Here's chapter two! Translations of the
French can be found at the end of the chapter.
CHAPTER TWO
THEN
The last words Michael Vaughn had heard from the woman he loved [he
never gotten the chance to tell her that] were "I'll see you soon,
Vaughn. We still on for the hockey game tomorrow night?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world," he had
replied. [she loves the Zamboni]
"Great. I'll see you back in LA. Dorothy
out." [she loves that movie so
much, he thinks to himself amused]
She was supposed to have caught a plane an hour later.
She never boarded that plane.
When Vaughn tried to ring her cell a few hours later [maybe
she missed the plane and hasn't been able to call?] her phone [smashed
but still functional on the side of a road somewhere in Paris] just kept ringing, and ringing and ringing and ringing. His
stomach turned to ice as he asked if anyone had heard from Agent Bristow in the
last few hours [maybe she called and I was in the restroom?], only to
have the rest of the agents on duty just shake their heads.
A few minutes later, he was standing outside Jack
Bristow's office while Jack's secretary checked on the activities of her boss.
"Ah, yes, Agent Vaughn, go on in. He's just doing
some paperwork," the pretty young thing [if you were any other senior
CIA officer's secretary, then I'd suspect ulterior motives for your hire. But
Jack Bristow be swayed by a pretty face? Highly unlikely.]
replied coolly. [ah,
that explains a lot. The man of ice requires a doorkeeper to guard the
entrances to his lair]
"Thank you," he replied, nearly to the door
already.
"Ah, yes, Lucy, what is it this time?" Jack
didn't turn around from his computer screen as Vaughn entered the room.
"Agent Bristow, we have a problem."
"Mr. Vaughn, I really do not have time for your
'problem' right now." [cold hearted
bastard...his daughter hasn't been heard from in twelve hours, and he's
concerned with his paperwork?]
"Sydney never boarded her plane out of Paris," he announces.
This gets a reaction. Jack swings around rapidly.
"What do you mean she never boarded her plane?"
"I mean she didn't board the plane, and she hasn't
been heard from in twelve hours."
"Get a team together. We're going to France."
He stands rapidly, puts on his coat, and is out the door
before Vaughn can say a word.
Vaughn does as he's told, and gathers a team. [Craig....Dixon....Eric...get your gear together. We're going to France.]
They fly out an hour later, but Sydney Bristow is
already dying halfway across the world.
* * *
They spent a week in France, questioning every person Sydney came in contact with on her mission, with no success.
None of them have ever seen Jack Bristow or Michael
Vaughn like this.
They're desperate, ruthless [no use for protocol now],
stopping at nothing to try and obtain information about the last hour of Sydney's mission.
Eric Weiss finally realised both of them were at
breaking point when the guards led a man [the local Alliance station chief]
into an interrogation room one day [Wednesday. We had been in France since Saturday. Sydney disappeared on Friday]. Vaughn
and Jack entered the room after the man.
Three days later, the guards led out a battered, weeping
shell of a human being.
Weiss watched the first day of the interrogation tapes.
After that he couldn't face it anymore.
John-Pierre Rousseau stood in chains. Michael Vaughn
held a gun to his head, green eyes turned to glittering emeralds.
This time it was Jack Bristow's turn to demand the
location of Sydney Bristow.
"Ou est ma fille? Ou est ma fille?"
Once they realized that they were getting nowhere with
this technique, they sat him down, and they began to tell him, in graphic
detail, how they would force him to talk.
At this point, Weiss threw up in a trashbasket,
sickened at their description of the torture they would inflict. [where did Mike go? Where did the Michael Vaughn I
became friends with go? Because this man is not Mike.
This man is ruthless…]
Then they did what they had told him they would do.
They were ruthless, cold, in their inflictment of
pain upon Rousseau.
Eventually he talked.
"Rue 8 des anges, Place des Vosges."
"C'est tout
que je peux vous dire."
So they went to the Place des Vosges, a fashionable section of Paris filled with cafes and art galleries and ornate, expensive houses.
[cold though, no life within]
Number 8 in the Street of Angels [she called me her
guardian angel once, Vaughn reflected bitterly…I said I'd always be there for
her. But when she needed me, I wasn't there] was a tall, grand old house [imposing
and arrogant].
They burst into the manor house, the CIA agents and
some local counter-terrorism police that they had co-opted into the operation.
"Halte! Police!" they all shouted as they burst into the house.
They dropped flash grenades to stun any inside, and
charged in, guns at the ready, dressed in black SWAT gear, Kevlar vests
compulsory.
They found a housekeeper, a gardener, and a maid, trembling
in the corner of a bedroom.
There was a torture chamber in the basement, a
soundproofed room so no one could hear the screaming that went on within.
On the walls of this room were words written haphazardly
in blood.
"Sydney Bristow is dead."
They had thought the house was cold and arrogant from
the outside.
But what they had found inside broke their hearts [and
souls].
* * *
They questioned the servants found within the house for
hours.
They knew nothing, except that Mr. Sloane and his guests
[a charming young British man, a lovely older lady, and a younger woman who
had spent most of her time in her room] had left the day before for
someplace cooler [it was July, and the weather in Paris was sweltering].
The housekeeper had heard Mr. Sloane tell Mrs. Bristow [although
she always told them to call her Laura] that Sydney had always liked Scotland, particularly the coastline where you could see across to Ireland.
So they went to Scotland, because it was a pitiful clue but it was all that they had, and
at that point they were so desperate that they were ready to believe the most
pathetic whisper in the dark.
So they went, driven by love and fear and anger and hate
and want and need and the desperate need to know what had happened. They didn't
want to believe she was dead. It wouldn't have made sense for them to have
killed her, they thought to themselves. But was this reason speaking, or just the desperate thoughts of two men trying
beyond belief to cling to the hope that she was still alive?
* * *
Michael Vaughn throws up on the way to Scotland.
He hasn't been able to keep any food down since she had
disappeared [she took his heart, his conscience with her].
First it was because his stomach turned to ice [cold/clenching
pain/feels like stone/can barely breathe] the moment he realised she had
just…disappeared. He doesn't know what's happened to her, doesn't know if she's
cold or tired or lonely or hungry or if they're torturing her, or if she's
already dead or if the CIA will soon have another star on that wall [two
that I love/two stars…Daddy would like her, I know. Maybe they could keep one
another company while they wait for me…]. He just doesn't know, and in a
way that's what gets to him the most. He thinks that maybe it wouldn't be so bad
if she was just dead, because then it would be simple to end it all [because
there would be nothing worth living for without her...I have a gun, and
bullets, and I don't mind suicide missions.] He doesn't want to live
without her, and he doesn't want to live if she's not living alongside him. But
it's the not knowing that gets to him most. He doesn't know how his father
died, but he at least knows the name and face of his killer. This time there's
not really even that much, is there? All three of them
were/are there, all three could have been/could be
responsible for her death [Sloane/Sark/Irina…three faces of the devil].
He believes she's still alive [because the world's not that cruel, is it? She was free, and she was
happy, happier than she'd ever been…].
But he just wants to know her fate. Because it's the not
knowing which is killing him.
His stomach heaves and retches constantly, and he has
long since stopped eating anything except the plainest, simplest food [even
that doesn't stay down long, but it keeps Weiss from force feeding me].
He looks at his hands, and he can see them around
Rousseau's throat, can see them holding a cell phone, threatening to have
Rousseau unless he talked. ["Tuez-le… ou avez-vous autre chose à nous dire, M. Rousseau?"]
And he throws up again, wondering how on earth Jack
Bristow didn't kill himself years ago.
How does he do it? How does he stay so ruthless? We
tortured a man until he screamed out to his mother like a child, battered him
black and blue…we did things that they would do to extract information from a
prisoner.
He looks at his hands, and he sees those of the enemy.
I am becoming what I despise, he thinks bitterly to
himself.
But he knows he can't stop.
He will find her, even if it costs him everything he
has.
He doesn't care if it costs him his job, his family, his
friends, or even the ability to look himself in the mirror every morning
without being disgusted by what he sees looking back….he simply has to find
her.
Because nothing else matters to him
anymore.
[when I am with her,
my life is vivid, a Technicolour glory. Now everything's black and white, and I
want the colour back. I want to live again. I want to see her again, see her
face, touch her hair, kiss better her scars, hold her
in my arms again. I want to tell her I love her, and never let her go again. I
want her back, and I want to be able to live again.]
Nothing else matters.
There's some angsty!Vaughn for you. Hehehehe...*giggles evilly*
Oh, and some translations?
"Ou est
ma fille?" - "Where is my daughter?"
"Rue 8 des anges, Place
des Vosges" – "No. 8, the street of Angels,
Place des Vosges [an area of Paris]"
"C'est tout que je peux vous dire." – "I know
nothing else."
"Tuez-le… ou avez-vous autre chose à nous dire, M. Rousseau?" - "Kill him....or do
you have something else to tell us, Mr. Rousseau?"
Please read and review! :)
:)
Em