Title: Captured Moments: 12 Days of Christmas
Author: Kira [kira at sd-1 dot com]
Genre: Romance/Fluff
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: We all know the drill. I don't own Alias, so please don't sue me. I'm already in debt. And even if you did sue me, it would come off my credit card and I'd still be in debt. So, right. You're better off leaving me be.
Author's Note: Special thanks to KarenB for the beta.
I have to say a few things before you all get started. First off, I came into writing this fic a bit skeptical; I've been writing this to balance myself out from the angst that is Chronic Vertigo. But as I wrote the last words, I was almost in tears. Writing this has been an absolute joy in every sense of the world. Thank you to EVERYONE who has read and commented, or simply read. Coming over to read your comments has been wonderful. And thanks to the girls who've rec'ed me a few times on TWOP - that is a true honor.
I truely hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I did writing it. And look out - another 'arch' in this story has started to form in my head. So, while you're waiting, check out the rest of my fics.
But first and foremost, thank you.
-------
"They gave each other a smile with a future in it."
- Ring Lardner
I'd always gotten the impression that Vaughn's mother lived close by. His comments and apparent lack of any sort of jet lag or large amount of time surrounding a trip to his mother's house seemed to support that theory. The first Thanksgiving I knew him, he'd gone to see her instead of spending it with his girlfriend at the time, and subsequent holidays had been spent a phone call away, but meetings were few and far between. Part of the reason I'd wished to spend this Christmas with him instead of his voicemail when the pain of the recent months had caught up to me and wine had guided my fingers across the phone's keypad.
Yet despite all my wishing, despite not only my efforts, but his own, life had once again kept us apart at those times when normal couples were forced to be together. If only that could apply to us and our constant state of occurrences; I know I'd be waking up to him and his poor excuse for a breakfast and not an empty plane taxiing down a runway.
Yes, Amélie Vaughn, as I'd learned her name the night before as Vaughn excitedly rattled off her address, lived in San Francisco. My previous plan of driving up to her house had flow out the window as soon as he'd said that part, the idea of driving seven hours on Christmas morning not an attractive one. He'd laughed at me, naturally, and told me a fifty minute flight up there was not bad at all, and he'd often used the time to clear his head and think up excuses as to why he didn't call her as much as she'd like him to.
I couldn't picture him as anything other than the perfect son, and told him so.
"Well, I've been distracted lately," had been his sly response, and I only felt a little bad for keeping him from his mother.
He was right about thinking on the plane. While other families, the two others sitting on the plane for similar reasons, sat chatting and playing, children running down the narrow aisle, I was thinking up exactly what I was going to say to Amélie upon meeting her.
Well, calling her Amélie was one thing I wasn't going to do.
But other than that, how much did she know? The phone call last night ended sooner than I'd liked, with Vaughn actually falling asleep on the line as I babbled on and on about everything and anything I could think of. He didn't go very many places without me anymore, but that didn't ease the separation anxiety I was feeling, and shouted into the phone selfishly for just a few more minutes of his attention.
But none of these questions had come up during that time. Did she know about the CIA, about what exactly Vaughn did on a daily basis? Had he told her about me? And if he had, how much did she know? Hanging above my head like a bright neon sign was the most important question, and that had to do with my mother and her connection to Mrs. Vaughn's late husband. It wasn't my place to tell her, yet I felt it was something that needed to be said, that she shouldn't like me and then learn the truth.
Damn it, why hadn't I asked Vaughn before he'd hung up?
I considered calling him then and there, pulling the airphone from the back of the seat and risking the charges for an international call from the airplane just to ask him the answer to that blinking question resting on my shoulders, but figured he'd be out of his room by now, rushing to finish up his mission so he could get home to me by tonight. If he wasn't in the air already.
Okay. Avoid the issue. Pretend everything was nice and perfect. Leave it to Vaughn to explain it all to her, to deal with it along with his mother when she found the closure she'd most probably been searching for the last twenty years. It was Christmas, after all, and I was supposed to be cheerful and thankful for all I had.
Except that I wasn't, and the one thing I truly had, the one connection and immaterial thing I was forever thankful for was currently halfway around the world.
With all these thoughts swirling around my head, the flight went relatively fast, the captain's voice echoing around the cabin sooner than I'd excepted as the stewardess swept down the aisle to collect garbage, seeming out of place in my mind as I felt we'd just taken off. She flashed me a fake grin helped along by hundreds of dollars of make-up, poorly selected and applied, and tossed my pop can in her airline stamped garbage bag.
I guess it was time to face the woman I'd feared facing for the last two weeks.
A taxi collected me at the curb and I handed the address over to the driver, smiling slightly at the blinking lights plugged into his cigarette lighter and tinsel looped around the rear-view mirror as he took the piece of paper, gave a gruff response, and hit the accelerator. He seemed surprised I didn't react as he cut off three merging cars, and grinned full out as he swerved across four lanes of traffic to get off at the correct exit.
"What brings you here?"
I snapped out of beach daydreams of warm summer nights and looked up at the driver as we cruised down narrow San Francisco streets, the hills bouncing my stomach as we rolled over them.
"Meeting someone," I replied, ever careful with the information I supplied. He grins and nods, taking a fluid left.
"Alone? A pretty woman like you should not be alone on Christmas."
I sighed and leaned against the window. "My boyfriend's out of the country."
"Ah. Business takes him away. But why did he let it?"
"He wasn't able to decline," I stated slowly.
"I'm sure he wanted to."
"I know he did. I just…wish he could have."
The driver pulled to a stop outside a nice moderately sized home, wisteria climbing up the front porch and the pillars just outside it, a garden large and healthy sitting under the front windows. My hand lingered on the handle longer than it should have, drawing the driver's attention.
"His mother?"
"Yeah."
"Ahh...he must really love you to send you here," the driver said. "My wife didn't meet my mother until we'd been married for three years! Men love their mothers, you know. He trusts you."
"I trust him," I smiled, feeling a new sense of joy. Even without snow, it suddenly felt like Christmas. Handing the fare over the seat, I stepped out of the car and stood on the curb long after the taxi sped off, suddenly self-conscious. Did I look alright? Was I presentable? Would she like me? I'd mulled over these questions when getting dressed that morning, but the anxiety came back in full force as I forced my feet to start up the walk, legs moving robotically in stiff, blocky motions. The sweet scent of wisteria invaded my nose the closer to the door I got, and I forced back a sneeze with a hand over my nose.
An allergy I never knew about?
Whatever the case, I was sniffling by the time my hand reached the doorbell. And just as my finger was hovering above the gold plated plaque surrounding the pearl white button, a realization hit me in the head so hard, I fell backwards into the railing running the length of the double-sided front porch. Stars swam before my eyes as I wondered what Vaughn's mother was going to think of a girl she didn't know showing up unexpectedly on Christmas morning saying she was, in fact, her son's girlfriend who was incredibly lonely with him being off on a mission in a foreign country.
"Mon dieu!"
I blinked a few times, clearing cobwebs from my vision, and pushed myself up to lean against one of the tall pillars standing on either side of the front steps. My head throbbed with each pulsating beat of blood rushing to what was most certainly going to be a bruise, and I looked up at the door as to scowl at it and its epiphany giving ways.
Instead, I found myself looking up into the stormy blue eyes of an older petite French woman who appeared as stricken as I felt. "Etes- vous bien?" she asked, and I rubbed my head, wincing as I tried to figure out what she'd asked.
"Owww," I whined. She stooped down, and put a soft hand on the side of my face, pulling my head forward, pushed it back, and examined my forehead. I flinched as she leaned over and parted my hair around the area where I'd banged my head into the pillar, and clicked her tongue. She swam in from of my face for just a moment, sitting back on her heels, and I blinked one final time in an effort to clear her up into a single person and not fragments of several identical twins.
"I'm so sorry! I was rushing out the door and did not know anyone was there," she gushed. I nodded, giving her a half-wink as I slid myself up the pillar and swayed on my feet upon planting them, once again, firmly on the ground below me.
That really hurt.
"You've got quite the bump on your forehead, there," she remarked, pointing to it's location with a bony finger. "But the back of your head seems fine."
I resisted the deep urge to hurt the screen door behind her. "Thanks."
"At least," – she paused to repair a bent vine of wisteria – "you have a head thicker than my son's."
"Oh?" I probed. She nodded once the vines were to her satisfaction with a smile I'd seen before.
"He used to fall on his head all the time; his bumps were purely comical in their size," she grins with soft eyes and a bemused expression. Oh dear God, she's trying to figure out who I am and what I'm doing on her porch on Christmas. "The size of grapefruits," was her addition that masked the sound of me trying desperately to clear my throat and find my voice.
"I'm – "
"I know who you are, Sydney," the Vaughn matriarch interrupted. "My son called this morning to tell me you'd be coming."
"Uh…yeah," I muttered. She was sharp; I had to give her that. Her head cocked to the side and she gave that look I was used to receiving from my father when I spoke out of turn in the middle of an intelligence briefing.
"Come now, you must have some manners," she chided.
Vaughn's gift list made a bit more sense now. "I'm Sydney Bristow," I smiled, holding out my hand. Amélie took it in her own and shook it with a grip stronger than I would have expected. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Vaughn."
She grabbed the mass of envelopes hanging out of the iron mailbox attached to the siding beside the door and waved me in with the group of bills and well-wishes, gold-leaf trimming an overly fancy card catching the sun as her arm waved. I was powerless to resist her stunning smile and sharp eyes, and blushed a bit as she held the screen door open as I walked through.
This wasn't the house Vaughn grew up in, but I felt the same swell of emotion as I walked through the door and into the sunlit walkway with Amélie just behind me, I'd feel if it had been. The home was just that; a home like any other, with warm tones and the welcoming scent of fresh baked goods just from the oven, a sprinkling of Christmas cookies and the snap of ginger invading my senses as she beckoned me through the front foyer and never-used living room to the spacious kitchen beyond.
The tones were yellow, a perfect match to the retro chair she practically pushed me into. I let my fingers run over the floral pattern of the square table and made a note to myself to get the woman some modern furniture the next time I won the lottery.
But Amélie Vaughn seemed at ease in the kitchen from another era, moving around in a flurry of activity while she pulled a cookie sheet from the oven and set it on the counter with calloused and aged fingers. I watched as she worked, carefully piling the cookies onto a cooling rack before she moved off to procure me a glass of tap water and a bag of ice.
"I really am terribly sorry about that," she soothed, pressing the bag to my forehead. I winced with a sharp hiss of breath, and took control of holding the ice to my head from her. She smiled weakly and set my water down before taking a seat next to me at the table.
"No problem, really," I told her. "I've had worse."
"So you're Sydney," she grinned, brushing aside my comment. I realized, as she smiled up to the eyes, that it was one she'd heard countless times before from her son, and wished for a rewind button and a VCR of my day thus far. "I've heard a lot about you."
"You have?"
She laughed like a sprinkling of sugar. "Michael talks about you constantly. 'Sydney this…' 'Sydney that…' I wanted to meet you so I could have a moment's peace!"
I smiled back at her and shifted the ice over my growing bruise.
"It's too bad about him being out of town for the holidays," she remarked just as I was taking a sip of cool water. I sputtered, my hand covering my mouth to hide my slip of manners, and looked up at her wide-eyed.
She seemed confused. "A bust, or something of the sort, on Christmas, of all days. How he went from an economics major to an officer for the ATF is beyond me."
The sharp pain I felt in my chest clued me into a loose Alice reference and redirected my memory to the cover I'd been given in relation to her state of being clueless in regards to her boyfriend. At least with a cover with the ATF, he wouldn't have to worry about his extensive knowledge of guns and firearms someone in the economics field wouldn't have. At least that answered the job question; Vaughn had kept his mother in the dark about his true place of employment, a move I could respect. There was no use worrying her when there was no need to do so, but I felt for him the day she figured out he'd been lying to her for all these years.
Noncommittal was the way to go in this situation, and I simply shrugged and took a drink of water once I was sure doing so was safe.
"You have a beautiful home."
Once my eyesight returned to normal, devoid of large black splotches swimming across my vision, I could truly appreciate the house, a juxtaposed assortment that crossed two continents and forty years. Out with the old, in with the new didn't seem to sit well with the matriarch, her cluttered kitchen and living room beyond filled with relics from happier times before she became the sole provider for her aging family. If my head wasn't pounding with the precise tune of an oncoming headache of gigantic proportions, I would have wandered from my seat at the scratched Formica table and examined everything I could before my rudeness got the best of me.
The decorations were minimal, set up by a solitary person to lift her own spirits and welcome –
"Excuse me, Mrs. Vaughn," I started, but she cut me off with a wave of her hand.
"Amélie, please."
Well, I'd already concluded I wasn't going to go there, and nodded with a small, forced smile. "Well, are you going to be, I mean – "
"What are you doing here, Sydney?"
Her earnest tone took me by surprise while clueing me in to her hospitable yet questioning nature, her question not one to be followed- up with an invitation to see the door. More philosophical in nature, though not requiring a four hour chat about how I viewed myself in the grand scheme of things (a topic, I assure you, I'd pondered several times since my life became more complicated, and even more so as it appeared to simplify itself). Literal seemed the way to go, my analytical mind probing the words and tone for exactly what she was asking about.
It was a good question, one that, if I ever left this life of extended servitude to my country, I might put on a test for my English class as they analyzed a great novel. 'Why was that character there?' with an annotation to clarify it extended past the physical.
I couldn't help but stray in that direction. Even if I'd stayed home, the empty feeling settled in the center of my chest like a heavy meal would have remained, and even sitting across the table from someone else did little to alleviate it.
"I couldn't stand to be alone again," I confessed with a rush of air. She gave a look so strong; I was almost knocked from my seat by its shear magnitude. But it softened slowly in the silence of the kitchen, the emptiness of the house, and I knew she understood.
Amélie's shift was slight, a slip of one hand over the other upon the tabletop. "I see."
I felt like a fool sitting there, in that woman's kitchen moaning about being alone for one Christmas when she had spent almost thirty alone and would continue to do so, kept company only by Vaughn.
Did he come up here last year? Fly for two hours after giving me my gift?
My gift.
Had I truly been alone last year? Was it possible that even then, when the thoughts of some kind of relationship with Vaughn had just begun to spout he felt the same hope too? His selflessness never ceased to amaze me; how one man could love so passionately and unconditionally seemed next to impossible. In a life that seemed so unblessed, he was the anchor to reality, to the truth.
My one miracle.
So what would that kind of man, so close to the gods of the ancient world, want? The singular wish that remained a mystery to me even as I felt I knew him so well. The realm of the physical would mean nothing to him. He loved his mother; was cute, devoted, caring – so what was I missing? What was the one clue my detective mind had missed?
I gasped and brought a hand to my mouth, ice bag fluttering to the floor with a dull thwap.
Over Amélie's right shoulder hung a picture of her younger self, arms of a loving husband encircling her waist. Snow dotted their eyelashes as it fell around them, and I knew without even turning the photo over it was from 1963.
"Excuse me," I breathed, standing as if caught in a dream, "I need to make a phone call."
..
I was thrown into voicemail as soon as I reached the front foyer.
There were only two reasons as to why I'd reach voicemail instead of the person I was calling. Either his phone had died overseas – something that wouldn't reflect well on him once he returned, the charger still plugged in next to his junk drawer filled with take-out menus. Or he'd turned it off. Intentionally.
Being a scenario I didn't wish to dive into at the moment, I tossed a glance to the kitchen and the baking machine that was Amélie Vaughn. My stomach grumbled in response to the overwhelming sweet smells flowing from the oven and made a note to make my time on the phone short.
It rang twice before being answered. "This had better be good, Bristow, I'm talking to you instead of eating some pretty damn good chocolate."
"Why isn't Vaughn's phone on?"
Weiss groaned. "I feel so used."
"You know you like it," I joked lightly, smirking. "Anyway, I thought he'd be on his way home by now."
"He didn't call you?"
My stomach dropped, Weiss' tone not as jovial as I would have liked at that moment. I took a deep breath and pressed a hand to my forehead.
"What's going on?"
"Where are you?" he dodged. I closed my eyes and fell to sit on the bottom stair, leaning my head up against the railing for added support.
"His mother's," I answered tersely. There was a clatter in the kitchen, and if Weiss hadn't been avoiding the answer to my original question, I would have run off to see what had happened beyond my field of vision.
"Really? Is she baking? Please tell me she isn't - her cookies are – "
"She's baking," I interjected. "What's going on?"
"Unforeseen circumstances. I know he promised he'd be out of there this morning, but – I'm sorry, Sydney, but – "
"I need to see him."
"What?"
"He'll be clear in 12 hours, won't he?" I asked, sitting up straight. "He has to be, Kendall didn't say anything about – "
"Sydney, listen to yourself. You're blabbering on about flying halfway around the world to see Vaughn on Christmas. What makes you think you can even get a flight?"
The truth of the matter was, I wasn't even thinking about the logistics of it all. I only knew I had to see him, get to him before the clock ticked to midnight and Christmas was over, before this life had stolen from me another moment in my life set aside for me and me alone.
"I might not be able to," I told him. "But you can."
"Sydney…"
"C'mon, Weiss, you're always saving our asses, what makes this different?"
"A trans-Atlantic flight?" he suggested. "Sydney, really, just – "
"Book me on a flight to London, Weiss. Call me back when you have the details."
I hung up before he had the chance to talk me out of it, to interject some pearl of wisdom about operations procedures and the practicality of a flight halfway around the world to see someone who'd be working just as hard to reach you. But that was the point, wasn't it? My actions weren't brash or impractical if applied to the ideal that Vaughn was working as hard as he could to get to me at that moment; it only seemed logical that I work equally as hard, and do whatever was within my power to get to him.
And if that meant flying around the world and missing Christmas, so be it. When added to the list of sacrifices we'd made for each other, it didn't rank high enough to be considered a great loss.
With the promise of seeing Vaughn within the next twelve to fourteen hours, depending on Weiss' speed and abilities from his family's home in Massachusetts, I bounced down the stairs and swung myself around the corner banister back into the kitchen, where Amélie was preparing to take another cooking sheet cluttered with delicious French pastries out of the oven. She almost jumped as I reemerged into her bright kitchen, holding a hand over her heart as I dropped into my recently vacated chair and cradled my cell phone between shaking hands.
"Excuséz- moi," I called over my shoulder.
"I should be used to it, by now," she remarked, carefully scooping cookies from the tray to a cooling rack next to the oven. I scooted around in my chair to face her, the phone still held tightly in my right hand. "The men in this family can move without making a sound."
"Really?" I asked, smiling. "Because Vaughn's not the most graceful person."
"Oh, no, that boy was a handful as a child," Amélie continued as she finished her task. "Always falling out of trees or off his bicycle. But I think after falling so much, he's gotten better. It's easier to sneak down the stairs if you've tripped down them and found the squeaking spots."
"Sneak out?" I held back laughter. She sighed and wiped her hands on the front of her apron.
"Such a rebel. To meet up with his friends and girls; none of which were as beautiful as you," she added as an afterthought. "And with such sparkling French! I knew he'd find a good one."
If there ever was a time to glow, it was then, at the moment when I finally received Vaughn's mother's seal of approval in the sugar coated kitchen pulsating with Christmas cheer. The past had little pull here, as she turned and placed another sheet of dough into the oven and set the timer, content with the daily task backed by years of tradition. Perhaps she'd baked them late Christmas Eve when the mornings would be a montage of torn wrapping paper and new toys. Or maybe she'd bake them after the presents had all been unwrapped and her son lay slumbering under the tree, exhausted as the excitement over the magic of Christmas morning wore off. No matter what the case, she moved with the ease of someone who'd done the motions for years, the cookies stacked in neat rows on the cooling rack in a way I'd never accomplish even after a hundred years.
"Is anyone else coming today?"
"Hrmm? Oh, yes, of course. They usually arrive sometime in the afternoon. I suspect they time it so they arrive at precisely the moment I set dinner on the table," she answered, pulling plastic bottles of sprinkles from a spice cabinet near the sink. The glass of water before me was nearing empty, and the smell of spiced cookies made me thirstier than ever. She had just opened a container of green sprinkles when I stood at her side awkwardly to refill my glass. It was one thing to speak casually from across the room, but standing this close to her only made me remember my first apprehension about meeting with her, and I was glad my hair and clothing in no way resembled my mother's.
"Here," she said, putting a bottle of small-grained red sprinkles in my hand, "why don't you help me?"
It was hard to say no when the bottle was already in my hand, and I gave her a weak, confused smile before uncapping the bottle and stood stiffly over the cookies. I hadn't done anything of this sort since I was five years old, and even with my perfect memory, the logistics of sprinkling were lost on me. Did she have a pattern she followed? A special flick of the wrist?
But I followed her lead, sprinkling evenly over the tops of butter cookies just after she covered them with green. "I make my cookies Christmas day. That way, they're fresh."
"Fresh," I nodded, covering a snowflake with a storm of red. "Got it."
"You have to wake up at just the right time, you see, or else you'll wake the house too early and by dinner they'll be whining."
"Whining isn't good," I concluded, giving a round cookie a red bozo nose.
"Why, one year, even the smell of my cookies didn't wake Bill and Michael, and they ended up sleeping until noon."
I stopped, a cascade of red falling onto a poor innocent cookie as I reeled from her shared memory. She grabbed my hand with her aged one, skin soft even after all these years, and tilted the bottle back up until the waterfall slowed to a trickle, then stopped.
"Don't worry, Sydney," she said softly, "I know."
"Know?"
She gave off a sigh and started brushing the red sprinkles off a buried tree shaped cookie. "He told me, you know. Said he wasn't supposed to, but – I've had my closure."
"Oh."
"I had my reservations about your relationship with my Michael," she continued, the brushing growing more aggressive over the eroding face of the cookie. "But he told me something, you know. He said, 'You can't hold her responsible for the mistakes of her mother. Just as you can't hold me responsible for wanting to follow in dad's footsteps.' He's a wise child, wiser than he should be at his age. But then again, so was his father. Who am I to question God's will?"
Of all the things I'd been expecting, that was the last thing I thought would have happened.
"Sydney," she said, her accent distorting my name, "make him happy, please. He's had so much sorrow in his life; I want him to have something good, something to make him laugh."
"I promise."
"Good. Now, tell me, why did you think the tree should be red? And dear me, why did you have to kill it with your sprinkles?" she laughed, brushing the last of the red sprinkles from the perfect tree, and I couldn't help but think that finally, the blood shed in the past had finally been washed from our hands.
..
My phone promptly rang, vibrated across the table, and clamored to the floor ten minutes after my impromptu conversation with Weiss.
"Give me good news," I directed at him after retrieving the phone and checking for damages. He huffed, chewed something, and cleared his throat before answering.
"Get to the airport," he answered between chews, "your flight leaves in an hour, and you know how security is these days."
"Thank you!" I practically screamed.
"Yeah, yeah, thank my brother the pilot. Merry Christmas, Sydney."
"Merry Christmas, Eric, and I won't forget this."
"Yeah, you'd better not. I expect a box of éclairs on my desk when I get back."
I hung up and kissed the phone as a stand in for Weiss, grinning as I looked up to Amélie and her final batch of cookies. She stood in front of me, a red tin with reindeers dancing across the lid held out to me on her hands.
"For your trip. Don't eat them all at once, you'll get a horrible stomach ache," she advised, practically pushing the tin into my hands. I took it with a smile, popping open for a peek at the treats inside, smiling as I spied the tree cookie on top, properly sprinkled with green.
"Thank you," I told her, tossing the strap to my purse over my shoulder. "For everything."
I don't think I needed to say the last part, but did anyway. She pulled me into a hug, kissed my cheek, and sent me on my way.
..
I've been to airports all over the world at varying times of the day and night. In Moscow, I had free reign of the airport as the sweepers worked on deserted walkways in the dead of night. Paris was a free for all with the crowds of people pushing their ways to destinations and gates, a herd of cattle roaming in one solid block of people. But San Francisco International Airport was practically deserted as the cab dropped me off in front of departures, a few travelers dawdling here and there as they leisurely made their way from gates to a next-to-empty baggage claim. Where I thought there'd be a line at the check-in counter, I found no one and half-expected to see a tumbleweed blow across the floor and make it's way around the ribbons defining line patterns.
"Hi," I greeted, leaning against the counter. The man behind it, tagged Andrew M., snapped his gum and looked up at me with dull, tired eyes. There was something about his name that seemed oddly familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
"Don't be so perky," he almost growled, "I had to wake up at five am."
"I need to pick up a ticket," I replied slowly. "Sydney Bristow?"
There was a click of fingers against the plastic of his keyboard in that wild rush that identified airport workers the world over, and after four thousand keystrokes more than I thought it took to type in my name, he smiled up at me and asked, "Any luggage?"
"No."
He narrowed his eyes in that way men do when analyzing something and said, "Where are you going that you're flying on Christmas without luggage?"
"Last minute," I confessed sheepishly. He shrugged and clicked about forty-five thousand keys that must have comprised my ticket information, seating placement and the words "no luggage" in airline language and handed me a small boarding pass. I examined it, then looked back up at him.
"Boarding pass. We do the check in and everything down here, now. Got your passport?"
I prayed I'd left it in my purse after Zurich as I dug through it, and was surprised when my fingers brushed against the hard plastic of the first page. I pulled it out and handed it to him. More clicks of the keys, and he handed it back.
"Have a nice flight," he called as I started away from the counter, "he must be really special if you're doing this on Christmas."
"He is," I told him over my shoulder. "More than he knows," I mumbled more to myself as I headed to gate 12, wondering why the time and gate number felt so familiar as well.
..
"This, Sydney," - I tried to find a comfortable position in the coach seat, thankful there was no one sitting in front of me to become irritated as my knees continued to kick into the back of the seat – "was a phenomenally stupid idea."
The original sentiment of my spontaneous flight had started to wear off like Christmas morning excitement faded into the lull of no more presents to unwrap, and I found myself wondering what the hell I was going to do once I got to London. For one, I only had a vague idea as to where Vaughn was staying, not a large amount of cash, no clothes, and a large tin of cookies that I was popping like mad as I stewed in my seat. Twelve hours on this flight were going to drive me insane.
I ran out of old receipts to examine and stuff in my empty bag of peanuts after two hours, and another three after that found me at the end of the book I'd originally brought along to keep me occupied on my first flight of the day. A man snored loudly two rows behind me, and no matter how high the volume on the headphones for the in flight movie was, I could still hear his loud honk and cough ever minute or so.
The magazines in the pockets are the most out of date, boring publications on the planet. I suspect they only stayed in print because those reading them had no other refuge and were subjected to them against their will.
The man behind me woke up, gave a loud hoot, and fell back asleep.
And then, so did I.
. .
I don't sleep much on planes. It comes from years of mission flights cluttered with briefs and covers needing memorization then and there. With a schedule like that, there was little time for rest before rushing off into the field, and even if I did find myself with a length of free time, the pre-mission jitters I'd never shed over the years of being a spy kept me awake.
There were no jitters now.
A hand on my shoulder prodded me awake, and I opened my eyes to see the snoring man standing over me with a bemused smile on his face.
"I can't believe you slept through my snoring. I know, I'm horrible," he commented shyly. I rubbed my eyes, a bit groggy, and glanced around the cabin. I yawned, stretched, and looked up to my newfound acquaintance.
"What time is it?" I yawned again and rubbed my eyes as sleep fell away into astute alertness. The man laughed and gave his watch a glance.
"This thing says 2 am, so," – he calculated in his head – "9 or so. You're lucky you slept on the plane; my first trip over I didn't and was dead to the world for days."
While I couldn't believe this man could ever miss sleep for any occasion, my thoughts were occupied with something quite different than jet-lag and its effects.
9 am. December 26th. I'd completely and totally missed Christmas.
The gloom I felt seemed to be shared by the rest of the plane's occupants. A haggard flight crew stood chatting near the exit to the plane with the flight attendants, their hats tucked under their arms to reveal hat hair in its purest form. They looked lonely, lost without their families with them, perhaps just as sad and lost as I was, disembarking an airplane in the middle of a large city with no clue as to the whereabouts of the one I loved; the aching desire within my heart guiding my heavy footfalls down the jet way. One after another, plunking down onto the carpeted metal arm in a robot's steps, purse clutched to my side. It twisted, the sounds of a busy international airport bouncing off cold walls growing louder as I turned with it, head down as I stepped into the warmth of the airport terminal.
I'd missed Christmas, a day signifying that togetherness I'd longed for the last year. Not only that, I'd flown across the world in the pursuit of Vaughn, stopping at nothing to find him and tell him I loved him. If need be, I'd turn back after uttering those words, those words that spoke all the thank you's for his simple existence, his saving state of grace bestowed upon me in my darkest hours. And for all he'd done, I'd been selfish – focusing on my own needs over his own, my troubles and fears and apprehensions. My paralyzing fear of loosing him like I'd lost my mother.
The thoughts swirled around in my head as a woman chimed a greeting to me over my right shoulder, her words cutting through the fog inside my head as my feet kept moving forward.
"Merry Christmas, Sydney."
I looked up.
And there was Vaughn.
..
"Just as soon as you tell me where you've been."
"Visited my mother, is that a crime?"
"Listen, you can't say a word, okay?" he replied quickly. "I just needed someone to hear me out, tell me if I'm doing the right thing."
11:37 am
A. V, E
12
"Yes, I was. So there he was, sitting on the couch, shouting away in a language half of us don't understand, and drinking more than, well, I've ever seen him drink before."
"It's not fine. Things have just – God, and you know I had something planned for you and now, well, I won't even be there to give it to you."
..
I threw myself into his arms wholeheartedly.
He gave a grunt in surprise, stepping back with one foot to steady himself as I latched my arms around his body and buried my face in the soft cotton of his simple white dress shirt. The world swirled around us until it was nothing but a blur of colors, a swish of a paintbrush against the blank canvas of our new life together, leaving everything out of focus but us as the sounds of the airport faded away and all I could hear was the steady beating of his heart. I felt arms wrap around and envelop me, warm and strong as they held me steadfast for a quick yet tender kiss to my forehead.
"What happened to your head?"
I pulled back just enough to look up along his profile and said, "Your mother hit me in the head with a screen door." He laughed a deep, rumbling laugh I'd heard only a few times before that could be, in his words, as rare as one of my smiles and kissed the bruise on my forehead.
"And she always called me the klutz."
"I'll have you know your mother's a very kind woman," I defended. He sobered and nodded.
"Of course she is. She's worked her magic on you."
"Magic?"
"Defiantly. Or maybe," he pondered aloud, "you worked yours on her."
"You planned this."
"Yes."
I was on a roll, the clues seen in the last week and a half loudly falling into place. Standing apart from him, I waved my hands in the air as I went through them. "This entire thing. The flight, your mother, even the check-in agent at the airport. Kendall?"
"Let's just say I owe him my first born. You don't mind, do you?"
"Not at all," I smiled. "The mission?"
"Fabricated. I've been here."
The world snapped back into view like a rubber band. The woman's voice cutting through the fog of my hopelessness had been French. And I'd been to Charles de Gaul enough times to recognize the Parisian airport on first sight. The flight, booked, most likely by Vaughn himself, had been to Paris, not London, and with some help from a friend at the airline, the destination of my flight had gone by unnoticed in my rush to reach him.
"Vaughn, there's…there's something I need to tell you," I started, but he cut me off with a finger to the lips, eyes darkening slightly as his voice dropped and danced over the skin of my earlobe.
"That can wait," he told me, and intertwined his hand with mine, leading me through the crowds of the airport like a ship cutting through the untamed sea.
..
I was a bit angry.
With all the planning that had gone into something as elaborate as a surprise spanning two continents and an entire ocean, anger was the last thing I should have felt at that moment. But if there was something I'd learned from the drastic turn my life had taken in the last year and a half, it was that trust had to be earned and once broken, was hard to re-establish.
It wasn't that I was unappreciative. Far from it. The joy I'd felt when finding him, dressed in the perfect suit and sticking out among the busy stream of people around him, when I disembarked the plane was a level of elation I'd felt only a few times in my life before. Instead, I was upset that he'd make me feel so hopeless and dreary on a day when joy spread through the world and I should have been partaking in it with the rest of those celebrating instead of loosing sleep due to my over analytical nature and a late-night long distance telephone call.
Or perhaps, when looking at the situation from another point of view, I was angry that he'd been able to pull a fast one on me. To plan something such as this with the help of so many people and keep me from the truth. The clues I'd stumbled on over the last 12 days might not have been accidental at all – perhaps he let me see just enough to keep my mind occupied while he planned away with his friends. Whatever his intentions were, he'd still shown there was more to him than I thought, and even he could out maneuver the great Sydney Bristow.
Complacency was a state I wished to be in yet was far from as he sped down wide roads past cars jammed with families and popular country bakeries. He said not a word the entire way, just kept his eyes on the road and hands firmly on the wheel as if I were some dangerous temptress that would steer him off track.
That, or he knew the questions that would spew forth from my mouth given the proper opening.
He swerved suddenly, forty minutes into our trip, and the flecking of gravel against the metal frame of the car jarred me from daydream thoughts to the present, the now. The heat of his gaze, intense and full, fell upon me, and I was blushing before I even turned to look at him.
"I feel like I'm in a sappy movie," I commented. He nodded.
"You like sappy movies."
"Yeah," I agreed, "but don't tell anyone."
I put a finger to my lips and hissed, the signal of 'shhh' for a secret that must be kept sliding forth through the quiet ambiance of the car as he turned again and kicked up more dust behind us in a veil covering our tracks. The slumbering trees of winter gave way to a grander sight; a cottage settled deep in the enveloping woods on a small plot of neatly kept land hidden in the dead of winter. I followed the line of the horizon with my eyes until they hit the house, and I flashed back to the picture hanging over Amélie Vaughn's shoulder like an angel watching over her in that empty home up north.
"Vaughn…." I started, but found my chest tight with emotion as the car skidded to a quick stop tangent to the squab brick house and the keys clink together as he tossed them from hand to hand.
"My mother inherited this house when she married my father forty years ago," he confessed as the keys went from hand to hand in the clinking of a failed jugular. "She told me it had some kind of magic – "
"I figured out your wish," I blurted out. He turned to me, face illuminated by the young sun crawling up the sky and I could have sworn his eyes were a darker green than I'd seen before, their depths inviting me to fall down into them.
His tone was flat. "You have."
"I snuck into your house – "
"I know."
"– to grab a - wait, you know?"
He smirked. "Weiss told me when I asked him to take care of Donovan while I was away and he didn't have his key."
"I broke the shelf in your closet. Now, don't be mad at me, but I was just at a loss as to what the perfect gift for you would be and I had this insane idea that you'd like one of your pictures framed like I did; when you gave me that antique frame, I searched for a picture to put in it – which was ironic that – "
"Sydney," he said calmly. "You're rambling."
I took a deep breath, consulted the good angel on my shoulder, and straightened my face. "When I saw that picture in your mother's kitchen, I knew what your wish was. Aside from the fact that you want your father back, and I know that's not going to happen, you wanted to follow in his footsteps.
You wanted to find a woman who swept you off your feet and do everything you could to make her happy."
I closed my eyes and waited for his answer.
..
"Yeah."
I ventured a peek with my left eye. "Yeah?"
"How could I ever doubt you? Of course you figured it out," he muttered.
"You're just saying that."
"Syd, I dated Alice for two years, and she never even came close. My parents were mismatched from the beginning; my mother was as outspoken as him and they'd always get into stupid arguments over trivial things, each always wanting to be right. And they had their share of problems before they got it right. I guess I always looked up to them, and after – "he paused and looked down for a second before regaining his resolve. "He was happy, she was happy, and I was happy. So, I asked Santa for a woman that would make me happy. Well, I don't think I phrased it that way – girls still had cooties when I was five."
"I see you've grown out of that phase."
"Yeah, you could say that. Listen, Syd, when I met you, I think I stopped breathing. It wasn't outer beauty or stunning looks, which you do possess in great quantities. It was who you were inside that almost killed me, and I suddenly found I couldn't live life without that. You infuriated me, but I liked it; I liked how strong you were and how you weren't afraid to show weakness once and awhile. You are real. My wish was answered long ago, Syd, so now it's your turn. Fair?"
I think if I hadn't been sitting, my knees would have given out on me.
"That's why I did all of this. I wanted to let you get away, but I knew I couldn't just tell you; I had to let you get here your own way. You move through life so differently than everyone else that I had to give you what you wanted without giving it to you." He paused and rubbed the back of his neck, face falling into a smile that made him look like a boy out on his first date with the most popular girl in school. "Does that make sense?"
"Perfect sense."
"Good. Because I was worried you'd kick my ass if I didn't do this right."
"Oh, c'mon," I smirked. "I wouldn't completely annihilate you."
"Oh?"
"I'd eat your food first. I'm starved after that flight."
..
Marie, as it was, happened to be the daughter of the local baker and was one of the best pastry chiefs in the area. His phone call of a few days prior had been with her, a courtesy call to tell him delivering this early on the day after Christmas would be costly, and I could tell by the delicious smells flowing through the front door of the cabin that he'd spared no expense. After a 14 hour plane ride with only a tin of cookies to sustain me, I dove into the food headfirst, leaving him behind as I sat myself at the table, put the empty cookie tin beside me, and started tasting everything I could get my hands on.
It was when the sun was setting that I finally calmed down, wrapped in Vaughn's arms as we snuggled into the overstuffed couch set in front of the fireplace. My eyelids threatened to deliver me to sleep with each tick of the clock's second hand, and the flames licking firewood had nothing on the heater that was settled just under me on the couch, his skin warm like coco fresh from the teakettle.
"I have to say, this is the best present I've ever gotten."
Vaughn shifted and turned so he was looking down at me. "But I haven't given you your present yet."
"Then what was all of this?"
"Haven't you been saying you needed a vacation?"
"True, but Vaughn, this is wonderful. I don't want anything else."
There was more shuffling as he reached behind him and groped the chair next to the couch until he found the right pocket and pulled something from it. With raised eyebrows, I followed his hand from the leather's deep pocket to the space between us, where he held the small, hastily gift wrapped package inches from my face and beckoned me to take it.
So I did.
It appeared as if he'd twisted wrapping paper around it, then followed suit with scotch tape until the dull surface of the paper had been made shiny by the overwhelming amount of tape used. Thankful, for once, that I had long nails, I picked at the tape until I flecked off a piece, then worked from there until a silver chain slid from the small hole I'd managed to make cobra-like in its unveiling. It stopped, dammed up by a larger object on the end of the chain, and I gave him a nervous look before pulling it from its home with a strong yank.
And was promptly hit in the face by something heavy and metal.
"I wear it on every mission, for good luck," he explained as I turned the all-to-familiar ring over in my hands. "It was handed down to me, and was for a few generations, I think. Anyway, I don't need it anymore."
"Why?"
"Because," he started, pulling me closer to him, "I have you. I don't need anything else in the world."
Snow started to fall outside the window, a pale white backdrop to the glowing fire roaring in the old brick fireplace. My eyes were drawn to the swirling dances of falling snow, watching as they fell straight from the sky only to be pulled away by the menacing wind. But in the end, they all reached the ground, blanketing the dormant Earth with their unique patterns. And perhaps they landed miles away from where they wanted to go, but made it to the ground nonetheless.
Maybe that's what this was. The road less traveled and all that. That when you come to a fork in the road, you can't see the end of each path laid out before you, only as far as the brush will let you. I'd wanted something so normal; I had looked down the path and seen couples enjoying their time together, at the ice rink, walking down the street, and become narrow-minded to the world that truly existed around me. Sure, the last two weeks weren't the smoothest, nor the most conventional when it came to the preparing for a major holiday together, but I'd missed the bigger picture.
I wanted to enjoy my time with Vaughn. And I had, even though my thoughts had been elsewhere. Shopping for Christmas gifts and skating under the stars. Watching holiday lights dance around front porches and decorated garage doors. Sitting on the bank of a river while he played with my hair. Went to a horrible holiday party complete with bad jokes, drunk coworkers, and the intervention of several police officers. Found a tree – the list continued on in my mind as I stared at our reflection in the window, his arms wrapped around me as he rested his chin on my head, content with just being.
The road here had been hard, convoluted by unseen circumstances and unusual ordeals, but it had been, in comparison, just as normal as a schoolteacher's. And maybe that's why Vaughn had planned it how he did, knowing I never made my way through life in a straight line, expected the unexpected in every situation. The surprise of seeing him waiting for me came out of no where, strengthened the very love I held for him.
Here I'd been searching my life for someone who knew me. Not the happy grad student rooming with her best friend or the tough daughter of a respected spy. But me. A girl who'd lost her mother and had grown up so fast she'd skipped childhood and went right to adulthood complete with responsibilities and expectations. In the midst of things, I lost who I was, that precious self-identity that marks us different from the rest of the world.
Then again, wasn't he just a boy who'd lost his dad and was trying to find him? Our methods might be different, but the aim, like the snowflakes falling from the midnight sky, was the same.
We'd just been blown off course for awhile.
I grabbed Vaughn's hands and twisted myself around in his embrace. "It's snowing outside."
"It is."
"Do you have a hat?"
He raised an eyebrow. "A hat?"
"And some gloves. I didn't bring any gloves."
"Weren't you the woman who mocked me for playing in the rain?"
"I was a fool then," I answered with a pouting bottom lip. "You've educated me in the ways – "
"There are hats and gloves," he interrupted. He smiled beneath me as I leapt backwards to my feet, pulling him up with me. In a blur of laughter he collected me up in his arms and led me away, digging through closets and chests like some great archeologist searching for the greatest treasure of his career until finally, at hat swung at me, followed by gloves and a warmer jacket.
Hand in hand, I led him to the yard. With misdirected snowflakes swirling around us, we danced and laughed until our sides ached and fingers grew numb with cold. Eyelashes coated in flurries, I fell to the snow with my arms wrapped around his waist.
"Hey there," he smirked down to me. I flung my arms to the sides and grinned.
"Didn't you ever make snow angels as a kid?"
"You're my angel."
His voice was a low and hoarse whisper like that I'd heard in the train station when no place was home. I leaned up and captured his lips with my own, pulling him down to me in a kiss that tasted like fresh snow as my fingers tingled with warmth.
"And you're mine," I breathed. He flipped back onto his feet.
"Come up out of that snow," he told me, "and kiss me properly."
I could do nothing but comply, leaving the snow angel to watch over us as we finally found our place in the world. Our own brand of normality in a world of abnormality and shadows.
The snow held no shadows, and as I tipped Amélie's hat back on my head, I realized Vaughn's Christmas wish had been the same as my own.
And we'd both gotten what we wanted for Christmas.