Title: Surrender

Author: BuffyAngel68

Rating: Soft R for implied suicide

Summary: What if Jarod and Parker happened to hear the same song at the same time and it seduced them both to give up the war...

Disclaimer: I don't own them. If I did, this is absolutely not the way I'd have it end, but the song "My Immortal" by Evanescence (not mine either) has been haunting me for weeks now and I couldn't let this plot bunny go. Or it wouldn't let me go. Same result.... grab the Kleenex.

----------------------------------------------------------

I'm so tired of being here

Suppressed by all my childish fears

Slowly, Parker stumbled through Jarod's former room, clutching the nearly empty bottle of sloshing amber liquid to her chest. Suddenly she wished she'd never turned on the small clock radio beside his bed. He'd only been allowed the luxury in the last year or so of his confinement at the Centre.... Confinement? She examined the word and rejected it. Employment... yes, that was better. Employment....

Tugging her mind away from uncomfortable thoughts, she refocused on the music. She never should have bothered with it, but the silence had been oppressive when she'd entered and she felt the need to lift that fog somehow. Ergo, music.... except it had turned out to be a very bad idea. The current song was hitting far too close to home....

And if you have to leave,

I wish that you would just leave

Because your presence still lingers here

And it won't leave me alone

His presence.... if she let herself think about it, which she did as little as possible, she realized that his presence was a large part of what made this seemingly cheery room so.... so darkly distressing. She assumed he must have had some happy moments in this bright space but all she could feel was his anger, his depression.... his pain. On top of her own sorrow and the alcohol she'd consumed the weight was just on the thin edge of being too much....

These wounds won't seem to heal, This pain is just too real....

Wounds... like her ulcer, like her mother's loss, like her inability to make any move at all away from the life her father had indoctrinated her into. Which led inevitably to thoughts of Tommy....

... But now I'm bound by

The life you left behind....

Was she? Was she really? She startled herself by laughing softly. There was no real humor in it, but still... it was something. Though not without a struggle, she managed to make it to his old bed and sink down onto it. Fumbling with chilled, numbed fingers, she dug in her pocket and emerged with a small, plastic amber tube that rattled ominously as she worked the white cap off and let it fall to the floor. Fiercely, she clutched the tube until she could feel it.... until it stopped making that awful noise. Ha! She had some strength left, obviously. Bound? Her? Not by anyone or anything.... not anymore.....

Your face it haunts

My once pleasant thoughts and dreams

Your voice it chased away

All the sanity in me....

What made him think he had the right to call her night after night.... to demand things from her.... demand emotions and actions she didn't have the courage to follow through on? She almost wished she could listen.... could see his face the next time he called and got no answer....

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone

But though you're still with me

I've been alone all along......

Popping two of the tranquilizers, she washed them down with a brief sip of the whiskey, only enough to escort the pills down her throat. After all, there were eight more capsules to swallow and she'd gone a bit overboard with the liquor earlier.... not much left.... but enough to do the job properly.

-----------------------------------------

I'm so tired of being here

Suppressed by all my childish fears

What had he been thinking... did he really want Sydney to find him like this? The song.... that was what had put him in this black mood. He reached over to change the station, but as the words spooled out, his hand hovered over the cheap plastic dial, hesitating.... No. The song was the catalyst, but the past five years were the actual reason he was sitting on the edge of a bathtub in a run-down motel with... this shiny release valve in his hand. Five years and the memories and the constant, unrelenting agony....

These wounds won't seem to heal

This pain is just too real....

He'd read about people who did this to themselves.... by mental health professionals, it was considered a cry for help. A potential first step on the road to an eventual attempt at killing oneself.... he'd been doing it for weeks and he hadn't seen the truth of that until today.... until the damn music. The lyrics were wrong. The wounds had healed at first. That was when he wasn't cutting two and three times a day... and sometimes forgetting to clean and bandage his arm the way he should. And he was doing it because the pain was too real. It was real and alive inside him and the sting of the metal swiping across and through his skin made his heart and his head shut up for a while. The interval of relief was getting shorter and shorter, though....

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears

When you screamed I'd fight away all of your fears

And I've held your hand through all of these years

He had done that for her, gladly. When they were young he worshipped her.... would have done anything to protect her, to be the one that held her after seeing her mother die.... but they hadn't let him go to her. No.. not they. He. Sydney had pulled him away, even though he knew what they meant to each other. He would gladly dry her tears and fight whatever stood in his way if it meant she wouldn't ever have to be afraid again.... but all his attempts at long-distance hand-holding and nudging had been less than useless. Even face to face he hadn't been able to break through her conditioning.... through the lies she'd been hand-fed for so many years.

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone

But though you're still with me

I've been alone all along......

With a frustrated sigh, he made another shallow cut on his forearm, then laid the x-acto blade on the nearby sink. It wasn't working anymore..... it wasn't enough. He had to go deeper. Besides, if he was truly alone.... if he'd never be able to stop and rest for more than a few days, then what was he waiting for anyway? No better time than now to slip under their radar once and for all. He had a brief moment of panic when the procedure escaped him, but it passed and he remembered. Warm water made it less painful.... twisting, he dropped the rubber plug into the drain and started the water flowing, adjusting the temperature until it felt right. The tub wasn't exactly sanitary, but he didn't think it mattered all that much. Once he got started... he wasn't likely to be paying attention to cleanliness.

-------------------------------

{I told you not to give up.... why did you give up?}

"Faith?"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------

END