The present

…the realization then hit him.

“Lyle is the father…isn’t he?”

The words were spoken softly, with a slight mixture of shock and sympathy barely audible.

He could see her shoulders slumping ever so slightly, before she turned around to face him. The flames of the fireplace edged against the backdrop to emphasize the emotions running behind her eyes. It was all that he needed to confirm the horrible truth.

She did not say anything, tried a few times, but nothing was forthcoming. Instead she just stared at him with haunting eyes.

He did not know how to respond, all he could think of was, “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t…” she whispered and held up an unsteady hand, almost like she was trying to block out the exposed truth laying between them. “I don’t want nor need your pity.”

“Parker…” he said and took a step closer, wanting to do something to take away the intense pain he could sense radiating from her.

It was too much for her. She turned around and ran out of the open door leading to the outside. She barely managed to take a few steps before collapsing to her knees as bile rose forcible up her throat.

He reached her side as the last trembles racked down her back. At first he had to strain his ears to hear the whispered words, which gradually became more audible as she regained a bit of her former composure.

“Do you now understand…I can’t be what you want me to be, Jarod…not anymore? I can’t be a mother to Michael, a daughter to Sydney or…” A soft sob interrupted her words.

He remained rigid as granite, unable to fathom the true extent of the horrors that the woman in front of him had to endure because of him. He dreaded the words that were sure to follow.

“I had allowed myself to trust you again, Jarod. I truly believed in your promises of a better future. When I passed Michael to you through the open vent and was caught before I could follow, I knew that you would come back for me.”

His mind drifted back to that day…to the day that hunter and huntress finally came together under a common purpose – the rescue of a son, already being manipulated by the Centre to follow in the father’s footsteps.

Two years before

Sirens…

The harsh sound of closing doors…

Running…

A painful throat from all the exertion, an unconscious little body in his arms, protectively held against his chest…

A woman behind him, urging him to hurry as they could hear footsteps and angry voices getting ever so closer…

An apparent dead-end, blanketed in shadows, but instead it was an intended opening that led them into the Centre and was supposed to be their way back to freedom…

He quickly handed the body to her, reached up and pulled himself up into the open vent. He reached back to take their son back and was just about to help her up, when a loud, “STOP” echoed from the corner of the passage that they had barely passed a minute ago, followed by the sound of the safety being removed from various guns.

Instinctively he drew back into the shadows; they both had agreed that the rescue of their son was to take precedence above anything else.

She turned around to face the new arrivals, raised her hands and took a few steps forward, shielding the hiding spot in the process.

The guns parted to allow a man, very similar in appearance to the woman, to pass through.

“Well, well, well…” the man uttered, with a sinister smile splattered across his face, “if it ain’t my dear ol’ sis that the men have been chasing all along.”

“Lyle,” she acknowledged him with a nod of a head, her passive face and voice refusing to portray the fear she felt for the safety of Jarod and their son.

The smile disappeared. “Where are they?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Don’t play coy with me, sis; you’ve been picked up on multiple cameras. Tell me where Jarod and the boy are and I might just consider going easy on you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t,” again the ominous smile. Silently he took a gun from the closest guard and pointed it directly to her head.

“I’m giving you one last chance.”

“And what? Shoot me? Despite your notions of grandeur Lyle, not even you have the authorization to terminate a red file.”

“You forget one thing, Ms Parker, eventually anybody can outlive their usefulness to the Centre…even you…now please turn around and get to your knees.”

The instruction made the hair rose on Jarod’s arms, still he could not – would not -, believe that the Centre would authorize lethal action.

The suddenness must have stunned her too, because at first there was no forthcoming action.

“Turn around, sis…”

Although he could see them clearly, Jarod knew that there was no way that anybody, even her, could see him hiding in the shadows, still the last thing that he saw, before his whole world came crushing down, was her face lifting in his direction and her lips forming the words, “I love you.”

The Present

“Even…even after the first time…” her words forced his mind back to the present. He closed his eyes for a second upon hearing her words, fully aware of the meaning.

“I still believed that you were trying to find a way to free me, to rescue me.”

“I thought you were dead for so long…” He knew his words had no meaning, had no way to undo the past, still he could not stop himself from saying them.

Her tear stricken face turned around, “I am dead, Jarod. My soul slowly rot away every time that he entered my cell to finally extinguish the day I gave birth to…”

Xxx

The Beginning

(A few months after Island of the Haunted)

He wanted to touch her, to caress the exposed skin of her shoulder, to trail a line down her bare back, but he knew better. Even after having just made love to her – for the very first time – certain things, certain emotions were still off limit.

“It’s time for me to go,” she whispered and proceeded to get out of bed.

“Please don’t go,” he knew he was begging, pleading, but at that moment could not care.

She uttered an audible sigh of impatience. “We had a deal, Jarod…” she turned to face him, “one day…only one night to give free rain to this …this thing we have between us…nothing more.”

He reached out a hand to grasp her arm, “But…what about us?” He could not go back to the way it was before.

For a moment, just a split-second her eyes connected with his and he could see fleeting moment of reluctance and something else in them, before it came clouded again in coldness. Forcible removing her arm from his grip, she turned her back towards him and hurriedly started collecting her clothes that was laying in disarray all over the floor.

“There never can be an ‘us’, Jarod…we agreed on that…you run and I chase, that had been decided for us a long time ago.”