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telarynTitle: Second Chances
'Verse: Leverage
Characters: Eliot, Nate, OMC (kinda)
Rating: PG=13
Word Count: 1867
Warnings: None
Summary: Eliot comes face to face with his own mortality, and unexpectedly argues himself into a second chance.
Author's Note: I recently put up an offer for a fic a day for the first twenty days of December. This is prompt #6, provided by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jazzyroses13, who proposed a very interesting story - putting Eliot up against St. Peter and having his certainty that he doesn't deserve heaven accidentally argue him into another chance at life.
Don't know if this is how you envisioned it coming together honey, but writing it was definitely fun.
Eliot Spencer had long ago made his peace with the fact that even though he’d been raised a proper Christian, Heaven wasn’t for the likes of him. It wasn’t something he ever discussed with anyone, because it wasn’t really anyone’s business.
Besides – people tended to look at you funny when you explained how you couldn’t respect a God that came at Good and Evil like some sort of cosmic tally sheet. Eliot was much more comfortable with doing good because it was a better way to live and allowed him to hold onto what little piece of his soul he had left, than looking at it as paying off some kind of debt he owed to the Divine Forces at Large.
Which meant that when he was ushered into the spacious corner office with a view of the mountains and the name Simon ben Jonah and the title “The Rock” inscribed in gold on a nameplate resting at the corner of the desk, his first reaction was to try and wake himself up. The man himself was about Nate’s age, dressed in a modest suit and reading sheets in an unusually large and old-fashioned ledger. “Ah, Mr. Spencer!” he said, glancing up as soon as Eliot was across the desk from him. “Sorry we have to meet so unexpectedly; I promise we’ll try to get you processed as soon as possible.”
The seat he waved Eliot to was comfortable, but having tried for several minutes now without success to wake himself up, Eliot knew he wasn’t going to be relaxing anytime soon. “There’s been some mistake,” he said finally. “I don’t know why I’m here?”
“Standard intake interview,” Simon said distractedly – eyes still on the open ledger. “Normally I’m more prepared than this, but we weren’t expecting you to jump the gun so spectacularly.” Half a moment later, he paused – a small, self-deprecating smile ghosting across his expression. “Of course, given how you’ve been doing these last handful of years, I guess we should have figured something like this would happen.”
Exhaling softly, he straightened up and folded his hands on top of the ledger; giving Eliot his full attention at last. “I’m sorry. Some confusion is natural in situations like this. What’s the last thing you remember?”
It never occurred to him not to answer, but when Eliot tried to recall the last thing he could put his finger on as being real, it was like looking into a dense fog. “We were working a job,” he said, brow furrowing as he struggled to put the pieces back together. “A real son of a bitch.” He paused, the distant sound of arguing voices in his mind. “Hardison…had just found out he was abusing his son.”
Nate had gone cold on hearing the news. Eliot suddenly remembered Sophie’s stricken expression with a painful clarity. Nate had stormed out of the pub without explanation or comment, and she’d automatically looked to him to bring the mastermind home.
“They were arguing,” he said carefully. “Nate was threatening Bilinski with all kinds of damnation.” His focus was internal now – he was only dimly aware of where he was, or that he had an audience. “Bilinski pulled…” He rubbed his hand reflexively across his chest, feeling a sudden burning inside, and swallowed hard. “He pulled a gun. Nate was so far gone he didn’t notice.”
“He didn’t care,” Simon interjected. Eyes wide as he began to put the pieces together at last, Eliot met the impassive gaze of the strange executive across the desk. “You have to understand that Nathan Ford’s soul is deeply damaged. You and your friends have brought him an incredible amount of healing, but some things are between an individual and his God.”
“No!” A surge of anger drove Eliot to his feet, but before he could make another move the burning ache in his chest flared to blazing life. He staggered, barely catching himself with his free hand against the edge of the desk. “You can’t…talk about…”
There was a thick wetness suddenly spreading under the hand he still had pressed to his chest. Stunned, Eliot pulled it away and saw dark liquid dripping slowly and heavily from his skin. Heart blood. He knew it as certainly as he’d ever known anything in his life.
“Mr. Spencer, you need to calm down.” Simon hadn’t been ruffled in the slightest, either by Eliot’s outburst or the fact that he was now actively bleeding onto the expensive carpet, but his expression was deadly serious. “You weren’t given a chance to fully process what happened. Getting upset here in this place can have some major ramifications.”
“I was shot!” Breathing was getting more difficult; Eliot half-fell, half-sat back in the chair. The pain in the middle of his chest was threatening to block out his awareness of anything else. “Bilinski was aiming at Nate…he was going to fire…”
Simon nodded. “And you stepped in the way. You took the bullet.” He sighed. “You can’t be surprised by how this turned out, Mr. Spencer.” He glanced at the open ledger and put his finger next to an entry. “It says here that you committed to this as a possible fate after Mr. Ford was shot on board Il Falcone Maltese in 2010.”
Eliot was stunned into silence for several long moments. Gradually he realized that his breathing was starting to ease, and when he looked down at his chest, the wound was no longer visible. “You need to draw your strength from that knowledge,” Simon continued. “It will make your transition smoother.”
His fingers flexed against the area where the wound had been. He managed to keep from clenching his hand into a fist, but it was a near thing. Accepting that he’d been shot, that he’d taken a bullet for Nate, was prompting some other more deeply terrifying realizations. Chief among them was the fact that this was likely not a dream. “Transition to what?” he managed to get out finally. Laying his suspicions out for Simon to confirm or deny was something he wasn’t quite ready to handle yet. “Where am I supposed to be going?”
“You’re dead, Mr. Spencer. It is my job to help you transition to your afterlife.”
Dead. Eliot exhaled sharply, slumping back slightly in his chair. The truth of it had been hovering around his consciousness ever since he’d entered the office, but hearing Simon say it seemed to free something inside him. “Okay…so what happens now?” He paused, looking around and forcing himself to really see his surroundings. “This all seems a little civilized for someone like me.”
For the first time, Simon looked confused. “Heaven is tailored to each soul’s personal experience, Mr. Spencer. With the volume we move on an hourly basis, it’s just not efficient for my position to be customized in the same way.”
“Heaven.” Even saying it out loud sounded wrong to Eliot’s ears. “I’m not supposed to be going to heaven.”
Simon sighed again, and Eliot could hear a twinge of frustration in the man’s voice. “You made the decision to avert Nathan Ford’s fate and take it on yourself, Mr. Spencer. Even though it wasn’t your time, we have to deal with the consequences of your choices.”
“No,” Eliot protested. “I’m fine with that part. It’s like you said – I accepted that it might come down to something like this. It’s the rest of it. I’m not supposed to be here. There’s been some kind of mistake.” Heaven? He’d dismissed the possibility so long ago that the only thing his brain could handle was that there had been some kind of cosmic screw-up.
“I understand this can be difficult to accept,” Simon said – clearly trying a different tack, “but I have literally hundreds of thousands of souls waiting behind you. I need you to try and open your mind a little to what’s going on here.”
“Dead. Got it,” Eliot said, trying to control his own rising frustration now. “I’m still not supposed to be here.” He pointed at the open ledger. “Doesn’t that have my history? Read it all the way through, and you’ll get why talking about heaven to somebody like me is impossible!”
“I have read your history, Mr. Spencer,” Simon said, “and the decision was made for you to go to heaven. It’s not for either of us to question it.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Eliot growled. The idea that someone who had done the things he’d done could be passed through to paradise after a few brief years as a reasonably good guy violated his understanding of life so deeply that he couldn’t do anything but reject it. It was the only way he knew how to retain his sense of self.
Simon stared at him for a long moment, then got to his feet and went towards the door of the office. Eliot forced himself not to watch as the man – or whatever he was – talked to somebody in low tones. After another moment, he returned to stand next to Eliot. “Get up, Mr. Spencer.”
Pretty sure that he’d angered the exec, Eliot nevertheless did what he was told. He wasn’t trying to be difficult; he just needed Simon to understand that somebody somewhere had made a mistake.
“We do have a provision for people in your situation,” Simon said, looking suddenly resigned. “It’s not a measure we prefer to enact because it has consequences, but you are clearly not ready to accept what’s happening and because of the schedule disruption, I don’t have the time to spend with you that I should.”
He raised his right hand and reached towards the spot on Eliot’s chest where the gunshot wound had been. “Hold still…”
******************
Noise and light crashed in around him. There was a mask on his face, forcing oxygen into his tortured lungs and he was surrounded by people shouting at each other. Pain nearly consumed his entire being, and Eliot wondered in a flash if he was getting ready to die all over again.
“Eliot!”
The insanity cleared for a moment, and he saw Nate at his side. “You’re going to be okay,” the mastermind was saying. “It’s going to be fine. It’s all going to be fine.” Tears stained his face, and his expression was bordering on hysterical.
Then the paramedics crowded in again, pushing Nate out of the way. Alive…I’m alive… It was a difficult thought swimming against the tide of pain that was still threatening to take him back down. He’d been shot in the chest. That meant surgery and a long, painful recovery, but he was going to live.
I’m not supposed to be here. Had he really convinced Simon ben Jonah to send him back, to restore him to life? You’re assuming it was real. Which was crazy, wasn’t it? It made more sense that his time in the executive suite was the dream – even if he had died for a moment, his brain had dreamt up the encounter to make sense of what was happening.
And yet, even in the face of the perfectly logical rationalization, he couldn’t shake the feeling that every moment of it was true.
'Verse: Leverage
Characters: Eliot, Nate, OMC (kinda)
Rating: PG=13
Word Count: 1867
Warnings: None
Summary: Eliot comes face to face with his own mortality, and unexpectedly argues himself into a second chance.
Author's Note: I recently put up an offer for a fic a day for the first twenty days of December. This is prompt #6, provided by
jazzyroses13, who proposed a very interesting story - putting Eliot up against St. Peter and having his certainty that he doesn't deserve heaven accidentally argue him into another chance at life.Don't know if this is how you envisioned it coming together honey, but writing it was definitely fun.
Eliot Spencer had long ago made his peace with the fact that even though he’d been raised a proper Christian, Heaven wasn’t for the likes of him. It wasn’t something he ever discussed with anyone, because it wasn’t really anyone’s business.
Besides – people tended to look at you funny when you explained how you couldn’t respect a God that came at Good and Evil like some sort of cosmic tally sheet. Eliot was much more comfortable with doing good because it was a better way to live and allowed him to hold onto what little piece of his soul he had left, than looking at it as paying off some kind of debt he owed to the Divine Forces at Large.
Which meant that when he was ushered into the spacious corner office with a view of the mountains and the name Simon ben Jonah and the title “The Rock” inscribed in gold on a nameplate resting at the corner of the desk, his first reaction was to try and wake himself up. The man himself was about Nate’s age, dressed in a modest suit and reading sheets in an unusually large and old-fashioned ledger. “Ah, Mr. Spencer!” he said, glancing up as soon as Eliot was across the desk from him. “Sorry we have to meet so unexpectedly; I promise we’ll try to get you processed as soon as possible.”
The seat he waved Eliot to was comfortable, but having tried for several minutes now without success to wake himself up, Eliot knew he wasn’t going to be relaxing anytime soon. “There’s been some mistake,” he said finally. “I don’t know why I’m here?”
“Standard intake interview,” Simon said distractedly – eyes still on the open ledger. “Normally I’m more prepared than this, but we weren’t expecting you to jump the gun so spectacularly.” Half a moment later, he paused – a small, self-deprecating smile ghosting across his expression. “Of course, given how you’ve been doing these last handful of years, I guess we should have figured something like this would happen.”
Exhaling softly, he straightened up and folded his hands on top of the ledger; giving Eliot his full attention at last. “I’m sorry. Some confusion is natural in situations like this. What’s the last thing you remember?”
It never occurred to him not to answer, but when Eliot tried to recall the last thing he could put his finger on as being real, it was like looking into a dense fog. “We were working a job,” he said, brow furrowing as he struggled to put the pieces back together. “A real son of a bitch.” He paused, the distant sound of arguing voices in his mind. “Hardison…had just found out he was abusing his son.”
Nate had gone cold on hearing the news. Eliot suddenly remembered Sophie’s stricken expression with a painful clarity. Nate had stormed out of the pub without explanation or comment, and she’d automatically looked to him to bring the mastermind home.
“They were arguing,” he said carefully. “Nate was threatening Bilinski with all kinds of damnation.” His focus was internal now – he was only dimly aware of where he was, or that he had an audience. “Bilinski pulled…” He rubbed his hand reflexively across his chest, feeling a sudden burning inside, and swallowed hard. “He pulled a gun. Nate was so far gone he didn’t notice.”
“He didn’t care,” Simon interjected. Eyes wide as he began to put the pieces together at last, Eliot met the impassive gaze of the strange executive across the desk. “You have to understand that Nathan Ford’s soul is deeply damaged. You and your friends have brought him an incredible amount of healing, but some things are between an individual and his God.”
“No!” A surge of anger drove Eliot to his feet, but before he could make another move the burning ache in his chest flared to blazing life. He staggered, barely catching himself with his free hand against the edge of the desk. “You can’t…talk about…”
There was a thick wetness suddenly spreading under the hand he still had pressed to his chest. Stunned, Eliot pulled it away and saw dark liquid dripping slowly and heavily from his skin. Heart blood. He knew it as certainly as he’d ever known anything in his life.
“Mr. Spencer, you need to calm down.” Simon hadn’t been ruffled in the slightest, either by Eliot’s outburst or the fact that he was now actively bleeding onto the expensive carpet, but his expression was deadly serious. “You weren’t given a chance to fully process what happened. Getting upset here in this place can have some major ramifications.”
“I was shot!” Breathing was getting more difficult; Eliot half-fell, half-sat back in the chair. The pain in the middle of his chest was threatening to block out his awareness of anything else. “Bilinski was aiming at Nate…he was going to fire…”
Simon nodded. “And you stepped in the way. You took the bullet.” He sighed. “You can’t be surprised by how this turned out, Mr. Spencer.” He glanced at the open ledger and put his finger next to an entry. “It says here that you committed to this as a possible fate after Mr. Ford was shot on board Il Falcone Maltese in 2010.”
Eliot was stunned into silence for several long moments. Gradually he realized that his breathing was starting to ease, and when he looked down at his chest, the wound was no longer visible. “You need to draw your strength from that knowledge,” Simon continued. “It will make your transition smoother.”
His fingers flexed against the area where the wound had been. He managed to keep from clenching his hand into a fist, but it was a near thing. Accepting that he’d been shot, that he’d taken a bullet for Nate, was prompting some other more deeply terrifying realizations. Chief among them was the fact that this was likely not a dream. “Transition to what?” he managed to get out finally. Laying his suspicions out for Simon to confirm or deny was something he wasn’t quite ready to handle yet. “Where am I supposed to be going?”
“You’re dead, Mr. Spencer. It is my job to help you transition to your afterlife.”
Dead. Eliot exhaled sharply, slumping back slightly in his chair. The truth of it had been hovering around his consciousness ever since he’d entered the office, but hearing Simon say it seemed to free something inside him. “Okay…so what happens now?” He paused, looking around and forcing himself to really see his surroundings. “This all seems a little civilized for someone like me.”
For the first time, Simon looked confused. “Heaven is tailored to each soul’s personal experience, Mr. Spencer. With the volume we move on an hourly basis, it’s just not efficient for my position to be customized in the same way.”
“Heaven.” Even saying it out loud sounded wrong to Eliot’s ears. “I’m not supposed to be going to heaven.”
Simon sighed again, and Eliot could hear a twinge of frustration in the man’s voice. “You made the decision to avert Nathan Ford’s fate and take it on yourself, Mr. Spencer. Even though it wasn’t your time, we have to deal with the consequences of your choices.”
“No,” Eliot protested. “I’m fine with that part. It’s like you said – I accepted that it might come down to something like this. It’s the rest of it. I’m not supposed to be here. There’s been some kind of mistake.” Heaven? He’d dismissed the possibility so long ago that the only thing his brain could handle was that there had been some kind of cosmic screw-up.
“I understand this can be difficult to accept,” Simon said – clearly trying a different tack, “but I have literally hundreds of thousands of souls waiting behind you. I need you to try and open your mind a little to what’s going on here.”
“Dead. Got it,” Eliot said, trying to control his own rising frustration now. “I’m still not supposed to be here.” He pointed at the open ledger. “Doesn’t that have my history? Read it all the way through, and you’ll get why talking about heaven to somebody like me is impossible!”
“I have read your history, Mr. Spencer,” Simon said, “and the decision was made for you to go to heaven. It’s not for either of us to question it.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Eliot growled. The idea that someone who had done the things he’d done could be passed through to paradise after a few brief years as a reasonably good guy violated his understanding of life so deeply that he couldn’t do anything but reject it. It was the only way he knew how to retain his sense of self.
Simon stared at him for a long moment, then got to his feet and went towards the door of the office. Eliot forced himself not to watch as the man – or whatever he was – talked to somebody in low tones. After another moment, he returned to stand next to Eliot. “Get up, Mr. Spencer.”
Pretty sure that he’d angered the exec, Eliot nevertheless did what he was told. He wasn’t trying to be difficult; he just needed Simon to understand that somebody somewhere had made a mistake.
“We do have a provision for people in your situation,” Simon said, looking suddenly resigned. “It’s not a measure we prefer to enact because it has consequences, but you are clearly not ready to accept what’s happening and because of the schedule disruption, I don’t have the time to spend with you that I should.”
He raised his right hand and reached towards the spot on Eliot’s chest where the gunshot wound had been. “Hold still…”
******************
Noise and light crashed in around him. There was a mask on his face, forcing oxygen into his tortured lungs and he was surrounded by people shouting at each other. Pain nearly consumed his entire being, and Eliot wondered in a flash if he was getting ready to die all over again.
“Eliot!”
The insanity cleared for a moment, and he saw Nate at his side. “You’re going to be okay,” the mastermind was saying. “It’s going to be fine. It’s all going to be fine.” Tears stained his face, and his expression was bordering on hysterical.
Then the paramedics crowded in again, pushing Nate out of the way. Alive…I’m alive… It was a difficult thought swimming against the tide of pain that was still threatening to take him back down. He’d been shot in the chest. That meant surgery and a long, painful recovery, but he was going to live.
I’m not supposed to be here. Had he really convinced Simon ben Jonah to send him back, to restore him to life? You’re assuming it was real. Which was crazy, wasn’t it? It made more sense that his time in the executive suite was the dream – even if he had died for a moment, his brain had dreamt up the encounter to make sense of what was happening.
And yet, even in the face of the perfectly logical rationalization, he couldn’t shake the feeling that every moment of it was true.
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