Futility
Author: Pharo
Disclaimer: 'Alias' belongs to J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot, Touchstone, and ABC.
Summary: Knocked down hopes rebuilt.
Spoilers: "Snowman".
Feedback: pharo@newyork.com
'now your world is way too fast, nothing's real and nothing lasts…'
---Goo Goo Dolls, 'Big Machine'A slight ringing sound followed by a frantic fumbling around for the phone. A couple of seconds later, a voice groggy with sleep mutters, "wrong number", and the other life takes over once more.
She's relinquished all hopes of having a normal life for a span of time longer than ten hours. This is her life: all that she has and all it ever will be. Calls in the middle of the night---2 am and her mind is a buzz of fluffy marshmallow clouds and blue-green skies---proceeded by a string of curses mumbled as she puts on her sneakers and grabs her house keys.
She makes up her mind to let him wait when she leaves her car in the driveway and opts to jog instead. She knows that it isn't a party for him either, but she needs something to lash out on. Unfortunately for him, he's the closest target.
The normally 15-minute jog turns into a 30-minute walk as her mind abandons the dreamlike thoughts for equally irrational musings of that life she could've had. A small summerhouse in the outskirts of the city, away from LA smog and the slightest hint of what her life was now. A small island reserved for just them. A dull, seemingly mediocre job that allowed for a personal life. The opportunity to go out on dates, although, if things had turned out the way they should've, she wouldn't have any reasons to date.
"Danny," she sighs into the cold weather that causes puffs of cold air to show itself. "Noah. Oh, Noah, you should've just left."
She shakes her head and tells herself to get over it. The countless hours of scribbling "Noah loves Sydney" (some "Mrs. Daniel Hecht" thrown in for good measure) during the plane trip back had to serve, therapeutically, some purpose.
"For a moment, I thought something happened to you," he says, causing her to realize that she's stepped inside the warehouse. The rattling chain-link fence closing her into the dark, cold, and miserable warehouse surrounded with lonely carts that seem to have the dust permanently settled on them..
"Just decided to take a jog."
She thinks that she should've run instead. Maybe the thoughts wouldn't be able to find her then.
"Pretty nice weather tonight. Kind of cool."
"Kind of cold," she replies, almost synonymously.
"Did you bring a jacket?"
She shakes her head and replies that she can take the cold.
"Nothing a little tea won't cure."
"Tea? Not coffee?"
She shakes her head again.
"Coffee keeps me awake," she says, wanting to add 'I already have too many things to do that', but keeping her mouth shut.
"Ever tried decaf?"
"I've tried everything," she says.
The hint of sadness creeps up on her with the prospect of having no other options left.
"Mom drinks tea," he says with a smile.
For a moment (the way he says 'mom') makes her think that if they got married, Mrs. Vaughn would be her mother-in-law.
"Aww, Mom, thanks for coming to Thanksgiving dinner." "Mom, you really have to stop spoiling the children." "Mom…"
"Oh," she says, snapping out of thoughts of what could never be.
"Three times a day, every day," he adds as if reading a prescription of some sort.
"Mom, did you take your medicine?"
She squeezes her eyes shut, counts to three, and tries to focus on the dingy warehouse instead of dreaming of being "Sydney Vaughn". She opens her eyes and it seems a little cleaner somehow, a little warmer, a little less than what it actually is.
"I need my ring," she softly says to herself, invisible hands in her mind blindly searching for the ring that's hidden next to a small the crevice of her drawer.
"What?"
"Nothing," she says, forcing a smile that covers her thoughts of 'you'll never know'.
"Are you ok?"
For a second, her mind blanks and she doesn't remember how to answer. She doesn't remember what the third SD-6 training session taught about evading questions or the replying with given answers that satisfy the general questions that are bound to come up.
"Yeah. I'm fine. Just a bit tired," she says, finally grabbing a hold of her loose mind.
"I'm sorry about calling so late. I didn't really realize what time it was until I left the office to come here."
"Working hard?" she asks, not really sure why.
"Always" is the obvious answer. That is what they do: work hard until they're dead, leaving vacant places for a new hard worker to take over.
"I can't make dinner, honey. Work again. Don't wait up."
She thinks that her life with Danny would basically be a string of "can't make dinner, honey" followed by "work again" and the frequent "don't wait up".
With Noah, it'd be no spy work. It would just be sitting on a small island in the far corner of nowhere, sipping on punch until they heard planes overhead. Then, they'd run to some other corner of the world and start again. They'd have so many lives: a new one every three days. They'd be so many different people that the work would come in not losing herself.
With Vaughn---what would it be like with Vaughn? With Vaughn, it'd be dinner in the office. A bottle of white wine to go with burgers and fries and a message to Weiss to hold down the fort for an hour. Maybe one of those rare times when they'd get to cash in a CIA sick day, they'd go visit his mother and watch her water her petunias and drink tea.
Another shake of the head and silent berating with the "focus, Syd, focus" chant.
"Things that can't happen aren't worth thinking about," Noah had told her long ago when she'd believed it.
Now, she knows that it's completely the other way around. It's the things that can't happen are what keep people like her walking. Breathing. It's the slightest possibility that maybe some fate will shine some light in her direction.
"I want something normal," she blurts out, wanting to slap herself a second later.
"Huh?" he asks, off guard from her interruption to the counter.
He looks up from the manila file in his hand and blinks a couple of times.
"Normalcy. I want it," she says, knowing it's more of a craving than a simple wish. "Half of my life is all about being normal, Vaughn. Normal, boring banker Sydney who's trying to get through English classes and term papers."
"The other half?"
"I'm a spy," she says with brevity as if it explains everything---the constant lying, the missions, the pain and sacrifice given to people who don't deserve it.
He nods.
"Sit down," he says, pointing to stacked carts.
She wants to tell him that she'd be much safer standing, but she complies. He sits down on the dusty box across from hers.
"I didn't want to bring this up."
"Then don't."
A plea. She knows that she's the one who led the conversation to this point. The point of dangling legs hitting dusty cartons and awkward silence pervading the air.
"What happened?"
"Didn't feel like reading the CIA files?"
"If you don't want to talk about it---" he says, holding his hands up as if he's being threatened with acid.
"Noah Hicks was---well, you know what he was. He, uh, put a grater to my neck, so I put a knife in his stomach. Curiosity killed the cat," she says with a forced smile of 'strength'. "I should've never trusted him."
She feels lost in the woods with no map, no moss growing on the trees or other indicators, no flare guns, and certainly no one to help her find a way out. She'd keep stumbling on roots of trees that she passed by already. Every once in awhile, she'd see a light somewhere, be it in the form of Noah or Danny or even Will, and she'd run to it, but by the time she'd get there, it'd be gone. Faded from existence, a mirage of some sort, or maybe even a hallucination. Whatever it was, it wasn't real.
"Do you want to be normal" he asks, dissolving the woods in her eyes, "so that you can trust people?"
"Yes. I want to be able to believe in people at face value, to actually be able to trust without having it end in betrayal 9 out of 10 times. I want to hang out with my friends and sleep until one on weekends. I want to be regular, but it's not going to happen is it?"
She looks at him expectedly for an answer.
"I'm sorry," he says weakly. "I---"
"There's no use dwelling on the past," she says, shrugging it off like she does everything else.
She thinks that there's no use dwelling in impossible futures either. Dreams of drinking tea and going to dinners that can never happen. Signatures with different last names scribbled across her journal like a little kid with a crush.
She tries to pay attention to him going over the mission details for a second time, but knows that all of it is futile. The hopes, the missed opportunities, the aspirations, the wishes to get out of the box she's closed herself into.
"So, what type of tea does she drink?" she asks after the brief silence from the now ended counter plan.
No matter how many times she'll beat her fists against the white sides of the box, the wrapping paper will muffle it. She knows this, is perfectly aware of the fact that love can't seem to find it's way to her, yet she insists on building up her hopes to get knocked down.
"Who?" he asks, gathering up his files.
"Mom."
Mom, Mom, Mom.
She can't help but wish that maybe one day it'll happen.