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Chapter or Story
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.
Author’s Note: Those of you who know my work and read these little author’s notes I’m so fond of know, aside from being absolutely in love with Jarod (mmm…fine male specimen) and the Pretender I’m a true blue x-phile to the core. I decided that, based on this, I might as well cross them over and see what happened, but remember kiddies, this is not an easy thing. Characterization if tough on the Pretender, but damn near impossible on the X-Files unless you’re really…really good (so I’ve found). So be patient, and if I totally botch this and mess with these beautiful characters to too high a degree beyond the comprehension of the meticulous mind, please feel free to rip on me all you like. I’ll deserve it. The Lynns feature prominently, as ever, so don’t mind them, I had loads of fun with this one. Thanx ever so much for your attention. On with the show.
Precious Blood
Part III: What Gods Forsake
Matrea Nara
These precious things,
Let them bleed
Let them wash away.
These precious things,
Let them break
Let them wash away
Break their hold over me
--- Tori Amos: Precious Things
She raised her eyes to behold her captor, long black tresses falling to frame her fine-featured face. She was disconcertingly like him in that moment. So much so that Lyle was forced to look away.
“Why good morning Uncle,” she greeted him, her tone somehow managing to be sweet and savage all at once. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me. You know I can’t bear rejection.”
Even bound and beaten, her clothing torn and bloodied, she was an impressive sight. They whole lot of them could be a pain in the ass, but no one ever accused them of being anything other than sharp and good-looking. She had their manner as well as their looks, and Lyle hated himself for being as nervous as he was at the prospect of confronting it thrice over. He didn’t have to though, he reminded himself. The youngest one got loose. She could have too, he knew, but she would not leave her twin. If only he could be so sure of the loyalties of his.
“It’s supposed to skip a generation,” he remarked lightly. He was, of course, referring to the fact that two sets of twins had been born in two successive generations, an unlikely anomaly. She knew what he meant. She knew a hell of a lot more than she let on. Her father’s legacy.
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh I’m not disappointed. You saved us a lot of work.”
“I saved you nothing Uncle. You would not have been the one to do the work anyway.” She glared at him with dark green eyes, pinning him under her stare until he wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of her and leave her to the Renewal Wing’s staff. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t let her beat him on her first day.
“I suppose it would be asking too much for you to cooperate.”
“You know both my parents better than I do and you still ask that question?”
“Children are not always the reflections of their parents. Besides, how am I supposed to know which one you’ll be most like? Your parents are total opposites.”
“Not so much as you might think.” Her grin was disconcerting, smug and humorless and wicked. “Have a care Uncle. They’ve set you up for one hell of a fall.”
“And you care?”
“Not at all. But you know how it is. Blood’s blood.”
Lyle approached her, placing one hand on either armrest of the chair she was tied to, leaning so close their noses almost, but not quite, touched. She never flinched, and the things he saw swimming behind those eyes were enough to make his breath catch for a minute.
“Yes,” he said, digging his fingers into the wound a bullet had left on her upper arm. “Blood is blood. And by the time I’m through you’ll have seen so much of it you’ll dream about it, sweat it, cry it. And they we’ll see who much their child you are.” Arin bared her teeth, made a snapping motion that brought her teeth together win a click. There was pain in her eyes now though. Good.
Lyle rose and turned, leaving the Renewal cell and this child of his sister and the pretender that got away. Yes, pain was definitely a start.
><
Ryker had never met his mother. Until just a short time ago he had not even known he had one, or a father for that matter. He was in no great rush to meet her in his current state of mind and body, but he was in no position to be proud. The way Jarod…Dad, the way Dad had described her he was more than a little intimidated by the prospect, but he must be strong. Luca and Arin would be strong, he reminded himself. And Luca and Arin would be defiant and proud as well. All he was was hurt and alone and afraid, but he must push all that aside now and do what he came to do. He must save his family.
He didn’t even know if they were still alive. All he could remember before the adrenaline rush had wiped his conscious memory clean was his father getting shot and bludgeoned by huge, men build like mountains in dark suits, then Luca getting shot, and Arin telling him to get the hell out of there. He knew she wasn’t leaving, and wanted to tell her he would stay with her and their father and brother. He had learned long ago, though, that one did not question his sister when he had that tone in her voice, that it was dangerous even to stand too close during times like those. So he had run, and heard them chasing them, and everything after that was a blur before he found himself in an alley three of four miles from his home, alone and bleeding. They must have popped off a few shots at him when it became apparent they wouldn’t catch him. It was just a flesh wound though, and he knew how to deal with those. Sometimes Centre training did come in handy. Not often, but occasionally.
Now it was dark, and he was stricken by an impossible anxiety. His family might all be dead, he was hurt with nowhere to go, and dammit he was only a thirteen-year-old kid. Ryker was not one for delusions. He knew full well he was not “only” anything, that what he was far surpassed anything his peers could hope to imagine. But he also knew he was naïve, and far from the level of the rest of his family. Dad had said he was a sub-power pretender, like his mother, and that he was lucky to be so because being a high-power pretender brought nothing but grief. Ryker knew better. He knew his father and his siblings would not have given up their gift if they had an option. Still, he understood why they did not wish it on him. He had grown up seeing the way his brother and sister were exploited, ten times as badly as he was, and though he knew his father loved his work he was constantly on edge, always looking over his shoulder.
Ok, now he was just stalling. Somewhere inside that hotel across the street was his mother, and the man who might as well be his grandfather (Dad had said Sydney had been the only father he knew growing up). Ryker envied him that, and knew Arin and Luke did as well. They had had no such father figure until their real father found them at last. Time to go. Time to get this show on the road.
Wiry, lithe Ryker with the auburn hair and hazel eyes stayed low as he darted across the street, gritting his teeth as pain shocked through his wounded leg. He knew Dad had been shot in the leg as well. What was the point, he wondered. His father had already been shot in the chest when he took the leg would, and Ryker had been so charged up he hadn’t even felt it until he stopped. Besides, the Centre men had proven themselves lousy shots when it came to moving targets.
It wasn’t difficult to scramble up the fire escape at the side of the building, but it would have been easier without the bum leg. Ryker loved to climb. Arin had affectionately nicknamed him the Monkey Boy, and Dad was sure he was going to fall and break his neck one of these days. Still, his talent had proven useful on more than one occasion, and he was proud to at least be able to do one thing better (not much better but better), that his high-power siblings.
He felt a bit depraved scurrying around peeping through strangers’ windows, but when he at last found the one he was looking for the ends easily justified the means. There she was, the mother he had never met, but heard enough about to know on sight. Arin must have a lot of their mother in her, he decided. There was the same aura of control, dominance and strength about this one as there was with his sister. Besides, Dad had shown them a lot of pictures of her, and of their grandmother Catherine, who looked just like her.
Yes, that was his mother. But she wasn’t alone. He had to wait until she was alone. Dad had always told them they could trust he in a pinch, and Sydney too and maybe even Broots. However Ryker and his siblings were as much Centre raised as their father was, and worse, they were Centre bred as well. He was hard pressed to trust even this far, and the sweepers in the room elicited a flight reflex he was hard pressed to suppress. He would wait.
The heavens wept.
><
Miss Parker was having enough trouble keeping her thoughts in order without all these questions and suggests buffeting her from all sides. She knew it was her job, that the sweepers needed to be assigned their tasks for the next day so the hunt of Jarod would progress smoothly and the Tower would stay off her back. She knew this, but didn’t give a damn. She was tired and worried and confused out of her mind and wanted them all to shut the hell up and find something more productive to do with their time, as far from her as was possible without sending them all the way back to Blue Cove.
When at last the team retired to their room and was left with only Sydney and Broots for company, she allowed herself to relax her Ice Queen demeanor for a moment. Jarod was alive, or at least was as of that afternoon. He was somewhere with those FBI agents now, and probably hurt pretty badly. Where was this irrational desire to go to him coming from? It wasn’t necessarily a desire to go catch him… It wasn’t that at all. She wanted to go to him, to make sure he was ok, to help him if she could, to find out who had hurt him and kick their fucking asses. Yes, that was what she wanted to do. It shouldn’t be what she wanted, but it was, and there was no point denying it.
“He didn’t tell you where he was?” Sydney asked, for the hundredth time.
He had been unduly outraged when he learned of Jarod’s call. Why hadn’t Parker called him immediately? Why hadn’t she demanded Jarod’s location? And so on. How could she explain to Sydney about her relationship with Jarod, about their unspoken agreement in their dealings with each other? There were times when you asked questions, times to taunt and tease and dance, and times when you stopped playing the game and did as you were told. The incident at the Dover Town Bank had been one of those times, when they stopped playing the roles of the enemies and united in a common cause, surrendered to the natural affinity that made them an indomitable team. When Jarod told her to keep her gun holstered so they wouldn’t all get killed; when he rose to her defense when she nearly made the mistake anyway, putting himself at risk to protect her; when Fenigore was shot and Jarod took the lead, giving the orders while she followed them without questions, saving the old man’s life; when she had a chance to get out with the rest of the hostages, but instead came back for him, were all such instances of mutual cooperation and trust.
There had been other times as well. Whenever Jarod gave her a lead into her past, or information on a Centre activity she had been purposefully excluded from, she never doubted him…never. He had told Her to dig up her mother’s grave once and she had put her trust in him completely. After Tommy’s death he had come to her in honesty and heartfelt empathy to help her find the truth, done so again one year later, and she had treated him like shit but never dismissed him or accused him. They dropped their façade when one of them was hurt, or had been hurt, or after they had just gone through hell together and were, as ever, left with nothing but a phone in the end. She remembered when she was shot, and he could have gotten away, but he had stayed behind in the hopes of helping her. Yes, she and Jarod had drawn the lines long ago and knew where the boundaries where. When Jarod called her and told her to do something after she had just seen his home a bloody shambles and heard the pain in his voice, she did not demand his location or refuse the favor. When Jarod needed her like he had needed her this afternoon, after all they had been through, all he had done for her, all she was because of him, she shoved her pretenses aside like so many wedding veils and did it, without question. Lives could depend on it, and probably did because he only brought her into his problems as a last resort (though he was always throwing himself into hers). If there was one thing she had learned from her years with Jarod it was that he didn’t joke about things of such import, and that while Sydney might be one of his reasons for keeping a tie on the Centre, she was still the little girl who gave him his first kiss, still his best friend as he was hers despite everything. There were some things he couldn’t go to his mentor with; it had been that way since they were children.
“No Syd,” she said. “He just said to tell the FBI he was at Maggie’s.” She paused, feeling a need to appease Sydney’s wrath and knowing she shouldn’t give a damn what he thought. “I did ask him Syd, but I didn’t ask twice and I didn’t beg. He was having a hard enough time as it was and he had more to say without arguing with me.”
“He wouldn’t have told anyway,” Broots added in her defense. She should have glared at him, growled some smart ass quip, but she was too grateful for the softening of Syd’s stern visage to spare her usual gibe.
“No, he wouldn’t. Did you ask what happened this morning?”
“Again, yes. He just said it was a long story, and I could have told you that.”
“Did he sound hurt?” Sydney hadn’t asked that before, and she hadn’t planned on worrying him with it, but now that he had there was no way around it and she wasn’t about to lie after all she and the old man had been through together.
“Yes,” she said.
“Bad?”
“Very.” Syd’s face fell, but he was grateful for the honesty as well.
The uncomfortable silence seemed to stretch on for a lifetime. When at last it was sundered, it was not by any one of them seated tensely about the room. The sound came from the window, a hesitant, shaky knocking that made Parker’s heart hitch and Broots jump three feet from his chair. Probably hoping it was Jarod, Sydney had crossed half the distance to the window by the time Parker had her gun drawn.
What he pulled after opening the window was not Jarod, but a half-conscious teen-age boy who closely resembled a drowned rat. Miss Parker opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Was about to demand for the second time that day what the hell was going on, when a second, much stronger, more insistent knock sounded from the hotel room’s door.
“Open the door Miss Parker,” a familiar male voice called. “FBI.”
Author’s Note: Those of you who know my work and read these little author’s notes I’m so fond of know, aside from being absolutely in love with Jarod (mmm…fine male specimen) and the Pretender I’m a true blue x-phile to the core. I decided that, based on this, I might as well cross them over and see what happened, but remember kiddies, this is not an easy thing. Characterization if tough on the Pretender, but damn near impossible on the X-Files unless you’re really…really good (so I’ve found). So be patient, and if I totally botch this and mess with these beautiful characters to too high a degree beyond the comprehension of the meticulous mind, please feel free to rip on me all you like. I’ll deserve it. The Lynns feature prominently, as ever, so don’t mind them, I had loads of fun with this one. Thanx ever so much for your attention. On with the show.
Precious Blood
Part III: What Gods Forsake
Matrea Nara
These precious things,
Let them bleed
Let them wash away.
These precious things,
Let them break
Let them wash away
Break their hold over me
--- Tori Amos: Precious Things
She raised her eyes to behold her captor, long black tresses falling to frame her fine-featured face. She was disconcertingly like him in that moment. So much so that Lyle was forced to look away.
“Why good morning Uncle,” she greeted him, her tone somehow managing to be sweet and savage all at once. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me. You know I can’t bear rejection.”
Even bound and beaten, her clothing torn and bloodied, she was an impressive sight. They whole lot of them could be a pain in the ass, but no one ever accused them of being anything other than sharp and good-looking. She had their manner as well as their looks, and Lyle hated himself for being as nervous as he was at the prospect of confronting it thrice over. He didn’t have to though, he reminded himself. The youngest one got loose. She could have too, he knew, but she would not leave her twin. If only he could be so sure of the loyalties of his.
“It’s supposed to skip a generation,” he remarked lightly. He was, of course, referring to the fact that two sets of twins had been born in two successive generations, an unlikely anomaly. She knew what he meant. She knew a hell of a lot more than she let on. Her father’s legacy.
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh I’m not disappointed. You saved us a lot of work.”
“I saved you nothing Uncle. You would not have been the one to do the work anyway.” She glared at him with dark green eyes, pinning him under her stare until he wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of her and leave her to the Renewal Wing’s staff. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t let her beat him on her first day.
“I suppose it would be asking too much for you to cooperate.”
“You know both my parents better than I do and you still ask that question?”
“Children are not always the reflections of their parents. Besides, how am I supposed to know which one you’ll be most like? Your parents are total opposites.”
“Not so much as you might think.” Her grin was disconcerting, smug and humorless and wicked. “Have a care Uncle. They’ve set you up for one hell of a fall.”
“And you care?”
“Not at all. But you know how it is. Blood’s blood.”
Lyle approached her, placing one hand on either armrest of the chair she was tied to, leaning so close their noses almost, but not quite, touched. She never flinched, and the things he saw swimming behind those eyes were enough to make his breath catch for a minute.
“Yes,” he said, digging his fingers into the wound a bullet had left on her upper arm. “Blood is blood. And by the time I’m through you’ll have seen so much of it you’ll dream about it, sweat it, cry it. And they we’ll see who much their child you are.” Arin bared her teeth, made a snapping motion that brought her teeth together win a click. There was pain in her eyes now though. Good.
Lyle rose and turned, leaving the Renewal cell and this child of his sister and the pretender that got away. Yes, pain was definitely a start.
><
Ryker had never met his mother. Until just a short time ago he had not even known he had one, or a father for that matter. He was in no great rush to meet her in his current state of mind and body, but he was in no position to be proud. The way Jarod…Dad, the way Dad had described her he was more than a little intimidated by the prospect, but he must be strong. Luca and Arin would be strong, he reminded himself. And Luca and Arin would be defiant and proud as well. All he was was hurt and alone and afraid, but he must push all that aside now and do what he came to do. He must save his family.
He didn’t even know if they were still alive. All he could remember before the adrenaline rush had wiped his conscious memory clean was his father getting shot and bludgeoned by huge, men build like mountains in dark suits, then Luca getting shot, and Arin telling him to get the hell out of there. He knew she wasn’t leaving, and wanted to tell her he would stay with her and their father and brother. He had learned long ago, though, that one did not question his sister when he had that tone in her voice, that it was dangerous even to stand too close during times like those. So he had run, and heard them chasing them, and everything after that was a blur before he found himself in an alley three of four miles from his home, alone and bleeding. They must have popped off a few shots at him when it became apparent they wouldn’t catch him. It was just a flesh wound though, and he knew how to deal with those. Sometimes Centre training did come in handy. Not often, but occasionally.
Now it was dark, and he was stricken by an impossible anxiety. His family might all be dead, he was hurt with nowhere to go, and dammit he was only a thirteen-year-old kid. Ryker was not one for delusions. He knew full well he was not “only” anything, that what he was far surpassed anything his peers could hope to imagine. But he also knew he was naïve, and far from the level of the rest of his family. Dad had said he was a sub-power pretender, like his mother, and that he was lucky to be so because being a high-power pretender brought nothing but grief. Ryker knew better. He knew his father and his siblings would not have given up their gift if they had an option. Still, he understood why they did not wish it on him. He had grown up seeing the way his brother and sister were exploited, ten times as badly as he was, and though he knew his father loved his work he was constantly on edge, always looking over his shoulder.
Ok, now he was just stalling. Somewhere inside that hotel across the street was his mother, and the man who might as well be his grandfather (Dad had said Sydney had been the only father he knew growing up). Ryker envied him that, and knew Arin and Luke did as well. They had had no such father figure until their real father found them at last. Time to go. Time to get this show on the road.
Wiry, lithe Ryker with the auburn hair and hazel eyes stayed low as he darted across the street, gritting his teeth as pain shocked through his wounded leg. He knew Dad had been shot in the leg as well. What was the point, he wondered. His father had already been shot in the chest when he took the leg would, and Ryker had been so charged up he hadn’t even felt it until he stopped. Besides, the Centre men had proven themselves lousy shots when it came to moving targets.
It wasn’t difficult to scramble up the fire escape at the side of the building, but it would have been easier without the bum leg. Ryker loved to climb. Arin had affectionately nicknamed him the Monkey Boy, and Dad was sure he was going to fall and break his neck one of these days. Still, his talent had proven useful on more than one occasion, and he was proud to at least be able to do one thing better (not much better but better), that his high-power siblings.
He felt a bit depraved scurrying around peeping through strangers’ windows, but when he at last found the one he was looking for the ends easily justified the means. There she was, the mother he had never met, but heard enough about to know on sight. Arin must have a lot of their mother in her, he decided. There was the same aura of control, dominance and strength about this one as there was with his sister. Besides, Dad had shown them a lot of pictures of her, and of their grandmother Catherine, who looked just like her.
Yes, that was his mother. But she wasn’t alone. He had to wait until she was alone. Dad had always told them they could trust he in a pinch, and Sydney too and maybe even Broots. However Ryker and his siblings were as much Centre raised as their father was, and worse, they were Centre bred as well. He was hard pressed to trust even this far, and the sweepers in the room elicited a flight reflex he was hard pressed to suppress. He would wait.
The heavens wept.
><
Miss Parker was having enough trouble keeping her thoughts in order without all these questions and suggests buffeting her from all sides. She knew it was her job, that the sweepers needed to be assigned their tasks for the next day so the hunt of Jarod would progress smoothly and the Tower would stay off her back. She knew this, but didn’t give a damn. She was tired and worried and confused out of her mind and wanted them all to shut the hell up and find something more productive to do with their time, as far from her as was possible without sending them all the way back to Blue Cove.
When at last the team retired to their room and was left with only Sydney and Broots for company, she allowed herself to relax her Ice Queen demeanor for a moment. Jarod was alive, or at least was as of that afternoon. He was somewhere with those FBI agents now, and probably hurt pretty badly. Where was this irrational desire to go to him coming from? It wasn’t necessarily a desire to go catch him… It wasn’t that at all. She wanted to go to him, to make sure he was ok, to help him if she could, to find out who had hurt him and kick their fucking asses. Yes, that was what she wanted to do. It shouldn’t be what she wanted, but it was, and there was no point denying it.
“He didn’t tell you where he was?” Sydney asked, for the hundredth time.
He had been unduly outraged when he learned of Jarod’s call. Why hadn’t Parker called him immediately? Why hadn’t she demanded Jarod’s location? And so on. How could she explain to Sydney about her relationship with Jarod, about their unspoken agreement in their dealings with each other? There were times when you asked questions, times to taunt and tease and dance, and times when you stopped playing the game and did as you were told. The incident at the Dover Town Bank had been one of those times, when they stopped playing the roles of the enemies and united in a common cause, surrendered to the natural affinity that made them an indomitable team. When Jarod told her to keep her gun holstered so they wouldn’t all get killed; when he rose to her defense when she nearly made the mistake anyway, putting himself at risk to protect her; when Fenigore was shot and Jarod took the lead, giving the orders while she followed them without questions, saving the old man’s life; when she had a chance to get out with the rest of the hostages, but instead came back for him, were all such instances of mutual cooperation and trust.
There had been other times as well. Whenever Jarod gave her a lead into her past, or information on a Centre activity she had been purposefully excluded from, she never doubted him…never. He had told Her to dig up her mother’s grave once and she had put her trust in him completely. After Tommy’s death he had come to her in honesty and heartfelt empathy to help her find the truth, done so again one year later, and she had treated him like shit but never dismissed him or accused him. They dropped their façade when one of them was hurt, or had been hurt, or after they had just gone through hell together and were, as ever, left with nothing but a phone in the end. She remembered when she was shot, and he could have gotten away, but he had stayed behind in the hopes of helping her. Yes, she and Jarod had drawn the lines long ago and knew where the boundaries where. When Jarod called her and told her to do something after she had just seen his home a bloody shambles and heard the pain in his voice, she did not demand his location or refuse the favor. When Jarod needed her like he had needed her this afternoon, after all they had been through, all he had done for her, all she was because of him, she shoved her pretenses aside like so many wedding veils and did it, without question. Lives could depend on it, and probably did because he only brought her into his problems as a last resort (though he was always throwing himself into hers). If there was one thing she had learned from her years with Jarod it was that he didn’t joke about things of such import, and that while Sydney might be one of his reasons for keeping a tie on the Centre, she was still the little girl who gave him his first kiss, still his best friend as he was hers despite everything. There were some things he couldn’t go to his mentor with; it had been that way since they were children.
“No Syd,” she said. “He just said to tell the FBI he was at Maggie’s.” She paused, feeling a need to appease Sydney’s wrath and knowing she shouldn’t give a damn what he thought. “I did ask him Syd, but I didn’t ask twice and I didn’t beg. He was having a hard enough time as it was and he had more to say without arguing with me.”
“He wouldn’t have told anyway,” Broots added in her defense. She should have glared at him, growled some smart ass quip, but she was too grateful for the softening of Syd’s stern visage to spare her usual gibe.
“No, he wouldn’t. Did you ask what happened this morning?”
“Again, yes. He just said it was a long story, and I could have told you that.”
“Did he sound hurt?” Sydney hadn’t asked that before, and she hadn’t planned on worrying him with it, but now that he had there was no way around it and she wasn’t about to lie after all she and the old man had been through together.
“Yes,” she said.
“Bad?”
“Very.” Syd’s face fell, but he was grateful for the honesty as well.
The uncomfortable silence seemed to stretch on for a lifetime. When at last it was sundered, it was not by any one of them seated tensely about the room. The sound came from the window, a hesitant, shaky knocking that made Parker’s heart hitch and Broots jump three feet from his chair. Probably hoping it was Jarod, Sydney had crossed half the distance to the window by the time Parker had her gun drawn.
What he pulled after opening the window was not Jarod, but a half-conscious teen-age boy who closely resembled a drowned rat. Miss Parker opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Was about to demand for the second time that day what the hell was going on, when a second, much stronger, more insistent knock sounded from the hotel room’s door.
“Open the door Miss Parker,” a familiar male voice called. “FBI.”
