She answers on the first ring. One word. "Where?"

"36 Willow Drive. Apartment 207. You need directions?"

"No." She hangs up.

He glances around his apartment, not sure how long he has. If she drives, maybe a minute. Five if she walks. The place is clean, anyway. Not as sparse as when he moved in, but still no clutter, no personality.

He walks to the bathroom, removes the contacts. Still cold from the walk here, he turns the thermostat up five degrees on his way back to the living room, then sits on the couch and stares out the window. Well over a minute by now, he thinks, and maybe she isn't coming. Maybe she's decided she doesn't want to have anything to do with you. Maybe you imagined the whole damn thing.

But it was real, he knows. Her body on his. Her startled eyes. Her voice on the phone — a desperation there he recognized.

And there, now, Sydney, walking along the sidewalk. He stands when he sees her, walks over to the door as she pounds up the stairs. He's there by the time she knocks, but he waits for a moment, heart racing, hand on the knob. Resolution, he thinks, is finally here.

Deep breath, door open, and Sydney standing there with a big, bright smile. After all the time and the way they left things, he doesn't know what to say, so he stands, motionless, not sure what to make of the happiness on her face.

She is more decisive, stepping inside and wrapping her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. Easy to respond, now that she's taken the first step, and pull her closer. He revels in it, in her closeness. Holding her now, and you thought you let her go forever. But this won't last. There's too much, so much —

Sydney stirs, turns her head towards his. "You came," she whispers. So simple, so wrong, and he has to release her, step away.

"I — no." He reaches behind her to close the door and turn the deadbolt. "I didn't."

"I don't understand," she says. "I thought you came to get me, to take me home. Pulling me out of the bar, this safehouse — Vaughn, please don't tell me I have to go hide somewhere else. I'm settled in now, and I can't do it again."

His last name should sound foreign; he hasn't heard it in two months. But somehow it seems natural out of her mouth. Natural and dangerous. He starts toward the living room, and she follows. "This isn't a safehouse. This is my apartment."

"I don't understand."

"Have a seat." She claims the right side of the couch, unbuttons her coat and shrugs out of it, draping it over the arm. Way to be hospitable. But what the hell is hospitable in this situation, anyway? Vaughn sits on the other end of the couch, next to the end table and the phone. He picks the latter up, slides the plastic strip from the bottom. Red light.

He turns to face her. "That's how SD-6 found you out."

"What?"

"Your bugkiller. It failed. They overheard you talking to Will about the CIA, and they stepped up scrutiny of your actions. Sloane had Marshall hack the video surveillance on your last mission. He saw you make the switch for us."

"Damn it. Of all the things — " sudden panic on her face " — wait. You said they heard me talking to Will. Is he okay? Is he safe?"

"He's fine. At least he was when I left. The CIA had a team on his place for two months, just to be sure. But he was really too high-profile a target after the story he published."

"What about my father?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know? Vaughn, what happened to you?"

It's been so long since he's seen her face, he thinks, he should want to see it no matter what. But he has to look away, stare at his hands, as he begins.

"The short answer is I really don't know what happened to me." He glances up; she's becoming frustrated. "But you don't want the short answer. After SD-6 tagged you as a mole, your father was under suspicion for a long time. When they cleared him, he laid low for a while, but it was pretty obvious he wanted to resume the operation. He wanted to bring you home. So he recruited Dixon."

"After all the times you said I shouldn't?"

"We realized we needed a double on ops, after we — after we lost you. It was still risky, but it paid off. They assigned me as his handler."

"So what happened?"

"I don't know whether SD-6 had identified me back when I was your handler, or somehow they traced me through Dixon. But they shot me." This startles her, eyes widening for a moment. "I woke up two weeks later in a room at St. Joseph."

"So you don't know what happened to Dixon, his family — "

"No. But I think the CIA must have had some sort of heads-up, so they might have gotten to them. I was shot on the front step of my apartment building, and somebody got there in time to give me medical attention and get me into hiding."

"So you're in the protection program, too." She is still skeptical, he thinks. Still wants to believe you're here to whisk her back off to Los Angeles. I tried, Sydney. I wanted to. So bad, I wanted to.

"Yeah. Just over two months now."

"Why here?" She asks. "Why Bloomington?"

"I think they cluster people in cities that have the right characteristics. A guy I work with, he's in the program too."

"The same city, I could almost write off as a coincidence." She pauses. "But Vaughn, I live two blocks away."

And you were ready to chalk it up to fate. The real explanation comes suddenly in his mind, but it's perfect and it's clear. "Your father," he says. "I think if he couldn't see you again — "

" — he wanted to give me whatever he could. So he made sure you came here."

Awfully presumptuous of Jack Bristow to give him as a gift, Vaughn thinks. Awfully hazardous to assume that she would want him. But then, he thinks, Jack Bristow didn't know what happened in the truck. He's not sure how to acknowledge her statement, so he says nothing.

"I feel so disconnected," she says. "Like all these things are still happening in my old life, and everyone there thinks — they all think I'm dead, don't they?"

"Yes. Although I think Will suspected something." And Dixon, he doesn't add.

A sad smile. "That sounds about right. But at least you're here now."

"Yeah." Silence, and it scares him. "Would you like something to drink?"

"Sure."

"What would you like? Coffee? Wine? Water?"

"Wine would be great." His images of her, his memories, he realizes, pale in comparison to the real thing. Never this beautiful, never this real, in his mind. She was fading, so gradually he hadn't realized it, and now that she's here, he wants to run his fingers across her face, analyze every angle.

Instead, he walks to the kitchen and opens the Bordeaux he bought under the auspices of someday having company. Pours himself a glass, to be polite, although he's not sure how well it will mix with the beer.

"I've got the same wine glasses," she comments, when he hands one to her.

"I bought them last month."

"I hated that, having to buy all new stuff. I like to shop, but after a while it just feels boring and pointless, like you're restocking your life." She takes a sip. "This is really good."

It strikes him, hard and direct, that he's sitting in his own apartment enjoying a glass of wine with Sydney Bristow. Far beyond something that would have happened in your old life. But she's not Sydney Bristow anymore.

"So what's happening in your life? What are you doing now?" Vaughn asks.

"I work in the library at Illinois State, over in Normal. Special Collections. It moves from boring to fascinating on a daily basis, but it's mostly been good. And the people are wonderful. That's who I was with, at Kelly's." She pauses. "I'm taking classes, too. I don't know if you knew this or not, but I was pretty close to getting my doctorate at UCLA."

"They said in my packet that you can't fake a doctorate," she continues. "The research, the dissertation, all the contacts. It would have been too dangerous. So I had to start over, and I can only go for a master's. But I'll still be able to teach, so I guess it's better than nothing. And it's not like SD-6 would have let me teach, anyway. What about you?"

"I work at Baxter Insurance — " She finds this highly amusing. " — which is a front company for the Agency."

"So you still work for the CIA?"

"Yes. A lot of low-level analysis and cybersnooping on bulletin boards. And we maintain a safehouse, although no one's stayed there since I started."

"You and this other agent in the protection program?"

"Yeah. Peter. He's a great guy, sort of showed me the ropes when I first started out."

She is quiet for a moment. "I wish I would have had someone like that. Someone who knows you're lying to everyone else, knows the life. Someone who knows who you used to be."

"I know exactly who you used to be." Which isn't true, he thinks, but close enough. He knew the important things, if not the details. And you could have learned them all. You could have been there for her, and you passed it all up.

"Yes, you do." She delivers it dry, but he's sure he knows what she's thinking. The same thing you're thinking.

You're going to have to broach it sometime. "I'm sorry, Syd. I could have been that person for you."

She leans back against the couch cushion, eyes hardening. "You don't have to apologize. I shouldn't have asked. I thought we had something we obviously didn't have."

Raw hurt, there on her face, and it hits him just as hard as her words. She's never fully healed. And she needs resolution just as much as you do. Maybe more.

"It wasn't wrong to ask, Syd."

"No. Don't tell me that. There's only one way it would have been right, and that's if you would have said yes. So don't. I don't need to hear this tonight. Let's just — "

"I should have said yes. That's why it wasn't wrong to ask."

"It's easy to say that now, when you can look back and see you were going to end up here, anyway. Hindsight is 20-20, Vaughn."

"I believed it before I was shot, Syd. I think some part of me knew it as soon as I said no."

This is enough to break her. "Then why did you say no? Why didn't you come with me? Why did you make me do this alone?" She blinks furiously, then let the tears go, rolling down her face.

"Because I was afraid." There. He's said it.

He's not sure what she expected, but it's clear this isn't it. "Why were you afraid?" Barely a whisper.

"I was afraid to risk everything and find out it was nothing." He pauses, forces himself to stay focused on her eyes. "I wanted the chance. I wanted to be part of your life — you don't know how much I wanted that. But that's a big leap to make, and I was afraid you were asking because I was the only one left you could ask. I was afraid you would decide a couple months in that you didn't really love me, or that maybe you never did."

"How could you possibly think that?"

"I don't know, Sydney. I don't know if it was love, if you can love someone...the type of relationship we had. I don't know how you get love from that. How you translate that into love."

She makes a half-hearted swipe at her wet cheeks. "How do you know it wasn't already love, Vaughn?"

"Do you think it was?"

"I don't know." She pauses. "But I do know you were the only person I would have wanted to come with me."

"Why?"

Her look says the answer should be obvious. But nothing about any of this has ever been obvious to him. Always a struggle, Sydney Bristow. "Because you know exactly who I used to be," she says softly.

It isn't that simple. "You and I both know that's not true."

"It's true where it counts." She swirls the last of her wine around in the glass. "Vaughn, what made you change your mind?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said you should have said yes. What made you change your mind?"

"You wanted me to take a risk, and it took me a long time to figure this out, but I realized that even if things wouldn't have worked out, being with you — that was worth taking the risk." No going back now. "Sydney, I've spent most of the last year trying to convince myself I didn't make the biggest mistake of my life. And I really think I did."

He's not really sure what to tell her beyond that. But maybe, just maybe, he thinks, watching as she slips back onto the verge of tears, it was all he needed to say.

There's still the question of what you need to do. Not so easily answered, but he thinks he knows.

It doesn't take long for the new tears to spill over. She brings a hand up to brush at them, but he leans forward and catches it in his. Squeezes it gently, and when there is no protest, moves closer. Her breath comes short and uneven as he places it back in her lap. He moves his hand slowly toward her face, fingers outstretched and trembling, like he's trying to woo a wild animal. Still not sure if she'll bolt.

But she stays there, leaning into his touch, his fingertips caressing her jaw, thumb sliding over wet cheeks, soft lips. He leans closer, and surely she knows what he wants to do. But she doesn't make it easy on him, doesn't close her eyes. Open instead, big and brown and wet, staring into his. Waiting.

He steels himself, moves in to brush her lips with his. And finally, a response. Finally, her eyes closed and her head tilted and her lips moving against his, mouth dry and oaky from the wine. He keeps it short, simple, sweet, then pulls back to gauge her reaction.

It isn't what he expected. She looks flustered, frightened. He leans back, give her some space, damn it. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have — "

"No. It's just..." She waves a hand between them.

"You're seeing someone."

"No. I'm — this is too much, right now. I just — I need some time." She reaches back and sets her empty wine glass on the end table, then stands quickly, other hand wrapped around her coat and yanking it with her. Halfway to the door before he can even think to speak.

"Sydney, wait." He rises.

"I can't." A whisper, and then she is gone.

He stands in the middle of his living room, the feel of her lips still fresh on his, and realizes he doesn't even know her name.