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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.
Summary: The child of Parker he could have dealt with easily. The child of Jarod as well. But these children were the product of both, and it had long been known that Jarod and Miss Parker together were an indomitable pair. Why then, Lyle wondered, had the Centre not considered this before creating these damned kids in the first place?
Precious Blood
Part V: The Good Soldier
Matrea Nara
The Good Soldier
Go go go go now
Out of the nest it’s time
Go go go now
Circus girl without a safety net
Here here now don’t cry
You raised your hand for the assignment
Tuck those ribbons under your helmet
Be a good soldier
--Tori Amos: Mother
He was asleep when she got there, fevered and coated with a slick sweat that jerked at her heart. She crouched down beside him, watching him, remembering the little boy, then the teenager, then the witty, adorably naïve man recently escaped with his fathomless heart and a voice that made her smile to herself even when it had purposefully woken her during her deepest sleep cycle.
Her face revealed none of her feeling with she placed a hand on his chest wound and pressed down, not very hard, but not gently either. Behind her Agent Scully stirred and was about to protest, but Mulder stayed her and the room settled again to stillness, just the two of them. Jarod jerked into wakefulness, sitting up sharply and crying out in pain. More gently this time, Parker pushed him back down, stroking her fingers soothingly through his dark, damp hair until he calmed. She could have been less rude about waking him, but she needed to balance her affection for him and her duty as best she could, and she knew no other way to do it. She had a job here, but at the moment she was with him for strictly personal reasons.
She had done this before, when she had caught Jarod to learn the truth about the Forest House. Even then she had appeased her sense of duty, the duty that said Jarod was her enemy, not her friend, by pressing the knife to his jugular before cutting the ropes that bound him. How symbolic that had been, she thought. I had the gun, and I just let him walk away. Why? Because he said he trusted me? Because I gave him my word? Or because I’m as terrified of seeing him back in that place as he is? She remembered the day her mother died, just before the shot, she had been watching Jarod doing the orbiter simulation. She had fear his fear, as she did now.
His was breathing normally now, though he did wheeze a little. He looked at her, brought his hand up shakily to take hold of hers, still resting on his chest.
“Cute,” he whispered. “Not funny, but cute.” She smiled at him, and it was genuine, her mother’s smile. “Ryker?” The question was directed at the agents looking on, pitched louder than his labored words to her, but not much. She could have answered. She knew where the boy was. Jarod knew that, she guessed, and was probably dodging asking her purposefully, to avoid personalizing it. She didn’t know why, because it couldn’t get any more personal, but that was probably what he was doing. Doesn’t want to talk about this with an audience, she decided.
“He’s upstairs sleeping,” Mulder replied.
“Exhausted with a fever and a minor flesh wound,” added Scully the doctor. “He has contusions on his arms and a black eye. Other than that no worse for wear. He’s a tough kid.” Jarod laughed, though the act seemed painful for him.
“It’s in the blood,” he told them. He was watching Parker when he said it, searching, but she refused to meet his eyes.
Taking that as his cue, Mulder said, “We’ll leave you two alone for a little while.” Placing a hand lightly on the small of his partner’s back he ushered her out of the room, with Maggie trailing, presumably off to check on Ryker as they proceeded up the stairs to the second floor.
“Why didn’t you tell me Jarod?” She hated herself for the hurt in her voice. She had never known Jarod to hide anything so significant from her.
“Give me a break Parker. Look at me.” She did, and had to look away, not because she couldn’t bear the sight of him but because she would not let him see her cry. “I found them and now I’m ‘shoot to kill.’ And believe me, if they wanted to you’d be much easier to reach than I was.”
“Dammit Jarod I had a right to know! As much as you did.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But I wasn’t the only one who decided not to tell you. They’re great kids Parker, but not entirely selfless. They wanted you dead even less than I did.” She noticed then that he still held her hand, and that the pressure on the wound had caused it to start bleeding again. She tried to pull away, but his grip was surprisingly firm. “They were just like me, growing up wondering about their family. When they finally knew who we were they were unwilling to let us risk ourselves for them. It’s the same reason I’m staying away from my father and sister, and it’s why Ethan left, why your mother faked her death in the elevator.” He squeezed her hand briefly, struggled to regain his breath as the effort to speak had left him winded. “Ours is a damned life Parker, we’ve known that since we were young. There was no reason to drag anyone else into it.”
“But I was already in it Jarod. I’ve been as cursed as you are for just as long. Shit, I was born into it!”
“So was I Parker. Not in the same way you were, but my fate was sealed when I was conceived, just as the twins’ and Ryker’s were.” She looked at him, saw the truth there as it had always been. Shifting from her crouched position on the floor, she settled on the edge of the couch beside him. A stiff breeze would topple her so precarious was her balance, but she wanted to be near him. She shouldn’t want to be. She should be calling the team and getting them down here to haul him and the boy back to the Centre but she couldn’t, and scorned herself for being weak like Catherine was. But had Catherine been weak? Or had Catherine been the strongest of the strong?
“The twins…”
“Arin and Luke. They’re sixteen.”
“Lyle has them doesn’t he?” Jarod nodded. “What will he do to them?”
“Try to reeducate them and place them back in the pretender program. Twins are invaluable at the Centre as it is but pretender twins…high-power pretender twins…”
“The whole time they were there and we never knew.”
“The Centre is a big place Miss Parker.”
“So is hell.” Jarod grinned, but too briefly to offer her any measure of solace.
“You said he would try to reeducate them. Will he succeed?”
“He tried to reeducate me too, remember?” Yes, she remembered. It had been torture for Sydney and not much better for her, knowing all that was happening to him was happening because he could have escaped, but had chosen to stay with her instead. “They’ll be strong for each other. He won’t break them.”
“But he’ll try.”
“They are his niece and nephew. Where he hated me for resisting he’ll admire them for it. He’ll be proud, and he’ll handle them differently.” He paused.
“Besides, Reins was project head. He won’t let them be permanently damaged.”
“Like he didn’t let you be permanently damaged when he stopped your heart or got you hooked on narcotics right?”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I wasn’t his, I was Sydney’s. Adults are always careless with other people’s money, kids break other kids’ toys and don’t care, and Centre doctors fuck up other doctors’ pretenders and never bat an eyelash. That’s the game Miss Parker.”
“I’m sick of the game. They’ve gone to far this time.”
“They did it sixteen years ago.” And tacked on to the end of that sentence was the unspoken accusation that resonated in her heart like a reckoning. They did it sixteen years ago…when she was still the most ruthless cleaner on the payroll, when Jarod was still living in a bleak, lifeless space and slaving daily on SIMs that resulted in numberless atrocities. Their children had been playthings of Reins when Jarod busted out of the Centre, when Parker made the deal to trade her freedom for his and set out to hunt him down like a dog. It would not be fair to hate the Centre now for something they had done all that time ago, because all that time ago, when it was being done, when their children were suffering just as Jarod had all his life, molded into the machine Parker had become, they had gone on oblivious. They had not been there. They had dug so deeply into their own pasts, uncovered enough secrets and lies to help them with their quests, but had never lifted a finger to save those three young lives. The fact that they had known nothing of the existence of the children did in no way sufficiently atone for the fact they had left them to the Centre and to Reins. Besides that, when by all rights she should have joined forced with Jarod long ago, and perhaps take some focus off the flight and hunt and put it back on the Centre’s underhanded dealings where it belonged, Parker had chased Jarod with a persistence born of a duty, a loyalty to a family, she no longer even truly believed in.
“But you got to them Jarod. They’re hardly in their thirties and they’re not caught up in the lied like I was before you got to me.” Sensing the conversation had taken a decidedly personal note she wished to avoid, she attempted, vainly, to change the subject to something less directly focused on her. “Are you going to be ok?” He looked like hell, and just this short conversation had left him winded and a ghostly shade of pasty white.
“Yes.” He averted his eyes when he said it, and the fear stirred in her belly yet again. But she did not challenge him. She had told him similar lies before. “Are you going to turn me in?”
“No.” He looked sharply at her. That was not at all the answer he had expected. Parker had always been the good soldier unless she had something to gain, or if she owed him. There was neither in this case, so why would she leave him here. She let him wonder. Lowering her face closer to his, so their nosed almost touched, and applying more pressure on his wound until he grunted and his breath caught, she spoke in a low, determined voice she could see by his eyes he knew well. “I’m going back to the Centre, and I’m pulling my…our kids out of the renewal wing, and I’m making Reins pay for this.”
He couldn’t speak; he was hurting to badly. But she knew what he was thinking. Over twenty years together, that was one of the after effects.
“I know he couldn’t have done it by himself. But one step at a time.”
She didn’t know why she did what she did next. It was something she hadn’t done in twenty years, yet it seemed to right, so totally natural to bend down those last few inches and press her lips tenderly to his. The kiss was soft, full of promise and a deep familiarity that she had known with no other man, not even Thomas. She and Jarod had been through things together most people would not even believe, knew each other better than most long-married couples, and felt the bonds of their shared childhood through to their souls’ cores. So when she kissed him, it did not feel to her life a first kiss, or ever a second, but as though she had kissed him every day since that first kiss all those years ago. Though she seldom admitted it, (not never, but seldom), there were few people as dear to her heart as Jarod was. No one actually, since Thomas and her mother were both dead. He felt it too. She could see it in his eyes and the wisp of a smile on his lips when she pulled away.
“I’ll see you,” she said. He nodded, still speechless, a welcome change. She wanted to see her son before she went back to that place. She wanted to see the light again before she plunged head on back into the darkness. That had always been Jarod before, and Thomas and her mother. But now there was another light, and she felt safe somehow, though she knew she was not.
She was no longer the good soldier, she realized with amazement. She had not been for some time, but now she was something more, something greater. She was a soldier again, but for a different cause, a rebel with a cause, a one-woman rabble in arms.
><
Lyle watched the girl pace, saw her fists clench and relax, noticed that her roving green eyes marked him at intervals, but otherwise purposefully avoided resting on him. He had recently moved her to a transparent cell of bulletproof glass, so she could see her brother in the cell next to her. Luke had been badly wounded, was in a coma, breathing with the assistance of a machine, with a defibrillator close at hand and an EKG beeping out a steady rhythm.
When Arin had seen him like that for the first time Lyle had been sure he’d finally broken her. She had come close to tears, staggered back until her back in the wall and slid to the floor to stare vacantly at the shell of her beloved twin. Yes, he had thought he had broken her then, and gone in to savor the fruits of his victory. His arm was now in a sling and the entire right side of his face was bruised and discolored. It had occurred to him then that perhaps it had been a mistake to let her see what the Centre was doing to her family, but he could hardly send anyone in to transfer her back to her old cell. She would kill them, her knew, if they tried to move her away from her brother.
So he watched her, and wondered to himself if Jarod and the other boy were still alive. It didn’t matter really. The twins were the most valuable prize. Still, the Tower, and even the Triumvirate, had made it clear that Jarod was to be eliminated. Outside the Centre he was a risk to their assets, and he made them nervous for obvious reason. If the other boy could be retrieved without being destroyed that would be an added bonus, and he had been promised that he would be made project head in that event. Reins didn’t know yet, and Lyle had no intention of telling him.
He hoped he could be there when they put a bullet in Jarod’s brain. He hoped his sister could be there to. She could deny it all she wanted, but he knew she had retained some of her childish affection for the pretender. He wanted her to be there, and he wanted her to be the one to do it. That would break her, make her much more complacent to the Centre’s demands. Thomas’s death had had that effect for a time, but Jarod had been there that same day, and every day thereafter, to keep her clearheaded and keep despair from conquering her. He had that effect on her, Lyle had noticed. When she was ready to collapse he would call her or send her something and she would be back again the next day, ready and more than willing to make Lyle’s life hell. If she worked as well with him as she did with Jarod, the latter would have been caught long ago and the former might even be nice to have around from time to time.
Arin had stopped pacing. She now stared at him, face impossible to read and eyes blazing. He tried to stare her down but it was he who looked away first. She snorted scornfully before resuming her pacing. If Lyle could not earn her respect he would get nowhere with her. The child of Parker he could have dealt with easily. The child of Jarod as well. But these children were the product of both, and it had long been known that Jarod and Miss Parker together were an indomitable pair. Why, he wondered, had the Centre not considered this before creating these damned kids in the first place?
Summary: The child of Parker he could have dealt with easily. The child of Jarod as well. But these children were the product of both, and it had long been known that Jarod and Miss Parker together were an indomitable pair. Why then, Lyle wondered, had the Centre not considered this before creating these damned kids in the first place?
Precious Blood
Part V: The Good Soldier
Matrea Nara
The Good Soldier
Go go go go now
Out of the nest it’s time
Go go go now
Circus girl without a safety net
Here here now don’t cry
You raised your hand for the assignment
Tuck those ribbons under your helmet
Be a good soldier
--Tori Amos: Mother
He was asleep when she got there, fevered and coated with a slick sweat that jerked at her heart. She crouched down beside him, watching him, remembering the little boy, then the teenager, then the witty, adorably naïve man recently escaped with his fathomless heart and a voice that made her smile to herself even when it had purposefully woken her during her deepest sleep cycle.
Her face revealed none of her feeling with she placed a hand on his chest wound and pressed down, not very hard, but not gently either. Behind her Agent Scully stirred and was about to protest, but Mulder stayed her and the room settled again to stillness, just the two of them. Jarod jerked into wakefulness, sitting up sharply and crying out in pain. More gently this time, Parker pushed him back down, stroking her fingers soothingly through his dark, damp hair until he calmed. She could have been less rude about waking him, but she needed to balance her affection for him and her duty as best she could, and she knew no other way to do it. She had a job here, but at the moment she was with him for strictly personal reasons.
She had done this before, when she had caught Jarod to learn the truth about the Forest House. Even then she had appeased her sense of duty, the duty that said Jarod was her enemy, not her friend, by pressing the knife to his jugular before cutting the ropes that bound him. How symbolic that had been, she thought. I had the gun, and I just let him walk away. Why? Because he said he trusted me? Because I gave him my word? Or because I’m as terrified of seeing him back in that place as he is? She remembered the day her mother died, just before the shot, she had been watching Jarod doing the orbiter simulation. She had fear his fear, as she did now.
His was breathing normally now, though he did wheeze a little. He looked at her, brought his hand up shakily to take hold of hers, still resting on his chest.
“Cute,” he whispered. “Not funny, but cute.” She smiled at him, and it was genuine, her mother’s smile. “Ryker?” The question was directed at the agents looking on, pitched louder than his labored words to her, but not much. She could have answered. She knew where the boy was. Jarod knew that, she guessed, and was probably dodging asking her purposefully, to avoid personalizing it. She didn’t know why, because it couldn’t get any more personal, but that was probably what he was doing. Doesn’t want to talk about this with an audience, she decided.
“He’s upstairs sleeping,” Mulder replied.
“Exhausted with a fever and a minor flesh wound,” added Scully the doctor. “He has contusions on his arms and a black eye. Other than that no worse for wear. He’s a tough kid.” Jarod laughed, though the act seemed painful for him.
“It’s in the blood,” he told them. He was watching Parker when he said it, searching, but she refused to meet his eyes.
Taking that as his cue, Mulder said, “We’ll leave you two alone for a little while.” Placing a hand lightly on the small of his partner’s back he ushered her out of the room, with Maggie trailing, presumably off to check on Ryker as they proceeded up the stairs to the second floor.
“Why didn’t you tell me Jarod?” She hated herself for the hurt in her voice. She had never known Jarod to hide anything so significant from her.
“Give me a break Parker. Look at me.” She did, and had to look away, not because she couldn’t bear the sight of him but because she would not let him see her cry. “I found them and now I’m ‘shoot to kill.’ And believe me, if they wanted to you’d be much easier to reach than I was.”
“Dammit Jarod I had a right to know! As much as you did.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But I wasn’t the only one who decided not to tell you. They’re great kids Parker, but not entirely selfless. They wanted you dead even less than I did.” She noticed then that he still held her hand, and that the pressure on the wound had caused it to start bleeding again. She tried to pull away, but his grip was surprisingly firm. “They were just like me, growing up wondering about their family. When they finally knew who we were they were unwilling to let us risk ourselves for them. It’s the same reason I’m staying away from my father and sister, and it’s why Ethan left, why your mother faked her death in the elevator.” He squeezed her hand briefly, struggled to regain his breath as the effort to speak had left him winded. “Ours is a damned life Parker, we’ve known that since we were young. There was no reason to drag anyone else into it.”
“But I was already in it Jarod. I’ve been as cursed as you are for just as long. Shit, I was born into it!”
“So was I Parker. Not in the same way you were, but my fate was sealed when I was conceived, just as the twins’ and Ryker’s were.” She looked at him, saw the truth there as it had always been. Shifting from her crouched position on the floor, she settled on the edge of the couch beside him. A stiff breeze would topple her so precarious was her balance, but she wanted to be near him. She shouldn’t want to be. She should be calling the team and getting them down here to haul him and the boy back to the Centre but she couldn’t, and scorned herself for being weak like Catherine was. But had Catherine been weak? Or had Catherine been the strongest of the strong?
“The twins…”
“Arin and Luke. They’re sixteen.”
“Lyle has them doesn’t he?” Jarod nodded. “What will he do to them?”
“Try to reeducate them and place them back in the pretender program. Twins are invaluable at the Centre as it is but pretender twins…high-power pretender twins…”
“The whole time they were there and we never knew.”
“The Centre is a big place Miss Parker.”
“So is hell.” Jarod grinned, but too briefly to offer her any measure of solace.
“You said he would try to reeducate them. Will he succeed?”
“He tried to reeducate me too, remember?” Yes, she remembered. It had been torture for Sydney and not much better for her, knowing all that was happening to him was happening because he could have escaped, but had chosen to stay with her instead. “They’ll be strong for each other. He won’t break them.”
“But he’ll try.”
“They are his niece and nephew. Where he hated me for resisting he’ll admire them for it. He’ll be proud, and he’ll handle them differently.” He paused.
“Besides, Reins was project head. He won’t let them be permanently damaged.”
“Like he didn’t let you be permanently damaged when he stopped your heart or got you hooked on narcotics right?”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I wasn’t his, I was Sydney’s. Adults are always careless with other people’s money, kids break other kids’ toys and don’t care, and Centre doctors fuck up other doctors’ pretenders and never bat an eyelash. That’s the game Miss Parker.”
“I’m sick of the game. They’ve gone to far this time.”
“They did it sixteen years ago.” And tacked on to the end of that sentence was the unspoken accusation that resonated in her heart like a reckoning. They did it sixteen years ago…when she was still the most ruthless cleaner on the payroll, when Jarod was still living in a bleak, lifeless space and slaving daily on SIMs that resulted in numberless atrocities. Their children had been playthings of Reins when Jarod busted out of the Centre, when Parker made the deal to trade her freedom for his and set out to hunt him down like a dog. It would not be fair to hate the Centre now for something they had done all that time ago, because all that time ago, when it was being done, when their children were suffering just as Jarod had all his life, molded into the machine Parker had become, they had gone on oblivious. They had not been there. They had dug so deeply into their own pasts, uncovered enough secrets and lies to help them with their quests, but had never lifted a finger to save those three young lives. The fact that they had known nothing of the existence of the children did in no way sufficiently atone for the fact they had left them to the Centre and to Reins. Besides that, when by all rights she should have joined forced with Jarod long ago, and perhaps take some focus off the flight and hunt and put it back on the Centre’s underhanded dealings where it belonged, Parker had chased Jarod with a persistence born of a duty, a loyalty to a family, she no longer even truly believed in.
“But you got to them Jarod. They’re hardly in their thirties and they’re not caught up in the lied like I was before you got to me.” Sensing the conversation had taken a decidedly personal note she wished to avoid, she attempted, vainly, to change the subject to something less directly focused on her. “Are you going to be ok?” He looked like hell, and just this short conversation had left him winded and a ghostly shade of pasty white.
“Yes.” He averted his eyes when he said it, and the fear stirred in her belly yet again. But she did not challenge him. She had told him similar lies before. “Are you going to turn me in?”
“No.” He looked sharply at her. That was not at all the answer he had expected. Parker had always been the good soldier unless she had something to gain, or if she owed him. There was neither in this case, so why would she leave him here. She let him wonder. Lowering her face closer to his, so their nosed almost touched, and applying more pressure on his wound until he grunted and his breath caught, she spoke in a low, determined voice she could see by his eyes he knew well. “I’m going back to the Centre, and I’m pulling my…our kids out of the renewal wing, and I’m making Reins pay for this.”
He couldn’t speak; he was hurting to badly. But she knew what he was thinking. Over twenty years together, that was one of the after effects.
“I know he couldn’t have done it by himself. But one step at a time.”
She didn’t know why she did what she did next. It was something she hadn’t done in twenty years, yet it seemed to right, so totally natural to bend down those last few inches and press her lips tenderly to his. The kiss was soft, full of promise and a deep familiarity that she had known with no other man, not even Thomas. She and Jarod had been through things together most people would not even believe, knew each other better than most long-married couples, and felt the bonds of their shared childhood through to their souls’ cores. So when she kissed him, it did not feel to her life a first kiss, or ever a second, but as though she had kissed him every day since that first kiss all those years ago. Though she seldom admitted it, (not never, but seldom), there were few people as dear to her heart as Jarod was. No one actually, since Thomas and her mother were both dead. He felt it too. She could see it in his eyes and the wisp of a smile on his lips when she pulled away.
“I’ll see you,” she said. He nodded, still speechless, a welcome change. She wanted to see her son before she went back to that place. She wanted to see the light again before she plunged head on back into the darkness. That had always been Jarod before, and Thomas and her mother. But now there was another light, and she felt safe somehow, though she knew she was not.
She was no longer the good soldier, she realized with amazement. She had not been for some time, but now she was something more, something greater. She was a soldier again, but for a different cause, a rebel with a cause, a one-woman rabble in arms.
><
Lyle watched the girl pace, saw her fists clench and relax, noticed that her roving green eyes marked him at intervals, but otherwise purposefully avoided resting on him. He had recently moved her to a transparent cell of bulletproof glass, so she could see her brother in the cell next to her. Luke had been badly wounded, was in a coma, breathing with the assistance of a machine, with a defibrillator close at hand and an EKG beeping out a steady rhythm.
When Arin had seen him like that for the first time Lyle had been sure he’d finally broken her. She had come close to tears, staggered back until her back in the wall and slid to the floor to stare vacantly at the shell of her beloved twin. Yes, he had thought he had broken her then, and gone in to savor the fruits of his victory. His arm was now in a sling and the entire right side of his face was bruised and discolored. It had occurred to him then that perhaps it had been a mistake to let her see what the Centre was doing to her family, but he could hardly send anyone in to transfer her back to her old cell. She would kill them, her knew, if they tried to move her away from her brother.
So he watched her, and wondered to himself if Jarod and the other boy were still alive. It didn’t matter really. The twins were the most valuable prize. Still, the Tower, and even the Triumvirate, had made it clear that Jarod was to be eliminated. Outside the Centre he was a risk to their assets, and he made them nervous for obvious reason. If the other boy could be retrieved without being destroyed that would be an added bonus, and he had been promised that he would be made project head in that event. Reins didn’t know yet, and Lyle had no intention of telling him.
He hoped he could be there when they put a bullet in Jarod’s brain. He hoped his sister could be there to. She could deny it all she wanted, but he knew she had retained some of her childish affection for the pretender. He wanted her to be there, and he wanted her to be the one to do it. That would break her, make her much more complacent to the Centre’s demands. Thomas’s death had had that effect for a time, but Jarod had been there that same day, and every day thereafter, to keep her clearheaded and keep despair from conquering her. He had that effect on her, Lyle had noticed. When she was ready to collapse he would call her or send her something and she would be back again the next day, ready and more than willing to make Lyle’s life hell. If she worked as well with him as she did with Jarod, the latter would have been caught long ago and the former might even be nice to have around from time to time.
Arin had stopped pacing. She now stared at him, face impossible to read and eyes blazing. He tried to stare her down but it was he who looked away first. She snorted scornfully before resuming her pacing. If Lyle could not earn her respect he would get nowhere with her. The child of Parker he could have dealt with easily. The child of Jarod as well. But these children were the product of both, and it had long been known that Jarod and Miss Parker together were an indomitable pair. Why, he wondered, had the Centre not considered this before creating these damned kids in the first place?
