This list will include all ratings and tags, so read at your own discretion! :)
bitten lips and broken hands by thunder_and_stars - Rated T
Nate leads them easily to Dariaâs car, where she is pounding at the window and screaming bloody murder at Nate, while Hardison easily steals the chip from her passenger seat. Someone is saying something, probably something important, but the world falls away into muted radio static when they settle their gazes on Eliot.
Eliot, who has been bloody and battered before, and will never ask any of them for support. Eliot, who always throws himself into danger.
Eliot, who suddenly drops, crumpling to the pavement like a puppet with its strings cut.
or, eliot doesn't walk off the concussion he definitely has like it's nothing
make a place for it to happen by Canon_Is_Relative - Rated T
Parker spots them first, coming around the corner of the house of mirrors. Before heâs close enough that she can make out the blood on his face and the limp in his step, she can see that Eliot is leaning on Molly and thatâs enough to make her feet start running before her brain tells them to. Hardisonâs shoes slap the pavement behind her.
Do your worst, Nate had said by Misses_B - Rated T
He had done his worst, and now he needed some help.
Or: Nurse Gaile only existed on TV
Smoke and Mirrors by eringiles - Rated T
When he confronts himself in the mirror of Nateâs bathroom he understands a little bit more why Sophie keeps checking in on him. He looks a state. Blood has crusted beneath his nose and in his hair. His eyes are half lidded, trying to keep the light away from where the concussion is beating out a merry drum against the inside of his skull.
A Hitter's Job by idkimoutofideas - Rated G
Eliot kept insisting that he was fine, that he didnât need a hospital, but Sophie knew better. After a fight like that at the carnival today⊠well, Sophie wasnât an expert on injuries, but even she knew he shouldnât be alone.
Post Job Celebration by AppalachianApologies - Rated T
Yet another tag to The Carnival Job, because Eliot needs some comfort. No slash. ONE-SHOT.
Being Worthy by Telaryn - Rated T
Nobody is happy about Eliot's decision to crawl off by himself and let his injuries be taken care of by a private nurse. Unlike Parker and Hardison, however, Nate is in a position to do something about it. He's also made a few decisions about the nature of his and Eliot's relationship, and how things are going to be for them from now on.
Lovingly Crafted by WriteItSmall (scribblemyname) - Rated G
"Are you calling this beautiful, lovingly crafted, personalized safe cracker storebought?" Hardison glared.
It's What Friends Do by akblake - Rated T
What actually happened after the end of The Carnival Job... Parker shows what she's learned about friendship. Not really shippy but could be read as such if you want :)
Roll Away Your Stone by hannasus - Rated G
Parker knows things about Eliot. Secret things. Things the others donât know.
Texts From This Morning by hannasus - Rated T
A series of texts between Eliot and the team on the morning after "The Carnival Job."
The Muse's Carnival by storywriter8 - Rated T
Eliot has to babysit their mark's kid, a young muse, until she gets kidnapped by Russians and he gets his ass handed to him. But Parker and Hardison refuse to let Eliot sulk off and lick his wounds alone so the werewolf explains why sometimes he has to be alone. But maybe not entirely alone anymore, after all, he has Quinn now.
Nurses Call the Shots by beggar_always - Rated G
Episode Tag for 4x06 - The Carnival Job. In which Nurse Gail is an old friend and Eliot should really listen to her.
What He Knows About Sacrifice by Distracted - Rated T
Set after the Carnival Job. Eliot was pretty banged up. Here's my take on what might have happened. Much comfort, because lord knows he deserves it and it's not really shown on screen.
Or Eliot collapses after the job with a concussion and punctured lung. Parker and Hardison are there for him as he recovers.
somewhere deep within you a beast shouting by Vorpal_Sword - Not Rated
Molly Connell and her daemon were kidnapped by their own housekeeper, held ransom for their father's crime.
This is the aftermath.
Do Your Worst by schrijverr - Rated M
What if Eliotâs worst in The Carnival Job was a little worse than in the show? What if he killed some of those Russians?
"Do not let him sleep!" Louisa's voice, sounding strange and distant. It reminds River of the vinyl records he used to listen to with the OB as a kid, the really old ones that made his granddad get that wistful look on his face that disappeared again as soon as he caught River looking at him. Things were so much simpler back then. If he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend he's back there...
"Cartwright!" Lamb snaps, shaking him a little. "Do you want to be fired from the Service for good?"
In this moment, that actually doesn't sound like too much of a bad thing if River is being honest. He doesn't say so.
"That wasn't rhetorical." Lamb's voice is loud, sharp. "We both know how your last job interview went. No one that's any good'll take you, which means you'll be stuck behind a desk at some basic mid-level office job. Or maybe a private firm'll take you on, like your old pal Webb! Imagine working for those arseholes. Is that what you want?"
"No," River mutters.
"No? Then keep your fucking eyes open!"
River forces himself to comply. There's not much to look at, really: the back of the passenger seat; the blood on his hand; Jackson Lamb's knees; the back of Louisa's head and, when he lifts his gaze a little, a glimpse of her worried face in the rear-view. The inside of his eyelids offered a better view.
The car hits a bump, jolting him and ripping a cry from his throat as pain tears through his side and chest where the bullets had struck. His vision goes dark for a second, and then he's pulled back to awareness by the sound of Lamb's raised voice.
"Jesus Christ," he's saying. "Who taught you how to drive?"
"I'm sorry!" Louisa, voice pinched. "River, come on!"
River groans, and prying his eyelids apart is harder this time. Breathing is hard, too. Everything is hard.
"River, talk to me! You okay?" Louisa cries.
"Yup," River gasps. Another groan. "Hurts."
"I'll bet it does," Lamb says. "Maybe next time you'll think twice before running off on your own like a fucking dickhead, eh? Course, I thought the same thing the last two times you did it. It's like you never learn, no matter how many times I tell you to stop doing stupid shit."
"You can..." River really shouldn't be wasting his breath on this, but he can't help it. "You can lead a horse to water."
Lamb makes a noise that could be a snort of laughter or, more likely, he's hacking up something disgusting.
"I don't know that I could lead you fuck-ups to water if we were on a-a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific."
River tries to draw in another breath to respond, but his chest hitches and he lets out a wet cough. His mouth fills with the taste of iron and he almost gags, but coughs again instead, blood flecking his lips, and he just keeps coughing. Panic is creeping in, black dancing at the edges of his vision. He can't get enough air...
"Keep breathing," Lamb commands, his words filtering through the ringing in River's ears. The pressure he's been holding on the hole in River's chest increases as he tightens his grip.
He doesn't know how long it takes, it feels like a lifetime, but the coughing fit finally subsides. His chest is burning, head pounding. He can't catch his breath. And, more than anything else, he's so, so tired. It's a deep, heavy exhaustion. He just wants to sleep.
"Cartwright! You open your fucking eyes, now."
Fucking Lamb. Louisa is speaking too, but River can't discern the words. She's too far away. He suspects she wants him to stay awake too, though, damn her. Damn both of them.
"Now!" Lamb repeats, tapping River's face. "You hear me, Cartwright? That's an order. I know you're shit at following those, but you had better follow this one. Come on. Eyes open. If you won't do it for me, do it for Guy. You saw what happened after Min. What do you think'll happen if you die in her backseat?"
That sparks something, the faintest bit of anger, and River's eyes open a little. He doesn't know how he manages it.
when a character just drops during a high-tension moment and the team scrambles to haul them up off the ground and keep running (what else would they do? leave them?!)
whether theyâre knocked out or pass out, the characterâs completely limp as theyâre yanked around/dragged to safety, oblivious while they take their little involuntary catnap
hands all over them, trying to shake them awake, swiping for more injuries, holding their face. donât even get me started on the one teammate whose hand flies out to cradle the characterâs head and neck so theyâre not jostled like a crash-test dummy
Iâve been binge watching Prison Break lately and the Michael/Lincoln relationship is honestly VERY reminiscent of Mac and Jack. Crafty, self-sacrificing genius little brother and tough, âbrutishâ over-protective big brother/father figure. Both willing to die for each other, go to the ends of the earth for each other.
There is obviously more to the story than what we saw in Cigar Cutter. Nothing we saw was bad enough that they wouldn't want to talk about it again, and Mac talks in 5x05 about how he and Jack were trapped in a sarcophagus for 6 hours.
Actually, that makes me wonder if they were going to show more of the Cairo mission but had to abandon that idea when George left the show.
They could have legit spent a whole episode on Mac and Jack stuck together. Imagine that conversation and Mac trying to improvise his way out with nothing but their belts, a few Egyptian pounds, and Jack's gun.
I kind of feel like the original Cairo Day was a series of things that just got worse. Like they thought they stopped the bomb, but they didn't. And then they thought they got away, but they didn't. And then they thought they could get out of the sarcophagus, but they couldn't.
The first Cairo Day anniversary involved nothing Egyptian. Not food. Not movies. Nothing. Jack locked them up in Mac's house with the blinds drawn, and they ate hot dogs and hamburgers and potato chips and watched all the Die Hard movies. Twice.
Alright, bestie, I'm going to take this and run with some thinky thoughts I have about this. Because I agree, there had to be more to what happened in Cairo then what we were shown. What we saw wasn't bad enough to "we don't talk about Cairo."
Why it's less of an issue for Mac, but for Jack it goes beyond just not wanting the word even uttered and not working that day to making it a complete no-fly zone.
Like, say, for example...
For Mac Cairo is... different than it is for Jack. Different people experience and process events differently after all.
But, also, more to the point, Mac feels less triggered by the events of Cairo because he doesn't--can't--remember it all.
Not the parts after things went sideways at least.
Not the parts where everything went from bad to worse.
Because sometimes being the one injured is better than being the one left standing.
He only finds out after he sweet talks Nikki into getting him a copy of Jack's Cairo After-Action Report. Which he wouldn't have had to do if Jack just talked to him. Instead of feeding Mac the most transparent lie in the history of every lie that's ever been told since the beginning of time about what actually happened; what exactly Jack endured.
Mac last clear memory of that mission is Jack on his knees, drawn guns pointed at his head. His own gamble failed, scrambling to come up with another plan, anything that would get him and his partner out of there alive.
Then there's pain. And hazy darkness.
But there's the gentle feel of gun calloused hands and a southern drawl in his ear and, like always, that's all Mac needs to feel safe.
Mac opens the document that Nikki sent him and reads Jack's words, concise, to the point. Emotionless.
But Mac knows better. He's seen the haunted looks that shadow Jack's brown eyes, hears the muffled shouts of his name that come from his guest room every night. His fully illuminated guest room despite the hour being after midnight.
Mac relives the ultimatum he gave to the terrorists failing. Jack writing of hearing a pained cry and the thud of a body hitting the floor and not needing to see to know it was Agent MacGyver. He reads of the fight that followed between Jack, the terrorist and his men.
Knows of the force that Jack would have been in eliminating all threats after that.
If a gun hadn't been pressed to the temple of his unconscious body. the hammer cocked and then Jack given a choice.
"Tell me to pull the trigger and you walk free, American. Or pick up the body of your friend and step into the sarcophagus that you so much enjoyed playing with moments ago. The choice is yours."
Mac knows the choice wasn't a choice at all.
He rubs a hand across his forehead, careful to avoid the half healed deep cuts and bruises that litter the left side of his face and up beneath his hair. His head throbs in time with his heart and Mac knows reading and the light given off by his computer is doing his concussion no bit of good.
Rest will come later, for both of them. Right now, he needs answers.
The remaining entries of Jack's After-Action Report offers even less details than the previous ones.
Jack catalogs the snap of wood as the sarcophagus is closed. Absolute darkness and silence surrounding them. The dizzying feel of the box being tipped and dragged. The slam as it was once again righted.
He writes of attempting to patch the wound on Agent Macgyver that he couldn't see. The stickiness coating his hands and the coppery scent that filled the infinitesimal space between them telling him he wasn't succeeding.
Jack tells of concussion checks. Of fingers pressed against his neck. Counting beats. Counting breaths.
Of thanking a "whiny water baby" for teaching him the controlled breathing techniques used in deep dives over a vacation spent on a sun-warmed beach in Hawaii.
The very ones that kept both of them alive until Nikki worked her magic and tracked them down.
Dug through rocks and boulders until she found the sarcophagus where the tracker on his phone was, still blessedly, transmitting.
Pulled them both out. Sweat drenched. Himself, face bloodied and hair matted, barely breathing, long having lost consciousness. Jack, eyes half-mast and almost delirious, holding onto consciousness with a tenaciousness only he possesses.
Mac knows there is going to be some tough conversations in his and his partner's future as they work to put this behind them and come out the other side stronger.
Then, after that, maybe they just won't talk about Cairo ever again.
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