coyotesuspect

Title: all that's best of dark and bright
Fandom: Leverage
Summary: A brief history of Sophie Devereaux. mild Sophie/Nate
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1200
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for 2.07 "The Two Live Crew Job"

IMPORTANT AN: Since they were calling Sophie, “Katharine” at her funeral, I went with that, and ignored the gaping plothole where her headstone said “Sophie Devereaux.”

Not everyone has a tragic past. People like to think that, that all criminals are really just troubled children on the inside. It makes them feel like they understand; every personality flaw easily summed up by a thirty second flashback and a tearful gaze.

But she’s not Hardison or Parker with their foster home upbringings, not Eliot with whatever gave him his hatred of guns, his empathy with abused children. She’s not even Nate, with his single, heartbreaking incident.

She grew up in London. Middle class neighborhood, happily married parents, good schools. In London, her name was... Well, it’s not important what her name was in London.

She was a bright student, had a knack for languages and lying. The first one got her recognition, the second one into trouble. She read for history of art at Cambridge, got recruited by MI5 after that, because of her knack for languages and lying. That was just as the Cold War was ending, but for the first couple years, it was still very John le Carre.

Then there was South Africa. In South Africa, her name was Harriet.

She doesn’t like to talk about South Africa.

South Africa’s the reason she stopped being a spook, but it’s not the reason she’s a grifter.

She spent two years in LA after that, being a failed actress. In LA, her name was Christine, and in the entire two years, she got four callbacks. Four. And not a single part. She was in plenty of plays, often times because she was the only who auditioned, but none of which paid. She picked up cash by running small cons, realized she had a knack for that after bluffing her way through a poker game at a bar on the Strip one night.

She’s a grifter because her first two careers fell through, and because she’s good at it, and because she likes money and shoes and exotic vacations. She is a con woman for the same reason other people are tax accountants or firemen or acrobats.

She was Alyson in Las Vegas, Veronika in Minsk, Lorelei in Hong Kong. She conned the rich not because she’s a bleeding heart, though she’s more compassion than your average grifter, but because it’s smart business sense and because she’s a romantic. Small cons have lower reward and less risk of getting caught; big cons are higher risk, but they’re also higher reward. It’s all economics, and she was pretty good at that in school too.

She had been running cons for three years when she first saw Nate; she was first caught by Nate two years after that.

She liked having Nate chase her. It was kind of like having a friend. She always knew where she stood with Nate, didn’t have to worry about him betraying her, because they weren’t on the same side to begin with. Sometimes they would meet for drinks while she was in a middle of a job and he was in the middle of trying to stop her. He would tell her about his wife, about how his son was doing in school. It was very sweet, very normal, a life she could have led.

At the end of the evening, she would drop a hint, and sometimes he caught it and sometimes he blew it. Though, she was never sure if she actually outsmarted him, or if he was just being a gentleman, letting her get away.

Her professional pride hopes the former, and her heart is a bloody traitor.

That’s the problem with falling in love of course, it makes things confusing, less clear-cut. Honestly, that’s the problem with love in general. That’s how people get to you, that’s how you screw up.

That’s why she hasn’t seen her parents in over a decade. Her official reason is because she’s wanted in England, but that’s really just an excuse. An arrest warrant has never kept her from anything she’s really wanted.

(That’s a lie about her parents though. She saw them at her sister’s wedding six years ago. They just didn’t see her. She stood in the back, disappeared before the ceremony was over, and left her gift in the very last pew.)

Her parents are lovely people, very respectable, and it’s kindest just to let them think she’s dead. Otherwise, she would have explain why she chose a life of crime over a life of serving the Queen, but there’s nothing really to explain, now is there?

It’s ironic, really. Britain had no problem when she was lying for them and getting people killed, but as soon as she started lying for herself- and not to kill anyone either, just for money- it was all very bad. Very non-kosher.

In case you were wondering, people getting killed is part of why she doesn’t like to talk about South Africa. It was all government sanctioned, of course, but in a way that makes it worse.

She does not like blood, literally or metaphorically, and she especially does not like it on her hands.

Not that the British government knows Sophie Devereaux is the same person as a young agent who disappeared just over fifteen years ago in South Africa.

She’s been Sophie Devereaux for awhile now. It’s her trade name. She went through three or four in her first year as a newly minted international thief, but Sophie’s the one that stuck. It means “wisdom,” and she likes that, though she couldn’t tell you why.

She doesn’t like to think of her names as aliases; she likes to think of them as actual people. Every new name she assumes, no matter how brief a time she may be using that name, she likes to give a history. It makes for good acting, and maybe that’s why she’s so unsuccessful on the stage. She thinks about her character too much.

But it works well on cons. Lily McReady lost her virginity when she was sixteen to her older brother’s best friend. Kristi Connelly won’t drink hard liquor. Ruby Holden has two pet cockapoos named Shelley and Keats.

In death, she was Katharine Montague. Katharine for Katharine Hepburn, Montague from Romeo and Juliet. It’s an actress’ name, though Katharine Montague was never that successful an actress. Tragic, really, that she should die young with her talent unrecognized. She could write a book on Katharine Montague, born in Auckland but raised in Leeds, two younger brothers, parents divorced, fell in love with acting when she was nine and participated in a school play, died in a horrific explosion.

So she’s no longer Katharine Montague, but she’s still Sophie Devereaux, no matter what she told Nate. And of course she has a story for Sophie Devereaux.

Sophie Devereaux grew up in London in a middle class neighborhood to happily married parents. She was a bright student, attended good schools, has a younger sister who married a few years ago.

Sophie Devereaux does not have a tragic past.

End.

AN: Title’s from the Lord Byron poem “She Walks in Beauty Like Night.” I’m sure Sophie would approve. In case you’re going, “Huh. I’m not kinda confused,” then ME TOO. I set out to write a short piece exploring Sophie’s motivation for being a thief, and came up with this. Take from it what you will.

Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading.