Chapter 6: No Coincidence

Disclaimer: Alias isn't, nor has it ever been, mine.

Vaughn found Sydney still in the cell, fast asleep with Kelly in her arms. He'd stood there, just watching them, for a few minutes before Sydney's eyes fluttered open.

"Hey," Vaughn said softly.

"Hmm?" Sydney mumbled, carefully climbing off the cot so as not to wake Kelly.

"Morning to you, too," Vaughn teased.

"Uh, morning," Sydney murmured.

"Rough night?" Vaughn asked sympathetically.

Sydney nodded.

"She woke up screaming twice."

Sydney turned to face him fully, and Vaughn saw a bruise on her left cheek. He reached out and touched it gently.

"What happened?"

Sydney chuckled.

"She fought in her dreams, and hit me once before she woke up."

Vaughn winced dramatically.

"I offered to stay…" he reminded.

"I know, I know." She looked down at Kelly, her hair fanned out around her face and her lips parted slightly. "At least she's sleeping peacefully now," Sydney muttered with a maternal smile.

Vaughn smiled, too.

"You two look like you belong together," he commented before he realized the implications of the remark.

Sydney's head snapped up.

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

"I just…look at her. She looks a lot like you."

Sydney put a hand to her forehead as if nursing a headache.

"Vaughn…" She trailed off, half afraid to say the words and half afraid he'd think she was crazy. "Vaughn, do you think she could be…related to me?" she amended finally.

Vaughn studied Sydney, then the sleeping Kelly, as if the question had never occurred to him before.

"It's not impossible, looking at you," he finally said, knowing exactly what her thoughts were but not wanting to credit them by admitting he'd thought the same thing.

"But how…"

"I don't know." Vaughn was quiet for a long time, then finally said, "Dixon wants Kelly to be in medical wing by nine."

"What time is it?"

"8:30."

"Mmm," Sydney groaned.

"I'll take her," Vaughn said. "Dixon's requiring either one of us or him to be with her at all times, anyway. You can change or whatever, and I'll take Kelly."

"Take me where?"

Kelly was sitting on the edge of the cot, wide-awake. Vaughn wondered briefly how long she'd been awake, as fast as she'd made the transition.

"My boss wants me to take you to see a doctor, to make sure you're good and healthy," Vaughn said heartily, not wanting to seem wary of Kelly's reaction.

"Aren't you coming?" Kelly asked Sydney.

"No. Sorry, baby, I've got work to do," Sydney said, tousling Kelly's hair affectionately.

"You gotta work long?"

"I don't know. But I'll tell you what. I'll come find you and Vaughn as soon as I get a break, okay?"

"'Kay."

"Okay." Sydney grabbed her overnight bag from under her cot. "I'll see you guys later, then." Sydney was out the door in a flash. She was sure to have a lot of work to do, and she was already late by normal standards.

"Hey, wait!" Vaughn called out behind her. "She needs to be dressed!"

Sydney laughed at the panic in his voice.

"There's a bag of clothes her size by the TV, and I think she can dress herself, Vaughn."

"Oh. Oh, good," Vaughn muttered.

He turned around to find Kelly giving him a look that clearly said he had a lot to learn.

Vaughn very quickly discovered that Kelly was not immune to the fears of a three-year-old as he'd originally assumed.

Kelly sat obediently, while Vaughn stood in the corner, as the doctor poked here, prodded there, shined a light here and again there, all parts of a yearly physical for a child, at first.

When the doctor brought out a needle to draw blood, mistakenly presuming that his patient would remain still, Kelly flew off the exam table--which was almost twice her height--and had her arms wrapped around Vaughn's neck in the blink of an eye. Vaughn was suddenly holding the little girl, with no real idea how she'd managed to get there.

"Nonononononono!" Kelly was crying, hugging his neck tighter.

"Honey," Vaughn gasped. "I can't breathe."

"It won't even hurt, Kelly," the doctor was saying kindly, quickly having realized his mistake. "We just want to look at your blood to make sure you're healthy."

"Nonononono!"

"Kelly, please, the doctor doesn't want to hurt you. He's a good guy, I promise," Vaughn soothed, a bewildered look on his face that gave away his inexperience with children.

"You're supposta keep me safe," Kelly whimpered against Vaughn's shoulder.

"I am," Vaughn sighed. "Kelly, you have to stop this. Now," he finally said, his voice harsher than he'd intended. He set her on her feet and gave her what he hoped was a stern look.

Kelly hung her head in defeat. From her wide eyes, Vaughn could tell she was scared, but what could he do?

The doctor set Kelly back on the exam table and managed to draw a small amount of blood without further incident.

"You know," the doctor said, glancing over his shoulder as he put a band-aid on the prick on Kelly's arm. "She looks like Sydney."

As this particular man had been on the CIA staff for as long as Vaughn remembered, he knew the man realized the significance of his statement. If Vaughn wasn't mistaken, he'd even seen Sydney a few times. When the good doctor glanced back again, Vaughn's expression was that of severe discouragement, which the man took to mean Vaughn had already considered this and didn't appreciate his commenting on it. Well, too bad.

"You also know," he continued, unabashed, "That I could perform blood tests discreetly to determine if there's anything more to that." He now turned to fully face Vaughn.

"And you know," Vaughn said, his voice deathly flat. "That any results from said tests, as well as the very fact that they were conducted without official approval, would have to remain confidential."

Vaughn was extremely wary of making a deal with the man, but he seemed to have a genuine curiosity and concern as to the outcome of any such tests. He surely knew about Rambaldi, and it was possible that he knew about what the Covenant had done to her. That would, after all, be a good reason to be curious, Vaughn rationalized.

"Understood," the doctor said, Jackson, according to his nametag pinned to his jacket lapel. "I will report my findings to you, and you can do with them what you will."

"Can I go now?" Kelly asked abruptly.

"Yes," Jackson said. "I'll have to file paperwork, but you can tell Dixon I give her a clean bill of health for the time being."

Sydney tried to keep her attention on the report she was typing, but three times of the space of an hour she'd come back to herself to find her hands had stilled and the generic CIA screensaver had claimed her computer screen.

She kept wondering what Kelly had been through, where she'd come from, and if the damages to her fragile psyche could ever be repaired. Which led inevitably to wondering where the little girl would end up, what with her history. If they couldn't find her parents, she might be released into the foster care system, but with her needs to adjust, and the conditions of her situation, it was likely Dixon would want an agent keeping tabs on her, may be tracing her movements well into adulthood…

And there was that screensaver again.

Sydney sighed. She wasn't accomplishing anything at all. She might as well go join Vaughn and Kelly.

Logging off her computer and pocketing the disk her report was on, she was ready to abandon her workstation when Vaughn and Kelly appeared in the doorway of the maze of workstations she was in. She smiled across the room at Vaughn.

Vaughn smiled back, then tripped as Kelly tugged him forward. He grinned sheepishly.

"Hi!" Kelly cried a moment later, releasing Vaughn and running to Sydney. "Whatcha doing?"

"Actually," Sydney said, matching Kelly's enthusiasm. "I was just coming to look for you." She glanced up at Vaughn questioningly.

"She wanted to see you." Vaughn shrugged. "And I didn't know what else to do with her."

Sydney laughed, and Kelly developed a look of distrust.

"I don't wanna go back to my room," she whispered softly, her voice full of fear that the statement would bring with it harm.

Vaughn looked panicked, but Sydney took only a moment to figure out what had triggered her reaction.

"Honey, nobody's going to make you go there," she comforted. She personally would see to it that Kelly never returned to that bare, unfeeling, cold little room in Russia. "Vaughn just meant that he couldn't think of anyplace else you might like to go, so he brought you to see me."

Kelly took this revelation dubiously.

"He made me get a shot," she confided to Sydney.

"Oh, baby, I'm sorry," Sydney said. "But I'm sure he only did it because he knew he had to." She looked pointedly at Vaughn; he'd created this mess, the least he could do was help rectify it.

"Right," Vaughn said obediently. "The doctor was just making sure you aren't sick."

For a brief moment, Sydney's eyes connected with Vaughn's and she thought she saw something that didn't belong, but then it was gone. She dismissed it. What could he possibly be hiding from her?

Toward the end of the day, Dixon ordered that Kelly be left in the cell that had been turned into a playroom, more or less, an amazing number of toys having been supplied to keep Kelly occupied, so that Dixon could speak with Sydney and Vaughn candidly. Kelly had been so fascinated with the toys that were foreign to her that she'd expressed little resistance to Sydney's leaving her alone.

Dixon cut right to the point once he had the agents alone in his office.

"We need to locate an informant inside the Calling," he said. "But we have several obstacles. One, we don't know enough of the members to know if a known informant is already inside. Two, I don't want to send any other agents on such a precarious mission, but the staff psychiatrists have all assured me that the presence of you two in the immediate future is crucial to Kelly's adjustment. Three, we don't know what we're looking for. We can safely assume the Calling has a newfound prophecy, but we don't know any specifics or even what form the prophecy may be in."

"We can put out intel on Russia's black market that we need intel on the Calling," Vaughn said at the same time as Sydney said, "One of us can go and the other stay with Kelly."

Dixon shook his head.

"I don't want to tip our hand, and I was strongly advised that Kelly seems to be more deeply impressed by the both of you, rather than one or the other individually," he said. "I'm not an expert, or even well-informed, and I don't want to compromise the welfare of the child."

"So what do you want to do?" Sydney asked, her patience waning. "We're at a standstill here."

"I don't want to do anything right now," Dixon admitted. "But the fact that the CIA's efforts to find new intel have been so effectively blocked leads me to suspect they may have someone on the inside here."

So, Sydney thought cynically, that is why we are suddenly the only ones trusted.

Aloud, she said," Surely you don't think one of our usual team has ties to the Calling."

"I don't want to, believe me. But after the extend of damage Lauren Reed managed to cause before we even suspected there was a mole, we can't afford to assume anything," Dixon asserted.

Vaughn wasn't easily convinced they should cease to trust their fellow agents until further notice. He had finally recovered from the trauma and self-doubt he'd experienced after discovering Lauren's betrayal, and he wasn't anxious to fall back into that dark place where you suspect everyone of being traitorous as he had during the time he'd thirsted for revenge.

"Sark has been lucky enough several times in the past to just completely avoid us," Vaughn argued. "Why are you so sure this is any different?"

"Because," Dixon began solemnly. "Every time we've gotten a location on a confirmed member of the Calling, that person has disappeared without a trace. Six times, Vaughn. That's no coincidence."

Yay! That was a long chapter! Review, please, and I'll try to get the next chapter up soon!