Equilibrium — Chapter 2

She can tell by the shock on his face that a firefight just outside the room wasn't involved in his plans. The sound is enough to sober them both up a bit. It clears some of the darkness, the drugs, from his eyes. It helps combat the whirling in her head, the dizziness caused by his fingers inside her.

And then out. Dragging a little harder over sensitive spots, she thinks, than was necessary. Drawing one final gasp from her, and then completely absent. He rolls off the table, feet light as they hit the floor. Leaves her to roll the vinyl back over her hips, struggle with the zipper, hands shaking.

She is just sitting up when black-clad men swing in, guns-first. Who are you? What side? She does not know, and prepares herself to flip to the floor. Under the table, she thinks, is the best place for now.

One shouts, stops her from moving. "We found them! Bristow, Vaughn, we've got to move." She decides she is willing to go with anyone that will provide her a chance for exit. Get the hell out of here, and then take it from there.

Vaughn is not so sure. He has been standing by the doorway, position defensive, even though he is clearly overmatched in arms. "Who are you? Who sent you?"

"We're the people that are supposed to be getting your asses the hell out of here. Jack Bristow sent us."

He does, lunging for one of them, wild and confused in the eyes, as she screams. "They drugged him! Damn it, don't hurt him."

The man stands surprised at Vaughn's approach momentarily, then ducks out of the way, swinging Vaughn into a set of shelves. His partner moves quickly, is there when Vaughn recovers and tries to retaliate. She flinches as the butt of his gun slams into Vaughn's temple, but finds she feels some relief as he slumps to the floor.

"Sorry," He says to her. "But we've got to move. Are you okay?"

————

The debriefing goes well past three hours. Three hours, still wearing the itchy blue wig and increasingly uncomfortable vinyl, although they gave her a green fleece blanket in the helicopter, and she has been wrapped in it since. Three hours in the metal folding chair of some forgotten tiny room in a Los Angeles safehouse.

Three hours, and all she can see is her last image of Vaughn — unconscious and carried to a separate helicopter. Three hours, and all she can feel is —

— also Vaughn.

She answers questions truthfully to a middle-aged man with old-coffee breath and a bad brown suit. Truthfully because she feels off-balance, and does not have the energy or desire to filter. Truthfully until he asks her what happened in the green-tiled room.

She responds to that by dodging, asking him if he could please find out how Agent Vaughn is. He is blunt in telling her he is not sure, and returns to the question. Then she talks, vaguely, about Vaughn being confused. About talking to him, about trying to clarify the situation. And the situation, sir, was that he was finger-fucking me until the CIA decided to show up and save our asses. She wonders what he would do if she said it. She has a hard enough time thinking it.

She tells him they were not in the room for very long. She thinks it was not long enough.

————

The brown suit hands her off to Weiss after the debriefing. He tells her Will Tippen is pretty banged up, but alive. This is wonderful news, she thinks, it means the mission was a success. More importantly it is something tangible, something to hold onto when everything else around her, in her, is out of whack. She smiles at him, thanks him for the news, and both are genuine.

Then she forces herself to hold steady. No shaking voice, wobbly eyes. Nothing to give away this secret. "What about Vaughn?"

This makes him very quiet, and she wonders if he's seen what she has — a side of Vaughn completely disparate from what she has known. A side she would not have believed if she hadn't seen it herself. If she hadn't felt it.

Weiss encourages her to start walking down a stark white hallway. "He's going to be okay. He was drugged out of his mind. You know that, right?"

She nods, and they reach the equally white door at the end of the hallway, but neither moves to open it. "Can I see him?" She asks, even though she is not certain this is such a good idea. She is certain of the developing feeling that things are amiss inside her. Certain that it feels like the air is pressing on her, causing an uncomfortable ache that pushes down to her core. Certain that there is nothing she can do to keep her mind from snapping back to the green-tiled room and the table. Certain that she needs something to stop the ache, stop her mind, and maybe if she just sees him —

"He's still coming out of it, and it's been pretty bad. I don't think he would want you to see him like that."

She nods and tries not to think of how she did see him as Weiss opens the door.

————

Weiss tells her she should eat, and she agrees. Gags down a dry bagel between swigs of Coke. Her stomach twitches in protest with every bite, and she longs to press the cold can against her forehead, but is not sure if there are people behind the mirrors in this half-hearted attempt at a suburban living room. That done, he hands her a change of clothes, and directs her to a bathroom.

Inside, she examines the clothes — sweatpants and a t-shirt, but no change of underwear, which is what she really wants — before placing them on the counter next to the sink. Everything here is nondescript beige and white, and she feels out of place as she pulls the electric blue wig from her head. Tries not to think about his lips on her chest as she wraps her fingers around the mesh shirt and pulls it off. Tries not to think about his hands peeling the pants from her as she does the same.

She changes quickly, thinks maybe clothes he hasn't touched will help. They do, marginally, but she longs for a hot shower, and this will have to wait for home. Hot steaming water to beat the strangeness from her. Stare through the water at the tiles, not down at her body. Stand and stare as it rolls down all the places he has been and rinses away the traces. Sends them down the drain and hopefully out of her mind.

————

She was not normal before, but there was a certain balance to the abnormality. An equilibrium. Everything in her life fit poorly, but there was a fulcrum hidden deep within the mess, and somehow that was enough to hold it all up.

That is all gone now.

She realizes this in the days after. Full days, for her. Filled with resolutions and repercussions. Recruiting of Dixon. Recovery of Will. New notations on her record. All things that should shake her, but they don't, and faster than it should, it seems, her life simmers back down to the old trio: spying, friends, school. But the equilibrium is gone, and her mind never strays far from the green-tiled room and the metal table. And Vaughn.

She thinks if she could just see him, it would help. See normal Vaughn and get the one from that room out of her mind. But for four days, the call does not come. When she goes into CIA headquarters for the requisite reprimand, she lingers around his office, hopes to pass him in the hallway. But there is nothing, and it only strengthens the other Vaughn in her mind. She thinks perhaps he asked to be reassigned, curses him if it is true for leaving things like this.

On the fifth day, SD-6 assigns her a mission, and she is glad. Throws the paper bag in the trash and knows that it will force an answer.

————

The answer is Vaughn. Seated quietly in a paint-splotched blue plastic chair when she arrives at the warehouse. Her legs wobble a little as she walks up, but he is normal. Perfectly, dark suit, blue oxford, calm green eyes, normal. Or as normal as looking like that gets. His gaze stays focused on her eyes, although she was prepared for every nuance of potential alternatives. The conservative black suit fits well, but it is a far cry from vinyl.

"Hey." Solid as she screeches another chair across the concrete, places it a few feet in front of him and sits. "How are you feeling?"

"Better." He smiles at her, soft. Almost shy, she thinks, and somewhere in that shy smile is hope for her balance. "I went straight from the hospital to getting chewed out. I'm sorry I didn't contact you earlier."

"It's okay." Actually, it's not. It was five days of hell. But you're okay. You're Vaughn. "I'm just glad to see you're all right."

"Thanks." He dodges her eyes for a moment, stares at his lap, and she relaxes more at the familiarity of this as they return to her face. "It's good to see you."

One more question to bring back the balance, although she already suspects the answer. Feels she knows him well enough to know that this is not how he would act if the answer was different.

"Vaughn, how much do you remember? About what happened?"

"I remember the water hitting. After that it's all kind of fuzzy." He stares at her for a second. "Sydney, why do you ask?"

She shakes her head slightly, hopes he'll let this drop, because this was the danger of the question. "No reason."

"You were awfully vague in your report. Especially about what happened when I was, uh — " He trails into embarrassment with this and she finds it refreshingly familiar.

" — high as a kite?" She forces the joke and slips into her best lying-spy smile, hopes she can keep it from wavering. "Not much happened. You were a little wild. But Vaughn, you were drugged. That's to be expected." Tell yourself that long enough, Syd, and maybe even you'll believe it.

He stands, a little agitated, paces past her and then back halfway, and it's something he's mulled over quite a bit. You can tell. You do know Vaughn.

"You're sure nothing happened?"

"Absolutely." Okay, if you could, please stop standing behind me.

"Good. Sydney, I'd hate to think I did or said anything inappropriate..." Actually, Vaughn, it was way beyond inappropriate, but —

He halts all thought now with a hand on her shoulder. A gentle squeeze, and it's just Vaughn, trying to be reassuring, but it bumps at her pulse, regardless. Just Vaughn. Just normal Vaughn.

"What about your mother?" She wants to fidget, turn her hands around inside each other. She wants to dart out from under his hand and sprint halfway across the warehouse. She wants to put an elbow into him — knock him down and tell him to take his fucking hand off of her, because she is having a hard enough time holding it together as it is.

She opts for none of the above. "What?"

"Your mother. Did you get what you wanted?" What you wanted. Stay calm, Syd, but oh god what he wanted was then what you wanted and nobody got what they wanted and you just have to remember to fucking breathe.

"No. I told her to fuck off." It feels good to tell him the truth about something. She wonders if there is surprise on his face at her choice of wording.

"Oh." As hypersensitive as she has become to his hand, she thinks she can feel his thumb want to move before it actually does. "Sydney, I'm sorry." And then it is rolling back and forth, the motion startlingly familiar.

It's just Vaughn. He's just trying to comfort you. But when she racks her brain, she can't recall a time when he's gone about it like this. You don't know me at all. She tries to remember the location of the closest table. Contingency plans now. If you had to, reach up. Flip him over your head. Vaughn, sprawled all over the floor. Over in a second. Sprawled all over the — damn it, Syd.

Of course, she does not. Of course, she does not need to. He removes his hand, walks back to his chair. She stops having to focus on each breath, no longer feels like she might explode.

When he speaks again, she forces herself to focus on his eyes. They are the safest — most different from everything she is trying to forget.

"If you recover the Rambaldi document, we just want a shot of it. Same as usual." Yes. Down to business. This is good. He reaches into his suit and pulls out a small camera. She gives in to fidgeting. "Here you go."

Tricky, now, to get it without touching him. Without making it obvious that she's trying to not touch him. She reaches out, wraps index finger and thumb around it gingerly. Manages not to brush against his fingers, and then it is resting in her lap. Safe. Home free.

"You okay? You seem a little jumpy."

A good reply now, and she can flee. "Yeah. I'm fine, just a little out of it. This has been a pretty rough week, obviously."

He smiles as she stands, eyes still soft green, and she likes that she will leave with that image in her mind.

"I know the feeling."