Sydney/Vaughn
Season 3.
1.
She doesn't want to be the other woman, and she tells him so repeatedly. But then he looks at her, and her strength - maybe the one thing she has left - slips away.
She's weak. When she needs to kick and scream and steal and hurt and shoot and destroy, she's strong. She's strong against her father, her mother, her enemies, her superiors, everyone. When it comes to Michael Vaughn, she's weak. So weak.
She thinks back to times when she was willing to be found out and get killed just for the pleasure of eating dinner or going to a hockey game with him, times when she was willing to break rules and protocol and put herself in danger just for him.
Back then, she wasn't even that in love.
She thinks of other times, good times, when she didn't disguise the weakness because they were both weak, and deep inside she knew that she would do everything for him.
When he stands in front of her, hands in his pockets and forehead wrinkles full on, she can't resist him.
And she becomes the other woman once again.
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She wants to hate Lauren Reed, because that's appropriate for the situation. Liking her can't be an option, because she's never met the woman, and pure hatred just isn't for her.
So she stays undecided, noting to herself that it's better that way, because she doesn't need - or want - to face the woman who, though unknowingly, destroyed her heart.
She looked at the picture Vaughn has in his office, expecting him to turn it away from her as he did the first time they met, with his picture of Alice, but he doesn't. She notices it's a picture of him and Donovan, covered in grass, and she wonders.
He knows what she's thinking and gives her a look, forehead wrinkles in action and green eyes narrowed suspiciously, and she holds her hands up in the air as if to say, hey, I just wanted to see how she looks like, so I can wallow in how better than me she is and how she's got you officially and I don't get you at all.
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it continues, daily even, because they work together and go on missions together - everyone knows Bristow and Vaughn do it better when together. They go in, talk with no words, and get out, carrying what they came to get.
In their reports, they never mention the flights, because it's not necessary and isn't important for the operations - and because no one should know what they do on those flights. It's their time together, where she forgets the aloneness, and he pushes back the marriageness, and they are reminded of the years before.
When it's over and they stand in the LA airport, lost for words, his ring stings her soul. When he gives her a smile and enters an unfamiliar car, she is reminded that she's nothing but the other woman.