Disclaimer: Alias is not mine.
Title: Black-Winged Angel
Author: Ayaren (aka Abyssinian)
Rating: G
Timeline: AU AU S2 post-Indicator.
Summary: One day she was gone.
Broken Part Three: Black-Winged Angel
One day she was gone.
There was nothing to suggest she was hours from abandoning them as she tried not to giggle at Marshall's stuttering antics and hugged Dixon warmly before leaving SD-6 to secretly visit her mother, imprisoned within the depths of the CIA taskforce centre.
She kissed her father's cheek and exchanged a smile with Vaughn before pleading weariness to escape home to the apartment she shared with Francie.
She vanished before she stepped through the front door.
They found her car in a parking lot at LAX, wallet lying abandoned in the glove box with her credit cards and drivers licence still inside.
Foul play was their first instinct. But the black and white footage from airport security cameras was enough to disabuse them of that notion. Watching her stride confidently to the toilets and then disappear into another, unknown disguise was enough for them to realise she had run.
Run from what? No one had an answer. Her colleagues at the CIA knew she desired nothing more than to see SD-6 in ruins over the death of her fiancée. Where would she go?
Why did she leave?
They suspected Irina knew, she had been the last person Sydney spoke to, but the woman known to the dark world she inhabited as 'The Man' merely shook her head when questioned, loose brown hair rippling with the movement.
When they turned away in defeat that enigmatic half-smile she used to confound ally and enemy alike flickered across her lips. She would say nothing, though her information would have done them no good. Her daughter was nearly as adept at keeping secrets as she was.
They searched for her. She was their Sydney, the heroine of their tale of good versus evil. Careful to avoid the SD-6 operatives that also scoured first Los Angeles and then the world the CIA searched for her.
And found nothing.
It was left to Will to explain everything to the distraught Francie, who could not understand why her best friend had suddenly disappeared without saying goodbye or taking anything from their house with her.
Vaughn mourned what could have been and then gave Alice the ring she had been hinting at for months.
Dixon often found himself eyeing the empty desk across from him, fiddling absently with his earpiece as he spoke distractedly on the phone.
Weiss would grimace and shift in the narrow hospital bed, gaze falling on the plant sitting by the window.
Marshall scuttled around SD-6 with his nervous stutterings less often, preferring to immerse himself in the tiny world of his lab.
Kendall's scowl became a permanent fixture. She had done nothing but antagonise him, yet he knew that without her the Alliance would not fall so easily.
Sloane mouthed thoughtless platitudes and continued with his business, occasionally sparing a thought for the bright young woman he once considered the daughter he had never had.
Jack wilted a little more each time they reached another dead end. His face remained as impassive as ever, but his eyes betrayed a grief that penetrated to the depths of his soul.
Irina paced her cell, dark eyes unfathomable.
They were only small things at first. Jack reported that Sloane was growing frustrated over a spate of failed missions. Kendall growled in irritation as the CIA suffered the same indignity, seven agents either hospitalised or dead and four missions gone sideways in the space of a week.
Rumours surfaced from the darkness. Informants spoke in hushed tones about a mysterious new organisation that was quickly gaining power over the established crime syndicates and terrorist cells that operated worldwide.
They struck without warning the reports said. Crippled establishments the CIA had classified as unassailable. Stole billions and vanished before the dust settled on the bodies they left behind.
Months later the first sighting was reported.
The devil who possessed the face of an angel, his chilling blue gaze a familiar fixture from the days of Derevko's reign. They had thought him dead, his fabled luck finally run out in a nameless city somewhere. He sneered charmingly and showed them what it meant to have attained the rank of the Man's favourite lieutenant at such a young age.
By his side was always the woman who had professed to loathe everything he represented. Brown eyes stripped of their innocence as she carved out her own place in her mother's blackened empire. She was a younger version of the one they used to fear. That same enigmatic smile turned their blood to ice, its effects enhanced by the determination she had gained from her father.
Within the CIA they waited for confirmation of these alleged sightings. Troubled glances were exchanged and breathless denials muttered continually with shaking heads. It was not her. Not her. She was good. She was not like the woman who remained locked in the cell not far from where they stood.
When it came, Jack Bristow wept a brief scattering of tears before informing the woman who had been his wife, his mouth set in a thin line. He accused her and she merely smiled, shaking her head.
Vaughn found himself flicking through the growing file of photographs and video stills whenever he had a spare moment. Every time he looked his eyes searched her face for a reason. Always he wondered why.
She was in some nameless café, an empty plate in front of her and a coffee cup in her right hand as she smiled at the blonde man seated next to her. The fingers of her left hand were laced with his on top of the table, one of his eyebrows raised in response to her amusement.
She was walking calmly through the doors of a building, her head held high and her hair cropped short so that it fell just above her shoulders. She carried a briefcase in one hand, the other rested on the arm of her companion. His head was turned slightly to face her, his face as expressionless as ever as he spoke to her.
She was crouched behind a desk, her hair pulled back from her face in a tight braid and her body clothed black from neck to toe. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration as she aimed the weapon in her hand at the enemy who had trapped her. Beside her knelt the blonde, his clothing as dark as hers, gun down for the moment as he slid in another clip. Their shoulders touched as they tried to present as small a target as possible.
She was moving undisguised through the streets of a nameless city, seemingly unconcerned about being recognised. She wore a casual shirt and jeans and one hand clutched a handful of expensive-brand shopping bags. The other reached up to grab the sunglasses the man at her side held playfully out of reach, a mischievous smirk curving his lips. His free arm was wrapped around her waist and he looked like any ordinary man in his faded denim jeans and leather jacket.
Picture after picture. Scene after scene. Her. Him. Always together. Some part of their bodies always touching, however minutely. Talking. Kissing. Walking. Killing.
Vaughn searched, and what he found made him wish he had not even opened the folder.
Sydney cared for the angel-faced assassin.
Loved him perhaps? Vaughn would never know. But it was enough to tell him that he had lost her. Even before Alice had become his wife he had lost Sydney Bristow. Lost her to the most undeserving creature to ever walk the earth.
Perhaps she had thought she could redeem him. Provide him with the conscience he had been stripped of decades ago by Irina's calculated manipulations. Instead he had taken hers from her. Shown her what it was to be a Derevko in their world, rather than a Bristow.
She caught Sloane in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle and the Alliance crumbled within days as the entire ranking leadership was outed in a similar manner, though not by her personally. The CIA dutifully cleaned up the mess and Dixon and Marshall were welcomed into the fold.
A guarded hope returned to Jack's eyes as he read the reports.
They thought that was the end of it all. That she would come back now that she had payed for Danny's death in blood. They thought she would give herself in and tell them it had all been an act. That somewhere inside she was still the white-winged angel they loved and that she would provide them with the keys to her empire's destruction.
But when it came, the confrontation was more than enough to convince them that she was beyond their offers of redemption.
Her wings were as black as her mother's now.
She shot Vaughn without a moment's hesitation, three bullets aimed at his heart. He only survived because she had not anticipated the bullet-proof vest. She did not glance back as he collapsed, the force propelling him back into a wall and unconsciousness.
Dixon chased after her, screaming for her to listen, pleading with her to come back. He told her he forgave her for keeping the truth from him and that he still loved her even as he aimed his gun at her head.
She stopped and turned, her mother's smile dancing on her lips as she dared him to pull the trigger. He never saw the blonde wraith glide up behind him. Never knew who sent him to the hospital with a knife wound in his back that took months to heal. But he could guess.
Vaughn wanted to hate her, but somehow he could not forget the young woman who had bulldozed into his life with that ridiculous red hair and a determination to see SD-6 and the Alliance in ruins.
He was not the only one who wondered where that young woman had gone. What had prompted her to leave that woman behind? What had broken her enough for Sark to pick up the pieces and rearrange them to his own satisfaction? What had made her love him?
It could be love, Vaughn mused. In some twisted way it could be love.
When he asked her she laughed in his face and tried to kill him.
They caught her once, injured and unprepared. They had not expected to find her and counted it good luck when they threw her into the cell next to her mother's. Everyone made the pilgrimage to stare at her through the glass, asking her to give them the one answer they craved.
Why?
She refused to say and stared impassively back, sending them away with a grieving shiver at the total lack of feeling in her once sparkling brown eyes.
They thought Sark would just abandon her as he had abandoned Irina. Give his classic line about flexible loyalties and save his own skin as he had done countless times before. But they did not realise how much Sydney had affected him until it was too late. He killed three agents out of spite, hunted them down for the fun of it before demanding her immediate return.
It was love, Vaughn finally confirmed, seeing the truth behind the blue eyes in those photographs, it was twisted and it was drenched in blood but it was love.
Kendall ignored the blonde devil's demands and lost them Irina too.
Sark took Jack and ten other agents from around the world. His message was clear enough and for their return he received not one but two Derevko women. He had not abandoned Irina in the end, even though the loyalty she had prided him for was now focussed solely on her heir.
Irina saw what Sydney had become and her eyes clouded with grief as she watched her daughter and her former lieutenant embrace. This was not what she had intended.
Jack stood in the centre of the cell his daughter had called home for the past two weeks and felt his heart withering in his chest. This was not what he had intended.
They were angels with black wings and together they ruled the world.
END PART THREE