Shattered (master)Mind (a dark leverage AU)
When Nate Ford wakes up, it's to a brightly lit room, a jackhammer going off at his temples, and a middle aged woman in a lab coat and fake smile watching him. His head swims, and he tries to remember what happened. Where he is.
"Good morning Mr. Ford. How'd you sleep?" The woman has a pleasant, calming sounding voice, and she looks down at a clipboard after Nate only blinks at her. "The weekend doctor made a note here and said you had another episode. Can you tell me what happened?"
Slowly the headache was leaving, and Nate frowned. Was this part of a con? A job? He couldn't remember. Hopefully the crew hadn't stuck him in rehab again, but the room didn't scream rehab. It was too much like a hospital room. Nate's skin tingled uneasily and he rubbed the goosebumps away on his arm. He had to remember the con. There had to be a job. "I don't remember. I think I just had too much to drink, though I'm usually very careful about that." He tried for a smile, but it felt off somehow. The uneasiness wasn't settling.
The woman looked at him for several moments before she sighed, lowering the clipboard and holding it in front of her. "Mr. Ford, you weren't drinking. This facility doesn't allow it, and you haven't left for almost six months."
Six months? That couldn't be right. Hardison probably made it look like that on records or something. "I snuck out." He had to keep her talking. Figure out what was going on. Too bad his com wasn't in. He could really use Sophie's help.
"We've been over this Nathan, there is no Sophie."
Started, Nate looked up at the doctor who only seemed patient. Apparently he'd been talking out loud. That wasn't a good sign. "How do you know Sophie?" The heavy feeling sank further into his bones, and Nate felt a strange sense of dejavu. Something was just outside his reach, but he needed it.
The doctor pulled a well worn manilla folder out from the clipboard, opening the cover and glancing at it while somehow always keeping her attention on Nate. It was unsettling, and familiar, and that in itself was unsettling to Nate. "Nathan Ford, age 51, Caucasian male, approximately six feet tall. Admitted to Oakville Hospital six months ago for depression, alcoholism, behaviour deemed dangerous to himself and others, and extreme psychosis."
She listed a few other things --medications, therapy-- but his mind got stuck on the last reason of admittance. Psychosis. Extreme at that. "I'm not crazy," he blurted out, his heart racing behind his ribs. He knew it was the truth, it had to be, but why did it taste so much like a lie on his tongue?
The doctor smiled at him again, that placating thing of plastic. "We don't like to use that word here, Mr. Ford. You know this."
Something was wrong. "I need to go. My team--" he stopped, his brain chatching up and realizing that if this was a con, he shouldn't mention the team.
"Ah, so that's what the episode was about." The doctor almost seemed relieved by that, and Nate's dread sank heavy and cold in his stomach. "Nathan, I need you to focus, alright? You don't have a team. You've been at Oakville Hospital six months. It's a Tuesday. September twenty-fourth, two thousand nine."
His head spun. "No. We just had a job. It was winter, and we've been together for years. We celebrated Christmas together in twenty ten." He had the memories. Parker had wore antlers with bells. Eliot cooked a ham. Sophie brought mistletoe and kissed everybody, much to Hardison's embarrassment and Parker's delight. He remembered it happening. But why was the memory fuzzy? Why couldn't he recall what Hardison's ugly Christmas sweater looked like?
Why did it taste like lies on his tongue?
"They're part of your delusions Nathan. Your mind makes up things dealing with these people. They aren't here. You were never a criminal, just confused." She said it like it was rehearsed. Like she'd said it before.
Nathan remembered her saying it before, the words echoing in his head. "No. They-- they're my family. They're real." Lies, bitter and burning. "I don't know you."
"Nathan you do know me. I've been your doctor for four months. We've had significant success with your treatment thus far. You are much more grounded in reality, and your episodes are fewer and farther between," she had a gentle smile on her face, like it was an accomplishment.
His stomach rolled and the uneasiness settled firmly in his mind as he recalled the hospital. The same conversation. Denial wasn't working. "I know them, Dr. Wright. They're real. We were..." He doesn't bother. Memories swirl through his mind. Sharp. Clear. Cutting. Real.
Eliot Spencer. A retrieval specialist Nate tracked down to Eastern Europe and set the local police force lose on. He'd had to ID the body, and the Polish police had him buried in an unmarked prison grave.
Alec Hardison. Twenty two year old hacker Nate found in a fancy hotel. Turned the boy over to the government, and he was either locked away with or buried for what he could do with computers.
Parker. Just Parker. A theif that was so young. Nate himself had put the cuffs on her, and watched as the crazy woman was stuffed into a cruiser, then a cell, then a box. Apparently she didn't do well in prison.
Sophie Devereaux. Lauren Williams. Katherine Clive. So many more names, but all one woman. She was the queen of grifters around the world. Both he and Sterling had chased her.
He remembers Paris. He shot her first, and they both went down.
He remembers San Lorenzo, them falling into bed together.
He remembers her pained faced.
Her face contorted in pleasure.
The way she gently touched the bullet wound in her chest.
Her fingers ghosting across the scar from her bullet in his shoulder.
He remembers that she didn't get up.
He remembers Maggie checking him into Oakville, after Sam died in front of him. After Sophie died in front of him. After getting Parker and Hardison and Eliot killed. After all the death got to be too much.
Nate remembers snapping, shattering, and taking refuge in his mind.
Doctor Wright sighs, makes a note in her clipboard about different medication, and leaves Nathan Ford alone with his tears.