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“Knight?”
It’s Parker. Maybe that should surprise her but for some reason it doesn’t.
She doesn’t know how she feels about him being up here looking for her so she stays silent, not sure she would be able to reply even if she wanted to.
Then a shadow falls over her and there he is.
“Knight.”
Her gaze flicks to meet his and back down, seeing the concern there but not really able to process it.
There’s a beat then he sits down at her side with a gentle ‘oof’, not so close that they’re touching but near enough that all she’d have to do is reach out and he would be there.
For a while, they sit in silence, staring out at the landscape.
“As views go, it’s an alright one, isn’t it?” Parker comments eventually.
Jess supposes he’s right in a way, the stadium, the far-off rumble of traffic, the water, it’s reassuring. Familiar.
But she doesn’t really consider the view when she’s out here.
This is her place, as morbid as it may be, to go when everything is getting a bit too much and she just needs a little space. Usually, she does find her way down to the morgue after a while but this is her space to decompress.
“I’m not here for the view,” she hears herself saying, her voice sounding distant in her ears.
“No?” out of the corner of her eye, she sees Parker turn to her, then he turns away again, shaking his head, “no, you’re here to escape. Not forever but, for a while.”
He sounds understanding. Far too understanding. Not for the first time, she’s curious about Parker and everything that’s happened in his past that he doesn’t seem keen to share.
There are ghosts in his past, just as there are in hers.
So many ghosts, regrets, failings.
Quietly, she admits, “I forgot how much that takes out of me.”
How exhausting it is, emotionally and physically. How the memories linger way past when the effects of the adrenaline fade.
“What, negotiations?”
How everything can go wrong from one second to the next.
“Hostage situations, being directly responsible for a life. I used to do it all the time but now I’ve taken a step back from it… I couldn’t see how much harm it was doing me.”
The carrying the weight of every single life and every single decision made by other people.
Feeling the responsibility so deeply and only just stopping the guilt of failure from dragging her down.
“Just because something is high reward, doesn’t mean it’s not high stress-” his voice brings her out of her thoughts- “for what it’s worth, Jess, I’m proud of your work today.”
The genuine quality to his words has her properly meeting his eye for the first time since he’d appeared.
She swallows, not sure how to take the sentiment because… it might be everything she’s ever needed to hear, even if she hadn’t realised it until this moment.
Maybe all she needs – as much as she’s loathed to rely on other people’s validation – is to be told she’s doing a good job. That she’s not fucking everything up. That she doesn’t need to carry this weight around constantly.
As if he can hear her thoughts, he continues, “I’m proud of your work every day. And that won’t change if you need to take a step away from negotiations for good.”
She has to look away at that. The release from the burden means more to her than she could ever say but it’s never going to be that simple.
“It’s impossible to step away for good. I thought I was gone but something always happens.”
Even though she’s a field agent now, she’ll always be a hostage negotiator at heart. When things happen in the heat of the moment because if she goes, those lives are on her no matter what happens.
And if she stays…
“A simple warrant becoming a potential suicide, a family dinner becoming unstable, a knife being held to a friend’s throat,” she lists dully, staring up at the sky, “it becomes personal so easily.”
A routine warrant becoming the day that your entire family dies. A past failure putting your own sister in danger. The way she bottles everything up so tightly that it might seem like she doesn’t care anymore but she couldn’t stop caring if she tried, it’s relentless.
Time and time again, she comes up against these situations, time and time again she rides the waves until they flatten out and she can shakily scramble to her feet once more.
“And if it’s not, then I just start going through the motions-“ she’s going through the motions now, talking without purpose or direction- “I know what I need to do and I know what I need to protect myself but then I can’t break out of it. I’m just stuck there, in protection mode.”
She’s stuck there now. She can’t get the feeling into her voice, can’t make her words or her body feel like her own.
“And what do you need to break you out of it?”
His voice is kind. It’s something that’s always struck her about Parker, he’s so many layers of enigma but one thing that’s always, always been clear: he’s kind.
And he somehow believes in them all so much more than they’ll ever truly be able to believe in themselves.
She takes a long breath and turns to him, answering, “Anything to prove I’m really here and it’s really over.”
For a moment, he simply frowns. Then he leans over and pulls her into a tight hug.
At first, she tenses at the unfamiliarity but, feeling the reassuring pressure across her entire body, she melts into it, her head falling to rest on his shoulder as she forces herself to breathe.
To breathe because this is real and she’s sat on the roof with Parker and he’s holding her and he’s proud of her and today is over and she might not be able to run from ever negotiating again but today was successful and he’s proud of her.
They stay like that for a while until he offers an awkward little pat to her back and pulls away.
“Come on, let’s get you some tea,“ he stands and stretches out his legs with a grimace, adding as an afterthought, “and I have doughnuts on my desk.”
Jumping up next to him, she grins, the motion not feeling quite real but not entirely fake either.
“Ooh, I have never knowingly said no to doughnuts!” he chuckles at that and she ducks her head, quietly adding, “thank you, Parker.”
He smiles, kind and genuine and proud, “Anytime, Jess.”