Title: A New Flame
Timeframe: Late Season Three, after Remnants
Author: Edes
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me
Summary for Part 6: Will and Leah are caught up in their thoughts
A/N: A lot of people put flashbacks in italics, so I'm trying to represent the past in both italics and present tense. That means thoughts become non-italic in the past, and vice versa. Hope it isn't too confusing.
Feedback welcome and appreciated!!! If you read it, I'd love to hear about it. Even if you think it stinks.
Part Six: Life is but a dream
[Laura]
Unfortunately, Sydney isn't an option. Jack protected her long ago from any meddling but his, preparing his mind games before she was even born. Laura knows better than to interfere—as much as she enjoys the little agent Sydney is becoming, Sydney has always been Jack's project.
Laura finds Jack's precautions adorably ironic. He protects his daughter from brainwashing at the same time that he secures her future in one of the world's most dangerous occupations. I guess he's decided that if he didn't program her, someone else would. Someone like me.
Jack is right, of course; his ability to analyze borders on prescience. But Laura keeps her secrets very, very well. Beset with work, sure in his plans, Jack does not notice that what he does to Sydney instructs Laura what to try with her subjects.
Laura, however, thinks it is a nice division of labor. It is Jack's job to slip into the minds of children. It is Laura's duty to learn how he does it.
The girls are drawing at the kitchen table, heads close to their little crayon scenes. They are quiet, absorbed. Jack is not due home until tomorrow at the earliest. Laura watches the children draw. They are so beautiful.
Leah excels, drawing fantastical unicorns and maidens that Syd envies silently.
Sydney uses her markers to draw people. Today, Dad and Mom hold hands on her paper. Scamper the cat hides in the grass. Syd dances on the lawn, under a sky formed by a simple blue stripe at the top of the page. Their crayon house spouts a perfect curl of smoke from a chimney that their real house doesn't have. "M" birds fly by, getting a good view of this ideal family.
Moments like this turn Laura's heart over. That's enough of that.
"Leah, honey, can I see your picture?"
"Sure, Ms. Bristow." Leah scuttles over, settles in the chair next to where Laura was paying bills. Never one to miss out, Syd leans over and looks, too.
"Wow, that's really neat, Leah." Laura's voice is warm, enveloping.
Leah beams. Ms. Bristow is always so nice. And so pretty. "See, that's the snow-unicorn-princess-queen, Sara. She can ride her unicorn, Star, with this magic saddle. I always pretend like she goes invisible when she uses the saddle, but I can't draw that, 'cause it's invisible."
Syd giggles, and Laura smiles indulgently. "Can I draw something on your paper, Leah?"
"OK." Syd and Leah lean in closer.
"Watch my pen, ladies, and I'll show you how to draw something very special."
Laura's pen never leaves the paper, slowly tracing out an ancient figure. It looks likes a maze, or an engineer's diagram. Laura has practiced many times to get it right. The movement of her hand in sinuous, entrancing. Syd's head soon drifts to the table in simple sleep.
Leah stares into nothing, pupils dialated.
"Now, Leah…" Laura begins.
[Leah]
The air was cold, but she was moving fast. Adrenaline surged through her body, commanding that she move on, on, on. Past the pain in her ankle. Past the fatigue in her muscles. Past the shattering of her will.
She moved with an unconscious grace, mounting the sides of neighboring boats with more finesse than she had ever tackled the vault. Soon her feet met the dock, and she pounded toward the shore. She jumped off the dock onto the small sandbar that stretched along the water. Her light, quick tread formed no footprints. She ran past the last of the boats like a pale ghost.
She was passing into a dream world. She was dissolving, losing her form. Her thoughts were inchoate, her body was alien. Her limbs moved her over the ground, keeping up a terrible speed, but her mind seemed to have gotten lost. Leah recognized her dreamscape: she was back in one of her own paintings.
The last spark of her consciousness waded through liquid eddies of color that coiled around her, threatening to pull her apart. Awash in a senseless sea of hues, she felt as if her flesh was fading, becoming transparent. Soon she would be a clear lens, helplessly focusing the beam of another's volition. She was drowning in the river of her own consciousness. A nameless force held her under. Breathing was impossible. A booming voice was like waves crashing through her mind. With a desperate gasp, Leah Monroe gave in and listened.
The instructions were startlingly vivid.
You must always keep it safe. You cannot let anyone get it. You are expendable. Your country depends on your haste.
Leah's body obeyed, moving relentlessly toward a metal staircase. Toward a window open in the Wisconsin darkness.
Leah mind still swirled in the sea of colors. A patch of white appeared in the haze. It seemed like a unicorn was standing before her, flickering like an old movie. She tried to run toward it, but she was weighed down by heavy silken robes. Leah knew if she could get to the great beast, she could fly away. But, wait. The white patch turned into Sydney's night gown. Leah could see her sleeping on the ground. It must be a sleep over.
"Syd!" Syd just lay there.
"Sydney!" Leah tried again. Something was wrong with her voice, though. It sounded mechanical. Slightly musical, like the ring of a cell phone.
Dream-Syd stirred. She sat up, scrunching her face in distaste.
Leah shouted with relief. "Syd! You have to help—," But Syd was running away, hands clamped over little pink ears. The phone noise continued until Leah stopped shouting.
It was replaced, incongruously, with a smooth English voice. The cold circle of a gun barrel on her temple snapped Leah back into herself. The voice continued.
"I appreciate your attention to our little timetable. You're right on schedule."
[Will]
Will woke up swearing. Since when did I become this easy? Clutching at his still throbbing head, he felt the deep pull of self-loathing. How could anyone associated with Derevko be innocent? Syd had told him bitterly how charismatic Irina was, how she had somehow even gotten Syd to begin to love her before she betrayed the CIA and reunited with Sloane. Will reflected that that had taken Irina months to earn Syd's love. It appeared as if he had been fooled by Leah in a matter of hours. Nice. The damsel in distress bit. Idiot.
But in the back of his mind, Will wondered. Was I fooled? He knew he wasn't stupid, or even that naïve anymore. He wasn't the same man he had been when this all began. The young upstart reporter who had traded glib jibes with his coworkers and guilelessly adored Sydney-Bristow-the-banker was dead.
Will was a harder, more removed version of himself. His quick mind still observed the world around him in minute detail, but his sober mouth less often commented on any of it. In a brief flash, Will remembered how he had shorn his head in a spasm of grief after he thought Sydney was dead. He would have looked like a chemo patient at the funeral, if he had attended it. Will hadn't gone. Racked with grief and pain, he had let Sydney and the twisted world of espionage recede behind him as he traveled north. That didn't mean he forgot: as a tribute to her and his dead past, Will let Jonah keep his hair short.
As Jonah, the rest of his personality had been shaved to essentials, too.
Three weeks ago, Sydney had brought Will back to life. He had felt Jonah fall away for a moment as she called him by his real name, her face trembling with sadness. She was alive, and Will knew then that he had returned from the dead with her.
But even as she sighed in his arms later that night, her neck arching with pleasure, she had belonged—as ever—to someone else. She had even told him so, right before she crushed herself to him in a desperate bid for solace. Will would not have traded those moments for anything, but he knew his resurrection was incomplete. He was alive, but gravely wounded, much the way he had left LA in the first place.
Leah and the events of the past few hours had made him feel like himself again. His days as Jonah were black and white, but this was vivid, saturated color. Syd wasn't there to protect him. Allison wasn't there to brainwash him. He was the active force here.
And he had to admit that, in meeting Leah, Will felt he had fleetingly touched a soul so similar to himself that it caused his bones to ache.
But then again, maybe that was just where she had hit him.
Will rubbed his head as the pain receded. Time to establish some facts. See what kind of story we really have here.
If Leah was working with Irina, he'd better get out of the boat, and fast. What had seemed like a haven would soon become a trap. But even if Leah was working with Irina, she was not working with the blonde woman. Will doubted that he was so important in the grand scheme of things that they would have gone through an elaborate charade to fool him. No, the fight had been real. The woman had meant to kill or capture Leah. And the blonde was working with Sark, even if Sark seemed surprised by it. Sark, who said that he was going to return to the apartment. Sark, who been working with Allison to kill Francie. Sark, who would almost certainly kill Leah if he found her. Sark, who had said he had a message to give him.
Will's eyes clouded with fury. Well, he is just going to have to give it to me in person, then.
End of Part 6
