This story is PG-13 for language only; it's set season four, after "Survival."

The FAQ for rec.guns was extremely helpful in determining basic gun and gun cleaning information. Any errors in this story related to guns are mine.

Disclaimer: didn't create them, don't own them, and I'm certainly not making any money off them. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and no infringement is intended. Please do not reproduce in print without my permission. Please do not archive. Archive links to this page are welcome.

Thanks to Kelly and Karen, as always, for beta-reading. I couldn't do it without them. Feedback to kirbyfest@yahoo.com is a very Good Thing, and much easier than most of Martha Stewart's recipes.

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It was amazing that she could still feel the gunshot wound. Not badly, not like right afterwards when the rest of her body seemed to disappear, overshadowed by the fire the bullet had left behind. These days, Parker couldn't so much feel the actual pain of the injury, but the entry and exit wounds burned like brands on her skin.

When it was worse than a dull roar, she was helped out by her good friend scotch, or by whatever alcohol she had around the house. Vodka worked. Gin was there as a last resort and resulted in a morning from hell where even Sydney's gentle voice hurt like nails on a chalkboard.

Even the alcohol didn't totally dull the memories, though. Having a murderous brother, a brother who wanted your molecules splattered across the tri-county area, tended to bother one for a while. She kept seeing the disarmed bomb sitting there, kept feeling the icy cold creep up her spine as she realized what it meant.

Trust your brother, my ass.

Jarod understood this even better than she did, apparently, though she wished he'd stop beating around the bush and just tell her about things. That wasn't his way, though; being a pain in her ass seemed to be his particular joy in life.

The living room was nearly dark on this late fall afternoon, with just one floor lamp providing a limited pool of light for her to avoid. She was turning into a hermit. Work and home, that was it-- amazing what you could get delivered. Parker wasn't afraid to leave; it just felt safer to be home, near the phone. She certainly didn't expect to hear anything from Daddy any time soon, but being near the phone was comforting. Secure. Curling up on the couch in comfortable clothes, clinging to a glass of scotch, was so much simpler than going out.

Her gun was on the coffee table in front of her, sitting next to the scotch. For the moment, the gun held her attention more than the alcohol did-- the smooth metal glowing in the dim light, all that power in such a small package.

She stared at it until her eyes started to hurt, and she had to physically shake herself to pull her eyes off it. Stop it, Parker. It's just the tool of your particular trade. Why had she ever thought she had the option to leave it behind?

She leaned forward, slowly, feeling the pull on the entry/exit wounds. Damn. She'd spent so much time inflicting pain on others, and getting it herself wasn't a whole hell of a lot of fun. Elbows resting on her knees, she stretched first one shoulder, then the other. It wasn't bad, really.

One hand crept towards the gun on the coffee table, brushing the cool metal lightly before moving to the glass. A good, long drink of scotch just might... Might what? Kill the minor pain she had left? Stop her from thinking about Daddy, about the Centre? About the eyes of a young boy that had shot her back twenty years in time and ripped open new holes in her heart?

The scotch burned her throat, as always, but as always she didn't stop drinking it.

Time to fill up some of this dark, empty evening. Time to clean the gun. Something about the smooth, ritual precision of the task always soothed Miss Parker, and made her feel like there was at least one minuscule thing in this world that she had control over. She had no control over her life, or her family, or her job, father, Jarod, Lyle-- anyone or anything. This, right now, she could manage.

The drawer under the coffee table held the tools-- solvent, cleaning rod, everything that she needed. She laid the objects out in front of her in a neat line, to the right of the alcohol and the weapon.

Parker was pulling the last of the cleaning pads out of the drawer when the phone rang. The receiver was on the couch, and she turned too quickly, at just the wrong angle, to pull it from the cushion. Shit, that hurt, right out of nowhere. "Yes?" she snapped, aware that most of the bite in her voice was a response to the pain.

Sydney's voice, somehow rough and butter-smooth at the same time, came through the line. "Miss Parker. Are you all right?"

She wasn't going to answer that particular question right now. "What do you want, Sydney?" It was none of Syd's business how she was doing, really. It wasn't anyone's business.

"I just called to update you on the status of the Chason report you'd requested. You left rather early today." He was using his neutral "You can trust me, I'm a doctor" voice, and she knew it. It should have made her angry. Tonight, in this room with her gun and her drink, it just made her feel a little less wrapped in the darkness.

"What about it?" Parker picked up the gun and slipped out the magazine.

She let Sydney babble on about the report while she laid the magazine to one side. Cleaning a loaded gun was stupid, and if she was going to go it wasn't going to be because she was enough of a moron to leave bullets in a gun she was working with. Daddy had taught her that long before she was old enough to go on her first date. "Never try to second-guess a gun, Angel," he'd said to her, and there had been no laughter in his eyes.

How pathetic that she'd had to learn about guns so young. Looking back, Parker wondered why it hadn't given her nightmares at the time, having her father teach her about guns when her mother had died because of one. Then again, maybe she'd had nightmares and didn't remember them. Certainly possible; she'd thought her mother committed suicide because it was easier than working for the organization that had killed her. The mind blocked out things it didn't know how to handle.

"Miss Parker?" Apparently Sydney had asked her a question and she'd missed it.

"Can we talk about this tomorrow, Sydney?" Her glass was nearly empty-- she'd just filled it, hadn't she?

"Of course." She heard paper rustling. "Get some rest, Miss Parker."

Parker laughed, humorlessly. "Right." She clicked the phone off before Sydney could say anything else, tossing it over her shoulder to the sofa.

First, more scotch. She scrambled off the floor, over to the bar, and brought the bottle over to the coffee table. Silly to have to keep getting up for it; might as well have it here with her.

She filled the glass about a quarter full, then screwed the top back on and shoved the bottle out of the way of her work space. With one finger, Parker poked at the cartridge she'd pulled from her gun. It was such a small thing to have defined her life so completely, and in so many different, terrible ways.

She shook herself, again. Enough reminiscing. It didn't do any good. It hurt too much.

The phone rang again. This time, she turned more slowly to grab at the receiver-- in some areas, at least, she learned her lesson. "What?" she barked.

It was some drone from the Centre with a procedural question that they apparently couldn't find anyone else to answer; Parker dealt with it swiftly and none too kindly. There was a reason she didn't have many friends at the Centre, and it wasn't entirely due to whose daughter she was.

It was completely dark now, and no matter how loath she was to get up Parker recognized that cleaning her gun with almost no light was idiotic. Leaning on the coffee table, she stood up and was surprised to feel the scotch hit her, all at once, like a rough back-handed slap. Shit.

Moving slowly, she went to the credenza and turned on another lamp, then turned and surveyed the room. She felt like the room was swaying gently. She'd had more to drink than she thought, and she hadn't really eaten anything today. The glint of metal caught Parker's eye, and she paused. Even unloaded, she wasn't going to finish cleaning that gun tonight and risk damaging it. It was a good weapon, her weapon, and she wasn't going to screw it up by cleaning it when she'd had one scotch too many.

Just one scotch too many? whispered a voice in the back of her head, following her as she went to the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat in there. Just one?

"Shut up," Parker muttered, aware that she was now talking to herself. She held on to the pantry door as she stared blearily inside. This was pathetic-- time to get some groceries delivered. She grabbed a box of crackers (probably stale) and went back into the living room.

Ready to settle down on the sofa with crackers and, possibly, just one more glass of scotch, she almost fell against the couch when the telephone rang again.

"Welcome to Grand Central Station," she muttered, tossing down the box of crackers, grabbing the receiver again. "What?"

"It's Broots, Miss Parker."

"Gee, and I thought it was Liberace," she snarled. "What the hell do you want?"

"If it's a bad time I'll... I'll talk to you about it tomorrow," Broots stammered. She could almost feel guilty for making him so uncomfortable-- when he'd gone above and beyond the call of duty to help her, again and again-- but the scotch blessedly dampened any guilt she might feel. Who needed friends, anyway?

"Let's do that." Parker clicked the phone to off-- again-- and sat down, reaching over to the box with a sigh and grabbing a cracker to stuff in her mouth. Mmm. What was it about salt and alcohol? The two just worked together beautifully.

Munching on the cracker, she stared at the odd arrangement on her coffee table. A bottle of scotch. A glass. The portable phone. Last but not least, the gun and its cleaning paraphernalia. Just the standard knick-knacks you'd find in any normal American home.

"Normal if you live in Dysfunctional Land," Parker mumbled before eating another cracker, staring at the gun while she chewed. She should put it away, yes? Away from her none-too-steady hands. Guns weren't toys. Guns killed people. Guns ended things. They'd ended her mother's life, they'd hurt her, they'd tried to hurt her father.

Guns didn't kill people, people killed people, singsonged that little voice in the back of her head. Parker laughed, wiping the cracker crumbs from the edges of her mouth. That one had always made her laugh. She wasn't a fan of gun control, but slogans made her itch.

The voice came back, more serious this time. Guns stopped the searching and missing and losing and crying and sorrow. They make it all go away, away, hummed the voice soothingly, growing louder in her head until Parker squeezed her eyes shut, tight.

No. No.

With the last bit of her mind that wasn't soaked in scotch, wasn't hearing that deceptively gentle voice, she slipped the gun into the coffee table drawer. Out of sight.

There were certain things in this world that were not options for Miss Parker, drunk or sober.

When the phone rang, it was almost a relief this time, and she grabbed at the receiver like it was a lifeline. "Hello?"

"Miss Parker."

Gee, it was the last of the Stooges to report in for the evening. Unfortunately, she didn't think she was up to Jarod's clever, innuendo-laden conversation this evening. "Can't you go torture someone else?"

He laughed, a rumbly sound that for some reason reminded her of Sydney. "It was either you or Lyle, and you won this particular coin toss."

He called Lyle? "Lucky me." She wanted to reach through the phone lines and strangle his cheerful little throat with her bare hands. She could, you know. She wanted to slam his face into a wall until he apologized for shutting her up in a boxcar with her homicidal brother. Just thinking about all the lovely things she could do to Jarod made her feel a little more focused. "What do you want, Jarod?"

"Just calling to say hello, and to see how you're doing." Parker could hear something clicking in the background. She knew she should try to figure out what it was, but it seemed like far too much effort.

"No. You never call without a reason." Her voice was huskier than usual. And-- was she slurring her words? Jesus. Time for bed. "I'm tired, Jarod. Get to the point so I can get some sleep."

"Have you been drinking, Miss Parker?"

"None of your business. What do you want?"

"The same things I always want." Parker could compile the list as easily and as quickly as he could. The dance was always the same. Almost always. "But tonight's not going to be when I get them. Go to bed, Miss Parker. Don't do anything foolish."

She clicked the phone to "off" without a goodbye; standard practice for their odd conversations.

Don't do anything foolish. Goddamn him, somehow he always knew what was going on in her head. She didn't like it, not one bit. She didn't want to think about how he knew; her mind had already gone in enough unwanted directions for one night.

Parker didn't bother cleaning up after herself as she headed up to bed. The crackers were already stale; putting them away wouldn't help. The scotch wouldn't go bad. The cleaning equipment could wait, for another day-- another night-- when the scotch was safely put away, when her head was clear.The gun would always be there in the morning.

The end
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