New edit: This was written after S5 but Im bumping if for those of y'all new to the forum

New edit: This was written after S5 but Im bumping if for those of y'all new to the forum. Its a trilogy along with Season 6 Europe and Season 7: Dark Forces. This is a softer story but hope you enjoy it...it answers the Behrooz question, in a serious way.

I'm the author of "Season 6 Europe" which I'm writing for fun as some of you may know. Do read that one too, but this story is the exact opposite of Season 6 Europe. I just decided to try my hand at something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and create a radically different mood than when I usually write for fun.

This story is set before, during, and after Season 6 Europe. Behrooz is the only major character that I didn't make up though recurring characters from the show will make guest appearances later on. This story was inspired by my recent travels and I hope ya'll enjoy the way the characters are presented. I was a bit uneasy writing this tale at first but I hope everyone likes it. In a way, this is lighter fare, but the shadows of the past are always present. This tale is ultimately about whether these past shadows win, or whether the characters will be able to go beyond their past.

Note: Every chapter in this story is named after a song. This DOES NOT necessarily mean the scenes are supposed to invoke the song's lyrics, I just got lazy making up chapter names ;)

"Some believe in destiny and some believe in fate. I believe that happiness is something we create." - "Something More", Sugarland (song)

We think about tomorrow then it slips away.
Oh, yes, it does.
We talk about forever but we've only got today...
And the days go by...
I can feel 'em flyin'
Like a hand out the window as the cars go by...
Yeah it's all we've been given,
So you better start livin',
You better start livin',
Better start livin' right now!
- "Days Go By", Keith Urban (song)

CHAPTER 1: SUMMERTIME

"…but we understand now," Mrs. Araz said.
Debbie felt her spirits soar all of a sudden as Mrs. Araz offered to show her pictures of Behrooz as a child, when they still lived in Turkey.

Awww, he's was such a cute baby, Debbie thought to herself. Deep down, she knew Mrs. Araz would understand in the end, and for a moment there Debbie told herself that she should have been more understanding too. Growing up in a diverse area like L.A. exposed her to many things, and one of the foremost was the there were so many people with life experiences different from her own. Mrs. Araz had talked about how their family had to deal with ignorant people, and she began to understand how hard it must have been for Behrooz to be a Muslim teenager living between two worlds, watching U.S., British, and Israeli military forces attacking the Middle East, listening to al-Jazeera with his parents about the devastating sanctions on Iraq, Iran, and Libya, and the hostility they faced on the streets of America after terrorists unconnected to them detonated a nuclear bomb which would have destroyed the city if not for a heroic CTU agent named George Mason, who sacrificed his own life flying it into the Mojave Desert.

Debbie was shocked as Behrooz came into the bright, sunlit living room from the kitchen and took her arm.
"Debbie, we have to leave now, it's not safe," he said with a terrified expression on his face.
"Behrooz, what's wrong?" she asked, suddenly unnerved by his strange behavior. Mrs. Araz had been so nice, the tea was great, and she had just decided it was a stroke of luck how the two met at their SAT prep course and became study buddies, which grew into something more. Behrooz had always been the really polite, well-mannered kid who didn't like to raise hell, and in a way Debbie was like that too. She had matured late, but was doing fine in high school. Everything was going to be fine, so why was Behrooz acting like this?

As they reached the foyer of the Araz home, a well-kept house that resembled every other in their idllyic San Fernando Valley suburb, she suddenly felt a charge pain in her chest and a shortness of breath.
"Behrooz, what's going on?" she asked, terror striken. She couldn't breathe, and felt her chest tighten. "Help me!"
She remembered Behrooz grabbing her, placing her on the floor and desperately asking her what was wrong. As her vision blackened out, she heard a muffled bang and felt a sharp metallic object passing through her chest.

The next thing she remembered, things were fuzzy, then began to clear. Only now she wasn't Debbie. She was Danielle, her twin sister. She was in a bright place, where exactly she wasn't sure, but her sister's gentle voice was saying, "It's not your fault."

Danielle broke down crying. It was her fault. She was the one who had introduced Debbie to Behrooz after they met in their SAT prep course in the Kaplan Review center in the Sunrise Hills Mall. There were voices, and they were talking about terrorists, a bombing, and she tried to cover her ears but couldn't get her arms to move. Then she realized she wasn't really awake, that she was in that groggy state all of a sudden, and the light was much dimmer now. She didn't want to be subjected to Agent Howard Bern from CTU Los Angeles talking about Behrooz Araz and how he was almost killed for trying to help her sister, or about the Araz family's involvement in the kidnapping of Secretary Heller. No, it wasn't Agent Bern's voice. There was more fuzziness, and she was staring up at a spotless ceiling painted in gentle hues. That voice became much clearer, too.

"…days after a new wave of deadly bombings on civilian targets in Israel, British authorities say the heavy security prepared for the London Olympics is a necessary measure, despite allegations of profiling by activist groups. Joseph Yearwood, CNN Radio, London."

Now she was REALLY awake. The voice was just the alarm clock, and the radio continued.
"…Seacoast radio 100.5FM, serving the Outer Banks and eastern North Carolina from Kill Devil Hills. We have perfect weather today, high of 87 degrees, lows of 70 with a slight chance of an afternoon thunderstorm, high tide in Kitty Hawk is at 10:08 this morning, 11:30 in Nags Head, and winds are out of the northwest at…."
She yawned and got out of the bed, reaching for the snooze button past a bunch of lovely seashells on the dresser, illiminuated by the warm, bright touches of the morning sun making its way into the sky. Dammit, why did she need to have that dream again? At least, her sister was now telling her it was okay rather than blaming her for her death in Behrooz's house. The therapy the witness protection program had given her was indeed working a bit after all.

The radio continued, "…playing your all-time favorites for 100 minutes of commercial free music to start your workday, we'll start this morning with Kelly Clarkson's new single, featured in the movie…."
She turned off the alarm and went out into the upstairs bathrooom of this duplex-type cottage, splashing water on her face. She quickly brushed her teeth, showered and changed for the day, putting on a light green tank top and denim jeans. The smell of pancakes and jelly came up from the dining room and she went downstairs, seeing her friend Allison in the kitchen. She could hear the soft melody of a Faith Hill song from the radio next to the dining table. She looked out the window and saw a middle aged couple packing luggage into their minivan with Pennsylvania license plates at the rental property that bordered on this one.

She didn't want to have that Behrooz dream, but it kept coming back to her. She always wondered what happened to Behrooz, what Debbie felt like in the last moments of her life as Behrooz desperately tried to save her life, risking his own. She couldn't accept the fact that he had lied to her, having been involved in Heller's kidnapping (Heller is now the President with Mike Novick as his VP) but then she will never know if Behrooz willingly participated in Heller's kidnapping or was coerced by his father. She didn't even know if Behrooz was still alive. She thought about what the case officer in witness protection, and her government shrink in Kansas City, had said to her, and focused on the present.

"Up early, eh, Dani?" Allison, a slim brunette with slight curls wearing a "life is good" purple T-shirt said. "Thought you don't work until 12 today. Besides, Outback doesn't really get busy till dinner, much better than the one I worked in last summer in Richmond. They might cut you some slack today, who knows."
"Yeah, thought I'd do some errands," Debbie replied. "Maybe get some of my jogging in, it's such great weather these couple days."

"Yeah, I could like lie there on the sand all day," Allison said, "But at least I'll be serving the outdoor seating area today, so it's cool."

"I like Outback so far," Danielle said, "The restaurant thing's kinda new for me, but its actually pretty laid back. I know our friends back at school, like Jess, she's like whats the point of being at the beach all summer if you're working but hey, I'm not complaining. I still get to swim every day and sneak some bread out to the seagulls when I get off at night."

"Jockey Ribs's actually pretty hectic, but hey, we're at the beach, while that slut's still trying to sell Xbox games to 12 year olds at Best Buy AND taking two English classes."

Danielle let out a slight chuckle. Her friend's sarcastic sense of humor was competing with the dread she felt from her dream for control over her emotions. Jess from Raleigh was one of their best friends too, and if she had been there, she would also be laughing at Allison's sarcasm. It's the first time since her sister died and their family forced to leave Los Angeles under witness protection that she really knew people so well. It was amazing how much friends could help you through a hard time. Danielle so wanted to tell these girls the truth about why she was here, but knew that she couldn't.

Casey, another of her girls, came out of the kitchen sporting a Kill Devil Hills beach lifeguard uniform and greeted Dani and Allison cheerfully. She had just finished making the waffles, handing one to Danielle. "Just in time, Dani," she said.
"They're…like the best, still gotta say it," Dani said, smiling, "I just can't make mine that good. Mine's always like yucky and falling apart. Jeez, I hate you."

They shared a laugh and Casey replied, "You're getting better at it. I swear, by the end of this summer you'll be cooking the way my grandma taught me how to."

Dani had gotten into cooking after her move to Kansas City under the federal witness protection program. She wasn't able to make many friends in the seven months she spent of her senior year at her new high school, not with the mood she was in, and her escape was watching TV. She became increasingly drawn to the Food Network, the only one that didn't have news reports or dramas about terrorism and war that constantly reminded her of her beloved Debbie. When Bobby Flay raced against the clock in Iron Chef, he's just trying to finish cooking a new banquet in time, not trying to prevent a nuclear bomb from destroying a major U.S. city.

Dani remembered the first movie Debbie and Behrooz went to together. It was the Matrix, also one of her personal favorites, mostly due to the hotness of Keanu Reeves, and in that movie, the Oracle had told Neo that one bite of the cookies she was baking would cheer him up after a their particularly discouraging meeting. The same was evidently true for Casey's waffles. The dread she felt from the dream began to lift as the sweet aroma went up to her nostrils, and Dani poured the maple syrup onto the waffle. She felt the sweet tinge of the syrup and the soft texture of the waffle as she slowly chewed it, savoring every second of it. She also helped herself to a nice fresh banana the girls kept in a large crystal bowl next to the large fridge, washing it down with a cup of skim milk.

Sometimes you have to think about what you have instead of what you've lost. It's the only way you can really go on in life, Dani had been told. She still blamed herself for what her family had to go through, suffering through Debbie's tragic death at only age 16, moving to a cookie-cutter suburb of Kansas City, which she felt boring after her own 16 years in Los Angeles, and until the last couple months, blaming herself constantly for killing her other half. Her parents were devastated at having to lose everything they had known on the West Coast, and it was her fault. Her mom and dad never hinted that they blamed her due to her suggestion that Behrooz and Debbie go out, but Dani suspected it. She would give anything for things to go back the way they were.

Yet it would be unfair to Casey, Allison, and the other two girls she shared this cottage with, Elyse and Becca, which she met attending college here in North Carolina, to say they were any less special or wonderful people than the friends in California she had never said goodbye to.

It was her mom's idea for her to stay in North Carolina over the summer, actually, instead of go back to Kansas City. It all started in a phone call she had made from UNC-Chapel Hill (University of North Carolina) back to Missouri, when she mentioned that Casey's parents had a vacation house and there was extra space for friends who wanted to live and work on the Outer Banks over the summer with her. Kill Devil Hills wasn't exactly a crazy party town, a rather wholesome family resort, relatively upscale, so her mother in particular urged her to accept Casey's offer. Besides, her mom knew how much she missed wading into the Pacific surf at Laguna Beach, and figured this would be good for her healing.

"All right, girls, I'll catch ya'll later." Dani said pleasantly.
Allison nodded. "You work until closing tonight?"
"Yeah, its gonna be like this on Fridays from now on cause Louis quit."
"Aww, well we can still catch swimming events tonight," she said, referring to the Olympics going on in London.

"Oh yeah, definitely. Jerry Phelps is so hot, I'm gonna be so pissed if he doesn't win."
Debbie got into her VW Beetle and backed out of the driveway, taking a short stretch of private roadway before emerging on NC state highway 12, also known as N. Virginia Dare Trail on its stretch along the seafront of Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, and Ocean Drive through Nags Head. Her radio was turned to the hit music station, whose rap, R&B, and hard rock selections helped deal with some of the homesickness. Things were better in college. Here at the beach, she just felt things were a bit plain. It wasn't so much that North Carolina and Missouri were boring places than that L.A. was simply the heart of it all and that anywhere else in the nation except New York paled in comparison.

Pretending to be the girl who lived in Kansas City for the past six years and Oklahoma City before that wasn't easy for the California girl. But in a way, learning how to become an obsessed Kansas City Chiefs fan AND a NASCAR nut, not to mention learning the lyrics to the chart topping hits of Tim McGraw, Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney, Jo Dee Messina, Sugarland, and Leann Rimes actually filled her mind enough so take time away from thinking of home, Behrooz, and the rest. No, not everyone in Missouri was like that, but the witness protection people wanted to create an identity sufficiently different enough from the old Danielle Pendleton. But here, alone in her car, driving alone the tranquil two-lane highway lined one side with hotels and sand dunes and the other with restaurants and low-rise condos, she felt she could afford to be the old California girl for just a moment. She knew this wasn't good, but she just couldn't help it.

Then the Nora Jones song ended, though, and the commercials came on, and she changed to the country station. "I'm not Danielle Pendleton anymore," she said to herself silently, "I'm Dani McSpadden from Kansas City, Missouri, and this is my favorite song."

(In a filmed version, this is where the opening credits come on as "Summertime" by Kenny Chesney plays and we are presented with establishing scenes of Nags Head, Kill Devil Hills, and the rest of the northern Outer Banks. Casey jogs across Beach Road, exchanging hellos with a Mexican gardener who gives her a sunflower, and past some beach grasses and reaches the lifeguard stand, and chalks in her name on the board attached it to it, indicating she's on duty now. She takes down the large umbrella over the wooden lifeguard stand so she can enjoy the sun. Amid the historic waterfront of the town of Manteo, workers are opening up quaint shops while a group of young men speed off in a powerboat as they leave the no wake zone. On a fishing pier, a father is teaching his son how to tie bait, while many people are sunbathing on the warm sands below. There are views of three Outer Banks landmarks: the black and white striped Bodie Island Lighthouse, the Wright Brothers Memorial, and Jockey Ridge, the largest sand dune in eastern North America, on which tourists are hang gliding. Finally we see a crowded highway bridge and we zoom in on a Jeep Grand Cherokee.)

"Yo Robbie, check that out," Brian Lee said, pointing at a man speeding on a jet ski as they passed over Albemarle Sound on the long Wright Brothers Memorial Bridge connecting Kitty Hawk and the other beaches with the North Carolina mainland. "You know, my friend did that once when he was wasted, it was hardcore, man.
Robbie Shiraz nodded. "That's insane, dude." Robbie Shiraz in a past life was Behrooz Araz, and this moment was probably the closest his life had ever been to normal. To his friends, Brian Lee, Matt Dyson, Kyle Mitchell, Marc Fisher, and Brad Scarlatti, he was Danny, a fellow marine biology major at the University of Maryland-College Park.

Robbie was the half Turkish, half Iranian, formerly quite shy dude who grew up in a preppy Washington, D.C. suburb, had an uneventful life, until he went to college and began to branch out. They were here for a summer-long program held at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the North Carolina Aqarium to do research on the wildlife in the wetlands, estuaries, and beaches on this part of the coast. The school had put them up in a vacation condo in Kill Devil Hills, six miles from the national seashore, and their first impression was that it was a boring town. Him and Marc were great friends, and the other guys were pretty cool, and they all looked forward to getting to know them better and having a wild and crazy summer here in addition to the research they had to do academically, and even that part was in the beaches and marshes rather than some classroom in Maryland.

"I was expecting Ocean City," Kyle said, referring to the beach town in Maryland that college kids flocked to in droves to get drunk and high all summer long. Some of their friends, the lucky ones, were spending their summer there. Most, unlike them, of course were stuck home in places like Baltimore, small-town Maryland, New Jersey, or Long Island taking summer classes or working at the mall or the pool or their family business.
"We gotta go another 2 hours south to Atlantic Beach if we really want to get wasted or laid," Behrooz said, the studious, mild-mannered boy from his past still inside him. He was the one who had went to the library and checked out the Fodors and Insiders' guide to the Carolina coast.

"Straight, man," the driver, Marc, replied. "Hey, my friend Jason from South Carolina, he's going there this summer, maybe we can meet up. Down there, they sell full kegs at the grocery store. You ready for the keg stand, Robbie?"
"Yeah," Behrooz replied, in the vacation mood he forced himself into, "Can't hold off on that forever."
"That's the spirit," Marc replied, following the road signs to "Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, Cape Hatteras."

What nobody outside the witness protection program, and some CTU agents like Curtis Manning and Tony Almeida, knew, was his past as Behrooz Araz. It was something he desperately wanted to forget but came back sometimes. It helped that he got to adopt the personality of the shy kid with conservative Middle Eastern immigrant parents. He could actually branch out now without people thinking he was weird, only sheltered. The government put him with an old friend of Dina Araz who lived in Potomac, Maryland, who no doubt was not told Dina was actually a terrorist and was executed by Marwan for betraying him.

He met Marc, an all-American kid from the suburbs of Baltimore when they lived on the same floor in their freshman dorm, and it was Steve and his friends who gave Behrooz a social life, urging him to go with them to a frat party and to play beer pong in their room with their large closet door on weekend nights, eluding their RA. He learned that he actually enjoyed the wild living and the craziness that was so authentically college, though finding a girl was always hard for him. Debbie was unexpected, she was the first and only girl he had dated, and it was because she was somewhat different than the typical American girl, and at first more acceptable to his mother. Mom would never have approved any of the girls here at school, Behrooz knew. But Behrooz knew that he was a new person named Danny Shiraz, and he desperately wanted one of the girls he went to parties with, the ones who hung out with him, Marc, and their friends, but as drunk as he got, as much as he loved the parties on Frat Row and student apartments, hooking up was not something he ever quite learned.