Title: Skeletons in the closet
Summary: Sydney faces her past at SD-6.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Alias related, only the characters you don't know.
Spoiler: 3:17 'The frame' and before, AU after that.
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Sorry for the delay with this story (if my friends stopped making me go out I'd get more done). I'm really going to try and finish this very soon as I have mock GSCEs coming up soon so I won't be able to post regularly.
Sydney stood watching the empty house that had once housed Vaughn and his wife. She felt betrayed by Elliot, again. She knew she shouldn't have trusted her again, shouldn't have let her in again; shouldn't have dared to love her again.
Once again she was on her own, uncertain of who to trust. She had no guardian angel to love and protect her. Lauren had stolen him while she knew Sydney was being tortured mercilessly until she cracked.
Part of Sydney knew she'd cracked a long time ago. The day she found Danny's corpse. That was when everything changed. She still missed him even when she was with Vaughn.
She would see him sometimes, when she needed comfort, but she had never told anyone, especially not Vaughn. They would have either had her go for counselling or spent weeks giving her sympathetic looks and pitiful glances.
She saw him when she needed him the most. When she found out about project Christmas, when she found out her mother was alive, when Sark had forced her to work with him. She even knew he was with her while she was held captive by the Covenant. In her mind she could remember fragments of a conversation they'd had. She had found comfort in that since the drug therapy had allowed her to remember it, but lately as she remembered more of the conversation it disturbed her.
"Why fight it Sydney? Just give in, let the doctor do his job and have a new life. Free from the pain of the CIA, your father, Vaughn, and all the other unnecessary complications."
"You're not Danny."
"Oh but I am Syd. Do you really think I didn't know about you and SD-6? What it truly was and what you did? Why do you think the Covenant want you so badly Sydney?"
"Danny is dead."
The man in Danny's form, using Danny's voice bent down to her level and shook his head. "No Sydney. I'm not. Do you know who I am? I am the covenant!"
Sydney shivered at the memory of the conversation. She had long ago reassured herself that the man had been lying and was some sort of trick by the Covenant.
She looked out the window once more and found a man watching her on the other side of the street. He was tall, with brown hair and a warm smile and his very presence soothed Sydney's turmoil. Danny was watching over her again. Unlike Vaughn he really was a guardian angel.
Then she noticed the puddle forming at his feet as the rain beat against his coat and dripped from his hair and clothes. Angel's didn't make puddles; angels didn't have handguns tucked into a holster beneath their coats. Angels didn't run away when you got out of the car.
She chased after the stranger until she lost him in a sea of rush hour traffic. Grabbing her cell phone she dialled Dixon at the CIA. "He's...somehow...I can't believe it...but he was there..."
"Syd?" Dixon's reassuring and real voice calmed her enough to finally splutter out one sentence before slumping to the curb and letting the tears run freely. "Danny's alive."