See Chapter 1 for disclaimers.
Author's note: Thank you for reading - double thanks to those who left feedback on Chapter 1: I'm glad it worked better than I thought it might!
A couple of notes on the chronology as we move into Chapter 2: I tried (and failed) to put together a coherent timeline in my head for Eliot's work history that actually manages to match up with what we are told in the show. For the purposes of this story, assume it goes something along the lines of: U.S. Army, two private military contractors (mentioned in the French Connection Job), "working for his country" (mentioned in the Rundown Job, and for which I read "CIA" ..feel free to assume that the call in paragraph 2 that he couldn't turn down came from Vance), which somehow devolved into his working for Moreau (the Big Bang Job). This chapter falls fairly immediately after whatever that "worst thing" Eliot did.
The second time Eliot Spencer appears seemingly out of nowhere in Toby's kitchen, it is at least daylight, and neither of his hands is lingering near any obvious weapon.
It's early in the morning, and Toby is alone in the kitchen, waiting for a couple of deliveries. This restaurant is his own: he made the move back to the States about a year after Eliot's impromptu apprenticeship with him in Brussels came to an end. The ending had been as sudden – although far less dramatic than – as the start. After three months of daily lessons covering everything from finding and selecting the best ingredients (or growing your own when suppliers prove unreliable), to slicing, dicing and julienning, and sautéing, blanching, roasting simmering, and flash-frying, Eliot had invited Toby to a meal he had prepared completely on his own, thanked him for everything he had done, and announced he wouldn't be showing up at the restaurant the next day. Toby hadn't pressed for an explanation, and Eliot hadn't offered anything more than that he'd received a call from an old friend about a job he couldn't turn down.
All of that was more than three years ago – and it has been almost two since Toby stopped expecting to hear from his unexpected protégé. He is curious, he has to admit. In those three months, he had seen Eliot rebuild a sense of his own humanity – to start to feel again, with all the painful self-knowledge that entailed. And Toby wonders sometimes if that beginning would be enough to withstand the assault of the life Eliot had returned to, or if it would simply make the next fall that much the harder. It's not a question he expected to ever have answered, and certainly not on this humid summer morning in South Carolina, when he is waiting on nothing less mundane than a delivery of salad greens and root vegetables.
-000-
Toby doesn't know what makes him look up from the inventory he is going over. There is no sound he can identify, and no sudden shadow blocking his light, but some change in the air tells him he is no longer alone. He turns and there, at the far end of the kitchen, where he shouldn't possibly have been able to get to without Toby noticing, is Eliot Spencer. Toby recognises him in an instant, despite the extra muscle he's packed on, the darker tan, and the new lines etched into his face. There are few signs left of the 'kid' Toby had reached out to three years earlier, and all too many of what the intervening years had involved. The eyes, though...Toby knows the eyes. They're not the detached, assessing instruments he recognised in his initial encounter with Eliot. This time, the gaze that meets his is one he knows from Eliot himself; from mornings in Brussels when Toby had arrived at the restaurant to find the kitchen gleaming with a cleanliness that made even the standard Toby held his staff to appear tawdry, half the day's prep done, and Eliot in the middle of it, eyes shadowed with sleeplessness and breaking around an internal slideshow he could not and would not share. So Toby does now what he always did then: tosses Eliot an apron and gives him a task to keep his hands busy and his thoughts, if not focused, at least structured.
"You remember the routine?" he asks, and Eliot, after a moment, nods.
"Good," Toby continues. "Today's menu is over there," he nods towards a chalkboard hanging near the entrance to the dining rom. "Why don't you get started on the breads?"
Eliot still doesn't say anything, but he ties on the apron, finds a cap to cover his hair, and then washes his hands and gets to work.
-000-
It is the pattern they follow for the next several months. Eliot doesn't speak more than necessary, and when he does it is always strictly related to the task at hand. The staff exchange curious looks behind his back, but seem to accept Toby's explanation that Eliot is a friend from Brussels who is helping out for a while. It helps that Eliot is a fast and efficient worker, makes no complaint when the less pleasant aspects of kitchen duty come his way, and never takes any share of the tips when he fills in for an absent bartender or busboy. He is the last one to leave at night, and is always waiting at the back door when Toby arrives in the morning. Toby tells him he doesn't have to wait outside, and offers him a key. Eliot gives him a guarded look and shakes his head, but the next morning Toby arrives to the smell of brewing coffee and baking bread. He makes no comment. He might worry about how few hours Eliot spends away from the restaurant, but thinks he understands that the activity provides not so much a distraction from the thoughts and memories churning just beneath the surface, but something for Eliot to hold onto as he navigates those waters. So, he keeps finding things for Eliot to do. The staff are disconcerted at first to find the same man washing dishes one day and designing the specials and going through the liquor inventory the next. The questions and murmurs die down, however, when Toby catches a cold that interferes with his senses of taste and smell, and Eliot is the one to identify and call him on the strange aromas emanating from some of the pots. Toby, when finally convinced that Eliot was right about him adding cumin rather than cloves to the sauce he was preparing, retires to his office with a box of tissues and the latest set of invoices, instructing the staff that nothing is to leave the kitchen until Eliot has tasted and approved it. Once the lunchtime rush dies down, this turns into a challenge to see who could stump Eliot by omitting or replacing one or more ingredients in the items they are preparing. Jaws start dropping as he identifies and corrects the fifth one presented to him by smell alone.
"It's very distinctive," he says, shrugging as he turns back to the peppers he is slicing. He doesn't mention the many reflective surfaces around the kitchen that enable him to keep an eye not just on the entrances and exits, but on what is happening in almost every corner of the kitchen. After all, it's not like he couldn't have picked out the missing spice just by smell, so what does it matter that he saw how many and which ones they used?
Toby, who has himself learnt the value of reflective surfaces from his time spent in the kitchen with Eliot, catches the tiniest smirk on Eliot's face from where he sits in his office, and sees it as the best sign yet that Eliot can find enough pieces of himself left from whatever precipitated this crisis to cobble together something – someone – he can live with. But as those pieces start to fit into place, he also sees a growing restlessness in the younger man, and he worries about how many times this cycle can repeat, and at what cost to both Eliot and the rest of the world. As much as he can see the joy of creation that Eliot finds in cooking, and the meaning and purpose associated with it, Toby knows it's going to be about as effective as Elmer's Paste in a situation that calls for rubber cement if Eliot goes back to the life he was living before.
-000-
Toby broaches the subject with Eliot when Eliot once again prepares a farewell-and-thank-you dinner. At least this time Toby knows what to expect when he accepts the invitation.
"I know," Eliot says, lifting a brooding gaze to Toby's concerned one. "I've already put the word out that I'm not available for the kind of job I used to do."
Toby thinks about that. It sounds...too easy.
"But?" he asks.
Eliot huffs a snort that is two parts frustrated and one part resigned.
"But it's not that easy," he admits. "People are still calling."
Eliot stops, and the look he turns on Toby is shamefaced.
"I'm really good at what I do," he says. "And some of the jobs...they make it sound like the right thing, y'know? Do the bad thing, but for a good reason."
Toby feels a shiver run through him, knowing exactly how susceptible he would be – maybe has been – to that kind of logic.
"I can't anymore, though," Eliot continues. "Maybe there's ways of living with those choices so you don't lose yourself, but me...the bad acts tear me apart and all the good reasons do is blind me to what's happening. There ain't enough left that I can afford to lose more."
Toby nods. He sees the truth in that even as he wishes he could turn the sadness and loss he hears in Eliot's voice into recognition of the strength it takes to know that about oneself, and walk away.
"So, what are you going to do?" he asks.
Eliot smiles a little wryly.
"Well, some of my skills are more versatile than others," he says slowly. "I am, for example, really good at getting into or out of places when people don't really want me to."
Toby chews on this for a moment.
"You're going to be a thief?" he asks, frowning in some combination of disbelief and distaste, although he would be hard-pressed to identify the dominant emotion. He supposes thief is at least a moral step or two up from assassin as a career choice.
"Nope," Eliot flashes him a genuine grin. "A retrieval specialist. I'm going to steal things back. Got my first job lined up for tomorrow."
Toby has to laugh. But he knows Eliot is going to need something more than that to keep all the pieces glued together – the love and support that family and friends offer as some of the best rubber cement for the human soul...and that seem so startlingly absent from this man's life.
"Anytime you get bored," he offers, "my kitchen is open."
Author's note: So, I know I stole the line about retrieval specialists stealing things back from someone...but I don't remember where I read it. Parker was explaining the difference between thieves and retrieval specialists to someone from Eliot's past...If you recognise it (or wrote it!), please let me know so that I can give credit where credit is due.