EVENT HORIZON
By: lucy2point0, email: wendy@devil.com
Rating: PG-13??? for this chapter.
Spoilers: Almost Thirty Years
Disclaimer: This fantastic Alias world is SO not mine, but it does belong to JJ Abrams, ABC and everyone else who is involved with the show.
Notes: Told from a Vaughn-centric POV. Thanks again for continued support & encouragement.
A little more S/V interaction in this one, I think. The pace is starting to ramp down...but gets a bit more complicated.
Feedback: Sure...
Archive: Sure, drop me an e-mail and let me know so I can visit.
He wrenches himself from the scene and focuses on keeping the mini-van on the road. He takes a deep breath and tamps down the urge to panic.
He is only partially successful; outwardly he sees his hands shaking slightly on the steering wheel.
Half-wildly, he tries to remember in his father's diary if his father had ever found himself in situations like this... This feeling that he is suddenly flying by the seat of his pants because a mission went abruptly and tumultuously beyond the confines, or expectations of a mission.
He half-laughs to himself, absurdly, and thinks that his father could have been Shakespeare for all it mattered; no description or exposition could adequately express what he is feeling right now.
He wonders if this is the same phenomenon that she and Jack feel every time they been been on a mission and if it has become almost second-nature to them...
She calls his name and repeats it to get his attention.
He mentally shakes himself out of his reverie and chastises himself for indulging in it. He glances at her from the rearview mirror.
"Vaughn, Will says there is a first-aid kit in the glove compartment."
He tells her yes, there is one and asks her if he should get it for her.
"No. You should concentrate on getting us to the airfield. I'll get it. Keep driving."
He hears her telling Will to apply pressure on Jack's wound and then moments later, she squeezes in between the front driver and passenger seats to get to the glove compartment.
He steals a glance at her and one look is enough for him. She looks determined, he thinks, with pursed lips and set jaw, but her eyes betray her; he can plainly see she is terrified for her father.
She catches him watching her, and her expression shifts and changes. She closes her eyes briefly and when she opens them again the terror is gone, replaced by determination.
And just as quickly she disappears from his peripheral vision with the first-aid kit.
Balls of steel, Weiss once called him a while back. If only Weiss was here to see her in action now, he would likely strip that title from him and give it to her, without hesitation or prejudice.
After a few minutes of listening to her tend to Jack and quietly confer with the CIA ground crew at the airfield with Jack's comm. unit, he asks her how he is doing. In a slightly shaken voice, she tells him.
"He's been slipping in and out of consciousness. I...Will and I managed to get the bleeding to stop. The bleeding looked a lot worse than it really was, but he's still lost a good amount of blood all the same. The bullet made a clean entry and exit through his left side, a little high up... The CIA medic tells me it's very likely no internal damage was done, but he can't confirm until we get Dad to a hospital."
He feels relieved, marginally, and relaxes his death grip on the steering wheel. She shifts, and moves closer to speak to him.
"Are we going to make it to the airstrip on schedule?"
He tells her they will in about 5 minutes or so.
A short pause passes before he asks her how Will is holding up. She lets out a shaky breath and lowers her voice.
"As well as can be, under the circumstances. He won't tell me what's happened to him the past few days, what was done to him or how he was treated."
He tells her maybe he's just not ready to tell her yet because the ordeal isn't over yet. Or that he's just endured and experienced things that most people will never have to face in their entire lives. Or that he needs time to deal with it. He tells her she and Jack, of all people, should understand that.
"Maybe you're right." Silence. "But I don't think I could live with myself if he develops a...a case of survivor's guilt or he gets into his head that things would have been better for me if I had never come to Taipei to rescue him... Because it would make things much worse that it already is." Her voice trembles and she continues. "For me...and for Dad..."
He hears her whisper more to herself than to him, something about tomorrow not coming soon enough. He looks at her questioningly from the rearview mirror. Her eyes meet his.
"I...I know when we get back to Los Angeles there will be a lot of questions and inquiries about what happened on the mission and before that happens, I want to talk to you about what's happened in the past few hours. I want to know how...you made it out and got here. I want you to know...how Dad found me..." She takes a deep breath. "...and how I saw my mother for the first time in almost 20 years."
-----
He watches the bright, sprawling lights of Taipei finally twinkle and fade from view from his window seat.
He doesn't remember anything else after she made her confession about seeing her mother; not how they got to the airfield, not how they boarded the plane—nothing.
Except that the certainty of what he has known and accepted for the past 25 years about his father will likely crumble in the face of the story she will tell him in the next few hours.
A shadow falls over his line of sight. He looks up and sees her, standing, with a thick blanket wrapped around herself. He gestures her to sit down next to him. She does, sitting on a small crate.
He asks after Jack and Will. She tells him that there have been no changes since they got onto the plane.
He looks over her shoulder to see for himself. Across the plane and just barely over another stack of crates, he can see Jack, still unconscious and being watched under the eagle-eyed care of the CIA medic. And Will, a scant few feet from Jack, on a cot, no doubt asleep from exhaustion.
Satisfied, he turns and looks at her now and looks at her, closely, for the first time since they were at the lab, separated by the door.
She has wiped off the blood from her hands and cleaned up the streaked and smeared clubbing makeup off her face. She looks...almost normal, he thinks. Except for the slight bruise and cut at the corner of the left side of her mouth...and her eyes; in the dim light of the plane they are completely unreadable to him.
She speaks first.
"So...how did you escape from the water?"
By: lucy2point0, email: wendy@devil.com
Rating: PG-13??? for this chapter.
Spoilers: Almost Thirty Years
Disclaimer: This fantastic Alias world is SO not mine, but it does belong to JJ Abrams, ABC and everyone else who is involved with the show.
Notes: Told from a Vaughn-centric POV. Thanks again for continued support & encouragement.
A little more S/V interaction in this one, I think. The pace is starting to ramp down...but gets a bit more complicated.
Feedback: Sure...
Archive: Sure, drop me an e-mail and let me know so I can visit.
He wrenches himself from the scene and focuses on keeping the mini-van on the road. He takes a deep breath and tamps down the urge to panic.
He is only partially successful; outwardly he sees his hands shaking slightly on the steering wheel.
Half-wildly, he tries to remember in his father's diary if his father had ever found himself in situations like this... This feeling that he is suddenly flying by the seat of his pants because a mission went abruptly and tumultuously beyond the confines, or expectations of a mission.
He half-laughs to himself, absurdly, and thinks that his father could have been Shakespeare for all it mattered; no description or exposition could adequately express what he is feeling right now.
He wonders if this is the same phenomenon that she and Jack feel every time they been been on a mission and if it has become almost second-nature to them...
She calls his name and repeats it to get his attention.
He mentally shakes himself out of his reverie and chastises himself for indulging in it. He glances at her from the rearview mirror.
"Vaughn, Will says there is a first-aid kit in the glove compartment."
He tells her yes, there is one and asks her if he should get it for her.
"No. You should concentrate on getting us to the airfield. I'll get it. Keep driving."
He hears her telling Will to apply pressure on Jack's wound and then moments later, she squeezes in between the front driver and passenger seats to get to the glove compartment.
He steals a glance at her and one look is enough for him. She looks determined, he thinks, with pursed lips and set jaw, but her eyes betray her; he can plainly see she is terrified for her father.
She catches him watching her, and her expression shifts and changes. She closes her eyes briefly and when she opens them again the terror is gone, replaced by determination.
And just as quickly she disappears from his peripheral vision with the first-aid kit.
Balls of steel, Weiss once called him a while back. If only Weiss was here to see her in action now, he would likely strip that title from him and give it to her, without hesitation or prejudice.
After a few minutes of listening to her tend to Jack and quietly confer with the CIA ground crew at the airfield with Jack's comm. unit, he asks her how he is doing. In a slightly shaken voice, she tells him.
"He's been slipping in and out of consciousness. I...Will and I managed to get the bleeding to stop. The bleeding looked a lot worse than it really was, but he's still lost a good amount of blood all the same. The bullet made a clean entry and exit through his left side, a little high up... The CIA medic tells me it's very likely no internal damage was done, but he can't confirm until we get Dad to a hospital."
He feels relieved, marginally, and relaxes his death grip on the steering wheel. She shifts, and moves closer to speak to him.
"Are we going to make it to the airstrip on schedule?"
He tells her they will in about 5 minutes or so.
A short pause passes before he asks her how Will is holding up. She lets out a shaky breath and lowers her voice.
"As well as can be, under the circumstances. He won't tell me what's happened to him the past few days, what was done to him or how he was treated."
He tells her maybe he's just not ready to tell her yet because the ordeal isn't over yet. Or that he's just endured and experienced things that most people will never have to face in their entire lives. Or that he needs time to deal with it. He tells her she and Jack, of all people, should understand that.
"Maybe you're right." Silence. "But I don't think I could live with myself if he develops a...a case of survivor's guilt or he gets into his head that things would have been better for me if I had never come to Taipei to rescue him... Because it would make things much worse that it already is." Her voice trembles and she continues. "For me...and for Dad..."
He hears her whisper more to herself than to him, something about tomorrow not coming soon enough. He looks at her questioningly from the rearview mirror. Her eyes meet his.
"I...I know when we get back to Los Angeles there will be a lot of questions and inquiries about what happened on the mission and before that happens, I want to talk to you about what's happened in the past few hours. I want to know how...you made it out and got here. I want you to know...how Dad found me..." She takes a deep breath. "...and how I saw my mother for the first time in almost 20 years."
-----
He watches the bright, sprawling lights of Taipei finally twinkle and fade from view from his window seat.
He doesn't remember anything else after she made her confession about seeing her mother; not how they got to the airfield, not how they boarded the plane—nothing.
Except that the certainty of what he has known and accepted for the past 25 years about his father will likely crumble in the face of the story she will tell him in the next few hours.
A shadow falls over his line of sight. He looks up and sees her, standing, with a thick blanket wrapped around herself. He gestures her to sit down next to him. She does, sitting on a small crate.
He asks after Jack and Will. She tells him that there have been no changes since they got onto the plane.
He looks over her shoulder to see for himself. Across the plane and just barely over another stack of crates, he can see Jack, still unconscious and being watched under the eagle-eyed care of the CIA medic. And Will, a scant few feet from Jack, on a cot, no doubt asleep from exhaustion.
Satisfied, he turns and looks at her now and looks at her, closely, for the first time since they were at the lab, separated by the door.
She has wiped off the blood from her hands and cleaned up the streaked and smeared clubbing makeup off her face. She looks...almost normal, he thinks. Except for the slight bruise and cut at the corner of the left side of her mouth...and her eyes; in the dim light of the plane they are completely unreadable to him.
She speaks first.
"So...how did you escape from the water?"