Author's note: My second Leverage fic. Written from the viewpoint of my favorite character... Parker. She's a very difficult character to write, so please let me know how i did. If there's enough interest, I plan to continue this... maybe into four or five chapters, so leave me a review and let me know whether I should continue or not. It's un-betaed, so all mistakes are my own.

I didn't re-watch the episode before I wrote this, but I don't believe that the name of Parker's brother was ever revealed, so I just picked one. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Disclaimer: Despite several failed neogtiations, a temper tantrum or two, and a startling amount of attempted bribe money... I still don't own Leverage or any of the characters.

Runaway

"I am more than you know, street lights and open roads.

And I am more than a face, stuck living in one place."

Run.

The single word reverberates inside your mind, echoing back again and again, increasing in panicked desperation with every repetition.

Run. Run. Run.

The demand is constant, unrelenting, and inescapable. The voice of some wise, inner instinct that you already know better than to ignore. Run, it repeats insistently. So, you do.

Your heart races, slamming repeatedly against your ribcage like a caged animal; frightened, desperate, and doing its best to beat its way out of your chest. Your breath comes in short, shallow gasps, and your lungs burn with every inhalation of the frigid evening air. Your small, sneaker-clad feet thump rhythmically against the pavement with a steady slapping sound that might be soothing if you could hear it over the rush of blood in your ears and the frantic hammering of your heartbeat. But you can't, and it's not.

Black spider webs creep along the edges of your vision as your head pounds in time with your footsteps. Every muscle in your body is stretched taunt, quivering with a combination of fear and adrenaline. Every nerve screams at you to stop, and you feel as though you could collapse at any moment. But that panicked inner instinct demands that you run, so you force yourself to keep moving.

You stumble, and throw your hands out ahead of you to keep from crashing face-first into the pavement, dropping your stuffed rabbit in the process. The concrete scrapes across your palms and rips viciously at the knees of your jeans as you fall to the ground.

Your eyes fill with tears, and although you hate crying with every fiber of your being, you can't quite stop them from overflowing; spilling in twin rivers down your cheeks, and splattering onto the sidewalk. You wipe them away furiously, swallowing against the sobs rising in your throat.

Bunny stares at you with accusing eyes from the spot on the sidewalk where you dropped him, and you close your eyes against the haunting image.

"I'm sorry," you whisper almost inaudibly, struggling futilely against the need to cry.

You blink against the tears, and the horrid scene runs through your mind again, with every detail preserved in perfect clarity. Every sound as loud and clear as the first time you'd heard it. Every feeling just as sharp, just as devastating. And yet, you can't stop yourself from seeing it, hearing it, feeling it again.

"Look! Look! I can do it!"

The excitement in his voice is contagious and you smile in spite of yourself, rolling your eyes affectionately as you cast a glance over your shoulder to see himpeddling furiously behind you. It's not the first time he's ridden the bike, but it is the first time you've allowed him to follow you to your favorite hill. Only because he wouldn't stop begging you, you remind yourself.

"I've been doing it since I was four," You inform him primly, peddling a little faster down the street, and shooting him a superior look over your shoulder.

"And now I can too!" he squeals excitedly, completely unaffected by your big-sister superiority.

You wrinkle your nose at him and turn back around, relishing the feel of the handlebars beneath your fingers and the rush of the wind as it blows against your face and whips your blonde hair wildly around your face. There is something about riding a bike as fast as possible down a steep hill that makes your heart beat a little faster and your lips curl into a smile.

It's freedom in its purest form. And you love every minute of it.

You hit the brakes, stopping at the bottom of the hill, and turning the bike around gracefully.

"Your turn," you challenge your brother, smirking at his awed expression. He stares down at you from the top of the hill, his blue eyes as wide as dinner plates and his lips opened into a perfect "o" of astonishment.

"I can't," he admits sheepishly, shaking his head. "I'll die."

"Scaredy-cat," you taunt, half-teasing, half- annoyed.

"Am not. I just…" he replies, but the rest of the sentence is lost in the sudden squeal of car brakes.

After that, everything seems to happen simultaneously. There's a scream, a sickening bump, and the overwhelming sound of your own heartbeat pounding in your ears.

Then the car is racing down the hill, speeding toward you. Instinctively, you jump out of the way, abandoning the bike. The car misses you – barely, and speeds around the corner. Fantically, you look toward the top of the hill, but Josh has disappeared.

Then there's the heavy, unnatural silence. The kind of silence that hangs in the air in movies right after something bad happens and everything switches to slow motion. The calm before the storm.

"Josh…"

In your mind, his name comes as a shout, but it leaves your lips as a strangled whisper. You wait for what seems like an eternity, frozen in place by fear and confusion. You know what's coming, and you can't quite brace yourself against the knowledge that everything in you begs to deny.

"Josh," you try again, louder this time, more desperate.

The silence is the only answer.

The sound of a car horn brings you jolting back to reality. Your eyes snap open and everything is suddenly disorienting. Wiping tears from your eyes, you crawl over to Bunny and gather him carefully into your arms, clutching him protectively to your chest.

You have no idea how far you've run. Five blocks? Ten? Twenty? It doesn't matter. It's not far enough. You could run to the other side of the continent and it still wouldn't be far enough.

You don't know what time it is, but the sky has darkened to the color of faded ink and stars are beginning to twinkle overhead.

That strong, panicked voice of instinct has abandoned you, and now you don't know what to do next. There's no outrunning the memory, and your whole body aches from trying. You're not sure that you can force yourself to move at all, let alone continue sprinting toward some unknown destination without even instinct to guide you.

The tears fall a little faster and you hug Bunny again, searching for some kind of comfort in the familiarity of his soft fur and floppy ears. You don't find any.

You want to curl up into a ball right there on the sidewalk and just lay there until someone finds you. Someone with a sweet smile and a soft voice. Someone who doesn't hit you when they're angry. Someone who doesn't know about the terrible thing you've done.

But even at seven, you're old enough to know that that will never happen. So you force yourself to your feet and look around for a safe place to hide.

Half a block ahead, barely discernable beneath the amber glow of a flickering streetlamp, is a park. Or at least, what passes for a park in this part of town.

It's just a small, vacant lot with a rusted jungle gym, a single set of monkey bars, and two slides. But it's better than wandering around alone after dark. You walk toward it, biting down on your bottom lip to keep it from trembling.

The jungle gym rises up from the shadows like the skeletal framework of an abandoned building, the central feature of a long-dead ghost town. The flickering light of the streetlamp casts shifting shadows beneath the monkey bars, creating a criss-crossing pattern that reminds you of a spider's web, half-hidden in the darkness and waiting to swallow up anyone who wanders too near. The twisty slide at the other side of the park looks like a snake, slithering through the shadows, patient, powerful, and poised to strike.

It's eerie and haunted-looking, like an abandoned set for a scary movie that no one ever got around to filming. You hate it instantly, but you have no other choice.

Clutching Bunny to your chest, you venture into the shadows, finding a safe place beneath one of the slides. You lean against the slide's support rail, hugging your knees to your chest and resting your head against Bunny's soft fur. Fear and desperation do their bast to keep you awake, pinching at you conscience every time you get comfortable, but eventually exhaution wins the emotional war, and you fall asleep.

Hours later, an unfamiliar sound jolts you into awareness, waking you instantly from your restless, dream-filled sleep. A small light is sweeping across the playground, banishing the shadows and casting small sections of the park into brilliant illumination. Before you can scramble to safety, the light falls across your hiding place.

You freeze.

Your heart races and that inner instinct shouts at you again.

Run. Run. Run.

You grab Bunny, and are about to dash into the safety of the shadows, when an unfamiliar voice stops you.

"Hello sweetheart."

The voice is female, soft and sympathetic. A woman crouches down in front of you, moving the bright beam of her flashlight to the side so that it's no longer blinding you. She's dressed in uniform with a shiny bronze nametag clipped to her chest.

A police officer, you realize with another jolt of fear.

"Can you tell me your name?" she asks in that same soft voice.

You don't answer.

The crackle of radio static slices through the silence, and you jump at the sudden sound. The woman reaches for the small hand-held radio clipped to her belt, never taking her eyes off of your face.

"This is unit 214," she says into the radio's speaker with a weary sigh, "I've got a runaway.

So, what did you think? Should I continue? Leave me a review and let me know.

Thanks so much for reading,

Shailee =)