Rating: PG13
Snip it: I have to lie to make the world stop ending.
Description: during the third season. Sydney's thoughts on Vaughn, Lauren, and everything.
Disclaimer: not mine.
Author's notes: I wrote this a while back and I wasn't sure if it was good enough to be put anywhere but in the trash can, still, seeing an alias fic (even a crappy one) go to waste is painful so here it is. Please comment or I think I might stop writing for a while.
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Inheritance
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I feel like I'm losing my mind.
Like I don't even know who I am any more, or what I'm doing, or why I'm doing it.
When I first said that, I thought I meant it, I really did. That's something you should know about me.
FACT ONE: Sydney Bristow means what she says.
Or at least I used to.
Back then, in the time before I became dead to anyone who has ever mattered, I used to be so sure. I meant what I said and I always, always knew how to say exactly what I meant.
That was before. I don't mean much of anything anymore- especially when it matters. I don't think I have the heart left to believe in anything.
But that night, on the pier with the fairs wheel tilting and spinning, reflecting off of Vaughn's eyes in the darkness, I really did believe that I was lost. My goals twisted around- traded for vendettas and vengeance. I didn't know then that I was really quite all right.
Didn't know that in the grander, larger, all-fucking-mightier scheme of things, that night could probably be counted as a high point in my life.
I was still innocent then, glaring out at the water, throwing pagers like tantrums into the pacific frothy waves and crying because when people have been hurt, that's just what they do.
If you had asked me then, when was the last time that I cried, I would have told you in earnest that it was two nights ago; watching a movie about a man named Daniel... Danny. In the movie Danny had died, and that night I could taste melted mascara and salt for hours. I cry a lot.
FACT TWO: Sydney Bristow cries a lot.
Or at least I used to.
Now it's all much different. You see, now if you were to ask me when the last time I cried was I would tell you something easy.
I cried a week ago when I found an old friend's name in the obituaries. I cried then, and after words, I felt better.
Made up stories that flow like cough syrup down my throat. I don't cry anymore. I can't remember how.
You don't have to lie to me Syd.
I have to lie to make the world stop ending.
That's how I feel; like nothing I say, true or false, is ever real. Like it doesn't matter because I have been mourned, and I have been missed and I have been buried. Put away.
Really I feel like I'm still crying. I haven't stopped since Taipei.
Sometimes I can even taste the salt again, a dizzy ocean, choking me, inside. So strong that I have to go and look in the mirror just to confirm what I have known all along: I am not human. Not anymore.
No tear streaked face means no tears means any human responses.
I am half alive, or I am mostly dead but whatever I am, I am not human because when humans are hurt they cry and I am not crying now. I am hurting but I am never crying.
It's just one more thing I can't remember how to do. Like loving- the way love felt like warm nutmeg and muffins in October.
I also used to love a lot. But not anymore, when only the physical act remains, drawing me in sheets and anger and choking pain. It hurts to come, now that I'm not with him. Vaughn. But I can't even love him anymore, the married man, handler and lover. I have pushed it all out to keep from dieing. I am incapable of love and all its warmth.
The old Sydney Bristow used to be warm, and she used to stop time (his).
FACT THREE: Sydney Bristow stops time.
Or at least I used to.
My father said you could set your heart by this watch. It stopped the day we met.
Now I only skip time and miss time and try to take it back without killing me and everyone around me in the process. Now I am not warm and now I don't have any stopped watches. I live in the subconscious knowledge that love is something slippery like quick silver, precious and toxic and sliding through your fingers into someone else's open palms the moment you burn to death inside your own home.
I bet that Lauren is warm.
Whether she stops time on wrist watches or not, it doesn't matter really, because either way she has him, and I bet she loves, and I bet she cries and I bet she means what she says.
So I guess that's really the problem, you see: I am dead. Dead still, and I can't just pick right up and be better again, because now I know that there are some things that when you lose them, they become someone else's.
Inheritance, it's called.
And that perhaps I do know where my tears and my love and my caring have ran off to.
They are no longer belonging to me.
I feel like I'm losing my mind.
I could scream the words like venom and break empty liquor bottles, feeling the thick sweet drops begin to coat my hands, and I guess I can really mean them.
I don't think I have a mind.
I often wonder if I deserve to have this body anymore, now that my ashes have been given up so easily. I wander around waiting for a pretty blond girl- probably not Lauren because she's already taken enough from me- to wander up and ask if she can please have my body because the rent is up and its time for me to leave. Sometimes I think about that night on the pier.
I'll get through this, I whisper to myself and then I give up on being strong and I imagine that Vaughn is still beside me, letting me hold his hand, committing a crime and loving it, while the lights go around and round.
I feel like I'm losing my mind, I would say, if I could say anything at all, but I can't find the tears, or words, or warmth. I have no conviction left.
I will get through this, I whisper. I am not real but I am still here, waiting. I will be lost and then one day I won't be. Or I might just disappear- either way I'm waiting.
FACT FOUR: Sydney Bristow lives a lot.
Or at least I used to.
-and I really do miss it.