The words are on Vaughn's mind again. Old words — and it hurts, makes him feel strange and horrid — that they came out of his mouth. Words buried deep in his subconscious, burrowed down until he no longer felt the guilt of them.

And then she comes back, ice eyes like a pickax at his head. Reaches in, roots around, silently tosses them back in his face.

Unearthed, they echo now as she tap-tap-clicks out of Weiss's office. He watches her leave, then turns to Weiss, still standing next to the doorway, a cup of coffee steaming from each hand.

When Vaughn finally speaks, he is unable to mask the desperate need to know. "Wha...what the hell happened to her?"

This is a strange and delicate dance, and they are not any good at it, although they have been doing it for some time now. Weiss sets the coffee down on his desk and strides behind it, the leather chair hissing as he sits. One hand darts out to grab the yo-yo lying next to a tall stack of files; it disappears into one of the desk's drawers, and then he gestures to the coffee. Want some? I don't think she'll be coming back for it.

Vaughn shakes his head and his eyes press. Don't mince this. You fucking owe me.

"She was on assignment in Russia." He nods, impatient; knows this already. "Somebody compromised the op, and she got caught in the crossfire. Apparently she's lucky she can still walk. How do you know her?"

Slack on the details. Well fine. "We went through agent training together." Hypocrite.

Weiss knows there is more, and he isn't allowed to ask for it. Not yet. And there is still the bombshell. "She's been assigned to the SD-6 case."

"What?" The word shoots out, vaguely venomous, and he grows more flustered. "That doesn't make any sense. Her background was Russian and computer science. They should have her all over the nuke."

"She probably hasn't been cleared yet. If she just spent seven years over there, I don't think anyone's going to authorize her working on their missing nuke right away."

A pause for digestion, and Vaughn wishes he was not so adamant in his last memo to Bill Devlin about the need for more agents on the SD-6 case. You get what you ask for, not what you want. He runs through potential complications and it takes a moment to realize that Weiss has spoken.

Something about grabbing a drink later. They have done a decent job of tiptoeing through this, but there are holes in the story, and Vaughn feels the need to fill them.

So much easier to sink into old habit. So much easier to forgive, to ignore. It is why he came here in the first place. "Sure."

———

There are three conference rooms in the CIA's Los Angeles headquarters. The first two are large, spacious affairs, massive wooden tables draped with plastic teleconferencing triangles — secure lines, of course — and rivers of wires that snake down the legs. The Central Intelligence Agency seal, a large circle on the wall above the head of each table, sets them apart from their counterparts at traditional businesses.

The third is located in what used to be two separate offices, the wall between them removed to make a small room. The walls are stark white and windowless, the table clean and new, but bare. The room is tiny, but you can cram ten people in if the other two are booked. The SD-6 team fits comfortably, and this has become their meeting place of late.

Vaughn is the first to arrive. He slaps a legal pad and pen down on the far side of the table and walks around to join them. The chairs are molded plastic, the tabletop cool laminate, and he longs to rest his head on it, just for a few moments. He does not; the rest of the team will be here shortly — including her — and he cannot afford to get caught trying to draw out the storm in his head. Instead he sits quietly and draws stars on the legal pad, making futile attempts to erase old words from his mind.

There are nine little ballpoint stars by the time Alex McClure walks in. Six months out of training and a bit wild, McClure has made it clear that he would rather be a field agent. But his ideas are solid, and he stays level so long as you don't rouse the Irish temper that lurks beneath the rusty hair and freckles.

Jack Bristow and Jim Kretchmer walk in together. As Jack's handler, Kretchmer — tall, graying rapidly, with small wire-rimmed ovals balanced on his nose — has always held Vaughn's respect. More so now, since he has heard Bristow's tape-recorded interrogation of Steven Haladki. The tape cuts off before the end, but his imagination has filled the gap effectively.

Kretchmer, along with Bristow — when he's in the building — have become the de facto leaders of the team since Devlin stopped attending their meetings, and most of their agents were reassigned. The SD-6 team is one of several at the CIA that have been stripped down to the bare minimum, devoted to the formerly important. Kretchmer takes the head of the table, Bristow a seat beside him. Weiss, right behind them and typically almost-late, sits quickly. This leaves Watkins in the doorway, leaning on the cane, and even Kretchmer and Bristow seem startled.

Christine Watkins is more world-weary, wiser, perhaps, than she was seven years ago. But the old, indescribable magnetism is still there. Features attractive, but unspecific, so that once she left the room you would remember something about blue eyes and little else. An appearance well-suited to what she did.

Vaughn knows this already, so he scrutinizes as Kretchmer introduces her. Most shocking are the flats on her feet, basic black and scuffed around the toes. A temporary thing, then, until she is stable enough to get back to the heels that jack her up to a more preferable height. He wonders how much of the rest of her is a temporary thing.

———

As operations go, it is simple. SD-6 is after a Rambaldi manuscript that details the Circumference. Arvin Sloane believes Alexander Khasinau, aka "The Man," has this manuscript. This is only partially true.

The full truth is that Irina Derevko, aka Laura Bristow, aka "The Man," has one copy of this manuscript, and the CIA has another. They want both, and will let SD-6 track down the other for them.

The mission is part of the tracking process. Sydney and Dixon are set to execute an in-and-out data grab from one of Derevko's front companies. The company's mainframe, Sloane believes, contains the location of the manuscript.

Vaughn knows the mission already — prepared the brief — but he lets Jack Bristow spell it out for the rest of the team. These things take on a particular cadence: SD-6 mission, CIA countermission, discussion and thanks for coming.

Watkins breaks the cadence. "I'm sorry. Did you say the mainframe was a model PV-E?"

Bristow stares at her, and she gives him the ice eyes back. "Yes."

"That's wrong. They never moved PV-E into production. There's a D, and an F, but no E." She glances about the room like this should be a major revelation, and finds only confusion. "They cut the disk latency time on the F model in half. If it's a D, you won't make the five minute window."

It is almost worth his new lay of complications to see Jack Bristow completely taken aback.

———

They do not meet at the pier any more. The park instead, and outside air a welcome change, cooling slightly in anticipation of night.

A little blond-haired girl has lost control of her balloon, and Vaughn does not miss the irony. She is crying, face blotchy red and snotty, about 20 feet away. "We'll get you another," promises a petite blond woman, patting at the blotchy face with a wrinkled tissue. Her mother, he assumes.

He turns his attention to the balloon, watches it grow smaller against the faded pastel remnants of the sunset. The speck has disappeared by the time she arrives.

"Do you mind if I have a seat?" Crisp, polite. A stranger's voice.

"No. Go right ahead." He slides his eyes sideways, one quick glance. She looks faded, muted. Tired.

Sydney sits her backpack on the grass in front of the wooden bench, and takes the opposite end with a slight creak. A stranger's distance. Two months ago, she clung to him in a CIA safehouse.

A stranger's distance since.

"We had to revamp your countermission. Bad intel. There's a transmitter underneath the bench, just set it on top of the unit. One of our agents here will search for the files. We'll decide what to give SD-6 once we see what's on there."

"Okay."

The little girl and her mother walk past. The little girl has a new balloon.

"How's Will?" The question has become commonplace, words as locked in their peculiar vernacular as "good luck" and "what's my countermission."

The CIA keeps careful track of certain things, the budgets of American newspapers among them, and when a story on SD-6 was slotted to run, they moved quickly. Court order, clear and present danger, story snuffed, and that was that. No damage done.

Damage was done to Will Tippin. Vaughn has seen the pictures, read the statements, and knew then that post traumatic stress was almost inevitable.

She sighs, slumps her shoulders. "About the same." Bullshit, Sydney.

She blames herself, he knows, and her subdued guilt march has worsened recently. He suspects Will has as well. She says she moved in with him so he would have someone there who understood his ordeal. He wants to believe her, but he wonders.

He wonders if she comforts him when the nightmares come. If she holds him in the night. If she lets him touch her, fuck her, until they are both tired enough for a dreamless sleep.

He is no longer the only one who knows her secret — special role no longer special. And you can't share a bed with her. Will can.

There is still something. Something in the way she held him in that safehouse. Something that flits across her eyes occasionally. It tells him he would have a chance if he just fought.

It is time to stop fighting.

Time to leave Sydney to Will Tippin, Irina Derevko, Noah Hicks — all the myriad knives she uses to stab, unwittingly, at him. Time to extract himself from Hurricane Sydney, the fucked-up force of nature, well-meaning but inadvertently destroying everything in her path.

It gives him a reason to change his vantage. It is safer from a stranger's distance.

———

Vaughn would prefer somewhere grittier, but they are getting too old for that. This bar is all polished cherry and brass railing, subdued voices and martinis on every table. He feels a little strange ordering a beer, but Weiss does the same, and there is some sort of strength in numbers. Even if the numbers no longer consider themselves friends.

They sit amidst the other suits, pint glasses clinking on the tiny wooden table. No bottles here. A few times back-and-forth, glass-to-mouth, for both. Eventually, it will loosen the angry knot in Vaughn's stomach. Enough of the familiar motion, and he may forget betrayal.

Weiss picks up a packet of Sweet 'N Low from the plate in the center of the table and twirls it between his fingers a few times. "So...Watkins. You went through agent training together. And?"

Weiss still does not deserve the long version, and it is too painful to tell. The short, instead.

"I hated her the first week. Cocky, but she could back it up." Weiss nods; this part has become obvious. "She was an ace at anything on a computer, knew like every Eastern Bloc language. Sharp mind. Really sharp. One day she just up and asked me out."

"You know, Mike, there are like millions of women in this world you don't work with." Habit, the joke. Weiss knows he's overstepped, and goes back to twirling the little pink packet.

The short version gets shorter.

"It took off pretty quick after that. We dated for about a year, and then she was assigned to field duty in Russia."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

———

Vaughn has lived in one apartment of the five-apartment flat for the last three years. Pushing thirty years old, with white aluminum siding that hasn't managed the California sun very well, it is filled with others like himself. Single-bedroom affairs for single people who can't afford or don't want any more. On a government salary, he fits into both categories.

The previous tenant in his particular apartment lost a security deposit on the illegally installed dog door and fence in the back. He assured the landlord it was fine, then used the opportunity to get a dog.

This is who greets him when he steps through the front door.

"Hey, Donovan." He rubs the dog's head and drops his mail — three bills and two credit card offers — on the floor. The bulldog is comparatively svelte for his breed, but a little soft from lack of exercise.

The interior is simple, necessities only. The entryway falls into the living room, kitchen and eating area beyond that. A hallway to the right leads to bedroom and bathroom, both sparse.

Tuesday is trash day, and so he walks through the place, collecting. There are more beer bottles in the kitchen can than he remembers drinking. But he has spent more time here in recent weeks than is normal.

He wonders how things grew so empty so fast. Important relationships had chilled, certainly, but there is more than that. What had been fairly frequent social events — hockey league, trips to the bar, beer-pizza-sports gatherings on Saturday afternoons — had all dissipated. Too many agents working too many hours. Too much threat for fun and games.

Vaughn ties the bag shut and thinks — not for the first time — that his life revolves around his job.