Fun Leverage Redemption Case fic that crosses paths with the Guard at Merrick Pharmaceuticals! by @bazinmousqueton

hey can I get yusuf “invented modern art” al-kaysani and nile “is this a rodin” freeman and “slightly unhinged but loves a scam” quynh banding together to heist precious cultural artifacts from western museums and return them to their home countries? nicolo “we fight for what we think is right” di genova can come too.

bonus:

james “I’m now appatently the tech and privacy guy” copley hears whispers about a group called leverage consulting that is rumored to do things exactly like this and gets in contact with a user called @age.of.the.geek.baby and bing bang boom the leverage crew is helping plan heists and showing the tog crew the ropes of liberating art and artifacts for the greater good (and looking good and sometimes ridiculous doing it)

Can you imagine if they met face to face and became friends?

Eliot and Nicky talking about the horrible things they did in their pasts and working towards forgiveness and how they find it in the people they love.

Nile, Joe, and Parker geeking out about art and techniques artists use and the security around different pieces (that's mostly Parker but Joe is taking notes as she rambles).

Copley and Hardison talking about ways to cover virtual and physical footprints and Hardison giving Copley tricks he's learned over the years.

Then the Leverage team hears from Nate and Sophie who are in France, trying to track down a forger who has been making replicas of paintings to pay for his alcohol addiction. Imagine Nate and Booker reluctantly bonding over loss of a son and alcoholism. Imagine Quynh and Sophie taking over the world together.

Okay but Andy knowing every single ingredient in the baklava. That is some good "its very distinctive" Eliot Spencer energy right there.

Put my Leverage binge on hold to finish rewatching The Old Guard and I can't stop thinking about Eliot being an immortal.

Nile is reborn when Andy looses her immortality right? Alternate Ending to the movie where Quynh dies in the coffin for the final time and Eliot getting hers (I know that one dying and another bring reborn probably isn't how it really works but that's the theory I'm using here)

Eliot dies, not on some job, just a car accident or something ordinary. No one is around and he's fine now, so Eliot just brushes it off with a 'that was kinda weird, I swear I should be dead but whatever'

Honestly idk how he would react, my main focus is the Old Guard trying to find him. He never seems to be in the same place two dreams in a row, the name tags he wears as well as the uniforms constantly change. They just can't get a read on who this guy is or what he does.

And when they finally do catch up to him? That's a whole nother thing entirely.

I am living for this but also @missmarthanightingale had a point:

“on the one hand this sounds amazing but otoh i REFUSE to accept an au where parker & hardison inevitably die & leave eliot all alone in the millenia to come? no???”

either hardison would find out a way for him and parker to stay immortal or else they’d end up being immortals too. there is NO universe where eliot lives and parker and hardison die. not one.

eliot spencer said it first, folks: ‘till his dying day

ALTHOUGH

imagine how poetic it would be if his first death WAS for parker and hardison, to save them??? taking his wedding vows from the finale words seriously

UGH NOW IM THINKING ABOUT THIS

I saw a fan theory that joe and nicky are canonically soulmates. like, none of the other immortals lived and died within the same “lifetime” as any other EXCEPT for those two. joe and nicky though? they were born three years apart, fought and died in the same war, by each others’ hands. their immortality story was DIRECTLY related to them finding one another. they discovered they were immortal because of each other, at the same time. they were meant to be, to fall in love, to spend eternity together

now I raise you, canon soulmates parker, hardison, and eliot. they may not die all at the same time, but they are all immortal and “die” within a reasonable amount of time as each other. there is not a world where there is one or two without the other(s). there is no plan m, no hardison dying in a world where parker and eliot live. there is no world where parker doesn’t come back from a heist, no world where eliot is finally taken down by an opposing goon. not in any universe. they were made to live together, be together, breathe together, as one. and then they find that they get to spend eternity with each other, too

also I’m totally here for the crew not knowing anything about him bc of his constant costume and identity changed for the team. like, that’s kinda hilarious,,, these super experienced immortals can’t track down one (1) guy

(@ op, so sorry for hijacking your post lol)

i see this and i raise you: parker and hardison are also immortal but they never die to prove it because eliot never lets them get in harms way so like 100 years go bye and they’re all still running cons and one of them realizes hmm... something’s going on here...

Yes! but imagine that they don't die to trigger the immortality because when they think they lost Eliot it felt like they were dying - and they were.

Because their souls are always meant to exist together. So only one of them had to die to trigger it.

Leverage AU: the Rich and Powerful take what they want, we steal it back for you. We provide… Leverage

me:

my brain, evil: leverage old guard au

Keep reading

Very Niche Leverage x The Old Guard content below

I love all of the Old Guard x Leverage crossover ideas ... and I’ve also started to thing about a scenario where the Leverage crew don’t just meet immortals, but ARE immortals. And none of them realize that the others are immortals too (at least at first).

It’s why they all work alone - each of them has learned that they can’t have real relationships with people. It’s why they keep saying that they’re just doing one last job. And it’s part of why they bond so hard so quickly. None of them are really natural loners, but they’ve all been alone for a while.

You need to tweak canon a bit to make it work; you have to assume that they don’t dream about each other like the Old Guard crew. And you also either need to take some of the flashbacks with a grain of salt, or assume that three of the five are pretty new.

But here’s what I’ve got:

I see Hardison as the oldest. Part of this is practical; we see less of his early life, so it’s easier to fit him into a different timeline. But he’s also easily the most self assured and unconflicted person in the group. Everyone else is on a quest to find out who they are, but Hardison already knows. I could totally see him as over 1000 years old. He might have been getting bored before the age of technology hit. He realized in the 80s how helpful computers would be for a person who had to keep creating fake identities. It’s also easier to have friends online - if you never meet, they don’t notice that you’re not aging. He’s been everywhere, seen everything, and is having a blast in the modern world.

Sophie ... I mean, being a grifter with a string of identities is perfect for someone a few hundred years old. Why do you think she got into stealing antiquities? Half of it was hers at some point in the past anyway. It’s a big part of what fuels her fear that no one will really know her - she’s lived hundreds of lives in a very literal way. She always has to leave people behind. She’s lived long enough to get really good at it, but not long enough to come to terms with it.

I like Nate as the newest. I don’t see him settling down with Maggie and having Sam if he knew he was immortal (and we see a lot of his Dad, so the timeline is pretty set there). I see him “dying” for the first time after Sam dies, and before his divorce. It’s part of how lost he gets - he not only loses everything, but feels like he’s been frozen in time against his will. Nate would have given anything to save Sam, but he’s the one who’s going to live for ever.

Eliot’s tough, in terms of timeline. I like the idea that he’s just old enough that people who knew him growing up would be starting to wonder why he’s not aging, but young enough that they might just think he’s aging really well. I think he would’ve “died” for the first time in the military, before he disappeared into the underworld. His realization (and maybe some other powerful people’s realization) that he’s immortal would have been what propelled him from the aboveboard, to whatever black ops / mercenary stuff he was doing that led him to Moreau. It’s part of what makes his relationship with his father so fraught. Eliot’s trying to make a clean break, but feels a lot of guilt about it. Part of me actually likes the idea of Eliot being around 60 ... but that messes with the timeline we see in the Two Horse Job.

Parker’s the hardest to fit in. The flashbacks to her childhood and relationship with Archie all point to her being about the age she’s supposed to be in the show. I’d like her to be older - I think there’s a lot of mileage in the idea of her social oddness coming from being someone who stopped trying to fit in a few hundred years ago. Like Sophie, she’s drawn to museums to see things she’s seen in earlier centuries. It would also add an interesting contrast in her relationship with Hardison - she reacts to immortality by drawing away from people, and he reacts by turning towards them. But, we also see multiple flashbacks of Parker as a kid, and we meet Archie, who knew her then. So we either need to accept Parker as the age she seems to be (leaving us with 3 fairly young immortals), or we need to engage in some selective canon blindness.

In this version, they’ve all spent time telling themselves that they don’t get to have real relationships with others (at least not for more than a few years at a time). They can all join the crew at first because they don’t think it’ll last long. And then they figure they can stay a little longer. And a little longer. And no one else looks that much older either, so a little longer’s probably fine. It’s years before they put the prices together and realize they’ll never have to leave after all.

hey can I get yusuf “invented modern art” al-kaysani and nile “is this a rodin” freeman and “slightly unhinged but loves a scam” quynh banding together to heist precious cultural artifacts from western museums and return them to their home countries? nicolo “we fight for what we think is right” di genova can come too.

i genuinely understand if they choose not to invite sébastien “literally a forger” le livre, but i DO think it would add an extra layer of hilarity. 

nile [as joe wraps up the object they came for]: should we take this piece too?  booker [sheepish]: it’s, uh, not real. i forged that back in ‘52.  nile [pointedly not asking which ‘52]: uh-huh. booker: it’s in my safe house in marseille. nile: *looks into the camera like she’s on the office* 

Nicky’s eyes narrow “Why is it in your safe house?”

“If you’ve had it so long, you should have returned it to the appropriate-” Joe starts his lecture, but is quickly cut off.

“…then they’d find out this one is a forgery…” Booker gestured helplessly at the artifact.

Nile sighed, hand moving to her face, “Why is that important exactly?”

“I want to see how long it takes them to figure it out. The curator has it authenticated every time it goes on tour and so far I’ve bested 87 experts on this piece alone.”

Booker’s face lit up and Joe chuckled. It had been some time since they’d seen such emotion on the Frenchman’s face.

“It is safe?” Joe asks, eyebrow raised. Booker nods. “Properly stored?” Booker raised a hand to his chest in offense. Joe shakes his head, “Once you get to 100, you give it back regardless.”

Booker is nearly grinning, hands clasped tightly together, “That’s fair.”

Nile throws her hands in the air and Quynh sticks her head out from the next exhibit over, “Did you forge anything else in this museum?”

Now, Booker is grinning.

OH. Booker hooks up with the Leverage crew during his exile.

During this hookup with the Leverage crew, Booker and Elliot argue about food. Most of those arguments can be distilled to disagreements about whether there’s enough fat in the recipe. Booker’s on team “more is more” while Elliot’s on team “I know what I’m doing, cook your own food if you don’t like it and stay out of my kitchen!”.

Booker freaking loves Hardison. He’s not quite as good as the hackers working for Copley, but he’s the best solo hacker Booker’s seen in decades. Plus, he’s the team forger, and Booker’s fascinated by how Hardison knows which parts of a digital footprint to build first, based on the mark and the con.

Booker worries about Parker, but he learns after the first week not to say anything. She’s daring and conscientious and she’d never risk her life or her team’s for something foolish, but Booker still worries about her for months, until she sees the care she takes in maintaining and updating her equipment. He doesn’t quite shake his worry (there’s something about Parker that reminds him of his wife’s sister (this character is not canon, I have no idea how much thought Rucka’s put into his characters’ families’ families)), but he learns to trust Parker’s judgement.

THIS

At some point Sophie shows up and it’s like that Spiderman meme where they’re pointing at each other like, YOU.

Andy would 100% Not Be Here for Nate’s crap. And she would love Parker.

There are at least 31 leverage/the old guard crossovers on AO3 and yet I’m pretty sure none of them have gone the objectively funniest route wherein the third act of TOG goes entirely off the rails because Parker Hardison and Eliot were halfway through scamming Merrick and happen to have already been in the building when Andy gets dragged in

some more unsolicited nile & quỳnh thoughts: neither of them were there for the last 200ish years of inside jokes and references of the rest of the guard and they respond by UNIONIZING and MAKING THEIR OWN they come back from their first trip together with like, the deep and unbreakable bond that you only get after getting alcohol poisoning and committing petty crimes with someone

they go camping for a weekend and no one hears from them the whole time because they did shrooms the first night and nile dropped her phone in the fire and quỳnh (who doesn’t believe in having a phone) was laughing at her too hard to get it out. they come back three days later in oversized tourist t-shirts and none of the belongings they left with. andy is sitting at the dining room table like a disappointed dad who has been up all night and holds up a newspaper with the headline SUSPECTS BREAK INTO MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM, SWIM WITH OTTERS like ....hey was this you. nile says no with a completely straight face and quỳnh is like on an unrelated note we have some artifacts to repatriate but you can’t ask any follow-up questions about them. also we own a bar now.

#but what's this about a bar#did they win it in a contest? (x)

whenever they are asked about the bar they are like ‘that is our secret ;)’ but the truth is that they genuinely have no idea, they woke up on day 2 of their girls weekend with vague memories of a poker game and the paperwork was in quỳnh’s pocket and all of nile’s credit cards were missing. nile was like ‘this feels super illegal’ and quỳnh was like ‘laws are fake, i love our new bar’ 

...The apparent "won a bar in a poker game" subplot makes me think they accidentally crossed over with Leverage just in time to (partially) screw up Nate's scheme to avoid the bad guys getting the deed. In which case, Nile and Quynh also soon discover that they have a crew of vigilante con-artists operating out of their bar. Quynh considers this a bonus.

Leverage crew is initially very upset that they cannot find any way to get ownership of the bar back because the new owners appear to be 1) legally non-existent/dead and 2) so disinclined to interfere with the bar's management or Leverage's operation out of it that there is just no way to get any useful intel or leverage on them. But they also turn out to be weirdly benevolent ownership when they do occasionally make contact, since they're willing to sink resources into helping the bar with apparently zero interest in claiming any of the profits, instead either reinvesting them in the bar or distributing to the staff. Eventually everyone just decides to accept the weird fae bar ownership.

hey can I get yusuf “invented modern art” al-kaysani and nile “is this a rodin” freeman and “slightly unhinged but loves a scam” quynh banding together to heist precious cultural artifacts from western museums and return them to their home countries? nicolo “we fight for what we think is right” di genova can come too.

bonus:

james “I’m now appatently the tech and privacy guy” copley hears whispers about a group called leverage consulting that is rumored to do things exactly like this and gets in contact with a user called @age.of.the.geek.baby and bing bang boom the leverage crew is helping plan heists and showing the tog crew the ropes of liberating art and artifacts for the greater good (and looking good and sometimes ridiculous doing it)

Work in Progress Wednesday: Leverage x The Old Guard Crossover

Tagged by @tishinada ~ thanks for the tag! :) If you want to participate, feel free to consider yourself tagged!

This is from the second chapter of the Leverage x The Old Guard fic (currently untitled) that I’ve been working on. PS: If anyone is familiar with Leverage and The Old Guard and wants to beta the first chapter, let me know via Tumblr DM. I’m almost done and want to post it soon. (Soon being, like, this weekend. Because ADHD and ASD and I’m a lukewarm mess of a creative idiot.)

i cannot Wiy

At this point I believe that the Venn diagram of Leverage fans and The Old Guard fans is a circle.

yes

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)