SkyGirl5
Cadet
:hi:
i dont think i've posted this... i have a funny feeling like i have though, but then again i could just be losing my mind and i just woke up, too :lol:
This is Goodbye
Genre: angsty s/v
Summary: post s2 but AU. Vaughn has a wife (who isnt Lauren!); he's miserable. Syd won't talk to him; she's miserable.
no time to send out PMs; perhaps later
Michael Vaughn opened up his refrigerator and peered down into it for a few minutes, carefully scrutinizing his choices. He scanned the shelves full of fresh fruits and vegetables, the container holding last night’s leftover spaghetti, and various unrecognizable items that should have been thrown out weeks earlier, only to realize that nothing appealed to him. Even if he could have had something not in his fridge, he was unsure what that would have been. It seemed his apathy towards life had continued over into food as well. Grabbing a beer from the bottom shelf, he shut the fridge door. It seemed the only thing he could decide upon lately was what beverage to drink and that beverage was almost always a Budweiser from the bottom shelf.
Perhaps apathy towards life was not exactly the best choice of words. Apathy implied he did not care. The problem was he did care – too much in fact. He cared so much that he did not even know what to do with himself. He was trapped in an impossible situation, not wanting to hurt any of the people he cared about, but guaranteed to break all their hearts, just like he was breaking his own.
Almost two years earlier, his entire life had been flipped upside down with the death of Sydney Bristow, the woman he loved. Suddenly, he was not working towards that goal of the white picket fence surrounding the brick house with the black shutters and the swing set in the back yard. That goal involved Sydney being in the kitchen, attempting to wave the smoke from a wayward cooking incident away from the smoke alarm while their two kids, one boy and one girl, argued over their newest toy. That goal was only a wistful dream, never to come true.
He mourned Sydney’s loss like one would mourn a spouse, because when she left him, that’s what he felt he lost. With his friends, Weiss, Dixon, Marshall and even shockingly, Jack, Vaughn was able to pull himself out of his depression funk. He left the agency and used his linguistics skills to be a high school French teacher, one of those ‘normal’ jobs he and Sydney always laughed at.
A little over a year after her death, Eric began harping on him to move on and go out on a date. Vaughn refused, stating it was too soon; the wound was still wide open. Eric, being Eric, persisted to the point where Vaughn was convinced that had Eric begun another conversation with “Hey, so there’s this chick…,” he was going to punch him in the face. In an effort to calm his anger he agreed to one date – one date, that was all, just to get Eric off his back. Unfortunately for Vaughn, that one date Eric set him up on happened to be with Sarah McAlister.
Sarah was not nearly as beautiful as Sydney (at least in Vaughn’s opinion, though she was obviously good looking) not as tall either. Her smile was not dimpled and her hair was not brown either, it was blonde. The first time Vaughn saw her, it was from a distance, all the way across the restaurant. He laughed to himself, thinking about how he was going to breeze through their coffee date together by playing the sympathetic not-quite-widower card. He could not have been more wrong. One look into Sarah’s crystal blue lake eyes and he was a goner.
Three hours later he realized that he and Sarah were still talking about nothing and yet everything. They made plans for a second date before parting and Vaughn kicked himself the whole way home, knowing he would have to face Eric’s cocky grin when he got there. On his second date with Sarah, Vaughn laid it all out. He told her about his serious relationship with a woman named Sydney, whom he believed to be his soul mate, and how she had died tragically in a house fire fourteen months earlier. Sarah was sympathetic and understood why he just wanted to be friends at first; they could move as slowly as he needed, she told him.
Vaughn’s version of slowly was something Eric still mocked him for to that day. After only two months of dating Sarah, they moved in together. Another two months and they were engaged; two months after that they were married.
Vaughn could not exactly explain or rationalize his attraction to Sarah any more than he could his deep love for Sydney. The only thing he knew was that Sarah was exactly the kind of woman he would have been looking for, had Sydney Bristow not existed in his life, that was. She loved kids, she loved hockey, she spoke French, she could cook better than his mother, and she was the sweetest person he had ever met. Their marriage wasn’t perfect; it never could be, considering that the fact that Vaughn would have preferred Sydney as his wife, and they both knew it. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good for both of them. For two months, things went smoothly, and then they got the call.
Sydney Bristow showing up alive and (relatively) well rocked everyone’s world, but most of all Vaughn’s. There she was - hurting, confused, lost, scared – yet he couldn’t touch her; he couldn’t have her. That killed him.
Sarah understood why Vaughn needed to help Sydney and try to be in her life; she encouraged him to do so. She knew that Vaughn could not stay away from Sydney; it was impossible for him. Unfortunately, Vaughn was completely oblivious to this concept and killing himself in the process.
For the first few days, he tried to help her, but she only pushed him away, knowing that he’d married another woman. Vaughn beat himself up daily about his decision to marry Sarah and, even more so than that, his decision to leave the CIA and stop the search for Sydney even when her father persisted that something was still amiss about the way she died. Fighting his inner demons, Vaughn began pushing everyone else away just as Sydney was pushing him away. He didn’t know how to live in his own life anymore, so he simply stopped living it.
“Michael,” Sarah’s soft voice filtered to his ears just as he was about to drink from the bottle in his hands. He grunted in response to her before taking a sip. “Come ‘ere, we need to talk a second,” she said.
“I’m really not-”
“Michael,” Sarah said in her sternest voice, “Please.”
Sighing, Vaughn walked over to her and the two of them sat across from each other at their kitchen table. “We’ve been avoiding this subject for two months now, and it’s not getting any better with time,” she began.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Vaughn said defiantly.
“That’s okay,” Sarah said. “You don’t have to talk; just listen. Michael… things aren’t okay between us. They haven’t been okay between us since you got that phone call two months ago and I know… I know it’s been crazy. I know you’ve been freaking out and I absolutely cannot blame you for that because if the situation was reversed I’d be freaking out too; anyone would.
“You’re a good man, Michael Vaughn, you don’t want to hurt anyone, but you are. You’re hurting me, you’re hurting her and you’re hurting yourself. The thing is… right now, you’re in two relationships-”
“No I’m not,” Vaughn cut her off. “I’m in this relationship.”
Sarah shook her head solemnly. “No, Michael, you’re not. You’re here, but you’re not here. You walk around the house, but you’re not here. You talk to me, but you don’t say anything. You kiss me, but you don’t feel anything. What you need is closure. You need closure with Sydney; you need to end things with Sydney. Then, we can start working on us,” she told him.
Vaughn’s brow furrowed at her. “What are you saying?” he asked with confusion.
“I’m saying that you need to go and do whatever you need to do to say goodbye to Sydney. The two of you never got your goodbye, so I’m giving it to you,” Sarah said. Noting that Vaughn still looked utterly lost, she continued very slowly, her voice shockingly even. “I want you to go to Sydney’s house and I want the two of you to say your goodbyes. You can stay ten minutes, you can stay the whole night – I don’t care. All I care about is that when you come back to this house, whatever the two of you had is over, and you’re ready to work on us and our marriage.”
Vaughn sighed heavily and rubbed his fingers over his brow before pinching the bridge of his nose. It was bad enough that he was insane, now his wife had lost it as well. “Sarah, I can’t do that.”
“Yes you can,” she told him. “I want you to; I want you to go… just…just don’t tell me what happens. I don’t care and I certainly don’t want to know. As long as I know that it’s over, that’ll be enough,” she said.
Vaughn looked at his wife with an almost graven expression. “Sarah I don’t need to-”
“Yes you do,” she said. She got up from the table and walked into the master bedroom of their one story home. A moment later, she returned with his wallet and car keys. She took the beer from him and handed the other two items to him. “Go,” she instructed.
“Sarah I really don’t think-”
“Damn it Michael would you just go!” she said, that time raising her voice to him. Vaughn looked at her slightly shocked; she almost never yelled at him or anyone. “GO,” she repeated firmly. Sighing, Vaughn got out of the chair he was sitting in and walked towards the door, not exactly sure what he was going to say to Sydney when he arrived at her house, that is, if she even opened the door to see him.
~*~
“Vaughn…what are you doing here?” Sydney asked. She only opened her front door enough to poke her head out, no further. She looked as surprise to see him as he was surprised to be there.
“Can I come in? I…we need to talk about something,” he said. Sydney hesitated for a moment before opening her door slowly and allowing Vaughn to step in out of the cooling night air. She shut the door behind him and led the way into her sitting room. “This is nice,” Vaughn commented upon seeing her house for the first time.
“Yeah it’s okay,” she said, sitting down on the far end of the couch with her arms tucked tightly around her body. “What do you want Vaughn?”
“Sarah told me to come here,” he said.
“Sarah?” Sydney questioned with confusion.
“Yeah…my, uh, wife,” he said in a quiet almost whisper voice.
Sydney swallowed hard as the knife in her heart twisted like it did every time she heard the term ‘wife’ coming from him. “I know who Sarah is, Vaughn,” she said almost sharply. How could she possibly have forgotten the woman who took away the man she loved? “I was just curious as to why she sent you.”
“She says we need to say goodbye… if we don’t say goodbye, if we don’t get closure… if we don’t…well, things will just go on like they are and I don’t want that, because, quite frankly, things suck,” he told her. Sydney nodded slightly, unable to argue with that point. “Sarah says that…that we need to say goodbye and…and I can’t leave until we do… even if it takes all night,” he said rather cautiously. Sydney shot him a death glare. “I’m just repeating what she said,” Vaughn defended himself quickly.
They were silent for a few minutes before Sydney got off the couch and began pacing around the room, shaking her head as she did so. “I can’t…I… can’t,” she muttered sounding rather tearful.
Vaughn slid forward in his seat, resting his forearms against his knees. “Can’t what?”
“I can’t… I can’t say goodbye to you Vaughn… I don’t know if I can… I don’t know if… I don’t know if I can live a life with you completely cut out of it,” she told him honestly. Even though they hadn’t really spoken in two months mostly because she was pushing him away, Sydney knew that if she really, truly needed Vaughn, he would be there for her. If they said goodbye, though, he wouldn’t be.
“No one’s saying that, Sydney. We can still be friends…,” he said, though his tone was slightly uncertain.
Sydney let out a bitter laugh as she sniffed back some tears. “Please tell me you’re not that naïve Vaughn.”
“We… we’ll still see each other,” he told her. Sydney gave him a look. “We will! When…. When Weiss has barbeques!”
Sydney shook her head as a tear rolled down her cheek. She quickly brushed it away as she imagined the sight of the two of them bumping into each other while getting burgers in Weiss’s back yard. They would smile and say awkward hellos, asking without meaning how the other was doing. Then, they would part, and Vaughn would go back to his wife and child, probably, and she would stand there alone, her heart breaking at the thought of what could have been. “No… no I don’t want us to turn into those kind of people”
“What kind of people?” Vaughn asked, confused.
“The kind of people that you went to high school with… the ones you pretended to like but you secretly curse their very existence and then… then you run into them at the grocery store or at the mall and you have awkward conversation for ten minutes, gloating about yourself and how great your life is and then… and then…when you walk away you laugh at the them behind their back because they got fat or old looking or something and you secretly hope you never see them again,” she said.
“We would never be that way,” Vaughn said adamantly. Sydney said nothing.
They were silent for a full seven minutes before Vaughn finally admitted, “I don’t know what to do.”
“Neither do I,” Sydney whispered.
Slowly, he looked up to her and saw her constantly brushing the tears off her cheeks. “I…I want to hug you,” he said.
“Okay,” she agreed, though she sounded unsure. Slowly, Vaughn got off the couch. He walked cautiously around the coffee table separating them and pulled Sydney gently into his arms. She tucked her head into his neck and they held each other there tightly, both of them reveling in something they knew they could never have again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find you,” Vaughn told her quietly.
Sydney shook her head gently against his. “It’s not your fault… you didn’t know; you had no way of knowing…I shouldn’t have yelled at you like I did. I can’t blame you for moving on. It was over a year and… and you deserved to have someone to share your life with.”
Vaughn pulled back and looked into her deep chocolate brown eyes that were bloodshot and were still welling with tears. No longer did those eyes sparkle with mystery and love -- they were sad, so sad and broken, that his heart fell to pieces just looking at them. “So this really is goodbye then…isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said quietly.
Vaughn leaned his face back up against Sydney’s and pressed a gentle kiss onto her moist, tear stained cheek. Then, he moved his lips to her forehead where he gave her a longer kiss. “I love you Sydney,” he whispered to her. “I’ll always love you.”
She nodded against his lips, tears flowing freely down her cheeks once more. “I’ll always love you, t-too,” she said with a slight hiccupped sob at the end.
Vaughn pulled himself a comfortable distance away from her, but left his fingertips on her cheeks, brushing away the tears rolling down them. “You look tired,” he said quietly, noting the dark circles under her eyes. “You should get some sleep.”
“Will…will you stay with me a little while?” she asked in the timid voice of a small child. Vaughn had never heard that tone from her before and, though it scared him, he could not deny her (or himself) the request.
“Sure,” he said quietly. “Can I use your bathroom, though?” he asked. She nodded and directed him down the hall.
Standing in front of the mirror, Vaughn refused to meet his reflection as he washed his hands in the cold sink water. He stared down at his fingers as they slowly turned from soapy to clean and the gold band of his wedding ring caught his eye. Slowly, he pulled his hands from the water and, after drying them on the nearby towel, held them in front of him. He stared at his wedding ring for he wasn’t quite sure how long, before removing it and slipping it into his pants pocket. He wasn’t sure how the rest of his evening with Sydney was going to play out, but however it did, that ring was not going to be a part of it.
When Vaughn emerged from the bathroom, he looked down the hall to his left and saw into Sydney’s bedroom. She was leaning over her bed, arranging the pillows and blankets on it. To his surprise, she was taking the tags off some of the pillows. Confused he asked, “Haven’t you lived here for like… six weeks now?”
“Oh…yeah, but I haven’t slept in the bed yet,” she admitted rather shyly. He looked at her with even more confusion. “I… well, I don’t sleep much at all but usually I just crash down on the couch for a few hours…,” she let her voice drift off with a slight shrug.
“Tonight you’re going to sleep,” he told her with a slight smile. She gave him a slight smile in return, just big enough to give him a momentary peek at her dimples, before they vanished and she slid into her side of the bed. Vaughn walked around to his typical side, but purposely stayed on top of the covers feeling that was more appropriate given their situation. He did tuck one of his arms around her, though, which caused her to roll back into his embrace. The two of them didn’t speak again; they merely floated off into sleep on their own little cloud, forgetting anyone else existed in the universe besides the two of them and not even caring that they did so.
~*~
“Are you awake?” Sydney whispered softly. It was the middle of the night – two fifteen am to be exact – but she was lying awake listening to Vaughn’s breathing beside her. In her mind, she was arguing back and forth about whether or not enjoying their goodbye would end up hurting worse in the end. She heard Vaughn’s breathing change and figured that he had momentarily woken up. She was correct in this assumption because after she spoke, he grunted at her. Vaughn was never a fan of talking in the middle of the night; rarely would he utter more than a grunt, a grumble, or a loud sigh.
“Okay,” she sighed. Then, as she rolled over to face the center of the bed, her bottom lip began to tremble as tears flowed out once more.
“What’s the matter?” Vaughn asked when he heard her sniffs indicating tears weren’t far behind.
“I don’t want to miss you,” she choked out. “I don’t… I can’t…”
“Shh, shh, I’m right here,” he told her softly. “I’m…right…here,” he said, his face nearing hers with each word he spoke. What started out as a gentle kiss quickly grew into heated passion, where only the necessary items of clothing were removed before a rushed love making session.
In the end, Sydney was left still crying and trembling in Vaughn’s arms while she, the initiator of the kiss repeated, “I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he told her softly. Truthfully, it was only the barrier of the sheets between them that was stopping him from initiating a connection between them. Carefully, Vaughn reached over Sydney and turned on the lamp beside her bed so that he could look her in the eye. Though neither of them spoke a word, both exchanged the same sentiments. If that was goodbye, they were going to make it right; make the memories last a lifetime.
~*~
When morning came and a soft light filtered through the blinds in Sydney’s room, Vaughn awoke. It was still early, barely after seven o’clock, but he opened his eyes with a heavy heart, knowing it was only a matter of minutes before he had to leave Sydney forever. He turned his head to the side so that he could look down at her. She was sleeping with half her body on top of his, but with her head on her own pillow. When he looked at her and saw her still-tear stained cheeks, he noticed that there was a soft smile on her lips. The smile was hardly visible at all and probably someone who didn’t know her as well as he did would not have seen it at all, but he saw it. He saw her smiling and saw her sleeping beside him, sleeping for the first time in months, and all of a sudden he started crying.
He had cried when he saw her charred, smoldering house for the first time and he had shed a few tears at her funeral, but for the most part he had been numb. He never was able to flood out all his pent up feelings of heartbreak, fear, loneliness, sadness and regret. At least, not until then. He cried so hard that he ended up waking Sydney, who opened her eyes in total shock. “Vaughn,” she said, her voice hoarse still from her tears and from sleeping, “what’s wrong?”
He did not answer her. He merely buried his face down into the pillow he was laying on until his tears ceased. He then looked over to her with one eye cautiously and saw that she looked concerned, which only made him feel like crying even more. She wasn’t supposed to be concerned for him. He wasn’t the one who lost two years of his life and had no idea what had happened in that time. He wasn’t the one who’d come back to find everything he knew and loved different and gone.
“Vaughn,” she said softly, running her fingers through his hair.
“I…I don’t know how to say goodbye to you,” he told her quietly.
A soft smile crossed her face even though tears were burning in her eyes. “You already did,” she told him. Then she leaned over and kissed his forehead twice before rolling away from him and pulling the sheets all the way up to her chin. “Goodbye Vaughn,” she said quietly before shutting her eyes and letting two tears roll down her cheeks and onto her pillow.
Vaughn lay on his side of the bed for a minute, unmoving. He knew that he had to leave, but he just couldn’t make himself move. Finally, he sat up and began retrieving his clothes from beneath the covers, atop the covers and on the floor beside him. Once fully dressed, he stood beside the bed, just watching her with her eyes closed tightly and her hands folded across her chest. His heart ached to be with her, but his mind wasn’t so sure. The proper thing for him to do was to leave and go back to his wife. Though ‘proper’ did not exactly come into play in their situation, considering they had just committed adultery…twice.
He began backing his way towards the door, his eyes never leaving on her. When his hand came in contact with the door handle he turned it, but didn’t open the door. He stood there, breathing in and out as much as he could, daring himself to leave, but at the same time, daring himself to stay. His heart literally on the verge of exploding in his chest, he released the door handle and stepped back. “I can’t do it…I can’t… I can’t walk away,” he said as he turned back to Sydney.
She opened her eyes and looked over at him saying, “Vaughn, you have to.”
“No, no I don’t… I can’t…,” he said. He walked quickly to the edge of her bed and sat down beside her, resting his hands on either side of her arms. “Sydney I can’t… I can’t walk away from you… I don’t know how to do that. Getting over you was so impossible for me to do I’m still not over you and I doubt I ever could be. I learned to live without you but it wasn’t living because even though I was with Sarah I was still loving you like you were still here.
“Sydney I can’t walk away. We have a second chance to be happy and we have to take it,” he told her though his voice was trembling.
“But Sarah…,” Sydney croaked out.
“I know,” Vaughn sighed. “She’s a good person and she doesn’t deserve this… she also doesn’t deserve a loveless marriage either, which is what we have. I can’t go back to her and be happy… I can’t be happy without you. This is my choice – I have to make a choice – and I’m choosing you; I’ll always choose you,” he told her.
“Vaughn…,” Sydney choked out, though her voice was only a squeak.
Vaughn lowered his lips down to hers and gave her a sweet kiss. “Promise me one thing Sydney.”
“What?”
“That if I go home and ask Sarah for a divorce and then I come back here… you won’t blame yourself and you’ll give us the second chance we deserve because none of this is your fault,” he told her. She looked hesitant. “Promise me,” he repeated.
She nodded her head and shut her eyes, “I promise.” He smiled down at her and then with a gentle kiss on her forehead, he left, bound for home and probably the hardest conversation of his life.
~*~
When Vaughn walked into his house, it was eerily empty. He had expected Sarah to be waiting for him on the front doorstep, asking him if it was over between him and Sydney. The truth was it could never be over. He walked around their house, calling her name, but she was nowhere to be found. Atop the kitchen table, he spotted a piece of paper. He walked over to it slowly, picked it up and began to read.
Michael,
For the past ten months I’ve been competing for your attention. There’s been another woman in your life and I’ve been trying my damndest to have you see me, and not her. To be happy because of me and not sad because of her. To love me and not her. For a while, I thought it was working, but I don’t think it ever was. Competing with a ghost is hard enough, competing with the real thing is and would be impossible.
I love you Michael, but I wasn’t sure if you loved me. When you walked out the door tonight, I knew that you didn’t. I have no doubt that you care for me, you wouldn’t have married me if you didn’t, but you don’t love me like you love her. You could never love anyone the way you love her. That’s why I’m leaving. I’m letting you go, back to her, because that’s what you want. This is goodbye.
Sarah
i dont think i've posted this... i have a funny feeling like i have though, but then again i could just be losing my mind and i just woke up, too :lol:
This is Goodbye
Genre: angsty s/v
Summary: post s2 but AU. Vaughn has a wife (who isnt Lauren!); he's miserable. Syd won't talk to him; she's miserable.
no time to send out PMs; perhaps later
Michael Vaughn opened up his refrigerator and peered down into it for a few minutes, carefully scrutinizing his choices. He scanned the shelves full of fresh fruits and vegetables, the container holding last night’s leftover spaghetti, and various unrecognizable items that should have been thrown out weeks earlier, only to realize that nothing appealed to him. Even if he could have had something not in his fridge, he was unsure what that would have been. It seemed his apathy towards life had continued over into food as well. Grabbing a beer from the bottom shelf, he shut the fridge door. It seemed the only thing he could decide upon lately was what beverage to drink and that beverage was almost always a Budweiser from the bottom shelf.
Perhaps apathy towards life was not exactly the best choice of words. Apathy implied he did not care. The problem was he did care – too much in fact. He cared so much that he did not even know what to do with himself. He was trapped in an impossible situation, not wanting to hurt any of the people he cared about, but guaranteed to break all their hearts, just like he was breaking his own.
Almost two years earlier, his entire life had been flipped upside down with the death of Sydney Bristow, the woman he loved. Suddenly, he was not working towards that goal of the white picket fence surrounding the brick house with the black shutters and the swing set in the back yard. That goal involved Sydney being in the kitchen, attempting to wave the smoke from a wayward cooking incident away from the smoke alarm while their two kids, one boy and one girl, argued over their newest toy. That goal was only a wistful dream, never to come true.
He mourned Sydney’s loss like one would mourn a spouse, because when she left him, that’s what he felt he lost. With his friends, Weiss, Dixon, Marshall and even shockingly, Jack, Vaughn was able to pull himself out of his depression funk. He left the agency and used his linguistics skills to be a high school French teacher, one of those ‘normal’ jobs he and Sydney always laughed at.
A little over a year after her death, Eric began harping on him to move on and go out on a date. Vaughn refused, stating it was too soon; the wound was still wide open. Eric, being Eric, persisted to the point where Vaughn was convinced that had Eric begun another conversation with “Hey, so there’s this chick…,” he was going to punch him in the face. In an effort to calm his anger he agreed to one date – one date, that was all, just to get Eric off his back. Unfortunately for Vaughn, that one date Eric set him up on happened to be with Sarah McAlister.
Sarah was not nearly as beautiful as Sydney (at least in Vaughn’s opinion, though she was obviously good looking) not as tall either. Her smile was not dimpled and her hair was not brown either, it was blonde. The first time Vaughn saw her, it was from a distance, all the way across the restaurant. He laughed to himself, thinking about how he was going to breeze through their coffee date together by playing the sympathetic not-quite-widower card. He could not have been more wrong. One look into Sarah’s crystal blue lake eyes and he was a goner.
Three hours later he realized that he and Sarah were still talking about nothing and yet everything. They made plans for a second date before parting and Vaughn kicked himself the whole way home, knowing he would have to face Eric’s cocky grin when he got there. On his second date with Sarah, Vaughn laid it all out. He told her about his serious relationship with a woman named Sydney, whom he believed to be his soul mate, and how she had died tragically in a house fire fourteen months earlier. Sarah was sympathetic and understood why he just wanted to be friends at first; they could move as slowly as he needed, she told him.
Vaughn’s version of slowly was something Eric still mocked him for to that day. After only two months of dating Sarah, they moved in together. Another two months and they were engaged; two months after that they were married.
Vaughn could not exactly explain or rationalize his attraction to Sarah any more than he could his deep love for Sydney. The only thing he knew was that Sarah was exactly the kind of woman he would have been looking for, had Sydney Bristow not existed in his life, that was. She loved kids, she loved hockey, she spoke French, she could cook better than his mother, and she was the sweetest person he had ever met. Their marriage wasn’t perfect; it never could be, considering that the fact that Vaughn would have preferred Sydney as his wife, and they both knew it. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good for both of them. For two months, things went smoothly, and then they got the call.
Sydney Bristow showing up alive and (relatively) well rocked everyone’s world, but most of all Vaughn’s. There she was - hurting, confused, lost, scared – yet he couldn’t touch her; he couldn’t have her. That killed him.
Sarah understood why Vaughn needed to help Sydney and try to be in her life; she encouraged him to do so. She knew that Vaughn could not stay away from Sydney; it was impossible for him. Unfortunately, Vaughn was completely oblivious to this concept and killing himself in the process.
For the first few days, he tried to help her, but she only pushed him away, knowing that he’d married another woman. Vaughn beat himself up daily about his decision to marry Sarah and, even more so than that, his decision to leave the CIA and stop the search for Sydney even when her father persisted that something was still amiss about the way she died. Fighting his inner demons, Vaughn began pushing everyone else away just as Sydney was pushing him away. He didn’t know how to live in his own life anymore, so he simply stopped living it.
“Michael,” Sarah’s soft voice filtered to his ears just as he was about to drink from the bottle in his hands. He grunted in response to her before taking a sip. “Come ‘ere, we need to talk a second,” she said.
“I’m really not-”
“Michael,” Sarah said in her sternest voice, “Please.”
Sighing, Vaughn walked over to her and the two of them sat across from each other at their kitchen table. “We’ve been avoiding this subject for two months now, and it’s not getting any better with time,” she began.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Vaughn said defiantly.
“That’s okay,” Sarah said. “You don’t have to talk; just listen. Michael… things aren’t okay between us. They haven’t been okay between us since you got that phone call two months ago and I know… I know it’s been crazy. I know you’ve been freaking out and I absolutely cannot blame you for that because if the situation was reversed I’d be freaking out too; anyone would.
“You’re a good man, Michael Vaughn, you don’t want to hurt anyone, but you are. You’re hurting me, you’re hurting her and you’re hurting yourself. The thing is… right now, you’re in two relationships-”
“No I’m not,” Vaughn cut her off. “I’m in this relationship.”
Sarah shook her head solemnly. “No, Michael, you’re not. You’re here, but you’re not here. You walk around the house, but you’re not here. You talk to me, but you don’t say anything. You kiss me, but you don’t feel anything. What you need is closure. You need closure with Sydney; you need to end things with Sydney. Then, we can start working on us,” she told him.
Vaughn’s brow furrowed at her. “What are you saying?” he asked with confusion.
“I’m saying that you need to go and do whatever you need to do to say goodbye to Sydney. The two of you never got your goodbye, so I’m giving it to you,” Sarah said. Noting that Vaughn still looked utterly lost, she continued very slowly, her voice shockingly even. “I want you to go to Sydney’s house and I want the two of you to say your goodbyes. You can stay ten minutes, you can stay the whole night – I don’t care. All I care about is that when you come back to this house, whatever the two of you had is over, and you’re ready to work on us and our marriage.”
Vaughn sighed heavily and rubbed his fingers over his brow before pinching the bridge of his nose. It was bad enough that he was insane, now his wife had lost it as well. “Sarah, I can’t do that.”
“Yes you can,” she told him. “I want you to; I want you to go… just…just don’t tell me what happens. I don’t care and I certainly don’t want to know. As long as I know that it’s over, that’ll be enough,” she said.
Vaughn looked at his wife with an almost graven expression. “Sarah I don’t need to-”
“Yes you do,” she said. She got up from the table and walked into the master bedroom of their one story home. A moment later, she returned with his wallet and car keys. She took the beer from him and handed the other two items to him. “Go,” she instructed.
“Sarah I really don’t think-”
“Damn it Michael would you just go!” she said, that time raising her voice to him. Vaughn looked at her slightly shocked; she almost never yelled at him or anyone. “GO,” she repeated firmly. Sighing, Vaughn got out of the chair he was sitting in and walked towards the door, not exactly sure what he was going to say to Sydney when he arrived at her house, that is, if she even opened the door to see him.
~*~
“Vaughn…what are you doing here?” Sydney asked. She only opened her front door enough to poke her head out, no further. She looked as surprise to see him as he was surprised to be there.
“Can I come in? I…we need to talk about something,” he said. Sydney hesitated for a moment before opening her door slowly and allowing Vaughn to step in out of the cooling night air. She shut the door behind him and led the way into her sitting room. “This is nice,” Vaughn commented upon seeing her house for the first time.
“Yeah it’s okay,” she said, sitting down on the far end of the couch with her arms tucked tightly around her body. “What do you want Vaughn?”
“Sarah told me to come here,” he said.
“Sarah?” Sydney questioned with confusion.
“Yeah…my, uh, wife,” he said in a quiet almost whisper voice.
Sydney swallowed hard as the knife in her heart twisted like it did every time she heard the term ‘wife’ coming from him. “I know who Sarah is, Vaughn,” she said almost sharply. How could she possibly have forgotten the woman who took away the man she loved? “I was just curious as to why she sent you.”
“She says we need to say goodbye… if we don’t say goodbye, if we don’t get closure… if we don’t…well, things will just go on like they are and I don’t want that, because, quite frankly, things suck,” he told her. Sydney nodded slightly, unable to argue with that point. “Sarah says that…that we need to say goodbye and…and I can’t leave until we do… even if it takes all night,” he said rather cautiously. Sydney shot him a death glare. “I’m just repeating what she said,” Vaughn defended himself quickly.
They were silent for a few minutes before Sydney got off the couch and began pacing around the room, shaking her head as she did so. “I can’t…I… can’t,” she muttered sounding rather tearful.
Vaughn slid forward in his seat, resting his forearms against his knees. “Can’t what?”
“I can’t… I can’t say goodbye to you Vaughn… I don’t know if I can… I don’t know if… I don’t know if I can live a life with you completely cut out of it,” she told him honestly. Even though they hadn’t really spoken in two months mostly because she was pushing him away, Sydney knew that if she really, truly needed Vaughn, he would be there for her. If they said goodbye, though, he wouldn’t be.
“No one’s saying that, Sydney. We can still be friends…,” he said, though his tone was slightly uncertain.
Sydney let out a bitter laugh as she sniffed back some tears. “Please tell me you’re not that naïve Vaughn.”
“We… we’ll still see each other,” he told her. Sydney gave him a look. “We will! When…. When Weiss has barbeques!”
Sydney shook her head as a tear rolled down her cheek. She quickly brushed it away as she imagined the sight of the two of them bumping into each other while getting burgers in Weiss’s back yard. They would smile and say awkward hellos, asking without meaning how the other was doing. Then, they would part, and Vaughn would go back to his wife and child, probably, and she would stand there alone, her heart breaking at the thought of what could have been. “No… no I don’t want us to turn into those kind of people”
“What kind of people?” Vaughn asked, confused.
“The kind of people that you went to high school with… the ones you pretended to like but you secretly curse their very existence and then… then you run into them at the grocery store or at the mall and you have awkward conversation for ten minutes, gloating about yourself and how great your life is and then… and then…when you walk away you laugh at the them behind their back because they got fat or old looking or something and you secretly hope you never see them again,” she said.
“We would never be that way,” Vaughn said adamantly. Sydney said nothing.
They were silent for a full seven minutes before Vaughn finally admitted, “I don’t know what to do.”
“Neither do I,” Sydney whispered.
Slowly, he looked up to her and saw her constantly brushing the tears off her cheeks. “I…I want to hug you,” he said.
“Okay,” she agreed, though she sounded unsure. Slowly, Vaughn got off the couch. He walked cautiously around the coffee table separating them and pulled Sydney gently into his arms. She tucked her head into his neck and they held each other there tightly, both of them reveling in something they knew they could never have again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find you,” Vaughn told her quietly.
Sydney shook her head gently against his. “It’s not your fault… you didn’t know; you had no way of knowing…I shouldn’t have yelled at you like I did. I can’t blame you for moving on. It was over a year and… and you deserved to have someone to share your life with.”
Vaughn pulled back and looked into her deep chocolate brown eyes that were bloodshot and were still welling with tears. No longer did those eyes sparkle with mystery and love -- they were sad, so sad and broken, that his heart fell to pieces just looking at them. “So this really is goodbye then…isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said quietly.
Vaughn leaned his face back up against Sydney’s and pressed a gentle kiss onto her moist, tear stained cheek. Then, he moved his lips to her forehead where he gave her a longer kiss. “I love you Sydney,” he whispered to her. “I’ll always love you.”
She nodded against his lips, tears flowing freely down her cheeks once more. “I’ll always love you, t-too,” she said with a slight hiccupped sob at the end.
Vaughn pulled himself a comfortable distance away from her, but left his fingertips on her cheeks, brushing away the tears rolling down them. “You look tired,” he said quietly, noting the dark circles under her eyes. “You should get some sleep.”
“Will…will you stay with me a little while?” she asked in the timid voice of a small child. Vaughn had never heard that tone from her before and, though it scared him, he could not deny her (or himself) the request.
“Sure,” he said quietly. “Can I use your bathroom, though?” he asked. She nodded and directed him down the hall.
Standing in front of the mirror, Vaughn refused to meet his reflection as he washed his hands in the cold sink water. He stared down at his fingers as they slowly turned from soapy to clean and the gold band of his wedding ring caught his eye. Slowly, he pulled his hands from the water and, after drying them on the nearby towel, held them in front of him. He stared at his wedding ring for he wasn’t quite sure how long, before removing it and slipping it into his pants pocket. He wasn’t sure how the rest of his evening with Sydney was going to play out, but however it did, that ring was not going to be a part of it.
When Vaughn emerged from the bathroom, he looked down the hall to his left and saw into Sydney’s bedroom. She was leaning over her bed, arranging the pillows and blankets on it. To his surprise, she was taking the tags off some of the pillows. Confused he asked, “Haven’t you lived here for like… six weeks now?”
“Oh…yeah, but I haven’t slept in the bed yet,” she admitted rather shyly. He looked at her with even more confusion. “I… well, I don’t sleep much at all but usually I just crash down on the couch for a few hours…,” she let her voice drift off with a slight shrug.
“Tonight you’re going to sleep,” he told her with a slight smile. She gave him a slight smile in return, just big enough to give him a momentary peek at her dimples, before they vanished and she slid into her side of the bed. Vaughn walked around to his typical side, but purposely stayed on top of the covers feeling that was more appropriate given their situation. He did tuck one of his arms around her, though, which caused her to roll back into his embrace. The two of them didn’t speak again; they merely floated off into sleep on their own little cloud, forgetting anyone else existed in the universe besides the two of them and not even caring that they did so.
~*~
“Are you awake?” Sydney whispered softly. It was the middle of the night – two fifteen am to be exact – but she was lying awake listening to Vaughn’s breathing beside her. In her mind, she was arguing back and forth about whether or not enjoying their goodbye would end up hurting worse in the end. She heard Vaughn’s breathing change and figured that he had momentarily woken up. She was correct in this assumption because after she spoke, he grunted at her. Vaughn was never a fan of talking in the middle of the night; rarely would he utter more than a grunt, a grumble, or a loud sigh.
“Okay,” she sighed. Then, as she rolled over to face the center of the bed, her bottom lip began to tremble as tears flowed out once more.
“What’s the matter?” Vaughn asked when he heard her sniffs indicating tears weren’t far behind.
“I don’t want to miss you,” she choked out. “I don’t… I can’t…”
“Shh, shh, I’m right here,” he told her softly. “I’m…right…here,” he said, his face nearing hers with each word he spoke. What started out as a gentle kiss quickly grew into heated passion, where only the necessary items of clothing were removed before a rushed love making session.
In the end, Sydney was left still crying and trembling in Vaughn’s arms while she, the initiator of the kiss repeated, “I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he told her softly. Truthfully, it was only the barrier of the sheets between them that was stopping him from initiating a connection between them. Carefully, Vaughn reached over Sydney and turned on the lamp beside her bed so that he could look her in the eye. Though neither of them spoke a word, both exchanged the same sentiments. If that was goodbye, they were going to make it right; make the memories last a lifetime.
~*~
When morning came and a soft light filtered through the blinds in Sydney’s room, Vaughn awoke. It was still early, barely after seven o’clock, but he opened his eyes with a heavy heart, knowing it was only a matter of minutes before he had to leave Sydney forever. He turned his head to the side so that he could look down at her. She was sleeping with half her body on top of his, but with her head on her own pillow. When he looked at her and saw her still-tear stained cheeks, he noticed that there was a soft smile on her lips. The smile was hardly visible at all and probably someone who didn’t know her as well as he did would not have seen it at all, but he saw it. He saw her smiling and saw her sleeping beside him, sleeping for the first time in months, and all of a sudden he started crying.
He had cried when he saw her charred, smoldering house for the first time and he had shed a few tears at her funeral, but for the most part he had been numb. He never was able to flood out all his pent up feelings of heartbreak, fear, loneliness, sadness and regret. At least, not until then. He cried so hard that he ended up waking Sydney, who opened her eyes in total shock. “Vaughn,” she said, her voice hoarse still from her tears and from sleeping, “what’s wrong?”
He did not answer her. He merely buried his face down into the pillow he was laying on until his tears ceased. He then looked over to her with one eye cautiously and saw that she looked concerned, which only made him feel like crying even more. She wasn’t supposed to be concerned for him. He wasn’t the one who lost two years of his life and had no idea what had happened in that time. He wasn’t the one who’d come back to find everything he knew and loved different and gone.
“Vaughn,” she said softly, running her fingers through his hair.
“I…I don’t know how to say goodbye to you,” he told her quietly.
A soft smile crossed her face even though tears were burning in her eyes. “You already did,” she told him. Then she leaned over and kissed his forehead twice before rolling away from him and pulling the sheets all the way up to her chin. “Goodbye Vaughn,” she said quietly before shutting her eyes and letting two tears roll down her cheeks and onto her pillow.
Vaughn lay on his side of the bed for a minute, unmoving. He knew that he had to leave, but he just couldn’t make himself move. Finally, he sat up and began retrieving his clothes from beneath the covers, atop the covers and on the floor beside him. Once fully dressed, he stood beside the bed, just watching her with her eyes closed tightly and her hands folded across her chest. His heart ached to be with her, but his mind wasn’t so sure. The proper thing for him to do was to leave and go back to his wife. Though ‘proper’ did not exactly come into play in their situation, considering they had just committed adultery…twice.
He began backing his way towards the door, his eyes never leaving on her. When his hand came in contact with the door handle he turned it, but didn’t open the door. He stood there, breathing in and out as much as he could, daring himself to leave, but at the same time, daring himself to stay. His heart literally on the verge of exploding in his chest, he released the door handle and stepped back. “I can’t do it…I can’t… I can’t walk away,” he said as he turned back to Sydney.
She opened her eyes and looked over at him saying, “Vaughn, you have to.”
“No, no I don’t… I can’t…,” he said. He walked quickly to the edge of her bed and sat down beside her, resting his hands on either side of her arms. “Sydney I can’t… I can’t walk away from you… I don’t know how to do that. Getting over you was so impossible for me to do I’m still not over you and I doubt I ever could be. I learned to live without you but it wasn’t living because even though I was with Sarah I was still loving you like you were still here.
“Sydney I can’t walk away. We have a second chance to be happy and we have to take it,” he told her though his voice was trembling.
“But Sarah…,” Sydney croaked out.
“I know,” Vaughn sighed. “She’s a good person and she doesn’t deserve this… she also doesn’t deserve a loveless marriage either, which is what we have. I can’t go back to her and be happy… I can’t be happy without you. This is my choice – I have to make a choice – and I’m choosing you; I’ll always choose you,” he told her.
“Vaughn…,” Sydney choked out, though her voice was only a squeak.
Vaughn lowered his lips down to hers and gave her a sweet kiss. “Promise me one thing Sydney.”
“What?”
“That if I go home and ask Sarah for a divorce and then I come back here… you won’t blame yourself and you’ll give us the second chance we deserve because none of this is your fault,” he told her. She looked hesitant. “Promise me,” he repeated.
She nodded her head and shut her eyes, “I promise.” He smiled down at her and then with a gentle kiss on her forehead, he left, bound for home and probably the hardest conversation of his life.
~*~
When Vaughn walked into his house, it was eerily empty. He had expected Sarah to be waiting for him on the front doorstep, asking him if it was over between him and Sydney. The truth was it could never be over. He walked around their house, calling her name, but she was nowhere to be found. Atop the kitchen table, he spotted a piece of paper. He walked over to it slowly, picked it up and began to read.
Michael,
For the past ten months I’ve been competing for your attention. There’s been another woman in your life and I’ve been trying my damndest to have you see me, and not her. To be happy because of me and not sad because of her. To love me and not her. For a while, I thought it was working, but I don’t think it ever was. Competing with a ghost is hard enough, competing with the real thing is and would be impossible.
I love you Michael, but I wasn’t sure if you loved me. When you walked out the door tonight, I knew that you didn’t. I have no doubt that you care for me, you wouldn’t have married me if you didn’t, but you don’t love me like you love her. You could never love anyone the way you love her. That’s why I’m leaving. I’m letting you go, back to her, because that’s what you want. This is goodbye.
Sarah
You overworked yourself there!!!!!!!!!! WOW 
