Summary: _
Categories: Post IOTH Characters: Broots, Jarod, Miss Parker
Genres: General
Warnings: Warning: Character Death, Warning: Language, Warning: Violence
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 3
Completed: No
Word count: 6425
Read: 11727
Published: 22/06/24
Updated: 05/06/25
1. Chapter 1 by Mirage
2. Chapter 2 by Mirage
3. Chapter 3 by Mirage
Emptiness. Parker saw only emptiness, miles of overgrown weeds lying flat, patches of sun-baked soil, wilted, fragrant honeysuckle strangling small trees to death. Disappointed and infuriated, she braked gently at the intersection, and shifted the car into park.
She removed her sunglasses, contemplated her options, noting the absence of signage, structures, and vehicles. They would have been as inutile as the sedan's GPS navigation system or any other technology.
Parker was confident that she was where she was supposed to be; confidence slowly began to wither. The three roads before her were, like the one behind her, unpaved, corrugated, and entirely uninspired.
She thought of one piece of technology that might be helpful after all, and speed dialed Broots.
"Hey, Miss Parker, you made it," Broots said with a cheerful wave at the blinking red dot on his screen that represented Parker's car. "How is your brother? I bet he's grown so much since-"
"The question is where," Parker interrupted crossly, her voice tight, tremulous. "Where is my baby brother, Broots?"
"He's- uh, well, those are the precise coordinates--" Broots coughed artificially and cleared his throat, "uh from, well, according to your uh t- the voices."
"Bring up the street and aerial views, Broots."
Broots obeyed and squinted at the screen. "It's kinda deserted out there, huh? Oh, gosh, you're at a-- you're at a literal crossroads, Miss Parker. Don't you think that's-"
"Don't," Parker intoned sharply, fearing Broots would say prophetic, or foreboding. "Please, Broots."
"I'm just saying," Broots said with a chortle. "Uh, it's pretty out there, but the grass could use some mowing, and some rain, and maybe even-"
"You're losing the plot, Broots," Parker interjected impatiently.
"Uh, right, um, maybe he's -- well, he's a toddler, right, so he's small, y'know, and the grass out there is taller probably taller than uh-- there are a few trees to your southwest, or, look, Miss Parker, please let me send Sam and Sydney out there. I'll join them and- and really you shouldn't be alone."
"He could be hurt," Parker said with a mute and sharp inhalation, finally hearing all that Broots had said, and hadn't. She tossed her sunglasses into the passenger seat, and stepped into the punishing heat.
"This is why you should have let me come with you," Broots softly scolded Parker. "What if you need some help with him? Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't know anything about children. And this could be a trap. What if it's a trap? I mean--God, Miss Parker, we don't even know who abducted him in the first place. Raines could be behind this, or Lyle, and you know-"
"Stay where you are, and don't you dare tell anyone about this," Parker hissed, promptly ending the call, and tossing the mobile into the driver's seat. She straightened, and murmured thinly, "Any suggestions, Mom? Please. Please."
Mom Radio might suck.
Fortunately, Broots doesn't.
The grass was, indeed, tall—coarse, dense, and lying flat alongside dying comfrey and dandelions, but easily thigh-high.
With short, tentative steps Parker traversed the land, occasionally sidestepping dried up animal carcasses, and one freshly dead rabbit who, in death, contributed to the vast circle of life; the air was putrid, and flies, vying for territory, angrily swarmed the carcass and flew upwards in thick swirls.
Ordinarily, Parker might have murmured, "ew," and wore a moue of disgust. Instead, she was relieved that it wasn't her brother that the legion of ants was carrying away, as tidily and efficiently as Centre cleaners, piece by piece.
"Hello," she called out, hoping to see a small hand waving back at her among the tufts of brambles. The cause seemed more lost and fruitless with each passing hour. Parker trudged on, regardless; returning to Blue Cove without the child, and with her mother's dire warning in her head, was unfathomable and unconscionable.
"Hello," Parker called once more, noting the shifting terrain, depressions that demanded a slower pace. Beyond the trees that Broots had alerted her to were steep, rugged inclines that terminated at a crumbling outcropping, and overlooked a small stand of oak trees.
Parker cautiously navigated her descent, and deftly weaved her body through the trees. She followed the narrow, winding and well-beaten trail to a pair of large, fallen oaks. Shielding her eyes from the shafts of sunlight slanting through the sun-dried leaves, she knelt between gnarled entwined branches, and studied the empty hollow beneath.
She was both relieved and disappointed, relieved that his body wasn't stuffed inside and sloppily buried, and disappointed that she and her brother weren't already on a jet, en route to a better life. Bitter tears filled her eyes and she angrily blinked them away, and the shadow falling across the patch of earth directly in front of her went entirely unnoticed. Clouds and hawks had been passing overhead all morning, briefly shading everything below, and throwing misshapen shadows at her. She'd grown accustomed to them already.
Contrarily, she believed she'd never become accustomed to feeling frantic-- bordering hysterical. She couldn't stop seeing Catherine, panic-stricken and heart-broken, pacing the floor of Sydney's office, explaining to Sydney that she intended to stage her death. She couldn't stop drawing parallels, couldn't reject the idea that she felt now the way her mother had felt then.
Parker feared the way she felt, and there wasn't time to pace, fall apart, sleep, eat, think it through, or relinquish her tenuous hold on sanity; her little brother was in danger, and she intended to find him. She rose with renewed purpose, and carefully turned herself around on uneven terrain.
Emerging from the tangled branches, she perceived a presence, and immediately stopped plucking debris from her blouse. She sought and immediately found the intruder, and failed to conceal her surprise.
Jarod stood, silent and appalled, in a pool of diffuse light, attempting to appraise the situation. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt, and a look of complete disbelief. A single muscle in his face twitched when Parker drew a sharp breath and her weapon, respectively.
Mm. That's the last time I ever tune in to Mom radio. And once again, nothing but silence from W.T.F.M.
What The Fuck, Mom radio, where the reception is always shoddy, the news is always tragic, and the Centre's Greatest Hits are in heavy rotation.
Jarod smiled warmly, and whispered Parker's name. "It's nice to see you again, too," he said, dropping his gaze, briefly, to the nine millimeter between them. "I was beginning to think I never would."
"Jarod," Parker stammered, looking past him, and then quickly jerking her gaze east and west, south and north, and determining that they were indeed alone, and that Jarod had defied logic and physics, yet again, and had simply materialized. Parachuted? Teleported? Does it fucking matter how he got here? Why is he? And where the hell is my baby brother?
The pair stared each other down for several moments, both struggling to navigate a whole other variety of rugged terrain. Jarod chose to be merciful, and give Parker additional time to process his presence. At last, he asked cordially, "How did you find me?" He smiled calmly, demonstrated remarkable forbearance. "If you don't mind my asking."
"Find you," Parker repeated with a snort of cynicism. "No. No, you've got ten seconds to tell me where my baby brother is and why you took him."
Jarod's eyes hardened briefly, and then softened, filled with sympathy and anguish. "When was he taken?"
"No," Parker stammered, adding with a cry of rage, "No, no, no. Tell me where he is."
"I don't know where he is," Jarod declared in a voice saturated with empathy. "I'm sorry. But I will help-"
Parker shook her head, drew a tremulous breath, and asked fiercely, "Why do I think you're lying?"
"You can't help but to think the worst about me," Jarod answered softly. "I understand. I've always understood. You were trained to distrust and hate me," he added, repeating the words Parker had spoken in Carthis, and plunging them, briefly, into the past, coercing them both to remember what had transpired immediately after she'd said those words.
Parker never had appreciated Jarod's gift for exactitude; presently, she was thoroughly dissatisfied. Her faltering hunter's stance was an awfully strong indicator that she considered his answer a grim reminder, or perhaps a warning. Inexplicably, she lowered the gun a fraction, grimaced, warred with herself, defied Catherine by hastily resuming her aim, and took a step back.
"I wish to god you hadn't been," Jarod confessed with some solemnity, frowning deeply. "It certainly explains a lot, answers some painful questions I've asked myself over the years. The good news is that if our half brother can break free of his training you can, too. You don't have to-"
"What have you done with my brother?" Parker shouted impatiently.
"I don't know where your brother is," Jarod answered quietly. "I wouldn't deny you your family," Jarod assured Parker. "I would never take a child from the person who loves him. You're his family. He should be with you. I know that. I know how much your mother wanted us all to be together, to be a family, and I want the same thing. Now, please, let me help you. When was he taken?"
Parker narrowed her eyes, and demanded eagerly, "Why are you here?"
Jarod shook his head, addressed her continued evasiveness: "You didn't answer my-"
"Why?" Parker screamed tearfully, startling Jarod, and much of the local wildlife as well. She was acutely aware of how completely mad she sounded. She knew she was being ridiculously—possibly insanely—cynical. She felt much too vulnerable for a Jarod confrontation.
She hadn't prepared for him, for his self-righteousness and condemnation, or his help.
"Dad owns some property nearby," Jarod said, answering quickly to appease Parker, and although the frown he wore deepened, he continued to speak in an even, measured voice. "I've been staying there, off and on, for about a year. I saw you get out of the car," he confessed, adding gently, "This entire area is surveilled 24/7."
"You were watching," Parker accused, briefly lowering the gun again. She asked hesitantly in a voice filled with dread, "Are they watching? Is Ian watching?"
Handily concealing consternation, Jarod nodded. His clone had decided the previous evening that he wanted to be called Ian, after trying on thousands of names over the years. How does she know? "Yes, he is," Jarod answered. The cameras are motion activated, and triggered our early warning alarm system. We're recording, too, and preparing to go live on several social media platforms if you pull that trigger. I've assured them that you won't." Jarod watched her face, asked solicitously, "What's wrong?"
Everything.
Every fucking thing is wrong.
I'm the intruder, here, trespassing in Wonderboyland.
My baby brother hasn't triggered any motion-activated alarms, which means he isn't here.
Mom radio completely sucks.
Jarod's looking at me like I've lost my mind.
I may have lost my mind.
I've definitely lost my car.
If I can't keep track of an entire car how the hell am I going to keep up with a toddler--- that I've already lost once, and still haven't found.
"Ian knows about me?" Parker asked, her voice strained and quiet. "About this?"
"He knows it's complicated," Jarod confirmed. "It doesn't have to be," he asserted with his typical impassioned optimism. "It doesn't have to be this way. You can give me the gun, come with me right now, and see for yourself how happy Ian is, and this-- all of this can be resolved. Everything can be different, and we'll find your brother together."
Too stunned to rebut or even speak, Parker's face twisted in disbelief, and in response Jarod said, "All right, yes, maybe it sounds insane. The most important creations in existence now were considered crazy ideas when they were first conceived. It's never too late for a beginning, for the life that your mother wanted for all of us."
"Is Ian happy?" Parker asked. "He's probably driving by now, demanding to be treated like an adult, but was he allowed to have a childhood at all," she asked, her voice faltering, nearly breaking---and nearly breaking Jarod.
Jarod drew a breath, and nodded enthusiastically. "He's very happy, and he's enjoying an extended childhood, complete with a steady diet of homemade ice cream, Garfield, and one of our old favorites, Cracker Jack, or as he likes to call it: The Holy Trinity of Childhood."
Well, hallefuckinglujah to that.
Parker returned the gun to its holster, swallowed hard, and said with a slight nod, "I'm glad."
"Yes, yes, of course you are," Jarod agreed, "Ian said you would be, that you wanted him to play, be a child, have a normal life. You were the first person to ever show him love and compassion, to tell him it's okay to cry. He and I have that, have you, your kindness, in common; we both know the truth, that this--- this isn't who you are."
Jarod smiled sweetly when some marginal semblance of relief touched Parker's eyes. "That wasn't all he had to say," Jarod added somberly, and observed Parker's head-shake of negation.
"No? Hmm? There's no reason to deny it, and it won't matter if you do; the Centre records everything. I know you were going to rescue him, take him away from the Centre, and- "
"Jarod," Parker cautioned sharply, evidently uncomfortable with the direction Jarod was taking the conversation.
"What's wrong?" Jarod asked, dropping his curious gaze to Parker's legs, her irresolute step back. Followed by another. And another. "What," he continued gently. "Now, surely, you're not considering leaving already," he chided with mock incredulity and a grimace of pain, matching Parker step for step, "not in the middle of our conversation. Now--hmm, where was I? Ah, yes, Ian. He said you knew a boy once, a boy like him, a boy exactly," Jarod added bluntly, and observed the color drain from Parker's face, "like him, and that you felt-"
Parker turned suddenly, and commanded her legs to move.
Running from a man who had spent years running from her, running for his life was, Parker knew, a futile, wasted, absurd effort. Jarod's continued freedom suggested that she was incapable of outrunning him.
Running?
From Jarod?
Christ!
And I had the audacity to accuse Broots of losing the plot.
"You can outrun me," Jarod informed Parker gravely, "but you can't outrun this. You'll never outrun the truth," he added sternly, walking in long strides, and watching the dirt and dead grass beneath her shoes indolently spiral upwards. "You know that."
Parker certainly knew; Catherine Parker's voice was reminiscent of a chorus of susurrations and gullible amens accompanying a hell-fire sermon, was consistently overlapping Jarod's clipped, stern cadence.
Parker, determined to prove both Catherine and Jarod wrong, urged her body to move faster, and while she instantly regretted it, she understood, at last, why Ethan had clutched his head, and cried in agony: Catherine's voice increased in pitch, volume, and intensity, insisting Parker turn around, listen, believe, that Jarod was correct, that he was the one to trust, the one.
The one?
The hell does that even mean?
Catherine pleaded with her daughter to turn around, and Jarod issued the same entreaty. "You don't have to run from this. Please, don't run away from me."
Jarod, like Catherine Parker, dared to contradict Centre mandate and Mr. Parker's doctrines. The pair were in complete accord, and while Parker was confident that she could defeat either of them in a reasonable one-on-one battle, she feared that, together, they were indomitable and inescapable. Catherine was, at least.
Parker slowed to a jog, transitioned to a slow walk, and glanced over her shoulder. Satisfied, albeit astonished, that Jarod wasn't chasing her, she bent at the waist, clutched her sides.
"Like I said, you don't have to run from me; I'm sorry that comes as a surprise to you. And seriously? Running from me?" He asked, a combination of strained patience and fatigue—both the mental and physical varieties—in his voice. "I know it's been a while, and we're both bound to be a little rusty here, so I'll refresh your memory: I run. You chase. Okay? Now, come with me-"
"Shut up," Parker groaned, squeezing her eyes closed, struggling to distinguish Jarod's voice from Catherine's. "Both of you."
"Both?" Jarod asked, observing Parker gulp air.
Her mother.
Of course.
"Your-- inner sense?"
"Inner, yeah," Parker answered tartly, unconsciously hugging herself. "Sense? Mm, not so much."
"Come on, now," Jarod asserted skeptically, "you don't really believe that."
"I," Parker stammered numbly, shuddering in the scorching heat. "I'm not sure what I believe," she confessed with a noncommittal shrug, and angrily dropped her hands to her hips. "I came here searching for my brother, and-"
"You found me," Jarod said when Parker's voice dissolved to silence. "It's no coincidence, no mistake. You're here right now because you're supposed to be. Your mother knows that I can help; it's sorta what I do.
She knows we're stronger together. We always have been. The Centre's always known that, too; it's why they worked so hard to pit us against each other, separate us. It's all right," he whispered sympathetically when Parker jerked her gaze away. "I imagine it's rather difficult to take my word for it. You don't have to," he explained, insisting gently, "listen to your mother."
Author's Notes:
I apologize for my tardiness. I also apologize for this chapter.
"You're having second thoughts," Jarod said.
"You should be, too," Parker cautioned. "You're risking a hell of a lot more than I am, and, unlike you, I've already done this dozens of times, or," she added tentatively, "it feels like I have."
"Then you are still having premonitions," Jarod said, returning his gaze to the road. He considered infinite choices, actions, reactions, infinite permutations of actions and reactions, paths taken and not.
He couldn't stop himself from pondering the other versions of himself Parker might have encountered turning left or right, or keeping straight at the intersection of four battered roads, and the influence they'd evidently had on her.
Questions lingered on Jarod's tongue; he swallowed them all, and glanced at her. "Ethan," he explained succinctly, answering the questions in Parker's eyes.
"Isn't with your family, is he?" She asked.
"No, I'm sorry, he isn't. We'll find him. We'll find our brother, and your baby brother. I'll never give up."
"Neither will I."
"Is there anything else you want to tell me?"
"You want to know if I'm still Haley Joel-ing like I was in Carthis, and communicating with dead people?"
"Uh-- I don't know what a Haley Joel-ing is, but, yes, in Scotland, you were being guided by a child who died more than a century earlier. Prior to that trip, Ethan said you were having premonitions, and Broots said you were having visions, and now, it's obvious that your inner sense is no longer dormant."
"It began before Carthis," Parker said with a mirthless smile. "I saw Tommy. He was with me, warning me, and-- just waiting. He," she added somberly, "he told me to trust you. Insisted. And I must have listened to him, because I took your advice, and I finally told him that I love him. And then he was gone. Go ahead and say it, Jarod. Tell me I'm crazy."
"If you are then we both must be, after all, you and I both saw Faith. Insanity isn't a foregone conclusion simply because there isn't another rational explanation."
"You can tell Sydney that the next time you two have a little sit down. He theorizes that it's my unfinished business, that I'm seeking closure, trying to resolve trauma, and possibly disassociating. He prescribed me anti-psychotics, and rest."
"That doesn't sound like Sydney. He wouldn't react that aggressively to a couple of instances of-"
"Dozens," Parker confessed. "Yeah, I know that look well," she said in response to Jarod's suddenly grave expression. "You know," she confided in a tight, flat voice, "I specifically asked Sydney not to tell you about any of this, asked him not to betray me. Only insanity, Jarod," Parker said, shaking her head slowly, "would explain why I'm here-- betraying myself."
"I think you're under an enormous amount of stress, and now you're afraid for your baby brother, too, and with good reason. Tell me, how have you been coping with all of this?"
"Better than I was when I was drinking scotch like it was a competitive sport."
Jarod widened his eyes, and remarked blandly, "A competitive sport. That bad, hmm?"
"Yeah," Parker said, surveying the empty, fallow fields beyond the window, "but I can finally empathize with Ebeneezer now."
"You knew how to reach me," Jarod said. "You didn't have to go through this alone. Or didn't you check your voicemail?"
"I appreciated the sentiment, Jarod, but you and I both know how complicated this is."
"Then," Jarod pleaded, "let's uncomplicate it."
"I don't know how to do that."
"You could try," Jarod said. "That's all I ask. We're not that different, you and me," he added after a moment. "We never have been. We have a lot more in common now. I help people, too."
"The people you help are alive, Jarod, and no one's accusing you of being insane or experiencing symptoms of trauma."
"No one recently. Look, maybe Sydney's wrong, and the ghosts are real. Or maybe Sydney is only partially wrong. Maybe helping these ghosts, these--hallucinations if it's what they are, is how you help you, maybe this is how you are supposed to heal your trauma."
"Is that what you've been doing since escaping the Centre, Jarod? Healing yourself by helping others?"
"Not exactly. What you're feeling and doing right now isn't sustainable. The constant worry, the churning in your gut, the pressure in your chest, the choking feeling in your throat, the desperation, the way your body rejects food and sleep.
I've been exactly where you are, and if you're going to to survive you can't live there. It gnaws at sanity until there's nothing left. I would have become an entirely different person had I remained in an uninterrupted state of heightened stress, pain, anxiety, and constant, fruitless searching."
"He's a toddler, Jarod," Parker exclaimed in a tremulous voice thick with grief. "I don't know who has him or what they're doing to him, or if he's eating or- or---" Parker drew a sharp breath, held it, summoned composure. "I have to find him."
"You will. My family's going to help you."
"Why? Why in the hell would your family help me after everything I've done to them?"
"Why don't you ask them yourself," Jarod said, slipping the gear into park. "Let's go."
The pair were barely out of the car when Ian bounded down the steps. "Uh-oh," Jarod announced, "Incoming."
"He," Parker said with a gasp, and immediately fell silent.
"Mhm, he still looks like me."
"No kidding," Parker murmured.
"You don't have to pretend that it doesn't freak you out. He'll know."
"Because he is exactly like you."
"Yes," Jarod agreed, confessing, lightly, "and it still freaks me out."
"I knew I'd see you again," Ian said with a sheepish grin, and confessed guilelessly, "I'm really nervous. But that's expected. You are too, probably," he said suddenly. "This has to be even more weird for you."
Parker smiled, and confessed with a nod, "A little bit, yeah."
"You'll adjust," Ian confidently asserted. "You only just now arrived. By the way, welcome home," he said, opening his arms to her, and, when Parker did the same, embracing her. "I hope you'll stay for a while," he said when he released her.
"Ian," Parker said, shaking her head, "I don't know-"
"Of course she'll stay for a while," Major Charles interjected, and observed Parker meet his gaze. "I just spoke to your Mr. Broots. He was worried when you didn't answer your phone. I don't know how the hell he was able to get this number, but I suppose that's neither here nor there. Come on up," he said, indicating a rocker with an extended hand. "Please."
"I gotta get back to work," Ian said, walking backward and then turning and jogging up the steps.
"Work?" Parker said quietly.
"He's coordinating with Mr. Broots to assist in the search for your baby brother," Major Charles said. "I've made some calls, Emily's reached out to her contacts. You're going to see him again soon, Miss Parker."
Parker nodded appreciatively, and accepted tea, all the while silently thinking, not soon enough. She never once suspected that Major Charles' words, intended to comfort her, would prove prophetic.
Nor did Parker suspect that Catherine had been appeased by something other than her willingness to cooperate with Jarod.
She forced herself to continue cooperating, drank tea, and allowed Jarod's father to convince her to join the family in the dining room.
Parker had never understood the evident obsession people have with feeding the worried, the anguished, the heartbroken, the lost, the seekers, the separated, the grieving.
The knot of fear in her throat made it impossible to swallow anything except liquids, and even that required an enormous effort. Rather than demand she eat, Jarod pushed a milkshake into her hand, quickly explained the health benefits of its contents, and returned to his chair.
Parker watched Jarod scoop up a veggie wrap with his left hand and quietly tap out messages on the laptop with the right. Emily, similarly, devoured a slice of pizza and occasionally shouted demands into her mobile while pacing the floor of the library.
Ian and Major Charles were somewhere, too, Parker guessed, no doubt multitasking.
This was their life, and had been for decades, and it broke Parker's heart.
Blinking back tears, Parker returned her gaze to her own laptop, and tried to force her hands to stop trembling. She lifted the straw to her mouth, forced herself to swallow, felt her stomach lurch.
It's not so bad now. And at least Mom's quiet. That has to mean something.
The silence gave Parker hope that she was, at last, on the correct path, and that the present detour was only a brief stop on the journey to a new life in Landsmeer with her baby brother.
But hope could be cruel, and the impact devastating after the plummet back to reality.
Parker had tried to temper her expectations while plotting the rescue, purchasing a home in Europe, depositing money into a fund for her baby brother. Her mother's memory served as stern reminder of the fate awaiting those who defy the Centre.
Nevertheless, Parker couldn't stop herself from loving the child, and, like her mother, she wanted, more than anything, to give her baby brother a real childhood and watch him grow up.
Staring at the laptop's dim screen, she realized with a pang of sorrow that he never would.
Her baby brother wasn't going to be found in any of the police reports she'd accessed, by any of Emily's contacts, or in any of the places that the international search party assembled by Major Charles intended to look.
Baby Parker was in the screen's reflection, standing at Parker's side. He circled the table slowly, and climbed into the chair recently vacated by Jarod.
The Pretender had excused himself after being summoned by his father via text, and Emily was two rooms away, eating her way through a deep dish pizza, and giving some poor soul absolute hell through clenched teeth.
Emily had observed Jarod leave, and was becoming agitated by his continued absence. She didn't trust the Parkers, through no fault of her own, of course; being tossed out of a window by one of them had tainted the entire lot.
It wasn't a question of one bad apple either, or a spoiled bunch. Based on her extensive research, she worried that the entire family tree was rotten and hollow, and should be felled.
Emily, understandably, didn't think it was wise to leave Parker alone. Neither did Jarod, although for enitrely different reasons.
"A 911 text, Dad?" Jarod said, dropping to a low crouch beside his father. "What's the emergency?"
"I'm afraid that what I have to say is going to come as a shock. It's about that Brigitte woman."
"What could Brigitte possibly have to do with us finding Miss Parker's brother."
"That's just it. He isn't Miss Parker's brother, Jarod," Major Charles whispered. "He's her son. And not just hers, Jarod," Major Charles continued gravely, " he's-"
"No," Jarod interrupted fiercely with a resolute head shake.
"Brigitte was a surrogate. To prove her loyalty to Mr. Parker she carried your-"
"Dad," Jarod stammered tearfully.
"Your and Miss Parker's child," concluded Major Charles.
Jarod lowered his head, and groaned a ragged, "God," through clenched teeth.
"I know, Son," Major Charles said, parking a consoling hand on Jarod's shoulder. "I know. One of us is going to have to tell her the truth."
Jarod rose, and pushed a hand over his face. Major Charles found his son's swift transition from shocked disbelief and tears of anguish to murderous rage and clenched fists rather alarming.
The bastards. They create my child without my permission and then deny me the opportunity to care for him, and now they've lost him.
"Jarod? Son? Did you hear me?"
"Yes," Jarod answered, adding in a tone of forlorn resignation, "I'll tell her."
Jarod absolutely would have told Parker, too, but when he returned to the dining room she was kneeling on the floor and pleading with his chair.
He felt physically unwell suddenly, and implausibly even more enraged. He was ashamed of himself for questioning Sydney's competence.
Clearly, the psychiatrist hadn't acted too aggressively. Jarod feared that perhaps Sydney had been much too conservative.
Jaord had personally treated patients who were more stable than Parker and they'd been involuntarily hospitalized at the time.
As if she'd overheard Jarod's thoughts, Parker fell silent, and swung her tearful gaze at him.
"It's okay," Parker assured Jarod, and Jarod wanted to scream a sternly worded rebuttal.
He believed she had a right to know she was a mother; he also believed that she was entirely too disconnected from reality to comprehend his words.
"Join us," Parker said, returning her gaze to the chair. "He wants to say goodbye."
Jarod shook his head slowly, forced himself to smile, and entered the room. "Look," he said softly, "I think you need to lie down now, and try to get some rest. Please."
"Soon," Parker insisted quietly, adding carefully, "He wants me to tell you that he liked the bunny."
"All right," Jarod said with a placating smile, deliberately choosing to remain neutral and neither feed nor outright starve the delusions, and, as a result, agitate her.
He believed she was suffering from a legitimate mental health crisis, and intended to telephone Sydney the second she fell asleep.
"No, it isn't all right, Jarod," Parker argued softly, pushing tears away with trembling fingers, and nodding slowly at an empty chair. "He feels your anger and pain just like he did when---- when you visited him in the infirmary, and left him the pink bunny."
Jarod inhaled a sharp breath and shook his head in negation. Parker's words, he believed, rang agonizingly true, and she seemed mentally sound. Devastated, yes, but lucid.
He had, in fact, visited the infirmary, on numerous occasions over the years, to see various people, including Sydney and Parker.
He'd only left one pink bunny in all of those years, just months after meeting a sexually abusive priest referred to as Shifty G by several people Jarod had questioned.
He recalled the Veritas project, and Raines masquerading—as millions of people do—as a Christian.
Jarod found Parker's words too difficult to comprehend and process. In fact, a small part of Jarod wanted Parker to be unstable, because it was considerably less painful than what she was suggesting.
A mental illness could be treated; their child's death could not.
Jarod briefly considered sedating Parker, and resuming his search for their son in peace. Jarod shuddered at the thought, widened his eyes.
The mental health crisis, he realized, was all his.
Or, Jarod argued— with himself, I failed to successfully bypass Centre surveillance, and she was watching when I left the pink bunny with her baby br-- our child.
Or maybe I accidentally confided in Sydney, and he told her.
Or--
Parker refused to let Jarod slip any further, or fall; salvation, however, was as brutal as it was compassionate.
"You whispered in his ear that his big sister," Parker said slowly, and forcefully, determined to say the truth plainly and clearly. She couldn't afford to lose a single syllable in incoherent sobs; she didn't have the strength to repeat herself. She drew a sharp breath, and looking up into Jarod's face, concluded tearfully, "loves bunnies, too."
Jarod followed Parker's gaze to the chair, attempted again to see what, or who, Parker saw there, and discovered, with a start, that the pink bunny, the one he'd given their child, inexplicably occupied it.
Jarod was only distantly aware of the grief siphoning oxygen from his lungs, the room undulating and briefly darkening, the strangled cry in his throat. And Parker's sobs.
The Pretender pursued every logical explanation, reached for one after another, and grasped only emptiness. Arriving at inevitable dead-ends, he backtracked, determined to disprove the proven, unveil the deception and misdirection Parker had employed to create such an elaborate and cruel illusion.
He was no longer pursuing truth, he realized; he was running from it, and his hypocrisy wasn't lost on him.
Jarod felt hope completely wither, and tears on his face, and his knees buckle.
He couldn't stop himself from sinking to the floor, and into a dark and unfamiliar corridor of hell--- at Parker's side.
Instinctively, he drew her into his arms, and wept while she sobbed into his chest.
The house was quiet with mourning, as unnaturally still and eerie as Major Charles's life had been when Jarod and Kyle were abducted decades earlier.
Major Charles wearily entered the sitting room, his shoulders hunched, the always-present smile absent. Passing the empty kitchen, he turned and glimpsed Emily, curled on the sofa, and silently weeping.
"Sweetheart," Major Charles whispered, kneeling at Emily's side, "I didn't know you were here."
"I didn't know what to do," Emily confided, pushing tears from her face, and sitting. I certainly don't want to go up there. "My room's next to Jarod's and— god, Dad, it was awful. She sobbed for three hours, and suddenly went limp in his arms.
I think she lost consciousness. I asked Jarod if she was okay," Emily continued tearfully, pausing to remove fresh tears from her cheeks, "he turned, looked through me, instead of at me, and gathered her in his arms. I didn't recognize him."
"They," Major Charles said quietly, joining Emily on the sofa, "have a lot of healing ahead of them. Sydney believes it's important they share their grief with each other. He'll be relieved when I tell him they're together."
"Relieved," Emily murmured despondently. "That's wildly premature. He, obviously, hasn't seen them."
"Not yet. He's still with Ian," Major Charles explained, and softly answered the question in Emily's tear-filled eyes, "Ian suffered a severe panic attack."
"Is he sure isn't something worse, like psychosis?" Emily asked. "Did Ian have panic attacks before he came to live with us?"
"No, he didn't. Considering the circumstances this isn't unusual behavior. Sydney gave him something to calm him, and help him sleep. He's going to stay with him until he wakes up."
Emily studied her father's tired, haunted eyes, and swallowed her suspicions and objections.
Her father had witnessed thousands of deaths during his years of military service, lost a son to murder, and now a grandson, and he still hadn't found Margaret.
New wounds scored—and embedded themselves into—old ones, allowing no possibility of healing. Major Charles looked truly broken, incapable of bearing another burden
"I'm gonna hit the rack," Major Charles said wearily, pushing a hand over his face. "What about you?"
Emily moistened her lips, and contemplated her answer. "Soon."
Nine hours. Are they intending to stay up there forever?
Emily feared the answer, and was wholly justified.
Parker and Jarod had absolutely no intentions.
Jarod lay on his side, next to Parker, and, through a blur of tears, watched her fitful attempts to sleep. They were both much too exhausted to sleep, and entirely too devastated to do anything else. Grief was heavy, immobilizing.
The only reasonable answer was to lie still— still expect for the frequent hypnagogic jerks. Parker and Jarod had already plummeted to the void's rock bottom; they relived the free-fall into hell each time they fell back asleep.
Jarod had stopped flinching each time Parker jerked awake, often gasping for breath, occasionally shuddering. He rose once, and only briefly, to loosen the blanket from beneath him, and cover Parker's body.
He wasn't certain how either of them would survive the loss. Still, even in grief's oppressive stupor, Jarod thought of his mother, and wondered if Margaret, too, had struggled to simply draw breath in the violent absence of her child's presence.
"We have to kill them," Parker snarled in a hoarse, liquid voice, answering the sorrow that demanded action, pleaded for justice.
Parker's words inspired a shift in focus, kindled a sliver of determination; they were an infinitesimal glint of all that remained of Parker's will to live lying, half smashed, among the ruins, and an argument for eventually crawling out of bed, and rejoining the rest of the world.
It was a whisper of purpose, and Parker was listening to it.
"Yes," Jarod answered sullenly, "Yes, I know." His voice was filled with an peculiar combination of apprehension and gratitude that Parker thoroughly comprehended.
Neither endorsed, or yearned to perpetrate, homicide; they were simply duty-bound.
Regardless of the danger awaiting them, the sorrow choking them, Parker and Jarod were going to do the difficult thing, the painful thing, instead of dying where they lay.
After scratching at the bottom of their reserves, they were going to scrape together what little strength and resolve that remained between the two of them, merge their resources.
They were going to shower, and force themselves to swallow food and coffee, and live another day regardless of how much it fucking hurt.
And then they were going to raze the Centre.
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