oh hey there, what if THE OLD GUARD but LEVERAGE
Oh, I like the way you think, friend.
There are legends in the criminal community, and thus for the people who chase them. They’re risks that insurance investigators have to be prepared for, and while some people say Nate Ford’s a fool looking into them, he’s met at least one of them. People who are such good criminals and thieves because they’ve been around for centuries upon centuries. When he’s asked to be an honest man and given some dossiers, he knows the traces of them they haven’t quite erased in their long, long lives.
Here, they’ve only met long enough to stop dreaming. They’re all too wary to stay. Or at least they were.
Sophie Deveraux has been a thousand different women--ten thousand, even, from day to day. Adapting to new technologies and generations and languages is easy enough, so why shouldn’t adapting her personality to get what she wants? She always demurs when people ask how long she’s been around, saying a lady should never be asked her age, but she namedrops Leonardo da Vinci kind of a lot. She’s met a thousand Nate Fords before, in their varying ways, honest men with tragedies behind them, but this one is just smart enough and just persistent enough to be interesting and dangerous.
Hardison is the youngest. He first died in the time of Lovelace and Babbage, and he’s superstitious, likes to say that he entered the world when computers did and he’d better worry when computers are done for. He’s died so few times that he still wakes up slow.
There are legends about Parker. That maybe she only died the first time. That maybe she’s the oldest of them. That she’s any and every thief in mythology. Only she knows which ones are true, and she claims she doesn’t care to remember. Iron doors, advanced security systems, it’s all the same.
There are legends about Eliot too. He’s died so many times that any time could be his last but he’s never hesitated to throw himself into the fray. Maybe he’s almost as old as Parker. Maybe he’s barely older than Sophie. Only he and Parker know, and they aren’t telling.
After so many centuries, it’s weird to be a team, but it’s amazing, how much less alone they feel. They’ll miss Nate when he’s gone, but he brought them together, and they have to be grateful for that, so they’ll stick around as long as he lasts.
And then Nate Ford dies awaiting arrest ... and comes back.