Mother
By She's a Star
Disclaimer: Alias is not mine. Alas, alas.
Author's Note: More angst! Season four type angst! Because the angst never stops, don't you know?
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Sydney mourns her mother without knowing why.
She envies Nadia a little bit – the naiveté and the repose. Her sister believes she's extracted revenge, and she's lamenting the loss of a woman that she never even knew. When she asks about her, Sydney doesn't know what to say. Irina Derevko cannot be explained or described (or understood). When it comes to the black and white of the matter, Irina is – was a terrible person. Murder and deception and manipulation and lies, so many lies that Sydney can't sort through them. Even without her, Irina lingers in a thousand things: Bill Vaughn's death; the shape of Sydney's hands; a permanent darkness in her father's eyes. Sydney finds herself dreading Thanksgiving because something twists in her stomach at the mention of turkey.
And still it breaks her just a little bit. She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror one Monday morning and begins to cry while lining her eyes. Inexplicably. She's careful to be quiet; Nadia knocks on the door and orders, teasing, that she hurry up before they're both late.
Her sister smiles a little bit whenever Weiss is mentioned. (Sydney can remember, acutely, going through this stage with Danny – things seem so much more blurred with Vaughn.)
'He's cute, don't you think?' Nadia says as they step out the door on a Thursday, and Sydney does not reply that their mother nearly killed him once upon a time.
On the nights that she can't sleep, she has taken to rereading Tolstoy because if she doesn't, her mind wanders. It still does, sometimes. Your mother wanted you dead; it is subtle, barely spilling from the pages of Anna Karenina.
Sydney has every reason to hate Irina Derevko; to take the few shining memories of Laura Bristow and tuck them away somewhere, quiet and bittersweet, and erase all the rest. Because she knows that she isn't supposed to have loved Irina. And maybe she hadn't.
She works on forgetting tears and seemingly genuine smiles and fingertips pressed against glass; one embrace with the air chilled around them, and conversations about toasters. Sydney thinks that she can almost remember the way the sundaes tasted, prays to forget her mother laughing.
'Tell me one thing about her,' Nadia requests, glancing up only for a moment as she flips through a stack of black and white photographs.
Sydney can tell her a thousand things, all sharp enough to sting and maybe scar. Instead, she forces a smile. 'She would always tuck her hair behind her ear,' she ventures lightly.
Nadia smiles back, genuine. Untainted. 'Like you.'