SUMMARY: Sydney Bristow's time is running out. She just doesn't know it yet.
A/N: This is my fic 'Break Me', only revamped. Be patient with me because I want to do well and make a good story.
Disclaimer: It's on my user page folks.
She lets out a long ragged breath, the desert stretches out like worn material seemingly endlessly and the sun swells horrendously a match in vividness for the thick dark blood that oozes from her wracked body. Excruciating pain tears through her suddenly as she dares to move and she resists the overwhelming urge to throw up. Staggering forwards blindly, unable to focus in her pain she doesn't see the crumbling precipice before her or the cavernous drop that follows it. The sun's heat furls around her weak frame like a blanket and entices sweat from her already destabilized body. She stands up straight for a few painful seconds and draws out a rasping ragged cough, blood explodes like fireworks from her lips and she then falls.
PRESENT DAY.
She swerves the car dangerously off balance,into a dimly lit one way street, just missing a white transit van., it gleams white like the moon and then speedsaway from her.
The distant blare of the horn fills her ears.
Gasping with adrenaline at the near miss Sydney Bristow's body stumbles out of the car, drunk and dishevelled she looses her footing and her heels send her crashing down onto her knees. They are grazed but she's lived through worse, she rakes a hand through her hair which is in desperate need of a wash and in the process, she catches sight of her reflection in the shimmer of a puddle of water; a remnant of the previous night's thunderstorm. Even in the dirty water she can see that her appearance leaves much to be desired.
Even in that muddy dark water, she can see how…lost she looks.
It's terrifying. What her life has become. She's a shell of the person she once was, unrecognisable.
Not worth shit.
Even under such a forgiving, round full moon, with all the stars and atmosphere she can't be beautiful. At least she has the sense to realise that it's probably best if she doesn't continue driving, especially in her inebriated state.
So she walks instead. Traipsing around the New York streets she goes unnoticed, or perhaps people do notice her and simply want nothing to do with her. After all, look at her, in her torn dress and heels that click obnoxiously, she appears to be the faded party girl who's been thrown out of a party so they ignore her. That's fine with Sydney, she wants nothing to do with them either. Clutching a bottle of whiskey, the glass cool around her hot fingers, she stumbles drunkenly through out the streets.
The path she walks lead her past the window of a still open bar. Here her reflection is illuminated, it's stronger and more defined, and it is how she is finally able to see what she must look like to others. Sydney sees herself in all her drunken, dishevelled, pathetic glory.
She roars with disgust at her self and what she's become and aims the bottle at the bar window, it shatters on impact and sprays the streets with dark liquid.
Passers by stop and stare and Sydney feels like a freak of nature, an experiment gone wrong. She scowls and curses at them, then she breaks into a run, her dress in tatters, the heel of one shoe breaks off and yet she still runs. The tears that flood from her face and mix with the grime on her features, blind her and she almost doesn't see the blacked out sleek Rolls Royce.
The car screeches to a halt and Sydney stares into the headlights, holding her forearm over her head to shield her eyes from the fierce light. For a moment she wants to crumple in the middle of the street, let the car drive over her. She doesn't. Instead she keeps running, ignoring the call of the driver.
The woman that stands illuminated in Sark's headlights looks so much like Sydney Bristow that it makes him uneasy. The naked fear he felt when he thought it was her is something he can't ignore. He still has some residual feelings for her.
He thought he was over her, when after spending so much time searching for her and coming up with nothing, he realised there was perhaps nothing to be found.
If she'd wanted to be found, she'd make it happen.
She was rogue now, and all the more dangerous for it.
At least when she was CIA, he knew where she stood; for the good, the righteous, for Vaughn. Now she was gone without a trace. Dust in the wind. A ghost he was slowly learning to live with.
That same 'ghost' had nearly driven him insane, not once had Sydney given him any indication of what she felt when he flirted shamelessly with him and yet he'd still looked for her, on the off chance that now she was rogue, she might be more accepting of him. Little old emotionally, ethically and morally bankruptJulian Sarkwith the strong, admirable, decent, honest, proud Sydney Bristow.
Crazy, right?
Then after two years that was it, he just gave up. He's moved on, or so he thinks. If he has moved on then why is he seeing her on street corners? Why is he calling her name into the New York darkness?
That woman was not Sydney Bristow. It was just his mind playing tricks on him.
As far as he knew, Sydney Bristow was no longer her name, for all he knew she was dead.
He gets back into his Mercedes and presses his head back into the leather, for a moment heis silent, he lets his thoughts settle like dust. Then the honk of a car horn bringshim abruptlyback to reality.
Sydney Bristow is no more, he tells himself.
Get used to it.