Title: 16 Messages

Author: Kira [kira at sd-1 dot com]

Genre: Vaughn POV, angst with a dash of humor. Or is it humor with a dash of angst?

Summary: Mother knows best.

Disclaimer: I don't own Alias. If I did, there would be a few changes, trust me.

Archive: Cover Me, anywhere else, ask.

Author's Note: I wrote this for a friend a while ago and realized I never uploaded it! Just a cute fic that started as a post-Telling Vaughn POV piece that kinda grew a mind of it's own in Physics class.

_________________

16 UNHEARD VOICE MESSAGES

The beeping alert from my cell phone jarred me awake; the contraption had only been turned on 20 minutes beforehand in a aching fit of loneliness. I'd forgotten to turn it off, an unfortunate side-effect of aspirin and hard liquor, and fallen asleep on my stomach facing the small TV I'd watched holiday specials on as a child. Surprisingly, Rachel's squeaky French-dubbed voice on a 6 year-old episode of Friends was no bother to my battered psyche, and I groped through the darkness of the all-familiar living room for the remote, my hand finally finding the edge of old duct tape that still held it together and hit the worn power button.

Ahhh, silence at last.

One of the most-used features on my cell phone, since the Agency decided to allocate for one that wasn't the size of a brick, was my call log. So, after grappling for my cell in the pocket of my discarded suit coat, I moved past the original message, and, after the shock to my eyes from the bright screen a few inches from my face, went to see who these 16 messages were from.

Sydney. Not surprised. Eric…a few times. Syd again, God, she was probably worried by now. Eric, no doubt in contact with Syd at this point. A US call. I recognized the number from Devlin's office, doing a required call-in, no doubt. Syd and Eric tag-teaming. The latest – I must have slept through the generic ring tone (never bothered to go through and change it) for it to click to voice mail – was Eric again.

He could be a pushy best friend, at times.

The throbbing headache banging against my skull warned me of the consequences to listening to 16 frantic voice mails, and while it would be smart to listen, I let my hand fall to the side of the couch, the phone clanking against a few empty bottles before falling with a dull thud to the thick carpet.

The side kitchen door creaked open just as I was falling back to sleep. Instincts kicked in, but had it been an attacker, I'd be dead – my gun was on the kitchen table next to a jar of mayonnaise and a crumb-covered plate.

"'Allo?"

Oh, crap.

My muddled mind went right to the date and month – something that would have been nice to give a thought of before settling down on the couch with my shoes on, and remembered that my mother always came here on the holidays to go shopping with her sister Trish and torment the more religious of my relatives.

I let my feet clunk to the floor before she happened upon them up on her family heirloom.

"Michel?" she called this time, her supersonic hearing most certainly picking up the less-than-covert removal of feet. I simply raised my hand and waved.

"Hi, mom," I greeted, but I'm sure my voice came out a lost raspier than I'd intended, because she came scurrying over, clicking her tongue and commenting, I'm sure, something derogatory towards the English language as she rounded the couch and clicked on a side lamp.

"Ah, mom!" I groaned (making sure to switch to French to avoid a mighty stare), throwing my arm over my eyes.

"Look at the mess you've made!" she exclaimed.

"Hello to you too," I drawled. 16 voice messages from gradually angering Syd and Eric would have been less painful than this.

"And you're bleeding!" Ah-ha. Wasn't too surprised she'd noticed the mess before the blood – I'd skinned my knees when I was six, and she noticed the destroyed bike before whisking me inside to treat my raw knees.

Her face hardened into that worried mask, the one, I'd always assumed, was one reflecting disappointment in himself, failing to protect her child from the world. It was no secret she loathed my chosen profession, cursed my father for setting me down such a path. But that night, I fear, she came face to face with the grim reality of my life, coming home after a late movie to discover her son lying on her couch, injured and leading, surrounded by empty alcohol bottles and aspirin as I tried to drown out the pain.

"You're bleeding on my couch," she commented softly (thank God!), and motioned with her hand. "Up."

I pouted as if I were 5 years old, afraid my head would fall off if I took it from its resting place on a pillow.

"Don't give me that. You're a grown man and managed to make a mess of my house, so you can get off that couch and sit at the kitchen table."

I would have said 'yes ma'am', but my slurred speech would have made it sound like a sarcastic retort, and she was already mad about her couch.

She disappeared into the bathroom, leaving me to completely humiliate myself to an armchair as, like getting used to cold water in a swimming pool, pushed myself up and swung around into a sitting position, the wound in my side waking up as I strained it, pulling the sides and negating any clotting that had stopped the bleeding.

And I'd just consumed a hell of a lot of alcohol. And took a bottle of aspirin.

Biting my bottom lip, I tried to steady my breathing and find a happy medium. Even from a young age, I never found myself entirely able to show weakness in front of my mother, feeling, after my father's death, that I was the man of the house, the one who was supposed to take care of her. Head pounding, I let it fall to my hands, stifling a cry as I moved again. How had I gotten something to eat, gathered her liquor, and moved all the way over here before?

Adrenaline is a beautiful thing.

The light in the bathroom was flicked off, signaling her return to the large living area and cuing me to get up. Slowly, I stood, the world swaying on its axis as my head spun. One step at a time. Then another. And another. And, crap, was that a bottle? Or something?

"What would you do without me?" My mother, standing below me, one of my arms around her neck. It was amazing how she could support me, being almost a foot shorter and something like 20 years older than me. She guided me to the kitchen table, letting me fall into a wooden chair, and dragged one over to face me.

"I'd be sleeping," I said. Talk about a delayed reaction. An elbow on the table, I balanced my head on my hand and looked up at her lazily though my eyelashes.

"Intoxicated on my couch and bleeding to death," she chided. I grinned, a lopsided grin.

"But asleep."

"What happened, Michel? And why are you here?" she asked, laying out the supplies she'd pulled out of the bathroom. Years with my father had gotten her into the habit of stocking the medicine cabinet with all kinds of medical supplies, and while she examined them, I hoped none of them were expired. "Off."

If I weren't so drunk, this might be a bit embarrassing. "A mission, about 10 miles from here," I explained, stripping off what remained of my white oxford button up. "Things didn't go as planned." I winced as I motioned to pull my undershirt over my head, but shook my head as she came to help me. "I'm fine, anyway," I continued, finally managing to take it off, "we scattered, and I came here. Hospitals could be under surveillance."

"Michel!" A hand went to her heart as I sat there in front of her, tired, bruised, bleeding, droplets falling onto her old linoleum floor.

"It's nothing, really," I deadpanned, reaching for some gauze. She smacked my hand away and grabbed some rubbing alcohol and swabs. Damn.

"So," she said, voice shaking. "How did you think you'd be safe here, if you can't go to hospital?" She applied it and leaned forward, pausing before applying.

I sucked in breath but made not a noise, the rubbing alcohol like acid being poured in the wound. "Face," I breathed, panting, "recognition." She nodded, being thorough, wincing herself each time my breath hitched.

"This could have gotten infected," she remarked quietly, pulling back the bloody gauze. A sob escaped her, slipped through her defenses, a tear falling down her face. I reached over to her, a hand gripping her arm. She looked back to me, surprised.

"I'm fine. Really. Have had worse."

"Worse, damn it, Michel, look at you! Look at what it's done to you! And why? Why?" she asked, half in hysterics, yelling. I closed my eyes, the throbbing of my headache worse as her voice rose, a wave of nausea sweeping over me that had been quelled till this moment. 

"I didn't know you'd be here," I whispered.

"Just like your father," she laughed, wiping her eyes and picking up a length of gauze. "Stubborn and without any common sense."

"And here I thought I'd gotten those from you," I smiled back at her.

"Of course not!" she retorted, offended. "I am the sensible one!" I narrowed her eyes at her playfully, cocking my head to the side.

"If you say so," I said, "but I'll need proof."

She pressed the gauze to my side, causing me to take a sharp breath as she taped it over the knife wound, her fingers cool against my warm skin. She noticed as well.

"You have a fever," she commented, sitting back to admire her handy work. At that moment, as she sat across from me, worried, motherly, and I sat there needing something, I was glad the house wasn't empty and I wasn't still passed out in front of her TV, slowly bleeding to death inside a freezing house in the middle of a French winter. "Come on, you need rest."

"Finally, you listen!" I laughed, a deep, throaty laugh that seemed to warm the room a bit. She laughed in reply, nodding her head as shaking hands gathered up the supplies and put them away in a cabinet. She was afraid she'd need them again. "I – "

The Nokia tune shattered the silence.

Groaning, I ran a hand through my hair and started to stand but found my legs had turned into spaghetti since the last time we'd had a chat, and woozily, I fell back into the chair with a thud, groaning at my own weakness. The phone, meanwhile, continued to ring.

"17 unheard messages," I remarked offhand as it died off, my mother standing at the counter, palms flat on the cool tabletop, head bowed. She shook, I could tell, crying silently as she had so many times in those years when she thought I wouldn't notice. If I pound on my legs, will they work properly?

Yes. Yes, they will.

So I stood and crossed the room, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"It'll be fine, I'll be fine."

"Yes, yes," she said, sniffling. "I know." She turned, composed, and put my arm around her dainty shoulders, ready to support my dead weight no matter how hard it was. I really love my mother. "Now," she asked, coaxing me to move, "did you really have your feet on my couch?"

I groaned.

"You did, didn't you?"

"Oui, mama," I confessed, looking down. Blood hit my tongue, and only then did I realize I'd been biting it this whole time to the point of puncturing the skin, and stifled a laugh. I didn't need to be loosing any more blood, and before my mother threw a blanket over my shoulders, an old, handmade one by my grandmother a few years before her death, I could see blood seeping through the makeshift bandage already.

Wow. What kind of idiot was I, to drink that much and such and think it wouldn't be, say, bad for my current condition? I think, at the time, seeing my shirt cut open as result of a four inch long knife wound down my side at my waist was exactly the right moment to start drinking and fall down into the world of denial.

A smack to the back of my head brought me back to reality.

"Ouch!"

"I thought I taught you better than that! Putting your feet up on the couch," she paused only to smack me again, "Idiot!"

"Aren't I hurt enough?"

"No," she replied sternly. "Look at this, I'll have to spend hours cleaning up after you."

"Like that's something new," I commented offhand. She moved to make three the total number of times she's smacked me, but I managed to duck. Unfortunately, it threw off the weight balance, and I found myself falling into the wall, pulling my head back before it smashed into a photo hanging there. The blanket slipped from my shoulders as I fell to the ground, crumpling in a heap as everything wore off at once, the denial, the alcohol, even the aspirin decided it wanted no part in my one man play. I curled up, defensively, like a small child, just wishing it would all go away.

She was at my side in a moment, wishing, I'm sure, that there was something she could do. "Oh, Michel, you're burning up. You need to get into bed."

"Naw," I mumbled, closing my eyes, "I can sleep – " yawn " – right here."

"Nonsense."

"Nope," I said in English, nodding off. She hugged me as best she could, being half my size, and simply held me as she had when I was 6 with skinned knees.

"My poor child," she whispered, rubbing my back as she slowly rocked. "My poor, poor boy."