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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Filling The Gap - by MMB
Chapter 2: Life Goes On
Sydney looked over at Miss Parker in the passenger seat next to him, his brow wrinkling in deep concern and worry. He had almost been too late, almost failed her completely, and it was a lesson he wouldn't soon forget. Had Lyle not called him to the Centre after Angelo began tearing the Sim Lab into little pieces and screaming about how Miss Parker was in danger for hours, he wouldn't have felt compelled to drive over to her house in the middle of the night on a New Year's Eve to check on her welfare. And had he not done that, she would have had the time to finish what she was intending - and he would have awakened on New Year's Day to the news that she had taken her own life.
Instead, he had somehow convinced her to hand over her Smith & Wesson, unloaded it, then convinced her to come home with him. There was no way in the world that he was going to leave her alone after this episode tonight - and perhaps not for quite a while to come - and he'd taken steps to make sure keeping her safe and close at hand would inconvenience neither of them much. In the trunk of his car was a large suitcase with as many of her necessities and personal items as he could reasonably throw into it in a fit of near-frantic haste. Hanging in the back seat was a dress bag with several of her mix-and-match work outfits, and a grocery sack on the floorboard held several pair of her signature heels.
The car moved past a street lamp, and he saw in a quick glance the cold light illuminating her face and reflecting off of the fresh tear tracks that lined her cheeks. She had a hand to her mouth, pressing against it tightly as if to stifle any sounds of her distress from catching his attention, much less disturb his driving.
Sydney pushed down on the accelerator just a bit more, now even more anxious to get them both to his house. How much of her current distress arose from the suicidal depression itself and how much was the result of heavy drinking was anybody's guess. What he knew all too clearly was that the demons responsible for driving her to the brink of suicide that evening could quickly and easily take her right back to that place again if he weren't very mindful and aware.
But she was still alive - sitting next to him in his car, safe and sound. He was grateful to have that much.
"We're almost there," he announced quietly to her, as much to reassure himself as to inform her of their location. "Hang in there," he soothed. "OK?"
He saw her nod out of the side of his vision, and he reached up and punched at his garage door opener as they drew near to his driveway. He steered the car up the drive and into its customary place in the garage, and closed the rolling door behind them. He stopped the motor, then turned to her and put his hand on her shoulder, sensing physical contact with another living human being was something she desperately needed at that moment. "Let's get you inside, where its warm," he said gently. "You grab the dress bag and shoes, and I'll get the suitcase from the back."
Miss Parker stirred herself with some difficulty, glancing over at her old friend guiltily as she swiped at her face with a gloved hand, ashamed of her tears and the vulnerability they represented but having been utterly unable to control them. "OK," she said in a shaky voice and then reached for the door handle. She opened the back door of the car and took control of the dress bag as Sydney retrieved her huge suitcase from where he'd deposited it, then waited for him to lead the way into his house.
The door from the garage opened up into his surprisingly spacious kitchen, lit dimly by the light in the stove hood. "This way," he urged, indicating with a nod of the head that she was to continue to follow him. He led her through the dining room, past the archway into his living room/library, and then up the staircase. "The bathroom is there," he nodded at the first door on the right, "and this is the guest room," he continued, turning into the second door on the right and reaching out to flip on the overhead light. He set the big suitcase down on the bed. "You can hang your clothes in the closet there," he pointed, "and the chest of drawers is yours to fill as you choose. I'm just across the hall."
"I feel like I'm moving in," she commented hesitantly, suddenly understanding the full implication of Sydney's words as she moved to lay the dress bag down next to the suitcase, drop the bag of shoes on the floor and look around her. The room was spacious enough, with plenty of room to comfortably accommodate an overstuffed and winged easy chair near the window, immediately next to the nightstand on which a small Tiffany lamp sat next to an alarm clock and the control box to the electric blanket. There was a low chest of drawers near the door, and an antique vanity with mirror next to it.
"You ARE moving in, for the time being," Sydney confirmed gently and firmly, hoping he wouldn't need to argue his case to her again. "I told you, you've spent enough time being alone - it isn't good for you right now."
"Sydney, I still think this is a terrible imposition," she tried again. "I don't need..."
Ah well, he should have known she wouldn't make things THAT easy.
He stepped closer to her so that she couldn't help but look at him. "We've been through this once already, Parker. No, this is not an imposition; and yes, you do need," he contradicted her firmly. "And I told you that I wasn't going to take “no” for an answer, remember?"
"Yes, but..."
"No, no 'but's. No more." He pulled her close to him and wrapped his arms around her, vehemence making his accent more pronounced. "I'm through holding back and standing aside hoping everything is OK when I know damned good and well it isn't."
She leaned into him, wrapped her arms loosely around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder tiredly. "I just don't want to be a bother," she murmured softly against his neck, finding that, despite herself, she was hungry for the comforting warmth of arms about her and the support of a shoulder beneath her cheek. It had been so long since she'd had anybody just hold her and comfort her like this, not since Thomas...
"You're not a bother - you never have been." He tightened his arms around her slightly to punctuate the statement. "We all need someone to lean on once in a while. You can lean on me all you want to for as long as you need to." He felt her tremble slightly as his words sank in, and one hand came up to rub across her shoulder slowly and comfortingly. "I've got you now. You'll be alright, I promise."
In the distance, Miss Parker heard the sound of Sydney's grandfather clock in the living room, chiming away the midnight hour and announcing the arrival of the New Year, and she shivered violently within the embrace. "I was ... planning to wait until midnight... and then I was going to..." she tried to explain, her voice shaking with an inner chill. "If you hadn't come when you did..."
"Don't think of that anymore," he shushed at her, protectively pulling her even closer as he realized just exactly how close he had come to losing her. "You're safe, and you're not going to be alone anymore. I'm right here." He rested his cheek against her hair, closing his eyes and once more offering silent thanks that he'd managed to get to her before she'd acted on her lethal plans.
"I'm so tired." She shivered again, although she still had on her heavy leather overcoat and gloves. "And cold."
"I know." He loosened his hold on her so that he could step back a bit and see her face. He smoothed the backs of his fingers very gently across her cheeks in an unthinking caress, noting that she looked ready to collapse at any moment. "This has been a very hard night for you, and what you need now more than anything else is rest. So why don't you get yourself ready for bed while I make you some herbal tea to help you sleep, hmmm? It will warm you from the inside out too." He ducked his head so as to catch her gaze. "Would you like that?"
Miss Parker nodded tiredly, but couldn't bring herself to move.
"Then I'll just hang this up in here for now, and put the shoes with it" he said in a take-charge voice, letting go and stepping away from her, then taking up the dress bag and bag of shoes, and opening the closet door. "And the suitcase can go on the dresser for the time being - you can unpack more completely tomorrow." He moved the baggage to its new place without another word. "Let me take your coat and gloves downstairs." He helped her out of her overcoat, tucking the gloves carefully into a pocket, then draped the coat over his arm. "Now, you get yourself ready and climb into bed, and I'll be back with your tea in just a bit."
"OK." She nodded again. "Thank you, Sydney," she said softly, "for everything."
He paused long enough to click on the controls to the electric blanket and turn on the bedside lamp. Then, with a gentle and reassuring look, he turned off the overhead light, stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
Miss Parker listened to the sounds of his steps retreating in the direction of the staircase, then looked around her again with a decided lack of ambition. Between the emotional vacuum that had arisen the moment Sydney had taken her gun from her and the affects of the alcohol she'd imbibed before Sydney had interrupted her, she had just about used up whatever little bit of energy had been keeping her moving under her old friend's persistent direction and supervision. Still, Sydney had told her what he wanted her to do while he was gone making her some tea, and it was cold in the bedroom without her coat on.
The cold finally gave her reason to move. She shivered and went over to lay open her suitcase and retrieve silken pajamas and velour robe and slippers, removing and placing the photographs of her parents on the night stand next to the bed as a first act of "moving in". She stared, first at her mother and then her father, wondering what they were thinking since she'd not come to join them after all. Were they disappointed, or relieved?
Disquieted by the thought, she changed, hung her clothes carefully in the closet, brushed out her hair and was just climbing into the now comfortably warmed bed as a soft knock broke the silence of the night. "Is it safe?" Sydney's voice asked from the hallway.
"Come in," she answered, pulling the warm covers up over her lap.
Sydney pushed the door open and entered carrying a mug of steaming liquid. "Here. Work on this. Its chamomile, mint and hibiscus flower tea - good for calming the nerves and settling the system. I put a little honey in it, to help it taste better." He came over to sit on the edge of her bed next to her and handed her the mug.
She took a careful sip of the hot drink, then nodded. "It tastes good." She reached out her empty hand and landed it softly on his nearest arm. "I don't know how I'm ever going to be able to thank you..."
Sydney's hand came over immediately to cover hers. "Don't, please... I'm glad I can be here for you now," he said gently. "I'm just sorry I didn't insist on doing this a long time ago."
Miss Parker leaned forward, being careful not to spill her tea, and again rested her forehead against his shoulder. "I owe you my life, Syd."
She felt him lay his cheek very gently against the side of her head. "Finish your tea, Parker, and then get yourself a good night's sleep. We can talk more tomorrow, when you're more rested." He wrapped one arm softly around her in a light hug and rubbed her back briefly before moving back and standing up. "By the way, I'm going to leave your door open, as well as my own. That way if you call out in the night, I'll be able to hear you, OK?"
"OK..." She looked up at him with big, grey eyes and took another sip of her tea. "And thanks for the tea."
Sydney bent down and deposited a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Goodnight, Parker. Sleep well." He turned to go.
"Syd?"
He paused and looked back at her.
She was sitting there, mug cradled in her lap, with a serious and thoughtful expression. "You would make someone a good father."
The simple, poignant statement went straight to his heart. And for the second time in that same evening, Miss Parker saw a tear fall onto Sydney's chiseled cheek. "Parker, there have been many times over the years I have wished you were my own daughter and not another's - but never more than this night." He opened his mouth as if to say more, then thought better of it. He'd said too much already. "Goodnight," he said, turning from her quickly and heading for his own bedroom, missing entirely the bemused expression that his words had caused.
Miss Parker settled back against the headboard and sipped at her tea thoughtfully, then cradled the mug between her two hands, sensing the warmth of Sydney's obvious affection for her reflected in the heat radiating from the ceramic mug as well as the warmth of the blanket covering her legs and lap. She had indeed made a massive error earlier in thinking herself bereft of anybody to whom she mattered at all.
Another group of sips, and she was finished with the tea. She set the mug carefully on the nightstand and reached for the lamp switch. With the room now dark, she scooted down in the bed, lay her head into the soft pillow and pulled the warm blankets up over her shoulders. She lay very still and could just make out the sounds of her host moving about in his bedroom across the hallway, preparing to retire. Just hearing him stirring nearby, and knowing that he was there - and would be close if her darkness threatened again - gave her a security and peace of mind that she hadn't had for weeks, not since she'd watched her father make his ill-fated leap from the airliner. She closed her eyes, convinced that perhaps tonight she might sleep without the nightmares for a change.
Sydney, having gotten undressed and now clad in his pajamas, sat down on the edge of his bed and listened carefully into the silence, but heard nothing coming from his guestroom. He leaned over until he could just peek out his door and noted that the soft glow of the small bedside lamp was no longer spilling out into the hallway from the open door across the way. He sat back up and sighed deeply in relief as he realized she had probably settled down for the night. Just as well. It had been a very long and emotionally draining night for the both of them; and as tired as he was, he doubted that he would be sleeping very well for the rest of it either. He had to be ready to rise at the slightest sound of distress, he cautioned himself. He clicked on the electric blanket and pulled down the covers, climbed into bed, and quickly fell into a restless slumber.
~~~~~~~~
Miss Parker stirred, rousing with the sensation of laying in an unfamiliar bed and the uncomfortable feeling that she'd just awakened from a none-too-pleasant dream. She rolled to her side and opened her eyes sleepily, wondering briefly if she were actually waking up or still dreaming, then caught a glimpse of the full moon shining through a window that shouldn't have been where it evidently was. She blinked and pushed herself awake a bit further. She wasn't in her own bed.
It took a few more confused moments of sorting through the tumbled and alcohol-fogged memories of the night before, and then she remembered - and she realized where she was and how she had gotten there. While she wasn't sure exactly what time it was in the wee hours of New Year's morning, she now knew without a doubt that she was in Sydney's guest bedroom. As her eyes grew accustomed to the moonlit darkness, she could make out her velour robe laying across the foot of her bed and, with a turn of the head, her open suitcase sitting on the chest of drawers across the room from her.
Miss Parker sat up in bed, pulling the covers over her shoulders against the chill of the night. Although she had apparently managed to sleep some, she still felt completely depleted and at a loss as to what to do next. Going back to sleep was out of the question - she had few doubts that attempting to do so would constitute an open invitation to a nightmare. And it was far too early to expect Sydney to be awake or want to be awakened by her uneasiness and confusion, so talking to him right now was out of the question as well. Stymied of all other apparent options, her tired mind could only find one idea to focus on, the one that had been foremost in her mind for weeks now.
She couldn't help thinking once more about the man she had for her entire life loved as her father, now missing and presumed dead after a parachuted plunge into the Atlantic Ocean at night. Thinking of him, missing him desperately, and realizing yet again she would never have the chance to finally and definitively win his love and approval - things she had worked her entire life for - made the darkness in her soul surge upwards again. Her mind quickly found the familiar path of thoughts, each leading inexorably and agonizingly directly toward the heart of that darkness.
It never failed. All the people she had ever loved and reached out to in her life had without any exception either remained forever out of her reach of their own volition or been violently removed from her world. Daddy, Momma, Tommy, Faith... even Jarod.
She lay back down into the soft pillow, a tear trickling down her nose, and she folded herself loosely into a fetal position. So much of her life was wasted, spent in efforts that had ultimately accomplished nothing. Why, oh why, had she let Sydney talk her out of ending it all?
Even as the darkness within surged and once more threatened to overcome her, she unexpectedly heard Sydney's stern and uncompromising voice from the evening before utter a single word - and suddenly before her mind's eye floated the face of young Debbie Broots. Here, despite all of her intentions to the contrary, had been at least one relationship that had borne positive fruits. She remembered then the last time she had seen Debbie, and how shyly proud the girl had been of the praise she was receiving for her achievements at her first dance recital.
Her memory twitched, and in her mind's eye, Debbie smiled at her with that big, open, trusting, loving smile of hers - and the darkness in her heart retreated a bit at the memory of warmth. Her memory twitched again, and suddenly she was back in her own living room only hours earlier, her head nestled on Sydney's shoulder, his arms around her tightly; and once more she heard his fervent "Oh, thank God!" in her ear. And once more, the darkness retreated. Not completely, but enough for her to finally become aware of what had been happening to her again and grow seriously alarmed at how quickly she had managed to spiral downward toward self-destructive thoughts again.
Miss Parker sat up again in bed and reached for her velour robe, her hands shaking. It had been way too easy, all alone in this darkened room, for her to give in to the desperation and loneliness that had driven her so close to death only hours earlier. No wonder Sydney had been so inflexibly insistent that she return home with him, and even more adamant that she leave her gun behind at her house safely hidden away. If he hadn't, if he hadn't insisted she come with him, if she had stayed home alone again, she just might have...
The implications of the direction her mood had been once more carrying her flooded over her. She leapt from the bed and sped down the hall toward the bathroom as she felt her entire body begin to rebel. As it was, she barely made it through the bathroom door, kicking it shut, and over to the sink before she was gagging up the meager and formerly alcoholic contents of her stomach. Tears of horror and disgust ran down her cheeks as she retched time and time again until there was nothing left, and then over and over on nothing.
She had no idea how long she had been bent over the sink after her retching abated, finally too tired from her heaves to straighten up or even clean herself up, before she heard a soft knocking on the bathroom door. "Parker, are you alright?" Sydney asked, his voice a study in sleepy concern.
"Just a moment, Syd," she managed, turning on the faucet and cupping a hand so that she could take a small amount of the cold water into her mouth and rinse it out. She then wet both hands and dashed water on her face to wash away the telltale tear tracks. She turned off the water, dried her face on the hand-towel and opened the door, prepared to flee back to the guestroom again.
But Sydney stood directly in her path out of the bathroom and wouldn't let her pass by him. He reached out a gentle hand and with a finger beneath the chin lifted her face until she couldn't help looking at him directly. The Sydney who confronted her was not the debonair, impeccably groomed and professional Centre psychiatrist she was used to seeing. Instead he was a sleepy friend just recently and abruptly awakened, standing there in concern for her welfare with pajamas rumpled from sleep, face grizzled and in need of a morning shave, and hair in complete disarray. But as unfamiliar to her as she might find this private and intimately informal man otherwise, he obviously was just as capable as ever of reading her expression like an open book despite her disheveled state. "What happened, Parker?" he asked gently.
That was the one question for which she had no good answer, and the one question that could completely demolish her fragile façade of self-sufficiency. Her huge grey eyes grew tragic and desperate, and in a completely out-of-character display of terror at where her mood had nearly taken her again, Miss Parker threw her arms around his waist and buried her face in his pajama shirt. As he closed his arms around her, he could feel the violence of her trembling - and he knew without a doubt that what he had feared would take place were she left alone had probably happened anyway, despite his having brought her home with him. While it was a hopeful sign that she had terrified herself when she realized what was going on in her own head, there were still consequences of that process to be faced.
"Shhhhh..." he soothed with a whisper into her ear, his arms tightening around her. "You're OK."
"No, I'm not," she admitted in a small voice, wishing she weren't finding herself so hungry for the safety and comfort his embrace represented to her. "I'm afraid, Sydney."
"I know," he said softly. "But I've got you now."
"I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to wake you..."
"Parker," he began, putting his hands on her shoulder and pushing back so that he could look her in the face and have her see his sincerity. "I want you to understand something very important. I WANT you to awaken me when things begin to overwhelm you again - no matter what time it is. That's why I brought you here in the first place."
"But I should be able to do this myse..."
Sydney placed a finger on her lips to still the rest of her sentence. "The time will come when you'll be able to do this yourself again, I promise. But until then, trust me just a little and let me help you when it gets to be too much." He smoothed her hair back in a caress and let her see just how worried he really was. "Don't you see - this whole thing has me scared too! I never want to come so close to losing you again!"
Miss Parker moved forward and rested her head on his shoulder again so that he wouldn't see the tears his words had caused, but somehow he sensed it anyway. "Its OK to cry," he soothed softly, his arms enfolding her again gently.
"Not for me," she murmured brokenly, a sense of dejá vu stealing over her. Her brows wrinkled in concentration, and then she remembered - those were the practically the exact words and response that she had exchanged with Jarod's clone in Donateresa when she had walked into his quarters and found him weeping. And for the first time in her life, she began to appreciate the true nature of the bleak emotional training she had received at the hands of the man she'd always thought of as her father.
"No, Parker, its OK - even for you," Sydney soothed back, again tightening his arms around her. "I told you, you're safe here, with me. Nobody else will ever know..." He fell silent as her arms around his waist tightened.
He eventually knew she was weeping silently when he felt first her ragged breathing, followed by dampness through the flannel of his pajama shirt; and he simply moved a hand to cradle the back of her head as it lay against his shoulder. She was trusting him with her tears at long last, and he accepted it as the gift it was and was determined to hold her for as long as she needed him to. Then the weeping grew in intensity until she was sobbing brokenly in his arms, and he found himself berating himself internally for not having seen how deeply distressed she had become of late. Some psychiatrist he was - some friend - not to have seen the depths of her pain. It was with great effort that he shoved this inward condemnation aside to be dealt with when he was alone again; right now, Miss Parker needed his strength and complete attention.
He shushed at her gently, held her close, and let her cry herself out - knowing that part of what had driven her so brutally earlier had been the lack of an outlet for this despair. Time passed, and finally the ragged sobs became weeping again. Eventually he heard her draw a shaky breath, and he knew the worst of this particular emotional storm front was over. "I think you've needed to do that for a while now," he commented quietly, and felt her merely nestle into his chest in response. He stroked her hair comfortingly. "Do you think you can sleep again now?"
She shook her head against his shoulder. "I'm afraid of my dreams," she admitted, her voice once again small and vulnerable. "I think this all started with a dream I can't remember, and I don't want to go through it all over again..."
"Do you want me to sit with you then?" Sydney asked gently.
She shook her head more strenuously. "No, Syd... You don't need to..."
"Stop." He pushed her back again and smoothed her hair away from her face. "This isn't about me. If you need me to sit with you and help keep your nightmares at bay tonight, all you need to do is to say so, and I will." He dipped his head to catch her gaze. "Now, be honest with yourself and me, and tell me - do you want me to sit with you?" he asked again.
"Yes." She blushed a blazing red in embarrassment and hid her face in his chest. "I shouldn't, but I do."
"Its OK," he reassured her gently. "Lets get you tucked in, then." With an arm about her shoulders, he reached beyond her to turn off the light in the bathroom and then escorted her back to the guestroom. He then proceeded to tuck her into bed as if it were something he had done for her every evening of his life. "I'll be right over there," he pointed at the lone overstuffed chair near the window, "if you need me in the night."
"Thank you, Sydney."
Sydney smiled gently and turned off the lamp on the nightstand. "Go to sleep, Parker," he directed in a whisper, then stepped to the closet and, with a minimum of fumbling, dragged down another blanket to wrap himself in while in the easy chair. It was a cold night, and he didn't need to tempt pneumonia while on his self-appointed duty. "Things will be much clearer in the morning," he promised her gently.
~~~~~~~~~*
Miss Parker rolled away from the errant sunbeam that had stabbed her eye through her closed eyelid and roused her. As she slowly became aware of her surroundings, she heard the soft sound of masculine snoring a short distance from her that definitely roused her even faster. She opened her eyes and looked about her, and finally her gaze settled on the sight of Sydney, cocooned in a thick quilted comforter, his head leaning back against one of the cushioned wings of the overstuffed chair, asleep. Seeing him and remembering what he was doing there in the first place touched her heart with warmth, banishing the nugget of ever-present darkness for the time being to a far corner of her mind.
She settled back comfortably into her pillow to watch over his sleep much as he had settled down to watch over hers. In spite of herself, she found herself pondering the unexpected development of finding someone who actually cared enough about her to discomfit themselves on her behalf in such a way. Not since Tommy...
No. She wasn't going to go there. She could sense the darkness swirling malignantly within that thought and the thoughts that would inevitably follow if she continued. She focused her gaze once more on her sleeping friend in his easy chair. Here was a man who had literally saved her life the night before. She owed it to him to consider the implications of that action in terms of the future of their long-time relationship and not give in to the temptation of falling into despair by thinking of her lost loved ones so easily this time. Not that honestly re-evaluating her relationship with him was going to be much easier...
For so many years, she'd been more than content to keep Sydney on the fringes of her world. He'd never been allowed too close, neither by her nor by her so-called "father", and yet he had become the accepted emotional safety net and been one of a very few constants of her life for as long as she could remember. As a girl, especially right after her mother's apparent suicide, he'd been there to comfort her as nobody else had save Jarod - at least until her father had seen fit to order her removed from the room. She knew very well that Sydney had to have turned a blind eye to many of the times she and Jarod had roamed the corridors of the Centre together after Jarod's duties in the Sim Lab were completed for the day. On many other occasions, he had indulgently given her small paperwork chores to keep her busy and out from being underfoot in the Sim Lab on those weekends when her father dragged her to work with him. Why he, Sydney, had also been working those weekends had never been questioned.
She had mostly lost touch with him directly during her years at boarding school and at college, then later in her years at corporate. She hadn't really seen him again until he'd been assigned to her team to catch Jarod after the Pretender's escape. In the following months and years, he'd consistently and conscientiously respected the distance and the more formal relationship she insisted on keeping with him. He did, however, let her know occasionally that he was still there for her should she ever want to let him in. She had often been pricked with his timely, often pointed, commentary or dropped hints here and there - at the time, each of them unwanted reminders of her own vulnerabilities. But until the night before, she'd never been able to imagine a situation where she would have wanted, much less needed, to take him up on his offer. She had simply taken him and his concern for her for granted.
Sydney stirred slightly in his sleep without rousing, his snoring fading away to soft breathing with the shift of position. Miss Parker's eyes slowly filled with tears as she realized painfully that Daddy - or the man she'd always called "Daddy" - would never have tolerated the kind of weakness and lack of emotional control from her that Sydney had fielded with such patience and compassion over the past few hours. "Daddy" certainly would never have been caught dead sleeping upright in a chair in his adult daughter's bedroom simply to make her feel safe from nightmares. On the contrary, "Daddy" would have made it very plain that for her to need that kind of support from anyone, much less ask for it from HIM, was to display a weakness that shone a bad light on the Parker name.
She knew from experience that "Daddy" would have taken great pains in making her feel inadequate and obliging her to apologize for failing the Parker name, him - and herself - somehow in the asking. And yet, despite that, and despite all the other lies and rejections and minor cruelties and insensitivities he'd visited on her over the years, she'd loved this cold and heartless man as fiercely and devotedly as any daughter had ever loved a father-figure. Why?
How could she have been so unconditionally devoted to a man who had repeatedly lied and deceived and manipulated her mercilessly to serve his own ends? More importantly now, how could she not yet give her trust to this gentle soul who had without a single complaint and at his own instigation taken up an uncomfortable sentry's post to protect her against her own nightmares? It was this level of care and concern that she'd always wanted to win from her father but had never succeeded. Believing she had lost all opportunity to do so had been the reason that she had mourned him so desperately, and her anguish had been a major part of what had driven her into her inner darkness.
She caught herself as she choked out a single sob of confused pain and immediately worked hard to swallow back the sobs that threatened to follow in short order. It wouldn't do to awaken Sydney - he'd lost too much sleep on her behalf the previous night already - but it was too late. Obviously his sleep had been far less deep than she'd assumed from the snoring, for it was only moments after she had made that one soft, involuntary sound when his head slowly tipped forward and chestnut eyes began blinking sleepily at her. "Are you OK?" he asked gently, stretching to work out some of the kinks that came with sleeping in a chair as he dragged himself into the waking world. He looked at her again more closely when she didn't answer immediately.
"Yes," she answered softly at last, wiping at her tears.
"Let's try that one again, shall we?" he said in the same, quiet tone. "Are you OK?"
"I was just thinking..." she began, then couldn't seem to find a way to finish the statement. What was more, she could no longer look him in the eye - she had already betrayed far more weakness to him than she could possibly live down, to add to it was untenable.
Sydney, sensing the pain in her voice, gazed at her with chestnut eyes warm with concern. There was no way he knew of to force her to speak, to oblige her to give voice to that which was causing her so much pain that she had actually considered self-destruction an option. When she was ready, she would tell him - and not one moment earlier. Besides, he had brought her home with him the night before precisely for this very reason - to be present when the pain manifested, and to let her know that he intended to be present and ready to listen when and if she chose to let him in.
He then glanced over at the window and noted the sunbeam streaming through, and turned back to her with a soft expression. "I suppose I could put on a pot of coffee," he suggested gently, very obviously and deliberately letting her off the hook.
She glanced up at him again, grey eyes wide with gratitude. "Coffee would be nice," she murmured in relief and surprise. He hadn't insisted on pressing for an answer after all when, in many other circumstances, she knew very well that he could have doggedly persisted until she relented.
Sydney rose slowly, his aging joints protesting loudly at the uncomfortable position they had been obliged to assume for so long. "Give me a few minutes to get the coffeemaker started. There's no need for you to climb out of your nice warm bed before you need to."
He kept the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, but gathered it up like a cloak as he moved with a shuffle toward her door.
"Sydney?"
He turned to look back at her over his shoulder, with a hand still on the doorknob. "Yes?"
Miss Parker pulled the covers over her shoulder, and yet looked up at him with those wide grey eyes still full of gratitude. "Thanks for staying with me last night."
Sydney smiled at her. "I'll see you downstairs in a little bit," he told her, and then walked from the room.
Miss Parker kept her eyes trained on the doorway through which he had stepped, her emotions still very much tumbled and confused, but a little more under conscious control this time. She definitely needed to think things through - now, and not later. Taking a firm hold on her volatile emotions, she returned to her train of thought from before having roused her host. There was a huge dichotomy between the insensitivity toward her of the man she'd believed to be her father on the one hand and the concern for her of the totally unrelated man who had guarded her sleep and just left her to make coffee.
The level of caring she had received from Sydney the previous night and even just now in their disjointed and sleepy exchange was far more than she was accustomed to getting from anyone since Thomas' death. What was more, the kindness he was showing her seemed to be hiding no strings, no conditions or expectations of her. He had not leveled the slightest recrimination at her at all for any display of weakness or vulnerability since convincing her to hand him her gun. On the contrary, he'd only demonstrated steadfast support and concern for her welfare, sensitivity and respect for her state of mind and an unconditional willingness to comfort her when she needed it.
She sat up and reached to the foot of her bed for her velour robe again, pulling it over her head slowly and zipping it up completely against the chill of the morning and the emptiness in her heart. Her world had turned inside out over the course of a single night, and she was completely at sea as to how to begin to participate in it again. Specifically, she was lost when the need to respond defensively wasn't there, when the need for prickly repartee or barbed rejoinder was not only absent but decidedly inappropriate. Sydney deserved neither - he was the most unthreatening element in her world at the moment - and yet, defensiveness had been her way of relating to him for so long that she now was at a loss at how to proceed.
She knew for certain that right now she desperately needed the emotional stability that Sydney represented to keep her from slipping down that dark and dangerous path to suicidal thoughts again. She also knew that he was willing to let her lean on him without recriminations, to allow her to cling to him literally and figuratively when her despair grew too great for her to handle alone. She knew intuitively that he was ready and willing to do whatever it took to pull her free of those dark influences without hesitation. But those were the only pieces of emotional knowledge about him left her now - the only other thing she knew for certain was that she was going to have to go through the process of redefining her relationship with him, and soon.
Last night, she'd considered the possibility of meeting the challenge of actually winning his approval and respect as an acceptable reason to continue living - and as she thought things through yet again, she found she still felt that way. But there was no question that until she knew how she felt toward him, meeting that challenge was not going to happen. After all, Sydney had played his own role in the lies and deceptions of her life - not the least of which being that he had known her mother hadn't really committed suicide all those years ago. Regardless of the situational ethics of his motives, he had been less than completely trustworthy more than once.
But then, had "Daddy" done better? And she had trusted HIM, implicitly... Was the prospect of trusting Sydney even half as much as she had trusted "Daddy" such a bad thing?
No, she decided, but it had been easier to keep Sydney simply on the fringes of her world, never having to balance his actions or motives against her own or even "Daddy's". She could no longer afford to do that anymore, however; and there were risks inherent in the process of changing that. In trying to learn to trust Sydney, she would have to face some of her own ethical failures, as well as deal straightforwardly with "Daddy's" obvious shortcomings.
She threw back the covers and put her feet down on the carpeted floor, then barefooted over to her open overnight case to pull out a pair of heavier socks and her thin slippers. She sat on the end of the bed and drew them on, grateful that she'd at least had the foresight despite her distress and confusion to pack them in the first place. She then carefully made the bed and pulled the bedspread smooth and taut before she followed in Sydney's footsteps down the hallway and down the stairs.
The smell of fresh brewing coffee met her halfway down the stairs. Now comfortably clad in a warm felt bathrobe and corduroy slippers, Sydney had his back to her as she stepped into the kitchen, reaching up into his cupboards for coffee mugs and plates for breakfast. He smiled easily at her as he turned. "There you are. Here, if you wouldn't mind..." he said, handing her the plates. "Coffee will be ready in just a bit."
Miss Parker carried the plates to the little drop-leaf kitchen table, setting them at two of the places that had the best views of the back yard through the arcadia doors. Outside, the snow that blanketed lawn and bush alike sparkled in the sunlight, looking almost too crisp and clean and light-filled to be real. She stepped closer to the glass, shivering a little as the chill from outside seeped through, immersing herself in a view that held no memories either good or bad for her.
Sydney watched her study his snow-covered back yard with an emotionless, empty expression. He had expected nothing more or less than this emotional limbo from her this morning. He looked down at the coffeemaker with a twinge of impatience, and the moment there was enough of the dark liquid to fill both mugs, he did so.
"Here," he said softly, walking over to her and handing her one of the mugs, "I know how much you enjoy your first cup of coffee in the morning."
Her grey eyes flashed in gratitude as she took the mug from him and inhaled the savory scent of the brew. "Thanks," she muttered, then took a careful sip of the scalding drink. "I should ask you to teach Broots how to make coffee..."
He chuckled gently with her, then sipped from his own mug and seated himself at the table. "Here and I thought you liked Broots' concoction..." Her responding glare of astonished denial made him chuckle louder.
"Sydney, this tastes like real coffee," she informed him carefully, pointing into her mug. "Broots' idea of coffee tastes like caffeinated mud." Then, as if she had run out of energy to make small talk, she turned back to looking out his arcadia door with the coffee mug clutched to her chest for warmth.
"What would you like for your New Year's breakfast?" he asked her after letting her rest and recharge again in the silence of the morning landscape for a little while. "I usually just have toast and jelly, but I do have some eggs in the refrigerator..."
"No thanks, Syd, I'm not really hungry," she answered absently, not turning from her contemplation of the snowy view.
He sighed inwardly, rose again and stepped closer. He covered her hands on her coffee mug with his own and then moved between her and the window so that she found herself looking at him and not the snow. "Yes, you are," he told her softly and firmly, "you just don't know it. I'll agree that you probably don't need to eat much, but you do need to give your body at least a little something for the energy." He dipped his head to keep hold of her glance when she would have looked down and away. "OK?"
Without the energy or resources to resist, Miss Parker shrugged and nodded. "OK."
He smiled at her and cupped a cheek briefly with a hand warm from holding coffee mugs. "That's better. Come on, now..." he continued, and with a gentle hand at a shoulder, directed her into the chair he had just abandoned. He busied himself with arranging the toaster close to the table on the counter and then popping two pieces of bread into it. He managed to fetch butter dish and jar of jelly from the fridge before the toaster spat the freshly crisped bread back into the air. "Here," he urged gently, quickly flipping one of the hot slices onto her plate.
She took the top from the butter plate and helped herself to a pat of butter for her toast without urging, and Sydney felt his spirits lift just a bit. She was at least approachable still. He took his own pat of butter as she twisted the top from the jar of jelly, then paused as she seemed to bog down while looking into the jar. This repeated hesitation wasn't unexpected either, and he had already thought through various ways to nudge her back into the “now” when her grip on reality slipped slightly.
"I hope you like plum jelly," he said in a light, conversational tone that brought startled grey eyes up to look into his, as if she had forgotten where she was and who she was with. As he had expected.
"Oh. Yes," she stammered, and finally took some of the red stuff and began smearing it on her bread. Her knife slowed, then she put it back down and looked up at him with eyes that were swimming. "I'm sorry I'm so out of it, Sydney..."
He shook his head at her gently. "There's nothing to be sorry about, Parker. I understand completely - I'm a shrink, remember?" He watched her try to wipe away the first tear almost before it hit her cheek, a look of frustration on her face. "Hey! I told you it was OK to cry, remember?"
"Oh c'mon, Sydney, even I know this is getting ridiculous," she managed, obviously more upset with herself than anything else. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't seem to stop..." She wiped again at the continuing moisture on her cheek with a frustrated hand. When her companion didn't reply, she glanced back up at him to assess his mood. The warmth in the chestnut eyes that met hers, as opposed to the derision she had been steeling herself against, brought yet another tear to her cheek.
Sydney had cringed inwardly when he'd seen the naked fear in her glance, realizing that she wasn't quite as approachable as he had hoped after all. "What are you so afraid of, Parker?" he asked carefully, reaching out once more for her hand and this time hanging on to retain physical contact with her, to keep her in the “now” with him. "Can you tell me?"
"I keep expecting you to..." she began lamely, then halted, and then tried again. "Daddy would have...." The sentence slammed to a halt again.
That was the clue he'd been waiting for. "What about your father?" he asked pointedly.
"He would never had put up with this," she said bitterly, waving her other hand at her own tears when she couldn't get the one free from Sydney's grasp. "He would have told me that no Parker worth his or her salt..." The tears were falling faster now, for she could hear her "Daddy's" voice in her mind, denouncing her weakness as if he were standing right at her elbow. She was just as vulnerable to the memory of the voice as she had ever been to the overpowering personality that had wielded it. She felt as chastised and humiliated as if he were standing over her in person, chiding her sternly.
"Your father never had much time for emotional display, from himself, from you, or from anybody else," Sydney nodded, grasping the point of her statement and freeing it of her own emotionalism. "And you keep expecting me to come at you with the same sort of recrimination. Is that it?"
"Yes." She was no longer able to control the shaking in her voice. "I don't want to be out of control like this, Sydney," she whimpered, then added as much of a tone of steel as she could manage to her voice. "I'm NOT like this."
"I know," he said softly. "But I think that you need to remember one very important thing." He waited until he had her complete attention, then continued, "My last name isn't Parker. I'm Sydney. And no matter what the reason, I would never treat you that way. Not ever." He gazed at her comfortingly. "Do you believe me?"
Miss Parker gazed at him apprehensively and saw nothing in his eyes or expression that could make her doubt his sincerity. With a shaky breath, she decided that the time had come when she needed to start trusting him if ever she was going to. She looked back down at her toast and the hand that Sydney still grasped in his, and then back up into his gaze. "OK..." she nodded hesitantly.
As if reading her thoughts, Sydney released her so that she could go back to spreading the jelly on her breakfast. "That's my girl," he stated in an encouraging tone, following suit and reaching for the jar when she was finished with it.
~~~~~~~~
It took a little more gentle prodding, but Sydney finally convinced Miss Parker to take a nice long shower and get dressed in the informal slacks and warm angora sweater he had packed for her the night before. By the time she was descending the last steps, he had taken his own shower, shaved, dressed in warm and informal trousers and turtleneck sweater, and was in the process of laying wood in his fireplace. He turned to note her arrival. "I thought we could do with a fire today - it will keep the house warmer."
"That sounds good," she said softly, slipping around the end of the long couch Sydney had positioned facing the fireplace and seating herself at one end, curling her legs under her after kicking her slippers off under the coffee table first. She watched him turn back to his self-appointed task, making no attempt to try to keep her otherwise entertained for the time being. After a few minutes, she began to look around her in curiosity; few had been the times that she'd been in Sydney's house, and never with the time to explore and investigate.
The living room clearly reflected the personality of the man who owned it. A warmly masculine room that called to mind a private estate's library, it was populated with the comfortably stuffed leather couch and matching easy chairs and oaken wood floor-to-ceiling bookcases that held volumes both new as well as old and probably valuable. The two leather-covered easy chairs sat in front of his front picture window with a small table between them with a reading lamp. On the glass-topped coffee table in front of her was an alabaster chessboard with chessmen at the ready, and a stack of alabaster coasters off to the side. An assortment of photographs of several sizes were arrayed on the mantle.
"There!" Sydney pulled the meshed ember-screen in front of a now brightly-burning fire and turned to his guest. She was almost lost in the immensity of his couch, curled and folded into a defensive knot with a doe-in-the-headlights expression in her eyes, but he could see that he once more at least had her attention in the “now.” "How about a little more coffee?" he asked her.
She shook her head slightly. "Thank you, no." She wrapped her arms around her as if chilled.
"Well, I'm going to get some more for myself, if you don't mind," he announced quietly. He motioned at the room that surrounded them. "I'm not sure what kind of activities you normally fill your New Year's Days with, but there is probably enough reading material to your liking somewhere on these shelves. Or we could try a game of chess when I get back, if you wish." He gazed down at her calmly. "Or we could just sit and talk."
"What would you be doing if I weren't here?" she asked softly, finding that she had no preference whatsoever and was hoping that his choice might give her some direction.
"How about I take advantage of having you here for company?" he asked instead. "Let me get my coffee, and we can talk for a while." He moved to step past her towards the hallway.
"Sydney?"
"Yes?"
She tightened her arms around herself. "Maybe I will take another cup of coffee after all, if you don't mind."
He smiled at her patiently. "Not at all. I'll be back in a moment."
Sydney had been gone a few moments when the telephone chimed garishly through the house. The bell cut off abruptly in the second ring, so Miss Parker knew he had picked up the extension in the kitchen. She found herself wondering who might be calling him on a New Year's Day - then chided herself. Sydney actually had family: Michelle and Nicholas. Why shouldn't he hear from them on a big holiday like today?
She wondered what it was like to have family call just to visit and ask after her, either by telephone or in person. "Daddy" had so rarely ever called her for anything but Centre business, and his visits generally had some sort of agenda behind them rather than simply spending time with his daughter. She shook herself mentally as she felt the darkness within surge yet again. She got to her feet quickly and went over to stand in front of the fire as if the warmth of the flames might have some power to hold that darkness back until Sydney could finish his call and return with their coffee. She leaned against the mantle and stared into the dancing flames, letting herself become hypnotized by their random motions and thus empty herself of her emotions once more.
Sydney stepped through the living room doorway with a coffee mug in both hands, and then slowed as he perceived the return of the sadness and emotional limbo. He took a deep breath and then moved resolutely across the room towards his guest. He put himself directly in front of her, should she choose to look up, and waited for her to notice his return and sipped from his coffee cup. When she didn't respond after a short time, he held out her mug to her, nudging her arm with it slightly. "Here."
She didn't start, but he knew he'd broken her concentration. She glanced up into his face with a bleak look, then took the mug from him. "You were a million miles away," he commented softly.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"What were you thinking about?" he asked gently.
"Telephone calls," she said with a tiny shrug, "and family and visits." She glanced at his face guiltily. "I heard your phone ring, and I wondered who would be calling you on New Year's Day - then I remembered Michelle and Nicholas. And I started wondering what it would be like to have family who cared enough to just call up to find out how I was. I've never had that..."
"I see." He leaned against the mantle himself. "I hadn't thought about it, but I can see where you're coming from. To be honest, I can't imagine either Lyle or Raines calling you just to see how you were doing. Incidentally," he added as an afterthought, "that phone call was Broots, wondering if I wanted to meet with him and Debbie for lunch near the ice rink. I told him I had a guest, but I'd call him back later and let him know."
"If you want to go, I can go home," Miss Parker said unhappily, holding out her coffee mug to him. "I don't want to hold you back from enjoying your day..."
"Parker," he soothed, holding up a halting hand and refusing to take the coffee mug from her, "Truth be told, I'd rather spend the day with you. But if you would like to go spend some fun time with Debbie yourself, however, I'll be glad to take you. Frankly, I can't think of a better time for you to do it, come to think of it. It could help you get your mind away from your troubles for a little bit, give you a fresher perspective on things..."
"Syd, I'm just being a sad sack and a wet blanket today. And besides, you don't need to be playing babysitter for me. I'll just go get my things together again..." With Sydney refusing to take her mug, she set the thing on the mantle. Afraid to look him in the face and see his relief at getting rid of her so easily after all, she tried to step past him to head upstairs to pack.
"No," he said more firmly, catching her arm as she stepped past him and hanging on tightly. "You aren't just being a sad sack or a wet blanket. For God's sake, just a few hours ago, you were getting ready to kill yourself! I've spent afternoons with Broots and Debbie before, and no doubt I'll have other chances to do so again. But I won't have another chance to be with you NOW." He reached for her hand, pulled it to his chest and held it there with both of his, his vehemence thickening his soft accent considerably. "I need you here - with me - right now. Stay, please."
"Sydney..." It took work to keep the unhappiness from being any more plain in her voice.
He put a finger beneath her chin and tilted her head until she had to look at him again. "Is it really so hard for you to believe that I would rather spend the time with you than with anybody else?" When she swallowed hard and looked at him with real hesitation and doubt in her eyes, he shook his head. "Look, I came too damned close to losing you completely last night - so one way or another, I'm keeping you very close to me for a while, for my own peace of mind as much as for your sake." He pulled himself to his full height and trained very determined chestnut eyes on her face. "If you go home, I'm going with you. I'm not letting you out of my sight," he announced with finality.
"Are you sure?"
"Parker!" he breathed out in mild exasperation. "What do I have to say to convince you? Of course I'm sure! My day is yours, period - and yours is mine in return. Agreed?"
She closed her eyes and nodded slowly, not entirely sure whether to be relieved or worried.
"Good. Then take this," he said, reaching out and retrieving her coffee mug from the mantle and holding it out to her, "and lets go sit down and talk a while."
"I warn you, I'm not very good company right now," she protested weakly as she accepted the mug back, once more finding herself without the resources to argue with him very much.
"Don't worry, you're just fine," Sydney assured her, putting an arm around her shoulder and leading her back to the couch. "Have a seat," he invited. She reclaimed her spot at the end of the couch, once more folding her legs up beneath her. He seated himself a short distance away, but still close enough that she was within reach if need be, and watched her for a little while. "Tell me something."
"What?" she asked carefully. Considering the events of the last evening, she had expected Sydney to begin using his skill as a therapist sooner or later. Perhaps actually letting him draw her out and work with her fears would be a way to learn to trust him.
"Tell me what happened last night before I got to your house."
"Nothing out of the ordinary, really," she began with a hint of bitterness in her voice. "Raines had made arrangements to meet Lyle and me for New Year's Eve dinner - one of those “offers I couldn't refuse” type things to supposedly give us some family time. Lyle was..." She paused, the sipped her coffee to give her a chance to steady her mood. "Lyle was supposed to pick me up. He called about five minutes before he was to be at my place to tell me Raines had..."
Sydney leaned his head back against the back of the couch, nodding. "He called to cancel," he deduced, understanding now the catalyst to her depression. He looked over at Miss Parker to find her sitting with eyes closed. "Then what?"
"I don't know," she shrugged. "It just seemed like the last straw. Every year now since I started working to hunt down Jarod, I've received an invitation from Daddy for Christmas and/or New Year's. And every time, something has always come up and he's called me at the very last minute to cancel." She buried her nose in her coffee mug for a long sip, once more steadying her mood. "When Lyle called..." She took a deep breath. "Let's just say that one of my first thoughts were “like father, like son, like father”..."
"You were feeling unimportant again. Discarded. Alone." Sydney commented astutely, and when he saw her first flush and then lose all color in her cheeks, he knew he'd pegged her accurately.
"It reminded me that even though Daddy was gone..." Her voice thinned on that part, and then she sipped her coffee again and regained her voice, "some things weren't going to be changing much. I began to wonder... And then I started to think that there was no use going on when..."
"I think that's about the point I came in," Sydney added quietly.
"Yes." Her voice was soft, hesitant.
"OK. Then I came in, talked you into giving me your gun, packed you some clothes and brought you home with me. We talked for a very little bit last night, and then you went to bed. Next thing I knew, I heard you running down the hall to the bathroom."
"Yes."
"What happened to cause that?"
Miss Parker sighed and cradled her coffee mug in her lap. "I woke up and started thinking about the same things I was thinking before ... before you interrupted me earlier. But then, in the middle of all of it, I started to remember how you'd talked me out of ... things ... and I realized I had been going right down the same road all over again, and that if you hadn't insisted on my coming here ... It... it... scared me..."
"But something else got you going," Sydney noted quietly. "What was the thought that pushed you back into the depression the quickest?"
She glanced at him, and her look was once again guilt-ridden. "You'll think me foolish..."
He shook his head at her. "What I think doesn't matter, Parker. The important thing is that you gave yourself enough of a scare with your reaction to a certain train of thought that you actually made yourself physically sick, right?" She nodded ruefully. "Then whatever it was that you were thinking is a powerful thought to you, a dangerous thought for you - and it needs to be faced in the light of day to be handled properly." He looked at her gently. "I will help you fight this battle, Parker. Just tell me what else distresses you so?"
Miss Parker sighed, then capitulated with a shallow nod. "I was thinking about how so much of my life seemed wasted, especially now that Daddy..." she began, but couldn't continue. A tear slipped, and she dashed it away in frustration.
"Wasted? How?"
"I..." she started, then halted as she realized that putting her reasons into words was going to be harder than she had first thought. "Everything I've ever done in life - my attitudes, even my major in college - were things I did to try to get Daddy to..." Her voice caught; the admission was an even more painful one than she had first considered. She tried another approach. "All I ever wanted was to have Daddy love me as much as I loved him, and approve of me and respect me. And no matter what I did, it never seemed to be enough..."
"You don't think your father loved you?"
"I don't know," she cried softly, and another tear found its way to her cheek. "He said he did, but he lied to me so many times... And now that I know that he wasn't even my real father - and that he knew all that time that he probably wasn't my father - I look at what I've made myself become, and I realize that I've been chasing windmills for most of my life. And now, with Daddy gone, even the reasons I did what I did don't matter anymore..." She wiped at her face absently.
"And now you're questioning all the choices you've made in life, and feeling lost and confused," he deduced again, and watched her flush and then grow pale again and knew he'd been spot on again. "OK, then lets look at your choices, Parker. Answer me this: do you like the person you've became as the result of your choices?" he asked next, his voice still soft and supportive.
He received an agonized glance for his efforts. "No." Her denial was only mouthed, as if saying the word was beyond her ability, but the shake of her head was emphatic.
He nodded, not really surprised by her response. "Is that why you thought that it wasn't worth going on - because the person you have become is so completely unlikable that nobody would ever miss her if she's gone?"
The thought sounded so harsh and uncompromising coming from Sydney rather than from her own mind. Still... "Look at how I have treated people - you, Broots, even Jarod..." she said softly, self-condemningly. "I'm arrogant, rude, sometimes downright cruel..." She looked up at him with eyes filled with despair. "I think that if I were you, I'd almost be GLAD to be rid of me..."
"Stop, right there!" Sydney interrupted abruptly, wanting to put a quick death to a particular line of thought that led very clearly and precipitously down into her inner darkness of self-destruction. "Look at what you're doing to yourself, Parker. You're projecting your own self-hatred onto me and everyone else." He paused, and then continued in a softer, more comforting, tone, "The fact is that I don't feel that way at all, and I'm fairly certain nobody else does either."
Startled at the novel idea, she closed her mouth and flashed him a thoroughly mortified glance before dropping her gaze to the surface of her coffee again.
He reached out a gentle hand and placed it on her shoulder. "You do need to look at yourself honestly and objectively, Parker, to know where truth ends and your own fears begin. Only by understanding yourself can you learn what you do have to live for - and I'll be right here to help you do that. OK? I know it hurts..."
She nodded unhappily. Sydney sat back against the back of the couch with a contemplative expression and folded his hands together around his coffee cup. "Let's return to the person you've become in order to please your father. Tell me, honestly, do you enjoy doing those things you accused yourself of?"
"Sometimes," she admitted guiltily. "At the time it happens, I don't think about it - I just react. Its only later that I start to feel bad for making everybody's life around me miserable all the time." She sighed and ran the fingers of one hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face. "I'm getting so tired of feeling badly after the fact, Sydney."
"OK," he said smoothly, soothingly. "Can you think of a good reason not to try to change - to react differently? Do you feel you absolutely have to be those things in order to survive at the Centre, or to be an effective leader?"
Miss Parker thought for a moment; the question opened new ground for her. "I think... Daddy would have said that those things I listed constitute my “edge.” All of the people at the top of the Centre hierarchy have that streak of ruthlessness - and those who don't usually end up get stepped on mercilessly." She sipped at her coffee. "Daddy was training me to take his place as Chairman when he was gone - at least, he was until Lyle entered the picture as a Parker. He's... he'd been training me to be this way for a very long time."
"I understand that," Sydney responded, putting his nearly-empty mug on the coffee table in front of him. "But my question to you was whether you feel you need to continue to be this person you don't like now that your father is gone, regardless of your feelings about yourself?" He saw her look of confusion and tried again. "Do you still feel the need to be ruthless now that he's gone, or is even thinking you have a choice out of the question?"
"The last time I tried to stop being ruthless, it cost Tommy his life," she answered bleakly. "When my mother tried to respond to the ruthlessness she saw around her at the Centre, they killed her. Look at what they've done to you, to Jacob, to keep you from bucking the powers that be and their agendas! And now Raines and his insanity sits at the top of the heap with my serial-killer twin brother as his right-hand man!" She gazed earnestly at him. "I want to survive, but I just don't know how much longer I can continue to hurt the people I care about simply to protect my own skin..."
"You're projecting again," Sydney soothed, reaching for a hand. "The fact is that you've not hurt me, Parker, not really. I know why you act as you do, and you've done things for me otherwise that show me that you care despite your tough façade. Debbie, bless her, sees right through you; and you have her father's undying loyalty because you have done things for him and his daughter too that show that you care for them, even though you'd never admit it to them. All of us know the pressure you're under - even Angelo and Jarod, for that matter - and none of us really takes your name-calling or posturing very seriously anymore." He dipped his head to catch her gaze. "You did know that, didn't you?"
Miss Parker's eyes had widened in surprise as he spoke, and she shook her head in dumbfounded disbelief.
"I think its about time you begin giving yourself a break," he finished gently. "You're a Red File. You should consider putting some of that innate talent into action on your own behalf for a change. At the Centre, you can keep wearing that one mask - the familiar one, the one the sweepers call the “Ice Queen,” the one with that “edge” you feel has a necessary survival value. But you can shed it when you walk out of the Centre doors - if you really want to, that is.
"You have friends - people who care about you and would like very much the pleasure of your company every once in a while. All you need to do is let these people know that your public persona at the Centre has nothing to do with the private, after-hours person that is who you really are. And then you let them know that the private persona would very much enjoy their company too - and then take the responsibility to spend time with these people." He squeezed the hand he had grasped. "The Centre may own us all, but there is considerable latitude within those limits, if you want to explore it."
"How do I do that?" she asked in bewilderment.
Sydney began to smile. "Do you REALLY want to know?"
~~~~~~~~~
"MISS PARKER!!!! Daddy, look! Its Sydney, and he brought Miss PARKER!!!"
Debbie's delighted scream carried across the rink, and then the small form of a child rocketed across the center of the ice to where two well-bundled adults were standing on the sidelines. Sydney looked over at his companion and was encouraged by the tentative look of anticipation that came over her as she waited for Debbie to scoot across the ice. The girl nearly bowled the woman over as she grabbed Miss Parker's waist to halt her forward movement, and Sydney chuckled at the sight of the woman clinging almost as tightly to the girl as the girl was to her.
"Sydney! Miss Parker!" Broots skated a little more sedately to the edge of the rink and then looked back and forth between the recent arrivals. "I..." He looked at the aging psychiatrist in concern. "Syd, you didn't say who your guest was..."
"Its OK, Broots," Miss Parker said, straightening up. "I wanted to come." She unslung the white figure skates from her shoulder and studied them in trepidation. "Although I'm not exactly sure what I've gotten myself into. I haven't tried this in years..."
Sydney had his own brown skates still draped over his shoulder. "Its one of those things that you rarely forget," he reassured her with a wide smile, "something on the same line as riding a bicycle. C'mon, Broots and Debbie can hold a place in the rink for us while we go change."
The two late-comers didn't take too long in the dressing shack, and then came tottering out towards the ice. Miss Parker halted at the edge and gave Sydney an apprehensive glare. "I'm going to end up flat on my ass, Syd, and you know it," she grumbled at him in a surprisingly good natured growl.
"Uh-unh," he shook his head at her, stepped confidently onto the ice and then held out his gloved hand to her. "C'mon, Broots and Debbie are waiting for us." He saw her glance longingly at the people skating serenely in a circle to the sound of a Strauss waltz playing over the loudspeaker. "Take my hand, Parker. Trust me; I won't let you fall," he said in a quiet tone meant just for her ears.
Her gaze landed on his face with surprising seriousness. "You haven't let me down once yet this year," she said as she placed her gloved hand in his. Their eyes met, and Sydney felt something warm and very strong connect between them, and he began to smile to himself, pleased that she'd actually agreed to give this outing a try.
With a cautious step, Miss Parker put herself on the ice, teetered for a moment, then felt Sydney's free arm wrap around her waist and catch her before she could lose her balance completely.
"Better?" he asked as she straightened carefully, and she nodded at him. "Good. Now step with your left foot, push with your right, and then glide with me," he guided her, hanging onto her waist tightly with one hand and holding her far hand with his other so that she could get her sense of balance and her feet under her.
It didn't take long, as he had suspected, before she had remembered the way to move her feet to propel herself across the ice. Debbie quickly caught up to the two of them and then skated in circles around them chattering at them happily as they moved sedately with the rest of the grownups in a circle around the rink. Broots eventually caught up with them as well and positioned himself at Miss Parker's other elbow, then was surprised when she tucked one hand gently into the crook of his elbow while the other hand continued to cling loosely to Sydney's arm.
"You don't mind, do you?" she asked her normally nervous computer tech hesitantly, seeing his surprise at her gesture.
"N..no, of course not, Miss Parker." Broots' eyes widened at her actually asking his permission. He took a second look into her face and noted the softer, sadder quality to her expression. "You OK, Miss Parker?" he inquired in bemusement.
"Not completely," she admitted with a glance in Sydney's direction, "but I'm getting there, at last. Thanks for letting me crash your little get-together, Broots."
"Oh, anytime! Debbie's always asking when we can see you next time - I'm sure she's thrilled to see you today." She saw him duck his head a little in his characteristic gesture. "I'm glad to see you too," he added softly. "I've always kinda hoped that you'd join us one day..."
"Thanks, Broots. That means a lot more than you'll ever know," she said earnestly, feeling that tiny nugget of darkness inside her shrink even further. She leaned toward Sydney and felt him lean towards her in return. "And thank YOU," she added with a squeeze on his arm.
"My pleasure, Miss Parker," the older man purred at her, once more speaking in that tone meant only for her to hear, wearing a highly contented expression on his face. Seeing her begin to smile again, and have that smile be the unpretentious one that a certain little girl had used all those many years ago, had made the heartache and difficulties of the past twenty-four hours worth it, in his estimation. More work would be needed, but he had a sneaky feeling the truly desperate crisis was waning.
"Daddy was thinking about taking me to McDonald's for lunch, Miss Parker," Debbie told her brightly, showing off her newly-discovered talent at skating backwards. "Are you coming?"
Miss Parker paused, waiting for her regular revulsion at the thought of fast food and finding herself surprised to discover it completely lacking. She looked down at the little girl, awaiting her answer with such anticipation, and nodded in decision. "Sure. Why not?" Debbie skated away, hooting in excitement.
"Miss Parker, are you SURE you're OK?" Broots asked again, now nearly dumbfounded at the previously unimaginable thought of his sophisticated and picky boss munching on fries in a fast food establishment with them.
"It's a special day," she commented, once more glancing up at Sydney and meeting his gaze - giving her words a double meaning. "And I have a feeling I'll be ready to eat after this unexpected exercise." She looked over at Broots then. "Besides, I haven't had McDonald's in a very long time either, and I think its about time I took care of that."
Her normally nervous tech looked up into his boss' face unflinchingly. "Alright, who are you REALLY, and what have you done with Miss Parker?" he asked, a budding smile belying the stern tone in his voice.
Miss Parker chuckled softly. "I'm trying on a new attitude for the New Year," she commented lightly. "What do you think of it?"
"I like it - but I think Mr. Lyle and Mr. Raines won't be very pleased," Broots answered softly and honestly, with obvious concern written all over his face.
"Broots..." Sydney warned with a slight frown. Mentioning the Centre might destroy the fragile mood.
"Its OK, Syd," Miss Parker soothed her friend, then turned to the younger man after making sure Debbie was still out of earshot. "The new attitude is for the private me, Broots, for when we're all off the clock. When we're at the Centre, and on the clock, things will be status quo like always - you get to be called a moron and Syd gets to be Freud or Dr. Spock - get it?"
The budding smile was back. "Got it!" he chirped in delight.
~~~~~~~~~*
Miss Parker relaxed into the passenger seat of Sydney's sedan with a quiet, satisfied smile curling the edges of her lips. Sydney had been right - after such a rocky start to the day, the time spent with Broots and his daughter had been exactly what she had needed. The laughs and the comaraderie they all had shared during those hours together had indeed given her a respite from her darkness, and provided her with a fresh perspective as to what she faced in the future, if she wanted it to be that way. And now, after a quiet dinner with Sydney, she was heading back to spend yet another night in a home - not just a house - that had more than just one lonely woman as its occupant. In so many ways, that which had drawn the darkness to her so easily had been effectively countered for the time being. Still...
"Sydney?"
"Hmm?" He glanced over at her, sitting in the passenger seat, in response.
"Why have I never..." she began.
Sydney turned his eyes back to the darkened street ahead of him. "I've been expecting you to begin thinking along those lines sooner or later, considering what all we did today."
"Its not over yet, is it." It wasn't a question.
"No, it isn't," he agreed carefully, not wanting to upset her but unwilling to lie simply to preserve her mood. "You have more battles ahead of you before you can say you've won the war. We've only touched on the more apparent causes of this particular episode - but let's not discuss this until we get back to the house, OK?"
"OK," she nodded in understanding. Neither of them needed to end up in a night-time car accident on an icy street. Moments passed by in companionable silence, and then she looked over at her companion once more. "Tell me something, then?"
"What's that?"
"How does a person ever say “thank you” properly to someone who has saved their life?"
He glanced back at her and found her looking intently at him. "By living a long and happy life, mostly," he began thoughtfully, returning his gaze to the road once more. "And maybe by doing the same thing themselves eventually for somebody else, when and if they get the chance." He pushed the button on his garage door opener, then steered the car carefully from the street into his driveway and into the open garage. "Here we are." He pushed the opener button again to close the door behind them and turned off the motor.
They climbed out of the vehicle and took off their boots before stepping through the door into Sydney's kitchen, lit only by the small bulb in the hood over his stove. "You hang up the coats," he directed as he shed his own garment, "while I put some water on to make some hot chocolate." He smiled at her as she took his coat from him. "That, I think, would make a fine ending to a very enjoyable day."
"That sounds good," Miss Parker agreed, shrugging out of her own coat and moving to do as she'd been told. "I'll stir the fire and see if I can get it going again," she called to him from the door to the living room. The light switch by the door turned on a floor lamp near the bookcases on one side of the room and the table lamp between the easy chairs. She knelt in front of the hearth, removed the ember screen and stirred at the banked coals with the poker, eventually uncovering some small pockets of red embers.
Having watched Sydney earlier, she knew where he kept his wood and what he used for kindling - so by the time the older man walked into his living room carrying two steaming mugs of hot chocolate, Miss Parker had the fire nicely restarted. She had gotten back to her feet and was examining the photographs on the mantle. She had alternately smiled or been intrigued by pictures of Sydney with his brother as younger men and children, as well as the photos of herself and Jarod as both children and adults; but she was drawn to one in which the faces were totally unfamiliar. "Is this Michelle and Nicholas?" she asked, pointing to a picture of a very pretty middle-aged woman and a handsome young man, obviously her son.
"Yes," he answered with a fond smile, coming close. "They sent it to me as a Christmas present last year." He handed her one of the mugs. "Nice fire," he commented, motioning for her to have a seat on the couch.
She shot him a grateful smile, then, "He's very handsome," she remarked with a backward glance at the picture. "Looks a lot like you did at his age."
"Thank you," Sydney smiled at her. He watched her kick off her shoes under the coffee table and fold her legs up beneath her again.
She inhaled the rich scent of chocolate, then noted with a small smile the miniature marshmallows he had floated on both their drinks. "You make a mean hot chocolate, Syd," she smiled and took a careful sip of the hot liquid.
He chuckled at her. "Its nice to have someone to share it with, for a change." He then sat quietly next to her, sipping his own drink and watching the fire dance behind the ember screen.
Miss Parker cradled her drink between her two hands, her mind returning to that same thought that Sydney had temporarily halted while in the car. "Today was... so enjoyable..." she began lamely, not really wanting to make small talk but not knowing any other way to make her way to the important things she did want to say.
"Debbie is good for you," he agreed nodding. "She gives you an excuse to step out of that mask you've worn for so long, an excuse to be more nurturing for a change. And you're good for her too..." He grinned at a memory of her face as she had considered his suggestion of putting on ice skates again after so many years. "And, by the way, I think I should point out that you didn't fall flat on your ass, as you had feared you would. In case you hadn't noticed, that is..."
She chuckled with him at her unnecessary apprehension, then turned serious. "Why haven't I ever tried doing this before?" she asked, casting her mind back over the course of the day. It had begun with ice skating and continued with enjoying a fast-food lunch and then a long and enjoyable visit with Broots and his daughter at their home - people she had so pointedly excluded from her private life for so long for reasons she no longer wanted to remember.
"Does it matter?" Sydney's softly spoken question brought her up short, and she shot him a questioning look.
"What do you mean? Doesn't it matter?" she asked back, confused.
"Of course it does," he answered with a casual shrug, "its just that it doesn't matter in the long run the way you might think it does. Its good to understand your mistakes, but if you keep your eyes always on the past, trying to understand everything about why you did things you cannot change, you'll never take the time to move on in your life."
"You're right." She looked back down with a sigh and watched the marshmallows slowly melting into white foam on the surface of her drink. "That doesn't make not doing this before right, though..." she retorted, as much to herself as to him.
"Right and wrong has nothing to do with it, Parker," Sydney shook his head. "The only thing that really matters is whether or not this change is going to be an isolated event for you, or whether you have any intentions at all of letting this happen again." He gazed at her evenly. "Do you know which way it will be for you?"
She gazed back at him wistfully. "I don't want to be alone anymore, Sydney."
"You're only alone if you never let people get close to you," he said gently. "This is what I was telling you last night at your house, if you think about it. Those of us who care about you are here for you when you need us, IF you will just meet us half-way."
"Even if I'm wearing my Centre mask and have been making life miserable for you?" she asked, suddenly fearful. "I don't know if I want to reach out to someone, the way I used to reach out to Daddy all the time, and just get ignored or pushed away all over again..."
"Parker, since when have any of us other than Raines or your father or Lyle ever pushed you away - even when you were being “ruthless”?" He looked at her sadly. "On the contrary, haven't we all reached out to you at one time or another, when you seemed to need us the most, only to have you push US away?"
"You're right, as usual." Miss Parker nodded sadly and took another sip of her chocolate. "God, what a waste," she sighed.
"That's one of the thoughts that have made you so miserable, isn't it?" She nodded again. "Well, it will continue to make you miserable if that's all the further you let yourself take it. If you want to, however, you can make your memories of missed - missed, not wasted - opportunities into object lessons for the future. You see, if you learn from them, then they weren't truly wasted after all. Let them remind you that there are always going to be new opportunities to connect with those you care about that will come your way now and then. All those missed opportunities can have meaning if you use them to remind yourself to be aware of the new opportunities when they show up and to take advantage of them." He sipped at his chocolate. "Today was an example of what happens when you do just that."
She sipped at her hot chocolate and pondered his words. "I guess I was so afraid of getting hurt - afraid of being pushed away myself - that I pushed away first rather than reach out. I caused my own loneliness."
Sydney nodded. "When we look at our lives, we often find that to be the case." He saw the sadness clouds rising on her emotional horizon, and hastened to add, "You aren't the only one here who's done the same thing, you know." She blinked and looked at him with questions in her eyes, jarred from consideration of her own issues momentarily.
"For a long time, I was so afraid of losing control of Jarod that I never let him know how I felt. I knew that if I did, the others would take him away from me. I waited too long, and now its too late to tell him..." He shrugged as he explained. "Then again, I was so afraid of losing my job or having Jarod taken away, I never dared say anything to you either when you were a little girl. And then, when I was assigned to your hunt for Jarod after he escaped, I knew you'd never accept anything I might say - I'd waited too long again. And so, if it hadn't been for Angelo last night, it would have been too late - and I would have lost you too..." He cleared his throat clumsily, his voice hoarse with emotion.
"Sydney?" Her voice was soft and surprised.
"When you're a psychiatrist, its easy to disregard your own advice half the time," he said gruffly, glancing over at her with a rueful expression, then looked down into his own drink with a combination of regret and frustration - a mood he rarely shared with anyone.
He heard the sound of a mug being put down on the glass coffee table and felt movement on the couch next to him, and then suddenly Miss Parker was sitting very close to him. She wrapped her arms around the arm closest to her and hugged it to her tightly, then rested her head against his upper arm.
"But you didn't lose me. You saved me. You pulled me up out of a deep, black hole, and you brought me home with you and took care of me when I started to slip back in again." she informed him quietly. "When the time came for you to say what you needed to and do what you needed to, you did - and because of that, I'm still here." She nestled down against his arm and shoulder a little more comfortably. "I think you're right - you're still disregarding your own advice. I'm not the only one here who seems to need reminding to let go of a past they can't change."
Sydney gazed down with a deep flash of fondness at the dark head laying against his arm. "I think there's a law against practicing psychiatry without a license, Parker," he stated finally, his lips curling at the edges with a chagrined smile.
"Is that what I'm doing?" she asked quietly, then lifted her head to look at him with her very heart in her eyes. "I thought I was reaching out to someone I care for very much who needs someone to lean on right now. After all, you reached out to me when I needed you most..." she informed him in a shimmering voice and then hesitated, unsure about putting her feelings in the open, but knowing that more needed saying. She offered up a silent, vehement prayer that his response would be accepting and not a rejection - there had been far too many of the latter in her life - and decided to put all her cards on the table.
"I can't bear the thought of being alone anymore, and I don't think you want to be alone anymore either. We've both been alone too long, and we both know that feeling that alone damned near killed me last night." He nodded; she was speaking the truth, for both of them. She took that as encouragement that made what she was about to suggest a little easier. "You've taught me over the last day that I can lean on you - but do you think you can learn to lean on me too, just a little?" She paused as Sydney's startled chestnut gaze caught and held hers. "Please, Sydney?"
Sydney gazed at her speechlessly for a moment, then gently pulled his arm away from her and lifted it over her head so that he could wrap it around her shoulders and gather her in closer to him. "I think I can do that," he said softly, feeling a lump build in his throat at the unexpected and far-reaching implications of both her statements and her gesture. "I think I'd like that very much."
He felt her arms quickly encircle his waist, and then she was snuggling down against him with her head pillowed against his chest. He dropped a kiss onto the top of her head, leaned forward just long enough to put his mug of chocolate down next to hers, then settled back and wrapped his other arm around her too and held her even closer to him. "You know, I care for you too, very much," he whispered, too emotional to trust his speaking voice, "more than you'll ever know."
Miss Parker settled eagerly into the closer embrace. Sydney's answer made her feel as if, for the first time in a very long time, she had come home to where she truly belonged. In all the times she had sought solace or affection in the arms of the man she had long thought her father, each time she had gotten the feeling that he'd accommodated her only under subtle protest or in order to otherwise manipulate her to his will and bidding. But the embrace that was wrapped around her now was like her mother's - warm and comforting and unconditionally accepting. Now that she understood the difference, she knew she would not be pining disconsolately for the lesser offering again.
She sighed in contentment and closed her eyes as she felt his cheek come to rest gently against her head in what was quickly becoming a familiar gesture of fondness. This experience of a mutual affection freely given and received by both equally was what she'd been missing for so long. This and the companionship of good friends - and even that had unexpectedly been returned to her today. In less than a day, Sydney had rescued her from a future too bleak to even be considered and presented her with one pregnant with opportunities.
He had taken her literally from feeling completely abandoned and discarded to knowing, without a single doubt, that she already had all the love, respect and approval she had ever wanted - and that she had needed do nothing to earn them after all. All of it - ALL of it - had been there for her all along, waiting to be noticed and accepted by her, as had been the man offering them to her. All the proof she needed of that fact was the heart that beat steadily beneath her ear and the arms that encircled her warmly - and the fact that, thanks to him, she was still alive and able to finally experience them for what they really were.
Chances were probably very good that Mr. Raines was her real biological father, but that detail of genetics no longer mattered to her in the least. As far as she was concerned, there was room for only one father figure at a time in her life or in her heart; and that role would belong to Sydney from now on. Moreover, she would waste no time in regret at having taken so long to find him, but rather she would begin to work hard to cultivate the new relationship between them properly, now that she had redefined that relationship for herself with crystal clarity.
The real challenge that would face her from this moment forward, however - the task that would give her life a new direction and purpose - would be learning to feel she actually deserved what he was offering her so freely. Returning those things in full and equal measure, on the other hand, would be a far easier and joyful proposition - if the fullness of her heart was any indication.
What was it that "Daddy" had always said - "Life goes on"? From within the circle of Sydney's arms, Miss Parker smiled in appreciation that at least once in his life, "Daddy" hadn't been lying. Life did, indeed, go on - and it really wasn't such a bad thing after all.
Chapter 2: Life Goes On
Sydney looked over at Miss Parker in the passenger seat next to him, his brow wrinkling in deep concern and worry. He had almost been too late, almost failed her completely, and it was a lesson he wouldn't soon forget. Had Lyle not called him to the Centre after Angelo began tearing the Sim Lab into little pieces and screaming about how Miss Parker was in danger for hours, he wouldn't have felt compelled to drive over to her house in the middle of the night on a New Year's Eve to check on her welfare. And had he not done that, she would have had the time to finish what she was intending - and he would have awakened on New Year's Day to the news that she had taken her own life.
Instead, he had somehow convinced her to hand over her Smith & Wesson, unloaded it, then convinced her to come home with him. There was no way in the world that he was going to leave her alone after this episode tonight - and perhaps not for quite a while to come - and he'd taken steps to make sure keeping her safe and close at hand would inconvenience neither of them much. In the trunk of his car was a large suitcase with as many of her necessities and personal items as he could reasonably throw into it in a fit of near-frantic haste. Hanging in the back seat was a dress bag with several of her mix-and-match work outfits, and a grocery sack on the floorboard held several pair of her signature heels.
The car moved past a street lamp, and he saw in a quick glance the cold light illuminating her face and reflecting off of the fresh tear tracks that lined her cheeks. She had a hand to her mouth, pressing against it tightly as if to stifle any sounds of her distress from catching his attention, much less disturb his driving.
Sydney pushed down on the accelerator just a bit more, now even more anxious to get them both to his house. How much of her current distress arose from the suicidal depression itself and how much was the result of heavy drinking was anybody's guess. What he knew all too clearly was that the demons responsible for driving her to the brink of suicide that evening could quickly and easily take her right back to that place again if he weren't very mindful and aware.
But she was still alive - sitting next to him in his car, safe and sound. He was grateful to have that much.
"We're almost there," he announced quietly to her, as much to reassure himself as to inform her of their location. "Hang in there," he soothed. "OK?"
He saw her nod out of the side of his vision, and he reached up and punched at his garage door opener as they drew near to his driveway. He steered the car up the drive and into its customary place in the garage, and closed the rolling door behind them. He stopped the motor, then turned to her and put his hand on her shoulder, sensing physical contact with another living human being was something she desperately needed at that moment. "Let's get you inside, where its warm," he said gently. "You grab the dress bag and shoes, and I'll get the suitcase from the back."
Miss Parker stirred herself with some difficulty, glancing over at her old friend guiltily as she swiped at her face with a gloved hand, ashamed of her tears and the vulnerability they represented but having been utterly unable to control them. "OK," she said in a shaky voice and then reached for the door handle. She opened the back door of the car and took control of the dress bag as Sydney retrieved her huge suitcase from where he'd deposited it, then waited for him to lead the way into his house.
The door from the garage opened up into his surprisingly spacious kitchen, lit dimly by the light in the stove hood. "This way," he urged, indicating with a nod of the head that she was to continue to follow him. He led her through the dining room, past the archway into his living room/library, and then up the staircase. "The bathroom is there," he nodded at the first door on the right, "and this is the guest room," he continued, turning into the second door on the right and reaching out to flip on the overhead light. He set the big suitcase down on the bed. "You can hang your clothes in the closet there," he pointed, "and the chest of drawers is yours to fill as you choose. I'm just across the hall."
"I feel like I'm moving in," she commented hesitantly, suddenly understanding the full implication of Sydney's words as she moved to lay the dress bag down next to the suitcase, drop the bag of shoes on the floor and look around her. The room was spacious enough, with plenty of room to comfortably accommodate an overstuffed and winged easy chair near the window, immediately next to the nightstand on which a small Tiffany lamp sat next to an alarm clock and the control box to the electric blanket. There was a low chest of drawers near the door, and an antique vanity with mirror next to it.
"You ARE moving in, for the time being," Sydney confirmed gently and firmly, hoping he wouldn't need to argue his case to her again. "I told you, you've spent enough time being alone - it isn't good for you right now."
"Sydney, I still think this is a terrible imposition," she tried again. "I don't need..."
Ah well, he should have known she wouldn't make things THAT easy.
He stepped closer to her so that she couldn't help but look at him. "We've been through this once already, Parker. No, this is not an imposition; and yes, you do need," he contradicted her firmly. "And I told you that I wasn't going to take “no” for an answer, remember?"
"Yes, but..."
"No, no 'but's. No more." He pulled her close to him and wrapped his arms around her, vehemence making his accent more pronounced. "I'm through holding back and standing aside hoping everything is OK when I know damned good and well it isn't."
She leaned into him, wrapped her arms loosely around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder tiredly. "I just don't want to be a bother," she murmured softly against his neck, finding that, despite herself, she was hungry for the comforting warmth of arms about her and the support of a shoulder beneath her cheek. It had been so long since she'd had anybody just hold her and comfort her like this, not since Thomas...
"You're not a bother - you never have been." He tightened his arms around her slightly to punctuate the statement. "We all need someone to lean on once in a while. You can lean on me all you want to for as long as you need to." He felt her tremble slightly as his words sank in, and one hand came up to rub across her shoulder slowly and comfortingly. "I've got you now. You'll be alright, I promise."
In the distance, Miss Parker heard the sound of Sydney's grandfather clock in the living room, chiming away the midnight hour and announcing the arrival of the New Year, and she shivered violently within the embrace. "I was ... planning to wait until midnight... and then I was going to..." she tried to explain, her voice shaking with an inner chill. "If you hadn't come when you did..."
"Don't think of that anymore," he shushed at her, protectively pulling her even closer as he realized just exactly how close he had come to losing her. "You're safe, and you're not going to be alone anymore. I'm right here." He rested his cheek against her hair, closing his eyes and once more offering silent thanks that he'd managed to get to her before she'd acted on her lethal plans.
"I'm so tired." She shivered again, although she still had on her heavy leather overcoat and gloves. "And cold."
"I know." He loosened his hold on her so that he could step back a bit and see her face. He smoothed the backs of his fingers very gently across her cheeks in an unthinking caress, noting that she looked ready to collapse at any moment. "This has been a very hard night for you, and what you need now more than anything else is rest. So why don't you get yourself ready for bed while I make you some herbal tea to help you sleep, hmmm? It will warm you from the inside out too." He ducked his head so as to catch her gaze. "Would you like that?"
Miss Parker nodded tiredly, but couldn't bring herself to move.
"Then I'll just hang this up in here for now, and put the shoes with it" he said in a take-charge voice, letting go and stepping away from her, then taking up the dress bag and bag of shoes, and opening the closet door. "And the suitcase can go on the dresser for the time being - you can unpack more completely tomorrow." He moved the baggage to its new place without another word. "Let me take your coat and gloves downstairs." He helped her out of her overcoat, tucking the gloves carefully into a pocket, then draped the coat over his arm. "Now, you get yourself ready and climb into bed, and I'll be back with your tea in just a bit."
"OK." She nodded again. "Thank you, Sydney," she said softly, "for everything."
He paused long enough to click on the controls to the electric blanket and turn on the bedside lamp. Then, with a gentle and reassuring look, he turned off the overhead light, stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
Miss Parker listened to the sounds of his steps retreating in the direction of the staircase, then looked around her again with a decided lack of ambition. Between the emotional vacuum that had arisen the moment Sydney had taken her gun from her and the affects of the alcohol she'd imbibed before Sydney had interrupted her, she had just about used up whatever little bit of energy had been keeping her moving under her old friend's persistent direction and supervision. Still, Sydney had told her what he wanted her to do while he was gone making her some tea, and it was cold in the bedroom without her coat on.
The cold finally gave her reason to move. She shivered and went over to lay open her suitcase and retrieve silken pajamas and velour robe and slippers, removing and placing the photographs of her parents on the night stand next to the bed as a first act of "moving in". She stared, first at her mother and then her father, wondering what they were thinking since she'd not come to join them after all. Were they disappointed, or relieved?
Disquieted by the thought, she changed, hung her clothes carefully in the closet, brushed out her hair and was just climbing into the now comfortably warmed bed as a soft knock broke the silence of the night. "Is it safe?" Sydney's voice asked from the hallway.
"Come in," she answered, pulling the warm covers up over her lap.
Sydney pushed the door open and entered carrying a mug of steaming liquid. "Here. Work on this. Its chamomile, mint and hibiscus flower tea - good for calming the nerves and settling the system. I put a little honey in it, to help it taste better." He came over to sit on the edge of her bed next to her and handed her the mug.
She took a careful sip of the hot drink, then nodded. "It tastes good." She reached out her empty hand and landed it softly on his nearest arm. "I don't know how I'm ever going to be able to thank you..."
Sydney's hand came over immediately to cover hers. "Don't, please... I'm glad I can be here for you now," he said gently. "I'm just sorry I didn't insist on doing this a long time ago."
Miss Parker leaned forward, being careful not to spill her tea, and again rested her forehead against his shoulder. "I owe you my life, Syd."
She felt him lay his cheek very gently against the side of her head. "Finish your tea, Parker, and then get yourself a good night's sleep. We can talk more tomorrow, when you're more rested." He wrapped one arm softly around her in a light hug and rubbed her back briefly before moving back and standing up. "By the way, I'm going to leave your door open, as well as my own. That way if you call out in the night, I'll be able to hear you, OK?"
"OK..." She looked up at him with big, grey eyes and took another sip of her tea. "And thanks for the tea."
Sydney bent down and deposited a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Goodnight, Parker. Sleep well." He turned to go.
"Syd?"
He paused and looked back at her.
She was sitting there, mug cradled in her lap, with a serious and thoughtful expression. "You would make someone a good father."
The simple, poignant statement went straight to his heart. And for the second time in that same evening, Miss Parker saw a tear fall onto Sydney's chiseled cheek. "Parker, there have been many times over the years I have wished you were my own daughter and not another's - but never more than this night." He opened his mouth as if to say more, then thought better of it. He'd said too much already. "Goodnight," he said, turning from her quickly and heading for his own bedroom, missing entirely the bemused expression that his words had caused.
Miss Parker settled back against the headboard and sipped at her tea thoughtfully, then cradled the mug between her two hands, sensing the warmth of Sydney's obvious affection for her reflected in the heat radiating from the ceramic mug as well as the warmth of the blanket covering her legs and lap. She had indeed made a massive error earlier in thinking herself bereft of anybody to whom she mattered at all.
Another group of sips, and she was finished with the tea. She set the mug carefully on the nightstand and reached for the lamp switch. With the room now dark, she scooted down in the bed, lay her head into the soft pillow and pulled the warm blankets up over her shoulders. She lay very still and could just make out the sounds of her host moving about in his bedroom across the hallway, preparing to retire. Just hearing him stirring nearby, and knowing that he was there - and would be close if her darkness threatened again - gave her a security and peace of mind that she hadn't had for weeks, not since she'd watched her father make his ill-fated leap from the airliner. She closed her eyes, convinced that perhaps tonight she might sleep without the nightmares for a change.
Sydney, having gotten undressed and now clad in his pajamas, sat down on the edge of his bed and listened carefully into the silence, but heard nothing coming from his guestroom. He leaned over until he could just peek out his door and noted that the soft glow of the small bedside lamp was no longer spilling out into the hallway from the open door across the way. He sat back up and sighed deeply in relief as he realized she had probably settled down for the night. Just as well. It had been a very long and emotionally draining night for the both of them; and as tired as he was, he doubted that he would be sleeping very well for the rest of it either. He had to be ready to rise at the slightest sound of distress, he cautioned himself. He clicked on the electric blanket and pulled down the covers, climbed into bed, and quickly fell into a restless slumber.
~~~~~~~~
Miss Parker stirred, rousing with the sensation of laying in an unfamiliar bed and the uncomfortable feeling that she'd just awakened from a none-too-pleasant dream. She rolled to her side and opened her eyes sleepily, wondering briefly if she were actually waking up or still dreaming, then caught a glimpse of the full moon shining through a window that shouldn't have been where it evidently was. She blinked and pushed herself awake a bit further. She wasn't in her own bed.
It took a few more confused moments of sorting through the tumbled and alcohol-fogged memories of the night before, and then she remembered - and she realized where she was and how she had gotten there. While she wasn't sure exactly what time it was in the wee hours of New Year's morning, she now knew without a doubt that she was in Sydney's guest bedroom. As her eyes grew accustomed to the moonlit darkness, she could make out her velour robe laying across the foot of her bed and, with a turn of the head, her open suitcase sitting on the chest of drawers across the room from her.
Miss Parker sat up in bed, pulling the covers over her shoulders against the chill of the night. Although she had apparently managed to sleep some, she still felt completely depleted and at a loss as to what to do next. Going back to sleep was out of the question - she had few doubts that attempting to do so would constitute an open invitation to a nightmare. And it was far too early to expect Sydney to be awake or want to be awakened by her uneasiness and confusion, so talking to him right now was out of the question as well. Stymied of all other apparent options, her tired mind could only find one idea to focus on, the one that had been foremost in her mind for weeks now.
She couldn't help thinking once more about the man she had for her entire life loved as her father, now missing and presumed dead after a parachuted plunge into the Atlantic Ocean at night. Thinking of him, missing him desperately, and realizing yet again she would never have the chance to finally and definitively win his love and approval - things she had worked her entire life for - made the darkness in her soul surge upwards again. Her mind quickly found the familiar path of thoughts, each leading inexorably and agonizingly directly toward the heart of that darkness.
It never failed. All the people she had ever loved and reached out to in her life had without any exception either remained forever out of her reach of their own volition or been violently removed from her world. Daddy, Momma, Tommy, Faith... even Jarod.
She lay back down into the soft pillow, a tear trickling down her nose, and she folded herself loosely into a fetal position. So much of her life was wasted, spent in efforts that had ultimately accomplished nothing. Why, oh why, had she let Sydney talk her out of ending it all?
Even as the darkness within surged and once more threatened to overcome her, she unexpectedly heard Sydney's stern and uncompromising voice from the evening before utter a single word - and suddenly before her mind's eye floated the face of young Debbie Broots. Here, despite all of her intentions to the contrary, had been at least one relationship that had borne positive fruits. She remembered then the last time she had seen Debbie, and how shyly proud the girl had been of the praise she was receiving for her achievements at her first dance recital.
Her memory twitched, and in her mind's eye, Debbie smiled at her with that big, open, trusting, loving smile of hers - and the darkness in her heart retreated a bit at the memory of warmth. Her memory twitched again, and suddenly she was back in her own living room only hours earlier, her head nestled on Sydney's shoulder, his arms around her tightly; and once more she heard his fervent "Oh, thank God!" in her ear. And once more, the darkness retreated. Not completely, but enough for her to finally become aware of what had been happening to her again and grow seriously alarmed at how quickly she had managed to spiral downward toward self-destructive thoughts again.
Miss Parker sat up again in bed and reached for her velour robe, her hands shaking. It had been way too easy, all alone in this darkened room, for her to give in to the desperation and loneliness that had driven her so close to death only hours earlier. No wonder Sydney had been so inflexibly insistent that she return home with him, and even more adamant that she leave her gun behind at her house safely hidden away. If he hadn't, if he hadn't insisted she come with him, if she had stayed home alone again, she just might have...
The implications of the direction her mood had been once more carrying her flooded over her. She leapt from the bed and sped down the hall toward the bathroom as she felt her entire body begin to rebel. As it was, she barely made it through the bathroom door, kicking it shut, and over to the sink before she was gagging up the meager and formerly alcoholic contents of her stomach. Tears of horror and disgust ran down her cheeks as she retched time and time again until there was nothing left, and then over and over on nothing.
She had no idea how long she had been bent over the sink after her retching abated, finally too tired from her heaves to straighten up or even clean herself up, before she heard a soft knocking on the bathroom door. "Parker, are you alright?" Sydney asked, his voice a study in sleepy concern.
"Just a moment, Syd," she managed, turning on the faucet and cupping a hand so that she could take a small amount of the cold water into her mouth and rinse it out. She then wet both hands and dashed water on her face to wash away the telltale tear tracks. She turned off the water, dried her face on the hand-towel and opened the door, prepared to flee back to the guestroom again.
But Sydney stood directly in her path out of the bathroom and wouldn't let her pass by him. He reached out a gentle hand and with a finger beneath the chin lifted her face until she couldn't help looking at him directly. The Sydney who confronted her was not the debonair, impeccably groomed and professional Centre psychiatrist she was used to seeing. Instead he was a sleepy friend just recently and abruptly awakened, standing there in concern for her welfare with pajamas rumpled from sleep, face grizzled and in need of a morning shave, and hair in complete disarray. But as unfamiliar to her as she might find this private and intimately informal man otherwise, he obviously was just as capable as ever of reading her expression like an open book despite her disheveled state. "What happened, Parker?" he asked gently.
That was the one question for which she had no good answer, and the one question that could completely demolish her fragile façade of self-sufficiency. Her huge grey eyes grew tragic and desperate, and in a completely out-of-character display of terror at where her mood had nearly taken her again, Miss Parker threw her arms around his waist and buried her face in his pajama shirt. As he closed his arms around her, he could feel the violence of her trembling - and he knew without a doubt that what he had feared would take place were she left alone had probably happened anyway, despite his having brought her home with him. While it was a hopeful sign that she had terrified herself when she realized what was going on in her own head, there were still consequences of that process to be faced.
"Shhhhh..." he soothed with a whisper into her ear, his arms tightening around her. "You're OK."
"No, I'm not," she admitted in a small voice, wishing she weren't finding herself so hungry for the safety and comfort his embrace represented to her. "I'm afraid, Sydney."
"I know," he said softly. "But I've got you now."
"I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to wake you..."
"Parker," he began, putting his hands on her shoulder and pushing back so that he could look her in the face and have her see his sincerity. "I want you to understand something very important. I WANT you to awaken me when things begin to overwhelm you again - no matter what time it is. That's why I brought you here in the first place."
"But I should be able to do this myse..."
Sydney placed a finger on her lips to still the rest of her sentence. "The time will come when you'll be able to do this yourself again, I promise. But until then, trust me just a little and let me help you when it gets to be too much." He smoothed her hair back in a caress and let her see just how worried he really was. "Don't you see - this whole thing has me scared too! I never want to come so close to losing you again!"
Miss Parker moved forward and rested her head on his shoulder again so that he wouldn't see the tears his words had caused, but somehow he sensed it anyway. "Its OK to cry," he soothed softly, his arms enfolding her again gently.
"Not for me," she murmured brokenly, a sense of dejá vu stealing over her. Her brows wrinkled in concentration, and then she remembered - those were the practically the exact words and response that she had exchanged with Jarod's clone in Donateresa when she had walked into his quarters and found him weeping. And for the first time in her life, she began to appreciate the true nature of the bleak emotional training she had received at the hands of the man she'd always thought of as her father.
"No, Parker, its OK - even for you," Sydney soothed back, again tightening his arms around her. "I told you, you're safe here, with me. Nobody else will ever know..." He fell silent as her arms around his waist tightened.
He eventually knew she was weeping silently when he felt first her ragged breathing, followed by dampness through the flannel of his pajama shirt; and he simply moved a hand to cradle the back of her head as it lay against his shoulder. She was trusting him with her tears at long last, and he accepted it as the gift it was and was determined to hold her for as long as she needed him to. Then the weeping grew in intensity until she was sobbing brokenly in his arms, and he found himself berating himself internally for not having seen how deeply distressed she had become of late. Some psychiatrist he was - some friend - not to have seen the depths of her pain. It was with great effort that he shoved this inward condemnation aside to be dealt with when he was alone again; right now, Miss Parker needed his strength and complete attention.
He shushed at her gently, held her close, and let her cry herself out - knowing that part of what had driven her so brutally earlier had been the lack of an outlet for this despair. Time passed, and finally the ragged sobs became weeping again. Eventually he heard her draw a shaky breath, and he knew the worst of this particular emotional storm front was over. "I think you've needed to do that for a while now," he commented quietly, and felt her merely nestle into his chest in response. He stroked her hair comfortingly. "Do you think you can sleep again now?"
She shook her head against his shoulder. "I'm afraid of my dreams," she admitted, her voice once again small and vulnerable. "I think this all started with a dream I can't remember, and I don't want to go through it all over again..."
"Do you want me to sit with you then?" Sydney asked gently.
She shook her head more strenuously. "No, Syd... You don't need to..."
"Stop." He pushed her back again and smoothed her hair away from her face. "This isn't about me. If you need me to sit with you and help keep your nightmares at bay tonight, all you need to do is to say so, and I will." He dipped his head to catch her gaze. "Now, be honest with yourself and me, and tell me - do you want me to sit with you?" he asked again.
"Yes." She blushed a blazing red in embarrassment and hid her face in his chest. "I shouldn't, but I do."
"Its OK," he reassured her gently. "Lets get you tucked in, then." With an arm about her shoulders, he reached beyond her to turn off the light in the bathroom and then escorted her back to the guestroom. He then proceeded to tuck her into bed as if it were something he had done for her every evening of his life. "I'll be right over there," he pointed at the lone overstuffed chair near the window, "if you need me in the night."
"Thank you, Sydney."
Sydney smiled gently and turned off the lamp on the nightstand. "Go to sleep, Parker," he directed in a whisper, then stepped to the closet and, with a minimum of fumbling, dragged down another blanket to wrap himself in while in the easy chair. It was a cold night, and he didn't need to tempt pneumonia while on his self-appointed duty. "Things will be much clearer in the morning," he promised her gently.
~~~~~~~~~*
Miss Parker rolled away from the errant sunbeam that had stabbed her eye through her closed eyelid and roused her. As she slowly became aware of her surroundings, she heard the soft sound of masculine snoring a short distance from her that definitely roused her even faster. She opened her eyes and looked about her, and finally her gaze settled on the sight of Sydney, cocooned in a thick quilted comforter, his head leaning back against one of the cushioned wings of the overstuffed chair, asleep. Seeing him and remembering what he was doing there in the first place touched her heart with warmth, banishing the nugget of ever-present darkness for the time being to a far corner of her mind.
She settled back comfortably into her pillow to watch over his sleep much as he had settled down to watch over hers. In spite of herself, she found herself pondering the unexpected development of finding someone who actually cared enough about her to discomfit themselves on her behalf in such a way. Not since Tommy...
No. She wasn't going to go there. She could sense the darkness swirling malignantly within that thought and the thoughts that would inevitably follow if she continued. She focused her gaze once more on her sleeping friend in his easy chair. Here was a man who had literally saved her life the night before. She owed it to him to consider the implications of that action in terms of the future of their long-time relationship and not give in to the temptation of falling into despair by thinking of her lost loved ones so easily this time. Not that honestly re-evaluating her relationship with him was going to be much easier...
For so many years, she'd been more than content to keep Sydney on the fringes of her world. He'd never been allowed too close, neither by her nor by her so-called "father", and yet he had become the accepted emotional safety net and been one of a very few constants of her life for as long as she could remember. As a girl, especially right after her mother's apparent suicide, he'd been there to comfort her as nobody else had save Jarod - at least until her father had seen fit to order her removed from the room. She knew very well that Sydney had to have turned a blind eye to many of the times she and Jarod had roamed the corridors of the Centre together after Jarod's duties in the Sim Lab were completed for the day. On many other occasions, he had indulgently given her small paperwork chores to keep her busy and out from being underfoot in the Sim Lab on those weekends when her father dragged her to work with him. Why he, Sydney, had also been working those weekends had never been questioned.
She had mostly lost touch with him directly during her years at boarding school and at college, then later in her years at corporate. She hadn't really seen him again until he'd been assigned to her team to catch Jarod after the Pretender's escape. In the following months and years, he'd consistently and conscientiously respected the distance and the more formal relationship she insisted on keeping with him. He did, however, let her know occasionally that he was still there for her should she ever want to let him in. She had often been pricked with his timely, often pointed, commentary or dropped hints here and there - at the time, each of them unwanted reminders of her own vulnerabilities. But until the night before, she'd never been able to imagine a situation where she would have wanted, much less needed, to take him up on his offer. She had simply taken him and his concern for her for granted.
Sydney stirred slightly in his sleep without rousing, his snoring fading away to soft breathing with the shift of position. Miss Parker's eyes slowly filled with tears as she realized painfully that Daddy - or the man she'd always called "Daddy" - would never have tolerated the kind of weakness and lack of emotional control from her that Sydney had fielded with such patience and compassion over the past few hours. "Daddy" certainly would never have been caught dead sleeping upright in a chair in his adult daughter's bedroom simply to make her feel safe from nightmares. On the contrary, "Daddy" would have made it very plain that for her to need that kind of support from anyone, much less ask for it from HIM, was to display a weakness that shone a bad light on the Parker name.
She knew from experience that "Daddy" would have taken great pains in making her feel inadequate and obliging her to apologize for failing the Parker name, him - and herself - somehow in the asking. And yet, despite that, and despite all the other lies and rejections and minor cruelties and insensitivities he'd visited on her over the years, she'd loved this cold and heartless man as fiercely and devotedly as any daughter had ever loved a father-figure. Why?
How could she have been so unconditionally devoted to a man who had repeatedly lied and deceived and manipulated her mercilessly to serve his own ends? More importantly now, how could she not yet give her trust to this gentle soul who had without a single complaint and at his own instigation taken up an uncomfortable sentry's post to protect her against her own nightmares? It was this level of care and concern that she'd always wanted to win from her father but had never succeeded. Believing she had lost all opportunity to do so had been the reason that she had mourned him so desperately, and her anguish had been a major part of what had driven her into her inner darkness.
She caught herself as she choked out a single sob of confused pain and immediately worked hard to swallow back the sobs that threatened to follow in short order. It wouldn't do to awaken Sydney - he'd lost too much sleep on her behalf the previous night already - but it was too late. Obviously his sleep had been far less deep than she'd assumed from the snoring, for it was only moments after she had made that one soft, involuntary sound when his head slowly tipped forward and chestnut eyes began blinking sleepily at her. "Are you OK?" he asked gently, stretching to work out some of the kinks that came with sleeping in a chair as he dragged himself into the waking world. He looked at her again more closely when she didn't answer immediately.
"Yes," she answered softly at last, wiping at her tears.
"Let's try that one again, shall we?" he said in the same, quiet tone. "Are you OK?"
"I was just thinking..." she began, then couldn't seem to find a way to finish the statement. What was more, she could no longer look him in the eye - she had already betrayed far more weakness to him than she could possibly live down, to add to it was untenable.
Sydney, sensing the pain in her voice, gazed at her with chestnut eyes warm with concern. There was no way he knew of to force her to speak, to oblige her to give voice to that which was causing her so much pain that she had actually considered self-destruction an option. When she was ready, she would tell him - and not one moment earlier. Besides, he had brought her home with him the night before precisely for this very reason - to be present when the pain manifested, and to let her know that he intended to be present and ready to listen when and if she chose to let him in.
He then glanced over at the window and noted the sunbeam streaming through, and turned back to her with a soft expression. "I suppose I could put on a pot of coffee," he suggested gently, very obviously and deliberately letting her off the hook.
She glanced up at him again, grey eyes wide with gratitude. "Coffee would be nice," she murmured in relief and surprise. He hadn't insisted on pressing for an answer after all when, in many other circumstances, she knew very well that he could have doggedly persisted until she relented.
Sydney rose slowly, his aging joints protesting loudly at the uncomfortable position they had been obliged to assume for so long. "Give me a few minutes to get the coffeemaker started. There's no need for you to climb out of your nice warm bed before you need to."
He kept the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, but gathered it up like a cloak as he moved with a shuffle toward her door.
"Sydney?"
He turned to look back at her over his shoulder, with a hand still on the doorknob. "Yes?"
Miss Parker pulled the covers over her shoulder, and yet looked up at him with those wide grey eyes still full of gratitude. "Thanks for staying with me last night."
Sydney smiled at her. "I'll see you downstairs in a little bit," he told her, and then walked from the room.
Miss Parker kept her eyes trained on the doorway through which he had stepped, her emotions still very much tumbled and confused, but a little more under conscious control this time. She definitely needed to think things through - now, and not later. Taking a firm hold on her volatile emotions, she returned to her train of thought from before having roused her host. There was a huge dichotomy between the insensitivity toward her of the man she'd believed to be her father on the one hand and the concern for her of the totally unrelated man who had guarded her sleep and just left her to make coffee.
The level of caring she had received from Sydney the previous night and even just now in their disjointed and sleepy exchange was far more than she was accustomed to getting from anyone since Thomas' death. What was more, the kindness he was showing her seemed to be hiding no strings, no conditions or expectations of her. He had not leveled the slightest recrimination at her at all for any display of weakness or vulnerability since convincing her to hand him her gun. On the contrary, he'd only demonstrated steadfast support and concern for her welfare, sensitivity and respect for her state of mind and an unconditional willingness to comfort her when she needed it.
She sat up and reached to the foot of her bed for her velour robe again, pulling it over her head slowly and zipping it up completely against the chill of the morning and the emptiness in her heart. Her world had turned inside out over the course of a single night, and she was completely at sea as to how to begin to participate in it again. Specifically, she was lost when the need to respond defensively wasn't there, when the need for prickly repartee or barbed rejoinder was not only absent but decidedly inappropriate. Sydney deserved neither - he was the most unthreatening element in her world at the moment - and yet, defensiveness had been her way of relating to him for so long that she now was at a loss at how to proceed.
She knew for certain that right now she desperately needed the emotional stability that Sydney represented to keep her from slipping down that dark and dangerous path to suicidal thoughts again. She also knew that he was willing to let her lean on him without recriminations, to allow her to cling to him literally and figuratively when her despair grew too great for her to handle alone. She knew intuitively that he was ready and willing to do whatever it took to pull her free of those dark influences without hesitation. But those were the only pieces of emotional knowledge about him left her now - the only other thing she knew for certain was that she was going to have to go through the process of redefining her relationship with him, and soon.
Last night, she'd considered the possibility of meeting the challenge of actually winning his approval and respect as an acceptable reason to continue living - and as she thought things through yet again, she found she still felt that way. But there was no question that until she knew how she felt toward him, meeting that challenge was not going to happen. After all, Sydney had played his own role in the lies and deceptions of her life - not the least of which being that he had known her mother hadn't really committed suicide all those years ago. Regardless of the situational ethics of his motives, he had been less than completely trustworthy more than once.
But then, had "Daddy" done better? And she had trusted HIM, implicitly... Was the prospect of trusting Sydney even half as much as she had trusted "Daddy" such a bad thing?
No, she decided, but it had been easier to keep Sydney simply on the fringes of her world, never having to balance his actions or motives against her own or even "Daddy's". She could no longer afford to do that anymore, however; and there were risks inherent in the process of changing that. In trying to learn to trust Sydney, she would have to face some of her own ethical failures, as well as deal straightforwardly with "Daddy's" obvious shortcomings.
She threw back the covers and put her feet down on the carpeted floor, then barefooted over to her open overnight case to pull out a pair of heavier socks and her thin slippers. She sat on the end of the bed and drew them on, grateful that she'd at least had the foresight despite her distress and confusion to pack them in the first place. She then carefully made the bed and pulled the bedspread smooth and taut before she followed in Sydney's footsteps down the hallway and down the stairs.
The smell of fresh brewing coffee met her halfway down the stairs. Now comfortably clad in a warm felt bathrobe and corduroy slippers, Sydney had his back to her as she stepped into the kitchen, reaching up into his cupboards for coffee mugs and plates for breakfast. He smiled easily at her as he turned. "There you are. Here, if you wouldn't mind..." he said, handing her the plates. "Coffee will be ready in just a bit."
Miss Parker carried the plates to the little drop-leaf kitchen table, setting them at two of the places that had the best views of the back yard through the arcadia doors. Outside, the snow that blanketed lawn and bush alike sparkled in the sunlight, looking almost too crisp and clean and light-filled to be real. She stepped closer to the glass, shivering a little as the chill from outside seeped through, immersing herself in a view that held no memories either good or bad for her.
Sydney watched her study his snow-covered back yard with an emotionless, empty expression. He had expected nothing more or less than this emotional limbo from her this morning. He looked down at the coffeemaker with a twinge of impatience, and the moment there was enough of the dark liquid to fill both mugs, he did so.
"Here," he said softly, walking over to her and handing her one of the mugs, "I know how much you enjoy your first cup of coffee in the morning."
Her grey eyes flashed in gratitude as she took the mug from him and inhaled the savory scent of the brew. "Thanks," she muttered, then took a careful sip of the scalding drink. "I should ask you to teach Broots how to make coffee..."
He chuckled gently with her, then sipped from his own mug and seated himself at the table. "Here and I thought you liked Broots' concoction..." Her responding glare of astonished denial made him chuckle louder.
"Sydney, this tastes like real coffee," she informed him carefully, pointing into her mug. "Broots' idea of coffee tastes like caffeinated mud." Then, as if she had run out of energy to make small talk, she turned back to looking out his arcadia door with the coffee mug clutched to her chest for warmth.
"What would you like for your New Year's breakfast?" he asked her after letting her rest and recharge again in the silence of the morning landscape for a little while. "I usually just have toast and jelly, but I do have some eggs in the refrigerator..."
"No thanks, Syd, I'm not really hungry," she answered absently, not turning from her contemplation of the snowy view.
He sighed inwardly, rose again and stepped closer. He covered her hands on her coffee mug with his own and then moved between her and the window so that she found herself looking at him and not the snow. "Yes, you are," he told her softly and firmly, "you just don't know it. I'll agree that you probably don't need to eat much, but you do need to give your body at least a little something for the energy." He dipped his head to keep hold of her glance when she would have looked down and away. "OK?"
Without the energy or resources to resist, Miss Parker shrugged and nodded. "OK."
He smiled at her and cupped a cheek briefly with a hand warm from holding coffee mugs. "That's better. Come on, now..." he continued, and with a gentle hand at a shoulder, directed her into the chair he had just abandoned. He busied himself with arranging the toaster close to the table on the counter and then popping two pieces of bread into it. He managed to fetch butter dish and jar of jelly from the fridge before the toaster spat the freshly crisped bread back into the air. "Here," he urged gently, quickly flipping one of the hot slices onto her plate.
She took the top from the butter plate and helped herself to a pat of butter for her toast without urging, and Sydney felt his spirits lift just a bit. She was at least approachable still. He took his own pat of butter as she twisted the top from the jar of jelly, then paused as she seemed to bog down while looking into the jar. This repeated hesitation wasn't unexpected either, and he had already thought through various ways to nudge her back into the “now” when her grip on reality slipped slightly.
"I hope you like plum jelly," he said in a light, conversational tone that brought startled grey eyes up to look into his, as if she had forgotten where she was and who she was with. As he had expected.
"Oh. Yes," she stammered, and finally took some of the red stuff and began smearing it on her bread. Her knife slowed, then she put it back down and looked up at him with eyes that were swimming. "I'm sorry I'm so out of it, Sydney..."
He shook his head at her gently. "There's nothing to be sorry about, Parker. I understand completely - I'm a shrink, remember?" He watched her try to wipe away the first tear almost before it hit her cheek, a look of frustration on her face. "Hey! I told you it was OK to cry, remember?"
"Oh c'mon, Sydney, even I know this is getting ridiculous," she managed, obviously more upset with herself than anything else. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't seem to stop..." She wiped again at the continuing moisture on her cheek with a frustrated hand. When her companion didn't reply, she glanced back up at him to assess his mood. The warmth in the chestnut eyes that met hers, as opposed to the derision she had been steeling herself against, brought yet another tear to her cheek.
Sydney had cringed inwardly when he'd seen the naked fear in her glance, realizing that she wasn't quite as approachable as he had hoped after all. "What are you so afraid of, Parker?" he asked carefully, reaching out once more for her hand and this time hanging on to retain physical contact with her, to keep her in the “now” with him. "Can you tell me?"
"I keep expecting you to..." she began lamely, then halted, and then tried again. "Daddy would have...." The sentence slammed to a halt again.
That was the clue he'd been waiting for. "What about your father?" he asked pointedly.
"He would never had put up with this," she said bitterly, waving her other hand at her own tears when she couldn't get the one free from Sydney's grasp. "He would have told me that no Parker worth his or her salt..." The tears were falling faster now, for she could hear her "Daddy's" voice in her mind, denouncing her weakness as if he were standing right at her elbow. She was just as vulnerable to the memory of the voice as she had ever been to the overpowering personality that had wielded it. She felt as chastised and humiliated as if he were standing over her in person, chiding her sternly.
"Your father never had much time for emotional display, from himself, from you, or from anybody else," Sydney nodded, grasping the point of her statement and freeing it of her own emotionalism. "And you keep expecting me to come at you with the same sort of recrimination. Is that it?"
"Yes." She was no longer able to control the shaking in her voice. "I don't want to be out of control like this, Sydney," she whimpered, then added as much of a tone of steel as she could manage to her voice. "I'm NOT like this."
"I know," he said softly. "But I think that you need to remember one very important thing." He waited until he had her complete attention, then continued, "My last name isn't Parker. I'm Sydney. And no matter what the reason, I would never treat you that way. Not ever." He gazed at her comfortingly. "Do you believe me?"
Miss Parker gazed at him apprehensively and saw nothing in his eyes or expression that could make her doubt his sincerity. With a shaky breath, she decided that the time had come when she needed to start trusting him if ever she was going to. She looked back down at her toast and the hand that Sydney still grasped in his, and then back up into his gaze. "OK..." she nodded hesitantly.
As if reading her thoughts, Sydney released her so that she could go back to spreading the jelly on her breakfast. "That's my girl," he stated in an encouraging tone, following suit and reaching for the jar when she was finished with it.
~~~~~~~~
It took a little more gentle prodding, but Sydney finally convinced Miss Parker to take a nice long shower and get dressed in the informal slacks and warm angora sweater he had packed for her the night before. By the time she was descending the last steps, he had taken his own shower, shaved, dressed in warm and informal trousers and turtleneck sweater, and was in the process of laying wood in his fireplace. He turned to note her arrival. "I thought we could do with a fire today - it will keep the house warmer."
"That sounds good," she said softly, slipping around the end of the long couch Sydney had positioned facing the fireplace and seating herself at one end, curling her legs under her after kicking her slippers off under the coffee table first. She watched him turn back to his self-appointed task, making no attempt to try to keep her otherwise entertained for the time being. After a few minutes, she began to look around her in curiosity; few had been the times that she'd been in Sydney's house, and never with the time to explore and investigate.
The living room clearly reflected the personality of the man who owned it. A warmly masculine room that called to mind a private estate's library, it was populated with the comfortably stuffed leather couch and matching easy chairs and oaken wood floor-to-ceiling bookcases that held volumes both new as well as old and probably valuable. The two leather-covered easy chairs sat in front of his front picture window with a small table between them with a reading lamp. On the glass-topped coffee table in front of her was an alabaster chessboard with chessmen at the ready, and a stack of alabaster coasters off to the side. An assortment of photographs of several sizes were arrayed on the mantle.
"There!" Sydney pulled the meshed ember-screen in front of a now brightly-burning fire and turned to his guest. She was almost lost in the immensity of his couch, curled and folded into a defensive knot with a doe-in-the-headlights expression in her eyes, but he could see that he once more at least had her attention in the “now.” "How about a little more coffee?" he asked her.
She shook her head slightly. "Thank you, no." She wrapped her arms around her as if chilled.
"Well, I'm going to get some more for myself, if you don't mind," he announced quietly. He motioned at the room that surrounded them. "I'm not sure what kind of activities you normally fill your New Year's Days with, but there is probably enough reading material to your liking somewhere on these shelves. Or we could try a game of chess when I get back, if you wish." He gazed down at her calmly. "Or we could just sit and talk."
"What would you be doing if I weren't here?" she asked softly, finding that she had no preference whatsoever and was hoping that his choice might give her some direction.
"How about I take advantage of having you here for company?" he asked instead. "Let me get my coffee, and we can talk for a while." He moved to step past her towards the hallway.
"Sydney?"
"Yes?"
She tightened her arms around herself. "Maybe I will take another cup of coffee after all, if you don't mind."
He smiled at her patiently. "Not at all. I'll be back in a moment."
Sydney had been gone a few moments when the telephone chimed garishly through the house. The bell cut off abruptly in the second ring, so Miss Parker knew he had picked up the extension in the kitchen. She found herself wondering who might be calling him on a New Year's Day - then chided herself. Sydney actually had family: Michelle and Nicholas. Why shouldn't he hear from them on a big holiday like today?
She wondered what it was like to have family call just to visit and ask after her, either by telephone or in person. "Daddy" had so rarely ever called her for anything but Centre business, and his visits generally had some sort of agenda behind them rather than simply spending time with his daughter. She shook herself mentally as she felt the darkness within surge yet again. She got to her feet quickly and went over to stand in front of the fire as if the warmth of the flames might have some power to hold that darkness back until Sydney could finish his call and return with their coffee. She leaned against the mantle and stared into the dancing flames, letting herself become hypnotized by their random motions and thus empty herself of her emotions once more.
Sydney stepped through the living room doorway with a coffee mug in both hands, and then slowed as he perceived the return of the sadness and emotional limbo. He took a deep breath and then moved resolutely across the room towards his guest. He put himself directly in front of her, should she choose to look up, and waited for her to notice his return and sipped from his coffee cup. When she didn't respond after a short time, he held out her mug to her, nudging her arm with it slightly. "Here."
She didn't start, but he knew he'd broken her concentration. She glanced up into his face with a bleak look, then took the mug from him. "You were a million miles away," he commented softly.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"What were you thinking about?" he asked gently.
"Telephone calls," she said with a tiny shrug, "and family and visits." She glanced at his face guiltily. "I heard your phone ring, and I wondered who would be calling you on New Year's Day - then I remembered Michelle and Nicholas. And I started wondering what it would be like to have family who cared enough to just call up to find out how I was. I've never had that..."
"I see." He leaned against the mantle himself. "I hadn't thought about it, but I can see where you're coming from. To be honest, I can't imagine either Lyle or Raines calling you just to see how you were doing. Incidentally," he added as an afterthought, "that phone call was Broots, wondering if I wanted to meet with him and Debbie for lunch near the ice rink. I told him I had a guest, but I'd call him back later and let him know."
"If you want to go, I can go home," Miss Parker said unhappily, holding out her coffee mug to him. "I don't want to hold you back from enjoying your day..."
"Parker," he soothed, holding up a halting hand and refusing to take the coffee mug from her, "Truth be told, I'd rather spend the day with you. But if you would like to go spend some fun time with Debbie yourself, however, I'll be glad to take you. Frankly, I can't think of a better time for you to do it, come to think of it. It could help you get your mind away from your troubles for a little bit, give you a fresher perspective on things..."
"Syd, I'm just being a sad sack and a wet blanket today. And besides, you don't need to be playing babysitter for me. I'll just go get my things together again..." With Sydney refusing to take her mug, she set the thing on the mantle. Afraid to look him in the face and see his relief at getting rid of her so easily after all, she tried to step past him to head upstairs to pack.
"No," he said more firmly, catching her arm as she stepped past him and hanging on tightly. "You aren't just being a sad sack or a wet blanket. For God's sake, just a few hours ago, you were getting ready to kill yourself! I've spent afternoons with Broots and Debbie before, and no doubt I'll have other chances to do so again. But I won't have another chance to be with you NOW." He reached for her hand, pulled it to his chest and held it there with both of his, his vehemence thickening his soft accent considerably. "I need you here - with me - right now. Stay, please."
"Sydney..." It took work to keep the unhappiness from being any more plain in her voice.
He put a finger beneath her chin and tilted her head until she had to look at him again. "Is it really so hard for you to believe that I would rather spend the time with you than with anybody else?" When she swallowed hard and looked at him with real hesitation and doubt in her eyes, he shook his head. "Look, I came too damned close to losing you completely last night - so one way or another, I'm keeping you very close to me for a while, for my own peace of mind as much as for your sake." He pulled himself to his full height and trained very determined chestnut eyes on her face. "If you go home, I'm going with you. I'm not letting you out of my sight," he announced with finality.
"Are you sure?"
"Parker!" he breathed out in mild exasperation. "What do I have to say to convince you? Of course I'm sure! My day is yours, period - and yours is mine in return. Agreed?"
She closed her eyes and nodded slowly, not entirely sure whether to be relieved or worried.
"Good. Then take this," he said, reaching out and retrieving her coffee mug from the mantle and holding it out to her, "and lets go sit down and talk a while."
"I warn you, I'm not very good company right now," she protested weakly as she accepted the mug back, once more finding herself without the resources to argue with him very much.
"Don't worry, you're just fine," Sydney assured her, putting an arm around her shoulder and leading her back to the couch. "Have a seat," he invited. She reclaimed her spot at the end of the couch, once more folding her legs up beneath her. He seated himself a short distance away, but still close enough that she was within reach if need be, and watched her for a little while. "Tell me something."
"What?" she asked carefully. Considering the events of the last evening, she had expected Sydney to begin using his skill as a therapist sooner or later. Perhaps actually letting him draw her out and work with her fears would be a way to learn to trust him.
"Tell me what happened last night before I got to your house."
"Nothing out of the ordinary, really," she began with a hint of bitterness in her voice. "Raines had made arrangements to meet Lyle and me for New Year's Eve dinner - one of those “offers I couldn't refuse” type things to supposedly give us some family time. Lyle was..." She paused, the sipped her coffee to give her a chance to steady her mood. "Lyle was supposed to pick me up. He called about five minutes before he was to be at my place to tell me Raines had..."
Sydney leaned his head back against the back of the couch, nodding. "He called to cancel," he deduced, understanding now the catalyst to her depression. He looked over at Miss Parker to find her sitting with eyes closed. "Then what?"
"I don't know," she shrugged. "It just seemed like the last straw. Every year now since I started working to hunt down Jarod, I've received an invitation from Daddy for Christmas and/or New Year's. And every time, something has always come up and he's called me at the very last minute to cancel." She buried her nose in her coffee mug for a long sip, once more steadying her mood. "When Lyle called..." She took a deep breath. "Let's just say that one of my first thoughts were “like father, like son, like father”..."
"You were feeling unimportant again. Discarded. Alone." Sydney commented astutely, and when he saw her first flush and then lose all color in her cheeks, he knew he'd pegged her accurately.
"It reminded me that even though Daddy was gone..." Her voice thinned on that part, and then she sipped her coffee again and regained her voice, "some things weren't going to be changing much. I began to wonder... And then I started to think that there was no use going on when..."
"I think that's about the point I came in," Sydney added quietly.
"Yes." Her voice was soft, hesitant.
"OK. Then I came in, talked you into giving me your gun, packed you some clothes and brought you home with me. We talked for a very little bit last night, and then you went to bed. Next thing I knew, I heard you running down the hall to the bathroom."
"Yes."
"What happened to cause that?"
Miss Parker sighed and cradled her coffee mug in her lap. "I woke up and started thinking about the same things I was thinking before ... before you interrupted me earlier. But then, in the middle of all of it, I started to remember how you'd talked me out of ... things ... and I realized I had been going right down the same road all over again, and that if you hadn't insisted on my coming here ... It... it... scared me..."
"But something else got you going," Sydney noted quietly. "What was the thought that pushed you back into the depression the quickest?"
She glanced at him, and her look was once again guilt-ridden. "You'll think me foolish..."
He shook his head at her. "What I think doesn't matter, Parker. The important thing is that you gave yourself enough of a scare with your reaction to a certain train of thought that you actually made yourself physically sick, right?" She nodded ruefully. "Then whatever it was that you were thinking is a powerful thought to you, a dangerous thought for you - and it needs to be faced in the light of day to be handled properly." He looked at her gently. "I will help you fight this battle, Parker. Just tell me what else distresses you so?"
Miss Parker sighed, then capitulated with a shallow nod. "I was thinking about how so much of my life seemed wasted, especially now that Daddy..." she began, but couldn't continue. A tear slipped, and she dashed it away in frustration.
"Wasted? How?"
"I..." she started, then halted as she realized that putting her reasons into words was going to be harder than she had first thought. "Everything I've ever done in life - my attitudes, even my major in college - were things I did to try to get Daddy to..." Her voice caught; the admission was an even more painful one than she had first considered. She tried another approach. "All I ever wanted was to have Daddy love me as much as I loved him, and approve of me and respect me. And no matter what I did, it never seemed to be enough..."
"You don't think your father loved you?"
"I don't know," she cried softly, and another tear found its way to her cheek. "He said he did, but he lied to me so many times... And now that I know that he wasn't even my real father - and that he knew all that time that he probably wasn't my father - I look at what I've made myself become, and I realize that I've been chasing windmills for most of my life. And now, with Daddy gone, even the reasons I did what I did don't matter anymore..." She wiped at her face absently.
"And now you're questioning all the choices you've made in life, and feeling lost and confused," he deduced again, and watched her flush and then grow pale again and knew he'd been spot on again. "OK, then lets look at your choices, Parker. Answer me this: do you like the person you've became as the result of your choices?" he asked next, his voice still soft and supportive.
He received an agonized glance for his efforts. "No." Her denial was only mouthed, as if saying the word was beyond her ability, but the shake of her head was emphatic.
He nodded, not really surprised by her response. "Is that why you thought that it wasn't worth going on - because the person you have become is so completely unlikable that nobody would ever miss her if she's gone?"
The thought sounded so harsh and uncompromising coming from Sydney rather than from her own mind. Still... "Look at how I have treated people - you, Broots, even Jarod..." she said softly, self-condemningly. "I'm arrogant, rude, sometimes downright cruel..." She looked up at him with eyes filled with despair. "I think that if I were you, I'd almost be GLAD to be rid of me..."
"Stop, right there!" Sydney interrupted abruptly, wanting to put a quick death to a particular line of thought that led very clearly and precipitously down into her inner darkness of self-destruction. "Look at what you're doing to yourself, Parker. You're projecting your own self-hatred onto me and everyone else." He paused, and then continued in a softer, more comforting, tone, "The fact is that I don't feel that way at all, and I'm fairly certain nobody else does either."
Startled at the novel idea, she closed her mouth and flashed him a thoroughly mortified glance before dropping her gaze to the surface of her coffee again.
He reached out a gentle hand and placed it on her shoulder. "You do need to look at yourself honestly and objectively, Parker, to know where truth ends and your own fears begin. Only by understanding yourself can you learn what you do have to live for - and I'll be right here to help you do that. OK? I know it hurts..."
She nodded unhappily. Sydney sat back against the back of the couch with a contemplative expression and folded his hands together around his coffee cup. "Let's return to the person you've become in order to please your father. Tell me, honestly, do you enjoy doing those things you accused yourself of?"
"Sometimes," she admitted guiltily. "At the time it happens, I don't think about it - I just react. Its only later that I start to feel bad for making everybody's life around me miserable all the time." She sighed and ran the fingers of one hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face. "I'm getting so tired of feeling badly after the fact, Sydney."
"OK," he said smoothly, soothingly. "Can you think of a good reason not to try to change - to react differently? Do you feel you absolutely have to be those things in order to survive at the Centre, or to be an effective leader?"
Miss Parker thought for a moment; the question opened new ground for her. "I think... Daddy would have said that those things I listed constitute my “edge.” All of the people at the top of the Centre hierarchy have that streak of ruthlessness - and those who don't usually end up get stepped on mercilessly." She sipped at her coffee. "Daddy was training me to take his place as Chairman when he was gone - at least, he was until Lyle entered the picture as a Parker. He's... he'd been training me to be this way for a very long time."
"I understand that," Sydney responded, putting his nearly-empty mug on the coffee table in front of him. "But my question to you was whether you feel you need to continue to be this person you don't like now that your father is gone, regardless of your feelings about yourself?" He saw her look of confusion and tried again. "Do you still feel the need to be ruthless now that he's gone, or is even thinking you have a choice out of the question?"
"The last time I tried to stop being ruthless, it cost Tommy his life," she answered bleakly. "When my mother tried to respond to the ruthlessness she saw around her at the Centre, they killed her. Look at what they've done to you, to Jacob, to keep you from bucking the powers that be and their agendas! And now Raines and his insanity sits at the top of the heap with my serial-killer twin brother as his right-hand man!" She gazed earnestly at him. "I want to survive, but I just don't know how much longer I can continue to hurt the people I care about simply to protect my own skin..."
"You're projecting again," Sydney soothed, reaching for a hand. "The fact is that you've not hurt me, Parker, not really. I know why you act as you do, and you've done things for me otherwise that show me that you care despite your tough façade. Debbie, bless her, sees right through you; and you have her father's undying loyalty because you have done things for him and his daughter too that show that you care for them, even though you'd never admit it to them. All of us know the pressure you're under - even Angelo and Jarod, for that matter - and none of us really takes your name-calling or posturing very seriously anymore." He dipped his head to catch her gaze. "You did know that, didn't you?"
Miss Parker's eyes had widened in surprise as he spoke, and she shook her head in dumbfounded disbelief.
"I think its about time you begin giving yourself a break," he finished gently. "You're a Red File. You should consider putting some of that innate talent into action on your own behalf for a change. At the Centre, you can keep wearing that one mask - the familiar one, the one the sweepers call the “Ice Queen,” the one with that “edge” you feel has a necessary survival value. But you can shed it when you walk out of the Centre doors - if you really want to, that is.
"You have friends - people who care about you and would like very much the pleasure of your company every once in a while. All you need to do is let these people know that your public persona at the Centre has nothing to do with the private, after-hours person that is who you really are. And then you let them know that the private persona would very much enjoy their company too - and then take the responsibility to spend time with these people." He squeezed the hand he had grasped. "The Centre may own us all, but there is considerable latitude within those limits, if you want to explore it."
"How do I do that?" she asked in bewilderment.
Sydney began to smile. "Do you REALLY want to know?"
~~~~~~~~~
"MISS PARKER!!!! Daddy, look! Its Sydney, and he brought Miss PARKER!!!"
Debbie's delighted scream carried across the rink, and then the small form of a child rocketed across the center of the ice to where two well-bundled adults were standing on the sidelines. Sydney looked over at his companion and was encouraged by the tentative look of anticipation that came over her as she waited for Debbie to scoot across the ice. The girl nearly bowled the woman over as she grabbed Miss Parker's waist to halt her forward movement, and Sydney chuckled at the sight of the woman clinging almost as tightly to the girl as the girl was to her.
"Sydney! Miss Parker!" Broots skated a little more sedately to the edge of the rink and then looked back and forth between the recent arrivals. "I..." He looked at the aging psychiatrist in concern. "Syd, you didn't say who your guest was..."
"Its OK, Broots," Miss Parker said, straightening up. "I wanted to come." She unslung the white figure skates from her shoulder and studied them in trepidation. "Although I'm not exactly sure what I've gotten myself into. I haven't tried this in years..."
Sydney had his own brown skates still draped over his shoulder. "Its one of those things that you rarely forget," he reassured her with a wide smile, "something on the same line as riding a bicycle. C'mon, Broots and Debbie can hold a place in the rink for us while we go change."
The two late-comers didn't take too long in the dressing shack, and then came tottering out towards the ice. Miss Parker halted at the edge and gave Sydney an apprehensive glare. "I'm going to end up flat on my ass, Syd, and you know it," she grumbled at him in a surprisingly good natured growl.
"Uh-unh," he shook his head at her, stepped confidently onto the ice and then held out his gloved hand to her. "C'mon, Broots and Debbie are waiting for us." He saw her glance longingly at the people skating serenely in a circle to the sound of a Strauss waltz playing over the loudspeaker. "Take my hand, Parker. Trust me; I won't let you fall," he said in a quiet tone meant just for her ears.
Her gaze landed on his face with surprising seriousness. "You haven't let me down once yet this year," she said as she placed her gloved hand in his. Their eyes met, and Sydney felt something warm and very strong connect between them, and he began to smile to himself, pleased that she'd actually agreed to give this outing a try.
With a cautious step, Miss Parker put herself on the ice, teetered for a moment, then felt Sydney's free arm wrap around her waist and catch her before she could lose her balance completely.
"Better?" he asked as she straightened carefully, and she nodded at him. "Good. Now step with your left foot, push with your right, and then glide with me," he guided her, hanging onto her waist tightly with one hand and holding her far hand with his other so that she could get her sense of balance and her feet under her.
It didn't take long, as he had suspected, before she had remembered the way to move her feet to propel herself across the ice. Debbie quickly caught up to the two of them and then skated in circles around them chattering at them happily as they moved sedately with the rest of the grownups in a circle around the rink. Broots eventually caught up with them as well and positioned himself at Miss Parker's other elbow, then was surprised when she tucked one hand gently into the crook of his elbow while the other hand continued to cling loosely to Sydney's arm.
"You don't mind, do you?" she asked her normally nervous computer tech hesitantly, seeing his surprise at her gesture.
"N..no, of course not, Miss Parker." Broots' eyes widened at her actually asking his permission. He took a second look into her face and noted the softer, sadder quality to her expression. "You OK, Miss Parker?" he inquired in bemusement.
"Not completely," she admitted with a glance in Sydney's direction, "but I'm getting there, at last. Thanks for letting me crash your little get-together, Broots."
"Oh, anytime! Debbie's always asking when we can see you next time - I'm sure she's thrilled to see you today." She saw him duck his head a little in his characteristic gesture. "I'm glad to see you too," he added softly. "I've always kinda hoped that you'd join us one day..."
"Thanks, Broots. That means a lot more than you'll ever know," she said earnestly, feeling that tiny nugget of darkness inside her shrink even further. She leaned toward Sydney and felt him lean towards her in return. "And thank YOU," she added with a squeeze on his arm.
"My pleasure, Miss Parker," the older man purred at her, once more speaking in that tone meant only for her to hear, wearing a highly contented expression on his face. Seeing her begin to smile again, and have that smile be the unpretentious one that a certain little girl had used all those many years ago, had made the heartache and difficulties of the past twenty-four hours worth it, in his estimation. More work would be needed, but he had a sneaky feeling the truly desperate crisis was waning.
"Daddy was thinking about taking me to McDonald's for lunch, Miss Parker," Debbie told her brightly, showing off her newly-discovered talent at skating backwards. "Are you coming?"
Miss Parker paused, waiting for her regular revulsion at the thought of fast food and finding herself surprised to discover it completely lacking. She looked down at the little girl, awaiting her answer with such anticipation, and nodded in decision. "Sure. Why not?" Debbie skated away, hooting in excitement.
"Miss Parker, are you SURE you're OK?" Broots asked again, now nearly dumbfounded at the previously unimaginable thought of his sophisticated and picky boss munching on fries in a fast food establishment with them.
"It's a special day," she commented, once more glancing up at Sydney and meeting his gaze - giving her words a double meaning. "And I have a feeling I'll be ready to eat after this unexpected exercise." She looked over at Broots then. "Besides, I haven't had McDonald's in a very long time either, and I think its about time I took care of that."
Her normally nervous tech looked up into his boss' face unflinchingly. "Alright, who are you REALLY, and what have you done with Miss Parker?" he asked, a budding smile belying the stern tone in his voice.
Miss Parker chuckled softly. "I'm trying on a new attitude for the New Year," she commented lightly. "What do you think of it?"
"I like it - but I think Mr. Lyle and Mr. Raines won't be very pleased," Broots answered softly and honestly, with obvious concern written all over his face.
"Broots..." Sydney warned with a slight frown. Mentioning the Centre might destroy the fragile mood.
"Its OK, Syd," Miss Parker soothed her friend, then turned to the younger man after making sure Debbie was still out of earshot. "The new attitude is for the private me, Broots, for when we're all off the clock. When we're at the Centre, and on the clock, things will be status quo like always - you get to be called a moron and Syd gets to be Freud or Dr. Spock - get it?"
The budding smile was back. "Got it!" he chirped in delight.
~~~~~~~~~*
Miss Parker relaxed into the passenger seat of Sydney's sedan with a quiet, satisfied smile curling the edges of her lips. Sydney had been right - after such a rocky start to the day, the time spent with Broots and his daughter had been exactly what she had needed. The laughs and the comaraderie they all had shared during those hours together had indeed given her a respite from her darkness, and provided her with a fresh perspective as to what she faced in the future, if she wanted it to be that way. And now, after a quiet dinner with Sydney, she was heading back to spend yet another night in a home - not just a house - that had more than just one lonely woman as its occupant. In so many ways, that which had drawn the darkness to her so easily had been effectively countered for the time being. Still...
"Sydney?"
"Hmm?" He glanced over at her, sitting in the passenger seat, in response.
"Why have I never..." she began.
Sydney turned his eyes back to the darkened street ahead of him. "I've been expecting you to begin thinking along those lines sooner or later, considering what all we did today."
"Its not over yet, is it." It wasn't a question.
"No, it isn't," he agreed carefully, not wanting to upset her but unwilling to lie simply to preserve her mood. "You have more battles ahead of you before you can say you've won the war. We've only touched on the more apparent causes of this particular episode - but let's not discuss this until we get back to the house, OK?"
"OK," she nodded in understanding. Neither of them needed to end up in a night-time car accident on an icy street. Moments passed by in companionable silence, and then she looked over at her companion once more. "Tell me something, then?"
"What's that?"
"How does a person ever say “thank you” properly to someone who has saved their life?"
He glanced back at her and found her looking intently at him. "By living a long and happy life, mostly," he began thoughtfully, returning his gaze to the road once more. "And maybe by doing the same thing themselves eventually for somebody else, when and if they get the chance." He pushed the button on his garage door opener, then steered the car carefully from the street into his driveway and into the open garage. "Here we are." He pushed the opener button again to close the door behind them and turned off the motor.
They climbed out of the vehicle and took off their boots before stepping through the door into Sydney's kitchen, lit only by the small bulb in the hood over his stove. "You hang up the coats," he directed as he shed his own garment, "while I put some water on to make some hot chocolate." He smiled at her as she took his coat from him. "That, I think, would make a fine ending to a very enjoyable day."
"That sounds good," Miss Parker agreed, shrugging out of her own coat and moving to do as she'd been told. "I'll stir the fire and see if I can get it going again," she called to him from the door to the living room. The light switch by the door turned on a floor lamp near the bookcases on one side of the room and the table lamp between the easy chairs. She knelt in front of the hearth, removed the ember screen and stirred at the banked coals with the poker, eventually uncovering some small pockets of red embers.
Having watched Sydney earlier, she knew where he kept his wood and what he used for kindling - so by the time the older man walked into his living room carrying two steaming mugs of hot chocolate, Miss Parker had the fire nicely restarted. She had gotten back to her feet and was examining the photographs on the mantle. She had alternately smiled or been intrigued by pictures of Sydney with his brother as younger men and children, as well as the photos of herself and Jarod as both children and adults; but she was drawn to one in which the faces were totally unfamiliar. "Is this Michelle and Nicholas?" she asked, pointing to a picture of a very pretty middle-aged woman and a handsome young man, obviously her son.
"Yes," he answered with a fond smile, coming close. "They sent it to me as a Christmas present last year." He handed her one of the mugs. "Nice fire," he commented, motioning for her to have a seat on the couch.
She shot him a grateful smile, then, "He's very handsome," she remarked with a backward glance at the picture. "Looks a lot like you did at his age."
"Thank you," Sydney smiled at her. He watched her kick off her shoes under the coffee table and fold her legs up beneath her again.
She inhaled the rich scent of chocolate, then noted with a small smile the miniature marshmallows he had floated on both their drinks. "You make a mean hot chocolate, Syd," she smiled and took a careful sip of the hot liquid.
He chuckled at her. "Its nice to have someone to share it with, for a change." He then sat quietly next to her, sipping his own drink and watching the fire dance behind the ember screen.
Miss Parker cradled her drink between her two hands, her mind returning to that same thought that Sydney had temporarily halted while in the car. "Today was... so enjoyable..." she began lamely, not really wanting to make small talk but not knowing any other way to make her way to the important things she did want to say.
"Debbie is good for you," he agreed nodding. "She gives you an excuse to step out of that mask you've worn for so long, an excuse to be more nurturing for a change. And you're good for her too..." He grinned at a memory of her face as she had considered his suggestion of putting on ice skates again after so many years. "And, by the way, I think I should point out that you didn't fall flat on your ass, as you had feared you would. In case you hadn't noticed, that is..."
She chuckled with him at her unnecessary apprehension, then turned serious. "Why haven't I ever tried doing this before?" she asked, casting her mind back over the course of the day. It had begun with ice skating and continued with enjoying a fast-food lunch and then a long and enjoyable visit with Broots and his daughter at their home - people she had so pointedly excluded from her private life for so long for reasons she no longer wanted to remember.
"Does it matter?" Sydney's softly spoken question brought her up short, and she shot him a questioning look.
"What do you mean? Doesn't it matter?" she asked back, confused.
"Of course it does," he answered with a casual shrug, "its just that it doesn't matter in the long run the way you might think it does. Its good to understand your mistakes, but if you keep your eyes always on the past, trying to understand everything about why you did things you cannot change, you'll never take the time to move on in your life."
"You're right." She looked back down with a sigh and watched the marshmallows slowly melting into white foam on the surface of her drink. "That doesn't make not doing this before right, though..." she retorted, as much to herself as to him.
"Right and wrong has nothing to do with it, Parker," Sydney shook his head. "The only thing that really matters is whether or not this change is going to be an isolated event for you, or whether you have any intentions at all of letting this happen again." He gazed at her evenly. "Do you know which way it will be for you?"
She gazed back at him wistfully. "I don't want to be alone anymore, Sydney."
"You're only alone if you never let people get close to you," he said gently. "This is what I was telling you last night at your house, if you think about it. Those of us who care about you are here for you when you need us, IF you will just meet us half-way."
"Even if I'm wearing my Centre mask and have been making life miserable for you?" she asked, suddenly fearful. "I don't know if I want to reach out to someone, the way I used to reach out to Daddy all the time, and just get ignored or pushed away all over again..."
"Parker, since when have any of us other than Raines or your father or Lyle ever pushed you away - even when you were being “ruthless”?" He looked at her sadly. "On the contrary, haven't we all reached out to you at one time or another, when you seemed to need us the most, only to have you push US away?"
"You're right, as usual." Miss Parker nodded sadly and took another sip of her chocolate. "God, what a waste," she sighed.
"That's one of the thoughts that have made you so miserable, isn't it?" She nodded again. "Well, it will continue to make you miserable if that's all the further you let yourself take it. If you want to, however, you can make your memories of missed - missed, not wasted - opportunities into object lessons for the future. You see, if you learn from them, then they weren't truly wasted after all. Let them remind you that there are always going to be new opportunities to connect with those you care about that will come your way now and then. All those missed opportunities can have meaning if you use them to remind yourself to be aware of the new opportunities when they show up and to take advantage of them." He sipped at his chocolate. "Today was an example of what happens when you do just that."
She sipped at her hot chocolate and pondered his words. "I guess I was so afraid of getting hurt - afraid of being pushed away myself - that I pushed away first rather than reach out. I caused my own loneliness."
Sydney nodded. "When we look at our lives, we often find that to be the case." He saw the sadness clouds rising on her emotional horizon, and hastened to add, "You aren't the only one here who's done the same thing, you know." She blinked and looked at him with questions in her eyes, jarred from consideration of her own issues momentarily.
"For a long time, I was so afraid of losing control of Jarod that I never let him know how I felt. I knew that if I did, the others would take him away from me. I waited too long, and now its too late to tell him..." He shrugged as he explained. "Then again, I was so afraid of losing my job or having Jarod taken away, I never dared say anything to you either when you were a little girl. And then, when I was assigned to your hunt for Jarod after he escaped, I knew you'd never accept anything I might say - I'd waited too long again. And so, if it hadn't been for Angelo last night, it would have been too late - and I would have lost you too..." He cleared his throat clumsily, his voice hoarse with emotion.
"Sydney?" Her voice was soft and surprised.
"When you're a psychiatrist, its easy to disregard your own advice half the time," he said gruffly, glancing over at her with a rueful expression, then looked down into his own drink with a combination of regret and frustration - a mood he rarely shared with anyone.
He heard the sound of a mug being put down on the glass coffee table and felt movement on the couch next to him, and then suddenly Miss Parker was sitting very close to him. She wrapped her arms around the arm closest to her and hugged it to her tightly, then rested her head against his upper arm.
"But you didn't lose me. You saved me. You pulled me up out of a deep, black hole, and you brought me home with you and took care of me when I started to slip back in again." she informed him quietly. "When the time came for you to say what you needed to and do what you needed to, you did - and because of that, I'm still here." She nestled down against his arm and shoulder a little more comfortably. "I think you're right - you're still disregarding your own advice. I'm not the only one here who seems to need reminding to let go of a past they can't change."
Sydney gazed down with a deep flash of fondness at the dark head laying against his arm. "I think there's a law against practicing psychiatry without a license, Parker," he stated finally, his lips curling at the edges with a chagrined smile.
"Is that what I'm doing?" she asked quietly, then lifted her head to look at him with her very heart in her eyes. "I thought I was reaching out to someone I care for very much who needs someone to lean on right now. After all, you reached out to me when I needed you most..." she informed him in a shimmering voice and then hesitated, unsure about putting her feelings in the open, but knowing that more needed saying. She offered up a silent, vehement prayer that his response would be accepting and not a rejection - there had been far too many of the latter in her life - and decided to put all her cards on the table.
"I can't bear the thought of being alone anymore, and I don't think you want to be alone anymore either. We've both been alone too long, and we both know that feeling that alone damned near killed me last night." He nodded; she was speaking the truth, for both of them. She took that as encouragement that made what she was about to suggest a little easier. "You've taught me over the last day that I can lean on you - but do you think you can learn to lean on me too, just a little?" She paused as Sydney's startled chestnut gaze caught and held hers. "Please, Sydney?"
Sydney gazed at her speechlessly for a moment, then gently pulled his arm away from her and lifted it over her head so that he could wrap it around her shoulders and gather her in closer to him. "I think I can do that," he said softly, feeling a lump build in his throat at the unexpected and far-reaching implications of both her statements and her gesture. "I think I'd like that very much."
He felt her arms quickly encircle his waist, and then she was snuggling down against him with her head pillowed against his chest. He dropped a kiss onto the top of her head, leaned forward just long enough to put his mug of chocolate down next to hers, then settled back and wrapped his other arm around her too and held her even closer to him. "You know, I care for you too, very much," he whispered, too emotional to trust his speaking voice, "more than you'll ever know."
Miss Parker settled eagerly into the closer embrace. Sydney's answer made her feel as if, for the first time in a very long time, she had come home to where she truly belonged. In all the times she had sought solace or affection in the arms of the man she had long thought her father, each time she had gotten the feeling that he'd accommodated her only under subtle protest or in order to otherwise manipulate her to his will and bidding. But the embrace that was wrapped around her now was like her mother's - warm and comforting and unconditionally accepting. Now that she understood the difference, she knew she would not be pining disconsolately for the lesser offering again.
She sighed in contentment and closed her eyes as she felt his cheek come to rest gently against her head in what was quickly becoming a familiar gesture of fondness. This experience of a mutual affection freely given and received by both equally was what she'd been missing for so long. This and the companionship of good friends - and even that had unexpectedly been returned to her today. In less than a day, Sydney had rescued her from a future too bleak to even be considered and presented her with one pregnant with opportunities.
He had taken her literally from feeling completely abandoned and discarded to knowing, without a single doubt, that she already had all the love, respect and approval she had ever wanted - and that she had needed do nothing to earn them after all. All of it - ALL of it - had been there for her all along, waiting to be noticed and accepted by her, as had been the man offering them to her. All the proof she needed of that fact was the heart that beat steadily beneath her ear and the arms that encircled her warmly - and the fact that, thanks to him, she was still alive and able to finally experience them for what they really were.
Chances were probably very good that Mr. Raines was her real biological father, but that detail of genetics no longer mattered to her in the least. As far as she was concerned, there was room for only one father figure at a time in her life or in her heart; and that role would belong to Sydney from now on. Moreover, she would waste no time in regret at having taken so long to find him, but rather she would begin to work hard to cultivate the new relationship between them properly, now that she had redefined that relationship for herself with crystal clarity.
The real challenge that would face her from this moment forward, however - the task that would give her life a new direction and purpose - would be learning to feel she actually deserved what he was offering her so freely. Returning those things in full and equal measure, on the other hand, would be a far easier and joyful proposition - if the fullness of her heart was any indication.
What was it that "Daddy" had always said - "Life goes on"? From within the circle of Sydney's arms, Miss Parker smiled in appreciation that at least once in his life, "Daddy" hadn't been lying. Life did, indeed, go on - and it really wasn't such a bad thing after all.
