(some/all of this will be going into my current wip coming out soon but i need to riff for a sec about leverage international deciding to actually consider their hitters' limits. significant contributions from my bud cecil.)
there won't be another eliot spencer.
for a lot of reasons, obviously. perfection was achieved early with that hot piece of punchy hands eye candy, and it's hard to become a boogeyman when eliot's name is already a whisper in the night. but there won't be another eliot spencer because leverage international does not fucking allow shit like the (un)knowing exploitation of a hitters body anymore. there won't be another hitter spending their retirement with pains that wont go away and mornings they can't get up and a fog in their brain that steals memories and thoughts and words with the precision of a thief, but these are stolen objects not even the best retrieval specialists could ever bring back.
there won't be another eliot spencer, not under parker and alec's watch.
masterminds (or whatever they decide to call their point) have to budget field time for hitters. as such, teams usually have at least two, so no one is doing consecutive jobs or working after a bad hit. hitters join a team and their masterminds must have a proposal to parker within the year of what alternative role hitters will be trained for over time. eight years is the absolute limit for hitter only assignments, four after that for mixed roles inclusive of hitter, but those twelve years total is pushing it to the very max.
theres no private hot nurses you pretend are just a hook up and are rly actual nurses. theres a league of health care professionals recruited to help. they are better trained than typical US health care orders. no "black people feel less pain/have stronger bones/extra muscles" or "women complain more/have a lower pain tolerance" bullshit in their medical network. no gender essentialism bullshit about bodies or transphobic language or practices. therapy aint mandatory but damn is it recommended hard.
the episode in 2.0 with the woman whose cop ex stalked her planted a seed. like, fuck why dont we check in. and even if there's not an active bad guy doing shit,, getting your life together and recovering from the trauma of victimization? that is hard.
leverage international becomes an ecosystem.
social worker has a bad taste in parkers mouth, so they call it something else. people who care. people who will check in. you are part of our protection forever like let's change the world. you guys are the good guys and can do things we can't imagine. so we are going to make sure you can do your thing, because theres only so much of an arms race we can do with bad guys vs bad guys.
truly an arms race: if it was nate's leverage international, they would be running fire through the world and taking down every fucker around and itll be warfare, as eliot says in the finale of 1.0. and that's how it starts with just them three but idk they didnt have to live like that. they shouldn't, and they teach others they shouldnt either. because how many bad guy security folks are told they have to start hitting harder & bring bigger guns, but they weren't so sure about this job to begin with, and maybe now is a good exit time? and then they end up on leverage's payroll instead.
nate would be disappointed about how slowly they are taking own the bad guys with so many people involved.
but nate would never have come up with this in all his plans. this kind of collaboration just wasn't in his alphabet. because as @july-19th-club argued so well, god love that ornery bastard but nate? nate never had that vision, you know? because this truly an extension of hardison's love. alec is here to make the world a better shelter for those he loves.
and by bre's time, recognition has shifted to "actually, this isn't just the scaled up adult version of a bully on the playground. this is the system. they have a network. we need to build our own."
the jobs are slower and paced because (1) the bad guys are spooked because the fuck is going on why cant anyone keep their money why is everyone going to actual jail; (2) their hitters are getting more ruthless; (3) leverage is like trying not to destroy their crews thru exhaustion; and (4) Plan Fucking Ms are goddamn unacceptable like the fuck nate thr fuck,,, parkers three jobs in tryna run leverage like nate and like how did you joke about that how do you have so casually in your brain like, oh yeah hardison the """"weak"""" one dies.
people are going to get hurt and die, because what they do is dangerous and you cannot account for it all and no one can replicate the magic skill/luck that was working with the OG leverage crew. but. but. if they need to scale back and slow down and have bigger teams and more training or whatever to protect their fucking family then fuck it. that's what they will fucking do.
there won't be another eliot spencer, but he will always be remembered. known. but the legacy of eliots work is not that he was an indestructible force. but the knowledge that every life is sacred and to be protected, not just the ppl you are putting your body in front of to defend but also yourself. and thats? thats love. thats a world truly changing and changed.
