DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters, only my interpretations of their motives. I've borrowed Miss P and Jarod for a little while, and tried to bring them to their senses; I meant no disrespect or infringement upon the rights and privileges of those who do own them.
SUMMARY: A bit of filler-- from Jarod's P.O.V. this
time-- for the ending of *Island of the Haunted*
It was supposed to dovetail with my very first fanfic,
The Haunted, but I'm not so sure. He sort of got away from me.
ESCAPE
"But what about... us?"
"You run, I chase. Just like always."
Tired, and weak from the crash and subsequent explosion, he ended the telephone call with a sigh. He should have known her defenses would be back in place.
It was all part of the game they'd resumed. It was almost as though nothing had changed.
But it had.
In the past, he would call her, sometimes to provoke her with a question, sometimes to tease her with the answer to a question she hadn't asked yet--
-- but always because he wanted, because he needed,
to hear her voice. There was comfort in it, the sound of her voice in his
ear. It made him feel connected, in some small way, to a part of himself--
not to the Centre, but to something else that went far beyond flight and
pursuit.
... "Then I was right in thinking that was the only good thing left on this island," Ocee had said to him, during the storm on Carthis.
"What do you mean?"
"The connection between you and her, of course."
... Sometimes he hung up on her, sometimes she on him, but in the most important sense, they never actually broke the connection.
She had asked him, there in Ocee's back room, whether he remembered when they were children together, at the Centre.
Did he remember?
Because he knew she wasn't ready to hear it, he didn't tell her that even without the DSAs to remind him, he could call to mind every encounter, every secret foray, every stolen moment they'd ever spent together, since the very first time he'd seen her...
... The first time...
He'd just completed a truly grueling sim for Sidney. He had hoped he'd have a chance to rest a little, maybe to sneak up into the vents to play a little chess with Angelo. Instead, they'd hustled him straight off to a glassed-in chamber on one of the "upper" sub-levels. They'd connected him to the machines again, like they always did, monitoring every aspect of his body's functions.
"Jarod, I'd like you to meet someone," Sidney had said, gesturing towards the glass wall.
He had turned and--
she'd been the prettiest sight he'd ever seen. Her long
dark hair was parted in the middle, and swung gently as she walked towards
him. When she got close to the glass, the light had reflected in her clear
blue eyes, and all at once he forgot how to breathe.
She was a girl.
His hand went up against the glass, almost without intention, and she put hers up to meet it.
"My name is Jarod," he'd stammered.
"I'm--" the vision had paused, then glanced away. When she turned back to him, there was hesitation in her face. "Miss Parker," she'd finished awkwardly.
They'd taken her away almost immediately-- the grown-up Jarod realized later that they had simply wanted to monitor his physical responses to a female near his own age; they'd separated the children as soon as they got the data they wanted. The child Jarod had been, though, had dreamt of that vision-- that girl-- for weeks, imagining that in her he might have found a friend, a confidante. Perhaps, now, he would not be always alone.
She'd solidified his adoration with secret visits, always
too few, always too short. Whenever she came into his lab, she reminded
him of the bright sunlight he'd seen reflected in videos and paintings.
One day, while Sidney was away in another part of the Centre, working on
a top-secret project, she'd arrived, smiling a secret. She'd heard
about some test animals being held in one of the sub-levels, and challenged
him to help her find them. Of course they had been successful--
they usually were. And also as usual, they'd come within a hair's-- or,
a hare's-- breadth of being caught by security personnel sweeping the corridor
unexpectedly, which sent them on a mad dash for cover. Sitting on a step,
safely hidden from the cameras, they'd gasped for breath and grinned at
each other, triumphant in their escape.
That was when, without warning, she'd leaned forward,
quick as a cat, and pressed her lips against his.
For Jarod, it was as if time had stopped. Her lips were soft and gentle, her breath was sweet and slightly tinged with mint, and her hair wafted just the slightest scent of lilacs.
It was a moment that stood outside of time, unique. It was the moment when he realized he belonged to her, heart and soul.
Not long after, her mother had been killed, and
everything changed. She'd been sent away to school after that, and he only
saw her during vacations when her father had no one else to watch her.
...They'd spent so much of what Jarod ironically called their childhood together, growing up in the shadow of the Centre, it amazed him that-- except for their wild ride through Hurricane Cassandra-- in the years since he'd escaped from the Centre, they had spent no more than five minutes together, alone.
... until they came together on the Island of Carthis.
He'd forgotten how mesmerizing her blue eyes could be, how hypnotic her deep voice when it wasn't snarling at him over the telephone.
She was so rarely vulnerable, so frequently on edge, prickling like a porcupine, punishing anyone who got too close, that it had surprised him when she collapsed at the cemetery. Somehow, even with his bruised arm, he'd managed to get her to Ocee's, to shelter.
And then when he'd walked into the back room to deliver Ocee's herbal tea--
-- it was like the first time all over again. His breath had caught in his chest, and his heart had begun to pound in ways that not even Zoë had prompted. It wasn't that her terrycloth bathrobe was so alluring, or that his dripping hair had been such an aphrodisiac. It was the look she'd given him as she'd tied the belt on the robe-- as if she were suddenly conscious of the two of them, not as prey and huntress, but as a man and a woman.
He wasn't a sheltered little boy anymore. He'd gotten his breathing under control, and calmly handed her the teacup, noticing a small tremor in her own hand as she took it. He'd wanted to put his hands around hers, to stop their trembling, and make sure she was all right. Instead he contented himself with a hollow admonition:
"Don't let the storm rage inside you, Miss Parker. You know who you are." Even then it had seemed scant comfort, coming from one such as he.
But she'd sat by the fire and asked him if he remembered when they were kids...
...as if he could forget, even without the stolen plastic disks, one millisecond of any time she'd ever spent with him.
Sitting beside her on the hearth, he'd heard the tone in her voice when she asked him why he was the one who was always with her during the hardest moments of her life. In it he recognized the sound of someone who was finally connecting the pieces of a confusing puzzle, but unsure of the picture they formed.
"Maybe because it's supposed to be that way," he'd said. Then he'd lost himself in her eyes, swimming in their blue depths, drowning, unable to catch his breath-- he leaned closer, imagining the softness of her lips already yielding to his-- the warmth of her skin--
But Ocee had interrupted them, and the moment had been shattered. As they lurched away from one another, he'd been surprised to see the expression in Miss Parker's eyes, the glance she threw him after she jumped up to help Ocee with the tea.
She'd wanted him to kiss her. The realization warmed him as the fire had not been able to do, and it was a full minute before he could focus on what the two women were saying.
Then later, in the limo, he'd held onto that look, and pleaded for all he was worth--
-- only to have her reject him, again.
... It had been one of the rare times when her father had brought her to work, a school vacation. She'd sneaked down to his sim lab, and he'd sat on the floor, in the one corner that was out of view of the security cameras that chronicled his every breath, listening to her stories of life at school. She'd told him about 'smores' and 'all-nighters' and 'dating' and 'dances'... how the boys at school were afraid of her because she was so smart, and how the girls teased her because she wasn't interested in any of those boys. She'd looked so sad, and so lonely in that moment. Before he could think better of it, or stop himself, he'd leaned forward and kissed her. While he was noticing that her lips were just as soft, and that she smelled even better than her remembered, some part of him noticed that she hadn't backed away or jumped up. She moved closer to him on the floor and kissed him back. When they'd finally separated, there were tears glistening in her eyes.
"I'm not afraid of you," he'd said fiercely. "I love you. When you come back from school, we'll be together, forever."
She'd laughed, a little sadly. "No, we won't. Daddy says we're going to the London house tomorrow, and then I'm going to a school somewhere in Europe, maybe Switzerland."
Her words stopped his lungs from functioning properly.
"But-- you'll be coming back?"
She'd shaken her head, the movement releasing a single teardrop to splash onto the floor. "Daddy says he wants me away from the Centre, and all the bad memories."
"What about me?" he'd asked, wondering if the pain in his chest was his heart literally breaking. "Am I just a 'bad memory'?"
"No, Jarod." She'd smiled, touching his face with a feather-soft fingertip. "But don't you see, I have to get away from the Centre."
He didn't see. They'd been sixteen years old. And
she hadn't told him she loved him.
... She had the same sad look on her face in the back of the limousine.
"Forget that moment of-- weakness, Jarod," she said, only this time, there was no smile, no tears. She just turned away.
But in the moment before she turned, he'd seen the look in her eyes. Now, as an adult, he recognized the expression for what it was.
It was fear.
For one heart-stopping moment he wondered how she could possibly be afraid of him. She should know that he would never hurt her, not intentionally. He hadn't meant for Thomas to be murdered by the Centre. That had been another gross miscalculation for which he would never forgive himself. (And the flu didn't count, his inner honesty protested. He'd been making a point.)
But to see fear in her eyes-- when he realized the men outside the limousine were beginning to load the plane, he reached for her, covering her hands with his, pleading.
She glanced down at their clasped hands, once, then turned
her gaze resolutely out the window.
All at once the full realization hit him, and he
pulled away, his shackles jingling softly. He took a deep breath, staring
straight ahead as he absorbed her pain, and intuited the source of her
fear. It wasn't
fear of him: it was the uncertainty
of her place in this life. What little stability she'd thought she had
had been ripped from her. Since that moment in the cemetery, her
life had begun teetering on the brink of something she wasn't ready to
acknowledge or accept. She wasn't ready for another blow-- that hard
shell was more fragile than she or anyone but he knew, and he couldn't
be the one to strike it.
Then the sweepers had come, anxious to hustle him onto the plane and back to the Centre. She'd simply gotten out of the car and walked away from him without a backward glance. Still, he couldn't resist one more attempt to reach her, one parting shot as they'd pulled him onto the plane. "Funny thing about endings, Miss Parker. You can change them, if you just change the story."
But the thugs her father employed dragged him away before
he could judge her response.
... In the nondescript hotel room, Jarod clutched the
cellphone, holding on to the memory of her eyes as they reflected Ocee's
firelight, wishing it could be her hand he held, her face he touched.
She'd wanted him to kiss her.
He should have known she wasn't ready, perhaps would never be ready, to take the final step. He'd saved her life, and his own, by landing the plane safely, and then he'd escaped, alone, again.
He'd escaped, but it was she who'd ended up
... trapped at the Centre.
For now.