Author: Angela Evans
Email: angel33296@aol.com
Feedback: Please
Distribution: FF.net, Cover Me, SD-1, all others please ask
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Vaughn misses a phone call that could change his life. But fate won't let him off that easy.
Spoilers: "The Telling"
Disclaimer: It's obvious that I don't own them – just look at the season finale :p
Classification: AU, future/inter-episode fic
Author's Note: Thanks to Jasmine, for listening to me, and to Colin, for being, well, Colin. Parahi Ia means 'goodbye' in Tahitian. I worked on this on and off the whole summer, and finished it literally the day of the S3 premiere.
You're starting to wonder what it is they really put in these drinks. It can't be just rum, there's gotta be something extra, cause you're feeling like you're floating. But it makes you feel good, so you don't wonder too much what actually goes into those cocktails with the little umbrellas.
Something hits you on the arm. A little pink umbrella. You turn your head and she's laughing at you.
"You think that's funny, do you?" you growl at her, before advancing. She shrieks with delight and pretends to hide behind her drink. Grabbing her arm, you pull her small body to yours. "I think I'm going to have to take you back to your room, missy, if you can't behave in public."
She grins in reply and you start marching her to the elevator. Your ocean view room is on the 18th floor, and you're wondering if you can make it that far. You're pretty sure the elderly couple sharing the elevator with you wouldn't appreciate you acting on the thoughts that are running through your head at this moment. It's torture, but the car finally stops at your floor and the two of you slip past the septuagenarians, who give you smiles that say what a beautiful young couple. And you are, or so you feel. It's very easy to feel that way when you're young and on your honeymoon in Tahiti.
The door barely shuts behind you before your room is attacked by a storm of clothing flying everywhere. But since this is a tropical climate, it's a light storm. You land on the bed, a tangle of limbs, and you hope the people next door will understand if you get too loud. That is your last coherent thought for quite some time.
When you do have another coherent thought, it's a curse, which is directed at your phone, which is rudely demanding you answer it. "Ignore it," she advises, but it keeps on ringing. You take the offending device, and look at your caller ID – it's Weiss, who can wait – before shutting it off and going back to a light slumber with your head buried in your wife's hair.
@@@
Merde. Tuez-moi maintenant, Dieu. Je veux mourir. Each syllable stabs through your consciousness like an ice pick. Every thought hurts your fragile, hung over brain, yet you keep repeating the mantra over and over. Je veux mourir. Je veux mourir. You're wondering if perhaps something wasn't slipped into those drinks with the little umbrellas that you'd been ordering all night.
When you finally dare to crack an eye open, you're punished infinitely. Your mantra of kill me now speeds up, now becoming right now. Tuez-moi en ce moment. You manage to move your eyelids, which you think is quite the accomplishment. Let's see you do that, Jack Bristow, after a night of bahama mamas and martinis.
The next time you open your eyes, Eric Weiss is sitting across from the bed. He's haggard and rumpled and weary. "Hello, Gorgeous," he greets you. You want to tell him you don't think that's funny, but all you manage is a groan. He hands you some aspirin and a glass of water.
He catches you surveying the room as you sip slowly. "She's downstairs, having a very long cappuccino." He clears his throat, and continues somberly. "We need you back."
No. "I'm out."
"No one ever gets out. You know that, Mike." You want to prove him wrong, desperately. But you still find yourself looking over your shoulder, in that wilderness of mirrors.
"It's been two years," you remind him. Two long years since that awful night. Two years in which that hole in your heart burned like fire until you found someone who could keep the flames at bay, even if only for a little while.
"Two years isn't that long. You're not even out of the trial period."
"Why are you here?"
"Someone called dispatch from a pay phone in Hong Kong last night…claiming to be officer 2300844."
You're wondering who is behind this new piece of cruelty. "It's not her."
"She knew the confirmation and we have corroboration from the safe house in Tsimshatsui. It's her."
"Send Jack," you argue like a pouting child.
Weiss sighs. "You've been requested." There's a heavy pause as he considers how to phrase what comes next. "By Jack."
For the briefest moment, you found yourself wishing it had been Sydney who requested you. If it had been, you could have told yourself you had valid reasons not to go. But the fact that it was Jack Bristow puts you in a bind. He's been in nearly the same place you've been these past two years. He's felt the pain, the loneliness, the feelings of abandonment and denial that you have.
"How long do I have?" What you really mean is, how long before the world comes crashing down around me?
"Plane leaves at 10. Considering the flight is about 18 hours, you've got a day before you face the firing squad," he says. "Better get a move on."
@@@
You are fairly certain you have the questionable honor of being the world's quickest packer. Scrubbed, dressed and pressed to the best of your vacation wardrobe, you find yourself in the lobby early, wishing that you weren't going to see her and wishing you already were there.
Explaining things to your wife was a challenge. Not able to tell her the real reason you were going, and not allowed to tell her what you were going for, all you had at your disposal was, "It's a work emergency." She didn't buy it, and you don't blame her. No law professor has work emergencies.
"What? Did Congress throw out the Constitution?" she countered.
"It's important. I promise you." She gives you the look, the one that means more important than me? than us? And all you can think is that this is the most important thing in the world.
Feeling like Judas, but not sure who your Christ is, you grab your bag and depart in search of Weiss.
He enters the lobby, cinnamon bun in hand. "Want some?" You shake your head and he shrugs. "Your loss. Lunch isn't till three."
"Where is Jack?" you ask, staying on the mission at hand.
"He and Irina are on the way. They'll arrive two hours behind us. Look, Mike…if you want to wait for them to arrive, I'm sure I can get us lost for enough time…"
"No. I'm the closest, I have to be the one to break the ice."
"Okay," he says.
@@@
On the plane, you're greeted by a lackey of Kendall's who's job it is to be a prick. He prattles on about protocol and clearance and security. You nod and make the required responses, but your mind is on Sydney. You know one thing: she's going to look to you for answers, for comfort and you'll only cause her pain.
"…at which point you will take Ms. Bristow into custody."
You haven't heard right. "Custody?"
He starts to quote directly from the rulebook. "Any agent that is considered to be rogue must be taken into custody by the lead officer during extraction. As lead, it is your required duty to take Ms. Bristow into CIA custody."
"But this is Sydney Bristow. She's not rogue, she's—"
"We don't know what she is. And until we do, we are not going to abandon protocol."
Protocol. Fuck protocol. Many nasty thoughts involving what you'd like to do to protocol run through your mind. You won't do it. "You follow protocol," you snarl at him, "I'm going to do what my gut tells me."
He sniffs. "Mm. Isn't that how we got here?"
You want to inform him of just how mistaken he is, but Weiss holds you back. "Save it for the bastards who took her," he remonstrates. As satisfying as it would be to make this lackey eat the CIA handbook, it would only be temporary. This was going to be a long flight.
@@@
You try to do the impossible. You find yourself looking for just the right words to say to her. You want to give her the elusive gift of truth. Truth. You don't even know what that is anymore. You really believed you loved the woman you married, and maybe you do. You certainly feel a certain responsibility to her. But Sydney…Elle est le seul amour vrai de votre coeur. Your heart's only true love.
And so you find yourself about to knock on her door at the safe house. And you have nothing. Nothing other than cold hard facts and a gold band around your finger. And the one truth you know above all else: You may be about to break her heart, but yours is already shattered.
You swallow hard and say goodbye to happiness, to love.
~fin~