Leverage: Supers

They don’t have superpowers. They don’t. Or at least, they don’t have super powers.

Sure, Nate jokes that he’s psychic. It’s a con he’s played on more than one mark, not counting the times Sophie (or, memorably, Tara) picked up the role. The rumors of precognition floated around him as an investigator no matter how much he insisted otherwise. As his reputation as a thief grew, so did the rumors. Being assumed as a seer of some kind has been a help as much as a hindrance, really, but it deters more trouble than it attracts, so Nate’s let the rumor lie.

But there are times, once in a while, when Nate pauses. His voice will get raspy. Usually it’s just a word: duck, stop, run, wait. The team has learned that you don’t argue when he uses that voice, because he’s always right, and it’s saved their lives more than once. Nate calls it a feeling, or an instinct, and then changes the subject. One time, when he was drunk and pressed, he slurred, “It didn’t save my son.” After that, they stopped asking.

Sophie isn’t actually a shapeshifter, not like in that 1970’s footage of the person changing, one face after another sliding across their body like a slideshow. They know Sophie can’t do that, because she’s a good liar but they know she cares, and if she could do that, she would have, when they were in a few tight spots where a change of face would have stopped the violence.

But there’s something just slightly too good about her performances, sometimes. Even though it’s her skills that sell it, her features never betray her. Her skin is always just enough of the right shade. Her eyes are always just close enough to the right shape. It could be written off as the mind playing tricks, except that Hardison keep having to update his facial analysis algorithms, because they keep getting Sophie wrong. People who have met her before swear they haven’t, and vice versa.

Eliot is easy to pin down, if harder to prove. It’s just not natural for anyone to take that much damage and never need a hospital. He always waves it off, insists it’s not as bad as it looks, but that doesn’t explain why he has smooth skin in places where he absolutely should have scars, given the injuries he’s acquired during their work.

One day Hardison cracks the right server and finds a photo he recognizes on a list in a military database. After that, he notices the way Eliot reacts to mentions of super soldiers and government experiments. It’s subtle. It could be mistaken for the general dislike many army grunts have of superheroes, if he didn’t know better.

Parker also has instinctive reactions, though she denies them even while tensing, just enough for her teammates to notice, around large men in lab coats when they tower over her, around needles and syringes. She doesn’t know why because she was far too young to remember anything before the endless foster homes.

When she trusts them, eventually, they get glimpses of Parker dislocating joints that shouldn’t be able to dislocate and popping them back into place without blinking or bruising. It’s a bit too much for even the most limber double-jointed acrobats. Hardison thinks of cats, who can fold their collarbones to fit through tight spaces, and deliberately does not go looking for Parker’s past.

And Hardison? Hardison doesn’t think he has anything at all above baseline. Sure, he’s always talked to his tech. He names his computers, the vans, the robots. He whispers soothing encouragements or desperate pleas off-mic. Like any good programmer, he’s irrationally superstitious, but he doesn’t really, logically, objectively think much of it, until the day when Parker thrusts her phone in his face, cracked and probably irreparably dead, and tells him to ask it to turn on for just a bit longer so they can call for help.

He does. It does. Parker seems completely unsurprised. Haridison starts being more aware of how he talks to things, starts leaning how to feel the connections that he’s been tapping into unconsciously his whole life.

They don’t have superpowers. But then again, none of them ever claimed to be normal.

Thinking about The Old Guard and Leverage. Specifically thinking about immortals Hardison and Parker who fall in love of centuries, slowly and carefully. Who knew there was always something there but let it take time. And then Eliot Spencer shows up. Eliot, former soldier, current retrieval specialist. Eliot, who has known for a long time that it's a miracle he's still alive, that he's long past the life expectancy of someone in his position. And he's carried around a form of survivor's guilt for so long, that when he wakes up from the gunshot that finally hit the wrong place, that feeling intensified. Why him? It's not so much the loss of loved ones-he lost those a long time ago. It's the memories of what hes does over his life, and the guilt that he, with so much blood on his hands, is the one who can't die. And he hears the other immortals stories of wars and battles, and he hears the good parts, but also thinks he is the exception, that his participation will never help the world. But over time, he learns to work on a team that values his mind as much as his skills, that Believes™️ in him. And he learns that he can be apart of something good, and feels hope for the future. That being immortal could mean something. (But of course there's the ache over watching two other immortals who have been in love for centuries and will be in love for centuries after and he hates how jealous he is and how much he loves them and how much he wishes there was room for him. Spoiler alert: there's definitely room for him ELIOT you are just bad at picking up HINTS. ....DAMNIT HARDISON)

I just watched The Old Guard this weekend and it was very good, I loved it, but uhhhh minor spoilers:

Immortal Eliot who’s been dreaming of Hardison and Parker for years and then when he finds them, realizes that they haven’t died for the first time yet and either they die over the course of the series and Eliot has to explain? OR Eliot quietly decides to make sure they live as long as possible before dying??

I don’t know but I’m just completely into the idea of Eliot even taking the Dubenich job as a way of finally meeting Hardison and Parker and then at some point (maybe the warehouse? Idk yet) he realizes that they don’t know what they are yet - note that at the end of the pilot, Eliot doesn’t approach Nate until after Hardison and Parker do, was he following Nate or following them? - so he decides to stick around. If over the course of the series, Hardison and Parker each die for the first time, it completely shifts the meaning behind “better or worse we change together” not to mention Eliot’s “til my dying day” and “I don’t have to search anymore”.

Parker walking off 20 foot falls would be so easy if she just healed from the damage. And if Eliot knew Hardison would be fine, the pool scene with Moreau is also completely different. I don’t know, I’m just low key obsessed with this idea right now.

yes

Does Hardison know he drowned and revived or does he just think he was really lucky

AN EXCELLENT QUESTION

And now does Eliot have to like subtly convince him that something is different now and Hardison is just oblivious until Eliot has to hold him down and poke him with a letter opener

(LOOK WHAT YOU DID)

Eliot spends two weeks trying to gently raise the subject, has a painstakingly crafted a PowerPoint of the pre-drowning times when Hardison got injured and the post-drowning times Hardison should have been injured but wasn’t and he’s got a whole speech planned.

Eliot has meticulously picked the day and time in case Alec passes out and/or runs (although he’s never been the runner, not like Parker who does it out of her nature or him, who does it out of habit. No, Alec has always stood his ground, even when he should have cut and run and Eliot loves him for it) but just in case, Eliot has accounted for every contingency.

Every contingency that is, save for Parker deciding the fastest way to “pull the band-aid out of the hat”

-Eliot hadn’t bothered to explain in either direction because he knew what she meant and how she meant it: this would hurt like pulling a band-aid off but underneath wasn’t an injury, it was actually no more injuries, at least not permenent ones, which was like magic, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and the worst part is that Eliot understood what she meant-

Parker is Parker so she shoves Alec off a (“Small! It was a small building!”) shoves Alec off a building and then Eliot sighes and jogs downstairs to Hardison already exclaiming something about “little warning next time” and “oh that is just wrong” and “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little” and lastly, right as Eliot hits the fire door and steps into the back alley“BLACK WOLVERINE BABY HELL YES”.

All in all, there are worse people to spend eternity with.

Hoooboy you just encapsulated their entire relationship.

And Hardison shouting he's Black Wolverine....Eliot is gonna be bombarded with so much x-men references....Hardison now calls one of his moves The Fastball Special.

"Thats--thats not how it goes," whines Eliot.

"Did you just admit that you been reading enough comics to know what the fastball special really is?" Hardison gleefully asks.

"What, no, shut up."

Oh but that makes The Morning After job kinda skeevy. Because Nathan may not be an immortal but he used Parker's immortality to get the mark to kill her during sex....so skeevy. And at the time Hardison didnt know (because it's before meeting Moreau) but Eliot knew. Oh Eliot knew what Nathan did. Jfc.

And oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Nonononono *slappy hands*

When Hardison was buried alive...

He died.

Many times.

Before they finally found him.

Aaaaaaaiiiiiggggghhhh.

But please tell me the OT3 meets TOG and hangs out and Parker squees over Andy's cave collection.

(STOP DOING THIS I’M NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO WRITE LEVERAGE FIC)

But if Nate is truly the honest man...does he know? Or does Sophie-an immortal who cut her hand on a piece of glass a few years before Dubenich and now knows she’s as mortal as anyone-does Sophie ask them to keep the secret, to spare Nate the pain of asking why not Sam?

(Changes Sophie’s request during season two. Let her bury them, all of them, let her make peace with her past so she can spend her future-whatever is left of it-with a mortal, honest thief.)

Which means Parker spent the whole of Morning After Job complaining about how much easier it would be to just BE DEAD for awhile instead of playing with makeup and spirit gum, seriously.

-“No Parker, damnit, I will not come choke you out, stop asking!”

“Fine, you big bay, but don’t make that face when my kisses taste like yucky blue lipstick.”-

And Grave Danger Job is still terrifying because they don’t know, not for certain, not for sure, how long any of them have. They don’t know how it all works yet. They’re still young for immortals, save Sophie who refuses to say how old she is but there’s too many women with too many faces in history for her to be younger than Eliot.

Eliot, who came of age during the Western Expansion, who fought in the territories and the new states and laid the railroads to the east coast and back. He dies the first time from a snake bite, had missed the tell-tale rattle in the darkness of an Oklahoma midnight, for all that it’s a very distinctive sound.

And Parker, Parker is a baby, barely past her first death when Dubenich calls. A mistake with a guard rotation at a private vault, two bullets to the back, she’d made it to the roof before the blood loss took over and had expected to die sky high and holding diamonds. She hadn’t. She hadn’t and she didn’t know why but she’s tested it in her warehouse and accepted it as fact. And that’s why she takes it more personally to not get paid than to nearly die. Dying is boring. Money is not.

Nate figures it out, mostly, at some point. Ma Mystere is a clue. As is Eliot’s lack of lasting damage. He and Nate play chess regularly and there’s no sign of decline, no hint of a lifetime (more than a lifetime) of knocks to the head.

But Nate still carries it around, that honest man. He’s lived with Plan M, and F, and Q, and even Z as unlikely as Parker would be to fall, he’s lived with them in his head for too long. He’s content to go to sea with his lovely, lovely wife and leave this one con unraveled. Kids should always surpass their parents, after all.

Let them go steal forever.

“let them go steal forever”

@letsstealsomethiefjuice BITCH IM CRYING

Watching Leverage can be a trip and a half. Especially because, like, how do all these people even find them?  I mean, it’s kind of handwaved as Hardison’s computer algorithms and stuff finding them, but even so.  And then! several people don’t want money, they want things like a horse, or even immaterial things like getting someone their self-esteem back.  That’s some next-level shit right there. 

Like, making deals with with the Fair Folk or demons type stuff.

Which means that the Leverage crew would be the demons/Fair Folk/supernatural entities having desperate people summon them, probably as a last-ditch desperation move they didn’t think would work.

Sophie is some sort of UnSeelie. She follows her rules and values manners and dispenses her kindnesses as she sees fit. Do not test her. You will not win.

Parker is a changeling, maybe. Or Seelie. Or maybe she’s just Parker, the only one of her kind. She hasn’t decided yet.

Nate is Human. An almost priest who hates himself and all his flaws and weaknesses while at the same time completely convinced of his own superiority. In the beginning anyway.

Eliot would have died years ago buy some unkind spirit liked his anger and blessed him and now he’s this sort of proto-god of soldiers who’s countries used them up and betrayed their ideals. He just doesn’t know it yet.

Hardison is something new. There is no word for him. He’s making a new world in which he will rule and he has no need at this time for a name or title.

When you cross the Threshold, you become something Other. 

Fair Folk? Demigods? Archetypes? Perhaps.

The Threshold is always different. But when you return from it … you never really return. You are always Other. You are always Outside.

For those five, the Threshold was the warehouse explosion in the first episode.

And on the other side … no more petty cons and grifts. No more squalid thuggery. They have crystallized, become Archetypes: Grifter. Hacker. Hitter. Thief. Mastermind. Small gods? Perhaps, but most certainly Powers, dancing with ease on “alternative revenue streams” and even weirder magics.

Listen to their catch phrases. These are conjure words. Strange promises, barely comprehensible to their beneficiaries, whispering of justice in an unjust world, payment deferred or refused, because the true coin of their trade is payback. 

“Let’s go steal fire from the gods.”

Oh my stars and garters, how much do I love the idea of the Leverage crew as small gods???  It is perfect and glorious! :D

*nodding vigorously*

Sans context…  you tell me, would you expect this line to be coming from an entirely mundane insurance investigator, or from someone whose friends might be a little uncomfortable around iron and may or may not be holding a contract written in ink that seems to be smoldering on the page:

“People like that…corporations like that, they have all the money, they have all the power, and they use it to make people like you go away. Right now, you’re suffering under an enormous weight. We provide…Leverage.“

‘An alternative revenue stream’ he says, smirking at the private joke. Their accounts are balanced using the coin of an older realm. Yes by vengeance delivered, hubris crumbled, a brisk business in karmic debt-collection… but also the sense of despair and powerlessness their client no longer has need of, or a sliver of the hope they’ve stolen back for someone once robbed of it. They may not want your money, but they are well paid all the same.

in honor of pjo getting a tv series

my niche au, featuring camp half-blood;

(Alexander Hardison, son of Hephaestus, the God of fire, of forges, of the art of sculpture, of technology.)

(Parker, daughter of Athena, Goddess of wisdom, of handicraft, of war.

Honorary daughter of Hermes, God of boundaries, of roads and travelers, of thieves, of athletes, of shepherds.)

(Eliot Spencer, son of Apollo, God of the Sun, of light, of oracles, of knowledge, of healing, of diseases, of music, of poetry, of archery, of protection.)