Title: Spark
Author: Laras_Dice
Rating: PG-13 (scaled back because I've kept control of my potty mouth!)
Spoilers: None
Archive: Anywhere, but please let me know
Summary: If you convince yourself of a lie long enough, does it become your truth?

Disclaimer: I own nothing and love Alias. So don't sue me!

AN: My first fic :-) Please R&R

Chapter 1 - Waiting

Michael Vaughn stood at the entrance to the CIA's op-tech room, a videocassette tape in one hand and a bag of fast food in the other. The tape held the rerun of some documentary on monkeys the op-tech guys had sent him home to tape. Somewhere, he knew, Eric Weiss was still cracking up. Not that he was complaining. The trip home had given him a chance to shave, shower, and even take a little nap -- which was more than anyone else in the room had done in what he suspected was days. Vaughn kept trying to tell himself that he really didn't need to be here -- that they would call him as soon as they made some progress -- but he just couldn't seem to pry himself away from the room.

"How's it going?" he asked, earning the attention of eight men who had previously been hunched over computer screens.

"Food," one said, as if that was an answer.

"No shit, Pasher," said another. He was Agent Calder, who was -- as far as Vaughn could figure -- the leader of the crew. "We've got pretty much group consensus here that this is the most complicated encryption scheme anyone's ever seen -- like ever. I mean, there was one in '92 from...well that's compartmentalized...and then this buddy of mine from college..."

Vaughn nodded. He had quickly learned that it helped bring these convoluted stories to an end.

"Anyway," Calder said. "We're making some progress, but it's super-slow going."

With that, he advanced on the food, as the rest of the group already had. Vaughn was convinced they were surviving on caffeine and grease, and he had long since started to regret the cracks he and Weiss used to make about them. He made his way over to an unoccupied desk and picked up one of the case files sitting there.

And as far as he was concerned, this was THE case file. He was afraid to let himself think about it, but the general agreement among the agents on the SD-6 case was that this could be The One. It was funny, Vaughn thought, how important this case was to him, when all he could do was sit around and wait. Sit and wait while op-tech worked to crack the encryption. Sit around and wait while Sydney and Jack Bristow got the files in the first place.

Memories of that particular mission still clutched at Vaughn's stomach. He had been afraid to offer it to Sydney in the first place, because he had known before he asked -- despite the danger -- what her answer would be.

The CIA had weighed the mission more carefully. An alliance member had invited Jack Bristow to a dinner party at his house in Rome. They would have been content for him to drop a bug, but Jack had floated the existence of the files -- stored on a server on the vast home's third floor -- that contained enough operations information and addresses to "cut the head off of the beast," as Devlin had said. But it meant that Sydney would have to break into the heavily-guarded house; if she was caught, her cover, as well as that of her father, would have been blown. They would have lost all of the progress they had made -- five years of his life, three and a half of Sydney's, and who knew how long of Jack's -- and Jack and Sydney would have lost their lives.

He had been adamantly against it at first, considering the risk to her life too great. But then he had thought about the missions -- all the ones in the future, each and every one dangerous -- that she would have to go on if they didn't give her this one. And eventually, the CIA had taken it out of his hands and proposed that they leave the decision up to Sydney.

She had said yes, immediately, as if there had been no other answer to the question. And so he had sat and waited as Jack entered the house, excused himself to go to the restroom, and disabled key alarms. Waited as Sydney broke in through the basement, slunk up to the top floor, and copied the files. Waited and forced the thought out of his mind that things were going too easily. Heard her whisper, "The guards are coming. I'm going out the window." Heard her climbing. Heard her slip. Heard the thump as she hit the ground, hard. Heard Jack's sharp intake of breath, and a dinner guest asking if he felt OK. Waited and waited, calling her name, until finally he heard Sydney's groan as she picked herself up off of the ground and slunk off across the lawn.

The corners of his mouth turned as he thought of the warehouse meeting after that.

"I have a bruise from -- literally -- here to here," Sydney had said, gesturing from shoulder to mid-thigh. "I don't recommend falling two and a half stories out of a heavily-guarded house. At least it wasn't concrete. The ground, I mean."

And then he grew contemplative, thinking about the mental images that bruise, and Sydney's body, would have conjured a few years ago. It hadn't been easy -- learning to force them out of his mind, along with any thoughts of love or affection beyond friendship -- but he had done it. Knew she had too.

Too dangerous. The two words he had made his mantra after realizing that he was far too interested in three words -- I love you -- that he might never get to say. And he knew in his heart that he would have been willing to risk danger to himself to pursue a relationship with Sydney, but he could never pile more danger on her. The partially-masked longing he saw in her eyes told him that she felt the same way.

But for Vaughn, there was something beyond that. With a romantic relationship, there was always the chance that things could go badly. That suddenly, she would be angry with him, or he would be angry with her, and then she would lose her confidant -- the one person she trusted and could go to when the splintered lies of her life weighed most heavily. Sydney and her father had grown closer, but Vaughn knew there were still some things she could only tell him.

He had finally come to recognize and accept the importance of that reality. And as much as he longed to take her out to a movie like Will, or sit and chat with her like Francie, he preferred his role in her life, as the only one who knew her whole truth.

Or almost her whole truth. They had each lied to each other after that one brief kiss three years ago. Ignored the attraction that -- back then -- had practically crackled through the air between them. Started to build the walls that had proven increasingly effective. There had been a spark between them, Vaughn reflected, but he was afraid they had buried it too deep for recovery.