DISCLAIMER: in the first chapter...
A/N: Thank you all for reviewing:
dagmar: I'm glad your enjoying the fic, you have the right idea of what I'm trying to achieve. Keep reading!
Jar-Par Fan: I admire MP's character a lot. She's had it tough but she's still here. I would like to have her strength, but I would never be able to have her attitude. Here is Jarod for you. Glad you like my reviews, I try to give as much I like to receive. Read away...
Gemini-M: have patience grasshoper, all will be reviewed in due time. Just remember, this is more JMP. I will deal with the Center on a sequel later.
leochick: Sorry for the short chpaters, I tried writing a longer one, posting here what I would normally put on two chaps. Hope you are pleased and I will try to stay on this track... I promise nothing!
NYT: You are absolutely right, it's a trail. But keep in mind that the car was probably already bugged and that she is leaving her old persona behind. I'll explain in more detail in chap 10(MP's turn). In the meanwhile, enjoy J!
Crazyrussiangal: Gald you are liking it, review always and on JMPR department I am sure you won't be disappointed!
Kathea: Welcome new reviewer. Glad to be able to please. I try very hard not to stray from their true characterization. Tell me if I go down the wrong path and enjoy this one!
suspencewriter: I've emailed you my response. Don't worry and enjoy the process, which is half the fun.
Chapter 9: Sadness
Slow...
What was before...
Fast...
What is now...
For as long as he could remember, Jarod had led a life full of constants and routines. He had known in advance all he was supposed to do or say, when he was supposed to sleep, to eat, to sim. In the thirty odd years of Center captivity, he had made very few choices for himself. So it was understandable, reasonable even, his reluctance to follow any kind of schedule for the first years of his acquired freedom. The slow, harmonic movements of his daily life in the Center were easily replaced by the frantic, rushed lifestyle on the run. The rush, the adrenaline made him feel more alive than he had most of his life.
However, as the days rolled into weeks, and turned into months so fast, he started to feel the loss of those blurred moments he ran past with such a hurry. Before he even noticed, years had passed and he found himself without any constant to rely on. No family near, no long term friends. He had always known life to be short, he just had never considered the implications of the endless string of pretends he did for a whole of six years. They were a treasure he wished not to change, nor repeat. He need something else.
So he had chosen to slow down. To appreciate what he had fought so hard to acquire.
In the late hours that followed his double shift at the hospital on Monday, Dr. Wilks found himself leaning against a wall, right beside the emergency hospital doors, clutching a lukewarm, see-through cup of coffee and watching people stroll by. He tried paying attention to them individually, but all he managed was to see a crowd. They moved like one, ate like one, breathed like one... And again he wished to be able to belong. Not to some unnamed crowd, but somewhere, with someone.
Again he felt his thoughts drift back to her. Something always beyond his control. It never seemed to matter, that most of his memories of her were of tension-filled times. That the pictures of her inside his never forgetting mind were of anger-filled stares. A dangerous huntress with a mortal weapon in her hand. No, he saw something else too, something most people failed to see...
Other memories, other pictures that persisted in his heart. Moments when the ice queen façade had been stripped away, leaving behind a woman filled with sadness and despair, unable to deny nor escape the bars that surrounded her. A woman with a shattered heart struggling to survive. He remembered moments when they were children trapped within a gray, ominous labyrinth, with only each other to light the corners of shadows. Yes... he had always seen in her a kindred spirit.
But she had refused his turning point, his extended hand, in favor of those same bars.
And he could not save those who denied salvation...
He sighed and berated himself for allowing her again to enter his mind. She was back at the Center, probably watching his body as it finished burning, without shedding a tear. Probably. Either way, it did not matter, he wasn't there anymore, but here. With a new life...
So deep in his thoughts, he failed to hear or feel someone as it approached him from behind and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. For a moment he wished it was her. Then, with panic suddenly rising in his stomach, he hoped it wasn't. Time slowed, an obvious conflict surging through his body.
His reaction was delayed, but it came... Turning slowly to see the person interrupting his thoughts, he felt his chest ready to burst.
He finally understood having his heart in his throat.
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The Center
Blue Cove, Delaware
Sim-lab 1
The news of her departure had both alarmed and relieved him.
After leaving his grieving body on the floor of her gray, sparse office, it was rumored that Miss Parker had gone to see the remains of the pretender's body. Some even said she had dried tears in her eyes. How she had found the body's locale was anyone's guess. But the fact still remained that not long after her visit, she had disappeared.
Worried that her sudden vanishing act had had some if not plenty of Center involvement, he had asked Broots to check the surveillance cameras on Miss Parker's last moments within these same walls. The tech, as worried as the psychiatrist had been, spent the better part of that day looking through the archives. The results of the search yielded four DSA's, none of which answered Sydney's most dreaded question: Were had she gone to?
The first recording had been of Parker inside the main elevator, her back to the door and her head leaning heavily against the cool steel wall. He wished to see her eyes, but the camera angle made it impossible. It worried him, the way her shoulder hung low, with an invisible, impossibly heavy weight upon them. His heart constricted as she traced slightly, with delicate fingers so much like her mother's, that same wall, looking and finding that tiny bullet hole, that changed everything.
The second one showed her striding with undeniable purpose through a nondescript hallway. Grey walls that looked all the same. She had known where to go, had shown not hesitation. He wondered about that. But this time, Sydney had been able to see the lost look in her eyes, glancing ahead, though never seeing and the dried tears on her cheeks. She looked so broken. He tried, but could not remember her filled with such sadness since that horrible day her mother died.
It seemed, sadly, that everyone she cared about, died.
If the firsts recordings had had Sydney worried about the mental state of Miss Parker, the third one brought renewed tears to his already puffy eyes and renewed worry. He watched, mesmerized, as she strode in the makeshift morgue, towards a charred body. He didn't allow himself to consider his protege, his main concern being for the still living. Or at least he hoped so.
She stood there long, neither moving to leave nor moving forward. Just stood there. Then, looking her from behind, Sydney caught the glimpse of a hand as it rose towards Jarod. The camera screen seeked his eyes, showing him as Parker trailed her hand in the dead pretender's face. Close, yet still not touching. It broke his heart to witness such intimate moment from two souls ripped by the Center.
A voice called her from beyond the camera's vision. Lyle. Apprehension grew as the Belgium man saw the twins, both with their backs to him. He watched, concerned, as Parker remained calm. He heard Lyle's words and apprehension turned into rage. He noticed the malice behind them and understood that the Devil had a plan. Rage melted into confusion as Lyle left the room, while Miss Parker stood still, gazing into nothingness.
Suddenly, she too, left.
There was an urgency in her step as she strode through the Center's parking lot. The fourth and last DSA showed as she got in her car and drove away. Sydney turned to Broots, a frown stamped on his brow and with shaky breath, asked the dreaded question...
" Do you... Do you know if she went... Home?" His gaze remained on the tech awaiting an answer. He noticed his own fingers trembling over the DSA player's keyboard and refused to glance over his shoulder into the frozen image of Parker's retreating car. Shaking his head, Broots told Sydney that no, she left but never arrived at her house, where, he discovered, sweepers had been waiting.
Sighing, thoroughly relieved, Sydney sent a prayer up above. Maybe he had never been a religious man, but if God could keep Parker safe, than he was a believer...
After all, when the life you lead is full of shadows and flames, burdened with death and deceit, escape was a heaven you could only pray to achieve.
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Memorial Hospital
NYC
Close to midnight
It seemed to take forever, the action of turning around. And though he felt relieved by the sight of Nurse Andrea Owens, a part of him grieved the absence of someone else. His eyes spoke of disappointment and Andy, as she was better known, saw in them an immense sadness. She might not have known him long, but she could recognize a torned soul when one was presented to her.
" I would like nothing better than to leave you here to frieze alone, but Dr. Sparrow just left with a bad case of the flu and we were wondering if you might stay another shift?" her voice carried a soft tone, filled with both respect and humor. She looked up expectantly for na answer. I relieved her when this mysterious man smiled a kind smile.
" Sure. It's not like I have anything else to do..." Sleep had always been a luxury he neither wanted nor could afford. Nightmares plagued both his waking and sleeping hours. Throwing his now cold coffee into a near trash can, he followed Andy inside. It surprised him to find the emergency room just about empty.
" There seems to be a lull here... What did you need me for?" his voice carried no accusation and Andy asked herself again about this compassionate doctor.
" There is just one patient for you. Her name is Angela White, 22, vitals are normal. She was assaulted this evening, is now in trauma 2. Needs a rape kit, some stitches to her temple and a check up. She seems calm enough, but if she refuses a male doctor I'll do the exam for you." She closed the file she had been reading from and delivered them into Jarod's awaiting arms. Thanking Andy and asking her to accompany him, he proceeded to trauma 2.
Instead of barging in like most doctor's seem accustomed to doing, Jarod gently knocked on the door and waited patiently to be allowed in. This seemed to boost Angela's confidence, for she called out to him and granted him passage. Her bravado, however, faltered when she saw the masculine features of her doctor, but she quickly recomposed herself. That reminded him of Parker's strength and an admiration for this woman was born.
With soft tones, that carried no demand, nor force, he asked her if it would be okay for him to examine her. It took Angela a couple of seconds, but she nodded her head in affirmative. And so he proceeded, asking permission every step of the way. She had not been raped as her appearance suggested, but her body was covered with bruisers and cuts. Only the one on her temple, though, needed to be stitched.
With the exception of a nod here and there, Angela had not spoken a word to Jarod during the entire procedure. However, when he was finished and asked the nurse behind him to help her get clean, Angela touched lightly his forearm and thanked him in a low, unsure voice. Giving her an assuring smile he turned to leave, but was stopped as he again felt her finger on his arm.
" I couldn't... I tried, but..." It seemed that she wanted to tell him something, however, the words failed to come. Without rushing her, he patiently stood, waiting. " I couldn't fight him off, I was so weak... " and she burst into tears, right into his arms. Jarod hushed her and a little uncertain, stroked her dirty hair.
" No... You were not weak. You survived, you're here. It takes more strength to get back on your feet than it takes preventing the fall..." Pulling away to be able to gaze into her tear-filled eyes, he spoke again. " Now is the time to prove how strong you are. Go out there with your head held high and show the world you survived!" Again he smiled when she nodded.
" What if it happens again?" he asked, her voice still shaky, but filled with astounding determination.
" I can't promise you it won't happen again, but I know what you can do so you won't fall..." she did not speak, but her eyes urged him to continue. " You learn to fight back." And for the first time since it all happened, Angela White found she could muster a trace of a smile.
From the corner of the room, Andy watched, her own eyes brimming and threatening to overflow, as Dr. Wilks spoke to the patient. The sense that he had been different than most people grew with every word he spoke. Here was a truly kind, human being, who did not hold back when aiding another.
This city lacked many of those.
She too smiled and sent up a prayer for him. God almighty had spared one of his angels from heaven to grace the cold streets of this city and he was a blessing. But, such a kind and strong soul did not deserve to be burdened with the type of sadness she had seen in his eyes. So she promised herself to keep praying on his behalf.
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The Center
Sub-level 23
Blue Cove, Delaware
Same time...
A figure, buried among air ducts that crisscrossed the entire building, sat holding a box of "Craker Jacks" and smiled into the darkness. He may not have found words or the eloquence to speak them, but what he knew in his heart was true. A warm feeling surged through him...
Almost time now...
Almost...
Have patience with me, I have a plot carefully constructed and I hope you won't be disappointed. Keep REVIEWING, because they keep me on my toes and don't allow me to be lazy and skip a week in posting.