Leverage Fic: Mourning Song
Title: Mourning Song
Genre: Angst, Friendship
Word Count: ~6,700 words
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Pairings: Eliot/Parker friendship
Warnings: None
Summary: Tag to "The Future Job." Parker had a brother once, and she still has her memories. We all mourn the death of a loved one and honor the person they were in our own ways. Parker's no exception.
Author's Note: A thanks, as always, goes out to rusting_roses. This fic was written more as a coping mechanism than anything else. One of my best friends had a sister die one week ago. It wasn’t an easy time, for me, or for my friend. Rusting_roses, I owe you a huge thank you. You were not only my beta for this fic. You were my rock through this storm. This fic is also dedicated to phoenix_laugh, who knows how to give a friend a pick-me-up, even from the other side of the world. The Leverage fic you wrote me gave me my first real smile in several days. Another thank you is owed to a real life friend who also was there when I needed her, again, even when she was several time-zones away. Even if you couldn't be here physically, your presence, the ear you lent me when I most needed it, was a god send. So thank you guys. When supporting a friend through a time like this, it’s good to have a support network of your own. I had three amazing friends through this. You guys kept me sane during one of the hardest experiences I've ever had to weather.
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Mourning Song
"What do you mean she's gone?" Eliot asked, putting down the knife he'd been drying off near the sink. He slowly turned toward the kitchen table where Hardison was sitting, tapping away at his computer.
"I mean just what I said, man. She asked for a week off," Hardison responded without looking away from his screen.
Eliot's brow creased. He supposed that Parker could maybe just want some time off. The idea of 'taking a break' just wasn't something that he normally associated with her, though. Sophie frequently tried to rearrange their schedules to allow her to make a weekend trip to Rome or attend the latest museum opening in Prague. Hardison occasionally bounced off across the country in search of his own kind at the science-fiction conventions he loved so much. But Parker? She lived for this stuff. There was nothing that compared to the excitement of a difficult theft. So what had her leaving all of that behind? "Where'd she go?"
Hardison shrugged. "I know I keep pretty good tabs on you guys but it's not my job to play babysitter. If Parker had something to do and she asked for some personal time to do it, I'm not going to invade her privacy."
Eliot wiped his wet hands off on the rag he'd deposited on the counter and crossed to stand behind Hardison. The hacker raised his eyebrow as he shot him a sideways glance over his shoulder. "Yes?"
Eliot crossed his arms. "I know it's just like you keep tabs on us all. Whether it's by your own stubborn persistence or Nate's request, I don't know. Nor do I care. But last time I took some time off I saw that you guys had Parker shadowing me. Don't even try to tell me you weren't involved."
Hardison's flurry of typing slowed and then finally stilled at that. He turned his head to meet Eliot's eyes above him. "I swear man; really, I don't keep tabs on you guys when you take time away from the team. All of us have things we want to keep private and I wouldn't betray that trust, even if Nate requested it. If Parker was there with you, it was of her own volition and curiosity that had her tailing you. She didn't go at my behest"
Eliot pulled out a chair and sat down next to Hardison then. If he was telling the truth, there was no need to make his friend get a kink in his neck from craning his neck back like that to look at him. But damn...Parker. There were times he really thought he was starting to understand the girl and all of her hidden complexities , and then she would go and do something like this and a whole new depth to her personality would reveal itself. It was like staring down into an abyss, sometimes. He would swear the little thief had an endless hoard of secrets that he and the others could never expect to totally comprehend. "Track her for me. I want to know where she's at, at the very least. That's not too much an invasion of privacy."
Hardison sighed, looking pensive. "I don't know man. That's kind of entering grey territory there. I mean, how would you feel if we did that to you?"
The hitter snorted. "She already did me one better by tailing me on her own time, whether you were involved or not. She opened the door on something like this when she decided to cross that line herself." When Hardison remained unconvinced, Eliot continued in a slightly softer tone, "Look, I just want to make sure she's not getting herself in trouble. If she's sneaking around some military base, well, maybe we have cause to be concerned. If she's somewhere harmless I'll let it lie, ok?"
"Fine. I suppose that won't do any harm." Hardison descended into silence for a spell as he sunk into the technological world that was his home territory. A few moments later he was looking up, shaking his head. "Last phone tower that had her signal is up in Maine. She goes off the grid there; I can't do any more for you than that."
Eliot ran a hand through his hair before dropping the hand to his other wrist. For the first time, Hardison realized that he was wearing a plain hemp bracelet containing a single bead. He untied the string that held it there and held the piece of jewelry toward the hacker.
"I know we're friends man, but bribery isn't going to work here. Besides, unless that bead it worth, like, elevnty billion dollars, I'm not take it. I'm not holding out on you here, there's nothing more to tell. And even assuming I was withholding info, jewelry wouldn't do it. Maybe a real light saber prop from the Star Wars set, but-"
Eliot growled, causing the hacker to drop off the end of his statement. "It has a GPS tracker in it. Parker wanted to exchange friendship bracelets...I figured if I was going to be roped into it I might as well use it to my advantage. She has the twin to that with a military-grade GPS tracker in it."
A grin crept across Hardison's face. He turned the bracelet over in his hand. It was very much something Parker would like, which also meant it was probably something that made Eliot cringe. The single bead was small, almost small enough that Hardison was surprised Eliot had managed to get a tracer in it. The clay bead was striped in fluorescent pink, green, and yellow. Eliot's fashion sense, whatever small amount he might possess, had probably wept at that. But sometimes you had to play on Parker's terms and by her rules and preferences in order to win the game. "That's sneaky, but smart thinking."
"Well someone had to keep tabs on the girl. And ever since she found out that you had a GPS in her shoes she took to buying new shoes every two weeks or so."
"I have tried to get another GPS on her with no success. That girl has a mind of her own on missions sometimes and it's just easier to know when she gets a sudden impulse to head off on her own."
Eliot snorted. "Try working with her in the field. She's a mind of her own all the time."
Eliot scooted over his chair closer to Hardison as he directed him to the proper secure website to use to activate Parker's GPS device. But going through and activating the device only occupied a very small amount of the hacker's attention. He needed more stimulation than this simple exercise, so conversation would have to suffice for the moment. "So where did you go when Parker tracked you? Must've been getting a bit rusty if Parker was able to track you. That's not even one of her stronger skills."
Eliot stared the hacker down with a steely gaze that left no question about how he felt about this line of conversation. "I thought you were under the impression that what we did on our own time was our own business?"
"I mean, I am. But we're sitting here and all, and Parker knows where you went. So I just thought I'd ask..."
"Well don't. And my skills are never rusty. Parker's main job is to be sneaky and elusive. Does it surprise you that she was able to sneak up on one of us? How often has she popped out of your ceiling vents and scared you half to death?"
"Man, don't be knocking me on that! You don't expect a person to just drop from the ceiling like that."
"I'd expect exactly that of Parker."
Hardison chuffed a quiet laugh at that. "I suppose that's true enough. I've got the tracker up and running. Should only take another few minutes to pin down her location. So you got trackers like this on all of us, or just Parker?"
"Of course I got them on all of you. I'm a retrieval specialist, remember? It's my job to come track you down and save your asses when you get in over your head. How am I supposed to do that if I can't find you?"
"That is so not cool man! I don't keep tabs on all of you, just Parker, and that's cause she does some crazy shit sometimes." Hardison lifted up his computer, looking for a GPS chip or something of the like. Eliot had to have planted it on something he regularly carried with him.
"Stop freaking out, Hardison. Like I said, it's a precautionary measure in case one of us was to get in trouble. I carry one too, in the bracelet, and Nate knows how to active it." That bit of knowledge had Hardison relaxing. If Nate knew about it, then Eliot really was on the level about the whole GPS thing and wouldn't invade their privacy unless dire circumstances were in play.
The hacker kept examining his computer as he waited for the GPS to hone in on Parker.
Eliot growled and pressed down on the laptop, forcing Hardison to let go of the edge he was peaking under or risk getting his fingers pinched. "Now stop trying to find it and get rid of it. I promise you, mess with the one I got on you now and I'll make sure the next one is impossible to get rid of."
Hardison relented, gulping at the threat. Several unpleasant thoughts were going through his mind as he envisioned all of the very uncomfortable places that the hitter could place a GPS device...the man had a sadistic streak that wasn't to be trifled with.
The hacker's computer chirped, drawing his attention back to the screen. "I've got her."
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Eliot pulled his truck into the shade of the campsite he'd rented for the next three days. He didn't know he long he was going to be here and it wasn't that expensive. If he ended up leaving before that, fine, he was out a bit of money. If tracking down Parker took longer than that, on the other hand, he would be looking at trying to retrieve a towed vehicle. And no one was going to impound his truck. No one drove his truck except for him. Ok, him and maybe Parker. And even then, it was just the one time he'd verbally doubted her carjacking skills and she'd stolen his truck just to prove the point. He'd made sure not to make that mistake twice.
He killed the engine and hopped out the truck, his boots scuffing against the gravel underfoot. He surveyed his spot. It wasn't much. Just a place to park his car and a picnic table with a bit of an opening between the pine trees to nestle a tent in there if he chose not to sleep in his truck. He was a ways back in the woods. He'd asked for that specifically, since there was something that eased his nerves a bit to be off on his own away from the tourists who might be lurking about. It wasn't that he was expecting trouble here, but some fine-tuned habits and neuroses weren't easily shed as a coat. No, those constructs had been woven into the very fiber of his being. He still jumped when people surprised him, and if it happened too fast and in the wrong way, he could very well end up accidently injuring someone who didn't deserve it.
He walked around to the bed of the truck and dropped the hatch as he began sorting the supplies he'd brought along. First thing he took out was the mountain bike he'd taken out of storage back in Boston before he'd made the five hour drive. Some of the older roads out here weren't passable by car and walking would take too long. Horses would've worked just as well, if not better, but finding Parker wasn't going to be made any easier if he ended up accidently causing her to flee at the sight of one of the animals that she seemed to possess an irrational fear of.
He brushed a bit of the dust off the seat as he leaned it up against the truck and began hanging the saddle bags off of the loading bracket he'd installed himself over the back tire. This bike hadn't been ridden in years. He packed just the essentials: a few knives, navigation material, plenty of dry food, his fire starting kit, his small tent and a sleeping bag, the small net book that Hardison had rigged up for long range communication capabilities by satellite so he could track Parker better. Cell phone reception died at the park entrance, Acadia National Park was one of the last vestiges of wilderness you could entrench yourself within in this country anymore. A few more odds and ends went into his saddle bags. He checked the supplies in his backpack and filled up his water bottles. He locked his truck and then he was off. There was the nod he gave to the campground owner as he rolled past the supply store and then he was biking along the mountainous spine that wrapped along east coast of Maine as if a great beast had chosen this land as its final resting place and gradually sunk into the land and become part of it.
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He found Parker that evening. She wasn't trying to be evasive, which was the first clue that she wasn't here working an outside job that she'd taken without consulting the rest of them. Up until he'd gotten here, on the ride up, that had been the explanation he was banking on; after all, what else would've brought Parker out here into a national park? It was just about as far as you could get from the luxurious living that often marked the individuals that Parker went after to steal from. He had been betting that some juicy target had pulled Parker out into the wilds like this. But this obviously wasn't the case; Parker wasn't acting like she normally would if she were on a job. So what had her out here?
He still hadn't figured that out. Did Parker take vacations? Was this really such a simple trip that he was reading far too into it?
It was late summer, and the sun was starting to kiss the mountain tops and let the world sink into a hazy evening. He clutched the brake on his bike, drawing to a halt at the top of the ridge. He couldn't help but smile as he watched the small figure of their thief below. He couldn't make out much more than her faint figure, silhouetted by the sun. But he could still see the way her ponytail whipped straight out back behind her in the wind. It was the perfect description of Parker. Like a horse running at a full gallop across an open field, tail raised high as an exclamation that, in that moment, no one would own them. It was freedom at its purest. And Parker lived that philosophy every moment of every day.
She clung to the bike, tightly. He could read that in the strain of her tightened shoulder muscles that didn't move quite right with the bike as she guided it around the lazy curves of the road as it wrapped down into the valley below. If she would just relax more, she would let her body flow with the movements of the bike and it wouldn't be so forced. She could do it, he watched her perform those motions when she was over the edge of a building hanging hundreds of feet above the street below. But here, with the road firmly under her feet, it was almost ironic that ease abandoned her in favor of a certain novice clumsiness that just ran counter to the normal grace he associated with her.
He waited until she glided around the tree line at the bottom of the valley before releasing the brake on his own bike and beginning the long coast down in pursuit of Parker and whatever had drawn her away from the terrain she favored above all else.
A few minutes later found the land leveling out and he had to begin actively pedaling to keep his speed up. The hitter's gaze was focused staunchly on the road ahead, scanning the distance ahead looking for Parker. There was no sign of her, or of anyone else, for the matter, on the open road ahead. Could she have gotten that far ahead of him? He hadn't given her that much of a head start and he had definitely been travelling downhill faster than she was willing to risk. No, if he had to bet, Parker would've likely been riding the break all the way down the mountainside.
His attention was drawn back as he heard the shifting of a bike's gears to the side of him. Eliot whipped his gaze sideways, it wasn't often someone managed to sneak up on him.
Parker nodded at him as if she had expected him to be there. She pedaled a bit faster, speeding up to draw her bike in alongside Eliot's. "You're following me."
The road ahead was starting to curb and Eliot was caught between keeping his gaze on her or on the road in front of him to follow the grade of the road. "You left without giving us much notice, in case you didn't notice."
He started trying to puzzle out when he had slipped up and let her see him. And after that, how had she gotten behind him? If she had pulled off the road it would've meant that he had ridden right past her without so much as noticing. Maybe Hardison was right...maybe he was getting a bit rusty.
"I told Hardison I'd be back in five days. That's no more time off than any of the rest of you have taken."
"So call me curious as to where you'd gotten off to. You did the same thing to me, trailing me back to Kentucky last year." He cursed once under his breath as he sharply jerked his handlebars to lean his bike into a curve to avoid a collision course with a tree straight ahead. He was having trouble multitasking like this.
"Damn it, can we stop for a minute and talk this out? If one of us gets killed it's not going to be much of a conversation."
She laughed. "You weren't invited. This wasn't meant to be a conversation." With more strength that he would've assumed Parker could possess in such a small frame, she pushed herself harder as the road started sloping uphill again and began pulling ahead of him.
He shook his head and felt his muscles strain as he pedaled harder to keep tight on the thief's tail.
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There were no more downhill bits along their journey to grant his aching muscles reprieve from the constant uphill battle. When they'd finally stopped for the night, he'd hardly been able to walk. His body was used to certain types of abuse, and this certainly wasn't his usual training venue.
Parker, on the other hand, hadn't showed the day's exertion in the least bit. She slunk around her camp as deftly as ever. She hadn't been much for conversation last night, which was odd for Parker. Usually she was badgering him with questions that seemed to come out of nowhere. What she got of his answers to these odd questions, he'd never know. But Parker wasn't like that now.
She had accepted his presence easily enough and the fact that he was shadowing her. But she hadn't been willing to give him any details about what they were doing here or where they were going. Hell, the most conversation they had that day was when he started pitching the tent she'd rolled out on the ground before going to retrieve some water from a nearby stream. She'd slipped the hammer from his hand as he'd been about to lay in on the first tent stake and made it clear that she would be taking care of herself, thank you very much, and he could keep to worrying about himself.
And Eliot had taken the cue. He was here as an observer, and Parker granting him that much was a gift in the form of a window into what she considered a private experience, whatever it was she was doing here. He'd seen her climbing gear in her bag, so there was still a very real possibility that this was a personal job of some sort that she'd taken under the table. All of these thoughts and possibilities had roiled through his thoughts as he rolled out his sleeping bag and drifted off into an uneasy slumber to the sound of buzzing insects and a gentle wind through the trees.
It was back on the road now. More damnable uphill travel. It was more pain stacked upon his already aching joints and seat bones. Who would've thought a bike seat could cause that much discomfort? Even a full day spent on horseback didn't make him sore like this. Parker showed no signs of slowing her pace, so he sucked it up and kept going. If she could do this, he could too. And there wasn't really an alternative. If he fell back, she'd be gone. Whatever almost inhuman force that was driving her higher into the mountains wasn't going to grant him reprieve.
He snagged his water bottle from its holder and swallowed a few swigs of the tepid liquid before sliding it back into its holder. He directed his gaze forward again just barely in time to see the rear wheel of Parker's bike disappear behind a tree line as she turned off the paved road and onto a dirt trail that forked off in another direction. He dipped his bike into a sharp turn to follow her. Had she finally decided it was time to ditch him?
He wasn't about to give her that. He worked to catch up to her, expecting her to be much further ahead already. Instead, the hitter found himself pulling on the brake hard to grind to a halt just a foot or so from where Parker had stopped her own bike and wheeled it around so she could watch the road. Her eyes were wide and every muscle was tensed.
"Parker, what's wrong?"
"Shhh!"
He rolled up his bike next to hers and fixed his stare in the same direction she was watching. They sat there like that for a minute or two until he heard the jingling of metal chain. That was shortly followed by voices drifting between the trees and then the sound of heavy footsteps clomping along the road.
Parker cocked her head and her eyes narrowed as something finally passed the opening from where the trail met the road. A team of heavy-boned draft horses strained against their harnesses as they pulled a carriage of gawking tourists toward the mountain peak. The older man driving the team flicked his wrist, setting the reins into a rolling motion that lightly slapped them against the horses' rumps.
"Get up, boys," he encouraged.
The horses snorted. One shook its head and swished its abbreviated tail back and forth anxiously but the team complied, throwing themselves harder into their exertions.
He turned to look at Parker. The thief had an angry glare on her face as if she expected the horses to break free of their harnesses and come to trample them. She growled as they passed low under her breath and then they disappeared behind the tree line again.
"You okay, Parker?"
"Fine," she snapped.
He waited for her to take the lead and start them moving again. And then he waited some more. The pair remained there for a solid fifteen minutes after the sounds of the group and their horses had faded off into the distance.
Eventually she sighed and scrubbed a hand across her weary face and slowed her quickened breathing. "Stupid horses. It's some heritage thing; they've always had carriage rides in the park." With that statement she kicked off against the ground to start a forward rolling motion and he was chasing after her once again.
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This wasn't her first trip here. That much became apparent as the afternoon waxed and waned. The comment about the horses, it meant that was something she'd never made peace with, suggesting she'd been here before and been equally frustrated those times too, though Eliot wasn't entirely sure why. She didn't consult a map either. Where ever it was that she was taking them, she knew the way by heart.
They'd moved off the roads accessible by car and onto a narrower one, pavement giving way to loose gravel. The jarring motion of his bike had grown even more unbearable with that switch. An old carriage road, Parker had told him when he'd given it a closer examination during one of their water breaks. That was as much of an explanation as he could hope for.
He was about to ask for a break when Parker abruptly pulled off to the edge of the road again. He shook his head and followed. She dismounted from her bike and walked it off the road and into the trees. A minute later it was mostly obscured by some brush she'd arranged to cover it. It was an admirable job, if you weren't looking for it, you would pass it right by. He duplicated her actions and then went to stand beside where Parker was adjusting the straps of her backpack, redistributing the weight across her shoulders.
"We'll walk from here."
Walking was not a fair term for it, Eliot decided. They weren't using a trail and Parker wasn't picking the easiest route up the mountain side. She was driving them in a straight line up the steep slope toward the apex of the mountain. She'd weave around insurmountable obstacles-large tree trunks and boulders-but when it came to smaller, inconvenient things like thorny bushes, she simply unrolled the long sleeves down to her wrists and plowed forward. She at least had a hair tie to pull her hair back. Eliot hadn't had such foresight and twice already he'd been jerked back by his hair being caught on a thorny branch.
The shrubs eventually started thinning out; the trees started becoming spaced further apart. Instead of the tightly tangled understory he'd come to expect, they all of a sudden had breathing room to walk without holding a hand outstretched in front of them to clear a path. Hell, Eliot muttered a silent thank you to whatever higher power might be listening he saw the first patch of sunlight on the otherwise shaded ground. Things might finally be getting easier for the first time since they'd started this uphill, and progressively more difficult, journey.
Parker stopped in front of him. He didn't see it and bumped into her with a grunt. She caught her balance and stepped to the side to reveal the view beyond to Eliot. He whistled low under his breath. The wilderness stretched out beyond them, first in a deep valley that allowed for him to truly appreciate the trek they'd made. The land stretched back upward to each side as the shoulders of other mountains jabbed toward the sky. "Wow, it's beautiful Parker." He unconsciously held one hand out against a nearby tree, almost a physical tether to the earth. They were on the precipice of a steep ridge that dropped off into a sheer cliff below.
She nodded and set her pack on the ground. She flipped open the rucksack and dug through it a bit until she drew out a series of items. Her body was turned in such a way that Eliot couldn't make out what they were.
Almost reverently, she wove her way along the ridge, unphased by the idea that one slip would have her plunging hundreds of feet below. She finally crouched down by a small pile of rocks. Eliot released his grip on the tree trunk, steeled himself, and stepped up closer to the edge next to Parker.
The rocks were of all different types, a few shone brilliantly in the sunset-red light that bathed their surroundings. There were a few rocks that had obviously been smoothed to perfection in a river bed at some point. And then there were ones that hinted more strongly of Parker's influence in bringing them here. He recognized a ruby, for sure, and a diamond that would fetch at least a few million dollars.
He stood there, silently, aware that something was happening here that meant a lot to Parker. This was some sort of ritual for her. He could read it in her confident movements, as if she had repeated this exact series of events until her body could execute them without conscious thought.
But Parker didn't move fast or quick like she would with something that she was trying to get done fast to show off or just because she could. There was deliberation in each movement, in the way she set out the Batman comic book at the base of the rock and then a small teddy bear. It flopped to the side when she first set it down, but she carefully righted it and brushed flat a tuft of fur that was standing up at an odd angle. She sat down then, crossing her legs, refusing to readjust her body to position it more comfortably on the rough rock.
Eliot settled himself down next to her. He wanted to speak, there were so many questions to ask. But this was Parker's time, and he would wait for her to share what she was willing to share on her own time.
"It's been fifteen years. I've made this trip ten times in those fifteen years," she spoke quietly, finally breaking her silence.
"What is this?"
"Nick died fifteen years ago today," she said, looking up at him with a solemn expression on her face. "We were out playing, riding bikes. Or at least trying. I was teaching him."
Eliot swallowed deeply. He knew the rest of the story. A heartless, fake psychic had teased the story out of her to the world at large on public television. In the moment he'd watched the TV screen and watched tears glistened in Parker's eyes, he'd wanted nothing more than to wrap his calloused hands around the man's throat, to choke the words down before he had a chance to do any more damage and punish him for taking his friend and doing her an insurmountable harm. In a ploy to boost ratings the fiend had taken her bubbly personality and popped it. He'd stripped away the careful walls that Parker had erected to bury those memories where they couldn't torment her and caused tears to bead in the corner of her eyes. He'd dredged up a memory that had caused Parker to flee at the mere mention. There were two kids playing innocently enough. There was a big sister trying to bring even a small smile to her brother's face by giving him a few fleeting moments of freedom from the harsh reality that kept them chained to the earth. And then there was a car and a collision and then the endless guilt that a person should never have to shoulder, let alone by themselves as Parker had apparently done for years.
"It wasn't your fault, Parker."
She nodded firmly. "It was. I was the one to take him out there that day. I was the one who chose to ride in the street where we would have more room and I could run alongside him and catch his bike if it started to lean one way or the other."
"Parker-"
"Eliot, stop. It happened fifteen years ago. Arguing over this doesn't change the fact that my brother is dead. He's been dead a long time; I've come to terms with that."
He opened his mouth to respond, and then closed it. Maybe there would be a time for this conversation. But it wasn't up here where something very intimate and personal to Parker was occurring. He wasn't here to impose. The hitter cleared his throat. "So, um, what are we doing here?"
"He died. But that doesn't mean I get to forget about him. Maybe he would've grown up to like riding a bike as much as I love rappelling."
He nodded, the bike ride up here suddenly taking on a different context.
Parker pulled out a few weeds that had started to grow in around her tribute to her brother, tidying the area. "I used to think it was stupid, burying someone and going to speak to their body. When a person dies, they're gone and dead. One of my foster parents took me to the graveyard one time and all I could think about was how they were talking to a pile of rotted bones and a stone that someone had placed there to mark their presence. Nick died, and our foster parents at the time buried him on their plot in a graveyard. They laid him out in a row with so many other dead people. Acres and acres of dead people."
She opened her hand, letting the wind carry the limp weeds over the edge where they spiraled toward the earth below. "I went there once, years after I ran away. Nick wasn't theirs to keep like that with their family. He was my family. He got his life stolen, and then they took his death away from me. I was left with nothing."
"What did you go back there for, to visit?"
She shook her head vigorously. "I didn't understand at first, why people would go and talk to a dead person like they were still alive. I didn't do that when my parents died...They were just people in my life. Mean people. But when Nick died...my family was gone. And I wanted to remember. I wanted a place to come and sit and remember who he was and what we had. That's what people like having graves for. I picked this place. It's some of the best bike trails in the country. If Nick had really grown to like riding, maybe I would've brought him here someday. And he liked parks and nature."
Eliot wanted to reach out and touch her, to comfort her. To tell her it was okay to mourn and that it was alright to feel this, and that she shouldn't have to do this alone. That she should never have had to make this trip alone. She wouldn't in the future; Eliot vowed that to himself silently. But he knew better than to reach out and settle a hand on Parker's shoulder. It would snap this fragile moment clean in two and draw her back into the private recesses of her mind that she so often kept to. "He would've liked it here." And he spoke the truth, in that. This place was a fusion of many things. It was part of the life Parker imagined might have pleased her brother. It was the things her little sibling had loved in the world. But it also spoke to Parker's joys too. Despite the solemn nature of their visit here, there was that spark in Parker's eyes. It wasn't there all the time. He really only really saw it when she was high up on some perch looking down on all the world below her as if it were her kingdom to reign over.
She nodded, rolling one of the precious stones between her fingers. "I didn't want him to be there, surrounded by so much death and all alone with that family that was never really ours. I went there, just once, at night with a shovel and a flashlight. I planned on taking back what they stole from me and bringing him up here to rest. It's much better to be surrounded by life, than death. I went there and I stood there for hours, just pinned there. I couldn't move. I couldn't do it. Some thief I am, huh? I couldn't steal back the most important thing that was ever taken from me."
"So he's still there?"
She shrugged. "I suppose. Resting there among all those dead people. But, Eliot, it's so overwhelming. So much death and sadness all concentrated in one place. You go there and see people in black outfits wearing black, desolate expressions as they lay flowers on the ground. I...I couldn't do that. I can't do that. I come out here, every year, and I remember who he was and imagine who he might've been."
She pulled a lighter out of her jeans pocket and flicked the wheel a few times until a spark finally rose into existence. She lowered it to the base of her memorial and set flame to the edges of the comic book and the stuffed bear. The fur started to melt and a strong chemical scent rose into the air, overwhelming the slight scent of pine. The edges of the comic book blackened and curled.
"I always had my rabbit. And he had his bear. And he always made me read these comics to him. I didn't even like comics. If superheroes were real they never would've left us to live like we did. He actually kept believing that someday one of them would swoop in and carry us off to a better life."
The black smoke rose into the air as her offerings were reduced to a pile of ash. They sat there for a long time, watching the flames smolder and the sun sink further behind the ridge off in the distance. Goosebumps freckled Eliot's exposed arms as the cool evening breeze beat against him. Parker had pulled her legs up against her and wrapped her arms around them to maintain body heat.
Eventually the flames died out and the orange embers faded to a dead grey. She uncurled herself and scooped a handful of the ashes in her cupped hands. She stood and walked to the very edge of the precipice before parting her hands, the tiny grains of her offering slipping between her fingers and down into the world below. Eliot rose to stand behind her.
She spoke again then. "He was a good kid. He would've been a great man." She turned her back to the world beyond and went to her bag. She pulled out her climbing harness and started fitting it to her body and buckling the various straps.
Eliot started to speak. "What-"
Parker cut him off, a trace of her mischievous grin finally gracing her face. It was the first time had seen it since he'd first started in on this pilgrimage with his teammate. "You learn to live, Eliot. All the sad things, it makes living life that much more important. Nick would've wanted that."
She threw her spare harness at him. "It'll be tight, but it adjusts quite a bit. We have to go soon, it's getting dark."
He shot her a confused glance. But a cursory inspection of their surroundings had his eyes settling in on the rappelling rig she'd drilled solidly into one the sturdier looking trees. "Hell no, Parker...no. I don't do this stuff."
She shrugged as she uncoiled her rope and started attaching it to the pulley system. "Walk back if you want."
"I don't know the way..."
"Guess you got one option then," she suggested, that glint in her eye flaring even brighter.
He growled.
She dropped a second rope into his hand. "Gotta learn to live sometime, Eliot."
--THE END--
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Genre: Angst, Friendship
Word Count: ~6,700 words
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Pairings: Eliot/Parker friendship
Warnings: None
Summary: Tag to "The Future Job." Parker had a brother once, and she still has her memories. We all mourn the death of a loved one and honor the person they were in our own ways. Parker's no exception.
Author's Note: A thanks, as always, goes out to rusting_roses. This fic was written more as a coping mechanism than anything else. One of my best friends had a sister die one week ago. It wasn’t an easy time, for me, or for my friend. Rusting_roses, I owe you a huge thank you. You were not only my beta for this fic. You were my rock through this storm. This fic is also dedicated to phoenix_laugh, who knows how to give a friend a pick-me-up, even from the other side of the world. The Leverage fic you wrote me gave me my first real smile in several days. Another thank you is owed to a real life friend who also was there when I needed her, again, even when she was several time-zones away. Even if you couldn't be here physically, your presence, the ear you lent me when I most needed it, was a god send. So thank you guys. When supporting a friend through a time like this, it’s good to have a support network of your own. I had three amazing friends through this. You guys kept me sane during one of the hardest experiences I've ever had to weather.
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Mourning Song
"What do you mean she's gone?" Eliot asked, putting down the knife he'd been drying off near the sink. He slowly turned toward the kitchen table where Hardison was sitting, tapping away at his computer.
"I mean just what I said, man. She asked for a week off," Hardison responded without looking away from his screen.
Eliot's brow creased. He supposed that Parker could maybe just want some time off. The idea of 'taking a break' just wasn't something that he normally associated with her, though. Sophie frequently tried to rearrange their schedules to allow her to make a weekend trip to Rome or attend the latest museum opening in Prague. Hardison occasionally bounced off across the country in search of his own kind at the science-fiction conventions he loved so much. But Parker? She lived for this stuff. There was nothing that compared to the excitement of a difficult theft. So what had her leaving all of that behind? "Where'd she go?"
Hardison shrugged. "I know I keep pretty good tabs on you guys but it's not my job to play babysitter. If Parker had something to do and she asked for some personal time to do it, I'm not going to invade her privacy."
Eliot wiped his wet hands off on the rag he'd deposited on the counter and crossed to stand behind Hardison. The hacker raised his eyebrow as he shot him a sideways glance over his shoulder. "Yes?"
Eliot crossed his arms. "I know it's just like you keep tabs on us all. Whether it's by your own stubborn persistence or Nate's request, I don't know. Nor do I care. But last time I took some time off I saw that you guys had Parker shadowing me. Don't even try to tell me you weren't involved."
Hardison's flurry of typing slowed and then finally stilled at that. He turned his head to meet Eliot's eyes above him. "I swear man; really, I don't keep tabs on you guys when you take time away from the team. All of us have things we want to keep private and I wouldn't betray that trust, even if Nate requested it. If Parker was there with you, it was of her own volition and curiosity that had her tailing you. She didn't go at my behest"
Eliot pulled out a chair and sat down next to Hardison then. If he was telling the truth, there was no need to make his friend get a kink in his neck from craning his neck back like that to look at him. But damn...Parker. There were times he really thought he was starting to understand the girl and all of her hidden complexities , and then she would go and do something like this and a whole new depth to her personality would reveal itself. It was like staring down into an abyss, sometimes. He would swear the little thief had an endless hoard of secrets that he and the others could never expect to totally comprehend. "Track her for me. I want to know where she's at, at the very least. That's not too much an invasion of privacy."
Hardison sighed, looking pensive. "I don't know man. That's kind of entering grey territory there. I mean, how would you feel if we did that to you?"
The hitter snorted. "She already did me one better by tailing me on her own time, whether you were involved or not. She opened the door on something like this when she decided to cross that line herself." When Hardison remained unconvinced, Eliot continued in a slightly softer tone, "Look, I just want to make sure she's not getting herself in trouble. If she's sneaking around some military base, well, maybe we have cause to be concerned. If she's somewhere harmless I'll let it lie, ok?"
"Fine. I suppose that won't do any harm." Hardison descended into silence for a spell as he sunk into the technological world that was his home territory. A few moments later he was looking up, shaking his head. "Last phone tower that had her signal is up in Maine. She goes off the grid there; I can't do any more for you than that."
Eliot ran a hand through his hair before dropping the hand to his other wrist. For the first time, Hardison realized that he was wearing a plain hemp bracelet containing a single bead. He untied the string that held it there and held the piece of jewelry toward the hacker.
"I know we're friends man, but bribery isn't going to work here. Besides, unless that bead it worth, like, elevnty billion dollars, I'm not take it. I'm not holding out on you here, there's nothing more to tell. And even assuming I was withholding info, jewelry wouldn't do it. Maybe a real light saber prop from the Star Wars set, but-"
Eliot growled, causing the hacker to drop off the end of his statement. "It has a GPS tracker in it. Parker wanted to exchange friendship bracelets...I figured if I was going to be roped into it I might as well use it to my advantage. She has the twin to that with a military-grade GPS tracker in it."
A grin crept across Hardison's face. He turned the bracelet over in his hand. It was very much something Parker would like, which also meant it was probably something that made Eliot cringe. The single bead was small, almost small enough that Hardison was surprised Eliot had managed to get a tracer in it. The clay bead was striped in fluorescent pink, green, and yellow. Eliot's fashion sense, whatever small amount he might possess, had probably wept at that. But sometimes you had to play on Parker's terms and by her rules and preferences in order to win the game. "That's sneaky, but smart thinking."
"Well someone had to keep tabs on the girl. And ever since she found out that you had a GPS in her shoes she took to buying new shoes every two weeks or so."
"I have tried to get another GPS on her with no success. That girl has a mind of her own on missions sometimes and it's just easier to know when she gets a sudden impulse to head off on her own."
Eliot snorted. "Try working with her in the field. She's a mind of her own all the time."
Eliot scooted over his chair closer to Hardison as he directed him to the proper secure website to use to activate Parker's GPS device. But going through and activating the device only occupied a very small amount of the hacker's attention. He needed more stimulation than this simple exercise, so conversation would have to suffice for the moment. "So where did you go when Parker tracked you? Must've been getting a bit rusty if Parker was able to track you. That's not even one of her stronger skills."
Eliot stared the hacker down with a steely gaze that left no question about how he felt about this line of conversation. "I thought you were under the impression that what we did on our own time was our own business?"
"I mean, I am. But we're sitting here and all, and Parker knows where you went. So I just thought I'd ask..."
"Well don't. And my skills are never rusty. Parker's main job is to be sneaky and elusive. Does it surprise you that she was able to sneak up on one of us? How often has she popped out of your ceiling vents and scared you half to death?"
"Man, don't be knocking me on that! You don't expect a person to just drop from the ceiling like that."
"I'd expect exactly that of Parker."
Hardison chuffed a quiet laugh at that. "I suppose that's true enough. I've got the tracker up and running. Should only take another few minutes to pin down her location. So you got trackers like this on all of us, or just Parker?"
"Of course I got them on all of you. I'm a retrieval specialist, remember? It's my job to come track you down and save your asses when you get in over your head. How am I supposed to do that if I can't find you?"
"That is so not cool man! I don't keep tabs on all of you, just Parker, and that's cause she does some crazy shit sometimes." Hardison lifted up his computer, looking for a GPS chip or something of the like. Eliot had to have planted it on something he regularly carried with him.
"Stop freaking out, Hardison. Like I said, it's a precautionary measure in case one of us was to get in trouble. I carry one too, in the bracelet, and Nate knows how to active it." That bit of knowledge had Hardison relaxing. If Nate knew about it, then Eliot really was on the level about the whole GPS thing and wouldn't invade their privacy unless dire circumstances were in play.
The hacker kept examining his computer as he waited for the GPS to hone in on Parker.
Eliot growled and pressed down on the laptop, forcing Hardison to let go of the edge he was peaking under or risk getting his fingers pinched. "Now stop trying to find it and get rid of it. I promise you, mess with the one I got on you now and I'll make sure the next one is impossible to get rid of."
Hardison relented, gulping at the threat. Several unpleasant thoughts were going through his mind as he envisioned all of the very uncomfortable places that the hitter could place a GPS device...the man had a sadistic streak that wasn't to be trifled with.
The hacker's computer chirped, drawing his attention back to the screen. "I've got her."
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Eliot pulled his truck into the shade of the campsite he'd rented for the next three days. He didn't know he long he was going to be here and it wasn't that expensive. If he ended up leaving before that, fine, he was out a bit of money. If tracking down Parker took longer than that, on the other hand, he would be looking at trying to retrieve a towed vehicle. And no one was going to impound his truck. No one drove his truck except for him. Ok, him and maybe Parker. And even then, it was just the one time he'd verbally doubted her carjacking skills and she'd stolen his truck just to prove the point. He'd made sure not to make that mistake twice.
He killed the engine and hopped out the truck, his boots scuffing against the gravel underfoot. He surveyed his spot. It wasn't much. Just a place to park his car and a picnic table with a bit of an opening between the pine trees to nestle a tent in there if he chose not to sleep in his truck. He was a ways back in the woods. He'd asked for that specifically, since there was something that eased his nerves a bit to be off on his own away from the tourists who might be lurking about. It wasn't that he was expecting trouble here, but some fine-tuned habits and neuroses weren't easily shed as a coat. No, those constructs had been woven into the very fiber of his being. He still jumped when people surprised him, and if it happened too fast and in the wrong way, he could very well end up accidently injuring someone who didn't deserve it.
He walked around to the bed of the truck and dropped the hatch as he began sorting the supplies he'd brought along. First thing he took out was the mountain bike he'd taken out of storage back in Boston before he'd made the five hour drive. Some of the older roads out here weren't passable by car and walking would take too long. Horses would've worked just as well, if not better, but finding Parker wasn't going to be made any easier if he ended up accidently causing her to flee at the sight of one of the animals that she seemed to possess an irrational fear of.
He brushed a bit of the dust off the seat as he leaned it up against the truck and began hanging the saddle bags off of the loading bracket he'd installed himself over the back tire. This bike hadn't been ridden in years. He packed just the essentials: a few knives, navigation material, plenty of dry food, his fire starting kit, his small tent and a sleeping bag, the small net book that Hardison had rigged up for long range communication capabilities by satellite so he could track Parker better. Cell phone reception died at the park entrance, Acadia National Park was one of the last vestiges of wilderness you could entrench yourself within in this country anymore. A few more odds and ends went into his saddle bags. He checked the supplies in his backpack and filled up his water bottles. He locked his truck and then he was off. There was the nod he gave to the campground owner as he rolled past the supply store and then he was biking along the mountainous spine that wrapped along east coast of Maine as if a great beast had chosen this land as its final resting place and gradually sunk into the land and become part of it.
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He found Parker that evening. She wasn't trying to be evasive, which was the first clue that she wasn't here working an outside job that she'd taken without consulting the rest of them. Up until he'd gotten here, on the ride up, that had been the explanation he was banking on; after all, what else would've brought Parker out here into a national park? It was just about as far as you could get from the luxurious living that often marked the individuals that Parker went after to steal from. He had been betting that some juicy target had pulled Parker out into the wilds like this. But this obviously wasn't the case; Parker wasn't acting like she normally would if she were on a job. So what had her out here?
He still hadn't figured that out. Did Parker take vacations? Was this really such a simple trip that he was reading far too into it?
It was late summer, and the sun was starting to kiss the mountain tops and let the world sink into a hazy evening. He clutched the brake on his bike, drawing to a halt at the top of the ridge. He couldn't help but smile as he watched the small figure of their thief below. He couldn't make out much more than her faint figure, silhouetted by the sun. But he could still see the way her ponytail whipped straight out back behind her in the wind. It was the perfect description of Parker. Like a horse running at a full gallop across an open field, tail raised high as an exclamation that, in that moment, no one would own them. It was freedom at its purest. And Parker lived that philosophy every moment of every day.
She clung to the bike, tightly. He could read that in the strain of her tightened shoulder muscles that didn't move quite right with the bike as she guided it around the lazy curves of the road as it wrapped down into the valley below. If she would just relax more, she would let her body flow with the movements of the bike and it wouldn't be so forced. She could do it, he watched her perform those motions when she was over the edge of a building hanging hundreds of feet above the street below. But here, with the road firmly under her feet, it was almost ironic that ease abandoned her in favor of a certain novice clumsiness that just ran counter to the normal grace he associated with her.
He waited until she glided around the tree line at the bottom of the valley before releasing the brake on his own bike and beginning the long coast down in pursuit of Parker and whatever had drawn her away from the terrain she favored above all else.
A few minutes later found the land leveling out and he had to begin actively pedaling to keep his speed up. The hitter's gaze was focused staunchly on the road ahead, scanning the distance ahead looking for Parker. There was no sign of her, or of anyone else, for the matter, on the open road ahead. Could she have gotten that far ahead of him? He hadn't given her that much of a head start and he had definitely been travelling downhill faster than she was willing to risk. No, if he had to bet, Parker would've likely been riding the break all the way down the mountainside.
His attention was drawn back as he heard the shifting of a bike's gears to the side of him. Eliot whipped his gaze sideways, it wasn't often someone managed to sneak up on him.
Parker nodded at him as if she had expected him to be there. She pedaled a bit faster, speeding up to draw her bike in alongside Eliot's. "You're following me."
The road ahead was starting to curb and Eliot was caught between keeping his gaze on her or on the road in front of him to follow the grade of the road. "You left without giving us much notice, in case you didn't notice."
He started trying to puzzle out when he had slipped up and let her see him. And after that, how had she gotten behind him? If she had pulled off the road it would've meant that he had ridden right past her without so much as noticing. Maybe Hardison was right...maybe he was getting a bit rusty.
"I told Hardison I'd be back in five days. That's no more time off than any of the rest of you have taken."
"So call me curious as to where you'd gotten off to. You did the same thing to me, trailing me back to Kentucky last year." He cursed once under his breath as he sharply jerked his handlebars to lean his bike into a curve to avoid a collision course with a tree straight ahead. He was having trouble multitasking like this.
"Damn it, can we stop for a minute and talk this out? If one of us gets killed it's not going to be much of a conversation."
She laughed. "You weren't invited. This wasn't meant to be a conversation." With more strength that he would've assumed Parker could possess in such a small frame, she pushed herself harder as the road started sloping uphill again and began pulling ahead of him.
He shook his head and felt his muscles strain as he pedaled harder to keep tight on the thief's tail.
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There were no more downhill bits along their journey to grant his aching muscles reprieve from the constant uphill battle. When they'd finally stopped for the night, he'd hardly been able to walk. His body was used to certain types of abuse, and this certainly wasn't his usual training venue.
Parker, on the other hand, hadn't showed the day's exertion in the least bit. She slunk around her camp as deftly as ever. She hadn't been much for conversation last night, which was odd for Parker. Usually she was badgering him with questions that seemed to come out of nowhere. What she got of his answers to these odd questions, he'd never know. But Parker wasn't like that now.
She had accepted his presence easily enough and the fact that he was shadowing her. But she hadn't been willing to give him any details about what they were doing here or where they were going. Hell, the most conversation they had that day was when he started pitching the tent she'd rolled out on the ground before going to retrieve some water from a nearby stream. She'd slipped the hammer from his hand as he'd been about to lay in on the first tent stake and made it clear that she would be taking care of herself, thank you very much, and he could keep to worrying about himself.
And Eliot had taken the cue. He was here as an observer, and Parker granting him that much was a gift in the form of a window into what she considered a private experience, whatever it was she was doing here. He'd seen her climbing gear in her bag, so there was still a very real possibility that this was a personal job of some sort that she'd taken under the table. All of these thoughts and possibilities had roiled through his thoughts as he rolled out his sleeping bag and drifted off into an uneasy slumber to the sound of buzzing insects and a gentle wind through the trees.
It was back on the road now. More damnable uphill travel. It was more pain stacked upon his already aching joints and seat bones. Who would've thought a bike seat could cause that much discomfort? Even a full day spent on horseback didn't make him sore like this. Parker showed no signs of slowing her pace, so he sucked it up and kept going. If she could do this, he could too. And there wasn't really an alternative. If he fell back, she'd be gone. Whatever almost inhuman force that was driving her higher into the mountains wasn't going to grant him reprieve.
He snagged his water bottle from its holder and swallowed a few swigs of the tepid liquid before sliding it back into its holder. He directed his gaze forward again just barely in time to see the rear wheel of Parker's bike disappear behind a tree line as she turned off the paved road and onto a dirt trail that forked off in another direction. He dipped his bike into a sharp turn to follow her. Had she finally decided it was time to ditch him?
He wasn't about to give her that. He worked to catch up to her, expecting her to be much further ahead already. Instead, the hitter found himself pulling on the brake hard to grind to a halt just a foot or so from where Parker had stopped her own bike and wheeled it around so she could watch the road. Her eyes were wide and every muscle was tensed.
"Parker, what's wrong?"
"Shhh!"
He rolled up his bike next to hers and fixed his stare in the same direction she was watching. They sat there like that for a minute or two until he heard the jingling of metal chain. That was shortly followed by voices drifting between the trees and then the sound of heavy footsteps clomping along the road.
Parker cocked her head and her eyes narrowed as something finally passed the opening from where the trail met the road. A team of heavy-boned draft horses strained against their harnesses as they pulled a carriage of gawking tourists toward the mountain peak. The older man driving the team flicked his wrist, setting the reins into a rolling motion that lightly slapped them against the horses' rumps.
"Get up, boys," he encouraged.
The horses snorted. One shook its head and swished its abbreviated tail back and forth anxiously but the team complied, throwing themselves harder into their exertions.
He turned to look at Parker. The thief had an angry glare on her face as if she expected the horses to break free of their harnesses and come to trample them. She growled as they passed low under her breath and then they disappeared behind the tree line again.
"You okay, Parker?"
"Fine," she snapped.
He waited for her to take the lead and start them moving again. And then he waited some more. The pair remained there for a solid fifteen minutes after the sounds of the group and their horses had faded off into the distance.
Eventually she sighed and scrubbed a hand across her weary face and slowed her quickened breathing. "Stupid horses. It's some heritage thing; they've always had carriage rides in the park." With that statement she kicked off against the ground to start a forward rolling motion and he was chasing after her once again.
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This wasn't her first trip here. That much became apparent as the afternoon waxed and waned. The comment about the horses, it meant that was something she'd never made peace with, suggesting she'd been here before and been equally frustrated those times too, though Eliot wasn't entirely sure why. She didn't consult a map either. Where ever it was that she was taking them, she knew the way by heart.
They'd moved off the roads accessible by car and onto a narrower one, pavement giving way to loose gravel. The jarring motion of his bike had grown even more unbearable with that switch. An old carriage road, Parker had told him when he'd given it a closer examination during one of their water breaks. That was as much of an explanation as he could hope for.
He was about to ask for a break when Parker abruptly pulled off to the edge of the road again. He shook his head and followed. She dismounted from her bike and walked it off the road and into the trees. A minute later it was mostly obscured by some brush she'd arranged to cover it. It was an admirable job, if you weren't looking for it, you would pass it right by. He duplicated her actions and then went to stand beside where Parker was adjusting the straps of her backpack, redistributing the weight across her shoulders.
"We'll walk from here."
Walking was not a fair term for it, Eliot decided. They weren't using a trail and Parker wasn't picking the easiest route up the mountain side. She was driving them in a straight line up the steep slope toward the apex of the mountain. She'd weave around insurmountable obstacles-large tree trunks and boulders-but when it came to smaller, inconvenient things like thorny bushes, she simply unrolled the long sleeves down to her wrists and plowed forward. She at least had a hair tie to pull her hair back. Eliot hadn't had such foresight and twice already he'd been jerked back by his hair being caught on a thorny branch.
The shrubs eventually started thinning out; the trees started becoming spaced further apart. Instead of the tightly tangled understory he'd come to expect, they all of a sudden had breathing room to walk without holding a hand outstretched in front of them to clear a path. Hell, Eliot muttered a silent thank you to whatever higher power might be listening he saw the first patch of sunlight on the otherwise shaded ground. Things might finally be getting easier for the first time since they'd started this uphill, and progressively more difficult, journey.
Parker stopped in front of him. He didn't see it and bumped into her with a grunt. She caught her balance and stepped to the side to reveal the view beyond to Eliot. He whistled low under his breath. The wilderness stretched out beyond them, first in a deep valley that allowed for him to truly appreciate the trek they'd made. The land stretched back upward to each side as the shoulders of other mountains jabbed toward the sky. "Wow, it's beautiful Parker." He unconsciously held one hand out against a nearby tree, almost a physical tether to the earth. They were on the precipice of a steep ridge that dropped off into a sheer cliff below.
She nodded and set her pack on the ground. She flipped open the rucksack and dug through it a bit until she drew out a series of items. Her body was turned in such a way that Eliot couldn't make out what they were.
Almost reverently, she wove her way along the ridge, unphased by the idea that one slip would have her plunging hundreds of feet below. She finally crouched down by a small pile of rocks. Eliot released his grip on the tree trunk, steeled himself, and stepped up closer to the edge next to Parker.
The rocks were of all different types, a few shone brilliantly in the sunset-red light that bathed their surroundings. There were a few rocks that had obviously been smoothed to perfection in a river bed at some point. And then there were ones that hinted more strongly of Parker's influence in bringing them here. He recognized a ruby, for sure, and a diamond that would fetch at least a few million dollars.
He stood there, silently, aware that something was happening here that meant a lot to Parker. This was some sort of ritual for her. He could read it in her confident movements, as if she had repeated this exact series of events until her body could execute them without conscious thought.
But Parker didn't move fast or quick like she would with something that she was trying to get done fast to show off or just because she could. There was deliberation in each movement, in the way she set out the Batman comic book at the base of the rock and then a small teddy bear. It flopped to the side when she first set it down, but she carefully righted it and brushed flat a tuft of fur that was standing up at an odd angle. She sat down then, crossing her legs, refusing to readjust her body to position it more comfortably on the rough rock.
Eliot settled himself down next to her. He wanted to speak, there were so many questions to ask. But this was Parker's time, and he would wait for her to share what she was willing to share on her own time.
"It's been fifteen years. I've made this trip ten times in those fifteen years," she spoke quietly, finally breaking her silence.
"What is this?"
"Nick died fifteen years ago today," she said, looking up at him with a solemn expression on her face. "We were out playing, riding bikes. Or at least trying. I was teaching him."
Eliot swallowed deeply. He knew the rest of the story. A heartless, fake psychic had teased the story out of her to the world at large on public television. In the moment he'd watched the TV screen and watched tears glistened in Parker's eyes, he'd wanted nothing more than to wrap his calloused hands around the man's throat, to choke the words down before he had a chance to do any more damage and punish him for taking his friend and doing her an insurmountable harm. In a ploy to boost ratings the fiend had taken her bubbly personality and popped it. He'd stripped away the careful walls that Parker had erected to bury those memories where they couldn't torment her and caused tears to bead in the corner of her eyes. He'd dredged up a memory that had caused Parker to flee at the mere mention. There were two kids playing innocently enough. There was a big sister trying to bring even a small smile to her brother's face by giving him a few fleeting moments of freedom from the harsh reality that kept them chained to the earth. And then there was a car and a collision and then the endless guilt that a person should never have to shoulder, let alone by themselves as Parker had apparently done for years.
"It wasn't your fault, Parker."
She nodded firmly. "It was. I was the one to take him out there that day. I was the one who chose to ride in the street where we would have more room and I could run alongside him and catch his bike if it started to lean one way or the other."
"Parker-"
"Eliot, stop. It happened fifteen years ago. Arguing over this doesn't change the fact that my brother is dead. He's been dead a long time; I've come to terms with that."
He opened his mouth to respond, and then closed it. Maybe there would be a time for this conversation. But it wasn't up here where something very intimate and personal to Parker was occurring. He wasn't here to impose. The hitter cleared his throat. "So, um, what are we doing here?"
"He died. But that doesn't mean I get to forget about him. Maybe he would've grown up to like riding a bike as much as I love rappelling."
He nodded, the bike ride up here suddenly taking on a different context.
Parker pulled out a few weeds that had started to grow in around her tribute to her brother, tidying the area. "I used to think it was stupid, burying someone and going to speak to their body. When a person dies, they're gone and dead. One of my foster parents took me to the graveyard one time and all I could think about was how they were talking to a pile of rotted bones and a stone that someone had placed there to mark their presence. Nick died, and our foster parents at the time buried him on their plot in a graveyard. They laid him out in a row with so many other dead people. Acres and acres of dead people."
She opened her hand, letting the wind carry the limp weeds over the edge where they spiraled toward the earth below. "I went there once, years after I ran away. Nick wasn't theirs to keep like that with their family. He was my family. He got his life stolen, and then they took his death away from me. I was left with nothing."
"What did you go back there for, to visit?"
She shook her head vigorously. "I didn't understand at first, why people would go and talk to a dead person like they were still alive. I didn't do that when my parents died...They were just people in my life. Mean people. But when Nick died...my family was gone. And I wanted to remember. I wanted a place to come and sit and remember who he was and what we had. That's what people like having graves for. I picked this place. It's some of the best bike trails in the country. If Nick had really grown to like riding, maybe I would've brought him here someday. And he liked parks and nature."
Eliot wanted to reach out and touch her, to comfort her. To tell her it was okay to mourn and that it was alright to feel this, and that she shouldn't have to do this alone. That she should never have had to make this trip alone. She wouldn't in the future; Eliot vowed that to himself silently. But he knew better than to reach out and settle a hand on Parker's shoulder. It would snap this fragile moment clean in two and draw her back into the private recesses of her mind that she so often kept to. "He would've liked it here." And he spoke the truth, in that. This place was a fusion of many things. It was part of the life Parker imagined might have pleased her brother. It was the things her little sibling had loved in the world. But it also spoke to Parker's joys too. Despite the solemn nature of their visit here, there was that spark in Parker's eyes. It wasn't there all the time. He really only really saw it when she was high up on some perch looking down on all the world below her as if it were her kingdom to reign over.
She nodded, rolling one of the precious stones between her fingers. "I didn't want him to be there, surrounded by so much death and all alone with that family that was never really ours. I went there, just once, at night with a shovel and a flashlight. I planned on taking back what they stole from me and bringing him up here to rest. It's much better to be surrounded by life, than death. I went there and I stood there for hours, just pinned there. I couldn't move. I couldn't do it. Some thief I am, huh? I couldn't steal back the most important thing that was ever taken from me."
"So he's still there?"
She shrugged. "I suppose. Resting there among all those dead people. But, Eliot, it's so overwhelming. So much death and sadness all concentrated in one place. You go there and see people in black outfits wearing black, desolate expressions as they lay flowers on the ground. I...I couldn't do that. I can't do that. I come out here, every year, and I remember who he was and imagine who he might've been."
She pulled a lighter out of her jeans pocket and flicked the wheel a few times until a spark finally rose into existence. She lowered it to the base of her memorial and set flame to the edges of the comic book and the stuffed bear. The fur started to melt and a strong chemical scent rose into the air, overwhelming the slight scent of pine. The edges of the comic book blackened and curled.
"I always had my rabbit. And he had his bear. And he always made me read these comics to him. I didn't even like comics. If superheroes were real they never would've left us to live like we did. He actually kept believing that someday one of them would swoop in and carry us off to a better life."
The black smoke rose into the air as her offerings were reduced to a pile of ash. They sat there for a long time, watching the flames smolder and the sun sink further behind the ridge off in the distance. Goosebumps freckled Eliot's exposed arms as the cool evening breeze beat against him. Parker had pulled her legs up against her and wrapped her arms around them to maintain body heat.
Eventually the flames died out and the orange embers faded to a dead grey. She uncurled herself and scooped a handful of the ashes in her cupped hands. She stood and walked to the very edge of the precipice before parting her hands, the tiny grains of her offering slipping between her fingers and down into the world below. Eliot rose to stand behind her.
She spoke again then. "He was a good kid. He would've been a great man." She turned her back to the world beyond and went to her bag. She pulled out her climbing harness and started fitting it to her body and buckling the various straps.
Eliot started to speak. "What-"
Parker cut him off, a trace of her mischievous grin finally gracing her face. It was the first time had seen it since he'd first started in on this pilgrimage with his teammate. "You learn to live, Eliot. All the sad things, it makes living life that much more important. Nick would've wanted that."
She threw her spare harness at him. "It'll be tight, but it adjusts quite a bit. We have to go soon, it's getting dark."
He shot her a confused glance. But a cursory inspection of their surroundings had his eyes settling in on the rappelling rig she'd drilled solidly into one the sturdier looking trees. "Hell no, Parker...no. I don't do this stuff."
She shrugged as she uncoiled her rope and started attaching it to the pulley system. "Walk back if you want."
"I don't know the way..."
"Guess you got one option then," she suggested, that glint in her eye flaring even brighter.
He growled.
She dropped a second rope into his hand. "Gotta learn to live sometime, Eliot."
--THE END--
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