Too Many Answers
By Hold-out Trout
Disclaimer: While I don't own The Pretender, I do own the first three seasons on DVD. This creates some problems, like fic ideas slamming me in the head as I watch old favorite episodes.
Author's Note: Since sappy seems to be working for me lately, here is this fic. Once again I genre hop. Well, sorry to anyone who likes something else I've written but doesn't know all my fandoms.
Jarod: "What becomes of us when we have all our answers?"
Miss Parker: "That is the question."
From Bank.
The answers left her cold. Bare facts left no room for love or truth. They left no quarter for her to believe that her father had had motives other than ambition, and they hemmed her into a single path. Freedom was an illusion, she told Jarod.
Their conversations were stilted. The truth left Jarod nothing with which to persuade Miss Parker. It left Miss Parker no place to hedge.
"Freedom is the only truth left," he countered.
"Truth. And where has that gotten us?"
Silence.
"Miss Parker-"
"No, Jarod."
It was the same conversation, every time. It had different, happier beginnings, beginnings that held genuine laughter and truth. After all, almost everything had been put right. Almost all of the children had been set free.
But Miss Parker stayed in the Centre.
Jarod stayed away.
Even in their freedoms they had their roles.
Miss Parker couldn't leave. She was trapped by her memories and her guilt. Her father and Mr. Raines—they were gone, along with the evil, the rot underneath the surface. She worked furiously, blindly, to turn it all around. She couldn't get rid of the memories of the dark places, and kept trying to scrub them clean.
Jarod couldn't come back. To him, the Centre was a place of horror and despair. He watched from a distance and knew his work was done, but he couldn't bring himself to go back, not even to rescue the one lost girl left.
Another night, another call.
"Please. Let go."
That was Jarod
"You first."
The answers crowded them out. There were no questions left to lure them from their spheres anymore.
It was, of course, Jarod who found the next question, and Miss Parker who found the right one.
"Why do you hide inside those walls?"
Miss Parker countered, "Why do you keep running? There's nothing to run from."
Silence.
The next day, Miss Parker looked around. She searched the Centre from top to bottom, wandering aimlessly, finding nothing.
She started on sub-level 27. It was lit up, although the only things down there were file cabinets—every record from the last twenty years. She checked the most sensitive ones. They were still there, not tampered with.
She walked up each sub-level, then each floor above ground. On every floor, assistants nodded to her, and clients smiled as they went about their business.
Finally, she returned to her office, ignoring her assistant's queries as to where she'd been all day. She shut the door behind her, crying quietly.
A voice came from behind her desk. "Nothing to run from."
"I kept myself here, jumping at shadows."
"Old habits die hard."
Miss Parker wiped her eyes and faced Jarod.
"I'm going to make a habit of breaking old habits."
Jarod nodded.
He took Miss Parker's hands.
"Let's get out of here."
She smiled.
"The habit of not smiling. Check." Jarod's voice was teasing.
"The habit of taunting Miss Parker. Still needs some work."
Jarod laughed. He still held Miss Parker's hands.
Two indrawn breaths.
Jarod started to pull away, but Miss Parker leaned forward.
When she pulled away, Jarod said, "No, no, no. You're supposed to break old habits."
"Damn. Some old habits die hard."
And she leaned in again.
Eventually, Jarod said, "Well, maybe not all old habits are bad."
"Or maybe four kisses over twenty years don't count as a habit?"
"Questions, questions, questions. Now I see how annoying I must have been all those years."
Another laugh.
Miss Parker sobered. "This is going to be hard."
"Hardest thing we've ever done."
And together they walked out of the Centre.