Chapter Fifteen

A slow, purposeful shiver traveled down Eliot's spine. He grabbed the handcuff key and tried to get it in the lock, one-handed, twisting his fingers to the point of pain.

"Yes, Parker."

Eliot got both cuffs off in record time and flung off the sheet to set to work on his leg irons. There were washcloths stuffed in the shackles. He hadn't noticed that before. No wonder they hadn't hurt by now.

"My guard never came inside."

"Parker, is your door locked?"

Eliot rubbed his wrists and climbed off the bed. He fell to his knees. His legs were jelly. He'd only been there a day! He took a precious few seconds to steady himself.

"Yes, I just double-checked it. Oh my gosh." She was whispering now.

"What is it, Parker? Talk to us."

"What's that noise?"

"Get away from the door and hide," Ford ordered. There was the crackling of a walkie-talkie and Ford's voice sounded farther away. "General Flores, I need your men on the ground floor." His voice was strained, and it sounded like he was talking to himself. "This doesn't make sense. Why would Moreau go after Parker? There are four guards outside Eliot's room, right around the corner."

"She's on the ground floor. Maybe Moreau couldn't get up here," Hardison guessed.

Eliot was working the lock on the door but he was having trouble. He was glad they'd left his jeans. He'd pulled out the lock picks stitched to the inseam before taking a few seconds to dress. He'd thrown on his boots and pulled a knife from the left one. He was ready, he felt good, rested and determined. The team needed him, and Parker was in trouble, as usual, but he couldn't get through this door!

The crackle of the walkie sounded through the com. "General Flores? General?"

"Nate, what's going on? Are they on their way?"

Ford sounded like he was in a state of disbelief. "I can't raise him on the radio."

"I'm going. Come on, Mr. Stevens."

"Sophie, stay put. That's an order."

Hardison called out. "Nate, we can't—"

"It could be a trap, Hardison. We're on the third floor, and Sophie is above us. We'd never make it in time."

"I can't believe you just said that over an open com!" Hardison yelled.

"Oh my God!" Parker whispered desperately.

Eliot heard the creak of a door over the com. Finally, he picked the lock and his cell door gave. He prepared to attack his own guards, but no one was there. Nobody was down the hall, either. To his left, the hallway dead ended. So Parker was to his right. He'd make it in time, but he didn't know what he was getting into, how many men he would face, their weaponry, the layout or his back up. They usually planned these things better. He crouched low and peeked around the corner. No one was in the hall, and one door was eerily ajar.

Eliot took a deep breath, listening to the panicked ramblings of his teammates. He hissed into the com. "Nate, my four guards are gone. Grab your guard and get down here. Hardison, if you're on your computer, turn off the lights in fifteen seconds. Sophie, stay put in case it's a trap, you're the most vulnerable. Parker if you can jump out the window and climb to safety, do it. Now." Before anyone could respond, he ran down the hall and kicked the door open. It was pitch-black except for a sliver of light that streamed in through a window. He saw four figures and fell into a defensive stance, ratcheting his right hand back, ready to throw the knife into the heart of anyone threatening Parker.

Then the lights came on.

Nate, Sophie, Hardison and Parker sat behind a table near the window. There was a computer on the table and he could see the screen. It showed a picture of Eliot's room and empty bed.

Eliot breathed hard, staring at them. Nate folded his hands on the table calmly, but his foot tapping betrayed his nerves. Sophie leaned back in her chair, one arm draped over the back. Her legs were positioned on the floor in such a way that she could bolt in a second. Hardison looked shorter than usual, his hands gripping the edges of the table as he sagged. He was using it as cover. Parker sat on the windowsill, swinging her legs.

"He's mad," Hardison whispered.

"Yes, he is. But he called me Nate."

Sophie smirked. "He remembered that Parker likes to jump out windows."

"He asked Hardison to use the computer. Did you hear that?" Parker asked.

Eliot didn't move, legs still bent at the knees, knife still held over his head.

Hardison sank lower behind the table. "He's sizing up which one of us to beat first."

"Yeah," Nate said. "But I still think it worked."

"Did it work, Eliot?" Parker asked hopefully. She was the only one not worried about an attack—which would be totally justified—but for all he knew, she was harnessed and ready to jump out.

Eliot could hardly believe what was happening. "You set me up?"

Sophie shifted in her seat. "What about me? You didn't say anything about me."

Eliot studied her. The woman he swore he didn't kill but remembered doing so. The woman who looked like she would have traded places with him on that pier. "Your name isn't Sophie."

"What is it?" Nate asked, leaning forward.

Sophie opened her mouth, but Eliot held his left hand out. "You all set me up."

Nate stood. "I did. We tried it the slow way but you weren't remembering. Locking you in a room, even with Parker's scrapbook—"

"Scrapwall."

"—scrapwall, wasn't working. You're not exactly the easiest amnesia patient to treat and time was not on our side."

Parker nodded, sending her ponytail bouncing. "If you escaped again, we might never have found you."

Eliot let his arm lower, but he still held the knife in his hand at his side. "You couldn't wait more than one day?"

"I knew it'd work." Sophie turned to Nate with a big smile.

"It's been three days," Hardison said.

Eliot finally relaxed a little, still at the ready as adrenaline was pumping through his veins. It seemed to clear his head a bit. He knew them. He knew their personalities, their talents, their quirks. "One day," he insisted. "It's been one…one day.

Hardison sat a little straighter. "I thought all that food would give it away. We needed you to think it'd only been a day or else it would be too suspicious that Moreau escaped three days later, not immediately while the palace was distracted with capturing you."

"But I didn't know Moreau was here."

Nate nodded. "We couldn't be sure what you remembered. And hearing us lay out the story over the coms, we wanted to be sure it'd stand up to scrutiny."

Eliot touched his cheeks with his free hand. They had a little scruff. "It can't have been three days."

"Man, you were really knocked out. You've probably been awake, like, fifteen hours out of the last three days."

"Eighteen hours, twenty minutes, thirty-two seconds," Parker said.

"That's creepy," Eliot and Hardison snapped.

"That's my boy," Hardison said. "While you were sleeping, we changed your clothes and shaved you."

Nate said, "We couldn't wait any longer or your muscles would atrophy to the point you'd hurt yourself trying to act."

"You have great muscle tone," Parker said.

Eliot cringed internally. The thought of anyone—even Hardison—coming at him with a razor blade while he snored like a badly tuned getaway car was too gut-wrenching to dwell on.

Sophie smiled brightly. "We made sure to dress the exact same whenever we came in."

"You messed with my head."

"We had to," Parker said. "How else could we get you back?"

"So, do you remember us?" Nate asked carefully.

"You ran a con on me."

"Did it work?" Parker asked.

"You don't con one of your own. I thought you were in mortal danger. I-I—"

Nate walked around the table and risked putting a hand on Eliot's shoulder. "I know, Eliot. I know. But that's your typical day. You're security. Those feelings are familiar to you. We had to trigger your memories somehow."

Eliot took a deep breath. He shut his eyes for a moment, centering himself.

"He remembers us," Hardison breathed. "He'd never close his eyes that long in a roomful of people he didn't know."

"Even worse, we're his captors," Parker said.

Eliot's eyes snapped open. "Stop talking about me like I'm not here."

"We're trying to figure out if you are here," Parker said. "Or, which one of you is here. It all has to do with time travel—"

Hardison stood up. "Parker!"

Sophie walked around the table and leaned against it. "How did you pick the lock to the door? We were worried about that. We couldn't figure out how to leave you a key to the door without being obvious. Did you use the metal of one of the keys Parker left you?"

Eliot glanced at the computer again. It showed his bed and a few feet to the left and right but not the door.

"Yeah, and where'd you get that knife?" Hardison asked.

"I, uh." Eliot wondered how much to tell them. "I had a lock pick set in my jeans and a couple of knives and other weapons and tools."

Nate let go of Eliot's shoulder. "But we patted you down and took everything away."

Eliot frowned at him. "One of these days, I'm going to have to teach you how to disarm a person, Nate."

Nate huffed. "All right, level with us now, would you please? What do you remember? Do you trust us? Are you going to bolt? Are you mad?"

Hardison pulled back. "And if mad, how mad?"

Eliot breathed through his nose to maintain his composure. His adrenaline was starting to seep out of his system. Nate was studying him, scrutinizing every reaction. It was just like him, too. He had to understand everything. He couldn't make a move without knowing exactly what the other guy was thinking. How else could he manipulate him? Except he was an honest man, only running cons to help people. Like this one. "I remember you."

Parker clapped and jumped off the windowsill.

Before she could run over and hug him, as she was bound to do, Eliot said, "Sort of."

Parker stopped in her tracks. Hardison regarded him sadly, Nate frowned and Sophie's face fell.

"I sort of know you, but I don't remember, like, specifics. Some things I do." He looked at Sophie. "You shushed me when I was fighting a hired killer back stage somewhere."

"Well, the kid was singing, Eliot. I had to see it through."

"Uh-huh." Eliot suddenly felt weak. The adrenaline crash sapped his strength, and the strange snippets of recollections only frustrated him.

Nate took a step back. "Would you like food or sleep?"

Eliot didn't like that. He felt comforted, but he was so used to relying on himself, he didn't like the idea that someone else could sense a weakness in him.

"You're hungry and tired, Eliot. It's not something you have to hide from friends."

"Get out of my head, Nate."

"Ooooooh! It's so exciting to have you back!" Parker ran over and hugged him.

Eliot rolled his eyes, biting back the response he'd wanted to shout. He did not hug her back, but he also didn't knock her out so she should take that as a win.

"We can watch a scary movie and grab our sleeping bags—or cots—and make hot chocolate and chat and laugh."

Eliot squinted in thought. "That sounds like a sleepover."

"You remember those? Oh, good. I didn't think to pack your fuzzy slippers, so it won't be exactly like a sleepover."

"I don't have fuzzy slippers."

"Probably because you're a boy."

Eliot shrugged. "Could be."

Parker grinned. "You can make the hot chocolate."

Sophie shook her head. "Parker, he's tired. Don't make him work."

Nate rounded the table. "Actually, putting Eliot in a kitchen might not be a bad idea. It could jog his memories even more."

"Do you know how many weapons a kitchen has?" Hardison muttered.

Parker cheered. "We'll have so much fun and stay up too late and try not to get into trouble but then jump out the window—"

"I keep telling you, Parker." Hardison came over and took her by the shoulders. "There is no jumping out the window in sleepovers."

"Maybe not in boy sleepovers." She turned to Eliot. "Is that true? That boys don't jump out windows at sleepovers?"

"Uh, yeah, that's true." Eliot remembered waking up when he was in the military, during a surprise attack in the middle of the night. There was fire…and alarms and screaming and men jumping out of windows. He regarded Parker thoughtfully. Did that count? "Mostly true."

"Oh!" Parker's hand flew to her mouth. "You see, Hardison? You just didn't know the right boys."

Hardison shook his head. "Eliot probably needs to sleep."

"Yeah," Parker said in her best 'duh' voice. "It's called a 'sleepover', Hardison."

Hardison looked at Nate, silently asking for help. It was such a familiar motion, and Eliot was bombarded with more visions of time spent with them. They knew him, a little too well. "How did you find me? I mean here in San Lorenzo."

"It was Sophie," Nate said.

"No." Sophie shook her head. "It was Parker. She found out where you were headed."

Parker draped an arm around Hardison. "I couldn't have done that without Hardison."

Hardison nodded toward Nate. "Without Nate's plan, you'd still be running around thinking it was the turn of the century."

Eliot watched at them. "You guys are really…" he shrugged, at a loss for an accurate description.

Parker chuckled. "We're not like your biker bar friends, huh? They're not as sappy as we are?"

"Biker bar?" Eliot thought about the last few days. Or however many days since the pier. "You went to the biker bar? What did you say? Nobody would have given me up there. Unless…did I change over the last…" Eliot was growing exhausted.

Hardison hooked a foot around a chair leg and pulled it over. "Here, rest for a minute."

Parker pushed him down, and Eliot let her. "I didn't talk to anybody, actually. Two guys were talking about you. I think they liked you. The guy with the green hair was gonna ask for your help, but he knew you were acting different so he didn't bother you."

Eliot stood up. "Snake needs my help? Was it his cousin?"

"Yeah, I think he said something about his cousin."

Eliot turned to Nate. "We've gotta get back there. I knew this would happen. I'm thinking the Eskimo on the Boat Con."

Sophie looked at him. "Eskimo on the Boat Con?"

"Are you making that up?" Hardison asked.

"It's like the Bear on the Elevator Con but with ice."

Hardison flung his arms in the air. "And we thought there was something wrong with his memory."

"Look, I don't need your help. I'll do it myself." Eliot walked out of the room, but he didn't get around the corner before the four of them were at his heels, chattering over one another. The next couple of hours were a blur, but he found himself at the airport, sitting in a hard plastic chair, almost wishing he was in the bed back in his comfortable prison and chains. The mattress was heavenly.

Hardison slammed the lid on his laptop. "I can't believe this. Our flight's been delayed four hours. Do we go back to the palace?"

Nate shook his head. "It's well past midnight."

"Get hotel rooms?"

"No. By the time we'd get settled, we'd be leaving again." Nate studied Eliot. "Unless you need to rest. We can leave tomorrow instead."

"I'm good." Eliot heard his voice come out gruff and sounding especially tired.

Without a word, Sophie stood up and sashayed down the long hall and disappeared in a crowd of people waiting for a flight to China.

"She leaving us again?" Eliot asked.

Hardison smiled. "You're remembering more, huh?"

"Maybe."

"How come you kept calling me Skipper?" Parker asked.

That was not something he was going to share with them. He had an affinity for kids, didn't get to see his nephew as much as he'd like and had babysat more often than any other bodyguard he knew. Then there were the soldiers' letters from home. He never got any himself, but the others shared theirs, shared their lives, and many had children and the children wrote about every class, toy and activity they enjoyed. It bolstered them all, gave them hope. But that was too personal to share. "You're excitable and you tend to bounce across rooms."

Hardison stifled a laugh, and Parker punched his arm playfully.

Sophie came back a few minutes later wheeling a cart loaded with five tightly rolled sleeping bags.

Parker's face became animated. "Sophie! Where did you get these?"

"Well, I—"

"Never mind." Parker waved her answer away with the flick of a wrist. "Come on, guys."

"Oh, no." Hardison sighed deeply.

Parker beamed. Eliot bit back his own smile. She could light up the whole airport with that grin. He stood up and started walking away. Nate and Hardison jumped out of their chairs.

"Where you going, buddy?"

Eliot turned on Hardison, about to snap. He stopped when he saw nothing but concern and the tiniest hint of alarm in his eyes.

"I'm going to the bathroom," he lied. "And I don't need an escort."

"I have to go to the bathroom, too." Hardison started toward him.

Eliot planted his feet shoulder width apart, crossed his arms and glared.

Hardison turned to Nate.

Nate studied Eliot for a long moment, and then, saying nothing, nodded at Hardison. Hardison started to turn back to help Parker at the cart when Eliot grabbed his arm. "Hey."

"Yeah?" Hardison looked uneasy, like he was hoping Eliot wasn't about to apologize or get emotional or something.

"Why don't you find a scary movie on your little laptop thing."

Hardison looked at Parker, gleefully unwrapping sleeping bags and positioning them on the floor in front of the chairs. "Yeah. I can do that."

Eliot walked past the bathrooms and made his way to the food court. He wished he could remember everything in one long string of events. How exactly he ended up with these people. Why they accepted him as they did. What he could do to ensure it didn't disappear in a puff of smoke. He walked back to find the tops of the sleeping bags forming a semi-circle around the laptop. The others were all on their stomachs, resting their heads on their crossed arms. He felt as though he could fall asleep in seconds, but Parker would probably be up for hours, she was so keyed up. The sugar wouldn't help.

"There he is! I told you he'd come back." Parker's features froze as she saw what he was carrying.

Eliot knelt down on the only unoccupied sleeping bag and offered the tray of hot chocolate. "We're not jumping out of any windows, Parker, so this will have to do."

Parker stared at him with wide, shining eyes. "This is perfect."

"What scary movie are we watching?" Eliot asked, not really in the mood for violence. Maybe Parker would have picked an old black-and-white film, one of those in which there was no blood but you had nightmares for weeks. Not that he was looking forward to that, but if it would replace his real nightmares, he was fine with it. He'd probably fall asleep within minutes, anyhow.

Nate and Sophie stifled a laugh.

Hardison hit a button on the laptop. "Anger Management."

Eliot stared at each one of them.

Parker smiled brightly. "Doesn't that sound so scary? It's all about anger and it's Jack Nicholson. Everything Jack Nicholson is in is creepy. It's going to be terrifying, don't you think?"

Eliot climbed into his sleeping bag, having no doubt in his mind that Parker would make up her own scary story as the movie ran.

Parker's kind face fell into a mask of worry. "It won't be too scary for you, will it? I didn't think of that."

"I think I can handle it."

"You say that about everything."

"I do?" Eliot turned on his stomach and faced the screen, hoping they wouldn't notice if he fell asleep. Hardison was on Parker's other side, stifling a laugh as he angled the laptop so they could all see. Nate and Sophie lay on Eliot's right. He noticed he was in the middle, not out of courtesy, he thought, but as a not-so-subtle reminder that he wasn't quite trusted. They were still worried that he might slip away when they weren't looking. Sophie was adjusting her wig—they explained its presence, but Eliot couldn't digest it all—and Nate was staring at him. Eliot tried a smile, but Nate just shook his head before turning his attention to the computer and blowing on his hot chocolate.

Parker leaned over and whispered, "This is exactly what sleepovers are like. Aren't they?"

Eliot's breath caught in his throat. She didn't know, did she? She was so naïve in some ways. She'd had a different sort of childhood. She was isolated and didn't have anything resembling a normal upbringing. She raved about sleepovers because she'd never been to one. And now they were on the floor of an airport in a European country in the middle of the night—a grifter, a hacker, a thief, a mastermind and a hitter with amnesia—all in 'borrowed' sleeping bags about to watch a comedy-thought-to-be-scary movie on a laptop, while waiting for a plane to take them to help a biker's cousin. Without thinking what he was doing, he reached over and pulled the top of her sleeping bag across her back and up to her shoulders and tucked the sides in. "Yes, Parker. They're exactly like this."

She beamed at him. "I knew it."

THE END

A/N: I hope you enjoyed my first long fan fiction!

Please don't ruin the twist in the reviews, if you can help it.

I hope you liked the twist – I figured I had to have an actual con somewhere in such a long Leverage story, and I had to have at least one of poor Nate's plans work!

Thank all of you who've stuck with me since April and took the time to leave a review. It is so appreciated!