Disclaimer: Alias Fanfic; I don't own them (except Andie)
Author's Note: Carrie was pregnant. If she bore a daughter, and then six years later had an unattached Sydney and Vaughn babysitting said daughter while Carrie and Marshall go to a party…. Please, enjoy!
Sydney tossed her brown hair over her shoulder and leveled a brown-eyed gaze at Vaughn.
"Do you have any twos?"
Vaughn's eyes dropped to the six cards in his hands. "No. Go fish."
Sydney drew her cards, while the six-year-old Andie, daughter of Marshall and Carrie, asked Vaughn, "Do you have any fours?"
"Why are you two picking on me?" he whined as he forked over his fours.
"We're not picking on you," Andie started.
"...we're showing how much we love you," Sydney finished.
Vaughn sighed, and asked Syd if she had any threes.
"Go fish." Sydney asked Andie if she had any sevens, and drew a card from the pile of cards in the center of the table.
Andie asked Syd for her twos, and laid down a set. Andie had only two cards left in her hand.
Vaughn pushed a hand through his hair and sighed as he handed his last cards to Sydney, who also lay down a set. However, Andie won, with an extra set down.
"You two cheated," Vaughn complained as Sydney congratulated Andie, crowing as if she had won herself. The female agent was just happy that Vaughn lost and that the little girl won.
Andie looked very serious. "No, I didn't! My daddy said that counting cards was cheating, and I did my best not to count the cards!"
Syd hugged the little girl. "Of course you didn't cheat," she comforted, glaring at Vaughn, "You're a good girl."
Vaughn, trying to get out of the doghouse, asked if Syd and Andie were ready for pizza, yet.
Andie bounced up with a six-year-old's energy. "Yes!" she yelled.
"Indoor voice," Syd and Vaughn said at the same time, grinning at each other but not actually saying, "Jinx!" even thought they both thought it.
"Go get your shoes on," Vaughn told the little girl, who scrambled to do so, her dark pigtails bouncing. He stood and offered a hand to Syd, who was still sitting on the floor. She took it, and gracefully rose to her feet.
"Pizza Hut?" she asked. Vaughn rummaged through his pockets and came out with his wallet. Flipping through it, he pulled out a coupon for Chuckie Cheese's. "Is here okay, instead?" he asked, holding up the gaily colored piece of paper.
Syd's eyes lit up. "I haven't been there since..." her face scrunched up as she thought, "well, ever."
Andie ran back out, wearing pink and white high-tops. "Are you ready?" she asked.
"Get your coat," Vaughn told her.
Andie's pigtails bounced up and down with her motion as she walked between Syd and Vaughn, who each clutched one of her hands to prevent her from getting run over in the busy parking lot.
"I want to play in the ball-pit," she announced to the world at large. Syd and Vaughn smiled at her, caught up in the giddy excitement radiating off the child.
Vaughn smiled at the girls and held the door open for Syd and Andie to enter. The warmth, energy, and fun blasted away outside's winter chill, immediately making their coats unnecessary.
A teenager stamped their hands with invisible ink. Sydney turned in circles, trying to take in everything at once as Vaughn got his hand stamped. "Skee ball!" she squealed.
Vaughn placed his hand on her shoulder and steered her towards a section of booths and tables.
"Food first!" he directed. Andie and Sydney bounded into a red booth and shed their outdoor gear. Vaughn smiled at their excitement and sat down opposite them.
"What type of pizza?" he asked them, but Andie was facing the back of the booth, watching the play-area. Syd was similarly occupied, wide-eyed at all the colors and sounds. Machines were chiming, coins were clinking, games were buzzing, and the radio bravely played above all the other noises. In the play-area, children screamed, yelled, and laughed.
Vaughn raised his voice and tried again. "What type of pizza do you want?"
This time, he caught Syd's fleeting attention and she got Andie turned around. "What kind of pizza?" she asked in the girl's ear.
"Cheese, onions, mushrooms, and pepperoni," Andie responded, "Can I go play now?"
"Not yet," Syd said, although it was obvious that she too felt the pull of the floor. "You have to stay with either me or Mr. Michael at all times, right?"
Andie nodded solemnly. "Or I might get abducted, 'cause I'm so smart."
"What do you want to drink?" Vaughn asked to fill the strange silence that settled over their table at Andie's remark.
"Sprite!" Andie yelled.
"Rootbeer," Syd said, warning Vaughn with her eyes that he'd better pick a caffeine-free drink, too, so that they didn't put any other ideas into the little girl's head.
Vaughn nodded and grinned at the two ladies wiggling on the booth seat in front of him. "Why don't you two go play in the ball pit until the pizza comes? I'll stay here and order for us."
Syd seemed reluctant for a minute, but he widened his smile for her, telling her that he didn't mind.
Andie suddenly became shy and stuck close to Sydney's thigh as they wove through the press of strange children and harried adults to reach the twisted mass of plastic tubing and camo-netting that created the play-area. Blinding red, yellow, blue, and green tunnels, slides, and ball-pits connected to each other in a fun, safe, way two stories high.
Held back by the height and weight limit of the static-crackling plastic, Syd contented herself by standing outside, separate from the parents, and making faces at Andie, who would pop in and out of the tattered netting and tubes just to seek out Syd's eyes, squeal happily, and disappear back inside.
Vaughn laughed at the pair from his vantage point in the booth, satisfied that his idea had been a good one. He could see Syd perfectly, and enjoyed watching her being silly. A waiter came by and he ordered their drinks and pizza.
Andie returned to the maze once again, and, laughing at the silliness, Syd turned to look at Vaughn. He waved at her cockily, looking like the cat that ate the canary. Bemused, she grinned back at him.
"Miss Sydney, Miss Sydney!" Andie called from above her head, and Syd looked up, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue at the little girl. The child giggled and stuck her tongue out too, instead of running.
At the change in the game, Sydney exaggeratedly stomped one foot and put her hands on her hips. Andie laughed loudly and ducked back in a blue tunnel.
Syd turned back to Vaughn, smiling widely. He saluted her with his drink, delivered during the exchange. She wiped her brow – it was hot in the play-area from hundreds of small bodies' exertions. He wiped his forehead with his glass, teasing her with its mock relief.
Andie returned to the main floor and dove into the ball pit. She joined a game directed by a ten-year old girl who was playing with her eight-year old brother. They were trying to separate the colored balls into piles in each corner. Andie cheerfully rooted through the red and blues for a yellow.
As far as Syd could follow and hear, the children allowed the game to evolve from separating the colors to looking for a mythical "white ball". Then, the children took turns burying each other, to burying yourself in an awkward game of hide-and-go-seek. A birthday-boy and his friends entered the ball-pit, and started a war, slinging the plastic balls at everyone around them. The current rulers (the brother and sister) disliked the interruption to their court, and squashed the insurrection after four brief skirmishes. Syd watched carefully to make sure that Andie didn't get hurt by the rough crowd, but the ten-year-old girl was protective of the newly-six-year-old and kept her out of the hardest battles. Pelted out of the ball-pit, the birthday boy took his friends and climbed up into the upper portion of the tunnels to play their own games.
At long last the pizza came and Vaughn signaled Syd to return. She called Andie out and walked her back to the booth. The little girl was sweaty and flushed from her fun. She slid into her seat quietly and took a long, deep drink of her Sprite. Vaughn lifted a steaming slice of pizza to her plate and she set to eating.
"Have fun?" Vaughn asked as he served both Syd and himself.
Andie nodded with a full mouth.
"She exhausted me, just watching her," said Syd before attacking her first bite.
They respected the seriousness of eating by not talking until Andie was in the middle of her second slice and the adults were on their third. Andie was slowing down and perking up after the meal.
"I made two friends," she told Vaughn while she picked at the cheese on her pizza. "We played hide and go seek, and tag," (Sydney must have missed that one), "and they wanted to put each color of ball in each corner, but it didn't work and I didn't tell them that it wouldn't because a sample contained four reds, three blues, and three greens. That missed the yellows completely! There weren't enough balls to put the colors in each corner."
Vaughn choked on his pizza.
Sydney shook silently with laughter, her glass of rootbeer poised at her lips because she'd intended to take a drink before Andie concluded why putting the colors in each corner wouldn't work.
"Can we go play games now?" Andie continued, looking up from her pizza at Vaughn, who was still trying to clear his airway, "What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing, sweetie," Syd said, putting her glass back down, giving up drinking as a lost cause. Vaughn relearned breathing. "He just got a bit of pizza stuck in his throat."
Andie wrinkled her nose. "That hurts."
Syd surveyed the demolished pizza and empty cups. "Can we go play games now?" she asked Vaughn in a sugary voice.
After taking several deep breaths, he said in a semi-strangled voice, "Yes."
The girls cheered and climbed out of the booth. Vaughn took a hasty drink to clear his throat and wondered what he'd gotten himself into.
"What about this one?" asked Vaughn, standing in front of a dinosaur game that roared at him. Andie flitted in front of him, stuck a token in the little gun attached to the case, cocked it, and pulled the trigger. The token flipped into the air, missed all of the open dinosaur mouths marked with high ticket numbers, and fell into the center of a flat tray, where it was swished into a slot marked 1 by a spinning metal bar.
"No fun," the child announced, plucking the dispensed one ticket and handing it to Vaughn. Sydney, who had been trailing the child from the last game, caught up to them as Andie moved onto the next game in the row – one that strongly reminded the agents of gambling machines. The end result was to use one coin to knock more coins off a lower shelf to win tickets. Andie failed to win anything, and bounced on, ticketless. Syd hooked her arm through Vaughn's as he stuck a coin in the machine Andie had vacated. He collected three tickets, and would have tried again, but Syd tugged on his arm, towards the little girl.
"Having fun?" he asked in her ear. He spoke in normal tones, but it might have well been a whisper because of the dings, roars, screams, bells, whistles, and assorted noises in the big room.
She grinned and nodded vigorously. "You?"
Her enthusiasm was infectious, and he smiled widely. "Absolutely." Her contentment made him leave the goofy smile on his face.
"Mister Michael! Play this one with me!" Andie yelled at them. Sydney disengaged from his arm and he sat down on a tiny vinyl stool next to Andie. "You have to shoot water into the clown's mouth! It moves the doll up the chute. The first one to reach the top wins!"
"Are you sure?" Vaughn said as he popped two tokens into the game – one for each side.
Andie readied herself against her water-shooter. "Ready!"
"Set!" Vaughn tightened his grip on the water-gun.
"Go!" she squealed and got a second's head-start on him. Vaughn had to admit he had planned on letting her win, but she was so good, he quickly became competitive. The clown-dolls raced upwards – and hers won.
Andie jumped up and down, delighted with her win. "Play Miss Sydney, Mister Michael!"
Syd tried to escape the inevitable, but Andie soon had her sitting next to Vaughn on the vinyl stools.
"Come on," Vaughn told her, paying for the game. "Bet I can beat you."
She sniffed. "Bring it on!"
"Ready!Set!Go!" yelled Andie, and both spies filled their respective clown mouths with water. Vaughn had Andie jumping up and down at his shoulder, though, and it broke his concentration. With a victory cry, Sydney stood up and punched her fist in the air.
"Ha! Told you I'd win!" she boasted to Vaughn. Andie was bouncing around Vaughn's legs as he stood and pouted at Syd. "We could play again… I could let you win?" she suggested slyly.
"No way! I'll win fair and square – at the next game!"
Laughing, they followed Andie as she tried rolling a token down a moving ribbon, bashing groundhogs back into their holes, and stopping a light precisely between two points. Andie gave the mix of single, double, and occasionally triple tickets to Vaughn as she won them. However, she didn't find another game that she enjoyed until they came to the skee-ball wall.
Syd untangled herself from Vaughn's arm as Andie put the first coin in. Seven balls rolled down the chute. "Is this the one you like?" Andie asked as Syd slid a token into the lane next to the girl's.
"Yup,' Syd said, brown balls clanking into her chute. Vaughn stood between their lanes, behind them.
Andie picked up a ball and tested its weight. "How do you play?"
Sydney smiled and rolled her first ball up the lane, popping it smoothly for 20 points. "Roll the ball up and try to aim for the highest points."
Andie nodded; Syd rolled a 30. Andie's first roll gained her ten points. Vaughn nodded encouragingly over her head and said, "Try again!" Andie's next shot bounced off of the 50 and into the 20 slot. Syd's fourth roll was too soft, while Andie bulls-eyed. When the two of them turned to Vaughn for another token, they each had about ten tickets instead of the ones and twos Andie had previously been receiving.
"I like this game!" Andie told her babysitters. Syd smiled at her – the spy was just getting warmed up. She intended to get a perfect score at least once.
Sure enough, the red buzzing light went off two tokens later.
"I won 120 tickets!" Syd exclaimed. Vaughn laughed at her.
"What?" she replied, vaguely irritated.
"Nothing," he said, "We're almost out of tokens."
"Do you have any games you want to play?" she asked.
"Actually…"
Sydney gathered Andie from Skee Ball, and they followed Vaughn to the other side of the room, where a basketball game was set up. "Watch Mister Michael," Syd told Andie. "He's going to win more tickets!"
"Gee, no pressure," Vaughn said to himself. He inserted his token and picked up one of the smooth, palm-sized basketballs. With a flick of the wrist and swish of the net, the first ball was through the hoop – the second ball following closely in its wake. He didn't particularly like basketball, but he knew how to drop the ball through the net.
The girls were staring at him when time ran out and he collected his tickets.
"You're good!" Andie told him, going to hang on his pant-leg.
"Why don't you play on the court?" Syd asked.
"I don't like basketball," he said.
She quirked an eyebrow.
"I don't! Hey, will you play another game with me?"
"What is it?" He was already moving (Andie still at his side) and she was following him.
"This!" he waved an arm over it, pleased with himself
"This" was a child-sized air-hockey table. Each adult's arm would cover ¾ of the playing-space, fully extended.
"Sure," she said. They each got on their knees and Vaughn put in the token. "Andie, stay here, okay?" Syd reminded the little girl, who nodded solemnly.
"Rules:" Vaughn said, taking up his blue-colored defense piece. Syd fished the green puck out of her side and set her red defense piece in front of her goal. "No crossing the center line. Everything else goes."
"That's not a rule!" Syd said and shot the puck at him, which he blocked. The puck flew back at her and she moved her piece to protect herself. His shot bounced off the walls twice, and she hit it back to him in the same manner – the puck nearly (nearly!) went into his goal from the side.
"Play nice!" he cautioned, "We have to go to seven!"
She gave him a feral grin that she normally reserved for the terrorists she hunted at work.
Ooohooo, he thought, that's how it's going to be?!
The puck flew across the tiny space, piercing first her defense and then his, simply because it was moving so very fast on so little a board. Andie jumped up and down, screaming support, as they counted and struck and blocked.
And then Syd slipped. And again. The scoreboard read 3:1, favoring Vaughn. They had hogged the hockey table for five minutes, which stretched to seven. 5:2. Andie bounced as Syd knocked one into Vaughn's goal, and then, Vaughn, trying to hit the puck back to Syd, let it get between his defense and his goal. It bounced into his goal again. 5:4. Both of them were getting tired. Syd let another one slide into her goal.
"Game point," she said, retrieving the puck.
"I'm going to beat you," Vaughn told her.
She smiled smugly at him. "Only if I let you."
"There will be no letting," he responded, "only taking."
"Play!" Andie shouted.
The puck resumed some of its earlier speed, darting from side to side, the sharp clack of it against the defense pieces drowning out some of the noise from surrounding games. Left, right, up, down, 30 degree angle – Syd, Vaughn, Syd, Vaughn, Syd, Vaughn – back and forth the battle for winner raged.
"Go!" shrieked Andie, not mentioning whom she wanted to do so.
Syd blocked to the left, but the puck went right, and slid into her goal. The machine shut itself off automatically.
Both of the adults slowly climbed to their feet. Vaughn was grinning like crazy. "Told you I'd win," he crowed.
She shot him one of those looks that indicated he'd better not rub it in too much, or else his fate would meet that of the terrorists she fought at work. "Good game," she offered.
Still grinning, he agreed. "Good game."
"How many tokens do we have left?" Andie asked.
Vaughn examined the cup they'd kept the tokens in. "Six. You can have them."
After the last tokens were gone, Vaughn suggested "Let's go count our tickets."
"I don't want to go home yet," cried Andie in a tone that indicated it was almost bedtime.
"We don't have to go home right away," Vaughn told the girl, crouching down to her level. "We just have to make all these tickets easier to carry." He pointed to the two handfuls of orange tickets Sydney clutched. "The machine chomp-chomp-chomps them, and we only have to carry the receipt."
"Okay, then," Andie said.
For a change, there was nobody at the ticket counting machine. All three of them giggled as the tickets flew from their fingers into the hungry mouth of the monster.
"416," Vaughn said appreciatively. "You two are good!"
Andie suddenly reached up and tugged on Syd's arm, bringing the woman to her knees. "I need to go to the bathroom," Andie whispered wetly in Syd's ear.
Syd nodded. "We'll be right back," she told Vaughn. "Why don't you start looking at what we can get for 416 tickets?"
Looking slightly confused, he agreed, and Syd and Andie headed towards the bathroom.
The bathroom was empty except for them. Syd was surprised – it was just a normal public restroom.
"Miss Sydney?"
Syd stopped studying her face in the mirror and looked at the stall Andie was occupying. "Yes?"
"I'm having a lot of fun. Thank you for bringing me to Chuckie Cheese's."
Syd returned to what she had been doing and grinned, her twin in the mirror agreeing. "Make sure you thank Mr. Michael. It was his idea."
"Okay."
Andie exited the stall and started for the door.
"Hands," Syd said, turning on the tap.
Andie obliged, quickly wetting her hands, rubbing a bit of soap between her palms, and blow-drying them afterwards. The little girl was starting to look tired. Syd glanced at her watch. Of course, it was eight o'clock – they'd been playing hard at Chuckie Cheese's for two and a half hours. Time to go home, Syd thought, and opened the door for Andie.
"Did you find anything good?" Syd asked Vaughn.
A rather subdued Andie was looking into the glass case containing the prizes.
"I like the Spiderman ruler, but it is a hundred tickets."
Syd wrinkled her nose. "Kind of expensive."
"Anything you like?" he asked her.
She cast an appraising eye over the prizes displayed. "Not really. Oooh! Glitter!" More precisely, little packets of body glitter in multiple colors for only 25 tickets apiece.
"What about you, Andie," he asked the child.
Her forehead was wrinkled in thought. "I'd love to have one of the miniature magnetic chess games, but they're 500 tickets apiece. There are tubs of body-glitter that'd be fun, and they're 300. But, I could take a ruler (100 tickets) to school with me, or wear the hair-ties that are only 250 apiece."
"You don't have to be practical," Syd murmured to the child.
"I could get 100 pieces of bubblegum!"
"I don't think your parents would forgive us if we let you get 100 pieces of bubblegum," Vaughn interjected. "You could get the hair-ties, and I could get a ruler, and Syd could get body-glitter, and we could spend the rest on bubblegum."
After several more seconds looking into the case, the little girl agreed to the plan. Syd summoned the person behind the counter, and he gave them what they wanted.
As they walked to the car, Syd clutched two packs of body glitter- magenta and silver. Andie held three pieces of bubblegum (the nice man had given her a third piece for one ticket, cause she was cute) and a pack of three pastel-and-metallic hair-ties. And, Vaughn had a six-inch Spiderman ruler poking out of his coat pocket.
Syd helped Andie into the back as Vaughn climbed into the driver's seat of the SUV. They listened to soft classical rock on the way back to the Flinkman-Bowmans' home. Syd turned on the heat, and as the car warmed up, a drowsy silence fell.
They returned to the house and shed their outdoor gear. It was almost nine o'clock – Andie's bedtime. Syd helped Andie get ready for bed, while Vaughn channel-surfed. He was surprised when the child appeared in the living-room with him, wearing a Disney Princess nightgown. "Thank you, Mister Michael, for taking me to Chuckie Cheese's."
"You're welcome, sweetie," he said.
She ran over and hugged him. "G'night, Mister Michael."
"Good night, Andie," he called after her, as she ran back down the hall to her bedroom. He heard giggles, and then the light went out.
Syd came back to the living room and sat down next to him on the couch. "Anything good on T.V.?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Nine hundred channels and there's nothing on."
She relaxed into the leather couch and propped her feet up on the coffee table. "When should they be home, again?"
"Eleven. Eleven thirty. Some time after now. How's Andie?"
They were close together on the warm couch, with the television playing softly in the background. Their voices were low murmurs.
"Exhausted. She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow," Syd said, sounding tired herself.
He nodded.
"Thank you for taking us to Chuckie Cheese."
He smiled. "You're welcome."
When Marshall and Carrie returned home, Vaughn was watching the Titanic with his arm around Syd, who was asleep at his side. When she heard the door, though, she opened her eyes and stretched.
"How was she?" Marshall asked as Carrie staggered to the bedrooms in her high-heels.
"Fine. We went to Chuckie Cheese's," Vaughn told him.
"I don't know how taking care of one six-year old takes as much energy as running two missions back-to-back, but it does," Syd interjected, retrieving her shoes and purse from the front hall.
"And you had help," Vaughn reminded her. She smiled sleepily at him.
Marshall handed each of them forty dollars. "We really appreciate it, though."
"You two deserve a night out, alone, every once in a while," Syd said. "G'night, Carrie," she called softly down the hall.
"G'night, Sydney," came the reply.
"Thanks, again," Marshall said, showing them to the door.
"Good night, Marshall," Syd and Vaughn chorused.
"Good night."
Carrie went into her daughter's bedroom to check on her before she turned in for the night. She kissed Andie's cheek, then stepped back as the girl stirred.
"Mommy?"
"Yes, baby? I'm home."
"Are Mister Michael and Miss Sydney married?"
"No. Why?"
"They should be. They look at each-other like you and Daddy do."
Carrie smiled to herself and ruffled her daughter's hair. "Good night, baby."
"Good night, Mommy." With a sigh, the little girl fell back to sleep.