A Shift In The Wind (the pretentious literati remix)
Remix Author: Voleuse
Original Story: The Original Story by TommyGirl
Summary: Ink, paper, nostalgia, and innocence.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Alias
Spoilers: Season 3
"Take it from me," said her father, "it is possible to get a Ph.D. in English while ignoring no less than three literary periods. You must have read something in all of them, but you can be quite ignorant of at least three and still do very nicely."
"Which three are you ignorant of?" said Janet.
"The moderns, the whole of the twelfth century, and the Jacobeans," said her father.
"You should have waited until she went to graduate school to tell her," said Janet's mother. "Here, have some pie to soothe your disillusionment."
The first night in her new home, after she splits a pizza and a six-pack with Weiss, she drags one of the largest boxes into the living room. It's sides are creased, the corners bent. On three sides, her father's careful script labels it "books."
She had been afraid her entire life had been erased, along with those missing two years, but it had only been waiting for her, patiently, in a long-term storage unit.
She tears the masking tape with her nails, rips the top flaps open, and breathes in the sudden waft of dust and paper and academia.
The books are packed in tightly, standing up, but she taps each one on its spine, recognizing them by color and width, silently naming them.
When she comes upon one, dark and gilt-edged, she pulls it out, flips through the pages. Anna Karenina.
She reads the first few chapters, curled up in her unfamiliar sofa, and then slips the book into her briefcase, to read piecemeal, when she can
My life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!
The book is heavy in Sydney's hands, and she lays it down on the table, runs her hand over the paragraph. Does it twice, backwards and forwards, relishing the faint rise of ink, and the chafe of paper, against her fingertips.
She can hear her mother's voice, husky and rich, reciting those words, giving them the lightest inflection. She had always associated the accent with literature, even affected it herself when she read aloud in classes.
It was only last year (three years ago) that she realized what the accent actually represented.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
Sydney treasures these snatches of in-between, stolen moments with her books. She carries a different one every week, slips it out when she has a spare minute. Between briefings, or during lunch, or right before she leaves for home.
When she's reading, she isn't an agent, double or no, and she isn't the lonely woman who watches the news while cradling take-out on her knees. She isn't someone who keeps losing everything. She isn't chosen for anything.
When she cracks open a book, she's the person she had always meant to become.
Tonight, she's waiting for her father to finish his briefing, so they can go out to dinner, to a new Chinese restaurant downtown. No shop talk, no angst, just...a normal night.
She used to have those, before. She misses them.
Tonight, she decides, she'll try to recapture her life again, starting with dinner with her dad. Maybe afterwards, she thinks, she'll pick up some beer at the corner store, see if Eric wants to watch whatever's on TMC.
"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can over come."
"And your defect is a propensity to hate every body."
"And yours," he replied, with a smile, "is to wilfully to misunderstand them."
"Am I interrupting?"
Her head jerks up, common courtesy and habit forcing her to acknowledge Vaughn, no matter how skittish he makes her feel lately. "I'm waiting for my father." She smiles tightly.
"I figured." He leans over her desk, slides a finger over the edge of her book. "Is it any good?" He doesn't look at the book as he asks.
Sydney draws the book to her, deliberately marking her place before closing it. Sets it down, folds her arms, summons all her cynicism. "Are we really going to do this, Vaughn?"
"Syd--"
"Because I made a pact with myself that for one night," she barrels forward, "I was going to relax and enjoy the fact that I'm alive."
There was nothing terrible in the appearance of the Demon : on the contrary, his countenance wore an expression of melancholy--nay, even of anguish, as if the eternal fire was gnawing at his heart.
"You can talk to me about anything," he says, and for a second, she believes him.
Then she remembers the year, remembers the lies, remembers the look on his face when he poured the acid down. And she remembers the way he's looked at her, as if she's the answer to all of his problems.
"Maybe I'm not the right person to talk to about this," she offers. "Maybe you need to talk to Dr. Barnett--"
"No." He gestures abruptly with his hands, cuts her off. "I'm fine. Really."
She should laugh it off, but it only makes her more nervous.
If we look through all the heroic fortunes of mankind, we shall find this same entanglement of something mean and trivial with whatever is noblest in joy or sorrow. Life is made up of marble and mud.
The look in Vaughn's eyes reminds her of her father, the way he looked when Irina Derevko first returned. The way his jaw clenched, the way all compassion faded from his eyes. The way every word said was wrapped in razor wire.
She wonders, briefly, if Vaughn learned this from her father.
Then again, her father never decided another woman would be his salvation.
"I know I hurt you," Vaughn says, "and that I made mistakes this past year. I'm sorry."
She starts to interrupt him, but he continues, almost desperate.
"I'm sorry that it made you lose faith in me," he apologizes," and I'm sorry I couldn't save you that night."
Sydney has to think for a moment before she realizes which night he means. "That's not what this is about, Vaughn." And I didn't need you to save me.
Vaughn looks away, straightens his shoulders. "What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know."
Tell us, they'll say to me. So we will understand and be able to resolve things. They'll be mistaken. It's only the things you don't understand that you can resolve. There will be no resolution.
When Vaughn walks away, Sydney almost stops him, fends off a sudden rush of regret, of longing. She stands almost without thinking, but doesn't speak out.
Vaughn doesn't look back as he exits, and she can't help but feel relieved.
She sinks back into her chair with a sigh, stares down at the book, which sits closed, patiently.
She picks it up, caressing its spine, and finds her place again.
And she reads.
end
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