Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money off of it.
Summary: This was written in between season 2 and season 3, based on speculation that Sydney had been replaced by a double.
Feedback: If you have a minute, I'd love some!
Sydney Remembers.
Sydney remembers wrapping the ring she'd bought for Vaughn, it was this wonderfully intricate celtic knot pattern in white gold. She'd bought it on a whim and then chickened out of giving it to him for Christmas. She'd been debating giving it to him for a birthday present when all the stuff with Will had gone down, and then Francie.
Her breath still hitches in her throat every time she thinks of Francie. Thoughts of Francie lead to thoughts of Danny, and Noah and Emily, and everyone else hurt or killed because of Sloane or SD6 or this Goddamn Spy life she lives. Sydney remembers every name, every face. She remembers her birthday, her social security number, Vaughn's mother's maiden name. She remembers playing "You Don't Know" with him on all too infrequent lazy Sunday mornings in her bed. She remembers kissing Will. She remembers meeting Francie. She remembers Jack making s'mores for her over a campfire when she was six. She remembers Irina tying her shoes for her when she was four years old.
What Sydney does not remember is where she was last year, or last month or even two weeks ago. Sydney does not know where the six inch surgical looking scar on her abdomen came from, who has cut her hair, where her clothes came from. All Sydney does know is she's missing almost two years of her life. Two years of living and loving and being with the people who now stare at her with wonder and a little bit of fear in their eyes. They still love her, they just treat her with kid gloves now, as if she's one of those fragile glass figurines Emily used to collect. They watch her like they can't believe she's actually there and not a ghost or something. Sydney desperately wishes for Francie's calm, accepting presence but comforts herself with Will's excited frenetic buzz whenever he's around her, Marshall's stutter, Weiss' quips, her Dad's clipped smiles, and Vaughn's arms around her at night. She does not know how she would have survived the revelations of the last two weeks without Vaughn.
She's finally gotten to see his apartment, although it is not the same one from two years ago, she has been living there since they got back state side and Kendall let her out of debrief. Her apartment has been rented to new tenants with both her and Francie gone. Will's new bachelor-style place is a mountain of papers and computer print outs and old pizza boxes. It's a complete contrast to Vaughn's condo on the beach, which is as neat as Vaughn's suit every morning but with the same comfortable homey facet that Vaughn himself exudes.
Vaughn is no longer Vaughn however; not Special Agent Vaughn, or even CIA Agent Vaughn. He's just Michael now, a guy who runs on the beach every morning with his dog who sometimes does consultations for the CIA in cases regarding the Bristows. He hasn't said anything, but Eric and Will have told her about the fits he threw at Kendall, the shouting matches and his own desperate attempts at getting her back.
She glosses over her Replacement in her mind like he does in their conversations and thinks only of the ring in her pocket. She needs to give it to him now, to replace the pale skin on his ring finger from Her ring with something that truly belongs to the two of them. She can tell Vaughn Remembers the life he led with her double, she knows he still has nightmares of the day she was found out. She can only imagine what that must have been like for him, to have to watch 'her' but not her go through a trial and eventually face the death penalty. She knows he got to know her double just as herself and not as Sydney during those months, knows how badly that affected him, and so she glosses over her own hurt feelings and allows him his time alone and his starts and scares whenever he doesn't notice when she enters a room.
The idea of Vaughn being with a double of herself drives Sydney nuts, both with jealousy, anger that he couldn't tell it wasn't her, that it took them six months to figure out something was wrong. She has caught herself watching old episodes of Farscape after Crichton was doubled and then one of the doubles was killed. She watches Aeryn's reaction to the other Crichton and wonders if that's how Vaughn feels, if she's still the Sydney he remembers or if she seems like a replacement herself for the other woman he spent a year and a half with before her execution. She feels cheated out of marrying Vaughn, out of the life that could have been hers that wasn't and will never be. But she comforts herself with thoughts of the future, of what they will share together and not what has been taken.
Sydney remembers hope.