A/N: My apologies for taking so long getting this out. Again, my work schedule is hectic. Moving on, this chapter was originally around eight pages long but I decided to split it up for an easier read. My thanks go out to 2k9girl I hope I can continue writing Griffin up to par and LouThePixe I'm glad you love it. All the rest of you guys know how much I appreciate you're interest in my little story. The next installment will come very soon, until then enjoy!

Chapter Twelve

Parker squinted hazel eyes in irritation. The blazing sun was shooting its scorching rays down onto her pasty skin, making her sweat more than she would've liked. Extreme heat and her didn't mix well, or at all really. On hot summer days there were only two places in which someone could find her and that was indoors where the air conditioning was on blast or outside in cool water a pool provided. So to say that she wasn't feeling very pleasant as she stood in what had to be ninety degree weather was an understatement.

For a moment her annoyance at being out in the middle of the desert led her to regret making the split second decision to throw the stupid switchblade at that Paladin. Of course, she really didn't regret it, but she didn't like what throwing and making the target had brought her. That day after acquiring her suitcase full of necessities, Griffin behaved as if nothing had happened, ignoring the fact that they were looking for her and with the utmost persistence. Once her tears had subsided and her breathing had returned to normal he wanted to see whether or not her accurate throw of the switchblade had really been a fluke or not. Forget the awkward hug he'd given; forget the deepening sadness she felt at seeing that news report.

At first she was speechless and then she refused, so many factors playing into her decision, but Griffin hadn't and still wasn't taking no for any sort of answer. He'd went over to the strung up dart board with Roland's face stuck to the middle and pulled out all the darts embedded. Wordlessly he pushed them into Parker's hand, ignoring the protesting expression on her face. She looked down at the darts in her hand and swallowed hard.

At that moment throwing darts seemed silly and was far from what she was feeling like doing. After what she'd went through all she wanted was to curl up and not think about anything else. Seeing that report on the news solidified her situation. Her parents were gone and all of their friends, the ones who cared for them deeply, knew nothing. They were worrying about her and she couldn't do a thing about it.

"Go on then."

Only to appease him so that she could get her wish of curling into the smallest ball possible, did she take up a dart and casting him an uncaring look tossed the dart in the direction of the board. It was set in the small red circle but was off only by a little bit from the dead center. And because she'd cast a succession of darts very close to the center was why her tatty pink sneakers were dusted in sand and the frown on her face seemed permanently planted in its spot currently. The target that been set a few yards away and already had an assortment of knives decorated into it, seemed to mock her as she stood there in discomfort under the sun. She felt sticky; her throat dry and wayward curls clung to the back of her neck.

"This is pointless," Parker whined. Normally, she wasn't a whiner, but as she saw it circumstances warranted it. With the back of her free hand she wiped the perspiration from her forehead.

"It's not pointless."

"It is," Parker argued. "This doesn't help at all with solving what's on that piece of paper in there."

Griffin pointed towards the target set out in the sand. "That, that target right there is what's going to save your ass when you do figure that letter in there out."

Parker shook her head, "How is throwing various knives," she held up the one in her hand. "At the target supposed to help me?"

"Call it practice!" Griffin raked his hand through his hair, a sure telltale sign that he was getting antsy with her.

"I don't need to practice, what I need is to be figuring out all those dots!" Her hand tightened around the knife's handle. More than figuring out the letter she just wanted to be left alone, even if it did mean her thoughts would nag and pull at her. At the moment everything just felt inequitable to her and it in turn angered her. Blots of emotions too big for someone like her were being pushed aside and it wasn't settling right with her.

"Oh for fucksake just throw the damned thing."

Without hesitating she threw the knife at the target and not even bothering to watch to see where it landed, she scoffed passed Griffin, in the process bumping shoulders with him. A diminutively familiar pain passed through her shoulder, but she ignored it in favor of returning inside to where it was cooler. It was becoming more and more frequent; the pain in her shoulder, but because of everything happening around her she was forced to ignore it. She was ignoring it now, overlooking physical pain for some that came more mentally.

Griffin yanked the knife Parker had just thrown and jumped after her. Not at all was he feeling like dealing with a moody girl. He landed inside the lair in time to see her cross her arms and slump into the couch. For a second, just for a second, he closed his eyes to try and reign in any oncoming frustrations he knew were there. Parker was proving to be a complete thorn in his side.

"What has got you flipping your ruddy lid?" Griffin opened his eyes and drove the knife into the nearest surface making it stick up erect and on its own.

Parker glanced once at him angrily before settling her eyes back into gazing at whatever was in front of her. "Nothing," she muttered feeling absolutely low.

"Good then, you can get back to practice."

Parker looked at Griffin once more and didn't enjoy the firm expectant look on his face. "You're kidding right?"

"No," he said stiffly. "I'm not."

"Well I'm not going back out there." There she'd said it. That was where she was supposed to leave it and stick to her guns, but before she could clamp down on her tongue, more came bubbling forth. "How can I when-when my face is plastered all over the news now? How can I go back out there and throw stupid dumb knives when I'm supposed to figuring out coded letters and keeping myself alive and away from ridiculous secret organizations? How can I when nothing about my life is right!"

Her outburst had her standing and her fists were balled up at her sides. She thought she had everything inside of her controlled. Bottling it all up wasn't exactly the best thing to do, but she felt it had to be done if she was to deal with everything. She hadn't meant for it to all come spilling out in front of Griffin. It just happened that way. It was supposed to stay stuck inside, at least until everything was over and done with, but her emotions seemed to have other agendas, and they seemed to want to come out and reveal themselves.

"You done yet?"

At his outwardly uncaring tone, Parker's lips pierced. "Is that all you can say? After all that's happened, that's it? Just some smart assed comment? How's doing what you want supposed to make anything better?"

"Cuz I've been through this, all of it and it's nothing new to me." Griffin adopted a more serious face as Parker drilled anger filled eyes into him. "I've been in your exact same spot! Every thing you're going through has happened to me. And maybe just maybe, I know how to handle the damn situation better than you!"

The anger melted away from Parker's eyes and visibly she seemed to shrink at Griffin's heated shout. Never had she been the kind of person who took pleasure or triumph in any sort of confrontation, she was much rather the type who skirted around issues that weren't swimming in pleasure. Natural born pacifist her father would say. What would he say now that she was practicing so that she could sink sharp knives into people with precision?

It was the wavering in eyes that seemed a bit too large for her that did him in. Whatever it was about this girl chipped at what he prided in as a solid barricade from everyone. Perhaps it was because they shared similar stories or maybe it was because she gave off an all too unsullied air about her. Whatever it was had him giving into something he swore to himself he wouldn't talk about if he didn't have to.

"Look," Griffin slid to the floor, his back against the wall and arms resting on the tops of his knees. "They killed my parents, Paladins and because of what I am, what I can do they pull out all kinds of fucking stops just so they can see me dead. You havin' your bloody face plastered over telly screens isn't a big shocker."

Frowning, Parker could feel the very effort it had taken Griffin just to say that his parents had been murdered by Paladins. Never for a second had she thought that all the running and fighting came easy to him, because how could it? How could running from an organization who rightly believed you to be a sacrilege to life ever be easy? There it was, that flutter in the pit of her stomach dawned itself as she watched Griffin's blue eyes stare at his hands. Without thinking an ounce, she put one foot forward and then another until she was standing mere inches away from Griffin.

Timidly, she sat herself crossed legged beside him. For a few minutes she didn't say anything, reflecting on what Griffin said. Her eyes worked over the sand dusting her shoes and her teeth took to chewing on her bottom lip. Griffin was silent too and her guess was that he was lost somewhere in his past. From the moment her father nudged her in the direction of Griffin she was placed outside of her comfort zone and now sitting next to him was no different.

An entire forest filled with indecision she fought and debated over, because a question was just waiting to pass her lips that she'd asked before and hadn't gotten an answer to. It'd been made clear to her that he hadn't liked to talk about his past. She couldn't blame him when he had been handed a bad end of the spectrum. Since she was stepping outside of everything familiar anyway, it didn't matter that she was trying to connect with a person who could unbelievingly transport themselves with a blink of the eye. Parker breathed deep.

"Griffin," her voice was low and carried a bit of hesitance. "How old were you? How old were you when it happened?"

He turned his stare towards her and for a second she regretted asking. Parker didn't wish to drudge up any memories that weren't missed. She was beginning to feel like an awful person for yelling out her frustrations at him and then making him remember what had to be the most horrible time in his life. Hurriedly she apologized, each apology fumbling into the next as she hoped to stave off his anger before it even started.

Griffin dropped his stare away from her and returned it to his hands. "Nine."

Parker was sure she hadn't heard him right. She was sure that her ears had taken that precise moment to stop working because she was having a hard time believing that those Paladins were so terrible as to go after murder children. It was unspeakably despicable. Immediately she felt a sadness leak into her on behave of Griffin. She wanted to inquire further on what happened, how at such a young age he'd dealt with it and just how he was able to escape.

Instead of further questions what came from her was, "You were just a baby."

Griffin jeered at her comment. "I wasn't a baby. I handled what happened to me a helluva lot better than you are now." But determined not to be thrown off topic he cleared his throat. "Anyway, if I could deal with something like this as a kid, I'm sure you can…pull yourself together enough to survive."

Parker looked back at her sneakers and as she continued to chew on her lip, she traveled a finger through the sand at the toe of her right shoe. She wasn't quite sure what to say to that. Parker was too caught up in the fact that he had only been nine when he'd been left to survive on his own. It was a great difference between what age she was now and what age he'd been.

"I'm just trying to make sure you don't get yourself killed," Griffin sighed.

Parker shot her head back up to look at him. At first there was a bit of confusion that wiggled itself into her feelings reflecting onto her face, but as quickly as it came, it left and in its place slowly grew an impish smile. Anyone else would've taken what he said as a passing comment. That simple sentence he'd spoken could've been just something to convince her that he was right and she was wrong. Parker hadn't interpreted it that way at all, instead of seeing the sentence as borderline harsh she chose to see the light that shined through that sentence Griffin spoke.

Griffin looked at her and hurriedly spoke, practically seeing the gears in her head turning. "I mean to say- what I mean to say is so that you don't get offed before that letter gets figured out."

Parker's smile only swelled. "You care."

"What? No I don't!" Griffin hastily got to his feet and looked at her with a spot of disgust.

Parker followed suite and pointed an amused finger at him. Just like that all her qualms had been pushed back to the very far regions of her mind. "You care about what happens to me don't you?"

Griffin shook his head showing to her his objection.

"Yes you do!" It didn't matter that he only cared for the sake of the letter or whether it be for reasons unknown to her; all that mattered was that there was a bone in his body that hadn't been spoiled by the evil deeds of Paladins.

"You care about me."

Griffin rolled his eyes and went back to the knife he'd sunk into a cluttered surface. "Oh don't be so full of yourself, sweetheart."

Parker chuckled and shook her head fully believing in what her thoughts had led her to. Griffin plucked up the knife and offered it to her. He seemed eagerly determined to get away from the subject at hand. At this Parker shook her head and accepted the knife, even though it was a symbol of all things loathed by her. It was now a fact that after their latest rendezvous with Paladins that having to learn some form of defense was a necessary evil on her part.

As much as she didn't want to take up the knife, she understood that it could be her very means of survival. Her father's efforts at keeping her safe would've been for nothing. He'd cared about her and it was only because he had bigger than life goals that she was standing in Griffin's lair. Parker was more than ready to honor her father's efforts, because it gave her something to hold onto that was a piece of him and that was beyond a memory. Parker came to accept that she couldn't possibly not fight and expect to float through unscathed and with a bubble around her.

"You care about me," she said in a singsong voice just to pick at Griffin's nerves.

"Shut it, will you?"

"You care," she batted her lashes at him as she still held onto the knife.

Griffin rolled his eyes and directed hasty steps towards the scorching heat the outdoors provided. His escape from what he found to be her all too happily irritating voice was not to be because her skipping form was following right behind him. Easily he could've jumped, surrounding himself with some place quiet and far away from her, but duty was first priority, annoyance or not.