Italic is Sophie's past.
I want to thank Mercedes for her support and kt8a for the constructive criticism.
I'm reposting this chapter again because I was told the bad writing made it confuse so, I got a beta and she helped me with that, I hope you find it more clear now and I want to thank Nalamin for her precious help.
If you anything else you want to point out, please to it. That's really immportant to me :)
He wished he could say that, slowly, everything got back to normal, but it didn't. He wished he could say that on one of those times he picked up the phone and dialled her number, he actually made the call, but he didn't...
He wished she hadn't stopped calling Parker and Hardison, but she did.
He wished she hadn't changed her alias to Annie Croy, but she did...
Eliot figured that was probably the only way the grifter could cope with the fact that she had killed somebody. In a way, that was good, because it meant that that thing was not going to eat her, but on the other... Annie Croy was not a nice, cosy woman; she was not the woman they were used too and they only fully understood that the night she made Parker cry...
Annie Croy could be unreachable, but she wasn't untraceable especially not for Hardison: when he found who and where she was, the team did what they always did: Nathan picked some job that would put them in her track and they'd all do the job pretending they weren't actually following her around.
As soon as they arrived, Parker went to look for her room and they all followed - even Nate who had a bell in his head telling that that was not going to go well. And he was right: Annie opened the door and pushed Parker against the wall violently. She was about to close the door when Parker whispered her name from under her breath: "Sophieee..." That was not just a name, it was begging and they all knew the thief didn't beg.
-I'm not Sophie, I am Annie Croy. Now stop following me, you wankers! - The second the door shut behind her, the young woman started sobbing uncontrollably. Nate pulled her into his arms, hugging her like she was a small child.
They were in the mastermind's bedroom in silence; Nate was blaming himself as well as Eliot. God damn it, if he had just stayed by her side, then maybe those things weren't happening.
-Sophie Devereaux is dead, man! - Hardison said from behind is laptop. - It's over!
It could have been Eliot or even Nathan, but Parker was the one punching his nose.
It took him forty five minutes to regain his conscience, and when he did, Parker was on the bed crying. He got up on his feet and went to lie next to her, embracing her, stroking her hair.
-Eliot, - she suddenly called. –Come here. –The three men looked at each other and Hardison started to get up, but she clenched her fingers around his arm. – You stay! – The men exchanged looks again, but they all knew if they fought about it she would win.
-She's stays in the middle! – The two younger men said at the same time.
Nate woke up on the couch and looked around. Eliot, Parker and Hardison were still in bed. He let a smile slip between his lips at the sight of that sweet picture; two boys giving in to make a girl feel safe…
They kept tags on her. That's how they knew she was on stealing spree, taking twenty-five paintings in just three days.
When Nate found out, he decided that was enough. They needed to get some closure on that situation, they needed to let go just as much as he did. He went to his desk and searched his files until he found the perfect job for that, a job that involved a long con in Brazil...
She was just seven years old when they came in into her house, the men wearing dark suits... She got scared and did what her daddy told her to do. She ran under the table.
She didn't quite remember how much time she spent there; the next thing she remembers is Uncle Collin's face calling her.
-Come on sweetie, it's okay now.
The door wasn't completely shut, so she was able to see her dad dragging one of the men. She could have sworn he was just asleep, but then she saw the blood...
She was twelve when her dad took her there for the first time, to the empty warehouse. He closed the door behind him and she asked what they were doing there; he gave her a sly smile and extended her a knife.
-I'm going to teach you how to use that...
But that wasn't just training and her father wasn't there to buy her ice cream and tell her how proud he was. But she was big enough to realise that was nothing to be proud of, anyway.
That had been years ago, but when the men broke into her room she did exactly what her dad had taught her, she ran for the knife Parker had given her before the strangers could catch it and stabbed them in the places she knew it would cause them to die, just like her daddy had taught her...
A few minutes later, she heard Parker's soft knock. She ran to the door and opened it just slightly; she spoke in a low tone, trying to keep calm so the girl wouldn't notice something was wrong. She told her she wanted to be alone with the most straight face she managed to. It worked. The girl left - with a disappointed look on her face, but still she left. And even though she never meant to hurt Parker, Sophie knew that if she'd seen what she had done, who she really was, the girl wouldn't just come back from that...
When Eliot broke into her room, she was curled near the window looking at what she had made. It turned out that her mother had been right when, during all those years she said "she was like her father!", and that terrified her. She was focused on breathing, trying to stop the situation from crushing her. When Eliot sat next to her, taking her knife away, she felt she could still be safe from all of that. After all, if he had made all those horrible things and still managed to be a good person, she could do it too. But he left.
He left her alone with her awful dark thoughts and she convinced herself that was because she just wasn't worth his time. She must be too bad, even worse than what he once was; she must have done worse than what he once done and that was the reason he had left her, because she was nothing more than a hopeless piece of shit, deserving to live in her very own personal hell.
When those thoughts started to eat her inside out, she transformed into the one person that could live with her own actions, the one person that saw no evil on what she had done.
Annie Croy, the one who knew that if she hadn't killed those guys she wouldn't be alive. And regretted nothing...