Title: Promises
Author: BlueDaze
Genre: Drama, Angst, and maybe some romantic stuff
Spoilers: none in this chapter
Rating: PG 13 in this chapter will most likely turn R in later ones.
Reviews: Yes, absolutely.
Disclaimer: Alias is not mine.
Summary: This is the sequel to Eternal Things. There is also another story called Player that I planned to be the prologue to Promises but it was Sark-centered so now it's a standalone. But it pretty much relates to my first fic. Anyways, Promises is mainly focused on Vaughn. But Sydney, Irina and Sark will show up sooner or later.
Without
I played the fool again
And I see us vanishing into the ground
Longing for home again
But home is a feeling I buried in you
I'm alright, I'm alright
It only hurts when I breathe
"Breathe" by Greeenwheel
The rain fell like so many glittering diamonds against the backdrop of the dusk. Michael Vaughn smiled an ironic little smile. Always darkest before the dawn, he thought as he took another sip off his scotch. He stared outside his window, restless and perhaps a bit tipsy. He sighed. Since when had everything become so gloomy? There was once a time when a starry twilight existed behind the rain clouds that now blanketed the night. But it had been so long since he had seen them that he had already begun to forget what they look like. When evening fell, the city of angels became a wet wonderland of showers and thunderstorms.
He didn't know why his heart had all of a sudden turned against the rainy season. Something about those ominous clouds kept him at a distance and made him wonder when he would ever see the sun again. Not that it mattered when he did; it was all murky to him. She was gone…what did it matter if the sun was hidden away in a cave somewhere or if it shined incessantly. He would not feel its presence either way.
The last time he truly felt the sunlight was when Sydney Bristow told him, her face completely dispassionate, to stay away from her. And that was all it took really.
He believed in her. He loved her and cherished her and gave her all the faith he had in the world. She knew that. She still chose to walk away from all the devotion he had selflessly offered her. She had already robbed him of his reason, marred his spotless record with the CIA, and forced him to break federal law on several occasions. He nearly died for love of her.
But all these sacrifices were nothing; they could not even purchase a good-bye from her.
And yes, in all honesty he was a little resentful for that.
There was no justice in the world. In his opinion, it was a cold and ruthless place which could take a man's reason using only a pair of luminous brown eyes and a shy, sensual smile. He felt he had lost everything except the haunting memory of her face which never lingered far. It was a poor substitute for the real thing.
But still, he would rather torment himself with her memory than if he had never met her.
It was all because of that damn promise.
Vaughn pushed away the file he had been reading, disgusted with himself and his weaknesses. He dropped his exhausted body against his sofa and anxiously waited for sleep to come. He knew it would be with great resistance.
The agent profile he had just read landed in a pile of photographs. Pictures he took out only when necessity, loneliness and longing, forced him to stare at them. Stare at them and think of her. Each photograph displayed the same face.
A girl. A woman. In his eyes, she was a creature with equal measures of darkness and radiance in her features. She was beautiful, naturally.
The picture taken for the case profile was sterilized as was the CIA standard. When he looked at it he saw a lovely and professional woman; black and white gave no justice to her exquisiteness.
He liked the candid and colored ones best. The ones where she smiled (he missed her smile among other things) and it was revealed that she had the most adorable dimples in the world. In the vivid photos he took (usually without her knowledge) she was vibrant and hopeful. His.
She just didn't know it. Or perhaps she did but knew the risk of saying so. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that they belonged to each other.
He would never call himself a stalker. He was too sensible to be termed that. He was just a firm believer in soul mates especially since he had found his own.
She had banished him from her life but the yearning was still there. Vaughn let out a groan and pressed a pillow to his face. He shut his eyes.
And he remembered… he remembered that day at Francie Calfo's grave. The sorrow and resignation on Sydney's face. How he thought that she was the most graceful woman in the universe even when she was in grief.
Then she spoke. It was his promise, his condemnation which she called him on. Her eyes begged him to understand. He didn't want to.
He always knew his heart would break if he were ever severed from Sydney Bristow's life. But the fact that the exile had come from her own lips was enough to crush it and hurtle his soul into a black hole.
She didn't want him anymore. He might as well be dead.
Vaughn tossed the pillow aside. His face was smeared with a wetness that always accompanied the memories. The night and day when everything went so horribly wrong.
Francie, innocent Francie, in that body bag.
Sydney, dead-eyed, pushed into the police car.
The home video Sark had sent to his office which simultaneously cleared Sydney's name and made Vaughn want to vomit.
But what hurt the most were the last words Sydney had said to him:
"Stay. Away. From me."
Then he watched her walk away as every particle in his being screamed at her to turn around and see the devastation she had left in her wake.
Now each time he flipped his special coin, the way the light flickered on its surface only served to remind him of the way her hair glowed. The way she glowed.
Agony came quickly this time. It thrust a stake through his heart and God help him he couldn't breathe without her. He clutched his glass of alcohol and brought it to his mouth.
The scotch tasted acrid on his lips and it fed the bitter passion which had already festered in his soul. Poison on poison, any way to deaden the pain.
"Goddamnit Sydney! Why!" He stared as the mirror shattered when the cup crashed into it. Glass fragmented and an amber fluid splattered a broken pattern on the off white walls.
So many things had shattered already. Sydney's delicate grip on reality, Francie's body, his heart.
Everything was broken and damn he would have to clean up that mess he made later.
He was on his feet and he paced the room, unsure of what he wanted to destroy next. He rubbed his hands across his face and he tried to pick out the last good memory he ever had. He found none forthcoming. Instead he recalled the conversation he had with Jack Bristow a few weeks after the death of Francie. He'd been curious (desperate) to know what Sydney's condition was.
"I wouldn't know," Jack Bristow said his voice shaky. "Sydney has cut me out of her life. Mr. Tippin has not spoken to her either."
"She can't just lock herself away!" Vaughn argued. "It's not healthy! She needs someone! (I need her)"
But Jack heard the underlying meaning in his words.
With sympathy he said "She needs time, Mr. Vaughn."
So he gave her time. Two months ago he gave her all the time in the world to grieve. His affection for her would've made him willing to wait for infinity.
Frustration got in the way first. As weeks passed, he came to realize that she would not come around any day soon. Probably not in the next ever.
For the first time, Michael Vaughn knew what it was like to lose Sydney Bristow. It felt like madness, wrong and unreal. It was ironic. He would never have believed it. It wasn't death or deceit or protocol that finally succeeded in tearing them apart.
It was a promise. A promise that he had so impulsively made that day in the cemetery.
If he was any less honorable than he knew he was, he would've thrown the damn oath out the window. Love was supposed to conquer all obstacles. Shouldn't that be enough to trump one lousy promise?
No, he decided. In Sydney's eyes it wouldn't be. His father told him once that a gentleman was nothing if he could not keep a promise. As a gentleman, he had to respect her wishes.
Even if it obliterated every dream he held of her. Even if the longer he stayed away from her the more his obsession grew.
She's made her choice. Now we'll both just have to with it.
He didn't want to live with it. He wanted to die because of it.
Maybe Vaughn was being melodramatic. Weiss would say he was being a crybaby. He only wished that he could trivialize it so easily. That would prove somewhat that his feelings for Sydney was nothing more than an infatuation.
But then he remembered what it felt like whenever she looked at him. Really looked at him. When formality failed them both and for a few seconds protocol meant squat. Those moments were silent and brief; sometimes he wondered if they even existed. Maybe they were just hallucinations he created in the dimness of the warehouse. Delusions he used to justify why he couldn't keep away from her.
This would be simple… except for the fact that they weren't just in his imagination. Whatever he felt for Sydney Bristow was as real as the air he breathed. It was as real as the emotions he saw reflected in her eyes when they stared into his: loyalty, respect, devotion, desire.
It was enough to make him so patient with her. He would wait until SD 6 was put down; he would endure with Sydney's insistence that Will Tippin had to be kept safe. All for the simple truth that he loved her and she loved him.
He would do everything in his power to make her happy and keep her protected and prove beyond a doubt that he was worthy of her.
Vaughn flopped back on the couch and for the millionth time that day dreamed up alternate ways his last encounter with Sydney could've ended. He thought of all the things that he said much too late. They all ended with "I love you." In reality, he knew he could never have said that aloud. He also knew that it would not have been enough to make her stay.
He leaned over and picked a photograph off the table. Sydney was leaning against a wood railing. He could see the ocean in the background and a breeze which caused the folds in her sundress to ripple. Her head was slightly downcast and her hands were clasped demurely behind her back. Despite her face being tilted down, her eyes were laughingly fixed on the camera. She looked both coy and alluring.
It was the only photo he had of her that she had given him. They had been in the warehouse and she was so excited to show him photos from her trip to Santa Cruz with Will and Francie. He supposed that these days she could hardly stand to look at them.
As she showed him the photographs and explained each of them in great detail he felt a small joy blossom inside of him. For a time he could allow himself to be coaxed into her world and be happy knowing that she was happy.
When she came to that particular picture, he was struck by it. He didn't know how anybody could look so beautiful and natural doing it.
"Oh yeah that one," Sydney said. "Will insisted that we had to get a shot of me with an ocean backdrop." Lucky bastard that Will.
"Can I have it?" He wanted to kick himself at the audacity in his voice. Even Sydney looked slightly taken aback by his bluntness.
Just as he was about to bs his way out of the situation by using a quick CIA-related excuse, she smiled. He was surprised to see a rosy blush on her cheeks.
"Umm…sure." Her smile was too radiant as she handed him the photo.
He had far too many moments like these where he had to restrain himself from kissing her.
It was his favorite photograph.
He sighed deeply. How long could he keep doing this to himself? He fooled Devlin and he managed to fool Barnett on some level. Besides Weiss and probably Jack Bristow, he had got everyone at the CIA offices to believe that he had emotionally detached himself from Sydney. People no longer snickered when he came down the hall. The whispers about his unhealthy attachment to her had ceased. It seems that he had shed that distasteful reputation and he should be grateful for that.
Then again, he never really cared what those double-speaking asses at Langley said about him. All that mattered was that whenever she looked at him, he felt wonderful.
"Sydney," he murmured. He traced the curves of the photograph.
Then he jumped up when he heard the phone ring. He glared at it. How many times had he hoped that it would be her on the other line to summon his presence like so many times before.
He picked it up, unable to ward away the hope that it would be her. "Hello?"
"Vaughn?" It was Weiss. Vaughn held back a groan.
"Hey man. What's up?"
"You better get down here."
"Why? I was sleeping." Liar.
"Just get down here." There was a sense of urgency in his voice.
Maybe it's about Syd. Maybe something happened to her.
"I'll be right there."
End part 1 tbc