He rarely meets with both of them, but nothing about this mission is typical. Dixon arrives first, steps slow and deliberate across the concrete, face wary when he finally reaches the fence and pulls it open. It clacks, catching for a moment, before he walks in with a gruff "hello." These are the only sounds he makes until Sydney arrives, blustering an apology about school.

"Thesis?" This from Dixon, and she smiles and nods. Vaughn realizes he envies both sides of the exchange. Sydney, for drawing friendliness — trust — from Dixon. And Dixon for knowing what to ask about.

You're here for business now. He pulls two manila envelopes from the table beside him, hands one to each.

"These are mission specs, based on what we have. Agent Watkins drew up most of the op." Dixon remains characteristically stoic, but he thinks Sydney's face darkens with the name. "You two will take the north entrance. Chris and I will take the east."

Skill level and field experience would dictate that they split Sydney and Dixon onto two separate teams, he knows. But these pairings are based on trust.

"At minimum, we're doing recon here," he continues. "If either team finds any Rambaldi artifacts, they are to recover them. We'll decide what to do with them at the rendezvous point. If you encounter a Circumference model, you should destroy it, but make sure you clear it with the other team on comms first."

We've learned that lesson the hard way. He catches the sharp glance Sydney gives him. Not your fault, Syd. That was a poorly planned mess. Destined to end badly, he thinks, and hopes this is not the same.

"Is that everything?" Dixon asks.

"Yes. We're set to go at midnight Friday. Moscow time. Everything else is in there." Now go ahead home to the wife and kids. "Sydney, if you could, stick around for a second."

Dixon smiles goodbye to Sydney, says goodbye to Vaughn, and exits quickly.

"What do you want?" she asks, eyes curious, after the closing pop of the metal door reverberates through the warehouse.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay with everything, given that it's..." He trails, uncertain of how to word this.

"My mother?" Still a rough topic, he sees. "Vaughn, it's fine." He expects a reassuring smile, or whatever along those lines she can muster, but gets a frown instead. "No. It's not fine."

"Your mother?"

"No." She stares at him sharply, as if something should be obvious. "Agent Watkins. Vaughn, I know you two were close, and I'm sorry, but I just don't trust her."

This surprises him. He had expected something along these lines — a veiled probe at their relationship, perhaps — but not this. "Syd, I trust her." More than anyone, anymore.

"You trusted her. But Vaughn, how long has she been gone?"

"Seven years." But sometimes it feels like never.

"A lot can change in seven years, Vaughn. You're back together, aren't you?" Quiet, but accusatory somewhere deep beneath.

"How did you — "

" — you're different." She does not say how. He knows it has something to do with a lighter demeanor, less interest in her. Her voice is soft when she speaks again. "It's dangerous to try to pick something like that up where you left off. Look at what happened with Noah."

"That's completely different, Sydney. I'm telling you — I know Chris, and I trust her."

"I trusted Noah, too, Vaughn, and look at what happened." Her voice grows louder with this.

"The fact that your boyfriend was an assassin has nothing to do with Chris." Something from the current of his unconscious. The words are out before he can think of them — filter them — but he finds he has grown impatient. Defensive.

And they hurt. Her eyes turn glassy, then cold. "You can believe whatever you want. But this is my ass on the line, too. So don't tell me who to trust, Vaughn."

"What do you want me to say, Sydney? We need her on this op."

"There's a lot you can say, Vaughn." Even sharper, and the fluorescent lights glitter off her eyes. "What happened to hockey games? What happened to Traetorria di Nardi?"

So this is about more than just trust, Sydney. "You took all that off the table. You know that." If they are going to throw this out in the open and beat it about, he realizes he does not want anything left unsaid. "You took up with an old flame. I understand that, completely. But you went first. Did you think I was going to stand around and wait while you went off with Noah Hicks? You changed the rules, Sydney."

"Bullshit, Vaughn. That's bullshit and you know it." She seethes, eyes boring into him, and he wonders why they didn't do this a long time ago. Refreshing, true feelings. "You mean to tell me if Chris came back before Noah, nothing would have happened between you?"

Good point, Syd, but it's still different, somehow. "I'm saying I would have at least had the courtesy to discuss it with you, Sydney. To ask you whether or not you were willing to wait. And it's not like this matters at all, what, with Will now."

This surprises her, and she looks at him sharply, brows sliding closer together. "What about Will?"

What about Will? You're fucking him, that's what about Will. He says nothing, but thinks surely she can see the meaning on his face.

"Vaughn, Will and I aren't — we were never romantically involved. Especially not now." Her eyes flash frustration now. "I moved in with him because he needed someone there who understands what he went through. And I'm the only one who even knows, besides my dad. But there's nothing — how could you possibly think there was anything going on between us?"

"It's easy Sydney. It's easy when all you tell me is you're moving in with him. Which is more than you told me about Noah."

"I don't exactly see you volunteering any information about Chris. Stop being such a fucking hypocrite, Vaughn. You want to screw her, fine. But don't make it my fault. And don't expect me to trust her."

With that, she whirls away, yanking at the fence gate until it rattles open. Loud, as are her boots on the floor, stomping toward the door.

He goes back to what she said about Will. Examines what it means.

———

The other thoughts do not creep in until later, as he is driving away. But they are powerful when they finally arrive — pulsating in his mind until he can no longer push them away. He has based everything on old trust.

Doubts now. That too much of her last operation is unexplained. That all he knows is what she has told him.

He has considered many things since her return. Old words. Inter-office relationships. Truces. The changes in her. The changes in him.

A u-turn is tempting, but he forces himself to wait. Finds a parking lot — a squatty, run-down grocery store thing, full of lumps and potholes — to turn around, back to headquarters.

It never occurred to him not to trust her.

———

He hates that Sydney might be right. He hates himself for doing this. He hates that it feels necessary all of a sudden.

There are far more workers in the office than is par for the middle of the evening, but par has increased as of late. Vaughn finds the bustle is actually preferable to what he needs to do, less noticeable as he runs a keycard through the slot outside a large white metal door and waits for it to slide open. The records room is empty, save for a sea of plastic beige file cabinets. This is also preferable.

Technically, there is nothing wrong with what he is about to do. He should be cleared to read most of her operations; minimal portions of her personnel file are open to any agent. Rather, it is a betrayal of trust.

Convenient, he thinks, that they are on the same end of the alphabet. Pulls "Robertson, Scott" and "Watkins, Christine," then walks back to his office. Closes the door but leaves the blinds open, and sets them on his desk. Watkins first, and he stares at it for a moment, her name flowing in and out of focus, before finally turning the corner.

The picture is old, from when she first joined the Agency. Hair lighter, fewer lines and a bright smile. A shocking reminder — catalyst to the comparisons he has been trying to avoid. The eyes are the bridge, still the same intensity. He moves on to her vitals, and nothing there is a surprise.

The first of those comes with her family. Her father, located and interviewed for her initial background check. He wonders if she knows about this — if she included her own file in her examination of the rest of the team. Her mother, Mila Kozlova, not a surprise at all, although he has not heard her last name in a long time. To him, she has always been Mila.

Vaughn turns the page to her early missions, cataloged with tight, uncomfortable printing that grows loose by the end of each account. He knows automatically that she would have preferred to type them, wonders why they don't in this day and age.

The early missions are all successes, which he has always assumed. She is good, something he knew almost instinctively, back in the early days of classes and training. Alive now means good, if you're Chris. Or it means something else.

The words on the next page are no more tight or loose than the others, but they stand out instantly: "We needed the intel, and I saw an opportunity."

Vaughn flips the page quickly. Potential fuel for his doubts, he thinks, will never outweigh his desire to keep that particular detail of her past buried. She is sincere. Her emotions are sincere. They have to be. She did that. She did that because her team, her country needed the information. How could she do that and not be working for your side?

Things go badly, you might push her triple.

Her final report is nearly as vague as her explanation to him, and he closes the file feeling no reassurance.

Robertson next, a twenty-year veteran of the Agency, according to the first page. Vaughn realizes he had hoped for something a little less trustworthy. An asshole, but also a company man.

He skims Robertson's earlier cases, looking for her name. A little shocked, when he finally finds it, to see that Robertson liked her, respected her in the beginning. And continued to, he reads, through operation after operation — the same successes detailed by Watkins.

Then Vaughn flips a page, and the tone changes abruptly. Here, again, is the mission he would prefer to skip. But one word — "rogue" — stands out to him, and finds he can't look away from the text.

Vaughn knows he will hate reading her side of the story, but he needs it now. He pushes Robertson's folder aside and flips hers back open, fingers skimming through the pages until he reaches the one he skipped.

Vaughn wonders what her intentions were then. If she had the ending planned when she walked in. With Semenov. With him.

The logic, again. It makes him feel like flinging the folder across his office. The factual, step-by-step recounting of the events that led to her pain. Once there, we had sex. Shit, Chris.

After he fell asleep, I picked the lock to his briefcase. It contained a number of plans and specs for Russian missiles, but I was already familiar with these. There was also a communication referencing a Milo Rambaldi document, and a series of access codes. I memorized the codes and left in the morning. There is no reason to suspect that Semenov was aware that I accessed his briefcase, or that he knew I worked in intelligence.

Quietly, gently, he closes her file, and wishes he had never opened it. Wishes he had never come here. But he is too deep into the task to leave it incomplete. He reopens Robertson's folder and flips to the back of the file, to the last statement — his remaining curiosity.

And Robertson's coverage of their last operation is much more detailed, objective. Another team member was able to uncover the location of the Rambaldi manuscript, and the team — three men plus Watkins — went in to retrieve it. Robertson, he reads, worked comms in a van outside. And heard it all go wrong, quickly. Shots over the lines, and all three men unresponsive. Watkins — barely so — but she managed to stagger out to the van before she passed out.

So, he thinks, Robertson never really went into what turned out to be a bloodbath. You don't see him walking around with his guts sewn in.

And nobody but Chris knows what happens in there. She says she can't remember. She's the one that got shot. A couple inches to the right and I'd be in a wheelchair. You don't see her in a wheelchair, do you?

Robertson's conclusions, now, and they are simple. Operation compromised by an unknown agent.

Maybe, he thinks, nothing pushed her to the other side. Maybe she has been there all along.

The image — which has reemerged with her report — shifts in his mind. It is no longer submissive Chris with the bald Russian programmer. Chris, screwing her contact, Anatoliy Semenov, an attractive young Russian. Naked bodies writhing on the bed and she's moaning. Enjoying it as much as she enjoys it with you.

How far back could it go? Perhaps, he thinks, beyond old Chris. Perhaps back to Mila — sweet, overworked Mila Kozlova. The obvious choice because she's not obvious. Not Mila, he thinks, she couldn't —

Mila died in a car accident. Sydney's mother died in a car accident. And Jack Bristow trusted his wife.

This is when his cell phone rings. A burst of heat under his collar, because he is fairly certain he knows who the caller is.

"Where the hell are you?" His guess is correct, and Watkins is angry. "Is everything okay?"

"Hey. Everything's fine — " Everything is not fine. Everything is terribly wrong and fucked-up, and you're going to have to go home to her and pretend it's not. And you're not nearly as good at lying as her, regardless of her allegiances. "I'm sorry — I should have called." He is sorry for other things, especially the files in his hands, but he does not ever intend to mention those. "I went back to the office and got tied up in something. I'm on my way out now."

"Shit, Michael. You know, next time, you might try calling. I'll see you in a little bit."

Vaughn returns the files to the records room, plastic cabinet doors rolling smoothly back into place. He checks one thing before leaving.

There is no file on Mila Kozlova.

———

She is lying in bed when he returns — booked on an earlier flight — but not yet asleep. Vaughn feels strange, slipping beneath the sheets with her, draping an arm over her stomach. Pretending his mind is not full of images and doubts.

"Hey," she says, voice concerned — or is it? "I was worried about you." She shuffles under the covers, turning to face him. "You sure everything's okay? Most people don't get tied up in paperwork the night before they have to fly halfway around the world for a mission."

"Everything's fine, Chris."

"You don't sound like it's fine." She slips a hand around to his back, drawing him closer. He thinks it is supposed to be reassuring, comforting.

"Chris, can I ask you something? The Agency — why did you join?" The question his mind conjured during the drive here. And he should have known the answer, should have picked it up somewhere along the line. But somehow he has missed them — either the question, or the answer. Perhaps both.

"That's a pretty deep question for this time of night." The light from the window is dim, but enough for her to study his face. "I thought about the things my mother went through, why she came here. And they did a pretty good job of convincing me that my skill set was — I think the term was 'desperately needed.' I don't know. It seemed like the right thing to do."

She smiles, but most of it is pain. "I thought at first my mother would be angry. Want me to work for some capitalist software company and make a bunch of money. But she wasn't. She said the important thing was that I could do whatever I wanted to do."

Her hand slips from his back, but she waits another minute before speaking. "You pulled my file, didn't you?"

He had thought he was less transparent. Apparently not. "Sydney — she doesn't trust you."

"I wouldn't trust me either, if I was her." He waits for her to ask the question. Do you trust me? He has no answer, and perhaps she can see this. "Trust is intellectual, Michael. Think about it. I'm not a hundred percent, we both know that. And our team isn't exactly ripe in field experience. I'll let you figure out why I'm going."

This helps, begins to quell the storm in his head, but it is not nearly enough.