Parker liked patterns.

They made up her world. She saw them everywhere. Patterns could keep you alive.

Knowing when motion sensors were activated in a vault kept you from being caught.

Knowing the response time for the local police had you a block away while they stormed the bank.

Knowing the default combination for a safe made you rich instead of incarcerated.

And knowing when someone would get drunk enough to hit you saved you from the emergency room and made you securely hidden inside a closet instead.

Patterns made her feel safe. They made things feel comfortable. It made that complicated thing called life a simple equation, "if a, then b." Math itself was a pattern she loved the most. There was always simplicity. There was always familiarity. If 5+x=7, x will always equal 2. There was always a pattern.

People had more difficult patterns. She caught the bigger patterns. Things that led to people becoming violent. Things that led to destruction. But other patterns about people confused her. She noticed them. But she didn't understand what they meant, or if she did have an idea, sometimes...ok, a lot of the time, she ended up being wrong. She liked patterns, but sometimes she didn't understand what they meant.

"Hey Parker, you're not going to start keeping notepads like this about us are you?" Her eyes were closed. People asked questions to get answers. That was one pattern about people she at least found obvious enough. But she didn't know how to respond to this one. She wasn't keeping notebooks about them. But she didn't need to. She pictured Hardison, knew when he would respond with a "seriously." Knew which color gummy bears he ate first. Knew he always watched Smallville on Friday nights.

She picked her favorite.

"Did you know you touch your chin every 2.5 minutes?"

She may not have understood why he did it...but that was ok. It was a pattern. And it was a pattern she'd stick around to see happen again and again, as long as Hardison was there.