god's grace lost and the devil is proud

The flame flicks up from his hand, lighting the word tattooed along his left index finger. Veritas…truth. Not something either one of them was particularly good at, she's realized. She wouldn't call it lying…more like refraining, holding the truth in. Sometimes, it means protecting the other person from the truth.

Elena inhales the fire into her cigarette as Connor steadies the lighter in front of her face. They stand behind the church, leaning against the brick wall as they watch Murphy, Dolly, and Duffy take turns shooting at cans and bottles with a .22 rifle in the field beyond the gravel drive.

She doesn't smoke often, as she usually aligns it with drinking or following some extraordinarily stressful situation. Now, it's just something to do with Connor while the other guys kill time.

Connor takes a drag off his cigarette, blowing the smoke out slowly as he narrows his eyes toward Elena. "So are ye ever going to tell me how'd ye ended up working with Smecker?"

She smiles and exhales. Since returning from New York, Elena had successfully dodged Connor's (and Murphy's) prying questions in the past few days. "He arrested me in an FBI raid."

Connor's eyes go wide, somehow in both belief and disbelief. Hell, if she's going to tell him the truth, she might as well have some fun, like Bloom always says. She strings him along as she explains how she was undercover with the Russian crime syndicate, piquing his curiosity as he asks, "Russians? Where? When?"

"New York. Not long before your run-in with them on St. Patty's."

Lifting the cigarette to his lips again, Connor lets the information settle in his mind. Elena can't help but notice the faint scar around his wrist, knowing full well how he got that. He pulls his head back a bit. "And Smecker was there?"

Her lips curl up as she describes what happened, how Smecker used her code name to signal that everything would be okay.

Connor raises his eyebrows. "Code name?"

Elena hesitates. "Guess you can know what it is now." The feeling that there's no going back now weighs heavy in her chest again. No matter how much she wanted to fight it, she's a part of this now…she's with the Saints, and there's no going back to the CIA ever again. "My code name is Sparrow. But Smecker said it in Russian."

His smile is bright as he chuckles. "Oh, as in vorobey?"

"Exactly. And the phrase he'd used was, 'A little bird tells me it's—'"

But Connor's laugh interrupts, and he covers his face in embarrassment. Elena looks at him with both worry and annoyance until he clarifies, "Ye know the last time I saw ye in prison, yeah?" He doesn't wait for her to answer; just smiles and shakes his head. "'A little bird' was the code Duffy had written on a postcard to us." Elena is still confused, wondering what Connor is trying to get at. He takes a breath and gestures towards his ears. "When I saw yer sparrow earrings, I panicked. Thought ye were part of our escape plan."

Her cheeks blush as she touches one of the small gold birds on her earlobes. She had no idea, and she feels like such a fool for being so God damn blind in that moment, for not reading Connor's reaction better. "Well, I was, indirectly." She twists her lips, still feeling embarrassed and sad at the same time. "They just kept me in the dark about when and how exactly they would break you out."

The laugh lines around his eyes are still creased from smiling. "And ye had to keep yer cover," he reminds her. "It's okay, lass," he starts as he takes another drag. "I still like yer earrings."

God damn Connor MacManus charm.

He flicks ash off the cigarette, looking down at his feet. "So what happened with the Russians?"

The question feels so out of place, and the answer really unimportant. Elena attempts to sound nonchalant as she recalls the memory. "Most of them were arrested in that raid. Except Nikolai." She looks down, watching the smoke swirl from around her fingers and instantly regretting saying the motherfucker's name.

She feels Connor's eyes sharpen on her. "Who's Nikolai?"

Another drag, still not looking at him. "He had given me a nice shiner on my cheek right before the raid, all because I refused to fuck him. He always got rough with the girls…even raped some of them. "

Those poor girls and their cries still haunt Elena. She blinks hard and lifts her head to see Connor twisting his face into anger.

"Not me. No, I pissed him off enough that all he wanted to do was beat me up. He took off right before the FBI came, and the other agents were dragging their feet in finding him. He was a low-level boss, not someone with real teeth in the operation. But he was still one evil motherfucker. So Smecker helped me track him down…and I killed him."

Connor stares at her, studying her. He wavers, lowering his voice as he asks, "Had ye killed anyone before?"

She pauses again, afraid to tell him the truth yet wanting to tell him everything so badly. "I had. But this was the first one I went rogue for…off the record."

Veritas.

He doesn't really react; he just takes another drag off his cigarette. "And Smecker helped ye?"

Smiling softly, she takes a beat. "He was the only one I knew I could trust."

Elena wonders if Connor's silence means he's piecing together the timeline, if he's figuring out that there's some overlap between her story and his. And she wonders if she should tell him that it's because of the evidence gathered at Copley Plaza in 1999 that led her and Smecker to find Nikolai.

Maybe someday. Not today. Not yet.

"Mind if I ask how did ye kill him?" Connor speaks up cautiously. He shrugs when she looks at him. "Call it morbid curiosity."

She stamps out her cigarette under her foot and steps closer to Connor, dropping her volume so no one else can hear. "Three shots to his chest. It was just the two of us in the room, so I pulled his gun out and planted it in his hand. Made it look like whoever killed him did so out of self-defense."

"Fuck, that's savage," Connor exhales. Elena knows he means brilliant. Growing up, she would have to explain to her friends why her mother would say savage whenever it seemed out of place, that it's what they say in Ireland to mean something is fantastic or amazing. She had to admit that it sometimes made her mother sound like a badass. And here, Connor using it makes Elena feel like a badass.

The sounds of Murphy arguing with Dolly about God knows what breaks her attention, and Elena quickly steps back, realizing just how close she had actually been standing next to Connor.

"Bullshit!" Dolly exclaims as the trio climbs the steps. "You did not hit both bottles with one bullet! Ain't no fucking way!"

Murphy scoffs at the detective and argues that the bullet ricocheted off the first bottle, thus hitting the second bottle. "Duffy, ye saw it, yeah?"

"I'm staying neutral, boys," the other detective raises his hands in surrender.

Connor flicks his cigarette to the ground and runs his hand through his hair, his eyes landing back on Elena as the three men walk between them. She sees the disappointment on his face, feeling her own features reflect the same sense of defeat.

The door opens just as Murphy reaches for it, and Bloom sticks her head out, her jaw chomping wildly on a piece of gum. "I think we have something," she explains, stepping aside to let the group walk in. Dolly and Duffy seamlessly switch back into detective mode, ready to work out whatever plans are needed for the Saints' next move.

"This about the Lombardos?" Connor inquires as Bloom joins them, walking to Smecker's office downstairs.

She chews on her gum with a smile. "Oh, you know it. Bastardos are running more than drugs these days."

Elena slows her steps, her stomach sinking as Murphy asks what the hell that means. Connor looks over his shoulder, concern wiping across his face when he sees that Elena has stopped entirely. She watches him get the attention of Bloom and his brother, but the cries of those Russian girls echo in her ears. Connor walks up to her, and his Irish accent saying her name breaks her out of the memory.

She blinks, now feeling anger bubbling in her throat. Her eyes dart between Connor and Murphy, then focus on Bloom, whose smile had faded into a solemn frown. Elena swallows hard, confirming her gut feeling. "You mean human trafficking."