Title: Being Broken

Author: AllOverTheWorld

Summary: Parker and Eliot find themselves on a rooftop in Houston, neither of them can sleep so they start to talk.

Authors Note: Thanks to all of you who reviewed Protector: race2win saides, b-mystique, southrnbygrace, Frankies girl 21. Enjoy.

The line of life and death is usually very distinct for most people, you wake up in the morning, you're alive, you get smashed by a train, you're dead. However, like anything in life, there are exceptions, Parker is one of those exceptions. Everyday, or sometimes multiple times a day, she flings herself off of buildings, elevators, you name it, and the only thing stopping her from plummeting to her death is cord. Yes, this cord is very special cord but, all the same, cord can snap and break. This was a risk that she was willing, no, needed to take because the only time that Parker felt really, (truly), felt whole. The wind rushing through her hair, the adrenaline pounding in her veins and the feeling of just falling, free, unstoppable, she felt alive.

There was no feeling like it.

Well, that was before.

Ever since she was a kid, Parker thought of herself as broken, she had had that message beaten and screamed at her enough times that at some point she just started believing it. That's why she worked alone. No one there to see you mess up, not that she messed up (another product of being told you're broken is an almost OCD need to get every move right, it's why she was such a great thief), only people there to read about your successes. In essence it was a way to prove to the rest of the world that she was not broken, but it was also a way to try and prove it to her self.

Joining the Leverage team had changed that and not for the best. Now with four other people relying on her Parker knew that there was no room to screw up, no room for someone who's broken. So she set about making sure that none of her colleagues found out. She cleaned her gear every day and updated it nearly as frequently, she paid special attention to the location of air ducts, emergency exits and staircases when Hardison was going over the blueprints (she had, upon occasion, even borrowed them so she could go over them some more) and she kept her emotions under lock and key.

The last of that list was the most difficult to wrangle with. Parker could do it just fine when she was awake and conscious but the instant her eyes closed and she fell asleep the chances of getting hit by a nightmare increased tenfold. So, to remedy that problem she rarely slept, at least in front of them. She spent her nights flipping through T.V. channels, cleaning her gear, or in the more recent nights (they were currently on a con in Houston), talking to Eliot.

It was no secret that Eliot didn't sleep but his reasons were different from Parkers. As he said, in response to her question of why he only slept for ninety minutes a day, "I don't need any more." It really was a classic Eliot answer, vague, he always gave vague answers when it came to personal matters.

Tonight the two of them were standing on the rooftop of the Trump Towers, thanks to Hardison they had gotten a fantastic upgrade, penthouse suite. The view of the city below was amazing, but neither of them were really paying attention to that. In fact, both of them were sitting at the edge of the pool, a heated pool, with their legs dangling in the water. Parker's legs were moving about, causing a slight disruption in the water while Eliot's just hung there, the water felt good on the bruise he had received from a gangbanger earlier that morning, that and the beer he was nursing.

"It's nice up here." He said, his voice low and quiet, as if he thought that if he spoke to loud he might wake up the entire hotel.

Parker jumped slightly and almost slipped into the pool, had Eliot not reached out, grabbed her arm and thus saving her from getting drenched. She had been so lost in her musings, more like whirlpool of thoughts, but who really cares, that she had forgotten that she wasn't alone. Parker was still getting used to having somebody to spend the long nights with and truth be told it was a change she sort of liked "Huh?" she said, looking over at Eliot, she had completely missed whatever he had said.

Eliot smiled and let out a small laugh "I said it's nice up here."

Parker nodded "I wonder what it'd be like to jump from here?"

"I'll take a wild guess here and say, just like jumping off of every other sky scraper." Eliot said

"Wrong." Parker said

"How?" Eliot said, shaking his head "All you do is run, jump and hope to god that your harness doesn't fail you."

"Wrong again." She said

"So explain."

Parker thought for full five seconds before nodding "Alright, but you have to make me a promise." She said, a sly grin slipping onto her face.

"Uh-oh." Eliot said "Why do I think that me saying yes is going to be a horrible idea?"

"Promise me you'll jump with me, just one time."

"What? No way, I like my feet firmly on the ground." Eliot spluttered.

"Fine." Parker said, looking down into the water and falling silent.

A pang of guilt hit Eliot and he sighed, Parker wasn't really a people person and there were very few things that got her excited enough to actually want to have a full on conversation with someone. Who was he to not to indulge her every once in a while "So what makes each building different?" he asked, looking at Parker.

She picked her head up and looked at him, a small smile playing at the edges of her lips and a shine in her eyes that he only saw when she was talking about thievery, or base jumping "Technically you were right in that every building is the same, because they are all made of glass, steel, concrete, you know, building-y stuff. The difference is the jump."

"You fall, you get whiplash, you survive. Sounds the same to me."

"Shhh." She said angrily, glaring at him "It's not the same. Each time is different because it requires a different harness, a different amount of rope to be let go before the brake kicks in, but best of all, the view's are different."

"So it's not just all a blur?" Eliot asked, half-joking, half seriously wondering.

"It was at first, the first seventy times or so that I did it, I spent most of them time wondering if I was going to die. But I make all my own equipment so I learned to trust myself and after that, well, I began to appreciate the view. The way the lights reflect of the glass, or the way the sound of the zip line echoes around an elevator shaft, each place is special."

"Huh." Eliot said, he honestly had never stopped to think that there may be a sense of beauty in risking your life by throwing yourself off a building "It almost sounds like fun."

"So you'll jump?" she asked, grinning wildly.

"I didn't say that!" Eliot said, shaking his head "I didn't say I would jump" the sparkle in Parker's eyes was fading rapidly, so Eliot began to backtrack "but" he said "I will jump with you."

Parker was taken aback "Really, you'll jump with me?"

The tone of her voice conveyed honest to goodness shock and surprise. It was like the fact that someone actually wanted to be with her, hang out with her, do something she liked was a foreign concept "Yea, Parker, I do want to jump with you. I want to know what all the fuss is about, what makes it so special to you."

"That, that means a lot to me." She said, quickly looking away from Eliot, a lot of emotions were currently beginning to overwhelm her and the last thing she needed was for them to take control.

"No problem." Eliot said, reaching out to gently grab her hand "You don't have to hide it you know."

"Hide what?" Parker said, pulling her hand out of his grasp and looking away.

Eliot scooted closer to her, unlike popular thought Eliot was actually quite perceptive when it came to emotions and what people were feeling, what they were hiding. It was a skill he had picked up on back when he was younger and since then had trained and honed so that he was quite adept on picking up on people's emotions.

This had come in hand numerous times, for example begin able to tell when someone was about to try and reach for their gun can allow you to break their hand before that happens. He was not about to go and break Parker's hands for any reason but he was able to see that she was suppressing a great deal of emotions most of the time. A small part of him was curious about what she was hiding from the rest of them but for the most part, he could understand where she was coming from. He just wanted her to know that "Your past."

Parker looked at him "You're one to talk. You're the poster boy for keeping the past in the past."

"Fine, how about this, I'll tell you something about my past and you tell me something about yours?" he offered, looking into her eyes "I promise I'll be honest with you."

"You start." She said.

Parker wasn't quite sure what was going on, Eliot was not the type of person to start spilling the secrets about his past. Unless he really wanted to know, wanted to help her.

"Alright" Eliot sighed "Want to know why I hate guns?"

Parker shrugged "Sure."

"Back when I was growing up, it was just me, my mom and my brother Emmett. We didn't have a lot of money but we always managed to make ends meet. Then, one summer, Emmett stops coming home at night, the first time I found him he was beaten so badly." Eliot trailed off, taking a moment to recollect himself before continuing.

"I asked him who did it but he wouldn't tell me so I did some digging. Found out that he was now a proud member of the local gang. After I found out that I went to find Emmett and talk him out of the whole thing. Needless to say it didn't work. Broke my mom's heart when I told her what was going on with Emmett. Summer was coming to an end when we got a knock on the apartment door, it was a police officer. He told us that my brother's body had been found."

Eliot paused again, this time looking up at the stars, the tears evident in his eyes but he fought hard to keep them from spilling down his face "Turns out he botched a gun shipment, they shot him with every gun in the next shipment. That destroyed my mom, she killed herself a year later."

"I'm so sorry." Parker said "About your brother, and your mom."

Eliot shrugged, and dipped a finger in the pool water. Part of him wondered why he had told Parker that story, maybe it was because she was a thief and the only way to get an honest answer from a thief was to give them an honest answer (well, sometimes anyway) "Your turn." He said gently.

Parker looked up, then sighed "When I was eleven I was being moved to my seventh foster family, the first six were pretty shitty, but this one, this one was the worst." She sighed, struggling to keep the memories at bay.

"Derek was a drunk, a nasty drunk who was good at hiding it. Monica was nice to me, when she was sober, which was rare, she was Derek's personal punching bag, until I came around. I was there for two weeks, worst two weeks of my life. For the past eight years I had been moved from foster house to foster house and I'd seen a lot of bad things but, people had screamed at me, yelled at me, took away bunny, but never before had someone actually hit me. Every time I moved the old parents would tell me that I was broken, useless. Derek and Monica did that, just with a little physical reminder, a reminder that I couldn't-" she broke off, as a stray tear slid down her face.

Her hand flew up to wipe it away but Eliot's hand beat her to it "You're not broken Parker." He said, wrapping one arm around her shoulder "Don't ever think that you're broken."

She turned to look up at him "You mean that?"

Eliot nodded, and he did mean it "You can rob a bank in forty two seconds, as far as I know that's not a symptom of being broken." He paused for a second, then asked "How'd you get out of there?" he asked

She wondered why he wanted to know but some part of her said that she could trust him, as unusual as that was. Normally she wouldn't talk about this because it could be perceived as a weakness and in her line of work a weakness was a sure fire way to get killed. Any yet she felt like she could trust Eliot "Derek was drunk to the dark side of the moon and Monica was out. I spilled some milk, he came after me with his shot gun. I booked out of there, lived on the streets until Archie found me, things got kind of mixed up after that."

"You survived." Eliot said "That's a lot more than other kids can say, look where you are now."

"Yea, on top of the Trump Hotel with a guy who bashes heads." She said with a small smile as she wiped away another tear "Look where I am."

"Hey" Eliot said gently, pulling Parker closer to him "You're doing what you like right? You know, throwing yourself off of buildings and stuff."

Parker nodded "That's true. How about you, you doing what you like?"

Eliot considered "Maybe not my dream job but I have friends, I get to help people, I get amazing views of Houston, it could be worse."

"It could be." Parker said and then had an idea "Let's go swimming."

"Uh-Parker, I'm not exactly in-" however before Eliot could finish his sentence he found himself being pulled into the water, clothes and all "Oh you're going to pay for this!" he said with a grin.

Amidst the splashing and the laughing Parker realized that maybe she was broken, but there was always some who wanted to put back the pieces.

Fin.

Hey all, what did you think about that? I hope that none of it seemed to out of character, if any of it was just let me know! Any and all reviews are welcome.

Thanks,

AllOverTheWorld