Author's note: see Chapter 1 for disclaimers.

I missed Leverage. Since my DVDs are currently buried at the bottom of a box, and someone very inconveniently decided to cancel Leverage a few years back, this seemed like the best solution to that problem :).

"I'm your huckleberry." - The Last Dam Job

There's a gun in his hand.

Again.

But this time, the man at the other end of the barrel isn't shooting at him, isn't an immediate threat to his survival, or to his team's. This man is unarmed, on the ground like an upended turtle, naked fear stamped across his face.

Yet Eliot doesn't lower the gun.

"What are you doing?"

Sophie.

Oh, God. Sophie is right there.

He doesn't want her to see this. He hadn't wanted any of them to know about the warehouse full of Moreau's men, and he does not want her to see this.

"What are you doing?"

In his peripheral vision, Eliot sees Sophie move, trying to get into his line of sight as she repeats her question.

He doesn't look up.

It isn't like he has an answer for her, anyway. He hears the anxiety in her voice, along with the note of warning, and he knows what she thinks he is doing.

Maybe he is.

It seems like it would be such an easy solution: one shot, and this man, this weasel, in front of him - who has schemed and plotted and caused endless trouble for his team, who trapped and killed Nate's father as nothing more than bait, and, somehow, with that act ripped apart an essential piece of the Honest Man in Nate that had survived his son's death and his years as a drunkard and a thief – this man would be gone, for ever and for always.

With Dubenich out of the way, Latimer would be easy enough to deal with. And the attention from law enforcement that Dubenich had directed towards the Leverage team was nothing they couldn't handle. They could pack up, move to a new city - a new country, even – and start again.

And Nate's hands would still be clean.

Eliot knows Nate. He knows exactly the kind of vengeance Nate is envisioning – and exactly how stubbornly Nate is ignoring Eliot's warning about that vengeance not being worth its cost. The unintended genius of Dubenich's plan is that nothing can destroy Nathan Ford more effectively than Nate will himself if he succeeds in his current plan for taking out Dubenich.

Eliot can't just stand by and watch that happen.

"I'm thinking about saving my friend some trouble," he tells Sophie.

And that is exactly what he is doing: thinking.

He's had the perfect shot lined up on Dubenich for lifetimes, now, but still hasn't pulled the trigger. Such a delay, particularly in front of an audience, would have been unthinkable for the Eliot Spencer who had made a deal with Moreau in Belgrade.

You're not that man anymore, Sophie had told him, barely more than a year ago.

At the time, he'd been a little frustrated by her naïveté, knowing he would always be "that man" in ways that Sophie, who grows and sheds identities like second skins, will fully understand; but he had also been resigned to disappointing her if need be. Taking Moreau down would have been worth it, even if it had cost Eliot his place on the Leverage team.

Not long after that conversation, Eliot had been more "that man" than he had in a long time – but, so far as he knew, Nate had kept his secret, and he'd had another year with the team to re-mark the boundaries he had set for himself and re-establish a sense of self within them.

And, now, as he hesitates, Eliot thinks maybe Sophie was closer to being right than she was a year ago.

It's not that the kid with God in his heart, a flag on his shoulder, and clean hands has found his way back into Eliot's mirror. He'd meant what he'd said to Nate about having killed that kid along with his first victim. And Eliot hadn't stopped there: he'd spent the next decade digging a grave and then heaping dirt and rubble in on top of the corpse.

But, lately, Eliot thinks he has been catching glimpses in the mirror of a man who, while not the man that kid should have grown into nor one able to fit the place that man should have had, might nonetheless be one who can finally give the kid the funeral he deserves and lay him to rest.

Eliot wants to give this new man that chance.

He's already almost lost him once. In that warehouse, picking up that first gun, he'd thought he was smothering the budding growth – and accepting that had carried him through the ensuing fight, right up to the final shot that took down Chapman, without a pause questioning his actions. But somehow, just a few weeks later, stuck in a crevasse with Parker while she struggled with a newly awakened conscience and connection with other people, he'd felt stirrings of life.

What he was capable of doing – what he was willing to do – didn't have to make him bad; it could just make him ... him.

It was just the flicker of a candle flame in the dark, but enough to hold onto a tentative hope that, this time, he wasn't going to have to rebuild from scratch.

As he'd told Parker, such capability could be a gift or a curse, and the choice between those was his – one he would have to keep making every time a situation arose in which the final solution looked like the best, or even the only, solution.

And this time – this time it isn't.

Nate has a plan, and Eliot is going to have to trust that somewhere in that plan there is room for Nate to make his own choice to keep his hands clean. If Eliot takes that chance away from Nate ... well, he doesn't really want to think about what hopes for both their futures he might be taking out with Dubenich if he chooses that path.

Eliot lowers the gun, hands moving automatically to empty the bullets. He feels the release of his own relief echoing back from Sophie – and hopes that neither of them will be regretting his choice just as strongly soon.

He's expecting mockery from Quinn. Eliot Spencer, a hitter whose name still makes men tremble in their shoes years after he got out of the game, unable to shoot a man presented to him on a platter? He can practically feel the clandestine communication channels start to vibrate with the news. But Quinn seems more amused than anything – perhaps assuming that Eliot's hesitation had been about disobeying Nate's instructions about leaving Dubenich to him. At any rate, he keeps his thoughts largely to himself.

"Hell, next time, give me the gun," is Quinn's only comment. "I'm your Huckleberry."

"Here," Eliot hands him the empty gun as they walk away.

It's a pointless gesture, and one Eliot's glad no-one is likely to quiz him about.

"Little late now," Quinn drawls.

Eliot ignores that comment.

"Love that movie," he says, changing the topic.

"Who the hell doesn't?" Quinn replies, tucking the gun out of sight.

And, with that, it's over. Eliot feels the weight of the choice lift from his shoulders even as his worry about Nate's plans settles more heavily. He's done his best to warn Nate, but he's under no illusions that Nate will let that warning override his commitment to vengeance.

Eliot hopes Sophie has another trick or two up her sleeve – preferably one with blonde hair, a mind that keeps up with the labyrinthine twists of Nate Ford's brain, and an uncanny ability to reconnect Nathan Ford to the honest man he'd been before this all began.

Another End.