FIC: Anything that Works (Leverage)

[lar_laughs]

Title: Anything that Works
Fandom: Leverage
Characters: the team
Word Count: 531
Rating: PG
Prompts: drinking at avfe, chronic illness at dark_bingo, health at caffeinatedmagic and 02. grace for the day at 5_prompts
Summary: Sophie's cough isn't going away and it's not getting better and no one knows what to do.


It started with a cough now and again. Nothing really unusual during allergy season and she shrugged it off whenever anyone asked her about it. If she was a horrible actress on the stage, it was nothing compared to how horrible Sophie was when trying to convince the team that there was nothing wrong with her.

When it progressed to the point where she hunched over during the coughing fits and took to carrying around a handkerchief to cover her mouth to hide any sign that her body was reacting to the pressure, everyone just quite asking her if she was alright. It was quite clear that she wasn't okay. There were doctor visits written out on the calendar in the kitchen, but the cryptic shorthand was hard to follow at first. Parker was the first to solve for the code, but it was quite by accident. She'd thought the appointment on the sixth was for a massage and called the number, thinking she could get one at the same time. That's when things started falling into place.

They bandied multi-syllable words around in their whispered conversations, trying to decide what set of symptoms fit their friend the best. Interestingly enough, it was Parker who was dealing with it the best. She knew it couldn't end well but that didn't bother her. Nothing in her life ended well. This was all just how life went. She wasn't surprised and, so, she wasn't bothered.

Nate was bothered. The drinking ramped up so that any time they weren't on a job, he wasn't coherent. He tried to drink the pain away as Sophie coughed as quietly as possible in her room. It was exactly what they'd all known would happen but that didn't make it any less heartbreaking to watch.

They stopped including Sophie on the jobs they took, even though they never told her that. It was an unspoken agreement that she would be in the command truck or, barring that, watching from home. More and more, she was just a breathy voice coming through the comms, encouraging and chastising as needed. At first, it was odd to not have her cheeky smile to brighten the low moments. After enough time elapsed, it was the new normal. They all just had to get used to it because it was never going to get better. There would always be a fissure in their lives that had once been filled with the then-Sophie. The now-Sophie didn't quite fill it, rattling around in the space that she had once occupied so completely.

"Please keep Sophie with us for a very long time," Parker prayed every night. She wasn't sure who she was praying to, just that it had sounded like a good idea when she'd seen it on one of the movies that Hardison was always watching, a box of tissue always right beside him. It worked on the movie so surely it worked in real life.

She figured it was better than trying to drink the problem away but then Parker had never gotten the reason Nate did it in the first place. But then she didn't get why the others in the group did a lot of things.

Comments

[meridian_rose]

This is so sad and so well told. I love that you don't tell us directly about the illness but give us enough clues for us to make an educated guess. I love Parker praying because she'd seen it in sad movies - and that Hardison needs tissues when he watches them, also very in character.

[lar_laughs]

Thank you! I love the idea of Hardison weeping at Lifetime movies and Eliot turning them off as he crosses the room just to irritate him!