Title: One Small Year
Author: akatolstoy
Email: akatolstoy@hotmail.com
Feedback: This song-fic is a companion piece to "The Tricky Thing About Trust." Please read and respond. I am eager for feedback!
Distribution: CD, anyone else please email me first and tell me the web address of your archival site.
Disclaimer: I don't own Alias, or any of its characters. It all belongs to JJ Abrams, Bad Robot Productions, ABC, Touchstone, etc. I also don't own the rights to any of Shawn Colvin's songs. The lyrics I quote are from "One Small Year" on Shawn Colvin's CD "A Whole New You," released by Columbia.
Summary: Internal POV of "train station scene" from ATY: Sydney seeks refuge at the train station and takes time to analyze her relationship with Vaughn as well as the tumultuous events of the past year.
Rating: PG
Classification: Angst, S/V Romance
Spoilers: "The Solution," "Rendezvous," "After Thirty Years"
Sydney gazed up at the vaulted ceiling of the train station, as she sat with her arms wrapped around her knees and her knees pressed close to her chin. She felt particularly child-like, nestled between the arms of the massive, throne-like bench. The bench was padded and upholstered in leather, but after six hours, she had discovered that even thrones made you ache after awhile.
Sydney had come to the station directly after meeting with her father to finalize the details of their rescue mission to Taipei. She had watched masses of humanity ebb and flow through the station throughout the day, but now the announcements of arriving and departing trains came less and less frequently over the P.A. system and the crowds had reduced to a trickle.
The train station had always been one of the spots where she had sought refuge over the years. She had thought it was the normalcy of ordinary people commuting to ordinary jobs that had comforted her. But, now another explanation occurred to her.
Train stations--at least architecturally--were a lot like cathedrals.
Her gaze traveled from one gigantic circular iron chandelier to another. The chandeliers hung in parallel rows from the thick wooden rafters up and down the expanse of the train station. Their soft, incandescent glow reflected from the marble floors and pushed back the shadows, creeping up the paneled walls. While she was here she could keep the dangers that had led her to seek its sanctuary at bay, at least for a time. When the station was quiet, as it was now, she could soak up the silence and let it quiet her fears. When it was busy, she could disappear within the crowds and pretend, at least for a few hours, that she was normal, too.
She had been lost in thought for much of the day. Every once in awhile, she had come out of her reverie to find her eyes following a certain person's passage through the crowded station, not knowing what it was that had first drawn her attention. First there had been the tall, leggy businesswoman, carrying a burnished leather briefcase in one hand and holding a cell phone up to her ear with the other, running to catch the train departing on track 6. The strap of her Kate Spade bag had snagged on the prong of a metal wastebasket and had slipped off her shoulder, but the woman kept running and had never looked back to see the purse dangling from the prong of the wastebasket.
Sydney had gone over, retrieved the bag and handed it to the security guard. She knew all too well what it was like to run in spiked heels, praying that time would not run out. However she doubted the woman in the Donna Karan suit knew just how challenging it was to take out six thugs and not mess up your makeup or break a nail.
Later in the day she had watched a harried young mother, with dark smudges under her eyes and wisps of pale blonde hair coming out of her ponytail, frantically scan the crowds for her errant husband, as she tried to juggle a diaper bag, a dripping tippy cup, and a two-year-old son, wailing for the Elmo doll he had dropped on the platform. Sydney had felt her heart constrict at the beatific change in the young woman's face when her husband had jogged up with the Elmo doll and the rest of their luggage in tow. After setting down the luggage and taking their son from his wife's arms, he had leaned in to kiss her, and Sydney glanced away, embarrassed by her absorption in the tender scene.
Just a while ago, she had watched a young couple dressed in trendy Gortex and Lycra hiking garb sit at a nearby bench discussing their travel plans. With their heads bent together, they had perused brightly colored pamphlets, talking excitedly in hushed tones, while pointing out areas of interest to each other. They were newlyweds by the look of it. Sydney had seen the gleam of the girl's diamond wedding band from where she sat. While watching them, she had felt tears prick at her eyelids. They had looked so happy, so sure of themselves and their love for each other, so confidant of the good things their future would hold.
She wished she could say the same about herself, knowing that if given the opportunity, she would jump at the chance at changing souls or switching destinies with any of these people. It was far better than trying to deal with what she now faced: Will's abduction, Dixon's suspicions, and the knowledge that "the Man" now knew who she was and who she really worked for.
Sydney sighed. When had she become such an escapist? When had she become so self-absorbed in her own problems that other people's worries seemed so trivial and their everyday joys so poignant?
She thought back to a song played over the P.A. system earlier that day. It was impossible to hear any song completely, due to the constant interruptions, but the lyrics of this particular song captured Sydney's attention and served as a refrain for her thoughts:
One small year
It's been an eternity
It's taken all of me to get here
Through this one small year
The hands of time
They pushed me down the street
They swept me off my feet to this place
And I don't know my face
Now all through the night I can pretend
The morning will make me whole again
Then every day I can begin
To wait for the night again.
One small year
I wonder where I've gone
It shouldn't seem so long or so weird
It had been almost a year since Danny had been murdered by SD-6, and his death had served as a catalyst for everything that had happened since then: the discovery of the awful truth about SD-6, the decision to become a double agent for the CIA, the revelation of her mother's traitorous past and the role she played in the death of Vaughn's father, and the realization that her father was not the cold, uncaring man she had thought him to be.
Over the past 11 months, it had taken all of her strength--more strength than she ever thought she had possessed--to balance the malevolent forces that kept threatening to tear her life apart. She had tried so hard to separate Will and Francie from the danger, and the lies, and the betrayal that had engulfed her, but she had failed. Will was now in the hands of Sark and at the mercy of "The Man." Guilt washed over her with renewed force, and she tried to separate herself from it, to master it as she mastered her anxiety before a mission, but it simply led her to ask more questions.
If, she hadn't told Danny about SD-6, she could have prevented everything. But, if Danny hadn't been murdered by SD-6, would she ever have learned the truth? About SD-6? About her mother and father? About herself?
When Danny had proposed, on his knees right there in the quad, belting out that goofy song, she hadn't thought of SD-6. She hadn't thought of the long "business trips" or the jet leg, or the "white" lies, or the possibility that every time she walked out the door, it could be forever, and he would never suspect. For one brief moment she had been deliriously, gloriously, happy. All she had thought about was the fact that she loved Danny Hecht, and he had just asked her to be his wife. Life would be perfect.
Except that it couldn't. Danny had loved kids, and she had always known he had wanted children--lots of them. For her the concept had always had a hazy, distant, glow around it. It was not until he had kissed her stomach and talked about a baby--his baby--growing inside her, that she knew with a dull, aching certainty that somehow it would all end badly. Of course, she hadn't know then just how bad the repercussions would be.
She had to tell him. There was no way she could marry him without telling him the truth: she couldn't have children. Not while she was a spy. She had signed an agreement when she became an operations officer at SD-6: no children while she was in the field. The explanation SD-6 had given her had been oh-so-compassionately and reasonably phrased: due to the nature of her undercover work, it would be unconscionable for them to send her on missions, knowing that her work would require her to endanger an unborn child. If she intended at any point to have children, she would have to notify her superiors, and they would retire her from field service. Sydney had believed that their concern was real at the time, but then again, she also believed she was working for a covert branch of the CIA, as well.
"People aren't spies forever. Sometimes they have to say they used to be spies," Danny had whispered into her answering machine, and those words, so filled with hope and yearning, had become his death sentence.
Sydney snorted. The thought of SD-6 having scruples about harming an unborn child, after they brutally murdered her fiancé was laughable. If she had become pregnant, she doubted very much that Arvin Sloane would have congratulated her and assigned her a desk job for the duration of her pregnancy.
SD-6 would have found a way to terminate her pregnancy, just like they had terminated Danny. She was simply too valuable an asset to waste in front of a computer terminal. An executive order would be handed down, someone would slip something into her bottle of Evian, and that would be that. She would be off to Taipei, or Zanzibar, or Smolensk, trying to appear stoic, but secretly nursing her grief instead of the baby she would never have.
But, if she had been careful not to get pregnant. If she had convinced Danny to wait a few years. If she had never told him that she was a spy, would their relationship have survived all the lies and the secrets, the missed anniversaries and the cancelled weekend plans, the recriminations, and the accusations, and the guilt?
The marriages Sydney had for models--Sloane and his wife Emily and, my God, her own parents--weren't very encouraging. Only Dixon and his wife Diane had given her hope that it would someday be possible to combine her career with marriage and a family. Except Dixon was a man. Sydney knew he was a caring father and supportive husband, but she also knew that Diane was the one who kept the family together. She was the one that ran the kids to soccer practice, nursed their colds, attended their school plays, bought the groceries, planned the dinners. Sydney knew it would have been hard enough to balance marriage while working for SD-6. Now that she was a double agent, it was utterly impossible.
After Danny, Sydney also knew beyond a doubt that she could never--ever-- allow herself to love again without first counting the costs. Too many people had suffered already on account of her. She couldn't bear to endanger the life of anyone else she loved.
Noah Hicks had been a mistake.
Oh, God, Noah! Being with Noah had been wrong on so many levels, but everything had happened so fast in Arkhangelsk. She hadn't had time to think, hadn't wanted to think. She had wanted someone--needed someone--so badly in her life and when Noah appeared, it had awakened a passion in her that she hadn't known how to control. It was as if the clock had suddenly turned back, and the intervening years had never existed.
Noah had been her first love. The fact that he worked for SD-6 should have made her pause this time around, but it didn't. She had been certain that he had been duped into believing, just like she, and Dixon, and Marshall, that he was working for the "good guys." But she had been wrong. Noah hadn't been working for SD-6. He'd been working for K-Directorate all along. If she hadn't killed him unwittingly in the knife fight, he may have killed her.
Why hadn't she seen it? Dixon had warned her; Sloane had appeared suspicious; her father had grown even more grim than usual; and Francie had gazed at her incredulously when she had admitted she had slept with Noah. However, it was Vaughn's look of concern and sad disbelief at the mere mention of Noah's name that wrung her heart and made her regret ever laying eyes on Noah Hicks.
When Noah had asked her to go away with him, she had told him she had personal reasons for staying. He had asked her to elaborate, but she had only revealed one--her quest to find her mother and obtain answers. There were, of course, other reasons: She had a responsibility to her father, to Francie, to Will, and to the CIA. She had sworn she would take down SD-6 and bring Danny's killers to justice. But, there was another reason; one she could hardly risk admitting to herself, much less to anyone else: she was falling in love with Michael Vaughn.
Michael Vaughn: her confidant, her friend, her partner in increasingly dangerous counter missions to compromise SD-6, and her CIA handler. The one man she must never--ever--become involved with was the one man who made her feel whole.
When her world crumbled, he was the one that helped her pick up the shattered pieces. His ability to sooth her fears, pull her back from the brink, intuit the words that could restore her strength and give her the ability to fight the darkness that threatened to encompass her bordered on the preternatural. When she had called him her guardian angel, she hadn't made the comparison lightly.
Of course, she hadn't appreciated him initially. She was too mad at the world to give a damn about anything or anyone, except taking down SD-6, and he had been impeding her, or so she had thought, until he showed her precisely what they were up against. The map he had used to bring her to her senses was the same map he used recently to show her how far they had come in the intervening months. That was Michael Vaughn. That gesture right there attested not only to how his mind worked, but to his natural tact and sensitivity.
Even from the very beginning, she noticed, he had used "we" when speaking of bringing down SD-6. She had thought at first that he was referring to the CIA, but she now realized that he had always meant them: he and she, together, working as a team.
Sydney smiled. They made a wonderful team. The precision and seamless interaction that she and Dixon had worked years to perfect came naturally to she and Vaughn after only a handful of missions. The uncanny way Vaughn read her emotions paralleled his ability to anticipate her every move. Together they successfully raided the Vatican archives and prevented Cole from taking down the Los Angeles branch of SD-6.
But, even before he accompanied her, Vaughn had been integral to the success of her counter missions. As her handler, his quick-thinking and immediate urge to act on her behalf had saved her more times than she could count. His actions in Denpasar were only the most recent examples of this. He had risked losing Sark in order to prevent Dixon from discovering her identity. Time and time again he had put himself and his career at risk for her. What had she done for him?
Nothing. No, worse than that--she had hurt him more times than she cared to remember. He very rarely confided in her the way she did in him, but when he did, it was usually as a result of some callous assumption she had made. He had told her about his father's funeral only after she had lashed out at him at the golf course, saying he couldn't understand what it felt like to lose a parent. While she weighed whether to turn her father in as traitor, thinking it was her decision alone to make, it was only with the greatest reluctance that he revealed that his father had been killed as a result of the KGB codes in her mother's books.
The fact that her mother had killed his father still had the power to knock the breath from her. She wondered if the revelation still had the same effect on Vaughn. As was so typical of their relationship, when she had sought to comfort him, he had reached out and took her in his arms so he could comfort her.
It had felt so good to be cradled in his arms, to hear him croon comforting words in her ear, as he smoothed back her hair. Why did such a tender embrace come only at the discovery of yet another betrayal?
She longed with every fiber of her being to be with him. She wanted a thousand different to things: to smooth out the lines that appeared on his brow when he was anxious, find out what made him laugh, surprise him with a romantic dinner, discover exactly where he got kinks in his muscles and then learn how to release them. She wanted to know what drove him wild in bed and what he liked to do on lazy Saturday afternoons. What was his favorite song? His favorite flavor of ice cream? His favorite movie? His favorite book?
She had carefully archived everything she had gleaned about Vaughn, since their first meeting. The reference he had made to Tolstoy. The fact that he took his coffee black and liked cherry Slush-os. The silver dollar and the picture of Alice that he kept on his desk (where was it now?). The King's pen in his briefcase that alerted her to his love of hockey. The cute white bulldog he had taken to one of their rendezvous and the smile that played on his face when he thought of his crazy Aunt Trish--but it wasn't enough, it wasn't nearly enough.
That's why she had asked him to the Kings' game. It wasn't simply to spite SD-6 or the CIA. It wasn't just that she wanted someone in her life she could trust and to whom she didn't need to lie. It was because she wanted to know what it was like to be part of his life. She thought he had wanted it, too. The lovely antique picture frame he had given her for Christmas had indicated as much. What's more, she had seen the brilliant flash of his grin, before he had gently, but firmly turned her down.
"Sydney, you can't do this," he had said, and it was only later, when she analyzed the conversation and remembered the odd stress he had placed on the word "you" that she recognized just how much regret was evident in those words. If he had said "Sydney, we can't do this," he would have rejected her offer but have instantly confirmed that his feelings were what the CIA would deem "inappropriate" in the process. It would have made it all that much harder in the future to avoid doing something that might possibly get them killed.
Although she understood the reasons behind his refusal, his words had crushed her. She had wanted then what he had given her later at the observatory--confirmation that he desired nothing more then to grab a pizza and go to hockey game with her, even if it were impossible.
Later on, in Rome, it was she who had to be the strong one, turning down his invitation to dine at Trattoria di Nardi. However, Vaughn had gone out of his way to promise her that there would be a next time, both for Trattoria di Nardi and for the hockey game. In effect, he had asked her to be patient, assured her that he would wait for her, no matter how long it took to bring down SD-6. But, could either of them hold out that long? Could they bear the consequences of what might happen if they didn't?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice coming over the P.A. system: "Attention, passengers. "Pacific Surfliner" to San Diego departing from platform five in fifteen minutes."
Sydney wondered who had come up with the wildly romantic appellations for train routes: "Empire Builder," "The Heartland Flyer," "Silver Meteor," and her all-time favorite, "The Desert Wind." If things were different, she and Vaughn could be boarding one of those trains right now. On a train trip there would be plenty of time for intimate conversation and comfortable silences, for laughter and long naps, and stolen kisses.
A that moment she became aware that someone had taken the seat behind her. Even before she turned to look, she could sense that it was him.
"Hey," Vaughn said softly.
It was almost as if her thoughts had conjured him there. "Hi," she said, and her voice caught before she could get the next words out. "How did you find me?"
"You told me a couple of months ago that when you feel the need to disappear, you go to the observatory. But the observatory was closed," he said with a sigh. "And then I remembered you said the pier calms you down. But you weren't there. And you weren't at the bluffs and the palisades, either."
Sydney felt tears prick at her eyelids. He had retraced the path of their relationship. How long had it taken? What had he been thinking as he revisited the sites of their most intimate exchanges?
She swallowed, trying to keep back the tears. "You didn't really go to all those places."
"Yeah, I did." She knew from the sound of his voice that he had smiled briefly, while saying this. "And then I remembered you liked the train station, too. Normal people going to their normal jobs." His voice had turned rueful. It was obvious the possibility of other circumstances, other lives had occurred to him, as well.
The tears welled up in her eyes. She couldn't stop them. "I can't believe you remembered that," she almost whispered, her voice thick with emotion.
He knew her so well. No one--not even Danny--had ever known the things Vaughn now knew about her. It struck her for the first time that he must cherish the intimate details she revealed about herself just as much as she treasured the bits of information she gleaned from him.
Vaughn interrupted her thoughts. "He's contacted you, hasn't he? Khasinau?"
They weren't so much questions as statements. "He wants the page. And you're going to give it to him."
Sydney could detect a hint of resignation in his voice, as if he had already had this conversation with her in his head and knew what the outcome was going to be.
She didn't know what to say. Her father had told her not to confide in Vaughn because of the danger posed by the mole within the CIA. However, that wasn't why she hadn't told him. She hadn't wanted to keep the information from him, but she knew that if she had disclosed their plans to rescue Will, Vaughn would have protested, told her it was too dangerous, and demanded that she not undertake such a foolish scheme.
"You came here to stop me," she stated, knowing she was as powerless to keep herself from doing anything that might vouchsafe Will's safety as Vaughn was in expressing his concern for her.
Vaughn's didn't immediately reply to the question implied in her statement. She could sense him searching for the right words to convey the strong emotions he felt. This was not the Vaughn she had met with earlier in the day. Something pivotal had happened in the meantime. Sydney wished they were in the cage at the warehouse. She could have gone to him then, grabbed his hands, looked up into his eyes, tried to assuage the pain caused by whatever it was he was struggling to tell her.
Vaughn cleared his throat. His voice was low and raspy with unshed tears.
"My father used to keep a diary," he began, "and when I was a kid I used to say, 'Hey, Dad, only girls keep diaries,' and he'd just laugh." Vaughn smiled at the memory, and Sydney did, too, trying to imagine the elder Vaughn as his son visualized him.
"He was a really good guy, my dad," Vaughn continued, his voice, growing even more shaky.
He paused, and they both understood what he had left unsaid: that he wished she could meet his father, wished he could bring her home to meet both his parents.
I would have loved that, you know. There's nothing I wouldn't do to turn back time and spare you that pain, she told him silently.
Vaughn took a breath, and he pushed on, despite the way his voice cracked and the way the words caught in his throat. "Yeah. But he was too hard on himself. I mean, he was such a "company" guy that whenever he slipped up even in the slightest way he took it so personally. There were a few operations--his last one among them--that he questioned. Operations he refused to participate in. But only in his diary. He'd write out what he wanted to say to the CIA director. I mean, things he could never say in real life. He was a company man, and I loved him very much. But it killed him, never questioning orders. His blind devotion to the job. If you're doing what I think you're doing, I'm in if you need me."
Tears coursed down Sydney's cheeks. She was so overwhelmed by the emotion in Vaughn's voice that it took a few moments before she grasped the import of his words or fully understood the significance of the gift he had just given her.
Vaughn actually had confided in her. He had revealed an aspect of his relationship with his father that until now, he himself had been unwilling to face. In essence, he was telling her the kind of man he wanted to be. Despite everything, he was going to help her rescue Will.
"Thank you," Sydney told him, knowing it was inadequate, but despairing of ever finding the words to convey all she wanted to say.
"Thank you," she repeated, under her breath, but this time not to Vaughn. The train station was a cathedral. God had answered her prayer. He had sent her guardian angel to her once again. Perhaps, someday, He would allow her to express her love for this wonderful man, as well.
Author: akatolstoy
Email: akatolstoy@hotmail.com
Feedback: This song-fic is a companion piece to "The Tricky Thing About Trust." Please read and respond. I am eager for feedback!
Distribution: CD, anyone else please email me first and tell me the web address of your archival site.
Disclaimer: I don't own Alias, or any of its characters. It all belongs to JJ Abrams, Bad Robot Productions, ABC, Touchstone, etc. I also don't own the rights to any of Shawn Colvin's songs. The lyrics I quote are from "One Small Year" on Shawn Colvin's CD "A Whole New You," released by Columbia.
Summary: Internal POV of "train station scene" from ATY: Sydney seeks refuge at the train station and takes time to analyze her relationship with Vaughn as well as the tumultuous events of the past year.
Rating: PG
Classification: Angst, S/V Romance
Spoilers: "The Solution," "Rendezvous," "After Thirty Years"
Sydney gazed up at the vaulted ceiling of the train station, as she sat with her arms wrapped around her knees and her knees pressed close to her chin. She felt particularly child-like, nestled between the arms of the massive, throne-like bench. The bench was padded and upholstered in leather, but after six hours, she had discovered that even thrones made you ache after awhile.
Sydney had come to the station directly after meeting with her father to finalize the details of their rescue mission to Taipei. She had watched masses of humanity ebb and flow through the station throughout the day, but now the announcements of arriving and departing trains came less and less frequently over the P.A. system and the crowds had reduced to a trickle.
The train station had always been one of the spots where she had sought refuge over the years. She had thought it was the normalcy of ordinary people commuting to ordinary jobs that had comforted her. But, now another explanation occurred to her.
Train stations--at least architecturally--were a lot like cathedrals.
Her gaze traveled from one gigantic circular iron chandelier to another. The chandeliers hung in parallel rows from the thick wooden rafters up and down the expanse of the train station. Their soft, incandescent glow reflected from the marble floors and pushed back the shadows, creeping up the paneled walls. While she was here she could keep the dangers that had led her to seek its sanctuary at bay, at least for a time. When the station was quiet, as it was now, she could soak up the silence and let it quiet her fears. When it was busy, she could disappear within the crowds and pretend, at least for a few hours, that she was normal, too.
She had been lost in thought for much of the day. Every once in awhile, she had come out of her reverie to find her eyes following a certain person's passage through the crowded station, not knowing what it was that had first drawn her attention. First there had been the tall, leggy businesswoman, carrying a burnished leather briefcase in one hand and holding a cell phone up to her ear with the other, running to catch the train departing on track 6. The strap of her Kate Spade bag had snagged on the prong of a metal wastebasket and had slipped off her shoulder, but the woman kept running and had never looked back to see the purse dangling from the prong of the wastebasket.
Sydney had gone over, retrieved the bag and handed it to the security guard. She knew all too well what it was like to run in spiked heels, praying that time would not run out. However she doubted the woman in the Donna Karan suit knew just how challenging it was to take out six thugs and not mess up your makeup or break a nail.
Later in the day she had watched a harried young mother, with dark smudges under her eyes and wisps of pale blonde hair coming out of her ponytail, frantically scan the crowds for her errant husband, as she tried to juggle a diaper bag, a dripping tippy cup, and a two-year-old son, wailing for the Elmo doll he had dropped on the platform. Sydney had felt her heart constrict at the beatific change in the young woman's face when her husband had jogged up with the Elmo doll and the rest of their luggage in tow. After setting down the luggage and taking their son from his wife's arms, he had leaned in to kiss her, and Sydney glanced away, embarrassed by her absorption in the tender scene.
Just a while ago, she had watched a young couple dressed in trendy Gortex and Lycra hiking garb sit at a nearby bench discussing their travel plans. With their heads bent together, they had perused brightly colored pamphlets, talking excitedly in hushed tones, while pointing out areas of interest to each other. They were newlyweds by the look of it. Sydney had seen the gleam of the girl's diamond wedding band from where she sat. While watching them, she had felt tears prick at her eyelids. They had looked so happy, so sure of themselves and their love for each other, so confidant of the good things their future would hold.
She wished she could say the same about herself, knowing that if given the opportunity, she would jump at the chance at changing souls or switching destinies with any of these people. It was far better than trying to deal with what she now faced: Will's abduction, Dixon's suspicions, and the knowledge that "the Man" now knew who she was and who she really worked for.
Sydney sighed. When had she become such an escapist? When had she become so self-absorbed in her own problems that other people's worries seemed so trivial and their everyday joys so poignant?
She thought back to a song played over the P.A. system earlier that day. It was impossible to hear any song completely, due to the constant interruptions, but the lyrics of this particular song captured Sydney's attention and served as a refrain for her thoughts:
One small year
It's been an eternity
It's taken all of me to get here
Through this one small year
The hands of time
They pushed me down the street
They swept me off my feet to this place
And I don't know my face
Now all through the night I can pretend
The morning will make me whole again
Then every day I can begin
To wait for the night again.
One small year
I wonder where I've gone
It shouldn't seem so long or so weird
It had been almost a year since Danny had been murdered by SD-6, and his death had served as a catalyst for everything that had happened since then: the discovery of the awful truth about SD-6, the decision to become a double agent for the CIA, the revelation of her mother's traitorous past and the role she played in the death of Vaughn's father, and the realization that her father was not the cold, uncaring man she had thought him to be.
Over the past 11 months, it had taken all of her strength--more strength than she ever thought she had possessed--to balance the malevolent forces that kept threatening to tear her life apart. She had tried so hard to separate Will and Francie from the danger, and the lies, and the betrayal that had engulfed her, but she had failed. Will was now in the hands of Sark and at the mercy of "The Man." Guilt washed over her with renewed force, and she tried to separate herself from it, to master it as she mastered her anxiety before a mission, but it simply led her to ask more questions.
If, she hadn't told Danny about SD-6, she could have prevented everything. But, if Danny hadn't been murdered by SD-6, would she ever have learned the truth? About SD-6? About her mother and father? About herself?
When Danny had proposed, on his knees right there in the quad, belting out that goofy song, she hadn't thought of SD-6. She hadn't thought of the long "business trips" or the jet leg, or the "white" lies, or the possibility that every time she walked out the door, it could be forever, and he would never suspect. For one brief moment she had been deliriously, gloriously, happy. All she had thought about was the fact that she loved Danny Hecht, and he had just asked her to be his wife. Life would be perfect.
Except that it couldn't. Danny had loved kids, and she had always known he had wanted children--lots of them. For her the concept had always had a hazy, distant, glow around it. It was not until he had kissed her stomach and talked about a baby--his baby--growing inside her, that she knew with a dull, aching certainty that somehow it would all end badly. Of course, she hadn't know then just how bad the repercussions would be.
She had to tell him. There was no way she could marry him without telling him the truth: she couldn't have children. Not while she was a spy. She had signed an agreement when she became an operations officer at SD-6: no children while she was in the field. The explanation SD-6 had given her had been oh-so-compassionately and reasonably phrased: due to the nature of her undercover work, it would be unconscionable for them to send her on missions, knowing that her work would require her to endanger an unborn child. If she intended at any point to have children, she would have to notify her superiors, and they would retire her from field service. Sydney had believed that their concern was real at the time, but then again, she also believed she was working for a covert branch of the CIA, as well.
"People aren't spies forever. Sometimes they have to say they used to be spies," Danny had whispered into her answering machine, and those words, so filled with hope and yearning, had become his death sentence.
Sydney snorted. The thought of SD-6 having scruples about harming an unborn child, after they brutally murdered her fiancé was laughable. If she had become pregnant, she doubted very much that Arvin Sloane would have congratulated her and assigned her a desk job for the duration of her pregnancy.
SD-6 would have found a way to terminate her pregnancy, just like they had terminated Danny. She was simply too valuable an asset to waste in front of a computer terminal. An executive order would be handed down, someone would slip something into her bottle of Evian, and that would be that. She would be off to Taipei, or Zanzibar, or Smolensk, trying to appear stoic, but secretly nursing her grief instead of the baby she would never have.
But, if she had been careful not to get pregnant. If she had convinced Danny to wait a few years. If she had never told him that she was a spy, would their relationship have survived all the lies and the secrets, the missed anniversaries and the cancelled weekend plans, the recriminations, and the accusations, and the guilt?
The marriages Sydney had for models--Sloane and his wife Emily and, my God, her own parents--weren't very encouraging. Only Dixon and his wife Diane had given her hope that it would someday be possible to combine her career with marriage and a family. Except Dixon was a man. Sydney knew he was a caring father and supportive husband, but she also knew that Diane was the one who kept the family together. She was the one that ran the kids to soccer practice, nursed their colds, attended their school plays, bought the groceries, planned the dinners. Sydney knew it would have been hard enough to balance marriage while working for SD-6. Now that she was a double agent, it was utterly impossible.
After Danny, Sydney also knew beyond a doubt that she could never--ever-- allow herself to love again without first counting the costs. Too many people had suffered already on account of her. She couldn't bear to endanger the life of anyone else she loved.
Noah Hicks had been a mistake.
Oh, God, Noah! Being with Noah had been wrong on so many levels, but everything had happened so fast in Arkhangelsk. She hadn't had time to think, hadn't wanted to think. She had wanted someone--needed someone--so badly in her life and when Noah appeared, it had awakened a passion in her that she hadn't known how to control. It was as if the clock had suddenly turned back, and the intervening years had never existed.
Noah had been her first love. The fact that he worked for SD-6 should have made her pause this time around, but it didn't. She had been certain that he had been duped into believing, just like she, and Dixon, and Marshall, that he was working for the "good guys." But she had been wrong. Noah hadn't been working for SD-6. He'd been working for K-Directorate all along. If she hadn't killed him unwittingly in the knife fight, he may have killed her.
Why hadn't she seen it? Dixon had warned her; Sloane had appeared suspicious; her father had grown even more grim than usual; and Francie had gazed at her incredulously when she had admitted she had slept with Noah. However, it was Vaughn's look of concern and sad disbelief at the mere mention of Noah's name that wrung her heart and made her regret ever laying eyes on Noah Hicks.
When Noah had asked her to go away with him, she had told him she had personal reasons for staying. He had asked her to elaborate, but she had only revealed one--her quest to find her mother and obtain answers. There were, of course, other reasons: She had a responsibility to her father, to Francie, to Will, and to the CIA. She had sworn she would take down SD-6 and bring Danny's killers to justice. But, there was another reason; one she could hardly risk admitting to herself, much less to anyone else: she was falling in love with Michael Vaughn.
Michael Vaughn: her confidant, her friend, her partner in increasingly dangerous counter missions to compromise SD-6, and her CIA handler. The one man she must never--ever--become involved with was the one man who made her feel whole.
When her world crumbled, he was the one that helped her pick up the shattered pieces. His ability to sooth her fears, pull her back from the brink, intuit the words that could restore her strength and give her the ability to fight the darkness that threatened to encompass her bordered on the preternatural. When she had called him her guardian angel, she hadn't made the comparison lightly.
Of course, she hadn't appreciated him initially. She was too mad at the world to give a damn about anything or anyone, except taking down SD-6, and he had been impeding her, or so she had thought, until he showed her precisely what they were up against. The map he had used to bring her to her senses was the same map he used recently to show her how far they had come in the intervening months. That was Michael Vaughn. That gesture right there attested not only to how his mind worked, but to his natural tact and sensitivity.
Even from the very beginning, she noticed, he had used "we" when speaking of bringing down SD-6. She had thought at first that he was referring to the CIA, but she now realized that he had always meant them: he and she, together, working as a team.
Sydney smiled. They made a wonderful team. The precision and seamless interaction that she and Dixon had worked years to perfect came naturally to she and Vaughn after only a handful of missions. The uncanny way Vaughn read her emotions paralleled his ability to anticipate her every move. Together they successfully raided the Vatican archives and prevented Cole from taking down the Los Angeles branch of SD-6.
But, even before he accompanied her, Vaughn had been integral to the success of her counter missions. As her handler, his quick-thinking and immediate urge to act on her behalf had saved her more times than she could count. His actions in Denpasar were only the most recent examples of this. He had risked losing Sark in order to prevent Dixon from discovering her identity. Time and time again he had put himself and his career at risk for her. What had she done for him?
Nothing. No, worse than that--she had hurt him more times than she cared to remember. He very rarely confided in her the way she did in him, but when he did, it was usually as a result of some callous assumption she had made. He had told her about his father's funeral only after she had lashed out at him at the golf course, saying he couldn't understand what it felt like to lose a parent. While she weighed whether to turn her father in as traitor, thinking it was her decision alone to make, it was only with the greatest reluctance that he revealed that his father had been killed as a result of the KGB codes in her mother's books.
The fact that her mother had killed his father still had the power to knock the breath from her. She wondered if the revelation still had the same effect on Vaughn. As was so typical of their relationship, when she had sought to comfort him, he had reached out and took her in his arms so he could comfort her.
It had felt so good to be cradled in his arms, to hear him croon comforting words in her ear, as he smoothed back her hair. Why did such a tender embrace come only at the discovery of yet another betrayal?
She longed with every fiber of her being to be with him. She wanted a thousand different to things: to smooth out the lines that appeared on his brow when he was anxious, find out what made him laugh, surprise him with a romantic dinner, discover exactly where he got kinks in his muscles and then learn how to release them. She wanted to know what drove him wild in bed and what he liked to do on lazy Saturday afternoons. What was his favorite song? His favorite flavor of ice cream? His favorite movie? His favorite book?
She had carefully archived everything she had gleaned about Vaughn, since their first meeting. The reference he had made to Tolstoy. The fact that he took his coffee black and liked cherry Slush-os. The silver dollar and the picture of Alice that he kept on his desk (where was it now?). The King's pen in his briefcase that alerted her to his love of hockey. The cute white bulldog he had taken to one of their rendezvous and the smile that played on his face when he thought of his crazy Aunt Trish--but it wasn't enough, it wasn't nearly enough.
That's why she had asked him to the Kings' game. It wasn't simply to spite SD-6 or the CIA. It wasn't just that she wanted someone in her life she could trust and to whom she didn't need to lie. It was because she wanted to know what it was like to be part of his life. She thought he had wanted it, too. The lovely antique picture frame he had given her for Christmas had indicated as much. What's more, she had seen the brilliant flash of his grin, before he had gently, but firmly turned her down.
"Sydney, you can't do this," he had said, and it was only later, when she analyzed the conversation and remembered the odd stress he had placed on the word "you" that she recognized just how much regret was evident in those words. If he had said "Sydney, we can't do this," he would have rejected her offer but have instantly confirmed that his feelings were what the CIA would deem "inappropriate" in the process. It would have made it all that much harder in the future to avoid doing something that might possibly get them killed.
Although she understood the reasons behind his refusal, his words had crushed her. She had wanted then what he had given her later at the observatory--confirmation that he desired nothing more then to grab a pizza and go to hockey game with her, even if it were impossible.
Later on, in Rome, it was she who had to be the strong one, turning down his invitation to dine at Trattoria di Nardi. However, Vaughn had gone out of his way to promise her that there would be a next time, both for Trattoria di Nardi and for the hockey game. In effect, he had asked her to be patient, assured her that he would wait for her, no matter how long it took to bring down SD-6. But, could either of them hold out that long? Could they bear the consequences of what might happen if they didn't?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice coming over the P.A. system: "Attention, passengers. "Pacific Surfliner" to San Diego departing from platform five in fifteen minutes."
Sydney wondered who had come up with the wildly romantic appellations for train routes: "Empire Builder," "The Heartland Flyer," "Silver Meteor," and her all-time favorite, "The Desert Wind." If things were different, she and Vaughn could be boarding one of those trains right now. On a train trip there would be plenty of time for intimate conversation and comfortable silences, for laughter and long naps, and stolen kisses.
A that moment she became aware that someone had taken the seat behind her. Even before she turned to look, she could sense that it was him.
"Hey," Vaughn said softly.
It was almost as if her thoughts had conjured him there. "Hi," she said, and her voice caught before she could get the next words out. "How did you find me?"
"You told me a couple of months ago that when you feel the need to disappear, you go to the observatory. But the observatory was closed," he said with a sigh. "And then I remembered you said the pier calms you down. But you weren't there. And you weren't at the bluffs and the palisades, either."
Sydney felt tears prick at her eyelids. He had retraced the path of their relationship. How long had it taken? What had he been thinking as he revisited the sites of their most intimate exchanges?
She swallowed, trying to keep back the tears. "You didn't really go to all those places."
"Yeah, I did." She knew from the sound of his voice that he had smiled briefly, while saying this. "And then I remembered you liked the train station, too. Normal people going to their normal jobs." His voice had turned rueful. It was obvious the possibility of other circumstances, other lives had occurred to him, as well.
The tears welled up in her eyes. She couldn't stop them. "I can't believe you remembered that," she almost whispered, her voice thick with emotion.
He knew her so well. No one--not even Danny--had ever known the things Vaughn now knew about her. It struck her for the first time that he must cherish the intimate details she revealed about herself just as much as she treasured the bits of information she gleaned from him.
Vaughn interrupted her thoughts. "He's contacted you, hasn't he? Khasinau?"
They weren't so much questions as statements. "He wants the page. And you're going to give it to him."
Sydney could detect a hint of resignation in his voice, as if he had already had this conversation with her in his head and knew what the outcome was going to be.
She didn't know what to say. Her father had told her not to confide in Vaughn because of the danger posed by the mole within the CIA. However, that wasn't why she hadn't told him. She hadn't wanted to keep the information from him, but she knew that if she had disclosed their plans to rescue Will, Vaughn would have protested, told her it was too dangerous, and demanded that she not undertake such a foolish scheme.
"You came here to stop me," she stated, knowing she was as powerless to keep herself from doing anything that might vouchsafe Will's safety as Vaughn was in expressing his concern for her.
Vaughn's didn't immediately reply to the question implied in her statement. She could sense him searching for the right words to convey the strong emotions he felt. This was not the Vaughn she had met with earlier in the day. Something pivotal had happened in the meantime. Sydney wished they were in the cage at the warehouse. She could have gone to him then, grabbed his hands, looked up into his eyes, tried to assuage the pain caused by whatever it was he was struggling to tell her.
Vaughn cleared his throat. His voice was low and raspy with unshed tears.
"My father used to keep a diary," he began, "and when I was a kid I used to say, 'Hey, Dad, only girls keep diaries,' and he'd just laugh." Vaughn smiled at the memory, and Sydney did, too, trying to imagine the elder Vaughn as his son visualized him.
"He was a really good guy, my dad," Vaughn continued, his voice, growing even more shaky.
He paused, and they both understood what he had left unsaid: that he wished she could meet his father, wished he could bring her home to meet both his parents.
I would have loved that, you know. There's nothing I wouldn't do to turn back time and spare you that pain, she told him silently.
Vaughn took a breath, and he pushed on, despite the way his voice cracked and the way the words caught in his throat. "Yeah. But he was too hard on himself. I mean, he was such a "company" guy that whenever he slipped up even in the slightest way he took it so personally. There were a few operations--his last one among them--that he questioned. Operations he refused to participate in. But only in his diary. He'd write out what he wanted to say to the CIA director. I mean, things he could never say in real life. He was a company man, and I loved him very much. But it killed him, never questioning orders. His blind devotion to the job. If you're doing what I think you're doing, I'm in if you need me."
Tears coursed down Sydney's cheeks. She was so overwhelmed by the emotion in Vaughn's voice that it took a few moments before she grasped the import of his words or fully understood the significance of the gift he had just given her.
Vaughn actually had confided in her. He had revealed an aspect of his relationship with his father that until now, he himself had been unwilling to face. In essence, he was telling her the kind of man he wanted to be. Despite everything, he was going to help her rescue Will.
"Thank you," Sydney told him, knowing it was inadequate, but despairing of ever finding the words to convey all she wanted to say.
"Thank you," she repeated, under her breath, but this time not to Vaughn. The train station was a cathedral. God had answered her prayer. He had sent her guardian angel to her once again. Perhaps, someday, He would allow her to express her love for this wonderful man, as well.