Title: Surfacing
Rating: R, for sexuality (probably a mild R, but hey,
better safe than sorry, kiddos)
Summary: Sydney POV, S/V. What happened in North Korea? What happened
afterwards? Sydney's story before, during, and after. For January's Official
SD-1 Challenge, the sole requirement for which was to Bring The Angst
(tm).
Spoilers: Through "Full Disclosure," and Speculation based
on the promo clip for "Crossings"
Disclaimer: I don't own Alias or its characters. This is for my and
others' reading pleasure.
Feedback: Yes, please! :-D Gifts of praise, hot young men, chocolates,
and quantities of vodka all graciously accepted :)
Part 1 - Drowning
* * * * *
Waking up there and then...it was like a dream that had forgotten to end.
In the Hong Kong safe house I touched the small line of raised flesh that now cut across my abdomen. It wasn't painful. I had no memory of that scar. It scared me, ever so slightly, and the worst part was that I didn't know why.
Of course, whatever I felt over my scar was made drastically less significant by the confusion of what had happened to me, what had happened to make me wake up in Hong Kong in the first place.
I think it was after Vaughn arrived in Hong Kong, but before I tried to fight my way out, that I first realized how dislocated I felt. Jarred, distanced, not just from what grip on reality I thought I had, but mostly from myself. I didn't know who I was any more.
I had no memory of how I came to that place at all, of how I had suddenly travelled halfway around the world from my home. 'Foreign' didn't even begin to describe where I was or how I felt just then.
There were so many questions in my mind. The scar was only one.
I looked up, and Vaughn came through the door, and I threw my arms around him as if he was the only person who could pull me out. Out, away from the questions. Away from the fear that would come.
Vaughn sat down in front of me, and my world changed.
* * * * *
My father put his arms around me and I started to think that maybe I would be able to get through everything somehow. That perhaps everything had been a horrible, horrible dream, and he would release me back into the life I had known before.
In his arms I was his daughter and he was my father.
In his arms all I could feel was his strength, and all I could think about was that he was the one thing I hadn't lost. "My friends are gone, I have no job, I have no home, Vaughn's married..." I'd never been a very religious person, but I thought I might start to become one if there was a chance for something else that could help me start to believe again.
I left his arms and for a moment, all I could think was that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be held in my mother's. Or Vaughn's.
I looked back into my father's eyes and searched for an anchor.
* * * * *
Months later I fell into Will's arms, and for the first time since Hong Kong, I felt at home in my own body.
"Syd, I get it," he'd said so simply. In my mind I was screaming back at how wrong he was, how he couldn't possibly understand what was happening to me.
The tears fell before I could even begin to realize the truth of his words.
"I'm just alone," I said back. They were the only words that had made sense to me ever since I had found myself in Hong Kong.
I fell into Will's arms, and realized that he was probably just as lonely as I was. The difference between us was that he'd had the chance to live and experience his two years' worth of loneliness. I could only inherit mine.
His hands clung to me just as tightly as I clutched him, that much I could tell from the way he held me. I grasped at his shoulders, every part of him within my reach.
When we kissed it was rough, at first, unlike anything I could remember from Will before. So this is what loneliness does to a person, I thought then. I'd become hardened and vulnerable at the same time.
For a moment I was back in my old kitchen instead of a dusty European safehouse. I could taste chocolate and ice cream on Will's lips instead of vodka, and there was innocence instead of knowledge.
I wanted to go back to the kitchen from four years ago, and I didn't care who I was betraying by thinking that, because four years ago I had a life I could predict, even in its own messed up way. Four years ago I had people around me, four years ago I had a path laid before me where I could see what it looked like more than three paces ahead.
I felt the roughness of Will's hands on my body and realized that I was in the arms of a carpenter, no longer a journalist.
I stopped talking, then.
We were between the floor cushions and the bed, and had only begun to shed layers of clothing, when Will put his hands around mine and tried to stop me from going farther than I wanted to go. Again my mind screamed back at him that he didn't understand me. Damnit Will, don't protect me, you can't do that any more.
His eyes probed mine for an instant longer than I wanted him to, but it must have been enough. It was enough for us both to realize that we'd already passed the point of protecting each other.
After that, we moved so quickly that it wouldn't have mattered anyway, but I wouldn't let him remove my camisole. I didn't want his hands to touch the scar on my body. I wanted the kitchen to always be there as an option in my mind.
I didn't speak until long afterwards. We released into each other and I bit down on my lip, dug my nails into his skin, afraid that words would betray me.
* * * * *
A few days after that, I woke up on a plane, in front of the only person who could give me the rest of my inheritance. Hope without memory.
At first it was disorienting, waking up aboard a plane that was already in the air, talking to someone who evidently knew me more intimately than I knew him. Disorientation quickly turned to curiosity, though, after we exchanged a few words. He sat down with me and offered me the only thing I'd been searching for those past few months.
"I know what happened to you, Sydney."
Kendall showed me photos and plans and told me about Julia and clandestine meetings on behalf of the CIA. I watched myself talking on a video screen and felt myself go numb.
I was Julia. Julia was me. I thought back to Simon and the way he'd looked at me. The way his eyes had travelled my body and his tongue had probed my lips. Julia was me.
A shiver passed over me, and I hoped Kendall hadn't seen it from over the rim of his coffee cup.
It wouldn't have mattered anyway, once he'd finished the story. My story.
The scar burned on my flesh. I pressed my hand to my skin, as if I could make it disappear.
But of course, it wasn't just the scar. The loneliness I had felt for so long had been replaced by an emptiness and confusion that I couldn't compare with anything else I'd ever experienced, and with such speed that I couldn't even begin to make sense of it, not even as I'd destroyed Sark's lab.
I started to wonder what else could possibly be taken from me.
* * * * *
When Vaughn and I were captured, I wondered if this would be the last. The only thing left that could be taken.
I touched his hands, helping him to loosen his wrists a little from the ropes.
He touched mine, trying to do the same thing that was taking me so long to accomplish. I felt the blisters and callouses on the palms of his hands. He was bleeding there, and on his cheek, and in other places that I probably couldn't see. But then, neither of us could see much of anything.
Stuffed in the back of a truck, somewhere in North Korea. The end of the world, or as close as we would ever get.
I could feel moisture trickling down along the side of my face. My hairline felt sticky. I brought my hands up towards my head and touched a finger to my cheek. I couldn't see the colour that dampened the tip of my finger, but I knew what the sensation was. Sweat, mixed with blood.
Vaughn was looking at me, I knew. I could feel that, too.
"It's only a little scrape," he offered. His voice wasn't as sharp as I was used to, from him. I think it was then that I truly started to feel frightened.
I reached my hands towards him, touching the line of his cheek, where another scrape cut angrily across skin that I had touched so many times before, enveloped in a darkness that was nothing like this. "You don't look so bad, yourself," I tried, my voice faltering suddenly, unexpectedly.
Tears welled in my eyes, and I blinked hard to keep them from coming. I was suddenly grateful for the darkness. Vaughn shifted his weight a little bit more towards me, and we were side by side in the back of the truck.
* * * * *
When I kissed him in North Korea, it was as though I was kissing a memory. I wanted him to be who he was when I'd kissed him two and a half years ago. I wanted that Vaughn to be kissing the Sydney that I used to be.
I kissed him in North Korea, and I felt his lips hesitate underneath mine. I felt him hesitate and knew that this was not a memory. When Vaughn finally kissed me back, something changed. We weren't kissing each other because of who we were once. I don't even think it was for who we wished we still were. Somehow, it was a kiss for what we knew we could still become, if only time would let us.
We stood in front of a firing squad and his hand touched mine.
The sound of bullets firing through the air, and we froze, our memories clinging to each other in a way that our bodies could not, trying to find a path ahead.
But the bullets didn't hit us, and I opened my eyes back at him, and realized the path ahead had started to clear.
* * * * *
There were no words between us after that day. After the rescue, after our return to Los Angeles. No words that I could remember, none that had any meaning for days afterwards.
Six nights later - or possibly seven, I can't remember exactly - I went for a late jog after trying in vain to clear my head. I'd tried everything else. I'd thrown myself into reviewing briefing notes, then turned to some of the two years of American literature that I'd missed. And then I'd thrown myself into cleaning my apartment. Once I'd remembered how little there was in my apartment for me to actually clean, I had to get out of there. For a little while, at least.
I rifled furiously through my closet and pulled on the first sweats and sneakers I could find, and was out the door.
I don't remember how long I ran for, either. It was long enough that by the time I stopped, my muscles had moved beyond the point of achiness, my entire body felt slightly numb. My mind had reached a contemplative state that rose above the new set of questions that had plagued me ever since North Korea.
And so I was relaxed enough that the sight of Vaughn on my doorstep didn't faze me very much.
By then I'd been walking for three or four blocks, the muscles in my legs stretching and returning to stability. I rounded the corner and stepped gradually up my walkway, keys already in hand. Vaughn sat there, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped lightly together. His eyes betrayed the thoughts that must have been swirling in his mind, and he didn't see me at first.
When he did first see me I was a few feet away, and he looked up as I stopped in front of him.
"Hi," I said then, an impossibly simple greeting for such an impossible situation.
Vaughn stood, greeted me back. "Hi."
A thousand possible options passed through my thoughts like a slot machine, as I contemplated what I could say next. In the end, I walked past him to the door, and turned back as I slid the key into the lock.
"Come in," I said. He did.