Author: Edele Lane
E-mail: [email protected]
Rating: PG-13/R (later)
Disclaimer: Everything "Alias"-related does not belong to me. It belongs to J.J. Abrams and probably 900 other people associated with him.
Archive: Cover Me; anywhere else, e-mail me first.
Feedback: Please;x
Spoilers: Everything up to and including "Second Double"/"The Telling"
Summary: Takes place right before Sydney talks to Vaughn in "The Telling." This means that the conversation that took place is in this story, but trust me, it's the only rehash of the script I'll do. Anyway, Sydney has to deal with the things she learns from Vaughn and adjust to her new life. Sounds boring right now, but, I have quite a bit in store. Just a note, I'm assuming that everything that happened in the last couple of minutes in the show can be taken at face value, mainly because I'll be really pissed if ol' JJ makes that whole damn thing a dream.
Dedication: This is for Ash who reads each part before it is posted here and is undoubtedly my best (and favorite) critic. This is also for Dana because we both live for fanfiction and I swear I get ideas for new fics constantly while we're discussing fics we've written previously. Check out her stuff (her penname is Dana Riker).
One
Questions
Sydney Bristow sat on a small cot waiting for her contact—whomever that was going to be—to arrive. She looked down at herself, at her clothes—bland, shapeless pants and a shirt that hung loose on her frame. She sighed. When she had first awakened, she had been wearing an oversized sweater and brown jeans. Upon arriving in the room in the safehouse to which she had been led, she almost immediately sought out a mirror, as if she didn't believe her own eyes and wanted to have her appearance reflected in a piece of glass that she could be sure wasn't deceiving her.
She had winced at how worn out she looked. Her eyes were dark, almost empty-looking, her skin was decidedly pale, and there were small wrinkles at the corners of her mouth. She had run a hand cautiously through her tangled tresses and found herself suddenly creeped out. She was reminded of the mission in a Romanian mental institution that she had accomplished at least two years ago. She swallowed nervously, remembering only selected parts of that mission, not wanting to inflict more stress on herself. But the simple fact remained—her disheveled appearance then rivaled the one now in a way that sent a chill through her, causing her shoulders to involuntarily shake.
So now, a short while later, she cast a glance at the door, willing someone to walk through it, to explain to her how in the hell she had ended up in Hong Kong when her last memory was falling unconscious due to fatigue from her fight with Francie's double, A.G. Doren.
Her blood went cold then. She hadn't had much time to think about what had happened to the real Francie because before she knew it, she had been fighting for her life in what she would consider to be the most brutal battle she had ever faced.
Sydney found herself shivering uncontrollably and she situated herself on the cot with her back against the wall the cot was pushed against and her legs drawn to her chest. Her lip quivering, Sydney wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth, silently.
What *had* happened to Francie? she wondered, feeling another chill race through her body. Deep down, she already knew. Francie had been killed. Why else double someone then keep the original one alive? What purpose did it serve?
She felt like crying. Her best friend was clearly dead and Sydney had absolutely no answers as to *why* it had happened or who had caused it. Her thoughts ran rampant until Sydney finally realized that her body was convulsing in sobs but that tears weren't escaping her eyes. She was too worn out to shed any tears. She calmed herself down after a minute, another wave of questions sweeping over her.
What had happened to Will? she thought, trying to maybe conjure up something positive. She had briefly spied him in the bathtub of her apartment in the middle of her fight with Doren. She couldn't tell if he was dead of just seriously injured and had lapsed into unconsciousness.
Sydney found herself wrapping her arms tighter around her knees and rocking back and forth again, the motion oddly comforting. She tried to keep her outlook for Will hopeful—she couldn't stand to lose anyone else, especially someone who cared about her and had risked himself and his career in ways that opened too many doors for Sydney to count. The most important one, though, was that he had inadvertently led her to her mother. His snooping into SD-6, his contact that was feeding him information, his kidnapping Those had all led to Khasinau, to the Circumference, to Irina.
The realization was almost too much for Sydney to take. She had never truly thought about it before, how that all had tied in together. If Will had never wanted to provide her with the closure he had no idea that she had had already, she would have probably never gotten even remotely close to her mother or even to Khasinau.
How different would her life have been? Would it have been easier? Harder? Would SD-6 have been taken down already? Would she have been able to have a relationship with Vaughn that quickly?
Sydney mentally kicked herself for being so selfish with her last thought. Sure, she cared about Vaughn a great deal; perhaps she loved him, too. But it wasn't the time to start thinking about him when she could have quite possibly lost one of the most important people in her life. But then, there was the simple possibility that Vaughn and her father were the only people she had left. She was basically certain that Francie was dead and it was hard for her to think that Will might have possibly have survived without receiving a chiding from a voice in her head that made her cringe and shudder.
Finally, she lay back on the cot, her head on a small and decidedly uncomfortable pillow and her body wrapped in a thin blanket that Sydney could swear only made her feel colder than she already felt. She stared at her surroundings as she lay on her side, curled up into a tight ball.
The room seemed entirely too red.
This fact, of course, only made Sydney think of blood. She closed her eyes in an exasperated attempt to force herself to get some sleep. She needed to be rested and be thinking in a coherent manner when whoever was supposed to meet with her finally showed up.
So, without another thought, she slipped a hand under the pillow, using it to cradle her head somewhat, then slipped her other hand underneath her cheek, creating even more support for her head and drifted off to sleep.
She woke up a while later—she wasn't sure how long it had been and, quite frankly, she didn't give a damn. She sat up, rubbing her eyes and then her throbbing temples, sighing heavily. Except for the mother of a headache she had, she felt a bit better. Physically better, of course, not mentally. Mentally, she was still reeling, her mind once again awash with questions that had no answers.
Sydney gingerly pulled the blanket back and moved so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed, her feet on the floor. Sydney thought back to the fight with Doren and briefly wondered why she wasn't feeling any pain from all of the blows she had taken in that battle. She felt briefly confused about why she didn't check to see what injuries she had earlier, when she had arrived at the safehouse. She attributed her scattered priorities and thoughts to the fact that she felt extremely disoriented and confused.
How *had* she ended up in Hong Kong, anyway?
Sighing a little, Sydney rolled up the sleeves on the baggy shirt and examined her arms and then her hands. She leaned over and rolled up the pants a bit to see if her legs had taken any damage, then rolled the pants and the sleeves back down. She reached a hand behind her head where she had put her hair into a braid sometime between looking in the mirror and retreating to the cot and felt for any bumps or cuts from when she had been thrown against the full-length mirror in her bedroom.
To her surprise, there weren't any, and that confused her even more. Why the hell don't I seem to have any proof that I was in a fight that nearly killed me? she thought angrily. Since she hadn't checked her torso, she lifted her shirt and examined her abdomen.
A scar—and a rather large one at that—was clearly visible just to the right of her navel. She traced the scar, which appeared to be about three inches in length, and thought about the fight again. She remembered being knocked around a great deal, but never enough to have merited such a colossal scar on her stomach.
She would have pondered the abnormality a bit more if she hadn't heard the door creak open and her head hadn't snapped up immediately to see who was entering the room.
It was Vaughn.
She emitted something of a relieved gasp and leapt up from the bed to embrace him. She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, and slid a hand into his hair, bringing his head closer to her. As she held him, she couldn't help but wonder about how he had looked when he first entered the room. His expression seemed hesitant—afraid, almost—and she wondered why. But instead of asking, she tried to focus on the fact that he was here. Her boyfriend was here. The man she cared about was here.
She tried to swallow her tears but failed, and they stung her eyes and rained onto her cheeks. She held him to her for a few seconds more before pulling back and blurting out, "They doubled Francie."
Calmly, with almost a hint of irritation to his voice, Vaughn replied, "I know."
Still close to him, her hands on his shoulders, his face, her eyes searching his, she asked the questions that had been plaguing her since she arrived at the safehouse. She thought she knew the answers, but she needed to ask, needed to get it out in the open so it won't be gnawing away at her insistently. "What happened to Will, to Francie? Are they dead?" She tried to sound nonchalant, she didn't want to break down more than she already had, but inside she felt as if she was being ripped apart.
"Will's okay," Vaughn said, avoiding Sydney's eyes for a reason Sydney couldn't figure out.
His response left her surprised, shocked, even. How the hell did Will survive? But thank god he's okay, Sydney thought with relief, thankgodthankgodthankgod. She decided to ask, though, exactly how it was possible. "What? How?"
He was silent for a moment, clearly trying to figure out a way to facilitate his explanations. "You—" he began, still looking down and still appearing to be hesitant around Sydney, "Sit down."
They both sat down, Sydney on the cot and Vaughn in a chair. Sydney stared at Vaughn with imploring, tear-filled eyes, trying to determine why he was acting to strangely and what exactly was going on. Vaughn stared back at her, as if he were looking at a stranger and not the woman he loved. He seemed to be trying to figure out for himself exactly what was going on, which made Sydney feel even more scared than she already had been.
She spoke, her voice foreign and meek to her ears, making her feel small and helpless. "Vaughn?"
He looked at her a bit more and Sydney practically felt bare under his scrutiny. She wanted answers about Vaughn's behavior almost more than she wanted answers about how she had come to be in Hong Kong.
"We thought you were dead," he said finally.
Sydney quirked her eyebrows, her mouth slightly agape. What the hell? *Dead*? She remained silent, waiting for him to explain further.
Vaughn remained his almost indifferent demeanor and said slowly, "They asked me to come back to—to explain."
The words were out of Sydney's mouth before she could stop them and form a question that wasn't laced with her frustration. "Come back from what? What are you talking about?"
In response, he rubbed his face with his hand in the way he always did when he was exasperated, upset, or annoyed. Something glistened in the low light of the room, catching Sydney's attention and making her narrow her eyes and blurt something out again. Her voice was rough with the sobs she had been harboring in the back of her throat. Why are you wearing that ring?" She looked up at him, her eyes full of anger, and was irritated to find him avoiding her gaze again, shaking his head in something that appeared to be disbelief. Sydney desperately avoided the urge to grab him and shake him, ask him what the hell was going on and what has happened, but she was able to refrain and instead sat with her back all too rigid, staring imploringly at her—now, apparently—ex-boyfriend.
" he began, still shaking his head, his voice husky with emotion, "Since that night You were missing."
Sydney gave him another of her "what the hell" looks, her eyes still narrowed and a single tear still lingering on her cheek. Her attention was grasped immediately when Vaughn took a shaky breath and spoke again.
"You've been missing for almost two years."
Sydney swallowed hard, her lower lip quivering uncontrollably. She wanted to break down right then, because it was now official—
She had never been more confused in her entire life.