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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: Hey hey kiddies. I have been informed that this story line, with Jarod and Parker being parents and not knowing about it, has been somewhat overdone. I hold nothing against the person who told me, seeing as how they did so in a polite and tactful way, however I must warn you, that was a big mistake. You see, telling me this is unoriginal, you have now given me license to seriously f**k with your little minds, and let me tell you, there’s nothing I love more. ;-)
Precious Blood
Part VIII: Memorium
Matrea Nara
Jarod’s Lair
Detroit
Two Months ago
“Dammit Arri put some muscle into it!”
“Go to hell,” I growled, my teeth clenched. I’d been holding the hot water tank up off the cinder blocks for ten minutes while Jarod took his own sweet time repairing it, and I was coming dangerously close to dropping the thing of his head. So what if I was slipping a little. I’m a sixteen-year-old kid for Christ’s sake. Ok, so I’m a genetically engineered super human sixteen-year-old kid, but who wants to get technical right? “You want to do this yourself?” He glared at me. Yeah, I thought, go ahead, get pissed. Sigh patiently and get all superior on me, but don’t be surprised when I drop this bad boy.
“Five more minutes.” Right. Like he didn’t say that five minutes ago. I rolled my eyes, knowing it was immature of me and caring not a whit.
“I’m timing you. Five minutes and I’m gone if you’re done or not.” A strand of my shoulder length raven hair tickled my nose, and I blew it away with a huff. Because Jarod wasn’t looking at me and I needed something to glare at, I shot the look of a thousand deaths at my reflection in the nearby wall mirror.
“Done. Let it down.” As tempting as it was to just drop the sucker, I lowered it slowly back onto the blocks. The last thing I wanted was to break it again and waste another fifteen minutes of my day.
Moving over to the sink I scrubbed the rust from my hands, raking dripping fingers through my hair and smiling crookedly at Jarod in the mirror. “Only in America,” I said, my voice mock-annoyed.
“Only in America what?” he asked, returning my smile.
“Only in America to you have a hot water heater in your house.” He confusion was considerable help lightening my mood. “You don’t have to heat hot water J.”
“That’s cute,” he laughed. “You think that one up all by yourself.”
“Hell no. Do I look that clever? Gallagher told me.”
“Gallagher?”
“Right. He’s this crazy who gets off smashing watermelons with a mallet. Cleaver guy though. Like there’s a permanent press setting…on your iron. You drive in a parkway and park in a driveway. Cargo goes by ship, shipments go by truck, you have a pair of panties but only one bra.” I love it when he laughs. He hasn’t done much laughing since I met him, and I admit the fault lies at least partially with me.
I hadn’t known Jarod very long when I figured it out. He was a funny guy, and passably good at hiding his talents from the outside world. But to one who’d played the game longer than him, younger or no, it was painfully obvious he was hiding something from the start. I discovered the truth of what that secret was the day I stumbled across my Latin teacher (like I needed a teacher to learn Latin anyway) talking Swahili on the phone in the teacher’s lounge. I mean honestly! Swahili! I never did find out who he was talking to that day, but the man spoke Latin flawlessly and then there was that whole Swahili thing…and I caught him on a couple other fronts to prove my theory. He’s a brilliant man you know, if a little naïve. Meeting me upset him, and I won’t pretend not to know why, though I could. That’s the name of the game isn’t it? Pretending?
No, I knew why Jarod was so upset when he was assured that we are kin of a sorts. He knew what I meant when I told him what I had managed to scrape together of my own past. I discovered later that the manner in which I was bred and raised was similar to Jarod’s brother Ethan’s. That the Centre had done that infuriated him, and I am happy to say I succeeded in surprising him with my little revelation. I guess he thought he knew all there was to know about other pretenders. Our kind tends to think that way I’ve discovered. I haven’t found it prudent to tell the poor bugger I’m not an only child. He’ll figure it out sooner or later I’m sure.
“Hey,” said he. He had moved to the sink to wash off his hands and bumped me none too gently out of the way. “You want to go to Maine?”
Maine? Well that fit the bill for the surprise of the day. Sure, I had told him I was sick to death of Detroit, my six month stay there being the longest period of habitation in any one place for quite some time, but I didn’t expect him to pop a move on me
“What’s in Maine?” Stupid question. I’d done my homework. I knew what was in Maine, but knew as well he would never admit to his motives if they were what I thought they were and I wanted to hear his invariably weak explanation.
“Lobster,” he said.
“Uh huh,” I sighed, uninterested. I glanced at my watch. It was getting to be time for dinner. “Hungry?” A man with a slower mind would have assumed I was still talking about Maine, but Jarod knew better. He had gotten to know after a while that I changed topics abruptly and without warning. He saw that I had heard all I needed to hear about Maine, come to my own conclusions, and wasn’t ready to answer him yet. He knew as well that my inquiry about food had nothing to do with his earlier lobster comment, and treated me to a lopsided grin to which I had become accustomed during my time with him.
“Seafood?”
“Nah. Tai.”
“You hate Tai.”
“Yeah well I hate lobster too.”
And so it happened that Jarod and I ended up in Maine three days later, at the home of Ben Miller, and I finally found the courage somewhere inside me to treat Jarod to yet another surprise. We were sitting on the end of the dock with our feet dangling in the water drinking lemonade. His thoughts were wondering, and I knew where they dwelt. My mind could not have been more focused. I had received word from Luca earlier that day and discovered that circumstances had changed so that I could no longer keep Jarod in the dark.
“Hey J?” Jarod was staring at his feet in the water, a million miles away from Ben Miller’s inn on the Lake Catherine. “Jarod.”
“Hmm?” He raised his eyes, looking at me with the vague expression that I had seen set on his face so many times when I didn’t really have his full attention.
“There’s something I put off telling you.” He was coming back to me now, distantly interested. I took a deep breath, exhaling with my words in a rush. “I have two brothers. Luke and Ryker. They weren’t raised with me but I found them, I can’t tell you how you probably wouldn’t believe me and it was part of the experiment anyway so I guess you’ll figure it out after I tell you. Luke’s my twin and Ryker’s three years younger than we are. They bred him to test the bond between us after they saw how Luca and me were connected, even though we were fraternal and they never saw a bond with any twin sets other than identical twins before. I would have told you but it was dangerous and I didn’t think it was important until…” I paused, looking up to see him looking at me with a gaping stare, disbelief scrawled all over his face. It took him a minute to process the fact that I’d stopped speaking, waiting for his reaction.
“Until what?” he all but whispered. I should have told him slower. He had been so upset knowing another young pretender had been caught in the grip of the Centre, if should have known he would react badly knowing the full extend of the experiments preformed on my brothers and myself. And, worst of all, I’d barely gotten started.
“Until my twin brother Luke called me from Minneapolis yesterday and told me…” No. Wrong approach. “We were curious about how the Centre got us. After you told me your story I sent Luke hunting for some key to our past, to try and find out where we came from. You see, it turns out all the Centre’s pretenders are from the same bloodline, all related somehow. The pretender gene is very specific. Only two families, that the Centre knew about anyway, have it. One family is commonly high power, the other more sub power. The Tower bred the strongest examples they had of both families to get my brothers and me, using the donors’ sperm and eggs and a surrogate mother.” I didn’t think it was possible for the human eye to go any wider than Jarod’s had been, but he proved me wrong.
“And I’m the father.”
It’s true what they say. The man’s a genius.
><
Lone Gunman Headquarters
Washington D.C
Present Day
It was almost a month since Miss Parker found Jarod near death in the home of Maggie Scully, and his condition was much improved thanks to the constant care and attentions of Dana Scully and the boy, Ryker. As soon as they had arrived at the Lone Gunman, where they planned to stay while they licked their wounds, the boy had requested several medical volumes detailing treatment methods for Jarod’s type of injury. He had studied the medical manuals in depth and watched Scully’s precise movements with an attentive eye. Ryker had become an invaluable help to the FBI doctor, and if not for his eager assistance Jarod might not have made such a rapid recovery.
Parker’s concern for Jarod prevented her from spending much time getting to know her son, and when she allowed herself time to think about the fact she was a little ashamed of herself for not making more of an effort. Ryker, though, did not seem upset by her neglect. His mind was constantly on Jarod, or on his siblings shut away at the Centre. Mulder and the three publishers of the Lone Gunman spent a majority of their time at the computers, communicating with their contacts and developing a plan to free the twins, to be implemented upon Jarod’s recovery. Parker could not worry about them too much, having never actually met them, and was as ashamed as she every got about her undeniable disregard for their well-being.
As apprehensive as she was for Jarod, she seldom spoke to him after he regained consciousness. From time to time he caught her eye, and she could see he wanted to speak with her, knew there were many things they needed to work out between them, but aside from the occasional, casual comment she could not bring herself to respond to his silent pleas. As the days oozed past he gained strength, and now could walk about the LGM headquarters for fifteen minutes to half an hour before tiring. He was becoming more and more frustrated with their lack of progress concerning the plan for the twins’ liberation from the Centre, and even more frustrated with the grueling pace of his recovery.
The day inevitably came when Jarod, stubborn as he was, refused to wait any longer whether he was healed or no. Ryker appeared to approve, though he didn’t say anything on the matter and regardless of the fact that he was the only one. On the morning exactly one month after the attack at the Scully residence such a dispute arose among them that the LGM went for a walk, actually leaving the five of them alone with their documents and equipment.
“One month!” Jarod roared. “One month they’ve been back there! I can’t stand the thought of even one day!” He and Ryker stood to one side of the imaginary skirmish line, Mulder and Scully on the other, with Parker seated somewhere in the middle watching the show.
“And we’ll get them out, but you’re not ready to go in there. You’ll be caught.” Scully’s voice was infuriatingly even, and Parker could see Jarod’s blood rising.
“I don’t think you understand.” His tone had dropped, low and deadly. “Do you know what kind of experiments they do on them there? Do you know why they were created!?” Scully said nothing. Mulder shook his head. “Tell them,” he barked, and Ryker actually jumped. When he spoke though, his voice was as dangerous and brooding as his fathers.
“When we’re not doing SIMs, they test our bond. When I was there they would attach electrodes too our bodies and shock us to see if the others reacted when one was shocked. Arin and Luke reacted to each other more than to me, I heard, and when I was being shocked the tests almost killed them.”
“And do you know why,” Jarod cut in, “they haven’t killed me yet? They could have.”
“They almost did,” Mulder deadpanned.
“Yes, but they didn’t. And why? Because even though I’m shoot to kill they can get one more test out of me. The first time I was shot the twins didn’t react. So they tried again, worse this time. To see if they reacted to the father like they reacted to the brother. If Parker was still there they would do the same to her.”
“As long as they’re at the Centre it’s open season on the three of us,” Ryker said, resuming his end of the conversation. “To test the twins they’ll do any number of things to us. You too especially.” He nodded at Jarod and Parker. “They don’t have any data on you yet.”
“They have data on Jarod,” Parker muttered. She couldn’t remember ever being so disturbed…except maybe when she had opened her mother’s grave and found it empty. The feeling here was not so different than that, kin to when Fenigore told her Major Charles killed her mother…information to drive the breath from her lungs.
“Yeah, which means you’re next.” Jarod elbowed the boy in the ribs to silence him, but received only a glare for reply and no respect for his obvious desire for silence on the part of his son. “We have to get them out to save them, and to save ourselves.”
“And if Jarod dies trying?” Mulder asked, breaking his silence. Silence reined for a time, as all present considered the possibilities.
“Then,” Jarod said softly, “I die trying. That’s my family in there.”
“You won’t die Jarod,” Parker rebuked him. “That’s my family too…and I have an idea.”
Author’s Note: Hey hey kiddies. I have been informed that this story line, with Jarod and Parker being parents and not knowing about it, has been somewhat overdone. I hold nothing against the person who told me, seeing as how they did so in a polite and tactful way, however I must warn you, that was a big mistake. You see, telling me this is unoriginal, you have now given me license to seriously f**k with your little minds, and let me tell you, there’s nothing I love more. ;-)
Precious Blood
Part VIII: Memorium
Matrea Nara
Jarod’s Lair
Detroit
Two Months ago
“Dammit Arri put some muscle into it!”
“Go to hell,” I growled, my teeth clenched. I’d been holding the hot water tank up off the cinder blocks for ten minutes while Jarod took his own sweet time repairing it, and I was coming dangerously close to dropping the thing of his head. So what if I was slipping a little. I’m a sixteen-year-old kid for Christ’s sake. Ok, so I’m a genetically engineered super human sixteen-year-old kid, but who wants to get technical right? “You want to do this yourself?” He glared at me. Yeah, I thought, go ahead, get pissed. Sigh patiently and get all superior on me, but don’t be surprised when I drop this bad boy.
“Five more minutes.” Right. Like he didn’t say that five minutes ago. I rolled my eyes, knowing it was immature of me and caring not a whit.
“I’m timing you. Five minutes and I’m gone if you’re done or not.” A strand of my shoulder length raven hair tickled my nose, and I blew it away with a huff. Because Jarod wasn’t looking at me and I needed something to glare at, I shot the look of a thousand deaths at my reflection in the nearby wall mirror.
“Done. Let it down.” As tempting as it was to just drop the sucker, I lowered it slowly back onto the blocks. The last thing I wanted was to break it again and waste another fifteen minutes of my day.
Moving over to the sink I scrubbed the rust from my hands, raking dripping fingers through my hair and smiling crookedly at Jarod in the mirror. “Only in America,” I said, my voice mock-annoyed.
“Only in America what?” he asked, returning my smile.
“Only in America to you have a hot water heater in your house.” He confusion was considerable help lightening my mood. “You don’t have to heat hot water J.”
“That’s cute,” he laughed. “You think that one up all by yourself.”
“Hell no. Do I look that clever? Gallagher told me.”
“Gallagher?”
“Right. He’s this crazy who gets off smashing watermelons with a mallet. Cleaver guy though. Like there’s a permanent press setting…on your iron. You drive in a parkway and park in a driveway. Cargo goes by ship, shipments go by truck, you have a pair of panties but only one bra.” I love it when he laughs. He hasn’t done much laughing since I met him, and I admit the fault lies at least partially with me.
I hadn’t known Jarod very long when I figured it out. He was a funny guy, and passably good at hiding his talents from the outside world. But to one who’d played the game longer than him, younger or no, it was painfully obvious he was hiding something from the start. I discovered the truth of what that secret was the day I stumbled across my Latin teacher (like I needed a teacher to learn Latin anyway) talking Swahili on the phone in the teacher’s lounge. I mean honestly! Swahili! I never did find out who he was talking to that day, but the man spoke Latin flawlessly and then there was that whole Swahili thing…and I caught him on a couple other fronts to prove my theory. He’s a brilliant man you know, if a little naïve. Meeting me upset him, and I won’t pretend not to know why, though I could. That’s the name of the game isn’t it? Pretending?
No, I knew why Jarod was so upset when he was assured that we are kin of a sorts. He knew what I meant when I told him what I had managed to scrape together of my own past. I discovered later that the manner in which I was bred and raised was similar to Jarod’s brother Ethan’s. That the Centre had done that infuriated him, and I am happy to say I succeeded in surprising him with my little revelation. I guess he thought he knew all there was to know about other pretenders. Our kind tends to think that way I’ve discovered. I haven’t found it prudent to tell the poor bugger I’m not an only child. He’ll figure it out sooner or later I’m sure.
“Hey,” said he. He had moved to the sink to wash off his hands and bumped me none too gently out of the way. “You want to go to Maine?”
Maine? Well that fit the bill for the surprise of the day. Sure, I had told him I was sick to death of Detroit, my six month stay there being the longest period of habitation in any one place for quite some time, but I didn’t expect him to pop a move on me
“What’s in Maine?” Stupid question. I’d done my homework. I knew what was in Maine, but knew as well he would never admit to his motives if they were what I thought they were and I wanted to hear his invariably weak explanation.
“Lobster,” he said.
“Uh huh,” I sighed, uninterested. I glanced at my watch. It was getting to be time for dinner. “Hungry?” A man with a slower mind would have assumed I was still talking about Maine, but Jarod knew better. He had gotten to know after a while that I changed topics abruptly and without warning. He saw that I had heard all I needed to hear about Maine, come to my own conclusions, and wasn’t ready to answer him yet. He knew as well that my inquiry about food had nothing to do with his earlier lobster comment, and treated me to a lopsided grin to which I had become accustomed during my time with him.
“Seafood?”
“Nah. Tai.”
“You hate Tai.”
“Yeah well I hate lobster too.”
And so it happened that Jarod and I ended up in Maine three days later, at the home of Ben Miller, and I finally found the courage somewhere inside me to treat Jarod to yet another surprise. We were sitting on the end of the dock with our feet dangling in the water drinking lemonade. His thoughts were wondering, and I knew where they dwelt. My mind could not have been more focused. I had received word from Luca earlier that day and discovered that circumstances had changed so that I could no longer keep Jarod in the dark.
“Hey J?” Jarod was staring at his feet in the water, a million miles away from Ben Miller’s inn on the Lake Catherine. “Jarod.”
“Hmm?” He raised his eyes, looking at me with the vague expression that I had seen set on his face so many times when I didn’t really have his full attention.
“There’s something I put off telling you.” He was coming back to me now, distantly interested. I took a deep breath, exhaling with my words in a rush. “I have two brothers. Luke and Ryker. They weren’t raised with me but I found them, I can’t tell you how you probably wouldn’t believe me and it was part of the experiment anyway so I guess you’ll figure it out after I tell you. Luke’s my twin and Ryker’s three years younger than we are. They bred him to test the bond between us after they saw how Luca and me were connected, even though we were fraternal and they never saw a bond with any twin sets other than identical twins before. I would have told you but it was dangerous and I didn’t think it was important until…” I paused, looking up to see him looking at me with a gaping stare, disbelief scrawled all over his face. It took him a minute to process the fact that I’d stopped speaking, waiting for his reaction.
“Until what?” he all but whispered. I should have told him slower. He had been so upset knowing another young pretender had been caught in the grip of the Centre, if should have known he would react badly knowing the full extend of the experiments preformed on my brothers and myself. And, worst of all, I’d barely gotten started.
“Until my twin brother Luke called me from Minneapolis yesterday and told me…” No. Wrong approach. “We were curious about how the Centre got us. After you told me your story I sent Luke hunting for some key to our past, to try and find out where we came from. You see, it turns out all the Centre’s pretenders are from the same bloodline, all related somehow. The pretender gene is very specific. Only two families, that the Centre knew about anyway, have it. One family is commonly high power, the other more sub power. The Tower bred the strongest examples they had of both families to get my brothers and me, using the donors’ sperm and eggs and a surrogate mother.” I didn’t think it was possible for the human eye to go any wider than Jarod’s had been, but he proved me wrong.
“And I’m the father.”
It’s true what they say. The man’s a genius.
><
Lone Gunman Headquarters
Washington D.C
Present Day
It was almost a month since Miss Parker found Jarod near death in the home of Maggie Scully, and his condition was much improved thanks to the constant care and attentions of Dana Scully and the boy, Ryker. As soon as they had arrived at the Lone Gunman, where they planned to stay while they licked their wounds, the boy had requested several medical volumes detailing treatment methods for Jarod’s type of injury. He had studied the medical manuals in depth and watched Scully’s precise movements with an attentive eye. Ryker had become an invaluable help to the FBI doctor, and if not for his eager assistance Jarod might not have made such a rapid recovery.
Parker’s concern for Jarod prevented her from spending much time getting to know her son, and when she allowed herself time to think about the fact she was a little ashamed of herself for not making more of an effort. Ryker, though, did not seem upset by her neglect. His mind was constantly on Jarod, or on his siblings shut away at the Centre. Mulder and the three publishers of the Lone Gunman spent a majority of their time at the computers, communicating with their contacts and developing a plan to free the twins, to be implemented upon Jarod’s recovery. Parker could not worry about them too much, having never actually met them, and was as ashamed as she every got about her undeniable disregard for their well-being.
As apprehensive as she was for Jarod, she seldom spoke to him after he regained consciousness. From time to time he caught her eye, and she could see he wanted to speak with her, knew there were many things they needed to work out between them, but aside from the occasional, casual comment she could not bring herself to respond to his silent pleas. As the days oozed past he gained strength, and now could walk about the LGM headquarters for fifteen minutes to half an hour before tiring. He was becoming more and more frustrated with their lack of progress concerning the plan for the twins’ liberation from the Centre, and even more frustrated with the grueling pace of his recovery.
The day inevitably came when Jarod, stubborn as he was, refused to wait any longer whether he was healed or no. Ryker appeared to approve, though he didn’t say anything on the matter and regardless of the fact that he was the only one. On the morning exactly one month after the attack at the Scully residence such a dispute arose among them that the LGM went for a walk, actually leaving the five of them alone with their documents and equipment.
“One month!” Jarod roared. “One month they’ve been back there! I can’t stand the thought of even one day!” He and Ryker stood to one side of the imaginary skirmish line, Mulder and Scully on the other, with Parker seated somewhere in the middle watching the show.
“And we’ll get them out, but you’re not ready to go in there. You’ll be caught.” Scully’s voice was infuriatingly even, and Parker could see Jarod’s blood rising.
“I don’t think you understand.” His tone had dropped, low and deadly. “Do you know what kind of experiments they do on them there? Do you know why they were created!?” Scully said nothing. Mulder shook his head. “Tell them,” he barked, and Ryker actually jumped. When he spoke though, his voice was as dangerous and brooding as his fathers.
“When we’re not doing SIMs, they test our bond. When I was there they would attach electrodes too our bodies and shock us to see if the others reacted when one was shocked. Arin and Luke reacted to each other more than to me, I heard, and when I was being shocked the tests almost killed them.”
“And do you know why,” Jarod cut in, “they haven’t killed me yet? They could have.”
“They almost did,” Mulder deadpanned.
“Yes, but they didn’t. And why? Because even though I’m shoot to kill they can get one more test out of me. The first time I was shot the twins didn’t react. So they tried again, worse this time. To see if they reacted to the father like they reacted to the brother. If Parker was still there they would do the same to her.”
“As long as they’re at the Centre it’s open season on the three of us,” Ryker said, resuming his end of the conversation. “To test the twins they’ll do any number of things to us. You too especially.” He nodded at Jarod and Parker. “They don’t have any data on you yet.”
“They have data on Jarod,” Parker muttered. She couldn’t remember ever being so disturbed…except maybe when she had opened her mother’s grave and found it empty. The feeling here was not so different than that, kin to when Fenigore told her Major Charles killed her mother…information to drive the breath from her lungs.
“Yeah, which means you’re next.” Jarod elbowed the boy in the ribs to silence him, but received only a glare for reply and no respect for his obvious desire for silence on the part of his son. “We have to get them out to save them, and to save ourselves.”
“And if Jarod dies trying?” Mulder asked, breaking his silence. Silence reined for a time, as all present considered the possibilities.
“Then,” Jarod said softly, “I die trying. That’s my family in there.”
“You won’t die Jarod,” Parker rebuked him. “That’s my family too…and I have an idea.”
