Chapter 25: Back to Normal

Sydney ran into Vaughn's room and stopped abruptly before reaching the bed. Vaughn was sleeping peacefully as the monitors in the room beeped to indicate that all was well. There was a chair next to his bed and she sat down in it. She gently held his hand trying not to wake him. She brought his hand to her lips as warm tears fell down her cheeks.

"Hello you. Hey, why are you crying?" Vaughn said weakly waking up.

"Because I'm such a fool." Sydney said wiping away her tears with the back of her hand.

"You're many things Sydney Bristow, and fool isn't one of them." Vaughn said in his usually comforting way. "By the way, what took you so long?" He teased to alleviate the mood.

"I ran into a few complications on my way here, nothing I couldn't handle." Sydney said smiling. Just being around Vaughn always made her feel that everything was going to be fine.

"So why the tears? Did something happen?" Vaughn asked concerned. He struggled to sit up but Sydney pushed him back gently and used the button by the side of the bed to sit him up.

"The nurse downstairs send me to the wrong room and the nurse in that room told me that you were dead." Sydney said laughing at herself for having believed it. "Now you see why I was calling myself a fool?" She sat down with a sigh and a thump.

"Sydney, I'm so sorry that you had to go through that. See, I'm alive and well, mostly well anyways. Dr. Sanderson wants to keep me here for observation for the next two weeks to make sure that the antidote doesn't have any side effects. You should have seen Dr. Yon Hee and Dr. Sanderson go at it. She told him that if he didn't get out of her way that she would shoot him and then patch him up and then shoot him again. She even managed to steal your father's gun to prove that she was serious. Where in the world did you find her?" Vaughn's eyes were alight with laughter though smiling seemed to be a difficulty because of the pain.

"So you remember everything even though you were in a Stage 4?" Sydney said half talking to herself. She wondered how much Sark remembered.

"It's strange, but it's like I was there seeing everything but unable to control anything I said or did. Sydney I'm so sorry about hitting you." Vaughn said remembering three days ago when he'd thrown her through a table at the reunion.

"Hey, it was nothing, if I hadn't gotten you infected with the virus in the first place." She smiled ruefully at him. She knew that Vaughn would never blame her but it didn't assuage the guilt. Her heart leaped at the thought of how close she had lost him and how if felt when she though he had.

"Why don't we call it even?" Vaughn said.

"Oh no, I think that I owe you a lot more then that." Sydney replied.

"And I owe you for my life Sydney, if you hadn't send Dr. Yon Hee, we wouldn't be having this conversation." Vaughn said firmly.

"About that, Sark's the one you should thank, not me." Sydney said quickly.

"Damn, I don't like owing that guy." A tension filled the air.

"Vaughn, Sark isn't as bad as he seems. I think that with some help he can be turned to out side and help us. He said." Vaughn interrupted her before she could finish.

"You can't believe anything he says Sydney. Did he give you some sob story about how he wants to be a good person but never got the chance? He's not some misunderstood bad boy that you can convert. He's a master manipulator who uses people to get what he wants. He's playing you Sydney." Vaughn said harshly. His eyed narrowed suspiciously as a thought occurred to him. Sark wouldn't have helped him unless he got something out of it. "How did you get him to help you?"

"He was going to help you anyways." Sydney mumbled ashamed of how she'd injected Sark with the virus. It hadn't been necessary to lead Sark on that way, she could have as easily just shot him with tranquilizer dart filled with the virus as she had originally planned. She'd deliberately wanted to play mind games with him to hurt him. Before she'd gone to meet Sark, she'd visited Vaughn. Vaughn had been restrained to the bed and he'd been screaming about how Sark had done this to him. She'd hated to see Vaughn turned into an animal and she'd wanted to make Sark pay for it. Only the consequences weren't quite what she had expected.

"Sydney, what did you promise him?" Vaughn said urgently. He was worried about Sydney; dealing with Sark was like dealing with the devil. He may want something from her that she couldn't deliver without sever consequences. The CIA had strict rules and once you cross the line, there was no going back.

"I didn't sell my soul to him!" Sydney said impatiently. She was afraid that by telling Vaughn what lengths she had gone through to get the antidote, she could lose his respect. There were only a few things she treasured and Vaughn's respect was one of them.

"What did you promise him?" Jack asked from behind her.

"I didn't promise him anything! I injected him with the virus so that he would have a reason to help me." Sydney answered feeling like she as being ambushed. "It was stupid and pointless since he was already going to help. It nearly got us both killed." Sydney confessed leaving out the other details. She looked nervously at Vaughn to see if she saw disgust there.

"What do you mean?" Vaughn and Jack asked together.

"He reacted slightly differently from it then you did. He went through the stages a lot quicker." Sydney said still searching Vaughn's face. It remained impassive.

"He looked fine when I saw him." Jack said drawing her attention.

"That's because he came up with the antidote while we were trapped in the lab." She brought out the two syringes and put them on the bed. "He even found an antidote for stage four in case Vaughn needed it. I guess he was telling the truth when he told me that Yon Hee was coming straight here." She sighed at how stubborn she'd been. Sark had never outright lied to her. He'd kept things from her it but it wasn't the same.

"Did he say anything that we could use against him?" Jack asked interested.

"No, nothing that I would use against him." She said deflecting the question.

Vaughn and Jack sent a look to each other over her wording. Jack's cell rang before either could comment on it.

"I'll be right there." Jack said hanging up. He nodded at Vaughn and looked at Sydney. "You should get some sleep, both of you." He said before leaving the room.

"Can you stay for a little while longer, until I fall asleep?" Vaughn asked knowing it was a selfish request. He wasn't quite ready to let her go.

"I'll stay as long as you need me." Sydney said pushing the button to lay the bed flat. She held onto his hand with both of hers and sat down in her chair.

Vaughn wanted to say that he'd need her forever but changed his mind at the last minute. "Is the chair comfortable?" Vaughn asked yawning. He was more tired then he'd realized.

"It'll be fine." She said.

"You can lay next to me if you want." Vaughn said sleepily, closing his eyes and pulling her hands closer.

Sydney lied down next to him laying her head on his chest. "Goodnight Vaughn." She whispered.

"Goodnight Sydney." Vaughn mumbled before falling asleep.