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theron09Title: Full Circle
Fandoms: Leverage, Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Eliot, hints of Eliot/Ellen
Summary: Eliot loses one family but finds another. A tie in to Boundary.
A/N: written for the leverageland big bang challenge. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
telaryn for the beta!
Word count according to wordcounttool.net : 1513
Points value – 15 points.
Eliot is in Canada tracking down a diamond for a client when he hears that William Harvelle has died. He’s not even told officially, just overhears it by chance in a hunter bar because he sometimes frequents them when he’s on the road. Hunters and hitters are alike, and it makes it easier on him if there are no questions.
The news takes him by surprise, as death always does. Bill had never made a secret of how cautious a hunter he was, how much he needed to know he could come back to his family and for some reason, no matter how much Eliot had seen, he’d always assumed Bill would. The last time he saw Bill, he hadn’t even said a proper goodbye.
The hunters talking about Bill don’t seem to know the details when Eliot asks, but they’re in agreement that it’s a damn shame because he was a great hunter. Eliot bites his tongue and doesn’t point out that Bill was a great person, too, because any energy he might have had to fight has left him at the news of his friend.
It’s more than two years since Eliot first met the Harvelles, and a lot has changed. He became a different sort of soldier, and then stopped being a soldier altogether, Jo’s grown in height, Ellen’s opened up to Eliot about how worried she gets when her husband is away on a hunt. And now, apparently, Bill has gone. Eliot wants to punch something, but he learned that punching walls wasn’t a good idea a long time ago, so he settles for clenching his fists so hard his nails make his palms bleed, and then he exits the bar and gets on with his job.
Ellen looks awful. Her eyes aren’t red and puffy, her hair isn’t a mess, and she has a smile plastered on her face. It’s fake, all of it – a show put on for the customers, or for Jo, or maybe because Ellen can’t bring herself to think about what she’s lost. When she spots Eliot, though, her face crumples just a little before she composes herself again. He slides onto his usual stool and nods gratefully when she sets a beer down in front of him.
“You heard, then?” she says, “I wasn’t sure whether you would, where you were.”
“When I heard I was in Canada of all places,” he snorts. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.”
“I know how it is – don’t worry. Have you seen Winchester?”
“John? Not since about eight months ago.”
Ellen nods. “He was on the hunt. With Bill.”
Eliot’s been observing people long enough to know there’s more to that story – more hurt – but he doesn’t ask. “I see. How’s Jo doing?”
“She’s lost her father,” Ellen says, as though that tells him everything, and maybe it does.
“Ellen, I’m-”
“Sorry about Bill. I know – everyone is.”
“I am, but that’s not what I was going to say. I’m going to fix up that sign out front for you, and if you want I can watch the place for the day, give you a break?”
“To do what?” Ellen picks up a cloth and starts wiping down the bar. “Hide in the back and cry? Is that what you think I need? That’s not me, Eliot.”
“I thought you might want to take Jo somewhere or something. I know you – time with your daughter is precious, and you can’t be getting a lot of it running this place single-handed.”
“I have workers.”
“But do you trust them to leave them be for a whole day?” he counters.
“Who said I trust you?”
“No-one had to say. It started the moment you and Bill showed a lost soldier some kindness.”
“Well then,” Ellen glances around the room and almost smiles, “it’s a kindness I’ll allow you to repay.”
~~
Eliot leads a busy life, but he still makes time to swing by and see Ellen and Jo every couple of months as long as it’s safe. Each time he visits, the pair seems a little more used to the idea that it’s just the two of them now, but Eliot never stops expecting to see Bill’s smiling face behind the bar when he first arrives.
That, he thinks, is why he pulls away when Ellen has a little too much to drink one night and goes to kiss him. Not because he wouldn’t be happy with Ellen, but because Ellen wouldn’t be happy with him – not like with Bill. It’s not right - they’re a sort of family, but they will never be that sort of family.
Years pass, and he goes to some darker places, pulls himself out of some of them and spends way too long with some people he should have avoided from the start. In between, there’s Ellen and Jo. When Eliot finally walks away from Damien Moreau, he goes to The Roadhouse to get his wounds cleaned and sort his head out. When Jo heads off to college, it’s Eliot who helps Ash watch the bar while Ellen takes her. When Jo returns from college, years early, it’s Eliot who talks Ellen down from driving her straight on back.
He hopes Bill would be glad Eliot’s watching over them as best he can, but he knows he’d be doing it either way.
~~
Eliot starts working with Nate Ford and three other criminals. They do things that could be considered good, if you ignore the fact it’s breaking the law – and he does, because helping the people they help is good.
They’ve been working together for nine months when Eliot spots something on one of the new feeds Hardison is browsing through, and he makes the hacker go back to check it. A fire. Arson. No suspects. He doesn’t need to be told the name of the bar to recognise the burnt remains, or the land where The Roadhouse used to be.
He calls Ellen’s cell three times and Jo’s twice before he gets an answer. They’re alive. Ash is dead. And that’s something Eliot can’t do anything about.
Ellen and Jo die too, a while later, and Eliot should have been doing something to help, except he was preoccupied with things in Boston and Ellen always knew more about the paranormal than he did anyway.
They’re working a job when he finds out and he spends the rest of it snapping at everyone for the smallest thing. Nate pulls him aside and asks him what’s happened, and Eliot finds himself telling some of the truth. Nate doesn’t tell the others, and for that Eliot is grateful.
Their job finishes and Nate announces that they’ve all been working too hard and they need a week off. No-one is surprised.
Eliot visits the site that used to be The Roadhouse. It’s not where they died, but it feels like the place to go. The bar was the place they all met, the place where they learned to trust one another. More than that, The Roadhouse was the Harvelles, and it makes sense to mourn there. He checks into a hotel down the road but it doesn’t feel right so he sleeps out under the stars instead.
He wonders what would have happened if he’d stayed here with Ellen and Jo after they’d lost Bill. Would he have been able to protect them, or been dragged down with them? He’d certainly never have even met Nathan Ford, or Shelley, or Moreau. He’s lived a life full of experiences, though, and they’ve taught him that there’s no point dwelling on what ifs. Things are as they are, decisions get made that can’t be gone back on, and people die no matter how hard they try not to.
He gets back to Boston and Parker gives him chocolate and Hardison hosts a movie night and Sophie takes him to the side and tells him she’s available if he needs to talk. When he confronts Nate, he realises his secret hasn’t been told - his team just know him too well – and that’s brilliant and it hurts so much all at the same time. It feels like he’s gone full circle; lost one family and found another without even realising the process was happening, and the worst thing is he knows he can never tell his new family about the Harvelles. Nate, Sophie, Parker and Hardison must be protected from the truth no matter what the cost.
Fandoms: Leverage, Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Eliot, hints of Eliot/Ellen
Summary: Eliot loses one family but finds another. A tie in to Boundary.
A/N: written for the leverageland big bang challenge. Thanks to
telaryn for the beta!Word count according to wordcounttool.net : 1513
Points value – 15 points.
Eliot is in Canada tracking down a diamond for a client when he hears that William Harvelle has died. He’s not even told officially, just overhears it by chance in a hunter bar because he sometimes frequents them when he’s on the road. Hunters and hitters are alike, and it makes it easier on him if there are no questions.
The news takes him by surprise, as death always does. Bill had never made a secret of how cautious a hunter he was, how much he needed to know he could come back to his family and for some reason, no matter how much Eliot had seen, he’d always assumed Bill would. The last time he saw Bill, he hadn’t even said a proper goodbye.
The hunters talking about Bill don’t seem to know the details when Eliot asks, but they’re in agreement that it’s a damn shame because he was a great hunter. Eliot bites his tongue and doesn’t point out that Bill was a great person, too, because any energy he might have had to fight has left him at the news of his friend.
It’s more than two years since Eliot first met the Harvelles, and a lot has changed. He became a different sort of soldier, and then stopped being a soldier altogether, Jo’s grown in height, Ellen’s opened up to Eliot about how worried she gets when her husband is away on a hunt. And now, apparently, Bill has gone. Eliot wants to punch something, but he learned that punching walls wasn’t a good idea a long time ago, so he settles for clenching his fists so hard his nails make his palms bleed, and then he exits the bar and gets on with his job.
~~
It’s another three months before Eliot gets the chance to swing by The Roadhouse, another two weeks before he works up the courage to do it. When he pulls up outside, he sees Jo sitting on the ground, shuffling a pack of cards. He can’t bring himself to talk to the kid first, so he goes into the bar – and then wishes he hadn’t.Ellen looks awful. Her eyes aren’t red and puffy, her hair isn’t a mess, and she has a smile plastered on her face. It’s fake, all of it – a show put on for the customers, or for Jo, or maybe because Ellen can’t bring herself to think about what she’s lost. When she spots Eliot, though, her face crumples just a little before she composes herself again. He slides onto his usual stool and nods gratefully when she sets a beer down in front of him.
“You heard, then?” she says, “I wasn’t sure whether you would, where you were.”
“When I heard I was in Canada of all places,” he snorts. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.”
“I know how it is – don’t worry. Have you seen Winchester?”
“John? Not since about eight months ago.”
Ellen nods. “He was on the hunt. With Bill.”
Eliot’s been observing people long enough to know there’s more to that story – more hurt – but he doesn’t ask. “I see. How’s Jo doing?”
“She’s lost her father,” Ellen says, as though that tells him everything, and maybe it does.
“Ellen, I’m-”
“Sorry about Bill. I know – everyone is.”
“I am, but that’s not what I was going to say. I’m going to fix up that sign out front for you, and if you want I can watch the place for the day, give you a break?”
“To do what?” Ellen picks up a cloth and starts wiping down the bar. “Hide in the back and cry? Is that what you think I need? That’s not me, Eliot.”
“I thought you might want to take Jo somewhere or something. I know you – time with your daughter is precious, and you can’t be getting a lot of it running this place single-handed.”
“I have workers.”
“But do you trust them to leave them be for a whole day?” he counters.
“Who said I trust you?”
“No-one had to say. It started the moment you and Bill showed a lost soldier some kindness.”
“Well then,” Ellen glances around the room and almost smiles, “it’s a kindness I’ll allow you to repay.”
~~
Eliot leads a busy life, but he still makes time to swing by and see Ellen and Jo every couple of months as long as it’s safe. Each time he visits, the pair seems a little more used to the idea that it’s just the two of them now, but Eliot never stops expecting to see Bill’s smiling face behind the bar when he first arrives.
That, he thinks, is why he pulls away when Ellen has a little too much to drink one night and goes to kiss him. Not because he wouldn’t be happy with Ellen, but because Ellen wouldn’t be happy with him – not like with Bill. It’s not right - they’re a sort of family, but they will never be that sort of family.
Years pass, and he goes to some darker places, pulls himself out of some of them and spends way too long with some people he should have avoided from the start. In between, there’s Ellen and Jo. When Eliot finally walks away from Damien Moreau, he goes to The Roadhouse to get his wounds cleaned and sort his head out. When Jo heads off to college, it’s Eliot who helps Ash watch the bar while Ellen takes her. When Jo returns from college, years early, it’s Eliot who talks Ellen down from driving her straight on back.
He hopes Bill would be glad Eliot’s watching over them as best he can, but he knows he’d be doing it either way.
~~
Eliot starts working with Nate Ford and three other criminals. They do things that could be considered good, if you ignore the fact it’s breaking the law – and he does, because helping the people they help is good.
They’ve been working together for nine months when Eliot spots something on one of the new feeds Hardison is browsing through, and he makes the hacker go back to check it. A fire. Arson. No suspects. He doesn’t need to be told the name of the bar to recognise the burnt remains, or the land where The Roadhouse used to be.
He calls Ellen’s cell three times and Jo’s twice before he gets an answer. They’re alive. Ash is dead. And that’s something Eliot can’t do anything about.
~~
Ellen and Jo die too, a while later, and Eliot should have been doing something to help, except he was preoccupied with things in Boston and Ellen always knew more about the paranormal than he did anyway.
They’re working a job when he finds out and he spends the rest of it snapping at everyone for the smallest thing. Nate pulls him aside and asks him what’s happened, and Eliot finds himself telling some of the truth. Nate doesn’t tell the others, and for that Eliot is grateful.
Their job finishes and Nate announces that they’ve all been working too hard and they need a week off. No-one is surprised.
Eliot visits the site that used to be The Roadhouse. It’s not where they died, but it feels like the place to go. The bar was the place they all met, the place where they learned to trust one another. More than that, The Roadhouse was the Harvelles, and it makes sense to mourn there. He checks into a hotel down the road but it doesn’t feel right so he sleeps out under the stars instead.
He wonders what would have happened if he’d stayed here with Ellen and Jo after they’d lost Bill. Would he have been able to protect them, or been dragged down with them? He’d certainly never have even met Nathan Ford, or Shelley, or Moreau. He’s lived a life full of experiences, though, and they’ve taught him that there’s no point dwelling on what ifs. Things are as they are, decisions get made that can’t be gone back on, and people die no matter how hard they try not to.
He gets back to Boston and Parker gives him chocolate and Hardison hosts a movie night and Sophie takes him to the side and tells him she’s available if he needs to talk. When he confronts Nate, he realises his secret hasn’t been told - his team just know him too well – and that’s brilliant and it hurts so much all at the same time. It feels like he’s gone full circle; lost one family and found another without even realising the process was happening, and the worst thing is he knows he can never tell his new family about the Harvelles. Nate, Sophie, Parker and Hardison must be protected from the truth no matter what the cost.
