This is a little continuation of my other story Parker Moves On showing some of Sophie's point of view. I hope to add more to this. I don't own anything.


Sophie was excited, no she was beyond excited. She had got the leading role in the Sound of Music and she had invited her old team to come and watch her including her biggest fan, Nate. As much as Sophie hated to admit it, she had missed them all terribly and at point she found herself looking for Eliot to get her out of a sticky situation, Nate to plan a con on a mark, Hardison to be in her ear proving her with the information she needed and Parker to emerge out of vents, jump of buildings without fear or come out with some quirky and baffling comment that had everyone confused. They had become so close they were like a family and leaving them behind was so hard but they all knew it was what had to be done.

Sophie had been listening out for rumours or information on them all to make sure they were all ok and alive at the very least. She knew she was like the mother hen of the team wanting to check up on everyone and make sure that they were all safe and well even when they were together but she thought that she had formed the strongest attachments to the group of thieves out of all of them meaning she needed to reassure herself that they were all safe. Well the strongest attachment apart from maybe Parker. Parker was the oddball of the group or twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag as Eliot like to call her it she seemed to form strong attachments to people when she let them in, she just had strange ways of showing it. Sophie wasn't sure how she was taking the split, Parker could seem very tough but when it came to emotions she could be very vulnerable and needed reassurance. Also she was the one that Sophie had the most trouble keeping tabs on. She knew Eliot was somewhere in Pakistan and that it was dangerous but she knew he could hold his own and frankly there wasn't much she could do to help there so she kept an eye out for information and breathed a huge sigh of relief when she heard he was home safe. Hardison may have been hacking some pretty big stuff but he was too good to get caught and Sophie knew where he was thanks to her contacts and so she was prepared to go help him if need be. They may not work together any more but Sophie was very protective if her team. Nate was by far the easiest to keep tabs on, he got sober and then moved into a little apartment above a bar and surprisingly stayed sober. Apart from that he did very little and anyway Sophie caught up with him a couple of times to see how he was doing anyway.

Parker was her problem though. She knew that Parker was trained to drop off of the map but she had to have crossed paths with some people somewhere and surely Sophie's contacts would have been able to find that kind of information but no. There was the occasional report of a sighting somewhere in some country but they were scattered around the globe and Sophie didn't think Parker would want to travel that far. Another thing that had Sophie worried was that there were very few big thefts around the world and in many break ins nothing was taken or the stolen items were given back. That was not like Parker at all and that had Sophie worried. She always fairly sure Parker was still alive and Nate told her not to worry, arguing that maybe Parker couldn't go back to being the bad guy or girl in her case and had stopped stealing by put Sophie wasn't sure. Still she kept her eyes out for her and kept an ear open for rumours just in case something came up.

Her play, Sophie decided would be a perfect opportunity to get the team back together and to let her check that everyone really was safe and well. She couldn't deny that she had been bored and she knew that Nate missed the trill of the chase as well and she was fairly confident that if she brought the team back together then they would fall back into their old pattern of jobs. She once again had to use her contacts to get the invites out and she wasn't even sure if they would reach their intended recipients but slowly she got conformations back that they had received them and that they would come. She got Nate's first then a while later Hardison's and then Eliot's a week before the show but the one reply she didn't get was Parker. It had been passed from pillar to post. It she had been told that it had finally been delivered as best they could for Parker to find it as she never left forwarding addresses so they didn't know if it would be picked up and Sophie was left feeling disappointed and like she had failed, as she assumed that Parker wasn't coming.

Her realisation was confirmed when on the opening night she entered the lobby of the theatre to find Nate, Eliot, and Hardison all staring at each other but no little blonde thief. Her lack of prescience had been noticed by the others but they all seemed to hold out a little bit of hope that she may be late or already there somewhere. Sophie waited as long as she could but finally had to rush off backstage but not before arranging to have drinks afterwards and telling them to tell Parker when they saw her. When. She was trying to optimistic and keep her hopes up but she was slowly resigning herself tot the fact that the little blonde thief either didn't get the invite or she just didn't want tot see them again. The empty seat next toe Eliot where she should have been made Sophie's heart sink a little before she pushed it to the back of her mind and carried on with her performance. She felt the euphoric high when she finished until she remembered that there was one member of their little mismatched team missing, a very bubbly, thieving, important part missing. After taking her bows she headed back to her dressing room where she was stopped at the door by one of the stagehands who handed her a letter. Slightly confused as to who would have written her a letter already, she retreated into her dressing room to read it in private. It read:

Sophie,

Thanks for the invitation, you may not have seen me but I was there.

You were great.

I know you've been looking for me and I'm sorry I couldn't speak with you but I am safe.

If you don't believe me get Hardison to check the footage of the security camera I the passage way to the sound technicians.

Say hi to the team for me and hope you all stay well.

Parker

Sophie scrambled to get changed quickly and rushed out of her dressing room clutching the letter. She checked the theatre several times but the was no sign of Parker left or that she had ever been there. She hurried to the lobby to meet the rest of the team and immediately demanded to know if they had seen Parker. She got three variations of congratulations and then commiseration that Parker hadn't shown up with Nate and Hardison sad and disappointed and Eliot angry at her for not showing and upsetting Sophie like this. Sad that they would believe Parker would leave them like that but understanding why they would think so she showed them the letter clutched in her hand whilst never letting go if it as though it was the last link she had to Parker and she wasn't going to let go of it. Hardison was straight on his phone hacking security and checking the camera feeds until he found the one that Parker had specified and rolling it back to the time period they couldn't believe it when the little blonde thief deliberately appeared in the camera shot and looking directly at the camera waved and smiled as though she were looking right at them and not through a camera. They soon found that apart from that one clip there was no other evidence she had ever been there.

Despite several more searches and a scan of the people outside, there were no further leads on where Parker was, not that they expected there to be really, if Parker didn't want to be found then she wouldn't be found. They trudged back to the bar, moods damped if they weren't already by Sophie's singing but none of them could shake the feeling that they were being watched although they couldn't pinpoint from where. In the bar, Sophie mourned the reviews of her performance and they decided to pull another job, holding some hope that maybe Parker would join them but knowing that they were better as a team and a unit than they were alone. The mystery arrivals of the evidence they needed throughout their con confirmed that Parker had been watching than and following them but she never showed her face again and they weren't entirely sure how she managed to do all of the work without being seen once. They continued to work together after that but they never replaced Parker, getting help where they needed it and hoping that she would return. Though they didn't see her after that day that wasn't the last they would see of Parker.