Leverage fic: Spring force
Spring force
Parker, PG, preseries, ~700 words
Written for the halfamoon 2010 Impromptuthon, to july_july_july's prompt how did Parker get to be the best?
Parker had it all worked out in her head, saw it as a truth always visible no matter how twisty things looked between here and there: to keep grown-ups from pushing her around, she needed money. Freedom to live where she wanted, come and go as she wanted, where no one could take from her what she didn't want to give away.
Other kids didn't worry her; Parker learned how to fight early, and how to cheat while doing it. Grown-ups you could only fend off so long using feet and fists, and they had other weapons kids didn't -- official forms and phone calls and frowning conversations with people in uniforms, and Parker was a good fighter but she always seemed to lose the other kinds of fights, the things involving paper.
No one taught her how to fight. She just did it one day when an older girl pushed her down in the bathroom at school. Parker grabbed her ankle and tugged. They struggled until Parker jabbed her elbow into the other girl's nose. There was blood, the other girl crying, Parker getting up and walking out, and that was that.
She was a good mimic, watched a lot of movies and imitated the moves, practiced in the mirror of whatever room she was sleeping in that month. She signed up for martial arts and gymnastics; no one thought anything of it. They murmured things like channeling her issues constructively.
But she still lost the kinds of fights fought with paper.
The first time she picked someone's pocket, it was sort of almost but not quite by accident. The hallway of the middle school was crowded and Parker got jostled up against some kid. The top half of a five-dollar bill was sticking out of his back pocket, and it fell all the way out during the scuffle. By the time that was sorted out, the bill was lying on the floor and the kid had already walked away and no one noticed, so Parker picked it up and put it in her pocket.
The next time she tried doing it on purpose, and got away with it. So she kept doing it, only at school, not at whatever group home she was staying in, because at school there were kids with a lot of rich clothes and personal electronics and sneakers that cost more than the entirety of Parker herself was worth. She got caught the first few times, the kids felt her fingers go into their pockets, but she always stepped away fast enough they never suspected it was her. Eventually she could do it without them feeling a thing.
She still felt herself pulled along through the system, an insistent current that would drag her under if she didn't keep moving every second. A couple of dollars snagged off her classmates wasn't going to cut it and Parker had plans, big plans, she knew the truth.
There was a locksmith where they threw out old locks that Parker fished out of the dumpster a few times a month. She smuggled them back to her bed, sat under her blanket with a flashlight when everyone else was asleep. Parker used the tools she'd borrowed from the basement of the Home (which she'd return in the morning because they needed them to get things fixed) and took the locks apart, got her fingers greasy with the grime on the tumblers. Eventually she acquired a lockpick set and some books, practiced until she could do it fast. She loved the click when the locks opened. It made it feel like she could breathe more easily, knowing she could open every door wherever she was.
In her first place of her very own, a room in a boarding house, she arranged string in a grid on the floor, covering the entire stained, ragged carpet. Then she did backbends and walkovers and handstands until she could do it without moving the string out of place. She set the string out in a tighter grid, and did it again.
Actually doing it with the motion-sensor lasers at the gallery was a breeze.
The first time she went rappelling, it felt like it did the first time she knew she could open every lock, and the grown-ups and their paperwork and their frowning conversations could snatch at her all they wanted, but they couldn't touch her.
Parker, PG, preseries, ~700 words
Written for the halfamoon 2010 Impromptuthon, to july_july_july's prompt how did Parker get to be the best?
Parker had it all worked out in her head, saw it as a truth always visible no matter how twisty things looked between here and there: to keep grown-ups from pushing her around, she needed money. Freedom to live where she wanted, come and go as she wanted, where no one could take from her what she didn't want to give away.
Other kids didn't worry her; Parker learned how to fight early, and how to cheat while doing it. Grown-ups you could only fend off so long using feet and fists, and they had other weapons kids didn't -- official forms and phone calls and frowning conversations with people in uniforms, and Parker was a good fighter but she always seemed to lose the other kinds of fights, the things involving paper.
No one taught her how to fight. She just did it one day when an older girl pushed her down in the bathroom at school. Parker grabbed her ankle and tugged. They struggled until Parker jabbed her elbow into the other girl's nose. There was blood, the other girl crying, Parker getting up and walking out, and that was that.
She was a good mimic, watched a lot of movies and imitated the moves, practiced in the mirror of whatever room she was sleeping in that month. She signed up for martial arts and gymnastics; no one thought anything of it. They murmured things like channeling her issues constructively.
But she still lost the kinds of fights fought with paper.
The first time she picked someone's pocket, it was sort of almost but not quite by accident. The hallway of the middle school was crowded and Parker got jostled up against some kid. The top half of a five-dollar bill was sticking out of his back pocket, and it fell all the way out during the scuffle. By the time that was sorted out, the bill was lying on the floor and the kid had already walked away and no one noticed, so Parker picked it up and put it in her pocket.
The next time she tried doing it on purpose, and got away with it. So she kept doing it, only at school, not at whatever group home she was staying in, because at school there were kids with a lot of rich clothes and personal electronics and sneakers that cost more than the entirety of Parker herself was worth. She got caught the first few times, the kids felt her fingers go into their pockets, but she always stepped away fast enough they never suspected it was her. Eventually she could do it without them feeling a thing.
She still felt herself pulled along through the system, an insistent current that would drag her under if she didn't keep moving every second. A couple of dollars snagged off her classmates wasn't going to cut it and Parker had plans, big plans, she knew the truth.
There was a locksmith where they threw out old locks that Parker fished out of the dumpster a few times a month. She smuggled them back to her bed, sat under her blanket with a flashlight when everyone else was asleep. Parker used the tools she'd borrowed from the basement of the Home (which she'd return in the morning because they needed them to get things fixed) and took the locks apart, got her fingers greasy with the grime on the tumblers. Eventually she acquired a lockpick set and some books, practiced until she could do it fast. She loved the click when the locks opened. It made it feel like she could breathe more easily, knowing she could open every door wherever she was.
In her first place of her very own, a room in a boarding house, she arranged string in a grid on the floor, covering the entire stained, ragged carpet. Then she did backbends and walkovers and handstands until she could do it without moving the string out of place. She set the string out in a tighter grid, and did it again.
Actually doing it with the motion-sensor lasers at the gallery was a breeze.
The first time she went rappelling, it felt like it did the first time she knew she could open every lock, and the grown-ups and their paperwork and their frowning conversations could snatch at her all they wanted, but they couldn't touch her.