So I've done a couple of short Leverage fics. but this is my first long one and I hope ya'll like it and will stick around for the rest of it!
I don't own Leverage but I kind of wish I did.
It's been six months since the team stumbled upon Tara and her old friend in McRory's and had decided that the team would be better off with an even number of players. Morgan Reed seemed to fit in perfectly, except that compared to them she was normal. She turned out to be a jack-of-all-trades and was able to accomplish almost anything asked of her. She was like the middle ground between Sophie and Parker, not so incredibly crazy but also not so sophisticated. She was the type that never stood out from the crowd and her face was easily forgettable. It took the team some time to trust her, but for the most part once they decided that they might be able to trust her, it came naturally. There was only one person who still had his doubts.
"Look Nate, we know nothing about her." Eliot protested again for the millionth time.
"Eliot, are you ever going to let this go?" Nate asked tiredly.
"No I'm not going to let this go 'cause I seem to be the only one here who hasn't been conned into trusting this woman."
"She hasn't conned anyone! She's good at what she does and she works well with the team. She has never given us any reason to not trust her so just drop it already."
With that Nate walked out of the room leaving Eliot alone to grumble and growl to himself.
It wasn't until a few weeks later that the team began to realize just how little they knew about their newest member. They were pulling a new con but it wasn't ending smoothly…Parker and Eliot were together trying to get out of the building after the alarms had sounded but Morgan also had to get out. She was running down a hallway with Hardison yelling in her ear that she needed to get out now.
"Yes, Hardiosn I know alright! I working on it but…hmmm…"
Suddenly there wasn't any more sound on the other end of Morgan's com.
"Morgan?" Nate asked, "What's going on?"
She didn't respond. "Eliot where are you? I think Morgan's in trouble."
"Kinda busy right now." Eliot growled out as he hit a security guard in the face with his elbow.
"I know but get to her as fast as you can." Nate urged.
No more that a minute later Eliot came running down the hall that he knew Morgan was supposed to be taking to leave the building but he didn't find her. All he found were four security guards knocked unconscious and three guns lying in pieces around them.
"Sorry ya'll," Everyone heard Morgan say over the coms.
"What the hell happened?" Nate asked.
"What? Oh, I was…um…just thinking about something and trying to get the hell out of this building." She responded cryptically.
Eliot of course knew better but kept his silence. Finally they all made it out and into the waiting cars. When they parked by Mcrory's and got out of the cars Eliot went to grab the gun that Morgan had tucked into the back of her jeans. Suddenly Eliot was on the ground, and he couldn't remember the last time that had happened and Morgan was holding the gun to his throat.
"Don't touch me, Eliot, it won't end well for you." Morgan said deadly calm.
She removed the gun and placed it back in her jeans and then helped Eliot to his feet and continued into the bar like nothing had happened leaving the rest of the team, except Eliot, looking stunned.
"What the hell was that?" Sophie asked looking at Eliot.
"I told you we knew nothing about her." Eliot said and followed Morgan into the bar with the rest of the team trailing him.
They all went up to Nate's apartment and sat around looking at Morgan.
"Okay, go ahead, ask all the questions I know ya'll are dying to know the answers to, but I can't promise I'll answer all of them." Morgan said bracing herself.
"So I guess you aren't like Eliot?" Parker asked.
" Excuse me?" Morgan said looking confused and even a little indignant.
"Well, Eliot doesn't like guns, he says that they are an easy way out and only people with no skill use them." Parker said bluntly.
"Ah, or he doesn't like them because he can't control his inner rage and he doesn't want to kill everyone in sight." Morgan said with a cruel smirk on her face. "I however have great control over myself and to do the things I can do with a gun takes a huge amount of skill, Parker. I'll show you sometime if you like."
"NO!" Nate, Sophie and Hardison all yelled in unison.
"I mean," Sophie said trying to cover up their outburst, "you don't have any reason to use a gun, Parker."
"Hey, you never know!" Parker said indignantly. Morgan just laughed.
"You're right, Parker, don't worry I'll show you the basics." She smiled indulgently.
"Anyway," Nate said in a way that meant that he was trying to get this conversation back on track. "What should we know?"
"I was in the military for a while." Morgan said with a shrug of her shoulders and acted like that explained it all.
" No, that wasn't normal military training, neither was the way you took out those security guards." Eliot interjected and glanced at her knowingly and Morgan caught that look and she knew that Eliot knew more than he was giving away.
"So what exactly did you do in the military then?" Nate asked.
"I don't think that really important." Morgan said seriously refusing to look at Eliot.
"You took out some security guards?" Parker asked suddenly.
"Yeah it's not a big deal. I had to get out of that damn building didn't I?"
"Yeah and she took one of their guns as a trophy too." Eliot growled
Morgan just rolled her eyes and gave him a "bring it, Eliot" look.
"Wait," Hardison said suddenly "if you were in the U.S. Military then why didn't that come up when I did a back-ground check on you?"
"Because, technically, my unit didn't exist." Morgan said, giving in to their questions. "What we did was super classified and I'm not going to talk about it here. But you know what you need to know, so if you don't mind, I'm going home." Morgan said tired of all of this and got up and walked out the door without giving them a chance to try and stop her.
After that, Parker disappeared and the rest of the team slowly broke up going to their own homes, finally leaving Nate in peace.
Morgan had bought a whole building for herself in Boston and had changed the basement into a shop and this is where Parker found her working.
"Hey, Parker," Morgan said after a few minutes of letting Parker watch her work, thinking that Morgan didn't know she was there.
"Man, I can never sneak up on you or Eliot. It's no fun!"
"Sorry, Parker." Morgan said grinning. Her and Parker had developed a very close friendship over the past months and it seemed like Morgan was the only one who actually, kind of, understood the way Parker's mind worked.
"Whatcha doing?" Parker asked curiously.
"Changing the barrel out of this gun I took today."
"Why?"
"Well because then it will practically be a whole different gun. Wanna help me?" Morgan asked, inviting Parker to come over to the workbench to watch.
"So are you going to teach me about guns now?" Parker asked eagerly.
"Sure I'll teach you some things."
The rest of the night was spent with Morgan teaching Parker about basic gun safety, how to take apart a gun, and about all the different types of guns and ammunition. Morgan knew that Parker knew some things about guns but she figured that she might as well cover all the bases anyway, just in case.
Over the following weeks everyone began to embrace the fact that Morgan could kick ass which turned out to be pretty handy since Eliot couldn't be in two places at once but Morgan usually let Eliot do the hitting when she could because knew that it was important to him to be the one protecting the team, he was the Hitter after all. She wasn't and she didn't want to be, but she would do her best to protect the team if she had no other choice.