Author's Note: One of the questions arising from the story will finally be answered in this chapter.
* * * * *
"Well, well, do my eyes deceive me or has the lovely Agent Bristow finally decided to grace us with her presence?" Eric Weiss stood before her in all of his snarky glory.
"Eric!" Sydney said delightedly, hugging him.
"How're you doing, Syd?" He embraced her warmly.
Sydney and Weiss had developed a close working relationship during her last few years with the CIA. Besides the missions where they were frequently required to interact, there were also those occasions when Vaughn could not meet with her to discuss her counter-missions and Weiss would usually fill in as her "temp," as she liked to call him. It went without saying that she missed her clandestine interludes with Vaughn, but she found herself not entirely sad when Weiss appeared in his place. He was always good for a laugh, either with his corny jokes or his deadpan one-liners, and that appealed to Sydney because God knows she needed some amusement in her life now and again.
In addition to his role as the Good Humor Man, Weiss also became a sort of go-between for Sydney and Vaughn. He of course knew all about Vaughn's head-over-heels feelings for Sydney, but he hadn't known until he'd spent more time with her that she had begun to feel the same way.
He was usually the silent observer during mission briefings or status meetings and since Vaughn always over-compensated by acting strictly businesslike whenever he and Sydney were in the company of others, he was no fun to try to rattle. So Weiss took to studying the other faces in the room and it was during one of those sessions when he first caught a glimpse that Sydney's feelings might have been less than professional for her handler.
Weiss didn't know why he'd decided to call her on it one day when he was meeting her at the warehouse in Vaughn's place. Maybe he was being a buttinsky or maybe he just wanted some validation that his best friend's feelings were in some way returned by the object of his affections. Weiss had always been disturbed by Vaughn's attachment to Sydney and to what it could lead in terms of their objective to bring down SD-6, but he still thought it would really suck if Vaughn was putting himself (as well as Weiss) through all of this angst for nothing.
Sydney had been surprised when Weiss posed his question to her and she dodged answering for a few moments.
"Why do you want to know?" She countered suspiciously. "Did someone put you up to this? Devlin or Barnett?"
"No, Sydney, I'm not doing anyone else's dirty work." Weiss replied, not offended in the least that she was wary of his motives.
"Then why would you ask me how I feel about Vaughn?" She queried. "I know 'they' think it's a sacrilege that he cares what happens to me, but you know, Weiss, that's what friends do." Perhaps she'd stressed that word a bit too long, but maybe she could distract him from the matter at hand with a little venting of anger.
"Hey, there's no need to get so bent out of shape." He put his hands up in self-defense.
"Well, how would you feel if someone questioned your feelings about a person who…who…" Sydney's feistiness suddenly turned flat. "…would be so much better off if you weren't in his life?" Her words ended on a sad note.
Weiss gave her a sympathetic look. "Is that what you really believe?" He asked shrewdly.
"Isn't it true?" She asked with a raised eyebrow. "Vaughn could have a normal life--or at least as normal as the CIA gets--if he wasn't involved in all of this cloak-and-dagger stuff with me."
"Well, maybe he doesn't want to have a normal life shuffling paperwork and typing up status reports." Weiss pointed out to her. "Maybe he enjoys all of the excitement and vitality and light you bring to his life."
Sydney looked up at Weiss, a hopeful expression in her eyes. "Does that make up for all the trouble I bring to him?"
"You're not as bad as you think." His mouth quirked. "And just for the record, he does think you're worth it."
Sydney gave Weiss a speculative glance. "Why are you telling me this?" She asked. "Weren't you the one who chewed him out about being too attached to me?"
Weiss' face reddened. "Mike told you about that?"
"He wasn't ratting you out." She assured him. "It just came up in conversation once. You know, when he and I get called in to Barnett's office for our yearly 'How are we doing on that emotional attachment thing?'"
"Syd, it wasn't personal." Weiss hastened to add. "I was just concerned. For both of you."
"So is that what you're doing now?" She asked lightly. "Showing your concern?"
"Yeah, in a way." He admitted. "Because I've come to the conclusion that it's not such a bad thing."
Sydney was shocked. "Are you serious?"
"Sure." He nodded. "I mean, hell, Sydney, we've all been doing this long enough to have experienced a lot of ups and downs, a lot of disappointments."
"But maybe you and Mike…maybe that can be one of the good things that comes out of all this." Weiss gave Sydney a look of genuine sincerity. "I really do hope you guys find a way to make it work."
After Weiss' admission, Sydney found it easy to admit that yes, her feelings for Vaughn had deepened into something more than just friendship. Weiss took on the role of couples counselor for the two lovebirds, listening to Sydney and Vaughn whenever they wanted to talk about how difficult it was to be in love with someone and never be able to tell them how you felt. He smoothed over petty disagreements about protocol or procedure and one time he even arranged for a candlelit meal to be sent to the warehouse, on the pretense that it was a "working dinner."
It killed Weiss that when things finally looked bright and rosy for the star-crossed lovers, Sydney had to create yet another obstacle to prevent her and Vaughn from being together.
He didn't know the complete story behind Sydney's defection to Santa Barbara or why she'd cut Vaughn out of her life, but even if there was a good reason for it (he was bound and determined to get it out of her before the weekend was over), it still made him mad that she'd screwed things up like that. And of course, he still got on Vaughn's case that he'd never even attempted to find out what was going on.
Weiss had actually called his best friend a wimp for not going to see Sydney after they'd learned she hadn't been abducted by some evil enemy faction and was instead lounging around on a beach somewhere up the California coast.
Vaughn cited his male pride as his excuse for not going after Sydney, retorting that if she didn't even have the common decency to let him know her whereabouts when she knew he'd be worried about her, then he sure as hell wasn't going to break any land speed records on his way out of town. In a somewhat defiant stance, Vaughn told his friend that he wasn't even going to expend the energy it would take to pinpoint exactly where she was.
Weiss realized that haranguing Vaughn would just make him dig his heels in deeper, so he wisely ceased and desisted going on and on about Sydney. He thought they were behaving like stubborn fools, but what did he know? He was just the guy who'd had to sit there and listen as they waxed so poetically and longingly about each other. From Weiss' point of view, he didn't feel it was too much to ask that he get the happy ending he thought everyone deserved (including him, for all the time and effort he'd invested into their relationship), but unfortunately, neither Sydney nor Vaughn was willing to comply.
Vaughn went through a bad spell for a few months and while Weiss tried everything to snap him out of it, it was running into Alice again that brought Vaughn out of his doldrums. Weiss grudgingly gave the woman her due in that she had succeeded where all of Vaughn's friends had failed, but it didn't mean he wanted his best friend to sign away his life in gratitude to her.
Weiss had never taken to Alice. He had found her unpalatable the first time she and Vaughn were together and he didn't like her any better the second time around. The airs she put on drove him crazy and he just didn't know how Vaughn could stand it.
When Vaughn told him he'd asked Alice to marry him, Weiss had blurted out that he was only doing it in an attempt to forget about Sydney. Vaughn rather coldly told him that he'd already forgotten about what's-her-name and that he was concentrating solely on building a new life with the woman he loved, namely Alice.
Weiss knew that Vaughn was just kidding himself. The same man could not fall in love with two women so completely opposite from one another. Alice was like the Anti-Sydney. She was cloying and bossy with a need to be fawned over and catered to. If Weiss wanted to go all psychoanalytical on Vaughn, he would have been correct in assuming that there lay the basis for Alice's appeal. Vaughn wanted to get so far away from everything that was Sydney that he had to go to the opposite extreme with Alice.
Weiss wanted to say all of these things to his friend, but he didn't want to alienate him even further into Alice's comely clutches. She'd already cut down on Vaughn's nights-out-with-the-guys and she'd had a dramatic (read: not good) effect on his personality. Whereas Vaughn used to be confident and assertive, he was now always looking to her for guidance as if he were a puppet and she was pulling his strings.
It troubled Weiss that Vaughn had changed so drastically under Alice's influence and he didn't like it that she seemed to relish her power over him. The plans for the wedding had been carried out with little input from the groom, who seemed perfectly fine to let his bride-to-be decide on everything, from the church to the menu to the color of satin ribbons in the flower girl's hair.
But the one thing they hadn't planned on was the re-appearance of Sydney Bristow into their lives. Sydney was the only person in the world who could bring forth any passion in Vaughn and even though that passion might have stemmed from anger instead of love, it would at least be a sign that there was still a spark, both in him and between them.
"How am I doing?" Sydney echoed thoughtfully. "I'm guess I'm doing okay, all things considered." She replied with a self-conscious shrug.
"Yeah, I hear you." Weiss nodded understandingly.
Sydney shot him a grateful look. "I see you're looking quite well these days." She teased him with a fairly lascivious leer.
"Checking me out, Bristow?" Weiss played along. "Have you finally come to your senses and decided to ditch Mikey for the best man?"
"Eric, Eric, have you forgotten that you're speaking to an English teacher?" She gave a woeful shake of her head. "Now I know I'm Lit and not Composition, but even I know that the usage of the word 'best' implies that there is none better and we all know that's not true when it comes to you." She said with a simpering smile.
"Where am I?" Weiss looked around in a disoriented manner. "Was there a timewarp back to Mrs. Rheinhart's tenth-grade English class?"
"It's called a joke, Sydney." He admonished her. "You know, since I'm the 'best' man in the wedding?"
"Oh, is that what you call that pitiful attempt at humor?" Sydney snorted. "My goodness, Eric, I've forgotten how corny you can be."
"Watch it, Bristow, or I just might be forced to take you out." He said, mock threateningly.
"As if you could." She scoffed. They both looked each other and then cracked up. Will, who had been watching their volleys go back and forth with an amused expression on his face, simply shook his head, gave them a parting wave and then wandered off in search of more shrimp puffs.
"Seriously, Sydney, it is good to see you." Weiss and Sydney drifted away from the dance floor and back over to the deck, where the music couldn't drown out their conversation.
"Likewise." She smiled. They settled at one of the small tables outside of the reception hall, which afforded them a modicum of privacy.
"Please tell me you're here for the reason I think you are." Weiss gave her an imploring look.
"A little exposition, please?"
"The wedding?" He prodded her. "As in you're here to break it up?"
"Eric, what am I?" Sydney asked, half in jest and half in exasperation. "Everyone's equivalent to a human wrecking ball? Why does everyone expect me to do something to disrupt the wedding?"
"Maybe because you're the only person who can?" He said pointedly. "Syd, I'm getting desperate here."
"You must be if you're turning to me." She said ironically. "You know, I'm actually kind of surprised you're not angry at me on Vaughn's behalf."
"Well, to tell you the truth, I was mad at you for what you did to Mike." Weiss confessed, sounding a bit judgmental.
"If you want to beat me up about that, you're going to have to take a number." Sydney replied soberly. "I've reserved the first million spots ahead of you for myself."
"Tell me it wasn't deliberate, Syd." He looked her straight in the eyes. "Tell me you didn't mean to hurt him."
"Of course not." She said vehemently. "How can you even think such a thing?"
"It's hard to know what to think when the people you thought you knew do stupid things to screw up their own lives and everybody else's." He replied, looking none too apologetic for his harsh criticism.
"I guess I deserve that." Sydney said quietly. "But it's not all my fault, Eric. Vaughn is the one getting married this weekend, after all."
"Syd, be fair." Weiss chided her. "You didn't write, you didn't call. What was he supposed to do? Stay in godforsaken limbo for the rest of his life?"
Sydney gave him a look of frustration. "Why do you have to be so irritatingly logical?"
"I didn't know being logical was a character flaw." His tone was dry.
"Normally it isn't except when it pertains to you." She retorted.
"Ah, Syd, I miss the quick wit." Weiss grinned and then lowered his voice. "And just between you and me, I think Mike does, too. He just isn't as fun to be around when he's not mooning over you."
Sydney gave him a brief smile. "Yeah, the good old days." She murmured half-kiddingly.
"But now he's got himself chained to the Debutante." Weiss looked chagrined. "Do you have any idea how wrong that is?"
"Tell me how you really feel about her, Eric." Sydney drawled as her face shaped into a frown. "You know, every person I've talked to makes it a point to tell me how much they can't stand Alice." She observed. "Why are you all hiding it from Vaughn?"
"Because we know it would only alienate him." Weiss replied candidly. "He depends on her a lot, Sydney. Too much, if you ask me, but she was there for him at a time in his life where he didn't know which way was up. She helped him put his life back together and now he thinks he needs her to keep him on the straight and narrow, so that he doesn't deviate down an unholy path." He gave her a meaningful look.
"Are you saying I'm the path to hell?" Sydney's lip curled as if she were offended, but it didn't last long. "Sorry, I know you're just being loyal to Vaughn and that's how you should be." She conceded.
Weiss studied Sydney with a sad look in his eye. "Sydney, why did you do it? I know how you felt about him and you knew how he felt about you."
Sydney avoided his gaze. "Eric, it wasn't intentional. You have to believe that." She stressed.
"If you want me to believe it, you have to give me something to go on." Weiss said matter-of-factly. "What's the story, Sydney?"
Sydney let several moments pass before she spoke again. The topic of her mental state after leaving the CIA wasn't something she found easy to talk about, even with her friends. "I--something happened to me after I left L.A." She began with some difficulty. "It's not something I like to talk about because it makes me sound…weak and I hate for people to see me that way."
"The people who know you would never think that of you." Weiss said compassionately. "Because we know everything you had to endure over the last five years."
She gave him a grateful smile. "I don't know if you could classify what happened to me as a nervous breakdown, but I think it was pretty close." Her words came out awkward and stilted, as if she could barely allow herself to acknowledge her mental collapse. "Once I was finally able to let everything sink in, it was almost as if I became buried under the emotional weight of it all."
Sydney's mouth quirked when she saw the surprised look on Weiss' face. "I know that sounds weird coming from me. Everyone always saw me as the can-do-it girl, the woman who never let her emotions interfere with her job."
"Not that things didn't affect me, of course, but I always thought I was able to get past the turmoil with very little damage to my psyche. I'm the woman who stabbed her lover to death. I'm the woman who made a deal with the devil, coldbloodedly sacrificing one man's life for another." Her tone was cynical. "And let's not forget that horrible episode with my mother."
"You were trying to save Vaughn's life when you agreed to Sark's plan. Anyone else would have done the same thing, regardless of the moral issues." Weiss said sternly. "And in the case of Derevko, what happened to her was unavoidable. No one found any fault with your decision-making in regard to her demise."
"She was my mother, Eric, and I'm partly responsible for her death." Even though she was aware of all the terrible things her mother had done, Sydney didn't have it in her to be glad that her mother's life had ended the way it did. Irina Derevko had been the woman who had given her life; they shared a bond as mother and daughter and nothing would ever be able to break that.
"But it wasn't just that, Eric. It was everything. I am the reason that so many bad things happened and I guess it overwhelmed me to the point where I could no longer function normally."
"I often wondered why you didn't have a regular appointment on Barnett's couch every week." Weiss looked thoughtful. "You always had a lot to deal with, Sydney. Forgetting about SD-6 for a moment, there was also the family stuff and the thing with you and Mike. It's admirable that you were about to juggle everything as long as you did."
"Maybe I should have talked to Barnett more. Maybe it would have helped me deal with my past indiscretions better than I did." She gave a shrug. "Instead I dropped the balls I was trying so hard to keep in the air. I had all of this empty time to think and I let the past eat away at me instead of focusing on the future I had spread out before me."
"Do you want to know what I did that first week at the beach?" Sydney posed the question to her friend. "Not a damn thing. Oh, it wasn't so bad that I stayed in bed all day with the covers pulled over my head, but it was close. I would get up, get dressed and go sit out on the porch to watch the waves. An entire day would go by and I wouldn't even realize it until I started to feel a chill. I lost five pounds in that first week and that was just from sitting there and not eating."
Weiss's expression was a mixture of empathy and shock. "Syd…" He murmured her name. "I had no idea."
"Oh, I'm not trying to play on your sympathies, Eric." Sydney shook her head. "In retrospect, I wish I hadn't gone off by myself. I wasn't prepared for the feelings of isolation or the lack of purpose. I wish I would've asked Vaughn to come with me."
"He would've, you know." Weiss said earnestly. "He would've done anything for you, Syd."
Sydney closed her eyes as a single tear fell onto her face. "I know."
"What do you think he's been waiting to do all these years? He's been wanting to take care of you practically from the first moment he met you."
Her lip quivered as she looked up at him. "I know, and it's a sweet sentiment, but it's a bit unfair, don't you think? Relationships are a two-way street, Eric, and I wanted to be able to take care of him, too." She sounded wistful. "All those times he used to talk about his dad, he would get this little boy lost look in his eyes and it was all I could do not to wrap my arms around him." Sydney wiped at her eyes. "I wanted to be there for him just as he was for me and I couldn't do that back then."
Sydney took a few moments to collect herself before speaking again. "My father visited me for the first time about two weeks after I got down there. Needless to say, he was shocked when he saw what had happened to me. I had lost a good deal of weight, I hadn't showered or washed my hair in several days. I had all the curtains drawn and the windows closed so that I could keep the light and noise from coming in."
"My dad was unbelievably supportive." Even now, Sydney was still in awe of her father's kindness and compassion during that most difficult period of her life. When her father stepped onto the porch on that hot summer day, she remembered her eyes filling with tears of shame. Jack Bristow, so tightly wound and so circumspect with his emotions, would see her loss of control as a sign of weakness. She thought he would be so disappointed in her.
It turned out she was wrong. "He didn't scream or yell or berate me for letting myself go to pieces. He simply marched me upstairs, ordered me to take the hottest shower I could stand and when I came back downstairs, he had a plate of spaghetti and meatballs waiting for me."
Weiss raised an eyebrow. "Jack Bristow made spaghetti and meatballs?" He asked incredulously.
"It totally goes against the persona, doesn't it?" Sydney said with an impish grin. "Actually, the spaghetti and meatballs was an old joke between me and my dad. After my mother left us and before he hired my nanny, the only thing he knew how to make was spaghetti and meatballs. Sometimes we would have that for dinner for seven days straight."
"I didn't mind because I was just a kid, but eventually he got tired of it. That's when he hired my nanny."
Weiss chuckled. "So Jack was the one who brought you out of your depression?"
"Surprisingly, yes. He stayed with me and he took care of me. He would let me cry on his shoulder or we'd stay up until two in the morning just talking. It was the first time since I was a little girl that I truly felt loved by my father." Sydney looked pensive.
"Oh, come on, Syd, don't be so harsh on your dad." Weiss chided her gently. "I know Jack isn't the most demonstrative man in the world, but you have to admit he was always a little over-zealous when it came to you."
"Yeah, and for a long time, I never really knew what that stemmed from." She replied. "I mean, I know that during the CIA years, he went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to protecting me, but that was mostly due to external forces, you know? It was always about fighting some unnecessary evil like my mother or Sloane. He was protecting me from them out of a sense of obligation as my father."
"But what he did for me last year, it finally proved to me just how much he cares about me." The thought put a smile on her face. "He could have checked me into some clinic and let someone else get my head back on straight for me, but he took the time to do it himself. He was helping me get better for my own sake, not because it would make his life easier if he didn't have a whacked-out daughter."
"I don't think there was ever any question that Jack values you above every other person on earth." Weiss said to her in a quiet voice. "The risks he's taken for you and the rules he's broken…" His words trailed off.
"I know, but it was still nice to see it for myself." Sydney shifted in her chair and then continued with her story. "After I finally snapped out of my trance or whatever it was, the first thing I wanted to do was to call Vaughn. A number of weeks had gone by, but I thought that if I could explain what had happened to me, he'd find it in his heart to forgive me."
"But every time I tried to pick up the phone, I would get this massive panic attack. I was so afraid that he'd slam the phone down on my ear and it would make me so frazzled that I'd spend the next half an hour crying over what I imagined might happen." She gave a heavy sigh. "At that point, I realized that I wouldn't be any good to Vaughn, not in the condition I was in. I needed to get my act together first. He deserved more than some basket case who would forget to breathe if she wasn't careful."
Weiss shot her a sympathetic look. "I realize you were going through a rough patch, Sydney, but you shouldn't have shut Mike out. If you were feeling lost, he would have helped you just as your father did. I think that's what got to him the most. You treated him as if he were a non-entity in your life."
"I didn't want to be a burden to him." Sydney said woodenly. "Not after what I had put him through all those years. For both our sakes, I needed to be the way he always saw me. Strong and competent and resourceful."
"I knew I had to become that person again, so that he would be able to love me again." She said tremulously. "He certainly couldn't have loved me the way I was back then."
Weiss thought to himself that Vaughn would have loved her regardless, but he didn't say it out loud. "Syd, don't get me wrong, it was an awful thing that happened to you and I sympathize with you, I really do, but was it really so shameful that you couldn't tell Mike about it? Because I think he would have understood."
"Oh, I'm sure he would have." Sydney nodded in agreement. "And believe it or not, Eric, I fully intended to tell him everything, but unfortunately, I never got the chance."
Weiss' eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean?"
"It was when I received the job offer to stay and teach in Santa Barbara." She explained. "I wasn't sure if I should take the job and I wanted to talk to Vaughn to see if maybe I hadn't blown it. That maybe there was still a chance that he wanted me back."
Sydney's voice hardened. "But when I called him, a woman--who I now think was Alice--answered the phone."
"Oh, come on, Sydney, you gave up on the supposed love of your life because another woman answered his phone?" Weiss looked annoyed.
"It was early morning, Eric." Sydney said softly. "I know what an early riser he is and I wanted to catch him before he left for the office."
"When she answered the phone, she sounded as if I'd woken her up." She gave him a look he couldn't fail to interpret. "And just when I was about to hang up, I heard Vaughn saying that he couldn't get to the ringing phone because he was in the shower."
"Oh." Weiss couldn't think of an excuse when the reality was so obvious. "I guess that's pretty clear."
"Clear as crystal." Sydney murmured. "So there you have it. My sordid little story of how I messed up the one thing that meant the most to me. There was no malice or ill will intended. It was just a matter of circumstances I couldn't control."
Weiss didn't know what to say. What Sydney told him about her previous summer in hell was sad and shocking and totally unexpected. It made him feel badly that he'd been so flip in asking her if she was there to break up Vaughn's wedding. Her emotions were probably close to the breaking point at the prospect of losing the man she loved to another woman in just two short days.
Then again, why was Sydney here? Weiss thought to himself. He knew she hadn't been invited and it couldn't be a coincidence that she'd come into town to visit Will on the very weekend Vaughn was getting married.
Perhaps Ms. Bristow had her own agenda…one that just might save his best friend from a lifetime of unhappiness.
"I'm glad you told me what happened, Sydney." Weiss took her hand in his and squeezed it. "I'm glad you trusted me enough to tell me the truth."
"Of course, I trust you, but all the same, I'd appreciate it if you didn't spread it around." She gave him a meaningful look. "I told you because you're a friend and because I didn't want you to think I was some cold-hearted bitch."
"I would never think that of you, Sydney. I defended you when Mike--" He suddenly stopped short, choosing not to reveal his friend's rather choice insults pertaining to one Sydney Bristow.
"I can just imagine what he'd call me." She said dryly. Weiss flushed.
"So are you going to tell Mike what you told me?"
"What difference could it possibly make?"
"Syd, you have to." Weiss said urgently. "If you told him, it would explain everything. Once he knows the real story, he won't be able to stay mad at you."
"Right, he'll feel sorry for me instead." Sydney said pessimistically. "I think I would rather have him hate me than pity me."
"He doesn't hate you."
"You don't know what he said to me earlier."
"Syd, listen to me, he doesn't hate you." Weiss said adamantly. "Whatever came spewing out of his mouth tonight was because he was hurt, plain and simple."
Sydney still looked unconvinced. "Eric, do you think he really loves her?" Her breath caught in her throat as she asked that question. If Weiss responded in the affirmative, she really didn't want to hear it.
He took a moment to think before answering. "I think Mike's confusing an extreme gratitude with love. He's convinced himself that he loves her because she was there for him at his lowest point."
"That was what he thought you two were all about. He thought that your relationship was all about giving love and support when the other person needed it the most."
"I let him down." She acknowledged.
"Big time." Weiss nodded, but his voice was kind. "Syd, I don't know if it'll make things worse for Mike if you know this, but I don't believe he's in love with her. Not the way a man should be in love with a woman he's about to marry."
A glimmer of hope appeared in Sydney's brown eyes. "Are you telling me I shouldn't give up?"
Weiss gave her a smile. "I didn't think the words 'give up' were in Sydney Bristow's vocabulary." He uttered softly.
Sydney reunited with Will shortly after her conversation with Weiss. By that time, she didn't think there was much more she could do to heighten her impact on the evening, so she and Will only stuck around for another half-hour or so. When they made their goodbyes to the happy couple, Alice put on a sickly-sweet smile but her eyes were cold. Vaughn struggled desperately to remain unmoved as he saw Sydney hanging on to Will's arm a little too close for his comfort.
Unbidden, a rather disturbing thought entered his mind. Where exactly was Sydney staying while she was in town? He knew she had been on the outs with Francie, but he'd seen them together tonight and they'd appeared quite chummy, so maybe they had made up. He hoped Sydney was staying with Francie and not Will, but he wouldn't let himself think about why he cared.
When Sydney had Will alone in the privacy of his car, she spilled the beans about Alice's plot to trap Vaughn into a misery-inducing state of matrimony. Will actually wasn't too surprised to find out that Alice could be so spiteful and her particular level of nastiness made him feel a bit squeamish.
"She's a viper, Will." Sydney fumed, her mood dark. "I've dealt with a lot of unsavory characters in my time, but for her to be so deceitful and vindictive to someone who professes to love her…" Her voice trailed off as she was at a loss for words to explain Alice's treachery.
"Maybe that's part of the reason why she's like that." Will hit the brake as he stopped at a red light. "Because she knows his feelings aren't really true."
"She can't know that for sure." Sydney said stubbornly. "Vaughn is a decent man and he doesn't deserve to be a target for her revenge. He did the right thing when he broke up with her all those years ago. It wouldn't have been fair to stay in the relationship if he had feelings for someone else."
"What about what he's doing now?" He queried. "Is it decent of him to use her in order to forget about his feelings for you?" Will was aware that it might have sounded as if he was slamming on his friend, but it honestly wasn't because he wanted to remove Sydney's rose-colored glasses where Vaughn was concerned. He was just trying to get her to see that deception came in all shapes and sizes; this wasn't a case of evil villain versus innocent victim because Vaughn and Alice were both at fault here.
Sydney was a bit miffed that Will was trying to disparage Vaughn's character, but she had to admit his question wasn't entirely off the mark. "If it's true that Vaughn still cares for me, then I think he's trying his damnedest to deny it." She said carefully. "It's possible he doesn't realize that he's using Alice."
"Well, Mike does have extra-strength blinders on when it comes to you." Will admitted. "He doesn't want to see what everyone else can see as clear as day. Even his fiancée."
"Will, we can't let him go through with this wedding." Sydney said insistently. "You agree with me, don't you?"
"It would not be a good thing to allow it to happen." He concurred. "And I would say that even if he was my bitterest enemy." He added.
"So will you warn him?" She asked. "I would do it, but you know he won't listen to me."
Will looked hesitant. "Sydney, I already told you Mike won't take kindly to me badmouthing Alice."
"But this is more than just saying you don't like her because she's phony and insincere! She wants to ruin his life!"
"Syd, think about it for a moment." Will said calmly. "Do you really think he'd believe me over her? He would either think I was lying and he'd be mad at me or he'd confront her, she'd convince him I was lying and he'd still be mad at me. It's lose-lose all the way around."
Sydney let out a frustrated sigh. "Oh, you're probably right." She looked glum. "You guys have a history thanks to me and it's not exactly one that inspires trust."
"Gee, thanks." Will murmured under his breath in a wry tone.
"All right, if not you, then what about Eric?" She suggested. "If he says that Alice is up to no good, Vaughn will have to believe him."
"I wouldn't be too sure of that." Will shook his head. "Eric can't stand Alice."
"I know that, but he's Vaughn's best friend." Sydney stated. "Vaughn trusts Eric."
"That may be true in most aspects of his life, but matters of the heart are something else." Will cautioned her. "Eric's feelings about the wedding have been pretty thinly disguised even though he's been trying to hold it in for Mike's sake."
"Mike's aware that Eric doesn't wholeheartedly approve of the marriage, but Eric's told me that Mike won't even discuss the matter with him." Will revealed. "He got kind of upset when Eric told him that he shouldn't even be thinking about getting married when he still has largely unresolved feelings for you." Will shot her a sideways glance.
Sydney felt her cheeks redden under Will's gaze. "I can't think about that now. All I'm concerned about is getting Vaughn out of this mess." She looked perplexed. "Okay, if you're out and Weiss is out, who's left? Who do you know that I can talk to and he'll listen to?"
Will gave her a helpless look. "I don't know, Syd. I can't--wait a minute, what about his mom?"
"His mother?" Sydney's balloon suddenly deflated. Sure, Mrs. Vaughn would listen to anything she would have to say. Right after hell froze over!
Will was warming to his idea. "Syd, she's going to be at the barbecue tomorrow. You could talk to her there."
"Will!" She burst out. "Have you forgotten the whole My-Mother-Killed-Her-Husband thing?"
"Okay, so it's not exactly the most ideal circumstances in which to introduce yourself to someone, but what choice do you have?" He asked matter-of-factly.
Sydney looked resigned. "None, I guess."
To be continued…
Author's Note: If you were wondering, the little thing about Irina being deceased at this point of Sydney's life is just something I made up. I do think that on the show, Syd is going to have to make a decision regarding her mother's life and someone else's that she cares about, but that's all just my own speculation.
Thanks for the read and have a Happy New Year!