S1 E21 – Rendezvous

As Sydney is trying to keep herself hidden from Dixon, Vaughn is setting up other agents to cover her.  But he makes it very clear that he doesn’t want the gun fire going near Sydney.  He doesn’t want her hurt at all.   Vaughn gets closer to the meeting point and throws in a smoke bomb to distract Dixon and allow her to getaway.  She tells him that she was unable to make the switch and that Sark still has the real ampule. So Vaughn goes after him, and Sydney runs from Dixon.  Unfortunately Sydney runs into a fence and can’t get past it so Dixon is able to catch up and she is now trapped.  Anytime we get to see badass Vaughn is a good thing, and anytime Vaughn and Sark are near each other, we get to see that.  Even though Vaughn isn’t an official field agent, you can see he has had training; he can jump off buildings and has no problem catching up with Sark and using the fence to knock him out.  Back to Sydney she has had to engage in fighting with Dixon, and she does well in the fight until Dixon slashes her shoulder with his knife, she backs up and he pulls his gun on her.  Meanwhile Vaughn has handcuffed Sark to the fence and retrieved the ampule.  He is trying to get Sydney to answer him over the coms, but when there is no answer, he gets Weiss back at base to tell him what’s going on.  Weiss tells him that he has to stay with Sark, Vaughn is having none of that and demands to know what is going on with Sydney.  He leaves Sark, even though he was supposed to wait, and gets to Sydney’s position just in time for Vaughn to knock out Dixon and save Sydney.  Vaughn tells Sydney to go, he doesn’t want her to be found out, and he goes back to where he left Sark and finds him missing.

Once again, even though it’s not directly affecting the relationship, I have to tell the Will storyline in this episode, because his storyline begins meshing with Sydney and Vaughn’s a lot more from here on out.  Jack and Will meet and Jack instructs him on what to say to Deep throat, as well as how he must set up a meeting.  Jack tells him key words that he will need to use, but doesn’t tell him anymore info than he really needs to know. So Will makes the call, and is told that he will receive instructions soon.

Back at SD-6 when Sydney meets up with Dixon for the first time, he looks at her very suspiciously, like maybe it was you in Denpasar.  She smiles and talks about her trip to Palm Springs, the Desert. He tells her that SD-6 apprehended Sark while she was away. And that they have a new lead on Khasinau.  Dixon watches her as she walks away, and sees that when she is bumped on the shoulder that he slashed her with his knife on, that she visibly winces.   He definitely suspects that she was there with him.

Weiss is not happy with Vaughn; he tells Vaughn that he just covered for him for losing Sark.  Vaughn thanks him, but he tells Vaughn that he doesn’t want thanks, partners cover for each other.  But he wants this whole thing to stop. Vaughn defends himself by telling him that Sydney is his responsibility, but Weiss interrupts saying that he isn’t going to trivialize his relationship with Sydney as a crush, Vaughn is taken aback, questioning the word crush, but doesn’t deny it.  Weiss tells him that whatever it is, it’s starting to affect him as well. Weiss goes on to say that he knows that Vaughn genuinely cares for Sydney, as does he.  But there is a line that they need to be mindful of, and have been told not to cross, but somehow they are a mile across the line.  Vaughn thinks for a minute, and then tells the truth.  He doesn’t know how to be Sydney’s handler without making it personal. Weiss tells him that he needs to figure out a way, then leaves.  Vaughn knows that he is right, but doesn’t like it.

Sydney and Dixon have been sent to a club in Paris to switch out a document of Khasinau’s, Sydney is not happy that they will be in the same room as Khasinau, but are instructed not to take him into custody.  They are going off of Sark’s Intel for this information, another piece of news that Sydney is not keen on finding out about.

Will and Jack meet up after Will was contacted.  Jack tells him what to expect when he goes to meet his contact.  That he will essentially be abducted and taken to an undisclosed location. Jack wonders what the terms of the meet are; Will tells him that he is to wait under a street light reading the business section of the paper, tomorrow night, in Paris.  --- So just to make things clear, both Sydney and Will are going to be in Paris at the same time.  This is going to get interesting.

When Sydney meets up with Vaughn, she sincerely hopes that her counter mission is to bring in Khasinau. He tells her that after Dixon makes the document switch, she needs to make another document switch herself.  You can see how much it pains him to do this, but he stays on track with what his job is and asks if she has any questions about the mission.  She tells him no, but she does want to know why he’s acting different.  He denies acting different and tells her that he has to go.  He hates to do it, but he knows that Weiss was right earlier, he needs to try and stop making it personal.  But on the other hand, you can see how much this pains Sydney.  She thought that she had a friend and confidant and in this moment, she has to question it.  He has hasn’t been this impersonal since they first met, and even then, he was more personable.  She really does wonder what is happening with him.

Jack drops off Will at his meeting spot, but as he’s being dropped off, Jack gives him some liquid to drink, it’s a counter agent to Sodium pentothal, Will wonders if they are actually going to give him truth serum, and Jack tells him that he would.  Jack tells him that he will be monitoring him the whole time and comforts his fears in a roundabout way.  Telling him that if they wanted him dead, they already would’ve made that happen, they need him to print the story and he knows someone who knows about the Circumference. But he also told him that if he actually feared for his life, he wouldn’t allow for the meeting to go on.

In Paris, Sark meets with Khasinau and shows him the fake ampule, following Sloane’s instructions.  They stay in the dining room to have their meal to celebrate Sark’s success.  Then the musical act begins, and it is Sydney singing.  She approaches Khasinau to get the recording of his voice with her ring, once Dixon tells her that he has it, she goes back on stage. While she is getting ready for the next song, she looks up and sees someone talking with Khasinau; they tell him that they have the man from Los Angeles.  While that is happening, she looks around and sees that will is being held by someone in the back of the room.  She tells the audience that she has to go; Dixon tells her that he has the document and will meet her out back in two minutes.  Will is being interrogated about the Circumference but he is getting very fuzzy around the edges and isn’t sure what he is thinking due to the different drugs mixing in his system. But then Sydney breaks into the room and beats up the men interrogating him.  When he realizes who just saved him he screams, and wonders what is going on.  She asks how he got there, and then proceeds to get him out of the club.  She tells Dixon over the coms that she can’t get there and that she’ll meet him at the extraction point.  Sydney and Will make their way thru the club and at every turn Sydney keep s surprising Will with how much she can do.  He is almost afraid of her.  They get outside and Jack is waiting for them, Will is relieved to see him, but Sydney is very upset that Jack brought him in on this.   In the car Sydney and Jack are arguing, and Will openly wonders who the hell they are.  They reach a safe house where Will is to receive a new identity.   Sydney tells him to go with the man, that he’ll be okay, and he just wonders what part of any of this is okay.  Jack explains to Sydney that he didn’t want to bring Will into all of this, but that someone else had already brought him in.  He also brings up the possibility that whoever it is, they are well placed and wants to bring down SD-6 as well as expose Sydney and Jack as double agents.  When Will comes back from getting his new look, Sydney hugs him and makes him promise not to tell anyone about all of this. And then tells him that she will see him at home, she is very shaken that now he knows about her secret life.

In LA, Dixon has a flashback to when he was shot, and he hears Sydney using the CIA’s radio calling herself Freelancer.  So when they are back in the office, he asks her to give him a straight answer.  He knows that she injured her arm, and he wants to know how it happened. She tells him about a hiking accident during her vacation.  He tells hers that she should have told him since they are supposed to know about each other’s injuries.

When Sydney meets to debrief with Vaughn about the mission, she tells him that Sloane thanked her for not turning Emily in and how he is sorry that he didn’t pay her the same courtesy.  Vaughn is shocked that she possibly be feeling sympathy for Arvin Sloane.  She reassures him that she doesn’t, but she’s just never seen him express regret for what he did to Danny.  Vaughn reminds her that he wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to kill her if he knew that they were having this conversation and she agrees.  He then goes on to tell her that they are working on contingency plans for Will.  He tells her that the options are Witness protection, and possibly recruitment.  She tells him no way, that they can’t bring him into this life.  He very plainly tells her that he is already part of this life whether she likes it or not.   She tells him that he is one of her best friends; he says that he understands, and she cuts him off telling him that he really doesn’t.   That he is able to go home and tell his friends that he works for the CIA, but she has to go home and look for any moment that she can be honest about anything with her friends, and now that he knows the truth, he’ll never trust her again.  She tells him that Will’s face was like he was looking at a stranger when he saw her.  Vaughn reassures her that he wasn’t; he was seeing her for the first time maybe.  You can see that it hurts Vaughn to tell her this, now that she is able to talk openly with another man in her life about what her life really is like, it scares him a little.  Earlier he tried to not be too personal with her, and he is trying to attempt it here, but like he told Weiss, he doesn’t know how to not make it personal with her.  You can tell that she is at least back at ease with him though; he has stopped acting too weird for her to be worried any longer.

When Sydney goes to see Will in the safe house, she tells him that she wanted him to stop looking into the death of Danny.  She admits that Danny dies because she told him what she did, and that they tried to kill her too.  He figures out that is the reason that she took his sisters passport.   She tells him that she is so afraid that he knows anything about her.  Then he tells her that he only pursued it because he wanted to help.  It killed him seeing her in so much pain.  But he promises her that he is not going to say a single word to anyone and he won’t ask anyone anything.  She tells him that Danny just left a message and that was all it took.  He tells her that he she won’t have to worry about him.  He tells her how hard it must be for her to have to lie to everyone, he doesn’t love her because of what she does or doesn’t do, but he just loves her. She thanks him, and then he thanks her for saving his life.  I think that at this point Sydney is happy to have Will know that truth, but I think that she may feel bad because she can see his feeling for her, and doesn’t feel the same.  She will only ever think of Will as her best friend, even if he is 100% in love with her.

As the episode concludes, Sark fools SD-6 and gets a blood transfusion that takes the tracer out of his blood and he goes back to LA and kidnaps Will from the safe house.

•  Items that I found noteworthy… 
• The Alliance knows that Arvin killed another Alliance member.  He goes to the Alliance and begs for them to allow the cancer to kill her and not them. At the end of the episode the alliance agrees that they will let her die from the cancer. 
• Sloane thanks Sydney for not turning in Emily, when she mentioned SD-6.  He wishes that he was as kind to her as she has been to him. 
• The Doctor comes in to Emily and Sloane and tells them that the symptoms that she is having is actually due to her entering remission, not getting worse.  But Sloane knows what this really means.