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The most scared that Hardison could remember being was when he was eleven and he thought there was a ghost.
He hadn't been living with Nana very long then, just a few months, and two of his foster brothers were putting him through the kind of initiation that often happens when a new kid arrives.
They were clever about it, he had to give them that, and they worked towards a long con payoff in a way few kids had the patience for. They started small. Late-night stories about old Miss Oliver who died in the house.
Then there'd been noises in the night. Small ones, easily explained away. Then his things started to move. His books would be on the floor, his jacket on the other side of the room from where he'd left it, and he was met with blank looks if he asked the other kids about it.
They needled him like this for weeks, until he was on edge with fear, and then they went in for the grand finale. He'd woken up in the middle of the night and seen the ghostly apparition of Miss Oliver hovering over his bed.
He screamed. And he kept screaming. The two boys looked on horrified, their plan having worked a little too well, and the next moment Nana came running into the room. It didn't take long for her to assess the situation and she chased the two boys from the room with dire threats of punishment, before returning to Hardison.
He couldn't stop shaking and crying and he ducked his head, not wanting Nana to see. His last foster father would have called him a 'sissy' and told him that boys don't cry.
But Nana didn't call him names. Instead, she took him into her arms and let him cry on her shoulder until he calmed down.
"Better now?" she asked when the tears finally stopped.
He nodded and wiped his nose with his sleeve. Nana tutted and handed him a handkerchief. As he dried his eyes, she dug around in a cupboard and pulled out a night light.
"Here," she said, as she plugged it into the wall. "No monsters, or brothers, can come sneaking up on you in the dark this way."
He looked at it uncertainly. He was surely too old for it.
"I'm too big to be afraid," he told her. "I should be brave."
Nana raised an eyebrow and shook her head.
"Alec, there's no such thing as too big to be afraid. You think I wasn't afraid tonight when I heard you screaming?"
He shrugged and she tucked the blankets up around his neck.
"One day, you'll be all grown up and you'll still be afraid. Maybe not of monsters in the night, but you'll be afraid. You know, bravery has nothing to do with not being afraid."
He frowned and she ruffled his hair affectionately.
"Fear's always there, Alec. Bravery's about how you handle it. You find a way to get through it and to manage it, like this nightlight. If you can do that, find a way to do what you need to even when you're scared, that, darling, is when you're brave. And Alec, you're smart and kind and strong. I have no doubt that you'll grow up to be very, very brave"
He smiled at her and then she kissed the top of his head. It was the first time he decided that he loved Nana.
But Nana wasn't here now and there was no nightlight that would take this fear away. His fear of the ghost paled in the face of the terror that gripped him when he heard the screaming through his com and realized that the plane was going down. He had never known fear like it. It felt like he was drowning in it. It pressed on his chest and constricted his throat until he wasn't sure that he could breathe.
"Hardison! We need you!"
He didn't think he could speak, let alone know what to say, and it was a few seconds before he managed to stutter out a response.
Nate interrupted his explanation of exactly how impossible this was. He said he trusted him. That he could count on him and that he always came through in the clutch. And Hardison remembered Nana's words. He could be brave. He just had to find a way to manage it.
He thought of his team. A little more than a team. He thought of Nate's trust in him, Sophie's smile, Parker's laugh, Eliot's affectionate gruffness. They were how he'd get through it, he realized. They were his nightlight to block out the fear. He'd manage it. For them.
"You're right, you're right. I got this."
Nana was right; the fear stayed. But he thought about the others and he managed to push it back and do what he had to do.
It was the most intense fear he had ever known and the relief that came when he saw that the plane had landed was unlike anything he had ever felt.
He punched the air in celebration and tried not to cry.
"Y'all cool?"
There was no answer for a moment and some of the fear came flooding back.
"Y'all cool?"
"Yes, cool," Nate responded, and he sighed in relief.
"Family. All right."
The threat of Haldeman discovering him meant that Hardison didn't have a chance to really process what had happened until he got back to the office. He dumped the box of odds and ends that he'd stolen for his dramatic firing onto the table, grabbed a bottle of orange soda, and sat down to turn on the news.
Coverage of the emergency landing was still going strong and the young reporter on-screen was excitedly describing the 'miracle'.
"I did that." He grinned broadly. "I landed a plane in distress from 3,000 miles away."
Hardison had no misconceptions about his skills, he knew that he could hack into just about any system ever created, but this was something else. Pulling this off was huge.
The others were clearly working to stay away from the cameras, but he caught glimpses of them; the backs of Nate and Sophie's heads, Eliot's shoulder, a flash of blonde hair as Parker ducked out of the way. His grin dropped as the images brought the fear he'd felt back to the forefront of his mind. He wasn't used to feeling helpless, but there had been a few moments when he had thought that he was utterly powerless to stop what was happening and that the plane was going to go down, bringing every member of his team with it.
The idea of losing one of them horrified him and to lose all of them together; he didn't think he could have handled that. To have to sit thousands of miles away while the people he loved died.
And he did love them, he realized. Just after the landing, pumped with fear and adrenaline, he'd said the word 'family' without even thinking, but it was true. They were his family.
He knew he wouldn't truly believe that they were safe until he saw them with his own eyes, so he stayed at the office, working his way through a huge supply of soda and gummy frogs as he waited for the others to return from Florida. He was out of his chair the second he heard the door open.
Sophie was the first to walk through and she found herself engulfed in a hug.
"Hardison-"
"Are you okay? You're all okay? You're not hurt?" He stepped back as he rattled off his questions and Sophie saw the fear and concern in his eyes.
"We're all fine, Hardison. Thanks to you."
She pulled him back into a hug and he clung to her.
"I was so scared," he said, softly. "I'm so sorry."
"Hey, we're okay. You did great."
He stepped back again and grinned at her. Nate, who had entered the room behind Sophie, nodded at him.
"Good job, Hardison. I knew you could do it."
Eliot and Parker were a little less understanding. They had not forgiven him for being MIA when they first went to Haldeman's office and, as far as he was concerned, they didn't appreciate the enormity of what he'd pulled off to save them. His repeated attempts to apologize were ignored and they seemed intent on giving him the cold shoulder.
"Ungrateful," he muttered, as the two of them walked off to their respective offices.
But they'd get over it. They'd all be okay; he knew they would. Because they were family.