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Parker skipped as she made her way to Eliot’s safe house. Today he was going to teach her knife disarms! When she’d started practicing the fighting stuff with Eliot she hadn’t really seen the point of it, she was just bored and this was something to do, but then Eliot had told her that if she focused up and learned her joint locks she’d get to play with knives and so she’d been really good. She’d even turned Hardison into a noodle the day before, demonstrating.
They’d done a little with the knives already, Eliot had shown her some basic blocks with them and said, “remember: winners bleed, losers gush,” which Parker thought was probably the wisest thing anyone had ever said to her and Archie had been really good at snappy comebacks and everything.
But today! Today she would get to put the knives in her own hands. The stabby power would be hers!
So maybe she was a little early -- okay, a lot early -- heading to the safe house.
Easily clambering up to the second floor, she eased open the window and dropped silently in.
Which is when she saw Eliot.
“That looks fun,” she said, loudly. Immediately, he fell on his face. “What are you doing?” She asked, curious.
“That was Dragonfly,” Eliot said, muffled into the carpet.
She padded over to him, ponytail swinging. “What Dragonfly?”
Eliot sighed, pushing himself up and rolling over to lie on his mat thing. “It’s yoga.”
Parker nodded. She’d heard about yoga. “Can I try?”
Eliot had sat up by now and was rolling out his shoulders. “I don’t think you’ll get much out of it.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“You’re already flexible and strong.”
Parker smiled brightly, Eliot gave the best compliments. “So are you, though.”
He paused for a second. Parker sometimes needed time to figure out her words, and she hated it when people rushed her, so she just sat back patiently, rocking a little on her hands.
“For me, it’s not about the stretching, it’s about the...ease.” Eliot tilted his head from side to side a little like he was trying to shake the words out. “Anyone can do a one armed hand-stand--” Parker nodded, because this was so -- “but yoga is about finding the balance between the two points and just,” he flicked his fingers out, “stepping from one to the next.” He snorted. “Lots of guys at class force their way into a really low warrior but they’re collapsing into their arches and their breath is all up in their head. That’s not the point. The point is that I get to just be here, you know?”
“It’s nice to have something to do that is about personal mastery,” Parker said. Archie used to say that over and over ‘personal mastery.’ Parker hadn’t thought as much about that piece of advice as she had about some of the others. ‘Always count the money’ was her favourite one. And what Eliot said made sense to her, most of the time she was always thinking three steps ahead, figuring out the exit strategy, but when she was listening to a safe she didn’t have to do anything else except feel it and get it right.
She knew it was exactly the right thing to say when a real smile bloomed on Eliot’s face, like a flash of gold at the bottom of a rippling pool, tucked away, but Parker knew it was still down there.
“Do you have to do it alone? The being here?”
“No,” Eliot said, the ghost of the smile lurking at the corner of his mouth.
So Parker asked again, “Can I join?”
Eliot eyed her again. “Ok, don’t laugh though.”
Parker frowned, why would she laugh? And when Eliot showed her how to breathe, they did it together.