AN: Dude. 97 reviews? You guys rock. Thank you so much! I will get around to replying to them. I will. First priority, though, is to get my one fic a day written, so I don't get behind. You guys wouldn't want that to happen, right? But I just want you all to know that I really, truly appreciate your comments and support. Thank you!

This is a direct sequel to "Saved a Wretch Like Me." In fact, it's more like the next chapter for it than anything. If you haven't read it, you definitely won't get this. Like the other story, this is posted here because there's no Rescue 77 category on the site. By the way, I'm really happy that the last chapter didn't receive any "I don't get it, don't like it" comments. *whew* It was actually the other way around, which is so great. Thanks again! (Reply to anon drjones: Dude, you've seen that show?! You're probably one of like, the less than 1000 people out there who have, lol. Thanks! Now everybody who hasn't seen it go take a look at the Always Christian Kane fansite.)

Summary: Nine years ago, Eliot gave his daughter up for adoption. Sequel to "Saved a Wretch Like Me." Leverage/Rescue 77

Saving Grace

Nine years ago...

He's tired. He hasn't had the chance to sleep much for four days; he's had to keep moving, and every time he thought he was safe and hidden enough to catch a half-hour of shut-eye, a heart-breaking wail from the baby carrier would wake him.

He's worn out.

He hitches the diaper bag into a more comfortable position and adjusts his grip on the carrier. The gentle movement makes the baby gurgle at him. He smiles down at her.

Man, this is going to be so hard. He never knew that he could love someone so much.

"It's for you, baby, I'm doin' it for you," he whispers, "'Cause you're worth it."

Little Baby Grace coos and waves tiny fists. He pulls the blanket up so she won't catch cold in the cool night air.

He walks up the path leading to the house, his brother's house.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now...

He buys her all the cookies she wants. Three packs of Thin Mints, two of Do-Si-Dos ("for Daddy," she says), and after careful deliberation, one box of Trefoil shortbread cookies. Eliot notes to himself that while Gracie hates Trefoils, they're his favorite. He counts that as a sign that she's not mad at him anymore. That mad.

They wander outside to the courtyard, where there's a small fountain and a few benches scattered about. Eliot lets Grace pick out which bench they'll sit at to eat their cookies.

She picks one right up against the fountain, so close that they can feel a light spray. It's a nice day out, and the mist feels good against their sun-warmed skin. Eliot puts the cookie boxes on the bench, and Grace picks out her package of Thin Mints. Then she pulls the Trefoils out of the stack and offers them to him.

"Guess this means I'm outta the doghouse now, huh?" he remarks, taking the box.

Grace shrugs. "Maybe. Tell me."

Eliot knows exactly what she means by that, but he doesn't want to tell her. He doesn't want to tell her the story of how he gave her up. He might tell it wrong, and it might alienate her forever, make her hate him for ever.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nine years ago...

He leaves the house, his brother's house, with a sinking, twisting feeling in his gut.

He'll come back. He'll come back for her, if he doesn't get killed first, if he doesn't get caught, if he doesn't get shot or blown up or any of the myriad ways Moreau can order his execution.

Wick's wife, Jess. He'd never met her before tonight, but she seemed like a nice woman. A kindergarten teacher, Eliot knows from looking her up when Wick had called him to tell him that he was getting married, and that Eliot had better be there as his best man, or else. (He didn't go. He didn't want his enemies - or the men employed under him - catching on that Eliot Spencer has a vulnerable spot after all.)

She'd opened the door and known exactly who he was. Of course - he and Wick are identical twins, after all. She'd seen the baby carrier, the weariness on his face, and she'd let him in. She'd given him coffee and food, told him that Wick had a night shift today, so he wasn't home. And then she'd asked if she could hold the baby.

He'd seen the looks she'd given the covered baby carrier, the furtive, longing glances. Eliot knows that she and Wick don't have children yet, even though they've been married for a while now.

He'd nodded and stood to pick the sleeping baby up out of her nest of soft blankets. He'd cradled her, tucked the little pink blanket around her and pulled it away from her face so that it wouldn't tickle her and make her sneeze. Then he'd handed her over to his brother's wife, slowly, carefully.

Jess had taken her and pulled her close, held her the right way (Eliot hadn't known what the hell to do with a baby, a newborn baby, when they'd first put her in his arms, but he'd learned. He'd learned quickly because he'd had to), and made the sort of sounds women make at babies. She'd smiled and asked him her name.

"Grace," he'd said, the first time he'd told anyone outside the hospital where she was born, "Her name's Grace."

"Oh," she'd said, "Oh, that's a beautiful name for a beautiful baby."

Grace had woken up then, and Eliot had moved in closer to take her from Jess, just in case Grace saw a stranger and started crying. But the crying never began. Grace had gazed up at her aunt and looked and looked and looked.

Later, he would pinpoint that as the moment Jessica Lobo fell completely in love with his daughter.

"Hi baby," she'd said softly, "Hi Grace. I'm your Aunt Jess. Hi."

He'd cleared his throat then. He'd said, "I need to ask you a favor. I, uh, I need you to watch her for a while. I don't know how long, but maybe a couple of weeks, a month maybe. I need to get things ready for her. I didn't know I was gonna have her until they called me and told me her mother died in labor and she'd said that I was the baby's father." It had all come out in a rush, once he'd gotten started. "I need to take care of things before I can take care of her. This is the safest place I could think of. Please."

"Of course," Jess had said, a happy smile spreading on her face, "Of course we'll take her." She rocks the baby and makes more sounds at her.

"Do you need to ask Wick?"

"No, he won't mind. We've been trying for a baby," she'd confided, but it had an odd inflection in it, something that sounded like...sorrow. He hadn't asked. Something told him that it wasn't meant for his ears.

So he'd taken his leave, said goodbye to his week-old daughter and gone to make her a home. A ranch, maybe. He'd often thought that he'd want a ranch, a small one, or a farm if he lived long enough to retire.

He stands outside his brother's house and feels a sense of foreboding. Like something, something is shifting in the gears of life (if he wants to be dramatic and philosophical about it).

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now...

He sighs. He wonders exactly how much to tell her. Most of it isn't meant for nine-year-old ears. Hell, some of it isn't meant for grown men to hear, not living men, at least.

"You know what I do?" he asks, "Work, I mean."

"Yeah," Grace replies through a mouthful of chocolate-covered cookie. "You're 'in security.' Whatever that means. You help people."

"Well," he says, feeling that plummeting of shame in his chest again, "Before you were born, I was in the business of hurting people. I did bad things for bad people."

Grace brushes the crumbs from her mouth and off of her clothes but says nothing.

"And then you came along and I thought that now would be a good time to get out, to quit. I had to take care of some stuff and I couldn't do it and keep you safe at the same time, so I went to the safest place I knew."

"To Daddy."

"Yeah," he replies, "to your dad. They took care of you for a month until I came back. I had a house all ready for you, y'know? A farm with horses and chickens and a funny-lookin' rooster. Your room was the one with the best view. I painted it pink."

"I don't like pink," Grace says.

"I know. But I didn't know that back then."

"So what happened?"

"I went back," he says, getting to the hard part. "And then they asked me if they could keep you."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nine years ago...

"No," he says, backing away with the baby in his arms. "No."

His brother's wife is crying in Wick's arms; she doesn't want to let the baby go.

"Please, El," Wick says, "We love her."

"No," Eliot shakes his head, "She's my daughter, Wick."

Jess looks up at her husband. "Tell him," she whispers, "Wick, please."

Wick meets his wife's wet eyes with his own moist ones. He starts to shake his head. "Jess."

Eliot takes the opportunity to turn around and leave, but his brother's voice stops him.

"Eliot. I can't have kids."

He turns around. "What?"

"We tried," Wick says, letting Jess go and walking towards him, "There's something wrong with me. I was in a chemical explosion a few years back, and they just told us a little while ago that- " he pauses, "that I can't have kids. We can't have kids. Please."

Eliot looks down at his daughter, his daughter, and sees how much she's grown in the month since he last saw her, how clean and healthy she is, how beautiful. "She's my daughter."

"No," Jess cries out, "Please, don't take her away." Wick catches her as she falls forward, sobbing, "We love her. We love her so much, please."

"Jess," Wick says quietly, "We can adopt. We'll adopt another baby, someone else's baby."

Jess shakes her head. "I love Grace. I love her, Wick. Don't tell me you don't want her as much as I do," she says fiercely.

"She's Eliot's," Wick says, but Eliot can see how right Jess is about how much Wick wants Grace, too. He wants her, he needs her, loves her.

Woken by the commotion, the baby begins crying. Eliot rocks her. "Shhhhh, Grace, I'm here. I'm here. It's okay."

It's then that he realizes that his daughter doesn't know him, doesn't recognize him, even though he looks exactly like the man who has been taking care of her for the last month.

Grace cries even harder, and Eliot doesn't...doesn't know what to do. He looks up at his brother, standing there with his wife in his arms and a broken, longing expression on his face, and he looks back at his baby girl.

His baby girl, who's crying her little heart out because she's being held by a stranger.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now...

"And then you gave me to them," Grace finishes as his story winds down.

"My life is no life for a baby," he says, trying to explain that it didn't happen like that, "It's no life for a kid."

"Dad said you wanted to say goodbye to me?" she asks, nibbling on another cookie (she won't be able to eat dinner with all those cookies in her stomach, but Eliot doesn't have the heart to stop her).

"Yeah, I did."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nine years ago...

He looks down at the wailing baby in his arms, and...and thinks, "I got no business being a dad. They'll love her. They'll take care of her. They'll keep her safe, safe from me, safe from Moreau and everyone else who wants to kill me. She'll be safe. She'll be happy. She needs a mother, a father who knows what to do. Not me. She doesn't need me."

He looks at his brother and his wife, whose faces are falling, disappointed, heartbroken - they think he'll leave, take the baby with him.

"Just let me say goodbye," he croaks, holding Grace closer to his chest, "Give me a few minutes alone with her to say goodbye. And then she's yours."

Wick and Jess remain frozen for a moment, as if unbelieving this turn of events, their good fortune. Then, looking at each other as if to confirm what they've just heard, they stammer out their thanks, with tears running down their faces.

They stumble out of the room together then, his arm around her, and leave him alone with Grace. His daughter, soon to be his niece.

A little voice in the back of his mind tells him that it's not too late, that he can walk out of the house with her now and his brother will never be able to find them. Then he remembers Wick's face, Jess's face, and thinks, no, he can't.

The baby has stopped wailing by now, tired out from crying so hard and for so long. She makes little snuffling sounds, short, quiet whimpers.

He rocks her, and sings.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now...

"What did you sing?" Grace asks, and offers him a Thin Mint.

He takes it, and starts singing, softly, the song he'd sung to her as a baby.

I guess I oughta tell you what's been going on
Well I've been chasing dreams for everyone but me.
When your heart is filled with misery
It's hard to find the energy
To remember just how much she means to me.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nine years ago...

"'Cause I've been hell on wheels for days now," he sings, and she quiets, gazing up at him with serious blue eyes, his eyes, "There ain't a shade of red I can't paint." He thinks, maybe she recognizes him now, remembers his voice (Wick can't sing a note, having been born completely tone-deaf).

When the lights go down, she always helps me see.
In the darkness a day will come
Another light for you to lean upon
But until then maybe your heart
Can rest in mine.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now...

"I know this song," Grace says. "I remember this one."

"Yeah," Eliot says softly, "I used to sing you to sleep with it, back after your mom died and your dad was a wreck."

"I miss her."

"Yeah," he replies, "I know." He wishes he'd come back to visit his brother and his family before she'd died, but he hadn't. He'd never known Jess in any other way than the woman who'd wanted his child. And now, she's dead, and there's nothing he can do about that.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nine years ago...

He goes into the kitchen, where Wick and Jess are talking softly, their heads almost touching. They've probably been kissing, they're so close together. Even though their eyes are red and there are traces of tears on their cheeks, they look happy.

They look up when he enters, looking half-afraid that he'll go back on his word.

He walks up to his brother and holds the baby out to him. "She's yours," he says tersely, "I'll take care of the paperwork."

"Eliot," Wick begins, but Eliot interrupts.

"Just take her," he says, his face crumbling. "Take her, Wick, please. Just don't ever tell her where she came from. Okay? That's all I ask. Love her, protect her, raise her right, and don't tell her where she came from."

Wick nods and takes the sleeping bundle out of his arms. "Yeah. Okay."

As soon as the warm weight leaves him, Eliot pivots and half-runs, half-falls out of the room, out of his brother's house, feeling like he's leaving his heart behind.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now...

"Why?" Grace asks. "Why didn't you want me to know where I came from?"

"Because I knew this would happen," he replies, gesturing wide to mean this whole big mess.

Grace sighs. "Do you ever wish you hadn't given me up?"

"No," he replies simply, "You wouldn't have turned out so good if I'd raised you."

She frowns. "You don't know that."

He turns the question around on her. "Do you wish I'd raised you instead of your dad?"

She thinks about that for a minute, turning it over in her mind. "No, I guess not. I like you as an uncle."

"And I like being your uncle." He smiles and bumps her shoulder. She scoots over and leans on him, so he puts his arm around her.

"But if Dad died, you'd take me, right?" She still looks unsure, and it kills him to see her so uncertain of her future. Kids shouldn't have to worry about stuff like that.

"Of course. You're still my family. But don't think about your dad dying. It's not gonna happen. He'll be okay."

"Yeah. He better be," she says ominously.

"Yeah? Or what?"

"I'll sic Nurse Eliot on him." She grins.

"Oh," Eliot chuckles, "is that right?"

She giggles. "Uh-huh."

"I guess he better get his ass all healed up soon or you'll make me give him sponge baths or some shit." He makes a comically disgusted face.

"Ew!" she punches him in the arm.

"Hey," he says, "Where'd you learn to hit like that?" He takes her hand and curls it into a proper fist. "Thumb goes outside, otherwise you'll end up breaking it instead of the other guy's nose."

"Will Daddy get mad at you for showing me this?" she asks, as she punches the air experimentally.

Eliot thinks for a moment. "Teaching you how to hit people, on top of filling you up with cookies? Yeah, probably."

Grace snorts. "You're gonna be in trouble," she sing-songs.

"Aw, shut up, kid."

"You're not supposed to say that to me."

"Oh, really?" He looks down at the nine-year-old tucked under his arm. "I bought you cookies. Doesn't that get me brownie points or something?"

She purses her lips up at him. "Mmm, maybe. Depends."

"On what?"

"Are you gonna take me to see the farm you bought me?"

He lets his head fall back. "You wanna see the farm?"

"Yes."

"It's kinda far," he hedges, "It's in Missouri."

"So?"

"So, we're in L.A.," he says, "And besides, you gotta ask first."

"Ask Dad? He'll probably say I can go." She seems sure of it, but Eliot's not too sure. After this whole fiasco, Wick's going to want to keep Grace close.

"I wanna see my room, even though it's pink, and I wanna see the funny-lookin' rooster, and the chickens and the horses, and I wanna see the view," she says.

"The animals aren't there anymore, but everything else is the way it was," he says. Nine years ago, he'd sold off the livestock, given away the baby things he'd bought, and chained and locked the fence surrounding the farm.

But the farm and the house, he'd kept them. He doesn't know why, but he'd kept them, as the only reminder he has that he had once had hopes of being a father, a good father.

"Well, I wanna see," Grace says.

He grunts noncommittally, and stands.

"Come on," he says, "We better get back to your dad's room. He mighta pulled something else out, like his IV or his catheter or something 'cause he got antsy waitin' to see if we've killed each other," he half-jokes, referring to the previous night, when he and Wick had gotten into a sort of one-sided argument that had ended in Wick pulling out his own breathing tube in a fit of frustration.

She wrinkles her nose at him. "You shouldn't fight with him when he's hurt."

"He's the one who picked the fight," he retorts. "I was only trying to get him to go back to sleep."

"Yeah," Grace says sarcastically, "it totally worked out like that."

They walk in companionable silence for a few minutes.

"Hey, Uncle Elly?" Grace asks tentatively.

"Yeah?"

"Why'd you name me Grace?"

Wick had spilled the beans on that one, too, damn him.

"Promise you won't laugh?"

"Promise."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nine years ago...

He holds his daughter in his arms for the first time, and gets lost in her big blue eyes, his eyes.

"Hi baby," he whispers, "Hi. I'm your daddy."

He reaches out to touch the soft cheek, but pauses. There's blood on his hands. Not literal blood, but figuratively, his hands are dripping with it. His hands aren't clean enough to be touching a new-born baby.

He can't. He can't.

He gives the baby back to the nurse and mumbles something about making a phone call. He thinks it comes out in Russian, but it might have been Italian or English for all he knows.

He makes it outside into the cold night air and breathes, pants, gasps, pulls his hair. He's a father. He's a father.

He'd gotten the call four hours ago, relaying a simple message: one of his former flames had died in a Moscow hospital, giving birth to a daughter, his daughter.

His daughter. He hadn't been sure because hey, it had been a one-night thing and she'd never called to tell him, but he'd taken one look into those big, innocent eyes and he'd known. He'd known that this little girl is his flesh and blood.

He stops pacing, so suddenly that an elderly woman almost bumps into him. He apologizes distractedly.

Yeah, he can do this. He can do this. He made this kid. He can take care of her. He can. And he'll do it right. He'll...he'll retire. He'll do it.

He pulls out his phone. "I quit," he says when Moreau answers.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now...

"Because," he replies, to answer Grace's question, "You were my saving grace. I'd be dead by now if it weren't for you. Because of you, I started to care again about being a good person. I don't feel like a bad guy anymore. That's all because of you."

Grace examines him critically. "Uncle Elly?" she asks suddenly, "Do you love me?"

"Of course I do," he replies, taken aback, "You know I do."

"Okay," she says, nodding, satisfied with his answer, "I love you, too. I don't hate you anymore."

"Oh really?" he says, laughing a little at the nine-year-old bluntness, "That's good to hear." Then he snags her around the shoulders, leans down to whisper in her ear, "I love you more than anything, Gracie. Always have, always will."

She rewards him with a peck on the cheek.

"Hey, Uncle Elly?"

"Yeah, kiddo?"

"What's for dinner?"

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nine years ago...

He holds his daughter for the second time, looks deep into her eyes, and smiles.

"Welcome to the world, Grace. I love you."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

AN: And that is the end of this verse, at least for this collection, unless you want more. I can definitely think of more to write.

The song lyrics are from Christian Kane's "In the Darkness."