Work Text:
Eliot’s hands are shaking when he slides the key into the lock. He can feel the phantom bruises of times past painted across his ribcage now more than ever, and he can still hear his father’s voice in his head clear as day, reminding him how little he’s good for. Reminding him what he is.
A dog.
He can still hear Damien’s voice in his head, too.
The lock clicks and Eliot slips inside his apartment, flicking the light switch on as he enters. This place isn’t home to him, but then, what is? Eliot hasn’t had a home since he was five and cooking with his mama in the heart of Oklahoma. When she died, everything changed. Eliot changed. He wonders what she would think of him now. Her perfect little angel all grown up to be a killer, a murderer, someone else’s weapon in evil.
Eliot’s hands won’t stop shaking.
He’s spent plenty of nights alone with the echoes of gunshots and memories that he can never get rid of. He’s danced with the devil too many times to count. This isn’t new to him. It doesn’t change the way his skin burns like it’s on fire, the way he can still feel the gunpowder and see their blood beneath his fingernails and all over his hands and on him. It shouldn’t faze him. He’s used to taking lives, after all. He wonders when his hands will stop destroying everything they touch. If they ever will.
The apartment blurs before his eyes, and Eliot drops to his knees, feeling his legs give out. He’s barely two feet past the threshold and he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He’s going to die, and he wonders if the tight feeling in his chest is supposed to be relief or dread. He isn’t afraid to die. But maybe he is. Eliot isn’t the same person he used to be.
Don’t be afraid to die, son. Dying is easy. Living’s the hard part.
Eliot almost can’t remember those words, doesn’t know who they came from at first. He almost can’t remember the last time he thought of his father, the last time that bitterness crept into his chest and filled his lungs, making it impossible for him to breathe or think or do anything but feel. He supposes it’s only right to think of him again for the first time in decades after picking up a gun and taking fifteen lives in a warehouse for the only people he’s had to call family since his mama died. He supposes maybe that’s the way it should be.
Maybe his father had always been right about him. Maybe he’s not worth anything more than that. Maybe he’s just a weapon, a tool for others to use and then discard when they’re done with him. Maybe he can’t stand to be in control, because he can’t stand the thought of proving himself right; of proving his father right - that he’s just another bent, broken soul that’ll burn himself out and lose himself in other people rather than face the impossibility of living another day with only himself to fight for. Maybe he doesn’t know who he is, except that he’s not more. He has never been anything more. Eliot Spencer is nothing. Eliot Spencer is the last thing people see before they die. Eliot Spencer wants to die, but every day he fights to survive.
On the floor of his apartment, shoulders hunched, he wonders if he deserves it. Does he deserve to survive, with all of the blood on his hands? Does he deserve the chance to fight for himself after everything he’s done? Before Leverage - before Nate, Sophie, Parker, and Hardison - he would have said no. He didn’t deserve it, but he did it anyway. He couldn’t stop. He’d spent so long just surviving, just fighting for the chance to live another day, that he couldn’t make himself stop for even a second. He had spent his whole life running, fighting, surviving. He can never stop. If there’s one thing Eliot’s learned over the years, it’s that if you stop, you die. And there was a time, before Damien Moreau, before the black ops, before he took so many lives and collected so many sins, when that meant something to him.
But now, Eliot fights to keep them safe. His team. His family. He fights to change the world, one corrupt CEO at a time. Even still, he knows it’s not enough. It will never be enough. No matter who he becomes, nothing can change the past. Nothing can change what’s inside of him. Eliot knows who he is; what he’s done. He knows there’s nothing he can do that will ever erase the scars, the ones that litter his body and the ones that mark his soul. The mental and the physical. Like he told the team in the park, he will never be clean.
The knowledge that he’s already damned still doesn’t make the feeling of a gun in his hand any easier to bear.
“Eliot,” someone calls, distantly, as if through a tunnel. “Eliot!” Eliot recognises that voice; he can never forget it. It’s Hardison. He takes a deep breath, or tries to, fighting for clarity.
“Eliot,” Another voice joins Hardison’s, just as familiar as the first. Parker. “Are you okay?”
And Eliot wants to snap back, Do I look okay? but he still can’t find his voice, and the room is spinning and he knows he’s having a panic attack but he doesn’t know how to stop it. Just like the thoughts of his father, it’s been a long time since he’s dealt with this, too. It’s been a long time since he’s lost control like this.
“Hey, come on, breathe with me,” Parker says, and she’s crouching in front of him, Eliot thinks, grabbing his arm with a vice-like grip. He settles into the pain, feeling the pressure of her fingers on his skin, trying to do as she said. He tries, once, and chokes, the feeling too familiar at the back of his throat.
“Shhh, that’s okay,” Parker soothes, and he thinks she’s running her fingers through his hair, a gentle, calming touch. She’s been doing that a lot lately. He didn’t think much of it until right now. “Try again.”
Eliot does. This time, he manages to get some air into his lungs before he starts coughing. “Good,” Parker praises him, and Eliot sinks into it, letting the sound of her voice wash over him, calm him, ground him.
“Again,” Parker guides, and Eliot follows her instructions, taking a deep breath in and letting it out. He can hear her heartbeat against his, and it’s comforting.
On his other side, Hardison takes over the breathing exercises from Parker, guiding Eliot through three or four before he’s calm enough to breathe on his own. He can still feel the panic pressing against his ribcage, ready to wrap long claws around his throat again if he lets his guard down, but for now, he’s okay. He can breathe.
Parker scoots closer to him and rests her head on his shoulder. He wants to cry.
“You good?” Hardison asks him carefully, and Eliot tries to nod, tries to say something to reassure him, but all that comes out is a strangled whimper.
“Hey, we’re here. We’ve got you, E,” Hardison says. He’s pressed against Eliot’s other side, so close that Eliot can smell his aftershave. Eliot wonders why. He almost killed Hardison earlier, and now he’s sitting next to Eliot on the floor like he deserves it, like he deserves any of their care or attention at all.
“Yeah,” Parker echoes, drawing Eliot out of his spiral. “We’ll take care of you, just like you always take care of us.” Eliot reaches over and laces their fingers together, giving her hand a little squeeze. It’s the best he can do right now, the closest he can get to saying thank you. She squeezes his hand right back.
Hardison wraps an arm around Eliot’s shoulder, and Eliot exhales hard, blinking back tears. He doesn't deserve this.
He doesn’t know why he’s showing them this side of him, this helplessly broken side that he usually carries so close to his chest, away from their good, trusting eyes, but he can’t stop. He can’t help it. They’re here, and they’re not ashamed of him, and it’s more than he ever could have hoped for; more than he deserves.
“You’re going to be okay,” Parker says, and Eliot wonders if she really believes that, or if she’s just saying it for his benefit.
“She’s right, Eliot,” Hardison chimes in, and his voice is impossibly soft, a low tone that Eliot’s never heard him use before. “We’re not goin’ anywhere, man.”
Eliot shakes his head, trying and failing to stop the tears from falling. They can’t promise that. They don't know what he’s done. No one does.
“It doesn’t matter,” Parker says, and Eliot flushes, cursing himself. He didn’t mean to say that out loud. “We’ve all done bad things, Eliot. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not!” Eliot finally finds his voice. There are tears in his eyes, falling down his cheeks and drip-dripping onto his and Parker’s hands. Hardison moves to wipe them away, but Eliot holds up a hand to stop him. They need to know. Before they can promise him that, they need to know.
“When I was working for Moreau,” he starts, taking a deep breath, “I killed people. I killed so many damn people, and I didn’t think twice about half of them.” He looks over at Parker, then Hardison, trying to gauge their reactions. When they seem unflustered, he continues on. “No one was safe. The young, the old, the sick, the disabled. It was all the same to him. He didn’t care if they were so damn helpless they couldn’t even defend themselves; he had me kill anyone that dared to cross him. He had me kill the relatives of anyone that dared to cross him.” Eliot shoves his head into his hands, the panic climbing up his throat once again, and chokes out, “And I did it. I always did it. I never said no, not once. I killed everyone he ever asked me to. And he asked me to kill a lot of people.”
Parker and Hardison are silent, letting Eliot speak, and he’s grateful for it. He doesn’t know if he can face their reassurances while he tells this story, tries to get this damn thing that’s been sitting in his chest for years out.
“I worked for him for three years,” Eliot says, his voice trembling. “Three years. Do you know how much innocent blood I have on my hands just from those three years alone?” It’s a rhetorical question, and for once, Parker doesn’t answer it anyway.
“In July of the third year, he sent me to kill a business rival of his.” Eliot can feel the static creeping up his throat as he remembers that day. “He didn’t know the family was having a party. There were guests in the house. I called him, asking what I should do. I knew he didn’t like witnesses. So he asked for a head count, and I gave it to him. And then he - ” Eliot swallows hard, his hands tightening on his head. “He said there weren’t that many, and this couldn’t wait. He ordered me to kill them all.”
Hardison slips his hands into Eliot’s, right under Parker’s, and Eliot squeezes them gratefully. They’re both sitting close to him, like a barrier of warmth, protecting him from the worst of his memories. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. I can do this. For them, I can do this.
“There were about ten people inside,” Eliot picks back up, “Counting the target, his wife, his five and three year-old daughters, their newborn son, and half a dozen of their friends. There was a police officer in there, and two Navy SEALs. I could tell by the way they fought when I came through the front door.” Eliot’s shaking now, his body trembling between Parker and Hardison’s. He bites his lip, hard, trying to make it stop, but it won’t. He won’t. He’s caught in the net of his own memories, too clear even years later, and he doesn’t know if he can pull himself back out.
He tries to speak again, but the words are caught in his throat and he doesn’t know if he can force them out. Doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to speak again after this. Parker and Hardison wait, saying nothing, as Eliot tries and fails to find his voice once more.
Finally, after nearly five minutes, Eliot manages to grit out: “Aren’t you going to ask me what happened after that?” There’s something raw and vulnerable in his voice, and Parker and Hardison can hear it, too.
“I’m pretty sure we already know what happened next,” Hardison points out, voice gentle, and that doesn’t make any sense, because if he does, then why is he still here, why is he still sitting next to Eliot and holding his damn hand like he’s not -
“It doesn’t change anything,” Hardison says, and his breath is hot against Eliot’s neck. Grounding. Steady. Unbreakable. Eliot grits his teeth against the sob that wants to escape. He can’t believe Hardison would say that, can’t believe Hardison would believe that, not after what he did to him.
“You told us not to ask,” Parker speaks up from beside him, answering the question again for herself and Hardison both, and her eyes are so blue and so earnest that it hurts Eliot to look into them, so he doesn’t.
“You - I - ” Eliot fumbles, at a loss for words.
“We love you,” Parker says firmly, and she says it like it’s a fact, and a well-known one at that. The earth is round, the sky is blue, we love you. Eliot doesn’t know if he can wrap his head around it.
“Yeah, we do,” Hardison confirms, and his hand tightens in Eliot’s. “This don’t change that, man.”
“How can it not?” Eliot exclaims, and the sob wrenches itself out of his throat and spills from his lips, a heartbreaking, pathetic sound. Parker scoots even closer to him, until she’s practically in his lap, and Eliot thinks he can hear the distinctive sound of Hardison crying, as well.
“It just doesn’t,” Parker says, and she buries her face in Eliot’s neck, one arm circling around his chest to hug him tight. “You’re our Eliot. That other Eliot, the one that did all those things, he’s gone now. You’re here, now. You’re not Old Eliot anymore.”
“Yes, I am,” Eliot protests, his voice cracking on the last syllable. “Parker, do you know what I did today?”
“We can take a guess,” Hardison answers for her. “I keep track of all the local news when we’re on a con, and we saw the warehouse explosion and reports of bodies. We knew that’s where you and Nate came from. It wasn’t too hard to put the pieces together.”
“And you’re still here?” Eliot can hear the incredulity in his voice.
“Yes, stupid, of course we’re still here,” Parker says, her voice muffled from pressing her face into Eliot’s neck.
“You did all that to protect us, right?” Hardison speaks up, and he’s got his logical voice on, like he does when he’s trying to convince Eliot or Parker of something they already know. “You killed them to protect us?”
“Yeah,” Eliot says, and it’s the truth. He never would have killed Moreau’s men if he hadn’t known that they’d come after Parker and Hardison and the others. He knows how Moreau does things. Even without Moreau in the picture, his men still would’ve come after the Leverage team. The only way they’d ever stop was if they were dead. Eliot knew he couldn’t allow them to live, not if he wanted his team to make it out of this safely.
“Well, there you have it,” Hardison says, and he makes it sound like it’s so easy, like Eliot didn’t just kill a dozen guys in a warehouse and leave their bodies there to rot. He shakes his head. They don’t get it.
Parker pokes him in the shoulder. “You’re not Old Eliot anymore. Old Eliot wouldn’t feel this bad.” Eliot sucks in a sharp breath. She’s not wrong, but it still hurts to hear.
“C’mon, El,” Hardison coaxes. “We’re not lyin’ to you, man. We wouldn’t do that.”
And Eliot knows that, he does; for a pair of thieves, Parker and Hardison are just about the most honest people he’s ever met. They wouldn’t lie to him, especially about something like this.
“We love you,” Parker repeats, and he feels Hardison nod against his neck, confirming her words yet again.
And so Eliot takes a deep breath, and he says, “I love you too.”
They crowd around him, blanketing him with their bodies, and Eliot doesn’t feel so alone.
He spends the rest of the night telling them, in halting sentences, between waves of panic and overwhelming memories, about the other things he’s done in the past, about all of the atrocities he committed working for Damien Moreau and others. And it helps, but it hurts; like rebreaking bones to get them to heal right. Eliot thinks this might be the first time he’s taken a step towards healing since the night he left Damien Moreau behind for good.
It feels like coming home. It feels like forgiveness. It feels like peace.