Lyrics from "Amsterdam" by Coldplay.
b)i) Reality Bites
They're happy for a while, that's for sure.
Things are great. They get along even better than they did before. She's a teacher now, just like she always wanted to be. He thinks she was happy, really, when they told her she was too much of a security risk to work as a spy again.
But he's still in the CIA, still intimately involved the hunt for her parents, believed on the run somewhere in the world, neither cooperating with nor visibly resisting Sloane's attempts to gain control of Rambaldi artefacts.
She hasn't seen either of her parents since her return, and she still doesn't know what happened to her – or so the CIA psychoanalysts have told him.
She claims not to remember anything more than fighting Francie – no, he catches himself mentally. Allison. Even two years after her discovery, it's hard for him to reconcile the cold blooded assassin he knows her now to have been with the bubbly best friend she described to him for so long.
He believes her when she says she doesn't remember anything – because, after all, why would she lie to him, anyway?
But she hasn't seen Jack or Irina since her return, and although she's quiet on the subject, to him at least, he knows it's eating away at her inside.
But the actions of her parents are still too close to the surface for him to talk about, especially to her, he knows.
It's always been hard for him, loving the daughter of his father's killer. He knows it sounds vaguely like a melodramatic storyline from some overlit Hollywood soap opera sometimes, but the sheer ridiculousness of it all doesn't make it any easier to live with, does it?
Because try as he might [try as he does, desperately] to separate the concepts of Irina and Sydney in his head, he cannot, just as he knows it is impossible for her to separate the concept of his father from the concept of him.
We are all our fathers' sons, and our mothers' daughters, he reflects bitterly, try as we might to run away from our past.
He thought he could live with it. And he could for awhile.
But there's still a part of him that can't help but hate Irina Derevko more
than anything in the world, and there's a part of him that knows how much
Sydney's mother came to mean to her in her nine months of residency inside her
little glass cage at the Joint Task Force Headquarters.
And at the same time there's a part of him that doesn't know what to make of Jack Bristow, a man he once respected infinitely, and not just because he was Sydney's father. Jack Bristow was, without a doubt, one of the most respected CIA agents of the last thirty years. Vaughn knew agents more senior to Jack who would have given their left arm to have been even a quarter as successful a career as Jack Bristow had had.
But shortly after Sydney's 'death' Jack had disappeared. Just like that.
Six months later, while on a routine op in Paris, Vaughn had seen him strolling, rather happily along the banks of the Seine, hand in hand with Irina.
Three months later he was reportedly involved in a mission planned by Derevko to steal Rambaldi artefacts from the US government – the very organisation he had once sworn to protect.
The idea that Jack could have thrown away the career he had had, the years of service to his country – he couldn't even begin to understand it, not really.
Although there's a part of him that says, if Sydney had done the things her mother had done, if she had asked you to come with her, told you that she still loved you – there's a part of him that says, you would go in an instant, patriotism be damned.
And there's a part of him that knows that if Jack and Irina share even a fraction of what he and Sydney do…well, there would never really be a debate between serving his country or being with the woman he loves.
But he hasn't seen either of her parents in over two years now, as far as the CIA [as far as he] knows.
And he knows she misses them both, longs desperately to see them. Because despite their sins, they're still her parents, after all.
He understands unconditional love all too well.
He accepts her need for her parents because he loves her more than he worries about her seemingly unstoppable obsession with finding her family.
He asks her about it, one day, nearly six months after her return.
"Why is it so important for you to find them, Syd?"
Her tone is quiet, guarded. She doesn't know where he's going with this, he knows.
"They're my parents, Vaughn. I…need to see them. Especially my mother."
He tenses at this, as he always does around mentions of her mother, but listens as she continues.
"Before I disappeared…while we were in Mexico City looking for my father…she said some things to me. Things about Rambaldi."
"What sort of things, Syd?" He asks her urgently, knowing that she didn't tell the CIA about this, didn't tell him about this before her disappearance.
"Things about me. Vaughn, she said…she said that it was me in the prophecy."
"But that's not possible, is it? What about Mount Sebacio?"
"Well, apparently it is, Vaughn." She sounds angry, and desperate, torn between telling him the truth and protecting herself – even from him, he thinks angrily.
"Syd, why didn't you tell the CIA this?"
"Hell, Vaughn, why wouldn't I tell the government that I'm the embodiment of a 16th century prophecy – and that I'm supposed to freaking well destroy something or someone that may or may not be this country for all I know?" She's definitely angry now, her words cascading one after the other. "They wanted to lock me up the first time around as it was! You think that they'd allow me to walk around free as a bird now?"
He can see her point…but still, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you swore an oath to this country the same as I did, and you would have been duty-bound to report it, just as I would have been!"
He can't believe he's hearing what he is, can't believe that she would think that he would do that rather than protect her.
"You think I would do that? You think I would choose my country over you? Fuck, Syd, you think I haven't betrayed my country enough protecting you? Do you know me so little – trust me so little?"
"You got married, Vaughn! How was I supposed to really trust you ever again?" she yells back at him, every inch as enraged as he is.
"I told you once that I was your ally. I'd like to believe that I still am." There's pain in his eyes as he speaks quietly now, watching her carefully. As his words hit her, there's a brief flash of something – shock or pain, he can't tell.
"Well, now I know, don't I?" She stalks off at this, and the topic is never brought up again, although things are frosty between them for the next little while, until they settle back into their normal little domestic routine.
Soon enough, though, things are back to normal, and he forgets the whole, ugly little incident.
But somehow he knows that this is not the woman he fell in love with, that her priorities have changed – or she doesn't know him as well as she once did.
But he's happy, and she seems happy, and for a while that's all that matters.
*
It's three months later when he discovers her sitting at and operating his CIA laptop while she thinks he's in the shower.
There's classified information of that laptop, he knows – and so does she.
It's password protected, of course, but he also knows that she's rated 'expert' in codebreaking.
He leaves her with his laptop, making her think he hasn't seen her with it, and goes to take a shower – just like she thought he was doing all along.
But when he gets a spare moment the next time he opens up the laptop, he quickly hacks into the access records and starts a search for the programs and files last accessed.
He rests his head on his desk while the computer searches, praying desperately that all he'll find is Solitaire, or Internet Explorer, that all she was doing was playing a quick game of cards, or checking her emails in a quick moment of relaxation – that'd she'd forgotten the rules governing the use of government laptops like his by civilians like her.
He prays, yes, hoping in vain that it's not what it looks like.
But somehow he knows what he'll find when he lifts his head from the desk and looks at the results of the search is exactly what it looks like, and it's nowhere near so benign as a mere game of cards.
Because he's always had good gut instincts, and this one is telling him that there's something not quite right here.
And so he lifts his head and opens his eyes, and he sees the programs she's accessed and his heart sinks. She's looked at countless numbers of Word documents, all of them relating to Rambaldi - and Jack Bristow and Irina Derevko.
The last document accessed, he notes with a chill enveloping him, contained the CIA's latest speculations on Jack and Irina's location.
Before he can properly comprehend what he's just learnt, he hears her coming in.
"Vaughn, are you in here? I just got a call from Eric – he wants you to come in early today…" she calls carelessly around the corner.
As if on autopilot, he draws his gun, remembering what he had thought after their argument a few months ago.
[But somehow he knows that this is not the woman he fell in love with, that her priorities have changed – or she doesn't know him as well as she once did.]
When she turns the corner, his heart catches in his throat at her beauty, as it always does when she enters a room, but he shoves back everything he feels for her, and pins her up against the fridge, her back to his stomach.
He hears a nervous giggle from her, and she says, "Um, Vaughn? Not that I'm not interested in this, but I really don't think you've got time for this, if you're thinking about what I think you're thinking about…"
He presses his gun to her temple then, and her face takes on a more worried expression.
"Vaughn, what are you doing? This isn't funny anymore." Where her voice was amused, almost sultry at first, it is now set, determined.
"Cut the crap, Sydney. If that is your name, really."
"Vaughn, what are you talking about? You're starting to hurt me." Her voice is starting to take on a desperate edge, he notes coldly, forcing himself to see her as no more than another suspected traitor to his country,.
It's the hardest thing he's ever had to do, standing there still as a statue, grimly pushing a gun to the head of the woman he loves, all the while pushing back every little bit of love he's ever felt for her – pushing back his heart.
But he does it, because he knows that if he did not, everything that he felt for her, the love, the pain, the grief, the tangled little ball of emotions in his heart labelled 'Sydney'…..if he didn't force it back…then it would overcome him.
It's the hardest thing he's ever done, but he does it.
[And I know I'm dead on the surface
But I'm screaming underneath.]
* * *
In one reality, she's not who she says she is.
In another, he loves her enough to let her go.
* * *