Title: Release
Author: Liz (liz@endlessdreams.net)
Distribution: My site, Allies, Cover Me. All others see profile.
Rating: G/PG
Spoilers/Timeline: During 3.17 (The Frame)
Ship: Syd/Vaughn
Summary: The watch is the last straw, and Vaughn can no longer ignore his desire for release.

Michael Vaughn was not a happy man. To make matters worse, the symbol of everything that kept him from being a happy man was sitting across from him at a table in what used to be his favorite restaurant in LA. His wife.

"So how was your trip?" she asked him, her voice solicitous.

"It was good," he replied.

"Well, what happened?"

He thought he detected a bit of frustration. Good, he thought. Now you know how I feel. But he smiled and answered. "You know, we uh…we got what we needed to get and we're just waiting to see how it pans out."

He propped his menu up so that he wouldn't have to look at her face, but sensed her movement before her hand appeared at the top of his menu to pull it down.

"Michael…I got you something while you were gone."

He just looked at her steadily, and she smiled. "Open it."

Resisting the urge to sigh – men were supposed to like it when their wives gave them presents – Vaughn opened the box. What he saw froze him to the core.

"I realized I forgot the anniversary of your father's death," Lauren explained. "And I felt terribly, and I wanted to do something special to make up for it."

Vaughn stared moodily at the watch, thought caustically, well, at least she didn't plan a romantic getaway to Santa Barbara.

"It's the watch he gave you," she adds proudly.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

"I had it fixed."

I can see that.

Finally he shook his head. "This isn't working." Even as Lauren frowned, a tinny voice sounded in his ear.

"Agent Vaughn, what the hell are you doing?"

"It's not?" Lauren asked. She frowned and reached for the watch. He pulled it back as if protecting it from ever being touched by her again.

"Not the watch."

"Agent Vaughn."

"Us."

"If you're going to insist on doing this, Agent Vaughn, the team's ETA is two minutes."

He watched Lauren's face carefully, willing her to break her cover so that it wouldn't be on his head. She watched him back, her face set in stone.

"This isn't working for me," he elaborated, one ear tuned to the sound of his father's watch ticking the seconds away. Disregarding the possible consequences, he waited a beat and then continued. "I'm not happy."

"I see," Lauren said tersely.

Now you're worried, he thought maliciously. Now you've got problems. You don't even know the half of it.

"I don't know," he began, playing his part as the second hand began another rotation around the watch face. He glanced at the door, spoke slowly. "I guess for a while I thought I could be again." He paused when he saw three agents from the Rotunda enter the restaurant. "But I don't think that's going to happen." He nodded imperceptibly at the agents, who quickened their pace.

"You're making a stupid decision, Agent Vaughn."

Blocking Devlin's voice from his mind, Vaughn took a deep breath as the agents closed in.

"I think I should arrest you."

Later, his only regret over the moment of truth would be that he hadn't had a camera ready to catch the expression on her face. Two of the agents pulled her to her feet and the third tossed Vaughn a pair of handcuffs.

"Thanks, Craig," he said with a grin.

Craig returned the grin. "Devlin's gonna be pissed, you know that?"

Vaughn set his jaw as he slapped the cuffs on Lauren. "I don't care." He took his earpiece out and handed it to Craig. "Make damn sure she doesn't get away," he said, gesturing towards a nominally struggling Lauren. "I've got something to take care of."

Without another word, he strode out of the restaurant, stopping just once at the door where the bewildered head waiter stood. Vaughn slid a twenty into the man's hand. "Sorry for the disturbance," he said glibly. Then he was gone.

His cell phone rang as he drove the streets of LA, but he didn't even glance at the LCD display to see who was calling. It was probably Devlin anyway, and Vaughn had only one thing – one person, really, in mind to talk to.

He drove mechanically, knowing the way to his destination as well as he knew the way to his own house. After all, his best friend had lived there for years.

Now, so did his heart.

He parked his car and switched off the engine, but didn't unbuckle his seatbelt or make a move to get out. The lights were off in Weiss' apartment, Vaughn noticed. He vaguely remembered Weiss mentioning a date with a hot redhead and hoped it was going well. His gaze automatically switched to Sydney's windows.

He knew which were hers, because she'd become his secret talisman. Whenever he had thought that he couldn't stand another moment of pretending, of living a life he didn't want or even like, he would come here. He would never go in, would never put Sydney – or himself – through that kind of torture. But he would see her lights, and picture her in her kitchen. Did she still cook spaghetti every Thursday and make grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup after a particularly long week?

He'd always loved spending time in the kitchen with her. She would cook, and wave away his offers of help. Don't come near my sauce with that pepper! It had always made him feel so deliciously normal to play out such a simple domestic scene. So that's how he imagined her when he sat in her parking lot and gazed at her windows. But somehow he never managed to convince himself that she was quite that content in the evenings when he had seen the pain in her eyes during the day.

So he sat in the car, clutching his father's watch – why won't you stop again? – and wondering how in the world he was going to explain himself to Sydney. And after Sydney, to Weiss, to his mother, to Jack. To the rest of his friends. He took a deep breath and resolutely unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car. The habitual motions of closing the door, locking it, and checking the handle to make sure it was locked soothed him.

Still holding his father's watch – of all the wifely gestures she could have made! – Vaughn made his way steadily to Sydney's door. Before he quite knew he'd done it, he'd knocked on the door.

Judging from the look on Sydney's face when she opened the door, Vaughn thought he was probably the last person she expected to see. Wordlessly, he handed her the watch. She took it, looked at it curiously.

"You…had it fixed?" Vaughn winced at the traces of pain he heard in her voice and shook his head quickly.

"No. No, I didn't have it fixed."

"Then who…oh." Her grip on the watch tightened visibly. "Lauren."

Vaughn nodded grimly. "It was the last straw, Sydney." He paused, wondered how to go on. "There are…things I need to explain to you. To apologize to you for."

Sydney tilted her head slightly to one side and looked into his eyes. "Are you okay, Vaughn?"

"Can I come in?"

She hesitated for the space of a breath then stepped aside to let him into the apartment. He walked in and gazed around, noting the similarities and differences between her apartment and Weiss'.

"So this is where you live," he said softly, echoing his words of almost three years before. He turned back to glance at her and saw that she recognized the words as well.

"This is where I live," she replied, following the script without knowing why. He wanted to kiss her then, as he had on that long-ago day. But he knew that it wasn't the right moment. And hoped to God that the right moment would present itself soon.

Finally Sydney broke the silence. "Sit down," she said, gesturing towards the large couch. Vaughn nodded and sat. He waited until she'd sat down as well to begin.

"You may have trouble believing this, but before I met you, I was a by-the-book kind of guy." He shifted in his seat and searched for words. "I was good at my job – they wouldn't have even considered assigning you to me if I wasn't. But I was very by-the-book. I was field-trained, but the Agency thought my talents were better suited to a desk, so I worked a desk." He met Sydney's slightly-confused gaze. "Anything for the job." He managed a sardonic grin. "Then you came into my life, with your bozo hair and your haunted eyes. And somewhere between bringing you coffee and doughnuts while you wrote a statement rivaling the length and breadth of War and Peace and donning leather and fake piercings while you blew up a big red ball of doom…it stopped being anything for the job and started being anything for you."

"Vaughn…"

"Syd, I need to get this out."

"Vaughn, don't…"

"Sydney." His voice was firm, brooking no objections. Sydney closed her mouth and braced herself for heartbreak.

"After you died, I lost my purpose. What was there for me to do anything for if you were gone?" He shook his head. "Eventually, my boozy ruminations led me back to where I started – anything for the job." Coldness crept into his eyes. "Only this time I wasn't quite so by-the-book. Devlin approached me one day, a few weeks after I returned to the Agency. He told me he knew that I was investigating your death independently, and that he had a way to help me bring your killers to justice."

Vaughn glanced at Sydney to see how she was taking the story. She nodded for him to go on, her jaw set with a stoicism reminiscent of her father.

"I'm sure he hasn't told you this, but just before your father was put in solitary, he sent me a message."

Sydney's eyes went wide.

"He said he thought he might have evidence that you were alive. But by that time it was too late, and anyway, before I could contact him in return he was taken away, and his evidence went with him."

"By too late, I assume you mean you had already married Lauren?" Sydney asked, her carefully modulated monotone voice not concealing her inner turmoil from Vaughn.

"I received Jack's communication the day after I proposed." Vaughn met Sydney's eyes. "But I had to go through with the marriage, Sydney." He paused, and a self-deprecating smirk crossed his face and left it as quickly as it had come. "Anything for the job."

"For the…" Sydney managed, her mouth open in shock.

Vaughn stood up to pace agitatedly around Sydney's living room. "I've been living a lie for the last two years. For the job." He whirled to face her. "And for you. To bring your killers to justice."

"But Dad…"

"His communication said might – he might have had evidence that you were alive. Devlin was pressuring me…I had to make a decision, Sydney. Your father was in jail. I had to do what I had to do. I had to marry Lauren."

"But…why Lauren?"

Vaughn crossed back to the couch and sat down close to Sydney. He gazed straight into her eyes, his face completely serious. "Lauren Reed was assigned by her employers to woo me out of my drunken mourning and marry me posthaste. Apparently I had information they were interested in. Or at least access to it. And I suppose they hoped it would distract me from finding vengeance for you."

"Lauren is Covenant." Sydney's voice was flat, shocked out of emotion and into mere existence. She stared intensely at the floor, as if all the answers were written into the weave of the carpet, if she could only decipher the code.

"Incidentally, so is her mother."

"You married her…for the job."

I married her for you. How twisted is that? "Yes. To find out all I could about the Covenant and why they would have wanted you out of the picture." Vaughn rubbed at his forehead. "When you came back to life again…I almost punched Devlin when he told be I couldn't abort the mission. There you were, right in front of me – a dream come true – and I couldn't touch you. Not because of any vows I took…my vows were a sham, a lie on both sides. But because of the job, because of the mission."

Sydney finally looked up from the floor. "Why are you telling me this now?"

Vaughn gestured to the watch Sydney still loosely held. "She had the watch fixed. I realized that I was letting the job ruin the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. I was letting the job take away the best part of me." He reached out, finally, and touched her hand. "You."

"Vaughn…"

"I arrested Lauren tonight. Three agents are taking her into custody as we speak. I'd call Devlin to see if she's there yet, but I think I'm in for a hell of a tirade, so I'm looking to put that off as long as possible."

Sydney felt a giggle bubbling up her throat, settled for an amused snort. She turned her hand over so that she and Vaughn were loosely holding hands. "Who else knows? Besides Devlin, I mean?"

"No one in the Rotunda. A couple agents over at headquarters – my handler, some secondary contacts. I didn't even tell Weiss…who, by the way, will kill me for this if you don't."

Sydney squeezed Vaughn's hand. "I'm not going to kill you. Though God knows what my father will do."

Vaughn chuckled slightly. "I shudder to think of it." He held out an arm. "Sit with me?"

She scooted over and curled up against his side. She leaned her head on his chest, just under his chin, and placed her hand over his heart.

"I love you, Sydney Bristow," he said softly.

"I love you, Michael Vaughn," she replied.

And it was enough to make them both smile they hadn't in over two years.

The End