Title: For Love of Country
Author: DOKChairman
Time: No particular time frame. Assume everything that has happened up to Counteragent is fair game.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately for my bank account, J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot Productions, and ABC own Alias. I own nothing so don't sue me.
Author's Note: For those of you who are fans of my other story, Angel Dark, don't worry. I haven't stopped working on it. In fact I have about 35% of the next chapter written. This idea came to me awhile ago and it won't leave me alone. The only way to clear my head is to put this story to paper, so here it is.
Warning!!!: This is a dark and angsty piece. It is quite possibly my most ambitious work to date. At least in terms of introspection and analysis of the characters. I have no idea whether or not I will actually nail the characters, but I'm going to try. However, you should be warned that characters are going to die. I won't say who (even though in all honesty, it is plain as day), but there will be a character death. Don't say I didn't warn you.
There comes a point in every man's life where he must make a decision. A decision so profound, so enormous, that it alters the very nature of his existence. This choice can be good and it can be bad, but no matter what, the choice changes the way he lives his life from that point onward. Some men are lucky, and only have to make that choice once in their lives. Some men are not.
For many, the choice is not a choice at all. It is merely something that they are forced to accept and move on. An inevitable conclusion.
Some men try to resist change. They try to do all they can to make things stay the same. To maintain the status quo of their lives. These men are fools. These men will sooner change the direction the earth rotates, than stop their lives from changing. These men can't accept that they must make a choice. That they must change.
CIA Special Agent Michael Vaughn understood this fundamental fact of nature better than most. He had made several choices in his life that had changed his life. He chose to join the CIA. He chose to become Sydney Bristow's handler. He chose to live the life he was forced to live. To live a life of danger and lies.
He understood that one cannot stop change, but only that one can guide change. As long as he made the choice to change, then he could maintain some sense of control over his life. It was little comfort, but it was more than most men were allowed.
Despite this understanding of the nature of change, Michael Vaughn was still presented with a choice he did not expect, nor want to make. He wanted to be a fool. He wanted to believe his life would not change, and that he would not have to make the choice life had presented him with. It was a choice, should he make it, that would change his life in a way no other choice he had ever made had. It was a life-altering decision. It would change not only what path his life took, but it would change who he was.
It was not an easy decision, but in the end, Michael Vaughn knew what choice he must make. Because, as he knew, his choice would not only affect him, but it would also affect those most important to him. If he was going to choose the inevitable, he was going to make the choice as the man he was, not as the man he could become.
For Michael Vaughn, he was forced to make his choice on the morning of April the 15, 2003, at exactly 9:35 A.M. That was the morning he chose to die.
P.S. This story will be at most three chapters long. It is not a long piece, but a short piece of introspection. Please tell me what you think. All thoughts are welcome. However, I would please ask that no one comments on the fact that I am killing off a main character. Critique anything you want, just not that. It is the central point of the entire story and is set in stone. Not even God himself, or Jennifer Garner in a bikini, could make me change my mind.