Transgressions of the Past
Author: Phoebsfan
Feedback: phoebs_fan2001@yahoo.com
Archive: CD, anyone else let me know so I can visit.
Disclaimer: J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot, ABC... no I am none of those. Therefore I have no rights, nor do I profit from any of this.
Rating: PG
Category: Angst/AU
Summery: Sydney muses over her mother's birthday. Jack muses over his wife.
AN: this is slightly AU-like now but hey when we find out that in fact Vaughn is not dead then it won't be AU-like anymore. But that's a few months in the future so we'll just have to wait till then.
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Every year in the past on this day, the one day I'd always insist upon getting off, the one day I'd let myself remember her, miss her… I'd get her flowers. Go to her grave and give them to her.
A birthday present of sorts.
The tradition started in high school. The moment I had that license in my hand I made promises to visit her more often.
At first it was whenever I wanted out of the house, when dad wasn't off in Paris.
Why couldn't I have a dad with a normal job? One that took him to places like Paris, Tennessee and Memphis. Places other normal dads went on business.
Normal people going to normal jobs. When I was younger, I still believed that lie. The one that said I had a normal family, my dad was a normal dad, my mom a normal mom.
Fate shifted that idea out of the agenda long before I was even born however. Not that I had any idea.
When Mom died, I'd felt abandoned, betrayed by my father. My father who was always gone on business, my father who didn't seem to care at all.
Ironic that I turned to the real betrayer in that time of need.
Ironic that as I sat and berated my father for leaving me, betraying me… Ironic that I idolized the real criminal. Spent time with her ghost. Told her memory all the things I should have been sharing with my father.
Mom and I spent a lot of time together in my younger years. I'd sit by her grave and tell her about boys, school, whatever came to mind. Up until I'd learned the truth… I paid her frequent visits, or as frequent as my schedule allowed.
Some people find things like talking to the dead a waste of time. They say that the dead have far better things to do then hang around some cold cemetery and listen to someone go on for hours about nothing. They say that they aren't there and there is no point to visiting their decaying corpses.
In my case I guess they were right.
I knew all along that she wasn't there, but her memory was. Her lie was. In a very real way, my mother did die that day. I may have been talking to an empty hole, I didn't even get the rotting corpse, but it never felt that way.
My ideal mother was always there.
Of course my lying, thieving, betraying mother was probably assassinating someone in Turkey.
Nice thought.
The woman who tucked me in at night barely had time to wash the blood from her hands before I walked in the door after pre-school.
But she always had a great bedtime story. (As if that made it all ok.)
I met my mother again. Three months ago.
Now would be the ideal time for some psychiatrist to analyze all the mixed feelings I've been having. I mean I sent my father to Barnett after we'd found out that Mom was still alive. Guess I'm living by double standards.
But that fits though, the whole double standard thing. It actually fits perfectly in my double life. Just another double thing.
Things come in twos. I mean you've got socks, peanut butter and jelly, lovers, eyes, hands, yin and yang, the list goes on and on. And apparently you can add personalities to that list as well.
Cause every fucking person I know has at least two of them.
Dad and Spy Dad. Mom and The Man. Sydney the student and banker vs. Sydney the double agent.
If you think about it that way though I have more then two personalities. Just my spy life has at least two personalities.
Still it's all the same when you think about it. So things come in twos.
Unless we are talking about lies that is. Lies come in dozens.
And truth... Well that's a lie to someone too. It all depends on your perspective. So basically there is no such thing as truth. It's all just a bunch of lies to someone.
So the truth doesn't hurt... something that doesn't exist can't hurt. Lies hurt. The truth is just another one of those lies.
Today is her birthday, Mom's that is. (Another lie.) It's Laura Bristow's birthday. (But then Laura Bristow is a lie too.)
Tradition says I should go to her grave and leave her flowers. Self imposed promises tell me I should head toward her resting place, talk to her about boys and school and whatever comes to mind.
My life has been built around lies. This harmless act of bringing flowers to a memory on her birthday, just another lie to add to the increasing pile really.
Usual birthday celebrations involve cake and friends. Mom's always involved just flowers and me.
I know in some way she loved me, even if she never cared for my father. (Or was that a lie too? Does she really love me? Has she ever?) That my memories aren't all tainted with lies. (But they must be because everything is a lie.)
But this year I didn't take the day off.
I pretend to be devoted to the cause, for Dixon's sake, for Sloane's sake. (I don't pretend. I focus. There is a difference.)
I still remember when Vaughn questioned me about my feelings toward Sloane, whether or not I was feeling sympathy for the man. I know I shouldn't. (I don't.) He doesn't deserve it after all the hell he's handed everyone. But I can't help but feel bad for him. (Lies.)
He lost his wife. I know how it feels to lose someone so close. (I do.) And Emily was a good person even if she was married to the devil.
Emily died while I was dealing with that lie I called mom for so long. (I miss her. Emily… The Lie.) She was the only mother I had after that memory died. I will bring her flowers. (I will.) But I can't bring mom flowers this year. (Not this year.)
I work. I go home and sit.
So simple are my actions, almost robotic, as if my mind is too busy to do anything else. Conversation with Francie is kept to the minimum. She thinks I'm reflecting on Mom and I guess she's right.
But I bet that she has no idea what's going on in my head.
I just sit for hours on my bed, with my wine, remembering the reasons I should go visit 'Mom.'
I swish the wine in its glass, play with the blanket's soft folds, close my eyes and let the mellow music's musk wash over me. I know I've set the mood for brooding, for pity. But hell it's been so long since I've had a pity party. Been so long since I've had time for one.
My shoulder aches, my arm is cut, and I twisted my ankle pretty nastily on my last mission. Yesterday I was in Morocco running from dogs, guards, gunfire. It's a good thing 'the bank' has such a good health plan.
The phone rings and I let it. Nothing is going to cut into my freaking pity party. I'm taking time for myself and it's about damn time I get that choice.
I can hear Francie's exasperated, "Wrong number bozo." And honestly, I don't give a shit. Vaughn can wait. Everything can wait.
We can talk about my mission to Taipei tomorrow. We can talk all about how hard it's going to be for me to visit my mother and steal some Rambaldi artifact from her. We can digest all the millions of conflicting emotions then.
Besides my mother is in a grave. Our last meeting only proved that.
But still I can't go get the flowers. Laura liked roses. I'd asked Dad once when I was younger. Irina probably hated them.
My mother was a murderer… She was a liar… She was a spy…
I tell myself she was bad, evil and any other negative synonym I can fit into the equation. But breaking it down into the basic parts... The words that define her so clearly and leave no room for the gray that would taint the black and white photo I use to judge her by.
All those words... that photo.
It's me.
Vaughn would tell me I'm wrong. That I care and want to make things better. That for some reason I will not turn into my mother.
I can only hope he's right.
He has such unfounded faith in me. Is so willing to dismiss all the logic and facts I can throw at him. And he always makes me believe him.
Before him, before I knew him, I know that I would have continued to sit on my bed for the rest of the night. Dreading my future, writing off any good that I have done, any good that she had done. Judging myself with her actions and framing that black and white photo to hang on my wall and remind me of all the ways the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Instead I get up and change, I get the flowers I need, and I head toward the echoing cemetery. I walk in the harsh, mocking, fading sun. Birds chirp, I want to tell them to pipe it. People pass by and smile, I manage to smile back. And it makes me feel slightly better.
When I left my bed, wine, and moody music, I left because I knew it was the right thing to do. Not because I wanted to or felt that my mother deserved it. I did it because of Vaughn's influence on me.
Vaughn has got me questioning everything. He's got me looking at the whole picture, including those gray areas. The mother part of Irina, the Laura Bristow part of her... that's one of those gray areas.
My mother loved me. She cared for me. She kept me safe. She missed me and she didn't want to lose me. (I think.)
It isn't wrong of me to care for her. It's not a bad thing that I visit her grave even though I know who she really is. (Is it?)
Will told me he loved me anyway. After all the lies I'd told him, after all he'd been through because of me. He still loved me. He didn't have to. He could have pushed me away.
I'd be appalled, hurt, betrayed... I was.
But he is still there for me. He still loves me.
Fundamentally it's the same. I was lied to. Like Will, I believed the lie.
I may not agree with what she did. I may not like her for how she hurt so many people. Killed Vaughn's father. Played my father. Betrayed national security.
But after it's all said and done, like Will, I still love her.
Maybe all I'll ever have are the memories. I know it's best I leave her buried. My father was right, there is nothing she could say. There was nothing she could say. Tomorrow I'll go back to work at bringing her down.
It's best I separate the two.
Laura and Irina. Mom and The Man.
I pull up to the cemetery and hop out of my car, brush at some lint on my skirt, check my hair in the mirror on the side of my door. Then I turn to face her grave and find my feet not working.
My father.
He hovers over her grave and suddenly I'm thrown for a loop. I'm not sure I'm ready to see him here. I'm not sure I'm ready to see him wipe at his eyes like he just did.
How can he still be here? After everything that he knows about her. How can he be talking to her grave, leaving her flowers?
How can he not hate her?
He leaves. I'm still frozen. Paralyzed. Conflicted.
This is nothing compared to some of the things I've seen. I can't weigh it on the same scale as some of the things I've done. But it leaves me so utterly confused I can't seem to remember how to move my feet for an entire five minutes or more.
When they work again I don't head for her grave. I let the flowers fall from my hand.
I turn around and open the door. Jump into the driver's seat and try to reason with myself.
Laura and Irina, Mom and The Man, they are the same person.
Why I don't see her... Why all of a sudden I feel betrayed... Why I feel like my world has slipped out from under my feet... It's all beyond my grasp.
Her birthday is off limits for me. I can't do it.
I start the car and back out, crushing the flowers under the wheels of my car.
I just don't understand how he could... with me he never could...
I understand how Will could still love me. I understand how I could still love her.
But I can't understand how he could still love her.
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The Man is the future. Haladki's words ring in his ears.
No. Haladki is wrong. The Man is the past. Was the past?
Or not.
Because Laura Bristow and 'The Man' have absolutely nothing in common.
Except of course that they are the same person.
He still couldn't call her by her real name. Her real name was the knife through his heart and he would not willingly stab himself.
Unwillingly, blindly, unknowing. That's how he preferred to stab himself. And that was why she succeeded all those years ago.
It was her birthday. Or the day that she'd said was her birthday. The day they'd celebrated with cake, and friends, and presents.
Laura Bristow's birthday, not her birthday.
Sydney didn't take the day off.
Maybe that was the only reason he found himself in front of her grave once more. A place he hadn't visited since he'd learned the truth of her betrayal. Since the funeral really.
A place he'd written out of his life for obvious reasons.
This trip wasn't an easy thing, even for him, so good at blocking out emotions.
Stone faced, stone hearted, and cold he'd walked up and deposited the flowers. Turning and walking away however had yet to come. Reading the words on her stone had caused a flood of memories.
...Loving wife and mother... (Spying, murdering, conniving bitch)
He couldn't help but wonder if there was ever a time that she was what her stone said and not what his mind told him. He knew she had genuinely cared for their daughter. Knew that, and that was her one redeeming quality.
Because every time he tried to write her off as a villain things got tricky. Sydney's existence always seemed to disclaim any evidence that she was purely evil.
Sydney proved that Laura had been capable of love, and maybe he was just lying to himself, maybe he was just blinding himself to the truth that hurt so much. But sometimes he liked to believe that she'd loved him in some twisted way as well.
Liked to believe that maybe, just maybe, she had a hard time near the end. Had a hard time putting those bugs in his clothes, listening in on his conversations. That maybe she had found happiness in their daughter and was thinking about happiness with him.
It was hard for him to believe, after all the affection she'd shown, after all the heated nights they'd spent demonstrating in all sorts of ways the love he was sure they'd had... It just didn't seem possible for someone to be so good at lying.
He'd known of his daughter's private celebrations with her mother for quite some time. She'd asked him to go with her a few times. He'd always told her no. He was a busy man and there was no reason to visit an empty hole.
He couldn't blame his daughter for being confused. Couldn't blame her for skipping her traditions this year.
He didn't know what Laura(Irina) told their daughter three months ago, but he did know that it had not been what Sydney had wanted to hear. He did know that she was struggling with the feelings of betrayal and fear of becoming like her.
The videos where his wife told a room full of men that he meant nothing to her. That he was a fool, a blind and lovesick fool. They still haunted him.
He'd given her everything and true he'd never been that sentimental about things, true he'd always preferred to look to logic... it didn't mean that what he had given her was nothing. She'd blindsided him, first with her beauty, then with her apparent love, and then most cruelly with her betrayal.
He had every right to hate her. She had said as much about him.
But he couldn't find himself hating her.
He could hate the woman that went by the name 'The Man.' He could bring her down.
But he could never hate Laura Bristow. Even if Laura Bristow was only a fictional character.
And so there he stood, flowers already deposited, with nothing left to do but so much left undone. Fulfilling her traditional birthday celebration of sorts. Knowing that his daughter would eventually discover the same truths.
That one day she'd realize that the two women were never the same woman.
And so he talked to her.
Ordinarily he'd condemn the behavior. Emotional, sentimental waste is what it was. But still he talked to the memory of those heated nights, those secret smiles and unnecessary touches. The memory of his daughter's mother. The one woman who had given him everything just to take it away violently, brutally, and unequivocally abrupt.
To his surprise he found his eyes misting as he told his wife about work, their daughter, and whatever came to mind.
Brushing at his eyes he gave her one last look and turned to go. His business was finished. And so much emotion was deplorable. She deserved none of it.
She had her flowers and her chat. Next year Sydney could continue with the tradition. Laura was gone. It was best he leave her buried.
Unburying her would only lead to confusion. And he didn't want to be confused over her. Didn't want to face the questions again. Didn't want to ask himself again if he hated her.
If there was ever a time she did care...
No it was best he keep her there.
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"Every year on her birthday I take the day off. This year I didn't. Every year I brought her flowers, but how do you bring flowers to someone you don't like? Someone who has hurt you so much. For years I thought she was an entirely different person. Now that I know, that I've seen and talked with her..." I shrugged it off as the cold warehouse produced a shiver. It's damp mildewy air clogging the nostrils. It's echoing vastness strangely comforting.
Vaughn only gave me that look, the one that told me he was listening and waiting. With that frown so entrenched on his forehead.
She'd hurt him too. She killed his father and most recently he spent some time with her. We'd had another run in with her only a week ago. His broken nose, bruised face, bandaged hand, tangible proof of all the ways she continued hurt him. Yet still he was willing to listen to my trivial problem.
Still he was willing to place me before everything. It's times like that I think I love him and could love him forever. But then I know what that would lead to and I'm not ready to kill another friend because of some insignificant feeling.
"I sat at home and blamed myself after work. Told myself that I should hate her, that I was becoming her. You would have kicked my ass for it I'm sure." I paused and gave him a smile. "...I finally decided to do it. I guess to keep myself from regretting it later; you know to keep up with the normal. Perpetuate the lie. I'd told myself that I just had to keep the two separate. But when I got to the cemetery my dad was there. And he was giving her flowers and talking to her. I think he may even have shed a few tears. I just... I couldn't. I couldn't understand how he could forgive her so easily. I don't understand how he could ever... It really threw me. I left without finishing." He was quiet. He always knows when to be silent and when to speak.
I shifted in my seat and looked at my hands. As if all the answers in the world were in them.
Hands, the vessels of our actions. Capable of so many things, from the gentlest and softest of touches to the harsh crack of flesh hitting flesh, the thud of fist and face, the warm and sticky blood covered carrier of death.
My hands however, were tired of holding up the world, tired of looking for those answers.
"My dad loved her so much Vaughn. When she was 'killed' he kind of lost it for a while. I remember once we all went to London for a week. Played tourists and everything. He always had his hand in hers, or his arm around her waist. My father has never been one for public affection. Hell he's never been one for affection. But with her it was always different. I just don't understand how he could still love her after everything. She broke him Vaughn. I don't understand how he can still care." I sighed then let my eyes meet his, warm and honest, comfortingly sweet.
"Why can't I forgive her so easily?"
"Sydney..." his voice rolled over me like a warm calming wave. The pier calms me like Vaughn. His voice takes on the same gentle lapping of wave against wood. The repetitive murmur of wave after wave, rolling in, always changing but staying the same. The salt flavored trance it induces is enough to heal almost every wound.
"You aren't your parents. And I can't pretend to know what goes on in your father's head. But it's all right to hate her. It's all right to be angry with her. He's known a lot longer. He's had years to deal with her betrayal. You haven't. Just don't be too hard on yourself about this and don't compare the way he is dealing with it to the way you are. It's not a fair comparison for anyone." He always speaks sense. His words always cut through all the confusion that muddles my mind.
"I know. It's just I felt so hurt. So betrayed. I don't know. It's silly I know..." He reached over and grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze before quickly withdrawing. Warm and soft like chocolate chip cookies just out of the oven, perfect. He smells like the ocean.
"It's not silly. It's normal." He never lets me get away with belittling my feelings.
"Thank you Vaughn. As ugly as all of this is and as hard as it has to be for you to hear it. Just... thanks. If it weren't for you..." I smiled shyly and stole a quick look. He smiled back, small, the corners barely curving, but it still warms the darkest parts of me.
And then our meeting is over. It's been two weeks since her birthday, four hours since our meeting.
I'm not fixed. I still don't know how to feel about my mother. Some moments I can separate the two of them. Some moments I find I can head to her grave. Others I find myself angry and hurt.
The truth may be ugly. But there is truth. Vaughn proves it time and time.
Every time he smiles, all of his words... they prove that just like the gentle lapping of wave on wood, just like the undeniably salty tang of the ocean, his warm and soft, firm and strong hands... They prove that there is truth. Their very existence, unchanged.
The smile that stamps my face when I leave him, that feeling in the pit of my stomach.
That is truth. That is honesty.
So truth has to exist, beautiful or ugly, foul or fair, bitter or sweet. It is there.
Who she is, what she did... Sometimes the truth hurts.
But it's the only way I'm going be able to get through this.