Chapter 27

"Hardison, run it."

The team was gathered in their usual spots in front of the large collection of screens, their hitter finally joining them after two days spent cooped up almost entirely in his room. The arrival of his father had left Eliot feeling a little off, so with the exception of mealtimes and his physio appointment, he'd hidden himself away, under covers and behind locked doors.

"Ok, today's marks are this lovely couple right here," the hacker tapped the space bar on his laptop which in turn activated a premade presentation on the team's targets.

The first image to pop up was of a couple on their wedding day, their smiles bright, wide, and obviously fake as they walked down the white-draped aisle of the chapel's auditorium. Probably a marriage of convenience, the criminals all thought, something to help legitimize the business as it hid their criminal ongoings.

"Happily married since March 2007, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher own the Fisher and Sons Bar and Grill based just on the outskirts of Sandpoint Idaho." The hacker continued, the screens behind him flicking to the next slide and showing a few staged photos from the mark's website. "Posing as your local family-run restaurant, the business is actually a front for a large trafficking ring, smuggling young women and children over the Canadian border."

"Our client was one of these women, but she managed to escape before getting sold like the rest of her group," Nate quickly jumped in with the remaining details of their case.

It seemed to be a simple enough case. They just needed to find the evidence that tied the couple to the trafficking ring and hand it over to the local cops.

"So, what's our play here, Nate?" Eliot, who had been starkly silent for the past couple of days, was the one asking the question. His voice soft and slightly hoarse after not being used in a while.

Still, the mastermind answered as if he hadn't been surprised by the hitter's rough and brittle tone.

"Sophie and I are on distraction duty. We'll keep the Fisher's busy and looking in the wrong direction whilst Parker goes in as wait staff and locates where the girls are being stashed. Hardison, you will be hacking their office computer trying to find any evidence that we can hand over to the local PD." As each name was called out, the corresponding head nodded in agreement, and by the time the mastermind was done with his speech, only one person was left waiting for instruction.

"What about me?"

Four heads turned to face the gruff-sounding southerner, three of those heads immediately flipping back in the direction that the question was asked.

"Eliot," Nate paused for a moment, wondering how he could explain this to not only the hitter but the rest of the team. He then began to speak slowly, as if dragging out his words would make them less impactful. "You'll be sitting out on this one."

"What, why?" It wasn't just the hitter that was asking, but also the hacker and thief as well. The latter of those was looking extremely annoyed but at closer inspection, you could see a hint of betrayal glittered in her eyes as well.

"It's a simple job, it only needs the four of us." Nate continued to explain to the group at large. He then softened his voice, aiming it just at the hitter who was starting to look a little dejected as he folded into himself and the soft cushions of his chair. "I promise this isn't permanent and has nothing to do with me thinking you're not capable. You proved yourself plenty the other day. This job just doesn't need your skills."

"I should still be there, as backup or something."

The mastermind shook his head gently, his grey-blue eyes softening into a sorrowful look. "There's no point El. Besides, maybe you should stay here and speak to a certain person while they're still around."

At that last comment, the hitter turned his face in disgust, his unruly crop of curls bouncing as his head whipped sideways. "I ain't interested in talkin' to him." Eliot didn't care that his tone and facial expression made him look like a pouting teenager, he wasn't in the mood for dealing with his father at that moment. And nor would he be in the near future, he surmised. "Any chance of reconciliation is long gone for us, trust me." He started to cross his arms as a sign of defiance, but a strain from that day's physio session made him reconsider. "Can't I just sit in the van with Hardison? I won't be in the way, I promise," he pleaded instead.

"Sorry, El." The mastermind again shook his head. "I really think this will be good for you."

"What if something happens? Human traffickers mean gangs and cartels as well. What if they show up and catch onto what you're doing?"

Eliot tried to reason with his boss, but it was to no prevail. He could see it in Nate's eyes even before the mastermind stated, "we have a hitter on standby."

"You what?"

"Look your right El," Nate spoke softly, crouching down until he was at eye level with his friend, so they could speak privately for a moment."We need a hitter just in case, but that isn't you anymore. We've been talking about this for some time now, you know that we need someone else to take that role. You agreed to help look for someone."

"Yeah, I did, so I could get someone we could trust, not just any old con from off the street. Where'd you even find this guy?"

"He was an old source from my IYS days. I'm only using him once; as an emergency." Nate laid his hand softly on the younger man's thigh, adding gentle pressure as he tried to calm the nervous tremors that started to build there. "And when we get back, we can talk about finding someone long-term, someone you trust and feel comfortable with."

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"We're about ready to head off," Sophie called from her spot on the second-story landing. She knew that both the hitter and his father were below her on the ground floor, the latter of the two just a few meters down the hall, so she was surprised when she didn't hear a response from either gentleman. "Mr. Clark?"

As she peeked around the corner, Sophie could see the older man pacing the corridor, his heavy boots stomping as they passed a large wall lined with bookcases.

"Mr. Clark?" The grifter tried again but nothing came from it. The man was clearly fretting over something, having a deep conversation with himself as he bit raged grooves into the ends of his fingernails.

After a few minutes of waiting for a response, it took Sophie grabbing his shoulder for Mr. Clark to even know she was there.

Without really acknowledging his previous state, the older man jumped right into whatever had been bothering him.

"Are you really sure this is ok?" He asked, fingers still shaking as they reached for his mouth again. "He doesn't seem the keen t' talk to me."

Sophie sighed as she looked at him for a moment, eventually turning away to sit down on a nearby chair. "Come sit with me for a minute." She signaled to the seat lying next to her and waited in silence until he acquiesced her request. "I know it can be scary, facing a past or person that you feel guilty about, but the only way either of you can ever move on is if you face your issues with each other, head-on. Your son needs this just as much as you do, probably more in fact, but he's never going to be the one that starts this conversation, not when he thinks it's pointless."

"It's hard," Mr Clark paused for a second, figuring out his words and how best to say them. "For years I wasn't even sure what happened between us, all I knew was that one day I woke up and my little boy was gone. If it wasn't for my niece tellin' me to pull myself together and see a damn therapist, I don't think I would've ever seen the truth."

"Nate mentioned that... you seeing a therapist I mean. How long did it take?"

"What, for me to finally pull my head out'a my ass and go, or to finally get what he was tellin' me?" Mr. Clark chuckled, but his head was still turned away slightly, his eyes hidden under slightly shuttered lids. "I started seeing Dr Hammond about six years ago, and I still keep learning new things about myself to this day. I guess there were a lot of issues to work through."

"How did you feel when you first started seeing this Dr. Hammond?" The grifter could tell she was slipping into one of her personas. If this was Eliot in front of her, he'd be accusing her of trying to manipulate him, shouting about the two Davids job and why you don't con your friends. But it wasn't the hitter, it was his father and possibly the only man that could help her friend right now, so she would use whatever trick was in her arsenal.

"Umm scared... Angry sometimes when he asked me t' talk but I didn't want to." He sighed at the memory of his first few appointments, remembering how angry and uncooperative he was as he lashed out at the woman that was offering to help him. He was lucky that she didn't just chuck him out and refuse to treat him and after a while, "it got better. The more I opened up, I felt safer and more relaxed with each session."

"Well, maybe that's how Eliot's feeling," Sophie suggested, hearing what was not said underneath the older man's monologue, and connecting to the hitter and his actions of late. "Right now, he's scared and angry. We're forcing him into a situation that makes him uncomfortable. But with time that may ease."

Thinking about it for a moment, Mr. Clark realized that what the grifter said did make sense. Truth be told, he'd been looking at this thing through his old lense of self-loathing and fear, the shock of seeing his son again, obviously transporting him back to the way he was back then when he was at his worst. But he's different now, and he knows a lot more and has a better connection with his feelings, something that Spencer could use help with.

"Thank you, Miss Devereaux."

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Eliot had been tense ever since his team left, the constant strain on his overly tight muscles causing sudden flares of pain as his damaged body spasms and locks.

However, this didn't distract him from his task at hand...

"Spencer." Mr. Clark walked into the large conference room on the ground floor of his son's apartment, spotting the man hunched over a desk and bashing away at a keyboard. "Hey, kid. I wondered if maybe we could talk for a bit?"

"What about?" The hitter didn't look up as spoke, just continued to hit random keys on the laptop in front of him. Apparently not getting the results he was after as he curses the 'damn machine.'

"You, your life, what happened between us," the older man ignored the sudden outburst from his son, deciding instead, to continue with his own plans for the afternoon.

"Why? It's not like you've been that interested before."

"I know," Mr. Clark spoke gently. "And that was wrong of me. I was goin' through some stuff back then, but I shouldn't have let it affect you the way I did."

The hitter sighed and pushed himself away from the desk slightly. He then picked up one of the handbooks helpfully labeled 'for Eliot in the event of a computer-related emergency', before quickly flicking through its pages as he skims the info. "Look dad, I'm not really feelin' up to this right now, so if you don't mind..."

"I get that," Mr. Clark quickly interrupted. "The thing is, I think we've let this stuff fester for too long, and if we don't deal with it now things will never get sorted between us." Trying to reach out a comforting hand toward his son, he wanted to offer his soft touch to his boy, but swiftly pulled it back when he saw the fear and tension on the younger man's face. "You see, Mr. Ford thinks that maybe some of our issues are causing some negative effects on your recovery. That's why he brought me here."

"Well, he's wrong. He was wrong to bring you here, and he was wrong to leave me behind. Now if you don't mind, I need to figure this out so I can help my team." Eliot huffed angrily, still trying to keep his calm center as he goes back to what he was doing before, fiddling with the tracking app on one of Hardison's backup computers.

"Spencer..."

"Damnit!" The hitter shouted. His control clearly slipping after months of dealing with pain and limitations that slowly chipped away at his ability to departmentalize. "What do you want from me? It wasn't bad enough that I'm stuck here, completely useless because of some stupid fuckin' accident, now I have to deal with you trying to patch up some decade-old drama." He was still shouting, this time right into the face of the man he used to be in awe of before his world fell to pieces, not for the last time.

"Son, I..."

"Don't call me that. I haven't been your son for almost twenty years, ever since you abandoned me."

Eliot could see the effect his words had on the older man, the way his eyes fell and face paled until he looked almost ghost-like, but he didn't much care at the moment.

"I didn't abandon you, Spencer." There was a little bit of gruffness in Mr. Clark's voice now, his own ire building as his son's accusations set in. "You left and never came back."

"I'm not talkin' about when I was eighteen and we had the argument," Eliot shook his head in frustration. "I'm talkin' about right after my mother died when you checked out on me. I needed you back then, to make everything make sense, to tell me it wasn't my fault. But you couldn't even look at me could you." His breath was coming out in harsh pants, but he could just about battle through the pain in his chest if it finally meant he could get the weight he carried off of it."Ever since then, every bad thing that happened in my life has me feelin' like it was my fault, like I deserved all the crap that happens to me, because obviously, I did somethin' wrong."

And he meant everything. From his time in the army when he watched his friends die, or when missions went wrong and he ended up tortured and thrown into a bottemless pit. During his work with Moreau, when things got tough and despite how hard he tried to fix it, to protect innocents, people still got killed needlessly, and it was all his fault, no matter what.

Even this latest accident. All he can do is think about how badly he's screwed up this time, how his actions have affected the team, and its ability to help the people that needed it, needed him.

And it all goes back to that scared and lonely little kid, the one that couldn't do anything right, the one that kills people with his mistakes.

"I tried dad, to make you notice me, to be the perfect son that never did anything wrong, but nothing worked."

"I'm sorry, Spencer, I really am." Mr. Clark again tried to reach out for his son, this time for his own comfort as he thought about how badly he'd hurt his little boy, but again it was rebuffed. "I know this doesn't make up for the past, for what I put you through, but I started seeing someone, a doctor that helped me figure out why I reacted that way. Dr. Hammond knows a lot about grief and how it affects people, he told me that the way I felt, the way I treated you, it was a result of the depression and anxiety I got after your mamma and brother died. The way everything lost color, and I stopped seeing and hearing the people around me, it was all just a manifestation of the hurt I was feeling."

"And you don't think I was hurting." Eliot spat out angrily. He was listening to his father, taking in his words fully and locking them away somewhere deep inside his heart, but that little ball of fire that sat in his gut was burning too fiercely to let any other emotion through.

"Of course you were hurt, I didn't mean..."

"I was a kid dad, I hadn't even hit my teens yet. I'd gone from having a loving family that meant the world to me to nothing. To just feeling like some invisible little boy hiding in the corner, alone and forgotten." "For years I tried to get a response from you, make you feel proud like you had before, but I couldn't do it. So I joined the army, made myself the best soldier possible, accepting every task they set me no matter how bad it made me feel. Because deep down I was still the lost little boy looking for acceptance from any source available."

"Did you find it?" The older man asked earnestly. He wanted the answer to be yes, that his boy had done what he couldn't for so long and fixed himself, but judging by the man's painfilled eyes those hopes would be dashed.

"Even if I did, I don't think I would know what it looks like."

A soft beep coming from the laptop's speaker, had the hitter turning to see if the hacker's tracking app had finally started working for him.

"Spencer, I just wanted to say..." Mr. Clark tried to get to the point of this conversation, but a raised hand stopped him in his tracks. He looked down at the screen, trying to make heads or tails of the confusing display of graphs and grid references, but it was no use. He'd never been good with technology, even GPS would annoy him so much that he just end up shouting at the mechanical voice to shut up. In the end, he had to ask, "what's wrong?"

There was a moment of silence as Eliot contemplated what to tell his civilian father, but he knew if any of what he was feeling had shown on the outside (which it had) then he couldn't lie. So he simply turned to the older man, raw fear thick in his throat almost like a coating, and said...

"My team is in danger."