Red Dust
By Hold-Out Trout
Disclaimer: J.J., please give us a good ending. I know you have it in you. All the rest of you, you might gather from that statement that I have no rights where Alias is concerned. I just like to slip in and out of the world from time to time.
Author's Note: This is the third and possibly last story I will write from Nadia's perspective. What I Think, and Crumbling Promises come first, but you don't necessarily need to read them first. This small piece takes place during the first part of the fifth season. Who knows what comes next for Nadia?
I will kill you.
These words rip through my head, leaving a trail of dust behind them. The dust settles into my eyes, the remnants of my constant rage.
My eyes are closed. They have been bolted shut by drugs. If I could open them, the dust would seep out, and I would kill my captors with one look. If that didn't succeed, my hands would finish the job in seconds.
A wash of blue, and I am almost myself again. A new treatment, then, quizas, but I can already tell this one will fail, just like the others.
The first rush of calm carries me to the lake, where voices echo out to me, bouncing their way into my brain, almost comprehensible, teasing me with familiarity.
I catch one—Jack—then another—unfamiliar—then Sydney.
Sydney. She's speaking to them, then to me. The echoes make her voice hard to catch, but I manage to get to some of the words, sometimes having to dive down in between sentences for the ones I missed. I put them together after she leaves or stops talking.
"…miss you."
"Still looking…Sloane…out of prison."
"Weiss…gone."
These are my conversations: whole hours distilled into a few words.
And I don't even have time to think about how I feel about these words, in that order, before I am dragged out of the lake where the words float, into the caves where red dust crawls along my skin, through my brain, and into my eyes.