Title: In Memoriam
Author: riane
Email:
Spoiler/Timeline: post season 5, AU.
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Alias.
A/N: This is my first Alias fanfic in years! Ah, fond memories. Hope you enjoy it. All feedback is appreciated. Thanks to Mnemo for the beta and Jewel21 for the encouragement!
--
It wasn't supposed to end this way.
Not like this. Not after they'd survived everything else – missions, countermissions, bullet wounds, fake deaths, almost-drownings, betrayal, Doomsdays prophecies.
--
'When's Daddy coming home?'
Blinking back tears, she gently touches her daughter's cheek and shakes her head. 'He's not coming home, honey.'
'Oh.' She looks straight at her mother with unnerving stoicism. 'When's the funeral?'
--
Mourning faces, all dressed in black. Some familiar, some not. A sad, loyal collage of a fractured life. Reinvented identities across so many continents.
After all the aliases, we lose track of who we really are.
Murmured words of comfort, shock.
She smiles numbly, holding her son's hand in her right, and her daughter's in her left.
One of them starts to cry.
--
'Uncle Dixon will take you home and stay with you. I need to be alone with Daddy for a while.'
Serious, dark-eyed and dark-haired. Nodded assent and silent obedience. Dixon dabs at his eyes as his diminutive charges, eyes downcast, follow him to his car.
She closes her eyes and sinks to her knees, inhaling the palpable, cumulative grief of the dispersing crowd.
She looks around. All gone.
Then, and only then, does she begin to howl.
--
She staggers to her feet, tears dripping from her chin, grass beneath her broken fingernails.
'I'm sorry for your loss.'
It can't be -
She whips around, instinctively reaching for a gun which isn't there.
'Not to worry, Agent Bristow,' he says, raising his hands, 'I come in peace.' Startling blue eyes, as blue as she'd always remembered.
'What do you think you're doing here?' she snaps. 'You're still on CIA's most wanted list. Even if I've retired, I'm going to have to report sighting you.'
'At your husband's funeral, no doubt,' he adds, tilting his head. He looks as though he hasn't aged a day since she was on active duty. All those lifetimes ago.
'Well?' she asks, still defiant despite her raw grief, 'what do you want? Or is this precisely it?' Trembling, she gestures to the tombstone. 'To end my life, right here? Some sick, symbolic way of saying goodbye to your old-time nemesis?'
He watches her tirade calmly. 'You know that I had nothing to do with your husband's death. And I am sorry for his death.'
She steps forward to slap him but he deftly sidesteps, smiling. 'How dare you-'
I came here to warn you,' he says softly, 'to be careful. Now that word has spread of your husband's death, especially under….suspicious…circumstances, your children may be at risk.'
'No,' she gasps, shaking her head, stepping backwards, 'no, no - no, this can't be happening – we left this, we left this – this game long ago. Not my children, not my children-'
He glances at his watch. 'I must be on my way. I'll be in contact, Sydney.' He begins to walk away. 'And Sydney,' he adds, looking over his shoulder, 'I would appreciate it if you kept our meeting between the two of us. For the sake of your children. Besides,' he says quietly, 'I do look forward to seeing you again.'
She doesn't know which surprises her more. His re-emergence in her tattered life, his devastating revelation – or the fact that even after all these years, he still has the audacity to flirt with her.
Even if it's over her husband's grave.
To be continued