Chapter 12: Fallocieux Une

Disclaimer: Alias isn't mine. Vaughn isn't mine. Nor are any other characters here depicted.

isabelle: I LOVE you!!!! It's so great to be appreciated!! lol. I feel so guilty that I might be causing you to neglect you own writing...but, as you can see, I'm doing no such thing! Enjoy!

Agent Harte commented--for about the tenth time--that there seemed to be several pages missing from the file on Kelly's birth.

Sydney gritted her teeth. She was well aware that there were pages missing. Six, to be exact.

"It's possible the Calling needed those pages for something," she commented with feigned helpfulness.

She leaned back in her plane seat. She was exhausted, but the notion that Kelly could be her daughter wouldn't let her sleep now any more than it had the last six hours. She'd put those hours to use, at least. She was minimally familiar with parts of the material. She knew Kelly had walked two months sooner than was average. That she'd had a vocabulary double the norm at a year. She knew Kelly had been subjected to thousands of vigorous training methods to turn her into a super-genius. That she could read on a third grade level before she was three.

Sydney also knew a lot of things that, if she had her way, Harte would never see. She was listed as Kelly's mother. Kelly had been born on February twentieth, so she was three now. Kelly was described as the Chosen One.

But there was no father listed anywhere. Sydney found that strange. Her name appeared in six different places in the file, but Kelly hadn't been called anything but subject, and there was no man's name anywhere.

Sydney's thoughts drifted unbidden to Vaughn. Even with his mistakes, Kelly was attached to him. A small grin crossed her face briefly. Vaughn even managed to look like a daddy, when Kelly got him down on the floor to play with her, or he scooped her up all of a sudden. Without a lot of a stretch, Sydney could see herself and Vaughn and Kelly, as a family. Kelly would need a lot to disabuse her of Sark's influence, but that wouldn't be a problem. They could all be happy, and…

Sydney stopped herself. She was delusional. She already had the white picket fence and the kid planned out here. Yet in the four years since Lauren's death, Sydney didn't feel like she'd ever come close to getting a commitment out of Vaughn. She was building castles in the air here, and they were undoubtedly going to land on her when the clouds they were sitting on blew away.

Hell, she thought, chastising herself for putting herself where she was. I think I even saw a minivan in the driveway. Right next to the little terrier named Rover.

She didn't even have proof Kelly was her child. As much--and as unreasonably--as she wanted it, she could hardly take the word of an agency headed by Sark. Besides, Vaughn wasn't quite so ready to play daddy, as much as he seemed to like Kelly.

Jack always paced when he could manage it without being seen. It was good exercise, but a sign of weakness if one couldn't control it.

He paced now, on his terrace high above the LA streets. Sure, he could be seen from the street, but no one could identify him from there. So he paced. Back and forth, back and forth.

Kelly was spending too long in the hands of Sydney and Vaughn. He had to get her out. But how could he do anything now, when Kelly was being watched so closely?

Sark. That was the only answer he could see. Coerce Sark into getting Kelly for him. Then, when Sark least expected it, before the CIA even knew she was gone, Jack would steal her away from Sark. He'd never see it coming.

He'd contact Sark to set up a meeting--a highly secret, high security, voice altered, net meeting--tonight. Two days, tops, and he'd have Kelly, Rambaldi's prophecy, protected from her parents, free to grow into Rambaldi's prophecy of power.

A simple two word anonymous e-mail, and Sark would jump to arrange a time. Fallocieux Une. Elusive One, in French. His own personal show of arrogance. He'd always manage to just slip away unnoticed. Just as he always had.

Vaughn grew increasingly anxious as the time grew nearer for Sydney's return. He thought up speeches, then scrapped them and started all over again. Sydney would hate him, but he had to tell her he'd known before. No, he should just tell her he'd arranged to run the tests. No, he couldn't lie, not even by omission. Not about this. She'd catch him. Then she'd probably kill him.

All the time, he stayed with Kelly. He stacked Legos in to a completely abstract shape--he never had liked the damn things as a kid--while Kelly constructed a miniature chair. Eh drew a rough sketch of Sydney's face while Kelly colored cartoon characters she'd never seen. He hooked up old-fashioned rabbit ears to the TV in the corner, and Kelly watched whatever was on.

It was late when Sydney walked into the cell. Kelly had long been asleep, but Vaughn had waited up for her, only feigning sleep while he lied on a third cot that had been added for his use. He sat up as soon as she came in.

"Hey," she said, managing only a weak smile. She wondered, not for the first time, if Dixon had told him what she'd reported.

"Hey," Vaughn responded, forcing a smile and leaving no doubt as to whether he knew. "We need to talk," he added, putting a hand on her arm to direct her back out into the hall. Not only would the hall be silent, the cameras were only activated in the cell.

"How much…What did Dixon tell you?" Sydney asked.

Vaughn took a deep breath.

"Better question would be what did I tell Dixon," he admitted. Sydney was confused, but she held her tongue; Vaughn would get around to explaining. "Syd, I…after you asked me if I thought you and Kelly could be…related, I kept thinking about it. I allowed tests to be run that would pinpoint your relation, if there was any. Syd, I…I knew the results before you left."

Sydney's first instinct, strangely, was to yell at Vaughn for not telling her before she left.

"And…?" she asked quietly.

"Syd, without a doubt, Kelly is your daughter."

Deeply embedded professionalism forced Sydney to ask, as soon as she'd caught her breath again, whether Dixon knew all this.

"I told him. He's going to run tests, just for appearances. No one else knows," he promised.

"I have a daughter," Sydney breathed, awe creeping into her eyes now. "But how…? I just don't understand…"

"Syd…" Vaughn placed a hand on her arm. "You know as well as I do that you may never know how. Or why, for that matter. She's just yours."

"I know, I just can't…I never really thought…I didn't expect it to be true." She paused, and a determined expression overcame her face. "I have to tell Kelly."

Vaughn's eyes widened a little.

"Syd, may be you should get used to the idea yourself, before you tell Kelly. Dixon may want to consult with the psychiatrist, Adams. She'll want to determine whether Kelly can accept it, or…"

"Vaughn." Sydney held up a hand. "Okay. You're right. But I have to be the one to tell her."

Being this close the truth, after all these months, years, was rejuvenating. She wanted to be free to pace, to be anxious, but Sark remained close by. He, too, was curious the man he'd begun to call merely Informant wanted to talk so soon after Kelly had disappeared. More yet, after his failed attempt to retrieve her.

Sark had already informed Irina that she would do al the talking, when the connection was established. Even though the man had to be well aware that he'd talked to as many as three different persons posing as Sark, and he had no way of knowing who was the real one, Sark hesitated to give him anything that could be used in any way against him, if the Informant was in a position to do so.

Typing rapidly on the laptop in front of her, Irina established a round about connection with the Informant. Without Sark's knowledge, she's also set her tracer program on the link. She'd programmed it to reveal its discoveries only when prompted to avoid being caught at it by Sark.

He had his team trying to trace the Informant, of course. But he simply didn't have the connections she had, and wasn't near accomplishing it.

"You tried to retrieve the child," the Informant said smugly. A smugness all the more irritating because Irina was sure she knew it. "And you failed."

"I will succeed in time," Irina said, trying to sound more like Sark than herself. She had a sinking feeling that she could be recognized by the Informant as likely as she could recognize him.

"Not alone," eh replied. "The CIA will never let you get near the child now."

"They won't know what hit them," Irina said calmly, having heard Sark say the same thing hours before.

Even through the demented, mechanically altered voice that replied, Irina felt that she knew it.

"I can help you."

"Why? What's in it for you?"

"As I've said before, I'm only a believer of Rambaldi's work. This child is meant to grow. She in endangered by her mother."

"How so?"

"Her very presence is a hindrance to the child. Bristow will teach her things she's not meant to know."

After a long moment of silence, Irina said, "Why did you contact me?"

"I can help you."

"So you said. Drop the cryptic bullshit and explain yourself, or do not expect to hear from me again," Irina snapped.

Behind her, Sark nodded approval.

"Understood. I have discovered that the CIA has begun running tests to determine the child's parents. You have to get her before they discover the truth, or she will undoubtedly disappear. You'll never get her then."

"That's not going to help us get her."

"But this will. There are DSR agents in the facility where the child is being held. If there is enough of a distraction, Agents Bristow and Vaughn will leave the child with the DSR agents. As they're unfamiliar with you, you should have little trouble taking them out. They seem to be a rag tag pair anyway."

And how would you know all this," Irina said, slowly, deliberately, and realizing the fact she'd been overlooking as she said it. "Unless you're inside."

"Not your concern," the Informant said easily. "Your only concern is distracting Vaughn and Bristow."

The connection terminated, and Irina snapped the laptop closed and tucked it in to a case.

"You'll assemble a team immediately?" she asked Sark. As long as he was going to be busy for a while, she could assess the extent of her success. And pray that her nagging suspicions were completely unfounded, for Sydney's sake.

Hehe! I love having Irina in this, and, though I can't explain it just yet, ya'll are definitely going to love where I'm going with this. I miss Irina in the show…Don't ya'll?