A/N: Written to try to satisfy lovesrogue36's prompt at leveragekink: 'Nate/Sophie, fugitives on the run.' Part one of three.
Disclaimer: I own nothing here and am just doing this for fun and to pass the time until Season 3.
Nate sits in the holding cell, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees and hands folded together. After months in the scratchy prison jumpsuit, it feels comforting to wear his own clothes, even if the suit doesn't fit quite right anymore. He figures that he can count on one hand the number of times he'll get to wear his suit: this prelim, the actual trial, the sentencing. Then, it'll probably be fifteen to twenty years of prison clothes.
The last four months have given him plenty of time to think, and he's become philosophical about many things. Like Sterling, whom he knows Eliot would like to leave toothless and bleeding on the side of the road. Sterling, who took Nate's State's evidence and made promises regarding a future plea bargain, only to promptly deliver him to a buddy in the Massachusetts DA office the second that Nate outlived his usefulness.
His father used to say that you can't blame a scorpion for acting like a scorpion. And Nate accepts that, in a way that he was never able to accept such things before. What's in your nature is in your nature, as plain and unalterable as your eye color or your blood type. Nate's done fighting his nature and is ready to accept the consequences, whatever those may be.
He wants to plead guilty, but his court-appointed attorney has advised against it. Sophie has offered several times to get him a "real" lawyer, but he likes the public defender, a fresh-faced farm boy from Iowa who paid his way through law school by working as a bartender. Nate's willing to plead not guilty, just to give the kid a chance to go to trial. In three years, the kid's only tried a handful of cases, since most of his clients plead out on deals.
The door buzzes open and Nate stands up to greet the guards. He's unfailingly polite to these men, a courtesy that earned him a good bit of suspicion before they realized that he wasn't just taking the piss. Nate respects anyone who puts in an honest day's work.
Stepping into the courtroom, he looks around for his team and is surprised when the only familiar face he sees is Sterling, smiling smugly from the row behind the defense table. Nate shakes his lawyer's hand and sits down at a slight angle, so he can keep an eye on the door, wishing that he could will his team to walk in before the hearing starts.
"They're gone, Nate. Scattered. Guess they suspected you might grass them out, since you've given up everything you had on Kadjic and Culpepper, but are still in hot water," says Sterling.
Nate can hear the smirk in his voice, can feel him leaning forward, and he has to curl his fingers over the edge of his seat to keep himself from forming a fist. It's what Sterling wants: to rattle him, to make him do something stupid. Nate turns it into a game in his head, determined to score a few points against the man who used to be a colleague.
Nate lets his eyes sweep over the courtroom one last time and feels a little uneasy as he spots one, two, three, four Asian faces, each belonging to a man more burly and dangerous looking than the next. They're scattered in different quadrants of the gallery, each sitting on an aisle, like strategically placed chess pieces. The uneasy feeling escalates toward panic as Nate puts a hand on his lawyer's arm and tries to find the words to explain that they're in danger.
Before he can say anything, the men make their move, hard and fast, taking out guards. Nate sees one of them bury a cleaver in the table in front of him before grabbing a handful of his hair and pulling him up out of seat. He tries to struggle but the guy punches him in the chest and follows it up with a left hook to Nate's eye. Breathless and seeing stars, Nate bonelessly allows the guy to drag him to the middle of the courtroom.
The guards are in an unconscious heap on the floor and the attackers, whom Nate can only assume are triads, have their guns. Most of the spectators are on the ground, waiting for the storm to pass, but Sterling has his hands up and is practically whistling as he strolls over to the biggest guy.
"Nice try, but you know there's no way out of this one. What say we make a nice little deal, you hand him over and we'll let you go on your way?"
Through his good eye, Nate watches the guy consider the deal for a flicker of a second. Then he smiles, cold-blooded and mean, before cold-cocking Sterling with a stolen pistol. Nate's eye traces the trajectory of two pearly white teeth as they arc through the air and land on the tile floor with soft pings.
The guy takes out Sterling's leg with a kick that's nearly as lazy as it is graceful, then follows-up with couple of vicious kicks to the ribs. Nate has to wonder for a moment if the sounds he's hearing are actually broken bones or just wishful thinking.
The guy nearest to the large window behind the jury box shoots it out and climbs up and out onto a roof just as a helicopter lands. Nate is roughly pushed over toward the window and dragged up and out of it, then hauled to the helicopter.
They put a black burlap bag over his head, which Nate thinks is rather like closing the barn door after the horses, since he's already seen their faces. But then something sharp and cold jabs his arm and his world goes black and silent.
---//---
Nate opens his eyes, panicking with the idea that he's gone blind, before he realizes that it's just the burlap bag. His hands are cuffed together with a zip tie, as are his feet, but his arms are unrestrained. He can feel something across his lap and drags his hands back, feeling a belt. A little more scrabbling around and he can feel smooth leather.
It's got to be an airplane seat and he's guessing that he's not traveling coach. Cleavers and private jets, it's all pointing to the triads, but he's still not entirely sure why he's alive. He's also not sure it's an entirely good thing, given what they might have planned for him on the other end.
The gears in his head grind slowly, trying to churn out a plan. He hears a few sharp, guttural words and then a rough hand grabs his arm. Another jab sends him back to the cold and the dark and the silence.
---//---
Nate feels like he's underwater, deep underwater, but unable to surface. He kicks his way toward the light, but something's pulling him down. He thrashes and fights, but it's useless.
A cool, soft touch soothes his forehead and words fall into his ears, but he can't make sense of them, even though the voice and language are familiar. He surrenders, falling back into the dark, wrapping it around him like a comforter.
---//---
When Nate finally regains his consciousness, it feels a lot like waking up from a bender, only much more confusing. He feels residual panic, but can't understand why until the events in the courtroom come back to him in vivid snapshots. The cleaver. The punches. Sterling's teeth landing on the floor. The helicopter. The jabs.
His eyelids feel heavy and he's not ready to open them. So he pretends to still be unconscious as he tries to gather as much information as he can using his other senses.
The first thing he registers is that he's not restrained. Not his hands or his feet. Not his arms or his legs. He's also not wearing his pants, jacket or socks. He does still have on his button-down oxford and his boxers. His tie is a question he can't answer because he can't feel it and doesn't want to look for it just yet.
He's on a bed, a comfortable one, and for that, he can be thankful. It's also soft and clean, with crisp cotton bedding. He moves one finger over the bedspread and can feel a pattern there, embroidery, which makes him wonder what sort of safe house the triads are running, with their fancy soft furnishings.
His mind is punchy, wanting to take the joke and run with it. Queer Eye for the Vicious Guy, Interiors Edition. One corner of his mouth twitches in an involuntary smile before he can pull himself back on point. He needs to listen. And to think.
He can hear birds. And a regular rhythmic whir that reminds him of summers in Boston, the way he'd drift off to sleep listening to the soothing sounds of the window fan. Now that he thinks about it, the air is warm and humid, and he can feel a thin sheen of sweat on his skin. He hears the whining buzz of a mosquito in his ear and wants to slap it, but he manages to ignore it instead.
He takes a deep breath, drawing the air in through his nose. He smells something floral, but he was never good at identifying flowers by their scent. That had always been Maggie's party trick. Early in their marriage, he'd sometimes come home early from work. He'd sneak up behind her, put one hand over her eyes as the other held the flowers under her nose. Her success rate was around 90% although lilies always seemed to stump her.
Nate chides himself to focus as he draws another deep breath. He can smell something else, something achingly familiar and soothing, but he can't quite place it. He takes several minutes, breathing deeply, trying to pin down the smell as its identity dances just out of reach.
He hears the faint rustle of a page turning and realizes he isn't alone. A thin blade of panic forms inside him and he tries to quell it. Easy. If they wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead, not holed up in some tropical luxury hide away.
Unless... they've already killed you and this is heaven, in which case, you're not going to lose anything by just opening your damn eyes.
But Nate keeps his eyes closed for several more minutes as he tries to formulate a plan, tries to imagine how the next few minutes could play out. He knows he has to make a break for it, somehow. Even though he doesn't know where he is.
If he could just look at his watch, figure out how many hours have passed, he might be able to extrapolate a list of possible locations. He shifts his weight, trying to find a natural, inconspicuous way to check his watch. Only his watch is gone. Take the watch, disorient the captive. That's what he would do.
Okay then, plan B.....plan B.....plan B... gather some more intel. Nate knows that he needs to figure out who else is in the room, then find a way to play them for information. Assuming, of course, that they speak English.
Nate listens careful, straining, to identify the general location of the other person. He lets his head fall to that side and slowly opens one eye, just a crack. The light surges in, nearly giving him a headache.
He can see hardwood floors, cheery yellow walls, and wicker furniture. Then he sees her, in front of the window, light flooding in behind her and washing out the details. But the elegant wave of dark hair, the jaunty set to her chin, the graceful lines of her crossed legs... they're all unmistakable.
"Sophie?"
---//---
TBC