Title: A New Flame
Timeframe: Late Season Three, after Remnants
Author: Edes
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me
Note: Did Will ever go meet that painter? How's life treating him in Wisconsin?
Feedback welcome and appreciated!!!
Part One: At the door
Leah
The knock on the door wasn't unusual. Leah's best friend, Mari, wrote tour guides upstairs in 20C and often dropped by. It was a sunny afternoon, one of the last truly hot days of the summer. Fall comes early to Wisconsin—Mari no doubt wanted to force Leah to enjoy it properly. Drag her sailing, or something.
Leah rolled her eyes; hadn't she fried on Mari's boat enough this summer? Any more freckles and her face was going to look like a sepia Jackson Pollack.
"'M cmin'!" Leah said around the gritty handle of a camelhair paint brush. "'E white air."
Brush balanced on the top of her water jug, Leah swiped her hands on her cargos and pushed her wavy brown hair behind her ears. A swipe of cobalt blue remained on both, accenting the odd palate that Leah ended up wearing every time she painted furiously like this.
Leah's preemptive retort was fully formed before the door had opened halfway.
"I'm not burning on your boat again, so don't even ask."
A splash of crimson joined the flecks of blue on her face as she blushed. A man stood there, relaxed and grinning. Leah fervently wished she had half the poise she did in her imagination; this wasn't exactly how she'd pictured meeting the only young, single guy in her building. Leah scanned her memory: Jonah from 5F.
"Hey," he teased. "I didn't know we had a problem with pyros and yachts around here. But thanks for the warning."
"Oh," Leah smiled breathily, still recovering. "I thought you were my friend, Mari. But you're not." Brilliant comeback. Leah grimaced inwardly.
"The writer, from upstairs? Not last I checked. I'm the construction manager from downstairs. And I'm the guy who forgot to get my tool kit back from the neighbor who used it and then went on vacation. I was wondering if I could borrow a hammer for a minute or two." He held out a hand. "I'm also Jonah Apton."
Leah blinked as she remembered she wasn't supposed to know his name. They hadn't technically ever met, but didn't everyone snoop—just a little!—around the mailboxes?
Leah also noticed that his eyes were ridiculously blue. Regaining her composure, she shook his hand in mock formality.
Her mouth quirked. "A construction manager without a hammer? That's bad, dude. I'm Leah, the painter who always has plenty of paint." She gestured at her multicolored clothing and laughed. She knew she should get back to painting but said anyway, "Come on in. I've just go to cover my palate so it doesn't dry out."
"'Dude?'" Jonah said, stepping into her apartment. "Are we in like the third grade?"
"What name would you prefer, dude?" Leah countered. She held back the rest of her retort as Jonah stopped to whistle, looking around.
"Wow." Jonah absorbed the array of canvases that filled the room. "Are these all yours?" Paintings leaned against every surface. Some of them were stacked four deep. Others hung on the wall.
Leah surveyed them briefly. "Yeah, mostly."
She shrugged, then smiled at his approving expression. She liked getting praise more than she cared to admit. Her art wasn't for everyone, but she tended to like people who admired it. Was it just vanity? Or was it because those people saw the world like she did? She didn't know.
Jonah bent down to examine one of the brightly colored abstracts. "I don't know much about art, but I love all the colors and the feeling of movement."
He straightened, and she saw that his smile was sincere. She grinned back, her eyes crinkling at the edges, and laughed off the compliment.
"It's ten compliments per half-hour use of the hammer, y'know."
"I'd better get started, then." Jonah held up his hands, framing the air in front of him, and adopted a terrible French accent. "Dis one, eet iz vehwee, 'ow you say? Pairfect? Zuch forms. And dis one, well…"
Leah saw his eyes rest on a set above her bed, and she cut him off. "Actually, those ones on the wall were done by a friend." A new note entered her voice. Jonah looked quickly but discreetly at her.
Awkwardly, Leah added, "I'll, um, get the hammer."
Turning away, she felt another blush rise, but she fought it with a silent reprimand. She should have taken those down long ago. Not that I shouldn't have moved on by now, anyway, paintings or no paintings.
But the truth was that the paintings over her bed still offered her fresh pain her every time she looked at them, with their beautiful, dream-world colors. She remembered the days that Bradley had painted them—uncomplicated days of streaming sunshine and the first flush of a giddy attraction. Days had passed that summer when they didn't leave her room—or get dressed. Over a year ago, damn it.
They had spent that summer lolling about, doing little. Her usually frenetic painting slowed to a trickle; her daily goals centered on making his gray eyes light up like they did when she teased him. Or when she pushed him away from the easel to run her hands over his bare chest…
God, Leah. Get a grip. You've been dying to meet Jonah for months. What good was all the therapy if you don't know by now that it wasn't your fault? Bradley killed himself.
It was the oldest story in the book: the melancholy artist. He was depressed. He didn't take his meds. Non-compliance, the doctors had called his behavior. Refusal to follow simple medical instructions. Like that's all it was—a small lapse in judgment.
Bradley's paintings told a story of an unrealizable future. They were complete, wholly formed and beautiful. They concealed the cracks in his psyche that she couldn't patch with love, with sex, or with drugs—although, in the end, they had tried all three. His paintings breathed potential and invoked a ceaseless desire to fulfill it. They promised a life exactly opposite of the one he chose. Bradley's paintings were the perfect lie.
Leah picked up the hammer and turned back to the living room.
Will
OK, this is going well, Will Tippin thought with rueful sarcasm as the petite figure retreated into the other room. He watched as she walked away stiffly. Her long brown hair swished like the tail of an irritated cat.
Will ran a hand over his face in a gesture that belied his earlier joking tone. He was still bruised from his encounters with Sydney and Allison three weeks ago. Neither his body nor his mind seemed to heal very quickly nowadays. You're getting old. Nice.
What am I doing here? Leah was obviously busy—and what was with her and those paintings?
Will's journalist's mind supplied the answer, unbidden. There's something that still hurts in her past so much that she can't hide it. He pushed the stab of sympathy away. Six months of Witness Protection preparation and two years of joking with his crew, of reading nothing more challenging than the newspaper, of plugging in his car at night during the Wisconsin winter all reminded him that he, Jonah Apton from 5F, was a simple guy, now.
This isn't going to work. He couldn't deny the brief chemistry he and Leah had shared, but he had demons enough for both of them, didn't he?
Will might have just completed a dangerous mission for the CIA, had consoling sex with his partner on that mission, Sydney Bristow, who happened to be one of his oldest friends, and—lest we forget—desperately in love with someone else. Will might have just engaged in a fight to the death with an international terrorist, Allison Doren, who happened to be his ex-girlfriend, and—let's remember—a genetic clone.
Will might have done all these things. But Jonah was finished with troubled, secretive women.
Yet words spoken to Sydney were almost like promises. Will swallowed slowly as he remembered the contented face he'd turned toward her as they said goodbye in LA after the debrief at headquarters. His alias might be compromised. He might be in imminent danger. Syd had advised him to moved, maybe internationally. Nonetheless, he was done running.
"No, I'll stay in Wisconsin."
He'd shot Syd a tentative smile, a hope forming in his chest. Hope that he could finally, really start over. Forget the crashing emptiness that killing Allison forged in his mind. Forget Sydney reaching for him in his dreams. Forget the sweetness of her hair on his chest.
"Maybe when I get back, I'll ask out that painter."
If Syd could slog through the mess that was her life now, the least Will—no, the least Jonah could do was hang in there long enough to ask an attractive woman on a date.
He was glad Leah didn't look anything like Syd, though. Leah's small frame was more cute than sexy, her wavy hair adorably mussed. Her eyes were large and dark blue-green, dominating a face with otherwise understated features. Understated, that is, until she smiled her absurdly huge smile, like she had at his protest over "dude."
Relaxing slightly with a small smile of his own, Will sat on the edge of a cotton covered couch. He turned his head and continued to look around.
He had no warning at all; his blood simply froze and he stopped breathing. The painting Leah had been working on was now in full view. Done in monochromatic blues, it was a picture of enigmatic sadness. A Wisconsin park in on a snowless winter day. A woman standing alone, arms holding a trench coat close. The woman stood straight and proud. She was achingly beautiful, her expression unreadable. She was unknowable, untouchable.
She was also, unmistakably, Irina Derevko. Sydney's mother and international terrorist.
"That's part of a new series," Leah said quietly behind him. Will barely had time to face her with a stupefied expression before the door to the apartment exploded in a cloud of oak shards and ash.
So much for starting over.
End of Part One