Title: How The Stars Did Fall
Word Count: 939 words
Rating: K+
Pairings: None (Jimmy Ford/Nate Ford/Sam Ford, family)
Warnings: Spoilers for Season 3's "Three Card Monte Job."
Notes: Inspired by the song "Embers" by the neo-classic band, H.E.R.R., from their album "Fire and Glass: A Norwood Tragedy". In my opinion, it is the perfect melody to illustrate Jimmy and Nate's relationship, but more than anything, Nate's pain.
Last of all, I do not own Leverage or any of its characters.
The cold, winter night of his birth. Crying, cradled in a soft white blanket, his father smiled down at him for the first time. It would prove to be one of the few times, but the boy couldn't have known. His father murmured his name, Nathan. He held the boy's small, tender hand in his rough palm. The boy squinted at the hazy hospital light; the moon sang a quiet lullaby.
Swallowing the lump in his throat and blinking back tears. He realized he couldn't be a pleaser, since his father could not be pleased. Eventually the card games stopped and he watched his father drink with vicious-looking men in the bar, before his mother hurried to pick him up. It was over, but he was still not relieved.
The stars still glistened and burned on the pitch black velvet sky a decade later. The night his mother was buried in her grave, a short simple service of few guests that ended before dusk, his father's absence unexplained. The young man was still pursuing his studies to become a priest, while his father was on the run from the cops for a sloppy clean-up of a job. He knelt in front of the stone-cold cross and prayed in soft sobs, oblivious of his father's lurking shadow in the woods beyond. When he wiped his eyes and looked at the woods, he knew he was all alone.
The day after he received a call of notification that Jimmy Ford was sentenced to fifteen years, he dropped out of the Catholic Seminary. He drove to the prison three times in the first year but never went in. What good would it serve? Neither of them sought redemption in conversation. Yet he always thought of his father years later, those nights when he crouched in his car and lit a frail cigarette to keep warm, waiting for his plan to unravel. The starlight was pale and burning, but he was always too cold to step out and watch.
He introduced himself as Nate at his job interview with IYS. He introduced himself as Nate to Maggie on his first day at the job. When the minister asked the question on the altar, his heart still tingled at the sound of "Nathan". Nonetheless he answered then kissed the bride. He couldn't help but glanced at the door later, as if expecting someone to walk in. But everything faded away when he looked into Maggie' eyes as they danced, because she was, at the moment, the only thing he needed. She was everything.
Sam was everything and more.
Sterling knew Nate could never let go of Sam's painting, but he wouldn't know anything else. Sterling wouldn't know how Nate held Sam's hand in his hand and taught the boy how to draw. Sterling wouldn't know how Sam liked to chew on pencil tips and Nate liked to pull them out of his mouth. Sterling wouldn't know the joy and the pain that had washed over Nate when Sam looked him in the eye. Sterling wouldn't know how it was like to wish the stars would burn to ashes if he dreamed Sam calling him "Daddy" one more time.
He'd been through it all without a father to realize he didn't need a father.
Therefore he merely nodded and turned away when he heard the message that notified him of Jimmy Ford's release. He didn't even make a sarcastic remark about privacy or technology when he found out Hardison had traced his old number and directed the calls it received to his current cell.
It was a different son who met with the father at McRory's bar. They shared drinks in the back room, too, after the Russians left with a grudge. He never quite realized how old his father had turned, and how far he went down the criminal road. When his father raised his glass, it all became clear. Sober, he went to his bedroom to get his gun after the meeting. He was alone on the balcony that night, under the deep dome of the welkin that was smoked purple by city lights. He looked up, but the stars were drowning.
He was sure the plan would work. He was sure he would blow Jimmy Ford's brains out too. Somehow the former and the latter did not click when he stared into his father's eyes down the barrel of the gun. He sat down and watched his father exit through the door, feeling both triumphant and helpless. The other man's words still echoed in his ears: join me. But he was no longer eight, or eighteen, or twenty-eight. He was no child, nor priest, nor honest man. He could only bury his face in his palm, and he could cry no more.
"I'm proud of you." The old man said to him before he left. He only nodded quietly, like the boy in the bar whose father told him to watch again. He didn't need those words anymore. He knew Jimmy loved Nathan as much as Nathan loved Jimmy. He just didn't know exactly how little, or how much.
That night he woke in his bed in the middle of the night, the little boy's smile fading into the old man's smile behind his eyes. When they both dissolved into darkness, he thought of the painting and the pills. Then he drifted back into unconsciousness.
And the stars finally burned to embers in his dream.