Title: Wanting Memories
Author: Liz (liz@endlessdreams.net)
Distribution: my site, ff.net, Cover Me. All others see profile.
Rating: PG/PG-13
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-S2 Finale
Ship: Syd/Vaughn
Summary: Sydney lost more than two years. Now she must remember everything - before she loses it all over again.
A/N: Feedback feeds the muse ;) Thanks for what you've given her so far!
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Part Three - Almost Doesn't Count
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When I came to in my bedroom, I was surrounded by controlled chaos. There were men all around me, taking care of Allison's body, looking for various bits of evidence, and cleaning up the mess we'd left in our wake. The edges of my vision were cloudy, I was dizzy even though I was still lying down. He was my anchor.
"Sydney, God, Sydney," he was repeating, over and over as he leaned above me. He wasn't looking at my face when I opened my eyes; he was scanning my body, assessing all my injuries. I knew there were many. Even if I hadn't been able to feel each and every one of them, they were numbered in the wrinkles lining Michael Vaughn's ever-expressive forehead. I reached up gingerly and caressed them fondly. His clear, worry-filled eyes snapped to my hazy, pain-filled ones.
"Syd?"
"It's so dark in my head…so dark… You're my light," I said thickly, my voice blocked by tears never to be shed.
"What?" he asked shakily, picking me up and carrying me out of the room.
"You're my light," I repeated. Then I slipped back into unconsciousness as he lay me gently down onto the ambulance stretcher and held my hand as if it was his only tie to life.
The way he told me about it on the plane, it almost felt like a memory.
Almost.
************
"The next time you woke up," Vaughn continued, "Jack, Eric, Dixon, Marshall, and I were all sitting around your hospital bed." Vaughn chuckled. "You took one look at us and said 'Look at all your faces! I must be about to die!'"
Sydney smiled a little at that. "Will?" she pressed.
"Will was in intensive care. Allison had stabbed him, then simply left him in the bathtub. We think…well, we think she almost wanted him to be found before he died."
Sydney sat up a little straighter and looked at Vaughn incredulously. "What?"
"Well, once Will was better, he told us that when she stabbed him, she was essentially weeping. That when she was carrying him to the bathroom and he was going in and out of consciousness, she kept saying 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' The theory is she actually started developing feelings for him while posing as Francie."
Sydney digested this information slowly. "Like my mother."
Vaughn gave Sydney an odd look. "My mother loved my father," Sydney said firmly. "She told me so."
"When did she tell you that?"
"Every day," Sydney replied without thinking. "Every day, just before she and Sloane left the room, she'd turn back to me and say the same thing. 'I love you, you know. And I loved your father too. One day, you'll believe me.' And then they'd leave." Sydney glanced at Vaughn's face to find him staring at her oddly. "What?" she asked, then comprehension dawned as she realized what she'd said. "Oh God, I remembered something…"
"I guess you did," Vaughn said quietly.
"I'm sorry it wasn't you, Vaughn."
"Don't be ridiculous, Sydney. Any memory is good. Small steps, Syd. You have to start somewhere, don't you?"
Sydney reached up and caressed his cheek again. "I guess I do," she said softly, allowing herself her first real smile since she'd awoke in the alley. They spent an endless moment simply staring into each other eyes. Kiss me, Sydney thought suddenly. You understand me more than I understand myself, take all of me.
Vaughn was leaning in to grant Sydney's unspoken request when the plane suddenly jolted a little in some turbulence, and the moment was gone. Sydney slowly closed her eyes and sighed as Vaughn pulled back a little.
"Well, I guess now we know it was Derevko and Sloane who abducted you."
Sydney opened her eyes. "What?"
"Your memory. It was of your mother and Sloane leaving your room."
Sydney nodded slowly. "So it was." She shook her head. "Four years and all I can remember is my mother, of all people. I don't know how I got away, or if I was released…I don't know why they held me there…" A half-forgotten memory from the days before the fight with Francie's double tickled Sydney's mind, but she was too busy trying to remember things after the fight to pay any attention to memories she could access at her leisure.
Vaughn, unable to stand seeing his beloved wife in pain, pulled her close and gently stroked her hair. "You'll get your memory back. I promise," he added emphatically. "I promise," he repeated on a whisper.
"Vaughn?"
"Just sit with me, Syd. Just sit with me."
"We didn't make your Santa Barbara reservations, did we?"
Vaughn laughed haltingly. "Not quite. But as soon as you were well, we went. You felt guilty leaving Will, but he insisted." Vaughn grinned. "In fact, he threatened to go on a hunger strike if we didn't go away."
"He did that?"
"He knew you needed a break, and he knew there was no way I was letting you out of my sight for more than five minutes at a go. So he figured he'd be just as fine without you 'hovering over his sickbed' as he put it, as he would be with you there."
"How nice," Sydney said dryly.
"He was looking out for you, Syd. You saw that in the end, which is why you went at all."
Sydney smiled. "I imagined so. Apparently I haven't changed that much."
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But she had.
Her eyes didn't smile up into mine like they did the last time I saw her. She didn't call me Michael anymore like she had since we got engaged. She stiffened every time some one knocked on the door of the cabin to bring in food or drink or blankets. Her wedding ring, the favorite thing of the woman I once knew, the one piece of jewelry she refused to take off for anything…her wedding ring sat in her pocket, unworn for two long years.
We passed the long flight from Hong Kong to Hawaii in alternating periods of conversation and silence. During the periods of silence she would curl up in my arms and if I closed my eyes and thought hard enough, I could almost imagine that we were curled up in front of our fireplace at home on a crisp winter night, Christmas music in the background and the smell of fresh pine and cinnamon mixed with burning logs in the air. We had a wonderful Christmas our first year – our only year – as a married couple. We'd taken many pictures of our lives after the night she fought Allison. But the album I looked at the most during her long absence was the Christmas album. Sitting there with her, wrapped in the blankets the co-pilot had provided, I could almost imagine myself back in that Christmas.
Then Sydney would break the period of silence with some question about the time she had missed. I would begin to answer and she would pull slowly out of my arms and turn to face me. Her eyes were wide, and though she tried to hide it, I could see the fear in her eyes. Fear that she would never remember…and fear that she would.
I can only hope those fears were not mirrored in my own eyes.
************
As the plane began its final descent, Vaughn shifted into briefing mode. "We are about to land at a Hickam Air Force Base, in Hawaii. We'll be taken to the TLF – that's Transient Living Facility, i.e. hotel – on base, where we will spend the next week or so."
"What?" Sydney interrupted. "I want to get home – see my dad, Will."
"Jack and Will have been flown to Hickam and are awaiting our arrival at the TLF."
"I thought we were meeting them in LA! You didn't tell me that we were all coming here!"
"I didn't know they were coming until that phone call ten minutes ago, and you were sleeping."
"I was not."
"You were, trust me. Did you hear my phone ring?"
Sydney grinned sheepishly. "No."
"Didn't think so. Now, as I said, we'll be staying about a week at Hickam. We don't want you on a plane for such a long stretch of time immediately after picking you up off the streets of Hong Kong."
"Of course not," Sydney said dryly. Vaughn gave her a look, and she shrugged.
"Right. We also wanted you to have time between your psych evals, physicals, etc."
"How sweet."
"It has to be done," Vaughn replied, then reached out to touch Sydney's cheek. "I'm sorry, I know it's hard. But it was out of my control…Kendall and Devlin, they wouldn't be convinced that it was safe to bring you back to LA."
"Safe?"
"Well…" Vaughn hesitated, scanned Sydney's face searchingly, then sighed. "It was assumed you'd been in Sloane's custody for the past two years. Who knew what you'd been programmed to do upon your return to LA. Or so declared Kendall. Devlin was in agreement."
Sydney nodded.
"Jack, Will, and I tried to convince them otherwise. But you know how they get. Buckle your seatbelt, we're about to land."
Sydney glanced out the window at the crystal blue water rushing up to meet them. "To bad there's no time to go snorkeling," she said jokingly, nodding towards the shoreline now visible. She buckled her seatbelt. "So Will still works for the CIA?"
Vaughn nodded. "He's our top analyst, to tell you the truth. I know that I should probably feel guilty considering the circumstances under which he came into our employment, but I'm so glad he started working for us. He's the best analyst I've seen."
Sydney beamed. "That's my Will," she said happily.
The plane landed, and Vaughn and Sydney were ushered to a waiting car. A young airman drove them to the TLF, then took them to a door. He handed Vaughn a set of keys. "Good luck," he said, apparently having been told something about Sydney and Vaughn, though Vaughn had no clue what he would have been told. "Your associates are waiting inside," he added. Then he strode away.
"Are you ready?" Vaughn said quietly to Sydney. She took a deep breath and nodded.
"I'm ready." Vaughn slipped a key in the lock and opened the door. Sydney slipped inside and Vaughn followed. He had barely closed the door when Sydney found herself held tightly in the arms of her father.
"Oh God, Sydney," Jack murmured into her hair as he held her close. "I thought I'd lost you, Sydney." He kissed the top of her head and then pressed his cheek on the spot he'd kissed, closing his eyes against tears of joy.
"Daddy," Sydney said brokenly.
Then she was released from Jack's embrace only to be enfolded into Will's waiting arms.
"God, Syd. We thought you were dead."
"I thought you were dead," she replied, before she realized they probably didn't know about her memory loss. She shifted back from Will and glanced uncomfortably at Vaughn.
"What's wrong?" Jack and Will asked simultaneously. Vaughn and Sydney exchanged a glance. Jack stepped towards Vaughn.
"What is wrong with my daughter, Michael?" Sydney lifted her eyebrows for a moment, then realized that upon Sydney and Vaughn's engagement, her father had probably stopped calling him "Agent Vaughn."
"Jack, Will, you should both sit down."
"Michael," Jack began, then catching the look in Sydney's eyes, motioned to Will. "Let's sit." They sat, Sydney and Vaughn next to each other on the room's couch, Jack and Will each sitting in a chair.
"What's wrong with Sydney?" Jack repeated when they were settled.
"Sydney is experiencing some memory loss."
"How much memory loss?" Jack asked tersely.
"The last thing I remember is going unconscious after my fight with the woman who was made to look like Francie," Sydney said quickly.
Jack and Will sat in stunned silence until Will blurted out, "Syd, that's almost four years ago!"
"So I've been told," she said with a glance at Vaughn. He took her hand and squeezed it gently.
"Syd, why don't you go into the bedroom?" He glanced at Jack, who nodded slightly. "Jack and Will brought some stuff for us, you can check and make sure you like what they brought you. Then you can just lie down. You're tired, I can tell."
Sydney knew he was just trying to get her out of the room so that he could talk about her with Will and her father, but he was right – she was tired. Too tired to even care that she was about to be discussed like a child. If she was awake too much longer, she was certain that she would soon be acting like a child. So she simply nodded.
"Okay." She squeezed his hand and stood up. Pausing to kiss Will and her father on the cheek, she crossed the room to the bedroom.