Title: Warehouse
Author: Kayar
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: Alias and its characters are not mine. It belongs to ABC, Bad Robot Productions, and a genius by the name of J.J. Abrams.

Summary: “Goodbye, Sydney Bristow.” AU Season 1. Character death, angst, oneshot. Inspired by the lyrics of the song “Warehouse” by the Dave Matthews Band (which also does not belong to me).

xxxx
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See I’m leaving
This warehouse frightens me

xxxx

The waiting was killing him. The warehouse provided some comfort in the familiarity of low electrical hums from fluorescent lights, large stacks of cardboard boxes, and the feeling of seclusion from the rest of the world. Especially in the basement level, where he waited, the din of LA traffic could barely be heard. Occasionally an emergency siren would pierce the silence, but he was accustomed enough to the sounds of downtown that he simply tuned them out.

He checked his watch for what must have been the twentieth time in ten minutes. Normally Sydney was exceptionally punctual for their debriefings, especially when she was the one who initiated the meet. The note on the paper bag she had left at the dead drop was brief; it only stated that she would like to meet later that day. He had followed up with a “Joey’s Pizza” phone call two hours later, and now, thirty minutes after that, he was still alone in the warehouse.

He removed his cell phone from his pocket and stared at it, briefly considering calling Sydney’s cell phone to make sure everything was okay. In the back of his mind, he knew that was folly; if SD-6 had called her into their headquarters, a phone call from her CIA handler in the middle of a debriefing would not go over well. He pocketed the phone. A few minutes’ tardiness was not cause for concern. She may have been stuck in traffic, or some other activity may have required her immediate attention. After all, she did have her work at SD-6, as well as her “normal” life as a graduate student to attend to. Sometimes he wondered how she found time to breathe, let alone meet with him. He resolved to wait another fifteen minutes.

xxxx

Fifteen minutes came and left without any other sign of life in the warehouse. Even the worst of traffic jams could not cause that sort of delay; she did not live more than ten minutes from the warehouse, and there were plenty of alternate routes. He was still wary of calling her phone, so he instead called the CIA offices. She may have left another dead drop requesting a change of time for the debriefing after he had already left.

After only one ring, Eric Weiss answered.

“Mike! Thank God. Where are you?”

His friend’s words immediately set off warning bells in his head. He could hear commotion in the background, louder and more urgent than the normal hubbub of a day in the CIA offices.

“I’m fine, Eric. What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, man. We would have called you, but we didn’t know if you were in hiding, and we didn’t want to tip them off to your location if you were.”

At the suggestion of an enemy presence, whoever they may be, Vaughn’s hand instinctively moved to cradle his holstered gun and his eyes swept around the warehouse. Still wary of his surroundings but needing to find out more information, he turned his primary focus back to the phone conversation.

“Eric, what the hell is going on?”

The quiet sorrow in Weiss’ voice gave away the answer before the words could. “It’s all over, Mike. Agent Bristow – Sydney – she was compromised.”

Suddenly, his mind seemed unable to comprehend anything. He was no longer aware of his surroundings, and he certainly was not able to understand the sentence just uttered by his friend. He barely heard as Weiss informed him that Devlin wanted to speak to him, and the sharp voice of his superior went unnoticed at first.

“Vaughn! I asked you where you are!”

“Oh, um, I’m still at the warehouse, sir,” Vaughn replied numbly.

“Good. Stay there. SD-6 agents are all over the area, and we don’t need them finding you. We have agents posted outside your location to stop any of their agents from entering the warehouse.”

A meek "yes, sir" was all that Vaughn was able to utter.

xxxx

The waiting was killing him. The numbness he had first felt was quickly giving way to frustration. The warehouse no longer signified comfort to him; it was vast, dark, and served only to cut him off from the rest of the world. There was nothing for him to do but pace along the chain-link fences and envision what had happened to her over and over again. In some scenarios a sniper's laser sight followed the back of her head as she took a jog in the park; in others several black-clad agents broke into her apartment and dragged her out, kicking and screaming, before throwing her in the back of their car and driving away. Sometimes she was still alive, strapped to a chair in the SD-6 headquarters, her fate left to the mercy of those trained only to inflict pain.

He wanted to argue with Devlin; he should have argued with Devlin. He wanted to be out there, fighting the enemy that had taken her. He tried calling the CIA offices several times, but to no avail - after ascertaining that he was in no mortal peril, Devlin would bluntly tell him to stay in the warehouse and then hang up before he could offer any sort of rebuttal.

Finally, after 53 excruciating minutes, Vaughn received the all-clear from his superior. Cautiously exiting the warehouse, he was immediately greeted by two panhandlers loitering outside. They took a moment to introduce themselves as Agents Holden and Williams but wasted no more time in immediately ushering him into a nearby car.

As they pulled out of the parking lot, Vaughn addressed the other agents, doing his best to keep his voice calm. “Do either of you know what happened to Agent Bristow?”

Wordlessly Agent Williams jerked his thumb towards the back of the car. Vaughn turned around in his seat to see two police cars, a fire truck, and a large object shrouded by a blue tarp crowded about an intersection half a block from the warehouse. A car accident in the clean-up stage.

xxxx

Details were sketchy at first, but he was finally able to piece together what had happened that day. She had left her house at the normal time to meet him. She was followed by a member of Security Section, but standard SD-6 protocol dictated that all agents be tailed occasionally, so she may have not noticed anything out of the ordinary. In the process of trying to lose her tail, she had driven past the warehouse to the next intersection. At the four-way stop, a silver van had run a red light and slammed into the side of her car. She had died instantly, and he took a small comfort in the fact that she had not felt any pain. To an innocent bystander, the crash looked like a gruesome hit-and-run, but to anyone in the intelligence business, it was a clear and public warning not to cross the Alliance.

xxxx

Attending her funeral would have meant certain death for him as well. Any new faces at the funeral would have received a thorough background check from SD-6’s Security Section, and he would have almost certainly been exposed before the service was even over. Devlin offered to set up a live feed broadcasting to the CIA offices for him, but Vaughn declined, finding the concept of watching her funeral on television far too crass. He would pay his respects when the time was right.

xxxx

Even as weeks passed after the incident, Vaughn could tell her death was still taking its toll on him. Under the advice of the CIA psychiatrist, Devlin had refrained from assigning Vaughn as a handler to another agent, instead keeping him focused mostly on analyst work. Despite Vaughn’s protests, Devlin had also refrained from giving him any work related to SD-6. Perhaps they thought he was so unstable that any mention of SD-6 would cause him to rush into the Credit Dauphine building, guns blazing. Perhaps they were right.

Maybe it was his own guilt that was driving him insane. It had never been determined what exactly had blown Sydney’s cover. But considering the hit had taken place on her way to the warehouse, he couldn’t help but wonder if they knew she was going to meet him. They had met in public plenty of times, and it was completely possible that a Security Section agent had overheard their discussion of SD-6 missions. Eric tried to ease his conscience by pointing out that he would be dead as well if SD-6 had been eavesdropping on their meetings. He still wasn’t consoled. He was the one that had given Sydney her countermissions. Maybe she had intentionally botched one too many SD-6 missions, or maybe one fake device or disk was just too obvious. In either scenario, he was ultimately responsible.

He could no longer even stand to drive by the warehouse. While he had been idly counting away the minutes, Sydney Bristow had been dying less than a block away.

xxxx

He often wondered what would become of the elder Agent Bristow. After keeping a low profile in a CIA safehouse for a week and carefully ensuring that there was sufficient evidence to back up all of his alibis, it was determined that Jack Bristow was not under suspicion by SD-6. As soon as he received word that his name was cleared, he began working nearly nonstop on Alliance missions. Whenever Vaughn asked of Jack Bristow’s whereabouts, he was almost always told he was out of the country. Perhaps he felt the need to double his efforts now that he was the lone double agent inside SD-6. Vaughn sometimes doubted that Jack had taken sufficient time to grieve for his daughter, but he nonetheless had to admire his drive to continue to fight SD-6 at all costs. He just hoped that whatever pain Bristow masked would not one day compromise him in the field.

xxxx

It was nearly three months after her death, as he was taking a 15-minute detour to avoid the warehouse on his way to the grocery store, when he came to the realization that he had to leave. He didn’t want to leave the CIA; he still desperately wanted to put a stop to the Alliance and all they stood for. No, he had to leave Los Angeles. There was too much history, too many memories. The constant reminder of what used to be was threatening to overtake him completely.

The next day at work he placed a transfer request. Langley accepted him with open arms – they could use an agent with such an intimate knowledge of the Alliance, they said. He could start immediately, and they promised him plenty of casework to keep him busy. They made no mention of possibly assigning him as a handler, and he made no such request.

xxxx

One month later…

He stood in the cemetery, head slightly bowed, pretending to pay respects to a man named Joseph Turner. Out of the corner of his eye, he could read the inscription on the headstone to his right. SYDNEY BRISTOW – BELOVED DAUGHTER AND FRIEND. After a few moments of silence, he began to speak in a low voice.

“You know, of all the times we met in public, of all the times we couldn’t look at each other, I never imagined we’d be doing it like this.” A faint smile appeared, then disappeared as quickly as it came. He took a breath to steady himself. “Syd, it wasn’t supposed to end like this. We were gonna take them down together. I-I’m not sure I can do this on my own.”

He took another deep breath. “Actually, the real reason I’m here is to tell you that I’m leaving. I’m transferring to Virginia, to the Langley headquarters. I’ll still be fighting the Alliance, trying to defeat SD-6…But I can’t do it from here. Too much has happened…” He trailed off, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t know when I’ll be back…if I’ll be back. I hope you can understand.” With those words, he turned to his right and began walking towards his parked car, swiftly pulling a bouquet of flowers from under his coat as he walked. He paused ever so briefly as he dropped the flowers at her grave, but willed himself not to break stride. Their final brush pass was as seamless as all the ones that had come before it.

“Goodbye, Sydney Bristow.”

xxxx

My heart's numbered beat
Still echoes in this empty room
Fear wells in me
But nothing seems enough to defend
So I am going away

xxxx

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(1/1)

A/N: This first popped into my head as an idea for a fic waaaay back in 2002, when Alias was still in the halcyon days of early Season 2. While I was rewatching my S1 DVDs a few months ago, the idea came back and this time, I actually bothered to write it down.

I say I was inspired by the lyrics of “Warehouse” rather than the song itself because I don’t feel that the tone, tempo, and even the instrumentation of the song fit with the tone of this fic.

Anyways, please review and let me know what you think!