Moreau: “…You weren’t supposed to bond with my enemies.”
Eliot, vibrating: “Yes, but–but the hacker made up a special handshake just for me, and he makes me new IDs without me even asking, and he lets me hug him without trying to grab me, and–and you know how people hug teddy bears and stuff? I think I may get it now, and did you know you can sleep more than 2 hours at a time? I think I slept for like 8 hours, which is really weird but I feel great, and the thief isn’t scared of me, and she listens to me, and she’s weird but some of it’s fun and she doesn’t try to hurt people, and she stole me a necklace because I said I liked it, and–”
My headcanon is that Hardison has a pretty solid idea what the worst thing Eliot did was because he was curious (remember, this is a guy who canonically cracked the Pentagon servers at twelve and hacked the White House emails because he was bored between S1 and S2,) and poked around the internet and less legal channels to get an idea for what Damien Moreau was up to at that time and worked from there. It doesn’t change anything as far as he is concerned. The only reason he doesn’t say that to Eliot is because he figures Eliot would probably not be thrilled that he was hacking into Eliot’s past behind his back.
i’m once again moving puzzle pieces around in my brain and uhh remember that one time i made a morality diagram because i am completely unhinged……welcome to the moreau edition.
my characterization of moreau is kinda,,, eliot but if he didn’t care about the blood on his hands.
essentially, i do think that moreau has the capacity for empathy, he just chooses when to use it.
assest or liability.
the reason moreau is so good at his job is because he knows he’s a bad guy but instead of having any qualms about that he teaches himself when to care and when not to care and how to have funwith it. and that doesn’t just make him good at running a criminal empire, it makes him good at owning eliot, breaking eliot.
one day i will write about the chapman of it all (a comparison between eliot, quinn, and chapman) but i don’t want to make everyone suffer thru that right now.
I know Eliot’s single-con “baseball career” was too short for this to actually make sense, but I have a sudden delightful mental picture of pre-season 3 Damien Moreau sitting in some expensive cushy office, studying a Roy Chappell baseball card* in utter confusion, trying to figure out 1) whether that is actually Eliot Spencer and 2) if so…why?
*The baseball card of course features a photo of “Roy” smiling mid-game, hair at maximum floof.
You say this as if Hardison did not actually design a limited edition Roy Chappell baseball card and hack the Topps website to add it to the catalog. AND as if the limited edition Roy Chappell Topps cards didn’t sell out within an hour and promptly create mass chaos at Topps’ HQ because a) no one knows who this guy is and b) where are these cards and how are they going to ship things that don’t exist and c) 5-10 business days later: HOW are we getting reviews on the website about a product we did not ship to customers because we do not have?
shit, eliot not letting anyone wash or wipe blood off him - even his own, unless he’s genuinely too injured to have much of a choice - because moreau did it for him sometimes, and it was always so heavy with symbolism (you’re a monster and I’m the only one who’s comfortable with it, you’re bloody and I’m giving you absolution), and he doesn’t get to let anyone else wash the blood away now. he has to own what he does.
new Worst Thing theory: eliot’s killed, fine, he’s tortured, he has the blood of children on his hands, he’s done a lot of bad shit under orders and it’s honestly kinda difficult to top it—
—until the day he does it without anyone ever giving the command.
the worst thing I ever did, I did for damien moreau.
nowhere does it say he didn’t do it of his own volition.
I feel like it probably wasn’t a big step from just anticipating orders - but it was enough that moreau treated it as significant.
loyalty that goes so deep he didn’t need to be told what moreau would want to be done - not even with a glance, a tilt of moreau’s head, the extra weight of significance in his voice. those small signals that are less agreed on earlier and more just learned by eliot as he strove to do and be enough.
the one time eliot acted without any of that was the day moreau knew he had won.
Imagine Eliot, a mercenary, falling into a job smuggling antiquities with this guy, probably met him after a job in Belgrade? Maybe around, oh, 1998-2000ish…
Damien was probably charming and Eliot had no chance against him.
Everyone on the team except Nate (yes, including Sophie), secretly works for Moreau.
They all know the others work for Moreau, but they’re from different divisions with completely different specialties and working styles, so they’ve only ever met any of the others in passing, if at all (possible exceptions being Eliot and Sophie, since I imagine Sophie’s skills would bring her closer to Moreau’s orbit than the others, even if she’s not in his inner circle).
