Disclaimer and such: check prelude.

A/N. Wow, first of all thanks to all who reviewed. I had expected a small riot after the last chapter but you were all well, pretty cool about it. (Unless I misinterpreted and you were actually telling me how much I sucked. ). No, seriously. Thanks a lot for telling me you liked the story despite the fact that things were not coming along as expected. It means a lot. =)

I would like to take this chance to remind all readers that the timeline for this fic is not lineal: The action on a chapter doesn't necessarily follow the preceding one, just like the second part of a chapter doesn't necessarily follow the first. It's tricky I know, but if you keep an eye on the references made to passage of time, it clears up. The following chapters will start explaining the more things so I hope you'll hang around.

Also, this chapter comes with a pretty chapter alert. It's a pretty, pretty chapter. Or as pretty as I can make them. Please no tomatoes.

As usual, feedback –either praise or criticism-, is encouraged and very welcomed. [Man, that was one long AN].

Chapter five

Living in the land of virtual reality

"The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world"
– Leonard Cohen.

The past five months had been without a doubt, the wildest of his life. And considering where he came from, the pretender was sure that was saying a lot. But, in the midst of the dizzying rollercoaster he was riding, he was content; a nice change from the dark gloom that usually plagued him. However, it's popular knowledge that changes bring consequences, and Jarod was well aware that he would have to pay in blood for what he was doing now. He almost knew that for sure, and yet, he couldn't bring himself to care. Not tonight.

Tonight was literally, their first night together and Jarod refused to waste it worrying away. It had taken a great deal of convincing to get his companion to come along, given that Blue cove was a good two plus hours away and she was the one who would have to drive back there at six in the morning. They'd finally figured out a way though, and so tonight, Jarod was not going to be concerned.

A stirring movement drew his attention towards the body lying beside him on the large bed. As he expected, only a second later Parker sat up disoriented and worried.

"Shiit".

In the clear darkness of the late spring night he could see her bare back, rising and falling in rhythmical motions with decreasing speed, until her breathing had returned to normal. A short moment followed in which she rested her hands on the mattress, felt the cold of the wooden floor on her feet and then fell back into her previously vacated spot, her body still somewhat rigid with unreleased tension. Jarod knew she could feel him staring at her, but Parker only glared at the ceiling as if it had secretly planed her awakening and refused to utter one word. After a few minutes of bravely trying to keep her glare in place, Jarod saw his partner surrender to sleep; finally she was gone and the tension started to seep away form her body. Only then did he allow himself to relax. Balancing his weight on one elbow he turned to study the face of the woman resting next to him, mentally congratulating himself on leaving the curtains drawn.

The cabin they were in wasn't especially big but the bedroom was spacious, with two windows that let in enough light for him to really look at Parker. Although her features had been committed to memory a long time ago, there was something different about seeing her like this, without the gun and the heels and the strategically applied makeup. This was just Parker. Late night Parker, early morning Parker: passionate, controlling, easily annoyed, gentle, warm and more than a little fearful. It was a strange, beautiful sight; a sight he loved, if only because it made him feel almost normal and less alone.

Placing a kiss on the top of her head, the pretender switched his focus from his companion to the ceiling, as he let his head hit his pillow again. Almost immediately, a light weight fell across his chest urging him to be a good pillow and he breathed a smile.

You're warm. Don't move.

That's what she'd said when she'd snuggled into him the first time they'd risked sleep together. Before that, their encounters had been briefer, and almost emotionally damaging in nature: they'd meet, they'd have sex, they'd leave, and then they would pretend to ignore the subject for a week or two until they met again. Of course, they'd started out on the wrong side of the tracks.

That night in Cambridge neither of them had been thinking. They'd both let their guards down and eased into the moment letting natural instincts direct their actions. They'd also fallen asleep that night, more emotionally exhausted than physically so. However, Jarod had awakened not long afterwards feeling lost between what should be and what was, and without the slightest clue as to what happened next. The only sensible thing he'd conceived at the moment had been to leave, so he'd slipped quietly out of the bed, and leaving her a scribbled cell phone number as a stand-in goodbye, he'd bolted from the room in search of his missing senses.

Parker had obviously found hers because she'd never called.

Six nights passed and the pretender had grown too restless to think straight. The doubt was making him paranoid and the paranoia was turning him psychotic. Were they still playing the same game? He needed to know. He needed to know if she was bowing out of the hunt or she just wanted to chew him alive. Unable to hold out for the answers any longer, he'd risked a call to her cell, and surprisingly it had been far less awkward than he'd imagined it would be.

I suppose I should thank you; Lyle hasn't tried this number. Why had he said that? Maybe because fighting with her was so easy. It was familiar, they both needed familiar. Familiar was good.

I want to talk to you. Thirty minutes of familiar later, the world had started to spin in the wrong direction.

At the time, it had made sense to him that she wanted to talk to him face to face. He'd been sure his cheeks were likely to meet at least one her hands in a rather forceful way, if nothing else. Besides, he'd told himself, they had to resettle the rules of their interactions and that called for an eye-to-eye. In layman terms, he hadn't been using his brain to think, but only now was he able to recognize that. And only now was he able to see that she hadn't been either, which to tell the truth, amused him quite a bit.

Parker moved against him and settled on a difficult position with her face between his neck and shoulder. After carefully tucking her head under his to keep a neck spasm from haunting her in the morning, Jarod stretched a bit and looked around. Clothes were strewn about the room, his laptop, up and running somewhere in the floor next to the phone line plugs. He was lying on a warm comfortable bed watching the fading moonlight striking the bedroom floor through the window panes and holding an otherwise unattainable woman in his arms. In short, it was great. A stolen kind of great, maybe, but Jarod wasn't about to complain about a gift horse's mouth. Especially considering that his finding a place so close to her had been a stroke of sheer luck, despite the expertise in real estate he'd gained in the past few months.

The empty house where they'd met following Cambridge had been undergoing some work at the time; construction tools and paint buckets wrapped in plastic were still sitting in one of the rooms waiting for the arrival of spring. Electricity and water were operational though- that was one of the useless factoids he'd found out about the property, while he'd been scouting the area surrounding his latest pretend for a suitable meeting place. He'd also learnt that the living room wooden floors needed a coat or two of lacquer, but he'd figured that out in an entirely different manner.

Waiting for Parker that evening had proved a nerve wrecking task for the pretender. On the phone, when he'd called her to give her the where and when, she'd compromised to show up alone and he'd believed her. That, however, had not prevented his mind for reeling in every possible direction. Luckily, as soon as she'd arrived, the reeling had stopped. It had been dark, thought still early in the evening; winter had been making its presence known through a heavy downpour, and Jarod had seen Parker run into the house and shake off her coat ostensibly ignoring his apparent absence. Yet, when he'd tried to sneak up behind her she'd calmly turned around to face him, unreadable expression firmly in place. The following ten minutes had been bizarre, though that was probably a kind description. Parker had silently moved into the living room taking off her wet shoes and padding across the shadowy, empty space. Jarod had followed her and her movements from a safe distance, trying to decipher the right way to do it. Unfortunately, by the time she'd come back to stand before him, he still hadn't known what was 'it' supposed to be. Since his female companion hadn't been of much help in that department, they'd just stared at each other stupidly for a while until gravity and stupidity had come together, pushing the pretender inexorably forward.

Leaning back from the kiss, he'd seen Parker giving him a bewildered look, one that he could have only matched to one of their early years as friends. She hadn't moved, though. Not backwards not forwards, she'd simply remained frozen in her pose. Taking that as a second chance, Jarod had kissed her again, this time getting the response he'd been seeking. It was the wrong one, he'd been aware, for an insane amount of reasons. Still, neither of them had stopped.

They hadn't talked at the house that night; in fact, looking back on it now, the experience bore a remarkable resemblance to an old silent film. Jarod had sat on the cold wooden floor watching Parker as she gathered her clothes and worriedly glanced at her watch: sooner or later her colleagues would be wondering about her and she needed to get back. In the darkness of the borrowed living room he'd seen her standing, heels and hair perfectly in place, eyes staring at him with wavering intensity, and it had only taken him a fleeting second to know that, that was what Miss Parker looked like when she was scared. Five months later he would still not trade that bit of knowledge for anything in the world.

Their late night call routine had resumed the following night, except their conversations were more filled with silences than ever before. None of them had seemed sure of what to say, so they'd danced around the subject of 'them' in favor of the chase and the Centre and the evil ways of Raines. They'd concerted dates for their meetings in a pretty executive manner and since time remained of the essence, their interactions had continued to be short and to the point, so to speak. Such had been their situation for a while, but something had changed somewhere between the warehouse in South Seattle and the motel room outside New York City; most likely her sleep patterns because one afternoon she'd simply fallen asleep, and lulled by the soft breathing and the warmth coming from his side, very tired Jarod had followed suit. They'd started spending more time after that. Too much time perhaps; or maybe it was the changing weather that had turned her into a talkative person.

The pretender wanted to think he'd been rubbing off on her but she'd have had his tongue cut off for even hinting at that.

Lyle is going to have my head.

The epiphany had hit Parker just a few weeks ago on an apartment in the Chicago metro area. Jarod had only given her a funny 'you're kidding' look.

I can't keep him under if he has my head.

And then he'd been reduced, in the words of his now mock-huntress, to a gaping, stunned, silent-dummy.

He had been shocked. Out of all the things he'd ever rationally expected Parker to say, that had definitely not been one of them. But the fact that she had voice concern about her fate and willingness to do something to prevent it, when just a few months back she'd sounded so utterly resigned, had been all the prodding the pretender had needed. To the ongoing search for his mother and the vanished scrolls, Jarod and Parker had added a list of possible ways to get around the Centre's watch; a quiet way, preferably, at least until they figured what exactly was the place really about. Parker was still hesitant, but all complications considered, a disappearing act was atop of the genius's list and he was already trying to cover all their bases. Namely: Sydney, Broots, Debbie…

That train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a muffle sound coming from the near vicinity of the bed. A new email alert. Trying his best to softly slide from underneath Parker's upper body, Jarod stood to retrieve the computer from its spot on the floor. Unfortunately with his current company, softly was severely overrated.

"Ethan?"

The dark haired woman was half way seated on the mattress, her eyes trained on him under sleep-laden eyelids. With no choice left, the pretender nodded resignedly and walked back to bed, setting the machine on the nightstand so they could read the newest update.

"Hmmm…"

The humming behind him brought Jarod back to the present. The latest developments felt like bad news in disguise even though he couldn't really pin point why. So much for some down time in peace…

"What are you going to tell him?"

That was the million dollar question. Jarod had reestablished contact with Ethan thanks to Parker's intervention: those two had a way of finding each other and parker had shared her contact number, not long after Carthis. At his return from Morocco (and Cambridge), the pretender and his brother had had the opportunity to meet and discuss Jarod's latest failed search. Suddenly and rather out of the blue, Ethan had volunteered to take the search task upon himself. He'd argued he had more mobility since his sister was obviously doing something to prevent Raines from looking for him. Not only that, he seemed enchanted with the idea of playing hunter for once. Besides, the young man had insisted it was something his inner sense was prodding him to do, and he had to listen.

It was the later reason that had made Jarod relent: he had been reluctant to tell his brother of Catherine Parker's revelations, not wanting to lay such a burden on his brother's shoulders. But understanding that whatever Mrs. Parker wanted to pass on to her children would not be hindered by a thirty year long disappearance, the pretender had finally accepted the help he'd been so cheerfully offered. That's how Ethan had ended up in Seville, where he was writing from now: thinking that the best way to track his brother's progenitor was to follow what he could of the scrolls, he'd done just that, except now there was a problem.

"He should follow your mother".

"Hmm?"

"Ethan!" Without waiting for him to snap out of it, Parker all but pushed Jarod out of the way and came to sit before the computer keyboard.

"What are you doing?"

"A port-de-bras, Jarod. What the hell does it look like?"

"Answering my email. Why?"

"He's my brother, and he should stay on your mother's trail".

"Because your inner sense says so?"

"His does. And so did my mother's. Besides …- He should keep looking for your mother. We can keep tracking the scrolls from here. Is not like we know where they are anyway"

She was right. That was the best solution to the matter of the diverging trails, and had he been granted more time at the computer, he would have typed down just that. However, there was something in her response that didn't quite make sense. Maybe it was her tone, or the pause she'd taken before answering, or the way she'd cut herself off in the middle of her speech… Jarod scooted toward the vacant side of the bed and laid back down keeping his eyes on trained on the back of his typing companion, until her posture told him what he needed to know.

'… your inner sense says so?' She'd flinched. She'd flinched and now she was sitting like on the edge of something hot.

He waited until she was done before speaking up again.

"I love you"

Parker's head swiveled in an extremely rapid movement that made Jarod grimace. Her neck would hurt in the morning, after all.

AN2. I have to say I did not go insane on my own. Therefore, I've decided to start placing the blame of the way I write where it belongs. This chapter lays on the shoulders of George Orwell, T.S. Eliot, Adrian Lynne, Louis Malle, Josephine Hart, Juliette Binoche and Jeremy Irons, my brother, my sister and my friend Carlos. I sincerely thank them all.