* * *
In one reality, she's not who she says she is.
In another, he loves her enough to let her go.
* * *
b)i)2 Blindness
"You accessed classified material on my laptop. Don't try to deny it."
"Vaughn, what are you talking about? This is me! Would I do something like that?"
"The Sydney I knew would never do something like that." His tone gets harsher, and he leans against her more, feeling the tense muscles of her back against his chest. "But you're not the Sydney I know, are you?"
There's something very wrong here, he knows, but he can't put a name to it. He just knows that this is wrong – she is wrong.
He feels the muscles of her back suddenly move, but he can't do anything about it before she takes him down.
*
He blinks.
Once.
Twice.
Three times, before his head clears enough for him to realise that there's nothing wrong with his vision, that what he sees before him is reality, not the most twisted nightmare he's ever had.
Sydney stands in front of him, a cruel smirk on her face.
He's tied hand and foot to one of their kitchen chairs, rope cutting into his ankles and wrists as he struggles against the bonds.
"Ah, Mr. Vaughn, how nice of you to rejoin the land of the living," she purrs to him, her words as cold as ice, even coming from his lover's lips.
"Who- Who are you?"
"Wow," she coos, "You're smarter than you look. You may call me….Ana."
He flinches at the name, and recoils back from her disdainful glance. Sydney's told him about Ana Espinosa, one of the last Cold War babies taken from Cuban parents and raised as a Russian.
He realises now why she seemed colder, more distant at times, overemotional at overs – the 'perfect' Sydney, but almost too perfect. She was almost a caricature of herself.
And the only thing he can think of as every moment of the last eight months flashes before his eyes, every kiss, every caress, every whispered moment shared is this.
"You're a lot better at this than Allison was."
She chuckles aimlessly at this. "Allison was an amateur compared to me, darling," she says, a hint of a Russian accent in her words.
"But the machine we found could only be used on people of the same gene type," he says, trying to puzzle out the mystery that's presented itself to him.
"You're more innocent than I thought! You really thought that Sloane would be naïve enough to work with someone like Markovic on a project that important without having someone on the inside who would keep him supplied with plans for the machine? Sloane's scientists had over a year to reconstruct the thing – and improve it. It wasn't too hard, sweetheart," she says, drawing out a single cigarette from some hidden place on her body, and lighting it with a small lighter from the same place.
She blows a puff of acrid smoke towards him, and begins to laugh quietly, the
sound low and harsh and throaty.
"Sloane let me be there when they killed her, you know. She screamed out your name, over and over and over again while they killed her," she laughs, louder now, a cruel grin playing across her features.
"It was the first – and last time I'd ever felt sorry for Sydney Bristow. Although I must say I did feel gratitude
for leaving me all these wonderful toys," she sneers, leaning in and chucking
the underneath of his chin while he struggles desperately against his bonds.
He'd thought he'd felt anger before, when Sydney had disappeared.
He'd thought he'd felt hate before, when Irina Derevko had reappeared three years before.
But he knows know that they were pale imitations of the emotions he feels now towards the woman standing in front of him, the emotions threatening to overwhelm him at that moment.
He spits at her, enjoying a brief moment of satisfaction as he watches her jump back slightly.
"She's dead, then?" he chokes out, his grief welling up along with his rage and hate.
"Yes, Agent Vaughn, she's dead. Finally, this time, I'm afraid."
"How long?"
"A year after she disappeared. I spent twelve months interrogating her, learning everything I could about her……and then they killed her. And then I spent another year with that bastard Sloane before he finally decided I had learnt enough to fool everyone – including you."
"You were – very good, I'll give you that," he says, grudgingly.
"Why, thankyou, Mr. Vaughn. I'm afraid I can't say the same for you, though. I mean, a trained CIA agent, and still so foolish? Didn't you ever wonder how I knew where you were that night on the pier? Do you think I'd have been stupid enough to let you go back to that pretty blonde wife of yours and waste my chance to get info off you?" she says, still puffing away on her cigarette, the smell making him leaning back in the chair, away from her.
"You never…you never gave me any reason to not believe you…and you were right about the pier," he says quietly, muting his words in some sort of respect for the dead.
"Yes, well, Sydney always was melodramatic, wasn't she?"
There are tears running down his face now, from the grief and the hate and the rage burning up inside of him.
"I'll kill you. It may be tomorrow. It could be next year. It might be twenty years from now. But I will avenge her."
"Now, isn't that cute," she sneers, pointing a pistol to his forehead as she extinguishes the cigarette.
"You know what, Agent Vaughn? I'm going to be very, very kind to you, and leave you with a little bit of advice that I learnt in spy school. 'Emotions get you killed.' You never learnt that lesson well enough, did you, Agent Vaughn?" Her words are mocking, derisive, every one as painful to hear as a blow to the face would have been to endure. "And I'm afraid I can't exactly leave you here, not after what I've just told you! Especially considering all those nasty little death threats!"
She cocks her gun at him, and he knows that he will die here, at the hands of a woman who wears the face of his lover, a woman who had spent the last nine months weaselling her way into his life, his bed, his heart. And why, he thinks aimlessly? Because he had been fooled by her resemblance to the woman he always had, always would love.
He's been fooled well, he'll admit that much. Sloane and his lackeys had chosen well both their target and their weapon.
Because Sydney has always been his weakness – and his strength.
She cocks the gun in his face, louder this time, and his eyes slowly refocus on the weapon, knowing that there is no way out, no last minute escape this time.
He'll die here, but somehow he doesn't mind that much.
Because he'll die, and then he'll be with her.
He smiles at Ana, grins, almost, daring her to take the shot.
"Goodbye, Agent Vaughn."
And all there is is black….and Sydney.
["We are all born for love. It is the
principle of existence, and its only end."]