Alias: To Kill A Mocking Bird
Disclaimer: I do not own, or claim to own, the show Alias, or any of its characters. Nor do I own the song "Wonder" By Megan McCauley, which can be found on the Elektra Soundtrack. Nor do I own the pieces from Alice in Wonderland, I mean honestly, if I owned any of the items listed, I would definitely be doing something else…and I would be old…
Summery: Vaughn and Sydney have a mission, of course. Based in the third season, before you find out that Lauren is the mole. Syd, and Vaughn are sent after the "Mocking Bird" a device that holds significance to the Covenant, as well as the prophecy. Sydney is still trying to get used to not knowing everything that happened the past two years, and Vaughn's wife. The song "Wonder" reminds me of Sydney and Vaughn and it inspired this story.
Reviews: Thank you, Acetoorion, smilez4eva, and meg. And thank you to Fair Cate for the constructive criticism. Sorry I spelled Dixon incorrectly I've gone back and fixed it, though I still plan to use the imagery because there's not pictures on a TV screen to see some of the details with. Thank you also for the compliments. And thank you Natalie, I meant to go back and check the spelling before I posted, but I forgot
Author's Note: Holly HT. Last night's episode. Oh my god. I can not live until it comes back on. What the hell is up with Vaughn? And then the car accident, and then click, off. And what the hell is up with VAUGHN! I don't even know if I can finish this knowing that he's not who I thought he was, he obviously really loves Sydney, but he's lied to her the entire time he's known her. And what does he mean "Depends who you ask?" Huh? What!
Last Time, On Alias:
"Vaughn and Sydney, you're to go on a mission to retrieve the Mocking Bird. It's a Rambaldi artifact that the Covenant is after, and the CIA wants it first. The Mocking Bird is said to be a voice recorder. We don't know whose voice, or what it says. Just that is has to do with the Prophecy and it could help with your memory Sydney, we don't know. Marshall." Dixon addressed Marshall for the rest of the mission's objectives.
"How are you guys doing?" Weiss's voice cracked through their ear pieces, jarring Sydney to the point where she grabbed at the first tangible thing she could hold onto; a bird's nest, and a rather large one at that. Her hand slipped off pulling the empty nest with it and knocking lose a branch that had been sticking out of the side, covered it silky moss. But, she didn't scream as she fell.
She still smelled the same. That was the first thing Vaughn noticed as he embraced Sydney on the ledge in front of the cave 350 feet down from Weiss and the van. In Ireland. Well, maybe not the first thing he noticed. He had actually noticed that it felt good to hold her again. Then that she smelled the same. Like lilacs, and earth, and some rare spice.
"This can't be right." He furrowed his eyebrows, rescanning the tiles.
"Why? What is it?" Sydney looked down at the hand device; a picture diagram of the tiles was on the screen. The red tiles were not to be stepped on, while the blue were safe. Sydney's eyes became wide, shocked.
"What's wrong?" Weiss's voice was worried over their ear pieces.
"All of the tiles are red," Vaughn looked up from the scanner, "Every one of them."
Chapter Two:
"I'm on it" Marshall was moving rapidly, faster than he had in…Well, since the last mission. Weiss had called on the cell phone, informing him that his scanner wasn't working correctly, because all of the tiles leading to the Mocking Bird were red. Marshall scowled at the computer screen in front of him, looking for disturbances in the system, or anything else that could be disfiguring the scanner's program. Then he sat back and blinked. "There's nothing wrong with the scanner. At all."
"What?" disbelieve coloured Weiss voice as he spoke into the cell phone.
"It's
working correctly; all of the tiles are infected with some sort of
trap. It's incredible. They must have put a huge amount of thought
and time into the design. I mean, the lives that had to have been
lost to create something so complex."
"Marshall, that's
great. We need to get past it." Weiss interrupted with impatience.
"You're going to have to find a way to get past all the tiles without touching any of them. I don't know what will happen if they're set off, there's no way to tell. I would come up with something but you're there and I'm-" Marshall heard the resounding click as Weiss hung up the phone.
"Alright, here's the problem. We don't know what's going to happen if you touch any of those tiles. There should be a way to get pass all of them without touching though. There's always something." Vaughn and Sydney listened carefully to Weiss's voice over their ear pieces. "Personally, I'm fresh out of ideas, and Marshall didn't have any either."
"I have one." Sydney spoke up, looking up at the rocks that made the cave entrance and the ones that were fifty feet back marking the end of the cave. "I'm going to need my bag. It's under the passenger's seat in the van." Sydney spoke quickly, setting down her mask on the floor of the cave, handing her flashlight to Vaughn.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" Said Alice.
"You
must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come
here."
Alice didn't think that proved it at all: however, she
went on: "And how do you know you're mad?"
"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"
"I suppose so," said Alice.
"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad,"
She didn't know why she had specifically thought of that conversation in Alice in Wonderland. It had just came to her, after she had planned what she would do, how she would do it, and put it into action. The 'mad' conversation had popped into her head after years of not having read the story.
Vaughn passed her the bag she had asked for. She knew exactly what she had packed in the bag. An extra disguise if the need arose, a lock picking set, and everything else she would need to make her way to the other side of the cave. Sydney pulled out the rather large black gun, pointed it at the far wall, and pulled the trigger.
It was loud, extremely loud in the quiet darkness, as the thick black cord shot through the guns muzzle and sent it's strong metal tip plowing into the rock. Now all she had to do was set up the guns holder in the rocks above her head. It would hold the cord high enough of the ground for its purpose.
Vaughn had caught on, of course, to what she had in mind. He had a scowl on his face as he helped her drill in the last screw to hold to gun tightly in place.
"I'll go over." It wasn't an offer, but she took it as one, and continued to replace her gloves that she had removed. "Sydney," he paused and switched off his ear piece, gave her time to follow his example. They had done this once before. Switched off their ear piece, and had gotten in trouble for it. But there was no more SD-6, and no one but the CIA knew they were here. "Sydney, I'll go over. We don't know what will happen if you hit one of those tiles. I'm not going to lose you again to a device we don't even know is worth it." He had his hand holding her forearm. Something she noticed, something that felt as though he had reached inside her and had grabbed her heart and squeezed. She pulled away.
"You don't have me any more to lose Vaughn." She needed to sound harsh, to sound sure. She couldn't, she wouldn't, tell him every thing she wanted to tell him, how much she still loved him and how she never wanted for him to let go. But he had let go, and he had married Lauren, and she had to accept that and move on. She had to put a sense of distance between Vaughn and herself. He had his eyes closed.
"I want you as a friend Sydney. I want you to be able to trust me, I want to be able to pass you in the office and not worry about what Lauren is thinking, or if I'm not making it to your standards. I can't go back to who I was then, I had to change, and I had to move on. I've told you this; I've told you my reasons. But I've known what it was like to lose you, to let your ashes leave my hands and watch them wash away. You do not know what I had to go through, you weren't there, and I can not, go through that again." His voice was soft, and laced with just a little of the anger he felt, just a little of the sadness.
"I need this." Her eyes were pleading. He didn't say anything, just gave a nod of acceptance. Sydney started clipping herself to the wire. Vaughn placed his hand on her arm;
"Syd, be careful." His voice was quiet, serious. She nodded, turned her ear piece back on, and pulled herself up on the wire, her legs wrapped around it and her hands pulling her body across. Vaughn turned his ear piece on as well.
"Sydney's making her way over to the Mocking Bird." Vaughn pressed his finger to his ear piece, speaking the Weiss.
"She's seriously amazing." Weiss shook his head, despite the fact that Vaughn couldn't see it. "Alright, you've nine minutes and forty-seven seconds."
Sydney's arms hadn't started aching just yet, but she knew that the return trip would have then shaking with tension. She was taking deep breaths as she moved one hand in front of the other, pulled, then placed her other hand up and repeated the practice.
"Eight minutes." Vaughn called out, checking his watch. The fact that they couldn't just walk over and take the piece would pull at their time allotment, Sydney knew this.
"If you time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him."
"I don't know what you mean," said Alice.
"Of course you don't!" the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. "I dare say you never even spoke to Time!"
"Perhaps not," Alice cautiously replied; "but I know I have to beat time when I learn music."
"Ah! That accounts for it," said the Hatter. "He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he's do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!"
She knew, of course, what had brought on this memory of her favorite story: her constant need to play with time. Before she met Vaughn she wanted to go back in time to Danny, not tell him about her involvement in SD-6. After that, there were many occasions she had wanted to make different choices, to change different mistakes. The second switch in the bomb that had killed the CIA agents she had met just ten minutes before hand. She wanted to go back in time, to before she had lost two years of her life, to tell Vaughn that she loved him, to never give up on her. She had to beat time, all the time…And now she couldn't just whisper to him and ask for a few moments more…A few less. Sydney snapped back to where she was, right above the Mocking Bird, and not in Wonderland.
Pulling her legs tighter around the wire, she dropped her arms and upper body and pulled the flashlight from her mouth (where she had clamped her teeth around it).
Within arms reach was a box, made of stone, and carved with intricate designs of a tree with flowing branches, and in the middle of the tree was a carved bird. The bird was small, real looking, with its head facing the top of the tree where you would imagine sunlight would be filtering through, and its beak open in song.
"I've got it." Sydney said out-loud, to herself, and to her partners over her mic.
"You have four minutes Sydney, quick but be careful." Vaughn's voice filtered over the ear piece. Sydney placed the box in the bag and pulled it closed and tight, before pulling it over her shoulders and tightening the straps; a hard feat to accomplish while hanging upside down. Leg strength would be her main way of pulling her self back, while pushing on the wire with her arms. "Two minutes and twenty-seven seconds." Vaughn counted down, watching his watch, worried about Sydney making it over in time. "Two minutes."
"Almost there." Sydney whispered; she could see Vaughn's outline, and the star speckled night behind him.
"Vaughn, Sydney, we've got company." Weiss's voice called urgently through. "I think it's Covenant," Weiss paused, and they heard the click as he placed his ear piece down.
"Weiss?" Vaughn pressed his finger to his ear piece once again; "Weiss?" his voice was louder as he called over the microphone. "Sydney, we have fifteen seconds!"
"Agent Vaughn, Agent Bristow." A smooth English voice sounded over Weiss microphone and into the pieces in Vaughn and Sydney's ears. "I imagine, since you arrived here such a long time ahead of us, you've already accomplished quite a bit of the work. Knowing Ms. Bistro, I have also come to conclusion that you have acquired the Mocking Bird. We want it, so I've taken the liberty of borrowing your friend here. You can have him back, alive and mostly unharmed, if you're willing to give us the device in return. We've left a note for you."
"Sark!" Vaughn yelled into his microphone. Sydney pulled herself down from the wire, landing on the safe zone in front of the tiles, next to Vaughn, with only two seconds to spare.
"Sark, you son of a bitch! If he gets hurt I swear-" Sydney screamed.
"Such language, Ms. Bistro, you should learn to control your anger. Take care." Another click was heard as the piece was placed back down.
"Were out of time." Vaughn looked up, the gas was making it's way out of the top of the cave. Behind them a rock like door was slowing closing. They had less than thirty seconds to get out of the cave.
"Vaughn," Sydney pulled at the clamps that still connected her to the wire with panic, "they won't come lose. I'm stuck."
TBC