Chapter Six-- "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year"
Kate turns away from me and paces. I repeat my question, "What happened to Syd?" I have to know. Because, if she is okay, then it's not worth it. If she's okay, and happy, and at peace, there is no way I'm forcing her to return to the dark, confused, hell-bent life she is living in the real world.
Kate mutters to herself, talking to an invisible friend, before sighing and saying, "I shouldn't show you this, but, it wouldn't realize the graveness of the situation otherwise."
My stomach lurches. Oh god. "Where. Is. She?"
Her demeanor changes. No long is she that wise-cracking and snide Angel. Now, she... now she actually acts and sounds the part: "I will take you to her, but you have to follow my instructions to a T. No snide remarks. No bull-shitting. You listen to me, do you understand me?"
"I understand. Now take me to Sydney."
"Take my hand." I do so. "Don't let go." She says, and with her free hand she snaps her fingers once and suddenly Arlington disappears and we're in a long, dark hallway. It's freezing cold and anguished cries fill the air.
I don't know what I'm feeling, but I've never felt anything before it in my entire life all at once. It's what I felt when that black car pulled into my driveway when I was 8 years old, what I felt when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, what I felt the first time I killed another human in combat, what I felt as I watched the apartment go up in flames... all rolled into one, multiplied by a million, and driven into my heart with a jackhammer. "Where the hell are we?"
"Hell."
I don't question. I know it's the truth, as Kate said, there's no room for bullshitting here. I shudder all the way to my toes as the cry erupts again. I know that voice. "Oh my God. Sydney!"
She tightens her grip on my hand, "Michael. We have to go now. I showed you were Sydney was, but you can't stay here."
"No. Kate. She... that..." Another cry. My heart clenches tighter. My lungs take almost nothing in. "How?"
"She committed the one sin you don't commit nor receive any forgiveness for."
"Kate, don't give me that god damned ambiguity!" My words have backfired. Everything is damned here. "Tell me why she's here, tell me exactly what happened."
"She killed herself. Shortly after her father died. She hated her life; she hated herself; she hated her role in SD-6 and in the CIA. She wanted a way out, so she mixed a bottle of painkillers with a bottle of Asbolut and got herself a once way ticket to hell; and not only is she in Hell, Michael, but this hallway that never ends is filled with doors to individuals, locked in their own personal hell, reliving their worst nightmares and the reason they ended up here in the first place. Special treatment for the Suicidials.
"Oh my God." No other words enter my mind. "Oh my God." I pause, I breathe. "Can I... can I see her?"
"Do you really want too?"
"No. I have to."
Kate lowers her head and leads me down the hallway. The screams ring in my ears. We walk what seems like forever unlike she stops at a door. I know, this is Sydney's door. She opens the door, "You have five minutes. After that, I'm coming in and taking you back to Arlington. Listen to me...." Her voice trails off. "Just... use it wisely." She pushes me in and shuts the door. And before I know it I'm in a ransacked apartment and I hear her crying.
I walk quietly as I can towards the muffled sobs; they are coming from what seems to be a bathroom. I step over the mess of the room and find it. I push the door open quietly.
And then I see it. Sydney crying over Danny's dead body in the bathtub. I've imagined this moment once or twice before, but never like this. The blood is everywhere. The room smells of rotting flesh and blood; her hair is clotted and sticky with blood; and her hands are solid red. She screams as loud and as long as her lungs allow; and then she screams more. I take a step forward and say, "Syd?"
She turns to me and stops crying, just for a moment. She stares at me for a full thirty seconds before attacking. "Did you do this? You did this!! Who are you? Did you do this? You killed him!"
I hold my arms over my face, my body automatically defending from her lunge. "Sydney! Syd! SYD! I DIDN'T DO THIS! SYD!"
"WHO ARE YOU?"
"My name is Michael Vaughn! I... I..." I stop. What am I supposed to tell her?
"Who are you?"
"I..." I search my head for a way to explain and come up empty. It's my heart that answers, "Do you believe in Guardian Angels?"
"No" She says, letting go off me and falling onto the ground, hugging her knees. "No... There is no God here.... I...." She doesn't have the strength to speak, she starts to cry.
In all the time that I've known Sydney Bristow, I have never seen her like this. That night in Hong Kong doesn't even begin to compare to her hysterics now, her lack of strength. I've never seen her so weak, so desperate. It's physically paining. Each breath I take is like a pound of exploding C4 in my chest.
I want to reach out and put my arms around her, comfort her. But I don't know how she'd react and I don't want to risk her disappearing.
I don't want to frighten her, but my heart can't bear witness to this any longer. If it tears any further it will snap into two. I walk over to hear as carefully as I would walk over a maze of laser alarms, and kneel before her shaking form. Even more cautiously, I reach out and take her bloodied hand in my own, ignoring the stain it creates on my white sleeve. "I'm going to help you, Syd."
I lean in and she flings herself against me. She cries, "Please, pleases I can't get out. I need to go get help... there are people dying here, and I can't help them. Everyone is dying and I want it to stop, you have to make it stop, please make it stop, please save them, please help me save them, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do... I...." She cries harder.
I allow her to sob into my shoulder and I gently smooth my hand through her tangled hair. I'm vaguely aware that I am whispering something into her ear but I'm not quite sure what it is. An endless string of apologies, maybe. "I'm going to get you out of here, Sydney."
She takes my head and gets up, she pulls me into the kitchen. There's more blood, and I see two dead bodies: Francie, with her chest full of bullets and Weiss on the dining room table, with an ice pick through his heart. "Please, I need to call an ambulance, but the lines are down and I don't have any rags or linen to wash their wounds, there's no water or food, and I am so hungry and so tired, but I can't sleep because they keep calling out for me to save them. You have to help me save them. Please, they are still alive, but just barely."
She pulls me over to Weiss, and I see he is still moving. "Please, help me."
My heart wrenches further at seeing my best friend, along with Sydney's, struggling eternally for their lives. I squeeze her hand harder and lace our fingers together. "I can get you all out of here."
"How?" Her eyebrows crinkle in that way which kills me.
How? "Just trust me. Do you trust me?"
"You don't deserve my trust! I don't know who you are? You'll leave, just like the rest of them. They all leave me. Everyone lies to me, and I believe them, and they lie to me, and use me. And then they die. And I'm left alone again. And I want it all to stop. But, there's nothing sharp, no food, no poison, no pills. Nothing to ease my pain. So, who the fck do you think you are, to come in here and tell me to trust you. I trust everyone and look what it got me. So, I need you to HELP me. HELP me with actions, not with fcking promises. Please, help me, save me; help me get out of here."
I let go of her hand and move mine to her tear swollen cheek. "I can do that."
"Then do it. Do it NOW." She says.
"Ok..." I pause. "But I'm going to have to leave you to do it."
"No...." She screams at me. "No!" She pushes me the ground. "No, you promised! You promised you wouldn't be like the rest of them and leave me! You can't leave me! Please...." And with that, she collapses onto me and starts to cry once more.
"Syd, I swear, you'll see me again... very soon... I promise. But right now, if you want to get out of here, I... I need to leave...." I realize that even with the knowledge that Kate will bring me right back to the world where Sydney is alive and (physically) well that I had left her in, it will still be nearly impossible for me to leave her now, in this state, as she clings to me as though she has never felt compassion before.
"No. I don't want you to go."
"I... I don't want to leave you, Syd. But I have to get you out of here."
"Then take me with you. Don't leave me, let me come with you."
How the... how the here do I explain this? "You will be. I'll leave, and then you'll be with me."
"Stay."
"...I can't, Syd." I say gently as I let my fingers travel down her cheek. "But I am not abandoning you, I promise."
"Yes you are! You lying bastard!" She says these hateful things to me, yet clings to me tighter than before.
I return the gesture firmly and don't reply to her accusations. I simply sit with her on the sticky, blood stained floor, rocking her as soothingly as I can in my arms. Hoping I'm not overstepping my fragile boundaries, I slowly lean down and press my lips to her damp forehead. "It'll be okay, I promise," I assure her as I move away. "I'm not going to leave you anymore."
"Time to go." Kate appears in the kitchen. She doesn't say anymore.
"Go? WHO THE FCK ARE YOU?" Sydney screams at Kate, who just ignores her.
"Now, Vaughn."
"No.... Vaughn...." She says my name in a way I know I can't resist. "No don't leave me. You promised me you wouldn't!"
I look up at Kate over Sydney's shoulder, keeping my arms securely wrapped around her. I back away just enough to see Sydney's broken, bloodied face. She stares back into my eyes and I swear, for a moment, I can see a glint of the look she used to send to me during every warehouse meeting, every debrief, each time we parted after a kiss.
I swear, through the glimmer of unfallen tears and the desperation and the horror and sorrow and pain... I can see hope. I can see her counting on me, depending on me to be there for her, to protect her, to be the ally I promised I would be.
I can see love.
And suddenly, nothing has ever been more clear to me in my life. "No," I tell Kate, my gaze still unwavering from Sydney's. "I'm not leaving."
Sydney actually smiles and I feel my eyes starting to tear up too. She hugs me harder and I kiss her forehead and push the hair out of her face.
Kate stares at me, as if she excepted this, but didn't prepare for it. "Excuse me?"
"I'm not leaving," I repeat. "She needs me and I can't leave her. Not like this. Not this time."
"Vaughn, this isn't real. This is what would happen to her without you. But, she is still living: you have to leave her now. You can't stay, you have no idea what you're doing!"
"I know exactly what I'm doing!" I exclaim. "And this is real. This is very real. In that other world, the one you want me to return to... she needed me. She woke up in hell and all she needed to save her was me. She needed my hand, she needed me to be her solace like I always had been. And I... I abandoned her. I wasn't there for her. I let her down and left her to deal with her horror and confusion and anger by herself."
I look down at Sydney again. She looks confused but doesn't say anything. I continue to stroke her hair and speak again to Kate. "That's not going to happen this time. I'm going to stay here for her and help her deal with this. Because I am her ally, and her constant. Because I'm her Soul Mate, Kate, and it's what I was put on this earth to do."
For a moment, I only hear my breathing as I realize exactly what I have just done. Kate is staring at me, blue eyes wide. Then, slowly, very slowly…she smiles -- the one I don't trust. Then, she snaps her fingers, and everything is gone again.
