They Call It Paradise
Part 1

“Sydney, you aren’t happy here.”

He looked up to find Rebecca standing in the doorway of his room and tried to smile. “I thought your knowledge…”

“I don’t have to be psychic to know that. I only have to look at you.” She came and sat opposite him. “What is it?”

He glanced over at her before looking away. “I don’t want to worry you.”

“I’m already worried,” she replied somewhat tartly, “so don’t pull that excuse. And Jacob is worried too.”

“So the two of you have discussed this already.”

“Yes,” said another voice from the doorway and Jacob walked over to sit beside Rebecca. “We have.”

“Well then,” Sydney got to his feet, “you’ll both have made your assumptions and have no need to talk with me about them.”

Jacob stood and placed a hand on his brother’s chest, forcing him back to his seat. “We have made assumptions and we want to know if they’re correct.”

“And you expect me just to tell you,” his brother snapped.

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Actually, yes. If Miss Parker were here, you might be able to avoid it, like you managed so often with her, but she isn’t. We are.” She leaned forward. “And what concerns you concerns us as well.”

“Noble sentiment.” Sydney looked past them and out to the tree-lined street in front of the house as he spoke. Rebecca brought up her legs in front of her and wrapped her arms around them, watching him.

“Jarod.”

“Jarod?”

She looked up to find that he had fallen asleep on the sofa beside her. Reaching up, she gently planted a kiss on his cheek before getting off the seat and walking through her room and out of the house. The street was a long avenue, lined with trees and she wandered along it at leisure, finally stopping outside one building and leaning on the gate.

“Are you going to come in, Rebecca, or would you rather stay there?”

“That depends, Jacob,” she laughed. “If I’m going to get lectured at again, then I’ll keep going.”

She heard his laughter out of the darkness and swung the gate open before he could answer, coming up to sit beside him on the outdoor sofa.

“How’s Jarod?”

“Happy.” She smiled. “Very happy.”

“And how are you?”

Rather than answering, she looked up at him. “You were right, Jacob, before you ask. But if you say ‘I told you so’…”

He chuckled and then looked around as the gate opened again.

“I thought I might find you here,” a familiar, deep voice stated.

“Missing me already?” Rebecca giggled.

Jarod came up and sat beside her, slipping an arm around her waist. “How could I not be? I wake up to find myself deserted…”

“With so little idea of where I was,” she laughed, “that it took you a good twenty seconds to find me.”

His laughter echoed around the garden. “Well, considering that you told me I could have anything I wanted, it seemed pretty easy to wish for it and know that it would be there when I opened my eyes.”

“Ah, so you were cheating again.”

He raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Probably.”

The opening of the door stopped him as he was about to kiss her.

“Well, look what the wind blew in.”

“Hey!” Rebecca protested. “I walked! I haven’t flown here since I gave you that shock by almost landing on top of you.”

Jarod stared at her. “You did what?”

“It’s a long story.”

“And you found it amusing,” Sydney added as he sat down.

“You didn’t?” She gave him a look of such amazement that Jacob broke into a fit of laughter and, after a moment, Sydney joined in.

As she said the word, he looked over and she could see the expression on his face. “It’s Jarod, isn’t it Sydney? You’re worried about him.”

“And you aren’t?”

“That doesn’t enter into it.” She watched him closely. “We’re talking about you at the moment, not me.”

Sydney got up from his seat and walked over to the far side of the room, staring out of the window. He made an effort to stifle the emotion that he could feel building up inside but Rebecca and Jacob exchanged glances as they watched his shoulders heave. Finally Rebecca got up and walked over to him, placing her hand on his arm and turning him to face her.

“Sydney? Is it Jarod?”

He nodded silently and she gently reached up to brush away the tears. “I know, Sydney. I know.”

Rebecca looked up to find Sydney scrutinizing Jarod closely and she raised an eyebrow as she watched him.

“Are you still worrying about him or is it something else now?”

Sydney shook his head and laughed but Jarod caught the tone of the question and looked up.

“You were…worried about me?”

“We all were.” The statement was made in Jacob’s quiet voice. “I don’t think any of us could have helped it, Jarod, even if we’d wanted to.”

“But…why?” Jarod's face betrayed his confusion. “You knew that the worst thing that could happen to me would be to come here, and…”

“No, Jarod.” Rebecca reached up and placed a finger on his lips, silencing him as she shook her head. “The absolute worst thing that can happen to a person isn’t dying.” Her eyes became sad. “It’s suffering in life. And that’s what none of us liked having to watch, for any of you.”

Sydney sat in the room and watched as Jarod moaned quietly in his sleep, his clenched fist pressed to his chest where the newly healed scars showed clearly through his unbuttoned shirt.

“He hasn’t been in this much pain for a long time.”

“Not since he was six,” Rebecca agreed quietly from her chair in the corner, her face wearing an expression of sadness. “Even when he was recalling it, the pain wasn’t as bad as it was at the time of his injury and illness.”

Sydney made no sound in reply but slid forward in his seat and placed one hand on that of the man lying in front of him.

“I think that time was worse for you than for him, Sydney.”

Her voice broke through the silence and the older man looked up at her, his expression one of shock. “How can you possibly say that? He was suffering…”

“And you would deny that you were as well? His pain, though, was only physical at the time, the mental pain only coming later. But your agony was a mixture of mental and emotional, and that’s the worst kind.”

“I didn’t even know what caused it…”

“And for the whole two weeks that his body was fighting the problems that Raines caused, you tried hard to find out. But you never could, because he hid the facts well enough to protect himself from you and the Triumvirate.”

“Why?” Sydney's voice was soft. “Why would anybody do that to a defenseless six-year-old boy?”

“Why did Raines do anything he did?” Rebecca shook her head. “Because he hoped it would help him and his career. But mostly just because he could.”

“I don’t remember anything of that time now, except for the things you reminded me of.”

Jarod looked down at Rebecca, his arms around her, and she nodded.

“I know, Jarod. It was meant to be that way. I wouldn’t have wanted to remind you of what came later because there was so much pain involved.” Her eyes became sad and she looked over at Sydney. “But we remember. He because he was there and I because it haunted my thoughts for weeks.”

“Years,” interposed Jacob. “In fact, I don’t think you ever got over it.”

“I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, though, was I Sydney?”

“No, Rebecca.” His voice was soft and his eyes searched the face of the young man who sat opposite him. “No, you weren’t.”

Jarod released his hold on Rebecca and leaned forward, his gaze intense. “Tell me.”

“Please, Jarod…” his former mentor begged.

“No, Sydney. Tell me. That, more than anything else, will get rid of it. We both know it will.”

Sydney looked down at the folder, his eyes taking in the small amount of data that was provided there – some internal bleeding, source unknown; possible acute appendicitis. Reaching into his pocket, Sydney pulled out a note, scribbled on a scrap of paper, which had been pushed into his hand by the surgeon that morning. This was the genuine diagnosis: an Esophageal rupture, and pleural effusion with the ongoing threat of Mediastinal emphysema, and all of that, with no apparent cause, in a boy of six.

However this had to be kept secret – because a higher directive, from some unknown source, had insisted, had demanded it. But the other doctor had been willing to ignore that directive and pass it on to his colleague. Shaking his head in a mixture of anger and sorrow, Sydney replaced the folder and pushed the paper back into his pocket. He then moved over to the side of the bed, sitting down in the chair that was there and gently reaching out to place his hand on the forehead of the boy that lay there. He could feel the heat of Jarod's skin and he frowned, getting up again to look at the chart once more, his eyes now traveling over the line that denoted the heightened temperature.

“Come quick – Jarod's dying!”

The words seemed to echo around the room and he looked around sharply, the tears standing out in his eyes as he recalled the image that he had seen twice that morning – the body of the small, blond girl lying on the high, white bed.

Jarod looked up sharply. “I had no idea.”

”No, Jarod. And I never wanted you to remember. That was why I did everything I could to make you forget.” Sydney looked sadly over at him. “Even the parts that it would have been better for you to know.”

“Such as?”

“Such as Rebecca.” Jacob spoke softly. “We didn’t want you to forget about her, but you couldn’t remember some without remembering it all.”

She felt his arms tighten around her as the words were spoken and looked up at him. “I didn’t mind, Jarod. I understood.”

“But I didn’t want to forget you, Rebecca.”

“If you hadn’t forgotten, Jarod, your life could never have been what it was. You had to forget, so that you could remember later.” She smiled. “And I had to die, so that I could live later.”

Sydney let himself into the house, having made sure that he would be contacted if anything happened to Jarod, and dropped into a chair in the kitchen, eyes turned to the sky where the sun was gradually sinking towards the horizon. He had never been home from the Centre so early before, but he couldn’t stay there, not today. Not after having seen that Jarod was asleep. And not after seeing the first child ever to die within the walls of the Centre. He felt his throat constrict and he swallowed several times, getting up from his chair and walking over to the phone. The dial tone hummed in his ear before he pressed the numbers and waited until it was answered.

“Catherine? How is she?”

“She’s better, Sydney. How’s Jarod?”

“He was asleep when I left. But he’s not in pain anymore.”

“And – Rebecca?”

He stared at the wall for a moment before replying softly. “No, Catherine. They couldn’t save her. They tried, but they couldn’t bring her back. Her injuries were just too severe.”

He heard her swallow several times. “And she was the one…”

“…who saved Jarod. But she found your daughter too, didn’t she?”

“Yes, Sydney. She did.”

“I was lucky,” Rebecca stated. “If your connection had been stronger, I would never have managed to get to both of you in time.”

Sydney looked over at her. “If it had been – who…?”

”I would have gone to Jarod, Sydney. I would have had to, because he would have died if I hadn’t. Miss Parker's pain would have faded when his did, whether I’d been there or not. All I did was help her to get through it.”

”All?” The voice from the gate made them look up. “That was a lot, Rebecca.”

The blond woman smiled. “Hello, Catherine.”

Jarod looked up as the woman came over and sat on the other seat, facing him, with a smile on her face.

“It’s been a long time, Jarod.”

“It has.” He smiled. “I’d say you haven’t changed…”

”I haven’t. But you have.”

“Can you see that?”

She nodded. “When you watch a person from here, before they die, then you see them as the world sees them. It’s only when they come here that things alter.”

He nodded before looking back at Sydney. “And what happened later that night?”

He didn’t look up as the door opened, his eyes staring at the spot on the floor that he’d been examining since finishing his discussion with Mrs. Parker and calling to check on Jarod's condition.

“Hello, Sydney.”

He froze, hearing the soft female voice, before looking up to see the girl held in his brother’s arms.

“No…” His voice was a whisper.

“Yes, Sydney.” She smiled, holding out her hands to him, but he backed away and she looked up at Jacob, a sad expression on her face. “I thought you said this would be easy.”

“And you said it wouldn’t be.” He smiled at her. “You were right.”

She wrapped both arms around his neck in a warm hug. “Is that such a surprise?”

“It took a long time to persuade you, Sydney. And yet I was right there, in front of you, all the time.”

He smiled faintly. “It would have been easier if I hadn’t seen your ‘body’ earlier that day.”

“I only planned that you would come with the members of the Tower and I hoped to find time to tell you the truth by then, so you’d be able to help me afterwards.” Jacob smiled. “By the time I saw you outside the window the first time, it was too late. But I thought you would have stayed with Jarod.”

“I couldn’t stay there,” Sydney responded softly. “I felt so guilty…”

“Why?” Jarod leaned forward again. “Why on earth did you feel guilty? You hadn’t done anything…”

“That was exactly why.” Sydney stared at his hands. “I thought that, if I’d done something, I might have been able to prevent it. If I’d even noticed earlier…”

”Then I would never have met Rebecca,” Jarod responded. “And that made it all worthwhile – even the pain.”

“Oh, you would have, Jarod. I promise that we would have met.” She smiled up at him. “I would have made sure of it.”

He only held her more tightly and then looked back at Sydney. “And what happened, once you were finally convinced?”

Sydney slipped in behind the wheel of the car and looked behind him as Jacob climbed into the back seat, the girl clutched in his arms, her blond hair streaming over his shoulder.

“Ready?”

“Let’s go.”

Nodding, Sydney started the car and drove it out of the driveway. At the first bump, he heard the muffled sob from behind and turned to see the girl clutch at his brother’s shirt.

“What is it, Jacob?”

“She was badly injured when I found her – broken bones. I haven’t had time to set them yet.”

“Do you want me to stop while you do it?”

“No, keep driving. I’ll give her something and do it while she’s asleep.”

He nodded again and focused on the road ahead but his ears were trained on the conversation in the back seat.

“I don’t want to go, Jacob.”

“You have to, Rebecca. You know that you do.”

“But I don’t want to leave you. I’ll never see you again.”

“You don’t know that for sure, Rebecca.”

“Yes, Jacob. I do.”

“You’ve made mistakes before, sweetheart.”

“But I won’t make them anymore. Not after what he did. Now I know.”

Rebecca looked up, tears in her eyes. “I was right, Jacob. You know I was.”

He nodded. “I knew at the time that you probably were, but I didn’t want to upset you more than I had to by making you go.”

She released her hold on Jarod's hands and threw her arms around Jacob’s neck, to which he responded by wrapping both arms around her, lowering his face to hide it in her hair.

“I’m so sorry, Rebecca.”

“No, Jacob. Don’t be. It was best. We both know that.”

“It’s easy…in hindsight…”

Reaching up, she kissed him gently on one cheek, wiping the tear that slipped out of his eye.

“It’s always easy, looking back. But you thought you were doing the right thing, Jacob, and we both know what would have happened to me if I’d stayed at the Centre. We know what they would have done to me – what they would have used me for. I would rather have died…”

“Don’t say that, Rebecca!”

”Why not, Jacob?” She pulled back slightly and looked up at him. “It’s true. Even being near you wouldn’t have been enough to make up for what they would have done to me – if I’d even been able to remember you at all. If Raines had had another chance…” She shuddered and held him close. “It was better that way.”

“You’ll be safe now, Rebecca.”

She looked up at him, the drugs still making her drowsy but tears clearly standing out in her eyes. “I love you, Jacob.”

He bent down and kissed her gently. “I love you, too, Rebecca. I’ll try to come and see you again…”

“No,” she interrupted him. “You won’t be able to. You don’t have…” She stopped and closed her eyes, opening them once more to look up at Sydney. “Jarod…will live. But he needs you, Sydney.”

“We should be going anyway, Sydney.” Jacob looked up, resolutely keeping the tears away. Turning back, he kissed her once more before walking to the door of the room. Once there, he looked back. “Goodbye, Rebecca.” Hiding his tears, he left the room, followed, several moments later, by his brother.

“And you never saw her again?” Jarod whispered.

”No. The accident happened and…” Jacob paused. “Sometimes I thought I did. I was still able to hear and, if my eyes were open, to see during that time. There were times when I thought she was there.” He looked down at her as she sat beside him. “Of course, now I know that I was right.”

Jarod looked over at Rebecca. “But you said, that day in the hotel room, that he would come and visit…”

She shook her head sadly. “I know what I said, but it wasn’t true. I used to dream that he’d come and see me, and those dreams were so realistic that I could just about convince myself he’d really been there, and not just in my mind.” She swallowed hard. “Then – after the accident – I couldn’t stay away. Even if Raines had been there, I still would have come. I had to see him.”

“And your parents didn’t…?”

She smiled at Jarod. “No, they didn’t mind. They understood what he meant to me. I told them. Often they would take me – before I was old enough to drive or go on my own.”

“To the Centre too?”

“Yes, there as well. They didn’t want to, but after my adoptive mother found me climbing out of my bedroom window one night, she thought it was better to take me than have me try to kill myself getting there alone.”

”And you didn’t know she’d come in?”

“Of course I knew she’d come in.” Rebecca laughed. “I knew they wouldn’t take me unless they knew how much I wanted to go, so I had to do something to make it look extreme.” She paused, a slight smile appearing on her face as she looked up. “Did I mention that our apartment was on the third floor?”

She dropped into the vent, making no sound as she loosely replaced the cover and began to creep down the darkened passages.

“Rebecca.”

“Hi Angelo.” She threw her arms around him and hugged him, feeling him hug her back. “Are you okay now?”

He nodded slowly, eyes fixed on her. “Sad.”

“I know, Angelo. They’re all very sad.” She chuckled. “It’s almost a shame they don’t know. Such a waste of emotion.”

Grinning, he turned and led her down the passageway. At the cover, she stopped and sat down, turning to him. He nodded, touched her arm gently and then faded away into the darkness. She smiled and then turned back, waiting for the girl to appear below her.

“It really was such an awful waste.” Rebecca turned to Catherine and smiled. “All those people, so many of them just devastated – and you were alive and well, only a short distance away.”

Catherine smiled sadly. “It was necessary. We all know that.”

“We do now.” Jarod leaned back and spoke philosophically. “Death gives one such a wonderful perspective on life.”

The older woman laughed. “You knew before, too, Jarod. You were the one who told my daughter.”

He shrugged. “Ancient history.”

“The things we were remembering were even more ancient.” Rebecca looked over at Sydney. “Like when you got back to the Centre – remember?”

Sydney gently opened the door and walked into the room to find a nurse standing beside the boy’s bed.

“How is he?”

“He’s been asking for you.”

He turned and stared at the woman. “So why didn’t you call me?”

“Because he told us not to.”

“Jarod?”

“No. Mr. Parker.”

About to respond, the psychiatrist stopped when he heard the weak whisper.

“Syd-ney?”

“Yes, Jarod.” He pulled up the chair and sat down, placing one hand on that of the boy that lay there. “I’m here.”

“It…hurts.”

“I know, Jarod.” As the boy began to roll over on to his side, Sydney rearranged the blankets so that he would be more comfortable and then gently stroked the sweat-covered forehead. “But it won’t hurt for long.”

“Promise?” Jarod's eyes were filled with tears and glittered feverishly as his hand clutched Sydney's.

“Yes, Jarod.” He picked up the damp cloth that sat on the table beside the bed, wiping the boy’s face. “I promise.”

Rebecca glanced over. “Neither of us was very good at keeping promises, were we, Sydney?”

He shook his head sadly. “No, I don’t think we were.”

“How long was it?” the Pretender asked.

Sydney looked over at Jarod. “You were ill for a fortnight. Dangerously ill for the first few days. The other doctors didn’t think you’d survive.”

”But you did.”

”I kept remembering what Rebecca had said – and somehow it never occurred to me to doubt her.”

“I wish I could have given you more hope at the time, Sydney.” She looked over at him, smiling slightly. “But I didn’t have the strength to fight against what Jacob had given me and tell you more, aside from those few things.”

“What you told me was enough, Rebecca. To know that he’d live was enough and you needed that medication at the time.”

“Why?” Jarod looked down at her. “What had happened?”

She placed her hands gently on the arms he had wrapped around her and looked up at him. “Do you remember what I told you, about Raines?”

Feeling him shudder slightly as he nodded, she pressed herself closer to him. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

He nodded again, more slowly, and she swallowed hard.

She walked into the room, knowing what she would find there, and there was no surprise in her eyes as she looked up to see Raines leaning against the empty bed, his arms folded.

“Well, if it isn’t the little psychic. And what might you be doing here? Perhaps – visiting somebody?”

He reached forward and grabbed her with one arm, the other hand pressed over her mouth so that she couldn’t make a sound.

“We’re going to have to make sure that you never have a chance to tell anybody what you found out about today.”

Carefully opening the door, he carried her to the elevator, taking her down to SL-27 and into a small room. He locked the door behind him and then carried her over to a table, putting her down on it and loosely tying her there. She watched silently as he wheeled over a black box and picked up the two slender rods, flicking a switch that caused the machine to give a loud whine. Her eyes widened slightly as, a look of anger on his face, he walked over to her. As he lowered the ends of the rods to her temples, she felt something explode in her mind and then everything went black.

She felt the tears slipping into her hair as he held her close to him as though he wanted to protect her from the danger that was long since past.

“He did it while you were – conscious?”

“Yes, Jacob.” Rebecca looked over at him, seeing the pain in his eyes. “He was too angry with me and too scared of what you, Sydney or the Tower might do to think about me. Besides, he wanted to hurt me. That was part of it.”

“And…and then?”

“The straps he was using to hold me down weren’t firm enough, particularly with the voltage that the machine was turned up to. The first few shocks released my wrists and ankles and the last one, the biggest, sent me flying across the room and into the wall. That’s when my legs were broken.”

She felt Jarod draw back from her and looked up to see the pain that was on the faces of the three other people on the veranda.

“After that happened, he picked me up and realized that I was still alive. He took a sheet and wrapped me in it so that nobody could see me and then carried me back up to my room, leaving me on the bed…”

“…where I found you.”

“Yes, Jacob. And that was only about twenty minutes after he left.”

“And could you – feel? I mean, you said…”

“I know what I said, Jarod.” She looked up at him. “Yes, I could feel. Not right away, but the first thing was the pain. Then I knew that someone was about to come into my room, and he did.”

“Jacob?”

She shook her head, smiling slightly. “Timmy.”

“Rebecca?”

He bent over the bed and shook her gently, feeling her in his mind but wanting to have her look at him.

‘No, Timmy. I can’t do that, not right now.’

“Are you okay?”

‘I’m alive. That’s the main thing.’ There was a pause and he felt the pain, a weak echo of what she was feeling, in his mind. He turned away, feeling sick. ‘Go and make sure he’s okay.’

“Jarod?”

‘Yes. He’s angry, wanting me, and I can’t be there. You have to go for me.’

“But…Rebecca…”

‘No, Timmy, you can’t do anything for me.’

“Are you sure?”

‘Very sure. Now go, quickly.’

“I thought I heard a soft thud as I opened your door. That was Timmy leaving, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Jacob.” She tried to smile. “He didn’t want to go, but I knew that you’d be there soon. Besides, Jarod needed him more than I did.”

Rebecca felt his arms around her and smiled, leaning back against him.

“And then?”

“Then what, Jarod?” She looked up and saw the curiosity in his eyes.

“After Jacob came?”

“I’ve never been too sure on that.” She smiled over at him. “Not what happened, but your motive. Did you come up with the idea of faking my death straight away or was it an idea that came later?”

He smiled. “If ‘later’ can be within thirty seconds, then, yes, it was later. My first thought was that you were really dead. My second was that you looked dead. And my third was that if I thought so, it shouldn’t be too hard to make other people think the same.”

Rebecca laughed. “I don’t why they made me do the simulations. You would have been just as good.”

She felt the needle enter her arm but the pain in her head and body was so great that it almost passed unnoticed.

“It’s okay, Rebecca.” His voice was soft and she could feel his hand on her head, gently stroking it. “This will help. I promise.”

Gradually the pounding in her brain began to recede, the pain ebbing away until finally her mind was clear. Slowly she felt the weight that had been holding her down all day lift and she opened her eyes, focusing on his face.

“Ja-cob.”

The word came slowly and he smiled. “Hi, sweetie.” Gently he brushed the hair away from her face.

“Jarod?”

“He’s feeling much better now.”

“And…Miss Parker?”

Jacob raised an eyebrow. “So you did know about that.” He smiled. “Yes, she’s better, too. But I think it’s time we got you out of here.”

She nodded and raised her arms, linking them behind his neck as he swung her up into his arms, a blanket wrapped tightly around her legs to stop them from being further damaged. She nestled into his neck and drowsily watched as he opened the door of the room with one hand, softly closing it behind him and rapidly walking down the hall to the car. Closing her eyes, she relaxed as he put her down on the back seat and climbed in behind the wheel.

“How could you…?”

“How could she what, Jarod?” Sydney looked over as Jarod shook his head in amazement.

“How, after everything that had been done to you, could you even think about me or Miss Parker? I mean, you must have been in agony…”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t so bad by then. I’d become used to it. And then whatever Jacob gave me helped too.” Turning her head, she looked up into his eyes. “But of course I thought about you two. You were the whole focus of my life, from the moment I first knew about your existence. If I hadn’t wanted to be sure that Jacob wasn’t worrying about me, it would have been your name and not his that I said first.”

There were tears in his eyes. “We were…?”

”Yes, Jarod.” She kissed him softly. “You always were.”

He looked up, blinking slowly several times until his vision cleared enough to see Sydney standing beside the bed.

“Hi, Jarod.”

“W…?” He tried to form the words but his lips were numb and wouldn’t work.

“What is it, Jarod?” Sydney leaned down, placing one hand on his arm. “What do you want?”

“Her.”

“Who?”

“Rebecca…”

Sydney straightened up, shaking his head. “No, Jarod. You can’t see her.”

The boy’s eyes filled with tears. “Please, Sydney.” His words were a whisper and the first of the salty drops slipped out of his eyes and down his cheeks.

“No, Jarod. She’s not here anymore.” He glanced away for a moment and then looked back down. “You won’t see her again, Jarod. Just forget about her.”

“Who else was there?”

“I was, Jarod.”

He looked over at the woman sitting opposite her and the confusion on his face cleared. “And, of course, you thought she was dead.”

“That was why, Jarod. I wanted to tell you more, but I couldn’t.” Sydney glanced over at Catherine, sadness in his eyes. “It was hard to know who to trust then.”

“But it can’t have been that much later that she came to you with the plan to get us out…”

”It wasn’t, Jarod.” Jacob spoke sadly. “But it was later enough for us to decide it would be better to keep it a secret. Nobody else knew, but we were concerned that if we told one person, others might find out too.”

“And did anybody else ever know?”

Rebecca looked up at him. “I know you heard me telling Miss Parker that her father knew. Not consciously, like I said then, but he somehow felt that I was still alive. His hatred for me and what I did, particularly later when he realized that I had to have helped the two of you find each other again, kept the memory of me in his mind. In fact he was still sure that I was alive in the world, even after I really was dead.”

“And thinking that Rebecca had died,” Catherine added. “I tried to convince my daughter to forget her as well.” She sighed and looked over. “I think that nobody in the world was ever meant to remember who you were.”

Rebecca smiled. “One person was. Timmy – Angelo never forgot.”

She slipped into the darkness of the vents, silently passing along them, going into the darkness, always downwards. Finally she appeared at the side of a room, fixing her eyes on the figure in the bed. Gently easing up the cover, she climbed out and walked over, looking down at him as he lay with his eyes closed, breathing erratically and with bruises on his arms and increased redness at two places on his chest.

“Rebecca.”

“Angelo.” Keeping her voice low, she turned and hugged him. “How is he?”

He looked sadly from the figure on the bed to her. “Pain. Bad pain.”

“Yes, Angelo. I know he’s in pain.”

She turned back and watched as Jarod's eyes moved under closed lips, as the dream began to invade his mind again, and as the events of that day and those of the past week haunted him. Slowly she reached out with one hand and placed it on his cheek, smiling sadly as she saw him relax almost immediately, something like a smile on his face.

“Remember?”

“No, Angelo. He doesn’t remember. Not consciously.”

“Dreams.”

“I know. He dreams about me sometimes. Not very often, though.” She sighed and then turned away, grabbing Angelo’s arm and pulling him with her into the darkest corner of the room, near the cover of the vent. As she reached out to pull it up, the door of the room opened.

“Jarod?”

At the sound of the voice, she turned, watching as Sydney stood for several seconds and stared down at the figure in front of him. Then, a sad expression on her face, she followed Angelo into the darkness of the vent, knowing that there was nothing she could do.

“You – were there?”

“Yes, Jarod. I had to be there. After I knew what Raines and Lyle would do to you there was no way I could have stayed away. I even watched them do it, the first day. I would have liked to be there every night, when they brought you back to your room, but I was too much…” She lowered her head, taking several deep breaths and closing her eyes.

“Too much what, Rebecca?”

Too much of a coward.”

“No, Rebecca.” Sydney leaned forward. “With everything you went through in your life, nobody could ever accuse you of that.”

Her mouth twisted. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“So tell me.”

”No.” She shook her head. “We’re getting rid of your nightmares now, not mine.”

“I dreamed about her again last night, Sydney.”

“Who, Jarod?” He looked over as the young man glanced up from the computer where he’d been working.

“The girl. The blond one. I told you about her.”

“Oh, yes. So you did.” Sydney looked calmly back down at the papers he’d been reviewing and, with a frustrated sigh, Jarod turned back to the computer.

“You couldn’t even remember my name by then, Sydney.” Rebecca laughed and watched as the man half-smiled in response.

“I suppose I tried to hard so make Jarod forget you that I managed to do the same thing to myself.” He looked up. “I’m sorry, Rebecca. You were such an important part of our lives and we all managed to forget you.”

“Almost all.” Rebecca looked over at Catherine. “Once you learned about me, you never managed to forget.”

”No, Rebecca.” Catherine smiled. “I couldn’t have forgotten you. Not just because of what you did…”

”…but because of what came afterwards.” Rebecca nodded and then glanced up at Jarod before looking back. “But we won’t got into that now.”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

“Because I’m tired.” She yawned. “All I want to do right now is go home and go to bed.”

“And…?”

She smiled as she got up from the sofa. “I told you, Jarod. You can do everything you ever wanted to here.”

They Call It Paradise
Part 2

Rebecca could feel Jarod's arms around her before she was even properly awake and she leaned in against him, opening her eyes to see him watching her.

“Hi.”

He gently kissed her forehead. “How did you sleep?”

”Better than any other night since I got here.”

He smiled, gently running his fingers through her hair. “I haven’t slept that well in a long time either.”

”No nightmares?”

”You promised, Rebecca.”

”I know.” She looked sadly up at him. “But I can’t always keep my promises. Not here, anyway. You know that.”

“Nor can you blame yourself for my decisions.” He stroked her cheek with a loving hand. “And, if I choose to feel pain, surely that’s my decision.”

She stood in the garden and watched him, her eyes sad as she saw that he was in pain. His placed one hand on his chest as he got up from his knees, walking slowly and gingerly into the house, making his way up the stairs and into his bedroom. She followed him inside. His movements sluggish, he eased his jacket off his shoulders and slipped it over the back of the chair that stood in front of his desk. Gently, he lay down on the bed and she watched, waiting for what she knew would come. The moment when they would be together again…

She glanced over towards the window and then slid out of bed.

“Where are you going?” Jarod asked, leaning back luxuriously against the pillows.

”We,” she stressed the word, “are going to look at something.”

Taking his hand, she led him onto the balcony. He sat down on the sofa and she nestled into his lap, pulling a thick blanket that sat there over them both. Gently she rested her head against his chest, both of them watching in silence as the sun slowly rose over the mountains in front of them, filling the sky with first a red and then orange light that slowly brightened to the normal hues of day. Sighing, she looked up to find him watching her.

“Where are we, exactly?”

She smiled. “When I was young – after I was released from the Centre – the people that Jacob had given me to brought me to a house in the mountains one year for a holiday. I loved the place and, when I finally made a home of my own here, this is what I wanted it to be. So it is.”

He looked up at the mountains around them. “It’s beautiful.”

She smiled. “I think so, too.”

“Almost as beautiful as you.”

Turning her face up to his, she kissed him gently and he wrapped his arms more tightly around her, staving off the chill of the early morning. They sat in silence for several minutes, Jarod drinking in the view and Rebecca loving, and a little disbelieving of, the situation she was in.

“Why did you come to me?” he suddenly murmured.

“Because I wanted to see you again,” Rebecca responded quietly. “I wanted to see you when you could see me and remember that it was me. Of all the dreams you had about me, I don’t think you remembered one.”

He stroked her hair with one hand, the other holding her close “That’s only partly true, Rebecca. I could remember having dreamed about you. I just couldn’t remember all the details.”

She nodded. “If I had thought you would have remembered, I wouldn’t have tried to…be there. To come back into the world.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I couldn’t just accidentally appear there, Jarod.” She turned her face up to his. “I had to really want to. I could hear your voice when I was asleep at night, but to see you, to feel you, I had to actually make the effort to be there.”

He paused. “Remember what you said to me, about seeing people?”

“Yes.”

“How do I look to you?”

“The way you did the second time we met, during those days at the hotel. Tall, handsome and distinguished.” She smiled and kissed him again.

His eyes took on a sad expression. “I was in pain there.”

“I know.” She picked up his hand and gently stroked it, holding it to her cheek for a moment. “But not all the time.” She looked up. “And how do I look to you?”

“You hardly ever changed.”

“I grew up!” She made an effort to look indignant, but had to smile at the tenderness in his eyes.

“But, afterwards, I only ever thought of you in one way – the same way you think of me, from the same time.”

Rebecca smiled. “Why did you ask?”

He grinned. “I just wanted to make definitely sure you weren’t seeing me as a six-year-old.”

She giggled. “That could make life interesting, if I was.”

He laughed, leaned down and kissed her for several moments before pulling away and looking at her, one eyebrow raised. “Could a six-year-old do that?”

“That depends.” She smiled. “You were pretty advanced at six.”

~*~*~

“How often have you sat here before?”

“Like this?” Her face became sad and she stared out over the mountains and into the rising sun. “Almost every day.”

“And alone?”

She nodded speechlessly.

He turned her face up to his with a gentle touch. ”And what were you thinking about, Rebecca?”

“I think you know, Jarod.”

The two of them looked around to find Sydney standing in the doorway. “I went to your house, but your father said you didn’t come home at all last night, so I took a gamble.”

“They’re missing me?” Jarod smiled.

“They’ve only just got you back and they probably feel that they’ve lost you again already.” Rebecca laughed. “I feel terrible.”

“Yes.” Sydney gave her a mock frown as he sat down opposite them. “I can see how guilty that makes you feel.”

She disconnected the call and remained still for a moment, looking down at the body of the unconscious man on the floor in front of her. Gently she rolled him over so that his head rested on her legs and she ran a finger down the side of his face, looking at his closed eyelids and white cheeks. Slowly she lowered her face so that her mouth touched his and then quickly pulled back, gently brushing his lips with her finger, as if trying to wipe away what she’d just done. Her voice, when she spoke, was tender.

“Hi, Jarod. It’s good to see you again.”

He moaned softly and his eyelids flickered but she placed one hand on his cheek and felt him relax at her touch.

“It’s all right, Jarod. Just sleep now. You can face it all later.”

His head rolled slightly to one side and his lips parted, color beginning to come back into his face. After several moments she lifted his head from her knees and stood up, glancing from him to the bed.

Rebecca glanced up to see Jarod throw his arms around Thomas and hug him, the other man returning the gesture. A gentle smile on her face, she turned to see Miss Parker standing at the bottom of the flight of stairs that led up to the large front veranda on which she and Sydney were now sitting.

“Is everything sorted, Parker?”

“Not everything, Sydney.” She laughed. “Give us time.” The woman came and sat down one of the two sofas, opposite him, as Rebecca pulled herself up to sit on the veranda railing.

“But you’re happy now, Miss Parker.”

“Is that a question?”

”No,” Rebecca smiled. “More a statement of fact.”

The brunette laughed. “And are you happy too?”

“Jacob asked me the same thing.”

“And what did you say?”

“There was only one answer I could give. The same as you would have, had you be asked and not told.”

Miss Parker glanced out over the mountains before looking back. “Did you ever talk to Thomas about me?”

“No.” Rebecca sighed sadly. “I never even saw Thomas until just now. I didn’t want to. And I don’t think he wanted to see me either.”

”Why?”

“Because of what I was trying to make happen between you and Jarod. I knew that, if you’d fallen in love with him, Thomas would have blamed me for it. And rightly so.”

Sydney raised an eyebrow. “So you admit that you did influence him?”

“I told Jacob that, not you.”

“We talked.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “I should have guessed.”

The other woman’s expression was confused. “You…wanted us to? Why?”

She smiled sadly. “I wanted him – wanted both of you to be happy and I knew that, while Jarod remembered me in the way he did, you couldn’t be.”

”What about the way I remembered Thomas?”

“I never factored that into the equation.” Rebecca looked up with a small smile on her face. “I guess I should have.”

“It might have helped.” The three looked up to see that Jacob had come up onto the veranda. “It probably would have saved a lot of emotion later.”

“Don’t start.” Rebecca leaned against the arm he wrapped around her shoulders and looked up at him. “We went through all this yesterday.”

“Not all, Rebecca.”

She narrowed her eyes at the man on the sofa. “What do you mean, Sydney?”

“You.”

“No.” She instantly pulled backwards as though trying to escape. “No, I don’t want…”

“You didn’t want to talk about Jarod, either, and that was what you needed.”

”I don’t need this. And you don’t need to know it either. The people who do know have enough of a burden to carry already.”

“Sharing burdens makes them easier,” another new voice stated.

“Angelo, please.” She turned as both he and Catherine appeared. “No.”

“Yes, Rebecca. They want to know.”

She shook her head. “They think they want to know. Once they do know, they’ll only wish they didn’t. Besides, it wouldn’t help them, to know that.”

He came over and stood in front of her, their eyes on a level, as Catherine sat down beside her daughter, sliding an arm around her waist.

“It will help you.”

“No. No, it won’t.” A tear gently slipped down her cheek. “It couldn’t possibly help me. Last night was bad enough.”

“Last night was the easy part.”

“I know.” The whisper was almost inaudible.

“And last night was for their benefit, not yours.” He took her hands in his. “You’ve never done anything for your own benefit. Your life was lived for other people and ever since your death you’ve gone on only doing things for other people. Now do this for yourself.”

“I can’t, Angelo.” A stream of tears had followed the first and she looked up at him. “I don’t know how. I wouldn’t even know where to start. How to do it.”

“How do I do it? How do I make him forget something like that? Whenever he’s awake, he asks for her.”

Jacob looked over at Sydney. “I know. Catherine said that her daughter is having the same problem.”

“Should we have done it differently?”

“How, Sydney?” Jacob got up and began to pace the room. “If she had been seen to be still alive, we would never had got her out of the Centre. And if we hadn’t got her out of there, somebody might have done worse things to her.”

“How is she?”

“They said that her legs were healing well, but that…” He stopped.

“She’s missing you, isn’t she?”

Jacob nodded. “Probably about as much as I…” He turned away without another word.

“But that wasn’t what…”

”What, Jacob?” She looked up at him.

“What happened that changed your whole perspective – your whole way of living, of thinking, of acting. Sydney told you, in those last days, what I’d said to him, about you being bitter. And it was true. Something did happen. But you never told me what.”

“That…” She paused and looked down. “Jacob, this is hard.”

“I know.” He wrapped his arms around her waist. “But try.”

She nodded. “That was the start, I think. Or a least a catalyst. When I ‘died’ and you took me to them, I kept you in my mind the whole time after you left.”

“I always thought you would have.”

“And I dreamed about you every night for weeks – months after,” she corrected herself. “I dreamed about you until finally I had to see you. So I ran away.”

“You what?” He pulled away and looked down at her, wide-eyed.

“I knew something was going to happen and so I left. I crept out of the house one night and either hitched lifts or walked until I got to Blue Cove.” Her eyes filled as she looked up at him. “But I was too late.”

She came around the corner, running as though her life depended on it and knowing that his did. The night was dark and the rain blinded her but she never stopped, the pain in her legs and side growing but still bearable. Finally she saw the lights coming towards her – headlights that brightened with every second – and she could see her shadow lengthened by those coming in the other direction. She screamed aloud, her voice lost in the sound of crunching metal as the car skidded off the road, finally landing in the long grass. She froze, unable to move, until she finally heard him pull himself free and begin calling for his brother.

“It took me five days to get there. It shouldn’t have taken that long.”

”Rebecca, you were only seven.”

“But I did one thing wrong.” She sobbed and looked up at him out of eyes that streamed with tears. “My legs hurt so badly one day that I lay down and, before I realized what I’d done, I was asleep. I woke up several hours later, knowing that I’d just made the one mistake that I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for; that you were going to be injured because I’d submitted to my own needs. After that,” her chin lifted, despite the tears that still poured down her face, “I decided I would never be selfish again, that I would try to make up for what I’d done by never thinking about myself anymore.” She looked up at Angelo, who had seated himself on the sofa beside Sydney. “You were right. I did live for other people. But only after that day, not before it. Before then, I did think of myself, sometimes.”

~*~*~

“How many times did you come back to the Centre?”

Rebecca shook her head in answer to Miss Parker's question. “I lost count. A lot, though, especially after I moved out of home and lived on my own.”

“And why?”

She smiled faintly. “The reasons varied. But most of them had to do with Jarod – and you, until you were no longer there.”

“And did you know that he was going to escape?”

Rebecca raised an eyebrow, the corners of her mouth lifting. “Miss Parker, what was I? What was it about me that you envied?”

As Miss Parker laughed and nodded, Sydney glanced over at Rebecca. “And what was it about her that you envied?”

“You’re incorrigible. You know that, don’t you?”

Sydney smiled. “I believe I’ve been told that once or twice before, yes.” He leaned forward. “Well?”

She sighed and leaned back slightly, feeling as Jacob put an arm around her back and he looked down at her, amusement in his eyes. “Oh, no you don’t. No ‘falling’ back off the railing and disappearing.”

“As if I would!”

“You would and you know it. You’ve done it before.” He smiled. “Just answer the question.”

She dropped the bags onto the bed in her apartment and glanced around at the bare walls, suppressing a shudder. The room seemed bare and unwelcoming after what she was used to, at the only home she had ever really had and which she had left because it didn’t feel the way she knew it was meant to. They tried to love her, but they were too afraid of her knowledge to allow themselves to get close to her. So she had moved out. Walking over to the window, she opened the Venetian blinds and looked out towards the large, cream-colored building that loomed in the distance.

“You lived near the Centre?”

“About half a mile away. It seemed like the easiest thing to do. Besides, they weren’t looking for me, so I was perfectly safe.” She shuddered. “I just never felt it.”

“And…why?”

Rebecca looked up and met Miss Parker's eye. “I’d been too late once. I figured that, by living that close, I could never be too late again.” She smiled. “Besides, it meant that I could have a visitor and nobody would know.”

“Who?”

After putting the last book on the shelf, she looked around. It was only a slight improvement and she would just have to get used to it. With a smile, she turned to the door in time to hear the knock on it.

“Come in, Angelo.”

He peeped inside. “Surprise!”

“No,” she laughed. “Not really. But I know you were trying.”

Pushing the door closed behind him, he came across and sat down on her bed.

“Sad.”

“Just a little, Angelo.”

“Homesick.”

She laughed, a short but light sound. “For what? I don’t have a real home and neither do you. Nor will Jarod or Miss Parker for a long time.”

“Jacob.”

Rebecca glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Yes, Angelo. Perhaps.”

“Go visit.”

“Not now. Not while Sydney's there. But maybe later.”

“Angelo!” the younger brunette exploded.

“Miss Parker.” He looked over, a hint of a smile on his face. “You didn’t expect me to stay there when I could get in and out so easily, did you? And especially when I could go to Rebecca and at least get a decent meal.”

“Instead of those wonderful alternatives they liked giving us.” She looked over and laughed. “I can’t say it did of us much good – at least not in terms of growth.” She focused on the two male figures she could see approaching the house. “Of course, some people are exceptions to that.”

She heard Angelo’s laugh as he continued. “It also meant that I could spend the night somewhere that wasn’t dark and draughty.”

“And they never found out…?”

Rebecca interrupted. “I could tell him when to go back, so that they wouldn’t miss him. No, they never did. Nobody ever found out.”

“Not even Jarod?”

“How could he? He didn’t even remember who I was.” She shrugged and turned her face away.

“And yet he dreamed about you, Rebecca,” Sydney said quietly. “He was still dreaming about you up to the last days before he left the Centre.”

“And afterwards.”

They looked over to find Jarod and Thomas coming up the stairs. “I still dreamed about her for a long time afterwards.”

“You didn’t even know who you were dreaming about.” She leaned back against him as he came over to stand beside her and he laughed.

“I think that’s a fair enough statement.” He kissed her. “It didn’t stop me though.”

She smiled faintly. “And yet you told me that all your dreams…”

“I didn’t have to tell you, Rebecca. You already knew without me having to say it.”

Nodding, she rested her head against his chest, watching as Jacob moved to sit down beside Sydney and Thomas sat down beside Miss Parker, slipping his arms around her shoulders as she leaned against him.

“But,” the Pretender went on, “you were never like you are now, when I used to dream about you.”

“Oh, really?” Thankful for the change of subject, she looked up, one eyebrow raised. “How was I?”

“After the second meeting, the way I remembered you changed somewhat.”

”Is that so surprising?”

“Not really.” Jacob interrupted the conversation. “Not considering how much you changed, Rebecca.”

“I had to change, Jacob. I grew up. I couldn’t have stayed the way I was when I was six.”

“Why?”

She closed her eyes briefly before looking at him. “Why what, Jacob?”

“Why did you change?”

Rebecca looked from Sydney to his brother. “You’re just as bad as each other!”

“Answer the question, Rebecca,” Sydney said firmly.

She stared at the floor of the veranda for a moment, before glancing up to meet Catherine’s eyes. The older woman nodded slightly and Rebecca sighed.

“This…this isn’t easy. It won’t be easy for you to hear and it isn’t easy for me to tell. I’ve never had to tell anybody before. Of the other two people who do know, one was already dead at the time and the other knows everything about me and always has.”

Rebecca swallowed painfully and felt Jarod's arms tighten around her.

“Last night, I called myself a coward and that point was immediately disputed. I have to admit that perhaps I used the wrong word. But, if I ever was a coward, then it was caused by somebody else.” She sighed and looked at Jacob. “You were right in what you said to Sydney, all those years ago. If I had become bitter – and I think perhaps I had – then it was caused by a specific event. Two events, actually. But they’re inseparable and, although they happened several months apart, I count them as one.”

A tear slipped out of her eye and she wiped it away, her eyes focused once more on the floor of the veranda and her voice still a dull, emotionless monotone.

“The first of the two events happened in October 1995, about a week before the experiments when Sydney was in Europe.” She felt Jarod shudder and squeezed his hand, wondering if he would still consider that as a comfort, once he knew.

She left the nursing home and made her way back to the hotel where she’d been staying, feeling sick at the thought of what was coming. Going into the room, she found him there, waiting for her.

“You don’t look surprised to see me, Rebecca. But then, I guess you wouldn’t be, would you?”


She stood with her back against the closed door, watching him and waiting for him to come towards her. For a moment she thought about screaming, about trying to change what would happen, but she knew there was no point. There was nobody who could help her, nobody who would. She watched as he turned towards her, his eyes alight with greed and power, as he slowly began to walk across the room, narrowing the space between them.

“Who?”

Rebecca looked up to meet Miss Parker's eyes and saw the pain in Catherine’s face, knowing that it was reflected in her own. She felt her lips tremble, aware of the impact that her next words would have on everybody who didn’t already know what she was going to say.

“Your brother. Mr. Lyle.”

She felt Jarod stiffen behind her and fixed her eyes back on the ground.

“How did he…?” Jacob began softly.

“He’d read about me in the Centre’s files and we had met once, years after the files said I was dead.” She closed her eyes briefly. “He found out where Jacob was and knew that I would come there, so he waited for me.”

“But…how did the Centre still believe you were dead?”

”He didn’t tell them.” She looked up to meet Sydney's eye. “He wanted to waltz back into the Centre with me, so that he would instantly be given anything he wanted. He thought that, if he told anyone else, that would lessen his chances and give him competition in the hunt for me.”

“And…when he found you?”

She involuntarily nodded, feeling the bile rise in the back of her throat.

She mentally screamed as he picked her up and threw her on to the bed, feeling his strength as he tied her down, finally covering her mouth with the cloth he’d brought with him. Closing her eyes, she tried to come up with some way, any way, to get out of the situation but nothing she knew, no power she had, could help her to escape from him. Roughly she felt her body jerk as he tore away her clothes and stared down at her.

“They won’t give me the chance for this once we get back to the Centre, so we’ll have to do it now.”

Closing her eyes, she commanded herself to show no emotion, not even to show the pain that she knew he would cause.

Then she felt the mattress bend under his weight…

“He…no, Rebecca – ” Jacob’s voice broke.

“I said,” she paused to swallow her tears as she looked over at the man who had been like a father to her, “I said you wouldn’t want to know. But you insisted.”

“But why…didn’t he…?”

She looked over at Miss Parker as the woman asked the unfinished question. “I suppose you mean, ‘why didn’t he take me back to the Centre?’.”

The dark-haired woman nodded and Rebecca continued.

“You have to understand, I went there every year, so the people who lived there knew me well. The hotel-owner’s wife came up, as she did every evening, to find out how Jacob was. When she saw the brighter than normal light coming from under my door, she got suspicious and knocked. Lyle…had already finished and was getting ready to take me with him but, at the sound, he disappeared through the window. She came into the room to find me on the bed.”

“Rebecca?”

She heard the gasp as the woman’s gaze took in the bloodstained sheets and the ropes that bound her to the bed, as well as the rag across her mouth.

“What on earth…?” Reaching over, she pulled down the cloth, watching as the woman gasped for air, before beginning to undo the ties that bound her wrists to the iron bed head. “Who…?”

“It…it doesn’t matter.”

“What? Are you…?”

“No, it doesn’t.” She closed her eyes, trying to block out what had just happened, and then looked up again. “But I need help. Medical help.”

The older woman went to the door and called for her husband, then reached over to pick up the phone on the bedside table.

“What…it’s…?”

“He cut the line.” Her voice was weak. “There’s a phone in my bag. Use that.”

As the man came into the room, his wife handed him the phone and pulled a blanket out of the cupboard, wrapping the slender woman in it to try and stop her shivering. As her ankles were also released, Rebecca curled herself up on the bed and felt the woman put gentle arms around her.

“I always knew he would never take me back to the Centre…but I always hoped that something would happen before it went that far.” Tears dimmed her eyes and she wiped them away. “It didn’t.”

Rebecca felt that Jarod was trembling slightly and she waited for him to pull away from her, to walk away in disgust, but he only held her more tightly and she could feel the tears falling from his face into her hair.

“They took me to a hospital nearby and then transferred me to one further away, at my insistence. They managed to stop the bleeding and I spent the next few days in that hospital. Finally they let me out, believing me when I said that I had somewhere to go where I would be looked after.”

“And…where did you go?”

“My apartment in Blue Cove.”

“Were you insane?” She looked over as the question seemed to explode out of Sydney's mouth and shook her head sadly.

“I knew about the experiments that Lyle and Raines were going to do to Jarod and I had to be there for that.”

“But…he knew…”

”He never told anyone that he knew. When he finally did think about it again, he imagined I’d probably have bled to death by the time I got help. He’d cut all of the phone lines from the building and didn’t expect me to get to a doctor as quickly as I did.” Her mouth twisted. “Because I hadn’t made a sound…as he did it, his other thought was that maybe I’d died during it.” She closed her eyes, stopping the tears from spilling out of them. “But I had to come back to the Centre. I couldn’t leave Jarod alone – not with what I knew was coming.”

She sat on the floor in the corner of her apartment, rocking herself gently as she watched the hands on the clock slowly move around. Finally they reached the time that she knew she had to leave and, very gradually, she pulled herself to her feet and opened the door. It took a long time for her to get down the stairs and the short distance seemed like an eternity as she moved across it, staying in the shadows until she arrived at the cover of the air vent. Her entrance was as silent as ever and she passed along the passages, finally arriving beside the room with large, silver chamber. It was only when she heard the yells that the emotion finally began to ebb back into her and she felt herself straighten up, eyes fixed on the door.

“So you…came back – for me?” the Pretender choked.

She turned and looked up into his face. “I had to, Jarod. I knew what it would do to you – what they would do to you. I couldn’t let you go through it alone, even if you didn’t know that I would be there.”

“Despite the fact that, if Lyle had seen you…”

”I was in no more danger from the Centre then than I was at any other time in my life. I always knew how dangerous it was for me to be there – but I had to.”

“But…Angelo…”

Rebecca glanced over at the other man. “Yes, he was there. I knew that. But I couldn’t feel comfortable unless I was there too.”

”Besides, Jarod,” the empath said softly, “she needed me after that.”

“In what way?”

Angelo looked over as Miss Parker asked the question. “Rebecca wouldn’t have made it back to her room that night if I hadn’t helped her.”

“So you knew…?”

”I knew enough.” His face became sad. “More than enough.”

“I tried to hide it from you, Angelo,” the psychic choked.

”You couldn’t have, even if you’d wanted to.” He smiled. “But you didn’t want to. It was a relief to you to know that I knew – and that you didn’t have to tell me.”

Rebecca nodded silently and then glanced across at Catherine. “When we came back to my room that night, were you already there?”

The other woman nodded. “I’d been there all along, from the moment you came back to your hotel room after visiting Jacob.”

“I thought so at the time. I never felt like I was alone.”

“But…you weren’t…”

“No, Jarod.” Rebecca looked up at him. “I didn’t know for certain that she was there.” She smiled faintly. “But I always felt that there was a source of comfort I could never understand. One night I dreamed about Catherine and, after that, always felt like it was her, that she was there, looking after me.”

Jarod looked over at the older woman, his eyes full of unshed tears, and he tried to smile. His words were a faint whisper. “Thank you.”

She lay on her bed, arms wrapped around her body, trembling as the memory of that day came flooding in on her again. She heard the window softly open and turned her face towards it, watching as the small figure crept across to the bed and slipped his hand into hers, brushing her hair away from her face.

“Took too long. Sorry.”

“No, Angelo.” She tried to smile. “You didn’t take too long at all.”

“Jarod – better.”

“Good. I’ll come and see him tomorrow.”

“Sick.”

“Yes, Angelo.” She swallowed, closing her eyes briefly. “I am sick.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Maybe I’ll still be sick tomorrow. But even so, I’ll come.”

“No.”

She glanced up and tried to smile. “Who’s the psychic one here – you or me? I said I’ll be there tomorrow, and I will, no matter what.”

“Why were you sick, Rebecca?”

She glanced up to meet the man’s questioning eye and sighed sadly. “I think that you already know the answer, Jacob.”

“You were – pregnant?”

Rebecca felt Jarod's arms tighten around her again and set her lips to stop them from trembling as she nodded silently.

“And…the baby?”

She closed her eyes at the tone of his voice, trying to push away her tears. “No, Jacob. I lost the baby.”

”How?”

She let out a shaky breath, her voice drained of emotion again. “That was the second event that I told you about. As I said earlier, they’re linked, inextricably.”

“When?”

Hearing the pain-filled whisper from above her head, she turned to see Jarod's face. The color had faded from it, apart from a line of red on his bottom lip where he had obviously bitten it to stop himself from speaking or crying out. Not wanting to see his expression at what she had to say in answer to his question, Rebecca turned away as she spoke.

“The next day.”

“You…went to the Centre?” he choked out. “To see…?”

Her hands were shaking by the time she pulled herself up out of the vents and she had closed her mind to what she knew was going to come next, not wanting to see it more often than just once, when she would have to live through the pain of it. Slowly she made her way to her apartment building, beginning to walk up the stairs to her room, her legs trembling from the effort and feeling sicker than ever as the world began to spin around her. Her face and hands were bathed in sweat and, as she reached up for the banister, her damp hand slipped on the polished wood and she began to fall. Her back slammed against the stairs and she felt the pain shoot through her, even as her head banged on a lower step and the world went dark.

She shut her eyes and felt the tears ease out from beneath her eyelids as others fell onto her head from above. As memory flooded back, she felt herself sway but his arms held her upright and close to him. Finally she opened her eyes, a sad gaze fixed on the face of the man opposite, watching as Jacob silently wept.

“I woke up in the hospital at Blue Cove…two days later…in intensive care. I knew that I’d lost the baby and that was the hardest part because, despite the fact that the situation in which it had been conceived was horrendous, I’d still made the mistake of starting to love it.”

“Mistake?” Rebecca glanced over at Miss Parker, seeing the tears on her face and the ferocity in her eyes. “How could it be a mistake to love your own child?”

”Because I knew that I was going to lose it,” she responded softly. “I’d known that from the day it was conceived, and earlier, and I’d sworn to myself that I wouldn’t get attached to it – but I couldn’t help myself.” She smiled faintly. “Besides, in some way I’d begun to associate it with Jarod, and that was just one more thing that reminded me of him.”

“But…how could you…?”

She looked over at Sydney. ”I was seeing Jarod every day during the time that the child was growing, and so it had a link of some sort to him. Call it what you like, it was the only way I could reconcile myself to what happened.” Rebecca blinked away the tears in her eyes. “Do you remember what you said about life being painful, that day in the hotel room?”

Sydney nodded. “And you said that, if you felt the same way…” He looked up at her sharply, the tears gone. “You tried it, didn’t you?”

”No, but I thought about it. I felt that life was just too agonizing…” She broke off and inhaled deeply. “But one night, a few days before Jarod escaped from the Centre, I dreamed about that time in the hotel and knew that I had to keep going – just for that.” She gave a satisfied smile. “And so I did.”

“But that was…” Sydney rapidly calculated, “five years away! How on earth could you possibly manage to wait for something that long?”

“I’d already waited thirty, Sydney.” Rebecca spoke softly. “What was another five years, after thirty?”

“So that was…what made you…”

”No.” Rebecca looked over at Jacob as he raised his eyes to hers. “That – those two events weren’t what changed me. It was the fact that I knew it was going to happen, and that I saw it all over and over in my mind, both before and after it occurred. And the fact that I couldn’t do anything, ever, to stop them. That was what gradually made me become bitter.”

“But you kept living – despite it all – just waiting for that short time?”

She glanced over as the woman spoke. “I kept living, yes, but not just for that. I still had a life. It didn’t just stop, in between those few days, thirty-five years apart. I still had friends, too, and they helped a lot.” She smiled gently at Angelo before continuing. “It sounds almost unbelievable but the knowledge of those coming days was actually what I needed. If I hadn’t known that there were still things to do, I may not have been able to force myself to keep going once it had all happened.” She smiled sadly. “You – the two of you – gave me my best reason to continue living.”

Gently she reached up and covered Jarod's hand with hers, tears glittering in her eyes. “And I also knew that, once you were reunited, I could finally let go. I didn’t know what it would be like – if there would be anything afterwards – but it didn’t seem to matter much, except when I wrote that letter. Then I tried to work out what it might be, so I could leave the two of you some kind of comfort.”

She opened her eyes to see the man standing beside the bed and her eyes grew wide as she stared up at him.

“Jacob?” The word was a whisper and he sat down, wrapping both arms around her and holding her close.

“Hi, Rebecca.”

“So I was right?”

“Yes, sweetheart.” He brushed away the traces of that single tear. “Of course you were. You were always right.”

“And…Sydney?”

“Yes, Rebecca. I’m here.”

She turned to see him sitting on the other bed and smiled at him briefly before looking back up at the man who had been like a father to her for so long.

“I was so glad that you didn’t know about it, Jacob.” She looked up, her breath still catching. “I couldn’t bear the thought, later, that we might have had to go through it on that day.” She paused. “I just wish that you hadn’t had to learn about it now.”

He got up from the sofa, coming over, and raised her face to his, wiping the tears away from her cheeks and smoothing her hair as he shook his head. “I don’t wish that, Rebecca. I only wish I’d known all along, so that I could have provided you with the comfort you needed.” He glanced up at the silent man who still stood with both arms still wrapped around her. “But, now that we know, we’ll be there for you whenever you need it. I promise you that we will.”

Jarod nodded speechlessly, knowing himself to be included in Jacob’s statement, and, feeling her body tense in his arms as he moved, lowered his head so that he could kiss the top of hers. At the gentle touch, she covered her face with her hands, turning her face his chest, as she began to sob. He wrapped his arms more firmly around her, resting his chin down on her head, and watched as Thomas and Miss Parker got up and silently left, followed by Angelo. Catherine moved over to sit beside Sydney, placing one hand gently on his for a moment before they, too, left the veranda. Jacob would have gone, likewise, but for the expression on Jarod's face that begged him to stay.

Jarod reached down and picked her up in his arms, carrying her over to the sofa and sitting down. Jacob sat opposite him, both pain and understanding growing on his face, as he watched the two of them.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Rebecca?” Jarod gently stroked the back of her head as she kept her face turned to his neck. “Why didn’t you let me help you?”

Her voice was muffled by her tears and by the fact that her face was still buried in her hands, but both men could still make out the words. “Jarod, you couldn’t have done anything to help me. You had enough problems of your own without having to know about mine.”

“I could have helped you, Rebecca. I still will, if you’ll let me.” He gently removed her hands and placed his on the sides of her face before pulling back slightly and looking down at her, his voice soft. “What is it that you’re really scared of?”

Jacob waited for a moment before he spoke. “She’s scared that you won’t want anything more to do with her, now that you know, Jarod. She’s terrified that you won’t love her anymore. That’s what she’s always been most afraid of; that you’ll reject her, because of what happened.”

The younger man glanced up to see the tears in Jacob’s eyes as he spoke, and then looked back down, his own eyes glittering.

“Do you really think that, Rebecca? Do you think that, because of the fact that he was the one who hurt you, I wouldn’t want to try and make it better?” He reached down and gently kissed her forehead. “You said that we had infinity, Rebecca, and I want to spend all that time with you. No matter what happened when you were alive, that was then. This is now. If it still hurts, we’ll mend the hurt. But we won’t let it ruin the time that we finally have together, not after all the pain we had to go through to get to this point.” He gently stroked her hair, holding her close. “Sydney once told me that, after you die, you go to paradise. It won’t be paradise to me unless I can spend it with you.”

She looked up at him, the pain in her eyes similar to that which she had seen so often in his. He lowered his face, one hand supporting her head and the other resting on her cheek. Gently, tenderly, he touched his lips to hers, feeling her shrink back, away from him. He gathered her closer, trying to show, in the only way he could think of, that his feelings for her hadn’t changed, despite what he now knew had happened. Finally, slowly she responded, the tears slipping down her face again as she relaxed in his arms, her lips pressed to his and her eyes closed. As the kiss ended, he pulled back slightly. Brushing away the shining drops from her cheeks, he smiled down at her, their faces still almost touching.

“I still love you, Rebecca. I always will, even more so, because now I know how much you put up with – what you lived through – for me.”

“You’ll…feel guilty.”

”No, Rebecca.” He shook his head, smiling. “No, I won’t. I’m not going to waste my time here on emotions like that. Not when there are so many other wonderful things that you’re helping me to feel.”

“Me?” She shrank back. “How could I…?”

”I know you love me, Rebecca, and that gives me the courage to love you, even though I know that I don’t – that I couldn’t ever – deserve someone as good as you.” He ran the fingers of one hand gently down the side of her face. “I just feel so lucky that you’ve given me this chance.”

Jacob softly got up off the sofa, knowing that they wouldn’t see him leave, and walked down the stairs. At the gate, he turned back, feeling his brother and Catherine come up on either side of him.

“It’s taken a long time.”

“It has.” He turned to Catherine. “Is that…all?”

”Isn’t it enough?”

”More than enough.” He sighed deeply. “But I just wanted to make sure…”

”No, Jacob.” She gently placed one hand on his arm. “There’s nothing else, no more that she hasn’t told you. You know about the rest.”

He nodded. “If only I’d known about that…”

“What would you have done, Jacob?” Sydney looked over at him. “I confess that I could have tried to do something, had I know, but I don’t know exactly what you think you could have done for her. Not considering the way you were then.”

Sighing, he turned. “I know. But she went through so much…”

”And now she gets her reward.” Sydney watched as Rebecca placed her arms around Jarod's neck and, their faces still close, he carried her into the house. “And he does too, for everything that he went through.”

Jacob looked up at the expression on his brother’s face. “I guess we both have a lot of our own nightmares to overcome.”

“Take their advice. Don’t waste your time, feeling like that. You know that they forgave you a long time ago. Why let it go on damaging you now?” Catherine smiled. “You know they’ll be happy, so be happy for them and enjoy what you have here. They both know you well enough to realize if you’re hiding things from them, so the only way that you can make sure they don’t see it is to let go of all that and put it behind you. Then you can both really, finally be happy. As you should be. After all,” she laughed, “this is Paradise, right?”



The End