Sworn Secrets
Author: Pharo
Disclaimer: 'Alias' belongs to ABC, Bad Robot, and JJ Abrams.
Summary: Things look different in light of the truth.
Spoilers: "Rendezvous".
Notes: CM Challenge.
Feedback: pharo@newyork.com
'can I break away? push me away, make me fall, just to see another side of me' –trust company, downfall
It's a weird sensation to find out that the truth is not bundled into neat little packages that you think you have figured out. That it's not crystal-cut and open for the world to see. To know that most of the time, what a person sees is the lie that's been perfected through small lies that smooth out the edges. Lies that people like her have said while looking straight into the eyes of people like me.
It's scary to learn more about more about a person in 24 hours than all I thought I knew after the past five years. It hurts to be hit with a disclosure that big – to know that there were people she trusted more than me, the devoted friend who would've kept any secret if she had just asked.
She looks different now that all the lies have been stripped away and all that's real about her is nothing like the person I thought I knew. She glows less and seems rawer somehow. She's not perfect-Sydney whose only imperfection is that she is too devoted to her job anymore. She's now someone who is just as flawed as the rest of us but because of her own accord. Someone who chose to go through more hell in one day than I have to put up with all month. Someone's whose made a single bad decision that could cancel out all of my bad judgement calls in the last year. She seems more real now that I know.
There are little things that I notice about her now that I know. Little tidbits that Francie can't. Things the old Will would never have seen.
Her hand shakes when she touches her face or tucks loose strands of her hair behind her ears. It's almost as if she's afraid of that the person she is now isn't really her. Like she's afraid she's kept on a mask from her other life that will reveal everything.
She practically runs out when she goes on one of her 'bank trips'. A completely valid sounding excuse and then a quick exit as if every second she prolongs the lie, it becomes worse than it already is.
She drinks a lot of wine. I think it helps her forget what she really does day in and day out because she seems happier when she has a drink. Her eyes seem lighter – free from the weighty fabrications. She lets herself smile more and laugh louder. However, she can maintain the degree of discipline that leaves the rest of us after a couple of sips. The control that allows her drop the smile and become composed once more the moment the phone rings.
"Wrong number," she says solemnly into the mouthpiece that tells me, even in my slightly intoxicated state, that she's back in the world of secrets.
"'Night Syd," I say when she has her shoes on and starts to grab her keys from the hook.
"Bye Will," she whispers and the sudden sadness makes her seem older. "Tell Francie I went to get some more popcorn when she comes back from the bathroom."
"Yeah," I say, my eyes travelling to the direction of the bathroom.
By the time I turn back, she's already gone.
That's the way everything with her ends. The only difference is that now I know why. I know why she's perpetually weary but manages to make the world think it's nothing with a smile and a nod.
Sydney Bristow is like the Mona Lisa. If you look at the Mona Lisa the way you'd look at every other painting and it's if she's happy, that her smile is true. But if you look at her differently, flip the painting over, you can see that her smile is really a frown and that the happiness is a merely a façade covering up something more – something deeper.
————
She had suggested that I stay at her house for awhile, "just until they make sure everything is secure" (she always speaks in terms of 'they' as if it's forbidden to use the three letters that 'they' implies). We made up some lame story to tell Francie about how my house was getting worked on – asbestos and reworking of water lines. Francie believed us because we were all friends and that's what friends do. They believe because friends don't lie to each other. But we did.
We're bad friends.
She comes into my room one night. Three knocks followed by the doorknob turning.
"Will."
"Hey Syd."
"Can we talk?"
"Always," I say, falling into the old Will way of interacting with her.
She clicks the door closed. I move over and she sits on the comforter of my bed. She looks down at her hands and then up at me. A second later, she goes back to examining her right hand clasped over her left.
"Will, I understand that you might be wondering about what really happened in Paris."
This is the first time since it happened that she's acknowledged it in a way that doesn't make me feel that I made up the entire thing. She used details – the name of a specific place rather than ambiguous pronouns.
"I thought you couldn't—"
"You should know. So what questions do you have?" she asks and suddenly she reminds me of a teacher talking to a failing kid's parents during a conference.
It's too formal – forced – to be comfortable, to feel like she's letting me in. It's almost as if she's obligated to fill me in. The next logical step in the CIA handbook of what to do when you mess up.
"What do you do?"
"I work for the CIA."
"Is that what SD-6 is?"
"No."
"So what is it?"
She takes a deep breath before reciting what they probably trained her to say.
"SD-6 is a black-ops division—"
I hold my hand up for her to stop speaking.
"No, don't give me the technical term. Are they the good guys or the bad ones?"
"Bad."
"So what do they have to do with you?"
"I'm a good guy trying to take them down. They come off as good guys until you find out the truth. Then your world comes crashing down because suddenly, you're bad through affiliation. Tainted," she says.
"What did you get yourself into Syd?" I ask with a sigh, suddenly weary of the fact that we even have to have this conversation.
"They killed Danny because he knew too much. I let him in and that's the price he had to pay."
She looks down at her hands again and I know that the same thought is going through both of our minds – that could've been me.
"Look Will, I know this is a lot to take in at a once."
"It is a lot to absorb," I agree absentmindedly, my mind still unable to grasp that someone I know is dead because of my best friend.
"I know it's compelling to tell someone about but you can't. Please?"
And suddenly it occurs to me why she didn't tell us about her double life. It wasn't about trust or about safety, but rather about the painful stings that truth brings. As she sits on my bed and asks me to "do this" for her, her eyes pleading with mine, I don't know if I can.
I don't know if I can sit back and agree to pretend not to know that she's risking her life every time there is a wrong number call. I don't know if I can let her look into my eyes and lie to me with such ease that it hurts to breathe when I think of the numerous times before.
"It all happened so quickly," I say softly. "I wouldn't even know where to begin."
"Will, our lives depend on this. I know that if you give your word, you won't go back on it."
I can tell she wants to hear me promise her that I won't open my mouth. The same way that friends swear to secrecy in tree houses – pinkie swears, blood brothers, private handshakes – only there's a lot more at stake now than when I was seven.
"I'd never do anything to hurt you."
"I know."
"Jeez Syd, why couldn't you just have a boring nine-to-five job like the rest of us?"
"I needed some excitement in my life," she says.
My smile fades.
"I stopped writing front page articles," I say in all seriousness. "I walked into Litvack's office and told her that the stress was getting to me and I needed an easier job. She commented on how it was unlike me to give up the front page. It wasn't a matter of giving up stardom but just the fact that I didn't want to research and expose peoples' secrets anymore. I am now new head writer of housing in the metro section."
"I'm sorry Will," she says sadly.
"Hey, no, don't be. It was just time for a change. I needed something a little more exciting."
The beginnings of a smile tug at the corners of her face and I think that maybe things can be normal again.