Parker Damhnait was not a child anymore. He never really was. It had been stripped from him like bark off a dry tree, layers of innocence peeled back until all that remained was the core of what could weather such mistreatment, the husk of him, the animal that continued to live out of the most basic desires in every animal. There were more gravestones in his heart than stars, and the numbness that he had learned to wear as a teenager, then lost for a time, a beautiful time, had iced back over him in a protective coat. Surviving was so much easier when numb.
His mother and sister had been lost to him young because of his father’s addictions.
Then his father was lost to the prison system, though he was dead to Parker before that.
Elzo, which meant Castor too, had disappeared without notice, probably dead, and somehow the not knowing was the worst part.
Themis, too, had disappeared. More silence, more absence, more assumed deaths.
Tate, his former best friend and roommate — another disappearance, another death no doubt, wiped clean from his life and this world.
Even Derp, the spastic little cat, had disappeared on him, leaving nothing behind by scattered hats and maple syrup stains.
And… Dani. Always Dani. Always running through his mind, both bidden and unbidden, just when he thought she might truly be washed from his consciousness.
When he told her he could love no one else, that had been the truth. Parker had to suffer through her death once, had to watch it with his own eyes. Somehow, he had survived it, and then, like magic, his Dani returned, alive, through a stroke of something that may have been the only time Parker ever wondered if there was a higher power that had heard his prayers, his tearful pleas. It had never occurred to Parker that he would be separated again from her, certainly not that the separation would be by choice.
It had been three years since the day he asked her to marry him, three years since she shook her head and said no.
The pain of her absence was different now, if only because it was numbed by so many other losses. Dani was the person who he told everything to, the only person he felt totally safe confiding in. When she had first left, Tate had begun to shoulder some of that, but — who was Parker supposed to talk to when Tate disappeared? He tried to text Dani, but the number was no longer in service. He tried to go see her, but she was no longer at home. Dani was lost to him, truly, and so he let the numbness seep deeper.
Other girls warmed his bed, some lingered, some didn’t, but nothing stuck. They all could sense it on him: the brokenness, the emptiness. What he could offer them would never be enough because he had already offered all of himself to someone. Someone who didn’t want it.
Destiny City felt different too, another woman changing on him. The only time Parker became Taranis now was to protect himself, the few times that became necessary. Or, when he needed to, he would slip away to his asteroid and roam the empty city. It felt like himself, a manifestation of what he felt inside: a once vibrant place, now devoid of all life and joy. In more civilian matters, he lost his job at the coffee shop after it was destroyed by monsters. Through luck, he nabbed a job doing computer security remotely — a decent paycheck, working from home.
After six months of holing up in his apartment, Parker realized that working from home was not particularly safe for him. He didn’t drink, never would because of his father, and so he hurt himself by keeping a folder of old photos of him and Dani on his desktop. His eyes were on one now, one of their first photos together when she dragged him into a photobooth at the mall.
There were other relics from her that still existed in his room -- old letters, a forgotten bracelet. Pathetic — it had been three years. Plenty of time to be over someone, plenty of time to heal. Someone like Dani would have someone else; the thought of it chilled him. She had been the breath of life in him, and when she left, the candle had been snuffed.
Many times, Parker dreamed of leaving Destiny City behind, for good. He imagined himself in cafes in Paris, or maybe the dreary rain of London. He would write books and fall for a girl with a a lilting accent and shrewd eyes. But when he pictured this girl, her features morphed, eyes shining a bright green, hair a powder blue. She became Dani, every time. Part of him wanted to leave DC, yes, but the rest of him was limited by money and hope. Hope that those he had lost would one day find their way back home to him.
In the meantime, his only friend was silence.
And like everyone else he had ever cared about, Parker allowed himself to disappear into himself, to become another ghost of Destiny City.
