DISCLAIMER - Still don't own them...if you do own them, can I have them for my birthday? Please? Lyrics from "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence [again, something I don't own], and the poetry is from a poem by Oscar Wilde [now *that's* a writer]. But, again, it's something I don't own.

Evolution

Cocoon

Wake me up

Wake me up inside

Call my name and save me from the dark

Save me

Save me from the nothing I've become

Only you are the life among the dead.

Bring me to life

            - "Bring Me To Life", Evanescence

You hold a gun to your head, and you wonder whether or not anyone would really care if you pulled the trigger.

You have no family, really.

Your mother, just a few hours ago, tried to kill you. [Tell me... Sydney... who sent you here? You must tell me.]

You didn't particularly care to play Twenty Questions with the mother who had abandoned [betrayed] you and your father so many years ago. [What? I'm grounded?]

Your father…well, maybe on some level he cares, but he was destroyed by your mother's betrayal, and he's just a hollow shell in some respects, his heart ripped out by a Russian spy so many years ago and stamped on until there was nothing left, and he's unable to love you properly and that's another thing you have to blame on your mother. [not enough to betray him, you had to break him as well]

You've killed all the men who have ever loved you.

Danny died because you couldn't keep your mouth shut, because you pathetically needed someone to know the truth about you. [People aren't spies forever.]

Noah died because you drove him to become an enemy of SD-6. [Because I was in love…I saw that as a sign of weakness in this work.]

Will's life has just been destroyed because he was too curious about the death of your fiancée, and because he loved you a little bit too much, even though he knew you didn't feel the same way. [Syd... I don't love you because of what you do, or what you don't do. I just love you.]

Vaughn died because he cared too much about you. [I'm saying I am falling love with you.] He died because you let him love you, let him care for you, rather than just pushing him away, even though you needed him so much. You gave yourself to him, with whispered words in concrete warehouses with chain link fences, and with little glances when you thought no one was looking, and by doing things with him that forever erased the line between you. You gave yourself to him after you used him, and after he used you, and after you told him you were sorry [Sorry for coming into your life, sorry for screwing up your perfect, normal world] you told him that you loved him, and it was then that you knew that this would only end in pain. Maybe, you think, if you never told him that you loved him, maybe, just maybe, none of this would ever have happened.

But you weren't strong enough. You weren't strong enough to push him away, to hide your love, to deny your needs, to make him hate you, or at least be reassigned so you'd have meetings with someone that you wouldn't be constantly fantasizing what it would be like to push them up against that chain link fence and kiss them until neither of you knew what your names were, until neither of you remembered anything about your life [because forgetting would be a welcome thing…forgetting would be bliss]. But you weren't strong enough, and now he's dead because of that. He's dead, because of you.

You needed him too much, and you couldn't let him go even though you knew you would end up killing him like all the others, because in the end all you are is a black widow spider, at once fascinating [like moths to a lamp they go] and deadly [eats her lovers].

You didn't go to his funeral. You couldn't stand to watch as they buried an empty coffin. Couldn't stand their glances when they think you're not watching, shouting [this is your fault].

Eric [I called him Balls of Steel, he told you] came to see you, came to see if you were all right, to let you know they had a team in Taipei looking for him. [I UNDERSTAND THAT! He's my friend, too!] You knew that he was just taking the company line, just trying to make you feel better. But at the same time you could see in his eyes the hate he felt despite himself. [You killed him. He was my best friend, and he was a good man and you killed him and you took him away from us and you took away my best friend and you killed him. You killed him!]

You couldn't stand to see his mother there, crying over the son she lost to the daughter like she lost her husband so many years ago to the mother. Like mother, like daughter. Vaughn men die at the hands of Bristow women. But Vaughn's dead. And he left no sons to die. And you will die childless and alone, right here.

That's one thing you're thankful for. The tradition stops here. You will kill no more that you love.

You are a literature student in one life. You studied Oscar Wilde well. A poem that you always found depressing and hard to understand comes to mind now.

For each man kills the thing he loves/ ..By each let this be heard/Some do it with a bitter look/Some, with a flattering word./The coward does it with a kiss/The brave man, with a sword!

Now you understand the words. More than understand, in a way. You are the words. You've killed all that you love, as a coward and as a brave man [Danny, with a kiss/Noah with a sword/Vaughn with kisses and water and swords and guns and everything in between].

You've killed everything that you love. But this is where it ends. Right here, right now, this is where you will end it all.

Your hands are still on the gun, and it's still raised to your head.

….His hands on yours, that night on the pier…When you're at your absolute lowest, at your most depressed, just remember that you can always... you know. You got my number….

He said he'd always be there for you. [my guardian angel] He said he loved you. He said he'd break into the Vatican with you. But he's not here now, is he? He's not here when you need him most, because you killed him because he was always there and because he said he'd go with you to Taipei, and…and you killed him.

Why can't he go away? All you can see in your head is him.

…Together at the warehouse, the first time you kissed, when you finally felt everything and nothing and you felt free even for a little while and it was everything that you needed and nothing that you wanted and it was good and you needed him so badly…

…then in the bloodmobile, the way he traced your cheek with the tip of his finger, how he breathed gently on your neck, until you were nearly begging him then stood up and told you that this wasn't about your ghosts, that this was about you and him…and you told him that you wanted him because you did, oh so badly you wanted him and you needed him and you had to have him to take away the pain and the blood and when you were with him you didn't see the stains on your hands because nothing else mattered with him…

…the last time, in the warehouse again, when you told him that you were falling in love with him, and he knew as well as you that you were lying, that you already were in love with him, because he was already in love with you as well…and you lay in his arms and you felt safe, and snug, and the world didn't matter anymore, and time passed by and you didn't care, because this was you, and this was him, this was Vaughn, this was the man you loved, and you didn't care then that you were going to kill him, because that was something you thought about only when you were apart from him, because when you were with him nothing mattered…

All you see is him. His death, his life, his love.

Your hands tremble a little as you raise the gun once more to your head and prepare to pull the trigger. It ends here.

Peace. And no blood on your hands.

No more blood on my hands. You like the sound of that. So you prepare to be nothing, and begin to apply pressure to the trigger.   

Your beeper goes off. [you just threw your beeper into the Pacific] Damnit, does everything have to remind you of him?

You put the gun down. You don't know why you didn't just finish it there, once and for all. But he haunts you too much still. Everything you see, everything you touch, everything that you are, every part of you. You thought it was bad enough with Danny, being moved to tears every time you heard that stupid song…now everything that you see reminds you of him. Posters for the Kings. [You're a Kings fan, aren't you?...the pen in your briefcase] Golf. Bugs. [What are you, twelve years old?] Pizza places. [Joey's Pizza?] Picture frames [I got you a present.]

Everything reminds you of him.

You can't bring yourself to put the gun back to your head. He won't let you.

You look at your beeper. It's your father.

You dial his number, and he answers promptly.


"Bristow."

"You paged me?"


"Ah, yes, Sydney. Sloane's sending you on a mission to France."

"What's in France?"

"One of Khasinau's men, Ravais, has a property there. Sloane wants you to put a bug in his office. You have a briefing at SD-6 in half an hour, and one with Weiss an hour later."

"Got it. Thanks." And with that, you disconnect the line, and look at the gun in your hand.

You're going to France.

He was born in France, you know. He has a French mother and an American father. He lived there for a few years after his father died [after your mother made him one of those stars].

He's a ghost you can't escape, and a ghost that won't let you die.

* * *

You've planted the bug, and you're on the way home, [home? What is home these days besides a place with more lies?] when you see a man that you saw in Taipei after you had escaped from your mother. [it was an unreinforced aluminium chair… I wedged it against a water valve to put stress on the weld points….getting past the door was harder]. He had been part of the hazmat team cleaning up the mess you had caused. [There was a hazmat team cleaning up the mess, testing the water. I stole a suit and went in.]

You're tired, so very tired. You're tired of lies, and you're tired of loss, and of having blood on your hands, and you're tired of loving people who you hurt, because that's all you do to them. But most of all you're tired of life itself. You want to die, but his ghosts [all your ghosts] won't let you. They beckon you, all three men, like the wise men you heard about at Sunday school, all three standing there, haunting you, beckoning you down the stairs behind the man you remember from Taipei.

So you go down the stairs, because you're too tired to fight your ghosts anymore, and you make yourself invisible and you watch Khasinau with a saw working on something [someone] and so you duck behind a corridor and you see who he's working on, and your heart stops.

It's him.

And then you're back in the ocean, as so many unnamed emotions rush throughout you, so many conflicting, fleeting thoughts…

You saw him die.

You watched it, over and over and over and over again until you put a gun to your head to get you out of the nightmare and then you realised that it wasn't a nightmare, it was your life…

He's alive. Oh God, he's alive, he's alive, he's alive…he's alive.

You look at your hands.

Blood once there is now gone.

You finally have the chance to purge your sins, to appease the devils inside.

You can save him.

And you do.

And at the same time you're saving yourself as well, because he's alive, and you don't want to die anymore, and he's alive and you have a rock again, and he's alive, and you have something to hold onto, someone to make you free again, someone to be free for, someone to love and hold, someone to live for.

He's alive.

And in the process of saving him, you save yourself.

Please read and review!


And yes, EgyptianKat, passion can mean many different things. Suffering, desire, want, love…as I said, a very versatile word. Bu the first two meanings there are what this story's about – suffering and desire [read: love].

So. Yes. Please read and review! Please, please, please!


Em