Disclaimer: Obviously I do not own any of these characters or plot lines. Everything belongs to J.J. Abrams (genius), Bad Robot, ABC, etc. etc. etc.
[A/N] Takes places after Remnants.
Tearless
__________________________________
When Dixon told her, the words tumbled out of his mouth in bits and pieces. "Sydney, sit down," he began when she entered his office, gesturing towards the cushy, black chair. She sat on the other side of his large desk. "I- I don't know how exactly to tell you this..." he looked down, avoiding her glance. "Your friend - Will Tippin..." He could have stopped there, Sydney knew what was coming. "This morning... the police found him dead...." He put his hand out and covered her hand, which was firmly placed on the edge of the desk. "Syd, I am so sorry."
"Dixon," she interrupted. "How?"
Dixon blinked and stared at her for a moment before audibly taking a breath and running his hand over his mouth and his chin. "Gun shot," he nodded slightly. "Right to the back of the head."
Dixon obviously hadn't given her a real answer, but Sydney loved him for it. She could tell herself that at least she had asked the question and console herself with the thought of her best friend leaving the world quickly.
"If you need anything Sydney," he started again.
She nodded. "Thank you."
The office was a blur of slow motion. Everyone was moving and working as usual, but Sydney couldn't seem to absorb what was happening. Here were all of these other CIA officers, going about their lives, completely ignorant of the fact that another completely innocent person had died because he knew Sydney. What was it about her that brought disaster everywhere she went?
All she could feel as she walked towards the restroom was the steady thump of her feet against the ground. She couldn't hear the keyboards clicking or the people talking or the phones ringing. She didn't register the sight of Vaughn and Lauren, laughing together in the corner. If anyone had called her name, she wouldn't have heard it. But who would have called her name, anyway?
She pushed the ladies' room door closed behind her. She checked the stalls; they were all empty. She leaned back against the wooden door and slowly allowed her back to slide down it until she was sitting on the cold, white tile with her knees pulled close to her chin. She buried her face in her hands. Sydney, of all people, was intimately familiar with the gaping whole left by a loved-one's death. But this time, it was different.
This time, there were no tears. And the part of this tragedy that hurt the most was that her best friend had just died, she couldn't shed a tear, and she couldn't figure out why.
***
Somehow, Sydney had known his death was coming. She knew he was going to die because nothing in her life was going well, nothing ever worked out, no one ever survived, so why should Will be any different?
Or maybe she had known it was coming simply because she was an experienced spy. If an agency like the Covenant wants someone like Will Tippin dead, that someone is going.
Or maybe she knew it was coming because he knew it was coming. When Will decided not to go into hiding, he made the decision to die, and Sydney had respected it. She had to respect it, she couldn't make him run away. No one wants to watch his back all the time, to be suspicious of everyone. She understood why he wouldn't want to move somewhere new again, to take on another identity now that Sark knew he was alive. Starting over is hell.
She had spent the past few weeks almost hoping he was already gone. By imagining him dead, she didn't have to worry about the pain he was yet to experience. She could only imagine the agony that one of the vile human beings dispatched by the Covenant to murder Will would be able to inflict if he so desired.
She only wondered if Will had survived long enough to ask the painter on a date.
Maybe Sydney couldn't cry because she had expected Will's death.. It didn't come as a shock, like Danny's death. It wasn't 'if' but rather 'when' he would be killed. Maybe Sydney could only manage to cry if it was a shock.
***
She thought about getting a sharp object or dropping something heavy on her foot. It was a foolish thought, and some rational part of her subconscious knew that, but if she could force herself to cry maybe the numbness would go away. She hated the numbness. She racked her brain... there had to be a reason she wasn't doubled over in tears. Will - perfect, beautiful, kind, generous Will - was dead. And Sydney was sitting there staring at the white wall of the restroom feeling absolutely nothing except frustration. What was different about this death?
This time she had had the chance to say goodbye. When he left the operations center a few weeks earlier promising that he would see her again, she knew it was a lie. And so did he. And when they hugged goodbye she was at least grateful that she had had that opportunity, one that eluded her when her mother died, when Danny died, when Emily died, when Francie died. Maybe Sydney only cried when there was something left unsaid: a last "I love you" or an "I'm sorry" that she never got to share. Maybe that explained it.
***
She looked at her watch. She couldn't remember if she had been sitting in the restroom for five minutes or 55 minutes. She couldn't feel time passing, just like she couldn't feel anything else. She closed her eyes again and was surprised to find herself remembering Anita. Anita, the first in the succession of nannies who raised Sydney after her parents evaporated into the world of espionage. Anita was an elderly woman with wise eyes and thick, black hair who always wore a string of pearls around her neck. Sydney had few memories of Anita's tenure, the period after Laura's death had always been nebulous to Sydney, but Sydney remembered crying to Anita. A lot.
If Anita made macaroni and cheese that was creamier than Laura's had been, Sydney would cry. If Anita pronounced a name in one of Sydney's favorite books differently, Sydney would cry. If Anita took Sydney to a new park to play, she would cry. Invariably, after a long fit of tears, six year old Sydney would explain: "My mommy never did it that way. When is she coming home?"
This went on for months, but after one of Sydney's breakdowns, an exasperated Anita sat down on the couch and put her arm around a whimpering Sydney. "Sydney," Anita said in her strong Spanish accent. "When I was a little girl in Madrid, whenever I used to cry, mi abuelo - my grandfather - he would tell me a story of a woman who grew up in his village. This woman, her name was Maria, when she was a little girl she cried all the time. Every day she cried, in school, at home, in the town plaza when her friends were playing. Sometimes she had good reasons to cry, sometimes not, but she cried still. All the time. Her papa told her that if she cried so much, one day all the tears would dry up and she could cry no more. But Maria did not believe them and she didn't want to because it helped her to cry.
So Maria grew up and she was very beautiful. She had long, shiny black hair and beautiful red lips and all the young men wanted to marry her. But suddenly, one horrible day her papa died. She had many sisters and they all cried because their wonderful papa was gone. But Maria, she could cry no more. She had no more tears to cry. And her mama said, 'Maria, don't you love your papa? Why do you not cry for him?'
And Maria tried to explain to her mama and her sisters why she shed no tears for her beloved papa. She told them that she had no more tears left. That when she was a little girl, she cried all of her tears and now, even though she was very, very sad, she could not cry. But they did not listen. They were all very mad at Maria for not crying because her papa was gone. They made her to leave the house and go somewhere else. And mi abuelo told me that he never saw Maria again. But ever since then he told all of his children and grandchildren that if they cry so much over little things, that one day they will have no more tears to cry. Sydney, comprendes chiquita? Do you understand my story?"
Sydney looked up into Anita's big, beautiful eyes with her own small, beautiful eyes and nodded.
"Now Sydney, you have a big reason to cry. You do not cry for little things, this I know. I did not tell you this story for many weeks even though you cried so much because I know that you have good reason to be so sad. But Sydney, now I worry about you. You are very young and very beautiful and I do not want you to become like Maria." Anita softly wiped the tears off of Sydney's red cheeks. "So Sydney, you must try very hard not to cry so much because maybe one day you can't anymore. Like Maria. Si?"
***
As a six year old, it had taken Sydney only a few months more of naïvete before realizing that Anita's story had been just that - a story. But maybe there was something to the idea of a woman who could cry no more.
If anyone's eyes could dry up, it would be Sydney's.
Maybe she had shed too many tears over the world that never ceased to let her down. This was just one horror too many. Maybe the numbness, the lack of tears, the feeling of helplessness was exactly what Anita had tried to protect her against. But it was too late.
Sydney could feel no more. She was tearless.
***
It's a strange feeling, living without realizing your alive. Sydney spent the rest of the day functioning without thinking about anything. She couldn't feel, all she could do was be. The day went on, and she went on. She smiled when she needed to, she talked to Marshall about his newest gadget, she filed her usual reports and attended her usual conferences. She left at the usual time and got in her car, which was parked in her usual spot, and drove. But she didn't drive home. She didn't know where she was driving. She just went.
And almost suddenly she was standing at a familiar pier, leaning against a familiar railing, staring out at the familiar ink-colored expanse of the Pacific. It was night, and the full moon which usually shone so brightly was obscured by clouds.
She held her cell phone in her hand. She had called him. As she waited there, she actually spent a fraction of a second wondering if her pager, which a few years earlier had hit the water with a loud 'plop' after she tossed it off the pier, had become imbedded in the sand. Or had it floated away? Had years of waves, rocks, and shells pounding against it fortified it into the ocean floor? Or had the abuse turned it into disintegrated bits of plastic and silicon scattered throughout the ocean?
It was chilly and she was starting to worry that he wasn't coming. She wanted so badly to cry, to make sure that she was alive because it was getting to the point that she wasn't exactly sure. Calling him was her last shot at feeling something. If he couldn't help her, maybe she really was a lost cause.
Because she was a spy, all of the people who had once been close to her were stolen away; their lives cut short by bullets and snipers and assassins. Maybe the final victim had become herself. She had always been emotional, but if she couldn't cry, maybe that was the sign that not only was she close to no one, but she had become no one.
And then he was there, standing next to her.
"Sydney," he said. He stood next to her and they both stared silently at the water.
"I can't cry," she stated. "You know me... I cry. It's what I do. And I can't, today. I'm too tired and I just, I can't feel anymore... I'm too tired and too alone and..."
"Sydney, see, that's where you're wrong. You may be too tired to deal with this. You probably are. But you are not alone. As long as I'm here you... will never be alone..." There was silence as they continued to stare at the water. "I'm trying to say, don't let this business, this life the you lead, don't let it take away your ability to feel things. It did that to me for a while... for a long time." He stopped talking for a moment. "I know I haven't always been there for you, but now... I can't watch you fall into the trap that I did. So I'm here. When you need someone."
She turned to look at him, her eyes wide open and her lip slightly parted. "Daddy," she breathed. "Thank you." She threw her arms around his shoulders and felt his arms wrap around her. "Thank you for coming."
"Thank you for calling."
***
And as she stood there with her face buried in her father's chest, the more she began to understand her lack of tears. It wasn't because she knew his death was becoming or because she was able to say goodbye. And it definitely wasn't because she couldn't feel anymore. Because she definitely felt something. And it hurt terribly.
Maybe she couldn't cry because she wasn't ready to deal with another loss like this alone. She was so tired of holding her head up and standing tall and then running home each night to cry into her pillow. She'd been playing that game for months since she'd returned and she had played that game too many time before. She couldn't handle it anymore.
But what about if someone were there with her... If her father were there... If she weren't alone... Maybe if she didn't have to worry about standing or holding her head up and she could just collapse and stay in her father's arms for a little while....
"I'm just so scared and so sick of this," she said. "Daddy, I can't...I can't..."
"I know," he replied. "I know."
And suddenly she wanted to throw-up, to scream, to cry, to let the world know that Will Tippin did not deserve to die, to kill the people who do things like this, to cry, to yell at someone, to punch something, to cry, to fall down, to not get back up again, to go find him because he can't really be dead and this is just some awful joke, to scream, to end this insanity. She wanted to cry. She needed to cry.
So she did.
She shut her eyes and thought about Will and Danny and Francie and Emily and everything that had fallen apart in the last five years of her life and everyone who had betrayed her and everything she didn't understand and she cried. A lot.
___________________________________
If you could review this, it would be completely and totally fantastic. Please, please, please, please, please..... please....
[A/N] Takes places after Remnants.
Tearless
__________________________________
When Dixon told her, the words tumbled out of his mouth in bits and pieces. "Sydney, sit down," he began when she entered his office, gesturing towards the cushy, black chair. She sat on the other side of his large desk. "I- I don't know how exactly to tell you this..." he looked down, avoiding her glance. "Your friend - Will Tippin..." He could have stopped there, Sydney knew what was coming. "This morning... the police found him dead...." He put his hand out and covered her hand, which was firmly placed on the edge of the desk. "Syd, I am so sorry."
"Dixon," she interrupted. "How?"
Dixon blinked and stared at her for a moment before audibly taking a breath and running his hand over his mouth and his chin. "Gun shot," he nodded slightly. "Right to the back of the head."
Dixon obviously hadn't given her a real answer, but Sydney loved him for it. She could tell herself that at least she had asked the question and console herself with the thought of her best friend leaving the world quickly.
"If you need anything Sydney," he started again.
She nodded. "Thank you."
The office was a blur of slow motion. Everyone was moving and working as usual, but Sydney couldn't seem to absorb what was happening. Here were all of these other CIA officers, going about their lives, completely ignorant of the fact that another completely innocent person had died because he knew Sydney. What was it about her that brought disaster everywhere she went?
All she could feel as she walked towards the restroom was the steady thump of her feet against the ground. She couldn't hear the keyboards clicking or the people talking or the phones ringing. She didn't register the sight of Vaughn and Lauren, laughing together in the corner. If anyone had called her name, she wouldn't have heard it. But who would have called her name, anyway?
She pushed the ladies' room door closed behind her. She checked the stalls; they were all empty. She leaned back against the wooden door and slowly allowed her back to slide down it until she was sitting on the cold, white tile with her knees pulled close to her chin. She buried her face in her hands. Sydney, of all people, was intimately familiar with the gaping whole left by a loved-one's death. But this time, it was different.
This time, there were no tears. And the part of this tragedy that hurt the most was that her best friend had just died, she couldn't shed a tear, and she couldn't figure out why.
***
Somehow, Sydney had known his death was coming. She knew he was going to die because nothing in her life was going well, nothing ever worked out, no one ever survived, so why should Will be any different?
Or maybe she had known it was coming simply because she was an experienced spy. If an agency like the Covenant wants someone like Will Tippin dead, that someone is going.
Or maybe she knew it was coming because he knew it was coming. When Will decided not to go into hiding, he made the decision to die, and Sydney had respected it. She had to respect it, she couldn't make him run away. No one wants to watch his back all the time, to be suspicious of everyone. She understood why he wouldn't want to move somewhere new again, to take on another identity now that Sark knew he was alive. Starting over is hell.
She had spent the past few weeks almost hoping he was already gone. By imagining him dead, she didn't have to worry about the pain he was yet to experience. She could only imagine the agony that one of the vile human beings dispatched by the Covenant to murder Will would be able to inflict if he so desired.
She only wondered if Will had survived long enough to ask the painter on a date.
Maybe Sydney couldn't cry because she had expected Will's death.. It didn't come as a shock, like Danny's death. It wasn't 'if' but rather 'when' he would be killed. Maybe Sydney could only manage to cry if it was a shock.
***
She thought about getting a sharp object or dropping something heavy on her foot. It was a foolish thought, and some rational part of her subconscious knew that, but if she could force herself to cry maybe the numbness would go away. She hated the numbness. She racked her brain... there had to be a reason she wasn't doubled over in tears. Will - perfect, beautiful, kind, generous Will - was dead. And Sydney was sitting there staring at the white wall of the restroom feeling absolutely nothing except frustration. What was different about this death?
This time she had had the chance to say goodbye. When he left the operations center a few weeks earlier promising that he would see her again, she knew it was a lie. And so did he. And when they hugged goodbye she was at least grateful that she had had that opportunity, one that eluded her when her mother died, when Danny died, when Emily died, when Francie died. Maybe Sydney only cried when there was something left unsaid: a last "I love you" or an "I'm sorry" that she never got to share. Maybe that explained it.
***
She looked at her watch. She couldn't remember if she had been sitting in the restroom for five minutes or 55 minutes. She couldn't feel time passing, just like she couldn't feel anything else. She closed her eyes again and was surprised to find herself remembering Anita. Anita, the first in the succession of nannies who raised Sydney after her parents evaporated into the world of espionage. Anita was an elderly woman with wise eyes and thick, black hair who always wore a string of pearls around her neck. Sydney had few memories of Anita's tenure, the period after Laura's death had always been nebulous to Sydney, but Sydney remembered crying to Anita. A lot.
If Anita made macaroni and cheese that was creamier than Laura's had been, Sydney would cry. If Anita pronounced a name in one of Sydney's favorite books differently, Sydney would cry. If Anita took Sydney to a new park to play, she would cry. Invariably, after a long fit of tears, six year old Sydney would explain: "My mommy never did it that way. When is she coming home?"
This went on for months, but after one of Sydney's breakdowns, an exasperated Anita sat down on the couch and put her arm around a whimpering Sydney. "Sydney," Anita said in her strong Spanish accent. "When I was a little girl in Madrid, whenever I used to cry, mi abuelo - my grandfather - he would tell me a story of a woman who grew up in his village. This woman, her name was Maria, when she was a little girl she cried all the time. Every day she cried, in school, at home, in the town plaza when her friends were playing. Sometimes she had good reasons to cry, sometimes not, but she cried still. All the time. Her papa told her that if she cried so much, one day all the tears would dry up and she could cry no more. But Maria did not believe them and she didn't want to because it helped her to cry.
So Maria grew up and she was very beautiful. She had long, shiny black hair and beautiful red lips and all the young men wanted to marry her. But suddenly, one horrible day her papa died. She had many sisters and they all cried because their wonderful papa was gone. But Maria, she could cry no more. She had no more tears to cry. And her mama said, 'Maria, don't you love your papa? Why do you not cry for him?'
And Maria tried to explain to her mama and her sisters why she shed no tears for her beloved papa. She told them that she had no more tears left. That when she was a little girl, she cried all of her tears and now, even though she was very, very sad, she could not cry. But they did not listen. They were all very mad at Maria for not crying because her papa was gone. They made her to leave the house and go somewhere else. And mi abuelo told me that he never saw Maria again. But ever since then he told all of his children and grandchildren that if they cry so much over little things, that one day they will have no more tears to cry. Sydney, comprendes chiquita? Do you understand my story?"
Sydney looked up into Anita's big, beautiful eyes with her own small, beautiful eyes and nodded.
"Now Sydney, you have a big reason to cry. You do not cry for little things, this I know. I did not tell you this story for many weeks even though you cried so much because I know that you have good reason to be so sad. But Sydney, now I worry about you. You are very young and very beautiful and I do not want you to become like Maria." Anita softly wiped the tears off of Sydney's red cheeks. "So Sydney, you must try very hard not to cry so much because maybe one day you can't anymore. Like Maria. Si?"
***
As a six year old, it had taken Sydney only a few months more of naïvete before realizing that Anita's story had been just that - a story. But maybe there was something to the idea of a woman who could cry no more.
If anyone's eyes could dry up, it would be Sydney's.
Maybe she had shed too many tears over the world that never ceased to let her down. This was just one horror too many. Maybe the numbness, the lack of tears, the feeling of helplessness was exactly what Anita had tried to protect her against. But it was too late.
Sydney could feel no more. She was tearless.
***
It's a strange feeling, living without realizing your alive. Sydney spent the rest of the day functioning without thinking about anything. She couldn't feel, all she could do was be. The day went on, and she went on. She smiled when she needed to, she talked to Marshall about his newest gadget, she filed her usual reports and attended her usual conferences. She left at the usual time and got in her car, which was parked in her usual spot, and drove. But she didn't drive home. She didn't know where she was driving. She just went.
And almost suddenly she was standing at a familiar pier, leaning against a familiar railing, staring out at the familiar ink-colored expanse of the Pacific. It was night, and the full moon which usually shone so brightly was obscured by clouds.
She held her cell phone in her hand. She had called him. As she waited there, she actually spent a fraction of a second wondering if her pager, which a few years earlier had hit the water with a loud 'plop' after she tossed it off the pier, had become imbedded in the sand. Or had it floated away? Had years of waves, rocks, and shells pounding against it fortified it into the ocean floor? Or had the abuse turned it into disintegrated bits of plastic and silicon scattered throughout the ocean?
It was chilly and she was starting to worry that he wasn't coming. She wanted so badly to cry, to make sure that she was alive because it was getting to the point that she wasn't exactly sure. Calling him was her last shot at feeling something. If he couldn't help her, maybe she really was a lost cause.
Because she was a spy, all of the people who had once been close to her were stolen away; their lives cut short by bullets and snipers and assassins. Maybe the final victim had become herself. She had always been emotional, but if she couldn't cry, maybe that was the sign that not only was she close to no one, but she had become no one.
And then he was there, standing next to her.
"Sydney," he said. He stood next to her and they both stared silently at the water.
"I can't cry," she stated. "You know me... I cry. It's what I do. And I can't, today. I'm too tired and I just, I can't feel anymore... I'm too tired and too alone and..."
"Sydney, see, that's where you're wrong. You may be too tired to deal with this. You probably are. But you are not alone. As long as I'm here you... will never be alone..." There was silence as they continued to stare at the water. "I'm trying to say, don't let this business, this life the you lead, don't let it take away your ability to feel things. It did that to me for a while... for a long time." He stopped talking for a moment. "I know I haven't always been there for you, but now... I can't watch you fall into the trap that I did. So I'm here. When you need someone."
She turned to look at him, her eyes wide open and her lip slightly parted. "Daddy," she breathed. "Thank you." She threw her arms around his shoulders and felt his arms wrap around her. "Thank you for coming."
"Thank you for calling."
***
And as she stood there with her face buried in her father's chest, the more she began to understand her lack of tears. It wasn't because she knew his death was becoming or because she was able to say goodbye. And it definitely wasn't because she couldn't feel anymore. Because she definitely felt something. And it hurt terribly.
Maybe she couldn't cry because she wasn't ready to deal with another loss like this alone. She was so tired of holding her head up and standing tall and then running home each night to cry into her pillow. She'd been playing that game for months since she'd returned and she had played that game too many time before. She couldn't handle it anymore.
But what about if someone were there with her... If her father were there... If she weren't alone... Maybe if she didn't have to worry about standing or holding her head up and she could just collapse and stay in her father's arms for a little while....
"I'm just so scared and so sick of this," she said. "Daddy, I can't...I can't..."
"I know," he replied. "I know."
And suddenly she wanted to throw-up, to scream, to cry, to let the world know that Will Tippin did not deserve to die, to kill the people who do things like this, to cry, to yell at someone, to punch something, to cry, to fall down, to not get back up again, to go find him because he can't really be dead and this is just some awful joke, to scream, to end this insanity. She wanted to cry. She needed to cry.
So she did.
She shut her eyes and thought about Will and Danny and Francie and Emily and everything that had fallen apart in the last five years of her life and everyone who had betrayed her and everything she didn't understand and she cried. A lot.
___________________________________
If you could review this, it would be completely and totally fantastic. Please, please, please, please, please..... please....