IF YOU'D LIKE, YOU CAN SKIP THE REST OF THIS INTRODUCTORY NONSENSE.

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Author: Alexis

E-mail: [email protected]

Feedback: Please, it would be much appreciated.

Distribution: Cover Me. Others please let me know.

Rating: PG to PG-13 to R for language (depending on chapter)

Classification: Romance, humor, drama, a little angst every now and then.

Spoilers: None. This story spans the timeline of pretty much the entire first season, but in a sort of Alternate Universe. Some actual Alias plotlines do apply though; everything you need to know will be in the text.

Summary: It's kind of hard to summarize--the focus is on the detail, not the plot. It's mainly about Sydney and Vaughn's relationship, and not much else. I like to think of it as taking the "Felicity approach to Alias."

Disclaimer: I don't own a damn thing. (JJ and the cool people at ABC and Bad Robot do.)

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chapter/one// DINNERTIME SHADOWING

Buying a blender together: that was what solidified Michael's and Alice's status as a couple, and--as it turned out--was also the cause for their break-up, more or less.

Michael, Vaughn to most (although he preferred to be called by his first name; people calling him by his last name made him feel like the male character in a Jane Austen novel), knew that much. His relationship with Alice and their status as A Couple wasn't the result of numerous dinners together with friends (all of which were couples, just like them), or the fact that they slept in the same bed practically every night (in his house, although she didn't live there), or the assertion of monogamy ("I trust you, I love you, etc, etc..), or the kissing, or the holding-hands-in-the-park, or the reciprocation of affection, or the near-proposal (on a whim, and a sudden rush of exhilaration, he almost, almost got down on one knee). No, it was the shopping excursion to buy a blender. That was what did it.

Nothing spelled out C-O-U-P-L-E more than going out to buy home appliances, together--so that you and your partner could come to a mutual agreement on the purchase of something you would mutually share. Michael wasn't exactly sure how they got to the point where they decided that they needed to buy a blender; after all, Alice didn't live there (even though she was there an awful lot), and neither of them cooked, which made the odds of either of them needing to blend something wildly out-of-favor. He did remember, however, a conversation whereby Alice had suggested that the kitchen needed to be spruced up; aside from all the regular kitchen constituents, all he had was a toaster and a microwave. He had probably just acquiesced to the demand to avoid another petty argument about his lifestyle, which, by all accounts, was exactly what most of their arguments were about.

* * * * * *

"Who is Sydney Bristow?"

She didn't very much fancy people who talked about themselves in the third person, especially to themselves. But she couldn't help it... "Who the hell is Sydney Bristow?"

Sydney stood in front of her mirror, staring intently at her reflection the same way you stared intently at paintings in museums--not knowing exactly what you were looking at or what you were looking for, just knowing that there was something there to contemplate.

Usually people who tried to identify themselves did so by recounting things they had done. So: she had inadvertently killed two people she really, really cared about (one, her fiance; the other, an ex-boyfriend who probably would have been her fiance had he not left so abruptly). She had made her cold-as-dry-ice father--who had, admittedly, warmed up since--revert back to his cold state, by suggesting that she find her mother, the woman that tore his heart out, ripped it to pieces, and used it as confetti at a KGB party. She had made a habit of routinely kicking everyone's ass (all of them bad, mind you.) She had friends who believed she worked for a bank, when in fact she worked for the corporation of evil. In a nutshell, she had been living a double life within a double life: lying about one thing to the first person; telling the truth about that same thing--but at the same time lying about another thing--to the second person; and lying about everything altogether to the third person. What a life it was, indeed.

It would take too much time to justify all these actions and Sydney knew that, though she also knew exactly what those justifications would be. So she stuck to her late-evening routine: a bath (she just got out of one, so that was done), followed by some peaceful reading in bed, with candles and red wine.

She pulled out a copy of Wuthering Heights, a copy that she had purchased at Border's the week before; she already owned a copy, but it was one of her mother's and for obvious reasons she didn't want to read that one.

* * * * * *

Michael didn't miss Alice--not really. They were always arguing--many of them were tiny disagreements, but every now and then they would have the massive blow-up, so massive that a relative stranger would be able to detect that it happened (Sydney, a while back, asked him if he and "his wife" had had a fight), and she was always nagging him, although the nagging didn't bother him so much. He was used to nagging: from his mother ("How come you don't have a wife... where are my grandchildren?"), from friends ("What do you mean you can't go out, it's Friday!?"), from past girlfriends ("All men are noncommittal fools!"), even from coworkers ("You're too emotionally attached!"). No, it wasn't the nagging. It was the introduction of other elements, the lack of understanding from the other party, and the fact that both these things turned everything into a complicated jumble.

First of all, Alice (a.) didn't understand things (b.) wasn't allowed to know about what she didn't understand, and (c.) became a raging maniac because she was wasn't allowed to know about things she didn't and shouldn't understand.

Did that make sense? Of course it didn't; but then again--what breakups do?

Like it was stated earlier, everything started and ended with The Blender. But it wasn't that the blender was the catalyst that led to the breakup, per se. (The blender wouldn't be like the match that ignited the dynamite; but rather, it would more likely be the person who handed the match to the person who used it to ignite the dynamite.)

Michael and Alice had an argument about his lifestyle--something about his job being his priority and not her (not an unusual complaint, many lonely housewives would say) and that he wasn't the person he once was. And that made him think, it made him reevaluate, it made him consider. Of course he wasn't the same person; he wasn't living the same life. (It would be rather unusual for the life someone was living to not correspond and correlate with the someone who was living that life.) And frankly speaking, his job was his priority; Alice hit that one right on the target.

The blender was a complicated matter, but easy to explain. You see, Alice wanted a Michael that wasn't Michael at all--an incarnation of a Michael that didn't and would never exist. She wanted a Michael that would be there all the time, a domestic Michael that would make malt beverages, and therefore be one to use a blender. That wasn't him; Michael knew that. In fact, he thought, they never should have bought the blender in the first place. It probably didn't seem like a big deal back then (he was just avoiding an argument, after all), but buying the blender together made some concession, however miniscule, to the existence of Alice's Michael Incarnate and it created a relationship based on a false reality. Alice wasn't aware of who he was, not then and especially not now. The whole blender thing helped him realize that.

The argument lasted quite a while, with its peaks and dips, high points and low points. It would crescendo and decrescendo from shouting matches to whispered confessions. Michael and Alice would alternate being target and shooter. And in the end, when all was said and done, Michael felt relieved--at a loss, but relieved.

* * * * * *

Sydney was sitting straight up in bed reading, though she wasn't exactly reading. Yes, she was silently reciting the words in her head, paragraph after paragraph, but her mind was elsewhere; it was drifting and wandering and exploring. She began thinking about herself--though she thought she was through with that already--and then she started to think about Danny, and how much she missed him.

Their breakup wasn't the result of an argument, unless you count the little disagreement they had shortly after the revelation of her true occupation, which Sydney didn't. It wasn't because they were drifting apart, and voluntarily decided to leave it at that. It wasn't because the powers-that-be prevented their love from blossoming (like if they were an angel and a devil in some sort of sci-fi movie). It wasn't because of religion, or conflicting interests, or parental disapproval, or anything equally trivial. It was because he was dead. Killed! Killed because of her!

One usually didn't recover from such a loss very easily. It was hard enough getting over your boyfriend who left you for the next girl, so you could imagine what this must've been like. He was taken from her against her will, and he was gone forever.

But thinking about Danny didn't make her sad, like it usually did. Actually, it was kind of pleasant. She remembered things she hadn't thought of in a while, little idiosyncrasies that made her chuckle every now and then: the way Danny proposed was the first thing that came to mind. And though she loved them, Danny was very much opposed to baths. ("You do nothing but soak in the filth you've accumulated throughout the day," he would say. She'd always assumed that his position on baths was the result of him being a doctor.) And Sydney never understood why Danny liked to order ridiculously simple home-foods at restaurants, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a grilled cheese sandwich, or better yet, cereal. Neither of them really cooked, but still... How hard was it to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at home, and what was so special about one from a restaurant? There were only so many ways you could specialize a two-ingredient sandwich, in her opinion. And there was practically nothing you could do to cereal.

Sydney put her book down; reading wasn't getting her anywhere, and although she enjoyed thinking about Danny, it wasn't safe to dwell in the past--not now, anyway. She had to sleep, and prepare for another strenuous day "at the office."

* * * * * *

Michael never really liked to throw Sydney into the whole "Alice breakup" equation. But she was there; she was a component. And now that Alice was gone, there was a vacancy, an open spot, and it was reserved.

But Sydney never really took notice to the opening, even though she was made aware of it's availability a couple of months ago.

The first time she met Vaughn she had blood spurting out of where a tooth used to be, her hair was "bozo" red (as she recalls him referencing it), and she had accused him--albeit, wrongly--of trying to play sneaky spy games with her. The second time they met she was too busy being Miss Thang to his rigid CIA persona. And the other times, well... either they weren't allowed to really look at each other, or they couldn't really see each other because they were in a barely-lighted warehouse, or they had too much on their minds to think about anything else. But now... now, it was different.

* * * * * *

Another mission meant another phone call from Joey's Pizza, which meant another secret meeting. So there they were yet again, in the self-storage facility, where, for some reason, darkness obscured half their faces. And for that reason, Vaughn thought, it was kind of weird admiring Sydney's face: one eye, half of her lips, a nostril. But nevermind, he would take all that he could get, and as of yet, this was all there was. As of yet...

Their conversations hardly ever deviated from the familiar branches: SD-6, CIA, the mission, the countermission, and every now and then, her problems, her apologies, her dad, her mom, his dad. All other exchanges not related to work were limited to mere small talk, small talk that consisted of a question followed by a couple-word response, then the same question redirected at the original asker. ("How was your Thanksgiving?" he would ask. "Good," she would say, "how was yours?") But today was different. They talked. And they talked some more.

They had a conversation--not a forced question-and-answer type of conversation, but a free-flowing, getting-lost-in-the-groove type of conversation. Sydney said she had to go because she had class and she had to write a paper on Upton Sinclair, then Michael said how much The Jungle disturbed him. Then she agreed and said how much her appetite for meat had since declined (just a little bit, right after reading it), then he smiled and said that he could never give up meat, and she smiled and agreed, and he further elaborated by saying he could never give up meat because of his favorite chinese foods, then she said that she loved chinese food and asked him which was his favorite restaurant. He managed to explain, quite articulately, that he didn't have a favorite restaurant because his favorite dish didn't exist in a single place; you had to mix and match. (The best fried rice was at the Chinese Kitchen downtown, the best egg rolls were at Egg Roll King uptown, and the best sweet and sour pork, or most of the other entrees for that matter, were at the Golden Fortune by his house.) She was--to his surprise--intrigued and interested. And before they knew it, they had agreed to a chinese-dinner date. How, you might ask? Well, the rest of the conversation went like this: (what was SAID is in normal type, what was THOUGHT is in italics).

Sydney: Yeah?

Michael: Yeah, but most of the time I just go to one place. But if I'm

motivated, I'll order take out from each place.

Sydney: I've never been to the Golden--what was it?

Michael: Fortune.

Sydney: Yeah.

Michael: You should try it. But you need to know what to order. They have

good sweet and sour pork, but if you want beef and broccoli... you

know, Chinese Kitchen has better beef and broccoli.

Sydney: Maybe I should take you when I go.

((Sydney: Oh god, that sounded like I was asking him out.))

Michael: Maybe.

((Michael: Did I just agree to go out with her? Now there's a weird silence. Break the

weird silence.))

Michael: I could show you how to order the perfect meal.

Sydney: I'd really like that.

Michael: Or maybe it'd be easier if I just ordered it and brought it to our next meeting. (beat) I mean, going place to place...

((Michael: Now that sounded like I just asked HER out for dinner.))

Sydney: Uh-huh.

((Sydney: Did I just agree to go to dinner with him?))

Michael: ...whenever our next meeting is.

Sydney: Friday? Isn't that when our next meeting is? 7:00?

((Sydney: Maybe that was a little too abrupt. But he did ask ME.))

Michael: Yeah, uh, I think you're right, Friday.

Sydney: Okay. Well, I gotta go. I'm late for class.

Michael: Okay.

And that was that: Friday, 7:00, chinese. Was it a date? It couldn't be a real date because first of all, they weren't allowed to date, and second of all, they were going to meet in a caged storage facility. And to top it all off, it was--to be perfectly honest-- a weird way of asserting a "date." It wasn't like he asked and she accepted, or the other way around. In this twisted circumstance both had asked each other (in an ambiguous, irrelevant way) and both had accepted (in a vaguely hesitant way). Maybe it was a pseudo-date, like the one Joey and Rachel had on Friends? Whatever it was, it was set: Friday, 7:00, Chinese.

* * * * * *

The notion of going out on a date--or whatever you wanted to call it--with Sydney set off a complicated stream of indulgent daydreams in Michael's head. (When your mind wandered, you couldn't really control where it went, could you? Moreover, even when you did try to control it, some superseding power relentlessly held your mind on that topic, which--in this case--was Sydney).

Michael entertained the fantasy of he and Sydney as a couple: what they would be like, who their mutual friends would be, what they would do when they went out and where they would go, what kinds of fights they would have, if they had any at all, what kind of relationship their respective parents would have with each other--that kind of thing. And before he knew it, he had invented an entirely new world: their world. And it was nice, their world. Sure, it wasn't perfect--even though it could be; after all, it was just a dream. But Michael liked to think of it as an imaginary reality, and absolute perfection would take away the reality aspect of it.

And in this imaginary reality, Michael figured, he and Sydney would be opposites, but not complete opposites, not opposites meaning a violent personality clash, but opposites in the little things. For example: if it was a peculiarly warm, sunny day in the middle of January, and they decided to go for a walk, he would bring a jacket as a precautionary measure and advise her to do the same. And accordingly, she would refuse, trusting the seemingly good nature of the weather at its current condition. Therefore, he would be the cautious, tread-carefully, safety-first kind of guy, and she would be the free-spirited, let's-just-do-it kind of girl (though this didn't mean that he was spineless and she was reckless, it just meant... well, you know what it meant).

Moreover, Michael thought, their opposing personality traits would compliment each other. Since he liked the dark meat of the chicken, she would prefer the white meat, meaning that if they were to order a whole rotisserie chicken to share between them, then there wouldn't be any arguing about who got what piece, and--as a great service to humanity, and a real kick to all the parents who like to introduce the topic of "starving children in Africa" as a means of getting their kids to finish their food--they would effectively make sure no part of the chicken would go to waste. That, in his opinion, was the making of a long-lasting, loving, caring relationship. Now the only thing was finding out whether even a tiny speck of this imaginary reality held any ground in the actual realtiy. He'd find out soon enough. Their date, or whatever you wanted to call it, was only an hour away.

* * * * * *

Sydney had only caught a glimpse of Alice, and not even the real Alice, just a picture of Alice (a picture of Alice and Vaughn moreover) displayed on Vaughn's desk. And if she had not met Vaughn earlier and recognized that the man in the picture was indeed him, she would have presumed the picture was one that came with the frame. (You had the happy couple, big smiles, arms wrapped around each other. All you needed was, say, a lake and a rowboat, or a picnic, and maybe a soft focus filter for effect. But they were situated by a tree, which filled in fine for the absence of the rowboat, picnic, and soft focus.)

The picture was stuck in her mind, and she wasn't quite sure why. Maybe it was because Vaughn had swiftly turned the frame away when he caught her looking at it, and that provoked her to think about it. Or maybe it reminded Sydney of her and Danny. Or maybe it was something about Alice.

The truth was, she did think about Alice, for some odd reason. She wondered what Vaughn saw in her. And it wasn't that Alice wasn't appealing, because she certainly was pretty. It was just that Sydney didn't see Alice and Vaughn as the right match. Alice seemed like the run-of-the-mill post-modern woman who still carried traditional values. (In ten years time, Sydney imagined, if Alice and Vaughn were still together--even though they weren't together at the present time, but anyway--Alice would be the superwife, juggling a job, yet still obliged to be the soccermom, the one who would drive the kids to practice in the minivan, the one who would be torn on whether to cook the casserole or the lasagna because moms and pops were visiting for the weekend.) Now, there wasn't anything wrong with that kind of life. It was just that... well, she didn't see Vaughn as the kind of guy for that kind of girl. (It's important to note here that Sydney's creation of Alice as Mrs. Vaughn and her surrounding world based on a single photograph might not actually be true--just to clarify.) Nevertheless...

Michael Vaughn, she thought, just wasn't Alice material. Was he Sydney Bristow material, for that matter? If Alice resided on one end of the lifestyle spectrum, then Sydney most certainly would be on the tail end of the opposite side of that very spectrum. And Vaughn didn't seem to be interested in the Anti-Alice--which, in Sydney's mind, was exactly what she was--because he looked pretty happy in the picture. But then again, he and Alice had broken up, and she had a date--or whatever you wanted to call it--with Vaughn tonight.

* * * * * *

Michael and Sydney met in the self-storage facility. It was 7:00 and the smell of chinese food filled the air.

Sydney walked in, but not in the urgent way she was used to. This wasn't a normal meeting, which meant that she had nothing to be urgent about, which meant that Vaughn wouldn't immediately whip out a file folder or jump into his spiel like he usually did. And this definitely was cause for panic. What was this (a date?) and how was she supposed to act? Suppose she considered this a half-date and came off semi-flirtatious, when he didn't consider this a date at all, thus making even an ounce of flirt in her tone of voice inappropriate. Or suppose she treated this just like one of their normal meetings, when he approached it like a date, then she would come off as cold and inconsiderate and he wouldn't know what to do and it would become awkward. So she walked in slow, looked around, and took in the ambiance that Vaughn had set for her, hoping it would help her determine the mood.

Michael had arrived earlier; he had to pick up the chinese food and set up the table. He wanted to make it intimate, but at the same time he didn't want to freak her out by coming on too strong. So he covered the table with a tasteful, but not too fancy, tablecloth, and placed a candle in the middle (if she commented on how the candle made it too romantic for her taste--even though he knew she wouldn't just come out and say it--then he could explain that it was just a source of light, since the warehouse was very dark. That was good reasoning, he thought). He placed two folding chairs on either side of the table, and left all the food in the boxes--presenting a dish would be too much. And anyway, if the tablecloth and candle were too romantic, then the casual presentation of food still-in-the-box would take down the romance factor a couple notches, and that would set an appropriate tone for the evening.

The dinner was amazing. Interspersed conversations punctuated each savored bite of chinese food. The evening, in their opinion, was absolute perfection: great food, great conversation, a great person to share the moment with. And though they tried to prolong it as much as possible, they knew the night couldn't last forever. But both Sydney and Michael went home satisfied, knowing that this wouldn't be the last time they had this type of meeting. Michael in particular left confident: something had assured him.

He had brought all the foods he had mentioned to Sydney, but also brought a plate of teriyaki chicken (and it wasn't cut-up chunks of chicken; it was whole pieces like the pieces you get when you order fried chicken). And when they were passing boxes and dumping food onto their plates, Michael pushed the teriyaki chicken platter towards Sydney; she smiled at the offering, reached in with her fork, cast aside the drumstick and wing, and pulled out the half-breast.

Michael smiled to himself. This was going to work, all right.