OK, I think that this is the last chapter for this story. The tentative
title for the next part is Regrets for Lies Told Today. (It might be a
little while before the first part for it is ready.)
Still some mild language involved so beware.
Again any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
The Pain of Innocence
The cold breeze on her tear-stained face brought Sydney back to her surroundings. It seemed like the cold had permeated her bones and congealed her blood.
I'm not alive, she mused. Live people aren't this cold.
She stood up from the cold grass only to be enveloped by the fog and darkness that had fallen. She glanced around at the graves, trying desperately to regain her senses but she felt like she was in a surreal dream. Why had she come here? She shook her head, her reasons for coming here seeming as insubstantial as the fog.
I'm not dead, she forced herself to believe. Dead people don't feel this much pain.
When you're at your absolute lowest, your most depressed, just remember that you can always, you know . . . you've got my number.
Could she call him? Could she rip him away from his normal life to come listen to her crazy, messed up rambling?
No, I can't do that to him, she half thought, half spoke her words. But.maybe I could just.Sydney's confused glance looked over her surroundings once more. The neatly groomed tombstones had an eerie quality to them. She almost laughed in a hysterical kind of way, at the thought of an empty cemetery spooking her when she could face armed men, twice her size without batting an eyelash. Sydney shook her head. She had to stop the hysteria that was bubbling up just underneath her surface. She could feel it trying to come out and she knew that if she allowed herself to succumb to it.She forced herself to walk back to the path without looking around anymore.
Without deciding whether or not to call Vaughn she turned on her car. I can always decide once I get there, she thought. The car shifted easily out of the parking spot, almost like it was eager to be moving from this place. Feeling drained and empty Sydney drove to the only place she could think of.
Sydney entered the dark, dirty warehouse with her shoulders slumped. Wrapped up in her own musings she almost didn't notice the man sitting on the floor. She had taken off her mud-encrusted shoes in the car and not bothered to put them back on. She almost hadn't even come in to the warehouse; she would have just sat in front of the door if some shrill voice in her head hadn't said to go inside before someone saw her. But the fog that had entered her mind was slowly lifting as she recognized the man sitting on the floor with his head in his hands.
Without thinking she closed the distance. "Vaughn?" she said hoarsely, surprised at how her voice sounded while she made a move to lay her hand on his shoulder.
Startled at the sound of her voice, Vaughn jumped to a kneeling position and had his pistol out before he recognized her. "Syd?" he paused trying to make his mind believe his eyes. "What are you doing here?"
Sydney lowered her hands from the defensive posture she had taken at having a gun pointed at her and shrugged, still feeling off balance. "Um.well I was just.ah you know.well what are you doing here?"
Vaughn smiled sadly at her. "About the same I guess." Sydney returned his small smile, understanding it because it seemed like an echo of her own. She slid down on the floor next to where he had been sitting and Vaughn sat back down next to her.
"My God you're freezing!" Vaughn exclaimed, looking at her, the concern lines on his forehead creasing. Without pausing he shrugged off his suit jacket and put it around her. Sydney accepted it gratefully and put her arms through the sleeves. Vaughn laughed softly as she held up her arms trying to find her hands in the long sleeves. "What happened?" he tried again.
Sydney bent her head down and examined the ends of the sleeves. The quality of the tailoring was obvious from the cut and the material indicated that this was probably an expensive suit. She leaned her head back on the chain fence and shook her head. She was too raw, too beaten up to explain, to wonder what had brought them both there. "Your suit is getting dirty."
Vaughn shrugged and shook his head. It didn't matter. "Where are your shoes?" he asked. Sydney looked at her outstretched feet poking out from the bottom of her slacks. She shrugged and shook her head. It didn't matter.
As she sat there looking at her feet she noticed that Vaughn's cell phone lay on the floor, past her. She leaned over and crawled to pick it up. She glanced at the screen of the phone and saw that he had missed a call. "You know," she said handing him the phone, "throwing my pager in the Pacific Ocean didn't solve any of my problems."
He looked up at her as he took his phone back and held it in his hands. "No, I guess it didn't, but if I remember correctly it certainly made you feel better at the time." This caused Sydney to chuckle. After a moment he continued. "How do you do it Syd?"
She glanced at him quickly, feeling oddly nervous and giddy before resuming her position next to him on the floor. "What do you mean?" she raised an eyebrow. "How do I lie to all my friends, travel around the world stealing items for a terrorist organization and deliver my evil boss into the hands of death? Or do you mean how do I manage to kick ass wearing heels?"
An involuntary laugh escaped Vaughn before he became serious once again. "No, I mean how do you live your life at home and your life at work? Which one becomes less real?"
"Neither," she answered softly. At Vaughn's skeptical look she continued. "They're both real. The reason I do the stuff at work is so that I can live my life." Vaughn nodded and Sydney saw a look of sadness appear on his face and she intuitively knew what it meant. "That doesn't mean that I consider my life here, working with the CIA to be less than my home life. I feel like I'm helping to bring down this horrible monster and that maybe everyone's home lives are going to be a little bit better because of it. But I do wish that my work and home lives didn't have to be mutually exclusive."
"But how do you stay true to everything you care about when work and home pull you in such separate directions?"
Sydney shook her head sadly. "I don't know if I do. Sometimes I just don't know what's right anymore. Sorry, that's not really the answer I know you want to hear. I-"
They were interrupted by the soft beeping of Vaughn's phone. Vaughn hardly glanced at the screen before ending the call and tossing his phone back across the floor. Sydney watched the phone skip across the cement like a stone skipping across a river. Then she turned her gaze to her companion and eyed him curiously.
Vaughn let the silence build until finally, unable to stand her glance any longer he tried to explain. "I just didn't want to be interrupted tonight. I didn't feel like pretending to anyone that-I mean that I just didn't want to pretend that my- never mind. I can't believe that I'm even bothering you about this." His shoulders slumped in defeat.
"No please Vaughn, go on."
Reluctantly Vaughn continued. "I just think that I was fooling myself. I think it's too easy to get caught up in things that you don't believe in but that other people expect you too. And then you spend all your time trying to make excuses for yourself, feeling guilty for a lie that other people put on you, when in reality what you should feel really guilty for is the fact you allowed yourself to accept the lie in the first place."
"Vaughn, I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. Do you regret working with me or for the CIA?" Syd asked tentatively, secretly scared of his response.
Vaughn grasped her by her shoulders and turned her to face him directly. "Never Syd. Working with you-well, that's when I'm not fooling myself."
Sydney could do nothing except continue to look at him. He was no longer grasping her but instead he lay his hands gently on her arms. It was only when he looked down that she realized that she had been holding her breath.
Finally he looked back up and continued. "The truth is completely inappropriate and I have no right to say it. So instead let me say that I'm sorry if you ever felt betrayed by me. If you haven't then-well, just ignore all this. But if you have, I'm sorry. That was never my intention and it won't happen again. No matter what."
Unfortunately, Sydney thought that she might know what he was talking about. Finding out about him and Alice had felt like someone had ripped her heart out, especially because she had thought (or maybe just hoped) that he had cared about her. If that was what he was talking about, then what he was trying to tell her was that he was sorry for getting involved with Alice again. Though he implied that he had not desired a relationship with her, he had accepted it because of certain reasons. She could just imagine what those reasons might be. She had heard the comments. That was why she had been so quick to deny any involvement between them to Dr. Barnett. She could just imagine the grief he received from his co-workers, dating Alice had probably eased it a bit. She also realized that if he did care about her, then giving her the tasks that he did, as part of his job would be torture for him. Not to mention the fact that being seen together would likely bring about both of their deaths. If he had managed to make himself believe that he loved Alice, even a little, perhaps it had helped to ease his pain. And that brought her to what was probably the most meaningful thing that he had said, his last statement. 'No matter what'. In his eyes she had seen that he meant, 'No matter what the cost'. He had told her that the price of easing his pain was not worth the pain he had caused her to feel.
Vaughn could see her eyes filling with tears and it nearly broke his heart. But he could also see her face change as she thought through all that he had said and so maybe they were tears of forgiveness. He lifted his hand to caress her cheek but that seemed to cause the tears to finally fall. He started to wipe them away but Sydney lowered his hands so that she could talk.
***
Jack entered the warehouse quietly. He had seen Sydney's car outside while he was driving past and had ordered the taxi driver to stop. There was no other car in the lot and he was concerned that she had come here by herself. As he approached the closed off area in the back he heard the quiet voices and stopped.
From his position by the wall, he could see their beaten faces, Sydney's shoeless feet, Vaughn's jacket around her and a cell phone lying a few feet away. He knew intuitively, that he was viewing a more intimate moment than if he had found them naked and in bed together. But he also knew why they had come here. It was easy for everyone to assume that they were both invulnerable but he knew better, even before seeing them right now.
I hope that you can find some peace in this, he thought. He saw Vaughn lift his hand and gently caress his daughter's cheek. He didn't know if he was supposed to feel anger at their disregard for their own safety or perhaps some paternal instinct to crush the hand of any man that dared to touch his daughter, but he felt neither. This was their journey to undertake. Jack turned around and just as quietly, let himself out of the warehouse.
***
"You are too good of a person for me, you know?" Sydney said quietly. At Vaughn's unbelieving expression she continued. "No, you are. You are so much stronger than I am. You have a strength of character that I admire so much." Sydney put up her hand to stop him from interrupting. Vaughn pushed his lips shut unhappily and she had to smile a little at his modesty. "It's true. You deal with things so much better than I do. All I can do is push them into a corner in my brain and forget about them, but when I have to deal with them I can't. It must drive you nuts listening to me oscillate back and forth between hating my father to defending him by insulting you. Not to mention my love-hate relationship with my mother. You just listen to me. You don't judge me, you never say, 'well Syd I tried to tell you about Madagascar'." Vaughn laughed lightly at her attempt to mimic him. "I know you went to go see my mother before they took you to the hospital, I know you went to see her to find me an escape in Russia, I've seen how my father treats you and I know how I've treated you sometimes. And you deal with it. I don't know how, but you do. And you manage not to hate me for how I act, and I even get the feeling you don't hate my dad. And I don't have a clue how you manage to even interact with my mother. You have this inner strength that amazes me. When we're working together I feel like I can do anything."
Vaughn gave her a half smile and shook his head slightly, but he didn't act like he was embarrassed. He acted like she was entitled to her own opinion, even if it was one he didn't share. "Syd, you're the amazing one. Without you, we would be years behind where we are, trying to bring SD-6 down. You manage to work for a man you hate, for a man who killed your fiancé. You have to deal with your mother, your father, your friends, and your co- workers at SD-6! And yet, somehow you manage to keep yourself together when anyone else I know would have fallen apart long ago. Without you, I would just be your average junior CIA-man, doing my job with average convictions, living my life half dead and never really knowing it. Without me," he laughed softly at himself, "you'd just have another handler."
Sydney shook her head. "No. I think that without you, I would be half-way to hell, if I wasn't already dead."
He looked into her eyes as the silence fell. Too much had been said, he realized. He saw that she met his gaze directly. She had a battered expression on her face and was looking into his eyes like she was trying to draw strength from them. He raised his hand to her face to try and smooth away her pain and so he wasn't prepared for the tension that seemed to wrap around inside his chest with his simple caress. His hand froze on her cheek unable to continue its caress, but equally unable to remove itself from her face. Maybe she had drawn away all that strength she had talked about because suddenly he felt like he had no power left to resist her. Using the hand on her cheek to guide him, he brought his face forward to kiss her softly on her lips.
They broke apart after a short while, but Vaughn noticed that the tension had not decreased. He continued to hold her face and he smiled when he noticed that Sydney's eyes no longer looked quite so desolate. She smiled back at him and they continued to look at each other for a few more moments before she spoke.
"So, what do we do now?" she asked.
Vaughn looked at her with a lopsided smile on his face. "I don't know. I guess we start by doing what we've always been doing. But we can do it together if that's something you want."
Her smile faded and Sydney gave him a small nod to indicate that she had understood what he was asking her. "It will be so difficult though."
"Is it something you want?" he asked her seriously, noticing that the haunted look was creeping back on to her face.
Sydney smiled sadly. "Yes. More than I allowed myself to imagine I would. I need it. I need whatever you can give me. Tonight I felt like I was dying inside. I don't understand why tonight was so different but it's like I was looking through shattered lenses. Until I came here. Just being with you gave me the strength I needed to be whole again." She paused to catch her breath and then looked at him desperately. "But I also think that I might-- "
Vaughn interrupted her by placing a finger on her lips. "Don't. Don't worry about me. I'm a big boy and I can take care of myself. I know what I'm getting myself into. And to be honest, I need it too. I need to feel alive, like I do when I'm with you."
Sydney searched his eyes for reassurances that his words were true. She seemed to reach some kind of a conclusion and then she raised her face to his to kiss him. This kiss was harder, more intense, like she was trying to give back to him all the strength she had taken. They broke apart breathless. Leaning their foreheads against each other, she spoke. Her words were purposefully softer as if to make the contrast between their heavy breathing greater. "Then that's where'll we'll start."
Vaughn nodded his head and opened his arms to her. She rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes, allowing herself to feel safe in his arms. In turn, he rested his chin on her head and closed his eyes, allowing himself to feel safe now that he had her in his arms.
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Still some mild language involved so beware.
Again any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
The Pain of Innocence
The cold breeze on her tear-stained face brought Sydney back to her surroundings. It seemed like the cold had permeated her bones and congealed her blood.
I'm not alive, she mused. Live people aren't this cold.
She stood up from the cold grass only to be enveloped by the fog and darkness that had fallen. She glanced around at the graves, trying desperately to regain her senses but she felt like she was in a surreal dream. Why had she come here? She shook her head, her reasons for coming here seeming as insubstantial as the fog.
I'm not dead, she forced herself to believe. Dead people don't feel this much pain.
When you're at your absolute lowest, your most depressed, just remember that you can always, you know . . . you've got my number.
Could she call him? Could she rip him away from his normal life to come listen to her crazy, messed up rambling?
No, I can't do that to him, she half thought, half spoke her words. But.maybe I could just.Sydney's confused glance looked over her surroundings once more. The neatly groomed tombstones had an eerie quality to them. She almost laughed in a hysterical kind of way, at the thought of an empty cemetery spooking her when she could face armed men, twice her size without batting an eyelash. Sydney shook her head. She had to stop the hysteria that was bubbling up just underneath her surface. She could feel it trying to come out and she knew that if she allowed herself to succumb to it.She forced herself to walk back to the path without looking around anymore.
Without deciding whether or not to call Vaughn she turned on her car. I can always decide once I get there, she thought. The car shifted easily out of the parking spot, almost like it was eager to be moving from this place. Feeling drained and empty Sydney drove to the only place she could think of.
Sydney entered the dark, dirty warehouse with her shoulders slumped. Wrapped up in her own musings she almost didn't notice the man sitting on the floor. She had taken off her mud-encrusted shoes in the car and not bothered to put them back on. She almost hadn't even come in to the warehouse; she would have just sat in front of the door if some shrill voice in her head hadn't said to go inside before someone saw her. But the fog that had entered her mind was slowly lifting as she recognized the man sitting on the floor with his head in his hands.
Without thinking she closed the distance. "Vaughn?" she said hoarsely, surprised at how her voice sounded while she made a move to lay her hand on his shoulder.
Startled at the sound of her voice, Vaughn jumped to a kneeling position and had his pistol out before he recognized her. "Syd?" he paused trying to make his mind believe his eyes. "What are you doing here?"
Sydney lowered her hands from the defensive posture she had taken at having a gun pointed at her and shrugged, still feeling off balance. "Um.well I was just.ah you know.well what are you doing here?"
Vaughn smiled sadly at her. "About the same I guess." Sydney returned his small smile, understanding it because it seemed like an echo of her own. She slid down on the floor next to where he had been sitting and Vaughn sat back down next to her.
"My God you're freezing!" Vaughn exclaimed, looking at her, the concern lines on his forehead creasing. Without pausing he shrugged off his suit jacket and put it around her. Sydney accepted it gratefully and put her arms through the sleeves. Vaughn laughed softly as she held up her arms trying to find her hands in the long sleeves. "What happened?" he tried again.
Sydney bent her head down and examined the ends of the sleeves. The quality of the tailoring was obvious from the cut and the material indicated that this was probably an expensive suit. She leaned her head back on the chain fence and shook her head. She was too raw, too beaten up to explain, to wonder what had brought them both there. "Your suit is getting dirty."
Vaughn shrugged and shook his head. It didn't matter. "Where are your shoes?" he asked. Sydney looked at her outstretched feet poking out from the bottom of her slacks. She shrugged and shook her head. It didn't matter.
As she sat there looking at her feet she noticed that Vaughn's cell phone lay on the floor, past her. She leaned over and crawled to pick it up. She glanced at the screen of the phone and saw that he had missed a call. "You know," she said handing him the phone, "throwing my pager in the Pacific Ocean didn't solve any of my problems."
He looked up at her as he took his phone back and held it in his hands. "No, I guess it didn't, but if I remember correctly it certainly made you feel better at the time." This caused Sydney to chuckle. After a moment he continued. "How do you do it Syd?"
She glanced at him quickly, feeling oddly nervous and giddy before resuming her position next to him on the floor. "What do you mean?" she raised an eyebrow. "How do I lie to all my friends, travel around the world stealing items for a terrorist organization and deliver my evil boss into the hands of death? Or do you mean how do I manage to kick ass wearing heels?"
An involuntary laugh escaped Vaughn before he became serious once again. "No, I mean how do you live your life at home and your life at work? Which one becomes less real?"
"Neither," she answered softly. At Vaughn's skeptical look she continued. "They're both real. The reason I do the stuff at work is so that I can live my life." Vaughn nodded and Sydney saw a look of sadness appear on his face and she intuitively knew what it meant. "That doesn't mean that I consider my life here, working with the CIA to be less than my home life. I feel like I'm helping to bring down this horrible monster and that maybe everyone's home lives are going to be a little bit better because of it. But I do wish that my work and home lives didn't have to be mutually exclusive."
"But how do you stay true to everything you care about when work and home pull you in such separate directions?"
Sydney shook her head sadly. "I don't know if I do. Sometimes I just don't know what's right anymore. Sorry, that's not really the answer I know you want to hear. I-"
They were interrupted by the soft beeping of Vaughn's phone. Vaughn hardly glanced at the screen before ending the call and tossing his phone back across the floor. Sydney watched the phone skip across the cement like a stone skipping across a river. Then she turned her gaze to her companion and eyed him curiously.
Vaughn let the silence build until finally, unable to stand her glance any longer he tried to explain. "I just didn't want to be interrupted tonight. I didn't feel like pretending to anyone that-I mean that I just didn't want to pretend that my- never mind. I can't believe that I'm even bothering you about this." His shoulders slumped in defeat.
"No please Vaughn, go on."
Reluctantly Vaughn continued. "I just think that I was fooling myself. I think it's too easy to get caught up in things that you don't believe in but that other people expect you too. And then you spend all your time trying to make excuses for yourself, feeling guilty for a lie that other people put on you, when in reality what you should feel really guilty for is the fact you allowed yourself to accept the lie in the first place."
"Vaughn, I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. Do you regret working with me or for the CIA?" Syd asked tentatively, secretly scared of his response.
Vaughn grasped her by her shoulders and turned her to face him directly. "Never Syd. Working with you-well, that's when I'm not fooling myself."
Sydney could do nothing except continue to look at him. He was no longer grasping her but instead he lay his hands gently on her arms. It was only when he looked down that she realized that she had been holding her breath.
Finally he looked back up and continued. "The truth is completely inappropriate and I have no right to say it. So instead let me say that I'm sorry if you ever felt betrayed by me. If you haven't then-well, just ignore all this. But if you have, I'm sorry. That was never my intention and it won't happen again. No matter what."
Unfortunately, Sydney thought that she might know what he was talking about. Finding out about him and Alice had felt like someone had ripped her heart out, especially because she had thought (or maybe just hoped) that he had cared about her. If that was what he was talking about, then what he was trying to tell her was that he was sorry for getting involved with Alice again. Though he implied that he had not desired a relationship with her, he had accepted it because of certain reasons. She could just imagine what those reasons might be. She had heard the comments. That was why she had been so quick to deny any involvement between them to Dr. Barnett. She could just imagine the grief he received from his co-workers, dating Alice had probably eased it a bit. She also realized that if he did care about her, then giving her the tasks that he did, as part of his job would be torture for him. Not to mention the fact that being seen together would likely bring about both of their deaths. If he had managed to make himself believe that he loved Alice, even a little, perhaps it had helped to ease his pain. And that brought her to what was probably the most meaningful thing that he had said, his last statement. 'No matter what'. In his eyes she had seen that he meant, 'No matter what the cost'. He had told her that the price of easing his pain was not worth the pain he had caused her to feel.
Vaughn could see her eyes filling with tears and it nearly broke his heart. But he could also see her face change as she thought through all that he had said and so maybe they were tears of forgiveness. He lifted his hand to caress her cheek but that seemed to cause the tears to finally fall. He started to wipe them away but Sydney lowered his hands so that she could talk.
***
Jack entered the warehouse quietly. He had seen Sydney's car outside while he was driving past and had ordered the taxi driver to stop. There was no other car in the lot and he was concerned that she had come here by herself. As he approached the closed off area in the back he heard the quiet voices and stopped.
From his position by the wall, he could see their beaten faces, Sydney's shoeless feet, Vaughn's jacket around her and a cell phone lying a few feet away. He knew intuitively, that he was viewing a more intimate moment than if he had found them naked and in bed together. But he also knew why they had come here. It was easy for everyone to assume that they were both invulnerable but he knew better, even before seeing them right now.
I hope that you can find some peace in this, he thought. He saw Vaughn lift his hand and gently caress his daughter's cheek. He didn't know if he was supposed to feel anger at their disregard for their own safety or perhaps some paternal instinct to crush the hand of any man that dared to touch his daughter, but he felt neither. This was their journey to undertake. Jack turned around and just as quietly, let himself out of the warehouse.
***
"You are too good of a person for me, you know?" Sydney said quietly. At Vaughn's unbelieving expression she continued. "No, you are. You are so much stronger than I am. You have a strength of character that I admire so much." Sydney put up her hand to stop him from interrupting. Vaughn pushed his lips shut unhappily and she had to smile a little at his modesty. "It's true. You deal with things so much better than I do. All I can do is push them into a corner in my brain and forget about them, but when I have to deal with them I can't. It must drive you nuts listening to me oscillate back and forth between hating my father to defending him by insulting you. Not to mention my love-hate relationship with my mother. You just listen to me. You don't judge me, you never say, 'well Syd I tried to tell you about Madagascar'." Vaughn laughed lightly at her attempt to mimic him. "I know you went to go see my mother before they took you to the hospital, I know you went to see her to find me an escape in Russia, I've seen how my father treats you and I know how I've treated you sometimes. And you deal with it. I don't know how, but you do. And you manage not to hate me for how I act, and I even get the feeling you don't hate my dad. And I don't have a clue how you manage to even interact with my mother. You have this inner strength that amazes me. When we're working together I feel like I can do anything."
Vaughn gave her a half smile and shook his head slightly, but he didn't act like he was embarrassed. He acted like she was entitled to her own opinion, even if it was one he didn't share. "Syd, you're the amazing one. Without you, we would be years behind where we are, trying to bring SD-6 down. You manage to work for a man you hate, for a man who killed your fiancé. You have to deal with your mother, your father, your friends, and your co- workers at SD-6! And yet, somehow you manage to keep yourself together when anyone else I know would have fallen apart long ago. Without you, I would just be your average junior CIA-man, doing my job with average convictions, living my life half dead and never really knowing it. Without me," he laughed softly at himself, "you'd just have another handler."
Sydney shook her head. "No. I think that without you, I would be half-way to hell, if I wasn't already dead."
He looked into her eyes as the silence fell. Too much had been said, he realized. He saw that she met his gaze directly. She had a battered expression on her face and was looking into his eyes like she was trying to draw strength from them. He raised his hand to her face to try and smooth away her pain and so he wasn't prepared for the tension that seemed to wrap around inside his chest with his simple caress. His hand froze on her cheek unable to continue its caress, but equally unable to remove itself from her face. Maybe she had drawn away all that strength she had talked about because suddenly he felt like he had no power left to resist her. Using the hand on her cheek to guide him, he brought his face forward to kiss her softly on her lips.
They broke apart after a short while, but Vaughn noticed that the tension had not decreased. He continued to hold her face and he smiled when he noticed that Sydney's eyes no longer looked quite so desolate. She smiled back at him and they continued to look at each other for a few more moments before she spoke.
"So, what do we do now?" she asked.
Vaughn looked at her with a lopsided smile on his face. "I don't know. I guess we start by doing what we've always been doing. But we can do it together if that's something you want."
Her smile faded and Sydney gave him a small nod to indicate that she had understood what he was asking her. "It will be so difficult though."
"Is it something you want?" he asked her seriously, noticing that the haunted look was creeping back on to her face.
Sydney smiled sadly. "Yes. More than I allowed myself to imagine I would. I need it. I need whatever you can give me. Tonight I felt like I was dying inside. I don't understand why tonight was so different but it's like I was looking through shattered lenses. Until I came here. Just being with you gave me the strength I needed to be whole again." She paused to catch her breath and then looked at him desperately. "But I also think that I might-- "
Vaughn interrupted her by placing a finger on her lips. "Don't. Don't worry about me. I'm a big boy and I can take care of myself. I know what I'm getting myself into. And to be honest, I need it too. I need to feel alive, like I do when I'm with you."
Sydney searched his eyes for reassurances that his words were true. She seemed to reach some kind of a conclusion and then she raised her face to his to kiss him. This kiss was harder, more intense, like she was trying to give back to him all the strength she had taken. They broke apart breathless. Leaning their foreheads against each other, she spoke. Her words were purposefully softer as if to make the contrast between their heavy breathing greater. "Then that's where'll we'll start."
Vaughn nodded his head and opened his arms to her. She rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes, allowing herself to feel safe in his arms. In turn, he rested his chin on her head and closed his eyes, allowing himself to feel safe now that he had her in his arms.
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