Sophie had never been shot before.
She'd come close. She'd felt the adrenaline surge as bullets flew past her face, far too close for comfort. She had been at the end of the mark's gun, her cover blown, her com smashed to pieces under his expensive polished shoes and nothing but her wits to save her. She knew guns, and she didn't hate them the way Eliot did but she certainly would prefer if they didn't exist.
And she had seen what bullets could do. To Nate. To Eliot. She'd watched as they collapsed under the weight of a tiny piece of metal- so small she could hold it on the tip of her finger. Yet it had the power to kill, to take life from some of the most powerful people she had ever seen, and bring others firmly to their knees.
She understood now. She understood why bullets hurt so much, why they stopped people in their tracks, seeped life and blood from their very existence. She felt for the very first time what they did- the slight panic at the sight of blood on the outside, and the cementing of that feeling when you realize it's yours. The lightheaded, fuzzy, empty feeling of blood loss everyone warned you about but couldn't prepare you for. The wondering on death that was different than all the wondering she had done before because suddenly it wasn't hypothetical but very, very possible.
"Sophie!" Nate's voice was loud in her ear. She wanted to pull the earbud out but she couldn't move. Or she could, she supposed, if she really wanted to. But it seemed like a tremendous effort when she could just put into practice all the times she had pointedly ignored him while on the con.
She didn't say anything and continued to stare at the ceiling. She pressed her right hand to the wound in her other shoulder, bunching up as much of her shirt as she could against the bullet hole, but it was bleeding through and she knew from spending time with Eliot that she wasn't supposed to move it but it was spilling over her fingers and the sensation was making her want to vomit.
The second she had hit the floor the mark had lost interest in her. He only wanted to make an escape, not get wrapped up in a murder charge. It wasn't like they were dealing with the mafia, or the mob, or those very distinctive guys Eliot always talked about. The mark was just a guy. Ironically, his name was actually Mark. Mark Wollinson, wanted by them for absentee landlordism. It wasn't something the team was particularly familiar with, but the job had gone quite well, for the most part. Nate had crafted a story, they had bought it. Parker stole some things, Hardison hacked some things, Eliot punched some people, and Sophie tried on one of her many identities.
She hung her identities, her personas, in the closet like expensive evening gowns and pulled them out for the con or a night out. Who would she be tonight? Gweneth Lawren, CEO of a Fortune 500 company? Marilyn Meece, daughter of someone important and British? Or maybe Lilian Scotts, a brave and honest opera singer.
She had ended up as Tia Rose, Director of Services, or something. She couldn't remember exactly. Her mind was getting fuzzy, and she thought she heard Nate call to her through the coms again, but it could have been Hardison, maybe.
"Sophie, can you hear me? Are you okay? What happened up there?"
Hardison, then. Nate was never so generous with his words. He guarded them as closely as she guarded secrets about who she really was- about who she had been and who she was now. Who she was going to be didn't matter, she supposed, especially now that she was ruining the carpet and all.
Sophie reached for her words. "Hardison, calm down," she said, and was surprised to find her voice shaking and shallow. She pulled in a sharp breath.
"What's going on?" he demanded.
She answered his question with another question. She may have been nearly incapacitated, but it wasn't like her training just fell to the wayside because there was a bullet lodged somewhere in her shoulder. She knew the truth would cause him to panic, and a panicked hacker would cause a defensive thief, and that would cause an angry mastermind and that would make more work for Eliot, and they just didn't have that kind of time.
"Are you out of the building?" She didn't want to think about how hard it was getting to breathe or how fuzzy her head was getting. "Everything's okay," she lied.
"Not yet," Hardison said. Sophie could tell he didn't believe her but she continued with the charade anyway, even as she accidentally pressed against her shoulder and more blood bubbled between her fingers. She tried to hide a gasp of pain.
"Find Parker and get out of the building. I'll meet you at Lucille."
Hardison sighed, and Sophie swore she could see him rubbing a hand over his face. "Okay, mamma, I'll see you there."
That was the thing about lies, Sophie thought, after the coms went dead. You didn't have to believe them. You just had to believe in them. Hardison knew she wasn't okay. He heard the shot, heard her scream and hit the floor, same as everyone. But he believed in her lie anyway. He believed in the story she told him because the only other option was believing in the truth- the truth that she was hurt, that she might not make it out of the building, that she could die.
In all her time as a grifter, Sophie had come to realize that lies were so valuable precisely because they were easier to believe in than the truth.
The door to the room opened with a crash and Sophie jumped, causing a sharp searing pain to shoot from the wound in her shoulder through the rest of her neck and chest.
"Sure took you long enough," she muttered, the strength gone from her voice now that she wasn't speaking to Hardison.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Eliot said, kneeling immediately beside her head. He took in the damage as only an expert could do- quickly, efficiently, and without a single wince.
"'S okay," Sophie said, grogginess overtaking her. She closed her eyes, even as Eliot's expert hands got to work. "I knew you'd come."
Eliot was just finishing up. He'd given Sophie some of his stronger painkillers and was thankful that, unlike some of the others, she had no aversions to pills and had taken them right away. Now she was sleeping peacefully while he put the finishing touches on his 17th? 18th? bullet wound suture. He couldn't keep track.
Suddenly Parker popped up from behind the headboard.
He wouldn't admit she had startled him, but his heart was definitely pounding harder than it had been a moment ago.
"Damnit, Parker." he growled under his breath. "What're you doing in here?" Her surprise visit had caused him to topple the neat pile of gauze and medical tape he was making in one of his many first aid kits.
"Is she okay?"
Eliot switched off the small, bright light he had been using for his work and the room plunged into near darkness. Only the light from the television in the next room illuminated their faces.
"She will be."
"Good." Parker perched on the top of the headboard, apparently not moving. Eliot sighed and continued putting his kit back together. "Nate shoulda gotten shot instead," she said.
Eliot threw a glance towards the living room, where Nate and Hardison were laying on the couches watching some ridiculous movie. "Better not say that too loud," he said, even as he couldn't hide a smile from the very edges of his face.
Parker shrugged. She kicked one foot up so it was braced against the wall and she was laying against the headboard. "What? He has more practice."
Eliot chuckled. She was right. "Though you wouldn't know it from their reactions."
Parker leaned over to look at him, what?, written on her face.
Eliot closed the latches with a satisfying snap. "She was so calm," he explained. "I've never seen someone so calm after getting shot in my entire life." He paused for a moment, put the kit back in the closet. "Well," he amended, "that's not true. The ones that're gonna die are usually pretty calm. Resigned to it, I guess."
Parker sat up on the headboard, so that one leg was dangling next to Sophie's sleeping face, the other folded up under her arm. "Did she think she was going to die?"
Eliot straightened the comforter up over Sophie, careful not to bump the wounded shoulder. With any luck, she'd sleep for a few more hours, at least. "Don't think so."
Eliot headed for the door. He turned to tell Parker to get out of there, to leave Sophie alone, but something about the way she was staring intently at him made him pause. "What?"
Suddenly Parker darted toward the adjacent master bath, and even though Eliot had already settled down with a beer and fought the guys for the tv screens in his mind, he followed. Something about her was jumpy and unnerved and it was best to follow along and ask questions later when she got like that.
He wasn't too surprised to see her shirtless and braless when he got to the bathroom. Her nudity should have probably at least registered as odd but it was so common now he didn't even bother to look away.
And good thing, too, because she was pointing to a jagged scar in the middle of her back.
He didn't need to see the thing to know what she was talking about, though, and he almost asked her why she dragged him all the way in here to show him a scar he all but put there himself when she cut him off.
"It doesn't matter what we're doing or where we are," she said, her eyes piercing. She slipped back into the tshirt she'd stolen from Hardison for the night. "You're here. You're here whether it's part of the con that you knock all the bad guys' heads together, or if we mess up and we're broken or sick or, or, whatever. It doesn't matter." She gasped for a breath and crouched on the lip of the tub. "If I were halfway across the country and I called you, you would come."
"I-" Eliot started, but she held up her hand.
"Sophie wasn't scared," she continued, fidgeting with the shower curtain between her fingers, "because she knew you'd be there."
Eliot flashed back to the last thing she'd said before she'd been too groggy, too delirious with shock and blood loss to form cohesive sentences. "I knew you'd come." Damn, Parker was right. But what did this have to do with the scar on her back?
"This-" Parker lifted her shirt again, pointing to the scar and nearly falling from the lip of the tub. It was gnarly. Eliot shuddered at the memory. "Was before you were Eliot." She took a breath, then amended. "Before you would come for us."
Eliot was silent, as was often the case.
But it was fine, because Parker filled in the blanks. "We aren't those people anymore, Eliot." For once she was still, perfectly still, and though she didn't look directly at him he felt the piercing heat of her stare. "We left them behind, on one of the jobs where we got hurt alone and sorted our money alone and tried real hard to forget each other's names."
Eliot smiled. "No encores," he whispered.
"But this one," Parker said, and she shifted on the lip of the tub, pulling her hair away from her neck.
Eliot reached over to help. He knew exactly where it was. A thin line, just behind her right ear. Long enough for twelve stitches. He should know; he performed them himself.
"This one," she repeated, drawing her finger along the scar. "Comes from after that, once we decided that being alone wasn't the same as being together." She dropped her fingers from the back of her head and on their way down they grazed the other scar, the gnarled patch of skin they would both prefer to forget. "That it hurts more."
Eliot thought about all the times he'd shacked up in an abandoned shed or an old barn to nurse his injuries- once he'd found himself in the back of a pickup on some dirt road out in the boonies. He considered these times. They were safer-yes. Neater- certainly. But Parker was right. They hurt more. A lot more.
Eliot's team still got hurt. That was inevitable in their line of work. Bullets would fly. Cars would collide, mob bosses would get pissed, and knives would continue to be pointy and sharp.
But they knew Eliot would come. Till his dying day.