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Jess isn’t sure what makes her come back to the office. For all intents and purposes, she’s done for the day and she probably needs an early night.
But the thought of going home and sitting in the dark until she falls into a restless sleep feels as unappealing as dragging herself out somewhere so here she is. The office is safe, in a weird way, it’s protection both from herself and from the outside world, a place where she can be alone without truly being alone.
No more than half an hour has passed when she begins to think that it might actually be worse to sit here idly filling out paperwork, the activity not involved enough to stop the anxiety from rising in her every few minutes.
Having to keep it all at bay locked in that panic room had sent repercussions throughout her entire day – spikes of anxiety, hot-cold chills, trembling hands, take a deep breath, get through the next minute – even more so than being tied up in a van because at least in situations like that, her training kicks in.
Kidnapping and fighting she can do; locked in and waiting, less so.
She’s carefully breathing her way through another wave of panic, trying not to equate that room with icy water and blood covering dark metal when Parker appears.
“Knight, hey-” he stops in front of her desk and just for a flash she sees pale skin and bloodshot eyes before she blinks and he’s back to normal, eyebrows raised in her direction- “I thought you had an appointment?”
“I did,” she replies, cursing herself for the half answer when he tilts his head.
The silence, weighted with concern, lingers long enough for her to begin a desperate internal scrabble to haul together a cohesive sentence, the pressure only lessening when he simply offers, “You hungry?”
No, not really, she wants to reply. Her stomach has been all over the place today, twisting itself in knots and what she could really do with is some time meditating but she just knows that any time inside her own head right now is going to lead into a spiral and she just can’t.
So, she finds herself agreeing, “I could eat.”
They go in Parker’s car, driving in a silence that isn’t any way awkward – they’ve never been scared of companionable quiet – but she knows she’s giving her unease away with her inability to sit still, hands dancing incessantly in her lap.
She hates that, hates the fact that he’s worrying, or even thinking about her, but she can’t find it in herself to reassure him in any way so she lets the silence linger as they walk into their usual diner and slide into the far corner booth.
Ordering a side of fries and a salad in the hopes that one of them might be able to persuade an appetite out of her and a chamomile tea in the vague awareness that more caffeine would probably be a bad idea in her already jittery state, she begins tracing the patterns on the table with her finger.
She knows he’s going to ask before he does, trying desperately to stop herself from tensing or wincing when he breaks the silence.
“Jess I uh, I just wanted to check if you were okay. I know today was a lot.”
Not even the gentle genuineness in his voice is enough to stop her from merely shrugging lightly in reply.
“I’ll be okay.”
He pauses for just a second before probing carefully, “But you’re not okay just yet?”
At that, she catches his eye, not sure what to say. She always feels a little naked, a little vulnerable, as soon as she starts talking about herself.
The weight of his knowing gaze is too much and she looks away, tugging at her sleeves where they’re brushing against the rope burns that she almost hadn’t noticed are still throbbing.
She’s used to aches and pains. They feel part of her in a way, evidence that she’s doing her job every day and doing it well even when it feels like everything is falling apart just a little.
Well, not everything. Just her. She’s falling apart.
Not all the time, not every day. But days like today.
“Sore wrists?”
Barely holding back a flinch as his voice rips her out of her thoughts, she swallows. “Yeah. Should’ve got some cream or something from Jimmy but…”
She’s not sure she can face him tonight.
They’ve got better at working together – she’s nothing if not good at compartmentalisation – but days like today leave her feeling too raw and the last thing she wants to disturb is the fragile equilibrium they’ve settled at.
The one where they pretend they don’t know so much about each other, where they pretend they can’t read each other’s micro expressions, where they pretend they weren’t something like a family for a while.
“What are you thinking about, Jess?” Parker asks, quiet but sincere.
She considers his question. She’s thinking about the case, about everything involved in giving up a child to make sure they have the best life, about that reunion, about mistakes made by her parents, about mistakes she’s made.
They’re all swirling around, incomplete and harrowing, but she supposes they boil down to, “Parents. And parenting.”
It feels like a harmless question and she thinks she’s given a harmless answer – one she can dodge around as needed – but somehow, Parker always seems to cut right to the heart of what she’s saying.
“Victoria?”
Nodding because she can’t ever bring herself to deny how much that girl means to her, she softly admits, “I miss her.”
The sudden tears in her eyes take her by surprise and she presses her lips together, trying to gain control of the emotions running rampant inside her, the anxiety acting as a constant baseline to heighten the loss, loneliness and longing.
She almost hadn’t wanted to think of Vic, seeing the reunion between mother and daughter today. But she had.
“You don’t talk to her, see her?” he asks.
And maybe she’s imagining the depth of the empathy in his voice.
“I do. I mean, you can’t do that to a child, you can’t just tear something out of their life and expect them to be okay-“ catching sight of his expression, she cuts herself off- “what?”
His face is soft, slightly amused. “When I first joined this team, you didn’t have the first idea of how to interact with children.”
Jess sighs, not sure whether to laugh or cringe when she remembers her first meeting with Vic.
She loves children but she’s always been terrified of getting to know them, of how they’d change her or her life. Vic though… she’d made it easy to have the forbidden daydream of being a mom.
“A lot has changed since then.”
That was nearly three years ago. They were strangers, who became nearly family and now? Now she doesn’t know what they are.
“Yes, it has. I’d like to say for the better but…” Parker quirks an eyebrow though she’s hardly listening, lost in her own thoughts.
She’s never had any relationships like Jimmy (she’s never known anyone like Jimmy) but he’d begun to truly see her and she can’t be with someone who sees the core of who she is, who keeps track of her traits and quirks better than she does.
Still, she misses him. And she misses Vic.
Sadly, she smiles, “I see her. I messaged her all the time when I was in California, we’ve been out together several times since I’ve been back…”
To see movies, to get ice cream, she’d even let Vic drag her to the mall once like they used to on the weekends when Jimmy needed a few hours to himself.
They haven’t been back to the arcade, not since Victoria told her that’s where her mom had always taken her for mommy-daughter time. That had felt like a step too far.
Because she’s not Vic’s mom. She’s always been very aware of that. Jimmy has always made her aware of that and she hadn’t wanted to see the look on his face when he’d found out where they’d been.
Vic had always been the only one who didn’t seem to mind. The only one who had it clear in her head that Jess wasn’t the mom she’d grown up with but she wanted to go to the arcade and why not with the woman who spent so much time with them she’d maybe even started to be family?
“But?” Parker prompts, then empathetically answers his own question, “it’s not the same.”
“It’s not the same,” she agrees dejectedly, smile sad and voice barely audible, “as being there in the evenings. It felt like being part of a family. But maybe it never was, not really.”
She’d been a girlfriend. The first taste of a relationship after a painful loss. Not a stepmom, certainly not a mom. Maybe she was never meant to be part of the family.
It still hurts though, that’s she’s not there for Vic anymore in any of the ways that matter.
“The line between parenting and not blurs when you spend that much time with a child, however careful you are to not step over it.”
Tearfully, she nods.
“Can we go?” she whispers, noticing for the first time how overwhelmed she is.
The lights are too bright, there’s too many people, every tiny sound is putting her on edge. She just wants to go, wrap herself up in a blanket and sleep for a week.
She’s exhausted; she can’t think about this anymore.
Parker doesn’t try and talk to her as they drive to her place and she’s grateful, so lost in her own world and thoughts that she doesn’t fully register him follow her in until she comes out of her bathroom in the softest clothes she can find (that’s why she’d pulled out this specific t-shirt, not because it’s Jimmy’s) and he’s there still, pouring two glasses of lemon water from the fridge.
It’s not too strange, he’s been over a few times for team movie or game nights whenever it’s her turn to have everyone over, but she’s just too tired to think. Too tired to try and host.
Passing her one of the glasses, he motions to the couch. “I might stick around for a bit.”
“Parker, I’m going to bed-“ she begins to protest.
“I know-” gesturing placatingly, his eyebrows furrow and she sees that gentle concern again- “I just want to make sure you’re alright.”
A flash of guilt passes through her that he can see her so well. He knows that if he leaves her, she’ll most likely spiral. Because she might be bone-weary now but as soon as he’s gone, her brain will take over and she’ll lay awake for hours, lost in all her thoughts and anxieties.
No one should know that about her. No one should pay such close attention.
The desire to be seen, for someone to pay such close attention that they truly know her, is always so strongly present in her. Until the opportunity is in front of her, then it’s all she can do to stop herself from running, hiding.
But this isn’t Jimmy… and it isn’t her dad. It’s Parker, and there’s something about him in this moment that has her smiling wearily and giving in.
“I don’t know anymore, today has brought up a lot for me. Being locked in-“ she pushes down the panic that instantly rises in her at the memory and all its associations, cold water, cold metal, cold skin- “memories. Parents. Regrets.”
Eyes staying on her, he moves to perch on the edge of her couch. “So, you’re thinking about Victoria. But you’re also thinking about your parents?”
For a while, she simply looks at him. This feels like a crossroads but she’s not sure what each path is or where it will lead her.
Eventually, she just follows her exhaustion and almost collapses down on the other end of the couch, placing her untouched glass on the table and tucking her feet under herself.
“My dad,” she answers slowly, “I’ve never been close with my mum, that’s nothing new-“ the pain there is an old, familiar one- “but my dad… it feels like there’s a distance growing between us. We don’t talk as much now and I miss him but I also can’t bring myself to talk to him. I’ve told him less and less about my life in recent years. Complicated relationships with parents…”
She trails off, not wanting to be too much. She knows that once everything – everything that she’s never dared verbalise before – starts coming out it won’t stop.
“If you need a minute, I can give it to you,” Parker tells her sincerely when she’s silent for too long, staring down at her fingers that just won’t sit still, “but Jess, I want you to be able to talk.”
She wants it out. She wants it over.
So, taking a breath, she begins quietly, “He remembers what my favourite toy was when I was five, but I can’t remember the last time he told me he was proud of me. He’s all but told me I’m not good enough and I barely feel good enough for myself.”
Tears are already pricking at her eyes, threatening to overwhelm her and she stares resolutely down, digging her nails into her palms.
“I want him to be nearby so I can just give him a hug and feel him hold me but I want him as far away as possible so he can’t see any part of my day-to-day life.”
She tries to hide her feelings but she wears her heart out on her sleeve, daring someone to look, hoping someone will see everything she’s actually feeling in her eyes.
And there’s no one she desires and dreads seeing more than her dad.
“His words have such a lasting impact on me, things he said to me when I was just a child that I can remember as clear as anything, that make me doubt myself every day-“ her breath catches in her throat- “I want to be able to tell him about the little things that happened in my day but dread him asking because I can’t let him see the reality of my life.”
Maybe she’s got too good at faking, maybe he just doesn’t want to see.
“I miss him even when he’s visiting. I wish he was gone when he’s here.”
She misses being able to look at him like he hung the stars with genuine, innocent, belief.
A tear slips down her cheek, joined by a second and a third as she chokes for breath and her voice trembles.
“I love him and I resent him, more than I have or do anyone else, for everything that he’s done for me. I want to ask him if he’s okay, I want him to ask if I’m okay, I want to know if we’re ever going to be okay.”
The tears overcome her but she can’t stop, she can’t stop, she can’t-
Breathe, she can’t breathe.
Her shoulders are shaking, her fists are clenched, her throat is swollen shut and the tears are streaming down her face.
Parker is there in an instant, laying his hands over hers and whispering, “Take a breath kid, breathe.”
It’s only at his gentle instruction that her body seems to remember how and she takes a shuddering breath, the air rushing into her lungs again and again as she struggles to slow the racing of her heart.
“It’s okay,” he soothes, taking her hands kindly in his and slowly, carefully unfurling her fingers to reveal crescent moon impressions on her palms, “take your time, you know I’ll wait.”
She’s not sure how long they sit there, in the warm light of the lamp, his hands over hers on her knee as she fights with her breathing. But she knows he doesn’t move, he just stays with her, whispering encouragements, offering steady support.
And when her tears finally dry up, leaving her shaky and weak and somehow more exhausted than she is after any fight, he gives her a tissue to mop herself up with, supports her glass as she drains it and finally coaxes her patiently into her bedroom.
He waits until she lays down before – in a motion than no one has done since she was a little girl – pulling the sheets up, tucking them carefully around her then perching beside her on the edge of the bed.
Emotion catching in her throat at the achingly familiar yet so distant sensation, she doesn’t know whether to stiffen or relax until her fatigue makes the decision for her, forcing her to sink back into the pillow.
“It’s okay,” he soothes, “it’s all okay, life is better than today. The morning’s just a sleep away.”
It almost sounds like something Jimmy would say but the words are formed in such a Parker way, the way of a gentle leader. Someone who pushes her to grow by letting her go but who would fight like hell for her.
Someone who hasn’t once let her down.
Her eyes begin to close of their own accord but the memories of cold and dark and running out of oxygen, running out of time, Parker’s running out of time return, cutting through the heaviness of sleep and she half sits up, frantically whispering, “Parker-“
But he’s still there, silhouetted by the half-light filtering in from the other room as he reaches up and tenderly smooths her hair out of her face until she relaxes once more.
A new wave of emotion rises in her, the simple gesture making her feel too many different things to begin to process after her emotionally charged evening, so she surrenders to the overwhelmingly tempting pull of sleep, letting an unfamiliar but kinder darkness claim her.
The last thing she hears is the warm care in his low voice. “This is yesterday now, leave it all there. It’s okay.”