Magsintherain - Mags

Inspired by this post by @lemissingmask

The team holding Eliot back from violence, either with a simple gesture or by putting themselves in front of him.

And the time the violence was encouraged:

in Leverage, in the background of some scenes you can see ads for or clips of another Dean Devlin production, The Librarian movie series. seems like The Librarian movies exist in the Leverage universe. BUT! at the end of the first david job, sophie’s storage unit contains the Judas Chalice, which is the titular arrifact in "The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice". it’s not an actual artifact irl. so there’s kinda 2 possibilities in my head at the moment:

sophie stole the prop, and considers it so precious that it’s stored amongst her stash of very real, very old artifacts. she’s like the worlds biggest Librarian fan.

the plot of The Librarian movies & tv show are real in the Leverage universe, and the movies are dramatic retellings of real events. sophie owns stolen cursed artifacts because of course she does.

(notably, sophie is seen holding & blowing into the judas chalice right after admitting that she has the real second david… you know, her big betrayal? the reveal of her judas kiss? etc etc)

The Swipe Right Job (S03E06) LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION (2021—)

*Poll options based on less common relationship tags that co-occur with the Leverage fandom tag on Ao3. Just for fun, please no yelling over preferences Haha!

Rewatching the pilot and watching how, when he sees how much that score made him, Eliot's tucking his head and just staring at that number and laughing - not throw his head back, but like the kind where you're almost fighting it but not quite not really, tight but wide grin that's not really open but still splits your face and makes your cheeks hurt, and almost manic about it, and thinking bout someone kiss this man so I don't have to, and like

I know metatextually they hadn't even STARTED working on that plot yet but like

Knowing what we know later, i can't help but think back to that moment and Eliot staring at that number and thinking holy shit. this is it. this is as free as I'm gonna get.

Because shit was getting tight, as a freelance retrieval specialist I think. Eliot's name was... starting to collect black marks. Failures.

He couldn't retrieve the monkey. He couldn't retrieve the dagger of Aku Abi. The community talks. Who knows what else had gone wrong in the year between the Rashomon flashback and the Nigerian Job? Nate said he chased them all, at one point or another. For Eliot, since Nate didn't know about the Moreau connection, that would've been in his freelance retrieval phase.

And Nate's good.

How many jobs did Eliot lose to him? How did his reputation fare, after those last couple failures? Did some of the higher ups know about his connection to Moreau? Did Damien have him blacklisted from certain circles, keeping him from taking more lucrative jobs with people who knew his full skillset, leaving him with the penny-ante players paying him well below what he should be getting ("why are you sending second-rate thugs after me?" perhaps because that's the price range you have to work in now, that's the only tax bracket that will hire you, the kind that hires second-rate)?

Had Eliot been considering it, until that moment? The possibility that Damien was right? That he would, inevitably, come crawling back after failing on his own? Maybe he could make it another couple months... a year or two even, if this success could bolster his flagging rep -

(there's a moment in the hospital, when all seems lost. they've been busted. the job that was supposed to save him doomed him. he'd find his way out, but after this colossal failure who's gonna hire him? he resigns himself to it happening sooner rather than later, now. then Parker gets Nate a phone, and he watches the man work a miracle)

- but he could see it looming on the horizon. The encroaching fear of knowing what was at the end of the road for him, the inevitable return to...

Then he opens that envelope. Sees that payout. The Score.

And in one singular fucking moment, one fell swoop, it comes crashing in on him that he'll never have to work for Moreau again.

Hell, he'll never have to take a single job he doesn't want to again. He can pick and choose his clients. Pick and choose his methods. The non-lethality that he was fearing was becoming a liability, just like Damien had said it would, suddenly no longer an issue. He could choose jobs he knew he could handle, instead of jumping at whatever was offered to him and hoping it worked out.

All because of this job. The one he'd hoped would get him by just a little longer. The one that for a moment he feared had ruined him.

Because of this team. This ragtag little group of people he was trying so hard not to enjoy the company of. Not to get attached to, even after such a short amount of time.

Because of Nate Ford.

So when Hardison calls him up later, with a story about another job and vet who needs their help, there's no hesitation in the "yeah, I'll be there."

Eliot had already decided the moment he saw the caller ID.

i need the ao3 tag wranglers to tag wrangle so it's easier to find the united healthcare shooter fic (there are 23 fics about him currently) (i did manually count) (i don't know what to tell you the internet is a bizarre and hilarious place sometimes)

It cracks me up that one of Sophie’s main assets in season 5 is her improv group that a) never asks any questions and b) is always down for any and all shenaniganery. Who are these people. Why are they here. I love them.

I was rambling on the issue of museums and human remains and how certain populations are more likely to have their bodies put on display to be gawked at and then went "well I guess the Pompeii casts were of Europeans. there are bones in there right?" and Googled it to make sure, at which point I confirmed that yes there are bones in there, but more interestingly DNA testing revealed that a cast of an adult holding a child everyone assumed was a mother and child were, in fact, a man and a kid entirely unrelated to him. Honestly that's more moving to me. Maybe they were connected in a way other than blood, but maybe a stranger saw a child when the world was ending and thought the one thing he could do was hold them.

I hope fifteen or twenty years after redemption ends we get another reboot of leverage in which Breanna leads a completely new crew who only ever heard of the original leverage team as heros of legends.

And they tell stories of them like they are mythical figures.

They tell stories of Nate Ford and Sophie Devereaux, how they chased each other across the world before joining sides in the middle to bring together the first leverage team. (They have the Old Nate painting in the current headquarters. Everyone in the new team knows without a doubt that is Leverage Founder Nathan Ford.)

They tell stories of Alec Hardison, Eliot Spencer and THE Parker, the trio who can make anything happen, who made this organisation into what it is now, the patron saints of every leverage team. If a job goes really sideways, they will come to save you, you don't even have to call them. They know.

(The stories range from mildly simplified to wildly inaccurate. Breanna finds this whole mystification fascinating to see, she even kinda gets it on some level, but it's also really weeeiiird. that's just his brother and his insane partners. She just gifted them matching plushies the other day. (She does know where they live and how to reach out to them but she never ever in no way would ever call them for a job. She can do this without them dammit) (but of course they'd still come out once or twice in every season sorry breanna i need my cameos dammit))

thinking about this

Woman: Who are you? Eliot: Well, ma'am, we'd be the cavalry.

Leverage 1x8 - The Bank Shot Job

Flores: Who are you? Parker: I’m supposed to tell you, "We'd be the cavalry."

Leverage 3x16 - The San Lorenzo Job

Ethel: We need real help. Where's the cavalry? Sophie: At the right moment, they'll be here. Probably. Possibly. I trust.

Leverage: Redemption 3x7 - The Shakedown in Clone-Town Job