Aphelion
By: Souris
Rated: PG
Disclaimer: They aren't mine. Never will be. Entertainment purposes. J.J. Abrams. Yadda yadda.
Author's Note: What effect has Noah had on Sydney and Vaughn? This was written after "Masquerade," and I don't know that it fits as well after "Snowman," but I'm posting it anyway. It's chock-full Ôo angst, angst and more angst!
***** Contains a mild allusion to a SPOILER for an upcoming episode, but nothing specific*****

Aphelion: the point in the path of a celestial body that is farthest from the sun.


Sydney rolled over and glanced at the clock. 5:34 a.m. She sighed. It had been close to 3 a.m. by the time she had finally dozed off after hours of tossing and turning. And now she was wide awake again, physically exhausted but unable to quiet her mind. She had lost count of how many nights and mornings had followed the same pattern in the past three weeks.

When she did sleep, her dreams often made her wish she hadn't. Wild, tumultuous images assailed her, images of her mother, her father, Danny, Sloane, Will, Francie, Noah, Emily, Vaughn --variously dead or dying, running from her or attacking her, killing each other or pulling her from the brink of horror.

She wondered if she was going mad. Or had already gone far past that point.

Increasingly, she had found herself dreaming of Michael Vaughn. She had dreamed of him before in the months that she had known him, but those dreams had been decidedly pleasant. These ... were not. These made her ache inside.

In one dream, they had been in the warehouse, when suddenly it had filled with fog that billowed up in an instant, think and blanketing. One moment he was standing in front of her, close enough to touch; then the fog had obscured him from her sight. She had put out her hand to grab onto him, but he wasn't there. She had called and called for him, but he didn't answer. Then she was outside and the warehouse was gone, leaving her alone in a vast concrete field.

She had woken up screaming his name.

She knew why she was having these dreams about him. It was no great psychological revelation. She had felt the distance growing between them almost from the moment that Noah -- just thinking his name was like a dagger's thrust -- had re-entered her life.

She had known that Vaughn was attracted to her, that he cared about her perhaps more than he should have. She hadn't known quite what to do about it, hadn't been quite ready to *do* anything about it. She knew that she was attracted to him, but it had seemed too dangerous, too frightening, too foolish to pursue. But now ... now it was as if he no longer cared for her the same way.

Oh, it wasn't as if he was rude or brusque; he was never that. He was concerned and polite and determined to keep her safe. He had continued to take chances to help her. He was never anything but professional.

She hated "professional."

If she had never seen how soft and warm his green eyes could be, how his face could light up with the most brilliant smile she had ever experienced, how his gaze could make her feel as if she were the only person in the universe, how a few light words could make her laugh no matter how deep her anguish or fear, she would have thought him perfectly attentive.

But she had seen those things, and she now ached with their absence.

Out of all the things that she had lost in the past few weeks -- confidence in her judgment, Will's trust, the hard-won ease with her father -- somehow the sparkle in Vaughn's eyes tormented her the most. Perhaps because it was the one thing that she most feared never recapturing.

What made it worse was that she knew that it was her fault, that the distance between them was because of her single-minded fixation on finding her mother and her misguided trust in someone that she had welcomed back into her life far too readily. Neither of those things required any great psychological insight to explain, either; she had been needy and desperate and tired of her situation, and that had led her on a self-destructive path that showed little regard for anyone but herself. She had come so close to making the mistake of her life....

Being able to understand her actions clinically didn't make her feel any better. It certainly didn't assuage her guilt and self-recrimination over how she had acted, how she had hurt those around her. She had seen that hurt written plainly on Vaughn's face, before he donned a mask of his own, invisible but no less concealing.

She knew now, with a realization that made her sick inside, that she had never fully appreciated Vaughn's commitment to her and her happiness. What she had left of that commitment now seemed a pale substitute.

He never asked her about anything but work anymore. No more questions about Francie or school. No more transparently jealous inquiries about Will. No more appreciative glances or sweet compliments that sent tingles throughout her body.

When she asked him about Weiss or his nemesis Haladki or his hockey, he answered with just enough information to be politely friendly, never more than she had asked for. When she told him about anything personal, feeling as if she were taking horrible advantage of him but unable to stop confiding in him or give up that connection, he listened, but she could sense a detachment that had never been there before. When she smiled at him, he smiled back, but it didn't reach his eyes.

It was perhaps -- probably -- selfish of her, but she wanted him back the way he had been before. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that she had been selfish where he was concerned. She knew that she had hurt him twice over -- with Noah and with her mother -- but she wanted him back more than just about anything.

Yesterday, she had worn a short skirt and tank top to their meeting at the warehouse, had applied her makeup carefully and fussed with her hair, not even realizing that she had dressed for him until he didn't even notice. She had sat in her car in a daze for a few minutes before driving away with moist eyes, feeling an almost overwhelming sense of loss and disappointment.

She glanced at the clock again. 7:21. He would probably be up. He might be up. She had to hear his voice; she had to see him. She could come up with some excuse to meet him later than day, before she left on the mission to Budapest. And then ... then she could tell him how sorry she was. She had said it before, but she needed to say it again. She needed to tell him how much she missed him, how much he meant to her, how grateful she was that he was in her life. She had a lot to make up for.

She reached to the bedside table for her cell phone and dialed his number. It rang for a long time, so that she feared he wasn't up after all.

"Hello. Michael's phone." The sleepy woman's voice that answered hit like a roundhouse kick to her stomach. She opened her mouth but could not speak.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" the woman asked.

"Who is it?" She heard Vaughn's voice in the background, then suddenly in her ear. "Hello?"

She hung up, staring at the phone in her hand. Thought would not come. Breath would not come. Only pain came, sharp and dull and throbbing and lancing all at once.

Why does this hurt so badly? she wondered as the bitter taste rose in her throat. But she knew; she knew that she had wanted him and had had him and had lost him. She gathered a pillow to her chest and wept, silently, so that Francie could not hear.

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I'm sorry, guys, that this wasn't the promised warehouse scene for "Une Nuit." After No!Augh, I just wasn't in a shmoopy Syd/Vaughn place. I'm sure I'll get back there later. Actually, I'm already kind of there again. I was just *really* displeased with Sydney in "Masquerade," and I kinda needed to make her suffer and atone before I felt that she was worthy of Vaughn again. I'm also thinking of doing a Vaughn-POV companion piece to this if the angst isn't *too* overwhelming! And I also have an idea for extending it and making a real VSR arc out of it.