Who: Parker & Eliot Spencer Where: The Base When: (backdated) Parker's arrival What: Parker arrives, asks questions and Eliot tries to answer Warnings: Nada
Getting thrown through portals wasn’t something Parker was all that acquainted with, from all the buildings and stairwells and ledges that she threw herself off, she’d never really added portal into that category. She’d been told half a dozen times that she wasn’t in Area 52 (or 51) and that they’d need to have someone check to see if any of her friends were there.
She really disliked the sense of confusion, the new place with new people, somewhere she didn’t recognise or understand, but she’d tried to listen to all the information and the rules that she was going to need to deal with. At least until she found the boys and they worked out where they were and how to get home.
Going through four alias’ before being told this was important and she needed to give her own name, she relented on the paperwork and argued for another ten minutes that she didn’t have a last name, it was just Parker. She was still muttering about it when she was making her way out, directions to her ‘home’ written down because she had not paid attention, and a key in her hand.
“This place is stupid.” Especially since no one had told her how she got there. Just ‘the portal brought you’, which really?
It made sense. Not long after Eliot started working with the local military to guard the portal, someone from home appeared. Maybe it was proximity to the thing, a thing he was incredibly unsure about, but at least it gave him this one thing. Not too long ago, he promised Nate and Sophie that he would look after Parker and Hardison until the day he drew his last breath. At least now, until Hardison realized what he was missing and got his ass in gear, he could keep his promise in regards to Parker.
Familiar blond hair caught his attention and Eliot took off down the hallway at a jog. “Parker!” Once, short, a little rough around the edges but slightly less than the tone he usually took with his occasionally wayward thief and hacker. He slowed down as he fell into step beside her. “Heard you’d dropped in.”
There’d been a section in the welcome that was ‘your friends might be here, they might’ve been here a while, they’re not pretending’, which Parker had listened to, but wasn’t entirely convinced. What, like Nate and Sophie were going to be here and tell her they’d been there all along? Or Hardison was there but also at home and nothing made sense.
So Eliot jogging to catch her, in the middle of this base like warehouse thing, and just mentioning it like she’d popped by for a catch up? “I don’t like this place.” It was wild and confusion and she really felt like she was in one of Hardison’s games.
“Is this a con? Is someone trying to con us?”
Parker didn’t miss a beat and Eliot found it refreshing, normal. His old life bleeding back into the new reality they’d found themselves in. He didn’t like the upheaval and while, so far, it wasn’t a threat to their lives, he wasn’t going to like it until he found solid footing in the mental sense.
He snorted softly, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “Neither did I.” There were a few questions he wanted to ask but given she’d just arrived? There would be time. “I mean, I’m still not sure about it, but…” Eliot shrugged, a reluctant gesture of uncertainty. They had to make do if they couldn’t leave, couldn’t go home. He wasn’t stubborn enough to think otherwise.
“No. I checked,” he replied, his scowl deepening. “This place is real as they come for something that came outta one of Hardison’s weird TV shows.” Not to mention, he thought a few of the people there may have actually been from one of Hardison’s weird TV shows.
Being guarded wasn’t anything new for them; not trusting the first layer of perception was something they’d always done, especially since Leverage Inc started up. And while it was very hard to con a conman, it wasn’t impossible. Eliot being on guard only assured Parker that it wasn’t paranoia to be on guard herself too.
So, they were in a new place, without their say so, with new people, that they didn’t know, and apparently the BrewPub came with if the key in Parker’s hand was anything to go by. She’d already been told roughly where it was, but she would’ve found it herself easily -working out where in the world she was and how to get places was something Parker excelled at. “It’s not Fringe, is it? I’m not really ready to meet Alt-Parker with brown hair who like… knits or something.” Because that would just blow her mind too much. “Is Hardison here too?”
Fringe. One of Hardison’s shows, no doubt one of the few that Eliot breezed out on when the hacker went off on a tangent. (He’d reluctantly admit there were one or two that Hardison convinced him to watch as the summary he pitched ended up being interesting enough.) Despite Parker’s concerns, Eliot couldn’t help the faint smile as he tried to imagine a Parker that knitted. Picked locks for fun, absolutely. Knitted? Not unless she could crack a safe with the needles.
“No, Parker, it’s not Fringe. There’s not an alternate version of yours…” He trailed off as he remembered his conversation with Carol, the familiar face over the network. His own twin in the librarian. “There’s not an alternate version of us but there are people who look like us.” How did he even begin to explain it? “They’re not us.”
Fringe would’ve been cool, even if she didn’t understand all the science, there was a lot of action and chasing and stuff. She could’ve enjoyed that -it just better not be Star Trek, because she didn’t like space. “That look like us?” That would be very weird, she was already sure of that. But then, Sophie managed to change who she was all the time, and they were managing to do things like that themselves.
Spinning the keychain around her finger, Parker pondered the situation -not Portland, no Nate, Sophie or Hardison, just her and Eliot, doing… something. Probably not Leverage International without Hardison. She’d told Sophie that so long as they were together, she was okay with wherever they were. But they weren’t all together, and she didn’t have her money -not that she knew of at least.
“I still don’t like it… But maybe we can make it work.” Eliot was here, Parker figured he’d been here a little while, maybe Hardison would follow. If she had both of them, things would be fine. And Parker could be patient sometimes. Maybe. A little. “Do you wanna come help me find the brew pub?”
“Yeah. They really look like us.” In a way that he found deeply disturbing, never having a twin in his life. “Yours is a pilot and mine’s a librarian.” Which couldn’t be farther from retrieval specialist than if he’d actually tried. “It’s weird.” It was a statement he usually heard out of Parker but this time, short and sweet fit the bill. He called it what it was.
Eliot scowled, hunching his shoulders slightly. “We don’t have a choice.” As much as he would have liked to think otherwise, he was a realist. They couldn’t hack, hit, or steal a portal, no matter how much they planned. It didn’t help that none of them had that depth of understanding of the required science either.
His eyebrows rose and he zeroed in on the keys in her hand, the ones he’d idly noticed before but hadn’t asked. “The brew pub’s here,” he stated. Well, there was one piece of good news.
Pilots and librarian versions of them would we weird -she'd never played a pilot, in all the cons, and she had trouble picturing Eliot as a librarian too. The finality of having to just get on with things, to deal with how it was, it didn't exactly sit well with Parker either, but Eliot did have a point about not having much of a choice.
"The BrewPub is here." Parker confirmed, she half hoped that Hardison would be there, waiting for them, with a job or a recon already on the screen, ready to read them in on a client he found or a job to do. But they weren't at home and it would be different. Different didn't need to be bad though. "C'mon, lets go find it." At the least, it would be something familiar.