Intruder
A/N : Obviously I do not own Alias. It belongs to JJ Abrams, ABC, Bad Robot, etc.
I'm not 100% sure where this story came from or if it's any good, but I just finished a really long story and I felt like writing something short and simple and different. I hope you like it...
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It should be raining. It should at least be cloudy. But it isn't, and it is strangely disconcerting.
Cemeteries are supposed to be gray.
But the sun is beaming down upon me and causing me to sweat uncomfortably in my black pantsuit, and it is not damp or gray in the slightest. I am standing here on the dry grass and my black high heels aren't digging into the mud and becoming dirty like I had expected them to, like they usually do at cemeteries. I hear two birds chirping happily in the trees behind me and a pair of squirrels is dodging playfully in and out of view behind the headstones. And I am standing at the grave of my fiancé who was brutally murdered five years ago because of my need for him to know the truth.
Everything is all wrong.
I had woken up that morning with a sick feeling my stomach. I hadn't been planning on going, but when I woke up, I just knew. It had been five years to the day, and it was finally time to go back, to pay my respects to Danny, to apologize to him, to be mature.
So now I am standing here next to a gravestone I haven't seen in half a decade and I am a complete stranger. A stranger to Danny and a stranger to myself.
I don't know the person who used to love this man so much. I can see her in my memory, but I can not relate to who she was. I'm not that girl anymore. The girl who fell in love with a smart, funny, charming medical student and imagined herself marrying him and having his children and quitting her job to stay home in her big, brick house and take care of them.
That naïve little girl doesn't exist. She disappeared when Danny died, and whatever part of that innocence I had allowed to sneak back in when I fell in love with Vaughn vanished when I saw the wedding band on his finger. Whoever that idealistic girl used to be turned into me, and who exactly that is I have yet to discover.
I am an intruder in my own past. I wish I could say that I have thought about him everyday, but that would be a lie. Before I disappeared, I thought of him when I needed motivation, whenever I needed a reason to keep on fighting. Since I have returned, I think about him only when it hurts too much to think about what I have now: nothing and no one. When it hurts too much to imagine Francie with a bullet hole in her forehead, I think about the life I used to have with Danny and Francie and Will when none of them had heard of SD-6. When it hurts too much to lie awake, completely alone in my bed and think about the fact that Vaughn's beautiful wife is the one who is sound asleep in his arms, I think about the life I used to have where Michael Vaughn didn't exist. When it is too scary to relive waking up in Hong Kong one more time, I think about waking up next to Danny. When I can't stand the memory of finding his bloody, murdered body in the bathtub, I think of him proposing to me or dancing with me or reading a book next to me in bed.
I am an intruder because I only think of him when it is convenient, or when I need to remember the way things were in order to assuage the pain of the way things are.
But maybe that's alright.
Maybe that was Danny's last gift to me, wonderful memories that no one can ever change. Memories that I can wrap around me for warmth when it's too cold and I need a respite from the stinging gusts of icy wind that are my life.
I kneel down next to the headstone, as if proximity to the words "Daniel Hecht" will allow him to hear me better, wherever he may be. "I still miss you, Danny," I whisper. "I'm sorry if you can't always see that, but I love you and I miss you. And I miss what we would have had together." I place the flowers on the grass in front of the headstone.
And I walk away, not knowing if I said enough, wondering if there exist words which can express the amount of guilt I feel over having become a person that Danny wouldn't even recognize were he to come back. Would he be able to forgive me for becoming the person I am?
And now I'm in my car and I'm heading to work and the strangest thing just happened.
It started to rain.
A/N : Obviously I do not own Alias. It belongs to JJ Abrams, ABC, Bad Robot, etc.
I'm not 100% sure where this story came from or if it's any good, but I just finished a really long story and I felt like writing something short and simple and different. I hope you like it...
_________________________________
It should be raining. It should at least be cloudy. But it isn't, and it is strangely disconcerting.
Cemeteries are supposed to be gray.
But the sun is beaming down upon me and causing me to sweat uncomfortably in my black pantsuit, and it is not damp or gray in the slightest. I am standing here on the dry grass and my black high heels aren't digging into the mud and becoming dirty like I had expected them to, like they usually do at cemeteries. I hear two birds chirping happily in the trees behind me and a pair of squirrels is dodging playfully in and out of view behind the headstones. And I am standing at the grave of my fiancé who was brutally murdered five years ago because of my need for him to know the truth.
Everything is all wrong.
I had woken up that morning with a sick feeling my stomach. I hadn't been planning on going, but when I woke up, I just knew. It had been five years to the day, and it was finally time to go back, to pay my respects to Danny, to apologize to him, to be mature.
So now I am standing here next to a gravestone I haven't seen in half a decade and I am a complete stranger. A stranger to Danny and a stranger to myself.
I don't know the person who used to love this man so much. I can see her in my memory, but I can not relate to who she was. I'm not that girl anymore. The girl who fell in love with a smart, funny, charming medical student and imagined herself marrying him and having his children and quitting her job to stay home in her big, brick house and take care of them.
That naïve little girl doesn't exist. She disappeared when Danny died, and whatever part of that innocence I had allowed to sneak back in when I fell in love with Vaughn vanished when I saw the wedding band on his finger. Whoever that idealistic girl used to be turned into me, and who exactly that is I have yet to discover.
I am an intruder in my own past. I wish I could say that I have thought about him everyday, but that would be a lie. Before I disappeared, I thought of him when I needed motivation, whenever I needed a reason to keep on fighting. Since I have returned, I think about him only when it hurts too much to think about what I have now: nothing and no one. When it hurts too much to imagine Francie with a bullet hole in her forehead, I think about the life I used to have with Danny and Francie and Will when none of them had heard of SD-6. When it hurts too much to lie awake, completely alone in my bed and think about the fact that Vaughn's beautiful wife is the one who is sound asleep in his arms, I think about the life I used to have where Michael Vaughn didn't exist. When it is too scary to relive waking up in Hong Kong one more time, I think about waking up next to Danny. When I can't stand the memory of finding his bloody, murdered body in the bathtub, I think of him proposing to me or dancing with me or reading a book next to me in bed.
I am an intruder because I only think of him when it is convenient, or when I need to remember the way things were in order to assuage the pain of the way things are.
But maybe that's alright.
Maybe that was Danny's last gift to me, wonderful memories that no one can ever change. Memories that I can wrap around me for warmth when it's too cold and I need a respite from the stinging gusts of icy wind that are my life.
I kneel down next to the headstone, as if proximity to the words "Daniel Hecht" will allow him to hear me better, wherever he may be. "I still miss you, Danny," I whisper. "I'm sorry if you can't always see that, but I love you and I miss you. And I miss what we would have had together." I place the flowers on the grass in front of the headstone.
And I walk away, not knowing if I said enough, wondering if there exist words which can express the amount of guilt I feel over having become a person that Danny wouldn't even recognize were he to come back. Would he be able to forgive me for becoming the person I am?
And now I'm in my car and I'm heading to work and the strangest thing just happened.
It started to rain.