Stanzas
Title: Stanzas
Author: Brix
Rating: R
Pairing: Weiss/Sydney
Summary: Sydney hates her house, gets weird letters, and has insomnia.
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. Imitation is the highest form of compliment.
Spoilers: This happens mid-Season Three. Only we’re going to pretend that Sark is in custody, because I said so. So…yeah. WAIT, YOU MEAN SHE’S A SPY?!
Feedback: Flowers need water and writers need feedback. Be kind, water a writer today. shadesofbrixton@yahoo.com
Archive: Take it anywhere, but drop me a line so I know where it goes.
Author’s Notes: For Dagny, who wanted Marshall, a Derevko or two, and Sydney/Weiss (or a general fic), and who got abandoned in the ficathon. I’m afraid I didn’t get as much Derevko in there as I would have liked…*winces* But I tried, hey?
Stanzas
Sydney had never lived by herself.
There had always been a roommate. Or a fiancé. Or a best friend. Or an emotionally detached but somehow still strangely comforting iceberg of a father. Before that she figures doesn’t really count, because how many little kids live by themselves?
But what it meant, really, was that when she finished the ritual of coming home – getting the mail, toeing off her shoes, collecting the recycling bin if it was a Wednesday, shedding her jacket – there wasn’t really anything to do.
The house was always too quiet. She felt, most of the time, like she was only visiting. Or waiting for something else to happen – for Vaughn to come out of the bathroom, maybe, or Francie to rattle the wrong key in the lock. So she would turn music up, loud enough to be heard throughout the entire house, and try to figure out how many chicken parts to cook, even though she was, as ever, the only one eating.
She just wasn’t used to it yet, was the expression on her father’s face whenever she made a comment about the house feeling empty. It had gotten to the point where she had stopped bothering to tell him how she really felt about the new house, when he politely inquired after her settling in. After that, he stopped asking altogether, and focused on easier questions; such as the state of the morning commute, the unsettlingly high price of coffee these days, or the weekend headlines that might turn into work assignments.
All in all, it had never been harder to talk to her father about what she wanted.
Which, if she was honest with herself, was more than the local radio station filling up her living room.
Sighing in vague frustration, she set her fork down on the table with a quiet metal tink and stood up, sliding noiselessly across the stained oak floorboards in her socks to shut off the stereo. She had even changed her movements to silence, she noted in annoyance. She had adjusted to the house. There was something very, very wrong with her.
More than usual, anyway.
Lying awake at night, that was the only time the house felt like there was more than her in it. It was easy to imagine, that way – lying on her back, watching the wash of shadows ebb and flow across her bedroom ceiling as cars passed by. It was the only time there was too much noise – too much filling up her head, and making her jumpy, and glad that she had her gun on the table next to the alarm clock.
When she was trying to go to sleep, it always felt like the house was occupied. Like someone was stalking through her kitchen as soundlessly as had become her habit, or padding around on the plush hallway carpeting, or making sticky feet noises in the guest bath near the front door. The floors had a thousand-thousand footsteps on them, and they only ever sounded when she was trying to fall asleep.
Which was why, as she was attempting self-hypnosis for the sixth time that night in an effort to stop hearing those softly treacherous shadowed feet, she heard the distinct crack of the mail flap being opened and closed around three in the morning.
It was like having a heart attack, but without the staggering shortness of breath, Sydney imagined. She could feel all of her muscles tense simultaneously, her pulse firing, her hand already on the gun, and her feet already soundlessly on that wicked wooden floor before she had even properly registered the sound.
Snap. The slap of heavy paper falling to the wooden floor. Another snap – the retreat. A car drove by, flooding her ceiling with grayish, curtain-dimmed shadows, and then the room fell into darkness again.
She edged cautiously into the front hallway, gun pressed in both hands and not a single tremble betraying her underlying nerves.
Who the fuck was stupid enough to drop letters off, through the never-used mail slot, at three in the morning, was what she wanted to know.
And there the letter sat, glowing calmly in its creamy envelope, nestled in stark contrast against the dark wood of the floors. She slid forward carefully, feeling the grit underneath her feet that meant it had been too many days since she’d swept, or too many visits to the beach lately, and toed it carefully.
It did not explode, leak acid, or drift any suspicious white powder onto her pedicure.
One delicately fingered hand reached into the hallway and snagged the letter, careful to stay clear of the range of the letter slot. Her back braced against a support wall – one with studs the knew would help slow bullets, if there were a gunman waiting for movement on the other side of the door – and slit open the letter with awkward, jerky effort.
The sound was deafening in the night air, louder even than Sydney’s heartbeat, and she tightened her grip reflexively on the weapon as her eyes darted across the heavy card stock of the paper – high quality, a little ragged on the edges like fine, hand-made paper. It felt like a wedding invitation.
She read the contents, lowered her weapon, and frowned.
* * *
“Marshall?” Sydney poked her head through the clear glass doors of Marshall’s office – the ones that reminded her of the ancient Airport LEGO set that she and her cousins used to play with – and searched for the source of the loud thump and startled report of the technician hitting the ground. She found her target when a spray of plastic bits flew up into the air and clattered back down behind his desk.
He rose awkwardly from the small space between his workbench and the wall, rubbing at the back of his head, and grinning sheepishly. “Hey, Syd. Hey. Did you…uh. I was just,” he thumbed behind him and she could hear the little plastic bits crackle precariously under his feet. “Whoops,” he said quickly, and ducked down behind the desk again, and she could hear the sound of the plastic being scraped into a pile. “Just making some modifications,” he called in too loud a voice. “Nothing to, uh, worry about.” His head popped up, and he blinked, and grinned again. “Hey, Syd.”
“Hey, Marshall,” she parroted, the laughter impossible to hide from her voice. “Can I ask you for your help?”
“Of course!” He deposited a pile of the plastic bits down onto the workbench and she could see most of them were shelving brackets. Painted purple. “What’s going on? Something for the mission to Hungary? Jack…I mean, Agent Bristow…well, your father… asked me to pull up those specs, and, I…” he rustled in a large pile of papers that were stacked on a rolling chair. “I’ve got them somewhere here, let’s see…”
“No, it’s something else. For a…side project?” She fingered the richly colored envelope, brushing her thumb over the crease repetitively. “It’s kind of private.”
Marshall froze, blinked, and looked at her. “A secret?” he said in a grave whisper. “Is this, you know…is this okay?”
She nodded in what she hoped was a reassuring way. “Someone dropped this off at my house last night,” she said, holding out the paper. “I was hoping you could do some ink analysis?”
“Oh!” He brightened, and shoved all the papers off the chair. “You want to, um…?” He gestured at the chair, and she chewed on her bottom lip to keep the laughter down.
“No, I’m fine,” Sydney insisted. “I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes, anyway. A debrief. But if you’ll let me know…?”
“Of course,” he rushed. “Of course, of course, go, don’t be, um, late. I’ll let you know.”
She turned to leave, flashing him a smile of gratitude, but he stopped her before she could get all the way out the door. “And Syd?”
She turned, and he gave her a knowing smile, held up the letter, and pressed the side of his nose. “Top secret.”
Her laugh slipped out before she could stop it. “Thanks, Marshall.”
Sydney could hear him saying ‘you’re welcome’ all the way down in the conference room.
* * *
It had been a long day.
They usually were, lately. Two hours of debriefing with Dixon, two hours of training in the basement, two hours of mission file work. An entire day of avoiding the people who were also avoiding her. She thought maybe there was something a little weird about feeling so emotionally distant from so many people she worked with – especially when those people happened to be men she had formerly thought she knew better than anyone else in the world.
If there was anything Sydney had learned from working at the CIA, it was that she never knew anyone half as well as she thought she did.
The rest of the afternoon had been taken up taking a crash course in Hungarian conversational phrases and testing out a new rappelling harness that the safety teams had been working on. She was so tired by the time she got home that she barely had the energy to microwave last night’s leftovers, toe off her shoes, and fall, face-first, onto the sofa.
When she woke, her hand was already on her weapon, and she knew she’d heard the slap of paper on the floor again. She was in an awkward position for it – cheek pressed clammily to the leather cushion of the couch, one arm twisted and tingling from a cut off blood flow underneath her, her feet dangling in exposed space.
She couldn’t see the door.
Levering herself up carefully, Sydney peaked through the shadowed hallway over the back of the sofa. Again, there seemed to be no movement from the front door. Just another envelope waiting for her, a little farther away from the door this time, as if the person who had left it had shoved it through in haste.
Her sights trained on the mail flap, she snagged the letter and retreated behind the sofa.
It was the same heavy paper, and the same cream colored envelope. She ran a finger over the decorative ragged edge of the flap, set her jaw, and pulled out the paper resolutely.
* * *
“Hey, Syd?” Weiss poked his head through her office door and she flailed, nerves frayed, and splayed her fingers over the pages of embellished handwriting that stared up at her.
“Weiss!” she answered with a somewhat splintered smile.
He frowned. “Are you okay?”
“Fine!” she chirped, and opened a desk drawer to sweep all the letters in. His frown deepened and he gave her a quirked eyebrow, but if there was one thing she liked about Weiss it was that he minded his own damn business when other people wanted to pry, and she forced her startled mind back down into a less defensive position.
“Right,” he said, clearly not believing her. “Well, Sark’s waiting downstairs. Why did you want to talk to him, anyway?”
“Hungary.” It was a lie, of course, but no one else had to know that, or have any reason to doubt her. Their conversation would be monitored, but not recorded, and Sydney had a few things that needed answering.
“Let me know when you’re done, okay?” Weiss asked, knocking twice on the doorframe of her office with his knuckles. “I’ve got to bring him next door for his monthly psych assessment when you’re finished.”
She smiled gratefully and, with one last shake of his head at her jumpy condition, Weiss retreated down the hall.
As soon as she was sure he was out of range, Sydney yanked open the drawer and pulled out the slightly crumpled pieces of parchment. She had ten, now – one for every night for the past week and a half – and she had found herself not sleeping, waiting awake for that one sound of life outside her door to deposit another letter in her hallway. And still, nothing. The letters had begun arriving at different times of the night, usually just after she had nodded off on the living room sofa. Any effort to stay awake for the arrival of the letters concluded the same way as her childhood efforts to wait for Santa Claus did.
Whoever was leaving them, she was certain, had top of the line surveillance laid on her house. They knew when she was sleeping. They knew when she was awake. She had a team come out and sweep the house, but no recording devices of any type were found.
She had been spending more time getting to know her home, though – finding new angles through which to watch the front door. Letting her feet pad with a little more volume as she slid down the hall between the couch and her bed all night. Trying to simulate a normal life, for whoever it was who kept leaving her these –
“…poems?” Sark said incredulously. “It looks like someone has a secret admirer.”
“Shut up,” Sydney snapped at him, feeding another of the letters through the metal drawer that connected the prisoner through to the outside world.
“If you tell me to be quiet, Agent Bristow, then why are you here for answers?” His voice lacked the smugness she had grown accustomed to from his years working against her – he was studying, now, calculating the pieces of paper and shuffling through them rapidly. The barb was custom, but it lacked its old antagonism.
“Just answer the question. Do you think they’re from her?”
Sark made a tsking noise and glanced up at her from the papers, but only briefly. His eyes firmly settled on the writing again, he mused, “You can’t even say her name, can you?”
“Answer the question, Sark.”
He glanced up at her again, this time longer, studying the lines in her face and her defensive posture. “And what shall I receive, in return, for my cooperation?”
Sydney felt something roil in frustration inside her chest. “What do you want?” she ground out.
He flashed her a contrite smile and focused on the pages again. “Reading glasses,” he said airily. “And new books.”
* * *
“So?” Weiss prompted her, the confusion written across his face apparent. “Were they from your mother?”
“Of course not,” Sydney said miserably. “At least, that’s what he said. The letters sloped in the wrong direction, he said.” She huffed in agitation. “I didn’t even know she was left handed.” She drifted for a moment, poking at the Styrofoam cup of vending machine coffee on the table between them, leaving a small half-moon indentation from her fingernail. “Do you think it’s okay that we gave him glasses?”
Weiss shrugged, noncommittal. “They’re plastic frames. The glass is polyfiber, he won’t be able to cut anything with it. They’re not sprung earpieces. There isn’t a lot he’s going to be able to do with a few millimeters of screw.” He didn’t sound like he believed that at all. “The thing that scares me is the fact that Sark needs reading glasses.”
Sydney cracked a half-smile. Then, looking down at the stack of parchment under her hand, she gave her fingers a quick tap. “What are we going to do about these?”
Another tilt of his shoulders, and Weiss was leaning back this time, watching the paper suspiciously. “What did Marshall come up with?”
“What?” came the startled reply from the end of the table, where Marshall was fiddling with the wires that trailed out of the projection screen. He had a pair of stripping pliers in his mouth and a yellow rubber glove on one hand. The other hand clutched what appeared to be a small, orange ping-pong ball. Marshall yanked the pliers out of his mouth and wiped them on his pants. “What did I what?”
“It’s okay,” Sydney said, shoving the pile of letters away from her. “Weiss knows.”
“Oh,” Marshall said in a rushed, relieved sigh. And then he gestured helplessly, the thick yellow rubber of the glove flapping against his arm. “Nothing foreign in the ink. The paper is store bought. Hallmark, I think, probably.” He pulled the pliers out again and poked a hole in the ping-pong ball. His brow creasing, he added, “and no finger prints on them, except for Syd’s. No trace resin. Not even any saliva on the envelope seal.” He looked up at them from behind his lab goggles. “Basically, there’s nothing that indicates the person who wrote them exists at all.”
“Except that they’re stalking Sydney,” Weiss added helpfully.
Marshall pointed his pliers at the other man, and jabbed the air once to emphasize his ‘yes’ before turning back to the screen.
Sydney pursed her lips thoughtfully, eyes sliding over to the pages helplessly.
“So, do we believe Sark? That it’s not Derevko?”
Sydney grimaced slightly. “I don’t know. I mean, it does beg the question of why my mother would be sending me poetry.”
“Why would anyone be sending you poetry?” Marshall’s voice floated from behind the screen. A second later, he poked his head out. “I mean, not that you don’t merit poetry. Just that no one would be sending it. Because it’s a bit odd, you know? Not that…um – ”
“It’s okay,” Sydney reassured him, and Weiss turned his head away and covered his laugh with a cough. Marshall gave her an intensely grateful expression and retreated behind the screen again.
“And you haven’t told your father yet?” Weiss ventured when he had himself under control again.
Chewing for a moment on her bottom lip, Sydney finally admitted that she had not. “I was afraid, at first, that he would think I was being foolish. And now it’s been so long, he’ll just be upset with me for not having said anything.”
“Then this is clearly a mystery we must solve ourselves,” Weiss said resolutely, scraping the papers together and shifting them neatly so that their corners touched. “I propose,” he said, lying the stack down, “that I monitor your house. They may be keeping an eye out for you being awake or asleep, but they won’t be keeping an eye out for the odd hours of your across-the-street neighbors.”
Sydney flashed him a grateful smile. “Are you sure it’s not too much trouble? I don’t want us both sleep deprived.”
Shaking his head, Weiss gave the papers a final pat. “The sooner we’re at the bottom of this, the better.”
* * *
When Sydney let herself into her house that night, she slammed the door as noisily as she wanted, and didn’t slip her shoes off until she was well into the kitchen, heedless of any garden dirt she may have tracked on her way from the mailbox. She threw her keys on the kitchen table, bypassed the radio that she normally turned on, and went straight for the refrigerator.
For dinner, she cooked for four. Just because she wanted to.
On her way to bed, she left the closet doors open and the blinds closed, for once. And she slept on her stomach, heedless of the shadows rolling across her ceiling.
Most importantly, though, she slept.
In the morning, muzzy and tousled, she made her way all the way into the kitchen and halfway through her coffee routine before she backtracked and looked at the hallway, very suddenly and dazzlingly awake.
There was no letter.
She tripped up to the front door, yanked it open, and looked down at the stoop. No white envelope, no folded parchment, no shining blue ink. Heedless of the gravel, she went all the way down to the mailbox and yanked open the little door, setting the red flag to shaking, looking for the letter.
Nothing.
Grinding her teeth, she trudged back up the path, little stones sticking to her feet and dropping with quiet clacks. She snagged the newspaper as an afterthought, tossed it on the dining room table, and let it spill its slippery advertisement guts all over the neat surface.
The coffee was bitter and too-strong, but she drank it anyway.
It wasn’t until she came home that evening that she noticed the heavy, cream colored cardstock peaking from between the pages of the LA Times entertainment guide.
* * *
“The newspaper?” Weiss crowed. “That’s not fair play! I didn’t know to look out for the newspaper man! You only said letters.”
“I didn’t know!” Sydney said, a little hysterical. “Do you think it’s the newspaper man? Do you think someone’s been watching your house, as well? Do you think it was just coincidence?”
Weiss shook his head, rubbing his eyes. “This is too much, Syd. I think you should turn it over to Dixon, if it’s bothering you this much. Or at least tell your father.”
That clamped Sydney down, and she made an effort not to crumple the paper in her hands. “I just don’t understand it,” she said mournfully. “What does it all mean? There’s no connecting theme between the poems. Nothing between the poets. Nothing to link the words in the passages to anything in my life, or the lives of the people I know. Nothing remotely threatening.” She gave a helpless gesture. “I just can’t see where I’m supposed to go from here.”
Weiss tilted his head at her a little. “Maybe you’re being too analytic?”
Sydney slumped down on the table, burying her chin in her crossed arms. “I’m just tired of it, that’s all.”
“Aw, hey,” he said, his voice apologetic. “I kind of fucked it up, too. I’m sorry. Look, we’ll try again, right? You want I should issue an APB to the teamster’s union?”
“They’re looking for you,” she reminded him miserably. “There’s no point.”
He propped his chin in one hand and they regarded one another contemplatively. The silence stretched. And then her eyes shifted off to one side. He quirked that same eyebrow, a familiar expression over the past few days. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said in that same desolate tone.
Weiss prodded her arm with a finger. “I know that face. What?”
She seemed to roll the idea over in her head one more time before voicing it. “What if you came over? They mightn’t be expecting more than one person at my house. It’d be harder to dodge two people. But you’ve already lost one night’s sleep – ”
“Going home to rest now,” Weiss said resolutely, standing. “Coming by at seven. With pizza. We’re going to figure this out once and for all.”
* * *
“Hrgah!” Sydney said, splaying gracelessly and nearly falling off the sofa. She blinked, squinted, and palmed one of her eyes. The sunlight pouring through the living room window made her raise her hand to block out the glare, and she rose shakily, popping her neck in a few places.
“You alright?” came the curious call from her kitchen.
“Ngg,” Sydney confirmed, rubbing her neck. She made her way past the dining room table to find Weiss propped at her kitchen counter, sports page in hand, and fresh coffee on the stove.
“Did you fall off the sofa?” He sounded amused, and Sydney wanted to pour coffee on his head.
“No,” she grumped, and leaned against the counter. “I can’t believe I fell asleep.”
“I can,” he said mildly. “Considering how little of it you’ve been getting lately.”
Sydney palmed her other eye, drank half a cup of coffee in one swallow, and moved to sit on the other side of the island. “Well? Is it the newspaper delivery man? Do I need to cancel my subscription?”
“No.” He scanned the box scores.
Sydney scrunched her nose up at the brief response. “Did anything come last night at all?”
Weiss sighed, folded up the newspaper, “Yes,” he said, and his eyes flicked down to the table top.
Sydney followed his gaze and he set aside the newspaper. And there, between his arms, was an open envelope, a fresh piece of parchment, and a blue fountain pen.
Nothing was written on the page.
“What?” she asked meekly.
“Sorry,” he said quietly, and stood up from the counter. “I didn’t think you’d…” he shook his head, and smiled crookedly. “Well. I didn’t think, clearly.” He thumbed over his shoulder to indicate that he’d show himself out, and retreated to the front door.
Sydney blinked.
The paper stared up at her, blank, cream colored, and never folded.
Her front door opened, and she scrambled suddenly, ducking around the island to catch him before he left. “Weiss!” she called, skidding noisily on the floors, her hands slapping into the hallway wall to give her balance. “Wait,” she said at his half-turned pause. He hovered uncertainly in the doorway, one hand on the threshold and the other on the doorknob. “Why?” she demanded, shoving hair out of her eyes.
He let go of the doorknob, pulled farther out of the house, but turned to face her fully. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Because I wanted to.” He shrugged, guilt written on his face. “I didn’t…I mean…sometimes you just need a little…poetry, you know?” He winced at the worthless explanation.
“You said it was too analytic,” she demanded, venturing another step closer. He didn’t retreat. “How was it too analytic?”
“Sometimes there isn’t a reason, Syd,” he told her, a hint of confusion in his voice. “Look, it was stupid, okay? I’m sorry. I’ll let you go and…you know. Sleep.”
He turned to go again, flashing one last apologetic half-smile, and Sydney grabbed his arm and hauled him back inside, and shut the door. “Just stop it,” she said, her voice harsh and her eyes hard. She jabbed a finger into his chest, and his expression wiped into surprise. “You should have told me it was you.”
“I didn’t think – ”
“Yes, we’re very clear on that,” she snapped, and then huffed, crossing her arms in front of her. “I mean, come on. Weiss. It was poetry.”
“Yeah,” he said lamely. “It was.”
She was silent for a moment, her scowl working its way around in various stages of severity. Just when he was beginning to shift awkwardly, she ground out, “Thank you.”
He froze. “I…what?”
“Thank you,” she said, a little louder, and with a weary sigh. “For the letters.”
He was watching her like she was a crazy person with scissors. “You’re welcome?”
“I mean it,” she said, tugging on his sleeve. She occupied herself with the folds of the material so that she didn’t have to look at his face. “I…hate this house. I hate living by myself. I hate being trapped in my own head for so long that I don’t know how to get out of it.” She ventured a glance up at him, and twisted her lips a bit. “You gave me something else to think about. Even though it was a really…kind of weird way to do it.”
“I…yeah.” He said, and then blinked. “Look, I’m sorry you thought I was a stalker.”
“So am I,” she said wryly, and he scowled at her a little. “Weiss. Why did you send me poems?” She slid her fingers down the cloth of his arms and pulled on his hands, let his fingers wrap up around hers.
“Because,” he said honestly, and squeezed her hand.
“Oh,” she said, and ducked her head again, a genuine smile pulling at her mouth.
“So,” he said, his voice deeper with amusement. “Am I, like, forgiven? Because I have to get to the office.”
“Yeah,” she said, the grin in her tone, now. “Yeah, okay.” She stepped a little closer, tilted her head up, considering. “Hey. You didn’t leave me any poetry for today.”
“This is true,” Weiss said cautiously, and let her tug him into the kitchen. He settled himself at the stool where he’d left his section of the newspaper, stared down at the blank sheet of paper, and looked back up at Sydney where she was hovering slightly behind him, her hands on one shoulder. “Don’t tell Marshall, yeah?”
“Promise,” she said, and nudged him.
Sighing, he picked up the pen. “I usually just copy this from books, you know,” he muttered, and scribbled down a few lines in the calligraphic scrawl that Sydney had grown used to over the past two weeks, so very different from his normal handwriting.
She leaned over his shoulder to see the small poem emerging, and a grin cracked her face. “Haiku. Slacker. I like it.” She slid her arms around his neck in a warm embrace.
“You’d better,” he groused, and leaned back into her.
you make the
cutest noises when
you wake up
this is the
worst way to tell you
I like you
mind if I
come by tonight and
cook dinner?
“Oh my God,” Sydney muttered against his hairline, squeezing him affectionately, “you are insane, aren’t you?”
“I’m beginning to think so,” he muttered back, with significantly less amusement than had laced her expression.
“Look,” she said, pressing closer. “This doesn’t count. You’re going to have to bring the book, tonight. Okay?”
She could feel him blink, and he tried to turn his head to look at her, but they were pressed cheek to cheek. “Really?”
“Yeah,” she said, and kissed his cheek. “Really.”
“Okay.” He grinned, and ventured a kiss next to her mouth.
She gave him a final squeeze before letting go, and the stool screeched noisily on her kitchen floor as he rose. Their footsteps echoed each other as she walked him to the front door, and she tapped idly against the door frame as he walked down the gravel path, crunching as he went.
The house was still empty when she turned back from the door – empty but for her. But it felt different, and she wondered at the change that two weeks of sleepless nights could have wrought. At the pile of letters splashed across her dining room table, though, she smiled and dropped the last poem to the top of the stack. Enough of a difference, she decided. If she wasn’t too analytic about it.