Chapter Text
It had started out innocently enough - or as innocent as any of Nate’s ideas could be, which, granted, was not very innocent at all. However, Nate was really more of a tactician than a strategist and, true to form, he had not planned for the long term when he’d come up with the idea. And so, in that respect, it had begun rather innocently.
The seed of the thing had been planted back when the team had been based out of LA, but it only germinated - so to speak - a little over a year later, in Boston. It would only bear fruit almost four years after that, in Portland.
This is the story of these four years.
There was a game playing on TV. Nate wasn’t really watching, though, and he was listening with only half an ear. He was reading, but his attention wasn’t primarily on that either: it was on the front door, listening, waiting for Hardison and Eliot to arrive. Parker was already there, eating her favorite cereal straight out of the box. As for Sophie, well - Sophie, or rather, Sophie’s absence, was what made Nate decide this was a path worth pursuing.
By some stroke of luck, Eliot and Hardison arrived together. Just as Nate expected, the book in his hands drew immediate attention.
“What are you reading?” Eliot asked suspiciously.
Parker swallowed her cereal without chewing it first. “You can read the title, it’s printed really big,” she said.
Eliot made a face at her and replied: “Thanks, Parker.”
Meanwhile, Hardison did read the title. “Oh. Em. Gee. Nate. Buddy!”
Now Eliot looked at him in suspicion. “Is that one of your books? I didn’t even know you read stuff that’s not on a screen.”
“That, my friend,” Hardison replied, “is a vintage edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide. Though, now that I think about it--” he turned to Nate “--why are you reading that?”
Yes, Nate had expected that line of questioning. The answer seemed self-evident to him but, nevertheless, he expected that it’d take some persuasion for Hardison to agree with his reasoning. This was sensitive territory; it was best to tread softly. Lightly, Nate said: “And not the Player’s Handbook?”
Hardison didn’t reply in words, but his gaze spoke volumes - and he was, indeed, as unhappy as Nate had thought he would be.
“Well,” Nate continued, “you didn’t think I wou--”
“No,” Hardison said. His voice became more emphatic with each syllable. “Nu-uh. You never played a single campaign in your life.”
“You see--”
“You are not DMing,” Hardison stated, more than loudly enough to override Nate’s deliberately calm tone.
“Actually--”
Hardison pointed at his mouth. “Read my lips: no. way.”
“It’s not that different than running a con,” Nate pointed out.
“Oh, isn’t it?”
“I need to sell you on a story. The rules,” and Nate lifted the book slightly for emphasis, “they’re just window dressing.”
It was the wrong thing to have said. Hardison’s expression twisted in genuine anger. “You do not get to turn everything into a con. I am turning around, walking right out of here, and calling Sophie.”
Hardison turned on his heel and left, but Nate was no longer worried about his little plan falling apart before it really took off: after all, Hardison was going to talk to Sophie, and Nate had a fairly good idea of how that would turn out. Hardison wanted to play more than he wanted to run the game, and Sophie was more than good enough to realize that.
Meanwhile, though, Eliot was measuring Nate with his eyes, his expression unreadable. “Why are you reading that, Nate? Seriously.”
This was going to be the hard sell. Hardison wanted to play; Parker had no reason not to, and would cooperate if this was what the others wanted. But Eliot-- No: as unhappy as it was going to make Eliot in the short term, the only way to win him over in the long one was to be completely truthful. “I figured Hardison was right, and this will make for a very nice team building exercise.”
“Team-building,” Eliot repeated, drawing the words out.
“I noticed everyone’s a little on edge lately,” Nate said, feigning lightness and pretended to not see how stormy Eliot’s expression got, “and I thought--”
Entirely predictactly, Eliot cut him off. “You know what, Nate? Hardison had the right idea. I’m outta here.”
Eliot made a show out of leaving angrily, but he closed the door with care rather than just let it slam behind him noisily. Oh, he would come around with time; and, perhaps, also with a conversation with Sophie.
In the meantime, though, Nate looked at Parker, who was still sitting on his breakfast bar - rather than by it - and still eating her cereal. “Are you going to leave, too?” he asked. Oh, she was going to leave, but more often than not, he could learn more about how Hardison and Eliot really felt by listening to Parker. She may not be all that good about using what she picked up, or even consciously accessing it, but she was extremely sensitive.
“I’m not done eating,” she said, and actually waited a beat for emphasis before adding: “Yet.”
“Well, if that’s how it is,” Nate said, and leaned back as he prepared to really focus on the book he was, in fact, reading, “put the box in the garbage before you leave, all right?”
She didn’t reply to that. When she did speak up, a few moments later, her voice was laced with suspicion. “Why are you still reading that?”
Unlike with Eliot, here being upfront wasn’t the way to go. Without lifting his eyes from the book, Nate replied: “It’s quite gripping, actually.”
“I don’t believe you,” she declared.
Now Nate did raise his eyes to meet hers. “Why else would I read it, if it isn’t interesting to me? No, the better question is,” he continued, not giving her a chance to reply, “why is it interesting to me?”
Parker resumed eating, and didn’t reply. But her expression - when Nate carefully looked over the edge of the book - was more thoughtful than hostile.
Oh, yes, Nate thought: this was going to work just fine.
Seven weeks later found the four of them sitting around Nate’s dining table as outside, the sun set. Nate had not been wrong; Sophie did eventually stir Hardison and Eliot towards gaming. That said, it had taken longer than he’d thought for that to happen.
And so, seven weeks later found the four of them finally sitting together for what - Nate hoped - would be the first session of many.
Parker was sitting very straight in her chair. As straight as ever: Parker’s core muscles didn’t ever let up. Eliot was slouched in his, looking resigned. And Hardison - oh, Hardison was very nearly bouncing.
First, Nate decided, they should get the metaphorical elephant out of the way. “I’d like to thank you all again for--”
He’d gotten along farther than he’d thought before he was cut off.
“Don’t thank us,” Eliot said flatly. “Thank Sophie.”
“Yeah,” Parker said, drawing the word out a little, “she said your communication skills are terrible, and we should model some for you.”
Had Parker timed it to catch Nate just as he was taking a deep gulp from his coffee? Whether or not Parker had done that deliberately, Nate found himself choking. Well, he supposed, whatever got the job done: obviously Sophie would go for that.
It was a lie, and he knew it. He also knew that, as talented a liar as Sophie was, she’d absolutely default to the truth when she could use it. They were different, in that regard: he only used the truth when he ran dry of lies. That, he supposed, was what she wanted him to learn.
Nate was still coughing; Hardison was done waiting, though. “So,” he asked, brightly, “what are you guys playing?”
“Thief,” said Parker.
“Fighter,” said Eliot.
Both of them had brought their best bland tone of voice for those short words. Parker probably did that because she was matter-of-fact unless she perceived an actual reason to communicate differently. Eliot, though, was probably deliberately pulling Hardison’s metaphorical pigtails.
And yes: Eliot’s mouth twitched as Hardison threw his hands up - which, in turn, sent a fair number of paper sheets flying.
“Seriously,” he said, then repeated: “Seriously. You get to be someone else, not for a con, not for a mark, purely for your own sake, and you choose to do the exact same thing you do every day.”
Nate knew what Parker would answer; he was curious to hear Eliot’s reply.
“I like what I do,” Parker said, proving Nate correct.
“I’m good at what I do,” Eliot said.
Meaningful difference, that. Most people enjoyed being good at things; Eliot most likely was not an exception. That Eliot drew that out, though, and hadn’t said what Parker had - oh, Eliot knew exactly what he was doing, there. More than that: Nate noticed the way Eliot’s eyes flicked across the three of them, seeking their reactions. Nate was pretty sure he showed nothing - but then, Eliot was more than smart enough to expect that. The skin around Parker’s eyes tightened, just slightly. It was a subtle - if consistent - sign that something caught her attention. Hardison, though--
--yeah, Eliot’s little test had gone straight over Hardison’s head.
“If I were a lesser man,” he said, “I would despair of you people.”
“I don’t know,” Nate said, drawing everyone’s attention back to him; it wouldn’t do to let this escalate into an argument or a fight - the potential for which was there, if Eliot was in the sort of a mood to be testing. “Makes for a balanced little team.”
This short sentence achieved exactly what Nate wanted it to. “This is not a con, Nate,” Eliot said, even as Hardison said the same thing in fewer words: “Not a con!”
Wait for it, Nate thought, counting seconds until--
“I kind of wish it was a con,” Parker said.
Hardison slapped his forehead, hard.
It went like that for a while: the game teetering on the edge of falling apart despite Nate’s best efforts, despite Hardison clearly wanting this to succeed - and Nate knew that, no matter what they said, Parker and Eliot wanted to not let Hardison down.
Then Eliot showed up at Nate’s place hours before they were due, carrying a tote bag and a bowl covered with a towel.
“Do I want to know?” Nate asked neutrally as he let Eliot in.
“I am done eating that crap,” Eliot said. His voice had that particularly clipped edge it did when Eliot was pretending that he was not, in fact, doing what he was doing.
Nate didn’t need to hang out in the kitchen to figure out what that was. Hardison was almost as fond of cheap pizza as he was of his dreadful orange soda, and a towel-covered bowl meant dough: Eliot was making pizza from scratch.
And it was excellent pizza, too.
“That’s it,” Hardison declared a few hours later, leaning back in the chair, “I’m ruined for normal pizza. Eliot, you’ve ruined me.”
“You look fine to me,” Parker said.
“He means that now he knows what real pizza is like--” Eliot began, then shook his head and changed tact. “No, you know what, I don’t believe you: you’ll go out and have that crap again tomorrow.”
“But I’ll be weeping on the inside,” Hardison promised.
Eliot would’ve retorted, but Parker cut in. “Can we play now?” she asked, impatiently.
Excellent, Nate thought: so both Eliot and Parker were invested now. He waited, curious to see whether either Eliot or Hardison would reply, and how.
It was Eliot, and he said “Yeah, just one moment,” then got up to clear the table. It wasn’t long before he returned, saying: “Now we can play.”
That was Nate’s cue. He put his hands together, asked: “So, where were we?” and continued directly. “This is your third day wandering the enchanted castle, and you still haven’t found a way out. Every room you enter is different and yet, all the rooms are the same: everything is in perfect condition, everything is fresh and clean, and absolutely nothing looks as if the castle has been abandoned for three generations. When you go through the kitchen, the apricot pie smells as if it just came out of the oven.” There Nate paused, giving his players a chance to interact with the story.
“Oh, that smells delicious,” Hardison said.
Eliot smacked him upside the head.
“Ow!” Hardison protested. “What was that for?”
“Enchanted castle, remember?” Eliot said in the slightly different cadence he used for ‘Mike’, his character. “Do not touch the food!”
“I wasn’t going to touch it!” Hardison protested.
Eliot and Parker exchanged a look. “Yeah, I don’t believe you either,” Parker said.
“I am a wizard,” Hardison said, affronted. “I do not need to be reminded not to eat the enchanted food.”
“Well, magic us a map to where the children are kept, wizard,” Eliot drawled.
“This castle,” Hardison said, drawing himself up, “has been enchanted by a dragon. I told you before we accepted this job, this is way above my pay grade. But no, you heard missing children and that was it. Aren’t you supposed to be neutral?”
Nate was wondering the same thing; Eliot’s reaction to that plot line was visceral and intense, and obviously - at least, to Nate - rooted in Eliot rather than in the background he’d given Mike.
“Aren’t you supposed to be good?” Eliot retorted - and it was Eliot, not Eliot-as-Mike.
Fascinating as Nate found that, Eliot’s response also had the chance to derail the game. Before that could happen, though, Parker said: “It’s not above our pay grade if we find the loom first. I want to find the loom that spins gold. Can you magic us a map to the loom?”
Hardison fell back against the chair and lifted his hands. “Dragon, people,” he said. “Dragon.”
That - or rather, both of those became a pattern: Eliot denigrating Hardison’s elf-wizard, and Eliot showing up well before the game session to cook something up in Nate’s kitchen.
Or, more often, bake.
“You’re late,” Parker said almost as soon as Hardison was through the door. “Why are you late? Eliot wouldn’t let us have cake without you.”
Hardison wasn’t late, but the cake was chocolate. Nate held back a smile.
“I’m not late,” Hardison protested, even as Eliot said: “It’s called ‘manners’, Parker.”
Unsurprisingly, the cake did not last long.
“Finally,” Nate said, settling into his storytelling voice as soon as Eliot returned to the table from having cleared it, “the tunnel ends and you reach the dragon’s lair. Even though you’re deep underground, the lair is lit; there must be something like a skylight very high above, so high that you can’t see it even when you crane your neck. There’s just enough light to see the sleeping dragon by, but it’s not enough to see around the lair. You don’t need to see when you can hear, though, and what you hear over the dragon’s deep snores is children crying.”
“I sneak past the dragon to get to the children,” Parker announced in the split second it took Nate to draw a breath.
“Roll the die, please,” he said, instead of adding more detail to the scene.
Parker picked up the D20 and cast it. “Ha!” she announced triumphantly. “Twenty!”
That was a very convenient 20. Nate lifted up the die and gently weighed it in his hand. The result was inconclusive, but nevertheless Nate was confident as he told Parker: “The unloaded die back, please.”
“What?” Parker protested, wholly unconvincingly. “I didn’t--”
“Parker,” Nate cut her off.
Parker’s demeanor changed to sulking, but she produced an identical-looking die - out of where, Nate wasn’t exactly sure - and held it out to Nate. “There is no way you saw me swap the dice,” she protested. “No way!”
“I didn’t need to see you,” Nate said calmly.
“Then how did you know?” she demanded.
He was, Nate reflected, going to pay for this. He’d deserve it, too. He tacked on a smile because that was part of the mystique, and said: “I just did. That’s why I’m the--”
Eliot lifted a warning finger. “Don’t say it.”
Nevertheless, Nate did go ahead and complete the sentence: “--mastermind.”
The three looks he received spoke volumes.
“Okay, just for that,” Hardison said, “you’re going to let her sneak to the children without rolling again. To the children, and back.”
“All right,” Nate said easily.
Hardison straightened up sharply. “Parker, don’t do that! It’s a trap!”
Nate would’ve been disappointed if he’d missed it. Still, he asked: “How did you…?” and waited to see who would reply, and how.
It was Eliot, closing up the line with the other two: “I think it’s our turn to ‘just know’.”
Well, Nate thought, if ‘team building’ was the goal, then it was being nicely achieved.
That was the last thing to go according to plan for a while.
They were using Nate’s place to hang out together. There were all sorts of justifications that could be made up for that; the others would probably make them, if the question arose. Sophie, though - Sophie couldn’t lie to herself. It was a catch - not the catch, but a catch - in the way she could lie to anyone but herself: lying to herself would only end badly for her, and she knew it.
So Sophie wasn’t lying to herself about why they were in Nate’s living room, despite Nate’s not being and despite his failing to be there any time soon: they missed Nate. Not having Nate there with them felt wrong, and so they were trying to make up for that by hanging out in a space that was Nate’s.
Because having Nate on the comm with them was, clearly, not enough.
Speaking of--
“So,” came Nate’s voice over the comm, his tone the sort of precise that meant he was making a pitch, “I was thinking…”
He didn’t get further than that.
“No,” said Parker.
“Nope,” added Eliot.
“Definitely not,” Hardison concluded.
“Would you at least let me tell you what I was thinking?” Nate asked. His tone - Sophie thought - meant he knew that was not going to happen and was trying to make an alternate path to getting what he wanted.
It was Hardison who replied to him, which meant Nate had about 50-50 odds of getting where he wanted to get at. “You were thinking that if we don’t have another session until you’re out of prison, that’ll be a really long time.” He paused, probably for emphasis, then asked: “Am I wrong?”
“No,” Nate replied, “But--”
“No,” the other three replied all together.
“Really, Nate?” Sophie added. She even put her magazine aside. “They refused to hear you the first time.”
“That was going to be my point,” Nate replied, because of course he did.
“Respect, Nate,” Sophie said. Keeping her voice cool was hard work. “Learn it.”
“Oh,” Hardison said with thinly-masked glee, “burn.”
“I thought the game was going great!” Nate protested.
Nate had found his alternate path, as evidenced by there being real emotion in Hardison’s words as he replied: “Yeah, and then you went ‘The princess is in another castle’ on us.”
“Yeah,” Parker picked up from where Hardison left off. “There was no castle, no dragon - how do we even know that there are missing kids?”
It still made Sophie uneasy that Nate had gone for that. It was no surprise that Nate wove the game from the fabric of reality - that was how he knew to weave a story. But that-- Childhood was a touchy subject for their three younger teammates, and without knowing what Nate had planned Sophie couldn’t estimate the odds of that exploding in all their faces.
In the meantime, though, Nate was absolutely taking the chance to sell his pitch, now that he’d gotten the three interacting with him. “Because you met the families, in the village.”
“Maybe someone paid them off,” Eliot said - and he, Sophie thought, understood that they had capitulated the second they were willing to talk with Nate about this at all.
“Well, if someone did,” Nate said, and he wasn’t even trying to hide the salesman in his voice, “don’t you want to find out who that was? Because that cave trap came very close to killing all of you.”
There was a pregnant pause while that angle sank in, and then:
“No,” said Eliot.
“No-uh,” emphasized Hardison.
“I don’t care,” Parker said.
That was a lie, and by the tone of her voice and the set of her shoulders, Parker knew she was lying. Nate had to have known that, because he chose to not continue to press, but rather let the niggling worm he’d just planted do its work.
Sophie looked at Hardison and Eliot as they resumed their game, at Parker as she returned to her locks, and knew that wasn’t going to be long.
It really did not take long, but they managed to get Nate out of prison, first. And given how that had gone for them, they all needed the distraction.
“Why oh why did we take a ship?” Hardison moaned, chewing the metaphorical scenery. “Ships are terrible, man.”
“And woman,” Parker said. It could be Sophie’s imagination - it really was that difficult to tell - but it was possible that like Eliot, Parker was developing a different voice for when she was speaking in-character as Lolly.
“And woman,” Hardison agreed.
“Yeah, you wanna watch that bit, buddy,” Eliot said in-character, the difference subtle but there. “Or you’ll find a knife poking out from between your ribs one of these days. Nights.”
“Lolly wouldn’t knife me!” Hardison said, scandalized.
Eliot and Parker let the beat hang.
“You are terrible,” Hardison informed them, and it was anyone’s guess whether he was speaking as Eldaran or as himself. “You are even worse than this ship.”
“Which one of us?” Parker asked.
“Right now? Both of you.”
“So are we each, like, half of a ship, or…”
And Sophie was clearly missing something, here, because Hardison’s expression changed in a way that said Parker’s words did something to the inside of his head - something that wasn’t unpleasant, exactly, but nevertheless messed with him in some way.
And Eliot probably missed that, because he didn’t usually offer Hardison an out in those situations. “It’s not our fault you get seasick, man,” he said.
“Oh, so you’re allowed to use that?” Hardison retorted.
“I was only talking to you,” Eliot pointed out, sounding so reasonable that Sophie could imagine Mike’s face.
“He was,” Parker-as-Lolly supported.
Hardison leaned back in his chair, and informed them crossly: “I hate you people.”
Nate swallowed back a smile, and jumped right back into narrating.
Hardison and Parker were talking about ships and the internet, a conversation that was probably key to understanding just what had hit Hardison, earlier. Sophie was badly positioned to eavesdrop, though, as she was helping Eliot clear the table. She refused to let him do that alone; sooner or later, she thought, he would no longer put up with this.
That turned out to be ‘sooner’, because Eliot picked up both the dishcloth and one of the towels, marched over to where Parker and Hardison were still at the dining table, and threw those at their faces.
“I cooked,” he said shortly in reply to Hardison’s indignation. “You do the dishes.”
“Exactly,” Hardison said, an agreement that wasn’t an agreement at all. “You cooked. Why should I--”
Eliot, Sophie decided, needed the backup. Not in terms of actually doing the dishes, but in terms of the drive that had him cooking for them every game night. She cut Hardison off and demanded: “Were you raised in a barn?”
That actually gave Hardison a pause.
“They’re both right, you know,” Nate remarked.
That had everyone suddenly focusing on him; he was still at the table, too, tidying up after the game. Sophie wasn’t actually sure whether his drawing attention to himself was deliberate or not.
“You know,” Eliot said, and his tone was very deliberate, “technically, you’re the host.”
Parker and Hardison exchanged a look then, simultaneously, threw both the towel and the dishcloth at Nate’s face. Hardison even managed to aim.
“Yeah,” Nate said, “I probably earned that.”
And if Sophie wondered if he was getting something out of the game as well, now she knew: he’d deliberately drawn everyone’s attention to his role in the shared dinner, and the setup was - without question - getting to his head, too.
He’d already put missing children in the game. Sophie could only hope that when it - almost certainly - blew up, it would only tear the scab off wounds that had already healed enough.
Sophie got up and went to the kitchen as soon as Nate started narrating the party of three’s entrance to the village. She was that certain that she knew where this was going. She kept some of her attention on Nate’s narration as she dug through the snack cupboard for the packet she knew was there and stuck it in the microwave.
“Oh, seen anything you like, buddy?” Hardison demanded, and nothing in his tone alone indicated that this was in rather than out of character.
“Eldaran,” Eliot as Mike warned.
She could hear the slight smile in Nate’s voice as he continued the narration. “The barbarian stands up. His head nearly brushes the ceiling, and he’s obviously a regular enough patron that he has no problem avoiding the lamps.”
“Damnit, Eldaran!” Eliot swore, in- and out of character mingling for a second.
“What?” Hardison said, flip. “You’ve been complaining about boredom since the bog. I thought I’d get you some light exercise.”
That would’ve worked if it was only Mike who’d gotten restless, but Sophie was fairly sure that Eliot was getting restless, too. She wasn’t sure what kicked it up this time, but she was reasonably sure that she knew how to disarm it.
Right on time, the microwave beeped. She pulled the packet out and tore it open.
“Oh,” Hardison said, attention clearly wrenched away from the game, “something smells good.”
“Smells like popcorn,” Parker said.
“Caramel popcorn,” Eliot corrected, then turned his head to look at her. “Sophie, I told you that was for a special occasion.”
Yes, which was exactly why she reached for that over the regular popcorn. “Nate’s gonna let you break that barbarian’s arm without rolling,” she said through a deliberately full mouth.
Eliot looked at Nate.
“I do know you,” Nate said, sounding entirely too reasonable.
And it said something, Sophie thought, that Eliot didn’t show signs of having realized that Nate was managing him, too. Eliot was usually sensitive - or perhaps sensitized was the better word - to that sort of a thing.
“Fine,” Eliot said, and Sophie was glad no one but Nate was looking at her because her breath caught: whatever had wound up in Eliot was unwinding already. “But you’d better pass me some of that.”
Sophie made a noncommittal sound, and stepped over to sit down next to him and put the bowl next to his elbow.
Eliot chewed through a small handful, then said: “I break the barbarian’s fingers and elbow and dislocate his shoulder.”
“The entire group of dwarves, as well as the other barbarian, stand up,” Nate replied immediately.
“Uh-huh,” Hardison said.
“What, you didn’t see that coming?” Parker said as Lolly. “Because I totally saw that coming.”
And that indicated Parker had seen that coming out of character, too.
“Both of you shut up and help,” Eliot-as-Mike said, the bite in his voice too thin to believe, “or I swear…”
Sophie picked up another handful of popcorn and tossed a few into her mouth, keeping up the casual front she had on.
Nate, though - he gave her a quick, sharp look. Sophie tweaked an eyebrow at him, and he looked away.
He should’ve known he wasn’t the only one playing this game.
Sophie could see just the moment Eliot decided what Mike was going to do.
“Wait, you’re going to do what?” Hardison blurted out - in-character, Sophie thought, because it had been a while since Hardison was genuinely that surprised at Eliot doing those things.
“It’s not a big deal,” Eliot said, using Mike’s voice.
“The lake is frozen, man!”
“You should try it sometimes,” Eliot said, and Mike’s voice was thinner for a moment, letting through more of the way Eliot often related to Hardison. “It’s good for your health.”
“No, thank you.”
“Besides,” Eliot continued, distance back and firmly in place, “the next item we need in order to find the loom that spins gold is at the bottom of the lake. So, I’m going to find it.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Parker said, using Lolly’s voice.
“I’m not doing it because I want to find the loom. I told you, odds are the damned thing is cursed. But if we find it…”
That - Sophie made a split-second decision - wasn’t something Eliot actually wanted to say to Parker. Too much of Eliot was coming in through Mike’s voice, but Parker’s character voice was always thinner where the loom was concerned: the idea of it had hooks inside her head much like the children had in all of theirs, but Eliot hadn’t noticed that and would end up hurting her in a way he never did.
Sophie cut him off with: “Don’t say it.”
“Don’t say what?” Eliot replied. “That…”
Sophie lifted a warning finger. “That’s just mean, and you bloody well know it.” She didn’t know what he was going to say, not precisely, but she could and did figure out the shape of it from the way Eliot shaped his words and voice.
Nate tilted his head minutely. “Are you part of this game, Soph?”
She made a movement that could’ve been tossing her hair back, if she had let it be a little bit bigger. “I’m the angel on their shoulder. Oh, see if I help you next time!” she added feigned-crossly as Parker, Eliot and Hardison showed their opinion on that idea, which they seemed to find patently ridiculous.
Nate turned back to Eliot. “You were saying…?”
Eliot hesitated, just long enough for Hardison to say: “Don’t say it, man.”
“Oh, are you a mind-reader now as well?” Eliot retorted.
He wasn’t - Sophie thought - going to say it, whatever ‘it’ was; were he going to say it, he’d’ve said that right then. And given the precise shade of annoyance in his voice, how fresh it sounded, he hadn’t minded that decision because she had asked.
“Nope,” Hardison said, still fighting a battle he’d already won, “it’s just that Sophie’s usually right about those things. You already said you think the loom is cursed, we hear you.”
And if Sophie had any doubts about what had made Eliot change his mind, that would’ve clinched it: the way Eliot almost shifted in his chair, the micro-expression that flickered across his face, that slight tilt of his chin. “You know what?” he said, too flatly, then his tone switched to Mike’s: “I’m gonna jump in now. The sooner I get in this lake, the less I’ll hear about it.”
“Uh, don’t you need to cut a hole first?” Parker asked, Lolly’s tone pitch-perfect. Sophie felt a momentary relief that Parker elected to not pursue what Eliot had almost said and chose not to.
“That what he’s for,” Eliot replied, jerking his chin towards Hardison, who raised his hands, palms forward.
“Don’t look at me,” he said.
“Don’t you have a spell that does this?” Eliot-as-Mike asked.
“Not right now, I don’t.”
“Take a wizard, they say,” Eliot-as-Mike said, and the anger was entirely for show, enough that even Hardison seemed to sense that. “He’ll be useful, they say. Seriously, man?!” The last two words were emphasized by Eliot bringing up both his hands and shaking them in Hardison’s direction.
“Oh, just you wait until I make it to level 5, buddy,” Hardison retorted, with less than the usual bite he packed into that sort of a sentence. “Just you wait.”
“You’re gonna die before that happens,” Eliot said, and Sophie couldn’t tell if that was as himself or as Mike.
“Yeah, didn’t you say that you’re crunchy and good with ketchup?” Parker asked.
That did it: Nate’s mouth twitched in the beginning of a smile, Hardison drew himself up, and Eliot leaned back slightly in his chair, looking pretty much the way he always did when he - or Parker and he - succeeded at pulling Hardison’s metaphorical pigtails.
“Okay,” Hardison said, crossly. “Nobody is allowed to make fun of me except me, okay?”
“Watch me,” Eliot retorted.
Nate chose that moment to intervene, cutting in before Hardison had a chance to and - deliberately, Sophie thought - switching the focus firmly to him. “That’s an interesting hole you’re digging there, Eliot.”
Sophie could tell how the other three were going to react the second Nate’s lips formed the word ‘hole’, and she wasn’t disappointed by the chorus of: “Shut up, Nate.”
And yes, Nate had done that deliberately, because he leaned back in his chair, satisfied, and said: “Wow, guys, this time it took you two hours to say this. I am impressed.”
Sophie very nearly sighed, then added her part in the play: “Take the compliment and shut up, Nate.”
Nate liften his mug in a mock-salute towards her, then took a sip.
This time, Sophie did sigh.
It went like that for the next few game sessions: Eliot was getting increasingly edgy and taking it out on Hardison within the safe bounds of the game, while Nate and Sophie ran interference. It didn’t take either of them much time to understand why Eliot was the way he was: they were drawing nearer to the six-month deadline and nearer to Moreau, and Eliot hated this job even more than he hated going up against pharma companies. Really, it was a marvel - given how much he hated what they were doing - that he was growing edgy rather than distant. So long as Eliot wasn’t growing distant and detached, Sophie wasn’t going to worry - or that’s what she kept telling herself.
Then came Grakkville Market.
“First of all we’re buying soap,” Eliot declared. Mike’s voice was solid. “Then we’re buying food. I was thinking chicken.”
“Wait,” Hardison said. “When you say ‘chicken’...”
“I mean a whole, live chicken,” Eliot said with relish. “Oh, yeah. Do you have any idea what an amazing meal I could make out of that?”
Hardison lifted a finger. “That requires setting up camp. I was kind of hoping for the inn.”
“So you can get us into another brawl? I don’t think so.”
“He has a point,” Parker said, Lolly backing Mike up for once.
“See?” Eliot stuck his thumb in Parker’s direction. “She thinks I have a point.”
Sophie’s and Nate’s eyes met: Hardison’s reaction was going to be interesting.
“Okay, I really hate you two right now. Really, truly hate you. In fact,” Hardison drew himself up, “I hate you so much that I turn around and go into this maze-like market, alone.”
“I’m not rescuing you when you get kidnapped!” Eliot said, raising his voice slightly as if calling after someone.
Really, Eliot should have known better than to give Nate the idea. Within half an hour of gameplay, Eldaran got arrested by the - probably corrupt - local law-enforcement.
And it spoke volumes about Eliot - Sophie thought - that even with this being a game, even with Hardison being only mock-enraged about the whole thing, which Eliot was more than capable of reading on him; even with all that, guilt flickered across Eliot’s expression and settled into the crow’s feet next to his eyes.
“He got kidnapped,” Parker said.
“He got kidnapped,” he agreed.
“He got kidnapped,” Parker repeated for emphasis.
Hardison threw his hands up at the two of them.
“I mean, technically he got arrested, but…” Eliot let the sentence trail off. Both he and Parker sighed deeply, then Eliot continued: “We could bail him out.”
“Could we?” asked Parker. Implied was, This is not our style.
“It’ll be the last of our gold,” Eliot said, putting mock-regret into Mike’s voice.
Parker pursed her lips, then declared: “Fine. We’re going to steal a wizard.”
And because Eliot knew what signals he was giving - he always knew, even when he couldn’t help but give away those signals - he glanced down at the table then sang softly: “We’re off to steal a wizard, the stupidest wizard of all.”
Hardison balled up a sheet of paper and tossed it at Eliot’s head. Eliot caught it without even looking.
The line of his shoulders looked a little less tense, though, so Sophie figured they were good.
She wondered about the missing children plot and its having all but disappeared for several months.
She should’ve known Nate was building up to something truly foul.
“Wait,” Parker said, voice wavering between herself and Lolly. “Children have gone missing in Sheinar too?”
“Oh, it’s not just that they’ve gone missing, the old lady tells you,” Nate said. “Six months after they vanished, the children came back and killed everyone in Shienar Village. Then, they disappeared again.”
“How long do we have?” Eliot asked, the first to recover.
“Uh…” Hardison fished around in the papers he had spread out before him. “It’s been two months since we heard about the missing children in the other village, and they’d been missing for about a month at that point, so…”
“Three more months,” Eliot said. “We have three more months.”
“We were looking for the loom,” Parker said in a very small voice. She didn’t say, I was looking for the loom, but all of them knew whose character wanted to find the loom the most.
“Don’t go there,” Eliot said tightly. Sophie couldn’t tell if he said that to Parker, or Mike said that to Lolly.
“We were working on this too,” Hardison said, his voice cast to pacify and soothe. “We know about all the abandoned castles and all the places dragons are, or have been, rumored to live within a three-kingdom radius.”
“Yeah, but the children could be at any of these places!” Parker said, distraught still.
“Eldaran’s right, we gathered a lot of intelligence. What we didn’t do is sit down and look it over.”
“We do that now. I don’t-- I can’t-- The loom can wait. Right now, I don’t care about the loom. We need to find the children.”
It just had to be children, Sophie thought. The distress of her three younger teammates was completely real. Nate had to have known that would happen. Was he trying to drive home some sort of a lesson?
“I wasn’t finished,” Eliot said, cutting right through Sophie’s musing. “We didn’t waste the last two months, and not just because we were gathering intelligence. We’re stronger, we’re faster, we’re better at this. Two months ago we were going to die going up against a dragon. Now we just might stand a chance. Even if it takes us two more months to get to wherever we need to go, we’re gonna be even stronger and better when we get there. And that means these children have better odds. Are you sniffling?” he demanded of Hardison, whose eyes have grown misty as Eliot gave his little speech.
The break in tone between Mike and Eliot was clear. That made Sophie feel a little bit better.
“You get it, you truly get it,” Hardison said.
“What?”
“Leveling, man. It’s how games work: you take a side quest so you can get the XPs and level up so you can take the boss fight. It’s exactly what we did, and you get it.”
Eliot’s expression was a study in carefully avoiding looking pleased. “Whatever, man,” he said. “You’re weird. Lolly?” He switched tone, turning back to Parker.
She took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah. Let’s go steal back some children.”
“All right, Nate,” Eliot said as soon as the apartment door closed behind them, “why’d you drag us back here? It would’ve been safer if we’d gone our separate ways from the airport, and you know it.”
And also Eliot needed to lock a door behind him and fall apart, Sophie thought. It’d been barely over a week since Eliot’s past with Moreau had come up. It’d been a demanding, exhausting week for all of them, and it had to be that much worse for Eliot. Focusing on safety considerations was just like Eliot, but Sophie figured that this time, it was more of a diversion: Eliot probably knew that he needed to crash.
“Yeah, yeah,” Nate said dismissively, “we need to lay low after San Lorenzo, I was the one who said it.”
“You said it, but you’re not practicing it,” Sophie said, on the basis that Eliot could probably use the focus being off him.
“Hey!” Nate protested. “I’m going to practice it. But first, we wrap up this campaign.”
Oh, for the love of-- Sophie thought.
“We just wrapped up Vittori’s campaign,” Parker said, confused.
“He means the game, Parker,” Eliot told her.
“Man, even I don’t feel like gaming right now,” Hardison said.
Nate’s expression did a careful dance, emotions shuffled up behind an unreadable mask. That, Sophie thought, was probably not a good sign. She was proven correct by Nate saying, “Don’t you want to find the missing children?”
“Did you just give us a spoiler?” Hardison demanded, suddenly more awake. “Or are you pulling our leg?”
“I wouldn’t do that. Not when there’s children involved.”
“Wait, there’s real children--” Parker started up.
“Oh, no,” Nate said. “Definitely not. I mean, probably somewhere in the world, but-- no. What I mean is, fictional or not, you spent the last half a year trying to find them. And you could do that tonight.” He paused for a second, letting that sink in. “Or in two weeks. Take your pick.”
It was blatantly manipulative, in a way Nate - no longer - usually was with the team. It wasn’t a miscalculation on his part: they were all too tired, too emotionally wrung out, for that to properly register.
Nate wasn’t necessarily wrong: finding the children was going to hit the three, no matter when it happened. They may as well get it out of the way when they had two weeks free of jobs ahead of them, when they could afford to rest and recover.
Their group wandered off towards the dining table, all of them but Eliot. Parker helped Nate pull out the game paraphernalia; Hardison just crashed in one of the chairs. For his part, Eliot stood in place, duffel bags still in hand. Then his shoulders rose and fell as he heaved a silent sigh, dropped the bags right there and said, “Oh, hell,” before joining the others at the table.
Yes, Eliot was fully aware of what this was going to do to him. So was Sophie - and so was, for that matter, Nate: Eliot had been wearing his earpiece back in the car with Chapman. They’d all heard what Moreau’s lackey had said. Sophie had no doubt Nate had put the pieces together, just as she had. She wasn’t surprised that Hardison hadn’t, but Parker - Parker was going to figure it out, Sophie thought. She could only hope that wouldn’t go as badly as Eliot seemed to think it would.
Nate gave it a beat of silence after they all sat down, then began the narration. “Finally, the tunnel ends and you reach the dragon’s lair. Even though you’re deep underground, the lair is lit; there must be something like a skylight very high above, so high that you can’t see it even when you crane your neck. There’s just enough light to see the sleeping dragon by, but it’s not enough to see around the lair. You don’t need to see when you can hear, though, and what you hear over the dragon’s deep snores is children crying.”
“The last time we were in this situation,” Eliot said, and Sophie couldn’t tell whether that was in or out of character, “it was a trap.”
“It’s a dragon, man,” Hardison said. “It’s smart. Maybe it put that trap there so we won’t do the right thing now.”
“You’re not the one the cave collapse would’ve buried,” Eliot replied.
Hardison turned to Parker. “Lolly?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s your call.”
Sophie counted seconds before Parker took a deep breath, then said clearly: “I sneak past the dragon to get to the children.”
“Roll the die, please,” Nate said.
Parker did.
They were staring, Sophie knew.
“Oh. my. God,” Hardison said.
“Yeah!” Eliot said, and yeah, Sophie thought, none of his defences were working right now, and this was going to hit him like a hammer between the eyes.
“Twenty,” Nate declared. “Nat twenty, even. You successfully sneak past the dragon and find the children. They are in a long series of cells, each locked with a padlock the size of your head.”
“That just makes them easier to pick,” Parker said.
“There’s no trap?” Hardison said, the confidence he displayed a moment before - when Eliot needed it - gone.
“There’s no trap,” Nate confirmed. He wasn’t looking at Hardison, though, and neither was Sophie.
“Oh my god,” Hardison repeated, then he too noticed what was going on. “Eliot, you all right, man?”
“Eliot?” Parker asked tentatively.
Sophie wasn’t wrong: the moment hit Eliot as hard as she thought it would. His eyes were scrunched shut, hands balled into fists on the table, and he was shaking; subtly, but shaking.
The shaking wasn’t good. The shaking wasn’t good at all. If Eliot was about to have a flashback, they needed to--
Eliot must’ve reached the same conclusion at the same time because he pushed his chair away from the table, so hard he almost lost his balance, then stomped out of the apartment, the door very nearly slammed behind his back.
This wasn’t as bad as Sophie thought it’d be, it was worse, and there was no way that Eliot being out there on his own was safe. She looked at Nate, her one potential ally in this, but Nate seemed completely calm as he got up to open a window, letting in the cool night air and the noise from the bar below.
“Why was Eliot crying?” Parker asked, sounding small.
“I think you’d better not ask him that,” Nate said. “Because then, he will tell you.”
“Nate, a word?” Sophie said tightly, then followed him near the monitors, as far away from the dining table as they could get without actually leaving Parker and Hardison on their own.
They two were talking quietly, but Sophie wasn’t listening to that, not even with half an ear. She needed her whole attention on Nate, because he - unlike her - had done the math properly on how badly Eliot was going to react, pushed that hard deliberately, and Sophie wasn’t actually okay with that.
There were things you didn’t do to your team. She thought they were past the point of Nate learning that.
“Was that really necessary?” she asked, her voice coming out in a hiss.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nate deflected automatically.
She shook her head. “Don’t play coy. Not now. Not about this.”
“I did give them the choice,” Nate said. He was trying for his reasonable voice, but Sophie could tell: he knew that was a shit excuse also.
She laid that out where he couldn’t deny it. “And after the week we’ve had, you expected them - expected Eliot to keep up, to think about all the angles and the implications? They trust you, Nate,” she said exasperatedly, “even he does! And I don’t think this is what they signed up for.”
It wasn’t. It wasn’t what Sophie had thought she was talking them into, almost a year back.
“I know what I’m doing,” Nate said.
Sophie was having none of that. “Do you? Because that didn’t look to me like he was ready.”
Nate’s expression became complex again. “The game is far from over.”
For a long moment Sophie just breathed, forcing her anger down and forcing herself to really look at Nate, to take in all the tells he was giving, everything he knew she’d be able to read on him - because he couldn’t lie to her, not when she was looking for it, and they both knew that.
She wasn’t going to back down, wasn’t going to let Nate claim this one for an uncomplicated victory, and that meant there was only one thing she could do, only one thing she could say. “Fine. I want in.”
“‘In’ as in…?” Nate asked, letting the question trail off. The question - Nate’s voice and body language as he asked it - said that he wasn’t trying to negotiate the extent of her involvement from this point on, but rather merely having it clarified, being put out where they could both see it.
“I want to know what you’re planning and why you’re planning it,” she said, flatly. “If this is the kind of game you’re running for them, you’re not running it alone.” That last bit was vicious and - given the way she was reading Nate - not entirely necessary, but she did want him to know, thought he needed to know just how angry she was with him.
She hadn’t missed the wounded cry that’d come in through the window a few moments earlier, hadn’t failed to recognize Eliot’s voice.
“Fine,” Nate said, simply.
She tilted her chin. “Thank you,” because good behaviour should be rewarded.
In the silence that followed, she could hear Hardison saying: “...happened to some of my foster siblings.”
“So is it something they did or something that happened to them?” Parker asked as Nate and Sophie were returning to the table. The question, and Parker’s voice as she asked him, told Sophie what the conversation was about, how the subject of Hardison’s foster siblings had come up and what it was, precisely, that had happened to them.
That was good. It meant that when the truth came up eventually - and eventually, it would - Hardison would be able to reconcile himself to it, would be able to accept it without tearing the team apart.
“Both,” Nate said, answering Parker’s question.
“Nate’s not wrong about that,” Sophie allowed.
“You think he’s going to be okay?” Hardison asked the two of them.
“Well, it hasn’t killed him so far,” Sophie said. She couldn’t keep the darkness from her voice.
And Hardison heard it, because he said bitingly: “Oh, because that’s encouraging.”
“He’ll be fine,” Nate said, his coldness allowing him to be a little more soothing in this moment. “Just give him time.”
“You know it’s not as simple as that,” Sophie told him exasperatedly. Goodness only knew what Eliot would revert to, after having been pushed this hard before he was ready for it.
Nate’s expression did another one of those complicated dances, until he settled for replying, looking at her rather than at Parker and Hardison: “Well, like you said - it hasn’t killed him yet.”