Title: W is for Winter
Prompt by: fleurb
Pairing/Characters: Parker
Rating: G/PG
Setting: Season 2
Word Count: 340
It had been a dark, lonely winter; it felt as if she had been lost in the murk for so long, she really had given up hope of ever getting out alive, so deeply frozen around her heart that no warmth could ever thaw it out, even if a spark was offered.
Unwanted as the snowdrifts, pushed aside and left to melt away, she was pretty enough but they tired of her easily, they wanted her gone before she was ever ready to be taken by whatever came next.
Out in the wilderness, away from a home that would hold her, warm her hands and face by the fire; though the dark sky was studded with diamonds, Parker saw no real light from her cracked and grimy window.
She clung to what she understood, but still the crinkled bills only looked like leaves of green, they were not really borne of Springtime, she was still locked out in the cold.
And it was always cold; cold and uncaring, no matter which city or country she landed up in, no matter where the North wind blew her, across oceans and plains.
Parker did not wait for a change, never wanted or asked after so long. She accepted the frozen wasteland and made it her own, made it shine with sparkling jewels of ice that no other could ever hold as she did. No, she never expected change, which was perhaps why it came.
Out of the black came blue, cold giving way to milder air, something almost warm - arms to catch her, a smile to greet her, words of advice, and those of encouragement.
In these people she found the Spring day she had almost forgotten to look for, the light she had started to believe should never be her own.
Now Winter was long gone, and Parker knew it for sure, because the first time in her life she saw flowers and sunlight, and she had never felt more alive than here with her team, her family, her home.