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Everyone should simply know something about Parker.
If she’s told what she’s not allowed to do, that is what she has to do.
People should simply know this.
Which is why Eliot should have known that when Parker offhandedly asked him, “Can I drive your car?” in a moment of dire boredom, and he muttered a distracted, “No, you can’t, Parker. Hardison, hand me that salt, ” while cooking the team dinner, he should simply know that she would break into his apartment building’s parking garage, dismantle all the security systems he installed on his car since meeting her and Hardison - not that they were anything but juvenile - and that she’d be where she was now, which was on a lonely stretch of highway in the pouring rain nearing a hundred miles an hour with the biggest smile on her face.
She’d been completely right about his car, by the way. It was wonderful. No wonder Eliot wanted to keep it all to himself. It didn’t shudder at the high speeds like so many of the cars she’s boosted had. Plus, this car was forbidden. Didn’t Eliot know how much better that made something?! Eliot bragged about this car so damn much Parker wanted to know just how supposedly great it was.
Really great.
That’s what it was.
Really great.
But…
It wasn’t for long.
Not when, through the sheet of rain through the windshield through the pitch black air, she saw the flash of a sign indicating there was a turn.
Normally, that wouldn’t have been an issue. She’s got some of the best driving instinct in the world; how else could she’ve handled so many boosts and car chases with the police (that she won, no less)?
But it seemed that this was the first time she’s handled a car at 135 mph, in a rainstorm, nearing a turn as tight as this one.
Because the moment she hit the brakes to turn, the car had other ideas.
It skidded across the slick pavement, the vehicle thrown sideways the opposite of its wheels’ intention. Out of pure instinct, Parker yanked the emergency brake, but it was too late. The car tipped, and the ground on this side of the road wasn’t level.
The Charger lurched to the side, flipping over, and Parker barely managed to choke out, “Uh oh,” before everything went black.
Eliot opened his eyes to the blackness.
He was lying awake in bed, blinking at the dark ceiling. Usually being woken in the middle of the night was caused by a vivid nightmare, or something Hardison-related.
But no nightmare, at least not one he could remember.
And he usually remembers those all too well.
He blinked again, traces of tiredness gone.
Whatever it was wouldn’t let him go back to sleep. At least not right away. A look at the clock told him it was just past three o’clock. He could go out for a drive to clear his head and try to get at least a handful of more minutes of sleep before going to Nate’s in the morning for the briefing of their next client.
Eliot threw on some clothes, grabbed his wallet and keys, and headed out to the parking garage.
He turned the corner to his spot, and -
It was empty.
He stared at the empty space, seeing a Post-It note on the ground in the center. There it read: We’ll be right back!
Eliot shut his eyes.
Parker.
PARKER.
“Parker,” he growled under his breath. And just after he told her she absolutely under no circumstances could NOT --
He sighed, pulling out his phone.
Good thing he had Hardison install a tracker on that thing, one that Parker knew nothing about.
The location dot blinked almost an hour away, for some reason parked off the road. Wouldn’t be the first time she pulled them over to do some stupid stunt.
He shook his head to himself, heading for his motorcycle, knowing he wouldn’t be getting anymore sleep that night.
He had to go kill a thief.
Pain.
Ouch, ouch, OUCH.
Parker cracked open her eyes.
Everything hurt. Like, everything really hurt. Her shoulder felt like someone lit it on fire. Her leg felt like a monster stepped on it. That made her laugh. Monster. Monsters weren’t real. But her voice caught, because laughing hurt. Since when did laughing hurt? She blinked. Laughing could hurt?
What happened?
Blinking a few more times started to clear the fuzziness in her head. She remembered that fuzziness. It was sorta… sorta like those drugs they gave her during that job that Nate started to lose his mind. Her head hurt. Why did her head hurt?
Wait…
She looked up, seeing a forest through a spider web. No….. not a spiderweb. It almost looked like…. Glass.
She blinked again, realizing what it was.
A car windshield.
Wait.
She could feel the seatbelt tight against her chest and neck.
She was in a car.
When was she --?
It hit her at once.
Dark.
Rain.
Turn.
“Can I drive your car?”
Oh, no.
Her heart started beating faster. A lot faster. “Oh, no,” she mumbled, fingers scrabbling to undo the seatbelt. Eliot’s car, I made Eliot’s car into a spiderweb… Did that make her a spider? She was a spider now? What was that movie Hardison made her watch? No, that was a spider man. She wasn’t a man. So how could she have -
“Ow!” she squealed, and stopped moving immediately. That fire that was on her shoulder suddenly became hotter. She stopped moving her left arm, heart beating even faster. Why couldn’t she move her left arm? Why did everything hurt?
She felt the edges of panic, but shoved them back down.
Get out.
Okay… that was always step one. When things go wrong, get out.
Slowly, she reached her right arm to her seatbelt latch, and undid it. It snapped open and unwound, releasing its tight hold against her chest, and she breathed out. Looking through the broken window, it wasn’t as dark as it had been when she was driving, and it also wasn’t raining half as hard. It was still a drizzle, tapping on the roof….
...The roof that was far closer to her head than it was before.
Dented.
Not closer.
Dented.
Oh, no.
Eliot was going to absolutely kill her.
When they’d used Eliot’s car for Nate’s drag race during the job with Lefty’s crew, Hardison had walked past Eliot’s car and brushed it with the zipper of his jacket. He didn’t leave a mark, but Eliot promised him if it did, he would have left a mark on Hardison.
Parker swallowed.
Something told her this was more than a mark.
Eliot loved this car.
The thought of Eliot and what he would look like when he found his car like this had her heart hammering for a completely new reason.
I just wanted to try it.
Parker felt rare tears well up and sting her eyes.
If she could just get the car back on the road, she could try fixing what she could fix. She’s fixed a lot of cars, she could fix this one. It was just a spiderweb windshield and a dented roof, right?
It took her a second to get her right hand over to the door, finding the latch on it in the semi-darkness. When she did, she pulled and used her left leg - the one that didn’t feel like a monster stepped on it, to kick it open. It flew open, and instantly the drops of rain still falling started to speckle her clothes. She leaned back in the driver’s seat, that movement making her head spin a little. That’s weird …
She waited until it settled, then stepped out with her left foot.
Feeling the damp grass or mud or whatever it was beneath her shoe, Parker used her right hand to help herself out of the door. The moment she was upright, she swayed, having to use the car to hold herself up. But just as she put her weight against it, the whole car shifted down, nearly making her fall as it skidded two feet across the ground. Parker held onto it with a little yelp, feeling a fire ignite in her left arm as her shoulder screamed from using the muscles.
She blinked, seeing with the light of the sun barely peeking over the horizon, and with a sinking heart she realized the car had slipped down the hill from the road, that apparently led to a steep cliff over the nothingness below.
The car slid down another foot across the ground toward the cliff.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. She let go of the car, but it kept sliding down. She could see it clearer now; the back of the car hit a thick trunk of a tree, stopping it from falling all the way down. It had been balancing precariously where it was until she moved. Pushing on the front of the car sent its nose forward, and now it threatened to go completely over.
Eliot’s car.
Eliot loves this car.
The car shifted another inch down the slicked mud. Parker blinked through the pounding headache, and saw another tree that was just out of reach of stopping the Charger’s descent.
If she could just…
The car slid down another few inches, and Parker’s heart jumped into her throat. She took a step to hurry around the front, but cried out when she put pressure on her right leg. Instinctively she braced her fall with the car, which only made it slide faster. “No, no, no!” Grimacing, Parker raced around the front of the car, limping badly on her right leg, ignoring the fire shooting up and down the limb.
The car didn’t stop sliding. Parker whipped her pounding head around, trying to find something to stop it, and settled for the only thing she could think of. The Charger’s nose was inches from the tree that could have saved it. So, Parker braced her back against it, put out her left - her good - leg and grabbed the bumper with her right hand, then pushed against the wheel with her knee as hard as she could.
The car met her, the wheel coming to a sliding stop right in front of her chest. She grabbed the corner of it in an almost hug, and pushed, feeling it come to a stop, the tree behind her helping. The wheel pressed painfully into cracked or broken ribs, but she did it. She saved the car. As long as she stayed here, it wouldn’t be going anywhere.
The car suddenly slipped down again, pressing more painfully into her. Parker gasped, feeling the pain in her ribs intensify.
Okay… not part of the plan.
This might be what the team mentioned when they said she needs to think things through.
Because she might have stopped it from falling to its vehicular death, but… she also just pinned herself here. The car’s weight was at a decline, and was already far too heavy for her to push off.
Maybe she should think things through…
Her face in a grimace from the pain, Parker lifted her right hand off the wheel to reach for her phone, but it was in her left pocket. She breathed out sharply in frustration when it simply wouldn’t reach, and she tried to move her left arm.
She cried out sharply as pain like a knife shot through her shoulder.
Dislocated or broken.
Starting to get scared, she looked around wildly for something to help, but instead caught a glimpse of what lay over the cliff a few feet away.
Green.
Some hundred feet below was a smattering of treetops, all in different arrays of green.
She quickly turned back around, fear hitching even more in her chest. “Help!” she whispered breathlessly.
“Parker! You drive like a crazy person! Don’t you even think about what could happen if you lost control?”
The day Hardison yelled at her for “almost killing him” or whatever. She’d thought he was just overreacting and being, well, Hardison.
She’s never thought about things going wrong.
But if not for the tree that had stopped the Charger from going completely over, she would be at the bottom with it.
And she was pretty sure she wouldn't still be breathing.
She really never did think things through.
The only thing she was good at was getting herself out of bad situations.
But…
She blinked at the Charger’s wheel, looking at the spiderweb cracks in the windows and felt a tear mix with the rain on her face.
Something told her Eliot wouldn’t have to worry about being the one to kill her.
It was nearing five o’clock in the morning, and the sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon.
It might have been a nice early morning drive to clear his head as he drove through the mountains on the outskirts of the city, but every other thought was an angry one deciding just how he was going to yell at Parker, as well as the constant vigilance of the tight curves with it still raining.
Eliot pulled over for the fourth time to check the Charger’s tracker, noting that he was one bend in the road away from where she parked. He stuffed his phone back in his jacket, flipped down his visor and got back on the road. He slowed considerably as he neared the next turn, then slammed on the brakes.
Not a few yards before him were intense skidmarks on the ground.
Ones that looked far too similar to his Charger’s.
Not only that, there was a young, thin tree snapped in half and several others damaged right beside it, as if something crashed into them.
Eliot shut his eyes, feeling his heart sink into his stomach.
“Parker…” he whispered, the anger gone, fear in its place. He turned off the bike and hit his kickstand, yanking off his helmet and tossing it to the ground.
He ran.
There was definitely a crash here. Not only by the skidmarks on the street and the trees, but the grass was flattened, as if..
...by the roof of a car.
“Dammit, Parker!”
Eliot ran, nearly losing his balance as the ground dipped into a steep decline. He ran carefully, keeping his weight back, following the destruction of trees in his wake.
And there, in a flash of orange and black, was the Charger.
The roof was dented inward. The car landed upright, but it was a mess of twisted metal. Slams into the ground and the heavy trees on the way down shattered the windshield, and tore off the paint in several places.
Eliot felt a strangled noise escape him and he ran faster. “Parker! Parker!”
Fear consuming him, he ran, careful not to fall as the ground dipped even more, and he skidded to a stop at the driver’s side, where the door was standing open. “Parker!”
But the seat was empty.
The whole car was empty.
He took a step back, eyes wide and desperate, calling, “PARKER!"
“E-Eliot?”
It was a breathy whisper, but it was close. It was coming from the other side of the car.
Eliot ran carefully around the hood and --
He jolted to a stop, the sight of her stopping his heart and stealing his breath.
She was pinned to the tree behind her by the car, her face drawn into a tight grimace. Blood dripped down from her forehead in a steady line down her cheek.
“Parker!” breathed Eliot in a strangled voice.
“Eliot,” she whispered again, and Eliot realized that wasn’t just rain on her face . She looked at him, her eyes fearful and sad. “Eliot, I’m… I’m sorry,” she choked out. "I... I c'n fix it, I promise... I..."
Eliot knelt next to her, wanting to collapse from relief because seeing that car the way it was had him convinced she wouldn’t be breathing when he found her, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet. The way she was talking sounded too strained, too painful. The car was crushing her.
He grabbed the front of the car, attempting to pull the damn thing off her. If he even could. He felt its weight; the decline almost doubled what it normally would have weighed. Dammit. “Are you all right?” he demanded through clenched teeth, his voice coming out rougher than he intended, but dammit he was scared as all hell. “I told you not to take my car, Parker!”
“I didn--I di’n’t mean to,” she slurred, and Eliot tried to shove down the extra fear that she had a concussion on top of it all. "I can.. I c'n fix it..."
“How did you end up here?!” he asked her, looking around, finally catching sight of just how damn close she was to the edge of that cliff. His heart shot in overdrive.
“It… was gonn… fall,” she managed, gasping a little.
“What?” he snapped, trying to gague just how injured she was. Talking seemed to hurt. Ribs. The car cracked or broke ribs.
And dammit the car wasn’t budging.
“I din’t want your car… to fall,” she explained, sniffling through the rain and tears.
Eliot briefly shut his eyes, realizing what she meant.
She’d gotten out of the damn car to try to stop it from falling.
The car wasn’t even moving an inch off her. Trying to move it from his angle was impossible.
He carefully let go, though it didn’t change anything in taking the weight off Parker. “Hold on. I have a crowbar in the trunk, I’ll get it. I won’t be able to get you free without it. Don't move, Parker. I'll be right back.”
He got back to his feet and ran back around the car, thankful the trunk wasn’t dented or stuck. Carefully, barely touching the car, he opened it.
He was mad.
He was so mad.
Parker’s never seen his eyes so wide.
He was so mad that his hands had shook.
Maybe she should just dive off the cliff and hope for the best.
Parker felt the slight movement from the trunk opening, and it pressed the car slightly deeper into her chest. She screwed her eyes shut.
But in the blink of an eye, Eliot was back at her side, and she watched him slide the metal bar into the metal of the car’s body, right over the wheel. Then, he looked at Parker. “Once I move this, I need you to get out of there, okay? Just grab onto me so you don’t fall. Okay?”
“Kay,” she whispered.
He counted down from three, then pressed all of his weight against the bar. His entire body shook with strength, and Parker didn’t waste a second. The car lifted maybe two inches off her, but it was enough. She dragged herself out of the space between the car and the tree, Eliot let go of the bar, and she grabbed onto him.
The moment she did, Eliot grabbed onto her just as hard, just as tightly, even though it made her ribs scream . A loud cracking sound made Eliot hold her tighter, but out of the corner of her eye, she watched the car fall over the side of the cliff. She felt Eliot’s hand on the back of her head, holding her tightly to his chest as they waited, hearing the muted sound as the hunk of metal hit the ground however far below the ground was.
Parker felt herself shaking, then realized, that wasn’t her.
Eliot.
Eliot was shaking.
He didn’t release her for a long moment, just whispered, “Are you okay?”
She nodded against him, even if it made her head pound harder and the world a little jumbled in her mind.
“What the hell were you thinking, Parker?!”
She pulled away, and he loosened his hold, but didn’t release her. He was looking at her with those big eyes, something making the blue look violent.
She felt her eyes sting again.
He was so mad.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “You love your car so much and I’ve never loved a car b’fore, I just wanted t’know… why,” she whispered.
“No,” said Eliot, “why the hell did you pin yourself between the car and a tree?! Do you have any idea how--” He cut himself off, looking even more mad. “That could have crushed you! You could have died, Parker!”
“‘Cause…” she said, sniffling. “‘Cause you care about it so much and I--”
“I care about you more, Parker!” roared Eliot.
She blinked. “Really?”
He looked weird then, like he didn’t understand how she could ask such a question. “Yes, really,” he pulled her back to his chest, hugging her tight. “Don’t do that again, Parker.”
“Steal your car?” she mumbled into his shoulder.
“No.” he said firmly, finishing, “Think that I care more about a car than you.”
She blinked, stunned.
Then, even through all the pain, she felt herself smile.