( It started with one of those weird sailor-senshi pens... )

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Dreamed again, tonight. Not as bad as usual, but at the same time it was worse than any of them since I remembered again. I was just... laying in the bed,the chain rough against my skin... and I was begging you to do something (I can't remember what) and you wouldn't. You just smiled, and wiped my tears, and I couldn't see anything but you.

I woke up crying.

I think, sometimes, that it really wasn't... what you did to me in your bedroom, or even the surgeries afterward, that was the worst thing about it all. No. It was how certain you were, tht this what what you needed to do. Unmoveable. I could curse, scream, cry, beg... bur you never stopped. You just smiled, and drugged me, and stroked my hair as you told me it was for the best.

You were a force of nature, a mad, unmoveable thing. Terrifying, and I tried to fight. But you can't fight a force of nature, can you? I tried, but --

I shouldn't send this. I'm crying again, and I can barely see the keys. I'm always so afraid you'll leave me, if I tell you what you did to me, what... all of it. I know it's stupid, we're trapped and you can't leave me and I can't leave you but it still scares the hell out of me, the thought of you saying no. Sad, huh? After everything you did... I can't even stand that.

I'm going to close my eyes, now, and press a button. It'll be either 'send' or 'delete.' Either way, I'm sorry. And as much as I love you, I wish there was some way out, for the both of us.

-P.

It's been two weeks since the reality explosion tore through Parker's universe, twisting her mind and making everything so clear. Two weeks since she drugged her suddenly-penitent ex-husband, and savagely beat him until he was unable to escape her. Two weeks that she's been holding him, drugged and at her mercy. Two weeks, but it feels like forever. And she wants it to be, wants to keep this liberation for as long as she can.

Which just makes today all the more unpleasant, really. She's enjoying a glass of wine in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, when she catches a glimpse of her reflection in the refrigerator door-handle. And everything twists again, as she looks into those cold brown eyes. As it hits her, for the first time in two long weeks, what she's done, and what she is. And she screams.

Parker left Norman in that white room, eventually. Left him after patching up his new wounds, leaving behind a stack of books she knows he likes and the lingering feel of her lips on his good cheek. And she takes herself to her library, not bothering to wonder when her house became so large and grand. She has more important things to worry about -- like anatomy and anesthesia and autoclaves, and where to get all this wonderful equipment she's going to need.

After all. If you want something done right, sometimes you've just got to do it yourself.

Parker wakes in the same place she's been all weekend, stuck in that cramped little tank full of yellow stuff. She tries to stretch, giving an almost-yawn, and all for pairs of legs hit the glass before she remembers just how small the enclosure is -- and that she's in one at all.

She really isn't enjoying this.

Parker is currently in a small, damp sideroom, off-ways of the Sanctuary. Shaking, and trying not to scream. God, god it itches. She's used every painkiller she has, scratched her skin raw and bloody -- let her fingernails scrape the not-bone shell underneath, the tapering single-claws -- done everything she could think of. But it still won't stop itching, stop hurting. And she curls up on the bloodied sheets, not knowing, not understanding at all why this is happening, happening to her, and she weeps.

Hello, Peter.

I'm sure you're wondering.... a lot of things. Why you're here. Who I am, writing you this. How I know your name...

It's pretty hard to believe, actually. And I don't mean that in the usual costumed-nonsense way.

It's 2006, Peter. It's been almost eleven years since Norman kidnapped you, did everything he did. You're out now, and you're free. He's not going to hurt you again.

You've spent the time since then... with an almost complete case of amnesia. Thinking you were first Norman's wife, then his ex-wife. Going by the name Parker Osborn, because you didn't know any better. But Norman made a mistake. He cheated on you, and you got your revenge. You ruined him, his legitimate and his criminal endeavors, both. (And gave him six arms, but that was more of a means to an end.)

Even though you still had the amnesia, you found out, eventually, what happened to you. And you discovered, in the Nexus, substances that would take you back to before you lost your memory, take you back to being Peter. Physically and nmentally. Only temporarily, but you couldn't help but think that that other, lost part of you deserved a chance to be free again, after so long.

And you wrote yourself a letter, and you took a drink from the first bottle...

...well. That went well.

Things have... not been going well for Parker, lately. In so very many ways. All because of the Nexus. The damn Nexus.

Norman is in jail, now. And everyone Parker has talked to has told her there isn't a chance in hell of her getting to visit him, or even getting a phonecall. But... she has her other ways. And for once, once in this whole damn month, there's been a lucky break -- he's being transferred to Ryker's late tonight, according to the press leaks.

They'll be expecting her, of course, in her 'Queen Goblin' guise. Her, and anything he might have up his sleeve. But she has an ace that no one would expect -- and all she needs to do is pay a little visit to what remain's of Norman's hideout in the operahouse...

He let me turn him in. He let me -- and they came, and he didn't fight them. He let them take him away. Because of me.

I'd say I was going to be sick, but I think I already am. Why else would I be wishing he hadn't?

I'm... finally calm enough, I think, that I can managed to type this out.

Yesterday was a disaster. I don't -- I don't mean this in any hyperbolic way. It's.... buildings are down. Everywhere. The communication networks, planes, cars, subways, too. Though they seem to be picking back up a little, again. The stock market... God. I've lost -- not everything in my accounts, but a lot of it. I've also lost the kitchen, where the tree fell on the house. The children are alright, though, thank God. And shes stopped following me...

Norman's been hit hard, too. His opera house, they siezed his accounts... Christ. He offered to help me with the kitchen... every professional place in the country is going to be busy with other things, so -- I took him up on it. He's in the guest room, right now.

Hasn't there been enough, already? Without this, too?

Clair? Clair, can I come over, or meet you somewhere? I have... some pretty remarkable news.

I have an aunt. And a camera. And a hundred things to do, good God. A million new questions...

And an ex-husband who loved me enough, last night, to finally tell me the truth.

Red gloves. And pain. And Clair, the second time... So little, but it's more than I've had, more than I've had for as long as I can remember.

Otto... if it's even you in there, anymore... I don't know what you did, or why -- but thank you.

My god. My god...

What is this?

Well, then.

So much for that.

I'm playing a dangerous game, here.

I've missed him, but I can't... he still needs to pay. Just let him off, let things go back how they were, and he'll do it again, and again. He'll think he can get away with it.

I have to either stop this, or -- make him understand that what goes on here doesn't affect anything else. Doesn't change anything.

I'm so tired of this. All of this. I want him dead. I want him somewhere, suffering, never able to hurt me again. Hurt his my children, like the people here suggested. I want to not be afraid, for them and for myself. I want to know who I really am. I want it all to stop.

Is that really so much to ask?

He didn't mean it. He didn't mean it. Lying, lying like he always does, the boy in the costume said he might have done it. Might have done all of this to me. You don't do that kind of thing to people you love.

I might have been a photographer, once.