WARNING: We're talking MAJOR character death here

Disclaimer: I don't own "The Pretender" or any of its
characters. Thanx for not suing! ~Oriana

*feel free to send feedback*

~~~~~~~~~

The groundskeeper, busy raking up the dead leaves dropped from nearby oak trees, straightened immediately as his watch's alarm sounded. He pressed a button to turn it off, and turned to another man, younger, busy with a pile of leaves a few feet away.

"Leave those," he ordered, dropping his rake.

"Huh?"

"Put down your rake, Adam, we're finished for now."

"But we've still got half the cemetery to do."

"We'll take care of that later. It's time for us to leave now." With a questioning glance, Adam, his first day on the job, obediently let the rake fall from his hands, and followed him. They walked across a few plots, and through a side gate.

"What's going on, Dave?" he asked.

Dave quieted him with a hand, then pulled him behind a tree. A moment later, the sound of leaves crunching under feet caught Adam's attention, and he watched with interest as a woman in her early thirties walked slowly across the cemetery. A flower in her hand, black pants suit, heels and leather trenchcoat; her eyes were covered with chic sunglasses.

"Who's that?" he whispered.

Dave shrugged. "No one knows. Two years ago she just showed up at the boss's office. Shoved a wad of bills at him, promised him more each month on one condition: during her visits, no one else was to be in the cemetery. She comes every day, at 2:30 like clockwork. The agreement was for one hour; she's never stayed less than that, and more often than not it's a hell of a lot longer. It can be as long as three, four hours sometimes."

"What does she do?"

He pointed to a plot, well kept with a fairly new headstone. "There, the grave with just a first name carved on it--she goes there, kneels or sits down, stands once in a while, and just talks."

"You think she's crazy?" Adam asked confidentially.

Dave shook his head thoughtfully. "No...Caught a glimpse of her once, leaning against her car afterwards. She'd taken off her sunglasses, was wipin' her eyes. She didn't look crazy, just sad."

"Everyone who comes here looks sad."

"Not like this. She looked...lost. And accepting, like something had happened, and she knew she couldn't change it, but felt lost anyhow."

He gave a low whistle. "Wonder what happened."

Dave averted his eyes from her. "Don't know. But every night after I see her, I go home and I give my little Susie an extra hug."

~~~~~~~~~

Oblivious to the men observing her across the way, the woman knelt down before the gravestone, and traced the engraved name with two delicate fingers. In a few weeks, fall would be winter, and dusk was coming earlier every day, but she never came without sunglasses, and her outfit was always the same. Some rituals have a purpose.

There was the old sensation, the same one that came back day after day as she stood before him. It still took her breath away every time.

She sat, as she often did, in front of the engraved stone, slid the glasses off, and talked. It wasn't some dire confession; all her sins had been laid out before him long before any of this. No, this was a conversation, a friendly, heartfelt one-sided conversation. Everything was mentioned, from warring countries to the new icecream flavor she'd tried that morning in the park. Each person she knew, and even the ones she'd never spoken to before but passed each day in the halls of her building, were as well known to him as to her. It brought the world to him, and offered her the only small comfort possible at this point.

With a small laugh, she recalled out loud some vague childhood adventure they'd had with paper airplanes. The laughter slowly died away, and with a start, she realized that it was almost dark. She'd been sitting for nearly four hours. Standing, she brushed the dirt and leaves from her black pants. The reality of where she was, and whose grave -not the actual person- she sat in front of, flooded back. She pressed her fingers to her lips, with a sad smile, then pressed her fingers to the name. The shock of touching it closed her eyes, and through shut eyelids escaped two warm tears.

The sunglasses were slid back in place. She studied the gravestone, then gently placed a single white rose on top. The ritual was complete.

"Tomorrow, I promise." Hesitation. "Goodbye, Jarod." Her words were a butterfly's whisper; someone could be standing five feet away, and not hear.

Her imagination added to the sentiment, and on the breeze she could almost hear the whispered reply, "Goodbye, Miss Parker."

~~~~~~~~~

"You're late again," she chastised as Parker closed the door behind herself.

"I know," she answered calmly, taking off her trenchcoat. The woman noticed with a raised eyebrow that Parker was in that same black outfit again. Every time she was late, she had that outfit on. But never when she was on time.

"Have a seat, and we'll get started," she offered, nodding towards the couch. Of all her patients, Miss Parker was the only that actually used it on a weekly basis. After she'd settled on the sofa, Dr. Schmidt reached for a tablet and pen, tucked a stray hair back into place, and turned her attention to Parker.

"So, what shall we discuss this week?" She'd found that it was best for her patient to lead these sessions--Miss Parker didn't handle others being the controlling authority well.

"Can you turn off that light?" she asked, staring at the ceiling.

"Of course," Dr. Schmidt replied, her voice showing her puzzlement, as she reached over and flicked the light switch. "Miss Parker, I'm sensing something different in you. Might I ask what?"

She gave a secretive smile, but it wasn't a happy one. "Doctor, tonight, no questions. In fact, you won't be speaking very much at all."

"All right." She relaxed in her chair, and set the paper aside. "Begin whenever you're ready."

Silence filled the room, interrupted every few moments by a small sound from the grandfather clock in the corner; tick, tick, tick. The room was illuminated by the street lights below, and though there was the normal bustle of busy city nightlife outside, the room had an isolated feel.

"I'm not an only child," she mentioned suddenly. "You didn't know that, did you?" It seemed to be rhetorical, so Dr. Schmidt didn't reply. "I grew up an only child, but I had brothers. Two. One became a serial killer, the other didn't even make it to preschool. I grew up in a place called the Centre...you don't need to know details; let's just say they specialized in deals with the devil." She laughed. "A friend of mine once repeated something to me that he'd told a man a few years before. He said, 'Without demons there could be no angels.' There were enough demons in the Centre to make the whole damn planet holy...I was lonely growing up. My mother died when I was young, and until boarding school my father kept me at home or the Centre, two very isolated places. I did make friends, eventually. There was Timmy -we called him Angelo- and Jarod." A wistful smile. "Jarod...my first kiss, my first true friend. Before the end, we would be the greatest of friends, the greatest of enemies, confidantes, even lovers, thanks to a Centre program when we were young. We knew things no one else outside those walls knew, we experienced things that no one should experience--it was only natural that we'd form a bond..." Parker drifted off into thoughts and memories of her own, while Dr. Schmidt sat and watched intently. Tick, tick...

When she hadn't moved for nearly five minutes, the doctor urged her on. "Something happened," she sensed, "didn't it?"

"Yes." The doctor looked up in surprise. It almost sounded as though Miss Parker was crying, yet she had never seen this woman show any deep emotion.

"Take your time."

The clock continued to tick. Parker's eyes narrowed, as though concentrating harder; she sat up just enough for her shoulders to be level with the arm rest. "There are some things...you just can't forget. Places and events that you can't move past." Her tone deepened, grew angry. "That place was like a reincarnation of hell. The only difference was, we had three devils: my father, my brother, and Raines. The pain unleashed there was...immeasurable. Finally, it just reached a boiling point. My relationship with Jarod at the time was tedious, at best. But when the time came, we all gathered so naturally. It had to be done, and we knew we had to be the ones to do it." A bitter smile spread on her lips, her eyes remained narrow. "We blew it up. Made sure the newest test subjects were safe out of the way, and burned that hell to the ground. Afterwards, we separated again. Sydney, an old friend of mine, reconnected with family; Broots, a co-worker and another friend, started over in Colorado with his little girl. I went to San Francisco, got an apartment, and tried to pretend that it had all been a bad dream. And Jarod...Jarod just kept being Jarod, saving the world one crisis at a time." She sat up completely, brought her knees up under her chin, and looked out the open blinds to the city skyline. "But...we couldn't adjust. The Centre...it eats away at you, until you're just a shell of someone who used to be human. You put all your energy into forcing this illusion, but eventually you're just to tired to hold it up anymore...And your world comes crashing down around you."

Tick, tick. She'd stopped, and Dr. Schmidt snapped out of her observant state. Miss Parker was giving no signs of going on, but she was so enthralled, she was actually considering pushing her patient further with the story. Then, Parker continued.

"Sydney was working as a child psychologist, in New York. A beaten teenager strung out on drugs went after him in a hospital." Her voice was choked up, but she continued. "Half a dozen broken bones, internal bleeding...but it was the skull fractures that killed him instantaneously. Broots wasn't as lucky." She was obviously struggling for control now. "Um, his little girl, Debbie, was riding her bike, and got hit by a car. The severe depression that he had been suffering from since running from the Centre greatly increased, and he began to drink. About a month after her death, he got behind the wheel drunk, and ran off a road in the woods. He was hooked up to machines for a week, in extreme pain, before succumbing to his injuries."

"I'm sorry," she whispered earnestly.

Parker didn't seem to hear her, and continued speaking in a far-off tone. "I think it was Jarod, though, that had the worst time. The Centre was gone, but he still carried this horrible guilt...for the simulations, for his helplessness, for the results...I think he even blamed himself for being the genius they exploited. His superman act continued, but he withdrew from everyone, stopped becoming attached to the people he saved. Sydney and Broots' deaths came, practically one on top of the other, and it was just too much. Helping others wasn't enough therapy anymore, and all of his pushed-down emotions had built up until he couldn't control them any longer. He grew violent, inflicting horrible injuries on the criminals he caught..." Her voice was still sad, but her eyes brightened a bit. "I saw him again, for the first time since the explosion. He followed me into a coffeeshop, and we stayed there the entire day, in a corner to ourselves, just talking...and crying. But it was too much...being near each other was just too intense, so we exchanged cellphone numbers, promised to keep in touch and meant it, and went our separate ways." Tick, tick.

"Oh, god," Dr. Schmidt breathed involuntarily. She felt her own eyes welling up, certain she knew what was next.

"It was...one gunshot wound." Her voice was small, childish, almost disbelieving. "One little bullet. A pretend goes wrong, he gets shot...and dies." A shaky breath. "Everything he endured, the life that was thrown at him...He deserved a better death, than bleeding on a cold cement floor in some old factory in an unfamiliar town. I, um, got the call...exactly twelve minutes after he died. I locked myself in my bathroom, threw up, broke out in a cold sweat, and stayed in there for three days. I was it, you see. The last one...Jarod had always seemed invincible to me, above something as horrible as death...and all it took was a bullet." She sniffed, hastily wiped away tears that were quickly replaced with others. "I don't even remember going to the airport. I shook myself out of my haze, and I was standing at the gate, ticket in hand...And I just kept standing. I didn't get on that plane. My feet wouldn't move, and my mind kept telling me that as long as I didn't go there, he couldn't be dead. As long as I didn't see his body for myself, there was no body, no funeral."

Tick, tick, tick.

"The funeral was at 2:30. I finally got on a plane at one, telling myself over and over that I hadn't ruined everything, that I could still make it in time. Our flight circled over the city for half an hour before landing. I got of that plane, dressed all in black, and ran like hell... When I reached the cemetery...there it was. Freshly made plot, dark soil forming this mound in front of a grey marble headstone. There was just one word on it, his name, Jarod. I, to this day, don't remember making funeral arrangements, but apparently in my haze I did... Bills came a week later proving it. I didn't put a last name because...because who he was, or at least pretended to be, changed week from week. That was his life, and it meant everything to him."

Tick, tick.

"I never left the city again. Called a neighbor, told her to mail the photos on my mantle, and keep everything else. I wanted absolutely no reminder of life before." She looked over with a slight smile, remembering better times. "I never told you about the photos, did I? One was of my mother, holding me as a baby. The other...was taken at this Italian theme restaurant." She laughed. "It was a ridiculous sight. Here it was, the night before our explosive end to the Centre, and where do we plan the final details but at a family fun restaurant. It was Jarod's choice, of course; his attempt to lighten the situation. This annoying photographer refused to leave us alone until we finally agreed to a photo." She frowned. "It's the only time I remember us all ever being together, and smiling."

Tick, tick.

"I go every day to him... Part of it is that I can't -or won't- let go, but mostly...it's to make it up to him. I went to his grave that day, and the minister came up behind me a few minutes later..." Her voice quavered. "No one came. There wasn't anyone to come. He'd never managed to find his family, and nobody from the Centre or his encounters out in the big wide world even knew." She sighed. "And so I go, every day; I change into this same black outfit, wear the same sunglasses, everything just as it had been that day. The only part of my daily life that means anything to me anymore; hell, the only part that I even remember most days. The rest is just going through the motions, but that...is everything."

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

That was it, Dr. Schmidt realized. There was no more. One woman's entire tragic life, summed up in less than half a session. She noted that the Miss Parker she was used to had returned. The woman sat up, smoothed her black clothes; the reddened, watery eyes had disappeared, and her posture was perfect. "Miss Parker," she ventured hesitantly, "I don't want to seem...blunt, or rude, but why are you telling me this? Why now? I've been your psychiatrist for the past year and a half. You come in, week after week, and talk for the entire hour, and yet if I were told to write a paper on you, I wouldn't be able to say a damn thing, beyond the fact that you eat out every day, work out of your home, and bought a new love seat last month. Until now, you've never mentioned a word about your personal life."

Parker smiled. "There's a reason for everything."

"Resolution? Is that it? You came looking to move past your experiences, and are only now comfortable enough around me to do so?"

She threw her head back and laughed. "Dr. Schmidt, I come to you because I can. Every week, for one hour, I have paid permission to sit here and bitch about the trivialities in life that tick me off."

"Then what?" she demanded.

The grin disappeared from Parker's face. "I have to ask you a favor," she replied earnestly.

"A favor?"

"Yesterday was two years, to the day, since Jarod died. Yesterday morning I had a doctor's appointment." Dr. Schmidt's heart jumped into her throat. "They say it's beyond miraculous that I didn't show a single symptom before now. They can't explain it. Whether it's fate or dumb luck, either way I don't really care. The cancer has spread everywhere, and the doctors say I only have a matter of weeks... I'll keep going every day, for as long as I can, but something tells me I'll make it a year."

"I'm...sorry."

"I didn't come here looking for sympathy," she answered matter-of-factly. "My life ended long before this. What I wanted to ask you... I've bought the plot next to Jarod's. There will not be a funeral, I've seen to that. No one would come anyhow, but it seems grossly unjust for me to have a funeral, when Jarod really didn't have even that." She stood, walked around the sofa, pulled up the blinds and stared outside. "I've arranged everything. A flower will arrive daily, and the groundskeepers will have specific instructions to keep everything looking perfect." She thought back to the account Jarod had secretly arranged for her, filled with Centre funds, just days before the explosion. "God knows I've got the money to make it happen." She walked back, and sat again. "I want you to see after things, Dr. Schmidt. I realize this must be an odd request, but you're the only person in this whole city I actually know, and he's worth it. So, please, I'm asking you from the bottom of my heart, do this for me. For him."

Tick, tick.

"All right, Miss Parker," she nodded in a low voice. "You have my word."

"Thank you."

"You still have 20 minutes left of your session. Why don't we just sit here?"

A faint smile. "That'd be nice."

The doctor studied her patient closely, then couldn't resist asking, "How did you manage to carry all of this for so long?"

"Letting go was never an option."

"I see. Still, I can't imagine how you survived it."

Tick, tick, tick...

"I never said I survived."

The End!