Don't Say Goodbye by Felicity Drummond
Summary: Jarod has too choose, Miss Parker is too afraid to answer the phone and Sydney is ever the mediator.
Categories: Indefinite Timeline Characters: Jarod, Miss Parker, Sydney, Zoe
Genres: General
Warnings: None
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 1 Completed: Yes Word count: 2662 Read: 2533 Published: 30/04/05 Updated: 30/04/05
Don't Say Goodbye by Felicity Drummond
Disclaimer: The characters Miss Parker, Sydney, Jarod, Broots etc. and the fictional Centre, are all property of MTM, TNT and NBC Productions and used
without permission. I'm not making any money out of this and no infringement is intended.




Don't Say Goodbye
By Sarah Felicity




If I could recapture
All of the memory's
And bring them to life
Surely I would

Here the distant laughter
Wasn't it you and me
Surviving the night
You're fading out of my sight
Swiftly

You're vanishing
Drifting away
You're vanishing


I was so enraptured
No sensibility
To open my eyes
I misunderstood

Now you're fading faster
It's getting so hard to see
You're taking the light
Letting the shadows inside
Swiftly

You're vanishing
Drifting away
You're vanishing

You're vanishing
Drifting away
You're vanishing

Reaching out into the distance
Searching for experience of the past
Just a trace of your existence
To Grasp
And if somehow I could recapture
All of the memories
And bring them to life
Lord knows I would
But now you're fading faster
You're getting so hard to see
Letting the darkness inside
Swiftly

You're vanishing
Drifting away
You're vanishing
You're vanishing
Drifting so far away
You're vanishing away

ARTIST: MARIAH CAREY
ALBUMN: MARIAH CAREY
TITLE: VANISHING


Just a whisper of your existence I chase you every day yet only this one shadow of a memory is true. It's a subconscious unadmittable area in the dark recesses of my mind. Where I admit I love you or loved you once. A memory of a love, maybe that is all I can claim it to be. I rarely dwell on such thoughts so painful so deep I barely feel or realise their existence so focussed am I on yours.

Sydney calls this an obsession. He's concerned the one mindedness I apply to my job, subsequently to you could cause more than an ulcer. The stress of you and the job inseperable in nature could kill me he insists eyes blazing with rarely revealed depth of feeling. Though I turn away in indifference, cut him with a sarcastic barb mocking his emotion. In my loneliest hours it's all I'm holding on to. The momentary slip that communicated his care.

I am alone now, holding on to it and a glass filled to the brim with my favourite poison. The bottle's somewhere nearby half empty as air replaces liquid rapidly evaporating, drowning all that's lost. The phone rings forgotten. I've grown accustomed to the tone and it fadeswith importance, with consciousness.

I'm not in the mood tonight to talk to you or be tormented by you. Is it you? Or the fact we can't speak without an argument. A conflict of desires every word is hard and sharp. You only ring to bait me not because you care, that's what hurts the most.

I wonder absently if I'm on the bed, the lounge or the floor. An irrelivant query till morning when the stiffness will set in with regrets. I don't always sleep alone though maybe now more often than I used to. If I need it there is always someone, ever the bruises to prove he was there.

In a few hours through a haze I will open my eyes, coffee improves Visibility yet sometimes I wonder at the use in seeing where I’m going.One of the keys to survival is to be blind. Don't ask, my brothers policy, mine is not too see.

I used to pretend I was on the right side, before I saw the benefits of being in the wrong. Power, control, intimidation I've built myself around these quality's, succeeded through them. From childhood I could have materially whatever I wanted, emotional poverty seemed a small price to pay but what did I actually gain?

I was seduced by the philosophy once you cease to feel you cease to Hurt, sometimes what you can't feel hurts the most. My father would tell me love wasn't my destiny, that it wasn't a 'useful' quality, I would have to agree.

Emptiness was ordained for me from the dissociated second of my mothers suicide. I doubt it was a mistake I was near the elevater that day, a mistake I saw her die. There is no such thing as a coincoidence in The Centre everything has a hidden message wether obvious as the bullet hole which haunts that elevator to this day or obscure as the reason I'm persuing unrelentlessly my former best friend.

Hate is destructive yet a long drawn out disease. I doubt anyone could save me from this path of destruction now, I don't want to be saved. I don't wish to be anyone's pet project least of all his. I'm not a victim or an innocent I'm a surviver. I'll never admit he's strongerthan I'll ever be because he knows how to say goodbye.

It is a dangerous game we play littered with unspoken rules, hidden clauses, cold fury. I've been close to death and I've been close to life yet I never thought I'd be desolate until yesterday when all I'd cherished began to fade before my eyes., to vanish to disappear. I never realised how dependant I'd become on the dance on you, just out of reach. That my life hung on the assurance you didn't die or move on.

For 4 years I've been suspended between the present and the past. The future without you is a terrifying prospect, If I could just recapture what we had. At first I fooled myself that there was hopebeyond the barriers of which side we were on. The times you saved my life didn't they prove this? I never did say thankyou it is a manner I've unlearned. For a pretender, you've always done a lousy job of understanding me.

Time no longer seems significant as you fade from sight, as does purpose. Purpose to endure, purpose to get out of bed, purpose not to cry. Any other moment... Well there's always that claim. There's always been tomorrow or the next day, all a blur of pace. I try not to stop long enough to wonder what I am running from or towards. I try not to stop!

The walls are closing in, enveloped beneath shady darkness they expand and invade before my eyes. Within their inky depths they hold nightmares. Like a plague of insects crawling over each other, crawling before my eyes or behind across the surface of my mind and feeding on imagination, turning my stomach. I slam my eyes shut but the image is still there it is impossible to escape what is inside, I cannot quell the paranoia I have a sense about these things.

The phone still rings through dillusion. There have been other nights,when I wouldn't answer when I made him wait yet finally gave in. The blow you have to deal tonight however is far too lethal to half-heartedly ignore. I can sense the words oppressing the atmosphere from the tip of your tongue, I will not here them. I will not give you the chance you've long been waiting for too destroy me. If I answer, these words will be the last I here from you so I don't answer safe in the knowledge you won't leave until you've said them, until you've said goodbye.

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It is a dark room where he sits and waits. The ringing tone chimes on his last nerve, still he continues to listen in no way poised to act. He expects her to pick up sometime soon, the more incessant annoys him the greater it would her. The thought creeps across his consciousness, like a scorpion stinging through his senses that she's never taken this long before, to get annoyed and answer. He allows unsubstantiated fears for her safety to wash over him, dripping with cold sweat through his hair combined with the late hour these thoughts magnify. Tentatively he sims alternative situations, all have about as positive an outcome as his black mood. He wants to see with his own eyes that she is ok yet common sense demands he not test fate. What if this is a test? The accompanying suggestion that he must therefore care what happens to her due to this impulsive consideration of failure is noticably absent from his reasoning.

He stares unseeingly past the sleeping woman stretched across his bed. Neither do his eyes focus on the lantern lit view through the roof to floor window across the room, deep thoughts disallow for him the peace she seems to have attained. Awake she makes him laugh, she makes him smile and helps him to forget yet there is constantly the mental barrier of the Centre preventing closeness with Zoe. He tries to place Parker and Sydney in the past and Zoe and his family in the future yet he is not ready to give away the past. As the few before this relationship lacks the connection and belonging he craves, that he can only find with Parker.

Impossibility is often overshadowed by overwhelming feeling. The practical jokes he has played on Miss Parker the time of night which has become habit for him to call all have a purpose beyond annoyance. The adolescence he missed out on gives what he feels only the childish avenue as outlet for expression, for grownups they continue to tease like children.

Parker is both what holds him back and pushes him forward. Their situation leaves him with only two choices:- To leave for good or hold on to the chase which has brought them both closer and futher apart than they have ever been since childhood, in the time since they were cruelly pitted against one another and ordered to run like rats in a maze.

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Parkers pale reflection captures frail attention as she is steadied by the cold tiled bathroom floor. Feverishly she pulls herself to her feet attributing nausia to the inevitable hangover come early. Work is an intimidating prospect that invades the curse of consciousness she tried so hard and drank so much to avoid. He fills her mind again as the phone begins to ring, has it been ringing all the time and she just did not notice or is he really inside her mind? She would have thought he'd have given up by now, has he nothing better to do? There is too much at stake to answer once again she allows the sound too fade into the early morning echo of background. It melds with heartbeat and the ticking of the clock.

She should feel something she decides raising a shaky hand and running it across her face. For one moment she allows every supressed thought and urge to invade in attempt, there is no significant reaction. The few tears slipping down her face and sparkling in her eyes could just as soon be attributed to her time honoured tendancy to cry when she was sick. The mental image of his face branded in her mind at this point of realisation begins to fracture and fade. She felt nothing and was incapable of anything more than indifference too accustomed to feeling nothing to conjure something more.

She tried once again in denial to simulate true feeling, anger was the only such emotion in contention. Slowly thoughts like building blocks became missiles vaulting together with a violent crash in her mind. Blinding anger she'd been taught so often to avoid at all cost, images and memory sharpened as vision blurred as she swayed and fell. 'It's not like I care.' Came dizzy, insistance. 'That I here her in his voice, his tone so light, so carefree. That I see her in his eyes those momentary glimpses I've caught when I was too early or him too late. It's not that I hate her... Who am I kidding, she's the reason he'll say goodbye.’

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Sydney sensed a storm brewing, He feared with what fury and further path of destruction the force of it would lead Miss Parker at gunpoint down. She was a danger to anyone near her yet most of all she was a danger to herself. Sydney had met Zoe once and he imagined she'd be caught in the middle of this Bermuda love triangle. Bermuda as due to Centre involvement one or all of the players was destined to disappear.

So much depended on misunderstanding. It was not Sydney's place to enlighten only to counsel when either of the two main players Jarod and Parker, sought comfort and/or advice. Unfortunately the one most in need of his guidance was the least likely to show up at his door. Parker's barrier of mirrors in only serving to deflect could most likely lose her the game.

Love is like chess. Complex, drawn out. Sooner or later somebody will call checkmate and end the game.

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The phone had stopped ringing. To parker it was the single most terrifying sound she'd heard in her life. She took a deep steadying breath, absorbed by dawn silence. It had been ten minutes now since the comfort of his attempts to contact ceased to resound. Maybe this was how he said goodbye.

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His hands shook as he composed the words. With all his genius his mind was blank, taking a long deep gasp of air stifled by the stuffy suite and his own anxiety his eyes strayed nervously to Zoe's still figure. He had the sinking feeling to write a note was cowardice. As she slowly stirred however stilted hurried words were spilled onto the page. Something warned him if she awoke he'd never have the strength to say goodbye.

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Desolation manifested, sending an open invitation to depression. Parker squeezed shut her eyes more tightly as light attempted alarm.

"An interesting place to sleep Parker."

Recognising the accented voice resonating gently from above she opened her eyes and stared upside down into Sydney's concerned frown considering as physical feeling reinserted itself with awake why the bed was so hard? Sydney knelt down pulling her to her feet as Parker winced leaning against him and attempting to stretch herself into a more human position.

"What time is it?" She requested sleepily.

"Late." he expressed non comittedly causing Parker to raise her eyes to his.

"Will I always end up alone Syd?" Sydney concealed a smile.

"Broots has a promising lead on Jarod." Was his only answer.

Relief flowed a tingling sensation, along with pins and needles.

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Jarod's latest laire was more luxurious than his usual style pushing her way into the miami hotel suite Parker looked around her gaze focussing on Zoe.

"Where is he?" Parker demanded.

Zoe took in Sydney's familiar face and the tall stunning brunette before her. Ever since she'd awoke anger was all she could manage tofeel.

"He left a note." She replied tonelessly, staring blankly out the window, the view no longer holding any allure.

Parker breathed a deep held sigh of relief not bothering to conceal it for the other woman's benefit.

"Any idea where he was going?" She questioned absently.

"He can go to hell for all I care." Zoe exclaimed bitterly, gathering her bags and leaving. Sydney looked at Parker as she stared out at the blindingly beautiful view she never before would have noticed in broken thought.

"At least I know he leaves note's." She said a gentle smile playing across her lips. Her cell phone began to ring and she answered it.

The End
This story archived at http://www.pretendercentre.com/missingpieces/viewstory.php?sid=580