3.

It's Gone

She was sitting by the phone- had been sitting by the phone ever since he had left- when it rang. She picked it up almost as if it were an animal, lifting it ever so gently to her ear. "H-Hello?"

"Syd?"

"Vaughn... where are you?"

There was a pause, as if the person on the other line was still debating whether or not to speak.

She felt the hot hears make their way up to her eyes again, only this time she understood why. Throughout the past few years, he had been her guardian angel, the shoulder she cried on, the arms that hugged her to him, the ears that listened, the lips that she now could kiss... and it killed her that she couldn't be the same for him. "Michael? Talk to me." In her mind, she added a plaintive please at the end of the order, making it into one of humble request.

"Pier."

The phone went dead. Her mouth opened a little, shocked by the abruptness of the call as well as the end of it. She lowered her phone back to the table and walked to the bathroom to change.

Twenty minutes later, she stepped out of the car and saw him standing sixty feet away, leaning on with both hands on the railing with his back to her. Already she could tell he was burning a hole into the ocean.

She cleared her throat and fixed her t-shirt, vowing to stay calm. If Vaughn wanted to stay profesional, if he wanted to pretend that their relationship wasn't there, she could play that game. She knew how to compartmentalize. It didn't matter that she had released all her emotions to this man, compartmentalizing was compartmentalizing.

She walked to his side. "What is it?" Her voice was perhaps a little more clipped than she meant it to be and she saw his slight flinch from the corner of his eye. He cleared his own throat and began.

"You have to get to the CIA safehouse in Sun Valley."

Despite her efforts to stay apathetic, her head jerked a little. "Vaughn, tell me what's happening. I will go wherever you tell me to because I trust you but you need to let me in... you need to tell me what you know so that we can have even footing." At her last words, she turned her head to look him in the eye, making sure that he couldn't escape these words, couldn't pretend to misunderstand the importance of them. "Vaughn... we broke all protocol to be together. And it was my understanding that we did this because-" She bit her lip, "-because we felt something so strong between us that we were willing to risk everything just to be able to go to sleep in each other's arms... and perhaps seeing each other again in the morning."

He turned his face towards the sea, maintaining the facade that they didn't know each other. "Syd, I need you to the safe house. I will tell you everything you need to know but you have to trust me here. It's for your own safety." Giving up on the facade, he turned and looked at her, the green of his eyes nearly magnetizing her. "Of course we did it so be with each other. I would never trivialize our relationship, Syd. But the call I got this morning... it concerned you and I just had to, I suppose make a mental counter mission, and I didn't want to tell you anything until I understood it myself."

"And do you?"

"No."

"So why are you talking to me?"

"Because I promised to tell you in an hour. And you're the one person that I can't stand breaking my promise to."

She nodded. "Okay, then give me something to chew on. Tell me what's gone."

Vaughn looked down at his hand for an instant and cleared his throat again in nervousness and agitation. "SD-6."

Her facial expression broke them, this was an answer that she hadn't expected. "Vaughn... what are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how the bank is closed and how there is no activity within it's walls. I'm talking about how every single desk is cleared, how every paper has been destroyed, how the only things left in the rooms are the furniture and the wires that used to connect with the computers. I'm talking about how suddenly, they were able to scatter without a trace, without any warning that we could detect, without any apparent motive, without the aid of any moving trucks or other large vehicles of any kind. How every single person is gone whether they knew the truth about the organization or not." He stopped then and looked at her with a gaze that she understood now. The green of his eyes intermingled with fear and concern for her and she couldn't help but close her eyes in surrender as the information swept over her.

He lifted a hand and placed it under her cheek, kissing her forehead and then saying softly, "But most of all, I'm talking about how everybody from Marshall to Dixon to Sloane itself is gone, disappeared from the face of the earth... yet you and Jack are still here."

She opened her eyes, raised her head from his warm hand, a steely reserve coming up behind the moist eyes. "We've been made."

He nodded.

"I'm going to go to the safehouse."

"I'll be behind you."

"It still doesn't make any sense."

"I know."

"I don't know where to start."

"We'll work it out together."

"All right then."

tbc...

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