ficlet: alias (post-finale, sequel, untitled)
OMG. Simon Rex and Jaime Pressly reunited in "an action movie with a dog who knows karate and can talk"? Dude! I so have to watch this. ABC Family, May 29th, y'all. You know you want to.
I re-posted my Alias season 3 Sark/Syd fic earlier today (backdated--it was originally posted at Blurty). When I was re-reading it, I realized it actually isn't half bad. I dug it out because I was having all these latent Sark/Syd fantasies after the finale, and, well...I wrote a bit of a sequel. I have this weird compulsion with Alias. It's sort of a passive-agressive response, I guess. Sydney's loyalty is pretty much intrinsic to her character, so I like to turn that completely on its head. Plus I think that's pretty much the only way she'd ever wind up with Sark. So.
Alias, Syd/Sark (untitled)
Warning: spoilers for season 5, picks up after the finale.
May not make sense if you don't read the other one first.
She has no choice but to stick with the plan. She thought he would extract her after they took Sloane and Irina down. She expected him to take her hand and run off with her, but instead he disappeared alone. Vaughn looked sheepish when he told her he'd let him go, kept rambling on in the face of her dismay until her expression froze over and she said she guessed it was time to let it go. Let go, she said, as if that could be her choice. Spying was in her blood and he hated that a normal bourgeois life didn't suit her. But she stuck to the plan, and made the logical choices, and things got even more complicated when a few years passed and another baby came. But what could she do but stay in deep cover and wait for him to reappear?
He didn't respond to any of their contact procedures. At some point, she suspected Vaughn hadn't really let him go. Perhaps he got suspicious; maybe Sark made a mistake and Vaughn killed him in anger, covered it up. But she has more faith in Sark than in Vaughn's trifling ability to hold a grudge. So instead of scared, she gets angry. He's either abaonded her or decided this is the life she wants. He hadn't been happy when she told him she was having his child. It'd been the worst argument they ever had, and when he slept with Rachel, it hadn't been a joke they'd agreed to perpetrate. But it was too late, too many things happening unexpected, and she'd already told Vaughn. After that, things had been different. She was watched too closely during the pregnancy--by both her father and her mother--to have contact with him. Nine months. No, longer. Much longer.
She didn't lie about loving the child. She won't be Irina: she won't abandon her daughter. She does not resent being a mother; only the distance it makes between her and him. Faking Vaughn's death was a relief, but it irritated Sark that she was playing games without him. Trust was the only faith they had, and she could see it waning in him. She lashed out at him, furious that he would doubt her after all this time. But he looked at her, bloated from pregnancy, and saw weakness.
She hated him for that. If she hadn't, she would have found some way to communicate with him before Sloane initiated his final count-down. Before her father was injured, and before she had to watch her mother die while Sark was elsewhere getting shot for his trouble. She lost both her parents in one night, and it hadn't been easy. As many times as she'd affirmed her loyalty to him--only to him, as long as his was only to her--her parents were still her parents. And her father had understood Isabelle when Sark turned his back.
It had been fear of his betrayal that kept them separate when she worked with him while Sloane thought she was dead. She knew he saw right through her, but while they were in public she pretended she was Ana. "I told them I killed Sydney," she remarked, excpecting he'd find it amusing. "Shot in the back."
"Really," he murmured, drinking. He watched her in the mirror over the bar. It was a delicious deception, the kind they would have enjoyed together once. She was pretending to be Sydney pretending to be Ana pretending to be Sydney, all while pretending to work with APO or the CIA, and really working with Sark. But she had no idea what he was thinking. "They should know better."
She smiled slowly. "I was very convincing."
He said nothing for a moment, scanning the bar. It seemed he had no interest in personal conversation with her. "As always," he finally replied. And set about getting them arrested without filling her in on the plan. It was the last time they were alone together--even then, they were apart.
And the years passed and were pointless, but it wasn't so hard to keep pretending. At least she still controlled that. As long as she could still pretend, she might get him back.
Then one day, Dixon brought evidence that Sark was still working. She laughed it off and teased him about trying to lure her back to the CIA, while Vaughn watched her warily. Not for the first time, she wondered what he might suspect. But she can't refuse the chance to see him, and she doesn't even try. It'd be a risk if she were truly in deep cover, but she's not fooling herself anymore; she'd been without a mission so long, she was no longer living much of a lie.
The first thing he asked was about her children. After so long, it was like they never finished their argument.
"They're fine," she said shortly. "Isabelle looks exactly like me as a child."
"And your son? I suppose he takes after Vaughn." She watched the tightness of his mouth as he said this.
"Yes," she replied. "I suppose he will. Children pick up more from their fathers than they realize."
He snorted. That was when she recognized how angry he was. She reached out and slapped him across his unmarred cheek. "Bastard. You abandoned me."
"You seem to have made do," he said, straightening his jaw.
"So you've secured your loyalty to someone else."
He grabbed her hand when she raised it the second time. "Are you still loyal to me?"
She sneered at him. "Always. You son of a bitch."
He pulled her close and she jerked back. "It's your loyalty I question, Julian." She shoved him away violently.
He smiled, pulled the folds out of his coat and smoothed his tie. "Are you going to arrest me, Sydney?"
She glared at him. She'd like to arrest him, just to show him she hasn't lost her edge. But the thought of him back in orange prison clothes and her far away with feet buried in sand made her stand back. "I'll kill you myself instead and say you resisted arrest," she threatened calmly. "If you don't tell me why you haven't been in contact."
He shrugged. "Who says I haven't tried?"
She gave him a hard stare. "Don't tell me you'd let someone else stop you."
His face gave nothing away. She allowed the possibilities to form in her head. Maybe Vaughn knew, after all. He would have done anything to retain the illusion of his perfect, normal family. In Sark's casual posture and blank face, she might find what used to be there: a purpose, a love, a secret no one else shared.
"Perhaps you would prefer to go back to your quiet, anonymous life, Sydney," he said. His voice was quiet, the one that once spoke to her when she felt abandoned. She'd grabbed onto him when she felt she had nothing worthy left, and they'd told themselves their lives meant nothing if they couldn't use their hard-won talent to hold onto *this*.
It was a question of whether she lost him, or he lost her. But now they were standing face to face in a hotel bar and all she had to do was reach out and find her place with him again.
She did. And it turned out it was easy to start again.
I re-posted my Alias season 3 Sark/Syd fic earlier today (backdated--it was originally posted at Blurty). When I was re-reading it, I realized it actually isn't half bad. I dug it out because I was having all these latent Sark/Syd fantasies after the finale, and, well...I wrote a bit of a sequel. I have this weird compulsion with Alias. It's sort of a passive-agressive response, I guess. Sydney's loyalty is pretty much intrinsic to her character, so I like to turn that completely on its head. Plus I think that's pretty much the only way she'd ever wind up with Sark. So.
Alias, Syd/Sark (untitled)
Warning: spoilers for season 5, picks up after the finale.
May not make sense if you don't read the other one first.
She has no choice but to stick with the plan. She thought he would extract her after they took Sloane and Irina down. She expected him to take her hand and run off with her, but instead he disappeared alone. Vaughn looked sheepish when he told her he'd let him go, kept rambling on in the face of her dismay until her expression froze over and she said she guessed it was time to let it go. Let go, she said, as if that could be her choice. Spying was in her blood and he hated that a normal bourgeois life didn't suit her. But she stuck to the plan, and made the logical choices, and things got even more complicated when a few years passed and another baby came. But what could she do but stay in deep cover and wait for him to reappear?
He didn't respond to any of their contact procedures. At some point, she suspected Vaughn hadn't really let him go. Perhaps he got suspicious; maybe Sark made a mistake and Vaughn killed him in anger, covered it up. But she has more faith in Sark than in Vaughn's trifling ability to hold a grudge. So instead of scared, she gets angry. He's either abaonded her or decided this is the life she wants. He hadn't been happy when she told him she was having his child. It'd been the worst argument they ever had, and when he slept with Rachel, it hadn't been a joke they'd agreed to perpetrate. But it was too late, too many things happening unexpected, and she'd already told Vaughn. After that, things had been different. She was watched too closely during the pregnancy--by both her father and her mother--to have contact with him. Nine months. No, longer. Much longer.
She didn't lie about loving the child. She won't be Irina: she won't abandon her daughter. She does not resent being a mother; only the distance it makes between her and him. Faking Vaughn's death was a relief, but it irritated Sark that she was playing games without him. Trust was the only faith they had, and she could see it waning in him. She lashed out at him, furious that he would doubt her after all this time. But he looked at her, bloated from pregnancy, and saw weakness.
She hated him for that. If she hadn't, she would have found some way to communicate with him before Sloane initiated his final count-down. Before her father was injured, and before she had to watch her mother die while Sark was elsewhere getting shot for his trouble. She lost both her parents in one night, and it hadn't been easy. As many times as she'd affirmed her loyalty to him--only to him, as long as his was only to her--her parents were still her parents. And her father had understood Isabelle when Sark turned his back.
It had been fear of his betrayal that kept them separate when she worked with him while Sloane thought she was dead. She knew he saw right through her, but while they were in public she pretended she was Ana. "I told them I killed Sydney," she remarked, excpecting he'd find it amusing. "Shot in the back."
"Really," he murmured, drinking. He watched her in the mirror over the bar. It was a delicious deception, the kind they would have enjoyed together once. She was pretending to be Sydney pretending to be Ana pretending to be Sydney, all while pretending to work with APO or the CIA, and really working with Sark. But she had no idea what he was thinking. "They should know better."
She smiled slowly. "I was very convincing."
He said nothing for a moment, scanning the bar. It seemed he had no interest in personal conversation with her. "As always," he finally replied. And set about getting them arrested without filling her in on the plan. It was the last time they were alone together--even then, they were apart.
And the years passed and were pointless, but it wasn't so hard to keep pretending. At least she still controlled that. As long as she could still pretend, she might get him back.
Then one day, Dixon brought evidence that Sark was still working. She laughed it off and teased him about trying to lure her back to the CIA, while Vaughn watched her warily. Not for the first time, she wondered what he might suspect. But she can't refuse the chance to see him, and she doesn't even try. It'd be a risk if she were truly in deep cover, but she's not fooling herself anymore; she'd been without a mission so long, she was no longer living much of a lie.
The first thing he asked was about her children. After so long, it was like they never finished their argument.
"They're fine," she said shortly. "Isabelle looks exactly like me as a child."
"And your son? I suppose he takes after Vaughn." She watched the tightness of his mouth as he said this.
"Yes," she replied. "I suppose he will. Children pick up more from their fathers than they realize."
He snorted. That was when she recognized how angry he was. She reached out and slapped him across his unmarred cheek. "Bastard. You abandoned me."
"You seem to have made do," he said, straightening his jaw.
"So you've secured your loyalty to someone else."
He grabbed her hand when she raised it the second time. "Are you still loyal to me?"
She sneered at him. "Always. You son of a bitch."
He pulled her close and she jerked back. "It's your loyalty I question, Julian." She shoved him away violently.
He smiled, pulled the folds out of his coat and smoothed his tie. "Are you going to arrest me, Sydney?"
She glared at him. She'd like to arrest him, just to show him she hasn't lost her edge. But the thought of him back in orange prison clothes and her far away with feet buried in sand made her stand back. "I'll kill you myself instead and say you resisted arrest," she threatened calmly. "If you don't tell me why you haven't been in contact."
He shrugged. "Who says I haven't tried?"
She gave him a hard stare. "Don't tell me you'd let someone else stop you."
His face gave nothing away. She allowed the possibilities to form in her head. Maybe Vaughn knew, after all. He would have done anything to retain the illusion of his perfect, normal family. In Sark's casual posture and blank face, she might find what used to be there: a purpose, a love, a secret no one else shared.
"Perhaps you would prefer to go back to your quiet, anonymous life, Sydney," he said. His voice was quiet, the one that once spoke to her when she felt abandoned. She'd grabbed onto him when she felt she had nothing worthy left, and they'd told themselves their lives meant nothing if they couldn't use their hard-won talent to hold onto *this*.
It was a question of whether she lost him, or he lost her. But now they were standing face to face in a hotel bar and all she had to do was reach out and find her place with him again.
She did. And it turned out it was easy to start again.