Disclaimer- I don't own Alias, JJ Abrams and ABC do
Authors note: Hi everyone! This is my second fic I'm letting everyone see so I hope you read it, like it and review it. Of course it would also be helpful if you didn't like it and reviewed cos I need to know how to improve it. The concept of this fanfic is quite weird, and I know you all think its impossible that Francie could have lived, but I had some ideas which I wanted to share with y'all. I would also like to take this moment to thank Anna, Lisa, Paul and Steve who helped me when I was about to give up on this and also Lauren for cheering me up! Oh, one last thing- remember that on Alias no-one ever really dies! Kate: )
Chapter 1- Chloe
She could see the sun streaming through the windows, and she found herself wishing the person she was in the dream were wearing a cooler outfit. She was sitting down in a red room, from the looks of it a restaurant, which for some strange reason she had nicknamed Deep Inside, happily chatting to a cute blond guy who was stacking ketchup bottles on top of each other. Yet again she had no idea where she was supposed to be in this dream; she didn't recognise it from her daily environment, yet she felt she knew it well. She thought she knew the guy too, her character in the dream obviously knew him well, but for the life of her she couldn't place him. Suddenly the dream scene started to fade, and she realised she was coming back to reality.
Chloe Jessica Tyler rolled over in her bed and opened her eyes ever so slightly, immediately closing them again when the sunlight assaulted them
Ah, that makes sense. Somebody opened the curtains and obviously it contributed to my dream.
Even though the dreams were vivid, she had long ago stopped questioning them and long before that had stopped telling people about them. They had occurred for as long as she could remember, and that was her last two and a half years. According to her family and friends, they hadn't occurred before, so she was led to believe they were a direct result of the accident. She couldn't even recall the accident; she just had to imagine it through what the people in the hospital and back home told her.
She had been at the bank, where she worked security cameras, and there had been a robbery. She was injured in the head but luckily for her the neurosurgery department at Graz University Hospital was one of the best in the world. They had managed to treat her injury successfully, however it had required fitting a metal plate into her brain. She now had a hole like scar in her forehead, where they had to drill in to insert it. She had memorised this information and ended up repeating it at least once a week to those who questioned the gaping scar on her forehead. The plate wasn't much of a problem though in comparison to her memory loss, she had suffered severe amnesia from the minute she came out of the coma and she had spent the last couple of years talking to her family and friends to regain a sense of what her life was like before.
Of course she didn't remember any of her family and friends, but there were that many people she knew they had to be telling the truth. Over time, she came to love them all again and learnt more and more about her life pre- accident, but she kept on having these dreams.
At first she had told her husband, Rob, about them. He had laughed and told her she wasn't making any sense. She had never played mini golf, or gone to business school, and she didn't have any friends like the two she described so vividly. At the time she was still wary of trusting anyone, and the dreams, they seemed so real. She couldn't hear anything of what was being said in the dreams at first, her hearing had been temporarily damaged but it came back bit by bit. In fact, when all of it came back, she was allowed to go back to work, though in a hotel this time rather than a bank. It was safer and she wouldn't suffer any traumatic memories.
Before they allowed her to be discharged from the private medical facility she was at, they made her take twenty sessions with a psychiatrist, and at the second one of these meetings, he asked her whether she was having strange dreams. It was after she had told Rob about her experiences and so she was slightly wary of what Dr. Cantrella was going to say next.
He claimed it was her conscience's way of trying to create a perfect life because she couldn't remember anything. However he also said that none of it was true and that she needed to merge back into her old life, with Rob, her parents, and the rest of her close friends in Graz.
The first few weeks after her accident, she read as much material about her life she could get her hands on. Her birth certificate, which told her she was born to Ana and Steven Oxford in St. Guys Hospital in London. She read school reports, from both her schools in London, England, which she left when she was nine, and the reports from her schools in Graz, Austria where she had lived ever since. According to her parents they had moved because Austria was her mother's home country and that her father had good job prospects there. They both worked for a private medical research facility, which is apparently the place she met her husband Rob. She had finished her degree course on Communication and Electronic Engineering and was on the look out for a temp job. Her mother was on Personnel and her father was one of the senior researchers and they found a three-month job for her in admin. She had been working there for 2 weeks before Rob asked her for help with some data storage. Apparently they got on really well, and within 4 months had moved in with each other. Her parents really liked him and they had a beautiful wedding, which according to the marriage certificate was on 17 June 1999. She worked a few security jobs around Graz before landing more permanent work at the bank in 2001. A year later, she had the accident and had to quit.
"Chloe? What an earth are you up to?" A male voice suddenly called up the stairs.
She broke out of the trance she usually went into after one of her dreams and realised that she was at the top of the stairs, sitting on top of the hoover. "Um, I needed to sit down, this was closest place I could find" No need to tell him I have no idea whatsoever... he thinks I've stopped the dreams... he would only fret if he knew they still occurred
"Any particular reason why you needed to sit down?" He asked, now standing directly below her, so she had an advantage point to study him hard. She did this ever so often, in case she ever lost her memory again. He was 6ft tall, black with a closely shaven head. He had a goatee today, occasionally he would shave it off, but she preferred it on. His mouth dimpled whenever he smiled, which wasn't as often as she'd like, but when he did, it was a beautiful smile. In fact, he was smiling at her now in amusement.
"I just felt slightly dizzy, I think I should have ate some more food before I went to bed last night, I'm starving." She held her hand to her stomach to complete her little act, hoping he would believe her. She hated to lie to him after all he had done to help her, but she knew that the dreams would worry him too much and she didn't want that. "Well come down and let me make you some breakfast" He replied, rolling his eyes at her helplessness.
"No, its ok, I can do it, I like cooking" She replied. In truth, she loved cooking, but every time she tried making meals when Rob was around he would tell her to go and relax in front of the TV, he was strange in that way. He wasn't even a particularly great cook, but for some reason she put up with it, especially when he gave her puppy dog eyes, pleading with her that he could do the cooking.
"Nonsense, you just said you were weak from hunger. I'll cook you some pancakes with those chocolate chips you insist on having whilst you get dressed. You know, I've gotta say you are the only person I know that eats those together, you have some weird tastes". He laughed and walked back to the kitchen, whistling some tune Chloe thought she probably should know, but couldn't remember. She knew why she ate the chocolate chips though. She wasn't that fond of them, but they had come up in conversation in one of her dreams with her two non-existent friends, and so she ate them because of that.
Breakfast was its usual fun affair. Rob would be fussing around her making sure she had everything she needed, before diving behind the paper. She would read the society pages while he caught up on sport and then they would split the business section in two. After they conversed about what they would be doing that day, Rob left for the research facility. Chloe didn't have to go to work till lunchtime because she was working the noon to midnight shift that day. She took the advantage of having a few hours to relax before her solo shift behind the hotels security system cameras and grabbed hold of the food and drink section and the sports section of the newspaper.
Firstly, she flipped through the sports pages looking for evidence of the LA Lakers latest game. Rob had no idea that she supported them, he didn't even know she liked basketball. It felt normal to her though, and every time she heard them mentioned she thought of steak and she felt all happy and comfortable inside. She couldn't help these feelings and she had no idea where they came from, they just happened. Secondly she turned to the food and drink section, her favourite part of the whole day came from reading this, and she guessed this is why a restaurant made a regular occurrence in her dreams.
After finishing her reading and coffee, she dialled up a couple of friends on their cell phones to check they were still up for dinner the next night.
The first person she called was Maria, one of her closest friends who also worked at the research facility. Maria chatted on about her newest boyfriend for a few minutes before they got around to talking about the dinner. It was a birthday celebration for Rob and they had all decided to go to a nearby posh Italian restaurant. The rest of the conversation was taken up discussing which dress they were going to wear, and then Maria had to hang up as she had some work due.
Secondly she called up Brigitte, the wife of Rob's best friend Christopher, another of the research facilities employees. They talked for a few minutes about work and their husbands before Chloe realised she had better get her skates on if she was going to get to work on time.
A few hours later she was sitting at her desk going through reports on incidents last week whilst checking the screens every few minutes. She was pretty amused because she had just had a call up from the receptionist who mentioned that a couple more rock stars had just checked in, and the concierge was already moaning. She checked the feed from the foyer and saw a couple of English wannabes being pretentious to Marco on reception; she shook her head, laughed, and went back to her reports.
A few minutes later by chance she was checking the sub basement cameras just past the north east quarter. Suddenly she caught a glitch on the screen and realised to her horror that someone had been messing with the cameras. She ran over to the other side of the office and turned on the back up cameras, which were part of another circuit. She looked down all the corridors, looking for something amiss. And then she saw it. It was a body leaned against one of the walls. She zoomed in closer, and saw that it was a woman, wearing a white shirt soaked with blood, covered by a brown jacket.
She shrieked. But it wasn't because of the blood; it was because the person she was focussed on looked exactly like her.