Title: the Worth of a Soul
Warnings: Character death and heavy situations.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the character, but owning some of the people might be nice. :)
He'd decided to take the short cut home. It'd been a long day, but well worth it. The con on Mr. Jenkins had gone perfectly, well, aside from Sophie breaking a heel and screeching because it was her favorite Stiletto, it was the perfect end to the perfect con. Nate had gotten the Canfield's their house deed back, plus a few golden additives in the shapes of bracelets and watches that Parker had accidentally slipped into her backpack. Mr. Jenkins was currently on his way to a NCPD prison cell and the Leverage team got to mark another "happy face" on their invisible board of good deeds.
He was feeling quite good with himself. Everyone had played his or her parts extremely well, coming together like a fine piece of oiled machinery. Ever since joining the Leverage team he'd started to realize that he didn't have to always work alone. Occasionally it was useful to have someone whip up a fake ID for you in two minutes or crawl through a tight space to open a door so you didn't have to waste precious minutes trying to pick lock it. He was slowly realizing the advantages to working with others…to enjoying working with others. Enjoying their combined skills in helping complete a con and the satisfaction of being congratulated by someone other then yourself at the end of the day. They'd wormed their way into his inner zone and once inside his comfort zone, he didn't know if he'd feel quite so whole again to have them leave him all alone. It had only been less then 8 months that he'd know the four, but somehow he felt more complete then he'd felt in a long time.
He made his way down the well-worn staircase in the park, wrapping his jacket tighter against his chest to protect him from the bitter wind seeping through the thin material, and then crossed under the dimmed park light and entered the tunnel under Madison Ave. He'd come this way a dozen times before, at all hours of the day and night. Usually there'd be a homeless man or two, curled in the corner trying to protected themselves from the cold of the night or playing some card game during the day to keep the boredom at bay, but no real threat of danger.
It was a quiet night, almost ominous. A little past 3:30 am. Threatening storms clouds were drawing nearer to obscuring the sliver of moon illuminating his path home. He was tired, having decided to have a celebratory drink with the gang before retiring for the evening. He'd decided he'd needed a bit of fresh air before crawling under his sheets and sleeping off the weariness of the past few days, so he'd foregone the Cabbie's solicitations and started walking. As a roll of thunder reverberated off the inside of the tunnel's wall, he quickened his pace; he had no urge to arrive home impersonating a drowned kitten.
The familiar click was what snapped him out of his daydream and slowed him up. It was the one sound in the world that he hated the most, and just when he was feeling good about himself and his day. He could feel the presence of the person standing behind him, but he couldn't get an exact feel for where or how far away they were from his body. Since the muzzle wasn't pressed up against any part of his body, there was a good chance the person was a professional. If you can feel the gun touching you, you know where it is and can surmises where the perp is, therefore effectively dropping an elbow, spinning on your heel and effectively taking down the asshole, Elliot remembered the words of an old acquaintance. He was trying to figure out if this guy was either really smart or really amateur when he heard the distinct click of the hammer being pulled back. Elliot still had no idea where the person was behind him.
"Listen buddy, I'm just on my way home," His Southern drawl sounded breaking the silence of the night.
"Give me all your money," a small voice barked from the right and behind of Elliot.
Elliot twitched ever so slightly, trying to gage the distance between himself and the owner of the voice. Judging by the sound of the person's voice, he figured the perp to be about 3-5 feet behind him. It wasn't that far of a distance, but could he whip around and take down the creep faster then a bullet exiting a chamber? Well, he was Elliot, so yeah, he decided to give it a shot.
"Hey Pal, you're really making a mistake," Elliot smoothly said, as his right foot simultaneously inched behind his left, stomping down and pivoting with Elliot's momentum as he spun to the right.
His eyes sought out the perpetrator, passing over the small silver shaft of the barrel pointing directly towards him and upwards, connecting on the face of his attacker. It wasn't the baby face of the grungy teenager that stopped Elliot from completing his strike and taking down this nuisance with a single upper cut, but something else, something entirely unforeseen in Elliot's mind. It was with this brief hesitation, really only a second or two, that allowed the perp to regain his wits and pull the trigger.
Somehow God was playing a cruel joke on Elliot. Time seemed to have slowed to an impossible crawl as Elliot looked back towards the barrel of the gun, noting the waft of smoke billowing upwards while a small spinning projectile circled ever closer to his chest.
It had been 1998 and he'd been hired to recover the four-year-old illegitimate child of a certain diplomat that preferred to keep the knowledge of his extra-curricular activities a secret from his wife and two teenage daughters. After a few days of research and knocking some heads together, Elliot had procured the location of the missing child. He'd spent another day planning his entry into the mansion of one of the diplomat's competitor's house's, before making his move. All in all it turned out to be a simple lost and found job. He'd managed to sneak around the two guards at the front of the house, slither past the inferred scanners outside the hostage's room, and after taking out three of guard's on the way out of the mansion, with kid in hand, he found himself smiling proudly to himself for a job well done.
He'd hurriedly strapped the kid into the passenger seat of his borrowed SUV and drove into the black cover of the moonless night. He quickly glanced over at the boy to see if he was alright, the kid was quiet, but as soon as he noticed the child's chest rising and falling, Elliot continued ahead. After traveling for a good thirty minutes, and fairly certain that no one was following them, he pulled over at a 24-hour minimart and stopped the engine. The kid hadn't moved since being rescued and Elliot was worried something might be wrong with him. He unbuckled his seatbelt, got out of the car, and opened the passenger door. The boy was stock still, head pointed straight ahead. Elliot hesitated for a brief moment before tentatively picking up the small, fragile wrist and feeling for a pulse. At first there was nothing and Elliot's breath caught in his throat, had the kid been accidentally hit by one of the bullets the guards shot at him? Elliot quickly did a scan of the kid and saw no blood.
Aside from the boy's crop of dirty blond hair that was matted together creating some mangled knots and one rip in his yellow Batman t-shirt, he seemed to be in one piece. Well, physically at least. Two still green eyes stared straight ahead. They made Elliot slightly uneasy. Even though the kid was breathing, his eye's had lost whatever youthful innocence they'd once held and were now dimmed, devoid of an inner soul. Whatever had happened to the kid in the last few days had destroyed him. Elliot just hoped his family would be able to help heal the boy's emotional scars and hopefully allow him to forget his traumatic experience.
Elliot jumped slightly when something thumped under his hand. Elliot looked down, forgetting that he's being feeling for a pulse. Another thump. At least the kid's breathing, Elliot thought as he put his head in the child's sightline.
"Hey kid, you alright?" Elliot asked in a quiet voice, his hand gently resting on the child's thigh.
The kid didn't so much as flinch.
"You're safe now. No one's gonna hurt you anymore, I promise," Elliot said trying to coax the kid out of his shock. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around the child's shoulders, essentially cocooning him in a giant leather blanket. "I'm gonna call your dad now and get you home. You're mother will be so happy to see you."
Elliot thought he detected a slight shift in the dulled eyes.
Fifteen minutes later one of the Diplomat's goons was loading a duffle bag full of cash into the back seat of Elliot's SUV while the boy was being smothered again his mother's chest in an emotional hug.
"I take it you know how to be discrete Mr. Spencer. Not a word of this is ever spoken again. This," the Diplomat struggles with the right word," little incident never happened. You've never seen myself, my child or any of the other people here tonight, correct?"
Elliot had heard this type of speech before and so he just nodded his head before climbing into his SUV and starting the ignition. He'd already filed the faces and names of the people he'd encountered in the last four days away deep inside his mind. They weren't important, just the means to obtaining him a little financial security.
As he put the car in reverse and backed into the street, he'd all but put this job down as a thing of the past. One last image of the deadened green eyes flashed in his mind before he wiped the memory of the incident from his current thoughts and put the car in drive.
The echo of a crack, almost an after thought as the bullet impacted his left upper chest, slamming through his sternum, nicking his aorta, bouncing off a rib, and sailing through his lower back before coming to rest against a urine stained plastic cup edged against the tunnel wall. He blinked the world back to normal speed, failing to notice the impassive expression on the ragged child's face as he locked eyes with two soulless green orbs before falling backwards onto the dirty cement of the tunnel's walkway.
The blood was pounding through his ears as it leaked out the hole in his back, staining the ground a dark red. The thief leaned over Elliot's spaded body to reach into his pockets, eliciting a small groan from the downed man. As the pulsing in his ears grew louder and he grew colder, Elliot barely registered the grumble of his attacker as the kid counted the crumpled dollar bills he'd discovered in Elliot's pockets. While Elliot's body was quickly shutting down major organs in a hopeless attempt to keep his heart beating, Elliot's mind was being assaulted by forgotten images rushing to the surface. The thief quickly pocketed the money and some of the other stuff he'd discovered on Elliot's person and disappeared back into the shadows of the night.
The off-white sliver of the moon finally succumbed to the storm clouds as they moved in to pour down on the predominately-sleeping town. It was a cool rain that fell across the city, soaking the buildings and objects in it's path, while running downstream to connect with other rivets of it's body, covering all that it passed in dampness. A hand of small water run offs, slid across the dusty tunnel floor, creating a muddied river as it past the urinal paper cup, capturing the small casting in its watery grasp and pushing it forward. Part of the flow broke from the main stream to pool around Elliot's rapidly cooling body, mixing its clean and clear makeup with his dirty, red essence.
Elliot's breath hitched, a bubble of blood gurgling in his throat, obstructing his airway. His lungs tried to pump their remaining supply of air through Elliot's body to clear the offending mass in his throat, but his heart didn't have enough energy to keep itself beating. Another strangled breath, blood seeping out of his lips and sliding towards the ground to mix with the rains washing away the filth of the city. Another half breath mingling with the pitter-patter of the rain as it splashed outside the tunnel entrance. Then, just the soothing sounds of the cleansing rain leading the city into a new day. The pink tingled water flowed freely across the tunnel floor and into the gutter. The small golden casting dropping between the metal grate and flowing downstream with the rest of the city's trash.
The lone murder had vanished into the forgotten crevices of the city with a new penknife, two paper clips, a single black hair tie, and twenty-two dollars and thirty-three cents jingling in his pocket.
The worth of a soul.