Disclaimer: “The Pretender” and its characters don’t belong to me they belong to TNT and NBC and are being used without permission. Please don’t sue because I have no money.

Author’s Note: This is a Response to a 10-word challenge by Thunderchild on Missing Pieces. Use three of the ten words given. First 10 word challenge.

darkness

feather

fragments

disappointment

dreamer

hollow

deceit/deceiver

instinct

fire/ice

caged/cage

Darkness

He watched the fire as the flames danced around the fireplace momentarily keeping the darkness at bay. He had stopped doing his pretends for a while hoping to find his mother and ask her about the scrolls and find out why the Centre wanted him back. Why him? Why not Eddie too? They had stopped chasing Eddie and went after him. His whole life was a question of why. He knew that he was a dreamer to dream that he would find his parents and they could live happily ever after because the Centre would never let him find, or even put his family back together. He only knew that they would never stop chasing after him and Miss Parker would never stop chasing him to put him back in his cage.

He got up and walked to the window to look outside. There was a movement in the window and he turned to see what it was. There stood Miss Parker in the doorway to the kitchen. He looked at her than looked around, but there were no sweepers. His first instinct was to run, but then when he didn’t find any sweepers he stood his ground. He wanted to see what she wanted first.

“How did you find me?”

She smiled at him. A real smile this time and shrugged.

“I want to help you Jarod.”

“Help me? Help me how?”

“Find all the answers and to bring down the Centre.”

“You would do this? Why now? What changed?”

“I know now that I can never get away from the Centre. The only way to do this is to bring them down.”

“Are you going to take me back?”

“No, Jarod. I told you I’m going to help you. Maybe I’ll even get some answers of my own instead of lies.”

He nodded to her and they sat down on the couch to talk about what they were going to do and talk about the past. Maybe just maybe he could put together the fragments of their pasts together.

The End.