Fic: Case of Mistaken Identity
Fic: Case Of Mistaken Identity
Author: LMX
Fandom: Leverage/ER
Pairing: Sophie/Nate/Eliot, Eliot/Moreau, (possibly one-sided) Eliot/Luca Kovač
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: ER Spoilers for Kovač's history and Leverage end of Season 3 and start of Season 4 spoilers.
Words: 2130
Warnings: This should be readable without knowing anything about ER or Luca Kovač. Hopefully.
Notes: For the leverageland Secret Agent challenge.
--
Of all the things Nate had heard in his life, this would definitely rank as one of those he didn't ever want to hear again.
"Say that again," he asked. He said it gently, rather than in the ranting tone he wanted to use, because he could hear an unfamiliar tremble in Hardison's voice that didn't fit with anything he'd ever heard from the hacker before.
"Eliot's just had some kind of breakdown in the Chicago ER. He tried to bash in the face of the ER doc who was trying to help him out, was calling him Damien." There was a stilted pause, the distinct sounds of a busy city hospital in the background. "I'm not gonna say the guy doesn't look like Moreau, but it ain't him, that's for sure."
"What's happening now?" Nate pressed, still gently. The last thing he needed now was for Hardison to explode on him.
"They've got Eliot restrained, and they're planning on moving him to the psych ward after they've stitched him up and made sure he isn't bleeding into his skull." There was a hesitation, Parker's voice murmuring too far away from the phone's mic to be picked up. "Apparently one of the other doctors has heard of Moreau and they've called the FBI in 'cause they think Eliot might be involved in the guy's operation."
"Which he was," Nate pointed out blandly.
"Yeah, well." Hardison sighed heavily. "That ain't exactly our biggest problem here, is it."
"Head injury?" Nate asked. Hardison hadn't mentioned anything when they'd said they were taking Eliot to the hospital before heading home, but it was rare enough for him to allow that. Nate had been working very hard on not obsessing over how their hitter might be hurt, pushing it hard into the category of 'things they could deal with once the con was over and Eliot was here at home with him and Sophie'.
"None that I can see," Hardison replied cagily. "We only came here because his hand was messed up from the steam vent. But he was in the usual Eliot-style face off with half a dozen guys back at the plant. Who knows what happened while we were making our get away."
"So he's hallucinating, product of head trauma." Nate was already shuffling through fake IDs for a medical doctor, pulling out an FBI badge with Sophie's photograph, reaching for his car keys with the other hand, phone pressed into his shoulder. "That's easy enough to explain away. We need a backstory for why he'd react like that to seeing Moreau. Maybe some blackmailing of a legitimate businessman, pushing him to the limit..."
Hardison coughed uncomfortably. "Nah, that's not going to fly."
Nate froze in place, "Why."
"Before he started a fight, Eliot kissed the guy."
Nate quietly added that to his list - suddenly expanding quite fast - of things he never wanted to hear or think about again.
"Alright then. Alright. So..." Nate floundered for a minute, mind flooded with images of how impassioned Eliot had been in Moreau's presence, how uncharacteristically emotional. How firm he'd been than no part of the San Lorenzo con take him anywhere near Moreau or his compatriots. "Stall. Delay the FBI if you can, give them information to send them chasing their tails. Sophie and I will be there as soon as we can. Let us know if his condition changes." Nate hung up on Hardison's objections and reached for his overnight bag.
"Nate?" Sophie appeared behind him, and the moral support was briefly overwhelming.
"Eliot's got himself in trouble in Chicago," he said plainly, handing over the FBI badge.
"And?" Sophie pressed, heading back towards the bedroom and going straight to the closet.
"He may have had a break with reality." He forced his voice flat and closed an iron fist around the panic in his chest. It was serious. Nate was well aware how serious losing grip was for a guy like Eliot. For anyone with Eliot's skills. His history.
"Is everyone alright?" Sophie asked, slipping into a dark suit, changing with brusque efficiency.
"Everyone but Eliot," Nate frowned. "And his doctor." He caught the sharp look Sophie threw at him as she pulled on her shoes. "It doesn't sound too bad, Eliot was hurt before he got to the hospital, so hopefully that stopped him doing anything anyone's going to regret."
Sophie chuckled tersely. "Well, let's go find out what we've got to save him from then," she sighed, and picked up a bag on her way out of the door.
-
"Detectives. Agents." Luca Kovač straightened compulsively in the face of the police and FBI presence now stood in front of him. He was heavily aware of the bruising on his face, and the ache in his side that Abby thought might be a broken rib, but he wasn't about to go home right now. This could prove to be interesting.
"Doctor Kovač." The first of the two agents; the younger one, blond and sharply dressed, stepped forwards first. "Your collegue's report was of a great deal of interest to us. We've had a team collecting information on Mr. Moreau's operation for a long time, but since his arrest in San Lorenzo it seemed like a lot of our cases were going to co gold. To capture one of his lieutenants at this point..."
Carter had spent a couple of caught moments bringing Kovač up to speed on Moreau and his warlording tendencies. Arms trade, blood money, drugs and prostitution. It wasn't anything he hadn't heard before, even though the name was new, but talking to Greenday's friend and his girlfriend... he just couldn't see it. It seemed much more likely the guy was just suffering from head trauma from the assault, and he'd gotten turned around and confused. It was less than unusual, and it was hardly the first hit he'd taken from a confused patient.
The first time he'd been kissed, though. That was definitely a first.
"Look, I don't really know who this Moreau guy is, but Mr. Greenday is suffering from a head trauma," Kovač shrugged. "We haven't assessed the level of damage but it's entirely possible that he doesn't even know where he is, let alone who he thought I was."
"Dr. Kovač, I'm afraid that is not the issue at hand here at all." The agent's voice turned sharp. "We know who your Mr. Greenday is."
"Well, if Mr. Greenday was one of Mr. Moreau's lieutenants it wasn't recently."
"And why do you say that, Doctor Kovač?" The second agent spoke more softly and with a gentle smile, Kovač would bet this was the guy they sent in to talk to witnesses and families.
"For a start, the first thing he did when he saw me..." Luca was determined he wasn't going to blush.
"We've heard about the assault. It's not as unusual as you might think for Moreau's staff to be... well, aggressive might be putting it lightly. Even towards the man himself. He crews a gang of sociopaths. Mercenaries and murderers."
"The friend who brought Mr. Greenday in - Mr. Vox - he said Greenday and his girlfriend had been together for nearly four years. She's a sweet girl, she sells flowers on the high street. He's not a sociopath." He wasn't entirely sure why he was so adamant that the guy was innocent. Maybe he just didn't want to see another guy hauled off into the hands of the FBI.
"I don't see how that's relevant, Doctor Kovač." The first agent pulled out a photograph - surveillance, grainy with distance - of three men and a woman. The two men were turned submissively towards the third in the centre, a man with dark hair and an amiable smile but the stance and posture of a soldier. In a second glance, Kovač could see how Nick Greenday had mistaken him for Damien Moreau - because that was undoubtedly who it was. A similar jaw line, maybe something familiar around the eyes. His hair was shorter, but then this photo was visibly dated. Nick Greenday himself - stood off to Moreau's right hand - was easily recognisable, but his hair was crew-cut short; still that same strong, composed stance, very much that of a soldier and only emphasised by the gun hanging loosely in his hand. The other man, off to the other side of the photo was younger, with short blond hair and a grin that looked positively psychopathic when taken with how obscenely armed he was. The woman was tall, with long dark hair and almost dwarfed by the gun slung over her shoulder. She wasn't submissive to Moreau, stood strong and confrontational at Moreau's left hand. She was lady to his warlord, he'd put money on it.
"Is this his girlfriend, Dr. Kovač?" the agent jabbed at the woman in the photograph.
"No," Kovač said firmly. "And that photo is at least ten years old. How do you know Greenday knows anything about Moreau's recent movements?"
"Several of Moreau's men were killed in what looked like an internal dispute, in Washington four months ago. This man," the agent's finger slid across the photo to the younger man. "Was killed there. Eliot Spencer," the agent pointed again, "His body was never recovered, but there is security camera footage of him entering the warehouse. This was less than a month before Moreau was arrested in San Lorenzo."
Luca felt like his brain had stalled, adrenaline suddenly rushing through every inch of him and driving a flight or fight response that made his breath quicken. "Did you just say Eliot Spencer?"
-
Hardison looked up and flinched when he saw the doctor Eliot had mistaken for Moreau walking down the corridor towards them. Or... towards him, as Parker was currently sneaking around behind the nurses' station while no one was looking.
"Doctor Kovač," he forced a smile, standing. "Are you alright? How's Nick?"
"I'm on my way in," the doctor replied, gesturing at the ICU doors at the far end of the corridor, his voice strangely low. "But I need you to be completely honest with me right now, because what you say will determine what the FBI agents outside do and don't hear."
Hardison had a thrill of excitement. He loved when these things evolved into something curious and unknown. "I can do that."
"My family... my family were killed in Croatia, during the war, and after that I spent a short time serving as a doctor for some military cells that were not general knowledge. I don't remember much from that time, but I have names, written down. Letters from them after I moved to the US." Kovač swallowed hard, and Hardison's thrill turned into full on tingles. "Is that man, is Nick Greenday... Eliot Spencer?"
"He's hurt," Alec hedged. "He wouldn't normally have..."
"It is him." The sigh of relief mixed with excitement that came out of Kovač had Hardison all turned around. "I'm going to see how he is. I'll be able to keep the FBI away long enough for your team to get him out."
Hardison frowned. "How do you know we have a team?"
Kovač smiled, "Spencer always works with a team. I have to say, though, that girl really had me fooled. No way I would have seen her as special forces."
"I'm mysterious like that," Parker said from just over his shoulder. Hardison flinched as Kovač jumped out of his skin.
A little wide-eyed, Kovač headed towards the doors at the end of the corridor. "I'm going to..." he gestured, and then disappeared through the doors.
-
Eliot opened his eyes with a pounding headache that rattled through his skull, and the stench of hospitals making his stomach turn. The lights were dimmed and the sounds of the hospital were distanced by the walls.
Then he saw Kovač.
"Shit," he groaned. "It is you."
"Tell me what you remember." Kovač ordered, that accent rolling over him and making sharp things inside him grate. It was so similar, so very similar to the San Lorenzian accent. But not quite the same. Not quite. Moreau always had been a poor substitute.
"You mean from today, or from sixteen years ago?" Eliot flinched as he tried to clench his hands and one refused to move.
"It was yesterday," Kovač chided. "We had to drain the blood off your brain to stop you dying, you've been sedated; but I'm glad you remember me now."
"Do you remember me?" Eliot asked. "Back then, you were..."
"No. I don't remember. But I remembered your name. From the letters." Kovač smirked. "Was the kiss for me, or for him?"
"Kiss?" And perhaps luckily for him, that was when Eliot passed back out.
Author: LMX
Fandom: Leverage/ER
Pairing: Sophie/Nate/Eliot, Eliot/Moreau, (possibly one-sided) Eliot/Luca Kovač
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: ER Spoilers for Kovač's history and Leverage end of Season 3 and start of Season 4 spoilers.
Words: 2130
Warnings: This should be readable without knowing anything about ER or Luca Kovač. Hopefully.
Notes: For the leverageland Secret Agent challenge.
--
Of all the things Nate had heard in his life, this would definitely rank as one of those he didn't ever want to hear again.
"Say that again," he asked. He said it gently, rather than in the ranting tone he wanted to use, because he could hear an unfamiliar tremble in Hardison's voice that didn't fit with anything he'd ever heard from the hacker before.
"Eliot's just had some kind of breakdown in the Chicago ER. He tried to bash in the face of the ER doc who was trying to help him out, was calling him Damien." There was a stilted pause, the distinct sounds of a busy city hospital in the background. "I'm not gonna say the guy doesn't look like Moreau, but it ain't him, that's for sure."
"What's happening now?" Nate pressed, still gently. The last thing he needed now was for Hardison to explode on him.
"They've got Eliot restrained, and they're planning on moving him to the psych ward after they've stitched him up and made sure he isn't bleeding into his skull." There was a hesitation, Parker's voice murmuring too far away from the phone's mic to be picked up. "Apparently one of the other doctors has heard of Moreau and they've called the FBI in 'cause they think Eliot might be involved in the guy's operation."
"Which he was," Nate pointed out blandly.
"Yeah, well." Hardison sighed heavily. "That ain't exactly our biggest problem here, is it."
"Head injury?" Nate asked. Hardison hadn't mentioned anything when they'd said they were taking Eliot to the hospital before heading home, but it was rare enough for him to allow that. Nate had been working very hard on not obsessing over how their hitter might be hurt, pushing it hard into the category of 'things they could deal with once the con was over and Eliot was here at home with him and Sophie'.
"None that I can see," Hardison replied cagily. "We only came here because his hand was messed up from the steam vent. But he was in the usual Eliot-style face off with half a dozen guys back at the plant. Who knows what happened while we were making our get away."
"So he's hallucinating, product of head trauma." Nate was already shuffling through fake IDs for a medical doctor, pulling out an FBI badge with Sophie's photograph, reaching for his car keys with the other hand, phone pressed into his shoulder. "That's easy enough to explain away. We need a backstory for why he'd react like that to seeing Moreau. Maybe some blackmailing of a legitimate businessman, pushing him to the limit..."
Hardison coughed uncomfortably. "Nah, that's not going to fly."
Nate froze in place, "Why."
"Before he started a fight, Eliot kissed the guy."
Nate quietly added that to his list - suddenly expanding quite fast - of things he never wanted to hear or think about again.
"Alright then. Alright. So..." Nate floundered for a minute, mind flooded with images of how impassioned Eliot had been in Moreau's presence, how uncharacteristically emotional. How firm he'd been than no part of the San Lorenzo con take him anywhere near Moreau or his compatriots. "Stall. Delay the FBI if you can, give them information to send them chasing their tails. Sophie and I will be there as soon as we can. Let us know if his condition changes." Nate hung up on Hardison's objections and reached for his overnight bag.
"Nate?" Sophie appeared behind him, and the moral support was briefly overwhelming.
"Eliot's got himself in trouble in Chicago," he said plainly, handing over the FBI badge.
"And?" Sophie pressed, heading back towards the bedroom and going straight to the closet.
"He may have had a break with reality." He forced his voice flat and closed an iron fist around the panic in his chest. It was serious. Nate was well aware how serious losing grip was for a guy like Eliot. For anyone with Eliot's skills. His history.
"Is everyone alright?" Sophie asked, slipping into a dark suit, changing with brusque efficiency.
"Everyone but Eliot," Nate frowned. "And his doctor." He caught the sharp look Sophie threw at him as she pulled on her shoes. "It doesn't sound too bad, Eliot was hurt before he got to the hospital, so hopefully that stopped him doing anything anyone's going to regret."
Sophie chuckled tersely. "Well, let's go find out what we've got to save him from then," she sighed, and picked up a bag on her way out of the door.
-
"Detectives. Agents." Luca Kovač straightened compulsively in the face of the police and FBI presence now stood in front of him. He was heavily aware of the bruising on his face, and the ache in his side that Abby thought might be a broken rib, but he wasn't about to go home right now. This could prove to be interesting.
"Doctor Kovač." The first of the two agents; the younger one, blond and sharply dressed, stepped forwards first. "Your collegue's report was of a great deal of interest to us. We've had a team collecting information on Mr. Moreau's operation for a long time, but since his arrest in San Lorenzo it seemed like a lot of our cases were going to co gold. To capture one of his lieutenants at this point..."
Carter had spent a couple of caught moments bringing Kovač up to speed on Moreau and his warlording tendencies. Arms trade, blood money, drugs and prostitution. It wasn't anything he hadn't heard before, even though the name was new, but talking to Greenday's friend and his girlfriend... he just couldn't see it. It seemed much more likely the guy was just suffering from head trauma from the assault, and he'd gotten turned around and confused. It was less than unusual, and it was hardly the first hit he'd taken from a confused patient.
The first time he'd been kissed, though. That was definitely a first.
"Look, I don't really know who this Moreau guy is, but Mr. Greenday is suffering from a head trauma," Kovač shrugged. "We haven't assessed the level of damage but it's entirely possible that he doesn't even know where he is, let alone who he thought I was."
"Dr. Kovač, I'm afraid that is not the issue at hand here at all." The agent's voice turned sharp. "We know who your Mr. Greenday is."
"Well, if Mr. Greenday was one of Mr. Moreau's lieutenants it wasn't recently."
"And why do you say that, Doctor Kovač?" The second agent spoke more softly and with a gentle smile, Kovač would bet this was the guy they sent in to talk to witnesses and families.
"For a start, the first thing he did when he saw me..." Luca was determined he wasn't going to blush.
"We've heard about the assault. It's not as unusual as you might think for Moreau's staff to be... well, aggressive might be putting it lightly. Even towards the man himself. He crews a gang of sociopaths. Mercenaries and murderers."
"The friend who brought Mr. Greenday in - Mr. Vox - he said Greenday and his girlfriend had been together for nearly four years. She's a sweet girl, she sells flowers on the high street. He's not a sociopath." He wasn't entirely sure why he was so adamant that the guy was innocent. Maybe he just didn't want to see another guy hauled off into the hands of the FBI.
"I don't see how that's relevant, Doctor Kovač." The first agent pulled out a photograph - surveillance, grainy with distance - of three men and a woman. The two men were turned submissively towards the third in the centre, a man with dark hair and an amiable smile but the stance and posture of a soldier. In a second glance, Kovač could see how Nick Greenday had mistaken him for Damien Moreau - because that was undoubtedly who it was. A similar jaw line, maybe something familiar around the eyes. His hair was shorter, but then this photo was visibly dated. Nick Greenday himself - stood off to Moreau's right hand - was easily recognisable, but his hair was crew-cut short; still that same strong, composed stance, very much that of a soldier and only emphasised by the gun hanging loosely in his hand. The other man, off to the other side of the photo was younger, with short blond hair and a grin that looked positively psychopathic when taken with how obscenely armed he was. The woman was tall, with long dark hair and almost dwarfed by the gun slung over her shoulder. She wasn't submissive to Moreau, stood strong and confrontational at Moreau's left hand. She was lady to his warlord, he'd put money on it.
"Is this his girlfriend, Dr. Kovač?" the agent jabbed at the woman in the photograph.
"No," Kovač said firmly. "And that photo is at least ten years old. How do you know Greenday knows anything about Moreau's recent movements?"
"Several of Moreau's men were killed in what looked like an internal dispute, in Washington four months ago. This man," the agent's finger slid across the photo to the younger man. "Was killed there. Eliot Spencer," the agent pointed again, "His body was never recovered, but there is security camera footage of him entering the warehouse. This was less than a month before Moreau was arrested in San Lorenzo."
Luca felt like his brain had stalled, adrenaline suddenly rushing through every inch of him and driving a flight or fight response that made his breath quicken. "Did you just say Eliot Spencer?"
-
Hardison looked up and flinched when he saw the doctor Eliot had mistaken for Moreau walking down the corridor towards them. Or... towards him, as Parker was currently sneaking around behind the nurses' station while no one was looking.
"Doctor Kovač," he forced a smile, standing. "Are you alright? How's Nick?"
"I'm on my way in," the doctor replied, gesturing at the ICU doors at the far end of the corridor, his voice strangely low. "But I need you to be completely honest with me right now, because what you say will determine what the FBI agents outside do and don't hear."
Hardison had a thrill of excitement. He loved when these things evolved into something curious and unknown. "I can do that."
"My family... my family were killed in Croatia, during the war, and after that I spent a short time serving as a doctor for some military cells that were not general knowledge. I don't remember much from that time, but I have names, written down. Letters from them after I moved to the US." Kovač swallowed hard, and Hardison's thrill turned into full on tingles. "Is that man, is Nick Greenday... Eliot Spencer?"
"He's hurt," Alec hedged. "He wouldn't normally have..."
"It is him." The sigh of relief mixed with excitement that came out of Kovač had Hardison all turned around. "I'm going to see how he is. I'll be able to keep the FBI away long enough for your team to get him out."
Hardison frowned. "How do you know we have a team?"
Kovač smiled, "Spencer always works with a team. I have to say, though, that girl really had me fooled. No way I would have seen her as special forces."
"I'm mysterious like that," Parker said from just over his shoulder. Hardison flinched as Kovač jumped out of his skin.
A little wide-eyed, Kovač headed towards the doors at the end of the corridor. "I'm going to..." he gestured, and then disappeared through the doors.
-
Eliot opened his eyes with a pounding headache that rattled through his skull, and the stench of hospitals making his stomach turn. The lights were dimmed and the sounds of the hospital were distanced by the walls.
Then he saw Kovač.
"Shit," he groaned. "It is you."
"Tell me what you remember." Kovač ordered, that accent rolling over him and making sharp things inside him grate. It was so similar, so very similar to the San Lorenzian accent. But not quite the same. Not quite. Moreau always had been a poor substitute.
"You mean from today, or from sixteen years ago?" Eliot flinched as he tried to clench his hands and one refused to move.
"It was yesterday," Kovač chided. "We had to drain the blood off your brain to stop you dying, you've been sedated; but I'm glad you remember me now."
"Do you remember me?" Eliot asked. "Back then, you were..."
"No. I don't remember. But I remembered your name. From the letters." Kovač smirked. "Was the kiss for me, or for him?"
"Kiss?" And perhaps luckily for him, that was when Eliot passed back out.