First off, I want to thank everyone who's been reviewing. You guys are so awesome. And dude, I don't want to name specific names but Bubbles- your review especially seriously made my day. I jest you not. So thank you so much guys, you make me soo happy. ::smiles like dork:: And now, on with the show :-)

PREVIOUSLY

I walked slowly away, staring over my shoulder at him until the guards lowered the gate behind me. Quickly, I wiped away the one tear that had escaped and made my way back upstairs to the main room of the Ops Center, a new determination sweeping over me. There had to be a way to prove Vaughn's innocence, and I was going to find it.

Written in Blood Chapter Nine "Emotions Overrated"

Wait around

If the fires there don't put it out,

Lay me down

Emotions overrated now.

I don't wanna hear another word you say,

I don't ever wanna waste another day,

What you say,

What you say,

What you never say,

Everything's a lie and you're afraid -"What You Say"- Sugarcult

"Will, would you mind stopping by for a while? Francie's at her sister's all weekend and I need some help with something."

"Sure, Syd, I'll be right over."

I hung up the phone and stared back down the wrinkled piece of parchment for maybe the 90th time that night. Through speckles of dried blood, the dark ink sketch of Vaughn stared back at me.

"This man illustrated here upon this page shall be born within the eleventh month, when the frosted wind reflects the bitter coolness of his past and distant future."

Check. Vaughn was born in November. This line did me no service. It's not as if I could alter his birth month.

"Scorned by losses from long ago, distrust shall be his fortress; anger, his growing destruction."

Losses from long ago… his father? It's true, this caused him to have a 'fortress or distrust' for my mother, understandably so. But anger? Vaughn had never seemed like a particularly enraged man. Not even around my mother.

What did this mean? Was he going to begin to distrust me? Would he begin to harbor anger about me?

'Sydney, stop being so stupid,' I told myself firmly, the back of my mind contradicting my words. 'It's just words on a paper. They didn't come true for you and they won't come true for him. Get a hold of yourself.'

"His heart shall only be sanctified by immortal love given to and gained by the one strong enough to obtain it."

Perfect, so now Rambaldi's a romantic. But… did he mean me? Was I the one strong enough to obtain Vaughn's 'immortal love'?

Ding-Dong.

I jumped, the melodic tones startling me out of my contemplations. 'Just Will,' I reminded myself, and carefully placed the parchment back onto the table before standing to answer the door.

"Hey," I greeted as I opened the door and my best friend's light blue eyes met mine.

"Hey, Syd. You needed help with something?"

"Yeah, come on in."

I quietly shut the door behind Will and ushered him back to the table. I pulled the lipstick/bug killer out of my purse and twisted it up, waiting for the almost silent beep before turning my attention back to Will and beginning to speak.

"I need your brilliant analyzing skills."

"Oh, I get it. That's all I'm ever needed for. Why not 'I needed your charming, funny, and endearing presence, Will?'"

I managed to smile a little despite myself, and shook my head. "Sorry, Will. And I'm sorry to be calling so late for this, I'm just kind of trying to get it done as fast as possible."

"Syd, what is it?"

"Ok, well I don't even know if you have the clearance for me to be telling you all this, but honestly, I couldn't care less about clearance right now," I told him, remembering Kendall's attempt to keep me away from Vaughn using clearance as an excuse. "You're familiar with Rambaldi."

"Of course, I've analyzed like twenty-something of his works. Is this his?" he asked, gesturing to the blood stained scroll on the table in front of him.

I nodded. "There's a Rambaldi prophecy I'm not sure if you're aware of, Will. Page 47-"

He cut me off. "Yeah, I know of Page 47. I've read it. It's a pretty important document in the collection, a lot of his other works reference back to it."

I looked at him in surprise. Then it dawned on me. "You've never seen the picture though, have you?"

"There's a picture?"

"Yes. A sketch of the woman believed to be the one the prophecy is about." I took a deep breath before revisiting the confession I'd been so afraid of. "The sketch looks exactly like me. The three factors dealing with blood and heart size mentioned, I was tested for those. And I was a match. The DSR took me into custody for nearly 24 hours believing that I was the woman in the prophecy."

Will stared for a moment, letting the meaning of this statement run through his active mind. "And… are you?"

I sighed, resting my elbows on the table and my head into my hands. "I don't know, Will. I just don't know." I paused before furthering my explanation. "I mean, in all technicality, I can't be. The only reason the DSR even sort of got off my back was because Vaughn found a loophole in the prophecy. It said 'this woman will have had her effect without ever having seen the beauty of my sky behind Mt. Sebacio.' They got me out of custody and sent me to Italy to see the mountain. After that, I didn't fit all the aspects of the prophecy anymore."

Will shook his head. "This whole thing is just so insane. 15th century prophecies? A woman who will cause the apocalypse? When did the CIA recruit Mulder and Scully?"

I smiled a little then let it fade, remembering what we had ahead of us. "I know, it's crazy. And it gets worse. We uncovered this document on a mission a few weeks ago."

Will stared at it for a moment, and I saw the realization creep across his face. "This is Vaughn, isn't it?"

"He's been taken into CIA custody. Not the way I was, not just being interrogated. He's being held in a maximum security cell, the same kind my mother is being held in. My only hope to get him out is to find the same kind of loophole in his prophecy that he found in mine. I need to find a Mt. Sebacio."

"And that's where my brilliant analyzing skills come in."

I nodded, and handed him a paper I'd printed out before he'd arrived. "Here's the English translation. I'll go make some coffee, we could be here a while."

We'd emptied three pots by the time the clock struck two. Notes and observations in illegible chicken scratch had been scattered about the table, almost completely cloaking the mahogany underneath.

"Syd?"

"Yeah?" I half groaned, exhaustion and frustration clouding my mind.

"It's 2 am. We've been at this for three hours and I'm just as clueless now, if not more so, as I was when I first rang your doorbell. I think we both need some sleep, most likely more you than me. Why don't I crash on your couch and we can get back to this first thing tomorrow?"

He was right, as always. Still, I began to protest, "Will-"

"Sydney, I hate to sound insensitive, but even if we found something useful right now he'd have to spend the night in that cell. Come on, you need to sleep," he urged, taking the mug of coffee I was clutching and placing it in the sink with his own.

I sighed. "Ok, ok. I'll go to bed."

I carefully picked up the parchment and carried it to my bedroom, hiding it in the middle drawer in my armoire between a couple of pillowcases. Then I shut my door and changed into comfortable clothes to sleep in. When I went back out into the living room, Will was already pulling out the couch cushions.

"Thanks for your help so far, Will. Sorry to drag you into this insanity."

"It's okay. You know you can always count on me, even when your problem sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi movie."

I smiled, grateful for his friendship. "Goodnight."

"Night," he plopped down on the couch and I started to make my way back to my bedroom before he called out again. "Syd?"

"Yeah?"

"Stop worrying. You'll think of something. You always do."

I nodded, trying to believe him, and went to my room. I crashed into sleep as I fell back on my pillows, trying to ignore the sense of foreboding that refused to pause its descent to my heart.

We didn't get back to work the next morning. At least, Will didn't. And not work on the prophecy problem.

At approximately 10:30 am the next morning, or that same morning depending on your viewpoint, the beeping of my pager blasted through my dreams, waking me with a start.

Oh God, I was so not in the mental state for this.

"Good morning, Sydney. I hope I didn't interrupt anything."

"No, nothing."

"Glad to hear it. We should get right to business," Sloane suggested as though it were an option.

I forced on a smile, nodded, and followed him into the briefing room where Dixon, Marshall, and my father were already waiting.

Sloane took his place at the head of the table and clicked on his remote. A black and white image of a short, dark haired man with a grim expression and a receding hairline flashed across the screens in front of us.

"This man's name is Ugo Giovanni. He's an Italian archeologist who helped found a popular museum and research center in his country," Giovanni's picture disappeared from the screen and was replaced with a photo of a large marble building; one that I recognized! Of course, I couldn't say this to Sloane.

"It has very recently come to our attention, as well, that he is an avid collector and investigator of Milo Rambaldi's works. He has a fairly impressive anthology in his research center. Thus far, we have attempted several times to negotiate for selected works in his collection, but we've been denied. However, recent events have contributed to an offer on his part.

"Two weeks ago, an encrypted document, Page 63 of the Rambaldi journal, went missing from the high security vault in his lab."

I bit my lip, then pressed it to my top one in a thin, straight line. I'd been partially expecting this, but surprise still overtook me.

Sloane continued. "Now, the manuscript still appeared blank However, just before its disappearance, which is believed to have been the work of K-Directorate, Giovanni had found a way to reveal the writing and picture on the page using a special photography technique. He still has those files."

I was intrigued by this, and glanced towards my father. His stoic expression gave nothing away, but he must have been as curious about this bit of information as I was. I turned back to Sloane as he went on with his brief.

"What Giovanni found on this page was quite remarkable. It was a prophecy about a specific man, assumed to still be living today should he actually exist. There was also a picture."

Oh, no.

"Giovanni was able to match characteristics mentioned in the prophecy with one of the matches found in a basic facial scan."

Shit… shit… shit.... I blinked. When I opened my eyes and looked at my screen, the gray toned image of my handler and… boyfriend?... smiled awkwardly back at me. His driver's license picture, or a membership card to something. It wasn't stern enough to be his CIA photo.

It was hard to cover what I was feeling then. I'd always pictured SD-6's takedown as the first time I'd ever see Michael Vaughn's face inside Credit Dauphine walls. I never could have imagined it would be on the screen that had so many times been the displayer of evil, lies, and deceit. Three words I would never associate with the image that now glowed from it.

"He discovered it to be a man named Michael Vaughn, an arms dealer with known ties to numerous terrorist organizations, including groups of ex-KGB assassins and French mafia."

Arms dealer…. Terrorists groups…. That son of a bitch! Ok… breathe, Syd. Breathe. Compartmentalize. That's what you were trained to do. Don't show emotion. No emotion, no anger, no astonishment. You don't know Michael Vaughn, you believe everything Sloane is saying. You trust that disgusting little rat up there when he tells you that the man you love, the most loyal and trustworthy man you've ever known, is a traitor to the country… yes, Sydney. That's it. Good job….

Repeating that mantra over and over and over in my head and clenching my hands painfully hard into fists under the table were the only actions stopping me from jumping across the table and strangling Sloane with his expensive silk red tie. The blood would have matched nicely…. Oh, he has more lies to tell us. Listen, Sydney

"He lives in an apartment in Los Angeles, not far from here. When Giovanni discovered this, he contacted me. Now more than ever, knowing the threat posed to his collection, he wants nothing more than to meet the subject of Rambaldi's prophecy."

So now he's just a Goddamn 'subject of a Rambaldi prophecy….'

"He has offered to hand over a significant portion of his Rambaldi collection in return for the delivery of Michael Vaughn to him. This is a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone."

Oh, do you have a stone? There's a few animals I'd like to kill with it….

"Sydney, Dixon, you will detain Mr. Vaughn and bring him to a meeting with Giovanni in Italy, collect the works, and come home. When their business is finished, Mr. Vaughn will be returned to Los Angeles and taken into CIA custody."

Wait a minute… he's already in CIA custody….

"It has, however, come to my attention that no outgoing calls have been made from Mr. Vaughn's phone in the past two days."

He tapped his phone? That sick bastard…. While silently cursing Sloane, I also felt a wave of relief push through my anger that he'd only tapped Vaughn's phone. Had he been visually monitoring his apartment as well, we'd both be dead by now for his impulsive invitation two weeks ago.

"We found that he is, indeed, absent from his home. Jack, have you found anything to that?"

I looked up at my father in surprise. He'd known about Sloane's quest to find Vaughn?

My father nodded curtly before answering. "My sources have informed me that he left to meet with a contact in Bangladesh. He'll be returning later tonight."

"Good, the sooner we accomplish this task, the better. Thank you, Jack." Sloane slid two folders across the table to Dixon and I. "Here are your mission details. Good luck."

I pried my cheeks apart into a distorted attempt at a polite smile, nodded, and carefully steadied myself for the anger engulfed walk ahead, knowing my rage was to remain in its air-sealed compartment until I was well outside those steel and plaster walls.

"Sydney," my father's voice called from behind me, stalling my hasty escape.

"Yes, dad?" it came out as almost a hiss.

"Why don't I stop by your apartment around five? I think we could use a good talk over some dinner."

I just nodded, understanding his way of telling me we had to figure out the Vaughn situation from here, but too livid and worn out to respond with much else. "Ok."

I turned away from my father and retreated to the parking garage as fast as I possibly could. I pulled out and finally, sunlight drowned the interior of my car. I just about floored it away from the building. The heavy traffic of the oblivious and naïve citizens of Los Angeles had never before seemed so appealing.

END CHAPTER