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They don’t ask each other where they went, the first time they split. The David Job leaves a bad taste in all their mouths, even if the final con had elements of reconciliation and forgiveness, there was still the burn of betrayal and that’s something none of them take lightly, having been loners so long for a reason.
Or, that’s what they tell themselves.
~IiI~
Parker spends six months lifting various pieces of art across the world, from museums to personal collections to collections private enough that most people aren’t supposed to know they exist.
She ends up putting half her haul back, especially if it belongs to a museum. She keeps most of the stuff from the private collections, unsure if they really deserve to have the sparklies that’ll get her money.
She doesn’t have Hardison to direct her to see if they really should go through with the con or not. She can do it herself, but it’s a lot of work in something she’s only just starting to understand.
She could return it, grifting to be a police officer, or Interpol, or FBI – especially FBI, since she still has the badge, but she’s not quite sure how to pull off the grift without Sophie giving her tips in her ear.
She could plan a complex con to get them to reveal themselves, whether or not they’re evil, but there’s no point when there’s just herself, and she doesn’t have Nate to say “let’s go steal” whatever to start the con.
She could try and get people to talk, but her brand of intimidation doesn’t always get people to talk the way she wants them to, and she doesn’t have Eliot’s backup.
In the back of her mind, she starts plotting ways to get into the Blackpoole exhibit, how best to integrate and pull off the con to get the two David statues back.
~IiI~
Hardison spends the six months wandering through the internet, the dark web, shutting things down and researching how he could go back and get the two David statues back, because, yeah, Sophie conned the team, but she came back for Parker, and Nate and Eliot had his back, and that counts for something.
Also, there might be a bit of personal pride, because yeah, Sterling was involved, but that doesn’t excuse him getting lax with his security. He stays close, keeps an eye on things, makes sure that all their trails go cold and dead, at least in the digital field.
He’s better, now, he’s honed his skills, he knows where he went wrong and he won’t make those mistakes again. He’s also got a few new skills, particularly courtesy of Sophie, that he can use to better make his way into the museum that Blackpoole is using for his art exhibit.
He’s ready for Blackpoole and Sterling. He hopes they won’t be ready for him.
(He doesn’t have feelers out for Parker, Eliot, Nate, and Sophie. He doesn’t. Nuh-uh, those computers over there in the corner? Totally working on something important and special – and yeah, if Nana asked he’d fess up and say that yeah, he’s keeping an eye out for his team – his old team. Even if it’s not easy to keep an eye on any of them.
Maybe that’s a good thing, considering Sterling.)
~IiI~
Eliot spends the months away from the team retrieving, hitting, and generally – well, not quite feeling sorry for himself, no matter what his sister says on that one phone call he makes to her, because that would be stupid – he’s only known the team for six months or so. They’ve only been a team for six months or so.
He doesn’t take contract jobs, though. He’s put that bit of his past behind, and while sometimes people do get killed as a consequence of the various jobs he takes or makes for himself, well, that’s part of life.
They (mostly) weren’t tortured beforehand, and he’ll take what he can get.
He didn’t contribute much to their suffering, that’ll have to do, for now.
(Eliot isn’t quite sure when he really agreed to not kill people. It was never a verbal promise to the team, but inherent with the promise to be better, wear a white hat – or a light shade of grey. He doesn't have to keep the promise, away from the team. But, he’s not put in a position where he has to kill anyone in cold blood, not in anything but self-defense, and so he doesn’t.)
He might keep an ear out, to see if any of them get in trouble, but he doesn’t hear much beyond mutters that the best are back at work.
He tells himself that that’s not reassuring.
~IiI~
Sophie throws herself into the grifts, and the performer in her wants to go big, flashy, pose as a lost heiress or something equally large, but the con knows that if she were to do something like that, Sterling would be on her like a fly on shite, and that’s an accurate statement to how she feels.
They were a team, and she broke them.
Oh, she can’t claim sole responsibility – Nate made the plan, had been drinking more than usual, and they didn’t account for Sterling showing up, but they never do – never did, and had made it out without much more than a few laughs and a change of plan, but Nate didn’t have the full picture, and that managed to fuck everything up.
So she keeps her head down, poses as an art critique and makes off with a few paintings. Ends up helping a museum in the process, and something in her warms, and she’d look back to Parker, to see what she thinks of the security, she’d laugh with Hardison over the security guards, along with Eliot, who’d probably critique their fighting, or otherwise come up with something distinctive about the con. And Nate…well, Sophie has rather given up on trying to figure out that man’s mind, but she’s sure he’d have something – some random detail, or an entertaining anecdote to add, even if he’d micromanage the con the entire time.
She stays in Europe, her usual stopping ground, but she keeps to the Western half, as if something is keeping her closer to America.
(She knows exactly what that is, and she’s got a plan for how to sort it all out – if not the team, then at least she’ll get both Davids.)
~IiI~
Nate contemplates going back to work as an Insurance investigator for about five hours, but then he realizes that that would never work, not right now.
For one, he’s now a wanted criminal, or, at least, Sterling (along with IYS, courtesy of Blackpoole) has been blackening his name in the circles he’d need to run in to get a job like that back.
He’s also been out of the game for years, and while he could argue that being in close proximity to some of the best criminals in their respective fields has offered him an unparalleled insight to the con, he’d also have to admit to spending an excessive amount of time with them, and would be labeled a potential accomplice by association.
(Insurance agents tend to act under the assumption that a person with a connection to a good criminal is a criminal themselves. They’re not often wrong – or at least, fewer people have ever been able to prove beyond a doubt that they aren’t involved with their friend/lover/spouse/sibling/parent/cousin/aunt/uncle/grandparent/nanny/step-parent’s criminal activities.
Nate, given what he’s been doing for the past six months, certainly can’t. He has a few failsafes, just in case, but he’s not quite ready to blow them on the team taking a break. He’s pretty sure they’ll all be back, after all. The job isn’t done, and, unless he’s wrong about their personalities – or they’ve completely changed their minds from the first con, they’ve had a taste for doing good, and they’ve enjoyed it, for the most part.
Besides, he has a plan. It just needs all the right people to be in the right place, at the right time.)
~IiI~
Blackpoole isn’t quite sure what hit him, but he regrets letting something with that much power out of his grasp.
Sterling laughs, as if Blackpoole had any real kind of power over Nate, or himself. Not at the end of the day, when he wiped out Nate’s major weakness and tie to the company.
But then, the man had always had an overinflated sense of power and importance. This kind of comeuppance, of art fraud, the very thing Nate made him millions – billions – in, is quite poetic.
It doesn’t mean that Sterling won’t come for Nate and his crew with all of his resources, but it does mean he’s willing to play along. Blackpoole had yanked his chain one too many times for him to not take a bit of vindictive pleasure in his fall from the company’s grace.
That's a wrap.
Kudos, comments, and concrit welcome. Poke me on tumblr, I'm fins-illusion.
~Fins