Why you were last
Summary: She hadn't apologized, but still forgiveness had been given. But without a real explanation, Sophie isn't too sure just how deep this forgiveness runs.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Leverage. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made with this story as it was written for entertainment purposes only.
Rating: PG. For the first time in ages ;-)
Spoilers: All season 1, especially "The Second David Job". There will be some quotes from that episode in the story.
Why you were last
Things were slowly getting back to normal. Sophie was glad they were, because even though she wouldn't admit it out loud, she had missed this. She had missed Nate and the others, and working with them. And after that Blackpoole job and Sterling had nearly blown their future as a team into smithereens, Sophie was extremely happy that they had found a way to go on.
Different offices, but they were still doing the same thing. And it felt good to go back to what they did best. Sophie could run cons on her own, and admittedly the payoff was a lot better without the altruistic background and the fact that she had to share whatever money a job brought with four other people. But that wasn't it.
She had run cons with huge payoffs for years. And though she never would have thought it, there was something more satisfying about a job that was done that had helped somebody else. Even if it didn't always add to the collection of goods in her warehouse.
And it felt even better doing that in a team. Sophie had come to appreciate the feeling of having a team in the background, others to fall back on if a job didn't go quite as planned. Others to share the joy of a job well done with. It had only been three jobs they had worked after Blackpoole, two of them very small scale, but it felt so good to be back.
Nearly everything felt good.
Sophie knew that with what she had done to get the second David she had risked the team worse than Blackpoole and Sterling had. She had her defense for that at the ready. After all they were thieves. It was what thieves did. She had wanted that second David, and if things had gone according to plan she would have had it. But there was one thing she hadn't considered, and that was the one thing that had blown up in her face.
She had conned the wrong people to get what she wanted.
Not because the team was too smart for her to con them. They were smart, and more prone to discover a con against them than most other marks, but that wasn't it.
They had been her own team. And that had been the mistake. They had trusted her, and she had tried to con them to her own ends. At that time she hadn't seen it, or hadn't been willing to admit it to herself. But the others had trusted her and that was why they had followed her into this con that had turned against them. It had taken all of them by surprise except Nate, who admittedly knew her better than they did.
You don't con your own crew.
The words had stung so much because they had been the truth. And because Sophie hadn't wanted to admit to herself that she had come to rely on the team as much as they had come to rely on her. By the time she had gone after the second David, she had already been much more entangled in this whole concept of being part of a team than she had been willing to admit.
Maybe hindsight really was 20/20.
But that shouldn't matter anymore. They had cleared all that up even before they had gone up against Blackpoole for the final time and had taken him down.
Admittedly, she hadn't apologized or explained much. And she probably sucked at either, no matter that neither had been her intention to begin with. But still, forgiveness had been given. They had forgiven her, all of them. Nate, Parker, Hardison, and Eliot had forgiven her for trying to con them. So all should be right between them again.
Only, it wasn't.
And it was driving Sophie mad.
It wasn't that there were big shows of distrust against her, on the contrary. The two smaller jobs they had worked first had been perfect to get their footing back. They had spent a couple of months apart, and needed a little time to get used to each other and their quirks again. And it had worked fine.
And then the last job had turned out a little more complicated than the two before that.
It hadn't been dangerous, not really. Not with Hardison in the background providing a solid cover story and a way out in case things went south. And not with Eliot by her side as the wordless reassurance that if things went down even beyond the point where Hardison's skills could get them out smoothly, there was still someone around who would keep her physically safe.
No, the job hadn't been dangerous in the most common sense of the word.
But then their mark had abruptly and unexpectedly changed his course of action, forcing Sophie to improvise and stray far from their initial plan. It had worked. Of course it had worked. Sophie was so good at what she did because she knew how to get what she wanted even if a plan went out the window.
No, it had been Eliot's reaction to her improvisation that had left Sophie rattled. Posing as her bodyguard in front of the mark, Eliot had remained stoic and silent throughout the entire con. But Sophie read people for a living, and unlike their mark she knew Eliot, so the subtle changes had not gone unnoticed by her. On the contrary, they had stood out so glaringly that she had wondered how everyone else could have missed them.
As soon as she had gone beyond what they had scripted before, Eliot had grown tense. She had subtly let the team know what she was doing, of course she had, and Nate had given her the go to improvise. Everyone else had adapted to the changed plan. Eliot had gone along, too, but he had been strung like a bowstring for the entire time. Sophie wouldn't call it nervous, because she knew it took a lot more than a change in plans to make Eliot Spencer nervous. But he had been edgy, watchful and visibly uncomfortable following Sophie's lead without a question. He had played along, but he had been really uneasy doing so.
And Sophie had known beyond the shadow of a doubt that had it been Nate and not her who had called the changes and the improvisation, Eliot would have reacted differently.
It had only gotten to her after the case had been wrapped up and they had been back at the office, but then it had hit Sophie like a blow. The team might have forgiven her for her attempt to con them all to her own means. But that didn't mean things were back to normal. They were with Nate, or as normal as they ever got between the two of them. And they were with Parker and Hardison.
But the relationship between Eliot and her had changed.
It wasn't open mistrust. If it were that, it might be easier to deal with it. It was more subtle than that, and Sophie had wracked her brains trying to figure out what it was. She had thought about it for the whole evening after the job had been wrapped up, trying to put her finger on what exactly it was that had changed about Eliot's attitude towards her.
Sophie had replayed all the conversations between them after her betrayal in her mind. Of course her team-mates had been shocked and hurt by what she had done. All of them had been. But looking back on it, the signs had been there that Eliot had taken it a lot harder and more personal than the others had. It had been Eliot who had been most outspoken about his feeling of betrayal when they had pieced the team back together. It had been Eliot who had questioned Sophie's involvement in the second Blackpoole job. And it had been Eliot who had seemed hurt more than the others by her apology, or rather by the fact that it hadn't been an apology to begin with.
Once she thought about it, Sophie asked herself how she could have missed it.
It wasn't exactly the good kind of epiphany, but it made one thing perfectly clear to Sophie – she needed to talk to Eliot. And she needed to do so before they worked the next job, to make sure that whatever happened then, there would be trust between them to make it work.
It wasn't about forgiveness. Sophie knew Eliot well enough to know that he wouldn't have accepted her not-quite apology if he hadn't meant it. It was about how far that forgiveness extended, and how much trust had been destroyed.
She had been given forgiveness without really asking for it, or giving an apology. And maybe it had been given too quickly, because the others hadn't really forced her to explain herself. And that had been enough for Parker, and for Hardison. But it hadn't been enough for Eliot, and Sophie hadn't seen it.
Even though the signs had been there.
"You don't con your own crew."
"Is she in on this?"
"I was just getting used to it. Being part of a team."
"You apologized to him first? Why am I last?"
Yes, for someone who read other people for a living, she had been bloody blind concerning what had been right in front of her eyes. Sophie sighed and got up from her chair. It was no use delaying this any further. She needed to talk to Eliot.
Headquarters was silent as Sophie left her office, even though Sophie knew that both Eliot and Hardison were still around.
The new space Hardison had found for them was roughly the same size than their old base had been. But where their previous headquarters had been and old and airy penthouse, their new home was more modern. No high ceilings, stone floor tiles instead of wooden floors, the interior a lot more glass and shiny surfaces than the high walls and old charisma of what they had previously had. It still had charm, but it was a different kind of charm. And Hardison had been adamant about using a newer building where updating the security was easier. Their tech-expert was determined not to make it as easy for someone to enter headquarters again as it had been for Sterling's henchmen.
As in the previous setting, each member had their own office, although they rarely used them to conduct work. Sophie mostly used hers to stash her wardrobe and all the costumes she needed for her roles, and to practice for her occasional theater appearance. What appealed most to Nate in his office was the well-stashed wet-bar, unfortunately, and Parker's office was pretty much bare except for the basic furniture and a new potted plant on her desk. Hardison had computer equipment set up in his office that was completely alien to Sophie, but which she secretly supposed was set up for gaming rather than hacking. And Eliot…well. Eliot's office was just an office, pretty much left like Hardison had initially equipped it when he had set up their new headquarters. He didn't spend much time there, anyway, but tonight Sophie was sure that was where she was going to find him.
Sophie had seen Eliot withdraw into his office earlier after they had wrapped up the job, and she hadn't heard him leave since then. So she was just going to take her chances with him there.
Eliot's office was two doors down from hers, and Sophie stood in front of the closed door for a few seconds and breathed deeply, trying to work up the courage and – more importantly – find the right words for what she wanted to say. She wasn't afraid of Eliot. She knew he'd never hurt her, no matter how badly she screwed up. But she was afraid that as soon as she entered the office she'd find out that something vital between them had been broken beyond repair, and that was an option she didn't even want to contemplate.
But she wasn't going to know until she actually went in, so Sophie raised her hand and knocked on the closed door.
"Yeah," Eliot called from inside after a short moment, and with a last deep breath Sophie opened the door and stepped into the room.
Eliot was sitting behind his desk, looking at her as she entered. His hair was hanging loose again instead of the ponytail he had bound it into earlier, and the suit jacket he had worn was lying over one of the leather armchairs that stood in front of his desk. The tie had vanished without a trace, and Eliot had undone the top button of his dress shirt and had rolled up the sleeves to just below his elbows.
On any other occasion Sophie might have said he looked relaxed after a job that had gone well, but the subtle signs spoke against it. There was a bottle of water on the desk beside him instead of a beer, the flat screen TV on the opposite wall was turned off despite the football game Hardison had mentioned earlier, and he seemed to be working through a file that was lying open on his desk.
"Do you have a moment?"
Eliot looked slightly surprised, but he nodded and leaned back in his chair. "Sure."
As Sophie stepped up to the desk and perched on the edge of one of the armchairs, Eliot closed the file in front of him. Despite her initial reason for coming here, Sophie found her curiosity peaked.
"A new case?"
Eliot shook his head. "Probably not. Just something somebody asked me to take a look at."
That was all Eliot had to say on the topic, and Sophie didn't press. She had the feeling this would have been his answer even if things wee still okay between them. They all had their lives aside from Leverage, and while there wasn't any time to work jobs without the team for any of them, it didn't mean they had completely given up on their lives before the team. They all still had contacts outside of what they did now, and sometimes someone who asked a favor of them.
Eliot kept on looking at Sophie in that stoic, silent way of his that he could keep up for hours if he thought he had to. He wasn't going to ask her why she had come here, Sophie knew that. So she drew a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap.
"There's something I wanted to talk to you about."
"Okay."
No, he definitely wasn't making it easy for her, and Sophie knew that this was deliberate. She probably had earned the harder treatment, too. But she was used to working for what she wanted to have, and she had chosen to have this conversation. So she wasn't going to back down.
"There was a reason why you were last."
"Huh?"
Eliot was taken aback, and it was obvious that he had no idea what she was talking about. Sophie had to admit that it had probably come out of the blue for someone who hadn't been brooding about this for hours now.
"Back when we were working the Blackpoole job. When we were camped out in that foreclosure villa Hardison had found, and I tried to talk to you."
There were frown-lines on Eliot's forehead as he tried to remember what she was talking about, but it only lasted for a second or two. Then his face hardened slightly, jaw set and his shoulders squared rigidly, just like he had done earlier when Sophie had started improvising on the job. Eliot was closing up, and he was shutting her out.
"You mean when you tried to apologize."
"I wasn't trying to apologize."
Eliot nodded. "I recall that was a large part of the problem."
Sophie sighed and stilled the way her hands were twisting in her lap. She hated it when small things like that betrayed how much she was struggling with something. And she was struggling hard with this conversation, because with what they were doing, it was vital that nothing this big stood between Eliot and her.
"I wasn't apologizing because I thought I didn't have anything to apologize for. Yes, I went behind all your backs. I wanted to work the job for my own reasons. I didn't tell you all I had the second David stashed away and wanted the other one to complete the pair. And I see now that it was a mistake. Not that I did what I did, but how I did it."
Eliot was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and head cocked slightly to the side as he listened. Not many people immediately guessed that about him, but Eliot was a very good listener, mostly because he didn't see the need to fill silence with words. It made other people say more than they wanted to, and for the first time Sophie found herself on the receiving end of this treatment.
"I shouldn't have kept things from you the way I did, that was my mistake."
Eliot smiled and shook his head. "No. You shouldn't have conned your own team, Sophie. You don't work against the people you're supposed to work with."
Sophie nodded. "But see, that was the problem. And maybe my mistake. There is a difference between working together and being a team. And what we did, we were working together. Nate found a way to combine all our skills to make us work jobs that each of us alone couldn't have worked. It was fun, and so much easier and more exciting than doing jobs alone."
Eliot raised one eyebrow, a crooked smile playing around the corner of his lips although no amusement showed in his eyes.
"So we never were a team, that's what you're trying to say."
Sophie sighed, battling her frustration. She knew that Eliot was weighing her words deliberately, forcing her to speak everything out plainly.
"We turned into one. But none of us are team-players, Eliot. This whole thing, us, and Leverage, it grew into something we didn't expect. And yes, when I saw an opportunity to get something I had wanted for a long time I went for it, without considering the team."
Eliot seemed to consider those words for a few long seconds, then he leaned further back in his chair and folded his hands behind his neck. The posture seemed relaxed, but only at first glance. There was nothing relaxed about Eliot at this moment, and this time Sophie paid enough attention to the details to notice.
"So there's the explanation for what you did." Eliot finally said. "But why now? And why to me? Or am I just step number four on your tour of explanations around the office?"
Eliot's voice was carefully neutral, but that didn't take any of the sting out of the barb. And it was weird how Eliot fell back into this carefully neutral speech that was laced with undertones when their conversations over the past days had been perfectly normal. But Sophie guessed that it had been brooding underneath the surface, and that today's job as well as her seeking him out had brought it to the surface.
"I bring this up now, and I bring this up with you and you alone because of what happened today."
The confusion on Eliot's face at these words seemed genuine.
"What was it that happened?"
Sophie allowed herself a smile. "I know that you probably don't like it when other people are able to read you, but trust me that to a certain degree I can. Definitely well enough to notice in glaring clarity how today's job made you uncomfortable."
Eliot shook his head, and it was as if the shutters were visibly closing right in front of Sophie's eyes.
"I have no problem working with you."
"No, but you had a problem following my lead when I went away from the script. Once I was the one who decided which direction to take the act into, you were getting uncomfortable."
Eliot shrugged, as if Sophie hadn't just proven to him in a very direct way that she could read him better than he had probably thought she could.
"And your point would be?"
"Good, let's get to the point. My point is that yes, I screwed up. And yes, I put my own interests above the team, and I used all of you to get what I wanted. I let my greed win over my loyalties, and by the time I realized how invested I was in the idea of us as a team I had already screwed up. I know that trust isn't something that can be won back by a simple explanation, but for what we are doing we need to trust each other. I need you to trust in the fact that I learned my lesson from the Blackpoole job, Eliot."
Eliot chuckled mirthlessly. "And what lesson would that be?"
"That if I work as part of a team, the team has to come first. The job we are working on comes first. And if I go off the script and improvise, I'm doing it to get the job done. Not for my own ends."
A smile was showing on Eliot's face, and it was so unfitting the expression in his eyes that Sophie didn't quite know what to make of it.
"In other words, you realized that you trust us, and now you need us to trust you too?"
Sophie nodded. "In other words, yes."
Eliot's smile widened, but this time the skin around his eyes wrinkled along with the motion.
"Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none."
Sophie raised an appreciative eyebrow. "Shakespeare?"
Eliot shrugged. "What, you thought I didn't read?"
Sophie shook her head. "No. Just not that you read Shakespeare for leisure. I would have figured you more for someone who always has The Art of War at the ready."
"Good thing you're not prejudiced," Eliot responded, but the tone of his voice was light. "I have to say that Sun Tzu is getting kind of repetitive after a while, so you can't really blame me for breaking the cliché."
"I guess not."
"I promise not to audition for any roles you have laid eyes on, if that helps you any."
Sophie couldn't stop the laugh from escaping, and it was a feeling of great relief when it did.
"I really appreciate it."
Silence settled over Eliot's office after that, and while it was no longer as tense a silence as it had been only minutes ago, Sophie knew that this conversation wasn't over yet. Their banter had somewhat eased them out of that discussion about mutual trust, which was something that couldn't be discussed but only either be given or not. And that was a decision Eliot had to make on his own, Sophie knew all she could do was point out to him that she had noticed he was struggling with that question right now.
"So why was I last?"
And somehow, that question was ridiculously easy to answer.
"Because you were the one whose reaction I was most afraid of."
Eliot drew a breath to say something, his posture tensing in indignation, but Sophie waved him off before he could get a word out.
"I'm not talking about that, Eliot. I am actually aware that you have yourself very much under control. But you were the one who was most outspoken in your mistrust of me when we tried to take on Blackpoole again. And you are the one who has the most to lose, because you are the one who invested most when you joined the team."
A frown appeared on Eliot's face and he tilted his desk chair to a different angle, as if looking at Sophie from a different perspective would make him grasp the meaning of her words.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Sophie shrugged. "It's true. It doesn't mean that you're more dependent, or that Parker and Hardison care less about this than you do. But they took less risks by joining the team, and they don't have to put as much trust into this as you do."
Eliot was shaking his head, but again Sophie interrupted before he had the chance to say something.
"When we need to break in somewhere, we ask Parker to do it. All the insane risks she takes, it's the same things she did when she was still working alone. When we have a technical problem to solve, we ask Hardison to do it. And yes, working for the team puts him into danger more often than before, but never without backup. When we need to con someone by acting, that's what I do – again, it's the same thing I did before we worked together."
Sophie drew a deep breath as she tried to find the right words to get her point across.
"But it's you we trust to have our backs during the jobs. You are the one who is our backup, you are the one we trust to get us out if things go bad. Before, you only ever had to worry about your own safety, about your own battles and getting yourself out. Now you also have to step in for each of us, because you know that we rely on you. And you had to invest more because you had to allow that from now on you no longer only rely on yourself. Sometimes something Nate calls goes against your instincts, but you have to trust him. Putting your life on the line is something different than breaking into a building, pretending to be someone else, or working a job from behind a computer. The stakes are much higher for you. We all know that there's a risk with every job we work, but for you the risk is exponentially higher as for the rest of us. It's the nature of our skills."
Eliot smiled. "That's probably been the nicest way of telling me that I'm the muscle in the outfit that I've ever heard."
Sophie rolled her eyes, battling frustration because right now she absolutely couldn't tell whether Eliot was teasing her or whether he was serious about it.
"What I'm trying to say, and obviously am failing to say, is that trust is vital if we all want to work together. And after what happened I was more hesitant to talk to you than to the others because I knew I broke all of your trust. And I knew that you were going to take it a lot harder than Parker or Hardison did. So I went and talked to them first because…I guess because I thought that I could gauge how difficult it was going to be talking to you."
Eliot looked at Sophie for a long moment, then he shook his head and laughed. Sophie didn't think any of what she had said was funny, but that didn't seem to stop Eliot's amusement any. As much as it relieved her to see him laugh instead of, say, yell at her and throw her out of the office, right now her confusion was mounting.
"Care to tell me what's so funny about this?"
Eliot shook his head again and visibly struggled to get his amusement back under control.
"Sophie, I have to tell you – for all the things that seem to have gone through your head before you came to me that day, you didn't actually say much when you finally got down to it."
And put like this, Sophie could see why Eliot was so amused by it. For someone who made a living out of smooth talking, she had been extremely tongue-tied that day.
"Fair enough. So, since I didn't get it out when I should have, let me try again. I know I screwed up, and I can only ask you to trust me that I learned my lesson from that. What I need to know is if we're okay with each other."
Eliot looked down at his hands for a moment, then raised his head and looked up, straight into Sophie's eyes.
"Yes, we're good."
The relief Sophie felt was stronger than she would have thought or would have anticipated before coming into Eliot's office. She couldn't keep the slight smile from her face as she got up from the leather armchair she had been perched on for the duration of their conversation and gestured towards the file that was still lying on Eliot's desk.
"Thank you. Then I guess I'll leave you to whatever dictatorship needs invading and go home and get some rest."
Eliot smiled, clearly amused. "Good night, Sophie."
"Good night."
As Sophie closed the office door behind herself, she was once more surprised by how relieved she felt about the outcome of this conversation. She hadn't wanted to admit it to herself for a long time, but the idea of being part of a team had grown on her much more than she had initially thought it ever would. But now that she admitted it to herself, she didn't want to see it end by something as stupid as what she had done. So she was relieved that Eliot had given her a second chance. Or rather, the promise of one. She wasn't deluded enough to think that things would be okay again from one moment to the next.
But it was the promise of a second chance, and somehow Sophie got the feeling that Eliot Spencer didn't give those very often.
*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*
The End
*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*
Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.