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After leaving the hospital, Sailor Taranis’s life became a blur. He remembered his night in flashes: the light dulling in Magellan’s eyes, the crack of the Negaverse agent’s staff, the blur of headlights as he ran through traffic, the weight of her body in his arms, eyes staring at him from behind bent newspapers and foggy windows, the stark glare of the hospital lights, the feeling of her arms slipping from him, the harsh bite of the grazing bullet. He ran for hours until the buzz of chasing sirens disappeared, replaced by the thrum of downed streetlights from the car crashes of the sleep sickness epidemic. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant pain greater than he thought he could handle.

Parker woke up out of his fuku and back in his Hillworth uniform in the drainage ditch in front of a flower shop. The patron, a chubby woman with red cheeks, poked at him with the handle of a rake, murmuring something in Russian. He staggered to his feet without a word, eyes red and cheeks tear-stained.

Then this is what he did:

He went to the apartment he shared with Tate in East Heights.
He stared in the mirror, but did not see himself.
He packed a small bag, enough for maybe a few days away.
He lifted a journal and then threw it into his trashcan.
He put food out for the cats, a small miracle.
He paused at the cat bed where Derp and his own kitten slept.
He stared at them, but did not see companions.
He dropped his henshin pen and cellphone beside the guardian cat.
He did not leave a note for Tate, or anyone.
He disappeared, without a word, and did not look back.

The Greyhound station was not far away. Parker bought a ticket to a place he never thought he would go. It was not a trip he was making for himself, even if he did not outwardly admit it. Parker moved like a ghost, unapproachable, unreachable. On the bus, he felt invisible, and this was like breathing for him. Invisible, forgotten, never to be seen again: this is what Parker wanted to be.

Dani was dead, but it hadn’t hit him yet. It was a slow crawl of a sadness so deep and dark that Parker knew he was not strong enough to rise back out of it. The sun had been swallowed by darkness, the birds all ripped free of their wings to plummet like stones to the dirt. There was no question that Parker would trade places with her. Dani was stronger; Dani could handle this.

For a boy who had suffered cuts and bruises unimaginable, this was the snapping of his neck. His spirit was broken, and the threads of it bled out of him with each dry tear and trembling shiver. There was no light at the end of this tunnel, just a doomed march down the spiraling staircase to the same wretched hole that had claimed the only person he had any love left for in this life.

The bus slowed. The door opened. Parker stepped off. He was standing in front of a institution for prisoners in treatment. He was on his way to speak to a man he had not addressed in years. Dani had asked this of him. This had been their plan together. Parker did not believe that she was somewhere watching over him with glowing wings and a sunny halo, but he believed that he loved her so much that she would affect his actions for the rest of his dim and flickering existence. She was dead; he was not ready to deal with it.

The worst of it was not over. The worst of it had not even begun.

Marcus Damhnait had not been expecting visitors. It wasn’t often that a man of his low social stature and crushed self-worth received friendly callers. If anything, the people who dragged themselves to the institution (calling themselves “good friend” or “cousin” and then shooting him steely gazes and murmuring low threats) fell more into a category of highly hostile than anything else. When Marcus was led to the private visitation area, he worried for a moment that this might be the end of him. Perhaps one of his old associates had smuggled in a syringe with a ceramic tip and planned on casually injecting him. Maybe it was toxin smeared on a napkin to poison him.

As he walked down the narrow corridor to the room, Marcus let his mind roam across every possible reason for him to have a visitor in the private room, ruling out most for sheer logistical impossibilities, but none of those considerations could have prepared him for who was sitting at the table, waiting.

Parker looked haggard and worn down. His hair was swept hastily over one eye, and he was slouched in spite of the hard back of the chair, arms crossed. When Marcus entered the room, he did not immediately look up, but his jaw clenched, visible by a subtle twitch of muscle just below his ear. The guard pulled out the chair for Marcus, told him that they had cameras on them, and then left.

Parker looked up at his father. His eyes did not hold hatred, or sadness, or pain. There was nothing, an empty chasm where emotion should be. This made Marcus silent. He had expected anger. He didn’t know how to cope with the unknown.

After a while, Marcus swallowed and said, “I didn’t expect you’d ever come, Parks.” He paused to allow Parker a response, but none came. So he continued, “But I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you came out here.” Again, nothing. “Not exactly the kind of place I’m proud to have my son visit me, but I’ll take what I can get. You’ve grown so much. I didn’t think you’d get this tall.” No response. “That’s good. Women like us tall.”

“I’m not here for you.”

Marcus stilled, the ghost of a smile fading slowly from his face. “You aren’t?” he asked.

“No, I’m not.” Parker sat up.

It seemed like he might say more, but it appeared that Marcus’s only son planned on making this as difficult for him as possible. He deserved it, sure. He was just glad to have Parker there at all. “So why are you here?” The question was hard to get out, but he managed. He could feel Parker waiting for him to ask it.

A flash of anger burned in Parker’s eyes, and then was replaced by the same absence of emotion that had made Marcus uncomfortable from the start. “Dani asked me to come. She arranged this room for us. She and I planned to come together.” Every pause was pregnant, every stare was sharp, every word was loaded.

There was something else going on here, Marcus knew that. He just didn’t know what. “I remember her.” Of course he did. It wasn’t often that he had visitors, let alone a pretty teenager who yelled at him like she was his own disappointed kid. There was no sign of the shock of ice blue hair. It was hard to miss anything in the small silver room. Again, Marcus felt his son waiting for him to ask the obvious, so he did: “Is she here?”

“She’s dead.”

“She’s dead?”

“She’s dead.”

Parker’s eyes were still flat, jaw still clenched. The news of her death was nothing to him. It had not sunk in yet. That night, his mind had evaporated into tiny shining pieces that cartwheeled away from his body. He remembered what had happened through the scars in his hands from crawling over pavement. The burn of a bullet graze on his arm. He had not seen the newspaper that declared him a murderer of the one person he had allowed himself to love yet. This was a small mercy.

Marcus did not know what to do. He hadn’t been a father in a long time -- had he ever? It was Imogen who was born to be a parent. He was just a stupid man caught in adult circumstances before he was prepared to grow up. Belatedly, he reached a hand out to where Parker’s rested on the cold metal table. “Son...”

Parker dropped his hands into his lap and pushed back in his chair. “I’m not your ******** son.” The metal squeaked across the ground. “I haven’t been your ******** son in a long time.” This wasn’t what Parker wanted to talk about, but the situation was too mixed up for him to separate one tragedy from another.

In all of his life, Marcus had never been so disappointed in himself. Here was a son whom he had neglected and mistreated for years calling out for help, even if he wasn’t saying it. Why had he come? Dani was dead. Did he really find it necessary to hold this appointment? No, this was something else. It struck Marcus like a bullet to the brain that he was quite possibly the only person who Parker knew who had experienced a similar loss. Marcus would hardly compare losing his wife to Parker losing his girlfriend, but for perhaps the first time, Marcus could see the world from Parker’s point of view. This was a feeling he had never had before.

Marcus leaned forward on the table. It took him a moment to summon up the words he thought his son needed to hear. “Parker -- this is not your fault. This is not a punishment that the world brought down on you.” His hand lifted to punctuate the words.

“My entire ******** life is a punishment the world has brought down on me.”

The words stung Marcus. He had tried, hadn’t he? He had tried to be a father, but he had never felt like it was a role he was meant to hold. His little girl died because of his negligence. He lost his wife to a house fire because he chose to save his son instead, a son that now shot him cool gazes across an even colder table. Parker had grown up without a father. This was perhaps Marcus’s only chance to be the man that Parker had needed him to be his entire life.

No matter how it hurt, Marcus had to bear these wounds for Parker’s sake. He owed that much to his only son.

“Parks, when I lost your mom, I drove myself insane thinking of all the ways things could have been different, how it could have worked out differently. I would stay up all night wishing that it was me that had died, and not her. I know you would have wanted it that way. Hell, the world would have wanted it that way. But do you know what came out of that? You did. Out of that ******** mess, you came out, and in spite of me and everything that I did wrong by you, you are still in school. You want to go to college. You have hopes and dreams and aspirations that everything that has happened to you has not sucked the life out of.”

Marcus raked his hand through his hair, a nervous gesture he shared with his son. This was something Dani had noticed when she visited and commented to Parker afterward. Seeing his father do this only made him think of her curled up in bed beside him, her head on his chest, their breathing falling and rising in the same slow cadence.

“People die, but we have to keep living. Dani would want that for you, wouldn’t she? I know your mom wanted that for me. You just... you can’t chalk up the random chance of the universe to some unfair weight being thrown on to you. Parks -- please. It hurts now -- and I won’t lie to you -- it is always going to hurt. But that hurt is going to dull over the years until it becomes a nostalgia, not a painful loss. And you’ll remember all the things you loved about that person, not just the things you lost the day they left.”

Was this what he needed to hear? Marcus tried to say the things that he wished someone would have said to him when Imogen died.

“It isn’t your fault in any way, Parks. That’s... that’s what I wanted to say.”

The silence that fell between them was a stiff line of string constantly tightening. Parker had not reacted during his father’s speech. He seemed to be taking in the words, and for a brief moment, Marcus thought that what he said had made a difference. Then Parker leaned forward and said, in a hushed voice, “I used to think that I was the reason everyone around me dies. Like it was some kind of punishment I got for loving anyone.” He clenched one fist. “But you know what? I never met Colie, and Dani was just fine until she came here to see you. You are poison, and whatever disease you have, I hope I’ve caught it now too.”

Parker pushed back from the table. He crossed to the door and knocked on it. “I want out of here,” he said gruffly.

Marcus got to his feet and grabbed Parker’s arm. “You don’t mean that.” His grip tightened; it hurt. “You don’t mean that.” A suicide threat -- was that what it was? -- was not to be taken lightly.

Father and son were toe-to-toe, eye-to-eye. It was the closest they’d been in years, but there was no love there. Just a shared misery. “You’re right. It’s isn’t you. It’s us. It’s genetic. Damhnait men kill the things they love. Dani deserved better. Mom deserved better. They were punished for giving a damn about us, and now they’re dead.” Parker banged on the door again. On the other side, a guard was fumbling with keys.

When the door cracked open, Marcus released Parker. The guard shot both of them a confused glance, but neither shouted out accusations. Parker stepped into the hallway, turning at the last moment to catch his father’s eye. “I am doomed to be alone, forever. I accept that. It’s time for you to do the same. Don’t look for me. Don’t send me any more ******** letters. You are dead to me. Okay? And as far as you are concerned, when Dani died, I died too. That’s it. That’s all.” The words were sharp and loaded with missiles that would explode today, but also later.

Parker pushed past the guard and disappeared into the hallway. Marcus shouted after him, but the guard held him back. A prisoner cannot give chase. Once Parker walked out of those doors, Marcus would be powerless again.

Even as he boarded another Greyhound bound for a city he had never been to, Parker could not be certain why he visited his father. Was it for Dani? He couldn’t say. All he knew was that he meant what he had said:

When Dani died, I died too. That’s it. That’s all.

Whoever Parker had been before that night in the alley, he was not that person now. He didn’t even know who that person was, and even worse, he had no idea who he was becoming. All he knew was that there was a hole in his chest, and it showed no signs of healing any time soon, or ever. Another wound for his list of battle scars, another loss to add to his tally.

There was nothing left to lose.