ParadiseKendra
Cadet
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. No infringement intended, no money is being made here, nothing illegal.
Title: For All of Them to Bleed
Rating: NC-17 for sexual situations and language
Category: Sydney/Vaughn Romance, Sydney Characterization
Summary: Towards the end of Season 3 and all through the beginning of Season 4, so much about what happened to Sydney during the two years she was gone and what was uncovered in Full Disclosure was swept under the rug by Vaughn’s pain because of Lauren. To me, he stole Sydney’s thunder a bit, her right to express her pain, and there was just so much missing between Sydney and Vaughn that this is a scene that just needed to be written by JJ in my opinion. So here it is.
Spoilers: This takes place around the time of Ice and Nocturne. Also major spoilers for Season 2, 3, and smaller ones for Season 1.
Author: Paradise, feedback, of course!
Dedication: Jennifer and Michael, they make it all happen!
Feedback: Of course!
Chapter 1
Sydney walked around her apartment aimlessly. Nadia was out and frankly as much as Sydney cared for her, she needed to be by herself. Nadia didn’t know her well enough yet to understand everything. Actually, Nadia would probably never understand. They would experience new things together, but Sydney had lived a full life before she knew of Nadia’s existence, and even after all the compartmentalizing, after all the love she felt for Vaughn and everyone else, she couldn’t count on anyone to accept all that she had inside her now.
She’d lived in this apartment for a while now, and although was nice, it was still empty. She’d worked so hard to make her last apartment a home after Danny’s death, and that was successful largely because of Francie and Will – but mostly Francie. There was nothing like her relationship with Will, but there was a corner of herself that she could never share with Will.
Francie made everything okay, and Sydney was forced to be someone other than a spy around her. She was forced to be a real person. She didn’t have to be the strong one when Francie was there. Francie could make her laugh almost anything off, and she could be herself around Francie. She’d told Francie about Vaughn, which consequently, Will pulled out of her later. Will had always been relentless. She knew he’d probably confronted Vaughn the way he would’ve confronted anyone she’d had feelings for.
Now though, aching for more memories than the few leftover scraps of the fire that Will had given back to her, and the things her father gave her, she felt the burning anger that she had buried away building up in her again.
She turned the air conditioning on. The anger was hot and alive inside her thriving body, and she needed to destroy it as fast as she could. Vaughn was in pain all the time, but he was beginning to heal. She didn’t know if it was because of her, or the lack of Lauren, but she had to be there for him. She had to be the one. She could never let him know the thoughts that crept into her mind now and then…all that she still held against him.
That she held killing Lauren against him.
She had to be better than this. She had to be a better person. The selfishness inside of her, she had to eliminate it. She wanted to serve her country. She had to help the man that she loved through the pain of killing the person that he had married.
And yet in doing that, he had once again…stolen her thunder.
No one looked to Sydney very much anymore over what she felt she couldn’t express. They assumed that she’d healed. She was nothing but strength that could sustain anything. Now, the only time that they looked at her was when Vaughn mentioned Lauren. That was the only thing she could still possibly be harmed by apparently. Not by her own demons or her traumatic past, but by the mere mention of the former other woman. Yes, that still got to her, but that was just the tip of Sydney’s anger.
She missed Vaughn so much. That was why she had let him pull her from her death on the train. She’d let him look at her like that, and she’d felt everything she ever had for him in that one moment. Then they were consuming each other, the fierce battle of missing each other mixed with the ceaseless need they’d had for so long. She didn’t regret it. She just regretted what it did.
It made him think it was all okay. Just like the forgiveness Kara needed and gave. In that moment, Sydney knew she had to be as gracious as Kara, and make him forgive himself.
She laid on her couch, staring at the ceiling. Watching the fan spinning above her, cooling her down, and she ached for the one person in the world she could be honest with about everything. Francie would be too comforting, Will, too would be on her side. Dixon, he’d try to get her to see both sides. Her father was convinced Vaughn’s pain was more than anything she could’ve possibly experienced. He sided with Vaughn these days anyway. Nadia, she didn’t know anything. Weiss, he’d be caught in the middle.
Getting out of bed, she decided to pour herself a glass of wine to help her compartmentalize again. That one disciplined glass a night. This was her third.
Hearing a gentle knock on the door, she glanced at the clock; it was past ten. Opening the door expecting to see either Nadia or her father, she was shocked when standing at the door was the fueling source of her pain. It was the man who had stolen everyone’s love from her, and everyone’s support. Now they all looked to him. They were now all trying to help him. She was expected to be over it. She wasn’t over it.
She hated herself for having thoughts that were this selfish.
“Hi,” she said. “You okay?”
“Yeah, are you? Sorry it’s so late.”
“I’m fine, come on in. Nadia’s not here, which of course worries me, but I’ll have to get over it,” she smiled.
She’d left out the photos of her mother, and the things Will had given her. Vaughn stared at the photo of her mother.
“Oh, I’m sorry, let me put those away. Nadia wanted to look at them,” she said, gathering them.
“Was that you?”
“Yes,” she said. Whether it was or not, she just said it so Vaughn wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.
“What is this?” he said, picking up a photo.
“Oh, that’s something that was actually salvaged in the fire, just barely. Will gave it back to me.”
“Who are these people? I know that’s Francie.”
Sydney wanted to pull the picture from him and not look at it anymore.
“Um, that’s…Amy, Will’s sister, that’s me and Danny, and Francie with her boyfriend at the time, and then it’s burned off Will and one of the women his sister fixed him up with.”
“So that’s Amy, and that’s Danny.”
For a moment he looked at her with a newfound understanding of her loss of someone she loved. But it didn’t comfort her. It tore at her because it was empathy. He was empathizing with her loss, which meant he understood it. He had really and truly loved some part of his life Lauren.
“It’s my non-spy life,” she said, taking the photo and placing it with the other ones. “I’m going to make about a thousand copies and give them to everyone who doesn’t live with me that can stand it.”
“Was anything else salvaged from the fire?”
“Some jewelry. Not much. How are you though? You purposely burned everything, did you not keep anything?”
“A few things. I wanted it gone.”
“I think…on some level, she completely understood, Vaughn. And despite her actions, and I’m not saying this because of my mother, but I think she loved you. I know it takes time. I know you’re in pain, but from someone who’s done things, seen things, the pain, all of it…gets smaller.”
However much she wanted to mean this, she was half lying.
“You’re hiding from me.”
She was surprised he even noticed something was hurting her. Choosing to be strong, she suppressed what he saw. She put her photos down and walked over to him, cupping his face in her hands.
“No, I’m not. I’m here. I’m always here, Vaughn. Tell me you know that.”
“I’ve had a chance to think about things, Sydney, all the things you left unsaid that I didn’t let you finish saying. I know that there are things you never told me. And things you began to tell me that I stopped you from finishing by placing guilt on you. But I know now, from watching you, what I always knew.”
“What are you talking about?”
He slowly removed her hands from his face, holding them between his own, as if to brace her for something.
“What I did, you would’ve never done.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“What you said, it was real. But I cut you off. No matter…what any organization sent to you, you would’ve never given into it the way I gave into Lauren.”
“Vaughn, you know that’s not your fault. You know I know that’s not your fault. They do that; they know what they’re doing, and I’m walking proof that it happens. I am the evidence that it happens. I get it, I understand. I fell for the lie too. I know it can be bought.”
She needed another drink. It wasn’t that what she was saying wasn’t true. It was that she hated what she still felt inside of her. She’d be damned if she’d show it to him after all this time.
“Sydney, why did you stop trying to find out what happened to the two years you were gone?”
“Vaughn please, I stopped because we all know. The Covenant had me. That’s it, right there.”
“That’s felgercarb and you know it.”
“Vaughn, this was months ago. I learned what I needed, and I moved on.”
“What the hell did you ever learn? You learned the Covenant had you. That’s ALL you know. You don’t know for how long. You don’t know who you saw at that time. Hell, for all we know, you could’ve been in love with someone else too!”
He hadn’t meant to say that.
“Sydney, I didn’t mean---”
“I know what you mean; it’s okay.”
“Let me finish. I didn’t mean you knowingly did anything…damn it, Sydney. That’s the point. You don’t know. Or do you?”
Dixon knew. Kendall knew. She didn’t know who else did.
“If you’re asking if I have any recollection of those two years, no, I don’t. But I don’t know why you’re bringing this up now. I’ve had time to deal with it.”
“Deal with what? You have nothing to deal with.”
Now he was pushing her too hard and she couldn’t stay calm any longer. “Vaughn, I’m not going to do this! Please, just stop! And it’s not what you think. It’s not that I’m resentful of anything. It’s that I’ve moved on. You’re the one that is still in the process of healing. I’m okay, I had my turn.”
She hadn’t had anything. She had no time, no chance, nothing. But she wasn’t about to do something stupid now.
“You’re afraid. I know when you’re afraid, tell me why.”
Now she felt like she couldn’t lie any more.
“I’m not afraid. I’m…better than this. I am not a horrible person, but there are these feelings I have that I can’t express. I can’t express them because they’re inappropriate. Because it’s time I got over them. And you’ve suffered too, I know you have, and I would do anything to take it from you. You don’t deserve more pain. So alright, there are things I’m still dealing with, but I can do it alone.”
“What is it you can’t express to me? Is it that you think I’ll disappear, that I won’t be able to take it?”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“So it is about me.”
“No!” she exclaimed. “It’s about me.”
“But you’re angry, and you’re angry at me. What, Sydney, because I’m already in pain, I’m somehow not supposed to hear what you need to say to me because it’ll hurt me?”
“Okay, Vaughn, you need to stop. Because I have never felt…this angry before.”
“That’s not true. You felt this way before, as you should’ve. You’ve never held back how you’ve felt towards me. I’ve always been able to handle your anger. Don’t you remember how angry you were at the world when we first met?”
“That was different, I was allowed to be irrational then; it’s ridiculous for me to be that way now.”
“Why, because I got screwed?”
“YES! Alright, yes. Please Vaughn, don’t do this,” she said, walking back towards him. “Please don’t try to peel me open. Please, look at me, can you feel me?” she said, touching the side of his face with her hand. “That’s real. This is real---”
“No it’s not. You need to tell me. You need to---”
“Stop it,” she demanded softly, now removing her hand and turning away, but he was expecting that, and yanked her back, gripping her upper arms.
“Why? So you won’t say something you’ll regret?”
“You don’t know what is still left inside of me. But you know I’m strong, you know I can deal with it. Let me deal with it my way. You didn’t exactly let me in to your pain, because you didn’t want to hurt me.”
“Yes, but your anger is at me, I deserve it. How cold would it have been for me to use you as my therapist to help deal with the pain I felt because of Lauren, when you were the one forced to watch me with her? What she did to me had nothing to do with you, what I did to you has everything to do with me.”
“Vaughn, Lauren did enough to you, I don’t want to hurt you too. I don’t ever want to see you in that kind of pain.”
“What about what I did to you? Forget Lauren, she’s gone. It’s you and me now, and what we did. And as hard as it may be, you need to get angry---”
“You don’t want me to get this angry. I could say things you couldn’t even imagine. And they’re not me. They’re my own grief---”
“Stop justifying it. And stop looking away. Everything isn’t perfect between us---”
“And why is that? Because I’m keeping secrets? I’m not, Vaughn. I’m not denying you anything.”
“No, but you’re sure working like hell to make sure I wouldn’t have any reason at all to ever think you had anything inside you but your willingness to keep going, right? Meanwhile I see you taking in a physical link to the person who killed Danny, to the person who killed Francie. Does Nadia even know? Or is that something else she gets to overlook, just like you got to overlook what your mother did to you.”
“I WILL tell her, I will. I will never do to her what they did to me, but she needs Sloane, and I’m not here to judge her.”
“You certainly make everything look so perfect in your life, yet you got drunk and slept with Will---”
“Don’t bring that up.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate myself for doing that to him because I did it to him before!”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Right, Sydney, he was in so much pain over that night. You damaged him badly. Trust me, he’s fine.”
“I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to pull the anger out of me. Don’t! Please. I’m okay---”
“When in the hell have you ever been okay? When has there ever been a moment---”
“What? A moment where what? You want me to get angry? I could get so angry you’d never look at me again. You’d think a two year break from me was a blessing.”
“You’re masking so much fire, so much anger, right here,” he said, placing his hand over her heart, dangerously close to cupping her breast. Her heart was hammering against her chest. “Can’t you feel it, even now? You’re bleeding with the need to let out. You’re angry, but you’re quivering with need.”
If he couldn’t get it out of her using her greatest targets, Sloane, Francie, her mother, Danny, Nadia, and Will, then he’d have to do it another way. And he felt the power, the electricity. He felt how much she loved him, and how much she wanted to hurt him at the same time. Her eyes flashed, and he dove for her, his hand crawling up to her throat to hold her in place.
Wildly unprepared for that kind of kiss, that act of passion and anger, she moved her hand over his in an attempt to free her neck. She gave away her secret of violence in the touch as he turned them around to knock her against the wall, driving the passion out of her through the kiss. Sinking his teeth into her lips, he nearly cracked them. Hearing her moan, he then slithered his tongue across her fuller, bottom lip to repair it. He nipped her chin delicately before traveling down her throat, feeling everything building inside her, as the sharp nails dug painfully into his back - the first taste of revenge.
“Stop it,” she hissed, fully prepared to do some real damage.
“Really?” he said back, now lifting his head back up to hers. “Give me a reason.”
“Where would you like me to start? Where you get to tell me how much you loved me? How much you grieved for me? I don’t know what you want me to say anymore. Everyone got to see what happened to me, everyone got to know! I got to feel so damn guilty for being alive. YOU made me feel so guilty for being alive. You made sure I knew how happy you were, but yet you couldn’t keep your hands off me until you let my father tell you to be deliberately cruel to me. And for what? As a way to make ME feel better? Jesus Christ, Vaughn, why the hell would you listen to my father? I don’t even listen to my father.”
“I couldn’t keep my hands off you?” he asked.
“Yes. Now I was guilty of it at that one point too, but I was drugged and didn’t know where I was. You…you were too involved with me, still. My father may have had that part right; it wasn’t the kindness that hurt me, it was your need to be with me, to touch me.”
“When did I touch you?”
“When I was under hypnosis and they brought me out, Vaughn. Your wife at that point was also trying to save my life and you were holding me. You had your arm around my waist. You were holding my hands. It was like I wasn’t the one who had lost two years. You had.”
“I wanted to help you. You’re saying I shouldn’t have stayed? I shouldn’t have helped or chosen to stay with you?”
“You NEVER chose to stay with me! The only reason you’re with me now is because she turned out to be the bad guy. You always chose her, and then you made me feel guilty because of your choices. I had nothing to do with your choices. You were going to make your choices and to hell with whatever I thought or said. I was irrational because of my own pain, or I was angry because you and I weren’t together. I was somehow wrong.”
“She was my wife. I had to choose her.”
“Then keep your damn hands off of me!” she said, trying to pull away from his grasp.
“No!” he shouted, struggling to hold her back. “Tell me what you told me that day, about closure. Tell me you still feel that way.”
“Don’t tell me what I feel. You and I made different choices in a moment of loss. Your choice was to leave, to move on. I would’ve never moved on from you. Hell, I DIDN’T move on after Danny as fast as you moved on from me with Lauren. And yes, we can play the card of manipulation, and it works to a degree, but the only reason you’re this upset with Lauren, the reason you hate her this much, is because you loved her. I would’ve never left the CIA that fast and married anyone. You loved her and then I came back, and you wanted me to be okay so you could be right. In that moment I could’ve made you bleed as much as I was bleeding.”
“I hate Lauren because she took my life from you---”
“I saw you with her! I know you loved her! I had just barely taken off my engagement ring in the amount of time you were kissing her on a street corner.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I came back to you! I endured more than I ever care to attempt to remember to get back to you. They warned me not to try to get back to you because they knew I’d see you with her. But you know me. Nobody could’ve stopped me from getting back to you, from telling you I was still alive, except you yourself, in love with someone else. The Covenant didn’t keep me from you for the entire two years. You did.”
“Sydney, help me out here. You came back? When?”
“Kendall abducted me.”
“What? He’s not Covenant.”
“No, I mean, he kidnapped me to tell me what the Covenant did to me.”
“How the hell did he know?”
“Because…I told him. Before I lost my memory.”
“You told him?”
“Don’t ask me for details, I don’t remember it now. The Covenant let me out after six months of torture. I worked for them to keep them from killing me for another three before I contacted the CIA for help. I contacted Kendall, I wanted to come home, and he tried to “prepare” me for things that were different.”
She exhaled a sigh.
“I wanted to come home. I was exhausted. I came back as Julia Thorne but you’d know me no matter what disguise I was wearing. I drove up to you. I saw you get out of the car. I was so relieved that the Covenant hadn’t killed you. I was just about to get out when I saw Lauren with you. And when I did, I realized I was too late. So I went back, staying away as long as I possibly could.”
“Not forever though.”
“No. I was brought back, slate clean, no memories, with all traces of Julia gone from me. I looked like Sydney again, with only the memories of my life as Sydney. I stayed away so you could have your perfect little life, until things happened and I had to come back.”
“You could’ve been back after nine months?”
“No, I could’ve been back immediately if I could’ve screamed. I was there at my own funeral. I was right there in that van. I saw the whole thing. I saw you throw the ashes into the ocean. I wasn’t ten feet from you in the van when you and Weiss embraced. I couldn’t scream for you. You want to talk about pain? You want to tell me how much you loved me, and that losing me almost killed you? I got to watch you throw my ashes into the ocean and get in a car and drive away as I frantically tried to scream for you. But they made me temporarily paralyzed, forcing me to accept my death so it would be “easier” for me to become someone else. I learned all this, and I never got to tell anyone. I’ve had to suppress everything and respect the classification of all of it, but it’s my life!”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“When would you have liked me to, Vaughn? What night might I have asked your wife if I could borrow you to tell you all the horrible things Kendall revealed to me about the Covenant? Especially since she WAS Covenant. That would’ve been appropriate.”
“What else did they do to you?”
“What would you like to know? The sensory deprivation, the starvation, the electroshock treatment? The way they’d starve me for weeks and then tease me with an entire meal before snatching it from me and replacing it with dog food that I’d throw up? Would you like to hear about them putting me to sleep by running an IV containing a barbiturate in one arm and then shocking me awake with an amphetamine in the other? The fact that I had to work with that man, Oleg? That I had to befriend him as Julia for two years after all of that torture? I thought when I came back and everything lost – you were married, everything I owned was destroyed, Francie was dead – I thought that nothing could be worse than knowing that. Turns out, there is!” she claimed, fiery tears in her eyes.
“Look at me!” she demanded, tearing her hands free of his grasp and pulling her shirt up to reveal the scar. “They took my eggs from me, and everyone got to know that, and I got the pure joy of destroying them in front of my CIA team, while you got to go home to your beautiful wife. I got to go home to the fact that I just destroyed my ova. So there I was, bleeding for all of you. There I was, with everything I had to endure, but I was so strong, so I’d be fine, right? And any day now, I guess I will be. Because that’s what’s expected of me. But what I never expected was for you to make me feel the way you did.”
He was so overwhelmed with all he hadn’t known that he had to work to keep up with her.
“How was that?”
“How did you want me to respond when you came up to me after I came back? Did you think I was going to soothe you? I wish I hadn’t felt so damn guilty about what I said to you that day, because no matter how blunt or harsh I was, I was right on the mark. You were not there to know how I was. You wanted to be free of any guilt you might’ve felt.”
She was hard and bitter now, the heat of her anger touching him.
“Whatever card you held, I could match. However much you ached for me, you were not kept in a place where you couldn’t see the light of day. I know the kind of grief you went through for me. I’ve been through that kind too. It’s how we met. You found someone to bring you out of it though, however false she is now. She was exactly what brought you back to life then. She was the answer to your prayers. And you were never sorry.”
“I loved you.”
“I loved you too. Enough to let you make me be someone I hated. I had to step back so many times. You hurt me so badly. You were so protective of Lauren, like I was somehow out to harm her. I had a right to be angry with her when she turned me in. I nearly lost what was left of my mind because she was an idiot.”
He began to interrupt her but she cut him off.
“And yet I held her hand and pulled her up from the ground and thanked her for breaking me out of the place she put me in. And then you hurt me even more when you held her in your arms after I’d been tortured for days.”
“I never took her side in that area. I came to you and I got you out of the country and I refused to tell her anything. I yelled at her for betraying you. I made it damn clear I loved you.”
“You made it clear to me you still loved me too. Do you know what that felt like? After sharing that kind of moment with me to then see you run to her like nothing had happened? You knew I hadn’t experienced the two years you had! How could you do that to me?”
“I thought we were dying.”
“Oh, so if you don’t have to deal with the consequences, it’s easy to tell me what you feel!”
He was losing the fight badly. “I wanted you to know.”
“You tore me apart! The next time you tell your ex-girlfriend that you’re leaving your wife, you better be damn sure. I have never been that person before and I never want to be her again. I will never allow myself to be put in that role again, waiting by the phone for you. I have never let anyone degrade me like that.”
Her hands went to his arms, fingers digging, daring him to put up with the pain, to stay there holding her against the wall.
“Ask me how,” she said. “Ask me how I could have this in me. Get angry with me.”
God, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to scream at him, scream at the injustice of her life and his supporting role in it. She wanted to tear him to shreds over the sheer fact that she’d lose this battle, and he’d still walk away in the end with her, because he had her heart. She wanted him to take her abuse, take her pain, and endure even a sliver of what she’d felt.
The anger began to build loudly inside her and she began to tremble with it. He felt it clearly, and wanted to drench himself in her; to tear everything off of her and cover himself in her anger.
She saw the passion, and felt it, but feared she’ll make him bleed long before she’ll make him moan. She tore herself from the wall and from his grip.
“Get away from me,” she spat angrily.
He was faster though as she walked back towards her kitchen. He reached up to her shoulders and she heard her back hit the wall.
“No! You don’t get to walk away now.”
“Vaughn, I hate that all of this is inside me, but it’s here now, and I’m now past yelling at you to a point where I want to do physical damage, so would you please leave?”
“Don’t say please to me right now.”
“Then get out!”
“No, I want the anger, and I want to feel it on you.”
“I want you to feel it too, but not in the way you apparently want it.”
“Then hit me.”
“You make it sound like I could do it once and be fine, like after tonight I’ll be perfect. Are you perfect after what you’ve been through?”
He ripped her from the wall towards him, tired of her stalling.
“God damn it, Sydney, stop stalling and hit me.”
She was startled by him pulling her close, and her anger leaked out and her hand moved forward in pure violence, breaking his skin. She felt a layer of her hard fury being opened, beginning to release the anger. She was breathing heavily, finding a way. She couldn’t remember at that moment that she was supposed to feel guilty. She just craved the way out. And he was giving it to her. He broke through the thick layer that she couldn’t.
She reached up to touch the blood on his face. She captured a few beads of it in her fingers and looked at it, then looked up at him again, her eyes blazing the true pain and hatred with no hesitation or guilt. Like she was expecting him to stand there and take it for every time she withstood him walking back into another woman’s arms. And if he couldn’t, he was welcome to leave, but she wouldn’t apologize.
Not tonight.
One damn night, just one night let it be about her and her anger.
He encircled her wrist with his hand and pulled her towards him, the blood between them both.
“How does it feel?” she slithered. “How would it feel to have to look at yourself every day and only begin to guess the kind of horrors you’ve done that you can’t remember and then come to work every day, with a fake smile on your face? I was the one smiling at you, at Lauren, at Dixon, everyone, your biggest issue was that you had not one, but two women who still loved you.”
She snatched her hand free.
“I was something left on the side of the road, nothing. I had no memories, no idea where I was or how I got there. You had something to go home to. Maybe it was a lie, but it was there. I was on the side of a road, dumped out of a truck or a car probably, because they were done with me. And so were you, when she was done with you.”
That was what pulled the anger out of him, and he thrust forward, wanting to hurt her back. She let him pin her arms over her head, glad she could do it back to him. She felt the darkness come out of her at that moment.
“Doesn’t feel good, does it? Having the person in your life you love more than anything, pulsating against that one splinter inside you that for the life of you, you can’t rid yourself of. You beat my own pain against me for a year, and I was just left standing there, for all of you to pull at, judge, and bleed the gorram heart right out of me.”
Using his hands, he slid them over her shoulders and pulled her up to him so she was on her toes, glaring at her.
“Then pay me back,” he dared, before crushing her lips with his own.
Returning her arms to above her head, she fed hungrily on him, her tongue lapping up the trail of blood she left on the side of his face, trailing her wetness along the wound, tugging on the pain. Fastening her to the wall, he pushed her face upwards to attack her neck, sweeping her hair free of the path of his mouth. Her veins were throbbing in angst, fury, and desire, in that very order. She slipped one hand free to curl around the back of his neck as his mouth tasted and nipped at the skin of her collar bone, eliciting new goose bumps.
There was no love in this act. They both knew that. But that didn’t stop the pooling heat from flowing through both their bodies.
Her eyes were watching his mouth along her chest, but he switched the dance when he scooped up her mouth, swallowing her in the probing kiss. His hands dove into her hair, enveloping her lower lip into his mouth while her fingers crawled up his back, drawing him closer. The battle for dominance became apparent when she broke from the kiss harshly, the audible noise of the separation loud and clear as she moved from him, never wanting him to have more than a taste of her.
She stopped and they stared at each other, her burning eyes only inches away from his as he closed the space between them, but she was fast and moved ahead, not letting him catch up.
Reaching her bedroom, his ambition drove him to grab her and shove her face forward against her own wall and they both struggled to regain their breath. Smashed against the wall, she felt his hand slide forward to her stomach. He separated the pieces of her shirt, sliding his hand down her trembling skin.
“I need to touch you there,” he whispered, and there was not much she could do about it.
She played the game with him, letting him slip his fingers beneath her underwear, and down into her soft folds. She turned her face more successfully to the side, enjoying the cool surface of the wall. His fingers curled around her and he squeezed gently at first, then more abruptly as he slipped one finger in, and her body clenched, her nails digging into the wall.
After her first shockwave of pleasure, she felt infuriated by the imbalance of power, and she managed to catch him off guard with one hand flooding over her stomach and the other touching her much lower. She grabbed him from behind and stopped him, turning around to face him. He reached forward, tearing the shirt from her shoulders and throwing it to the floor.
Though there was a bed in the room, he grabbed her once more, driving her down to the floor instead. She reached for his shirt and yanked it from him, climbing over him, entwining herself around him in a black bra and black pants. They rolled together, kissing deeply, and she drank the touch of his hands along her back, the weight of her own body over his. In the midst of the kissing, she felt him unhook her bra, and then he rolled her beneath him so he could remove it without discomfort. She worked away the belt of his pants, the rest of their garments being shoved away in a distant corner of the dim room.
As they dove for one another, he felt the anger on her hot, moist skin as he slid against it. She bent her knees and parted her legs slightly, feeling him take up her wetness on his fingers and spread it over her. He touched her almost painfully, but she liked it that way. She liked it intense, slightly painful, not the tenderness of their last time. He was sucking on her, thrusting his tongue into her as she thrashed her head back, closing her eyes as the glitter burst behind her eyelids.
Slipping fingers in and out of her, he licked and kissed his way back up her body, feeling her part her thighs, and drove swiftly into her, holding her arms back by her sides. She tilted her head back, arching her body, guiding him deeper. She broke her arms free, wrapping one around his back, guiding his throbbing muscles closer to her. She licked and nipped at his shoulders, leaving visible marks along his skin, tasting him as he continued to slam into her, his breath hot against her neck.
She pulled him closer, her hand slipping between them to feel the muscles on his chest. She wrapped her legs around his hips in a deathlike grip, as he sunk his frantic body further into her.
In her throws she bit into his tattoo, drawing blood, which she lapped up immediately with her tongue, licking wildly. She was hungry as his body manipulated hers, mutating it into this heaving person who was replying to him, quickening her pace to match his in a matrix of needs. She raked her nails along his back while his mouth played along her face, walking along her jaw.
He wanted her to look at him, but she denied him. She knew he wanted her to make some form of contact, even an angry one, but she didn’t give him that. She kept her eyes closed and impassioned, knowing she was hurting him in the process. He forced a kiss, a deep kiss that she wanted to turn away from as he used all his strength to penetrate her one last time. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, needing the taste, riding out her spasms as he climaxed into her.
Waiting out each other’s orgasms, he never released his hold on her throat, but the kiss became slightly less invasive and somewhat more caressing. The exhaustion in them both made them give up the fight and Sydney’s arms rest at her side. She allowed herself to be kissed by him, moaning into his mouth as the last sparks subsided from inside her.
They laid beside each other, awaiting their breathing to return to normal, and he waited for her to speak.
Eventually, she said, “Still taking it slow, Vaughn. It took you time to heal, it’ll take me time. I realized tonight, I had a right to feel the way I do, and I can stop hating myself for it.”
“You never should’ve hated yourself. You didn’t tell me anything that wasn’t true.”
“Shhh,” she whispered. “I’m tired, you’re tired. We can fight again tomorrow if we have to. For now, let’s just lie here.”
“Okay.”
That was enough. That was more than enough. The love was there; it had always been there. The anger wasn’t over; this was only a start. All wasn’t forgiven, all wasn’t healed, but her hardened pain was cracked open, and was now spilling from her, like a virus leaving her body.
And for him, it was enough.
~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~
Hope you liked it! I just felt Sydney was really cheated in Season 3 and Season 4 and that she had a right to say these things and I enjoyed writing this piece, and giving Sydney the characterization JJ wouldn’t.
And what’s wrong with a little NC-17! Not a damn thing!
The title is from a line in Mariah Carey’s “Looking In”, a fantastic, deep song, and the line for all of them to bleed refers in the song to the same thing it refers to in the fic. Sydney standing there, her life destroyed in front of her, everyone knowing about it and she’s just there open, naked, for everyone to look at her and tear into her with their eyes. She’s there for all of them to bleed because they all know what she’s been through. She has no privacy. It was powerful for me to write her. Thank you.
Completed: February 4th, 2005
Title: For All of Them to Bleed
Rating: NC-17 for sexual situations and language
Category: Sydney/Vaughn Romance, Sydney Characterization
Summary: Towards the end of Season 3 and all through the beginning of Season 4, so much about what happened to Sydney during the two years she was gone and what was uncovered in Full Disclosure was swept under the rug by Vaughn’s pain because of Lauren. To me, he stole Sydney’s thunder a bit, her right to express her pain, and there was just so much missing between Sydney and Vaughn that this is a scene that just needed to be written by JJ in my opinion. So here it is.
Spoilers: This takes place around the time of Ice and Nocturne. Also major spoilers for Season 2, 3, and smaller ones for Season 1.
Author: Paradise, feedback, of course!
Dedication: Jennifer and Michael, they make it all happen!
Feedback: Of course!
Chapter 1
Sydney walked around her apartment aimlessly. Nadia was out and frankly as much as Sydney cared for her, she needed to be by herself. Nadia didn’t know her well enough yet to understand everything. Actually, Nadia would probably never understand. They would experience new things together, but Sydney had lived a full life before she knew of Nadia’s existence, and even after all the compartmentalizing, after all the love she felt for Vaughn and everyone else, she couldn’t count on anyone to accept all that she had inside her now.
She’d lived in this apartment for a while now, and although was nice, it was still empty. She’d worked so hard to make her last apartment a home after Danny’s death, and that was successful largely because of Francie and Will – but mostly Francie. There was nothing like her relationship with Will, but there was a corner of herself that she could never share with Will.
Francie made everything okay, and Sydney was forced to be someone other than a spy around her. She was forced to be a real person. She didn’t have to be the strong one when Francie was there. Francie could make her laugh almost anything off, and she could be herself around Francie. She’d told Francie about Vaughn, which consequently, Will pulled out of her later. Will had always been relentless. She knew he’d probably confronted Vaughn the way he would’ve confronted anyone she’d had feelings for.
Now though, aching for more memories than the few leftover scraps of the fire that Will had given back to her, and the things her father gave her, she felt the burning anger that she had buried away building up in her again.
She turned the air conditioning on. The anger was hot and alive inside her thriving body, and she needed to destroy it as fast as she could. Vaughn was in pain all the time, but he was beginning to heal. She didn’t know if it was because of her, or the lack of Lauren, but she had to be there for him. She had to be the one. She could never let him know the thoughts that crept into her mind now and then…all that she still held against him.
That she held killing Lauren against him.
She had to be better than this. She had to be a better person. The selfishness inside of her, she had to eliminate it. She wanted to serve her country. She had to help the man that she loved through the pain of killing the person that he had married.
And yet in doing that, he had once again…stolen her thunder.
No one looked to Sydney very much anymore over what she felt she couldn’t express. They assumed that she’d healed. She was nothing but strength that could sustain anything. Now, the only time that they looked at her was when Vaughn mentioned Lauren. That was the only thing she could still possibly be harmed by apparently. Not by her own demons or her traumatic past, but by the mere mention of the former other woman. Yes, that still got to her, but that was just the tip of Sydney’s anger.
She missed Vaughn so much. That was why she had let him pull her from her death on the train. She’d let him look at her like that, and she’d felt everything she ever had for him in that one moment. Then they were consuming each other, the fierce battle of missing each other mixed with the ceaseless need they’d had for so long. She didn’t regret it. She just regretted what it did.
It made him think it was all okay. Just like the forgiveness Kara needed and gave. In that moment, Sydney knew she had to be as gracious as Kara, and make him forgive himself.
She laid on her couch, staring at the ceiling. Watching the fan spinning above her, cooling her down, and she ached for the one person in the world she could be honest with about everything. Francie would be too comforting, Will, too would be on her side. Dixon, he’d try to get her to see both sides. Her father was convinced Vaughn’s pain was more than anything she could’ve possibly experienced. He sided with Vaughn these days anyway. Nadia, she didn’t know anything. Weiss, he’d be caught in the middle.
Getting out of bed, she decided to pour herself a glass of wine to help her compartmentalize again. That one disciplined glass a night. This was her third.
Hearing a gentle knock on the door, she glanced at the clock; it was past ten. Opening the door expecting to see either Nadia or her father, she was shocked when standing at the door was the fueling source of her pain. It was the man who had stolen everyone’s love from her, and everyone’s support. Now they all looked to him. They were now all trying to help him. She was expected to be over it. She wasn’t over it.
She hated herself for having thoughts that were this selfish.
“Hi,” she said. “You okay?”
“Yeah, are you? Sorry it’s so late.”
“I’m fine, come on in. Nadia’s not here, which of course worries me, but I’ll have to get over it,” she smiled.
She’d left out the photos of her mother, and the things Will had given her. Vaughn stared at the photo of her mother.
“Oh, I’m sorry, let me put those away. Nadia wanted to look at them,” she said, gathering them.
“Was that you?”
“Yes,” she said. Whether it was or not, she just said it so Vaughn wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.
“What is this?” he said, picking up a photo.
“Oh, that’s something that was actually salvaged in the fire, just barely. Will gave it back to me.”
“Who are these people? I know that’s Francie.”
Sydney wanted to pull the picture from him and not look at it anymore.
“Um, that’s…Amy, Will’s sister, that’s me and Danny, and Francie with her boyfriend at the time, and then it’s burned off Will and one of the women his sister fixed him up with.”
“So that’s Amy, and that’s Danny.”
For a moment he looked at her with a newfound understanding of her loss of someone she loved. But it didn’t comfort her. It tore at her because it was empathy. He was empathizing with her loss, which meant he understood it. He had really and truly loved some part of his life Lauren.
“It’s my non-spy life,” she said, taking the photo and placing it with the other ones. “I’m going to make about a thousand copies and give them to everyone who doesn’t live with me that can stand it.”
“Was anything else salvaged from the fire?”
“Some jewelry. Not much. How are you though? You purposely burned everything, did you not keep anything?”
“A few things. I wanted it gone.”
“I think…on some level, she completely understood, Vaughn. And despite her actions, and I’m not saying this because of my mother, but I think she loved you. I know it takes time. I know you’re in pain, but from someone who’s done things, seen things, the pain, all of it…gets smaller.”
However much she wanted to mean this, she was half lying.
“You’re hiding from me.”
She was surprised he even noticed something was hurting her. Choosing to be strong, she suppressed what he saw. She put her photos down and walked over to him, cupping his face in her hands.
“No, I’m not. I’m here. I’m always here, Vaughn. Tell me you know that.”
“I’ve had a chance to think about things, Sydney, all the things you left unsaid that I didn’t let you finish saying. I know that there are things you never told me. And things you began to tell me that I stopped you from finishing by placing guilt on you. But I know now, from watching you, what I always knew.”
“What are you talking about?”
He slowly removed her hands from his face, holding them between his own, as if to brace her for something.
“What I did, you would’ve never done.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“What you said, it was real. But I cut you off. No matter…what any organization sent to you, you would’ve never given into it the way I gave into Lauren.”
“Vaughn, you know that’s not your fault. You know I know that’s not your fault. They do that; they know what they’re doing, and I’m walking proof that it happens. I am the evidence that it happens. I get it, I understand. I fell for the lie too. I know it can be bought.”
She needed another drink. It wasn’t that what she was saying wasn’t true. It was that she hated what she still felt inside of her. She’d be damned if she’d show it to him after all this time.
“Sydney, why did you stop trying to find out what happened to the two years you were gone?”
“Vaughn please, I stopped because we all know. The Covenant had me. That’s it, right there.”
“That’s felgercarb and you know it.”
“Vaughn, this was months ago. I learned what I needed, and I moved on.”
“What the hell did you ever learn? You learned the Covenant had you. That’s ALL you know. You don’t know for how long. You don’t know who you saw at that time. Hell, for all we know, you could’ve been in love with someone else too!”
He hadn’t meant to say that.
“Sydney, I didn’t mean---”
“I know what you mean; it’s okay.”
“Let me finish. I didn’t mean you knowingly did anything…damn it, Sydney. That’s the point. You don’t know. Or do you?”
Dixon knew. Kendall knew. She didn’t know who else did.
“If you’re asking if I have any recollection of those two years, no, I don’t. But I don’t know why you’re bringing this up now. I’ve had time to deal with it.”
“Deal with what? You have nothing to deal with.”
Now he was pushing her too hard and she couldn’t stay calm any longer. “Vaughn, I’m not going to do this! Please, just stop! And it’s not what you think. It’s not that I’m resentful of anything. It’s that I’ve moved on. You’re the one that is still in the process of healing. I’m okay, I had my turn.”
She hadn’t had anything. She had no time, no chance, nothing. But she wasn’t about to do something stupid now.
“You’re afraid. I know when you’re afraid, tell me why.”
Now she felt like she couldn’t lie any more.
“I’m not afraid. I’m…better than this. I am not a horrible person, but there are these feelings I have that I can’t express. I can’t express them because they’re inappropriate. Because it’s time I got over them. And you’ve suffered too, I know you have, and I would do anything to take it from you. You don’t deserve more pain. So alright, there are things I’m still dealing with, but I can do it alone.”
“What is it you can’t express to me? Is it that you think I’ll disappear, that I won’t be able to take it?”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“So it is about me.”
“No!” she exclaimed. “It’s about me.”
“But you’re angry, and you’re angry at me. What, Sydney, because I’m already in pain, I’m somehow not supposed to hear what you need to say to me because it’ll hurt me?”
“Okay, Vaughn, you need to stop. Because I have never felt…this angry before.”
“That’s not true. You felt this way before, as you should’ve. You’ve never held back how you’ve felt towards me. I’ve always been able to handle your anger. Don’t you remember how angry you were at the world when we first met?”
“That was different, I was allowed to be irrational then; it’s ridiculous for me to be that way now.”
“Why, because I got screwed?”
“YES! Alright, yes. Please Vaughn, don’t do this,” she said, walking back towards him. “Please don’t try to peel me open. Please, look at me, can you feel me?” she said, touching the side of his face with her hand. “That’s real. This is real---”
“No it’s not. You need to tell me. You need to---”
“Stop it,” she demanded softly, now removing her hand and turning away, but he was expecting that, and yanked her back, gripping her upper arms.
“Why? So you won’t say something you’ll regret?”
“You don’t know what is still left inside of me. But you know I’m strong, you know I can deal with it. Let me deal with it my way. You didn’t exactly let me in to your pain, because you didn’t want to hurt me.”
“Yes, but your anger is at me, I deserve it. How cold would it have been for me to use you as my therapist to help deal with the pain I felt because of Lauren, when you were the one forced to watch me with her? What she did to me had nothing to do with you, what I did to you has everything to do with me.”
“Vaughn, Lauren did enough to you, I don’t want to hurt you too. I don’t ever want to see you in that kind of pain.”
“What about what I did to you? Forget Lauren, she’s gone. It’s you and me now, and what we did. And as hard as it may be, you need to get angry---”
“You don’t want me to get this angry. I could say things you couldn’t even imagine. And they’re not me. They’re my own grief---”
“Stop justifying it. And stop looking away. Everything isn’t perfect between us---”
“And why is that? Because I’m keeping secrets? I’m not, Vaughn. I’m not denying you anything.”
“No, but you’re sure working like hell to make sure I wouldn’t have any reason at all to ever think you had anything inside you but your willingness to keep going, right? Meanwhile I see you taking in a physical link to the person who killed Danny, to the person who killed Francie. Does Nadia even know? Or is that something else she gets to overlook, just like you got to overlook what your mother did to you.”
“I WILL tell her, I will. I will never do to her what they did to me, but she needs Sloane, and I’m not here to judge her.”
“You certainly make everything look so perfect in your life, yet you got drunk and slept with Will---”
“Don’t bring that up.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate myself for doing that to him because I did it to him before!”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Right, Sydney, he was in so much pain over that night. You damaged him badly. Trust me, he’s fine.”
“I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to pull the anger out of me. Don’t! Please. I’m okay---”
“When in the hell have you ever been okay? When has there ever been a moment---”
“What? A moment where what? You want me to get angry? I could get so angry you’d never look at me again. You’d think a two year break from me was a blessing.”
“You’re masking so much fire, so much anger, right here,” he said, placing his hand over her heart, dangerously close to cupping her breast. Her heart was hammering against her chest. “Can’t you feel it, even now? You’re bleeding with the need to let out. You’re angry, but you’re quivering with need.”
If he couldn’t get it out of her using her greatest targets, Sloane, Francie, her mother, Danny, Nadia, and Will, then he’d have to do it another way. And he felt the power, the electricity. He felt how much she loved him, and how much she wanted to hurt him at the same time. Her eyes flashed, and he dove for her, his hand crawling up to her throat to hold her in place.
Wildly unprepared for that kind of kiss, that act of passion and anger, she moved her hand over his in an attempt to free her neck. She gave away her secret of violence in the touch as he turned them around to knock her against the wall, driving the passion out of her through the kiss. Sinking his teeth into her lips, he nearly cracked them. Hearing her moan, he then slithered his tongue across her fuller, bottom lip to repair it. He nipped her chin delicately before traveling down her throat, feeling everything building inside her, as the sharp nails dug painfully into his back - the first taste of revenge.
“Stop it,” she hissed, fully prepared to do some real damage.
“Really?” he said back, now lifting his head back up to hers. “Give me a reason.”
“Where would you like me to start? Where you get to tell me how much you loved me? How much you grieved for me? I don’t know what you want me to say anymore. Everyone got to see what happened to me, everyone got to know! I got to feel so damn guilty for being alive. YOU made me feel so guilty for being alive. You made sure I knew how happy you were, but yet you couldn’t keep your hands off me until you let my father tell you to be deliberately cruel to me. And for what? As a way to make ME feel better? Jesus Christ, Vaughn, why the hell would you listen to my father? I don’t even listen to my father.”
“I couldn’t keep my hands off you?” he asked.
“Yes. Now I was guilty of it at that one point too, but I was drugged and didn’t know where I was. You…you were too involved with me, still. My father may have had that part right; it wasn’t the kindness that hurt me, it was your need to be with me, to touch me.”
“When did I touch you?”
“When I was under hypnosis and they brought me out, Vaughn. Your wife at that point was also trying to save my life and you were holding me. You had your arm around my waist. You were holding my hands. It was like I wasn’t the one who had lost two years. You had.”
“I wanted to help you. You’re saying I shouldn’t have stayed? I shouldn’t have helped or chosen to stay with you?”
“You NEVER chose to stay with me! The only reason you’re with me now is because she turned out to be the bad guy. You always chose her, and then you made me feel guilty because of your choices. I had nothing to do with your choices. You were going to make your choices and to hell with whatever I thought or said. I was irrational because of my own pain, or I was angry because you and I weren’t together. I was somehow wrong.”
“She was my wife. I had to choose her.”
“Then keep your damn hands off of me!” she said, trying to pull away from his grasp.
“No!” he shouted, struggling to hold her back. “Tell me what you told me that day, about closure. Tell me you still feel that way.”
“Don’t tell me what I feel. You and I made different choices in a moment of loss. Your choice was to leave, to move on. I would’ve never moved on from you. Hell, I DIDN’T move on after Danny as fast as you moved on from me with Lauren. And yes, we can play the card of manipulation, and it works to a degree, but the only reason you’re this upset with Lauren, the reason you hate her this much, is because you loved her. I would’ve never left the CIA that fast and married anyone. You loved her and then I came back, and you wanted me to be okay so you could be right. In that moment I could’ve made you bleed as much as I was bleeding.”
“I hate Lauren because she took my life from you---”
“I saw you with her! I know you loved her! I had just barely taken off my engagement ring in the amount of time you were kissing her on a street corner.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I came back to you! I endured more than I ever care to attempt to remember to get back to you. They warned me not to try to get back to you because they knew I’d see you with her. But you know me. Nobody could’ve stopped me from getting back to you, from telling you I was still alive, except you yourself, in love with someone else. The Covenant didn’t keep me from you for the entire two years. You did.”
“Sydney, help me out here. You came back? When?”
“Kendall abducted me.”
“What? He’s not Covenant.”
“No, I mean, he kidnapped me to tell me what the Covenant did to me.”
“How the hell did he know?”
“Because…I told him. Before I lost my memory.”
“You told him?”
“Don’t ask me for details, I don’t remember it now. The Covenant let me out after six months of torture. I worked for them to keep them from killing me for another three before I contacted the CIA for help. I contacted Kendall, I wanted to come home, and he tried to “prepare” me for things that were different.”
She exhaled a sigh.
“I wanted to come home. I was exhausted. I came back as Julia Thorne but you’d know me no matter what disguise I was wearing. I drove up to you. I saw you get out of the car. I was so relieved that the Covenant hadn’t killed you. I was just about to get out when I saw Lauren with you. And when I did, I realized I was too late. So I went back, staying away as long as I possibly could.”
“Not forever though.”
“No. I was brought back, slate clean, no memories, with all traces of Julia gone from me. I looked like Sydney again, with only the memories of my life as Sydney. I stayed away so you could have your perfect little life, until things happened and I had to come back.”
“You could’ve been back after nine months?”
“No, I could’ve been back immediately if I could’ve screamed. I was there at my own funeral. I was right there in that van. I saw the whole thing. I saw you throw the ashes into the ocean. I wasn’t ten feet from you in the van when you and Weiss embraced. I couldn’t scream for you. You want to talk about pain? You want to tell me how much you loved me, and that losing me almost killed you? I got to watch you throw my ashes into the ocean and get in a car and drive away as I frantically tried to scream for you. But they made me temporarily paralyzed, forcing me to accept my death so it would be “easier” for me to become someone else. I learned all this, and I never got to tell anyone. I’ve had to suppress everything and respect the classification of all of it, but it’s my life!”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“When would you have liked me to, Vaughn? What night might I have asked your wife if I could borrow you to tell you all the horrible things Kendall revealed to me about the Covenant? Especially since she WAS Covenant. That would’ve been appropriate.”
“What else did they do to you?”
“What would you like to know? The sensory deprivation, the starvation, the electroshock treatment? The way they’d starve me for weeks and then tease me with an entire meal before snatching it from me and replacing it with dog food that I’d throw up? Would you like to hear about them putting me to sleep by running an IV containing a barbiturate in one arm and then shocking me awake with an amphetamine in the other? The fact that I had to work with that man, Oleg? That I had to befriend him as Julia for two years after all of that torture? I thought when I came back and everything lost – you were married, everything I owned was destroyed, Francie was dead – I thought that nothing could be worse than knowing that. Turns out, there is!” she claimed, fiery tears in her eyes.
“Look at me!” she demanded, tearing her hands free of his grasp and pulling her shirt up to reveal the scar. “They took my eggs from me, and everyone got to know that, and I got the pure joy of destroying them in front of my CIA team, while you got to go home to your beautiful wife. I got to go home to the fact that I just destroyed my ova. So there I was, bleeding for all of you. There I was, with everything I had to endure, but I was so strong, so I’d be fine, right? And any day now, I guess I will be. Because that’s what’s expected of me. But what I never expected was for you to make me feel the way you did.”
He was so overwhelmed with all he hadn’t known that he had to work to keep up with her.
“How was that?”
“How did you want me to respond when you came up to me after I came back? Did you think I was going to soothe you? I wish I hadn’t felt so damn guilty about what I said to you that day, because no matter how blunt or harsh I was, I was right on the mark. You were not there to know how I was. You wanted to be free of any guilt you might’ve felt.”
She was hard and bitter now, the heat of her anger touching him.
“Whatever card you held, I could match. However much you ached for me, you were not kept in a place where you couldn’t see the light of day. I know the kind of grief you went through for me. I’ve been through that kind too. It’s how we met. You found someone to bring you out of it though, however false she is now. She was exactly what brought you back to life then. She was the answer to your prayers. And you were never sorry.”
“I loved you.”
“I loved you too. Enough to let you make me be someone I hated. I had to step back so many times. You hurt me so badly. You were so protective of Lauren, like I was somehow out to harm her. I had a right to be angry with her when she turned me in. I nearly lost what was left of my mind because she was an idiot.”
He began to interrupt her but she cut him off.
“And yet I held her hand and pulled her up from the ground and thanked her for breaking me out of the place she put me in. And then you hurt me even more when you held her in your arms after I’d been tortured for days.”
“I never took her side in that area. I came to you and I got you out of the country and I refused to tell her anything. I yelled at her for betraying you. I made it damn clear I loved you.”
“You made it clear to me you still loved me too. Do you know what that felt like? After sharing that kind of moment with me to then see you run to her like nothing had happened? You knew I hadn’t experienced the two years you had! How could you do that to me?”
“I thought we were dying.”
“Oh, so if you don’t have to deal with the consequences, it’s easy to tell me what you feel!”
He was losing the fight badly. “I wanted you to know.”
“You tore me apart! The next time you tell your ex-girlfriend that you’re leaving your wife, you better be damn sure. I have never been that person before and I never want to be her again. I will never allow myself to be put in that role again, waiting by the phone for you. I have never let anyone degrade me like that.”
Her hands went to his arms, fingers digging, daring him to put up with the pain, to stay there holding her against the wall.
“Ask me how,” she said. “Ask me how I could have this in me. Get angry with me.”
God, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to scream at him, scream at the injustice of her life and his supporting role in it. She wanted to tear him to shreds over the sheer fact that she’d lose this battle, and he’d still walk away in the end with her, because he had her heart. She wanted him to take her abuse, take her pain, and endure even a sliver of what she’d felt.
The anger began to build loudly inside her and she began to tremble with it. He felt it clearly, and wanted to drench himself in her; to tear everything off of her and cover himself in her anger.
She saw the passion, and felt it, but feared she’ll make him bleed long before she’ll make him moan. She tore herself from the wall and from his grip.
“Get away from me,” she spat angrily.
He was faster though as she walked back towards her kitchen. He reached up to her shoulders and she heard her back hit the wall.
“No! You don’t get to walk away now.”
“Vaughn, I hate that all of this is inside me, but it’s here now, and I’m now past yelling at you to a point where I want to do physical damage, so would you please leave?”
“Don’t say please to me right now.”
“Then get out!”
“No, I want the anger, and I want to feel it on you.”
“I want you to feel it too, but not in the way you apparently want it.”
“Then hit me.”
“You make it sound like I could do it once and be fine, like after tonight I’ll be perfect. Are you perfect after what you’ve been through?”
He ripped her from the wall towards him, tired of her stalling.
“God damn it, Sydney, stop stalling and hit me.”
She was startled by him pulling her close, and her anger leaked out and her hand moved forward in pure violence, breaking his skin. She felt a layer of her hard fury being opened, beginning to release the anger. She was breathing heavily, finding a way. She couldn’t remember at that moment that she was supposed to feel guilty. She just craved the way out. And he was giving it to her. He broke through the thick layer that she couldn’t.
She reached up to touch the blood on his face. She captured a few beads of it in her fingers and looked at it, then looked up at him again, her eyes blazing the true pain and hatred with no hesitation or guilt. Like she was expecting him to stand there and take it for every time she withstood him walking back into another woman’s arms. And if he couldn’t, he was welcome to leave, but she wouldn’t apologize.
Not tonight.
One damn night, just one night let it be about her and her anger.
He encircled her wrist with his hand and pulled her towards him, the blood between them both.
“How does it feel?” she slithered. “How would it feel to have to look at yourself every day and only begin to guess the kind of horrors you’ve done that you can’t remember and then come to work every day, with a fake smile on your face? I was the one smiling at you, at Lauren, at Dixon, everyone, your biggest issue was that you had not one, but two women who still loved you.”
She snatched her hand free.
“I was something left on the side of the road, nothing. I had no memories, no idea where I was or how I got there. You had something to go home to. Maybe it was a lie, but it was there. I was on the side of a road, dumped out of a truck or a car probably, because they were done with me. And so were you, when she was done with you.”
That was what pulled the anger out of him, and he thrust forward, wanting to hurt her back. She let him pin her arms over her head, glad she could do it back to him. She felt the darkness come out of her at that moment.
“Doesn’t feel good, does it? Having the person in your life you love more than anything, pulsating against that one splinter inside you that for the life of you, you can’t rid yourself of. You beat my own pain against me for a year, and I was just left standing there, for all of you to pull at, judge, and bleed the gorram heart right out of me.”
Using his hands, he slid them over her shoulders and pulled her up to him so she was on her toes, glaring at her.
“Then pay me back,” he dared, before crushing her lips with his own.
Returning her arms to above her head, she fed hungrily on him, her tongue lapping up the trail of blood she left on the side of his face, trailing her wetness along the wound, tugging on the pain. Fastening her to the wall, he pushed her face upwards to attack her neck, sweeping her hair free of the path of his mouth. Her veins were throbbing in angst, fury, and desire, in that very order. She slipped one hand free to curl around the back of his neck as his mouth tasted and nipped at the skin of her collar bone, eliciting new goose bumps.
There was no love in this act. They both knew that. But that didn’t stop the pooling heat from flowing through both their bodies.
Her eyes were watching his mouth along her chest, but he switched the dance when he scooped up her mouth, swallowing her in the probing kiss. His hands dove into her hair, enveloping her lower lip into his mouth while her fingers crawled up his back, drawing him closer. The battle for dominance became apparent when she broke from the kiss harshly, the audible noise of the separation loud and clear as she moved from him, never wanting him to have more than a taste of her.
She stopped and they stared at each other, her burning eyes only inches away from his as he closed the space between them, but she was fast and moved ahead, not letting him catch up.
Reaching her bedroom, his ambition drove him to grab her and shove her face forward against her own wall and they both struggled to regain their breath. Smashed against the wall, she felt his hand slide forward to her stomach. He separated the pieces of her shirt, sliding his hand down her trembling skin.
“I need to touch you there,” he whispered, and there was not much she could do about it.
She played the game with him, letting him slip his fingers beneath her underwear, and down into her soft folds. She turned her face more successfully to the side, enjoying the cool surface of the wall. His fingers curled around her and he squeezed gently at first, then more abruptly as he slipped one finger in, and her body clenched, her nails digging into the wall.
After her first shockwave of pleasure, she felt infuriated by the imbalance of power, and she managed to catch him off guard with one hand flooding over her stomach and the other touching her much lower. She grabbed him from behind and stopped him, turning around to face him. He reached forward, tearing the shirt from her shoulders and throwing it to the floor.
Though there was a bed in the room, he grabbed her once more, driving her down to the floor instead. She reached for his shirt and yanked it from him, climbing over him, entwining herself around him in a black bra and black pants. They rolled together, kissing deeply, and she drank the touch of his hands along her back, the weight of her own body over his. In the midst of the kissing, she felt him unhook her bra, and then he rolled her beneath him so he could remove it without discomfort. She worked away the belt of his pants, the rest of their garments being shoved away in a distant corner of the dim room.
As they dove for one another, he felt the anger on her hot, moist skin as he slid against it. She bent her knees and parted her legs slightly, feeling him take up her wetness on his fingers and spread it over her. He touched her almost painfully, but she liked it that way. She liked it intense, slightly painful, not the tenderness of their last time. He was sucking on her, thrusting his tongue into her as she thrashed her head back, closing her eyes as the glitter burst behind her eyelids.
Slipping fingers in and out of her, he licked and kissed his way back up her body, feeling her part her thighs, and drove swiftly into her, holding her arms back by her sides. She tilted her head back, arching her body, guiding him deeper. She broke her arms free, wrapping one around his back, guiding his throbbing muscles closer to her. She licked and nipped at his shoulders, leaving visible marks along his skin, tasting him as he continued to slam into her, his breath hot against her neck.
She pulled him closer, her hand slipping between them to feel the muscles on his chest. She wrapped her legs around his hips in a deathlike grip, as he sunk his frantic body further into her.
In her throws she bit into his tattoo, drawing blood, which she lapped up immediately with her tongue, licking wildly. She was hungry as his body manipulated hers, mutating it into this heaving person who was replying to him, quickening her pace to match his in a matrix of needs. She raked her nails along his back while his mouth played along her face, walking along her jaw.
He wanted her to look at him, but she denied him. She knew he wanted her to make some form of contact, even an angry one, but she didn’t give him that. She kept her eyes closed and impassioned, knowing she was hurting him in the process. He forced a kiss, a deep kiss that she wanted to turn away from as he used all his strength to penetrate her one last time. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, needing the taste, riding out her spasms as he climaxed into her.
Waiting out each other’s orgasms, he never released his hold on her throat, but the kiss became slightly less invasive and somewhat more caressing. The exhaustion in them both made them give up the fight and Sydney’s arms rest at her side. She allowed herself to be kissed by him, moaning into his mouth as the last sparks subsided from inside her.
They laid beside each other, awaiting their breathing to return to normal, and he waited for her to speak.
Eventually, she said, “Still taking it slow, Vaughn. It took you time to heal, it’ll take me time. I realized tonight, I had a right to feel the way I do, and I can stop hating myself for it.”
“You never should’ve hated yourself. You didn’t tell me anything that wasn’t true.”
“Shhh,” she whispered. “I’m tired, you’re tired. We can fight again tomorrow if we have to. For now, let’s just lie here.”
“Okay.”
That was enough. That was more than enough. The love was there; it had always been there. The anger wasn’t over; this was only a start. All wasn’t forgiven, all wasn’t healed, but her hardened pain was cracked open, and was now spilling from her, like a virus leaving her body.
And for him, it was enough.
~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~
Hope you liked it! I just felt Sydney was really cheated in Season 3 and Season 4 and that she had a right to say these things and I enjoyed writing this piece, and giving Sydney the characterization JJ wouldn’t.
And what’s wrong with a little NC-17! Not a damn thing!The title is from a line in Mariah Carey’s “Looking In”, a fantastic, deep song, and the line for all of them to bleed refers in the song to the same thing it refers to in the fic. Sydney standing there, her life destroyed in front of her, everyone knowing about it and she’s just there open, naked, for everyone to look at her and tear into her with their eyes. She’s there for all of them to bleed because they all know what she’s been through. She has no privacy. It was powerful for me to write her. Thank you.
Completed: February 4th, 2005
