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New Fic: Appointed Hours (Alias)
First 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.
no subject
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
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
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
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.