Title: When The Sum Is Not Equal To The Whole
Rating: R (for the 'dark night of the soul' factor)
Category: Angst/Romance (dark images shall abound and happiness shall have no dominion...with apologies to Dylan Thomas for the bastardisation of his verse)
Spoilers: Post-Telling AU...very AU
Disclaimer: They're not mine. It took me 24 steps to admit that. I had to do the class twice
Notes: No I am not dead. Apologies for those waiting on There But For The Grace..., but what can I say, I just had to start writing this. For those who see that this is a two-parter, fear not the second part is written and I'm just going over it with a toothcomb. Enjoy, but please, for those who want to flame, feel free to, but know that it won't affect or make a difference to what I write. By the same token, thank you for all the encouraging reviews I have received, and the death threats(
Now before the notes become longer than the tale...enjoy
*********************************************
In the end, the only name for her was Laura. An exquisitely appropriate moniker considering who she was - what she was.
Still, often she forgot. Often she referred to herself as 'Sydney' and only after catching the flash in his eyes she would remember...
...she was not Sydney Bristow
Sydney Bristow had died years ago, though it had taken much longer for her real body to be found.
Too long
When she had woken up in Hong Kong all she could think of was Vaughn. She knew, deep within herself, that if she could just get to him, he would come for her, rescue her, and help her make sense of her tabula rasa state. Vaughn would save her. He always did.
And he did come.
She often found herself wishing that he had left her there, refusing Jack and ignoring his own sense of honour. She would have survived. At that point she had had herself, and it would have been enough. Vaughn's revelations stripped her of even that last constant and exiled her to the half-life she had lived since.
On paper, her life actually looked pretty good. A hell of a lot better than when she had been double-crossing murderers and being beaten up by men twice her size. She lived in a nice apartment, she was eminently employable -currently she was on a sabbatical of indefinite length- and she had a husband who would do anything for her.
The reality, however, was very different.
The apartment she inhabited was a prison cell. Its pain-soaked walls and utter silence were constant reminders of her manifold failings. They never stopped reminding her just how much a fraud she was.
Her sabbatical was her own protracted period of mourning. For Jack. For Sydney. For Vaughn. And even for her. An extended period of 'sitting shiva' for the death of the only life she knew. The life she was forever barred from.
And her husband- that was the cruellest blow of all. The wedding ring had been on his finger longer than the actual duration of their paper-marriage. Without it she would not have been able to get out of Hong Kong or into LA but Vaughn had neatly side-stepped all the messy detritus of lack of papers, money, clothes etc with it. His codename was 'boyscout' after all.
And also, he had gone through the process before.
Rating: R (for the 'dark night of the soul' factor)
Category: Angst/Romance (dark images shall abound and happiness shall have no dominion...with apologies to Dylan Thomas for the bastardisation of his verse)
Spoilers: Post-Telling AU...very AU
Disclaimer: They're not mine. It took me 24 steps to admit that. I had to do the class twice
Notes: No I am not dead. Apologies for those waiting on There But For The Grace..., but what can I say, I just had to start writing this. For those who see that this is a two-parter, fear not the second part is written and I'm just going over it with a toothcomb. Enjoy, but please, for those who want to flame, feel free to, but know that it won't affect or make a difference to what I write. By the same token, thank you for all the encouraging reviews I have received, and the death threats(
Now before the notes become longer than the tale...enjoy
*********************************************
In the end, the only name for her was Laura. An exquisitely appropriate moniker considering who she was - what she was.
Still, often she forgot. Often she referred to herself as 'Sydney' and only after catching the flash in his eyes she would remember...
...she was not Sydney Bristow
Sydney Bristow had died years ago, though it had taken much longer for her real body to be found.
Too long
When she had woken up in Hong Kong all she could think of was Vaughn. She knew, deep within herself, that if she could just get to him, he would come for her, rescue her, and help her make sense of her tabula rasa state. Vaughn would save her. He always did.
And he did come.
She often found herself wishing that he had left her there, refusing Jack and ignoring his own sense of honour. She would have survived. At that point she had had herself, and it would have been enough. Vaughn's revelations stripped her of even that last constant and exiled her to the half-life she had lived since.
On paper, her life actually looked pretty good. A hell of a lot better than when she had been double-crossing murderers and being beaten up by men twice her size. She lived in a nice apartment, she was eminently employable -currently she was on a sabbatical of indefinite length- and she had a husband who would do anything for her.
The reality, however, was very different.
The apartment she inhabited was a prison cell. Its pain-soaked walls and utter silence were constant reminders of her manifold failings. They never stopped reminding her just how much a fraud she was.
Her sabbatical was her own protracted period of mourning. For Jack. For Sydney. For Vaughn. And even for her. An extended period of 'sitting shiva' for the death of the only life she knew. The life she was forever barred from.
And her husband- that was the cruellest blow of all. The wedding ring had been on his finger longer than the actual duration of their paper-marriage. Without it she would not have been able to get out of Hong Kong or into LA but Vaughn had neatly side-stepped all the messy detritus of lack of papers, money, clothes etc with it. His codename was 'boyscout' after all.
And also, he had gone through the process before.