A/N: I own nothing. Also, there is probably a bunch of issues with my medical knowledge. Sorry about that!
They could have been long gone. They could have been two counties away with the money for their client. However, Eliot had a vibe. It's not the first time he acted on a vibe like this. When they stole the hospital a while back, he made sure that Randy would be safe from his abusive father. Now was no different. He wasn't about to walk out when there was a little girl who would be left to fend for herself. He had to knock some sense into her father. The kicker? Her father was planning on robbing the bank; the bank that the team was also "robbing". Before he even had a chance to talk to him, Eliot was surrounded by armed thugs.
The element of surprise worked wonders for the bank robbers. Without it, they wouldn't have been able to even get a hit in. A couple well executed hits and the hitter was thrown off his game. These guys were professionals. Nate, Sophie, Parker, and Hardison could do nothing but watch and try not to blow their cover. The fight seemed to go on forever, and for some reason Eliot wasn't performing as flawlessly as he usually did. Nearly none of his punches were landing. To all of their surprise, Eliot went down, hard.
The team watched their downed hitter, eagerly waiting for him to keep busting some heads. Soon they realized he wasn't getting up. He wasn't even trying. In all their time together, none of them had ever seen Eliot lose consciousness, or even sleep for that matter. The gunmen weren't done yet. They kept kicking the unconscious retrieval specialist. Finally, the leader called them off, and the team was finally able to rush to his side. He didn't look good.
Wordlessly, they flipped him over and tried to make him comfortable. Sophie lifted his head into her lap, and began brushing his hair out of his face. He was a mess. He had a long gash on his forehead from where he was pistol whipped that was bleeding quite a bit. There were also bruises littering his face, and they knew his torso would look no better without even looking. After a few minutes, the emotions inside the bank were calming. Now that the only hostage willing and able to take them out was out of commission, the bank robbers had a lot less to worry about.
"Hardison, give me the scarf you're wearing. We need to stop the bleeding," Nate said, breaking the loaded silence. He opened his mouth to protest, but decided against it when Eliot shifted slightly and let out a pained moan. He grudgingly handed Nate the expensive looking accessory. When Nate used it to apply pressure to the wound, he tried to pull away from the pain. Sophie adjusted his position, trying to make him more comfortable. When she moved his head, she noticed something that made her heart stop beating momentarily. There was blood, and not from his forehead.
"Nate," she said quietly, but with concern in her voice and worry in her eyes. She gestured to the blood on her pants.
"Let's roll him over slightly. I have to see where that blood is coming from. Hardison gently flipped Eliot onto his side, mindful of the probably broken ribs that would be affected by the shift. There was a gash similar to the one on his forehead on the back of his head, near the base of his skull. Luckily, it didn't look terrible. Head wounds bleed a lot, so the amount of blood is no reason to assume the extent of the wound. Nate rolled up the scarf and put it on the ground, gently moving Eliot so his head was resting on it. His own weight would keep pressure on the wound. The other wound had stopped bleeding, and now it was just a waiting game.
While they were seeing to Eliot, the bank robber's little girl has quietly approached them. Parker was the first to notice her. "Nate. Nate. Nate," she whispered. When he looked up from Eliot, annoyed, Parker gestured to the little girl. "I think she's onto us," she said quietly with urgency.
"Parker. She's six," Alec Hardison clarified. "What's wrong with you?"
"Why do people keep asking me that!" she exclaimed, honestly confused. Everyone shook their heads.
Sophie was the first to actually address the little girl, who was still standing there staring at her hero, the only man willing to stand up to her father. The only man she felt safe around. "Hi, what's your name?" she asked, switching into her motherly tone of voice.
She looked over her shoulder at her father, who was distracted talking to his henchmen. "Cassidy," she answered softly. Before anything else could be said, her father was storming over. He grabbed her by the arm and threw her on the ground.
"What did I say about talking to strangers?" he asked through his teeth. "Especially not to con men. They'll tell you anything to get you on their side." Nate had had a bad feeling about this whole thing since the beginning. Somehow these guys knew that they were not who they said they were.
"John!" he called to the thug that seemed to be his second in command. "Let everyone go. Except these five. The money we'll make robbing this bank is nothing compared with what we can get for these thieves."