:absolute Zero: sandstone:
Notes, comments etc. in Chapter 1.
Chapter Two: Sandstone
"I have long considered it one of God's greatest mercies that the future is hidden from us. If it were not, life would surely be unbearable" –Eugene Forsey
8:47 pm
Arizona
For a long time they sit in silence, the cool of the evening wrapping around them as they gaze up at the stars. The sky is unmarred by clouds, the universe above a world of swirls and dashes, of tiny pinpricks of light countless miles beyond them.
"In the morning," speaking slowly, mere decibels over the crackle of the fire, she tilts her head in his direction to catch the rest of his words, "we'll hike out of here."
In college, she and Francie had taken a trip out to the canyon, in late December, the air almost crisp and right around sixty degrees. They'd hiked down to the river in an afternoon and remembered that the return trek the following morning had been nothing short of grueling. It's a straight pitch to the top on winding corners and a foot and a half of walking room. Her calves had ached for days following that first visit, and now, ten years later, she hopes she's still in shape enough to make it up in one piece.
She watches him in the moonlight, his brown-blonde hair shining as he walks over to the helicopter. Its navigational system is shot; turning the key in the ignition does nothing. The engine makes a loud click that resounds in the too -quiet night. He turns, face grim, and nods at her curtly.
"I think that whatever it was worked." He announces stoically, tone flat and unemotional.
Finding an alcove, she sits with her knees drawn to her body. This is the nature of their relationship, where in privacy they speak in clipped sentences and avert their eyes from the other. Neither wants to get too close.
He throws down a sleeping bag and opens his canteen, taking a leisurely gulp. More than 12 feet away and she can still see the muscles work in his neck, his arms, the upturn of his shoulders. The moon is bright and full and serves as diminished light, illuminating everything, granting shadows on the still ground.
Unmoving, she watches him, and can't stop the swell of thoughts that come to her mind unbidden. Remembers a night that felt like an eternity ago, the momentary weakness; the slide of his hand on her body and his breath hot on her neck, and oh god…
"Sydney." He interrupts the memory, comes closer, hands closed around a rectangle in the dark. "Call her."
His eyes are frigid when she meets them, green glass coolly glowing in the darkness, his lips drawn in a line. It makes her shiver, the distance between them, the knowing that she- and she alone- placed it there.
"Okay." She takes the phone from his fingers without touching him. Smiles without much trace of beguile as he walks away, kicking up the dust as he walks. She notices dully that both of their pant legs are coated, streaming red lines of sand and dirt.
Her fingers shake when she dials, matching the tremor in her stomach that goes outward, crawling up her neck, into her shoulders, everything tensing as the line pulses and then-
"Yes," at the opposite end. She shivers.
"We did it." She tells her, finds her voice weak and clears her throat. "It's done."
"I know." Her mother sounds so delighted, her excitement uncontained even across the multitudes of distance between them.
"So it worked, then?" Ventures a question. Knows the delay that will come, the placating silence that her mother will offer. Typical, and yet this time, it's not enough.
"It worked." The reply is terse.
"If you knew that already then why did you make me call?" Sydney bites off the words, emboldened by the miles separating them.
Her mother gives a small chuckle, no doubt serving as a patronizing acknowledgement of her daughter's bitter tongue. "So I could be the first to admonish you if your efforts proved fruitless."
Frustration filling her, she drags a hand through the short crop of hair. The lack of weight is still disconcerting, the ragged ends scrape against her fingers. Taking a deep breath, she attempts to control her anger, knowing that the emotion is beyond useless. "Then can you at least tell me what it is, exactly, that you've had us do?"
Again, the tiny, humorless laugh. "I don't believe that the time is right. You'll know soon enough for yourself. Besides- seeing, my dear daughter, is so much more effective that the spoken word."
Sydney dares a glance at the figure opposite her, standing close enough to overhear the conversation, his face a mask of unconcealed distaste. He stands with his hands on his hips, posture indignant in the soft light of the moon. It only compounds his apparent indignation, her eyes on him. She runs an index finger over the floor of the canyon, making squiggled lines, fighting back tears.
"Fine." She says, deflated of anger and filled with a sort of self-serving pity. "I'll wait."
*
5.15.2002 :
Taipei :
'You tell me…' she wrote in her perfect block handwriting, trying unsuccessfully to steady her shaking hands. 'What would you do in my situation?'
It seemed a simple enough plan. A gun to the side of her head and Sark; smirking as he manned the trigger, occasionally going so far as to tap the Magnum against her temple whenever she slowed her writing.
"This isn't a term paper, Ms. Bristow." he clicked back the safety and held the weapon against her ear. The cool steel tickled the burning flesh and made her tremble, but not from fear. Moreover, she shook from abhorrence for herself, for her actions. "You don't have to agonize over every nuance of grammar, every sentence. Just write."
She nodded and put the pen back to paper.
'I made a deal.' Black and white, it stared up at her. I, Sydney Bristow, of sound mind and body… 'I made a deal, that in exchange for both of our lives, we owe her…' Her, the ubiquitous "she", the mastermind behind this; her, her, her. Her mother. False placating smile and that buried Russian accent. Irina.
I know you are going to want to disagree with me, but I am asking you to trust me.' Her hand shook when she wrote "trust me". It glared up at her, a silent reprimand. Her eyes fixed to those words; as she looked down upon it as the paper became ingrained into her mind, the thick ivory parchment with miniscule flecks of lavender. It smelled like the color of the flecks, delicate, light, lavender in springtime, or from a hand lotion, slight and soft but permeating. Instantly knew she would forever associate the fragrance with this moment, with these words. The pen suddenly felt heavy in her fingers, burned hot against her palm.
Sark stood over her, breath near her ear as he read the last written line. "Well, do go on." He encouraged, she could hear the amusement laden in his tone. Shooting a glance up at him, she scowled in contempt.
"While I'm sure it is impossible for you to fathom, I do have a slight problem in doing this to my friend. To ask him to trust me when I have been blackmailed into compliance-"
"Interesting." He interrupted her. "I'm sure that your…friend," he slurred the word like it was something distasteful, "will appreciate the fact that you've so selflessly bargained for his life. Now, back to the task at hand."
"Please…" Is all she managed to write before he snagged the paper from beneath the pen, eyes scanning it rapidly.
"You have lovely penmanship. Quite nice for a girl raised in the states." Folding the paper, he started to tuck it into his pocket before arching an eyebrow, "Oh my, had you wanted to sign this with little endearments? Possibly a declaration of unspoken love?"
Glaring up at him, she tapped the pen against the dull grain of the table. It would have been very nice to shove it into his jugular, but unfortunately propriety stopped her before she did.
He left her to her own silence, to staring ahead at concrete block walls that made the room even more drab and distasteful, if that was possible. Tied to the chair, feet bound in plastic interlocking rings that were completely impossible to break without something sharp enough to cut them -she's tried, and the red rings around her ankles gave proof to the futility of her efforts. The room smelled like mildew, something dripped, and she hadn't eaten in over seventy-two hours. Hadn't slept either, finding the ache in her legs and arms made it impossible to relax for even fifteen minutes. At least the bastard had freed her hands long enough to write that letter and now to nervously await the response. Cocky fuck, she thought, a wayward strand of her thick hair falling into her eyes. She lifted a hand to wipe it away, saw the angry red gashes stare back at her, slightly scabbed over, some oozing a thin trickle of blood, sticky red that gloms on the dull formica. Nails all broken, unknown debris jammed and creeping over her cuticles; tiny, dirty slivers. Lowering her wrist, she rested her hand on the cool table gingerly, and for a moment- a tiny second, she though about laying down her head.
After all, she'd given up, hadn't she? Willingly played into Irina's little game, the one that traded her and Vaughn's life for an existence based solely on forced servitude; a type of indentured servant that could never be freed. Her mother's slave- though it felt empty to call her that, to give her a title such as "mother" when everything about the designation did nothing to belie the bankruptcy of emotion behind it. The fact that every thing about her childhood had been a lie, her small collection of facts about her mother fabricated, a mere fantasy. Unreal.
The heavy metal door creaked open and Sark's golden head filled her vision, his blue eyes emotionless, his lips curled in a smirk.
"I have delightful news. It seems your little partner has decided to comply."
*
5.16.02
3:08 P.M
Fifty-two minutes.
Their reunion was given a scheduled time, at four in the afternoon, as though assigning a date and time would make it all somewhat more tangible. More real, less sacrificial, as if they could be convinced to not mourn their loss of fragile, temperate freedom. Freedom- it had become an abstract concept, a variable that no longer fit into the equation of her life. While their freedom of choice was gone, they did remain living, a reality that was fixed and permanent. Guilt burned within her, an angry torch fueled by bitter self-hatred, she reveled—yes, reveled, in knowing that she would be seeing him in less than an hour.
The lack of time did nothing to make anything more real for her; in fact, she was unwilling to believe he was alive until she actually laid eyes upon him, touched him, accepted absolute proof that he was living. She wanted to see for herself the mechanics of his breathing, of his heartbeat, of everything that distinctly composed him.
And then she would believe that the past three days had actually happened.
After the delicate truce was agreed upon, her mother had sent someone to bandage her wrists and ankles. The girl had looked less than twenty, with olive skin and almond-shaped eyes, eyes that were kind, sympathetic to her pain. She soaked Sydney's wounds in lukewarm, cloudy water, rubbed a salve that smelled of mint and burned the sores that her frequent attempts at escape had caused. When she was prompted to stand, the petite, dark haired woman winding a slender arm around her waist; her arms and legs had failed, and she had fallen, through the kind woman's arms and face-forward into a sharp corner of the formica table before her. Knocked unconscious, she'd awoken to find her wrists wrapped, ankles tended to in much the same manner, and a winding strip of gauze around her head.
She could only imagine how it was that she must look; bandaged, worn, no doubt bruised- for she could feel the tender, swollen places along her cheeks and chin. The area under her left eye was still sticky with blood. She was almost thankful for the lack of mirrors or windows; anything that might reveal the true state of her appearance. Head throbbing from her inadvertent injury, she stared at the wrap around her wrists, glowing back too white and stinging her eyes that throbbed with every heartbeat, every breath, every single movement she made.
The following morning they had moved her to another room in what she could only assume to be some western quadrant in her mother's vast compound. Khasinau himself had come to collect her, playing the role of the tired old man, calling her "dear" and offering her breakfast. Even though she was starving and her body in dire need of nutrients, her rebellious nature had caused her to refuse. He'd escorted her into another room with an industrial looking sink and mirror and bed, and said for her to wait.
He told her; in a soft voice that she thought he meant her to construe as soothing "You can see him in an hour."
This was a reward, she made no mistake in that simple understanding. Irina had given her a choice, a choice between two things, and she had picked the less painful for herself. Flashing to an earlier scene, she re-invented her mother, standing before her, eyes cold. The way the woman had said her name "Sydney..." like it was glass, sharp and pointing. It had cut through her, that tone. Sliced right through and made her see that the years of distance had transformed her mother into nothing more than a cruel, calculating and disdainful opponent. An enemy.
This new room had a mirror in its southern corner, along a wall flanked by opaque windows that were impossible to see the ground beneath through. The long, rectangle glass she avoided for a little while, still afraid to look at herself. Her imagination had done a well enough job of painting the way the past few days and their concurrent events ought to have made her look, and so she perched on the edge of the bed, willing herself to have the courage to actually look. To see the marks that gave proof to her efforts, however short-lived, to break free. Rising slowly, she walked toward the glass tentatively, her figure becoming less and less blurry the closer she got - until finally she materialized, moving into blinding focus and showing her a worn woman, her hair matted, her face bruised.
In the beginning, she had resisted. Gotten hit a half dozen times and now her face was mostly mottled-looking black and blue spots, one around her eye chasing violet with puce and yellow. The bandages were too clean, a contrast to the black of her clothes and the sore spots on her cheeks. The clothes she came to the club in she still wore, the dog collar broken when someone (she thinks it was Sark) had grabbed her from behind and caused the material to rip against her throat. It left an angry, red, haphazard mark along her skin, but everything did.
She looked terrible, and her appearance only amplified a growing fear within her that multiplied with the minutes that she imagined passing with virulent speed. In a matter of minutes, she would come face to face with him. Suddenly the prospect of reunion seemed less and less a wonderful thing as she envisioned his face, his eyes closed off and angry as he looked at her. Unforgiving. She'd sacrificed his life, she knew it, but once she could explain—
Would he believe her? Would he understand the meaning behind her actions, the trust that she had for him? The emotion? He'd risked everything when he came with her to Taipei with her, put his life on the line for her, and she repaid him by forcing him into a contract with the very monster that had killed his father. He might perceive her as selfish, preferring death to the future she bargained for him. Was it selfish that she needed him to get through this? Was it a mistake to want to beg him to agree with her, so that he would defect with her, to truly, really throw his life away for quite possibly the only greater good that was immediate and only limited to them?
She couldn't take his silence. If he refused to speak to her then it would break her, worse still if he refused to listen to her paltry explanations for her actions. He knew the ultimate bargaining chip for her had been saving his life - that had been her choice, and she had agreed to the unsmiling Irina that she would do almost anything to save him, a fact that her mother had been surprised about, labeling her immediately weak. "Loyalty." The woman spat the word like it was blasphemy, a sin.
Systematically, in those early hours of her confinement, her mother had threatened to kill everyone, not just limited to Vaughn, but their friends. Family. Past lovers, everyone that either had ever known. Dead in a matter of days, untraceable, violent deaths. That was Irina's promise and threat, and the chilling, bleak look in her eyes confirmed that she meant what she said.
She believed Irina Derevko's threats. She believed it when she said that she had people in her employ that would not hesitate to shoot Francie Calfo in the head. Wouldn't blink when it came down to putting a bomb in her fathers car… all these deaths, and countless others- played in her mind slowly as she had silently weighed their options.
Like a snake, that woman had made her slithering demands that Sydney had no choice but to acquiesce to.
And so she had. Nodded, tears streaming down her face, she sold her soul to the devil-their souls, for along with her own she had singularly bargained for Vaughn's life as well.
"It's time" Khasinau interrupted her memory, jerking her eyes away from her reflection and to his worn face at the doorjamb. She couldn't move for a moment, suddenly dumbstruck with full- blown fear.
Her feet scuffled against the concrete of the floor, a whispered sound; she somehow made it to the door. Dizzy from a mixture of adrenaline and sick anticipation, she followed the tall man in front of her, noting the lack of gray in his coal black hair, the slight stoop of his shoulders as he walked ahead of her. His shirt was untucked, some luxurious saffron yellow fabric that moved with his rail thin body as he made strides ahead of her. She knew it was ignorant to think this man weak: he had once held K -Directorate in the palm of his hands. This man, who now shuffled his feet and didn't tuck his expensive, tailored shirt into his Chinos, had been deposed, by none other than her traitorous, manipulative bitch of a mother.
The walk was not long down corridors with unmarked doors and occasional guards, clothed in green-fatigues, their faces bland, emotionless, hands wrapped around assault rifles. Their eyes followed as they past them, training on her, she felt them bore into her back as she walked, staring through the thin fabric of her gossamer shirt, peering beneath, the contrast of white skin shrouded in black and marred with countless bruises, lacing out, angry, across her back, over her ribs.
Khasinau had a key that he used to unlock the heavy door that guarded Vaughn; it opened with a creak and let in a sliver of light from the hallway behind them. She saw nothing in the black within those four walls, nothing but the shadow of herself and the man beside her. Stepping into the interior with more than a bit of caution, her eyes adjusting to the dim light, she found the figure of a person crouched in a far corner as her heart made a thundering sound, drowning out everything in it's forceful beat.
"Vaughn." Her voice sounded rusty from disuse, indescribably tired. It creaked around the edges and threatens to break, but she managed, somehow, to hold herself together. The door closed with a loud, final sound, leaving them alone in near complete darkness. She sunk to her knees in front of him; he blinked up at her, blood in his hair and the dark marks of bruises along his cheeks, his jaw, his hairline.
"Sydney." His mouth moved funny, gingerly, he spoke like he was swollen. She touched his jaw tenderly and he grimaced, but she couldn't stop the course of her fingers. Despite his bruised, broken flesh - the sound of her name on his lips, she still needed validation. Proof it was him, that this was no illusion. No trick. Real.
"What did they do to you?" Tears came to her eyes, hot and angry, but simultaneously mournful. She wanted to erase the injustices he was so undeserving of, that which she had caused him.
The little light in this room made him a mere shadow. His finger lightly grazed over her bandages, the dark spot on her cheek. "You're hurt" He said, his voice so small, so faraway that it ripped something in her, a barrier she fought so hard to keep up in these endless hours of their confinement broken. Sobbing now, she cried openly in front of him as she noticed through water-drenched eyes that they had torn away his clothes and now all the wore was a bloody tee-shirt and ripped leather pants, his feet shoeless, his hair in a million directions. Vaughn wrapped his arms around her, shushing her in this too-quiet, pain-filled room, rocking her back and forth.
"I'm sorry," she said, over and over and over. "I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry."
*
9:52 pm- Arizona
She watches, distractedly, as the fire burns at their feet, sending spirals of smoke into the darkness beyond. He sits opposite her, arms circled around his knees, his head slightly tipped. Every so often his eyelids droop and then open up again, the glint of light in his irises visible even from across the flame and the veil of smoke.
Watching him has become her only form of communication, and there is so much that she learns in these secret conversations. He looks at her sporadically, their eyes almost meeting- never holding- before one or both of them looks down or away. She knows what he is thinking, only because she thinks the same. Or at least she wants to hope that she does.
At one point in this entire fucked up situation, things had been different with them. At least they could speak to one another like adults, but now, it seemed that all this time between them had only bought them silence.
"Michael," she says; watches as he stiffens at the use of his first name. "Would you at least talk to me?"
"No." He says quite evenly, more so with buried menace. She cringes at his tone, frowns at its callous nature.
"Please…" Knowing he hates it when she uses a placating tone. He's gotten so far away from her, and tonight she feels so empty. So clueless in the light of everything that had happened to the two of them in the past three years, and she needs him beside her. He doesn't move, makes eye contact- fleeting, but makes it all the same.
"I said no, Sydney. You bought your solitude. Now live with it." Standing, he brushes off a torrent of dirt and steps away from the fire, his back disappearing into the night.
Sydney brushes away tears that she blames on a shift of the wind and an upstream of smoke.
*
to be continued…in 7-10 days.
a/n: again thanks to jess and fred, who actually make this piece a readable, coherent entity rather than just words on paper, jumbled and confused in tense.
I am not sure if the word "gloms" is actually a word, but as far as I am concerned, if only for today, it is.
Feedback is always appreciated (aliasfanfiction@hotmail.com)