Pheromones
by : Dru
Chapter. 8
Disclaimer : Don't own a thing you'd want, so please don't sue.
Words : 3139
A/N : Pretty much starts from where ch. 7 ended. Still in the ses.3 finale. I like this one actually more than ch.7. Enjoy hopefully and Please leave a reply. :)
Dru, 05:30 AM. June 19th, 2005
"Where's Vaughn?" Sydney asked Weiss, after she got out of the interrogation with that Forester guy. Annoying as fucking hell.
"I haven't seen him since he finished interrogating Sark, but, uhh, word is he worked him over pretty good. Didn't get any information out of him, but it had to feel pretty good trying. I'm sure he'll be back soon. Probably needed to walk it off." Weiss told her, and that made her instantly more worried. She walked away from him, took out her cell phone and dialled his number. Yes, it was on her speed-dial. It wasn't like she could have Lauren or Sark there.
"Eric said you took off. Need some company?" She told him, as soon as she heard he had picked up the phone so to speak. She didn't care about that, she just wanted to know if he knew about Lauren.
"No, I'm good." He told her, and that made her suspicious. If this wasn't something he knew she'd disapprove of, he'd jump at the chance like a love sick puppy.
"Where are you?" She asked, trying to sound worried and not annoyed & angry at the damn just words could not describe it. She just had this feeling in her gut that he'd gone and done something really stupid.
"Doesn't matter." was his answer and that confirmed it in her mind that this was not something unimportant.
"What does that mean? Vaughn, what's goin' on? Sark talked, didn't he, and you know where Lauren is." She asked him, sounding like she cared for him and all, if someone overheard it and knew of the little fairytail screw-up they were. Fuck! I'm going to kill Sark.
"I'm taking care of it." Was what he only said to her, and that sounded seriously bad and was that rain she heard from his end? Bad, bad, bad.
"I don't know what you're thinking, but you cannot do this, Michael. If you kill her, you will be arrested and charged with her murder. If you're not, if you get away with it, it'll haunt you, Michael. God, after everything we've been through, I'll lose you all over again." She told him, trying to use the fairytail thing on him and sounding all desperate. If you kill her, I'll kill you. You jealous son of a bitch.
"I have to go." He told her, and hung up. He hung up on her. He. Fucking. Hung. Up. On. Her! His damn "soulmate".
"You're sure the computation is exact?" She asked the kinda nice looking, italian () geek. She didn't want any miscalculating, and neither did Sydney.
"It's all good. ... Someone went through a lot of hoo-hah to encrypted a longitude and a latitude. What the hell is in Palermo?" He asked her, and she just thought : God, can't this guy shut up! She had had dealings with him before and he talked non-stop.
She saw some coordintes and such on the guy's screen :
(38deg 07' N, 13deg 21' E
YA(cosh(X/L)C-1)
XL/C(cosh-1)(1+Y/A)
where A/((Q2/Q1)-1)?
Ccosh-1(Q2/Q1)3.0022)
"You're payed to be discreet, not curious." She told him, as he went to the suitcase with the money that was supposedly for him. I HATE computer geeks. I wonder if they're all like this.
"That's okay, beautiful. This will keep my mouth shut." He told her, as he stared at the money like it was something really beautiful. But that was the third time he had called her something other than her name, and seriously, no one except two people got to call her anything but her name.
"So will this." She told him, as she shot. Enough was enough. Plus, he had done his part anyways. But as she packed some stuff together, and then walked towards the exit she's knocked out.
"I need the tape from the Sark interrogation." Sydney told a tech guy who's name she had never bothered to learn. I want to see the damage that both pricks have done. She was seriously angry with Sark telling Yawn (as she now liked to call him), also she just knew that Yawn needed to feel in control and would take that out on her boyfriend.
"Actually, that's been classified." The tech guy tells her, she suspected that but just to be sure asks "by who?" And he tells her it was her "wonderful" father. Well, he didn't say wonderful. That would have been weird, he didn't even say her father. He said Jack Bristow. So, she goes in search of her dad and when she finds him she tells him;
"I want that tape." I hate you, dad. She thought, as she demanded the tapes from him. She knew he didn't haven them on him or anything, though that wouldn't surprise her, but he could get them.
"No, you don't. Not if you want what's best for Vaughn." He told her, like he knew what was best for her and had not told her a few months ago that Vaughn was just a boy who was never good enough for her. Like I give a rat's ass. Oh, my how things change.
"You know what he's going to do if we don't stop him." She told him, looking shocked and her father probably thought it was at the thought of her boyscout committing pre-meditated murder. But she only thought that she had to stop him, because her and Lauren were now...friends. And she was not going to lose yet another fucking friend to murder.
"Yes. He'll get closure." Her dad told her, and she just wanted to throw up. Oh, please kill me now. She thought because who knew her dad was like that.
"You want him to kill Lauren." She told him, not a question. It was quite obvious. You son of a bitch. She just thought about him, as he stood there and pretended to be this man who cared for anyone but himself.
"If he doesn't, it will eat at him like a cancer. The only cure is to end it, now. She destroyed Vaughn's life." He told her, and many others would have said that proved that he was thinking about Vaughn's mental health. Yeah, right. This is so about you and mom.
"Vaughn's life, not yours. This is about what Lauren did to Vaughn, not what mom did to you. I don't know what you've told him or how much of all this you've orchestrated, but in some twisted way, you've got Vaughn carrying your burden, trying to get you closure by doing the one thing you never had a chance to do, kill the person who betrayed you." She told him, it was really starting to show how angry she really was. Even though I don't like him that's really unfair to him. My father using him like that.
"I did have a chance, and I didn't take it. And not a day went by that I didn't regret letting her go. Vaughn will feel the same way. He will end up like me, and I love you too much to let that happen." Her father told her, kinda sharply and annoyed at her attitude. Love me too much? If you loved me so much why didn't you at least try and save Danny. Sloane fucking trusted you, you could have tried, you selfish son of a bitch. Yes, she was still hurt about that. Why do you think she joined her mom when she contacted her when she got that month off after Danny's funeral. And yes, she had been ready to betray the CIA, and she had just helped them a bit first.
Lauren came to and found that she was strung up like fish to dry. At least she hadn't been gutted or something disgusting like that.
"Michael, please, I need to ask you to understand. When the Covenant asked me to marry you, I knew eventually they'd want me to coax you back into the CIA. Two years went by, and I hadn't heard from them, and by then I'd convinced myself I never would. I prayed I wouldn't, because I'd fallen in love with you." She told him, as she looked at the idiot she had been married to for nearly two years. Oh, god. He's finally snapped. It had to happen sometime. I just wish I hadn't been around. Where the fuck are you, Syd?
"Shut up! I am going to erase you. I'm going to remove any evidence you ever existed. You used me, you used my grief, my work, who I am. You took that from me. I'm, taking it back. This is hydrochloric acid. You'll be unrecognisable." He practically yelled in her face, and despite being hung up by her hands by a maniac, she just thought God, dramatic much? (Yes, she was aware that was something Cordelia from Buffy used to say. What could she say, she liked the show. It had a bite in it.) He's totally flipped his wig now.
"Michael, I swear I was going to tell you everything. Remember that night we went downtown and had dinner? Instead, you told me Sydney was back. She came back, and you didn't need me anymore. I could see it in your eyes. Sydney came back, and..." She told him, still holding up some semblance of authentic feelings towards the freak. Maybe didn't love him, but it had still hurt a bit.
"I said don't say her name." He yells at her, and she is so getting tired of his...his tantrum. For crying out loud! "I hate you, but I love Sydney more. That's the only reason you're not dying tonight." He tells her, trying to use a low creepy voice but actually just sounds kinda broken. Great, because you love her your not killing me? Wow, Thanks. She thinks and just as she looks at him again, she sees blood coming out of his mouth and her mouth forms a wide smile.
"Thank God." She says, as she spit on his fallen form and tries to kick him before she gets her hands free.Son Of A Bitch! Yeah, she was impatient.
"Vaughn, you're going to be okay." Let's hope not. she thinks but tells him some bullshit, as they roll him towards somewhere to operate on him. She didn't really care that much. She stays there for awhile. Playing her part perfectly.
"I heard. Is he still in surgery?" Her father comes up to her, and looks so...so compassionate and she wanted to throw up. Like he gives a fuck. She knows he said they can't loose Vaughn like three years ago or something, but did he ever really care?
"You were right. Lauren has to pay." She tells him, all serious but is thinking blah, blah, blah. Bite me. Sure it was childish and all, but right now she just couldn't seem to care at all.
"Vaughn is going to be okay, and when he is, he has to end it, not you." He tells her, like he can decide something like that. She almost rolls her eyes at her old man.
"If it's okay for Vaughn it's okay for me. I need your help... expedited credentials, transportation..." She tells him, and she just knows he ain't giving up yet. Stubborn. They were all so damn stubborn.
"My advice was specific to Lauren's betrayal of him." She's told, but she doesn't give a damn. If she really wanted, she would. Like she couldn't do it on her own, if she really wanted to.
"Lauren betrayed all of us." Sydney tells him, and she did know it was a possibility and she would really kill her when it came to that but that had yet to happen to her knowledge and had proved herself to be an all right friend.
"Not in the same way. She was his wife." He tells her, and she just thinks yeah, and I'm your daughter.
"I don't care about any of that now. I want her to die, and that's going to happen whether you help me or not." She told him, in that stubborn way that told him she wasn't going to move an inch on this. Well, the Lauren getting dead, that was probably bound to change.
Sark looked up from where he was sitting on the cot they called a bed and saw socontactsme guards walking into the next cell with Lauren Reed. Barbie, as Syd had called her once. He stood up and went closer to her, as they took of her handcuffs.
"When I went to meet your contact, Vaughn was there. He was your contact. You set the meeting. Did you set me up?" She said, and sure it sounded like her and all but something was off. It could be that they were trying to pull of what they had done when Lauren dressed up as Syd and did the sandwich shopping for Nadia. Giving Syd an alibi, well, a kinda alibi.
"It's okay, I would have told them too." She said and that was actually true. "Let me see what they've done to you." She beckons him to come closer, and when her hand is on his cheek he know this is his girlfriend. He just savours the touch for a few seconds. I really hope Vaughn doesn't die, because I'm going to kill him for this. Syd thought.
"My mother's hired a lawyer. He'll be here soon. The only way we can get the location is if I tell him how to access your contact's information."
"He backs up everything on an off-site server." He tells her, and hopes she knows what she's doing. He was 100 sure that they were being watched. Maybe someone had already gone there. Maybe Lauren, or something. Maybe they had nothing to loose.
"Tell me you know the passphrase." She tells him, and wonders why she doesn't have it. Well, why she thinks that Lauren wouldn't know. Well, actually maybe she didn't because the guy had just changed his password because he was paranoid as hell but rightfully so.
"I do. It's a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche." He tells her, and if they were alone she would probably call him a prick or something. Even though it wasn't his password.
"God is dead." She said, and he just thought didn't she know that was way too obvious.
"No, the other one. Woman was God's second mistake." He tells her, and he wished he could smirk or something but well, he was just really tired for some reason. She grabs him and gets a choke hold on him. They're watching, right. They're fucking watching. "Sorry." Is whispered into his ear so low that no one but him heard it.
"Thank you." She tells him, as she lets him go and takes of the Lauren mask. "Voice modulator courtesy of CIA technical services." She tells him, in her regular voice. Same thing they used when Lauren dressed up as Syd.
"This little trick of yours means Vaughn failed. Tell me, is he dead." He asks her, all shocked and shit Please, let him be bloody dead. He hoped agent bore was dead, but that guy had more lives than 4 cats together.
"No, he's not. But thanks to you, Lauren won't be so lucky." She tells him, all acting above him and angry at what happened. Drama queen. You just had to do that.
"The equation leads to Palermo." Sydney tells her dad, on the phone. Not like we were ever going there. Different team. As she stuffed some junk in a bag. Not much she wanted to take with her.
"False ID, passport, drivers license. Plane from ? Aerospace is standing by with instructions to take you wherever you want to go. If this is the location of the artifact, there will be a strong Covenant presence." He tells her. Awww, how sweet or something like that. Of course there was a strong Covenant thing there, it was their dig after all.
"I'll be careful." She tells him. Not like I'll be in any danger.
"Let me go instead." He tells her, trying to keep her safe like she's some kid that actually still needs him.
"I can't." Is her obvious answer. I can't because that'll fuck everything up. Can't have that, can we? She zones out on him for a bit, as she looks around her place to see if there's anything she's missing. Yes, where the hell is her ring that Danny gave her. She had off course taken it with her before the house was torched, like she'd actually burn stuff that was sooo close to her heart. It was all at her mom's place.
"..." Her dad had just said something, but she hadn't noticed because of her search for her ring. It was probably nothing important anyway.
"What?" She asks, and maybe thinks he noticed her little black out, but he doesn't seem to as he says ; "Nothing. We'll talk when you get back." He tells her, all 100 percent sure that she's coming back. Sorry, not coming back, Dad. Lauren has already picked up Kat and one her way home.
"How're you doing?" Weiss asked his best friend, as he woke up but his friend looked kinda panicked. He sat up and looked around.
"Where's Sydney?" He asked him, and looked again around. Damn, what was it now? What drama was between them now. Seriously, it was getting a bit old.
"Tell me where she is." Vaughn practically orders Weiss, and that's something Weiss isn't so fond of. He could at least ask nicely.
"She went after Lauren." Weiss told him, and he just knew that his friend was going to do something insanely stupid. Vaughn was just so umh, different from before he met Sydney.
"No no no, have to get her." Vaughn starts to say, as he sits up again and starts to try and get out of bed. See, stupid. Weiss pushes him back down.
"No no no no, Mike, you've got a punctured lung. There's a guard outside the door. Foster's got the building locked down. He revoked your clearance pending investigation of your rogue op. You're not going anywhere." Weiss told him, and had this look on his face that said 'and that's final.'
"I have to get to Syd." He tells his friend, who was being a pain in his ass right about now.
"What? Why?" He asks, finally cracking and wanting to know what is so damn important.
"Lauren didn't stab me. Sydney did." Vaughn tells Weiss, who's jaw goes to the floor. He's shocked out of his socks. She stabbed him? Again?
To Be Continued...
A/N # 2 : Yeah, so fucking long. Damn it, and when I wrote this had yet to punch in more that half. God. It's 7:07 am on our independence day. I shouldn't have spent all night doing anything besides sleeping. Now I want sleep, I've been a bit under the weather. :yucky:(
Well, I hope this part wasn't too horrible and that you enjoyed my version of the ses. 3 finale. ;) Please, pretty, pretty please leave a reply. You know what they do to me. :p
Dru, 17.06.2005