Title: Awake
Summary: Sydney reflects on Vaughn and some of their problems while watching him sleep. Post S3. Companion to Sleep
Ship: S/V all the way!
A/N: Okay, so this is a companion piece to Sleep. I decided that I can't really turn Sleep into a multi-chapter thing but my muse was like, well, make a companion piece for it. So yeah, for those who asked for more, here it is. And I'm thinking this will be it for this series unless I get the sudden inspiration to write another companion piece. And if you haven't read Sleep, I suggest that you do. You don't have to but it's a another POV on the whole situation.
Disclaimer: Like I said, I own everything and everyone and Vaughn, Drew Fuller, and Orlando Bloom are still fighting over me in the pool. And the only lie that I've told so far is that I have a pool, cause I don't. hehe, I wish.
When: Post season three
Rating: PG-13 cause there's swearing. Not as bad as Sleep but still some there.
Thanks to neptunestar, Fair Cate, stargirl591, Lu78, luiza, mandi, kiki, Tine, Spykid18, AFan17, skye3 for their fantastic reviews for Sleep. You guys helped inspire me to write this fic and I love you guys.
He twitched in his sleep and I bit my lip to keep from laughing. He was so cute when he was sleeping. I know cute is a word that a giddy teenager would use to describe her latest crush. But with him, I felt like a giddy teenager.
He used to have a normal life, before he met me. He had a nice girlfriend, a good job, he followed the rules, he had order, and then I came along with my bright red hair and my bleeding jaw and threw his world off balance. I should rephrase that, his adult life before me was normal, while his childhood life was less than perfect, which could have been drawn back to me and my messed up family.
When he was about eight, his father who also worked for the CIA was killed. It wasn't on a mission, or serving his country or anything like that. My mother killed him. She killed him in cold blood. She killed him because he hid one of her daughters from her. I say one because I'm the other and she didn't seem to give a rat's ass about me.
He was assigned as my case handler at the CIA. That started a whole chain of events that led from a handler's concern for his asset to a man's love for a woman. I called him in the middle of the night sometimes just because I needed someone to talk to that I didn't have to lie to. He always came whenever I called him, meeting me at places like the pier or convenience stores or a warehouse. He came without question and listened patiently to me ranting about how much I hated Sloane and SD-6 and lying to people. I always passed it off as he was concerned about me, that it was his job to listen to me ranting. Now I realized that he did all that because he loved me.
Then my mother came back and that created a tension between us. He always insisted that he was fine, that he could handle it. I could see in it his eyes that he was lying. He couldn't handle it. The thought that the woman that killed his father was right down the hall from him tortured him. I tried to get him to talk to me about it but he always insisted that he was fine. He had no problem with me unloading my problems on him but if I tried to let him to do the same to me, he would get close lipped and snappy.
He always said that he never deserved me. While I know that I never deserved him. I never did anything to merit someone like him loving me. Yeah, some people say that I brought down the Alliance. I didn't do that. Sloane brought down the Alliance. I was just the pawn he used to do it. And all the counter missions I did for the CIA that aided in the fall of the Alliance, they were all thought of by him. He was the one to come up with the plan. I would just carry it out.
Someone like me would never deserve someone like him. With his warm, caring eyes that looked at me and only me with love and admiration, and his strength that he always so willingly gave to me, and his strong sense of loyalty and just as strong sense to break whatever rule necessary to help me, his thoughtfulness, I didn't even deserve his constant worrying.
Maybe, just maybe, he is right when he says that he doesn't deserve me. I know that I don't deserve him. And maybe we don't deserve each other. Neither one of us deserve someone like the other.
I don't remember much that night that changed our lives forever. I remember him dropping me off at my house, promising to pick me up after the debrief, for our weekend trip to Santa Barbara. That night I found out that the woman I thought was my best friend and roommate was actually a genetic double. She found out that I knew and we fought. It was one of the worst fights I was ever in. I beat her. After, I fainted, and when I woke up, what I found shocked me.
I was cold and wet and sore in places I didn't know could be sore and confused and I had a scar on my stomach that I knew wasn't there before. Somehow I managed to hobble to a pay phone and call the CIA. They told me to get a safe house and wait for the agent that they were sending. I hoped that it was him.
It was him. Or a different him. He was babbling something about me missing for two years and that in that time, he thought I was dead. He told me that he had gotten married and it wasn't to me. He told me that he was no longer with the CIA and a teacher.
I didn't believe that it was him at first. I couldn't. There was no way that the man in front of me was the man who only one day before in my timeline whispered to me over and over how much he loved me after a wild night of romance. It couldn't be him. He wouldn't get married to anyone but me, especially after me being gone for only two short years.
I put on the act of pretending to accept the news and when he was distracted I attacked him. I never before had the thought of attacking him but I thought the man in front of me could not be the man he said he was. I thought he was a double like the fake Francie and that Lennox guy. I thought he worked for Sloane and was there to keep me from him and my life back in L.A. I kicked his ass. I'm pretty sure that I always could, I just never had put that theory to the test. And when I tested it, it turned out that I could.
I heard the guard coming and thought the guard was working for Sloane as well. I abandoned beating the crap out of him and fled the safe house room. Outside, I was stopped by two guards and I beat the crap out of them as well. I made it the middle of the street before my head started hurting and the ground was no longer flat and stable. Everything was blurry and spinning and I wanted to throw up. He appeared then, a tranquilizer gun in his hand. I begged him to leave me alone and not to use the tranquilizer gun. He didn't need to. I was losing my grip on the conscious state rapidly and started crumbling to the ground. He ran forward and caught me before I hit the pavement. The last thing I remember is being in his arms. I loved the feeling and hated it at the same time.
When I woke next, I was in the hospital with Dixon, my ex-partner at SD-6 by my side. He confirmed everything that had already been told to me and slowly I began to believe it. I had been missing for two years. I was thought dead. The only man I ever truly loved, including Danny was married to another woman. All of my things had been sold or given away and very few things had been put into storage or kept by people that wanted something of mine to remember me by.
I didn't see him for days and when we did meet, I couldn't control the unbelievable amount of hate I felt for him. While deep in my heart, I loved and missed him terribly, the rest of me hated him more than I hated the man that brought me into his life in the first place. He tried to talk to me. He said that he had come to see how I was. I knew that wasn't true.
He came to see how he was. He came to see exactly how much I hated him or loved him or despised him or wanted him. He tried to be rational. I told him that we didn't live in a rational world and all thoughts of rationality were pointless. Being rational had nothing to do with it. He gave up on me. He lost faith. I told him that if he had been the one to disappear and supposedly die, I wouldn't have given up on him. I would have found out the truth. I realized then, that it would have been an absolute waste to do so. He had no faith in my being alive. He gave up. I wouldn't have. But he did. I didn't know until months later exactly what he was going through after I had "died" and I instantly wanted to take back those words.
I took up drinking to help me forget all of my problems. And Eric was right there next to me, ready and willing to help me get as drunk as freaking possible. Drinking felt good. When I was drunk, I forgot all about the crap life I was trapped in. Eric asked me once if there was anything that I wished that I had back from my old life. He instantly knew that was a stupid question and rephrased it so it meant something materialistic. I told him that I had a first edition of Alice in Wonderland given to me by my mother before I learned what a horrible woman she was. And being the incredible sweet guy he was, Eric went out and got me a third edition of Alice in Wonderland. He said it wasn't the same. I said it was better.
I learned things about me when I was missing. Little things, like my name then was Julia Thorne. I worked for the Covenant, a terrorist organization a lot like Sd-6, it even included a number of the same people. I was an assassin. I was supposedly brainwashed into thinking that I was in fact Julia Thorne.
Then I learned what really happened to me. The Covenant had kidnapped me after I fainted after fighting with the double Francie. I was thought dead because my DNA was injected into a burnt body the Covenant placed in my house. The body was ID by the DNA. I was then brought to some facility where for months, they tried to convince me that I was Julia Thorne, an assassin. But my Project Christmas training given to me by my father prevented all that. I led them on to believe that I thought I was her. Then the first chance I got, I contacted the CIA to tell them that I was alive. They wouldn't let me come back. The CIA, the people that were the good guys, wouldn't let me come back to my life and him. They said my work with the Covenant was needed badly.
I refused. I said that I had to go back. I had to see him. So, I did. I followed him and was about to run to him when I saw him with that blonde woman that ruined my life. Lauren. I realized then, that he had moved on and agreed to help the CIA take down the Covenant.
The first chance I got from the Covenant to be released, I took. But before I was truly free, I found a doctor that said he could erase memories. I asked him to erase mine. All of my memories from the past two years I wanted gone. He accepted. And my memory was reset.
That was when I woke up in Hong Kong, confused beyond all reasoning.
It was good to know what had happened to me but that didn't change the fact that he wasn't in my life. He was in hers. He was her husband. She could kiss him all she wanted while I had to stand on the sidelines, my heart shattering every time I saw them together.
North Korea. That mission plagued my dreams and fantasies for weeks. We were captured by the North Korean army or something like that and thrown directly into prison. He said things to me. Things that I had been dying to hear and I said things to him. Thing that I had been dying to say. Then we kissed. And it was exactly how I remembered it. Sweet and gentle and tangy and firm and heaven and hell and loving and torturous. That was how I remembered him. He didn't fail my memories. We escaped death that day and went back to L.A., the things we said haunting our very souls.
Lauren hated me. I could tell just by the way she glared at me. But then again, would you welcome the woman that your husband loved more than you with open arms? I wouldn't have. I didn't blame her for feeling the way she did. Until I learned the truth about her.
My dad started thinking that Lauren was a double agent, sent in by the Covenant. I didn't believe him at first. I disliked her but I couldn't just go around accusing her of betraying her country because of that. Then I noticed things. I thought I saw her in a bar once, killing an asset that me and her husband had been meeting with. I read over the files that my dad had gathered and everything pointed to her being the mole.
I tried to tell him about my suspicions. He brushed them off. He said that just because she was his wife, that didn't give me just cause to accuse of her of betraying the United States. I knew that love was blind but I didn't think it was stupid too. He proved me wrong on that.
My dad said something to him and a couple days later, he came to us and told us that he had found evidence of Lauren's betrayal. He believed us. I could see it in his eyes that he was sorry for doubting me and saying those things he said, even if he never voiced the apology. He didn't need to.
Lauren realized that she had been compromised and left. She ran like a coward. I thought her a coward because SD-6 almost learned of my true allegiances several times, and almost had me killed just as many times and I didn't run. She ran because she was afraid. I stayed because I wanted to.
I noticed changes in him. He wasn't the same man I knew before. He was crazed and hurt and angry and hell bent on revenge. I thought at first, that he was just going to help capture her and put her away for life. I thought wrong.
I learned that my father had given him a key to a storage facility that contained untraceable weapons and other things needed to deal with her remains. He planned to kill her. And my father was helping.
I confronted my father on it and he said that it needed to be done. That the man I loved needed to kill his wife in cold blood to move on with his life. I thought there were so many things wrong with that sentence that it wasn't even funny. I knew what it was really about. I knew it had nothing to with Lauren to the man I loved; it had everything to with what my mother did to my father. My father said that he regretted never killing my mother for what she did to him and he wasn't going to let the man I love, no matter how much he disliked him, turn into him.
I knew it was wrong. No matter how much my father tried to justify it, killing your wife was not something that was smiled upon. I called him on his cell phone and instantly I knew that he was already going to kill her. His mind was set on that. I tried to talk him out of it. I told him that he wouldn't get away with it and that it would haunt his conscious if he did and I would lose him all over again.
He didn't listen and the next thing I knew he was being wheeled past me on a stretcher with a stab wound to the back. I had been at the hospital waiting for news about Marshall and the other agents' conditions after the attack on the Rotunda the day before and then he was there. And he was bleeding and unconscious. He had a punctured lung. I thought Lauren had done it. That his plan had failed and he ended up the one seriously hurt.
I realized then and there that Lauren didn't deserve to live. She needed to pay for what she did to him and me and the CIA and everyone else caught in the web of her lies. I went to my father for help and at first he refused. But when I told him that I was going to do it with or without his help, he agreed. He arranged a flight for me and gave me the necessary weaponry to end her life.
I made it to the camp in Palermo and waited for her to show. I ran into my aunt before she did and realized that my aunt was working with that bitch and put a tranquilizer dart in her chest. Lauren finally made her appearance and I made my move. But some idiot had to get in my way at the last minute, causing me to shot him and not the bitch in front of him.
She and I fought. It was something that I had been waiting for almost a year. At first, it seemed like I was going to beat her. But the tables turned on me just as they had her and she suddenly had the upper hand. She was about to shoot me and end my life when he showed up. He shot her, twice, and wounded, she let me go and I ran to him. He caught me in his arms. He kissed me sweet and gentle and tangy and firm and heaven and hell and loving and torturous, just like North Korea.
He killed her that night. Just as he always intended to do. Only now, it could be passed off as self defense. And it was, in a sense. We told ourselves and CIA and anyone else who asked that it was self defense and we weren't charged at all with her death. We were free.
His first thought was to get married. I thought it a stupid idea. He realized it was too. We weren't connected as we had been three years earlier, though it still only felt like a year to me. We needed to reconnect, learn to get to know one another again, test our new boundaries and limits. And to my surprise and delight, his boundaries and limits were non-existent when it came to me. He would give me anything I wanted, no matter the cost. We dated, then moved in together much to the dislike of my father, and then we finally felt ready and became engaged.
I said no big wedding, and he agreed. I wasn't sure if he was agreeing with me because he couldn't refuse me anything or if he really didn't want a big wedding either. Hopefully and probably the latter. We picked a date and invited the few people we wanted there. We decided that it would be friends and family only and neither of us had that much family or friends.
We were married on October first, the day we meet. It was perfect, though parts of it are a blur and I am eternally grateful for the wedding video. Now the ring on his finger is the one that I put there and he swears that it will never leave his finger. I don't doubt it. He was my Michael Christopher Vaughn for ever and ever.
He makes an incoherent noise in his sleep and I let out a soft giggle. He's slumped over his desk in his study, probably suppose to be working on a report for the CIA. I lean in the doorway, watching him sleep. When he sleeps, those infamous forehead wrinkles are gone and he's always smiling a little bit.
I walk across the short distance to his side and lay a light kiss on his forehead. He jolts awake and rubs at his face, trying to clear the fog of sleep. His eyes land on my stomach and his reaches a hand out to touch it, "How'd it go at the doctor's?" He asks, softly.
I smile and place my hand over his, "Everything's fine. I'm fine. The baby's fine." I still can't believe that in a little more than six months, we're going to be parents. I hope that the baby inherits his eyes and cleft chin and strength and sense of loyalty and hopefully, he or she goes without his worrying. But if our baby does get his worryful nature, I'll still be the happiest woman in the world.
"I love you." He says softly, his eyes slowly traveling up to my face.
"I love you, too." I answer, cupping his face in my hands, and giving him a soft kiss. He pulls me down onto his lap suddenly and I laugh. "Cheater."
He smiles, "Yeah."
I lay my head on his shoulder and close my eyes, just relishing in the love he's so readily giving me. I love watching him when he sleeps. I love everything about him when he sleeps. But I love him even more when he's awake. Sleep is good. Sleep can be healing. But awake is ten times better. Awake is perfect.
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