Chapters: 1/5
Fandom: Leverage (US TV 2008), Moon Knight (TV 2022)
Rating: Teen
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Crossover, Case Fic, Ambiguously around or after Leverage Redemption S3, Post Moon Knight S1
Summary:
"Layla El-Faouly's here."
"Layla El - who is she?" Harry asks. "Should I know who that is?"
Sophie hears the tour guide - apparently on a phone call - before she sees him.
"Marc was worried, so just - I know."
On comms, Breanna whistles. "I knew that name sounded familiar, but - wow."
"Cairo team has been trying to recruit her for years," Parker says. "But -"
“Sophie, what’s the call?”
Sophie looks the approaching tour guide, who's finishing up his own call.
"Yeah. I'll see you soon. Laters, gators."
Sophie takes a deep breath, turns her head away to hide that she's speaking. “Go. Eliot, try to stall her.”
---
Thank you so much to everyone who liked this when I started posting bits on tumblr, wouldn't have made it to the full fic without you.
4/5 chapters are written and edited and I'll be posting on Sundays!
He steps off the bus and into a fitful, spiteful rain that rolls down the back of his collar and soaks into his shirt with icy water. The bus stop is on the opposite side of town to where he needs to be, so he slings his duffle bag over his shoulder and starts walking, tugging his beanie low to keep the rain off as best he can. His bones know the route, and he's not expecting trouble for once, so he lets himself relax, drops the constant vigilance that was beaten into him by every bit of training he'd had since stepping on the bus out of the same town. It makes him feel naked, exposed, even though he knows there's no-one else about. The scratch and scrape of his boots on the path are the only sound apart from the rain dripping off the occasional tree.
The thick stone walls and cast iron gate come into sight and his steady pace falters, because he's not ready for what's waiting for him on the other side. Seeing it will make it real, and there's a finality about that he can't avoid. His feet feel stuck to the rain dappled pavement, legs heavy like there's lead flying at him, and he heaves in a breath before he starts walking again, ignoring the shake that's slowly spreading through him. There's water on his face and he blames the rain, though that doesn't explain the way his eyes are burning. He blinks, gets in another choked breath, swiping his hand under his nose before he surveys the neat rows of shining white stones. The sight is like a fist to the gut, drives the air out of him and he has to close his eyes, lean against the wall for minutes-seconds-hours before he can fill his lungs properly again. His duffle drops to the floor with a thump and he leaves it there, because there's enough weighing him down already.
The one he wants is at the end of the row, fresh flowers standing proud in the vase by the headstone. Oxeye daisies. Her favourite, he thinks, and bites his lip, hard on the little wounded sound that wants to escape. Oh, god, Mom. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
He blinks again, feeling the salty slip down his cheek and surrenders to it, dropping to his knees, one hand splayed on the headstone, the other dug into the thick grass like if he lets go he might just be swept away. Once the tears start, he can't get them to stop, feels like they're scouring him clean. There's a surrender in them and it feels like the first one in forever, after years spent building walls up, thick and strong and so solid nothing touched him. All the things he held at bay hit him and he yields to them, the scent of dry dusty air and cordite and blood cooking under the baking sun drifting through his mind like a vengeful spirit.
I think you'd be ashamed of me now, Mom, he thinks and glances down at his hands, expecting them to be coated in thick and clotted red. They say we're keeping people safe, but some of the things we do… He shakes his head, draws a shaking hand over his face. Some of the things we do are wrong.
It's the first time he's admitted it to himself, and a wave of disgusted relief passes through him. Maybe I'm not beyond redemption, he thinks, if I can still recognise that.
The letters are cut into the stone in crisp, even lines and he traces them, traces the name that had always just been Mom to him. Remembers hugs scented with baking and perfume, a careful hand brushing out his hair, and tending his hurts. Remembers too, the look on her face when he stepped on the bus, bound for a job he felt called to do, because she'd seen the damage it did once and knew exactly how it would chew him up and spit him out.
"Well I'm not out yet," he says, aloud, but quietly, because there's a hush about the place he's loath to disturb. "I'm sorry I wasn't here. I tried. God knows I tried, but they… well, there was a mission and…" he trails off, digs awkwardly in his damp jean pocket and pulls out the silver locket he'd picked up at a little market, on a dusty street, in a town whose name he can't recall.
The ground is soft and he scrapes a shallow hole, dropping the necklace in. "I thought you'd like it - I was gonna-" his voice breaks and he stops, bowing his head and surrendering to the fresh wave of tears. His healing ribs ache, and he presses his hand against them, because that pain he knows how to deal with. "I'm sorry," he murmurs and closes his eyes, focusing on the push-pull of his breaths until his body settles. "I love you."
"El, it's time to go," a voice says from the gate and he looks over, swallowing hard because someone cared enough to follow him.
"Paul. You shouldn't have come," he grates out, and forces himself to his feet, wincing as the blood flows into his legs after so long kneeling. The other man crosses the space between them, deliberately bumping Eliot as he stops.
"Please," Paul says. "You think being a medic is just sticking on the bits you idiots get blown off?" He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a dollar, placing it carefully on the stone. "Mrs. Spencer, you raised a smart boy, but he can be dumb at times."
"Give me a minute?" Eliot asks, and Paul nods, already heading back to the gate.
The words he wants to say won't come-they're churning inside of him like the storm that's passing by overhead. "Thank you. For everything. For seeing a baby no-one wanted an-," his voice breaks and he lets the words trail off, because he can't get a thing out past the lump in his throat. "Just thank you," he gets out at last, lifting his fingers to his lips and touching them to the stone in a silent kiss.
It could be his imagination, but for a moment, the wind feels warm against his cheek as he turns away and walks to the gate, only turning as he reaches it.
We wanted you, and I'll never be ashamed of you, son, he hears, but maybe it's just the wind and wishful thinking.
The gate clunks closed behind him, and he can't help but take one last look back before he picks up his duffle and starts walking, knowing the greater good is always calling his name.
(from “The God of Loss” by Darlingside, which will make you cry.)
so I was thinking about the trio and kids. Because these people, you know, they adore kids! they’re great with them! And they might not admit to that, they may not believe it, but we know it, we see it with Eliot and Molly, with Hardison and Trevor, with Parker and Josie, with the kids from The Stork Job and The Fairy Godparents Job and their clients’ children and so very many more.
Most of all we see it with Breanna. We see how they mentor her, how they provide advice, how they encourage her, how they build her up, how they laugh with her and speak of teaching her and telling her stories from the beginning. they unashamedly adore her. And they are so very good with her—they know how she looks up to them, they know they are always watched, and they behave like it. They are truly wonderful with her.
We know they love kids. We know, too, that they see the foster system’s flaws, and we know they fear for the children they save from bad situations. We see how they instinctively nurture the kids of the clients who have lost a parent. We watch how they will lift up the children of the marks who do not treat them well.
But they are not meant for white-picket fences.
These are not the kinds of people who settle down. They do not get tired of what they do one day and say “perhaps we’d best end this now.” They never get tired of it. They adore their work, they adore their life, they cannot imagine anything else. They will never willingly stop.
But there is a point where need eclipses want. There will be a day when they cannot do it anymore.
This is a known fact, but it is not a loved one.
The years trickle by. The time of Redemption comes and goes. They raise team after team, create an ever-reaching map of International, help people by the thousands and by the singles. And they are not the management. They leave that to the capable people they have trained, the ones they trust with their lives and more, and they keep doing the jobs, they stay involved, they get their hands dirty. Because there is nothing else for them. They began this doing what they loved, after all, and that love has not faded. If anything it has only grown.
Parker cannot sit still in an office all day, and Eliot cannot watch others fight and listen to them take the blows that he should, and Hardison will never be able to see all the things his algorithms raise and all the troubles that pass in the media and not do anything about it himself. This is against their very nature.
But the years go on and on, decades pass, and Hardison realizes one day that this cannot go on forever.
It is Hardison, because it is him who sits in the headquarters or the van or the discreetly close location with his laptop open and monitoring frequencies. It is Hardison, not Eliot or Parker, who can pay the most attention to the every soft grunt and caught breath and withheld noise of pain.
It is Hardison who realizes, one fateful day, that those moments increase day by day, job by job, and his injury logs have grown exponentially thicker in the last year. He watches their medical supplies drain away faster and faster even as he replaces them. More and more there are mornings when the other two linger between the sheets for longer than they used to.
It is he who watches Eliot squint ever more at the files and sees his glasses come out of his pocket with unusual regularity. There is a box full of spares in the bottom drawer of their wardrobe for when they break on the job. Hardison begins tipping the lid more often when he starts hearing the crunch of broken glass in his husband’s jacket pocket. They disappear faster these days.
(One day Hardison has had enough. He makes the toughest case he can and slips it into Eliot’s jacket pocket the night before a job. Eliot never says anything, but it lays on the bedside table sometimes when they’re off, and the glasses stop disappearing from the box so often.)
It is he who notices how Parker reinforces her rigs more and more, how ropes and straps support more than they used to and stretch further. The vents don’t thud so often these days. She has hung a hammock high in the rafters of their house, and he sees her less in the harness and more tucked away there.
(He adds padded bottoms to some of the vents and larger places to rest. Parker never says anything, but the vents rattle a little more often.)
It is he who observes how Eliot isn’t at the punching bag as regularly anymore, how he wraps his hands so carefully when he is, he who sees how Parker does not stretch quite as far as she used to, how she painstakingly plan jobs where she does not have to do a backbend or a particular contortion.
It is he who watches every time they step out—not jump out, no, not anymore—of the van, carefully holding on to the sides, and thinks to himself as he watches them walk away—
Is this the last time I will ever see you?
It’s Hardison who, whenever he finds a new job for them to do, eyes the circumstances and determines whether it’s something he can ship off to another team or not. His algorithms are prioritized now to chances of harm rather than potential jobs, attuned to the ever-growing injury logs. Their jobs begin to skew further to grifts and simpler building plans. But that never stops him wondering: Will this be the last job we ever take?
Will I send them to their deaths today?
For it is not his hair that fills with grey streaks faster and faster. It is Parker’s. When he sits behind her on the bed with her brush beside him, carefully separating her hair into strands for braiding, he finds more and more of them silvering.
(He watches her braid it every day, but some mornings she slips before him anyway. She was delighted when she discovered he could do it, courtesy of too many little sisters and not enough time in busy school mornings. It brings a grin to his face every time he thinks of her sunshine smile.)
It is Eliot’s, for there are late nights when Hardison finds him stretched out and half-asleep on the couch, and when he comes back with a blanket Eliot will be sitting up and waiting. He always sits beside him. Sometimes, Eliot lays back down with his head in his husband’s lap and lets him card gentle fingers through his hair. Those cherished moments become bittersweet when he finds that it is not so thick nor as deep in color as he remembers (though it is always soft).
And it is Hardison who bolts awake in the midst of the night with the ringing of the comms in his ears, clutching at the sheets to reassure himself he is not in the van he is not in the headquarters he is not on a job he does not have the earbud in his ear he is not listening to his lovers dying.
These nightmares plagued him from the beginning. He cannot count the number of times he has dreamt of sucking death-rattle breaths, the crack of spines, the sound of screaming in his ears, cannot count the times he has dreamt of searching and searching for bodies. Sometimes he does find them, staring eyes and crushed ribs and mangled limbs. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes they aren’t dead at all—but those times he never finds them. He can never figure out which is worse.
But the nightmares have never been so bad as they are now.
Other nights he does not sleep. Other nights, he sits awake and watches his lovers’ scarred chests rise and fall in deep slumbering breaths, and wonders when will I lose you? A year from now? Two? Or only months, only weeks?
What if it’s tomorrow?
He wakes to the others’ weeping often. But he thinks they are the ones comforting him more these days.
Finally Hardison has had enough.
They can’t do this any longer. He can’t do this any longer. Hardison cannot live without them, these two lights of his life, his sun and moon and bright diamond stars—but he knows he will die last, should they continue down this path, and he will die alone and many years from now.
For it is not he who takes punch after punch from men decades younger than himself, who climbs into stories-high elevator shafts where one wrong button-press could end it all, who stares down the barrels of guns without one himself, who hangs off the sides of buildings by his fingertips, who pushes and pushes and pushes his body day in and day out. His husband and wife are resilient. The odds say that they should have been unable to keep doing this a decade ago—and the odds are wrong.
But Eliot and Parker are not the kinds of people who can merely stop. There will never be a day, Hardison knows, when they will sit down with him and say we do not want to do this anymore. They will push and push and push themselves till they break.
Hardison knows what their breaking will look like. His dreams have told him so. Hardison will not, will never, let that happen on his watch. He will have to stop them.
If he asked, they would. It would take coercing, it would take shouting and arguing and probably many hours of the two of them off on their own and thinking, but they would.
But Hardison turns this over in his mind as he forges paintings and writes code and sends out emails to the teams, tries to picture stopping, and it makes him go nearly as cold as the thought of breaking does.
Stopping means no more jobs. No more jobs means…
Well, it means a lot of time spent volunteering, he supposes, and overseeing International’s teams. It means a lot more nights spent at home and not hotels. More of Eliot’s home cooked meals, he guesses, and more movie nights, more trips for fun. The medical kit wouldn’t have to be refilled nearly as often. Eliot’s box of glasses would never have to be replenished again. It means fewer days spent watching his partners hobble around and deny that they need to sit. Hardison wouldn’t have to plan jobs around the weather that makes their bones ache, or watch Parker wince as she drops out of a vent, or notice how Eliot needs the volume in his comm brought up higher than he used to.
There would be no heart monitors that spike and fall on the screens.
Hardison thinks of this, and then he imagines Parker and Eliot in their house, day in and day out, and it brings a shake to his breath rather than a steadiness.
Ever-moving Parker and Eliot, his never-stopping always-going wife and husband, for whom he has to fill the house with distractions to keep them from pacing and snapping and looking for trouble. Parker has vents and climbing systems and a room full to the brim of boxes of locks, safes, puzzle-boxes, books of riddles, absolutely anything and everything that could challenge her.
There’s a small gym for Eliot. Hardison always puts new gadgets and cookbooks in the kitchen, and he’s found that there are indeed some books that Eliot will spend hours reading (assuming he can find his glasses). A guitar found its way into the living room one day, and now books of music pile up on the nearby shelves. He keeps a closet specifically for outdoor gear.
But there are only so many meals that can be cooked. Parker is already bored of most of the puzzle room. More than that, they both have to move. Challenges from books and puzzles and games have never and will never be enough for them.
Hardison thinks of them in that house, day in and day out, growing wearier and wearier of what they have, growing tired of what life has to offer, and it sends a racking shudder through him.
He goes on, day in and day out, and he watches them, and they push themselves, and he worries and he wonders and he dreams and he fears.
And then, one day, it hits him.
They’re sending off yet another kid to the foster system. Hardison will track them and make sure they find the right place, but it always aches a little to watch them go. He’s been through that hell. There is nothing he wouldn’t give not to help them. The three of them always see them off, but it never feels like enough.
This time, though, he’s rushing, running to meet them. The kid is already leaving. Parker and Eliot watch them go, tension laced in their shoulders, and it occurs to him that he rarely ever watches them watch the kid.
They look with the same love in their eyes he saw so many years ago. In a moment he is struck with memories: listening to Eliot teaching Molly how to hit balloons with a dart in the mirror, Parker putting her hands over Josie’s ears as she taught her to break into a car, the worried love in his husband’s voice as he searched for the girl he had known for mere hours, the outraged passion of his wife’s protectiveness over the teenager she had seen so much of herself in.
There is the ringing of Parker’s half-choked declaration they’ll wind up like me. There is the way Eliot had spoken of Cory, a boy who still carried his father’s lunchbox while he worked in a mine for his family. There’s the kid from the boxing ring and the kid whose father was killing himself in the ice rink and the children tackling Eliot in the school and, and, and—
—and Hardison remembers teaching bright, precocious Trevor about hacking when they were trying to steal a goddamn potato of all things. And of course Breanna, wonderful, perfect Breanna, who leads International now. Breanna, whom he spent so many long, long days and nights teaching how to hack and how to build software and hardware and engineering and whatever else she asked of him. Breanna, who called even when it was four in the morning for her, just to hear his tales of the crew. She still calls. Half the time it’s only to hear their voices.
With her comes the loud, bustling noise of Nana’s house, the shouting echoing off the walls, the warmth of his little siblings on his hip, the attention and focus it took to put braid after braid in his sisters’ hair. Nana was forever busy with the kids. He still loves coming over as often as he can to help. One thing never changes—her house is forever noisy. There are always new kids around, and there are always lessons to be taught: how to fold laundry, how to dance along to a song without worrying whether you’re doing it right, how to complete all of your schoolwork for the night, how to speak kindly, how to work together, and the most important one of all:
Love yourself.
Nana’s work is never done. She is always busy.
Eliot and Parker cannot stand to be still. They need to be doing something. But most of all, they have to be helping someone.
The puzzle snaps together like a flash of lightning. As the thunder rolls, so does his mind: he knows precisely what he needs to do.
First there’s the matter of housing. Their house is big, but not that big, and anyway, the only home that matters to them is each other. Nana’s only one person, and she can manage plenty of kids on her own. Between the three of them, Hardison is sure they’ll wind up with quite the brood.
There are any number of mansions lying around the States. It’s shocking how many there are. They’re not small, either: most of them could fit a whole extended family in them, though most of the time they’re just bought by too-rich people who can’t hope to fill a quarter of the space. Hardison should know. The crew has infiltrated plenty of them. But he knows they’ll find a way to put one to good use.
He searches for the ones that are unlikely to be bought and only takes up space. There’s a lot of them, half too damaged to be good for anything, but one sticks out: secluded with beautiful grounds, an area with good (but not too good) schools, a half-decent price point, and a bit of a fixer-upper.
Standing on ladders and driving in nails isn’t not physical, but it’s a lot better than dodging punches or dropping two stories off a building. Giving Eliot and Parker a project right off the bat will help ease the blow of quitting the jobs.
Then he hunts down research. He already has shelves upon shelves of books on psychology and parenting and foster children and anything else that could be helpful, but there’s always more to read. A refresher course is important.
While he’s got algorithms searching for that, he sets some to hunting down more details on the local area as well as building renovations, then begins building a plan. He’ll have to introduce the idea slowly. Parker and Eliot won’t be opposed, per say, but getting them to completely agree will be a challenge.
It takes a few weeks, but it’s going well, and Hardison’s almost ready to present his idea to them.
Then his world shatters.
It’s another job, another day, another time when he watches his lovers head out the door and wonders will it be this time?
Except then will it be this time? changes to oh God, it’s this time.
Eliot’s breaths choke off at the same time something crunches.
Parker screams his name so loud Hardison’s ears ring. Or maybe that’s him—maybe that’s him screaming so hard that the taste of blood coats his throat—but it doesn’t matter because Parker’s cut off with a jerk and the comms go dead and they are dead dead dead and—
The world spins and drops out. The next few hours are black but for agonizing pain.
His only memory is not of sight or sound or hearing. It’s touch, the thready warmth of two pulses flickering under his fingers.
They tell him later that he found them in the nick of time: two unconscious bodies collapsed side-by-side in a back alley, and him, clutching their wrists with 911’s number still glowing on the phone beside them. Apparently he rode in the ambulance, because they couldn’t get him away from the other two without restraining him. Every time they tried they feared they’d hurt him.
What he remembers next is this: waking in a plastic chair, head dizzy (with sedatives, he learns later), an ice-cold knife of grief sunk into his heart and tears coating his cheeks, to the steady paired beeping of twin heart monitors.
They survive. Miraculously, they survive, somehow with only minimal injuries. Hardison knows it’s only because of the advancements made within the last few years. Three days later they’re out of the hospital and back home, Eliot on crutches and unhappy about it, Parker complaining at length over the stitches in her arm. Hardison can’t even be annoyed by it. They’re here and they’re alive and they’re still here.
He gives them the evening. But the next day he’s up even before them, spreading papers on the table and making breakfast at the stove (because you learn some things when your husband is a world-class cook) when the two of them come to the table.
When they ask, he doesn’t bother to soften the blow. This is the last time he’s doing that. They’re done.
Eliot and Parker look at each other, then at him. They nod.
He blinks. Just like that? he wonders, and then asks it aloud.
“We don’t want to hurt you again,” they answer, and his heart could break with relief.
When he presents the plans they answer with all the joy he had hoped for. They’re worried, of course—will they be fit to care for children?—but Hardison only rolls his eyes and reminds them of Breanna and Josie and Molly and Cory and all the rest, and they relent.
Two months later they move out to the mansion. It’s a difficult project. Even Hardison didn’t anticipate how long it would be (though Eliot grumbled at him about how much harder this would be than it seemed, dammit, Hardison, what have you gotten us into this time?) but it’s good work, hard work, busy work. He doesn’t have to watch them pace in a hotel room with boredom. There is no angry snapping born of too much time spent sitting around. They work and Hardison blasts music and the other teams chat with them over voice calls.
Some nights Eliot sits in the central hall, the ceiling four stories above them and laced with Parker’s rigs, and plays new songs for them on his guitar. They all sing along when it’s one they know. The acoustics of the room are perfect for echoing and strengthening their voices.
Other nights they curl up on a pile of king mattresses spread three-wide and two-deep, blankets heaped high, and whisper stories to one another before falling asleep to the songs of morning birds outside the windows.
Hardison still wakes screaming. Eliot and Parker do too. But it’s not every other night anymore, and now that they aren’t on jobs, his nightmares begin to recede.
(Of course there’s always the recurring one that did happen. Sometimes he sleeps with their wrists in his hands or his fingers pressed to their necks, just to reassure himself their hearts are still beating. If Eliot and Parker are still awake, one of them will pull him close and press his ear against their chest, and he falls asleep listening to their heartbeat.)
Some of the International people show up to help. They come with suggestions and ideas that get put to good use. Breanna delights in helping them pick out the tools for a massive workshop. His other siblings come too, and he puts them to work. Nana is too old for traveling these days (though he knows she’ll outlive them all), but she talks to them over video calls and gives them tips on how to make everything work.
“How on earth are you going to handle so many kids?” some of them ask. “You’re looking at a school’s worth.”
The three of them just smile. They’re up to the task—and besides that, there’s a number of people from other crews who are also on the brink of retirement. An entire section of the manor is planned for incoming helpers: they won’t be alone for long.
Finally the mansion is done. Or, well, done enough. It’ll always be a project. There will always be a room that needs repainting, or a sink that breaks out of nowhere and needs repairing, or a piece of roof that’s leaking. But it is more than livable—oh, so beautifully livable, the best home Hardison has ever found for them, filled to the brim with all they could ever want.
There is a library with shelves that stretch two floors up, filled with more books than he could read in a lifetime and skylights flooding the room with sunlight. The gym has endless features: a dance studio, a martial arts room, weights, gymnastic mats and bars, a goddamn ball pit because Parker loved the idea, and slides to go with it. Eliot has the biggest and best kitchen he could have ever dreamed of. There’s even a walk-in fridge and freezer.
(“The hell do you expect me to be cooking for, an army?” he asks once, and Hardison laughs.
“Worse. Kids.”)
They’ve made the bedrooms a little plainer than usual, though they have rooms filled to the brim with furniture and curtains and decorations of all shapes and sizes. It will be the kids’ home too. They deserve to decorate their own rooms, no matter how long they’ll be staying.
There are movie rooms, and rooms of pillows and couches and blankets, hidey-holes aplenty (Parker knows them all), games, puzzles, music (Hardison’s pretty sure a band could set up shop in there), art, writing spaces, closets and closets waiting to be filled, bathrooms with tubs big enough to be small pools, a real pool both indoors and out, and Hardison sometimes loses track of what else. They make sure all but some reserve rooms are used and functional. None of them will let this space go to waste.
Getting everything up to code is a job and a half, but there’s plenty of disabled International people (and Hardison’s siblings too) who give them pointers and let them know who the right people to call are. Hardison delights in picking out elevator music. Eliot informs him that programming them to play The Imperial March every time he uses them is not as funny as he thinks. Parker plans little puzzles in Braille and puts them in all sorts of places.
She, of course, has rigging all over the place. The high ceilings are her dream. There are hammocks everywhere. Eliot adores the greenhouse and gardens, spending hours mulling over plans and determining precisely what will work best. Hardison watches the lawn service mowing the massive yards and mulls over the best use for them. There are paths aplenty for running and walking. Eliot’s got a whole space mapped out for an orchard. Parker’s claimed a not-insignificant section of it for mazes and a high ropes course (which is going to be godawful hard to build, but he can’t wait to watch the kids on it).
Hardison’s read a lot of books and seen a lot of research supporting animal-raising as an excellent activity for kids. And he’s always wanted a dog.
When they visit the local shelter they end up with three (because Eliot’s a softie for them) and two cats. He plans a chicken coop in the back and goes to long-term planning for more farm-type animals. Parker has come to love horses over the years, and he knows Eliot’s fondness has never faded. Maybe a stable or two.
Their adoption and foster papers process not long before they’re done. (Hardison technically already had them, but they hadn’t been done the legal way, and though the law is pretty stupid about this whole thing he still wants to do it right.) Then it’s time to get to work.
They’re careful, of course. They begin with two siblings in the summer. Both are teenagers, that age where it’s hard to get them into a foster home, let alone to adopt. (Of course the three of them aren’t looking for adoption unless the kids want it. They’re human beings: they get to choose their own parents.) Both are quiet and wary, looking overwhelmed as they stare up into the manor’s heights.
Parker and Hardison exchange glances, wincing. They’d known from experience that this might be tricky.
They start small, relegating everything to a single wing. It’s around the size of an ordinary house, maybe a bit bigger, and while the three of them have their own rooms elsewhere they make sure to sleep nearby. (That’s something else the kids look at them strangely for: there aren’t many polycules who foster kids, after all. There aren’t many polyamorous couples visible in the media period, though that’s changing with Breanna’s generation. )
When Eliot loads one kid’s laundry into the machine (and oh, they need to go shopping so badly for these kids), he finds a worn dress at the bottom of a pile of boy’s clothes. The same kid, he recalls, who had shaken their head a little when he had asked them about haircuts, whose hair was already brushing their shoulders. It’s fraying at the edges, obviously well loved. There’s a hole in the skirt. When he brings the laundry up he takes out the sewing kit (well, a piece of it—there is a truly enormous area of the arts room dedicated to material arts) and makes sure to fix the hole before he puts everything in the closet. The dress goes first and foremost, hung delicately on a special hanger.
The days go by, the kids become more open, and a routine falls into place. They fill closets with dresses and scarves and put boxes of pins with pronouns in their rooms. Eliot teaches them to chop vegetables and shows them basic self-defense. He helps them walk the dogs, and when he offers they let him teach them meditation.
Parker takes them to therapy (a tricky conversation, but well worth it) and shows the younger one how to climb. The older one is more interested in puzzles, and she happily complies, bringing out a massive box full to the brim with puzzle-boxes.
Hardison, for his part, puts together movie nights and video gaming sessions. He shows off the library and makes sure they know where to find everything, as well as the rules of the house. When one of them shows an interest in fandom, he makes sure they know where the cosplay stuff is. One day he starts a DnD campaign with all four of his family members.
Four becomes five, five becomes seven, the school year begins and some choose homeschooling and others choose public. Homework is done, meals are cooked, dogs are fed, cats are befriended, lightsaber battles play out in the yards and Nerf gun fights are had in the halls (Eliot still prefers a shield), pillow fights go down, tears are cried and arguments ring out in the halls, the fridge doors and pin boards and walls are covered in artwork, kids eight, nine, and ten show up, conversations about queerness are had, a Pride parade is attended, there’s therapy and therapy and so much therapy, sports teams are joined, clubs are attended, problems occur and they handle it, they handle it, they handle it all no matter how hard it is.
Hardison isn’t sure he’s ever seen the other two so happy. He, for one, cannot contain his joy. The children are hard but they are wonderful, bright sparks ready to go out into the world with no one to dim them.
There is a baby one day that International directs to them. The rest of the kids dote on them. The work is hard, but they manage anyway, and there’s three of them to get up when the little one cries. There is nothing more endearing than watching Eliot asleep with a tiny baby crooked in his arm or Parker carefully climbing with them strapped to her chest.
One day, as he’s sitting on the porch with the other two at his sides and watching the kids play, he glances to the sides and realizes that his partners have gone fully gray. He himself finds his joints creaking more and more these days.
The International retirees are doing fantastic and Breanna is the perfect heir to their throne, directing teams with all her brilliance while getting her own work in on the side. She’s mentioned she thinks she might hand it off to one of her own proteges, just so she can go back to some of the old work.
We built a legacy, he thinks, and then, We built a legacy, and we are here now, and they did not die and leave me here alone, and we are happy.
He realizes Eliot and Parker are looking at him with that we know what you’re thinking expression. They smile at him when he notices. Parker kisses his cheek and Eliot pulls him closer on the porch swing, and though they say nothing at all, he knows they’re all thinking the same thing:
We got our happy ending, and we made sure everyone else will too.
The first time it happens, she's unprepared. It's exhilarating, to start, watching him in his element but it's five against one; a brutal fight, and it's not until they're in the car and on their way back to the hotel that she realises Eliot didn't walk away uninjured.
There's a dark bruise blossoming across his cheekbone, spreading up into his eye, a smear of tacky blood at the corner of his mouth, and he has his arm pressed against his ribs like they ache. She brushes her hand over his left shoulder and feels him flinch, remembers too late Hardison's warnings about broken bones and the plates and pins holding them together. She winces at him in apology.
"I'm okay, kiddo," he says, and grins at her with bloodied teeth.
That time, she believes him.
----
The second time, she's more prepared, but it's worse, because one of the private security guards had been carrying a knife and there's a deep, bloody cut across his forearm that won't stop bleeding. There's a hitch in his breathing that she's come to know means broken ribs, and she's utterly miserable, because if she'd done her job better, maybe the whole thing could have been avoided.
Parker pulls out the stitch kit, trading glances with Eliot and Breanna tenses, thinking fuck, here it comes, before he pulls her into a careful hug.
"You'll do better, next time," he says.
----
The blood won't come out from under her nails and she scrubs frantically at her hands, remembering how it had felt, pumping out under her palms, Eliot broken and bleeding and shot, wrong place, wrong time, just a stupid bit of bad luck… she sucks in a choked breath and goes back to scrubbing, ignoring the sting of the harsh hospital soap.
Her hands are bright red when she finally gets all the blood off, rejoining Sophie and Parker in the waiting room for minutes-hours-days until the surgeon comes back out, a soft smile on her exhausted face. "He's going to be okay," she says, and the three of them sigh in relief.
"When can we see him?" Breanna asks, and the surgeon leads them through to his room.
He's pale and pained, a bulky cast on his injured arm, bags of blood hanging behind his head, running into his veins, but he smiles when he sees them. "Remind me to look up bulletproof sleeves, huh?" he jokes, faintly, and none of them laugh, because it had been too damn close, this time.
---
It's her fault, the next time. They're setting up the equipment for a con in an empty office and she trips one one of the trailing cables. He's quick, grabs her to stop her falling, but she can't halt her momentum and her forehand cracks him right in the face. Both of them grunt at the impact.
He reels back a couple of steps, both hands clamped over his face, blood dripping from between his fingers. "I think you broke my nose, kiddo," he says, disbelief and wonder and amusement and pain all mixing in his voice.
She's not sure if she should laugh or cry, gut churning with guilt, expecting him to be angry.
He takes the ice pack from her, pressing it to his face, the other hand patting her on the shoulder. "You have one hell of a headbutt there," he says.
It takes days for the black eyes to fade, and even longer for her guilt to do the same.
----
She learns, about the best ice packs and when he'll take something and when he won't, slowly figures out that some drugs make him groggy or nauseated or wired. Learns about heat for the old nagging injuries and cold for the new ones. Learns the signs of him having a bad day, when the ghosts of his old injuries haunt his bones, knows when to offer aid and when to leave him alone, but she still envies the ease that Sophie and Parker have around him, watches with careful amusement as Parker pokes his less tender bruises and he grumbles about it in a slow way that means he's not really annoyed. It's love and trust and a bond that is slowly forming, like a growing seed, one that just needs more time before it blossoms into its full form.
She'd come into the team filled with stories of his heroics, narrated with love by Hardison- and despite how he feels about it, there is something heroic in offering your own body up as sacrifice to keep people - strangers- safe. It's different, now that she's seen the cost, seen him quiet and wan with pain, seen him gather himself up to keep going when it would have made more sense to stop, because the job needs him to, seen him so utterly exhausted that even breathing seems like hard work. The stories don't mention any of it- the toll it takes on him, on the rest of them, and she thinks maybe that's for the best, because heros don't bleed or sweat or puke.
Well, most of them, because he's a hero to the people they save, even if he won't accept the label. Even if he insists that he's just doing his job, that he has more to do, that how can he stop when the bad guys just keep coming?
She watches him, slumped on the recliner, and ice pack on his knee, another on his shoulder, bandages peeking out from under the ratty t-shirt, and wonders just how much longer he can keep going, already knowing the answer…
My Leverage fic has been getting some lovely notes and stuff on here lately so I figured it's time to share the link to my AO3 profile. Lot more fic on there, including chapter fics. Enjoy! 😁
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