It's Eliot who comes looking for her when she doesn't show up for breakfast, a meal they had taken to sharing as the earliest risers on the team. They've been on this job two weeks longer than Nate predicted, and she's in trouble.
He finds her on her bathroom floor, shaking and covered in sweat, seizures wracking her small frame. She had run out of tryptophan the day before, they were out working the entire day, and the seizures hit before the drug store opened.
"Parker!" the hitter fell to his knees beside her, one arm wrapping around her shoulders to support her, the other going to her head to check for a temperature. "What's wrong, darlin'?"
"Milk," she managed to grit out without biting her tongue.
"What?" he demanded, decidedly confused. "Milk?"
"Yes," she replied through gritted teeth. "Get milk."
Rather than leave her in the bathroom, Eliot picked her up and carried her into her small motel room, placing her on the bed, where she curled onto her side clutching a pillow, before going to the minibar.
"There's no milk here," he declared, turning back to her, and she rolled her eyes. at him. If it was that easy, didn't he think she would've done it?
"I…know that. Go…get…milk," she ordered, her body bucking on the bed completely out of her control.
"Parker, darlin', I think you need a doctor, not a glass of milk," Eliot told her gently as he grabbed his phone.
"No…doctors. Too dangerous," she told him, trying to shake her head but unsure as to whether or not she managed the action.
"Parker, this is no time to be worrying about the con," Eliot told her as he started to dial.
Parker lashed out, managing to hit his phone and send it straight upwards, where it hit the room with a loud crack, before falling to the floor, its screen dark.
"PARKER!" yelled Eliot. "I'm tryin' to help here, darlin'," he informed her.
"Milk…helps. Doctor…dangerous," she told him, scowling. "I'll…explain later. Just…get me some milk, at…least two pints."
"There better be a damn good explanation for this, Parker," the hitter growled before running from her hotel room. He didn't know why he wasn't already on his coms to the rest of the team, getting them mobilized to help, but there was something in Parker's eyes that stopped him, a fear and a vulnerability that he had never seen there before.
So instead he ran down to the small café just outside the motel and, yanking open their fridge, grabs a couple of pints of milk. He slapped a bill down on the counter, fairly sure he just paid for four times what he took, and ran back out, dodging a woman coming in the door.
Back in Parker's room, he ends up sitting with her between his legs, leaning against his chest as he helps to drink straight from the bottle. She swallows the milk in gulps and sips, whatever her body will allow, not caring when it spills down her chin to stain her already soaked tank top.
He doesn't really expect the milk to help, but within five minutes he can see that something is changing. The seizures aren't stopping, but they're growing smaller. Another five minutes and she lies panting in his arms, occasional tremors shaking her frame. She's consumed the entire two pints of milk, except for what she's wearing instead.
She pushes off him and then shifts out of his lap, turning to face him on the bed, hugging a pillow to keep her body more or less upright.
"Explain," ordered Eliot.
"I…this is really complicated," Parker said, glancing away from him. "I…my brain doesn't produce serotonin. Levels fall too low, I start seizing. The tryptophan in the milk supplements the serotonin and stops the seizures. Mostly."
"Alright, that explains the seizures and the milk but not the doctor. What else?"
"I…I never told anyone about this before," Parker admitted, her eyes now glued on the bedspread, her hands fisted so tight into the pillow that her knuckles stand out stark white against her skin.
"It's alright," Eliot said softly. "Take your time."
She knows she needs to get this over with, because soon the milk will wear off. It's a low-tech solution, and the dosage it provides isn't enough to last for long.
"You're gonna think this is nuts," she told him, "but I can prove it, at least most of it. But first, you can't say anything about this to ANYONE, do you understand? Not even the team."
Eliot realised what it meant that she'd never told anyone whatever it was she was about to tell him. It meant that no one had ever had the level of trust with her that he did, because he knew without a shadow of a doubt that if she didn't trust him, it wouldn't matter how many explanations he demanded, she still wouldn't answer.
"I swear on my nephew's life," he promised, and she nodded once.
"I actually have family somewhere, you know?" she said first. "Brothers, sisters. Not fosters, real family. No parents, though. Or I guess maybe the problem is actually too many parents. No idea who they are though. The best of the best of the best, sir! That's what they're supposed to be. Geniuses, athletes, specialist soldiers. Well, that, and a couple cats, a wolf, shark and I'm pretty sure they threw in some eagle just for fun, and you know, long distance vision."
"Parker!" snapped Eliot, completely lost. "You aren't making any sense, girl. Slow down and tell it from the beginning."
"From the beginning, huh? Okay," she replied, shifting again so she was sitting beside him on the bed. She shivered, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his side, and she snuggled into the warmth his body offered.
"Once upon a time there was a girl named Pan," she began. "Well, really she was named Pandora, but that was just way too long and difficult when you were in a hurry, so she was called Pan. Pan lived with her brothers and sisters in a secret military base called Manticore from the day she was born, the day all of them were born. They had no real mothers, just surrogates used to carry them to term, and their DNA was such a mess that you couldn't have told who their 'parents' actually were. You see, Pan and her sibs were made, not conceived. They had DNA from a number of people, military, physical and scientific geniuses, and a variety of animals that gave them incredible abilities, strength, speed, flexibility and more. For twelve years they lived and trained there under brutal conditions. Not all of them survived. When they escaped, not all of them made it out. They split into pairs. Pan went with her brother Bobby, but he got taken down before they got out. Once she was out, Pan set about hiding. For a while she lived on the streets, getting as far across the country as she could, but eventually she got picked up by social services and ended up in the system. She bounced from home to home until she was about sixteen, she thinks, and then she split. She became someone else, someone other than who Manticore and the system made her into, someone no one knew about, who no one could hurt. She became Parker. But, see, the problem is that because they were made, Pan and her sibs weren't perfect. Someone along the line someone screwed up, and they ended up with certain…difficulties. The chief one being that their bodies don't produce serotonin, so they have to get it other ways. And the girls that were lucky enough to get cat DNA literally go into heat three times a year."
Eliot blinked. This was a lot to swallow, but it was Parker and she didn't just say things to say things. She certainly wasn't going to come up with a story this outlandish on her own, and she'd said she could prove it.
"The only thing I've got that connects me openly to Manticore is this," Parker told him, bending her head forward and sweeping her sweat soaked hair off the back of her neck.
Eliot froze, eyes widening, as he stared. There was a barcode tattooed on the back of her neck, like she was…like she was a piece of property. It set a fire burning in his belly as he stared at it, raising one hand to trace over it.
"If that's all that visibly marks you, why not just get rid of it?" he asked curiously, but Parker shook her head.
"I tried that once. It felt like they were pouring acid on my skin, and it was back within a week. It's not a tattoo, it's programmed into my genetic code. To them, that string of numbers is all I am. X5 series number 439. Not Parker, not even Pan. I was only Pan to my sibs."
Eliot closed his eyes in horror at what she was describing. He'd heard of the government doing some terrible things, but this was beyond the pale.
"I need to shower and get to the drug store before the milk wears off," Parker told him, and he nodded. "That means you need to let go, Eliot," she prompted, and he started at the reminder before raising his arm and letting her crawl out from underneath. "I'll be five minutes."
"Okay, darlin'. I'll be here."
Five minutes later, Parker emerged from the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel, another wrapped around her body. Eliot immediately looked away, staring at the wall as she crossed to her suitcase and grabbed some clothes, dressing as fast as her shaky hands would allow.
"Let's go. The others'll be up soon," she said, turning back to him, completely unashamed, as she pulled off the towel that had been holding her hair. "Oh, one second," she shook her head as she realised what she'd almost done, and grabbed her compact, but her hands were shaking too badly for her to do what she needed. "Do you mind?" she asked, holding it out to Eliot and pulling her damp hair away from her neck. "Just smooth it over, it should cover it completely," she instructed.
Eliot quickly covered the barcode, and they headed out of the room, Eliot wrapping an arm around Parker's waist when she stumbled, pulling her against his side. "Come on, darlin', lets get you what you need."
They headed out of the motel and to the nearby drug store.
"What exactly are we looking for?" he asked, glancing around the not particularly well-stocked store.
"Tryptophan. It should be with the dietary supplements; I hope it's with the dietary supplements," she muttered under her breath, but he still heard her.
They crossed quickly to the small section of shelves that held the vitamins and dietary supplements, Parker's eyes darting anxiously across them as she tried to see what she needed. Finally her eyes landed on a white plastic bottle, and she grabbed it off the shelf with shaking hands.
Eliot glanced at the shelf, scowling when he saw there was only one bottle there; he'd wanted to get more, to make sure that she didn't run out again any time too soon. "Will that be enough?" he asked, concerned.
"I don't know," she admitted softly as they headed to the counter. "If we have to stay here much longer, I don't think so. I haven't had a really bad patch like this since before we got together as a team. When it's like this it never goes away completely, it just eases off enough that I can more or less function. I have to sleep more and dose myself almost constantly. If we're here for more than another couple of days, I'll run out again."
Eliot handed the bottle over to the girl at the counter. "How long will it take for you to get more of that in?" he asked as he handed over a bill, ignoring Parker's attempt to pay.
"At least a week," the girl replied, not glancing up from her computer monitor.
"Is there another store in town where we might be able to find it?"
"We're the only pharmacy in town," she replied, still not looking up from the computer. "Sorry."
Eliot growled in his throat at her lack of manners before helping Parker out of the store. Once they were outside, she grabbed the bottle with shaking hands and was trying to get the lid off. Eliot let her try for a minute, then took it back gently and opened it himself. "How many?" he asked softly.
"Three," she replied, and he tipped them into his palm before handing them over. She tossed them back all at once, dry, and swallowed.
"Okay?" he asked softly, and she nodded tiredly. "Breakfast?" he asked then, bringing them back to the thing that had started all of this in the first place, his words a soft reminder of his promise to keep her secret and help keep her safe.
