Azhria Lilu
Captain
NOTE: This fic is not by me. It was posted at the old forums by akatolstoy, and due to demand I am re-posting it here as akatolstoy has not done so yet
To akatolstory: I took the liberty of posting it here, as you had it at the old forums. If you would like it removed, please email of PM me.
This fic takes place post-ATY
Title: Compline
Author: akatolstoy, akatolstoy@hotmail.com
Title: Compline
Author: akatolstoy
Rating: PG-13
Genre: S/V Romance/Angst, WIP
Distribution: please email me first.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Alias, or any of its characters. It all belongs to JJ
Abrams, Bad Robot Productions, ABC, Touchstone, etc.
Spoilers: entire 1st season, slight spoiler for season 2, involving Willage
Feedback: Please read and respond. I am eager for feedback!
Summary: Post-ATY. Sydney, Jack, Dixon, Vaughn, and Will come to grips with the events that will alter all their lives.
This fan-fic is a companion piece to “The Tricky Thing About Trust” and “One Small Year”archived at fanfiction.net. The title refers to a series of prayers meant to be said before sleep.
“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake. Amen”--The Common Book of Prayer
Compline
“Mom?” Sydney gasped, as the figure emerging from the shadows revealed itself.
“Sydney, how lovely you’ve grown!” Irina whispered, crossing over to her daughter and touching her cheek softly. “I’ve watched you for so long. I’ve seen the agent you’ve become, but never in these long years have I had a chance to see you face to face!”
Her mother’s touch felt cool, light, and familiar. Sydney began to search her face for signs of the woman she had known—the woman who had soothed her to sleep with lullabies, rocked her while reading story books, and clasped her in her arms when she returned home from school. There were faint lines around this woman’s eyes and mouth that Sydney had not associated with the woman who had been her mother, but the warm brown eyes, the expressive eyebrows, the straight, aquiline nose and full mouth were the same.
“Mom?” Sydney repeated, her voice, even more tremulous.
“Yes, Sydney. It is I,” Irina stated simply. “But, this was not how I imagined we’d meet. Fate has been very unkind to both of us. It has made us enemies, when my only wish was that we could be together, working side by side. But your father and Arvin Sloane have corrupted you. I should have foreseen that eventuality. I’m sorry.”
“Corrupted me? Corrupted me?” Sydney, exclaimed, tears streaming down her face. “Look at me! You’ve had me bound, you’ve kidnapped and tortured my friend, and someone I love has most likely died because of what you’ve done!” Her voice rose with anger and gained strength with every word. “You were the one who left! You were the one who betrayed us! How could you? How could you be my mother and have killed all those men? How could you let your entire marriage to my father be a sham? I’d accuse you of betraying your country, but I don’t even know what country you truly work for!”
Irina stepped back and sighed, in no way surprised by Sydney’s outburst, but still saddened by it.
“I am not working on behalf of a single country, Sydney. Everything I have done—everything I will do—is for the safety and security of the entire world. Let me ask you something. Why do you think Arvin Sloane is so obsessed with Rambaldi and his inventions?”
Sydney swallowed. “He believes all of Rambaldi’s devices combine to form a weapon of mass destruction. Once he—or rather, SD-6—possesses this weapon, he can keep it or sell it to the highest bidder.”
Irina smiled. “Perfectly true. Now, tell me, do you think Russia’s or the United States’ desire for the Rambaldi device is any different than Sloane’s?”
“Of course!” Sydney cried. “The point is to keep the weapon away from anyone who wishes to use it against them, not to use it themselves!”
Irina gazed at her daughter and shook her head. “How can you have been a spy for so long and not have realized the truth?” she asked and shook her head. “You’ve played the game, but you’ve lost neither your naiveté nor your patriotism, I see. Like your father, you still believe governments exist to serve and protect the rights of their citizens,” she intoned bitterly.
For the first time, Sydney detected a cold, cruel glint in her mother’s eye. Irina frowned, and Sydney could see that over the years this had become a habitual expression. She began to watch her mother even more warily.
“Tell me something else,” Irina continued. “Which country has been the only nation to use a nuclear weapon against another country?”
Sydney’s mouth went dry, and she felt as if she were being examined by a stern and exacting professor. “The United States dropped a series of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force the Japanese to surrender and thus end World War II,” she replied in a hoarse voice.
“That in itself should prove my argument that the United States’ motives are not as pure as you would like them to be. It proves that even America will use weapons of mass destruction if provoked. Do you still feel that Rambaldi’s weapon would be safe in the hands of the American government?” Irina’s smile turned brittle. “Do you know how the arms race between America and Russia really started?”
Sydney shook her head, her eyes expressing both horror and fascination as a result of her mother’s revelations.
“American and Russian scientists working separately on developing nuclear capability for their countries, began secretly sharing information so that neither nation would be the sole possessor of a weapon of such destructive force. The scientists felt that although they would each be betraying their countries, they would be doing what was best for mankind. The saw themselves, not as citizens of a country, but as citizens of the world. One of those men, Yuri Alexseivich Suvin, was your grandfather, Sydney,” she said softly. “The Soviet government discovered he was trading secrets and sent him to Siberia, where he was later put to death without a trial. I consider myself a citizen of the world, just like my father, and I will do anything I have to do, so that my father’s sacrifice was not in vain.”
Irina’s voice shook, and she looked pleadingly into the eyes of her daughter. “Now do you think I am a traitor? That I am in this for my own personal gain? Everything I have done has been done to keep you safe from political machinations of the world’s super powers, even though you and your father, Arvin Sloane, and countless others have tried to thwart me at every turn. I loved you, and I loved your father, even though I considered his loyalty and his patriotism destructive and misguided. Do you think I wanted to hurt you? Do you think I wanted to leave you? Do you think I have not regretted the things I have done? Yes, I killed those agents you spoke of: I seduced and killed every single one, but only because I had to. Because there was no other way. That is, I seduced every agent but one, but in the end, I killed him, too,” she added, almost as if to herself.
Sydney froze in her seat. “Who was that agent?” she asked haltingly.
Irina lifted an eyebrow and turned to her daughter in surprise. After all she had revealed, that was the last question she expected from her daughter. “His name was William Vaughn. Other than your father, he was the most upright, gentle, and honorable man I have ever known.”
Sydney remained silent, her emotions clashing inside her. When she had dreamed of coming face to face with her mother, two very different scenarios had come to mind. In one, her mother was cruel and irredeemably evil---someone she could justifiably hate and fight to her dying breath. In the other, her mother was abject and repentant---someone she could pity and perhaps rehabilitate. She was not prepared for the combination of the two that was before her: this strong, tragic, unrepentant woman who recognized the evil she had done and justified it as serving a higher end.
“All you’ve done is make a case for absolute power corrupting absolutely,” Sydney said after an extended silence. ”What makes your motives any different? Why should the world trust you with the Rambaldi device?”
Irina’s eyes glowed, as she gazed at her daughter. “That’s my girl. That’s the question I was hoping you’d ask. What would you say if I told you I had a dream: a dream of a world united into a single democratic society with elected officials from every culture and indigenous people, and the world’s security vouchsafed by a weapon of untold power? A weapon with the ultimate failsafe: it can only be detonated if all 47 elected officials activate it simultaneously and thus would be used only if the world itself were endangered. That is the dream that both Milo Rambaldi and I share. That is the dream to which I have devoted my life.”
“I would say that you have betrayed and killed countless people—people you respected, some that you loved—for an utopia you’ll never see realized in your life time and which may never be realized,” Sydney said in a low voice.
“Perhaps,” Irina, replied, the light suddenly extinguished from her eyes. “But perhaps it’s my destiny to try,” she murmured with a strange tone in her voice.
“You know about Rambaldi’s prophecy, don’t you?” Sydney asked suddenly. “You know what the CIA found when they exposed the blank page in Rambaldi’s manuscript. They found your picture. They thought it was me, but it was you! Rambaldi didn’t predict you’d save the world; he predicted you’d destroy it!”
Irina gazed at her daughter. “Did it never occur to you that the CIA faked that prophecy to prevent you from taking my side and coming to work for me? If the CIA could fake Rambaldi documents expertly enough to fool SD-6, what makes you think they didn’t dupe you as well? I cannot tell you for sure what is written there. I have not seen the complete Rambaldi manuscript. You yourself must choose whom to believe. I won’t force you to make a decision now, Sydney, but you will have to make one soon. And I warn you that if you decide to remain my enemy--if you decide to continue to work against me--I will not spare your life or the lives of those close to you to realize my dream.”
With that, Irina turned away from her daughter and exited the room after saying a few words to the guard at the door. The door swung shut, and Sydney was alone--and desperate… desperate for someone to contradict what she had just heard. Someone who would tell her that she was not engulfed in an endless series of lies and cover-ups. Someone who would deny the charge that working for the CIA was no better than working for SD-6. She wanted someone she trusted to tell her the truth, and she wanted that truth to be something she wanted to hear. She wanted her father, but most of all she wanted Michael Vaughn, and Michael Vaughn was dead.
***
Hours passed, and no one came in to check on her. Since her mother’s visit, Sydney had worked relentlessly on loosening the twine with which they had bound her hands, and in the process, she had rubbed her wrists almost raw.
Just as she succeeded in almost getting one hand free, she heard someone open the door. It was a guard carrying a tray of food, but he got no more than a few feet into the room when someone hit him over the head with a gun. The guard slumped to the ground, his head hitting the hard concrete floor, while the tray he had been carrying flew from his hands, skidded, and finally crashed against the wall.
“Dixon!” Sydney gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“There’s no time to explain. We’ll talk later.” Dixon stated, crouching down to seize a gun from the recumbent guard. He then came over to Sydney, and released her. “I’ve been in radio contact with your father. He’s secured the north entrance to the building, but there’s no telling how long he can hold out without back up. He told me there would be another agent with you. An Agent Vaughn. Is he being held in another room?”
“He was trapped behind the security doors when the Mueller device exploded and flooded the lab. I tried to save him, but I couldn’t get the doors open once they sealed! Dixon, we can’t leave without him.”
“Syd,” said Dixon looking grim. “If what you say is true, he’s probably dead. We can’t waste time searching the building for a man who’s beyond our help. We have to get out of here now!”
“I don’t care!” Sydney exclaimed, grabbing him by the arm. “I need to know if Vaughn got out. I need to know if he survived. Dixon, please, please, help me find him. I can’t leave without him.”
Her grip was like steel, but her eyes pleaded with him. Dixon gazed at his partner and sighed.
“Okay,” he replied, conceding, against his better judgment. “We have to go through the main part of the building in order to get to the north entrance, anyway. Here, take this gun. We’ll search as we go along, but if we don’t find him before we reach the north entrance, we can’t go back inside. You understand?”
Sydney nodded. She took the gun Dixon handed to her and cocked it. “Let’s go.
***
Vaughn heard footsteps and pressed himself against the wall, with his gun extended, waiting for the inevitable. There were clearly two guards by the sound of it, and there was only one bullet left in his gun. He barely had enough energy to stand, much less the energy required for hand-to-hand combat or an extended gun fight. What a stupid way to die. Drowning would have made more sense then dying in this hallway, knowing Sydney was in danger somewhere in this building, and he had failed to reach her.
Dixon rounded the corner first and immediately trained his gun at the figure he saw there.
“Dixon, it’s Vaughn! Don’t shoot!” Sidney cried, running forward.
Vaughn spotted Dixon first, and seeing him lower his gun, he shut his eyes, and slumped against the wall. It didn’t occur to him to wonder at Dixon’s sudden appearance or question why he would lower his gun. Instead, relief washed over him at not having to fight yet another guard in his weakened condition.
However, his lids fluttered slightly at the sound of Sidney’s voice, and he glimpsed her briefly through the fringe of his eyelashes.
That was all he needed. In an instant, a last surge of adrenaline coursed through his body, giving him enough energy to get up, drop the gun and take the remaining steps between them. She collided with him so forcefully, he almost fell backwards from the impact. Ignoring the pain in his ribs, he crushed her fiercely to his chest, then suddenly pushed her away, just far enough to see her face.
“Sydney, Oh, my God, Sydney!” His voice was hoarse from all the water he had swallowed and husky with emotion. His hands clasped her face now, searching her eyes, trying to take in the fact that she really was standing before him. He watched as disbelief, then joy, and finally a ghostly, residual sense of panic played across her face, as she relived the horror of their parting.
“Vaughn! Your face! Seeing your face through that window! I thought I’d lost you. I thought you were gone. It didn’t seem possible I could lose you. Not here. Not now. Not this way.” She couldn’t stop herself. She was sobbing now, and yet the words kept fighting their way out of her, despite her gasps for air.
As one hand gripped his jacket, the other flew up to caress his cheek. She felt the stubble beneath her fingers, and looked up into Vaughn’s dark green eyes. The depth of emotion she found there took her breath away.
Now it was she who was drowning. Gently, Vaughn drew her back into his arms, and she buried her head in his chest, completely overcome at the idea of just how close they had come to being parted forever.
There wasn’t a single bone or muscle in Vaughn’s body that wasn’t aching or throbbing painfully. He had never felt so physically exhausted in his life or so blissfully happy. Sydney was in his arms and that was all that mattered. Vaughn closed his eyes and rested his cheek on her hair.
“Shhh” he murmured, holding her close. “Ne pleurez pas. C'est bien maintenant. Nous sommes ensemble, chéri. Je suis ici. Ne pleurez pas. Je t'aime” he whispered, kissing her hair, as her sobs receded.
He had slipped into French without thinking, only now realizing what he had said, but unwilling to take it back— life was too precarious, he thought, and every moment with Sydney was precious. He couldn’t afford to waste any more time thinking about protocol or what the CIA may deem “appropriate” interaction among agents.
“Je t’aime,” he repeated softly, brushing a wisp of hair from her cheek. His heart skipped a beat as Sydney raised her head and gazed up at him, her eyes suffused with wonder...
Dixon had purposely adverted his eyes from Sydney and Vaughn’s embrace, as he kept a look out for guards, but now he cleared his throat and approached the couple. He laid a hand on Sydney’s shoulder and said, “Syd, we gotta go. I don’t like how quiet this place seems. There should be more guards around. Something’s not right. Let’s find your father.”
Sydney nodded. Dixon looked at Vaughn inquiringly, but formal introductions would have to wait. Vaughn let his arms fall, and Sydney stepped out of his embrace. Just as all three turned to go, they saw Jack and Will coming towards them.
****
Jack had waited at the entrance, growing more and more impatient as the minutes ticked by. They should be here by now. Dixon’s unexpected appearance had been a godsend, but what if all three of them were now captured? There was little Jack could do without calling in backup, and he doubted the CIA would drop everything and send an extraction team to Taipei for a group of rogue agents who had deliberately gone against protocol. In fact, Jack knew that from Devlin’s point of view, they had stolen valuable intelligence data and handed it over to the other side. They’d be lucky if they weren’t accused of treason when they got back. That is, if they all made it back alive.
Finally fed up, Jack felt he had no choice but to go in after them. He edged his way, slowly into the building, watching for guards, as well as any sign of the missing agents. At the sound of footsteps behind him, he whirled around.
“Mr. Tippin, do you realize just how close I came to putting a bullet through your head?” he seethed, through clenched teeth, lowering his gun.
Will blanched visibly, but took a step forward. “The sedative you gave me wore off. I saw you go inside the warehouse and thought maybe there was something I could do to help…” Will, swallowed, painfully. He looked at Jack and tried to keep his gaze steady. “If there is anything—anything—I can do to help Sydney…”
“Go back to the van, Mr. Tippin,” Jack ordered sharply, cutting him off. “You’re of no use to me or to Sydney in your present condition. You’ll only endanger yourself further.”
The truth was Will was almost as in much danger in the van, as he was inside the building with him. Will didn’t move, and Jack sighed. He reached inside his jacket and handed the battered and bruised reporter a gun. “Take this, but stay behind me.”
They continued edging their way around corridors. Will followed Jack’s lead, but stayed at least three steps behind him. Jack peered around the next corner, and then swore under his breath. Will‘s sweaty fingers gripped the gun Jack had given him more tightly, but he was confused by the barely perceptible relaxation in the older man’s stance. When Jack did not advance, Will’s curiosity got the better of him, and he almost stumbled over him in his effort to get a glimpse of whatever Jack had seen.
“Who the hell is that?” Will whispered, stunned.
Just around the corner stood Sydney cradled in the arms of a stranger. Will watched as the man kissed the top of her head and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. His heart constricted as he saw her lift her head and look up at the man with eyes full of wonder and something else…love?
Jack didn’t give him time to analyze the significance of her gaze, though, and roughly hauled him back around the corner before Dixon could turn in their direction.
However Jack, too, had gazed at Sydney and Vaughn meditatively for a moment, unaccountably loath to interrupt their embrace. Of all the times and places, he thought exasperatedly, but, he had to acknowledge that a small part of him was glad to see them together, despite the fact that they were ensconced in each other’s arms, protocol be damned.
He attempted to trace the source of this inner weakness, but then noticed Will was still staring at him, expecting an answer.
“That man is Sydney’s handler—“ Jack began, wondering just how much of Sydney’s covert activities he wanted to reveal to Tippin.
“I can see that!” Will interrupted, conscious of the irritation and jealousy in his own voice, but unable to mask it, “Who the hell is he?”
Jack glared at Will, his lips compressed, and his eyes steely. As much as he didn’t care for Sydney and Vaughn’s timing or choice of location, he liked Tippin’s tone of voice and his reaction to the situation even less.
“Agent Michael Vaughn is Sydney’s contact at the CIA, and like you, her friend,” he stated coldly.
Will slowly shook his head at Jack’s words.
That’s where you’re wrong, buddy, he thought, the truth slowly taking on certainty in his mind. Sydney and I are friends, but she’s in love with him. Him. Michael Vaughn. That should be as frickin’ obvious to you as it is to me.
Catching Jack’s eye again, he was startled by the man’s glare and was afraid he had spoken his thoughts aloud.
“Listen, Mr. Tippin,” Jack said curtly, clearly out of patience. “There was much Sydney couldn’t—in fact, was forbidden—to share with you and Francie about her work. Agent Vaughn has been there for her, when neither you, nor I, nor Francie could be. He has risked both his career and his life on this mission, and he came simply because he knew you were a close friend of Sydney’s and that your life was in danger. Michael Vaughn has earned Sydney’s gratitude and my respect for that. I believe he deserves yours, as well.”
Will swallowed and then nodded his head, utterly abashed and no longer able to meet Jack Bristow’s gaze.
Jack gazed at the battered and bruised man in the bloodied sweatshirt beside him—a boy, really—and felt something like remorse. It was clear to him that Tippin had feelings for his daughter that she did not entirely requite. No doubt his dogged pursuit of Daniel Hecht’s killers was designed to win her love—the love Tippin had just now watched her bestow on Vaughn.
For an instant, Jack wished he could take back his words and spare this boy additional pain. But only for an instant. There were bigger issues at stake at the present moment than matters of the heart, and it seemed he needed to remind both Sydney and Vaughn of that, as well.
“Let’s go,” Jack said, stepping around the corner. Will followed, but with more hesitation.
“Will!” Sydney cried as soon as she saw him. Leaving Vaughn’s side, she ran to him and hugged him. “Are you all right? Oh, my God, Will! What did they do to you?” she gasped, taking in all at once the rusty spots of dried blood on his sweatshirt and the livid bruises on his face. She fingered his swollen jaw, and Will winced.
“It’s about time someone over here did an expose on unsafe dental practices. Heck, I’ll write the article myself. They don’t even have to use my byline. Who licenses these quacks, anyway? Godzilla?” Will grimaced, manfully trying to wave away Sydney’s attention. He was suddenly conscious that he struck a less than heroic figure amid the more seasoned agents—of which he included Vaughn, who was now approaching him.
Now that he could see him up close, Will saw that Vaughn looked haggard. Clearly, this man had gone through high water and a good bit of hell in order to be standing here beside Sydney. They eyed each other for a moment, and unexpectedly Will held out his hand to him.
“Jack told me everything you’ve done. What you risked to be here. Thanks. I just want to say—thanks,” he ended, rather lamely, trying not to think about Sydney or the embrace he had seen moments ago and focus solely on the fact that this man had helped save his life.
Slightly taken aback, Vaughn nodded and grasped Will’s hand in return.
Up until now, the mere mention of Will’s name had been enough to send him into a jealous snit. He remembered Sydney coming to the warehouse the night she took Will to the dinner party at Sloane’s. She had looked absolutely fabulous in that black tank dress. He couldn’t help but notice how it hugged every curve of her body, despite the fact that Jack had been standing right there watching him.
Even though he knew it would have broken every rule in the book, he had wanted to accompany Sydney to that party. But he played the “Company” man, gave her the counter mission, and watched wistfully as she turned to go—except that a “Company” man would never have told her she looked pretty.
Pretty! What a unbelievably absurd understatement!
For the rest of night he had tortured himself with images of Sydney and Will together: Will helping her with her coat, pulling the chair out for her, sitting next to her at the table, his knee almost touching hers… it drove him absolutely crazy. The truth was that he was more jealous of Will than he had been of Noah Hicks. Noah had come and gone, but Will was a constant part of Sydney’s everyday life—the part of her life Vaughn was forbidden to share.
For that reason and more, he had expected to hate Will on sight. He was surprised to find that wasn’t the case. He liked the reporter’s self-deprecating humor and had a grudging respect for his scruffy courage. He even felt a degree of camaraderie with him. After all, hadn’t they both broken the rules and risked everything in order to help Sydney? But now as he looked at the man he once considered a rival for Sydney’s affections, it occurred to him that Will might be as envious of the role he played in Sydney’s life as he was of the role Will himself played.
Jack glared at Will and Vaughn with equal impatience, but Sydney glanced back and forth between the two men, a smile creeping over her face. However, any further exchange was cut off by a alarm, which suddenly began keening like an air raid siren.
Dixon and Jack exchanged glances, sharing a sudden realization that explained why there were no guards on this side of the building: the warehouse was being evacuated, probably through a secret passageway or hidden exit. “The Man” was using the guards who would normally be stationed around the building to remove whatever could be salvaged. The siren was the last warning before they blew up what was left of the lab, so that there would be nothing the CIA could use to further their own knowledge of Rambaldi or his strange inventions.
“Go!” Jack shouted, not bothering to explain to the others. “Get out of here. Now!”
Sydney whipped around and grabbed Vaughn’s hand. There was no way she would leave him behind again. They started to run, with Sydney pulling Vaughn along. Will followed, then Dixon, while Jack brought up the rear. They reached the north entrance, just as the warehouse blew.
The blast threw all of them several feet. Vaughn and Sydney stumbled and rolled to the ground, while both Jack and Dixon dove to cover Will. Debris flew everywhere, as flames burst from the warehouse, traveling several stories into the air. Sydney crouched down until the worst was over, and then turned around, feeling the heat of the blaze on her cheek. The red and gold inferno mesmerized her, until Jack finally grabbed her and pushed her toward the van.
Where was her mother now, and what would be her next move?
***
Once the plane Jack had commandeered took off, they began to take stock and attend to their wounds. Fatigue was apparent on all their faces, but, Will, having received another powerful sedative, was the only one who slept. Although his face still looked swollen and garish, the painkillers had made him comfortable, at least for the short term.
Dixon and Jack were remarkably unscathed except for a few minor burns, as was Sydney—barring the puffy, bruised area of her cheek, where a guard had blindsided her with the butt of his gun and the abrasions around her wrists. Vaughn, however, had cracked three ribs which needed bandaging. Fortunately, the plane had often been used on medical runs and had an extremely well stocked first aid kit.
Sydney blushed as she self-consciously helped Vaughn remove the tight black t-shirt he had worn to the club. Although she hadn’t wanted to draw attention to her perusal of his chest, she wasn’t able to suppress her gasp of dismay at seeing the purple, green, and yellow streaks the mottled the area around his ribs.
Vaughn simply gritted his teeth and silently lifted his arms, so that she could wind the bandage around him. Sydney could tell from the way he averted his eyes, though, that he was embarrassed. This was clearly not the physical intimacy either of them had had in mind earlier.
She tried to be as gentle as possible, but despite her attempts, he grunted several times in pain.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she muttered, distractedly, working as fast and as efficiently as she could. “When did this happen? When we were thrown to the ground by the blast? ”
Vaughn inhaled sharply, then shook his head. “I think I felt a couple crack when the wave threw me against the door.“ He gave her a lop-sided grin. “But, then again, it could have been the guard that was trying to kick the hell out of me before I grabbed his gun. Although, I don’t think that last sprint before the warehouse blew helped any. Remind me to renew my membership at the gym and brush up on my combat training when I get home.”
Sydney knew he was making light of his injuries for her sake, but it clearly hurt him to breathe. She could hear the raspiness in his lungs and wondered just how much water he had inhaled after the Mueller device exploded. Cracked ribs might not be the worst of his woes.
She gave him a rueful smile, as she lowered the t-shirt over his head, and smoothed the fabric down around him, careful not to press on the bandages. “I doubt you’ll be doing any sparring any time soon. This will take at least five or six weeks to heal—that is if you don’t catch pneumonia.”
“Great!” he replied, the sarcasm evident in his voice. Then he noticed Sydney hadn’t removed her hands from his hips after smoothing out the last fold of the t-shirt.
They stood only inches a part.
It would be so easy to kiss her, Vaughn thought. All he had to do was lean in and he would finally feel her lips pressed against his. How long had he waited for precisely this opportunity? His brow furrowed as he gazed at her.
He had told her he loved her, and he was all but certain now that she cared for him, but that didn’t change the circumstances they found themselves in. The fact that he was finding more and more creative justifications for breaking the rules didn’t make it any safer for them to do so. Could he really afford to put her life in any more jeopardy than it already was?
The tension between them was palpable. She seemed to be waiting for his move, either unwilling or unable to break the spell that transfixed them on her own.
“Syd—“ he said, his voice low and rough with emotion, seeing the sorrow in her eyes at his hesitation.
“Vaughn, don’t. Don’t say it!” she pleaded, putting her fingers to his lips.
She knew the risks. Would one kiss really make such a difference? She tried to deny it, but in her heart, she knew it would change everything. There could never be just one kiss, because one kiss would be followed by another and another and another. But, he had told her he loved her back in the warehouse in Tapei. Could anything ever be the same again?
“Shh, don’t cry,” he had whispered in French. “Everything’s okay. We’re together now. I’m right here. Don’t cry. I love you.”
At first she couldn’t believe her ears. Had she heard him correctly? Did he even realize what he’d said? But then he had repeated it with a new sense of resolve in his voice.
I love you.
At that moment, she had felt everything inside her melt and begin to glow. Dixon had interrupted them before she could reply, but she hoped Vaughn had read her answer in her eyes.
Tears pricked at her eyelids now as she held her fingers to his lips. She looked at him and saw the same anguish she felt reflected in his eyes.
“When?” she asked, brokenly, unable to meet his gaze any longer.
“I don’t know,” he answered, kissing her fingers, before he lowered them from his lips. “Someday soon. I hope."
***
She helped him to the back of the plane, where Dixon and Jack were already crouched over, deep in conversation. Although certain that Will was still asleep, they spoke softly even though very little could be heard over the drone of the engines. There was much that needed to be discussed, which Will could not be privy to—at least not yet.
“Dixon, this is Agent Michael Vaughn, my handler at the CIA. Vaughn, this is Marcus Dixon.”
Sydney glanced back and forth between the two men and blushed, suddenly recalling that Dixon had witnessed her emotional reunion with Vaughn. He had no doubt surmised that her relationship with Vaughn extended far beyond the normal agent-handler protocol. She hoped he wouldn’t say anything in front of her father—unaware that Jack and Will had witnessed the embrace themselves.
Dixon’s smile, which had appeared on his face as she and Vaughn approached, widened further. “I believe Agent Vaughn and I already met in an alley in Denpasar. I still have the goose-egg-sized lump on my head to prove it,” he said massaging the back of his head, laughing.
Vaughn looked sheepish. “Sorry about that. It wasn’t really a fair fight. I was lucky I came up to you from behind. You seem to be in great shape, even after Aconcagua.”
Dixon smile faded momentarily at the mention of Aconcagua, but then resurfaced. “Of course,” he said, as a new piece in the puzzle shifted into place. “You must have put together the CIA team that extracted us. If Syd hadn’t contacted you, I probably wouldn’t have made it. I have both you and Syd to thank for that. ”
“Dixon, how did you find out I was a double agent for the CIA? And who told you about our mission to Taipei?” Sydney asked.
“After I left you at the pier, I drove to SD-6 and sat in my car for over an hour, trying to work up the nerve to go in there and denounce you to security section, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t,” he said, glancing up at Sydney, troubled.
“I didn’t know what to think. All the evidence pointed to the fact that you were betraying SD-6—and for all I knew, the country, but your protestations were so—so vehement—I went over all the excuses and rationalizations I had made for you again in my mind. There was only one that seemed to make any sense. I reasoned that if the CIA had any suspicions about SD-6 or any of its activities, they might recruit an agent inside the agency to investigate,” Dixon said, glancing around the circle, “so I went to the L.A. field office instead and demanded to see someone in charge of covert ops. I told them that I suspected you were a double agent working against SD-6, and unless they confirmed that her activities were sanctioned by the CIA, I would turn you into security section at SD-6.”
Dixon’s words were met with stunned silence. Sydney opened her mouth and then closed it once more. Without knowing that SD-6 was not a covert branch of the CIA, Dixon had come remarkably close to guessing the truth. It was at that point that Sydney and Vaughn exchanged glances.
“Whom did you speak with at the CIA?” he asked, the question coming out more sharply than he intended.
Dixon chuckled. “Well, there seemed to be some confusion at the office about that. I was told the agent assigned as Sydney’s handler had been suspended recently and taken off her case,” Dixon said, turning to Vaughn with one eyebrow raised.
When Vaughn nodded in confirmation, Sydney turned to him in surprise and dismay. “Vaughn—what happened? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to tell you after we got back from Taipei. I didn’t want to concern you. You had enough on your mind worrying about Will,” Vaughn said, shooting Sydney a guilty look, but then returning his focus to Dixon. “So, then what?”
“Then, I was told I should speak to an Agent Haladki, but he did not respond to being paged,” Dixon replied, looking inquiringly around the group.
Vaughn and Sydney both turned to Jack. “Haladki was the source you referred to earlier. Wasn’t he?” Sydney stated.
Jack assented. “His knowledge of the circumference gave him away as the mole. I extracted the information I needed from him for this mission and then eliminated him,” he stated in a perfectly controlled voice.
“Haladki’s body was found later at the warehouse, along with the tape you made of his confession,” Dixon stated. “Devlin wasn’t precisely thrilled with your methods of extracting information. Let’s just say you didn’t exactly follow CIA protocol. However, taping Haladki’s confession was a smart move, Jack. Not only did it exonerate you and provide the CIA with evidence of Haladki’s activities, it gave me the information I eventually needed to follow you to Taipei.”
It took a minute for Sydney and Vaughn to absorb this information.
“So, who told you about Sydney and the mission to Taipei ? Devlin?” Vaughn said, resuming his questioning of Dixon.
Dixon shook his head. “They finally let me talk with an Agent Weiss who revealed that Sydney had been spying on SD-6 covertly for the past nine months at the CIA’s behest. He told me he couldn’t tell me any more without risking Sydney’s cover and placing me and my family in jeopardy, but later he relented.”
“What precisely did Agent Weiss tell you?” Vaughn asked, his voice urgent. “ I have reason to believe he may have been feeding information to Haladki for months and may be just as dangerous.”
“Weiss was helping Haladki?” Sydney asked incredulously.
Dixon glanced at Sydney and then back at Vaughn. “Agent Weiss was aware that circumstances made it appear that he was the mole. He wanted you to know that in an effort to locate the source of the security breaches, the CIA did a sweep of all the offices and found bugs in both your office and Agent Weiss’s. Agent Weiss believed that as a result of the bugs, Sydney’s cover was compromised, as was all the intelligence you both had collected over the last several months. He told me he was all but certain that you had gone to help Jack and Sydney rescue Will, and he was very worried that you were all walking into a very dangerous and elaborate trap.”
Sydney watched as a mixture of doubt, shame, and then a surge of anger flashed across Vaughn’s face.
He had considered Weiss a traitor, had been certain of it, even though Eric was his best friend. Of course, it was reassuring to discover Weiss had not fed information to Haladki knowingly, but Vaughn still felt betrayed. It was Eric’s actions, after all, that had caused Devlin to remove him as Sydney’s handler. It was then that his thoughts turned to Dixon. He didn’t know what he would have done in Eric’s place if Dixon had walked into his office, but he sure as hell wouldn’t have sent him to Taipei. What was Eric thinking?
He slammed his palm down on an upended crate. “So Eric told you not only about Sydney’s status as a double agent, he sent you to Taipei to extract us? Doesn’t he know he’s endangering your life, as well as risking any chance we have of keeping Sydney’s cover intact?”
A sudden coughing fit forced him to suspend his diatribe. Sydney went to offer him her support, but he shook his head, indicating he didn’t need it.
Dixon waited for Vaughn’s coughing fit to pass. When he resumed his story, his voice and expression remained dignified, but a thin undercurrent of anger hovered just below the surface. “Agent Weiss had every reason to believe that Sydney’s cover was blown whether I went to Taipei or not, and he felt responsible for putting you and Sydney in danger. However, he didn’t ask me to go—I volunteered. I told him that I had spent 21 years believing that I was serving my country by working for SD-6 and the last 7 of those I spent as Sydney’s partner. After I discovered the truth about SD-6, do you really think Agent Weiss could have stopped me from going to help Sydney? You of all people should understand that. Isn’t that precisely what you did yourself, even though they suspended you?”
Vaughn rubbed his forehead and ran a hand through his spiky, disheveled hair.
“Of course,” he said, sighing. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
It was Dixon who had found Sydney and helped her escape. For all he knew, if Dixon hadn’t been there, none of them may have gotten out alive. What was wrong with him? The icy cabin felt stuffy to him, and he swayed on his feet, feeling a bit light-headed.
Dixon’s gaze left Vaughn and moved to Sydney. Tears glistened in his eyes and his voice shook. “Syd, it was bad enough to think you were the traitor. Now I learn that it was I who was unwittingly betraying my country. I don’t know what upsets me more. That SD-6 lied to me for so many years, or that you knew for the last year and didn’t tell me.”
Sydney covered her mouth with her hand, as tears silently slid down her cheeks. She had dreaded this moment. There were no words to express her regret, but still she tried.
“Dixon, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I wanted to tell you! There wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t agonize over not telling you,” she whispered. “Dixon, forgive me! I wanted to tell you so badly!”
“Sydney’s not to blame,” Vaughn said sternly. “I am. I ordered her to keep the truth from you. In the beginning, I felt it was necessary because the CIA had no way of telling which agents knew of SD-6’s true agenda and which had been duped into believing they were working for the CIA. After you sent the request for support when McKenas Cole stormed SD-6, I knew you believed you were working for a covert branch of the CIA. However, I convinced Sydney that by telling you, she would be endangering you and your family. I’m sorry. I thought it was for the best—for you and for Sydney. Perhaps I was wrong,” he concluded, a note of bitterness in his voice.
Vaughn knew by now that there were no simple answers in this line of business. Everyday he made decisions on which the lives of countless other agents depended. It was like a game of chess. The configuration of the entire board could change as the result of one move—except the casualties weren’t mere chess pieces. Lives of men and women—agents like his father with families and loved ones—were sacrificed simply to get the next vital piece of information the government needed to stay one step ahead of covert enemies like SD-6. The trouble was there was no endgame in sight. The game could go on forever and the casual victims and collateral damage on both sides would just continue to mount.
Dixon shook his head back and forth slowly, following his own train of thought.
“All those missions for SD-6! Syd, at any point I could have done something that might have exposed you and endangered your entire operation. Oh, God, Badenweiler…” Dixon’s voice faded, as realization suddenly dawned. “The second detonator… Syd, the way you reacted… you said it was because of Danny, but that wasn’t it, was it?.. there must have been a team in there…My God, Sydney, how many men did I kill?” he said, his voice hoarse, a look of horror contorting his face.
“No, no, not you,” Sydney said fiercely, crouching down towards Dixon and grasping his hands. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know.”
“I take full responsibilities for the deaths at Badenweiler,” Vaughn interjected softly, but firmly. “All of us wish those deaths could have been prevented and the lives of those men spared, but as I told Sydney, everyone on that team knew the risks of performing specials ops. They died serving their country.”
Vaughn didn’t add the words like my father. At that instant the memory of standing by his father’s coffin as an eight-year-old boy merged in his mind with the memory of comforting a boy, much like he himself had been, at the funeral of the agents who had died at Badenweiler. It made his head swim, and he reached out to an upturned crate. To Vaughn’s surprise, Jack reached up to steady him, a look of concern in his eyes. He was even more astonished when the usually taciturn man broke his silence to defend him.
“Dixon, your ignorance was the best way to guarantee Sydney’s cover and her safety,” Jack said shortly. ”We simply couldn’t afford to bring in a third double agent prior to this, and as Sydney’s handler, Agent Vaughn acted in the best interests both of the CIA and the agent in his charge. Those deaths were the result of actions taken by SD-6. No one should take the blame except Arvin Sloane,” Jack affirmed. “However, now that you and Will both know the truth, and ‘The Man’ has compromised Sydney’s cover, something else must be worked out. But first, we need to find out exactly how much ‘The Man’ knows and how he intends to use it. What did the three of you discover at the warehouse?”
Sydney glanced at Vaughn. His eyes had taken on a glazed, feverish look, and all the color had drained from his face. “We can talk about this later. Vaughn, I think you should rest.”
Vaughn shook his head stubbornly. “I’m alright. Let me tell you what I know. It isn’t much.”
With his lungs burning from the lack of oxygen, he had left the small window from which Sydney caught her last glimpse of him and found a small pocket of air near the ceiling of the sealed corridor. When he dived back down to check on Sydney, he saw her being dragged away by guards.
By this time the wave which had slammed him into the door had begun to recede. It reminded him of the wave machine he had once spotted in Devlin’s office. If you tipped one side, the wave washed against the opposite end, ricocheted, and flowed back to the end at which it had started, repeating this process, until it dissipated and equilibrium was reached.
He followed the wave to its source, taking advantage of the increasingly larger air pockets he found a long the way. Once he reached the lab, the water had leveled out, and he was able to find a foothold and climb up to the rickety catwalk that still hung down from the ceiling of the laboratory. He resolved to stay hidden there until he had recovered enough energy to move. Soon guards were swarming over what was left of the lab, but none of them even glanced at the catwalk.
When he felt it was safe, he moved out of his hiding place, only to be ambushed by a guard who got in several kicks before Vaughn could trip him up and take his gun. Slightly more confident now that he was armed, Vaughn began searching the premises for Sydney, but it was slow going. His progress was hampered both by his injuries and his need to remain undetected. In the end, Dixon and Sydney had found him.
It wasn’t a long story, but Vaughn was clearly fatigued by the telling of it. Sydney noticed that as he talked, he braced his ribs with one arm and increasingly stopped to catch his breath before going on.
“The guards seemed to be searching the lab for something in particular,” he said, when suddenly he was seized with a coughing fit and couldn’t go on.
Finally recovered, he pulled something out of his pocket. “After the guards left, I decided to look around myself and found this, wedged into the side of a crate.” He held out a small prism, shaped like a pyramid, no bigger than a gaming die. He rolled the pyramid in the palm of his hand, and variegated rays of light shot from its surface even in the dark cabin. A glyph was etched into the surface of each side of the prism, one of which Sydney recognized: the Rambaldi eye.
“Marshall would have a field day with this. It must be a part of the Mueller device,” she breathed.
“A very important part, if the guards’ concern is any indication,” Jack stated. “Excellent work, Agent Vaughn. Now I suggest you take Sydney’s advice and rest.”
Jack’s voice was kind, and Vaughn looked into the older man’s eyes. Something had shifted in their relationship. Antagonism and antipathy had changed to respect. The two men gazed at each other, and Vaughn finally assented.
****
Sydney checked on Will, saw to it that Vaughn was settled as comfortably as possible near the front of the plane, and returned to where Dixon and her father sat.
“Dixon told me he found you bound, but unhurt in the warehouse with only a single guard at the door. Given enough time, you could have freed yourself,” Jack said. “What happened after the guards dragged you away?”
“I woke up in a room, and Khasinau came in. He tried to feed me soup. He was gentle and somewhat sad,” Sydney mused. “He’s not the man you think he is.”
Dixon and Jack exchanged incredulous glances.
“Are you sure he didn’t drug you?” Dixon asked skeptically. “What was the point of luring you to Taipei, if he wasn’t going to interrogate you? That sounds nothing like the profile we have of ‘The Man.’ Just look at what Sark did to Will, presumably on orders from ‘The Man’ himself.”
Sydney shuddered. It made her sick to think of what Will had suffered. “But that’s what I am trying to tell you. Khasinau isn’t ‘The Man.’”
“Then who is?” Jack burst out impatiently.
Sydney looked at her father uncertainly. “ ‘The Man’ isn’t a man at all,” she said, and her voice quivered. “ ‘The Man’ is a woman.”
Jack looked at his daughter’s anguished eyes, and his own eyes grew wide.
“Laura,” he breathed.
Sydney nodded, swallowing back her tears.
Now it was Jack’s turn to shake his head in disbelief. Slowly, his features hardened, taking on a stony mask of suppressed anger. “Did she hurt you in any way?”
Sydney looked at her father helplessly. “Just seeing her…hurt me. I don’t know what I expected…one moment she seemed exactly like the woman I remembered, tender, loving; the next she turned into this impossibly cold, cruel stranger. Seeing that hurt worse than if she had shot me.”
Tears slipped down her face, and before she could wipe them away, Jack grabbed her shoulders and forced her to look straight into his eyes. “What did she say to you?” he asked her agitatedly. “What did she tell you?”
Jack did not interrupt once as Sydney recounted her entire conversation with her mother. He hung on every word she said, his face taking on a more and more haunted look with each revelation.
Dixon tactfully withdrew, leaving Sydney alone with her father. Jack, however, had retreated into himself. Only his rapid breathing belied his almost eerie, outward calm. All she had wanted after her mother’s visit was to be comforted by someone who loved her. Someone strong enough to reassure her that everything she worked for hadn’t been a lie. Subsequent events—her reunion with Vaughn, the escape from the warehouse, and her concern for Will and Dixon—had made it impossible for her to dwell on her conversation with her mother. She could only guess what her father was thinking now.
“Dad?” Sydney said tentatively. “Dad?” she said more loudly, when he continued to stare past her.
Jack’s eyes slowly came back to focus on his daughter, and bit by bit his stony façade cracked. Loud, choked sobs came from deep within this seemingly stoic man, and Sydney threw her arms around his neck. Jack clung to her, and Sydney felt the sobs shudder through him.
“I’m sorry…” he muttered brokenly. “I was a fool. Such a fool. I regret everything about my relationship with that woman… everything except you. If she had hurt you… God help me…”
After a time—neither father or daughter could say how long—Jack wiped his eyes with the cuff of his shirt, and turned away from his daughter. Without another word, he moved to the back of the plane. Sydney gazed after him, looking at the father she was getting to know so much later in life than she would have liked. She didn’t know what sort of confrontations with Irina the future held, she only knew she and her father would face them together.
****
Those who could sleep rested for the remainder of the trip, but Sydney remained awake with Vaughn’s feverish head cradled in her lap. She had tried to make him as comfortable as possible amid the boxes, but even in his sleep he winced whenever the plane hit the slightest turbulence.
Due to the altitude at which the plane was flying, it was extremely chilly in the cabin. Sydney rearranged the blanket around him and watched, helplessly, as his temperature soared and his breathing grew more and more tortured. In no time his body was wracked by chills, and he shuddered, even as sweat beaded on his forehead. Intermittently, his eyelids would flutter, and he would mutter something she was unable to understand.
She wiped the sweat from Vaughn’s brow and prayed, as his delirium deepened. She listened, as he argued with Eric, justified his actions to Devlin, confronted his father’s ghost, tried to warn her of the guards approaching from behind, and whispered endearments to her in both French and English. He was reliving the events of the last few days in his dreams, and Sydney was abashed by all that he revealed, knowing he was not in control of what he said. She felt as if she was seeing directly into his soul, and it humbled her and filled her with a fierce protectiveness. She tried to sooth him and encouraged him to sleep, but the torrent of words would subside only to pick up again a short time later. He fell asleep only when they were within an hour of L.A.
It was at this point that Jack made his way over to his daughter. “How is he?” he queried, the concern evident in his eyes, even though his voice remained cool and detached. It was the first time they had spoken since she had told him about her mother.
“He’s delirious and his lungs are congested. It’s already hard for him to breath because of his cracked ribs. We need to get him to a hospital as soon as we get to L.A.”
“I’ve radioed ahead and arranged for Agent Weiss to meet us at the airport. He’ll take care of Agent Vaughn and make sure that he gets the medical attention he needs.”
“What about Will?”
“I gave him another sedative and a heavy painkiller. He should be fine until we get to L.A. We’ll have to take him to another safe house for the time being. The CIA can arrange for an oral surgeon to examine him there. Tippin’s going to have to decide soon whether he wants to go into the witness protection program or become an operative. There’s no indication that SD-6 is aware that you are a double agent. I’m convinced Irina is holding that information in reserve, to see if you will cooperate with her in the future. For the time being, I believe it’s safe for you to go back to your apartment, but I will be checking in with you frequently.”
Sydney nodded. She thought that would be the extent of their conversation, but her father cleared his throat. There was still something he wanted to say.
“Vaughn and Tippin are good men, Sydney. Both of them. It’s obvious they care about you very much. You should be proud—very proud—of the way they’ve handled themselves in Taipei. Try not to worry.” He put his hand on her shoulder briefly, and then turned to go.
“Dad?”
“Yes?” He turned back looking vaguely apprehensive that she would expect something else—some further proof of his emotional weakness.
“Thank you.”
Jack gazed at his daughter in silence, and slowly nodded his head.
****
Both Sydney and Jack had to support Vaughn as they deplaned. Weiss got out of the car parked on the tarmac and jogged the remaining distance to the plane to meet them.
“Mikey, let me tell you something confidentially. You look like felgercarb,” Weiss said as he swung Vaughn’s arm around his shoulder shifted more of Vaughn’s weight onto himself. “I haven’t seen you this messed up since Driscol wiped the ice with your ass back in the semifinals. Remember that game?” Weiss kept his tone jovial, but his eyes were heavy with concern.
Vaughn was too far gone to react to his friend’s raillery. Sydney followed Weiss to the car and helped him get Vaughn into the backseat. He was barely conscious, and his breath came in shallow, wheezing, rasps.
“What the hell happened to you guys in Taipei?” Weiss growled, once he shut the door. This was precisely what he had tried to warn Mike about after Denpasar. He’d give Syd one of the famous lectures on appropriate agent-handler protocol he gave Vaughn, if he didn’t think she’d kick his ass.
Sydney knew Weiss was angry at her for having endangered Vaughn’s life. Maybe if she weren’t so exhausted, she would have taken umbrage, but too much had happened in the last 48 hours. And, frankly, there was nothing he could reproach her with that she hadn’t already chastised herself for during the long flight back to L.A.
“It’s a long story,” she said, sighing. “Vaughn cracked a few ribs. He has a fever and became delirious on the trip back. I think he inhaled a good deal of water back in Tapei. He needs a doctor. Please take—take good care of him.”
Her voice faltered. She bit her lip and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold back the tears. She had cried in front of everyone else. She wouldn’t cry in front of Eric Weiss.
Weiss glanced at her and knit his eyebrows. “Syd, hey, listen, don’t worry,” he said soothingly, shedding his tough-guy act. “He’s gonna be fine. Trust me. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d seen him messed up worse than this. Hockey’s not a pretty sport, and Mike’s no wuss.”
Sydney sniffed, and wiped away the tears that stubbornly trickled down her cheeks, despite her best efforts at controlling them. She smiled briefly through her tears, which was precisely what Weiss had been hoping for.
“Really, go home.” he continued. “Get some rest. I’ll take care of everything and call you on a secure line to update you on his status. Mike wouldn’t want you to worry about him.”
“I love him,” she said suddenly, staring intently at the asphalt.
She spoke so quietly Weiss barely heard her. He gazed at her over the roof of the car, speechless, all his worst fears confirmed. She lifted her head, and it nearly broke his heart just to look at her.
“Jeez, Syd, it doesn’t surprise me,” he sighed. “You gotta know at this point that he loves you, too. But, there’s a reason why the CIA discourages this kind of thing,” he continued on, his voice taking on new urgency. ”Forget the fact that he’s your handler, and it’s clouding his judgment. You should just see the way he gets every time you go off on a mission. It scares the felgercarb out of him that you might not come back. Now that he’s taken it into his head to start accompanying you on jaunts like this one, it could get you both killed—that is if SD-6 doesn’t spot you canoodling somewhere and kill you first.”
He realized too late that he was shouting at her. He stopped abruptly, and threw up his hands. “Syd, I’m sorry. You don’t need a lecture from me, especially right now. It’s just Mike’s my best friend. I don’t want to see him hurt anymore than you do.”
“It’s okay,” Sydney said, wiping away her tears. “You should—you should get him to the hospital, though,” she told him, the strength and determination returning to her voice. “I heard everything you just said, and you’re right, but we’ll deal with it later, after Vaughn’s recovered.”
Weiss nodded, for this first time seeing a little bit of Jack Bristow coming out in her. “I’ll tell you what. Mike’s gonna be laid up for a couple of weeks at least. Write a message on a paper bag anytime and leave it at one of the drop off-points. I’ll make sure he gets it. Just don’t make it mushy or someone in recon will see it and have a field day.”
“Thanks, Eric,” she said. “For everything.”
“Don’t mention it. Now, seriously, go home and get some sleep.”
***
Sydney gingerly opened the door of her apartment, hoping against hope that Francie wouldn’t be home.
It was just her luck. Francie was sitting with a mug of coffee at the kitchen counter, doing the crossword in the Sunday edition of the L.A. Times.
“Syd!” Francie cried, as soon as she saw her. She threw down her ball point pen and ran to give her a hug. “How was Puerto Vallarte?”
Sydney hugged her roommate. Puerto Vallarte? “It was great—really great!” she enthused, hoping Francie didn’t detect how clueless she was. Who told Francie she had gone to Puerto Vallarte?
“I was so happy for you when I found out!” Francie said leading her over to the couch. “I told your Dad when he called that it was about time the bank did something to acknowledge all those extra hours you put in!”
Then Francie took a good look at her roommate. “Hey, you sure don’t look like someone who just got back from all-expense-paid weekend in Puerto Vallarte. What happened?”
Sydney sighed. “Well, actually, the weather was awful. And it really wasn’t much fun without you and Will.”
“Didn’t anyone else go with you? That’s kind of lame. It sure was sudden, the way they whisked you off like that, but I wouldn’t have been able to go because of all the preparations for opening the restaurant, and I don’t know where Will’s gone off to, but you could have at least invited someone from work. What about the guy who gave you that picture frame at Christmas?”
“Francie!”
“I’m just saying, why go to Puerto Vallarte alone when there’s a cute guy at the office who was sweet enough to get you a Christmas present!”
Sydney sighed. She wished with all her heart that she had been in Puerto Vallarte with Vaughn, instead of in Taipei extracting Will and confronting her mother. The image of them together, sunning themselves on the beach, contrasted jarringly with her memory of keeping watch through the night to see if a feverish and delirious Vaughn would survive the plane trip back to L.A.
“Actually, I thought about it, but he’s been out sick the last week or so. Pneumonia, I think,” she replied, rather distantly.
Francie frowned. “That reminds me.” She looked apprehensively at Sydney and took her hand. “I have some—some bad news for you. I don’t know how to tell you this, but Emily Sloane died over the weekend. I’m sorry, Syd. I really am.”
Sydney was stunned. Emily had appeared so strong when she had last seen her. Sloane had even said that the cancer was in complete remission. Surely it wasn’t because of the security breach…My God, had someone at SD-6 terminated Emily, knowing full well she was Sloane’s wife? Or was Sloane himself so merciless, so without pity that he could take the life of the woman who had loved him for thirty-six years?
“Oh, Syd, I know it’s a shock!” Francie said, dismayed. “I shouldn’t have told you right when you got in the door. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
“No, I’m all right.” Sydney, said, giving her friend a small smile. It was the same brave, everything’s-all-right-even-if-it’s-not-smile that her roommate had come to know well. “But, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go to my room and rest for awhile.”
To akatolstory: I took the liberty of posting it here, as you had it at the old forums. If you would like it removed, please email of PM me.
This fic takes place post-ATY
Title: Compline
Author: akatolstoy, akatolstoy@hotmail.com
Title: Compline
Author: akatolstoy
Rating: PG-13
Genre: S/V Romance/Angst, WIP
Distribution: please email me first.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Alias, or any of its characters. It all belongs to JJ
Abrams, Bad Robot Productions, ABC, Touchstone, etc.
Spoilers: entire 1st season, slight spoiler for season 2, involving Willage
Feedback: Please read and respond. I am eager for feedback!
Summary: Post-ATY. Sydney, Jack, Dixon, Vaughn, and Will come to grips with the events that will alter all their lives.
This fan-fic is a companion piece to “The Tricky Thing About Trust” and “One Small Year”archived at fanfiction.net. The title refers to a series of prayers meant to be said before sleep.
“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake. Amen”--The Common Book of Prayer
Compline
“Mom?” Sydney gasped, as the figure emerging from the shadows revealed itself.
“Sydney, how lovely you’ve grown!” Irina whispered, crossing over to her daughter and touching her cheek softly. “I’ve watched you for so long. I’ve seen the agent you’ve become, but never in these long years have I had a chance to see you face to face!”
Her mother’s touch felt cool, light, and familiar. Sydney began to search her face for signs of the woman she had known—the woman who had soothed her to sleep with lullabies, rocked her while reading story books, and clasped her in her arms when she returned home from school. There were faint lines around this woman’s eyes and mouth that Sydney had not associated with the woman who had been her mother, but the warm brown eyes, the expressive eyebrows, the straight, aquiline nose and full mouth were the same.
“Mom?” Sydney repeated, her voice, even more tremulous.
“Yes, Sydney. It is I,” Irina stated simply. “But, this was not how I imagined we’d meet. Fate has been very unkind to both of us. It has made us enemies, when my only wish was that we could be together, working side by side. But your father and Arvin Sloane have corrupted you. I should have foreseen that eventuality. I’m sorry.”
“Corrupted me? Corrupted me?” Sydney, exclaimed, tears streaming down her face. “Look at me! You’ve had me bound, you’ve kidnapped and tortured my friend, and someone I love has most likely died because of what you’ve done!” Her voice rose with anger and gained strength with every word. “You were the one who left! You were the one who betrayed us! How could you? How could you be my mother and have killed all those men? How could you let your entire marriage to my father be a sham? I’d accuse you of betraying your country, but I don’t even know what country you truly work for!”
Irina stepped back and sighed, in no way surprised by Sydney’s outburst, but still saddened by it.
“I am not working on behalf of a single country, Sydney. Everything I have done—everything I will do—is for the safety and security of the entire world. Let me ask you something. Why do you think Arvin Sloane is so obsessed with Rambaldi and his inventions?”
Sydney swallowed. “He believes all of Rambaldi’s devices combine to form a weapon of mass destruction. Once he—or rather, SD-6—possesses this weapon, he can keep it or sell it to the highest bidder.”
Irina smiled. “Perfectly true. Now, tell me, do you think Russia’s or the United States’ desire for the Rambaldi device is any different than Sloane’s?”
“Of course!” Sydney cried. “The point is to keep the weapon away from anyone who wishes to use it against them, not to use it themselves!”
Irina gazed at her daughter and shook her head. “How can you have been a spy for so long and not have realized the truth?” she asked and shook her head. “You’ve played the game, but you’ve lost neither your naiveté nor your patriotism, I see. Like your father, you still believe governments exist to serve and protect the rights of their citizens,” she intoned bitterly.
For the first time, Sydney detected a cold, cruel glint in her mother’s eye. Irina frowned, and Sydney could see that over the years this had become a habitual expression. She began to watch her mother even more warily.
“Tell me something else,” Irina continued. “Which country has been the only nation to use a nuclear weapon against another country?”
Sydney’s mouth went dry, and she felt as if she were being examined by a stern and exacting professor. “The United States dropped a series of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force the Japanese to surrender and thus end World War II,” she replied in a hoarse voice.
“That in itself should prove my argument that the United States’ motives are not as pure as you would like them to be. It proves that even America will use weapons of mass destruction if provoked. Do you still feel that Rambaldi’s weapon would be safe in the hands of the American government?” Irina’s smile turned brittle. “Do you know how the arms race between America and Russia really started?”
Sydney shook her head, her eyes expressing both horror and fascination as a result of her mother’s revelations.
“American and Russian scientists working separately on developing nuclear capability for their countries, began secretly sharing information so that neither nation would be the sole possessor of a weapon of such destructive force. The scientists felt that although they would each be betraying their countries, they would be doing what was best for mankind. The saw themselves, not as citizens of a country, but as citizens of the world. One of those men, Yuri Alexseivich Suvin, was your grandfather, Sydney,” she said softly. “The Soviet government discovered he was trading secrets and sent him to Siberia, where he was later put to death without a trial. I consider myself a citizen of the world, just like my father, and I will do anything I have to do, so that my father’s sacrifice was not in vain.”
Irina’s voice shook, and she looked pleadingly into the eyes of her daughter. “Now do you think I am a traitor? That I am in this for my own personal gain? Everything I have done has been done to keep you safe from political machinations of the world’s super powers, even though you and your father, Arvin Sloane, and countless others have tried to thwart me at every turn. I loved you, and I loved your father, even though I considered his loyalty and his patriotism destructive and misguided. Do you think I wanted to hurt you? Do you think I wanted to leave you? Do you think I have not regretted the things I have done? Yes, I killed those agents you spoke of: I seduced and killed every single one, but only because I had to. Because there was no other way. That is, I seduced every agent but one, but in the end, I killed him, too,” she added, almost as if to herself.
Sydney froze in her seat. “Who was that agent?” she asked haltingly.
Irina lifted an eyebrow and turned to her daughter in surprise. After all she had revealed, that was the last question she expected from her daughter. “His name was William Vaughn. Other than your father, he was the most upright, gentle, and honorable man I have ever known.”
Sydney remained silent, her emotions clashing inside her. When she had dreamed of coming face to face with her mother, two very different scenarios had come to mind. In one, her mother was cruel and irredeemably evil---someone she could justifiably hate and fight to her dying breath. In the other, her mother was abject and repentant---someone she could pity and perhaps rehabilitate. She was not prepared for the combination of the two that was before her: this strong, tragic, unrepentant woman who recognized the evil she had done and justified it as serving a higher end.
“All you’ve done is make a case for absolute power corrupting absolutely,” Sydney said after an extended silence. ”What makes your motives any different? Why should the world trust you with the Rambaldi device?”
Irina’s eyes glowed, as she gazed at her daughter. “That’s my girl. That’s the question I was hoping you’d ask. What would you say if I told you I had a dream: a dream of a world united into a single democratic society with elected officials from every culture and indigenous people, and the world’s security vouchsafed by a weapon of untold power? A weapon with the ultimate failsafe: it can only be detonated if all 47 elected officials activate it simultaneously and thus would be used only if the world itself were endangered. That is the dream that both Milo Rambaldi and I share. That is the dream to which I have devoted my life.”
“I would say that you have betrayed and killed countless people—people you respected, some that you loved—for an utopia you’ll never see realized in your life time and which may never be realized,” Sydney said in a low voice.
“Perhaps,” Irina, replied, the light suddenly extinguished from her eyes. “But perhaps it’s my destiny to try,” she murmured with a strange tone in her voice.
“You know about Rambaldi’s prophecy, don’t you?” Sydney asked suddenly. “You know what the CIA found when they exposed the blank page in Rambaldi’s manuscript. They found your picture. They thought it was me, but it was you! Rambaldi didn’t predict you’d save the world; he predicted you’d destroy it!”
Irina gazed at her daughter. “Did it never occur to you that the CIA faked that prophecy to prevent you from taking my side and coming to work for me? If the CIA could fake Rambaldi documents expertly enough to fool SD-6, what makes you think they didn’t dupe you as well? I cannot tell you for sure what is written there. I have not seen the complete Rambaldi manuscript. You yourself must choose whom to believe. I won’t force you to make a decision now, Sydney, but you will have to make one soon. And I warn you that if you decide to remain my enemy--if you decide to continue to work against me--I will not spare your life or the lives of those close to you to realize my dream.”
With that, Irina turned away from her daughter and exited the room after saying a few words to the guard at the door. The door swung shut, and Sydney was alone--and desperate… desperate for someone to contradict what she had just heard. Someone who would tell her that she was not engulfed in an endless series of lies and cover-ups. Someone who would deny the charge that working for the CIA was no better than working for SD-6. She wanted someone she trusted to tell her the truth, and she wanted that truth to be something she wanted to hear. She wanted her father, but most of all she wanted Michael Vaughn, and Michael Vaughn was dead.
***
Hours passed, and no one came in to check on her. Since her mother’s visit, Sydney had worked relentlessly on loosening the twine with which they had bound her hands, and in the process, she had rubbed her wrists almost raw.
Just as she succeeded in almost getting one hand free, she heard someone open the door. It was a guard carrying a tray of food, but he got no more than a few feet into the room when someone hit him over the head with a gun. The guard slumped to the ground, his head hitting the hard concrete floor, while the tray he had been carrying flew from his hands, skidded, and finally crashed against the wall.
“Dixon!” Sydney gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“There’s no time to explain. We’ll talk later.” Dixon stated, crouching down to seize a gun from the recumbent guard. He then came over to Sydney, and released her. “I’ve been in radio contact with your father. He’s secured the north entrance to the building, but there’s no telling how long he can hold out without back up. He told me there would be another agent with you. An Agent Vaughn. Is he being held in another room?”
“He was trapped behind the security doors when the Mueller device exploded and flooded the lab. I tried to save him, but I couldn’t get the doors open once they sealed! Dixon, we can’t leave without him.”
“Syd,” said Dixon looking grim. “If what you say is true, he’s probably dead. We can’t waste time searching the building for a man who’s beyond our help. We have to get out of here now!”
“I don’t care!” Sydney exclaimed, grabbing him by the arm. “I need to know if Vaughn got out. I need to know if he survived. Dixon, please, please, help me find him. I can’t leave without him.”
Her grip was like steel, but her eyes pleaded with him. Dixon gazed at his partner and sighed.
“Okay,” he replied, conceding, against his better judgment. “We have to go through the main part of the building in order to get to the north entrance, anyway. Here, take this gun. We’ll search as we go along, but if we don’t find him before we reach the north entrance, we can’t go back inside. You understand?”
Sydney nodded. She took the gun Dixon handed to her and cocked it. “Let’s go.
***
Vaughn heard footsteps and pressed himself against the wall, with his gun extended, waiting for the inevitable. There were clearly two guards by the sound of it, and there was only one bullet left in his gun. He barely had enough energy to stand, much less the energy required for hand-to-hand combat or an extended gun fight. What a stupid way to die. Drowning would have made more sense then dying in this hallway, knowing Sydney was in danger somewhere in this building, and he had failed to reach her.
Dixon rounded the corner first and immediately trained his gun at the figure he saw there.
“Dixon, it’s Vaughn! Don’t shoot!” Sidney cried, running forward.
Vaughn spotted Dixon first, and seeing him lower his gun, he shut his eyes, and slumped against the wall. It didn’t occur to him to wonder at Dixon’s sudden appearance or question why he would lower his gun. Instead, relief washed over him at not having to fight yet another guard in his weakened condition.
However, his lids fluttered slightly at the sound of Sidney’s voice, and he glimpsed her briefly through the fringe of his eyelashes.
That was all he needed. In an instant, a last surge of adrenaline coursed through his body, giving him enough energy to get up, drop the gun and take the remaining steps between them. She collided with him so forcefully, he almost fell backwards from the impact. Ignoring the pain in his ribs, he crushed her fiercely to his chest, then suddenly pushed her away, just far enough to see her face.
“Sydney, Oh, my God, Sydney!” His voice was hoarse from all the water he had swallowed and husky with emotion. His hands clasped her face now, searching her eyes, trying to take in the fact that she really was standing before him. He watched as disbelief, then joy, and finally a ghostly, residual sense of panic played across her face, as she relived the horror of their parting.
“Vaughn! Your face! Seeing your face through that window! I thought I’d lost you. I thought you were gone. It didn’t seem possible I could lose you. Not here. Not now. Not this way.” She couldn’t stop herself. She was sobbing now, and yet the words kept fighting their way out of her, despite her gasps for air.
As one hand gripped his jacket, the other flew up to caress his cheek. She felt the stubble beneath her fingers, and looked up into Vaughn’s dark green eyes. The depth of emotion she found there took her breath away.
Now it was she who was drowning. Gently, Vaughn drew her back into his arms, and she buried her head in his chest, completely overcome at the idea of just how close they had come to being parted forever.
There wasn’t a single bone or muscle in Vaughn’s body that wasn’t aching or throbbing painfully. He had never felt so physically exhausted in his life or so blissfully happy. Sydney was in his arms and that was all that mattered. Vaughn closed his eyes and rested his cheek on her hair.
“Shhh” he murmured, holding her close. “Ne pleurez pas. C'est bien maintenant. Nous sommes ensemble, chéri. Je suis ici. Ne pleurez pas. Je t'aime” he whispered, kissing her hair, as her sobs receded.
He had slipped into French without thinking, only now realizing what he had said, but unwilling to take it back— life was too precarious, he thought, and every moment with Sydney was precious. He couldn’t afford to waste any more time thinking about protocol or what the CIA may deem “appropriate” interaction among agents.
“Je t’aime,” he repeated softly, brushing a wisp of hair from her cheek. His heart skipped a beat as Sydney raised her head and gazed up at him, her eyes suffused with wonder...
Dixon had purposely adverted his eyes from Sydney and Vaughn’s embrace, as he kept a look out for guards, but now he cleared his throat and approached the couple. He laid a hand on Sydney’s shoulder and said, “Syd, we gotta go. I don’t like how quiet this place seems. There should be more guards around. Something’s not right. Let’s find your father.”
Sydney nodded. Dixon looked at Vaughn inquiringly, but formal introductions would have to wait. Vaughn let his arms fall, and Sydney stepped out of his embrace. Just as all three turned to go, they saw Jack and Will coming towards them.
****
Jack had waited at the entrance, growing more and more impatient as the minutes ticked by. They should be here by now. Dixon’s unexpected appearance had been a godsend, but what if all three of them were now captured? There was little Jack could do without calling in backup, and he doubted the CIA would drop everything and send an extraction team to Taipei for a group of rogue agents who had deliberately gone against protocol. In fact, Jack knew that from Devlin’s point of view, they had stolen valuable intelligence data and handed it over to the other side. They’d be lucky if they weren’t accused of treason when they got back. That is, if they all made it back alive.
Finally fed up, Jack felt he had no choice but to go in after them. He edged his way, slowly into the building, watching for guards, as well as any sign of the missing agents. At the sound of footsteps behind him, he whirled around.
“Mr. Tippin, do you realize just how close I came to putting a bullet through your head?” he seethed, through clenched teeth, lowering his gun.
Will blanched visibly, but took a step forward. “The sedative you gave me wore off. I saw you go inside the warehouse and thought maybe there was something I could do to help…” Will, swallowed, painfully. He looked at Jack and tried to keep his gaze steady. “If there is anything—anything—I can do to help Sydney…”
“Go back to the van, Mr. Tippin,” Jack ordered sharply, cutting him off. “You’re of no use to me or to Sydney in your present condition. You’ll only endanger yourself further.”
The truth was Will was almost as in much danger in the van, as he was inside the building with him. Will didn’t move, and Jack sighed. He reached inside his jacket and handed the battered and bruised reporter a gun. “Take this, but stay behind me.”
They continued edging their way around corridors. Will followed Jack’s lead, but stayed at least three steps behind him. Jack peered around the next corner, and then swore under his breath. Will‘s sweaty fingers gripped the gun Jack had given him more tightly, but he was confused by the barely perceptible relaxation in the older man’s stance. When Jack did not advance, Will’s curiosity got the better of him, and he almost stumbled over him in his effort to get a glimpse of whatever Jack had seen.
“Who the hell is that?” Will whispered, stunned.
Just around the corner stood Sydney cradled in the arms of a stranger. Will watched as the man kissed the top of her head and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. His heart constricted as he saw her lift her head and look up at the man with eyes full of wonder and something else…love?
Jack didn’t give him time to analyze the significance of her gaze, though, and roughly hauled him back around the corner before Dixon could turn in their direction.
However Jack, too, had gazed at Sydney and Vaughn meditatively for a moment, unaccountably loath to interrupt their embrace. Of all the times and places, he thought exasperatedly, but, he had to acknowledge that a small part of him was glad to see them together, despite the fact that they were ensconced in each other’s arms, protocol be damned.
He attempted to trace the source of this inner weakness, but then noticed Will was still staring at him, expecting an answer.
“That man is Sydney’s handler—“ Jack began, wondering just how much of Sydney’s covert activities he wanted to reveal to Tippin.
“I can see that!” Will interrupted, conscious of the irritation and jealousy in his own voice, but unable to mask it, “Who the hell is he?”
Jack glared at Will, his lips compressed, and his eyes steely. As much as he didn’t care for Sydney and Vaughn’s timing or choice of location, he liked Tippin’s tone of voice and his reaction to the situation even less.
“Agent Michael Vaughn is Sydney’s contact at the CIA, and like you, her friend,” he stated coldly.
Will slowly shook his head at Jack’s words.
That’s where you’re wrong, buddy, he thought, the truth slowly taking on certainty in his mind. Sydney and I are friends, but she’s in love with him. Him. Michael Vaughn. That should be as frickin’ obvious to you as it is to me.
Catching Jack’s eye again, he was startled by the man’s glare and was afraid he had spoken his thoughts aloud.
“Listen, Mr. Tippin,” Jack said curtly, clearly out of patience. “There was much Sydney couldn’t—in fact, was forbidden—to share with you and Francie about her work. Agent Vaughn has been there for her, when neither you, nor I, nor Francie could be. He has risked both his career and his life on this mission, and he came simply because he knew you were a close friend of Sydney’s and that your life was in danger. Michael Vaughn has earned Sydney’s gratitude and my respect for that. I believe he deserves yours, as well.”
Will swallowed and then nodded his head, utterly abashed and no longer able to meet Jack Bristow’s gaze.
Jack gazed at the battered and bruised man in the bloodied sweatshirt beside him—a boy, really—and felt something like remorse. It was clear to him that Tippin had feelings for his daughter that she did not entirely requite. No doubt his dogged pursuit of Daniel Hecht’s killers was designed to win her love—the love Tippin had just now watched her bestow on Vaughn.
For an instant, Jack wished he could take back his words and spare this boy additional pain. But only for an instant. There were bigger issues at stake at the present moment than matters of the heart, and it seemed he needed to remind both Sydney and Vaughn of that, as well.
“Let’s go,” Jack said, stepping around the corner. Will followed, but with more hesitation.
“Will!” Sydney cried as soon as she saw him. Leaving Vaughn’s side, she ran to him and hugged him. “Are you all right? Oh, my God, Will! What did they do to you?” she gasped, taking in all at once the rusty spots of dried blood on his sweatshirt and the livid bruises on his face. She fingered his swollen jaw, and Will winced.
“It’s about time someone over here did an expose on unsafe dental practices. Heck, I’ll write the article myself. They don’t even have to use my byline. Who licenses these quacks, anyway? Godzilla?” Will grimaced, manfully trying to wave away Sydney’s attention. He was suddenly conscious that he struck a less than heroic figure amid the more seasoned agents—of which he included Vaughn, who was now approaching him.
Now that he could see him up close, Will saw that Vaughn looked haggard. Clearly, this man had gone through high water and a good bit of hell in order to be standing here beside Sydney. They eyed each other for a moment, and unexpectedly Will held out his hand to him.
“Jack told me everything you’ve done. What you risked to be here. Thanks. I just want to say—thanks,” he ended, rather lamely, trying not to think about Sydney or the embrace he had seen moments ago and focus solely on the fact that this man had helped save his life.
Slightly taken aback, Vaughn nodded and grasped Will’s hand in return.
Up until now, the mere mention of Will’s name had been enough to send him into a jealous snit. He remembered Sydney coming to the warehouse the night she took Will to the dinner party at Sloane’s. She had looked absolutely fabulous in that black tank dress. He couldn’t help but notice how it hugged every curve of her body, despite the fact that Jack had been standing right there watching him.
Even though he knew it would have broken every rule in the book, he had wanted to accompany Sydney to that party. But he played the “Company” man, gave her the counter mission, and watched wistfully as she turned to go—except that a “Company” man would never have told her she looked pretty.
Pretty! What a unbelievably absurd understatement!
For the rest of night he had tortured himself with images of Sydney and Will together: Will helping her with her coat, pulling the chair out for her, sitting next to her at the table, his knee almost touching hers… it drove him absolutely crazy. The truth was that he was more jealous of Will than he had been of Noah Hicks. Noah had come and gone, but Will was a constant part of Sydney’s everyday life—the part of her life Vaughn was forbidden to share.
For that reason and more, he had expected to hate Will on sight. He was surprised to find that wasn’t the case. He liked the reporter’s self-deprecating humor and had a grudging respect for his scruffy courage. He even felt a degree of camaraderie with him. After all, hadn’t they both broken the rules and risked everything in order to help Sydney? But now as he looked at the man he once considered a rival for Sydney’s affections, it occurred to him that Will might be as envious of the role he played in Sydney’s life as he was of the role Will himself played.
Jack glared at Will and Vaughn with equal impatience, but Sydney glanced back and forth between the two men, a smile creeping over her face. However, any further exchange was cut off by a alarm, which suddenly began keening like an air raid siren.
Dixon and Jack exchanged glances, sharing a sudden realization that explained why there were no guards on this side of the building: the warehouse was being evacuated, probably through a secret passageway or hidden exit. “The Man” was using the guards who would normally be stationed around the building to remove whatever could be salvaged. The siren was the last warning before they blew up what was left of the lab, so that there would be nothing the CIA could use to further their own knowledge of Rambaldi or his strange inventions.
“Go!” Jack shouted, not bothering to explain to the others. “Get out of here. Now!”
Sydney whipped around and grabbed Vaughn’s hand. There was no way she would leave him behind again. They started to run, with Sydney pulling Vaughn along. Will followed, then Dixon, while Jack brought up the rear. They reached the north entrance, just as the warehouse blew.
The blast threw all of them several feet. Vaughn and Sydney stumbled and rolled to the ground, while both Jack and Dixon dove to cover Will. Debris flew everywhere, as flames burst from the warehouse, traveling several stories into the air. Sydney crouched down until the worst was over, and then turned around, feeling the heat of the blaze on her cheek. The red and gold inferno mesmerized her, until Jack finally grabbed her and pushed her toward the van.
Where was her mother now, and what would be her next move?
***
Once the plane Jack had commandeered took off, they began to take stock and attend to their wounds. Fatigue was apparent on all their faces, but, Will, having received another powerful sedative, was the only one who slept. Although his face still looked swollen and garish, the painkillers had made him comfortable, at least for the short term.
Dixon and Jack were remarkably unscathed except for a few minor burns, as was Sydney—barring the puffy, bruised area of her cheek, where a guard had blindsided her with the butt of his gun and the abrasions around her wrists. Vaughn, however, had cracked three ribs which needed bandaging. Fortunately, the plane had often been used on medical runs and had an extremely well stocked first aid kit.
Sydney blushed as she self-consciously helped Vaughn remove the tight black t-shirt he had worn to the club. Although she hadn’t wanted to draw attention to her perusal of his chest, she wasn’t able to suppress her gasp of dismay at seeing the purple, green, and yellow streaks the mottled the area around his ribs.
Vaughn simply gritted his teeth and silently lifted his arms, so that she could wind the bandage around him. Sydney could tell from the way he averted his eyes, though, that he was embarrassed. This was clearly not the physical intimacy either of them had had in mind earlier.
She tried to be as gentle as possible, but despite her attempts, he grunted several times in pain.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she muttered, distractedly, working as fast and as efficiently as she could. “When did this happen? When we were thrown to the ground by the blast? ”
Vaughn inhaled sharply, then shook his head. “I think I felt a couple crack when the wave threw me against the door.“ He gave her a lop-sided grin. “But, then again, it could have been the guard that was trying to kick the hell out of me before I grabbed his gun. Although, I don’t think that last sprint before the warehouse blew helped any. Remind me to renew my membership at the gym and brush up on my combat training when I get home.”
Sydney knew he was making light of his injuries for her sake, but it clearly hurt him to breathe. She could hear the raspiness in his lungs and wondered just how much water he had inhaled after the Mueller device exploded. Cracked ribs might not be the worst of his woes.
She gave him a rueful smile, as she lowered the t-shirt over his head, and smoothed the fabric down around him, careful not to press on the bandages. “I doubt you’ll be doing any sparring any time soon. This will take at least five or six weeks to heal—that is if you don’t catch pneumonia.”
“Great!” he replied, the sarcasm evident in his voice. Then he noticed Sydney hadn’t removed her hands from his hips after smoothing out the last fold of the t-shirt.
They stood only inches a part.
It would be so easy to kiss her, Vaughn thought. All he had to do was lean in and he would finally feel her lips pressed against his. How long had he waited for precisely this opportunity? His brow furrowed as he gazed at her.
He had told her he loved her, and he was all but certain now that she cared for him, but that didn’t change the circumstances they found themselves in. The fact that he was finding more and more creative justifications for breaking the rules didn’t make it any safer for them to do so. Could he really afford to put her life in any more jeopardy than it already was?
The tension between them was palpable. She seemed to be waiting for his move, either unwilling or unable to break the spell that transfixed them on her own.
“Syd—“ he said, his voice low and rough with emotion, seeing the sorrow in her eyes at his hesitation.
“Vaughn, don’t. Don’t say it!” she pleaded, putting her fingers to his lips.
She knew the risks. Would one kiss really make such a difference? She tried to deny it, but in her heart, she knew it would change everything. There could never be just one kiss, because one kiss would be followed by another and another and another. But, he had told her he loved her back in the warehouse in Tapei. Could anything ever be the same again?
“Shh, don’t cry,” he had whispered in French. “Everything’s okay. We’re together now. I’m right here. Don’t cry. I love you.”
At first she couldn’t believe her ears. Had she heard him correctly? Did he even realize what he’d said? But then he had repeated it with a new sense of resolve in his voice.
I love you.
At that moment, she had felt everything inside her melt and begin to glow. Dixon had interrupted them before she could reply, but she hoped Vaughn had read her answer in her eyes.
Tears pricked at her eyelids now as she held her fingers to his lips. She looked at him and saw the same anguish she felt reflected in his eyes.
“When?” she asked, brokenly, unable to meet his gaze any longer.
“I don’t know,” he answered, kissing her fingers, before he lowered them from his lips. “Someday soon. I hope."
***
She helped him to the back of the plane, where Dixon and Jack were already crouched over, deep in conversation. Although certain that Will was still asleep, they spoke softly even though very little could be heard over the drone of the engines. There was much that needed to be discussed, which Will could not be privy to—at least not yet.
“Dixon, this is Agent Michael Vaughn, my handler at the CIA. Vaughn, this is Marcus Dixon.”
Sydney glanced back and forth between the two men and blushed, suddenly recalling that Dixon had witnessed her emotional reunion with Vaughn. He had no doubt surmised that her relationship with Vaughn extended far beyond the normal agent-handler protocol. She hoped he wouldn’t say anything in front of her father—unaware that Jack and Will had witnessed the embrace themselves.
Dixon’s smile, which had appeared on his face as she and Vaughn approached, widened further. “I believe Agent Vaughn and I already met in an alley in Denpasar. I still have the goose-egg-sized lump on my head to prove it,” he said massaging the back of his head, laughing.
Vaughn looked sheepish. “Sorry about that. It wasn’t really a fair fight. I was lucky I came up to you from behind. You seem to be in great shape, even after Aconcagua.”
Dixon smile faded momentarily at the mention of Aconcagua, but then resurfaced. “Of course,” he said, as a new piece in the puzzle shifted into place. “You must have put together the CIA team that extracted us. If Syd hadn’t contacted you, I probably wouldn’t have made it. I have both you and Syd to thank for that. ”
“Dixon, how did you find out I was a double agent for the CIA? And who told you about our mission to Taipei?” Sydney asked.
“After I left you at the pier, I drove to SD-6 and sat in my car for over an hour, trying to work up the nerve to go in there and denounce you to security section, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t,” he said, glancing up at Sydney, troubled.
“I didn’t know what to think. All the evidence pointed to the fact that you were betraying SD-6—and for all I knew, the country, but your protestations were so—so vehement—I went over all the excuses and rationalizations I had made for you again in my mind. There was only one that seemed to make any sense. I reasoned that if the CIA had any suspicions about SD-6 or any of its activities, they might recruit an agent inside the agency to investigate,” Dixon said, glancing around the circle, “so I went to the L.A. field office instead and demanded to see someone in charge of covert ops. I told them that I suspected you were a double agent working against SD-6, and unless they confirmed that her activities were sanctioned by the CIA, I would turn you into security section at SD-6.”
Dixon’s words were met with stunned silence. Sydney opened her mouth and then closed it once more. Without knowing that SD-6 was not a covert branch of the CIA, Dixon had come remarkably close to guessing the truth. It was at that point that Sydney and Vaughn exchanged glances.
“Whom did you speak with at the CIA?” he asked, the question coming out more sharply than he intended.
Dixon chuckled. “Well, there seemed to be some confusion at the office about that. I was told the agent assigned as Sydney’s handler had been suspended recently and taken off her case,” Dixon said, turning to Vaughn with one eyebrow raised.
When Vaughn nodded in confirmation, Sydney turned to him in surprise and dismay. “Vaughn—what happened? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to tell you after we got back from Taipei. I didn’t want to concern you. You had enough on your mind worrying about Will,” Vaughn said, shooting Sydney a guilty look, but then returning his focus to Dixon. “So, then what?”
“Then, I was told I should speak to an Agent Haladki, but he did not respond to being paged,” Dixon replied, looking inquiringly around the group.
Vaughn and Sydney both turned to Jack. “Haladki was the source you referred to earlier. Wasn’t he?” Sydney stated.
Jack assented. “His knowledge of the circumference gave him away as the mole. I extracted the information I needed from him for this mission and then eliminated him,” he stated in a perfectly controlled voice.
“Haladki’s body was found later at the warehouse, along with the tape you made of his confession,” Dixon stated. “Devlin wasn’t precisely thrilled with your methods of extracting information. Let’s just say you didn’t exactly follow CIA protocol. However, taping Haladki’s confession was a smart move, Jack. Not only did it exonerate you and provide the CIA with evidence of Haladki’s activities, it gave me the information I eventually needed to follow you to Taipei.”
It took a minute for Sydney and Vaughn to absorb this information.
“So, who told you about Sydney and the mission to Taipei ? Devlin?” Vaughn said, resuming his questioning of Dixon.
Dixon shook his head. “They finally let me talk with an Agent Weiss who revealed that Sydney had been spying on SD-6 covertly for the past nine months at the CIA’s behest. He told me he couldn’t tell me any more without risking Sydney’s cover and placing me and my family in jeopardy, but later he relented.”
“What precisely did Agent Weiss tell you?” Vaughn asked, his voice urgent. “ I have reason to believe he may have been feeding information to Haladki for months and may be just as dangerous.”
“Weiss was helping Haladki?” Sydney asked incredulously.
Dixon glanced at Sydney and then back at Vaughn. “Agent Weiss was aware that circumstances made it appear that he was the mole. He wanted you to know that in an effort to locate the source of the security breaches, the CIA did a sweep of all the offices and found bugs in both your office and Agent Weiss’s. Agent Weiss believed that as a result of the bugs, Sydney’s cover was compromised, as was all the intelligence you both had collected over the last several months. He told me he was all but certain that you had gone to help Jack and Sydney rescue Will, and he was very worried that you were all walking into a very dangerous and elaborate trap.”
Sydney watched as a mixture of doubt, shame, and then a surge of anger flashed across Vaughn’s face.
He had considered Weiss a traitor, had been certain of it, even though Eric was his best friend. Of course, it was reassuring to discover Weiss had not fed information to Haladki knowingly, but Vaughn still felt betrayed. It was Eric’s actions, after all, that had caused Devlin to remove him as Sydney’s handler. It was then that his thoughts turned to Dixon. He didn’t know what he would have done in Eric’s place if Dixon had walked into his office, but he sure as hell wouldn’t have sent him to Taipei. What was Eric thinking?
He slammed his palm down on an upended crate. “So Eric told you not only about Sydney’s status as a double agent, he sent you to Taipei to extract us? Doesn’t he know he’s endangering your life, as well as risking any chance we have of keeping Sydney’s cover intact?”
A sudden coughing fit forced him to suspend his diatribe. Sydney went to offer him her support, but he shook his head, indicating he didn’t need it.
Dixon waited for Vaughn’s coughing fit to pass. When he resumed his story, his voice and expression remained dignified, but a thin undercurrent of anger hovered just below the surface. “Agent Weiss had every reason to believe that Sydney’s cover was blown whether I went to Taipei or not, and he felt responsible for putting you and Sydney in danger. However, he didn’t ask me to go—I volunteered. I told him that I had spent 21 years believing that I was serving my country by working for SD-6 and the last 7 of those I spent as Sydney’s partner. After I discovered the truth about SD-6, do you really think Agent Weiss could have stopped me from going to help Sydney? You of all people should understand that. Isn’t that precisely what you did yourself, even though they suspended you?”
Vaughn rubbed his forehead and ran a hand through his spiky, disheveled hair.
“Of course,” he said, sighing. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
It was Dixon who had found Sydney and helped her escape. For all he knew, if Dixon hadn’t been there, none of them may have gotten out alive. What was wrong with him? The icy cabin felt stuffy to him, and he swayed on his feet, feeling a bit light-headed.
Dixon’s gaze left Vaughn and moved to Sydney. Tears glistened in his eyes and his voice shook. “Syd, it was bad enough to think you were the traitor. Now I learn that it was I who was unwittingly betraying my country. I don’t know what upsets me more. That SD-6 lied to me for so many years, or that you knew for the last year and didn’t tell me.”
Sydney covered her mouth with her hand, as tears silently slid down her cheeks. She had dreaded this moment. There were no words to express her regret, but still she tried.
“Dixon, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I wanted to tell you! There wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t agonize over not telling you,” she whispered. “Dixon, forgive me! I wanted to tell you so badly!”
“Sydney’s not to blame,” Vaughn said sternly. “I am. I ordered her to keep the truth from you. In the beginning, I felt it was necessary because the CIA had no way of telling which agents knew of SD-6’s true agenda and which had been duped into believing they were working for the CIA. After you sent the request for support when McKenas Cole stormed SD-6, I knew you believed you were working for a covert branch of the CIA. However, I convinced Sydney that by telling you, she would be endangering you and your family. I’m sorry. I thought it was for the best—for you and for Sydney. Perhaps I was wrong,” he concluded, a note of bitterness in his voice.
Vaughn knew by now that there were no simple answers in this line of business. Everyday he made decisions on which the lives of countless other agents depended. It was like a game of chess. The configuration of the entire board could change as the result of one move—except the casualties weren’t mere chess pieces. Lives of men and women—agents like his father with families and loved ones—were sacrificed simply to get the next vital piece of information the government needed to stay one step ahead of covert enemies like SD-6. The trouble was there was no endgame in sight. The game could go on forever and the casual victims and collateral damage on both sides would just continue to mount.
Dixon shook his head back and forth slowly, following his own train of thought.
“All those missions for SD-6! Syd, at any point I could have done something that might have exposed you and endangered your entire operation. Oh, God, Badenweiler…” Dixon’s voice faded, as realization suddenly dawned. “The second detonator… Syd, the way you reacted… you said it was because of Danny, but that wasn’t it, was it?.. there must have been a team in there…My God, Sydney, how many men did I kill?” he said, his voice hoarse, a look of horror contorting his face.
“No, no, not you,” Sydney said fiercely, crouching down towards Dixon and grasping his hands. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know.”
“I take full responsibilities for the deaths at Badenweiler,” Vaughn interjected softly, but firmly. “All of us wish those deaths could have been prevented and the lives of those men spared, but as I told Sydney, everyone on that team knew the risks of performing specials ops. They died serving their country.”
Vaughn didn’t add the words like my father. At that instant the memory of standing by his father’s coffin as an eight-year-old boy merged in his mind with the memory of comforting a boy, much like he himself had been, at the funeral of the agents who had died at Badenweiler. It made his head swim, and he reached out to an upturned crate. To Vaughn’s surprise, Jack reached up to steady him, a look of concern in his eyes. He was even more astonished when the usually taciturn man broke his silence to defend him.
“Dixon, your ignorance was the best way to guarantee Sydney’s cover and her safety,” Jack said shortly. ”We simply couldn’t afford to bring in a third double agent prior to this, and as Sydney’s handler, Agent Vaughn acted in the best interests both of the CIA and the agent in his charge. Those deaths were the result of actions taken by SD-6. No one should take the blame except Arvin Sloane,” Jack affirmed. “However, now that you and Will both know the truth, and ‘The Man’ has compromised Sydney’s cover, something else must be worked out. But first, we need to find out exactly how much ‘The Man’ knows and how he intends to use it. What did the three of you discover at the warehouse?”
Sydney glanced at Vaughn. His eyes had taken on a glazed, feverish look, and all the color had drained from his face. “We can talk about this later. Vaughn, I think you should rest.”
Vaughn shook his head stubbornly. “I’m alright. Let me tell you what I know. It isn’t much.”
With his lungs burning from the lack of oxygen, he had left the small window from which Sydney caught her last glimpse of him and found a small pocket of air near the ceiling of the sealed corridor. When he dived back down to check on Sydney, he saw her being dragged away by guards.
By this time the wave which had slammed him into the door had begun to recede. It reminded him of the wave machine he had once spotted in Devlin’s office. If you tipped one side, the wave washed against the opposite end, ricocheted, and flowed back to the end at which it had started, repeating this process, until it dissipated and equilibrium was reached.
He followed the wave to its source, taking advantage of the increasingly larger air pockets he found a long the way. Once he reached the lab, the water had leveled out, and he was able to find a foothold and climb up to the rickety catwalk that still hung down from the ceiling of the laboratory. He resolved to stay hidden there until he had recovered enough energy to move. Soon guards were swarming over what was left of the lab, but none of them even glanced at the catwalk.
When he felt it was safe, he moved out of his hiding place, only to be ambushed by a guard who got in several kicks before Vaughn could trip him up and take his gun. Slightly more confident now that he was armed, Vaughn began searching the premises for Sydney, but it was slow going. His progress was hampered both by his injuries and his need to remain undetected. In the end, Dixon and Sydney had found him.
It wasn’t a long story, but Vaughn was clearly fatigued by the telling of it. Sydney noticed that as he talked, he braced his ribs with one arm and increasingly stopped to catch his breath before going on.
“The guards seemed to be searching the lab for something in particular,” he said, when suddenly he was seized with a coughing fit and couldn’t go on.
Finally recovered, he pulled something out of his pocket. “After the guards left, I decided to look around myself and found this, wedged into the side of a crate.” He held out a small prism, shaped like a pyramid, no bigger than a gaming die. He rolled the pyramid in the palm of his hand, and variegated rays of light shot from its surface even in the dark cabin. A glyph was etched into the surface of each side of the prism, one of which Sydney recognized: the Rambaldi eye.
“Marshall would have a field day with this. It must be a part of the Mueller device,” she breathed.
“A very important part, if the guards’ concern is any indication,” Jack stated. “Excellent work, Agent Vaughn. Now I suggest you take Sydney’s advice and rest.”
Jack’s voice was kind, and Vaughn looked into the older man’s eyes. Something had shifted in their relationship. Antagonism and antipathy had changed to respect. The two men gazed at each other, and Vaughn finally assented.
****
Sydney checked on Will, saw to it that Vaughn was settled as comfortably as possible near the front of the plane, and returned to where Dixon and her father sat.
“Dixon told me he found you bound, but unhurt in the warehouse with only a single guard at the door. Given enough time, you could have freed yourself,” Jack said. “What happened after the guards dragged you away?”
“I woke up in a room, and Khasinau came in. He tried to feed me soup. He was gentle and somewhat sad,” Sydney mused. “He’s not the man you think he is.”
Dixon and Jack exchanged incredulous glances.
“Are you sure he didn’t drug you?” Dixon asked skeptically. “What was the point of luring you to Taipei, if he wasn’t going to interrogate you? That sounds nothing like the profile we have of ‘The Man.’ Just look at what Sark did to Will, presumably on orders from ‘The Man’ himself.”
Sydney shuddered. It made her sick to think of what Will had suffered. “But that’s what I am trying to tell you. Khasinau isn’t ‘The Man.’”
“Then who is?” Jack burst out impatiently.
Sydney looked at her father uncertainly. “ ‘The Man’ isn’t a man at all,” she said, and her voice quivered. “ ‘The Man’ is a woman.”
Jack looked at his daughter’s anguished eyes, and his own eyes grew wide.
“Laura,” he breathed.
Sydney nodded, swallowing back her tears.
Now it was Jack’s turn to shake his head in disbelief. Slowly, his features hardened, taking on a stony mask of suppressed anger. “Did she hurt you in any way?”
Sydney looked at her father helplessly. “Just seeing her…hurt me. I don’t know what I expected…one moment she seemed exactly like the woman I remembered, tender, loving; the next she turned into this impossibly cold, cruel stranger. Seeing that hurt worse than if she had shot me.”
Tears slipped down her face, and before she could wipe them away, Jack grabbed her shoulders and forced her to look straight into his eyes. “What did she say to you?” he asked her agitatedly. “What did she tell you?”
Jack did not interrupt once as Sydney recounted her entire conversation with her mother. He hung on every word she said, his face taking on a more and more haunted look with each revelation.
Dixon tactfully withdrew, leaving Sydney alone with her father. Jack, however, had retreated into himself. Only his rapid breathing belied his almost eerie, outward calm. All she had wanted after her mother’s visit was to be comforted by someone who loved her. Someone strong enough to reassure her that everything she worked for hadn’t been a lie. Subsequent events—her reunion with Vaughn, the escape from the warehouse, and her concern for Will and Dixon—had made it impossible for her to dwell on her conversation with her mother. She could only guess what her father was thinking now.
“Dad?” Sydney said tentatively. “Dad?” she said more loudly, when he continued to stare past her.
Jack’s eyes slowly came back to focus on his daughter, and bit by bit his stony façade cracked. Loud, choked sobs came from deep within this seemingly stoic man, and Sydney threw her arms around his neck. Jack clung to her, and Sydney felt the sobs shudder through him.
“I’m sorry…” he muttered brokenly. “I was a fool. Such a fool. I regret everything about my relationship with that woman… everything except you. If she had hurt you… God help me…”
After a time—neither father or daughter could say how long—Jack wiped his eyes with the cuff of his shirt, and turned away from his daughter. Without another word, he moved to the back of the plane. Sydney gazed after him, looking at the father she was getting to know so much later in life than she would have liked. She didn’t know what sort of confrontations with Irina the future held, she only knew she and her father would face them together.
****
Those who could sleep rested for the remainder of the trip, but Sydney remained awake with Vaughn’s feverish head cradled in her lap. She had tried to make him as comfortable as possible amid the boxes, but even in his sleep he winced whenever the plane hit the slightest turbulence.
Due to the altitude at which the plane was flying, it was extremely chilly in the cabin. Sydney rearranged the blanket around him and watched, helplessly, as his temperature soared and his breathing grew more and more tortured. In no time his body was wracked by chills, and he shuddered, even as sweat beaded on his forehead. Intermittently, his eyelids would flutter, and he would mutter something she was unable to understand.
She wiped the sweat from Vaughn’s brow and prayed, as his delirium deepened. She listened, as he argued with Eric, justified his actions to Devlin, confronted his father’s ghost, tried to warn her of the guards approaching from behind, and whispered endearments to her in both French and English. He was reliving the events of the last few days in his dreams, and Sydney was abashed by all that he revealed, knowing he was not in control of what he said. She felt as if she was seeing directly into his soul, and it humbled her and filled her with a fierce protectiveness. She tried to sooth him and encouraged him to sleep, but the torrent of words would subside only to pick up again a short time later. He fell asleep only when they were within an hour of L.A.
It was at this point that Jack made his way over to his daughter. “How is he?” he queried, the concern evident in his eyes, even though his voice remained cool and detached. It was the first time they had spoken since she had told him about her mother.
“He’s delirious and his lungs are congested. It’s already hard for him to breath because of his cracked ribs. We need to get him to a hospital as soon as we get to L.A.”
“I’ve radioed ahead and arranged for Agent Weiss to meet us at the airport. He’ll take care of Agent Vaughn and make sure that he gets the medical attention he needs.”
“What about Will?”
“I gave him another sedative and a heavy painkiller. He should be fine until we get to L.A. We’ll have to take him to another safe house for the time being. The CIA can arrange for an oral surgeon to examine him there. Tippin’s going to have to decide soon whether he wants to go into the witness protection program or become an operative. There’s no indication that SD-6 is aware that you are a double agent. I’m convinced Irina is holding that information in reserve, to see if you will cooperate with her in the future. For the time being, I believe it’s safe for you to go back to your apartment, but I will be checking in with you frequently.”
Sydney nodded. She thought that would be the extent of their conversation, but her father cleared his throat. There was still something he wanted to say.
“Vaughn and Tippin are good men, Sydney. Both of them. It’s obvious they care about you very much. You should be proud—very proud—of the way they’ve handled themselves in Taipei. Try not to worry.” He put his hand on her shoulder briefly, and then turned to go.
“Dad?”
“Yes?” He turned back looking vaguely apprehensive that she would expect something else—some further proof of his emotional weakness.
“Thank you.”
Jack gazed at his daughter in silence, and slowly nodded his head.
****
Both Sydney and Jack had to support Vaughn as they deplaned. Weiss got out of the car parked on the tarmac and jogged the remaining distance to the plane to meet them.
“Mikey, let me tell you something confidentially. You look like felgercarb,” Weiss said as he swung Vaughn’s arm around his shoulder shifted more of Vaughn’s weight onto himself. “I haven’t seen you this messed up since Driscol wiped the ice with your ass back in the semifinals. Remember that game?” Weiss kept his tone jovial, but his eyes were heavy with concern.
Vaughn was too far gone to react to his friend’s raillery. Sydney followed Weiss to the car and helped him get Vaughn into the backseat. He was barely conscious, and his breath came in shallow, wheezing, rasps.
“What the hell happened to you guys in Taipei?” Weiss growled, once he shut the door. This was precisely what he had tried to warn Mike about after Denpasar. He’d give Syd one of the famous lectures on appropriate agent-handler protocol he gave Vaughn, if he didn’t think she’d kick his ass.
Sydney knew Weiss was angry at her for having endangered Vaughn’s life. Maybe if she weren’t so exhausted, she would have taken umbrage, but too much had happened in the last 48 hours. And, frankly, there was nothing he could reproach her with that she hadn’t already chastised herself for during the long flight back to L.A.
“It’s a long story,” she said, sighing. “Vaughn cracked a few ribs. He has a fever and became delirious on the trip back. I think he inhaled a good deal of water back in Tapei. He needs a doctor. Please take—take good care of him.”
Her voice faltered. She bit her lip and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold back the tears. She had cried in front of everyone else. She wouldn’t cry in front of Eric Weiss.
Weiss glanced at her and knit his eyebrows. “Syd, hey, listen, don’t worry,” he said soothingly, shedding his tough-guy act. “He’s gonna be fine. Trust me. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d seen him messed up worse than this. Hockey’s not a pretty sport, and Mike’s no wuss.”
Sydney sniffed, and wiped away the tears that stubbornly trickled down her cheeks, despite her best efforts at controlling them. She smiled briefly through her tears, which was precisely what Weiss had been hoping for.
“Really, go home.” he continued. “Get some rest. I’ll take care of everything and call you on a secure line to update you on his status. Mike wouldn’t want you to worry about him.”
“I love him,” she said suddenly, staring intently at the asphalt.
She spoke so quietly Weiss barely heard her. He gazed at her over the roof of the car, speechless, all his worst fears confirmed. She lifted her head, and it nearly broke his heart just to look at her.
“Jeez, Syd, it doesn’t surprise me,” he sighed. “You gotta know at this point that he loves you, too. But, there’s a reason why the CIA discourages this kind of thing,” he continued on, his voice taking on new urgency. ”Forget the fact that he’s your handler, and it’s clouding his judgment. You should just see the way he gets every time you go off on a mission. It scares the felgercarb out of him that you might not come back. Now that he’s taken it into his head to start accompanying you on jaunts like this one, it could get you both killed—that is if SD-6 doesn’t spot you canoodling somewhere and kill you first.”
He realized too late that he was shouting at her. He stopped abruptly, and threw up his hands. “Syd, I’m sorry. You don’t need a lecture from me, especially right now. It’s just Mike’s my best friend. I don’t want to see him hurt anymore than you do.”
“It’s okay,” Sydney said, wiping away her tears. “You should—you should get him to the hospital, though,” she told him, the strength and determination returning to her voice. “I heard everything you just said, and you’re right, but we’ll deal with it later, after Vaughn’s recovered.”
Weiss nodded, for this first time seeing a little bit of Jack Bristow coming out in her. “I’ll tell you what. Mike’s gonna be laid up for a couple of weeks at least. Write a message on a paper bag anytime and leave it at one of the drop off-points. I’ll make sure he gets it. Just don’t make it mushy or someone in recon will see it and have a field day.”
“Thanks, Eric,” she said. “For everything.”
“Don’t mention it. Now, seriously, go home and get some sleep.”
***
Sydney gingerly opened the door of her apartment, hoping against hope that Francie wouldn’t be home.
It was just her luck. Francie was sitting with a mug of coffee at the kitchen counter, doing the crossword in the Sunday edition of the L.A. Times.
“Syd!” Francie cried, as soon as she saw her. She threw down her ball point pen and ran to give her a hug. “How was Puerto Vallarte?”
Sydney hugged her roommate. Puerto Vallarte? “It was great—really great!” she enthused, hoping Francie didn’t detect how clueless she was. Who told Francie she had gone to Puerto Vallarte?
“I was so happy for you when I found out!” Francie said leading her over to the couch. “I told your Dad when he called that it was about time the bank did something to acknowledge all those extra hours you put in!”
Then Francie took a good look at her roommate. “Hey, you sure don’t look like someone who just got back from all-expense-paid weekend in Puerto Vallarte. What happened?”
Sydney sighed. “Well, actually, the weather was awful. And it really wasn’t much fun without you and Will.”
“Didn’t anyone else go with you? That’s kind of lame. It sure was sudden, the way they whisked you off like that, but I wouldn’t have been able to go because of all the preparations for opening the restaurant, and I don’t know where Will’s gone off to, but you could have at least invited someone from work. What about the guy who gave you that picture frame at Christmas?”
“Francie!”
“I’m just saying, why go to Puerto Vallarte alone when there’s a cute guy at the office who was sweet enough to get you a Christmas present!”
Sydney sighed. She wished with all her heart that she had been in Puerto Vallarte with Vaughn, instead of in Taipei extracting Will and confronting her mother. The image of them together, sunning themselves on the beach, contrasted jarringly with her memory of keeping watch through the night to see if a feverish and delirious Vaughn would survive the plane trip back to L.A.
“Actually, I thought about it, but he’s been out sick the last week or so. Pneumonia, I think,” she replied, rather distantly.
Francie frowned. “That reminds me.” She looked apprehensively at Sydney and took her hand. “I have some—some bad news for you. I don’t know how to tell you this, but Emily Sloane died over the weekend. I’m sorry, Syd. I really am.”
Sydney was stunned. Emily had appeared so strong when she had last seen her. Sloane had even said that the cancer was in complete remission. Surely it wasn’t because of the security breach…My God, had someone at SD-6 terminated Emily, knowing full well she was Sloane’s wife? Or was Sloane himself so merciless, so without pity that he could take the life of the woman who had loved him for thirty-six years?
“Oh, Syd, I know it’s a shock!” Francie said, dismayed. “I shouldn’t have told you right when you got in the door. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
“No, I’m all right.” Sydney, said, giving her friend a small smile. It was the same brave, everything’s-all-right-even-if-it’s-not-smile that her roommate had come to know well. “But, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go to my room and rest for awhile.”
