#i want to say the vanya situation doesn't get that far? theyre closer in this verse

[e-vasong]

Leverage AU ideas

Submission (Hey, it looked like tumblr sent this to me under your real name, so I’m not gonna say who submitted it just in case that was an accident, but @ submitter if you want credit feel free to hit me up with a URL or something, or reblog this and @ me or whatever!):

 Idrk how tumblr works but, for your leverage au: Vanya is Reggie’s real daughter which is why she has the violin but she was neglected bc reggie was obsessed with the others. The others are jealous of Vanya for her normal life/being Reggie’s real kid.

Eventually however she comes to the for help (probably bc of Lenard) and she helps them and they become a real family.

Maybe at some point she gets infected with a bio weapon that could kill everyone (maybe lenard tries to sell it to the commission) or learns dangerous information and they all have to save Vanya!

Oh God.  (Presuming these are about the Reginald-As-Archie-Raises-The-Kids-As-Criminals AU.)  These are so good.

The others are all homeless kids or kids from the system that Reggie plucked out and adopted because he saw tendencies in them that he believed, with training, could make them the best team of criminals around.

And this all translates so well to the canon dynamic where Vanya/the rest of the family both don’t really process the abuse endured by the other party.

Reginald neglects Vanya in favor of the others; tells them they have potential.  And when Vanya asks to join in on the lessons he tells her that she has no talent at all.  He tells her again and again how he chose the others, and the implication is clear.  That if it had been up to him, he never would have chosen her at all.

Meanwhile, the others are jealous of Vanya, Reginald’s biological kid.  They’re always aware, on some level, that he only took them in because he thought they might be useful--that it was money and power that brought them into his care, as if he’d bought them.  That he could always just...put them back, in a way they feel he can’t do with Vanya.  They look at Vanya, who spends her days practicing the violin and studying normal school subjects while they have to devote their days to things like disabling laser grids, swindling people out of their funds, and getting beaten into the ground in martial arts training, and they’re--they’re jealous.  Of course they are, even if they don’t know it.

It takes them a long time (though not as long as in canon, I think) to realize they never should have blamed each other.  It was always their father.

Instead of writing a tell-all book, Vanya turns over a bunch of information to the FBI.  Their father gets arrested, a handful of the siblings get their covers blown on an important job and almost get killed by the mark’s henchman.  It’s a shitshow all around.  Their dad’s the only one to go to jail, though before he serves any real time a sniper takes him out through a courthouse window.  They can’t figure out who did it; the mystery haunts them all for years.  The others don’t get caught, but they’re still furious that Vanya almost got them killed.

(And later, much later, Vanya will join up with her family to run a con.  Some of them haven’t let go of their suspicion and hurt yet.  She doesn’t quite blame them, but it still stings.  But here’s the thing.  There are always people out there looking to exploit weakness.  And Vanya will argue with her siblings.  Diego will snap: don’t pretend like you care, you almost got us killed!

And Harold Jenkins will be waiting.  Once a young homeless thief and grifter himself, Harold heard of Reginald Hargreeves collecting prodigious young criminals off the street and begged, begged Hargreeves to take him in.  Hargreeves had sniffed, shouldered the child out of the way.  If you really had any talent, Hargreeves had said, you would have conned me into it.

But Reginald Hargreeves’ vision had always been flawed.  Harold is no perfect criminal, but he’s a dangerous one.  And when Vanya storms out of the team’s homebase in the torrential rain, Harold pops his hood up, plasters the gentle, personable smile of Leonard Peabody onto his face, and sets his con into motion.)

They all split ways for a while, the way I described in my other post.  Allison keeps grifting.  Falls in love with a mark, Patrick, at one point.  It ends badly.  Ben and Klaus are a hacker/thief duo, except Ben has more scruples about who they victimize than Klaus, and it makes things tense as hell between them sometimes.  Diego is working as a ‘retrieval specialist’ with an intense moral code and a willingness to turn on anyone that hires him if they prove themselves shitty enough.  Luther gets out of the life and goes to live in the same apartment complex as Vanya.  They end up staying close the whole time, with Vanya giving music lessons out of her apartment and Luther teaching martial arts classes.

And then they all get a missive.  An invitation, a promise of a job.  Luther almost throws it away, but Vanya stops him.  We should check it out, she says.  And so they do.  And there they find all the others: Diego, Allison, Klaus, and Ben.

And Five.  Five, the brother they’ve long thought dead.  He looks tired.  And after he fields their frantic embraces, their questions, and even lets them cry on him a bit (though he doesn’t look very happy about it), he leans back, and he tells them he has a job to offer them all.

He gets a chorus of rejections almost immediately.  Vanya presumes she isn’t invited.  Luther says he’s out of the game, and Allison says she’s trying to get out.  Diego mainly seems skeptical that Five has anything worth offering.  Klaus wants to go back to his apartment and not take jobs that are like, hard, or anything.  Low risk only, please.  Come on, Ben, let’s go.

Ben shoots Klaus a furious glare.  Actually, he says.  I can make my own decisions, Klaus.  I want to hear what Five has to say.

Five has to repress a grin. Ben has always been Five’s favorite brother.

Five puts a manila folder on the table.  His siblings pick it up, start passing it around.  It’s not long before they’re frowning, clearly distressed by what they’re reading.

“His name is James Moore,” Five says.  “He’s seven years old.  He has a rare blood disease, but there’s a new experimental treatment that his doctors believe could save his life.  His insurance company is refusing to pay for his treatment; they keep forcing the family to jump through loopholes.  It’s a, uh, company policy that they didn’t include in the contract.  Stall paying for treatment until it’s too late.  Commit a moral atrocity, let innocents die, profit.  Y’know how it goes.  Age old story, really.”

“I don’t con sick people,” Diego says, and Five rolls his eyes.

“Good, because that’s not what I’m suggesting.”

“The insurance company?” Allison catches on first.  Ben follows suit, eyebrows shooting up as he realizes what Five is saying.  “You’re suggesting we con Perseus Insurance?  Owned by one of the most powerful men in the world?  That Perseus Insurance?”

Five leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees.  He’s planned this speech.  He has a plan to take down the Commission, but it involves moving a lot of pieces very, very slowly.  And if he can take down some other bad people along the way?  Good.  But he needs a team he can trust.  He needs his family, which means this pitch needs to work.  

“The rich and powerful take what they want,” Five says slowly.  “Right now, James and his family,” he gestures to the Moore file, “are suffering under an enormous weight.  I’m suggesting that we provide...leverage.”