Disclaimer: I don't own Leverage.
About a month after Sam's death, Nate went to one grief counseling session. He went for two reasons: because Maggie begged him, and because IYS offered to pay, out of a misguided belief that once Nate "got over" his grief he'd come back to them. Of course, he'd rather trim his nose hairs with a blow torch than go back to IYS, but they didn't know that, and he was happy to bleed them dry.
At that point, he hadn't started drinking yet, which meant that neither his grief nor his anger were dulled. He walked into the session not expecting much, and that was what he got. The grief counselor was a woman in her mid-thirties, pretty, who greeted Nate with a limp handshake and a request that he call her Laura.
After they'd both sat, Laura asked Nate some bullshit questions and he replied with some bullshit answers. Then she asked some more probing questions—questions about Maggie, about Nate's feelings toward IYS, about whether he'd considered suicide—and he replied with stony-faced silence.
Finally, bored and wanting nothing more than to retreat to his house—the one he and Maggie were on the verge of losing—he snapped.
"We're dancing around the issue, Laura," he said, piercing her with his eyes. "The only way these sessions will have any value is if you can help me, and I don't believe that you can do that."
She met his gaze more steadily than he'd have expected. "If I can't help you, who can?"
No one, he thought. He'd needed help before Sam had died and no one had given it to him then. Anything they tried now was far too little, and far too late.
"Answer one question," Nate said, "and I'll decide whether I think you are qualified to help me."
"What is it?"
He leaned back on the couch, crossed his legs at the knee, and drummed his fingers on the armrest. "Will I ever be happy again?"
He could see the reassuring lie spring to her lips. He gave her credit for holding it back. He also appreciated that she took a few minutes to consider the question. When she spoke, she spoke slowly, with great consideration. "It will take time. The loss you have endured is not something from which you will ever fully recover. However, I do think—yes. You may never be happy in the way you were, you may never be as happy as you were in the past, but if you're open to it—if you truly commit yourself to healing and moving on—I think you'll find that you're still capable of experiencing happiness. On a small scale, if nothing else."
Nate nodded. Then he got up and walked to the door. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about," he told her, and left.
Nate wakes at six a.m. on the anniversary of Sam's death. He's given the team the day off—didn't give them an explanation, but they've been making noises about needing a break, so none of them protested. He's been pushing them hard lately, he knows, too hard, but he can't seem to stop himself. For the past month he's felt this date looming just ahead of him, taunting, and he's worked the team hard and himself harder because he couldn't bear to think about it.
But now the day is here, and there's no avoiding it. Here, in the sanctity of his apartment, in the privacy of his mind, there's no more pretending that he's moved on, that a family of thieves is anything like a real family, that anything he's done over the past few years has done anything to make up for the fact that he let his own son die. Grief surrounds him, blackening his vision, threatens to swallow him whole.
His nose twitches. What is that smell? Whatever it is, it doesn't belong here, intruding on his sorrow. He drags his pillow from under his head and presses it down over his face, blotting out the smell.
But now there's noise, too. The clinking of dishes, the hiss of something frying.
Nate growls and half-stalks, half-crawls out of bed. He spends a fraction of a second looking for his slippers before he gives up and storms downstairs, brimming with anger and pain and soul-crushing fatigue.
It's Eliot—of course it's Eliot. Stirring sausages in one pan while he expertly folds an omelet onto a plate. He looks up when he hears Nate on the stairs and grins. Nate glowers.
"Go home, Eliot," he snarls.
Eliot snorts and, still stirring the sausages, blindly pulls open the silverware drawer and takes out a fork. "Not gonna happen, man."
"You've been pressing me for time off for a week now," Nate reminds him.
Eliot shrugs. "This is me taking time off." He puts the fork on the plate with the omelet and nudges it toward Nate. "Here—eat it while it's hot." He pours pancake batter onto a frying pan.
"No," Nate says shortly. "I'm going back to bed." Before he can stomp upstairs, though, the front door opens and Hardison comes in, his arms loaded down with what appears to be a year's supply of orange soda and gummi frogs. Parker's behind him, dressed all in black and wearing a mourning veil.
"Oh, good," Hardison says. "You're awake!"
Nate crosses his arms over his chest. "No. Absolutely not. You two, get out of here! And you, Eliot!"
"We can't leave," Parker says, walking over to take Nate by the arm. "We're here to help you."
He sputters at that, then surprises himself by allowing her to lead him to the couch. She pushes him gently until the back of his knees hit the cushion and he falls back onto it with an "oomph." A moment later, Hardison sticks the plate with the omelet in his hands. He holds it loosely and does not eat.
Eliot joins them at the couch, carrying a plate of sausages in one hand and a plate stacked with pancakes in the other. Hardison goes back to the kitchen and returns with plates, utensils, and syrup. Eliot sits on Nate's right, his elbow pressing into Nate's side. Parker plops down on his left, stretching her legs across Nate's with her feet on Eliot's knee.
Hardison takes the adjacent armchair and loads up a plate with sausages, pancakes, and gummi frogs—liberally drizzling syrup over all of it—then picks up the remote.
Nate has half a second to wonder where Sophie is before Hardison turns on the TV and Nate's heart seizes in his chest.
"What—" he croaks.
Eliot slings an arm over his shoulders. "Relax," he mutters. "Trust us."
Sophie is standing at Sam's grave, looking into the camera, holding a bouquet of bright flowers.
"Nate," she says, "we know what this day means to you. We know how much you lost. And we know how difficult it is for you to face it. Which is why we decided that, this year, you won't face it alone."
She holds the bouquet to her face, breathes in deeply, smiles at the scent. Unaccountably, Nate's eyes prickle.
She turns away from the camera to face the tombstone. "Sam Ford," she says softly. Her voice has none of the over-exaggerated emotion that it does when she's acting; this is from the heart. "We grieve every day for what happened to you. Though we never knew you, we love you—because we love your father. Your father, who loves you more than anything in the world. You would be so proud of him, Sam. I know that he was always proud of you."
She lifts the bouquet to her lips and sets it on the grave. She glances at the camera again, tears brimming in her eyes. She walks out of its line of sight.
A moment later, Maggie appears. Nate can see the strain that this day has put on her. Her face is drawn, her eyes hollow. Even now, she can't bring herself to look at the grave. He longs to hold her.
"I never blamed you, Nate," she tells him, looking down at her clenched hands. "Our son never blamed you. Please stop blaming yourself." She trembles a little, takes a deep breath. He thinks she intends to say something else, but instead she sort of crumples in on herself. Sophie leaps back into the picture to catch Maggie as she sags, following her to the ground, holding her as Maggie clutches her sleeve and sobs as if her heart is breaking.
Nate is crying too, crying in the combined embraces of Eliot and Parker as Hardison quietly turns off the television. The omelet is on the floor. Parker's arm is across Nate's throat, almost strangling him, and Eliot's hand—rough and soothing at the same time—is stroking Nate's hair. Nate falls asleep, or maybe blacks out.
The next thing he knows, he's waking up to find himself stretched out on the couch with a thin blanket drawn over him. Groggy, he turns his head and sees Eliot, Hardison, and Parker sitting on the floor in a semi-circle with a photo album and various papers strewn between them.
He'd last seen the album and those papers in his personal safe. Apparently there are certain drawbacks to having thieves treat one's home as their own.
"Look at those mad typing skills," Hardison says, pointing to a certificate Sam had once received. "Thirty-five words per minute, very nice! Looks like he was quite the little Hardison."
Either they haven't noticed Nate's awake, or they're pretending not to have noticed.
"Are you kidding me?" Eliot picks up Sam's report card and shoves it in Hardison's face. "Straight A's in PE, man! That's me all the way."
Parker, who's been flipping through the album, stops abruptly. "Look at this," she says. The other two crowd in around her. Nate can hear Eliot's sharp in-drawn breath. "I'd say he was a mini-Nate," Parker says softly, brushing her fingers across the photo.
Nate knows the picture. It's one of his favorite, with five-year-old Sam grinning mischievously into the camera with four of his friends—coincidentally, two girls and two boys—arrayed behind him like his own personal army. Sam had been quite the little leader.
Nate swings his feet over the edge of the couch and sits. The movement catches Eliot's eye. Eliot nudges Parker and Hardison, then jerks his head in Nate's direction. They look at him and smile.
Nate searches inside himself and is stunned to find that the knot of pain in his chest has loosened, just a little. Maybe it's because, in the smiles of his team, he can see echoes of Sam's customary grin. Maybe it's because this is the first time he's truly understood that Parker, Eliot, Hardison, and Sophie genuinely want him to be happy, genuinely care about him outside of his capacity as leader of their team.
He thinks back to what that grief counselor once said to him, about being open to the possibility of future happiness, about how he would have to want it if he was ever going to experience it. Thinking of Sam, he can almost remember what happiness feels like. Looking at his team, he wants to feel that again. Maybe it's possible for him to feel some small measure of happiness. Probably not. But maybe.
He slides off the couch and joins them on the floor.