To My Dedicated Readers: I would like to apologize for the state in which the first 16 chapters of this story were posted. I can't believe you would bother to read them the way they were! A friend of mine posted them and hadn't realized that I didn't put empty lines between each line of text…oops…so they were posted directly from Word without proper formatting. As you will notice, ever since Chapter 17, when I took over posting myself, I've posted from an html document so as to save formatting. MY SINCERE APOLOGIES TO YOUR EYES FOR ANY DISTRESS CAUSED TO THEM! I've fixed that little problem now. Thanks so much for submitting yourself to the eye torture and again, my sincere apologies.
Disclaimer: Sigh…Sadly, I do not own the characters of The Pretender. I in no way wish to defame any of its affiliates nor NBC or TNT. That's it.Read it now!
Summary: Clues to the past bring Ms. Parker and Jarod back together again. Very involved in IOTH, but you can understand it without having seen it. Ties up most story lines. Mostly from Ms. Parker's point of view. Chapters are short.
The Truth Is Waiting
By Bec-Bec
Chapter 1
Houdini and the Inner Sense
Ms. Parker was a strong willed person. She had been since the day she was born. She always strived to achieve her goals and, generally, she always succeeded…except at trying to capture Jarod.
Somehow, he had managed to elude her capture for six years. SIX YEARS. That was forever by her standards. It wasn't her fault, and Broots and Sydney were good at what they did, in their own ways. It's not like she hadn't come close to catching him, it's just that he always found some way to pull a vanishing act and BAM! There she was, back at the drawing board trying to find him again.
The closest she had come had been on the Island of Carthis. She could have caught him right then and there, if she had wanted to. She had been so close to him that she could have,…well, she had been close. But then, he pulled another Houdini, and there she was again, stuck at the Centre, trying to find out where Wonder Boy was this week.
It might not have been such a bad arrangement if he didn't taunt her with endless metaphorical objects as hints to his location, and the past. That just pushed her too far. Slipping through her fingers was one thing, but throwing it in her face was another. No one mocked a Parker. So, she sought her revenge, and the hunt continued.
****
Lately, Ms. Parker had been having terrible nightmares. They had started after she returned from the island. Normally, bad dreams were just unsettling, but to Ms. Parker, they were worse. She had what Sydney had dubbed "The Inner Sense," something like intuition, but stronger. It usually spoke to her in the voice of her mother, but she wasn't as good at understanding it has her brother, Ethan.
Ethan could hear the voice all of the time, she just heard it when something bad was going to happen or could happen if she didn't stop it. In the case of her dream, she could tell there was something more. Her Inner Sense practically screamed it at her. The problem was, she couldn't understand what it meant.
****
Inside Ms. Parkers dream
Ms. Parker walks down an empty street on the island.
She can tell something is wrong.
Each step fills her with more dread.
She sees something lying in the street and as she comes closer, she realizes it is Ocee's dead body.
Stepping back abruptly, she looks to her right and sees the ghost of Angel pointing at something.
She turns her head and discerns a man with a flaming tree branch from the shadows.
As he moves near her, she recognizes that it is Raines.
She turns around and begins to run.
She can see Jarod standing at the end of the street, but before she gets there, she feels claws tear into her side.
She falls to the ground crying out, "Jarod! Jarod!" and then she wakes up
****
Ms. Parkers Bedroom
Ms. Parker sighed defeatedly as she slumped back aginst her headborad. She'd just awakened from another nightmare. Again, she wondered why the dream had not stopped its nightly visit and what on earth it could possibly mean.
Her thoughts were jumbled as her tired mind tried to comprehend what it kept witnessing.
"It doesn't make any sense. I already knew that Raines was a psychopath and I'd never in my life let him touch me," she cringed at the thought, "maybe Angel is trying to tell me something, but what? Why do I feel so let down by Jarod? Could it possibly be that…I love him."
Overwhelmed at the thought, she grabbed a bottle of pills on her nightstand and quickly swallowed two of the blue capsules.
"I can't love Wonder boy…I want him dead…I want to drag him into the Centre on his knees while he begs for his freedom, and then…" she stopped for a moment. "Who am I bringing Jarod back to the Centre for? My father's gone and I'd rather die than give Raines the satisfaction of Jarod's return. Yet, I can't give up the chase, the thrill of impending capture is too strong. I don't want it to ever stop. Or…is it that I don't want the Centre to hurt him…I don't want him hurt at all.
"Damn it ! Damn it! Damn it! Why does Jarod mean so much to me? I can't love him. I don't love anyone. Love makes people weak, love gets people killed. I'm a Parker, the only thing Parkers love is power. I want the power, not Jarod…power…power…
"Who am I kidding? Lyle wants power, My father wanted power, Raines wants power and I don't want to be like any one of them. All I want is the truth…about who I am…and who my mother was, and for that case, my father. Jarod's the only one that tells me the truth. But, I can't love Jarod. I have no heart to love with…or do I?…Oh God…"
Ms. Parker's medication finally kicked in and relieved her of the war occuring in her soul. The unanswered questions of her dream still hung in the air, weighing heavily on her drugged sleep.