rewatchedThe Underground Job last night as a wind-down and now Eliot and Cory have been bouncing around in my head all day. can’t stop smiling at it. literally cannot get over Eliot big-brothering this kid I swear to gods.
like!!! Paul Revere’s lunchbox! Cory throwing history facts at Eliot and Eliot’s fond “smartass”! bonding over getting the grunt work! that obvious look in Eliot’s eyes when Cory tells him about his father, aargh (and can we just… oh, Cory. eighteen, either just out of high school or dropped when he was sixteen, and in charge of providing for his entire family, and we know his father must have been a wonderful man–oh, Cory), the way you can see how he immediately goes “okay I’m going to take care of this kid,” how he directs Cory toward the job that’ll get him furthest along toward his future… oh, goodness. and, and, and!the way Eliot drops everything to go find him even when he’s in the middle of looking for the bomb! chivvying him out of the mine!
and oh. ohhh. how betrayed Cory looks when Eliot says he’s leaving. the sheer pain. I’m just. guys, these two knew each for, at a wild maximum, four days. this job was pretty short and snappy. so little time, and yet somehow Eliot’s become this role model, this older brother figure, this friend, and Cory legitimately can’t stand the idea of losing him. it hurtsto watch that scene.
but like–you know that this means that, in those few days working together, those hours spent together working in the mine, they must’ve talked. it must have taken hours dusting the walls, after all, with little else to do but talk. there’s this rapport we can feel between them (and pointsto the writers and actors and everybody on the goddamn crew for this ep for pulling that off within such a tiny frame of time) that they obviously built. what did they talk about, do you think? what kinds of stories did they share? how much do you think Eliot knows about Cory, walking away? how much does Cory know about him?
and then Cory offers that hug. that lovely, lovely hug (a mirror to Hardison’s earlier, really, and what does that say?), so obviously emotional, and Eliot… that brief hesitation before he returns it. that “oh” moment. he’s going to miss this kid, he knows that, but oh, he didn’t realize just how bad the kid was going to miss him.
it makes him asking the other miners to look after Cory all the more bittersweet, really. he wants the best for this kid, this eighteen-year-old given full responsibility for his family, this teen who is probably not so far from so many of Eliot’s old childhood friends. so he asks, and he sets it up, and he does his absolute best, because he has to. what a kindness, what a love there is there.
and yet. and yet.
you can see that regret in his eyes. that wish that he couldstay there, just for the kid, just for the miners, just to keep them all safe. he can try his best to leave behind a good legacy… but he can’t be there to be sure.
what kind of pain is that to bear, I wonder? knowing that you’ve done your best, and still heart-broken, in a small way, to know you’re leaving behind a younger brother whom you could have watched grow into a wonderful, strong young man?
oh, Eliot. at least it’s better than the other regrets you bear.
