Dedicated to fatewalker. Happy birthday dear.

His eyes open at the first ring of the phone. Eliot searches his brain for anything that can explain a phone call at three in the morning, while reaching out to pick his cell abandoned on the floor. He can't find any logic explanation, which it's totally fitting considering who's the one calling him.

"What?" he asks, sitting on the futon.

"Hi, Eliot. How are you?"

At least she's showing some manners. He had his ninety minutes of sleep, so he doesn't snap at her, even if it would be perfectly understandable of him.

"I'm fine, Parker."

"That's good." she says, and then stalls into silence.

"Did you call me at three in the morning just to ask me that?"

"Not really,"

And yet she's silent. He has this vague memory of her bothering the hell out of him, chasing him around to know what's sex-ting; if she called to raise the level of awkwardness between them and ask him about sex-phone – God help him - he'll just get up, go to Hardison and break all of his fingers so he will stop spending his nights on his computer instead of with his girlfriend and he won't have to put up with this anymore.

Last time they've been alone he woke up with her laying next to him and didn't realize she wasn't a dream or a hallucination, that he could kiss without the world crashing down all around them, until he was close enough to feel her breath.

He kicks away that image from his mind.

But suddenly there's an alarm in his brain, and he's getting up from his bed. Fast.

"Are you hurt? Did someone kidnap you?" His retrieval specialist mind-set is already defining the faster and most efficient way to proceed with her retrieval before breakfast time. However, she tells him she's 'fine, fabulous, well I did lose the chance to break into my favourite's security system company party, but I guess I can just go and watch their new product once it get installed at the City National Bank, so-'

"Parker!" this time he does snap, interrupting her.

"Uh"

"Why did you call me?" He's trying to be patient here, really, but she's making it very hard on him.

"I couldn't sleep."

"I am not your personal entertainer."

"You don't talk that much." she agrees.

"Then why did you call me?"

"Because you're the only one that would answer," she states simply - all the others are sleeping right now. "Would you come with me to the Museum?"

"You mean, in the morning?" He asks, confused.

"No, I mean right now." She answers. "I can bypass their system entering by a window that's on the-"

"Why don't you just watch some TV? Or try reading a book?" He suggests. She should try normal sometimes, she could even enjoy it – maybe.

"I don't have any, which it's a pity because children on TV always fall asleep right away when someone read them a story. Books must very boring. I don't know why they print the whole thing if they never go past third page."

Eliot's brain is absorbing the information and he finds himself connecting the dots. Picturing Parker as a kid. In his mind she's all blond and wild and innocent. In his mind she's all alone.

"No one ever read anything to you?"

"Of course they did, Silly." He can hear a smile in her voice "When I was eleven, an officer read me my rights, but he didn't seem very nice so I didn't stay in the car where he had handcuffed me."

"It's not really the same as a book…" His voice is soft, but the room is so empty and silent that it reaches her just the same.

"I know. Books are longer." There's curiosity in her voice. "You like them. You're always reading when we've got nothing to do."

"Yeah, I like them." There is this little ache inside of him, and he's trying hard to find the right words to take it away but he knows he can't. The problem is not what there is, it's what is missing.

There's this voice inside of him – maybe his conscience, he never listened to it until he got stuck with his messed up team, so he can't really tell. It says 'Of course she's a thief, they stole from her first.'

Someone – someone he so very badly wants to beat into a bloody pulp that can't be identified as human being, because he's left nothing solid or bigger then a rice grain – took away her childhood, and he would like to steal it back for her.

He can't do that, so he must settle for something simple, more immediate.

"Would you like me to read to you?" he asks, going to open one of the white sliding doors behind which he has his handmade library shelves.

"Would you? Do I need to do something?"

"Just lay down on your bed, put your phone next to your ear and relax."

He can hear the eagerness in the way she breathes, and he lets his fingers touch his books, all lined up on the shelves he made, looking for something she would like.

He's already picked Arsene Lupin versus Sherlock Holmeswhen he remembers an old, wore out copy of The Little Prince buried into a corner of the lower shelf. He can keep Maurice LeBlanc for later, he thinks. He takes his glasses, he sits on the futon with one light one and starts reading.

"Once when I was six years old I saw a beautiful picture in a book about the primeval forest called True Stories-"

"That's a strange name for a forest, don't you think?"

"Yes" he concedes.

"But it's pretty."

"Yes, it is."

"Go on,"

And he does continue; even after she stops him to asks him mere nothings, or to say that there's nothing bad about liking figures – which doesn't surprise him.

"I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He had never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures-"

"That must be-" But she doesn't end her sentence. He thinks she's probably trying to figure out if that's sad or beautiful "Go on…"

"If you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life…" Eliot can hear her holding her breath. Like a happy child, or a little girl waiting her first kiss.

He's got things to do, his vegetables to fertilize and bread to make but, right now, he can't help but be glad she called him.

"Are you still there?" He asks, just to push her a little, to listen to her eager voice reassuring him. He wants to hear, "I'm here, right here. Didn't move an inch," and then beg "Please, continue."

He smiles at her tender rapture, wishing he could fill the void in her memories. Wishing he could look at that lonely kid in the eyes, and take her by the hand and bring her somewhere safe. Somewhere warm.

But you can never go back, only forward.

"...You see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…"

He thinks this is more or less the point when Parker started to slip peacefully into sleep, leaving him alone into a grain-field with the first lights of dawn shyly spreading in the sky behind his windows. He wonders if she will like to listen to Lupin's adventures next time. He bets she will.