Hi there, everyone. I know; it's been a long, long time. It was never my intention to abandon The French Kiss Job, but life happened - mostly in really good ways - and it just... got away from me. I do want to finish the story (it's all outlined), and I hope to. I can't promise a particular timeline, but I can tell you that I definitely want to complete it - for you all, and for myself. Thank you to everyone who has read the story and held out hope for its ending. Sorry it's taken so long to grant your wish. Here's one more step toward the finish line.

Chapter 25

Eliot had slept on more than his fair share of uncomfortable surfaces – cliff outcroppings narrower than his frame, fraying rope hammocks suspended above quicksand, slippery paving stones in old Roman sewers – but he'd never woken up feeling worse than he did now, after only two hours spent on a bench by the banks of the Seine.

It wasn't just that his head throbbed or his back ached or his mouth felt like dray sandpaper – those barely registered as nuisances. Physical discomfort was an old friend and constant companion. The pain that mattered was the ache of emptiness in his chest.

All of it was over.

Five and a half years – longer than he'd spent doing much else. Permanence had never been his M.O. before the Leverage team. He'd never seen them coming, and they'd changed everything. And he'd thought… well he'd thought that maybe, finally, he had put down roots that ran deep enough to hold him in place.

Stop, he told himself as he sat up and rubbed his eyes, both of which felt too big for their sockets.

This was for the best. And it had been a long time coming.

Even still, no matter how he tried to think about something – anything – else besides Nate's vitriol, or Sophie's silence, or Hardison's closed eyes, or Parker's wide ones…

Dammit. There he went again.

He stood up. Stretched. Walked to the edge of the concrete bank to peer into the murky waters of the river. He willed himself to focus on the distorted shadow of his frame that the streetlight above him was casting on the undulating surface.

This was what he was in the grand scheme of things, he reminded himself. A shadow and a specter, no more than a force and a tool. He was a moment in people's lives, but never meant to be fully-formed. People like him, who did what he did, didn't get that luxury. Expecting any human relationship to survive, much less four at once, had always been a pipe dream.

But it… had been nice while it lasted.

For a moment, the emptiness in his chest came close to transforming into something else – maybe the dull throb of loss or the sharp agony of betrayal. Maybe both at once. He closed his eyes against the transformation, but that was a mistake; there were somehow far more painful things for him to see when he tuned out the world than when he let it distract him.

He needed to move, he decided. That had always worked for him in the old days, moving too quickly from job to job to think too hard about any of them.

He left the Seine behind, wandering southeast into the Latin Quarter, letting the autopilot of his experience and training lead him on a roundabout, pointless, meandering path that had the sole purpose of avoiding security cameras while he cleared his head. At some point he found himself at the feet of a perfect scale model of the Statue of Liberty, which meant that he had somehow not registered climbing over the spiked fence of the expansive Jardin du Luxembourg, which sprawled out in front of an old palace used as the seat of the French Senate.

Really? He'd managed to sneak into one of the most visited parks in Paris and not even noticed?

Maybe he'd done too good of a job wiping his mind clean with the excursion. Surely there existed some medium between being overwhelmed with thoughts by doing nothing and wandering around without any awareness of his own actions in order to forget.

Maybe. But that medium was probably called actually functioning, and he didn't have a whole lot of capacity for that right now.

Eliot could barely make out Lady Liberty's face in the darkness, but he could picture her strong brow and straight nose, her classical-style lips frowning in solemnity at bearing the torch of freedom. A woman who took her job very seriously – and rightly, considering that job was standing as a beacon of hope to untold numbers of tired, poor, and wretched. Even this little sister of the real statue in New York Harbor emanated a strength of dignity and purpose in manning the gates of opportunity for the world's downtrodden. The ones other societies had left behind and discarded.

He didn't realize that he was biting his lip until it had already happened. He could taste iron on his tongue. And salt.

Because that had been them. That had been his team. Giving hope to the people left behind by big business and corruption and a broken justice system – standing in the gap and holding up hope.

But to offer hope to others, there had to have been some drop – some molecule – of hope from within to keep things going. Some fuel to keep the torch lit, or it would eventually move to consume the hand of its holder in hunger.

Eliot's fuel stores had been running on empty for a while now. And his hands were goddamn burned.

"You know what else?" he growled up at the impassive face of the statue. "That flame ain't actually burning." Nothing more than hollow bronze.

He turned his back on the robed replica so violently that his feet sprayed gravel from the path in a wide arc, and with the pivot, the pendulum inside him swung back toward the gaping maw of nothingness. His feet were moving again, his mind shifting back to neutral once more. To safety. To control.

The muscles of his psyche remembered how to effectively steer toward apathy and cynicism but hadn't had much recent practice. They were rusty. A little sore. But, with every shift back to the stasis that had kept him alive for so long before the team – through cruelty and dishonor and horror that no one with an actual shred of soul could stomach – it got a little easier. The mental muscles stretched and warmed, recalling how to shepherd him back into the safe cocoon of not giving a damn.

Keep moving. Keep going.

He did. All over the 23 hectares of the garden, kept immaculate since the seventeenth century. Past more statues, flower beds, trees and benches. He briefly considered trying to lie down again on one of the benches, but then thought better of it. He couldn't stop. He was a shark; if he stopped, he would die.

Eventually, he found that his feet had led him once again to one of the garden's landmarks: this time, a long pool framed by an alternating pattern of wrought iron railings and dozens of carved stone urns on squat pillars. At the end of the pool rose the façade of a tall stone fountain, still and silent after hours, the statues occupying its niches deep in shadow. The still waters of the pool reflected the semi-circle of the night's moon, which had sunk low on the horizon.

He had almost made a circle of the gardens to now be standing in front of the Medici fountain, back to the jardin's Latin Quarter side after wandering all the way to its far edge for a sneer at Lady Liberty.

How long have I been out here? he asked his internal clock. It whirred with the effort but was finally able to produce a guess at the current time: around 4:00am.

Less than two hours until sunrise. Four or five hours since he'd left the team.

Were they looking for him? he wondered, before he could stop himself. Did they care that he was gone? Or were they just relieved, the burden of fear that he instilled in them lifted from their shoulders after all this time?

Had Parker found her words, finally able to articulate her doubts about him? Had Sophie begun to comfort them all, assuring them that this was all for the best, while Hardison hung his head but nodded along? Nate was probably regaling them all with "I-told-you-so"s and holier-than-thou sermons about pride and wolves in sheep's clothing and…

… God, Nate, why?

All of Eliot's efforts to keep the pain at bay failed at once, his rusty systems no match for the piercing mental image of Nate's frigid stare. Even in his mind's eye, he couldn't look away from the mastermind, trapped by the magnetism of Nate's confidence and ruthlessness.

He desperately grasped for his defenses, but they slipped away like smoke on the wind. They weren't built to take fire like this. They had been too poorly-maintained for too long. Even as he began to pace in front of the fountain, hands buried in his hair, moving, trying to think of anything else, his brain only let in more images:

Hardison's terror when Eliot had broken the hotel room lamp. Parker's hurt when Eliot had told her to grow up. Sophie's shock when Eliot had revealed his past with Moreau. Aimee's disgust when Eliot had walked into her father's office….

All of them betrayed by him. Scared of him. Hurt by him. They had trusted him, and he had let every single one of them down in the most spectacular ways imaginable.

But not Nate. Nate had always been ready, always been suspicious. Eliot could clearly picture even now how distrust had lingered on Nate's face that night when they'd gathered for that very first job in Chicago… and never really gone away.

Not for Eliot.

"A violent psychopath whose complete lack of self-control threatens everyone around him."

Nate had always seen the monster. He'd known how to employ its claws and teeth and bloodthirsty spirit to his ends, but he'd never lost sight of what it really was. Who the hitter really was.

Eliot stopped pacing. He took his hands from his head, letting them hang limp at his sides.

Enough.

Enough of the running. Enough of the self-pity. Eliot Spencer was many things, but a coward was not one of them. At least, not anymore.

Eyes open, he thought. Size up your enemy. Don't you dare turn your back. Don't you dare.

He hadn't left the van because Nate had hurt him – even though he had. He hadn't run away so quickly because his feelings were bruised. He'd gone because Nate was right. Hadn't he been thinking this all along? That they would be safer when they all split up – that the only way to keep them all in one piece would be to go their separate ways again?

Not just because they would be harder to round up – that was really just an excuse, wasn't it? – but because they wouldn't be around him. No threat was greater to them than the one they thought had been tamed.

And, yes, it hurt. Yes, everything Nate had said was now seared into Eliot's heart, blackened like a brand. It was agony, maybe worse than anything he'd ever experienced, and that was saying something.

But it wasn't going to kill him.

It was going to hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt.

But it wasn't going to kill him.

Because they were still alive. And no matter how much they hated him or feared him or distrusted him, it was worth it to know that was true, and that he could still do something to keep them that way.

The pain was sharper and deeper because he loved them.

But, because he loved them, he would bear it.

He would not run from it. He would not ignore it. He would not try to numb it. Not anymore. Those defenses, the ones that had belonged to the old Eliot, were rusty for a reason: who he was now made them obsolete. The man he was now couldn't forget the haunted, torn look in Parker's eyes any more than he could forget the wild abandon of her laugh and the megawatt light of her smile. To run away from the bad, he would have to run away from the good, too, and the man he had become was not prepared to do that.

It was going to hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt… and he was going to let it.

With that acceptance, all of the panic and fear that had driven him across Paris suddenly seemed to rush out of his body in a wave. The exodus left his legs weak, and he dropped to his knees in the pea gravel before the fountain. Every little rock pressing against the denim of his jeans reminded him that this moment was real – that his soul was really bleeding out and he was permitting it. And it... it wasn't okay – that wasn't the right word. But it was worth it.

After he'd taken a moment to catch his breath, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out his cell phone. He'd turned it off after getting a few blocks away from Lucille's French Cousin, but he hadn't yet been able to bring himself to take the battery out. It was one thing to avoid street cameras on instinct, but to remove the battery from his phone– to disable any chance Hardison might have had to ping the phone's location – was something else. Something that felt much more final. He hadn't yet had the nerve.

But now that his heartstrings were completely exposed, and there was nothing more to lose, he dug the stub of a fingernail into the side of the phone, fishing for the latch to release the little battery pack.

Instead, the phone's screen sprang to life.

Eliot swore softly, examining the device. Had he mixed up the release latch and the power button? A quiet voice in the back of his mind gently asked, did you do it on purpose?

"No," he muttered aloud, though, to be honest, he wasn't sure.

He turned the phone over, illuminating his boots in the soft glow of the screen, and peered closely at the back casing. There was the latch – there in the middle of the back panel, not on the side at all.

"Come on, Spencer," he said, now much more certain of what he had done. "Stop stalling."

Acceptance or no, this part was still harder than he had thought it would be.

He pressed his nail in again, this time in the right place.

The phone buzzed with vibration.

And buzzed. And buzzed.

He blinked.

Turning the phone back over, he realized that the buzzing had had nothing to do with his agonizing quest for battery removal at all. The phone was vibrating with incoming texts.

"Don't you do it," he told himself… without much conviction. He opened the first text. And then the next.

ELIOT! I'm so so so so so so so so so so so sorry! I can't TELL you how sorry I am!

U r family to me, E. My brother. Always will be. We really messed up if u don't know that.

Of course you wouldn't hurt us. Nate was being a big stupid idiot face. I was too because I didn't say anything. Please don't go.

Eliot, my heart is heavy with grief over what you and Nate said to one another in the van. He didn't really mean those words. You know how much he cares about you. He's hurting, Eliot. You have to understand how all of this has upset him. I know he regrets everything that he said.

Please come back. Please. Please please please. I'm sorry.

Tell me where ur ass is right now. Don't play games with my heart, E

E – plz. We've been looking for an hour. Just tell us where u r.

Ok we r going back to the hotel. Waiting 4 u. Not going anywhere until u come home.

Pressure began building in Eliot's chest and behind his eyes. Hot, sticky pressure accompanied by a tightness on his windpipe that forced his breaths in and out like drowning gasps.

More buzzing from the phone – voicemails. Ten of them. Six from Parker, two from Hardison, and two from Sophie.

Nothing – no texts, no voicemails – from Nate.

Eliot's left hand reached wildly for the railing in front of him, finding a bar to hold onto and gripping it for dear life. All of his emotions, unchecked and allowed to roam completely free now, swirled in his mind like a maelstrom. Grief. Anger. Betrayal. Guilt. Resignation. Elation. Affection. Longing. Loneliness. Emptiness. Doubt. Fullness. Certainty. Hope.

His vision blurred. He doubled over. He was weeping and pounding on the railing. He was smiling and bracing himself on the iron. He was lost in a whirlpool of complete uncertainty, feeling everything so acutely.

Maybe not the pain alone, but this – the hope and the pain together, fighting for supremacy – would surely kill him in the crossfire.

His sense of time abandoned him in the reeling. He might have been there for days, or perhaps only a manner of minutes. It felt like forever before the phone began buzzing again.

And buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed.

A call.

Not just an artifact from the past, but an intervention in the present.

Which was the cowardly path? To pick up the phone or to let it ring? To walk away and accept his fate or to run back and try again? God, he didn't know. He didn't know anything anymore.

His instincts answered for him. Seemingly of its own accord, his finger pressed "accept," and a cold mingling of relief and fear washed over him as he raised the phone to his ear.

The voice at the other end brought the motion of the emotional whirlpool to an abrupt and wrenching halt.

"Spencer," said a deadly calm voice he recognized. As if he'd been catapulted into a solid concrete wall, Eliot felt the air fly out of his lungs and had the sudden, violent urge to throw up. "We need to talk."

Not all of the reasons for Eliot's longtime mastery and avoidance of his emotions had come from cowardice. Indeed, many arose from a purely utilitarian need for survival, from a discipline needed to do his job. Because the more he was paying attention to the echoes of his own thoughts, the less he was paying attention to his environment.

Now, exhausted by trying to follow thousands of echoes and grasp hundreds of conflicting feelings, Eliot's mind was slow. Even as the sound of the voice cut through the complex tangle, disorientation was receding too slowly.

Ordinarily, the crunch of twenty military-issue boots on gravel would have been distinctive, as would the crackling of a tazer, or the cocking of a handgun hammer. Today, they barely registered.

"What do you want?" Eliot growled into the phone. He didn't hear two of the boots come to a stop behind him.

"Someone is on their way to pick you up," said the voice.

Eliot had hardly comprehended the words when something hard struck him across the back of the head. His vision darkened.

"They've already come for the others," the voice said. So calm. Almost dead.

Another blow.

The voice sounded farther away now. Eliot vaguely realized that he had dropped the phone.

"You're next."