Please tell me I’m not the only one who wants to know what the otters are going on do. Otters always seem so happy and playful. Like Ezekiel with alien invaders, I am planning to side with our new otter overlords.
Sophie Devereaux is both the easiest and most difficult Leverage character for me to write.
Sophie the actress is easy to write. We see a lot of her in the show. This is the Grifter, the actress, the face Sophie chooses to show. As long as I am writing from someone else’s perspective she is not difficult, I can write what people see, I can write what she lets them see. And even from her perspective is not so difficult if the spotlight is on someone else.
But writing her, the real her, is another story. I don’t know where to start with the real Sophie, because even her name is an act. And that is part of her charm, the mystery.
I think that may be why I have very few head canons about her life, compared to all the other characters. Because while for most characters it is what we know that is most intriguing, even when we know very little, with Sophie it is the other way. It is what we don’t know that makes her so interesting.
This is a crossover scene, two scenes technically, that I wrote a while back, between watching Leverage and The Librarian movies and watching The Librarians show, and polished up for Character Appreciation Week. It is not canon compatible for… reasons. If you’ve seen The Librarians you know why. If not I won’t spoil it. (And if you like Eliot enough to be reading fanfiction about him, you should definitely go watch The Librarians, if only for Jake Stone.) Basically it’s anEliot appreciation piece because… actually I think “because he is Eliot” pretty much covers it. There are vague spoilers for both stories here, but nothing overly specific.
(When the rest of the team is in danger, Eliot needs to use Excalibur to save them.)
Eliot stared at the sword lodged in the stone for a long moment. He was the only one of the team that hadn’t tried, and failed, to pull it out earlier.
“The way I see it,” he said finally “you have a personality, at least with Flynn, so I think you got at least some say in who uses you. It didn’t matter before because only the worthy can wield you. I’m sittin’ here bearin’ my soul to a sword so it’s possible I’m crazier than Parker, but I’m not that crazy. I’m not under the delusion that I’m worthy. But the people I’m goin’ to save are. They’re the worthiest part of me and I need… I need your help gettin’ ‘em back. So please, help me save them, just this once.”
He reached out hesitantly and the sword sprung a few inches into his hand of its own volition.
(Later. Team rescued, disaster averted, ancient mummy re-killed, day saved. So probably quite a bit later.)
As soon as they were back in the library, Eliot removed Excalibur from its scabbard and returned it reverently to the stone. He laid it flat and the sword whipped into the air and landed point don, imbedded in the rock.
“You used Cal?!” Flynn asked, sounding impressed. It took a lot to impress someone who retrieved the Spear of Destiny his first week on the job, and has been doing the job for over a decade.
“One time deal,” he said. He could have sworn he heard Parker snort with laughter, but that was Parker, she sometimes laughed at strange things. “It’s not like I can pull the sword from the stone,” he elaborated. “He just agreed to help me save them.” He nodded over his shoulder at Parker, investigating the real Mona Lisa and seamed suspiciously fixated on its frame, and Hardison, who had already put on the jetpack and glanced sheepishly over at Eliot and Flynn when he realized he had been caught.
“Well, don’t stop on my account,” Flynn said to Hardison. He then spun on his heels to speak to Parker. “You, please do stop on my account. That painting is not to be stolen. Well, technically I suppose it’s already been stolen. I’m sure your thiefly skills are to the task, but are you up to the task of not having your life sapped by its hypnotic gaze?”
“You really don’t get it,” Charlene said. “Sometimes Excalibur fights for other people. You should have seen him when the Spider Triad tried to kidnap Flynn. But no matter how important the job, and we’ve had some doozies, he only lets people he considers worthy actually wield him.”
“Apparently that includes you,” Flynn confirmed.
“That’s… I’m sure there’s a mistake,” Eliot insisted.
“See,” Parker said. She had abandoned her investigation into the real Mona Lisa and bounced over to his side. “I keep telling you we aren’t the only ones who like you.”
“But… you couldn’t draw the sword,” Eliot said. “Neither could Hardison.” Hardison hovered over on the jetpack. Flynn stared at him in amazement.
“Oh that,” Parker said dismissively. “I was gonna steal it. I was gonna give it back,” she added quickly. “One of the good guys now and all. But imagine the bragging rights for the thief who managed to steal the sword from the stone. Unfortunately Excalibur has a pretty unbeatable security system.” She sighed and looked a tiny bit pouty.
“I kinda tried to hack the system,” Hardison admitted. “There’s a pair of Arthur’s gloves a few rows over. I thought I could trick the sword into thinking I was him, like a magic fingerprint scanner. I mean, its Excalibur. That’s like the Holy Grail for anybody who grew up on Monty Python and the… Holy…” he trailed off with an unabashed grin. “That analogy got away from me.”
“That analogy was never yours to begin with,” Eliot pointed out.
“You know what man, you know what I mean,” Hardison insisted. “I mean, it’s freakin’ Excalibur. How was I supposed to resist at least tryin to hack the system? How’d you do it? Get it to like you or whatever?”
“I didn’t. I’m not. I just asked it… him… for help. Felt like a damn fool talkin’ to a sword but apparently I convince him that the mission was more important than whether or not I was worthy.”
Parker looked between the sword and Eliot, cocking her head to one side in thought. “That’s why you’re worthy,” she said. “Because it wasn’t about you. It was about saving people. And not just this time. In general. And that is what the sword likes.”
“I’m no King Arthur,” Eliot said.
“King Arthur, or Arturus as the name is often rendered in Latin,” Flynn said, “there is a lot of fascinating debate over that actually, the name commonly rendered Arthur may derive from either a Roman or a Welsh name. According to the eighteen eighty-two version of the Historia Brittonum…” he must have noticed their eyes glazing over because he reigned in some of the heavy flights of academia, “anyway, he took over much of Britain at the direction of a magician and a sword. He also tried to have his wife burned at the stake for adultery, which was a huge double standard was given that he had a kid with his half-sister. All of which is to say, it’s probably for the best that you aren’t King Arthur, because most of us probably wouldn’t be very happy with him if he were to suddenly turn up.”
“The man’s got a point,” Hardison said.
“I thought King Arthur brought peace to England,” Parker said.
“He did,” Eliot said. “But that is just a ‘winner writes the history’ way of sayin’ he swept through killin’ people until everybody left decided it was better to go along with what he said.” He frowned, considering whether perhaps he had more in common with King Arthur than he had at first thought, and not liking the idea one bit.
“The sword must judge by some other criteria then,” Hardison said. “I mean, technically we did sort of help take over that country that time, but not all of us are worthy, and I don’t think Flynn has taken over any countries. Have you?”
“I’ve stopped a few people from taking over countries, but I have never actually taken one over myself. You have?” Flynn asked.
“We didn’t take it over, we stole it. And gave it back,” Eliot said. “That’s kinda what we do.”
“You’re trying to distract us,” Parker said, poking Eliot in the shoulder. “Because you don’t think the sword will accept you, but you know we aren’t going to let it drop until you try again.”
“You aren’t?” Eliot asked. He thought for sure he had gotten them off on enough of a different track for them to let it go. He knew he wasn’t worthy of the sword. He didn’t need or want proof of it.
“No. We aren’t.” She took one arm and half dragged Eliot back over to the stone. Hardison followed along in the jetpack and Flynn trailed on foot.
“Don’t you want to know?” Flynn asked, in a tone that suggested that anyone not wanting to know, about anything, was entire incomprehensible.
Eliot sighed. “Fine. All of the rest of you tried,” he pointed out. “If it’ll get y’all off my back.”
He reached out and seized the sword’s hilt and drew it smoothly from the stone. He almost dropped it in surprise.
In honor of Character Appreciation Week, (because all my original posts are Leverage related,) I have finally organize my pages so I have a place for all my metas and all my fics in convenient places.
Hardison and Parker don’t get married. Well, not in the usual sense of the word. Like everything they do, it is slightly illegal and highly unusual.
Hardison asked. He took her night repelling at the Eiffel Tower and popped the question (with a stolen ring of course, because he pays attention.) She said yes while trying to untangle Hardison from his ropes.
Parker had already watched Sophie planning her wedding and decided that it was like Sophie’s obsession with shoes; fine for other people but not something she could understand or wanted to do herself. Uninterested in planning a wedding of her own, Parker stole one. Well, technically it wasn’t a wedding. She stole a marriage license from a mark. From Hardison’s research before the job she knew the mark was getting a divorce anyway, so she figured he didn’t need it anyway.
She handed Hardison the data she retrieved from the office.
“You know how you asked me to marry you? Well, I got us a marriage license. That makes us married, right?” She handed him the license and he choked on his orange soda.
Hardison had Parker call Nate and Sophie. He was glad, if a little disoriented, to be so suddenly married but he definitely didn’t want to be the one to break it to Sophie that she wouldn't be able to help plan the wedding. He also hacked the county records to make it, well, legal wasn’t exactly the right word, but semi-official at least.
Nate and Sophie flew in for a very impromptu reception which consisted of just the five of them and a cake Eliot made.
From that point on they were married. Sure, it wasn’t technically legally binding, but neither of them held to the letter of the law anyway so that didn’t matter. And sure, their marriage license didn’t have their names on it, but neither did their driver’s licenses so neither of them were inclined to quibble over that particular detail.
For their honeymoon they planned and carried out a heist to steal themselves wedding rings.
I could see Hardison making a comic like this if they had too long between jobs and he started to get bored. Or if there was a lull in Lucille during a job.
Hardison didn’t come up with his catchphrase. He heard it, liked it, and claimed it.
He was not the most popular kid in school. He was a very much a geek, arguably over the line into being a nerd, well-liked by his teachers and not many others. He made up for that somewhat with his naturally friendly temperament, but even so he wasn’t most of the students’ favorite.
The other geeks were nice enough most of the time but he didn’t fit the image of what a geeky high school kid should look like. He was black and in the minds of most of his very white fellow geeks that automatically made him a jock at best and a gangbanger at worst. He wore backwards baseball caps with Star Wars t-shirts. It didn’t match their image. And on top of that he was smarter than most of them, so they were a bit jealous too. The jocks didn’t want him because they could tell right away that he was a geek to his very core. Even so, he almost never got straight up picked on because he was tall and strong and nobody wanted to test whether he was a total nerd or not.
He didn’t go to his first prom. He didn’t have anyone to go with anyway, and told himself it was really because Nana couldn’t really afford a tux rental. He could always hack in somewhere, get himself on a prepaid list, but there the whole idea circled back around to not having a date.
“What you doin’ hidin’ out up here instead of goin’ to your prom?” Nana asked.
He shrugged, glancing up briefly, then back down at his computer screen.
“I know that shrug young man. Don’t you gi’me that shrug. If you don’t want to talk about it tha’s ok, but you can use your words to say so.”
“Stacy’s goin’ with the quarterback,” he said, just catching himself in time to keep from giving another shrug. Nana notices and smiled.
“You’ll get the last laugh and no mistake.”
“How?” Hardison asked a little petulantly. “He’s team captain. He’s got the girl.”
“And he’s got maybe a one in a million shot at any of that mattering for the rest of his life. What you’re good at don’t go ‘way after school. Don’t you know it’s the age of the geek?” Nana asked. “Well it is and don’t you forget it.
The next year he also didn’t go to prom but that time it didn’t bother him at all. He was busy hacking the Bank of Iceland. Age of the geek indeed.
My headcanon is that Hardison has a pretty solid idea what the worst thing Eliot did was because he was curious (remember, this is a guy who canonically cracked the Pentagon servers at twelve and hacked the White House emails because he was bored between S1 and S2,) and poked around the internet and less legal channels to get an idea for what Damien Moreau was up to at that time and worked from there. It doesn’t change anything as far as he is concerned. The only reason he doesn’t say that to Eliot is because he figures Eliot would probably not be thrilled that he was hacking into Eliot’s past behind his back.
Maggie could tell you that she was angry. That she wanted to scream at the world and never stop screaming until they returned her precious son to her.
Maggie could tell you she was bitter. Because Sam didn’t even get to be a teenager.
Maggie could tell that she was happy. Because he wasn’t suffering anymore.
But, mostly, Maggie Collins was tired. Tired of seeing her son in such immense pain and not being able to do anything about it. Tired of trying to reason with the doctors. Tired of watching her husband sprout more grey hairs on his head and wear a further hole in the carpet. Tired of sitting up for nights on end in the hospital, holding Sam’s hand and lying to him. Telling him that everything would be alright.
Because it wouldn’t be. Absolutely not. How could it be? He was nine and he was dying and she was old and she would continue living when all she wanted to do was lay down on the sterile hospital floor and die. Die so that her little boy could keep living.
It didn’t surprise her what Nate said. Not really. Somehow she’d always known. What surprised her was the return of feeling. Suddenly, Maggie Collins no longer felt tired. She no longer felt nothing. Rather, Maggie was furious. and IYS would learn that hell hath no fury like a woman whose child has been ripped from her senselessly.
I’ve decided there should be a different button right next to “like.” Because for posts like this one “like” isn’t the right word. “Ripped my heart out and stomped on it” is more accurate. There should be an easy shortcut way of saying all of that while indicating that, in some slightly masochistic way, I appreciate it.
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