Disclaimer: I don't own anything having to do with Alias, not even a poster! It all belongs to JJ Abrams and Bad Robot.
Description: Yet another AU during Sydney's missing two years. What if Sydney was never kidnapped, and no one ever tried brainwashing Sydney but herself? Future Sarkney.
The sting of discovering your life long best friend is dead, and having to kill her body double all within the span of a few minutes still burned on her mind, in her eyes, and in her ears. When she went to sleep she could see the blood, heard the screaming, and her mind would race imagining what Francie had thought during her last moments. Had she known that it was Sydney's fault she was a target at all?
That had been three months ago, and ever since then she had been here, sitting in the dark hotel room she had gotten in Cuba. It was one of the last places the CIA would look for her. It wasn't like she had planned to run from them at first, she just thought she needed some alone time, but then, after one week had gone by she went online to read her first news paper, to be greeted with the site of her own obituary.
She wasn't dead, but she didn't feel alive either, so she had thought how convenient it was that they wouldn't be searching for her. Oh, she'd have to stay out of their way, but it was a lot easier to do if they thought you no longer existed. The only one she felt bad about was Will, who didn't understand any of it. Her Father and Vaughn both acted sad enough, but since she had been keeping tabs on them, they both seemed to be breathing heavy sighs of relief. Knowing her was very taxing, but not nearly as bad as being the Sydney Bristow.
People had been pulling her from all directions since the day she had been born. She had been in the middle of a Cold War battle, otherwise known as her parents.
For the last three months there had been no pulling. Sydney expected the people who faked her dental records and staged the house fire to call after the first month had gone by, but now she didn't know what to think. More than any kind of torture or mind washing experience she had gone through, the experience of hiding out to avoid alerting that you're not dead was, well, it was mind twisting.
Sydney started to question herself, question if she really was Sydney, or if she was really somebody else. Maybe she had been the one to start the fire and had inhaled a little too much smoke before exiting. Could that explain feeling Sydney Bristow's feelings?
As week went by week she stopped feeling anything but basic survival needs. Hunger, pain, fatigue, and after while she told herself that it was only in her strange swirling of feelings that she had confused the person she read about in the obituary with herself, with who she really was. She wasn't Sydney Bristow. Sydney Bristow was all things she wasn't, so much her very opposite that the thought of meeting Sydney almost sickened her, and at some point she squelched her mind so thoroughly that she wasn't even able to think of her name in any context.
The day after that total void of identity occurred, something new began. Deep within her psyche came up something that was the total opposite, someone who her mind told her that she could be, if she was defined as being Sydney's opposite.
And thus, Julia was born. No last name, just that one. She knew that she, Julia, was blonde, British, and nothing else. Right before Sydney slipped beyond oblivion, she put together an agreement with some old contacts, to cover up the last pieces of Sydney's life, and give Julia something to do. They called this agreement The Covenant.
A week later, her mind had filled in all the gaps in Julia's life, answered all the questions she had about herself. She even knew her last name, Thorne. It's all she allowed most employers and coworkers to call her. Thorne was less personal, less part of who she was.
That is how the real Sydney Bristow died, and her body and mind, though some say not her soul, created a new self. The soul wasn't involved in the process at all, it wasn't allowed to, for Julia had none, for she didn't know how to be Julia and have one simultaneously. Her mind had created this alter ego built on an image that Sydney had stored away as being her nemesis, her complete opposite.
That image was Julian Sark, and until now, he had never revealed to Sydney, the part of him that still had a soul.
A/N - I am okay with leaving this as a one-parter, but if I receive enough positive feedback I'll continue it. I know it's kind of cliche to write about the missing two years, because everyone has a spin on it, but well...this is mine! Wouldn't it have been so interesting?