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In the filtered light of a quiet street, Parker could see himself standing at the edge of a yard. It was a house that was familiar and yet not. The pale yellow paint peeled in thin strips, and the whole house leaned to the left. The screen door had a hole and hung lazily off its hinge, clapping against the door frame with each gust of wind. Behind the house, there was a field, and then a treeline. Open -- too open for any place he had ever lived. It looked like a Midwestern home painted in the colors of desolate suburbia. So why was he here?

Around the side of the house, a tuft of curly hair popped out, and then a round face of a young toddler. The girl looked familiar, but he couldn't remember why. She marched over to him, clopping over the damp grass in bright green rainboots. "Pwarker. I been looking eeeeeeverywhere!" She splayed both hands outward and then slipped her hand into his. "You arwe vewy late." The little girl pulled him along, dragging him through the same patch of grass she had just come through. She walked with a purpose, tight ponytail bobbing as she walked.

Parker struggled after her, eyes peeling across the field. Where was this place? There was something familiar about the house. And this kid. "What am I late for?" he asked, sidestepping a discarded tricycle. The little girl turned around and smiled at him, tiny teeth poking out beneath a thin lip. Something about that smile made his chest tighten. "What did you say your name was?" The little girl turned again and grinned, a satisfied giggle squeaking out of her mouth.

She slipped her tiny hand out of his and clopped haphazardly toward the backyard side of the house. Parker did not follow. The little girl stopped running and turned around, popping an elbow on each hip. "You supposed to chase me, Pwarker!" she said, jutting out a bottom lip. He still didn't move. The girl crossed chubby arms over her chest and started to march away. "I'm telling Mommy!" The girl started to sprint, disappearing around the side of the house.

Parker stood there, alone.
The sun looked odd -- almost purple.
Parker started to turn away.
And then he heard her scream.

His legs were moving before he was conscious of them, digging trenches into the wet mud. He fell once, but the little girl screamed again. Parker was up and stumbling, digging his fingers in the wet mud and hoisting himself back up. Coming around the side of the house, he nearly tripped again where the mud turned quickly into concrete.

There was a pool. And someone in it.

The little girl was standing on the edge, face streaked with tears. She was babbling incoherently, and Parker knelt beside her, curling her to his chest. She wrapped her hands in his shirt and buried her face. "It's okay, Colie," he said, the words leaking out of him as naturally as his next breath of air. Colie. His... older sister? He had never met her, only seen pictures, and most of those had been destroyed by his father in a comatose rage. And yet -- this was her. He knew it just as much as he knew himself. Inching back, Parker stared into her face, bright eyes blinking slowly. Colie sniffled, and out of the corner of his eye, Parker noticed someone approaching.

It was his father, and yet not. It was also the redheaded Negaverse agent from the fight. The man pulled Colie from Parker's arms, and she screamed again, the sound breaking into a thousand pieces. "Colie!" Parker shouted, struggling to his feet. But there were hands grabbing him. He glanced to each side and saw the purple-haired Negaverse girl and the one they called Nova, each grinning wickedly.

They dug their nails into him until he bled. One said, "Throw her in." The other said, "Burn her alive." Parker could not move. He couldn't speak.

Colie continued to scream and flail, eyes searching desperately for Parker's. He tried to break free, but those gripping fingers sunk into his bones. The redheaded man shot a smirk in Parker's direction and then inched toward the bright blue outline of the pool. With a guttural cry, he hoisted Colie above his head and threw her kicking and screaming into the pool. Her splash sounded like rain falling.

The two women lifted Parker, dragging him to the edge so that he could watch. He tried to shut his eyes, but his body wouldn't respond, eyelids gluing themselves to his brow bones. Looking down into the pool, he watched Colie struggle to swim, her green rain boots weighing her down, a plastic charm bracelet slipping off of her wrist, her smile broken into a terrified scream. He watched until her arms stopped flailing, until her eyes closed. She drifted like a feather to the bottom, coming to rest beside the drowned body of a woman. He knew it was his mother before he even saw her face. Colie fell neatly into his mother's floating, lifeless hands, and under the water, they looked almost peaceful.

As soon as he recognized his mother's face, Parker felt a wave of heat, and the pool erupted in flames, as if he had caused it. There was no sound now, just the rocking bodies of the two women beside him who laughed as he screamed. They were so terribly beautiful, so hideously serene. Parker felt his arms go limp, his head hang down. He, too, was lifted into the air and thrown into the pool. The flames lapped against his skin, but he couldn't feel it. He could only see himself drifting towards his mother and sister, fingers reaching out as if to just make contact.

And then he was wrenched into a blinding light.



Parker flexed and unflexed his fingers on the bar of his hospital bed, IV pulling against his skin. He did not surface from sedation, but he stirred, arms bumping against the sheets and feet kicking at the bar below him. He had not woken up since he had been rushed here two nights before, unconscious from pain. It was midday, and he was expected to wake at any moment that afternoon.

Still drifting in and out, Parker became vaguely aware of white walls, a steady beeping, but he did not open his eyes.

The sedation was a thick blanket that hung heavy on his chest. Parker felt his forehead break the surface of that deep slumber like a dolphin cresting out of the waves. It felt colder, tingles of sensation running across the spot. He stirred, freed from his dream but wedged in the sterile whiteness of his flickering consciousness. And then -- a touch. Nearly feather-light, but strong enough to cause goosebumps across the bare skin of his good arm. His left was broken and in a cast that went above his elbow, making movement impossible save the slow wiggling of his fingers. His right shoulder was thickly bandaged to cover the hole that had been punctured there by a Negaverse stiletto.

He thought he heard his name, but it was distant and hidden behind a wall of fog. Was it Colie again? Was she searching for him again?

Before he opened his eyes, Parker raised his good hand and grasped the wrist of the person who had touched his shoulder. The initial movement was hurried, but he slackened his grip and moved his hand into theirs, not intertwining fingers but slowly filling the small space that separated their palms. "Colie," he said. It was not the strained, quiet whisper of a hospital patient from a movie who, after a few tearful gazes, mutters something weakly. No -- it was desperate and pained.

A few moments passed, and then Parker felt the fog lift, growing thinner and thinner with each passing second. When he finally cracked his eyes, he grimaced from the brightness of the room, clear blue eyes struggling to adjust. Someone was beside him. He turned his head as much as he could without bringing pain. It was a girl. Parker blinked several times. Out of habit, he moved his left arm to wipe his eye, but it was suspended in the air above him by a hospital sling. The contraption jittered, sending a series of metal clicks echoing into the room. With the beeping of the heart monitor, it created a cold symphony.

Parker sighed, moving his tongue around the insides of his mouth to push away the sleepy thickness that had formed while he slept. The room sharpened into focus, though the outlines were still hazy. To his right, there was a television mounted on the wall playing golf. He glanced beside him and saw an empty hospital bed with the sheets folded neatly at its foot. Bright fluorescent lighting shot unhappy beams down across his bed. He glanced back to the person sitting beside him.

It was Dani.

Parker wasn't sure what he felt. Not sadness. Not anger. Not disappointment. It was an unfamiliar feeling, one he hadn't experienced in too long a time. His heart lifted, chest puffing out. He was still too drugged to make sense of anything, but in spite of himself, he smiled weakly. "I'm surprised I fit into your schedule," he said, laughing quietly. The laugh turned in to a cough, and Parker sputtered, the arm sling rattling with each tremor of his body.

He was still holding her hand, but had yet to realize it.

Parker was vaguely aware of Dani asking questions, and even less aware of her hand resting gently in his own. The only questioned he remembered was the one she repeated twice. "No," he said, swallowing slowly. "No nurses." Sensations trickled back to him little by little, his eyes opening and closing. This was not the first time that Parker had been in the hospital, but it was the first time had been sent to one while unconscious. The fact that he could not remember how he got here was troubling the boy.

Wait... there had been a fight? It flashed across his mind, not an entire scene but just faces. There had been two other students. Were they here? His eyes had moved to the ceiling, but he brought them back to Dani's face. His vision was still fuzzy, and she seemed to have a glowing outline surrounding her, which seemed quite fitting. Or perhaps it was the morphine? Who knew.

Parker swallowed again. Several questions bounced around in his head, but he couldn't decided on one. After a moment of quiet, he finally asked, "How did you know I was here?" He didn't sound ungrateful, just surprised. Without any parents to rush to his side, Parker was fairly used to taking care of himself whenever he fell ill. Whether it was the flu or a visit to the hospital, he had never had another person really give a damn about his well-being. And yet, she was here... Dani had come. How long had he been out? How long had she been here? He blinked slowly, tongue working in his mouth, still fighting the fatigue that fought to send him back to sleep.

Swallowing again, Parker tried to retrace the steps in his mind, to remember everything that had happened. He was coming home from a client's house, and something attacked him -- no, someone. Two someones. He remembered the one with the jumper cables. With a cringe, he remembered her stilettos too, the one that pierced him. He flickered his eyes away from Dani and to his shoulder. The bandage was laid so thickly that his bicep looked twice as big, which seemed like some kind of cruel joke.

It did not surprise Parker that the boys at Hillworth didn't know where he was; they probably knew where Franz and Simon were. Perhaps one of them had been the one to tell her? Parker tried to remember what became of the boys, but it gave him a headache. Whatever their fate was, he could do nothing to change it now. Dead was dead. Injured was injured. Parker had survived; that was all that mattered to him.

When Dani offered water, Parker let his eyes return to her face. "Yes. Water," he said, unsure of what else to say. The tingles of the medication still vibrated in his arms, but his mind was quickly coming in to focus, reminding him of his walls, his pride, his facade. He didn't want Dani to think any less of him than she probably already did. She was practically a body-builder, and he had his a** handed to him in a matter of minutes. He remembered the attack with a frown, visualizing the blows that caused the injuries that had him laying in this bed. God... this would cost him an arm and a leg.

Parker only became aware of her hand when it pulled away from his, the cold of the hospital room seeping in to his fingertips. It remained frozen, fingers poised upward and reaching toward her departing form. Disappointment -- this was a feeling he recognized. The pale curls of her hair bounced out of sight, and in the moment of quiet, Parker allowed himself to think. Dani was here. Dani: the girl he had only ever met once. She had come here to see him because she was worried. Drawing his eyebrows together, he tried to make sense of her actions. Did she feel guilty about something? Did she need something from him? It didn't occur to him that she would come here out of concern for his well-being.

When she returned, Parker tried to sit up higher in his bed, but the hanging sling jostled again. He paused, thought for a moment, and then found the switch on his bed that allowed him to raise the headboard. With a metallic buzz, the bed bent up, raising Parker from a prone position to one that allowed him to comfortably sit eye to eye with Dani. He took the water from her, fingertips brushing, and said, "I am perfectly capable of drinking water." He tilted the cup to his lips and drank slowly, letting the water soothe his cracked throat.

Cradling it in his hand, Parker traced his thumb up and down the papery side, eyes flickering warily to Dani. "Why did you come here?" he asked, unable to keep it to himself. It was true that he hadn't really stopped thinking about Dani since they met, but he was not willing to understand that for what it was. Parker had only ever been disappointed by people, women especially. He largely considered the majority of them to be either stupid, whorish, or both. But Dani didn't seem to be either. He surveyed her quietly, chest rising and falling in even spurts.

The events of the battle still loomed in the back of his mind, but in that moment, he was much more concerned with the girl in front of him. The Dani he remembered was bubbly and vivacious. This girl seemed deflated. Was it over him? It couldn't be. Could it? Parker swung hard been hope and paranoia, all the while watching Dani like she was some new species of animal that he had never before encountered.

It wasn't that Parker was creeped out by Dani's appearance at his bedside. It was that he was confused by how terribly positive he felt about her presence. Aside from his dead mother, he wasn't sure there was anyone else he would rather wake up next to --- wait. What. His mother he would want to see for comfort, but Dani he would want to see for a different kind of feeling. A comfort, yes, but something more complete than that, something more passionate than that too. The notion caused him to look away from her, eyes tracing up the sling contraption that hung in the air above him.

His pale eyes traced the ceiling. "Usually, when people say they aren't weird when no one accused them of being weird... it is because they are weird." The sentence was sloppy and devoid of the vocabulary that Parker usually made use of, but it rang of his characteristic logical explicativeness, even if it wasn't as fancy. After a moment, he laughed, eyes crinkling and mouth breaking in to a smile. He turned to look at her. "I don't think you are weird." It wasn't like Parker to reassure someone of his feelings; he believed that the other person should learn to interpret. Maybe it was the morphine making him laugh and take it easy on her, but Parker did not feel as bad as he should of, as bad as he certainly would have if Dani was not there.

When Dani mentioned the cause of his hospitalization, Parker's smile diminished, relaxing into an awkward expression of pleasant ambivalence. A part of him demanded that he not tell her anything, but given the drugs, the daze, and the Dani, Parker found himself much more willing to be open. Before he shared that, though, he let his eyes fall to Dani's cast. Lifting the cup that held the water, he tapped at it with his thumb. "Your arm," he said, laughing again. It felt nice, a pleasant rumble in his chest that he didn't often feel. "I will make you a deal. You tell me what happened to your arm, and I will tell you what sent me to the hospital." It seemed fair enough, and Parker reasoned that Dani's typical babbling would make it easier for him to share his own story. He imagined she probably fell while doing something -- running, probably. Didn't she say she liked rock climbing? Yes... he vaguely remembered that. Looking far more boyish and playful than usual, Parker watched Dani, waiting for her to volunteer her own tale of misforune and woe.

Parker did not take jokes well, and he made them even less. His laughter was typically done in a mocking way, or a kneejerk reaction when he saw someone fall. If Dani could draw out honest-to-God laughter from him sober, she deserved a medal of epic proportions. Which she would probably display in a prominent location. Because she is competitive like that. Parker's smile widened when Dani joked back with him, eyes rolling upward. "Good," he said, arching his back a little. "You can never trust the ones who claim to be normal." In suburban paradises some of the most scandalous dynamics could be found. Those who acknowledged the weirdo in themselves made Parker a bit less judgmental. Another point for Dani.

The fuzziness in his head showed no signs of dissipating, but Parker was feeling better. Each moment of consciousness was a reminder that he was still alive, that he had survived an attack. Was it normal to have that many fighters in one place? It seemed like terrible luck, and Parker was not quite surprised it fell to him. Bad things always did. Except Dani... it would seem.

When she spoke, Parker watched her mouth, studying each part of her face for much longer than necessary. It was mostly the drugs, but also his own interest. Saving a kitten? "I had a kitten. I loved that kitten. And then my father's lawyer sent it to the pound." Parker let his head roll to the side, sighing. This was DEFINITELY the morphine talking. There was no way on the face of the Earth that Parker would have brought up both his father and his beloved Darwin without some kind of use of excessive force. "Your story is more noble. Noble to save a kitten." He was babbling, eyes rolling around. He closed them, scrunching his eyes. Parker didn't do drugs or drink. Upon coming out of this, he would be super pissed to realize he had been given pain medication -- the same medication that his father had been addicted to since before he was born.

Drawing in an enthusiastically loud breath, Parker drained the last of his water, crumpling the cup in his hand and dropping it next to him in the bed. He pushed a fringe of hair out of his eyes, tapping a thumb on his forehead. "Well," he began, speaking with an uncharacteristic bounce to his words, "I was coming home from working on someone's computer, and this girl with jumper cables... jumped me. She dragged me to a park. And then there was this other girl who had a hole in her chest. They said her name... I don't think I remember it... right now. But she ripped this... thing... out of the hole in her chest. And the one chick called it a seed. And there was this red-headed guy who showed up and attacked me. And then a guy in a skirt and a magical school girl and... They fought..." He rubbed at his forehead, trying to remember more details. Normal Parker would have lied. Medicated Parker seemed full of truth juice. It was hard to put everything it order to remember the details. In that moment, he couldn't even recall how his arm was broken.

Shaking his head, Parker looked a bit despondent, but it didn't last long, dissolving in to scathing laughter. "My life is so... funny," he said, the laughter growing deeper, darker. It was pained, annoyed, upset. Despite the haze in his head, Parker's pervasive pessimism leaked out anyway. He could have said more, but he stopped talking, dropping his hand to the bed. Parker picked up the crumpled cup and squeezed it again. "I got my a** handed to me," he said with another laugh, tossing the cup to the floor. "Like I was nothing. Nothing at all." He scowled, but it dissolved too, everything dissolving into a state of simple euphoria. It was intoxicating, this feeling of painlessness, of nothingness. So easy to fall too far under its sway...

The fuzziness in his limbs made every movement ripple like he was moving through a fine mist. It reminded him of the magic of the boy with the umbrella, how it bathed everything in thickness, making it hard for him to move. Parker had run. Parker had survived. So why didn't get feel happier? Why did he not beam with pride? He watched the ceiling, hand resting lightly on his chest. These people, these kids, looked like they were his age -- his age, but so much more than him. Why were some people born with magic and others weren't?

"You know," he said, clearing his throat and staring up at the ceiling, "I used to think it was all a conspiracy. The rumors about the Senshi and Negaverse. I thought it was some tool of the corrupt Destiny City government to create a militant state. And then I met some. I guess I could still be right..." It was not uncommon for a government to stage attacks on its own people to force the majority to their cause. Parker had no idea what cause Destiny City would need so much support for, but it was hard for him to believe that these magical, masked kids were anything but a tool of the bourgeoisie.

Parker had been very afraid in the park, but not just of the three Negaverse agents. The two senshis didn't seem to do much in his favor, other than distract the bigger, badder guys. He wanted to tell Dani more of the experience, if only to convince himself that it was real, but then she touched his forehead, fingers brushing across his skin. It was a gentle movement, and the first physical contact Parker had had with a girl in over a year. His eyes flickered over to her face, and he traced the lines of concern and conflict. A sober Parker might have tried to get to the bottom of it, but medicated Parker only frowned back, wishing Dani wouldn't feel sad. He liked her happy. She was a little beam of sunshine in his dreary life.

And she liked him too, which was good. Parker failed to see any other implication in the statement, if it were there. Someone like Dani would never like him in any way other than pity, perhaps a sympathetic friendship. Still, he was happy that she was here. Otherwise, no one else would be sitting beside him. "I will let you win the broken bone competition," he said, tapping his cast. "One is enough." Parker was covered in scars, scrapes, and bruises, but he hated it. He never adjusted well to broken bones or physical inconveniences. He wasn't so physically fit that it was a simple thing to just use other muscles. Breaking his left hand was going to make a lot of things more difficult; he wished it had been his right.

Wiggling his shoulders into his pillow, Parker let out a semi-contented sigh, turning to look at Dani again. "Just promise me one thing," he said, looking serious. "Never wear stilettos around me. Brings back bad memories for my shoulder." He bubbled with laughter, like a drunken bum, and touched at the place where the purple-haired Negaverser had delivered the painful blow. Parker didn't think to further explain the comment, blinking slowly and clearing his throat. The morphine was doing its job, but when it wore off, Parker wouldn't be so ambivalent about his injuries.