Title: Angel Dark

Author: DOKChairman

Time: No particular time frame. Assume everything that has happened up to Counteragent is fair game.

Disclaimer: I do not own Alias. If I did, Dixon would actually appear in an episode this season, Marshall would be in practically every scene (that guy cracks me up so much), Sydney and Vaughn would at the very least admit that they have feelings for each other, and most importantly of all, Sydney would wear even less clothes than she usually does. Unfortunately for my bank account, J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot Productions, and ABC own Alias. I own nothing so don't sue me.

Pairing: This will be a Sydney/Vaughn piece. As if there's anything else.

Author's Note: After receiving some comments, I feel compelled to write this. It was never my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable by asking if you were a girl or not. I was merely trying to get a bead on my audience. As more than a few people have pointed out, and this was a fact I was already pretty confident of being true beforehand, most of the Alias fanfic writers, readers, and all around general viewers are female. If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a guy. So as you can see, I'm in the minority here. But's that's okay because I think Alias is a great show. Hell all shows with strong female leads are worth watching. Buffy the Vampire Slayer happens to be one of my all-time favorite shows, and it pretty much doesn't get anymore pro-female empowerment than that.

Now as you can see, I identify with Vaughn. Mainly because he's a guy, and because only a brilliant man, or an incredibly dumb one, would claim to completely identify with and understand the female mind. I am neither. I have a totally straight, completely non-gay, man crush on Michael Vartan. He's so dreamy! Ohhh, sorry, transferring my girlfriend on that one. Anyway, the point of this round about explanation is this: don't hate me! I'm sorry and if people want me to stop asking questions, just tell me and I'll stop quicker than you can say Jennifer Garner deserves to win the Golden Globe! Oh, and Sydney and Vaughn forever. *Nods head and says, "There, that should show them I'm on their side."*

Warning!!: There is some darker than normal imagery in this chapter and you should be forewarned. You will see a side of Tiffany that has not been shown, and it may change how you view her character. Oh, and there is a surprise/cliffhanger done in true Alias fashion. Once you read it, I ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt before passing judgment.

Tiffany pressed her hands even deeper into the pockets of her sweatshirt. It was cold, and since they were only a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean, the pier was foggy and wet. The sweatshirt didn't offer much in the way of protection against the chill, but it did keep her hands warm. That was all that really mattered.

Tiffany fingered the keys of her car as she continued walking briskly toward her parked car. They had parked the car almost half a mile away and Tiffany still had a ways to go. Tiffany had argued that parking the car so far away would leave them without a means of escape, but Vaughn had pointed out that having the car close by would also tip someone off that something was going on. Avoiding detection was their primary concern.

Tiffany had not given up easily, but she had eventually acquiesced to Vaughn's plan. Of course, it was she who had to be the one to walk the half mile to get the car. In the mind numbing cold no less. Typical of most Michael Vaughn plans. He does all the thinking while she does all the working.

She knew she really needed to stop giving in so easily to Michael. She knew that it made her look like she didn't know how to look after herself. Which was ironic because in reality, it was Michael who really needed looking after.

Unfortunately, her deferring to Michael was a habit she had picked up years ago. Almost from the first moment she met him. She had been so young, only eighteen at the time, and he had been so much older, that she unconsciously did what he said. It didn't help matters that he had always been in a position of authority over her.

She hadn't been lying when she had told him that she used to idolize him. To be honest, she still did. Michael Vaughn had been the consummate professional. He was smart, thorough, tough when he had to be, likable when he wanted to be, and he always did what was right. That was what made him rise high enough in the ranks to run his own op at the ripe old age of 27. Tiffany couldn't help but admire him.

She knew she hadn't been the only one. Everyone else on the team did as well. Well, everyone except for Elisa...Tiffany shook her head, trying to clear that thought from her head. That was not something she wanted to think about. She quickly went back to her previous thoughts.

It still impressed her, even after all this time, that Michael had garnered so much respect and admiration so early in life. It made her feel better about herself knowing that she wasn't the only one so easily taken in by Michael's charm. If the few brief glimpses she had seen of Michael and Sydney Bristow together were any indication, it was pretty clear that Michael's agent was already under his thrall.

That thought made her smile. It was cute, Tiffany thought, that Sydney had been jealous of her. If Michael would only take the rule book shoved up his ass out of the way, she knew the two of them would have probably made a nice couple. Although, Tiffany admitted to herself, she wouldn't mind if Sydney stayed single. Michael's agent was quite the hottie.

But no, that was a thought for another time. Tiffany sighed, pitying herself. Why the hell did it have to be so cold? She wanted to scream into the night. That thought quickly died though. She might as well announce to the whole city of L.A. that nefarious goings on were happening at the pier. Maybe a neon sign, like the ones in Las Vegas. For some reason that thought actually made her giggle. Out loud.

Tiffany quickly scolded herself. She could be such a flake sometimes. She just praised god that her hair wasn't blonde.

Tiffany stopped thinking long enough to make a quick scan of her surroundings. As far as she could tell, the pier was still empty. That was good because she didn't feel like explaining why she was there so late at night. Of course, she knew, any other person up and about would need a good reason for being there as well. It was just best for everyone if contact with other human beings was avoided as much as possible.

Tiffany sighed again and watched the breath exhaling out of her mouth quickly turn to steam. Tiffany was extremely tempted to try and make shapes with her breath, but the thought quickly died with a flash of embarrassment. Sometimes she wondered if she had ever grown out of her teenage years. She was almost 27 for Christ's sake. These were not the kind of thoughts she was supposed to have.

She was supposed to be thinking about politics, or work, or other such important things. Hell, she knew she should be thinking about who was trying to kill her, but she just didn't feel like it. Thinking was Michael's department. And while she knew she was not a stupid woman, far from it she knew, she preferred to think about mundane things. Not strategy and tactics. She was a shoot first and ask questions later kind of woman.

That thought had served her very well in the past, and she had no intention of changing now. She could name countless times where little or no thinking had saved her life while she had been in the field. Sometimes a quick reaction was all that separated one from a warm bed and a pine box.

If it hadn't been for the barely audible scuffle of shoe against pavement coming from behind her, Tiffany would have never made it to her much bemoaned car. Instead, the scuffle threw her experienced senses into high gear, and she immediately dropped to the ground. The bullet whizzed right over her, at about chest level, and impacted against the wall of one of the pier's many game booths.

Tiffany compacted her body and rolled to her left where she had remembered a concrete pylon. She crawled behind the thick pillar and calmed herself, holding her breath. Minimizing her own noise production, she carefully listened to the area around her. It was obvious from the amount of noise the person was making that he or she had given up all pretenses of sneaking up on her.

Despite the direness of her situation, Tiffany couldn't help but berate herself for letting someone get the drop on her. She had gotten sloppy, and now some psycho was trying to kill her. Not only that, she thought depressingly, but if something happened to her, there would be no one to warn Michael until it was too late. She was not about to let that happen. Not only did she want to live, but she wasn't about to fail Michael like she had failed Krugar.

Tiffany risked sticking her head above the pylon to get a look at her surroundings. She belatedly realized that she was only a few hundred feet from where she had parked her car. If she could only get to the car, she could escape and rush to Michael. Unfortunately, any attempt to run would more than likely get her a bullet in the back.

She tried scanning the area for her attacker, but all she saw was black. And fog. That damn fog was giving her attacker a natural cover. The only thing she had going for her was that she could hear the sound of her attacker's movements, but even that wasn't very helpful on account of the noise of the ocean.

Tiffany sighed and reached into the pocket of her jogging pants. She quickly pulled out her gun, checked to make sure it was loaded and there was a round in the chamber, and prepared herself to move. She was going to have to do this the hard way.

That thought made her briefly hesitate. If she used her gun, there would be no more pretending that nothing was going on at the pier. The sound of a gunshot would carry for miles, and would surely alert any friends her attacker might have. The upside was that Michael would know something was wrong, and he would immediately put their contingency plan into action. Of course that meant she would be on her own, but that was fine with her. She loved Michael dearly, but he wasn't exactly the best field agent in the world.

Tiffany moved until she was sitting on her haunches, and flexed the muscles of her calves. She had to move fast and keep low to the ground. Tiffany took three deep breaths and felt an inner calm settle over her. It had been four years since she had to do something like this, not counting the time where she had saved Vaughn's life, and it really did feel like riding a bike. The old instincts just came back to her as if they had never left. The adrenaline was pumping and she was settling into the Zone as she liked to call it.

Tiffany exploded in a flurry of movement. She could hear the sound of a silenced bullet dig into the pavement behind her, and she moved even faster. As she ran, she turned her head to the side, hoping that she would get lucky and actually see her attacker. Unfortunately, as like before, she had no such luck.

She had ran about forty feet, when she suddenly felt compelled to stop and dive to her right. She heard the sound of two bullets hit the ground where she had been standing, and as she came out of her dive, she brought her gun up. She tracked the sound of the incoming bullets as well as she could, and finally fired in the direction of where she assumed her attacker was.

The sound of her gunshot was almost deafening to her ears, destroying the relatively calmness of the night. Thankfully, she had remember to close her eyes before she fired so as not to ruin her night vision.

Tiffany stilled her body and strained her senses to their maximum. She closed her eyes and focused solely on her hearing. She heard the sound of a rock flying across the ground, and she spun to her right and fired. Tiffany heard running feet and guessed that her shot had gotten too close for her attacker's comfort. Tiffany tracked along the person's path and fired twice. Both shots missed, and the running feet quickened in pace.

Tiffany exploded out of her crouch and took off running at full speed in the direction of her attacker. After only a few seconds, Tiffany could just make out a black-clothed body running in front of her. From what she could see, the person looked like a man, and there was a gun hanging loosely at the man's side. Unfortunately, the man was at least fifty feet away, and the fog made it difficult to get a clear shot.

Tiffany put on a burst of speed, and she started to gain on the running man. The man turned his head to look behind him, saw Tiffany, and extended his gun arm behind him as he ran. The man fired randomly, hoping to get lucky, but his shots were too wild to actually hit Tiffany.

The man's gun ran out of rounds, and he brought the gun in front of his body to change the clip. Tiffany heard the sound of the discarded metal magazine falling on the ground, and she brought her own gun up. This was her chance. Tiffany abruptly stopped, made her body as stiff as a board, grasped her gun with both hands, aimed as best she could and fired twice.

The gun bucked in her hands, and the two bullets set out on their path of destruction. The first bullet went wild, missing the man by inches, the second bullet however, hit the running man in his lower right back. The man let out a cry of surprise and pain, and that was all the indication Tiffany needed.

She started running again, and after about three seconds, came upon her attacker who was writhing on the ground in intense pain. When the man saw her, he brought his gun out from beneath his body and tried to shoot her. Tiffany saw the move and viciously kicked the gun out of the man's hand, breaking one of his fingers in the process.

The man yelped and brought his injured hand close to his body, holding it tight against his chest. He was too busy to try anything else, as his other hand was busy trying to stop the blood flowing out of his body from the bullet wound in his back.

Tiffany, meanwhile, picked up her attacker's gun and stuck it in the waistband of her pants. She did a quick search of the man's body, and after determining he was clean, got down on one knee next to him and started interrogating him.

She jammed the end of her gun into the base of the man's throat and started asking questions. "Who are you?"

The man gulped, but stayed quiet. Tiffany pressed the gun even harder into the man, and his face contorted in pain. Menacingly, Tiffany said, "Tell me what I want to know, or I'll leave and let you bleed to death all alone on this pier. Now I repeat, who are you?"

Tiffany meant what she said and she tried to convey her sincerity through her words and actions. Her eyes bored into the man, searching for any kind of clue.

When the man still didn't say anything, Tiffany punched the man as hard as she could where he had been shot. The man's breath exploded out of his mouth and his eyes rolled upward. He would have slipped into unconsciousness if Tiffany hadn't slapped his face to keep him aware.

The man opened his mouth and looked about to say something, when he suddenly changed his mind and clamped his jaw shut. To put it mildly, Tiffany was not pleased. Unlike some of her former colleagues back at the CIA, Tiffany had absolutely no qualms getting her hands dirty. Especially not when someone was trying to kill her.

In a low and deadly calm voice, Tiffany said, "I am only going to ask you one more time to tell me who you are. If you don't tell me, I will kill you. Do you understand?"

The man's eyes closed briefly and he nodded his head. But he didn't say anything. Tiffany sighed and stood up. The man's eyes opened and stared back up at Tiffany defiantly. Tiffany only shook her head and stared down at the prone man before her.

In all honesty, she had no desire to kill the man. But she had learned long ago, that in the kind of life she lived, leaving one's enemies alive was a luxury she could not afford. It was best to deal with them swiftly and quietly. If she just left him there, there was always the chance that his friends would pick him up and then not only would they have information about her, but she would have to contend with yet another assassin once the man was healed.

She knew Michael would probably not approve, but he would understand and that was all she really expected. After spending the last month with him, she knew firsthand that Michael still had dreams of that night in Prague. The night where they had all found out about Elisa...

Tiffany once again pushed all thoughts of that painful night away. Now was not the time. Tiffany looked down one last time at the still defiant man and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the man in the middle of his forehead and he died instantly. Tiffany felt disgusted at herself and the now dead man, but at least she could take some consolation in the fact that if nobody had found him, he would have more than likely died soon anyways. The wound in his back was right where his kidney was and there was a good chance there had been massive damage to his internal organs.

It wasn't much consolation, she knew, but it was all she had. She took one last look at the man who had tried to kill her, and turned around and started jogging towards her parked car. She had to leave. There was no telling whether or not her attacker had friends, and she had no intention to wait and find out. Plus, Michael had almost certainly heard her gunshots and he would already be on the move. She wanted to get to their meeting place as soon as possible so that he wouldn't worry.

She was only about ten feet away from her car when she heard the clicking sound of a gun being cocked, and then half a second later the, the silent retort of a gun being fired. Tiffany felt a burning sensation shoot up from her right leg, and she suddenly lost all ability to place any weight on the limb. Tiffany collapsed to the ground and let out an explosion of air. She immediately brought her gun up and started firing randomly into the air.

Her gun quickly ran out of rounds, and she dropped it on the ground. She had more ammo for it, but she knew it would take too long to reload, so instead she reached for her waistband where she had stashed her other gun. She had it about halfway out of her pants when she suddenly saw two men walk up to her. Both men had guns pointed at her and she reluctantly let go of the gun.

When the man on the right saw her stop reaching for the gun, he smiled and said, "Smart move Agent Greene. I want you to carefully take the gun out and throw it toward me. Barrel first."

Tiffany glared at the man and did as he asked. "Good, now the other one Agent Greene. I know its not loaded, but we don't want you getting any ideas."

Tiffany sighed and picked her empty gun off the ground and threw it at the man. She wasn't gentle and the gun hit the man on the left hard in the shin. The man glared at her and Tiffany smiled innocently back.

Now that Tiffany was unarmed, the man on the right resumed talking. "Where is Agent Vaughn?"

Tiffany laughed and said, "Do you actually think I'm going to tell you? If you do then you're stupider than you look."

The man on the right frowned and the man on the left kicked Tiffany hard in the side. Tiffany winced and grabbed her side, but she was not deterred from keeping quiet.

Tiffany couldn't help but chuckle lightly at the irony of her situation. Just seconds ago she had been in this exact same situation, with the roles reversed, and she just found it amusing. Karma really was a bitch.

The man on the right attempted to reason with Tiffany. "Look, we don't care about you. As much as you know, its nothing compared to how much Agent Vaughn knows. We would be willing to let you go if you tell us where we can find Vaughn."

Tiffany glared defiantly at the men. "Go to hell jackass. If you know so much about us, then you must know that I won't turn on Vaughn. So you might as well kill me now and stop wasting my time."

"Don't worry, the temptation to do just that is growing with every passing second. However, the potential information you contain is far too important to just kill you. You could save us a lot of time and money if you just tell us where Vaughn is."

"Are you two fucking moron's or something? I said I'm not talking, so stop trying to convince me otherwise. Seriously guys, give it a rest." Tiffany's voice was full of venom and contempt.

The man on the left kicked Tiffany again, and Tiffany thought she heard one of her ribs crack. The wind was temporarily knocked out of her, and she clamped her mouth shut to stop any cries of pain from escaping. But she did not talk. Her loyalty to Vaughn outweighed even her own sense of self-preservation. Not that she believed for a second that they would actually let her live if she did turn. She wasn't a complete idiot to think that.

The man on the right sighed and said, "If that's how you feel, then you are of no use to us. Goodbye Agent Greene."

The man would have pulled the trigger if not for the blinding headlights of a car suddenly sweeping over his body. Both men cried in surprise and immediately shielded themselves from the intense light. Tiffany used the opportunity to begin crawling away as fast as she could.

She looked up from the ground to see the car speeding towards the three of them, and she heard the two men start firing in the direction of the oncoming car. Tiffany heard glass breaking, and bullets pinging against metal, but the car kept on coming. The car was aimed directly at the two men, and it barreled down on them. The two men dived in opposite directions, scattering.

The car threw itself into reverse and skidded to a screeching halt between Tiffany and her two attackers. Once the car was stopped, the passenger door flew open and light from inside the car cascaded over Tiffany's body.

Tiffany heard a man's voice from inside the car shout to her, "Come on! Get in the damn car!"

For some reason, the man's voice sounded very familiar. Tiffany couldn't quite place it, but it was right on the tip of her mind. Tiffany wasn't exactly caring who the man was at that the time, and she hurriedly climbed to her feet. She gritted her teeth and endured the incredible pain it caused to walk on her injured leg.

It wasn't until she was at the door that she got her first look at her savior, and when she did, she collapsed to the ground in surprise. The man saw her fall and shot her a disapproving look. "Get you ass in the car Tif! We don't have time for this shit!"

Tiffany shook off her dizzy spell and used the car to climb back to her feet. She dived into the car and sprawled herself across the passenger seat. As soon as most of her body was in the car, the man threw the car into high gear and took off. It was good timing, because the two men outside had recovered enough to resume firing at the car. Part of the front windshield exploded above Tiffany and the glass came raining down on top of her.

Tiffany shook the glass off and righted herself on the seat. Once she was situated properly, she looked at the driver of the car in wide eyed astonishment. The man saw the look she was giving him and shot a cocky grin in her direction. Jokingly he said, "What? Do I have something in my teeth?"

Tiffany was speechless. That quickly changed, however, after the lame joke. Tiffany smacked the man on the arm, none too gently, and said, "You never could tell a joke Kyle."


P.S. As some people have pointed out, the scene where Sydney whispers in Vaughn's ear in the last chapter is cheesy and cliched, and I have no excuse for the crappiness of that stuff. Wait, that's not true, I do have an excuse. It was my girlfriend's fault. She made me write that stuff, don't ask me how because I don't really remember (I think there was a lot of alcohol involved), and before I understood what I was doing, I had put that scene in the story. As I said before, I was really busy when writing the last chapter, so I didn't have the chance to change anything before I posted. If my girlfriend wasn't such a hardcore S/V'er I wouldn't have to worry about this stuff. If I was easily paranoid, I'd worry that she likes Michael Vartan more than me. Oh who am I kidding, I'd dump me for Michael Vartan.

P.S. I'm sorry for the long post above, but I tend to ramble when I talk to strangers. It's a bad habit I picked up in my high school gambling class...uh I mean my gaming class. Wait, I mean my computer class. Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. I swear I must have made over $400 my senior year. Those were the days. That was where I got my handle, but that's a story for another time.

P.S. Sorry again. Thanks for the great feedback. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll reach 100 by my set deadline, but that's ok. As usual, read and review. Your input is all that matters. Thank you all. Oh, and in case I don't see you all beforehand (you know what I mean), happy new year.