With My Dying Breath
12.
I closed my eyes and immediately darkness came over me, filling everything with it's smooth blackness; clogging up every crack of light in sight.
I immediately hold Sydney a little tighter to me so that I know she is there. The dream is coming again.
It always comes now; it is inevitable. As soon as I close my eyes, it attacks my senses until I am dead with fear and I open my eyes to hope again.
I can hear Jack snoring in the room next door and I can feel Sydney's shallow breaths on my neck but those sensations are fading fast and I start to sink into sleep and the dream catches me once more.
"Don't look back Vaughn. Just keep on going but whatever it is, don't look back."
I look at her angelic face but can barely register her words.
"Are you coming with me?"
"Why would I go with you?"
"Because you promised you would. You said that you would be by my side forever."
I hold out my hand and wait for her to place her own in it so that we can walk back home and sit on the beach once more.
But the hand never comes.
"Sydney?"
She looks at me and I see sudden emotion flit across her face before disappearing as she strengthens her resolve. But I don't understand why she feels she has to hide her feelings from me.
"Forever turned out to be a lot shorter than we thought it would be."
My blood turns to ice at those words.
"What are you saying? Sydney, come on, let's go."
"I can't. There's nowhere left to go."
In desperation, I grab her hand in mine, not willing to let her get away that easily. "What are you talking about? There are a million things left to see and a billion things left to do."
"For you. Not with me. There's no more time."
Her hand slips away but I grasp it again before it falls to her side.
"We have all the time in the world."
She looks at me kindly, with a wisdom I can only hope to one day have lighting up her features.
"Yes you do."
"We. We do."
For a second I think I see tears in her eyes but I must be mistaken because now they are dry. She brings my face down to hers and kisses my forehead lightly.
"Go on now. Don't look back remember."
And I feel dazed as I listen and do as she tells me to do.
But then I feel the loneliness; the pangs of sharp regret running through my body make me turn back.
But it's gone. Everything's black and there is nothing anywhere.
I have truly lost her.
My eyes burst open and I can feel the layer of sweat that envelopes my body.
The same sweat I have been covered with for the past month.
Ever since Sydney came home.
I suppose that, in a way, it's fair. The days with her are so perfect that there has to be some retribution. So in payment of my days, I give up my nights to fear and death and loss.
But I suppose that this way is better than living with fear and loss and dreaming about some far off fulfillment.
I check to make sure Sydney is still lying next to me; it's the same thing I do every night.
I sigh, finally feeling the dream releasing its hold on me.
But then I freeze.
And stare at the woman lying next to me.
Why? Why am I doing this?
Because she is lying so horribly still.
I lay a gentle hand on her throat and panic until I detect a low pulse. It's barely there and I know now that my dreams have prepared me for nothing.
Instead, they have merely become reality.
Full of fear, I find myself walking into the living room and calling an ambulance.
It's as if my body is on auto-pilot. I have no idea how to function anymore yet I am.
~:~
"Jack."
It's barely a whisper but agents are trained to sleep lightly and he is awake in an instant.
"What is it? What's wrong?" He sounds grumpy and, though normally I would have been shaking by now, there is an actual answer to his question.
"Sydney."
His eyes are open immediately and he is as alert as I've ever seen him.
"What happened?"
"She's unconscious with a very low pulse and heartbeat."
I hate how mechanical my words sound.
He briskly walks to our room and I hear sirens in the distance.
He walks out, carrying her in his arms.
"I'll take her," I offer. But he glares at me.
"You will do no such thing."
It's his emotion talking. I'm sure of it. But my emotions speak too and this is the time that they choose to do it.
"I'm her fiance and I will take her to the hospital."
He steps towards me and seemingly towers over me though he is shorter than I am. And for the first time, I see the tears glistening in his eyes and the worry lines deepening in his forehead.
"She's my daughter. Before anything else, she's my daughter. And I wasn't the one who took her out of the hospital. You can follow us in your car but I will be the one in the ambulance holding her hand. Because I am her father and she needs me."
He makes sense and I remember a time when I felt sorry for him; he was losing his daughter in every way possible. Even to me. But now I had something to lose too.
"And I don't? I have great need for your daughter Jack, and I can't just let her go."
"I know you love her Agent Vaughn, and I know she loves you. But this is not your decision to make. And I swear that if you try one more time to take her from me, I will gut you."
The sirens are closer now and he opens the door and the stretcher comes.
I watch him lay his daughter so gently on the stretcher and I feel my heart breaking.
She is absolutely limp and she's all by herself. White as the sheet covering her. She's being hoisted into the truck and Jack's climbing into it.
To be with her.
And I realize that it's raining. That the heavens must be crying for Sydney Bristow because, for some reason, I can't squeeze out a tear. I am frozen to the asphalt, watching as everything moves in slow motion.
I see Jack turn towards me and I see the sorrow in his face and the silent apology that he will never actually say.
There is a mutual understanding as the doors close.
And with the bang of the closing doors, the world resumes its pace. I am drenched; my sorrow has burst, and I am left alone crying in the middle of the street.
TBC~
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-Jenn