Title: Freezing Point
Author: Shade (SpyShade@yahoo.com)
Summary: "You were told not to feel, and so you don't." Sydney POV.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, none of the Alias characters are mine.
Thanks: To Jess, for quoting Dostoevsky in her diary, because that quote fueled this story.
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"There is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache." -Dostoevsky
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You have been trained to compartmentalize your emotions - basically, not to feel. Experience has taught you that this is actually quite a handy trait to have, when it is needed. In the beginning, you remember questioning it. Human beings embody an immeasurable number of emotions, and you were not sure that you could simply ignore them, for it did not seem like a simple task. But now you are a monster, and monsters do not have emotions. And you are not bothered by feelings anymore.
Instead, a dull ache resides inside of you. You cannot remember when it first arrived, but you know that it is persistent and will not fade. At first, you did not even acknowledge the ache; you passed it off as an insignificant internal injury sustained on another forgettable mission. But slowly, unobtrusively, the ache replaced emotion.
As the cold wind whips around your face, you realize that the mysterious ache has had more influence on your life than you bothered to notice. With Will you stumble over the line between friends and more-than-friends, with Vaughn you stumble over the line between professional and forbidden. You want love from these men to ease your aching into submission, but you cannot bring yourself to nudge that last part of you across the lines. You want to be loved, but unconsciously know that you are incapable of returning it. Because you cannot feel.
You used to loathe your father. This is not true, anymore, although you are still far from loving him. The constant battle of trying to let yourself trust him is too tiring for you now, and so you have classified your feelings toward your father as ones of sheer indifference. You have a world to save, and you know he will always put you before himself, and you think your façade of determination compensates - for your father - the fact that you are simply unable to feel.
It is preposterous for you to still consider Francie your best friend. She does not know the first thing about you, and she can never comfort you the way a best friend should because she never knows the whole story. The wind picks up, and you burrow your head further down into the turtleneck of your sweater. You realize that all you can feel anymore is the cold, and the ache.
Arvin Sloane used to spark such animosity in you. You used to be able to taste your own blood in your mouth when he spoke, because you were forced to bite your tongue to keep from speaking your mind. You used to want to vomit at his touch, and you used to have to sit on your hands were you were alone with him. But you have become so skilled at compartmentalizing your emotions that you simply don't feel anything towards him anymore. You know that this should worry you, but it doesn't, and you don't care. You just ache.
You can still remember the first time you killed someone. It was during your fourth mission, in Stockholm. You were alone, and you shot him as a reflex, thanks to the months of training you had received. Training also told you to run the second after you shot him, but simple humanity locked you in a state of fear. You stood in shock for a few minutes, shielded by the shadows, before timidly approaching him. You knew that he was an agent for K-Directorate, but you wanted to know who you had robbed a life from. He had no personal trinkets on him; no family photos or good luck charms or even money. His Lithuanian issued passport informed you that his name was Anatoli Romanov, his birthday was December 16, 1964, and he lived in an apartment in Vilnius. You knew that it was a fake passport, but even knowing something fake about the man you had just killed made it easier somehow. It let you know that he was a real person, not just a government suit-and-glasses carbon copy, and that was comforting.
Now, you usually don't even acknowledge it when you kill someone. You certainly don't have time to sift around in their pockets for personal information. You don't need to know whether or not they were real anymore. You can no longer feel sorrow, or guilt, and you tell yourself that they were bad guys and that is all the justification you need. But you still ache.
Any rational person would tell you that the ache is a result of your inability to feel, that you ache because it is your only outlet. But you tell yourself that you are too good for that, too well trained. You can handle it, you can handle anything. You were told not to feel, and so you don't. Aching is not supposed to be a side effect.
Lately, you have lost sight of your purpose. Your life has become a blur of betrayal and lies and intimations and murder and haunting prophecies. The goal you once had - destroying SD-6 - seems so unreachable now that you usually forget what you are fighting for.
You struggle with the wind to allow you to lean forward. The wind makes you squint your eyes, and it stings your pale cheeks. The railing of the pier is too cold, and you shove your hands into your pockets in defeat. The cold cannot numb the ache.
You wonder why you exist, what you are here to do. How did you go from an eager nineteen year old recruit to Agent Basketcase? You want to feel again, but you can't, and perhaps that is the worst feeling.
A cold tear drips down your cheek. You are not sure about anything anymore, and it makes you ache.
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The End.
Author: Shade (SpyShade@yahoo.com)
Summary: "You were told not to feel, and so you don't." Sydney POV.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, none of the Alias characters are mine.
Thanks: To Jess, for quoting Dostoevsky in her diary, because that quote fueled this story.
----------
"There is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache." -Dostoevsky
----------
You have been trained to compartmentalize your emotions - basically, not to feel. Experience has taught you that this is actually quite a handy trait to have, when it is needed. In the beginning, you remember questioning it. Human beings embody an immeasurable number of emotions, and you were not sure that you could simply ignore them, for it did not seem like a simple task. But now you are a monster, and monsters do not have emotions. And you are not bothered by feelings anymore.
Instead, a dull ache resides inside of you. You cannot remember when it first arrived, but you know that it is persistent and will not fade. At first, you did not even acknowledge the ache; you passed it off as an insignificant internal injury sustained on another forgettable mission. But slowly, unobtrusively, the ache replaced emotion.
As the cold wind whips around your face, you realize that the mysterious ache has had more influence on your life than you bothered to notice. With Will you stumble over the line between friends and more-than-friends, with Vaughn you stumble over the line between professional and forbidden. You want love from these men to ease your aching into submission, but you cannot bring yourself to nudge that last part of you across the lines. You want to be loved, but unconsciously know that you are incapable of returning it. Because you cannot feel.
You used to loathe your father. This is not true, anymore, although you are still far from loving him. The constant battle of trying to let yourself trust him is too tiring for you now, and so you have classified your feelings toward your father as ones of sheer indifference. You have a world to save, and you know he will always put you before himself, and you think your façade of determination compensates - for your father - the fact that you are simply unable to feel.
It is preposterous for you to still consider Francie your best friend. She does not know the first thing about you, and she can never comfort you the way a best friend should because she never knows the whole story. The wind picks up, and you burrow your head further down into the turtleneck of your sweater. You realize that all you can feel anymore is the cold, and the ache.
Arvin Sloane used to spark such animosity in you. You used to be able to taste your own blood in your mouth when he spoke, because you were forced to bite your tongue to keep from speaking your mind. You used to want to vomit at his touch, and you used to have to sit on your hands were you were alone with him. But you have become so skilled at compartmentalizing your emotions that you simply don't feel anything towards him anymore. You know that this should worry you, but it doesn't, and you don't care. You just ache.
You can still remember the first time you killed someone. It was during your fourth mission, in Stockholm. You were alone, and you shot him as a reflex, thanks to the months of training you had received. Training also told you to run the second after you shot him, but simple humanity locked you in a state of fear. You stood in shock for a few minutes, shielded by the shadows, before timidly approaching him. You knew that he was an agent for K-Directorate, but you wanted to know who you had robbed a life from. He had no personal trinkets on him; no family photos or good luck charms or even money. His Lithuanian issued passport informed you that his name was Anatoli Romanov, his birthday was December 16, 1964, and he lived in an apartment in Vilnius. You knew that it was a fake passport, but even knowing something fake about the man you had just killed made it easier somehow. It let you know that he was a real person, not just a government suit-and-glasses carbon copy, and that was comforting.
Now, you usually don't even acknowledge it when you kill someone. You certainly don't have time to sift around in their pockets for personal information. You don't need to know whether or not they were real anymore. You can no longer feel sorrow, or guilt, and you tell yourself that they were bad guys and that is all the justification you need. But you still ache.
Any rational person would tell you that the ache is a result of your inability to feel, that you ache because it is your only outlet. But you tell yourself that you are too good for that, too well trained. You can handle it, you can handle anything. You were told not to feel, and so you don't. Aching is not supposed to be a side effect.
Lately, you have lost sight of your purpose. Your life has become a blur of betrayal and lies and intimations and murder and haunting prophecies. The goal you once had - destroying SD-6 - seems so unreachable now that you usually forget what you are fighting for.
You struggle with the wind to allow you to lean forward. The wind makes you squint your eyes, and it stings your pale cheeks. The railing of the pier is too cold, and you shove your hands into your pockets in defeat. The cold cannot numb the ache.
You wonder why you exist, what you are here to do. How did you go from an eager nineteen year old recruit to Agent Basketcase? You want to feel again, but you can't, and perhaps that is the worst feeling.
A cold tear drips down your cheek. You are not sure about anything anymore, and it makes you ache.
----------
The End.