Title: The Exam

Summery: Sydney is just having a really bad day.

Post Episode and spoilers: Color Blind

Author: Sarandipity

Distibution: Fanfiction.net and possibly SD-1, soon.

Disclaimer: Don't own alias, diddy diddy da.

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Sydney Bristow, secret agent extraordinaire, was frightened. Not by the usual mob of large Slavic gangsters or colorblind assassins but by a measly Q & A exam.  But yet again the world is always out to get Secret Agent Sydney Bristow even if she was off duty. She had said that Florence was beautiful that time of the year, but honestly she only knew that Romanian Mental Institutions prefer shock therapy rather to a shirk and a leather sofa.

She took out her number two pencil, newly sharpened and pinked tipped, and began to take to the paper in a legible script effortless for the professor to examine. One hand supported her paper and she could feel her clammy fingers sticking like bonbons to the parchment. Her other hand scratched the paper like nails to a blackboard. Her pencil had been too sharp and she pressed too hard. Sydney always put too much pressure on her script to a point when it was inerasable.

A mass of students expressed their exasperation at her annoying screeching in a majority of hushing.

Sydney looked around at her classroom of peers with a remorseful appearance as they returned to their own papers. Sydney couldn't tell if they had been bothered or distressed. It was only a test, right? A test that she didn't study for or even knew of it's existence until that paper landed face down on her small plastic imitation of a maple wood desk. Was she nervous? No, not really. She was more uncomfortable at the essay part. She could do with a couple of sentences at the majority of the questions, passing a few for a couple of words and of course restating it to seem longer. But if she had to write more that a five-hundred-word essay, in which she was completely lost to do so, she was going to fail.

"Ms. Bristow," Her attention gazed from the classroom to the Professor Morgan sitting at the front of the board. "Eyes on your own paper."

Sydney smiled uneasily and returned her stare to the paper on her desk. She took a great moment to examine the question and she never processed it through her psyche to formulate a valid answer.

Sydney's mouth hung opened as her eyes gawked at her own paper. The first question and she was blurring out into space? "Focus!" She harshly whispered to herself. Obviously her Professor looked up concerning as well as the other annoyed students at the bizarre outburst. She almost laughed it up as she once looked around the room and back at her own paper.

1. Give specifics on the first writings that recognized Walt Whitman as the great poet of the democratic spirit of America? (2 pts.)

This was a two-point question? She didn't believe it, it seemed more like a four point question then a two-point but totally not a two-point question. How many writings did they go over that semester, ten? It seemed way more than that. Sydney took a large deep breath as she began to sum up any poem she knew authored by Walt Whitman and expressed how he gave the people a democratic view.

Wait, there weren't asking for how the he gave people democratic view.

Damn it! She was going off topic!

She lightly erased the chicken scratch and realized the lead was to dark to be erased so easily. Sydney began furiously erasing the paper the ebony lead into the paper creating a large smug. She pressed the other side of the eraser harder into the paper when suddenly the pink tip broke off the end and bounced its way into a white man's curly red Afro.

She squinted in hysteria, the majority of her thought it was funny while also she thought this was extremely ironic. Before she could oppress anymore-inner giggles she snorted shaking her body into a hiccup.

Sydney Bristow snorted, not one of those doubting hiccups but the full on impression of 'did I do that?' Steve Urkle snorts.

It wasn't her fault; it was the man in front of her trying to pose as a black man in a retro style hairdo when he had an impression of an albino. He also wore his pants do far down on his hips that his underwear didn't even cover what it was suppose to on his backside. He was just screaming for a bikini waxing—on the opposite side though. He brought too much attention to the room and left her hiccupping into Steve Urkle snorts. How could you blame her?

"Ms. Bristow, please." Her eyes shot back up to Professor Morgan who was obviously infuriated by her outburst. "Students are trying to finish the exam."

"Sorry." She sincerity said to her peers and to her Professor. He nodded and told her to continue on with the exam.

She nodded and combed her hair between her fingers as she sunk to her back, humiliated once again by her own faults and of course the conventional Professor Morgan. Her eyes shot back to the clock realizing that she had wasted half of the class on question one.

1. Give specifics on the first writings that recognized Walt Whitman as the great poet of the democratic spirit of America? (2 pts.)

She reread the question and still she sat there like a lump potato, her pencil began to flicker up and down in a fast beating motion between her two fingers on the desk. And of course people tried to ignore her but it was hopeless to try to intervene with her nervous habits. She supported her tipsy head with her fist on her cheek, waiting for her whole left side to become numb. She was actually thinking about not completing this exam really, she didn't care anymore.

Her very deep glace became a lifeless stare and so forth blurring out the questions to the exam…you are now entering the twilight zone…Sydney's mind mocked. She shook herself alert and made sure she was going to finish this if she had almost…ten minutes left?

She wasted all that time nodding off into space and had three more pages of this Q & A to finish. She really did herself in this time. After all the spies, after all the missions, and after years of meetings with Sloane she couldn't even finish a three page Q & A on American Literature. Hello? She American, couldn't she just sum it up into a righteous American patriot? She could do that in less than ten minutes. Right?

She took her very damaged bitten yellow pencil without an eraser and began to chicken scratch all the things that could be recognized as Walt Whitman best works in American poetry.

Half way through her answer her pencil broke.

She held it up in front of her eyes, the almost eaten number two pencil was splintered in half and its lead point could be no longer used. She sighed as she leaned on the other side of her desk to find the pencil in her pocket of her backpack. Ironically, the bar kept her from reaching her bag and every time she reached over to that top pocket the old plastic chair squeaked.

Eyes bolted from their paper and over to Sydney Bristow's annoying squeaking desk.

Professor Morgan was fully done with her annoying outbursts.

"Ms. Bristow, could you please…" She ordered from marking her student's papers.

"My pencil broke, I'm just…" Sydney squinted as she reached farther to grab her bag.

Students' eyes rolled and sighed as they were inevitably interrupted.

"Ms. Bristow, please don't lean." Professor Morgan snuffled.

"I'm just trying to get another one in my…"

Sydney hand grasped the backpack but unfortunately sent her whole niche capsizing over to the floor. The desk wobbled at first as her hand reached over the side of the desk and then finally in one unexpected but probable motion it tipped onto the side where Sydney's weight had been stressing over. Her papers went flying to the floor as well as all her personal belongings rolling into the open as well as some feminine hygienic products. At first she didn't know what happened but she felt throbbing on her right arm things quickly became clear.

Student's bolted up from their chairs and the man with the Afro and helped her up from her capsized desk. She realize her arm had been pinned under the metal bar with all of her body weight and now was hurting as worse than the blistering shocks in freezing fish water she received in Romania. Well, maybe not as worse but possible as bad.

The teacher helped her up from the desk and took a good look at her arm. He held it under his own hands and moved it slightly and a moan escaped Sydney's lips.

"Well Ms. Bristow, it seems you fractured your arm. I'll get the infirmary. You stay put." He retreated to the front with a displeased smile on his face. The guy with an Afro began to pick up all her scattered personal items from the dusty tile floor. He placed it back in her messenger bag, and then took a purple wrapped spherical item that lay at his feet and stared at it inquisitively. For a man in the hardest American Literature program in the country he was pretty slow and dimwitted.

"Dude, that's a tampon." One of the jocks thrashed at him in a very loud baritone whisper.

Someone just doesn't want me happy.

Sydney could feel her heart beat faster and her face turn a certain shade of red in humiliation. The Afro kid almost threw the tampon back into her bag as the men started laughing in the most annoying hyena giggle. Sydney grabbed her bag wishing to leave the classroom. It wasn't right how she was being sent right back to junior high. Still, she was the biggest goof in school and it was so tiring.

The nurse helped her up and put her in a wheel chair and walked her down to the infirmary. It seemed as if the Professor was going to let her study after all.

She was put on a bed and the med students crowed around her bed like a fresh piece of meat. The doctor explained the fracture in medical terminology that was she decided to ignore as the morphine was leaked through her IV. She wished out of all places she was brought to, it had to be the medical student's branch. This was how she met Danny, after a large jump for the track team left her shoes full of sand and her ankle twisted.

The cast seemed too heavy the last time she had one on. Unbelievably, she was sixteen when her leg broke in a terrible skiing accident. That's what people said, and that's what she told herself but really she tripped and fell on ice. The skiing story was more appealing to the boys who would come over to her couch and try to seem caring. The all-girls boarding academies left her sort of flirtatious with the other species during that year hiatus. That's too how she met Steven, her high school sweetheart. To this day, Steve thinks she was going down a triple black diamond and her skies broke when she tried to do a full airborne 360.

"Take these twice a day, it will numb the pain." The doctor handed her the orange bottle filled with pink horse pills. She put that in her bag as her hand rested in an arm sling. "You probably will have that on for a couple of weeks for the hairline fracture to heal. You're lucky that it didn't break."

She nodded and thanked the doctor. He opened up the blind around her bed, and there stood Will and Francie to take her home.

Hopefully this day didn't get worse.

"You're alright Syd? They called and said that you…fell over in your desk…" Will tried to keep a serious face as he almost did the same snort she did. Francie slapped his arm, ashamed of him.

"What, have you ever had a friend almost break her arm from falling off her desk?" He raised his arms defensively.

"Actually, I was still in the desk when I fell over." Sydney mumbled as she stood up from the sterile cot.

"See, my point!" Will laughed hysterically. "Seriously Sydney, are you ok?"

"Please, Will. I had injuries worse than this." Like bullet shots, pulled ligaments, shock therapy.

"Let's get you home." Francie planned maternally.

Sydney was so tired when Will helped her to the car. The morphine kicked her out most of the day and she refused the stay there any longer. She rather rest in the comfort of her own home for now. Hopefully this would call for some time off, but the possibilities of that ever happening were slim to none. She could make it into something really terrible, like she was almost raped and the thug twisted her arm to do so. It was really terrible what excuse she had to make up because of the extreme job.

They won't believe it anyway, first she was the best fighter, and secondly, it was on her medical files.

And this was the CIA, and the imposter CIA.

Both of them were going to find out what happened.

They probably know about her junior year skiing trip and how she didn't really go down a triple black diamond hill.

"Ok, were you leaning or you lost your balance?" The trio entered the Los Angeles flat where Francie and Sydney lived, and the occasional tornado of unknown food stealing also happened. Wow, Los Angeles had thugs, white guys with Afros, and human eating tornados. What a town?

Sydney collapsed on the couch and took the clicker from in between the sofa.

"I was leaning." Sydney huffed as she began to channel surf.

"Was it before or after the pencil broke?" Will opened up Sydney's stash of home made hard lemonade.

"After."

"Did your skirt fly up when you fell?"

"Hopefully not, I'm on my period."

"Ok, Syd. Did really need to know that!"

"You asked for details, I'm giving you details."

Will gazed at his best friend totally exhausted from maintaining a 4.0 GPA and still keeping the economy in check. Sydney worked hard, received little money, and still wanted to become the world's greatest professor even on her period and with a broken—fractured arm.

"Why do you channel surf?"

"I don't know, I really don't like commercials." Sydney replied.

The phone ringed and of course Will picked it up even if he did resign there.

"Yeah?"

A moment of frustration freezed his face.

"Were not Joey's pizza, dude, stop calling." Will looked at Sydney with a shocked face as he set the phone back on the cradle. "Can you believe it? Don't they get a clue? I really don't think a Joey's Pizza exists in Los Angeles."

Sydney sat up and decided to go for a little walk.

She also decided that this day sucked.

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