Author's note: As usual, I own nothing and no money is being made. All characters are even being returned to their boxes in surprisingly good condition this time.

So, this one is a bit of an experiment...I'm not sure what I think of how it turned out, so constructive criticism is even more than usually welcome! And if you happen to notice typos or places where there is an unintentional switch in tenses that I missed during editing, those are fair game for comment: I'll go in and correct them if the story is not yet marked as complete...after that I probably won't, in case that triggers alerts for new updates (that would just be cruel to anyone following it!). I also reserve the right to respectfully disagree on whether the errors pointed out are indeed errors - some will be, but others may simply be transatlantic differences in spelling or word usage.

That being said, all aboard the fun train for the latest ride: I hope you enjoy it!

Eliot Spencer to Nathan Ford (The French Connection Job):

"Yeah. Anyway, I met Toby. We were reconning this restaurant in Belgium. And I should have closed him out. I should have been in and out in under 90 seconds. But I ended up talking to him for three hours. He showed me that I could use my knife to create instead of destroy. I stuck around for a couple of months. He taught me everything there was about the art of food, and I... He's one of the guys that kept me from falling all the way down. So now, I'm asking the other guy to understand why I'm gonna help him."

The first time Toby Heath sees Eliot Spencer walk into his kitchen, he knows there are about ten seconds separating him from an untimely meeting with his Maker if he can't come up with a compelling reason for delay. A block of high quality, recently-sharpened chef's knives sits just inches from his right hand, there is a cleaver hanging nearby, and a dozen more kitchen implements that would make adequate weapons lie within reach from almost any point in the kitchen, but Toby doesn't consider fighting. Even when one of the two balaclava-ed, black-clad men continues straight through the kitchen into the empty front of the restaurant, technically doubling his chances, the small part of Toby's brain that isn't panicking recognises the futility of any such action. The remaining man is muscled like a hunting cat, a tightly coiled mass of violence stalking silently across the kitchen towards Toby, fingers already reaching for the fighting knife snugged into a belt-sheath at the hip. Toby is a reasonably fit man in his prime, but he knows he is no match for this man – nor for the emotionless assessment he sees passing through the eyes fixed on him. Toby isn't a victim or a target, not even collateral damage; he is an obstacle about to be efficiently removed from the path.

Toby knows those eyes. Well, not the particular pair facing him now: he is pretty sure he would remember any previous encounters with trained assassins...or not be alive to worry about remembering them. But Toby has always been an idealist and a dreamer, and, in his youth, convinced he could heal humanity's self-inflicted wounds and save it from itself.

-000-

He first saw those eyes when he was fresh out of college and working as a counsellor at an inner-city school in Los Angeles. It was the 1970s and neighbourhood after neighbourhood was being lost to the street gangs. He watched teenagers – kids – being forced to choose gang membership and survival over the childhood lessons of thou shalt not kill, over and over until it was no longer a conscious choice, let alone a choice of conscience. He faced his first gun, and his first gunshot, at the hands of a kid he passed in the school hallways every day. Toby survived. The kid, who ran when he missed, was found dead two days later.

He saw the eyes again when he laid down his Vietnam protest placards and volunteered with a group offering counselling to returning soldiers – men who hadn't had a choice about going, and had found themselves committing unspeakable acts, either under orders or to protect themselves or the men they served with. Toby had done the research and the training he was offered on "Post-Vietnam Syndrome", and he genuinely wanted to help these men pick up the fabric of wholesome, normal lives. But faced with the eyes that catalogued his every expression and movement but didn't seem to register him as a living being let alone human, he was at a loss. The toolkit he had been given was missing the critical wrench. He kept showing up because quitting would be admitting failure, and there was still enough shine left on his idealism to rebel against that. And, finally, Toby had been handed his wrench, in a manner and at a moment when he was least expecting it. He was meeting with a new referral to the volunteer group, and the man had spent their hour relentlessly detailing every life, or group of lives, he had taken. Toby was shaken. He had grown used to the men who deflected or joked about the carnage they had witnessed or inflicted; the ones who refused to admit, even to themselves, it had ever happened; even the men who just stared blankly through him without any sign of recognition. But this cold objectification left him momentarily speechless.

"Do you even realise you're talking about human beings?" Toby blurted out. "How can you talk about – think about – people like that? Like they're nothing more than a chair in the corner or a..a box of cereal on the shelf?"

He shut his mouth abruptly as his brain caught up with his mouth and reminded him that he knew better than to react with such anger and disgust. He expected rage in response and had to swallow harder against his fear than he ever had when staring down the barrel of a gun as the hands resting on the table between them tightened into white-knuckled fists. He didn't expect the first emotion to cross the eyes staring into his own to be a soul-devouring despair.

"How else," the man asked, voice as dispassionate as before, "am I supposed to keep believing in my own humanity?"

Toby felt a wave of compassion rising within him as the quiet question recast some of the more disturbing behaviours he had witnessed from signs of humanity lost into last-ditch attempts to hold onto its vestiges.

"I don't know," he admitted, leaning forward. "What makes you feel human?"

-000-

It became a question Toby asked countless times in the years that followed. He asked it of soldiers for as long as the volunteer programme continued. He asked it of men and women convicted of violent crimes when he went back to school for a graduate degree in psychology and made this the focus of his masters thesis. He asked it sometimes of his family and friends, or of the person standing next to him in line in the grocery store, and he asked it of every person he met in the refugee camps when he worked for the United Nations Human Rights Commission after graduating. Somewhere along the line it got shortened to 'What makes you feel?', and he got a variety of answers: a song, a fight, a poem, a girl, a boy, a drug, a thunderstorm, a rollercoaster; building something, planting something; having something to plan, somewhere to go, someone to talk to. These became the answers he hoped for, because they gave a window into a world that he could expand. But more often than not when he looked into eyes that had seen too much, done too much, had too many choices taken from them, the response was the same as the first time he asked: a blank look and a little shake of the head – or, worse, a quizzical frown, as if he was asking them to consider an entirely foreign concept. And what he couldn't find was a way to re-forge that connection to the most basic sense of self. Eventually, soul worn bare, Toby had to walk away before he drowned in other people's despair.

He went in search of what he had tried to help other people find: the things that make him feel – make him feel alive, feel human. All the travelling he had done up to this point in his life had been to the aftermath of war zones and natural disasters, so he started seeking out the beauty man created instead of destroyed. He backpacked through Greece and Italy, drinking his fill of architecture and art, then headed west. He skipped the Communist bloc because, whatever gems of beauty it may contain, he knew he wouldn't yet see past the drab greyness of oppression. He was in Salzburg during the summer music festival. Ticket prices for the official performances were far beyond his price range, but the whole city was filled with music, and it soaked through his skin and down to his bones as he took himself on a self-conducted, meandering tour of the city's churches, open air markets, opera houses, and gardens. He was somewhere in Spain when he realised that what stood out most in his mind from each of the places he visited was the food. He had quizzed people about ingredients and preparation, spices and combinations through at least three countries, and found something elemental and essential in the making and sharing of a meal that satisfied what he had been looking for in ways that the greatest paintings, literature, and operas did not. Toby decided he wanted to learn more. So he went to Paris.

-000-

The first thing Toby learnt about cooking was how expensive Parisian culinary schools are. He was fluent enough in French to navigate his way out of the maze of courses designed specifically for tourists, which increased the value-to-money ratio significantly, but the fact remained that he needed a job. He found one teaching English to an eclectic mix of businessmen, teenagers, and Algerian immigrants – which made him realise how much he had missed this interaction, this involvement in other people's lives. He had to scale back the teaching when he started his apprenticeships with master chefs, but he didn't give it up entirely until a few years after he qualified, when he finally felt he had learnt all he could from Paris, and moved on. He spent some time learning the major wine regions of France – their food as well as their wine, because one of the things he has learnt is his woeful ignorance of the proper pairings – then moved on to Belgium for the beer. Brussels suited him, and he settled there, working first as a sous chef at a restaurant with a growing reputation among the members of the European Parliament, before taking over the kitchen on the chef's retirement.

Which is the long story of how Toby now finds himself facing Eliot Spencer across a kitchen at three in the morning, and how he knows that his survival is about to be determined by the next words out of his mouth. And that if they are the wrong ones, they will be his last.

"You American?" Toby asks.

He doesn't know why – everything about the man in front of him screams ex-military, dangerous, and trained killer, but Toby can't put his finger on anything that specifically marks him as American rather than British, German, Russian, South African, Israeli or, really, from any part of the world where blue eyes are a possibility. Toby suppresses a wince as his ears hear what his mouth has said, because, seriously, knowing death is stalking him from three steps away, that is the best he can come up with? He's pretty sure he's just crossed the final 't' on his own death warrant, when he spots the slightest hesitation and widening of the eyes from the man in front of him. Apparently Toby hadn't been the only one surprised by that question. Pressing whatever advantage he might have gained, Toby turns a little to scoop something from a dish beside him.

"Taste this," he continues, holding out the spoon. The reason Toby is in the kitchen at three o'clock in the morning when all the cleaning up from the night before and prep for the next day is done, is that he has been thinking it might be time move back to the United States and open his own restaurant there. The problem is that it has been so many years since he ate – let alone prepared – "American food" that he is not sure how to adjust his cooking to the American palette. He has tested out a few recipes on the restaurant's regular American customers, mostly from the Embassy, but, like him, many of them have been out of the country for a long time – and present the second challenge of already liking Toby's cooking. He can never be sure their compliments on his adaptations are because they taste like things Americans would want to order in a restaurant, or because they taste like things Toby made. As such, even in this most unsettling of situations, he is eager for fresh taste buds.

-000-

If Toby's first question surprised the intruder, the demand for taste-testing draws him to a physical halt. Toby continues to hold the spoon out at chest height, just inches from the other man. The blue eyes flick down to the spoon then back up to Toby, wary and just a little bit puzzled, and Toby feels his heart rate ramp up another notch. His pulse is so loud in his ears, he feels sure it must be echoing around the kitchen. The man reaches out to take the spoon, his other hand still uncomfortably close to the hilt of the wicked-looking knife, and Toby has a sudden, panicked and incongruous thought.

"Wait," he says. "Are you allergic to nuts?"

The eyes narrow, and Toby starts to babble.

"Because there are pistachios in there, and if you had an allergic reaction it could..." his eyes drop to the knife and he realises what he is saying. And to whom. "Oh."

Toby stops, clamping his lips together over any further fall of words, fingers relinquishing the spoon. He's not sure what he expected, but it is certainly not for the man to actually taste the food he is offering. It's not anything particularly fancy or strong in flavour – just a pistachio pesto he thinks might work in a couple of dishes – so he's surprised by the reaction it gets. He can actually see the moment the flavours penetrate the man's consciousness: there's a slight flare in the eyes that are still fixed on Toby – almost the same reaction as biting into a chili pepper would cause – followed by a pinching of the nostrils visible even through the balaclava on a sharp inhale that seemed to be trying to draw the flavour even deeper inside. But most surprising is the way the man savours it, taking his time in the same way Toby learnt to do with wine and beer tastings, but as if it was the food itself making him do that, rather than any advice or training he had received. He blinks as he swallows. His eyes are still on Toby, and Toby now sees when first perceives Toby as the man who created the pesto. Toby swallows against a suddenly dry mouth as he realises he is watching this man confront the choice between dehumanizing his targets and seeing himself as a monster. He wishes there was some way to tell him that, as horrifying as that second option is, the fact that it's there means he has not fallen all the way down. And that, given something to hold onto, he can crawl his way out of whatever darkness is swallowing him. There isn't – or, at least, Toby hasn't found it yet – so he waits, motionless and barely daring to breathe, knowing that there's at least one life in danger on either side of that line and praying that, somehow, they will both get to walk away from this.

The unknown man in front of him lets his empty hand fall loosely away from the knife and turns to lay the spoon very carefully on the counter beside him. He places his hands on either side of the spoon, pressing down with such force that Toby is very grateful for the solid construction of his kitchen. Toby is still tensed, expecting some kind of crisis to erupt in violence, when the man speaks.

"Lemon juice?" he asks.

Toby blinks, stunned.

"Ummm...no," he says, when he realises an answer is actually expected. "Zest."

Tony finds himself once again under the scrutiny of those blue eyes, but the quality of it has changed: they are looking now for a distraction from the internal struggle, a lifeline from the man whose life they had threatened only moments before. And Toby, thinking that maybe, just this once, for this one man, he actually has a lifeline to offer, throws it.

"It gives the taste and aroma without the acidity of the juice," he explains, and the man nods, giving the statement the kind of consideration more commonly reserved for breakthroughs in quantum physics.

-000-

The swish of the door leading through to the bar and the dining area startles them both. Toby had forgotten about the second man, and his reappearance makes every muscle in his body clench even tighter in fear. Glancing up at the kitchen clock, he is surprised to see that the encounter has lasted less than two minutes.

There's an exchange between the two men in a language Toby doesn't understand, but from the body language he suspect it is along the lines of "Get it done and let's go", "Change of plans", and "If you won't, I will." The second man takes a threatening step towards Toby, drawing his weapon, and suddenly the first man is between them, bundling his colleague out the door they came in by. There is another heated exchange in the foreign language, then Toby hears the first man switch to English.

"Tell J I'm out, and that if he's going to finish this job, he needs to do it elsewhere."

Toby can't hear the response, or what follows, but he's starting to believe that he maybe isn't go to die tonight, and, suddenly, he wants a drink and he wants to sit down. The former is going to have to wait until his hands are steady enough for pouring, but there's a kitchen stool nearby. He hooks it over with a foot and collapses heavily onto it. He leans on the counter, staring at the bowl of pesto that seems, somehow, to have saved his life.

-000-

"You okay?"

Toby jumps back to his feet at the words, whirling around. He had thought both men had left; hadn't heard the quiet steps of his would-be assassin approaching again. The man falls back a step, raising his hands to show he isn't a threat. He hesitates for a moment, then, almost sheepishly pulls off his balaclava.

Toby stares into the face of the man who could-should-would have killed him, and focuses on inhaling and exhaling. He subsides back onto the stool, which the man – kid, really, because Toby can see now that he's in his mid-twenties at the most – takes as permission to drop his hands and lean back against kitchen counter. He folds his arms across his chest and stares down at his boots. Toby's heart rate starts returning to something approaching normal – again – and he is able to study the other man as something other than a threat. The kid is hiding it well – he's obviously been thoroughly trained – but Toby knows he has to be freaking out...even if he hasn't fully realised it yet.

"I could use a drink," Toby says, standing. "You?"

The boy looks up, surprised, and Toby wonders why he stayed. But below the surprise and under the masks Toby can see the growing fear of what he sees in himself, and knows he stayed for the lifeline Toby offered earlier...for pesto and lemon zest. He nods, so Toby fetches two glasses and a bottle of scotch. Toby pours them each a double, and slides one of the glasses over. The kid unfolds his arms and approaches, but seems hesitant. He doesn't touch his glass as Toby lifts his own. There doesn't seem to be an appropriate toast for this situation, so Toby just raises his glass in a silent salute and takes a sip.

"My name's Eliot," the kid tells him, eyes focused on the glass he is turning between his fingers. Then, apparently making a conscious effort, he stills his hands and meets Toby's eyes. "Eliot Spencer," he elaborates, as if recognising he needs to offer Toby some show of trust in return for all that Toby is offering him.

Toby nods, accepting it.

"Well, Eliot," he says. "I'm Toby. Why don't you pull up that other chair? We'll have a drink and then I'll teach you how to make pesto."

He takes another sip as Eliot brings the second kitchen stool over to the counter and sits down. They drink for a while in silence. Eliot finally breaks it with the question Toby has been trying to answer for himself since he offered Eliot a drink instead of kicking him out of the kitchen.

"Why?"

Toby thinks of the man all those years ago who had first put words around the battle he knows Eliot is facing – believing in his own humanity – and of all the people in between for whom he had nothing to offer. He thinks of what he has found for himself through cooking, and what, thanks to a bowl of pistachio pesto, he maybe has to give this time.

"You could have killed me and chose not to," Toby explains. "The least I can do, is offer you the same kind of second chance."

He sees Eliot's fingers tighten around the glass and knows that he has correctly read the fear. He reaches over and taps the counter next to Eliot's hands to make sure he has his attention.

"We all deserve at least one of those," he says. "Most of us need two or three."