For Sydney
Simon/Julia, Syd/Vaughn || AU Lost Years || G
Summary: Everything good and worthwhile in Julia Thorne's life has been for Sydney.
Complete: Yes
She wakes up in Rome again, in the apartment she bought almost a year ago. The angel on top of the church outside her window seems to stare at her, the personification of the nagging voice she’s been hearing in the back of her mind for the last six months. The voice that tells her something isn’t right with her life. That whispers about a different pair of hands caressing her body than Simon Walker’s. A voice that fills her dreams with images of a completely different life than the one she thinks she remembers leading.
She stares back, dares the angel to reveal the truth. Truth. For one moment, Julia remembers a time when the search for truth was second only to the search for justice. Stupid, she tells herself. When has her life ever been about truth or justice? She is nothing but an assassin. A damn good one, but still, she commits murder for hire – a profession that inherently prevents one from being closely acquainted with the truth. And as for justice, she’s fairly certain the scales wouldn’t tip in her favor.
Carefully getting out of bed so as to not disturb Simon’s sleeping form, Julia gets up to go to the bathroom. But again the angel catches her eye. He seems benign now, as if he is gently smiling down at her. Loving her, despite who she is, what she is. She’s sure it is a male angel, standing guard over her and the rest of the city. My Guardian Angel, she thinks suddenly, the phrase accompanied by an image of crystalline green eyes. Unnerved, she gets back in bed and wills herself to sleep.
A few hours later, she wakes again to the sound of Simon dressing and gathering his things. He tells her he has a mission somewhere in South America, and he doesn’t know when he’ll see her again, or be able to be in touch. She nods, the information not worrying her. Julia Thorne does not get emotionally attached. One last kiss, and Simon is gone.
She gets up, and paces restlessly between the bed and the window. The angel is backlit by the rising sun. He seems poised for flight now, waiting only for someone with whom to share his freedom. Julia turns from the window. Freedom is something she has never tasted. She notices a brown paper lunch bag sitting below the window. The sight of it pulls her from her thoughts and back to the present. Where had the bag come from? She decides that perhaps Simon left it, and picks it up.
She sits down on the bed with the bag on her lap and takes a deep breath, feeling unnaturally apprehensive. Glancing at the angel once more, she carefully opens the bag. Inside she finds a single item. A small wire-bound notebook, the pages cramped with her own handwriting.
But she doesn’t remember ever seeing the notebook before, let alone writing in it.
Her confused glance flies to her angel, still wreathed in heavenly light. He holds no answers, and she hurriedly puts the notebook back in the bag and tosses the bag to the floor beside her bed. A nameless fear forms in the back of her mind and centers itself in her gut. She doesn’t even know what she’s afraid of, or why she is afraid in the first place. Julia Thorne knows no fear. Why should one little notebook scare her?
She decides she can face the notebook and the nagging voice better if she is dressed and fed, so she quickly dresses. Kneeling down, she opens the bag again and takes out the notebook, then heads to the kitchen. She mechanically fixes herself two fried eggs and three strips of bacon while the notebook sits on the counter, mocking her for putting off reading it. Finally, her eggs and bacon on a plate beside a full glass of orange juice, Julia Thorne begins to read.
Things I know:
My name is Sydney Anne Bristow.
I am thirty years old.
My father is Jack Bristow. My mother is Laura Bristow, alias Irina Derevko.
I am in love. I am loved.
I have a home. I have family. I have friends.
I am not alone in this world.
One plus one is two. Two times two is four.
The Pythagorean Theorem states that in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the two sides added together.
No matter what they do to me, these things I know.
Julia eats without tasting the food. Who was Sydney Bristow, and why did she have Julia’s handwriting?
They are trying to change me. I know what they’re doing. Do they think someone who’s seen as much as I have, done as much as I have wouldn’t recognize the preliminary steps of reprogramming when I see them? I will fight it. I won’t give in.
I am Sydney Anne Bristow.
Daughter of Jack and Laura Bristow.
Lover of Michael Vaughn.
Friend to Will Tippin and Francine Calfo.
There are twelve months in a year, which contains 365 days, unless it’s a leap year, in which case there are 366.
No matter what they do to me, these things I know.
The entries go on and on like that. Descriptions of what “they” did to Sydney today, and then the litany of things Sydney knows. Julia finds herself drawn into Sydney’s story. Who is Sydney Bristow, she wonders. And why does she have Julia’s handwriting?
They started to call me by a different name today. I refused to answer. I won’t let them change me. I will be strong. He’s out there, I can feel him. Grieving for me. I feel his pain stabbing at me like a thousand knives. I dreamt of him last night. He thinks I’m dead. I have to get back to him.
I am Sydney Bristow.
Daughter of Jack and Laura.
Lover of Michael.
Friend to Will and Francie.
Rainbows are made when light refracts through raindrops. Rain forms from clouds, which form from evaporated water from lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water.
No matter what they do to me, these things I know.
Julia reads on. She’s seen a lot in her lifetime, most of it not pretty. She long ago learned to depend only on herself and not to believe in anything that could talk to you, because chances are it is lying to you. But for some reason, Julia Thorne feels pity for Sydney Bristow. No woman should have to lose her life and be turned into someone else. Julia is her own woman, she tells herself. She hates to think of anyone being used so cruelly and completely by another human being. She reads on.
When I try to remember their faces, they are all blurry. His eyes – were they green or hazel? Was she black or white? Was he a doctor or a reporter? Was she a teacher or a spy? I want my life back. They can’t break me. I will be strong.
I am Sydney.
Daughter.
Lover.
Friend.
The world is round. The sky is blue.
No matter what they do to me, these things I know.
Julia turns the page expectantly. She gasps.
When they called me Julia Thorne today, I answered. After all, they haven’t called me anything else for as long as I can remember. I didn’t think I should have responded, but I couldn’t remember why. But it made them happy when I did. If I make them happy, maybe I’ll get out of here sooner.
I am Julia Thorne.
Assassin.
I don’t know anything anymore.
Julia stares in horror at the notebook. She turns the page and is greeted by nothing but blank space. She has no recollection of being Sydney Bristow. The names Sydney wrote about mean nothing to her. She reads it all again, and is struck by one thought.
His eyes were green. Like her guardian angel’s eyes are green.
My Guardian Angel.
She runs to the bathroom and stares at her reflection in the mirror. She sees only Julia, but somehow she knows that somewhere deep inside, Sydney Bristow is waiting. Waiting for freedom, like a companion for Julia’s angel poised for flight. She hears her phone ring and picks it up. Accepts a mission to Hong Kong without thinking about it.
She knows what she has to do. She prays for the courage to do it. Julia Thorne isn’t a happy woman. She doesn’t like to think about her supposed past, she can’t bear to contemplate a future that continues on as each day of her recent past has. Julia Thorne is nothing but a killer. But she thinks that maybe Sydney Bristow was something more. Sydney Bristow had a family, a lover who she loved, friends whom she cared about.
She makes a stop in Zurich, writes her address in code and puts it and the key to her apartment in a small manila envelope. “For Sydney” she writes, carefully and evenly. Julia feels like a mental patient, one of those people who have multiple personalities. Only in this case there isn’t one that knows what the other one is doing. She considers writing a full-fledged letter to Sydney, but somehow the idea strikes her as just too weird to really contemplate.
She tucks the manila envelope into a crisp cream-colored envelope and addresses it to Arvin Sloane. She doesn’t understand why she does it, but she doesn’t question it either. Sydney will need to get to the apartment if she wants to find out about Julia. And somehow Julia is sure that Arvin Sloane would be able to get the key to Sydney. She instructs a messenger when to deliver the letter to Mr. Sloane’s office, and is on her way to Hong Kong before she can change her mind.
She comes to an alleyway somewhere in Hong Kong, her mission aborted. It is eerily lit by a flashing neon light, and an old Simon and Garfunkel song pops into Julia’s head. She wonders where the hell that came from as she doesn’t even know who Simon and Garfunkel are. She’s never been one for pop culture. Sydney must like Simon and Garfunkel, she thinks. Whoever they are. Julia Thorne pulls out an old water bottle and downs the contents, tosses aside the empty bottle to join the rest of the trash piled in the alley. She lies down on the ground, curling around herself.
She calls forth her ghosts, one by one. The fuzzy months when they told her she’d been in a coma. Her handwriting had told her otherwise. She thinks of the angel outside her apartment and realizes that it was always questioning her. What is it for? Who is it for? When Julia Thorne falls asleep for the last time, her last thought is of the answer.
It’s for Sydney.
The few good and true things in Julia Thorne’s life have always been for Sydney.