Title: Possession
Author: mojoco
Rating: R
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, they belong to JJ Abrams and Bad Robot Productions.
Author's Note: Thanks to those who have reviewed "All She'd Taken" and "Any Way, Any Place." This kind of grew from those.
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Chapter One
Most people have seen a movie or a TV show where a character fakes their own death, and they've simply rolled their eyes. "I'm so sure it's that easy," they tell their friends, and dismiss the idea as ridiculous. Impossible.
They're right. For most people, faking their own death would be ridiculous, impossible.
Not for people in Sydney Bristow's line of work.
She remembered the night he'd told her: You can't even exist anymore. It had taken her a moment to understand what that meant, to not exist. And then she'd realized: hiding. They'd talked about it every time she'd threatened to quit SD-6. But this time, it wouldn't just be enough to enter the Witness Protection Program.
She had to completely disappear.
The night had started off peculiarly. She'd picked up the phone to hear a familiar voice on the other end: "Joey's Pizza?" To which she'd replied, more out of habit than anything, "Wrong number." As soon as she'd hung up the phone, though, she'd frowned. It wasn't that such a call was rare; in fact, they had become more frequent since she and Michael had started sleeping together more than a year before. But she wasn't supposed to receive calls like that anymore. As of that day, SD-6 had actually become the section that didn't exist. It was over. She and Michael didn't have to hide anymore. They could look at each other in public. He could take her home with him at night. Or so she'd thought. She should have realized all along that such ideas were naïve. Completely unrealistic.
But the thing was, Michael, usually her voice of reason, had seemed to think a real relationship with her was possible, too. "When it's all over, I'm going to call you on the phone," he'd said, eyes lighting up. "And I'm going to tell you that I'll be at your house in five minutes and that you'd better be naked by the time I get there."
"Michael!" she'd squealed. He never talked like that, or at least, he hadn't then. For as often as she'd told him that he would have to loosen up if he wanted to become the kind of man that could enjoy the kind of relationship that involved late night meetings at the warehouse and stolen hours in cheap motel rooms, that had never really happened. He'd loved her and had been willing to be with her any way he could, but she'd known that he'd hated having to sneak around. "I feel like some creep cheating on his wife," he'd complained once.
"Darling, you don't have a wife," she'd said dismissively. She'd tried to make a joke out of it, but really, she'd hated how hard this was on him. A couple of times she'd even thought that it might be better for him if they just ended it, but she'd never quite been able to bring herself to do it. Anyway, deep down she'd known that as long as she existed, there would be no one else for him.
Imagine her surprise the night he'd told her that she wasn't allowed to exist anymore.
As odd as she'd thought it had been to get a call for Joey's Pizza, it hadn't immediately occurred to her that something was wrong. Maybe he just wants to see me one last time at the warehouse, she reasoned. After all, that was where they'd shared their first kiss, where they'd made love for the first time-- if it could be called making love when it was done up against a chain link fence, her skirt up around her waist, his pants down around his ankles. Personally, under other circumstances she probably would have chosen a cruder term for it. But this was Michael.
When she'd gotten there, though, Michael had worked himself into a panic, and it had scared her. Sloane knew, he'd told her, that she'd been the one to help put him behind bars. What was more, Sloane had friends who weren't locked up, and she had just earned herself more new enemies than she could count. "You can't go home again," he'd told her. And then the words she'd never forget: "You can't even exist anymore."
She'd lashed out at him, asking how he could have let this happen. She might as well have punched him in the stomach while she was at it. "Syd," he'd said. "You know that I'd never do anything to hurt you."
"Right," she'd snapped. "You'd just turn me into a goddamned ghost."
He'd only stared at her, pain clouding his beautiful green eyes.
"So what happens now?" she'd asked, voice laced with bitterness. "I run?"
And he'd returned her gaze, steel replacing the beaten look in his eyes. "No," he'd responded. "We run."
She'd tried to talk him out of it. She probably hadn't tried hard enough. She'd probably spoken in a voice that begged to be ignored. But she'd tried, asking why he should have to leave his job, his life.
"My job is nothing," he'd said, his voice flat. "Just what I do. And you are my life."
She'd known he thought he meant it, but it wasn't exactly true. Yes, she was important to him, but his life? No. He had a job, friends, family. And her. If he ran, she would be his everything, and he hers, and they would possess each other as completely and fully as only two people who had nothing else could.
She would be his. All his. Only his.
And so they'd gotten in the car and driven, finally parking it in the Gulf of Mexico.
People scoffed at the idea of faking your own death. What they didn't know was how easy it could be, if you knew what you were doing.
It was even easier to be reborn. Take a new name, live a new life. Drivers licenses, birth certificates, passports. These were all things that could be faked.
They spent the night of their deaths in a seedy motel not unlike one of the dozens they'd met in over the past year. They would begin their new lives in the morning. He hadn't told her where they'd be going. She hadn't asked.
And she gazed at their passports, staring down at names that meant nothing to her. After all, they were just names, belonging to people who had no pasts, whose futures hadn't been determined yet. Newborns.
"Katherine Cavanaugh and Marc Chadwick," she murmured, gazing at the birth certificates. According to hers, she'd been born in Corpus Christi, Texas. Yes. In a way, she had been, or Katherine Cavanaugh had been, if that was who she was now.
"Uh-huh," Michael murmured. He was sitting up against the headboard of the bed, watching the news and sipping Jack Daniels from a plastic cup. She supposed he deserved a drink. She could have probably used one, too.
"Michael…Marc." The new name suited him, she supposed. What was a name, anyway?
Except…she'd never forget how he smiled the first time she called him Michael instead of Vaughn.
He looked up at her, raising his eyebrows. "Katherine?" He said it as a question, as if he weren't 100% sure that was who she was. Honestly, she wasn't quite sure, either.
But still she joined him on the bed, taking his drink from him as she arranged herself so she was facing him, straddling him. He looked so beautiful, so perfect. Her guardian angel. "Hardly anyone goes by Katherine, you know," she told him as she sipped the whiskey. "They go by Kat, or Kathy."
He stared at her for a moment, taking the plastic cup from her and taking another drink. Actually, he gulped the last of it, tossing the empty cup onto the floor before he touched her cheek. "Or Katie."
"Katie it is then," she whispered, leaning forward to kiss him. "Darling?" she whispered once they'd parted. She didn't want to call him Marc just then. What she had to say next was meant for Michael. Except Michael was dead.
"Yes, honey?" She smiled. He understood. Of course he understood.
She took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. "Thank you. For everything."
He smiled, only a flicker of a smile. Such a sad smile. She wanted to tell him he could go ahead and cry if he wanted to. He had reason to cry. He had reason to want to run as far the hell away from her as he could get. After all, she'd destroyed him, killed him. Made him into a ghost like she'd had to be.
"Maybe we should just go to sleep," he whispered, and then her eyes filled with tears, too. For once, he didn't try to wipe them away.
"Okay," she said, climbing off of him and settling next to him. He put his arm around her, kissed the top of her head, and they closed their eyes. But she didn't think either of them got much sleep that night.
In the morning, she stared at their birth certificates, glancing up at him as he stood at the mirror in his undershirt and boxers, shaving.
Birth certificates. So easy to fake. And there were so many things that were so easy to obtain if you had one.
Like marriage licenses.
"Marc?" she called, and he glanced up at her. He hadn't seemed surprised to be called by the new name, yet the look in his eyes almost shocked her. She could always tell exactly what he was thinking, feeling when she looked into those green eyes of his, and just then she wished that wasn't the case. He looked cold. Dead. Maybe this is the wrong time, she thought.
Or maybe it was exactly right. Maybe this would give him some life back.
Still, she felt strangely nervous when she opened her mouth, as nervous as when she'd asked him to that hockey game a lifetime before.
"What if my last name was Chadwick, too?" she blurted out.
For a moment, his eyes lightened, but just as quickly, they dimmed again. "I'm not sure what you mean, Katherine."
He hadn't reacted when she'd called him Marc, but she winced at the sound of her new name. Especially since he hadn't called her Katie. The full thing sounded like a punishment. Yet still she dared to stand, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind and pulling him to her. "Marry me, Michael."
He took her hands, extracting himself from her embrace. "Michael is dead."
Her eyes filled with tears, but she forced them to meet his, reflected in the mirror. "Then marry me, Marc."
"You don't know Marc," he said, his voice clipped. "And I don't know you. Katherine."
She managed to work her way between him and the sink, wrapping her arms around his neck. He didn't shrug her off, but he didn't touch her, either. "How do you know?" she whispered. "Maybe Marc and Katherine are as in love as Michael and Sydney were."
He looked down at her. Damn those green eyes, full of enough pain to break her heart. "Is that even possible?"
"Well, Katherine is definitely in love with Marc," she told him. She took one of her arms from his neck, lifting a washcloth from the sink and using it to wipe away the shaving cream that still clung to his face.
"Syd, I wasn't finished shaving!" he exclaimed, then bit his lower lip, realizing his mistake. "So," he said, his voice soft as he gently extracted the cloth from her hand. "What makes Katherine love Marc so much?"
She gazed up at him, lips softening into a smile. He almost sounded hopeful. Sure, she had killed him. But she could breathe life into him again, she knew she could. "To begin with?" she said, caressing his cheek. "Everything."
"Syd--" he began, and she lifted his hand to cover his mouth.
"He's beautiful, for one thing," she said. "The most beautiful man she's ever seen."
He blushed, looking away, but he didn't tell her to stop.
"He looks out for her. She thinks he worries too much, but secretly she likes it."
The corners of his mouth turned up into a smile, encouraging her to keep going.
"Mostly, though, she just loves the little things," she said. "The way he pulls her to him when they sleep, even after they've been fighting. The way his eyes light up when she walks into a room. The way, every once in awhile, he can stop being so serious for a minute and say or do something that'll completely blow her mind."
He lifted his hand to touch her cheek, slowly, tentatively. "Maybe now he won't have to worry so much," he whispered. "And he can blow her mind more often."
"She'd like that," she responded.
He placed his hands on her waist, lifting her so she was sitting on the counter. "Wait here." She watched in a mixture of curiosity and amusement as he located his jacket and shoved his hand into the right front pocket.
And removed a little black box that could only contain one thing.
"Syd…Katie," he said, his voice soft as he opened the box. "Whatever your name is, I love you, and I would like very much for you to be my wife. Will you marry me?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "Michael." Once he put that ring on her finger, she vowed she'd never call him that again. But just then she really wanted Sydney Bristow to say that yes, she'd marry Michael Vaughn. "Of course I will."
He pulled her to him, hugging her more tightly than she'd ever been held before. "You've been planning this?" she whispered.
"Sort of," he responded. "I wanted to propose when we took down SD-6--"
"Michael--" she tried to interrupt, but he would have none of it.
"--But that didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped," he finished.
She offered him a tentative smile. "Maybe it'll be better this way."
He brought her hand to his lips, and when he took it away, he slid the ring onto her finger. "I'll do everything in my power to make sure that it is."
And he kissed her, and she believed him.
He'd made everything better already.
