Outsider
She's here because she owes Sophie.
She'd probably have come anyway, but discharging that particular debt is an added bonus to the money she's getting paid for dealing with this insanity. And, oddly enough, the longer she's with them, the less important the money seems to get…
At least the team are interesting to watch, even if they're infuriating to deal with.
.
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Nate is one step shy of total freefall. It's clear he's keeping going on the cause alone, fuelled equally by whiskey, coffee and adrenaline. A heady mix, and highly explosive. Tara hopes she's somewhere else when the spark finally catches. Another continent, preferably.
Watching him work is an education, mind. He's clever and calculating and merciless, understanding what makes people tick and exploiting their innermost fears and desires to bring about his own brand of elegant justice. Tara sees the way he looks at the rest of his team, though, and it's just too close to the way he looks at the marks for her to trust him. Nate would play his team mates the same way he plays the marks if he felt it was in the best interests of his plan to do so, Tara feels sure.
After each job, he climbs back into the bottle, wallowing in his own private hell. He pushes the others away when they try to help him, guarding his betrayal and hurt and grief jealously. After all, if he lets the team in, they might be able to take these things away from him. And then what would be left? Certainly Nate doesn't know, and that's what scares him. Tara's seen his like before, worked that pain to her own ends in a hundred cons. She knows where he's headed, and it ain't pretty.
She doesn't like Nate that much. In the position he's in, he endangers all of them, Tara included. He swings between using his team like pawns in a very risky chess game and acting like Team Dad. She can see the others have trouble keeping up with his changing moods and spiralling plans too. He's charismatic though, and despite how bleak and broken he is, she can understand what Sophie sees in him. She just hopes that her friend isn't going to get her fingers burned…
.
If any of them needs Team Dad, it's Parker.
She's the original feral child, all grown up. She's beautiful and fragile and wild, and Tara's having trouble understanding how she's managed before now, without the team to back her up. Parker doesn't do people well, lacking the indefinable something that lets one human understand another without needing a book of instructions. It would have been so easy for her to become a victim of society instead of a menace, prey instead of predator. There's no denying she's good, though. She's definitely the best thief Tara's ever seen, government included.
Parker doesn't like her. Probably because Parker likes Sophie, and Tara isn't Sophie. It's not like it's occurred to Parker to hide her dislike, after all.
Parker almost has to be less frail and innocent than she appears, but Tara finds her impossible to read. There's no pattern to what she wants, what she does, what she says. The way she moves is breath-taking – graceful and fluid and infinitely controlled, a stark contrast to the workings of her head. She's disturbing too. The way she watches people reminds Tara of a cat spotting something tasty. Maybe she shouldn't have called her adorable after all…
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Hardison, on the other hand, is totally adorable. He's young and enthusiastic and loves to make the rest of the team happy. He's polite and deferential to the others, most of the time, and he's clearly in love with Parker. She hasn't noticed, and Hardison lacks both the skill and experience to make her understand. He's constantly looking for approval, unaware that his hacking skills are world class, and that he could easily end Tara and her career with the push of a single button. Somehow this doesn't seem as important as it should when twinned with the fact that he is a genuinely nice person.
Not a quality you often find in the criminal fraternity.
The need for approval, particularly from Nate, makes Tara wonder where benevolent authority has been for the hacker's young life. He's clearly been taught respect, and kindness and consideration, but Tara guesses that he hasn't had a father figure to look up to. Hell of a thing, when your first real father figure is a shattered, bitter booze-hound with a vengeance Jones…
As well as adorable, Hardison's also soft. Between the asthma and the allergies and a staggering lack of physical co-ordination, Tara's surprised he doesn't crap out more often, and even more surprised at the brotherly affection between Hardison and the most dangerous man she's ever met.
.
Tara knew about Eliot Spencer already. Everyone knows about Eliot Spencer. His reputation is a bloody one, suggesting a man without mercy who's loyal only to whoever's employing him.
So seeing him with the rest of the team is something of an eye-opener. He's kind to Parker, a brother to Hardison, friends with Sophie and he's clearly ready to catch Nate when he does eventually fall. He's not the man she thought he was going to be.
He's got more charm than she expects from the average hitter too – a country-boy twinkle that disarms and misdirects and makes him easy to underestimate. Tara reckons she's a good judge of people, but Eliot hides his secrets well. He's polite, even friendly, but Tara's sure she'll never know what's really going on behind those cornflower eyes.
She's picked up a few clues. He takes any job involving kids really personally. He's faster and stronger than he looks, hiding his build under a loose shirt. He's closed, keeping himself in check and weighing each word before it leaves his mouth. He's careful of the team, treating them the way she'd treat something precious and fragile. He moves light and quiet, scanning his surroundings all the time. Something about the way he moves suggests to Tara that he may have been hurt badly in the past in addition to dealing out death and destruction, that he's been the tortured as well as the torturer, though that's not a question she thinks she'll ever get an answer to. Catch him off guard though, and just sometimes there's a whole world of pain reflected in his eyes…
Four broken individuals. Much as Tara likes Sophie, she's finding it hard to see how these people work together as a team. But they do work, and as Tara watches them swing into action once again, she's pretty sure she's never seen anything quite like them.