Disclaimer: I do not own Leverage
nor am I associated with Dean Devlin, Timothy Hutton or Gina Bellman.
No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: This is a missing
scene from the Roleplay. If you haven't been reading, let me catch
you up a bit: Nate and Sophie were married a month after she got
pregnant, though they had been engaged before. Two months after the
wedding, Nate was kidnapped by a Russian mobster he and Sophie had
run into in the past. Due to a series of events, he was believed dead
for four months before being rescued in St. Petersburg. For the full
story, checkout the Roleplay Chatroom!
Beloved Father, Friend, Husband
Red for love, white for grief.
They buried a single red rose and a single white rose in his place. Nate was Catholic; he should have a proper burial even if they didn't have a body. Everyone was there, from Maggie, Dr. Morgan and Mrs. Nancy Ford on one side of the cathedral to Emma and Jack Hurley on the other to Sterling standing at the back with his hands casually in his pockets.
Some were there just to make sure he was really dead. Some were there because they knew one facet of him and loved just that piece. But some were there for Nathan, for the man they knew and loved. He brought out the best in all of them, let them know they were good people no matter how the world might label them. He never tried to change anybody; he always said there was nothing wrong with a one of them, that they were just 'misguided'. At least, that's what he used to tell Maggie.
He was a father some of them. Hardison looked up to him, probably because he was only 17 the first time Nate was sent out after him. Parker was never really the daughter sort, but she classified him as a father-figure in her own way. Eliot even used Nate as a cover now and again; they could pass for father and son when they had to.
He was a colleague, an old friend, a son to a handful. Nancy barely cried, not because she wasn't heartbroken over her only son, but because that's the sort of woman she was. Strong and brave and Nate's hero. He always had been something of a mama's boy. Paul did the service; everyone had thought it only fitting. Old friends poured in, even though they hadn't seen him in years.
But to one person, sitting in the front row in bright red heels and Nate's favorite dress, even though it barely fit over her three-months-pregnant bump, he was a lover and a husband. Sophie cried quiet, heartwrenching tears the whole mass. Paul almost reached out and hugged her when he handed her the communion wafer. All he could picture was that beautiful ceremony in Provence with Sophie looking more radiant than ever in an ironically white, one-shouldered gown that must have been driving Nate crazy, though the added radiance could have admittedly been a pregnant glow.
Two months married and she was a widow with a baby on the way. A third-time widow. It would seem third's a charm doesn't apply to thieves and liars like them.
On the third and final day of services, the burial, she laid a book of matches from the hotel in Paris on the casket. It was a romantic gesture, maybe a bit sentimental and ridiculous, especially that she had kept the thing, but they shared a cigarette over that folded piece of paper and damn if it didn't have bloodstains on the back from being in her pocket at the wrong time.
"I love you, Nate," Sophie whispered, pausing to lay a hand on the polished mahogany. "Present and future. I'll always love you, Nate." Something in her died there as she walked across the trimmed grass and laid a carnation on Sam's grave as well, even though she continued to wear her ring. Something she would miss desperately: her heart.