"Gray Skies Again" (1/3)
Author: Bella
E-mail: bella_lumina@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The characters (except Joe, Jamie, John, and Nina and Ellie Vaughn) are not mine.
Spoilers: Everything up to and including "The Box." Minor spoilers from "The Coup" are referenced indirectly. You probably won't be able to find them if you aren't looking.
Notes: This is a companion piece to "Nothing to Be Afraid Of." Thanks to Cassandra for the beta-read! :) Another story will follow this one, tying up the loose ends.
*September 17, 2003*
I need to write this down, although it will probably come back to haunt me. I have to tell someone. I can't keep it inside of me anymore, or I think it will eat through my skin.
Think about it: how would you feel if the woman you loved was sleeping with someone else? How would you feel? I can tell you how it feels. It feels unbearable. It feels like someone is sitting on your chest, crushing you. You want to scream and cry at the same time.
I saw them. I'd seen them together before, but I figured he was just some guy she worked with. In her job, this sort of man was always around: the man in the well-tailored business suit. He was attractive, I'll give her that; he had sandy brown hair and piercing gray-green eyes. His stare was disconcerting, I could tell, and he had never even stared at me. I peered through his apartment window, and I saw them in his bed.
I figured out that this man was CIA, not SD-6, about two months before. I had noticed that she met him regularly, but not openly, a year ago. Six months ago she stopped meeting with him abruptly, and instead a larger man with darker hair. Occasionally, though, the green-eyed man would make a reappearance. It took me all this time to figure out who he was. Now there's no question in my mind at all.
You see, though I'm technically dead, I still have access to the same things that I did when I was alive. I can use a fake social security number to get fake mail. I have a fake name. And I can use my brains to figure things out. This green-eyed man was Sydney's CIA agent. It was obvious that he had been in love with her for quite some time, though I don't think as long as I've loved her.
I feel like I've loved her forever, and I've figured out that maybe she could love me, too. It isn't outside of the realm of possibility, after all. If a woman can forgive a man for killing the man that she loves, then that woman can surely learn to love that man as well. If she has that sort of capability for forgiveness in her life, her capacity for love must be inexhaustible. It really does make perfect sense when you reason it out.
SD-6 was done this afternoon; the CIA vehicles pulled up after two, and I knew it was over. I watched as the sandy-haired, green-eyed man of Sydney's paced back and forth, talking with the darker-haired man. I waited, holding my breath, until I finally saw her. An unfamiliar agent brought her out of the building, and her green-eyed man hurried to her, holding her while she cried. He kissed her; I had never seen him kiss her before.
And she went home with him. I followed; I had to make sure she was okay. She'd been through so much. It made me sick to see them together, but I had to make sure she was okay. He took her to his bedroom, and she slept with him on his bed. She slept with this man, who she obviously had little or no contact with anymore. I couldn't believe she would do something like that. But she did; she let him take her clothes off, and she let him kiss her and touch her, and she let him sleep with her. I learned his name, because she called it out: "Michael."
And now, what's worse is that they're together constantly. She went away -- with him, I presume -- the night after, and they were gone for several days. Since then she's either spent the night at his apartment or he's spent the night at her house. It's disgusting.
Tonight, I saw them again together for the first time. I knew that they were with each other every night because I had seen their cars in front of each other's houses, but I hadn't been able to compel myself to watch for her, although my entire being ached for her. Sydney Bristow is like a drug. She's like heroin. One exposure and you're permanently hooked.
He was at her house this time. Her friend wasn't at home, and they called for takeout pizza and ate messily in the living room in front of the television. He laughed with her and grinned at her. When she had finished her pizza, he leaned over and buried his hands in her hair before kissing her soundly. She melted into him, discarding her plate to move closer to him. She murmured -- I couldn't hear what she said -- and they stood and stumbled to her bedroom. I left. There's something wrong about this situation, and I haven't figured it out yet, but you can be certain that I'm going to.
*October 4, 2003*
Sydney is back at college full-time, and I think she's going to get an education degree. She's close to finishing her masters, I know, and I think she's planning to teach high school English. She would be a wonderful teacher. She's taught me a million things.
Her reporter friend is dying over her newly discovered relationship with the CIA agent. I don't think any of them know that he's CIA. I know, but then again I know lots of things. The reporter is in love with her, not the way that I'm in love with her, because this guy couldn't possibly understand that. His eyes follow her when she leaves a room. He makes flippant comments to Francie when Sydney isn't around. He needs to find someone else.
They went to a hockey game tonight -- by them, of course, I mean Sydney and her new right arm, "Michael." Apparently he likes hockey. I don't know. She's never been a compulsive hockey fan. They didn't get back until one o'clock in the morning, and they sacked out on her bed. He drapes an arm over her while they sleep, like she's a possession of his. Sydney Bristow is no one's possession, yet apparently this man feels like he has some claim on her. He doesn't own her, and he needs to get that through his head quickly.
*October 31, 2003*
Usually Sydney and Francie have a huge Halloween party, but this year they didn't. Francie has a new boyfriend; I don't know what his name is, but he's a doctor and he obviously has money. She and her boyfriend took his little brother out trick-or-treating.
Sydney and the CIA agent went to a bar with some of his friends. I've done some checking. There's the darker-haired CIA agent; his name is Eric Weiss. The blonde man is Vaughn's (that's his last name -- I checked some records last week) college roommate, Joe. Joe's wife is Jamie, a pretty, red-haired woman. And then there's a blonde woman who Vaughn used to date: Alice. Surprisingly, Sydney doesn't seem to have a problem with being around Alice. Just one more sign that this flirtation with Vaughn probably won't last long.
The bar was typical; low lighting and dark wood. There was a pool table in one corner and a jukebox in the other. Fake cobwebs were strewn everywhere. I sat at the bar, ostensibly watching a basketball game on television. She sat in a booth beside Vaughn with Eric on her other side. "I'm going to set you up with someone," she informed Eric, sipping at her beer.
He gave her a disbelieving look. "You're really not."
"No, no, there's this girl in one of my lit classes," she continued. Vaughn laughed at Eric's eye roll. "She's pretty. You two would really hit it off."
"Jamie, explain this to me," Eric began. "You're a woman in a relationship."
Jamie laughed, inspecting her wedding ring. "You know what, you're right..."
"Stop it," Eric replied good-naturedly. "You know what I mean..."
They went on to discuss the reasons that women in happy relationships always want to set up their friends; Sydney snorted and leaned against Vaughn. I left just as Alice walked into the bar, giving Sydney a very succinct look and sitting down beside Joe. I really didn't feel the need to watch them bicker over some tool like Vaughn. That would be just too much.
Watching them tonight, I began to feel a bit frightened. I really thought that she would be over her fixation on him quickly, and it's been more than a month now. I'm not sure how things are going to change, but they've got to change soon.
*November 13, 2003*
Sydney's reporter -- I've discovered that his name is Will -- quit his job at the paper suddenly. He's been hanging around her house, not really doing much of anything. He seems incredibly suspicious of everyone, and I'm not sure why.
This guy, Will, is the one who was investigating (and I use that term loosely) Danny's death for his editors. I don't have any evidence that he found anything conclusive about the murder or about Sydney. Of course, if he had discovered that it was me -- because, after all, I am the one who killed Danny Hecht -- he wouldn't be able to go any further. I'm legally dead. This has its advantages sometimes.
I suppose that Will and I have more in common than one would think. He's got some sort of crush on Sydney; I don't think he loves her like I do, but then, the love I have for her isn't a normal kind of love. It's like respect and admiration coiled up together with lust and longing. I wonder sometimes when I'm going to snap again. I don't snap when I'm with her.
When I came back to Los Angeles -- it seems so long ago now, though it's only been a year -- I came back because I needed her. I didn't come back because I was in love with her. I can love someone for a long time without being around her. I *needed* her help, because she'd given me a piece of myself in Romania that I had somehow lost again along the way.
I looked at a painting one day, and suddenly it was black-and-white again. No, I shouldn't say things like that. The transformation wasn't sudden. I knew exactly why I had lost myself again. I had worked on restraint and patience for so long, but that night in Germany when that dirty little beggar had stolen all of my drawings...
I killed a person again. I don't know why I did it. No, I do know why; I don't know why I reacted the way that I did. I snapped. *No man is an island*, I remember thinking wildly. I didn't need to kill him, but I did, methodically, in the same way that I had been taught years before. I threw his body in the Rhine; the next morning I woke to a black-and-white world. Gray skies again...
So I came to find her. After all, she was the one who had inexplicably fixed something in my brain the last time I had seen her. And behold, once I found her, once I felt the connection we had coursing strongly within me again, the colors came back. Blue skies. I craved those blue skies.
This Will seems the same; he's only at ease when he's with her, and even I can't explain that. Something's happened to him, but as long as it doesn't affect Sydney, he can deal with it on his own.
*November 27, 2003*
It was almost all over tonight. I'm getting careless, I think. That's got to stop.
Apparently it's Vaughn's birthday, and there was a huge wrapped box sitting on Sydney's dining room table. The guy's older than I am, and he's older than Sydney is, too; he turned 35 today. It's hard to believe that Sydney's going to be thirty in the spring; she still looks like a freshman college student.
She planned a party for him, and he seemed a little embarrassed by this. The guests began to trickle in at six-thirty: first Will and his sister, who was carrying a huge bag of store-bought ice. Francie's boyfriend -- whose name, by the way, is John, and who is a pediatrician at a hospital downtown -- showed up next. Weiss was there; Vaughn's mother came in with Joe and Jamie. Vaughn was one of the last to arrive. Sydney's father walked in five minutes before they ate. This took me by surprise; she and her father seem to get along well, but he makes no secret of the fact that he doesn't exactly approve of Vaughn. Vaughn's eyebrows raised amusingly when Mr. Bristow walked in.
I didn't want to stay, really; Sydney would be fine, she had her whole family there. I didn't want to hear the stories that Joe and Vaughn's mom told. I didn't want to watch Sydney look at Vaughn adoringly every time his mother mentioned an embarrassing childhood incident.
But I had to know what was in that box.
I've had fantasies resembling this night since I found her house. I would wake up in the morning with her arms wrapped around me; she'd whisper, "Happy birthday," softly in my ear. There would be a box waiting for me on the table.
He didn't move to open the gift until they were sitting in the living room after dinner. Just as Sydney had abandoned her seat beside him on the couch to retrieve the box, Jack Bristow's eyes snapped toward the window that I was watching through, and he nudged Vaughn. I couldn't make out what he murmured, but Vaughn's eyes also turned to the window, and he stood slowly. Vaughn's mother grimaced as he reached into a drawer in the coffee table and carefully extracted a handgun; Will's sister's eyes grew wide and round. "Sit down," Jack said harshly as Will stood to follow.
I crouched and sneaked around to the other side of the house. My heart was beating wildly. I'm not sure how he didn't catch me. If it had been Sydney looking around, she would definitely have found me.
*December 6, 2003*
It's over for now. She earned her master's degree today, graduating in a ceremony at her college. When she came home that night, she was sporting a diamond on her left hand. Francie had obviously seen the diamond that morning, because she admired it several times, but she didn't freak out. He must have proposed in the morning; I had stopped by the night before to check on her, and she didn't have it then.
I've done a little background check on Vaughn's mother. She's not actually American, which surprised me, because her English is pitch-perfect. Her name is Nina; she was born in Rouen in France. This made me curious, and through a little more digging, I found out that Vaughn, Mr. CIA, wasn't born in America, either. He's a dual-citizen, American and French. Go figure.
I mention Vaughn's mother only because I saw her for the second time today. Francie threw a tiny get-together for Syd's graduation, and Jack, Dixon, Will, his sister (I found out that her name is Amy), John, Eric, and Vaughn's mother came over. Re-reading that sentence, I realized that I forgot to include Vaughn; the sickening thing is that he's at her house so often that I almost forget he doesn't live there. Obviously he was at the party, too.
His mother cried when she saw the ring, and Francie cried again, and Sydney nearly did. Everyone fawned over the ring and hugged Sydney tightly. Jack shook Vaughn's hand tentatively, then congratulated them. Vaughn seemed surprised, yet pleased, which made my stomach turn. Even Will found it in himself to shake Vaughn's hand and hug Sydney.
I was so tired that I nearly fell asleep against the side of the house. I went home, feeling defeated, before I reminded myself that engagements weren't necessarily permanent. After all, Sydney never married Danny, did she?
To be continued...
Author: Bella
E-mail: bella_lumina@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The characters (except Joe, Jamie, John, and Nina and Ellie Vaughn) are not mine.
Spoilers: Everything up to and including "The Box." Minor spoilers from "The Coup" are referenced indirectly. You probably won't be able to find them if you aren't looking.
Notes: This is a companion piece to "Nothing to Be Afraid Of." Thanks to Cassandra for the beta-read! :) Another story will follow this one, tying up the loose ends.
*September 17, 2003*
I need to write this down, although it will probably come back to haunt me. I have to tell someone. I can't keep it inside of me anymore, or I think it will eat through my skin.
Think about it: how would you feel if the woman you loved was sleeping with someone else? How would you feel? I can tell you how it feels. It feels unbearable. It feels like someone is sitting on your chest, crushing you. You want to scream and cry at the same time.
I saw them. I'd seen them together before, but I figured he was just some guy she worked with. In her job, this sort of man was always around: the man in the well-tailored business suit. He was attractive, I'll give her that; he had sandy brown hair and piercing gray-green eyes. His stare was disconcerting, I could tell, and he had never even stared at me. I peered through his apartment window, and I saw them in his bed.
I figured out that this man was CIA, not SD-6, about two months before. I had noticed that she met him regularly, but not openly, a year ago. Six months ago she stopped meeting with him abruptly, and instead a larger man with darker hair. Occasionally, though, the green-eyed man would make a reappearance. It took me all this time to figure out who he was. Now there's no question in my mind at all.
You see, though I'm technically dead, I still have access to the same things that I did when I was alive. I can use a fake social security number to get fake mail. I have a fake name. And I can use my brains to figure things out. This green-eyed man was Sydney's CIA agent. It was obvious that he had been in love with her for quite some time, though I don't think as long as I've loved her.
I feel like I've loved her forever, and I've figured out that maybe she could love me, too. It isn't outside of the realm of possibility, after all. If a woman can forgive a man for killing the man that she loves, then that woman can surely learn to love that man as well. If she has that sort of capability for forgiveness in her life, her capacity for love must be inexhaustible. It really does make perfect sense when you reason it out.
SD-6 was done this afternoon; the CIA vehicles pulled up after two, and I knew it was over. I watched as the sandy-haired, green-eyed man of Sydney's paced back and forth, talking with the darker-haired man. I waited, holding my breath, until I finally saw her. An unfamiliar agent brought her out of the building, and her green-eyed man hurried to her, holding her while she cried. He kissed her; I had never seen him kiss her before.
And she went home with him. I followed; I had to make sure she was okay. She'd been through so much. It made me sick to see them together, but I had to make sure she was okay. He took her to his bedroom, and she slept with him on his bed. She slept with this man, who she obviously had little or no contact with anymore. I couldn't believe she would do something like that. But she did; she let him take her clothes off, and she let him kiss her and touch her, and she let him sleep with her. I learned his name, because she called it out: "Michael."
And now, what's worse is that they're together constantly. She went away -- with him, I presume -- the night after, and they were gone for several days. Since then she's either spent the night at his apartment or he's spent the night at her house. It's disgusting.
Tonight, I saw them again together for the first time. I knew that they were with each other every night because I had seen their cars in front of each other's houses, but I hadn't been able to compel myself to watch for her, although my entire being ached for her. Sydney Bristow is like a drug. She's like heroin. One exposure and you're permanently hooked.
He was at her house this time. Her friend wasn't at home, and they called for takeout pizza and ate messily in the living room in front of the television. He laughed with her and grinned at her. When she had finished her pizza, he leaned over and buried his hands in her hair before kissing her soundly. She melted into him, discarding her plate to move closer to him. She murmured -- I couldn't hear what she said -- and they stood and stumbled to her bedroom. I left. There's something wrong about this situation, and I haven't figured it out yet, but you can be certain that I'm going to.
*October 4, 2003*
Sydney is back at college full-time, and I think she's going to get an education degree. She's close to finishing her masters, I know, and I think she's planning to teach high school English. She would be a wonderful teacher. She's taught me a million things.
Her reporter friend is dying over her newly discovered relationship with the CIA agent. I don't think any of them know that he's CIA. I know, but then again I know lots of things. The reporter is in love with her, not the way that I'm in love with her, because this guy couldn't possibly understand that. His eyes follow her when she leaves a room. He makes flippant comments to Francie when Sydney isn't around. He needs to find someone else.
They went to a hockey game tonight -- by them, of course, I mean Sydney and her new right arm, "Michael." Apparently he likes hockey. I don't know. She's never been a compulsive hockey fan. They didn't get back until one o'clock in the morning, and they sacked out on her bed. He drapes an arm over her while they sleep, like she's a possession of his. Sydney Bristow is no one's possession, yet apparently this man feels like he has some claim on her. He doesn't own her, and he needs to get that through his head quickly.
*October 31, 2003*
Usually Sydney and Francie have a huge Halloween party, but this year they didn't. Francie has a new boyfriend; I don't know what his name is, but he's a doctor and he obviously has money. She and her boyfriend took his little brother out trick-or-treating.
Sydney and the CIA agent went to a bar with some of his friends. I've done some checking. There's the darker-haired CIA agent; his name is Eric Weiss. The blonde man is Vaughn's (that's his last name -- I checked some records last week) college roommate, Joe. Joe's wife is Jamie, a pretty, red-haired woman. And then there's a blonde woman who Vaughn used to date: Alice. Surprisingly, Sydney doesn't seem to have a problem with being around Alice. Just one more sign that this flirtation with Vaughn probably won't last long.
The bar was typical; low lighting and dark wood. There was a pool table in one corner and a jukebox in the other. Fake cobwebs were strewn everywhere. I sat at the bar, ostensibly watching a basketball game on television. She sat in a booth beside Vaughn with Eric on her other side. "I'm going to set you up with someone," she informed Eric, sipping at her beer.
He gave her a disbelieving look. "You're really not."
"No, no, there's this girl in one of my lit classes," she continued. Vaughn laughed at Eric's eye roll. "She's pretty. You two would really hit it off."
"Jamie, explain this to me," Eric began. "You're a woman in a relationship."
Jamie laughed, inspecting her wedding ring. "You know what, you're right..."
"Stop it," Eric replied good-naturedly. "You know what I mean..."
They went on to discuss the reasons that women in happy relationships always want to set up their friends; Sydney snorted and leaned against Vaughn. I left just as Alice walked into the bar, giving Sydney a very succinct look and sitting down beside Joe. I really didn't feel the need to watch them bicker over some tool like Vaughn. That would be just too much.
Watching them tonight, I began to feel a bit frightened. I really thought that she would be over her fixation on him quickly, and it's been more than a month now. I'm not sure how things are going to change, but they've got to change soon.
*November 13, 2003*
Sydney's reporter -- I've discovered that his name is Will -- quit his job at the paper suddenly. He's been hanging around her house, not really doing much of anything. He seems incredibly suspicious of everyone, and I'm not sure why.
This guy, Will, is the one who was investigating (and I use that term loosely) Danny's death for his editors. I don't have any evidence that he found anything conclusive about the murder or about Sydney. Of course, if he had discovered that it was me -- because, after all, I am the one who killed Danny Hecht -- he wouldn't be able to go any further. I'm legally dead. This has its advantages sometimes.
I suppose that Will and I have more in common than one would think. He's got some sort of crush on Sydney; I don't think he loves her like I do, but then, the love I have for her isn't a normal kind of love. It's like respect and admiration coiled up together with lust and longing. I wonder sometimes when I'm going to snap again. I don't snap when I'm with her.
When I came back to Los Angeles -- it seems so long ago now, though it's only been a year -- I came back because I needed her. I didn't come back because I was in love with her. I can love someone for a long time without being around her. I *needed* her help, because she'd given me a piece of myself in Romania that I had somehow lost again along the way.
I looked at a painting one day, and suddenly it was black-and-white again. No, I shouldn't say things like that. The transformation wasn't sudden. I knew exactly why I had lost myself again. I had worked on restraint and patience for so long, but that night in Germany when that dirty little beggar had stolen all of my drawings...
I killed a person again. I don't know why I did it. No, I do know why; I don't know why I reacted the way that I did. I snapped. *No man is an island*, I remember thinking wildly. I didn't need to kill him, but I did, methodically, in the same way that I had been taught years before. I threw his body in the Rhine; the next morning I woke to a black-and-white world. Gray skies again...
So I came to find her. After all, she was the one who had inexplicably fixed something in my brain the last time I had seen her. And behold, once I found her, once I felt the connection we had coursing strongly within me again, the colors came back. Blue skies. I craved those blue skies.
This Will seems the same; he's only at ease when he's with her, and even I can't explain that. Something's happened to him, but as long as it doesn't affect Sydney, he can deal with it on his own.
*November 27, 2003*
It was almost all over tonight. I'm getting careless, I think. That's got to stop.
Apparently it's Vaughn's birthday, and there was a huge wrapped box sitting on Sydney's dining room table. The guy's older than I am, and he's older than Sydney is, too; he turned 35 today. It's hard to believe that Sydney's going to be thirty in the spring; she still looks like a freshman college student.
She planned a party for him, and he seemed a little embarrassed by this. The guests began to trickle in at six-thirty: first Will and his sister, who was carrying a huge bag of store-bought ice. Francie's boyfriend -- whose name, by the way, is John, and who is a pediatrician at a hospital downtown -- showed up next. Weiss was there; Vaughn's mother came in with Joe and Jamie. Vaughn was one of the last to arrive. Sydney's father walked in five minutes before they ate. This took me by surprise; she and her father seem to get along well, but he makes no secret of the fact that he doesn't exactly approve of Vaughn. Vaughn's eyebrows raised amusingly when Mr. Bristow walked in.
I didn't want to stay, really; Sydney would be fine, she had her whole family there. I didn't want to hear the stories that Joe and Vaughn's mom told. I didn't want to watch Sydney look at Vaughn adoringly every time his mother mentioned an embarrassing childhood incident.
But I had to know what was in that box.
I've had fantasies resembling this night since I found her house. I would wake up in the morning with her arms wrapped around me; she'd whisper, "Happy birthday," softly in my ear. There would be a box waiting for me on the table.
He didn't move to open the gift until they were sitting in the living room after dinner. Just as Sydney had abandoned her seat beside him on the couch to retrieve the box, Jack Bristow's eyes snapped toward the window that I was watching through, and he nudged Vaughn. I couldn't make out what he murmured, but Vaughn's eyes also turned to the window, and he stood slowly. Vaughn's mother grimaced as he reached into a drawer in the coffee table and carefully extracted a handgun; Will's sister's eyes grew wide and round. "Sit down," Jack said harshly as Will stood to follow.
I crouched and sneaked around to the other side of the house. My heart was beating wildly. I'm not sure how he didn't catch me. If it had been Sydney looking around, she would definitely have found me.
*December 6, 2003*
It's over for now. She earned her master's degree today, graduating in a ceremony at her college. When she came home that night, she was sporting a diamond on her left hand. Francie had obviously seen the diamond that morning, because she admired it several times, but she didn't freak out. He must have proposed in the morning; I had stopped by the night before to check on her, and she didn't have it then.
I've done a little background check on Vaughn's mother. She's not actually American, which surprised me, because her English is pitch-perfect. Her name is Nina; she was born in Rouen in France. This made me curious, and through a little more digging, I found out that Vaughn, Mr. CIA, wasn't born in America, either. He's a dual-citizen, American and French. Go figure.
I mention Vaughn's mother only because I saw her for the second time today. Francie threw a tiny get-together for Syd's graduation, and Jack, Dixon, Will, his sister (I found out that her name is Amy), John, Eric, and Vaughn's mother came over. Re-reading that sentence, I realized that I forgot to include Vaughn; the sickening thing is that he's at her house so often that I almost forget he doesn't live there. Obviously he was at the party, too.
His mother cried when she saw the ring, and Francie cried again, and Sydney nearly did. Everyone fawned over the ring and hugged Sydney tightly. Jack shook Vaughn's hand tentatively, then congratulated them. Vaughn seemed surprised, yet pleased, which made my stomach turn. Even Will found it in himself to shake Vaughn's hand and hug Sydney.
I was so tired that I nearly fell asleep against the side of the house. I went home, feeling defeated, before I reminded myself that engagements weren't necessarily permanent. After all, Sydney never married Danny, did she?
To be continued...