Promise
Don't talk. Don't think. Don't even feel. Just...react.
It was one of the first rules she learnt about hand-to-hand fighting. Now, as she lay on the ground of an abandoned warehouse, blood streaming down in what felt like rivers, she wondered distantly how she was supposed to react.
She should be applying pressure on her wounds, but there were just so many, and it really required far too much effort. She must have been dying anyway; there was no way they'd just leave her here otherwise. How had the mission gone so wrong? Was this really how it was all going to end?
There were blurred shapes in front of her. She blinked furiously, trying to focus her vision, and registered the back of somebody she knew very well.
"Sydney?" he called out. Instinctively, she attempted to answer, but only managed to sputter a slightly choked sob.
It was enough. He heard it and turned around, rushing to her as she coughed up God knows what in an attempt to call out to him. "Oh God, Syd." He leant over her, attempting desperately to stop the bleeding.
As she tried to hold off unconsciousness, she watched his failed attempts with something almost like amusement. "It's not gonna stop," she whispered to him. "Even if we call for extraction, it'll take at least half an hour and I don't think I have that long. I know my own body. I'm not going to make it." The last sentence was said as a statement. A simple, resigned, statement. There was no resentment, no fear, but the deepest of regret for what would never be.
He stared at her; she stared back, and a moment of perfect understanding came between them. They both knew she wouldn't make it, but he was going to try anyway, because he couldn't allow himself to give up on her again.
Sydney smiled up weakly at him, and for a split second, the sight of her smile was enough to make everything all right. "You found me, Vaughn. I knew you would." It hurt to speak, but it would hurt more not to tell him.
"Syd..." he didn't know what to say anymore. He wanted nothing more than to hold her to him forever, but knew he couldn't.
"Times like these I wish I worked at a real bank." She tried to smile. He wanted to laugh at the simple irony of the situation, at the cruel joke fate was playing on them, yet again. It always happened like this. They would find each other, and then lose each other again, at the worst possible time. It was the cruelest 'meant to be' in existence.
She struggled to sit up, and he laid a hand across her softly, minding her wounds. Resigned, she lied back against him and tried her best to stay awake. "Vaughn? If you make it out alive...tell my father something for me. Tell him that he doesn't need my strength. His own strength is more than enough to keep both of us going."
He didn't know what she meant, but it didn't matter. "I will, Syd."
"And...and tell Dixon that he will always be my anchor. Tell Marshall that someone as smart as him never really needed keys." She was rasping by this point, her voice barely above a whisper. It hurt so much to speak, but she was trying not to feel, and she needed so badly to say this. "Tell Nadia that though we don't share the same father, it doesn't matter. It wouldn't matter even if we didn't share the same mother, because we have the same heart. Tell Weiss that he's been a better friend to me than I've ever shown gratitude for."
Vaughn nodded again. He knew he would remember every word of this, and relay it to the right people, if it was the last thing he did. He owed Sydney that much. "Syd, I..." God. How was he going to say everything he needed to say? How was he supposed to say anything at all?
She smiled. "I know, Vaughn. I know." He knew that she did. She understood exactly how he felt, because she felt it herself. "Promise me you'll tell them."
He nodded, unable to stop crying now. "I promise."
"It's all right, Vaughn." She felt herself start to slip in and out of consciousness, but kept going for as long as she could. "You've always been my guardian angel. Now it's my turn to be yours."
"I...God Sydney, you're so beautiful."
"Even now?" She smiled wryly.
"Even now." He encased her hand in his, caressing it, wishing that by doing so he could hold on forever.
"Promise me you'll find me again, Vaughn." Her faint whisper from before was a trumpet compared to the volume she now spoke at, yet he heard every word with his heart.
"I will. I'll find you. We always find each other." His grip on her hand became tighter.
"And…promise me we'll make it to Santa Barbara." She slipped again, blacking out for a few seconds, but not before she heard his answer.
"I promise."
"Promise me you'll move on." This was the hardest part, hardest thing to say. How could she ask something this unbelievably hard of him?
He didn't know how he was going to do that. He didn't know if he could ever share with anyone else what he shared with her. But still, as he watched her life slowly slip away, there was only one right answer to give.
"I promise."