AN: Oh, look here. Poesie, having basked in the success of her birthday mega-fic with its crazy-obscure crossovers, is now going to try what? A Close to Home crossover? But didn't I partially do that already? Besides, how many people have even seen that show? Well, more people than have seen Rescue 77 anyway. So here goes. Close to Home crossover. It's a future-fic, so really, all you need to know is that Christian Kane played the husband of a prosecuting attorney on the show. He was one of those sweet, supportive kind of secondary characters. He *spoilers - seriously, don't read this story if you don't want to be spoiled, m'kay?* died in the Season 1 finale. Their daughter had just had her first birthday. Awww. *tear*
The character Phil Chase is an OC. Annabeth Chase is the main protag of the show, and Hailey is her daughter with Jack. Jack wasn't even in every episode, but whatever. Any chance to see Chris Kane, right?
Summary: The team takes a case that hits a little close to home for Eliot.
The Close to Home Job
They haven't had time to check up on their potential client beyond the bare facts, but he had been very insistent on meeting. He'd said that the life of a child is in danger, and well, you know what a sucker they all are (especially Nate) for cases involving kids.
Nate had set up the meeting in a bar in Indianapolis, where the potential client lives. In his eagerness, Phillip Chase had arrived early, even earlier than Eliot and Hardison, who are still absent. Parker and Sophie had gotten in only minutes before Mr. Chase ("just call me Phil"), debating about the pros and cons of shoe designs (beauty versus practicality).
"This is my granddaughter, Hailey," begins Phil, a sixtyish man with a small, wiry frame, sliding a candid photograph over to Nate.
"She's seven years old. Last month, she was taken from her mother's house, and we haven't seen hide nor hair of her since. She could be in another state, or another country, and we don't even know! A month. It's been a whole goddamn month. The police say the chance that she's even alive is so small- " The man swallows hard. "They're giving up, I know they are. They say the first day is crucial. After that, the- the survival rate drops like a stone."
"You said she was taken from her mother's house?" Nate asks looking down at the bright blue eyes of the smiling blonde girl. There's something oddly...familiar about those eyes, but he can't quite place his finger on it. "What about her father? Are they divorced?"
"Jack's dead. He was my son." Phil clenches his jaw. "Both of my boys are dead."
"I'm sorry for your loss and for your current situation," Nate begins with something resembling delicacy, "but we are not private detectives."
"I already hired private detectives. They didn't come up with squat," Phil spits out. "Mr. Ford, I heard you help those the law can't help. Well, I don't believe the law can help me. Not anymore." He shakes his head. "I brought up both of my boys to be good, law-abidin' men, but I can't believe in the system anymore. Not after justice let my son's killer go free."
Sophie exchanges a look with Nate and clears her throat. "Which son?" she asks gently, "Jack, or the other one? What happened?"
"Jack. El- " Phil swallows again, as if pushing down another painful memory. "Jack's brother was killed in action a long time ago. Jack was hit by a drunk driver on his way to pick Hailey up from daycare. The man who killed him got away without a scratch, and only got five months and community service. Five months, for leaving a little girl without a father, and a damn good woman without a husband. Just because the police were too damn lazy to calibrate the breathalyzer they used to measure the alcohol on that bastard's breath. No proof, they said. Well, the proof is, my son is dead!"
Parker purses her lips, unsure of how to comfort this man carrying so much pain. She pats his arm awkwardly and hums sympathetically, prompting the usual uneasy stare. This time, though, she gets an odd feeling of déjà vu, like she's seen this look somewhere before.
"I'm sorry," Phil says wearily, running a hand down his face, "I shouldn't have said all that."
Just then, Eliot and Hardison come in through the door, arguing about elves and dwarves and how dammit, Hardison, they don't even exist!
"Eliot?" Phil Chase stands on unsteady legs, using the table to support his weight. "Eliot? That you, boy?"
Eliot stumbles back, eyes wide open in surprise. "Dad? What're you doin' here?" He seems startled, and a little anxious, which is a difficult feat to accomplish.
The other members of the team look at each other. "'Dad?'"
Hardison looks back and forth between the two men. "Did I miss somethin'? I feel like I missed like, an episode or somethin'."
"Eliot," Phil says again, and closes the gap between him and his son. Embracing the son he had thought long gone, he says, "They told us you were dead. God. They said you died."
Eliot bites his lip. "I'm sorry, Dad," he says quietly into the collar of his father's jacket. "I can explain."
Phil pulls away and holds him by the shoulders, anger sparking in pale blue eyes remarkably like his son's. "Explain? Like where the hell you've been these past fifteen years? How could you stay away from your family like that? An' lie, an'- You didn't even come to your brother's funeral."
Eliot blinks in shock. "What?"
Phil goes on, "Jack went to yours. An' yet here you are alive an' kickin'. Where the hell were you?"
"Funeral?" Eliot repeats, his face pale and clammy, "Dad, what're you talkin' about?"
The father's arms drop to his sides as his rage abates. "You mean you didn't know? They didn't tell you?" he asks, somewhat calmer. He shakes his head and snorts. "Figures. Jack's been dead for six years," he says softly.
Eliot stares in horror. "Dead? Jack's dead?" he croaks. He seems incapable of doing anything other than repeating his father's words.
Phil nods. There are tears glistening in his eyes.
"Was it- Was he sick?" Was there something he could have done? Did Jack die because he needed a kidney or a bone marrow transplant and his exact genetic match couldn't be bothered to check up on him?
"Drunk driver."
Eliot stares at Phil, as if hoping that this is some bad joke because, Jesus, Jack? Not Jack. Not his twin brother. His face twists in grief, guilt, yes, more guilt than anything. He should've known. He should've...What? There's nothing he could have done to prevent a drunk driving accident. But he should have been there. He should've...
Parker frowns worriedly and nudges a chair behind Eliot's legs, just in case he falls over. He's starting to tilt like the Leaning Tower of Eliot.
"I didn't know," Eliot begins, "I didn't know. I didn't- " He breaks off, unable to finish. They hadn't spoken in so long...He hadn't checked on his family in so long. That, he should have, could have done.
"He was married," Phil says, "Her name is Annabeth. They have a daughter, Hailey. She's seven now." He looks down at the photograph of the little blonde girl on the table.
Eliot picks it up. She has his brother's eyes and his smile. Seven years old, and Jack died six years ago. (He's dead, God, he's dead.) "She was only a baby. She doesn't remember him."
"No, she doesn't," Phil shakes his head sadly. "Look, she's missing. I- I ain't gonna let her go, too. Maybe I've grieved enough for Jack, but I ain't ready to grieve for his baby girl. I can't believe that she's dead, Eliot. I just can't."
"What do you mean, she's missing?" Eliot frowns, and puts the pieces together, "You? You're the client?"
Client? Phil looks towards the others, forgotten in his combined joy at being reunited with his son, and the grief at breaking the news of Jack's death to him. "You work with this Ford guy, Eliot? What happened to the army?"
Shit. "I still sometimes do jobs for them," Eliot hedges, "But not too many these days. These guys are my team."
Parker decides to help him out. "We're thieves," she says, slinging an arm around his shoulders. "The best."
Eliot closes his eyes in mortification.
"But we help people," Sophie says calmingly, "You knew that, Mr. Chase, Phil. That's why you came to us. You knew that our methods might be a bit...unconventional."
Phil takes his gaze off of his flushing son and looks around at the team of...thieves from whom he has requested assistance. "If you'll get Hailey back home safe and sound, I don't care if you're a traveling circus."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hardison says he needs time to run his web crawlers through security feeds, anything that might turn out to be a lead. Could be that the girl really has been taken across state lines, maybe someone talked about it somewhere, something. He hacks the Indiana state police database and pulls up a list of their suspects and does his own investigating in their files.
Phil tries to buy his son a beer, but Eliot just shakes his head and tells the bartender to put both of their drinks on his tab. Then he orders two shots ("and leave the bottle, sweetheart").
"To Jack," he says, and downs his.
"They said you died," Phil says when he can speak again after the whiskey goes down. His voice is flat, as if remembering...
Eliot runs a fingernail down a deep scratch in the polished wood of the table. "I know. I'm sorry. But they had me doin' dangerous things, things that are classified and that I'm still not allowed to tell anyone. They had to kill Eliot Chase and get me a new identity. It was to keep you guys safe, I swear. I didn't want to do it. They told me I had to stay away from you, especially Jack. Because he...you know."
Phil nods, drinking in the sight of his son, and thinking of the other. "Because he looked like you?"
"Yeah. Some people mighta wanted to use him. I'm sorry, Dad." Eliot looks up, eyes pleading. "I didn't want to, but I was already in too deep, an'- I'm sorry."
"We went through a rough spot after. Jack dropped outta college, started...started getting' into some bad things. He didn't take it so good. I tried to help him, but..." Phil sighs and shakes his head. "Stubborn kid."
Eliot swallows. Damn. The secret government entity that had "killed" him hadn't allowed him to check up on his family for a good long while, and well, even when they'd stopped telling him that it was too dangerous, he hadn't wanted to open up old wounds again. It hurt to think of his family and not be able to talk to them ever again. He and Jack had been close, very close. So he'd cut his ties completely and stayed away, praying that God would keep them safe.
God. He shouldn't have trusted in Him so much. But he'd been a kid back then, and he'd believed.
"By the time he met Annabeth, he'd put his life back on track," Phil says a little more gently, "He had his own construction company, and he'd saved up a pretty bit of money."
Eliot takes another gulp of his beer. It doesn't help much. "So this Annabeth girl," he asks, changing the subject to matters less painful. "What's she like?"
"She's a deputy prosecutor here in Indianapolis. She's a fine, smart woman. Good at her job, good mother, and she was a good wife to Jack, for the two years they were married."
Phil sighs. Two years. He and the boys' mother had had longer than that, before they couldn't stand the sight of each other any longer and had divorced, with Jack staying with him and Eliot going off with her to live in Kentucky. There had been visits - just the boys - but he hadn't seen his ex-wife until the day of her funeral.
"Were they happy?"
Phil takes a sip of his beer. "Yeah. Yeah, they were happy. They were even plannin' on having another kid when it happened. Hell, they were about to take a vacation, sort of a second honeymoon, flying out that weekend."
Eliot nods and picks at the label on his bottle. "She blonde?"
Phil chuckles. "Of course."
They share a smile. Jack and his endless string of blonde girlfriends had long been a family joke.
"Who's blonde?" Parker asks, popping out of nowhere. She seats herself next to Eliot and pilfers his beer.
Eliot grabs it back and glares. "None of your business. Go away, Parker. Go bug Hardison."
"Now, son," Phil says, "Is that any way to talk to a lady?"
Parker guffaws and punches Eliot's thigh. "He thinks I'm a lady!"
Eliot groans.
"Hey guys," Hardison calls, "I got something!"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What Hardison had discovered was a very carefully-hidden trail that led to a small cabin on the outskirts of the city. Because it involved the daughter of an Indiana state prosecutor, Nate decided to take a semi-legal way to getting her out. They left an anonymous tip with the FBI and when they came roaring in, they (Eliot, Hardison, and Parker) had mingled.
They find her in a hidden basement.
Eliot climbs down cautiously, senses alert, looking left and right for potential attackers.
At the bottom, he finds a little girl huddled into a corner. Her straight blond hair gleams a washed-out gold in the beam of his flashlight.
"Hailey? You okay?"
Parker takes that as a sign that all is well. The lights flicker on, and the big blue eyes squint at the sudden brightness, then widen incredulously when they catch sight of her rescuer.
"Daddy?"
Eliot shakes his head as he checks her over for injuries. "No, I'm not your daddy. I'm your Uncle Eliot."
"You look like my dad. He's dead."
No scrapes, no nothing, except for the raw skin around her ankle from the chain keeping her from running away. She's relatively clean, not under-fed, and the clothes that she is wearing aren't the ones from when she had been taken. That doesn't mean much, but she doesn't look like she's been hit or...had other things done to her. That's the main thing. He knows that there will still be trauma from what she's been through, but it won't be as bad as it would have been if...something had happened to her.
"Yeah, I know. We were twins. Now me and my friends, we're gonna get you outta here, okay, Hailey?"
Parker reaches over and picks the padlock attached to the short chain around Hailey's ankle.
"Twins. Obviously. Because alien clones would have been my next guess." Ha, sarcasm. From a kid that tiny? She'll be fine.
"Your grandpa said you have your daddy's sense of humor." ("That must be awful for Annabeth," Eliot had chuckled when he'd heard that.) He picks her up and carries her outside.
"Is that bad?" she asks while the paramedics check her over. "Having my dad's sense of humor?"
He smirks, even though he doesn't really want to. His brother's death still hurts. But he doesn't want to scare the kid, so he smirks and he says, "Only if you decide to pull a practical joke at a funeral."
The girl's blue eyes open wide in excitement and her jaw drops. "Did he do that?"
"Yeah," Eliot confides, "when we were kids. And the worst part of it was that he pinned it on me."
Hailey giggles. "What did he do?"
Seeing that the paramedic is done examining her, he says, "Now that's a story for another time, don't you think? We gotta get you home to your mom." He holds out his hand to help her down from the back of the ambulance.
"Mommy! Is she okay?" Eliot notices that instead of letting go once she'd climbed down, she'd held onto his hand with a tight grip.
"She's fine. Just real worried about you. So's your grandpa."
"I miss them. I was scared." The confession makes a curl of anger tighten around his gut. "Are they coming soon?"
He had heard Nate calling his dad as soon as Hailey had been found. "Real soon."
"Can you stay with me until they get here?"
"I was scared. I was scared. I was scared." It echoes in his head, over and over again. The mark is going to pay. A lot, and as painfully as Eliot can convince Nate to make it.
"Sure I can, sweetheart."
Just then, a news van pulls up, then another, and string of cars shows up behind them. Reporters.
The cameras flash, and Hailey shrinks away from the bright lights, the shouting ("Hailey, hey, Hailey, look over here, honey! How does it feel to be found? Were you scared? What did he do to you?"), and huddles against Eliot's side.
He puts his arm around her protectively and growl-shouts, "Get these people outta here!"
Seeing the agents scuttle into action, he picks Hailey up again and takes her to the team's fake FBI van to avoid the media's attention. He can feel her shaking against him, and warm, wet tears seep into his collar.
Crap. He doesn't know what to do with a crying kid. He's the kind of guy kids are scared of. He doesn't do the comforting thing all that well. This kid needs her mom. Hell, he bets even Jack would've known what to do.
"You okay, darlin'?" He strokes her hair out of her face and rubs circles on her back. If he was mean enough, he could try to untangle her choking arms from around his neck, but he's not that mean, and besides, he's pretty sure that it would take a crowbar to pry them apart.
"Mm-hm." The giant hiccup and the sob that follows it belie her answer.
Seriously. He doesn't know what to do. He wishes he did, but he's pretty much stuck. So he keeps rubbing her back while the sobs rack her body, and pretty soon, he starts humming the first song that pops into his head.
Well I know they say all good things
Must come to some kind of ending,
We were so damn good,
I guess we never stood a chance.
"They're he-re," Parker chirps into the com. Then the van's door opens, and there's the sister-in-law he'd never known he had, and his father standing behind her, worry and relief dancing on their faces.
The prosecutor doesn't see him in the darkness of the van at first - she has eyes only for her daughter. "Hailey! Hailey, are you- Jack?"
Annabeth looks like she's seeing a ghost, and maybe she is. He looks just like him, anyway, his twin brother.
"Annabeth," his dad says from behind the pale blonde, "this is Eliot, Jack's brother."
She opens her lips to speak, but all the comes out is "But- " Then she gapes again.
"Nice to meet you, Annabeth," Eliot says, to break the tension, "Don't mean to startle you, but maybe you could come inside and shut the door." He looks down at Hailey, who's still sniffling and latching on to him with her face in his chest to avoid the camera flashes outside.
Reminded that she is a mother first, Annabeth jumps into action and climbs into the van, with Phil supporting her from behind. He gets in after her and closes the door firmly in the reporters' faces.
"Oh. Hailey, baby. I'm here. Mommy's here." Annabeth reaches out to take Hailey from him, but the little girl in his lap continues to hold on tight.
"Come on, monkey," he says gently, tilting her head up to look at him, and thumbs the tears away. He smiles encouragingly. "It's okay. You're safe. Look! It's your mommy. Your mommy's here."
Annabeth, who had started and stared when Eliot called Hailey "monkey," recovers and strokes the silky blond hair so much like her own. "Hey, honey."
"Mommy? Mommy!" With a half-hiccup, half-cry, Hailey pushes off of Eliot's chest and lands in her mother's arms in a wild, desperate scramble. "Mommy."
Phil's eyes meet Eliot's around the two blondes. Thank you.
Eliot shakes his head. No, no, this is his family. No thanks needed. This is Jack's family. It's enough for Eliot to know that a part of his brother lives on in his little girl, and he thinks, maybe he can make up for not being around for Jack by making sure that his family taken care of. Jack would have done the same for Eliot, any day of the week.
Annabeth wipes the tears from her cheeks. "I- I thought you were dead, Eliot. Jack never talked about you, and when he- " She takes a shuddering breath and continues, "when he died, I only found out that he was a twin because we buried him next to you. Where you're supposed to be buried, I guess. Your dad said- " She looks to Phil for corroboration, who doesn't seem to know if Eliot wants her to know what he'd told him back at the bar.
Eliot averts his eyes for a moment, then meets hers, guilty, guilty, guilty. "I can explain that. Just not here. Not now."
She looks into his face. He sees the moment when she realizes that the man in front of her is not her husband, far from it. Two different people with the same face.
She nods. "I want a full confession later," she says, then "Nice to meet you, Eliot," a smile twitching on her lips.
"Yes, ma'am. Nice to meet you, too."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Hailey okay?"
Eliot had sneaked out of the house when the feeling that he was an intruder got to be too much. He'd come here, thinking that maybe...maybe...maybe something.
Phil walks up next to him and looks down at his son's headstone. "She'll be alright. She's a tough kid."
"Got that from Jack?"
"Got that from Annabeth," says Phil with a grin.
Eliot snorts. "That felt like the interrogation of my life," he says, half serious.
He'd told his brother's widow everything, well, not everything, but the highlights of the unclassified parts of his life. He'd never confessed so much to anyone, especially not to someone so involved with the law, but she had asked him why he'd felt the need to hurt his brother so much that he couldn't even say his name years later. And Eliot had had to answer, had to explain to her, because it was like explaining to Jack why he'd had to do what he did.
She told him that now she knew where Jack had gone every time he mysteriously disappeared: around the time of their engagement, before the wedding, when they found out that she was pregnant, when Hailey was born...all the milestones in Jack's life, he had come here, to the cemetery where he'd thought his brother was buried, to tell Eliot about it.
And now, Eliot looks down at his brother's headstone ("JOHN 'JACK' CHASE born Aug. 8, 1973 died May 19, 2006") and tells him that his family is safe, that his daughter is safe. He promises to watch over them and to be there when they need him. They'll always be taken care of. Better late than never.
Phil nods to the headstone next to Jack's. "We should have that one taken down," he says. "You ain't dead. Thank God."
Eliot shrugs. "Nah, leave it. Eliot Chase is dead. I'm not that kid anymore."
"Really? You think so? I still recognize him when I see you. You've changed, but that's all part of growing up. You're still my boy."
Eliot frowns and keeps his eyes on his brother's grave, not wanting to look at his father. "Dad, I've done things..."
"I know, son," Phil interrupts. "I fought in 'Nam. I know that look."
Eliot shakes his head. "Worse things, for bad people. It was okay when I thought that if it was for my country, then it had to be right. But when I stopped thinking that, I should've stopped. I didn't, and that's how I got to where I am now."
"Where you are now doesn't seem so bad," Phil says after a moment. "You got Hailey back to us. You and your team of thieves." He claps a hand on his son's shoulder. "I think you're doing a lot of good, if you do this for other people you don't even know."
Eliot smiles, a little embarrassed by the praise. "Thanks, Dad."
"I call it like I see it."
"You always did," Eliot says, grinning, "Wouldn't take no B.S. from anyone."
"Mm-hm. Neither did your mama," Phil says with a chuckle. "Maybe that's why we didn't get along so good."
Eliot laughs. "Could be. Too much alike? I know how that one goes."
Phil raises an eyebrow. "Really? You got a wife stashed somewhere you didn't tell me about?"
"No," Eliot says, laughing, "hell no, just girlfriends. One girl in particular. A long time ago. I don't do relationships now."
Phil nods, "Uh-huh," he says, "That team you got looks like a relationship to me."
Eliot shrugs. "Nah. I just like workin' with them. Get on my nerves sometimes, most of the time, but they're good people, good at what they do. We work good together."
"Sounds like a family to me."
Eliot purses his lips. "Mm, I guess so."
"Guess what?"
"Parker!"
"Hey, did I startle you? I did, didn't I? I snuck up on you! That's two times!" crows the thief, waving two fingers in his face.
Hearing his father's laughter makes admitting it worth it. Almost.
"Did not. Once, Parker. Once. And get your fingers outta my face 'fore I break 'em off."
"Ha! Twice."
"Once."
"Hey, is that you, Eliot? I didn't know you were dead. You're kinda solid for a ghost," she says, and slugs him in the shoulder, "Are you a zombie? A ninja zombie?"
"Parker...There's something wrong with you."
AN: So...This was the story I mentioned at the end of "Twenty-Three Chromosomes" as being my back-up in case I got behind on writing my daily one-shot. I also have that other story (the Down Syndrome one), but I still want to fiddle with it before I post it. I am currently writing a story for drjones, who doesn't have an account, so I have no way of telling her that I'm doing this. Hope you catch this note, so you know to check in tomorrow!