Title: Tabula Rasa

Author: LegalBlonde

Rating: G

Pairing: S/V

Spoilers/Timeline: None, future

Summary:  Sydney, Vaughn, angst, romance. 

Disclaimer:  JJ has lots of money.  I have none.  JJ owns lots of characters.  I own none.

Author's Note: This was written for the SD-1 May challenge.  Flowers, baseball, a movie quote.  What movie quote?  "Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."  From The Matrix, of course.  (Is it May 15 yet?)

She doesn't know exactly how it happened.  There was "my mother is my mother" and "I'm not putting my job in front of you" and "you used my razor again" and "why didn't you call" and "never question where my loyalties lie".  And then there is nothing.  She opens the door to a puff of stale air, the smell of a house sitting empty too long.  Her feet pad across the still-clean carpet and her hand trails along the kitchen counter.  She does not set down her bag until she reaches the bedroom, where the pillows are fluffed and the bed is made.  She lets the bag fall from her shoulder with a thud, denting the pristine peace of the perfectly-covered mattress.  She knows there will be a note, neat script on a lined yellow page, and a message, blinking red light on the black machine, and it won't be Joey's pizza this time.  It will be "I'm so sorry" and "I just need some time" and "it's not you, it's me" and "can we talk in person" she knows she will read it until it falls apart at the precise creases or play it until the machine starts to click and stick at the beginning, and she will have a cool glass of wine and a warm bath and she will begin the long business of forgetting. 

DC or North Texas or even Wisconsin.  She will work from another office for a while, saying she can better direct Sloane's investigation from there, citing a specialist or an artifact or a team.  She will put a bronze-colored lockbox on the door and a bored agent across the street, and she will pack up her life in a matched set of black leather luggage, taking her dark suits and her light shirts and the stick of yellow concealer that covers the circles under her eyes.  She will leave  behind photographs and letters and a thin stack of printed emails, she will take the old perfume and not the new, she will leave the new leather-bound set of poetry books behind and stuff her old paperbacks into her bags.  She will tap out her new life on a taupe-colored keyboard, sitting straight at an angular metal desk with a center drawer that sticks.  She will stack the paperwork up on either side, three stacks on the left and two on the right, and she will love searching through reams of Echelon data.  At least, she will try. 

She will learn a new language.  There's popular dialect of Farsi she's not familiar with, and she's never mastered Dutch.  She will write a paper.  One professor always told her what potential she had, said she might publish, poise her herself perfectly on the tenure track.  She can add her name to the dusty archives of bland literary journals, she can close her eyes and dream about her cluttered office and eager students and her bright future in a job she will never have.   

**********

He will go to a hockey game.  He will sit in the fourth row and have two beers, or maybe three.  He will buy a bag of peanuts and crack open the shells and let the red husks fall onto his shirt and not bother to brush them off.  She always hated that.  He will jump to his feet and cheer at the goals and the fights and when it's time for the Zamboni, he will turn his head and leave the row and wait in the long refreshments line. 

He will go to a baseball game.  He will wear a dingy Mets cap turned backward and a t-shirt with "Walk for Hope 10k 1999" across the back and he will run his hands down the worn fabric of his jeans.  He will choose a night game, so he can return home late and fall soon to sleep.  He will buy a hot dog, and he will not bring his glove, because she always wanted to do that, and always believed she would catch the home run. 

He will move to a different desk.  Work harder, arrive earlier, and stop rushing out the doors to get home.  He was a rising star once, a prospect, an up-and-comer, a company man.  He will be one again.  He will wear dark suits and white shirts and red ties.  He will speak precisely and act cautiously and keep his head bent over his desk.  He will accept the promotion, even if it means a transfer, and he will close his eyes and picture a bigger desk, in a private office, with a wood-laminate nameplate that says Michael C. Vaughn.  He will use his middle initial; it sounds more official.  He will pack away the picture frames and hang his diploma on the wall, summa cum laude embossed in crimson for all to see. 

He will close his eyes when the ache starts behind his forehead, he will keep a package of aspirin and a bottle of water in the lower right-hand drawer of his desk.  And the bright colors and scents and sounds of memory will fade, leaving his world a dull, immaculate gray.