixed in is weird at first,” she tells him. “It feels like it isn’t allowed. Like if you’re all the way happy then you’re doing something wrong.” She huffs defiantly. “But you’re not. You’re perfect.”

Eliot sighs. He wants to deny it. It’s not true, of course it’s not true, it’s horseshit, nonsense, it’s just plain wrong. But denying it will make Parker double down, he knows her well enough to know that. 

She specializes in believing. 

He looks at her. 

“You’re doing so well,” she tells him, stroking his cheeks with her thumbs. Kissing his nose, his cheekbone, his lips. 

He kisses back, of course. How can he not, his girl, his brilliant beautiful Parker. 

She’s trying to teach him how to fly.

Chapter Text

“Does anyone ever really leave?” Sophie’s old friend Billy says, not for the first time. And Eliot knows what he means. 

Moreau has been gone for years, but the time with Moreau still clings to Eliot, drags him down. 

So Eliot needs to know. “Who the hell is Ramsey?”

Her answer is not reassuring. “Someone who I very much hoped thought I was dead.”

Soph has always been good at keeping her past under wraps, but lately it’s started to catch up to her, and it’s been coming unraveled. She hasn’t handled it perfectly, but she’s handled it with grace, and Eliot envies her that. 

All he can do is make sure to be there, to make it easier if he can.

Sophie’s ghosts, they’re not easy. But she’s facing them, one at a time, and maybe this one, the one she’s hidden so deep, buried in herself, maybe it’s the last of ‘em. 

Maybe someday soon she can be done, she can rest. 

Righteously. Forgiven.

Leaving the past behind. 

Now, there are some people who will try to sell you a simple method for being reborn, but if it’s simple, it won’t work. Rebirth is supposed to mean starting over, washed clean, but all that does is put you back at the beginning of your journey. Begs you to step wrong again. Any lessons you’ve learned, any progress you’ve made wiped away. 

And some things, some things are part of you and can’t be wiped away. 

Eliot’s still got more to do, and that’s not changing anytime soon. 

But some days he’s so tired. Some days Parker is light as a feather and Sophie is stepping towards the end of her journey and Eliot knows he has such a long way to go to get where they are. Some days it’s only Harry it doesn’t bother him to be around, because Harry has a long list ahead of him yet. A long list of sins that need righting. 

Still not as long as Eliot’s. These are good people, and some days Eliot still doesn’t know what he’s doing here. 

He goes back to his house, after they wrap the job, meaning to weed the garden but he ends up just sitting. Sitting on his nice sofa in his nice house with the big garden, with the sketchpad and bright colored pencils on the table in front of him, untouched. 

There’s a song in his head, this is not my beautiful house, his brain sings at him, and then Parker pops up in the doorway, having broken in again, and the next line ambushes him. He puts his face in his hands.

“You’re not okay,” she says. 

Let the water hold me down, the Talking Heads continue in his brain. 

“No,” he agrees.

She sits herself right down on the couch next to him, scootching in close, and he lets her. 

“Let’s call Hardison,” she says, getting out her phone. 

Eliot sighs, long, relieved? He can’t quite place the emotion. But yeah, it’s been too long. “Yeah,” he says, letting himself put an arm around her, because it feels okay to need them both.

“Hey, babe,” Hardison says from the screen as he picks up Parker’s call, and then he sees that it’s both of them, and he smiles, and he says, “Hey, babes.”

Eliot is glad it’s a video call, because he can just give a little tiny corner of a smile, and he doesn’t have to talk, not yet.

“Hi!” Parker says, waving her fingers at the screen. “We just wrapped a job, and it went really well, and it turns out it was a good thing we took Harry to the ax throwing place with us that one time, because dodging axes was a skill he did end up needing!” She squinted at the screen, a bit smug. “But now Eliot is having feelings.”

“Uh huh,” says Hardison. “Hey, El,” he says, in that voice of his that’s just so soft and sweet. “You wanna talk?”

Am I right? Am I wrong? says the song in his brain. My God, what have I done?

Eliot rubs at his face, and then he mumbles, “I got a song stuck in my head,” because where do you start with this stuff? Where do you even start?

“Yeah, what song?” Hardison asks. 

“Once in a Lifetime,” Eliot tells him. 

“Huh,” says Hardison, and then does something out of frame, and then says, “Oh, oof.” He peers at Eliot through the screen like he’s trying to see into his soul across all the miles between them. “So you, uh… feeling a little disconnected?”

And it all sort of… it overflows, the feeling, it’s saturated all of him like a sponge and it’s gonna find its way out one way or another. 

“Feel like I’m drowning,” he says. 

Alec blows out a breath. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I gotcha. Parker, can you rub his back for me, just a little? Like…” And then Parker’s hand is skimming across his shoulderblades, up and down, firm but not too firm, and Eliot’s lungs don’t feel like they’re struggling anymore. “Yeah, like that,” Alec says, soft, from the phone. 

Eliot takes a deep, slightly shuddering breath. 

“There you are,” Alec says. 

“Fuck, I miss you,” Eliot says, almost a whisper. 

“Yeah,” Hardison says, matching his tone. 

“I don’t…” Eliot says, and then trails off. There are so many things he wants to say that he knows Parker and Hardison would object to. The things his head is full of, about how even when they’re here, they’re out of reach, because Eliot is so, so far below them, so mired in regrets. He takes another breath, Parker still keeping him from locking up with the easy motion of her hand on his back. 

“It’s not allowed to be too much,” he says, “but sometimes it is anyway. Some days I'm swimming and some days I'm drowning and I don't think I ever realized how much time I spend drowning until you two gave me a taste of dry land.”

“Yeah?” Alec asks. “You got a place to rest now?”

“I do,” says Eliot. “But it's not the place where I thought I'd end up. It's oceans away. And the only reason that’s even a little okay is because you’re here with me.”

On the screen, Hardison closes his eyes. “And here I am up in the stars,” he says. “Aw, fuck, El, I need to give you a hug.”

“Yeah,” Eliot agrees. Parker leans her head on his shoulder. “We need you back safe, you understand that, right?” he tells Alec, knowing he’ll be able to hear all the other things in it he can’t bring himself to say right now. 

“I promise,” says Alec. “I will be back with you as soon as I can manage.”

That’s good enough. 

It has to be.

Chapter Text

Eliot's feeling better, and maybe someday there will even come a time when it doesn't take Parker literally sitting on him to get him to relax. But it'll do, for now, Parker's weight on him and Alec's voice coming across the miles. 

They save him, every time. 

They're always asking him to be as happy as he can be. The knee jerk response of 'I don't deserve it' comes and goes in waves, but weaker every time. And he's weathered this storm and come out the other side. 

So going into this job, he's in a pretty good mood. 

“This is Dr. Daniel Gray,” Breanna says, gesturing at the screen. “I want him bagged and gagged and sitting in front of me in two hours.”

“And now we’re talking,” Parker says. “Eliot?”

Eliot is pretty sure Breanna is joking, and only slightly less sure that Parker knows it. But he decides to play along. “You’ll have him back in one,” he says, suppressing a smile.

Sophie is the one to break the game, still so used to Parker needing her advice to read people, as if Parker hasn’t known Bre since Bre was twelve. “Parker. She’s… she’s kidding.”

Breanna looks at them all, a familiar darkness in her eyes, for long enough that Eliot gets that this is personal, that she really is tempted to call the fury of Eliot and Parker down on this guy. But she does break. “All right, fine,” she says, annoyed. And lays out the job.

It’s at a college, it’s a science geek thing. And Harry wants to try it the legal way. The mostly legal way. 

It’d be kinda nice if they could pull that off, honestly. If a system worked the way it was supposed to, for once. 

There’s only one guard on day duty for the whole campus; campus security is really more of a night gig, most times. The plan is for Eliot to take him out if he comes around, and Eliot is kinda hoping he doesn’t. 

But of course no job can go perfect. 

There's the guard. And the hallway is full of kids, of course. And then the guard walks up to him, a maintenance guy the guard clearly knows isn't meant to be here, and gives him a smile and a reason to move elsewhere, not a lecture or a threat. 

Ah, shit.

Eliot stumbles through a terrible explanation of why someone who’s here to fix the sump would be up on a ladder messing around with the acoustic tile, and all the guy says in response is, “You remind me of my son. I lost him in the Gulf War. You ever served?”

Ah, shit.

“Yes, sir, I did,” says Eliot, because if a guy like this asks, you tell the truth. 

This is surreal. Like running into an old friend on a con, the kind of friend who covers for you. Only they’ve never met.

The guy (the name on his badge is Floyd) does remind him a little bit of his dad, too. But… cuddlier.

Eliot does not want to have to fight him. 

He'd break every rule he ever set himself for Parker, for Hardison. If they needed it, if they asked him. No hesitation. He'd cross this particular line for Breanna, or for Nana or any of her kids, in a heartbeat if he had to. 

It wouldn't be a sure thing with Soph or Harry; they'd see his regret and end up regretting too. The same is true with Parker and Alec, but they know he can't say no to them, so they don't ask without weighing the cost, not anymore. 

There are some people… there are some people he just. Can't bring himself to disappoint. 

Case in point. Floyd.

He sighs, recognizing he's not gonna be able to make himself do this for a client, even Breanna's friend, not for plan A. Especially for Harry's plan A, the point of which is to break as few laws as possible. 

Parker always gets antsy when she can't steal for a job, but Eliot was kinda sorta looking forward to just being a lookout on this one. 

And maybe it doesn't have to be a fight. Maybe he can slow down sometimes and let the rest of the team pick up the slack. 

They're good at this.

“Sophie, I can’t take this guy out,” he says. 

Sophie makes skeptical noises and accuses him of dropping the ball, but she makes it work. 

The problem they run into isn’t with stealing the proof back. They get that fine. It’s new info that means they have to stall the mark’s plans at least until after the hearing.

Sophie keeps needling him about the thing with Floyd. But Eliot just does his job, has fun with it, plays the fool and locks Dr. Gray in a closet ‘accidentally.’

The insults Gray spits through the door sure don’t make Eliot wanna let him out any faster. 

And then, like clockwork, there’s Floyd. Giving Eliot that look. That look that says ‘you’re up to something, and I should probably disapprove, but…’

Something in him got freed up, Eliot thinks, when he made things right with his dad. He sits in front of the busted door, next to the spilled coffee, and he grins up at Floyd like a kid knowing he's been caught at mischief. 

Eliot admits he’s got Dr. Gray in the closet, and Floyd doesn’t seem in any hurry to rescue him. In fact, when Eliot goes to give Gray the key, Floyd stops him, saying, “Can’t we just wait and let him stew in there overnight?”

It’s so easy to laugh along with this guy. 

Floyd calls Eliot ‘new blood,’ not the name on Eliot’s doctored badge, and Eliot wonders if Floyd suspects it’s not his real name. 

He still trusts Eliot enough to invite him to the little secret club they got going on down here, on the edges of campus life. 

So Eliot trusts him enough to ask for a little help with the con, here and there. 

It’s good to hear Hardison’s voice in his ear, even if it’s just for a minute, even if he’s being the eccentric billionaire investor for their con, and not himself. 

God, Eliot misses him. But it’s not as bad as it was. 

When things take another twist and they need to ramp up the crime again, Parker says, “You know, Hardison got me a new grappling hook for Christmas.” The way her fingers play over it tells Eliot she feels the same ache. 

The three of them, they used to keep some things separate, but they’ve let some of those lines go fuzzy. Parker still doesn’t participate physically in the sex, but she’s branched out in the other ways she interacts with it; Hardison is now almost as good at leading Parker in a swing dance as Eliot is; and Eliot has gotten less weird about the things that Hardison does with Parker, the way he indulges her kinks. 

So when Eliot is faced with the prospect of taking down some guards or finding a more creative solution that will make everybody happier, he says, “I got an idea,” and then adds, “Parker, you and your grappling hook are about to be very happy.”

He knows what he’s saying and isn’t self-conscious about it anymore, which is growth.

Floyd knows Eliot doesn’t work for the university, and he still treats him like part of the club, and as he says goodbye, he says, “You ain’t done fixing things.”

Eliot nods, because that's what you do when someone like Floyd says something like that to you.

It’s true. 

Truer than he’d like it to be. 

Despite how relentless he’s been, there’s always more to do. But Parker is trying to get him to turn away from that, at least sometimes, at least a little.

It’s not what he’s taught himself to do. And he doesn’t know if he can do both. 

There are two wolves inside you, Breanna would say, the way she speaks in memes sometimes, there are two wolves inside you, fighting.  

(Parker’s never said what she sees in Breanna’s soul, but Eliot sees enough of himself in her sometimes to imagine her being a young hungry wolf pup, the way he was once.)

He knows the original story. The thing you feed, it grows, it triumphs. 

Parker has asked him to feed this seed of joy, to nurture it. 

Maybe there isn't a good wolf and a bad wolf in this story. Maybe they're both just animals. Or plants, the way Parker talked about oregano. 

Maybe there's just a tired wolf, curling up in a garden somewhere and letting the sweet smells of dirt and herbs drift around him. 

Maybe not everything has to be a fight. 

After today his body doesn't have any new aches, there's no taste of blood in his mouth, no echoes of pain received or inflicted.

It's… nice. 

He'd spent some time, after Parker and Hardison had dragged him up out of one of the bad swings, trying to see if he could be the guy his kid self had wanted to be, or maybe just the guy his kid self had assumed he'd grow up to be. That hadn't gone so well for him.

Maybe he should have tried just being a kid again, instead. 

It seems to work for Parker. Eliot isn't going to go and see any child psychologist, nope, no, but that doesn't mean he can't kind of try on some of the related ideas for size. 

Like maybe sometimes asking for things he wants instead of always looking for ways to be useful. 

Like maybe trying new things, things that might not work exactly right, but that might make him happier. 

It might just work out for the best.

Chapter Text

Eliot cradles the phone in his hands as he talks to Alec, telling him about the job.

“Never fought for a better cause,” he says, “but it’s rough. It’s always a rough job when women are in danger, but this kind of danger, how do you just walk in without making things worse? Had to let Parker be the one closest to her, ready to step in, and it made sense, it did, Parker can fight. Parker was the best one to make her feel safe with this. It’s just. I dunno.” Eliot rubs at his face with one hand. “Doesn’t feel nice to be hanging back while Park walks into danger.”

“Yeah, I gotcha, I gotcha,” Hardison says. “You protect us. It’s what you do.”

“Always,” Eliot agrees. “And it’s not just that, but I know I gotta stop with some of these ideas I got growing up, that the guy is always supposed to be the one taking the risks, that we’re the ones standing in front. ‘Cause I know that’s all wrapped up in the same kinda wrongness that leads to guys like this. Guys who think they’re owed something. That women have a specific place.”

“Oof, yeah,” says Alec. “Yeah, it gets mucky. Knowing where that line is between being the hero and stepping in where you ain’t wanted. But I know you make the best calls you know how, and listen when someone asks you to do different. Parker had this. Yeah?”

“She was brilliant,” Eliot agrees. “First she drugged the guy, then the next day she walks into his office with a big-ass power drill, makes sense for a maintenance worker cover but any thought this guy has about coming anywhere near her with that in her hands? Gonna end real quick.” He chuckles. “Tortured him to no end. You woulda been proud.”

“Oh, I am,” Alec says, grinning. 

There’s silence on the line for a moment as they both consider their Parker. 

Eliot especially doesn’t like to think of her in those situations because he knows she’s never even gonna be interested in that stuff from anyone, not even the people she trusts most and loves like it’s spilling out of her. 

The lines, the lines he was taught not to cross and the lines he knows he’s got to be careful of now, they’re so different that it still throws him, way too often. 

He shakes his head, trying to find the words. Not finding them. 

“Hey, El,” Alec says softly. “What’cha thinking?”

“I just.” He closes his eyes and blows out a breath. “Life’s so different than I ever thought it would be. Things ain’t the way I was taught. You know, sex is for specific times and specific places, for your one person.” He grimaces. “There was a time I thought I was damned, so I didn’t really try and go along with it all anymore. But it all stayed, tucked away.” He taps the side of his head. “Traditions about when and where, I know now they ain’t nearly as important as what people choose, but I get ‘em stuck in my head even now.”

“Yeah, when all we really need to do is make sure everyone feels safe and respected, like, how hard is that? Really?” Hardison gives a little frown and a shake of his head. 

“Comes so natural to you,” Eliot says, admiring and only slightly bitter. 

“Hey, hey,” says Alec, “we all got bad things to unlearn. Ain’t none of us live in this world without some stupid things getting stuck in our brains sometimes.”

Eliot sighs. “Yeah, I know. I’m just. Tired.” He looks at Alec’s face on the screen. 

His guy has been so far away for so long. And he just wants… He just wants. He’s restless. On edge, the kind that’s a good feeling, if he can do something about it. But he can’t, not really.

And Alec gets a speculative look on his face. 

“Hey. I know that look,” he says. 

“Yeah, what about it?” Eliot counters. “You’re not here.”

Yeah, maybe it’s a little sharp. Eliot looks away from the screen. 

“Eliot,” says Alec. “You need to hear me say this again? I’ll say it as many times as it takes. I’m not gonna be jealous over you getting what you need, not ever. I’m gonna keep loving you and I want you to be happy, more than anything. We both know what I’d be doing if I was there, but you’re right, I’m not. You need somebody to fuck you and yeah, I wish it could be me. But it can’t. So. You got someone you could call?”

Last time Hardison was away for this long was during the Maria thing, and Eliot is somehow both relieved and unhappy that he doesn’t have anybody like that in his life right now.

She was worth all the pain, but he still doesn't want to go through it all again.

But he supposes he does have someone he could call. A friend, someone he trusts, despite everything. Someone who knows the score. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Got someone I could try.”

“Well?” says Hardison, raising his eyebrows expectantly. 

“I called ‘cause I wanted to spend time with you,” Eliot tells him. 

“Time, I got,” Hardison says. “If that’s what you want. But I gotta save up all my kisses and all of that for later. And you, you need some loving now, huh?”

“Love, I got,” Eliot says with the edge of a smile. 

“Yeah, yeah, you do,” says Hardison, smiling soppy-sweet. “Love you, El.”

Eliot smiles, heart threatening to burst with everything he feels about this guy. “Love you,” he says back. 

Things are different (again) with Paul. They've always been friends before anything else, always guarded each other's backs, and they trust each other with the vulnerable parts of themselves, body and soul. 

Last time, things had been intense, because how could they not be after everything, after the funeral and the fallout, and it all cemented how important they are to each other. But it never felt like it does with Alec, with Parker; becoming irreversibly entangled, building one life out of three. Never felt like with Maria, like the beginning of something that might catch and hold the two of them just as close. 

Eliot and Paul are what they are; the thing that's been changing is how they are. 

It hurts stepping into Paul's house after last time, when every reminder was a tug of grief. But now it’s… like easing the kinks out. Smoothing away the tense knots. 

And when it comes to touching him, it’s easy, maybe more than it’s ever been, as the past retreats. Fewer secrets, less shame, for the both of ‘em. 

Fewer ghosts. More laughter. 

It’s actually, it’s fun, and it’s been too long since he was lying skin to skin with someone in a satiated mess, just being. 

Eliot’s still Eliot, though. Still has doubts and regrets that creep up, sometimes. His attention wanders as he’s lying there, propped up on his elbows next to his friend. 

“So,” Paul says, watching him with a crooked smile, “did you make things right with your dad?”

“Yeah,” Eliot says, because he did.

“It help?”

“Yeah, it did. Freed up a part of me I thought I lost.” He smiles a bit.

“But there’s something else.” 

“Ain’t there always, for guys like us?” Eliot asks. 

“Yeah, maybe.” Paul shakes his head, still looking at Eliot. 

“Why’re you looking at me like that.”

“Hey. I don’t need to know, okay? That’s not why I’m poking at this. We both know neither of us is telling the other every one of our secrets, we both have plenty. But I want you to know you could.”

Eliot sighs and looks sideways at Paul, not saying anything more. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” says Paul, “but I think you should tell someone. Maybe your partners?”

“I can’t…” Eliot starts, and then trails off.

“You could try.”

Eliot winces. “I can’t tell Alec.”

Paul squints at Eliot for a minute, then tilts his head to the side. “Not much shocks Parker, does it?”

“Not much, no,” Eliot agrees. “But she’s better’n me. Not… I don’t mean she’s worth more. It’s hard to explain.” 

“Maybe because it isn’t a real thing?” Paul says pointedly.

“No, it’s a thing. I mean.” Eliot tries to think of how to explain the way they both sit partly in the darkness and partly out of it, but the way she’s still… less caught under the weight of it. “One time, the two of us were stuck in an ice crevasse with a corpse,” he says. 

Paul’s eyes widen, but he just says, “Right. We’ll just skate right over the details of that, doesn’t matter now.”

“We had to…” That doesn’t matter right now either, he doesn’t need to make himself say it. But. “It broke her in a way that I don’t break anymore. I don’t like seeing her like that.”

“Is talking to her about whatever this old wound is really the same as that?”

Eliot doesn’t have to think about it, he already knows the answer. “Yeah. Yeah, it would be.”

“Hmm.” Paul just watches him for a moment.

“You don’t believe me,” Eliot accuses.

“If you thought that, you wouldn’t even be considering telling her.”

Eliot takes a breath. Slowly, he says, “I once told her that if she asked, I would tell her. I don’t… if she does, if she asks for that… don’t think I could say no to her. Even if.” He lets his head fall forward, his hair making a curtain between him and the world. “Even if it meant she’d never trust me again.”

“You're scaring me, Eliot,” Paul says.

Eliot pushes his hair back again so he can glare at Paul. “I probably should scare you. You might think you know what I'm capable of but you never saw me during the worst of it.”

“Well, maybe. But that's not what kind of scared you're making me,” Paul tells him. “I know who you are, Eliot. I do. And I know what it is to feel backed into a corner and do something you’re not proud of. And it scares me that there’s someone out there who could back you this far into a corner.”

“He died in prison in San Lorenzo eight years ago,” Eliot says. “Last time I ever had to kill, it was him that put me in that corner. Team moved heaven and earth to get him put away. Made breathing a whole lot easier.”

“Jesus,” Paul says. “Yeah, I bet.” He shifts just slightly, pressing himself against Eliot’s side. “So he’s gone. So it’s in the past.”

“Yeah, and best thing I can do is pretend like I’m not the guy who could do that, right?” he says. “Ignore it, like it never happened.”

“No,” says Paul. “No, that doesn’t sound like moving on, to me.”

“Can’t do anything about it,” Eliot argues. “Can’t make it right.”

“Maybe you can’t make it right with the people you hurt,” Paul says. “That’s not always up to us. But can you make things right with yourself? Be a friend to yourself, knowing this is in your past?”

Eliot closes his eyes. “I don’t know,” he says. 

Paul hums thoughtfully, and then he says, “So, if someone you loved told you they’d done the same, If Parker told you -”

“Parker would never,” Eliot growls sharply, with a hard, warning look.

“Okay,” says Paul, holding up a hand in surrender. “Okay. If I told you I’d done the same?”

“You wouldn’t either,” Eliot says.

“You can’t know that.”

“I can,” Eliot tells him. 

“You can’t.” Paul’s voice is calm, even and matter-of-fact. “Anyone who would sign on to the kind of system we did? We can all be manipulated. We can all lie and kill. We can be desperate and we can follow orders we don’t like because we don’t see another way. You know I have. I’ve never been in that specific place where you were. What if I had been?”

“Then I’d tell you,” Eliot says, voice grinding out of him, “I’d tell you you shoulda found another way out.”

“But after that?” Paul asks. “It’s done, it’s over, it’s not ever happening again. Are we good?”

“Fuck,” Eliot mutters. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not uniquely evil,”  Paul tells him. “I know better than most that you’re dangerous. I also know there are real villains out there. And there’s a big difference between them and you. You’re doing your best now. You’re not doing that stuff now, you’re putting as much good into the world as you can manage.” Paul laughs, a bit darkly. “I get the impulse that drives you there, I really do. But you can’t keep punishing yourself. You have to make peace.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Eliot tells him.

“Maybe not,” Paul says, gripping his shoulder and jostling him lightly, affectionately. “Maybe I never will. Thank you for talking to me. You don’t need to tell me everything, but I sure understand better now than I did before. And I hope it helped you to talk about it, at least a little.” 

“Hmph,” Eliot says. And he takes a deep breath. And he says, “Might’ve, yeah.”

“Good,” says Paul. “Wouldn’t want to return you in worse condition than I borrowed you.”

Eliot smacks him for that, but he also can’t help laughing just a little.

Chapter Text

Hardison is on the big screen at headquarters again, just to hang out with the crew. He’s usually watching a lot of cameras and often on the phone with Parker or someone from the international teams or both, but that’s business, usually. She thinks he probably isn’t spending enough time just hanging out with people. 

Eliot is showing off his art just a little, still shy about it. It’s something personal, but he’s also getting better about being open with the team about personal stuff. 

“Can’t wait to see these in person, you know?” Alec says, smiling in that warm, encouraging way he has. 

Eliot smiles back and says, “Gotta get back down here, I guess.”

Then Harry walks in, glancing at the art spread out across the bar. 

“Hey, look at that! That’s pretty good!” He grins hugely.

Eliot shoots him a glare and says, “Stop being a dad at me, it's not good.”

“It's… got potential,” Harry corrects, shrugging. 

“That's not the point of it, though,” Eliot tells him. “I’m not tryin’a get better at art. I’m trying to get better at being bad at stuff.”

There’s a long pause. “...Huh,” says Harry. "Yeah, that's a valuable skill, now that I think about it. Which makes me feel better about being bad at so many things."

“You do have a talent for pushing through,” Eliot tells him, gathering up his drawings again. 

“It’s true,” Parker agrees. 

They all chat about the different ways to grift effectively even when something unexpected happens, but then Hardison has to go, a call from one of the international teams. That’s always going to be the priority. 

Parker understands, she does. But she still goes up to her room and sits on the couch so she can be a little bit sad about it without ruining anyone else’s mood. 

But after a while there's an Eliot head poking in her open door, and she smiles. He walks in and surveys the situation before heading for the couch.

He moves closer, uncharacteristically hesitant, and Parker just watches to see what he does. 

Then Eliot is lying with his head in Parker's lap. 

Unusual. Good, probably. Eliot initiating touch probably doesn’t happen as often as he needs touch. But there’s. Something else.

The only times this has happened before is when he's been seriously injured. She looks him over, no injuries that she can see, just a brain too full of things, maybe. The slant of his eyes as he looks up at her, mostly relaxed, but a little wary. 

She runs her fingers through his hair to see if that will help. 

He closes his eyes and the lines of him are just slightly less rigid. Good. She keeps her hand moving. 

It’s a long time of being patient and letting him be before he makes any kind of noise at all, and then it’s only her name, and not even all of it, short as it is already. 

“Park?” he murmurs.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Is it okay if I rest?”

She peers at him again, wondering if she’d missed some kind of injury, even though she knows for a fact he’s just been hanging out in headquarters drawing and chatting all afternoon. But there’s still nothing. “See, this is the kind of thing that makes me want to ask if you're dying,” she tells him. 

He sighs, long and heavy. “I used to think dying was the only way I could really rest,” he says. “But you, you and Alec and the team, you teach me.”

He’s got an expression that’s almost a smile, but doesn’t have the energy to be one. 

“Then yeah,” she agrees. “No dying. But you can rest.” She pats him on the chest. “As long as you need. Okay?”

He hums quietly and puts his hand over hers, but he’s still looking at her a little bit edgewise, a little bit strange. 

“What?” she asks.

“I don’t ever wanna hurt you,” he says slowly.

“I know,” she says. He always does everything he possibly can to keep her from hurting more than she has to. 

“But sometimes I don’t know how that’s gonna work,” he says. “With me being who I am.”

With him hurting all the time, and with their souls walking so close together, she thinks he means. But his hurt isn’t who he is. 

“I love who you are,” she says.

He looks away. 

She just keeps running her fingers through his hair, hoping. Just hoping he’ll be able to heal a little bit more.

The London team is in trouble, and they call Parker. As much as this is what she’s chosen, how she’s shaped Leverage International to work, it still feels weird. They can all call on each other, she’s always been clear that that’s the kind of operation she’s been building. There’s always someone on the end of the line who’s not going to judge if you drop the ball, or you’re outmaneuvered. Archie taught her to work alone, not to trust anyone else, but when Archie turned to her for help, she had someone to ask when she knew she’d gotten in too far.

If she’s going to be asking people to pull jobs for her, she needs to be able to make sure someone is there to answer their call when they get into trouble. 

What’s weird is how often she ends up being the person on the other end of the line. She always pictured Hardison, the one who always has their backs with a cover or a prop or an escape or of course a hack, or Eliot, the one who’s always protecting, always reacting to threats, always feeding and teaching and giving. But it’s her, so much of the time now. It’s Parker who they call, and it’s heavy, she thinks, it’s heavy, it weighs her down. So she thinks of Hardison humming, thinks of the way he held her, explaining that it’s a strength to have these connections, that it’s okay to be a little burdened if there’s someone to help carry it. 

So she’s calm, she asks them what happened. And when they tell her, she looks at the problem from as many angles as she can manage and calls everyone else she can think of to weigh in, to help her help the London team. 

In London, they find that this has something to do with Ramsey, Sophie’s old mentor. Some forgeries he’d done. Marble, not bad looking, but Parker has always preferred objects with a little bit of a shine to them. 

But Interpol is more on the ball than they expected. Parker doesn’t know why until she hears the name. Inspector Astrid Pickford. 

She’s too sharp to have on their trail right now. They need to regroup. 

It’s Eliot who sees that there’s something more going on here with Sophie. Her past is coming up again, and apparently it's Parker's past too! Astrid Pickford. What?

Astrid Pickford, Sophie’s stepdaughter?

Parker can see it, actually. The way they both radiate confidence and competence. The way they tilt their heads, the way they look at you like they’re trying to figure out whether you’re something shiny to collect or something unimportant to ignore.

Bird souls. She should have known.

And Eliot has a thing about the team's pasts, the team's ghosts. He’s had his eye on Sophie; admitted to Parker that he didn’t think her past was done with her, that something was coming. A reckoning, he’d called it.

They can do reckonings. But it takes sticking together, it takes all of them helping. 

Parker sticks close to Eliot and Eliot sticks close to her. And close to Sophie. Sophie goes to talk to Billy the Gent and Eliot has to go too, as muscle. Well. Parker can be muscle. 

She mirrors Eliot as he looms threateningly. He mirrors her back. They're reflections, souls standing close as they can right now. Careful, careful of each other, careful of Sophie, needing to be in step for this. Needing to be in each other’s minds, to depend on each other. 

Together, they can do this. 

Parker really wants to kidnap Astrid. She isn’t sure if it’s just the nemesis thing, or if her instincts are right that this is one of those times when kidnapping really is a good plan. 

But then Eliot says “it might be the best way,” and Parker moves it up a few notches on her list of plans. 

But Sophie has a plan to try first. One with a whole lot of misdirection, and a bomb. 

Parker is also partial to plans that involve explosives, so she isn’t too disappointed. 

Eliot is getting frustrated about his accents. Sophie is coaching him and he’s trying, but Breanna pokes fun. And it is a little stiff. A little off. 

Once the building is evacuated and Sophie has turned her attention more fully to the floor-sized misdirection she’s creating, Parker tells Eliot, “Remember, the first rule of accents is to have fun and be yourself.”

She hears the barest chuckle in response, and the next time Eliot speaks in character, maybe the accent isn’t perfect, but he sounds like a person, a person who’s feeling a lot of things at once and is just doing his best. 

That’s better. They’re good at this, together, even when they’re bad at little bits of it by themselves.

Maybe this plan works. Maybe Astrid is okay after all. 

Probably no kidnapping, then. 

Sometimes Parker is all right with getting it wrong.

Chapter Text

No, there is going to be a reckoning. 

The authorities are everywhere, and Arthur Wilde is taunting them.

He’s playing a dangerous game, he has to know that. To protect family, they would do anything. 

“I can just picture Eliot right now,” Arthur says. “Thinking of all the ways he can quietly take me out.”

So he does know some of it. 

“Oh, no, no,” Eliot says. “No, that's Parker. I'm thinking about how I can do it very loudly.”

And now he knows the rest. 

They will make him pay. 

They find the empty case, run through the how and the why, and Parker watches as Eliot focuses in on getting Sophie out, because Sophie might be a little compromised right now. 

She can’t worry about how Eliot’s been. She just can’t afford that. This is the same as letting Hardison go to space. He needed to be able to do that, because otherwise he’d regret it, and right now Eliot needs to be able to focus on Sophie.

There’s a lot going on, obviously, guards to get past, Harry’s case of the venties to deal with, but she keeps an ear on those two. There’s a quieter moment while Sophie puts together a quick set of badges, and she starts to apologize. 

“I just…” Sophie pauses. “I really wanted to believe that my past was fixable, and I didn't see him coming.”

There’s something about the way the word ‘fixable’ sits in that sentence that pings an alarm in Parker’s brain. 

And then Eliot responds, telling her that the team is all made of second chances. “And that is why you believed Arthur deserved another shot because you are... redeemed.”

“So are you,” says Sophie, and Parker feels just a prick of dread…

“No,” says Eliot. “No, I will never be redeemed, and I made peace with that a long time ago.”

Oh. Shit. 

They don’t have the time or the focus to spare to unpack that right now, none of them do, so Parker bullies Harry back into the vents and they make their way to a clean getaway.

But then. 

They realize the crown is still in the museum, and Sophie wants to go back for it. 

It’s that word again. ‘Fixable.’ There will be a reckoning, and Sophie wants it over with now. 

Eliot tries to convince her that it’s a trap. That they should get away clean and try again later. 

But Sophie is determined. And if it is all really fixable, how can they not help?

So. Turns out the kidnapping is back on. 

They get Arthur. 

Sophie wants to look him in the face one last time, and of course it’s complicated, their pasts always are. 

“You get to keep being superior to everyone,” Arthur tells Sophie. “Stepping on those around on you. Leaving nothing but damage in your wake.”

Parker can’t help but think about how Eliot compared his past to Sophie’s, about how he hurts people, it’s what he does. Leaves a trail of bruised bodies. That’s damage. Sophie’s past being fixable is one thing, and Eliot’s past is another. Parker knows that. 

“I am done feeling guilty about our past,” Sophie can tell Arthur, and mean it. 

Eliot doesn’t see a path to that for himself. 

But he doesn’t look any different; he just seems like Eliot. Maybe there’s something about this she’s not understanding; maybe he’s just so used to carrying the knot of guilt inside him. Maybe nothing’s really changed. 

Except he said it. He wanted them to understand. He wanted Sophie to understand that she was already good enough, even without tying up all of her loose ends. By contrasting her life to his. 

She isn’t sure where to go with this. 

Eliot laughs and smiles with them all; when they’re convincing Harry to stay with the team, Eliot’s contribution is that crime is fun. 

And then Hardison comes online, and everything feels a little more manageable. A little more like a normal day, except it’s them, so there’s plots and plans and schemes. 

So apparently they’re going to break into NASA and steal back a Hardison. 

Once the plan is discussed and Sophie and Harry have gone off to set the early steps in motion, the others are just hanging around, and Eliot gets out his sketchbook, the one he’d been drawing in during their first phase reconnaissance at the museum. 

He tears out a page and slides it over to her, so she takes it and looks at it. 

There’s Eliot and there’s Parker, her ropes and his knife, the danger that’s part of him and the danger she flirts with. 

Parker grins. “Aww, that's so sweet! Hardison, look what Eliot drew for me!” She holds the picture up for the camera.

“Aww nice,” says Hardison. 

Breanna looks up from her laptop. “Wait, Eliot drew a sweet thing for Parker? Lemme see!” she makes grabby hands until Parker passes the drawing her way. As Bre looks at it, her expression goes from eager to confused to still confused and disturbed. “…Okay,” she says. “You guys have the weirdest mating rituals. Just for the record.”

“Well, that’s because I’m weird,” says Parker, “and my guys know just what I like.” She kisses Eliot on the forehead even as he tries half-heartedly to swat her away, and she collects the drawing back from Breanna.

She is going to treasure it always. 

Sophie stops in to talk to Parker later that night, as Parker is organizing her rigs.

“So,” Sophie says, looking around at Parker’s room, seeming just slightly out of place. “Do you think I’ve really let go of enough of my secrets that Eliot can say whether or not I’ve redeemed myself?”

“You know we’ve all got our noses in each other’s business whether we want it or not, right?” Parker says. “We all like to know more than we should about everyone. You’re not an exception.” Parker raises her eyebrows at Sophie. “From either side of that. Eliot knows you.”

Sophie sighs and sinks down onto the sofa. “I guess the mystique really is gone, then,” she says. “No more big exciting secrets.”

“No,” says Parker, rolling her eyes a little, “No more secrets that jump out at you and hurt you. Only nice secrets.”

“How can you tell the difference without knowing the secrets?” Sophie asks, not like she doesn’t believe Parker can tell, but curious, or testing. 

“It’s how you hold yourself,” Parker explains. “The secrets that hurt, they keep you curled in on yourself, bend you a little.”

Sophie frowns just slightly. “The way Eliot is,” she says. 

“Yeah,” Parker agrees, without looking at Sophie. “Like that.”

“I didn’t realize,” Sophie says, slow and quiet. “That he was that hurt. That he thinks so little of himself. I feel like I should have known.”

Parker closes her closet door and sits on the corner of her bed, facing Sophie. 

“That doesn’t sound quite right to me,” Parker says. “He’s hurting, but he knows what he can do, and what he can handle.”

“You aren't worried?” Sophie asks. 

Parker looks at Sophie, who has been a criminal all her life, sometimes cold, sometimes jaded, but never, Parker thinks, Sophie has never lost track of what it is to be human. Sophie is a method actor, and Parker has learned that that means putting yourself into the role, making your feelings fit the performance. That’s something you need your humanity for.

That’s something that Parker isn’t good at, because she’s never had a perfect grasp on what it is to be human. There have been times in her life when she lost track of it entirely, and knew only survival. 

Those times are far away now, and if they echo oddly inside her mind sometimes, it doesn’t mean she’s still there, empty and lost and alone. 

Parker and Eliot have made that journey together, in a lot of ways. Those hollow places inside them that echo sometimes, they’re not the same shape, but Parker still recognizes how they act. However Eliot is now, one thing Parker knows for certain is that he’s come a long way towards being better, to himself and to the world. 

“I know some parts of Eliot's mind that even you would have trouble fitting yourself into, I think,” she tells Sophie. “And the dark isn't always as cold as it looks.”

Sophie watches her for a moment. “All right,” she says. “But keep your eye on him, okay?”

“Always,” Parker agrees.

“Especially on this job, though. I'm a little afraid that we're doing something with such high stakes and so little margin for error and Eliot is going to see an opportunity to make sure Hardison makes it back that gets him hurt. Badly.” Sophie frowns, watching her. “Do you think that's a concern?”

It all goes through Parker's head in a blink. The things she could say to that. 

I can't tell you it won't happen. Me and Eliot? We need Hardison to keep living more than we need each other. They’re both infinite, but Hardison explained to me once how some infinities are bigger than others. And. Regrets are a hazard of the way we live, one way or another. I'd be angry at Eliot if he died, yeah, but I'd be angrier if he could have saved Alec and didn't. And so would he. We’d both be so angry we’d burn right up and there’d be nothing left. 

“I might be able to explain what I think,” is what Parker ends up telling her, “but I can't afford to cut myself open like that right now.”

Sophie seems to process that, then stands and shakes herself, like she's realizing she forgot something. “Right. Of course not. Forget I asked.” She smiles. It's one of the ones Parker still can't always tell whether it's real, and she thinks maybe Sophie doesn't know either. “We’ll get the job done,” Sophie says with conviction. 

And they will, one way or another.

It's not a reassuring thing, what Eliot said to Sophie. But he seems… he seems okay. So Parker lets it go. For the moment.

She doesn’t want to face it without Hardison, anyway, if it turns out to be bad. 

Oh, Hardison is back on the same world as Parker and Eliot, thank everything. In the same room, even! They can touch him and breathe him in and listen to his heart beat and feel his lungs move as he breathes. 

They sandwich him up in a hug, Parker with her arms tight around his middle and her ear pressed to his shoulder blade, hearing him breathe, even and calm. Eliot's plastered to his front, where his heart lives, and Eliot's arms wrap around them both. 

"Hey," Hardison says, soft and fond. One arm tight around Eliot, the other resting over Parker's arm where it's wrapped around his side. "Hey, you two. I missed you." He kisses Eliot's forehead, and he squeezes Parker's hand. 

Parker has no words for this, and Eliot doesn't seem to either, but he wordlessly grumbles an answer anyway, and the meaning is clear. 

"Yeah," Hardison agrees. "Yeah, that was too long." He leans down and sighs into Eliot's hair. “I gotta slow down. Gotta come home.” His voice breaks, just a touch, on that last word. 

They're curled together on the padded kitchen mat in the back of the food truck, the boys sitting side by side leaned against the cabinets with their near arms around each other, Parker curled up in between and on top of them both with the boys’ other arms looped around her, and there's something that hasn't quite eased back into place yet, that's still jangling in Parker's head. 

Sophie looks back from the driver's seat as they’re stopped at a light, and there's an echo, a hollow place where Nate once was. But there's Harry and Breanna beside Sophie, they're all family, Sophie isn't alone while they take their time. This is the whole team together, this is their family now, and so are Nana and her kids and the trainees and the international teams and all the clients who stay in touch…

The food truck is speeding away under them, like the world spinning. The world is so big and the world is so small, and they do so little and they do so much, and their family is the whole world and their family is right here, just the three of them…

Slow down. 

She takes a breath.

“I get it,” she says. “I get it now.”

“What do you get?” Eliot asks. 

“Why you'd want to retire.”

This time, it's her voice that breaks. 

“Oh,” says Hardison, squeezing her tighter. “Ouch, baby, I'm sorry.”

Eliot just smiles in that familiar, sad way he does sometimes. “I guess that's what you get for pokin' around in my head,” he says. 

“It's not either of your faults, it's not a fault,” she tells them both. “It's something new I understand, and I think that's good.”

“Okay,” says Alec, easy and patient. He leans in to kiss her forehead. “Tell me.”

“It’s the same kind of feeling I get when I don’t want to be weighed down, I think,” she says. “It’s a way to tell yourself you can get away clean. Because sometimes it feels like the only way to slow down is to stop all the way. It's an illusion and most of the time I can see through it because it didn't make sense to me, I do what I want and I can always stop and do something else.” She takes a breath, remembering the weight of everything they’ve built together. “But I see now. How big the mission can get if you let it. How it feels to have that gravity. That thing that keeps pulling you to do more until you just want to be out of it. Not feel it pull you down anymore.”

Hardison hums an agreement, and rests his forehead against hers. “Yeah,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s it,” says Eliot, low and quiet, so that she feels the vibration in his chest more than the words in her ears. “That’s the lie it tells you. That breaking away will be better. And with some things it is, but not with this. Not with us, not with the team.”

“Yeah,” says Parker. “But. Maybe there’s some way we could find to live that isn’t all the way in or all the way out.”

“You think?” says Eliot. 

“What would that look like?” Alec asks. 

“Let’s make plans to retire, and talk about all the things we would do if we were retired, and do more of those, and then not actually retire all the way,” she says. “Let’s just retire a little bit.”

“That sounds nice,” Eliot murmurs into her hair.

“Not gonna lie,” Hardison agrees, sounding tired, “it really does.”

She breathes a long sigh. “Good,” she says. She sags against them. Eliot’s hand comes up to cradle the back of her head, and Hardison shifts his arm until she can feel the warmth of it all up and down her back and the gentle motion of his thumb across her shoulderblade. They have her. 

She can practically hear them looking at each other. 

“You need a break, huh?” Hardison asks. “You been thieving, you been coordinating half the international teams, helping with their recruit training, and you got your own projects too.” He sighs. “I get too caught up in where I need to be, I forget how much you do sometimes.”

“Our girl’s incredible,” Eliot agrees softly. 

“We gotta take a step back,” says Hardison. “We gotta reassess our priorities. Do more just for us.”

“Kinda sounds like what Parker’s been asking me to do,” Eliot says. “But I guess we change together.”

“Yeah,” says Alec.

The truck rolls to a stop and there’s the sound of movement from up front. 

“Are you three planning to stay on the floor there for much longer?” Sophie asks, looking them over.

“Yeah,” says Parker, because she can’t imagine moving right now, wrapped up in her boys. 

“Right, need anything? Snacks?” Harry asks.

“They’re literally in a food truck,” says Breanna. “Pretty sure there’s snacks somewhere in here. But seriously, text if you need anything, right?”

“Will do,” says Hardison. “Thanks, Bre.”

Sophie leaves the key inside the partition door, gives them a little wave and shuts it, giving them the silence of the truck. 

After a moment, Hardison sighs again, lightly. “Good to be home,” he says. 

The other two just snuggle more firmly against him. 

“So, speaking of Parker’s project,” Hardison says, turning to look at Eliot. “How you doing, El?” 

Eliot looks back at him, a smile sitting in the corner of his mouth. “Good, I think. Complicated. Better now.” He squeezes Hardison for emphasis. 

Parker hums thoughtfully, looking at Eliot. 

“What you thinking, Park?” Hardison asks. 

“There was something,” she says slowly, “and I don't know if it was a good sign or a bad one. Or just a complicated thing that means things are getting stirred up. Something Eliot said to Sophie when we were in the museum.”

Eliot looks at her speculatively. “You heard that, huh?”

“Sophie was worried.” Parker wrinkles her nose. “I thought about worrying too.”

“What, why?” Hardison asks, turning to Eliot. “What did you say?”

“So,” Eliot says, looking down at the floor. “You know. There's something almost irresistible about doing everything you can to make the world better. Giving everything you are. But you got me thinking maybe I oughta stop once in a while.”

“That is kinda the consensus it seems like we’re coming to here,” Hardison says, nodding.

“And, well.” Eliot winces. “That's hard for me because it means I gotta deal with the fact I'm never getting redemption.”

“What?” Parker pulls herself a bit more upright so she can really look at Eliot's face. He means this. She glances at Hardison, who’s frowning at Eliot. “No, that’s not… That wasn't what I meant. That isn't what we want.”

Eliot laughs, a dry sound, tired and a little unhappy. “It’s the only way your project is gonna work,” he says. “It’s make peace, or keep fighting.”

Parker narrows her eyes at Eliot, then huffs a sigh. “Explain that to me,” she says. 

“You don't get it?” he says. “This is the gift you gave me.” He waves his hand aimlessly, as if he’s trying to show her something as obvious as the air around them. “That I'm allowed to stop trying. Not stop trying to be a good person now, but stop trying to make up –”

He’s sort of gasping for breath, and Alec pulls him forward from where he’s leaned against the cabinet so Alec can rub his back, slow, up and down. Eliot clings to Alec in turn, and Parker thinks about all the times Eliot has seemed like the steady one, the landing place, but he’s human and made of flesh and feelings like everyone. He needs things sometimes like everyone.

This is messy, getting him to show it, but it’s okay because Alec is here to be the steady one. When it comes to feelings, Alec is their solid ground. 

“Easy,” says Alec. “I’m not gonna lie, I’d like to hear more, I don’t get it yet, but no rush, right?”

Eliot nods. 

He takes a breath, and he starts again. 

“You gotta understand, there is no balance. I know you think it works like your stupid comic book movies, it don’t. It don’t work like Black Widow, there’s… I could spend the rest of my life. And I was gonna. I was gonna spend the rest of my life tryin’ to balance out an equation that there’s no answer to. I had to try, cause what else was there? I've known for a long time that my list, it's longer than my life. And even if it wasn't?” Eliot swallows, hard. “You can’t erase some things.” 

There’s so much grief plain on his face. 

“There’s some things you can make up for. But the people I did those things to, I’ll never be redeemed in their eyes, and I never should be. The best thing I could ever do for them is to vanish from their lives. Maybe what I do now is good. That don’t erase anything.”

“So you want to give up?” Parker asks. Her voice sounds small in her ears. She can’t believe that Eliot has too much bad sticking to him to ever come out the other side of his mess. 

He takes a shaky breath. “Not… not the way you think. I want to be the best person I can be now and maybe that means… making peace with the past in a new way.”

“Okay,” says Alec, still making steady strokes up and down his back. “How’s that?”

There’s a not-quite-smile on Eliot’s face. “I knew a long time ago that redemption was a place I could never get to,” he says, “not in one lifetime. And I always told myself that as long as I was walking in the right direction that was okay.” He shakes his head. “I told myself that. I didn't actually believe it. I still wanted to get there, more than anything.” He pauses, looking uncertain. “But maybe I could let myself believe that it really is about the journey. It’s about who I am now, what I do now. Setting aside amends and balances and just living the best life I can now. And maybe that means doing everything I can to make you two happy. And maybe that means being happy as I can be, myself.” He makes a noise that’s got pain in it, but also just a bit of a laugh. “No, that ain't redemption. It's something else altogether, maybe something harder. Moving on, maybe. Letting go.”

“Okay, yeah,” says Hardison, and he looks at Parker, and Parker nods in agreement. “If you want to let go? I've got you. We've got you.” 

“Yeah,” Parker confirms. 

The not-quite-smile vanishes, and Eliot looks frustrated. “But there’s…” He raises a hand to his chest, gesturing. 

“You’re tied up in knots,” Parker guesses.

Eliot nods. “I've got poison in me, in my mind, and it's maybe stopping me from growing good things in there.”

There’s silence for a moment, and Parker decides it’s time to test the waters. “Should I ask?” she says to Eliot. “The question you told me not to ask?”

Eliot takes a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh, and he looks at them. “I…” he starts. “Only if you want to know.”

Parker has to say something true.

"I want you to be able to let go of it a little," she says. "You’ve been all wrapped around it and knotted up for so long."

“What are we talking about here?” Hardison asks, watching them both with a tiny puzzled frown.

“The worst thing I ever did,” says Eliot, the words rolling out low, like gravel.

Alec puts his hand over his mouth. His eyes are wide and watchful. He's pretty much never the one of the three of them to lose their words, but he doesn't seem to have any for this. 

“It gets stuck in your throat,” Parker guesses. 

“I never told anyone,” Eliot says. “The only other person who knew is dead. So it's been stuck up in here.” He taps his temple. “Only place it exists anymore. So I have to be the one who keeps track of it.”

“Or you could tell us,” Parker says.

Eliot makes a frustrated noise. “I don't even know if it'll help! And I don't wanna hurt either of you that way.” He looks at Alec then, and he says, "Knowing, it'd hurt you."

“If you need to say it,” Alec says, his voice like crumpled paper, squashed and running together at odd angles, “if you need to say it, you say it.” He puts on a brave face, but he's. Oh. Of course. He's been in the same room with Eliot and Moreau, watched Moreau tug on Eliot's chain, hold Eliot still while Alec was pushed under, his breath taken away. 

That was the day Parker first asked. That was the day Eliot trusted the team with the precise location of his worst regrets. But it was also a day Alec almost stopped breathing. 

"Do you really want to know?" Eliot asks them. 

Parker knows now she has to be the one to say these words, because Alec can't. 

"It’s a weight," she says, "and I want to help you carry it."

“Because you’re all tied up in my knots with me,” Eliot says slowly. “You got yourself tangled in my mess.” He raises his eyebrows at her, as if daring her to say that he’s wrong. 

He isn’t wrong.

“Yes,” she says. “Because I want to be.” She clutches his arm, needing him to know the truth of it. 

He’s shaking. Maybe they all are. 

“You,” says Eliot, looking at her, shaking his head, then loses the words and has to start over. “I wouldn't trust anyone but the two of you with it,” Eliot tells them, “and I don't think I could say the words without Alec here. But I can’t…” He stumbles again. “If I had to choose one of the two of you to hear it…”

He looks at Parker, silent, run out of words but she knows what he means.

“I'm the one asking,” she tells him. “Eliot, what did you do?”

He closes his eyes for a moment, looking like he’s gathering all his strength. He leans in close, close enough to be sure it’s only her, even with Hardison so close. His breath is warm on her cheek. 

He tells her.

For a moment, she doesn’t breathe, can’t, and he tenses, waiting. 

A sound bursts out of her, a sob, and he moves like he’s trying to get away but Parker holds him there, holds him close. Buries her face in his neck because yes, the thought that someone could do that to another person is terrifying, but that was an Eliot she never knew, and the Eliot she has known all these years is the person who makes her feel safest in the world. 

He is the one who's here. He is here. 

He relaxes into her hold, little by little, until he’s holding her in turn, and they’re both crying.

And then Alec's arms are around them both, hesitant. Parker bonks him gently with her head, like the cat she is, and snuggles back into his space, bringing Eliot along with her. 

They need their Alec so much right now. They need him buoying them up. 

There's a mess of grief, a flood of it, Eliot's grief over what he's done and Parker's grief over that and over all the pain it gives him, Hardison's trauma and the grief that the others are both suffering, but Parker can't afford to lose herself to any of it. The job needs finishing. 

She brushes Eliot’s hair away from his face, cradling his damp cheek with her hand. 

Eliot’s mind is the hardest security system she’s ever broken into, locked up so tight. Guarded so carefully. She’s stolen away his most valuable secret. 

He handed her the key years ago – ‘if you ask me, I’m gonna tell you’ – but that was just a single lock, and the mission parameters had required so much more than that. The timing had to be right. The alarms had to be disabled, the guard had to stand down. 

And now she needs to make sure that everything is set right, that the house stays quiet even as she slips out with her terrible, lead-heavy prize. 

She knows now. She touches the skin that did it, knowing.

“It’s okay,” she tells him, soft as she can manage with the roughness of crying thick in her throat. “It’s okay. You can rest now. You’ve done so well. You are good. You are. You’re enough right now. And it’s time to rest.”

She's never seen him quite like this; he always has such tight control over himself; he is always making sure he is ready for the next thing. And now he's not. He looks a little lost, like he has no concept of what comes next. 

She swallows down the bitterness of her new knowledge. It's her job to control it right now. Not to let it throw her off balance. 

She keeps touching him softly, tells him again, "You can let it go now. You're good now. And we love you and it's time for you to rest."

There's something in his eyes that says he's let himself hear what she's saying, and he closes his eyes and gives a long sigh. But his eyes are still wary when he opens them again.

“Can you believe me?” Parker asks him. 

“I don’t think I could have ever believed that from anyone who didn’t know,” he tells her, not quite an answer, so she waits. 

“I still only believe halfway,” he continues. “But I'm trying.”

Alec hums quietly, holding them both a little closer. “You done such a good job,” he tells them. “Getting Eliot a little more happiness. I wish I knew better how to help.”

Parker and Eliot share a look. Parker turns to Hardison and says, “You're helping. You help. So much.”

“Yeah?” Alec asks, a quiet smile creeping onto his face.

“By being here,” says Eliot slowly. “By being you. By being part of the team. By showing me it’s possible to be a good criminal, how to be part of this team, and maybe sometimes how not to do it.”

“What!” Alec puts a hand to his chest, mock-offended. “I have done nothing wrong, ever, in my life.”

Eliot chuckles at that. He shakes his head. “You know, you didn’t used to be driven like you are. When you started to be, I knew it was gonna hurt you. I saw you falling into the same bad habits as me and when you push yourself like that,” Eliot says, and then pauses, staring into the distance, thinking. “Well. It's easier to see it for what it is when I’m looking at you. It's got good and bad in it, just like everything.”

“Yeah,” says Hardison. “I can say you need a break, but if I see good I can do, I can’t just not do it.” He bends his head to lean it against Eliot’s.

“We still got more to do,” says Eliot. “That's never stopping. But we could stop. Just for a bit.”

“I see it, I see it,” Hardison says. 

“Good,” says Parker. “So it’s all of us. We’re going to rest more.” She sighs. “Job done.”

“So you got what you wanted?” Eliot asks her. “No regrets?”

Parker looks at Eliot, squinting slightly, because no one knows better than he does that there is always room for regrets. She scrunches his hair fondly. “I just wish I could do more,” she tells him. “I see the way the past sticks to you. I wanted you to be able to feel clean.”

A dry laugh escapes Eliot, and he shakes his head. “Nah, nah. That's not… not who I am. Not even who I wanna be.”

“I don't understand,” she says.

He thinks for a moment, “You remember when we helped get the poison out of the soil of Leon and James’s farm?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, already starting to see the shape of what he’s saying.

“That’s the way you’ve been helping me, and I kinda want my dirt, anyway. You need dirt, to grow things. That's life, trying and failing and trying again, leaving mess behind. Mess is part of life.”

That makes sense to her. Not for how she feels, but for who Eliot is. 

"Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

Parker's fingers are interlaced with Eliot's, and then Alec's hand rests on top of them both, sandwiching Eliot's hand between his and Parker's, fingers curled around both of theirs. 

The job is really truly done, and she lets her mind drift. 

“I still know way too much about mycoremediation for someone who really doesn’t like dirt,” she comments.

Alec laughs softly. “I remember you got all caught up in the difference between poisonous mushrooms and poisoned mushrooms,” he says.

“They weren't just poisoned!” she says, warming immediately to the topic. “They grew that way even though they were an edible kind. The mushrooms we grew there were so sneaky! They looked like regular eating mushrooms but they had so much poison in them because they were busy taking it out of the dirt." She contemplates how scary that would be if it wasn't the team doing it. "They're good to have on your side," she says.  

"Like you." Alec kisses her cheek. "You're so sneaky, my sneaky deadly dangerous little oyster mushroom." 

Eliot straight up giggles at that, which makes Hardison stare wide-eyed for a moment before he breaks into his own radiant grin. 

"You, sir, you need to sleep." Hardison's finger wavers as he points at Eliot, and then Parker pokes his finger to point that out, only she misses, and that makes Eliot laugh harder. "We all need to sleep," Hardison continues, laughter in his voice. "Motion to adjourn to Parker's bed."

"Seconded!" Parker says, raising her hand. 

Still smiling, wide and easy, Eliot says, "Motion carries."

They lean on each other as they walk into headquarters, tired and drunk on emotions, chief among them relief and love. 

They make it up to Parker's room, and one of the others has left drinks and snacks out for them, close to hand so they don't have to move more than necessary. Parker makes the others drink something sweet, and they make her drink too, but they’re too tired to eat. So the rest is a haze of kisses and sleepy cuddles, and Parker lets the extra weight of her new knowledge settle into her mind, uncomfortable but not unwanted. 

They carry each other.

They weigh each other down and they pull each other up and they dance, the three of them, different parts of the same swooping dance, saving each other. Catching and holding each other. 

The big things and the little things, sometimes they echo each other. Sometimes the things that spark them up are the same things that braid them together into one strong cord of love. 

Just knowing that they will always be there to catch each other. 

Till the end, and maybe past that. Because nothing is impossible, between the three of them.