Hey, look, new chapter! I have no idea how that happened!

And before we get to the chapter, I'd just like to say -

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JU!

I hope you have a wonderful birthday.

Dedication: To juju, for her birthday. Enjoy the chapter, sweetheart!

Disclaimer: Still not mine, still JJ's, don't sue, I have no money...songs used are "What's Wrong", by Alex Lloyd, and "Answer", by Sarah McLachlan.

Chapter Three

You slip out of her bedroom quietly, not wanting to disturb her reverie, and walk down the stairs as quietly as possible.

You choose the smaller downstairs bedroom, a beautiful, airy room with a double bed in the centre and a large desk in the corner. It's painted cream, although the wall behind the bed is a sky blue colour instead. The wall facing the foot of the bed is clear glass, with French doors leading out onto a balcony overlooking the garden.

It's peaceful and empty and calm and everything you need to try and calm the raging whirlwind of emotions wrestling for supremacy inside your body. You've only been near her for less than two days, and already you're a mess. Already you're forgetting who you are now, what you are now…forgetting the ring on your finger and the wife in your home.

You have no idea how you're going to last a month here, living with her, breathing the same air she breathes, day in, day out, every hourminutesecond spent with her. Being near her has always been torture for you. But there was a time you almost savoured the torture, the endless meetings and briefings and missions, knowing that you would go home with her at night and she would soothe your pain with kisses and caresses in her bed.

Now you've just come to see it as torture, like you did for the first eighteen months after you met her, eighteen months of twice-daily cold showers and endless hours of reading manuals on protocol to remind yourself what exactly would happen if you gave into your emotions and kissed her against the chain link fence in the warehouse like you did every night in your fantasies – although, to be perfectly honest, you remember, that wasn't all you two did in your fantasies. You'd never blushed at remembering dirty dreams before you'd met her, but some of the things that you'd done with her in your dreams still embarrassed you [almost as much as they excited you.]

You sit on the bed, head in your hands, breathing in and out, trying to get your heartbeat back under control, to stem the adrenaline rush that has always come from being near her.

You idly wonder exactly how you're supposed to be helping her recover from psychological trauma when the scars that her death left upon your life are still so vivid that you still crave the burning sensation of alcohol snaking its way down your throat, so real that you still remember every word of every conversation you had with her in the apartment that she'd never actually visited….so painful that you'd abandoned a job that you'd loved because it hurt too much to see the CIA insignia and remember that it was because of that symbol that she'd died.

But when you remember the haunted look in her eyes those first few hours in the hospital, the empty stares of incomprehension in her bed, the battered and weak woman that she'd been in the shopping mall….then you think that maybe your wounds aren't quite so bad, after all, not in comparison to hers, at any rate.

[Saving souls is a good thing to do,
But it's hopeless when you're falling yourself.]

*

You shower slowly, letting the almost cold water swamp you, hoping in vain that it will cool your need for her, that it will make you feel the wedding ring on your finger means anything compared to what you will always feel for her….but it doesn't. And so you step out of the bathroom, almost envying the freedom of the two magnificent dolphins immortalized in stained-glass in the bathroom's windows. Love must be a much simpler thing for animals, you think wryly.

"Vaughn?" You hear her voice as you hear her steps down the stairs, clear yet cautious, unsure of what you two are doing here, in the delicate dance that you dance together, each trying desperately to stay in step and avoid stepping on toes.

"Yeah, what is it, Syd?" you reply, sticking your upper body out around the door of the bathroom as you open it, seeing her dressed simply in a denim skirt and white cotton halter top. There's a part of you that says, isn't she the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?, but there's a part of you that says, you're married now, stop thinking about what it would be like to slide that skirt off her…

She actually blushes at the sight of you with only a towel wrapped around your waist, even though she's seen you in a lot less hundreds of times before.

"Sorry…I thought you were dressed."

"Don't worry about it. You look really nice." [and you think of a time when it had all seemed so complicated but is now so simple compared to the landmines you're surrounded by now, when you had told her, "You look really pretty."]

"Thanks. What are we doing for dinner?"

"You can choose…I think there are some takeout menus on the fridge, or I think I saw a thing for a restaurant along the beach if you want to go out…"

"I'm up for it if you are."

"All right. Just let me get changed, okay?"

She blushes again and looks away to the side, a sure sign of embarrassment for her. "Sure."

*

You end up at a small restaurant called White Sands, after a slow walk along the beach, past a lagoon that looked just about ready to break its banks and join the sea. It's only small, and you're one of only a few couples there, which you're not all that surprised by, since it's only a Tuesday night. She's only been back since Friday, although it seems now like an eternity ago.

The owners greet you warmly at the door, and ask you whether you'd prefer to eat at one of the tables outside on the pavement, an offer you accept gratefully, because the closer you are to the cool sea breeze rushing off the Pacific Ocean the better. It's way too hot here for you, a lover of all things snow and ice for as long as you can remember.

You're shown to an intimate table on the pavement, and given menus while the waitress bustles off with a promise to return for drinks orders.

"Vaughn…."

"Yeah, Syd?"

"Why did you agree to come with me?"

It's a good question, you know, but not one that you can immediately answer. You bend your head slightly and breathe out.

"Because I wasn't going to let you come down here in the state you were in alone."

"My father could've come, Eric could've come….Marshall could've come instead of you."

"You'd spend a month with Marshall rather than me? Syd, I'm hurt."

She laughs at this, but suddenly turns more serious again. "Vaughn, I'm serious. You have a wife! What does she think about you doing this?"

"She understands," you say, knowing that she doesn't.

"No, she doesn't, Vaughn," she says, her voice catching as she continues, "If it was the other way around….I wouldn't."

If she was your wife no ex-girlfriend would ever be able to drag you away, you think with a tinge of bitterness.

"Your" waitress arrives again at that moment, and it is with relief that you both order drinks and meals and start to steer the conversation onto safer topics, because there is no subject more dangerous to the two of you than your wife and your feelings for her.

There's a new coolness in the rather forced conversation you have with her as you eat, much like two adversaries making small talk before battle [two hearts fighting one war]. It's different to the relaxed banter that you'd been enjoying with her on the plane and in the store that morning, different to the jokes and smiles you'd shared on the walk across the beach. And you both know it's because of Lauren.

It's not that you don't love Lauren. Because you do. It's just that what you have with Sydney is so much more than love. It's so much more than any word, so much more than any combination of letters could possibly express, you surely think, not knowing how any combination of brushstrokes on a page could possibly express this curious mix of longing and need and want and heartbreak and a sensation that grips the bottom of your stomach every time you see her in a way that suddenly makes you fifteen years old again. It's desperation and interdependence and loyalty and faith and hope and truth and lies and needing her more than you need air, even though you don't know why.

*
You walk back across the beach in silence, each of you enjoying the peace and quiet of the open skies above you and the sand under your feet below you.

When you return to the house, she returns up the stairs, kissing you on the cheek lightly, oh so lightly, and then whispering into your ear, "Thank you…for everything."

Her touch burns you like it always has and it's all you can do to just watch her walk up the stairs, wondering listlessly whether or not she knows she has this power over you, and whether or not you have a similar power over her.

You're tired, and you know at least some of your fatigue must be jetlag, but you can't sleep. You roll from side to side, wondering why she must always be the cause of your insomnia, either from her presence, keeping you awake with kisses and caresses or because of her absence, keeping you awake with worry and fear. You're not entirely sure of the cause of this particular bout of insomnia, but you suspect it's a mixture of both, her small smiles and your memories of past kisses mixing in equal parts with worry and anxiety over her visible and invisible scars.

And then you hear a scream, her scream, and the cause of your insomnia is no longer the most pressing issue on your mind.

You race up the stairs, banging nearly all your toes along the way but not caring, to burst into her room to see her sitting up in bed, flailing her arms around her and whimpering, "Please, no, please…please."

You run to her side, gathering her in your arms like a baby and smoothing her hair. "Ssshh…it's okay, Syd. They're not going to hurt you, okay?"

You're not used to seeing her helpless like this, and truth be told you have no idea how to deal with someone experiencing nightmares like this. But it's her, and so you'll try to help her anyway.

"Vaughn?" she half-gasps, half-moans. "Please, don't leave me again…"

You release her quickly and then pull back the covers on her bed so you can sit with her in your arms. "Sssh, Syd…it's okay."

"Please…please don't go."

"I'm not going to let go, I promise."

She's actually shaking from the intensity of her nightmare, and you wonder exactly what they subjected her to in the ninety-six hours she was missing, and exactly how deep her invisible scars have cut her.

You can't sleep holding her, you know, but somehow you think that you might sleep pretty well later, better than you have since her "death" – or return, for that matter. Because tonight you'll go to sleep knowing that you've helped her in some small way, and you think that maybe that might prevent you from the nightmares that have plagued you since her death. They always start differently, but end up the same way, with you sitting in the ruins of her burnt-out house, head in hands, crying like a baby, and wondering why you couldn't have saved her. Wondering why it had been so important for you to go to the meeting with Kendall, wondering why it had been so important that you had left her there to die without you.

She had given you purpose to your life for so long, given it some sort of meaning again, the same sort of drive that you had once felt because of your patriotism – the same sort of motivation that had been driven out of you by countless hours of paperwork and bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo.

You had defined your life by helping her, protecting her, rescuing her – being there for her.

But you weren't there for her when she needed it, and that was what hurt you the most.

That was what kept you awake at night, tossing and turning beside your wife.

But as you hold Sydney in your arms and watch the sunrise, it's like nothing has changed. She's still your purpose, your drive, your compass. It's hard to want to ever let her go; such is the relief and sense of completeness that washes over you at feeling her in your arms again.

You've needed this for so long. You've needed to feel like she needed you again, needed to feel that you had some sort of purpose in her life, needed to feel like you were her knight in shining armour. You needed to be able to help her, save her, rescue her, even though she's normally in no need of rescuing.

Because rebuilding her now, helping her exorcise her demons, soothing her pain from the nightmares….it helps you. It helps you because it means that you're saving her like you couldn't do two and a half years ago.

And somehow that goes a little way towards silencing your own demons as well.

*

And so you sit there, holding her, until her sobs eventually subside and she falls asleep in your arms, watching the sunrise.

When she wakes, she does so suddenly, and the uncontrolled swing of her arm nearly breaks your nose. "Ooof! Syd, be careful! You could've broken my nose."

"Sorry," she rasps. "Reflexes."

She freezes as she becomes aware of the rather intimate position that you've found yourself in. "Vaughn? What are we doing?"

"Don't worry, Syd….you had a nightmare."

"Vaughn…I can't let you do this! You shouldn't be here!"

"Calm down, Syd. There's no way I'm going anywhere when you're like this. Have you been having nightmares for long?"

"No," she says, turning away from you, and you can tell she's lying through her teeth.

"Sydney, I was not your handler for a year and a half for nothing. I can tell when you're lying to me."

"Ever since I got back."

"From the mission?"

"Yes," she breathes softly.

"Syd, what happened to you then?"

"I don't know, Vaughn," she says, almost whimpering. "I know I was only gone three days…but it seemed like years." She shivers in your arms and tenses up at the memory of whatever torture they'd exposed her to, and you hold her tighter until she recovers.

"Vaughn….will you stay here? With me? Please? I…I need you, more than anything." Her voice is desperate, and you can hear her pain and loneliness and need.

"I told you once that I was your ally, Syd. Nothing's changed. I'll stay with you as long as you need."

And you will, even if it costs you your marriage.

[Cause I can only tell you what I know
That I need you in my life
And when the stars have all burned out
You'll still be burning so bright
Cast me gently into morning for the night has been unkind]


TBC

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Em