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God had abandoned him—fine. Nate could understand that, it made a modicum of sense. Even in this life, he had been attracted to a woman who was not his wife, he'd failed in his attempt at priesthood—he'd worked for an evil man.
But Paul? The man had served the Lord wholeheartedly. His church was a refuge for those in trouble. Letting it close would actively make the world worse. Father Paul deserved a miracle, and if the Lord wouldn't provide it, Nate would.
"You sure you don't have a problem with this?" Eliot asked him again.
"Like what?"
"Like excommunication?"
Nate spun on his heel. "Oh yeah? And why aren't you worried about it, huh? This doesn't bother you at all?"
Eliot gave him a flat look. "Because I'm not Catholic."
Nate laughed, entering his office as his entourage grew. "Yes, you are."
"That? That's a big reason why I'm not Catholic," Eliot stressed. Nate could sense him jabbing a finger at his back and rolled his eyes.
"What's excommunication?" Parker asked, confused.
"How in the hell is Mister Texas over there Catholic?" Hardison piped up.
"Hey, I'm from Oklahoma—"
"There's a difference?"
Eliot glared at him, but didn't deign to answer. "...And I'm not Catholic. Here, Sophie," he added politely, passing her a cup of tea that she accepted graciously. Both of them were very pointed in their civility. See? This is how friends act.
Nate scoffed quietly at the implied reprimand. Eliot had started it.
"I still don't know what excommunication is," Parker announced to the room.
Nate waved the question away. "It's not important."
"It's when someone gets themselves kicked out of the Catholic church," Hardison answered, surprisingly. Then he turned to Nate, his expression concerned. "Nate, what exactly are you doing?"
"What—what we're doing," he corrected. "Like I said, we're going to fake a miracle."
Hardison's eyes went wide. "You—what? Isn't that a mortal sin?"
"So now you're religious, too?" Eliot's words were biting. Maybe Nate had pushed him a little with the whole Catholic thing.
"I'm—I mean, I'm non-denominational," Hardison answered, "but I never do anything my Nana told me not to do. This? This just doesn't seem right."
Hardison's little song and dance there came across like a particularly complex round of two truths and a lie. Better to avoid that altogether to get him on board. That meant ultimately getting him to think about the "how" of it. "What doesn't seem right? Let me get this straight. We’re trying to save a church, right? So, faking a miracle, to me, seems like the quickest way to do that."
Sophie backed him up, then, as expected. He knew she held little love for the greater institution of the Catholic church. When Parker stepped in to summarize the plan they were building, he was sure that Hardison would go along with it, in spite of his misgivings. He assigned Parker to keep Father Paul at bay, with Eliot to play Hardison's errand boy. It was only a little petty.
"As long as I don't have to do anything immoral," Hardison said, as if he wasn't already on the hook.
"Ah, absolutely not. No, I just need you to figure out, you know, how to fake a miracle," Nate said, deadpan.
"We all going to hell," Hardison bemoaned over Eliot's snickering.
Sophie Devereaux had played "the other woman" before, as had her other identities. It's not as if it bothered her—it could be a useful gambit. But when it came to Nate, and to his wife...she had always tried to tread carefully there. Nate wasn't a mark to be twisted to her whims—she'd known him since he was mortal. Not to mention that Maggie was a delight.
That was part of the problem, actually. Losing Sam had scarred Nate deeply. Losing Maggie might just break him if he refused to step away from her. If Sophie could spare him that, she would, but it required delicacy. His wounds were fresh. On the other hand, Nate had an unfortunate stubborn streak. A light touch would get her nowhere. Such a frustrating man.
"How was it, talking to Maggie again?" she asked him as a gauge.
"Uh, good. Y-yeah, strange. Good. Yeah, I still feel, uh...."
That didn't bode well. "Guilty?" she asked.
He looked at her, then away. "Yeah. Something...something like that."
Well, that was insulting. She'd never made a real move on him, not while he was married. She'd known he wouldn't have taken it well. Apparently, he was not aware of the same thing. "You never cheated on her, Nate," she said plainly.
"I was tempted."
Christianity, honestly. "No, you weren't." She cleared her throat before he could argue. "Nate, you made a family. There's a lot of things to consider now that you're leaving them behind."
Nate frowned at her. "But I'm not 'leaving them behind.' I can't just abandon my wife."
Sophie sighed. "You know we don't get to make those choices. All I'm trying to say is that you need to figure out how to move forward."
"Of course," he said, dismissive.
Why couldn't he take her seriously? She leaned in close to him, drawing his attention. "Just don't take too long," she warned.
His expression turned shuttered. She held little sympathy for him. She wouldn't have to push so hard if he would just listen.
The closet they hid from the Vatican in was cramped and full of robes, with stacks of plates and cups on a normal set of shelves. Unsurprising—Parker had always found normal temples extremely boring to steal from, whether they were called churches or not. They were usually fun to climb, when she wasn't hiding from the Vatican.
Parker stared at Eliot.
He stared back.
"I stole a relic," she whispered, leaning closer to him. "What did you do to make the Vatican mad?"
Eliot made a face. "I don't want to talk about it."
"You punched a priest, didn't you?"
"I don't want to talk about it!" he hissed at her.
She shuffled into his space and waited, still staring. Eliot flushed a little and glanced away, muttering something about bishops needing to set an example for the church.
Yeah, she'd called it.
Hardison snuck in, closing the door softly behind him. He exhaled quietly, slumping against it.
Parker and Eliot shared a look, then turned back to him. "Why are you hiding from the Vatican?" Eliot asked.
Hardison made a face at them. "Oh, I don't know, maybe because I faked a miracle?" he whisper-yelled. "The miracle they're here to check?"
"Well they don't know that."
"Woman—!"
The sound of talking drew closer to the door. Hardison eeped and ducked away from it, shoving past Eliot on the way.
"So why are you really hiding?" Eliot asked, folding his arms.
"Why don't you tell me first?"
That seemed like a fair trade. "I stole a relic." Parker pointed at Eliot. "He punched a bishop."
"I didn't—"
Hardison raised his eyebrows.
"He deserved it, okay?"
Parker could see when Hardison decided not to dock Eliot points for that, though Eliot didn't seem to. Hardison had been acting like he was behind in points after they figured out who beat up Father Paul, which made it surprising. He liked winning.
"So why are you hiding in the closet?" Parker asked.
"Vestry," Eliot corrected.
"Gesundheit," Hardison said, which made Eliot roll his eyes. Then Hardison interlocked his fingers, twisting them round and round like he was trying to braid them into rope. "Uh...I might be a little bit...Jewish."
"Ohhh." That made a lot of sense, now that she thought about it.
Eliot glanced at him, then at the plates and things. He picked up a package. "Here, want some terrible crackers?"
Hardison eyed the package. "Isn't that sacrilegious? Think I've hit my quota for the year, man. For the rest of my life."
Eliot shrugged. "They're not consecrated yet. You got nothing to worry about."
Hardison smiled so brightly. It was hard to look at. "I absolutely do. Gimme those."
Parker snatched one of the crackers away from Eliot, earning a glare. She nibbled on one edge, but stuck out her tongue immediately, throwing it away. "Like paper, ugh."
"They're not that bad." Eliot tossed one into his mouth. Whole. "You can't live off sugar alone, Parker."
"Agree to disagree," she muttered with a glare, perching on the nearest clothes rack.
While the two of them sat together on the floor eating paper wafers, Parker scoped the room. Only five exits. It was an older building, so it didn't have convenient things like vents.
She'd spotted a sixth exit when the door opened. Father Paul shut the door behind him, staring at all of them with the face everyone wore when exposed to Nate for too long. "You can't be in here!"
Hardison started to get up, but Eliot held up his hands. "Our apologies, Father, but I really don't think you want us out there, either."
Father Paul buried his face in his hands. "You do realize that you're eating the communion wafers?"
"To be fair, they're not consecrated." Eliot ate another one.
"And how long has it been since your last confession?"
Eliot nearly choked on the wafer. "I'm—I'm not Catholic."
Father Paul raised one eyebrow. "No?"
"It was probably before he punched a bishop," Parker helped.
"Parker."
"You know what? Unlike you, I should actually be fine out there. I'm just gonna go and leave you to—" Hardison waved one hand at Eliot and the other at the priest "—whatever this is, okay?"
Parker sighed. She wanted to go back up into the bell tower, but she couldn't risk getting near the Vatican. "Don't look them in the eyes," she warned him. "They can smell fear."
Hardison smiled at her and left.
Father Paul made a kind of croaking sound.
"Ooh, did you eat one of the crackers?" Parker said, trying not to laugh at him. "They are pretty dry. Stick in your throat."
In seminary school, Paul had thought that Nathan Ford would become one of the best debaters of their generation. He was absurdly knowledgeable about the translation and interpretation of God's Word throughout history, and had managed to convince many of their professors to reconsider their views. Paul had thought that Nate had found his calling in priesthood. He'd been surprised by his marriage until he'd met Maggie himself. He couldn't consider it a wrong path by any means, just a different one. He had stayed in touch with Nate, arguing with him over interpretations of the Holy Scriptures on Monday evenings. Nate would drink a glass of red wine and he would drink water. When he didn't have homework, Sam would sit nearby sometimes and drink apple juice; those arguments were gentler than their usual ones.
Paul had never thought that Nate's faith could break. Nate had helped him hold strong to his own faith, time and again. It didn't seem possible. Yet here he stood, a thief. Yes, it was a miracle that he and his band of criminals had saved Paul's church, but if he'd still come to church in the first place, Paul couldn't imagine that Nate wouldn't have done the same months ago—without the deception. It was Paul's failing that he hadn't reached out to Nate and kept him with the Lord and with their community—that he hadn't helped his friend. Tragedies were difficult to understand for those on Earth, Paul knew that well. When their lives were so fleeting, how could they hope to know God's will?
Even though Paul reached out to him now, he didn't think Nate would come to Mass next Sunday.
Sometimes...sometimes tragedy struck, and the only thing you could do was pray. He hoped he would see Nate sitting on the pew three from the front again someday.
So. Parker.
Hardison had been thinking about Parker a lot since his sleep deprived brain came up with the idea of time travel. The problem wasn't that it explained things—it was that nothing else seemed to. He was as big a fan of Sherlock Holmes as the next geek, but having "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" justify time travel? Hell nah. He had to have missed something. Although if anyone could pull off the impossible, it would be Parker. Maybe it was getting a little creepy how much he was investigating her, but it was a mystery. He had to solve it.
His phone rang, startling him out of his latest search refinement on Parker—although was it really a refinement when he was constantly widening his search parameters? Anyway. The call was from an unknown number, which Hardison answered out of curiosity more than anything else. "Hello? I'm sorry, I just got this phone, I don't—"
"Cut the crap, Hardison."
"Eliot?" He checked the display—still the wrong number—and frowned. "Did you break the phone I gave you?"
There was a moment of silence on the line, punctuated by a quiet curse. "No, I still have it, I just bought a burner, and—look, that's not important. I'm at the airport—"
"Hold up," Hardison said, looking up the burner's call history—only two so far, less than an hour ago, one to LAX and the other to...somewhere in Kentucky? He thought Eliot said he was from Oklahoma, but he had worked in Tennessee in the past.... Well, whatever. He dug into that one a little more. "Hold up. You okay?"
Eliot adopted his most patronizing tone. Hardison deserved that, he thought with an eye roll, treating the Eliot Spencer like a normal person. What had he been thinking? "Something came up," he was saying, "so I won't be available for a while, and since you're in charge of coordinating the team, I thought I should do you the courtesy of letting you know—"
Hardison sat forward as the info popped up, his algorithm scooping up not just names but the most recent news. News of a fire. "Is everyone okay?" he asked, completely serious.
Eliot cut off abruptly. "...The horses aren't."
Hardison exhaled shakily. "Yeah. Yeah, I see that. Is there anything I can do to help? I can—"
"It's not—this is my business, okay? I'll handle it."
Too late, he was already combing through business license and ownership and insurance—
Insurance.
"Actually, this is looking a lot like what we do as a team," he said, looking at Eliot's flight manifest. Coach? Not a chance. He was bumping that up to first class right now. "I can get Nate on your flight, you two talk to the client—"
"They're not clients—"
"Same as Father Paul wasn't? Teresa?"
"Yeah, because Nate was so committed to helping Teresa."
"Well, you got lucky. You got an instant buy in. The horses were insured by IYS."
The phone went silent. Hardison was still dredging up all the info he could, trying to become an expert on Kensington Stables yesterday, so he didn't notice right away. Once he did, he paused midway through their website. "Eliot? You still there?"
"Yeah." His voice was quiet. "I guess I owe you one."
"Nah, man, don't worry about it. We're a team, right?"
"...Yeah."
"Look, I'll get Nate out there with you—upgraded you to first class, by the way—and then we'll tackle this thing together, okay?"
"Okay." He cleared his throat. "Hardison—thanks."
Hardison blinked, caught by surprise, but Eliot had already hung up. He was left staring at the Kensington Stables website, everything about it screaming dot com era. Specifically, he stared at one of the grainy, low res pictures.
It was a picture of a blonde haired girl patting a horse's neck, but the rider of the horse could just barely be seen. He was in profile, his hair cut short and his face out-of-focus and shadowed by his hat. Even so, it was obviously Eliot, looking just the same as he did now, but for the easy smile. No stress, no threats, no sarcasm—he looked happy, full stop.
Hardison called Nate.
"You called him?"
Nate leaned back in his seat to watch the fireworks. He hadn't expected it, exactly, but it had definitely been possible. And it seemed that Eliot knew far too well why families were a bad idea for people like them.
"How's your husband, Aimee?" the hitter asked.
Nate glanced at him, curious at his tone, but Eliot had eyes only for the girl—eyes full of love.
"Gone. Seems I have a weakness for men with one foot out the door."
As she stormed out, Eliot's expression turned carefully neutral. He wanted her to be happy, even without him. Interesting. The complication, of course, being that she wanted to be happy with him. Why else would her marriage fail while she was still so young? And so hurt by his leaving.
"So when you said you knew the family, you meant you...knew the family, huh?" Nate asked as they were left alone. He couldn't resist needling him, though, not after the judgment Eliot had already passed on him, so he didn't stop there. "Please tell me you weren't engaged to her."
"No," he said, sharp. He glanced away. "No matter how much she wanted us to be."
Nate leaned forward. "There's no way we're gonna do this if I have to worry about you being stupid because you're too involved with—"
Eliot's laugh was bitter. "I'm not involved. I left, Nate. Unlike you."
"You still love her, don't you?"
"Doesn't matter. I can't be what she's looking for." He ran a hand over his face, growing cold with anger once more as he looked at the pictures of horses on the wall. "Willie called me, not Aimee. I'm here to help him."
"I need you focused on the job, Eliot."
Eliot glanced back at him and smiled with too many teeth. "Oh, don't worry about that. I'll be focused." He headed for the door. "Let's get this bastard."
Horses used to be small, once upon a time. Parker could clearly remember when they had been small. Over eras and ages, they'd become terrifying alien creatures. She wanted nothing to do with them. "Can you hack it?" she asked the magician. Now was the perfect time for magic.
Hardison gave her a look. "Hack a lock? Nice. You still really don't understand what I do, do you?"
She pouted at him.
Eliot didn't even look at her when he started talking. He was really snappish today. First Nate, now him. This was why they needed to stay away from mortals. "Parker, you're gonna have to go in through the air duct, drop down, and let us in."
How did they not see the problem with this. "But the horses are in there!"
"No, no, no. there's a back room, there won't be any horses in there," horse lady promised.
She didn't believe her.
"We need you to do this," Eliot said, harsh. Then, looking back at her, his expression shifted. "I need you to do this."
Her eyes narrowed. She owed him no favours.
He locked eyes with her. "Please."
Please. Please, he said. What was Parker supposed to do with that? He'd said that he'd risk his own getaway for hers, and that was one thing, but it was another thing completely for him to know she didn't owe him anything and still ask her for help. With horses. She did not like horses.
He should have known better than to care. They didn't live long enough to get attached to, and neither did the horses. But...he'd said please. He was asking her. Relying on her, and he was like her. They might see each other again some day. They could be amicable, at least.
It was still crazy, Parker fumed to herself as she got out of the car. He was crazy—why did he like horses so much in the first place?
She would do it, but she didn't have to like it.
“Old” was an inside joke Hardison still didn’t get. Nate and Sophie had called that Sterling guy “an old acquaintance” and he’d proceeded to be an evil mirror of Nate.
Hardison couldn't help but wonder if Aimee Martin would count as an "old friend" to Eliot. If he would. Even though he and Parker and Eliot had all known each other just as long, he had a sneaking suspicion that Parker would, and he didn't know what to do with that. The two of them connected on another level, in a way he couldn't. Parker had just faced a deep-seated fear for the man before he pulled a cowboy and rode away.
Eliot had better know what he had in a teammate like Parker.
"Can he make it there in less than five minutes?" Hardison asked Aimee, trying to think of ways to delay Foss and buy Eliot more time.
Aimee shook her head, but he could see the admiration on her face as she looked at where Eliot had disappeared. "Anyone else, I'd say no," she said. "But Eliot's got a chance."
"He's that good?"
"He's the best I've ever seen." She nodded after him. "Eight years and he doesn't even look out of practice."
"Of course not," Parker said, matter-of-fact. "He's Eliot."
Hardison felt a pang. He pushed it away. "He'd better make it. There's nothing I can do to help him from here."
As Nate said something to Willie about leaving the lovebirds alone, he looked at Aimee, and she looked back. He wished things could have gone differently between them. But that wasn't his life. It could never have been his life.
He hated falling in love with mortals.
He wasn't one for picturesque language, but they were so...ephemeral. The longer he lived, the clearer that became. One would think it was war that would have taught him that, given how many he'd been in, but so often it was peace. In war, he was one soldier among many. His life could be ended as simply as any other in those circumstances. With the advancement of technology, that had become something more common, not less. But in peace...in peace he saw them grow up and grow old. He saw their lives shorten a little more every day.
It hurt worse than a blade or bullet ever could.
"Eliot," Aimee repeated.
He snapped back to himself. "Hm?"
She bit her lip. "You okay? You went a little space cadet on me there."
"Yeah, I'm—I'm fine," Eliot said.
She hesitated, scuffing her toe against the ground. Eliot's heart ached. It wasn't Aimee's fault, of course not, but—why hadn't she moved on already? He couldn't give her what she needed. She had to know that by now.
The silence dragged. Eliot exhaled slowly, controlled, before looking away from her. "Aimee, I know I haven't done right by you—"
"Eliot, stop."
"You deserved better, and I'm sor—"
"I was wrong!" she shouted over his apology.
He stared at her.
"I was wrong." Aimee smiled, but there was no joy in the expression. "I knew you weren't the kind to settle down, but I thought I could be the exception." She looked away. "I'm glad you found a family."
"Wh—wait, those guys?" he asked, pointing after Nate. "I don't—"
Aimee smiled at him again; he shut up. If it helped her to believe that, he wasn't going to take it from her. "I'm just sorry it couldn't be me," she said, brushing away a tear.
He hated falling in love with mortals, because so often, it was impossible not to.
He stepped close to her, taking her hand in his, resting his forehead against hers. When she leaned into him, he kissed her goodbye.
Stepping into the Leverage offices, Nate saw Sterling and stopped in his tracks. The man raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.
Nate strode past him to the liquor. They could discuss their little chess match at the stables, but this...this was not about that. "Why are you here, Sterling?" he demanded, refusing to look at him.
"Is that any way to greet an old friend?"
Nate arched an eyebrow at him, pointed. "Are we friends?"
Sterling crossed his legs, unruffled. "Old enemies, then. You're being quite rude."
"Usually a guest waits to be invited."
"You weren't home."
He snorted. "Oh, of course. Uh, look, if you're just here to whine about how you lost—"
"What would Sam think of his father now?"
Nate gritted his teeth, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists.
Sterling tipped his head, condescending. There may have been some sympathy there once, but no longer. They'd grown too far apart for that. "Look, Nate. I don't want to say I told you so—"
He laughed, pouring himself a whiskey.
Sterling sat forward, serious. "This is not the way to deal with this, Nate. Crime? Really?"
He shook his head. "I'm not a criminal."
It was Sterling's turn to laugh in disbelief. "You can't be serious."
Nate sipped his drink, pointedly not offering his "guest" any.
Sterling's eyes narrowed. "Despite what the church would have you believe about martyrs, suffering doesn't automatically make you a hero."
"Because you know so much about the church."
"Don't insult me."
"I'm not a martyr, Sterling." His hand gripped the glass tighter. "I'm not a hero."
His lip curled. "Spare me the false humility. You are not above the law and you never have been, Nataniele. Sooner or later, you'll have to come to heel. Play your little game with your little team as long as you can, but you know I'm right."
"It's not going to be that easy, Sterling," Nate said, keeping his voice mild. "I've picked up a few things over time."
Sterling got to his feet, leaning in close. He lowered his voice. "At the end of the day, how much can you really trust these criminals?"
"More than I can trust you."
Sterling stepped back, his expression flat. He shrugged, sliding his hands into his pockets and turning to go. "Conosci i tuoi polli," he mocked.
"Rest assured, if it all falls apart, I won't come crying to you."
"I would expect nothing less."
Nate drained his glass as Sterling left, relishing in the burn of it. He'd show him exactly what he was capable of.
fin