Title: Cold Oatmeal
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: G
Length: 632 words
Content notes: no content notes apply
Author notes: for comment_fic and hc_bingo
Summary: Once, Parker met a woman who looked like her but had a "normal" life.


Sometimes Parker needs a change of pace from eating cereal in her apartment. She goes to McDonald's instead and orders oatmeal. She gets odd looks from other patrons as she uses the McDonald's pamphlets to cool off her oatmeal. She wants to eat the oatmeal cold.

One time while she was in McDonald's, she saw a woman who looked exactly like she did. Parker rubbed her eyes and made sure her oatmeal was actually cold. After confirming she was in her usual McDonalds with the usual patrons giving her odd glances, she took her cold oatmeal to the booth where this Parker lookalike was sitting.

"You look like me," Parker said to her lookalike. "Can I sit by you?"

The lookalike looked at Parker and her cold oatmeal. "Oh, wow, you really do!" she said. "Sure, you can sit by me!"

Parker sat across from her lookalike.

"I'm Parker."

The lookalike offered Parker her hand. Parker shook it. "Is that your first name or your last name?"

"It's just my name."

"Heather Parker. We both have the same name! Kind of. What a coincidence."

"Yeah, what a coincidence."

"What do you do, Parker?"

"It's a secret." Parker took a bite of her oatmeal.

"You're not unemployed or anything?"

"No. But I have to keep it a secret."

"Oh, that's right. You could be working for the CIA. My apologies. I'm an elementary school teacher. I teach fourth graders. This is my day off. I'm going to the beach by myself for the day."

"Are your fourth graders well behaved?"

"Oh, they're all well behaved." Heather took a bite of her Egg McMuffin.

"You never considered being a thief?"

"I'm a teacher, Parker, but I'm not hurting for money. My husband and I make enough money to pay our bills and take care of our daughter." Heather pulled out a wallet and showed Parker a photo of a toddler. Parker saw that the woman was wearing an engagement ring and a wedding band. "This is Olivia. She's two."

"I don't think I looked like that as a child. I don't know what I looked like as a child, honestly."

"You're very eccentric, Parker."

"I've heard worse."

Heather showed Parker more photos of her family. Heather Parker, unlike Parker, was adopted into a loving family that never once threatened to take her back to an orphanage. Heather eventually went to college; a loan specifically for teachers as well as her parents paid off most of her college education. Heather also met her future husband while in college. After they both graduated, they were married and had gotten pregnant shortly thereafter.

Parker would've loved to have had Heather's life. It sounded better than being bounced around from foster family to foster family, not knowing whether her parents would lash out at her or threaten to beat her. She stopped eating her oatmeal momentarily and thought how happy she would've been had she had a family that loved and cared for her enough to have a happy childhood.

And then Parker realized she would've been miserable had she had Heather's life.

For all Parker knew, Heather hadn't attempted to steal anything in her life, not even an olive from an olive bar. She had never jumped off of a building or buried herself alive. Her friends (if she had any) weren't as awesome as her friends. And her husband was certainly not as cute as Hardison. Why long for the life of a stranger that looked like Parker when Parker had the more interesting and much better life?

Parker finished her oatmeal.

"It was nice meeting you, Heather," Parker said as she headed for a trash can.

"You too, Parker. Stay safe."

Parker walked home, thinking about what building she was going to jump off next.