Author's Notes: This is my absolute first piece of Alias fanfiction. Yes, I am nervous. And I've been a little hard on Sydney in this one, but I promise I'll be nice to her next time. I'll write something sappy and romantic. Please don't throw too many rotten tomatoes, at least not without giving me a chance to duck first :)

Summary: Vaughn reflects on the consequences of interference with Sydney's arrest.

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Notions of the Infinite (1/1)

by darkstar
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When he closes his eyes, he sees it very clearly in his mind, but shining and pale as if underwater. Memory is never crystal, but rather broken glass.

He shifts through the shards for reflections, and this is what he finds:

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Here's the setting--

They pick a city, any city. They throw a dart on the map, or ransack the alphabet and go from there. S is for San Fransisco, iced tea and eggrolls and the hotel room that smelled like cheap pot (not theirs, at least not this time.) P for Phoenix. C for Carson City. T for Tijuana, hot and sweaty and still a blur from the tequila. The city is a detail, really, minor enough. A formality of sorts.

There is a hotel room, or rather many hotel rooms that do not change so much as offer variations on a theme. Stains on the wallpaper, dirt in the carpet, cigarette burns in the sheets. Neon lights outside the window, sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes blood red. Vacancy, it says. These places are never full. This is a main source of attraction, as in the inherent decay. No one asks questions, at least not if you've got the cash. In these places they are simply a man and a woman, both of them cheap street trash, instead of two fugitives running themselves into the ground. They do not pretend to believe this means they are safe.

He's laid down two rules: never sign in together and never use their real names. People are looking for them, some friendly, some not. Either way they don't particularly care to be found. Anonymity makes it easier to get the fix; there's something intoxicating about assuming the identity of someone who does not exist. If they don't exist, they can never die. A rush, a sense of power. Addictions were formed on less. So they enter as strangers. Scratch the names on paper, his in blunt block letters and hers in lazy cursive, a reflexive delicacy. There will be an interlude of several hours just to be safe. The waiting kills. He'll pace the floor, the bones of his jaw tight and ready to pop. She'll strip the bed to the bare mattress (roaches, she says) and read Tolstoy, Eliot, Poe. But she never seems to finish a single page; her eyes are drawn back, back, back to the clock.

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Here's the close up--

Nothing unusual, a mundanity of sorts. Cliched, perhaps, but isn't love always? They can't afford to be original; they don't have the time.

There's a man, worn ragged, but in more than just the bones. It's in his face: the thin lines, the rusted corners. It's in the eyes: the cold sheen, the jagged edges sharp enough to draw blood. Steel, or perhaps iron. Something along those lines, hard and brittle and not easily bent. Melted, rather, under high heat and that is a danger with them. They are flammable when together; they are a bonfire. But how else are they to live, if not in the midst of burning?

There's a young woman; pretty but stripped to the core. You still get the impression of beauty, but it's impossible to look at it directly because there's a shining, like radiation. She'll burn the retinas. The lips are smeared with too much red and the eyes are rimmed with too much black; all a part of the disguise. It draws out the whiteness in her skin; the hollowness of the cheekbones, the softness like wax. When he touches her face, he's afraid he'll leave fingerprints. Indentations.

All this is excused because they are together.
Nothing else exists.

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This is how it begins--

(Atlanta)

The Patriot Motel. Orange neon lights, three letters burnt out on the vacancy sign. V c n y

He signs his name Alex Thomas. She's already arrived, it says so in the upper left hand corner of the register. Laura Chase. These particular aliases were her idea, something she read in a book, something that has meaning to her, although he doesn't always understand why such details are important. If let to himself, he'd stick with Bob.

He pauses a moment to catch the room number. 345.

He goes to his room but doubles back at the last moment, down the back stairway, and stands on the corner of the street. His eyes pry apart the night, peel back the thick layers of darkness. He runs his mind through the usual questions:

/Were we followed?/
No. But he could be wrong. And even if he's right, it's only a matter of time. Always is.

/Where will we go?/
He doesn't know, but beyond that he doesn't care. The only thing that matters is that she is in the roach motel behind him, tripping blankets from the bed, waiting for him, instead of strapped to a chair in a white room waiting for the next doctor to slide a needle up her spine. He shivers.

/Do you realize what you've done?/
Yes, he says aloud, to the streetlight. I had a gun strapped to my left leg, and I used it when they started strapping her down in the van. When her eyes begged me for help. I shot three of them and she took the other two down and we ran like dogs. Like animals, without stopping, until morning. Somewhere in the middle of it all we stole a car. And now we're in Frisco.

/It's not far enough. They'll come back, they'll come for her. They'll shoot you and leave you on the floor and take her back alive./

I still have the gun, he whispers. Let them try.

With this ultimatum dangling in the night air behind him, he turns to find his way back to Room 345. She meets him at the door.

"You idiot. You've killed yourself. You idiot."

Her hands wrap around his neck, pulling him inside, holding him to her. Desperation, hunger, betraying her words.

"I'm not going to let you die for me, Vaughn." she hisses, into his ear. "You idiot--"

He silences her with one finger on her lips, with one word. "Sydney." The finger slides down the bone of her jaw. "No one is going to die."

"Say it like a promise."
"I promise."
"Show me."
"How?"

She leans forward and kisses him for the first time.

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This is the interlude, the calm in between--

(Phoenix)

An hour before this moment, he stood in the back room of an old stucco church that smelled of chickens and stale incense. Twenty miles outside the city, or maybe thirty. A white cotton sundress was involved, as was an exchange of words followed by the kissing of the bride. The rings will come later; at this point he can't afford them. It's taking everything he has just to maintain their survival.

But they needed this wedding, if only as a form of defiance. If only as a secret.

The honeymoon consists of three hours in a dusty room at Happy Cactus Motor Lodge.

Afternoon heat slides through the metal fan blades, quivering in waves of light above the curve of the sheets. The mattress is on the bare floor; outside it's one hundred twenty degrees in the shade. A radio plays to hide the rattle of the fan and a woman sings in Spanish, which neither of them understands, but this doesn't matter. Neither of them are listening to the music.

He lies on his back beside her; his skin sticks to the mattress as he hands her another piece of ice. Passes it through her palms (bare) and his palms (bare) until a second skin of moisture forms. In this manner, they share an entire bucket of ice, letting the chips melt on their foreheads, down their necks, across their mouths.

The room is golden in the sun. She is golden in the sun.
He smiles.

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Here's the breaking point:

(Carson City)

He stands outside the door, grocery bags in hand. Catching her scent. Cigarette smoke, burnt flesh, tequila.

There are other smells, even less pleasant. The hallway stinks of old beer, old urine, old pot. Everything aged, rotted, even the air: dead, decaying from too long without sun. (No one opens the windows in this kind of place). Even the colors: avocado green carpet, yellow stains on the walls, a vomit-orange bedspread.

He steps into the room, brings his eyes up to study the woman he loves. Appraise the recent damages.

His first thoughts are always the same-- young, too young, although this has been a lie for sometime. The little paradoxes confuse him-- for example, the clothes she is wearing. A white cotton tank top, molded to the contour of the ribs; she has yet to show evidence of the child supposedly ripening beneath the skin. Jeans, dark blue, too baggy as if she's trying to hide something. Bare feet, the toenails painted midnight purple. Matching the fingernails perfectly-- it's a concern at her age.

Young, too young.
Both of them.

The rest of the picture contradicts this--

She lies on the stripped bed, stretched out in a lazy reclining position, a half-finished cigarette held defiantly between two fingers. Desperation in the eyes; he knows why without even looking at her arms. There will be burns: small, circular, from the cigarette, no doubt; if she used the lighter they would be long and thin. Penance, she says. For the people they killed in our name.

He drops the groceries by the door. His voice is weary; it reveals this is routine.

"Thought we talked about this, Syd.."
"What?"
"It's not your fault. Not Jack, not Will, not Francie. Just like Weiss and Alice aren't my fault. We're not responsible for their deaths."
"You can't say that. We ran. It blew his cover. We still ran. Even when the others died, even when we knew it was meant to draw us out. We hid like rats."

He shrugs off his jacket, his jaw tightening with frustration.

"You want to play this game, fine. You want to cut something, you want to burn something, you come to me." He jerks his shirtsleeve up to his elbow. "Right here. C'mon."
"We tried that In Philly, sugar. Didn't work, remember?"

Hiss of smoke through her lips, thin and curved like a bird's claw.

"Make it work." He snatches the cigarette from her, throws it to the floor, crushes it before she can stop. She reaches for the pack and he catches her hand. "The baby."

"Don't worry, she'll just laugh it off and keep on coming. I'm a superfreak, remember. Prophecied about and all."
"You talk like she's a tumor."
"According to some medical textbooks, she is.'
"You believe everything you read, now?"
"I believe nothing. Nothing but you."

Her hands slide over his, the blank mask of her features begins to crack.

"Tell me this isn't killing us, baby. Tell me."
"It's hard. I know. But You're strong. You'll make it." In his
mind, he adds a coda. /You have to./

"You should have let them take me. You should have let them play their little games."

His arms around her, holding her still, letting her cry. Another paradox-- the roughness of his voice measured against the gentleness of the embrace. Hands on either side of her face, passing through her hair, a gesture of love but also desperation.

The clock is running down.

"I'm not worth this."
"Yes, you are. think of us, think of the baby--"
"What kind of life do you think she'll have? What kind of life do you think we'll have?"
"We'll find a way, Sydney. We will."

Now he's pulling her back against his chest, leaning onto the bed. Arms sliding to her waist, protection or possession or both.

"It isn't going to work."

A crack in her defenses; her voice edges tears.

"We'll make it work."
"I'm fading, you know. Every day I lose another piece of myself. I can't even remember my favorite color. I've tried all morning but I cant, it's gone and--"
"Red."
"Red."
"Yeah, darlin. Dark, thick, red, like the color of wine in Italy."

Her hands move to cover his.

"Thanks."
"It doesn't matter, you know."
"What doesn't?"
"The color. You look good in everything."

She almost smiles. It's the almost that breaks him, every time.
She whispers in the almost-silence.

"You still love me?"
"Don't know how not to."

She's twisted in his arms, now, her eyes dead level with him.

"One day, we're going to wake up and it'll all be gone. We won't even recognize each other. We'll be dual hallucinations. Ghosts."

He pushes her against the pillows in a kiss, tears sliding down his face where she can't see. They are limp, dead weight, as if they are bodies hauled from the sea.

Drowning.

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This is how it goes down--

(Tijuana)

From this point, everything rises or falls. More falling than rising. It can be relegated to abbreviation, simply for the sake of time. More cigarette burns and razor blades, but no scars. He stops her before that; he is the type to think he is doing something to protect, even if it is futile. Especially if it is futile. Her deterioration continues, subtle yet profound. The descent is many things, but gaudy is not one of them; she has more dignity than that.

The child is born, scrawny, red, a tiny lizard baby. A girl. She wants to name it Jackie. He wants to name it Alice. They argue. She says she can't take it anymore.

Don't be ridiculous, he says.

Three weeks later, she's gone.
He finds only a scrap of paper, tucked in a drawer with her personal effects-- a bent picture of her father, melted lipstick, cracked nail polish bottles. (Toward the end, everything fell into a disarray, this is evident even in the handwriting. Jagged, scrawled.)

Los Angeles, no.No, no, please.Don't take me.Vaughn, please.
San Fransisco. First Kiss.
Route 66, nightmare.No, No, Please.Help.
Phoenix. Wedding. One hundred twenty degrees. He smiled.
The Davy Crockett Motor Lodge. Jack, Will,Francie, gone. Forgive us
now and in the hour of your deaths.
Dallas. Baby. What have we done?
Sydney Luvs Vaughn 4ever
Carson City, no, no, burning.
Seattle. Baby.
Drowned.

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Now this is reality--

He has not relived memory.
There were no cities, no motel rooms, no ice buckets in the sun. No baby. These are versions of her, of himself, that he has created, and these reflections belong to another world. An alternate dimension of time and space, one in which he tries to save her and lives with the consequences.

In reality, he does nothing.
He opens his eyes and the van has come to a stop, and the men in black suit jackets are filing out toward the nightclub where she is dancing, unaware. Ignorant of the fact that she will be taken, that he cannot stop it. He wonders if she will number him with the enemy, or if she will see his eyes and read the truth.

/I am not one of them, I swear, I am here only because there is no way I will allow them to take you alone. I am here to let them know who they will have to beat down before they hurt you./

He hides behind this resolution, this better judgment that keeps him from throwing away their lives and the lives of others just to protect her now. He shows nothing of the rage, the hate, the fire; he locks it behind a stone mask that reveals nothing as she is pulled into the van, as she is strapped to the wall. As she pleads for help and stares at him with eyes naked with his betrayal of her.

/I am protecting you, Sydney, I am here, this is the best way. Escape would destroy us. I have foreseen it. I have lived it for both of us and it is beautiful and ruinous, like a bonfire. But in the end you walked away..../

And it killed him.

But despite all this, the logic and the reason and the fact, for just one moment, his hand slides down his pant leg to his gun. Caresses the trigger.
He hears the words (he does not remember them; they do not exist, but somehow he hears them) she whispered to him in their alternate life. On a stripped bed in a run down motel room, he had held her and she'd asked a question.

/You still love me?/

As he lets go of the gun to lean closer to her, as he listens to himself spill empty reassurance to her, he covers her naked eyes with his own stare and in it he echoes the words he has never said.

I don't know how not to, baby.
I don't know how.

The van door slams behind them and they are in darkness.

Because of this, no one sees his hand slip into hers.

the end
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Whoohoo! The end! Yay! See, it wasn't *that* dark, now was it? Now it is time for you, my esteemed readers, to tell me what you think. Should I continue writing our star-crossed lovers or should I cut my damages and stick to reading?

Any comments or suggestions are worshipped with candles and Vaughn clones at clone347@aol.com

The Muse and I thank you for your time :)

darkstar