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"Uncle Eliot?"
Eliot looked up from his punching bag to see Elaine standing at the precise edge of his workout space. Nathan and Sophie had taught her well; even at age six she was well aware of what Eliot did on the team, and that meant you didn't go up and tap him on the shoulder while he was punching and kicking the stuffing out of something.
"What do you need, small fry?" Eliot took a step back to grab his water bottle and drink deep, feeling the sweat running down his naked back and soaking into the sweatband around his forehead.
"What're those marks from?" Elaine pointed at the myriad of scars decorating Eliot's torso and arms.
He closed his eyes for a second and let out an explosive breath. It figured that Elaine, daughter of the two best verbal tacticians on the team, would be the one to ask him straight out about something no one else had in nine years. Parker and Hardison's son was fascinated by him, but Colby hadn't worked up the courage to beard him in his lair yet. Son of a thief and hacker, he approached every situation sideways. Elaine would go straight to the source, though she didn't yet know how to ease the truth out of someone subtly.
Eliot appreciated her childish honesty more than he could say.
"A lot of people hurt me, pumpkin. That's why I have scars." Eliot sat down on a bench against the wall, and only then did Elaine breach the perimeter and come to stand in front of him.
"I know what you do. Daddy 'splained to me," Elaine said solemnly.
"What did he say?" Eliot asked warily, wondering how on earth you explained someone being a professional hitter to a six year old.
"That when you go after the bad, greedy men, and they try to hurt Mum or Daddy or Uncle Alec or Auntie Parker you make them stop. And sometimes you have to hit them, but only if they're bad men and they won't stop when you ask," she recited, hands clasped behind her back.
Eliot tried to repress a grin at her solemn delivery, and reminded himself to compliment Nate and Sophie on their parenting style.
"And sometimes they hit me back," Eliot agreed, nodding. Elaine unclasped her hands and reached out to touch an old, puckered bullet wound on his shoulder, poking it to see if it felt different than regular skin. Furrowing her brow, she moved to a jagged knife cut on his chest, and then the remains of a purpling bruise on his ribs.
"Did it hurt?" Elaine asked, looking up at him, eyes wide under her dark bangs.
"It hurt when I got them. A lot," Eliot said ruefully.
"Do they hurt now?" she persisted. In answer, Eliot rolled his shoulders and neck, and a popcorn-like series of crackles filled the room as his joints popped.
"Sometimes," Eliot said, grinning slightly.
"Ew!" Elaine said, shuddering. "Mum says cracking joints is bad for you!"
"Your Mom is a very smart lady."
Elaine went silent for a second, and touched the old bullet scar again. "What happened?"
Eliot sighed and grabbed a towel to dry himself off. "What happened to me is a lot of scary stories, and your Daddy would be really mad if I told them to you." Well, that was an understatement. Eliot might be able to twist Nate into a pretzel if he felt like it, but Nate and Sophie has his number mentally in more ways than he was comfortable with to ever think about crossing them.
"What about when I'm older?" Elaine persisted, with her jaw stubbornly set like Nate's.
"When you're old enough to go to an R-rated movie on your own, I'll tell you," Eliot said in compromise. "Our secret."
"It's a deal," Elaine said, and shook Eliot's hand like she'd seen her parents do a hundred times on the job.
Eliot shook his head slightly as Elaine took herself out of the gym. Nate and Sophie were good parents, but they knew all too well the kinds of dangers that were out there. Elaine wasn't sheltered, but she never really saw danger close up. Eliot cared as much for her as if she were his own, and he wouldn't let her step into life on her own without being armed with everything he could give her.