Denouement
by vega
Rate: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters.
Category: A response to Cover Me January Challenge. Angst. Futurefic. S/V. Second person POV alert.
Spoiler: All of first season and general second season.
Summary: "They write their own tragedies. Now the curtain falls, the play's done, and the world ends here."
Note: Thank God it's finished. This is my first Alias fic. I hope it isn't a total disgrace.
***
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-T.S. Eliot.
***
You write your own tragedy, marked by protagonists and antagonists, rising actions and climax, all five acts and scenes, and the inevitable deaths of the characters in the long, preluded and predicted end.
Or, perhaps she does. You're a mere actor playing by her rules and lines in the stage she has decided upon.
At least now you are waiting for your own climax, the end of all this. There's a certain satisfaction in that. You can feel the weight of the gun inside your jacket.
You chose a booth strategically located that you can see everyone who enters the cafe, more out of a trained instinct than precaution. You watch the entrance for a moment, then reach for the old-fashioned letter envelope in front of you. Every Christmas and every one of your birthdays you've received a card without a returning address, no stamp, no print. You never had to pull out the old and crumbling brown lunch paper bags to recognize the neat handwriting. This particular letter arrived weeks after Christmas and nowhere close to your birthday, containing the handwriting that, regardless of length, always reminds you of Tolstoy.
If nothing else, you appreciate her choice of the meeting place. The cafe is deserted. The frost on the window, the snow lazily falling from the sky, and everything outside on earth is white. Inside, the flames crackle at the far corner fireplace, dyeing the walls in amber and sepia. The only waiter yawns, appearing grateful that the fire is warming up the space in this winter afternoon. A candle and a rose at each table. A wine bottle. This is your second glass, and you have not decided whether you want to be sober or dead drunk for this. 'La Vien Rose' from an old-style jukebox. You fail to see the irony.
You came early, restless, but she is exactly on time.
A little bell rings as the door opens, accompanied the whirlwind and the snowflakes slipping in and falling on the wooden floor of the cafe. She enters and, seemingly knowing where you are almost instinctively, comes straight toward your booth in slow, measured steps.
You do not look into her eyes. Not yet. Instead, you absorb the details. You may have imagined her looking like her mother, with the seductive air and no flaw to be found in every aspect, but she's not her mother. Her hair is dark brown again, and it comes to her shoulders and ends with curls that look soft and leave you aching for a single touch. She wears a maroon-colored winter coat, ankle boots and gloves, all immaculate. No purse. That little tidbit is particularly interesting. You don't detect any weapons, but she doesn't need any. Just like she doesn't need any backup in this little excursion if she were here to kill you.
She approaches the table, and the candle on your table wavers. She takes off her coat, brushes off the snowflakes on her hair gently, and slides into the seat across you.
You watch her face, her neck, her dark cream-white suit, and her hands on the table. Finally, there are her eyes. Before, you told yourself you would look into her eyes as long as you could to find the answer there. Her eyes are not dead, not like how you've imagined, but they have a disquieting quality that would have any other man run to her, or run for his life. She watches you, occasionally fingering the clay candleholder, and your eyes follow her every movement. You would like to think it's caution on your part, but it is more of morbid fascination.
You notice that she, too, is taking in the details of you. You wonder what she sees. The years have been generous, or so you've been told, but there are lines on your face where they haven't been before. The grays in your hair, the eyes that no longer sparkle, the little things giving some evidence to the time, and, maybe, its cruelty.
It is not possible that she hasn't aged a day, yet it might just as well be possible.
You're the first to look away when the waiter arrives.
"What would you like today?" he asks.
"Something warm would be nice," she says, flashing a perfect smile that is obviously not wasted on the young waiter, who emanates all the typical characteristics of a college student eager for any hint of any action.
You wonder if the waiter really is a student of a college nearby; you haven't made any reconnaissance. This place could be owned by her, or the Alliance, but it doesn't matter. You can be surrounded by all of the Alliance members for that matter. That's no longer important, now that she's here.
The waiter, still glowing from being the receiving end of her smile, suggests every kind of coffee they have. You didn't receive this kind of attention when you ordered.
"Hot chocolate, with lots of whip cream." She smiles again. "I feel like celebrating today."
The waiter quickly retreats, and she turns to you.
There might have been things to say, the questions and the words and the cries, but you can remember none of them.
She says nothing. She takes off her gloves and puts them on the table. Her hands are lean and small, looking deceptively fragile. She is wearing a ring with a large exotic jewel that you can't name. It is burgundy and glitters in every direction. It is the color of blood.
"Rambaldi's legacy," she says, noticing your interest. "He's been a big help."
Of course, you think.
/This woman here depicted will possess unseen marks. Signs that she will be the one to bring forth my works. Bind them with fury, a burning anger, unless prevented at vulgar cost this woman will render the greatest power unto utter desolation./
Utter desolation. You came here to find out what it is.
"You've wondered whether Rambaldi was right all along," she speaks without a hint of hesitation. No animosity. Not at all like she's talking to someone who she hasn't talked to for over a decade, her enemy for over a decade.
Everything else is silent.
"Everyday," your voice cracks against your wish.
"Me, too," she answers. "I guess we don't get to cheat fate."
It was your idea that led her to see 'the beauty of Mt. Sebacio', to prove she wasn't the one of the Prophecy. That cursed Prophecy. You were so proud when the plan worked, thought the two of you (and Jack, always Jack) cheated what others thought to be fate.
She's here, in front of you, and all you can think is that you are cold. Shivering.
"How's Danielle?" she asks when the hot chocolate arrives.
You try not to bristle. You decide to focus on the window beyond her shoulder, the window and the falling snow. It calms you down enough for you to answer, "She's well."
"Pre-school, piano and ballet? Not too much for a five-year-old?" She looks curious, innocently curious, and you're not certain how long you can sustain this.
"Her mother would have wanted it that way."
She nods, thoughtful. "Of course."
"Did you kill Alice?" you ask when the thought occurs.
She shakes her head. "It was the Alliance. They thought you were getting a little too persistent."
So you know now. What difference does it make? Nothing. Either way, whether it was the Alliance or the woman presently in front of you, your wife died four years ago because of you, because of your work.
"I'll admit that the idea has occurred to me several times, and I might have, you know, if the Alliance didn't have a handle on it first," she adds with an odd smile on her face, leaving you wonder whether this is her twisted idea of humor, "Alice smiled too much in every picture. She seemed too happy at your side."
"She was never happy."
You married Alice mostly because of her. And the rest, to prove that you could live a life without her. To show her what she gave up for this, this terrible thing that cannot be called life.
Yes, you would have quite liked to die in Alice's place.
She says nothing. You wonder if she ever blinks. Someone might stab her back if she wastes a fraction of a second to blink. Wonder if she has anyone taking care of her, watching her back.
You reach for more wine, thinking you might need some alcohol in the system for this. Not a wise decision, but you're here, which proves self-preservation never has been your top priority. "As long as we're on the topic of family, how is your mother?"
"She's well. She wishes you well, by the way."
"Good, because I want her dead," you tell her, matter-of-fact.
Her face is like a mask of Porcelain masquerade faces; there is not a single twitch, no expression. It might be frozen, even, colder than the weather outside. Whatever you've been expecting, this isn't it. "She killed your father," she says. "I haven't forgotten."
"She killed Jack, did you know?" There is no evidence of surprise on her face, and you press on, bringing out the last card you've been holding for the last few months, "We now have the evidence that Irina Derevko was the one who informed Sloane about you and your father. A concrete evidence."
Her calm eyes meet yours, and you realize, suddenly, she has known. She has known it all along. With that, the last hope you've been harboring somewhere deep in your mind--brainwashing, threats, blackmails, among many other reasons to betray the country, to betray the people in it, to betray you--is blown away. She has known.
Her hand fingers the candleholder again. Her eyes are one the flame, gently burning. "Dad had it easier. Death is infinitely easier than taking life."
"You can't seriously believe that," incredulity slipping into your voice is quite unintended. Maybe you can't completely discard She-has-been-brainwashed-all-along theory yet.
"She had her reasons, as I had mine."
What were they? The question tugs at your lips. You were never sure if you wanted to know. Not if this was really her. Her. "Are they enough to justify killing thirty-eight people?"
You shouldn't do this. You didn't come here to ask this. You came, not to talk about the past, not to discuss their respective lives, but to end this. But you may have been waiting for this for all these years. The question hangs in the air, and you want the answer.
"Your count is not entirely accurate." Her lips curl into a bemused smile. "And their deaths are entirely justifiable."
"Eric," you say automatically, without emotion. Bitterness and anger have dissipated a long before the last of the people you cared about were taken away from you. The only thing you feel now is exhaustion, and you want to stop.
She sips her hot chocolate slowly, mesmerized by the taste. A bit of foam is on her lips and she wipes it off with her fingers. The gesture is nothing seductive, not like what you've heard and been told, just casual. Sweet, even, if you didn't know who you were talking to.
Sydney Bristow is sitting in front of you, calmly taking the discussion on the death of your closest friend, someone she'd once called a close colleague, while enjoying her hot chocolate. There's a surreal quality to this all.
"I meant to tell you that you visit Eric's grave far too often," she says. "It wasn't your fault."
"It's very reassuring, hearing that from you," you say, hating the fact that you can calmly talk about Eric now, without the tremor that used to shake the core of your being.
"He thought he was protecting you; he wasn't, and he got in the way."
"Where's your heart?" the question slips before you can help yourself.
"I don't know. I might have killed it a long time ago. I was thinking maybe you can find it for me again."
You, too, have thought you lost your heart, but she's breaking it now, all over, right at this moment.
She tucks her hair behind her ear, her eyes downcast, and you realize it isn't the big things you've missed. She and you had no big things, no meetings that lasted more an hour or no missions you could look into her eyes straight without bullets ready to baptize both of you. What you have missed is this, this little bits and pieces of her habitual gestures, none of them you could see from your intelligence reports, surveillance cameras, and everything that briefly captured Sydney Bristow, the angel of death. For all of your eleven years.
Time can pass much more quickly than one might think.
"Do you believe we can live by memories alone?" she asks, suddenly.
"No." You wouldn't be here otherwise.
"It's what I've done. Live off the memories. People can't live off blood and corpses, you know. I'm not a vampire."
She actually sounds mischievous, and you have no choice but to play along. "How do you do it, then?"
"The trick is to keep breathing. Being alive excuses everything, Mr. Project Director, CIA. You know this."
She's a killer, you think. You too have blood on your hands, but there is a distinction, something that kept you sane all this time. "You said death is an easy way out and murder isn't. I think I'll take the easy way out."
"More than twenty years with the State Department, and you're telling me the world is still morally unambiguous to you," she says, her voice containing innocent amazement. "You surprise me, still."
"I'm only telling you I'd rather die." Some time ago, she would have said the same thing.
She watches for a moment, thoughtful and searching. "I know, but you can't. Not yet, at least. I need you alive today."
"You already killed me eleven years ago."
She stiffens, a little, and you're glad for that little reaction. "I did. But I needed you alive now. I needed you to be with me at this moment. And you are. That's all that matters."
"Why?"
The question is double-edged, and you find yourself treacherously glad that you still mean something to her, even like this.
None of her steel-like appearance slips, yet there is something there, something reminiscent of her that you've known as her case officer eternity ago.
She doesn't answer. Instead she asks, "Would you have come with me, if I asked?"
Probably. Even if it would have been the ruin of both of you.
You don't answer either.
"But then, it wouldn't have been you. It wouldn't have been you I was getting. I know. So I didn't ask." She looks away, her elbow on the table, her face leaning against the palm of her hand. "If you're still looking into the whereabouts of Arvin Sloane, I recommend you to start from the Pacific Ocean. A plane crash, I heard."
This is her way of reminding you that she will always bring you down to reality with a hard thud.
This means Arvin Sloane is the last to go among the Alliance members who are directly involved in making her life hell. The rest died years before. She could have killed Sloane then, if she wanted, hunted him down and snapped his neck with her bare hands. Instead, she let him stay alive, every moment in fear of Sydney Bristow. The great Arvin Sloane.
You cannot feel sorry for the man.
"It happened a week ago from yesterday," she offers offhandedly. "Which is why the Alliance decided to have an emergency meeting today."
You're thinking about the report from a month ago that has everyone in the agency on the edge. Another mysterious artifact of Rambaldi's has been found and gone missing. The tech team speculated its use as an explosive. "What's your mother up to?"
"Nothing, because I'm better at this."
Presently no intelligence officer in their right mind would disagree to that. You wouldn't, either. "But you don't have to be."
"And there's no reason not to be." She shrugs. "The Alliance killed Francie. CIA killed Will--"
"That's not--"
She cuts off your protest, "CIA abandoned you both. You were in a coma for two days while Will was in a morgue. I've kept the score. Mom killed my father and yours. The Alliance killed Danny, Francie, Dixon and his family. CIA killed Will and almost killed you by making the promises they couldn't keep. None of them I can forgive."
Her brown eyes are sepia, reflecting the light from the faraway fireplace, and you see them swirl with cold rage that burns and scorches everything around her.
You might have been the first to be burned.
When you woke up from the coma, the doctors said Miracle, and Eric said, I'm sorry. Will Tippin ('Look, if my friend is in danger, and there's anything I can do to help, I will. Tell me what to do.') is dead, you were told. So were Francie, Dixon, and Jack Bristow ('Sydney's cover has been blown.' 'What?! Jack--' 'I'm getting her out, but I need you to run interference for me.' 'Jack, you can't--' 'Thank you. For everything.') Sydney? Disappeared. Irina Derevko? Disappeared, too. It didn't take a genius to figure out Sydney was the one who broke out her mother.
"We know Sydney was at the hospital at least once, though, to see you," Eric told you, like a consolation prize that could never be enough.
You looked for her until there was no end, until there was nothing alive in you, until a series of suspicious deaths, all involved with SD-6, caught the eyes of the Intelligence communities. The reality came true, little by little, by corpses showing up here and there and by the methods of execution that were too colorful to describe. After that, all of the CIA agents suspected to be moles in any way or form died, one by one, in a swift execution style. The Alliance members weren't as lucky.
You threw up for every new corpse that was discovered. After eleven of them and twelve months later, there was nothing left in you to come out.
A year later, they reached the conclusion that Sydney Bristow was turned. Irreversibly. And she was now the enemy of the state. An assassin and an international arms dealer, the right hand of Irina Derevko.
Sometimes, the only crime you can accuse her of is taking away your Sydney Bristow from you. Piece by piece.
You had once thought, looking at her bright red wig and reading her Tolstoy story, she might well be the death of you. You hadn't been wrong, not entirely. But at least now you know something is going down today. You're here, again, to be her pawn, to assume a role in her play. But it will end. You will ascertain that.
"Tell me where the bomb is."
She answers easily, as if she's been waiting for this all along, "A secluded town 50 miles away from Rio Cuarto, where the newly established SD-13 is located, where all the senior members of the Alliance are having a little meeting. It goes off in two minutes"--she checks her watch--"and forty-two seconds."
"You can stop it." It's not a question.
She takes a sip from her mug again. "Of course."
"Do it now." You take out the gun from the jacket, your finger on the trigger. "Call it off."
She takes one look at the gun without interest, then turns her eyes to you. "You can take me in, or kill me. You can try both, but neither is going to stop this from happening in two minutes."
She puts her hands on the table, and waits.
Here you are, at your own climax.
Here you are, to test the theory you have invested in for the last few years.
That this time is different.
The last three encounters, when you caught the glimpses of her shadow in fleeting moments, you stood watching, disbelieving. While other agents aimed and shot at the shadow that moved faster than anything they dreamed of, you stood watching, disbelieving.
The very last time you saw her, you actually did aim, even triggered. You missed. Blamed it on your shaky right hand, the shoulder that never fully healed. The shoulder that hurt every time you felt her near.
What makes you think this time is any different?
It's not. It's laughable.
A trace of tremor goes through your right arm and your hand shakes slightly. Her keen eyes do not miss anything, and her lips are pressed into a thin line.
"I had hoped that would be enough to send you to an early retirement plan."
"Broken bones do heal." Unlike some other organs of your body, you think. But that's another story.
"You should've retired. And become a teacher. You would've made a great teacher."
You told her once, a long ago, that you had wanted to be a teacher. Little first-graders would adore you, and you would play basketball and hockey with boys at recess. Apparently she remembered, and was quite determined to put you away from this life for good. At your first encounter with her after her turn, you hesitated--she didn't.
"You were never that good of an agent. Better than some. Better than the most, maybe, but never one of the best."
You don't deny it. You became a part of CIA mostly because of your father, wanting to know dying for your country was really worth something after all, wanting to see it for yourself. You really began to understand your father only after she walked into your life.
"You were a good handler, though," she says, finishing her hot chocolate and somewhat listlessly playing with the candleholder again.
You can hear the sound of the wind hitting against the window. It might be turning into a full-blown snowstorm. Absurdly, you think about your car you've parked out of the road, away from the cafe. You wonder whether you could make it out if this ever ends.
Your gun is dropped. You feel a wary grin on your face. You watch her for the rest of the two minutes and forty-two seconds.
Her watch eventually makes a beep sound, and you close your eyes. The snow is still falling outside, the candle still burns, nothing's changed, and somewhere in Argentina, over a hundred of the Alliance agents just died.
Sometimes, the only crime you can accuse her of is taking away your idea of Sydney Bristow, piece by piece.
Her index finger is drawing a circle on the tablecloth, and for the first time you notice that it is embroidered with little roses, in burgundy. She seems to be fascinated by them. The normalcy of this is just ridiculous.
"You had a similar tablecloth for Danielle's birthday," she says, somewhat wistfully. "I always wondered if you were happy. If that smile of yours was real."
The realization hits you, hard. It's incredible that you've never thought this before. "You've been watching me."
"Everyday," she says.
Everyday? Listening and watching as you watch the Sesame Street with your daughter? When you eat, when you sleep, when you play with Groovy the dog, every moment of your life?
You can't protest it's a gross violation of privacy, because from you, the secret agent man keeping taps on too many people, the notion sounds just absurd. You can't protest she doesn't have any right, because you are not certain if she really doesn't have any. If all these years haven't given her any right at all.
And treacherously, you almost want to say this is unfair. She has watched you in daily life with the surveillance systems that even the best tech team the United States of America has to offer couldn't detect. She has watched you and Danielle. She got to see all the little things about your life that has been crumbling ever since, while you only saw the traces of her, most of the times the dead bodies of the Alliance operatives and rare snapshots, grainy photos, which contained her expressions that wouldn't be discerned, not even after the countless nights of staring at them, imagining what it would feel like to touch her hair that seemed to change color every week, to see her eyes that seemed to look straight at his.
It's an obsession, an addiction. You are hers, and she, yours.
"It was never real," you tell her.
"What?"
"My smile."
A phone suddenly rings, breaking the gentle silence settling in the cafe. Hers. You didn't bring yours.
She listens and hangs up without a word.
She stares at the candle for a moment before blowing it out, almost like an experiment, with her eyes closed.
"Would you have come with me, if I asked?" she asks, opening her eyes. Then she shakes her head. "Don't answer. It doesn't matter any more. Now that all of one thirty-five Alliance members including Irina Derevko were eliminated in the explosion."
You stare, not understanding.
"Mom offered her help and a place in her organization in exchange for a daughter she always wanted. So I gave her one. I perfected my role as a backstabbing double agent daughter. I think she'd be proud."
"Sydney."
She doesn't stop to acknowledge your use of her name for the first time in a long time. "My father is avenged. Your father is avenged. The Alliance no longer exists, and the leftovers of the various terrorist groups are so little that even the current CIA can easily take care of them without you. It's over. You don't have to die for your country."
"You did this for me."
"Yes," she says simply.
You can't breathe. You feel sick.
She tucks away a streak of her hair behind her ear. Her voice is soft, "You were all I had left. I needed you to be alive and I needed them to be dead. I made the only choice I could. Everything else was secondary."
The years unravel.
You are her excuse, her excuse for all of this. She's been deluding herself, you think, clinging to the only presence that was left for her. And she doesn't know. She still doesn't know.
You would like to cruelly destroy her world as she has yours. To destroy the idea that has centered her life, like she has yours.
You want to tell her it's not love. It's not love at all.
You can't, because it's not true.
So, the only choice is to tell her the truth. "I came here for one thing."
"To die."
"Yes. I think I deserve that much."
That's not courage. That's not being moral. That's cowardice.
But it just might be the only choice you can make.
Her hands tremble, because she knows this. "Danielle needs her father to be there at the recital tomorrow. You promised."
You feel old, the weight of the twenty years, all of the unrecognized battles against the enemies of the state, bringing you down, all because she is right.
She watches you again with her dark eyes. She bites her lips and stands up.
"I love you, Michael Vaughn," she speaks softly, like she is finally free to say the words. Like Cinderella who ran out after the clock had struck midnight, the magic vanished, exposed and vulnerable, she is ready to walk away.
She never asked much. She never asked for anything. She never said much. You never told her anything. You thought you would sacrifice everything you had for her. Except that she was the one who did.
The trick is to keep breathing.
Being alive excuses everything.
You watch the snow falling, falling, falling. The sepia of the fireplace does nothing to the frost on the windows. The waiter has long ago disappeared, and you are alone in this place. The wind murmurs against the glass, the last sigh. The world is dying. Utter desolation, said Rambaldi.
"How does this end?" you ask.
She stops, turns around.
"My imagination always ended here," she says, "at this moment."
You stand up. It's surprisingly easy to cross the distance between Michael Vaughn and Sydney Bristow. You reach her and take her hands. You hold her as long as you can, drink the air she breathes. The curls of her hair, the softness of her skin. You have all. Finally, there are her eyes. Before, you told yourself you would look into her eyes as long as you could to find the answer there.
And you do.
"Sydney, how does this end?"
For a second, she looks confused, vulnerable. Lost. She stares down at her hand you're holding tightly.
"I want to hold your hand and walk with you in the snow. I want to go to the recital tomorrow and give Danielle flowers and a hug and kisses. I want the world to end then. Right there."
She's no longer cold to the touch.
"Can you do that for me?" she whispers.
Her fervent whisper, 'Will you say it?'
Will you say it?
Say it.
Please.
You watch the snow falling, falling, falling. The wind murmurs against the glass, the last sigh. The world is dying.
You are not.
Utter desolation, said Rambaldi.
You don't care.
You write your own tragedy. And now the curtain falls, the play is done, and the world ends here.
"Yes," you tell her, your voice barely above the sound of the wind. "Let's do that."
THE END
01/16/03
by vega
Rate: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters.
Category: A response to Cover Me January Challenge. Angst. Futurefic. S/V. Second person POV alert.
Spoiler: All of first season and general second season.
Summary: "They write their own tragedies. Now the curtain falls, the play's done, and the world ends here."
Note: Thank God it's finished. This is my first Alias fic. I hope it isn't a total disgrace.
***
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-T.S. Eliot.
***
You write your own tragedy, marked by protagonists and antagonists, rising actions and climax, all five acts and scenes, and the inevitable deaths of the characters in the long, preluded and predicted end.
Or, perhaps she does. You're a mere actor playing by her rules and lines in the stage she has decided upon.
At least now you are waiting for your own climax, the end of all this. There's a certain satisfaction in that. You can feel the weight of the gun inside your jacket.
You chose a booth strategically located that you can see everyone who enters the cafe, more out of a trained instinct than precaution. You watch the entrance for a moment, then reach for the old-fashioned letter envelope in front of you. Every Christmas and every one of your birthdays you've received a card without a returning address, no stamp, no print. You never had to pull out the old and crumbling brown lunch paper bags to recognize the neat handwriting. This particular letter arrived weeks after Christmas and nowhere close to your birthday, containing the handwriting that, regardless of length, always reminds you of Tolstoy.
If nothing else, you appreciate her choice of the meeting place. The cafe is deserted. The frost on the window, the snow lazily falling from the sky, and everything outside on earth is white. Inside, the flames crackle at the far corner fireplace, dyeing the walls in amber and sepia. The only waiter yawns, appearing grateful that the fire is warming up the space in this winter afternoon. A candle and a rose at each table. A wine bottle. This is your second glass, and you have not decided whether you want to be sober or dead drunk for this. 'La Vien Rose' from an old-style jukebox. You fail to see the irony.
You came early, restless, but she is exactly on time.
A little bell rings as the door opens, accompanied the whirlwind and the snowflakes slipping in and falling on the wooden floor of the cafe. She enters and, seemingly knowing where you are almost instinctively, comes straight toward your booth in slow, measured steps.
You do not look into her eyes. Not yet. Instead, you absorb the details. You may have imagined her looking like her mother, with the seductive air and no flaw to be found in every aspect, but she's not her mother. Her hair is dark brown again, and it comes to her shoulders and ends with curls that look soft and leave you aching for a single touch. She wears a maroon-colored winter coat, ankle boots and gloves, all immaculate. No purse. That little tidbit is particularly interesting. You don't detect any weapons, but she doesn't need any. Just like she doesn't need any backup in this little excursion if she were here to kill you.
She approaches the table, and the candle on your table wavers. She takes off her coat, brushes off the snowflakes on her hair gently, and slides into the seat across you.
You watch her face, her neck, her dark cream-white suit, and her hands on the table. Finally, there are her eyes. Before, you told yourself you would look into her eyes as long as you could to find the answer there. Her eyes are not dead, not like how you've imagined, but they have a disquieting quality that would have any other man run to her, or run for his life. She watches you, occasionally fingering the clay candleholder, and your eyes follow her every movement. You would like to think it's caution on your part, but it is more of morbid fascination.
You notice that she, too, is taking in the details of you. You wonder what she sees. The years have been generous, or so you've been told, but there are lines on your face where they haven't been before. The grays in your hair, the eyes that no longer sparkle, the little things giving some evidence to the time, and, maybe, its cruelty.
It is not possible that she hasn't aged a day, yet it might just as well be possible.
You're the first to look away when the waiter arrives.
"What would you like today?" he asks.
"Something warm would be nice," she says, flashing a perfect smile that is obviously not wasted on the young waiter, who emanates all the typical characteristics of a college student eager for any hint of any action.
You wonder if the waiter really is a student of a college nearby; you haven't made any reconnaissance. This place could be owned by her, or the Alliance, but it doesn't matter. You can be surrounded by all of the Alliance members for that matter. That's no longer important, now that she's here.
The waiter, still glowing from being the receiving end of her smile, suggests every kind of coffee they have. You didn't receive this kind of attention when you ordered.
"Hot chocolate, with lots of whip cream." She smiles again. "I feel like celebrating today."
The waiter quickly retreats, and she turns to you.
There might have been things to say, the questions and the words and the cries, but you can remember none of them.
She says nothing. She takes off her gloves and puts them on the table. Her hands are lean and small, looking deceptively fragile. She is wearing a ring with a large exotic jewel that you can't name. It is burgundy and glitters in every direction. It is the color of blood.
"Rambaldi's legacy," she says, noticing your interest. "He's been a big help."
Of course, you think.
/This woman here depicted will possess unseen marks. Signs that she will be the one to bring forth my works. Bind them with fury, a burning anger, unless prevented at vulgar cost this woman will render the greatest power unto utter desolation./
Utter desolation. You came here to find out what it is.
"You've wondered whether Rambaldi was right all along," she speaks without a hint of hesitation. No animosity. Not at all like she's talking to someone who she hasn't talked to for over a decade, her enemy for over a decade.
Everything else is silent.
"Everyday," your voice cracks against your wish.
"Me, too," she answers. "I guess we don't get to cheat fate."
It was your idea that led her to see 'the beauty of Mt. Sebacio', to prove she wasn't the one of the Prophecy. That cursed Prophecy. You were so proud when the plan worked, thought the two of you (and Jack, always Jack) cheated what others thought to be fate.
She's here, in front of you, and all you can think is that you are cold. Shivering.
"How's Danielle?" she asks when the hot chocolate arrives.
You try not to bristle. You decide to focus on the window beyond her shoulder, the window and the falling snow. It calms you down enough for you to answer, "She's well."
"Pre-school, piano and ballet? Not too much for a five-year-old?" She looks curious, innocently curious, and you're not certain how long you can sustain this.
"Her mother would have wanted it that way."
She nods, thoughtful. "Of course."
"Did you kill Alice?" you ask when the thought occurs.
She shakes her head. "It was the Alliance. They thought you were getting a little too persistent."
So you know now. What difference does it make? Nothing. Either way, whether it was the Alliance or the woman presently in front of you, your wife died four years ago because of you, because of your work.
"I'll admit that the idea has occurred to me several times, and I might have, you know, if the Alliance didn't have a handle on it first," she adds with an odd smile on her face, leaving you wonder whether this is her twisted idea of humor, "Alice smiled too much in every picture. She seemed too happy at your side."
"She was never happy."
You married Alice mostly because of her. And the rest, to prove that you could live a life without her. To show her what she gave up for this, this terrible thing that cannot be called life.
Yes, you would have quite liked to die in Alice's place.
She says nothing. You wonder if she ever blinks. Someone might stab her back if she wastes a fraction of a second to blink. Wonder if she has anyone taking care of her, watching her back.
You reach for more wine, thinking you might need some alcohol in the system for this. Not a wise decision, but you're here, which proves self-preservation never has been your top priority. "As long as we're on the topic of family, how is your mother?"
"She's well. She wishes you well, by the way."
"Good, because I want her dead," you tell her, matter-of-fact.
Her face is like a mask of Porcelain masquerade faces; there is not a single twitch, no expression. It might be frozen, even, colder than the weather outside. Whatever you've been expecting, this isn't it. "She killed your father," she says. "I haven't forgotten."
"She killed Jack, did you know?" There is no evidence of surprise on her face, and you press on, bringing out the last card you've been holding for the last few months, "We now have the evidence that Irina Derevko was the one who informed Sloane about you and your father. A concrete evidence."
Her calm eyes meet yours, and you realize, suddenly, she has known. She has known it all along. With that, the last hope you've been harboring somewhere deep in your mind--brainwashing, threats, blackmails, among many other reasons to betray the country, to betray the people in it, to betray you--is blown away. She has known.
Her hand fingers the candleholder again. Her eyes are one the flame, gently burning. "Dad had it easier. Death is infinitely easier than taking life."
"You can't seriously believe that," incredulity slipping into your voice is quite unintended. Maybe you can't completely discard She-has-been-brainwashed-all-along theory yet.
"She had her reasons, as I had mine."
What were they? The question tugs at your lips. You were never sure if you wanted to know. Not if this was really her. Her. "Are they enough to justify killing thirty-eight people?"
You shouldn't do this. You didn't come here to ask this. You came, not to talk about the past, not to discuss their respective lives, but to end this. But you may have been waiting for this for all these years. The question hangs in the air, and you want the answer.
"Your count is not entirely accurate." Her lips curl into a bemused smile. "And their deaths are entirely justifiable."
"Eric," you say automatically, without emotion. Bitterness and anger have dissipated a long before the last of the people you cared about were taken away from you. The only thing you feel now is exhaustion, and you want to stop.
She sips her hot chocolate slowly, mesmerized by the taste. A bit of foam is on her lips and she wipes it off with her fingers. The gesture is nothing seductive, not like what you've heard and been told, just casual. Sweet, even, if you didn't know who you were talking to.
Sydney Bristow is sitting in front of you, calmly taking the discussion on the death of your closest friend, someone she'd once called a close colleague, while enjoying her hot chocolate. There's a surreal quality to this all.
"I meant to tell you that you visit Eric's grave far too often," she says. "It wasn't your fault."
"It's very reassuring, hearing that from you," you say, hating the fact that you can calmly talk about Eric now, without the tremor that used to shake the core of your being.
"He thought he was protecting you; he wasn't, and he got in the way."
"Where's your heart?" the question slips before you can help yourself.
"I don't know. I might have killed it a long time ago. I was thinking maybe you can find it for me again."
You, too, have thought you lost your heart, but she's breaking it now, all over, right at this moment.
She tucks her hair behind her ear, her eyes downcast, and you realize it isn't the big things you've missed. She and you had no big things, no meetings that lasted more an hour or no missions you could look into her eyes straight without bullets ready to baptize both of you. What you have missed is this, this little bits and pieces of her habitual gestures, none of them you could see from your intelligence reports, surveillance cameras, and everything that briefly captured Sydney Bristow, the angel of death. For all of your eleven years.
Time can pass much more quickly than one might think.
"Do you believe we can live by memories alone?" she asks, suddenly.
"No." You wouldn't be here otherwise.
"It's what I've done. Live off the memories. People can't live off blood and corpses, you know. I'm not a vampire."
She actually sounds mischievous, and you have no choice but to play along. "How do you do it, then?"
"The trick is to keep breathing. Being alive excuses everything, Mr. Project Director, CIA. You know this."
She's a killer, you think. You too have blood on your hands, but there is a distinction, something that kept you sane all this time. "You said death is an easy way out and murder isn't. I think I'll take the easy way out."
"More than twenty years with the State Department, and you're telling me the world is still morally unambiguous to you," she says, her voice containing innocent amazement. "You surprise me, still."
"I'm only telling you I'd rather die." Some time ago, she would have said the same thing.
She watches for a moment, thoughtful and searching. "I know, but you can't. Not yet, at least. I need you alive today."
"You already killed me eleven years ago."
She stiffens, a little, and you're glad for that little reaction. "I did. But I needed you alive now. I needed you to be with me at this moment. And you are. That's all that matters."
"Why?"
The question is double-edged, and you find yourself treacherously glad that you still mean something to her, even like this.
None of her steel-like appearance slips, yet there is something there, something reminiscent of her that you've known as her case officer eternity ago.
She doesn't answer. Instead she asks, "Would you have come with me, if I asked?"
Probably. Even if it would have been the ruin of both of you.
You don't answer either.
"But then, it wouldn't have been you. It wouldn't have been you I was getting. I know. So I didn't ask." She looks away, her elbow on the table, her face leaning against the palm of her hand. "If you're still looking into the whereabouts of Arvin Sloane, I recommend you to start from the Pacific Ocean. A plane crash, I heard."
This is her way of reminding you that she will always bring you down to reality with a hard thud.
This means Arvin Sloane is the last to go among the Alliance members who are directly involved in making her life hell. The rest died years before. She could have killed Sloane then, if she wanted, hunted him down and snapped his neck with her bare hands. Instead, she let him stay alive, every moment in fear of Sydney Bristow. The great Arvin Sloane.
You cannot feel sorry for the man.
"It happened a week ago from yesterday," she offers offhandedly. "Which is why the Alliance decided to have an emergency meeting today."
You're thinking about the report from a month ago that has everyone in the agency on the edge. Another mysterious artifact of Rambaldi's has been found and gone missing. The tech team speculated its use as an explosive. "What's your mother up to?"
"Nothing, because I'm better at this."
Presently no intelligence officer in their right mind would disagree to that. You wouldn't, either. "But you don't have to be."
"And there's no reason not to be." She shrugs. "The Alliance killed Francie. CIA killed Will--"
"That's not--"
She cuts off your protest, "CIA abandoned you both. You were in a coma for two days while Will was in a morgue. I've kept the score. Mom killed my father and yours. The Alliance killed Danny, Francie, Dixon and his family. CIA killed Will and almost killed you by making the promises they couldn't keep. None of them I can forgive."
Her brown eyes are sepia, reflecting the light from the faraway fireplace, and you see them swirl with cold rage that burns and scorches everything around her.
You might have been the first to be burned.
When you woke up from the coma, the doctors said Miracle, and Eric said, I'm sorry. Will Tippin ('Look, if my friend is in danger, and there's anything I can do to help, I will. Tell me what to do.') is dead, you were told. So were Francie, Dixon, and Jack Bristow ('Sydney's cover has been blown.' 'What?! Jack--' 'I'm getting her out, but I need you to run interference for me.' 'Jack, you can't--' 'Thank you. For everything.') Sydney? Disappeared. Irina Derevko? Disappeared, too. It didn't take a genius to figure out Sydney was the one who broke out her mother.
"We know Sydney was at the hospital at least once, though, to see you," Eric told you, like a consolation prize that could never be enough.
You looked for her until there was no end, until there was nothing alive in you, until a series of suspicious deaths, all involved with SD-6, caught the eyes of the Intelligence communities. The reality came true, little by little, by corpses showing up here and there and by the methods of execution that were too colorful to describe. After that, all of the CIA agents suspected to be moles in any way or form died, one by one, in a swift execution style. The Alliance members weren't as lucky.
You threw up for every new corpse that was discovered. After eleven of them and twelve months later, there was nothing left in you to come out.
A year later, they reached the conclusion that Sydney Bristow was turned. Irreversibly. And she was now the enemy of the state. An assassin and an international arms dealer, the right hand of Irina Derevko.
Sometimes, the only crime you can accuse her of is taking away your Sydney Bristow from you. Piece by piece.
You had once thought, looking at her bright red wig and reading her Tolstoy story, she might well be the death of you. You hadn't been wrong, not entirely. But at least now you know something is going down today. You're here, again, to be her pawn, to assume a role in her play. But it will end. You will ascertain that.
"Tell me where the bomb is."
She answers easily, as if she's been waiting for this all along, "A secluded town 50 miles away from Rio Cuarto, where the newly established SD-13 is located, where all the senior members of the Alliance are having a little meeting. It goes off in two minutes"--she checks her watch--"and forty-two seconds."
"You can stop it." It's not a question.
She takes a sip from her mug again. "Of course."
"Do it now." You take out the gun from the jacket, your finger on the trigger. "Call it off."
She takes one look at the gun without interest, then turns her eyes to you. "You can take me in, or kill me. You can try both, but neither is going to stop this from happening in two minutes."
She puts her hands on the table, and waits.
Here you are, at your own climax.
Here you are, to test the theory you have invested in for the last few years.
That this time is different.
The last three encounters, when you caught the glimpses of her shadow in fleeting moments, you stood watching, disbelieving. While other agents aimed and shot at the shadow that moved faster than anything they dreamed of, you stood watching, disbelieving.
The very last time you saw her, you actually did aim, even triggered. You missed. Blamed it on your shaky right hand, the shoulder that never fully healed. The shoulder that hurt every time you felt her near.
What makes you think this time is any different?
It's not. It's laughable.
A trace of tremor goes through your right arm and your hand shakes slightly. Her keen eyes do not miss anything, and her lips are pressed into a thin line.
"I had hoped that would be enough to send you to an early retirement plan."
"Broken bones do heal." Unlike some other organs of your body, you think. But that's another story.
"You should've retired. And become a teacher. You would've made a great teacher."
You told her once, a long ago, that you had wanted to be a teacher. Little first-graders would adore you, and you would play basketball and hockey with boys at recess. Apparently she remembered, and was quite determined to put you away from this life for good. At your first encounter with her after her turn, you hesitated--she didn't.
"You were never that good of an agent. Better than some. Better than the most, maybe, but never one of the best."
You don't deny it. You became a part of CIA mostly because of your father, wanting to know dying for your country was really worth something after all, wanting to see it for yourself. You really began to understand your father only after she walked into your life.
"You were a good handler, though," she says, finishing her hot chocolate and somewhat listlessly playing with the candleholder again.
You can hear the sound of the wind hitting against the window. It might be turning into a full-blown snowstorm. Absurdly, you think about your car you've parked out of the road, away from the cafe. You wonder whether you could make it out if this ever ends.
Your gun is dropped. You feel a wary grin on your face. You watch her for the rest of the two minutes and forty-two seconds.
Her watch eventually makes a beep sound, and you close your eyes. The snow is still falling outside, the candle still burns, nothing's changed, and somewhere in Argentina, over a hundred of the Alliance agents just died.
Sometimes, the only crime you can accuse her of is taking away your idea of Sydney Bristow, piece by piece.
Her index finger is drawing a circle on the tablecloth, and for the first time you notice that it is embroidered with little roses, in burgundy. She seems to be fascinated by them. The normalcy of this is just ridiculous.
"You had a similar tablecloth for Danielle's birthday," she says, somewhat wistfully. "I always wondered if you were happy. If that smile of yours was real."
The realization hits you, hard. It's incredible that you've never thought this before. "You've been watching me."
"Everyday," she says.
Everyday? Listening and watching as you watch the Sesame Street with your daughter? When you eat, when you sleep, when you play with Groovy the dog, every moment of your life?
You can't protest it's a gross violation of privacy, because from you, the secret agent man keeping taps on too many people, the notion sounds just absurd. You can't protest she doesn't have any right, because you are not certain if she really doesn't have any. If all these years haven't given her any right at all.
And treacherously, you almost want to say this is unfair. She has watched you in daily life with the surveillance systems that even the best tech team the United States of America has to offer couldn't detect. She has watched you and Danielle. She got to see all the little things about your life that has been crumbling ever since, while you only saw the traces of her, most of the times the dead bodies of the Alliance operatives and rare snapshots, grainy photos, which contained her expressions that wouldn't be discerned, not even after the countless nights of staring at them, imagining what it would feel like to touch her hair that seemed to change color every week, to see her eyes that seemed to look straight at his.
It's an obsession, an addiction. You are hers, and she, yours.
"It was never real," you tell her.
"What?"
"My smile."
A phone suddenly rings, breaking the gentle silence settling in the cafe. Hers. You didn't bring yours.
She listens and hangs up without a word.
She stares at the candle for a moment before blowing it out, almost like an experiment, with her eyes closed.
"Would you have come with me, if I asked?" she asks, opening her eyes. Then she shakes her head. "Don't answer. It doesn't matter any more. Now that all of one thirty-five Alliance members including Irina Derevko were eliminated in the explosion."
You stare, not understanding.
"Mom offered her help and a place in her organization in exchange for a daughter she always wanted. So I gave her one. I perfected my role as a backstabbing double agent daughter. I think she'd be proud."
"Sydney."
She doesn't stop to acknowledge your use of her name for the first time in a long time. "My father is avenged. Your father is avenged. The Alliance no longer exists, and the leftovers of the various terrorist groups are so little that even the current CIA can easily take care of them without you. It's over. You don't have to die for your country."
"You did this for me."
"Yes," she says simply.
You can't breathe. You feel sick.
She tucks away a streak of her hair behind her ear. Her voice is soft, "You were all I had left. I needed you to be alive and I needed them to be dead. I made the only choice I could. Everything else was secondary."
The years unravel.
You are her excuse, her excuse for all of this. She's been deluding herself, you think, clinging to the only presence that was left for her. And she doesn't know. She still doesn't know.
You would like to cruelly destroy her world as she has yours. To destroy the idea that has centered her life, like she has yours.
You want to tell her it's not love. It's not love at all.
You can't, because it's not true.
So, the only choice is to tell her the truth. "I came here for one thing."
"To die."
"Yes. I think I deserve that much."
That's not courage. That's not being moral. That's cowardice.
But it just might be the only choice you can make.
Her hands tremble, because she knows this. "Danielle needs her father to be there at the recital tomorrow. You promised."
You feel old, the weight of the twenty years, all of the unrecognized battles against the enemies of the state, bringing you down, all because she is right.
She watches you again with her dark eyes. She bites her lips and stands up.
"I love you, Michael Vaughn," she speaks softly, like she is finally free to say the words. Like Cinderella who ran out after the clock had struck midnight, the magic vanished, exposed and vulnerable, she is ready to walk away.
She never asked much. She never asked for anything. She never said much. You never told her anything. You thought you would sacrifice everything you had for her. Except that she was the one who did.
The trick is to keep breathing.
Being alive excuses everything.
You watch the snow falling, falling, falling. The sepia of the fireplace does nothing to the frost on the windows. The waiter has long ago disappeared, and you are alone in this place. The wind murmurs against the glass, the last sigh. The world is dying. Utter desolation, said Rambaldi.
"How does this end?" you ask.
She stops, turns around.
"My imagination always ended here," she says, "at this moment."
You stand up. It's surprisingly easy to cross the distance between Michael Vaughn and Sydney Bristow. You reach her and take her hands. You hold her as long as you can, drink the air she breathes. The curls of her hair, the softness of her skin. You have all. Finally, there are her eyes. Before, you told yourself you would look into her eyes as long as you could to find the answer there.
And you do.
"Sydney, how does this end?"
For a second, she looks confused, vulnerable. Lost. She stares down at her hand you're holding tightly.
"I want to hold your hand and walk with you in the snow. I want to go to the recital tomorrow and give Danielle flowers and a hug and kisses. I want the world to end then. Right there."
She's no longer cold to the touch.
"Can you do that for me?" she whispers.
Her fervent whisper, 'Will you say it?'
Will you say it?
Say it.
Please.
You watch the snow falling, falling, falling. The wind murmurs against the glass, the last sigh. The world is dying.
You are not.
Utter desolation, said Rambaldi.
You don't care.
You write your own tragedy. And now the curtain falls, the play is done, and the world ends here.
"Yes," you tell her, your voice barely above the sound of the wind. "Let's do that."
THE END
01/16/03