Title: "The Shepherd and the Lambs"
Author: Pirate Turner
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Elliot is no shepherd.
Warnings: Drabble
Word Count: 300
Date Written: 27 November, 2011
Challenge: For a challenge posted to the ProvideLeverage LJ comm
Disclaimer: Elliot, all other characters mentioned within, and Leverage are ﾩ & TM their rightful owners, none of whom are the author. Everything else is ﾩ & TM the author. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.
They didn't know him. They thought they did, but truthfully, they had no idea of the man he really was or how dark his soul was. They couldn't do half the things he could blinded. Even Parker, who'd been running on the wrong side of the law practically all her life, was nowhere near as ruthless as he. Heck, they were all lambs in comparison to him, and he was no shepherd.
They had no idea how many hundreds of people he'd killed or the lives he'd sacrificed to save his own men. They were walking a tight line between Good and Evil, a game that, in the end, they couldn't possibly win for there would always be losses along the way for which they weren't prepared to take. They couldn't play the Devil's game and always come up smelling roses.
Elliot knew what they were facing more than any of the others. They weren't killers by their first or second natures like him. They didn't know how it felt to feel another living being struggle for their last breath and die with their hands closed around their throat.
His new team thought he was a good guy, but Elliot knew better. He wasn't good. He was good at what he did, was a survivor, and did care about the innocents, but that didn't make him good.
His survival instincts now were screaming at him to flee this idiot's game of risking everything to save innocents when Nate's voice crackled over his earbud. "Elliot, we need you."
He'd never abandoned a team yet, and he wasn't about to start today. "I'll be there," he promised, starting running to them. They might not know him, but they knew they could count on him and, for now, Elliot guessed, that was enough.
The End