waking up to ash and dust: Eliot doesn't like hospitals. There are a few reasons for that. like you know i am better than the worst thing i ever did: “I’m goin’ to die for them,” he says to Sophie, before he ever says it to Nate, and it is not a simple statement of fact but a barebones confession, the helpless bleeding of a wound that he was too smart to not know had been made but he’d been putting pressure of for years, hoping that with spit and a prayer that he could make it heal, but he never could, isn’t sure that the stitches that could close that wound have even been invented. “Yes,” she says, “And how long have you known that?”

“Make me a sandwich,” Parker says, so he does. “Cut the damn wire,” says Hardison, so he does. “Jump,” says Parker, says Hardison, and he never needs to ask, “How high?”