Confessor

by behemoth

Vaughn finds himself on the wrong end of a CIA gun.

Title: Confessor.

Author : behemoth

E-mail: magnikolayevna@aol.com

feedback: email above

distribution: Yes, you can archive this work, please email me and tell me the web address of your archival site

disclaimer: Alias is owned by ABC, Touchtone, is the creation of

JJ Abrams and Bad Robot Productions. I'm just visiting.

summary: Vaughn finds himself on the wrong end of a CIA gun.

rating: R (language)

Classification: Angst Vaughn/Sydney

"I wouldn't go for the gun, Michael." Her words carried up, bouncing off the rafters like a choir floating up to the heavens. Bouncing, beckoning, and dissolving into confusion as he tried to reconstruct her last sentence into something that made any sense at all. Anything that didn't make the foundations of his universe crumble.

Vaughn turned to find himself staring at a CIA issued pistol, currently so close to his face he could practically see where the serial number had been filed off. Not now, he thought, and please-please not you. His eyes followed the barrel to her face, calm and resigned.

"What are you doing." Not a question. A statement, meant to replace the this isn't you that was welling up in his throat. Knowing that question had been futilely asked by so many people in his situation before. Time and time again have his predecessors looked into a trusted face, even loved face, and found a stranger. Why should this moment be any different?

Because if this moment wasn't different, Sydney would die.

"Katherine. Talk to me." He watched as the gun backed away slowly. Its owner stretched her leather clad legs allowing herself the extra height needed to perch on top of the computer table they had set up – together- only hours ago. A command post to monitor Sydney's trek into a dormant KGB warehouse outside of Kiev. Apparently glastnost had caused the Duma's Rimbaldi fascination to be forgotten.

Or had it.

"C'mon, Mikey. Time to play I've-got-a-secret." Katherine ran a quick hand through her hair and rested her elbow on her knee, settling in for the long run. "We have a little heart to heart and you get an A-plus for not getting a double agent killed."

This can't be Kat. Someone's done something … Michael could see her in Paris, seven years ago. Leaning against the stone wall along the Seine, staring out at the water as she talked him through his first solo assignment, walked him through his fear. He saw Katherine, but in his ear he heard Sydney's slow, deliberate breaths.

"Vaughn, the security system must have a failsafe somewhere. I'm locked out of the-"

"Syd, sit tight for a minute. Whatever you do, don't try to rewire that security panel." Vaughn tried to keep his voice steady, but Katherine smiled at the tightness that crept into his throat. He had gone with a mobile earpiece in case they had to run. The KGB might be dormant, but the mafia never was.

"What's going on?" Sydney, being held hostage out in the darkness, without her even knowing it. And he would have to listen to her die. Rage was simmering up through his bloodstream.

"Syd. The building's rigged to blow 20 minutes after a tampered entry unless you punch in an override code at that panel." He looked at his watch, fifteen minutes to go, "I'll have you out in ten. Promise."

"Well, Michael, looks like I wasn't wrong," Katherine idly played with the cuffs on her worn blue oxford. The shirt was several sizes too big, obviously not hers, and she traced her fingers on it lightly while keeping the barrel trained on her former protégé.

"I don't know what's happened to you, but you won't let an agent die." He hated having to say that with Sydney listening. " I've seen you throw yourself in front of bullets to prevent writing condolence letters."

Katherine frowned. "And yet I've still had to write them. So have you. I wish common decency had allowed one of those to be sent to me. With my name on it."

"Vaughn, just get out of there," he heard Sydney whisper from the darkness, her voice breezing over the image that was forming in his mind. Sydney in a basement a quarter mile out of his reach with her eyes flashing fire as she canvases the room for an alternate exit.

"Tell her you're not going anywhere."

Vaughn nodded towards the encrypted transmitter on the table. Katherine was wired too, this was the three-way call from hell.

She shrugged, pulled out her earpiece and let it fall. "I'm not very sociable."

"Vaughn. I.. Vaughn, just.." He could hear Sydney trying to pick her words carefully, trying to communicate without tipping off Katherine. Finally a relenting huff, "KGB fail safes are old school. I'm good…"

"Syd. It's not KGB." Suddenly the old barn had become a church, a cathedral. Enlightenment was sneaking in with the moonlight and the pile of a decade's worth of debris became a rising alter behind Katherine's back. Fitting. Talking to her had always felt like confession. " Is it, Kat?"

"Good, kiddo." So obvious. So simple. Why he hadn't thought of it before, seen that something was wrong. But all he had been thinking about since they met in Odessa was…Sydney. Kat had been in charge of his overseas training-'always check your doorways, kiddo'- in Europe before he was sent back to the States. Her eye for detail, her diligence was the standard he still judged himself by. She wouldn't have missed something that big. Fourteen minutes. She's been on assignment here for a year, she would've known. Kat rewired the building herself.

"No Rimbaldi."

"Not there."

"K-Directorate?" After Sydney? Had they gotten to Kat?

"No. I'm flying solo on this one."

"What's with the set-up?" Syd's breath in his ear, slow and controlled. "You know I'll help you. Give me the code and we'll take care of whatever this is."

"Liar. A good one, but still a liar. It's no matter really." She stopped fidgeting with her cuff and leaned back to concentrate on him. "You and I are on even playing field now. You know that, Mikey, don't you?"

"'Even playing field?'"

"I had my suspicions when you first approached me to discuss the intel – which, by the way, you should never take from anyone in this area that I haven't cleared. Sloppy of the boys back home."

Vaughn could hear Sydney scraping something heavy across concrete – probably a piece of furniture. Her breathing was picking up pace. "Kat. Give me the code."

"Michael. Give me my husband." The sarcastic veneer cracked across her face for a moment, and Vaughn saw a sea of pain beneath. The riptides of which were threatening to consume not only Katherine, but Sydney in the process.

"I didn't know you were… " Thirteen minutes. Somewhere in there was the woman he had known. Damn it, every instinct he had on how to play this situation out was going to take too much time.

"Married? Big secret. The CIA discourages…. But you know that don't you. You don't need a lesson on that."

Don't. Please. "Kat. Tell me what you want." The furniture noises had stopped. Vaughn couldn't tell if Sydney had found something interesting in the basement… or in the conversation.

"I still remember the first day I met you. Brash young thing. All swagger. Ready for the world. I was supposed to run the training wheels off of you. You had shown a lot of promise to the boys and girls upstairs, they just wanted me to rule out any overriding vengeance factor. Legacy issues."

Furniture was scraping again in his ear. "Could we save the this-is-your-life crap for later? You've got the gun, you've got the code. Let's go."

"You have no patience, young Skywalker," she teased.

"Fuck you." Great, piss off the woman with the trigger. Jesus, you'll get Sydney killed yet.

"Play nice." If this evening had ended anywhere else but the Twilight Zone, Vaughn would've been thrilled to fall into the familiar banter. Instead they both stared, two petulant children fighting over a toy. She broke the gaze, sighed, "You worked cleanup on an extraction in '98, a bad extraction from Chechnya."

He remembered the case. It had been bad. "Yeah. We lost four good agents that day." He wasn't sure how much she knew, or how to approach this. Best to let her do the –twelve minutes- talking.

"No. You lost three. The fourth was intentionally shot and left behind."

" There was a lot of gunfire that morning. Kat, we can't prove that-"

"You had that agent's cover story leaked, Mike. He went in deep, and you laid down the tracks for him. You found the right asset, you handled the agent who made sure the cell believed he had turned." Okay, she knew the story. Play this one honest, keep her reasonable and- Dammit. The backdrop of scraping sounds had stopped. He tensed. Now he couldn't even hear her breathe, didn't know what she was thinking. Katherine continued, "The one that went under? The one that took the shot? That agent was my husband."

This wasn't going to end well. Please, Sydney, make some noise. "I'm sorry, Kat," Vaughn said sincerely, "I really am. But if this is vengeance.. For leaving him behind? You know what…"

"No."

"Then what, Kat? Just tell me, please. This isn't you. I know this isn't you."

"You've never seen me with the bad guys, kiddo."

"I'm not a bad guy."

"I'm not a good girl." She slid off the table and presented the gun in a more military fashion. The space between them had gone still, practically cold without Syd's voice present. Vaughn slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans, trying to act calm despite the second hand on his watch crying as it crept onwards. Eleven minutes. Shit, the '98 op had been so bad…

He ventured a step towards her, "John Donovan was a good man," he said softly, looking out at the dark tree-line outside the door. She tensed at the sound of his name, dropped her shoulders, almost looked away. Almost. Damn. She snapped the gun up as he turned back. "When you found out I was on the op, why didn't you just ask."

"I trained you better than that. I knew you'd do the right thing. Not give the information to an obviously unstable agent who may use it to unwittingly undue a tenuous détente all in the name of love. Let me go in there, guns blazing and let the Russians know we were playing on their turf without permission? That not all of us got the memo about the Cold War being over? No, I don't think so. You would see the lives at stake first."

"Unless you held a gun to my head?"

"Unless you were in love."

Ohjesusohnoohfuck.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Pity."

"Code." Goddamit, where was Sydney?

"Truth." The silence in Vaughn's left ear was deafening.

The truth would not set Sydney free. Time suddenly had weight. "I'll get you the files. I'll bring you the whole.."

"Story? I got a doozy of an encrypted one from Devlin." Static winced, and rapid breathing spilled into his ear. Finally. Katherine continued, "Seems there was this SD-6 mission in my neck of the woods and would I be so kind as to facilitate a counter? I scouted the building, which was dead, and was all set to send you kids packing when I saw your face walk in that door."

Sydney's breathing calmed, found its pace.

"I've seen you, Michael. Seen you flash that little smile of yours to help unlock doors. Watched you pull the Casanova routine to pick up an asset , dump her at the door with a smile on her face. Pretty interesting, really. I heard that blonde at the German Embassy in Poland is still writing letters to one Misha Putin at State." Here Katherine leaned back against the table, enjoying the picture she was painting, "You were a model of CIA – yes, she has ten minutes left, Mikey, please don't check your watch when I'm talking to you- a model of CIA decorum and detachment."

Somewhere down the road, metal was scrapping against metal. Michael let out the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. "If you hurt her…"

Katherine grinned, "But I've never seen you like this. God, it must be like looking in a mirror. Have you told her that you love her? This agent of yours?"

Silence. His cathedral, this barn in the middle of nowhere, grew exponentially to swallow him whole. Vaughn willed his mouth to move. To lie.

"Tick tock, Mikey."

But he couldn't. Not to Sydney. "No. No, not yet." Kat's gun no longer seemed to bother him.

Only then, low and sweet, did he hear, "Vaughn – Vaughn, It's- I-" A sharp crack, nothing. No. Nonono. Sydney…

Katherine's hand was on the transmitter. "Maybe this should just be between us now, kiddo."

"What the fuck?"

She laughed softly, almost like her old self, "You started breathing again. Gotta work on that, it's no good falling all to pieces every time you wake up next to a note that says nothing but 'Gone to work'."

Vaughn was ready to snap. "This is bullshit, Kat. Fuck – fine, you win. You're holding the life of the only woman I've ever loved over my head like she's some sort of fucking bait and I admit it. Okay? I fucking admit it. Now please, please stop this cat and mouse shit and tell me what you want."

Nine fucking minutes.

"Tell me what happened to John."

"There are ways, you know this. You know them better than I-"

"The trails stop after you, Mike. I tried, they all fucking stop."

"What makes you think I know?"

"You cared. You would've tracked him."

"You're not going to believe me, Kat."

She glanced over at the transmitter and sighed. Looking back up at him, her eyes had already started to water. She relaxed her grip on the gun, let it fall forward to hang off her index finger, "Now I will."

Vaughn took a slow breath as he took her gun. Gently, thumbing the safety on, he said, "Second row from the bottom. First one on the right."

She stepped away, sharply turned her head so he couldn't see her face. Couldn't see, but had no problem imagining. The stars on the Memorial Wall always beckoned to him every time he crossed the CIA seal. Those that could not be named, those that could not come home. Growing up, it was his father looking back from that wall. But more and more often, he saw Sydney in there as well.

Not yet.

"Katherine."

She turned back slowly, wiping her face on the sleeve of her – of John's shirt.

"Now. Please."

She smiled, barely dislodging the pain in her face. "One of the hardest things about being with John, besides his complete and utter lack of taste in movies, was learning to trust him to do his job." Katherine reached out and lazily brushed a lock of hair off Vaughn's forehead. Raising her voice slightly, she added, "Ms. Bristow, it's a pleasure."

"Step away from him." The low and sweet from before was now about twenty feet behind him. Vaughn turned to see Sydney standing in moonlight, just inside the open barn door. Confusion tempered the steel anger in her eyes. It had not yet, however, reached her hands. She aimed her gun at Katherine's head and said to him, "There were no explosives. No C4, no Sem, nothing. That's why I took my earpiece out – to check. Every door and every window in that place was wired. But to nothing…"
"You were right, Michael. I hate writing letters." Katherine said, and slipped her wool scarf around her neck. Ignoring Sydney's gun, she picked up a small black suitcase underneath the table. "But then again, kiddo, you always were."

Vaughn grabbed her arm as she turned to walk towards the door. "Kat – where are you going?"

"Not going. Gone." Whispered.

"You understand you can't go back there."

"I know. I believe you. That's why I had to do it this way. Short of seeing his… Well. It's the only way I'd know." Vaughn let his arm drop, squeezed her hand briefly as she found her voice again. "I'm off to someplace warm. Take good care of that equipment, Mikey, I wouldn't want anything to happen to it."

Sydney was still trying to decide what to do with her gun as Katherine passed her. "And Agent Bristow, I wouldn't let him use that 'I have ze key to the French Embassy's wine cellar' line with you. No good ever comes of it." She smiled over her shoulder at Vaughn, and walked out into the night.

He stood still for a minute, looking at Sydney in the doorway. Saw the number of times he had wished that he didn't feel the way he did, that they weren't the people they were. As if feeling his gaze, Sydney turned to him, away from Katherine's disappearing trail.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly.

"I'm fine, I… Vaughn, what was that?"

He put Katherine's gun on the table, started to disconnect and pile the communications equipment. He knew Sydney was waiting for him to say something. The minidisc slid out of the computer with a simple touch, a couple of keystrokes and he could've uploaded tonight's conversation to the bosses back home. Then they would take her away from him, true. But then he couldn't be used against her.

"Vaughn," Sydney was walking slowly towards him, a look on her face he couldn't quite place. "Vaughn, I.. I understand if.." She looked at the disc in his hand and sighed, "If you just said what you did to.. I mean I should thank you, right? Right. Really."

Her bottom lip, which he wanted very much to reach over and touch, was slightly quivering. God, she was pouting. His brave sweet queen was actually pouting. He let his hand float up and trace that lower lip, delighted in the surprise that crept across her face. For a second he thought of Katherine's smile as she left, that she still had one after losing John like that. That there still could be smiles despite this life. Leaning back against the table, he took her hands.

And pulled her to him.

The first kiss was soft, almost chaste. Slow and light, it was a question. She answered with the second, deepening the kiss and letting her tongue run delicately over his. He pulled her tighter to him to keep her from falling. Or so he thought, as the feeling of her hands on his chest had turned the world upside down.

Time had acquiesced to gravity, its presence no longer a constraint. Reluctantly they pulled apart. He looked over at the CIA issued gear and sighed, never removing his hand from the place it had found on the back of her neck. "Syd," he said softly as he let his lips brush her cheek, "Gotta go to work."