Author: Konstantine (aka Jenni)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Like I own these fabulous characters? Get real. I also steal two very specific words from the song "Hurricane" by Something Corporate and alter them a tad. First one to guess which words they are wins a pony!
Summary: "In a summer breeze, everything you've been hoping against hope for can come true."
Pairing: S/V
AN: I know it seems to take off on a completely different, almost absurd note towards the end, but I had to write this. Oh yeah, it's my first Alias fic too, so try not to beat me with the criticism stick too hard.
AN 2: Written for the March 2003 Challenge, takes place after the events of ATY, partway through "The Enemy Walks In". Sydney has escaped from Irina and is back in LA, but Vaughn hasn't been found.
"Sydney, it's been a week..." Her father begins. But she can't hear him, because she knows what he's going to say and if she doesn't hear it, it isn't true. It can't be true.
"It's not like we're giving up, but..." And now there's a pounding in her head, which she thinks might be her heart, and she thinks of everything she could've told Vaughn and didn't.
"The memorial service is tomorrow, at two...Sydney..." he takes her awkwardly in his arms. "I'm sorry, sweetie."
Sorry.
The word sounds so foreign on his lips. What does he know about sorry? What does he know about what she's lost?
Sorry. She's heard that word so much recently.
("We couldn't find anything in Taipei, I'm sorry. "I'm sorry to tell you that you might never see him again.")
She wants to kill someone, but she doesn't know who. Maybe her mother, if she can ever find her.
She needs him to be here and help her through this. He's the only one she trusts implicitly. But his memorial service is tomorrow, and they don't even have a body.
She's sitting in the back pew, where no one can see her, and she's supposed to be listening to somebody saying something, but all she can think about is the empty coffin and her empty, empty heart.
She thinks she might want to stop holding back and start bawling, but Kendall's there and even though she's in disguise (she always needs a fucking disguise) he'll know and then they'll have broken protocol. But how can they break protocol if he's...gone. Not dead. Dead is too final.
She can't breathe-something heavy and dark and invisible is crushing her body, and she has to get out.
She shoves her hand through the window in his bedroom, and crawls in through the ragged hole. She shouldn't be doing this. Sloane probably already has an assassin on his way. But nothing matters anymore because she needs to do this.
In the dimming twilight, she makes out the furniture dotting his bedroom--nothing special. But this is the first and last time she'll ever be in his apartment, and she wants to absorb every aspect of his life...every ordinary thing that made him--makes him--what he was...is. What he is, because he's not dead. He's not.
She starts for the door, blood from her hand flowing freely across the floor, the pain not even registering. She wants to find his kitchen and look at the kind of food he eats, but on her way out her foot hits something soft. She lifts a dirty tee shirt from the heel of her shoe. She lifts it to her face and inhales. The scent of him clings to every facet of the fabric, and she thinks she's going to be sick. She gropes blindly in the hallway for the bathroom and retches in the toilet. Grief does not become her, she thinks, flushing the toilet. That's what this is, isn't it? Grief? But how can she grieve for Vaughn when she's so sure he's alive?
Suddenly, she hears the front door open and her heart freezes. It can't be...can it? She rushes into the hallway and squints in the direction of the noise. No, it's not Vaughn, it's a woman with short blonde hair, sniffling back tears as she looks around her, bewildered. It's Alice. It takes every shred of will power within Sydney to stop from weeping, as every last bit of hope diffuses out of her like a dying light bulb. She slinks back into the bedroom and leaps out the window, hitting the ground and sprinting away into the night.
Something wakes her when it's very dark out, and she's angry because she only just managed to cry herself to sleep. But a thick summer breeze blows through her window, and she swears she smells his aftershave.
Goddammit, she's hallucinating again.
"Syd...?" Someone with his voice is kneeling at her bedside. "Syd? It's me..."
In a summer breeze, everything you've been hoping against hope for can come true.
"I know I'm breaking about a thousand different rules being here, but I had to...you had to know...how could I not see you first?"
She reaches a hand out to touch his face, only inches from hers, and he's solid. He's real he's there he's alive.
"Vaughn." She sighs, practically cries.
"Yeah, Syd, it's me." His voice. Oh, his voice.
Oh no! His voice!
"We need...SD-6...they could hear..."
"It's OK, I've got it covered."
And oh, she missed him so so so much and she knows that he can never die on her again. Not ever. So she does the only logical thing-she kisses him. If being without him was hell, then this exceeds heaven.
Everything is warm and soft and all at once. As she's exploring his mouth with hers, she bursts out crying, weeping into his face. He disconnects himself from her, and pulls back an inch to look at her.
"What's wrong?" His voice is so full of concern and love; it only makes her cry harder.
"You were dead!" she wails. "You were gone and never coming back and I snuck into your memorial service and broke into your apartment!"
"Oh, oh God, Sydney, no, I'm here now, it's okay." He kisses the tears off her face and she quiets down.
"Vaughn, you can't ever die again."
He smiles, a laugh in his voice as he tells her he won't. She once again captures his lips and pulls him into bed with her. She's been so cold since Taipei, and needs to feel his warmth. His shoes are off, and his tee shirt is being pulled over his head. Another breeze from the window before she's discarded her clothes too and everything is bliss.
When he wasn't kissing her, her eyes were open so she could be sure it was really him. Every time she saw it was, her heart lurched in her chest with happiness. She didn't fall asleep, for fear of waking up and discovering it all to be a dream. He rolls off of her torso, and fits himself against her side, draping an arm across her chest. He's breathing symphonies in her ear when she says "I love you." She shifts to face him and says it again. His smile could supply power to New York City for a millennium. "I love you," he whispers, showering kisses across her jaw. "I love you I love you I love you..." Each declaration supplies another trickle of his lips against her skin.
She idly wonders how this can ever work out-how she can bear to let him leave while it's still dark out so he doesn't risk dying for real this time. But she knows it won't matter, because Sloane will have his head blown off if he thinks he can destroy the best thing that's ever happened to her. Now she has more reason than ever to take down the Alliance, and she. Will. Not. Fail. A soft kiss on her temple assures her of this, and in checking the clock she knows they still have an hour until he absolutely has to leave, so she stretches out on his stomach and absorbs the love that hangs thick in the air around them.
He's alive.
She's alive.
They love each other.
They've been trained to be careful.
Nothing else will ever matter.
THE END.