Conséquence-Alias, PG13-Vaughn
Peregrine
Alias is owned by ABC, Touchstone and is the creation of JJ Abrams and Bad Robot Productions.
Conséquence is French for Aftermath
AN: Vaughn is alive, but what happens when he comes back from the dead?
******
When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds, within a flash
Here Comes the Flood, Lyrics by Peter Gabriel
*******
Chapter One: After The Flood
A million gallons of water thrusting its aqueous arms at her fleeing heels, and me standing there like an idiot…..mouth hanging open…..totally mesmerized like some country bumpkin visiting the big city for the first time. Nothing could prepare me for the drenching of my life. Ten g's pressing my face against the glass like a pilot in a flight simulator. Not exactly the high point of my existence.
My instructors said I was born to the water, feet flipping like a seal, body skimming the surface like a dolphin. Age six, Boy Scout camp. Endless trials. Endlessly perfecting my skill, waiting for this one moment in time to strut my stuff. Right.
You're not fooled, are you? You saw my face, air escaping while I tried to quell the rising wave of panic, telling you it was no use.
Airtight doors with failsafes can't be defeated by a fire extinguisher. I wanted to tell her, but this giant whirlpool had the nerve to interrupt me. Sucking me down a tunnel, flushing me through the sewer system, and vomiting me into a canal full of detritus. Foul-smelling, noxious garbage floated around me. Choking me with its fumes, reminding me that I was lucky to be alive.
Crinkly black leather, Matrix issue, tainted by my little dip in the refreshing waters of Taipei.
Strange man leaves water.
News at eleven. Weekly World News flash. Is he a selkie or some escaped mutation? A feat of genetic engineering gone wrong. Furrowed brows and tie- dyed hair. Yeah, I can see it all now.
The year of the drowned rat.
Rusty Mandarin dialect comes to mind as I trade clothes with a street person. Baggy caftan. Pointed hat. Funny shoes that pinch my toes. Keanu would be disappointed, but what can you do? More bartering gives me five minutes on somebody's black market cell phone.
******
"Where the hell are you, Mike?" The connection was bad, but Eric's annoyance came through loud and clear. Like how dare you leave me with your mess of cases? How dare you run off into the sunset with your agent while I get stuck with your work?
The long and short of it was that I needed him right now. I couldn't tell him to fuck off for betraying me, for caring more about his 401K than loyalty and honor and all that goes along with it. He was right about me. I was irrational, beyond caring about my future in clandestine operations. Because when you're nearly washed out to sea by a tidal wave, it tends to put things in perspective. Emotions are laid bare, on the table for all to see. Painted in the lurid colors of Hollywood Boulevard. Tarted up by the cheapness of it all. Shoddy life. Shady work. Meaningless. Pointless. Banal. My voice, when it thinks to move my larynx and produce the words, croaks out that one little word. "Taipei."
The long silence of disbelief. The snort of 'no way'. The hiss of 'you're shitting me'. Followed up by, "You need extraction?"
A laugh finds it way from my belly, silently shaking my abdomen as I say evenly, "Yeah."
"Go to the embassy and I'll make arrangements."
I look down at my clothes and smother another chuckle. "It's not that simple."
So I use up the rest of my five minutes and give him the scoop. Bad connection and all, I can hear fume impatiently, mind racing for a solution. When I finish, his advice is the same, "Go to the embassy. I'll….explain it to them."
The line goes dead and I stare at the phone, wondering if our friendship has died along with it.
******
US Embassy. Forbidding walls. Gates with spikes. Keep out the aliens like me. My knock yields to the cut and paste features of some minor lackey. Drawn out vowels. Genteel South. Mint juleps and white gloves. A sniff of her upturned nose and a moue of distaste as she lets me pass. The click of her spike heels as she escorts me to a waiting area. The murmur of voices, hers raised and harried, the lower tones of her superior, rising and falling as they discuss my fate.
Cheap, government-issue chairs and tables. Pressboard and plastic. Fugly picture of George Jr. with his arm around some diplomat. Plants rotting on the sun-drenched sill of an open window. Overflowing with the water from some hypervigilant secretary with a black thumb. Flies buzzing, competing with the approaching tap of a cane.
A face hovers in the doorway like an apparition and coalesces into the grizzled features of the guy making nice with Mr. Bush. He peers at me through a monocle. Shades of Col. Klink. Clears his throat of its phlegm. Scores two points in the spittoon and creaks, "Mr. Vaughn, is it? You are in a bit of hot water."
Great. More references to water. Reminders I don't need. "Umm, yeah," I bluster with my usual brilliance, trying not to notice the fusty odor that clouds the room as he approaches me. Pigpen personified. My not so lucky day. "So Agent Weiss contacted you?"
He purses his lips and shakes his head for a moment. I can see the logic in not getting involved. Really I can. If pond scum showed up at my doorstep, I'd sure hesitate before lending a helping hand. "Yes," he says after a long beat. "I am Ambassador Smythe."
Yikes. I have a snob on my hand. That's Smythe with a long i and don't you forget it. The urge to shorten the vowel passes and I extend my hand. "Agent Vaughn."
His fingers are damp with perspiration and limp as the biscuits that my mother churns out as haute cuisine. White and fishy like some bottom feeder. "Your agency says I should give you my full cooperation. What do you think I should do?"
Ah, the old turning the tables trick. Focus on the victim. Put him on the spot. Watch him hem and haw and beg for mercy. When you have him by the short hairs, string him along for awhile. Make him sweat blood. Capitulate when it's clear that you have his undying gratitude. "Interesting question. I guess I would help, but not before calling in a few favors."
The creases of his face crack into a hideous smile. A rictus stuffed with piano key teeth. Yellowed with nicotine and years of bad coffee. "Exactly right."
Not only a snob, but a pretentious git to boot. My guess is Choate, with a stint at Oxford that permanently etched his accent with the veddy British overtones that flute through his nose. "So you can help me?"
"That is in my power, yes." Smythe stands there with a hateful smirk on his face. Like he knows he has me dangling. He seems to come to some decision and adds, "Follow me."
******
The wonders of a hot shower and a decent meal. My flight leaves in the morning and Smythe has offered me housing for the night. A monastic cell in the attic, stuffed to the gills with file cabinets and cartons of paper dating back to the Cold War. Hard mattress and iron bedposts. Springs erupting like geysers, skewering me with each twist and turn of my body. When it becomes clear that sleep will elude me, I jerk a folding chair to the window and let the night claim me. Arms of humid air surround me with the odors of swamp and fried food. Too much time to muse on what could have been.
Me and Sydney. Working together. A real team for once. Only it never was. I was the added accessory that clashed with the whole operation. The jarring note in an otherwise perfect crescendo. The key that never turns the lock. The failed field operative. Flying a desk was all I deserved. No time to dig for any real meaning, scrabbling beyond the trivialities and protocols that dictated my role in this fallacy. This farce that I played every day, relentless hour upon hour, countless nicks of my blade with each morning shave. The perfect way that I knotted my tie after years of practice. Trained by my Parisian mother and her high-faluting ways. Hair slicked back. Razor-sharp creases in my pants, cloned on my forehead like a Photoshop stamp. Big, sharp G-man with my fancy Italian shoes. And to think it all meant something once, a very long time ago, in a faraway place called LA. A distant memory.
I should be in panic mode now. Tying myself into knots, wringing my hands, demanding that they help me find her. But that was the old Vaughn, the one that drowned in the laboratory, the man whose backbone was surgically removed at birth. The new me has a spine that prickles as it grows and shapes me into a person I don't recognize. Snarky. Indifferent. Blase. Darkness that has always been there, patched and paved with good intentions and molded by decorum.
Sydney.
Love that burns. How can you love someone you don't even know? Their every breath is a passing thought that fans your face, the here and the now vanquished by the fantasy that looms whenever you see her. The swing in her step. The bounce of her shiny hair. The light in her eyes. The way she moves. The scent that you catch when she flits around you like a hummingbird, sidestepping and dancing, restless legs and arms emoting with her conviction. Admiration turns on its head in the tunnel. Bleak and cold as the deluge that washes it all away. Love. Respect. Honor. All gone now.
******
Peregrine
Alias is owned by ABC, Touchstone and is the creation of JJ Abrams and Bad Robot Productions.
Conséquence is French for Aftermath
AN: Vaughn is alive, but what happens when he comes back from the dead?
******
When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds, within a flash
Here Comes the Flood, Lyrics by Peter Gabriel
*******
Chapter One: After The Flood
A million gallons of water thrusting its aqueous arms at her fleeing heels, and me standing there like an idiot…..mouth hanging open…..totally mesmerized like some country bumpkin visiting the big city for the first time. Nothing could prepare me for the drenching of my life. Ten g's pressing my face against the glass like a pilot in a flight simulator. Not exactly the high point of my existence.
My instructors said I was born to the water, feet flipping like a seal, body skimming the surface like a dolphin. Age six, Boy Scout camp. Endless trials. Endlessly perfecting my skill, waiting for this one moment in time to strut my stuff. Right.
You're not fooled, are you? You saw my face, air escaping while I tried to quell the rising wave of panic, telling you it was no use.
Airtight doors with failsafes can't be defeated by a fire extinguisher. I wanted to tell her, but this giant whirlpool had the nerve to interrupt me. Sucking me down a tunnel, flushing me through the sewer system, and vomiting me into a canal full of detritus. Foul-smelling, noxious garbage floated around me. Choking me with its fumes, reminding me that I was lucky to be alive.
Crinkly black leather, Matrix issue, tainted by my little dip in the refreshing waters of Taipei.
Strange man leaves water.
News at eleven. Weekly World News flash. Is he a selkie or some escaped mutation? A feat of genetic engineering gone wrong. Furrowed brows and tie- dyed hair. Yeah, I can see it all now.
The year of the drowned rat.
Rusty Mandarin dialect comes to mind as I trade clothes with a street person. Baggy caftan. Pointed hat. Funny shoes that pinch my toes. Keanu would be disappointed, but what can you do? More bartering gives me five minutes on somebody's black market cell phone.
******
"Where the hell are you, Mike?" The connection was bad, but Eric's annoyance came through loud and clear. Like how dare you leave me with your mess of cases? How dare you run off into the sunset with your agent while I get stuck with your work?
The long and short of it was that I needed him right now. I couldn't tell him to fuck off for betraying me, for caring more about his 401K than loyalty and honor and all that goes along with it. He was right about me. I was irrational, beyond caring about my future in clandestine operations. Because when you're nearly washed out to sea by a tidal wave, it tends to put things in perspective. Emotions are laid bare, on the table for all to see. Painted in the lurid colors of Hollywood Boulevard. Tarted up by the cheapness of it all. Shoddy life. Shady work. Meaningless. Pointless. Banal. My voice, when it thinks to move my larynx and produce the words, croaks out that one little word. "Taipei."
The long silence of disbelief. The snort of 'no way'. The hiss of 'you're shitting me'. Followed up by, "You need extraction?"
A laugh finds it way from my belly, silently shaking my abdomen as I say evenly, "Yeah."
"Go to the embassy and I'll make arrangements."
I look down at my clothes and smother another chuckle. "It's not that simple."
So I use up the rest of my five minutes and give him the scoop. Bad connection and all, I can hear fume impatiently, mind racing for a solution. When I finish, his advice is the same, "Go to the embassy. I'll….explain it to them."
The line goes dead and I stare at the phone, wondering if our friendship has died along with it.
******
US Embassy. Forbidding walls. Gates with spikes. Keep out the aliens like me. My knock yields to the cut and paste features of some minor lackey. Drawn out vowels. Genteel South. Mint juleps and white gloves. A sniff of her upturned nose and a moue of distaste as she lets me pass. The click of her spike heels as she escorts me to a waiting area. The murmur of voices, hers raised and harried, the lower tones of her superior, rising and falling as they discuss my fate.
Cheap, government-issue chairs and tables. Pressboard and plastic. Fugly picture of George Jr. with his arm around some diplomat. Plants rotting on the sun-drenched sill of an open window. Overflowing with the water from some hypervigilant secretary with a black thumb. Flies buzzing, competing with the approaching tap of a cane.
A face hovers in the doorway like an apparition and coalesces into the grizzled features of the guy making nice with Mr. Bush. He peers at me through a monocle. Shades of Col. Klink. Clears his throat of its phlegm. Scores two points in the spittoon and creaks, "Mr. Vaughn, is it? You are in a bit of hot water."
Great. More references to water. Reminders I don't need. "Umm, yeah," I bluster with my usual brilliance, trying not to notice the fusty odor that clouds the room as he approaches me. Pigpen personified. My not so lucky day. "So Agent Weiss contacted you?"
He purses his lips and shakes his head for a moment. I can see the logic in not getting involved. Really I can. If pond scum showed up at my doorstep, I'd sure hesitate before lending a helping hand. "Yes," he says after a long beat. "I am Ambassador Smythe."
Yikes. I have a snob on my hand. That's Smythe with a long i and don't you forget it. The urge to shorten the vowel passes and I extend my hand. "Agent Vaughn."
His fingers are damp with perspiration and limp as the biscuits that my mother churns out as haute cuisine. White and fishy like some bottom feeder. "Your agency says I should give you my full cooperation. What do you think I should do?"
Ah, the old turning the tables trick. Focus on the victim. Put him on the spot. Watch him hem and haw and beg for mercy. When you have him by the short hairs, string him along for awhile. Make him sweat blood. Capitulate when it's clear that you have his undying gratitude. "Interesting question. I guess I would help, but not before calling in a few favors."
The creases of his face crack into a hideous smile. A rictus stuffed with piano key teeth. Yellowed with nicotine and years of bad coffee. "Exactly right."
Not only a snob, but a pretentious git to boot. My guess is Choate, with a stint at Oxford that permanently etched his accent with the veddy British overtones that flute through his nose. "So you can help me?"
"That is in my power, yes." Smythe stands there with a hateful smirk on his face. Like he knows he has me dangling. He seems to come to some decision and adds, "Follow me."
******
The wonders of a hot shower and a decent meal. My flight leaves in the morning and Smythe has offered me housing for the night. A monastic cell in the attic, stuffed to the gills with file cabinets and cartons of paper dating back to the Cold War. Hard mattress and iron bedposts. Springs erupting like geysers, skewering me with each twist and turn of my body. When it becomes clear that sleep will elude me, I jerk a folding chair to the window and let the night claim me. Arms of humid air surround me with the odors of swamp and fried food. Too much time to muse on what could have been.
Me and Sydney. Working together. A real team for once. Only it never was. I was the added accessory that clashed with the whole operation. The jarring note in an otherwise perfect crescendo. The key that never turns the lock. The failed field operative. Flying a desk was all I deserved. No time to dig for any real meaning, scrabbling beyond the trivialities and protocols that dictated my role in this fallacy. This farce that I played every day, relentless hour upon hour, countless nicks of my blade with each morning shave. The perfect way that I knotted my tie after years of practice. Trained by my Parisian mother and her high-faluting ways. Hair slicked back. Razor-sharp creases in my pants, cloned on my forehead like a Photoshop stamp. Big, sharp G-man with my fancy Italian shoes. And to think it all meant something once, a very long time ago, in a faraway place called LA. A distant memory.
I should be in panic mode now. Tying myself into knots, wringing my hands, demanding that they help me find her. But that was the old Vaughn, the one that drowned in the laboratory, the man whose backbone was surgically removed at birth. The new me has a spine that prickles as it grows and shapes me into a person I don't recognize. Snarky. Indifferent. Blase. Darkness that has always been there, patched and paved with good intentions and molded by decorum.
Sydney.
Love that burns. How can you love someone you don't even know? Their every breath is a passing thought that fans your face, the here and the now vanquished by the fantasy that looms whenever you see her. The swing in her step. The bounce of her shiny hair. The light in her eyes. The way she moves. The scent that you catch when she flits around you like a hummingbird, sidestepping and dancing, restless legs and arms emoting with her conviction. Admiration turns on its head in the tunnel. Bleak and cold as the deluge that washes it all away. Love. Respect. Honor. All gone now.
******
