Disclaimer: The world or the characters of Leverage and Stargate SG-1 aren't mine and I'm not getting paid for this.
AN: Alright, this is the last chapter before the short epilogue.
Like the previous parts this too was beta-read by the brilliant isagrimorie, but after I was done I ended up changing as few paragraphs, so if the commas have gone nuts you can absolutely blame me.
*o0O0o*
* One second later at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs *
*o0O0o*
Hardison is still blinking away the spots resulting from the blinding light when he notices that they're no longer inside the brewpub.
Where they are is a plain room with a table containing two chairs on one side and one on the other. There are no windows and something about the air makes him think of underground, - which makes sense, Cheyenne Mountain is an underground military complex after all and… wait, no, what is he thinking, none of this makes sense, a second ago they were in Portland, not Colorado Springs.
There's no logically sound way for them to have changed locations.
The science of it alone is centuries away. He knows he's checked. Though apparently not well enough.
Okay! Okay. So he's obviously been wrong. The science apparently works just fine. He can deal with this, he's fine.
Wait, what was it this dude was saying just before what happened… happened?
"What exactly does SGC stand for?"
"Stargate Command." the grinning old white man says like he's still waiting for the other shoe to drop on their heads - and by the by, if he hadn't looked it up himself Hardison wouldn't believe that this man is in the military let alone a general in it.
Stargate. Star Gate. Gate of Stars. There's just no way…
"Please tell me that's just a code name you're using." Hardison almost pleads, he can deal with crazy super secret teleportation science, that's pretty cool actually as long as he doesn't think too much about how it was just used on him and Parker and Eliot - who he's going to kill, he's pretty sure, yeah, he's almost definitely going to kill Eliot, - but a star-gate is another thing entirely and he doesn't even want to begin to contemplate the consequences involved in that.
"Nope." O'Neill answers, popping the 'p' and then teetering back on his heels, hands in pockets.
"Oh," Hardison mutters, his eyes already staring off into distance as he starts going through the available information. He pauses on Eliot's overprotective, overwhelmingly reluctant mood. Goes back to all those top secret promotions of O'Neill's. Considers the transportation method that got them here. And then lands on that single moment where he got through the stronger than usual, but not really all that extraordinary outermost layers of protection that were disguising the code underneath. The code that now that he thinks about it wasn't based on any kind of human math or language that he knows of.
Oh, Jesus, holy hell and all their goddamned angels - 'Sorry, Nana.'
Hardison twists on his heels to stare at Eliot. His man doesn't seem to quite be looking back.
"Eliot?" Hardison asks, as calmly as he can manage under the circumstances, his right hand grabbing blindly for Parker's and squeezing. "Are the crazy people telling me that there are ALIENS?! And that you didn't tell us about it?"
The tension in Eliot's shoulders seems to increase at Hardison's accusation, and he didn't actually think that was possible.
He isn't getting any other kind of response though and tries not to be too hurt about that. Eliot doesn't do well with corners, Alec knows, it's just that usually he doesn't feel like he's the guy putting Eliot in them.
But hell, he's not going to be feeling guilty about this. If the 'truth has been out there' and Eliot - Eliot - didn't tell them about it, he damn well has a right to be a bit mad about it.
Even if he'd maybe rather not know now too. His thoughts screech to a halt and he immediately snickers somewhat hysterically in the back of his head. Because yeah right, scratch that, he needs to know everything. When was first contact? How did it go? Who was involved? Are Americans the only ones that are in the know, because if yes, that'll go to hell in a hand-basket so quickly it'll give whiplash - maybe to the entire planet. Exactly what is a Stargate? An actual gate? A communications device? A transportation device? A species of alien? Is Stargate that bright light that dropped them here? Does that mean it could transport them even further than from Oregon to Colorado? Like a different planet further? How many other planets can support life then? Are they going to meet aliens?
Oh, my god, is he gonna be meeting aliens?
His eyes go back to the table in the middle of the room with its three chairs, their placement and two piles of thick folders waiting there. All his answers probably lie there, or at least a few of them, but he immediately gets stuck on the number of chairs here and leaves his questions waiting at the back of his mind. Somehow he doubts that Eliot's going to be the one who's going to give them what looks to be a briefing, so why isn't Eliot getting a chair?
"Is Eliot going to be leaving somewhere?" Parker asks from beside him, obviously coming to the same conclusion as Alec and tugging on his arm to move them in front of their partner.
Hardison doesn't resist, mad or not, - ALIENS!? - Eliot is family. Always.
"Yes, well, we thought it would be better if when we approach Nathan Ford and… Sophie Devereaux is the name she's using I've been told? That Mr. Spencer is there as well." Says a woman's voice from what for the first time Hardison notices is an open doorway.
There is immediately something very no nonsense about her, but in that kind of confident manner that is excluded by Maggie in front of art people, not the kind that oozes out of Sterling when there are reporters to impress. Dressed in a very neat dark blue uniform, her hair blonde and cut short, her posture straight and very certain, she at once reads to him as in charge. The two-star patches on each of her shoulders enforce that idea neatly of course.
There's another woman beside her, leaning seemingly unconcerned against the wall by the door. In contrast to the General, her hair is long, dark and held back in a tight ponytail, her face carefully blank under the thin frames of her glasses. There are no patches on her green coveralls other than the ones proclaiming her as part of SGC.
He notices the clothing seems to be a size too big for her but puts the observation aside for the moment.
"Major General Samantha Carter." The first woman says with a smile that fits her face, though Hardison can't help note that it doesn't reach all the way to her eyes, not in a dishonest way, but there's well-hidden exhaustion there that is obviously having an affect. She shakes Parker's hand and then Alec's and nods at Eliot who has, yes, definitely gone in full 'higher ranked officer in the room' mode in a way that he didn't seem to with Jack O'Neill.
Hardison guesses that this means he's actually met Samantha Carter before. Maybe she was in charge whenever it was that Eliot worked here.
'-Eliot worked here.'
Hardison's heart sort of stops and then picks up its pace significantly. His mind goes through to the end of that thought; the military in charge of a secret project that involves aliens, quickly connects with all the reasons why they'd need to involve Eliot in such a project, Eliot who is smarter than he likes to pretend but neither a scientist nor a diplomat. Eliot who is very very good at three things: cooking so expertly Gordon Ramsey might cry tears of joy; fighting like a cornered mama bear-wolf-tiger-insert-your-choice-of-apex-predator; and though he doesn't like to think about it: killing.
And somehow Hardison doesn't think the US military hired Eliot to feed the aliens so there is only really one conclusion to draw here.
And now Hardison and Parker have signed non-disclosure agreements that have bound them to keep what is clearly the best-hidden secret on the planet. And soon Sophie and Nate will apparently be signing those documents too.
But they're thieves, the best thieves sure, and working as white hats, yeah, but what are they doing here?
Suddenly Parker's read on Eliot looking like he wanted to grab them both and run feels a lot less like a trivial detail.
—
Though the arrival of General Samantha Carter had somewhat eased the tension in Eliot - he's worked with her before, though she was still a colonel at the time, - her words concerning Nate and Sophie racked that tension right back up.
"General." Eliot starts, trying to figure out the most respectful way to ask if they really need to involve the last two members of this family. Eliot is good at what he does, the best, but as the growing number of old injuries have started to remind him lately, he's getting old for this life. And he'd take any bullet that came for them without hesitation, but bullets come in straight trajectories and he remembers this place, nothing here comes from where you expect it or travels in a way that can be predicted.
Guarding two people here would be a stretch, guarding four might be too much even for Eliot.
And that's if Carter doesn't need to send them off-world.
"I've been shown your files, Spencer. We're going to need all of you." General Carter's voice is firm, but then her eyes soften and he glimpses the soul under the two silver stars. "We will protect your people, you know that we will do everything to keep them safe for as long as they're here, whether they agree to help us or not."
"They don't have to agree," Eliot says back. They're civilians, even Eliot really, none of them can be ordered to do this job.
"No, of course not. But I've read all your files." Carter repeats herself, putting weight on the words. "Do you think any of them will say no? Will you?"
He clenches his fists but doesn't answer.
He doesn't have to. Of course they're not going to say no. He knew that as soon as he knew that this was about protecting the world. That's why he wanted to vanish with them before they could be told anything. Now it's already too late.
His eyes slide toward Parker and Hardison, her hand is clenched around Alec's in a vice grip, she obviously hasn't liked the sound of this conversation.
To avoid her piercing stare he switches his attention to Hardison. Usually, their friend would yelp at the powerful hold of Parker's fingers right about now, and complain about the loss of feeling in his extremities but this time he seems hardly to notice, just absently pats Parker's hand until the muscles of it relax.
And his eyes just stare off into air, moving rapidly from side to side like they do when he's reading code. He looks at once terrified and like a kid in a candy shop, Eliot recognizes the hunger of curiosity blooming inside that brilliant head of his.
For once, Eliot can even guess what's going through Hardison's brain.
"Will you accompany the people we're sending for your friends?" O'Neill says from the side of the room.
He looks back to Parker and puts the question in his eyes. He can't decide to follow the US government's wishes and involve their retired - read: vacationing, - family members without her input. It's bad enough that he can't ask Sophie and Nate themselves.
Parker's face is as if carved from stone, but finally, she nods back in permission.
Eliot closes his eyes and pulls in a deep breath, centering himself to the new reality. His family are going to involve themselves into a galactic clusterfuck, and Eliot is going to have to come up with a way to make sure they all survive it - he eyes Hardison - and don't lose their hacker to the toys.
"I'll come with you," Eliot says to the two generals. It's better if he's there anyway, going by themselves there'd be a good chance that the poor soldiers would just spend the day carrying bags of Sophie's shoes while she and Nate vanished into thin air at one of the shops.
Carter nods and then turns back to face Parker and Alec.
"My assistant is going to read you into the program. It's the basics, we'll give you everything else you might need after the full debrief of why you're here." The general says with a slight catch in her voice and waves toward the dark haired woman who stands straight and gestures for his friends to take their seats at the table.
Hardison seems to finally come out of his head to eye the stack of files waiting for them. "Paper again? Really?"
"Usually we'd be giving you tablets for this Mr. Hardison, but somehow I feel this would not be a prudent choice under the circumstances." General Carter answers, amusement clear in her voice.
Hardison shrugs, easily conveying that it was worth a shot.
Then he looks at Eliot, a struggle taking place on his face.
"Just FYI, you and I are going to be sharing some words, my man. I think we need a new addendum to 'You don't con your own crew' something along the lines of 'Friends don't hide aliens from friends'." Then he steps forward to grasp Eliot's forearm and pulls closer, placing their foreheads almost together to stare into Eliot's eyes in reflection of a moment from five years back, when Eliot needed Alec to stay in play to stop the terrorist attack. "And you better listen to Parker. None of us is dying here, none of us."
His partners know him too well it seems. He nods to them both as he steps back, but doesn't vocalize the promise now either. He hates lying to his team.
"Stay safe." He says instead and then follows generals Carter and O'Neill through the door, leaving Parker and Hardison behind him.
And he knows Carter is right, her people would lie down their lives for his partners before letting harm come to them. They might even be the most well-protected people in the mountain right now, - maybe more so than even the two generals, - he wasn't wrong in categorizing them all as civilians after all. And no one who works here would let anything bring injury to even a tiny part of the Earth's population, every single one of them would die first.
And if they really are this vital to whatever mission they're here for, then that would just be further incentive to their oaths.
Still, though he knows he can trust the SGC personnel with his life, he has before, and it's been well earned. - 'I can draw the fire, Colonel.' 'No Spencer, just buy me some time, I'm almost finished replacing the last crystal.'
Though he knows he can trust them with the world's survival - he's read the reports.
Trusting them with his family's lives makes something itch at the back of his neck.
—
Parker's mind is driving a hundred miles per minute.
Accepting aliens isn't hard. It's just a detail in a puzzle she didn't have before but does now, it doesn't even really affect the larger picture in front of her. Alien people on alien planets don't distort Parker's view of human people on a human planet.
No, it's not aliens that are making Parker feel like she's in a free fall wearing someone else's rappelling equipment and without having had time to check it first. What Parker's stuck on is the reason for their involvement.
Governments don't like thieves, not ones not in their employ anyway. And certainly not a team of them that habitually take up fake governmental positions and break through 'pick-an-alphabet-soup' firewalls when the need strikes - or when Hardison just feels like it.
These people should have tried arresting them. For all of Eliot's apparent trust in them, the fact they didn't try still leaves a bad taste in her mouth.
Parker hates missing pieces. The plans she builds are like three-dimensional moving laser grids that she spins through with equal parts skill, planning, and instinct. But to get to the prize on the other side she still needs to have seen all the lines so that she can predict where to bend out of the way in time to not trigger the alarm.
And right now there are lines all around her she can sense but can't see.
So she puts all her focus into unraveling the woman in front of her for hints.
"In 1928 an archaeologist in Giza excavated a massive buried artifact, the source of which we couldn't uncover and the power of which we didn't yet understand." The woman says in a way that leaves a strong impression of quoting: something practiced about the way she's speaking and yet also not. Parker can't quite put her finger on what's bothering her about it yet. "Eventually we concluded that the mineral it was composed of wasn't found anywhere on Earth. We also immediately began trying to translate the inscriptions found on the artifact."
She slides at them a photo of a large ringed object first and then follows it up with a few more pictures containing some closeups that show the symbols. They look like a weird hybrid of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Norse runes but Parker's stolen enough inscribed priceless artifacts in her life to be able to tell that the origin is neither.
"Eventually we concluded that the object was a gateway, a door that could create a wormhole to a similar gate built somewhere else." The woman pushes her glasses further up her nose and blinks rapidly, like the prescription isn't quite right for her.
Maybe it's something about the slightly over-dramatic way the woman is talking or the professor-y accent which doesn't quite fit her, but Parker's fingers start twitching in unrest.
"Wormhole?" Hardison's head swings up from where he was leaning forward to inspect the photos.
"Yes. A wormhole is a link between two separate points in spacetime-" The woman shifts slightly and there's a flicker of something different in the way she starts the sentence, like she went from one know-it-all accent into a different know-it-all accent. The answer is scratching at the edge of Parker's mind.
"I know what a wormhole is," Hardison says hissing out a breath. "How long have you guys been going to a different planet?"
"Actively? Since 1997. And it's not 'planet' as in singular." The woman says and smiles, switching back to the way she's been speaking since sitting down. "This galaxy has a wide network of Stargates scattered upon thousands of inhabited planets. By putting in the right address we can access any one of them."
Hardison falls back in his chair with a stunned expression.
Parker, on the other hand, finds her focus zeroing in on the woman's body language: sitting straight, shoulders back. She'd been gesturing with her hands in grand sweeps all the while having talked. All of it looking natural, but not practiced, not like it's habit.
This woman, who Parker suddenly realizes hasn't actually introduced herself, is beginning to remind her of Tara the first time they met her when she was playing Miss Carlisle.
"Who are you?" Parker asks.
There's a beat of silence and then the woman leans forward, with a self-satisfied grin puts her elbows on the table and rests her chin atop her linked hands. The transformation from a proper, straight-laced specialist is impressive and obvious.
"Four and a half minutes. Oh, but you're good." The woman says with a wink.
"You didn't answer her question," Alec says, no surprise in his tone from the change in the woman's body language either, so he must have seen the inconsistencies too.
"Vala Mal Doran." She says and extends her hand to them.
Neither Parker nor Alec takes it, but she just shrugs with a widening grin and pulls back.
"That's an unusual name," Parker says.
"Not from where I'm from, darling." Mal Doran immediately answers.
Parker feels her brows furrow at the implication. Beside her, Hardison seems to choke on air.
"But you're human." He says and Parker looks at him with slight concern at the strangled pitch his voice comes out in, that only ever happens when he starts panicking. She reaches over to take his hand and ground him back into the present.
For Parker it's always been the other way around, when she's the one spiraling the skin to skin contact would just make it worse - for her it's voice that helps, talking her back from the edge, - but Hardison needs the solid warmth of another's touch so she says nothing and just squeezes his hand until she sees his breathing evening out.
"I am." The woman finally says, and Parker finds herself thankful that she waited until Alec was calm, even if it only took a few moments. "But not Tau'ri."
"That makes no sense," Hardison argues.
"Only to those who don't know the history." Mal Doran says, her eyes moving from Hardison to her and to their clasped hands, obviously reading them as Parker was reading her.
"What is the history then?" Parker asks.
"The history is that for the past ten thousand years in the eyes of the Goa'uld humans have made excellent slaves. And hosts." Vala says with a certain bitterness that speaks of something personal.
Before Parker can follow up on that the door leading to the hallway opens up and a man around Eliot's age steps in rubbing his eyes.
"Hey, Vala have you seen my glasses anywhere? I closed my eyes in my office for maybe a minute and-" he cuts off and squints at Mal Doran. "Are you wearing my glasses?"
"Yes, Daniel." Mal Doran says with a smirk no longer paying her or Alec any attention.
"Vala?" The man says with a frustrated sort of calm.
"Yes, Daniel?" Mal Doran says with feigned innocence.
"Why are you wearing my glasses?"
"They fit the costume." She says without any sign of bashfulness, at least none that Parker could see.
"Costu-" The man stops mid-word finally seeming to notice the two other people in the room and clearly uncomfortable with the audience blushes the slightest bit.
"Jack brought our thieves, I wanted to see how quick they'd figure me out. Sam agreed." Mal Doran explains. Parker doesn't think she appreciates the use of the possessive.
"Did Sam agree with stealing my glasses too?" He says, his voice an irritated huff.
"Well, she didn't *dis*agree." Mal Doran says, her amused grin never wavering.
"Of course she didn't." The man says with a glare and then goes quiet, waiting. Mal Doran just keeps looking at him through the lenses of the stolen glasses.
"Vala!" He finally snaps and Hardison coughs into his hand to hide his snicker.
"Yes, Daniel?"
"Give me back my glasses, please!" He says, frustration apparently boiling over.
"Of course, Daniel." Mal Doran says and removes the glasses, handing them over with clear relish. If they'd have met this woman under different circumstances she'd definitely introduce her to Tara, she thinks they'd get along like a house on fire.
Maybe literally. Parker would enjoy being there to see that actually.
The man snatches the glasses, puts them on with one smooth movement and finally turns to them.
"It's a pleasure meeting you. I'm Doctor Daniel Jackson."
"What kind of doctor?" Is Parker's immediate question, she doesn't like doctors, in her experience, they like to poke things too much.
"Linguistics and archaeology."
—
"So, what do you think?" Jack asks Sam after they're done watching the recorded footage showing the beginning of the briefing Vala started out giving the two people before Daniel showed up and took over.
She sighs, they did catch on to Vala's act quickly, but that doesn't really prove they're right for the mission as far as Carter's concerned.
And then there's the fact that she just doesn't like this. She doesn't like leaving the fate of the world up to a team of criminals, but Walter's files once he started really digging into them more deeply were in fact rather convincing.
Apparently, these are the guys who were behind the reveals of corruption and the arrests of at least three high-ranking members of NID. Ones that SGC had missed during the cleanups.
And that didn't even begin to touch on some other events where this crew's hands were apparently felt.
Sam can't condone the tools these people use in the name of justice, but she can't fault them either. And she can't argue the results.
"I think Vala's right, they're our best shot." As much as she doesn't like it. "But if anything happens to them we'll be responsible for the deaths of four civilians. Five if we count Spencer."
"Present company excluded a lot of our big brains are civilians," Jack says but she can see he's no more happy about this than she is.
"You know that's different, we don't send the scientists into enemy territory without an on the ground military backup. The only backup these people might end up having is Eliot Spencer, and if we're very lucky, someone in a cloaked ship in nearby orbit."
"But we need them," Jack says.
"But we need them," Sam agrees.
*o0O0o*
AN2: I'm posting the epilogue tomorrow morning (so depending on where you live it might just be in the very late evening tonight).
I know this wasn't the longest story but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. Letting me know which parts you liked (or didn't) would be nice too (and helpful for any potential future fics I write).
Thanks for reading, and have a nice day everyone :)