Title: Mirage
Author: Jennifer N (jennifer_n97@hotmail.com)
Summary: "She is not seeing the future. She is reliving the past. A past she thought she destroyed." 1/1
Category: Drama/Angst
Spoilers: Season Three
Rating: PG-13
Distribution: CM, SD-1, ff.net
Disclaimer: Alias does not belong to me. Shocking, isn't it?
A/N: While you can read this as a standalone, you could also read it as a sequel/companion of sorts to "The Phoenix."
Hugs and thanks as usual go out to the non-deletion crew. ;)
And in case you read this, see some random stuff, and go "huh???", let me explain. A certain someone *coughJudecough* helpfully gave me six random things to include in this story. (The list is at the end.) As for random things that aren't from her list . . . well, those are due to wacky me. :)
Mirage
She has spent six weeks convincing herself she has an overactive imagination.
Six weeks waking up alone in her bed, twisted in the sheets and clawing at pillows. Six weeks pushing images, faces, names, out of her mind.
Six weeks of denial.
If anyone knew about these, they would send her back to that support group she visited months ago. But somehow, she knows that what she is seeing is different.
Four weeks ago she worried that maybe she was seeing the future. With her role in the Prophecy all but confirmed, it seemed possible.
She realizes now she was wrong. Everything she has seen in her dreams is not the future. And it's not confined to her dreams anymore either—faces intrude upon briefings, names pop into her mind as she pumps her gas, visions of herself in unfamiliar situations make her pause in the middle of a sentence.
She is not seeing the future.
She is reliving the past.
A past she thought she destroyed.
*****
She goes out to dinner with her father, finds herself seated across from him in a booth at his favorite Chinese restaurant. She blandly makes conversation with the man she used to look up to adoringly and call daddy and waits until he has handed his credit card to the waiter to ask the one question she must have answered.
"What was my memorial like?"
His eyes narrow momentarily while he frowns, trying to figure out his daughter. As usual, he can't follow her haphazard train of thought; after a moment of reflection, he hesitantly begins to tell her.
" . . . said a few words, and then Vaughn scattered your ashes—"
"You were standing farthest away from him," she interrupts suddenly.
"What?" he says, snapping a chopstick in half.
"Vaughn stood on one end . . . and you were on the other end . . . right?" she finishes hesitantly, wondering if she just imagined the scene that is currently superimposed over the empty red wall behind her father.
"That—that—that is correct," he replies haltingly, staring at her as if he has never seen her before. "How did you know that?"
She shakes her head sadly. "I'm not sure." She folds her napkin and places it on the table. "But I'm going to find out."
*****
After spending twenty minutes sobbing in Vaughn's arms, she makes herself pull away and wipe her eyes. They talk for a few minutes, soft, hushed tones meant to comfort and soothe the other before she realizes that she should go. She would love to stay with him in this parking garage—in a perverse way it reminds her of the warehouse—but a lot has happened since those long-ago days. Being spotted together won't get them killed, but it will destroy them both.
Not to mention the wife.
She gives him a small smile, enough to reassure him she will make it through this latest crisis, and gets in her car. She exits the garage and pulls out into traffic and is halfway home before she realizes her head is pounding from her outpouring of tears, and she hastily swallowed the last of her aspirin the day before. She sighs and switches lanes, pulling into the nearest pharmacy she can find.
She enters the store and knows exactly where to find the maximum strength, barely non-prescription aspirin. She snatches two bottles off the shelf and ignores the disapproving stare of the little old lady perusing the multivitamins, quickly cutting into the next aisle over to make her way to the cash register.
And she freezes.
It's an ordinary aisle in an ordinary pharmacy, filled with innocuous bottles of shampoo and conditioner, cans of hair spray, boxes filled with potions designed to curl one's hair.
And then there is the hair dye.
As many years as she has been in the spy trade and as many aliases as she has assumed, she has only dyed her hair once—the infamous bozo red that transformed her from Sydney Bristow to Amy Tippin. Yet she finds herself slowly walking to one box in particular, staring at the blonde haired woman.
Seeing the words on the box in Italian.
She blinks, then closes her eyes and reopens them. The words on the box are in English, she notices. But in her mind they are in Italian.
She stares at the light hair on the box, and suddenly, she is standing in a bathroom dressed only in a tank top and shorts, setting the timer for twenty minutes.
"Miss? Miss, can I help you find something?"
She breaks out of her reverie and turns to see an employee standing next to her, waiting expectantly. "No thank you," she mumbles, then rushes for the cash register.
The image of the Italian box in her hand stays with her the rest of the night.
*****
"You killed Mulder and Scully."
"I what?"
She keeps her eyes closed and nestles deeper into her pillow on the couch. "When I was in North Korea. You forgot to feed Mulder and Scully, and when I finally got back home, I had two dead fish in the bowl." She rubs her head with her right hand and groans. "It just took me awhile to remember to tell you that."
She hears him walk across the room until he is standing over her. "Hangover?" Weiss asks sympathetically.
"I wish," she groans. She lifts her legs long enough so that he can sit at the other end of the couch, her feet in his lap. "Just a really rough night."
"Syd, it's three o'clock in the afternoon. Are you sure you're gonna be okay?"
No, I'm not going to be okay, she silently tells him. I don't even know what "okay" is anymore.
"It's my day off," she growls. "If I want to spend it like this, so be it."
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks hesitantly.
"Not really."
"Bottling it up isn't going to help you."
"Since when did you become so damn reasonable?"
"Since when did you spend your one day off—and it's a beautiful day outside, I must add—cooped up inside on your couch, with your nose turned up like you've smelled rotten eggs?"
Instinct takes over as she sits upright on the couch and swings her legs over the side. She makes a run for the bathroom and makes it just in time, although her empty stomach produces little more than heaving and gagging. When it is over she slowly stands from her kneeling position and leans against the doorframe.
"What you said . . . before . . ." she trails off.
"Yes?" he prompts her.
"About the—the—rott—"
"What did I say?" She can see him trying to recall his exact words. "Oh, yeah. You looked like you had been smelling rotten eggs."
She feels her stomach lurch again and she clutches the doorjamb. "That." She notices his stare and slowly removes her fingers, one at a time, until she can wrap both arms around her body. She passes him and walks down the hallway, back to the couch, where she sinks down once more, this time lying on her stomach, her face turned to one side.
"Do you ever have dreams about something you wish you could forget?"
She is alone in the cell, cold and shivering for God only knows how many days. Maybe if she's lucky today they'll let her stay inside her holding place all day long, not . . .
Weiss stares at her strangely. "With this job, who doesn't?"
"Yeah," she says softly to herself. "Who doesn't?"
The slop they call food is placed tantalizingly in front of her, and God, she hates herself, but she's desperate enough that today she might try to take a bite.
She leans down closer and tries to ignore the odor that threatens to overwhelm her. Whatever this conglomeration of . . . stuff . . . is, it smells awful. She feels like she is eating straight out of her garbage can, which for some reason always smelled like rotten eggs to her. Will and Francie used to tease her that—oh God, Will and Francie . . . she shoves her hand into the concoction and throws it into her mouth, using every compartmentalization trick she can think of to keep it down.
But the smell of rotten eggs stays with her.
Even in her dreams.
"You're sure you don't want to talk about it?" Weiss asks her again.
She shakes her head. "You know what? You're right. The sun is shining outside, and I'm cooped up in here on my one day off in forever. You want to maybe walk down to the beach?"
He shakes his head at her as she stands up. "I don't think I'll ever understand you, Bristow," he calls out as her bedroom door slams shut.
She rests her weight against the closed door for a moment before pulling her sneakers out of the closet.
I don't understand myself either.
*****
She is eating dinner with her father again, this time at Micelli's, when she finally learns how her mother helped rescue her and Vaughn in North Korea.
"This will come as a surprise to you, but your mother is not an only child. In fact, her sister works in intelligence too. Irina sent your Aunt Katya—"
"—Elena," she interrupts. They stare at each other.
"Aunt Katya? Who is she?"
"How did you know she has a sister named Elena?"
She leans back in her chair. "I don't know," she says finally. "It just slipped out."
He stares at her skeptically, and she knows she must tell him.
"I've been seeing things lately—stuff from the past, I mean—it's like what Kendall told me, but it's so much more vivid and real and I feel like I'm actually there, and—" She stops. "And Aunt Elena has a beautiful smile. She uses it a lot more than Mom does."
"Is the knife her weapon of choice too?" He almost smirks as he takes a sip of his drink.
"She's a Derevko. What do you think?" is the only retort he gets.
He shakes his head and revels in the fact that he just heard his daughter giggle for what is possibly the first time since her return. "You met her as Julia?" She slowly nods. "But how is that possible? And how are you able to remember?"
"I'm not sure," she says in a low voice. "The surgery . . . maybe it wasn't as successful as we thought." She toys with the food on her plate. "I don't know why I ever met her though; I don't even remember seeing Mom during that time—oh God."
"What? What is it?"
"I'd like to hire you for a job in Helsinki." She accepts the file folder. "The information I need is on a disk in this vault. I would like you to retrieve it."
"But, Ms. Derevko, that's not why people usually hire me." She smirks as she stares at her mother, does her best to keep her voice at its lower pitch. "Perhaps you did not understand after my meeting with your associate—Elena, was it? I accept cash for hits. I don't steal disks from stupid parties."
"While I will not deny your—your impeccable record as an assassin," Irina falters at the term, "I feel that this mission would be a good fit for someone like yourself. You're young, talented, beautiful. A job like this shouldn't be a problem."
They negotiate the terms for several minutes until they find a price they can both live with.
"Good luck in Helsinki," Irina says as she walks past her.
She pauses at the door.
"Is there a problem?"
She shakes her head. "Just a moment of déjà vu, I guess," she says ruefully. "For a second, you reminded me of someone." She places her hand on the door knob, ignores the brightness in her mother's eyes at her final words. "I'll be in touch," she says, then walks out of the room.
She manages to hold in the tears until late that night. She wanted to see her mother, wanted to work with her and feel some sort of connection to someone, yet she is still too afraid—of her new life, of the Covenant, even her own mother—to admit who she really is. To anyone.
"I worked with Mom," she says at last.
"You worked with her? Your mother?" he exclaims. "Why did you do that?"
"She never hired me to kill anyone," she reflects, almost to herself. "It was always reconnaissance missions or stealing intel from someone else. The kind of jobs I used to have at SD-6." She smiles. "She paid better than everyone else."
He signals the waiter and orders another drink. "And when exactly were you planning on bringing this up?"
"I just remembered it, Dad," she says defensively. "I can't help what I remember and when. This time you triggered it with your talk of Aunt Elena. I mean Katya."
He sighs. "Is there anything else about working with your mother that you remember?"
She rests her chin in her hands and closes her eyes. He watches and waits for her to dig through memories that aren't supposed to exist until he practically sees the light bulb go off.
"We were trying to extract you."
"There's a CIA agent, Jonathan Bristow." She tosses the folder with her intel onto the table. "He's been placed in solitary for working with known terrorists." She smiles darkly. "I think he would be perfect for your operation."
She takes a sick pleasure in noticing how many expressions flit across her mother's face. "What's so special about him?" her mother finally asks.
"He's a top game theorist. We could use that," she points out. "And he doesn't mind not towing the company line."
"But look where it got him," Irina replies. "And why do you think he would freely walk away from his country, his government?"
It takes all of her acting ability to say this convincingly. "Wife died back in the 80s, daughter was declared dead fourteen months ago. If he was considered a rogue agent before, he's definitely a renegade now. Thinks that God and country stole both of them away from him." She smiles. "If we asked nicely, I think he would work with us."
"We were making plans to break you out of solitary and work with us—Mom and Julia, I mean," she corrects herself. "But then I came back, and I got you out on my own." She shrugs. "It's all a little fuzzy right now, but I know that's what we were doing."
"And you don't know why these memories are returning?" he questions her again.
"Not exactly," she hedges. "But I have some ideas."
******
She is curled up in her bed with her laptop late one night, investigating a few names she has recently recalled, when her e-mail flashes that she has a new message. She opens it and briefly reads the note before downloading the attachment.
Apparently Vaughn chose work over sleep too.
It's an updated status report on Lisenker, and he wants her to look it over if she has a chance that night before he submits it first thing in the morning to Dixon. It's not the first time, nor the last, that he has sent her something to review. She used to tease him about it, commenting on his lack of confidence in his writing. He always retorted that she had the Ph.D. in literature, not him, and he merely wanted to help her keep her writing skills sharp.
She squeezes her eyes shut as the banter floats through her brain. It's just one more reminder of how much things have changed in the last two years. Before, she would have teased him about it in an IM or he would have harassed her as they both sat in bed or on the couch, working for all of five minutes before finding other ways to distract themselves. Now it's short e-mails filled with "please" and "thank you" and nothing more.
She quickly scans the document as it opens, muttering a curse at how long the document is, before she scrolls up to the top and begins to read. On sentence three her eyes widen as she reads, "Agents Vaughn and Bristow left Los Angeles on 10.01.06 to . . ." Her heart lurches as she stares at the words on her screen, finally realizing that she reversed the first two sets of numbers. It does not say October first, as she read it—a date still several months in the future—but the tenth of January.
"Big difference there, Syd," she mutters, silently berating herself. The odd thing is, she reflects, that the date didn't scream at her because of its significance four and a half years ago; it's almost as if there is something else, some other reason that October first should mean something to her. Exasperated, she pushes it out of her mind and resumes her reading. She makes a notation here and there, then resaves it and sends it back to him.
She continues her research within the CIA databases, sensing that she is close to an important discovery. She's not sure what exactly, but she knows it's tied to those elusive two years. She grows frustrated, however, as search after search fails, and she is still left with nothing. Instead she begins making a list of every name, every place, that has randomly appeared in her head the last few months, every unexplainable thing that she wants—demands—an answer for.
She is still furiously writing when it hits her—October first. What if . . . but no, she dismisses it. Impossible. But what if you're right? a little voice taunts her. She groans out loud and rises from the bed, walking over to the small filing cabinet in the corner of her closet. She unlocks the top drawer and retrieves a manila envelope with her new employment papers for Credit Dauphine. Even if the Alliance has been gone for years, the bank still exists, and the Agency felt it would be for the best if she continued to pretend to be an investment banker.
At the very back of the envelope, though, is a wrinkled sheet of paper, unaffected by many attempts to straighten the page, make it look more presentable. It is one of dozens if not hundreds of papers that she signed in the first few days and weeks after her return; days and weeks that rushed by in a blur to her. But the millions of forms and nondisclosure agreements have more than just her signature.
They also have a date.
She tries to smooth the wrinkled paper again, rereading the first draft of her statement that she signed on the plane back to the States. She stares at her signature, her vision blurring as she remembers that dreadful flight home.
He stands over her, trying to look authoritative and powerful; she still sees him as her lover. "Sydney, stop being such a . . . a . . ."
"Pain in the ass?" she offers, smothering a laugh.
He sighs. "Something like that." He shakes the paper in his hands, and she can see her bold "I DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING!!!" message. "When I asked you to write your statement about what you remember, I expected more than this." He crumples the paper and tosses it at her.
She catches it easily with one hand and stares up at him defiantly. "How many times do I have to tell you, Vaughn? I. don't. remember. anything."
"Look, I know you've got questions—"
"Now, there's an understatement—"
"Well, so do we," he interrupts her back. "As far as we knew, you were dead until you called in from that pay phone two days ago. The Agency . . . they want you to write up your statement, including everything you remember about the last two years." He glares at her. "And try to be more specific this time, okay?"
"I don't remember anything about the last two years!" she argues. "The last thing I remember is falling to the ground in my apartment and shooting Francie's double."
His forehead wrinkles even more, and he anxiously runs his fingers through his hair. "Fine. Write that then," he snaps. He hands her a fresh sheet of paper and returns to his seat at the other end of the plane, leaving her alone to write.
She quickly scrawls her statement, short as it is—a far cry from her initial statement when she walked into the CIA, she thinks—then signs and dates it. Feeling slightly mollified, she rises from her seat and slowly walks over to him.
"Thanks," he says hoarsely as he takes the paper from her outstretched hands. He reaches over and places it in a briefcase. She takes a step back and slowly pivots her body to return to the back of the plane. "Sydney?"
She turns around. "Yes?"
"I—I can't imagine how difficult this is for you, how difficult it's going to be for you," he stumbles over his words. "I—I just—" He pulls a brown paper bag out of the briefcase and shoves it into her hands. "This is for you."
"Huh?"
"Just—just take it. Please." He tries to smile, but his lips have forgotten how to curve upward.
She hesitantly opens the bag and sticks her hand inside it, pulling out something soft. "Vaughn, it's—you—you—you didn't have to," she chokes out. She tries to tell herself not to cry. It doesn't work.
"It's not exactly like the old one that Francie got you, but it's pretty close. I—I thought you might want to have a good luck charm on this flight back; I know you always had to have it in your carry-on bag when you left for your missions," he says softly.
She runs her fingers over the small, plush frog. "Thank you," she whispers before the sobs consume her. She turns and runs away, letting her tears fall in the privacy of the bathroom, the green frog clutched in her arms.
When she returns to her seat, he offers her a sleeping pill. Under ordinary circumstances she would refuse it, but right now, she welcomes the oblivion that sleep brings. She slips the tablet under her tongue and swallows, falling asleep minutes later.
When she wakes up, she is in the hospital.
And he is gone.
She grabs a tissue and blows her nose, then picks up the "I DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING!!!" statement. She sees her signature at the bottom of the page, scrawled in her distinctive handwriting, and then the date beside it.
October fourth.
She returns to her laptop with a new vigor, trying to make connections between the names floating in her head, Hong Kong, and October first of last year.
Finally, she feels like she is making progress.
*****
"Where's Vaughn?" she asks Weiss as they walk down a hallway in the Ops Center.
"He had to meet with Devlin downtown before coming in this morning." Weiss grabs a doughnut as they walk by a half-full box sitting on someone's desk. "Probably has something to do with the bereavement time he's going to be taking for Senator Reed's funeral." He lowers his voice. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm fine," she says lightly, all evidence of last night's tears gone. "I just had a question for him about our debrief, that's all." She furrows her eyebrows in confusion. "Wait a sec. Didn't Vaughn meet with Devlin the other day?"
"I don't think so. Why? Do you think Mike's in trouble?" he asks, concerned.
She eases into her desk chair as the images from her mind play across her computer screen. She can see their profiles as they sit in his classroom, talking in earnest. Sees his wedding band glint in the brightly lit room, feels her stomach clench for the millionth time as she takes note of that detail, watches him read a stack of papers Devlin has handed him, vows to herself she will see him soon . . .
"Oh my God," she gasps.
"What? Syd, what's wrong?" Weiss is beside her in an instant, playing as always the role of dutiful friend.
"Sssh," she waves him away, still blankly staring at her computer screen. Only she can see what it is really showing.
"The gentleman you passed in the hallway—he's an old friend of mine," her mother tells her. "Retired intelligence. He still takes on the occasional project though."
She nods, unsure what to say in response.
"If you ever need to run surveillance on someone, he's the person to contact. Excellent work and highly trusted. That's something I don't say lightly."
"Surveillance . . ." she says slowly, the wheels turning. She eyes her mother. "How long has he worked for you?"
Irina's eyes flicker with satisfaction. "Almost twenty-five years."
"That's a long time to work with someone."
"He does good work. I've always known that." She opens a desk drawer and retrieves an envelope. "This picture was taken not too long after I hired him." She hands her a glossy photograph, worn around the edges from being handled too much.
"She's such a pretty little girl," she says over the lump in her throat. "Who is she?"
"My daughter," Irina says, smiling genuinely. "She's celebrating her seventh birthday in that picture."
"You must be very proud of her," she says softly.
"I am," she agrees. "Unfortunately, she disappeared several months ago."
"At least you have photographs to remember her by," she changes the subject. "Not everyone is that fortunate," she says, recalling her barren apartment in Rome.
Her mother hands her a business card. "In case you ever need someone watched," she simply tells her. "Don't lose his number."
She stares at the telephone on her desk, lets her fingers trace over the numbers.
She remembers them all.
*****
She sits at an outdoor café at noon, letting the sun sink into her skin as she waits for her lunch to arrive. Bored, she grabs a copy of that morning's Washington Post that a patron left behind and makes a face as she slices her finger with the front page. Senator Reed's death is, predictably, on the cover. She skims the article, curious to see what has been released to the press, when she turns the folded paper over and sees a photograph. "Senator and Mrs. Reed on the campaign trail," the caption reads underneath what appears to be the standard campaign photo op. Flags waving in the air, banners proclaiming re-election . . . a face she has seen before.
And suddenly, it all makes sense.
They don't know she is eavesdropping in the next room, trying to glean as much intel as possible for her next dead drop to Kendall. They don't know she is still there; she supposedly left thirty minutes earlier. Instead, she is crouched in an empty room, hoping the parabolic mikes she strategically placed earlier are recording everything.
There is a new voice this time, a woman, someone she doesn't recognize. She is prepared to dismiss it, list her as another anonymous player in the game the Covenant plays, when she hears a familiar name.
And a reference to "my daughter Lauren."
She knows she is still fuzzy on some of the details; maybe that's for the best, a part of her points out. But she remembers enough to know that the meeting she overheard was in August, that three weeks later she received photographs of Vaughn meeting with Devlin. Even now she can recall her feeling of elation the night she stared at his profile while she lay curled up on her bed in Rome. If he was talking to Devlin, then he was coming back to the CIA.
If he was coming back to the CIA, his wife—and she used that term loosely—would be of even greater danger to him.
But if his ex-girlfriend, an extraordinarily capable agent, happened to come back from the dead . . .
. . . then maybe Vaughn would eventually learn the truth about his wife.
So she began making plans to leave her new life, recorded a message to be seen by Kendall's eyes only, and signed the papers in Hong Kong for an operation that would help her forget the horrors of the last two years. It would make her return easier, she hoped, if she didn't have to remember the torture, the agony, the heartbreak she had experienced.
She selected the first of October—the only date that still held meaning to her—for the invasive surgery to take place. Four years earlier, it heralded the beginning of a new stage in her life.
Now, as she puts the pieces together, remembers who Lauren truly is, she can only hope that a new beginning is on the horizon.
~~~fin~~~
In case you care, the list of items to include was:
A frog gift from Vaughn.
A broken chopstick.
A paper cut.
A rotten egg.
Sydney is upset because her goldfish Mulder and Scully die.
October first. (Okay, I didn't exactly write what she gave me for this one, but I did use the date, so in my universe, it counts. ;))