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Parker rolls his shoulders and scans the room. He's wearing long sleeves and smells faintly of hospital. He's hurt. He's here.

He wonders if it's a theme.

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"That is stupid." He smiles a hair and shakes his head.

"And that's the worst of the damage? You are a lucky young man, Parker."

"Couple of fractured ribs," Parker shrugs. "And I am lucky man. You doubt it?"

"I do not doubt it in the least, my dear boy."

He arches a brow. "You have gotten those taken care of as well, I trust."

"Hospital," Parker says again. "They put me on a lot of good meds. Cute nurses." He grins.

"How wonderful for you, then. I'm sure you're eager to get back?"

He laughs, however, and takes another slow drag of his smoke. He might be watching Parker out of the corner of his eye, the mildest bit concerned.

Parker watches, mimics. Watching Lawrence smoke feels like watching something personal, sometimes.

"Not really," Parker says. "Fleeing from the law is never something you want to get back to."

Sometimes it is personal.

He pauses, thinking. "Then you should stay here for a bit. The authorities tend to forget."

A smile.

Parker smokes for a second, exhales. "I can't leave my partner there, all alone."

"I didn't mean forever. Simply until your arm is healed up properly."

Duh.

Parker smiles, a light joke, because otherwise he'd snap at the idea of leaving Longbaugh alone at all.

"I think that even that would be too long."

Lawrence understands that it's hard to think about leaving someone you're all but attached to by the hip.

He nods. "Perhaps so."

Parker blinks. "Yeah," he waves a hand. "I know that you didn't exactly get out of England on happy memories, but you miss anyone?"

"From England? No, no. I don't suppose so. The only person that I would miss from Europe at all, oddly enough, is here. Nick Knight."

A smile and a pause. "However ... Feisal and Ali, from Arabia .. will be missed. I doubt they would be happy to see me now."

"The peace thing," Parker says, but it's a slight question.

"It would make anyone resent me, I should think, to have me promise them things that I could not force the British to give them."

A pause. "It was hard enough to allow my trust in at first. Evidently, such things shouldn't have happened at all."

"You don't think that anyone should trust you?" Parker's fingers drum on his knee, once.

"Not on such important things. I'd hate to see it turn out badly again." He sighs, taking a long drag of his cigarette.

"Trusting me on a regular day is a sound bet indeed, however." He's fiercly loyal to people he cares about. Right now there are about three of these people.

"Ah, but, Lawrence, the important times are when it matters," Parker says. It's a little hard, the look in his eyes. Because, what's the use of trusting someone for drinks, if you can't trust them to turn up when the shooting is heavy and the timing is right?

And his own is just as hard, just as sharp.

"I am aware of such things, Parker. And had I any ability to change the peace, I would have done it. I do not make plans to break promises to people that I protect."

He's continually appealing for Feisal and the Arabs to Britain. Some day they will listen, he hopes...even if he doesn't know that it will be sooner than he thinks. Lawrence is a person who can be trusted to death.

Parker looks at him hard, nearly like he's looking for something. "We're always trying to keep those promises," Parker says. "Life never works like we plan. Ever."

"Then you work harder, Parker."

He keeps his gaze on the other man - steady, because he's not lying - because he has risked life and limb for what he believed in and the people he loved and would do it again a thousand times over.

"Do you?" Parker asks. "Or do you give up and crawl into a hole?"

He's watching, now, and seeing something that makes him nod.

"I do not give up, Parker."

He's not given up now. He simply realized that the war was over and that more fighting was not what he wanted.

"You moved to France," Parker says.

"The Peace conference was in France." He counters, frowning.

"I stayed for the entire year trying to negotiate. I have a definite conference with the Prime Minister in January."

He'll be asked to reevaluate the treaty with the Arabs. But he doesn't know that yet.