COMING UP FOR AIR

Disclaimer: JJ, the rights are solely in your possession. I am but a flicker of light bouncing off the brilliance that is you (Of course if you kill off Vaughn I will hunt you down and make you scream like Will Tippin.)

Author's Note: I plan on creating a series that will run throughout the summer. I apologize to those who have read my prior work. I neglected to tie up some loose ends because it became difficult for me after the "true" storyline began shifting. With this series and the summer hiatus, I think I will have plenty of time to do some world building. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Rating: This Chapter is rated PG. Future chapters may be labeled anywhere from PG to NC-17.

Achieve: Feel free but please let me know where I can find it.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-


CHAPTER ONE:
FAMILY BUSINESS

Will Tippin hurried in the footsteps of Jack Bristow. The alley was dark and damp and every shadowy corner held promise of more unspeakable terror. "Where are we going?"

Jack barely glanced back as he spoke. "Sydney didn't report in. Something's gone wrong."

"Do you know where to find her?" Will asked.

"No."

"Then where are where are we going?"

Jack halted in his tracks and Will came inches from bulldozing into him. "Sydney risked everything for you tonight. She may already be considered a traitor to her country. Not to mention her life is in jeopardy. We're going into the lion's den."

Will's eyes widened. "Going back? We can't go back! Do you have any idea what that madman did to me?"

Jack stared him down, his patience running thin. "What happened to you this evening was unfortunate, but for people like us it's just an unfortunate fringe benefit of the job. Next time you see Sydney, ask her how she enjoyed your friend the dentist. He extracted a molar for her last year."

Will's mouth dropped open in disbelief. Sydney had endured the same torture. Not only that but there had likely been many other excruciating moments in her past. For that matter, she could be suffering at the hands of another right now. "Lead the way."

Jack barely nodded, turned on his heel and walked briskly away with Will in tow.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

"I'm sorry we had to meet like this, Sydney." Irina said, approaching her slowly. "It's been a long time."

Sydney could barely look at her. It was painful to rest eyes on a woman who could be responsible for such horror. Her mind reeled with all the evil that had been attributed to "The Man."

"You know about the prophecy," Syd whispered.

Irina nodded, bending down to Sydney's level. "I'm sorry that they mistook you for me. At least you got to see the mountain. I've heard it's beautiful. Of course, I've never been."

"Why?" It was a simple question, but there were a thousand nuances to it. Why did you leave me? Why didn't you love me? Why did you hurt dad? Why did you send Noah? Why did you kidnap Will? Why are you bent on destroying everything I love? Why Vaughn?

"There are so many things for us to discuss, Sydney. This is not the way I would like for us to begin our re-acquaintance. All I can tell you, as you well know, is everything is not always as it appears. I think if you reflect on everything you know about "The Man" you will see that I have never intentionally caused pain or suffering to gain ground."

Sydney's head snapped up. "Look at me."

Irina looked directly at her daughter.

"I want you to look into my eyes, mom. Take as long as you need, but look deeply. Then tell me what you see." Several moments passed as mother and daughter stared at one another. Sydney's face was stone. Irina's façade cracked marginally as she studied the familiar eyes.

"Do you see pain?" Sydney asked. "Do you see suffering?"

Irina broke contact and stood abruptly. "It will pass. When you know the truth, the pain will pass."

Sydney could not suppress the look of disgust. "Even if tomorrow the pope were to canonize you a saint, I would suffer. I've lost everything because of you. My childhood was a lie. You made my father into a shell of the man he could have been. My fiancé was murdered because I was drawn into your game. I've betrayed my closest friends. You enlisted Noah into you plan and brought about his downfall by my own hands." Sydney swallowed back the burgeoning tears. "And now Vaughn."

Irina walked toward the door. "Time, Sydney. You will have to give it time."

"Thanks to you, that's all I have left."

Just as she was about to exit, Sark came into the doorway. "We have visitors."

Sydney looked at Sark, hoping he would give her some indication of whom they had captured.

"I'll return soon." Irina said, glancing backwards. For an instant, Sydney saw remorse n her face, but it quickly faded and Sark led her to her captives.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Jack Bristow struggled with the thick rope that bound his hands behind the crude wooden chair. The binds were tight, but certainly not impenetrable. In time, he could free himself. Certainly, his captor knew this.

"You won't be here long, Jack. Don't waste your energy."

The voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard to him. A sound he had long ago banished from his brain it caused him such discomfort to hear.

"So, it's you. I should have seen it sooner. It all makes perfect sense now." She stood in the shadowed recess of the room. He preferred it that way. He did not want to see her.

"Sydney is fine. You must know I wouldn't harm her." Irina said, quietly.

"Must I?" Jack spat. "Should I think of you as some charitable heart that would never harm a fly, let alone your own daughter. Or do you forget that I know the treachery your capable of?"

She stepped into the light and he saw her face. It was lined slightly with times inevitable mark, yet she was exactly the same. The mask of the sweet Laura he knew had been removed. When he looked at her now all he saw was Irina.

"I'm glad to see she has you looking after her, Jack. You wouldn't allow her to skin her knee as a child without being there to scoop her off the playground pavement. She's fortunate to have you." Jack could not look at her. Memories of being a true father to Sydney felt like someone was wrapping their fist around his heart.

"What are you doing with Tippin?" he asked, eager to change the subject.

"He's safe. I have some of my people administering some sedatives, cleaning him up a bit." She almost smiled. A smile? Was he supposed to be grateful that she was cleaning up the mess she made?

"Torturing Sydney's friend was not pleasant for me," she continued. "Perhaps my dentist's tactics are a little extreme, but it was important that I know he was as naive as he claimed for Sydney's sake."

Jack took her in, full face. "Don't you dare propose to do anything for Sydney's sake. If you want to do something for your daughter, drive yourself off another bridge."

Irina was slightly rocked by his bitterness. "I deserve that," she said, "but as I told Sydney, in time you will see that there is more at stake here."

"I want to see her."

Irina nodded without a word. "I'll have you reunited."

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Overwhelming sadness draped Sydney like a burial shroud. There was nothing left in her life to care about. Everyone she touched had been victimized in some way by the horrific chain of events begun by her mother. Now Vaughn was dead. The only person in her life she trusted completely. The only man in her life she'd ever been herself with was gone.

In her mind she kept reviewing those last moments. What had made him return to the lab? Why didn't he wait for her at their rendezvous location? His eyes, pleading with her to run to leave him behind before she met a similar fate. Even as he was drowning he thought of her well-being. There was no panic in his eyes, only concern for her. He'd risked his career to follow her. He left everything he'd ever worked for behind because he believed in her.

The people in her life that stood beside her did so out of circumstance. They didn't choose the path it chose them. Vaughn had been the only one to walk with her blindly.

Sloane, SD-6, The Man, Rambaldi, all of them be damned. If she found a way out from underneath her mother's grasp she would call it quits. She didn't even know who the enemy was anymore. A look in the mirror might reveal they'd been keeping company all along.

The door to her one room hovel open and Jack stumbled in, his hands tied crudely at his stomach.

"Dad?" her voice broke.

He stood before her the words escaping him. What did one say when your daughter has discovered that her mother is the root of all evil?

Tears slid silently down Sydney's cheeks. The sight of her father, the memories and the overwhelming desire to be held by him suffocating her senses. "Dadhow did we miss it? All of this evil, tied to us both all along."

Jack sank to his knees in front of her. "You must separate yourself from it, Sydney. It's the only way to survive."

"Will? Did you get him out?" she asked.

Jacked nodded. "He's safe."

"And the Circumference?" Jack asked.

"Destroyed." She swallowed hard and pleaded silently with her tears to keep them at bay. "Dad Vaughn"

A look of pain crossed Jack Bristow's face, quickly replaced with resolve. "He followed his instincts. He couldn't have lived with standing idly by."

"But he would have lived," she sobbed. "If I'd never walked into his office. If I'd never told him about mom. If mom had never killed his father."

Jack raised his bound hand and placed them gently against his daughter's cheek. The touch was so intimate from the man she'd distanced her heart from that she could barely contain the instant stream of tears.

"Vaughn did what his father never could. He died with pride. You gave that to him."

Sydney nodded and briefly rested her cheek against Jack's hands. She didn't agree. She couldn't agree, but she appreciated his attempt at rectifying her mistakes.

"How are we going to get out of here?" she asked.

Before Jack could answer, Irina did it for him. "As soon as your friend is well enough to travel, you're free to go."

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

She had been warned repeatedly by Jack, Devlin, Weiss, everyone, not to attend. Yet nothing anyone said seemed to matter anymore. She was no longer living by their rules.

As she watched the mourners gather, she reflected on the recent past. There were no safe places anymore. The truth was teetering on the ledge of a mammoth skyscraper. Sydney felt sure it was about topple with the slightest wind.

The CIA had managed to hold the story on SD-6, indicating that while Will had in fact stumbled across something of importance, it was a matter of national security. They convinced his editor that revealing the details Will had uncovered would jeopardize thousands of lives. They weren't exactly lying.

The loss of the Rambaldi page had affected Sloane deeply. He had been in a subterranean funk, almost as low as Sydney's own, since her return from Taipei. Thankfully, he suspected that "The Man" had somehow infiltrated his system. Strangely Dixon had not led him to believe otherwise.

Nonetheless, Sydney and Jack were walking on eggshells everywhere they went these days. Even the CIA was skeptical about the fate of the mole. It wasn't until her dad revealed a tape of his "interrogation" of Haldaki that Devlin believed his story. It was difficult for him to overlook Jack's tactics, but he did. Temporarily.

She watched from across the cemetery as the uniformed military personnel presented arms and rang out a seven-gun salute, as they folded the patriotic colors into a perfect triangle and handed it to the woman sitting between Weiss and Devlin.

His mother. Her heart leaped to her throat. What pain she must have endured! Her husband and now her son, both lost to causes she could never understand. Causes that Sydney herself no longer understood.

Devlin spoke to the group in black, but she could not hear his words. Surely, he spoke of Vaughn's commitment to his country, his heroism. It was easy to pay tribute to man who could no longer speak for himself. They could rewrite his history. They could make him a patriot.

The crowd began to diminish. Devlin shook Mrs. Vaughn's hand and walked away. Weiss stood with her and held her arm as she approached the coffin. She lay a white rose on it's shiny mahogany top, kissed her gloved hands and touched it solidly, saying a final goodbye.

She watched as he helped her into the car. He shut the door and signaled for the driver to pull away. His own CIA issue sedan was the only car left at the site, but he didn't approach it. Instead, he approached her hiding place. He'd spotted her.

When he finally arrived behind the crypt she used as her shield, she could barely look at him. She was embarrassed by her stealth. She was ashamed of her hand in Vaughn's death. Weiss had betrayed him, but she had been his downfall.

"You shouldn't be here," he said.

"I needed to" There was no simple explanation.

"I've been assigned as your handler. At least temporarily."

She looked shocked.

"I'm not too thrilled about it either. Sydney, I'm a company man. Vaughn, he was a good man, an honest man, but he wasn't a company man. He couldn't check his emotions at the door. I can. I won't allow you to do anything that might jeopardize what we're trying to accomplish."

Sydney shook her head in mock agreement. She had no intention of working with Weiss or the CIA. Within the week she would disappear off the face of the earth.

"For what it's worth," Weiss said. "His feelings for you may have been inappropriate, but they were genuine. He would have followed you into Armageddon."

Sydney couldn't look at him. Instead her eyes rested on Vaughn's coffin. "He did."

"Expect a meeting on Monday," he said coolly. "You still have your pager?"

She nodded.

"555-4329 when you see that number, meet me at back of Cosgrove's market on Brighton Street. Mr. C is a former agency snitch, in a relocation program. You can slide right though the door in the produce department."

"Right." The thought of meeting Weiss at the back of a green grocery held no appeal. There would be no race in her pulse at his page. No bounce in her step as she approached him. In fact, he was a sad reminder of what she had lost.

"I don't advise you paying your respects, Sydney. Anyone could be watching." He could see she was drawn to Vaughn's final resting place.

She turned away from him and began walking out towards the highway. She had left her car about a mile back. There were no parting words for Weiss; nothing could make its way passed the lump in her throat.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

When she arrived back at her apartment Will was waiting for her.

"You okay?" he asked, standing from his perch on the edge of the sofa. "Did you say goodbye?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't be seen. I said it from a distance."

"He meant something to you." Will acknowledged.

Sydney could not speak. She nodded; her eyes brimming with unshed tears. Will crossed the room to her and opened his arms. She slid into his protective hug and let her emotions cascade out.

For several minutes they stood in silence, until Syd finally pulled away. Will had also been thought he ringer these past few days. He was still recuperating from the harrowing experience.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Getting my legs back beneath me," he said. "Nothing's the same anymore. I expect to wake up tomorrow and find out that the sky is really pink and the grass is violet."

Sydney sunk into the sofa. "You have to give it time." Before the last syllable had left her lips she realized she'd spoken her mother's words. Time for what? What would time have revealed to her that would make anything better?

"I've got a meeting with Devlin tomorrow morning. They're trying to figure out what to do with me." He sat down beside her, tentatively. "Syd, I don't want to go into relocation."

She took his hand. "And I don't want you dragged into this mess. Will, the alternative is making you a part of the CIA. Are you ready for that? Are you ready to give up normal life?"

He squeezed her fingers gently. "If I had you, I could manage it. At least we'd have each other. You didn't have that before. Best friends who share a very big secret."

Sydney wiped away the last of her tears. "I don't know if I can do it anymore, Will. You have no idea how deep this is. There are so many layers to this deception. Things I could never tell you, even if you sign up."

"I told you before," he said. "I won't ask you any questions. What you do it's so amazing. So selfless. If I could have even a small part of that it would be so much more rewarding that writing tripe for the paper. I could make a difference."

Sydney slid her head down onto his lap and closed her eyes. "I thought that once too."

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

The next morning, Francie was on the phone with the realtor arranging a meeting to view a possible location for her restaurant. Sydney envied her ability to have such a normal goal. She wished she could be a part of seeing it to fruition, but she had made her mind up. Disappearing was her only option.

Syd was packing a bag. Francie watched with a cautious eye as she talked, her attention split between the agent and her departing friend.

"Yeah, I'll hold," Francie said.

"Syd, you just got back. Where are they shipping you off to now?"

"Myanmar," she answered robotically. The art of lying washed away with Vaughn's future. She really was escaping to Mandalay.

"Yes, I'm here," Francie said to the receiver.

Sydney carefully packed a few extras in her bag. The photo of she and Jack, in the antique frame Vaughn and gifted her with at Christmas. How difficult it had been for him to open himself to her. How she regretted now giving him something in return. Ever. When she reflected on all the times she could have offered him the smallest gift. A smile, a hand, the promise of a hockey game.

"Can you hold on a second?" she heard Francie ask the agent. "I've got another call." She clicked the button on the handset. "Hello?. You've got to be kidding me. Listen buddy, I'm on a very important call here. Why don't you order Chinese or Indian food instead? It's apparent that Joey has closed his doors, changed his number, he doesn't want you as a customer anymore." Click. "Sorry, Bryan so what time do you want me to meet you?"

The frame slid from Sydney's hands, crashing to the hardwood floor below. The glass cracked, but she didn't see it. Two words rang in her head over and over again.

Joey's Pizza.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would greatly appreciate your R&R. I plan on continuing this into a long series. If you like where it's going, I will go forward with that plan, if I sense you're not happy with it, I'll scrap it.