*snickers* For Steph :-)
You never meant to think of Michael Vaughn as a son.
His father wasn't the first, nor the last, agent you killed with at least one young child at home. At last count, your orders had left nineteen children—some of those children were in their forties by now—without a parent.
But in every case but one, you never saw a photograph of the happy, smiling, childish faces. You never saw them rush to their parents and wrap their arms around them. You never saw the tears when they learned that mommy or daddy wasn't coming home this time.
You never had to attend their funerals on your husband's arm.
Just Agent Vaughn's.
You had barely walked in the door from your "weekend with the girls" when a somber Jack told you the news. "William is dead." You did your best to act surprised; this was the first of your hits he had ever told you about. For some reason, he took this one personally. "I've already packed Sydney's things; she finally settled down and took a nap. You'd better go upstairs and pack—repack, I guess—quickly. Our flight leaves in a few hours."
You had protested, argued that you had never known the man—this much was true; he was just a name to you—that it wasn't right to cart a sick child across the country, and weren't the other passengers just going to love you on the flight?
He stopped your protests with a sorrowful look and the words that haunted you on every hit thereafter. "He's young, married, one kid. We used to work together, grab a beer or watch the game together before he met his wife and got relocated. The mission he was on yesterday . . . I was supposed to take that job, but I refused it because I knew Syd wasn't feeling well and you had had your weekend with your college friends planned for weeks. Langley called him and he agreed to do this on his weekend off . . .Laur, that could have been me. That was supposed to be me. The least I can do is attend the man's funeral. That could have been me . . ."
You had known the location of your hit changed the day before you left, that new instructions were placed inside an extra book the antique bookstore supposedly sent overseas because you were such loyal customers. Jack was impressed by the kindness of the elderly gentleman with a twinkle in his eye who had taken such a liking to the two of you, young and in love on your honeymoon. "You remind me of my wife and me at your age." Jack, of course, never dreamt that he was exchanging money and giving his address to one of the KGB's oldest informants.
When the extra book came via special delivery that day, you knew it had to be important, but it wasn't until you returned that you realized how important. If you had not decided to peruse your new selection before your trip, if Sydney had not been fighting the croup, if Jack hadn't been such a good father . . . you could have been face to face with him. Your original target. Your enemy. Your husband. Your Jack.
You supposed he was right—the least you could do was attend Agent Vaughn's funeral.
It was better than attending Jack's.
So you dutifully repacked your suitcase, placed Sydney in her car seat, and drove to the airport where you waited while Jack parked in long-term parking. You cuddled Sydney and rubbed her back, hoping her lungs would clear, while you approached thirty thousand feet. You quickly shook Mrs. Vaughn's hand, murmured a condolence to her son, and then sat in the back corner, bouncing your daughter in your lap, waiting for her cough medicine to take effect, holding her close as she slept.
You tried your best to nap on the return flight, but every time you closed your eyes you saw their haunted faces staring back at you. You saw them night after night, week after week, until Jack feared for your health and suggested you see someone. He thought you feared losing him, thought that your nightmares consisted of you standing over his coffin.
He didn't realize that in them you saw what he and Sydney would face someday. A spouse and a child, devastated, inconsolable. You held your daughter even tighter to your chest during that time, you remember now as you arrange flowers; you said "I love you" more often than you ever had before. All because of your reaction to a funeral you were never supposed to attend.
It made your superiors livid when they heard the news. "What were you thinking showing up at that man's funeral?" they questioned you repeatedly. You never were able to give them a good answer.
Since they were furious with you for attending the funeral, you feel it was probably for the best that they didn't know what was going on in your mind. Not just the nightmares, the fears of what Jack and Sydney's lives would be like someday.
Call it an agent following her gut instinct, a woman's intuition, something only a mother could know . . . whatever it was, it screamed to you, even then.
As you entered the funeral home that fateful evening, you realized you had just been introduced to a new player in the game. A player who wouldn't even join the CIA for almost twenty years.
It's not that you followed him, studied him like you did your daughter after you left. But you never forgot his name, always wondered in the back of your mind what was going to happen to him. When one of your moles reported back to you that he was at the Farm, it was all you could do to suppress a cackle. You had been right all those years ago. Now if you could only determine his purpose in all of this . . .
One evening a few years later at an old pier confirmed what you had suspected. At last, all of the pieces had fallen into place.
You had watched with amusement when the CIA—an organization notorious for its monumental errors in judgment—paired up your daughter and the son of a man you killed. Jack, on the other hand, immediately panicked and used his connections to get him pulled off the case, convincing his old friend Ben that Michael was too inexperienced to be a handler. That a more experienced agent would be better suited for this operation. Devlin agreed, and the switch was made.
It's possible that Jack got to breathe one deep sigh of relief before he heard the latest news—that Sydney had superseded him and demanded that "Agent Vaughn" be promoted. With that, you sat back and watched the show unfold before you; this was family drama at its best. All of Jack's new plans, so intricately designed and well-strategized, were now worthless. Sydney had demonstrated that she was as much a Bristow as Jack was—maybe then he finally saw the similarities, but you doubt it—and that sometimes things would have to be done her way. No alternatives.
Which is why shortly thereafter you found yourself slipping in the shadows of a pier, watching as a beeper was thrown into the ocean, as two hands clasped for the first time. The mother in you screamed as you realized that you and Jack were in trouble.
Michael was far more dangerous to your little girl than Noah ever was.
You closely observed them in the following months as these two young agents worked together time and again, becoming true partners. Truth be told, it was one of the best match-ups you had ever seen, although you hesitated to admit it. (And knew Jack would rather die than agree with you.) Seeing how much they accomplished, even as inexperienced as they were in some ways, made you wonder what it would have been like if you and Jack had been able to work together for the last twenty years.
Maybe then your recent collaboration would have been more successful.
Sighing, you straighten your maid's outfit and carry a vase outside of the large estate and place it on one of the countless tables under the grandiose white tent. From your vantage point you can see the ceremony taking place, but none of the dozens of government agents in attendance bother to notice you.
Again. The CIA—the organization that decided this event was not a threat to national security, that there was no way a known terrorist would slip in—is an organization notorious for its monumental errors in judgment.
The ceremony continues without you as you search the crowd for familiar faces. You see Kendall and his shiny head glinting in the hot sun. You see Weiss trying his best not to fidget in his rented tuxedo.
You see Michael, holding another woman's hand. You had known this would happen—for goodness sake, look at where you are—but you still ache for your daughter. You know she's buried somewhere inside this Julia person.
You hear the applause and cheers. You hear the murmurs from the guests, comments about moving on quickly, how happy they seem, how much she helped him.
But you don't really hear them. Your eyes are too busy at the moment.
For the first time you see the gold band on his finger.
And you wish that your daughter had placed it there.
tbc