SUMMARY: Sydney Bristow doesn't exist anymore....
SD-1 June Challenge Entry: 2nd Place Winner.
RATED PG
GENRE: Angst
SPOILERS: None. This is a Future-Fic
DISTRIBUTION: I'd rather this is not distributed anywhere without my permission. I'll put it where I want it. But you're still welcome to contact me and try to convince me that my story should be in your fine archive.
Dedicated to Paty, who by writing the fluffiest entry imaginable, has forced me to exact my revenge with an attack of angst.
CRY OF ORPHANS
by Aliasscape
Copyright 2003
He'd know her anywhere.
Even with the dark shades, blonde wig, a sunhat, and half obscured by a tree, he recognized her without a second glance. Eight years hadn't made him forget the way she walked, or stood, or the shape of her cheeks, her ears, her lips. He panicked a moment. He got up from his seat at the table. When he'd agreed to come to this wedding reception in the park, he hadn't thought about how exposed it really made him. Why should he? She'd been gone for eight years. Dead to him. Dead to the world.
Vaughn looked across the park to children playing. His own wild princess wasn't yielding to the rules of wearing a frilly, pink, flower girl dress. Her white dressy shoes had been abandoned in the sand next to her flower basket. She was up another tree, being the adventurous nine year-old that she was. Untamable. She wasn't going to notice if he stole away for a few minutes.
He walked away from the reception slowly. He thought maybe she'd run. She simply seemed to realize her disguise wasn't working and removed the sunglasses. She had the audacity to smile at him. Seeing her smile only made him angry.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, stiffly.
Her eyes went to the girl up the tree, who was daring to drop twigs on the unsuspecting wedding guests. "I wanted to see her."
The words stung his ears. How dare she. He took a step to block her line of vision. "How did you know we'd be here?" he had to ask. Had she been spying on him? On them? And if so, for how long?
Her brown eyes showed an annoyance they had no right to claim. She was the uninvited guest. "Once a spy, always a spy," she answered, sharply and her words cut right through him. She smiled sadly at the bride and groom, feeding each other cake. "I hope they're ready."
Vaughn swallowed and caught a look in her eyes. She hadn't been ready.
Sloane wasn't defeated. He just disappeared.
After a year of not having a single new lead they could solidly tie to Sloane, Sydney had decided to get out. Leave the CIA. It had seemed only natural that Vaughn's relationship with her progressed after that. Maybe they hadn't thought things through well enough. Maybe they spent too much time kissing and not enough time conversing. Maybe he'd pushed her. Maybe she only went through the motions of love and never felt any of it. Maybe she didn't want to. Maybe she didn't know how.
The wedding was small, only family and their closest friends. They bought a white two-story house in the suburbs. He stopped doing field work except on occasion. She took up teaching at a college. He thought they were happy. He loved their life together. He thought she did, too. He loved it when they would spontaneously take off and spend a night in Paris, or Hawaii or Australia. He suggested after a year that they have a baby. She said she liked it being just the two of them. So, he waited six months and suggested it again. She said she was busy with work and there wasn't any time. So, he waited another six months.
She looked up from grading papers in bed and gave him a strange look. "This is really important to you, isn't it?"
He frowned slightly, then brushed her arm with the tip of his finger. "I want to have a baby. And I want to have it with you. What's so difficult to understand about that?"
She smiled at him. "Okay," she whispered and set the papers aside. She rolled over and kissed him. "Let's have a baby."
She was pregnant three months later. She decorated the room in yellow and green and teddy bears. She showed little interest in finding out the gender of the baby. He enjoyed three a.m. trips to get pickles and ice cream and Chinese food. They discussed names as they baby-proofed the house months before it was required.
Taryn Lelise Vaughn was born on the fifth of May.
"Taryn. It means young soldier."
He got to hold her first. Sydney wanted him to. He thought she was just too tired after nine hours of labor. Taryn looked like her mother. The same brown hair, the same brown eyes and just beautiful. He thought their lives were going to be perfect. Everything was so normal.
Maybe being normal drove her insane.
It was only a few days after getting her home that things seemed to fall apart. Sydney couldn't breast-feed. A doctor found them a good formula. He found himself up with their daughter most nights, hoping Sydney could get some much needed rest. He could stare at Taryn for hours. He liked getting up with her in the middle of night. Sydney went back to work before he did.
"Taryn likes you better anyway."
But she was barely at work a week before she had to take time off again. She would sleep twelve hours a day. She'd feed Taryn, change her, any basic needs. But something wasn't right. She didn't seem attached to the child in the way she should. She would keep her distance from Taryn, especially when the baby was upset. Sometimes he'd catch her crying over the crib when Taryn was sleeping, but she'd never tell him what was wrong.
"It's post-partum depression."
"She just needs more rest."
But it was almost as if she was distressed simply by the baby.
Sydney's behavior became odd and erratic. He'd wake up in the middle of the night and she'd be gone. Sometimes, she wouldn't return for a day or two.
"Where have you been? I've been worried sick."
"I just needed some time to myself. To think."
"About what?"
"I'm tired. I'm going to bed now."
He let it go too many times, because she was always better when she returned. She'd hold Taryn more, play with her more. She'd give him more attention, too. Maybe she really was just overwhelmed sometimes. He figured it'd get easier when Taryn was older. He'd ask Will or Jack or Weiss to babysit intermittently. He'd take Sydney on vacation or sometimes they'd just sit at home. When it was just the two of them, Sydney was normal.
When Taryn was six months old, Sydney returned to teaching part time. He waited a couple weeks, to see if she could handle it, before he finally went back to working full-time himself. They hired Taryn a part-time nanny.
And then, Taryn was nine months old.
Weiss flagged him down at the Ops Center. "I saw Sydney heading for your office. She brought the baby in. She's really growing."
He grinned. "Yeah, she is." He hurried into his office.
Taryn sat in her baby carrier on the floor in front of his desk. Sydney was nowhere in sight. He thought perhaps she'd stepped out for a minute, but he noticed something in the middle of his desk. It was a black pen. Gold letters on it read: "Sydney and Michael Vaughn: August 12."
Marshall had given it to them on their wedding day. And, it wasn't an ordinary pen. Vaughn clicked the top and Sydney's voice began to play.
"I don't know how to do this. I've been trying so hard to pretend that everything's alright. It's not and you know it's not. And I can't pretend anymore. I know you'll be alright. I know you'll both be alright. Probably better." Her voice cracked. "Goodbye, Michael."
He got up, grabbed the baby carrier, and rushed to the parking garage. Her car wasn't there. He dialed her cellphone only to have it ring back at him from inside the carrier. He hurried back inside to the Ops Center.
"What's going on?" Weiss asked him.
He shook his head, almost unable to speak. He was grateful when Weiss took the baby carrier from him. "She's gone. She gave me a pen. I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen."
"What are you talking about?" Weiss demanded.
"Sydney's gone!" he shouted. He immediately regretted it as Taryn began to cry. He picked her up and tried to comfort her, but she cried for a long time. As if she knew she wasn't ever going to see her mother again.
He'd gone home to find most of Sydney's things gone from the house. He tried to track her. Everyone tried. He'd run off on any lead at the beginning. He thought if he could just speak to her. If he could just get her some help. Let her know, whatever it was she was going through, he was there, then he could bring her back.
But then the reports started coming in. Sloane resurfaced first. Then, Derevko and Sark. And then someone new popping up wherever Derevko did.
"She left to stop Irina on her own."
"She left to join her."
It didn't matter what the reason was. She had left their daughter. She had left him. She gave up everything and everyone to chase down the one person she had wanted since she was six years old. It scared him to death to think that one day, Taryn might do the same thing.
He realized he couldn't keep chasing Sydney. Sydney Bristow didn't exist anymore. And he couldn't take the whispers around the office.
"His wife is the traitor."
Vaughn couldn't leave Taryn without a father, too. He retired and made her his focus. She was two years old then and she needed him. He needed her. But he found himself outmatched by her more times than he'd care to admit. She was too stubborn, too bold, and too adventurous for her own good. He thought it was better not to speak of Sydney. He finally understood why Jack Bristow had lied all those years. He didn't want her to know that her mother had abandoned her. He didn't want her to know who her mother was. Vaughn felt the same. It meant hiding the pictures. It meant not speaking of her. But the child was too intuitive. And she resented him for keeping his secrets.
Jack Bristow left them alone after Vaughn's decision. Perhaps looking at Taryn, who was an exact copy of his daughter and his ex-wife was too much to bear. Taryn had inherited all the features of her mother and grandmother and with it, the Bristow women's curse. She was determined to be independent. It seemed she was only trapped in a child's body. She carried the weight of three generations. The lies, the betrayals, the deep dark family secrets....
"The other kids asked me today why I don't have a Mommy. They asked me if she was dead. They asked me if you and her were divorced. Dad, I'm the only kid in my class whose Mommy just doesn't exist."
He had to pull her out of school shortly after that. She had gotten into too many fights. The school told him she might be better suited in a more controlled environment.
"She's six years old!" he exclaimed.
"And she broke another child's nose. We simply can't have her here."
He walked out of the meeting and knelt down in front of his small daughter. "Why?" he questioned, his face pained with concern.
"He said I'm an orphan." She looked down and backed away when he tried to hug her. She continued in a whisper. "Being without a mother, it is like being an orphan."
He home-schooled her himself. They needed the time together. He needed to get to know his daughter and hear more of the thoughts she seemed to be unable to share most of the time. Her behavior improved, but he still found that when she was upset, he couldn't touch her pain. She wouldn't let him in. He blamed Sydney for that. For making his daughter someone who felt she couldn't completely rely on anyone but herself. So, he put her in therapy.
"Taryn has a lot of repressed anger."
As if he didn't already know that. For that matter, he had a lot of repressed anger. He took it out on beer bottles in the woods behind their house with his 9 mm.
"Can I do it too, Daddy?"
The first three times he told her no. But he gave in once, carefully teaching her the proper way to shoot. He'd kept her away from anything spy-related for so long, but found she was a good shot. And they seemed to bond over broken beer bottles better than they could talk over dinner.
Somehow in the last year though, things were alright. He'd finally gotten Taryn to make some friends her own age. She'd been able to enter public school and she was a grade ahead for her age. With Taryn in school, Vaughn had even made the difficult transition back to a CIA analyst. He kept away from cases involving Sloane, Derevko or Sydney. Jack Bristow had even stepped into their lives again.
"I don't want to repeat the same mistakes."
That was his explanation. It was all Vaughn needed to hear. Taryn accepted having a grandfather cautiously at first. But she got used to him quickly. She seemed to find something comforting in Jack's serious demeanor.
It was a Saturday afternoon at the park at the wedding of Agent Craig who had been all too pleased to have Taryn be the flower girl. Everything was going so well. So, "Why now?"
Sydney looked him in the eye. "Because I'm here now."
"You never called. You never wrote. You never attempted to make a single contact in eight years." He didn't need her here to destabilize their lives again.
"Yeah, well, it took my mother over twenty years. So, I think I'm ahead," she responded. She sidestepped him so he could no longer obscure her view.
Vaughn turned in time to see Weiss pulling Taryn out of the tree. "What do you want?" he necessitated. But his worst fears were playing in his head.
She's here to take her away. She's here to take Taryn. I'll have her arrested first. I'll kill her first.
Weiss picked the tree leaves from Taryn's hair. She slipped back on her shoes and took her basket. She glanced around and for a moment Vaughn worried she'd spot him and come over. He took a step back to remain shadowed by the trees and Taryn took off towards the dessert table.
"What if I wanted to undo the damage I've done?" Sydney asked him.
"It's not possible," Vaughn said, coldly.
"You told me once, you said, I wasn't my mother." She took a few steps away, keeping her back to him.
"You didn't have to be."
"Do you think you could ever forgive me?"
Vaughn felt the hate he'd directed at her for the last eight years start to rise. He walked around her to get a look at her face. "Tell me that they tortured you. That they threatened you. Threatened me. Threatened Taryn!"
She raised an eyebrow at him. "You want me to make excuses?"
"I want a reason. I want to know how you could leave us. I loved you with every fiber of my being."
"It wasn't enough," she said matter-of-factly. "I didn't have a mother. I didn't know how to be one."
"You didn't even try." Vaughn shook his head. "You've seen her. Go back to being whomever you've become." He started to walk away.
"I'm going to turn myself in."
He halted, but didn't turn around. "That won't fix anything." When he got no response, he glanced behind him and she was gone. He scanned the park quickly with his eyes, almost expecting to find her lurking among the wedding guests. But he didn't see her.
He rejoined the reception and sat back down in his seat. He sat his cellphone on the table in front of him. Taryn came up and climbed into his lap. "Want some cake, Daddy?" She had a large piece of white cake decorated with pink frosting sitting on her plate. He nodded.
Taryn fed him a bite off her fork. The cake was sickeningly sweet. As he swallowed, his eyes watered, overcome by the realization that he might never have another moment as peaceful as this ever again. Taryn put her cake down and hugged him without a single word. He hugged her back. His wild princess. His young soldier.
They stayed wrapped in each others arms until his cellphone rang and shattered the moment. He let it ring once more as he whispered in his daughter's ear. "I love you." Then, he put the phone to his ear and heard the words he knew were going to divide his world.
"Your wife just turned herself into the CIA."
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A/N: Okay, so that's my first attempt to write anything S/V. What'd you think?
Challenge elements: 1) Guest at a wedding 2) Chinese Food 3) Line: "She's gone. She gave me a pen. I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen."