Notes: This is the product of one of those bunnies that bites and reffuses to let go. I heard this song watching a BtVS episode and it transformed into a Leverage fic. Go figure.
I didn't write the song and neither did Eliot/Christian Kane. It just fit well.
Back to Freedom
On my way…
Eliot doesn't know why, but he's been scribbling those three words over every surface he's come across since he left home. Maybe it's because he's fifteen, lost, hurting, and he has no idea where he's going except that he's on his way somewhere else. He's leaving behind that… that everything.
So he walks down the highway, bag slung over his shoulder, his hair growing long, a black sharpie in his pocket that he marks all the signs he passes with.
He's heading vaguely westward, hitch hiking and praying to any god above that none of the truckers take intrest in him. A girl he met two rest stops ago had turned up dead and raped by the time he hit the last one.
He should be more horrified, but right now he can't really feel anything besides his tired legs, his empty stomach, the blood he'd scrubbed off his face two weeks ago, and a ghost of the beatings that should have driven him to the road years ago licking at his heels. He didn't know if anyone would come looking for him.
But he knew he'd never get another chance to leave if he got caught.
I ask myself
Why did I come again
To find my own way to freedom
And the change is gonna come
"That's pretty." Someone said behind Eliot causing him to spin around, automatically putting up his fists. He'd been living on the street of L.A. for more than a month now, more than enough time for even a scrawny fifteen year old to learn to fight or die. The fact this person had caught him unaware, singing to himself to try to stave off the cold and hunger and fear, made him more than uneasy. "I'm sorry please don't stop." It was a girl who stepped out of the shadows.
She looked maybe as young as him, or a few years older, pretty despite the layers of grime that easily marked her as another street rat. She didn't seem that threatening, and maybe Eliot was more lonely than he liked to admit, so he relaxed and sat back down on his stoop. "There's no more. Only wrote that far."
"Pitty." She said softly, sitting next to him and unabashedly leaning against his shoulder. "You have a nice voice. I havn't heard anyone sing in a long time. I miss it."
For reason Eliot wouldn't understand later he started to sing.
They stayed together for a few weeks, ducking the cops and scraping for what food they could. It was a friendship born mostly from the shared hell they were living through and the determination not to go back to whatever hell they'd found even this little freedom from.
When she froze to death that winter he didn't cry. He wrote the words that had drawn her to him on the wall above where he found her body and walked away. For the first time he couldn't make sense of why he was here. This was just a different hell, with different rules, and more people dieing.
The winter bit in deeper.
Chained by fear
The keeper was myself
And there's freedom inside
I woke up from a dream
The stars were in my eyes
Eliot opened his eyes, the next verse echoing through his head as he looked into the skies overhead, seeing stars only because of the concussion he'd suffered. There were red and blue lights blaring around, and sirens, and a pain in his side and radiating out all over.. He felt like the living dead. He was too tired to move, to tired to think except to look up at those stars only in his head.
He woke up in a crowded hospital ward, the voice of his mother and that girl echoing again with those lines as he fought through pain and haze to try to figure out what the hell had happened.
He remembered a day panhandling on a street corner, trying to get enough to buy himself a hot dinner that had actual food in it. Someone had felt generous and given him a twenty. Before he even got two blocks away he'd been mugged. He fought back and ended up with a bullet in his gut for his troubles. He hated guns. After two frickken years on the streets he was a good fighter but guns threw that all to hell.
A doctor and police officer came in. They wanted to know who he was, who his parents were. When he said they were dead they wanted to send him to a shelter he agreed, knowing he'd run the moment he could walk. A shelter, maybe even foster care was tempting. Food and housing and warmth all with regularity had been the stuff his dreams were made of for years.
But he couldn't. Foster care meant families who were either happy, which were unbearable to be with, or would be just as mess up as what he'd run away from. And nothing lasted. No one stayed. He couldn't deal. If he froze up any more he'd die. He had to find freedom. He had to get away and find warm skies and soft wind and he couldn't do that if he was tied down.
At least on the streets he knew who he had to fear (everyone), and who he could trust (no one), and he had a taste of freedom and it didn't matter if no one ever shared it with him. On the streets he could forget. On the streets he could breath. On the streets he was so scared he wasn't afraid and the chains were so well defined he didn't have to pretend to anyone.
Calling me back home
To sail my ship to freedom
And change is gonna come
Eliot scrawled the words across the plain gravestone in a empty graveyard where they'd buried that girl. The song he'd started writing four years ago not done yet but he was leaving the streets now. He'd gotten the notice of some hot shot who was paying him to go fetch something from someone somewhere that didn't matter and paying him enough money to get off the streets. He promised Eliot more jobs if this worked out.
Eliot didn't know if this was freedom, it still felt like the streets only his stomach wasn't empty and he had a warm new coat and boots. He still felt all frozen over and like he couldn't breath but he made his decision and he guessed he had to do something now. He couldn't hang around forever.
Before he could change his mind Eliot went through his old town, avoiding the house he'd grown up in but finding his way to an old ranch on the counties edge. Ammie was pissed as hell that he'd been gone four years but got over it in moments. She was just glad he was alive.
She was the only soul who knew why he'd run. She was the one who'd bought him his bus ticket and told him if he didn't leave his old man was going to beat him to death one of these days.
He couldn't stay, and being back brought too much back, and she knew he had to leave. He promised he'd be back before too long. He just had to find something first. Find it for a dead friend and himself and maybe then he could stay.
She hadn't understood, but she tried, and that was enough for him to know he'd be back.
There was something there, in that moment when she held him before he left to find freedom and what he'd lost when he'd watch his dad beat his mom to death when she tried to stop him from doing the same to Eliot, and maybe long before even that… There was a tiny taste of freedom. Or maybe what he'd really been searching for but too afraid to find.
I'm gonna find my way
Find my way
Find my way
Back to Freedom…
Eliot didn't know why that song kept playing through his mind. It was a song from his past, that song he'd written as a teenager going through hell and finding something worse on the other side. It wasn't like walking away from his four now former team mates should remind him of years on the streets. He was about to get on a private jet plane for crying out loud.
But he still found himself repeating that last verse in his head, remembering those long hopeless years that had taught him to fight and survive. He remembered the loss and loneliness and how he'd never found that freedom, just learned to live somewhere halfway.
Maybe he understood now. He wasn't looking for freedom. He was looking for something else.
He turned around. The others had stopped walking but none of them turned.
"On my way…" He sang softly, closing his eyes and realizing the song was finished at last.
"I ask myself
Why did I come again?
To find my own way to freedom.
And change is gonna come
I'm gonna find my way
Find my way
Back to freedom
Chained by fear
The keeper is myself
And there's freedom inside
I woke up from a dream
The stars were in my eyes
Calling me back home
To sail my ship to freedom
And change is gonna come
I'm gonna find my way
Find my way
Back to freedom
When he opened his eyes the others had turned back to look at him, turned back to stay. "Find my way home."