The Snowball

Written for the prompt: Leverage, Eliot/Hardison, "Did you really kill someone with a snowball?"

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The Snowball

Eliot looked up at the question, unsure. "What did you say?" he asked.

"Did you really kill someone with a snowball?" Hardison pressed again.

Eliot hummed as he considered the answer, running down the jobs he'd done in snowy climes or in winter. He bit his lip when a few memories started to drip in, ones from the dim and distant past. He wondered if Hardison knew what he was really asking or maybe it was better to wonder if he was really supposed to answer.

"Kind of. . ." he hedged hoping that would be enough, but he should know Hardison better than that. He's a persistent bastard when the mood takes him, which it clearly has now.

"Where?" Eliot answered the question with the name of a village in a high mountain pass that he knows even Alec will find difficulty locating on a google map. He wasn't holding out much hope that Hardison would let it drop even now and he was right.

Hardison asked, "So who? Why?"

Eliot gave a slight shudder, unable to deny the memories of children playing with snowballs and him sneaking in and wrapping a stone in snow and hurling it with deadly accuracy at one of the boy's fathers. He remembered how the children had seen the figure slump into the snow, the shouts of distress that had gone up before he was running into the undergrowth escaping, objective achieved with a single shot.

Hardison had noticed the shudder, moved closer, arms wrapping round Eliot as he apologized, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked. It doesn't matter."

Eliot was saddened as he looked up at Hardison from behind a curtain of his hair, felt as the other man swept a hand up to take his hair back off his face. "It's not something you want to remember," Hardison said softly.

"It's not something I can ever forget," Eliot replied. "It was something that had to be done."