Title: Four Times Parker Dreamed About Having a Family, and One Time She Didn't Have To
Author: Zara / The Amazon Ziti
Fandom: Leverage, Parker-centric gen (pre-Parker/Hardison/Eliot)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Inexplicit child and spousal abuse, inexplicit sexual assault, Parker being Parker
Summary: See title.
Word Count: ~3,900
Beta-read by thedeadparrot and jendavis (both on LJ). Thank you so much for your insights, ladies! This story would not be what it is without you.

I.

When Parker is six years old, her name isn't Parker yet, and she goes to her first foster family.

There's a mom who's almost never home. Sometimes Parker sees the mom early in the morning. The mom drinks coffee black and puts on sneakers at the door to the garage. She wears business suits with shoulder pads and there's a pair of high-heeled shoes in her bag. Parker hides all around the house and watches the mom as she goes. Sometimes the mom sees her, but she doesn't yell at Parker or try to get to her to come out; she just gives a distracted nod and leaves.

There are a couple of real kids, twins, a boy and a girl. The real kids don't like Parker very much. She and the real daughter share a bedroom, but the real daughter would rather share with her real brother, and she doesn't care that it wasn't Parker who picked who goes where. The real kids leave for school at the same time Parker does, but they run ahead side-by-side, and Parker is left behind. She can't catch up because she's too small, but she doesn't want to walk with the real kids anyway.

There's a dad. He has an extra room all to himself above the garage. He works there. Parker doesn't know what his work is, but it looks boring. His room is full of books and papers. There's nothing interesting in any of the cabinets or drawers, except in a cup on top of the desk there's a little golden sword. It's less than a foot long. It shares the cup with pens and pencils. When Parker picks it up to play with it, she doesn't realize how sharp it is and pricks her finger. The dad comes into his garage room then. "Hey, now, er..." He flaps one hand at her because he doesn't remember her name. "Leave that alone, now." He takes the little golden sword away. Later Parker hides and watches him use it to slice open sealed envelopes. Parker thinks this is a waste of a sword.

The dad's not mean, but he's kind of helpless. He's home all day working. He can't really cook and he can't really clean. When he does laundry he'll accidentally turn the white clothes into gray clothes, and when he does dishes he breaks them. He'll talk to Parker like she's in the same grade with his real kids, but she's not, they're three years older than she is. The dad will get distracted and forget he's supposed to make them dinner until they're all hungry and one of the real kids stomps up to the room above the garage to complain. Sometimes when the dad comes by at night to make sure the lights are turned out, he'll comment vaguely that his real son's room is a mess, but he never makes them tidy up. The dad will remind Parker to take a bath, but he won't help her, so Parker spends six months splashing herself with chilly water and ducking her head under the bath tap to wash her hair.

Huddled under a warm gray blanket on the bottom bunk, Parker dreams. She dreams about a dad who stands up straight, holds on to her shoulders, looks her in the eye and calls her by name. He makes big plans that have Parker in them and describes them to her with dramatic sweeps of his hands. He scolds Parker when she makes a mess and then he helps her clean it up. He praises Parker when she does things right. He finds Parker no matter how well she hides. He has blue eyes that smile more than his mouth does.

The first time Parker steals something she doesn't even have to sneak. She walks up the stairs to the room above the garage while the dad is trying to mop the kitchen floor. She takes the little golden sword and puts it in her pocket and pulls the hem of her shirt down over the protruding hilt. Then she walks back down the stairs and out to the front steps, where she waits for the car to come take her away.

II.

When Parker is eight years old her name still isn't Parker yet, and she is given her first stuffed animal.

It's a fat brown bunny with big plastic eyes and long floppy ears. It's half as big as she is. When this foster mom and dad come to get her from the home, the mom gives it to her. Parker clutches the bunny the whole long drive back to their house. It's a double-wide trailer, nicer than some other ones Parker's lived in, with fake stone detailing on the outside. The mom guides Parker inside with one hand on the middle of her back. Parker tries to flinch away, to walk a step ahead, but the mom won't take her hand away.

This dad is a mid-level manager at Wal-Mart, and the mom is a hostess at a diner. The dad says mean things to the mom a lot. He calls the mom fat and ugly. He makes fun of her when she gets her hair dyed blonde and asks who she's trying to kid. Parker watches them with wide eyes, waiting for the dad to crack. Whenever Parker's not hiding, the dad sees her and says, "What the hell are you looking at?" and Parker knows it's time to disappear again. "That kid's a freak, I swear," the dad says to the mom later. The mom smiles uneasily and says, "Ssh, Matt! What if she hears you?"

The dad loses his job at Wal-Mart. He comes home and sits down with a bottle of beer in the La-Z-Boy in front of the TV and pretty much stays there. The mom gives him cheery pep-talks and rants with him about those bastards at Wal-Mart and agrees not to do her grocery shopping there anymore, even though it's the cheapest place and they don't have a lot of money. Eventually she hints that he might want to start looking for a new job, but she scurries away like a waterbug when the dad glares. As he gets meaner, she gets meeker. Parker hides and hides and watches.

Something makes the dad mad at Parker and he stomps around the house looking for her. Parker hides in cabinets, in the dryer, under the beds, in the air duct, behind a window curtain. He doesn't find her. He tells the mom, loudly, because he wants Parker to hear: "If that creepy kid doesn't start behaving, I'll rip her bunny rabbit's head off, I swear to God." He takes Parker's bunny that the mom gave to her and puts it on a shelf high up in their bedroom. The mom trails behind him, weakly pleading Parker's case. She gets in the dad's way when he goes to watch the game, and he shoves her hard into the wall. The mom slides to the floor and sits there alone, sniffling to herself. Parker waits til the mom and the dad are both asleep and then she comes out from behind the loose panel in the back of their closet and steals her bunny back.

That night Parker sleeps, holding on tight to her bunny, safe between the wall and the washer and dryer, and dreams. She always dreams about her secret dad, but this night there's a mom there too. She dreams about a mom who is all gentle words masking an iron will. This mom can be tall and regal like a queen or gentle and curvy like an invitation. This mom can make men kneel at her feet and like it. When this mom bickers with Parker's dad, they come out even. When Parker hides, this mom waits patiently for Parker to come out and play. She knows not to touch Parker unless Parker says it's okay. This mom is never afraid to laugh. She has a mouth shaped like a kiss that hasn't happened yet.

In the morning Parker ventures from her hiding-place and the bunny is taken away again. The dad issues her a dare -- become a better thief -- and Parker is suddenly quite sure that her secret mom would take that dare and win.

III.

By the time Parker is thirteen years old she's picked "Parker" for the name her secret mom and dad call her, and she starts at a private school for the first time.

Her current foster family -- two moms and two real daughters, even though Parker's not sure how that works -- is really rich, rich enough that they give Parker a room all to herself and a closetful of new clothes that she won't wear. They also subject to her to a slew of aptitude tests. The tests prove that Parker is smart enough for the same fancy private school that the real daughters attend, so in the middle of the semester she's taken out of public school and she starts classes with the real daughters.

The real daughters are close to Parker's age, but they're nothing like her. One is a year older than the other, but they're best friends. They're both beautiful and vibrant and they laugh all the time. Neither of them looks like they've ever wanted or needed to hide in their entire lives. They have artfully tousled hair that they toss over their shoulders a lot. Boys follow them like fish on hooks.

Neither of the real daughters is like anyone Parker's ever met before. They and all of their friends glow with health and prosperity. None of them ever have less than fifty dollars in their crisp clean wallets. The girls all wear diamonds in their ears and pearls around their necks and platinum on their wrists. They don't even notice when these things are taken away from them. Parker spends a day lifting wallets from designer shoulder-bags and bracelets from wrists just to see what these shiny children will do. Some of the things she takes she doesn't hoard, but switches between girls. One of the real daughters goes for half a day without noticing that her silver Tiffany watch has been replaced with a friend's gold Rolex, and doesn't even spare a suspicious thought when the watches are replaced after the last class of the day.

Parker has spent most of her school career hiding in crowds, fading into the background. It's easy in public schools, in classrooms of thirty students with harried teachers. At this private school it's different. Parker stands out, and she doesn't like it. There are only about ten students in most of her classes -- never more than fifteen -- and she can't hide in the back of the room because most of the teachers arrange their desks in a circle, seminar-style. Parker's so surprised the first time a teacher calls on her that she doesn't think to say something wrong or stupid. Everyone stares, and Parker cringes away. It's not so bad at first. The teacher recovers, and asks Parker another question, and is pleased when Parker once more offers a clever answer. The classroom is swept up in a debate and, relieved, Parker falls silent.

The teachers must talk amongst themselves, though, because in every class after that, all the teachers call on Parker. Flustered by the attention, Parker says the right things over and over again. It takes a week before the other students get tired of her. Then the real daughters lead the charge.

None of the girls try to call Parker stupid, because clearly that's not true. But they say she only gets the answers right because since she doesn't have any friends, she studies all the time. They call her weird and creepy because she doesn't talk to other people much. They make fun of her skin, paper-pale from all her indoor hiding-places, and the way she sits hunched over, hiding her body from anybody who looks. They poke her and pull her hair and laugh when she flinches. They spill their lunch trays on her in the dining hall. They pants her in the hallways and make fun of her ugly underwear and cat-call when she tries to get away.

Then the boys join in. Parker hates it all, but she thinks the boys are probably worse than the girls. They shove her so she bounces off the lockers and they come up behind her in the stairway and grope her. They call her slut and whore and pass her dirty notes in class. Daniel Harper spends two weeks being sweet to her when nobody's watching and then coaxes her to go for a walk in the park with him alone after school. When Parker goes to meet him, Daniel and seven other boys are waiting there. She runs, and they chase her, laughing. She finds a place to hide and watches them comb the park for more than an hour before they give up and disperse.

That night Parker sleeps in the park, wrapped in her old pea-coat, under a bush behind the public bathrooms, and dreams. In her dreams, her secret mom and dad take her to school and when she gets out of the car she has a friend waiting for her, tall as a tree, his whole face smiling. He offers his hand and she takes it and he doesn't let go all day long. They sit together at lunch and nobody spills anything on either of them. Boys make fun of him for holding Parker's hand, but he doesn't care. He's just as smart as Parker is -- smarter, maybe. They plan together how they're going to burn the school down, and he thinks of things Parker would have missed on her own. When Parker's secret mom and dad come to pick her up at the end of the day she's waiting outside the smoking ruins of the school, hand-in-hand with her boy. His hands are bigger than Parker's, and much darker, with soft uncallused palms.

When Parker goes back to her foster house in the morning, the moms scold her and make the despairing noises that Parker recognizes as a prelude to a phone call to the home. The real daughters look her up-and-down. They see her dirty uniform, her grass-stained knees, and laugh at her. After school on Monday Daniel Harper tries to corner Parker to explain. She knees him in the groin and breaks his nose and sets his tie on fire while he's still wearing it. He'll never tell anyone a girl did this to him. On Tuesday Parker is clumsy, bumping into other students in the hallways, tripping over their feet when she walks to her desk, almost dropping her tray on a crowded table at lunch. At the end of the day she gets into the car waiting to take her to the home, her pockets full with sixty spoiled children's watches and jewelry. It's not what she wanted best, but she would have needed an accomplice to burn the whole school down.

IV.

When Parker is seventeen she doesn't answer to her old name at all anymore, and she spends the entire year counting down to her eighteenth birthday.

She's not the only one who's almost old enough to leave. She's in the home now, too old for most foster parents to take an interest, too creepy to convince the ones left over otherwise. Parker doesn't mind; at least this way she doesn't have to move her stuff or hear how she's disappointing people. In the home she can just be creepy Parker, and as long as she's in by six-thirty every day they don't really care where she goes after school.

Parker spends her time plotting her first real heist. This won't be lifting things from people's homes or pockets or lockers, or shoplifting food and clothing, but a real robbery, one that will last her long enough to get away and make a safe hiding-place. She still practices her usual lightfingers stuff, taking people's wallets and replacing them before they notice, slipping into classrooms so quietly the teachers leave her off the attendance roster, but she does these things to stay in shape, not to entertain herself.

Parker prepares for months and finally does a practice run on a local bank. It's all old, fancy tumblers and slow security cameras and a single guard outside when she's casing the place who believes her when she says she's lost. It's like taking candy from a baby, easy as breathing, the cash fairly leaps into her hands and she slides out of the bank like she's greased and saunters away. Ten thousand dollars in cash, not that she'll spend it until she has to. Parker stashes it somewhere safe and is back at the home by quarter of six.

There are some boys Parker's age at the home that have been watching her. Parker had thought they were watching her because she's pretty, but it turns out that's only part of the truth. They know she's a thief, and they know she's got plans, and tonight they tell her they want in. They want Parker's money! The idea is so ludicrous that she laughs at them, still flush with her successful heist and the prospect of more whenever she wants. Her laughter makes them angry.

They strong-arm her into a bathroom and smack her around, but Parker's been scared of things her whole life and she's never willingly given up what belongs to her before. The leader grabs her around the neck and slams her head into a mirror. The mirror cracks and Parker bleeds and he lets her go and all the boys laugh nastily when she stumbles. There's more after that -- more laughter and teeth and hands and skin. Parker doesn't think she cries this time, but she's not sure. Her face is wet when the night staff member finds Parker half-dressed on the bathroom floor, but she's bloody and sweaty and the whole bathroom's kind of damp so Parker doesn't know. She wants to lock herself in her room and clean up alone and sleep up in the air duct with the vent pulled to so nobody can see her, but the night staff member insists on filling out an incident report and bringing Parker to the infirmary for the night.

That night Parker lies stiffly on a cot in the infirmary, her back pressed up against the chilly wall, and dreams. She is walking down a sidewalk, holding hands with her secret boy, and another boy steps up to her other side and slips his arm around her waist. He's gruff where Parker's first secret boy is friendly, but when she tells him a secret he looks at Parker and sees everything. Parker brings the secret boys to her hiding-place. When they leave, the boys from the home are waiting. The new boy steps forward, silent and serious and strong, and fights them off so Parker doesn't have to. They fall down around him with their limbs bent wrong, and Parker's new boy looks up and smiles for the first time. The first boy squeezes her hand, and the new boy shrugs his shoulders, and Parker steps next to him, lets him pull her up against his side, and the three of them walk to meet Parker's secret parents, who tell her how proud they are that she stole ten thousand dollars and kept it safe. The new boy is solid and warm next to Parker. She turns to look at him and he ducks his head, tucking his long hair behind one ear.

Every other week for the rest of the year, one of the boys from that group suffers an unfortunate accident. One smokes in bed and sets his room on fire. One walks into gang territory as if he doesn't have their missing merchandise in his baggy pants pockets. The police catch one stealing from a jewelry store and have to chase another with their guns drawn when they catch him selling drugs. One is on kitchen duty in the home when the dishwasher explodes. In the early morning of Parker's eighteenth birthday the leader of those boys wakes up screaming as Parker breaks his fingers. Everyone had wondered about the other boys, but Parker wants them to know for sure about this one. When both hands and wrists are done, Parker listens for the sound of night staff running in the hall, too late to rescue this boy, and then she leans in and tells him how much money she stole tonight. When the night staff finally get the door open, there's nothing there for them but a sobbing boy with shattered hands.

I.

When Parker is twenty-five, everyone calls her Parker, and she has belonged to a crew for more than a year.

Parker goes to work every day, almost like a normal person. She has a safe hiding-place that nobody comes to unless she invites them. She and her crew run cons and make money and help people who can't steal money or justice by themselves.

Now that Parker's been a member of the team for a while, she doesn't dream of her secret family much anymore. She dreams of cons instead: elaborate, involved dreams of thieving with her crew. Nate is there, maneuvering them like chess pieces. Sophie is there, distracting their marks with hints and illusions. Alec is there, opening doors, messing with the rules til they bend to his will. Eliot is there, keeping them all safe. Parker is there too, scooping up the prizes and smuggling them home.

When Parker realizes she's been dreaming all wrong, she's in a funk for a week, worried about her secret family, angry at herself for not actually missing them after all they've done for her since she was only six, before Parker was even her name. Everyone at work tries to cheer Parker up somehow, but it's not til Eliot's helping her wrestle Alec to the floor as Sophie and Nate stand by, laughing and keeping score, that Parker starts to realize what's happened.

That night Parker goes for movies at Alec's apartment and falls asleep on the couch with her head on Alec's shoulder and her feet in Eliot's lap.

She doesn't dream.

When she wakes up, her boys are there.

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FIN
first posted on LJ on January 25, 2010

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