Defying the Shadows APO is hit hard when three of their best agents wind up in the hospital, but the intrigue and deception is deepened when it is discovered one of them has dark secrets, and the only one that can discover the truth doesn't remember…
Chapter 1: Subtitles
Disclaimer: I don't, nor did or will I ever, own any aspect of Alias. All recognizable characters and plot strands belong to JJ Abrams, not to me. But this plot in this particular fic is mine. But I have no characters to claim all for my own like in some of my other fics. Like Jeffrey…I love Jeffrey!
It was like the awful black-and-white subtitled American horror films she and a couple other girls had snuck in past Sophia when they were just girls. Undead zombies. That's all these people were. The bullets…they didn't stop them. There were so many of them…
She looked around, looked at her hands. She was one of them now. Blood…so much blood. It was on her, now. Her gun…why couldn't she put it down? That man…he had only been trying to help. Why did she want so badly to see him die? To see his blood spill into the street? Horror overtook her as she looked down and saw it was her hands that now held the knife she'd watched slit his throat.
Her eyelids suddenly felt heavy, and the bloody images vanished, leaving a darkness and a deep sense of dread. Shed needed to cry, wanted even to break down, but somewhere between her mind and the physical reaction she couldn't do it.
Her eyes fluttered open, adjusting to unbearably bright lights, and then they landed on a figure by her bed.
Eric.
The urge to cry out to him, to beg him to save her, to warn him, was so strong it almost choked her, but she couldn't. The unexplainable wish she felt to strangle him with the IV tube hanging near her bed, with such a murderous rage that she felt paralyzed by it, won out. But her arms felt heavy, too heavy to even left.
"Weiss," she heard herself squeak weakly, but the voice was faraway and not her own.
She saw his eyes go wide and distantly saw him stand and quickly move to the doorway.
"Hey!" he shouted into the hall. "She's awake!"
People rushed in, began turning knobs and pressing buttons.
Stupid bastard, she thought vaguely as she slipped back under, the sedatives being increased beyond even her strange new powers of alertness.
The images replayed themselves again and again, never ceasing. Shadows one time, all in sharp relief the next, perhaps in vivid color yet another. She saw the black jeep the same way every time. It came out of nowhere, smashing into their car. A hand, the visor pulled down low. Then it was all shadows and outlines, low voices, humming, buzzing, beeping.
Darkness.
His secrets haunted him. At times, he heard noise, but other than that and the dreams there was a silence so utterly complete it was scary.
At one point, he relived, through an absolutely real dream, his father's funeral. He'd almost forgotten how devastating it was, to be a small boy at a government funeral. Seeing his father being lowered into the ground, and not even knowing what he'd done. How he'd died. Where he'd died. Thinking of a million dark and scary ways Daddy could have died, all of them being all his fault. All because he couldn't keep his stupid mouth shut.
Was it an accident? Had he been shot? Mommy was always afraid Daddy would get shot. Did someone do it on purpose? Had his Daddy known he was going to die? Did he worry about what would happen to his wife and son?
Or had he left them in death as easily as he'd often left them alone in life?
He remembered clearly seeing his mother, his strong, cheerful mother, sobbing hysterically when she saw the American Flag, the very flag that had taken his Daddy away, she'd told him, flying high over the cemetery. Seeing, past her, the men lining the edge of the cemetery, trying to blend in. One behind a tree. One standing over a gravesite. A few sitting in a discreet car.
He wondered if they were good guys or bad guys, like the ones that killed his Daddy.
Tucking his hands into his suit pants pockets, he walked with his mother toward their car. His Daddy's car, really, because his mom had rarely driven it until after they'd gotten the news. She was still crying softly even as they walked across too green grass toward the iron gate.
All of a sudden, they were both grabbed and thrown into the back of a sleek black sedan before either could resist.
Again he wondered distantly if these were good guys, like his Daddy, or bad ones.
Ah, lots of questions, very few answers, right? Yes, duckies, these are the dreams our rabid and wrecked characters are having. Go with it, and review please…and no, I have no earthly idea where 'duckies' came from.