9.

Nate found her in the small café near the hospital, with a glass of Jack warming in her long fingers. Sophie Devereaux could cry on demand, pouring out tears faster and easier than he could smile, but after those tears her eyes would never be red. They weren't real tears, weren't important, so there were no traces left.

Now, she was sitting at a table far away from the windows, with her sunglasses on.

He ordered a coffee and sat in front of her, noticing it wasn't her first glass of whiskey. He said nothing.

"When I disconnected myself, I went straight to the third floor," she said staring at her glass. "I almost went to his room."

"He knows you, and knows all your weak spots. He knew how to distract you from further analyzing his voice."

"Do you think I'm a fool? I know what he had done, and I played my part in it, playing on his move, but Nate," she finally raised her eyes. "He shouldn't be alone in that damn room!"

"Last time I checked, it was his decision," he said. "You don't chase away everyone who cares about you, and then whine for being alone."

"He almost died, you insensitive son of a bitch!" she snapped.

"Yes, Sophie, I'm aware of that fact," he continued calmly. "I'm also aware, now more than ever, that he played on your protective instincts, and no matter how much you think you willingly played the right part, intentionally, you're still…affected."

She looked at him in silence, and moments passed before she finally spoke.

"You're mad at him," she whispered.

"You're not?"

"Mad?" she shook her head. "At a shot, beaten man, who did everything he could to keep his team from danger? Pardon, his friends. And is still doing it, further endangering himself?" Her voice was arctic. "No, I'm not mad at Eliot. But you are. You're mad because he dared to do this, to leave you out of that decision."

"I'm mad because of his one move, Sophie, and for reasons I still can't articulate to myself, much less to someone else. That one thing he did… he'll pay for it. All of this that came after that is just… expected from him."

"Because he didn't tell us what was happening the first time he called from the warehouse?"

"No, not that." he said shortly.

She eyed him quizzically, but he just smiled.

A waitress brought him his coffee.

"I spoke with Betsy, she was just leaving when I caught her." Sophie continued when the girl went away. "I asked her about a transfer to some other hospital. She said it would be stupid and dangerous in his condition, but possible. In a day or two, when they're certain there won't be any complications, and when his blood loss is completely under control, it will be possible to move him away from danger, into another hospital, far away from the Chileans. He won't have to go after Villacorta, and he won't be alone."

"You're not thinking clearly, Sophie," he sighed. "Short term decisions are deadly-"

"I'm thinking about ours and his well being, Nate, because someone has to! I'm afraid you're on a totally different track right now, and you are forgetting the only thing that's important. To stay alive, all of us!" she leaned to him, her eyes hard and serious. "I'm thinking of stopping that mad idea of leaving, for Christ's sake! He has to be stopped! Betsy said merely walking can kill him, he's still bleeding, and if he goes out, there'll be no need for Chileans to wait for him."

"You shouldn't speak with Betsy about it; you of all people should know how dangerous is when someone shows she knows too much. He will read the change in her behavior, and he'll start asking himself why, what caused that change."

"I haven't told her anything about his intentions; she told me! She said he's already one foot out of the door."

"It wouldn't be the first time for someone to come to the right conclusions starting with the wrong premises."

"She's Bonnano's friend, Eliot will presume they're exchanging notes about him behind his back."

"If you can't beat someone's paranoia, use it against him?"

"When Hardison was giving us info on Chileans, I asked you why we just couldn't grab Eliot and run. Remember that? I still think it's the best solution. No, it's the only one, if we want to survive this."

"There's no running from this, Sophie, we'll never be safe. When you're marked for death, it doesn't just stop if you move to the other town, it doesn't work that way. We should be safe for some time, yes, they'll need time to find us. And one day, maybe next month, you'll go out your front door, and find five guys who'll open fire. One by one, we'll all go down."

"Don't bullshit me, Nate, you know what tactical retreat stands for. We just need some time 'til Eliot gets well, 'til you come up with a decent plan, and then, complete, we will crush Villacorta. We destroyed Damien Moreau, we can take Villacorta down."

"Yes, it would be perfect," he suppressed a growl. "It's just this minor problem of the immobile hitter who needs a hospital with a good thoracic unit; even I could find all the possible locations in three minutes, using nothing but Google, go there and check all the names, false names, files, false files, all the IDs, or simply check room after room 'til I find him, and kill him without a problem, because, imagine that, in some other hospital there wouldn't be an armed guard in front of his door! Even better, I wouldn't have to look for the other four because I would know they are there with him, very close. According to you, they should be in his room, holding hands and singing, so I wouldn't have to search at all, just empty my magazine. We are stuck here, in Mass Gen, do you understand that?" Just when he finished, he realized how bitter he sounded, so he calmed down and took a sip of coffee. "Yes, Sophie, I thought of all that," he continued softly. "And much to your surprise, I'm still thinking about it. I'm thinking about every possible move, in hundreds of combinations. Yet this time, the very important decisions and first moves in this game are not mine, they are Eliot's."

"This…game?" she slowly repeated, and her eyes suddenly sharpened. "And whom are you trying to beat in this game, Nathan Ford? Villacorta or Eliot? Or both?"

"Don't be ridic-"

"It seems Eliot knows you much better than I do. His actions, from the warehouse on, are adjusted to your anticipated moves. He obviously thinks you'll put everybody's lives in danger again just for the thrill of the game, because you need one more victory, one more opponent beaten to dust. It seems he is not wrong at all. Only this time, he doesn't know that it's not Villacorta you're after, that it's him. Tell me something… when you chased him, have you ever actually caught him? You didn't tell us that. Is this your second chance to play, and find out if you can beat him?"

Dear God, he was wrong, it wasn't simple protecting instinct, it was maternal instinct, in full charge. And he was in its way. "Sophie, you're distressed and upset, and too emotionally involved right now, and you can't-"

"Yes, I am. So what? Nate, I'll ask you a few questions. And I'll know if you lie."

"Yes?" he sighed.

"Will you let him continue with his plans, just because you want to see what will happen, and to see if you can guess his moves correctly? And beat him? Will you put his life in danger? Will you risk Eliot's life, just for the thrill of the game?"

He stared at her, not quite sure was she trying to confuse him, or mock him, or… but she was sitting, holding her glass with both hands, her gaze steady. Waiting for the answer.

Jesus. Okay, she was scared and miserable, and he was too cold and insensitive, but this was just a little too much.

"The answer to your questions," he started, trying to control his voice, "Would be: yes to all." This time he leaned in her personal space. "Yes, I will put his life in danger. Yes, I will let him continue with his plans, if I have to. Yes, I want to see what would happen. Yes, I want to see if I can guess his moves. And yes, definitely, I want to beat that crazy son of the bitch… to a pulp. Preferably with a baseball bat. And while doing all that to keep him alive, I have to keep all of you safe, and think of Villacorta and his men. I don't have time for being nice, Sophie. I'll merely have time to become cruel enough to do everything that needs to be done."

"It won't be so hard. You're natural."

"Enough! Please!"

"Am I dismissed, boss?" she throw a bill on the table and stood up.

God, it was going from bad to worse. She never called him like that before.

"You're wrong." she simply said. "You don't have to be cruel to finish this. You just have to care enough."

"When you care, you lose." The words escaped him before he could stop them. And the grifter stopped and turned to look at him again. Wrong words. A very wrong move.

"You know, I still remember every word and feeling from your speech about family, on the Maltese Falcon. Do you? Or those were just words, and not feelings? Are we really your family, is he your family? And if this…" she waved her hand around them, helplessly, disgusted "…is not the time and place to remember that feeling, when shall it be? At someone's funeral? We are all sick and tired of words, Nate."

He sat stiffly, holding his cup, hoping she would leave if he said nothing. But she came back and leaned into him, her hair touching his cheek.

"There's something worse than 'when you care, you lose,' Nate," she whispered in his ear. "When you lose first, and then realize you cared. Don't let that happen to you. Because we can't lose you both."

.

.

.

With just five minutes of practicing, Eliot managed to disconnect all the IV tubes from the catheters in his forearms without watching what he was doing, and put them back in with the same invisible moves. It took him another five minutes to do it with both hands under the blanket, without moving the thin cloth. Another five minutes to do both at the same time, while his arms were crossed. George drank another dose of morphine while Eliot practiced hiding the disconnected morphine tube going into the soil with a slow move of cleaning a single dry leaf.

He had so much to do, and so little time to do it, and the hours that passed couldn't be replenished.

The silence was unbearable.

He refused to turn on the TV, and almost threw out a nurse who came after Betsy left; poor girl was just trying to entertain him. It was hard to be nice when your patient growled at you. She didn't notice she left without syringe.

He was not bored, for Christ's sake! One more hour of thinking and his head was about to explode.

After one more turn of disconnecting, when he realized that pain exhausted him so much that his hands were trembling, he pressed the button and let himself be shot up with one dose. It was a relief to be able to just lie with his eyes closed, and not move. Only problem with that relaxed, floating state was that it brought back the conversation with Nate and the others; that damn talk came back every time his attention slipped. And every time he thought of it, he had to suppress vomiting.

When things go too easy, something is wrong. It went smooth, much easier than he expected, having been prepared for much longer negotiations. He got two days too easy, so, either Nate was also aware of how serious the situation was, or he was totally unaware of the same thing. Two opposite things with the same result, and not a single clue which one was true.

What if he was wrong? He had been asking himself that question since he called them from the warehouse, when he realized what was happening, and what would happen… and he still hadn't found the answer. He would know in the end, no sooner.

The funny thing about all this was that no matter how it would end, the play won or lost… he was going to lose. And that bothered him more than he ever imagined it would. He knew it from the beginning, though, and he chose it without hesitation. But what if he was wrong?

He couldn't lay down any more, too disturbed to rest, and he pushed himself to sit. That wasn't enough either; he stopped himself when he noticed his hand was already on the railing of the bed, ready to tear it away. He could fool many people, even ones more clever than him, but he never managed to fool himself. He knew, exactly, when his rage took over to suppress despair.

With the drug in his bloodstream, he allowed himself to breathe a little deeper, trying to calm down; and one by one, he tuned out all thoughts of the conversation with the team, of possible ends and inevitable losses, and all the what ifs, returning himself to the here and now. In the room, in the hospital, in the bed. That was the problem he had to solve… everything else, right now, were just distractions. Small steps, one by one.

It seemed he had to choose between two states. First, more drugged and in less pain, with thoughts sharp as overcooked pudding, butterflies, memory loss, constant drifting away and threefold vision. The good thing was that that kind of immobility hastened his recovery, slowed the bleeding, and he wasn't in danger of messing up all the work the surgeons had done. Not a state appropriate for thinking, though… or walking out of the hospital. Trying to choose which of the three doors was the real one could slow him. A little.

The second, less drugged and more in pain. Clear thinking, complete grasp of the situation, able to work on details of the plan that was formed in the warehouse while he was waiting for Bonnano… no, not a plan. It was a clear course of action, he knew what had to be done and why; a plan was something to make up as he went along. The only problem with that state was that he was on verge of passing out if he moved too fast, and simply reaching for the phone was a process that he had to stop three times just because he had to wait for the pain to cease and let him continue. And he wasn't even completely off the drugs, he was just on lower doses. Walking out of hospital? Yes, after ten days. If.

It was the afternoon of the second day, and he still hasn't collected enough courage to actually try to stand up, too frightened of the possible results. That hesitation scared him more than anything.

Maybe he should let a little rage surface again, this despairing shit was too annoying.

Some people gave up too quickly because they looked at how far they still had to go, instead of how far they had gotten. Yet, he wasn't 'some people'. He lived through the initial shooting. He was alive when Bonnano arrived. He survived transport to the hospital. He was breathing after the operation. He was able to sit up and think. All of that running only on a sheer will, nothing else…and he planned to continue that pattern.

Fuck strategy, all that a decent hitter needed was winning in every tactical move he made. Strategy was for masterminds, they enjoyed playing; hitters did not play.

For now, he was winning. It was all about surviving all the small steps that lay before him, so he closed his eyes and concentrated on the next one.

To correctly remember the dozens of numbers that were reeling inside his head, 'til Betsy brought him the fucking papers.

.

.

.

It took almost half an hour for the damn waitress to take away Sophie's half finished whiskey. He was sitting, staring at the golden liquid. Drinking his third cup of coffee.

Nate didn't know why he was still there, and not at the hospital, being useful.

"You can't con a fired bullet, Nate."

He had no idea why he was thinking about that sentence right now, after all that Sophie had said; it wasn't a shield from her words, no. More like a distraction, one source of pain to occupy his thoughts and give him a rest from the others. He could clearly hear every cadence in the sentence, but he couldn't catch the exact feeling in the hitter's voice. Something had vibrated in his head at the moment Eliot said it, something disturbing, but he couldn't allow himself to stop and find out what was, he had to continue talking. And then it was lost.

His phone rang, breaking the sentence just at the moment he thought he was about to catch something, and he swore. It was Bonnano; he had to talk to him.

"Betsy just called me and told me she was the courier who brought Eliot two new phones, some expensive fancy shit like his disconnected one, which she brought to Middleton and transferred tons of messages from it onto the new ones, then disconnected and threw away the old one, and brought all that back to Eliot. Then she told me I have to do something to stop him from leaving because he's planning something. Are you all completely crazy, or it's just an impression I get, who knows why?"

"Wait, wait," Nate shook his head, arranging Bonnano's words in coherent order. Betsy, phone, GPS in Middleton, Hardison's data on Chileans, two new phones. Great. Just great. "Erm, where are you exactly?"

"Coming your way. Going to talk to him. I ask again, are you all completely crazy?"

"Yes, we are. And yes, he is leaving, I've told you that the first time we spoke, but you dismissed it. At least, he is trying to find a way to do it. I'm not sure is it possible, though, so it's not time for drastic measures yet." He waited until Bonnano stopped his muffled curses, then continued. "It will be of the most help if you can find out something about his plans, at least what he thinks about all this. I don't think he'll tell you anything, but we can try."

Bonnano growled. "I'm a cop, Nate, when I want people to talk, I find a way."

"You may find this a little more difficult than you expect. But I hope you're right."

"Can you explain something to me?" Bonnano continued. "What if you just go to him, and tell him you're here, hidden, safe, and that you won't do anything, hence there's no need for him to go wreak havoc?"

Nate squinted on Bonnano's choice of words. And yet he knew nothing about the real Eliot, he had never saw him doing his job. "I was thinking about that for a long time," he said. "I suggest you ask him that exact question, hypothetically of course, and then you'll see why I didn't do it."

"Betsy is pissed," Bonnano sighed. "She likes him."

"Yep, I thought it might happen," Nate sighed back. "She has to be extra careful."

"Not like him as in 'you're charming so I'll go easy on you', more like 'I like you so I'll double my efforts in stopping you from doing foolish things'. She has one son in my unit, and another in Afghanistan. Maybe we should let her handle this."

Nate remembered Sophie's red eyes, hidden behind sunglasses. "Maybe… not. But if everything else fails, we'll unleash her, okay?"

"Yep. I'm going now… I'll call you after I talk to him. No, I'll come to you, text me the address later."

Nate put the phone back in his pocket. Phones. Two new phones. And all Hardison's data was now in Eliot's head, being sorted out. Maybe they'd made a huge mistake. Maybe he made a mistake; it was his call.

The water flow in the clepsydra had just started to move, slowly, but steadily, as the countdown clock in his head jumped few hours. He had a lot of watches in his head lately, and they were all saying different times.

He looked through the café window, at the hospital buildings, golden in the sinking sun.

"'Cause, maybe, I just miss you all."

He ran his hand through his hair, slowly exhaling. He had to get rid of everything distracting, and start thinking about drastic measures.

He had a crazy, drugged hitter with suicidal tendencies, who was gnawing his leash; the professional grifter who cried because the hitter was feeling lonely, more or less accusing him of attempted murder; a thief who was speaking to invisible members of the team, and collecting hand grenades; and the hacker who was just about to break. And when he broke, it would be spectacular.

Yes, it was all about the family. They were all unstrung, frightened, scared for each other, and utterly unreliable because of it. And that's why he couldn't even think about feeling anything. One of them had to stay emotionally uninvolved. Or they all would end up dead.

He sighed and put a comm back in his ear.

"Hardison." he said. "All alive?"

"Yep," Hardison answered.

"What's Eliot doing?"

"Still not trying to get up, he's just staring at-"

Nate took the last sip of coffee, listening patiently to the silence.

"Okay," Hacker finally said. "Yes, I've been in Eliot's room, although you forbid us to go in there. Yes, I put a camera in it, I admit. But how did you know that?"

"Hardison, it would be the safest to put that recording on the biggest monitor you have, if you wanted us not to notice, because nobody looks at your monitors anyway, ever. You're always surrounded with lit screens, and all of a sudden, you have only a small one, turned off and hidden behind the wall of bottles which you always keep in fridge. You're too damn tired to continue, go to sleep."

"I have to monitor security cameras, Nate, can't let-"

"You're making mistakes. Period. We'll all come to the office for a while, everybody needs a little time off, to collect strength for tonight. Bonnano is coming here again, on his way home. Betsy called him and told him Eliot's really going out. While he's here, we can rest. Order something to eat."

"Well, how about pizza and a CT scan?"

"What?" he didn't like how that sounded. "What's happening?"

"I keep the monitor off almost all the time, privacy issues, it's not okay to stare at him all the time. Just imagine how would you fee-"

"Hardison! What's happening?"

"Nothing alarming. Just strange. I turn it on every fifteen minutes to check, to see is everything okay, and if there's something new. The last three times he was looking at himself in the mirror. Have they checked his head for a concussion, perhaps? I mean, have you ever, ever seen Eliot with a mirror before? I feel a disturbance in the Force, Nate."

"Damn."

"What?"

"I don't know yet," he sighed. "But I will."

Tick tock.