A/N: Thanks to a little immediate and encouraging commentary from some of you out there, I was more confident in this chapter, and thus typed it a bit faster. So, I suppose that means some thank-you's and shout-out's are in order: Sobee1982, chopsticks, Becky, and Lady Prongs of Rohan. Hugs and kisses, folks. And now, please do enjoy.  

Chapter Three

Weiss looked like he had barely taken the time to pull his shirt over his head in his rush down the street. The cowlick that sleep had coaxed into his hair might have even been comical in her half-hysterical state as she watched him pace the length of the stain on her carpet, but Sydney was too intent on being somber. At length, he halted in front of her, shoulders lifting in an unconscious shrug.

"Looks bad, doesn't it?" she whispered quietly, folding her arms protectively over her chest.

"Well, I think we can pretty much rule out this being any good news."

In the successive moment's silence, he struggled with his next words, but she anticipated his aim, and answered the questions he wasn't willing to ask with all the details of the night before she could dredge from her memory.

"I woke up this morning, in my bed, in my pajamas," she concluded her account, picking at her clothing, "with no memory of anything between that and falling asleep on the couch. That blood could have been there before I even got home, but I couldn't tell you anything for certain because I never came in here last night."

"What I want to know," he said slowly, "is what brand of beer did you have?"

Her eyes plead with him to be serious. He rubbed a hand thoughtfully over his hair, then crossed the room abruptly to throw the doors of her closet open. Grabbing at the first thing in sight, he tossed a pair of jeans at her, rapidly followed by a shirt. She hugged the articles instinctively to her chest, staring wordless queries in his direction.

"Go on," he shooed her with his hands. "Take a shower, get dressed. You'll feel less…icky afterwards. We can decide what comes next from there."

But she refused to understand, and he nearly came to the point of undressing her himself, when modesty kicked in and she slammed the bathroom door in his face. On the other side, he leaned his back against the wall with a sigh that hovered somewhere between relief and exasperation.

When she appeared again with skin scrubbed raw and red, clad in fresh clothes, Weiss was sprawled out on the floor in front of the door, legs stretched out in front of him. "Feel better?" he asked, gazing up at her.

"Wonderful." She rolled her eyes at him, but her sense of humor seemed miles away.  She had taken the minutes spent in the bathroom to compose herself, a mask dropping to cover the trembling inside her. "What do you suggest I do now, o great leader?"

"While you were unwinding in there, I called in the experts," he grunted as he pushed himself to his feet. "Your dad will be here in a few minutes. I defer all further decisions to him."

She invited him to stay with her until Jack arrived, and they situated themselves awkwardly at opposite ends of the couch in the living room. On the coffee table, the one empty beer she had placed there before dropping out of consciousness had been mysteriously replaced by four bottles. Weiss looked at her; she couldn't look at him.

He reached across the distance between them to press her hand compassionately. "I'm sorry," he tried haltingly. "I'm sorry that all this had to happen to you. Not just this morning--not that it's the most pleasant way to wake up--but everything. I don't think I always appreciate just how hard it must be on you."

She considered the warmth of his hand around hers. So many people came into her life, but hardly any stayed for any length of time. She had so few friends nowadays; she didn't want to take this for granted. "Thank you. For coming so quickly, for being so patient, for waiting with me. I'm sure this wasn't how you were expecting to spend your morning."

"This? This is nothing. My sisters made bigger messes fighting over the bathroom before school."

"Sisters?" she latched to any hope of conversation. "I never knew you had sisters."

"You didn't ask, did you? Don't worry about it," he amended hastily when he noticed her instant mortification. "Yeah, I have three sisters. But to make things worse, I'm the baby of the family. I was the guinea pig to all their experiments. They have some rather embarrassing photos of me in makeup and dresses stored away to use as blackmail." The tone of his voice contradicted the familial pride shining in his face. "But you have to love them, you know? I mean, without them, I might have gone my entire life thinking I was an autumn when I'm actually a spring."

She would have laughed, but she was too frightened she might cry in her still shaken condition.

Jack brought with him an air of absolute competence that nearly made her believe he could wave his hand and make her troubles take flight. She watched him walk the same path around her room that Weiss had, and she gave him the same answers that she had to Weiss--the only ones she knew. Weiss stood on the other side of Jack and nodded his agreement with the statements.

"Sydney," Jack began as he finished his inspection, "I need you to answer one question with complete honesty. Do you know the name James Dunn?"

"James Dunn? I don't understand what that has to do with anything," she protested.

"Do you," he repeated firmly, "recognize the name James Dunn?"

"No. Should I?"

"Mr. Dunn was one of the members of the FBI tribunal that questioned you a few years ago when the Prophecy was first uncovered. An upstanding man, generally well liked, and recently promoted. He was reported missing late last night by his live-in maid. His body was discovered early this morning a few blocks from here in an alley behind a restaurant."

"Are you suggesting that I might have murdered him?"

"Did I say any such thing?" he snapped, glaring sideways at her. "I'm just preparing you for the possibility that someone might connect the two of you. That they might suspect you had a motive for revenge."

"How can I have a motive for the murder of a man I don't even remember meeting? I didn't do this."

"I know," he voice had taken on a soothing quality to counter the alarm creeping into hers. "But I will need a sample of the blood to take with me for the lab to examine. Just to be certain."

"Of course," she answered hollowly, bending to pick up the clothes lying untouched in the middle of the spot. "Take this." She handed him the frist piece of cloth she could detach from the pile, and gathered the rest to her chest. She took a few tentative steps toward the laundry room. "I should wash these…or maybe I'll burn them."

Jack studied her anxiously, noting the slightly unconnected way she moved. He reached out his hand to touch her arm, but it fell short, and he dropped it back to his side. "Sydney, I think it would be best if you came back to HQ with me. I'd like to have you nearby for whatever happens."

Her face was gradually losing its color and her hands shook under her burden. The smell of blood was clouding all her senses. Was this James Dunn's blood? Had she really killed a man? Had she lost all control over her own mind, her own body?

The clothes fluttered to the floor from her limp arms. "I think I'm going to be sick." She lurched several more steps out of the room and into the hallway, and Jack forced himself to remain silent spectator. She's a big girl; she doesn't need me to hold her hair. It only when her progressively steadying gait took her straight past the bathroom door, that his apprehension reached its pinnacle, but he reached the kitchen only in time to catch the fading echo of keys jingling and the front door closing. Ending his now-frenetic sprint on the porch, he was only in time to catch a glimpse of the bumper of her car rounding the corner of her street. If he had been by himself, he might have dropped his head to his hands, but instead he held himself upright and impassive.

"She knew better than to do something like that," he said to no one in particular, but at his shoulder, Weiss inclined his head gravely in agreement. "They're only going to think she's guilty after this."

~~~~~~~~~~

The momentum of her body colliding with it robbed the chair of its uneasy balance and flung it, with her still attached, to the ground. The combined force of her back slamming into the wooden floorboards and the burning footprint in the middle of her chest that had sent her there squeezed the oxygen out of her lungs in one painful, surprised whoop. Wasting only the time it took to blink the black spots out of her vision, she drew her knees to her chest and counted the footsteps of her opponent as she approached. One, Two…Three. She shoved her heels into the seat of the chair ferociously, gathering all her anger and frustration into the movement, propelling the chair into a swift slide across the polished oak planks. The sharp and over-adorned claws it claimed as feet dug into the bare skin of her attacker's legs, yanking an outraged yelp from the blonde's throat. Hatred lit her pale eyes with a new, internal light as she climbed over the piece of furniture.

Julia Thorne scrambled to her feet in the pause her latest assault had allowed her, scanning the room for another strategy. The curtains caught her attention just a few feet away: thick and voluminous fabric in asymmetrical patterns that hung heavily on a sturdy-looking rod. Without faltering, she began to back herself towards the far end of the window, allowing some genuine fear to enter into her expression and her arms to droop in her best imitation of a mother bird, feigning a wounded wing in order to lure a predator away from her nest. Look, she begged her adversary silently, Look at me. I did something stupid. I backed myself into a corner. I'm too tired, too hurt to think straight. Now you have the advantage. Come and get me. The blonde advanced, and Julia's whole body sang with triumph.

Between the two rapt combatants, the window framed a flawless view of the Eiffel Tower in all its nocturnal glory. Below it, the streets of Paris swelled with her people as they were drawn from their homes into the night in celebration of Bastille Day. The horizon blazed with exploding fireworks, filling the sky with innumerable falling stars. For a moment, it seemed the entire world was on fire.

"Make a wish," Julia muttered as she reached up to snatch at the curtain. With the right leverage, the whole unit collapsed, covering her enemy with twisted folds of strangling fabric. Stooping quickly to scoop up the rod that had held the drapes up, she examined it in her palms: dense, heavy, nearly four inches in diameter, and perfect. She waited until a head emerged from the tangles of constraining cloth, then aimed directly below it. At the end of her charge, the metal connected decisively with flesh, giving way to the terrible moist snap of at least one rip fracturing. The blonde doubled protectively around her middle, wheezing dreadfully. Julia abandoned the rod, once again grappling with the hems of the curtains, and with one wrench, jerked the fabric out from beneath the other woman's shoes. Unable to compensate, she tottered and tumbled over backwards, knocking her head forcibly against the hardwood. Julia observed dispassionately as the woman's breathing faltered for a few heartbeats before resuming in painful, laborious gasps.

Julia ransacked the already decimated apartment in quest of the documents she had been sent for, finally uncovering the thin folder under the bulk of the overthrown couch. She had to move quickly; she knew there had been a video camera in the blonde's brooch, and somewhere a few miles away from where she stood someone was panicking over the loss of some sensitive paperwork to an unexpected visitor. In half an hour there would be dozens of operatives scouring the streets, all with her face printed on a paper tucked into their pockets. She took the stairwell downstairs two steps at a time, flinging herself out on to the avenue to be lost in the faceless security of the Parisian mob.

In her hotel room, she locked herself in the bathroom with the supplies she always carried with her in case of emergency. She dyed her hair over the sink, spreading stains on the complimentary towels, and blow-dried it to hang in front of her eyes, shielding her face. Darkening her makeup, she tried to create the illusion of someone else. When she was satisfied with the result, she threw her suitcase on the bed, rummaging through for only the most essential items to shove into a small backpack; the rest she abandoned. She didn't bother to close the door behind her as she made her way to the lobby, and back out into the festivities to search for a phone to place a safe call on. She needed a new passport.

~~~~~~~~~~

Lauren insisted on taking him out to dinner as soon as he got home, despite the fact that he assured her several times he would be just as happy at staying at the house. He was barely in the door before she was driving him back out, not even allowing him the time to change his travel-stained clothes, and his complaints only made her more adamant that they hadn't spent nearly enough time together lately. "My treat," she had teased as she slid the money out of his wallet.

Dinner itself was a tense affair, with each trying to surpass the other in their politeness. There was a frailty to the evening, to their relationship in general, that made them afraid to cross some invisible line into shaky territory, afraid that the other might shred away the flimsy layers in response and reveal what was at the heart. She was at her most charming, she beamed and kept them to safe topics, like the weather and hockey and her family, while he laughed at jokes that weren't funny and swallowed his wine. Neither dared mention the letters 'c' or 'i' or 'a,' or anything else of real meaning to either of them. They brushed hands and elbows and lips across the dinner table like lovers, but shared only as much as they would with any stranger.

She drove them home because his first glass of wine had been inevitably followed by a second, and possibly a third. While she went ahead into the house, he wrestled his still-unpacked duffle bag out of the backseat, but he dropped it again on the threshold when a muffled shriek startled him into action.

Lauren stood at the entrance to their bedroom, hand frozen unconsciously on the light switch, gawking open-mouthed at the wreck inside. The curtains had been torn off the windows, every dresser drawer wrenched out of its place, the sheets ripped from the bed and scattered across the floor, and the mattress itself had been tossed nearly to the opposite side of the room. The broken window, which had sprayed glass perilously across the carpet, was obviously the point of entrance.

He pushed his way past, ducking under his wife's arm, and sifted automatically through the wreckage, taking a quick inventory of the objects. "I don't get it," he murmured more to himself, unbending with a one of his shirts in hand. "Everything still seems to be here. What could they have been looking for?"

"I don't think this was a robbery, Michael," Lauren answered faintly from where she still stood in the doorway. "I think someone was trying to frighten me."

"Frighten you?" He let the shirt slide to lie on the dresser. "Lauren, if there's something you haven't been telling me…"

"Don't you get it? This was her doing. Sydney is trying to scare me."

"Sydney." He ran a hand roughly over his eyes. "It's a very--very--remote possibility. But why would she jeopardize her standing at the CIA to do something this petty? Besides, smashing the window is too much of a hassle; she would have just picked the lock."

"You're defending her." Shadows covered her eyes in darkness as they narrowed distrustfully. He would have done anything at that moment to derail this argument--the one argument he could never win.

"No. I'm being logical. Think about the work we do--I'm sure we've made quite a few enemies that might have a motive for this."

"Logical? How can I be? This was a direct attack on me, on my home. She hates me just because I'm the woman you married, and I can't think of any obstacle that would stop her from getting what she wants. Who's side are you taking? Because I think your loyalties should lie more with your wife than your…your…your girlfriend," she sputtered to an infuriated stop.

The whole statement was absurd enough to tempt him to laugh, but he clenched his teeth over his lip as he squatted down to lift one corner of the mattress. "Alright. We're getting ahead ourselves. Jumping to conclusions isn't going to make this any clearer. Let's take this one slow step at a time. We can talk over all the scenarios while we clean up. Can you give me a hand with this, sweetheart?"

She crossed her arms around her stomach, cutting herself off emotionally from him. Her body was drawn as stiff and straight as the wall behind her. "I'm leaving for a conference in Toronto early tomorrow, and I won't get home until this weekend. When I get back--" She took a deep breath to calm the rage that had crept back into her tone. "When I get back, I want her gone, Michael. I mean it. And maybe then I'll be logical enough to discuss it with you. I'll be on the couch if you need me." The door shuddered with a resounding crash as she slammed it, announcing her exit.

He hefted the mattress by himself and replaced it on the frame. He let himself fall into its embrace, staring broodingly at the ceiling, stretched out on his back, hands tucked behind his head. He dozed infrequently over the next few hours, his dreams knotted up inseparably with the nightmares of waking hours, until he heard Lauren stumble in the dimness of the room some time before dawn. He closed his eyes and relaxed his expression, feigning sleep to avoid another confrontation. He sensed her scrutinizing for several minutes before she finally gave in, and left with the clothes she had come for. Shortly afterwards the shower started up, then the blow dryer, the coffee pot, and finally the car.

He heard he key locking the front door and he turned his back to the wall, falling back into the darkness of his thoughts.