Sydney gazed around the one-room cottage. Opposite the door at the far end
of the room was a stone fireplace with two faded, but comfortably
upholstered, green chairs set before it. A wooden bench with an upright
back stood on the eastern wall, while a squat cooking stove and a sink with
a long-handled pump took up the wall to the west. A small wooden table with
two chairs was placed in the center of the room, while an alcove, which
disclosed an incredibly soft-looking bed behind a set of partially closed
red curtains, was situated to the right of the entrance. To the left of the
front door was a shelf, crowded with seashells, framed pictures, and dog-
eared books, swollen to twice their normal size from the salty sea air.
Vaughn watched her taking in the surroundings, enjoying the look of curiosity and wonder that played across her face.
"This cottage--you own it, don't you?" Sydney asked him, noticing the rather smug grin on his face. "The captain of the Bihan Gouelanig called you a Kernevad and told me your relatives have always been islanders. But you were born in Fleury. That's in Normandy, isn't it?"
Vaughn nodded. "I inherited this cottage from my grandmother. She lived on Île Mariette her entire life. My mother grew up here, but left so that she could go to school in Paris."
"Is that where she met your father--in Paris?" Sydney asked curiously.
"Yeah, he was posing as an official at the American embassy while on an extended covert op for the CIA. My parents lived in Fleury for the first few years of their marriage. I was born there, and I still think of it as my childhood home, even though we moved to the States when I was five. While we lived in Fleury, we would come to Île Mariette all the time to see my grandmother, and even after moving to America, we came back to spend our summers with her here on the island."
"I remember my grandmother trying to convince my mother to stay permanently after my father died," he continued, "but my mother told her that my father had been an American, and that he had wanted me to grow up at least partially in the United States. I think she thought about moving back here when I went to college, but my grandmother died shortly after I entered Stanford, and by that time, my mother had already made a life for herself in the United States."
Besides their conversation in the train station, this was the most Vaughn had ever revealed about himself or his past. Sydney listened avidly. There was so much she wanted to learn about him. It seemed strange that she should feel so close to him and yet not know these basic facts.
"Do you still vacation here every summer?" she asked.
"Not nearly as often as I used to,"Vaughn confessed. "In fact, it's been years since I've been back here. I can't tell you how much I've missed it," he said, a boyish grin spreading across his face. "Do you want to see the rest of the island?"
"I thought you'd never ask!" Sydney exclaimed, finding his buoyant spirits infectious.
She followed him out the door, and he grabbed her hand as they climbed further up the point on which the cottage rested.
She gazed at him then, relishing the opportunity to do so out in the open, with no thought to whom might be watching them or what danger might lie ahead. His high cheekbones appeared more sharply angled than usual and the weight he had lost as a result of his illness made him appear even taller. Although there were circles under his eyes, the lines that often furrowed his brow were completely gone, and she thought his green eyes had never appeared more vivid. He was more relaxed than she had ever seen him, and the way he carried himself bespoke a quiet confidence and ease. Only his breathing--slightly faster than normal, considering they had just started out on their walk--indicated that he had not yet gained back all his strength after Taipei.
Though the setting and mood could not have been more different, Sydney couldn't help but recall how they had held hands at the club in Taipei, threading their way through the crowded dance floor. Sexual tension had coursed and arced between them, and she blushed, thinking of how aggressively he had shoved aside the guy who had tried to pick her up. The feeling which bound her to Vaughn at this moment, if more placid, was no less strong. She felt as completely linked to him now as she had in Taipei.
As they stopped at the pinnacle to watch the waves crash against rocks below, Sydney slipped her arm around his waist. Vaughn did the same, and it seemed to her like the most natural action in the world. For a brief moment, they were simply an ordinary couple come to enjoy the view.
"How could you bear to leave Île Mariette at the end of those summers?" she asked softly. "I've been here for only a few hours, and I can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else. Two days doesn't nearly seem enough, considering what lies ahead."
She paused and looked up at him, her eyes troubled. "I don't know of any successful triple agents, Vaughn, do you? You only hear about the ones who fail."
Vaughn tightened his arm around her. "That's because the successful ones complete their missions and then escape to remote islands under assumed names never to be heard from again."
"Islands like Île Mariette?" she suggested lightly.
Vaughn glanced at her, and she gave him a wistful smile.
For one brief moment she allowed herself to imagine the tranquility and peace of such a life. Days filled with conversation, books, and long walks around the island, evenings in front of the fireplace, then falling asleep at night wrapped in Vaughn's arms. It filled her with such longing that she quickly pushed the thoughts away. She and Vaughn wouldn't be here on Île Mariette if they hadn't been assigned an extremely dangerous covert op, and dreams of the future were simply that: dreams and nothing more. Neither of them could afford to pin their hopes on a future that might never come to be.
They gazed a few more moments at the churning sea below before turning to go.
"Did Weiss come up with our aliases or did you?" she asked, as they started down the point again towards the village of Kaertrez, her thoughts returning once more to the mission.
"Marie Arnault was my grandmother's maiden name. I used it as a kind of codeword for the captain of the Bihan Gouelanig, so that he would know who you were. I gave him explicit instructions to approach no one but you, and if anyone asked about you once he got back to Kaertrez, he was to say simply that you were my guest, coming to spend the weekend, and he hadn't quite caught your name."
"Do you trust him?" Sydney asked even though she knew that Vaughn would not fail to be anything but careful, especially now that both her mother and SD- 6 would be suspicious of her whereabouts.
Vaughn nodded. "A true Breton--a Kernevad--will keep a secret to his grave, and Jean-Luc Brochet is a Kernevad through and through. During World War II, all the islands off the coast of Brittany were occupied by the Germans, but only the inhabitants Île Mariette were successful in organizing any sort of underground resistance movement, perhaps because it was the smallest of the three islands and also the most close-knit. Brochet was one of leaders."
"He didn't seem at all surprised when I referred to you as Jacques Vinneaux," Sydney commented. "Is that another family name?"
"No, I just made it up. It was simply the second part of the code that would confirm your identity. I thought it sounded dashing and romantic, like the name of a character from a Dumas novel," he said giving her a lop- sided grin.
Sydney laughed. "I thought Jacques Vinneaux sounded more like the name of a musketeer than a staid, old linguistics professor."
Vaughn stopped for a moment to contemplate their surroundings, and Sydney looked around, trying to discern what exactly had captured his attention on the grassy knoll.
"When I was a kid, a group of us would come up here and whack the hell out of each other with sticks, pretending to be The Three Musketeers," he explained, chuckling. "I remember one time someone caught me right here above my eye, and I bled like crazy. My mother almost fainted when she saw me and took me straight down to old Doc Giroux, and I had to have three stitches. If you look closely, you can still see the scar. I never really did grow out of the fascination, though. I think it was Dumas' novels that actually inspired me to take up fencing in college. I wasn't all that bad, either."
"There's so much I want to show you," he said turning to her, his eyes glowing with enthusiasm. "Tomorrow, if you want, I'll take you to the lighthouse on the western end of the island. If the keeper is the same man I used to know, he'll let us climb up to the top and look out. It's really amazing. Seals sun themselves on the rocks over there, and I've even spotted dolphins once or twice off the shore. We could pack a lunch. Say, are you getting hungry?"
"A little," Sydney admitted, smiling at the sudden change in subject.
"Good! I'll finally get to take you to dinner. You won't believe it, but I know this great little restaurant. It's called the Yellow Moon--Melen Loar-- "
Sydney laughed, recalling how he had asked her out to dinner while they were breaking into the Vatican.
"But that doesn't mean that I've given up on taking you to Trattoria Dinardi someday," he said with a grin.
"The next time we're in Italy," she agreed.
As they walked along the harbor, Sydney discovered Vaughn not only knew every part of Île Mariette, but everyone on it. Shouts of "Bonjour, Michel!" and "Demat, Michel!" came from all sides as fishermen and boat captains hailed them from the pier. Not everyone greeted Sydney with the same enthusiasm, however. She thought she caught more than one envious glance from the young women they met on the narrow, winding streets of Kaertrez. Sydney gripped Vaughn's hand a bit more possessively, once again thinking of the dance club in Taipei and wondering what she would have done, if the tables had been turned and some woman had dared to approach Vaughn.
"Did you ever spend time here with Alice?" she asked suddenly, trying to keep her voice neutral.
Vaughn stared at her, much as he had that day at the carwash when she had asked him if he had had a fight with his wife. Over the last year, he had lost sleep worrying about her relationship first with Will, and then Noah. It had never occurred to him that Sydney could be jealous of Alice.
Vaughn turned pensive. "No, I never brought her here," he replied, falling silent.
Sydney glanced at him. His silence did nothing to allay her sudden insecurity, but she decided not to press him.
They were quiet for a time, and Vaughn thought back--was it really just last summer that he had considered bringing Alice to Île Mariette? He remembered thinking that perhaps if they spent a week together on the island he loved so much, it would help them to repair their relationship and close the ever-growing gulf between them. He had mentioned the idea to Alice, and she had seemed interested, but some instinct had kept him from pursuing the matter further. He had always thought he'd propose to his future wife on Île Mariette and, despite all his attempts to convince himself otherwise, he had known even then that Alice wasn't the one he wanted to share the rest of his life with. They ended up putting off their visit to Île Mariette, and three weeks later, Sydney walked into his office, battered but defiant in her fire-engine-red, Run-Lola-Run hair. His life hadn't been the same since.
They turned down a few more cobblestone streets, and when they reached the Melen Loar, Vaughn ushered Sydney inside the quaint and homey restaurant, which served as a local gathering place for the people of Kaertrez. Like everywhere else on the island, he was welcomed as an old friend the moment he stepped inside. Someone went to tell Madame Saval, the owner, that Michel had returned and that he was accompanied by a pretty young woman. A few moments later, a short, rather rotund woman, dressed in black with rosy cheeks and silver hair tied back with a lace hairnet, rushed out to greet them, drying her hands hastily on her white apron as she made her way past the tables.
Vaughn nearly slipped up and introduced Sydney by her real name, but Syd quickly interrupted him and introduced herself to Madame Saval as Marie Vinneaux--deducing correctly that Arnault would no longer work as an alias-- and taking the surname of Vaughn's alias instead. Vaughn glanced at her, and she blushed.
Madame Saval, however, seemed not to notice the fumbled introduction. After clicking her tongue in dissatisfaction over Vaughn's apparent weight loss and chastising him for staying away from the island for so long, she turned to Sydney and patted her cheek, saying something to Vaughn in Breizh, her blue eyes moist and kind. Vaughn smiled somewhat sadly, Sydney thought, as Madame Saval enfolded them both in a warm embrace.
"What did she say?" Syd asked curiously, a few moments later, as Vaughn guided her to a table in the corner of the restaurant, which he hoped would afford them some privacy.
He gazed at her uncertainly for a moment before he spoke, and then looked down at the table.
"She assumed we were engaged," he said finally, finding it difficult to keep the wistfulness out of his voice. "She told me what a beautiful bride you'll make."
"Oh."
Vaughn glanced up at her, and the sadness and yearning he found in her eyes made him ache.
He thought of the engagement ring he had seen Sydney wear for so many months after her fiancé's death. He knew he wasn't the first man who'd dreamed of spending his life with her--hell, he wasn't even the second or third, if you counted Will and Noah--and if things had turned out differently--if the world was just--she'd be married to Daniel Hecht right now and he wouldn't be sitting here mesmerized by the candlelight reflected in her eyes. What right had he even to hope for a happy ending? But, how could he not, when it was all he wanted in the world?
The air was suddenly thick with things left unspoken between them: Hopes. Dreams. Desires. All of them made even more impossible by the increasingly complex web of lies and betrayal they found themselves caught in.
"Syd--"he said softly, taking her hand.
"It's okay," she replied in a low voice, giving him a small smile, but Vaughn could see the tears shining in her eyes, and he sighed.
When Eric had first outlined the operation to him, all he could think of was that it would place Syd in even greater physical danger than she had been in previously. He hadn't stopped to consider the emotional cost of hiding their true feelings behind a cover they both wished so desperately to be true. He would have given anything to have walked into the Melen Loar and introduced Syd to Madame Saval simply as Sydney Bristow, the woman he loved, and not be forced to pretend she was Marie Vinneaux.
"Syd, listen to me," he said earnestly. "I don't know what the future holds, but when you asked me to that Kings game, you said that you wanted something in your life to be real. This is real--my feelings for you are real--what's between us is real. Never doubt that."
Sydney glanced up at him, and he held her gaze, hoping that she would realize that there was more emotion behind his words than he could readily express.
Her heart skipped a beat, and she found it difficult to drag her gaze away as Madame Saval bustled over to their table, carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses. Their conversation ceased as a waiter set the table in front of them. Madame Saval had insisted on cooking her specialties for them, and soon, dish after steaming dish was brought to their table: sole, baked in a white wine sauce, with mushrooms, shrimp, and scallops; lamb basted with red wine and herbs, which had simmered for hours; salad and plenty of crusty bread; coffee and impossibly flaky pastries for dessert. They found they could not concentrate on anything but the meal before them.
At the end of the evening, Madame Saval refused Vaughn's attempt to pay. When Sydney and Vaughn rose to leave and go out into the cool night air, she asked them to wait, disappeared briefly, then came back with a lovely, intricately patterned wool shawl. Kissing Sydney on the cheek, Madame Saval draped the shawl around her shoulders, which were bared by the narrow straps of her sundress. Overcome by the old woman's kindness, Sydney pressed her cheek to Madame Saval's papery pink skin, and hugged her as they said their good-byes.
Vaughn held the door of the Melen Loar for Sydney, and they stepped out into the evening. The night was clear, the full moon bright, and they could see the sweep of the Milky Way stretch across the dark expanse of the night sky. The melancholy sound of bells could be heard, pealing somewhere in the distance.
"Are those church bells?" Sydney asked, drawing the shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
Vaughn nodded. "There's a small cloister here on the island, and the bells ring four times a day for matins, none, vespers and compline, calling the nuns to prayer. I forgot how much I loved hearing them."
"I used to attend services with my grandmother on the cloister grounds and this really profound, deep silence would fill the chapel sometimes," he recalled. "I remember thinking that somehow God was present, there in that silence. I'd go there sometimes just to sit and listen to it, especially after my father died. I can't tell you when I stopped going or why."
They were both quiet for a few moments, each lost in thought. Sydney was the first to break the silence.
"Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, all for your love's sake," she recited softly to herself.
Vaughn looked at her inquiringly, and Sydney blushed.
"It's one of the few prayers I know by heart. After my mom died--that is, after she--Irina--left,"she said, stumbling in her efforts to articulate whatever connection Irina Derevko had to the woman she had once called her mother, "my father hired a nanny. She taught me that prayer, and we'd say it together each night before I went to bed. I thought I had forgotten it until that night in the plane when we were flying back from Taipei. Your lungs were congested and you were delirious. I didn't know if you'd survive the trip back to L.A., so I held your head in my lap and prayed."
There was a tremor in her voice, and she looked up at him, tears in her eyes.
"I thought after I lost Danny, I had nothing left to lose, and I was certain I'd never fall in love again," she said, her voice catching, "but I met you, and you gave me a reason to go on with my life that had nothing to do with revenge. You were the one person I could trust completely; the one person I could count on to be there for me; the one person who made me feel whole. You were my guardian angel," she said simply, smiling at him through her tears.
She paused and took a deep breath before she continued, her voice still shaky.
"I loved Danny, and that love was real, but when I thought I had been reunited with you in Taipei, only to face losing you on the trip home, I realized I truly would have lost everything if you died, because you'd become the one person I couldn't imagine living without."
"But the thing that hurt most," she said, hardly able to get the words out, "was the realization that you had always been there for me, and when you needed me, I wasn't able to protect you. I was as helpless holding your head in my lap as I was when the security doors closed and trapped you on the other side. So I prayed and asked God to do what I couldn't. To spare you. To spare your life. Not for my sake, but for yours."
Sydney stood before him, crying, her shoulders shaking from her sobs. Vaughn tenderly drew her into his arms, his own eyes stinging with tears. He held her tightly, kissing the top of her head, her forehead, her cheeks, her hair. Once her tears subsided, he drew her gently in the direction of his grandmother's cottage--toward home.
Vaughn watched her taking in the surroundings, enjoying the look of curiosity and wonder that played across her face.
"This cottage--you own it, don't you?" Sydney asked him, noticing the rather smug grin on his face. "The captain of the Bihan Gouelanig called you a Kernevad and told me your relatives have always been islanders. But you were born in Fleury. That's in Normandy, isn't it?"
Vaughn nodded. "I inherited this cottage from my grandmother. She lived on Île Mariette her entire life. My mother grew up here, but left so that she could go to school in Paris."
"Is that where she met your father--in Paris?" Sydney asked curiously.
"Yeah, he was posing as an official at the American embassy while on an extended covert op for the CIA. My parents lived in Fleury for the first few years of their marriage. I was born there, and I still think of it as my childhood home, even though we moved to the States when I was five. While we lived in Fleury, we would come to Île Mariette all the time to see my grandmother, and even after moving to America, we came back to spend our summers with her here on the island."
"I remember my grandmother trying to convince my mother to stay permanently after my father died," he continued, "but my mother told her that my father had been an American, and that he had wanted me to grow up at least partially in the United States. I think she thought about moving back here when I went to college, but my grandmother died shortly after I entered Stanford, and by that time, my mother had already made a life for herself in the United States."
Besides their conversation in the train station, this was the most Vaughn had ever revealed about himself or his past. Sydney listened avidly. There was so much she wanted to learn about him. It seemed strange that she should feel so close to him and yet not know these basic facts.
"Do you still vacation here every summer?" she asked.
"Not nearly as often as I used to,"Vaughn confessed. "In fact, it's been years since I've been back here. I can't tell you how much I've missed it," he said, a boyish grin spreading across his face. "Do you want to see the rest of the island?"
"I thought you'd never ask!" Sydney exclaimed, finding his buoyant spirits infectious.
She followed him out the door, and he grabbed her hand as they climbed further up the point on which the cottage rested.
She gazed at him then, relishing the opportunity to do so out in the open, with no thought to whom might be watching them or what danger might lie ahead. His high cheekbones appeared more sharply angled than usual and the weight he had lost as a result of his illness made him appear even taller. Although there were circles under his eyes, the lines that often furrowed his brow were completely gone, and she thought his green eyes had never appeared more vivid. He was more relaxed than she had ever seen him, and the way he carried himself bespoke a quiet confidence and ease. Only his breathing--slightly faster than normal, considering they had just started out on their walk--indicated that he had not yet gained back all his strength after Taipei.
Though the setting and mood could not have been more different, Sydney couldn't help but recall how they had held hands at the club in Taipei, threading their way through the crowded dance floor. Sexual tension had coursed and arced between them, and she blushed, thinking of how aggressively he had shoved aside the guy who had tried to pick her up. The feeling which bound her to Vaughn at this moment, if more placid, was no less strong. She felt as completely linked to him now as she had in Taipei.
As they stopped at the pinnacle to watch the waves crash against rocks below, Sydney slipped her arm around his waist. Vaughn did the same, and it seemed to her like the most natural action in the world. For a brief moment, they were simply an ordinary couple come to enjoy the view.
"How could you bear to leave Île Mariette at the end of those summers?" she asked softly. "I've been here for only a few hours, and I can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else. Two days doesn't nearly seem enough, considering what lies ahead."
She paused and looked up at him, her eyes troubled. "I don't know of any successful triple agents, Vaughn, do you? You only hear about the ones who fail."
Vaughn tightened his arm around her. "That's because the successful ones complete their missions and then escape to remote islands under assumed names never to be heard from again."
"Islands like Île Mariette?" she suggested lightly.
Vaughn glanced at her, and she gave him a wistful smile.
For one brief moment she allowed herself to imagine the tranquility and peace of such a life. Days filled with conversation, books, and long walks around the island, evenings in front of the fireplace, then falling asleep at night wrapped in Vaughn's arms. It filled her with such longing that she quickly pushed the thoughts away. She and Vaughn wouldn't be here on Île Mariette if they hadn't been assigned an extremely dangerous covert op, and dreams of the future were simply that: dreams and nothing more. Neither of them could afford to pin their hopes on a future that might never come to be.
They gazed a few more moments at the churning sea below before turning to go.
"Did Weiss come up with our aliases or did you?" she asked, as they started down the point again towards the village of Kaertrez, her thoughts returning once more to the mission.
"Marie Arnault was my grandmother's maiden name. I used it as a kind of codeword for the captain of the Bihan Gouelanig, so that he would know who you were. I gave him explicit instructions to approach no one but you, and if anyone asked about you once he got back to Kaertrez, he was to say simply that you were my guest, coming to spend the weekend, and he hadn't quite caught your name."
"Do you trust him?" Sydney asked even though she knew that Vaughn would not fail to be anything but careful, especially now that both her mother and SD- 6 would be suspicious of her whereabouts.
Vaughn nodded. "A true Breton--a Kernevad--will keep a secret to his grave, and Jean-Luc Brochet is a Kernevad through and through. During World War II, all the islands off the coast of Brittany were occupied by the Germans, but only the inhabitants Île Mariette were successful in organizing any sort of underground resistance movement, perhaps because it was the smallest of the three islands and also the most close-knit. Brochet was one of leaders."
"He didn't seem at all surprised when I referred to you as Jacques Vinneaux," Sydney commented. "Is that another family name?"
"No, I just made it up. It was simply the second part of the code that would confirm your identity. I thought it sounded dashing and romantic, like the name of a character from a Dumas novel," he said giving her a lop- sided grin.
Sydney laughed. "I thought Jacques Vinneaux sounded more like the name of a musketeer than a staid, old linguistics professor."
Vaughn stopped for a moment to contemplate their surroundings, and Sydney looked around, trying to discern what exactly had captured his attention on the grassy knoll.
"When I was a kid, a group of us would come up here and whack the hell out of each other with sticks, pretending to be The Three Musketeers," he explained, chuckling. "I remember one time someone caught me right here above my eye, and I bled like crazy. My mother almost fainted when she saw me and took me straight down to old Doc Giroux, and I had to have three stitches. If you look closely, you can still see the scar. I never really did grow out of the fascination, though. I think it was Dumas' novels that actually inspired me to take up fencing in college. I wasn't all that bad, either."
"There's so much I want to show you," he said turning to her, his eyes glowing with enthusiasm. "Tomorrow, if you want, I'll take you to the lighthouse on the western end of the island. If the keeper is the same man I used to know, he'll let us climb up to the top and look out. It's really amazing. Seals sun themselves on the rocks over there, and I've even spotted dolphins once or twice off the shore. We could pack a lunch. Say, are you getting hungry?"
"A little," Sydney admitted, smiling at the sudden change in subject.
"Good! I'll finally get to take you to dinner. You won't believe it, but I know this great little restaurant. It's called the Yellow Moon--Melen Loar-- "
Sydney laughed, recalling how he had asked her out to dinner while they were breaking into the Vatican.
"But that doesn't mean that I've given up on taking you to Trattoria Dinardi someday," he said with a grin.
"The next time we're in Italy," she agreed.
As they walked along the harbor, Sydney discovered Vaughn not only knew every part of Île Mariette, but everyone on it. Shouts of "Bonjour, Michel!" and "Demat, Michel!" came from all sides as fishermen and boat captains hailed them from the pier. Not everyone greeted Sydney with the same enthusiasm, however. She thought she caught more than one envious glance from the young women they met on the narrow, winding streets of Kaertrez. Sydney gripped Vaughn's hand a bit more possessively, once again thinking of the dance club in Taipei and wondering what she would have done, if the tables had been turned and some woman had dared to approach Vaughn.
"Did you ever spend time here with Alice?" she asked suddenly, trying to keep her voice neutral.
Vaughn stared at her, much as he had that day at the carwash when she had asked him if he had had a fight with his wife. Over the last year, he had lost sleep worrying about her relationship first with Will, and then Noah. It had never occurred to him that Sydney could be jealous of Alice.
Vaughn turned pensive. "No, I never brought her here," he replied, falling silent.
Sydney glanced at him. His silence did nothing to allay her sudden insecurity, but she decided not to press him.
They were quiet for a time, and Vaughn thought back--was it really just last summer that he had considered bringing Alice to Île Mariette? He remembered thinking that perhaps if they spent a week together on the island he loved so much, it would help them to repair their relationship and close the ever-growing gulf between them. He had mentioned the idea to Alice, and she had seemed interested, but some instinct had kept him from pursuing the matter further. He had always thought he'd propose to his future wife on Île Mariette and, despite all his attempts to convince himself otherwise, he had known even then that Alice wasn't the one he wanted to share the rest of his life with. They ended up putting off their visit to Île Mariette, and three weeks later, Sydney walked into his office, battered but defiant in her fire-engine-red, Run-Lola-Run hair. His life hadn't been the same since.
They turned down a few more cobblestone streets, and when they reached the Melen Loar, Vaughn ushered Sydney inside the quaint and homey restaurant, which served as a local gathering place for the people of Kaertrez. Like everywhere else on the island, he was welcomed as an old friend the moment he stepped inside. Someone went to tell Madame Saval, the owner, that Michel had returned and that he was accompanied by a pretty young woman. A few moments later, a short, rather rotund woman, dressed in black with rosy cheeks and silver hair tied back with a lace hairnet, rushed out to greet them, drying her hands hastily on her white apron as she made her way past the tables.
Vaughn nearly slipped up and introduced Sydney by her real name, but Syd quickly interrupted him and introduced herself to Madame Saval as Marie Vinneaux--deducing correctly that Arnault would no longer work as an alias-- and taking the surname of Vaughn's alias instead. Vaughn glanced at her, and she blushed.
Madame Saval, however, seemed not to notice the fumbled introduction. After clicking her tongue in dissatisfaction over Vaughn's apparent weight loss and chastising him for staying away from the island for so long, she turned to Sydney and patted her cheek, saying something to Vaughn in Breizh, her blue eyes moist and kind. Vaughn smiled somewhat sadly, Sydney thought, as Madame Saval enfolded them both in a warm embrace.
"What did she say?" Syd asked curiously, a few moments later, as Vaughn guided her to a table in the corner of the restaurant, which he hoped would afford them some privacy.
He gazed at her uncertainly for a moment before he spoke, and then looked down at the table.
"She assumed we were engaged," he said finally, finding it difficult to keep the wistfulness out of his voice. "She told me what a beautiful bride you'll make."
"Oh."
Vaughn glanced up at her, and the sadness and yearning he found in her eyes made him ache.
He thought of the engagement ring he had seen Sydney wear for so many months after her fiancé's death. He knew he wasn't the first man who'd dreamed of spending his life with her--hell, he wasn't even the second or third, if you counted Will and Noah--and if things had turned out differently--if the world was just--she'd be married to Daniel Hecht right now and he wouldn't be sitting here mesmerized by the candlelight reflected in her eyes. What right had he even to hope for a happy ending? But, how could he not, when it was all he wanted in the world?
The air was suddenly thick with things left unspoken between them: Hopes. Dreams. Desires. All of them made even more impossible by the increasingly complex web of lies and betrayal they found themselves caught in.
"Syd--"he said softly, taking her hand.
"It's okay," she replied in a low voice, giving him a small smile, but Vaughn could see the tears shining in her eyes, and he sighed.
When Eric had first outlined the operation to him, all he could think of was that it would place Syd in even greater physical danger than she had been in previously. He hadn't stopped to consider the emotional cost of hiding their true feelings behind a cover they both wished so desperately to be true. He would have given anything to have walked into the Melen Loar and introduced Syd to Madame Saval simply as Sydney Bristow, the woman he loved, and not be forced to pretend she was Marie Vinneaux.
"Syd, listen to me," he said earnestly. "I don't know what the future holds, but when you asked me to that Kings game, you said that you wanted something in your life to be real. This is real--my feelings for you are real--what's between us is real. Never doubt that."
Sydney glanced up at him, and he held her gaze, hoping that she would realize that there was more emotion behind his words than he could readily express.
Her heart skipped a beat, and she found it difficult to drag her gaze away as Madame Saval bustled over to their table, carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses. Their conversation ceased as a waiter set the table in front of them. Madame Saval had insisted on cooking her specialties for them, and soon, dish after steaming dish was brought to their table: sole, baked in a white wine sauce, with mushrooms, shrimp, and scallops; lamb basted with red wine and herbs, which had simmered for hours; salad and plenty of crusty bread; coffee and impossibly flaky pastries for dessert. They found they could not concentrate on anything but the meal before them.
At the end of the evening, Madame Saval refused Vaughn's attempt to pay. When Sydney and Vaughn rose to leave and go out into the cool night air, she asked them to wait, disappeared briefly, then came back with a lovely, intricately patterned wool shawl. Kissing Sydney on the cheek, Madame Saval draped the shawl around her shoulders, which were bared by the narrow straps of her sundress. Overcome by the old woman's kindness, Sydney pressed her cheek to Madame Saval's papery pink skin, and hugged her as they said their good-byes.
Vaughn held the door of the Melen Loar for Sydney, and they stepped out into the evening. The night was clear, the full moon bright, and they could see the sweep of the Milky Way stretch across the dark expanse of the night sky. The melancholy sound of bells could be heard, pealing somewhere in the distance.
"Are those church bells?" Sydney asked, drawing the shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
Vaughn nodded. "There's a small cloister here on the island, and the bells ring four times a day for matins, none, vespers and compline, calling the nuns to prayer. I forgot how much I loved hearing them."
"I used to attend services with my grandmother on the cloister grounds and this really profound, deep silence would fill the chapel sometimes," he recalled. "I remember thinking that somehow God was present, there in that silence. I'd go there sometimes just to sit and listen to it, especially after my father died. I can't tell you when I stopped going or why."
They were both quiet for a few moments, each lost in thought. Sydney was the first to break the silence.
"Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, all for your love's sake," she recited softly to herself.
Vaughn looked at her inquiringly, and Sydney blushed.
"It's one of the few prayers I know by heart. After my mom died--that is, after she--Irina--left,"she said, stumbling in her efforts to articulate whatever connection Irina Derevko had to the woman she had once called her mother, "my father hired a nanny. She taught me that prayer, and we'd say it together each night before I went to bed. I thought I had forgotten it until that night in the plane when we were flying back from Taipei. Your lungs were congested and you were delirious. I didn't know if you'd survive the trip back to L.A., so I held your head in my lap and prayed."
There was a tremor in her voice, and she looked up at him, tears in her eyes.
"I thought after I lost Danny, I had nothing left to lose, and I was certain I'd never fall in love again," she said, her voice catching, "but I met you, and you gave me a reason to go on with my life that had nothing to do with revenge. You were the one person I could trust completely; the one person I could count on to be there for me; the one person who made me feel whole. You were my guardian angel," she said simply, smiling at him through her tears.
She paused and took a deep breath before she continued, her voice still shaky.
"I loved Danny, and that love was real, but when I thought I had been reunited with you in Taipei, only to face losing you on the trip home, I realized I truly would have lost everything if you died, because you'd become the one person I couldn't imagine living without."
"But the thing that hurt most," she said, hardly able to get the words out, "was the realization that you had always been there for me, and when you needed me, I wasn't able to protect you. I was as helpless holding your head in my lap as I was when the security doors closed and trapped you on the other side. So I prayed and asked God to do what I couldn't. To spare you. To spare your life. Not for my sake, but for yours."
Sydney stood before him, crying, her shoulders shaking from her sobs. Vaughn tenderly drew her into his arms, his own eyes stinging with tears. He held her tightly, kissing the top of her head, her forehead, her cheeks, her hair. Once her tears subsided, he drew her gently in the direction of his grandmother's cottage--toward home.