Disclaimer: Leverage is the wonderful creation of John Rogers, Chris Downey, Dean Devlin, and other associated names. I borrow for my own amusement.

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"You, were brilliant," Nate announced, carrying two plates of spaghetti with meatballs. He set one of the plates down in front of Sophie and pressed a kiss on her cheek before sitting opposite her.

"And this is how you reward me? With spaghetti?" she asked with one brow raised, clearly not enthused at the prospect of eating such a plebeian meal. She poked a meatball and watched it slide down to the side of the plate.

Nate cocked his head to the side and fixed her with an exasperated look. "Best I could do on short notice. We had reservations at that fancy French restaurant that just opened, but someone decided to cancel." He raised his eyebrows meaningfully at her before digging into his pasta.

"I just didn't feel like going," Sophie explained, giving him a tired half-shrug that still managed to look elegant.

Besides the small 'mmm' of appreciation she made when she tasted her first forkful of Nate's spaghetti, Sophie was silent for the rest of the meal. She made no attempt to start a conversation. Nate periodically sneaked worried glances at her; she was unusually somber this evening. After pulling off the impossible White Rabbit, Nate had thought she would be in very high spirits as was the case whenever they successfully pulled off a particularly good con, but tonight her dinner lay half-eaten and she looked lost in thought.

"Still thinking about the con?" he finally asked.

Sophie pushed back her plate and laced her fingers together, looking to the window. "Something like that."

His eyes softened. "Tell me," he said.

"I'm just—" she started. "What we did to Dodgson, Nate. It was terrible."

"What we did to Dodgson?" he echoed, a pinch incredulous. "We saved his company and gave him a future he could look forward to!"

Sophie looked at him then, eyes flashing in anger. "You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. Don't pretend otherwise."

"I admit it could have gone better," Nate said, jaw tight. "But we pulled it off, didn't we? You pulled it off, Soph. Without us, all those factory workers would be jobless right now and he would probably be haunted by his cousin's death for the rest of his life."

"So the end always justifies the means? Is that it?"

"Yes." He glared at her stubbornly. "Isn't that what we've always done? We lie, cheat, steal in order to help people who can't help themselves."

"Yes, but from worse people!" Sophie threw her hands in the air and stood up, paced the room. "Charles was nothing like the marks we've targeted in the past."

He leaned his forearms into the table and followed her progress around the room with wide challenging eyes. "And yet the people around him still suffered, still needed help."

"We could have done something else."

"Could we really?" Nate challenged. "In this situation? His people didn't want him removed, they wanted him 'fixed'."

She pursed her lips. "And we almost broke him. It could have gone either way in the end."

"But we didn't." he insisted.

"It was just blind luck—that Charles thought Parker was Patience. If we didn't know that, we would have pushed and pushed in a direction that was no good and eventually ruined him."

Nate said nothing. Sophie took that as a sign to continue.

"And what about the next time a client comes to us and asks us to fix someone else, hmm? You can't expect us to be quite as lucky again. We're good, but we're not gods, Nate. Playing with another person's mind is unpredictable. I said it before. You can't control it."

He exhaled sharply and turned away, one hand on the table clenched in a fist. He didn't speak again for a minute or two, and Sophie was half-tempted to return to her apartment and leave him to his brooding.

"I know," he finally bit out. "I know."

She stepped close to him and reached for his hand, rubbing soothing circles over the back of his palm, searching for something to say.

"It's just…" he said, swallowing, "it gets harder to tell the client no when you know you've helped others in worse situations and there's a chance you can help them too. To give them what they couldn't achieve otherwise."

"Oh Nate," she murmured and ran a hand through his curly hair. Sighing, Nate let his head drop backwards until it rested against her stomach and he stared up at her with blue eyes searching for an answer. "I know. It's never easy."

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Notes: … definitely not the Nate/Sophie fic I had planned to write. But the way The White Rabbit Job ended, with the team tossing the ethical complications of the con out the window just because it succeeded, bothered me. After all, it did well pointing out the same issues in the beginning and the middle of the ep.

Second foray into Leverage and I obviously do not have a handle on Nate and Sophie yet. Concrit is very much welcome. Thanks for reading!