Chapter 2, in which Jake discovers some things about Eliot and misses some other things completely.


"So you found Dedalus's Labyrinth under a Boston skyscraper and you fought the Minotaur? Why am I missing out on all the fun?" Jake rants at Baird over the phone, pacing around the bedroom Eliot showed him to. Baird and the others have made it back to the Library, thanks to Jenkins, and Jake is on speaker phone with them trying to figure out what is going on. He would have come back as well, but losing Eliot and his crew to find the back door would have been impossible, and Jake doesn't want to lose track of Eliot just yet anyway. There's too much of a risk that if he does, he won't see his brother again.

"Alright, we need to get that thread," he says. "I'll try to smooth things out on my end, and I'll meet you outside Golden Axe, okay?"

"How long do you need?" Baird asks.

"I don't know. I need to figure out what my brother was doing in the building, and what he knows or doesn't know about this whole mess. Actually, how about you go on ahead? Now that we know what we need to do, I'm not going to be of much use anyway."

"That, and they're probably still looking for you," Jones says. "They think we're still in the labyrinth, but they know Stone escaped. They see your face, they're not going to hesitate to bring you down."

"Gee, thanks," Jake says, but Jones is right. Especially since if he understood this right, his face, or rather his resemblance with Eliot, is part of what tipped them off. "Just keep me posted, and I'll tell you how it goes here."

"See you later, then," Baird says.

"Good luck," Jake hangs up.

He takes a deep breath and walks back out into the hotel suite's lounging room. This case they were so eager to work on has become a mess very quickly. And Eliot coming up in the middle of it…

Jake closes the door behind him and looks around. Eliot is sitting in an armchair, his legs tucked under him, fiddling absently with a beaded leather bracelet on his wrist. He is still wearing the same suit, but he has lost the tie and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. Parker sits cross-legged on the couch beside Hardison, whom Jake has figured out she is dating. Hardison has connected his little wireless keyboard to the TV, but he scrambles to shut off the screen when Jake comes in, and interrupts whatever he is saying.

"I think we all have some explaining to do," Jake says, going to sit in the second armchair. "Want to start with what you were doing at Golden Axe?"

"We could ask you the same question," Eliot says. He is guarded, tentative. Jake reflects that this isn't quite how he imagined they would meet again for the first time. In his mind, it was far more effusive, with an embrace and laughs and maybe a few tears. But then, they seem to have been both taken by surprise.

The truth is, even if he imagined it often, Jake had given up hope of ever seeing Eliot again.

They have been talking on the phone regularly for a long time, and they've been closer in the last few years than ever since Eliot enlisted, but Eliot has always made it clear that he doesn't want Jake involved in his life. He doesn't even know where Eliot lives, these days.

"I asked first," Jake teases, but with an undercurrent of tension. The situation is delicate. Beyond their personal problems, there is still the fact that Eliot and his crew are somehow involved in Golden Axe's dodgy business, and that Jake doesn't know how much they know about it, or what their intentions are. He trusts Eliot with his life, even after all these years, but he also knows Eliot's crew doesn't often stay on the right side of legality.

Parker and Hardison look at Eliot, waiting for him to react. Eliot is still not quite meeting Jake's eyes, but he seems to be assessing him. "I've told you a little about what we do," he says.

"You never told us you have a twin, but you've told him about us?" Hardison asks incredulously.

"Only the basics, nothing dangerous," Eliot says.

Hardison looks unhappy, but he lets it go.

"Our client's son went missing five weeks ago, after coming to Boston for an internship. We traced it back to Golden Axe, so we went in to try and find out what happened," Eliot continues.

"Is this the kind of cases you normally take?" Jake asks with a frown. It sounds like they have stumbled upon one of the sacrificed interns.

"No, but the client is a friend of a friend. Parker was posing as a new intern, and me as an auditor. Now why were you there? Last I heard you were still working on the pipeline in Oklahoma."

Jake considers for a moment. What can he tell them without talking about the Library? If Parker was posing as an intern, she would have been the next sacrifice, which means she's still in danger.

"I have a new job," he starts, then pauses again. He doesn't have a proper cover story, and he is a terrible liar. Eliot is going to see right through anything he says. "I work for...a library," he finished lamely.

Eliot raises an eyebrow.

"Hardison?" he says, without turning his head.

"You sure?" Hardison asks.

"Run it."

"Okay." Hardison types something on his keyboard, and the TV screen comes back to life. It displays a picture of Jake's driver license, and a bunch of other documents, all pertaining to Jake's recent life. "Jacob Stone. Up until a month ago, you were working for an oil rigging company in Oklahoma, while secretly writing academic articles on art history under..." Hardison trails off for a moment, looking rapidly through a bunch of files. "Seven aliases? Seriously? That's overkill, man. Even we rarely have that many active at the same time. Anyway, your passport was flagged on a bunch of flights back and forth to Europe during the same week last month, and a week after that you quit you job and left your house. I have no record of a new job, but a substantial amount of money appeared on your bank account just after you left Oklahoma, and you had your mail forwarded to an address in...Portland, Oregon?"

Jake stares at him, aghast. Jones has proved he is a very good hacker, but this guy is working in another league altogether, if he pulled that out in the time it took Jake to call his colleagues.

"Seriously?" Eliot asks with a small laugh. "You moved to Portland?"

Jake nods. Eliot doesn't react, seemingly still waiting for his answer.

"Yeah," Jake says. "Why?"

"That's where we're based," Eliot says.

"Really? That's one hell of a coincidence," Jake says. It's also a complication. He may be secretly glad this means they will probably see each other again, but Jake doesn't really know how to explain he works for a library whose entrance is under a bridge.

That's when he comes to a decision. He's not supposed to tell anyone about the Library, but there are too many concurrent factors here to ignore. And Jake so badly wants to tell Eliot. Share everything, like when they were children.

Like they have not done in twenty years.

Now he just needs to get Eliot to believe him.

"Have you ever heard of the Library?" he asks.

"What do you mean, the library?" Hardison says. But Eliot and Parker have both frozen in their seats, clear recognition on their face.

"You're the Librarian?" Eliot asks. He doesn't look happy about it.

"There's several of us now. Well, Flynn has the title, I guess." Jake interrupts himself before he goes into technicalities. They don't really matter right now.

What matters is that Eliot already knew.

"How do you−" he starts.

"I came across a Librarian about twelve years ago. Didn't end well," Eliot says.

"I tried to steal a Welsh crown once," Parker says. "But someone took it first, so I followed him to the Metropolitan Library in New York. I hitched a ride on the elevator, and it went really, really far down, and came out in a big room full of bookshelves and shiny old things."

Jake gapes at her. She managed to get into the library unnoticed and not get caught, and what she has to say about it is that it's full of 'shiny old things'? Eliot told him he has a very good thief on his crew, and few things surprise Jake now that he had met Jones, but Parker really is something else.

Even Eliot is frowning at Parker. Hardison just looks lost.

"Somebody wants to tell me what's going on?"

Eliot seems to realize something and he lets out a barking laugh. "I can't believe with all your talk about trolls and mages that you're the only one who doesn't know!" he says.

"Know what?"

"That magic exists!" Eliot snorts.

"What?"

"Yeah," Jake says. "And the Library is there to protect the world from the people who want to use it for their own goals."

"What?" Hardison says again, freaking out. "There's rumors all over the darknet, but you're telling me it's real? Like, really real?"

"Yeah, it is," Jake answers, almost proudly, until he realizes that both Eliot and Parker knew before he did. He frowns and comes back to the matter at hand. "Golden Axe has been sacrificing people for millenia. They have Dedalus's labyrinth under the building, and the Minotaur. My colleagues had to fight it to get out."

"Damn," Eliot says. "Something tells me the Minotaur is harder to beat than your average security guard."

"You could say that. Baird said bullets didn't seem to affect it, and it's ten feet tall."

"How did they escape?" Parker asks.

"We have a magic door," Jake says with a smirk. "Opens anywhere in the world to take us back to our base."

He doesn't mention that Jenkins only got the door working this morning or that their base is not, technically, in the Library itself, because they lost the Library three weeks ago. They don't need to know that. Not yet, anyway.

"They're going back in now," he adds. "We've figured out that the Labyrinth is powered by the thread of Ariadne, which is in the building's server room. Which isn't a server room at all, by the way."

"We know," Parker says. "I lifted an access card on my first day there. It's full of really old art and stuff. I wish we had Sophie to tell us what it's worth, because I've never seen anything like it. Looked kind of like what's in that Library of yours."

"Did you see a big ball of thread?" Jake asks. If Parker has already been in the room, she might be able to go back undetected, which is more than he can say for Baird and the others. "And who's Sophie?"

"Sophie was our grifter and art specialist," Eliot answers. "She and Nate retired from the crew a while ago."

"Yes, I saw it," Parker says at the same time. "Great big ball of thread looking completely out of place. What does it do?"

"Wait, what's her full name?" Jake asks Eliot, having a hunch. Eliot talked to him about the members of his crew before, but never by name.

"Sophie Devereaux, why?"

"The Sophie Devereaux? The famous art thief? The one who stole Klimt's Portrait of a Lady?"

"You know her?" Eliot asks, shocked.

"Only by reputation. She's made quite a name for herself in the art world."

"She's one of the best," Hardison says, almost proudly. Eliot smiles briefly, but he looks disturbed that Jake has connections to his world.

"To get back to the thread, it looks like it's the artifact anchoring the Labyrinth and the Minotaur in Boston," Jake says. He digs his phone out of his pocket, a bit worried that he hasn't heard anything from his co-workers yet. "So we need to take it out of the building and bring it back to the Library."

"What is it that they did to the missing interns, exactly?" Hardison asks.

Jake winces. "We believe they sacrifice them to the Minotaur. The original myths talks of the sacrifice of seven male and seven female virgins. They've interpreted that to mean interns in the modern day."

"Damn," Eliot says. Hardison grasps Parker's hand in his, and she doesn't move even though she looks like she wants to squirm out.

"Yeah, maybe your cover wasn't the best idea," Jake tells Parker with a grimace.

At the same moment, his phone starts ringing.

"Baird?" he asks, answering the call.

"Yeah. Listen, it looks like we're back in the Labyrinth. Or maybe we never got out, I don't know, but we're definitely not in Boston."

Jake sighs and listens to her explanation of Jenkins' and Cassandra's theories.

"Right. So either you get to the center of the Labyrinth before the Minotaur finds you, or we take over on our end, is that right?" he summarizes when she's done, for the benefit of the other people in the room.

"Pretty much. But I don't think I can fight the Minotaur on my own, and there's no way we can outrun it."

"Can you distract it until we get you out?"

"Maybe," Baird says. "You're still with your brother?"

"Yeah. I think we can get a key card and get to the thread, though we'll need a little time," Jake answers, looking at Eliot for confirmation. Eliot and Parker both nod toward him.

"Great. Wait, what exactly did you say your brother does?"

Jake chuckles. "That's a conversation for when we have more time. I'll keep you posted," he says, hanging up.

"You guys are okay to help out?" he asks Parker and Hardison. From their expression, their decision is already made, but it never hurts to ask. Eliot is already putting his shoes back on.

"It's our job too," Hardison says. "Doesn't usually involves Minotaurs, but it should be an interesting novelty, right?"

Parker nods enthusiastically. Jake shakes his head at their antics.

"Parker, did you say you stole a key card on your first day? Do you still have it?"

"No, I put it back," Parker says.

"It shouldn't be too hard to get another one," Eliot adds. "Parker, can you handle it?"

"Sure, I'll go back as Intern Parker. She's a fun person to be anyway, and I don't think she's been burned."

"Good. Be careful, though, if what Jake said is true, you might be in actual danger. Keep your comm on and bail at the first sign of trouble, okay?"

"Fine," Parker says.

Jake watches their exchange carefully. They're not even looking at each other as they speak, but there is real concern and tenderness in Eliot's voice, and the slightly petulant edge to Parker's words is clearly just for show. Hardison is still typing on his keyboard, but Jake can tell he's listening closely. These people look up to Eliot, wait for his cues and want him to lead their little crew.

Jake tries to imagine his own team in a few years. Will they be this close, this attuned to each other? Will they even last long enough to form a real friendship, or will the group explode before they learn to work together? Given Jones's insufferable personality, Cassandra's betrayal, and Jake's own feelings of inadequacy, he's not sure they'll make it through this one case, let alone countless others.

They definitely won't if they're eaten by the Minotaur, Jake shakes himself. Now is not the time for aimless reflection.

Eliot is already at the door, ready to go back out. He seems hesitant for an instant, then Parker is at his side and she casually slips her hand into his. Jake eyes Hardison, who is right behind them, but he doesn't seem bothered by his girlfriend being this intimate with another man. He shrugs and follows them out the door.


I hope you liked it!

I've finished writing this story, and there will be five chapters all in all. I'll post the remaining over the next few weeks, and then I should be able to start posting another fic in this AU right away.

Please tell me what you've liked in this chapter! And how do you think Eliot's blindness will come out?