Summary: 18th century French AU of "The Rashomon Job." Powdered wigs, big dresses, and swashbuckling, oh my! A rather silly one, of course.
"Dude, honestly, I don't even know" warning: Probably extremely historically incorrect. I obviously don't know much about French history, other than what I've picked up over the years from movies and books (supplemented by the internet). This is what happens when I think "brocade" and "Leverage" together. Actually, the first idea that came to mind was an Elizabethan-era pirates AU, but I couldn't really fit the brocade in there alongside the neck ruffs because even Sophie wouldn't wear a heavy dress like that to raid another ship – there must be female pirate swashbuckling, after all! So this happened. Also, forgive me for the silly names and for not knowing where the heck all the accents on vowels go. You'll see what I mean. *hides*
B is for Brocade
"I'm going to tell all you imposters about how I stole the Arthurian Dagger*," Sophie says, smoothing down the silk of her blue and gold brocade dress and tucking a few stray strands back into her elaborately erected and perfectly powdered pompadour wig. She gives a smug, self-satisfied smile behind her fluttering lace fan at the explosion of jealous outrage that follows.
"Please, do go on," Alexandre Ardissón, called "Alec" by his friends, calms down enough to say, scoffing. Long, graceful fingers rub at a smudge of ink splattered purposely and artfully onto the parchment in front of him to match the ink stain on the letter that he is currently forging. "I would love to hear your 'true' story on how you stole the dagger that I stole five years ago."
"Excuse me," Eliót Spenceur says, a scarred hand going to the handle of the rapier at his hip, "You stole?" He's that close to challenging the forger to a duel. And if Sophie was a man…But she's not, and his blessed mère taught him better than to be rude to a lady, even if she is a thief.
"Liars, all liars," Parquois (just Parquois) says lightly, with an undercurrent of irritation, "I'm the one who stole the Arthurian Dagger five years ago!" She slips her lockpicking set out of the leg of her soft-soled leather boots that she wears with her unconventional, yet comfortable, men's clothes, and attacks the tiny lock of the small chest in front of her with careful, but easy precision. (No one asks where she got such an elaborately and expensively jeweled artifact worthy of the Medicis. They've learned by now that it's best not to ask.)
"And here's how I stole it," Sophie cuts in (without raising her voice, of course, since that would be utterly unladylike, and if there's nothing she dislikes more, it's being unladylike…at least, unless she's in character as someone…below her).
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
She only gets part of the way through her story of how she impersonated both an English noblewoman and a visiting Vatican priest (in one con, no less) before Eliót is laughing at her. It had taken him a year to get used to them enough to laugh, with all their quirks, clashing personalities, and differences in class. Thieves they may all be, but they didn't all start out that way.
Sophie Devereaux had been…Well, apparently she had been born into great wealth and noble family, or perhaps only one or neither, and had grown up learning the age-old art of manipulating people of high class. Parquois is a product of the Court of Miracles, abandoned at birth, or close enough to it that she doesn't remember anything before her hard life there. Ardissón is the son of a freed slave who was raised by nuns. Eliót, a soldier turned mercenary, who became an assassin, who in turn became a thief, is a man of many faces. And Nathanael Fourde, their leader, had worked for the moneylender Blaquepoule before a conspiracy involving the death of Nathanael's son had led to him leaving, taking with him certain…business secrets that are now common knowledge, due to the con that they had played on the unscrupulous Blaquepoule the previous year.
They had all started out far apart, in both geography and class, but in an unexpected turn of events, they had come together in their fight against corruption.
But now is a time for reminiscing. Talk of old schemes, both successful and not, has brought them to their current topic, the legendary (supposed) Dagger of King Arthur, which had been stolen five years previously.
That it had been stolen, and when, they could all agree on. But as to by whom…
Sophie had indignantly and with the prideful arrogance fitting of her station as a highborn lady (as she always insists) had begun her story before being rudely interrupted by Eliót's blatantly unconcealed sniggers.
"What?" she says, annoyed at the air of 'I know something you don't know' that the man is exuding.
Eliót, still grinning, reaches over and snags Alec's rather ornate powdered wig off of his head and puts it on, covering up his own simple pulled-back brown hair. He then stands and bows with all the grace of a lord, taking Sophie's hand and kissing it with a smug look.
"Beautiful Milady de Winter," he says in a higher, more posh, mincing voice than his habitual gruff tones, "I am Docteur Abernathé. Perhaps you have heard of me, even in England?"
It really shouldn't surprise them. The assassin turned thief is rough, wild, and has the bearing of a soldier, but he can carry himself like a nobleman when necessary.
"You!"
The twinkle in Eliót's blue eyes turns into a full smirk at Sophie's astonished and entirely put out exclamation of recognition.
"Me." He straightens and tosses the poorly mishandled wig back to its sputtering owner. "Here's how it really happened," he says, and proceeds to tell his story.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Of course, he doesn't get very far before Sophie interrupts, saying that her accent of an Englishwoman speaking French doesn't sound at all like that.
Eliót's tale is full of swashbuckling and swordfights with a dozen men at once. When he mentions how a visiting Moorish ambassador from the southern countries had suddenly taken ill and how the English lady had practically forced the patient onto him (here, Eliót glares at the unrepentant Sophie), Ardissón gives a self-satisfied snort of his own.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
When Alec is finally bullied and threatened into smugly telling his story of how he had forged his invitation, faked illness so that he would be brought into closer proximity to the room holding the dagger in privacy, and created a diversion with a smoke bomb (a harmless device of his own invention), the rest of them reluctantly concede that he had indeed been the one to steal the famed dagger.
Except…
"Parquois?" Nathanael prompts.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
"A maid? Why a maid?" Sophie asks, intrigued.
"Because no one notices the servants," the little thief explains plainly with a shrug, "They're invisible. You can do whatever you want, as long as you don't do anything that the nobs'll notice."
She continues her story of how she had noticed the signs of someone else trying to steal the dagger, and had swiftly and silently gotten into the locked room to steal it before anyone else did and ruined her plan.
Parquois explains with unconcealed irritation how she had discovered a big, fluffy, utterly unuseful brocade dress, complete with big, fluffy underwear and a big, fluffy, dusty wig stuffed into a bag in the closet instead of the ropes and pulleys for escaping that they were supposed to be, and how in her rope-less climb down, she had accidentally dropped the dagger into a secret spy hole that led to goodness knows where.
At that, Nathanael makes a very small, very inconspicuous, and therefore very suspicious noise that immediately captures the attention of them all.
"Nathanael?"
"Here's how it really happened."
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
AN: Yes, that's the end of this, which is not where the actual episode ends, but what else can I say but that the dagger basically dropped into Nate's hands out of the spy hole in the ceiling? Maybe while he was in the garderobe (toilet)?
* Carnwennan is the name of King Arthur's dagger. Yes, I know that it's the Dagger of Aqu'abi on the show, but I'm on a King Arthur kick right now (see Merlin, The Librarians) - with a side of Musketeers (which is of course where the femme fatale Milady de Winter comes from). Also, I might work it into some of my other one-shots for this collection. I kept the dagger part of it because Excalibur would be way too long for Sophie to hide in her skirts, although Parker would totally be able to manage it (because she's Parker, that's why). I also considered the Holy Grail, but decided against it. I mean, cup or shiny sharp thing? Mmmmm, yeah.
Here are all the names and descriptions because I'm sure it got a bit confusing:
Sophie Devereaux = same as on the show; a spy, conwoman, and courtesan, impersonating Milady de Winter and a priest
Alec Hardison = Alexandre "Alec" Ardissón; a forger and the son of a freed slave, who was raised by nuns, impersonating a visiting Moor ambassador
Parker = Parquois; a thief from the Court of Miracles, impersonating a servant girl
Eliót Spencer = Eliót Spenceur; a thief and former assassin/soldier, impersonating a doctor
Nate Ford = Nathanael Fourde; worked for Blaquepoule (Blackpool) as something like a secretary
Blackpoole = Blaquepoule; a corrupt moneylender and Nathanael's former boss
. . . . . .
And now, Anon Review Replies (I promise I'll try to not make this collection's anon review replies as...epic-ally massive as they have been in the past, lol):
GoHead: Thanks for checking up on my page! I hope you enjoy these as much as you liked the others!
Guest (who reviewed just as I was about to post this one! Lucky!): Welcome to Leverage! No really, I mean it, because you will find that this fandom is really nice and warm and friendly, as compared to some fandoms I've dipped and dabbled in. Plus, the fics are really great. :D I'm glad that you liked the first chapter of the collection. Nate is always "dad" to me. It's just so much funnier that way. I love the family dynamics of the team, so that's mostly what I write about. And yes, in my head, Eliot is an egg: hard on the outside, gooey and golden on the inside. *cringes at bad metaphor* :P Thanks for dropping me a review! Much appreciated!