******
You can't sleep.

You drink two cups of coffee before you leave the house and three more after you get to work and you've started keeping a packet of herbal energy something-or-another in your right-hand desk drawer. The tablets are green and large and smell vaguely like alfalfa, and though you don't know exactly what's in them, you're reasonably certain it will kill you before you hit forty. But your chances of hitting forty have been pretty low since you got involved with the Bristows, and when you look at it that way, death by multivitamin doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

Either way, you can't sleep.

You can name at least six kinds of insomnia: grief, anticipation, shock, excitement, overthinking, and worry. But this isn't the I'll-lose-my-job insomnia or the I'm-getting-married insomnia or even the Sydney's-on-a-mission insomnia, (although you claim to have forgotten that kind) it's genuine Bristow-induced thinking insomnia. Probably the worst kind.

You can't stop thinking about her question. You hear her voice when you start to slip off to sleep, the cool chill in it she used to reserve for her enemies and now uses for you. You see the cool, flat darkness of her brown eyes and the way she stares at you: unblinking, jaw set, flicking dark hair over her straight shoulders.

"Can you trust me?"

Sometimes you hear her voice hard, and flat, the way she said it. Sometimes you hear it softening, with a tremor, as if she's about to cry. Other times you hear it in a whisper, the way she used to speak, in your ear late at night. And whenever you hear it, you have to answer. Because this is Sydney, and you've never mastered the art of not sacrificing for her. After all, it's only sleep.

And then, suddenly, you have the answer. Not in meticulous reasoning in the early evening or sleep-addled dreaming at three a.m. or even in the shower, where you usually get your best ideas, but one morning in front of the mirror as you're straightening your tie and trying not to spill your first cup of coffee on your new starched oxford. It pops into your head unbidden, like her voice, and it slams you back into the wall and creases your forehead and pounds your heart, and you feel the fast flush of perspiration lining your collar and sticking to your just-pressed shirt.

The answer is simple, but nearly impossible to perform, as most true answers tend to be. And yet it is the answer, the one she's looking for, the best and most likely the only answer you'll be able to come up with. So you wipe off your damp forehead with your equally-damp hand, straighten your tie, and leave for work.

******

The list has been delivered to your desk, neatly sorted and organized and broken down by continents, just as you asked for it to be. No one else dares to touch it; no one risks using the intel, because it's tainted, dangerous, no matter how valuable it might be. It's a sign of your credulity, vanity perhaps, that you're willing to use it, and you know there must be whispers behind your back, people suggesting other reasons, because some of them have been around long enough to remember. Gossip may grow old, but it never dies.

Some of them say it's a sign you're still in love.

You pick a name off the list, almost at random. It's not quite that way -- you choose a location that will be difficult to secure, a place where anyone might slip in and out unnoticed. If you're going on a suicide mission, you might as well go all the way.

You pick an artifact from the CIA's ever-growing Rambaldi collection. This too is almost at random, except that you're careful to select an item small enough to conceal easily and recent enough that word might not be out that it's now the property of the CIA.

You gather the information at your desk and sit down at the computer, accessing the email account given to you. You make an offer, suggest a location.

You slug back another cup of truck-stop coffee and hit send. Every fiber of your body winds tight with the tension, praying that your answer is the right one.

******

Hong Kong was most certainly the wrong choice. Besides the memories it contains, there's the powerful heat that presses down on every surface, soaking through your oxford and your nicest pants, no matter how much bottled water you down, making you wonder how much longer you can take it.

At least you have an excuse for breaking into a cold sweat when the time comes.

You're sitting a little too casually in a stiff metal chair in a bare room that must have once been an office. The indoor/outdoor carpet and crooked whiteboard hanging along one wall suggest a western company, and the tiny window opening only to a putrid alley suggests a none-too-profitable one. You entered through the only door half an hour ago and let it snap shut behind you, flimsy grey-painted metal and an even flimsier tension lock the only thing between you and whatever waits on the other side. You took a seat in the stiff-backed metal chair and laid a small black object, no larger than a glasses case, on the table before you.

At precisely 10:06, the metal door handle turns, scraping roughly against the frame. Every muscle tenses and you lean forward, careful to keep your hands resting casually on the tabletop and an unconcerned expression on your face.

Your contact enters the room, just as scheduled, greedy eyes glittering at the sight of the Rambaldi artifact. A few perfunctory pleasantries, a wire transfer, and he's on his way out the door.

You settle back into the flimsy chair with something like a sigh of relief. You'd been waiting for that metal door to swing open and Sloane to step in, guns blazing, and the alternative (a round, balding Asian man who looks more like a bureaucrat than any of your colleagues) leaves you a little stunned and, truth be told, a little let down.

The gunshot rips through the air and you have your Beretta out of the holster before the sound stops ringing in your ears, kicking over the chair in your urgency to get to the door. You line up beside it, gun ready, waiting for whatever's about to come through that door.

When the door moves, you jump and aim all at the same time, and it takes every bit of self-control you have not to lay on the trigger right then. Thank goodness you didn't.

Because yet again, you're holding a gun to the forehead of Sydney Bristow.

"Put the gun down, Vaughn."

She manages to keep still this time, but as soon as you pull the barrel away, she crosses to the table, slapping down the small black case. You swallow, but don't bother to lower the gun. There's still a ring of condensation around the tip where it contacted her warm forehead.

"We had a team waiting outside. Weiss was going to recover it."

She twitches her shoulders in what you guess is passing for a shrug. "Tell Weiss he can take the rest of the day off."

"That's not funny, Sydney. A man just died out there."

She cocks an eyebrow at you. "How do you know he died?"

"Are you telling me he didn't?" You want to double over and throw up all over her boots. Who exactly was she shooting?

"I'm telling you that Wen Yu was a known terrorist and an interrogation expert. He's hired himself out to FTL, K-directorate, SD-10, Kasinau, anyone who had the money. He makes our friend the dentist look like Santa Claus. He's better off dead to the CIA, and I don't see why you should care about how."

Now you really want to retch over that floor. Who the hell is she?

"And you would do that? Just murder someone, in cold blood?"

"He pulled his gun first, if it matters." She hops up on the table as she says this, perching on the edge, feet dangling just a little.

"It does matter, and I can't believe you wouldn't remember that."

"I seem to have forgotten a lot of things." She tilts her head to one side as she says this, a challenge. You don't take the bait.

"Why did you bring that back to me?"

"Who says you're leaving the room with it?" Touche.

"What if I did?"

"Then the CIA would keep this little artifact in its collection. I'm sure Kendall will be very proud of you." She uses the tone you would expect if she were patting the head of a five-year-old.

"And that wouldn't disturb you? To let the CIA have this?"

Her eyes narrow. "I'm not in this race, this – whatever it is – for Rambaldi. I'd be just as happy to see it all blown to pieces."

"Then why do you work for Irina Derevko?" The bitter tone is back again; you can't seem to keep it out.

She smiles, the tight, brittle smile she keeps giving you. "Why do you think I work for her?"

"I'm not playing this game."

"Then put the gun down."

The absurdity of the situation dawns on you, standing here in the doorway holding a gun on her and carrying on a conversation as if nothing about it is unusual. The worst part of it is that you've been so intent on her you haven't even bothered to keep the sights trained properly. You drop the gun slowly to your side, suddenly feeling sheepish.

"I don't really care who ends up with Rambaldi's work, as long as it isn't Sloane. Nobody can be trusted with this; no one is going to use it for the right thing. Not Sloane, not my mother, not K-directorate, and definitely not the CIA."

"And yet you're giving it back to me?"

"Call it a good faith gesture."

You start to make a move toward the black case and freeze in mid-step, realizing too late it's a move toward her as well. You've never quite mastered those.

She senses your hesitation and holds out the black case, arm straight and rigid, as if she were pointing a finger. You reach out and slide it from her hand, fingertips brushing fingertips, slight, forbidden, electric. The way it always was.

"You should leave." She speaks quietly, tone matter-of-fact. For once, you agree with her. You take a step back.

"I didn't mean this room."

Your eyes or your forehead must betray your confusion, because she actually makes an effort to clarify. "I mean this life. You should leave it; find a job that doesn't threaten to get you killed and a wife who won't leave you. Someone who's good for you." (Not someone like me, you're both thinking.)

"I believe in what I do. If I didn't, I wouldn't be here."

She shakes her head, something like sadness showing in her dark eyes. "This life will take away what you have, empty you. It turns you dark, makes you bitter. Look at our parents. Look at my father and Kendall and Sloane. That's who we become. That's how we end up."

You shake your head, slowly. Your chest contracts, breath whooshing out of you like a punch to the lungs. You've loved this woman and feared this woman and hated this woman and, never, not once, has it struck you to pity her. But that's what you feel now, for this stiff, brittle, dark figure in front of you. Pity.

"It's not how we have to end up," you say softly. It's not how you have to end up, Sydney, is what you mean, but you can't quite form the words.

She smiles, the way she does so often lately, a flick of the lips that manages to be both sad and bitter, and not in the least humorous. She looks at the floor.

She raises her eyes, but never high enough to meet yours, as she slides off the table and crosses to the door, brushing past you as if the meeting is over. She leaves you talking to her back.

"I have an answer to your question."

She freezes, muscles tensing, and you would be smirking, except for the rush of your blood and the pound of your heart and the sudden clammy perspiration on your hands.

"What?" Her voice is guarded, cautious, as she slowly turns around to face you.

"Yes."

She blinks. Twice.

"Yes?"

You don't repeat yourself: she heard you the first time. You just meet her dark eyes and watch it sink in.

"How can you be sure?" You hear it, and your stomach jumps right up into your throat. The tremor in her voice, the softness – how long has it been since she's spoken that way to you? To anyone?

"I can't be sure. But, if I have a choice, I choose to trust you."

She blinks again, drawing a hand across her face to brush away some unseen hair.

"What makes you think that's even possible, after…" she trails off, looking for the word, one word that will sum up the hell the last five years have been. She simply ends with, "…after."

She's done it now. Your heart catches and your breath hitches and you're suddenly trying to control the blood rushing to your face and the sweat rushing to your hands. So, naturally, you open your mouth and let the first thing you think of tumble right out.

"Because a long time ago, Irina Derevko took away the person I loved most. I won't let her do it again."

Shit. Great one, Vaughn. You finally grow the balls to use the "L" word with Sydney Bristow and you spit it out like a gawking fourteen-year-old while you're standing in an empty office with a dead body down the hall. Way to go. Way to go.

Before you can open your mouth again and dig yourself in deeper, she does the one thing you never expected, the one thing you've never been quite sure how to handle.

Sydney Bristow is crying.

She just stands there, staring at you, tears streaming down her face and hand resting on the doorknob. And when you see her, now, in this moment, you see the woman you remember standing there, the woman who could kick your ass one minute and cry on your shoulder the next, the woman who could go from steely professional to laughing friend in just a second, the woman who could always, always make you happy, just by smiling back. This is not Sydney Bristow, the criminal, daughter of Irina Derevko and ruthless professional. This is Sydney, the woman, the same one you fell in love with seven years ago. Your Sydney.

But she's acting like the Sydney Bristow you know now. Because before you have a chance to get over the shock of seeing her this way, to remember whatever eloquent phrase you're expected to throw out next, she wheels around on her heel, all business, ignoring the tears in her eyes.

She's gone.