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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Disclaimer: see Chapter sixteen
~~~~~~~
To End The Evil
Part 49
Weighting the options
Parker and Ethan walked back into the house.
“Jarod?” Parker called. “Jar, where are you? We have to talk!”
Jarod’s head appeared in the doorway to the living room. “I’m here.”
Only seconds after Jarod had said that, Major Charles came out of the kitchen and went over towards the living room, clearly intending to participate in the conversation.
Parker gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. Then, she drew a deep breath and strolled into the living room.
The Major had taken a seat in an easy chair and Jarod sat at the table on his laptop. Broots sat opposite to him but the moment Parker came into the room; he winced, already anticipating the next fight. He got up quickly and fled the room.
If Parker hadn’t been focused on the argument that lay ahead of them, she would have smiled at the vanishing act of the tech.
But she didn’t smile.
Jarod looked up at her. “Give me a second. I have to finish this and then we can talk.”
She nodded and waited while his fingers flew over the keyboard. Hitting the enter key, he sat back and looked at her expectantly. “Well?”
“We have to talk about what we want to do,” Parker said firmly.
Jarod winced and looked over to his father.
“That’s what we tried to do the last few days but you haven’t exactly been cooperative,” the Major accused sternly.
Parker narrowed her eyes. She swallowed down her anger and looked back at Jarod. “We have to talk and we have to talk about it ‘alone’, Jar!”
Jarod tilted his head and seeing the determination in her eyes, he got up. The Major followed suite, intending to follow the two people wherever they would go to.
“What part of the word ‘alone’ is hard to grasp?” Parker snapped, letting part of her anger shine through.
Now the Majors eyes went small. “I won’t let you make such a complex decision alone,” he stated firmly.
Parker stepped up to him and stared directly into his eyes. “With all due respect, Major. I don’t think it is your place to make that decision,” she said calmly.
Felling the anger boiling in both persons, Jarod stepped in between them. “Dad, she is right; we have to talk - alone. We need to think this through,“ Jarod said determinedly. He had placed himself strategically between Parker and his father with his back to Parker.
“I told you before and I will tell you again. I won’t allow you to make such a decision alone,“ Jarod’s father snarled more towards Parker than towards his son.
Parker gasped behind Jarod’s back and he felt her body tense and push forward. Jarod swiftly turned and put a hand on her shoulder. Her gaze was fixed on his father and she still pushed forward. “Parker!” Jarod snapped. “Let me handle that,” he ordered.
Parker’s eyes flew over to him and she held his gaze. When she saw his serenity and determination, she nodded and backed away.
Jarod turned back towards his father. “We know that you are against it and we will consider it but in the end it is our decision to make,“ Jarod told his father calmly.
“You are not the only people’s lives at stake here,“ the Major snapped.
“Don’t you think I know that,“ Jarod responded, now equally angry but not letting the anger he felt getting the upper hand. “We know that it is a hard decision but it is ‘ours’ to make. We are old enough to take all the facts into consideration and to take the responsibility!”
The Major opened his mouth but he was interrupted by Jarod, “No, don’t say anything else. I’ve had enough of your constant interference. We will make a decision and we will make it with great caution,“ with that, Jarod turned and walked towards Parker, who stood in the doorframe.
Parker nodded at him and they both walked out of the room together. Jarod snatched his jacked on the way and they left the house.
~~~~~~~
Just as Parker had stormed off in front of Ethan only several hours ago, it was now Jarod who stalked through the woods ahead of Parker.
She followed him quietly much the same way Ethan had followed her and waited for the opportune moment to approach him.
The long and determined strides Jarod made clearly showed her just how angry he was. She had long since learned to interpret his body language.
‘Reach out to him, precious. He needs you now,’ her mother’s voice rang in her head suddenly.
Parker quickened her pace and closed the distance between Jarod and herself. “Jarod, wait,“ she called softly.
He stopped dead in his tracks but he didn’t turn around. His hands were clenched tightly at his sides.
Parker walked around him and stood in front of him. His head was turned downward and he didn’t look up at her.
“Jar,“ she soothed and reached out to him.
When she touched his shoulder, he sighed, trying to release some of his anger.
“I know that you are upset but let it go. Your father is worried about his family and nobody can blame him for that,” she said.
Jarod looked up. “I know but he is just so stubborn. I mean, we are not children anymore. We can make our own decisions,“ he voiced his anger.
“Yes, we can and we will. That’s exactly why we are standing here, outside while the rest of our friends are in your house,” Parker stated.
Jarod stayed silent but then he finally nodded and straightened once more. They started walking again, this time slowly and side by side. “Feels good to keep your own father in cheek in some way, doesn’t it?” Parker smiled.
“Yes and no,” Jarod said. “I didn’t want to be that hard but…”
“…he overstepped his boundaries,” Parker finished and Jarod nodded. “Do you know a place where we can sit and talk out here without interference?” she asked.
A small smile spread across his face. “Yes, I do,“ he reached for her hand and placed it in his own. She couldn’t keep in the smile that crept on her face at his touch.
They strolled quietly through the wood on a small path. Parker wouldn’t have found it even if she knew it was there and several times she thought that they had lost it but Jarod walked on confidently. He knew his way around. He led her around dark and overgrown passages through the wood.
“Careful, there is a small slope,“ Jarod told her shortly.
They broke through some bushes and suddenly they were standing in the open. The wood lay behind them and ahead was the lake one could oversee from Jarod’s house.
There was a small beach they were standing on, between the wood and the water.
Jarod took her hand again, which he had let go of before the slope and started to walk along the beach, with her at his side.
Parker was speechless. It was so beautiful and calm here.
After some more minutes Jarod stopped. He sat down on the still warm sand and leaned his back against a big stone. The ease with which he had picked out that stone clearly showed that today was not the first time he sat there. Parker followed his example and sat down next to him.
When Jarod looked at her, she had her eyes closed and her head tilted towards the sun. He smiled gently and did the same.
They sat there for several minutes until Parker looked up again and started the conversation.
“I talked to Ethan,“ she muttered.
Jarod looked over to her and quirked an eyebrow.
“I told him how I feel about all this,” she went on.
Jarod stayed silent and gave her the time to organize her thoughts.
“Well, that’s exaggerating it a bit,“ she laughed silently. “I don’t really know how I feel about it,“ she looked over at Jarod and met his gaze.
“Try to describe it to me,” he suggested gently, looking at her.
“I’m confused. On the one hand, I want the Centre gone and out of our lives forever but on the other hand… I don’t know. It’s so weird,” she shook her head and then looked down at her hands.
“On the other hand, you don’t want to do it. You refrain from doing so,” Jarod stated.
Parker looked up sharply and Jarod smiled sadly. “That’s how I feel,” he explained, looking down on his hand that lay in his lap. “I don’t really understand it myself. For a long time I wanted nothing more than revenge and bring down the Centre but now that I have the chance…,“ this time he tailed of.
“…you can’t do it,“ she finished his sentence. Jarod nodded. “Then we have the same feelings,” Parker conceded and Jarod nodded again.
“The question is what we want to do about it,“ he said, looking up once more and meeting Parker’s gaze.
“I don’t know,” Parker admitted, making a helpless gesture.
“I mean, do we want to live a life far away from the place that hurt us all that time or do we want to try and make something better out of it?” Jarod clarified. He tilted his head
Parker grimaced. “That’s basically the same question Ethan confronted me with earlier. He told me that it was our decision to make what we wanted to do. If we could overcome the anger toward that place and try to make something new and probably something better out of it,” she repeated.
“The place has hurt us so many times but yet…,” Jarod started.
“I’d like to have the chance to make it better,“ she nodded while finishing his sentence once more. “I can understand your father’s point. He has lost two sons to the Centre and his family has been ripped apart. There is so much hurt in his voice when he argues his point,“ she sighed. Parker leaned back and let her head come to rest on the stone they were still propped against.
“We can never make that pain go away,“ Jarod said, averting his gaze from Parker’s profile and looking out over the lake. “It’s done in the past but maybe we can create a better place and help to prevent similar things from happening again.”
“Somehow I would like to try and achieve what Mom never had the chance to do; turn the Centre into a place that brings good and not bad into the world. A place everyone can be proud of; she could be proud of,” she murmured.
“It is an ambitious goal,“ Jarod objected, turning back to her.
“I know and I don’t know if we will be able to reach it,“ she admitted, meeting his eyes.
“Maybe it’s worth a try. Turn the place that has brought so much evil into the world around and let something better arise,” he mumbled and Parker nodded.
“Somehow I don’t like the idea of turning my back toward the Centre. Even if we bring it down, there would be…”, Jarod struggled to find the words, “there would always be a bitter taste, a bad feeling.”
“We wouldn’t have to worry about that if we were close to the Centre or if we were the ones heading it,“ Parker finalized and this time it was again Jarod who nodded.
“What do we want the Centre to become? What kind of work would we want to be done there?” Parker asked.
“The Centre was bound to do research. We should keep it at that. The laboratories are high standard and if we get some more and new and ambitious researchers we can bring much good into the world with it,” Jarod voiced his idea.
Parker pondered that and tilted her head in approval.
“The next question is if we are able to go to the Centre unloaded and without any reservation,” Jarod asked.
Parker looked up and grimaced. She shook her head slightly, biting her lip. “No. But would that speak against our intention? I mean …,” she tailed of.
“We would lose our distance to the theme,“ Jarod objected.
“Yeah, but we would most certainly not make the mistake of letting the Centre glide back into the evil it embodied for so long”, she stated.
Jarod nodded wordlessly at that letting his gaze again come to rest on the surface of the lake that stretched out in front of them.
“Would you be able and willing to go back to the place that held you captive for so long and that still haunts your dreams?” Parker voiced her next question softly.
“If it stands for something better and if the work done there would be used to help people not to hurt them, yes I would!” he said firmly.
“We can assure that as long as we are there and having the things under our control,” Parker said.
Jarod pondered once more. “We all have endured so much through the hands of the people at the top of command in the Centre. Maybe it is time to turn that place into something better. I mean… it is ‘our’ place and destiny to do so,“ he finished.
“We’ll do it then?” Parker asked.
Jarod drew a deep breath and then nodded curtly, locking his gaze on hers. “We do it!”
Parker turned to look at the water again. She closed her eyes.
‘You’re doing the right thing, precious!’ Her mother’s voice called. ‘I am so proud of you!’
Jarod looked closely at her and saw a lone tear making its way down her cheek. He bent over and wiped it away with his thumb. “Hey, what is it, Melina? If you are not certain about this, if you don’t want to do it, we won’t do it,“ he told her worriedly.
She looked up and into his eyes. “No, it’s not that,” she sniffed.
Jarod caressed her cheek gently. “Then what?” his eyes softened further, if that was even possible.
“It’s Mom. She... she just told me how proud she was,” Parker snivelled.
Jarod smiled gently and drew Parker into a hug. Her head lay at his shoulder as soft sobs shook her body.
“Maybe we can make that place into something one can be proud of, into something that ‘we’ can be proud of and that makes all of our suffering in the past worth the pain,“ Parker murmured through her tears.
“We will do everything to make it into that!” Jarod affirmed and Parker nodded against his chest.
A few minutes later when Parker had calmed down, she looked up at Jarod with red rimmed eyes and smiled slightly.
He met her gaze and bent to drop a kiss on her forehead.
Parker shifted and turned in his embrace. Then she leaned back again.
Jarod was still popped against the stone and now Parker was sitting between his legs with her back against his chest. His arms encircled her lightly, holding her close to him. Jarod’s chin rested on her shoulder.
They both enjoyed the company of the other and were content to share that moment of calm and companionship with the other.
Both their thoughts were silently focused on the other, focused on their feelings toward each other. They weren’t quiet ready to express these feelings yet but they weren’t denying them to themselves anymore.
They had come a long way to reach this point in their relationship and they both didn’t dare to reach for more that fast. They had been through so much good and bad together and both were hopeful to reach out for more in time.
To be continued…
~~~~~~~
Part 49
Weighting the options
Parker and Ethan walked back into the house.
“Jarod?” Parker called. “Jar, where are you? We have to talk!”
Jarod’s head appeared in the doorway to the living room. “I’m here.”
Only seconds after Jarod had said that, Major Charles came out of the kitchen and went over towards the living room, clearly intending to participate in the conversation.
Parker gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. Then, she drew a deep breath and strolled into the living room.
The Major had taken a seat in an easy chair and Jarod sat at the table on his laptop. Broots sat opposite to him but the moment Parker came into the room; he winced, already anticipating the next fight. He got up quickly and fled the room.
If Parker hadn’t been focused on the argument that lay ahead of them, she would have smiled at the vanishing act of the tech.
But she didn’t smile.
Jarod looked up at her. “Give me a second. I have to finish this and then we can talk.”
She nodded and waited while his fingers flew over the keyboard. Hitting the enter key, he sat back and looked at her expectantly. “Well?”
“We have to talk about what we want to do,” Parker said firmly.
Jarod winced and looked over to his father.
“That’s what we tried to do the last few days but you haven’t exactly been cooperative,” the Major accused sternly.
Parker narrowed her eyes. She swallowed down her anger and looked back at Jarod. “We have to talk and we have to talk about it ‘alone’, Jar!”
Jarod tilted his head and seeing the determination in her eyes, he got up. The Major followed suite, intending to follow the two people wherever they would go to.
“What part of the word ‘alone’ is hard to grasp?” Parker snapped, letting part of her anger shine through.
Now the Majors eyes went small. “I won’t let you make such a complex decision alone,” he stated firmly.
Parker stepped up to him and stared directly into his eyes. “With all due respect, Major. I don’t think it is your place to make that decision,” she said calmly.
Felling the anger boiling in both persons, Jarod stepped in between them. “Dad, she is right; we have to talk - alone. We need to think this through,“ Jarod said determinedly. He had placed himself strategically between Parker and his father with his back to Parker.
“I told you before and I will tell you again. I won’t allow you to make such a decision alone,“ Jarod’s father snarled more towards Parker than towards his son.
Parker gasped behind Jarod’s back and he felt her body tense and push forward. Jarod swiftly turned and put a hand on her shoulder. Her gaze was fixed on his father and she still pushed forward. “Parker!” Jarod snapped. “Let me handle that,” he ordered.
Parker’s eyes flew over to him and she held his gaze. When she saw his serenity and determination, she nodded and backed away.
Jarod turned back towards his father. “We know that you are against it and we will consider it but in the end it is our decision to make,“ Jarod told his father calmly.
“You are not the only people’s lives at stake here,“ the Major snapped.
“Don’t you think I know that,“ Jarod responded, now equally angry but not letting the anger he felt getting the upper hand. “We know that it is a hard decision but it is ‘ours’ to make. We are old enough to take all the facts into consideration and to take the responsibility!”
The Major opened his mouth but he was interrupted by Jarod, “No, don’t say anything else. I’ve had enough of your constant interference. We will make a decision and we will make it with great caution,“ with that, Jarod turned and walked towards Parker, who stood in the doorframe.
Parker nodded at him and they both walked out of the room together. Jarod snatched his jacked on the way and they left the house.
~~~~~~~
Just as Parker had stormed off in front of Ethan only several hours ago, it was now Jarod who stalked through the woods ahead of Parker.
She followed him quietly much the same way Ethan had followed her and waited for the opportune moment to approach him.
The long and determined strides Jarod made clearly showed her just how angry he was. She had long since learned to interpret his body language.
‘Reach out to him, precious. He needs you now,’ her mother’s voice rang in her head suddenly.
Parker quickened her pace and closed the distance between Jarod and herself. “Jarod, wait,“ she called softly.
He stopped dead in his tracks but he didn’t turn around. His hands were clenched tightly at his sides.
Parker walked around him and stood in front of him. His head was turned downward and he didn’t look up at her.
“Jar,“ she soothed and reached out to him.
When she touched his shoulder, he sighed, trying to release some of his anger.
“I know that you are upset but let it go. Your father is worried about his family and nobody can blame him for that,” she said.
Jarod looked up. “I know but he is just so stubborn. I mean, we are not children anymore. We can make our own decisions,“ he voiced his anger.
“Yes, we can and we will. That’s exactly why we are standing here, outside while the rest of our friends are in your house,” Parker stated.
Jarod stayed silent but then he finally nodded and straightened once more. They started walking again, this time slowly and side by side. “Feels good to keep your own father in cheek in some way, doesn’t it?” Parker smiled.
“Yes and no,” Jarod said. “I didn’t want to be that hard but…”
“…he overstepped his boundaries,” Parker finished and Jarod nodded. “Do you know a place where we can sit and talk out here without interference?” she asked.
A small smile spread across his face. “Yes, I do,“ he reached for her hand and placed it in his own. She couldn’t keep in the smile that crept on her face at his touch.
They strolled quietly through the wood on a small path. Parker wouldn’t have found it even if she knew it was there and several times she thought that they had lost it but Jarod walked on confidently. He knew his way around. He led her around dark and overgrown passages through the wood.
“Careful, there is a small slope,“ Jarod told her shortly.
They broke through some bushes and suddenly they were standing in the open. The wood lay behind them and ahead was the lake one could oversee from Jarod’s house.
There was a small beach they were standing on, between the wood and the water.
Jarod took her hand again, which he had let go of before the slope and started to walk along the beach, with her at his side.
Parker was speechless. It was so beautiful and calm here.
After some more minutes Jarod stopped. He sat down on the still warm sand and leaned his back against a big stone. The ease with which he had picked out that stone clearly showed that today was not the first time he sat there. Parker followed his example and sat down next to him.
When Jarod looked at her, she had her eyes closed and her head tilted towards the sun. He smiled gently and did the same.
They sat there for several minutes until Parker looked up again and started the conversation.
“I talked to Ethan,“ she muttered.
Jarod looked over to her and quirked an eyebrow.
“I told him how I feel about all this,” she went on.
Jarod stayed silent and gave her the time to organize her thoughts.
“Well, that’s exaggerating it a bit,“ she laughed silently. “I don’t really know how I feel about it,“ she looked over at Jarod and met his gaze.
“Try to describe it to me,” he suggested gently, looking at her.
“I’m confused. On the one hand, I want the Centre gone and out of our lives forever but on the other hand… I don’t know. It’s so weird,” she shook her head and then looked down at her hands.
“On the other hand, you don’t want to do it. You refrain from doing so,” Jarod stated.
Parker looked up sharply and Jarod smiled sadly. “That’s how I feel,” he explained, looking down on his hand that lay in his lap. “I don’t really understand it myself. For a long time I wanted nothing more than revenge and bring down the Centre but now that I have the chance…,“ this time he tailed of.
“…you can’t do it,“ she finished his sentence. Jarod nodded. “Then we have the same feelings,” Parker conceded and Jarod nodded again.
“The question is what we want to do about it,“ he said, looking up once more and meeting Parker’s gaze.
“I don’t know,” Parker admitted, making a helpless gesture.
“I mean, do we want to live a life far away from the place that hurt us all that time or do we want to try and make something better out of it?” Jarod clarified. He tilted his head
Parker grimaced. “That’s basically the same question Ethan confronted me with earlier. He told me that it was our decision to make what we wanted to do. If we could overcome the anger toward that place and try to make something new and probably something better out of it,” she repeated.
“The place has hurt us so many times but yet…,” Jarod started.
“I’d like to have the chance to make it better,“ she nodded while finishing his sentence once more. “I can understand your father’s point. He has lost two sons to the Centre and his family has been ripped apart. There is so much hurt in his voice when he argues his point,“ she sighed. Parker leaned back and let her head come to rest on the stone they were still propped against.
“We can never make that pain go away,“ Jarod said, averting his gaze from Parker’s profile and looking out over the lake. “It’s done in the past but maybe we can create a better place and help to prevent similar things from happening again.”
“Somehow I would like to try and achieve what Mom never had the chance to do; turn the Centre into a place that brings good and not bad into the world. A place everyone can be proud of; she could be proud of,” she murmured.
“It is an ambitious goal,“ Jarod objected, turning back to her.
“I know and I don’t know if we will be able to reach it,“ she admitted, meeting his eyes.
“Maybe it’s worth a try. Turn the place that has brought so much evil into the world around and let something better arise,” he mumbled and Parker nodded.
“Somehow I don’t like the idea of turning my back toward the Centre. Even if we bring it down, there would be…”, Jarod struggled to find the words, “there would always be a bitter taste, a bad feeling.”
“We wouldn’t have to worry about that if we were close to the Centre or if we were the ones heading it,“ Parker finalized and this time it was again Jarod who nodded.
“What do we want the Centre to become? What kind of work would we want to be done there?” Parker asked.
“The Centre was bound to do research. We should keep it at that. The laboratories are high standard and if we get some more and new and ambitious researchers we can bring much good into the world with it,” Jarod voiced his idea.
Parker pondered that and tilted her head in approval.
“The next question is if we are able to go to the Centre unloaded and without any reservation,” Jarod asked.
Parker looked up and grimaced. She shook her head slightly, biting her lip. “No. But would that speak against our intention? I mean …,” she tailed of.
“We would lose our distance to the theme,“ Jarod objected.
“Yeah, but we would most certainly not make the mistake of letting the Centre glide back into the evil it embodied for so long”, she stated.
Jarod nodded wordlessly at that letting his gaze again come to rest on the surface of the lake that stretched out in front of them.
“Would you be able and willing to go back to the place that held you captive for so long and that still haunts your dreams?” Parker voiced her next question softly.
“If it stands for something better and if the work done there would be used to help people not to hurt them, yes I would!” he said firmly.
“We can assure that as long as we are there and having the things under our control,” Parker said.
Jarod pondered once more. “We all have endured so much through the hands of the people at the top of command in the Centre. Maybe it is time to turn that place into something better. I mean… it is ‘our’ place and destiny to do so,“ he finished.
“We’ll do it then?” Parker asked.
Jarod drew a deep breath and then nodded curtly, locking his gaze on hers. “We do it!”
Parker turned to look at the water again. She closed her eyes.
‘You’re doing the right thing, precious!’ Her mother’s voice called. ‘I am so proud of you!’
Jarod looked closely at her and saw a lone tear making its way down her cheek. He bent over and wiped it away with his thumb. “Hey, what is it, Melina? If you are not certain about this, if you don’t want to do it, we won’t do it,“ he told her worriedly.
She looked up and into his eyes. “No, it’s not that,” she sniffed.
Jarod caressed her cheek gently. “Then what?” his eyes softened further, if that was even possible.
“It’s Mom. She... she just told me how proud she was,” Parker snivelled.
Jarod smiled gently and drew Parker into a hug. Her head lay at his shoulder as soft sobs shook her body.
“Maybe we can make that place into something one can be proud of, into something that ‘we’ can be proud of and that makes all of our suffering in the past worth the pain,“ Parker murmured through her tears.
“We will do everything to make it into that!” Jarod affirmed and Parker nodded against his chest.
A few minutes later when Parker had calmed down, she looked up at Jarod with red rimmed eyes and smiled slightly.
He met her gaze and bent to drop a kiss on her forehead.
Parker shifted and turned in his embrace. Then she leaned back again.
Jarod was still popped against the stone and now Parker was sitting between his legs with her back against his chest. His arms encircled her lightly, holding her close to him. Jarod’s chin rested on her shoulder.
They both enjoyed the company of the other and were content to share that moment of calm and companionship with the other.
Both their thoughts were silently focused on the other, focused on their feelings toward each other. They weren’t quiet ready to express these feelings yet but they weren’t denying them to themselves anymore.
They had come a long way to reach this point in their relationship and they both didn’t dare to reach for more that fast. They had been through so much good and bad together and both were hopeful to reach out for more in time.
To be continued…
