Title: Shock Factor
Genre: Friendship, Parker character growth fic
Word Count: ~7000
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Pairings: None, but strong Eliot/Parker friendship
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Spoilers for "The Morning After Job"
Summary: Tag to "The Morning After Job." Parker's really gotten nonchalant about using her taser. Eliot makes a comment about it, spurring Parker to take a look at the consequences of the actions she's chosen to take. Written for the prompt "Characters: Parker/Eliot. He's very strong, but she's stronger" for the 2010 mult-fandom ficathon at the femme_fic community on livejournal.
Author's Note: A huge shout out to my betas vivrebarefoot and rusting_roses for hammering a rough fic into polished form. The contributions they made to this fic-clarifying plot points, fixing all of my silly grammatical mistakes, and streamlining my at-times rambling writing-helped make this story something to be proud of
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Shock Factor – Chapter 1
It sounded like a bug zapper. That had been Parker's first thought when Eliot had shown her what was to become her back-up weapon. He'd held it in his hand and pressed the button and its tips had lit up like lightening and it emitted a shrill buzz that had made her jump, more startled than scared. He'd tried to pass it over to her right after that but Parker had refused him at first. She didn't get caught and was never in confrontations, so why would she need such a device?
Eliot had snorted and reminded her that just last night Parker had found herself in that exact scenario, cornered in the basement with two thugs facing her. Eliot had barely made it in time to clobber the two of them before they'd reached her. Part of Parker's job was to avoid confrontation - a good thief doesn't get caught, after all- but that didn't mean that she always succeeded. He'd pressed the taser into her hand and she'd instinctually closed her hand around it. Fifty-thousand volts settled into the palm of her hand.
At first, it had just ridden in her purse, if she were acting a part in the con, or would hang on her belt with the rest of the equipment she routinely carried while rappelling or climbing through an air vent. She hardly gave it any thought at all, really.
And then had come first time she'd been faced a confrontation with the taser at her disposal; she hadn't hesitated to use it. Eliot had drilled her well. When the guard locked a hand around her wrist she'd drawn the taser, settled it to his chest, and watched him drop to the ground, twitching with the aftershocks. She didn't wait around to see if he was okay. It was enough that the man was down and no longer posing a threat. Hardison was screaming in her ear that four more of them were on the way and she needed to pull a disappearing act. She'd sprinted off, taser in one hand as she followed Hardison's careful instructions directing her out.
And when the adrenalin wore off and Eliot swung the van door shut and the tires squealed as they pulled away from the building, Parker pulled the little device off her belt and marveled at it. She wasn't a big person and never had been. The best thing she had going for her against muscle-packed men like that was her stealth and her ability to remain hidden while she worked. After all, if they couldn't find you, well, what damage could they do? They'd have as much luck trying to pin down a wraith.
During past cons- and thefts, for that matter- she'd always hated the moment when the bodyguard or security guard or henchman of the week happened to look upwards and see her outline in the rafters. Her breath would hitch and time froze. She felt like an animal in the rifle view of a hunter, caught by the indecision of whether to flee or not, conflicting instincts clamoring for her attention. It was the feeling she dreaded most in the world.
Eliot had given her a new weapon against that feeling. Even with training, Parker would never be able to match a man like that in a one-on-one fight. The laws of physics were against her. But here Eliot had given her a small device that single-handedly ruined the skewed dynamic. She was, in fact, as close to equal footing as she'd ever be. Nowadays when someone spotted her and yelled at her to stop and raise her hands, she was able to swallow that lump in her throat, wait for her opponent to close the distance, drop them with one well placed blow, and get away cleanly. There was something liberating in not having to fear so much anymore.
And she'd tried to share that feeling of liberation with her friends after they'd pulled a con on Mark Vector to get Damien Moreau's bank account numbers. The con hadn't gone perfectly, several kinks in the plan had popped up along the way, but they got it all sorted out in the end. When Vector had gone nuts at seeing her in the courtroom and had gotten a handle on Eliot's gun, she hadn't hesitated to pull out the taser, put it against the man's flesh, and incapacitate him. The man was waving a gun around with her teammates standing right there and a whole courtroom full of everyday people who weren't used to being on the bad end of a mix-up like that. It had turned out to be fake gun. A part of her felt silly at considering she had acted so liberally. But the other part of her rationalized that Eliot hadn't told them that part so she'd handled the situation on the assumption that the weapon was a real gun with live rounds.
And in the heat of the moment afterwards, every nerve still vibrating from the sudden excitement, she'd done something very uncharacteristic by throwing her arms over Hardison's and Eliot's shoulders and offering a simple enough comment: "You know, I'm really starting to like tasing people. Is that a problem?"
Hardison had laughed at that. Eliot had gone the opposite direction in his response, bristling against her touch and firmly pulling the taser from her hand. He hadn't mentioned it at all during the ride home, and Parker hadn't asked about it. After their debriefing Eliot had pulled her aside, face stern. "Tasers aren't toys Parker. They're weapons. They hurt people. You might think about that in the future."
She'd opened her mouth to explain herself, but he was gone before she'd found the words.
Stupid Eliot. Ok, maybe he wasn't stupid, that was pretty harsh and Eliot was usually pretty nice to her. He cooked for her and volunteered to spot her while she tests her new rappelling gear. But he'd gone back to their normal routine like they'd never had that short exchange. He didn't speak of it again.
While Eliot may have considered that short warning the end of the story, for her, it was as annoying as that mosquito bite whose itch you just couldn't ignore. She knew that scratching just made it worse and the next day she'd have red trenches dug in her arms from her persistent itching. Nevertheless, she couldn't shake his comment from her mind. And the more that she thought about it, the more disconcerting it all became. She'd never thought about the people she'd tased as victims. They were mean people and if she didn't take them down they'd hurt her. What sort of restraint was she supposed to show in such circumstances? The one time she hesitated might be the only time it took for someone to get a lucky shot on her.
But she hurt people when she tased them. Eliot had said as much. It made her pause, made her think, made her stare at the innocuous weapon as though she could tease the secrets out of it with nothing more than the will of her mind. She wondered if Eliot had ever been tasered. She wanted to ask him what it felt like. But Eliot would probably just growl at her and tell her to leave things alone that were his responsibility to worry about.
The paradox eventually brought Parker to the lobby of the Boston penitentiary, desperate for answers. She needed to know just what her actions had done when she'd tased all those people. It hadn't just been a few people over the past few times. How much hurt had she caused those people in her efforts for self-preservation?
"Alright, miss…Miss White is it? We've gotten your visit all arranged. You can collect your purse on your way out. If you'll just follow Officer Morrison here he'll take you back."
Parker shook her mind clear of the thoughts that had been playing on a loop through her head and followed the uniformed officer through a maze of doors and gates that buzzed when they opened and locked automatically as soon as they passed through.
The officer stepped to the side as they entered into another room and pointed to a chair toward the end of the row of cubicles. She stood in the doorway, waiting for some cue from the man.
His stern expression softened and he smiled. "This your first time visiting? Loosen up a bit, you'll do just fine. You'll find Mr. Vector in cubicle seven."
She nodded and stepped forward, past the officer, and closed the distance to the cubicle. She sat down and scooted the chair in.
Mark Vector stared back at her, an eyebrow curiously raised as he picked up the phone on his side of the thick, bullet-proof glass barrier. She did the same on her side.
"Ah, the little con artist that set me up. I wondered what brought you down here to visit. It seemed to me you'd already done enough, you know, getting me these new digs," he sneered, motioning to the drab grey room that surrounded them.
She gulped. This wasn't exactly the way she'd seen this discussion starting. She mustered her courage, meeting his eyes as evenly as she could. "You did bad things. That got you put in here."
"Enough with the trivialities. The little game you played on me has already killed any hopes I had for the next several years. So tell me, why should I waste another second on you?" he jabbed at her, a snarl curling his lips.
Parker inhaled sharply. "I, uh, I just wanted to ask you a question…"
"Well all you've done so far is mumble incoherent fragments," Vector was quick to retort. "Spit it out already!"
She broke eye contact with the man and stared at a point on the wall behind him. If she didn't look at him, he couldn't pin her in her seat with that scary expression of his. "When we were in court and you pulled that officer's gun and I tased you, did it hurt?"
He scoffed, rolling his eyes. Then he took a second glance and realized she was serious. His eyes darkened. "You ever been electrocuted? How best to put this? Hmmm….It's like having a rusty knife slowly drawn against every nerve in your body. And as much as you want to cry out, surrender, do whatever it takes to get the pain to stop, you don't even get that reprieve. No, you're pinned in place like an insect in some exotic bug collector's display case!" He stood up then and smacked a hand against the glass.
Parker instinctually jumped back from the noise, nearly dropping the phone in the process.
"Of course it hurt, you bitch!" An officer was moving toward the ex-hockey player-turned-crooked-investor at the sudden outburst of aggression.
Parker fumbled with the phone again and eventually managed to settle it into its cradle before quickly retreating toward the door without looking back, some unseen force hurrying her movements away from Vector.
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