Same ole, same ole...
This Chapter: Back to Lauren's POV
Suggested Soundtrack: "Mirror Mirror" by M2M, "Thrown Away" by Papa Roach, "Heart Shaped Box" by Evanescence, "Double Life" off the "Alias" Soundtrack, and "Time of Your Life" by Green Day.
Author's Note: Don't hate me because I make Lauren somewhat reasonable. I'm not contrivance-happy like some creators we know.
Video Doomed the Government Agent
Chapter Three: Breaking the Triangle
The next morning, you wake up in the same clothes you were wearing yesterday. You must have cried yourself to sleep, because there is an awful crick in your neck. Rubbing the soreness a good portion of the time, you shower and dress only to find yourself in the same position you were in the night before: sitting on your bed with your head in your hands and without a husband in sight. Feeling yourself getting worked up again, you forcefully calm yourself and welcome your wits back.
You need to get a hold of him in any way possible. But how? You know without even looking that he has not taken his cell phone with him. And you don't even know where he went!
Wait a second.
Yes, you do.
The answer is so painfully obvious, it's almost laughable. You mentally slap yourself on the wrist for being such a dumb blonde.
He went to Weiss's place!
Dashing around the bed to your phone, you hit speed dial number two and tap your foot impatiently as they phone rings. "Hello?" A voice answers, hesitatingly cautious to the point of scared. This is not a good sign.
"Where's my husband?" You snap instantly, practically crawling through the phone and into his ear.
He sighs in exasperation but replies sarcastically, "Right there next to you. Ooh! I win! Look, I'd love to play Twenty Questions with you, but there's this little thing called work that I do—"
"It's a Saturday!"
"Since when does that have anything to do with it?"
"Look," You snarl into the receiver, "I know Michael's at your apartment. I'd like to talk to him." Even this small degree of politeness makes you sick to your stomach. He doesn't exactly like you, and you have even less affinity for him. But if you are going to weasel out an answer, you will need to be nice to him.
Eric sighs again, this time in defeat. "Lauren, I don't think you want to hear what I have to say—"
"Would you shut up and let me talk to my husband? I know he's right there next to you, so be a doll and hand him the phone—"
"He's not here."
You pause for a moment and double back in your memory to check if you heard him right. You did. Confused, you murmur more to yourself than him, "Where else could he be if he's not there?"
"You definitely don't want to hear the answer to that question."
Something about his tone — its weight, its hollowness, the trembling note of sadness at the end of the last word — makes you listen harder. Maybe it's the fact that he is actually being sympathetic toward you when you two are alone for the first time in...ever. You grip the receiver tighter, nails digging into the crack in the plastic where the two pieces fit together. "You know, don't you, Eric." Stated rather than asked.
You can practically see him rubbing his neck nervously. "Lauren, please don't—"
"Where is my husband?" You repeat dangerously, voice barely above a whisper.
Embedded in a breath he answers, "Syd's."
No amount of coaching could have prepared you for that. Although, deep down, you suspect you knew that was the case the entire time. It just...makes sense now that you think about it. Instead of feeling stupid about not guessing right off the bat, you become angry, incensed, livid. How dare he? How dare he run off to her apartment when you were having a fight about her in the first place? How stupid can he be?
Does he have a death wish?
You can practically hear Eric reproaching himself for telling you his location. And you are only about to make it worse. "Give me her number."
He is so filled with regret that he does not hear you. "Huh?"
"Give me her phone number," You repeat strongly, straightening your stature to fuel your venom.
Shaking his head so vigorously the phone creaks he responds, "I can't do that, Lauren. I've already told you way more than I probably should have, and I don't want to get either of them in trouble—"
"Well it's too late for that." You let your statement sink in before tagging on, "Give me her number, Eric, or I'll just get it some other way." How, you have no idea, but he doesn't know that.
"Then you'll just have to go and do that because I ain't giving you nothing, Lauren Reed."
"That's a double negative, Agent Weiss—"
Click.
He hangs up on you.
Slamming the cordless phone back into its cradle, you leap off the bed, jamming your hands down onto the mattress with enough malice to propel you two feet into the air. Now what are you going to do? Your husband is sleeping over at his not-really-ex-because-they-never-actually-broke-up ex-girlfriend's apartment after a harsh fight with his wife? What is the logical progression of events?
You cannot even think about it. Leaving the bedroom, you pad down the hall to the kitchen and recoil despite yourself. On the kitchen table are his set of apartment keys and...cell phone. A thought assaults you.
If being cynical got you into this, being cynical just might get you out.
Maybe he has called her apartment recently, and the number is stored in the index.
Racing to his phone, you turn it on, waiting impatiently while it flashes to life, and scroll through the recent calls, hoping against hope that names would be partnered with the numbers.
Nothing. You should have known better, as he is a spy and knows not to keep a list of received or sent calls. But wait a moment. You know he has friends and family in his phonebook under code names; yours is "BAC". At the time, he said it stood for Beautiful, Amazing, and Charismatic, but now you realize it merely stands for Ball and Chain. BS ("Balls of Steel" he said) was Weiss; FM ("Favourite Mother") was Amélie Vaughn. "Hell" was probably the Ops Centre; "Lucifer" was most likely the NSC office where you used to be stationed. The only other name on the list is both new and foreign to your eyes.
"Joey's Pizza"?
What the hell is Joey's Pizza?
Who the hell is Joey's Pizza?
Assuming it must have something to do with Sydney Bristow, you press the button and call the number highlighted with the cursor.
It rings seven times before someone answers.
"Chez Bristow, now serving Michael Vaughn's famous crepes and something that looks like a large black cinder block...Mystery Meat! The chef says it's called Mystery Meat! Real original name, Syd."
Bingo.
It is him.
He is caught red-handed.
His red hand is caught in the cookie jar.
He is caught red-handed in the cookie jar with his pants down.
No. Stop. You do not want to think of it that way. It causes too many mental images, and you do not trust yourself to separate fact from fiction.
"So it's true," You state calmly, no hint of emotion despite the roaring war in your stomach.
The laughter dies in his throat. "Lauren," He barely whispers. All background noise disappears, and you assume he excused himself to an unoccupied room. You hear him breathing in slow, measured intervals, neither of you knowing quite what to say. "Lauren, I can—How did you—Are you—Why did you—What are you—"
"Michael..." You interrupt, his stuttering breaking your heart; the fact that he has to validate his presence is devastating. What have the two of you come to? Your hunt proved there truly is no trust in this relationship. At least, on your part; he probably trusts you completely. His mere act of not being able to successfully complete a sentence startles you. Your planned diatribe flies out of your head, and your throat constricts to the width of a plastic straw. Before you can censor yourself you squeak, "I don't want to talk about this over the phone. When you're ready to have a rational, face-to-face discussion, you can come home: I'll be waiting. But for now, you can stay there with her and finish breakfast." You hang up quickly without giving him a chance to respond.
And you sit down at the kitchen table to wait.
It only takes a matter of seconds before you are up again, pacing throughout every room in the apartment. When you reach your bedroom, you end up facing the TV and the VCR. Behind the flimsy plastic flap, the video tape that started it all — both literally and figuratively, then and now — taunts you like a million bullying schoolchildren. Instead of their high-pitched screaming, the moans and lustful murmurings from that cassette dance cruelly in your ears, their tempo and volume squeezing your brain and driving you utterly mad. They continue to accelerate and crescendo to such a feverous pitch that it feels as if your skull is caving in and your stomach is volleying between your head and feet and your are doubled over and clutching your ears to shut them out...
That's it.
This must stop.
Without a second thought, you eject the tape and practically sprint into the kitchen. Clutching it with knuckles whiter than eggshells, you peer around the small space: knives, scissors, microwave, small grill on the balcony...
Jackpot.
It is more than just a passing whim that carries you out on the balcony early in the morning with a fresh bag of charcoal, a box of matches, and an aging videocassette tape. Within minutes, a roaring fire two feet high blazes before you, black smoke curling up towards the high white clouds in the sky. The tape is still gripped in your hand like a vice. Your brow and chest are sweating from your proximity to the fire. The moisture dribbles down your cheek and drops off your chin into the inferno, sizzling and evaporating before it even reaches the coals. Your clothes cling to your clammy skin as do sections of your tousled hair. Then the wind abruptly picks up, nudging the tall fire toward you. As you have no wish to die in a fiery ball of flames, you quickly complete your task and drop the tape into the flames.
That is all it takes for those incessant taunts to float away like ashes on the wind. Your stomach calms; your brain ceases to pound; your ears rest. As the fire pops and crackles and the plastic hisses and melts, you suddenly feel the compulsive need to say something, to chant in a foreign language like this crazy vengeance is a spell to dissolve the misery permeating your life. You think back to your boarding school days, trying desperately to latch onto any Latin word still floating around in your brain. All you can come up with are ciniseris, patina, and monticola (ruin, dish, and mountaineer respectively), but they will have to do. You also feel like you should be holding a book — an old book with cracked leather binding and gold-edged paper — but that is a little too much to ask your disintegrating perception of possible and impossible, slightly ridiculous and completely insane.
You begin chanting those three words over and over like a mantra, quiet at first, then louder and with more force 'til you are screaming at the top of your lungs and you feel your vocal chords straining under the pressure. The words are barely audible over the snapping of the fire and the regular downtown Los Angeles noises.
Since you can hardly hear yourself, it is no surprise that the person now in your apartment is going unnoticed. Your watering eyes close to block out the thick smoke, and your voice strains to reach a sopranino pitch at a fortissitissimo volume. All of your hate and anger and malice and rancor and confusion and numbness and shock and denial are pouring out through those three repeated words, giving you solace in a rhetoric that does not even make sense.
Then you hear it. Even over all that. That one, short, passing intake of breath from inside the apartment barely classifies as pianissimo, and as it came from inside, you probably would be unable to hear it in the dead of night. It is laden with such shock, horror, disbelief, and disgust that your fear Cynical Voice has recongealed in your consciousness. The words die immediately, and you turn around slowly, bracing yourself for another reincarnation of Sydney Bristow.
What you actually find is just as bad.
Michael Vaughn stands there in his Weekend Jeans and T-Shirt, utterly stunned. The ratty old backpack dangles from his fingertips and finally drops to the tile floor, the metallic ping the zipper makes as it strikes the tile sounding small and far away. Just like the fire: in fact, all noises seem to fade to the background as you stare blatantly at him, scrutinizing his paralyzed form. What has he done in the past twelve hours? Who has he done? Is he as innocent as he looks in those tattered clothes? You'd like to think you can tell anything by one look at him, but everything you knew exploded like gasoline when you found that tape.
Just as suddenly as he appeared he is gone, but you hear him banging about in the kitchen. He rushes towards you brandishing the small garbage can from the study and wearing the determined façade you know from missions.
You can only watch as he dumps its contents onto the blaze, surprised to note that it contains water not shredded documents.
You can only watch as he grunts in frustration, the flames still far from docile, and searches for the lid to the grill.
You can only watch as he slams it on and plugs the holes with the dishcloth you keep wrapped around its handle.
Only when you hear the crackling subside and the hissing crescendo can you move. You stare at him in angry astonishment. Who gave him the right to stop you from burning a tape he shouldn't have made in the first place? Who gave him the right to shatter your attempt at a perfect American home life?
He is breathing heavily, his face as singed from the smoke as yours must be. Resting a hand on his hip, he wipes the sweat-slickened hair back off his forehead, leaving white streaks that you would have thought comical if you were not so angry. He leaves his hand on his forehead as his pulse and breathing slow to normal, and then removes the lid from the grill. Black smoke and the scent of burned plastic issue forth like a flood, and you both stumble back in amazement. He unties the rag from the lid's handle and sweeps it back and forth to clear the air. You close your eyes; why, you are unsure. Yes, the stench and smoke are stinging and you want to get away from them; but more importantly, you realize you have no idea how he is going to react. You did not plan on letting him see this ritual display; in fact, you even thought about dumping the evidence and somehow convincing him that he took the tape with him when he left, possibly leaving it at her place.
Now he has made that impossible.
Suddenly you feel the urge to punch him in the nose. Then he might get a glimpse of what you are feeling right now.
But instead he glares at you from underneath his eyebrows. He must have found the remnants of the tape. After disappearing inside for a few moments, he reemerges with the barbeque tongs, and you have to fight you feet to keep from abruptly jumping off the balcony. At first, you think he means to kill you, to stab you through the heart with those long metal pokers. But you realize your stupidity as he leans over the grill and peers through the lingering smoke. Gingerly, he dips the tongs into the mess and extracts the horrible, twisted, dripping mass of plastic. He stares at it for what seems like an eternity, and an infinite amount of emotions zoom across his face like cars around the track at the Indianapolis 500: disbelief, anger, relief, anger, disappointment, anger, malice, anger, hatred, anger. The last emotion seems to be ever present — or not that far from his mind, at least. It continues to linger in his eyes: you think you see a muscle spasming near the juncture of his nose and cheek. What worries you most is the smoothness of his forehead; not a single wrinkle mars its surface. You have seen him angry before, mostly when he is watching ESPN replay highlights from a Kings' loss for the hundredth time, and always, always he has those insipid wrinkles written across his face.
But not this time.
This is an anger you have never seen before.
And the sight of it is enough to almost carry you over the edge of the balcony despite your protestations.
He tosses the heap at the ground, probably a little more forcefully and nearer to your feet than is necessary. It clangs on the wood dully and hollowly; exactly the sound your heart is making as it clunks around somewhere in your stomach. He squares his shoulders and rests the tongs at his side, still menacingly clutched in his fist. As much as you want to track the movement of those tongs (in case they are launched at your throat), you cannot drag your gaze away from his eyes. That lingering anger has mushroomed to taint the rest of his face, and is boiling over into the rest of his body. You passively wonder whether your skin would bubble if you stepped any closer to him.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?"
His voice is so low and uncharacteristically filled with hate that you do not realize at first that he has spoken. The only reason you notice at all is at that particular moment, you happen to be gazing at his lips, lips that never before have you heard utter a hateful word against anybody, let alone you. You can read lips relatively well, and with the way he is manically over pronouncing every word, you immediately get the message loud and clear:
You are in for the verbal thrashing of your life.
Stuttering back up to his eyes, your radiate pure, unadultered fear. Untrusting of your vocal chords, you let the fear speak for you.
Apparently he does not care that you are afraid, for his gaze and words are not diluted in the slightest. "What the hell did you think you were doing?" He repeats, louder this time. "Lighting a fire outside in the middle of winter and letting it get as big as it did? Just be glad I got home before the neighbours called the fire department. And what could have possibly possessed you to burn my tape? MY TAPE! My possession, my personal property, my decision as to what should be done with it! How could you have bee so stupid as to burn it? What did you think would happen? That-that my past with Syd would just go away? That this argument would just go away? That I would forgive you? It's not that easy; it's not all going to disappear that fast!"
"So wait a second. Let me get this straight," You interject, gathering back some of your ground as you kick the hunk of plastic away toward the balcony's railing. "What the hell were you planning on doing with it when you got home? Hiding it under the mattress for a rainy day?"
"This is exactly what I'm talking about!" He exclaims, not missing a beat. You can tell he is purposefully avoiding the subject, but he does not give you time to call him on it. "You don't trust me to do anything right, do you? I can't believe this. I cannot believe this! I thought that leaving you alone for a while to calm down would bring you to your senses. Apparently I was wrong." He paused for a moment, the anger on his person seeping into the air and building a wall between you, brick by livid brick. "I was prepared to forgive you if you could prove you were sorry. Obviously you aren't capable of being that mature. It's obvious that you don't deserve or even want my forgiveness. And right now I have no intention of giving it to you."
Your mood suddenly swings to the other end of the spectrum, and tears brim your eyelids, blurring his image. You stutter over your tongue; it seems to have swelled to occupy your entire mouth. "I-I have no idea what to do, Michael. I'm so lost, and there's nothing I can do—"
"Yeah, there is. You can trust me."
The words tumble out of your mouth before you can check them. "I don't think I can." They echo on both sides of the Wall of Anger, lingering in the air like the black smoke. Those five simple words sting your heart and poison your blood, leaving more than a bitter taste in their wake.
His anger is now completely transferred to the atmosphere around the two of you. Instead of responding, he merely frowns at you, shakes his head in disgust, and walks back into the apartment.
For the rest of that Saturday, you feel like you are walking on eggshells, glass, and boxes of lit C-4. When he is called into the office, you realize five minutes after he leaves that jealousy is not the only emotion you feel. Sure, his absence could mean he is going to see her, but the tension is finally decreased. You cannot decide which emotion disgusts you more. Deciding not to dwell on the possibilities for too long, you opt for grabbing the bottle of Windex and a few paper towels to finish what you started yesterday. Halfway through your second window you realize that even doing this could get you into trouble; you are positive the Fates will have a field day trying to think of something suspicious for you to stumble upon. You put away the Windex and throw away the towel.
So instead you sit at the kitchen table in silence, twirling a pen betwixt your fingers until you hear his keys in the lock. Then you stand and glance around the room hurriedly for something to do, to make yourself look busy. You eventually throw yourself at the refrigerator to start making dinner. The two of you have a ritual of making dinner together every Saturday night, and maybe your body throwing itself at the fridge is a subconscious attempt at getting back the normalcy that you've banished.
But as soon as he plods into the apartment, he drops his briefcase, coat, and keys at the door, brushes past you, grabs a beer, and collapses on the couch to watch highlights on ESPN.
You get his message loud and clear.
The TV continues to drone as you bustle about the kitchen preparing spaghetti: one of the only dishes you know how to make by yourself. Before the water boils, you lean against the counter with your arms folded across your chest. The silence in barely bearable. You know you are both listening to the other, packing the silence with apprehension. It's almost as if you are teetering on the edge of a cliff, the updraft from the canyon below the only thing keeping you planted on solid ground. Just as you feel yourself pitching forward, a new sound enters your repertoire: the boiling water. You jump into action, scuttling about the kitchen chopping vegetables, stirring the sauce, or sautéing the sausage.
Then the noisy silence settles in, the type that is uncomfortable, but to such a small extent that its presence is tolerable. The play-by-play becomes less mocking, and the chopping and sizzling are friendly to the ear. But then the preparations finish, and he knows by the absence of noise from the kitchen that dinner is ready. Despite his palpable animosity, your husband is not nearly rude enough to let you dine by yourself, so he flips off the TV rather reluctantly and seats himself across the table from you.
His wine remains untouched as he practically inhales his meal, the noodles leaving his plate at a rate you think must be some sort of special affect. All side dishes that you painstakingly prepared — garlic bread, salad, Italian sausage, he ignores them all. This creates a one-sided silence. While he sounds eerily reminiscent of a pig at a trough in his haste, your back is straighter than a pin, and your shoulders thrust back in the way your etiquette teacher taught. The fork poised daintily over your noodles chops them into smaller pieces to avoid slurping and sauce splashing, bringing them to your mouth as slowly as possible, creating a maximum contrast to his speed. His scraping reverberates between you, magnified like a hair under an electron microscope. But if he notices, he does not show it; he continues to gobble away under the silent scrutiny of your stare.
Only you can detect the silence, your silence.
What have the two of you come to?
You have barely touched your meal as he pulls away from the table, clearing his plate but leaving the wine for you to handle. He returns to the living room and flips on the television again, a movie this time. Ironically, it's "Ferris Beuller's Day Off". What you wouldn't give to throw a chair at the television, if not to break the damn thing, then to break this damn silence.
He sleeps on the couch that night.
The remainder of the weekend continues in much the same fashion. Occasionally you would attempt a conversation, inquiring about whatever he was watching on that insipid box in the living room, but his blank stare was the only response you ever got. Now that you think about it, at least he acknowledged your existence.
That Monday at work is the textbook definition of awkward. She obviously knows that you know he stayed at her apartment Friday night, because every other glance she throws at you consists of triumph and pity masked expertly with muted concern.
At least, that is what you tell yourself to keep from drowning in helplessness.
During the lunch hour, she even cross the bullpen to your temporary desk and tries lamely to strike up a conversation. When she attempts to steer the line of inquiry towards Michael, What Happened, or possibly an apology, you defeat her every time, changing the subject like a pro. You have no use for her sympathy, her advice, her pity. After the third time, she gives up the useless fight and excuses herself to her desk, leaving you to your limp, leftover salad.
Michael would have been proud.
You are not quite sure what the Official Last Straw is, but it breaks the camel's back somewhere near the middle of the week.
It isn't his long hours spent at the office that does it.
It isn't the cold way he avoided your gaze, or the distrusting glare he pierced you with when he had to look at you.
It isn't his frosty words during briefings or the way he shot down everything you said when you hadn't even finished.
In fact, you welcome any brand of verbal communication from him. Because you cannot stand the silence.
And that is what eventually does you in.
The silence.
After that Monday, you just stop trying to communicate with him in any manner; anything you do seems to set him off. So instead you go about your business in silence, or with the radio on if the mood strikes you. The silence is so complete that any noise actually seems unnatural, seems to be invading and disturbing the delicate balance the two of you have established. So most of the time that radio stays off. But the television stays on; it has become part of the silence, not even registering when you walk into the room. It helps that he watches "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" incessantly, even when he does paperwork.
But that all changes on Wednesday night.
That night the equilibrium shifts without warning, and that updraft of air supporting you changes direction suddenly, causing you to plummet into the gorge below.
He comes home smelling of vodka and perfume.
Not really perfume, but it is something foreign and unlike him, so you assume it is her perfume or the scent of a candle from her apartment. It smells of ivory soap and raspberry lotion, neither of which particularly appeal to you or appear around the apartment. He offers no explanation; instead he struggles to kick off his shoes upon arrival, tipping into the wall whenever he attempts to stand on one foot. You watch the almost comical display he performs from the kitchen, one fist digging into your hip like a mother waiting for her child to finish his dinner. Finally his feet rid themselves of the bothersome leather, only to trip over them on their journey to the couch. He collapses like a marathon runner after a race, and just barely has time to flip on yet another rerun of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" before falling into an alcohol-induced stupor, not really awake and not really asleep.
This is the silence you hate the most.
Your questions and accusations dangle in the air as big as billboards on the side of the highway, and probably just as obnoxious. His nonverbal challenge to voice them gnaws at you, but at the same time piercing your tongue. You will not give in to him; not again. You did once, and all it got you was a failing marriage. So you fervently bite your tongue but leave the unasked questions out there, hoping against hope that maybe — just maybe — a snowball will melt in Hell and he will feel compelled to tell you where in the world he has been. But it doesn't happen that way. Instead, his challenge grows stronger and more volatile until you swear you can hear him actually screaming the words directly into your ears and—
You snap.
You cannot take it anymore.
Something needs to be done about this: something drastic. Something NOW.
So you retreat to the bedroom before you hear his snores begin to radiate from the couch. (He always snores when he practically drinks himself into a coma.) You sit on your bed with your head in your hands, trying to elude the damning silence. Thoughts, scenarios, possibilities, all run through your mind at a thousand miles a minute, not loitering long enough to be dwelled upon to their fullest extent. But the thought, the scenario, the possibility that has been lingering in the back of your mind for some time, now, finally gets the opportunity to shine. It somehow fights its way through the mish-moshing hubris and burrows into your frontal lobe, enveloping your entire consciousness. Eventually, all the others fade away, and all you are left with is this one.
It doesn't take you long to figure out that this is the only possible course of action to take in order to solve this problem, to clean up the mess you have made out of all the lives involved.
You know what you must do.
And you do not hesitate to do it.
You take the next day off from work. Before he plods out the door, a little more deliberate than usual, he gives you a long once-over to make sure you are not seriously sick. Catching your eye he nods once, without malice for the first time in days, and leaves the apartment without slamming the door. After rushing to the bedroom, you root through the closet and the dresser drawers, throwing every single one of your belongings onto the bed.
It takes you barely an hour to pack up your entire life.
Barely an hour.
When you decided to move into his apartment instead of buying a new one, you did not realize how many of your own belongings you were giving up. Now as you stretch to fill your three suitcases and a duffle bag, it hits you full force just how much you invested into this relationship. You know he entered into this marriage with vigor matching yours; at least at first. Neither of you had banked on the admitted love of his life coming back from the grave. You never asked him to stop loving her completely, but you hoped he would cease to be in love with her. Apparently it was too much to ask.
As you toss yet another meaningless knickknack into a suitcase, you decide you cannot blame anyone but yourself for this mess. He is right: you should not have jumped down his throat about the tape, should not have denied him time to explain, should not have tried to burn what was rightfully his. But once the crack formed and doubt started to trickle in, all the reasoning and logic in the world could not plug the hole. You know in your heart you cannot spend another week that way, let alone the rest of your life.
In the end, it is your own inability to forgive, forget, move one, and trust that is your undoing.
It's just like he said at the beginning of this whole debacle.
What it comes down to is faith.
Faith in him.
Faith in your relationship.
Faith in faith.
And you lost it.
But you do not regret a second of your time spent with him. You have learned what it means to love Michael Vaughn, to be loved by Michael Vaughn. And you also learned what it means to be Sydney Bristow, because giving this man up is easily the hardest thing you have or ever will do in your life. You cannot possibly imagine how she could do it, do not want to imagine.
It's all for the best, though.
You are not meant to be with him: it is definitely written somewhere in the stars that Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn will be together forever. And you would do well to step out of Fate's way.
And so you do, silently and without explanation, as you doubt either of them will need one.
You pause at the doorway to his apartment, drinking in one last look at the home you made with Michael Vaughn. The papers are on the kitchen table all ready for him; all he needs to do is slap his John Hancock on a few lines and it will be official.
The silence in the apartment is surprisingly bearable. The silence lays about as languid and peaceful as a summer day in the country. For the first time since she came back, you can breathe freely. You revel in the feeling and despair at its cause.
And you know, finally, that you are making the right decision.
With a sad smile, you turn your back on the empty apartment and close the door.
No matter how badly you want to run away from this city — just go — something compels you to stick around to see his reaction. You have become a spectator, now, rooting him on like the rest of the world. If he does not do what you want him to do immediately after he finds the papers, so help you, God...
That is the reason you sit parked across the street from your old complex with a pair of powerful binoculars in hand.
Your heart begins to beat faster as you see his car crawl into the complex's parking garage, in no hurry to reach his goal. It takes a good twenty minutes for him to travel from vehicle to apartment. You stare through the lenses intently, breathlessly waiting for him to find the papers. When he does, you swear the people shuffling past your car can hear your pounding heart. He takes them out on the balcony to read them, granting you a better view. He finishes them quickly, and his head finds its way into his hands, your thumping heart shattering as it does. You knew he would feel some degree of pain at your initiative, but the grief nearly kills you all the same.
Slowly, he rises from his seat and disappears back inside and down the hall. He reemerges a minute later with his cell phone in his hand. You gasp and lean forward as he stares at it, willing your blatant message to be emphatically received. Without another moment's hesitation, he dials a number and puts the phone to his ear.
Mere minutes later, Sydney Bristow's car pulls into the parking garage. In half the time it took him, she reaches the apartment, and he brings her out on the balcony, gesturing to the papers laying innocently on the porch table. They sit down to read them again...together. She finishes quickly and looks at him, a mixture of uncertainty and hopefulness. He nods slowly, squeezing her hand. She offers back a watery smile as he extracts a pen from his breast pocket.
Together, both with a hand on the pen, they sign the papers.
You just barely notice the single tear on your cheek as you nod once towards them, bestowing your silent blessing, pull into traffic, and drive off.
TBC...