leverage/firefly fic: jacaranda (parker, river gen)
Title: Jacaranda
Fandom: Leverage/Firefly crossover
Pairing: Parker, River gen
Rating: teen
Notes: For sabrina_il in the purimgifts exchange. 1000 words.
Summary: Two by two, what girls can do.
Parker doesn't like it here.
She hears sounds in the hallway outside her room at night, and she pushes herself further into the corner of the bed, covers tight in her fists.
The first time they come for her, she doesn't hear a thing.
--
"What are you doing?"
Parker jumps, nearly slipping on the solar-cell roof tiling. She stares at the girl she'd swear was not right behind her five seconds ago. She recognises her, the girl's room is two doors down from Parker's. Still, she's kind of working to a schedule here, it's not really a good time for chatting or whatever.
She turns back to the edge of the roof and starts looking for the best way down. "What does it look like I'm doing?" she says. "I'm escaping."
"Oh."
Then, because it's actually a good question, she adds, "What are you doing?"
"Followed you."
"Why?"
"You were going somewhere."
She glances back at the girl who is sitting down now, her chin on her knees, just watching. Her feet are bare. Parker shrugs, turns, and steps off the roof.
Five minutes later, when she is apprehended in the branches of an enormous jacaranda tree, she looks back up at the roof but the girl is long gone.
Smart, she thinks, as she is marched back inside.
--
She never gets in trouble for the unauthorised excursions. Not the first time, or any of the times after that.
"They watch us," River tells her one morning at breakfast. "To see what we do next."
They always bring her back. Sometimes she even gets out, all the way out past the walls. Once she makes it to the spaceport the next town over. She always ends up right back where she started. But she still goes.
"Smart," River whispers.
Half the time Parker has no idea what River is saying but this time she just sips her juice and nods. "Yeah."
--
So after the explosion there was a new set of foster parents.
The new foster parents got busted for fraud.
A group home, then, where one of the kids blamed her for something that happened to a cat. She'd liked the cat. It curled up on her bed sometimes at night. When they made her pack her stuff she didn't protest; nothing to stick around for any more, anyway. She sat outside on the steps to wait, holding her suitcase on her lap. She traced the cat's name on the side of it with her finger.
Then there was another foster home.
And another one.
And after that there was the incident with the fire, but it wasn't the usual government lady who came to get her. Instead, two guys in suits.
When they asked for her name, she swung the suitcase a little and said, "Parker." And then she said, "What's with your hands?"
After that, she ended up at the Academy.
--
"I don't dance," Parker says, each time more annoyed because it's not like they can forget, the surveillance devices are always on, documenting everything anyone says or does. They freaking know she doesn't dance.
"We encourage individual expression," the instructors say, each time sounding more like a threat.
The thing is, Parker actually enjoys a lot of it, like the gymnastics, the high ropes and obstacle courses, the covert tactics. Sometimes even Chemistry gets interesting. But dancing? Like she doesn't have enough reasons to get out of here. Jeez.
--
She tells herself sometimes it'll be okay, it'll be okay, she'll be okay. She's not like those other kids, the broken ones. There's less of her to break.
--
All of the kids have something. Going places she's not allowed is Parker's. River has something else altogether, the best at everything. But dancing is the only time she seems to like it.
She spins in circles around Parker, weaving in and out of the other kids in the corridor. They're supposed to be going to lunch.
She grabs Parker's hand. "Come on!"
"No," Parker says, "no, I don't - do that."
But Parker is already being spun and they whirl together until they crash into a wall and end up on the floor in a heap.
She spits out a mouthful of River's hair. River smiles at her before jumping up and twirling away. Parker doesn't dance, but sometimes when she was little she'd hold her breath until sparkles spun in front of her eyes, and it felt just like this.
--
Parker worries about River sometimes, but she's not so good at this friend thing, and she worries about herself more.
You'll get out, River says to her.
They're sitting on the edge of the pool, waiting their turn to dive. River isn't even looking at her. Her lips aren't moving. But Parker can hear her all the same and it's weird, but really, not even close to the freakiest thing she's experienced in this place by far, so whatever.
River's voice whispers through her mind. All the way, out into the black.
Of course she'll get out. Nothing in Parker's life has ever lasted, and this place isn't going to be the exception. It won't. It can't.
What about you? she thinks really loud, and assumes River can hear.
There's water on River's face, but then, they have been swimming.
He hasn't come, she says.
--
They get inside. They work the locks and get in and mess stuff up, take things that don't belong to them.
One night she makes it out to the road past the outer wall and when they come to bring her back she screams and kicks and fights just like they taught her. It doesn't make any difference
--
One day River is gone.
A week after that, the Academy's main Monitoring and Security building explodes spectacularly, lighting up the night sky, but Parker isn't there to see it. There's nothing to stick around for any more.
Besides, she's too busy running.
And she'll keep running until she can't feel them watching her any more.