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Blood was trickling down Jarod's forehead when they sat up and Miss Parker was reminded of that surreal moment when she had cradled Thomas' lifeless body in her arms, involuntarily dipping her fingers into the blood that was smeared over his temple. For a moment she felt as if the present and the past were once again merging and she gasped, reaching out for Jarod.

1. "Are you okay?" she asked breathlessly. Only the surprised look in his eyes at her obvious concern managed to pull her back into the present, but her hands were already all over his shoulders to check for wounds.

"Parker, careful...!" Jarod warned, but it was already too late and a thin line of blood trickled down Miss Parker's finger where she had cut herself with the pieces of glass that covered his sweater. He caught her wrists in his hands so she would not cut herself any more. "I'm okay. We're both okay," he soothed her.

Miss Parker felt embarrassed at her outburst and shied away from him, eager to find the source of the attack.

"What the hell was that?" she demanded and carefully rounded the kitchen counter half crouched to the floor.

Leaves and rain were carried through the smashed window by the merciless October wind, but she was far too agitated to shiver. Jarod followed her to the window and looked outside. The hedge looked ruffled in one corner, as if someone had climbed the fence and left in a hurry.

"Whoever it was, they didn't care to wait for us to catch them," he said. "I should get something from the basement to fix that window for tonight before the floor gets anymore wet."

Miss Parker had wrapped both her arms around her upper body against the cold and shook her head in disbelief. "That might have gotten us killed."

"Yes. If it hadn't been for you."

Miss Parker looked up at him. "I was acting on instinct. Don't you think that I actually cared about whether anybody smashed in that brilliant little head of yours!"

She was only slowly regaining her bravado, so he pretended to buy her act of not giving a damn about him. Well, she had proved the opposite to be true mere moments ago.

"Now get whatever you need to repair that nuisance and I'll take care of the glass," Miss Parker commanded and so he walked out into the hallway.

Involuntarily he found himself dwelling on the memory of her hands on his body to check whether he was okay. They had been gentle but efficient and she had seemed...

Don't go there, a voice inside him said. We're on a mission here and there's no time for wishing things to be different.

Anyways, this might as well be the confusion one sometimes felt after narrowly escaping serious injury or even death. When he returned with a large panel of chipboard, he could hear the sound of glass that was thrown into a garbage bin. She was just finished when he stepped in and watched in silence as he fixed the wooden panel to the window.

"This should do until tomorrow morning. Even if they do come back," he finally said and stepped back, admiring his handiwork.

"Okay. Now that you are finished with that, let me see your forehead," Miss Parker said in a neutral tone that had been carefully chosen to neither allow concern nor gentleness. She had to stand on her toes to inspect his face, so he lowered his head slightly for her.

Her fingers grazed the already dried blood when she pushed a few loose strands of hair back from his forehead.

"You will live," she remarked dryly after a moment and he could feel her breath on his face.

"Good," he replied.

"Now how do we find that son of a..."

"Miss Parker!" he interjected. "Keep this PG."

She gave him a dark look and turned to the stove.

"The food is burned but I'm not hungry anyway. I'll go to bed."

"Miss Parker, wait..." he wasn't sure why he wanted to keep her downstairs so badly, but he felt as if he had to try anyway.

"Do you think the Centre was behind this?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "You know as well as I do that, if that was the case, they would have arrived in helicopters with blazing lights and gunshots. A stone hurled through a window is a little bit too trivial for an international syndicate, don't you think?"

"You're right..." he murmured, out of things to say. "Maybe it was just a prank."

Without another word she turned on her heel and walked out. Jarod was surprised to find himself calling her back a second time.

On her way out she paused and grabbed the doorframe so that the sleeve of her grey sweater slipped up and Jarod froze.

"Miss Parker... what?"

She realized what had happened quickly and tried to cover what had caused Jarod's confusion. But the Pretender was too fast for her and grabbed her wrist before she could.

"Miss Parker..." he repeated.

"I know my name. Thank you very much." Her attempt at being snide was betrayed by the fact that she avoided his gaze.

Jarod had to force himself to be gentle and not succumb to his desire to forcefully turn her hand around, but she didn't resist at all. As soon as he could take a good look at her palm he was assured that he hadn't been wrong. A thin scar that still looked fresh reached across her palm from her forefinger down to her wrist. It looked as if the wound had been deep, as if it had been caused by a sharp blade. Due to his medical knowledge from past pretends Jarod could tell that the scar couldn't be any older than a few weeks.

"What happened to you?" he asked.

Miss Parker simply tried to pull her hand away, but to no avail.

"Who did this to you?" he asked, but she refused to answer him.

"Let me go," she demanded, but Jarod wouldnt hear her.

"That looks as if it was done on purpose, Miss Parker. It could have used stitches. You didn't go to hospital, did you?"

Miss Parker began to jerk her hand back but he had expected her move and held on with both his hands now, carefully running his finger along the scar. When she realized that he wouldn't let go of her, she froze, probably hoping that he would finally give up if she just remained silent.

"You're hiding it," he observed. "I have only seen you in long sleeves since you've arrived here. You wouldn't be hiding it if it had been from an accident, would you?"

She looked him in the eye for the first time since he had seen the scar.

"This is none of your business, Jarod." He knew her well enough to be able to tell from the tone of her voice that she was close to surrendering and simply telling him what he wanted to know just to get away.

"That must have hurt," he said. "Who did this to you? Lyle? Your father?"

Suddenly something else appeared in her eyes and before he could ask again, rage had already overwhelmed her.

"My family might be severely dysfunctional, Jarod, but you can't honestly believe that they would simply cut me with a knife because they feel like doing something cruel!"

Jarod felt sheepish, but before he could start to apologize, she went on. That was probably the reason why she had been holding back- because she knew she wouldn't be able to hold back the words once she had started saying them.

"Do you want to know who did this?" she demanded, her voice suddenly rising up.

Jarod opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

"Get used to the concept of rhetorical questions, wonderboy!" she snapped.

"But I want to know who did this to you! If I can do anything to help..."

She laughed angrily. "You did!" she spat at him. "It's your fault, for god's sake, that I had to walk around with a bandaged hand for a week, trying to convince Sydney I cut myself because I broke a vase!"

Jarod was finally at a loss of words.

"This scar..." Miss Parker nodded towards her hand since Jarod had caught her second hand in his, too, to hold her in place. "... is three weeks old. Remember what happened three weeks ago?"

Jard had a good memory, so he didn't need to think for long.

"The surveillance tape..." he began, but she cut him off again.

"Damn right. The surveillance tape, Jarod. It wasn't enough that you had to force me to acknowledge that my family consists of psychopaths, no! You have to remind me of it in regular intervals. I bet you get up in the morning, look in the mirror and wonder: 'Have I broken Miss Parker's heart lately? No, I think with her psychological constitution she must have picked herself up by now. Time to kick her in the face again!' And then you find another tidbit from my parents' past, like that surveillance tape. How did you think I would feel upon seeing my mother in a supermarket with an eye as black as Doctor Raines' soul? What do you think I would do faced with the fact once again that my mother was beaten by someone around here? What good did it do me? There is absolutely nothing I can do against it anymore because she is dead. And she suffered before she died. Thank you for reminding me all over again!"

Her voice had risen to a scream and tears shot into her eyes.

"Yes, I am trying to hunt you down to get my own freedom. Yes I am a bitch and I snap at people for nothing. And you... you help everyone... you're kind to everyone! But does that give you the right to torture me like that?"

A sob caught in her throat and she closed her eyes briefly, to keep the tears at bay.

Jarod didn't know what to say because all he could concentrate on was the guilt that started welling up inside him. He stared down at the light red scar and imagined what must have happened. Miss Parker seemed to sense what he was thinking.

"Look at me, Jarod."

He looked up into her eyes and all the pain he had ever caused her seemed to reflect back at him.

"You... did this to yourself?" he asked feebly.

"Yes. And I wouldn't have regretted it that badly if I had known that it would one day serve to show you just what your playing god causes."

She remembered vividly how she had driven home from the Centre the evening after she had received Jarod's package. It had contained said surveillance tape from a supermarket near Blue Cove where her mother had gone shopping. The package had been lost in the mail and so it had only been delivered to her when everyone else had gone home already. She had watched it and felt as if someone had knocked her backwards. The next morning she had barely remembered how she had got home. She only remembered the moment she had broken through her frontdoor and found herself in her house, unable to relax. Her heart had seemed to burst into a million pieces that cut numerous little wounds into her insides. The emotional pain had been so great that she had looked around for something... anything to numb it.

She had found scotch first, but not even the alcohol had been able to make her forget what she had seen. Why did she have to see her mother suffer like that? She had walked restlessly around her house, she had smashed her glass, she had smashed the bottle, she had cried until she had felt too weak to go on. Then she had seen the large knife that belonged to her kitchen set. She rarely cooked but she knew that it was sharp.

Her mind fuzzy by adrenaline and alcohol, she had taken the knife out and stared at the shiny blade. Pain. There was too much pain inside her. If she'd cut herself... Although she had known just how stupid and wrong it was, she hadn't been able to resist.

Miss Parker had never hurt herself before. It just wasn't in her nature, but that evening she was too drunk and too desperate to realize that it was no means to stay sane.

So she had simply closed her hand around the blade and squeezed until blood had run down her arm. As soon as she had seen the blood, the spell had been broken and she had dropped the knife to the floor, horrified at what she had done.

She had wrapped a towel around her hand and had fallen asleep on her couch. The next morning she had felt hungover and embarrassed, so she had cleaned the wound and bandaged it. Sydney hadn't believed her when she had told the lie about the vase, but she had been quick to evade his questions.

She snapped back to the present when Jarod finally let go of her hands. He looked horrified. Like a careless child that had only now realized the momentousness of what it had done. At least it was like that with Miss Parker.

She had been hiding her scar as well as she could with long sleeves, hoping that it would fade with time, and had simply tried to repress the memories of that night. Never had she been furious about Jarod's interventions until now.

But the fury had evaporated now and all she wanted to do was sleep and forget about the whole affair again. She knew that she should have left before this got any more out of hand, but she was just too tired. She would leave for home in the morning.

Jarod didn't protest when she walked out.

He stood in the middle of the living-room and felt a new and unwanted feeling rise inside him. He had always been the good guy. Like Robin Hood who took from the rich and gave to the poor. He had been playing his little games with the Centre crew without allowing himself to see that Miss Parker was as much a victim as he was.

He had been thinking in black and white although the world consisted of shades of grey.

The genius he was, he understood quickly that due to his long time in the Centre he had failed to develop some of the social competences other children gained automatically through contact with others. His behaviour had been normal even if it was stupid and hurtful. He just couldn't view it from that detached point of view because he felt so damn guilty.

Miss Parker had enough to deal with without him pressing her for answers she didn't have and punishing her by giving her more painful details she didn't want.

His hands were shaking and his mind felt numb, but he had to talk to her now.

When he climbed the stairs, he felt how much he wanted to talk to her, but dreaded it at the same time.

His knock was answered with a muffled: "Go away", but he entered anyway. Miss Parker was still dressed and sat on the bed, absent-mindedly brushing her dark hair. He marvelled at its rich chocolate brown as the brush went through it.

"You're beautiful..." he whispered his thoughts aloud and felt foolish immediately. Flattery would get him nowhere, even if he meant what he said.

She simply looked at him as if she knew what was going on in his head. She put the brush aside: "What do you want?"

Her voice was as clear as ever and sounded business-like.

"I... I would like to apologize..."

"Because I cut my hand? Big deal."

"No... because I was mindless. I didn't think about how my... games... would affect you."

She smiled humorlessly.

"After all these years..." she added sarcastically.

"I never wanted to see you as someboy with feelings... and at the same time I did. I... guess I felt as if I could control you in a way...as if I could make you see yourself but without seeing you myself... does that make any sense?"

She shook her head, but her face looked less tense than mere moments ago.

"What I mean is... I guess it was easier to see you for what you wanted me to see."

"Mean cold bitch," she said.

"Yes."

For a moment they just looked at each other, then Jarod took her hand and looked at her palm again.

"Did it hurt much?"

"Not as much as seeing my mother all miserable," she admitted.

"I am so..."

"You told me already, Jarod."

He looked at her and wondered how she could look so strong when she had revealed just how vulnerable she was.

"I'm not weak, you know," she said. "You don't need to think that just because I went nuts for a moment you would have to be my friend."

"We used to be friends all right," he said. "When we were kids."

She couldn't help but smile.

"Yes but that was a long time ago, Jarod. I'm not the same person anymore."

She was right.

"Yes. You are very different..." he said and he could see from the look in her eyes that she was proud of the strong woman the frightened girl had become.

"What have you done with the knife?" he asked suddenly.

"Threw it away," she replied casually. "I don't cook anyway."

Maybe it was just the tension easing away but they started laughing at the same time. Jarod was still holding on to Parker's hand and didn't care about letting it go. When they had regained their composure, Miss Parker shook her head.

"Wow. Who would have guessed only 24 hours ago that I would sit here with you and laugh my ass off about a joke that isn't even funny..."

"Yes. Who would have guessed?" he asked and smiled.

For the first time in years she smiled back comfortably.

"And we're holding hands." She playfully cocked and eyebrow at him which caused him to drop her hand immediately.

"I guess you're tired and want to sleep..." he said and quickly got to his feet. He was halfway across the room when he heard the one word she called after him:

"Stay."





Chapter End Notes:
...to be continued...





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