“At the risk of sounding like a broken record,” Jarod said with some delicacy, “this is going to be okay.”

“You aren't surprised,” Parker said sourly, and directed a murmured obscenity at the screaming kettle

“I was,” Jarod offered apologetically, removing the kettle from the stove, and pouring its contents over the loose Assam that Parker had spooned into a small porcelain teapot. “I think you were, too.”

“Were?” Parker repeated indignantly. “That's charitable of you. I still am.”

“Give yourself some time,” Jarod advised softly.

“Mhm, right, because I didn't just give myself an entire decade's worth of time,” she exclaimed in a tight, quiet voice. With a mirthless snort she added, “I shouldn't be confused. I didn't leave because my feelings for you changed.”

“No, but you didn't expect that we'd both still feel this way,” Jarod said, offering her a warm smile. “It's like you never left.”

“It is,” Parker agreed. “And it isn't. Ten years,” she murmured incredulously, depositing herself into a chair.

“You're not beholden to arbitrary timelines, and we don't measure relationships with time. Michele knows that. You know it, too. It's just time. And you would make the same decision again,” Jarod added with a knowing smile. “Wouldn't you?”

Parker considered Jarod's question, observed his slow advance in silence. 

“This isn't really all that complicated. It's been a stressful, and, at times frightening, several weeks,” Jarod said with some solemnity, installing himself into the chair opposite Parker, “and between almost losing Sydney, celebrating his recovery, learning more about your past, and discovering that you're going to be a Godparent maybe you haven't had an opportunity to consider what would have happened had you'd stayed.”

Parker's face twisted in confusion. “Stayed?” she asked.

“If you'd stayed with me that morning.”

“I wouldn't have murdered a man,” she answered tartly, sounding more querulous than she'd intended, “for starters.”

“Instead, he would have gone to Raines, and while we slept sweepers would have completely surrounded the house. I know we talked about visiting Côte d'Ivoire, but- uh not in handcuffs and blindfolds, not as prisoners.They would have used you to control me.” Jarod disclosed to Parker as delicately as was possible. He, nevertheless, noted her infinitesimal reflexive recoil.

“And used me to control you,” he continued carefully. “I don't want to think about what they would have done to you, or what I would have done for the Centre to ensure you weren't harmed; there is nothing I wouldn't have done to protect you.”

Parker considered Jarod's words, frowned.

“You saved our lives, and hundreds of thousands more,” Jarod asserted in a voice that was grave, oracular. “We're still here. It cost us ten years- is one of way looking at it.

Another way of looking at is it only cost us ten years, not our lives. I won't say we were lucky, I won't lie and say it didn't hurt. Considering all that the Centre has taken from us, all that they could have taken, the number of lives that could have been lost, and that we're on speaking terms again ten years was a pretty good bargain. It wasn't some strange coincidence, was it?” 

Parker's frown deepened. “What wasn't?”

“That you needed to leave,” Jarod answered solemnly, “at exactly the same moment a sweeper was watching us.”

Parker widened her eyes, and in a strained voice, said, “That sounds a helluva lot less crazy than it ever did inside my head.”

“It isn't crazy. Both your mother and our brother-”

“I'm not like them,” Parker said hastily.

Jarod silently studied Parker for several moments, and said, thickly, “You're afraid that you're like them.”

“No,” Parker asserted placidly. “I--- yes, I was. You're not wrong. I'm not like them. It hasn't happened again,” she clarified. “Sometimes I wonder if it happened at all, if I was crazy.”

“You tried to tell me. Hundreds of times. Didn't you?”

“Not about this. The timing seemed like more of a warning than the-- the warning. I wanted to trust you, and I wanted to believe you were right, that everything would be normal once we were together, and out of the states. I tried to believe you. I attributed the voices and the confusion to self-sabotage, Centre training, tried to ignore it.”

“Until you couldn't.”

“Yeah,” Parker said with a sheepish grimace and an accompanying hollow laugh. “Until then,” she agreed with a nearly imperceptible nod, and succeeded in silencing the brutal self-mocking and the award for worst-timing-ever goes to-

“I started thinking about how unhappy Mom was, and-- what happened the last time I decided to leave the Centre.”

“It makes sense that you'd think of Thomas on the eve of leaving the Centre.”

“This was - it was different. It was like I was reliving it again. But with you. Only,” Parker expelled a breath, quickly drew another, and rose unhurriedly, ignoring Jarod's expression of concern.

Jarod became disoriented briefly, recalling his final conversation with Catherine, watching her rise from the sofa, turn away, deliver the terrible news. Like mother, like-

“Only I was holding the gun, and you were--” Parker's voice dissolved to suggestive silence.

“Dead,” Jarod said when it became clear that Parker couldn't.

“That's why I left,” she announced after several moments, folding her arms across her chest. “Why I didn't come back.”

Jarod's brow creased. “That wasn't the inner sense.”

“I know that now. It wasn't even the aversion torture and Centre training. It was a memory, but you converted the files; you knew before I did.”

Jarod rose impulsively, and observed as Parker swiveled, and met his gaze.

“What?” She asked.

“Memory,” Jarod stammered. “What do you mean by that? How can you remember something that hasn't happened? Uh- I'm sorry. Yes, I converted the flies,” Jarod explained hastily, pushing a hand through his hair. “You have the only copies.”

Parker absorbed Jarod's words with a blank stare, and after a moment, answered him with an expression of resignation, “Raines called it NeuroReality. He talked for hours about bilateral cochlear implants, engaging all of the sensory cortices, and,” she added with a dismissive wave of hand, “the typical Raines masturbatory drivel.

He touted it as painlessly invasive biotech-medicine, was adamant that the virtual become indistinguishable from the real. It was indistinguishable. He somehow generated a virtual you that was real enough to kill.” Parker shook her head. “I wasn't aware that the technology even existed then.”

“It didn't exist. Not officially. That project was conceived exclusively to save lives and improve quality of life,” Jarod explained with some effort, strangling on remorse. “By me,” he confessed.

Parker dropped her arms to her sides, recoiled from Jarod's words. “I thought you might say that. Mm,” she added in a low murmur, widening her eyes as she spoke, “really hoped you wouldn't.”

“I didn't know that Raines was going to twist my work into a tool of torture, and use it to hurt you. I wanted to save lives,” Jarod tearfully insisted when Parker advanced. “I believed it would save lives.”

Parker lifted her hand to Jarod's bicep, felt him stiffen beneath her touch, and realized that he—Mister This Isn't Really All That Complicated—had been anticipating her fists instead, and he refused to even attempt to shield himself, as if he believed he deserved to be punished, as if it were somehow possible for anyone to punish him more than he punished himself.

“It did save lives,” Parker insisted softly. “Yours. Mine. Hundreds of thousands. We're here---and do I have to repeat everything you just said, verbatim? What?” Parker asked suddenly, intrigued by Jarod's inscrutable gaze.

“I spent years wondering why you left me,” Jarod answered in a tight, hoarse voice. “Now that I know the truth I- I understand why you had to leave, but I'm having difficulty comprehending how you were able to share your life with me, even briefly, and,” he continued with a slow head shake that dislodged the tears standing in his eyes, “and how I could possibly possess the audacity to ever consider asking you to do it again.”

“Then it's a damn good thing,” Parker asserted resolutely, “that I'm not waiting for you to ask.”