Disclaimer:  The characters are not my own, I'm only borrowing them to put them into situations of my own imagining.

Finding Family

Part Sixteen:  Deja vu

Rating: G

Category: S

Timeline: Sometime in the middle of the series

Spoilers: None

Keywords: MPJF, JOF

Summary:  Miss Parker accidentally shoots Jarod, which forces her to confront her feelings towards him.  Meanwhile, a seriously injured Jarod has to learn to trust someone to help him and finds out a little about his family history.

Houston, Texas, Friday, 6 PM

Parker stood just outside the doors of the building.  Night had fallen completely as the thick storm clouds had obscured any evening twilight.  A light rain had begun to fall and the sound of thunder promised more.  She hesitated even though she knew exactly which way to go to return to her hotel.  The voices whispered in her head.  More and more she had begun to hear them.  Ordinarily she ignored them, or the bustle of everyone around her overwhelmed them, but tonight she felt especially alone and so they sounded louder.  One in particular was quite insistent.  'That way…he went that way…' it seemed to say to her.  She didn't have to question who 'he' was.  She had just seen him.  She felt a double dose of guilt for not having apologized for having shot him.  She sighed.  She was supposed to wait for him to call her.  In the middle of the night, of course.  That was how they played this game after all.  But tonight she needed more.  She needed to know just what he thought of her, because she wasn't sure what to think of him anymore.  She pulled her coat closer around her, stepped out into the rain, and walked down the street away from her hotel.

***********************

Jarod walked along the road no longer in a hurry.  He had burst out of the building at a dead run, but now he knew she wasn't after him anymore.  That wasn't the way they played the game.  He knew he had to call her sometime later.  He should wait until he knew she was back in Blue Cove and had to fight the impulse to pull his cell phone out and just call her now.  Her behavior had him mystified.  She had made a point of looking after the young woman Amanda.  She had actually helped reunite Amanda and her mother.  This was hardly the tough Miss Parker that she tried to project.  He smiled to himself, just when he thought he had her figured out, she surprised him.  He loved that about her, most people were just too simple and predictable.

A gust of wind brought a pattering of heavier raindrops.  The trees had sheltered him from the light rain, but he was beginning to get wet now.  He pulled the lab coat around him from the growing chill and stopped to lean up against a tree.  He looked up at the sky enjoying the show Mother Nature was putting on.  Lightening raced through the clouds and thunder rippled after it as the storm grew closer.  A steady wind brought a decidedly cooler temperature with it and occasional burst of wind lashed the tree limbs like mad marionettes.  He loved it.  As a child, sheltered in the concrete, subterranean basements of the Centre with no access to even a window, he had tried to imagine storms that he read about.  Reality was so much more chaotic, so much more dangerous.  So much like her.

*********************

Parker walked along the same road oblivious to the storm.  It seemed the perfect backdrop to her conflicted emotions.  She knew what she should do, what was expected of her and what she must do in order to survive, but it was not what she wanted to do.  What she wanted…she was afraid to even voice it to herself.  Instead, she let the wind blow her down the street, the elements of Nature itself were in harmony with the voices in her head and she let them pull her along like a current in a stream.

Suddenly, she saw him.  He was leaning against a tree, his head upturned to the storm letting the rain fall in his face unheeded.  She might have walked by except the white lab coat reflected the spot of light from a street lamp and made him stand out against the dark tree trunks.  His old-fashioned hairdo and his mustache could have made him look odd, but out here in the storm he looked even more handsome.  He looked like the archetypical hero, unafraid of even the elements.  She found herself drawn forward like a moth to a flame.

Without even thinking she began to run toward him.

*********************

Jarod heard the sound of her boots slapping the wet pavement and jerked his head to the side as he tried to make out her figure in the increasingly heavy rain.  He couldn't really make out her face, but he knew it was her.  For a moment he hesitated wondering whether he was simply imagining her, but a burst of lightening lit the scene like day for an instant and he could see her dark hair flying out around her face and her lips pursed the way she always did when she chased him.

Without even thinking he began to run away from her.

As he ran, the lab coat flapped around his legs and he realized that the white made him easy to track.  He ignored the stabbing pain in his shoulder as he shrugged the coat off and threw it to the side.  He had reached the end of the quiet delivery access road and was forced to stop as he stood facing a major thoroughfare.  Although the bulk of the evening rush hour was over, there was still plenty of traffic and crossing without a light was going to be hard.  He glanced back over his shoulder at Parker barreling down on him, and looked back desperately at the road.  He spied a lucky break in the traffic as a large truck on the opposite side moved sedately along trapping the speedy little cars behind its bulk.  He dashed out in front of a blue sedan on his side of the road and out to the center median.  He paused a moment as a small white car whizzed by, its horn blaring and then he ran out in front of the truck and into a large wooded park.

Parker skidded to a stop as the horn blared, watching breathlessly as Jarod sprinted in front of the truck and into the park.  Once he was out of the headlights of the cars, he all but disappeared in the curtain of rain.  She bent down and picked up the white lab coat, only to throw it down angrily.  She paced along the gutter waiting for the traffic to slow until finally the light far down at the corner held back the flow temporarily and she was able to sprint across the road.  She jogged in the pouring rain until she came to another quiet cross street.  She could just make out the street sign, Golf Course Dr.  She leaned on the cold, metal pole for a moment deciding whether she should just turn around and go back to her hotel and get warm and dry.  But the voices drove her on and she ran blindly into the dark park following him not with her eyes, but with her heart.

Jarod was panicked.  There hadn't been any sweepers with her back at Dr. White's office.  She had clearly acknowledged the temporary truce, so what had happened?  Had he been seen by Lyle or Raines and had they sent her after him again?  Who else was chasing after him with her?  As he reached a rise in the municipal golf course, he slid to a stop on the wet grass and turned, panting, to look back over his shoulder.  He could see the traffic moving far off at the edge of the park, but it was dark under the trees.  On the other side of the park road, he could make out the buildings of the zoo behind a high fence that he had already dismissed as being unable to scale with his hurt shoulder.  His plan was to lose his pursuers in the park and circle around back to the medical center where he could get lost in the many hospitals and buildings there.  Not to mention, the temperature was dropping fast as the cold front barreled over the city.  He needed to find shelter and hopefully some dry clothes soon.

He shivered as he stared out into the darkness trying to detect human movement under the trees.  The problem was that strong gusts of wind were swirling leaves all around and the tops of the trees were swaying and creaking as they were lashed in the wind and rain.  Then a wind gust over fifty miles an hour literally blew him over and pea sized hail began to pellet his head and shoulders.  This storm was changing quickly from being simply uncomfortable to out-right dangerous.

He couldn't afford to stop on this rise.  He needed to get down out of the wind at least, maybe under a tree so its limbs would block the some of the hail.  He slid on his backside down the hill, gaining a layer of thick, claylike mud on his already soaked pants.  As he got up to try and run, his pants felt heavy and now it was hard to bend his knees, "Perfect," he muttered as he struggled on.

Parker found herself growing angry at Jarod.  Why was he running away when it was just her?  She really wanted to talk to him.  Why did he always get to choose the time to talk?  She was getting soaked from this rain and it was starting to get cold.  A huge gust of wind blew her into a stand of small pine trees and she stumbled, scraping her legs on their sharp needles as she tried to catch herself.  Then hail began to drum on her head in time with a throbbing headache.  "Perfect," she muttered as she struggled on.

By a quirk of fate, Parker found herself on top of the rise that Jarod had just left.  She wanted to get a farther view, but found the swirling debris from the storm just as hard to peer through.  Looking down she saw the unmistakable sign of his recent slide down the slope and she grinned almost wickedly, knowing she was close.  "JAROD!" she called, trying to throw her voice over the fury of the storm.

Was it a trick of the wind?  Jarod thought he'd heard his name called.  He came to a stop leaning over on his knees, trying to catch his breath.  His usual stamina was gone.  Between his gunshot wound, his recent infection and fever, and having his blood drawn that morning, he was weak and fading fast.  He might have to let himself be caught now and save his remaining strength to escape later.  He looked back towards the rise he had just left and saw her figure silhouetted against the roiling clouds.

Suddenly, the air itself was ripped apart.  A blinding flash of lightening completed the circuit from clouds to ground via the live oak towering just above Parker.  The sound of thunder simultaneously deafened Jarod and he watched in horror as a huge limb ripped away from the tree's trunk and descended with gravity's merciless force onto Parker.  The pounding rain seemed almost quiet after the thunder vibrated away from its source.  After the daylight-like brilliance, his eyes had difficulty adjusting to the dark, and Jarod could feel his hairs on his arms and back of his neck still standing on end from the electric field that had discharged.  "PARKER!" he cried out desperately.

He ran back toward the rise and saw the huge tree limb sprawling diagonally from the top to the bottom and Parker no where in sight.  Forgetting his own hurt shoulder, Jarod broke smaller branches and shoved his way in and under the big limb.  Crawling under it, he felt blindly around until he touched her hand.  "Parker!" he cried again as he grasped her cold hand and pulled her towards him.  Luckily, she wasn't pinned under as the smaller branches at the end held the limb up and kept the broken, jagged end on the top of the rise.  Jarod clawed at the mud trying to make a deeper hole so he could pull her out from under the limb.  Adrenaline powered his efforts as he backed out, pushing smaller branches back out of his way with his broad back and pulling her out with his one good arm.  He finally got the two of them out and down at the base of the rise.  The wind was blocked but the rain poured down on them washing away some of the mud.

He snapped into paramedic mode.  Kneeling next to her, he tilted her head back and checking for breathing.  Leaning over, he protected her head from the rain and hovered his cheek over her face to feel her breath while looking for the rise and fall of her chest.  As he felt the soft, warm puff of air on his cheek, he took a shuddering gasp of air himself, not realizing he had been holding his own breath.  He quickly felt over her limbs determining that she hadn't broken any bones, but discovered a gash above her ear that was quickly swelling.  He pulled his shirt off and wrapped it around her head to slow the bleeding and leaned back on his heels to look down on her.  She was unconscious and in danger of going into shock.  The pouring rain and steadily decreasing temperature were putting them both in danger and he needed to find shelter now.

Standing, he looked back at the lights glowing from the top floors of the nearby hospitals over the tops of the trees.  Medical help was so close and yet so far away.  He couldn't leave her here in the rain to get help, and he couldn't carry her all the way out either.  He looked down at his own bare chest and the blood soaked bandage on his shoulder, suddenly realizing the intense pain he had thus far ignored from having pulled out a number of the stitches so recently used to close his gunshot wound.

Nature answered his dilemma with another burst of lightening and he noticed a small, shed just a short distance away closer to the golf course access road.  Nodding to himself, he ignored the pain in his shoulder and used both arms to drag Parker over to the fallen limb.  He hefted her to a standing position, leaning her precariously against the limb and whirled around to catch her on his back as she slumped back over.  Bending his knees, he tossed her up slightly into a fireman's carry, adjusting her weight so it fell mostly on his good shoulder, her head lolling against his bandage.  Lightening flashed again and thunder rumbled as he sloshed through the rain towards the shed.

Although, she wasn't particularly heavy, he found himself stumbling to a halt when they reached the shed, his energy almost all gone.  He let her slide off his back against the wall, allowing her to slump to the ground.  He rattled the locked door and then with a burst of anger, kicked the door open.  The shed housed a riding mower, as well as other gardening equipment stacked neatly around the edges.  There wasn't enough room for the two of them too, unless he could move the mower.  Setting the gears into neutral, he got around behind the machine and with a last burst of energy pushed it out off the shed and into the rain.  Panting heavily, he stood in a daze in the doorway under the shed relieved to finally be out of the rain.  Guiltily, he spied Parker still getting drenched and stepped back out to pull her in with him.  Kicking the door closed he slowly collapsed against it, sliding to a sitting position with Parker leaning against his chest, her legs stretched out between his own.  He wrapped his arms around her, bent his head down on the top of hers and closed his eyes with exhaustion.

It was his body's own shivering that woke him up.  Jarod had no idea how long he had slept, but it couldn't have been long as the thunder only sounded a couple miles away now.  The rain poured down steadily outside and the growing cold combined with their soaking clothes had chilled both he and Parker.  He lay her on her side carefully and scooted around to feel around the shed.  His eyes adjusted to the dim light and he could make out various gardening tools along the wall.  As he felt along the shelves, his hand hit a stack of folded fabric.  Pulling it out, he shook out a large canvas, paint cloth.  Dusty and bespattered with dried paint, it was never-the-less a godsend.  He pulled it over his shivering shoulders, then stepped on the heels of his shoes to pull his feet out and then yank off his soaked socks.  He undid his belt and pulled off his muddy pants, leaving on only his briefs.  He felt his way back to Parker and quickly undressed her as well, trying not to notice how silky her skin was and keep his mind on their survival.  He untied his shirt from around her head and was glad to see the bleeding had stopped.  He covered her with the canvas, while he quickly draped their clothes around the shelves to hopefully drip dry.  Shivering, he crawled under the canvas with her and rolled her up against him, her head cushioned on his good shoulder, the hurt side up.  He brushed her hair back from her face with his own hurt arm and then pulled the canvas up around them tightly.  Then finally giving in, he fell asleep oblivious to the hard concrete floor.

************************

Parker woke up slowly.  Part of her was warm and cushioned, but her back was cold and her left arm was trapped under her on a hard surface.  She rolled up on the warm surface, pushing up with her trapped arm and snuggling her cheek onto the warm fuzzy surface that pillowed her.  At first she smelled only a musky smell that made her feel safe, but slowly she grew aware of the scents of blood and sweat, with an overcast of what could only be called wet dog.  Then she not only heard, but also felt the steady rhythm of a heart beating and its rhythm made her aware of her own heart beat throbbing in time with a headache.  Gingerly, she reached a hand up to the side of her head and couldn't help moaning when she touched the tender wound, noticing that her hair was matted with dried blood.  Then she realized that the surface she rested on was rising and falling with a soft rumbling snore and that except for her bra, her bare skin was pressed close to a bare chest.  With a start, she blinked her eyes open and jerked her head up to the vision of Jarod's handsome face, relaxed in sleep.

His arm tightened around her reflexively in his sleep and she fought against him by putting her hand on his shoulder to push herself up.  The pain in his shoulder as she pushed against it woke Jarod up with a start and an involuntary groan.  Parker rolled off of him into a sitting position and he rolled over on to his side lifting himself on his elbow to look at her in the dim light.  "That was your hurt shoulder," she realized, "I'm sorry."

He nodded understanding that she was apologizing for pushing against him as well as for shooting him in the first place.  "How's your head?" he asked softly reaching up his hurt right arm and brushing his hand gently over her cheek and across her hair on the left side.

"What happened?" she whispered back.

"Lightening struck the tree and the limb fell on you.  I had to get us out of the rain and managed to carry you to this equipment shed," he explained briefly, leaving out all the heroics that had taken place to achieve this apparently simple goal.

She touched her head again and nodded slowly, "It hurts," she said simply.

He shivered since she had pulled the canvas cover off of him when she sat up.  The storm had long since passed and the rain had stopped, leaving behind only a deep cold that made their warm breath wreathe out around them.  "Can we share?" he asked with a gentle pull on the cover.

She nodded slowly and pulled the canvas over both their shoulders as she slid back beside him holding herself up on her elbow to face him.  She became acutely aware of his warm body beside her and realized that they hadn't been this close for years.  She recalled the dream she had when sleeping in his apartment in North Carolina and wondered again if she had actually uncovered a repressed memory.  She leaned in and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply of his scent to see what other memories it jogged.

Jarod felt an intense jolt of erotic attraction for her from her simple action, even though they weren't even touching each other.  Although they talked on the phone regularly and he saw her often at a distance, there were very few times they had actually been in a room together.  Granted she had come close to capturing him once in Florida and again in Atlanta when he was trying to save the boy Davy from becoming another of Raines's experiments.  But this felt more like the time they were caught in a bank robbery and had to work together to save not only themselves, but also the other hostages.  Only this time, there was no one else around.  A mad hope began to form in his mind that he could get through to the real woman that she hid behind her Ice Queen mask.

"Do you remember when my father send me away to boarding school?" she asked unexpectedly.

His brown eyes stared deeply in her blue ones as he nodded, unable to trust himself to speak, afraid he might break the spell that had unlocked his old best friend.

"I don't remember it clearly," she began unwilling to admit she actually remembered two versions.  "I came to say good bye and you…"

"I wouldn't run away with you," he finished, settling in her mind which version to believe.

"I woke up in the Renewal Wing," she said quietly with downcast eyes.

"Renewal?" he asked wonderingly.  "You slapped me in disgust and stormed out saying I was a stupid lab rat," he accused.

"Me?  I woke up remembering that you attacked me, trying to, to…"

"Parker," he interrupted realizing that she was accusing him of rape, "I would never…"  He reached out to pat her and ended up stoking her hair softly where it fell across her shoulder.

The action reinforced her newly acquired memory and she looked up at him with fire in her eyes, "Your memory is wrong, Jarod," she asserted.

"Impossible.  I have a photographic memory," he countered defensively, upset with the anger he saw in her eyes.

"It's not your fault," she explained trying to explain her anger.  "Raines tampered with both of our memories.  He made us fear and distrust each other."

She watched as he closed his eyes tightly and clenched his jaw together in concentration.  "You came to see me in the middle of the night.  You begged me to run away with you.  I told you that we could never get away.  We fell asleep," his voice was unemotional as he recounted the memory.  Then he inhaled deeply and her lightly floral scent jogged his own memory and he involuntarily clutched her shoulder.

His actions sent a thrill through her and she felt a surge of surprise at the strength of her feelings for him.

His expression was angry as he opened his eyes, "Your father came in and found us.  He dragged you away.  A sweeper held me down and Raines injected me with something.  Parker, I never remembered before now!  Why?"

"Because we haven't been close to each other before now, I think.  I had sort of a waking dream when I slept in your bed in Raleigh.  It was the smell on the sheets that made me remember," she said reaching over to stroke the stubble of his beard beginning to show.

At her touch, he jerked back as though shocked.  "Odors can have a powerful link to specific memories," he announced rather analytically.

She laughed lightly and leaned in toward him, "What else do you remember, Jarod?" she asked huskily.

"That you use your femininity like a weapon against me," he replied, surprising even himself with his tone.  He was feeling irrationally claustrophobic and had to fight the urge to push her away.

Her eyes narrowed, and she studied his face, "Is that you talking or are you programmed to run from me?"

He flinched at her words and snapped back, "Are you programmed to chase me?"

They stared at each other with a mixture of emotions each.  Deep down they were attracted to each other, but the years of angry taunts from Parker and sneaky traps from Jarod had eroded their trust.  Anger, fear and pain mingled together to cloud their judgment.  And maybe, just maybe, they were acting on primitive brainwashing from their childhood.

Jarod blinked first and leaned in towards her deciding to throw caution to the wind and make a move on her.  "Run away with me, Parker," he urged.

For a moment she almost accepted, their breath mingled in a haze between them.  They were inches away from sealing their fate with a kiss and changing the direction of their lives forever.

But the enormity of the thought of the Centre chasing after her scared Parker and she was afraid of losing everything she had ever known to spend her life with the man she had been trained to hate for the last twenty years.  She pulled away from him, "I could never leave," she began.

He reacted irrationally.  Instead of cajoling her and helping her face her fears, he reacted jealously like a hurt suitor, "You were ready to leave it all for Thomas, but not me?" he asked bitterly.

The thought of Thomas made Parker wince that she had forgotten him.  She had loved him and his gentle manner.  His unconditional love, even though she had barely revealed her real self to him, had convinced her to try a new life.  But he had been murdered in order to keep her at the Centre.  In a way it was all Jarod's fault, as he had arranged for them to meet in the first place.  If she hadn't met Tommy, he would still be alive.  She pulled away from Jarod and snapped, "It's your fault he was killed!"  Her grief for Thomas brought up her long unresolved grief for her mother and she lashed out irrationally as well, "And it's your father that shot my mother!"

"I can't believe that," Jarod retorted, "My father would never do such a thing!"

"How do you know?  You don't know anything about your parents!  Maybe you were stolen from them, but they sure didn't try very hard to get you back, did they?" she said hurtfully.

Jarod pulled away from her like a fire had sprung up between them.  He threw back the canvas cover exposing them both to the cold so that the chill of the room replaced the warmth they had shared so briefly.  He stepped over her angrily and grabbed his pants from where he had hung them the night before and pulled them on.  They were cold and stiff with the mud but mostly dry.  He pulled on his blood encrusted shirt and stepped into his shoes, completely ignoring his socks on the floor.  His hair had dried sticking up in the back, his mustache and unshaven chin made him look devilish.  His look was full of hurt and anger as he glared back at her looking like a complete madman.

She was suddenly frightened of him as she realized she had stepped over the line.  How had this gotten so out of hand?  She wanted to take it all back.  She wanted to wake up all over again, but it was too late now.  She looked at him with a stricken, apologetic look.

His anger melted, replaced by sorrow.  "My Miss Parker really is gone.  They took her from me long ago," he said looking forlornly at her.  Then stepping past her again, he opened the door just enough to step out into the cold night and disappeared.

"I'm sorry," she whispered after him, but the moment was lost.  She pulled the cover back over herself against the chill, and curled up in a ball too miserable to even cry.

Jarod stalked back towards the medical center, his thoughts in a turmoil.  What had happened back there.  One moment it had felt just right, like coming home, and then the next, they had been worst enemies.  It was like there was no middle ground for them.  He looked back at the small shed, half tempted to return and try again, but he shook his head.  That was just a romantic dream.  Perhaps his parents had found true happiness with each other because of a winter storm, but it wasn't that easy for him and Parker.  His only option at this time was to continue his quest to find his parents and find that unconditional love that he so craved.

Author's note:  Well, they ran away with me that time.  What can I say?  The muses sang to me.  Imagine this story happening just at the end of the third season, and you know it can't end in a kiss.  Hope you enjoyed it anyway.  We'll see where they take me next time…