I run my hand across the kitchen counter. I bask in the sun shining through the small windows. I walk to the living room. Everything is whole, unbroken. Like my last memory never happened. I go into my bedroom, and sit heavily on the bed.

I know this is just a dream, but I was happy here. True, I was sad, and perplexed, and enraged here. But towards the end, I was happy. Very, very happy.

Almost all was right in my world. What wasn't right, I thought soon to be remedied. I had love, I had family, I had friendship, and a very bright future. I look over to the unbroken mirror, seeing myself in those same clothes, the same hair. I remember sliding down that wall, holding tenaciously to my retreating consciousness, enabling me to defend my life one final time before slipping into darkness. I didn't realize someone else waited to take my life in a different way.

I hear the door open. I hear familiar footsteps. I have to leave here, now.

I awaken, the tears already starting to fall. I close my eyes and settle into the still unfamiliar bed. Even after all these months, it feels like a stranger's bed. Maybe that's because I'm the stranger. I don't even know myself anymore.

I go to work like I always do. I come home like I always do. I eat, sleep, read, jog, like I always do. Day in, day out. Alone. My love is gone, my friends are gone, and my family is fractured. My father often tries to shore me up, but he is obsessed with finding out what happened to me, why it happened, and making sure it never happens again. In his world, I am in a protective box, and he is on the outside. He reaches in to comfort me at times, but then he becomes obsessed again.

Am I depressed? I don't know. I don't really think I've ever felt that way. When Danny died, I was seized by the need to take revenge, not depression. I've talked to Dr. Barnett on a few occasions, but the conversation always seems to go to the same place, and I feel like I'm going nowhere.

Nowhere. I can't recover my past, and I feel like I have no future. What if the Covenant is defeated? Perhaps some other Rambaldi-obsessed group will decide that they must get their hands on "this woman here depicted..." Will I ever be safe? Will I ever have complete control of my life? Will my life ever be normal?

I think I am depressed. I'm embarrassed to admit it, even if it is only to myself. I've never been that type of person. I've always been resilient, able to bounce back from anything. So I thought.

The dreams started coming when I began feeling this way, when my anger and my renewed need for revenge died down. Why did it do that? I don't know. Perhaps because everything was so different. I didn't know what I was supposed to be fighting for. The things I used to fight for were gone. I could fight for myself, but now I didn't know what that meant.

The dreams always started out the same. I'm in my old apartment, thinking about how good it felt to be there, how happy I was there. I go to the bedroom, sit on my bed, and look at the mirror. Then the front door opens, and I hear the footsteps.

The first time it was my father. "Sydney, why are you still here?" was all he would say, gently and sternly. Then I would wake up.

Then the next time, it was Sloane. As the anger and revulsion rose in me, he spoke before I could do anything. "Sydney, why are you still here?" Also gently and sternly, though in a different blend than my father.

After that it was Dixon. When he asked that same question, he spoke with the tone of a father long experienced in comforting his own children. Despite their intentions, my father and Sloane could not duplicate that.

Then Will, asking me with impatience and concern. Weiss, with that long-suffering annoyance he does so well. Marshall, with uncertainty and confusion. Even Sark dared ask me that question, with all the smugness that impetuous, arrogant bastard could muster. Kendall made an appearance, after in my waking hours he had taken me and revealed what happened during my missing time. It was somewhat humorous, because when he said "Sydney, why are you still here?" it was with the attitude of someone in charge, finding a subordinate not completing a task satisfactorily.

All the men in my life. Almost all of them. After Kendall, I started waking myself up when the door opened and the footsteps began. I couldn't face him, not in that room where we had made love. It would be a sharp, painful reminder of what I had lost. That bed was gone. That room was gone. That apartment was gone. That relationship was gone. That life was gone.

Sometimes I cry, out of nowhere. Never at work, or on a mission. No, there I must be the undefeatable Sydney Bristow, the Uber-agent that triumphs over everything, including death. She doesn't cry, she's too strong. I realize that some of those I work with know better, but in an office filled to the rafters with stress, I'm not about to add more.

But at home, I cry. No one's there, except me, so I can cry until I feel empty. At that point I either fall asleep, or busy myself with some inane household task, depending on the time. Lately though, I'll do housework, even if it's the wee hours of the morning. If I fall asleep, I'm back in the apartment, and he is coming.

I don't want him to ask me why I'm still here. Unlike the others, I would feel compelled to answer him, and I don't have the first clue as to what I would say. And this is besides all of the other problems I would have seeing him there.

So I just go on as I always do. I feel like I'm stalled, held in place. No steps forward, no steps back. Stalemate. Frozen in the time I lost.

But tonight, after giving these thoughts free reign in my mind, I give myself a mental shake. I decide to at least go for a non-routine jog, down to the store to pick up some ice cream, and come back to a book I've been meaning to read. I'm tired of my thoughts spinning in endless, useless circles.

I run my hand across the kitchen counter. I bask in the sun shining through the small windows. I walk to the living room. Everything is whole, unbroken. Like my last memory never happened. I go into my bedroom, and sit heavily on the bed.

I know this is just a dream, but I was happy here. True, I was sad, and perplexed, and enraged here. But towards the end, I was happy. Very, very happy.

Almost all was right in my world. What wasn't right, I thought soon to be remedied. I had love, I had family, I had friendship, and a very bright future. I look over to the unbroken mirror, seeing myself in those same clothes, the same hair. I remember sliding down that wall, holding tenaciously to my retreating consciousness, enabling me to defend my life one final time before slipping into darkness. I didn't realize someone else waited to take my life in a different way.

I hear the door open. I hear familiar footsteps. I want to leave, want to not face this, but I know I must.

He comes to the bedroom door, and stops there, just like everyone else did. He looks like he always does after work: still in his suit, but the tie is pulled loose, and he looks slightly rumpled. So long ago, when he came into my room looking like that, he was looking for rest, comfort, and me. Then the rest wouldn't really come until later.

He looks at me, his eyes filled with concern, sadness, and love. "Sydney, why are you still here?" He sounds like he is pleading for me to answer. I could never deny him.

I look down at my hands, clasped in my lap. "I like it here." There. I have changed the dream. Now I start to wonder what will happen, and hope I don't wake up.

I feel his weight settle on the bed. Close to me, but not right next to me. Even in my dreams, he is like the man I've come to know, not the man I knew. "You can't stay here."

"Why not?" I challenge him with the question, wrapped in bitterness. I hear him sigh. Somewhere in my mind a voice asks if this is really a dream. Of course it is. Though I am here, here doesn't exist anymore.

He puts his arm around me, settling his hand on my shoulder. I look at that hand. It's the left one, and the gold band glitters at me mockingly. Why did I let the dream come this far?

"Because you have to move on, go on with your life." He takes my challenge, and counters with a cliché. I'm angered now. I shrug off his arm, stand up, and face him.

"Vaughn, how can you tell me to move on! You haven't even moved on yourself, though you act as though you have! Everyday you look at me, still wanting me, and I can feel it. You've even told me how you feel. And every time I think that I can come back to what I felt here," I raise my arms and spread them to encompass the room, the apartment. "What we felt here, you pull the rug out from under me! Can you blame me for wanting to stay here?" I fall to my knees, and start to cry. "Everything I knew and loved is here. And there is little that I know or love in my new life. That's why I'm still here."

I wonder if any of the others that came to me here would understand that, or even care. My father would come the closest, but even he wouldn't understand why I held onto a love that should be dead. He's a hypocrite. Even he didn't give up his love for my mother, even after he learned what she was. He just buried it under a pile of mistrust.

Vaughn comes down to the floor, and sits next to me. He takes me into his arms, and I sob into his shoulder, like I have so many times before. Yes, he even let me do this recently, but here, in this apartment, in this room, I don't feel like I'm doing something forbidden. It doesn't feel like I'm stealing from someone else.

"I know. You're right," he whispers into my hair. I feel somewhat bemused. Of course I'm right, this is my dream. But as he continues to hold me, comfort me, I feel different about that. "I didn't move on. Not from you, just from," he hesitates, then continues. "What happened. You know how much that hurt me. I've been a fool not to realize how much I've been hurting you."

He pulls away from me, and while his traitorous left hand holds my shoulder, he uses his right to push tear-soaked hair away from my face, and brush away the tears. "I loved you. I love you. But I made a very solemn promise to someone else, and it's not something I'm going to be able to give up carelessly. Not now. You can't wait for me." His face becomes stern, more serious. "I'm not going to push you to find someone else, I can't do that. But you can't wait for me. Not here, not anywhere. Someday Syd, I'll come back to you. But you can't wait."

He was pleading again. Pleading for me not to wait. But someday was better than no day, and I believed this dream Vaughn.

"It's not just you, you know," I whisper to him. He grasps my hands, and looks down to them.

"I know. But I hurt you the most." He looks up, into my eyes again. "But Syd, you can't stay here. It's just as dangerous to be here as it was the night you," he hesitates again, old pain rising in his eyes. "Disappeared. You must begin to fill the life you have now with things that will keep you there. You can't lose your focus because you want to stay here. This place is gone." He leans over, and before I can protest, or encourage, he kisses me. A strong, passionate kiss full of promises, and regrets. I close my eyes, and allow myself to fall into him.

Much too soon he pulls away. I keep my eyes closed. He whispers into my ear. "Someday, I will come to you, help you, and maybe we can make a place better than this one." Still dazzled, I nod.

"Someday may be much sooner than you think." That voice however, is not Vaughn's. It sounds familiar, but I can't place it. I can't even determine if it's male or female. Such is the nature of dreams, to obscure things that should be clear.

I snap my eyes open to find myself alone in the room, with no indication that Vaughn had ever been there. I touch my lips as the tingling reminder of his kiss tells me that he was.

I stand up slowly, listening for signs that someone else may be in the apartment. I don't believe that I'm safe in my dreams anymore. I hear nothing, and I feel certain that I am alone in my dreamscape again. I look over the room, seeing the neatly made bed, the undisturbed patio door, the unbroken mirror.

I walk over to the mirror, and look into it. It's no longer the me of this place, it's the me I am now. I'm leaner, harder. My clothes are not so different, but I brush my bangs away from my perpetually sad face. I appraise who I am now, who I want to be, and decide to leave this place.

I pull my fist back, and then let go with the hardest punch I have. Something breaks in me as my hand impacts the glass. I feel immense satisfaction as I see the mirror crack, then crumble. The last thing I notice is that the mirror looks not like someone broke it with a fist, but rather as if something heavy was thrown into it, like a body......

I awake. No tears on my face. The morning sun gently pours into my bedroom. I smile. Then my cell phone rings. I pick it up from the nightstand and check the caller ID. It's Vaughn.

"Hello?" I answer tentatively. We have a briefing this morning before going on a mission, and I'm confused as to why he would be calling me beforehand. Whimsically, I wonder if he had the same dream I had.

"Um, hey, I just, uh, wanted to let you know that I'm going to be late to the briefing." There's an undercurrent of uneasiness to his voice, just like there has always been lately. I know now how bad he feels for what has happened. There's also something else, something that was also present in the dream. It's a tinge of discontent. "Don't wait for me." He says firmly.

"I won't."