Disclaimer : I do not own anything about Alias or any of the characters written about here. They all belong to JJ Abrams and bad Robot and ABC etc.

A/N I think it was the last episode of Alias in February that you can see the frame I am writing about on her nightstand. I wouldn't have noticed it except that I read about it online, but it's there. Anyway, that was the inspiration for this story.

A New Understanding

It's amazing how much your life can change in just a few days.

One day you're engaged to be married and the next day your fiance is dead. One day your father sells airplane parts and isn't a part of your life, but in just a few days he is a CIA agent who has saved your life. You are a CIA agent, but in the span of a few days you learn that you weren't really working for the CIA at all. One day you are happy. The next you are miserable.

Everything can change. Sydney had been so sure of where she stood in the world, what she had to do to be happy for the rest of her life. Now she wasn't sure of anything.

Sydney stood in her new apartment unpacking. Her friends were helping. She needed their help – it was hard to unpack the pieces of your life when every piece reminds you of what you used to have.

Somebody had already unpacked the box that held her picture frames. The photos of Francie and of Will and of Sydney as a little girl had already been arranged beautifully on the bookshelf, just as they used to be.

One of the frames held a picture of her and Danny. He had given her the frame as a gift when they had been dating for just a few weeks. Francie had taken the picture one day when they had gone out to lunch. Sydney had added it to her collection of picture frames on her shelves. She had put it up on that shelf when Danny was an important part of her life, but not the only part that mattered to her.

But now things were different. Now Danny was all she thought about. He seemed to be the motivation for every movement she had made in the past few days. Now he was the only part of her life that seemed to matter.

She took the frame off the shelf. She held it in her hand, which quivered slightly. Since it had happened, she couldn't stop thinking the same thing over and over again: If I had just been able to keep my secret, he would still be alive.

A tear rolled off her face and crashed against the glass. She wiped it away and set the picture on the table next to her bed. Now she would have his picture next to her to remind her of what she had lost.

…

A year and a half later

She awoke to the sound of water hitting the floor of the shower. She never knew she could enjoy the sound of the shower so much – but she did because it meant that he was there. Hearing him in the shower meant that even if everything she had experienced with Vaughn for the last few weeks had been a dream, she didn't have to wake up yet. At least she could live in the fantasy for a little bit longer.

She opened her eyes and looked at the clock. 5:45. Too early, she though as she shut her eyes again. In a few minutes, she would have to get up and go to work and face the reality of her life. But for right now, she would just listen to the water running, and be happy knowing that he was there.

Through everything that had happened in the past few weeks—including her mother's betrayal and losing Emily for the second time —at least there was one thing to keep her sane. He was there. She couldn't think of a time since she had met him that he hadn't he been there. How many times had he risked his job—and his life—to save her? She could spend hours thinking about all the times he had either saved her life or rescued her from her thoughts when the weight of the life she led was getting to be too heavy. But what was the point of thinking about the past when he was here now?

After spending so much time alone, so much time grieving and blaming herself for Danny's death, Sydney was finally starting to feel whole again. Now, when she came home from another physically painful day at work, she didn't have to be along with her thoughts, experiencing a different kind of pain. Now she had him.

She opened her eyes again. 5:47. She knew she should get up. She turned on the light next to her bed.

And there was the picture she had seen every morning for the past year and a half.

When she had first put it there, she would take it off the nightstand every night and fall asleep holding it. Sometimes she would wake up in a cold sweat at two or three in the morning and find herself still clutching the frame. After a little while, she would just stare blankly at the picture before she fell asleep. If she stared at it long enough she could almost hear him and smell him as if he were there. And while she was staring at it she would beat herself up mentally – she could never stop thinking that it had to be her fault.

As time went on, she needed the picture less and less. It stopped being something she needed to heal herself emotionally, but rather something she needed to motivate her. She would glance at it in the morning to remind herself what she was fighting for; why she had entered this war against Sloane and why she had to finish it. And even after she had started seeing Vaughn, she wouldn't let herself put it back on the shelf.

Wouldn't putting it back on the shelf mean that she didn't need Danny anymore? That she had forgotten his life – and his death? That he wasn't important?

But on this morning, she didn't glance at it as she had for the past few months. She seemed to freeze when she saw it. She couldn't hear the shower running in the background anymore or feel the cold hardwood against her feet. All she could think about was the picture. Something about it didn't seem right today.

She felt, for the first time, that the wooden frame, which for so long had been her solace, was tying her down.

As had been the case every other time she had considered moving the picture, the questions she seemed to be unable to answer surged through her head.

But today was different, she woke up feeling different. She felt infinitely more peaceful. For the first time since he died she didn't constantly feel that guilt and that sorrow. It was there, sure, but it wasn't the first thing she thought of in the morning anymore. It didn't take over her life.

And it wasn't just because she had Vaughn. Sydney had changed since Danny had died. Her life had changed, and she had adapted to it and become a different person. And along with that change came a transformation in the way she thought about Danny.

Now, after all these months of going through stages of grief, she thought of him with a new understanding. She was lucky to have known Danny as long as she knew him, and in the time that she knew him he had made her a better person.

He was still making her a better person. He had shown her how to be stronger than she ever thought she could be. Putting his picture on the shelf didn't mean she had forgotten about him. It meant that she had finally become strong enough to admit that a picture wasn't going to bring him any closer to her. Everything she needed to know about him was already in her mind.

She had put the picture there to remind herself of the death that she – wrongly or rightly – felt she had caused. Instead of using his memory to punish herself, wouldn't it make more sense for her to honor his memory by being the best person she could be – the person she was when he knew her? As trivial as the location of a picture frame might seem to some, she knew she couldn't be that person without moving it.

Sydney raised the frame to her lips and softly kissed the glass. She held it by her face for a moment before walking to the bookcase. She hadn't touched the arrangement of frames since the day she moved in. The spot for his picture was still there.

She didn't doubt herself. She didn't feel the urge to grab the frame off the shelf and apologize profusely to Danny. Somehow, she was sure. Somehow she knew that this was right.

She got back in bed. Sure, she was supposed to get up, but right now she needed to listen to that water again. She turned off the light, and pulled the covers up. 5:52.

The water stopped running. A few moments later Vaughn walked out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.

"Syd. You awake?"

"Yeah," she replied quietly as she rolled over to face him. He sat next to her on the bed.

"You okay?" he asked.

She smiled slightly and took a deep breath. "Yeah." She nodded, as if to reassure herself. "I am."

…

Thanks for reading!