a/n: I'm putting a HUGE angst warning on this chapter. It's just incredibly dark.

Anyway. You've been warned.

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chapter two.

ferris wheel.

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Up 'n down
Ferris wheel
Tell me how does it feel
To be so high...
Looking down here
Is it lonely?

-Norah Jones, Carnival Town

He pretends that the postcard is not the reason he can't sleep and blames his insomnia on over-caffeination.

It really doesn't matter that "caffeination" isn't a real word.

The light bulb to the lamp resting on his night stand goes out with a tiny pop and he's left sprawled out on his bed in the dark, postcard still in hand. He can make out the glossy picture in the pale moon light. A Ferris wheel with bright lights projecting into the night.

He is lying on Lauren's sheets and reading Sydney's postcard. As he feels like he's been doing for the last year.

It should be a little more poetic than that. But no, not really. All it comes down to is bed sheets and flimsy pieces of cardboard, apparently.

And that thought is only a little bit depressing.

---

It's not a hard decision.

He just won't go.

Simple as that.

---

He jumps at the sound of the phone ringing, the shrillness piercing through the dark. He lunges for it, waits another ring, and fumbles it before finally bringing it to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Hi."

He pretends not to be disappointed at the sound of Weiss's voice when he longs for another.

"Hi."

"Look, I wanted to just...what I said a few days ago, with you and Sydney, I didn't..."

"Eric, it's fine."

"No, it's not. When I talked about her abandoning you, I didn't mean...it's...I don't have any right to lecture you on your relationship with her, and I..."

"I said, it's fine."

Silence. He can make out the static of his friend's breathing before Weiss speaks again.

"I'm getting off in half an hour. Feel like going somewhere?"

"Sure."

"You have to tell the agents guarding you that you're going out, though."

"So I can be followed all night? I'll pass."

"I'm serious. Enough with you sneaking out. You're going to get yourself killed, you know that? I'd rather not have to worry about exactly which dumpster we'll be finding you dismembered in."

"Okay."

"I want a real 'okay.'"

"This is a real 'okay.'"

"Michael..."

"Who are you, my mother? I got it."

---

He makes a quick stop in the apartment across from his where the team is stationed I'm going out/Where?/Church/It's a Wednesday night/See, it's religious intolerance like this that drove my family out of Fleury before bounding down the stairs three at a time to the building's parking lot. Turn key. Shift gears. Head out of lot, nearly kill three people for failure of lifting eyes from staring wheel. There will be a black sedan with darkened windows following soon. And oh, like clockwork, there they are. Head over to nearest church 'The Church of All Knowing Mammals?' Damn it, they're never going to buy this. Circle four times, almost kill two more due to sudden memory lapse Driver's Ed: And the red light means what, children? Lose previously mentioned sedan, drive slightly over the speed limit, hit curb while pulling into parking space.

Who the hell gave him a license, anyway?

They like the dingy bars. The ugly ones. The holes-in-the-wall where the barstools are covered in tacky red vinyl and jukeboxes in the corner. Honest to God, jukeboxes. Of course, they play only Elvis and the Supremes, something strangely out of sync with the rest of the bar, but jukeboxes none the less.

Not because either of them particularly like drinking in locations where a thin layer of sawdust covers the floors and where broken glass is the only source of glitz and glamour, but they're both pretty stupid drunks. And blurting out government secrets where there would actually be people is one of those very bad ideas that would inevitably lead to very bad things that would inevitably lead to very bad results.

So they haunt bars where no self-respecting stand-up citizen would ever frequent. Places that would only pass health inspection if rats were suddenly considered acceptable in kitchens.

Weiss is already there, nursing an undistinguishable drink and chatting up the bartender. He's a good guy, a man named Jim that knows their names and when to cut them off.

He slides onto the next seat, orders the usual.

It's not until his first swallow that he notices the thick folder under Weiss's nervous fingers.

"So, how have you been?" He's being too nice. His smile's too big. "I was talking to this friend I have over at UCLA, and he said if you wanted a job, he could maybe set something up for you..."

Vaughn says nothing, just stares at the clear liquid in his tumbler. Blatant disregard for the bright red warning on the bottle of pills sitting on his bureau at home "DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL." It won't be the first time he'll be scolded by doctors for this type of thing what was it, two years ago? Two and a half? "You cannot continue mixing alcohol with your anti-depressants, Mr. Vaughn."

He takes a long sip, an act of defiance to...something. His body, maybe. He'll slowly poison the body that somehow managed to withstand torture by electric baton, torture by syringe, torture by betrayal, torture by spouse.

"What is this about, Weiss?"

"Nothing. This is just you and me, talking."

"You didn't bring me here to make a social call."

He's only half guessing here, but gets a look. The patented look. His eyes move back to the folder.

Weiss waits until Jim is at the other end of the bar, showing off family pictures and disconcerting self portraits drawn in magic marker by his kindergartener.

"They found some more stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Lauren stuff."

Pause. Too long a pause to help keep up his "I'm-fine-that-my-wife-was-a-woman-who-betrayed-me-oh-yes-fine-fine-fine" façade.

"Dixon...thought that you would want to see it."

His fingernail digs into his left hand, drawing a tiny dash of crimson blood...

"I do."

"Mike, I...I really don't think this is a good idea. It won't help you reach closure."

He wants to bite back, something about Dixon sending him here to deliver the documents, not dispense advice from "Dear Abby," but he refrains and allows the words to burn on the tip of his tongue. "Jailhouse Rock" blares from the corner, bizarrely inappropriate at this point.

"How was your mom?" he asks, a half hearted attempt to change the subject.

"Fine. She wants to know if you've found a nice girl to settle down with yet, because if you haven't, she plays bridge every Tuesday night with a woman who happens to have a very pretty daughter about your age."

"Tell her I still have the 'Blind Date Disaster of '96' fresh in my memory. She's your mother. Why can't she interfere in your love life once in a while?"

Artificial smiles all around. They'll be pretend happy for now. His fingers still itch for those files.

"Legally, if you ask for them," Weiss begins, following his friend's gaze. "I have to give them to you."

"Then I'm asking for them."

"You can't undo this, you know."

He tells him that he doesn't care.

---

He misses the offices over at the Joint Task Force more than the job itself. A strange thing to long for, seeing as how it's just a bunch of cheap desks and malfunctioning water coolers, but it was clean cut, professional, smelled slightly of lemon Clorox. His own personal sanctuary since he was twenty-four.

A bit unhealthy, not that he thinks about it, but fights with Alice and anniversaries of deaths would lead to long hours spent in his overly tidy corner office. The scent of leather and smudged fingers covered in pen ink. It was comforting, in a strange kind of way.

The folders shake in his hand. He wants to rip them, destroy them; set them on fire and watch them burn. His jaw is clenched far too hard and he feels a migraine coming on. He's not sure how many more Tylenol he can get away with taking.

Tainted documents. He can't take them home, put them away in a desk drawer. The telltale heart. They'll still be there, as he lies away in bed, just sitting there, his shattered marriage in charcoal gray on the pages.

The warehouse. Ugly metallic chain link fences and lime colored plastic chairs that always looked as if they'd been stolen from the nearest elementary school.

It's still there, isn't it?

---

This place should've been torn down years ago.

It's evident that whatever security measures the CIA used to keep people out clearly weren't enough. Broken bottles of Heinekin and half smoked cigarettes now litter the floor. Self storage facilities are now the hot spots for partly stoned teenagers on Friday night, apparently. This feels wrong, somehow, and he has the sudden urge to grab a broom and sweep the years away.

Well, what was he expecting, exactly? For this to remain a shrine to the days when Sydney would proudly show off the bruises she received on the latest mission, courtesy of three Russian thugs and a two-by-four?

"Don't you want to hear about how I got that one?" she would ask with a grin she tried to hide.

"Not particularly. Looks like it was pretty painful. Hold still, you've still got a piece of metal in your back."

"You really don't want to hear?"

"Tomorrow," he sighed, reaching for the first aid kit. "Tell me tomorrow."

The crates are still there. He pulls one past the yellowing pile of alcohol labels and sets it in the center of the floor. It makes a screeching sound as it goes. Fingernails on blackboards.

And the files are still in his left hand. Alice in Wonderland, toxic bottles with friendly messages.

Drink me. Drink me. DrinkmeDrinkmeDrinkmeOpenmeOpenmeOpenme...

He rips the giant envelope open with a satisfying tear and thinks of how he needs to be mind numbingly drunk right now to be dealing with this. His breathing becomes painfully staggered. Every place she went, every person she met with, every thing she bought, it's catalogued perfectly, meticulously. A life summed up in dates and times.

A life summed up in numbers.

He drinks it all in as fast as he can handle. Hotel records of places he never stayed at, grainy photographs of her kissing men who, no matter how hard he squints his eyes, are not him, purchases of documents that he never saw.

He stops at the word "clinic."

One shot too many.

He thinks he may be sick.

---

He burns them in his kitchen sink at home, watching the papers smolder and curl. The faucet turns on at the flick of his wrist as the water bubbles out and washes the ashes down the drain.

He won't think about it. Won't break down.

That night, he dreams of rusted fighter jets refueling and taking off from launch pads made of bottle caps. Emerald explosions light up the sky, now the shade of rotting eggplants. If he runs fast enough, he might be able to reach the horizon by dawn...

He wakes up exhausted.

---

Thursday creeps up on him, like mist sneaking in after a storm. He checks his calendar, just to be sure. "Good Morning America" tells him that it is, in fact, a beautiful Thursday morning, and if he sticks around, they'll inform him of ways to eat a healthier breakfast. He munches at his stale Cap'n Crunch in defiance.

It is Thursday and he is not going.

He briefly considers watching a series of infomercials for Wonder Mops before hunting for his hockey skates.

He follows every traffic law in the book and takes the long way there. He's in no hurry. He's got nowhere to go.

The next few hours are occupied by attempting to suppress hypothetical baby names while half heartedly pushing a puck around the rink.

She never loved you.

He plays a game of hockey with himself and loses. How is that even possible?

---

Dusk. Vaughn closes the drapes to block out the setting sun and flips through channels with the battered remote that he always manages to lose amid the sea of couch cushions.

BANKRUPTCY FIRM HIRED BY AIRLINE—click—GET THE CAR OF YOUR DREAMS NOW—click—I TOLD YOU, GAVIN, I'M NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL—click—EL PERRO FUE A LA PLAYA Y—click—OUR FIVE DAY CHAMPION WITH A GRAND TOTAL OF OVER—click—

Ruthie Baker used to come and watch movies with him, when he was ten and lived down the street from her. He hated Ruthie Baker. She would always tell him which actors had fake British accents, which were going through messy divorces, which were morphine addicts. He didn't want to hear about how the blood was really ketchup and the snow, in fact, soap flakes. He pointed out with pride one day that one of the charioteers in "Ben Hur" really was trampled and killed. She just rolled her eyes and he pretended that she hadn't ruined movies completely for him by explaining that they were filmed in Hollywood basements.

He stares at his watch as it ticks down slowly. 57...58...59...

He won't go. He won't go he won't go he won't go.

Shit.

---

It occurs to him, as he watches the ocean slam violently into the beige shoreline, that this is the same place, the very spot that the two of them stood at, on the night of beepers and naïve sermons about keeping hope alive. He stares down at his feet and tries to adjust them, put them in the exact place he stood when Sydney took his hand for the first time. A weak attempt to make it back to the people they were five years ago.

Olive colored splinters from the unfinished wood cut into his fingers. Not enough to draw blood, but they make him wince.

Angry clouds threatening to drench tourists hang low overhead, turning the night sky a bluish-orange. He wants it to rain, pour, simply so he can pull his jacket in close and run down the boardwalk. Just to feel a sense of urgency.

It's too humid. The thick denim in his jeans form to his legs and stick. A few idiot swimmers brave the surf. He glances down at his watch. Again.

And she's still not here.

---

Another fifteen minutes crawl by.

The air smells of raspberry cotton candy and salt.

---

Ten more minutes. He makes improbably excuses for her in his head and leans up against the pier.

Neon lights shine through the darkness from the mini amusement park: acid green, Pepto Bismal pink, blood red. Carnival town. Bulbs on the Ferris wheel flash irregularly.

Almost as if...

No. Nononono.

This is just getting ridiculous.

---

The man running the Ferris wheel has no face. His blonde hair sticks out like straw from his head and his purple lips would like to know if Vaughn wants to get on; it's empty, except for the shadow of a solitary woman.

Yes, he replies, he would like to get on.

"You're late."

It's the first thing the figure says, her voice low to the point of cracking.

"What can I say? I was given bad directions."

And the ride begins to rotate.

He should be the one to break the silence.

Instead, he feels the Ferris wheel jerk to a stop at the top. He stares intently at nothing in particular.

"I almost though you wouldn't come," she says finally.

"That would be pretty uncharacteristically of me, now wouldn't it? I mean, why shouldn't I come when you call? But when I need you, surprisingly, you're no where to be found."

Beat.

"That's not fair and you know it. You weren't exactly banging down my door every night to see how I was doing when you were married to Lauren."

"That was different."

"How the hell was that different?"

"I would never have left you like that!" he explodes. "Do you know what it was like, to wake up in that safe house in Italy to find you gone after you had promised you would be there? Jesus Christ. Lauren was dead, I was coughing up blood from being stabbed by your lovely aunt...and you didn't care enough to stick around?"

He suddenly wants to take it back, take it all back. The words, the marriage, the two years, everything. Rewind to when their personal problems could be solved temporarily by autumn walks in the park.

"I'm sorry," he stutters. "I didn't mean—"

"You're right, though."

Her eyes glitter in the light of the crescent moon. The Cheshire cat's smile.

"I've abandoned you and left you and you don't deserve it and I'm sorry I'm so sorry..."

Every other word is racked with sobs. He reaches out to touch her back lightly. Not to console her, but to make sure he's not just talking to a silhouette.

"...and the agent I didn't mean to I didn't know who he was working for I got scared I...I didn't mean to kill him..."

It takes Sydney a few minutes to collect herself. He wants to know about the bank, about Wittenberg, but he refrains, allowing his arm to instinctively curl around her waist. She leans her head cautiously on his shoulder. He needs to hate her, for his sanity, but finds himself softly stroking her hair.

"I'm leaving. On Saturday," she whispers.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know."

"Are you coming back?"

"No."

He can feel silent raindrops begin to fall against his face. Pedestrians below run for cover.

"I want you to come with me."

"I can't."

"What do you have left here?"

He doesn't know.

---

She leaves eventually. She has to; shadows seem to grow faint and disappear in the light. But not before she kisses him, long and tender and slow. He's left touching his lips where hers were, soft and tasting faintly of vanilla.

His legs seem to get the idea before his head and he takes off running, heading frantically into the direction she wandered off in, but she's already disappeared into the dark crowds. Ghost.

The rain falls harder, warm drops of water that do nothing to cool down the temperature. Los Angeles is too hot, too damp, too crowded, too lonely.

Why does anyone come here?

---