The Way it Should Be
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Title: The Way It Should Be
Author: Jennifer
e-mail: aliaswriter@hotmail.com
AIM: aivilo313
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Post "The Telling" – begins a couple of minutes before the ending of the season finale and serves to release the angst and anguish that I am feeling over the fact that Vaughn is "married"- - please note that my words that are spilling out into this ultimately S/V story does not necessarily reflect my thoughts on what will occur in the next season.
Spoilers: All of Seasons One, Season Two, and whatever flashbacks that may pop into my head related to those seasons. (Obviously until "The Telling")
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Freebie: haha, you are a dork but I love that about you. Never complain about long reviews because they rock~ (I feel complimented that you found so much to say to me in the first place!)
Speedy: Always love hearing from you partly because you make me laugh and partly because you raise my self-esteem so damn much.
Same to you Secret Agent Girl and Dream Writer 4 Life~
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4.
The muffled voices became clearer as her eyes slid slowly open, her vision also clearing as she raised her head weakly, feeling every single bruise on her body. Francie's double had been a more-than-competent fighter.
At the thought, her eyes closed again in silent anguish. I killed her. I killed my best friend. She knew that it wasn't truly true, that it had been another person behind the mask of her loving friend's face but the image of the holes appearing on her torso was more than etched in her mind. She had been holding the gun; she was the one who had pulled the trigger.
"She's waking up."
In the far reaches of her mind, she knew that somehow Sloane was in the car or at least was involved in this but was unable to think about it much more.
She couldn't stifle a small groan as the floor of the van shook as it flew over a speed bump.
"Put her back to sleep." That voice… it was so familiar.
She cried out as an elbow came crashing to her head, leaving her with only darkness.
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Vaughn sat at his desk in the dark office, his face buried in his hands and his fingers twisted deeply into his hair. How could this have happened? Why now, now when life had seemed so perfect? Right when he had found the only person he had ever truly loved- that's right, he could now acknowledge that he loved her- was taken from him in a most brutal way.
The only light that shone in the engulfing blackness of the office was from the little lamp that stood on his own desk, illuminating the pieces of paper lying on the table top; the information that they had garnered in the last hour… she had been missing from his life for an hour now and with every minute, he knew that her chances of life were fast receding.
He refused to believe it. It couldn't happen, she was much too resilient to die on him. She would survive anything. She had to.
He opened his tired eyes once again, blinking twice to rid himself of the black dots that hovered in his vision. He could feel the tears threatening to come back to him, knew that he wouldn't dare close his eyes again. Her face haunted him when he did so.
There was a sound of the door opening and then footsteps moving towards him.
"I thought I'd find you here."
"Where else would I be, Eric?" Vaughn's voice was edgy with tiredness and infinite sadness. "All I can think about is that if I had only postponed that damned debrief… if only I had taken her with me- - we would be in Santa Barbara right now."
Saying the words was hard, it was the acknowledgement of what his own mistakes were and now they were voiced and out in the open.
Eric sat heavily on the chair next to the table, looking down, his good humor vanished. "You're going to go to Santa Barbara, Mike. We'll find her. And you have to stop blaming yourself. You couldn't have known-"
"I couldn't have known? I was practically living with that cloned bitch!" He regretted turning on his friend almost immediately after the words were spat from his mouth. "I should have known… I should have protected her."
"Michael, you hadn't even met her before. If she was able to fool Sydney and Will for so long… there's no question as to how she was able to pull the wool over your eyes. She tricked everyone," Weiss laughed ironically, "we even had a protective detail assigned to her to protect her- from what? From herself? No one's at fault here."
His friend turned then, and in the dim light of the room, Eric saw the tears streaking their way down his cheeks. "She's gone, Eric." He turned away, ashamed, hiding his face with his hands, leaning back slightly in his chair. "We were going to go to Santa Barbara."
Eric didn't know what to say. All he could do was repeat his words. "We're gonna find her, Mike. Don't worry, she's valuable to all of us."
"She's not just valuable to me Eric. I- I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to live without her now that I've known what it's like to be loved by her, to wake up next to her- - how can any man go back to the dismal life he used to live after that?"
Eric didn't know how to respond. "You should go home and get some sleep- you'll be much more helpful to us if you're rested."
He stood up. "No, I can't go to sleep. Even if I went home, I would just be restless. You know how I get when Sydney's not home, Eric."
Eric nodded. "Yeah. I know."
He watched his friend's receding back as he strode out into the dark. "I'm going to pier if you need me. I need to get some fresh air."
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The icy breeze was refreshing to him, it made him feel sure that he was alive… for what feeling could slice through someone so thoroughly if it wasn't real? He held on tightly to the wooden rail, allowing himself to feel every prick of the uneven wood press into his hands.
He pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and stared at it, staring at it to give him some answers. But none came.
The shrill ringing of his phone cut through the air and he picked it up in an almost frenzy.
"Hello?"
"Agent Vaughn, this is Jack. I need you to come here right now." Vaughn nodded, instinctively knowing where "here" was as he strode to his car in a half-run and crammed his key into the ignition. This had to be a good sign; surely there were going to find Sydney. They had to.
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He spread out the pictures on the table and waited for Agent Vaughn to enter the warehouse. Ten minutes later, the door opened and he entered in a harried state and walked jerkily over to him. "What is it?"
Jack pointed to the picture taken from the traffic camera. A black SUV was caught; the driver of the automobile a scared-looking white male in his mid 50s. There were no license plates.
"I don't understand. What does this have to do with Sydney's case?" Vaughn looked closely at the pictures again, trying to see what Jack had seen and what seemed so elusive to him.
Jack pulled out a file from his briefcase and opened it, showing a picture of the same driver. "Morris Saint-Clair. His wife filed a missing persons report a week and a half ago."
"He was kidnapped? Why would someone kidnap him?"
"We don't know yet. He was a professional chauffeur and our best bet right now is that he was taken because he was both helpful and dispensable. Anyway, we have good reason to believe that Sydney is in this car; this SUV passed the traffic lights at Monroe and Wilshire 35 minutes ago. We've circulated descriptions to every hotel, motel, and B&B as well as all police stations and even some gas stations."
Michael nodded, shaking his head slightly to clear his thinking. "Wait, how do we know that Sydney is in this car?"
Jack pointed to the next picture, a blow-up of the first which showed the window behind the driver of the car. There was a smudged handprint on it, as if a person had struggled and had smacked the window during the fight.
A third picture was yet another computer-generated augmentation of the handprint. Pulling out his laptop, Jack expertly scanned the picture onto it and typed a few keywords to bring up the CIA directory service. The only clear fingerprint was placed in the search query as hundreds of faces and profiles were scanned through the program until a match was found.
Sydney Bristow.
"Monroe and Wilson? Where does that road head?"
"It's a local road with 6 different breaks. One of which is a freeway." Jack stopped talking and looked at the younger man. "Agent Vaughn, I'm aware that we have had our differences but I also know that we both have Sydney's best interests at heart and I want you to know that I thoroughly trust you to help me with this investigation. But, please allow me to say that you look like hell. Go to sleep."
Vaughn cracked a small smile that didn't mean anything. "I can't sleep."
Jack nodded. "I thought as much."
96 miles away, an unidentified black SUV cruised along the freeway with a full tank of gas, a picnic basket of supplies, and 4 passengers.
TBC…
Hmmm…this story is cookin'- I haven't updated one story so often ever since the early days of An Undefinable Sweetness… hope you all enjoy it so far, the ideas haven't run out yet and Gracie obviously feels very bad for leaving me for those two weeks and is making it up right now.
Look forward to some flashbacks within flashbacks because you guys all know how much I love making up S/V moments~
I'm thinking that the return to the present tense will be one of the later chapters and that the backstory of what occurred to Vaughn and how the investigation will be the main portion of the story for a couple of chapters to come. Then we will go back to Sydney's response and Vaughn's explanation (which I hope is not too unrealistic), and then we'll go forward until then.
Hope this fic is helping to alleviate at least SOME of the ALIAS madness!
Love you all! (keep the feedback coming, it totally makes my day!)
~Jenn
