Signs
Author: Pharo
Disclaimer: 'Alias' belongs to J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot, Touchstone, and ABC.
Summary: Loss results in blindness to deception.
Spoilers: "Snowman".
Feedback: pharo@newyork.com
'when did your eyes begin to look fake?' ---Dashboard Confessional, 'Screaming Infidelities'
She thinks back to how, in retrospect, everyone loves to point out the seemingly insignificant clues might have given subtle hints of what was to come. It's simple, it's analyzing, it's history. Time and time again someone points out that if so-and-so was done differently or if so-and-so had paid more attention, things would've turned out completely different. She thinks that now, she's trying to do the same thing.
She never saw it coming, never even had the slightest clue that it was going to happen. She, a master of deception, never once caught the small tinge of it in his eyes. She didn't see the small rain cloud growing into something bigger, something grayer, something that once opened would spill endless tears for days and nights.
How could she have known when everything had been sunshine and rainbows? Was she supposed to guess that he'd betray her? Was it some sort of cue that she was supposed to read off a cereal box or a trace of something wrong in her morning coffee?
"You didn't see it because you didn't want to see it."
"You think I lied to myself?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, well, no one else was about to do it for me."
Did she have any other choice? It wasn't a matter of wanting to deceive herself (who wants to deny the God-awful truth?), but rather it was a need to have something (anyone) to believe in. Everyone does things to make themselves happy. Hers was the refusal to see what was real.
She feels like she doesn't even know what the truth is anymore. Does truth even exist? Is it something that she concocted in her mind while weaving the blanket that she pulled over her eyes? Is it something only alive only in her head? Has it passed with the time long ago when noble knights fought evil sorcery to protect villages?
Truth doesn't exist anymore (she's not sure if it ever did to begin with). Everything is measured in terms of 'lie' and 'bigger lie'. Good guys working for bad guys, bad guys working with other bad guys, everyone using someone else---that's as close to truth as she can get.
He spoke of signs. Visible signs that didn't need a decoder ring to be uncovered.
"The signs. Right, the signs. How could I have missed the damn signs? Were they words written by way of constellations? A bat signal? Then what? Were they big bulletins on the highway? No, that'd be too damn obvious wouldn't it?" she'd shouted at him. "So, what? Notes stuck on the refrigerator with fruit magnets? No? Well, enlighten me, Vaughn. Tell me what the damn signs were!"
She doesn't see any signs. She thinks maybe she's immune to them, something she picked up on one of her missions to find a clearing in the middle of some random jungle. Maybe she got injected with a serum that took away her perception of 'signs'. Whatever it is, she still hasn't found the so-called 'signs'.
She thinks that the signs were a crock. No one ever sees them. No one even knows that they are there until after they lack significance. It occurs to hear that she doesn't know how to spot the signs anymore, to read and interpret them. It become lost in that struggle to hold on to a shred of anything, clinging to anyone that'll help her resurface from the fierce, yet silent sea of what her life is now.
"It happens to everyone."
It doesn't make sense why it always seems to happen to her. Billions of people in the world and the odds that she is the one to experience the constant betrayal are very slim. No, she knows that it only happens to her.
"You're such a liar, Vaughn. Such a bad liar."
He was a good liar (obviously, he was or else, she wouldn't be in this state now). He'd look past the layers of work and life (she supposes he's the only one who can do that), through the lies, and down into her soul. He'd tell her that they could go away, leave all the stuff behind them and start a fresh, new life. He talked and she imagined the kind of life with. He told her what she needed to hear. Lies with the ease of a used car salesman and the grace of a saint. He made his life all lies and then molded them into hers (as if it weren't already full of them).
Her head (heart) hurts to think of him like that. To glimpse at him in true color and realize that he's too dark to make out anything but a silhouette in her mind.
"I know you're strong and evidently, you can deal or else, jeez, you'd be dead by now."
Dead like he is. Like they are. Oh, it hurts her to think of anything anymore. Everything (everything that mattered) revolves around those that were dead through her affiliation. And the very few that count who are still alive face greater possibilities of joining the other group every time they are near her.
"I just worry about you sometimes, Syd."
Sometimes, she thinks of just locking herself in some random motel room until enough time had gone by for the manager to forget about her. She thinks about waiting for a wandering traveler (looking to get lost like her) to come, find the room occupied, and offer to take her along to whichever highway he was going to next. Together, they'd disappear.
She just wants to disappear. She wants to get away from the violence. Away from the thoughts, the missions, the loss, this place…away from it all. She wants to drive to the farthest corner of the world, swim through the oceans, and wind up in a remote region where she can live off of a nature and listen to the birds (and nothing else). She wants a plane ticket to the moon to become friends with scared little green aliens that can erase memories.
"Don't. It makes my job harder."
Other times, she thinks about driving to some isolated place and calling SD-6 to tell them that she's going to become a mole. She'd wait. They'd come. It would be over finally.
"Please Vaughn. Just…just stop caring."
An outrageous request, she knows this. Caring isn't an on-off switch. But she needed to warn him.
She gave him the signs, but she thinks that maybe he's the same as her.
Maybe he doesn't see them either.