A/N: I should warn you that you'll have more fun with this story if you
don't nitpick the details. With that said, enjoy!
## ## ##
Chapter 2:
"So, what do you know about him?" Sydney asked as they walked and carried Vaughn through the darkness, hoping not to get noticed. They'd already planned to play it off as if he was drunk if anyone asked.
Weiss was telling her what he knew between breaths as they walked, "Well, he was obsessed with Rambaldi...as you already know. He devoted his whole life to putting the pieces together. Of course...with the lack of technology like we have today...he didn't get very far."
"Huh," she grunted in answer, while balancing his ankles in one hand to be able to open the front door of the hotel. Weiss had already used the signal jammer they had before nearing the hotel on the off chance that SD-6 had tapped into the security system. But at the moment, Sydney wasn't worried about being found out by her organization's security section; she was too interested in the man being toted between her and Weiss. She wanted to ask if Weiss knew if Vaughn was married at that stage of his life, but knew it was girlish and silly to even be thinking it, so she pushed it from her mind.
They wordlessly carried Vaughn to her room, ignoring the strange looks from the few members of the hotel staff that were about their business, and once safely behind her room door, Weiss laid him out on the bed. He then removed Vaughn's muddy boots while Sydney stuck to the plan and took pictures of each page of the journal with the tiny CIA-issue camera.
"What am I going to tell him in the morning?" Sydney asked as Weiss prepared to leave with both cameras in hand.
"I've heard you're great at improvisation--"
"Don't remind me."
"—Make up something." She gave him a derisive look as he continued, "I'll just get the pictures copied and give you back SD-6's camera before dawn." She nodded in response and waited as he opened the door. Before she closed it behind him, he turned back and said, "Hey, let me know how the conversation with Marshall goes. And take care of him—my future depends on it."
Sydney smirked again, but knew that behind his tease was a serious request. "I will," Sydney promised and then closed and locked the door.
Once alone, she dutifully picked up her cell phone and dialed Marshall and explained the situation to him. After his initial shock and subsequent freak-out over what Vaughn's missing from the past would do to the space- time continuum, Sydney managed to get him calmed down and asked how she could get him back. "Well, uh, the next opportunity," she heard him shuffling papers around, "would be next week. Monday."
"Monday??" she yelled, and then hushed to keep from waking Vaughn. "Marshall, that's over a week away!"
"I'm...sorry. I'll tell Mr. Sloane and find out what he wants you to do until then."
"Great," she sighed, and then said, "Thanks Marshall."
She hung up with him, picked up her CIA phone, activated her bug-killer, and dialed Weiss. She told him what Marshall had said, and then complained, "This is going to be a long week."
"Yeah, well. It could be worse."
"How?" she wondered out loud.
"You could be seeing Sloane again tomorrow. This way, it's like you're getting a forced vacation."
"Vacation? More like a babysitting job."
"Okay, so maybe it's not a bed of roses. But just try to get some sleep. I'll see you at five a.m."
"Gee, thanks for your help."
"Sleep tight," Weiss teased, and Sydney felt like sticking her tongue out at him if he could see her. But instead she just hung up and shook her head in amusement.
She hadn't known Weiss very long—having just had a short conversation just before their first jump to go back in time—but she sensed that they could be good friends if and when the Alliance was gone. But that hope was slowly turning into an impossible dream to her. What had started out as revenge on Sloane for killing Danny had slowly dwindled, and she realized it was gradually draining the life out of her. Was it really worth it all? She didn't know.
Realizing she was still drenched, wearing her wet clothes, she grabbed some clean clothes from her small suitcase to change into. She went into the privacy of the bathroom, took a quick shower and dressed in a clean tank top and pajama pants, brushed her teeth and hair, and then shut off the light in the bathroom and considered where to sleep. Besides the bed—where Vaughn had rolled to his side, landing in the middle—there were only two chairs, and the prospect of trying to sleep sitting up didn't appeal to her.
Looking back to the queen-sized bed, she realized there was plenty of room to share it with him, and she'd have to be awake before dawn anyway to meet with Weiss. Making her decision, she stood on Vaughn's side of the bed and rolled him toward her on his back, noticing that he was still wearing his wet trench coat. She sighed, not wanting him to wake up cold, and worked one sleeve off of his arm and then rolling him to get the other, and when she tried to pull the coat out from under him, he ended up on the other side of the bed on his stomach. Draping the coat over a chair, Sydney turned and noticed he'd flipped to his back again and she stood back and surveyed him.
He was dead to the world now, with an arm haphazardly draped across his face; his right hand resting on his chest. She gently pulled his left arm down to look at his face a little more closely now that he was still and quiet and in better lighting.
Her first thought was that he looked sleep-deprived by the bags under his eyes and the wrinkles on his forehead that she sensed came out in concentration or anger or worry. Whatever the cause, they were present at the moment, and she wondered what he was dreaming about. His face was strong with the slightest amount of stubble on his chin, and his long eyelashes were resting still on his cheeks. His nose had a bump and looked like it might've been broken sometime in his past, but somehow—along with his thin lips that Sydney's gaze lingered on a little too long—it gave him the kind of character that she admired.
She rubbed her face in frustration. 'What am I doing? I don't know anything about his character! And he's basically over a hundred years old!' She started to stand when she realized she still held his left hand in hers, and instead slowly sat back down, shocked by her own actions. But, she just couldn't let it go. Continuing to hold it, she stroked the back of his hand with her thumb and wondered what his life was like; if he used his hands to write, or dig for Rambaldi's artifacts, or to caress a woman's face. Was he married? Was he engaged? Was Weiss's great-great- grandmother a hundred years into the past missing him from her bed?
Shaking off the inane desire she still had to find out, Sydney stood, let go of his hand, and finished turning off the lights in the room before folding the bedspread over him to keep him warm and slipping between the sheets beside him.
The moonlight filtering in through the curtains highlighted the angles of his face and Sydney couldn't stop herself from staring at him again. He seemed so intense, so deep in thought, and yet so soundly asleep at the same time. As she watched, a smile played at the corner of his lips and Sydney found her lips automatically curving up at the same time.
The feeling in her chest was overwhelming at the sight of him and she forced her eyes shut to sleep, but found that she couldn't stop them from popping open again. As she stared, he adjusted himself to lie on his side, facing her, and his arm reached out for her, his hand landing on hers.
Sydney's first instinct would have been to flinch and pull her hand away, but for some reason, it felt natural and right and something she needed more than she realized. So instead, the feeling of his touch was enough to make her relax, and before she knew it, she was asleep.
## ## ##
Michel Vaughn's eyes opened slowly and looked up to a strangely textured ceiling. Without even looking around, he knew he was not in his bedroom. He sat up in confusion and leaned on his hand, studying everything in the room. Under his hand, a button was pushed on a small, black box and another, larger box in the corner of the roared to life, and loud voices and moving pictures on the front talked about something called 'entertainment news'.
He jumped back in fear and surprise, and fell off the edge of the bed, landing on his rear, bumping his head on the nightstand behind him. Sydney was opening the door to the room when she heard the television come on, and a loud thump, and rushed in to find Vaughn in that fearful position on the floor, staring at the TV in horror.
She rushed to his side, grabbed the remote off of the bed and clicked the television off, before kneeling in front of him. "Are you okay?" She shook her head and repeated in French, "Allez-vous bien?"
"I speak English," he told her and then quickly started firing off questions. "What was that noise?" He pointed. "The-the talking-the people—Where did that come from?"
"It...it's hard to explain--"
"Who are you?? And where am I??"
"You're in Paris--"
"I am NOT in Paris!"
"Yes, you are!"
"No I am not!"
"Mr. Vaughn, you ARE in Paris, but you are NOT in eighteen-ninety!"
That silenced him for a moment, and blinked about seven times before asking, "What?"
Sydney sat back a little and kept eye contact as she explained, "Try to understand this... You...you're in the future. This is the year two thousand one."
He tried to let that sink in, but he found the words, "That's impossible," quietly slipping from his throat.
"Is it?" She shook her head in mild amusement at his naïveté. "Have a look outside."
Eyeing her suspiciously, he stood up beside her as she opened the drapes so that he could see the city. Immediately recognizing a few old landmarks among all of the twentieth century buildings and structures, Sydney could tell it was starting to sink in. "Oh, my god," he murmured in disbelief, as he watched machines he'd never seen on the roads, and listened to the strange noises outside of their window.
Sydney watched his profile to make sure he wasn't going to pass out, and then when she was sure he was okay, she told him, "I'll tell you everything, but I thought you might want to freshen up first. I bought you some things," she picked up a plastic bag off of the foot of the bed where she'd dropped it, and started rifling through it, "Some shaving cream and a razor, your own toothbrush and comb, and deodorant--"
He touched the plastic bag with his fingertips and asked, "What is this?"
"These are the things I bought."
"No. This material—what is it?" he asked again.
She realized that he was talking about the bag itself. "Oh, it's plastic."
"Plastic?"
Sydney put a hand on his and tried to ignore the sensation that touching his skin gave her. "There have been a lot of changes in the last one hundred years, Vaughn. Let's take it one step at a time."
He seemed to calm even more, and Sydney took the bag into the bathroom and set it on the counter beside the sink. Hearing him walk in behind her, she said, "There's soap and shampoo in here if you want to take a shower--"
"A 'shower'?" he asked curiously, and Sydney nodded when she realized he might not know what that was.
She gestured over her shoulder to the tub and pulled back the curtain. He stepped behind her as she pointed out the showerhead and the faucet and explained, "You just turn this handle like this, pull this knob and water comes out up there for you to wash off in. It's what we do to get clean."
"But this is a bath," he pointed out.
"I know," she nodded. "People take baths now just to relax."
"Oh," he commented with his eyebrows crossed in confusion. "Do you?"
Sydney's face showed surprise at his personal question he'd asked merely out of curiosity, and watched as he blushed in embarrassment.
His eyes darted to the floor. "I'm sorry. That was inappropriate."
"That's okay," she assured him. "Don't feel ashamed to ask me anything. I understand." There was a moment of awkwardness until Sydney said, "Anyway, if you want to...clean up, I've got someone bringing up some clean clothes for you. They should be here any minute. And until they come, there's a robe on the back of the door."
Leaving the room at his nod, she closed the door behind her and left him alone to freshen up and hopefully give him some time to let it all sink in. Fortunately, she'd been able to coerce the manager of the hotel to purchase some men's clothes for her and he'd offered to do it and bring them up to her room within the hour. There were definitely benefits to being a woman who was trained at using her flirting skills to get what she needed. She'd guessed at Vaughn's size, and used the excuse that her 'boyfriend' lost his luggage on their flight over. It gave her a strange feeling when she realized how naturally the explanation came to her lips, when she could have just as easily said that he was her brother or a good friend. But it didn't matter. Whatever works, right?
There was a knock at the door just as Sydney heard the water shut off, and after thankfully getting his clothes from the ever-polite hotel manager and shutting the room door, Sydney knocked on the bathroom door, announced that she had the clothes, and heard Vaughn tell her to wait "just a moment." He popped his towel-dried head out of the door; his body wrapped securely in the robe, and held out his hands for the clothes.
Sydney stifled a laugh as he quickly closed the door again, and then, turning from the door, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace.
She was smiling—something that wasn't unusual when she was with Will or Francie, but when she was alone, she'd had a hard time finding anything since Danny's death to be happy about. And the woman currently smiling back at her was the happy person she hadn't seen in months.
## ## ##
Edited to correct French, as pointed out by ireela. Thank you!
## ## ##
Chapter 2:
"So, what do you know about him?" Sydney asked as they walked and carried Vaughn through the darkness, hoping not to get noticed. They'd already planned to play it off as if he was drunk if anyone asked.
Weiss was telling her what he knew between breaths as they walked, "Well, he was obsessed with Rambaldi...as you already know. He devoted his whole life to putting the pieces together. Of course...with the lack of technology like we have today...he didn't get very far."
"Huh," she grunted in answer, while balancing his ankles in one hand to be able to open the front door of the hotel. Weiss had already used the signal jammer they had before nearing the hotel on the off chance that SD-6 had tapped into the security system. But at the moment, Sydney wasn't worried about being found out by her organization's security section; she was too interested in the man being toted between her and Weiss. She wanted to ask if Weiss knew if Vaughn was married at that stage of his life, but knew it was girlish and silly to even be thinking it, so she pushed it from her mind.
They wordlessly carried Vaughn to her room, ignoring the strange looks from the few members of the hotel staff that were about their business, and once safely behind her room door, Weiss laid him out on the bed. He then removed Vaughn's muddy boots while Sydney stuck to the plan and took pictures of each page of the journal with the tiny CIA-issue camera.
"What am I going to tell him in the morning?" Sydney asked as Weiss prepared to leave with both cameras in hand.
"I've heard you're great at improvisation--"
"Don't remind me."
"—Make up something." She gave him a derisive look as he continued, "I'll just get the pictures copied and give you back SD-6's camera before dawn." She nodded in response and waited as he opened the door. Before she closed it behind him, he turned back and said, "Hey, let me know how the conversation with Marshall goes. And take care of him—my future depends on it."
Sydney smirked again, but knew that behind his tease was a serious request. "I will," Sydney promised and then closed and locked the door.
Once alone, she dutifully picked up her cell phone and dialed Marshall and explained the situation to him. After his initial shock and subsequent freak-out over what Vaughn's missing from the past would do to the space- time continuum, Sydney managed to get him calmed down and asked how she could get him back. "Well, uh, the next opportunity," she heard him shuffling papers around, "would be next week. Monday."
"Monday??" she yelled, and then hushed to keep from waking Vaughn. "Marshall, that's over a week away!"
"I'm...sorry. I'll tell Mr. Sloane and find out what he wants you to do until then."
"Great," she sighed, and then said, "Thanks Marshall."
She hung up with him, picked up her CIA phone, activated her bug-killer, and dialed Weiss. She told him what Marshall had said, and then complained, "This is going to be a long week."
"Yeah, well. It could be worse."
"How?" she wondered out loud.
"You could be seeing Sloane again tomorrow. This way, it's like you're getting a forced vacation."
"Vacation? More like a babysitting job."
"Okay, so maybe it's not a bed of roses. But just try to get some sleep. I'll see you at five a.m."
"Gee, thanks for your help."
"Sleep tight," Weiss teased, and Sydney felt like sticking her tongue out at him if he could see her. But instead she just hung up and shook her head in amusement.
She hadn't known Weiss very long—having just had a short conversation just before their first jump to go back in time—but she sensed that they could be good friends if and when the Alliance was gone. But that hope was slowly turning into an impossible dream to her. What had started out as revenge on Sloane for killing Danny had slowly dwindled, and she realized it was gradually draining the life out of her. Was it really worth it all? She didn't know.
Realizing she was still drenched, wearing her wet clothes, she grabbed some clean clothes from her small suitcase to change into. She went into the privacy of the bathroom, took a quick shower and dressed in a clean tank top and pajama pants, brushed her teeth and hair, and then shut off the light in the bathroom and considered where to sleep. Besides the bed—where Vaughn had rolled to his side, landing in the middle—there were only two chairs, and the prospect of trying to sleep sitting up didn't appeal to her.
Looking back to the queen-sized bed, she realized there was plenty of room to share it with him, and she'd have to be awake before dawn anyway to meet with Weiss. Making her decision, she stood on Vaughn's side of the bed and rolled him toward her on his back, noticing that he was still wearing his wet trench coat. She sighed, not wanting him to wake up cold, and worked one sleeve off of his arm and then rolling him to get the other, and when she tried to pull the coat out from under him, he ended up on the other side of the bed on his stomach. Draping the coat over a chair, Sydney turned and noticed he'd flipped to his back again and she stood back and surveyed him.
He was dead to the world now, with an arm haphazardly draped across his face; his right hand resting on his chest. She gently pulled his left arm down to look at his face a little more closely now that he was still and quiet and in better lighting.
Her first thought was that he looked sleep-deprived by the bags under his eyes and the wrinkles on his forehead that she sensed came out in concentration or anger or worry. Whatever the cause, they were present at the moment, and she wondered what he was dreaming about. His face was strong with the slightest amount of stubble on his chin, and his long eyelashes were resting still on his cheeks. His nose had a bump and looked like it might've been broken sometime in his past, but somehow—along with his thin lips that Sydney's gaze lingered on a little too long—it gave him the kind of character that she admired.
She rubbed her face in frustration. 'What am I doing? I don't know anything about his character! And he's basically over a hundred years old!' She started to stand when she realized she still held his left hand in hers, and instead slowly sat back down, shocked by her own actions. But, she just couldn't let it go. Continuing to hold it, she stroked the back of his hand with her thumb and wondered what his life was like; if he used his hands to write, or dig for Rambaldi's artifacts, or to caress a woman's face. Was he married? Was he engaged? Was Weiss's great-great- grandmother a hundred years into the past missing him from her bed?
Shaking off the inane desire she still had to find out, Sydney stood, let go of his hand, and finished turning off the lights in the room before folding the bedspread over him to keep him warm and slipping between the sheets beside him.
The moonlight filtering in through the curtains highlighted the angles of his face and Sydney couldn't stop herself from staring at him again. He seemed so intense, so deep in thought, and yet so soundly asleep at the same time. As she watched, a smile played at the corner of his lips and Sydney found her lips automatically curving up at the same time.
The feeling in her chest was overwhelming at the sight of him and she forced her eyes shut to sleep, but found that she couldn't stop them from popping open again. As she stared, he adjusted himself to lie on his side, facing her, and his arm reached out for her, his hand landing on hers.
Sydney's first instinct would have been to flinch and pull her hand away, but for some reason, it felt natural and right and something she needed more than she realized. So instead, the feeling of his touch was enough to make her relax, and before she knew it, she was asleep.
## ## ##
Michel Vaughn's eyes opened slowly and looked up to a strangely textured ceiling. Without even looking around, he knew he was not in his bedroom. He sat up in confusion and leaned on his hand, studying everything in the room. Under his hand, a button was pushed on a small, black box and another, larger box in the corner of the roared to life, and loud voices and moving pictures on the front talked about something called 'entertainment news'.
He jumped back in fear and surprise, and fell off the edge of the bed, landing on his rear, bumping his head on the nightstand behind him. Sydney was opening the door to the room when she heard the television come on, and a loud thump, and rushed in to find Vaughn in that fearful position on the floor, staring at the TV in horror.
She rushed to his side, grabbed the remote off of the bed and clicked the television off, before kneeling in front of him. "Are you okay?" She shook her head and repeated in French, "Allez-vous bien?"
"I speak English," he told her and then quickly started firing off questions. "What was that noise?" He pointed. "The-the talking-the people—Where did that come from?"
"It...it's hard to explain--"
"Who are you?? And where am I??"
"You're in Paris--"
"I am NOT in Paris!"
"Yes, you are!"
"No I am not!"
"Mr. Vaughn, you ARE in Paris, but you are NOT in eighteen-ninety!"
That silenced him for a moment, and blinked about seven times before asking, "What?"
Sydney sat back a little and kept eye contact as she explained, "Try to understand this... You...you're in the future. This is the year two thousand one."
He tried to let that sink in, but he found the words, "That's impossible," quietly slipping from his throat.
"Is it?" She shook her head in mild amusement at his naïveté. "Have a look outside."
Eyeing her suspiciously, he stood up beside her as she opened the drapes so that he could see the city. Immediately recognizing a few old landmarks among all of the twentieth century buildings and structures, Sydney could tell it was starting to sink in. "Oh, my god," he murmured in disbelief, as he watched machines he'd never seen on the roads, and listened to the strange noises outside of their window.
Sydney watched his profile to make sure he wasn't going to pass out, and then when she was sure he was okay, she told him, "I'll tell you everything, but I thought you might want to freshen up first. I bought you some things," she picked up a plastic bag off of the foot of the bed where she'd dropped it, and started rifling through it, "Some shaving cream and a razor, your own toothbrush and comb, and deodorant--"
He touched the plastic bag with his fingertips and asked, "What is this?"
"These are the things I bought."
"No. This material—what is it?" he asked again.
She realized that he was talking about the bag itself. "Oh, it's plastic."
"Plastic?"
Sydney put a hand on his and tried to ignore the sensation that touching his skin gave her. "There have been a lot of changes in the last one hundred years, Vaughn. Let's take it one step at a time."
He seemed to calm even more, and Sydney took the bag into the bathroom and set it on the counter beside the sink. Hearing him walk in behind her, she said, "There's soap and shampoo in here if you want to take a shower--"
"A 'shower'?" he asked curiously, and Sydney nodded when she realized he might not know what that was.
She gestured over her shoulder to the tub and pulled back the curtain. He stepped behind her as she pointed out the showerhead and the faucet and explained, "You just turn this handle like this, pull this knob and water comes out up there for you to wash off in. It's what we do to get clean."
"But this is a bath," he pointed out.
"I know," she nodded. "People take baths now just to relax."
"Oh," he commented with his eyebrows crossed in confusion. "Do you?"
Sydney's face showed surprise at his personal question he'd asked merely out of curiosity, and watched as he blushed in embarrassment.
His eyes darted to the floor. "I'm sorry. That was inappropriate."
"That's okay," she assured him. "Don't feel ashamed to ask me anything. I understand." There was a moment of awkwardness until Sydney said, "Anyway, if you want to...clean up, I've got someone bringing up some clean clothes for you. They should be here any minute. And until they come, there's a robe on the back of the door."
Leaving the room at his nod, she closed the door behind her and left him alone to freshen up and hopefully give him some time to let it all sink in. Fortunately, she'd been able to coerce the manager of the hotel to purchase some men's clothes for her and he'd offered to do it and bring them up to her room within the hour. There were definitely benefits to being a woman who was trained at using her flirting skills to get what she needed. She'd guessed at Vaughn's size, and used the excuse that her 'boyfriend' lost his luggage on their flight over. It gave her a strange feeling when she realized how naturally the explanation came to her lips, when she could have just as easily said that he was her brother or a good friend. But it didn't matter. Whatever works, right?
There was a knock at the door just as Sydney heard the water shut off, and after thankfully getting his clothes from the ever-polite hotel manager and shutting the room door, Sydney knocked on the bathroom door, announced that she had the clothes, and heard Vaughn tell her to wait "just a moment." He popped his towel-dried head out of the door; his body wrapped securely in the robe, and held out his hands for the clothes.
Sydney stifled a laugh as he quickly closed the door again, and then, turning from the door, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace.
She was smiling—something that wasn't unusual when she was with Will or Francie, but when she was alone, she'd had a hard time finding anything since Danny's death to be happy about. And the woman currently smiling back at her was the happy person she hadn't seen in months.
## ## ##
Edited to correct French, as pointed out by ireela. Thank you!
