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Sophie the actress is easy to write. We see a lot of her in the show.  This is the Grifter, the actress, the face Sophie chooses to show. As long as I am writing from someone else’s perspective she is not difficult, I can write what people see, I can write what she lets them see. And even from her perspective is not so difficult if the spotlight is on someone else.

But writing her, the real her, is another story. I don’t know where to start with the real Sophie, because even her name is an act. And that is part of her charm, the mystery.

This is a crossover scene, two scenes technically, that I wrote a while back, between watching Leverage and The Librarian movies and watching The Librarians show, and polished up for Character Appreciation Week. It is not canon compatible for… reasons. If you’ve seen The Librarians you know why. If not I won’t spoil it. (And if you like Eliot enough to be reading fanfiction about him, you should definitely go watch The Librarians, if only for Jake Stone.) Basically it’s anEliot appreciation piece because… actually I think “because he is Eliot” pretty much covers it. There are vague spoilers for both stories here, but nothing overly specific.

(When the rest of the team is in danger, Eliot needs to use Excalibur to save them.)

Eliot stared at the sword lodged in the stone for a long moment. He was the only one of the team that hadn’t tried, and failed, to pull it out earlier.

“The way I see it,” he said finally “you have a personality, at least with Flynn, so I think you got at least some say in who uses you. It didn’t matter before because only the worthy can wield you. I’m sittin’ here bearin’ my soul to a sword so it’s possible I’m crazier than Parker, but I’m not that crazy. I’m not under the delusion that I’m worthy. But the people I’m goin’ to save are. They’re the worthiest part of me and I need… I need your help gettin’ ‘em back. So please, help me save them, just this once.”

He reached out hesitantly and the sword sprung a few inches into his hand of its own volition.

Fanfiction

Hardison and Parker don’t get married. Well, not in the usual sense of the word. Like everything they do, it is slightly illegal and highly unusual.

Hardison asked. He took her night repelling at the Eiffel Tower and popped the question (with a stolen ring of course, because he pays attention.) She said yes while trying to untangle Hardison from his ropes.

Parker had already watched Sophie planning her wedding and decided that it was like Sophie’s obsession with shoes; fine for other people but not something she could understand or wanted to do herself. Uninterested in planning a wedding of her own, Parker stole one. Well, technically it wasn’t a wedding. She stole a marriage license from a mark. From Hardison’s research before the job she knew the mark was getting a divorce anyway, so she figured he didn’t need it anyway.

She handed Hardison the data she retrieved from the office.

“You know how you asked me to marry you? Well, I got us a marriage license. That makes us married, right?” She handed him the license and he choked on his orange soda.

Hardison had Parker call Nate and Sophie. He was glad, if a little disoriented, to be so suddenly married but he definitely didn’t want to be the one to break it to Sophie that she wouldn't be able to help plan the wedding. He also hacked the county records to make it, well, legal wasn’t exactly the right word, but semi-official at least.

Nate and Sophie flew in for a very impromptu reception which consisted of just the five of them and a cake Eliot made.

From that point on they were married. Sure, it wasn’t technically legally binding, but neither of them held to the letter of the law anyway so that didn’t matter. And sure, their marriage license didn’t have their names on it, but neither did their driver’s licenses so neither of them were inclined to quibble over that particular detail.

Hardison didn’t come up with his catchphrase. He heard it, liked it, and claimed it.

He was not the most popular kid in school. He was a very much a geek, arguably over the line into being a nerd, well-liked by his teachers and not many others. He made up for that somewhat with his naturally friendly temperament, but even so he wasn’t most of the students’ favorite. 

The other geeks were nice enough most of the time but he didn’t fit the image of what a geeky high school kid should look like. He was black and in the minds of most of his very white fellow geeks that automatically made him a jock at best and a gangbanger at worst. He wore backwards baseball caps with Star Wars t-shirts. It didn’t match their image. And on top of that he was smarter than most of them, so they were a bit jealous too. The jocks didn’t want him because they could tell right away that he was a geek to his very core. Even so, he almost never got straight up picked on because he was tall and strong and nobody wanted to test whether he was a total nerd or not.

He didn’t go to his first prom. He didn’t have anyone to go with anyway, and told himself it was really because Nana couldn’t really afford a tux rental. He could always hack in somewhere, get himself on a prepaid list, but there the whole idea circled back around to not having a date.

“What you doin’ hidin’ out up here instead of goin’ to your prom?” Nana asked.

He shrugged, glancing up briefly, then back down at his computer screen.

“I know that shrug young man. Don’t you gi’me that shrug. If you don’t want to talk about it tha’s ok, but you can use your words to say so.”

“Stacy’s goin’ with the quarterback,” he said, just catching himself in time to keep from giving another shrug. Nana notices and smiled.

“You’ll get the last laugh and no mistake.”

“How?” Hardison asked a little petulantly. “He’s team captain. He’s got the girl.”

“And he’s got maybe a one in a million shot at any of that mattering for the rest of his life. What you’re good at don’t go ‘way after school. Don’t you know it’s the age of the geek?” Nana asked. “Well it is and don’t you forget it.