Notes: Follows my story Steal the Sky. This is a complete AU and cross over set up in that story so if you want to understand this you really need to read that first.
This takes place between the end of Steal the Sky and the begining of the team's first Leveragey job together.

The Things They Taught Her
Four things they taught Parker, and one thing *they* couldn't.

Nate

The moment the words leave his mouth he knows it was a mistake.

They've been together and whole and flying for just under two days. She's been on the ship for nine.

She's still at the point it took Nate nearly a month to get Hardison past where she keeps asking him for permission to do things that no one should ever have to ask for permission to do and the fact he's already been through this with Hardison doesn't help.

And now, here, she had taken the initiative. She was hungry and she had seen food she wanted to eat and he'd just happened to come out of the conference room in time to see her gleefully biting into the fresh apple she'd taken from the kitchen.

And he'd asked her if Eliot had said she could have that and told her she couldn't just take anything she wanted without asking first.

She looks confused and that look quickly becomes fear and Nate tries his best to backtrack, damage control, holding his hands out in front of him palm up and empty like he'd learned with Hardison in the past few months.

And he swallowed the bile and pressed down the rage at the reminder of why they would panic if Nate spoke sharply while holding something.

"Parker. You can eat whatever and whenever you want, except for the fresh food unless Eliot tells you you can." Parker blinked at him, understanding but not in the way only Parker could and he continued, watching her slowly untense. "The Ares Project messed with his physiology, not just his mind. His body has a difficult time processing additives and preservatives that are used to make the food we normally eat. Fresh fruits and vegetables, basic grains, what meat we can get, it's the stuff he can process most of the time."

She looked at the apple in her hand eyebrows scrunching together, thinking. "It's really expensive." She stated. "We almost never got real stuff because it's expensive and that's why I wanted it." She looked up at him, like a kid pleading for a treat they really wanted but knew they weren't going to get.

He sighed and slowly crossed the space between them. "If something belongs to just one person on our crew you have to ask for, and get, permission before you take it." He tried to put it into terms she wouldn't get confused in the future, and figured it was pointless to try to extend this lesson to beyond just the crew.

"But I'm free. That means I don't have to ask for permission. You keep telling me that."

Nate paused a moment before thinking of a way to put this she might understand. "Before your handlers and Fathers would tell you what to do?" She nodded. From Nate's talks with Hardison he knew they pretty much were expected to only do what they were told to do. "Well now I'll tell you what you can't do, and leave the rest up to you to figure out." She looked at him for a long moment before nodding slowly.

He continued to walk out of the living area, calling back over his shoulder. "You can't take or eat any more fresh food without asking."

He heard the sound of her taking another gleeful bite out of the apple before he closed the door.

Dean

It was the second day after the little blonde theif, Parker, came on board that Dean realized he might have some long-term company in the engine room.

She'd spent most of her first day on the ship alternating between showing off her collection of stolen jewelry, swinging on the catwalks like it was her own personal playground, and unnerving the hell out of him and Sam (okay, it was mostly alternating between the first two and doing the later constantly).

There was something wrong with that chick and this was coming from the guy who'd been raised as one in a long line of people who hunted things that could give Reavers a run for their money in the nightmare department. (Nate had been surprised to learn Reavers weren't the only Nightmare created by Man, just the first ones with large enough numbers not to get swept under the rug by people in power, but he knew better now).

Of course Parker made Hardison's brand of unnerving seem downright Baba-Mama-he-er-Gemie Normal.

Ford had told Bobby before they'd all signed up for this mess and then Bobby had told him and Sam about Parker, Hardison, and Eliot. That they'd been more or less enslaved by the alliance since childhood and they were experiencing freedom for the first time. That they'd all been abused in different ways and that they would probably be showing some rough edges.

Dean remembered Sam asking Bobby if he was telling them to be nice to Ford's people.

Despite Bobby's response running along the lines of a warning about the dangers of poking at the insane Dean got the feeling that for all Bobby would never say it that was sort of what he was asking. Bobby hadn't given any details but something on his face said that he'd been given a lot more than he wanted.

It meant he'd been mostly prepared for Hardison and his habit of knowing way too much and the weird way that when his jokes and rambling ended there was something almost painful in the silence as his eyes always drifted upwards. It took a little while, and they still slipped up and forgot more often than they remembered (it had been just the two of them for a long time afterall), but by the time Parker had arrived they didn't yell at each other when Hardison was around and even when they forgot the look of old, deep, fear on the hackers face reminded them quickly.

Parker had been something else.

But he spent most of his free time (what little of it he took, there was a lot of work to be done and he liked working on Leverage even if she had a stupid name) in the engine room and she liked the catwalks and they were on opposite sides of the ship so he didn't need to worry about that.

But then it was the second day after she'd come on board and Dean had just finished welding something near the floor and he felt eyes on him.

He rolled out from under the monstrosity that was the engine (whoever thought that an engine room that was nearly three stories tall to support a cluster of small engines, life support systems, the ship's stealth field generator, and he alone knew all else was a good idea should be shot) looking up through the series of metal scaffolding and bits and pieces of pipe or support that could double as hand and footholds (further proof the engineer had no regard for mechanics) into the gloom near the ceiling and saw Parker hanging upside down from a support beam, unflinching at the eight foot straight drop directly beneath her or the metal pipes that would break her skull and neck long before they broke her fall.

"You can't be in here." He told her. The fact the engines weren't on the only reason he thought she might hear him."

"But I can go wherever I want to go." She stated, something in her voice disturbingly like Sam's back when he was a kid and used to believe and repeat anything Dean told him. "Nate said I could do that now."

It was the now that got him.

"Alright. Just don't touch anything."

He'd always had a soft spot for blondes. It was a character flaw.

He'd keep telling himself that.

"But…" She started.

"Nate said you could do anything you wanted too?" He asked.

She got an almost petulant look on her face. "…No… but he didn't say I couldn't. He keeps telling Hardison and me that now we'll be told what we can't do instead of what we can."

It didn't make a lot of sense to him that that being told what you couldn't do would be a bad thing.

Unless before that the only things they could do were what they were told they could do which was not an idea he liked.

"Well you can stay there." He told her, simplifying things into her terminology, his voice gentling a little like it usually only did when he was talking to someone a good deal younger than she was. "You can't touch anything because if you break something bad things might happen."

She nodded, stuck her hands in her pockets, and closed her eyes.

It took awhile but he eventually got used to having her occasionally come in and, he assumed, take naps hanging from the rafters of his engine room like the bats the ship was modeled after.

It was the third evening after they'd taken to the sky when she left her perch and sat on one closer to him, watching. She wasn't touching anything though so he paid her no heed. He was working on a bit of shiney wiring after all.

"This engine is like a lock." She said just as he was starting to tune her presence out and listen to Leverage's engines. He nearly hit his head as he jolted, startled, to look at her. "Really really complicated. It needs lots of probes and picks and the tumblers are always falling out of place and changing but it you get it just right you hear the click and the Black is unlocked."

He could comment, but he didn't feel like trying to decode that enough to give it the response it probably deserved. "Pass me that wrench will you."

"You said I couldn't touch." She stated, almost solemnly.

"Well now you can touch that wrench to pass it to me." She passed him the wrench and watched as he started to tighten the bolts on the carborator box he'd been working on. "This is a crescent wrench." He stated. "The thing sitting next to it was a C clamp." He held out his hand, silently asking for her to pass the tool.

He didn't expect her to get up and back away. "I can't learn this."

"Huh?"

"I'm a thief. I have explosive designation but not a mechanics one." There was that old fear again, but mixed with frustration this time.

But this he had something he could give a response to, in words she'd understand. "Did Nate say you couldn't?"

She looked at him, expression blank, for a long moment before a brilliant smile crossed her face and she sat down again, passing him the C-Clamp, before asking him what he was doing.

She was unnerving, but unnerving was kind of his job.

Sam

When Sam was Ten there was a time when Dean had been sick and his Dad was on the other side of the planet and there was no food in the shuttle and Dad told him to take the money he'd left Dean and go out and get what they needed.

He distinctly remembered arming himself for war (or the two block walk to a market) and opening Dean's wallet and just staring at the credits and feeling this insane sense of wonder. He had money. He was going to go out and buy things. He was going to decide what they had for dinner tonight and then buy it. By himself.

Alone.

It hadn't been until he got to the store that he realized with money and power came this huge sense of responsibility. What if he got it *wrong*?

Looking back the entire chain of thoughts would have made no sense to anyone who wasn't a ten year old boy from a family that almost never had any money and what they had certainly wasn't put in a child's hands.

At least that was what he thought until now.

It's five days since Leverage soared her way back into the black and they were making their first stop planet side since then to stock up on what goods they couldn't in the tiny settlement they'd spent the last couple months just outside of.

Leverage was staying in orbit, what she was designed to do, with Nate and himself staying on board while the others took the two shuttles planetside.

He was coming out of The Impala, getting the things he'd need out of her in case they ended up staying planet side overnight and he had to stay in one of the passenger rooms instead of his normal bunk, when he saw what reminded him of that one time years ago.

Parker, Hardison, and Eliot had been chosen to head planetside to run errands for their work and to stock the ship, each given an amount of money for the task they accepted easily enough.

But now he saw Sophie walking between them as they stood near the hatch that led to the second shuttle, giving them each a small pouche that clinked with coins. "…new clothes maybe. Books. Whatever."

"Why do we need stuff?" Parker asked, holding the bag like she was weighing it. "I like just having money. I can get what I need with it and if they take it away because I like it I can just get more."

The other two stiffened at her words, their faces going blank, hands falling neutrally at their sides and Sam got this insane thought in his head that it was like they were paranoid having their hands in their pockets would indicated they liked the clothes they were wearing and because of that they'd disappear.

Sophie seemed to not know how to respond to that.

Sophie left, the three former agents talking quietly to each other in Greek as they got ready to leave. Sam turned to the keypad by the hatch he'd come out of, pressing in the sequence to get ready for The Impala to detatch, listening. Hardison seeming excited, Parker seeming wary, and Eliot showing once more his default expression was either a poker face or general annoyance.

Parker was the last one to board the shuttle and Sam took a chance, speaking up and actually to her when it was just the two of them for the first time. "You could get something to keep your money in." Sam suggested. She turned to him, looking surprised. "There were these things called piggy-banks back on Earth that Was that people kept change in."

She looked thoughtful for a moment, or crazy. Her expression tended to all have some crazy in them. After a long moment she gave a little smile.

"Parker!" Came the cry from down the hatch, Eliot sounding like he was in a hurry to get going.

Parker rolled her eyes but turned to catch up.

"You know you're allowed to have things now." Sam said before he could think about what he was saying or really consider the implications of the fact it needed to actually be said (or that he of all people was saying it, he could only name two things he and his brother had really held onto over the years).

She turned back, confusion, crazy, and almost something surprisingly close to fear on her face.

"You're allowed to have stuff, to like stuff. We won't take things away from you."

She left without responding to him and he wondered if she believed him or even understood.

But a few days later that she came onto the bridge during his late night watch carrying a battered old stuffed Bunny and sat down in the co pilot seat with it, hugging it close as she watched the stars with the same awe Sam always had.

Sophie

It was a week after Eliot arrived and Leverage (god, would she ever get used to that name?) began her first journey. They were still two days out from their first job but she needed to talk to Hardison about their alias sometime before they landed.

Of course the problem was, as usual, finding the man. After checking their work shuttle, the bridge, and the conference room she headed for the dorm level. It was the middle of the afternoon but that didn't mean he wouldn't be sleeping.

Hardison, Parker, and Eliot had responded to the sudden void of the rules and restrictions they'd had all their lives by each adapting their own schedules and habits in complete isolation to the others or even each other. Admittedly in space there wasn't exactly an indicator of Day and Night like the sun but it was normal to do what you could to keep a semblance of balance. The ship's clocks were all set to the same time and the rest of them tended to sleep at a regular hour and eat regular meals.

But Hardison seemed to operate on a thirty hour schedule instead of the twenty-four considered normal. Parker cat napped for a couple of hours at a time randomly throughout the day and night. Eliot seemed not to sleep at all (and Sophie would have actually wondered if somehow the things they'd done to him had made him unable to sleep if he didn't look tired on occasion).

They seemed to take care of the rest of their needs in an equally haphazard manner. Even Eliot seemed to only eat and take his medication regularly because doing otherwise would destabilize his body needlessly.

So Sophie wasn't entirely surprised to find the door to the crew's room closed and the opaque panels showing the room was darkened. Leverage had a decent sized Captain's quarters, a large suite like state room for the elite passengers the ship was designed to transport originally, three small passenger rooms, and a medium sized room meant to house the ship's crew.

Initially the idea had been for Parker, Hardison, and Eliot to each take one of the passenger rooms, and only using the crew's room if they took on real passengers or had to actually use their cover story.

What had actually happened was Hardison immediately taking one of the four berths in the crew's room and Eliot moving in there his first night on board. (Thinking about it Eliot must sleep a little because she overheard him explain to Nate that their entire clans slept in the same room so he actually slept better when someone he knew was in the room. Sleeping while alone felt unsafe.)

Sophie didn't understand why Parker seemed to be an exception until Eliot had explained to her that Parker was the last of her clan, had been alone since she was a little girl.

It explained a lot more than Sophie liked.

So Sophie was a little surprised when she walked into the Crew's room, quietly in case Hardison was asleep instead of just messing with his computers in the dark like he sometimes did, and saw Parker perched on the table in the middle of the room staring at something.

It said something about Parker that her surprised lessened when Sophie realized Parker was watching Hardison sleep.

Parker held a finger to her lips to keep Sophie quiet and Sophie motioned for the girl to follow her out into the hallway.

Once the door was closed behind them and they could talk without waking the hacker Sophie quietly but firmly told Parker she couldn't just watch people while they were sleeping.

"I know." Parker's expression clouded. "But I…" Her voice faded a little before she finished and she looked over her shoulder like she was considering running like she'd taken to doing whenever uncomfortable with a situation. More than anyone on the ship she seemed to find comfort in being alone.

Sophie kept her expression neutural and stayed quiet, trying to give the girl a moment to express herself.

"He… he was having a nightmare." She said finally. "He has nightmares when he sleeps alone. But Eliot was busy with something and he's been tired and I was..." She made a face. "Hardison keeps saying we're a clan now but I don't know how to be clan but I thought maybe if I sat here…" She shook it off, seeming to dismiss the idea of her functioning like a clan member even as she said it, and turned to leave.

Sophie called after her. "Sometimes you don't need permission. Sometimes you need to break rules."

Hardison and Eliot

They would be landing on Four Rivers in a little more than eighteen hours. Parker was tired, and she knew she should get some sleep between now and then, but she'd been restless for the past few days. Ever since Sophie had found her watching over Hardison she'd been…

She wasn't stupid. She knew Nate, Sophie, Sam, and Dean were all trying to teach her and Hardison and Eliot about being free. She knew they needed the lessons. Hell, sometimes it felt like the three of them were only staying on the boat to learn how to be free and then they'd leave.

The fact Hardison seemed to have mostly gotten a hang of it and Eliot was always pretty well adjusted had been part of what was making her insides feel like they wanted to be outsides.

Agents were the only people that made any sense to her. Eliot and Hardison had been acting as translators for her since they first got on the ship, explaining the verse outside Olympus in terms she could understand and explaining Olympus to the rest of the crew so she didn't have to.

She didn't like them like them, they weren't family. She didn't have family. She didn't want or need family.

But it was a bad kind of scary to not have them around.

She needed sleep but she couldn't make herself relax. Even napping in the engine room or with Bunny in their hidey hole wasn't working.

So she had gone back to watching Hardison sleep.

Only Eliot came in the room not long later and Parker got up because she was only watching Hardison so he wouldn't be sleeping alone. If Eliot was there he wouldn't be alone.

A hand on her arm stopped her from leaving. She turned back, surprised Eliot had stopped her.

"You're tired." He said quietly. "You should get some rest. We need you on your game tomorrow." Somehow him saying it made her feel like her eyelids were even heavier. She nodded and moved to go but the hand stayed on her arm. "You know you're welcome here right?" She turned back again, confusion and an uncomfortable feeling in her chest. "Take a bed and stay. We're a long way from Olympus and we aint agents anymore but I figure we're all the clan we have these days. In this verse if we don't keep close and look out for each other no one will."

She hesitated. She couldn't sleep in a room with someone. She couldn't. Could she?

"I'll let ya have the top bunk." Eliot said with a small grin and Parker found herself trying to match it and nodding.

She could try right?

He pulled off his outter layer of clothing, grimy from the time he'd spent in the engine room (she knew from her naps and the time she spent learning about lock-picking engines from Dean that Eliot also spent some of his free time with the ship's mechanic) and sweated out from the continual rounds of training he went through, and slid under the blankets of his bunk.

He didn't say anything or even look expectantly at her, leaving her to decide what to do and when and how to do it.

It was an odd reminder that she was free to decide that for herself now.

No one said she couldn't sleep around others but herself, no one said she couldn't learn something new or break new habits, no one was going to take these people away from her, and even if all that wasn't true she could still break the rules and do this anyway.

She slipped off her shoes and climbed up into the bunk, curling up in the sheets and closing her eyes.

She drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sounds of Hardison and Eliot's steady breathing and the faint hum of the good ship Leverage.