Sydney couldn't believe that she was actually going to have a day to herself. It had been years since she had any free time that didn't involve Lily in some way. Not that she really minded it.
Her father had seen how much the past few weeks had taken out of her. When he asked her what was wrong, she reluctantly told him about Lily's constant demand for stories about her father. Jack chalked it up to a daughter being curious of where she came from. He said it was bound to happen sooner or later.
So Jack had taken her daughter away to Disneyland for the day. To give Sydney some much needed peace and quiet, as he put it.
She had told him that there was no such thing as peace and quiet when it came to her life. But it seemed like she had been wrong. There hadn't been one phone call or unwanted disturbance all morning. She was almost unnerved by it.
Which is why, when the doorbell rang as she sat down to eat a sandwich for lunch, she was almost happy to hear it. It was just too strange for her not to be on the go constantly.
"Will," she said in surprise when she saw him standing on her doorstep. "What brings the big New York Times journalist to my humble abode?"
Will laughed and gave her a small kiss on the cheek while crossing the threshold. "I just write a few features every once in a while."
"You're on the front page weekly," she reminded him. "Seriously, what brings you here?"
"I just wanted to talk to you about a few things that I never got around to discussing."
"As long as it doesn't involve me telling a story, I'd be happy to."
Will grinned at her suspiciously. "It kind of does involving you telling me a story. Is that a big deal?"
"Lily's been asking me to tell her stories about her father practically every day for the past few weeks. I'm getting a little tired of dredging up the pain. Which is why my dad took her away on a little holiday."
"We can do this later if it's a bad time." He made a move to head back out the door.
She shut the door before he could leave. "No, it's fine. At least with you I don't have to filter what I say. What did you want to talk about?"
"Sark, actually."
"My husband sure is a popular topic these days." Sydney took a seat on the couch and gestured for Will to sit next to her, which he did. "So, what do you want to know?"
"I was writing an article the other day on the reasons why most friendships break up, why people drift off. And it made me think of you, Sydney. We used to be best friends before the whole Allison Doren incident. I was practically the only thing you could count on."
"And you want to know what happened?"
"No. I know what happened. You got caught up in your crazy spy life, and I got caught up in trying to rebuild the life I once had. We were both busy. I mean, I never disappeared completely. I was there for your wedding, and I've been here for you and Lily since Sark died. But there are just so many things I wasn't here for. If a couple years ago someone had told me everything I would miss, I wouldn't have believed them."
"You didn't miss that much," Sydney insisted.
"I missed you having to kill your own sister. I heard about the whole thing over a month after it happened. And that was from your father who never really liked me."
"I know I should have told you."
"You shouldn't have had to. I mean, you just killed your own flesh and blood. I should have been in your life enough to know that you needed me."
"This sounds almost as if you're about to propose marriage," she joked.
"Well, I have been waiting an awfully long time," he said with a sly grin. "Seriously, though. I want to know about some of the things I've missed."
"Like Nadia's death?"
"Yes, I do want to know about that but not right now. You've got too much on your plate already to be reliving those memories. For now, all I want to know is how you told everyone that you loved Sark. It must have taken a lot of courage."
Sydney rolled her eyes. "You know that story, Will."
"No, I honestly don't. I had heard about it from Marshall right after it happened, but I didn't believe him. Then I got an invitation to your wedding in the mail. The only reason I came was I thought it was a joke."
"If you hadn't thought that, if you knew it was real, you still would have came."
"True. But I might have been a little better prepared."
"So, you want me to tell you how I told the old gang that I was in love with the man that most of them either hated or feared?"
"Most of them?"
"My mother always thought he was a godsend."
"Figures. Irina can never go with the crowd."
"It's her thing." Sydney paused to collect her thoughts for a moment and then began. "It all started when Vaughn decided to divorce his wife..."
Michael Vaughn took a deep breath and knocked on Sydney's front door. If she wasn't home, he didn't know what he'd do. The things he had to say to her couldn't wait any longer. It was time she knew the truth.
Sydney opened the door quickly and stared at the man in front of her. "What are you doing here, Michael?"
"Nice greeting," he said, walking past her and into the house.
"You haven't been to my house in two months. Not since..." Her voice trailed off. She had moved on, but she still couldn't say Lauren's name.
"Since my marriage," he filled in. "I know that it hurt you, Syd. I'm sorry."
"It's fine. I'm fine."
"You could never lie to me," he said, smiling at her again.
"I'm not lying."
He nodded in a way that made her think he didn't believe her and started to look around.
"My initial reaction at this point was to kick him to the curb. He was acting so strange. I mean, we hadn't spoken a word outside of mission context in two months and now all the sudden he was on my doorstep."
"Didn't he divorce Lauren after two months?" Will asked.
"Exactly..."
"What do you want, Michael?" she asked, getting tired of his odd behavior.
"That's the second time you've called me Michael tonight," he pointed out.
"What's your point?"
"You never used to call me that."
"You used to mean something to me then." As soon as she said it, she wished she could take it back. Purposely saying hurtful things was not something she usually did.
"I hated saying that. I mean, he meant so much to me once."
"You two always had a lot of potential."
"Potential that was never acted on. He got married." Sydney knew that what she was saying would, under any other circumstance, have come out bitter. But it just seemed like a statement of fact now. "It didn't seem to faze him much, though...""You still mean something to me, if that's any consolation." He took a seat on the sofa.
"What do you want?" She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway.
"Marrying Lauren was a mistake. The biggest screw-up I think I've ever made. I didn't realize what a horrible decision it would turn out to be then."
"Don't be stupid," Sydney said. "You love your wife. She's your whole world, Michael."
"I don't think I ever loved Lauren. She wasn't who I thought she was."
"I don't see why you had to come to my doorstep to tell me all of this."
"I'm getting a divorce, Sydney." He said it so quiet that she almost didn't hear him. Almost.
He looked up to her and saw that she was staring at him and nodding slowly.
"I really think he believed that I would take him back with open arms."
"But you didn't. Because you had Sark."
"Everyone knows this now, but he was a good man. He always had been. He just had his problems like every one of us."
"At least he didn't have a bad habit of ruining his life," Will pointed out.
"That ability is specifically your forte. Anyway, I stood there nodding, trying to figure out where to go from there. I think Vaughn took it as an invitation..."
Vaughn got up and walked over to where she was standing. He pulled her arms apart and grasped both her hands in his. "Don't you see what this means?"
She didn't say anything, and he moved in to kiss her. Before his lips made contact, she pulled away and walked to the other half of the room.
"I think it was at that point that he recalled the conversation I had with him before his wedding." She couldn't help but blush. "I was a little drunk the night before the ceremony and I kind of found myself on his doorstep swearing at him for giving up on what we might have had."
"You didn't?"
"You know what tequila does to me..."
He smirked at her. "You're not still mad at me about giving up, are you? Contrary to what you believe, I don't think I ever gave up on us, on our potential. Not in my heart. I love you, Sydney."
"He just stood there, beaming at me. Don't get me wrong. Vaughn is my friend. He always will be. But that day, it was almost as if I didn't know who he was."
"Sounds like he was acting like Sark," Will observed. When Sydney looked at him questioningly, he elaborated. "He was cocky and sure that you would come running back into his arms. He figured that you had just been pining away for him the past two months."
"That does sound like my husband," she agreed.
"So, what happened when he said he loved you?"
"I didn't know what to say. So I said nothing..."
The silence was excruciating. She just didn't know what to say to him to let him know that she had given up on them ever being together. With Sark, she had moved on from the place she had once been.
"Syd?" he asked hesitantly. She still didn't answer. "Don't... don't you love me, Syd?"
"Now you know the proper response to that, don't you?"
Will smiled at her. "It's been so long that I've finally dealt with the fact that you weren't coming back. Things aren't the same anymore. There was a reason you married Lauren, and that just couldn't have disappeared overnight. I don't think we're in the same place as we once were. I want to be on my own for a little while to figure things out."
"Any of those would have been great to say to him. They wouldn't have hurt him too much, you know?" She looked sheepishly at one of her best friends. "But do you know what actually came out of my mouth?"
"But I love Sark."
"You did not?" Will practically screamed, his mouth hanging open. "What a way to lay it all on the guy at once."
She laughed at his reaction. "I know. I immediately wished I could take it back. But it was out on the table. There was nothing I could do, but try to explain..."
"Oh god. I shouldn't have said that." She sat down and put her head in her hands. All of the sudden, she just wanted to hide from Vaughn. When she finally chanced a look up at him, she saw he was staring out here intently. "I'm sorry. There was probably a better way to tell you that."
"You're lying to hurt me," he hissed decidedly through his teeth. "I know that my marriage has hurt you a lot, but I didn't think you'd stoop this low to get revenge."
She felt a little anger flare up inside of her. At that second, she knew that the hiding was over. She had to tell Vaughn, and everyone else, what she had been doing with Sark. "It's not a lie. He was there for me when I needed him."
"I know there was something between us at one point, Sydney."
"Yes, at one point I would have given up the world just to be with you. If you had asked me then, I would have told you that I loved you with all my heart in a second."
"You can't deny that even after I got married you still wanted me?"
"Of course I wanted you," she hissed. "I loved you. But eventually I got to the point where I only thought about what we had lost every other second. And then it became once every half-hour. Then only a couple of times a day. And finally I stopped thinking about what might have been all together. And do you know why I was able to do that?"
Vaughn shook his head. She looked at him coldly. "Because of Sark. He told me that I didn't have to pretend when I was with him. If I wanted to say something to him that would be hurtful or inappropriate, I was free to do so. For the first time in my life, I got to be the real me."
"I don't think I realized how much I had come to love Julian until that moment." She smiled at the memory. "Vaughn and I fought forever about whether I was lying or not. He eventually accepted it as truth."
"I never thought you would actually love a murderer," Vaughn said, deliberately not looking her in the eyes.
"You almost punched him at that point, didn't you?" Will asked with a chuckle. "The Sydney Bristow I know wouldn't take a comment like that sitting down."
"I had to use a little self-restraint, yes..."
"And you have no right to be criticizing him. He never abandoned me when I needed him."
"That hurts." Vaughn placed a hand absentmindedly over his heart.
"It should. I gave up my love of Danny for the prospect of forming a relationship with you. I sped up my mourning because I thought if I hesitated, I would lose you. And when I was finally ready to tell you how much I loved you, you got married."
"Sounds like you laid it on thick," Will observed.
"I was so mad at him." Sydney sighed. "I acted irrationally. I yelled at him when I should have been gentle. He had come to me finally willing to say he loved me, and I mocked him. It was no wonder that he simply got up and left."
"He walked away."
"Didn't even put up a fight." She shook her head. "You know, I really would have thought if he loved me, he would have put up a fight."
"So what happened then?"
"I didn't talk to Vaughn for years. He didn't show up when I invited him to the wedding." Tears began to form in her eyes at the next memory that popped into her head. "The next time I saw him was at the funeral for Julian. He apologized to me."
"He admitted that he was wrong about Sark."
"And about me. I really wish he could have been around to get to know Julian like the rest of you did. All of you considered him your friend."
"It turned out he was a great guy," Will said, shaking his head. "I still can't believe that. A part of me is screaming that there was no way this guy should have been the right one for you."
"Yeah. You always knew that you were my soul mate, didn't you?" She poked him lightly in the side.
"Hey! I'm just saying we should have at least given it a real shot. The closest we came was a few awkward kisses."
"You won't ever quit, will you?"
"Not until you admit that I am the only one for you." Together they laughed until they cried.
When they had gotten control of themselves again, Will asked, "So how did you tell everyone else?"
"It wasn't as hard as I thought. In typical Irina fashion, my mother loved the idea. My father was furious, but he warmed up to the idea eventually. Most of my friends at the CIA didn't talk to me for a few weeks. But eventually they realized there has to be something else to this guy if I was able to fall in love with him. That's the one thing I got out of all the suffering and pain it took me to tell everyone. The people in my life are so amazing."
"You didn't tell me," Will pointed out.
"I thought everyone else would overreact, but I knew with you it was a given. So I put it off. Eventually, Marshall let it slip."
"And I didn't believe him."
"But you came to my wedding." Sydney slid her hand into his. "And you came to Sark's funeral. And you were here for Lily and I. You've been watching over us for years now. In my mind, that's all the matters."
Will let her cuddle up to his side and just sat there holding her in his arms. It had taken years, but he truly thought they might have finally gotten back to the place they once were.
"I love you, Will," she whispered.
"I love you, too, Syd."
She looked up at him. "Platonically of course."
"What else is there?" he said with a wink.