This fic is my absolute pride and joy. It's pretty much the only thing I've written that I can actually read again and think it's good.

Title: For Old Times' Sake
Author: Margot
Timeline: Sometime around the first few eps of S3. It'll probably go a bit AU from here.
Summary: Syd and Vaughn meet unexpectedly and begin to reminisce.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to JJ Abrams.

Chapter One: Chance Meeting

Her heels click on the cold floor as she walks slowly into the building she has not seen in two and a half years. That thought comes easily to her now; the adding on of two years is almost an automatic process. It hasn’t always been like this. When she first came back, it was difficult to remember that so much time has passed. Now she hardly even has to think: it hasn’t been a month since she was at her favourite restaurant, is has been two years and a month. Her last dentist appointment was not eight weeks ago, but two years and eight weeks ago. She’s sick of the number two. Everything must have two years added on to it, and she just wishes that she could get past it. She wishes she could make new memories, ones that don’t need two years added on to them. She wants to say, “I was here just last month” when she goes out somewhere. She doesn’t want to notice things that are new or different. She feels like a tourist in her own city.

As she looks around, she notices that this is one of the few places – perhaps the only place – that hasn’t changed a bit. She brushes her hand along one of the crates and looks down at the dust that gathers on her skin, and it comforts her. She knows that it’s unlikely, but she can’t help believing that this place hasn’t been used since she was last here. She had never missed the warehouse – it was the embodiment of everything that was horrible about her life. It meant SD-6, and her days of hiding herself from her friends. It meant the days when she and Vaughn couldn’t be seen together, and though the warehouse was where they had forged the beginnings of their relationship and would always have nostalgic qualities for Sydney, the fact that she and Vaughn could be together in public had been enough to keep her from ever wishing to go there again.

But now she would give anything to be transported back to the time when she came here every other day. Her life then had been complicated, and she’d had very little freedom, but it had been life with Vaughn. He’s in her life now, of course, but it’s not the same. Not by a long shot. Even when he was with Alice, Sydney had known that really they belonged to each other. Alice was just an obstacle to be overcome, and Sydney had never really considered the thought that they wouldn’t. But Lauren is so much more than just an obstacle. She’s his wife and Sydney knows that Vaughn isn’t about to leave her. That alone is bad enough, but the fact that the three of them have to work together makes things a million times worse.

She sits down on one of the crates – somewhere she has sat a thousand times before. She closes her eyes and pictures him standing in front of her. The image is so real that she smiles blissfully, as she watches him smile at her, his eyes communicating what his lips cannot. She opens her eyes and is shattered when she remembers that it was only a daydream. She sighs as she feels tears pricking at the back of her eyes. She forces herself not to cry; it seems that she has done nothing else since she came back. She doesn’t want to think about him, because if she lets herself the tears are inevitable. And yet, at the same time, all she wants to think about is him. He’s all she ever thinks about. That is, after all, the reason she came here. At home, there’s always a distraction. Weiss seems to be eternally in her apartment; probably because he knows that if she’s alone she’ll only think about Vaughn. She wanted to be quiet for a few hours and just think, so she came to the one place that has always been a sanctuary to her. And though she never missed it until now, she is beginning to realise that this has been the most important place in her relationship with Vaughn. The most important place in her life.
She knows only too well what thinking about him will do to her. But she doesn’t care, because she doesn’t ever want to stop thinking about him. She loves him with all her heart, and she doesn’t want that feeling to stop. She knows that it will only make her unhappy, and she believes that in turn will make him unhappy but she’s afraid to stop. She’s afraid that if she stops loving him, there’ll be nothing left.

* * *

His car pulls quietly into the space it always occupied. He gets out, shuts the door, and pauses before going in. He knows what this place represents, and what his going there symbolises. He knows what Lauren will think if she finds out. But he doesn’t care. Because he has to be alone, and this is the first place – the only place – he has ever had the sense of peace that he needs. He stands outside for quite a while, part of him screaming at him to get back in the car and go home to his wife. His wife. Lauren. He loves her, he knows he does – so why is he here? Why was he drawn here on the way home from work? Why has this place, and everything that’s happened here, been on his mind all day?

He tells himself that it will just be one short visit. Just to say goodbye. Goodbye to what? To the memories he has been holding dear for the past two years. He has to let go of them because they’re not his lifeline anymore. For the longest time, he had nothing left of her but these memories, but now she’s alive and these faded pictures in his mind are no longer her remains. He has to say goodbye to something else as well; something far dearer to him than the memories of shared smiles and exchanged kisses. He must say goodbye to his love. Until now he has been allowed to love her. She was dead – what harm could it do to keep his feelings alive? But now she’s back, and his heart has been given to another. To love Sydney… it isn’t fair. It isn’t right. It isn’t fair to any of them. It’s no one’s fault. This is just how things turned out. But sometimes, and he knows he shouldn’t, he can’t help but blame Lauren.

And that’s when he realises that, if this is anyone’s fault, it’s his. Because it was he who gave up, it was he who moved on. And Sydney’s left to deal with the mess. It’s at times when he thinks like that that he breaks down. He cries silently at night, and he suspects that Lauren knows, although she never says anything. He goes for long walks in the rain, mentally putting himself through torture over what he did to the love of his life. And then he sees what he’s doing to Lauren, and puts himself though torture over that. Which only ever brings him back to Sydney again. It’s a vicious circle and he has to get out of it.

* * *

Eventually, he forces himself to take the next step. He looks at the floor as he walks in, and doesn’t notice the figure sitting on a crate, equally absorbed in staring at her shoes. As one person, they look up and meet each other’s eyes. It is as if they have rehearsed this and know exactly when to raise their eyes.

“Sydney,” he states, his voice barely above a whisper

“Vaughn,” she whispers back, not knowing what else to say.

There was a time when they stood and sat in the same positions, both of their minds overflowing with things they wanted to tell each other, but could not. Now, in a moment when anything they want can pass their lips, neither can think of a single thing to say.

TBC...

Margot

Oops, I forgot I'd posted this here.... :blush:

Speaking of forgetting things, when I first wrote this chapter (aaaaaages ago) I forgot that I'd written the first chapter in the present tense, so I wrote this in the past tense. But it kind of worked out well, as the first chapter seems more of a prologue than a real chapter, so it fits that it's different. Imo, anyway :)

I've just read it again and cringed at some of the awful things I wrote...bits of it are really corny and overdone and stupid. But it does get better I promise. My writing improved a lot with this fic, and the later chapters are longer and better. Imo.

Chapter 2: A Happy Coincidence

Silently, they held each other’s gaze until Vaughn looked away and the spell was broken. He cleared his throat uncomfortably and looked at the floor. Without even realising it, Sydney mirrored his actions, and her own gaze was drawn to the dirt and dust that blanketed the cold floor of the same warehouse that had been a haven to her so many times in the past.

Suddenly, the tense silence was broken as Vaughn spoke. “Sorry. I…I didn’t know you were here.”

“I needed somewhere to be alone and think,” she explained quietly. “Weiss has been great, but he wants me to stop dwelling on the past and to get on with my life. I know he’s only trying to help, but I’m not ready for that yet. I just need to sort things out in my head, you know?”

“I know,” he nodded, understanding only too well what she meant. He too had things he needed to think about. “If you want…to be alone, I’ll leave.”

“No,” she said in a shaky voice. A voice inside her told her that it wasn’t a good idea; she needed to start distancing herself from him or she’d never get over him, but she couldn’t resist asking him to stay, and the words had left her mouth before she had time to stop them. “I want you to stay.”

“Okay,” he agreed, knowing in that instant that he would probably always agree to everything she asked him to do. He sat down next to her on the crate, and an amiable silence descended over them, all the weight and discomfort of the previous silence gone completely.

After a while, she turned to him. “Do you come here often?”

“This is my first visit in a long time,” was his response, which he made while continuing to stare straight ahead. Somehow it was easier to recall the painful time following her death if he didn’t look at her. “When I thought you’d died…I was out of the country for a while. I just couldn’t bear to be in the same city you’d lived in, the city we’d enjoyed together. It seemed like there was a memory of you haunting everywhere I went.” Tears filled his eyes as he spoke, and Sydney instinctively covered his hand with hers to comfort him. A spark of electricity shot through her arm and touched every nerve in her body, and she immediately retracted her hand, murmuring something about static electricity, though they both knew that the tiny fireworks exploding inside them were caused by something else entirely. “When I came back, this was the first place I came,” Vaughn continued. “Being back in L.A. overwhelmed me and I came here to think about you, and to let you know that I hadn’t forgotten. I cried for hours that first night. After that, I came every day for a while. Then gradually, it became once a week, then once a month. When Lauren and I got married I stopped coming. The last time I was here was the morning of our wedding.”

Sydney looked at him, tears clouding her own eyes as he unveiled the depth of the grief he had suffered. She felt both awed and saddened. She could never stand to see him hurt, or upset, and the thought that her supposed death had caused him so much pain was torture to her. But on the other hand, she was amazed by the strength of his love for her, and the way his life had been violently shattered when she disappeared.

“This is my first time here, too. I mean, the first time since… before,” she said, wondering exactly what had brought them here at the same time, when neither had been to the warehouse recently.

“What a coincidence,” mused Vaughn, as if he had read her mind. He threw her the first genuinely happy smile of the evening and she replied with a smile of her own, not at all surprised that he had known what she was thinking. They always had had a strong connection, after all.

“You think?” she asked, curious as to what he thought about all of this.

“Sure, why not?” was his nonchalant reply.

“Of all the places in L.A., of all the times we could go…. and we both end up here. Together,” she continued her train of thought aloud, talking to herself rather than to him.

“But we both came here for a specific purpose, a purpose that only this place would do for,” he countered, while he remembered many similar conversations in the past. They had often discussed their unique relationship, and whether or not they had been brought together by fate, or sheer luck. Sydney had always leaned towards the idea of fate, whereas Vaughn, the Scully to her Mulder, had his money on luck.

“Whatever,” she waved her hand dismissively in his general direction, having forgotten all about the fact that they were no longer together. “Once is a coincidence, twice is fate.”

“Ah, our first happy coincidence.” Vaughn, too, was enjoying their relaxed conversation, which although playful, had serious undertones that he was only too happy to discuss. Ridicule it as he might, the idea that he was fated to be with Sydney Bristow was one he loved.

Sydney nodded, knowing, as she always did, exactly what he was referring to. Of all the officers in the CIA, of all the agents he could have been assigned to…

“What if I have an instinct about you?”

“My guess is you don’t. Have another double.”

“I’m not trying to play you.”

“We’ll see.”

For a moment, they were both lost in the same memory, reliving their first real conversation as if it were only a few days ago. But at the same time, they thought and felt how much had changed between them.

“I have an instinct.”

“I still have an instinct about you, Syd. You’re gonna be okay,” he assured her quietly. He had no basis for his foundations, only what he felt in his heart to be true. Perhaps, she was right after all. Maybe such things as soulmates and fate did exist. Just as he was about to bow to her knowledge and admit that he had been wrong, she halted his thoughts with a quiet interruption.

“And then I almost lost you before we’d even had a chance.” A twinkle grew in her eyes, as she saw another opportunity to continue their playful banter from before. “But we were brought back together again, weren’t we? Someone up there really wanted us to w**k together,” she finished with a grin.

“Yeah, you, Syd,” he retorted quickly. Lauren was intelligent and funny, but the quick-witted joking he shared with Sydney was something missing from their marriage. He hadn’t realised until now how much he missed it. “As I recall, we were allowed to w**k together again because someone was incredibly stubborn about it and threatened to withhold intel unless she got her own way. Who could that possibly have been?” By this point, they were both grinning like idiots, comfortably slipping back into their old habits and too far gone to care that, in the long run, this would only make things worse.

“I have no idea,” she said innocently, and blessed him with a brilliant smile that lit up her whole face and made her chocolate-brown eyes glimmer with the look of love he had seen shining there a thousand times before.

You’re so beautiful. He almost said it. Two years ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He had loved to tell her how beautiful she was; she always either blushed and smiled, or, if she was feeling mischievous, told him jokingly that he was beautiful too. He stopped himself just in time, but she saw the second where he faltered and it brought them crashing down from their pleasant memories and denial.

“Why did you come here tonight?” she asked, already knowing the answer, and internally cringing before he even gave it.

“To say goodbye,” he answered honestly, though not without obvious sadness.

“I understand,” Sydney whispered past the lump in her throat and the quickly-gathering tears that set her eyes on fire.

“Syd…” he said gently. “This isn’t fair on you…. or Lauren. I have to move on. So do you.”

“No I don’t!” she replied angrily. “It’s not for you to decide what I should do. It’s my life and if I want to spend the rest of it crying over what I could have had, then that’s what I’ll do.”

“Syd, don’t be so stupid! You can’t just give up like this. Don’t you see that by doing so you’d be allowing the Covenant to ruin your life? I know it’s hard, Sydney. And don’t look at me like that,” Sydney was opening her mouth to contradict him but stopped when he predicted what she would say. “Don’t say that I don’t know what you’re going through, because I do. I had my life ruined too. You were my life, Syd, and they took you away from me. I felt like you do now, but I picked myself up and I got on with things. You have to try. You can’t just let them take your life like this.”

“They’re welcome to it,” she said bitterly, “because this isn’t living.”

TBC...

Margot