By: Jada Lynne
Email: jadalynne16@hotmail.com
Website: http://Jadalynne.diary-x.com
Archive: Just send me a link.
Disclaimer: I've got about $30 to my name, a car accident to pay for, and precious little money to do it with. Refraining from suing me would be greatly appreciated.
Wiley, GA is completely fictional. I looked up at the bookshelf over my desk and grabbed the first name I saw. If there actually is a Wiley, GA (or anywhere for that matter) Well, heh, you live in a town named Wiley! I don't own Pearl Jam, either.
Summary: April Credit Dauphine Challenge
Rating: PG13 - R
Classification: Smutty Romance-y Angst
Special Thanks to Isabelle for her help with the title and providing me with the lyrics. Not to mention the awesome beta work and encouragement.
Don't you think you've done enough?
Oh, don't you think you've got enough, well maybe.
You don't think there's time to stop?
There's time enough for you to lay your head down, tonight, tonight
Let it wash away
All those yesterdays
What are you running from?
Taking pills to get along
Creating walls to call your own
So no one catches you drifting off and
Doing all the things that we all do
--Pearl Jam
"All Those Yesterdays"
"This coffee tastes horrible!" The man, his plaid shirt spotted dark
with grease, shouted. "I thought you knew the way I liked it! Now go get
me a new cup, and make it quick!" He spoke in the grating, condescending
voice of a man who was used to his every whim and desire being met with little
contemplation.
Carrie Preston calmly placed the full mug of coffee on her tray. "I'm so sorry, Roy." She said, her quiet voice glazed over with the saccharine sweet twang of rural Georgia. "I'll go make you a new one right away." Because its not like I have seven other customers waiting for food or anything. She thought bitterly, turning away from the table with a swish of her short, wrinkled skirt.
Rain fell heavily on the tin roof of the diner, pattering against the dented metal with an echoing din. In the kitchen, Carrie pressed her forehead against the cracked paint of the cupboard.
"Roseanne is at table six waiting for her burger." Rick, the head
cook, snapped unsympathetically. "Stop standing there and do your job!"
He roared when Carrie only stared at him blankly.
Fingers wrapping around Rick's red, fat neck. Squeezing. Squeezing. Feeling
skin give and bruise under her fingers. Watching his eyes bulge as he struggled,
clawing at her hands as he fought for life giving air.
"Sometimes, girlie, I think there is something wrong with you. You don't start moving your sweet little ass, you're not going to make it here a week longer."
She could see it. She could see it so vividly it took her a moment to realize it wasn't actually happening. "Sorry, Rick, I'll be caught up in a second." She said weakly, fighting for breath herself.
She loaded her tray, pouring a dollop of hot coffee into Roy's original mug, and swung back out into the dining area. She set the mug in front of Roy. "Mmmhmm, baby, that's exactly right." He said with a slimly little smile. A short-fingered hand rose to rest at her backside. "That's exactly what I wanted."
She could feel the anxiety attack coming on. It was a matter of time, hours really, before she snapped. Carrie only hoped that she could finish off her shift before it came. She hoped she could curl up into a ball in the tiny bed inside the equally tiny boarding house before she was reduced to a helpless, sniveling mass of tears. At least, she hoped it was tears. Tears were better then the violence that would jump up and seize her by the throat, making her lash out at the closest person to her. Like in Orlando where she'd attacked her manager at the department store she'd been working out. There was still a warrant out for Amanda Tilly.
She was Carrie Preston now, mediocre waitress, new woman in town that everyone whispered about. Some people thought she was on drugs because of the way she'd just stop, staring off into space as tears sprang to her eyes. Some said she must be crazy, so they left her alone. That was fine by her, she didn't want friends. She certainly didn't want family. She didn't even want to live, really, but didn't even have enough emotion left inside her to end her miserable existence.
She closed her eyes for a moment, her gait faltering as she crossed the diner.
------
"Run." The connection over the phone was bad, the raging storm
messing with the phone lines.
"What?" She asked, twisting the cord over her forefinger. "Who is this?"
"You need to listen to me. You need to get out of your house, get out of the city. Just run."
"This isn't funny." Even as she weakly retorted to the electronically altered voice, the bile began rising to the back of her throat. "Who is this?"
"Sydney." Even altered, the frantic fear of the voice was apparent. "They know. Run."
------
"Hi, welcome to Ever Ready Diner, what can I get for you this evening?"
She dumped the plates, sticky with grease, into the drab gray bin and picked up her wet rag. Scrubbing the table in wide circles, she made careful work out of breathing. It seemed to become more and more difficult, every place she went. Harder to blend in, harder to keep that that small tenuous grasp on her sanity. Remembering to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
The repeated the mantra in her head, rhythmically with each circle her hand made on the cracked plastic cover of the table.
The bell on the door jangled as it opened. The gust of wind brought the pouring rain with it, and even across the narrow room droplets hit the back of her bare legs. She cursed herself for not locking the door and waited for Rick to come out screaming.
She propped the gray bin propped against her side. "We're closed,"
She began coolly as she turned.
Michael Vaughn stood in the doorway of the Ever Ready Diner, hair plastered
against his head, his long jacket dripping onto the floor, leaving him stand
in a small puddle. His suit was dark, face strained, vivid green eyes standing
out against the colorlessness of his face.
The bin slipped out of her suddenly paralyzed fingers. Cheap ceramic plates and mugs bounced as the container hit its side, then shattered into jagged chunks as they hit the floor.
Vaughn!
Her mind screamed it, over and over again, even if she couldn't make her mouth form words.
-----
She sat on the lip of the tiny bathtub, staring down at her wallet.
Smooth leather. Black. Inky black.
She pulled open the snap and stared.
One by one, she pulled pieces of her life out and dropped them into the sink in front of her.
Drivers license. Library card. UCLA ID. Credit Dauphine pass. Visa card. Mini address book.
Precious photos. They were the hardest. Will, Francie, Danny, her father The faces blurred together as she pulled them out of the plastic case in her wallet. She riffled through them one last time, feeling tears spring to her sand-dry eyes, before tossing them in the sink.
She had to gather all her strength to light the match. With shaky hands, she dropped the match into the sink. The first tears slid down her face as she watched the photos of those she'd held closest shrivel. Watching their beautiful faces get licked by orange and yellow flames. Hearing her identification, those tangible things that made you legally you, crackle and hiss as flames ate them.
For all inventive purposes, Sydney Bristow died in a hotel room on Route One.
-----
"You dumb bitch!" Rick shouted as he emerged from the kitchen, staring
at the shattered pottery strewn across the floor. "All of this is coming
out of your pay. Now, clean this shit up!"
Carrie stood ramrod straight, appearing if she'd snap in two at the slightest touch. "What are you doing here?!" Her voice was high pitched and panicked, but no longer carried the southern accent. Her voice was now unrecognizable to Rick, as was the sad looking man in the dark suit dripping on his floor.
"It" The man shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. "It's safe now." He said.
Carrie shook her head also, but violently so. Her hair whipped around her face as she rocked. "No. No. No." She repeated. "It'll never be safe. Never be safe."
Rick was getting seriously creeped out. The four years served in the Marines had him recognizing the unmistakable lump under the man's arm. He was carrying, and that simple fact alone had Rick inching back to reach for the Louisville Slugger he kept behind the register.
"It's okay," Vaughn said, taking a small step forward. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't. It's okay now."
"Vaughn." Carrie wrapped her arms around her stomach as Rick wrapped his fingers around the butt of the bat. Even if Carrie was a flighty goddamn lunatic, Rick was suddenly sure that this guy was some stalker ex boyfriend, and as her boss, Rick was going to take it onto himself to show this guy what was what. In his whirling, overactive imagination, Rick became sure that this guy had been beating Carrie. It was up to Rick to explain how women were supposed to be treated. What kind of name was Vaughn, anyway? Fucking salesman prick, he guessed. In Wiley, Georgia, they protected their own. Horrible waitress or not, Carrie Preston was one of them.
Vaughn took another step forward, uncertainty etched across his face. "Do you want to go back?" Silence stretched as Carrie stared, eyes wide. "Syd, I need to know. Do you want to come back?" He held out a hand, eyes begging for any sort of response.
God. Run. Safe. Help. Pain. Run. Danger. Safe. Vaughn. Here.
Dizzy with emotion she'd forgotten she could feel, she closed her eyes. It'd been so long, hideously long, since she'd even allowed herself to think about her former life. For a moment, the world as she knew it spun around her and she feared she was going to faint. It was too much, too fast. Way too much.
It took everything she had to step forward and take his hand. It took more then she thought she could give to step over the shards of glass and follow him out the door.
"Carrie?" Rick called softly, confused by what he just witnessed. It wasn't even the fact that his newest waitress had just walked off the job, and unless he wasn't mistaken, she had done so permanently. When Carrie had shown up in town, driving a second hand compact car that looked to be on its last string, he'd asked a lot questions before hiring her. Now it appeared as if he should have asked a few more. It looked like there was a lot they hadn't know about Carrie Preston.
Wipers sloshed water back and forth, battling the heavy rain that fell against
the windshield of the SUV. The sky was black, moonless, and the he drove a little
too fast down the empty road.
She wasn't asleep; Vaughn knew that. Every once in a while, she'd reach up and brush the wet tendrils of hair out of her eyes. Still, she never said a word, only stared despondently out of the passenger side window.
When SD6 had fallen two months before, Vaughn patiently waited before he'd flown to Atlanta. He remembered the excitement of participating in the raid, remembered the look on Arvin Sloane's face as he was read his rights. Vaughn knew the image of the frail old man's face would stay with him forever, as he'd been the one to snap the cuffs around his wrists. His only thought was he could finally see Sydney again.
Despite his excitement, he'd waited a long month and a half, making sure the Alliance was truly gone before he'd began to look for her. The CIA knew where she was, they'd known the moment she'd left her apartment in LA six years ago, but they would never let that information anywhere near Vaughn's unit. Even the illustrious Jack Bristow, thief of high security files everywhere, couldn't get near his daughter's whereabouts. Only the highest of the high was privilege to that information, and it took two weeks of non-stop work to get access to it.
Still, he went through all the proper channels, all the proper meetings, all the proper paper work. Vaughn wanted to do it right. He wanted to make sure that when he brought Sydney home, there would be nothing from the past that could touch her.
He had it all planned out, how it would go. The way he'd walk in, the way she'd smile, those gorgeous dimples flashing, as she'd see him. She'd be surprised to see him, but happy. She'd be surprised, but happy, when he told her SD6 was gone. She'd be surprised, but happy when he told her she could come home.
She wouldn't look like a deer caught in headlights inside a seedy café in the middle of rural Georgia. She wouldn't be wearing an uncomplimentary yellow dress, the kind with the skirts that are meant to increase tips. She wouldn't have her hair dyed an ugly shade of strawberry blonde. It wouldn't look as though she'd taken a pair of garden shears to it.
Soon as he'd gotten the thick file tracing her movements, her zigzags across the United States, he knew it wouldn't be like he'd planned. He knew it wouldn't be the happy little fairy tale reunion he'd wanted.
He'd watched her through the window of the diner, rain soaking him. He was cold, cold straight to his core, as he watched her clearing tables. Even from the distance, he could clearly see the sadness in her eyes.
Now she sat despondently in the seat next to him, arms wrapped tightly around herself, completely silent. Say something. He mentally pleaded. Anything. Just say anything.
Clearing his throat, Vaughn spoke, surprised at how uncomfortable initiating conversation with her was going to be. "I'm going to find somewhere to stay the rest of the night." He said, watching her reaction out of the corner of his eye. Of course, visibly, there was none.
"How'd you find me?" Her voice was different then he remembered, lower and shakier. It certainly didn't hold any of the cockiness that was present when he'd first met her.
"The CIA's had an eye on you since you left." Vaughn answered quietly. "They figured it was easier to keep you safe if they knew where you were."
Sydney made a small sound. "I never noticed a tail." She whispered.
Vaughn didn't know what to say. They lapsed back into silence, ten minutes of tension, before Vaughn spotted the neon red sign advertising a chain hotel.
Vaughn parked pulled into an empty parking spot next to the door. He turned off the ignition, sitting for a moment before turning to her. "I'll, uh, I'll be right back. I'm going to go get a room."
Sydney nodded, but still avoided eye contact. Vaughn hissed out a frustrated breath before swinging open his door and venturing into the storm.
Sydney began to rock. Her heart was racing, hammering painfully insider her chest. Luckily, she was able to keep her breathing under control. She'd wished, desperately, that she'd had the foresight to grab her purse from the Ever Ready.
Already doubting herself, her decision to come back, Sydney bit her lip to hold back the sob. She couldn't do this. She couldn't face a man she hadn't seen in six years; face a past she barely could think about.
Quite simply, she couldn't face what she'd become.
It all came back at once. The amazing thrill that rushed through her veins every time she'd gone on a mission. The excitement of being a new agent. The secret thrill she got everything she successfully lied to someone, making even her friends think she was something she wasn't. It stopped being fun after the truth came out, but there was still a power in her. Fierce power that isolated her from the horror that she'd surrounded herself with.
Then the power was gone, a safety blanket that was ripped off of her without the slightest warning. And she was left with nothing.
She couldn't look at Vaughn, seeing that thinly veiled pity in his ever-expressive eyes. Before she'd seen the look on her face, she'd been two people. Now it was all one messy blend, past and present, and in that mixture she could see her complete lack of future.
She couldn't go back, couldn't face the others. Will. Francie. Her father. She couldn't let them see what she was, what she'd let herself become. A shell of a person, incapable of feeling anything, lest she feel too much. Weak, tired, and placing her faith in pills to get her through a single night.
The SUV seemed to close around her, stealing the breath from her lungs.
Run! Run! Run! She screamed silently, over and over again. Her fingers searched the door for the handle, sweat-slicked fingers fumbling and knotting together in her panic.
All at once she was falling, tumbling out of her seat as the door opened.
And before she could open her mouth to scream, before she could command her legs to run, she found herself surrounded in a pair of strong arms, nose pressed up against a warm chest.
Vaughn stuck his credit card back in his wallet as he stepped back into the
rain. He didn't ever remember a time it had rained this hard in LA, but he was
almost getting used to it. Stuffing his wallet in his back pocket, he stepped
out from under the protective canopy and back into the rain. He jogged to the
passenger side of the car, pulling the door open.
He didn't really think about it, catching Sydney as she came flying out of the car was more instinctive then conscious. "Whoa, hey." He said, for a lack of anything better as she twisted and pulled away from him.
"Get off me!" She shrieked, voice gurgled by the rain. "Get the hell off me!" She jerked back shoving him with both hands.
He only tightened his grip, alarmed enough to hold her in place as she clawed and scratched at him. The old Sydney would have him lying in a small ball on the ground by now. "Syd, what's wrong?" All at once, she went rigid in his arms, standing so tense that it seemed she would break in half.
Something inside her broke, shattered really. Soon as the name, the one from so long ago, fell upon her ears, she could physically feel the tear.
Emotion she'd forgotten she could feel hit her at once as she began to sob. Six years of pain, six years of the stress of running, six years of pretending to be something she didn't want to be; all of it hit her at once. Six years of life, experienced in the blink of an eye.
She curled into Vaughn, arms tightening like vices around him. With rain falling on them in ice-cold sheets, Vaughn held her as she wept. The sobs, low and keening, seemed to rip through her frail body. She'd always been thin, but she'd never been so Fragile was the only word he could assign to her, but it still seemed so unnatural to assign such a word to Sydney Bristow.
It finally occurred to him the ridiculousness of the situation. He was standing outside a hotel two hours outside Atlanta, Georgia with a soaking wet, hysterical woman in his arms.
He knew words were useless, so he half carried; half dragged her through to doors of the hotel. Ignoring the measuring glances of the front desk clerk, Vaughn led Sydney down the hall and towards their assigned room. After more then a little shifting, Vaughn managed to dig the key card out of the deep pocket in the side of his jacket.
It took him a moment to realize that she was shivering. And once he did, Vaughn realized why. She was ice cold, glassy-eyed, and pale as ice. He wasn't a psychiatrist; he didn't know what had set her off. But he also recognized it was going to take one to find out.
He was freaked. It was simple as that. He didn't think he'd ever been quite so freaked in his life. He couldn't think of that now. If she was going into some twisted form of shock, Sydney was Vaughn's first concern.
She was soaking wet and that's something he figured needed to be fixed fast. He cursed himself for a moment, remembering the fully packed suitcase in the backseat of the SUV. Dry clothes, those always help. And the only way he was going to get them was to leave her alone. That wasn't an option. He wasn't going to leave her alone for even a moment.
He sat her at the head of the bed, yanking the thin comforter out from under her. Vaughn wrapped it tightly around her shoulders, rubbing her back in quick circles.
She cried herself dry. She could give no more. Her lapse into feeling after years of detachment ended on a few, hiccupping breaths. She was empty again, cold and empty.
She felt Vaughn tense beside her. "Are you okay?" He asked tentatively.
Was she? She had no idea. There was no way what she was feeling could be termed as okay. But she was lying on a clean bed in hotel room on the way home. Home. The word seemed almost foreign to her mind, and she almost dismissed it. She had no home.
But lying in Vaughn's arms, she wanted to hope. She wanted to believe it'd be okay.
Despite all of that, she still felt so goddamn empty. She despised herself. She disgusted herself.
"Syd, are you okay?" He repeated.
Her voice was scratchy and barely audible. "I feel so cold."
Vaughn shifted slightly. "I've got some dry clothes in my car, I'll--"
"No." She snapped, rolling to straddle him. "I need to feel alive." Quickly, almost frantically, she pressed her lips against his. "Make me feel alive, Vaughn. I need to feel alive."
Vaughn closed his eyes, scrubbing both hands over his face with disbelief.
This was wrong. All wrong. How did it go so wrong?
One minute, she'd been hysterical, the next, she was jumping him, ripping at his clothes like a rabid animal.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he'd been commanding himself to stop. To wake up and realize that his was all some twisted nightmare. It had to be a nightmare, because it was so far from the many dreams he'd had of being reunited with Sydney.
Though, after she'd fallen into a fitful sleep, the scratches on his back felt a little to real, the bruises felt a little too fresh. There was no doubting he slept with her. No doubt that he felt like a horrible person for it.
He was at the very edge of the bed, having no physical contact with the woman he'd just lost himself in. Staring at a spot on the ceiling because he couldn't even bare to look at her. He averted his gaze from the mirror across the room because he couldn't even bare to look at himself.
This was all wrong.
He couldn't seem to get his thoughts together, and he knew he needed too. He slipped quietly out of bed, slowly gathering his wrinkled clothes from where they lay scattered on the floor.
He closed the door to the bathroom hoping an hour or two in a hot shower might make him feel a little better.
She was alone again. Dreadfully alone, but it was worse now because she could
hear the shower running. Before she was alone because she had no one, now she
was alone because she'd pushed the last person she'd had away.
She didn't know how it was possible that her life had just gotten worse.
She couldn't stand laying their a moment longer.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she wrapped the blanket around her, toga style. She tiptoed, as the bathroom was now silent. She hoped Vaughn would take his time, she couldn't face him. She wouldn't have too, she hoped.
She found his holster neatly inside the nightstand next to his side of the bed. Vaughn wasn't one to leave his weapon lying haphazardly around, so its location didn't surprise her. With slow, calculated movements, she unsnapped the strip of leather and slipped the weapon out of the harness.
The gun was cool in her hands, with an unusual weight that she never had grown accustomed to. It was why she'd never carried a weapon herself in her years with SD6, and continued to refuse after joining the CIA, despite strong suggestions. She'd seen what such a compact piece of metal could do to human flesh. She didn't want to contribute to that. At least, she hadn't wanted that kind of violence strapped to her side, then.
Now, she craved it. She lusted for it. She deserved it.
Unsure of her exact intentions, Sydney let the gun rest against her side, clutching the edges of the blanket at her chest as she walked. Watching her reflection as she approached the mirror, she laid the gun on the dresser's counter. Studying herself, she brushed a hand through her hair. Blunt, choppy layers of reddish blonde. Her face, cheeks hollow with emaciation. Her eyes, the only thing she still had Sydney Bristow, were now blank, with small lines of stress lining them.
Next, her fingers brushed over the smooth metal of her escape. Finger flexing around the handle. Clicking off the safety. Thumb pulling back the hammer.
"Sydney?!" The shocked exclamation from behind her made her spin on her heel.
Vaughn stared at her, with anger and betrayal before striding across the room and grabbing the gun from her hands. With a furious flick of his wrist, the clip bounced on the carpeted floor. "What in the hell is going on?!" He shouted.
Sydney lost herself in the depths of his green eyes. She heard nothing else. She sank to the floor, drawing her knees to her chest. Silently, tears spilled down her cheeks. Rocking herself, she began to hum a song to herself. "Don't you think you've done enough?" She paused, a large grin splitting her face. "Don't you think you've got enough?" Vaughn stared at her, mouth hanging open as she giggled. "Well, maybe."
She could see Vaughn's mouth moving, knew he was speaking to her. It was all so far away, all so fuzzy now. She continued to smile, an alarmingly bright smile with blank, detached brown eyes. She was singing, at first lyrics to a song, then unintelligible gibberish that increased in volume.
No one could touch her, no one could touch her when she was living in yesterday.