A Fragment
__________________________
Dr. Kerr met Sydney and Will as soon as they got off the elevator. Will could tell that Kendall had paged her while she was in the middle of a nice dinner; he had never seen her wearing a sleeveless black dress and pearls during a regular work day. She said nothing, she just led them briskly to her office, the combination of her high heels and Sydney's making quite a racket on the linoleum.
"Agent Bristow," Dr. Kerr began as she gestured toward the dark red couch in her office. Sydney and Will took a seat. "I heard a rumor that you have regained some of your memory. True?"
Sydney nodded, the half-smile and calm visage she had had since the moment they left Vaughn's house were still there. Dr. Kerr sat down behind her desk, leaned forward and folded her hands on her desk.
"How did it feel?" asked Dr. Kerr, sounding genuinely interested.
"It was the weirdest feeling... all those flashes of memories they just..." Sydney trailed off. It was easy to see that she couldn't find the words to explain it.
"A patient of mine once told me it was as if they had been juggling the pieces of a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle for months, never getting a break, and all of a sudden the pieces just snap together in the air and all the juggling is over."
Sydney smiled and nodded.
"Well, let me tell you what's next. In the same way that you don't remember every moment of your life, you won't remember every moment of your absence, either. You'll remember significant fragments: the moments that were so good or bad or different or exciting that they make enough impression on you to remember them. Kendall has asked me to go through as many fragments as possible, but we can't do it all tonight. We're going to start with one fragment tonight, and over the next few days we'll see what else we can get. Any questions?"
Sydney shook her head.
"Actually, I have one," said Will.
"If you're okay Sydney, why don't you go in the next room and have Miss Clark get you set up while I talk to Mr. Tippin. Just to save some time."
"Ok," Sydney said. She stood up and left through the door that connected Dr. Kerr's small office to the room where the hypnosis was preformed.
"You had a question?"
"It's not a big deal, I was just curious, what makes something jog someone's memory?"
She gave small chuckle. "If only we knew. It varies from person to person. All we know is that it has to be something - or someone - who is a part of in the suppressed memories. But it's more than that. It has to be something that is linked to the memory and only to the memory..."
"That's why pictures of Sloane or her mother wouldn't trigger her memory? She knew them from before?" asked Will.
"Exactly. Even if she had seen a picture of one of them tonight - when apparently enough time has passed that she can begin to remember - it wouldn't have mattered. It has to be someone she knows only from her experience who made a strong impression on her." Dr. Kerr took a breath. "Why do you ask?"
"I was just confused. What Sydney saw, it couldn't have been there... it's impossible."
"What was it that jogged her memory?"
"We went to Agent Vaughn's house for dinner. She was looking at the pictures and all of a sudden she went completely rigid and -"
"Who was in the picture?" asked Dr. Kerr.
"It's impossible. It was a picture of Michelle Vaughn - his wife."
Dr. Kerr raised her eyebrows. "His wife?" she asked.
"Could it have just been someone who looked like Michelle that Sydney was remembering?" Will suggested.
She took a long, deep breath. "Whatever she saw in that picture had to be something that was strongly ingrained in her memory in order for it to trigger suppressed memories. If there were any doubt, it wouldn't have triggered her memory."
"Then how does Sydney remember Michelle Vaughn?"
Dr. Kerr stood up and grabbed the yellow notepad and a blue, plastic pen off of her desk. "I have no idea, but it should be very interesting to find out."
With that she slipped through the door and into the side room. Will stood up to follow, completely bewildered. He had been so sure that Dr. Kerr would tell him that Sydney's memory was unreliable, or that it wasn't really the picture that jogged her memory. He was sure that Dr. Kerr would be able to provide him with some explanation, anything that could clarify why a picture of Michelle in her wedding dress, hand in hand with Vaughn, had opened up the floodgates to two years worth of memories. There was absolutely no way Michelle Vaughn could be linked to Sydney's absence. No way. No. Possible. Way.
He stood in a room which he had gotten to know very well over the past three months. It adjoined the room where Dr. Kerr and Sydney now sat. Will leaned against the glass and watched her. He didn't know if he should be happy that she had regained her memory, or crushed at what he was hearing.
"Where are you Sydney?" Dr. Kerr asked.
Sydney was sitting with her eyes closed, her jaw clenched, and her hands firmly gripping the armrests. "I can't tell. I can't see anything."
"Can you hear?"
"Yes. It's a heart monitor. There are some voices. I can't tell what they're saying."
"What does it feel like?"
"I'm cold. I'm lying down... on a bed or something. I can feel an IV in my arm. Everything is hazy. I... I don't think I have enough energy to move. Everything seems so muffled."
"It must be the sedatives. Is it getting clearer?"
"Yeah, I think. I just opened my eyes."
"Okay Sydney. I want you to tell me everything you see."
"It's a dark room, it looks like a basement. There are cement walls and all sorts of medical equipment and..."
"What is it Sydney?"
"Sloane is there."
"Does he see that you're looking at him?" asked Dr. Kerr. She wrote feverishly on her yellow pad of paper.
"No, he isn't looking at me. He's talking to someone."
"Who is it?"
"I can't see her face."
"Describe her to me."
Sydney paused. "Average height. She has dark, curly hair."
Lot's of women have dark, curly hair, Will told himself, as he listened to Sydney from the other side of the glass. That doesn't mean it's Michelle.
"Alright Sydney, what are they saying?"
If Will hadn't undergone regression therapy once himself, he wouldn't have believed Dr. Kerr expected Sydney to remember a conversation she heard sometime in the last two years while she happened to be hooked up to an IV of sedatives. But he remembered his experience all too well. Once they hypnotize you, you can see, hear, and read things you didn't even realize were there while you were actually living in the moment.
"Sloane's talking. He's saying that he and Irina have total faith in her ability to accomplish the objectives of this mission. Now he's asking if she has any final questions?"
"Sydney, feel free to use his exact words, you can talk in the first-person if you want to," Dr. Kerr said.
"Alright. The woman is talking now. She's saying, 'I actually have just one. If you want me to keep him out of your way, once the first objective is achieved wouldn't it be easier to kill him?' Sloane's nodding. Now he's speaking again. He's saying, 'Yes, yes it would be. If we could just do that, the other objective wouldn't even be important. In fact, if it had been my decision...' Now someone is interrupting him." Sydney gasped.
"It's alright Sydney, you're doing great. Who's there now?"
"It's my mother. She's walking into the room and talking. 'You are not to kill him. Under any circumstances. If I find out that you did, you will answer to me.' Now Sloane is talking again. He's saying, 'I guess she made herself clear.' He has that awful grin on his face that makes by blood curl. The woman is talking again. She's saying, 'Well, then. I'm ready.' My mother just said there was one last thing and the woman asked what it was."
Sydney suddenly stopped talking and bit her bottom lip.
"Sydney? What did your mother say?"
"She told the woman not to fall in love with him." Irina would be able to give advice in this area, Will thought to himself.
Dr. Kerr continued, "And you still can't see the woman's face?"
"Just her back. Oh, no!"
"What?" asked Dr. Kerr.
"Sloane - he saw me watching him." Her breathing sped up and for the first time since they had sped away from Vaughn's house her face was not calm.
"It's ok, Sydney. Remember, you're perfectly safe. Nothing can happen to you. Just tell me what you see."
"He just yelled 'doctor' and gestured toward me, the woman turned around and - "
"And?"
Sydney's eyes burst open. She took a couple of shallow breaths. "She turned around."
"Who turned around? The woman?"
"It was her. It was the one in the picture. It was Michelle."
Will had been sure there was no possible way that Michelle was a spy. He was also sure that even if Sydney had said that Michelle was there - in the cold, damp, concrete basement - that he wouldn't believe Sydney. It wasn't that he expected her to lie on purpose, but maybe a subconscious part of her would want so badly for Michelle to leave that she might *think* she remembered her. He had been sure he wouldn't believe Sydney. But as soon as she said it, as soon as the rock had plummeted into his stomach and he had regained his ability to breathe, it all made sense. Everything he had ever wondered about Michelle... it all made sense.
***************
Here was Michelle's story, the one she told Vaughn, and Will, and everyone else who asked. Michelle grew up in Topeka, Kansas. Her parents divorced when she was four, and she grew up with her mother and older sister, Karen, once her dad moved to Florida. A few years ago, Karen married to a wealthy lawyer in Topeka. Their mother could not have been more proud. One of her little girls had done the sensible thing: married young and married well. The other was working at T.G.I. Friday's to pay for nursing school. Her mother urged her to be like her sister, to meet some of Karen's husbands friends. But Michelle was persistent, she wanted to help people and take care of them when they couldn't take care of themselves. One day, soon after Michelle graduated, she was sitting at her kitchen table in her small, grimy apartment, eating a TV dinner out of its plastic carton when it occurred to her. Currently she had very few friends about whom she really cared, a mother who loved Karen more, a sister who was too busy cooking gourmet meals for her perfect husband to talk to her, and a grimy, closet-sized apartment. She could leave Topeka, still have the sister who doesn't care, the lack of friends, and all the rest of it, but also have a new chance and new scenery. One month later, she moved into another grimy, closet-sized apartment. But this one was in Los Angeles. She had been working at the hospital in L.A. for exactly two days when Michael Vaughn wound up there as a result of a gunshot wound.
It was the perfect story. She had just moved to L.A.- that explained why the only friends she had at her wedding were a few nurses. She hated her father for abandoning her - that explained why no one walked her down the aisle. Her sister did nothing except obsess over her rich lawyer husband - that explained why her sister flew in only for the wedding and didn't stay for the reception. Her mother thought she was a disappointment - that explained why, when her mother found out Michelle wasn't marrying a rich lawyer, or even a doctor, her mother took the same flights in and out of L.A. as Karen did. Michelle wanted to be a nurse so badly that she gave up her family to be one, she loved caring for people - that explained why she was so patient with Vaughn, why she was always a shoulder to cry on, why she never made any demands for herself except begging him to leave the CIA in order to save himself from the constant reminders of Sydney.
It was a great story. But it hit Will just then that that was exactly what Michelle was - a story. On occasion, Will had asked himself how anyone could be so patient. How could anyone see through the icy exterior Vaughn had put on after Sydney's disappearance and find the person inside? How could anyone start dating someone who was in that kind of a place? How come it never bothered her that he mumbled Sydney's name in his sleep and daydreamed about her while he and Michelle were eating dinner? And now Will knew how.
********************
Will turned around with his eyes shut and leaned his head against the window. He put his hands over his face and took a deep breath. He couldn't believe it, but at the same time, he knew it was true. The entire time that they had believed Sydney to be dead, there had been someone sleeping in Vaughn's bed who knew exactly where she was. He wanted to hate Michelle. But every time her face popped into his head, he imagined the giggling, curly-haired nurse who saved one of his best friends from complete depression. He could hardly believe that this same woman had suggested, mere days before meeting Vaughn, that it would be much easier to kill him than to get him to marry her.
Will knew he had to open his eyes. Sydney was still talking to Dr. Kerr, so he needed to compose himself for when she came out. He opened his eyes and was shocked to see that he was not alone.
Vaughn was sitting on the couch. He hadn't even heard him come in. The look on his face was exactly the same look Vaughn had a few days earlier when they had eaten lunch together in the CIA cafeteria. The look that Will had finally decided could be perfectly described as 'distressed: extremely upset, anxious, or unhappy.' This was just one more beating for Vaughn, another punch from a faceless bully who had begun torturing Vaughn when his father died and just never seemed to relent.
"Did you, uh...did you..." Will began.
"Hear that? Yeah. I heard," Vaughn replied.
"I'm sure Sydney could have made a mistake," Will was lying to himself and to Vaughn, and Vaughn knew it.
Vaughn shook his head. "No mistake. When you guys left, I ran upstairs to grab my keys. This was on the bed." He handed Will an envelope.
Will looked behind him, and when he saw that Sydney and Dr. Kerr were in the midst of a discussion and that Dr. Kerr was still burning a hole in her paper with her pen, he opened the envelope and read the letter.
'Dear Michael,
I should have done this as soon as she came back. I should have disappeared the second that you told me Sydney was home. It was selfish of me to stay. I don't know if I'm going back to where I am supposed to go or if I'll just go hide. Either way, I won't be back. I shouldn't be telling you any of this, of course. I should have just told you I was running to the store and never come home. You would've thought I left you because of Sydney, and you would have been right, but for all the wrong reasons. What I'm about to tell you, I'm telling you because I broke the number one rule. I fell in love.
As I am sure you have surmised by this point, I am not really Michelle. Who I am, or who I was, is not really of importance. Whoever I used to be was hired by Arvin Sloane and Irina Derevko to accomplish two objectives. The first one was to seduce you, marry you, and convince you to leave the CIA. You were getting too close to finding Sydney and it was making them nervous. The second objective of my mission was accomplished, too. I won't go into it in detail, except to say this - Sydney's baby is your baby, too.
I know that you must hate Irina Derevko, but let me say this in her defense. It was she who demanded that I not kill you. She also was the one who made Sloane wait because she wanted the baby to belong to you and to Sydney. Whatever her motives are, she seems to work for Sydney in whatever strange and twisted ways she can.
The few months that I spent as Mrs. Michael Vaughn were without a doubt the best of my life, even though I know they weren't the best of yours. I have a feeling, though, that the best months of your life are still to come. I will never forget you, but I hope with my whole heart that you can forget me.
- Michelle'
Will folded up the note and put it back in the envelope. He looked up at Vaughn. Vaughn was leaning back on the couch, his arms resting at his sides. Tears were falling down his cheeks. The strange thing was, Will really wasn't sure if they were tears of sadness or tears of joy.
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Okay, I hope that made sense. Thank you so much for reviewing the last chapter and for reading this one. I hope you enjoyed it, and as always, I am immensely grateful for reviews.
__________________________
Dr. Kerr met Sydney and Will as soon as they got off the elevator. Will could tell that Kendall had paged her while she was in the middle of a nice dinner; he had never seen her wearing a sleeveless black dress and pearls during a regular work day. She said nothing, she just led them briskly to her office, the combination of her high heels and Sydney's making quite a racket on the linoleum.
"Agent Bristow," Dr. Kerr began as she gestured toward the dark red couch in her office. Sydney and Will took a seat. "I heard a rumor that you have regained some of your memory. True?"
Sydney nodded, the half-smile and calm visage she had had since the moment they left Vaughn's house were still there. Dr. Kerr sat down behind her desk, leaned forward and folded her hands on her desk.
"How did it feel?" asked Dr. Kerr, sounding genuinely interested.
"It was the weirdest feeling... all those flashes of memories they just..." Sydney trailed off. It was easy to see that she couldn't find the words to explain it.
"A patient of mine once told me it was as if they had been juggling the pieces of a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle for months, never getting a break, and all of a sudden the pieces just snap together in the air and all the juggling is over."
Sydney smiled and nodded.
"Well, let me tell you what's next. In the same way that you don't remember every moment of your life, you won't remember every moment of your absence, either. You'll remember significant fragments: the moments that were so good or bad or different or exciting that they make enough impression on you to remember them. Kendall has asked me to go through as many fragments as possible, but we can't do it all tonight. We're going to start with one fragment tonight, and over the next few days we'll see what else we can get. Any questions?"
Sydney shook her head.
"Actually, I have one," said Will.
"If you're okay Sydney, why don't you go in the next room and have Miss Clark get you set up while I talk to Mr. Tippin. Just to save some time."
"Ok," Sydney said. She stood up and left through the door that connected Dr. Kerr's small office to the room where the hypnosis was preformed.
"You had a question?"
"It's not a big deal, I was just curious, what makes something jog someone's memory?"
She gave small chuckle. "If only we knew. It varies from person to person. All we know is that it has to be something - or someone - who is a part of in the suppressed memories. But it's more than that. It has to be something that is linked to the memory and only to the memory..."
"That's why pictures of Sloane or her mother wouldn't trigger her memory? She knew them from before?" asked Will.
"Exactly. Even if she had seen a picture of one of them tonight - when apparently enough time has passed that she can begin to remember - it wouldn't have mattered. It has to be someone she knows only from her experience who made a strong impression on her." Dr. Kerr took a breath. "Why do you ask?"
"I was just confused. What Sydney saw, it couldn't have been there... it's impossible."
"What was it that jogged her memory?"
"We went to Agent Vaughn's house for dinner. She was looking at the pictures and all of a sudden she went completely rigid and -"
"Who was in the picture?" asked Dr. Kerr.
"It's impossible. It was a picture of Michelle Vaughn - his wife."
Dr. Kerr raised her eyebrows. "His wife?" she asked.
"Could it have just been someone who looked like Michelle that Sydney was remembering?" Will suggested.
She took a long, deep breath. "Whatever she saw in that picture had to be something that was strongly ingrained in her memory in order for it to trigger suppressed memories. If there were any doubt, it wouldn't have triggered her memory."
"Then how does Sydney remember Michelle Vaughn?"
Dr. Kerr stood up and grabbed the yellow notepad and a blue, plastic pen off of her desk. "I have no idea, but it should be very interesting to find out."
With that she slipped through the door and into the side room. Will stood up to follow, completely bewildered. He had been so sure that Dr. Kerr would tell him that Sydney's memory was unreliable, or that it wasn't really the picture that jogged her memory. He was sure that Dr. Kerr would be able to provide him with some explanation, anything that could clarify why a picture of Michelle in her wedding dress, hand in hand with Vaughn, had opened up the floodgates to two years worth of memories. There was absolutely no way Michelle Vaughn could be linked to Sydney's absence. No way. No. Possible. Way.
He stood in a room which he had gotten to know very well over the past three months. It adjoined the room where Dr. Kerr and Sydney now sat. Will leaned against the glass and watched her. He didn't know if he should be happy that she had regained her memory, or crushed at what he was hearing.
"Where are you Sydney?" Dr. Kerr asked.
Sydney was sitting with her eyes closed, her jaw clenched, and her hands firmly gripping the armrests. "I can't tell. I can't see anything."
"Can you hear?"
"Yes. It's a heart monitor. There are some voices. I can't tell what they're saying."
"What does it feel like?"
"I'm cold. I'm lying down... on a bed or something. I can feel an IV in my arm. Everything is hazy. I... I don't think I have enough energy to move. Everything seems so muffled."
"It must be the sedatives. Is it getting clearer?"
"Yeah, I think. I just opened my eyes."
"Okay Sydney. I want you to tell me everything you see."
"It's a dark room, it looks like a basement. There are cement walls and all sorts of medical equipment and..."
"What is it Sydney?"
"Sloane is there."
"Does he see that you're looking at him?" asked Dr. Kerr. She wrote feverishly on her yellow pad of paper.
"No, he isn't looking at me. He's talking to someone."
"Who is it?"
"I can't see her face."
"Describe her to me."
Sydney paused. "Average height. She has dark, curly hair."
Lot's of women have dark, curly hair, Will told himself, as he listened to Sydney from the other side of the glass. That doesn't mean it's Michelle.
"Alright Sydney, what are they saying?"
If Will hadn't undergone regression therapy once himself, he wouldn't have believed Dr. Kerr expected Sydney to remember a conversation she heard sometime in the last two years while she happened to be hooked up to an IV of sedatives. But he remembered his experience all too well. Once they hypnotize you, you can see, hear, and read things you didn't even realize were there while you were actually living in the moment.
"Sloane's talking. He's saying that he and Irina have total faith in her ability to accomplish the objectives of this mission. Now he's asking if she has any final questions?"
"Sydney, feel free to use his exact words, you can talk in the first-person if you want to," Dr. Kerr said.
"Alright. The woman is talking now. She's saying, 'I actually have just one. If you want me to keep him out of your way, once the first objective is achieved wouldn't it be easier to kill him?' Sloane's nodding. Now he's speaking again. He's saying, 'Yes, yes it would be. If we could just do that, the other objective wouldn't even be important. In fact, if it had been my decision...' Now someone is interrupting him." Sydney gasped.
"It's alright Sydney, you're doing great. Who's there now?"
"It's my mother. She's walking into the room and talking. 'You are not to kill him. Under any circumstances. If I find out that you did, you will answer to me.' Now Sloane is talking again. He's saying, 'I guess she made herself clear.' He has that awful grin on his face that makes by blood curl. The woman is talking again. She's saying, 'Well, then. I'm ready.' My mother just said there was one last thing and the woman asked what it was."
Sydney suddenly stopped talking and bit her bottom lip.
"Sydney? What did your mother say?"
"She told the woman not to fall in love with him." Irina would be able to give advice in this area, Will thought to himself.
Dr. Kerr continued, "And you still can't see the woman's face?"
"Just her back. Oh, no!"
"What?" asked Dr. Kerr.
"Sloane - he saw me watching him." Her breathing sped up and for the first time since they had sped away from Vaughn's house her face was not calm.
"It's ok, Sydney. Remember, you're perfectly safe. Nothing can happen to you. Just tell me what you see."
"He just yelled 'doctor' and gestured toward me, the woman turned around and - "
"And?"
Sydney's eyes burst open. She took a couple of shallow breaths. "She turned around."
"Who turned around? The woman?"
"It was her. It was the one in the picture. It was Michelle."
Will had been sure there was no possible way that Michelle was a spy. He was also sure that even if Sydney had said that Michelle was there - in the cold, damp, concrete basement - that he wouldn't believe Sydney. It wasn't that he expected her to lie on purpose, but maybe a subconscious part of her would want so badly for Michelle to leave that she might *think* she remembered her. He had been sure he wouldn't believe Sydney. But as soon as she said it, as soon as the rock had plummeted into his stomach and he had regained his ability to breathe, it all made sense. Everything he had ever wondered about Michelle... it all made sense.
***************
Here was Michelle's story, the one she told Vaughn, and Will, and everyone else who asked. Michelle grew up in Topeka, Kansas. Her parents divorced when she was four, and she grew up with her mother and older sister, Karen, once her dad moved to Florida. A few years ago, Karen married to a wealthy lawyer in Topeka. Their mother could not have been more proud. One of her little girls had done the sensible thing: married young and married well. The other was working at T.G.I. Friday's to pay for nursing school. Her mother urged her to be like her sister, to meet some of Karen's husbands friends. But Michelle was persistent, she wanted to help people and take care of them when they couldn't take care of themselves. One day, soon after Michelle graduated, she was sitting at her kitchen table in her small, grimy apartment, eating a TV dinner out of its plastic carton when it occurred to her. Currently she had very few friends about whom she really cared, a mother who loved Karen more, a sister who was too busy cooking gourmet meals for her perfect husband to talk to her, and a grimy, closet-sized apartment. She could leave Topeka, still have the sister who doesn't care, the lack of friends, and all the rest of it, but also have a new chance and new scenery. One month later, she moved into another grimy, closet-sized apartment. But this one was in Los Angeles. She had been working at the hospital in L.A. for exactly two days when Michael Vaughn wound up there as a result of a gunshot wound.
It was the perfect story. She had just moved to L.A.- that explained why the only friends she had at her wedding were a few nurses. She hated her father for abandoning her - that explained why no one walked her down the aisle. Her sister did nothing except obsess over her rich lawyer husband - that explained why her sister flew in only for the wedding and didn't stay for the reception. Her mother thought she was a disappointment - that explained why, when her mother found out Michelle wasn't marrying a rich lawyer, or even a doctor, her mother took the same flights in and out of L.A. as Karen did. Michelle wanted to be a nurse so badly that she gave up her family to be one, she loved caring for people - that explained why she was so patient with Vaughn, why she was always a shoulder to cry on, why she never made any demands for herself except begging him to leave the CIA in order to save himself from the constant reminders of Sydney.
It was a great story. But it hit Will just then that that was exactly what Michelle was - a story. On occasion, Will had asked himself how anyone could be so patient. How could anyone see through the icy exterior Vaughn had put on after Sydney's disappearance and find the person inside? How could anyone start dating someone who was in that kind of a place? How come it never bothered her that he mumbled Sydney's name in his sleep and daydreamed about her while he and Michelle were eating dinner? And now Will knew how.
********************
Will turned around with his eyes shut and leaned his head against the window. He put his hands over his face and took a deep breath. He couldn't believe it, but at the same time, he knew it was true. The entire time that they had believed Sydney to be dead, there had been someone sleeping in Vaughn's bed who knew exactly where she was. He wanted to hate Michelle. But every time her face popped into his head, he imagined the giggling, curly-haired nurse who saved one of his best friends from complete depression. He could hardly believe that this same woman had suggested, mere days before meeting Vaughn, that it would be much easier to kill him than to get him to marry her.
Will knew he had to open his eyes. Sydney was still talking to Dr. Kerr, so he needed to compose himself for when she came out. He opened his eyes and was shocked to see that he was not alone.
Vaughn was sitting on the couch. He hadn't even heard him come in. The look on his face was exactly the same look Vaughn had a few days earlier when they had eaten lunch together in the CIA cafeteria. The look that Will had finally decided could be perfectly described as 'distressed: extremely upset, anxious, or unhappy.' This was just one more beating for Vaughn, another punch from a faceless bully who had begun torturing Vaughn when his father died and just never seemed to relent.
"Did you, uh...did you..." Will began.
"Hear that? Yeah. I heard," Vaughn replied.
"I'm sure Sydney could have made a mistake," Will was lying to himself and to Vaughn, and Vaughn knew it.
Vaughn shook his head. "No mistake. When you guys left, I ran upstairs to grab my keys. This was on the bed." He handed Will an envelope.
Will looked behind him, and when he saw that Sydney and Dr. Kerr were in the midst of a discussion and that Dr. Kerr was still burning a hole in her paper with her pen, he opened the envelope and read the letter.
'Dear Michael,
I should have done this as soon as she came back. I should have disappeared the second that you told me Sydney was home. It was selfish of me to stay. I don't know if I'm going back to where I am supposed to go or if I'll just go hide. Either way, I won't be back. I shouldn't be telling you any of this, of course. I should have just told you I was running to the store and never come home. You would've thought I left you because of Sydney, and you would have been right, but for all the wrong reasons. What I'm about to tell you, I'm telling you because I broke the number one rule. I fell in love.
As I am sure you have surmised by this point, I am not really Michelle. Who I am, or who I was, is not really of importance. Whoever I used to be was hired by Arvin Sloane and Irina Derevko to accomplish two objectives. The first one was to seduce you, marry you, and convince you to leave the CIA. You were getting too close to finding Sydney and it was making them nervous. The second objective of my mission was accomplished, too. I won't go into it in detail, except to say this - Sydney's baby is your baby, too.
I know that you must hate Irina Derevko, but let me say this in her defense. It was she who demanded that I not kill you. She also was the one who made Sloane wait because she wanted the baby to belong to you and to Sydney. Whatever her motives are, she seems to work for Sydney in whatever strange and twisted ways she can.
The few months that I spent as Mrs. Michael Vaughn were without a doubt the best of my life, even though I know they weren't the best of yours. I have a feeling, though, that the best months of your life are still to come. I will never forget you, but I hope with my whole heart that you can forget me.
- Michelle'
Will folded up the note and put it back in the envelope. He looked up at Vaughn. Vaughn was leaning back on the couch, his arms resting at his sides. Tears were falling down his cheeks. The strange thing was, Will really wasn't sure if they were tears of sadness or tears of joy.
_______________________
Okay, I hope that made sense. Thank you so much for reviewing the last chapter and for reading this one. I hope you enjoyed it, and as always, I am immensely grateful for reviews.