Witch is Why I Spy, an alias fanfic

Title: Witch is Why I Spy

Author: Wanderlustlover

Email: PG-13

Category: Written for the Crossficathon, for nicalamity

Disclaimer: Nothing here is mine, as usual. I do this purely out of love and respect for the series and the characters. This is Charmed during the beginning of the latest season and Alias pre-SD6's fall.

Archive: Ask first, though I will usually concede.

"Are you ready?"

"When your inside the compound, and you've broken through the security in lab, you'll make the hard copy on this. Then you'll switch the real copy, for this one. Since we do know what the artifact looks like within replicating value I'll leave it up to you to figure out a way to explain how you couldn't acquire the Rambaldi artifact."

"Sydney? Are you ready?" The dark skinned man asked her again, leaning over to touch her shoulder.

"Of course, Dixon," She replied calmly, as she continued to braid the end of a long strand of blonde hair that wasn't hers but was presently sitting very neatly in a pile on her lap. After that she started pulling it over her own head, situating, her hair pulled up tight underneath. "It's a simple retrieval routine. I don't think I should have any problems."

"Piper! Phoebe!" Paige called out frantically, as she came rushing down the two sets of stairs, the crystal pendulum still swaying and dangling from her fingers. "Where are you guys?"

"In the kitchen!" Piper's voice carried from the back of the house.

Paige moved through the front room and dinning room quickly, used to getting around in high heels without any real motion problems. Opening the door she found herself in the middle of the debate between Piper and Phoebe, which seemed to be about Phoebe's job and Piper's kids again.

"Guys, focus! We've got bigger issues," Paige shouted above the ruckus they were causing. "I was upstairs, scrying for the presence of the Avatars and nothing was coming up. And I was just talking out loud, you know, getting frustrated that it wasn't working-"

"And you found something?" Phoebe asked, looking impatient and like she really wanted to walk out. Which caused her to notice her sister was actually holding a jacket and her purse. She's been on the way out when this all start probably.

"If you'd let me finish," Paige snarked at her half-sister. "As I was saying, I was ranting at the map cause it wasn't working, saying it was easier when we were working with innocents and the pendulum landed immediately. I think an innocent needs us."

"I don't think I should have any problems."

It seemed like a smart thing to say at the time, and now that she was running from some guy who was somehow throwing fire at her it seemed like that kind of thing she should say only if she truly wanted this to go badly.

Getting into the building had been a synch. The gate guard had passed her card and let Sandra Seseli in without any question. And so had the deskman. Seseli hadn't worked here more than two days before being reassigned two years ago. But her clearance did allow access to all projects that were under her supervision, including R-3XP46.

The R stood for Rambaldi. Apparently Seseli was just as much an obsessed zealot as Sloan.

Sydney had gotten the copy of the hard drive files just fine, but she'd run into a snag gathering up the artifact. A large obstacle who'd looked easy to take down when he was originally asking her what she was doing in the storage facility, saying everyone's visits to there had to be booked in advance and she wasn't.

She bluffed and it failed horridly. It made a little sense when he started rambling about the importance of Rambaldi as a great magi and who was she to be touching his prized belongings, because it wasn't a stretch in any zealots mind.

She'd thought it was all going to be easy, just knock him out, grab the artifact and make tracks.

Until he attacked her first, throwing fire from his hands. Not a gun. Or something new, shiny and deadly made by Evil Instruments to Kill You With Incorporated.

Fire from his bare hands!

"Mountaineer to Outlander, I've got a problem."

Well, that was one way to put it right? After all she was taking on an assault. Right. With a guy who was throwing fire from his hands? Needless to say she hadn't questioned what to do after the first time if had just narrowly missed her head. Running seemed to be the best option on the books.

"Mountaineer?" The earpiece crackled loudly in her ear, even though she knew it was barely audible. "I can't hear you. What's going on in there?"

And then the air shimmered black in front of her. Shimmered. There wasn't anything else to call it. And suddenly he was standing in front of her and the fire was heading for her, erratic pain slashing through her shoulder, causing her to drop the case that was hanging on it. She cried out, but her hands reached for the falling case.

"Stupid mortal," the demon called angrily, his voice causing the room around them to shake. "Why don't you give me whatever you've taken and maybe I'll be lenient enough to let you live once I've finished torturing you."

"Hey, scum! Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" A voice, clear and annoyed, from behind the two of them suddenly rung out. And Sydney caught sight of a shimmer of white fading from around two figures on the opposite end of the walkway before everything stopped.

"Hey, scum! Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" Paige called out.

"You demons really need to work on your people skills," Piper responded after Paige, throwing her hands out. The girl froze, but the demon didn't. He exploded, but instead of turning in dust and swirling ash, everything swirled around until he reformed again.

"Oh, do it again. It almost tickles," Tentendant cackled, brushing the dust off of his shirt and hitting the prone figure of the blonde, smoking girl out of the way. "I'll come back and deal with you when I've finished with the witches."

"I don't think so," Phoebe said suddenly, running up from behind him, throwing an arm out so that a vial went careening down at his feet. The demon screamed and instead of swirling like he had earlier, he seemed to burst and melt all at once.

Phoebe nudged up on the space he'd been in slowly, waving her hands. "Well, that's a new way to go. Is she okay?"

"I think so," Paige said, pulling her up into her lap, and knocking off the wig the rest of the way since her fall. Picking up the wig, she shrugged, "Except that it seems the demon wasn't the only mystery here."

"Her pulse is still strong," Piper added, pealing the womans shirt back over her shoulder and then laying it back down flat. "But she'll need to be healed. It looks like the demon got her pretty good. Leo!"

Her eyes opened slowly, everything coming to her at once. There was the scent of the flowers on the bed table next to her, some sort of flowery cleaner used on the linens, and, oh, yes, there was the scent of cooking bacon and a kind of mixed bead and fruit.

Well, it seemed sort of perfect and nice; till it struck her that she wasn't in her own house. Or even a hotel.

Slipping out of the bed as quietly as she could, she rummaged through the dresser top but found nothing impressive looking accept a pair of nail scissors. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, her black sweater completely gone across her shoulder. Her fingers touched her shoulder but she found it completely unblemished.

Her mind went blank for a second, but then she remembered the pain and all the fire. Fire coming from some mans hand and then people appearing and disappearing. Wow. Those must have been amazing drugs they gave her. Next she went thought a few drawers finding nothing that looked like a good weapon aside from nail scissors, which she kept in her palm. Turning she went for the door just as it opened.

"Ah, so you are awake," a woman with long brown hair, carrying a tray of food.

"Where am I?" Sydney asked defensively.

"California. San Francisco and the Halliwell house, more precisely," the woman, setting down the tray on the foot of the bed, said tentatively. "I'm Piper."

Sydney eyed her uncomfortably. There was air of almost too much nice-ness in the room. The tray of food, which could be poisoned, and the woman who looked very domestic and could have been concealing a terrible murderer.

"Sandra," she replied. After all, harmless was the easiest thing for people to fake and she didn't want to be off her game. Especially not when waking up in someone else's dream of what a family house should look like.

"I cleaned this for you," Piper said, leaning down to pick up the blonde wig off a small antique chair that was on the side of the dresser facing the door the woman had come in. She held it out. "I had to undo it and then rebraid it to get it clean."

Sydney opened her mouth after a second and then closed it, reaching out and taking the wig from Piper. This was definitely getting very strange. Her voice didn't seem connected to her when she responded though. "You didn't need to do that."

"It's fine. Almost dry now, too" she said, shrugging her shoulders, as she stared at the woman in her bedroom. "So why don't you tell me what was happening? Why you were wearing that? And what you were doing where we found you?"

She stood there staring at the blonde wig while the woman was speaking. It had bows at the ends of the braids now. And it seemed important, yet it was completely pointless, and she was still staring at it. This was completely insane. Wasn't it?

"Are you holding me captive?" Sydney asked, keeping her voice completely level. She didn't want to fearful or seem like she was nervous.

"Of course not," Piper said, laughing at the audacity of the idea, waving her hands. "We just brought you here because you were unconscious."

After a few more seconds, Sydney looked up at Piper, reaching up with her alternate hand to touch her shoulder. "I saw you appear from nowhere. And my shoulder, I got burned. I remember the fire coming toward me. I remember the feel of the all the pain flooding through my body, and my case fell. My case-"

"It's on the chair, where your wig was," Piper interjected, giving her a concerned look as she watched new information continue to dawn on the woman. She fiddled with her hands, as she said finally, "And, it might sound crazy, but we healed your injury. You'll be alright and there won't be any lasting effects of any kind."

"You healed me?"

"Not exactly, my husband did. I'm a witch. My sisters and I saved you," the woman said, trying to appear calm, but Sydney could hear the small tremor of anxious nervousness in her voice.

Sydney blinked a few times staring at her trying to come up with something, feeling very confused, and responded with the only things she could finally. "I'm a CIA agent. I need your phone so I can call in that I haven't been kidnapped."

"She's a cop?" Phoebe exploded.

"She's an undercover CIA operative," Piper retorted, as she was changing dishes from the soaking water into a rack on the counter. "It's not the exact same thing."

"It nearly is," Paige piped up from a stool at the island in the kitchen where she was still picking at a plate of food, but unenthusiastically. "The real question though is, can we trust her? I mean, is she like Andy or Darrel? Or should we just do some hoodo-voodo and make her forget she was ever here?"

"I think that falls under personal gain, Paige," the sister at the sink responded, as she turned around grabbing a hand towel to wipe her hands.

"Do we care? Hello? She's just another form of law enforcement," Paige quipped back, pushing her plate away finally.

"She might take us in for what she's seen," Phoebe added, crossing her arms over her stomach, where she was leaning against one of the counters.

"I think she's got a lot more going on than we expect. We should give her a chance," Piper said, after hanging the wash towel back up. "Sydney will be down in a few minutes. Then we can all talk to her and we'll make the decision of what to do then. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Phoebe said, after some tense silence and furtive looks from Piper at both of them.

"I don't like it," Paige groused, "But your probably right. We'll see. And if it doesn't work. Whammo!"

Sydney made a loop around the park before she dropped the brown paper bag in the second blue mailbox. Then she made a second loop before stopping by a bench to do her warm down stretched. She'd stretched out her legs and most of her lower back before the man on the bench reading the newspaper even moved or acknowledged her presence.

When she was sitting down, he finally moved and set a cup down in-between them. "I didn't hear from you. I thought you might have gotten hurt."

"The mission went bad, I got the copy but couldn't get the artifact," she replied, picking up the coffee and realizing after a sip that it was exactly the way she liked it. Really dark and just a touch sweet. Strange, she couldn't remember ever telling him how she liked her coffee. "Good coffee."

"So what happened?" He asked, casting a searching glance at her just a few seconds longer than would be normal, before returning to his paper and turning a page.

"I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told you," she said leaning down to stretch out more. Glancing at her watch she counted fast and realized she only had another half minute or so before she needed to get back up so she didn't look too suspicious. "I was there and I'm still not sure I believe it."

"I'll read it on your reported," Vaughn replied after a moment.

"Of course," Sydney said, putting the coffee down, and sliding it over a bit as she stood up. She stretched her arms out, looking across the park at all the people milling about, and took off again at a medium pace.

Her life was all about secrets; who to share them with and who to keep them from.

This would just be another of them.