Title: Fade
Author: agent otter
Summary: "It's safer that way, to remain constantly on the move. But this isn't the first time that they've sacrificed safety for something else." Sydney/Vaughn
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own Alias or anything having to do with it, but if I did I'd be seeing a lot more of Bradley Cooper. And I mean that in several literal ways.
Author's note: For some reason I seem to be writing a series of stories in which main characters are on road trips and I'm writing in present tense. Uh... sorry.

A rush of stale air hits him in the face as he yanks open the laundromat door and steps inside. The chairs along the wall are worn orange plastic, and the interior smells like fabric softener and resignation.

There's only three people in the place this afternoon, and he sizes them up quickly, automatically, with the wary eye of a man who has grown used to expecting attack from unexpected quarters. He didn't used to do that, but a lot of things have changed, and that's one of the smaller ones. He sees the elderly Asian woman dozing in one of the chairs, the twenty-something man loading up a dryer. He doesn't rule them out as a threat, but they aren't why he's come.

Sydney didn't turn to see him enter, but the angle of the open dryer door to her right provides her with a rear-view that's clear enough to watch his movements. He crosses the distance between them with a handful of halting steps, his knees a little weaker than he'd like them to be. She doesn't turn around, just bends to pull her wet clothes from the basket at her feet and throw them into one of the dryers, a handful at a time.

She leans over to pick up more laundry, and his hand reaches out, wraps gently around her arm, just above the elbow, redirects her motion away from the basket. There's a sudden flood of memories and when she turns, into his arms, he wants to kiss her like he did then. But they have no time -- there was never time or patience or safety enough to make things work -- and instead he wraps one arm around her shoulders, shoves his other hand into his jacket pocket and fingers the pistol there, warmed by his body heat.

She doesn't ask any questions as he ushers her out the back door, checks for tails or threats or big men with machine guns, and finally hurries her down the alleyway, hugging the wall, out to the street where there's a beat-up Chevy sedan idling. She climbs into the passenger seat and he slips behind the wheel, and they move off down the road at a perfectly reasonable pace, no matter how much he wants to push the accelerator all the way to the floor.

He has more patience now, there's more deliberation in his action, and he's a little harder around the edges. He's grown a thin, precise beard that makes him look older. She can see all of this, and tells him with a look that she can't really find it in herself to approve.

"How's your partner?" she finally says, after a half an hour of silence and watching the highway roll by under the afternoon sun. "What's his name? Goldberg?"

"Goldman," he corrects. He fishes one-handed behind her seat, eventually emerging triumphant with a pair of sunglasses in his hand. "He died a couple of months ago." He chuckles a little, inappropriately, then gives her what might pass for an apologetic glance, if the smooth black lenses over his eyes had betrayed anything. "He was shot seven times in a raid on a K-Directorate facility," Vaughn explains, "and when he miraculously survived it they told him 'Sorry, while we were digging around in there we found the mother of all tumors. You'll be dead within a week.' He hung on for two."

Sydney looks down at the worn carpet between her feet. It's dark gray and reveals nothing. "I'm sorry," she says, and she feels bad that she pretended to hardly remember the man. She remembers him. She remembers checking in with every source she had to make sure he wasn't a mole. To make sure he'd take care of Vaughn when she couldn't. Wouldn't, she reminds herself. When she wouldn't.

Vaughn shrugs, a minute one-shouldered motion, and glances out the window as he changes lanes. That coldness, too, is new, and she wonders if there was more to Goldman than she knew. Had he and Vaughn fought constantly? Had he been a mole? Or had Vaughn just slipped far enough from the man he'd been that he could shrug off his partner's death and not even summon a frown?

"They've got me behind a desk again, for the time being," he says after a moment, conversationally. "Working with Jack on some counter-espionage ops." Another pause as he flounders, wondering why he brought it up, deciding to press forward anyway. "He misses you."

She doesn't nod or smile, just turns her head to look out the window and there's a curtain of long brown hair between them. He falls silent. When they stop at a gas station, she goes into the bathroom and emerges with a shorter haircut, just brushing her shoulders, and she's wearing entirely new clothes: drawstring cargo pants, a long-sleeve shirt with a t-shirt over the top, well-worn sneakers. It almost makes her feel like a college student again. He's already outside, pumping gas, not into the sedan, but into an equally beat-up van. He's changed, too, into a pair of loose jeans and sneakers of his own, and a plain white t-shirt. He turns around and she's almost grateful to see that the severe beard has been shaved off entirely. It takes ten years off his face.

He smiles at her as she climbs into the van, and she thinks that they must look for all the world like two young people in love. They're both adept, now, at playing the parts for which they are cast, then throwing the roles aside when they're done. She feels bad about it, sometimes, but she isn't sure whether she ever knew another way to live.

She doesn't ask where they're going; she doesn't want to know. She doesn't ask what they're running from, either, but that's only because she already knows. Instead she shifts in her seat, leans back against the door, and watches him as he drives.

He seems thinner than she remembers, but stronger too. Wiry. His hands look rougher, thicker around the knuckles and a little calloused, and she guesses that he's been spending a lot of time at the gym, in the boxing ring. She wonders if he still takes Donovan for a run every morning. The wrinkles on his forehead are a little deeper, the crow's feet around his eyes a little more pronounced.

"You look tired," she finally proclaims.

"I am," he replies, but that's all he says.

She lets the silence unravel for awhile, then says, in a voice almost too soft to hear, "How's my dad?"

Vaughn shrugs again, but this time she can tell that he does care. She thinks maybe he's just trying not to rub in the fact that he cares more than she does.

"He's not as mobile as he used to be," Vaughn says. "But he gets by okay. No complaints."

She tries to picture the two of them together, her battle-scarred father -- with a cane, now, to help him walk with a shattered knee -- and this new, harder version of her once-lover. She decides that it makes a perfectly natural image, to imagine the two of them in a quiet corner of the Ops Center, analyzing intelligence data and being silent together. She thinks that he probably appreciates the quiet now, so she doesn't speak either, and dozes in the passenger seat instead.

Vaughn navigates the van through a bumpy maze of highways, rural routes, and dirt roads in circuitous routes before he finally parks the vehicle in the dubious shelter of a crumbling barn. He touches her shoulder lightly, and she follows him as he squeezes between the front seats and into the back of the vehicle.

There's a mattress laid out on the floor, so that one of them can sleep while the other drives. It's safer that way, to remain constantly on the move. But this isn't the first time that they've sacrificed safety for something else.

He reaches for her tentatively, as if he isn't sure of himself or her anymore. But she meets his hand halfway, catching it with hers, slipping in closer in the cramped confines of the van and placing his palm against her hip. They shed their disguises slowly, as if there's pain in their joints from the process of laying themselves bare, but when they stumble over each other and land in a tangle on the mattress, they both manage to laugh. They make love almost as tenderly as she remembers it, but his hands are less certain now, endearingly clumsy, and she has to concentrate to keep from choking on the love and desperation and hopelessness and fear that grip her throat.

When fatigue and emotion finally send them into exhausted sleep, she slips her hand into his and curls up on her side, her face pressed against his shoulder, as she drifts away.

* * *

The van is moving again when she wakes, and though she immediately recognizes her surroundings, knows that she's safe, she still curses herself for carelessness. She should've woken when he moved, much less when he started the vehicle and pulled back out onto those poorly maintained roads. But a glance up between the front seats reveals that they're back on the highway. She snatches up her clothes, slips into them, then wriggles her way back between the seats and collapses on the passenger side.

He looks over and smiles a tiny little smile, but doesn't seem to mind that she's just sitting there again, watching him.

"Why didn't we work?" she asks suddenly.

The swerve is slight, and she wouldn't have noticed it if she weren't trained for that kind of thing, and if it hadn't been accompanied by the tightening of his jaw.

"Because you decided to play the martyr and go into hiding," he answers. His lips hardly move and the words grate out from between his teeth.

"We were falling apart long before that," she argues, shaking her head.

"No."

"Yes."

"We would've been fine. But you gave up on us." He shoots her a glare that's accusing and angry. She shrinks back a little against the door.

"We weren't fine. My father was on a suicidal bender and--"

"Francie wasn't your fault."

The silence in the car would be absolute, if the van were better insulated against road noise. All they can hear is the steady hiss of tires on the roadway.

"Things get hard sometimes, Sydney," he finally says, and his voice is a cracking murmur. "You know that better than anyone. But you can't just run away when you're about to break. It doesn't help to put you back together." He looks at her, long and hard. "That's supposed to be my job. You're supposed to let me be there for you."

"Watch the road," she chides, and then she snaps her mouth shut, because she's sure if she makes another noise it'll be a sob, and she can't afford to collapse. Not now.

But he seems to know how close she is to that edge, and he glances at her again. "You can't be so fucking strong all the time," he says. "It's not fair to us mere mortals."

* * *

They squabble constantly when they're together, but he doesn't seem to want the road trip to end; each day he begs her for one more day and each day she gives in because it's been over a year since she's seen him and she didn't remember any of it feeling so good. When she realizes that he's steadily winding his way west -- back toward California -- she asks him to stop in a K-Mart parking lot in Phoenix. They slip into the back of the van again, and when he's fallen asleep, she pulls on her clothes, grabs that duffle that contains the supplies he brought for her, and makes her escape out the back door. He wakes as she's leaving, but it's morning by then, the K-Mart is open, and he can't just dash out of the van without any clothes on. By the time he's pulled on his pants, she's gone.

* * *

To be continued, I guess. :)