Title: The Art of Retrospection (Chapter 3)
Author: agent otter
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Alias is not mine. Damn. Neither is Bradley Cooper. Double damn.
Spoilers: Anything up through "Firebomb" is fair game, I suppose, though I don't think there's any major plot points given away or anything.
Author's note: This isn't turning out to be very R-rated, is it? This chapter's also a bit short, but don't worry, the next is coming soon.


There was a note waiting for her on her keyboard when the briefing finally ended at one o'clock. It read, Had an errand to run. Back in time for lunch. She looked around the ops center, but he was nowhere to be found, so she flipped the note over, pulled out a pen, and wrote her own message in return: I'll be in my dad's office; find me when you get in. She dropped the paper on his desk as she passed on her way to the elevators, then took the long journey up several floors and down the hallway to the office that her father called his own.

He looked up as she entered, and waited in silence as she took a seat. "He's not in the office," she said, quietly. "Weiss is tailing him?"

Jack could only nod, and clench his jaw at the sheen of tears in his daughter's eyes. She pulled out her cell phone and began to dial Weiss' number, then cleared it. Dialed again, and cleared it, and wondered why it mattered to her where Vaughn was. But she knew why it mattered, and on the third try she put the call through.

"Where is he?" she asked, as soon as the person on the other end picked up.

"The Thai place just around the corner from your apartment," Weiss answered, and then she severed the connection, standing abruptly. When the phone rang again, it was a surprise, and she nearly dropped the little cellular to the floor.

The caller ID just said "Vaughn". She put the phone to her ear and said, "Vaughn?"

"Hi," his soft voice said through a slight hiss of interference. "Sorry to leave you hanging, but I've got Thai. Meet me at your place?"

"Yeah," she answered. "I'll see you soon."

She tucked the phone back into her pocket, gave her father a long, forlorn look, then left his office.

He picked up his own secured office line, dialed Weiss himself, and said, "She's on her way to meet him at her apartment. Stay on him. I don't think she can hold off on a confrontation anymore, and she may need backup."

Then all he could do was sit, and wait, and stare at the phone, willing it to ring.

* * *

The apartment was quiet when he arrived, and he smiled in satisfaction at having arrived first as he set the take-out bags down on the kitchen counter. It was when he'd begun searching through the kitchen drawers for the candles which he knew were there somewhere that he heard the noise from Sydney's room. He stopped, straightening, and walked slowly, stealthily up the short hallway. The bedroom door was open, just slightly, but not enough that he could see what was happening inside. He glanced at his watch; it had only been seven minutes since he'd called, and it should've taken Sydney at least ten minutes to get home.

From within, another thump and a scraping sound, and he placed a hand on the grip of his pistol as he eased the door open and stepped into the room.

"Francie," he said, and she jumped, dropping a couple of tools to the floor. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I didn't think you'd be home this time of day."

She smiled down at him from the footstool upon which she stood, one hand holding up the light fixture. "I don't really have to be at the restaurant for a couple of hours," she explained. "So I was just getting some chores done. Changing lightbulbs and stuff, you know."

"Yeah," he muttered, but his eyes had already caught onto the objects she'd dropped: a screwdriver, a pair of thin cables, and a tiny surveillance camera with a built-in microphone.

He pulled his gun from the holster in the exact same moment as she let go of the lighting fixture, leapt off the stool, and slammed shoulder-first into his midsection. He managed to retain his grip on the gun, but lost it when she grabbed hold of his arm and slammed it repeatedly against the edge of the dresser. The weapon skittered off under the bed and came to rest against the wall on the opposite side. Her knee caught him in the ribs, and her elbow smashed into his cheekbone with devastating effect; his fingers were tingling from their abuse and now he could see that pins-and-needles pain as a visualization with the stars that swam through his vision.

When she lunged onto the bed, headed for the gun, he grabbed her legs to stop her forward momentum, and vaulted over the bed himself. He crashed into the wall with a complete lack of grace, jarring his shoulder, but he scooped up the gun and aimed in one smooth motion, and somehow he managed to not even flinch as he pulled the trigger.

She fell back against the dresser, and the bullet had caught her in the chest, but she lurched forward again, and his finger squeezed the trigger again. This time she would not be getting up; the bullet had drilled through her face, and there was blood all over the walls, the dresser, the little nightstand and the antique picture frame that sat on it. His hand was clenched so tightly around the gun that he couldn't seem to drop it, and he ached everywhere, from the fight and the gunfire and the certain knowledge that he'd just killed more than Francie Calfo.

They burst into the room together, Weiss and Sydney, but he had only a fraction of a moment to wonder what Eric was doing there before Sydney's wide eyes took in the scene, and looked at him and the gun in his hand. He had only a moment to think because after that, Sydney's gun was out, too, and the plaster next to his head exploded as he ducked.

Later, he would think that maybe he'd been able to dive out that window and flee to his car because Sydney, super-spy though she was, loved him. Later, he'd have time to ponder a thousand actions and reactions that would've kept Francie alive. Later, he'd massage the tense muscles in his gun hand and think about everything he'd killed that day, and cry.

* * *

The motel was in Hollywood, sandwiched between two strip clubs and surrounded by bars, liquor stores, and sex shops. It seemed to have its own resident prostitute on call in the lobby, but when he'd come in she'd looked away. There was probably something about him that told her he was in law enforcement, he thought, or maybe the bruise on his cheek -- blossoming already into sickly shades of yellow -- told her that he was bad news.

He took the stairs two at a time, but approached room #204 slowly, keeping eye out for signs of intrusion. An unlocked door, movement in the window, anything out of place that might betray a trap. He'd only been out of the room for ten minutes, but it would've taken less than one for someone to pick the lock and slip inside.

There was no one else there when he unlocked the door and warily entered. He wasn't sure whether that fact relieved or disappointed him, but he didn't take the time to linger over the thought. His cellular phone lay on the bed -- turned off, so they couldn't track him using the signal -- and he sat down the bags next to it. He'd bought carry-out Chinese from a suspect-looking restaurant, and stopped at the nearest drug store for aspirin, a vapor rub for his aching muscles, and a bottle of cheap whiskey.

He'd lingered in the beauty aisle, eyeing the hair dyes, his gaze wandering to the front windows where he could see a shop across the street selling leathers and costumes and wigs and everything he'd need to fit in at any one of the surrounding seedy nightclubs. There was a metro station locker that no one knew about, filled with cash, ID's, passports, paperwork, gadgets and guns. He could hit that locker at night, empty out the weapons and electronics, the cash, and half of the phony identities.

But he'd have to leave behind a dozen sets of documents, a dozen different aliases. Stephanie Grause. Emilie Banks. Audrey Mollet. Claire Laurant. Sandra Wells. Maggie Walker. Gina Pearson. Fiona Smith. Ellen Gill. Ashley White. Sarah McFadden. Shirley Warren. Ghosts of people who'd never existed, but they all wore Sydney's face. And to leave them behind he'd have to leave her behind.

He sat on the bed, opened the whiskey, rubbed some of the pungent muscle balm into the flesh of his gun hand, and didn't think any more about the locker, the ID's, the guns, or his getaway. Instead, he wondered how and when he should turn himself in to the CIA so that his friend wouldn't be around to shoot at him, and whether they'd put him in a cell near Irina Derevko.

* * *

In the morning he traveled on foot to a small sporting goods store in a strip mall five blocks away, and bought himself a t-shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers with all of his remaining cash. Two blocks from there, he hotwired a Ford Focus that had been minding its own business is somebody's driveway, and traveled to the park that sprawled out just behind the Joint Taskforce building. He parked not far from the building itself, stretched briefly, then set off a brisk jog along the path, toward the grizzled black man who sat along the trailside with a sign that read, "Vietnam veteran - please help". The two men eyed each other as he steadily approached, and the homeless man showed no surprise when Vaughn dropped a couple of coins into the outstretched styrofoam cup as he passed by. But there was a little astonishment in the man's voice, only faintly heard as Vaughn jogged away, when he muttered, as if to himself, "Boy Scout requests covert entry."

But Vaughn only managed to travel another two minutes on the path before a run-down blue van jumped the curb, roared across the grass, and screeched to a stop in front of him. The side door was already rolled open, and the barrels of four guns stared him down from within like vipers' eyes. One of them shot him, and as the dart pumped heavy doses of tranquilizer into his bloodstream, his eyes slid shut, he weaved on his feet, and he didn't even feel the hands that caught him and dragged him into the van.

* * *

The morning's briefing was marked by somber expressions, dire predictions, and shouted arguments, until Agent Weinkampf crept in and delivered the small slip of paper to Kendall. The angry argument between Sydney and Weiss continued, uninterrupted, until Kendall broke in, in a quiet voice, to read the note aloud.

"Boy Scout requests covert entry," Kendall said, and the room fell into sudden silence, then abrupt motion as they all piled out of the conference room and into the rotunda. There was already a crowd gathered around the monitors of three techs, who were watching the video feeds from the park. Sydney, Kendall and the rest arrived just in time to watch the van door slide shut and the vehicle roar away, leaving twin trails of demolished grass in its wake.

"You think he was going to turn himself in?" Weiss asked, voicing a question that was on many minds. "Was he prepared to give up information about Sloane's operation? Maybe tell us what happened to Vaughn?"

Sydney shook her head, her arms folded tightly across her chest. "I don't know. If he was, they'll kill him. Those must've been Sloane's guys."

Jack was giving orders to the CIA teams that had immediately tailed the van, but they'd already lost it, in a maze of back alleys and the midst of four traffic accidents. The man who had been Michael Vaughn had disappeared.

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to be continued