CHAPTER FIVE
THEN [AND NOW]
They go back to LA, utterly forlorn and completely without hope [shattered, empty vessels that once held men].
Jack Bristow thinks [no, he knows] that the pain of the death of a loved one [carcrashdisappearancethirtyyears] can only be matched, only be surpassed by the betrayal [pictureloveSarkhow?KGBtraitortraitortraitor] of one closest to you.
He knows this [was completely destroyed by this.]
And now, he reflects bitterly, Michael Vaughn knows this.
The younger man does not speak on the flight, does not eat, does not sleep.
He sits there, his face torn between anger [furyragebetrayal] and sadness [griefpainhurtbetrayed].
He doesn't know what to believe, what to think, what to do.
There was a photo of the woman he loved [love doesn't begin to describe it, he thinks bitterly to himself] in a bedroom of a Scottish farmhouse.
She was alive. [at least she isn't dead…wasn't dead]
She was standing next to a man Vaughn knows only as Mr. Sark.
He's dangerous. Treacherous. A hired gun, an assassin.
Sydney isn't safe with him.
And yet he was hugging her in the picture [he stood behind her, arms wrapped possessively around her waist/she hadn't pushed him away], his head nestled on her shoulder, looking down at a swaddle of pink blankets in her arms [babyblankets?baby?baby?baby?].
Sydney wasn't pregnant. [there would have been signs, his brain screamed. blood tests. morning sickness. evidence.]
So there is a mystery baby, Vaughn concludes.
A baby, in Sydney's arms. A baby in Sydney's arms in a photo of Sark and Sydney [theylooklikethey'reinlove].
Has she betrayed him? Was it all a lie?
Was it all another act, one more disguise?
Does she have another handler somewhere, someone who told her how to win my heart [steal my heart/soul/everything]?
She deceived Sloane and SD-6 for so long [deceived the world/her friends/her lovers]…could she have deceived him for just as long?
Vaughn doesn't want to believe this of her, but doesn't know whether or not his refusal to believe it comes from desperation [despairlovegriefsorrowabsoluteandutterdespair] or from intuition ["I have a feeling," he had told her the first time he met her.]
Does he not believe that she is capable of this treachery because of his love [his "emotional attachment" to her/against protocol] for her, or because he believes that she was real when she was with him [surely that could not have been pretend?].
Michael Vaughn does not know what to believe, what to think, what to do.
He looks over at Jack Bristow and finally understands everything.
He understands the cold exterior [because if you let go you would never regain control of yourself].
He understands his absence during Sydney's childhood. [she is his salvation and his downfall, all wrapped up into one neat little package…when he looks into her eyes, he sees his wife's face]
He understands his ruthlessness, his disregard for everything.
He understands Jack Bristow better than anyone would probably want him to understand Jack Bristow – better than Jack Bristow would want anyone to understand Jack Bristow.
Oh, yes, he understands everything now.
He understands everything except that which is most important – he cannot understand that one photo, that one simple image that proves both that she is alive, but at the same time is dead to them.
And he wonders whether or not the person that he loved more than his life itself [he would rather die than give her up, he thinks…he sold his soul for her!] betrayed him, if his sacrifice [the sins committed in her name…the torture, the pain, the blood split…] was for nothing, and he wants to break down and cry, but he knows he can't ["Mikey, you have to be a man, you know, know that your Daddy's gone…you can't let people see you cry! What would they think? You've got to be strong. Be a man. Make Daddy proud…"], because he'd never be able to stop.
He sold his soul for her, and now he doesn't know if she ever loved him [was it just empty words?], if any of the sweet nothings whispered in his ears late at night were true, if the sounds she made when he kissed her, whether or not it was all a fake, another disguise [like Russian dolls, layers inside layers inside layers], just another role for the great and wonderful Sydney Bristow to play.
He wonders if she ever laughed at his ignorance [because he'd never suspected a thing, had he?]
And yet a little voice whispers in his head words that he does not want to hear: it asks a question he cannot answer. "Would you prefer her dead, or a traitor?"
He can't answer this, but some part of him wonders if he believed her a traitor so readily because betraying them would mean that she would still be alive….and where there is life there is a possibility of redemption [maybe…].
But these are just empty questions, ultimately.
So he sits in the plane over the Atlantic, and he looks out the window, at the nothingness below.
And he wonders how Jack Bristow took the news of his wife's betrayal.
* * *
He remembers the first time he told her he loved her.
* * *
He had just been shot by that bastard Sark [he stood at the top of the stairs, gun in his hand/he could see the bullet coming, but wasn't fast enough to dodge].
[They were holding hands, lying down on a picnic blanket in a park. It was autumn, and all around them leaves were falling, red, and gold. It was beautiful – she was beautiful.]
She ran down the stairs, kissed his forehead, ripped open his jacket to reveal the Kevlar vest underneath that had stopped the bullet short of his heart. "Vaughn, Vaughn…you okay?" she asked anxiously [worriedconcernednowyouknowwhatthisislike].
[She was reading a book, something for one of her classes. He lay on his back, watching the leaves fall. She was adorable when she read, when her nose crinkled just like…that. "Laura," he whined plaintively, "Put down that book!"
She, quite wisely [in her opinion] ignored him, only to be surprised a few minutes later by a pair of arms sneaking around her waist and snatching the book away.]
"Yeah, Syd, I'm okay," he replied gingerly [he was sure he'd broken at least one rib], watching her forehead and nose scrunch up in worry.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. We can't waste anymore time here Syd," he said, letting her help him to his feet.
[He threw the book away into a pile of leaves, prompting a squeak of outrage.
"Jack! I was reading that!"
"Was, Laura, was reading that." He grinned at her
annoyed expression, pinning her down onto the blanket and proceeding to tickle
her senseless.
"Oof! Jack! That tickles!" she exclaimed loudly.
"I know," he replied, still grinning like a loon.]
She hugged him once he got to his feet, and he held onto her tightly [hold me like you'll never let me go, he begged silently], as if she was his life itself [because she was in so many ways].
He kissed her forehead gently and whispered into her ear, "I love you."
"I know," she replied, kissing him back. "I know."
[He stopped tickling her suddenly, far too mesmerized by her eyes to keep up the tickling.
Tilting his head slightly, he kissed her on the forehead, and then each corner of her mouth, and her eyelids…"Have I told you lately exactly how beautiful you are?"
She shook her head, grinning equally mischievously as they continued their
little game.
"Tell me," she suggested slyly.
"Well, I particularly like this spot here," he replied, kissing a spot on her neck, "and these points here," with this, he placed a kiss on each corner of her mouth, "and of course here," he finished, kissing the tip of her nose.
"Of course, I like all these points, but if I was to single them out individually we'd be here all day, and I'm getting a bit cold…"
He went serious suddenly, and his eyes darkened. "I love you, you know."
"I know," was all that she replied.]
* * *
The first time they met.
* * *
He was in a small bookstore somewhere in LA…the bookstore is now long gone, and the beautiful little antique shopping district where it was located was long ago replaced by a big mall.
He was browsing in the classics section…looking for a new copy of To Kill A Mockingbird, he thinks. A tree branch had broken a window in a rare electrical storm, letting in torrential rain and soaking his copy of the book completely.
He couldn't find the book anywhere. Exasperated, he had turned to leave when a rather striking [beautiful, actually] young woman had walked up behind him and handed him the last copy that the store had. He wondered out loud how she had known what he was looking for…she simply laughed softly and told him that he had been muttering the title rather loudly. He was quite embarrassed at this, I remembers.
He had never been the most confident of men with women…especially not those as beautiful as Laura was. But she took pity on him and introduced herself.
"I'm Laura Young. And you're a fan of Harper Lee, I take it?" She offered her hand. He had stared blankly for a few seconds before accepting her proffered hand and shaking it lightly.
"Ah…yes. Jack Bristow. Pleased to meet you, Laura. My old copy got soaked in that storm recently and I…"
He had started to ramble a little, before she laughed again, and this time he noticed how musical her laugh was. He had turned red from embarrassment, she told me later, rather amused.
"Well, Jack, I'm actually just about to have a cup of coffee. Would you care to join me? I hate to sit alone."
Well, how could he have refused such a lovely lady's invitation? He said as much, and followed her to a small table [that's right…I remember now the reason I frequented that store so much…its owner was a fantastic cook, and made incredible coffee] outside the store.
It was a bright, clear, fine day, a very unusual LA day. It was a beautiful day, the sun shone brightly, and he was having coffee with the most beautiful woman he had ever had the pleasure of meeting. What more could a man want?
The owner, a Mr. Martov, rushed over to our table and took their order – she took her coffee black, no cream or sugar. A very Russian trait, now that he thinks back upon everything. He thinks he must have been so…intoxicated by her presence, even then, that he ignored the little things that must have been so glaringly obvious to others. He wonders now perhaps how much of our "chance" meeting was chance, and how much a carefully orchestrated ploy. Mr. Martov, he'd long concluded, was a KGB sleeper agent. The bookstore located so close to his apartment, a setup. The destruction of the book? Well, that might have been a coincidence.
As they sipped our coffee, they talked – first of the weather, as strangers are prone to do, then of the neighbourhood [she lived three blocks from his building, he learnt], and then of books. She was a post-grad literature student, and Oscar Wilde was one of her favourite authors.
They sat and talked for hours, and he began to put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was the woman he thought was Laura Young. He learnt the name of her dog [Darcy, after the Pride and Prejudice character]; he discovered that she was originally from Wisconsin [close enough to Russia, he supposes…] and that she loved the cold and hated the heat; she was an only child and that her parents had died two years ago in a plane crash. He in turn told her that he worked for the government [just boring stuff, though]; he told her that he'd never been in love, and that he preferred reading to watching television. He told her that I had a degree in politics and international relations, and that I had nearly chosen a degree in engineering over politics, but had been sucked in by the promise of serving my country [in this, at least, we shared something; we both would do anything our country asked of us…she sold her body and her soul; I sold everything I had…twice.] He told her that he liked classical music and the Beatles.
He only realized many years later that the odds were that she knew his past better than he did.
It was nearly four hours later when she announced that she had to meet some friends for a friend's birthday party. He asked if maybe they could catch the local production of To Kill A Mockingbird together sometime?
"I'd be delighted, Jack. Here's my number," she replied, tearing a corner of her napkin off and scribbling a number with a pen fished from her backpack. And like that, she was off.
Jack Bristow just stared numbly. She was graceful, witty, beautiful, intelligent, yes…but she had an indescribable quality that surpassed physical beauty. She was…she had charisma. He was drawn to her like moths are drawn to a lamp – hopelessly entrapped by the light, even as it lures them unknowingly to their doom.
Jack Bristow was hooked, sunk and captured, all in one chance meeting - he just didn't know it yet.
Michael Vaughn lived his life by the book.
He worked hard.
He was a patriot, serving his country.
He kept in shape, which in turn kept his doctor happy.
He rang his mother every Sunday afternoon, just to check in.
He fed his dog Donovan every morning, at almost exactly 6am, after he had woken up.
He had a pretty blonde girlfriend, Alice, who worked in advertising and liked going sailing on weekends.
He had a routine, a pattern – he had order to his life.
He had, as a matter of fact, a reasonably happy life. A normal life, as a matter of fact.
That all changed on October 1st, 2001.
The day Sydney Bristow entered Michael Vaughn's life, everything changed.
It was love at first sight [he knows it sounds like something from a bad romance novel, but its true].
She sat in his office, perfectly still, eyes dark and bloodshot, mouth bloody and missing teeth, with the brightest, bozo-red hair he's ever seen.
And yet she's still beautiful.
She's strong, that much is evident [not
just physically, but mentally as well], but vulnerable at the same time, a
walking ball of contradictions.
He's never seen anyone so incredibly strong and resilient but at the same time as close to tears with every word.
She's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and he's just fallen head over heels for the one person he knows he cannot [is forbidden to] develop feelings for.
His normal life ends today; ends here in this place, this office, with this woman sitting in front of this man.
His life will never be the same again, however much he might try to deny it [he kept going out with Alice, because the easiest person to lie to is yourself], however much he might try to fight it [he doesn't want to love her but he does, so much].
He loves her.
He's loved her ever since he met her.
He thought he had a happy life, a good life before he met her, but he thinks he must have been living life blind before then.
He doesn't know how he lived without her in his life, doesn't know how he was ever satisfied with anything [with anyone] except [before] her.
He's hers, body, heart, soul [hooked, sunk, captured? surely not]. From the moment she walked in, he thinks that if she had asked for the moon, he would have killed himself trying to get it for her.
He broke into the Vatican with her, went to Taipei, contracted a near-incurable disease because of her.
He's taken risks he never suspected he would, done things no one in their right mind would ever do [not for anything short of love].
He loves her.
He always has [even when he hated her for making him love her], and he always will.
And in the end, that's the one overriding truth of Michael Vaughn's life – that he loves Sydney Bristow.
That's all he is, when he gets right down to it – he's hers [or she is his]. His work [protect her], his life [love her], his everything [care for her].
He didn't ask for it to be this way [never thought he would want it to be like this].
He never wanted the sleepless nights, tossing and turning alone in bed wondering if the woman he loved was safe.
He never wanted to have to lie to his best friend ["trust is a tricky thing."]
He never wanted to be consumed by his love for someone. He had always been independent, in control of his life, no one's slave.
And yet he was consumed by his love for her [and it was glorious and it was extraordinary and it was wonderful and it was painful and it was terrible and it was the best and the worst thing that had ever happened to him but he certainly didn't want it to end], taken over by the pain and the glory and the overwhelming idea that maybe a normal life [normal girlfriend, order in life] wasn't what he really wanted [wasn't what he really needed], and that maybe what he wanted was everything he could not have.
Michael Vaughn's life changed [for the better or the worse, who can tell?] the day he met Sydney Bristow.
That's all he knows anymore.