Part VII

"Well, isn't this a pajama party?" the man asked. Will plastered as genuine a smile on his face as he could. Not that he was insecure or anything, but Vaughn always got what Will wanted. Maybe that was part of the reason he liked being Jonah. There was no Vaughn, however, there was no Sydney either.

"Will what are you doing here?" Vaughn asked. "You're putting yourself at high risk." Even though Will may have been the slightest bit jealous of Vaughn, and perhaps threatened when they were both with Sydney, he always respected his concern for others, or perhaps only for the people close to Sydney. He didn't know, and he didn't want to judge.

"It's a long story," he said reaching out his hand to the CIA man. Vaughn took it warmly and heartily shook it. He had a strong firm grip. A man's handshake.

"Yes," Sydney interjected taking Vaughn by the arm. "But let's not delve into the details. You have to try these." She sat him down in front of a plate of pancakes and handed Vaughn a fork. "Will made them." Will set down his coffee cup and smiled politely. He rubbed his hands together feeling the calluses and the ruggedness of Jonah once again.

"So Will, how's life in Wisconsin?" Vaughn asked. He put a fork full of pancake in his mouth and chewed briskly. Will noticed how Sydney watched Vaughn's strong jaw moved in fluid motion. She adored him and he felt wrong for disliking him for it.

"Wisconsin is..." Will trailed off. "...different from Los Angeles. I never realized how much I missed the ocean until I saw it again for the first time in two years." They chuckled nonchalantly. Small talk with Sydney's boyfriend was not what he was expecting.

"Well, I'm going to get ready," Nadia announced getting up from her seat. She placed her dish in the sink and smiled at Will.

"Breakfast was great Will," she complimented. "Thanks."

He smiled back. "No problem." Sydney looked at him fondly and wrinkled her nose. Her eyes twinkled with a vibrancy he missed in the cold of the Wisconsin snow. He loved the way she looked at him.

"I think that I should get dressed too," she said. She placed her plate and coffee cup in the sink and gave Will an affectionate peck on the cheek before she moved to Vaughn.

"I'll be ready in 15 minutes," she said looking down at him.

"Mmm, hmm," Vaughn replied with a mouthful of pancakes. She kissed him tenderly on the forehead and headed off to her room leaving the two men. Will felt a little part of him close off when he saw Sydney kiss Vaughn. But what did he expect? He has been gone for five years and Sydney never knew him as anything other than a friend. He was fortune's fool.

"So Will," Vaughn started up. "How exactly did you get out of Wisconsin without sending the entire FBI after you? By the way, these pancakes are awesome. Better than Syd's, but don't tell her that." He smiled warmly at the man.

"I know a guy who makes fake passports. I figured he was a guy worth knowing," Will replied. He didn't want to get any farther than that.

"Oh, well, it looks like you're still CIA at heart after all this time." Vaughn set down his fork got up and poured himself a cup of coffee. He stood in the warm yellow light that shone through the window and sipped the hot liquid. His brown hair caught the golden light which illuminated his head in an unearthly glow. He was clean shaven and Will didn't doubt that if he got close enough he would smell a hint of cologne. Vaughn was always sharply dressed. At least when ever the two of them had been together. He wore a dark gray suit, a French blue shirt and matching tie with the most impeccably polished shoes Will had ever seen. He felt like a fool standing with Vaughn in the kitchen in his pajamas and day old stubble. They stood there for a moment and silently drank their coffee until Nadia emerged from her room. Will took it as his cue to leave.

"I should wash up," he said. "I'll see you in a few." Vaughn smiled warmly.

"Yeah." Will bee lined for the guest room with coffee in hand, thankful for getting out of there. He shut the door behind him and leaned back against it. He set the cup down on the night stand and tipped his head backward toward the door. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and willed himself to be back in Wisconsin. Seeing Sydney with another man was more than he could handle. After two years of being celibate for her, Vaughn was the last person he wanted to see. Will slowly regained his composure and went to the bathroom to wash up. Everything inside was just as he remembered what Sydney liked. There was a wash cloth for each matching towel, the toothbrush holder on the right, toothpaste on the left, and of course, vanilla scented candles. The scent tingled his nose and pleasantly sweetened his brain like candied yam. Worriedly, he checked the shower curtains. No, they were different than the ones in his dream. He was relieved. When he stepped out of the room, he was greeted by smiling faces and a hug from Sydney.

"Will, Vaughn and I have to go in. Are you sure that you're going to be okay? Nadia has already left." Of course it was Sunday morning. She had to work. Sydney could never just quit. She was married to her job. He'll never know how she can fly to Sri Lanka and back and not give off the slightest bit of jet lag. She was truly an amazing woman. He forced a fake smile. "By the way, if you need anything, here's a list of phone numbers, mine, Vaughn's and Nadia's if anything should go wrong." She handed him a slip of paper. He looked at it briefly remembering her slender manuscript and pocketed it.

"Thanks, but I'll be fine. I think I'll just go to the beach since you live so close to it. You're so lucky." She smiled again and Vaughn took her by the arm and they left. Will let out a long sigh and sat down in the kitchen. In place of the pancakes and laughter, Will was left with silence and the tingle of the burning sun on his skin. Casting his eyes around the kitchen, Will's curiosity urged him to observe her house.

It was clean, as always, everything in its place and nothing seemingly out of the ordinary. The couches and other larger pieces of furniture looked as if he and Sydney had picked them, and there was no doubt in his mind that they would have if things were different. It was a comfortable space. Will walked through the house looking at various things and touching things as if to make sure they were real and not some form of super spy gadgetry.

He reached the doorway of Sydney's bedroom and stopped. He gazed around. Nothing had changed. She was always clean and orderly. Will debated whether or not he should enter. He was a foreign man now in newly foreign territory. It would seems like an invasion of privacy, especially if one threw Vaughn into the picture. But that was an aspect that Will did not want to dwell on. When would he ever get another chance to be in Sydney's room? Possibly never. He set one foot on the plush carpet and entered a whole new world. The bed, which took up most of the room was simple and contemporary with two nightstands on either side. Will could tell which side Sydney slept on by what was on the nightstands. She always slept on the left and the book on the left stand proved it. Across from the bed was a single brown leather chair and a row of drawers and a closet built into the wall.

"That's clever," he thought out loud. On Sydney's side on the left wall, there were several windows with the curtains pulled back allowing the sun light to illuminate the soft crème-colored sheets of the bed. Across the room was another door and Will entered cautiously. It was the bathroom. Inside were his and her sinks, a bathtub and a separate shower. Around the tub and through out the bathroom were of course, vanilla candles. Will closed his eyes and inhaled the lingering aroma. He remembered too well what it was like to enter the house and be greeted by the sweet warm scent and the slight humidity of the bath. He missed it in cold, cold Wisconsin.

Will looked at his reflection in the mirror seeing tired listless eyes deeply set into his tanned face. Crow's feet were beginning to appear at the corners of his eyes, but they were not from the laughter. He had little of it in Wisconsin. He vigorously rubbed his face with his hands, his fingers lingering on a minute scar below his eye where an errant steel bit hit him on a build eight months ago. He forced himself to look deeper. This was Jonah's face, portraying Jonah's age, and Jonah's scars. But somehow, Will couldn't bring himself to live the lie. Forcing himself away from his own image, Will walked out of Sydney's bathroom and back into the sun light of the bedroom. He was about to leave, when his eye caught Sydney's closet.

Not thinking, Will cautiously opened the smooth wooden door and likened the experience to opening a time capsule. All her clothes hung neatly on wooden hangers arranged by color, type, casual, formal, and what ever other category a woman could think of. Will reached out and touched the soft fabric. Sydney had suits in gray, brown, black, plaid, wool, cotton, cashmere, silk and countless others all owning a matching pair of heels. She had jeans, Capri's, khaki, something kind of like Capri's, he didn't know the term, tank tops, camisoles and various other clothes. He never realized how many clothes Sydney actually had and marveled at how he never considered them in his definition of beauty. It didn't matter how low-cut her shirt was because he never saw it. He loved her for who she was. She was his kind of gal, simple and elegant. On the top shelf he spied an old stack of newspapers that piqued his interest. After all those years, journalism would always be his passion.

He reached for them to bring them down, but in moving his arm, he knocked over an old hat box. The contents of which spilled out on the beige carpet. Will sighed in frustration, and Jonah cursed and knelt on the floor to pick up the scattered odds and ends. He found a pair of stunning blue earrings, clips of articles, some of which were his, or about him and the SD-6 chaos that ruined his life, some were about her mother and there were some odd slips of paper with what he assumed was code despite the ordinary messages like "buy milk and eggs."

After retrieving most of the contents of the box, Will picked up the last item from off the floor. It was a small, black velvet cube and as he slowly opened it, his heart began to ache. Inside, the light from the sun refracted off the intricate cuts of the diamond ring and cast vibrant kaleidoscope light on the darkly painted walls. He recognized the ring from years and years ago when he was first denied of his love. It was the engagement ring that Danny gave Sydney. It was the ring that gave her hope, that gave her happiness, that gave her grief and heart ache. The ring that took Sydney one year to finally take off. He remembered what he did to her. How he pried into her life, into Danny's death so selfishly that he might be the one to rescue Sydney from her dark oblivion.

But he unknowingly made it worse. He unknowingly helped the enemy, and became the cause of his own excommunication. He had aided in his fall from grace. And like an angel cast out of Heaven, he was doomed to spend the rest of his life in a frigid and vast colorless hell. He gingerly closed the velvet box and placed it back inside the hat box and put it up on the shelf.

As he pushed the box to the back of the wall, yet another slip of paper fluttered to the ground and landed face down. Frustrated, Will bent down to pick it up and turned it over. What he saw brought back old broken memories. It was a picture of him, Sydney and Francie the day they went and played mini golf. He laughed as he remembered how Sydney charmed an old man into taking their picture. Everyone falls to Sydney's charm. The were all smiling, his arm around Sydney, hers around him, and Francie right in the middle. How tormented he was to know that something like this would never happen again! Tempted, Will was about to pocket the picture and take it back to Wisconsin as the only memento of her that he wished to save, but after a fleeting glimpse of the background, Will observed the picture closer. There, in the distance behind them, a figure stood on the wooden and chain-linked bridge smiling at them, watching them. Will brought the picture to his nose and gasped bringing it back.

It was Vaughn.

Will's soul cried out and tears pricked his eyes. Vaughn had had Sydney's heart earlier than he had thought. Standing resolute, Will placed the picture on Sydney's bed and walked out. He had seen what he wanted to see and felt that he had overstayed his welcome. He needed to leave. He needed to go before he cracked any further. Will quickly passed through the house silently memorizing every detail so that he would never forget. Before he reached the door, he stopped in the living room and grabbed a picture frame sitting on the coffee table. Sydney was framed inside and he gently took her out placing the empty frame back on the table.

He went to the door and turned the lock. He turned around and took one last look at Sydney's life without him and said his silent goodbye. Out in the sunlight, Will jogged to the bed and breakfast he registered in, grabbed his duffel bag and settled the bill. He wasn't there ten minutes before he was off heading back to the airport.

When he stepped out of the cab and into the bustle of people at LAX, Will made his way to the check-in and pleaded his way into a seat on a same day flight to Wisconsin. After finding the gate and settling down in the rigid leather chair, Will thought of calling Sydney. He took the little slip of paper from his pocket and the cell phone he never used, never in Jonah's life at least, and dialed her number. It rang three times.

"Hello?" Her voice was smooth and cheerful over the phone.

"Hey, Syd. It's Will," he greeted.

"Will, hey. Are you okay?" She was worried.

"No, no, I'm fine. I just wanted to tell you that I'm leaving. I'm at the airport now."

Silence.

"Oh, uh, okay, but why so soon? You just got here. Are you sure there's nothing wrong?"

"Yeah, everything is fine. But I have to work tomorrow, you know how it is." Was that a sniffle he heard? Maybe not.

"Yeah, I know. You be safe okay? I'd die if anything happened to you." He smiled.

"Okay. Say bye to Vaughn for me?" He had to be civil. He could see her smiling.

"Okay," More silence. "Will, I love you." His heart lay shattered on the ground and tears welled up in his eyes. All the noise that was around him went suddenly mute.

"Not as much as I love you," he replied. Before she could answer, he hung up the phone. She didn't try calling back and even if she did he wouldn't have answered. Will sat watching the world pass him by as he waited for his plane and his mind wandered. Suddenly a woman with light brown hair interrupted his thoughts.

"Excuse me," she politely interrupted. "Is this the waiting area for the Wisconsin flight?" She smiled at him. He liked her smile. He straightened up in his seat.

"Yeah, yeah it is," he smiled. He gestured for her to take the seat next to him. She nonchalantly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and extended her hand.

"I'm Julia," she introduced. He took her hand and shook it. She was really pretty.

"Jonah," he replied. He sat back in his seat and looked at the dingy colored air outside. Jonah couldn't wait until he got back to the cool crisp Wisconsin air. He missed his friends, he missed his job and he missed that cute little painter girl who lived down the hall. Maybe, when he got back, he would finally ask her name.

Fin

Thank you to everyone who read this fic! I really enjoyed your comments and I hope my ending was all right. To clarify, Julia in the last section is not Julia Thorne. I was tempted to make her so and then do an AU Jonah/Julia, but I thought against it. However, that doesn't mean I won't do it in the future! Thanks again to everyone who R&Red. I appreciate it!

By the way, thumbs up? thumbs down?

Au revoir...for now,

taintedvision