Title: L'Ecrivain se Lamente [2/7]
Author: Airebella E. Spencer
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: always craved * nudge nudge * - his_gray_eyes@hotmail.com
Distribution: CD okay…all others, remember the Golden Rule: Ask first, Post later.
Disclaimer: oh how I wish Alias was mine…but you can't have everything you wish for J
Summary: Post ATY…again another character of my own creation, but this is a seven part serial, so it'll be finished. Sydney and Vaughn are tangled in another web of lies, and their ties are deeper and stronger than what could have ever expected. Part II: they remember, she moves closer…..
[AN]: thanks to all those who've read the story so far and to those who've told me what they thought. your gracious reviews mean a lot. I want to thank everyone who's helped me with this piece, especially kat because she's the best beta out there and she will be really missed. I'd also like to thank my substitute muse, my sister sydney because probably would have never finished this if she wasn't always on my ass, and hil for just being great in general. again, if there's any confusion…don't hesitate to email me and ask.
"I get a little warm in my heart when I think about winter/I put my hand in my fathers glove/I run off where the drifts get deeper/sleeping beauty trips me with a frown/I hear a voice/'you must learn to stand up for yourself 'cause I can't always be around." tori amos.winter
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Habiter demain comme si cet étaient aujourd'hui.
Live tomorrow as if it were today.
{Now}
him
He knew nothing.
He analyzed her face, the glistening emerald of her eyes, the bounce of her curls, the curves of her smile.
He knew nothing.
Her voice would always flow, each word connected to the next. Her movements were fluid, her motives hidden. Every utterance held the secret of his life in it's breezy palm.
He knew nothing.
She would never answer his questions straight forwardly. He called her Annika, and she called him Michel. She knew everything about him.
And he knew nothing.
she
The paper fell from her nimble fingers, landing soundlessly in the sand by her feet. She called the penguin back over to her and inquired in her shocked Italian the origin of the cosmopolitan on the table at her side. He could only begin to describe her {" tall, olive skin, dark hair, and beautiful dark eyes, just like you, Senora"}. Annika, with her long, lithe body never changed.
She stood, her world circling about her in dizzying spins that almost pushed her back into her empty seat. The confused waiter caught her as she fell, his strong grip slowly pulling her to her feet. Her brow had quickly constricted, her eyes dark and angry.
The man's inquires fell on deaf ears. Her eyes were scanning the pearly white beach, searching for her, searching for the woman she never thought she'd see again. She glared at the starched words on the sheet by her side, bending over to retrieve it.
Her brain processed the penmanship, her eyes taking in each word, each letter, each accent, each character. The writing was large and slanted, looped and elegant with a twist all its own. The scrawl itself spoke its own language, brushing a cord in her mind that had been cold for so long. Then something snapped.
She turned around to inquire the location of her generous benefactor, but the server was gone.
Without a second thought, Sydney Bristow was too.
{Then}
Every child has an obsession. A quirk, a flaw, a dislike, an addiction. Teddy bears, security blankets and candy are the common likes: some of the classic hates include anything and everything green or healthy. After all, childhood isn't childhood without a certain degree of attachment.
Annika came to them at the end of her childhood with her own obsession. Numbers.
She herself (Hopf, Anni L.) was infatuated with numbers. Even, odd, square roots, irrational, rational. Her undying love for the Arabian creation lived with her since she first learned how to count. Sydney could swear that sometimes she had heard Annika counting the letters in each word, the number of carrots in her salad, or the number of commas in her books. But her most memorable obsession was her favorite number. Forty-seven.
Annika ate her peas in sets of forty-seven: she allowed a limit of forty-seven characters per line in anything she wrote, typed or handwritten, and in any sport possible her jersey number was forty-seven (in those sports that allowed it, of course).
Once she remembered receiving a poem that consisted of forty-seven stanza, each forty-seven characters long. She told Annika that she was crazy, a comment which marked the beginning of a week long feud that was hastily settled by an order from Jack and cruel chastisement by their young British housekeeper Catherine, who chopped up bits of ground beef and tossed them in a salad.
This device, however did get them to talk, but it did nothing for Catherine herself, as that next day she was fired. Both girls were vegetarians.
Quarrels and quirks aside, one thing was certain. Annika was destined to be one with the pen. Her writing, no matter how oddly structured was beautiful. Her literary voice was lyrical, her descriptions livid and flowering. Her hand itself was uniquely artistic: it painted the portrait of any story with precision and texture. Most importantly, with every piece she produced, there was always a line in a language foreign to her own. Annika's infamous line always echoed through Sydney's mind, yet she never understood its meaning. It's meaning was a secret shared between two people, one of which was Annika.
The other, Sydney was told, was a man named Milo Rambaldi.
{Now}
him
It was nearly the seventh week he'd been with them, and he'd yet to see his captor. At the end of the first fortnight he'd been moved to an oak-trimmed suite with tall glass-paneled doors that led out onto a long balcony that stretched along the expanse of the house. Annika came to see him everyday, her visits spaced in even intervals of eight. She took him from his rooms to an empty long dining room for each meal and escorted him back unattended, so sure of her power over him that she required no assistance.
That night when she brought him back there was a large manila envelope waiting by his bedside. He growled softly and was about to tear it to shreds when a cool hand stopped him.
He looked at her for some sort of missing explanation: he expected to find it hidden in her eyes, or laced in her countenance. But Annika's mask was taunt and drawn, her eyes cold and stern.
"That, Michel, would not be a wise course of action. You're going to want to see what's in that envelope." She slid her fingers underneath his palm and pried his hand loose, and in doing so, took the large casing into her hands.
Opening it only produced a smaller, stained white package with a fading scrawl spread across its front. The mere sight of it made him swallow forcefully, his eyes beginning to water at their edges.
He snatched it from her outstretched hand, walking backwards until the backs of his calves hit the legs of an overstuffed armchair. He examined the envelope closely, running his fingertips over the starched corners and crude paper.
He looked up to meet Annika's gaze again, and she nodded, confirming his disbelief. She moved towards the door and was gone.
He was alone.
{Then}
He remembered a hockey game. The first game of the season, the first game that he would ever play. The pee wee league in his town had been practicing for months, whole blocks of hours at a time, a lot for an eight-year-old to take. He did it cause he loved the rush: he loved the feel of the ice underneath the blades of his skates, the sound it made. Mostly importantly he did it because it made his father happy.
He was late. The first period had come and gone, then had second, and half-time. He was late again, but then again it was his father. He was always late.
The game was won and William Vaughn was nowhere to be seen. His mother told him that she received a message from the front desk, that he missed his flight and was catching the next one, two hours later.
But he never came home.
He remembered waking up to a cold house. The house was never cold, even in the blistering heat of the summer. His nose failed to catch the scent of the waffles and pancakes his mother made every Saturday morning: he couldn't smell the coffee he found so repulsive. The door to his room had been opened a crack, and his two little sisters, ages seven(Vaughn, Charlotte M.) and four(Vaughn, Jacqline T.) were standing at the foot of his bed.
He called them to his bed noticing the tears that ran down Charlotte's cheeks, gently scolding them for waking him when they did. Jacqline curled into his side, shaking only until sleep came, and the elder of the two softly cried herself to sleep. When they were finally resting peacefully, he slept.
He awoke to his mother's scream. He remembered shooting straight up in his bed, alone, his sisters gone. It took him all of two seconds to reach his family in the frame of their large front door, his mother clutching the knob so hard that her knuckles were white.
Sometimes, when he wanted to, he could forget. Forget the pain in her eyes, the deep cut of her wails, the pleading in her voice. She was pregnant, she said. Pregnant women with three children need to be supported by a man, she moaned.
But she also noticed her children's presence. She brushed his cheek and asked him to take his sisters away, down to their immense backyard to lose themselves in their childhood. And he did. But he also saw them.
The men in their black suits, the men with their masks. Their fake pity. Their protocol. One with salt and pepper hair, the other with a fading brown mop. They scarred his memory, his childhood. In adulthood, they tore up the wounds.
That night his mother found him in bed before he fell asleep. She sat on his blue plaid sheets and explained everything to him. She gave him a letter. Written by William Vaughn himself, laced with instructions that she had followed. It had been written only to be seen by his (Vaughn, Michael C.) eyes, only if fate had taken his father's life.
But he refused to read it.
His mother placed it on a shelf in her bedroom, and occasionally, as life went on he'd go in and look at it, tempted by the writing on the envelope that he was beginning to forget.
The last time he went into his mother's room he was eighteen. Senior prom, with Gina Webber and all of his friends. He had his fingers behind its back and was about to break the seal when the doorbell rang.
He never saw it again.
{Now}
she
All she'd taken was a box. A container full of her most prized possessions, a select few of the items she couldn't live without. A first edition of Pride and Prejudice, faded black and white stills of a high school lake-side party, a folder of old letters and cards, and a silver antique frame. It was with these items that she'd refused to part, as they held the key to the life she once had, the life she could never return to.
She'd left Los Angeles with nothing but a cardboard box and three new credit cards, issued to her courtesy of her father's magic. With a swipe of plastic she created herself a life anew, tucking the leftovers of Sydney Bristow's life into bureau drawers and the closet shelves.
Thoroughly she searched her villa, neatly removing and replacing items that she had turned over in her frantic search. In finding the sample that she acquired from her flowered hat box, she removed the vellum from her book, placing it next to Annika's poem.
The writing was different, somehow. It was nearly identical, yet she knew something was wrong.
She pulled a stack of papers from the open case, quickly rummaging through the many leaves until she came to one that satisfied her curiosity. A faded note, stained with strawberry jelly that had once been tucked into her lunch by her mother's caring hand. She drew it out of the pile and put in on the table, placing the poem aside so she could examine the two pieces of paper before her.
She had been right.
The writing was identical.
The doorbell rang.
[End Part II] next update: 08.16.02
