Live Like You Were Dying

Character: Will

Rating: PG

Word Count: 1,487

Spoilers: Up to Remnants

Notes: For Clara, who issued the challenge months ago and was very patient with me as I tried to write this! I’m not sure it’s what you were looking for, but here it is!

 

There’s a buddy of mine, a guy who works construction with me. His name’s Clint, he’s old enough to just about be my dad and he’s from Texas. And at this point, I’ve got to tell you, any stereotype that you might come into your mind, any picture you might be getting of him?

 

You’re absolutely right.

 

Clint is a self-professed gun-totin’ redneck son-of-a-bad-word, and proud to be so. He’s fond of saying that he likes his men like he likes his whiskey (straight) and his women like he likes his coffee (strong and a little bitter.) He’s not a little curmudgeonly and God help you if you cross him, but when the chips are down, you can count on him for anything.

 

But the one thing you can really, really count on with Clint?

 

He loves his country music.

 

Loves it so much that he plays it in his truck, sings it out loud as he’s working, even plays the country station on the break room radio. Most of the rest of the guys can’t stand country music, but none of us are going to argue with Clint over it, so we’ve all got an education, and some of us are even beginning to like certain songs.

 

There’s one, though, that I just can’t get to like, no matter how often I hear it, no matter how often Clint sings it, no matter that it’s the CMA Song of the Year, as Clint keeps reminding me. It’s called “Live Like You Were Dying” and it’s about all the things that a man did once he found out that he was going to die, about he wishes we could all live like that, with abandon, without fear. It’s not a bad tune, and the lyrics aren’t violently horrible, and it’s a popular song.

 

And I can’t stand it.

 

Clint can’t quite wrap his head around that, has gone to great lengths to tell me the story of how it was written about the singer’s father (and that’s one of the only reasons I can remember who sings the damn song, from knowing he’s Tug McGraw’s kid; I remember having his baseball card as a kid) who’d just found out he was dying from cancer. Which is a tragedy for him and gives the song a deeper meaning, sure, but I still don’t like it, and it’s mostly to do with getting past the title, which also happens to be the hook of the song.

 

See, I’ve got a different perspective on the matter, which is what Clint doesn’t know, what I can’t ever tell him.

 

Because, unlike Clint, I’ve looked death in the eye, at a time when death was in the eyes of my lover, a woman I thought I’d known for years, a woman I could see myself spending the rest of my life with. Finding out that Francie wasn’t Francie, that she was Allison Doren, a doppelganger created to spy on Sydney was, without a doubt, one of the worst moments of my life, because the first thought that came to me was, how long had it been going on? Had I ever been with Francie, or was it Allison all along? Her eyes when she knew I’d found out the truth, those eyes that had been once been filled with love, then filled with anger, hatred, and feeling the knife slide into my gut was almost a relief, because I knew that I was going to die, and I wasn’t going to have to live with the knowledge that Francie was dead, that I’d literally been sleeping with the enemy.

 

And then I woke up in the hospital to find out that I was going to have to live with that knowledge.

 

Not only that, but also with the knowledge that Sydney was dead, as was Allison. And that as far as the rest of the world was concerned, so was Will Tippin.

 

I never got to say goodbye to anyone, my family, my friends – not that I had many of those, not after the drug stories the previous year. I moved around for a while, before settling in Minnesota, working construction, living, as my handler told me, a normal life.

 

Except that it wasn’t a normal life, not really.

I went from work to home to bed, without anything in between. I rarely went to movies, because action films reminded me of Sydney, love stories reminded me of Francie, and sci-fi was too like what had been done to Allison. I didn’t read, because it reminded me too much of writing and the career that I’d lost. And I didn’t make many friends, because I couldn’t trust them, couldn’t be sure that they weren’t spies, ready to kill me at the slightest chance.

 

And then I was at work one day, and I heard the voice of a ghost.

 

At first, I thought I was dreaming, just like I’d dreamed about hearing Syd’s voice so many times, just like I’d dreamed about Francie. Then I looked up, and she was standing there, and I knew I wasn’t dreaming.

 

Just like I knew it wasn’t Syd. It was another Allison, another doppelganger, come to finish the job, and I knew what I had to do.

 

Pulling that gun on her was the most alive I’d felt in two years, knowing that I was going to exact some measure of revenge on the people who had destroyed my life, the lives of so many people that I loved.

 

And then she began talking, and God help me, I listened. I asked her the question, and when she told me that story about how I got my job on the paper, I was sure my ears were hearing wrong, sure that I’d crossed the line into insanity.

 

Because she was Sydney and she was real and she was sobbing into my shoulder, and I’d never realised how much I missed her.

 

We talked, and I never realised how much I’d missed that either.

 

Being drawn back into the spy world wasn’t as much as an ordeal as I’d feared; in fact, I insisted on it. If I could help get the people who did this to us, then I was going to help her, no questions asked. So I got to travel to Europe, wear clothes that Jonah – and Will, for that matter – would never wear, speak in a British accent, pretend to be a rock star. I got to chase bad guys – Sark and Allison – and I got to kill Allison; a knife in the gut, a closing of the circle, poetic justice if you will.

 

And, in a safe house in Warsaw, fuelled by too much vodka, and not a little adrenaline, I found myself kissing Sydney Bristow. Which, if I’m honest, was something that I’d wanted to do for a long time, and there was no way it was going to end at just kissing.

 

That night was the first time in two years that I’d kissed someone, touched someone like that, let them touch me. I don’t just mean physically either; but inside, in the heart, where it matters most. For the first time since that night where all our lives changed, I was actually feeling something, something real.

 

For the first time since that night, chasing around Europe, in hiding with my best friend, holding her in my arms, I felt like I was actually alive.

 

Which is what was on my mind when I said goodbye to her, in the halls of the CIA ready to go back to my life as Jonah. She called after me, told me that we’d never talked about what we’d done, and I just smiled at her. “Yeah,” I said. “I kinda like that.”

 

Because I’d spent the last two years thinking and re-thinking and over-thinking things, and I’d just realised that I didn’t want to do that anymore. After all, there was no way that there could be anything between us, not the way that our lives were, so what was the point in talking it over? Better to leave it where it was, a beautiful memory, a valuable lesson learned.

 

So when I went back to Wisconsin, I began doing things I hadn’t done for two years. I began going out with the guys after work. I went to movies, read books, took up photography. I even asked out the cute artist that lived in my building, and even though it didn’t go anywhere, that’s not what matters. What matters is that I took that leap of faith, got on with my life.


That’s why, when I hear Tim McGraw wishing that everyone had the chance to live like they were dying, I shake my head, mentally tune out.

 

See, I lived like I was dying, like I was dead, for two years.

 

Now?

 

I want to live like I’m living.

 

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