Title: "The Ties That Bind Job" (Part Eight)
'Verse: Leverage/Angel
Characters: Entire Leverage team plus Faith and Angel
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2616
Summary: It's not just Nate's past that's come back to haunt him, as Eliot quickly learns. He'll never willingly put his team in danger, but there are some ties you just can't cut...no matter how far you go.


Eliot continued to stay upright, but the morphine meant that his maneuverability was impaired beyond anything that could be blamed on the concussion and the broken ribs. The doctors had managed to pump a few extra pints of blood into him, but he'd still lost a lot of to begin with.

Hardison and Parker let him support himself, knowing he would never agree to their help. They did flank him on the rush home, however, keeping him on course and subtly nudging him upright when he stumbled.

After a while, Eliot kept himself distracted by asking about everything that had taken place while he'd been unconscious. He asked pointed, careful questions about Angel once he learned about the man's connections with Wolfram and Hart.

He also didn't seem the least bit upset to find that his saviors had been a vampire and a murderess, a fact which perturbed Hardison to no end.

"Man, are you tryin' to tell me that it does not bother you in the slightest that you got put in the hospital by things which should not actually exist?"

Eliot shook his head, trying to ignore the protests from his bruised skull. "Nope. From what's been said, seems like these things are pretty standard." He grinned wolfishly. "Put a stake in my hand next time and see how it goes."

Hardison sighed heavily. "Whatever you say, Anita."

Parker amazed herself by managing to keep Eliot from taking a proper swipe at Hardison. The hitter stopped mid-swing, not bothering to shake her off as he processed what Hardison had actually said. "You read vampire porn?"

"What?" Hardison sputtered. "Vampire? Naw…hell no." Then he stopped as something seemed to occur to him. "How in the hell do you know it's vampire porn?"

Eliot pulled free of Parker's grip then, but Hardison sidestepped his next attempt at retaliation more easily than he should have been able to. "Okay, then, what about Wolfram and Hart?" Hardison demanded, obviously trying hard to change the subject. "I background checked you, man, and I know that you have got outstanding warrants within the borders of our fair nation. You cannot tell me that the thought of lawyers that powerful sniffin' around you doesn't make you sweat."

"Yeah, actually, I can," Eliot said. "'Cause it doesn't."

Off Hardison and Parker's looks of disbelief, Eliot shrugged – managing not to wince this time. "They took the time to bring me in and get me patched up. 'Sides, Wolfram and Hart's never been any trouble for me. They've even helped me out of a few messes in the past that I couldn't fight my way out of."

Parker cast him a suspicious sidelong glance. "Wolfram and Hart helps you?"

"It's what they do. Helpin' the bad guys is kinda their specialty."

"But you're not a bad guy…right?"

Eliot hesitated the barest fraction of a second before he replied, his voice carefully casual. "Once upon a time. Weren't we all?"

Hardison shrugged. "By the conventional standards of an uncaring world, yeah."

"But now we're the good guys," Parker insisted. "Right?" Eliot sensed that confirmation of that belief was important to her.

"Right," agreed Hardison.

"Right," Eliot said.

He asked questions about what Nate had been doing – and was very surprised to hear about the possibility that his savior might be Nate's previously unknown daughter.


"How's he handling it?" Eliot asked.

Parker was saved from answering by Hardison. "Holding it together, far as we know. Sophie's with him."

"I don't like her," Parker said, feeling the need to get her feelings on the table – so to speak. "She's not nice enough to be Nate's daughter."

Neither Eliot nor Hardison had anything to say to that, but Parker could feel the hiccup in the conversation.

No matter how many questions Eliot asked, Parker kept coming back to the feeling that he was most concerned about the coroner's report the hospital had dug up. If there's a coroner's report on Lindsey McDonald, she thought, that means that Lindsey McDonald was a real person.

Real enough for Eliot to panic upon learning the man was dead.

Parker knew Eliot wouldn't keep any secrets that might endanger the team, but of all of them she suspected he had the most to hide. That was part of why he stuck around – they lethim keep his secrets. Now was definitely not the time to change that unspoken rule and start pressing him for sensitive information.

Eliot was panting for breath by the time they reached the pub. The morphine had clearly worn off. He tried to hide how much pain he was in, but Hardison and Parker knew him better than he probably thought they did. When he had to lean against the wall, the two of them exchanged a worried look. Hardison went immediately to unlock the back door for them – no way were they getting Eliot through the crowded bar, even if Hardison did own the building.


In the end he was so weak it took both Parker and Hardison to settle Eliot in Nate's bed. They didn't bother offering him any aspirin, which saved him the trouble of refusing it. The two of them then hovered awkwardly for a few minutes, before he finally sent them downstairs to wait for Nate and Sophie so he could sleep.

Sleep didn't come. Eliot was reasonably sure that his concussion was no longer life threatening, but he hurt too much and he'd slept enough under the influence of the morphine. He finally satisfied himself by simply trying to get comfortable, and listening in on Hardison and Parker's anxious chatter over the coms. Nate and Sophie would be home soon, and…and…

...and then what?

They couldn't handle vampires. Eliot had actually known that vampires existed before the job even started, and he'd still nearly gotten himself killed. For all their weaknesses, vampires were fast and strong and if they managed to hold you in place for more than a minute you were dead – thirty seconds, if more than one decided to take a bite out of you.

If it hadn't been for Faith, he would have died in that warehouse – or worse. He hadn't stood a chance, and so his team wouldn't either. That was just a fact they'd all have to accept. He wasn't sure what Faith and this Angel character could do that they couldn't, but Angel wasa vampire, and Faith had lived long enough to get him out of the building. Those were two big pluses which already meant that they had a better chance than the rest of his team combined.

The smart thing to do, now that he was somewhere safe, was to rest up and try to will his body into healing faster. The best thing to do was let Faith and Angel do their thing. Nate and Sophie would be back soon, and they could…just…wait.

The thought of just lyinghere and letting someone else do hisjob made the bile rise in Eliot's throat. Never mind the idea of letting Angel just waltz away when the bastard had to know what had happened to Lindsey.

Cool off, he told himself. Now was not the time to run off and do something stupid, especially when the team was on high alert for his sake. Lindsey was dead – it didn't matter how, it didn't matter why. Knowing what had happened wouldn't change anything. Rushing off half-cocked and injured just for answers wouldn't do him or the team any good, especially not if there were vampires in the area and Wolfram and Hart was around.

Lindsey was the only reason you worked with those guys in the first place. Lindsey had been the only one willing to bail him out of trouble when he couldn't simply punch and kick his way out.

Eliot closed his eyes, trying to get his breathing under control. No matter how much he reminded himself that dead was dead, and he couldn't change whatever had happened, thinking of Lindsey made his chest clench and his hands shake.

Some ties you just can't cut, a deep, dark part of him whispered, no matter how far you go.


Sophie lay a hand on Nate's shoulder as they approached the apartment door. "Are you going to be okay?"

Nate smiled at her. It was a loaded question, but at least now that she had the full story Sophie wasn't pushing him to do something right this second about his problem. "Probably not," he admitted, "but I promise I'll make it through the next few hours."

The scene that met them when Nate opened the door was comfortingly familiar. Hardison was in his chair, hunched over his laptop. A dizzying stream of data flashed across the bank of wall monitors. Parker was leaning against the kitchen counter, plowing through a bowl of her favorite cereal.

"How's Eliot?" Nate asked, heading immediately in Hardison's direction. If there was anything new he needed to know, Hardison was the one who would tell him.

The hacker glanced up at him. "Not good, man. We got him out of the hospital, but it was a near thing."

Nate glanced over at Parker. "And why did we get him out of the hospital?" He still wanted to know why they had felt the need to harness Eliot out of a window and into a four floor drop, but he wasn't sure he trusted Parker to tell him.

"Somebody turned up a coroner's report on the mysterious Lindsey McDonald," Hardison said. "Didn't think it was prudent to stick around and try to explain that."

"Eliot didn't want to stay," Parker added. "He got real upset when he heard Lindsey was dead, and he started pulling out his tubes and everything."

Sophie winced. "Well," she said, trying to recover somewhat, "I guess that proves what Mr. Angel was telling us about his being presumed dead."

With a sudden flash of insight, Nate turned back to his hacker. "What do we know about Lindsey McDonald?" he asked, giving Hardison the opening he hoped the man was looking for.

Hardison pressed a button on his laptop, and the screens in front of them resolved into pictures and facts on one "Lindsey McDonald, Attorney at Law". "Meet Lindsey McDonald – once upon a time, Wolfram and Hart's best and brightest. Handled all of their top cases, was co-VP of 'special projects' for a while."

Nate moved closer to the monitors, studying the largest picture of a man who, minus the shorter hair, was the perfect image of Eliot Spencer.

"Is it Eliot?" Sophie asked. "One of his aliases?"

"Lindsey's a real person," Parker said. "Eliot said so."

"His twin brother," Nate said – making the intuitive leap. "Lindsey was Eliot's failsafe – bailed him out of trouble he couldn't punch or kick his way out of, right?"

A clatter of laptop keys was his initial response. After a moment, Hardison said, "Looks like. McDonald had three siblings that survived to adulthood. One of them could've been our boy."

Nate puzzled the situation over another moment. "When did McDonald die?"

"According to the coroner's report Spring of 2004. Dude was found shot in a one room apartment in a really bad section of South Central LA."

"And Eliot never knew…"


Getting out of the apartment had been less difficult for Eliot than anyone would have been comfortable admitting. And taxi drivers were the same everywhere – all willing to shut up and drive absolutely anyone anywhere for enough money.

Eliot knew his teammates were going to have a fit about him leaving, but he'd lain in bed arguing with himself for a good half hour, and finally he just hadn't been able to stand it.

He'd known that Nate kept 'mad money' under the mattress, and had silently promised to pay his boss back. Parker had mentioned that Faith and Angel were staying at the Seaport Hotel, so he'd decided to start there, pausing just long enough to take out his earpiece and leave it on the bedside table.

The fact that he didn't know the room number, and couldn't ask at the desk without attracting unnecessary attention didn't even slow him down.

As he stepped out of the cab, however, luck was on his side for the first time in days.

"Hey! Eliot!"

He flinched when the unfamiliar voice called his name, and looked round to see who had recognized him.

He'd never been introduced to the dark-haired woman striding towards him, but he would never forget her face. They'd spent a grand total of thirty seconds in each other's company, and he'd barely been conscious enough to get a good look at her face as she pulled the vampire away from his neck.

"Man," she said, coming to a stop beside him as the taxi drove away. "Either you're not entirely human yourself, or you're just nuts. Docs let you out looking like that?"

"Not quite."

Faith quirked a smile at him. "Believe me, I know how that goes." Then, taking a closer look at him, she took him by the arm and went to work steering him towards the nearest bench. "C'mon. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?"

"Angel."

"What about him?"

"Need to talk to him."

Faith seemed to recognize something in his eyes. She sighed and shook her head. "Look, let me give you some friendly advice, okay? One reformed psycho to another. Whatever he did to you once upon a time, you're not in any shape for payback right now. You know what he is, don't you?"

Eliot nodded. "Yep. Don't care. I'm not lookin' for payback. I just need to talk. I just want answers."

The repetition seemed to help steady him. Faith, at least, seemed to believe he was sincere. Eliot saw her relax very slightly. "Hey, boss man knows things. Probably got your answers." She paused a moment, checking him out more completely. "Need help up?" she asked finally. "No offense, but…the lobby's kind of not an option for you right now. We'd like to keep under the radar ourselves."

You've come this far. If Faith could get him to Angel, he'd follow her lead. "That's fine."

Although he'd never admit it to anyone, Eliot let her help him to his feet because his chest hurt, and he was still short a pint or two of blood and she'd already saved his life once. He allowed her to guide him to the alley behind the hotel and help him up the fire escape leading up five floors.

When they stopped, Faith rapped on a seemingly random window covered by heavy curtains. A moment later, the catch was loosed from the inside. Faith waited for a ten-count, then lifted the window, moved the curtains aside, and swung herself over the sill and into the room. Eliot followed.

There he is. Angel had ducked into the kitchen to avoid the beam of dying sunlight let in by the opening of the curtains. He nodded as Faith entered, and his eyebrows raised very slightly when Eliot appeared behind her.

"Relax, boss," said Faith, jerking her head at their visitor. "His good hand's in a cast and he needed me to help him up here. Just wants to talk."

"Do you?" asked Angel, transferring his gaze to Eliot.

Eliot nodded. "Uh-huh."

Angel nodded. "All right." He paused. "Your friends don't know you're here, do they?"

"They'll guess."

"You should probably get this confab started then," interjected Faith, jerking a thumb at the nearest chair. "Sit down."

Eliot sat. Angel took a chair across from him. Faith leaned against the kitchen counter, the better to keep both men in sight.