Undisclosed Desires - Muse
I know you suffered
But I don't want you to hide
It's cold and loveless
I won't let you be denied
I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty is not just a mask
I want to exorcise the demons from your past
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart
Parker knew better than anyone that the past could destroy you if you weren't careful because Parker's past had destroyed the girl that used to be Parker but really she wasn't Parker because Parker wasn't her and that girl was so much more smallersadderweaker than the new Parker.
Before she met the team the old Parker and the new Parker were trying to stab one another in her sleep and that made her uncomfortable in her own skin because it wasn't just her in her skin she was sharing it with the new Parker and the old Parker but the nowParker was stuck in the middle and couldn't do anything without one of the other Parkers showing up and telling her stealing is wrong or he's going to find out or you're a bad girl and what happens to bad girls? or you want that? take it it's yours or he can't tell you what to do - this is our life orwouldn't it be fun if we just fell? the rope snapping wind tugging our hair all the glorious seconds of free fall before you would smash into the hardcruelevil ground and go be with Nick because isn't that where you belong?
But even though she tried really really hard she couldn't stop being the old Parker who still ate fortune cookies and was afraid of men and slept in a closet with Bunny - that was old Parker who she couldn't stop being anymore than she could stop being the new Parker who jumped off buildings and stabbed people with forks and broke fingers and stole and lied and kicked ass and loved her new family and Eliot - that was the new Parker.
But after she met the team the two Parker's had reconciled somewhat. She didn't make herself throw up after eating the cookies anymore or burn herself with cigarettes after she lied or stole or hurt someone - she accepted that she was who she was and neither Parker was bad and now she was comfortable with at least one aspect of her life.
She was comfortable with Eliot. Eliot was like jumping off a four story building because four story buildings were safe and familiar and damn hadn't she been jumping from them her whole life and she was still alive and safe. That was Eliot except that she hadn't been doing Eliot for her whole life because that would be weird but she had known him for two years six months nine days eighteen hours thirty six minutes but that was a really long time for her to know someone before she blew them up or dropped them off of a building so Eliot was really somewhat of a personal record for her and she was as certain as she had ever been about anything that wasn't stealing that it was because she didn't like to loose things that made her feel safe and nothing made her fell safe quite like Eliot.
She was crazy. Absolutely, one-hundred percent completely bat-shit insane, of that Eliot was sure. Anyone who slept upside down because they thought it was "cozy" had to be bonkers.
Not, of course, that Eliot was saying he was afraid of heights, because he wasn't. There wasn't much that scared the Retrieval Specialist these days, not much that got his blood pumping and his adrenaline spiking through the roof, but seeing Parker swan dive off of the Willis Tower with only a simple harness was without a doubt at the top of the list.
Eliot wasn't stupid, he knew that being in the system and bouncing around from one foster home to another had really messed her up, but sometimes he swore that she did it just because she like to hear him tell her "There's something wrong with you." In his opinion, that only proved him that much more right, but that didn't mean that he didn't like it, or that he wanted her to stop being who she was. He liked his women to be a little... wild.
And he knew what it was like to grow up in a dysfunctional home - not that that made him sentimental, or anything. He was a man of many interests and he couldn't protect the team if he was moping about his past. He couldn't change the past. He couldn't change how some people acted or what people did to him, and if he was pissed at the world, well, it was okay for a hitter to be angry. No one questioned it, because it made him better at what he did if he hated whomever he was fighting because who he was fighting was an embodiment of the world that had screwed him over.
Well, maybe not everyone, but at least it was something tangible that he could beat on.
But then again, Eliot only used violence as an appropriate response.
Revenge was an appropriate response. To want to punish someone for hurting someone you cared for - that fake physic who made Parker cry - was perfectly normal. Once, when Hardison was having a post-con-gone-well all-nighter, they had watched The Punisher, and Eliot decided that Frank Castle said it best and generally just summed up Eliot's whole career - "In certain extreme situations, the law is inadequate. In order to shame its inadequacy, it is necessary to act outside the law. To pursue... natural justice. This is not vengeance. Revenge is not a valid motive, it's an emotional response. No, not vengeance. Punishment."
No one was innocent - everyone was guilty of a crime, whether they just sat back and ignored the bruises on a child's face simply because they would rather not get involved or if a man thought that his son needed a "firm hand." Everyone was guilty of something that deserved punishment.
Eliot got his revenge on those who had hurt him, but now that he was a part of a team, it was different. Every scar on Parker's body, Nate's mind, Sophie's heart, Alec's spirit, was a direct insult to his abilities to keep the team safe, and in the criminal world, those who went after the family of a mark were either desperate, insane, or thought they had enough money and manpower to get away with it.
Eliot's team was his new family, and those who hurt his family were punished. Eliot was going to punish the whole God-damned world.