Chapter Two

A strange sense of déjà vu came over her as they pulled up next to her apartment. But because déjà vu was all too familiar in her mind, and since there was no question that she had been here before, she brushed it off with an air of indifference. After all, Vaughn had driven her home before, and this time was just like any other.

His embrace was warm, and the material of his jacket softly caressed her cheek so that she had no desire to leave the warm nest they had created. He, however, had to go to a debrief, and she needed to forget everything that had happened in the last few days.         

Forgetfulness would come in time, but she felt the urge to tell him of her fears. "Sloane has the device...and my mother, she-"

Vaughn touched her chin and commanded gently, "Another day." To appease him she smiled a tiny smile and he reached over to kiss her. This was one of the many reasons why she loved him; he always knew the right thing to say and do.

Her hand moved to the car door handle, but his voice stopped her. "So I did it."
Looking into his eyes she replied, "Did what?"
"Booked the hotel," he answered matter of factly.

Sydney looked down for a moment, her breath caught momentarily in surprise. She looked back up. "No you didn't." 'He couldn't have,' she thought, 'because everything is so crazy, how could he expect us to get away right now?'

He smiled at her shocked expression and disbelief and continued veraciously, "Yes I did."

"You did. Santa Barbara," she confirmed, still not fully believing the words.

"Three nights, starting tonight." He said, looking pleased with himself. "It was probably the greatest phone call I ever made."

Her smile grew as she leaned in towards him. "You're a genius." Maybe it was possible after all. She let the anxiety she felt wash away; the weekend getaway could allow her to forget. 

"Thank you." After they parted from the quick kiss, he added, "So, after the debrief I'll come pick you up."

"Okay," she assented, exiting the car slowly and measuring her pace as she entered the foray of her apartment. His announcement had done the trick; she began to plan what she would take with her on their trip.

Inside the apartment things were just a little too perfect, a little too in place for her liking, and the very air seemed to tingle with foreboding. No matter what she told herself, she couldn't shake the feeling that she had been in the very spot she stood, smiling a little smile at Francie when she walked in.

"Hey," she greeted Francie after performing a mental shake.

"Hi," she answered. 

Usually Francie only responded in one-word answers when she was completely exhausted or extremely pissed off, which led Sydney to inquire, "You okay?"

"Relatively speaking."

'Must be tired,' she thought, 'if she was mad, she would be glaring at me right now.'

Seeing the refrigerator out of the corner of her eye she decided she would have a little ice cream, a just reward for the day she had been through, and a little wake up so she could pack for her first night in Santa Barbara.

Still flipping through the magazine on her lap, Francie asked her in response, "You?"

In her contemplation on how to answer her, Sydney grabbed the vanilla ice cream without thought and picked up a spoon from the drawer below her. "Tired," was the only response she could come up with, and it was the complete truth.

When she sat down next to Francie in the living room, her friend looked at her and inquired, "What's up?"

"I am so burnt." From her mother and her ramblings about Rambaldi, from Sloane and the world in general. Santa Barbara was looking better every second.

"I understand."

'No, Francie, you don't. But you're not allowed to.'

Remembering that she had left her cell phone off earlier to save the battery, Syd took it out to check the messages before plugging it in to charge for the trip. "You have two messages," it's high-pitched mechanical voice said as she held the phone to her ear with her shoulder.

"Where's Will?" she wondered as she tried to spoon some of the rock hard vanilla ice cream, listening to Mary Beth from Kendall's office tell her that she needed to call the bald asshole back.

"Will said he had something to do," Francie answered, voice deep.

Sydney's phone gave a small click as the next message began, and Will's frantic voice quietly filled her ear. "Sydney it's me listen, this is going to sound insane but I just found provacillium in the bathroom. And I think that I think that uh. Just think about it. I think the double is Franc--" Click.

It took Sydney only a split second to realize what Will had said and another two seconds to recover from it. Trying as hard as possible to maintain her composure, she removed the phone slowly from her ear and clicked it off.

She looked up at the woman across the couch from her. She looked exactly like the best friend she'd known since freshman year at college. She looked exactly like Francie. How could she not be the woman that she'd lived with nearly every year since she'd met her?

Lingeringly she stood and forced on a small smile. "Francie... I've got to change out of these clothes."

"Ok."

She sounded just like Francie too. Sydney put the ice cream back into the freezer and headed to her room. She reached under her bed for her gun, fingers grasping the cool metal handle as she pulled it out and stood again, heading for the door.

She pulled back the trigger slowly and thought about how it would feel to aim at the woman on the couch. She hesitated.

Could she really do this? What if Will was wrong? She'd be killing her best friend.
Then Sydney thought...she thought back a few months to the takedown. Francie's sudden unsettling spirit, her nonchalance when meeting Vaughn, how distant she'd become... the bugs in the apartment... and suddenly, Sydney knew it was the truth. The wool had been pulled over her eyes for God knows how long. She'd been blinded by her own emotions and unable to realize what was right in front of her.
'I am so stupid', she thought as she gripped the gun harder. 'But this is no time to be beating myself up'. No. She had to take care of this. Now.

Her steps were calculated as she tiptoed down the short hallway, but when she emerged into the living room it was void of anyone, and she felt her pulse begin to skyrocket as she scanned the area quickly. Francie, or rather, the double, was nowhere to be found.

She stepped into the open room hesitantly, gun poised and ready. She heard Francie coming before she felt the tackle from behind, but couldn't turn fast enough to counterattack, and was hurled to the ground so forcefully it knocked the wind from her lungs and the gun from her hand.

Gasping, she scrambled for the weapon as the double came at her again, and she flipped onto her back and fired. Not realizing she had closed her eyes, she opened them to see her best friend splayed on the ground, blood gushing from the wound in her neck.

The world crashed then, when she saw her best friend dying in the hall of the apartment they shared, and feeling the cold metal handle of the gun that ended it all. Her breaths came shorter and shorter until she was suffocating, the room spinning out of control…and then a sweet blackness.

It was not destined to last, however, because her cell phone chose to begin its shrill music, and she was brought back from the nonexistence she had been edging near. 'Shit' was her only reaction, and then she forced herself to get up and find the offending phone.

It was a text from Vaughn, no doubt in the middle of his debrief, and it simply said, "Can't wait."

Not exactly in any state for romantic anecdotes, she shoved the phone away from her, eyes still drowning in tears.

A wave of nausea swept through her and she realized she was going to be sick very, very quickly. She scrambled on her knees into the bathroom and emptied the dinner she'd had with Vaughn earlier and the vanilla ice cream into the toilet. Choking and gagging so hard that she saw red, she finally backed up against the wall, nothing left in her stomach but air.

Sydney rested her head against the wall behind her and covered her face in her hands, sobbing now. Bringing a hand down quickly to wipe hair from her damp forehead, she caught a flash of something in the tub in the corner of her eye. Oh, God... she thought and gasped, suddenly feeling the need to vomit again.

Her stomach convulsed again and again as she rested her forehead against the cool tiles of her bathroom floor, sobbing pitifully until she lacked the strength to do even that. The sweat was cold and clammy on her skin and she thought she'd never felt more disgusting in her life, physically and emotionally.

There was a resonance of cracking wood from the front of the apartment; the unmistakable sound of someone breaking and entering. Her brain immediately went into spy mode, she made herself rise from the floor and glance around the doorframe to see the offending intruder, or intruders, which was more likely the case.

Six men, it seemed, with black ski masks and what looked to be a body bag, entered with absolutely no stealth, which was shocking considering that three people could possibly be moving around inside, one of which being a trained spy.

Her mind raced and her heart pounded. She glanced quickly at Will, then at the men, then at Will again. She didn't want to just leave him here, but there didn't seem to be a choice. What would her enemies want with the body of her best friend anyway?

Her eyes then shot to the window across the hall in the bedroom. She leaned over the tub. "I'm so sorry, Will. I'll be back for you as soon as it's possible. Love you... sorry!" she whispered, then sprinted as silently as possible into the bedroom.

She could hear the deep muffled voices of the men in the other room, coming closer and closer to her current location. Without allowing herself a moment's hesitation, she yanked up the window and threw herself out of it, tumbling onto the damp grass outside. She shivered and lay otherwise motionless for a moment, then forced herself up and ran, not turning back until she was at least half a mile away.

Pausing then to catch her breath, she turned back to her home. Through the dark Los Angeles night, Sydney was sure she could see a bright orange flicker peaking through the window just before she turned again and pounded the shining pavement.

When she had first come to the CIA and received Vaughn as her handler, it had been recommended that she memorize the directions to his home in case she had been discovered and could not contact him through the phone. Luckily for her, she still remembered them, and that was the path she took through the night.

If anyone thought it strange to see a full-grown woman dressed in a conservative suit running across streets and keeping to the shadows, no one stopped her to question. Her mind was focused solely on making it to Vaughn's apartment, although it occurred to her that they might be waiting there as well.

It wasn't until she broke in to the bottom floor of the apartment that she let herself calm down, shutting the door gently behind her and climbing the two floors of stairs to get to 2C, then using the bobby pin that opened the lobby door to open his as well.

She'd never been there before, never seen where her boyfriend lived and slept occasionally. It was tasteful, a typical bachelor pad, but her mind wouldn't stay on it because she kept remembering and everything began to blur until her thoughts were one long continuous train of 'Oh shit oh shitFrancie'sdeadWill'sdeadmyapartmentisgonewhatthehellishappening'

'Breathe. Just breathe goddamnit.' She told herself over and over, until finally air began to circulate in her lungs and her mind began to slowly calm and she realized that she could smell the vomit, the acrid odor of the gun, and both her friend's blood on herself, and that almost made her stomach convulse once more. In sudden haste she made her way to the back of the apartment and found the bathroom.

Shedding her clothes, she climbed into the shower and turned the water as hot as it would go. As the water pelted down, it mingled with her tears until the pounding soothed her into a daze and the water began to run cold. She let it run over her, rivulets streaming down her face as she cried for her friends.

TBC…

A/N: Now we get to the good stuff. The next chapters are the real reason we started writing this…and just to clear it up, her adventure in S3 was REAL, not a dream. :-D Thanks for reading,

Holly and Dani