Title: Rashomon Redux

Author: Peripatetical

Rating: T

Summary: The morning after the night before. Four mostly-reliable narrators, three hang-overs, two head traumas, and the Dagger of Aqu'abi.

Spoilers: Season Three

Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just taking the Leverage crew out for some cheap fun. I'll get them back to Electric Entertainment and TNT in the morning.

Author's Note: Hardison's mug in the previous chapter is actually a Woot! t-shirt designed by Aled Lewis. Go see it on the Reckoning at shirt(dot)woot(dot)com...you know you want one! Also, I borrowed Second Fridays from the MIT Museum, but you really can get into the Gardner Museum for free if your first name is Isabella.

Chapter 3: Hardison

At Nate's words, Parker sprang into action. She turned off the stove and yanked the tea kettle from its burner. The kettle's shrill whistle subsided to a burbling hiss. Once Parker poured most of the hot water into the blue and white teapot, the kettle was silent all together.

Hardison cautiously lifted his head. "Is it over?" he whispered.

Nate looked up from splashing whiskey into his fresh cup of coffee. "I think your ears are safe for now," he assured his hung-over teammate.

The silencing of the tea kettle calmed Sophie down also. Nate reclaimed his seat at the kitchen counter, but his eyes stayed on the grifter as she clumsily unwrapped herself from the blanket and climbed to her feet. She was muttering angrily—Nate thought she had worked herself up to Turkish, but he didn't catch any Russian imprecations or threats mixed in, so he figured Parker was safe, too.

The grifter was wearing her salmon-colored silk robe, one that Nate recalled from his flying trip to London the year before. He liked that robe. Not for its appearance particularly—unlike the majority of Sophie's clothing, this piece didn't complement her coloring at all. The profiler in Nate constructed several meanings from this aberration: he suspected that she wore the robe because it was comfortable and she thought the material was pretty. Perhaps it had some sentimental value attached. It wasn't something she'd wear to seduce a man, although Nate had a more than a couple of fantasies that started with getting her out of it. Mostly, he appreciated the robe because she had brought it with her when she returned to Boston. To him, it was a sign that she had come home.

As Sophie approached the kitchen, Nate could see that she was barefoot. Her toes were painted red, and navy blue pajama pants hid her legs below the hem of the robe. Above the robe's neckline, the collar of a white dress shirt peeked out. So, she had stolen more than a pillow from his room last night. Nate took a breath, preparing to needle her about the petty thefts, only to shut his mouth in surprise as she started in on him first.

"Are you responsible for that alarm clock from hell? Huh?" she demanded. Hardison ducked and covered his ears again.

Nate raised both hands in a surrender motion and shook his head, no. It wasn't her words that robbed him of speech, but her delivery. After cursing fluently though several languages and dialects, she had returned to English. But this English was distinctly American. More specifically, it was third-generation-North-End-of-Boston American. This accent had stormed Boston PD. Twice.

"Good morning to you, too, Viola," Nate ventured. Sophie didn't comment. She rounded the counter and brushed by him on her way to the coffee pot. Nate, Hardison, and Parker all watched her curiously. Her first stop after pouring coffee was the liquor cabinet. It was strange enough for Sophie to pass up freshly brewed tea. They had never seen her spike her coffee.

The grifter huffed in annoyance when she had to shift bottles around to get at her goal. Finally, she straightened, and Nate's eyebrows rose as she poured a full shot of vodka into the coffee. The addition raised the liquid level in the mug so high that she had to sip it down before she could take another step. Lifting her eyes from the rim of the coffee cup, she realized that she was the center of attention.

"What are you all looking at?" she asked belligerently. No one volunteered an answer, and for five long seconds that seemed to stretch into infinity, everyone just stared. The standoff was broken by Eliot striding into the kitchen.

"I heard the tea kettle," he said. The hitter's hair was tied back and still wet, and the smell of soap wafted with him. He eyed Sophie, taking in her coffee and her stance in front of the open liquor cabinet.

"What's with her?" he asked the room at large. Nate and Hardison just shook their heads.

"Woke up weird," offered Parker. "Nate, too, but you already knew that. Hardison's about to tell him about the gift shop."

Eliot nodded. He crossed to the dining table and picked up his abandoned shirt. From the man's reaction, Nate guessed that the shirt was still slightly wet. Eliot examined the shirt with mild confusion, sniffed it, and dropped it back on the chair, preferring to make due with a single layer, rather than put the damp flannel over the Henley he was already wearing.

Hardison's eyes tracked Eliot as the hitter made his way to the kitchen counter. The younger man seemed to be waiting for everyone to settle before picking up the tale. Sophie wasn't helping—she prowled aimlessly about the kitchen, scrutinizing the rest of them as if they were the stars of an exotic nature documentary.

Eliot scooped up the lemon by the mugs, tossing it idly as he checked on the tea. Satisfied, he grabbed a paring knife and efficiently sliced the fruit into wedges. He moved the cutting board with the lemon wedges closer to the tea pot, and poured two mugs of tea. Passing one of the mugs to Parker and keeping the other for himself, he sat down next to Nate.

"Well?" he asked Hardison. "How far into the fiasco have you gotten?" Immediately, Parker jumped in.

"It was a good idea!" she argued. Nate thought they were still talking about the gift shop, but he wasn't sure.

"He had a knife, Parker," Eliot answered reprovingly, "and I couldn't get to you."

"A knife? Who had a knife? And where were you?" Nate suddenly had so many questions, he didn't know whom to look at first. And it was unnerving having a strangely-behaving Sophie at his back, drifting in and out of his peripheral vision.

"People, hold up," interrupted Hardison. "Nate, you were off comms. Eliot, Parker's idea to borrow the souvenir wasn't a bad one—it would've bought us some time to frame Hayton. But you have to admit," he turned and faced Parker as he continued, "we weren't prepared for either the gift shop or the man with the knife."

Parker capitulated, although her expression indicated she was holding back several arguments. "Fine. Whatever. Tell it your way." She picked up some lemon wedges and began mangling them as she squeezed juice into her tea.

"Thank you," breathed the hacker. He drank some more soda and rolled his shoulders. He inhaled, as if to begin, and then changed his mind.

"You know what? I won't just tell you, I'll show you. Hang on, I'll put the surveillance video up on the big screens." Hardison pushed himself away from the counter and headed toward the chair where he'd slept. He dragged the upholstered chair into the briefing area and then went back for his laptop, tapping on the keyboard even as he picked it up off the floor. The wall-mounted flat screens flared to life and briefly showed cascading file folders before resolving into the familiar vantage points of security cameras.

Hardison sank down onto the chair and gestured with his left hand, which was holding the small remote.

"These are files from last night. See, there's the atrium, with the cleaning crew." The grainy footage showed 10-15 people wearing uniforms busily breaking down tables and filling trash barrels.

Nate, Eliot, and Parker had followed Hardison into the briefing area and were now perched at the table that faced the screens. The tableau looked more like the beginning of a job than the end of one. Sophie, however, kept herself separate; she lounged against the spiral staircase, cradling her coffee cup and looking bored.

"There's Eliot," said Parker, pointing toward the bottom right quadrant of the scene. The hitter, recognizable by his bulk and the pony tail sticking out from under his cap, appeared to stumble and drop his end of a table. The footage was silent, but the table's impact with the stone floor must have been loud, because almost every other figure on camera flinched and turned in Eliot's direction.

"And there goes Parker, into the vents" narrated Hardison. On screen, the slim figure of the thief disappeared around a corner, taking advantage of Eliot's noisy distraction. Hardison fast-forwarded through several minutes of footage. When two museum guards entered the atrium, he slowed the playback speed to normal.

"These are the guards that Eliot warned us about," he continued. "See, there they go towards the gallery with the dagger." Hardison sped up the footage again, briefly, and then paused the action, "And there goes the guy with the knife." On screen, one member of the cleaning crew was frozen mid-stride, clearly breaking away from the group and heading toward a doorway opposite the exit taken by Parker and the guards.

"How'd you miss him the first time?" asked Nate.

"The door he left through? That's the direction for the bathrooms," answered Eliot. "He blended in with the rest of the cleaning team, better than me and Parker, really. His footwear wasn't suspicious, and I gotta tell you, he was not wearing a knife holster anywhere under his uniform. I would have noticed."

There was a sharp click as Eliot reached under the table and took out his frustration on the light switch. The briefing table went dark, and the hitter's shoulders relaxed slightly at the loss of brightness.

"Much as I hate to admit that Eliot has x-ray vision, he's right," said Hardison. With a wave of the remote, he opened a new window of security footage. This window showed an area of hallway, empty except for a marble bust atop a column. The new picture was also in black and white, but it had better resolution than the atrium shots. The mystery man in the janitorial uniform entered the frame, and knelt next to the bust. Hardison zoomed in on the man's target, a small rectangular air vent about six inches off the floor.

"After things calmed down, I went back and tracked him. He avoided the museum's cameras, but he didn't know about ours. He took the long way around to reach the dagger, and before he entered the gallery, he saw Parker in the hallway with the replica. That's when he doubled back and picked up the knife stashed in the wall."

"When he saw me with a dagger, he assumed that I had beaten him to it," sniffed Parker disapprovingly. "Very sloppy—he didn't even bother to check the display case."

"And absolutely no eye for authenticity, either," offered a French-accented voice behind them. "I could see that the gems in the replicas were fake from 10 meters away."

Nate, Eliot, and Parker swung around in their chairs to gape at Sophie.

"What?" asked the grifter. "I admit that the young man's copies were much better." She shrugged her shoulders elegantly and waved her coffee cup at Hardison as she spoke. Nate tried to recall the circumstances under which he had last heard these tones—precision and condescension and impatience all rolled together. He somehow knew that if she were speaking in French, her accent would be southern—Meridional, not standard Metropolitan French—but that wasn't enough for his memory to put a name to this character. With the conundrum simmering in his brain, Nate tried to keep her talking.

"Weren't you fooled by Gladstone's fake five years ago?" he queried.

Too late. He'd lost her attention. With a toss of her hair, Sophie abruptly switched personae again. She blinked, cocked her head to the side, and glared at each member of the team in turn, eventually returning to Nate. Viola D'Agostino's indolent slouch was back. So was her confrontational attitude.

"Your taste in movies is terrible," she accused, nodding at the flat-screens. "This is even more boring than our date last night."

Hardison grinned, and Eliot and Parker snickered openly at Nate's chagrin. Sophie didn't wait for the mastermind to formulate a response. With a swirl of her robe, she swiftly placed her empty coffee cup on the dining table, and climbed the spiral staircase to the loft upstairs.

"Are you sure she didn't get hit with anything last night?" Nate asked again.

"Not unless something happened to her during your date," answered Eliot with a smirk.

"Maybe she hit her head when she fell off the couch," suggested Hardison. They all looked over at the couch. The pillow and blanket lay on the floor where Sophie had dropped them. There were no pieces of furniture or other hard corners anywhere near. Parker's expression turned gleeful.

"It's like the Wheel of Fortune!" she enthused. "Round and round and round she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows!" Parker twirled once in her chair, as if to illustrate her point. "Do you think she'll do requests?" she added hopefully.

With one last worried glance up the staircase, Nate shook his head. He could hear water being turned on.

"Maybe she'll be more clear-headed after a shower." The familiarity of Sophie's French accent was still bugging him, but he returned his attention to the bank of screens and the still image of the man retrieving a knife.

"If this guy was showing up on your cameras, Hardison, how come you missed him the first time?" pressed Nate. Could he prize answers out of anyone today?

"Hey, man, I had one eye on the guards, because those two I just showed you on screen weren't keeping their usual schedule, but otherwise, I was just a little busy with gift shop security," defended Hardison.

"Those souvenirs weren't as 'unprotected' as Parker claims. Sure, they were out on open shelves, but the museum is serious about catching shop-lifters—there are cameras everywhere in there—and the surveillance inside the shop is completely separate from the security system protecting the art. We've got a back door into the system that monitors the galleries, but we never bothered with the gift shop."

"OK, OK," said Nate. "I get it. There were a lot of cameras. Just show me what happened."

Hardison aimed the remote and pressed a button. The mystery man kneeling near the air vent vanished, and security footage of Parker took his place. This footage was silent as well. The thief was standing in front of two wide glass doors, working the lock at the center. Displays of merchandise were dimly visible through more glass on either side of the doorway. To the left, Nate could see early 20th century posters for the Olympics arranged around an ad for an exhibit called 'The Art of Sport' and the right side was devoted to souvenirs stamped with famous Impressionist paintings. Did the world need toothbrushes decorated with Monet's Water Lilies?

The team watched as Parker triumphed over the lock and checked her watch. She didn't seem either pleased or displeased with her time, simply shrugging and pocketing her tools. Then, she did something truly surprising—instead of opening the door, her hand paused mid-reach and she stood perfectly still. The hacker answered Nate's unspoken question.

"Now what y'all can't hear is me yelling over the earbuds for her to give me time to turn off the door alarm before she goes busting in there," he explained.

"It wasn't a complicated alarm. I could have clipped it from the doorway," muttered Parker.

"But then we would've had to go back and fix it, mama" Hardison answered gently. "It was cleaner this way."

"Wait, she's right in front of a glass wall," Eliot said. "If there are so many cameras inside the gift shop, then some of them are aimed at the door. Why aren't guards swarming up from the control room?"

"See how you can see the merchandise inside the shop from out in the hallway?" Hardison asked. "The nighttime security lights are brighter in there. It's like seeing into people's living rooms at night from out on the sidewalk. The gift shop cameras can't see her until she gets inside." He paused and took a swig from his soda bottle.

"At least, that was my theory when all this was actually happening," he admitted. Before Nate could quiz Hardison on this last statement, the hacker directed their attention back to the screen.

"Look, now she's in." They watched as Parker walked toward one of the souvenir daggers, this one prominently displayed on top of a glass counter that doubled as a jewelry showcase and check-out register. Before she reached the souvenir, however, she veered to the right and stopped in front of a wooden door. The door was inconspicuously located along the side wall of the gift shop, between a rack of calendars and a stack of wire cubes holding t-shirts. As Parker made short work of this second door lock, Nate wondered if she had decided to steal a dagger from the stockroom.

The security footage didn't follow the thief into the back room, so Hardison filled in the gap as they waited for Parker to reappear on screen.

"The computer system that runs the gift shop security is in that room," he explained. "Parker's getting me direct access."

Parker chimed in. "That room turned out to be computers AND storage," she said. "There were more daggers in there so I took one of those."

Just as she finished speaking, her on-screen counterpart re-entered the gift shop from the back room. The team could see that she was carrying a souvenir dagger. The thief stopped for a moment, hefting the toy in front of her as if testing its balance. She then tucked the dagger into her belt, briskly walked to the glass doors, and slipped out into the hallway. She locked the door behind her and turned right, away from the entrance to the gallery where the real dagger was kept, and disappeared from the camera's view.

Nate's brow furrowed. Parker was going the wrong way, and out in the hallway, her dark clothing and blond braid were clearly visible to the gift shop cameras. As if sensing that Nate was about to launch into more questions, Hardison hastily resumed his narration.

"Now, you saw when she was waving the fake dagger around a little bit? Those souvenirs look nice from far away—or through glass in a dimly lit gift shop," he shot a pointed glare at Parker, "but it turns out they're totally light weight. At least Gladstone's fake was kinda convincing to hold."

Eliot coughed, "Like you'd know" and sat back to see if the hacker would rise to the bait.

Nate noticed that while Eliot was recovering, Hardison was still in pain. Instead of reflexively jumping into a verbal brawl with the hitter, the younger man scotched the exchange with a repressive "Back at ya, man" and continued on.

"Gladstone's fake, so I've heard, was convincing to hold, but these—not so much. Parker was bringing the toy dagger back to the van; we were going to fix it up a little before she made the switch."

"That's probably what convinced the guy with a knife that she had the real thing," grumbled Eliot, shifting back into analysis-mode. "She was heading toward an exit, away from the gallery."

"Well, he was convinced alright. And Parker only convinced him further." Hardison's face was grim, his mouth a tight line, as he flicked the remote. More hallway footage appeared on screen. At first, Parker was the only figure visible. She was heading purposefully in the direction of the atrium. Some sound caught her attention, though, because she pivoted in a sharp about-face and stopped, her posture tense and wary.

The team didn't have to wait long. The cleaning-crew imposter entered the scene from the left, brandishing his knife. The thug was stocky and had light-colored skin—that was all Nate could tell from the footage. The man's hat obscured much of his face from the camera's view. Still, even without clear facial expressions or sound, it was evident that Parker was playing a game of chicken.

The thug gestured toward the dagger at her waist. He must have said something as well, because Parker responded by placing her left hand protectively in front of the dagger and shaking her head in the negative. The man took an experimental step forward and she stepped back. She then began side-stepping slowly in an arc, keeping a careful five feet between her and the knife. The man turned with her, mirroring her movements. He was still talking and he punctuated his words with slight jabs of his knife. He was growing progressively more agitated and didn't seem to notice or care that Parker had reversed their positions by 180 degrees. She was now on the left of the screen, facing toward the atrium, and the thug was on the right. Even though Eliot had scolded Parker earlier for engaging an armed man without ready back-up, Nate half-expected the hitter to come charging down the hallway and take down the threat.

It didn't happen. Instead, the thug stopped his monologue and lunged at Parker. She was prepared for his move—faster than the frame-speed of the camera, she struck and suddenly the knife was skittering along the floor. The thug froze for the briefest instant—Nate could imagine him deciding between the fight and his mission. The mission won. He snatched the dagger out of Parker's belt with his left hand and took off running in the direction of the exit.

Alone in the hallway once again, Parker pulled a dark cloth from somewhere on her person and made her way over to the abandoned knife. Careful to preserve prints, she wrapped the knife in the cloth and tucked it into a pocket of her uniform. As she raised one hand to her ear, a sign that she was talking to one or more of the Leverage teammates over comms, Hardison stopped the play-back.

"There's not much more to see," he explained. "Parker went back into the gift shop to get a new fake dagger and then she came out to the van. Eliot followed the goon who took the dagger from her."

At the mention of his name, the hitter turned an exasperated face to Parker. "You shoulda just given him the fake, Parker. Cowered a little—he would've bought the act."

Parker shook her head. "I had to do what I did," she insisted. "The souvenir was so light, I couldn't just hand it over. He had to believe that I was protecting something valuable and that he was taking it from me by force." Parker took a sip of her tea and then added brightly, "Besides, keep-away worked. I know you can't rush a guy with a knife. A gun, sure, but not a knife. "

"I am too young for gray hairs," Hardison complained to no one in particular.

Nate turned to Eliot. "Again, where were you when all this happened?"

"Stand down, man. I could ask you the same thing, except it's pretty clear you don't know," said Eliot. Still, he answered the question. "While Parker was in the gift shop, I was half a floor down in the north wing. I had gone to check out those two security guards. There was something off about them."

"Something off, you mean other than the fact that they weren't following the regular schedule?" asked Hardison. The hacker had sunk back down into his chair. His soda bottle was empty, and the energy that had sustained him while he was running footage on the flat-screens was gone.

Eliot nodded. "Their watches. The style of watch they were wearing said former IRA, not security guard from East Boston."

"Watches?" said Hardison, "Really?" It occurred to Nate that the hacker wasn't actually surprised by Eliot's reasoning, but merely making comments in order to stay awake.

Before the hitter could explain just how very distinctive IRA members' watches were, Nate jumped in with more questions. "What were IRA-trained fighters doing posing as museum guards? And where were the real guards?"

"I don't know where the real guards were," said Parker. "But I know why other people were after the dagger. Knife-guy told me."

Quick glances at Eliot and Hardison confirmed that Parker's revelation wasn't new to them. Nate realized that they had heard the whole exchange over the earbuds as it happened. From up in the loft, he heard a hair dryer turn on. He wondered if he and Sophie had been audio witnesses to the knife-fight, as well, wherever they had been.

"What did he tell you, Parker?" Nate asked.

Parker thought for a moment, as if playing back the scene in her mind. "He said a lot. Mostly swear words and threats. But the important part was that he didn't care how many fakes the British bastard had sold to other people—his boss had paid a fair price for the dagger and he was going to get it for him."