parker is the one instantly interested in nate's ability to see the big picture. in the first ten minutes of the Nigerian job nate tells her how he knows the guards aren't at their station and she goes "I would've missed that." then at the end of the episode, she's the one that she's good at one thing, but he knows other things. she's always learning things from the others in a way no one else is. sometimes crime things, sometimes real life/social things, sometimes both. eliot teaches her to fight, sophie teaches her to grift, she doesn't hack, but she handles tech better than anyone but hardison. (eliot teaches her to like things, sophie teaches her how to have/be a friend, hardison teaches her to trust) she runs her own jobs, on her own, where the rest of the team never does. at first it doesn't work (the inside job) but then it does ( the broken wing job). obviously we see nate actually pull her into the planning in the long goodbye job in preparation for the ending, but she's been interested in learning from him, learning how to do what he does, since the very start. at first I think it was out of her self-preservation mindset, she didn't expect to have people to back her up, maybe ever. but even after she figures out they're sticking around, she won't have to run jobs alone, she keeps learning. from nate, from sophie, from eliot, from hardison, even tara. eventually, from harry. because of harry, from breanna. she accepts their input in a way nate never did, in a way nate never could. his "sicko love of control" wouldn't let him. but from the start, parker lets them teach her. and that carries over in the way she leads. she controls herself, never them. she makes the final call, but she wants input first. not because she can't make the decision herself, but because she sees the big picture in a different way than nate. she's watched the team save each other's skin over and over because one person noticed or knew something no one else did, and she knows she isn't always that person. they all grow so much in those first five years, and I don't know if I even think parker grew the most. but I do think she grew the most intentionally. she looked at all the others, saw what skills they had that she didn't, and decided she would learn.
