Title: Finding Peace II
Prompt by: Leverageland Charming Bingo - happiness
Rating: PG
Setting: unknown
Word Count: 342
Eliot didn't deserve to be happy. He had known this fact above all others since the first day he took a shot at an innocent without warning, when he took away a little girl's Daddy who did not deserve his fate. Years later he expected it to still be true. For as long as he lived, he never could see a day when he would be able to close his eyes at night without nightmares invading, when he could look to the future and smile at all.
Everything changed one day in Chicago when Eliot joined a team of thieves for what was supposed to be one night only. Later they would meet again, and again. Los Angeles and Boston, these places became homes of a kind but it was really the people that made him feel like part of something he didn't want to leave, and none more so than Parker.
To the world she was just kind of insane, the world's greatest thief, of course, but twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag, and Eliot was forced to agree with that at first. Later, he realised she was so much more. A smile that could light up a rainy day, a light touch that could soothe any wound, and a spirit that nobody could ever truly break. He hadn't seen it coming, never really considered he ever needed people, never mind a woman like her, but it turned out he should have expected the unexpected in the one area of his life he never realised he needed to.
Eliot didn't deserve to be happy. He had known this fact above all others since the first day he took a shot at an innocent without warning, when he took a way a little girl's Daddy who did not deserve his fate. Now, he had Parker, and whether he deserved the happiness he'd found or not became a moot point, because he didn't know how to be anything else when she was here in his arms, making his world complete.