A/N: I've had this crossover fic idea in my head for quite a while now but I was never 100% sure how to write it or if it would be any good. I'm now 90% sure I can make it work, so here we go! Really hope somebody out there might want to read it now ;)

Disclaimers: All recognisable characters belong to John Rogers, Chris Downey, Dean Devlin, TNT, and a bunch of other folks who aren't me.

Chapter 1

"This wasn't how this was supposed to be."

Jacob Stone stared through the glass in the door, one hand on the back of his neck and a serious look on his face as he stared at Eliot lying silent and still in the bed. He wanted to make things better, he really did, and instead he made them ten times worse.

"We'll figure this out," Cassandra promised, reaching a tentative hand to his shoulder. "We always do."

"And if we don't?" he checked, eyes flashing angrily and a growl in his tone as he shrugged her off. "I know you're all the glass is half full, Cassie, and that's just great, but that's my brother in there and he's... I don't even know what he is," he said, looking to the ground.

It was all his fault. That was what hurt Jake so much. As if there hadn't been enough pain shared amongst the members of his family over the years. Seeing his father again a couple of weeks ago hadn't ended so well, but it had made Jake think long and hard about all the other people that he loved, like his brother, Eliot. The only person that Dad was more shamed by than Jake himself. The rejection should have bonded them closer together, but it didn't. Blood brothers they may have been, but nobody was more different than Jacob and Eliot as they got older.

"Seemed like a good idea, trying to find him," he said bitterly. "I figured fate had to have a plan when I found out he was right here in Portland these past few years. Like destiny, I was supposed to make amends, you know?"

"He was happy to see you," Cassie reminded him with a half a smile. "You know he was. He was interested enough in your life that he came here to The Library. To see where you work, to meet your friends."

"Yeah, and look what happened!" said Jacob crossly, pointing into the next room where his brother lay unconscious still. "I messed up, again."

"No, Jake," she told him, grabbing his arm when he moved to storm away. "This isn't your fault."

"Tell it to Eliot," he advised her, knowing she couldn't. "Better yet, tell it to Parker," he said acidly.

Cassandra recoiled as if he physically slapped her. Jacob was a little grumpy, even a little harsh sometimes, but rarely with Cassie, and he certainly never had been mean. Even back when he told her he didn't trust her at all, he said it so kindly she was more sad than mad about it. Now they were good friends, or so Cassandra thought. As much as Jake was hurting, she couldn't stand to have him talk to her this way.

"I can't take this anymore," said Jake, pulling his arm from her grip too easily and walking away before another word could be spoken.

With a heavy sigh, and tears in her eyes she was barely holding in, Cassie looked back through the window into the next room. She hoped rather than believed that everything was going to work out okay.

"Any change?" said a voice, so suddenly that Cassie almost jumped out of her skin.

"No. Nothing," she confirmed, turning to face Parker with her hand over her heart that beat wildly out of control. "We will do everything we can, I promise. There has to be an explanation, and an antidote to whatever caused this. Once The Library is secure, we'll get everybody on the case..."

She stopped talking when she realised Parker was going into Eliot's room and evidentially not listening at all anymore.

"Okay then," said Cassandra to herself. "I'll just talk to myself."

She watched the other woman sit down on the chair by Eliot's bed and lean over him, apparently speaking softly to her friend. Cassandra wondered if they weren't more than just friends, but from the way it was told to her, Parker was dating another man. Not that her relationship with the as yet unseen Hardison seemed all that stable from what she had heard.

"What a real mess," Cassie said to herself, and yet it had all started so well, just a couple of days ago.

...48 hours earlier...

"Are you okay?"

"Sure. I'm fine," said Jake, looking anything but in Cassie's opinion, but she didn't say it. "I just... It's weird. We've been here more than a year, and he was here all the time. My brother, a couple of miles down the street from The Annex."

"Pretty big coincidence," she agreed. "The odds are amazingly small. Calculatable, of course," she noted, watching the figures scrolling in front of her eyes, waving her hands amongst them to get what she needed in the right places.

"Cassie," said Jake, his hand on her arm getting her attention. "Not right now."

"Right, sorry," she said, forcing a smile as she swiped away all the mathematical equations that blocked her view of the brew pub's front doors. "So, are we going in?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Jake nodded, taking one more deep breath and then pushing forward through the doors.

Cassandra followed, unsure what to expect when Jacob finally faced his brother again. He told her the story, how they grew apart when they got older, how their father pretty much declared Eliot dead to him decades before, possibly the only person worse treated than Jake himself when it came to their dad. Of course, even Jacob admitted that there were reasons enough to think the worst of Eliot.

Apparently, he hadn't always been one of the good guys. That had changed more recently. A little digging on the internet didn't bring up much, but then Ezekiel offered to lend a hand, mostly on account of his being nosey, or so Jake had said, and suddenly they knew everything.

It was strange to be walking into a place that was knowingly run by a bunch of thieves. Cassie expected to be more concerned than she was about meeting not just Eliot, but his associates, also. Still, she had made friends with Ezekiel Jones easy enough, and there was hardly a thief more world-renowned than he. At least, that's the way he told it.

"Oh!" she started when a blonde woman suddenly appeared in front of her as if by magic. "Hi, I... Well, we were looking for someone."

"Eliot St- Spencer," said Jake, stumbling over the fake name a moment. "Is he here?"

The blonde eyed him with even more suspicion than when she had looked at Cassie, but Jake couldn't wonder as to why. Whoever she was, she knew his brother, and was clearly noting the uncanny resemblance between them.

"Eliot!" she yelled over the bar. "There's a guy out here wearing your face!"

"Parker, what the hell are you-?" Eliot stopped short of saying anymore as he appeared from the kitchens.

He wore a bandana on his head and an apron covering his clothes, though Cassandra couldn't help but notice the muscles that strained beneath the layers. Save for those and the longer hair, he might have been Jake in disguise.

"Wow," she said without really noticing she had.

"Hey, brother," said Jake, not even registering Cassie's reaction. "'S been a long time."

There was a moment when Eliot seemed to have turned to stone, he was so still, and then in a second he leapt over the bar as if it wasn't there at all and pulled his brother into a rib-crushing hug.

"Damnit, Jake," he said, holding onto him still. "You're the last person I expected to see."

"Yeah, well," he replied, holding on just as tight as Eliot ever was. "Heard you were in Portland, I was too. A guy can't come visit his big brother?" he said as they pulled apart and looked at each other.

"Yeah, a guy can do that," said Eliot, smiling big. "It's real good to see you."

"You too." Jake nodded.

"You never told me you had a brother," said Parker, frowning hard. "He could've been really useful on cons, you know, looking so much like you," she said thoughtfully, putting her face in between the guys and glancing back and forth between them so fast, Cassie felt dizzy just watching her.

"Jake doesn't do what we do, Parker," Eliot told her with a look. "Hell, these days I don't know what he does," he considered, looking back at his brother.

"I'd love to tell you, but maybe not here," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the crowd of diners and drinkers.

"Upstairs," Eliot advised, "but maybe first you could introduce us to the beautiful lady that I gotta assume if your girlfriend," he said, smiling at Cassie then.

"Oh, no," she said, shaking her head. "I'm not... I mean, I'm a friend and a girl, or woman, technically, I guess, but not a girlfriend. We're not... Jacob and I, it's not... No."

"You talk fast," said Parker with a look, "and she really, really wants everybody to know you're not dating," she told Jake then.

"I didn't mean to..." said Cassie helplessly. "I was just clarifying the facts. Cassandra Cillian," she said, holding out a hand for Eliot to shake.

"Any friend of Jake's is welcome here," he assured her, taking her hand and kissing it rather than shaking. "Come on up."

Leaving Amy and the other staff to run things in the pub, Eliot and Parker escorted Jake and Cassie upstairs. Conversation was stilted at best when they got there. Neither brother seemed entirely confident in talking about how things were now or how they used to be. Jake mentioned seeing their father recently, but aside from asking how he was doing, Eliot didn't seem interested in hearing anymore. The look on his face seemed to suggest to Cassie that it was all too painful to recollect how they parted ways the last time.

"So, you're not a thief or a hitter or anything," said Parker, cutting into the conversation just as soon as she could, "but you don't have a regular job or you would've told us what it was in the bar."

"She has a point," said Eliot, looking thoughtfully at Jake. "Last I heard, you were still in the family business, publishing all your academic papers under a dozen different aliases."

"Yeah, well. Things changed," said Jake, ducking his head. "Don't get mad when I tell you this, okay, 'cause it ain't like it sounds."

"This ought to be good," Eliot replied, looking cautious now.

"I got recruited into a team," Jake started to explain. "We... well, we help people, and we protect stuff. El, I'm... I'm a Librarian."

There was a look that went with the phrase, that conveyed that capital L on the front of the job title most would assume was a normal, every day job. Cassandra wasn't shocked. Jake already told her that Eliot might not be as surprised about magic as others often were. Though he had never been certain he believed all the stories before, Jacob and Eliot had a cousin who was rumoured to have dabbled in the darker arts years ago, working for a law firm that was literally in leagues with the devil or some such. It was the only reason Jake was worried about telling his brother about his new job now. From the look on Eliot's face, Cassandra more than understood why he had been so concerned.

"Get out."

"I knew this was a mistake," said Jake sadly, rising from his seat. "Come on, Cassie."

"No," said Eliot then, getting to his feet, also. "I didn't mean it like that. Jake, I wasn't... I meant get out of that job, that place. The Library, it ain't... that ain't a place you wanna be."

"You don't get to decide that for me," said Jacob definitely. "Okay, you may be my older brother, but this is my life, a life you ain't been a part of in too long."

"I didn't have a choice."

"Yeah, you did, El, and you made it a long, long time ago."

They stood there, almost toe to toe, blue eyes locked onto blue eyes. Cassandra realised very suddenly that she had stopped breathing and forced herself to do so before the world quite got a chance to go black in front of her eyes.

"There's no team at The Library," said Parker then, catching everybody's attention. "There's only one Librarian at a time and he works alone, always."

"Huh. Everybody knows now?" said Cassie looking from her to the guys and back.

"Parker?" Eliot said with a questioning look. "You know about this?"

"Sure. Who hasn't tried to steal from The Library? They have the best stuff," she said, smiling kind of nostalgically. "I'm hungry," she declared then, taking herself off to the kitchen without a second thought.

Eliot shook his head. "Eight years, and I still don't... Parker!" he yelled then, giving chase.

Jake looked from his brother's retreating form to stare at Cassandra.

"So much for The Library being a secret, huh?"

All Cassie had to give him was a shrug.

To Be Continued...