Title: There But For The Grace Of You, Go I.
Rating: R
Category: Romance/Angst (dark images shall abound at first, and this Vaughn is not going to be Fluffy Bunny Vaughn)
Spoilers: Nothing past Season 1
Disclaimer: They're not mine. It took me 24 steps to admit that. I had to do the class twice
Summary: Rambaldi gives Vaughn a second chance he'd thought impossible.
Notes: Surprise! News of my death has been exaggerated but not by much I gotta say! Seriously though, I must apologise for the delay, but hey on the bright side of things, the angst should severely decrease from here on in and you actually get some answers. Kind of. Although they do pose many more questions.
I should mention that all mistakes are my own as I am beta-less, and I do apologise for any glaring ones, but I am posting this at 4am...need I say more?
And btw for those who are not Eliot mad (why aren't you btw?), the first line is a bastardisation of the first line of Rhapsody on a Windy Night, more commonly known to some as 'Memory' from Cats.
And without further adieu...on with the story
Chapter 3
Rhapsody On A Windy Night
Midnight. Still early for any night in LA, but on this night even the pavement was silent. The moon shone down on the pier and onto the water, where waves lapped and sand and shore silently, hushed, waiting...
It was the first time he had been to the pier since Sydney's death, and he found it disconcerting that despite all the many changes LA's cityscape had seen, this place remained the same. This was why he had refused to come back here. Here it was so easy to slip back into the pleasant fiction that he was waiting for her, that she was just a little late, that he would turn, would see her and would not feel the gnawing emptiness that he had carried around with him for too long now. But despite knowing all of this, he had come here tonight. It was not the first stop he had made on his impromptu stroll down memory lane, rather it was his last.
He had gone to the warehouse, but the dankness only reminded him of the chill that pervaded right to the very core of him. He had gone to the train station, and as he sat waiting, it became painfully obvious that a scene where so many joyful reunions and tearful farewells would hardly be appropriate for this long overdue wake. So –almost desperately- he returned, back to the pier, to a place he had forsworn for so long, and as he listened to the sound of waves, he let the memories come. He did not hide from them, run from them, drink them away or resolutely close the door; instead he let each wash over him.
The mission had been nothing special, just a simple dead drop. Sydney had been disappointed when he'd told her that he wouldn't be meeting her for the usual debrief as Devlin had deemed it unnecessary, but he had joked with her about how for once she wouldn't have to worry about tails when driving.
Jack had called him half an hour after the time she was meant to have passed that disc to their guy at the airport. He had been watching a Kings game; idly dreaming about when he would be able to share something as simple as this with her and it had actually taken a moment to register that the phone was ringing.
It seemed wrong that he didn't 'know' before he picked up the phone. He somehow thought that the connection that he and Sydney shared would act as their personal alarm system. He'd always thought that if something went wrong, his gut would have warned him hours before, or he'd feel her calling him. As naïve as it was, he not only believed that, but took comfort in it. By the time he put down the phone he had stopped believing in anything at all.
Instead of a disc being left at the appointed dead drop, Sloane had left Sydney's broken body, There for all to see. Her dignity stripped away and her beautiful features almost unrecognizable due to trauma, blood and god knows what else.
Had it been anyone else breaking the news to him, Vaughn would have refused to believe it. Would have assumed it was a trap, a hideous joke, a test, anything but the truth. But it was Jack telling him, Jack who voice sounded as if he had eaten glass.
The numbness that insulated him lasted only as long as his trip to the morgue. Jack had told him where Sydney was, and he had gone down, needing to see her one last time. Staring down it dawned on Vaughn that this was the first time he had seen Sydney nude and it struck him as exquisitely amusing and appropriate. The sound of his laughter echoed off all the metal hollowness of the morgue and he laughed until he was sick. Literally. One moment he was hysterical, the next moment he was on his knees retching violently with tears pouring down his face.
Spent, he found himself falling forward, and but for a pair of hands, he would have crashed heedless, face first into his own vomit. Looking up through tear-blurred eyes, he saw the ravaged countenance of Jack Bristow. A man, who in a day had aged at least ten years. With his help, Vaughn got to his feet, and turning around once more to where the shell of Sydney lay, carefully covering her body with the sheet before he kissed her lips for the last and first time.
And so he had lived –for want of a better word- a strange half-life, living not because he wanted to but because he owed it to Sydney . Moving from one mission to another, with empty Finlandia bottles as the punctuation, which broke up the days and nights, till Jack had come to meet him that second night. The night they had captured Sloane and the night that they had found out what The Final Design was really all about.
All logic dictated that he should have thrown Jack out. It was too ridiculous, even for Rambaldi, and that was saying something, but Sloane believed in it and for some reason so did Jack and against his will so did Vaughn. He didn't know if it was belief so much as hope. The desperate hope that an inmate on death-row has when praying for clemency.
A time machine.
The CIA on realizing what Rambaldi's end project was terminated the research and the whole Rambaldi quest deeming it frivolous and just plain insane. But Jack and Vaughn knew better.
At least they hoped they did. Desperate people do desperate things and Vaughn and Jack had reach and passed desperation several years ago.
After months of studying in secret the specs and trying to deal with formulas that defied all modern teaching it was ready for it's first human trial. There was never a question of whom it would be.
Moving away from the pier Vaughn decided to head to one last place. One last place to make his night's pilgrimage complete.
Standing in front of Sydney's gravestone he realised that this was the first time he had actually come here since the funeral.
"Syd," He whispered hoarsely "Wish me luck for tomorrow."
He found himself straining, as if to catch a hint of her voice on the gentle breeze that ruffled all the trees around him
"I love you Sydney and I always will. I just wanted you to know that."
Noticing for the first time the pale streaks that laced the overhead sky he hurried away, anxious to get back to a Past that was his only hope for their future.
"Are you ready?" Vaughn found it hard to believe that Jack had actually asked him that question. He didn't think it was necessary to reply
"Are you receiving all my alpha patterns?" He asked in reply, twitching the various leads attached to his head. "And are you sure that the serum's strength will work...on a human anyway?"
"No I'm not sure," Jack snapped back "It's not an exact science Vaughn, you know that. All the test subjects weren't exactly in a position to tell us whether we successfully managed to send them back."
"They were rats Jack! For fuck's sake what the hell is wrong with you?" Vaughn couldn't believe that Jack, Jack Bristow of all people was nervous before a mission.
"What's wrong with me," Jack icily bit back "is that you are trialling an untested device designed by a mediaeval mystic. What's wrong is that any test we have done has rendered the test subject useless, in a permanent coma, their brainwaves following a pattern that cannot be mapped or explained. What's wrong is that even if this does work you won't come back. What's wrong is that..."
"I don't care what happens to me Jack," Vaughn shouted, furious at Jack's sudden squeamishness.
"But I do." Jack roared back. His legendary calm splintering and slicing through Vaughn's righteous fury.
"I have to do this Jack...you know that." It was quietly said, but his last comment seemed to affect the man in front of him far more than his anger
"I know."
And with a nod of decision, Jack Bristow flicked the switch and device rumbled into awareness moving all around him like some out of control fair ride.
Despite the sickening speed Vaughn felt calm, and in control in a way he hadn't been in years. All his senses seemed to have heightened and as everything spun in a blur before him he could here each of his heartbeats, and with each beat a picture formed in his mind of Sydney. Always Sydney.
Sydney with her bozo red hair.
Sydney yelling at him.
Sydney smiling tentatively.
Sydney crying.
...Sydney
And then everything stopped.
The sickeningly fast movement of the machine.
The visions.
His heartbeat.
And as he opened his eyes, Vaughn's felt himself re-born. Everything that was once so important meant nothing, and everything that he had thought so complicated so was so damned easy, because not more than ten feet away from him sat Sydney. Younger than she had ever been when he had known her. But so beautiful it made him ache.
And though Vaughn knew his mission had just begun, for just a moment he allowed himself to hope.