Title: Safety of Objects
Author: verona parker
A/N: The results of spending far too much time watching deleted scenes from season three dvds. Entry for the September challenge.
---
This is where it ends:Eight people in a room, dark suits and dark faces. Indistinct, unemotional. For these ten minutes, they will have no names. No lives. There will just be the smell of carpet cleaner and plexiglass.
His death is strangely unsuitable, the way sunny days on funerals are unacceptable. Arvin Sloane should've gone down in flames. Explosions. Bursts of color and the smell of burning flesh.
One by one, they'll file out, leaving only two behind for the removal of the man's body from the padded cross. The gruesome task they're given each time. It must be a curse that comes with monosyllabic names.
They walk down the hallway, fluorescent lighting and all. Everything is washed in dark blue.
---
One sided conversations by the front door and artificial comfort. His hand against my cheek. Bitter taste of nostalgia.
It always begins the same way.
"I was on my way home from work and I just wanted to make sure you were okay."
I try out a fake smile and shoulder shrug.
"I'm fine." Uncertain pause. "I will be fine."
"Syd."
I pretend I'm not transparent.
"This was going to be it. The end. Sloane's death, it was going to be a...a liberation. But here it is. And there's no satisfaction in it. No relief."
"It won't always be like this. It'll get better."
"I know."
I can feel the words forming, fighting to get out. Youshouldgohome. Youshouldgohome.
"Do you want to come in?"
---
This is where it gets out of hand:
Chipped ceramic mugs because I accidentally broke the glasses one night in a rampage for anything sharp. Cheap wine out of the olive colored bottles. We are no longer on polar ends of the couch.
The make up I wasn't able to get off feels heavy on my eyelids. Dark blue eye shadow I haven't worn since high school dances in the tacky gym, plaid uniforms, and arguing over who would become the future Mrs. Jake Ryan.)
I'll never be able to remember who made the first move, but the taste of his oaky lips will come rushing back later, much later.
My hands under his shirt shoes kicking off buttons buttons fumbling with the disks fingers in my hair...
I mumble stupidly about a wife, someone's wife, his wife, maybe? I fight the buzzing in my head. It's only a mistake if I think about it too hard.
---
My room is cluttered with dark objects I can't quite make out. A desk that has seen better days, a chair that I've decided I hate, a pile of clothes long since discarded on the floor, the bureau given by Weiss ("It was my grandmother's. Actually, it still is. Her insistence on living each year costs us far too much money.")
They all sit in silent judgment before whispering amongst themselves of the moral compromises Sydney Bristow just committed.
His chest rises and falls beside me, but my eyes stay glued to the jagged crack in the ceiling. If I chipped away at the white paint, would I discover the original plaster to be discolored?
"Michael..."
I trail off, but he doesn't care to finish my sentence or add one of his own. Nervous fingers twist at his wedding band.
I can't tell that my breathing has become staggered. Not until I hear it, the quiet gasping that I can't quite place, do I realize it is coming from my raw throat. I bite down on my lips until I draw blood. The taste is sickening. Liquid metal.
He pushes back the covers and the bed instantly feels like ice. His banging around the room, groping for anything that even vaguely resembles an article of clothing that would belong to him. I am paralyzed, unmoving, but my eyes wander to him dressing. The buttons on his oxford are in the wrong holes. I debate pointing this out to him.
My throat is closing up.
"Where are you going?"
The question is mine, but the voice isn't, can't be. Scratchy, fingernails on blackboards, strangled cats. I cringe inwardly.
He offers an apologetic smile, or maybe a pitying one. Or one of disgust, the end of a mutual respect. I can't tell. Everything is dark, too dark.
There's no response, just another futile search for his jacket. I should tell him that it was abandoned on the couch a good forty nine minutes and eleven seconds ago.
"You can stay, if you want. You could just...call her, tell her that you need to work late, and...stay..."
There it is again. Steel wool, shattering champagne glasses, choking.
I take the sheets up around me and move to get out of bed. Did I open that window? The warm night breeze wafts through. Inappropriate weather and a symphony of irritating crickets. It's stuck, no matter how hard I pull down on it. Lost cause. Eggplant covered goosebumps cover my arms.
I will him to speak with my eyes, but all I can see is a fading reflection.
The man standing in front of me looks like someone I used to know.
(Chemical changes occur when the chemical identity of a substance is destroyed and a new substance is formed...)
I wonder how long it will be until I have become what he is.
Nothing but elements.
He moves for the bedroom door and I follow, because I am stupid and because something hurts if I don't and because I don't know how not to. Through the hallway, with artsy photographs of people I've never met. Into the living room that I am giving some serious consideration to burning down. He finds the jacket in question. I try to find the screams mounting in my stomach.
"I'll...talk to you later, okay?" he assures me. He's fully dressed and I'm still wrapped in a sheet and it feels like we've been doing this forever.
I want to be shouting. Ripping him apart. Kicking and punching until he is torn and bloody. I hate you. I hate you. I cut until bone appears.
"O-okay."
Of all the words in the English language, this is the one I pick. Something duo syllabic that I can't even say without stuttering.
And he's gone. Bright headlights momentarily illuminate the street. Tire wheels on gravel.
I change the cream sheets and tell myself not to cry.
---
He forgot to tell me that I'm beautiful.
In my now shattered mirror, I'm not. Three reflections stare back at me. Split features.
My scabbed lips make me look diseased.
She's beautiful. Honey blonde hair and deep blue eyes. Despite it all, she's fake perfect.
---
I shower, taking time to wash away the sex and alcohol. I am covered in dirt and him.
---
It is raining by the time I push back the covers, fat drops splattering against the already speckled sidewalk. It drizzles down the window pane. Clear veins through the glass.
---
This is where it's shattered:
Showing up at his apartment days later while she's away for the weekend and watching dark mascara drizzle down my face. Staring at the bloodshot fire clouds in his eyes.
There are no words spoken this time, now halfway drunken promises of what life will be like an hour from now, a day from now, a week from now. The rain violently drones out low moans. I wish for the beach and solarcaine.
The lights flicker, buckling under the pressure of the storm. Dark blue shadows are amplified when the electricity finally gives out. Sinister objects, half in dark. I gather up my clothes and contemplate waking him.
I trip over the threshold out of his bedroom (his, theirs, never ours) and scrape my knee on uneven wood, but he's still asleep, lost in sepia toned dreams. The mercury scent of blood, dark and crimson. Stain on the floor.
I should leave, go, abandon their apartment that feels too put together for comfort. I can't seem to pull myself away. It's like staring at the remnants of a train wreck.
I pull open drawers in their kitchen a little too hard until I find melted down candles and a pack of restaurant matches. I go through four of them before I'm finally able to light the candle. Dull, flickering flame bathing the room in candlelight. I burn the palm of my hand for failure to pay attention to what I'm doing. It'll sting tomorrow.
Leather bound photo albums sit in their respective places on the shelves, beckoning me over. They're terrible gossips, those old pictures. Michael Vaughn, seems to be having a pretty good time with that new blonde thing, last that I heard, and is that a ring on her finger?
I bring the first one over, set it down with a sound that would rival a small explosion of Semtex, in decibels, listen for any evidence that he's been jarred awake. Nothing.
Their memories are musty, slightly blurred, covered in fingerprints. The woman in white, the man in black. Grainy.
(Why do you build me up/build me up butter cup)
I stare intently at the man and tell myself there must be a trace of sadness in his smile, even if I can't see it.
Perfect in her wedding dress. I don't understand it. You'd think that karma would balance that right out.
Another snapshot. The pair stands off center, closer to the left. Out of focus, standard pose in front of the Eiffel Tower. The sky is downcast, slate gray. Bulky jackets. The wind blustering her flaxen hair.
A sphere of wax builds up beneath the wavering flame before collapsing, spilling over the glossy photograph. Burning candles and staring at ghosts.
I slam the album shut and replace it on the shelf in the wrong place. I'll shut the front door quietly and hate myself later. I don't belong here.
---
I pretend sleep on the couch, old afghans that constitute eye sores wrapped up to my neck. The clock in the corner ticks loudly. A reminder of the minutes slowly slipping away. I can't remember the times I tried to hold on to passing moments, only to have them slide through my fingers. White sand of the beaches we used to frequent when my mother was still there to mark my height on the kitchen wall.
Late night TV, coffee, and bottles of wine. Old episodes of ER and remembering Francie's Noah Wylie addiction and crying. I want to braid her hair, paint her fingernails, burn her lasagna.
George Clooney loses a patient. But that's how hospitals work, isn't it? Loved ones die. People sob and grieve and mourn. If you're lucky and on a TV show, you are occasionally comforted by a doctor plucked straight from an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue.
And so it goes.
The clock chimes 4:30. I struggle against sleep.
---
I've only closed my eyes for a few minutes, I'm sure, but a quick glance at my watch and I realize I've been out for three hours. My throat aches. I drink pink Pepto Bismal straight from the bottle despite the fact that my stomach isn't the problem. I think I need a day to save my sanity.
Dixon's secretary is sympathetic (Marlene something, or is it Marian?), promises to pass along the message that I will not be attending work today, and reminds me to drink liquids. Yes, thank you. Liquids. Will do.
The empty bottle and cups sit out from last night. Apparently, they have yet to clean themselves up. The coffee mugs are, admittedly, ugly. Gray-brown and more than slightly lopsided. Danny used to hate the kind that you could buy in bulk and all matched. Shopping at Pier 1 was a crime punishable by death. We used coffee cups made by his artist mother: off color, off center. I don't know where to find more like them. I satisfied myself by picking out the most hideous style of mug Pottery Barn had to offer and then buying five carbon copies.
I tell myself that it's fundamentally the same idea.
---
The woman behind the coffee counter has raven purple hair. She chews wads of gum that smell like colgate and fiddles with her nose stud.
I order a giant coffee that I'll never finish and can't remember the way I used to doctor it. After five minutes of debate, I fix it the way Vaughn likes his. One milk, no sugar. I take a cautious sip.
It is bitter.
---
I settle on a double feature at the Odeon. Old movies made in the 50's with corny music and special effects. The snow is made out of freezer dried soap flakes. I eat three day old popcorn they assure me is fresh and turn down the soda so as not to run the risk of missing the happy endings.
---
I fake congestion and violent coughing the next day. Marian/Marlene interrogates me on my fluid intake. I assure that I have, in fact, been attempting to cure my mysterious ailments with soup out of red labeled cans.
Weiss is not so easily fooled. He calls right as a woman with no face wraps up her talk show segment.
"Go to work."
Our greetings are extremely lacking as of late.
"Di'in I dell you I'b sic?"
"You're full of shit, Syd."
I say nothing. The television tries to sell me cooking ware.
"Get the hell in here."
"Okay."
"They need me back."
"Fine."
"I'm gonna go."
"You do that."
I can hear his coat rustling as he hangs up. It mumbles in disdain.
---
This is where it hurts:
Old bagels from the employee lounge and pop up "Get Well Soon!" cards from Marshall. Questions of how I am doing, health wise.
I'm dying. Thank you for asking.
Vaughn shoots me a pained smile from across the Rotunda. I display false fascination in paperwork. A group of agents pass by. I dissipate into the crowd.
---
Days are easier when you have a formula to get through them. Reactants. Products. Chemistry always seemed so simple. Straight forward answers, no room for debate.
Three cups of stale coffee, one useless mission prep, two stones in an empty relationship, and a pair of scabbed lips leads to...one tolerable life?
Unbalanced equation. Maybe I could change up the amount of coffee and scratch the report, then...
Half a dozen pairs of eyes stare at me expectantly from around the table.
They want me to speak.
---
I have dreams of running through burning hallways and walls of giant Rambaldi parchments. They crumble to ash too quickly to read. My future is hazy again. I look for patterns in static.
---
His guilt is on overdrive. He writes my reports and brings me in alternatives to the black liquid they dispense in the employee lounge and pass off as "coffee." He trades small kisses and touches with Lauren and makes dinner reservations at nice restaurants. The concept that it's mutual infidelity eludes him. He hates her, but hates going against his built in code of morals more.
I write my own debriefs and drink what the Joint Task Force provides me with. The pain flashes across his face for a fleeting second before disappearing.
---
This is where it ends:
Staring at blank screens and working hard to give the appearance of concentrating. Pushing back disheveled bangs. Incessant pen tapping.
"I'm sorry."
He blurts it out on a late night, when she has already gone home and I'm listening to the gentle hum of computers.
"It's fine."
"Syd—"
"I said, it's fine."
I type in steady sequence on the keyboard and pull together words that don't resemble the English language.
"This will all be over one day."
I pack up my things with no response. The world moves beneath me. One day, none of this will be ours.
(fin)
---
Challenge requirements: a telephone conversation, parchment, a burn, the Eiffel Tower, and candlelight.
Thank you to Liz and Alli for all their encouragement
This was my first fic, so, well, bare with me here.
---