This is the day Michael Vaughn meets Will Tippin. Meets, perhaps, is not the proper word. Rather, he spies him in the hallway, leaving Barnett's office. Vaughn has never met the reporter, but he has collected bits and pieces from Sydney over the past year. And there, stepping into the hallway in baggy khaki pants, and a shirt and jacket that most would interpret as mismatched, must be the whole puzzle.

He watches as Tippin stares in his direction, thinks there should be no reason for recognition — that to Tippin he is just another suit. Then the footsteps behind him come closer, become more distinct, and he realizes Tippin isn't looking at him. The volume of her shoes tells him without looking that she is walking to be seen, because if the need arises, she can be dreadfully stealthy.

Watkins's footwear has tracked the time. Small heels first, then boots, and finally a height that feels right when they kiss. Her body is still lankier than he remembers, but the curves are improving — enough to draw more attention as she walks through the halls here. There are also things casual — and not-so-casual, because she garners both again — observation cannot pick out. She has grown more muscular under his touch, although her stomach remains soft.

Tippin is still observing as she places a hand on his arm and slides around him, smiling a hello. Careful to maintain some distance, the casual co-worker guise, which is something they mastered long ago.

"What's your schedule like tonight?" He thought he would not like the far-shorter hair, but has found it makes her face seem fresher.

"I'm free as of now."

"Good. I need pizza."

He has missed the off path of another agent striding down the hallway, eyes locked on a file folder and headed straight toward Watkins. She has not, however, and she snaps a blunt warning, stepping closer to Vaughn. The agent only brushes her shoulder, but Vaughn checks carefully for pain in her eyes. There is nothing, save perhaps for a brief instance of smolder at the proximity before she steps back.

"Sorry!" The agent calls out, never breaking pace, which is not odd at all. The pace here is still frenetic, the search a seesaw where potential progress always ends with everyone landing back on their asses. From what Vaughn has seen, they are beyond desperation now — approaching a resignation that they will find it when a mushroom cloud makes the location obvious.

Watkins straightens and swings back on the way to her original destination. When he looks back down the hallway, Tippin is gone.

———

Sometimes he thinks the pain is still there. That the new muscles and the tough face are all an act, a way to hide it from him, from the rest of the world. Perhaps even from herself.

Many of the courses they took during agent training were basic. How to shoot, how to fight, proper technique for dead drops and brush passes. Some were a little more unsettling. He recalls specifically an afternoon seminar on interrogation, and a rambling lecture about torture techniques that had almost everyone looking nauseous.

Except, of course, Chris, who sat next to him and stared out on the room, puzzled at their predicament. Finally, she'd lifted her hand, frustrated.

"It's just pain. Either you live or die, and either way it's over eventually."

Torture 101 by Christine Watkins. Sweet and succinct. It was the only useful thing he had taken away from that afternoon, the words he knew he would run in a continuous loop through his head if ever faced with the nausea-inducing things.

There was a logic to the words, to the feeling itself, that was inherently Chris. Too much logic, he'd thought. Too rational for him to understand how she could believe it so resolutely.

That night she sat at her computer desk and ignored him for three hours. Busy typing until he'd offered to work at the substantial knots between her shoulder blades. There was no logic in the moan that rose from her when his hands drifted elsewhere.

———

They only dead drop today, and Sydney is fifty feet away, exiting the park, when he arrives and sits on the bench. Previously, he might have wished they could stop and talk — ask her about Will and Francie, her classes, her father. Lately, there has only been one question — "How's Will?" — and he gets reports to answer that one now.

He makes one final, deliberate scan — eyes only, no telltale turning of his head — of the park in front of him. Nothing, and so he reaches underneath the bench and, in one motion, detaches the cardboard tube taped there, pulling it into his lap.

Inside, he knows, is the original version of the Rambaldi manuscript, recovered two days ago in Germany. The lab that held it is now a pile of rubble and cinders, and SD-6 considers the remains of the document a part of the ashes. He considers briefly — then pushes it away — that both of them nearly died because of the parchment inside the tube.

Vaughn does wish he could congratulate her. Suspicion is strong — although the CIA still lacks the resources for intel to support it — that Irina Derevko has been able to regroup and is again working on Rambaldi's Circumference. The last thing the SD-6 team wants is their target doing the same.

Praise for good work aside, Vaughn has been largely indifferent about meeting with Sydney of late. Occasionally, he misses the connection they had — or at least the one he thinks they had — before they both trenched back into their own worlds. She does not know that things have changed with Chris. No one does — unwritten rule — but he thinks she suspects something.

He has found this pleases him. Not because of anger or jealousy — although those were strong in the beginning. It pleases him because they meet now and he feels some semblance of control over the situation. His relationship with Chris is still tenuous, occasionally strained — the old words they ignore most of the time still somewhere down there, a lingering current of unease. But she has changed things in him, changed his perspective, and that has changed everything.

His briefcase today is a soft-sided leather thing, important for what he needs to do next. Smooth and rapid, he slides at the zipper to make an opening just large enough for the tube, then slips it inside. He closes the zipper as he stands, then walks away, pace and demeanor that of a businessman here on a lunch break.

———

They spent part of the weekend at the beach — her suggestion. Watkins in a solid black swimsuit that covered the pink line on her stomach, and somehow he found that change more jarring than the lines on her face, the pants and the short shoes.

Too hot, too crowded, she said, and suggested they swim. Then a quick realization on her face, an apology, and she told him she would understand if he didn't want to. He thought about explaining it to her — that it wasn't really fear, merely a lack of desire to feel the water around him. To remember Taipei and how drastically things changed after it. Instead he shrugged his shoulders and stood with her, followed her to the waterline. And he did hesitate when his feet crossed the border between wet sand and dry, but it had nothing to do with recent memories.

He was six when his father took him the first time. A little strange, he thinks, because Fleury was so close to the beaches steeped in history. Perhaps he was too young, or perhaps his father just wasn't around, not available even to take him to the place that defined Normandy for the rest of the world.

Omaha was closest, and it was not until later that he realized his father had specifically selected one of the American beaches. That was long before he began to consider what it was to be American. What it was to be his father.

He remembers most the demeanor of the adults. That he became solemn, reverent — or as close as a six-year-old can get to these — because of them. He still did not understand the gray-haired man in American tourist clothing, who kneeled down in the wet sand just before the waves and stared at it, unmoving for a very long time.

Vaughn grasped his father's hand and listened as he talked about hedgerows and bunkers and LSTs, but his focus was on the American man. Eventually, the man's hands slowly descended to the sand, resting there before he stood and walked away, a confusing silhouette against the rough waves. The imprints were still there when a slight tug at his hand told him it was time to move further down the beach.

He returned at 12 and thinks it was the first time he truly wanted his father's job.

———

They have been here many times before, but not in this incarnation. Dark brick walls and dim, low-slung lights, but it is still enough to see her work quickly through three slices of pizza. She refuses a fourth, however.

"That's enough for one night. I've got firearms cert this week, and then full conditioning next. That's going to be a real bitch."

He watches her for a moment with this, waits until her eyes shift from her beer to his. A question he thinks he already knows the answer to. "They're working you awfully hard for a desk jockey, aren't they?"

Her eyes drift back to the beer. "Not a desk jockey. I want to get back into field shape."

This is starting to sound too damn familiar. "Shit, Chris. You can't honestly be planning to go back out. Look at what happened to you." And what about us?

She seems to know the question he doesn't ask. "I asked to go back into training as soon as I got back, Michael. They're not going to send me anywhere." She grins and meets his eyes again, a faint glow on the blue. "I'm too old and broken-down."

The humor is meant to deflect, but he does not let it. "What if they did, Chris? Damn it, I'm not going to go through that again."

The force of his words seems to startle her. "Michael, I need to do this. I need to get back to where I was. The odds of them sending me anywhere are — "

" — I don't care about the odds, Chris. I don't want to be here if there are any odds."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means I can't fall in love with you again and watch you leave for another seven years. It means I can't wait around to find out that whoever shot you this time had better aim."

"You're assuming this is going to last."

"No, Chris. I'm telling you it can't last with that hanging over us. You said last time you didn't have a choice. You do now, don't you?"

She nods slightly, but there is a stagnant pause before she speaks, and he fears this is when it will all crumble again.

"I asked to go back into the field because I didn't have anything important here in L.A. Anyone important." She runs her hand across the table, sliding her fingers gently over his. "If it means that much to you, I'll tell them I changed my mind."

"Thank you."

"You know as long as we're both with the Agency, this can't go anywhere — things will never progress. And I don't know about you, but I don't plan on leaving any time soon."

"It doesn't matter," he tells her, and means it fully. Her hand becomes tighter, warmer around his.

There is nothing ominous about the gesture, nothing strange about her tenderness that night. There is nothing to suggest that this is the day before everything falls apart. This is the day before it all begins to unravel.