A Game of Heroes
An Alias fanfic by JenC
Disclaimer: "You may experience some
mild side effects . . ." No, wait,
wrong disclaimer again. The characters and
situations of Alias are the
property of J. J. Abrams, Bad Robot, and
company. No harm is intended.
Spoilers: None in this section
Classification: angst (of the shameless
Mary Sue variety)
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: always welcome: jen@fanfic101.com
Archiving: CD and fanfic101--all
others should ask first
Summary: "He was a man with a past,
she'd decided . . . " |
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"But I look up: the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out."
--Octavio Paz
I. Knight
Carina Leighton leaned around the end of the bookshelf to
watch the man in
the gray trenchcoat. He was a regular, but it had
only been in the past
few weeks that she'd really noticed him. 'The old
guy,' Stan called him.
And he did have silvery hair, and eyes that looked liked
they'd seen far
too much, but he was tall and broad-shouldered and had an
interesting face.
She couldn't help staring.
So, although Stan had told Carina to shelve the new Nora
Roberts paperback,
instead her palms were sweating on Dance Upon the Air
as she watched the
mystery customer.
He was a man with a past, she'd decided. She liked
making up histories for
all the regulars. The slender woman with the
iron-gray hair and the ramrod
posture was clearly a Cold War defector from the Russian
ballet, and the
Chinese man with the gap-toothed smile was a herbalist
who'd accidentally
poisoned his best friend's wife, and her mystery man . .
.
Carina sighed and slid the paperback into place on the
shelf. The mystery
man was a high-ranking diplomat, still looking for the
woman with whom he'd
fallen in love on his first visit to America. He'd
sworn long ago that
he'd never love another. So obviously there would
be no point in speaking
to him.
She squeezed another book onto the shelf and
scowled. Were they packed in
too tightly? Stan hated it when book covers got
bent. She had another
fifteen in the box, which she'd saved for a free-standing
display near the
front of the store. But going to the front meant
passing the mystery man,
maybe even walking close enough to catch a hint of the
cologne he wore. At
that thought, she could feel her hands begin to tremble,
so for something
to do, she pulled the last book off the shelf and checked
for wrinkles.
She couldn't see any, but rather than risk Stan's wrath,
she dumped it back
in the box and bent down to pick up the carton.
If I'm behind the box, he can't see me, she
reasoned. No one notices
the help. So it's no big deal to walk to the front
and set up the
display. Part of her wanted to study the man
up close, see what color his
eyes were, look at his hands. Fear won out, though,
and she kept her eyes
trained on the contents of the box as she hurried to the
front of the
store.
Five steps, and she would be past him. Three, two--
And then disaster struck, in the form of the biker guy.
Biker guy raced in every Friday to pick up the latest
copies of his
favorite magazines. Carina thought of him as biker
guy mostly because he
never took off his bike helmet in the store, but also
because he had a
thick goatee, a tattoo of a snake on his arm, and an aura
of cigarette
smoke that never really left him.
He was always in a hurry, and on that particular
afternoon, he tried to
break the law of physics that said two objects with mass
cannot occupy the
same space at the same time. Given that biker guy
was taller than her by
six inches, and outweighed her by a good fifty pounds,
Carina didn't stand
a chance against him. His elbow took her in the
shoulder, and the box of
paperbacks spun out of her hands. Nora Roberts
novels scattered across the
aisle. Thrown backward, Carina reached out for
anything that might break
her fall. Her hands caught only air, and she
crashed into the nearest set
of shelves and landed on the floor, with Jane Austen's
works cascading down
around her.
Biker guy didn't even stop.
Too stunned to do anything but gulp for air, Carina sat
with her back
against the shelf, hunched over as if that could keep her
out of sight. A
shadow fell over her, and she looked up into the face of
her mystery man.
He knelt down beside her on one knee, reaching out
without touching her. A
courtly gesture, she thought. Like one of King
Arthur's knights.
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm sorry," she mumbled, ducking her head,
then looking back up because
she couldn't resist. "I should have been
watching--"
He studied her for a moment. "It wasn't your
fault." Then, to her
surprise, he turned and began shelving the books that had
fallen.
"Oh, you don't have to--" She stopped,
mesmerized by the quickness of his
hands, as he replaced Jane Austen and the rest.
"Thank you."
He didn't answer, except to continue with his task.
Carina bit her lip,
then used the end of the bookshelf as a brace to pull
herself back to her
feet. Nora Roberts' latest still lay in heaps, so
she bent and began
replacing the books in the box.
"You must like that book. You've got at least
a dozen copies of it."
"What?" She glanced up, blinking.
He looked like he was smiling, just a
little. It was hard to tell. "Oh.
OH. No, I just . . . I just work
here. I need to . . ." She trailed off,
feeling her cheeks grow hot as
the words piled up on her tongue. "I'm
sorry," she said again, and
scuttled past him with the box of books cradled in her
arms. Her bad knee
wobbled a little with each step, but she gritted her
teeth and willed her
feet to keep moving.
"You are hurt." She
heard quick steps behind her, and felt a hand on her
arm.
"I-I'm all right."
"You're limping."
She looked down, hating her traitorous knee, and tears
stung her eyes.
"It's an old . . . I'm fine. Really."
He didn't move away. She liked the feeling of his
hand on her arm, and she
wanted to say something, anything, so she could hear his
voice again. The
words wouldn't come, though.
"Hey, where's Stan? Lunch? Can you ring
me up, then? I'm in a hurry."
Biker guy barged past them, knocking the mystery man's
hand from Carina's
arm.
"Sure," she said, a little relieved to have
something to do, a reason to
move. Blinking back tears, she set down the box and
went around the
counter to open her register.
As she rang up biker guy's purchases, he tapped his
fingers on the counter.
The tapping drummed on her nerves, and she dropped
two of the magazines
trying to put them in a bag. "Stupid
bitch," the biker guy said.
"I'm sorry," Carina said for what seemed the
millionth time that day. As
she passed biker guy his bag, she could see the mystery
man standing behind
him, watching her. To her disappointment, he didn't
bring a book for her
to ring up, but followed biker guy out of the
store. The bell on the door
jangled as he left. Carina stifled a sigh.
As she watched him walk away, to her surprise he stopped
and spoke to the
biker guy. Whatever he said, biker guy didn't like
it; he stepped in close
to the mystery man, a smirk on his face, and said
something. Carina's
heart lodged in her throat. What if the biker guy
pulled a knife? What if
there was a fight?
What followed happened too fast for Carina to see
clearly--one moment, the
men were standing nose to nose, their bodies tense with
anger, and the
next, biker guy was hunched over, cradling his hand, and
the mystery man
was walking away without a backward glance.
Carina had to remind herself to shut her mouth. He
really is like one
of King Arthur's knights, she thought. He
hit that man for me.
Dizzy
with amazement, she closed down the register and went
back to the Nora
Roberts display.
The sheer thrill of the fact that the mystery man had
spoken to her, had
touched her arm, had gone to battle for her even though
she hadn't managed
to utter a complete sentence, carried her through the
weekend and into the
following week. Every morning she took a little
extra time with her makeup
and clothes, though she'd remind herself when she looked
in the mirror, "He
only comes to the shop on Fridays at noon."
Still, she bought women's magazines at the grocery
checkout, and tried to
find a way to bring her mane of wild dark hair under
control. She studied
the fashion tips, and she practiced speaking to him,
thanking him, asking
his name. When Friday came around, she promised
herself, she'd be ready.
By Friday at 11:00, she felt like she'd eaten a flock of
birds for
breakfast. Stan yelled at her for putting the Tom
Clancy display in the
wrong place, but she was so busy watching the door, she
barely noticed.
Noon came and went, but the mystery man didn't
appear. Disappointment
tasted bitter on her tongue. Biker guy came in, but
he avoided her and she
saw he had a cast on his hand. Too sad to feel
smug, she continued with
her chores.
At 3:00, Stan wheeled a dolly loaded with boxes in from
the storage room in
the back. "I need to leave early," he
said. "You lock up. And make sure
these are all put away before you go."
"Sure." She followed his orders without
much enthusiasm, watching the
clock as it crawled closer and closer to 5:00. At
five minutes to the
hour, with no customers in the store, she decided she
might as well turn
the sign and lock the door. But when she reached
the entrance, she saw a
figure on the far side of the glass. Her mystery
man.
She flung the door open with a clash of bells, then stood
there, not sure
what to do next.
Finally he said, "I'm late. I should come back
another time."
"No! No. Come in." She
stumbled a little as she moved aside, but hoped
he didn't notice. "I, uh, I promised to put
some books away before I left.
So you can . . . look around." The
thought occured to her that she could
lock the door, lock herself in with him. Then she
remembered what he'd
done to the biker guy, and decided to leave the door
alone. "Take your
time," she added as she fled to the back of the
store.
From there, she could watch him without being completely
obvious. For once
she didn't ration herself to glimpses, but stared, greedy
for the sight of
him, as he thumbed through books and read back copy or
dust jackets. Only
when he wandered to the magazine section did she get back
to shelving
books.
"I think I'm ready, if you could ring this
up?" He appeared at the end of
the aisle, a book in hand.
"Yes." She swallowed the knot fear had
tied in her throat. Now's my
chance to talk to him, she told herself. "I
wanted to ask--" she began,
and then her foot caught on some invisible obstacle, her
bad knee buckled,
and she found herself pitching toward him.
He caught her, but it wasn't anything like the
movies. Her face pressed
into his shirt front, and his arms clamped tight against
her sides to hold
her up. His fingers dug into her back, and he
staggered backwards as he
absorbed her momentum. She breathed in the scent of
him, soap and old
books and something sharp that she couldn't name.
Her fingers tightened on
the sleeves of his coat.
"I'm--"
"Don't say it." He set her upright and
that ghost of a smile quirked the
corners of his mouth again. "Accidents
happen."
"All the time. To me anyway."
Carina sucked in a deep breath. "I can . .
. help you with that book. If you want."
"Thank you." She could hear him close
behind her as she walked to the
front of the store. Probably waiting to see if some
other disaster befalls
me, she thought, with her fingers pressed to her cheeks
to cool the burn of
embarrassment. She managed to ring in his purchase
without further
mishap--Kafka's Metamorphosis--and slipped it
into a bag.
As he took it from her hands, their fingers brushed and
she jerked back.
"You wanted to ask something?" he said, as if
he hadn't noticed her
reaction.
"I wanted to thank you for helping me last
week. And--" she licked her
lips--"and ask your name."
He frowned, and she wondered if she'd been too
forward. "Jack," he said
after a long moment. "My name is Jack."
"Jack." She liked the way it
tasted. "I'm--my name is Carina."
"Good night, Carina." He nodded, tucked
the bag under his arm, and
disappeared into the night.
"Good night," she echoed, long after he'd gone.
Several weeks passed in which she barely caught a
glimpse of Jack. He kept
his visits to the store brief, and she wondered if she'd
scared him off
with her awkwardness and her questions. Probably,
she told the mirror
the next Friday. It always works that way.
Still, she couldn't help looking for him as noon drew
closer. The lunch
hour came and went without any sign of him. The
only consolation she had
was that biker guy also failed to put in an appearance.
At 3:30, Stan left for the day. "You can lock
up," he told her. He
didn't even ask, she thought bitterly. He
just assumed that I had
nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon. And the
sad thing is, he's
right. She watched him go out the back, and
wished that just once, she
had the courage to tell him she couldn't close the store.
A few more customers straggled in, but by quarter to
five, they'd all
disappeared. Carina leaned on the counter and
sighed. She didn't need a
more lucrative job; between her paycheck and the
insurance money from the
accident, she made ends meet. "But there's got
to be something more," she
told herself. "Look at you. Afraid to
say no to your boss. Daydreaming
about a man who's only spoken to you once or
twice."
The ringing of the bell on the door jolted her out of her
reverie. She
turned, but to her disappointment saw only the biker
guy. He hurried back
to the magazine section without speaking to her.
As she straightened and dusted the book lights and other
odd ends behind
the counter, the biker guy's gravelly voice interrupted
her. "Hey, could
you help me out?"
"Sure." She dropped the tissue she was
using to dust, and hurried toward
the magazines. "What do you need?"
"Where is it?" He turned to her, his face
twisted in a scowl.
"What? Which magazine?" The raw
anger in his tone sent a jolt of fear
down her spine. His hands clenched and opened, and
his breathing rasped.
"They should all be in their usual--"
"It's not here, dammit! The message.
Where's the message?"
"What message? I don't know what you
mean." She backed away, her gaze
darting toward the front door, then the back room.
Which way should she
run?
"You know what I mean. I've seen you watching
him. Trying to rub up
against him. Now where's the message?"
His eyes glinted, a mad light.
She smelled cigarette smoke, and oil and sweat.
"Please, I don't know."
"Don't bother playing stupid." He reached
into his pocket and pulled
something out. A gun? She jumped back, and
stumbled as her knee twinged.
No, it was a knife. The blade snicked out, a soft,
nasty sound, and he
held it in front of her face. "Bad enough
you're a cripple. I could make
you into an ugly cripple. Or a dead one."
Her breath caught in her throat. "I don't
know. I don't know any man. I
don't know about any message. Why are you doing
this?"
"Because you have to learn to stay out of things
that don't concern you."
Biker guy lashed out with the knife, and she only just
leaned back in time
to stay out of his reach. "Hold still.
This will only take a minute . . ."
One moment he was right in front of her, and the next her
arm was caught in
a vise and she felt herself yanked sideways and spun
around. She slammed
into one end of a shelf as something else slammed into
the other, and the
whole thing toppled over, spilling books everywhere.
Carina squeezed her eyes shut, afraid of what she might
see. She heard a
meaty thud, then the biker guy's rough voice.
"No more, okay? Just listen
to me. She's up to something. I thought she
had the message."
"There was no message. I just got here, you
moron." Jack's voice, as
smooth and even as always, even in the middle of a
fight. "Didn't I warn
you not to draw attention to yourself? Didn't that
cast on your hand teach
you anything?"
"You're not going to cut me loose, are you?"
"Actually, I was planning on a tighter
leash." A body moved. "Now get up,
and get out of here. Don't come back. I'll
contact you."
"Right." Still muttering under his
breath, the biker guy stomped away and
soon the bell rang as he left the store.
An arm slid around her shoulders and lifted her.
"Did he hurt you? Can
you hear me?"
She nodded, still without opening her eyes.
"I'm . . . okay, I think.
He's gone, isn't he?"
"For good." Jack's breath on her face was
warm and smelled like coffee.
"You can open your eyes now."
She did, squinting up at him. "He was going to
kill me."
"Kenny likes to scare people. It can be useful
. . . most of the time."
He helped her to stand, then let go of her and stepped
away.
"Should we--should I call the police?"
"It would be better if you didn't." He
rubbed at his forehead. "I would
consider it a favor. Things are off-balance enough
as it is."
From what he said--and didn't say--she guessed he was an
undercover cop, or
something. Carina stared down at the heaps of books
that lay on the floor.
"So," she said, "you didn't--when
you hit him out in the parking lot, it
wasn't because of what he did to me."
"No." He reached down and righted the
shelf that had fallen.
"It's a business thing."
"Something like that." He looked at her,
his face blank. "I really can't
talk about it."
"Oh." She scooped up an armful of books
and crammed them haphazardly into
the shelf. "Of course."
"Not that it was acceptable for him to treat you
like that."
She was afraid to look at him again, but his voice
sounded tight. "No."
"He won't bother you again. I'll make sure we
conduct our business
elsewhere."
"Sure." The bruises on her arm hurt, but
her heart hurt worse. The
mystery man--Jack, she corrected--wouldn't be back.
Ever. He'd been the
one to bring that horrible biker guy into the store, and
now he was
leaving. And he wasn't at all what she'd
thought. "Why?" she asked.
"Why what?"
"Why are you helping me? You don't--"
"I felt sorry for you. Sorry for making a
mess," he amended.
She glanced over at him, guessing from the tight line of
his mouth that he
realized he'd been tactless and didn't know what to do
about it. "You can
go," she said. "It's all right. I
can finish up."
"I'll stay." They went on working side by
side, in silence, until the
books were put away. When he let himself out, it
took all her willpower
not to watch him go.
[fin--part one]
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