Chapter 30: "Revelations"
Vaughn absently tapped his pen against his desk as he sat in the joint task force center. He was finding it impossible to concentrate this morning, for reasons that sadly had nothing to do with memories of his and Sydney's rendezvous in his office the night before. Although he would much rather have been reliving every moment of their frenzied coupling, his mind was occupied by thoughts of another Bristow woman.
From his vantage point at his desk, he could see all of the security monitors keeping tabs on the ops center, but the third monitor from the right kept demanding his attention even as he tried to ignore it. He closed his eyes tightly, attempting to block out the images on the monitor, but even in his mind, he could still see Irina Derevko pacing back in forth in her cell.
Before he left for Virginia, he'd gotten used to seeing Irina on the monitors, usually ignoring her, but sometimes finding himself mesmerized by her efficient movement, her calm meditation, her inescapable resemblance to the woman who held his heart under lock and key. He had long since ceased to be affected by the grainy images on the monitors -- or so he thought, because they had been affecting him quite a lot in the past couple of days, a fact that he attributed to his conversation he'd had with Jack.
As much as he hated to admit it, Jack had raised some very salient points, and ever since then, thoughts of Irina had been preoccupying Vaughn's mind, although they were intermingled with his usual anxiety and concern for Sydney's well-being while she was away on her mission. Now that Sydney was home safely, however, Irina was in the forefront of his thoughts, and he was less than thrilled about it. He knew, however, that she was simply going to remain there the longer that he avoided dealing with her, and before he even realized what he was doing, he found himself standing before her, separated only by the glass wall of her cell.
Irina and Vaughn simply stared at each other for a few minutes, each trying to detect any changes in the other's appearance over the five months since they had last seen each other.
"You're back," she acknowledged, finally breaking the silence.
"Yes."
"Sydney must be happy about that," she smiled.
"I didn't come by for a social visit," he announced with irritation.
"Oh." He followed her eyes as she glanced at one of the security cameras overhead and looked back at him questioningly.
"I'm not concerned about that. Now that I'm no longer Sydney's case officer, my relationship with her is none of the CIA's business," he defiantly answered.
"Very well, then. What can I do for you, Agent Vaughn?" Her tone was outwardly solicitous, but he could hear the almost imperceptible challenge in her words and he already hated her for it, so he decided to skip the niceties and get straight to the point.
"The first time that I came to see you, why did you tell me that I looked just like my father?"
Irina was momentarily taken aback, but she managed to recover before her shock became evident to Vaughn. There weren't many people who could make her uneasy or uncomfortable, but he was one of the few, and she supposed it was due to the unique and terrible ways in which their lives had intersected.
"Surely I'm not the only person who has ever commented on the resemblance between you and your father. I'm sure that your mother must see it as well."
Vaughn's blood began to boil at the same time that he felt a chill run along the length of his spine. "Don't you dare talk about my mother," he spat. "I mean it, don't ever mention her again," he warned.
Irina was startled by the way that his green eyes turned a threatening black and she took a deep breath to relax herself. "I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "Still, the fact remains that you do look very much like him."
"That's not how you meant it, though" Vaughn shook his head. "You meant for those words to hurt me, and that wasn't the only time that you threw his death in my face. Why?"
"Because I was testing you," she admitted.
"Testing me?" he asked in disbelief.
"Yes," she said, as if her reasons for doing so were obvious. "You were my daughter's handler, and I needed to know that she was working with someone who would do anything for her, anything to make sure that she didn't become another victim of Arvin Sloane and the Alliance."
"What does that have to do with -- "
"When you came to see me that first time, I knew that you had come so Sydney wouldn't have to. I knew that Kendall was pressuring her to come talk to me, and that she would never accede to his demands. You came instead, and I saw the fear in your eyes. I saw how difficult it was for you to be here, to talk to me, and it didn't take long to understand why you were doing it. It was instantly obvious how much you cared for my daughter."
"If it was so obvious, why did you need to test me?" Vaughn testily asked. He was beginning to chafe at the realization that he was so transparent to both of Sydney's parents.
"I needed to know just how far you would go for her, whether you had a breaking point. I soon learned that you didn't. When she was trapped in FAPSI headquarters, you rushed over here and asked for my help without thinking twice about it."
"I don't think twice when it comes to Sydney," he shook his head.
"You don't think at all, Agent Vaughn," she corrected. "You *feel,* you react. I needed to know that, and because I was trapped in this cell, the only way I could think to test you was to say those things to you and see how you reacted to them, see whether they affected the way that you felt about my daughter."
"They didn't."
"I know that now," she nodded as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Agent Vaughn, I know that you have no reason to believe anything that I say, and I know that you probably won't, but I want you to know that I appreciate all of the things you've done for Sydney. I don't think that she -- she would probably be dead by now if she had been assigned to another agent, one who didn't care about her as much as you do."
Vaughn wasn't sure how to respond to Irina's assertion. He wanted to believe that any of his colleagues would have made the same kind of sacrifices for Sydney that he had, but he didn't know if that was true or not. "Your daughter is much more than a professional responsibility to me," he acknowledged, "but you already know that."
"Yes. It's been obvious since the day we met. I'm just -- Thank you for not turning your back on her when you found out who she was, when you found out who *I* was," she quietly said.
Vaughn merely nodded before he turned to leave the detention facility. Something kept nagging at him as he began to walk away, however, and he turned and slowly walked back toward the cell as Irina watched him uncertainly.
"You say that I have no reason to believe anything that you say to me, but I need you to prove otherwise."
"I'm not sure that I know what you're talking about, Agent Vaughn."
"I need you to tell me the truth right now."
"The truth about what?"
"The truth about why you killed my father." He watched as she instantly grew pale and her eyes took on a haunted expression. "I don't need to know how -- I already know more about that than I ever wanted to -- but I need you to tell me why, because his CIA file doesn't explain it."
"I'm not sure that I can explain it either," she quickly replied. "I was never told why the KGB wanted William killed. I never knew what kind of work he was doing at the time."
Vaughn's eyes widened in surprise and he was shocked to learn that Irina hadn't even known why she was ordered to kill his father. All this time, he had believed that there was a connection between his father and Irina, that their paths had crossed before, that he had somehow compromised her mission objectives and needed to be dealt with. Finding out that she had never known his father and killed him for absolutely no reason at all was almost more than he could take, and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach.
"Are you telling me that you killed him simply because you were ordered to? Without even knowing why they wanted him dead? How could you -- why would you do that?"
"How often do *you* question orders, *Agent* Vaughn?"
"A lot more often since I met your daughter," he pointedly replied. "I've found myself questioning all kinds of orders for her, and you've never struck me as someone afraid to speak her mind, so how could you not challenge what they wanted you to do?"
"I couldn't," she said softly.
"Why not?" he asked, his voice low and intense.
"Because I couldn't, and that's all I intend to say about this. You should go," she counseled.
"You owe me answers," he persisted.
"You don't want the answers that I have to give you. You should trust me on this," Irina gently warned him. It was obvious that Sydney hadn't told Vaughn what she knew about William's death, and Irina was terrified of the impact that it might have on their relationship if Irina told him herself.
"Tell me." Vaughn's voice was quiet but forceful. "I'm not leaving here until you do."
"You really should."
"I'm not going to."
They stared at each other for several long moments, his eyes challenging her to answer his question, her eyes pleading with him to drop it and leave. It soon became apparent that he really didn't intend to leave until he got some answers, and she silently prayed that the answers he received wouldn't destroy her daughter's happiness. She wrapped her arms around herself protectively and focused her vision on a spot over his shoulder, not wanting to look him in the eye as she explained.
"As you know," she quietly began, "the KGB sent me here to spy on Jack, to gather secrets primarily about Project Christmas, but also pertaining to other classified matters as they arose. Initially, I was just supposed to date him for a couple of years, but as he rose through the ranks of the agency and became a senior officer, the KGB thought it would be advantageous to make my assignment more long term, and it just so happened to be around the same time that Jack asked me to marry him.
"So, we got married, and a couple of years later, I became pregnant with Sydney. My superiors were adamantly opposed to the idea of me having an American child, but I refused to terminate the pregnancy and they finally relented. For the first year after Sydney was born, I was happier than I had ever been before. Even though I knew that my life was a lie, the way that I felt about my family was not, and when my superiors realized how attached I'd grown to them, how attached I'd grown to my life as Laura Bristow, they decided to use it to their benefit. I'm not sure if you know this, Agent Vaughn, but the best way to control someone isn't to torture her or hold her captive; it's to give her something that she's always wanted, something that's more important to her than anything else, and then threaten her with losing it.
"My superiors understood that, they were counting on that, so a little more than a year after Sydney was born, they began ordering me to kill CIA agents. Each time, they bought my compliance by threatening to harm either Jack or Sydney, sometimes both of them. They knew that I would do anything to keep them safe, and they played on my emotions as a means of coercion."
"Oh god, my father was one of those agents," Vaughn whispered, not even realizing that he'd spoken aloud.
"Yes. That particular time, when they asked me to kill your father, they threatened Sydney. She was only 18 months old at the time, and she was -- " Irina closed her eyes and smiled serenely. "She was my reason for waking up every morning. When they first threatened to kill her, I didn't take them seriously. I couldn't imagine that they would ever kill someone so young, so innocent, but things that happened to the families of some of my fellow agents convinced me otherwise.
"The thought of them killing Sydney terrified me, but they soon came to me and threatened her with something even worse. They threatened to take her one day when I least expected it, to make me live the rest of my life not knowing what happened to her -- whether someone else was raising her, whether she had been placed in the Russian equivalent of Project Christmas, whether they'd train her to be a swallow agent like I was. I wouldn't have known anything, and they knew that I would torture myself everyday wondering what had happened to her.
"You might not understand this, because you're not a parent, but I would rather have known that she was dead than face the uncertainty of never knowing what happened to her or how they might use her. I would have done anything to prevent her from being controlled by them, from being sucked into a life like mine. So my choice was easy and when they gave me the final order to kill your father, I did."
"No," Vaughn said bitterly. "You didn't just kill him, you mangled his body, you maimed him so badly that it took the CIA forensics team two weeks to confirm his identity."
"I know," she acknowledged. "I used his murder to take out all of my rage against my predicament. I thought that if I made his murder appear brutal enough, my superiors would stop questioning my loyalty to my country, and stop asking me to do things to prove it to them."
"And did they?"
"Of course they didn't," she bitterly replied. "If anything, it made them want to test my loyalty even further, concluding, of course, with requiring me to make the ultimate sacrifice when I left Jack and Sydney."
"That wasn't the ultimate sacrifice," Vaughn said in a voice so quiet and controlled that it almost scared Irina by its utter lack of emotion. "I'm sure that leaving them was painful for you, and I'm sure that it hurt, but it wasn't the ultimate sacrifice. You at least got to know that Jack and Sydney were okay. My father never got that. He probably spent his dying moments worrying about me and my mother."
"You're right," Irina said softly, "but sometimes -- " She abruptly stopped talking and Vaughn looked up at her again.
"But what?"
"I, I shouldn't . . . I don't want to upset you more than I already have."
"I don't think that would be possible. What were you going to say?"
"Sometimes I actually think that your father was the luckier of the two of us. Let me explain," she quickly said, raising a hand when Vaughn's eyes flashed in anger. "After I left Jack and Sydney, there were so many times when I wanted to die, when I wished that I were already dead, because that would have been so much less painful than knowing that I could never again be with the two people that I loved most in this world.
"And before you get upset about what I just said, ask yourself whether you'd rather die or be forced to leave Sydney, knowing that you could never be with her again. Could you honestly spend the rest of your life without her, knowing that she thought you were dead? Could you stand the thought of her moving on with her life, or falling in love with someone else, having another man's children?
The stricken look on Vaughn's face confirmed what she already knew.
"I know you think that I haven't been punished for what I've done, and maybe I haven't been punished enough, but every day of my life until the KGB dissolved was a punishment, not having any idea what Sydney and Jack were doing or who they were doing it with. Maybe it will help you rest easier at night knowing that I've spent the past twenty-two years living in a hell of my own making."
"I doubt it," Vaughn quietly replied, "because I've spent the last twenty-*six* years living in another hell of your own making."
Irina looked at the pained expression on Vaughn's face, and for the first time, she began to understand the magnitude of what she'd done to his father. At the same time, however, she realized that he wouldn't have her daughter to love if she hadn't done what she did, and she wasn't sorry for that.
"I don't ever expect you to be able to forgive me, Agent Vaughn, but I did what I did for Sydney. Maybe one day you'll understand that. I hope you'll never have to, but you can't tell me that you wouldn't kill someone if it meant keeping her safe. You love her too much to do anything else."
Vaughn stared at her for a moment before wordlessly turning to leave her cell. Of all the painful revelations that he'd had in the past fifteen minutes, the absolute truth of her last statement was the most painful of all.
*****
"Hi Daddy," Sydney said with mock sweetness as she walked up to her father in the rotunda of the ops center. She saw his back stiffen slightly and she suppressed a smirk just before he turned around to greet her.
"Sydney, you're back."
"Yes, I am," she raised her eyebrow. "So, I guess that means that you won't be able to invite Vaughn to any more surprise dinners."
"I take it that he told you about that."
"Dad," Sydney sighed, "you had to have known that the first thing I would do when I got back was go see him. And just for the record, I would be really pissed about what you did if it weren't for the fact that he really didn't seem to mind."
"He didn't?" Jack asked, with obvious surprise.
"No, which either means that he's not telling me the truth, because you threatened him, or the two of you actually did have a mostly pleasant evening with each other."
"Sydney, you should trust Vaughn and believe whatever he says to you," Jack smiled enigmatically. "I don't feel any need to tell you what he and I discussed, but I think that both of us were enlightened by our conversation and we've reached a new level of understanding with each other."
"You're not just saying that?" Sydney hopefully asked.
"No, I'm not."
"So you approve of our relationship?"
"Well, in all honesty, I wish that the two of you would have waited to pursue a relationship with each other, but what's done is done. Now that I better understand Vaughn's feelings, I'm confident that he'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe. So, if you're as enamored with him as you claim to be, then yes, I begrudgingly approve of your relationship." His slight smile betrayed the fact that his acceptance wasn't as begrudging as he made it seem.
"Thanks, Dad," Sydney smiled gratefully. "I really do love him."
"I know you do, honey. I just hope that you remember that and don't let anyone come between the two of you."
Sydney looked at her father quizzically, wondering where that last comment had come from, but it was quickly forgotten as he spoke again.
"Listen, I have a briefing with Devlin in a few minutes, but maybe we can have dinner with each other later in the week. I promise to go much easier on you than I did on Vaughn."
She laughed and nodded. "I'd like that."
"Good. I'll see you later," Jack said before he rushed off to his meeting. Sydney quickly scanned the room, searching for Vaughn, but she didn't see him anywhere. She sighed with disappointment and headed back down the hall to the parking garage when she ran into a harried looking Weiss.
"Sydney, thank god I ran into you," he said with a breathless sigh of relief.
"Weiss, what's wrong?"
"Have you seen Mike at all today?"
"No, I haven't seen him yet. Why? Is something wrong? Did something happen to him?"
"I don't know. All I know is that he was away from his desk for a while and when he came back down into the rotunda, he grabbed his keys from his desk and took off. A couple of agents tried to stop him to talk to him about work stuff, but he blew them off, and they both said that he looked really upset. I've spent the past half hour trying to figure out what's going on, and I was hoping that maybe you might know."
"I have no idea," Sydney whispered. It was so unlike Vaughn to just bolt like that and she couldn't imagine what would make him to do that, unless . . .
"The only thing that I can think of that would make him so frantic is you," Weiss said, echoing her own thoughts. "Are you in some kind of trouble? Has something happened with SD-6?"
"No, not that I know of," she shook her head. "Besides, if something were going on with me, don't you think he would have called to let me know?"
"Yeah, unless he didn't have time or he didn't want to scare you." Weiss ran an impatient hand through his hair and sighed as he tried to think of other alternatives.
"Listen, Weiss," Sydney said, hoping that her voice didn't sound as shaky and panicked as she felt. "You stay here and wait to hear from him or from anyone else who might know anything, okay? I'm going to try to find him."
"Syd, do you think that's a good idea? I mean, if something is -- "
"I have to find him, Weiss," she urgently pleaded. "I can't just stay here and do nothing if something is wrong, or something happened to him. I have to know. I have to leave," she said as she hurriedly began to head for the parking garage. "Call me if you find out anything," she called over her shoulder.
*****
Sydney briskly walked down the hall of the warehouse and breathed a deep sigh of relief when she reached the gate and saw Vaughn sitting on one of the tables with his back turned to her. She briefly hesitated, considering that maybe he wanted to be alone and she should leave him there, but she needed to check on him, needed to reassure herself that he was okay. She slowly opened the gate, trying to make as little noise as possible, though she knew that he must have heard her footsteps and already known that she was there.
She walked towards him uncertainly, her breath catching in her throat as she observed his slumped shoulders and bowed head. She knew that something was seriously wrong, and when she stepped in front of him and saw the anguished expression on his face, it nearly broke her heart. She couldn't ever remember seeing him look so unhappy and the only thing that mattered to her was trying to make it better.
She placed a gentle hand on his knee and dipped her head, attempting to catch his eyes with her own. "Vaughn?" she softly whispered.
He was staring at his hands in his lap and looked so lost in his own world that it scared her. She began to wonder if he even realized that she was there, until he reached out and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in the crook of her neck. Her momentary surprise soon gave way to relief that he seemed to appreciate her presence, that he seemed to want her comfort. Mostly, she was just relieved that he appeared to be physically unharmed.
She wrapped one arm around his shoulders and gently stroked his hair with her free hand, wondering what was wrong, but not wanting to press him, knowing that he would eventually talk to her when he was ready. He clung to her tightly and she planted a gentle kiss on the top of his head. They stayed that way for a few minutes, holding onto each other in comfortable silence until Vaughn finally raised his head from Sydney's shoulder and looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.
"Sydney," he choked out.
"I'm here," she gently smiled as she stroked his face. "Baby, what's wrong?"
"Nothing. You're here now," he said, shaking his head and replacing his grief-stricken expression with the one he usually wore when he was trying to reassure her and convince her that something awful really wasn't a big deal. She knew him too well to be fooled by his act, however.
"You're obviously upset about something. Do you want to talk about it? You know that you can tell me anything, Vaughn."
"I know, I just -- " his voice trailed off and he looked away from her to an indeterminate spot in the room.
"Vaughn," she gently coaxed, "whatever it is, you need to tell me. I hate seeing you unhappy. I just want to make it better."
"I know you do, Syd," he sighed, turning his attention back to her. "But this . . . I don't think that you *can* make it better, and I don't want to -- "
"You don't want to what?" she asked when he stopped talking
"I don't want to dump this on you. I don't want you to feel like," he paused, "like this is your fault."
"*My* fault? What's my fault?"
"Nothing," he said emphatically. "None of this is your fault. Listen, if I'm going to tell you what's wrong, you have to promise me -- *promise me* -- that you're not going to let yourself feel guilty about this."
"Feel guilty about what?" she asked, beginning to panic slightly.
Vaughn took a deep breath and gently squeezed her hand. "I talked to your mother this morning."
"You talked to my mother?" she repeated. "God, what is it with my parents wanting to talk to you all of a sudden?" she asked in exasperation.
He shook his head. "She didn't ask to talk to me. I went to her."
Sydney was surprised, knowing that Vaughn only interacted with Irina when he absolutely had to. "You did? Why?"
"Because I needed some answers from her."
Sydney's eyes widened and she swallowed hard, casting her eyes downward to prevent Vaughn from seeing the fear that had taken hold in them. Her heart began to pound and an eternity seemed to pass until she gathered the courage to speak again.
"Answers about what?"
"About my father, about his death. I needed to know why she killed him."
Sydney closed her eyes and shook her head, finally understanding why Vaughn had been so distraught when she arrived. She didn't know if her mother had given him the answers that he sought, or whether she'd told him the truth, but she suddenly wished that she herself had told him months ago. She cursed herself silently, knowing that he should have heard it from her instead of her mother.
"What did she tell you?" she shakily asked, afraid to look him in the eye.
"Syd," he said apologetically, "we don't have to discuss this. Honestly, I'm fine, and -- "
"Vaughn," she sharply cut him off, finally raising her head to look at him. "Whatever it is that you think you're protecting me from, you're not," she shook her head. "Just tell me. What did she say?"
He sighed, knowing by the resolute look on Sydney's face that she wasn't going to let him blow this off. He squeezed her hand again and gave her a nervous half-smile. "Okay, first of all, I love you. You know that, right?"
"Of course, I know that."
"And you know that nothing your mother could ever say or do could change that, right?"
She bit her lip to prevent the tears in her eyes from falling. He was being so sweet to her, not knowing that she had been keeping this horrible secret from him for months. "I want to believe that," she murmured.
"Believe it," he said firmly, raising her chin until she was looking at him again. "Sydney, seriously, I'm not just saying that."
"I believe you," she nodded.
"Good. When I had dinner with your father, he said some things that made me realize that I needed to have a conversation with your mother, a conversation that I had been putting off for a really long time."
"You and my dad talked about my mom?" Sydney asked with surprise.
"Yeah, we did -- a little bit, anyway."
"Vaughn, my dad barely talks to *me* about my mother. I can't believe that he would feel comfortable talking to you about her."
"Well, it's not like he was telling me all about their relationship or anything. He just has some -- " he paused, choosing his words carefully, "*concerns* about her, concerns that he thought I might share."
"Concerns as they relate to me," she clarified.
"Yes," he admitted.
"So do you?" she asked softly. "Share those concerns, I mean."
Vaughn looked away for a moment, contemplating her question. "I don't think that your father and I necessarily have the *same* concerns -- or maybe we do and we just choose to deal with them differently. But he made me realize that I've been trying to deal with my concerns through avoidance, which, of course, is no way to deal with them at all."
"Vaughn," she said carefully, "I hope you're not letting my father bully you into feeling one way or another about my mother. I mean, however you feel about her or how you choose to deal with those feelings is something that only you can decide. You don't have to change that for him or even for me. You know that, don't you?"
"Yeah, I do. But your dad didn't tell me to go talk to her; I did that on my own, because it was time. It was past time, actually, and I needed answers from her. Not for him or for you, but for myself."
She nodded understandingly, but underneath her calm exterior, she was already dreading the answer to her next question, although she knew that she couldn't avoid it.
"Did my mother give you the answers that you were looking for?" She slipped her hand from his and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her upper arms to counteract the chill that was already working its way through her body.
Vaughn briefly mourned the loss of contact with her, but ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath, looking down at the ground as he tried to prevent himself from getting emotional remembering his conversation with Irina.
"Yeah, I guess. I don't -- I never told you this, but when she first turned herself into the CIA, when I went to see her so Kendall would lay off of you, it was hard for me to look at her, to look into the face and the eyes of the woman who killed my father. All I could think about was the fact that her face and her eyes were probably the last images my father ever saw."
He took a shuddering breath before he continued, remembering his first encounter with her as vividly as the one that he'd had just a couple of hours earlier.
"Just as I was leaving the holding cell, she told me . . . she said 'you look just like him.'"
Sydney could feel all the blood drain from her face and she looked at him in horrified disbelief. "She said that to you?" she asked in a voice barely above a whisper. "How come you never told me?"
"Because -- I don't know. I think part of me wanted to forget it and pretend that it never happened, and the other part of me wanted to spare you the pain of finding out, because even though we weren't together back then, I knew that if I told you what she said, you would be furious."
"Yeah, I would have been," she agreed, her voice tight as she tried to control the anger bubbling inside her.
"And that's why I didn't tell you, because you would have been pissed, and you never would have agreed to have anything to do with her, and you needed to work with her, to pump her for every bit of information that would help in destroying the Alliance. I didn't want you to refuse to do that just because of the things that she said to me."
"The things that she said to you?" she blinked. "Things, as in *plural*?"
"Yes," Vaughn reluctantly admitted, "but that's not important right now -- "
"What did she say?" Sydney asked, her jaw clenched, barely disguising her anger and disgust. Vaughn saw the hard, cold look in her eyes and wished that he had never mentioned any of this.
"Sydney -- " he began.
"What did she say?" Sydney repeated, quietly emphasizing each word. Vaughn pleaded with his eyes for her to drop it, but she looked back at him expectantly, silently telling him that she intended to do no such thing.
"Remember when you were trapped in the FAPSI building in Moscow?"
She nodded.
"You needed a way out, and I knew that she was the only person who could give me one, so I went to her for help. Once you were out safely and I hung up the phone, she asked me how I could say thank you to the woman who killed my father."
Sydney closed her eyes and covered her mouth with her hand. She couldn't believe that her mother had been so cruel to Vaughn and that he hadn't told her about it. Even though he claimed that he hadn't told her because he didn't want her to stop working with Irina, she knew that he had also done it to protect her feelings, to keep her from being further exposed to her mother's dark side. She couldn't believe that Vaughn had let himself be emotionally wounded that way for her benefit, months before she even told him how she felt about him. Even though she knew that she shouldn't be anymore, she was awed by the depth of his love for her, the lengths to which he would go to protect her from the things that would hurt her or make her unhappy. She reached out to caress his face, tilting his head up to look at her.
"I can't believe that she said those things to you. I'm so sorry, Vaughn."
"Don't apologize, it's not your fault."
"Yeah, but you suffered through it alone, without having anyone to talk to. I can't imagine how that must have felt." She looked him dead in the eye, daring him to be honest with her. "Don't tell me that you weren't hurt by that."
"Yeah, it hurt," he admitted. "It was like having a knife stuck into my chest the first time. The second time, I was at least a little bit more prepared. It didn't affect me as much then, or so I thought. But after my conversation with your dad, I began to remember the way -- it was almost like she was taunting me about my father's death, and once I remembered that, I needed to know why."
Sydney nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, but immediately untucked it and drew her hand back down when she realized what she had done. She tightly crossed her arms over her chest to prevent herself from doing it again.
"So what did she tell you?"
"She said that she was testing me, trying to find out how much crap I'd endure for you. She said that she needed to know the extent of my willingness to protect you."
Sydney suddenly felt sick inside, realizing that once again, her mother had put Vaughn through hell because of her. She simply couldn't believe that Irina had subjected him to that.
"Did you believe her?"
"No," he flatly stated. "Not at first. I found it hard to believe that she said those things to me in an effort to protect you, but -- " his voice broke off as he looked back down at his lap. "I believe her now. Now that I know the kinds of things that she's done before to protect you, I believe her."
The grief that flashed across his face cut straight to Sydney's heart and her throat grew tight around the lump that had formed there. She could almost feel Vaughn's pain and although she only wanted to take it away, she knew that she was probably about to add to it. She stepped closer to him and lightly placed her hands on his thighs as he looked up at her attentively.
"Vaughn," she softly said, "I know why she killed him. She told me." Vaughn looked at her questioningly and she continued. "When I came back from Virginia, all I could think about was you and your mom, the way that she accepted me and the way that you opened yourself up to me when you took me to you father's grave. So when I saw my mother again, I wanted to know why she killed him, I needed to understand, and she told me that she did it to keep her superiors from killing me."
"You knew?" he asked in a low, disbelieving voice. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it wasn't the kind of thing that I could tell you over the phone," she explained. "At first, I wanted to tell you face to face so you wouldn't be alone when you fount out. I wanted to be there to -- I don't know -- comfort you, if that would have even been possible, if you would have even wanted my comfort."
"I would have," he said, placing his hand over one of hers. It was smooth and warm and the simple gesture filled her with hope that he wasn't angry with her.
"I'd hoped so. Remember the day that you called and I had just come back from that really long run and you commented that I only run that much when I'm upset about something?"
"Yeah," he remembered as he was struck by a realization. "That was the day that you found out, wasn't it?"
"Yes, and I felt awful about it. After spending the week before with you, I was finally starting to let go of all the guilt that I was carrying around, but when my mother told me the truth, it brought all of the guilt back, even worse than before, because I realized that your dad's life was sacrificed for mine. You and your mom lost him because of me," she said tearfully.
"Syd -- "
"No," she shook her head, "I need to finish. I was feeling really guilty, and Eric talked to me and told me that I shouldn't, that you wouldn't want me to. I so desperately wanted to believe him, and over time, I guess I began to. I started to think that maybe the truth wouldn't affect our relationship, and that perhaps it would be better not to tell you about it, better to spare you the pain of hearing it. But I know now that I had no right to make that decision for you, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for not telling you the truth, and even sorrier for being the reason that he -- "
"Don't," Vaughn warned. "Don't you dare say that. Don't even think it." When she brushed the tears from her eyes and looked down, he tilted her face back up to his and kissed her softly. "Sydney, I really don't know yet how to feel about what your mother told me. It's going to take me a while to process it and deal with it, but it's not going to change how I feel about you. It could never do that, and I thought we agreed that we weren't going to let our parents affect us anymore."
"We did, but come on, Vaughn, that's a fantasy. Of course they're going to affect us. There's no way to get around that, and it's going to be even more true if we get married."
"If?" Vaughn raised his eyebrow.
"When," she said, with a small smile. "*When* we get married. Vaughn," she sighed as he laced his fingers through hers. "Have you even thought about how we're going to explain this to our children? Because we can't *not* tell them. You know that."
"I know," he solemnly nodded.
She sighed again. "Sometimes I feel like we're never going to be able to move past my mother. No matter how we feel about each other, or how much we swear not to let her affect our relationship, she's always going to be there, lurking in the background -- not even lurking, really. Maybe we just need to accept the fact that she's always going to be an issue instead of pretending that she's not."
"I can do that, as long as we both understand that where my feelings for you are concerned, she's not an issue. As far as my feelings about her are concerned, obviously, she's going to be an issue for me, and I hope that you can understand that. Even if you reach a point where you can begin to forgive her for everything that she's done, I hope you'll understand if I can't, because I'm not sure that I ever can, Syd," he quietly acknowledged.
"Even though I know why she killed my father, even though I know that she did it to protect you, I don't know if I'll ever get over the *way* that she did it. She caused my family so much pain, and I'm just not ready to let go of that yet. I won't ever begrudge you the right to have a relationship with her, but I can't be a part of that right now, and I need you to understand that I may never be able to be a part of that."
"Vaughn, of course I understand. Believe me, my own desire to have a relationship with her is very much in doubt right now," she said with a wry smile. "I don't ever expect you to accept her just because you love me. Honestly, it's enough for me that you can even look at me without holding everything that she's done against me. I would never ask you for more than that, but there is one thing that I do have to ask you for -- I'm going to need you to be completely honest with me in the future about how you feel about her. Seriously, I don't want you to try and protect my feelings or decide not to tell me things that you think I might not want to hear. When you asked me to marry you, I made a conscious choice to put you above everyone else in my life, and the only way that can work is if we're honest with each other, no matter how much it hurts."
"Syd," he smiled, "you say that now, but -- " She silenced him with a soft kiss.
"I mean it now," she promised. "I'll mean it later, too."
TBC . . .
Vaughn absently tapped his pen against his desk as he sat in the joint task force center. He was finding it impossible to concentrate this morning, for reasons that sadly had nothing to do with memories of his and Sydney's rendezvous in his office the night before. Although he would much rather have been reliving every moment of their frenzied coupling, his mind was occupied by thoughts of another Bristow woman.
From his vantage point at his desk, he could see all of the security monitors keeping tabs on the ops center, but the third monitor from the right kept demanding his attention even as he tried to ignore it. He closed his eyes tightly, attempting to block out the images on the monitor, but even in his mind, he could still see Irina Derevko pacing back in forth in her cell.
Before he left for Virginia, he'd gotten used to seeing Irina on the monitors, usually ignoring her, but sometimes finding himself mesmerized by her efficient movement, her calm meditation, her inescapable resemblance to the woman who held his heart under lock and key. He had long since ceased to be affected by the grainy images on the monitors -- or so he thought, because they had been affecting him quite a lot in the past couple of days, a fact that he attributed to his conversation he'd had with Jack.
As much as he hated to admit it, Jack had raised some very salient points, and ever since then, thoughts of Irina had been preoccupying Vaughn's mind, although they were intermingled with his usual anxiety and concern for Sydney's well-being while she was away on her mission. Now that Sydney was home safely, however, Irina was in the forefront of his thoughts, and he was less than thrilled about it. He knew, however, that she was simply going to remain there the longer that he avoided dealing with her, and before he even realized what he was doing, he found himself standing before her, separated only by the glass wall of her cell.
Irina and Vaughn simply stared at each other for a few minutes, each trying to detect any changes in the other's appearance over the five months since they had last seen each other.
"You're back," she acknowledged, finally breaking the silence.
"Yes."
"Sydney must be happy about that," she smiled.
"I didn't come by for a social visit," he announced with irritation.
"Oh." He followed her eyes as she glanced at one of the security cameras overhead and looked back at him questioningly.
"I'm not concerned about that. Now that I'm no longer Sydney's case officer, my relationship with her is none of the CIA's business," he defiantly answered.
"Very well, then. What can I do for you, Agent Vaughn?" Her tone was outwardly solicitous, but he could hear the almost imperceptible challenge in her words and he already hated her for it, so he decided to skip the niceties and get straight to the point.
"The first time that I came to see you, why did you tell me that I looked just like my father?"
Irina was momentarily taken aback, but she managed to recover before her shock became evident to Vaughn. There weren't many people who could make her uneasy or uncomfortable, but he was one of the few, and she supposed it was due to the unique and terrible ways in which their lives had intersected.
"Surely I'm not the only person who has ever commented on the resemblance between you and your father. I'm sure that your mother must see it as well."
Vaughn's blood began to boil at the same time that he felt a chill run along the length of his spine. "Don't you dare talk about my mother," he spat. "I mean it, don't ever mention her again," he warned.
Irina was startled by the way that his green eyes turned a threatening black and she took a deep breath to relax herself. "I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "Still, the fact remains that you do look very much like him."
"That's not how you meant it, though" Vaughn shook his head. "You meant for those words to hurt me, and that wasn't the only time that you threw his death in my face. Why?"
"Because I was testing you," she admitted.
"Testing me?" he asked in disbelief.
"Yes," she said, as if her reasons for doing so were obvious. "You were my daughter's handler, and I needed to know that she was working with someone who would do anything for her, anything to make sure that she didn't become another victim of Arvin Sloane and the Alliance."
"What does that have to do with -- "
"When you came to see me that first time, I knew that you had come so Sydney wouldn't have to. I knew that Kendall was pressuring her to come talk to me, and that she would never accede to his demands. You came instead, and I saw the fear in your eyes. I saw how difficult it was for you to be here, to talk to me, and it didn't take long to understand why you were doing it. It was instantly obvious how much you cared for my daughter."
"If it was so obvious, why did you need to test me?" Vaughn testily asked. He was beginning to chafe at the realization that he was so transparent to both of Sydney's parents.
"I needed to know just how far you would go for her, whether you had a breaking point. I soon learned that you didn't. When she was trapped in FAPSI headquarters, you rushed over here and asked for my help without thinking twice about it."
"I don't think twice when it comes to Sydney," he shook his head.
"You don't think at all, Agent Vaughn," she corrected. "You *feel,* you react. I needed to know that, and because I was trapped in this cell, the only way I could think to test you was to say those things to you and see how you reacted to them, see whether they affected the way that you felt about my daughter."
"They didn't."
"I know that now," she nodded as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Agent Vaughn, I know that you have no reason to believe anything that I say, and I know that you probably won't, but I want you to know that I appreciate all of the things you've done for Sydney. I don't think that she -- she would probably be dead by now if she had been assigned to another agent, one who didn't care about her as much as you do."
Vaughn wasn't sure how to respond to Irina's assertion. He wanted to believe that any of his colleagues would have made the same kind of sacrifices for Sydney that he had, but he didn't know if that was true or not. "Your daughter is much more than a professional responsibility to me," he acknowledged, "but you already know that."
"Yes. It's been obvious since the day we met. I'm just -- Thank you for not turning your back on her when you found out who she was, when you found out who *I* was," she quietly said.
Vaughn merely nodded before he turned to leave the detention facility. Something kept nagging at him as he began to walk away, however, and he turned and slowly walked back toward the cell as Irina watched him uncertainly.
"You say that I have no reason to believe anything that you say to me, but I need you to prove otherwise."
"I'm not sure that I know what you're talking about, Agent Vaughn."
"I need you to tell me the truth right now."
"The truth about what?"
"The truth about why you killed my father." He watched as she instantly grew pale and her eyes took on a haunted expression. "I don't need to know how -- I already know more about that than I ever wanted to -- but I need you to tell me why, because his CIA file doesn't explain it."
"I'm not sure that I can explain it either," she quickly replied. "I was never told why the KGB wanted William killed. I never knew what kind of work he was doing at the time."
Vaughn's eyes widened in surprise and he was shocked to learn that Irina hadn't even known why she was ordered to kill his father. All this time, he had believed that there was a connection between his father and Irina, that their paths had crossed before, that he had somehow compromised her mission objectives and needed to be dealt with. Finding out that she had never known his father and killed him for absolutely no reason at all was almost more than he could take, and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach.
"Are you telling me that you killed him simply because you were ordered to? Without even knowing why they wanted him dead? How could you -- why would you do that?"
"How often do *you* question orders, *Agent* Vaughn?"
"A lot more often since I met your daughter," he pointedly replied. "I've found myself questioning all kinds of orders for her, and you've never struck me as someone afraid to speak her mind, so how could you not challenge what they wanted you to do?"
"I couldn't," she said softly.
"Why not?" he asked, his voice low and intense.
"Because I couldn't, and that's all I intend to say about this. You should go," she counseled.
"You owe me answers," he persisted.
"You don't want the answers that I have to give you. You should trust me on this," Irina gently warned him. It was obvious that Sydney hadn't told Vaughn what she knew about William's death, and Irina was terrified of the impact that it might have on their relationship if Irina told him herself.
"Tell me." Vaughn's voice was quiet but forceful. "I'm not leaving here until you do."
"You really should."
"I'm not going to."
They stared at each other for several long moments, his eyes challenging her to answer his question, her eyes pleading with him to drop it and leave. It soon became apparent that he really didn't intend to leave until he got some answers, and she silently prayed that the answers he received wouldn't destroy her daughter's happiness. She wrapped her arms around herself protectively and focused her vision on a spot over his shoulder, not wanting to look him in the eye as she explained.
"As you know," she quietly began, "the KGB sent me here to spy on Jack, to gather secrets primarily about Project Christmas, but also pertaining to other classified matters as they arose. Initially, I was just supposed to date him for a couple of years, but as he rose through the ranks of the agency and became a senior officer, the KGB thought it would be advantageous to make my assignment more long term, and it just so happened to be around the same time that Jack asked me to marry him.
"So, we got married, and a couple of years later, I became pregnant with Sydney. My superiors were adamantly opposed to the idea of me having an American child, but I refused to terminate the pregnancy and they finally relented. For the first year after Sydney was born, I was happier than I had ever been before. Even though I knew that my life was a lie, the way that I felt about my family was not, and when my superiors realized how attached I'd grown to them, how attached I'd grown to my life as Laura Bristow, they decided to use it to their benefit. I'm not sure if you know this, Agent Vaughn, but the best way to control someone isn't to torture her or hold her captive; it's to give her something that she's always wanted, something that's more important to her than anything else, and then threaten her with losing it.
"My superiors understood that, they were counting on that, so a little more than a year after Sydney was born, they began ordering me to kill CIA agents. Each time, they bought my compliance by threatening to harm either Jack or Sydney, sometimes both of them. They knew that I would do anything to keep them safe, and they played on my emotions as a means of coercion."
"Oh god, my father was one of those agents," Vaughn whispered, not even realizing that he'd spoken aloud.
"Yes. That particular time, when they asked me to kill your father, they threatened Sydney. She was only 18 months old at the time, and she was -- " Irina closed her eyes and smiled serenely. "She was my reason for waking up every morning. When they first threatened to kill her, I didn't take them seriously. I couldn't imagine that they would ever kill someone so young, so innocent, but things that happened to the families of some of my fellow agents convinced me otherwise.
"The thought of them killing Sydney terrified me, but they soon came to me and threatened her with something even worse. They threatened to take her one day when I least expected it, to make me live the rest of my life not knowing what happened to her -- whether someone else was raising her, whether she had been placed in the Russian equivalent of Project Christmas, whether they'd train her to be a swallow agent like I was. I wouldn't have known anything, and they knew that I would torture myself everyday wondering what had happened to her.
"You might not understand this, because you're not a parent, but I would rather have known that she was dead than face the uncertainty of never knowing what happened to her or how they might use her. I would have done anything to prevent her from being controlled by them, from being sucked into a life like mine. So my choice was easy and when they gave me the final order to kill your father, I did."
"No," Vaughn said bitterly. "You didn't just kill him, you mangled his body, you maimed him so badly that it took the CIA forensics team two weeks to confirm his identity."
"I know," she acknowledged. "I used his murder to take out all of my rage against my predicament. I thought that if I made his murder appear brutal enough, my superiors would stop questioning my loyalty to my country, and stop asking me to do things to prove it to them."
"And did they?"
"Of course they didn't," she bitterly replied. "If anything, it made them want to test my loyalty even further, concluding, of course, with requiring me to make the ultimate sacrifice when I left Jack and Sydney."
"That wasn't the ultimate sacrifice," Vaughn said in a voice so quiet and controlled that it almost scared Irina by its utter lack of emotion. "I'm sure that leaving them was painful for you, and I'm sure that it hurt, but it wasn't the ultimate sacrifice. You at least got to know that Jack and Sydney were okay. My father never got that. He probably spent his dying moments worrying about me and my mother."
"You're right," Irina said softly, "but sometimes -- " She abruptly stopped talking and Vaughn looked up at her again.
"But what?"
"I, I shouldn't . . . I don't want to upset you more than I already have."
"I don't think that would be possible. What were you going to say?"
"Sometimes I actually think that your father was the luckier of the two of us. Let me explain," she quickly said, raising a hand when Vaughn's eyes flashed in anger. "After I left Jack and Sydney, there were so many times when I wanted to die, when I wished that I were already dead, because that would have been so much less painful than knowing that I could never again be with the two people that I loved most in this world.
"And before you get upset about what I just said, ask yourself whether you'd rather die or be forced to leave Sydney, knowing that you could never be with her again. Could you honestly spend the rest of your life without her, knowing that she thought you were dead? Could you stand the thought of her moving on with her life, or falling in love with someone else, having another man's children?
The stricken look on Vaughn's face confirmed what she already knew.
"I know you think that I haven't been punished for what I've done, and maybe I haven't been punished enough, but every day of my life until the KGB dissolved was a punishment, not having any idea what Sydney and Jack were doing or who they were doing it with. Maybe it will help you rest easier at night knowing that I've spent the past twenty-two years living in a hell of my own making."
"I doubt it," Vaughn quietly replied, "because I've spent the last twenty-*six* years living in another hell of your own making."
Irina looked at the pained expression on Vaughn's face, and for the first time, she began to understand the magnitude of what she'd done to his father. At the same time, however, she realized that he wouldn't have her daughter to love if she hadn't done what she did, and she wasn't sorry for that.
"I don't ever expect you to be able to forgive me, Agent Vaughn, but I did what I did for Sydney. Maybe one day you'll understand that. I hope you'll never have to, but you can't tell me that you wouldn't kill someone if it meant keeping her safe. You love her too much to do anything else."
Vaughn stared at her for a moment before wordlessly turning to leave her cell. Of all the painful revelations that he'd had in the past fifteen minutes, the absolute truth of her last statement was the most painful of all.
*****
"Hi Daddy," Sydney said with mock sweetness as she walked up to her father in the rotunda of the ops center. She saw his back stiffen slightly and she suppressed a smirk just before he turned around to greet her.
"Sydney, you're back."
"Yes, I am," she raised her eyebrow. "So, I guess that means that you won't be able to invite Vaughn to any more surprise dinners."
"I take it that he told you about that."
"Dad," Sydney sighed, "you had to have known that the first thing I would do when I got back was go see him. And just for the record, I would be really pissed about what you did if it weren't for the fact that he really didn't seem to mind."
"He didn't?" Jack asked, with obvious surprise.
"No, which either means that he's not telling me the truth, because you threatened him, or the two of you actually did have a mostly pleasant evening with each other."
"Sydney, you should trust Vaughn and believe whatever he says to you," Jack smiled enigmatically. "I don't feel any need to tell you what he and I discussed, but I think that both of us were enlightened by our conversation and we've reached a new level of understanding with each other."
"You're not just saying that?" Sydney hopefully asked.
"No, I'm not."
"So you approve of our relationship?"
"Well, in all honesty, I wish that the two of you would have waited to pursue a relationship with each other, but what's done is done. Now that I better understand Vaughn's feelings, I'm confident that he'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe. So, if you're as enamored with him as you claim to be, then yes, I begrudgingly approve of your relationship." His slight smile betrayed the fact that his acceptance wasn't as begrudging as he made it seem.
"Thanks, Dad," Sydney smiled gratefully. "I really do love him."
"I know you do, honey. I just hope that you remember that and don't let anyone come between the two of you."
Sydney looked at her father quizzically, wondering where that last comment had come from, but it was quickly forgotten as he spoke again.
"Listen, I have a briefing with Devlin in a few minutes, but maybe we can have dinner with each other later in the week. I promise to go much easier on you than I did on Vaughn."
She laughed and nodded. "I'd like that."
"Good. I'll see you later," Jack said before he rushed off to his meeting. Sydney quickly scanned the room, searching for Vaughn, but she didn't see him anywhere. She sighed with disappointment and headed back down the hall to the parking garage when she ran into a harried looking Weiss.
"Sydney, thank god I ran into you," he said with a breathless sigh of relief.
"Weiss, what's wrong?"
"Have you seen Mike at all today?"
"No, I haven't seen him yet. Why? Is something wrong? Did something happen to him?"
"I don't know. All I know is that he was away from his desk for a while and when he came back down into the rotunda, he grabbed his keys from his desk and took off. A couple of agents tried to stop him to talk to him about work stuff, but he blew them off, and they both said that he looked really upset. I've spent the past half hour trying to figure out what's going on, and I was hoping that maybe you might know."
"I have no idea," Sydney whispered. It was so unlike Vaughn to just bolt like that and she couldn't imagine what would make him to do that, unless . . .
"The only thing that I can think of that would make him so frantic is you," Weiss said, echoing her own thoughts. "Are you in some kind of trouble? Has something happened with SD-6?"
"No, not that I know of," she shook her head. "Besides, if something were going on with me, don't you think he would have called to let me know?"
"Yeah, unless he didn't have time or he didn't want to scare you." Weiss ran an impatient hand through his hair and sighed as he tried to think of other alternatives.
"Listen, Weiss," Sydney said, hoping that her voice didn't sound as shaky and panicked as she felt. "You stay here and wait to hear from him or from anyone else who might know anything, okay? I'm going to try to find him."
"Syd, do you think that's a good idea? I mean, if something is -- "
"I have to find him, Weiss," she urgently pleaded. "I can't just stay here and do nothing if something is wrong, or something happened to him. I have to know. I have to leave," she said as she hurriedly began to head for the parking garage. "Call me if you find out anything," she called over her shoulder.
*****
Sydney briskly walked down the hall of the warehouse and breathed a deep sigh of relief when she reached the gate and saw Vaughn sitting on one of the tables with his back turned to her. She briefly hesitated, considering that maybe he wanted to be alone and she should leave him there, but she needed to check on him, needed to reassure herself that he was okay. She slowly opened the gate, trying to make as little noise as possible, though she knew that he must have heard her footsteps and already known that she was there.
She walked towards him uncertainly, her breath catching in her throat as she observed his slumped shoulders and bowed head. She knew that something was seriously wrong, and when she stepped in front of him and saw the anguished expression on his face, it nearly broke her heart. She couldn't ever remember seeing him look so unhappy and the only thing that mattered to her was trying to make it better.
She placed a gentle hand on his knee and dipped her head, attempting to catch his eyes with her own. "Vaughn?" she softly whispered.
He was staring at his hands in his lap and looked so lost in his own world that it scared her. She began to wonder if he even realized that she was there, until he reached out and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in the crook of her neck. Her momentary surprise soon gave way to relief that he seemed to appreciate her presence, that he seemed to want her comfort. Mostly, she was just relieved that he appeared to be physically unharmed.
She wrapped one arm around his shoulders and gently stroked his hair with her free hand, wondering what was wrong, but not wanting to press him, knowing that he would eventually talk to her when he was ready. He clung to her tightly and she planted a gentle kiss on the top of his head. They stayed that way for a few minutes, holding onto each other in comfortable silence until Vaughn finally raised his head from Sydney's shoulder and looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.
"Sydney," he choked out.
"I'm here," she gently smiled as she stroked his face. "Baby, what's wrong?"
"Nothing. You're here now," he said, shaking his head and replacing his grief-stricken expression with the one he usually wore when he was trying to reassure her and convince her that something awful really wasn't a big deal. She knew him too well to be fooled by his act, however.
"You're obviously upset about something. Do you want to talk about it? You know that you can tell me anything, Vaughn."
"I know, I just -- " his voice trailed off and he looked away from her to an indeterminate spot in the room.
"Vaughn," she gently coaxed, "whatever it is, you need to tell me. I hate seeing you unhappy. I just want to make it better."
"I know you do, Syd," he sighed, turning his attention back to her. "But this . . . I don't think that you *can* make it better, and I don't want to -- "
"You don't want to what?" she asked when he stopped talking
"I don't want to dump this on you. I don't want you to feel like," he paused, "like this is your fault."
"*My* fault? What's my fault?"
"Nothing," he said emphatically. "None of this is your fault. Listen, if I'm going to tell you what's wrong, you have to promise me -- *promise me* -- that you're not going to let yourself feel guilty about this."
"Feel guilty about what?" she asked, beginning to panic slightly.
Vaughn took a deep breath and gently squeezed her hand. "I talked to your mother this morning."
"You talked to my mother?" she repeated. "God, what is it with my parents wanting to talk to you all of a sudden?" she asked in exasperation.
He shook his head. "She didn't ask to talk to me. I went to her."
Sydney was surprised, knowing that Vaughn only interacted with Irina when he absolutely had to. "You did? Why?"
"Because I needed some answers from her."
Sydney's eyes widened and she swallowed hard, casting her eyes downward to prevent Vaughn from seeing the fear that had taken hold in them. Her heart began to pound and an eternity seemed to pass until she gathered the courage to speak again.
"Answers about what?"
"About my father, about his death. I needed to know why she killed him."
Sydney closed her eyes and shook her head, finally understanding why Vaughn had been so distraught when she arrived. She didn't know if her mother had given him the answers that he sought, or whether she'd told him the truth, but she suddenly wished that she herself had told him months ago. She cursed herself silently, knowing that he should have heard it from her instead of her mother.
"What did she tell you?" she shakily asked, afraid to look him in the eye.
"Syd," he said apologetically, "we don't have to discuss this. Honestly, I'm fine, and -- "
"Vaughn," she sharply cut him off, finally raising her head to look at him. "Whatever it is that you think you're protecting me from, you're not," she shook her head. "Just tell me. What did she say?"
He sighed, knowing by the resolute look on Sydney's face that she wasn't going to let him blow this off. He squeezed her hand again and gave her a nervous half-smile. "Okay, first of all, I love you. You know that, right?"
"Of course, I know that."
"And you know that nothing your mother could ever say or do could change that, right?"
She bit her lip to prevent the tears in her eyes from falling. He was being so sweet to her, not knowing that she had been keeping this horrible secret from him for months. "I want to believe that," she murmured.
"Believe it," he said firmly, raising her chin until she was looking at him again. "Sydney, seriously, I'm not just saying that."
"I believe you," she nodded.
"Good. When I had dinner with your father, he said some things that made me realize that I needed to have a conversation with your mother, a conversation that I had been putting off for a really long time."
"You and my dad talked about my mom?" Sydney asked with surprise.
"Yeah, we did -- a little bit, anyway."
"Vaughn, my dad barely talks to *me* about my mother. I can't believe that he would feel comfortable talking to you about her."
"Well, it's not like he was telling me all about their relationship or anything. He just has some -- " he paused, choosing his words carefully, "*concerns* about her, concerns that he thought I might share."
"Concerns as they relate to me," she clarified.
"Yes," he admitted.
"So do you?" she asked softly. "Share those concerns, I mean."
Vaughn looked away for a moment, contemplating her question. "I don't think that your father and I necessarily have the *same* concerns -- or maybe we do and we just choose to deal with them differently. But he made me realize that I've been trying to deal with my concerns through avoidance, which, of course, is no way to deal with them at all."
"Vaughn," she said carefully, "I hope you're not letting my father bully you into feeling one way or another about my mother. I mean, however you feel about her or how you choose to deal with those feelings is something that only you can decide. You don't have to change that for him or even for me. You know that, don't you?"
"Yeah, I do. But your dad didn't tell me to go talk to her; I did that on my own, because it was time. It was past time, actually, and I needed answers from her. Not for him or for you, but for myself."
She nodded understandingly, but underneath her calm exterior, she was already dreading the answer to her next question, although she knew that she couldn't avoid it.
"Did my mother give you the answers that you were looking for?" She slipped her hand from his and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her upper arms to counteract the chill that was already working its way through her body.
Vaughn briefly mourned the loss of contact with her, but ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath, looking down at the ground as he tried to prevent himself from getting emotional remembering his conversation with Irina.
"Yeah, I guess. I don't -- I never told you this, but when she first turned herself into the CIA, when I went to see her so Kendall would lay off of you, it was hard for me to look at her, to look into the face and the eyes of the woman who killed my father. All I could think about was the fact that her face and her eyes were probably the last images my father ever saw."
He took a shuddering breath before he continued, remembering his first encounter with her as vividly as the one that he'd had just a couple of hours earlier.
"Just as I was leaving the holding cell, she told me . . . she said 'you look just like him.'"
Sydney could feel all the blood drain from her face and she looked at him in horrified disbelief. "She said that to you?" she asked in a voice barely above a whisper. "How come you never told me?"
"Because -- I don't know. I think part of me wanted to forget it and pretend that it never happened, and the other part of me wanted to spare you the pain of finding out, because even though we weren't together back then, I knew that if I told you what she said, you would be furious."
"Yeah, I would have been," she agreed, her voice tight as she tried to control the anger bubbling inside her.
"And that's why I didn't tell you, because you would have been pissed, and you never would have agreed to have anything to do with her, and you needed to work with her, to pump her for every bit of information that would help in destroying the Alliance. I didn't want you to refuse to do that just because of the things that she said to me."
"The things that she said to you?" she blinked. "Things, as in *plural*?"
"Yes," Vaughn reluctantly admitted, "but that's not important right now -- "
"What did she say?" Sydney asked, her jaw clenched, barely disguising her anger and disgust. Vaughn saw the hard, cold look in her eyes and wished that he had never mentioned any of this.
"Sydney -- " he began.
"What did she say?" Sydney repeated, quietly emphasizing each word. Vaughn pleaded with his eyes for her to drop it, but she looked back at him expectantly, silently telling him that she intended to do no such thing.
"Remember when you were trapped in the FAPSI building in Moscow?"
She nodded.
"You needed a way out, and I knew that she was the only person who could give me one, so I went to her for help. Once you were out safely and I hung up the phone, she asked me how I could say thank you to the woman who killed my father."
Sydney closed her eyes and covered her mouth with her hand. She couldn't believe that her mother had been so cruel to Vaughn and that he hadn't told her about it. Even though he claimed that he hadn't told her because he didn't want her to stop working with Irina, she knew that he had also done it to protect her feelings, to keep her from being further exposed to her mother's dark side. She couldn't believe that Vaughn had let himself be emotionally wounded that way for her benefit, months before she even told him how she felt about him. Even though she knew that she shouldn't be anymore, she was awed by the depth of his love for her, the lengths to which he would go to protect her from the things that would hurt her or make her unhappy. She reached out to caress his face, tilting his head up to look at her.
"I can't believe that she said those things to you. I'm so sorry, Vaughn."
"Don't apologize, it's not your fault."
"Yeah, but you suffered through it alone, without having anyone to talk to. I can't imagine how that must have felt." She looked him dead in the eye, daring him to be honest with her. "Don't tell me that you weren't hurt by that."
"Yeah, it hurt," he admitted. "It was like having a knife stuck into my chest the first time. The second time, I was at least a little bit more prepared. It didn't affect me as much then, or so I thought. But after my conversation with your dad, I began to remember the way -- it was almost like she was taunting me about my father's death, and once I remembered that, I needed to know why."
Sydney nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, but immediately untucked it and drew her hand back down when she realized what she had done. She tightly crossed her arms over her chest to prevent herself from doing it again.
"So what did she tell you?"
"She said that she was testing me, trying to find out how much crap I'd endure for you. She said that she needed to know the extent of my willingness to protect you."
Sydney suddenly felt sick inside, realizing that once again, her mother had put Vaughn through hell because of her. She simply couldn't believe that Irina had subjected him to that.
"Did you believe her?"
"No," he flatly stated. "Not at first. I found it hard to believe that she said those things to me in an effort to protect you, but -- " his voice broke off as he looked back down at his lap. "I believe her now. Now that I know the kinds of things that she's done before to protect you, I believe her."
The grief that flashed across his face cut straight to Sydney's heart and her throat grew tight around the lump that had formed there. She could almost feel Vaughn's pain and although she only wanted to take it away, she knew that she was probably about to add to it. She stepped closer to him and lightly placed her hands on his thighs as he looked up at her attentively.
"Vaughn," she softly said, "I know why she killed him. She told me." Vaughn looked at her questioningly and she continued. "When I came back from Virginia, all I could think about was you and your mom, the way that she accepted me and the way that you opened yourself up to me when you took me to you father's grave. So when I saw my mother again, I wanted to know why she killed him, I needed to understand, and she told me that she did it to keep her superiors from killing me."
"You knew?" he asked in a low, disbelieving voice. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it wasn't the kind of thing that I could tell you over the phone," she explained. "At first, I wanted to tell you face to face so you wouldn't be alone when you fount out. I wanted to be there to -- I don't know -- comfort you, if that would have even been possible, if you would have even wanted my comfort."
"I would have," he said, placing his hand over one of hers. It was smooth and warm and the simple gesture filled her with hope that he wasn't angry with her.
"I'd hoped so. Remember the day that you called and I had just come back from that really long run and you commented that I only run that much when I'm upset about something?"
"Yeah," he remembered as he was struck by a realization. "That was the day that you found out, wasn't it?"
"Yes, and I felt awful about it. After spending the week before with you, I was finally starting to let go of all the guilt that I was carrying around, but when my mother told me the truth, it brought all of the guilt back, even worse than before, because I realized that your dad's life was sacrificed for mine. You and your mom lost him because of me," she said tearfully.
"Syd -- "
"No," she shook her head, "I need to finish. I was feeling really guilty, and Eric talked to me and told me that I shouldn't, that you wouldn't want me to. I so desperately wanted to believe him, and over time, I guess I began to. I started to think that maybe the truth wouldn't affect our relationship, and that perhaps it would be better not to tell you about it, better to spare you the pain of hearing it. But I know now that I had no right to make that decision for you, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for not telling you the truth, and even sorrier for being the reason that he -- "
"Don't," Vaughn warned. "Don't you dare say that. Don't even think it." When she brushed the tears from her eyes and looked down, he tilted her face back up to his and kissed her softly. "Sydney, I really don't know yet how to feel about what your mother told me. It's going to take me a while to process it and deal with it, but it's not going to change how I feel about you. It could never do that, and I thought we agreed that we weren't going to let our parents affect us anymore."
"We did, but come on, Vaughn, that's a fantasy. Of course they're going to affect us. There's no way to get around that, and it's going to be even more true if we get married."
"If?" Vaughn raised his eyebrow.
"When," she said, with a small smile. "*When* we get married. Vaughn," she sighed as he laced his fingers through hers. "Have you even thought about how we're going to explain this to our children? Because we can't *not* tell them. You know that."
"I know," he solemnly nodded.
She sighed again. "Sometimes I feel like we're never going to be able to move past my mother. No matter how we feel about each other, or how much we swear not to let her affect our relationship, she's always going to be there, lurking in the background -- not even lurking, really. Maybe we just need to accept the fact that she's always going to be an issue instead of pretending that she's not."
"I can do that, as long as we both understand that where my feelings for you are concerned, she's not an issue. As far as my feelings about her are concerned, obviously, she's going to be an issue for me, and I hope that you can understand that. Even if you reach a point where you can begin to forgive her for everything that she's done, I hope you'll understand if I can't, because I'm not sure that I ever can, Syd," he quietly acknowledged.
"Even though I know why she killed my father, even though I know that she did it to protect you, I don't know if I'll ever get over the *way* that she did it. She caused my family so much pain, and I'm just not ready to let go of that yet. I won't ever begrudge you the right to have a relationship with her, but I can't be a part of that right now, and I need you to understand that I may never be able to be a part of that."
"Vaughn, of course I understand. Believe me, my own desire to have a relationship with her is very much in doubt right now," she said with a wry smile. "I don't ever expect you to accept her just because you love me. Honestly, it's enough for me that you can even look at me without holding everything that she's done against me. I would never ask you for more than that, but there is one thing that I do have to ask you for -- I'm going to need you to be completely honest with me in the future about how you feel about her. Seriously, I don't want you to try and protect my feelings or decide not to tell me things that you think I might not want to hear. When you asked me to marry you, I made a conscious choice to put you above everyone else in my life, and the only way that can work is if we're honest with each other, no matter how much it hurts."
"Syd," he smiled, "you say that now, but -- " She silenced him with a soft kiss.
"I mean it now," she promised. "I'll mean it later, too."
TBC . . .