Title: Proclivities
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Five missing scenes.
Spoilers: Through 3.16 "Taken"
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
A/N: These were written for the LJ First Lines meme, in which a writer publishes a list of her stories' first lines and invites others to contribute short pieces using them. My thanks to the writers whose lines inspired me; their names are included below the title of each piece. The imperfect result is entirely my own.
Gold (Alias 3.02, "Succession")
For eretria.
He shouldn't be here. He was going to fail without even knowing what was
expected of him. The light of day was a numbing, crippling assault and he was
deeply afraid that the no-place of his cell and all the eternities in it had
ruined him. But someone had buried him two years ago and someone wanted him now
and he, always reliable, waited upon events. Why, when his existence had never
been his own, would the thought even occur to him? My
life. My life. My life is in
danger--
"--isn't it?"
A sudden ocean of sensory input, brain catching up with the rest of him: slick
metal benches stinking permanently of disinfectant; air so dry it abraded the
throat; freckled shoulders and amber-shot eyes. Had anyone ever touched him so
lightly, so carefully? Perhaps that accounted for the impulse to speak.
It surprised them both. No doubt Sydney Bristow thought she knew his bartered
soul better than most, but was there, conceivably, a suggestion of guilt in the
stare she gave him in reply? He wanted to bend closer and breathe her in like
air. He decided that there was.
Which was some satisfaction, anyway. He'd hoped for
some scrap that might help explain the hard blue sky, for instance, that
dazzled him through the open doors of the van, but Sydney only looked up, busy
with the shackle-bolts. He was no better at reading her than he'd ever been.
Possibly he'd been mistaken about the guilt.
The sight of her face had shocked him awake only hours ago. Now her hand was a
warning at his back as the arid ground scorched his feet through the soles of
his shoes. "You're up," she said, soft and ruthless, and out he went.
A noisy, bloody hello, as it turned out, and weren't they all?
Ochre dust on his hands and in his throat, yellow blaze of
sun pinning him to earth. He took his first real breath grinning down at
the desert floor, or so it felt. Time, which had slowed, found its track again.
He lost sight of Sydney in the thickening air.
When they showed him his patrimony he stared for a moment, then laughed and
made the bargain as they'd known he would. There was no clause requiring him to
forget whose hands had undone his chains and sent him out in the garish light
to take his place again.
*
Proclivities (Alias 3.07, "Prelude")
No borrowed first line here.
It went without saying that both her employer and husband were fools, but
perhaps, he conceded, he had the advantage here, knowing the family so well.
The resemblance was there if you knew to look.
"Open it," he told her, leaning in, and oh, yes, down to the smoky
perfume of her white-gold hair, he knew her.
Which gave their exchange an air of unreality, he felt, but he was careful to
explain things with all his accustomed courtesy. It had pleased her mother--and
various others--once upon a time, and perhaps she knew that. Or
perhaps not. Her hands on the envelope were steady.
He watched with interest her carefully played reaction to the photograph and
its subject: a woman, a cousin, another counterfeit blonde--another Derevko, doing what they all do best.
*
Account Rendered (Alias 3.10, "Remnants")
For Brix.
Bright light. Cold. He'd come
to gagging on his own blood. His shirt was soaked black with Allison's by the
time he reached the vehicle. He'd lost the box. He'd lost more than that.
Tippin.
They'd simply failed to anticipate that contingency, an error he knew he'd pay
for quite literally. The investment in Allison Doren
had been considerable.
But they'd promised her more than that. In due time he'd collect what was owed
her in turn, never mind that she'd sold him out and would have again as often
as it paid her. He'd a fondness for monsters, having been bred one himself, and an inability to forget anything at all.
*
If (Alias 3.14, "Blowback")
For Vanzetti.
It happens all at once and seems to take forever. Later he remembers the moment
expanding like the skin of a soap-bubble, the smell of volatiles, hydraulic
fluid, the cold metal sounds of the Lisbon docks.
If you love her, drop the gun.
Even as he speaks he hears the echo rearrange itself: You. Her. If. It's a moment of
perfect irony, generations of dynastic puppetry tangling with the here and now.
Once upon a time there were three sisters and three daughters, and for each
daughter there was--
Michael Vaughn's weapon hits the catwalk then, and the bubble breaks.
*
Nerve (Alias 3.16,
"Taken")
For gabby silang.
They're playing that mysterious, ridiculous game again. He makes a move, she
ups the ante, and here they are staring each other down in the Mexican
sun--again. Two fathers, two daughters; the symmetry isn't lost,
he's sure, on any of them.
Use me, with well-timed contempt: she's perfect, as always. Marcus Dixon
had been a breath away from regrettable impulse. Jack Bristow, he knows, will
calculate better. Approaching her with the collar, he's careful not to smile.
She's flushed and sweating lightly in the brutal sunlight. At no time does he
permit his fingertips to touch her skin.
*
[End]
October 11, 2004