Story: Once Upon A Time
Author: Steph, aka Fanatic482 (stephanie406@att.net)
Disclaimer: Alias and the characters of the show aren't mine. They belong to JJ Abrams, ABC, Bad Robot Productions, etc etc
Rating: PG-13 overall, individual chapters that are R will be marked as such
Spoilers/Summary: Sequel to "Beyond All Limits"; General Season 1 Spoilers; Sydney and Sark on a private island with one Prophecy goal to fulfill
Distribution: Cover Me, Sarkgasm, Dark Enigma yes; all other please ask first
Thanks To: Glenna, Jennifer and Becky for the betas!
Author's Note: Yeah, I think this is the most closely posted chapters to this story that I've put out. Consider yourselves lucky and blessed. Heh. Well, then again, I was on spring break this past week. Chp 6 is started, but not finished, so hit that review button when you're finished reading to motivate me!
Chapter Five: Familial Ties
It was day thirty-four of being on the island. He too had been keeping count of their days on the blissful "little island paradise." He was working within a time frame, much though he wanted to deny such a thing. Against his intentions when he first escorted Sydney, or Amanda as he now called her, to the island, the respect he'd held for her as a professional had evolved into respecting and liking her as a person.
Which made what was coming in thirteen days time all the harder for him to do.
It was his second favorite time of day, sunset, and Ethan sat in a hammock tied between two palm trees on the beach. It was such a beautiful spot, and such a glorious time of day. The span of still-warm white sand stretched until it hit the waves of the blue sea, which melted into the sky above and the setting sun that painted the sky all shades of the rainbow. He was alone, for now, and peace settled into his soul. If nothing else, Mother Nature had always been kind to him, and had always been steadfastedly there.
"Hey." Her melodious voice was just loud enough to be heard over the surf and quiet enough not to ruin the serenity of another beautiful sunset. "Thought I might find you down here." Ethan shifted his gaze in her direction, smiling when his gaze met hers. She'd changed, opting for shorts and a tank top over the sundress she'd worn to dinner. "Mind if I join you?" He felt powerless to do anything but shake his head and make room for her next to him.
He left his arm stretched across the hammock, and she snuggled into his side as she got comfortable. Sometime in the past week, she'd apparently decided to let her guard down and just be herself around him, to stop holding him at arms length and take advantage of the only real human contact she had access to. Automatically and unconsciously, his hand moved up to comb through the silky strands of her hair.
Yes, it was getting very hard for him to be objective about this woman. She tended to steal his breath away more and more often. She sighed in what he took for contentment. As time went by, it got easier to read her, to know what certain facial expressions and sounds meant. The world of Sydney Amanda Bristow was by no means straightforward or clear-cut. He liked that. And he liked that he had the opportunity and the means to finally get to know her. She'd intrigued him from the first time he'd met her.
Her voice broke into his thoughts. "Tell me a story, Ethan." She picked her head up and turned to look at him. "Please?" She brought her legs up into the hammock, draping them over his lap. His left hand came to rest on her knees, trailing across the faint scarring that was the only visible proof to her humanity.
Somewhere along the way, she'd found out he could tell magnificent stories of places he'd been, things he'd done, what it had been like to grow up in an orphanage packed with more children than was right. And he'd discovered that some of those journeys were cathartic—that he'd been longing to share the stories.
He shook his head and smiled gently at her. "Nope. You first tonight."
She groaned and wrinkled her nose. "Fine," she caved, blowing out her breath noisily. "Any requests?"
"Actually, yes, tonight there is." She gazed up at him quizzically. He'd never actually requested a certain story from her. Tonight would be the night everything would change. "Tell me what it was like before she left. What your family was like, what family life was like."
"Well… compared to after she left, life before was idyllic… happy. Nice. Mom and Dad were always so… content. She made dinner when she wasn't off on her little 'conference trips.' She said that cooking was fun, creative, and soothing. When I was four, I went through a phase where all my pasta had to be spiraled. She never once forgot." Sydney smiled reminiscently. "She made my clothes for me, telling me that I was going to be the best-dressed little girl in the whole kindergarten. I always had homemade cookies in my lunches, and notes written on my napkins. Every Friday afternoon when Dad got home from work, we walked to the local park and bought hot dogs from a vendor for dinner.
"I got my first Barbie and Ken dolls when I was five. Since my parents were the most romantic, perfect couple I knew, Barbie and Ken had a marriage just like my parents. After all, Mom was always waiting to give Dad a kiss as soon as he walked in the door. They were always sneaking kisses when they thought I wasn't looking—but I peeked. I always thought they were the most loving couple I'd ever known. Well, until I found out the truth. But even then… there was just a side to Dad that only surfaced when Mom was around. He—he changed after she died. She'd always nagged him about working too hard and not playing enough. Told him that he was going to spoil me rotten, which he did. After she was gone, he never did anything but work, practically forgot I even existed."
Sydney's expression was so sad that Ethan regretted asking her to share at all. "Invariably, things will change. She left, and everything changed."
"Hey." His hand moved up and caught hers, lacing her fingers with his. "Forget I asked."
She shook her head in protest, giving him a weak but brave smile. "You know, Dad once told me that the first real fight they had was over my after-school activities. Mom wanted me to learn to play the piano; Dad wanted me to become a perfect little ballerina."
"So what did you wind up doing?" he asked curiously.
She grinned. "I told them I was going to play soccer. It horrified them enough that they offered a compromise of gymnastics classes."
Ethan burst out laughing. "You really did have them wrapped around your little fingers, didn't you?"
"I most certainly did." Her smile faded, as once again she remembered the tragedy that unfairly tore both her loving parents away from her.
"My turn now, right?" he asked, changing the subject.
"Uh huh," she confirmed and curled closer as the night chill began to set in.
For a moment, he paused in thought. He knew what he should tell her, what she really wanted to know but would probably always be too polite to come straight out and ask him. He'd let her discover his abilities to tell a good story, and knew there was one she continually hoped would be the one he voluntarily told. And because of how much he'd come to like and respect her, he wanted to share it with her. The ultimate story of how he'd become who he had, why he had done the things with his life that he had—a compelling story if ever one existed, though no one but him would ever know it in its entirety.
He took a deep breath and began. Telling the story of a lonely orphan, always the one being bullied around and picked on. At twelve years old, he'd stolen what money and food he could get his hands on and he'd left. Roamed the streets, finding food and shelter where he could, developing a sense of street savvy that would serve him the rest of his life. He lost himself in his story, knowing that if he looked at her, he'd never be able to finish. Not now, with the shaping of how he'd become who he was still to tell.
"I was fourteen when a kid I'd seen around on the streets invited me to join a street gang he'd gotten involved with. There was always fighting in the streets—Catholics and Protestants, men and women, cops and kids. And then there we were—the kids that skulked around behind the law, doing whatever was asked of us, for a price. My first contract was a political candidate who went too far outside the acceptable boundaries of the time. He never even saw me coming, and after he was dead, a particular stroke of genius implicated our largest street rival.
"By fifteen, I'd begun to have a reputation amongst the underground. The particularly difficult jobs came with requests that I perform them. It was money, but more than that there was respect. For the first time, people feared me for what I could do to them. That sense of power was dizzying. The adrenaline rush compares to nothing else in the world. It was thrilling, and I embraced my life, believing I had been destined to live the life I had found.
"By seventeen, my ambitions were higher than what Ireland could provide me. It was harder to evade the law, harder to trust the people that were supposed to be my surrogate family. So I struck out for London. Worked a job here and there, working my way around Europe until your mother approached me. Told me she was impressed with my 'resume' and was interested in hiring me for some freelance work. So I accepted, and over time she didn't trust anyone else. I got promoted into the Organization." He stopped, finally daring to look down at Sydney, trying to gauge a reaction. "She cared about me, and that was more than I'd dared to ever ask for. She looked after me; saw to it that I had everything I could ever want. I—it was like she adopted me, raised me to be the son she'd never had. For the first time in my life, I had real family."
Sydney's eyes were shining with tears. "Ironic, isn't it? The only family you ever knew began only after mine fell apart." The pain in her eyes burnt dangerous and hot, making his throat constrict at the realization that he'd caused it.
"Sydney—" Ethan reached his hands down to brush away her tears, but she violently twisted out of his reach, both unaware that he'd called her by her first name.
"Don't. Just don't." And then she was gone, running down the beach in the direction away from the house.
He sat where he was, knowing as well as she did that he had to let her go. But it didn't ease his frustration. His signature self-control slipped a few notches as the frustration welled and he took it out by kicking the sand at his feet and uttering a few choice explicatives.