I wrote this at some point during the last season, and for some reason, just never posted it. I have absolutely no idea why not, but I found it whilst clearing out my hard-drive and thought I'd share! It's Eliot centric, a moment near the end of a job gone wrong. Thank you for reading.
Yeah, so, he's bleeding.
Bleeding quite a lot actually. Slow but steady, leaking out from between fingers that were tight to his side, but are getting looser the wetter they become.
He thinks he should be more worried about that than he actually is.
The bad guys are long gone, retreated as he broke the first neck, leaving the dead man crumpled in a corner. There are voices yelling in his ear, but they're kind of muffled by the static in his head. The only thing that's clear is the sound of his raspy gasps as he tries to draw in enough air to keep away the little black dots that are creeping around the edges of his vision.
Which is something else that he isn't worrying about as much as he should.
Not that he isn't trying. But cotton wool is filling his head from the ears inwards, and his legs are numb and his fingers are numbing, and he can't help the slide sideways from where he was sitting against a wall, to curl up on the floor. He feels something shift in his chest and thinks that leaning on broken ribs should be more painful than a dull ache he feels at the edge of the fiery hole in his side.
The best piece of advise anyone gave him was 'You are going to die. Accept it', and the fact it was given to him by a Russian mobster who subsequently failed to kill him does not make it any less valid.
Hitter's don't retire. Live by the sword, die by the sword and all that shit. And maybe he should be glad that he didn't die in a burning barn in Kiev, or a dank hole in Korea, or any of the hundred other places he's spent time in between then and now.
He should find peace in the fact that he's dying in his own backyard, so-to-speak. That he died protecting good people (because they may be criminals, but they're better than a lot of the Honest Men he's worked for).
And maybe that's the problem. Because he's not at peace, nowhere fucking close, and it's Sophie's voice in his ear yelling at him to stay awake. Parker berating him for not telling her he was hurt. Hardison giving rapid-fire directions to Nate, who's breathless voice keeps telling him that they're on their way.
The blood is still flowing, and the numb is still making his fingers rubbery. But he's taking a breath, and another one, and hasn't stopped yet, and these people have wormed their way under his skin somehow. Underneath the first layer of distrust and paranoia that have served him so well all these years.
He manages to force frozen digits to clench a little tighter, stem that slow leak for a moment more. The groan of pain is worth it. Sophie re-doubles her efforts to keep him alive over the com-line as blonde hair appears at the doorway and whisky-stained fingers take over from his red-coated ones, moments before the little black dots win their battle with his consciousness.
He's still bleeding, and Hitters don't live to see retirement. Eliot knows the odds are against him.
But he's not dead yet.