Everything's the same…Well, except MAJOR TISSUE WARNING!
Addition to Spoilers/Timeline: Similarities to canon from Season 3 are not intended.
This Chapter: Well, you get to know why the title of the fic is "The Wall"…
Suggested Soundtrack: Go for angsty, sad instrumental music for this one; no vocals if you can help it. Which is why I'm suggesting the entire "Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King" soundtrack, especially "The Steward of Gondor" featuring Billy Boyd, "The Return of the King" featuring Viggo Mortensen and Renée Fleming, "The Grey Havens", and "Into the West" by Annie Lennox. I know I said no vocals, but these are exceptionally well done and fit perfectly.
Author's Note: In all honesty, this was the direction I was going in from the start, which was why I was more than a little put-off by the fact that J.J. had already gone and done what I wanted to write about. Oh well. It's still different. I rarely cry when I write sad angst, but I was tearing a little while I wrote this. I was listening to the above music while writing, so that might have something to do with it. Anyways, enjoy!
Chapter Two
His shoes scuff the cement as he kicks a rock down the sidewalk. Stuffed inside the pocket of his trench coat, his left thumb subconsciously twirls a ring around his finger. The colour of the coat allows him to meld into the darkness around him; the lights around this area have been absent for a long while. He exhales and walks into his own breathy cloud of moisture, warming his skin momentarily before it evaporates like alcohol, leaving him cold again. For L.A. in winter, the air had more of a chill than in seasons past. But then again, he liked the cold, enjoyed it even; the thermostat at his apartment was constantly set at an even forty-seven degrees: just the right temperature to chill him to the bone yet somehow keep him from death. Lifeless leaves swirl around his feet as a gust of wind kicks up, forcing him to tighten his collar against it. He has enough coldness in his soul and in his heart: he does not need it down his shirt as well. Only two more blocks to go…
He begins to think of why he is going there, why he could not celebrate the hollow victory at home with his expanding liquor cabinet. Then a voice answers in his head as small and as annoyingly right as logic can be: it is her victory as well. She would have wanted to know about it. He realizes this as truth and continues down the walk, trying to ignore his longing for a shot of vodka. One more block to go…
This one flies by as he closes his eyes and subconsciously quickens his pace. He remembers the harsh slap of his dress shows on the pavement, the crackling that had not ceased to be with him since, the insufferable, choking heat…
He releases his hold on his collar, welcoming the frigid breeze.
And then he is there.
Memories flood and threaten to drown him, ranging from the soaringly happy to the indescribably sad. They overwhelm him to the point of cutting off his air supply: he can now only breathe in short, shallow gasps that never allow him to receive all the oxygen he needs. He has felt this way since…but only recently began to have these panic attacks.
He stops in front of the charred remains, still not quite able to fathom the enormity and desolation of the site. Even the sidewalk and pavement along the perimeter remains blackened, unchanged by cleansing or rain, an ever-present reminder of what happened here. Metal beams, twisted in ways they should not be, are strewn about among the bits of rubble, cement chunks of notable size tossed in for texture. A swatch of chain-link fence here or there remind him of things he does not want to remember — times and activities that evoke the same emotions now as they did then. Any wood that was present had seared, converted to ash, and carried away by the wind in a thick black cloud of smoke. He can still see, still smell, still feel it pressing in around him like the sides of a trash compactor.
No glass lay about.
There never was any windows in the place, he remembers passively.
In the far corner of the plot, a stretch of brick wall looms like the lone soldier after a bloody massacre. It had somehow miraculously survived, and he makes a beeline towards it, knowing exactly how and where to step in order to ensure his safety; he had been here many times since…
Little light pervades the perpetual darkness surrounding the area, but knowing this he came well prepared. He extracts an old flashlight from a pocket and presses the button. The beam illuminates thousands of markings etched into the brick; some are random words and others are coherent sentences. His fingers roam the chaotic array as the light glides about, both searching for something. When he finds it, he sighs and sits down beside the neatly carved stanzas. Holding the light by its head, he searched his pockets for another item: a book. The old leather cover is cracked and faded despite its limited life: it has seen the light of day for barely over a year. Leaning against the wall and stretching his legs out in front of him, he begins to search for the first of two bookmarks. Upon finding it, he places the mark on a flat rock beside him, smoothes the page wrinkled by tears, and reads:
'I should not dare to leave my friend,
Because — because if he should die
While I was gone, and I — too late—
Should reach the heart that wanted me;
'If I should disappoint the eyes
That hunted, hunted so, to see,
And could not bear to shut until
They "noticed" me — they noticed me;
'If I should stab the patient faith
So sure I'd come — so sure I'd come,
It listening, listening, went to sleep
Telling my tardy name, —
'My heart would wish it broke before,
Since breaking then, since breaking then,
Were useless as next morning's sun,
Where midnight frosts had lain!'
The tears spring to his eyes and spill over before he can stop them.
He had not meant to be late that day; he really hadn't. Kendall had called him in for an extra meeting concerning Derevko, kept him after, and would not let him leave until he signed about five hundred papers. Then as he was leaving, Weiss decided to give him the third degree; he enjoyed being a persistent ass when it made him late for a meeting with her. He had wanted to race to the warehouse on the back of a Pegasus, but had to make due with his compact car. The traffic was especially heavy that night, and every red light seemed determined to bar his way. He remembered—he remembered nervously tapping his fingers on the cold steering wheel and repeatedly glancing over to the passenger's seat. According to his recollection ten roses, ten sprigs of baby's breath, and one deck of playing cards sat beside him.
They were celebrating their two month, two week, and two day anniversary.
At least, they had been going to.
But they never got that chance.
As he approached the warehouse, he could tell something was terribly wrong. Even with the windows closed, he could smell the smoke. Not bothering to circle the block three times and park half a mile away, he pulled right up next to the building and instantly forgot all of their carefully laid plans.
Smoke streamed through every crack in that building from foundation to roof. It lingered and hung about like a second, lower sky. The stench of ash permeated everything.
He was not worried at first. Running back to his car, he extracted his cell phone, thinking to call her before she tried coming to meet him and then phoning the fire department. But when he turned around, everything changed.
There was her car: that big, ugly red thing that probably used more gas in a week than his car did in a year.
He had nearly dropped the phone.
She was already inside.
Blood pounding in his ears, he dialed 9-1-1 and sped through his predicament; he never could remember exactly what he had said to that poor dispatcher, but he was certain she was sworn at more than once.
Then the phone did drop to the ground, probably shattering; he never cared enough to retrieve it, so he did not know for sure. He raced to the back door, their door, tried the handle, and recoiled in pain: it seared his fingers. Desperate, he tore off the sleeve of his dress shirt, wrapped it around his hand, and tried again. This time it gave way. Swinging outwards, it released a billow of black smoke that had almost choked him right there. Using the same torn cloth, he wrapped the fabric about his head so that it covered his nose and mouth and dove into the sea of black.
Immediately, the temperature skyrocketed. The concrete shimmered with a heated haze. Flames engulfed most of the space, licking the walls like a child eats a popsicle. The crackling and groaning of the metal expanding, melting, and crumpling was almost deafening. He was instantly grateful they habitually kept that entrance free of junk; otherwise, he would have been dead as soon as he opened the door. He began stumbling towards the far corner where the flames were lowest.
It was then that he heard it: the repeated crashes of crates against cement and banging of metal against metal. Sounds only a human — a live human — could make. Listening more intently, he heard them again; it had not been wishful thinking.
She was alive.
He scrambled towards the sounds, avoiding flaming crates and molten sections of fence. Tearing off his other sleeve, he wrapped it around his hand again in order to clear his path more easily. Out of the dancing orange mass, a pole emerged and began savagely beating at a section of fence only yards away.
Hopes rising he called out, "Sydney!" The cloth muffled his voice, so he cast it aside, no longer worried for himself, and tried again.
In a particularly low section of flames her face appeared, wavering and unstable from the heat. "Vaughn!" She cried out, throwing herself towards him, but only reaching the searing chain-link fence instead. She jumped back and clutched at her forearms, successfully battling away the grimace of pain for his sake. Doing her best to suppress the agony that overwhelmed both her body and spirit, she returned to the fence. "It's Sloane! He did this! He came in here, and I thought it was you, and he locked me in this—this cage! Then he poured kerosene everywhere and lit a match. He knows; he knows about us, about the CIA, about everything! He said—he said this was my retribution, my comeuppance.
"I tried to break the lock, but it's some kind of carbon-based ore and won't melt in this low heat. I'm trapped and—" She did not get to finish her sentence, as the beams above creaked and groaned. Finally one fell, landing with a shower of sparks in between the two and sending him reeling backwards. She barely batted an eye.
Then he noticed her physical appearance. He could tell her shirt had been white at one time, but the smoke that still hung around them had blackened it. Her sleeves, just like his, had been discarded, and the rest of what he could see hung in limp tatters. The skin on her forearms shined red, and black lines marked the places where they had connected with the fence. Her face was smeared with ashes and dried blood: her lip and temple were bleeding profusely. The long, brown hair he loved was singed shorter than he had ever seen it: most of her high ponytail had been burned off. Yet her eyebrows were set and her shoulders were squared; she was not giving up without a fight.
He grabbed himself a pole, ripping off another section of shirt for his right hand. "Hang on, Syd: I'm going to get you out of there."
Her eyes widened in horror. "No! Don't! Get out of here now!"
His stance did not change. "Not without you."
"Vaughn, listen to me. There are propane tanks in here and you know it. If the fire reaches them, we're all dead." Her voice hitched, but smoke had not been the only obstruction. "I love you, Michael Vaughn. More than anything on this Earth. I love you too much to let you die here with me. I am not afraid. Get out now."
He shook his head vigorously; maybe if he happened to shake it hard enough, all of it would go away.
She grunted in frustration. "Stop being so stubborn! You know I hate it when you condescend. Just please—please go. Get out of here. I love you more than anything, and I won't stand to see you die because of some foolish fantasy about being a hero. Go and live — live for me." Despite her burning hands and the flames that were growing ever taller, she muscled open a circle in the fence wide enough for her arm to slip through. She reached out over the fire's tendrils and grasped his hand one last time. She stared into his eyes without any trace of fear or doubt. "Live for us. Never stop believing in the impossible. Never stop fighting for the good in the world. Never surrender. Never stop being the man I love more than life itself." Retracting her hand, she took up her pole again, wincing at its temperature. "Now go! Leave! NOW!" She screamed at the top of her lungs.
Another beam creaked overhead, garnering both of their gazes. She jabbed threateningly towards the door with her pole, and he dropped his object and began backing away. Before he passed away from view he whispered, "I love you, too, Sydney Bristow. My love, my soul, my wife." The last time he saw her, she was beating against the fence again, still attempting an escape. And then the heat took hold of him, and the smoke began pressing down around him, cutting off his oxygen and infecting his lungs. He stumbled towards the exit as the beam fell from above, and he heard her piercing, agonized wails of pain. Not wanting to give himself time to think about going back, he followed her orders and fumbled out of the burning warehouse.
He was barely one hundred feet away when the first explosion rocked the building.
It set off a chain reaction of sorts, popping one after another like bubble wrap.
There were twenty in all.
And the twentieth was the one that blew out the side of the warehouse, partially collapsing the roof.
That was when the fire department arrived, five trucks at the peak, spraying their little hoses and making sure the fire could not spread to any other abandoned buildings. He had been sitting against the side of her car, hands blistering and bleeding onto the shards of his shirt, when the EMT bustled over. He asked if there had been anyone inside, while another hurried over with a first aid kit to bandage a wound on his head that he did not know he had.
His loaded stare pacified them with an answer, and they led him to the awaiting ambulance to be taken to the hospital.
After that, he cannot remember a thing; his theory is that he passed out. Others have said that he was conscious, but not really there. Sometimes he wonders how he survived the night, let alone the year that followed.
They had found her body charred and almost indistinguishable from the rest of the rubble. The only mode of identification they could use was her dental records…and the ring on her finger. Everyone at the CIA was surprised to hear about that.
No one had known they were married.
No one except Jack, who had pulled all the strings within reach to make sure no one knew they were married.
His only consolation was that the CIA allowed him to bury her under the name Sydney Vaughn.
It had been little consolation.
He smoothes the pages over again, working in the new tears cascading down onto them. His head leans back upon the only other survivor of the fire, and he sighs shakily. The news he has been carrying all day bubbles to the surface and he whispers:
"We did it, Syd. We got 'em. SD-6 and all the other cells are gone. The good guys won."
He wants to tell her everything, to tell her that her father informed Dixon of the truth about Sloane; that Jack recruited her former partner; that Dixon helped to take down the organization as well. That when he first walked into that sub-basement and saw Sloane, the first thing he did was stab him in the gut with the knife she used to carry; then he wordlessly walked away.
That she was being hailed as a hero for the gargantuan role she played in taking them down.
That they did it for her.
That she was free from them
That she was free from all guilt she held for betraying her country as long as she did.
That he still loves her as much as ever.
But he really does not need to say it; he has a feeling she knows already.
Instead, he flips to the other mark in his book, takes out that same knife, and turns to the bricks. He had started to carve out a poem on his first trip to the burned down warehouse. Sometimes when he came, he could not bring himself to etch anything; sometimes only a word would transpose itself from book to wall.
But tonight he feels he can do an entire stanza: the last in the poem.
Slowly but surely he chips away at the bricks, carving into them the words that resonate in his mind, in his soul, and in his heart. He finishes and sits back to read it one last time.
'If I may have it when it's dead
I will contented be;
If just as soon as breath is out
It shall belong to me,
'Until they lock it in the grave,
'Tis bliss I cannot weigh,
For though they lock thee in the grave,
Myself can hold the key.
'Think of it, lover! I and there
Permitted face to face to be;
After a life a death we'll say, —
For death was that, and this is thee.'
Satisfied with his work, he closes the book and sets it and the knife and flashlight beside him as he leans back against the poem. He sighs once again, this time in contented relief, and closes his eyes to welcome sleep at last.
* * *
They find him the next morning.
Jack is summoned immediately, and he rushes to the site. A single ambulance is stalled beside the rubble of the once great building. He picks his way over to the four paramedics dressed in blue jumpsuits just as they cover him with a white sheet. Jack's eyes do the asking and the driver answers, "A homeless man found him and called us from a payphone. He had no pulse when we arrived, and we tried to resuscitate him, but he was unresponsive. His—his heart just stopped working." She shrugs her shoulders and walks away to help load him onto a stretcher.
But before she gets too far, she turns back around and inquires, "Is there any family we need to notify?"
He thinks for a moment before shaking his head. "His parents passed away long ago, and his wife died last year. I'm all the family he's got."
She nods solemnly and replies, "I'm sorry for your loss, sir."
Jacks shakes his head, slowly this time, as he watches the other three EMTs load his son-in-law into the ambulance. "Don't be. He's happier this way." Without waiting for a response, he climbs into the vehicle and sits next to the body with his head bent.
The paramedic shrugs, slides into the front seat, and drives them all away. The warehouse and the wall stand alone, solitary reminders of the memories and sadness that they have seen, and wish the world will never see again.
END