Part I (and on LJ)

It’s written in an experimental style for me, and, well, it’s fanfic, so pls. be kind.

Fade in from commercial to Eliot kneeling on the floor in front of two redheaded women.

“Stand up and come with me.” The redheaded women are both looking at Eliot, but it’s the one in yoga pants that speaks.

Eliot looks at her; he doesn’t move, not yet. Lady Alessia is still holding the remote; she jabs her finger at the button. This time, it’s a long shock, nearly enough to knock him out.

“That’s enough.” Anastasia holds out her hand for the remote. “He’s a lovely gift, Alessia, thank you. But if I’m going to control him, you’l have to give me the remote.”

There’s a moment where Alessia hesitates, frowning. Then she nods. “Of course, dear sister. Here. And the keys as well, although I’d be careful with unlocking him. He’s a bit… feral.”

“You always give me the nicest presents.” The remote goes into Anastasia’s back pocket, and her arm goes under Eliot’s shoulders. “Stand up,” she repeats, in exactly the same tone as before, “and come with me.”

The Office

“So this is the ‘intake database’ for the slave markets of Tír na Cali.” Hardison’s air quotes seem to cut the air. “And they’re very thorough. Everything about every slave they ‘intake’ comes into this system. It’s one of the most secure in the world. One of.” He pokes the screen. “It took me almost half an hour to crack it, and I only have about fifteen minutes before they notice I’m here.”

He flips through photographs of naked people, one after another. Most of them are young, many of them are handsome. “This is the intake for the week Eliot and King went missing. And here is Brendan King.” Their mark – their former mark – looks lost and sad, standing against height markers like a prisoner, wearing nothing but handcuffs and a plastic collar.

Hardison takes a breath. It has none of his usual dramatic flair; his hand hesitates on his remote.

“And here is Eliot.”

There are stats, lines and lines of information and notes. None of them are looking at that. They are all looking at the photo of their friend and teammate, handcuffed, shackled, and collared, in the process of lunging at the camera already.

“Right.” Nate puts his hands on the table. “Let’s go steal an Eliot.”

“Any Eliot?” Sophie’s lips purse. “I’ve found myself rather fond of the one we had.”

“There are no other Eliots. Nobody else is an option.”

“I’m teasing, Parker. I’m just teasing. Of course we’re going to steal our Eliot. “

“Because he’s the best.” Parker is trying to smile; it’s obvious she’s not quite getting there.

“Because he’s ours.

Tír na Cali

Lady Anastasia walks Eliot down the hall. Her arm is still wrapped around his shoulders, although his footsteps, even shackled, are growing more steady.

They turn down a quiet, dimly-lit stretch of hallway, and she releases him. She takes three steps away; her stance shifts, feet spread, hands lazy at her sides. Eliot, bound as he is, still gives the impression he’s ready for a fight.

“Before you kill me.” Anastasia’s voice is rough but certain. “There’s something you should know.”

Part VII: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/679176.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/678175.html. You can comment here or there.

Part I (and on LJ)

Fade in from commercial; the back of a well-dressed redhead, again, and Eliot, clenching his jaw.

“Now kneel.” The woman’s voice is like knives, sharp and cold. We can see from the side of her that she’s smiling, pleased with this. Eliot, on the other hand, is not.

“Fu-”

The electric sound fills the air again. Eliot’s hands twitch and once again clench into fists.

“Kneel.”

Eliot kneels.

“Very good. I knew you could be trained.” She pats his shoulder; he says nothing. His head is down; his hair loose in his face. “I wonder if she’ll cut that hair. A pity, if she does, but she likes the military sort.”

“She?” The woman’s hand hovers on the remote; Eliot adds a grudging “Ma’am?”

“My darling little sister.” The words could burn. “And she’s coming. Be quiet and behave yourself until she gets here.”

“Ma’am.” He nods his head again, letting his hair cover almost everything.

“Aah, Anastasia! I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come!”

Another redhead enters; we’ve seen her before, at the very beginning clip, but looking at her next to Alessia, they’re prince-and-pauper twins.

“Alessia.” Anastasia’s stance is careful, legs shoulder-width apart; she’s wearing loose pants and a silk tank top that gives her plenty of movement range. “How can I help you?”

“I got you a present. I saw him in the store, and I just couldn’t help myself!” Lady Alessia is gushing. Her voice is sickly-sweet and her smile is painted on. “This is Eliot. Isn’t he lovely?”

Eliot looks up at the sisters, his expression just short of murder.

The Office.

“So, we’re down to two options.” Nate is glaring at the computer screen. “Hardison found both cars-”

“Parts of both cars. Let me tell you, Eliot’s going to be pissed.”

“If you want to vanish, you break all your connections, everything that ever tied you to your persona. The car would be a big part of that.”

“He wouldn’t.” Sophie’s hands are tight on the table. “Would he?”

“That’s option number one. Option number two-”

“No. Nuh-unh. No way.” Parker is shaking her head, no, no, no. “Sophie…”

“Let him talk, Parker.”

“I don’t like it either, Parker, but we have to accept the possibility that he’s been taken by the Californians.”

“Then he’s dead.” Hardison’s voice is flat. “There’s no way Eliot would stand for that. He’d make them kill him.”

“There is a good possibility that he’s dead, yes. Hardison, can you hack the Californian databases?”

Tír na Cali

“Now, you two have fun.” Lady Alessia makes shooing gestures. “Go on, Anastasia, enjoy him.”

The pauper twin looks between the two of them, Lady and angry slave a couple times, then seems to come to a decision. She nods at Eliot. “Stand up and come with me.”

Cut to commercial.

Part IV – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/678175.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/673541.html. You can comment here or there.

Part I (and on LJ)

This one is sort of a transition sequence; I had to get him back to the beginning…

Fade in from commercial: first sound, heels clicking on the floor, then a redheaded woman in an expensive business suit. She’s holding something in her hand – a smart phone? a remote control? Eliot’s vision is blurring in and out; he blinks a few times and we see a button right under her thumb.

“This is how this is going to work.” Her voice is faint; she opens a window in the front of Eliot’s box, maybe three feet wide by two feet tall. “You are going to do what I say. Everything I say, when I say it. And you are going to respond to anything I say with ‘yes, Lady Alessia.’ Do you understand?”

Eliot blinks again and his vision is clear. “Fuck you, Lady Alessia.” His voice comes out like a grunt, raw and pained. An electric zapping sound fills the room. Eliot grunts again, louder and clearly more pained. “The fuck?”

“It’s a training collar. You’re a difficult case, or so they’ve told me, but I have the perfect place for you. Now, come on out of that box, nice and slowly.”

“I’m cuffed – ow, fuck!”

“You’re cuffed, what?”

Eliot glares balefully at her. Her finger is lingering over the button, however. “I’m cuffed, Lady Alessia. Really?”

“Really. If you’re going to be a slave in Tír na Cali, you’re going to have to learn the rules… oh, dear.” She steps back delicately as Eliot slides out of the small opening, landing on his feet despite his bindings. “As I was saying. You’re going to have to learn the rules.”

“Fuck you… Lady Alessia.” This time, he doesn’t even grunt as the shock goes through him. She keeps shocking him until he falls unconscious.

Later

“You are going to make a lovely gift for my sister.”

“I’m not anybody’s gift, not yours or your bitch sister.” Eliot has been in better moods.

She slaps him this time, instead of shocking him, her claws raking across his cheek, barely missing his eye and his mouth. A drop of blood trickles out.

“Now remember to behave until I hand you over.” He has pants on; that’s a start. Not much of a start, since they are so sheer as to nearly be see-through, but it’s something.

“Behave.” He snarls it, half an agreement, half a question, but does not move. The redhead still tut-tuts at him.

“I did say behave.” She pushes a button waiting in her hand. A buzzing zzap fills the air, brief but loud. Eliot clenches his jaw, refusing to shudder.

Cut to commercial.

Part V

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/656100.html. You can comment here or there.

Part I (and on LJ)

It’s written in an experimental style for me, and, well, it’s fanfic, so pls. be kind.

Fade in from commercial as a black-haired woman aims a rifle at Eliot.

She’s wearing the same outfit as the men on the floor – black fatigues, black tank top, black jacket. She’s too slender, too weedy, to be believable as a soldier, and her hair is loose, tangled black curls everywhere. She’s aiming the rifle with military precision, though.

“Shoot me.” Eliot grunts out the challenge. “Come on, shoot me. You can’t, can’t you? You need me alive.”

“Yep.” She pulls the trigger.

Location: Their Newest Office.
Time: The next morning

“So, this is what we have. Sophie and Parker cased the bar; the bartender remembers Eliot and King going out for a smoke; King was drunk enough that he was falling all over Eliot.”

The Last Call Bar

“I have to say, they weren’t the sort that I pegged for being a little bit swish, you know, but the way the older guy was all over the younger one…” The bartender sits down on one of his own stools. “Sorry, ma’am. You said the old guy was your husband?”

“Ex.” Sophie’s persona snips the word off. “My ex-husband. And his boyfriend, you say? Well, that certainly explains a lot about him and his poker games.”

Gambling debt explains a lot. The bartender nods. “Men do stupid things when they’re trying to hide things, ma’am. I’m awfully sorry. It’s just, he ran out on a tab…”

The Office.

“And Parker found in the back…”

Parker dumps a bag onto the table; cigarette butts and matches fall onto the table. “This isn’t the interesting part, unless you find it interesting how many cheap cigarettes people smoke. No, this is.” With thick gloves on, she extracts a single needle-tip from an envelope. She sets it down on top of the envelope and adds a spent cartridge.

“Tranq. He was tranqued.“ Hardison glares at the dart as if it’s offended him. “Shit.”

“And King?” Nate is staring at the needle, too. “Concrete facts, Hardison. King?”

“As far as we can tell, he’s missing, too.”

Somewhere in Tír na Cali

Eliot comes to in a glass box; the box is only big enough for him to sit in. His hands are shackled behind his back, his ankles cuffed together, and the metal collar he is wearing is thick and clunky-looking.

There is a man we haven’t seen before in the cell to his left; in the cell to his right sits an uncomfortable-looking Brendan King. Both are wearing the same sort of plastic collar that Eliot was earlier sporting; neither are handcuffed.

A gorgeous redhead strides into view, her heels clicking loudly on the floor.

Cut to Commercial.

Part IV (and on LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/649510.html. You can comment here or there.

Part I (and on LJ)

It’s written in an experimental style for me, and, well, it’s fanfic, so pls. be kind.

Fade in from commercial: an expensive chair, the back of a woman wearing very expensive high heels and a sleek business suit, Eliot’s back.

“I did say behave.”

Eliot clenches his jaw. From behind him, we can see how his fists, too, are clenched. Lash marks mar his back, some fresh, some already beginning to heal.

“Now kneel.” The woman’s voice is like knives, sharp and cold.

“Fu-” The electric sound fills the air again. Eliot’s hands twitch and once again clench into fists.

“Kneel.”

And he kneels.

Location: Their Newest Office.
Time: The evening Eliot was taken

“I’m telling you, this is where the tracker went dead.” Hardison jabs his finger at his state-of-the-art screen, at a glowing point on the map that indicates Eliot’s last-known: the red box noting the mark’s watering hole of choice suggests he’d moved a couple miles north of the Last Call Bar.

“But that doesn’t make any sense.” Nate is frowning; that’s fair, they are all frowning. But he’s frowning at the data. “I mean, the plan was for Eliot to bring the mark out to his car, and then take him back to the warehouse.” He gestures broadly at the map. “The car is gone…”

“Tracker disabled, car missing, not in any junkyard we’ve been able to find.” Hardison’s voice goes from short to snapppish. Nobody notices. “And what’s more? King’s car is missing, too. And so’s King.”

“Eliot was supposed to make Brendan King vanish.” Sophie purses her lips. “That was the con. Get him to spill everything in front of a witness…”

“And then buckle him up tight.” Hardison nods. “Yes, exactly. The thing is, they were supposed to vanish from everyone but us. This… this is not everyone but us.”

Parker twists in her chair, looking between the other three members of the team. When she speaks, her voice is very quiet. “You don’t think he’s ditched us, do you?”

Deep in Tir Na Cali
As the team is discussing his disappearance

Eliot throws a punch, knocking a man to the ground. Surrounding him are the bodies of five others, all wearing the same uniform: black on black, with black hats. The room in concrete block with narrow metal beds; a chain link gate swings open behind him.

Eliot is wearing a plastic collar, bright orange, and half a pair of handcuffs.

Behind him, a black-haired woman aims a rifle.

Cut to Commercial.

Part III (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/646705.html. You can comment here or there.

This is … what happens when you let me watch an entire season of Leverage in a week and a half. *cough* Tír na Cali/Leverage fanfiction crossover.

It’s written in an experimental style for me, and, well, it’s fanfic, so pls. be kind.

“Hardison, no!”

Alec Hardison levels a gun at a pretty redhead; her eyes narrow. Behind Hardison, Eliot shouts out. A glint of gold can be seen around his neck.

The redhead moves.

Three weeks earlier

“And that’s when she left me.” The man has been crying into his whiskey for an hour, while Eliot keeps the drinks coming and pretended to be interested. “And she took the Molier.”

This is the piece of information that they’ve been waiting for. “Damn, man.” Eliot shakes his head in sympathy. “Damn, that’s hard.”

The drunk is patting his pockets. “Got a light?”

“Yeah, but you can’t smoke in here. Come on, I’ll join you.” He tilts his head towards the back porch.

They step out onto the porch, the only ones out there. It’s a Tuesday night, and the bar was nearly empty to begin with; a few nudges cleared it out. There’s nobody to interfere with –

Eliot never sees who hits him with the tranq dart. The dart lands; he shoves the mark out of the way. “Nate?” He pulls the dart out. “Nate, I’m hit. I’m…”

Not even an elephant tranq should be that fast-acting. He goes down on top of the mark, swearing into the com.

Location: Deep in Tír na Cali.
Time: Four days later

“Now remember to behave until I hand you over.” The woman was gorgeous – red hair like a flame, body sleek like an athlete, dressed like a businesswoman. Her eyes are pale, her smile painted-on, and her nails are very sharp, which Eliot has had cause to learn, if the lines across his face are any indication.

He is wearing, in addition to her claw-marks, a very thick metal collar, shackles just as thick, and thin pants that don’t suit him.

“Behave.” He snarls it, half an agreement, half a question, but does not move. The redhead still tut-tuts at him.

“I did say behave.” She pushes a button waiting in her hand. A buzzing zzap fills the air, brief but loud. Eliot clenches his jaw, refusing to shudder.

Cut to commercial.

Part Two (and on LJ)
Part III (and on LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/645538.html. You can comment here or there.