A/N: Hi!... Here's the next chapter... This one's a step back from all the tension that's been building up as we check up on everyone's favorite hitter's past. Sorry for delaying the progress of the story but you can totally blame my muse, who forced me to write the background chapter... Plus, I wasn't really in the mood to write the major whumpage that we're gonna be seeing in the next chapter... I promise!... Sorry Eliot and Parker... it's gonna be a tough ride in the next coupla chapters... :|

Anyways, thank you all for such a great response to this and all my other Leverage fics... hope you like all the future fics and chapters the same way too. Thanks to all my reviewers, you guys make my day when you review... bear hugs and Eliot's Choco-chip cookies to you all... On with it now...

Chapter 06

Taking a deep breath, Eliot turned around where he stood. It was clear from what he'd heard from Hardison about the camera footage that Parker was somewhere on the floor either above or below the one he was on. Since he couldn't depend on Hardison to give him a location, the hitter had to do it the old fashioned way. This was when his battle honed senses came into play.

"Guys... I am gonna need you to stop making any noise for a minute now. No sounds at all... got it?"

He knew that Parker still had her comm in, knew that Mikhail Ivanevich also knew that, had probably got someone to hack into their communication frequency and was probably listening to everything they said since the beginning of the con, but there was nothing he could do about it now. All of Eliot's considerable focus and energy was now concentrated on a single thing. Getting to Parker as soon as possible. He couldn't let her remain in the power of the Russian mobster for long.

Closing his eyes, Eliot centered his body and mind the way an old man had taught him eons ago.

It had been fourteen years ago, he'd been a part of a commando unit on infiltration duty in Northern Japan. The unit had been formed of a dozen fresh new recruits along with a couple of old timers, mainly to give the new recruits a taste of what actual operations were like. They weren't supposed to find a cell of Chinese arms dealers, but they had stumbled upon it. Even as they tried to retreat without losing men, Eliot and another guy had gotten shot. Forced to leave them there in order to save the rest of the team, the unit had abandoned the two injured men. Later at the base, the two of them had been reported missing and presumed dead.

Though the other young man had died, Eliot had been fortunate enough to be alive when he was found by an old Japanese man, who was the owner of the rice paddy fields he'd lain bleeding in. The Japanese guy had taken him home, cleaned and taken care of the bullet wounds with the expertise of a medical doctor and had permitted him to stay till Eliot got better. That day, Eliot Spencer had been shot thrice. Once in the right shoulder, once in the left thigh and once in his back, very close to the spinal column. He'd been in an enormous amount of pain for a long, long time but he'd fought with it as much as he could.

After being immobile for about a month, Eliot had become better, much by the force of his will. It had taken a lot of work and exercise to become fully functional again, but Eliot wouldn't have been able to do it had it not been for Li-san, the old man who'd saved his life. Li-san had not only nursed Eliot back to health, he'd also taught him various exercises that would condition his body and bring it back to working order. Eliot had learnt Kung-fu and a host of other martial arts along with Tai-chi at the hands of the old Li-san, who it turned out, used to be the master of a dojo before he retired to lead the life of an ascetic in the mountains.

Over the course of six months, Eliot not only got back his health and mobility, he'd gotten stronger, faster and certainly more capable. Previously, he'd known just enough of the Japanese language to get by but now, he was fully conversant with the language and its calligraphy. He'd also learnt Chinese, the art of cooking and knife skills from the old master. By the end of six months, Eliot had started calling him Ojii-san, which meant 'grandfather' in Japanese. Eliot would've stayed back in Japan with the old man, who'd started out as his master and had slowly become much more than that, had it not been for Li-san passing away in his sleep one night.

Never had Eliot Spencer felt more alone in his life. Not when he'd left home to get away from an abusive father, not when he'd left the United States with the army to get away from the memories of Aimee, and certainly not when he'd been left shot and bleeding to death by his so called team half a year ago. Deciding that he had nothing left for him in Japan, Eliot had made the journey back to America, going back to doing the one thing he'd known all his life... Working with horses.

He'd actually worked as a trainer at the stables of a man who'd turned out to be a mob boss for about a year. The gangster had taken Eliot in as one of his crew after finding out one day that he'd taken down a gunman who'd been sent to kill him in just a few seconds. Since then, Eliot had worked both with crews and alone, quickly gaining the reputation of being the best retrieval expert in the business. He'd had almost no social life for the period of time he'd been working because whatever down time he'd gotten was spent in getting better at what he did and learning new ways of fighting wherever, whenever he could.

With better understanding of his own self and the world around him, dissatisfaction at the jobs he was doing had set in and he'd gone back to the army. This time, he'd served in the commando unit for two years before being moved to Black-Ops for another three. Again, cynicism due to seeing wars up close and death on a daily basis had set up his wanderlust again and Eliot had left the army to go back into retrieval and travelling the globe.

Judo, Jujitsu, kick-boxing, Krav Maga, boxing, Aikido and so many other styles of fighting found themselves being listed on Eliot's repertoire over the years. He'd also learnt many new and rare styles of fighting wherever he went on jobs... ending up with Kuta from Egypt, an ancient style of fist fighting, Rumi Maki from Peru, Boabom from a retrieval trip to Tibet and the bare basics of Varma kalai, an ancient Indian style of fighting that was based on in depth knowledge of the human nervous system.

Over the years, Eliot had trained so much and learned so many different ways of fighting that it had almost become an involuntary action like breathing. Even though violence became a way of life for Eliot, he'd not forgotten the teaching of his master and mentor Li-san. It had been the old man's contention that violence was never the answer to everything. Most things were and could be resolved by the force of the mind itself.

So, as he liked to call it, violence became his 'appropriate response' to things that couldn't be resolved otherwise. Eliot never went in kicking down the front door, guns blazing. He was a thinking fighter, preferring to wait it out, pick his moments and take down the opponent by choosing to maximize on his flaws rather than by brute force.

That and the reputation he'd gained as a retrieval expert had been what had gotten him involved with the Leverage Associates team. At the beginning, he'd been very wary of working as a part of a team after such a long time, but after pulling off their first job, however haphazardly, Eliot had to agree that there was something about this crew. Some sort of weird dynamic that wasn't a usual part of normal team psyche. So he'd stayed... part of the team but always with one foot out the door, not ready to let anyone in to his personal life, not ready to trust anyone... anyone besides Nathan Ford that is.

He knew that if anyone in the business could be trusted, it was Nathan Ford. He'd been notorious among the people in Eliot's business as the 'thorn in your backside insurance guy', who was possibly incorruptible. Nate had actually been the reason that Eliot had agreed to come on board. He'd been curious as to why a straight as a ruler ex-insurance guy would need a band of thieves. He'd stayed because he'd been intrigued by the man himself and the others in the group... Particularly the thief. She'd been a bundle of crazy, that was sure, but she'd also been one of the most professional and focused people he'd come across.

Then he'd found that even though they were both as different as chalk and cheese at first glance, they weren't all that different underneath. Parker had found that she liked being around the gruff, protective hitter. It had started with teasing and trying to get a rise out of him but had evolved into a lot more with time and so had started one of the first lasting relationships that either of them had ever had in their lives.

Over the next couple of years of working together and spending time off the job too, the two of them came to know each other almost as much as they knew themselves. Parker understood just what Eliot was communicating when he was silent, which was a lot of times and Eliot from his side, understood just why Parker was Parker and let her be herself, never trying to change her or judge her in any way.

When the shift had happened from friends to something more they couldn't tell you even if they wanted. It had been after one of Parker's safe houses had been broken into that she'd spent a lot of time at Eliot's apartment, and the routine had somehow just extended to all other areas of their lives. They were very comfortable around each other by then and the comfort and understanding had morphed into something more complex, more beautiful and a whole lot more scary by the time Parker had found a replacement for her warehouse.

Even though she had a house of her own now, Parker usually spent most of her time at Eliot's penthouse apartment during weekdays, and the weekend with him at his farmhouse just outside town. Even though they were a team, all of them still preferred to keep their private lives and homes to themselves, at least most of them did. Nate couldn't cuz his home was now their offices and Hardison wouldn't cuz he was just like that... a people person who liked to have his friends around him all the time. Parker and Eliot were intensely personal and territorial about their things and as a result, no one on the team was aware that Eliot had two homes, one in the city and the other, which he used only when he had to get away for sometime.

The first time he'd shown Parker around his house had been an unforgettable experience. She'd been gaping at everything, keeping up a litany of one sentence... 'You actually have a real house' Yeah... it had grown old pretty soon and Eliot had been hard pressed to not growl at her by the time they toured his library. Don't act so surprised... he wasn't just hired muscle. Eliot liked to read... a lot, and that was proved by the libraries both his residences had.

Over time, Parker had adjusted admirably to living in a 'real' house as she insisted on calling it even now. She'd even learnt about taking care of some of the plants he had in his extensive gardens back at the farmhouse. In return, Eliot had gotten introduced to base jumping... something he'd never have thought he'd like cuz he was the kind of person that liked to have their feet firmly planted on the ground. But somehow, Parker had made the whole experience worth it, with her unbounded enthusiasm and her absolute love for the sport.

Now, Eliot had no qualms in joining Parker when she wanted to jump from skyscrapers for a thrill and Parker knew which plants had to be watered twice a week and which ones not to touch if you didn't want a host of thorns embedded in your fingers. Ouch... that had been a long and incredibly painful evening. Thugs with guns had nothing on thorns from a cactus. Now Parker knew the hard way that you didn't pet a cactus, no matter how cute it looked in the pot.

Eliot had also started teaching Parker the basics of cooking, which she'd picked up fairly easily once the hitter found the right way to teach her. Let's just say that it involved visual aids, detailed instructions about which measuring vessels to use because when a recipe called for a cup, it didn't mean just any cup... not that anybody found it important to mention that in their books... also, when the recipe thingy mentioned a spoonful, you had to use the same sized spoon throughout the process... again, something no one had found worth mentioning. How was someone supposed to know that if they'd never cooked before?...

Parker had learnt all that the day she'd tried baking cookies while Eliot was out grocery shopping and ended up burning half his kitchen down. It hadn't been much, mainly smoke and water damage from the sprinklers, but Eliot hadn't been amused. Somehow they'd sent away the firemen without them finding any of Eliot's hidden weapons, which were liberally scattered throughout both his residences.

That was something that Parker loved finding and changing their hiding places, just to frustrate the hitter, whenever she was feeling bored or particularly angry after an argument. Oh and those were abounding... Both Parker and Eliot were strong minded, stubborn creatures who lived by set values and routines. Sharing wasn't natural to them and having strong feelings for each other didn't do much to change their personality. So a lot of voluble arguments resulted, but they somehow or the other got settled quickly, eventually ending up in the bedroom. Not that either of them minded it all that much... or at all.

By some sort of silent agreement between them, both Eliot and Parker had refrained from mentioning their relationship to anyone else, even the rest of the team. Eliot kept saying that what they did off the job on their own time was nobody's business but theirs, but Parker was sure that he was just as scared about admitting to actually caring about someone else to the rest of the world. In their line of work, if someone who shouldn't know it, came to know things like that, someone usually ended up hurt... or dead. So it made sense to the two of them that no one else know about their relationship until they were ready to tell them.

But they hadn't taken into account the thirst for revenge some people had... they hadn't thought of the really long memories bad guys had, especially of times when they'd been outplayed. They'd failed to take into account the fact that they could be under surveillance by someone other than law enforcement, someone who was bent on destroying them if it was the last thing they did...

And that was what had brought Eliot to this moment. This moment where all he could think about was that Parker was in the clutches of one of the most brutal, vicious men he'd had the misfortune of crossing, and that he would stop at nothing to get to Eliot, wouldn't have any qualms hurting or killing the people Eliot cared about... loved, to get him to come to him. Mikhail Ivanevich had to be stopped once and for all and Eliot knew that he had to bring into play everything he'd ever learned, every bit of skill he had. Every molecule of his self was concentrated on the objective of getting Parker out of danger as quickly as possible while making sure that no one had the capability to hurt any member of his family ever again.

Eliot the team player, Eliot the cook, Eliot the singer, the boyfriend, the rancher, the cowboy... all of them disappeared to be left with Eliot Spencer the hitter, Eliot Spencer the fighter, the best damn retrieval specialist in the whole world, the guy who could break every bone in your body with one hand tied behind his back, the guy who could make you wish you'd never been born.

This was Eliot the protector and he would make sure that what was his, was absolutely safe. His family, his team was his priority now. Their safety and security were more important than anything else, even himself. He would make sure Parker and the rest of them were secure and out of danger... or he would die trying.

A/N : Okay. So that was it. Eliot's back story... Now we have him all angry and primed to go bash people up and exact some quality revenge. Stay tuned for a lot of action in the next chapter... And don't forget to review what you thought about this one... Reviews are like a nice, long hug from Eliot Spencer... ;)

Lotsa luv

Macybear