#sophie

Oh yes, the hot wizard movie

Title: A Side Effect of Friendship
Rating:G
Pairing/Character: Lambda, Sophie
Spoilers: Post-game, so…
Words:~2,500
Summary: Sophie and Lambda have some unfinished business at the tree that’s a few hundred years late.

A/N: This is all entirely the fault of this image:

Because of how new Lambda’s name looks in comparison to everyone else’s.

FF.Net|AO3 | or here

Now though, he’s being led back to that tree. Or rather, he’s being dragged there. He only came along because it’ll be dark in an hour or so and he doubts Sophie will want to miss crablette night at the manor. Yeah, that’s totally why he accepted her offer to go to the tree with her.

He finally tears his gaze up from the ground, his lips tugged down into a frown as he surveys their current location. They’re almost to the hill, the one that Sophie’s taken to using as her garden these days. The smaller girl is still there in front of him, her hair swaying as she walks. She’s started experimenting more with her hair in recent years, having worn it down for so long and only occasionally wearing it in her familiar pigtails. The experimenting was mostly brought on by the current Lord’s twin daughters who apparently decided today was a braided ponytail day. It’s observations like this that remind him he made the right choice in having the Amarcian make his hair short.

“We’re almost there!” he hears from farther in front of him than before, and he grunts in a rudimentary reply before picking up his own pace. When in the Hell she had gotten that far ahead of him, he will never know.

It occurs to him, then, that he’d forgotten to ask a vital question before they left—why were they going to Lhant Hill? He’d assumed his sister needed help with something that she was either too weak or too short to handle (though her small stature was fact, her being weak was not, as their monthly sparring matches prove to everyone). He should’ve grown suspicious when she’d failed to invite the Lhant children as she often did.

“Sophie,” he calls as he closes the distance a bit more between them, noticing they’re almost at the top of the hill, “what, pray tell, are we doing here exactly? This is unusual, even for you.”

Sophie doesn’t pause at all in her step, but she does turn a bit to look back at him with a face so innocent that he almost feels like vomiting into the nearest bush.

“Isn’t it obvious? To make a friendship pact!” She replies as they reach the crest of the hill, her eyes upturned from the strength of her smile.

The statement perplexes him, his eyebrows furrowing as he follows her out into the field of flowers, just barely watching where he’s stepping to avoid her precious sopherias.

The surge of eleth gathered here hits him like a wall he has to pass through, and he inhales before continuing to follow Sophie, his sister having stopped to do the same. As disgustingly colorful as this place is with all the flowers living here, he has to begrudgingly admit that there is a certain calm here that he’s never found anywhere else.

“Why?” he finally thinks to ask as they approach the old, weathered tree, its bark a dull brownish-gold and its leaves a dark green. “This tree was already used by them and you. Is it not the tradition to use clean trees?”

Not to mention, do they really need one? Their friendship was pretty much sealed and sworn the day that Fool decided to adopt him and coaxed their growing sibling bond into existence. This would just be redundant, wouldn’t it? He frowns curiously at her back, waiting to be enlightened as to the purpose of this visit.

She doesn’t answer him immediately, instead stepping closer to the tree and placing her hands over the worn names of their adoptive fathers. Her fingertips trace the outline of each letter of their names as if trying to memorize them. He hears her inhale a bit shakily before she finally answers, “It was something they wanted to do after we renewed ours. Richard proposed it and Asbel thought it’d be a good idea but wanted to wait until you were able to write your name yourself. He knew it wouldn’t happen for a long while, so he said we’d do it later, when you wanted to and were able to…” she trails off, her hands lowering back to her sides.

He doesn’t remember having heard any of this and figures it must’ve happened while he was sleeping. He breathes a hum to show he’s listening.

“But then…Richard got ill, and he wouldn’t get better. And then he died and part of Asbel did too…remember?” she looks back over her shoulder at him, her eyes shining just a little from having to recall these memories.

That, of course, is something he remembers quite clearly. It had been decades since they settled things with Fodra, and the children of their friends had all grown and were starting to have their own families when Richard’s health began to fail. It wasn’t poison, but the doctors had said they suspected it was a result of his compromised immune system due to a childhood full of poisoning attempts. Everyone had expected that old pervert to go first, but even at almost eighty he was still as lively as when he was forty.

He remembers Cheria, Hubert, and Sophie trying to heal the monarch, but whatever disease he’d contracted had already taken hold of him. The helplessness and frustration permeating their shared world at the time was so acute he had sworn he could almost feel it himself. In the end, Richard became the first of their friends to perish. Sophie had been distraught of course, they all had, but he keenly remembers something within Asbel changing the day Richard died. It was like a light had gone out on his side of the inner world. Cheria had helped him where she could, but he supposes losing the person he spent so much time trying to save and had devoted his life to protecting took its own unique toll on their father.

He nods quickly in answer to his sister’s question, having almost forgotten to do so. Her attention turns back to the tree and their carved names.

“After that, Asbel never brought it up again. I don’t think he forgot. I think his grief was clouding him too much. And then everyone else left…and then so did he. In the end we still didn’t add you to our friendship pact like we’d agreed upon,” she continues, lifting an arm to wipe at her eyes, no doubt shedding full tears now despite her back being to him.

He shuffles a little awkwardly where he stands. Consoling his sister when she gets like this is still something he’s not good at—and will probably never be good at—but if there’s one thing he’s learned in the decades of being the only ones left, it’s that his presence seems to at least have some kind of positive effect. So he simply remains where he’s planted, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his pants for lack of anything better to do.

When it seems her emotions have calmed he finally deems it safe enough to speak,

“I see…unfortunately, neither of them are here. So, if you insist on making one, it would only be between us and not the four of us, I’m afraid.”

It might be a little harsh, but it’s the truth. He’s sure she stopped grieving herself some time ago, but every once in a while she’d do something that made him question just how far into grief she was in.

“You’re wrong, Lambda. They are here.”

One of those times would be now, apparently.

He breathes a long-suffering sigh as he removes a hand from one pocket and lifts it to cradle his forehead, his gaze subsequently turning to the ground, “They’re not.”

She whirls around on her heel to face him just as he lifts his own head, her eyebrows pointed down and her cheeks puffed the way they usually are when she’s being stubborn or mad—a trait she picked up from Cheria. He crosses his arms over his chest in response to the expression, quirking an eyebrow at her as if daring her to prove him wrong. This move appears to startle her, the pout disappearing and her eyebrows lifting up in favor of mild surprise before she quickly turns away, her own arms coming up to mimic his current stance.

“The tree. I know they’re not with us physically anymore…but their names are here. They carved their names here themselves when they were just boys. So, a part of them still exists within this tree, I think,” she explains, glancing over her shoulder at him briefly before looking back up at the tree, “So, if we make a Friendship Pact here, then…in a way it’ll be as if we’re making it with them too. Right?”

She uncrosses her arms and turns to face him again, her expression soft and imploring. It makes him have to avert his gaze for a moment, staring out at the nearby ocean instead and the way the low-hanging sun dances across its surface. After a moment he returns his gaze to Sophie, the girl’s expression unchanged and he breathes a defeated sigh before uncrossing his arms as well. “I suppose.”

Her expression brightens immediately into a smile and he blinks only once before he’s suddenly being pulled by an overzealous little sister to stand closer to the tree. She stands an arm’s length to his side, bouncing slightly on her toes with an almost annoying, patient smile adorning her face. As if waiting for him to mimic her position. He furrows his brow before turning a little awkwardly to face her, his arms remaining stiffly at his sides as he frowns down at her.

This is stupid. Absolutely stupid. Ridiculous. Asinine. But for all the silliness of this little ritual, it does seem to make her happy and he supposes he prefers that over any of her other emotions, even if it is a little annoying.

She gives a brief, satisfied nod of her head.

“Like this,” she says as she reaches out for his hand that’s facing the field, lifting it and holding it palm up before placing her own hand over his so that the palms of both hands were facing each other. She then raises her free hand and places it on the tree’s trunk, right over where Richard’s name is carved. She glances between his free hand and the tree, indicating for him to do the same.

He grumbles incoherently under his breath which causes her to quirk her own eyebrow almost threateningly and he quickly lifts his own free hand to mimic hers, placing his fingers over Asbel’s name. She smiles pleasantly at that and gives another nod before taking a deep breath.

“Lambda Lhant,” the sudden use of his full name startles him a bit and forces him to focus on his sister, “though we’ve known each other for a long time, many of those years were spent on negative emotions and misunderstandings.”

She smiles a bit then, almost fondly.

“And while we’ve been friends for a long time already, let’s stay this way for twice as long or longer than the time we spent as enemies. This is my vow of friendship to you,” she finishes, turning her head up to look at him expectantly. “Your turn!”

He’d been listening to her speech attentively the whole time, but the sudden return to him has him caught off guard, a feeling he doesn’t like. He tenses as a result before quickly relaxing again, though he’s unsure what to say. Sophie doesn’t appear to be in the mood to supply him with anything either, her gaze still upturned and expectant on him, her wide eyes blinking slowly as she waits. He considers for a moment before finally deciding on the words.

“I’ve been your friend for a long time, but it was The Fool who swore me to this life. So, I accept,” he deadpans, fighting really hard to keep his lips from twitching into a smirk at the pout his sister stares him down with. “Not everyone’s suitable for flowery language, flower girl.”

Her pout grows deeper and she lightly smacks at his hand with her own, the smirk finally showing through and a low, amused laughter actually escaping him.

“You’re mean,” she whines, as if she expected something different.

“And you’re a brat,” he retorts, though his voice is light and joking.

Her pout remains the same though she rolls her eyes a bit, lowering her hands—prompting him to do the same—and kneeling to pick up a nearby rock, holding it out to him.

“The pact’s not finished until you write your name. Write it wherever you want.”

He accepts the small stone and turns to face the tree, frowning up at it and surveying it. There is a lot of blank space, but he supposes the point would be for his name to be near theirs, wouldn’t it?

“Here,” he says, picking a spot a little under where Sophie’s worn name is.

He sets about carving his name into the tree, having learned how to write from the many times he watched Asbel do it. His hand writing is by no means neat, but he figures as long as it’s readable, it counts. Letting the stone drop back against the roots, he leans back to survey their four names on the trunk, turning his gaze after a moment to the girl, “Satisfied?”

She nods with a happy hum, her grin wide and beaming. The reaction makes him snort as he turns to begin to the trek back to the manor. They’ve been here long enough and it’ll be dark sooner rather than later. When he doesn’t hear his sister’s softer footsteps behind him he pauses to peer back over his shoulder at her. Of course she didn’t follow, because she’s too busy still staring at their names. He almost considers just shrugging and leaving. Almost.

“Nora’s making your favorite kind of crablettes tonight. Let’s go home so they’re still hot when we get there. Sophie?” He raises an eyebrow a bit as he watches her, waiting for her to come join him, but she remains in front of the tree.

“More for me, then,” he mumbles, loud enough for her to hear as he turns to continue walking back the way they came.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” She shouts from behind him as she rushes up to walk at his side, a small giggle shaking her frame.

“What is it?” He asks, not turning to look at her and instead keeping his gaze ahead of them, occasionally scanning the nearby brush for lurking monsters.

She giggles again at his side, “Nothing. I’m just happy. Their wish was able to be fulfilled even after all this time, so…thank you.”

He hums softly in acknowledgement. Her happiness was apparently infectious because he, too, can feel it.

But he supposes that’s just a side effect of friendship.

Title: When Eight Becomes Two
Rating: T because mentions of death
Pairing/Character: Sophie, Lambda
Spoilers: End game spoilers galore
Words:~2,095
Summary: Dealing with emotional responses was never his forte. Consoling crying girls was especially high on the list of things that were not his forte.

Author’s Note: SO I FINALLY WROTE THAT SAD IDEA WITH SOPHIE AND LAMBDA. Naturally, it’s part of Lhant Family Moments, so this can be considered chapter 2 of sorts even though LFM is just a collection of stories involving the Lhant Family as a whole. So this part is loosely related to this one, though this can be read as a stand alone one shot. I should also warn that this part is kind of Hurt/Comfort as it involves sad things but it’s also kind of cute, so hopefully that makes up for the sads. Hope everyone enjoys it either way! May this encourage more people to write/draw them with this kind of relationship because my heart needs it…

FF.Net|AO3|DA or here…

She knew it had to happen someday. It was only logical, after all. Humans weren’t like them. They were weak, fragile, subject to breaking down with age. Of course they would reach a point where they’d simply stop moving altogether.

She knew that, and yet here she was before him, crying like it had been unexpected when the truth of the matter was that both of them knew it for quite some time. Then again, perhaps, he should’ve expected this as well. She was always the more emotional one. She cried at the funerals and passings of everyone else that they knew, why then would The Fool’s death result in a different reaction?

No, he supposed, it made sense when he thought of it like that—not that it helped him understand any better. Despite all these years of living with and amongst them there were still some things about humans that just…completely eluded him.

He scoffed mentally to himself. If The Fool was going to up and die so suddenly in his sleep, the least he could’ve done was teach him what you’re supposed to do with crying girls. Normally, or at least had he been asked ages ago, he wouldn’t care at all. What business was it of his to care about the emotional responses of those around him? Let alone someone like Protos Heis? It wasn’t any of his business nor something he’d particularly care about.

However, nowadays he supposed such a reaction wouldn’t have been very “brotherly” of him, now would it? He would’ve deigned to smirk, but instead he just frowned. Honestly, what was that Fool thinking, making them siblings of all things? The idea was preposterous then and it still baffled him now. Plus, he left without properly telling him what to do in this situation. When the others had died, The Fool was always there to dry her tears and console her, always going on to him about how he and Protos Heis were siblings now and how this was why they were supposed to take care of each other. All good and nice in theory—except for the part where he’d neglected to tell him how he was supposed to do that.

At some point unbeknownst to him—really when did he actually become so lax around her? Ridiculous—she’d moved and was now hugging him, rather tightly by the glance he was able to get of her hands in the poor excuse of a shirt he wore. And still crying. Always crying. But now it was into his chest and he didn’t necessarily have to look at her, which was nice—but he could still hear her.

Honestly, the Amarcian and her twin halflings had done an impressive job. The thought had never occurred to him that he could even have his own body again. It’d been eons since he was alone in a body all his own, not a shared or stolen one. In one thousand years he’d gotten accustomed to being either bodyless or stealing the bodies of other living beings. To have one that was entirely his again after so long still admittedly felt strange and foreign…but not entirely unpleasant. This was a parting gift from The Fool, he supposed.

It’d been a foolish and unprompted suggestion. Well, maybe not entirely unprompted. It’d only been suggested when the Amarcian had sent a mass message to everyone rambling on about how she’d figured out the missing pieces of the lost art of humanoid making. That was when The Fool suggested the mere idea of him having a new body made for him. She hadn’t even built a proto-type, but The Fool had asked her anyway after getting a rather nonchalant answer out of him. That was about thirty years ago. Still, despite that, this body was suitable. Nostalgic, really. These humans were strange and amusing with their ideas, giving him a new body that looked like an aged up version of the one he had long, long ago. Sometimes it was almost too much for even him to truly comprehend.

He was startled out of his reverie by hearing his name come from the girl. Ah, that’s right. He still had a crying…sister to deal with.

“Pro—,” he bit his lip. He’d tried to stop referring to her as that when The Fool had reprimanded him about it one day. “She’s your sister now,” he’d said, “so you need to start calling her by her actual name!” but some habits die hard, as they say.

“Sophie,” he tried again, “it’s been months. Why are you still crying about this?”

Indeed, it’d been about three months now since The Fool had passed away. He’d been in this new body for a little less than that too, since The Fool had requested it be done as soon as possible after his eventual death. The twin halflings had arrived to facilitate it a week or so later. The funeral had been about a month ago, so really the reason for Sophie’s continued tears was completely eluding him.

The response to his question came in the form of a head shaking negatively, though still against his chest, and a muffled “I’m…I’m not crying about that…”

This surprised him, since lately the only things she cried about anymore were memories of their friends or when one or more of her flowers died unexpectedly. He glanced at the window in his room and remembered suddenly that it was late at night, not that he’d been sleeping really.

He gave a mildly exasperated sigh before asking,

“I see. Was it a dream, then?”

A nod this time and a slightly tightened grip on his shirt. Good grief, this girl…how The Fool even dealt with this for all the decades he did was truly commendable. Or even that other Fool, Richard, since he vaguely recalled times when Sophie would run crying to him instead of The Fool who was their “father”.

“You…You left. You, and Aslyn, Michael, Alex, Camellia, Stewart…everyone left…a-and I was alone and it was dark and lonely and—,” a sob cut her off, but she didn’t continue speaking anyway.

He hummed in acknowledgement, honestly not sure what to say to that. She used to do this to The Fool all the time, he recalled. She’d come into the bedroom and quietly wake him up to tell him about a dream she had if she didn’t do it at breakfast the next morning. Usually her dreams were silly or happy…she rarely, if ever, had dreams of that nature that left her, well, like this. He searched his memories but honestly couldn’t recall any time from before that was like this one. If they happened, he must’ve been truly asleep when they occurred.

“Well,” he started finally, “as you can see, I’m clearly still here. So what is the immediate problem?” She was still crying, after all. Surely she shouldn’t still be crying if his presence or lack thereof was the concern.

“You are,” she agreed, sniffling before moving her head now to look up at him, “but for how much longer, Lambda?”

Well, he certainly hadn’t expected that. This night was shaping up to be quite an interesting one with many surprises.

“And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”

Because really, he’d still been here for those nearly three months, hadn’t he? And it’s not like he had anywhere else to go or the desire to go anywhere else at the moment. He’ll have to go by The Fool’s grave later and admonish him for leaving him ill-equipped for these situations—wait, that would be just as foolish. He’d be talking to a slab of stone with names on it.

Her features changed into that of a pout, tears still brimming at the edges of her eyes.

“I mean…you weren’t always that particularly happy about being in this family, so…” she tilted her head a bit to the side, a frown and worried eyebrows returning to her face, “So now that Asbel’s…gone…there’s not really anything to keep you here…right?”

Ah, so that was it. She worried about the silliest of things, though he supposed her concern was valid. After all, he hadn’t exactly been the most enthusiastic participant of this family of theirs. It seemed even that she spent far too much time around The Fool.

“Hmph…it seems his foolishness somehow rubbed off on you. So it was contagious…” he quipped, getting a startled “Hey!” as a response which produced a light chuckle out of him.

She’d gone back to hiding her face against his chest, mumbling “You’re mean,” loud enough for him to hear.

He chuckled again before finally answering, “It is true what you said, but your logic has a flaw. As I recall, that Fool tasked me with making sure you weren’t left alone, always worrying and doting on you as he did. So, I’m afraid, even if I wanted to I can’t exactly leave. Nor do I really care to at the moment,”

He paused, unsure what else to do or say. She wasn’t exactly crying anymore, though he could still hear the occasional sniffle coming from her, and her face was still hiding in his chest. Vaguely, he recalled a time when Aslyn—the Fool’s brat—had fallen from a tree and scraped both of his knees. He’d cried and whined even after Cheria had healed his small wounds with her artes, but he’d stopped when she hugged him and pet his hair. Perhaps that was the secret key. Did it work as well on girls as it did young boys?

“Besides,” he added, lifting his hands now to mimic the motion he remembered and smiling when Sophie jumped a bit in his arms, “we made that Friendship Pact after Fodra, did we not? It won’t get any easier, since they’re only humans and will have to eventually die as well. And their children too. You know this as well. Still…even if I do end up physically leaving one day, it won’t be permanent.”

He turned his head away, though still kept his arms around her and absentmindedly stroked the back of her head as Cheria had with Aslyn.

“The Fool assigned me the role of your big brother, after all. It would be unwise if I ignored his order. In fact, that Fool was so insistent on it, I have no problem imagining that if he could, he would manifest himself just to admonish me. It’d be rather unpleasant, to say the least,” he smiled despite himself.

He was only half kidding, honestly. For all his centuries of hatred, being forced to live with her and be around her constantly without having to fear for his life made her start to grow on him. Life, he admitted, would be rather dull without her. Good thing they’ll both live forever, then.

Her head moved which prompted him to remove his hand and look back at her.

“So…you won’t leave? Even if…when everyone else does?” she was staring up at him, her eyes shimmering with either more unshed tears or hope, he wasn’t quite sure. Perhaps both.

“Yes.”

She smiled then and released one hand from his shirt to wipe at her eyes.

“That’s good then. I…I feel better now, so I should go back. Thank you, Lambda,” she removed her hand from her face and continued to smile at him which only made him turn away and mumble under his breath.

She giggled while removing herself from him before heading towards the door that had been left open from when she ran in here.

“Sorry for disturbing you like that. Good night, Lambda,” she said over her shoulder.

“Mm, next time you have a nightmare, do try to knock, will you? Surely The Fool taught you better than that.”

She only giggled again before closing the door back and leaving him in silence once more. He lied back on the bed, despite the fact sleep wasn’t exactly a necessity to him, even after all these years. As ill equipped as he was, he supposed he handled that well enough. At least she stopped crying. He could just hear that Fool praising him.

Staring up at the wooden ceiling, the thought of visiting Asbel’s grave crossed his mind again. On second thought, maybe he will admonish that stone, foolishness be damned. He never did finish telling him just how much of a Fool he had been.

Yes, he thought while closing his eyes, he’ll do that tomorrow…after shopping for better clothes with Sophie.

Oh hi there.

Properly posting this now, here on my fanfic Tumblr.

Title: Lhant Family Moments
Rating:T
Pairing/Character: Richard/Asbel, Asbel/Cheria (very light), Sophie, Lambda, other characters
Spoilers: Yes. Heavy spoilers. Spoilers are fucking EVERYWHERE. Through the whole game, F Arc included.
Words:1052
Status:In-Progress
Summary: Small, fleeting moments in the strange, shared lives of Richard, Asbel, Sophie, Lambda and sometimes Cheria.

Author’s Note: You’re not getting an AN here because everything that needs to be said about this has already been said everywhere I’ve posted this =P.

AO3|FF.Net

Alternatively, it’s also under this Read More.

froyo-ocs:

Hey, can y’all rb this if it’s okay to send you messages asking about your ocs, cause on god I wanna interact with y’all but I am terrified of being annoying lol

eyrieofsynapses:

So, in between the absolute and utter chaos of This Is The Real Life, I’ve been sitting down to rewatch Leverage here and there, for the sake of preserving my sanity, and I did The 15 Minute Job a few days and noticed something.

Here’s the thing: this is the third (and last) time I can recall Nate telling Eliot to walk away from the job. (Well, kind of.)

Nate: All right. We can still make this work.

Eliot: I don’t know why I’m sitting here listening to a new plan.

Parker: Well, the first one’s not going all that well.

Sophie: This playing-with-fame thing, it’s reckless.

Eliot: You’re not controlling the mark. All right, we’re operating without a net. Somebody’s gonna get hurt.

Nate: Eliot, why don’t you just take the rest of the job off?

(Eliot gives Nate a long look before pushing back his chair and leaves the table. Parker does the same)

Sophie: Consciously or not, I think you look at Reed Rockwell and see everything you hate about Nathan –

Nate: Any way I can get you to not finish that thought?

Sophie: Every time something goes wrong, you push harder, and now you’re pushing to ruin Rockwell so hard, you’re going to end up ruining yourself. Maybe that’s what you’re trying to do.

(I’m keeping Sophie’s bit in for a reason, by the way. We’ll get to that in a minute.)

Now, this is the fourth season. It’s more than a bit out of the ordinary at this point, actually, because for the most part Eliot and Nate rarely conflict anymore. But it follows an old pattern: Nate goes over the edge, Eliot calls him on it, Nate gets annoyed and tells him to back off.

There’s two other instances of this that I can remember: The Snow Job (waaaaaaaaay back at the start) and The Maltese Falcon Job (you know, where it all went to hell). Admittedly the latter is less “walk off the job” and more “seriously insult,” but either way, both times it’s Eliot calling Nate on his bullshit—

Nate: Guys, you got to trust me, all right? You’ve trusted me before, and with your life.

Eliot (slams his hand down on the table): Not when you’re drunk.

Nate: Oh, come on.

Eliot: You’re not in control of yourself.

Nate: So, what, you’re gonna control me? Is that it?

Eliot: Ah, I ain’t your daddy. You can drink yourself into a coma as far as I’m concerned, but you take me down with you – then it’s my problem.

Nate: You know, you talk too much. You ought to just go skip some rope.

Eliot: What? What? (gets up angrily)

Nate: Skip some rope.

Eliot: You want me to skip something? (heads across the room)

Sophie: Hey, hey! (gets in front of Eliot)

Eliot: I’ll skip your drunk ass off this marble floor.

Sophie: Okay, I need to speak to Nate alone. For a second.

Eliot (turning away): Yeah, do that.

(Eliot leaves, followed by Hardison and Parker, who lingers to give Sophie a meaningful look. Sophie sits on the arm of the couch)

Nate: Now, don’t you dare give me the “we’re all a family” speech.

Sophie: Mnh-Mnh. No speeches. Just a question. Is this helping you? Hmm? If you give Wayne Scott back what he lost, will you be satisfied?

Nate: You know me. I can do this.

Sophie: I knew you two years ago.

Nate: Well, I’m still the same person.

Sophie: No. You’re not.

Nate: No, I’m not.

— in Snow Job, and—

Nate: Don’t worry about Sterling.

Eliot: Did you just say, “Don’t worry about Sterling?”

Nate: Yeah, don’t worry about Sterling. What you don’t think I can beat Sterling?

Eliot: I think in the last six months, Nate, I’ve heard you talk about beating the Triads, beating the Russians. All right? Maggie’s boyfriend. Huh? How’d that work out? We all said that meet was a bad idea, right? But you got a taste for taking down this Mayor and you can’t resist.

Nate: You wanna walk away? Walk away.

Eliot: I’m not walkin’ away. It’s not my job. My job is to get your back. And, Nate, I’m gonna do it. All the way down. But I need you to do your job.

Nate: And what’s that?

Parker: Be Nathan Ford. Be the person we came back for.

…inMaltese Falcon. 

Intriguingly, Eliot does walk away—for a bit—in both Snowand15 Minute. But he comes back both times. And you know what? Kudos to him for walking away, because that’s exactly what he needed to do. Snowobviously wouldn’t have ended well, and 15 Minute was just waiting to blow up. He demonstrates healthy anger management beautifully: walk away, cool off, and then come back to the problem later with a clear head.

Also, based on the conversation in Maltese, I suspect that Nate knows full well he won’t walk away in 15 Minute too. I’m guessing that’s more an “I’m done with you pushing me” warning instead.

Notice something else about those times, though?

Sophie.

Both times, Sophie doesn’t interrupt or try to add on to Eliot’s piece, and then, when he leaves, proceeds to metaphorically grab Nate’s ear and ask him about the thing that’s putting the job at risk… and, incidentally, the thing Eliot’s worried about. Because every time, every single time, he’s hit exactly the right mark. If anything, that’s why Nate gets angry. He knowsEliot’s right; he just doesn’t want to believe it.

Thing is, Eliot’s wake-up calls are a bucket of ice water, whereas Sophie’s approach is, well, hers. She’s more artful about it, and she knows how to dance circles around Nate. There’s also their respective dynamics. Nate respects Eliot (…most of the time), but, because it’s Nate, he tends to take those wake-up calls as a challenge rather than a warning. (…something something Nate’s problems with toxic masculinity and refusing to back down, probably.) But he’s a whole lot less likely to do that with Sophie, perhaps partly because he knows she’ll probably just use it as ammo if he does.

This is, in a way, pushing at Nate on two fronts: Eliot’s upfront and blunt warnings, and Sophie’s gentler pushing. Eliot cracks down, Nate gets the hard “I’m doing something wrong but I really don’t want to admit it” moment, and then Sophie snares him and forces him to keep staring that wrongness in the face. Does Eliot intend to give her that opening? Probably not (certainly not in Snow, and, for obvious reasons, not in Maltese). But she’s able to take advantage of it pretty well.

Intriguingly, we get a swappedversion of this in The Last Dam Job, when Sophie tries to get Nate to listen about killing Dubenich and winds up calling on Eliot to talk him down instead. Her softer approach won’t work in that situation, so she needs Eliot’s ice-bucket instead, because this time it’s the only thing that might get Nate to wake up. But her initial approach softens him up for Eliot. It’s easier for Nate to hear him out when he’s already had that seed of doubt planted in his mind, and Eliot takes a gentler approach that time around.

Also worthy of note: in both Snowand15 Minute, while Nate goes on, he does seem to listen to both of them. He backs off a bit. Not much, but he does. It’s unvoiced, but they do shift his perspective.

And in Maltese Falcon, when Eliot puts his foot down and says I will notwalk away, Nate listens to him then, too. However, that time, Sophie isn’tthere to push at Nate—and while he cools off a little, he doesn’t have her to push that point all the way home… and the crew winds up nearly getting themselves killed until she steps in. Tara says that Sophie had the plan built in because she knewthe trio would follow him “all the way down,” as Eliot puts it.

This is, I think, partly because Eliot knows he cannotwalk away. If he does, someone’s going to get hurt. So even when he thinks it’s at the worst point, even when he’s surethat it’s going to end badly… he stays. Because he knows it’ll end way worse if he’s not there.

Except Nate knows that. Which means that he willkeep going, if he’s being really blind and stubborn about it, and so Sophie is essential to pulling him back too.

Anyway. It’s a good demonstration of how both Sophie and Eliot wind up pulling on Nate in their respective ways, and how they’re both essential to keeping him from getting the crew killed. They’ve both got a lot of influence on Nate in ways Parker and Hardison don’t. Eliot’s seen stuff, and if he says something’s too dangerous, it’s too dangerous. Not that Nate always listens, and they do pull through. But whenever Eliot puts his foot down, it’s really important to listen, because he knows exactly what he’s talking about.

Trouble is, Nate’s a reckless jackass—who, moreover, really likes a challenge, and really hates losing, and thus has precisely zero idea when to back the hell off. Sophie’s important for any number of reasons. But one of the big ones is getting him to listenwhen Eliot says “this isn’t right.”

So… yeah. They’re counterweights, basically. (And definitely the only reason why the crew is still alive.)