Written for comment_fic on livejournal

Prompt was Leverage, Nate/author's choice, inspired by "I wear this crown of thorns, Upon my liar's chair/Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair" (Song Lyrics from Johnny Cash's cover of NIN's "Hurt"). WARNINGS for character death and lots of very bad things. Don't read if you don't like.

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Parker never understood people, Nate knew. If she had any sense about people at all, she would know that she should leave.

Sophie figured it out. When Nate started drinking again, this time dropping the first half of the term 'functional alcoholic.' And when prescription drugs became his chaser. And when he treated what was left of his team horribly when he should have given them comfort.

Sophie left. She was no fool.

Hardison, too, though he probably didn't leave because Nate was an asshole. Which he was. He left, Nate knew, because he couldn't stand to be around anything that reminded him of Eliot.

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The last job as a team. When the plan went from bad to worse, Nate had to take drastic measures. He managed to get his team out but only by putting himself back in.

So Nate Ford, the honest man, was going to jail. But Eliot wouldn't accept that. And the rest of the team wanted a long con, but Eliot didn't want to wait to get Nate back.

They knew Nate would never approve of a plan this risky. But Nate wasn't there, after all.

Eliot took two in the chest. He bled out before they got to the hospital. But not before he got Nate out.

That was two years ago.

Nate had told Parker it was okay for her to leave. He had told her every day, sometimes yelling at her to leave, sometimes saying horrific things to her just so she would hate him enough to let him go, leave him alone so he could wallow himself to death.

But she wouldn't go. She stayed. And she wasn't the same. She was... subdued. Less random, less excitable. And definitely less inclined to do what Nate told her. And more inclined to call Nate on his crap.

Nate wasn't sure if she had changed because she lost Eliot or because she lost Nate. The old Nathan Ford, the one she looked up to like a hero. The one who kept her safe and understood her and liked her and mentored her and believed in her, and did all the things that no one had ever, ever done for Parker. She couldn't possibly be deluded enough to think he was still that man.

But she was different now. She didn't look up to him as if he were taller than a building. He was just the guy she lived with now, the damaged guy she put up with because she was scared to leave or maybe didn't have anywhere else to go.

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The first time she kissed him, he was sitting in his armchair crying. She sat on his lap without warning, straddling him, face to face. He tried to push her off, grabbing her hips with his hands, but she wasn't exactly weak. She leaned over and kissed him on the lips, softly and patiently. She had never been patient before.

Nate didn't kiss back. He took another swig and said, "Go away, Parker."

"No."

"I don't think of you that way."

"Learn to," she ordered, softly but without waver, staring into his eyes. Looking for the old Nathan, he assumed, the one who made everything right.

"I can't save you Parker. I can't save anyone any more."

Parker frowned. "I'm sorry, is your crown of thorns dusty? Shall I help you clean it?"

She got off his lap and walked away. Parker never used to say things like that.

"Bitch!" he yelled after her, "Nobody on the team even wanted you with us! You're just some stray I can't get rid of!"

Parker didn't respond. But she still didn't move out.

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The next time they kissed was a few weeks later. Parker was in the hospital. She looked at him. She looked so tired.

"Sorry," was all she said. And not all that sincerely.

Nate had found her overdosed in her bathroom. He almost hadn't gotten there in time. He didn't even know she was using.

There was a time when he would have known. Would have noticed any miniscule change in her behavior, would have taken care of it.

There was also a time when Parker would never have done it in the first place.

But after a long silence, Parker started to cry. "Don't leave me, Nate," she said angrily, "Don't you dare use this as an excuse to leave!"

He was stunned. But he said, quietly, "I won't," and gently wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. And he saw her need for him, her want, and he leaned over and kissed her. And she tasted terrible, exactly like an OD in the hospital would taste like, dry and rotting and wrong. But he kept kissing her, refusing to let his senses overrule him.

This time, it was Parker who didn't kiss back. She just waited until he was done, and then repeated, softly, "Don't leave."

It went on like this for a while, unreturned advances. Baby steps. A gesture here, a disaster there. Nate felt guilty about it, like he was taking advantage of the girl he had used to think of more like a daughter.

But Parker it made it pretty clear that he was no longer her father figure. She was always ready to call him an asshole when he deserved it. Even when he didn't, like when he unsuccessfully tried to get her to try rehab. Though she wasn't exactly wrong when she called him a hypocrite.

And she didn't let his rants get to her, his verbal abuse, his insistence that she was just a criminal and couldn't understand the guilt that an honest man feels. At least it seemed like she was ignoring him, dismissing his ravings like so much old junkmail.

So maybe Parker was getting smarter about people, Nate thought. But then, if that were true, she would leave.

The first time they fucked, both were too out of it for it to be truly consensual. Nate was just aware enough to know that they shouldn't be doing this, that it was wrongwrongwrong. But Parker was just coordinated enough to hold Nate on the bed with her legs, to keep him there long enough for friction and need and not giving a damn to win the day.

In the morning she looked at him with no expression on her face, then got up and headed into the shower. She was in there a long time.

Nate got up to head downstairs, but as he tried to walk, he just fell to his hands and knees crying. He wished he had something he believed in enough to ask for forgiveness. But instead he stayed there on the carpet, shaking and naked, wanting to wretch but finding his throat was too dry. He started sobbing, trying to bury his face in the rough fibers of the floor, trying to erase the broken thoughts that scraped along his insides, leaving him raw.

What he did to Eliot.

What he was doing to Parker.

Parker found him like that. A wasted piece of a former man. Crying on her bedroom floor.

She ran over to him, tried to lift him up. "I'm sorry, Nate," she said, "I can't fix it. I can't fix what we did to Eliot. And -- and I can't fix what that did to you."

Nate looked at her half-blind with tears. And he laughed, or something like it. And he said, "Is that why you're still here Parker? Because you think I can be repaired? Because I don't need you, Parker. I can't be fixed. So I don't need you." Nate lay flat on the floor again, trying to catch his breath, wishing his reach was long enough to grab his pills.

"You're a liar, Nathan Ford," Parker said, almost matter-of-factly. "A good liar. But a liar."

She lay on the dirty floor then, next to him. Her body was close to his. But it wasn't touching.