******
Winter
december
She almost forgets the holidays this year, not remembering until nightfall that it is Christmas Eve. She buys no glossy cards, no expensive ice cream. She wonders if this makes her less sane, less human, and quickly decides she doesn't want to think too hard about that. She's back in Mexico City again, full of its gaudy colors and blazing lights. Hard to forget the holiday, in a place like this.
She leaves the motel after nightfall, when the streets are full of people, in taxis and on bicycles and whole families on foot, all heading toward the cathedrals for midnight mass. She follows them, getting caught up in the crowds, allowing them to pull her along.
She sits in the back of the church, stuffed between an elderly woman wrapped in an enormous orange scarf and a squirming five-year-old in his first suit. When the congregation kneels to pray, all she can think of are the charred bodies on the floor, the ashes someone had to wash away. (Will it always be like this?)
She bends her knees and her head with them, not repeating the words but letting her own words run through her head, the same words that run through her head every night as she tries to sleep.
I love you. IloveyouvaughnIloveyouitsyouIloveyou.
She remains in the pew long after the others leave, hands folded, head bowed, pretending to pray. They leave her in silence, trailing out in couples and families and large groups, voices rising as they reach the street. She waits until they are gone, then slips her hands beneath the pew, running them back and forth across the bottom of the seat. They encounter more chewing gum than she cares to think about. She feels it -- the touch of cool, rough metal, contrasting with the polished wood. She curls her fingers and digs in her nails, face scrunching as the splinters drive into her fingertips. The tendons on her arm pull taut, and after long moments of nothing, the metal begins to move.
She suppresses a grunt as she finally pulls it loose, discreetly glancing to one side and the other, ensuring no stragglers or altar boys are standing nearby. She cups the metal in her hand, pulling it from beneath the shadow of the pew. The knife has a silver grip, engraved with flowing script, and its sheath bears the eerily familiar mark of an eye.
******
2005
january
She watches the New Year from a Paris balcony, for the first time springing for an expensive place. Not that she has a choice. She runs her hand over the bills in her pocket, wondering how much longer this can go on. It would be poetic, wouldn't it: Sydney Bristow, the great international spy, dying of starvation in a Paris alley.
She's dipped into the Swiss account three times, and there's only enough to do so once more. More frightening than the money is the risk of discovery, even though the account's been moved each time. She will have to find concrete information soon, even if it means risking exposure.
She sighs, running her hands through her hair, forgetting about money and discovery for the night. She has a bottle of champagne, and a dusty plastic flute, and she's going to make the most of both of them.
The fireworks display isn't nearly as impressive as it was at the millennium, with the Eiffel tower full of beautiful fire, when she watched it from LA, on the couch in their apartment with Danny's arms wrapped around her. She had the day off (the whole day) and bought a new dress for the party that night. He bought champagne (two bottles) and they cracked one open even though it was only three in the afternoon. They watched the Paris display on tv and toasted and kissed for the New Year with every passing hour, and they never made it to Charlie's party that night.
She tosses the flute away, disgusted, and turns her back on the paltry display. She walks back inside, bottle gripped in her hand, and shuts the doors against the sounds of lovers in the streets.
******
february
Jack
Another dark-suited minion drops it on his desk, another plain manila folder, just like all the others. He opens it, and his fingers slip off the edge; he cannot fathom why someone would send this report now, since -- well, since everything.
Yet another cruelty of the immaculate government system -- in a stuffy office somewhere, hunched over a cheap government-issue desk, an underpaid researcher has been slaving away on this, someone who missed the memo to stop, just a mindless cog in the bureaucratic wheel.
For the report before him is on a woman -- his daughter -- and the 15th-century drawing of her face. He would credit Kendall with passing this on, but he has known him to be callous, never cruel.
As he stares at her face, the images flash back -- beginning the way all his nightmares do, with an innocent blue folder. He slides the photographs aside; he's seen enough of them -- the ones scattered across his coffee table, convenient coasters for the bottle of Jim Beam that always seems to find its way there.
He focuses his clouded vision, blinking too hard in the pale fluorescent lights, and tries to read the words. The words, yes -- but they mean nothing to him. Someone has found a different meaning to the infamous prophecy, it seems -- a cryptic remark no one thought to follow up on. He turns another page, reads a report of a monastery in Assissi, at the base of Mount Subasio. Rambaldi left a drawing there, containing an encoded poem referring to the beauty of the sky.
The cog-like bureaucrat has followed the report with hurried notes, some even scribbled by hand, excited speculations on the possibilities this poem might contain. Someone was quite proud of himself (herself?) for cracking this little code.
Someone was too late.
For the file holds another report, the intel of a team dispatched to Italy just last week. The sketch had been stolen sometime last winter, no one knew quite when. This search, like all the others, proves to be nothing but fruitless waste.
He crumples the final page in his hand, not caring what it contains. A throb runs through the (already) aching vessels in his head. Why would they keep on studying the prophecy, when they already know Sydney's fate? What kind of heartless place would do this, search this way?
What kind of person simply trudges on, knowing the object of his search is dead?