[ It had been there. She knows it had. Parker may see the world a littel differently than most people, but she doesn't imagine things that aren't there.
Usually.
And giant cracks in the earth don't just disappear overnight. She approaches slowly at first, tossing rocks and sticks at the place where the chasm used to be, to see if they fall through. When they don't, she comes a little closer, toeing tentatively at where the ground shouldn't be, and yet is.
Eventually, she gets braver, and braver still, until she's running back and forth along the ground, jumping up and crashing back to the ground as hard as she can, just trying to find a place where she can break through the illusion. ]
I know you're not real!
exploring - penhew houseopen
[ At first, it seems like a normal house. The kind of house Parker had never had a chance to live in, growing up - everything fresh and clean and new, carefully decorated and neat as a pin.
She brushes past the plush cushions and tasteful furniture without a second glance, looking for anything more portable, but there's nothing. No jewelry in the upstairs bedrooms, no antique china in the dining room or crystal vases on the tables. Even the artwork on the walls is worthless - bland, mass-produced landscapes that wouldn't be worth stealing even if she had a place to take them.
It's the third or fourth time she passes one of the house's many mirrors that she feels it - the creeping sensation that she's not alone. Parker freezes, listening carefully, but there's no sound, and nothing to see when she whips her head around fast to look back behind her.
Until she passes the next mirror, and sees the shadowy figure standing behind her.
It doesn't take her long to take action. Breaking mirrors is bad luck, so she resists the urge to do so even though she desperately wants to, instead just collecting every mirror in the house and stacking them, facedown, in haphazard piles in the middle of the living room. She doesn't even realize there are tears running down her face as she races though the house, grabbing mirrors and doing all she can not to look at them as she adds them to the hoard. There always seems to be one more, no matter how carefully she checks the rooms. ]
memoriesclosed to castmates and those who have seen Parker's memory
[ When she'd found her old bunny rabbit, resting carefully against a pillow as if it had always been there, all she could do was stare. It was a trick, it had to be, right?
But she and Hardison and Eliot had all been pulled here from Portland, too. No one knows how, but it had happened. Why shouldn't the same thing happen to Bunny?
She'd watched it carefully for a moment, all the same, waiting for it to slowly raise its head and look at her with glassy dead eyes, or maybe attack her. Or explode. But when none of that had happened, she'd let out a tiny whimper, hopeful and relieved, and rushed forward to grab it without a second thought.
And then the flashback had hit. It's not as though she'd ever forgotten what had happened. Not as though she hasn't relived it, over and over, countless times in the years since. But this had been different. As if she was there, seeing the car come around the corner, both too fast to stop and so slow it seems to take an enternity. Her own childish scream of terrible. The horrible sound of the collision.
Even when it's all over, she stays where she'd frozen in place when it began, curled up in a tight ball on the bed, one hand still holding Bunny in a white-knuckled grip, eyes unfocused and staring at nothing. ]
Parker | Leverage
[ It had been there. She knows it had. Parker may see the world a littel differently than most people, but she doesn't imagine things that aren't there.
Usually.
And giant cracks in the earth don't just disappear overnight. She approaches slowly at first, tossing rocks and sticks at the place where the chasm used to be, to see if they fall through. When they don't, she comes a little closer, toeing tentatively at where the ground shouldn't be, and yet is.
Eventually, she gets braver, and braver still, until she's running back and forth along the ground, jumping up and crashing back to the ground as hard as she can, just trying to find a place where she can break through the illusion. ]
I know you're not real!
exploring - penhew house open
[ At first, it seems like a normal house. The kind of house Parker had never had a chance to live in, growing up - everything fresh and clean and new, carefully decorated and neat as a pin.
She brushes past the plush cushions and tasteful furniture without a second glance, looking for anything more portable, but there's nothing. No jewelry in the upstairs bedrooms, no antique china in the dining room or crystal vases on the tables. Even the artwork on the walls is worthless - bland, mass-produced landscapes that wouldn't be worth stealing even if she had a place to take them.
It's the third or fourth time she passes one of the house's many mirrors that she feels it - the creeping sensation that she's not alone. Parker freezes, listening carefully, but there's no sound, and nothing to see when she whips her head around fast to look back behind her.
Until she passes the next mirror, and sees the shadowy figure standing behind her.
It doesn't take her long to take action. Breaking mirrors is bad luck, so she resists the urge to do so even though she desperately wants to, instead just collecting every mirror in the house and stacking them, facedown, in haphazard piles in the middle of the living room. She doesn't even realize there are tears running down her face as she races though the house, grabbing mirrors and doing all she can not to look at them as she adds them to the hoard. There always seems to be one more, no matter how carefully she checks the rooms. ]
memories closed to castmates and those who have seen Parker's memory
[ When she'd found her old bunny rabbit, resting carefully against a pillow as if it had always been there, all she could do was stare. It was a trick, it had to be, right?
But she and Hardison and Eliot had all been pulled here from Portland, too. No one knows how, but it had happened. Why shouldn't the same thing happen to Bunny?
She'd watched it carefully for a moment, all the same, waiting for it to slowly raise its head and look at her with glassy dead eyes, or maybe attack her. Or explode. But when none of that had happened, she'd let out a tiny whimper, hopeful and relieved, and rushed forward to grab it without a second thought.
And then the flashback had hit. It's not as though she'd ever forgotten what had happened. Not as though she hasn't relived it, over and over, countless times in the years since. But this had been different. As if she was there, seeing the car come around the corner, both too fast to stop and so slow it seems to take an enternity. Her own childish scream of terrible. The horrible sound of the collision.
Even when it's all over, she stays where she'd frozen in place when it began, curled up in a tight ball on the bed, one hand still holding Bunny in a white-knuckled grip, eyes unfocused and staring at nothing. ]
wildcard
Plotting comment is here!