Firstly, I'd just like to say a big YAY that the GCSEs are FINALLY over!!!
YAY! No more exams!
This takes place after the first scene of A Free Agent, but for it to work with the story I've had to re-write the first scene. I loved the way it was done in the show but that just wouldn't have worked with my story. I've also got references to Truth Be Told but my memory of that episode is hazy and the transcript wasn't much help so I may have got things wrong.
This idea was sparked off by something I read about The Telling before I could avert my eyes (please, no references to The Telling in reviews, I'm trying so hard to stay spoiler-free!). The story was inspired by the Buffy episode "Normal Again" (which, btw, is an amazing piece of TV). Thank you Joss and the people at ME for 7 years of great TV. Well, this is neither the time nor the place to mourn the loss of my favourite show, so on with the story!
Lastly, PLEASE REVIEW!!!!!
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A ray of light crept in through the window, warming Sydney's face and forcing her to wake up. She kept her eyes closed as tiredness overcame her and she pretended that she was still asleep. She had to fight the smile that threatened to take over her face when she became aware of the warm arms holding her close, and the memories of the previous night swept through her. Eyes still closed, she thought of her newfound freedom. SD-6 was gone. Gone forever, and she could be free. Her thoughts were interrupted by a drowsy murmur near her ear.
"I know you're awake. I can see you smiling," she could almost hear the smile in Vaughn's voice.
"Shhh! No, I'm not. I'm asleep," she replied with a giggle. All the time her eyes remained shut and all she could see was the comforting darkness that surrounded her. She heard a voice in the back of her mind. She recognised it instantly, for it was none other than her own.
"Come on, Sydney. It's time to wake up," it, or rather, she, said. Sydney was confused. What did it mean, it's time to wake up? She was already awake. "Sydney," the voice continued, more sternly this time, "it's safe to wake up now."
Thoroughly confused, and sure she was imagining things, Sydney slowly opened her eyes. The sight she was greeted with gave her a shock she would never forget. Instead of the comfortable bedroom she loved so much, her eyes met with the stark white walls of a little room. The room was empty, save for the small bed she was in, a table on one side of it, and a chair on the other. There was a window on one side of the wall behind her bed, and the door in the far corner was slightly ajar, revealing a corridor with walls much the same colour as the room she was in. Sydney took in all of this in a matter of seconds, and shifted her gaze to the chair by her bed, the occupant of which was staring at her, wide-eyed, as if she had arrived from another planet. She recognised him and opened her mouth to say his name, but the confident statement she had been intending came out as a pleading whisper. She tried again.
"Vaughn?"
"Oh my God. . . Sydney!" He shot out of his chair and turned towards the door. As if suddenly realising something, he turned back to her and added to her confusion by announcing that he was going to get a doctor and would she be okay by herself for a moment? Sydney was too shocked and dazed to respond so, deciding that she would be okay, he turned towards the door once more. He was hesitant to leave and his journey out of the room was punctuated by his turning back around to gaze at her open-mouthed several times.
Sydney was left to wonder where she was, what she was doing there, and what had happened to the room she had been in only moments before. She was so sure she had been there. But she hadn't seen it, had she? If only she'd opened her eyes earlier, she might have had some idea of what was going on! She knew the man who had just left the room, that much was obvious from the fact that she had awoken curled up next to him in bed, both of them naked nonetheless. But had that really happened? The bed she was in now, and the uncomfortable hospital clothes she was wearing seemed to suggest otherwise. She knew him, though. She was positive she did. He'd known her name, after all, and he'd been holding her hand until he'd left the room.
Presently he returned, this time with a tall doctor. Vaughn and the doctor were arguing; Sydney heard Vaughn earnestly telling him that she was "awake, really awake!" The doctor apparently thought he was lying, and was trying to calm an excited Vaughn with suggestions that he wasn't sleeping enough. When he saw that Sydney's eyes were open and that she had moved a little, the doctor did a double take, which would have been comical had the situation not been so important. He fussed around her for a while, all the time mumbling such phrases as "well, I never!", "it's a miracle!" and "this is extraordinary!". Vaughn, too, seemed overjoyed at the whole thing, but Sydney was still terribly confused and beginning to be a little frightened.
"I'll call her father," said the doctor, when he was finally done. "Make sure she gets some sleep, she's still very weak." Vaughn nodded and took up his place in the chair beside Sydney's bed. When they were alone, Sydney raised her head slightly, but finding it much too heavy to hold up, she flopped back down onto the pillow.
"Where am I?" she asked, when she was comfortable again. Vaughn took a deep breath. He hadn't been prepared for this and wasn't sure how Sydney would react to the news.
"You're in a hospital. You've been in a coma for two years,"
Sydney shot bolt upright in her bed, ignoring the stabs of pain that shot through her as she did so. "No!" she said forcefully, and glared at Vaughn.
"Syd, I know it's hard - I mean, I can't even imagine what it must be like to be told this. Please lie down," he begged her, deeply concerned about this woman who, until just recently, he had never even had more than a one- sided conversation with. Too tired to argue, Sydney complied and settled herself back in the bed. She stared up at the ceiling, trying to process what she had just been told. She was suddenly full of questions and wanted them all answered at once. After some consideration, she decided to ask the one that was least likely to cause more emotional trauma.
"Who are you?"
Vaughn looked disappointed. She had said his name when she woke up, and he assumed that meant she knew him, although he had no idea how that was at all possible. "I'm Michael Vaughn," he said with a smile. "I work for the CIA. You're in a CIA hospital,"
"You know, it's funny. I knew that. I have no idea how, but I did,"
"I've visited you every day for the past two years, you probably heard me talking to you. People in comas are supposed to be able to hear things," he finished a little uncertainly. Sydney tried to smile, but it hurt her dry, cracked lips. Seeing her pain, Vaughn got up and filled a glass with water. Sitting back down, he held it out to her. She took it with a shaking hand, and very nearly upset the whole glass on the bed. Vaughn saw that she was unable to hold it herself, so he took it back and set it down on the table while he helped her into a sitting position. He held the glass to her lips and she drank a little of the cool water. When she had finished, Vaughn made sure that she was comfortably lying down again before returning to his seat.
"Do you remember anything?" he asked, after a little silence had ensued. Sydney frowned. She remembered things, but she didn't know how she had come to be in a coma and that was what she was most interested in at present.
"I remember some things. But I don't know if they really happened or not. Hey, only half an hour ago I was waking up in bed with -" she stopped suddenly, realising where her sentence was going. Vaughn saw that she was uncomfortable and didn't press her to finish. "What I mean is," she continued, half in an attempt to cover her mistake, "I've been dreaming for the last two years and it's hard to make out what was part of the dream and what wasn't."
Vaughn wasn't sure what to say, and the pair lapsed into a warm silence. Sydney's eyes began to close, though she was making a conscious effort to stay awake.
"You look tired," Vaughn remarked gently.
"I am," she said, with a little sigh and a smile.
"You should get some sleep. We'll figure everything out when you wake up again," he promised. She smiled again, and closed her eyes, drifting off into a much-needed sleep almost before her eyelashes brushed against her cheeks. Vaughn looked down at her affectionately for a moment before getting up. He was reluctant to leave, and was worried that Sydney's sleep would cause her to slip back into her coma, but her gentle breathing showed him that this was a healthy sleep and he reflected that she must really need it. Waking oneself from a coma was a tiring business, he supposed.
Sydney slept soundly for most of that day, and when she awoke she found that a tired looking Vaughn was still sitting patiently by her side, and that another chair had been pulled up next to his for her father. This time, she was prepared for what she would see when she opened her eyes, and her sleep had given her some perspective. It was now easier for her to draw the line between her dream world and reality and she found that her "memories" of the past years, were a little less real.
"Sydney, you're awake," said Jack, somewhat unnecessarily. Sydney wasn't sure how to react to his appearance. In her own version of the past two years they had been close, but they had hardly known each other before that. It dawned on her that her real relationship with her father was probably even more strained that it had been before her coma (a time which she still remembered, after all her coma-world had picked up where the real world left off). There couldn't have been any father-daughter bonding sessions of late, due to obvious reasons, and Sydney couldn't help wondering how often her father had come to visit her.
"Dad," she breathed. The tears gathering at her eyes made the decision for her, and her reaction was an emotional one. Jack bent forward and kissed her carefully on her forehead. After that he seemed unsure of what to do, so Vaughn got up intending to give the two of them some time alone. "Agent Vaughn, don't go!" Jack called out. Time alone with his daughter would be strained, and he didn't want to put either himself or her under the pressure of trying to force a relationship simply because the situation called for it. "I think you should be here to help answer Sydney's questions. I'm sure you have a lot of them," he glanced at Sydney as he said this and she nodded slightly. Vaughn sat back down, and took Sydney's hand in his when she looked imploringly up at him. She smiled at this and took strength from him to ask a question that had troubled her even in sleep.
"How did the coma happen?" she asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
"We don't know," Jack replied with a frown. "We were hoping you might remember, actually,"
"I don't," Sydney looked downcast.
"It may come back to you eventually," Vaughn offered, reassuringly.
"After Danny died," Jack continued. Sydney jerked her head up. Although she had dealt with his death and moved on in her dream, she had begun to entertain hopes that he had not died at all. Vaughn rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand, saddened by her obvious pain, and silently wished that she didn't have to go through this. Jack paused momentarily before carrying on. "After Danny died, and I told you the truth about SD- 6. . ." Jack trailed off. The next part was hard for him to say, and he felt that he was responsible for what had happened to Sydney.
"Yeah?" Sydney prompted.
"You got out of the car. . . you were crying. I drove away and left you, Sydney, I left you! I know I was never a good father to you, but I never meant for this to happen,"
"Dad, of course you didn't! I know that!" Sydney said emphatically.
"We found you lying in an alley near where your father dropped you off." Vaughn finished the story in a quiet voice. Sydney brought her hands up to her head and ran her fingers through her messy hair. She rubbed her hand across her eyes, a small grimace of concentration on her pretty features.
"I remember this," she said slowly, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. "I remember being in the alley. . . someone came up behind me. I don't know what happened after that but then I was on a plane and I was brought to the CIA."
Jack shook his head. "That never happened," he said. "Agent Vaughn was supposed to meet you, but when you never showed up he went back to where you'd last been seen. That was where he found you, and he took you straight to a hospital. You were there for two weeks, Sydney, and the doctors wanted to give up on you but I wouldn't let them. I had failed you so many times, and I wasn't going to give you up without a fight," he smiled a gruff little smile at his daughter before continuing. "It took a lot of arguing and a rather large sum of money but in the end they relented and you were transferred here. This has been your room ever since."
Sydney laughed a raspy little laugh when she thought of how different she had dreamed her life to be.
"What happened after you were taken to the CIA?" asked Vaughn, interested in what Sydney had dreamt about for two years.
And Sydney began her story. She talked for two hours and told it well, from beginning to end, and her audience were entranced by the twists and turns it took. Jack was shocked by his torture of Will, a man he had only met a few times when they had been visiting Sydney in hospital at the same time, and he was greatly moved by the revelation that Irina was alive. Vaughn was rather amused by Sydney's inventing a girlfriend for him, someone Sydney had placed in her dream to keep them apart. Sydney laughed out loud when he told her that Alice didn't exist, and she wondered dryly how she had ever considered a fictitious character as serious competition. She missed out details such as the date in France that she and Vaughn had been on, their kiss after the SD-6 takedown, and finally, the night they had made love. This was mainly to save herself and Vaughn from the certain embarrassment of talking about these things, but also because she wanted to keep those particular memories separate from the rest of the dream.
"That's quite a dream," Jack said, at length, when they had heard the end.
"It's amazing," Vaughn agreed.
"Well, it took me two years," Sydney smiled. Though talking for so long had tired her a lot, it had made her feel better, and had helped to ground her in the real world. "So, are you gonna tell me what really happened?" she asked, looking from one to the other. "Is The Alliance still around? Is Sloane alive? How are Francie and Will?"
Jack laughed. "One question at a time," he said. And so began the real story of the past two years.
TBC. . .
This takes place after the first scene of A Free Agent, but for it to work with the story I've had to re-write the first scene. I loved the way it was done in the show but that just wouldn't have worked with my story. I've also got references to Truth Be Told but my memory of that episode is hazy and the transcript wasn't much help so I may have got things wrong.
This idea was sparked off by something I read about The Telling before I could avert my eyes (please, no references to The Telling in reviews, I'm trying so hard to stay spoiler-free!). The story was inspired by the Buffy episode "Normal Again" (which, btw, is an amazing piece of TV). Thank you Joss and the people at ME for 7 years of great TV. Well, this is neither the time nor the place to mourn the loss of my favourite show, so on with the story!
Lastly, PLEASE REVIEW!!!!!
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
A ray of light crept in through the window, warming Sydney's face and forcing her to wake up. She kept her eyes closed as tiredness overcame her and she pretended that she was still asleep. She had to fight the smile that threatened to take over her face when she became aware of the warm arms holding her close, and the memories of the previous night swept through her. Eyes still closed, she thought of her newfound freedom. SD-6 was gone. Gone forever, and she could be free. Her thoughts were interrupted by a drowsy murmur near her ear.
"I know you're awake. I can see you smiling," she could almost hear the smile in Vaughn's voice.
"Shhh! No, I'm not. I'm asleep," she replied with a giggle. All the time her eyes remained shut and all she could see was the comforting darkness that surrounded her. She heard a voice in the back of her mind. She recognised it instantly, for it was none other than her own.
"Come on, Sydney. It's time to wake up," it, or rather, she, said. Sydney was confused. What did it mean, it's time to wake up? She was already awake. "Sydney," the voice continued, more sternly this time, "it's safe to wake up now."
Thoroughly confused, and sure she was imagining things, Sydney slowly opened her eyes. The sight she was greeted with gave her a shock she would never forget. Instead of the comfortable bedroom she loved so much, her eyes met with the stark white walls of a little room. The room was empty, save for the small bed she was in, a table on one side of it, and a chair on the other. There was a window on one side of the wall behind her bed, and the door in the far corner was slightly ajar, revealing a corridor with walls much the same colour as the room she was in. Sydney took in all of this in a matter of seconds, and shifted her gaze to the chair by her bed, the occupant of which was staring at her, wide-eyed, as if she had arrived from another planet. She recognised him and opened her mouth to say his name, but the confident statement she had been intending came out as a pleading whisper. She tried again.
"Vaughn?"
"Oh my God. . . Sydney!" He shot out of his chair and turned towards the door. As if suddenly realising something, he turned back to her and added to her confusion by announcing that he was going to get a doctor and would she be okay by herself for a moment? Sydney was too shocked and dazed to respond so, deciding that she would be okay, he turned towards the door once more. He was hesitant to leave and his journey out of the room was punctuated by his turning back around to gaze at her open-mouthed several times.
Sydney was left to wonder where she was, what she was doing there, and what had happened to the room she had been in only moments before. She was so sure she had been there. But she hadn't seen it, had she? If only she'd opened her eyes earlier, she might have had some idea of what was going on! She knew the man who had just left the room, that much was obvious from the fact that she had awoken curled up next to him in bed, both of them naked nonetheless. But had that really happened? The bed she was in now, and the uncomfortable hospital clothes she was wearing seemed to suggest otherwise. She knew him, though. She was positive she did. He'd known her name, after all, and he'd been holding her hand until he'd left the room.
Presently he returned, this time with a tall doctor. Vaughn and the doctor were arguing; Sydney heard Vaughn earnestly telling him that she was "awake, really awake!" The doctor apparently thought he was lying, and was trying to calm an excited Vaughn with suggestions that he wasn't sleeping enough. When he saw that Sydney's eyes were open and that she had moved a little, the doctor did a double take, which would have been comical had the situation not been so important. He fussed around her for a while, all the time mumbling such phrases as "well, I never!", "it's a miracle!" and "this is extraordinary!". Vaughn, too, seemed overjoyed at the whole thing, but Sydney was still terribly confused and beginning to be a little frightened.
"I'll call her father," said the doctor, when he was finally done. "Make sure she gets some sleep, she's still very weak." Vaughn nodded and took up his place in the chair beside Sydney's bed. When they were alone, Sydney raised her head slightly, but finding it much too heavy to hold up, she flopped back down onto the pillow.
"Where am I?" she asked, when she was comfortable again. Vaughn took a deep breath. He hadn't been prepared for this and wasn't sure how Sydney would react to the news.
"You're in a hospital. You've been in a coma for two years,"
Sydney shot bolt upright in her bed, ignoring the stabs of pain that shot through her as she did so. "No!" she said forcefully, and glared at Vaughn.
"Syd, I know it's hard - I mean, I can't even imagine what it must be like to be told this. Please lie down," he begged her, deeply concerned about this woman who, until just recently, he had never even had more than a one- sided conversation with. Too tired to argue, Sydney complied and settled herself back in the bed. She stared up at the ceiling, trying to process what she had just been told. She was suddenly full of questions and wanted them all answered at once. After some consideration, she decided to ask the one that was least likely to cause more emotional trauma.
"Who are you?"
Vaughn looked disappointed. She had said his name when she woke up, and he assumed that meant she knew him, although he had no idea how that was at all possible. "I'm Michael Vaughn," he said with a smile. "I work for the CIA. You're in a CIA hospital,"
"You know, it's funny. I knew that. I have no idea how, but I did,"
"I've visited you every day for the past two years, you probably heard me talking to you. People in comas are supposed to be able to hear things," he finished a little uncertainly. Sydney tried to smile, but it hurt her dry, cracked lips. Seeing her pain, Vaughn got up and filled a glass with water. Sitting back down, he held it out to her. She took it with a shaking hand, and very nearly upset the whole glass on the bed. Vaughn saw that she was unable to hold it herself, so he took it back and set it down on the table while he helped her into a sitting position. He held the glass to her lips and she drank a little of the cool water. When she had finished, Vaughn made sure that she was comfortably lying down again before returning to his seat.
"Do you remember anything?" he asked, after a little silence had ensued. Sydney frowned. She remembered things, but she didn't know how she had come to be in a coma and that was what she was most interested in at present.
"I remember some things. But I don't know if they really happened or not. Hey, only half an hour ago I was waking up in bed with -" she stopped suddenly, realising where her sentence was going. Vaughn saw that she was uncomfortable and didn't press her to finish. "What I mean is," she continued, half in an attempt to cover her mistake, "I've been dreaming for the last two years and it's hard to make out what was part of the dream and what wasn't."
Vaughn wasn't sure what to say, and the pair lapsed into a warm silence. Sydney's eyes began to close, though she was making a conscious effort to stay awake.
"You look tired," Vaughn remarked gently.
"I am," she said, with a little sigh and a smile.
"You should get some sleep. We'll figure everything out when you wake up again," he promised. She smiled again, and closed her eyes, drifting off into a much-needed sleep almost before her eyelashes brushed against her cheeks. Vaughn looked down at her affectionately for a moment before getting up. He was reluctant to leave, and was worried that Sydney's sleep would cause her to slip back into her coma, but her gentle breathing showed him that this was a healthy sleep and he reflected that she must really need it. Waking oneself from a coma was a tiring business, he supposed.
Sydney slept soundly for most of that day, and when she awoke she found that a tired looking Vaughn was still sitting patiently by her side, and that another chair had been pulled up next to his for her father. This time, she was prepared for what she would see when she opened her eyes, and her sleep had given her some perspective. It was now easier for her to draw the line between her dream world and reality and she found that her "memories" of the past years, were a little less real.
"Sydney, you're awake," said Jack, somewhat unnecessarily. Sydney wasn't sure how to react to his appearance. In her own version of the past two years they had been close, but they had hardly known each other before that. It dawned on her that her real relationship with her father was probably even more strained that it had been before her coma (a time which she still remembered, after all her coma-world had picked up where the real world left off). There couldn't have been any father-daughter bonding sessions of late, due to obvious reasons, and Sydney couldn't help wondering how often her father had come to visit her.
"Dad," she breathed. The tears gathering at her eyes made the decision for her, and her reaction was an emotional one. Jack bent forward and kissed her carefully on her forehead. After that he seemed unsure of what to do, so Vaughn got up intending to give the two of them some time alone. "Agent Vaughn, don't go!" Jack called out. Time alone with his daughter would be strained, and he didn't want to put either himself or her under the pressure of trying to force a relationship simply because the situation called for it. "I think you should be here to help answer Sydney's questions. I'm sure you have a lot of them," he glanced at Sydney as he said this and she nodded slightly. Vaughn sat back down, and took Sydney's hand in his when she looked imploringly up at him. She smiled at this and took strength from him to ask a question that had troubled her even in sleep.
"How did the coma happen?" she asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
"We don't know," Jack replied with a frown. "We were hoping you might remember, actually,"
"I don't," Sydney looked downcast.
"It may come back to you eventually," Vaughn offered, reassuringly.
"After Danny died," Jack continued. Sydney jerked her head up. Although she had dealt with his death and moved on in her dream, she had begun to entertain hopes that he had not died at all. Vaughn rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand, saddened by her obvious pain, and silently wished that she didn't have to go through this. Jack paused momentarily before carrying on. "After Danny died, and I told you the truth about SD- 6. . ." Jack trailed off. The next part was hard for him to say, and he felt that he was responsible for what had happened to Sydney.
"Yeah?" Sydney prompted.
"You got out of the car. . . you were crying. I drove away and left you, Sydney, I left you! I know I was never a good father to you, but I never meant for this to happen,"
"Dad, of course you didn't! I know that!" Sydney said emphatically.
"We found you lying in an alley near where your father dropped you off." Vaughn finished the story in a quiet voice. Sydney brought her hands up to her head and ran her fingers through her messy hair. She rubbed her hand across her eyes, a small grimace of concentration on her pretty features.
"I remember this," she said slowly, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. "I remember being in the alley. . . someone came up behind me. I don't know what happened after that but then I was on a plane and I was brought to the CIA."
Jack shook his head. "That never happened," he said. "Agent Vaughn was supposed to meet you, but when you never showed up he went back to where you'd last been seen. That was where he found you, and he took you straight to a hospital. You were there for two weeks, Sydney, and the doctors wanted to give up on you but I wouldn't let them. I had failed you so many times, and I wasn't going to give you up without a fight," he smiled a gruff little smile at his daughter before continuing. "It took a lot of arguing and a rather large sum of money but in the end they relented and you were transferred here. This has been your room ever since."
Sydney laughed a raspy little laugh when she thought of how different she had dreamed her life to be.
"What happened after you were taken to the CIA?" asked Vaughn, interested in what Sydney had dreamt about for two years.
And Sydney began her story. She talked for two hours and told it well, from beginning to end, and her audience were entranced by the twists and turns it took. Jack was shocked by his torture of Will, a man he had only met a few times when they had been visiting Sydney in hospital at the same time, and he was greatly moved by the revelation that Irina was alive. Vaughn was rather amused by Sydney's inventing a girlfriend for him, someone Sydney had placed in her dream to keep them apart. Sydney laughed out loud when he told her that Alice didn't exist, and she wondered dryly how she had ever considered a fictitious character as serious competition. She missed out details such as the date in France that she and Vaughn had been on, their kiss after the SD-6 takedown, and finally, the night they had made love. This was mainly to save herself and Vaughn from the certain embarrassment of talking about these things, but also because she wanted to keep those particular memories separate from the rest of the dream.
"That's quite a dream," Jack said, at length, when they had heard the end.
"It's amazing," Vaughn agreed.
"Well, it took me two years," Sydney smiled. Though talking for so long had tired her a lot, it had made her feel better, and had helped to ground her in the real world. "So, are you gonna tell me what really happened?" she asked, looking from one to the other. "Is The Alliance still around? Is Sloane alive? How are Francie and Will?"
Jack laughed. "One question at a time," he said. And so began the real story of the past two years.
TBC. . .