#litluminary
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I miss you in Leverage fandom, so I’d love a scene from that mortal!Eliot with fae!Parker and fae!Hardison story you mentioned once. (Bonus points for incorporating the folklore about mortals being bound to Faerie by its food, since food is Eliot’s love language.)
Changelings
One of the best ways to con people is by telling the truth.
Parker and Hardison will never be the grifters Sophie wants them to be. But they do their best, given their limitations.
Like when Hardison told Nate, “I bounced through five sets of foster parents until I ended up with Nana.”
Like how Parker doesn’t talk about her childhood at all.
I. Hardison
“I hate humans,” Parker said to Hardison when they got back from the orphanage job. “I should have brought those kids through a ring to the Other Side.”
It’s the first time Parker has acknowledged what they are out loud. They’d both known, of course, seen the signs: careful lies of omission, a wariness of iron. Hardison had tried to bring it up, sharing a hazy memory of the daughter of an orisha and a faerie queen, born when the stories of European invaders did battle with the stories of West Africa hundreds of years ago – he thinks she might have been his mother, but she’d traded him away for a human child anyway.
(“I don’t talk about that stuff,” Parker had said, with an air of finality.)
“They’d have to send over just as many faerie kids to keep the Balance,” Hardison said. “And you know that ain’t fair. Besides, you don’t hate humans.”
“Yes I do,” Parker said. “I blew up my foster parents.”
(Hardison has met other changelings. They call the humans who raised them their parents. Hardison and Parker say “foster parents,” except when they talk about Nana. Sometimes the human children get the better end of the bargain.)
The door opened. Eliot said, “Parker. I need backup at the casino.”
Parker nodded and leapt out of her office chair. Hardison grinned at her. She flicked her ponytail at him as she turned and left.
II. Parker
“We have to tell him,” Parker said while Eliot was in the kitchen plating the first course. She could smell something rich and savory, like warm dark oil.
“We don’t have to tell him anything he won’t even believe,” Hardison said. “None of my siblings at Nana’s house ever believed it, and I did all kinds of weird-ass – ”
“Sophie believes it,” Parker said.
“She what?”
“I didn’t mean to tell her but she got all Sophie at me! First she gave me grifting lessons and she tried to make me lie and realized I couldn’t,” Parker said in a rush. “Then she realized you can’t either. That’s why she always introduces us with our fake names, so we don’t have to say them. She didn’t know why at first but she kept guessing and finally she said we’re fae. I told her it sounded silly but she said ‘tell me I’m wrong’ and I couldn’t. But she hasn’t snuck me iron or made me tell the truth about things I don’t want to. So Eliot wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.”
Hardison said softly, “I never thought he would. That ain’t our man.”
Eliot came in with bowls of steaming consommé garnished with parsley. The look on his face, you’d have thought he knew he was serving a lost faerie prince and a daughter of the Unseelie. Hardison said, “That smells so good, you have no idea. I must have made some kind of good choices in my life to deserve this.”
“You wouldn’t know a good choice if it smacked you upside the head,” Eliot said. “Which is what I’m gonna do if you let this soup go cold.”
When their bowls were empty, his hospitality accepted, Parker said, “Eliot, you know we never lie to you, right?”
“Technically we don’t lie to anyone,” Hardison said. “I don’t know if you, uh, noticed – ” At Eliot’s raised eyebrows, Hardison seemed to remember that he was talking to one of the most observant men in the mortal realms. “Right. Yeah.”
“Technically we don’t lie to anyone, but we really actually don’t lie to you,” Parker said.
Eliot’s mouth went soft in that way that wasn’t a smile, a face Parker always knew she could trust when everything else seemed confusing and fake. “I know.”
“So we’re going to tell you something weird but you have to believe us,” Parker said. “Because we earned it.”
“A hundred times over,” Eliot affirmed.
Hardison and Parker exchanged a look. Hardison nodded. “Okay, so it’s like this. It’s true we’re both kids who got kicked around the foster care system. It’s just that we didn’t get given up by who you might think…”
III. Eliot
They thundered through the faerie ring in their fine raiment, riding impossible steeds.
The faerie queen rode a camel patterned black and white like a magpie, her head wrapped in indigo cloth and starlight. The Unseelie raven girl wore a trail of clouds and feathers, and her horse’s breath steamed white even on a summer day in Portland. Eliot wouldn’t have known who they were if not for the children clinging to their waists, who would have been perfect miniatures of Parker and Hardison if it hadn’t been for their eyes, flat without that dancing light he’d come to understand was from another world.
Hardison jumped up from the picnic blanket. “Oh God oh God oh God. I knew the whole fresh air thing was a bad idea. Fresh air means woods, and woods means faerie rings, and faerie rings mean twelve kinds of trouble. Where is the damn car?”
Eliot reached up and clamped a hand on Hardison’s hip. “Don’t show fear.”
Parker was in a crouch, watching the faeries ride out from the treeline. Hardison said, “How do you know how to act around a faerie queen?” But he didn’t flee.
“I know rulers. Warlords.” Eliot looked up at him. “I knew Damien Moreau. He stole children too.”
The faeries stopped before the picnic blanket. The grass around them frosted over, and the light fell on them silvery like moonlight instead of golden summer sun. “We’ve come to claim our children,” the queen said.
“What do you want us for?” Parker spat, still in her predator’s crouch. “You didn’t want us. You traded us away.”
“Legends of you have reached even the faerie realms, daughter,” the raven girl said, the words misting in front of her mouth. “It seems we made a bad trade. Fortunately, we can trade to get you back.” She hoisted the stolen human child in her arms. The child stared, flat-eyed, as if she hadn’t understood.
“No way am I going back there,” Hardison said, looking nervously at the swirling blackness rising up from the faerie ring. “I don’t remember it all that well, it was a long time ago, but I am totally sure y’all don’t have Netflix, and that is just not acceptable.”
Eliot reached for Parker’s hand, staring certainty into her fae-lit eyes. She took it. They stood, proud and defiant. “You have no claim on them,” Eliot said. “I do.”
The queen thundered, “They are our blood, born in our realm! What claim could you possibly have?”
“I welcomed them to my table, and they ate my food from the mortal realm,” Eliot said. “I claim Parker and Alec Hardison.”
The Unseelie fae tasted the air with her tongue, like a snake. “You are no being of power. You are only a mortal man. I can taste death on you. Changeling children all eat food made by mortals, and they are not bound to this realm.”
Fear clutched cold at Eliot’s heart, though he refused to show it. Parker and Hardison told him about faerie law, and he knew his claim abided by it. But he couldn’t quite believe the faeries would follow the law instead of declaring themselves above it, as every other warlord Eliot had known would do. He kissed Parker on the mouth, tasting chocolate, a final goodbye if her mother stole her away.
“The way I understand it, if a human goes to the Other Side and accepts the hospitality of the fae by eating their food, they’re bound there forever. Changeling children aren’t bound to this realm by our food because if we welcome them as the humans they were traded for, we don’t know who they really are, so it’s no true hospitality. I gave them my hospitality knowing full well who they were, and they accepted it. I claim Parker and Alec Hardison.”
“You can only claim our children by their true names,” the faerie queen said. “Your claim by their false human names has no power.”
Fear dried Eliot’s mouth and rooted him to the spot, but still he refused to show it. The children the faeries had stolen in trade for Parker and Hardison were changed from their time on the Other Side, and if the faeries traded them back, they might not survive here. Eliot kissed Hardison on the mouth, tasting candied fruit, a farewell for him if the queen his mother stole him away.
“Hardison,” Eliot said, still looking him in the eye. “Tell the lady you’re Miles Morales.”
“You know I wish I could,” Hardison said. “I cosplayed as him at ComicCon – ”
“ – I know, your costume crap was all over the place – ”
“ – but I can’t, because I ain’t him, and that’d be a lie.”
Eliot placed a hand to the back of his neck, drawing him down. “Tell her you’re Alec Hardison.”
Hardison – Alec – swallowed hard. He turned slowly from Eliot’s eyes to the queen’s fathomless ones. “My true name is Alec Hardison.”
The queen hissed.
From the raven girl’s arms, the girl exchanged for Parker spoke, her voice high and piping but precise. “If you claim them a third time, they will be bound forever to the mortal realm, and they will die as mortals.”
Eliot’s throat closed up. He’d promised he’d protect Parker and Alec until his dying day, but he couldn’t ask them to die for him.
Alec took Eliot’s hand and kissed him on the cheek. “I’d rather die with Eliot than live forever in Crazy No Internet Child Stealing Land,” Alec said. “Y’all want us back because we’re legends. Eliot just wants someone to cook dinner for when he comes home.” His kiss glowed warm on Eliot’s cheek like a beam of sunlight.
Parker took Eliot’s hand and kissed him on the forehead. “I always knew I’d die here. That’s what makes it so important to do the right thing.” Her kiss felt as heavy on his forehead as the impact of hitting the ground from a height.
“I claim Parker and Alec Hardison as my own.” Eliot glared at the faeries. “Now get the hell out of our city.”
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Hmm, I see what you’re saying. But can this particular warlock turn people into whatever he wants, like a stick in the mud, or a pig? If not, how does it link to the sisters’ powers? There doesn’t seem to be a logical connection there, and I don’t know if the writers thought as far as the Law of Sympathy for this.
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Congratulations on 1000 followers! Let’s see... from the Hork-Bajir Job ‘verse, if you don’t mind—Parker made good on her wish to steal an Escafil device at some point, and Hardison and Nate should be morph-capable before they go after the Kelbrid. The creepiness of morphing gives way to a happy moment. (Whole-team flying, perhaps.)
(The Hork-Bajir Job is my Leverage/Animorphs crossover, for anyone unfamiliar.)
Trading Faces
“I heard you have to commune psychically with these things,” Hardison says, staring at the blue box in Parker’s hand. “I tried meditation once and I got way too fidgety, didn’t feel any cosmic wholeness with the universe.”
“You just have to focus your mind on it,” Parker says. “You can do that.”
“My sixth-grade guidance counselor would beg to differ.”
Eliot rests a hand gently on Hardison’s arm, prompting him to turn and meet eyes. “Hey. This is a big decision, Hardison. If you’re not ready to do this, it can wait.”
“Eliot...” Nate says warningly.
“It can wait,” Eliot insists. “It’s gonna take months on that ship to get to Kelbrid space. Not everything has to be on your timeline, Nate.”
“Nah, it’s fine, I can do this,” Hardison says. “Lead on, Jedi Master.”
“Put your hands on the box,” Parker tells Nate and Hardison. “Focus your mind on it. Try to block out everything else. Sophie, Eliot, be quiet.”
Nate and Hardison each put a hand on a different face of the box. After a moment, Hardison yelps a little. “It tickles!”
“It’s supposed to do that,” Parker says. “Keep focusing.” She waited another minute. “Okay. It’s done.”
Nate frowns, his eyes still closed. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Parker confirms.
Sophie claps her hands together. “And now for the first order of business! Time for both of you to acquire the rest of us.”
“And no using my DNA for dumb pranks, Hardison,” Eliot says, holding out his arm for Hardison to touch anyway.
“Or to wheedle gossip from your ex-wife, Nate,” Sophie says, bringing his hand to the side of her face.
Nate and Hardison go around acquiring the others; Sophie, Eliot, and Parker have already done this. Hardison approaches Parker carefully, saying, “How do you want to do this?” She grips Hardison’s forearm, and he acquires her that way, feeling protective as she falls into the trance, a rare moment of unawareness. Nate follows Hardison’s cue, offering his arm for her to touch instead of the other way around.
“All right,” Sophie says, when they’re all done, gathered back in a circle. “And now we practice. Everyone morph the one to your left.”
Parker is standing to Hardison’s left. Oh, it feels so wrong to morph her, when he’s got this big a crush on her and no sign she likes him back. But this isn’t about that, it’s about being able to trade places on a con if they need to. So Hardison closes his eyes and thinks about Parker, which is easy enough. Her quicksilver grace, her alert eyes. And the changes begin.
He shrinks down, which feels like missing a step on the stairs, a short fall. He yelps, and his voice comes out higher. All around him, his teammates’ faces are blurring and shifting. He squeezes his eyes shut again. Parker, Parker. His bones shift and grind. His weight shifts, and he staggers forward a step. Even with his eyes closed, the noises of morphing all around him are awful. He covers his ears and tries to let it all settle.
Center of gravity lower to the ground. He’s light on his feet. He rocks a little, back and forth on the heel, testing it. That’s better. He’s getting the shape of it. He uncovers his ears.
To his left, he hears a clap, and Nate saying in an exaggerated voice, “Let’s go steal us an Andalite!”
“You’re making me sound like a maniac,” says Sophie’s voice in an American accent.
Eliot says with a snicker, “I don’t think she’s too far off the mark.”
And Hardison’s own voice is close by his ear, saying, “Hey. How’re you holding up there, man?” It’s a little low and subdued for how he talks, but not too bad.
Hardison doesn’t want to open his eyes. There’s already so much happening in his body and his ears. He says very quietly back, “You know how Parker’s brain works differently from the rest of us? I think I’m feeling that right now. I just need another minute.”
“Hey Parker,” Eliot says out loud, in his best Hardison impression. “You got any being-Parker tips?”
“Go climb up on a roof,” she says, unmistakably Parker even in Nate’s voice.
“Besides that!” Hardison says.
“I don’t know, that’s what I do.” He hears her moving around in Nate’s body, testing it, and he goes back to trying out Parker’s, swinging the arms and legs around.
“That’s it,” Eliot says in Hardison’s voice. “Bend forward and touch your toes.”
He can do that easy, and the floor too, all without bending his knees. He opens his eyes like that, folded over with his hands on the floor. Upside down. He sees Nate’s feet moving over the floor as gracefully as a dancer’s. Hardison laughs and collapses to the floor in a tangle.
“You all right, Hardison?” Sophie, in her creepily perfect Eliot impression.
“I’m fine,” Hardison gasps. His laughs are coming out as Parker’s snort-giggles, which is awesome. “I just think we’re going to need a lot more practice.”
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litluminary
Current status of the next Dæmorphing fic, “The...
I’ll get through it as soon as I can. No worries about the deluge of content – it’s my pleasure.
Oh my goodness, interacting with my Dæmorphing beta reader on Tumblr where everyone can see! I feel like our epic secret writing friendship has been finally brought to the light.
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When will you post the final part of Daemorphing series?
1) There are actually two fics left: the big climax of the war, and then an epilogue fic about the characters and the world after it's all over.
2) I don't know! I had surgery earlier this year and needed a couple of months to recover, so I only started writing the next fic recently. But it's definitely getting written and my beta readers @litluminary and @crowlesdraws have said they love it so far :)
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A chat log from 2017
Spoilers for all of The Abyss under the cut
just to show you how long I had that last scene planned:
featherquillpen, 11:13:31 PM
Especially because once it spreads through the orbit-side Pools around Earth, if they time it in sync, Evatran can just assume direct control of all the infected ships. "Hey, so you may have noticed you can't control your hosts anymore. Wondering what's going on and what we should do next? Hi, we're Eva Lopez and Aftran 942. Welcome to the Peace Movement, motherfuckers."
featherquillpen, 11:14:43 PM
I might actually have her say that. I'm almost certain it's canon that Eva swears like a sailor.
litluminary, 11:14:52 PM
She has to get that recorded for Marco to play over, and over, and over...
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For all you Dæmorphing fans out there: while I’m only explicit about it on-page with Sara Berenson and Jamal (OC), I do intend Tobias, Ax, and Mr. Tidwell as autistic characters as well. I’m neurotypical, but my beta reader @litluminary is aut-spec and gives me a lot of insight.
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Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Leverage, Good Omens (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Characters: Alec Hardison, Crowley (Good Omens), Nathan Ford, Parker (Leverage), Aziraphale (Good Omens), Sophie Devereaux (Leverage), Anathema Device, Eliot Spencer (Leverage), War (Good Omens)
Additional Tags: Crossover, POV Alternating, Footnotes, Non-Chronological
Summary:
Crowley asks Leverage to stop the shady corporation trying to buy out Aziraphale's bookshop. He gets rather more than he bargained for.
Thanks to @litluminary, @purronronner and @c-rowlesdraws for your help!
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I’m exporting all my old Livejournal posts because I had a Livejournal since 2006 and I only cross-posted my public entries to Dreamwidth. It’s a real walk down memory lane, in a variety of ways. I originally posted Dæmorphing on LJ, and seeing the original posts is a trip. This is my original author’s note on the first fic:
This is a fusion with His Dark Materials - basically, Animorphs but with dæmons. This all poured out of me within the span of about three days, so it's unbeta'd. My apologies. If anyone has any ideas for more fics in this 'verse, please say so in the comments. I have a lot of inspiration to write more, but I'm not sure exactly what to do with that inspiration.
“a lot of inspiration to write more” is one hell of an understatement, 2011!me
I also discovered it was @malathyne who supplied Tobias’s dæmon’s name, so thanks for that!
I rediscovered the original LJ comment by @litluminary on “Prometheus in Chains” that was so long, thoughtful, and insightful that I decided to take her on as a beta reader.
I said in a comment on “When We Were Children” that the series would start to diverge from canon at book 26.... oops, it started diverging a lot earlier than that.
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thundever just asked me how I name dæmons in Dæmorphing. I am afraid my answer will disappoint because to be honest I put much less effort into it than most authors of dæmon AUs I know. I know for sure that my beta reader @litluminary puts way more research into it than I do.
My answer depends on the culture the dæmon comes from. If the dæmon comes from a Western culture / strongly Western-assimilated immigrant culture, then I just use the default name generator here and pick out one that sounds nice. That’s all there is to it. It takes about 30 seconds.
If the dæmon comes from a non-Western culture, I put more thought into it, because I want to take care to show some respect. Latin@ dæmons get names that are Latinized elements of Roman mythology, like Marco’s Diamanta, Eva’s Mercurio, and Miguel’s Andromeda. Chinese dæmons from less Western-assimilated Chinese families get names from the apocryphal folk history of China – you’ll see a bit of this in “Welcome Home” soon.
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Prompt: a scene from the Tobias-is-an-Andalite timeline from A Place to Stand
Aaaand my last prompt from my 500 followers fest. Thank you for being so patient, @griffinguy24.
A general note that I will be cleaning up / fleshing out my minifics from this prompt fest and posting them on AO3 (though this may take a while, as writing Chapter 3 of the new Dæmorphing fic is my current highest writing priority.)
I should also add that my awesome beta reader for the Dæmorphing series, litluminary, once wrote me a giftfic set in the Andalite!Tobias timeline from A Place to Stand. I may try to convince her to post it on AO3 as a Dæmorphing Divergence if enough folks are interested.
By the time I arrived to intervene in the fight, it was already over, the bullies scattered. Tobias was reeling, a bruise blackening on the side of his head. One of the bullies must have knocked him silly with the flat of his blade.
«Tobias,» I said. «Why didn’t you call for me? I would have protected you.»
Tobias looked at me with only a single stalk eye. «I am fine.»
«No, you have a nasty bruise. You should go to the infirmary.» I fixed on him with my main eyes. «There is no shame in losing a tail fight to bullies. Not all males are meant to be warriors. There is a place in the world for people like you.»
«That’s not it,» Tobias whispered. «I didn’t want you to hear what they said.»
«There is nothing they could say about you that I would give any credit.»
«It wasn’t about you, Aximili,» Tobias said miserably, finally looking at me with his main eyes. «It was about Mother. How she’s strange, and stupid, and rude, and gave me a name no one’s ever heard of.»
And Tobias could never explain why Loren was the way she was, because no one could know the secret that she was an alien who had become an Andalite nothlit. Now I understood his predicament. I should have seen it sooner.
«You will not face this alone, Tobias-kala,» I said. «I will not let them hurt you again.» And I would speak to Loren privately, tell her that she needed to expose herself to Andalite society more, learn to navigate our culture better, so as to spare her son this pain. But Tobias did not need to know about that.
Tobias snorted. «You’re barely older than me. You can’t call me Tobias-kala.»
I smiled. «And how will you stop me?»
«I’ll tell Father why you score so poorly in xenobiology!»
«You wouldn’t dare!»
«Yes I would, Aximili-kala!»
I chased him through the schoolyard. He outran me, like he always does.
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Give me a scene from a universe in which the Ellimist stacked the deck differently, and Elfangor gave the morphing power and intel on the Yeerk Empire to Team Leverage. After all, they've taken down corporations bigger than the Earth-based Yeerk presence.
Once they were out of danger, once the tremors of disgust and terror had passed, Sophie murmured to Nate, “We should scatter. Lay low for a while.”
Out of the corner of Nate’s eye, he saw Parker and Eliot holding onto Hardison as he trembled and whispered, “He died. We met an alien prince and he was – s-so cool and nice and that other alien ate him!”
Nate studied Sophie’s face, the way she bit her lip and looked into the far distance as if she were imagining dark possibilities. The Yeerks were everywhere, Prince Elfangor had said. They could be anybody. Nate was already a paranoid bastard, and after what he’d seen tonight, it had only gotten worse. “Okay,” Nate said blandly. “How about you and I take a trip to Majorca for a week? Lay back on the beach and wait for the heat to die down?”
Sophie shook her head. “No. We can’t stick together. It’s too dangerous. What if one of those monsters saw us? We’re harder to recognize if we split up.”
“I just offered to spend a week with you in Majorca,” Nate said, loud enough to interrupt his younger teammates’ quiet entente, “and you turned it down.” He snapped his fingers. “Eliot. Parker. Secure Sophie and blindfold her. I think we’ve found ourselves our first human-Controller.”
“What?” Sophie said, pressing a hand to her chest. “Nate, you’re setting our own team on me? How could you?”
“Prince Elfangor said a Yeerk can only last three days without Kandrona,” Eliot said, eyes narrowing. “If you’re really Sophie, you won’t mind if we keep you under some light house arrest for a few days just to check.” Parker passed him a blindfold, which Nate decided it was better if he didn’t know why she had it on hand.
Sophie bolted. She used her knowledge of the city, ducking through alleys and side streets, but Eliot and Parker were faster. By the time Nate and Hardison caught up, they already had her bound and blindfolded.
“What’s wrong, Yeerk?” Nate said. “No Kandrona generator in Majorca?”
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