As You Were III: Clockwork

Rating: I guess in this installment it is slightly more R.

"Which one do I get to play with?"

It was amazing how one simple phrase could annihilate all rational thought in one's mind. Sydney's face was rosy with such mischievous innocence he was almost fooled by the serenity of her tone. Her words if taken out of context were perfectly innocuous. They were playful accompanied with the achingly familiar lilt in her voice and betrayed not a hint of malice. In her own distorted perception the rotunda was nothing more than a playground on a balmy spring day; this wasn't a hostage situation, it was a Sunday picnic.

There was no doubt in Vaughn's mind or soul that no matter how this travesty played out, in Sydney's head she perceived herself to be completely innocent of what she was doing.

And this terrified him.

Vaughn found himself recalling a phrase from a book he read a few years back. It loomed in his memory now as he watched Sydney act her part.

"Goodness comes from within…goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."

The sentence ricocheted through his insides with a hollow ache.

Whether Sydney had been brainwashed and how it had happened didn't mean jack-squat. She just wasn't Sydney anymore. That significant part of her had ceased to exist. She may be less than a person, but that was all a matter of relativity.

And even though it was complete weakness on his part, he still sick with love for her. That very same passion was meaningless in whatever nightmare she had emerged from.

And his heart broke for it.

Sark regarded her question with mock thoughtfulness. "Oh that's right. I promised you a toy, didn't I?" She nodded, somber. "Well then-"He spun her around in a long slow spin. "Pick one."

Sydney smiled blissfully as she twirled beneath his arm, hair whipping elfin-like around her face. In a vague way, it was almost like watching a train wreck. She stopped; his arm was still extended grasping her hand. She lifted her arm and pointed her finger in judgment.

"Bang," she whispered with a grin, quite pleased with her choice.

Even as Sark stabbed Vaughn in the neck with an injector gun and he glimpsed Sydney with an endlessly sunny expression of glee on her face and he knew that he had lost her forever…he still couldn't bring himself to stop loving her. It was weakness on his part.

As the room dissolved into black, his mind shifted in retrograde away from the Ops Center (from her) and his last thought was of the last day he saw her.

****

You have to remember he broke her heart first.

He was already waiting for her at the warehouse. It was a scorching hot day and he discarded his jacket and tie in favor in the cool staleness of the Mikrostorage. Yet somehow the heat did not leave him; it clung to his back and blue oxford like a sickness. He was all sticky with warmth…and shame at what he knew he had to do.

Today was the day he was going to break Sydney Bristow's heart and in the process tear out his own.

Consequently, today was also the last day he would see her as she was: hopeful, gentle, sane. But of course, there was no possible way he could have known that. If he did…well what's past is past is now the present.

All he heard was the sound of her footfall on the cold concrete and the dread that threatened to destroy his well-assembled speech.

She walked into the cage, her face glowing. He didn't know whether it was the heat or the fact that she was, plain and simple, ethereal. He forced himself to focus and ignore the sudden spark that flinted within him. But it was Syd- he knew her long enough to notice that where she walked, a light seemed to follow.

At the same time, he noted that it was a possibility that the heat had made him delusional.

She was dressed down in a white T-shirt that barely touched the waist of her low slung jeans. He swallowed and looked at the ground, the safest region he could think of.

"Hey Vaughn," she greeted with her usual cadence. "So what's up? I sort of wasn't expecting your call. Not that I mind but-" her words stopped cold when he refused to meet her eyes. The effervescence melted out of her tone. "What's wrong?" Damn, was he that obvious?

He finally mustered up the courage to look at her face. That was his first mistake. The concern furrowing her brow was enough to make him wish that he had opted for drinking himself into a coma. For a few moments, he was tempted to just toss his speech and lie through gritted teeth. No, Syd nothing is wrong. Everything is the same as it ever was and I'm not about to cut myself up at the sight of you.

Well it's a little too late to change your mind now, Boy Scout. You started the fire and God help you if you should burn.

Every line he practiced right before she arrived fell out of his head, leaving him speechless. There was a period of excruciating silence in which his vocal cords was rendered incapacitated and the only thing in his head was fuzzy, unhelpful static. Then he said the only thing that felt natural to say.

He exhaled and breathed "Jesus, why do you have to be so beautiful?" He couldn't contain the hint of misery in his inflection.

The frown on Sydney's forehead disappeared for a second before reappearing and deepening. She moved closer to him. That was the other mistake. The extreme humidity of the day had served to enhance her perfume. As soon as she came close enough, he caught a bewitching whiff of vanilla and jasmines. His mind became a languid cloud of need and want and all the naughty things he craved but couldn't have. Danger, chocolate, sin… he was reminded that Sydney Bristow was the embodiment of all that.

Definitely not helping. He took a prudent step back. "What's wrong?" she repeated.

Turn around, his mind shrieked at her. Get out now. I'm this close to losing it as of the moment and will most likely do something I'll regret. It's best if you just leave now and maybe I'll be better tomorrow.

Of course he didn't say anything like that. That would've been letting his passion get the better of him for once and Heaven forbid that should happen.

Instead he looked at her and said "I can't do this anymore."

She didn't have to ask what he was talking about. The simplicity of the statement was all that was needed to tear her heart out. "Vaughn." There was nothing beyond the impassioned way she uttered his name.

"I can't be your handler anymore." As though saying that would re-enforce his resolve. Instead the stricken expression on her face made him turn away. "I don't understand," she whispered.

He forced himself to explain although at this point an explanation wasn't going to do anybody one bit of good.

"I though I could do this. I thought that I could look at you and act the part of the case officer, the company guy. It turns out that I can't. And I'm sorry for that Sydney. The truth is you deserve better than what I could give you."

"Vaughn, what are you talking about? Did my father say something to you? Because-"

He cut her off. "Your father didn't say anything. It's just that," he met her bewildered gaze. His voice wavered as he spoke. "I can't look at you without…" he let out a breath. "…without wanting you. In a way that compromises everything I learned from my father about being an officer. I can't sleep at night without dreaming of you. But I can't keep standing here, knowing that the only reason I'm allowed to be with you is the only thing in this world that's keeping us apart. I can't be here and pretend that it isn't destroying me. Because it is."

And the sad, super-fucked up thing is that a part of me doesn't even mind.

She swallowed. "You're not the only one standing here Vaughn." He nodded, never leaving her eyes. "I know it's hard. It's not easy and it never will be. But we've managed so far- Vaughn please don't leave me!" The plaintiveness of her voice was gut-wrenching. There was nothing he wanted more than to pretend he hadn't confessed a damn thing or believe that in another world, with another set of situations, the two of them stood an actual chance of being together.

That world didn't exist. Not for them, anyways.

"The more I think about it the more I know. This isn't about how we feel but it is so easy to forget that when I'm with you. The closer I get to you the harder it is to remember what we're supposed to do."

The severity of the logic sank in. "I know," she breathed. She backed away from him. "So what-"

"I've requested a new case officer for you." Her head jerked up at him, stunned. "It won't be long."

She stared at him, stunned at how unemotional he was. He had gotten better at compartmentalizing all those pesky emotions like love, despair, anger. Inside, annihilation was running rampant. He didn't dare show a flicker of any of that.

"This doesn't change anything, you know," she told him. There was a note of defiance in her tone. "No matter what you do or say these feelings-" she practically spit out the word. "- are there. We could ignore it all we want but they don't fade and they don't die. Believe me, I know. I've tried to make it go away once. But it's inevitable. One day, I realized that these emotions are the very same ones I can't live without."

As she spoke, it was as if she had taken a shard of glass and twisted it within his heart. This was the closest that she had ever come to telling him how she felt about him and he was telling her to leave his life and never come back. It all seemed brutally unfair.

"I-" he struggled for the words. "-I have to go now."

"Vaughn," she pleaded. "Don't you love me?"

He swallowed the rock-hard lump that had formed in his throat. "Sydney, I love you so much that I can't remember who I was before I met you. That's the problem."

He straightened his face devoid of all emotion. From this moment on, it would be forever closed off to her. He grabbed his jacked and briefcase, preparing in the most professional of ways to leave her life. She watched all of this numb. Words echoed.

"I can't remember…that's the problem."

He was right at the threshold of the cave when he stopped. Without turning he told her "You'll be fine, Sydney. I believe in you." And then he walked away, the finality of it all dissolving all senses like acid.

He wasn't there to hear her final words.

"How do you believe in something that isn't even real Vaughn?"

*****

When he came to for the second time that night, he was strapped to one of those annoyingly uncomfortable plastic chairs, the kind that Agency sprung for because they were too cheap for upholstery.

His wrists were tied to the armrests with duct tape as well as his legs. It appeared that he was in a room that was hidden away from viewing the rest of the rotunda. Strange that it never really occurred to him what this room was used for.

He was still drowsy from whatever the hell it was Sark used to drug him. Right now, it was taking everything he had to resist the temptation to pass out again. Opening his eyes only served to remind him that being unconscious was in so many ways better than waking to the nightmare that was reality.

Sydney and Sark were standing before him, patiently waiting for him to awaken. The amusement since had not left their faces.

"Welcome back, sleepyhead," Sydney chirped. She reached over and wiped his brow. "We thought we'd lost you."

"Yeah, that really would've been a shame," Vaughn responded, dully.

He looked around suddenly anxious to know if the other hostages were all right or if they were even alive.

"They're all right," Sydney told him, perceptively. "They're not happy but they could be in your position."

She turned to Sark with a winsome smile. "Thank you." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "He's the prettiest pet I ever had." Vaughn couldn't help flustering at such a degrading comment.

"Remember, we don't have a lot of time for dawdling. So try not to get too rough with him."

She pouted. "Oh well, where's the fun in that?" He smiled at her lighthearted viciousness. She took a step back toward Vaughn and Sark made as if to leave. Her head snapped towards him. "What you don't want to watch?"

Sark looked back at her. "No thanks baby. You just have fun with your new toy. Try not to make too much of a mess."

And then he left.

Sydney studied Vaughn with an intentness that resembled fascination. She paced back and forth as though she didn't know what to do with him. She leaned forward to look him in the face and he felt her warm breath brush against his cheek. Gently, so gently, she stroked the contours of his cheek.

He found it all too easy to let all those old feelings come pouring back into him.

But if he was really being honest, those same emotions had never really left.

"You have really pretty eyes," she complimented. "So green and sparkly."

God, she still smelled like vanilla and jasmine flowers. It was enough to drive his senses to the brink of lunacy.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head away from her. Still, her scent billowed around him like a smoke, suffocating him. He heard glass shatter and his eyes snapped open. Sydney had broken the monitor of a computer and fragments of glass lay strewn on the floor. She bent down and picked up a long, sharp shard. She tested its tip, and then looked back at her prisoner. "How sharp do you think this is?"

She straightened, grasping the piece of glass in her fist. "You think I don't remember you," she said, her voice deceptively soft. "But I do. Everything else is a little hazy but you're very clear." She traced the hard line of his clenched jaw before trailing her finger down and toying with the top button of his dress shirt.

And then she began to undo his shirt, one button at a time, with a cunning tenderness. Vaughn's mind short-circuited and his mouth went dry. She seemed very unaware of what she was doing to him as she slid into his lap, pressing herself against him in a way that provoked his nerve endings to a thrilling ache.  Her slender fingers deftly made their way down. His head became a sluggish haze consisting of the blurry confusion of whether this was supposed to be a torture session. When she was finished she gently curled herself against him, almost as if she needed a hug.

"I remember that you wanted me." She sat up and traced the outline of his collar bone with the glass. The delicate sensation of pain ran through him like a thread and he became agonizingly aware of the steel of his zipper. "You wanted me in all the ways you couldn't have me." She prodded him deeper with the glass, right against his jugular. "Unless I let you."

"Sydney," he whispered, hoarse and she looked at him, curious. "You can't do this."

"I am doing this," she told him, darkly. She lifted his under shirt, exposing him and traced the glass against his abs, applying pressure. "And this." He let out a hiss. A thin, red thread had appeared that would ultimately be his undoing.

He rolled his head back, trying to navigate his way through the tumble of sensations. It was too much and everything inside him was burning, sensation and emotion fused together like iron. And somewhere during the blaze in which control was now nothing more than a smoldering heap of ashes, something primitive had already taken hold. It had been so long since he had been this close to her, close enough to desire her touch, no matter how savage, with every atom of his being. As one side of him screamed out the perverseness of the entire scenario, another part couldn't help but long for more.

She pulled away. "You could have had me any time when we were together." She pushed it into his flesh and dragged down. He stifled himself against the sting. "You're stronger than I am and I wouldn't have put up that much of a fight. And even if I did…."

"I would never do a thing like that to you Sydney." He nearly growled out the words. "You meant more than that to me."

She laughed into the curve of his neck. The sensation sent shivers up and down his back. She lifted her head and whispered into his ear.

"Maybe if you had paid a little more attention to me instead of your silly protocol and rules and morals and ethics…I would be in that chair instead of you." The vivid imagery, so sensual and still so cruel, was a tangle of molten heat in his lower belly. "All those sleepless nights you could've been touching me, instead of me all by my lonesome just touching my-" She gave a wicked grin as she felt him throb against her. The feral intimacy of her words burned him to his very core, so hot and unbearable and irresistible. His shame and desire had no boundaries when it came to her. That much had remained at least.

When it came to Sydney Bristow, he was still, tragically, just a man. No one in this world would ever make that more painfully obvious to him than her. In the end she was his fatal flaw. If it turned out that she would tear him to shreds by the end of the night, Sydney would still be the one thing he could never bring himself to live without.

He opened his eyes and looked her hard in the eye. "Sydney, if you're going to kill me do it quick."

She cocked her head puzzled. "Now why on earth would I want to do that? If you were dead, that would make it a lot harder to torment you. What a funny thought." She dug her nails into his shoulders.

"Are you going to kill me?"

"Only if you're good," she breathed, foxily. Suddenly her face became cold. "All the same you killed me first."

He stared at her. "What?" She stood up and turned away from him. Her eyes became distant with an unseen memory. "I waited for you that night at the cliff. I waited for you and you never came." She turned back to look at him and her eyes were misty with tears. "Everything gets blurry after that."

"I don't understand. I never-"

Sydney put a finger to his lips, hushing him. "No, no. No, no, no. No more explanations. It's all a little too late for that now."

She set down her shard on the table beside him. Her eyes were still far away, well insulated from his pleas. Then they narrowed at him, shimmering with a clairvoyant radiance.

"Sunrise is coming," she intoned. "There's going to be a judgment."

Vaughn could not begin to decipher the enigma of her phrase. It was as if she was seeing something still far down the path they were all treading. There was a nuance of reverent zeal in her voice that did nothing less than chill him.

Once more he tried to get through to her. "Sydney, I don't know if you can hear me or if you could possibly comprehend it. You're not well. Whatever happened to you-it was wrong. Evil. And I am so sorry that I couldn't stop it from happening. But you have to know that I never called you out on that night." He took a breath. "I love you, Syd. Somewhere inside of you, you have to understand that much." His voice grew steely. "And if I have to I will take you down and beat the sanity back into you."

She stared at him, growing pale at his words. She seemed to have lost her bearings for a minute and she seemed like nothing more than a little girl.

Then the ruthlessness returned to her face. "Yet each man kills the thing he loves," she quoted, clipped tone.

Suddenly, the dense air between them was broken by the sound of gunshots. Vaughn started but they failed to get the slightest reaction from Sydney who simply raised her head.

"Hmmm." She looked back at Vaughn, an absentminded smile on her face. "Well," she crooned. "Looks like Daddy's home."

Sark entered the room. For a minute, he took in the scene, frowning at Vaughn's torn shirt and Sydney's disheveled hair. "We have a visitor," he announced. He stepped aside, allowing the new player to enter.

Before Vaughn could guess what new disaster was gathering, a figure entered the room. All his wind was knocked out of him in a poisonous hiss.

"Ah," Arvin Sloane said. "You must be Michael Vaughn. Sydney has told me such wondrous things about you." He gave him a magnanimous smile. Sydney squealed and ran into his open arms. As he lavished attention on her, he wrapped an arm around Sark as though he were the ideal son.

From this angle, it appeared as though-but it wasn't possible. The concept was too nauseating to conceive of so it couldn't be true-

"I believe-" Sloane said with a triumphant smirk. "Mr. Vaughn, that you are well acquainted with my family."

To Be Continued

Ok there is like one more part of this to go and I hope you like it so far. I'm so sorry that I've been lazy with the updates. Oh well. Send reviews!

Oh yeah just a note. The first quote "Goodness comes from within…" is from Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange a really weird novel and creepier movie.

And Sydney's quote "Yet each man kills the thing he loves" is from Oscar Wilde's poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." I think that's the title.