Title, Author, Genre, Rating, 'Shippers' Paradise, Spoilers/Timeline, Archived, Disclaimer, Summary: The same. :)
Addition to Disclaimer: I own the poems. They are mine. Do not steal!
Author's Note: This chapter is basically what I thought really should happen in the first few episodes of Season 3. But then again, I'm campin' on De Nile right about now.
This Chapter: Government conspiracy and my little detour down De Nile.
Suggested Soundtrack:
~ In the beginning: "Lose Your Way" by Sophie B. Hawkins, "Acoustic #3" by Goo Goo Dolls, "Letting Go" by Sozzi, "My Immortal" and "Hello" by Evanescence, "Even Angels Fall" by Jessica Riddle, "The Hardest Thing" by 98°, "The Art of Letting Go" by Mikaila, "Dear Lie" by TLC, "Pain" by Dream, "Hiccup" by P!nk, "Time of Your Life" by Green Day
~ In the end: "Feels Like Home" by Chantal Kreviazuk, "I'm a Believer" by Smash Mouth, "We're a Miracle" by Christina Aguilera
Chapter 2: Answers
When the plane landed in L.A., the first thing the CIA did was throw Sydney into a federal cell. And conduct various tests (including an ocular scan) to determine whether she was the real Sydney Anne Bristow. During this time, the only three people who came to see her on a regular basis were her father, Vaughn, and Weiss. Jack Bristow frequented her cell the most, appearing through the three sets of gates once or twice a day. When Vaughn visited her, she was distant and unresponsive, her words clipped and purely professional. It was all she could do to keep from bursting into tears whenever his gold band caught the light and glinted mockingly into her eyes. And even though his visits evoked great pain — pain too strong to put into words — she craved them like an addict craves her substance. She could not explain it, could not rationalize or theologize the reason; maybe that was what miffed her the most about this situation. But no matter how firmly or how many times she told herself that the next time he came she would refuse to see him…somehow, it just would not work out that way.
During her stay in federal prison, Weiss became her wall, her pick-me-up after Vaughn's excruciating visits. He usually sauntered down that hallway as his best friend was leaving having a few hushed words with him before they parted ways once again. Eric would joke with her like absolutely nothing had happened, like those two lost years really were lost — in the sense that they had never occurred for either of them. Despite what was transpiring outside of her cell, they always had a light-hearted, happy, and CIA/work-free conversation. Those ten, twenty, thirty minutes a day were her refuge, the reason she bothered waking up at all. They were the reason she lived. Because everything else was closing in on her swiftly enough to asphyxiate her.
Will was refusing to see her. Despite Vaughn's hasty reassurances that it had nothing to do with her, that he just could not find time in the day, Sydney knew that his absence had everything to do with her reappearance. Her former best friend had probably moved on with his life and had achieved the elusive closure when it came to her disappearing act. It was easier to think of it that way, she guessed, than to think that he simply blamed her for everything wrong in his life. Because that was her job, what she dedicated at least half of her waking day to doing.
In the duration of her time in federal custody, she had divided her alone time into three parts: Waking Part I, Waking Part II, and Nighttime. Depending on her mood, the Waking parts would be used to dwell upon different things. Sometimes Part I would be dedicated to self-pity and guilt, and Part II would be spent concocting theories about what could have happened during those two years. The nights were invariably spent thinking about the love of her life.
Michael Vaughn was usually lurking in the back of her mind no matter what she was doing, but he positively haunted her at night. Sometimes she would go so completely out of her mind that she would start screaming nonsense words at the empty walls and pace in a square around her cell. She did not care if anyone or everyone was watching her from the security cameras mounted in the corners high above her. In fact, once she used those to her advantage.
Her voice had become hoarse one day after a long laughing fit with Weiss, and she could not even begin her nightly tirade. So instead she stood in the middle of the room — in plain view of every single camera — and began mouthing her request in every language she knew including tapping her foot in Morse code and signing in American Sign Language. A minute or so later, a young agent rolled back the gates and handed over two legal pads and two pens; apparently her reputation preceded her. Grabbing at them eagerly, she had sprawled out on the floor and began to write. The next day during Vaughn's visit, she had hid the pads underneath the single blanket her dad had smuggled for her, but Weiss was a little late that day so she had taken them out again for a while until he finally arrived. She had left them on top of her metal table in the corner while she talked with Weiss, but when he left they were gone. Her only explanation was that Eric was told to confiscate them, but any further than that and her rationale grew hazy. Why would the CIA want her nameless, incoherent ramblings? Unless Vaughn wanted to laugh over how unhappy she was.
Because he was certainly happy enough.
Upon her insistence, Weiss had sequestered a small photo of his best friend and his new wife. Sydney knew it was probably a mistake and definitely wrong of her to ask him to do it, but she needed it. It only fueled her anger, her self-pity, and her despair to new lows. Every night during some point in her tempestuous tirade she would pull out the picture and direct her anger towards that. Every day some new wound would open up and the picture would eventually be the victim: their genuine smiles in front of a picturesque park backdrop seemed to be mocking her to such an extent that they deserved to be blamed.
But everyone was still working on who was really to blame for the whole two-year-long ordeal. Her first week back was full of purely physical check-ups and tests to make sure that she had not contracted any diseases that could possibly be contagious to other agents. She had been quarantined in a completely sterile version of her cell for the first two days before they had confirmation that she was of no danger to others.
That was when the shrinks descended upon her as if attracted by powerful magnets. They talked to her, they tested her, they observed her, they tried everything possible to pry the repressed memories of the past two years without: A) cracking her head open with a crowbar or B) forcing her to undergo regression therapy. Nothing seemed to work so eventually Agent Kerr and Doctor Barnett teamed up to perform the latter upon Agent Sydney Bristow. Every other day (if one had asked her the name of the day, she would not have been able to say) she had been personally escorted by Agent Michael Vaughn to the only room in the facility designated for that purpose. She was not clear on if he actually stayed and watched, but she had a sneaking suspicion that he did. She knew that his need to know what had happened to her was just as big as hers if not even bigger. So every other day after he visited with her he would guide her down the familiar path to the loathed room.
And they were starting to get somewhere, things were starting to uncover themselves.
Her future was upgraded to a slightly lighter shade of bleak.
After about a month in CIA custody, Sydney was officially released. But she was faced with a perplexing conundrum: she had nowhere to stay. Will was still refusing to see her, let alone speak to or live with her. Vaughn was out of the question, and she could not possibly impose on her father. To put another spin on the problem, her bank account, credit cards, everything that she could have drawn money from simply did not exist. Everything had been frozen and then transferred into another account that she could not obtain records for. So renting a place was completely out of the question. Instead of putting her up someplace or even designating her a safe house somewhere, Director Devlin insisted that she stay in her cell until she could come up with her own money. Besides finding this extremely suspicious, Sydney also saw this as extremely rude and ungrateful.
One particular day after a regression session, Sydney and Weiss were strolling back up to his desk. They were going to grab a bite before the main part of the Ops Centre closed, allowing them to get her back "home" before "curfew". The two were sharing a laugh over a bout of inappropriate innuendo when he suddenly stopped and tried to steer her down another corridor leading away form the bullpen. When she slipped passed him and into the almost-deserted room, she stopped cold. There was Vaughn sitting at his desk, deep in conversation with the brunette from the picture. As she stood there, dumbfounded, he rose from his seat, handed her a coat, and took her into his warm embrace, smothering her thin lips with his full ones. Her heart stopped, the world ceased to turn, the bottom fell out…All the cliches became suddenly, painfully true.
Weiss came crashing through the doorway calling her name. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware of his hand on her elbow, attempting to pull her away form the couple, who were now gaping at them open-mouthed. Sydney simply shook her head in disbelief; as long as she had not seen them together, live, unscripted, and in colour she did not have to believe it was true. Now that fragile snow globe of a reality had shattered; she had her answer.
Roughly shrugging off her friend's hand Sydney began running. She ran past the stationary couple, down the opposite hall, and out the front door of the CIA building. She did not know where she was going, but she knew she just wanted to be where no one else was.
* * *
She had no idea where she was, let alone how to get back to familiar surroundings. All she did know was that it was dark, she was on a beach, she was alone, the beach was deserted, she was alone, it was late at night, she was alone, she was sweaty and aching, and she was alone. The moon had just risen over the hills behind her…Hills…She must be really far from Los Angeles…The air was cleaner, too…very far from Los Angeles…
Sharply cold seawater lapped softly at her bare feet (how did she lose her shoes?) and wet the cuffs of her jeans. Sand squished between her toes as she walked away from the churning waters. Her legs ached, her feet ached, and her heart ached; she needed a place to sit down. Standing just out of the reach of the chilly fingers of the ocean, she stood motionless and surveyed her options: sand, more sand, and a steep, jagged precipice on the shore side. None of these pleased her terribly. Turning towards the endless expanse of ocean, one thing struck her as odd. The tide was coming in, but it broke around a large boulder in the middle of the small cove. Without a second thought, Sydney ran into the water up to her waist and then started swimming towards it, not caring that the saltwater was positively destroying her clothes. Upon reaching it, she hauled herself up the slippery surface and sat hugging her knees staring out at the horizon.
The incoming tide rolled gently against the rock, the mist melding with the salty tears that were coursing down her cheeks. She peered out towards the craggy rocks that formed the boundary of the cove, breaking in one hundred-foot-long gap. The abandoned lighthouse, she guessed, was up on the top of the hill behind her, warning away ghost ships from this desolate harbour. Crashing swells that echoed in the cliffs' crevices were the only sounds. They calmed her and soothed away her anger but then served to strengthen her bitterness and despair. It was such a solitary, noble sound for such a solitary, ignoble person.
She was alone. She was finally and truly alone, both in the moment and the world. All faith and hope and goodness and will had left her, leaving an empty shell to be filled with bitterness, sadness, and indifference. Her moment of despair was so deeply profound that she knew it would not last only a moment, nor two years, twenty-four months, one hundred and twelve days. Its length was undetermined; like the sea and the sky that stretched out until they kissed in that thin line called the horizon, it looked as if it would never come to a close.
So she hugged her knees closer to her, resting her cold tired head upon them, and cried. Cried and sobbed and wailed and yelled and screamed and complained and whispered and mumbled and muttered and cursed and swore and bellowed and howled and shouted and shrieked at the injustice of it all. ('What did I ever do to you, huh? What? Tell me! Tell me so that I can never do it again. Or I can do it so many times that you just get tired of punishing me! Aren't you tired of watching me slog through all this crap yet? It's the same thing over and over again, haven't you realized that? Betrayal, beloved's death, betrayal, beloved's death, betrayal, lose two year's worth of memories, beloved gets married to someone else…Why don't you change it up a bit, huh? Make me happy for once! Or is that not in your master plan? One day of happiness filled my quota, right?')
The moon had reached its peak directly over her head when she finally had nothing left to cry. But she continued to despair silently, gazing out over the waters as if she might find an answer — to what, she did not know. She began to shudder violently: the incessant spray had kept her drenched and, combined with the brisk wind, was making her innards freeze as well as her skin. Her knees knocked and the chattering of her teeth were audible over the natural noise.
Suddenly, an object dropped down on her shoulders, but she was too far gone to care; she did not even look up. Syd knew it was a coat that had suddenly alighted upon her, and she also knew who the owner was...
"I looked for you everywhere." Vaughn slid down unsteadily and folded his legs under him, facing her and trying to capture her gaze. She refused to comply.
"Obviously not."
An exasperated sigh. "Everywhere you used to go; all your old places."
She looked him straight in the eyes, unwavering coldness radiating from her brown orbs. "I found a new place."
He did not know what to say, so he did not say anything; he sat there staring at his hands. The spray had settled in droplets that were running down his skin like veins — until they reached that band of gold. It inadvertently caught the moonlight and shone into Sydney's eyes. She did not even attempt to hide her wince; she angled her body so that she could not see The Ring if she looked straight ahead. Vaughn sighed. "Sydney, I—"
"No Vaughn," She cut him off emotionlessly. "You don't owe me any explanation. You…had the right…to move on." Each word was a thousand knives plunging into her still-beating heart.
"Syd, I really need to say—"
"Stop!" She commanded, willing the tears to evaporate directly from her tear ducts. "I really don't want to hear anything — especially from you."
Vaughn grunted in exasperation, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to look at him. The ring seared through his leather coat and into her skin. "Why won't you talk to me?"
Sydney widened her eyes in amazement, a drop escaping from the corner of one of them in the process. "I don't want to talk to anyone right now! Can't you see that? That's why I came here in the first place: so I'd be here and you'd be with Karen." She spat the name as if it were a venomous poison. But she was not searching for his pity; she was just…Actually, she did not know what she wanted. Things were just flying out of her mouth randomly in an attempt to block out whatever he had to say.
"Sydney Bristow, I need you to listen to me."
There was something — something in his voice — that gripped her, slapped sense into her and made her want to listen. What he had to say was more important than anything he had ever known: more pressing than espionage, than national security, even life itself. It was a matter of sanity, or survival. The same hostility and bitterness held her features, but Sydney's frozen heart softened almost imperceptibly. Suddenly her eyes were not so cold and her breath became more steady and deeper. Sydney wanted to hold on to her anger, despair, and bitterness because it was what sustained and fueled her; she closed her eyes in an attempt to cage the slippery emotions. She waited for him to continue.
"He took a knife
And twisted, twisted,
Twisted, twisted, twisted
'Til it would go no more
To the hilt
A momentary respite
But then another
Ragged
Rusty
Large
One repeats the same
Song and dance
Over and over
Again and again
'Til I'm ripped in half.
"He poured acid
And it burned, burned,
Burned, burned, burned
'Til there was nothing left to burn
The last drop dripped
Skin bubbled and popped
Like thin soap membranes
Caught on the plastic wands of children.
"He lit a fire
And it blazed, blazed,
Blazed, blazed, blazed
'Til it ran out of material
The last ember glowed
Charred, scarred
Seared, cleared
Working like a microwave and
Melting
From the inside out.
"He took a rope
And hung, hung,
Hung, hung, hung
'Til the last breath dropped from my lips
With a shuddering rasp
Purple in the face
Tongue lolling and lopsided
Looking more like a shade of
Crayon
Than a human face.
Oh, the power of a few
Choice words
Fueled by love," She heard him recite from memory, voice shaking with indecisiveness as if he was not sure about what he was going to say next. She gritted her teeth in anger but before she could say anything he continued, "Or how about this one:
"It has started: the
"Crumbling of my world. It's falling piece by piece
And I can't stop it. The
Need to breathe and the
Need to survive take priority and
Override any other thought.
They say that one minute of happiness
"Belittles a year of sadness…Yeah,
Right. At this moment, nothing could
Ever glue my world together again.
At least, with everything as it was Before.
That's how I will refer to things from now on: Before It
Happened and After the Fact.
Everyone is gone and now
"I am all alone.
"All of the trust, the trysts, and the truths are gone,
Murdered,
"Drowned. The former
Rock in my life has eroded, crumbled, not
Over millions of years as it
Was supposed to.
No.
It could never be that easy for me.
Never.
Get out of my head, get out of my head!
"Help me. Anyone.
Everyone. Someone. Just bring me to
Life and help me live, help me breath.
Pick me up and take
"Me where I belong.
Elevate my soul and keep me from crumbling.
"The first letters of every line spell out something: 'I cannot breath; I am drowning. Help me'."
Sydney threw off the arms on her shoulders and completely turned her back on him, shaking her head in disbelief. "Now you're stealing my writing, too. Is there any part of my life that you don't want to destroy?"
Vaughn ignored her. "Don't pretend you didn't write these because of me."
"Don't flatter yourself."
"God, Sydney…! If I know…how it would affect you…Never imagined…I never would have…If I only knew…"
"Yeah, well, there's nothing you can do about it now. You're married to Her, and I know you won't break those vows. Not even for me," She added in a whisper. Then she raised her voice again. "You're better than that. And I don't want to break up a perfectly happy relationship." Those knives were back again and they brought some friends as well. "What I can't understand is how you could manage to get over me in two years. Two years, Vaughn! Not even that long: you said you met her a year ago. God, you must really have a thing for the agents you handle. And no body…how could you be sure that I was…That I wasn't going to…" She trailed off into silence, too flustered to express her thoughts synchronously.
"I'm married…But I'm not married to Karen."
She internally rolled her eyes. Her brain did not get a chance to process that further before her mouth shot off. "Karen, Jill, Michele, Liz, Bob, Joe…What difference does it make? It's somebody! Names don't matter; we both know how easily those can change."
"Syd, I'm married to you."
Her eyes flew open and she struggled to keep her back to him; most of her thought he was lying, that this was his half-hearted, cruel, and disorganized way of getting her back on his side. But, as always, there was a sliver of indecision: maybe he was telling truth.
"What?" She had not even realized she had spoken. Giving in to the majority of her conscience, she turned around and gazed into his eyes, searching and pleading to find some shred of validity. The moon was directly behind him, a corona of white light encircling his head, shrouding his features in blackness. But his eyes glowed with pain, agony, and unshed tears, the strength and amount of which surprised her beyond description.
"I am married to you," He repeated, the ring easily slipping off his slick finger. Reaching for her hand, he scooted closer and pressed the object into the centre of her palm. Sydney reluctantly turned it over in the dim light, trying to see if there was an inscription. Vaughn saved her the trouble. "It says '10/1: True Love'. I married a woman who everyone thought was dead. Do you know how incredibly hard that was, Sydney?"
She was still speechless, gripping the ring so tightly that she thought it would soon become welded into her hand. Her throat felt like it, too, had a band around it, and the band was slowly shrinking. The buzzing in her brain would not cease, and she was too disoriented to form coherent sentences. "How…What…Why…How…Huh?"
Vaughn clasped both of her hands with his own, squeezing the ring between them. The pain and suffering oozing from his eyes and knotted brow prompted Sydney's eyes to finally overflow again. "Before I explain everything, you must understand this. I love you. I always have and I always will: two years or two thousand years could never change that. I know we never really said it before so I'm saying it now. This finger, this hand, this body has only ever been for you. I will accept — I will 'settle for' — nobody else. There could never be anyone for me but you."
Sydney did not know how to respond. Vaughn released her hands and moved to hug her; she let him, but this time it was she who was unresponsive. When he pulled away she finally mustered up the strength to speak. "Explain. Now."
* * *
He took an entire five minutes to compose himself, stabbing at his tearing eyes as if he were unaccustomed to stemming their flow. "What should I start with?"
"There's more than one thing that you lied about?"
Vaughn winced and began pulling on his earlobe out of instinct, trying to find a release for his nervous energy. Another minute or so passed as he sifted through his options.
She was beginning to think that he was not going to start again when he mumbled something. "What was that?"
"I said, 'I'll start with Will.'"
"You mean, he isn't paralyzed?"
"Oh no, he is," Vaughn reassured her. "But…he really did want to see you. We were forced to keep him away, though."
"But—but why?"
He sighed. "Let me finish first. Then I'll explain." She nodded, urging him to continue. "There is no Karen. Well, I take that back: she's a real person, but that's just her alias. She does work for the CIA and she does live in D.C., but she has a fiancé over there as well." The words were starting to flow in torrents, now that he was more confident and in control. He barreled on.
"There was actually no reason to keep you in a cell all of that time." He laughed shortly. "You could have officially requested to have been moved to a safe house or even put up in a hotel. Why didn't you?"
"I—I didn't k-know that you c-could," Sydney stammered out of both cold and surprise.
Vaughn shrugged his shoulders. "Well, it wouldn't have mattered: Kendall probably would have denied you flat out."
"What about my money? Where did it go?"
"Ahem," He cleared his throat and straightened his back, squaring his shoulders. "Um, I, uh, merged our accounts after I, we…You know. But don't worry," He added hastily, "I didn't touch your money. I was still holding out hope that you would turn up. If you didn't…well, then it would sit there 'til I did. But your credit cards were canceled. Dumb ass bankers wouldn't let me change them to my name. Thank God I gave up dealing with them."
Sydney chuckled slightly but simmered quickly upon seeing the pleased look on his face. "What about Weiss? Was he in on this at all? Please say he was just an innocent bystander."
Another heavy sigh. "No one involved in your case was an 'innocent bystander', Sydney. We all had our parts to play. Our stupid, goddamn parts." His face hardened like the rock they were perched upon. "He was the one who stole the stuff you wrote, but I guess you figured that out already. Will was supposed to analyze it, to see if you had inadvertently revealed something about where you've been. When he realized that it was too personal for anyone else to see, he reported that it was just incoherent rambling and handed it off to me. I memorized it all. That's when I realized I had to tell you the truth about everything. Before it got out of hand.
"I probably shouldn't be telling you this," He continued, staring at the hands tightly folded in his lap, "but Weiss was bugged during all of your conversations."
"What?"
"This sounds completely unprofessional, but what he did was at my insistence. I was living vicariously through Eric. I-I…I craved a real conversation with you, Syd. But you wouldn't talk to me, and I couldn't truthfully talk to you. Not at all. So as soon as I'd leave, I would run up to the surveillance room and just watch and listen to you two talk and joke and be happy. It-it made me happy, Syd, to know that even if it was just for a minute, you were happy as well. That what we had done hadn't completely ruined and broken you. It also cemented a conclusion I came to a long time ago: you are truly the strongest, most amazing, most wonderful, and most beautiful woman I ever have and ever will know. But that doesn't excuse my actions, and I don't' deserve your forgiveness for anything I've done. I'm just telling you my reasons so you don't have to beat yourself up over the 'why's and the 'how's of it all. I just hope you understand that I've done everything I've ever done out of love for you."
He winced prematurely, positive that she would either verbally berate him…or simply push him off the rock.
Sydney mentally pulled out her automatic compartmentalizer and filed away all the confusion she was feeling at the time. After a few moments of thinking of anything else that could have been lied about she asked, "Is it time for the reasons yet, or is there more?" She had not meant for the sarcasm and the hostility to slip into her tone. Seeing him cringe definitely did not help her guilt.
Still averting his eyes he answered, "Do you want the short version or the long version?"
"Let's try the short first."
"The CIA made me do it."
"You've got to be kidding me. That's not an acceptable answer. I'll take the long version, thank you very much; I've got all the time in the world."
He gazed up at her from under his eyebrows. "I'm dead serious, Syd. Devlin and Kendall ordered us to lie about everything. Kerr and Barnett said that if we…upped the emotional ante…it could help us figure out where you've been. Apparently it's been proven that if the subject has been under emotional stress, it can either help the regression therapy extraordinarily…or it can immensely hinder it. Your father was hell-bent on getting the recovery process over with as fast as possible, so he decided to roll the dice. And see what we've got? The CIA now has so many leads that they don't know which one they should go after first! And it's all because of you! Isn't that amazing?"
She scoffed. "Yeah, but wasn't it at the expense of my sanity? My mental stability? I've said it before and I'll say it again: since when have you been one to follow the rules? What happened to the Michael Vaughn who would damn protocol, burn the rulebook page by page if he had to? What happened to the man who would do anything to save me, save us? Did he just die when I disappeared?"
"Syd, I've been breaking the rules since the moment I met you; what makes you think I stopped when you disappeared?! I've done nothing but shun them for two years! Hell, I'm doing it right now; this is classified information, and I'm jeopardizing the success of your therapy by telling you! You have to realize that I'm being extremely selfish here. I couldn't stand to be away from you, to keep from touching or kissing you — let alone act out this charade — any longer. I thought I would go insane! So no, the Michael Vaughn you knew two years ago did not die; he just…got a little crazier." They both cracked small smiles, and his gaze met hers again as their hands crossed the gap between them and intertwined themselves.
She grinned stupidly down at their union. That was the hand that held his ring, and now it was nestled safely between their cold, wet flesh. She squeezed his hand to remind him of its presence. "Where's my ring?" Syd teased, gazing back into his eyes.
Vaughn's smile slowly disappeared. "It was buried in your casket. I-I honestly didn't know what to do with it. Everyone else thought that we had gotten married before you disappeared, so they assumed that the ring had disappeared with you."
"Wait a second. How did everyone else know that you…" She trailed off, unsure of how to finish. Suddenly, the prospect dawned on her. "You changed my last name, didn't you? You changed my last name and put 'Vaughn' on my headstone instead of 'Bristow'." He nodded silently, anguish reappearing in his eyes in the form of tears. Sydney smiled warmly, slipping her hand out of his so she could slide the band of silver back onto his finger. "Sydney Vaughn…Ugh, I should have stuck with my maiden name. What if someone called out 'Agent Vaughn!' and we both turned around to look? It would get really confusing."
Vaughn looked at her with confusion masking excitement. "Are you — Do you mean — You still—"
"Yes, Michael, I want to marry you. It's been four years: I've waited long enough."
The pair stayed silent for a time, content to watch the moon dip beyond the horizon, creating a silver walkway on the water that lead directly to their boulder island.
Sydney shivered again and this time he did not hesitate to pull her close, settling her between his legs and wrapping his arms around her from behind. A question abruptly popped into her mind. "If you weren't off gallivanting with Karen during my absence, then what were you doing?"
"Looking for you," He answered soberly. "They had a task force for about a year; then Washington had us disband and bury you. But your father and I kept going, following every possible lead, and every time we were grasping at straws. You have no idea how frustrating it is to get your hopes up and then have your legs cut right out from under you. Will would have helped, but he was so drugged half of the time that he didn't know which way was up. But I never gave up hope, Syd. I never would have stopped looking for you. Never. When Weiss called to tell me that they found you…it was the happiest phone call of my life."
"Even better than when you called the hotel in Santa Barbara?"
And the pain was back. Why did she have to keep doing that?
"A different kind of better," He replied, hugging her even tighter. "And besides, we'll go to Santa Barbara for our honeymoon."
Sydney's cheeks hurt from smiling so widely. "Honeymoon…sounds about right."
* * *
"Syd, do we really have to do this? Can't we just get you another ring?"
"No way! I want that one."
"Okay. You heard the lady: start digging." Groundskeepers for the cemetery began shoveling away sod and dirt in front of Sydney Vaughn's headstone. It was a day before their wedding and Sydney insisted on having the ring he had buried. So they rounded up three workers from the CIA cemetery's landscaping staff and set them to work.
It had been over a year since Sydney Bristow resurfaced. Their copious amount of leads had been wheedled down 'til there were very few left. Still insistent on obtaining the information, Sydney visited Agent Kerr and Doctor Barnett, much to the displeasure of Agent Vaughn. He did not exactly enjoy picking up the pieces of his fiancée every Thursday night. But they had survived by some miraculous feat and were preparing for their impending wedding, despite the obscenely morbid fashion.
"Tell them to dig faster, Vaughn; I want to get home," She whispered in his ear, her breath tickling his small hairs. She pulled away from his neck grinning from ear to ear. He slung an arm around her waist and barked an order to rush them along.
An abrupt whirring noise sounded from behind the couple, and they turned simultaneously to see Will rolling over the grass in his new motorized wheelchair. Syd's mile widened even more, dimples exploding, as she broke contact with Vaughn and raced to meet her friend. "Oh God, Will, I haven't seen you in forever! Are you out of the hospital for good now? No more surgeries or anything?" Will Tippin had been out of the hospital for less than a blink of an eye before a blood vessel near his spinal cord ruptured, sending him right back in. He had been in and out ever since.
Will shrugged his shoulders in earnest. "To be honest, I have no idea. I'm just trying to lie low until tomorrow: this is one event that I don't want to watch on videotape." Sydney had taped her 'birthday party' for him last year: all it consisted of was Syd and Vaughn chit chatting with cardboard cutouts and having frosting fights with the camera.
Vaughn gave a shout to grab their attention; apparently the workers had finished their ministrations. As Syd and Will approached the dirty casket, he undid the padlock and lifted the lid. Inside, laying up on the satin lining was a horribly decaying sprig of foliage and a slim silver band decorated only by a miniscule diamond. She angled it so she could read the inscription; it was the same as her fiancé's. She smiled up at him with such a glow that he wondered if she really was a fallen angel. They shared a tender moment while Will looked on to a space only about ten yards away. Ignoring his friends, he nudged the lever forward and followed his line of sight.
Both of them peered after him, knowing where he was going but willing him to turn back all the same. But then something off in the distance caught Vaughn's eye: a flash of grey and black disappearing into a canopy of green. His subsequent sigh was a touch melodramatic. "I think you should go talk to him, Syd. I'll meet you by the car."
"But what about—"
"I'll take care of it."
She nodded and silently stalked off after her friend.
When he was sure she was absorbed in Will and their mutual grief-filled past, he began stealing his way across the cemetery, attempting to be as inconspicuous and camouflaged as possible, finally penetrating the curtain of leaves beneath the weeping willow. There he found—
"Jack." The man nodded curtly, not looking at his future son-in-law but at his daughter and her friend, mourning in front of a headstone. "I'm surprised you came."
"You said it was urgent," He replied matter-of-factly, dragging his eyes onto the younger agent. "I assumed it had to do with my daughter."
"It does." Vaughn knew it was useless to dance around the issue. "Rumours have been flying around lately about what really happened to Sydney." No response. "People have been saying…Jack, people have been saying that the CIA were the ones that organized your daughter's kidnapping, that took away two years from her. That they did it because the government thought that our relationship was a threat to national security. Are they right, Jack? Are the rumours true?"
Mr. Bristow glared into Vaughn's eyes with a harsh, steely edge. "Tell Sydney I'll be at the ceremony tomorrow. I assume it starts at the same time." With that, the senior Agent Bristow calmly strode away with strong, measured strides that did not betray his age.
That was all the answer Michael Vaughn needed.
