Title: Memento Mori
Word count: 500
Notes: Written for the rewind challenge at alias500: aftermath. Companion piece to Ghosts and Lost. Set between seasons 3 and 4.
Sydney cuts the engine and looks through the windshield at the house. She has been driving all morning but now that she is finally here she isn't sure what to do next.
Last night she buried her mother. She looked at the body of the woman who gave birth to her, a neat hole in the centre of her forehead, and in that moment Sydney hated her father as she never had before.
This is the second time she has buried her mother. It is no easier than the first.
And she thinks: my father is dead to me too.
Blinking back tears, she gets out the car and walks up to the house. Her father gave her directions and told her this was her mother's dacha. She had hung up without acknowledging him, but yet she has come here anyway.
There is an orange cat sleeping on the topmost step. He looks up when Sydney gets closer, then rolls over onto his back and stretches lazily. Sydney bends to scratch his belly for a moment; the presence of the cat has cheered her up – but only slightly.
She picks the lock and enters the dacha. The cat follows her inside, meowing loudly as though calling someone.
Sydney imagines that she can feel her mother's presence in the house; she wanders through slowly, trying to commit everything to memory. She feels as if she owes it to her mother to remember her – because despite everything she was still her mother.
She sees a photo frame lying face down on a shelf. All the other photos in the house are of Sydney; this one is of Jack.
Sydney sinks onto the nearest chair, her knuckles turning white as she clutches the frame too tightly.
Daddy, how could you? she thinks. She loved you.
The cat jumps onto Sydney's lap, butting his head against the frame. Sydney absently rubs his fur as tears fall unchecked down her cheeks.
The last time she saw her mother, Irina said, "I love you," and jumped off a building. Sydney wishes things had happened differently, wishes she had had the chance and the courage to say, "I love you, too."
The cat is purring now and for the first time Sydney notices his collar. She fingers the tag; Cyrillic letters spell out the name Vronsky. On the back of the tag is a date two and a half years in the past. Sydney has no idea what it means; probably this cat did not even belong to her mother.
She remembers the expression on her father's face when he told her he and Irina had been working together to find her. She had known there was more to that story but had been too lost in her own pain to ask.
She knows she will never ask now, and it is perhaps better that way. She does not want to know the details about how her father murdered her mother.
Some things are better left unsaid.