Abby stood with her head tucked in the crook of her arm, which lay slain across the kitchen bench; her body and head too tired to even consider moving from where she had settled herself ten minutes ago.

"How was the party?" Parker asked enthusiastically as she poured herself a bowl of cereal.

"Too loud, Parker," Abby moaned, the noise causing her head to throb harder than it already was.

"Parties can be like that," the thief replied innocently.

"No, I mean you, right now, too loud," she clarified, finally mustering the energy to stand up straight. Parker gave her a questioning look.

"She's hung over Parker," Eliot supplied, in a gruff tone of voice from the other side of the room.

"Hung over? Like from," she questioned then proceeded to take a swig out of an imaginary bottle. The silence she received answered her question. "Oooh."

"I don't know why she's here," Sophie stated, walking down the stairs from Nate's room; they'd really forgone the whole 'try and pretend we're not together' thing. "She should be home on the couch eating Mac and Cheese and watching Gilmore Girls. That's how you get over a hang over," she declared as she made it to the bottom of the stairs. She took a moment to clip on her earring s and fix up her hair before she continued. "You don't get over a hangover by hanging out here and working in a bar. Trust me."

"No Sophie, she doesn't get coddled for doing the wrong thing," Eliot protested. "She disobeyed me, eleven times."

"I'm right here," Abby murmured, not entirely happy at her uncle pretending she wasn't there and couldn't hear every word she was saying. Eliot either didn't hear, or chose to ignore the comment and continued.

"She has to do her chores, as normal. Help Cora out, as normal, because she shouldn't have done it," he declared.

"Eleven drinks?" Sophie confirmed. "That's a bloody lot!"

"I know," Eliot replied, the anger in his voice now accompanied by disappointment. "Now, Abby can you please go help Cora in the bar with inventory?" He said, turning to Abby and, even though it was phrased as a question, it wasn't one.

"Yes sir," she said mockingly and then lazily left the room. After she had left Sophie stood for a moment before turning to follow the teenager.

"Sophie," Eliot warned.

"Oh, you don't scare me," Sophie quipped. "I'm just going to see if she's alright."

Eliot sighed and let the grifter walk out the door. He then stood silent for a moment before moving back to the bench in front of the plasmas as Nate walked down the stairs.

"You think this is about her father?" the mastermind asked, walking into the kitchen and pouring himself a cup of coffee.

"Think it's about alotta things," he replied, flicking over a page in his file.

"She will figure it out though," he reassured the hitter as he walked out of the kitchen and down to the briefing bench. "All teenager's go through this," he tried to console the man and ensure him that it wasn't just because of their… questionable background and abnormal circumstances that she had acted out but rather because she was normal.

"Yeah, her mother did and got pregnant," he retorted and a tense, rigid silence ensued.

"You know Sophie and the others already have a plan with dealing with her father," Nate eventually stated, shifting the tone of the conversation to something a little more light-hearted.

Eliot snorted a laugh.

"I was thinking maybe of just gettin' away for a couple of days instead."

"Still," Nate offered and the mastermind couldn't help notice that the hitter didn't disagree.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Please don't lecture me Soph," Abby moaned when she saw the grifter entering the bar. "You know I'm going to get that from him later."

"He hasn't talked to you yet?" Sophie questioned as she sat down at the bar next to Abby. The grifter grabbed a pile of napkins off of the bar and began stuffing them, alongside the teenager into their housings.

The teenager was silent for a moment

"No," she shook her head, "he told me to get up and get dressed and hasn't said two words to me since." She turned to grab some more napkins, clearly a little upset. "He's never been this angry at me before." Her voice was quiet, timid and evidently exhausted.

"I think that's to be expected," Sophie replied softly, much to the teenager's surprise. "Abby you're sixteen, now I understand that your friends are going to drink and you probably will too but…" she trailed off, trying to find the words to express what she really meant.

'He worries enough about you as it is with his job, he doesn't need anything else'- No, that was too passive aggressive.

'This isn't really like you, you're too smart for this'- No, just no. No teenager needed to be called stupid.

'You don't want to turn out like Nate do you?'- she dismissed that one almost immediately.

Abby had stopped stacking napkins and was now fiddling nervously with her fingers. "Just make good choices sweetheart," Sophie decided upon and the teenager snorted a little bit with laughter at the clichéd advice.
But it was all the advice Sophie, at this particular point in time, was willing to give; lecturing or disciplining the girl wasn't her place. Her place was to be there for her, not criticise her and be someone she could always talk to.

"You didn't do anything, umm, you might regret did you?"

"I didn't have sex Sophie, if that's what you mean," Abby said quickly and the grifter did nothing to hide the sigh of relief she let out. At least not as much as she could remember. She certainly hadn't slept with Kyle, but there was something nagging at the back of her mind; she'd done something stupid, she was sure of it, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"He didn't even kiss me," she finally confessed more quietly, turning back to her conversation with the grifter.

"Well, boys can be impeccably frustrating," she pushed her hair back behind her ear, "and you're alright?"

Abby shrugged. "I'll be fine, just as long as Eliot actually says something to me. This waiting is just killing me."

"I believe that's the point."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Eliot went the rest of the day without saying anything significant to Abby; part of him was brooding in anger, the other part knew that the anxiousness of waiting on her part would get her to really think about what she'd done.

The car ride back to their apartment had been eerily silent and when they finally made it inside, flinging off her jacket, Abby made straight for her room.

"Abby," Eliot said before she could make it and the teenager halted in her steps. "Can we talk please?"

Abby felt a moment of relief, and then dread at what was coming. She turned around and leant against the nearest wall, eyes staring at the ground, unwilling to make eye contact.

"What were you thinking Abby?" Eliot queried, crossing his arms angrily.

"It was just a couple of drinks," she replied nonchalantly.

"No, a couple of drinks doesn't get you that blind drunk!"

"It's not a big deal," she shrugged, standing up from against the wall and walking into the living room, mostly so she didn't have to face him.

"Yes, it is a big deal," he yelled. "You can't, you can't just do things like this Abby. It's not okay!"

"I..I…"

"Do you wanna tell me why it's not okay or should I?" he questioned rhetorically, not even waiting for her to finish stammering. "You're underage, it damages brain cells. People, guys, will try and take advantage of you when you're drunk. What if you let slip what we really do?" He listed the things off on his fingers as he went along. "What if, god forbid, someone from my past saw you and you couldn't protect yourself…"

"That's not going to happen."

"You don't know that and let me finish. What if you'd gotten arrested? You'd have a record. Our names, the team's names, could have been flagged. Did you think about how you could've put them in danger? And, with the amount of alcoholics on your mother and father's side of the family, you may not have the capacity to experiment with drinking! You went back on your word Abby!"

"Please stop yelling," she yelled, then timidly sat down on the couch and buried her head in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees.

Eliot took a deep breath and paced slowly behind the back of the couch, stretching, or flexing, his hands behind his head. Yup, way out of his comfort zone.

"Did you think about why you did it?" he asked more softly as he walked around and sat on the couch next to her. Abby shook her head, which still rested in her palms. Eliot could see tears slipping out from under her hands and trickling down her arms.

"I don't know," the teenager replied.

"Yes, you do," he pressed, still softly. Abigail shrugged once more.

"Because Kyle thought it'd be a good idea," she finally declared softly, lifting her head from her hands, pulling her feet up onto the couch and wrapping her arms around her legs. "And I thought he might finally ask me out."

"Abs, you shouldn't have to get drunk in order for him to like you or ask you out," he explained but Abby said nothing. She just stared at her fingers, which were fiddling uncomfortably. "Abby," he said softly. "You have to be true to yourself Abby, that's it. At this stage in life, that's all anyone can ask you to do." the words sounded cheesy and cliché as they slipped out of his mouth but he did not care. "You're young Abby, the world is open; you've got the whole world at your finger-tips. Just, don't be afraid to stand your ground. Don't be afraid to stand up to who you are. You shouldn't need to do things you don't want, be who you don't want to fit in, or for any other reason. You always have a choice Abby; use it," reciting the words like he'd heard them yesterday.

"Ma used to say that," Abby replied, cracking a slight smile from her red, blotchy face.

"Yeah well, that advice, that was all your ma," Eliot confessed, pulling the teenager close to him.

"Oh?"

For a moment, Eliot considered telling her the story of how, when he was first noticed by Moreau, he had gone to his sister, confided in her, and asked for her advice. He considered telling her how his sister had told him to 'stand his ground' and 'do what's right'. He considered telling her how her mother's advice had given him the smarts to say no to Moreau, before he realised that it was that action which, ultimately had ended her death.

"What? You think I got the smarts to come up with that?" he joked instead. "Yeah," he continued more seriously. "She gave some good advice, your ma. Smartest woman I've ever met."

"I'm sorry Dya Dya," she apologised. "I'm grounded aren't I?"

"Hell yeah," he replied bluntly.

"How long?"

"'Till you're thirty."

Title and some of Eliot's 'speech' stolen from Time and Space by the Accidental

I was pretty happy with this chapter, what do you think?