One Year Later
Nice
"You sure you don't want to talk about this?"
Weiss asked as he handed Vaughn a cup of coffee.
"There's nothing to talk about," Vaughn said
pretending to be completely focused on the mission, even though there was
nothing happening to focus on yet. He knew that Weiss would notice how irritated
Sydney had been at him back in LA before they left, but somehow he hoped that he
wouldn't bring it up. Yeah....sure.
"I share my fights with you!" Weiss said.
Vaughn looked at him, "No you don't."
"Yeah, I do. Remember when Alan pissed in the living
room?" Weiss pointed out.
"That was your dog!" Vaughn shot back.
"Yeah, but I was angry about it and I let you know how
upset I was," Weiss argued. Vaughn shook his head and considered telling
Weiss that housetraining problems did not exactly constitute a fight, but
decided against it.
"I appreciate you trying to cheer me up, but you don't
have to do that,"
"I know I don't have to. As a matter of face if I
weren't your friend I would tell you to just quit your damn whining-"
"Hey! You were the one that brought it up!" Vaughn
argued.
"However!" Weiss cut in, annoyed at being
interrupted, "I am your friend, so I want to hear about it! Tell me!"
Vaughn sighed "It was just a disagreement about Jack, among other
things."
"What other things?" Weiss asked.
"What? What other things?," Vaughn said.
"You just said other things," Weiss said.
"There are no other things! It's just an
expression." Vaughn argued.
"All right, here's a thought," Weiss said after a
moment, "Tell her how you feel," Vaughn gave him a look, "I know,
I know, I was the one who said this is a line you don't cross but that was
before I nearly died. And you know what they say about the white light and all
that? No. They're wrong. It's darkness. Darkness."
Vaughn waited for a moment the finally said, "I
understand."
He did understand what Weiss was trying to, very
inarticulately, say. He wasn't sure though. Him and Sydney had argued about him
not telling her that he knew about the bugs her father found in his home, but he
didn't mention that she also brought up Alice because he was afraid he would
read too much into it.
He was interrupted when the man they were looking for came
onto the screen. "Okay here we go," Weiss said and flipped on their
connection to Sydney's comm.
Sydney walked through the airport behind Schatz at his
bodyguards. She pushed up her sunglasses that allowed her to see through his
clothes. The Gyroscope that they were looking for was in a shoulder harness
under his coat. She turned activated the Artful Dodger the way Marshall had
shown her and headed toward the security station.
"How you doin'?" she said to the guard in a New
York accent. As she passed through the detector it beeped. The guard
automatically stopped her.
"Oh oh oh ! Voulez-vous repasser mademoiselle, s'il vous
plaît," he said, telling her to go back through.
"It wasn't me!" she said.
"Si c'est vous. Bracelet, collier... Allez," he
said motioning for her to take them off. She sighed and began pulling off all
the punk jewelry she had on. Meanwhile she saw the second security guard
checking Schatz's ticket.
"Damn machine, happens every time I go through these,"
she complained.
"C'est seulement pour votre sécurité mademoiselle.
Merci," the guard said.
"Whatevah. At JFK I went through five times, they
literally had me take off my shirt," She tossed the last piece other than
the ring in to the basket and walked through again, it went off again as
planned.
"Oh, my gawd!" she yelled.
"Allez, suivez-moi, on va passer à côté, s'il vous
plaît," he said, taking her by the arm.
"Hey watch the hand. It's not a date!" she pulled
back, as she did so she spotted Schatz walking through the machine. "I see,
you wanna get your thrills?" she said, removed her jacket, and went
back through the machine bumping into Schatz along the way.
"Excusez-moi," she flirted as she slipped the
gyroscope out of the harness beneath his coat. On the other side she put the
jacket on the conveyer belt and walked back through. No beep.
"Merci, mademoiselle," the guard said.
"Thank you," she huffed and slipped the gyroscope
into her bag as she walked away.
She put her jacket back on as she walked toward the utility
room that the CIA was using to monitor the airport. When she walked in Weiss was
the first to come up to her.
"Good work," he said.
"Okay," Vaughn said, hanging up the phone,
"They said everything is fine. We should be out of here in three hours or
so."
She looked at him briefly then went over to a table to unpack
the gyroscope. She was still irritated at him for not telling her about the
problems her father was having, and she was mad at herself for bring up Alice
while they were arguing. But damn it was it too much to ask to be informed
things about her own father?! She heard him stepping up beside her as she was
muddling over that.
"Listen, uh, do you want to go to dinner? When we were
driving into town I saw this place. Rousseau, I think it's called," he
said.
That was certainly not what she'd expected. "Vaughn,
we... we can't do that," she said.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Well, we have work to do........and we're leaving
soon," she responded, 'and I'm supposed to be mad at you' she added
silently.
"We've got the gyroscope, we're not leaving for three
hours, and I am hungry. I'm starving. I mean, we're going to be together anyway,
why can't we be eating? Aren't you hungry?" he asked.
"Yeah I'm hungry," she said after a pause, "Let's
do it."
"Yeah?" he asked smiling.
She nodded, "I'm going to change."
"That's a good idea," he said as they laughed at
her purple haired punk costume.
"Okay," she said.
As Sydney walked off Weiss creped up to where Vaughn was
still standing. "And?" he said, obviously trying to contain his
curiosity.
"We're going to dinner," he answered as he re-remembered
how to breath.
"Ooooh yah!" Weiss said and did a celebratory
dance.
"Okay, in exchange for this I'll take an éclair."
"Right," Vaughn laughed as he walked off to go
change.
"If they're small, bring at least two," Weiss
called after him.
"Voilà, par là. Alors, vous restez en ville?"
Monsieur Rousseau asked as they walked into the small bistro.
"Non, de passage seulement. On va à Avignon. Ma mère
est née à Montpellier." Vaughn answered.
"Well, you speak French almost as well as I do," he
said looking pleased, he turned to Sydney and gestured to take her coat
"Mademoiselle."
"Thank you," she said and handed it too him as they
sat down.
"See what you like and I'll be right back," he
said. With that Monsieur Rousseau turned and walked away, leaving an awkward
silence in his wake. They half smiled at each other and glanced at their menus.
After a few of the longest seconds in history Sydney finally
jumped in, "I think wine would help the situation."
"I was just thinking the same thing. S'il vous
plait?" Vaughn agreed, Rousseau quickly stepped back over, "We'd like
a bottle of red wine please."
"Oh yes, of course," Rousseau nodded and left to go
get it.
Sydney sort of signed and laughed at the same time. This was
really ridiculous. They'd known each other for a year and had almost been killed
together several times but they were nervous about simple dinner?
"So I heard you on the phone with base ops. Your code
name is Boy Scout?" she asked, trying keep away another awkward silence.
"Yeah," he laughed.
"Why?"
"Um, it goes back to CST -- clandestine service
training," he started then hesitated, "You don't want to hear
this."
"Vaughn."
"Okay, the Boy Scouts have a motto--"
"Always be prepared," she finished.
He nodded, "On my first day, I showed up and I had
forgotten my field manual so the instructor said, "That is your one screw
up. From now on, you'd better be prepared."
She laughed and he simply nodded and said, "Aren't you
glad you asked?"
"It's okay," she said still laughing. Rousseau
returned with their bottle of wine, so they paused while he poured their
glasses.
"Tell me about your pets," Vaughn said once
Rousseau had gone.
"What?" she asked.
"Your pets. I want to know about every pet you ever had,"
he said.
She smiled at the sheer randomness of the question,
"Well not many actually. I had some goldfish my freshman year in college.
The frat house next to my dorm went around knocking on doors after pledge week
asking people if they wanted the fish they had left over."
He chuckled and waited for her to continue.
"And um......." her expression changed as she
continued, "....when I was five I had a puppy."
"And?"
"And what?" she asked hoping he would drop the
subject. He gave her a look.
"It died about five months later," she said,
"Do you remember when I told you about that camping trip where I broke my
arm?"
"Yeah" he said.
"Well what happened was that while my mom and I were out
hiking he broke free from where he was tied, ran up to the road and got hit by a
car. My parents told me later that afternoon and I just went crazy. I cried, I
screamed at my dad saying that it was his fault he should have saved him, and
then I went running off into the woods alone. I got about......I don't know
fifty feet when I tripped and went rolling down a hill. My parents found me a
couple seconds later and took me to the hospital," she said, "Once the
doctor was finished we were alone in the room. I remember I was scared and
angry. I expected them to yell at me and tell me I was bad but they didn't. They
simply that it had been a terrible day and that I should think about it and
learn from it and if I did that then it would be a day that I grew up a little,
and then they just left, I guess to fill out paper work or something."
"They were right about something though........I did
grow up a little," she finished. A silence followed as she sipped her wine.
Vaughn thought for a moment and then said, "You know
when I was in college we had this guy our dorm who would steal food from
people's refrigerators, so everyone on our floor together and set one up with a
trap so that it would dump a bucket cream corn on anyone who opened it without
moving the bucket. So later that day we heard a crash from the room where we set
up the bucket but it wasn't the person who had been stealing................it
turns out my roommate forgot to mention that his mother was coming to visit that
day."
As Vaughn finished his story Sydney sat confused for a moment
before asking, "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Nothing, I was hoping it would make you laugh," he
said blushing lightly.
She looked at him for a couple seconds and then laughed out
of disbelief. "Okay," she said shaking her head and pouring herself
more wine, "So what did you major in in college?"
"Law," he answered, "I never took the bar exam
though."
"So other than studying law and dropping buckets
of corn on people's heads," she said and gave him teasing look, "what
did you do in college."
"Not much actually.....played pool. It was my major
source of income for a while there," he answered.
"Playing pool. I can see it," she said.
"We should play sometime," he suggested.
"Yeah....we should," she agreed. A paused followed
in which both said nothing.
"So do you want to order?" she asked breaking the
silence.
Before he had a chance to answer they were interrupted by his
phone ringing. He gave her an apologetic look and answered it.
"Yeah?........Weiss, what's
up?..............What?..........a head of schedule?............forty five
minutes?............" he said into the phone a grim look crossing his face.
Sydney picked her napkin up off her lap and pinched along the crease.
"Yeah..........okay, we'll be there," he hung up
and looked back at her.
"We have to go," She she stated as he was still
preparing himself to fill her in. He looked at her and nodded. She placed the
napkin back on the table and they walked out the front door, both trying to hide
their disappointment and failing miserably.
