Title: East of Eden
Author: Liz )
Distribution: My site, Allies, Cover Me, all others see profile
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-Resurrection (3.22), all of S3 applies
Ship: Quasi-S/V
Summary: Day to day, he's discovered, is easier to live through if he has to live without her.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, S3 was JJ's fault!
And Cain went away from the Lord's presence and lived in a land called "Wandering," which is east of Eden.
- Genesis 4:16
The room is dark and smells of stale cigarettes and age. When he checked in, he was almost surprised the desk clerk didn't quote an hourly price. Now as he sits silently in the cold room, he realizes that perhaps even the hourly motels are nicer than this one.
Not that he cares. He didn't come here for rest or relaxation, both of which would require some degree of comfort. He'd had enough of that in the hospital, and found no answers. No, his mood is far more suited to the cold and musty room he sits in than it would be to some cushy hotel or quaint inn.
She'd left him. Redemptive kiss in the Sicilian countryside or not, as soon as he'd moved from critical to stable condition, she'd left on some new personal quest (he'd like to imagine it's all following stars and tipping at windmills, but he's grown too jaded). He thinks it might have something to do with Rambaldi, because doesn't everything? He decides for the eight hundred and sixty-seventh time that he hates Milo Rambaldi. After all, the man took away his father, and now there seems to be a good chance Rambaldi will also be taking the woman he loves, has always loved.
When he'd been released from the hospital a few days earlier, he'd sought out Jack Bristow, thought maybe he could talk to him about Sydney. Maybe he'd know what was wrong. But he too had been gone. Probably off with Syd on the Rambaldi Quest, he decides now. They were obviously conspiring to keep his poor sick self out of the loop. Or something like that, he's certain (Jack never liked him anyway).
He moves from the rickety wood chair to sit on the bed and discovers that the sheets are scratchy and that the pillow is as uncomfortable as the rest of the room.
He still doesn't care.
It's the third motel room in which he's slept in as many nights. They're all starting to blend together anyway, and he knows that by the fifth or sixth he won't even remember the third. Day to day, he's discovered, is easier to live through if he has to live without her (again, and this time without the bottle). With her, he can think in the long run. He can make plans for the future that are brightly colored and sparkly just because she's in them by his side (white picket fences keeping brown-haired, green-eyed, dimpled children safe). Alone now, he opens his crisp new Rand McNally road map to determine which state he can make it into by quitting time tomorrow, and that's the furthest ahead he plans, except for the vague notion that the Agency only gave him a month of convalescent leave.
Not that he remembers the date anyway. It doesn't matter though, he's not being careful not to leave a trail. When they want him, Weiss will come find him and bring him back. Maybe by then he'll have some answers (if indeed there are answers to be found, which he has trouble believing most days).
Outside, the sun is setting. Though the room is getting darker, he doesn't bother to turn on any lights. He gets up and sets the map on the rickety dresser, pulls a fresh pair of boxers out of the duffel bag next to the map, idly noticing that he'll have to stop by a Laundromat sometime in the next few days. He strips, puts on the boxers, and drops onto the bed (it's lumpy on top of having scratchy sheets; he thinks this is typical of his luck). He doesn't bother to get under the covers, despite the chill in the room. He's asleep soon after his head hits the pillow, but he dreams all night long.
Dreams of her, dreams of them. Dreams of how they could be, how they should be. How they were. When he wakes, he shakes his head as if to clear the images from his mind (she's gone again, he reminds himself, and this time by choice). He takes a cold shower, and the water helps him block her from his mind again. As long as he lives in the moment, he can make it through to the next.
He drives with the same intensity he used to give to being her mission backup. He checks the map at every junction, decides which direction he wants to go, and always remembers to turn on his turn signal before he makes the turn. It helps to concentrate on the wandering, on the running away, instead of on what he's running from (broken marriage, broken dreams, broken hearts). Never mind that the whole reason he drove away was to get time to think. Away from Weiss and his friendly offers to watch the game and commiserate, away from Barnett and her all-knowing gaze, away from Dixon and Marshall and the pity he can see in their eyes (he thinks the pity is the worst).
He stops only to refill his tank and his stomach. He remembers to stay hydrated, and to take his pills. They don't make him drowsy, so he's still okay to drive. The scenery is flat now, and varies from tan to red and back again. He wonders if he's hit Texas yet, checks the map. No, not for some miles yet. He'd chosen Texas as his stopping point the night before. No specific city. Just Texas. Somewhere in Texas. He thinks maybe Texas is big enough for his thoughts. Big enough to lose them in, to leave them in. To escape from them in.
He sees one of those extended stay places, thinks maybe he'd like to stay in one place for a while. But the lobby looks too comfortable; the desk clerk's smile looks too cheerful. He tips the cowboy hat he'd bought at the last tourist trap masquerading as a gas station and murmurs indistinctly, hoping the clerk will take it as a positive salutation. He walks away without a second glance, gets in his car and drives away in search of a dive to spend another night in before wandering more (can't stop, must keep moving).
He keeps moving east, and the next day he's in Dallas, where he decides even Texas isn't big enough. After that it's Memphis, then he meanders his way to more cities than he cares to remember. He stops at beaches in Virginia and museums in Maryland. He climbs the rocks at Gettysburg and wonders if he can leave his ghosts with the ones he knows climb with him (they understand lost causes like his).
Three weeks into his sojourn he finds himself standing on a cliff in Maine, listening to the pounding ocean. The wind picks up and he imagines it blowing all the bad thoughts and memories away (no wedding, no ring, no Hong Kong, no Sicily). He stares at this ocean, so completely different than the one which holds the ashes of a woman passed off as Sydney Anne Bristow. If Sydney dies again, he thinks morbidly, this time he'll throw the ashes in this ocean (much angrier, much more passionate, much more Sydney).
Then he reminds himself he's not supposed to be thinking of her. He sits on the cliff's edge and contemplates life as he knows it. He may not be living the dream, but at least he was living. A man had to start somewhere. Still, he'd lost track of just which motels and cities he'd been in. All he knew was the driving desire to go east (just east, away from the city of angels and demons and everything in between).
I'm east, he thinks to himself. As far east as possible, he tells the voice in his head (east, it whispers, east).
He stares out to the ocean and wonders just how far east he's willing to go.
The End