New Fic: Appointed Hours (Alias)
Dec. 16th, 2003 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiFirst and foremost, Happy Birthday SEP! I hope you feel well soon.
Next, a new Alias story. I was bound to start writing about Sloane sooner or later, since he's my new secret boyfriend. Three drabbles over three years.
Title: Appointed Hours
Author: Vanzetti (vanzetti@populli.net)
Rating: G
Summary: The role of bereaved husband comes easily to Arvin Sloane.
Disclaimer: JJ, Bad Robot, ABC. I simply borrow what's theirs.
Distribution: Cover Me, list archives, otherwise with permission
1.
"She was cremated," Irina says.
Sloane tastes ash on his tongue. Jack's decision, he thinks. Sydney wouldn't understand his horror: Emily's body reduced to ashes and tossed about on the winds. Jack might, had he considered it.
Beneath Irina's sympathetic mask, he can see that she guesses what he feels, perhaps why as well. She has asked little of him since they left Tuscany, and he of her, but he is aware of Irina's growing impatience. Time has not, in fact, stopped for everyone else. There are plans, schedules, appointed hours yet to come.
"Thank you," he responds, swallowing bitterness.
2.
Ashes in the wind. He returns to Tuscany precisely one year later, listening for Emily's voice in the rustling olive-leaves. The American government is wary, but Sloane is a master at playing on his countrymen's sentimentalism. The role of bereaved husband comes easily.
The garden is untended: red dust and green-black cypresses. Emily would see its beauty and dream of ways to improve on that beauty; he sees only a weed-choked ruin, peaceful as an empty tomb. It has been a dry spring, in Italy. A lizard runs along a cracked paving-stone, a hawk wheels overhead.
She is not here.
3.
The villa burns to the ground in December; Sloane hardly notices. On the second anniversary he closes the office; his staff eye him with confused sympathy and thank him for the holiday.
He considers returning to the monastery, but knows that this is not the time. Instead he stands on another mountainside, not quite half a world away. There are wildflowers everywhere, blue and white and yellow, bright against the bright grass the way the white clouds are bright against the shining blue of the sky. He takes a deep breath, tastes ash on the mountain air.
She is everywhere.
end
Thanks to Rez for looking it over and helping me fix a few problems.
Next, a new Alias story. I was bound to start writing about Sloane sooner or later, since he's my new secret boyfriend. Three drabbles over three years.
Title: Appointed Hours
Author: Vanzetti (vanzetti@populli.net)
Rating: G
Summary: The role of bereaved husband comes easily to Arvin Sloane.
Disclaimer: JJ, Bad Robot, ABC. I simply borrow what's theirs.
Distribution: Cover Me, list archives, otherwise with permission
1.
"She was cremated," Irina says.
Sloane tastes ash on his tongue. Jack's decision, he thinks. Sydney wouldn't understand his horror: Emily's body reduced to ashes and tossed about on the winds. Jack might, had he considered it.
Beneath Irina's sympathetic mask, he can see that she guesses what he feels, perhaps why as well. She has asked little of him since they left Tuscany, and he of her, but he is aware of Irina's growing impatience. Time has not, in fact, stopped for everyone else. There are plans, schedules, appointed hours yet to come.
"Thank you," he responds, swallowing bitterness.
2.
Ashes in the wind. He returns to Tuscany precisely one year later, listening for Emily's voice in the rustling olive-leaves. The American government is wary, but Sloane is a master at playing on his countrymen's sentimentalism. The role of bereaved husband comes easily.
The garden is untended: red dust and green-black cypresses. Emily would see its beauty and dream of ways to improve on that beauty; he sees only a weed-choked ruin, peaceful as an empty tomb. It has been a dry spring, in Italy. A lizard runs along a cracked paving-stone, a hawk wheels overhead.
She is not here.
3.
The villa burns to the ground in December; Sloane hardly notices. On the second anniversary he closes the office; his staff eye him with confused sympathy and thank him for the holiday.
He considers returning to the monastery, but knows that this is not the time. Instead he stands on another mountainside, not quite half a world away. There are wildflowers everywhere, blue and white and yellow, bright against the bright grass the way the white clouds are bright against the shining blue of the sky. He takes a deep breath, tastes ash on the mountain air.
She is everywhere.
end
Thanks to Rez for looking it over and helping me fix a few problems.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 10:43 am (UTC)These are beautiful. I was just reading an older story (S1) that touched on Sloane's love for Emily, and since I know you had been thinking about the subject... well, I am just overjoyed to see this. And to see his grief so artfully drawn.
I think this might be my favorite part:
Emily would see its beauty and dream of ways to improve on that beauty; he sees only a weed-choked ruin, peaceful as an empty tomb. It has been a dry spring, in Italy. A lizard runs along a cracked paving-stone, a hawk wheels overhead.
She is not here.
Not only does it read beautifully and create an incredible image, it also brings the truth of their relationship to life. Arvin saw in Emily, hope, redemption and love. She was the one who tended to living things, and he... well, that isn't quite his world view or experience.
The entire piece is just incredibly poignant and lovely.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 02:15 pm (UTC)Sloane is growing on me--I like his human side. I'm not ordinarily a great fan of the redemption-by-love theme, and I know that Arvin's love for Emily doesn't outweigh all those years in SD-6, but it does make him an interesting character to think about. He's not all black and white.
(I tear up during their scene together in the S1 finale, when he tells her the truth. Their such wonderful actors, both of them.)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 10:57 am (UTC)It's hard not to want to write post "Phase One" Arvin/Emily tenderness, with his much darker internal thoughts as a contrast... because I so loved seeing their relationship.
And now I want to try a similar format with other characters-- Syd, or Irina. Particularly Irina.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 02:16 pm (UTC)Yes. Although by then I think Emily understood quite a lot of Arvin's darkness by that point--that was the important thing for him, I suspect, that she knew what he was, what he'd done, and loved her anyway.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 11:01 am (UTC)This is the couple you'd thought would most appeal to me, isn't it? Well, you were right. They're fascinating even though one is gone.
<--holding on fast to my determination not to watch Alias, despite your Evil Machinations ;-)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 02:19 pm (UTC)(I'm still insanely pleased whenever you read one of these.)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 02:22 pm (UTC)It's a cliche, I guess, to say that Sloane doesn't think of himself as evil--but I think more to the point is that his feelings for Emily are perhaps the one thing in his life not part of the big Rambaldi plan.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 12:19 pm (UTC)Absolutely wonderful. I love the whole mood and flow of this piece, but those are my favorite lines. You just had to go and make me feel sorry for the twisted little weasel, didn't you? *g*
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 02:21 pm (UTC)I exist to spread the Sloane love! Really!
Seriously, though, there's a lot of tragedy in Arvin Sloane's story, and he fascinates me.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 03:16 pm (UTC)Though that might be a comfort in the end. Sloane's a fascinating character because he has these elements of humanity, of pain and feeling. Lovely that you're writing him.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 04:13 pm (UTC)I even thought is Sloane's horror at the news she's been cremated not at the destruction of her body, but at the prospect of her ashes spreading on the wind?
I think there are a number of reasons for his horror--certainly, the lack of closure is part of it. Also, of course, because she's been cremated he won't be able to use any Rambaldi magic to bring her back to life. And finally (unstated in this piece) religious prohibitions aside, American Jews are often reluctant to consider cremation, for historical reasons. But that depends on whether or not one thinks Sloane is Jewish--I can't recall whether that was established in canon.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-17 09:14 am (UTC)It is a lovely piece. I read your other Alias pieces as well as a few weeks ago, and liked them a lot. They're beautifully written, and manage to express complicated relationships with paradoxical clarity.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-17 10:45 am (UTC)As for Sloane's background--I think I came across the possibility in a fannish discussion. (I don't think it's well-established enough to be considered fanon.) At the time, I filed it away in the back of my mind, and it came to light when I started thinking for this piece. It gave me the ashes and the instinctive recoil at cremation, and I went from there. I assume it here because it's useful to me (and because I don't think the matter of Sloane's religion has ever been established); I'm not sure that's a very good answer for you, though.
For the record, I think that Sloane's real religious connection is to Rambaldi. But that doesn't affect the question of his background.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-17 11:14 am (UTC)Like the Italy touch, too.
Just bought the Alias S2 DVDs and am watching like mad. But I don't think I'm going to finish before I leave for Oxford on Fri. Aargh! I really wanted to see them before I try to embark on that Sark fic (am still wondering what was I high on when I said I would do that).
Do you happen to know whether one can play U.S. DVDs on U.K. DVD players? My guess would be no, one can't, because how would that benefit capitalism?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-17 12:09 pm (UTC)That cracks me up, but only because it's so very, very true. I think that if one happens to own a multi-region DVD player, one can, but I'm not really good with that kind of thing. There is apparently some way that really clever people can re-program their DVD players (no, really!) to make this happen. I still can't use my VCR, which should give you an hint about my capacities.
I'm glad you liked this. Have fun with the S2 DVDs. You will be fine. Send me an email if you have thoughts/want to discuss anything.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 01:21 pm (UTC)