Once, they'd all thought Leverage Consulting & Assoc. would last forever. A few years later, Nate fell in love with a client who also had a kid, so he quit in order to become a better role model than a criminal. Pretty soon after that, Sophie left to run a long con (the longest) to improve working conditions in the country where she's supposedly a distant cousin of the queen. He, Eliot, and Parker tried to hold it together, and were mostly successful even though it wasn't the same with just three of them, until he and Eliot got involved and Parker disappeared to Europe to begin a now-legendary three-month thieving binge. Two just wasn't big enough to run much anything, and one night Eliot whispers, "I think I'm leaving the business."

Hardison jerks up fast and looks in the dark towards Eliot's form. "What?"

Eliot sighs and sits up as well, pushing the covers off his legs. "I'm old for this game, Hardison. Yeah, right now I'm the best, but pretty soon a new guy will come along who's younger and faster and he's gonna knock me to hell." Hardison can hear his mouth working, fancy he can see the silhouette of his adam's apple bob as he hesitates a moment. "That's didn't use to bother me, but now it does," he says shortly. "Now's the best time to do it. We don't have anything going on, there's nobody after our heads."

Hardison looks through the gloom and finally nods. "Okay," he says, because what else could he say? "Okay." They settle back down, curled around one another. "'M not leaving," Eliot mumbles. "Just having a career change."

While career changes might work for Eliot, Hardison can't settle down so easily. So he lets out feelers, searching around his criminal network for a thief and a grifter that wouldn't mind the loss of their well-earned money as long as they had an alternative revenue stream. Eliot's already said he'd get in contact with Raquel Diane again about a longer commission for the team's hitter, and Hardison's got dibs on the slot marked 'mastermind' in addition to his hacking – and if the need every arises, Eliot assures him, he can always step in as an all-around handy man. "Not that I'm in the crew," Eliot adds. "Just the backup plan."

He isn't surprised to find that girl they rescued from the car boosting ring, Josie Marvin, is working as a thief now. Since Hardison already knows her, he just drops in to visit one day. She smiles when she recognizes him, and they chat about her most recent opportunities. New York City is a good place for a starting thief.

Eventually, the conversation turns to the team. Hardison rambles about the crew's disparate activities while keeping note of the speculative gleam in Josie's eye. He leaves that day with a clap on Josie's shoulders, remarking that maybe he'll call her up one day if there's ever a need. On the train ride home he checks, and sure enough there's a cell phone number hastily scribbled down on a scrap of paper tucked in one of his pockets. He folds it carefully and stores it in his laptop case. "Just call me Charles Xavier," he mutters to himself.

The next recruit comes personally recommended from a fellow hacker and WoW buddy. They meet in a café on the other side of Boston, and the grifter shakes his hand with a charming smile. He certainly has the confidence and poise to be a grifter, not to mention the looks. "Hello," he says. "The name's Hatter." Hardison thinks the accent is British, and winces at the unintended similarity.

They sit down and order coffee. "Is that your first name or last name?" Hardison asks. Hatter just smiles, and Hardison's almost ready to walk away. He doesn't want his new grifter to replace Sophie or Parker.

Before he actually gets up, however, Hatter points over to a building across the street. "I hope you don't mind, but I always say the best interview is on the job. I get to see what kind of man I'm working with, and you get to see what kind of man you hired. My friend says you're good, so in a minute or two a rather wealthy businessman is going to walk through those doors and down to a meeting with his newest investor. I just need you to play along." Hardison is intrigued, so he agrees to the charade. An hour later Hatter is a few grand richer and Hardison has a new grifter.

A few days after that, Eliot gets a phone call. The thing with Raquel Diane didn't work out – she's also settled down, living somewhere in Europe possibly. But there's a new up-and-comer Raquel recommends who's good at her job but light on work due to her being a woman. She delivers quite a lot of unnecessary veiled threats about sexism and what she'll do to Eliot if he doesn't follow through on her recommendation. Eliot starts tracking her down while Hardison finds a new mark. He and Eliot have discussed it, and decided that immoral yet extremely rich is the way to go – reel them in with a normal mark, then slowly start weaning them off money and onto do-good feelings, emphasizing what bastards they're taking down.

Eliot finally gets in contact with the girl hitter and pays for her to fly in from California. He insists on going to the meeting with Hardison – number one because he was her contact, and number two because he wanted to be able to have some say in his replacement.

Keladry is shorter than Hardison by a scant half-inch, which is amusing mostly due to the way Eliot puffs up with envy. Eliot insists on putting her through numerous trials, sparring and quizzing and posing scenarios, a few of which Hardison remembers from a few Leverage jobs. They spend a good half-hour throwing different punches in the air and challenging the other person to name the fighting style.

Finally, Eliot relents with a reluctant grumble. "She'll do." Hardison rolls his eyes, because he'd figured that one out a good half-hour ago, and hands her a hotel key card as he says goodbye.

The team meets for the first time in the second floor office of Eliot's new restaurant a week after that. The actual restaurant part on the first floor is pretty quiet, but Hardison assumes traffic will pick up when people realize the food is good and the prices low.

He has an entire presentation set up, and runs through it without difficulty. They're young but professional, and on their way to the being the best. Much like the Leverage crew was, at the beginning. Hardison feels a little thrill that he might be able to train them all up, sharing what he learned from his teammates with them. He's starting a whole new breed of criminal – smart, expertly trained, but with a conscience.

Eliot laughs and calls him melodramatic. But he listens as Hardison follows him around the restaurant's kitchen babbling about the team's achievements, and always leaves extra food in the fridge of the above office, which has become the new team's unofficial headquarters. He's even found Kel and Eliot sparring, Eliot obviously mentoring her on a few of the more effective points of whatever martial art they were doing.

When Nate calls to check up on him and Eliot, Hardison gives him Parker's latest known whereabouts, the news he'd hacked from inter-departmental e-mails in Sophie's new country, and information on how Eliot's new restaurant is faring. Then he starts talking about the new team. Nate chuckles. "You know," Hardison says. "I've been thinking about the job after this. There's a perfect mark, but finding a way to get close enough to him is a real headache."

The team doesn't like Nate. Hardison thinks it's because his presence reminds them there are still some things they still can't do. But working together, Nate and Hardison are able to devise the perfect doorway into the mark's life. And it's a bit nostalgic, having Nate's voice on the comms again, though he refuses be involved in anything that makes him leave HQ. Plausible deniability and all that. The job goes off like most jobs do – a little rough in the middle, but pulling through in the end to leave a clean enough getaway. Nate returns to his legitimate lifestyle after having a goodbye feast courtesy of Eliot, and Hardison plans the next job.

Hardison doesn't realize how much he talks about his new team to his old one until Sophie sends them all Christmas gifts. He smiles guiltily at Eliot, who just shrugs. "It's your life now, man," he says. "No use trying to pretend otherwise." The most shocking thing about the day, however, is the card attached to Hatter's box, which has the name 'David' written on it in Sophie's flowing hand. Hatter grins ruefully and flips the new top hat onto his head. "I didn't know you knew her," he says. Hardison smiles.

Parker's introduction to the team is… less than ideal. While Eliot and Hardison have long gotten over the fact that Parker will break into your house when she's in town, it's quite a shock to the rest of the crew when during a team meeting she pipes up from the stairway, "Ooh, you're stealing the Statue of Liberty? Can I help?" Once the team's heartbeats are back to normal, they also have to deal with all the little ticks and awkwardness that have simply become Parker to Eliot and Hardison. It's a rough adjustment.

Parker does, however, prove to be very useful when the con runs sideways and they need her to play a Russian brothel owner in addition to swiping some key figures from the New York branch of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. It's a long story. She hangs around for a week after the job's finished, but her feet start itching again and before long the guest room is empty, their toilet paper ("The fancy stuff," Parker had enthused, "that actually thick enough you don't need to use an entire roll every time you go") is gone, and there's a picture of Beijing taped to their fridge. Hardison smiles and stores the picture with the other assorted knickknacks he's saved from Parker's check-ins.

So the Leverage crew didn't last forever, no matter what they'd said all those years ago. But as Hardison e-mails Nate a copy of an unreleased video game for his son's birthday, listening to Eliot putter around the kitchen while Hatter and Sophie, who's dropped in for a visit over the winter holidays, talk quietly, and as he hears the soft creak of a window and quiet giggling as Parker and Jodie clamber back into the building, he smiles. Keladry looks over her book, a question on her face. "Just glad to be home," he says.