Title: Complex Saviour
Prompt by: n/a – for Heroine Mini Bang 2012 on Livejournal
Rating: PG-13/T
Setting: unknown
Originally posted: 1st July 2012
Notes: none

It was too much to handle, just far too much to take in. Parker really didn't deal with emotions well at any time. Right now she was having far too many of them, and all at once.

A part of her always knew something like this would happen. Somewhere way back in a dark corner of her mind, she worried and panicked that this team could not last forever, that there would be some permanent break up, or worse still, something terrible would befall one of those closest to her.

In all her life, Parker never really had family. Archie came close, a couple of other foster kids had been almost like true siblings for a while, but nothing like this. Here she was important and cared for and loved. Here was a real family with warmth and affection. She had parents of a kind, guys that had her back no matter what. No-one demanded anything from her, not really. She only had to consider their feelings and try to be the best thief and best friend she could be, it wasn't much, and she had no problem doing it. If she behaved, she could stay, with these people that was true enough, not like so many lies she was told in her childhood.

There had always been the possibility that someone would leave. Sophie had once, but there was a connection then, communication, the promise of return. She had come home in the end, as Nate had from jail, as they always did when they were taken away from the team.

This was different. This wasn't a choice or an easy fix. This was big and bad and thinking of it even for a moment made Parker want to curl up in a ball and cry her heart out.

Tears were strange. Parker didn't understand crying most of them time, since she didn't do it much. Sophie would cry when she was happy. Hardison shed tears over TV shows that Parker didn't even understand. Nate got choked up about his son that was dead and gone. That just left one.

Poor Eliot. He thought that he got away with his charade. He figured everybody thought he was so tough that he never got upset, never cried at all. Parker knew better. Everybody thought they knew her too, but nobody could know everything about everyone. She might not understand her own emotions and how they worked, but she knew that Eliot had moments of weakness. He was still the strongest person Parker had ever met, inside and out. He gave her strength when she wavered, and that meant the world to her, but he could be hurt, and not just with knives and bullets. She saw the looks that crossed over his face sometimes, emotions dancing in his eyes. The job that helped Aimee's father all those years ago. When they had to take on Damien Moreau. Most especially when he dodged the question about what he had done in his time working for the evil crime lord. Eliot could be broken, it was not an easy thing for anyone to achieve, but Parker feared that knowledge now.

The yelling was getting louder. It reminded Parker too much of her childhood, sitting in the corner of the next nameless bedroom, hands over her ears, trying to pretend it wasn't happening. A bottle smashing against the wall, a scream, fists against flesh, the crack of bones. It all replayed in her mind, harsh and fast, and over and over in a never-ending whirlwind of noise.

It wasn't real. It had been then but it wasn't now. Here in the safety of Nate's apartment, it was only a simple fight of words. It was only Nate and Sophie, and as mad as they could get with each other, they would do real harm. No breakages to the inanimate or the human, not here. Of course, it was far away from here that the damage was likely to lie, and that was why they fought, louder and louder all the time.

Parker huddled her side closer against the wall, knees against her chest and arms wrapped tight around her legs. Her forehead was pressed against the metal rail that ran along the edge of the mezzanine, digging in hard, but she couldn't move. She tried to breathe through the panic, tried not to let tears over-take her but it couldn't be helped. Eyes closed and she saw too much behind her lids, too many terrible things that her imagination would torture her with. Eyes open and she saw more than enough, her beloved parents tearing lumps out of each other with desperate words and defeated sobs.

Hardison was quiet, silent even. Eliot would find it amusing if he were here, would make jokes about what it takes to get the hacker to shut his mouth for five seconds. Of course, if his friend were here to say those things, Hardison would not be so still and sombre. He felt the loss as Parker did, but not enough for her. She stared down at him, willing him to be frantic, frenetic, forceful. She didn't want to hear plans and cons, ifs and maybes. She wanted action!

The action was missing. The power, the driving force. That was what Eliot was. He was all for a solid plan, but he'd make one in seconds and be gone just as fast. Up and through a window forty storeys up before anyone could blink, catch a person leaping from a height with a seconds notice, save a team-mate on the fly in a faraway foreign country. He was so much more than what he seemed, not just a punch up artist, a hitter, or even a retrieval specialist. He was her protector, he was the cavalry, he was Eliot.

Now he needed them to take his usual role, to save him as he so often saved them. Instead they fought, arguing around and around, as if that would help. Parker couldn't bear it. They were getting nowhere fast, nowhere at all right now, and when Sophie finally gave in and slammed out through the front door, Parker knew it wasn't going to get any better like this.

She watched Nate as he paced back and forth a moment, and then tore after Sophie, yelling her name at the top of his lungs. Hardison remained as he had been before, tapping away on his laptop keys as if he heard nothing, felt nothing. Parker was sure he was as torn apart as her, or almost anyway, but he showed it even less than she might.

It was no good, just sitting here, it made her as bad as the rest of them, as useless as yelling and typing and hoping. Action was what was needed. She needed to think like Eliot, act like he would. Assess the danger, sure, but no matter what it was, go in all guns blazing and save the day. She wasn't quite built for battle the way the hitter was, but that couldn't matter now. Parker had been saved so many times by Eliot Spencer. Now it was time to repay that favour, as best she could.

When Hardison looked a moment later to see if he could spot Parker up on the mezzanine, there was nothing and nobody there, and seemed as if there never had been.

Parker thought it might be tougher, planning out a mission like this alone after so long being part of a team. It was shockingly easy in the beginning. She had contacts of her own, mostly fences but they mixed in circles that contained only the worst kinds of people. They made her look like a saint, even made Eliot come off as relatively angelic in comparison, but Parker didn't ponder too long on the evil these men might do.

It took her three days to get the right name, the right number. She was no hacker or mastermind, no fast talking grifter, but she had the skills she needed from all these roles.

She knew plenty before. Parker wasn't dumb and you didn't survive to twenty five living her kind of life without being sharp enough, without having your wits about you. Sure, she picked up things from her team along the way, but this was old school, this was how things used to be for her, when the streets were home and friends was a word used only in jest.

She made her call, knowing she had no choice but to play it this way. Busting in and meaning business, that was Eliot's style. It couldn't be hers. Parker had her self defence skills, she was useful for helping out in a fight, but these guys were dangerous, the bad kind, that her own hitter friend hadn't been for years now. It was probably turning his back on that roll that had landed him in this situation now, Parker was sure. They had connections to Moreau, the assholes that had taken Eliot, though they were not under his instruction this time. That made it easier, it meant less chance of a backlash when the deal was done, but the deal must still be done, no matter what.

Almost out of range, on a throwaway cell. It wasn't a Hardison trick, despite how it looked, Parker had known how to be untraceable for years.

She started at a million and worked her way up. Nameless, faceless Grouchy McThug made bile rise in her throat with every chuckle and curse, but Parker wouldn't bite couldn't allow herself. She swallowed down her anger and frustration, knowing if she lost her cool it would only make matters worse. She played her part the best she could, and prayed for all she was worth that she got it right.

There was an associate she could call on. He owed her a favour, this mountain of a man, the kind of guy that would be called Tiny in the ironic sense. Parker never knew his name, only his number and his scarred-up face. Once upon a time, he had needed a thief's help, a slim and agile person to complete a mission he could never hope to manage himself. Now she got paid back.

She had him play lackey, go to the drop off and pick up the merchandise that meant more to her than any money or diamonds ever could. He made the cash drop, they deposited a bloody broken mess into his arms, whilst Parker watched from far above on the building top, out of sight and out of mind.

It almost killed her to wait the thirty agreed minutes before going after her man and meeting him in the hotel room rented under a false name and a dodgy credit card. These four or five days had been hard enough, they were on the home straight, at least of the first phase, and it was now Parker started to struggle.

The not knowing was bad, imagining and suffering nightmares of the what ifs and maybes. She knew the bad things that happened to good people, it filled her with the blackest dread to imagine what evil might be exacted on one who used to play on the wrong side himself, and in one of the worst ways. It didn't matter to her what he had once been, Eliot had changed, he should be allowed to stay clean, but there was always those that wanted to drag him back down into the mud. He wouldn't go willingly, and so they had taken him. For all that they had done to break him, Parker wanted to tear them to pieces, wished she had that kind of power, but knew she did not. All she had was herself, and Eliot to save.

At the hotel, her bought prize was dropped unceremoniously onto the bed and then her 'friend' glanced at Parker with a mournful look. The question as to why this mess of a guy meant so much was never asked, only implied, and Parker didn't care to answer. She had too much else to focus on, far too much to do to stop and talk about feelings even she didn't understand. the fact was she had done only half of what was needed so far. Eliot was alive and safe from those that would harm him, but now the hardest part began, helping him survive all they had done to him, praying every moment that she wasn't too late.

It was dark again, and that was good. It may be oppressive and suffocating, but the dark was better than the alternative. With light came a different kind of darkness, the kind with pain and anger and suffering. Eliot could withstand so much, but even his resolve was starting to slip after too many hours and days of waiting.

He lost count. It never happened before, because he always kept his wits about him, always knew how long he'd been gone, how many miles the van had travelled, all the details carefully mapped. This time was different, and too well planned by others. They knew him too well and they were ready where he was not.

Fighting the blackness became too much and only led to painful light. Safer and easier to stay in the dark and let himself heal, let his mind unscramble. It never quite made it, never quite found a path out through the labyrinth inside his own head, except for her.

She might have been worse torture than the actual trials they put his body through. Blonde hair and wings, like an angel, she floated everywhere he turned in that darkness. She haunted him, voice soft and delicate, so close and yet a million miles away. Bound hands could not reach for her, limbs like lead that refused to comply. Behind his eyes she danced and played, urged him out of the dark, but the light was worse, had been worse, until that last time.

A figment was all she was, Eliot was not so far gone as to think otherwise for more than a moment at a time. She was out of reach, inside his mind, that scrambled and twisted and took her away as fast as she came to him. Tears would be cried over her if he had the strength, or perhaps if he didn't. Giving in was never an option whilst he could remember, whilst she still danced on the haunted plains of the mind they tried to steal with pain and twisted memories that were not all his own. The more frightening belonged to him perhaps, but that didn't matter.

This was a different place. It took long enough to realise, but the darkness was thinner somehow, and the light that waited beyond softer and less of a trial to face. The angel in his mind no longer danced but only spoke in soft tones he finally heard so clearly. Not a mile away on a hill in the distance anymore, she was here now, she was within reach, he would've sworn, and though every muscle strained and ached, every good sense warned him away, he needed to know his mind had not deceived him a final time. His hand lifted all of an inch before dropping back down, a failure.

To Parker it was success. She noticed the movement, the struggle, and the letting go a while. He was trying to come back to her, and it was all she could hope for right now. The things those animals had done to him, she didn't even want to think about, but she had to, had to figure out how to mend the injuries and heal the suffering. Saving Eliot was so much more than getting him back from those that took him away. It was fixing all that was broken, and she was no expert, but knew enough to get by.

All the time she had known him, she had watched him. When he fought, he was graceful as any dancer and deadly as any weapon, but this was not the only time she learnt from observing. When the job was over and the deed was done, a dozen bruises, cuts, and scrapes needed attention. Popping joints back into line, binding ribs that cracked under pressure, stemming the flow of blood that ran a river no-one was supposed to see. She saw. She observed everything, taking silent notes inside her mind. She wanted to know, wanted to help, kept a list in her head, a whole book of ways to help him if worse should happen than these things, if Eliot should be beyond a state in which he could mend himself. It had never quite come to pass before. She had helped a little here and there, but mostly he took care of himself, took care of everybody and never complained. Now it was her turn, and Parker took it seriously.

The physical stuff was easy. Switching off her mind to the fact it was Eliot, or at least trying to, made it easier to concentrate. He was out for the count and couldn't complain nor pass any comment as she sewed up holes and bandaged wounds the way she had seen him do a hundred times before, on his own body and on others. So many places bore the brunt of attack upon attack. They made a mess of the man she loved most, but she would heal each and every injury, somehow.

The drugs might have been harder. Eliot didn't stay down long when knocked unconscious. No crack to the head or severe amount of pain left him lost to unconsciousness for more than a minute. This was hours, days, unknown expanses of ever lengthening time that he barely stirred. Tell-tale holes in places only people like them would think to look proved that needles had pierced his tough skin, filled him up with nobody knew what, until the world warped out of focus, trapped him in a nightmare with no escape.

The dangers of it were not lost on Parker. The team saw an innocent when they looked at her, but they forgot sometimes how she came up in the world. The streets were tough and mean, you had to be strong to survive, and the skills she learnt from other kids, from other thieves, they only got her so far. She knew the world and the horrors of it. She knew drugs and the evil that lay within each hit. A moments Heaven or Hell would always give way to the latter eventually, and the darkness would envelop you like nothing ever had before, but would again if you didn't learn to keep your distance next time. They had given him no choices, no doors to escape by. Now the worst was over, but there was little she could do to ease the pain until he fought his way out of the dark alone.

Parker spoke with words she barely knew herself. Calming lullabies one kindly foster mother had sung to her in years gone by that were misty at best, that might even have been someone else's memory. Comfort as she had heard Sophie speak it, rallying cries of confidence and encouragement she thought she might be making up herself. Tears of panic and relief combined that he was here but so far damaged, so far away though close enough to touch.

She watched the door and the window like a hawk, when her eyes were not focused on his own and willing them open. There were no guarantees they would be safe here, safe anywhere, but there were no choices left but to wait. Until Eliot had the strength to wake, never mind move, Parker was low on options. She barely slept for three nights, just waiting and wishing. It never once occurred to her it was wrong to keep Eliot from the team. They knew he was safe, that was all they needed. Parker was still mad at them, though even she knew it wasn't fair.

They wanted to help, of course they did, but they'd taken too long. Already every nightmare scenario had run through Parker's head, how much worse things might have been if she had not made her rescue when she did. As bad as this all was, biding her time whilst Eliot's body and mind fought the poison inflicted upon him, the injuries and torture, at least he was alive. The alternative was enough to make her heart want to shatter where it beat too hard in her chest. She could not stand the idea that she might have been too late.

The fourth night, he woke. Perhaps even that was pushing the definition of the word beyond its boundaries. His eyes flickered open and immediately he had Parker's full attention. She scrambled from her far corner of the room where she attempted sleep, nervous as she was of being too close to Eliot, afraid of hurting him or being caught up in some nightmare he wouldn't be able to control.

On the edge of the bed, she hovered, silently praying this was the beginning of the end of this torture that they both had to bear in different ways. She barely breathed at all, just watching his chest rise and fall, willing it to keep on going as she had for three days together.

For Eliot, the world was becoming less and less dark, and in the mists that began to part before his eyes, the same blonde angel appeared. Now she had a name as well as a face, and he knew her. Near enough to hear her words, close enough to touch if he only had the strength.

"Parker?"

Her name spoken in his voice, the first time in too long, made her want to cry. He sounded awful, broken and battered as he looked, but it was Eliot and that was all that mattered. He was here and alive, and he knew who she was. That was all Parker really needed in this moment, and wondered if she would really ever need anything else for as long as she lived.

A part of her had started to wonder if she had imagined the slight movement of his hand hours and hours before. Perhaps she was hallucinating as much as he was, perhaps she was going even more crazy than he ever accused her of being before. Now all she could be was thrilled he was coming round, and even more so that he knew her face.

"It's okay," she said, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat that wouldn't shift. "I mean, it's not okay," she amended. "You're actually in pretty bad shape, but you're alive and I count that as a plus, because I don't really know what I'd do if you died or something, I just... I don't know," she rattled out, the way Parker did sometimes.

It might have meant more to Eliot if he could focus on anything she was saying, or if she was talking at a speed that wouldn't have been unfathomable to even a fully coherent person! As it was, Eliot was pretty glad to realise he was still alive too. For a while there, he'd started to wonder.

The room was coming into focus around the mixture of worry and joy written across Parker's tear-stained face. This wasn't home, not his or hers. It didn't feel right to even be Boston, but it was safe for now apparently, and that would do.

Concentrating on breathing and keeping his eyes open was all Eliot could do for several minutes, then the memories started to surface. Little pieces floated to the top and fixed themselves together like a jigsaw puzzle. There were still huge spaces in between that he couldn't recall, but he got the basics pretty fast. He was taken by men, scratch that, by cowards, who came at him from behind and plunged a syringe into his neck. Each and every time he gained consciousness there was pain and agony, torture the like of which he had barely known before, and then the unwelcoming darkness that haunted his mind with tricks and traps he could not keep from falling into.

"How?" he choked out then.

Parker didn't need to ask for more explanation. He needed to know how he got here, that was all the question could be. If she knew herself it would be easier to explain. The whole scenario seemed like a faraway dream now, or rather a nightmare she never ever wished to revisit.

"I paid them," she said, eyes locked onto his own, with nowhere else to go as he stared back at her. "They tried to tell me you weren't for sale but, you know what they say, everybody has a price." She smiled like a proud child for all of a second. "I paid them," she repeated, shrugging like it was no big deal, even though they both knew it was.

Parker didn't give away money. She never gave away money, it was her most prized possession, worth more than her diamonds or jewels, or any other thing she ever stole. Cold hard cash was what she craved, what she seemed to live to own, and yet she had parted with so much to save him.

There was no question in Eliot's mind that it would take hundreds of thousands, probably millions of dollars for those assholes to give him up. They didn't want him dead, they wanted him hurt, tortured, in indescribable pain for as long as they could make it last. A combination of physical injuries and drug-induced panic, it worked well for what they wanted, and they could have sustained him in such a state for weeks if they had a mind to.

Instead, he was free. Beaten, battered, bruised, and broken, but free. There was nothing here that wouldn't heal given time, he was certain of it, as he flexed each aching muscle and swallowed down the bile in his throat. He would survive, just like always, but he would never get over the shock of what Parker had done to save him.

"You don't pay," he told her that which she obviously already knew. "Never." He frowned so hard it made his head hurt and that was the only reason he stopped, one of his leaden arms just about light enough by now to allow him to put a hand over his eyes that were currently protesting the light he had fought so hard to return to.

"Some things are more important than my money," she told him softly. "Actually, it turns out only you are," she amended, looking anywhere but at him.

To Eliot she seemed so small all of a sudden, so tiny and lost in the room that was barely meant for two people to even sleep in. This thing she had done, this sacrifice she had made, it meant more to him than he would ever be able to explain. He knew Parker was a good person, way better than he could ever hope to be again after all he had seen and all he had done, but he never expected her to go this far, and for him of all people. Though she cared for the team, and he knew she did, her friends were money and diamonds, and a stuffed bunny if he recalled. These inanimate objects could not fail her, could never leave her of their own accord, or hurt her in any way. She liked them better than people, and yet, she had exchanged so much of her precious money to save his worthless hide. Perhaps more than that, he realised too suddenly, she had put herself in a position where the animals that would take him and torture him might find her and do the same.

"Coulda got yourself killed," he told her, with as much anger as he could muster through the pain and lethargy. "Twenty pounds o' crazy... You coulda..."

"But I didn't," she reminded him, reaching for the hand he seemed to be extending her way, but failed to co-ordinate correctly.

She had touched him a hundred times over the years and another couple of hundred on top these past three days together. She tended to every wound and soothed every nightmare as best as she could, but now he was awake, it felt so strange to make contact. She shifted a little closer, making it easier to hold onto his hand without either of them stretching far. He was neither hot nor cold anymore, she realised, as she reached out the fingers of her other hand to help him get his hair out of his eyes when it fell. His forehead was a normal kind of warm and that was a good sign too. Honestly, the very fact he was awake and mostly coherent was all she really needed right now.

"Parker", he whispered, unable to do much else right now as he forced his eyes to focus on her own. "Thank you," he told her sincerely.

"You're welcome," she replied, and even she knew it sounded dumb, but there was little else to say right now. "Besides, I don't know how to be without you anymore. Thank you, for not dying before I could get to you," she said seriously.

Eliot smiled at that, he couldn't help himself. She was sincere as anything in what she said, though it sounded strange. Only people like them could make sense of such a situation. Only she could have saved him like this and he knew it.

Once he was over the worst of this crap he'd been put through, he planned to spend the rest of his worthless life showing Parker how grateful he was, how much he loved her for what she'd done for him, and for a hundred other reasons she couldn't possibly understand yet.

She had saved him from the end in such an extraordinary way, and it would be their own extraordinary beginning.