Disclaimer- yet another thing I don't own
Authors notes- I want to go ahead and acknowledge some of my wonderful reviewers. Their kind words keep me going. Even if I have not thanked you individually please know that I am reading and loving all the reviews. I hope that everyone is still enjoying the story. I do want to put just a couple of reviewers on the spot, their kind words and insight have really helped, so without further ado
A very special thanks go out to Sara, JB, Star, Sprite, Rachel, Syd GillyKC, Secret Agent Girl, and Kimmers for their sticking with the story and encouragement along the way. Aslo thanks to all those that had such kind words of encouragement when you saw the last update was only a measly authors note.
I am sorry this took so long to get out, you all know how real life can be, but we only got a few more chapters to go and they should be up fairly quickly.
Chapter 8: A Time for Peace CIA Headquarters Langley Va
Malone felt it was okay to leave his office now. Sydney had pulled herself together and laid something on Vaughn's desk and then walked out. He was a bit perturbed to have been witness, of sorts, to the conversation Agents Vaughn and Bristow had. He knew Sydney's side of the story and he was curious to Vaughn's, although he learned quite a bit during their conversation. He liked to have all the facts, was even told it made it made him a good agent and for reasons unknown to him he felt drawn in to the soap opera that was unfolding.
Seeing as how it was now 1:30 he headed downstairs to the cafeteria to get a sandwich. He stood in line right behind a woman about his own age. She had brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail. He could not see he face but she was petit and looked exhausted, owing to her slumped shoulders and hair that had started pulling out of its constraints. He leaned forward a bit to grab the last remaining hamburger, and also to see if he could see her face. Their hands touched briefly as they picked up the same lone burger.
"Take it" Malone said to her. She turned and smiled as she thanked him. She was not gorgeous as far as supermodel or heck even Sydney Bristow goes, but she was pretty in a Sandra Bullock sort of way "Thanks, so how bad is the food here? It's my first day."
"Not too bad if you get her early enough when it's fresh, right now it probably tastes like raw sewage that has been warmed under a heat lamp." They both smiled at each other. "So what department are you with?" Malone asked as he looked to see what else was available for him to choke down.
"Clandestine Ops, under AD Weiss" She had a big smile on her face. Malone saw the smile and assumed she was proud of the placement. He knew it was not easy to start there.
"Great then we'll be working together, I'm Malone"
"Murphy, nice to meet you" she answered" You the Malone that was inside at the big bust up at STG?" Malone laughed, his little moniker had somewhere along the way be come the official name.
Along with like 15 other agents and an extraction team." He answered trying to be humble but so proud at the same time.
"Well maybe we'll get to work together." She leaned in a bit closer as they made their way to the checkout area "So what's the scoop on Weiss. He can't always be as corny as he was during my meet with his this morning?" She asked, smiling conspiratorially.
"Actually he is, but you get used to it. He's a good guy. You can't find a better person to learn from." Malone answered with a laugh. "Well, I've got to get back to work; I'll see you around, Murphy." And Malone left to head back to his office, contemplating the new girl Murphy and wondering if he should ask her to dinner something. He was surprised when he opened the door to his office to see Agent Vaughn sitting half-slumped in the visitor chair.
"Agent Vaughn, what can I do for you?" Malone asked a bit nervous to be talking to this man, a newly created legend among the Agency. He and Vaughn had never actually had a conversation so Malone was not sure why the Agent was now in his office.
"This is my son." Vaughn held out a picture of his and Sydney's son. The boy was the spitting image of his father. Sandy brown hair and green eyes the only thing of his mother he saw was the dimples in his lopsided smile. Malone wasn't sure what to say, so he said the only think he could think of, "good looking kid you got there."
"Yeah he is, isn't he? Look I'm sorry about before, you know with me and Sydney." Vaughn seemed a bit awkward in his response.
"Don't worry about it."
"She's an amazing woman; we just never could get it right."
"Looks like you did at least one thing right" Malone said motioning to the picture. Vaughn looked long and hard at the picture of the young boy in a hockey uniform and smiled.
"Do you have a couple of minutes? I know we haven't really gotten to know each other that well, but I can't talk to Weiss about this, not yet."
Malone was surprised that Agent Vaughn wanted to talk to him about anything, but he was intensely curious as to his side of the story and he had a feeling that his curiosity was about to be satisfied.
"Of course, paperwork can always wait." He smiled at Vaughn and urged him to talk.
Thinking back on it, there was always something right about the two of us. From the start, we just clicked." Vaughn gave a small smile as if remembering the two of them all those many years ago. "It took me by surprise, the feelings I developed for her. I knew it was wrong form the start, but you can't stop your feelings, although I tried really hard to hide them. I think she always saw through me though. I could never fool her, no matter how hard I tried."
Malone settled himself in for the long haul He sat back in his chair and took a sip of soda. "She was always so focused on her final goal, the take down of SD-6. It was humbling, her steadfast determination, but I realized that it was nice to be with someone who knew what they wanted. I had never really known what I wanted." He gave a wry grin, "I joined the Agency because my father was an agent, and he was killed in the line of duty, I figured I needed to carry on his legacy, make him proud. He was such a Company man, and that what I wanted. Or so I thought. Being with Syd though, she made me reevaluate what I wanted to be, what I wanted to leave behind."
Malone started really paying attention, sitting up I his chair, he leaned forward, intent on not missing a word. He began to see the draw Vaughn had to Sydney, he was a man lost and she found him, or rather, helped him find himself.
"Our lives became inextricably entwined, even if we weren't working together, as we always were, our pasts joined us together in a nightmarish way. Her mother, you see, had killed my father." Vaughn took a deep breath and continued on, it was obvious just saying that phrase was difficult for him, even now. "She was so upset about that fact, her mother had killed many people, but she was devastated that my family had been affected. She actually apologized to me for all tat her mother had done."
"But it wasn't her fault" Malone jumped in.
"That's what I told her. But Sydney always felt the weight of her world on her shoulders and felt responsible for so much, even if it was out of her control. It just made me love her even more. For a long time, there was no one that she could be honest with. Even her best friends had no idea what her real life was. She felt like fraud most of the time, always lying, to those that she was supposed to be closest with. I was the only one of friends that knew. I relished that role. I liked being special in her eyes. I felt it gave me an edge over her "real" life, an "in" if you would." Vaughn seemed to take a break for a minute as if trying to gather his thoughts, or figure out what he should reveal. "Towards the end of the Alliance, I knew that there was a problem, I couldn't concentrate, all I thought about was her and I told her as much. She never approached me about the tension between us; it always had to be me. I accepted that, I knew that she was focused on her goal, and more than that, I knew that she had had so much conflict and tragedy in her life, that she was not about to go out and find even more."
Vaughn stopped talking and Malone wondered whether knowing, or thinking, he was considered a 'burden or trouble' in anyone's life could not be an easy role to accept. Malone also realized that in their line of work, it was the norm, the accepted reality of living a life full of constant danger. But he knew it was still most likely very hard to deal with.
"When the Alliance fell, we wasted no time. We started dating almost immediately. I had never seen her so happy, and it made me happy to be a part of that. I knew that she had never had the normalcy she craved and I was honored to share it with her. She had finished school and started teaching, just as she had always wanted. We were happy, I proposed and she answered right away. The wedding planning was going smoothly." A brief pause gave Malone warning that the bulk of the troubling story was ahead, "Until I got word that my father, who I believed dead, may still be alive." Vaughn looked down again at the picture of his son. A smile lit up his face. "I only remembered my father as this larger than life man. A hero. A patriot who died for his country. To find out that he was still alive was thrilling and disconcerting all at the same time. I waited to tell Syd about what I had learned. If he was still alive then it meant that her mother, whom we had in custody had been withholding important information and could still be a threat. Weiss and I did more recon work and found a compound where my father was possibly being held. We immediately started planning for his release. That's when I told Sydney. She was not happy that I had kept it from her. When I told her that I was going to try and find him, I thought she was going to go mad. She was so angry and I couldn't understand it. I had been right there with her when her mother was found alive and I supported her in her quest to find her. But it was like that didn't matter at all, like nothing in the past had any bearing on our present or future together. I know now why she was so scared about me going, but back then, it just angered me. I didn't give her the chance to explain. I didn't even try to figure out where she was coming from. I just got it in my head that she was wrong and went anyway,"
Vaughn stopped and thought about his actions 11 years ago. Malone saw the wheels turning in his mind. To him, it all started to make sense. Two people that had to trust each other with their lives had a hard time trusting their hearts and because of that they stopped talking, stopped trying. It made him sad. He saw that Vaughn never really thought that Sydney didn't care for him or care about his life. It appeared that it was just not a part of their lives. It seemed that all that mattered was them. The outside world did not seem to matter. But when that outside world crashed in on the two they did not know how to deal with it. Malone came out of his thoughts to hear Vaughn speaking again.
"I left, so angry with her, with her ultimatum. I had this gut feeling I was going to die on that mission. And it didn't matter to me. I didn't have Sydney anymore so what was the point. And I was right, well almost. I wished I had died for many years. But after the first couple of years, when I finally pulled out of my funk all I thought of was her.
Vaughn sighed and leaned back in the visitor's chair, staring intently at the picture of his son in his hand. "When I saw Jack in Marrakech I nearly cried. I had been so angry that the agency had apparently forgotten about me, but then there was Jack." Vaughn gave a small chuckle. "That man never liked me, but he respected me, I was one of the few who would stand up to him, who held him accountable for his misdeeds. Above all Jack is loyal, practical, but loyal. I owe him my life." There was a break in the conversation, if you could call it that, "have you met my son?"
Malone was surprised at the change in topic. "No, I haven't."
"Me neither. I always wanted a family."
"Looks like you have always had one." Malone said slowly he wasn't sure how far he could go in sharing his observations with Agent Vaughn, "Look, I don't know what people have told you, but Sydney came back to the Agency after you "died". She looked for you for 3 years until Weiss convinced her to give up the search. I can't say that I know her that well; I can however say that she was a very unhappy. I saw her only a few times before you came back, and each time she was fighting with Weiss to keep up the search. I got the impression that she felt she had let you down. But from what it sounds like, you let each other down. It's easy to lay blame at someone else's feet. At least she owns up to her side of it. Maybe its time you start doing the same." Malone knew this was the sticky part of his advice and he only hoped that Vaughn would not be offended by him speaking so openly. "It seems to me that you had a bit of a knight in shining armor complex going on; riding in on your white horse to save the day. Maybe that was the problem, once everything was over with the Alliance, you had nothing to do, and you had no standing with her anymore. The foundation you built your relationship on was gone, and neither of you knew how to deal with the other without that foundation."
Malone felt emboldened by his newfound place as a confidant to Agent Vaughn. These people had it all and threw it away for one stupid reason after another and to be honest it was pissing him off. The only one that seemed to want to fight for anything was Jack and Lord knows Malone was not going to try and give him advice.
"Your right you know. It's been so easy to let Syd take the blame, that's who she has always been. But it is as much my fault. I stopped trying; I shut myself off from her. I didn't want to see what was right in from of my face. And now, I've gone and done it again. I want her back, I want to know my son, but I don't know if we're ready yet." At that Vaughn got up and walked out of the office, he sat back down in his own office next door and went back to work on his paperwork. Malone watched him for a few minutes, noticing that every few seconds he would stop and look at the picture of his son.
Authors notes- I want to go ahead and acknowledge some of my wonderful reviewers. Their kind words keep me going. Even if I have not thanked you individually please know that I am reading and loving all the reviews. I hope that everyone is still enjoying the story. I do want to put just a couple of reviewers on the spot, their kind words and insight have really helped, so without further ado
A very special thanks go out to Sara, JB, Star, Sprite, Rachel, Syd GillyKC, Secret Agent Girl, and Kimmers for their sticking with the story and encouragement along the way. Aslo thanks to all those that had such kind words of encouragement when you saw the last update was only a measly authors note.
I am sorry this took so long to get out, you all know how real life can be, but we only got a few more chapters to go and they should be up fairly quickly.
Chapter 8: A Time for Peace CIA Headquarters Langley Va
Malone felt it was okay to leave his office now. Sydney had pulled herself together and laid something on Vaughn's desk and then walked out. He was a bit perturbed to have been witness, of sorts, to the conversation Agents Vaughn and Bristow had. He knew Sydney's side of the story and he was curious to Vaughn's, although he learned quite a bit during their conversation. He liked to have all the facts, was even told it made it made him a good agent and for reasons unknown to him he felt drawn in to the soap opera that was unfolding.
Seeing as how it was now 1:30 he headed downstairs to the cafeteria to get a sandwich. He stood in line right behind a woman about his own age. She had brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail. He could not see he face but she was petit and looked exhausted, owing to her slumped shoulders and hair that had started pulling out of its constraints. He leaned forward a bit to grab the last remaining hamburger, and also to see if he could see her face. Their hands touched briefly as they picked up the same lone burger.
"Take it" Malone said to her. She turned and smiled as she thanked him. She was not gorgeous as far as supermodel or heck even Sydney Bristow goes, but she was pretty in a Sandra Bullock sort of way "Thanks, so how bad is the food here? It's my first day."
"Not too bad if you get her early enough when it's fresh, right now it probably tastes like raw sewage that has been warmed under a heat lamp." They both smiled at each other. "So what department are you with?" Malone asked as he looked to see what else was available for him to choke down.
"Clandestine Ops, under AD Weiss" She had a big smile on her face. Malone saw the smile and assumed she was proud of the placement. He knew it was not easy to start there.
"Great then we'll be working together, I'm Malone"
"Murphy, nice to meet you" she answered" You the Malone that was inside at the big bust up at STG?" Malone laughed, his little moniker had somewhere along the way be come the official name.
Along with like 15 other agents and an extraction team." He answered trying to be humble but so proud at the same time.
"Well maybe we'll get to work together." She leaned in a bit closer as they made their way to the checkout area "So what's the scoop on Weiss. He can't always be as corny as he was during my meet with his this morning?" She asked, smiling conspiratorially.
"Actually he is, but you get used to it. He's a good guy. You can't find a better person to learn from." Malone answered with a laugh. "Well, I've got to get back to work; I'll see you around, Murphy." And Malone left to head back to his office, contemplating the new girl Murphy and wondering if he should ask her to dinner something. He was surprised when he opened the door to his office to see Agent Vaughn sitting half-slumped in the visitor chair.
"Agent Vaughn, what can I do for you?" Malone asked a bit nervous to be talking to this man, a newly created legend among the Agency. He and Vaughn had never actually had a conversation so Malone was not sure why the Agent was now in his office.
"This is my son." Vaughn held out a picture of his and Sydney's son. The boy was the spitting image of his father. Sandy brown hair and green eyes the only thing of his mother he saw was the dimples in his lopsided smile. Malone wasn't sure what to say, so he said the only think he could think of, "good looking kid you got there."
"Yeah he is, isn't he? Look I'm sorry about before, you know with me and Sydney." Vaughn seemed a bit awkward in his response.
"Don't worry about it."
"She's an amazing woman; we just never could get it right."
"Looks like you did at least one thing right" Malone said motioning to the picture. Vaughn looked long and hard at the picture of the young boy in a hockey uniform and smiled.
"Do you have a couple of minutes? I know we haven't really gotten to know each other that well, but I can't talk to Weiss about this, not yet."
Malone was surprised that Agent Vaughn wanted to talk to him about anything, but he was intensely curious as to his side of the story and he had a feeling that his curiosity was about to be satisfied.
"Of course, paperwork can always wait." He smiled at Vaughn and urged him to talk.
Thinking back on it, there was always something right about the two of us. From the start, we just clicked." Vaughn gave a small smile as if remembering the two of them all those many years ago. "It took me by surprise, the feelings I developed for her. I knew it was wrong form the start, but you can't stop your feelings, although I tried really hard to hide them. I think she always saw through me though. I could never fool her, no matter how hard I tried."
Malone settled himself in for the long haul He sat back in his chair and took a sip of soda. "She was always so focused on her final goal, the take down of SD-6. It was humbling, her steadfast determination, but I realized that it was nice to be with someone who knew what they wanted. I had never really known what I wanted." He gave a wry grin, "I joined the Agency because my father was an agent, and he was killed in the line of duty, I figured I needed to carry on his legacy, make him proud. He was such a Company man, and that what I wanted. Or so I thought. Being with Syd though, she made me reevaluate what I wanted to be, what I wanted to leave behind."
Malone started really paying attention, sitting up I his chair, he leaned forward, intent on not missing a word. He began to see the draw Vaughn had to Sydney, he was a man lost and she found him, or rather, helped him find himself.
"Our lives became inextricably entwined, even if we weren't working together, as we always were, our pasts joined us together in a nightmarish way. Her mother, you see, had killed my father." Vaughn took a deep breath and continued on, it was obvious just saying that phrase was difficult for him, even now. "She was so upset about that fact, her mother had killed many people, but she was devastated that my family had been affected. She actually apologized to me for all tat her mother had done."
"But it wasn't her fault" Malone jumped in.
"That's what I told her. But Sydney always felt the weight of her world on her shoulders and felt responsible for so much, even if it was out of her control. It just made me love her even more. For a long time, there was no one that she could be honest with. Even her best friends had no idea what her real life was. She felt like fraud most of the time, always lying, to those that she was supposed to be closest with. I was the only one of friends that knew. I relished that role. I liked being special in her eyes. I felt it gave me an edge over her "real" life, an "in" if you would." Vaughn seemed to take a break for a minute as if trying to gather his thoughts, or figure out what he should reveal. "Towards the end of the Alliance, I knew that there was a problem, I couldn't concentrate, all I thought about was her and I told her as much. She never approached me about the tension between us; it always had to be me. I accepted that, I knew that she was focused on her goal, and more than that, I knew that she had had so much conflict and tragedy in her life, that she was not about to go out and find even more."
Vaughn stopped talking and Malone wondered whether knowing, or thinking, he was considered a 'burden or trouble' in anyone's life could not be an easy role to accept. Malone also realized that in their line of work, it was the norm, the accepted reality of living a life full of constant danger. But he knew it was still most likely very hard to deal with.
"When the Alliance fell, we wasted no time. We started dating almost immediately. I had never seen her so happy, and it made me happy to be a part of that. I knew that she had never had the normalcy she craved and I was honored to share it with her. She had finished school and started teaching, just as she had always wanted. We were happy, I proposed and she answered right away. The wedding planning was going smoothly." A brief pause gave Malone warning that the bulk of the troubling story was ahead, "Until I got word that my father, who I believed dead, may still be alive." Vaughn looked down again at the picture of his son. A smile lit up his face. "I only remembered my father as this larger than life man. A hero. A patriot who died for his country. To find out that he was still alive was thrilling and disconcerting all at the same time. I waited to tell Syd about what I had learned. If he was still alive then it meant that her mother, whom we had in custody had been withholding important information and could still be a threat. Weiss and I did more recon work and found a compound where my father was possibly being held. We immediately started planning for his release. That's when I told Sydney. She was not happy that I had kept it from her. When I told her that I was going to try and find him, I thought she was going to go mad. She was so angry and I couldn't understand it. I had been right there with her when her mother was found alive and I supported her in her quest to find her. But it was like that didn't matter at all, like nothing in the past had any bearing on our present or future together. I know now why she was so scared about me going, but back then, it just angered me. I didn't give her the chance to explain. I didn't even try to figure out where she was coming from. I just got it in my head that she was wrong and went anyway,"
Vaughn stopped and thought about his actions 11 years ago. Malone saw the wheels turning in his mind. To him, it all started to make sense. Two people that had to trust each other with their lives had a hard time trusting their hearts and because of that they stopped talking, stopped trying. It made him sad. He saw that Vaughn never really thought that Sydney didn't care for him or care about his life. It appeared that it was just not a part of their lives. It seemed that all that mattered was them. The outside world did not seem to matter. But when that outside world crashed in on the two they did not know how to deal with it. Malone came out of his thoughts to hear Vaughn speaking again.
"I left, so angry with her, with her ultimatum. I had this gut feeling I was going to die on that mission. And it didn't matter to me. I didn't have Sydney anymore so what was the point. And I was right, well almost. I wished I had died for many years. But after the first couple of years, when I finally pulled out of my funk all I thought of was her.
Vaughn sighed and leaned back in the visitor's chair, staring intently at the picture of his son in his hand. "When I saw Jack in Marrakech I nearly cried. I had been so angry that the agency had apparently forgotten about me, but then there was Jack." Vaughn gave a small chuckle. "That man never liked me, but he respected me, I was one of the few who would stand up to him, who held him accountable for his misdeeds. Above all Jack is loyal, practical, but loyal. I owe him my life." There was a break in the conversation, if you could call it that, "have you met my son?"
Malone was surprised at the change in topic. "No, I haven't."
"Me neither. I always wanted a family."
"Looks like you have always had one." Malone said slowly he wasn't sure how far he could go in sharing his observations with Agent Vaughn, "Look, I don't know what people have told you, but Sydney came back to the Agency after you "died". She looked for you for 3 years until Weiss convinced her to give up the search. I can't say that I know her that well; I can however say that she was a very unhappy. I saw her only a few times before you came back, and each time she was fighting with Weiss to keep up the search. I got the impression that she felt she had let you down. But from what it sounds like, you let each other down. It's easy to lay blame at someone else's feet. At least she owns up to her side of it. Maybe its time you start doing the same." Malone knew this was the sticky part of his advice and he only hoped that Vaughn would not be offended by him speaking so openly. "It seems to me that you had a bit of a knight in shining armor complex going on; riding in on your white horse to save the day. Maybe that was the problem, once everything was over with the Alliance, you had nothing to do, and you had no standing with her anymore. The foundation you built your relationship on was gone, and neither of you knew how to deal with the other without that foundation."
Malone felt emboldened by his newfound place as a confidant to Agent Vaughn. These people had it all and threw it away for one stupid reason after another and to be honest it was pissing him off. The only one that seemed to want to fight for anything was Jack and Lord knows Malone was not going to try and give him advice.
"Your right you know. It's been so easy to let Syd take the blame, that's who she has always been. But it is as much my fault. I stopped trying; I shut myself off from her. I didn't want to see what was right in from of my face. And now, I've gone and done it again. I want her back, I want to know my son, but I don't know if we're ready yet." At that Vaughn got up and walked out of the office, he sat back down in his own office next door and went back to work on his paperwork. Malone watched him for a few minutes, noticing that every few seconds he would stop and look at the picture of his son.