Title: Shades of Gray
Author: Carrie (CaReYbEaRy@aol.com)
Disclaimer: I don't own Alias or any of the characters.
Spoilers: Season Finale
Rating: PG, but it will probably change throughout the series
Category: Angst, Romance, little action, little everything
Distribution: Anywhere. Just let me know.
Author's Note: Hey guys…I'm tying to get these up quickly, I'm afraid that I won't be able to write for a little while, so I'll write these now and post them as a preemptive action. Thanks so much for your reviews again, I hope you are enjoying!!
CHAPTER 7
The next day was a Saturday, and Sydney was enjoying the weekend break, and would be using it to completely relax. Will was still sleeping, and Francie was away for the weekend, visiting her parents in Sacramento. Sydney was grateful for that, because, hopefully, by the time she came back, Will's bruises would be faded enough that they could easily cover them up.
Sydney sat on her couch, wearing sweatpants and a tank top, enjoying her morning coffee and reading the newspaper. She couldn't bring herself to do school work on her day off. At around eleven, Will stumbled into the room, mumbling "morning," and heading straight for the coffee.
"'Morning," Sydney greeted him. "How do you feel?"
Will slumped down on the couch next to her. "Like I got some teeth pulled." Will tried to joke, not exactly getting across any humor, as he readjusted his jaw slightly. Sydney cracked a small smile for his benefit.
"So what do you have to do today?" Will asked her.
"Absolutely nothing." Sydney said, smiling widely. "At some point, I have a meeting with Vaughn, but other than that, I'm free for an entire weekend." Sydney said happily.
Everything after 'Vaughn' was lost on Will. He hated that this man helped Sydney more than Will ever could. It was like they had their own private club, which he wasn't allowed into.
Will's thoughts were interrupted by Sydney elbowing him.
"Did you hear me?" Sydney asked.
"No, sorry. What?" Will asked.
"I said that since I don't have any work, we should go out one of these nights." Sydney repeated.
"Yeah." Was all that Will could manage. Normally, his heart would race at a statement like this, but he knew that it was nothing more than a friendly gesture. Every once in a while, he thought of trying again to make something more of his relationship with Sydney, but always lost the courage. He kept thinking that maybe she had changed her mind about him, but didn't want to make the first move. But the little voice in the back of his head told him that she would just reject him.
Current events, however, had brought all new situations to life in his head. Was there something going on between Sydney and Vaughn? If there wasn't, should he make a move, before Vaughn gets to, or should he give up and play the role of a supportive friend?
"So what is with this 'Vaughn' guy?" Will asked, before having time to think about it.
"What do you mean? I told you, he's my handler." Sydney said, trying to understand what Will was getting at.
"But are you guys…close?" Will asked, hoping that she would get what question he was really asking.
"What are you getting at?" Sydney asked, not really wanting to answer the question anyway.
"Do you like him?" Will asked blatantly, not believing that the words had actually come out.
"He's my handler. We can't even be seen in public together, not to mention it's against protocol." Sydney said, not really answering the question.
Will seemed to accept this answer, knowing when to drop a subject. Before he was able to say anything else, Sydney hopped up.
"I'm going to go take a shower." She announced, before darting out of the room.
She walked into her room and into the bathroom where she turned on the hot water in the shower. She stripped off her clothes and stepped under the hot spray. She let the water wash over her, not realizing how tense her muscles were until they began to relax.
Her mind started spinning with thoughts. About Will, about Vaughn, about her mother, about what happens next. She couldn't believe that Will had asked her if she liked Vaughn. She liked to pride herself in thinking that she hid her emotions rather well, but if Will saw that there was something between she and Vaughn, maybe others did too.
Sydney had stopped denying a long time ago that Vaughn had feeling for her too. It might have been easier to stay away from him if she believed that there was no way that he felt anything towards her. But the looks that he had been giving her lately, and his actions in Taipei proved to her that there was something going on there. The only thing that prevented her from taking things further was the constant threat of death. And although that is a fairly big obstacle, she sometimes found herself wanting to take that risk. She just had to remember that maybe someday, after SD-6 is gone, they could be together. Although this instilled hope in her, it also brought sadness. What if SD-6 couldn't be brought down in her lifetime? She didn't want to waste her whole life, pining for someone who she could never have.
She tried to clear her head, and focus on the warm water. She soon got out of the shower and slipped into her bathrobe. She heard the phone ring a distance away, but decided that Will could answer it. She toweled off her hair, and walked into the living room.
"Did the phone ring?" she asked Will, who was standing by the refrigerator.
"Yeah, it was a wrong number though." Will said.
"Joey's Pizza?" she asked.
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
"We get that all the time." Sydney said, not sure why she didn't want to tell Will that it was Vaughn. She wanted to keep it a secret between them, she guessed. And, she didn't want Will giving her a hard time every time they got a wrong number.
Sydney walked back into her room and slipped on some jeans and a tank top. She grabbed a zip up sweatshirt also and walked out of her room.
"I think I'm going to go to the library and get some work done." She told Will, who was still padding around the kitchen.
"I thought you weren't doing any work today." Will said, annoyed that she was leaving.
"I know, but I can't just sit around the house all day. I have a lot of school work to catch up on." She couldn't believe that after all this; she was still lying to him. She didn't have to, she just did.
"Fine." Will muttered, ducking back into the refrigerator.
Sydney walked over to the door and slipped on her tennis shoes and grabbed her backpack.
The ride to the warehouse seemed shorter than the previous night, but she was grateful, because she had a lot that she wanted to talk with Vaughn about. She pulled up to the abandoned building and got out of her car. She looked around for any possible tails, knowing that there wouldn't be any since she had been checking the whole way there.
She walked into the warehouse and saw Vaughn already there, as usual, standing in their cage in the back corner. She didn't know exactly why they always stood back there, but she didn't really have time to dwell on it.
"Hi." Sydney said as she approached him.
"Hi." He said back to her.
Sydney loved their weekend meetings because Vaughn was always in casual clothes. She liked that she got to see a part, even a small part, of what he was really like. He was dressed in khaki pants and a v-neck sweater. Her attention was drawn from the chest of his sweater to the bulge in his arm. She suddenly remembered his injury.
"How's your arm?" she asked.
"It's fine." He replied, not elaborating. She hoped that he wasn't going to act all professional again. Although it had only lasted for one meeting, it was painful.
"Did you see a doctor?" Sydney asked. Vaughn knew that she wasn't going to let it drop, and even though he hated sharing any of his weaknesses with her, he relented.
"Yeah. It's not too bad. You were right, it didn't go through the bone, it only grazed it. It's fine, really." He said, emphasizing that he didn't want to talk about it. He changed the subject to the only other thing that he could think of.
"So how is it going with Will?" he asked, not really wanting to know how great they were getting along, but knowing that he should ask.
"Fine. I told him a lot that he should know though." Sydney said, looking down. She hated to see Vaughn mad, or disappointed, or sad. For that matter, she hated to see him when he had any negative emotions.
Vaughn sighed, knowing that this would happen. "How much did you tell him?" he asked, needing to know now what the damage was.
"I told him that I was a double, but he probably would have figured that out. I told him how Danny died. I also told him that he couldn't tell anyone. I made sure that he knew the precautions he had to take." Sydney finished. Once she said it all out loud, it didn't sound that bad.
"That's fine. Nothing that he probably wouldn't have found out in time anyway." Vaughn said, relieved that she hadn't told him anything that could put anyone, especially herself, in danger. "It'll be good for you to have someone that you can talk to about all of this stuff." He said, not really wanting to admit that he had been replaced as her comfort friend.
"I guess so. But I don't really want to tell him anything." Sydney admitted. "I don't know if it's because I don't want to see him get hurt, or think less of me. Or because I don't want you to stop being the person who I tell everything to." She said quietly.
Vaughn was stunned. He had never expected her to say that. "Sydney, no matter how much you tell Will and no matter how much you guys talk, you can still tell me everything." Vaughn tried to assure her.
"I know, but I guess I just want there to be things that are just between you and me. I don't want to tell Will about Sloane, or my mom, or my dad, or my missions. I don't want him to know those things." Sydney tried to explain what she was feeling, finding it difficult to find the words.
Vaughn crinkled his forehead, not exactly knowing what to do with this information. "Is it because you don't want to get him into this?" Vaughn asked, trying to help Sydney know why she felt this way.
"No, he's already a part of this. I don't want to get him any further into it, but I just feel more comfortable talking about these things with you, not him. I know that he'd give me opinions, and judgments, and tell me to get out of it, and just make things harder. Do you care that I tell you these things?" Sydney asked, wondering why he was trying to push her at Will.
"No! Not at all. I'm glad that I can help you." Vaughn told her quickly. He loved that he could help her. And he loved that she still wanted to tell him private things, even though she could tell them to Will. He just wasn't sure what it all meant. "It must be nice not having to sneak around anymore. Well, at least not around Will. I know how much you hated lying to your friends." Vaughn said, trying to boost her spirits.
"That's the weird thing. I still feel like I'm sneaking around. I mean, I am sneaking around. I told Will that I went to the library. And I just let him think that it was a wrong number calling for Joey's Pizza." Sydney told him, not really sure why.
"Why? I though that you hated lying to them." Vaughn questioned her.
"I know. I still do. But I guess it's just easier than the truth sometimes." Sydney said sadly.
Vaughn didn't reply, sensing that she wasn't finished.
"Do you think that it will always be like this?" Sydney asked.
"Like what? The lying?"
"Yeah. And the sneaking around. Do you think that I'll always find it easier to lie than to tell the truth?" Sydney asked, growing worried that she would just become a pathological liar.
"No. I don't. I think that once SD-6 is gone, you will be able to go where you want, when you want, and you'll tell your friends everything. You're a person who needs to share things with other people. And that's great. Especially when you're in the kind of business where almost no trust exists. It's good that you don't want to lie, and that you actually catch yourself doing it. I know that you're worried that things will never change, and the SD-6 will never fall, but it will. Things won't always be like this. I know that it's going to take longer than you had expected, but the work that you've done so far has been amazing, and things will get better soon." Vaughn said, emphasizing every word so that she'd know it was true.
Sydney didn't have anything to say. She just smiled. She wondered how long it would take until she stopped needing to hear Vaughn's pep talks. He spoke so passionately, and she loved that he believed in her so much. Her eyes were locked onto his, and she felt the breath catch in her throat. They were standing so closely, that for a moment, she thought that he might kiss her.
Vaughn was terrified. Sydney was standing in front of him, looking into his eyes, and it felt like she could see right through him, into his soul. He wanted to kiss her so badly. He almost started to lean in, but somehow caught himself. He took a step back from her and cleared his throat.
"Why don't you go home and rest a little more. We can meet about all the other stuff tomorrow. I'm not even really done figuring out what we're going to do about your mom yet, so think of it as letting me off the hook." He joked.
Sydney smiled, a mixture of disappointment and relief running through her system. "That sounds good." She said. "Maybe I'll actually go to the library and get some work done."
Vaughn nodded. "I'll contact you tomorrow." He told her as she walked away. He really wanted to say that he'd call her tomorrow, but that would be too personal. He couldn't believe how close they had come to kissing. He couldn't let that happen again; he didn't know what he was thinking. He was really going to have to keep himself in check from no on. He waited a few minutes before he, too, walked out of the warehouse and into his car. The only think on his mind, though, was seeing Sydney tomorrow.
Okay, hopefully there was a little more substance to this one. I'm posting chapters 6 and 7 at the same time because I won't get a chance to post anything tomorrow. I hope you enjoyed these chapters, and let me know if you think I should change anything, or if there's anything you thing should happen. I appreciate all reviews…I love them!! Thanks for being so awesome and staying with this story. -carrie
Author: Carrie (CaReYbEaRy@aol.com)
Disclaimer: I don't own Alias or any of the characters.
Spoilers: Season Finale
Rating: PG, but it will probably change throughout the series
Category: Angst, Romance, little action, little everything
Distribution: Anywhere. Just let me know.
Author's Note: Hey guys…I'm tying to get these up quickly, I'm afraid that I won't be able to write for a little while, so I'll write these now and post them as a preemptive action. Thanks so much for your reviews again, I hope you are enjoying!!
CHAPTER 7
The next day was a Saturday, and Sydney was enjoying the weekend break, and would be using it to completely relax. Will was still sleeping, and Francie was away for the weekend, visiting her parents in Sacramento. Sydney was grateful for that, because, hopefully, by the time she came back, Will's bruises would be faded enough that they could easily cover them up.
Sydney sat on her couch, wearing sweatpants and a tank top, enjoying her morning coffee and reading the newspaper. She couldn't bring herself to do school work on her day off. At around eleven, Will stumbled into the room, mumbling "morning," and heading straight for the coffee.
"'Morning," Sydney greeted him. "How do you feel?"
Will slumped down on the couch next to her. "Like I got some teeth pulled." Will tried to joke, not exactly getting across any humor, as he readjusted his jaw slightly. Sydney cracked a small smile for his benefit.
"So what do you have to do today?" Will asked her.
"Absolutely nothing." Sydney said, smiling widely. "At some point, I have a meeting with Vaughn, but other than that, I'm free for an entire weekend." Sydney said happily.
Everything after 'Vaughn' was lost on Will. He hated that this man helped Sydney more than Will ever could. It was like they had their own private club, which he wasn't allowed into.
Will's thoughts were interrupted by Sydney elbowing him.
"Did you hear me?" Sydney asked.
"No, sorry. What?" Will asked.
"I said that since I don't have any work, we should go out one of these nights." Sydney repeated.
"Yeah." Was all that Will could manage. Normally, his heart would race at a statement like this, but he knew that it was nothing more than a friendly gesture. Every once in a while, he thought of trying again to make something more of his relationship with Sydney, but always lost the courage. He kept thinking that maybe she had changed her mind about him, but didn't want to make the first move. But the little voice in the back of his head told him that she would just reject him.
Current events, however, had brought all new situations to life in his head. Was there something going on between Sydney and Vaughn? If there wasn't, should he make a move, before Vaughn gets to, or should he give up and play the role of a supportive friend?
"So what is with this 'Vaughn' guy?" Will asked, before having time to think about it.
"What do you mean? I told you, he's my handler." Sydney said, trying to understand what Will was getting at.
"But are you guys…close?" Will asked, hoping that she would get what question he was really asking.
"What are you getting at?" Sydney asked, not really wanting to answer the question anyway.
"Do you like him?" Will asked blatantly, not believing that the words had actually come out.
"He's my handler. We can't even be seen in public together, not to mention it's against protocol." Sydney said, not really answering the question.
Will seemed to accept this answer, knowing when to drop a subject. Before he was able to say anything else, Sydney hopped up.
"I'm going to go take a shower." She announced, before darting out of the room.
She walked into her room and into the bathroom where she turned on the hot water in the shower. She stripped off her clothes and stepped under the hot spray. She let the water wash over her, not realizing how tense her muscles were until they began to relax.
Her mind started spinning with thoughts. About Will, about Vaughn, about her mother, about what happens next. She couldn't believe that Will had asked her if she liked Vaughn. She liked to pride herself in thinking that she hid her emotions rather well, but if Will saw that there was something between she and Vaughn, maybe others did too.
Sydney had stopped denying a long time ago that Vaughn had feeling for her too. It might have been easier to stay away from him if she believed that there was no way that he felt anything towards her. But the looks that he had been giving her lately, and his actions in Taipei proved to her that there was something going on there. The only thing that prevented her from taking things further was the constant threat of death. And although that is a fairly big obstacle, she sometimes found herself wanting to take that risk. She just had to remember that maybe someday, after SD-6 is gone, they could be together. Although this instilled hope in her, it also brought sadness. What if SD-6 couldn't be brought down in her lifetime? She didn't want to waste her whole life, pining for someone who she could never have.
She tried to clear her head, and focus on the warm water. She soon got out of the shower and slipped into her bathrobe. She heard the phone ring a distance away, but decided that Will could answer it. She toweled off her hair, and walked into the living room.
"Did the phone ring?" she asked Will, who was standing by the refrigerator.
"Yeah, it was a wrong number though." Will said.
"Joey's Pizza?" she asked.
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
"We get that all the time." Sydney said, not sure why she didn't want to tell Will that it was Vaughn. She wanted to keep it a secret between them, she guessed. And, she didn't want Will giving her a hard time every time they got a wrong number.
Sydney walked back into her room and slipped on some jeans and a tank top. She grabbed a zip up sweatshirt also and walked out of her room.
"I think I'm going to go to the library and get some work done." She told Will, who was still padding around the kitchen.
"I thought you weren't doing any work today." Will said, annoyed that she was leaving.
"I know, but I can't just sit around the house all day. I have a lot of school work to catch up on." She couldn't believe that after all this; she was still lying to him. She didn't have to, she just did.
"Fine." Will muttered, ducking back into the refrigerator.
Sydney walked over to the door and slipped on her tennis shoes and grabbed her backpack.
The ride to the warehouse seemed shorter than the previous night, but she was grateful, because she had a lot that she wanted to talk with Vaughn about. She pulled up to the abandoned building and got out of her car. She looked around for any possible tails, knowing that there wouldn't be any since she had been checking the whole way there.
She walked into the warehouse and saw Vaughn already there, as usual, standing in their cage in the back corner. She didn't know exactly why they always stood back there, but she didn't really have time to dwell on it.
"Hi." Sydney said as she approached him.
"Hi." He said back to her.
Sydney loved their weekend meetings because Vaughn was always in casual clothes. She liked that she got to see a part, even a small part, of what he was really like. He was dressed in khaki pants and a v-neck sweater. Her attention was drawn from the chest of his sweater to the bulge in his arm. She suddenly remembered his injury.
"How's your arm?" she asked.
"It's fine." He replied, not elaborating. She hoped that he wasn't going to act all professional again. Although it had only lasted for one meeting, it was painful.
"Did you see a doctor?" Sydney asked. Vaughn knew that she wasn't going to let it drop, and even though he hated sharing any of his weaknesses with her, he relented.
"Yeah. It's not too bad. You were right, it didn't go through the bone, it only grazed it. It's fine, really." He said, emphasizing that he didn't want to talk about it. He changed the subject to the only other thing that he could think of.
"So how is it going with Will?" he asked, not really wanting to know how great they were getting along, but knowing that he should ask.
"Fine. I told him a lot that he should know though." Sydney said, looking down. She hated to see Vaughn mad, or disappointed, or sad. For that matter, she hated to see him when he had any negative emotions.
Vaughn sighed, knowing that this would happen. "How much did you tell him?" he asked, needing to know now what the damage was.
"I told him that I was a double, but he probably would have figured that out. I told him how Danny died. I also told him that he couldn't tell anyone. I made sure that he knew the precautions he had to take." Sydney finished. Once she said it all out loud, it didn't sound that bad.
"That's fine. Nothing that he probably wouldn't have found out in time anyway." Vaughn said, relieved that she hadn't told him anything that could put anyone, especially herself, in danger. "It'll be good for you to have someone that you can talk to about all of this stuff." He said, not really wanting to admit that he had been replaced as her comfort friend.
"I guess so. But I don't really want to tell him anything." Sydney admitted. "I don't know if it's because I don't want to see him get hurt, or think less of me. Or because I don't want you to stop being the person who I tell everything to." She said quietly.
Vaughn was stunned. He had never expected her to say that. "Sydney, no matter how much you tell Will and no matter how much you guys talk, you can still tell me everything." Vaughn tried to assure her.
"I know, but I guess I just want there to be things that are just between you and me. I don't want to tell Will about Sloane, or my mom, or my dad, or my missions. I don't want him to know those things." Sydney tried to explain what she was feeling, finding it difficult to find the words.
Vaughn crinkled his forehead, not exactly knowing what to do with this information. "Is it because you don't want to get him into this?" Vaughn asked, trying to help Sydney know why she felt this way.
"No, he's already a part of this. I don't want to get him any further into it, but I just feel more comfortable talking about these things with you, not him. I know that he'd give me opinions, and judgments, and tell me to get out of it, and just make things harder. Do you care that I tell you these things?" Sydney asked, wondering why he was trying to push her at Will.
"No! Not at all. I'm glad that I can help you." Vaughn told her quickly. He loved that he could help her. And he loved that she still wanted to tell him private things, even though she could tell them to Will. He just wasn't sure what it all meant. "It must be nice not having to sneak around anymore. Well, at least not around Will. I know how much you hated lying to your friends." Vaughn said, trying to boost her spirits.
"That's the weird thing. I still feel like I'm sneaking around. I mean, I am sneaking around. I told Will that I went to the library. And I just let him think that it was a wrong number calling for Joey's Pizza." Sydney told him, not really sure why.
"Why? I though that you hated lying to them." Vaughn questioned her.
"I know. I still do. But I guess it's just easier than the truth sometimes." Sydney said sadly.
Vaughn didn't reply, sensing that she wasn't finished.
"Do you think that it will always be like this?" Sydney asked.
"Like what? The lying?"
"Yeah. And the sneaking around. Do you think that I'll always find it easier to lie than to tell the truth?" Sydney asked, growing worried that she would just become a pathological liar.
"No. I don't. I think that once SD-6 is gone, you will be able to go where you want, when you want, and you'll tell your friends everything. You're a person who needs to share things with other people. And that's great. Especially when you're in the kind of business where almost no trust exists. It's good that you don't want to lie, and that you actually catch yourself doing it. I know that you're worried that things will never change, and the SD-6 will never fall, but it will. Things won't always be like this. I know that it's going to take longer than you had expected, but the work that you've done so far has been amazing, and things will get better soon." Vaughn said, emphasizing every word so that she'd know it was true.
Sydney didn't have anything to say. She just smiled. She wondered how long it would take until she stopped needing to hear Vaughn's pep talks. He spoke so passionately, and she loved that he believed in her so much. Her eyes were locked onto his, and she felt the breath catch in her throat. They were standing so closely, that for a moment, she thought that he might kiss her.
Vaughn was terrified. Sydney was standing in front of him, looking into his eyes, and it felt like she could see right through him, into his soul. He wanted to kiss her so badly. He almost started to lean in, but somehow caught himself. He took a step back from her and cleared his throat.
"Why don't you go home and rest a little more. We can meet about all the other stuff tomorrow. I'm not even really done figuring out what we're going to do about your mom yet, so think of it as letting me off the hook." He joked.
Sydney smiled, a mixture of disappointment and relief running through her system. "That sounds good." She said. "Maybe I'll actually go to the library and get some work done."
Vaughn nodded. "I'll contact you tomorrow." He told her as she walked away. He really wanted to say that he'd call her tomorrow, but that would be too personal. He couldn't believe how close they had come to kissing. He couldn't let that happen again; he didn't know what he was thinking. He was really going to have to keep himself in check from no on. He waited a few minutes before he, too, walked out of the warehouse and into his car. The only think on his mind, though, was seeing Sydney tomorrow.
Okay, hopefully there was a little more substance to this one. I'm posting chapters 6 and 7 at the same time because I won't get a chance to post anything tomorrow. I hope you enjoyed these chapters, and let me know if you think I should change anything, or if there's anything you thing should happen. I appreciate all reviews…I love them!! Thanks for being so awesome and staying with this story. -carrie