title: scientific method
author: labyrinthine
email: elabyrinthine@yahoo.com
rating/classification: r/ vignette, oddness, dream imagery gone amok
summary: order in the midst of disorder. Sydney slows the fall.
disclaimer: these characters do not belong to me.
a/n: I just realized now that hey, I've already done the whole dreamfic thing, with Will. And here I am again. oops :) Anyways, this is the belated, belated semblance of birthday porn for Thorne (you know, that special brand of laby porn, which isn't porn at all). Trippy shoutouts to Lara for the on-the-spot encouragement, Hil for the beta *ages* ago, and Amanda C (see, the hypothesis is wrong! science is truly evil!).
note to reader: watch your tenses, is all I'm saying. Otherwise this will make no sense, and I refuse to be held accountable…
I am part of all that I have met
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margain fades
For ever and ever when I move
-tennyson
*****
and you fall
spiraling, dizzy with adrenaline and speed as the wind cuts your cheek just right on a tangent
and you open your arms, like wings that would catch on a stream and push you forward. But your arms are thin, and you cannot fly, and in the air you are displaced
out of your element
so you fall, with your shirt puffing behind you like a parachute but you have no parachute, and you pay this no mind
because a parachute would slow you down.
that's not how it happened
well, maybe. You can't be sure, you can never be sure of anything, really. Perhaps you are mistaken, the image is fuzzy and it is hard to recollect.
start at the beginning
yes, that is what you will do.
*state the problem*
get up get up wake up
the alarm clock sounds like a siren, beep beep beep and your head is answering, thud thud thud. See, you can communicate this early in the morning, contrary to empirical evidence.
wake up, Sydney
turn off the alarm. Pull the covers, twist, feet on the floor. Automatic, no thought necessary
think, Sydney
a routine. The soles of your feet itch the hardwood, you barely feel it. Maybe you are floating
perhaps
an apparition, an aberration, padding silent down the hallway, and then you stop. There is a scrap of paper on the ground, just touching your left toe, why is it out of place
you reach down to pick it up, restore order, everything has a place
this is not your place
but you extend your arm as far as it will go and still the paper is out of reach. You bend down, but the paper crumples and falls, through the wood floor, through the foundation, and you follow it, down and down and you are falling…
*research the problem*
Alarm clock. Her eyes fly open. Not a siren, just the clock, get a grip. Her head pounds in time to the noise. A flurry of hands emerge, pushing back the covers and blindly swatting the alarm to beat it into submission. Her feet hit the floor and she stumbles to the mirror, critical.
Shit. In the early morning light her skin glows faintly translucent; a perfect landscape for the black smudges under her eyes. Wonderful, she speaks under her breath, her voice catching slightly, tripping on the whisper. She reaches for the coverup and gets to work.
She declares herself presentable after twenty minutes of makeup, clothes, and a five minute power nap. It's taking longer and longer to get ready in the morning, though she is loathe to admit this to herself. On autopilot, she wills her body to motion and heads down the hallway – destination, coffeemaker – relieved she threw it on a timer last night. It's hard enough to function fully awake; her mind fuzzy from interrupted rest, she leaves nothing to chance.
"You didn't sleep, did you." Francie's voice resonates through the apartment and Sydney turns in a circle, unable to pinpoint her location until her friend steps to meet her in the kitchen. Fran, she has noted, never seems to have problems with mornings.
"I slept." Sydney opening a cabinet to reach down a mug, suppressing a yawn behind the cabinet door.
"I saw that. Syd. You can't – just go back to bed."
Her hair swings with the shake of her head. "Meeting at 9. Busy day…" she turns again, gives up, and yawns in full view. Covering it up takes too much conscious thought anyway. Reaching with her left hand she grabs the coffeepot, hot off the burner, shifts her position to align the pot with the cup and her momentarily distracted fingers shift, slip and Syd hastens to support the heated bottom of the pot with her free hand.
"Ow!" She throws the pot on the counter, and reaches over to start cold water running to calm the developing blister on her fingers. Out the corner of her eye she can see Francie witness the whole scene, realizes she's probably witnessed half a dozen other scenes just like it the past few weeks. She wonders if telling Francie she's too tired to care will help her cause. Probably not.
"Sydney, I'm serious. Call out. You're only going to hurt someone sleepwalking around all day."
are you sleepwaking?
She can't remember how she became so exhausted. She's had problems sleeping, sure, but that comes with the job: jetlag to keep you awake and enough violence and deceit to fill your dreams. "Yeah." She glances at the coffeepot, the heated bottom slowly searing a ring into the countertop. There will be a permanent reminder of this.
Her head starts pounding again; she is finding it harder to keep the headaches away. Be responsible Syd, let's be serious here. "Yeah, I'll call out. Can you…?" She gestured to the scene before her. "I think…I think I'm going to go lie down for a bit. ok?"
She turns and pads down the hallway towards her room before Francie can respond, though she can feel her friend's eyes on her back the entire trip. Slowly, deliberately, she reaches her room, shuts the door behind her, and it is only then she sags to the ground in a heap.
get up, Sydney
no, it is better to sit here for a minute, take a breath, the bed is so far away
sleep for just a little longer, everything will be better if you can just get some decent sleep for once
and when was the last time you got some decent sleep
shut up shut up how can you concentrate when you can't hear yourself think
and as your eyelids fall so does the floor
and you fall
don't fall
please, no more dreams
*formulate a hypothesis*
"Syd, what's going on." Vaughn's voice a calculated whisper, directed towards the selection of microwave popcorn.
She stares blankly at the array of pasteurized juice behind glass cases and wonders why they even bother with this cloak and dagger shit. Checking behind your back every minute makes it nearly impossible to watch where you're going ahead, and she can't afford to stumble. "Nothing's the matter. I took the day off, errands, doctor's appointment, it's nothing."
"Doctor?"
"Sleeping pills." Not the answer he was expecting, Syd bets. He breaks protocol to make eye contact, searching her face before turning, resigned, back to the shelves of convenience store goods. "Francie's idea."
"Anything I need to know about?"
"What? No. Is this why you called me? I'm sorry if I triggered some red flags or something by calling out, but everything's fine. I think Sloane intends to send me back to Madrid to retrieve those documents tomorrow, I'll keep you posted."
"That's fine." She can tell, it's obvious, his restraint from turning around again to face her. "Look, even the best agents-" he trails off. "It's more common than you'd think, a lot of people…"
"I don't want to hear your nightmares." Harsher than she intends, perhaps, but still the truth. "The pills aren't even that strong, if you have to know."
"Just-"
"I don't want to talk about it." She tightens her shawl. "I'll keep you posted about Madrid."
talk about it
talk about it
*test the hypothesis*
your limbs are not responding
the clouds that obscure your thoughts have diffused through your body and you couldn't move if your life depended on it
and he is not helping your plight, with his large hands pinning your arms behind you, with his chest brushing yours
with him in you
out of you
not that you would want to leave this, you never want to leave this, not his erratic breaths against your cheek, the rush when you make eye contact and hold it
break it Sydney look away
and it becomes too much and you lose yourself in pure sensation, and he is the only thing tethering you, him and the springs of the sofa pressing up against your back
you are sandwiched, trapped, with your legs up and twined around him
you can't move you need to move away
and he is moving and it is amazing and you can't make it stop
but your head isn't kicking in, you have no control, why are you panicking when this is so good
don't fight it
why can't you snap out of it
and he is moving faster, pushing you deeper into the sofa but the springs are giving in and you are falling into the sofa, he is pushing you in
and you can't move to stop it
just let it go
and your head is still a mess of clouds and you feel yourself falling down, you call out, Vaughn, and he just stills and looks in your eyes and the distance grows
and you can't reach up to him and you drop from underneath and you fall
fall
and there is no limit and you fall forever and hope that it will stop but it never does
*form conclusions from the data*
The alarm blares for over a minute before she recognizes the sound for what it is and makes an effort to silence its noise. Her arm feels leaden reaching over the covers to slap the clock into submission. The orange vial with the pharmacist's dosage information slapped haphazardly on the outside holds fast as the nightstand wobbles under the force of her swats.
Better living through chemistry, right. Insomnia and waking spells were one thing, but a drugged cage she couldn't wake up from, trapped in dreams she'd rather not have in the first place – it had to stop. It wasn't healthy sleep, it certainly wasn't restful.
She closes her eyelids, letting her shoulders and neck collapse back to the creased pillow. It was too much, it was all too much.
It didn't always used to be like this. When she was first recruited, she would have these fantastic dreams, Syd against the world, imagining herself victorious in the most elaborate situations. She was so sure, so confident that what she was doing was right, that she became invincible in her own eyes. Even with years of field experience behind her, she was able to segregate what happened during the day, keep it separate from assaulting her at night.
She soon learned that becoming a double, lifting the figurative cover over her eyes, had the unfortunate side effect of opening the backdoor to years of demons itching to play in her unconscious. Now nothing was to be trusted, not fully, not explicitly. Her dreams weren't memories of past missions gone sour or confrontations in hostile situations – they were always her, spiraling out of control. Her in unfamiliar positions, falling aimlessly, nothing to hold on to or slow her down, and it was more frightening to her than any recreation of reality. There was doubt everywhere, shadows in the corners, making her reluctant to sleep. Eventually, she had enough of a problem falling asleep regardless to make it much of an issue.
solid ground
Sydney forces her eyes open again, half-lifts herself off the bed, stares down the vial of pills still standing defiantly on the nightstand. No more. There were other ways to fix this, ways that didn't involve medication burying the problem further out of reach.
start over
*results*
Sydney swings her legs around, feet hitting the floor, sitting on the bed. Her hands, steady and sure, reach for the phone. Dial a number by rote. She lifts the receiver to her ear and waits.
Perhaps she is calling Vaughn, to hear his nightmares. Francie, for grounding in normalcy. It could even be the office counselor, an impartial ear.
It doesn't matter.
Hypotheses are funny like that. You think you're right, you've got the problem figured out, and it turns out you couldn't be farther from the truth.
solid ground
you think you've got it figured out, now, with any luck
maybe this is the answer
and you find a parachute, where you least expected, and everything slows down
and you find the ground.
it's time to wake up now
*****
scientific method
elabyrinthine@yahoo.com