It seemed that as soon as she'd had her epiphany, she could suddenly feel everything. She tried to remember if she had before, if she'd even felt anything at all from him. She could recall little things, inklings she'd picked up previously. And that first day, back in the hospital cafeteria, he'd been happy. Really happy. That's why she'd noticed him in the first place. But was it really? She couldn't help but seriously wonder how much merit there was to his claim- that even if it hadn't been forefront in her understanding, that she'd known the truth from the beginning. But had the vision told her that? Or had it been a deep running sense of the truth that she wasn't able to accept then? Furthermore, could she accept it now when it was laid out on the table?
The accident had nothing to do with it. Maybe she'd hit her head, but this was no illusion or figment of her imagination. Unbelievable as it was, it was real and it was happening.
He was telling the truth, and she knew it to be real. Not because she had all the facts or because she knew the whole sordid story that her mother never told her, but because she felt it. Empathy didn't lie. It was the only thing in the world that she knew to be irrevocably true. He was claiming to be her brother, and it was true. How... bizarre.
A brother. Her brother. Who'd of thought? Mom had some serious explaining to do. That is, if Parker even had the gull to bring it up to anybody. It was her secret, not her mother's or her sisters' or anyone else's. It was dark and secret and just hers. Something she shared with the enigmatic stranger of hers. Her brother. She couldn't understand why, among other things, but she felt particularly possessive over Julian. She didn't want to share him with the rest of the family.
Cole Turner rang a rather dim bell for her, recalling the entry for Balthazor in the Book of Shadows, the small piece dedicated to him in her mother's part of the Charmed story of her youth, back before Parker and her sisters were born. And from what she could remember, Balthazor had been bad. Really bad. Really, really bad.
A little part of her was thinking Source of all Evil when her thoughts lingered on Cole Turner, but she couldn't put the words to her lips. She wasn't sure, but it would sure as hell explain why Julian had waves of malevolence emitting from him. She had half a mind to reach out and touch him, just to pull a vision from him and see something dark just to prove it to herself. Or perhaps she wanted to touch him just to touch him. They were kin, after all.
Throughout the time it took him to briefly explain and for her to think on what he'd said, her face remained completely impassive. By all rights, she should call the family and vanquish the wicked person sitting across from her. She wasn't surprised to find that that option seemed almost laughable to her, though it shouldn't have been. She'd stopped asking herself what was wrong her since she was too taken by what was transpiring. It was dangerous and unthinkable, and that's what made it so easy to let line between black and white warp to the point where sitting with a demon didn't seem all that irrational.
She was quiet another moment, as though she was waiting for him to say something more. When he didn't, she leaned forward just as he had, mirroring his position. And instead of denying such an outrageous claim (the supposedly vanquished child that her mother never spoke of!), running for her life back to home, or any other rational thing (which she would have done months ago), there was one thing that was more important. The last question, which Julian had so slyly neglected to answer. "Why are you telling me this?" And then she added, after noting his slight trepidation when he'd spoken, "And why are you nervous?" He shouldn't be. He could probably kill her right there and not a single person would know.
Some voice, the same one that had told her just moments ago that she indeed wanted to know the truth, whispered the unholy answer in her head. The little rational voice, which was getting more and more distant, argued it would never happen.