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Love (Topic 8)
Feb. 15th, 2006 04:36 pmWith Valentine's Day around the corner we want you to think about love. Who do you love? What does it do to you? Does it lift you up like a bad cheesy power ballad? Does it destroy you? What does love do to you? What has it done to you in the past?
Yesterday, I went to the house that used to be my home for many a year. It does not belong to me any longer and has not for years; after the end of SD-6, the state confiscated it, as I had expected. The only thing of value to me that was still there by the time I left had not been in the house anyway. It was the garden, Emily's garden.
No matter where we lived in the course of over thirty years of our married life, Emily started to plant. She did this even if I had warned her we would have to move in a few months. When she had years, as was the case with our home in Pacific Palisades, she worked her magic so thoroughly that even five years of another, less gifted gardener, could not erase it. I stood outside and regarded what grew, what promised to bloom quite soon, with that mixture that always comes to me when I think of Emily these days: the grief that I lost her, and the fierce joy that she existed.
I met her in the same year I started to work with Jack Bristow; as coincidences go, this was a rather odd one. There was no particular moment at which I could say I fell in love with her, or she with me. But by the end of that year, it was quite obvious to both of us that living apart would no longer do, and I proposed. Though eventually, many years later, our marriage would lead Emily to her death, I cannot wish it otherwise. There are things I would alter about my past if I could, but never this. Loving Emily was what made my life worth living, and there was just one thing more painful than watching her suffer as she did when we lost Jacquelyn. As she did in her brave fight against her cancer. Sometimes, even these days, I wake up and the thought of Emily being eaten away by this enemy inside suffocates me. Then I remember it went into remission.
And then I remember that she is dead.
Emily is not the only person I ever loved. But she may be the only one in whom I never evoked hate as well as love in return, no matter what I did. When she showed me the wire she wore, that last day, that was my only fear: that I had lost her at last. That she come to hate me. But then she tore it away, and decided to come with me once more.
If she had loved me less, she might be alive today. This irony is somewhat inescapable. I think Dixon's wife Diane died for it. It also strikes me that my daughter Nadia, whose existence owes its fact to the only hurt dealt out to Emily I cannot wish undone due to what it resulted in, would in all likelihood still be conscious and healthy somewhere in the world if I had never looked for her. Or if after our disastrous first encounter I had not successfully tried to win her affection. Which, presumably, is why Irina tried to keep her existence a secret from me, and kept away from Nadia herself. Irina and I never were in the slightest danger of loving each other, but we understood each other because we always saw each other very clearly, without any illusions. During the two years Sydney was gone, I spoke to her once, and she asked me whether I could really believe our unknown child would be better with us in her life than without, given that happened to her other daughter and my late wife.
(It was Irina's kind of question; she never fights fair, and one never expects her to.)
"I can't know whether her life would be better or worse with me in it," I said. "But I do know mine is worse without her."
"You selfish bastard," she said.
"And what are you doing right now, Irina?" I asked back. "Ruining Jack's life all over again?"
She hung up on me after that. So, what does love do to me? It provides me with a reason for my continued existence and makes it worthwhile. It does not destroy me, no; but it seems it enables me to destroy those I love most.
*locked*
Except for Jack and Sydney. They remain eminently undestroyable. Given what Nadia and Emily have in common, and what Jack and Sydney share in regards to me, I can only conclude that hating me must provide protection. Sometimes I wonder whether this is why I started to keep secrets from them again. When she visited me after I shot Nadia, there was no hatred in Sydney any more, for the first time since her fiance Danny died. After I had finished absorbing this moment of grace, I started to worry. Whereas I always found Sydney's earlier vows that she would never forgive me quite reassuring. Jack, of course, is unable to ever exorcise hatred once he started, which means he should survive us all.
Muse: Arvin Sloane
Fandom: Alias
Yesterday, I went to the house that used to be my home for many a year. It does not belong to me any longer and has not for years; after the end of SD-6, the state confiscated it, as I had expected. The only thing of value to me that was still there by the time I left had not been in the house anyway. It was the garden, Emily's garden.
No matter where we lived in the course of over thirty years of our married life, Emily started to plant. She did this even if I had warned her we would have to move in a few months. When she had years, as was the case with our home in Pacific Palisades, she worked her magic so thoroughly that even five years of another, less gifted gardener, could not erase it. I stood outside and regarded what grew, what promised to bloom quite soon, with that mixture that always comes to me when I think of Emily these days: the grief that I lost her, and the fierce joy that she existed.
I met her in the same year I started to work with Jack Bristow; as coincidences go, this was a rather odd one. There was no particular moment at which I could say I fell in love with her, or she with me. But by the end of that year, it was quite obvious to both of us that living apart would no longer do, and I proposed. Though eventually, many years later, our marriage would lead Emily to her death, I cannot wish it otherwise. There are things I would alter about my past if I could, but never this. Loving Emily was what made my life worth living, and there was just one thing more painful than watching her suffer as she did when we lost Jacquelyn. As she did in her brave fight against her cancer. Sometimes, even these days, I wake up and the thought of Emily being eaten away by this enemy inside suffocates me. Then I remember it went into remission.
And then I remember that she is dead.
Emily is not the only person I ever loved. But she may be the only one in whom I never evoked hate as well as love in return, no matter what I did. When she showed me the wire she wore, that last day, that was my only fear: that I had lost her at last. That she come to hate me. But then she tore it away, and decided to come with me once more.
If she had loved me less, she might be alive today. This irony is somewhat inescapable. I think Dixon's wife Diane died for it. It also strikes me that my daughter Nadia, whose existence owes its fact to the only hurt dealt out to Emily I cannot wish undone due to what it resulted in, would in all likelihood still be conscious and healthy somewhere in the world if I had never looked for her. Or if after our disastrous first encounter I had not successfully tried to win her affection. Which, presumably, is why Irina tried to keep her existence a secret from me, and kept away from Nadia herself. Irina and I never were in the slightest danger of loving each other, but we understood each other because we always saw each other very clearly, without any illusions. During the two years Sydney was gone, I spoke to her once, and she asked me whether I could really believe our unknown child would be better with us in her life than without, given that happened to her other daughter and my late wife.
(It was Irina's kind of question; she never fights fair, and one never expects her to.)
"I can't know whether her life would be better or worse with me in it," I said. "But I do know mine is worse without her."
"You selfish bastard," she said.
"And what are you doing right now, Irina?" I asked back. "Ruining Jack's life all over again?"
She hung up on me after that. So, what does love do to me? It provides me with a reason for my continued existence and makes it worthwhile. It does not destroy me, no; but it seems it enables me to destroy those I love most.
*locked*
Except for Jack and Sydney. They remain eminently undestroyable. Given what Nadia and Emily have in common, and what Jack and Sydney share in regards to me, I can only conclude that hating me must provide protection. Sometimes I wonder whether this is why I started to keep secrets from them again. When she visited me after I shot Nadia, there was no hatred in Sydney any more, for the first time since her fiance Danny died. After I had finished absorbing this moment of grace, I started to worry. Whereas I always found Sydney's earlier vows that she would never forgive me quite reassuring. Jack, of course, is unable to ever exorcise hatred once he started, which means he should survive us all.
Muse: Arvin Sloane
Fandom: Alias
