Snapshots

I.
Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn
"Train Station"

"How did you find me?" she asked as he sat down behind her on the bench that suddenly no longer felt empty. He gently leaned against her, their backs pressed against each other on that once empty bench in that empty train station, with empty trains that pass by. She wonders if they can ride on one and disappear. Where will they go? 'Where they will never find us.'

"You told me a couple of months ago that when you feel the need to disappear you go to the observatory. But, the observatory was closed. Then I remembered you said the pier calms you down, but you weren't there. And you weren't at the Bluffs at the Palisades, either."

"You didn't really go to all those places..?"

"Yeah, I did. And then I remembered you like the train station, too. Normal people go to their normal jobs."

"I can't believe you remembered all that," she whispered with a faint smile.

"Well... I did."

Normal people with normal jobs were not them. But with their backs pressed against each other on that bench in that empty train station, it was easy to pretend, even for just a moment, that they were. And so he allowed himself that one moment.

"Listen, when you're at your absolute lowest, at your most depressed," he started, his voice foreign to his ears, "I'm in." And with not more than a whisper, he added, "if you need me."

II.
Jack Bristow and Irina Derevko
"Prison"

He looked at her, remembering the person she was thirty years ago. The woman he loved, and as circumstances had permitted it, had grown to hate. Her wife. Or so she was in the pretentious illusion of their marriage.

"I missed you," she gently said as she pressed a palm in the cold glass that separated them. She sounded sincere, and she was. She smiled when he kept his silence, knowing instantly and painfully, that he had not believed it.

She watched him. Unflinching for the thousandth time at his cold gaze. He was a façade of detachment and unwanted defeat. Her Mark, long ago, in a grander scheme of things. And so when she became the mask of the life she pretended with him, she betrayed him. Treachery is potent, she imagines.

"Thank you," he replied. His tone not losing its note of doubt and sarcasm. As if burdened that he even said that. Hesitatingly, he lowered his eyes to meet her stunned gaze. "I missed you too."

And then silence, always silence. They stood facing each other. Her, inside a chambered room which was her prison. And him, in momentary annoyance and loathing. The captive and the captor. The tables have turned now. He frowned, unsure if he should say the words that crossed his mind before he had stood in front of the woman who deceived him.

Nevertheless, he said it.

"You're right. Technically, we're still husband and wife."

And he turned and walked away.

III.
Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn
"Driveway"

He stood still as the black sedan swerved across the driveway and slowed to a stop. As if on cue, the door on the driver's seat swung open, the glint of the dimly lit driveway gave the car a solitary glow as a woman came out and slowly walked towards him. For a split second, he gazed at her, but as circumstancial acknowledgments would have it, he looked away.

She stopped five feet away from him. "Hi," she greeted. A polite smile on her face.

He raised his eyes and looked past her. "Hi."

They were back where they started: him at her side, and her beside his, but never too close. Momentary consents in stolen glances. In every brush of hands, every clash of gazes, every word none of them ever dared say. But never stepping on solid ground.

"Yesterday," he began, breaking the heavy silence between them, "when you told –--" but she cut him short.

"No. You don't have to explain."

He flinched, stung by her callousness. Nonetheless he continued. "Yesterday, when you told me—"

"Seriously," she said yet again, demanding. "Don't explain." Gone were the empty train station and empty trains; and the bench where they pressed their backs against each other was, once again, empty.

As if knowing he would not say anything this time, she looked at him, a sad smile in her eyes. "Lie to me," she whispered. Her voice threateningly fragile.

He raised his eyes and met hers momentarily lost in its turbulence.

"Everything will be all right."

IV.
Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn
"Two Years After"

He crouched, his head bent forward, shoulders crunch, as he held in his arms the unconscious body of a woman. He took deep breathes every now and then, but he was silent and still as he layed on that dark corner of an abandoned alley.

How did it come to this?

"I'm sorry," he quietly said. Almost wishing she could hear him. Slowly, he held her closer, his cold hands brushed against her warm skin, her breath steady on his neck. He had forgotten the gun by his side and the gold ring he wore on his finger.

Two years had passed. Two years of thinking she was dead. Yet suddenly here she was, an accident waiting to happen.

He sighed, lightly brushing the hair that fell on her face. It was a sweet face, of silk that hides steel. Beautiful, he thought. She had always been beautiful. He buried her two years ago. They told him there was nothing left of her for him, that everything burned. They said it with pity in their eyes, glad they were not him. He went on his way and pushed her at the back of his mind to that corner where they tell you never to go. And then he received a call yesterday. She was alive — they found out; he must retrieve her. And all that he tried so hard to forget came flooding back, and she was everywhere again. Normal people with normal jobs, he whispered in a self-depreciating laugh. He gazed at her unconscious form, taking in a moment that is only theirs.

"I love you," he whispered knowing that she would never hear.