SPOILERS: General season two.
DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to J.J. Abrams.
SUMMARY: who we were isn't lost before we were us. Sixth in the Matrilineal series after Em's lovely "Countermeasures."
THANKS: To Em, of course, for starting this insanity. Back over to you. Heehee. To kate, for the Haikus of Kickassedness. And to Jo March, despite her refusal to join the insanity, for claiming she actually enjoys my writing. :)
Indigo
Macha
Seven days of searching turns up nothing.
Vaughn works 18 hour days, stares at photocopies and faxes until his eyes burn, searching for an irregularity that will lead him to Jane. He can't think too much about Sydney, even though every time he looks at the picture of Jane, he wishes he'd thought to take the picture of the two of them -- of Sydney and Jane -- that he'd noticed on the bookcase of Sarah Lewis's home. He doesn't, after all, have any pictures of Sydney. He could access a ton of surveillance footage of Sydney-as-various-personas, but none of her.
He tells himself that's the only reason he'd want that picture of Sydney and Jane -- nostalgia.
Because, he can't let himself think about Sydney; he's too angry to make reasoned decisions where she's concerned. Too bad every time he looks at Jane's dimples, he sees Sydney's irrepressible grin, and then the fury comes back. And he can't afford the anger, because he needs to be logical. He needs to be at the top of his game if he stands any chance of finding his daughter.
His daughter. The words are still a shock to him every time he hears them.
He knows from Sarah Lewis's records that Jane is six months old, and he agonizes over this. If she was full term -- and there's no indication that she was otherwise -- than Sydney was nearly three months pregnant when she left him. How could he have missed that? How could he have been so unobservant?
Being observant is his job, after all. He's supposed to notice the details that others miss. He's also supposed to be able to find people who don't want to be found, and uncover objects that people have tried their best to hide, but if the past week is any indication, he's failing miserably.
He decides to blame Sydney.
It's not a totally unreasonable position. After all, Vaughn has always considered Sydney's tendency to flout the rules frustrating, but in this situation, it makes her moves completely unpredictable. If she were operating under CIA protocol, he could narrow the field a little, figure out where she'd go for safety and anonymity. But she's making her own rules as she goes along, and he's haunted by the memory of the story she'd told when she'd walked into the CIA, the adaptability and ingenuity she'd shown. The sheer size of the United States, the amount of small towns with little in the way of electronic surveillance, the amount of people teeming in the big cities -- it makes him crazy, because she'll turn it into an advantage.
She already has, since the people who are trying to kill her seem to be having as little luck finding her as Jack and Vaughn. Vaughn hopes, anyway, though he's never been completely convinced by the "no news is good news" school of thought. He's seen too many CIA agents go missing, never to be found, to be that optimistic. In this specific case, he believes Jane is still alive because he has too. And so he keeps searching.
Jack is concentrating on Sydney's motives: Why she'd run in the first place, what her motive is now, where she would go -- that sort of thing. Weiss is tracing Sarah Lewis's life to see if a pattern emerges that could help predict future moves.
Vaughn monitors as many different intell sources as possible, and on his rare down time, he does random spot checks of portions of the United States via KH-11 satellite. It's futile, he knows. The chances of him choosing a one square mile portion of the Midwest at the exact time Syd drives through it are astronomical. That doesn't stop him from doing it.
Every time Jack orders him home to get some rest, Vaughn heads instead for the beach, running not on the paved walkway, but down on the sand. It's twice the effort and it tires him twice as fast. Unfortunately, this doesn't result in twice the amount of sleep. He's still getting by on three, maybe four hours a night.
He wonders if Jane is sleeping through the night yet.
***
On the eighth day, there's something.
It's barely anything, a blip. A surreptitiously recorded, single-sourced report from a K-Directorate agent in Arizona, alleging that he saw a former CIA operative. The agent doesn't say it's Sydney, doesn't say it's a female operative, doesn't mention a baby, but it's still enough to catch Vaughn's attention, because the CIA keeps track of its retired agents, and as far as he knows, there's no one in Tucson. With the utter lack of any better pieces of intell, Vaughn takes it to Jack.
"There's no corroboration?" Jack asks, and if Vaughn didn't know better, he'd think Jack sounded nervous.
"No, but we got this by chance. It's a cellphone intercept--"
"I don't like fortuitous intell."
Vaughn bites back a cruel remark, tries to reign in his anger. "Jack, listen--"
"No, you listen," Jack steps closer, too close, crowding Vaughn to get his full attention. "We have limited resources here. It's you, me, and Agent Weiss working on this and our regular tasks. We cannot afford to go haring off--"
"I'm not suggesting--"
Jack merely raises his voice, "To go haring off on single-sourced information that's, at this point, three hours old."
Vaughn can't understand Jack's reluctance, can't comprehend why this intell is any less credible than the tenuous leads they'd followed in pursuit of Sloane and Derevko. "Fine, I'll go myself."
"No."
"Tucson is only an hour away by plane."
Jack opens his mouth to say something else, but Weiss raps twice on the door and opens it. "Guys?"
Jack takes a step backwards, away from Vaughn. "What is it?"
"Kendall."
Jack nods, shoots Vaughn one more warning look, and exits.
Vaughn stays behind, telling Weiss he'll be a few minutes late. He's not sure what he's doing anymore, not sure why he suddenly doubts Jack's motives, but he tells himself to trust his instincts.
Not that his instincts have much of a batting average of late, but his instincts are really all he has left.
***
Forty minutes later, Jack has convinced Kendall not to move on a sighting of Sloane in Kazakstan. Jack argued very reasonably that Sloane is a hard target, that they need to plan this mission down to the last detail, that sending in agents who are in country would put them at unnecessary risk when, after all, Jack, Vaughn, Weiss, and a team familiar with Sloane's M.O. could be there in less than a day.
Vaughn finds himself agreeing with Jack, despite niggling doubts. Nobody -- save possibly Derevko or Sark -- knows how Sloane operates better than Jack Bristow. That plus Jack's facility with strategic moves make him the obvious choice to lead the mission.
Vaughn walks slowly back to his desk, wondering why the thought of putting his search for Jane on hold during the mission makes him so damn frustrated. In 48 hours, Sydney could be on the other side of the globe. She could disappear forever, and Vaughn will never meet his daughter.
It's purely by chance that Vaughn catches Jack. He's flipping somewhat manically through satellite channels, as if he can do twice the work now to make up for the coming 48-hour gap, when he hits the wrong combination of keys. Instead of external footage, he gets the internal monitors on a split screen -- four rooms shown in black and white. Even from the strange angle, he can recognize Jack, standing near the door in an empty conference room.
And he's on his cellphone.
Vaughn pulls that room up to full-screen, but Jack's already leaving, tucking his phone into his pocket.
Angrily, Vaughn pushes himself from his desk and heads Jack off in the hallway. "Who was that?"
Jack stares at him, that icy glare that gives nothing away. "What are you talking about?"
"On the phone," Vaughn says, his tone low and insistent.
"Agent Vaughn, wouldn't your time be better spent preparing for this mission?" With that, Jack stalks off.
Vaughn spends the next four hours fidgeting at his desk, his attention split between the pictures on the screen and his suspicions over Jack's motives. He can't figure out who Jack could possibly have been calling. When Jack leaves for the night, Vaughn follows him, hanging back five or six cars until they're nearing Jack's house. Then Vaughn zooms right up beside Jack on La Cienaga, gesturing brusquely at a parking lot.
Jack wrenches the wheel and zooms into the Best Buy lot, screeching to a halt at the far end. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he demands, stalking over to Vaughn's car.
Vaughn launches himself out of the car and slams his door closed. "That's what I was going to ask you."
"Are you crazy?" Jack demands. "Do you really think this is an appropriate place for the kind of discussion you seem to want to have?" He gestures at the store, which has two small surveillance cameras mounted at the corners of the building, aimed out over the parking lot.
"I don't care. I want to know what's going on," Vaughn insists.
"We're going after Sloane," Jack says, enunciating carefully as if Vaughn were a slow-witted child. "You need to pack a bag and be at the airport in two hours."
"That's not what I meant." Vaughn crosses his arms. "You called someone."
"Yes."
"Who?"
Jack stares at him for a long moment. "I called a source I have in Kazakstan. I asked him to do some surveillance until we get there."
He's lying, Vaughn thinks immediately. There's no tell, Jack is far too skilled to give it away when he's lying. Vaughn just... he just knows that Jack's lying to him. And he knows Jack will never admit it until he's damn good and ready, and so Vaughn nods curtly. "Fine."
Jack watches him carefully, and Vaughn knows that Jack knows. "You need to watch yourself, Agent Vaughn. Tread very carefully."
Vaughn doesn't bother to answer, he just gets in his car and drives away. He's driving aimlessly, so damn sick of being lied to, of being betrayed by the people he trusts.
He has an idea, a really bad idea. But Jane's in danger and Sydney's virtually unfindable. Weiss only has a few hours a day to work on this, and now Jack. If Vaughn can't trust Jack anymore, this terrible idea may actually be the only option he has left. He hates the very idea, is not big on asking for help in any situation, never mind like this, but he knows he won't find Jane and Sydney on his own. And so he parks at the curb four doors down from a small internet café in Santa Monica. He pays his $9.95 and sets up a hotmail account with obviously false personal information, says he's a 17 year old boy named Jeffrey. He selects "compose" and types in the email address from memory.
It takes nearly the entire remainder of his half-hour of internet time to compose a message that will be understood by only the intended receiver, but when he's satisfied, he holds his breath and hits "send."
Vaughn checks his cellphone compulsively for the next two hours as he collects Donovan and heads for the beach. He runs with the small phone clutched in his hand, and he's so startled when it rings that he nearly drops it.
"Vaughn," he answers, his voice roughened from physical exertion.
"What a surprise to hear from you, Agent Vaughn," says Irina Derevko. "Am I to understand from your cryptic email that you're asking me for help?"
Vaughn closes his eyes and says, "Yes."
THE END
Feedback is cherished.
The Sticky Wicket -- Fanfic by Macha
healthyinterest.net/macha
Healthy Interest -- We're Not Obsessed. Really.
healthyinterest.net
DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to J.J. Abrams.
SUMMARY: who we were isn't lost before we were us. Sixth in the Matrilineal series after Em's lovely "Countermeasures."
THANKS: To Em, of course, for starting this insanity. Back over to you. Heehee. To kate, for the Haikus of Kickassedness. And to Jo March, despite her refusal to join the insanity, for claiming she actually enjoys my writing. :)
Indigo
Macha
Seven days of searching turns up nothing.
Vaughn works 18 hour days, stares at photocopies and faxes until his eyes burn, searching for an irregularity that will lead him to Jane. He can't think too much about Sydney, even though every time he looks at the picture of Jane, he wishes he'd thought to take the picture of the two of them -- of Sydney and Jane -- that he'd noticed on the bookcase of Sarah Lewis's home. He doesn't, after all, have any pictures of Sydney. He could access a ton of surveillance footage of Sydney-as-various-personas, but none of her.
He tells himself that's the only reason he'd want that picture of Sydney and Jane -- nostalgia.
Because, he can't let himself think about Sydney; he's too angry to make reasoned decisions where she's concerned. Too bad every time he looks at Jane's dimples, he sees Sydney's irrepressible grin, and then the fury comes back. And he can't afford the anger, because he needs to be logical. He needs to be at the top of his game if he stands any chance of finding his daughter.
His daughter. The words are still a shock to him every time he hears them.
He knows from Sarah Lewis's records that Jane is six months old, and he agonizes over this. If she was full term -- and there's no indication that she was otherwise -- than Sydney was nearly three months pregnant when she left him. How could he have missed that? How could he have been so unobservant?
Being observant is his job, after all. He's supposed to notice the details that others miss. He's also supposed to be able to find people who don't want to be found, and uncover objects that people have tried their best to hide, but if the past week is any indication, he's failing miserably.
He decides to blame Sydney.
It's not a totally unreasonable position. After all, Vaughn has always considered Sydney's tendency to flout the rules frustrating, but in this situation, it makes her moves completely unpredictable. If she were operating under CIA protocol, he could narrow the field a little, figure out where she'd go for safety and anonymity. But she's making her own rules as she goes along, and he's haunted by the memory of the story she'd told when she'd walked into the CIA, the adaptability and ingenuity she'd shown. The sheer size of the United States, the amount of small towns with little in the way of electronic surveillance, the amount of people teeming in the big cities -- it makes him crazy, because she'll turn it into an advantage.
She already has, since the people who are trying to kill her seem to be having as little luck finding her as Jack and Vaughn. Vaughn hopes, anyway, though he's never been completely convinced by the "no news is good news" school of thought. He's seen too many CIA agents go missing, never to be found, to be that optimistic. In this specific case, he believes Jane is still alive because he has too. And so he keeps searching.
Jack is concentrating on Sydney's motives: Why she'd run in the first place, what her motive is now, where she would go -- that sort of thing. Weiss is tracing Sarah Lewis's life to see if a pattern emerges that could help predict future moves.
Vaughn monitors as many different intell sources as possible, and on his rare down time, he does random spot checks of portions of the United States via KH-11 satellite. It's futile, he knows. The chances of him choosing a one square mile portion of the Midwest at the exact time Syd drives through it are astronomical. That doesn't stop him from doing it.
Every time Jack orders him home to get some rest, Vaughn heads instead for the beach, running not on the paved walkway, but down on the sand. It's twice the effort and it tires him twice as fast. Unfortunately, this doesn't result in twice the amount of sleep. He's still getting by on three, maybe four hours a night.
He wonders if Jane is sleeping through the night yet.
***
On the eighth day, there's something.
It's barely anything, a blip. A surreptitiously recorded, single-sourced report from a K-Directorate agent in Arizona, alleging that he saw a former CIA operative. The agent doesn't say it's Sydney, doesn't say it's a female operative, doesn't mention a baby, but it's still enough to catch Vaughn's attention, because the CIA keeps track of its retired agents, and as far as he knows, there's no one in Tucson. With the utter lack of any better pieces of intell, Vaughn takes it to Jack.
"There's no corroboration?" Jack asks, and if Vaughn didn't know better, he'd think Jack sounded nervous.
"No, but we got this by chance. It's a cellphone intercept--"
"I don't like fortuitous intell."
Vaughn bites back a cruel remark, tries to reign in his anger. "Jack, listen--"
"No, you listen," Jack steps closer, too close, crowding Vaughn to get his full attention. "We have limited resources here. It's you, me, and Agent Weiss working on this and our regular tasks. We cannot afford to go haring off--"
"I'm not suggesting--"
Jack merely raises his voice, "To go haring off on single-sourced information that's, at this point, three hours old."
Vaughn can't understand Jack's reluctance, can't comprehend why this intell is any less credible than the tenuous leads they'd followed in pursuit of Sloane and Derevko. "Fine, I'll go myself."
"No."
"Tucson is only an hour away by plane."
Jack opens his mouth to say something else, but Weiss raps twice on the door and opens it. "Guys?"
Jack takes a step backwards, away from Vaughn. "What is it?"
"Kendall."
Jack nods, shoots Vaughn one more warning look, and exits.
Vaughn stays behind, telling Weiss he'll be a few minutes late. He's not sure what he's doing anymore, not sure why he suddenly doubts Jack's motives, but he tells himself to trust his instincts.
Not that his instincts have much of a batting average of late, but his instincts are really all he has left.
***
Forty minutes later, Jack has convinced Kendall not to move on a sighting of Sloane in Kazakstan. Jack argued very reasonably that Sloane is a hard target, that they need to plan this mission down to the last detail, that sending in agents who are in country would put them at unnecessary risk when, after all, Jack, Vaughn, Weiss, and a team familiar with Sloane's M.O. could be there in less than a day.
Vaughn finds himself agreeing with Jack, despite niggling doubts. Nobody -- save possibly Derevko or Sark -- knows how Sloane operates better than Jack Bristow. That plus Jack's facility with strategic moves make him the obvious choice to lead the mission.
Vaughn walks slowly back to his desk, wondering why the thought of putting his search for Jane on hold during the mission makes him so damn frustrated. In 48 hours, Sydney could be on the other side of the globe. She could disappear forever, and Vaughn will never meet his daughter.
It's purely by chance that Vaughn catches Jack. He's flipping somewhat manically through satellite channels, as if he can do twice the work now to make up for the coming 48-hour gap, when he hits the wrong combination of keys. Instead of external footage, he gets the internal monitors on a split screen -- four rooms shown in black and white. Even from the strange angle, he can recognize Jack, standing near the door in an empty conference room.
And he's on his cellphone.
Vaughn pulls that room up to full-screen, but Jack's already leaving, tucking his phone into his pocket.
Angrily, Vaughn pushes himself from his desk and heads Jack off in the hallway. "Who was that?"
Jack stares at him, that icy glare that gives nothing away. "What are you talking about?"
"On the phone," Vaughn says, his tone low and insistent.
"Agent Vaughn, wouldn't your time be better spent preparing for this mission?" With that, Jack stalks off.
Vaughn spends the next four hours fidgeting at his desk, his attention split between the pictures on the screen and his suspicions over Jack's motives. He can't figure out who Jack could possibly have been calling. When Jack leaves for the night, Vaughn follows him, hanging back five or six cars until they're nearing Jack's house. Then Vaughn zooms right up beside Jack on La Cienaga, gesturing brusquely at a parking lot.
Jack wrenches the wheel and zooms into the Best Buy lot, screeching to a halt at the far end. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he demands, stalking over to Vaughn's car.
Vaughn launches himself out of the car and slams his door closed. "That's what I was going to ask you."
"Are you crazy?" Jack demands. "Do you really think this is an appropriate place for the kind of discussion you seem to want to have?" He gestures at the store, which has two small surveillance cameras mounted at the corners of the building, aimed out over the parking lot.
"I don't care. I want to know what's going on," Vaughn insists.
"We're going after Sloane," Jack says, enunciating carefully as if Vaughn were a slow-witted child. "You need to pack a bag and be at the airport in two hours."
"That's not what I meant." Vaughn crosses his arms. "You called someone."
"Yes."
"Who?"
Jack stares at him for a long moment. "I called a source I have in Kazakstan. I asked him to do some surveillance until we get there."
He's lying, Vaughn thinks immediately. There's no tell, Jack is far too skilled to give it away when he's lying. Vaughn just... he just knows that Jack's lying to him. And he knows Jack will never admit it until he's damn good and ready, and so Vaughn nods curtly. "Fine."
Jack watches him carefully, and Vaughn knows that Jack knows. "You need to watch yourself, Agent Vaughn. Tread very carefully."
Vaughn doesn't bother to answer, he just gets in his car and drives away. He's driving aimlessly, so damn sick of being lied to, of being betrayed by the people he trusts.
He has an idea, a really bad idea. But Jane's in danger and Sydney's virtually unfindable. Weiss only has a few hours a day to work on this, and now Jack. If Vaughn can't trust Jack anymore, this terrible idea may actually be the only option he has left. He hates the very idea, is not big on asking for help in any situation, never mind like this, but he knows he won't find Jane and Sydney on his own. And so he parks at the curb four doors down from a small internet café in Santa Monica. He pays his $9.95 and sets up a hotmail account with obviously false personal information, says he's a 17 year old boy named Jeffrey. He selects "compose" and types in the email address from memory.
It takes nearly the entire remainder of his half-hour of internet time to compose a message that will be understood by only the intended receiver, but when he's satisfied, he holds his breath and hits "send."
Vaughn checks his cellphone compulsively for the next two hours as he collects Donovan and heads for the beach. He runs with the small phone clutched in his hand, and he's so startled when it rings that he nearly drops it.
"Vaughn," he answers, his voice roughened from physical exertion.
"What a surprise to hear from you, Agent Vaughn," says Irina Derevko. "Am I to understand from your cryptic email that you're asking me for help?"
Vaughn closes his eyes and says, "Yes."
THE END
Feedback is cherished.
The Sticky Wicket -- Fanfic by Macha
healthyinterest.net/macha
Healthy Interest -- We're Not Obsessed. Really.
healthyinterest.net