A/N: Hi there... I don't really know what prompted me to write this one shot... but somehow it felt good to just let it all out of my system.

Thank you to all of my readers for your unflagging support.

Please don't forget to read and review.

Eliot knew something was gonna go wrong that day the moment he entered the office. Nate was much more drunk than usual, Sophie wasn't talking but had tear stains on her usually impeccable face and Hardison was... just sitting there. Hardison, the motor mouth of the team was just sitting on the couch, staring at some random point on the wall, completely tuned out from the rest of the world. And who knew where their thief was.

Huffing in exasperation, Eliot proceeded down to the kitchenette, to get some coffee before he started on breakfast. Fifteen minutes later, pancakes the way Parker liked them were ready when he remembered that she wasn't there. Sighing at the way even his small, everyday actions revealed just how much the little blonde had become a part of his life, Eliot called everyone over to the table and tried to concentrate on eating his portion... but it felt a little odd without Parker there. Also, the hitter noticed that his throat seemed a bit scratchy and his voice was going a bit hoarse... maybe he was coming down with something.

Over the years, Parker had managed to crack that tough exterior of his and reach the heart of him where she'd contentedly made a comfortable home. And Eliot knew, now that she had made her way into his heart, there would be no more room for other woman there for the rest of his life.

Eliot Spencer was built to be a one woman man. In his younger days, he'd thought that maybe that woman was Aimee... but that had proven to be just his youth and inexperience talking. What he'd figured to be love had just been teenage infatuation and the two of them had grown up, grown apart and thankfully he had moved on. Then, when he'd all but given up on the prospect of having anything other than his job in his life, Parker had snuck her way into his heart and turned his whole world upside down.

It had all started with the thief wanting to find out if he was really all that good at sex because she'd seen so many women fall for him whenever they were out celebrating a job well done or he had to grift for a con. He'd resisted at first, thinking that sleeping with someone from work was the quickest way to breaking up their team. Also, the fact that it was Parker, their resident bundle of crazy, had also stopped him from acting on the obvious physical attraction sparking between the two of them.

But then they'd barely survived one of their jobs and Parker had showed up at his house that night. Her arguments had somehow made sense to his scrambled brains that night. She'd said things about living every day as if it was her last and not knowing what the next day was going to bring. Eliot had also been quite frustrated with trying to ignore whatever was brewing between them and somehow, the two of them had ended up in bed.

He hadn't known, still didn't know in fact, just what had happened that night. They hadn't actually had sex, but come morning, both Eliot and Parker had known, even with their assuredly limited perception of human emotions and reliance on relationships in their lives till now, that whatever they had was special enough to pay attention to and nurture. That had been the start of the rest of their lives. They'd made a mutual decision to keep their relationship a secret from anyone else till they knew that this... whatever it was, would work out between them... till they became comfortable around each other enough for their team's reactions to not matter all that much.

But somehow, something had stopped them from making it common knowledge even after they had become so comfortable around each other that neither could remember quite how they'd survived before their relationship... even after she'd finally moved into his apartment and farmhouse after he'd badgered her about it for almost a month.

But since both Parker and Eliot had always been their strongest pair since the beginning of Leverage Associates, both of them able to understand each other's plays and thought processes right from the beginning, none of the others actually noticed enough to pay attention to the fact that the hitter and thief had both changed considerably.

Nate had noticed that they seemed to communicate better, but he chalked it down to more training, which Eliot always insisted on... Sophie on the other hand noticed that the pair didn't seem to need much verbal communication to get their views across nowadays, but she too put it down to Eliot and Parker finally settling down to the idea of working in a team. Hardison had been too involved in some video game tournament for the last couple of weeks and before that he'd been given too much work by Nate. As it was, he wasn't the brightest lad in the house and so failed to notice anything different.

As he ate, Eliot noticed that something was indeed wrong around the house. While he was sure the pancakes tasted quite good if he could say so himself, the rest of the team wasn't too enthusiastic about eating at the moment. Sophie was still looking morose but she was the only one who was actually making any effort to actually ingest anything from the plate in front of her. Hardison was in his customary seat next to Eliot but he was still staring blankly across the table... right at a point beyond the empty chair where Parker was supposed to be.

Thinking of Parker made Eliot shake his head in frustration. His sneaky little thief hadn't been there when he'd woken up that morning. She must've sneaked off sometime during the night to pull of some or the other impossible heist. If he wasn't so used to her disappearances and so proud of her top notch skills, he would've been badgering Hardison to track her down and go get her himself, even if he had to drag her away from her target kicking and screaming.

But he knew, that Parker was the best there was, and that she knew that she had to be extra careful these days... if not for her own sake then for his... for theirs. He'd drilled it into her some time back that she wasn't alone now. It had been surprisingly easy to confess to her that he worried about her when she wasn't near him. She'd understood... something else that he hadn't expected. Had she been the same Parker as she was when they'd first met, she would've blown him off, packed up her things and high-tailed it in the middle of the night.

But no... this Parker, his Parker had understood where he was coming from. She'd told him that she'd feel the same way if Eliot left for something and didn't come back or check in for longer than he'd said he would be. The way they had understood and consoled each other's fears that day had probably been the sweetest, most memorable moment of their relationship for Eliot...

Finishing his plate of Pancakes with a sigh, the hitter looked around at the various faces of his team. Parker's chair opposite him, was of course, empty... nothing to see there. To the left of that was Sophie's seat, where she seemed to have given up on the idea of eating after nibbling on a couple of bites. To his left, was Nate... and as he looked at the mastermind was when Eliot figured out that maybe something had actually gone seriously wrong before he came in that morning. Nate had actually brought a bottle of aged scotch to the table and was drinking straight from it. While that wasn't that much of a new or startling sight, it was Sophie's complete ignorance of the fact that made Eliot sit up and take notice.

If Sophie wasn't yelling at Nate for getting drunk so early in the day, even bringing to the bottle to the table, then it had to be a humongous problem. Hardison wasn't much help in anything either. The hacker had stubbornly been staring off into space, intent on ignoring everything and everyone else in the room. Eliot sighed again. He wasn't really in the mood to resolve whatever childish argument they'd gotten into again... so he just cleaned up his plate and putting Parker's in the oven to keep it warm for whenever she decided to drop in, Eliot strolled off to his office.

He'd been in there for barely ten minutes when Sophie hovered around the doorway, knocking on it hesitantly, as if in two minds whether to come in or not. Something in Eliot's demeanor seemed to make the decision for her and she walked in and sat herself on the cushy chair that Parker liked to perch on next to the one he was ensconced in. Parker never actually sat on it... he'd seen her in a hundred different positions in that chair but honest to god she'd never once sat on it like a normal person would. That errant thought almost brought a smile to the hitter's face before the expression on Sophie's caught his attention.

Soundlessly, the grifter extended her hand and placed it carefully on his shoulder. Before he could be bewildered at Sophie's odd behavior, she placed her other hand on his other shoulder and leaned in slightly. Whatever Eliot was going to say to the older grifter stayed unsaid as he caught her expression... it was a mixture of great sadness, slight fear and overwhelming pity.

Something in that expression alternately fascinated and repulsed him. He felt like he had to run far, far away from those emotions that the grifter was exhibiting but at the same time, there was some tantalizing force trying to awaken a dormant connection between those emotions and something inside him. He stayed where he was... stiff, still as a statue, waiting... wanting to hear what Sophie was going to say. He was sure from the gravity of her expression that whatever it was, was important and maybe life altering.

For a second he panicked... maybe something was wrong with Parker... maybe something had happened to her. But that thought got wiped away as stupidity by his common sense. If something was wrong with her, if she was hurt or something, they wouldn't be sitting here. They'd be rushing to a hospital or something. Besides, he was Parker's emergency contact. If anything was wrong with her, he'd be the first to know. No... that wasn't it. Something else was wrong. Maybe Sophie was sick... or Nate.

But somewhere in the back of his mind, some tiny part of him understood what Sophie's eyes were trying to say, and he was genuinely puzzled at that part of him... it was a tired, defeated feeling, a feeling of acceptance, a feeling of utter exhausted defeat that he'd thought he was unfamiliar with. Eliot Spencer had never failed... he'd never left a job unfinished. So now it was highly frustrating now that there existed a part of him that was so spineless and resigned that it was ready to accept whatever Sophie was trying to say without any sort of retort or question.

Sophie opened her mouth to say something and all conscious thought stopped inside Eliot's brain. He knew whatever she had to say was very, very important and every bit of him was focused on her now. But what she said after almost a minute of heavy silence, threw him completely off the tracks.

"It's time Eliot..." she said.

For the life of him, Eliot couldn't understand the significance of her words. But he was so busy trying to make some sense out of them that he failed to notice that Sophie had gotten up and was steering him out into the hallway and out of the loft before he could even open his mouth to object. Before he could frame a question, they'd all trooped into Lucille and were driving off somewhere.

Fifteen minutes the drive lasted and they were the longest fifteen minutes of Eliot's life. He was in the back seat with Hardison while Nate drove and Sophie occupied her usual shotgun seat. It felt a little weird however, with Parker warmth snuggling into him missing from his side. He reminded himself that there was no way they were going to leave her out of this and that she was probably meeting them wherever they were going.

Hardison, the usually talkative one, was stonily silent today, probably still angry at the fight, still gazing blankly out the window. Sophie did the same out of her window while Eliot was irritated to find that Nate was carefully peering at him at regular intervals... the mastermind was watching him more than he was watching the road and it almost made the hitter growl out that he hadn't been part of whatever argument was going on between Nate, Sophie and Hardison. But just as he was reaching his limit, the van rolled to a stop. There were there... wherever there was.

Stepping out, Eliot could see that it was...

Oh god no...

After that his brain literally shut down. Eliot couldn't process what he was seeing... where he was. Suddenly, it all started to make sense to him. Those little things that he'd missed... those small clues that had been scattered around his house, the loft and even in the eyes of his team, his family.

The blue roses in the backseat next to him made sense... they were her favorite. She had to have expensive taste, his thief. So many more connections were made as the hitter finally saw the whole picture for as if the first time. Sophie's dress, Nate's black fedora with a black ribbon on it, his suit... the nice black one he used only on... special occasions, Hardison's sombre mood and his equally sombre clothing choices, the silence, the emotions Sophie had tried... and failed to hide, the aches and pains all over him, his hoarse voice, the bandages over his chest, shoulder and arm... the things he'd seen but not noticed... her empty seat. It all made sense and suddenly, he didn't want it to.

He didn't want to know all this, he didn't want to remember waking up without her beside him... he didn't want to remember that he had a small, square blue felt box sitting in the drawer of his nightstand, bearing the logo of what was probably the most famous jewellery store in the world and her favorite place to go... he didn't want to remember the shape and size of the beautiful pink diamond he'd chosen so carefully. He didn't want to think about the fact that that box would never even be touched now.

His eyes, growing wider with each thought, each sickening revelation, stopped on the block of marble in front of him, topped by a cute little cherub. And he couldn't breath anymore... he didn't need to. His reason for breathing, his reason for living, his reason for waking up every morning... his little thief... wouldn't be getting her ring... ever.

Eliot Spencer's eyes shut as the blue roses fell from his hands.

A/N: So there it is. I can't say I hope you liked it, but I hope that some of you atleast could connect with the sentiment in someway...

I know the pain of losing a loved one and I hope I haven't offended anyone by my words or sentiments.

Please review your thoughts and ideas. All kinds of feedback are welcome, but the good ones make me happy :)

Love and cookies

Macybear