A/N: This was originally intended to be one part, but I decide to split it up so that it's not so long. This fic highlights the important moments in Syd's life, taking place during Season 1 and Season 2. Enjoy, and please review. 
Part 1 - Taking Time
Blink.
You’re alive. Cold and confused, you scream and shriek. Suddenly, you’re warm again, and you’re in your mother’s arms. She quiets you and tells you your name.
You have an identity. You are Sydney.
Six years of innocent life – normal life – go along smoothly. You had many friends and did well in school. You were well taken care of by loving parents. You admired them. What they had together is what you wanted with someone when you grew up. You had everything going for you. You lived in a bubble, and nothing could touch the love and happy carefreeness that surrounded you.
But with one rainy night, everything turned against you. A fatal car accident on a highway next to the ocean changed everything. Your mother was dead. Her body was never found. Neither was the man who caused the accident. There was no one you could blame. So instead of becoming angry, you became somber. You withdrew from your friends and threw yourself into your schoolwork, on some level to gain the attention of your father.
It never worked.
There were no more weekend family picnics, no birthday celebrations, no bedtime stories of princes and princesses in beautiful, mystical lands. There was only the quiet drabness of boring, everyday routine. It was as if all color had left with the passing of your mother. She had been the glue that held the family together, and without her, your world was fragmented.
The cause of this sudden emptiness in your life was mostly due to your father’s attitude. He remained distant and distracted, obsessed with work, hardly ever noticing you.
Or so you thought.
What you don’t remember is him and his work being the key factor in shaping the rest of your life.
Blink.
You’re nineteen now. Ever since you were little, you’ve felt that your calling in life was to become a teacher just like your mother. So, while dutifully studying for mid-terms, the last thing you would expect is some generic black-suit man to approach you and offer you a job in espionage.
It’s decision time.
Part of you thinks it isn’t even for real. How are you even suited to be a spy? But another part is intrigued. It wants to know if you could actually do it. You’ve always liked to challenge yourself, and going for this would be no different. You need a job anyway, so you make the call.
You breeze through the training and the tests. It was like you were meant to do this. Soon after you became a full fledged agent, you met a person whom you would come to despise like no other. Sloane.
He smiled and shook your hand and welcomed you to SD-6. And your fate was sealed.
You worked diligently for seven years alongside your trusted partner, proud of your patriotism with full belief in your cause. But in the midst of those seven years, you met someone you loved even more than your work. He was the person whom you saw yourself growing old with. He was the person who gave your life meaning. And he would be the key to turning your life upside down. And that was because you couldn’t lie to him. You couldn’t keep up the façade. If you could pledge to spend the rest of your life with this man there could be no deceit allowed.
And so you shot the consequences to hell and took the risk of revealing the truth.
You didn’t work for a bank. You had never worked for a bank. This disquieting information seemed like a joke at first, but there was no laughter in your voice, no sarcasm in your eyes. It didn’t take long for the truth to sink in.
You weren’t the person he thought you were. And he was hurt by what he realized were all of the lies up until then. It took some explaining, but eventually, he came around.
But most unfortunately, that is exactly what killed him.
Blink.
You’re exhausted from a long flight and glad to be home. However, you return to the worst nightmare of your life – your beloved dead in the bathtub, blood everywhere.
You scream and shriek, horrified and furious, cursing yourself, God, and the man responsible for this. Danny’s blood still warm on your hands, you seek answers that you already know from whom you now regard as the lowliest being on the earth. Your search was fruitless; you knew it would be. It only served to heighten you hatred for Sloane. And that is the driving force in nearly all of your actions from this point forward.
Blink.
It’s three months later, and you find yourself on the run. The scum of the earth couldn’t stop with the killing of one innocent. Now, he’s on to you. You fight and flee desperately, and you are aided by the one person you least expected.
Your father.
You discover that he is part of this secret, dark recess of the world too. Now, after some twenty years of remaining at an uncaring distance, he wants to be the father he was before your mother died. You don’t buy it.
You have too much to worry about at the moment than all of a sudden trying to reconcile with your father. Because, you weren’t whom you thought you were. You didn’t work for the CIA. You had never worked for the CIA.
You knew what you had to do to set things right. It would be double the work and triple the stress, but it had to be done. Because you had even more reason now to see that conniving bastard whom you still had to call your boss go down.
And that’s when you met him. He seemed warm and friendly enough, but you were not ready to trust anyone just yet, so you remained guarded and distant. It was all still a deadly game for you, and everyone was a player. You had to be prepared to make the right move.
But still, there was something about him that made you want to put your faith in him. There was something in his eyes… Whatever it was, it stopped your heart, and you stopped his watch.
It wasn’t easygoing together at first. You had to butt heads and establish the ground rules and your expectations of each other. Initially, you weren’t very open to the idea that you wouldn’t be the one with all the cards, that he was going to be the one in charge of you. But somehow, deep down, you realized you could trust him.
Blink.
It’s a cool, quiet night. Water gently laps at the pier. The reflection of a nearby Ferris wheel glows magnificently in the water. Despite the peace that surrounds you, your head is ringing with raw emotion. Pain, devastation, frustration, loneliness, helplessness bombard you until you feel weak. So you go to the only person left to call.
He stands quietly as you vent and sob. And then he says everything you needed to hear. He is there for you. He lets you know that he will always be there whenever you need him. It was as if he wrapped you in a warm blanket of comfort, fighting your fears away, easing your pain. That was the moment when you realized that he was the only person in the world whom you could trust with all of your heart. He was the only person who would stay faithful to his word. He was the only one who would really understand. You came to understand him too, and something grew between the two of you – something greater than the relationship of a handler and his asset, some stronger, loving bond.
But there were so many things that still stood between you.
Blink.
The memory of your murdered fiancé returns with a painful vengeance. Not only do you meet the man who killed him, but you have to help that man as well. The stinging flash of pain is too much for you. You have to get out of there. You sprint away aimlessly, seeking only to distance yourself from the programmed killer, who ironically enough is also the victim in this case. You scream and wail at the injustice of it all, and curse the fact that the dark underworld of espionage is so interconnected that it could have brought you to that man. When you finally returned to some of your senses, you knew you couldn’t hold anything against that man. He had had no knowledge of what he did. As usual, it all went back to Sloane. It was some web he had woven to have his assassins be the victims. Now more than ever, you were driven to bring an end to his crimes against humanity. And so, you let the pain over Danny fade, and you forged ahead.
Blink.
You’re a fugitive. Some insane prophet’s words from hundreds of years ago are the only reason that you’re on the run. Your surroundings are all too familiar. The minute your car hits the water, you know what you have to do to survive. And suddenly you realize that that is exactly what she would have done. Your mother is alive.
Blink.
An old lover returns. You find that you still harbor some feelings for him. A night of passion rekindles the once dead flame. You thought that that night was only the beginning again. But you didn’t realize until too late what he had become. He wants you to run away with him, to let all the past go to hell and start anew, fresh, free from the secrets, the lies, the heartache. An offer so tempting, that you couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to accept it. Living on a beach in the middle of nowhere, learning how to surf, and not having locks on the doors, not having to constantly worry about danger or death; you could see yourself doing it all, but only in imagination. The reality was that you had too many things keeping you here; finding your mother, relationships with your friends, your duty to your country were all too important to leave behind.
But in the end, you wished that you had left. Because of you, Noah was dead. Another person you loved was stricken down, and this time in actuality by your own hand. It seemed like some force enjoyed ripping your heart apart at every chance it could get. And each time it was through, you heart was that much more tattered, more darkened. But this time, Vaughn was there for you. He picked up the pieces for you and helped you put them back together. He was your heart’s source of rejuvenating light. Would it always be this way? You fervently hoped so.
Blink.
It had always been people keeping you and Vaughn from each other – terrorists, old boyfriends – but now there was something even more tangible.
A door. And he was on the wrong side.
You could only watch as the water crushed his form to the window on the door that had closed too soon. You couldn’t just let him die. You had to do something. You pounded on the door with the fire extinguisher with all of your might, even when he motioned for you to save yourself. You didn’t listen. You couldn’t leave him. Suddenly he was gone from your view; you couldn’t help him. You were captured.
Blink.
You taste blood in your mouth when you wake and there is a resonating ache in your head. Within minutes, you are greeted by the sight of someone whom you haven’t seen in almost thirty years. The Man. Your mother.
It’s a short, hateful conversation until she shoots you. From that range, it feels like a ton of bricks was dropped onto your shoulder. But even that pales to the intensity of your anger that you could have ever loved this woman, this traitor.
It was easier than you would have thought to escape. Almost too easy… You didn’t have the time to ponder that idea any longer. You had to get back. You had to find Vaughn.
Not even presumable death could keep you apart. You were in France (really) when you found him. Half naked with his face battered, he couldn’t have been a more beautiful sight. You saved his life. It was as simple as that. No more words were needed. Only wide, bright smiles as you parted until the next time.
Blink.
It’s just after the goodbye to the closest mother figure you had since you were a child when you hear the news. Your mother wanted to cooperate. She turned herself in.
And just like that, she was thrusted back into your life. You tried to establish boundaries to keep things from getting any more personal, but that effort was fruitless. What Irina Derevko wants, she gets, and she wanted to get close to her daughter. There was no way you could stop her from stealing a part of your heart back; she was your mother, after all.
You were confident that you could take care of yourself when it came to your mother. It was your father that you had to worry about. Especially when you found out what he did to you.
The puzzles, the exercises, the tests, all of the training is what he programmed you with and what he made you forget. Everything he did was his own way of protecting you, of making sure you could take care of yourself. But that is not at all what you feel about what he did for you.
It was a rainy night when you confronted him, voice laced with rapprochement, the pain of betrayal pouring from your eyes. Afterward, you tried to walk it off, and your feet led you to your trusted savior again. Drenched with rain, face streaked with tears, you melted into his inviting arms, and he just held you, no questions asked. The air was too thick with emotion for words at that moment, and he respected that. When you finally pulled back to look at him, he dried your face with a gentle sweep of his thumb and drove you home.
It was his simple actions and his simply being there that saved you that night. Soon the tables were turned, and it was up to you to save him again.
Discovering he was infected with a deadly virus, you turned to its maker. Your mother assured you there was a cure, but getting it was another matter. Your time with Vaughn at the hospital was too brief for your liking. He reached for your hand, his only source of comfort in his time of pain. But suddenly, alarms were blaring and doctors were rushing him into surgery. And that’s when you met the one person you never expected to exist in this world – Vaughn’s girlfriend.
There was someone else in the place of where you not-so-secretly wanted to be. You didn’t want explanations because you didn’t think you could take them. There was something between you and him that you hadn’t felt with anyone else before, and there was nothing like lies and secrecy to affect the bond. Everything was out in the open, everything but your confession of love for each other. You didn’t want to say it because there was no way you could act on it, not now. But, you’re still hurt that he had seemed to disregard that bond. However, he must have known that there was something important between the two of you or he wouldn’t have even tried to explain himself.
He had a girlfriend. You left it at that. You go for a drive to clear your head. Soon, you somehow find yourself back at the pier, the place where he helped you discover he was your only ally. You look up at the night sky, the moon and the stars illuminating the water below, and you come to an understanding. If your relationship with Vaughn had to remain platonic for now, then so be it. If you were meant to be together, your time would come in the end. All it would take is a little patience. You breathe deep and feel rejuvenated by this revelation. Your time would come.
TBC
Part 1 - Taking Time
Blink.
You’re alive. Cold and confused, you scream and shriek. Suddenly, you’re warm again, and you’re in your mother’s arms. She quiets you and tells you your name.
You have an identity. You are Sydney.
Six years of innocent life – normal life – go along smoothly. You had many friends and did well in school. You were well taken care of by loving parents. You admired them. What they had together is what you wanted with someone when you grew up. You had everything going for you. You lived in a bubble, and nothing could touch the love and happy carefreeness that surrounded you.
But with one rainy night, everything turned against you. A fatal car accident on a highway next to the ocean changed everything. Your mother was dead. Her body was never found. Neither was the man who caused the accident. There was no one you could blame. So instead of becoming angry, you became somber. You withdrew from your friends and threw yourself into your schoolwork, on some level to gain the attention of your father.
It never worked.
There were no more weekend family picnics, no birthday celebrations, no bedtime stories of princes and princesses in beautiful, mystical lands. There was only the quiet drabness of boring, everyday routine. It was as if all color had left with the passing of your mother. She had been the glue that held the family together, and without her, your world was fragmented.
The cause of this sudden emptiness in your life was mostly due to your father’s attitude. He remained distant and distracted, obsessed with work, hardly ever noticing you.
Or so you thought.
What you don’t remember is him and his work being the key factor in shaping the rest of your life.
Blink.
You’re nineteen now. Ever since you were little, you’ve felt that your calling in life was to become a teacher just like your mother. So, while dutifully studying for mid-terms, the last thing you would expect is some generic black-suit man to approach you and offer you a job in espionage.
It’s decision time.
Part of you thinks it isn’t even for real. How are you even suited to be a spy? But another part is intrigued. It wants to know if you could actually do it. You’ve always liked to challenge yourself, and going for this would be no different. You need a job anyway, so you make the call.
You breeze through the training and the tests. It was like you were meant to do this. Soon after you became a full fledged agent, you met a person whom you would come to despise like no other. Sloane.
He smiled and shook your hand and welcomed you to SD-6. And your fate was sealed.
You worked diligently for seven years alongside your trusted partner, proud of your patriotism with full belief in your cause. But in the midst of those seven years, you met someone you loved even more than your work. He was the person whom you saw yourself growing old with. He was the person who gave your life meaning. And he would be the key to turning your life upside down. And that was because you couldn’t lie to him. You couldn’t keep up the façade. If you could pledge to spend the rest of your life with this man there could be no deceit allowed.
And so you shot the consequences to hell and took the risk of revealing the truth.
You didn’t work for a bank. You had never worked for a bank. This disquieting information seemed like a joke at first, but there was no laughter in your voice, no sarcasm in your eyes. It didn’t take long for the truth to sink in.
You weren’t the person he thought you were. And he was hurt by what he realized were all of the lies up until then. It took some explaining, but eventually, he came around.
But most unfortunately, that is exactly what killed him.
Blink.
You’re exhausted from a long flight and glad to be home. However, you return to the worst nightmare of your life – your beloved dead in the bathtub, blood everywhere.
You scream and shriek, horrified and furious, cursing yourself, God, and the man responsible for this. Danny’s blood still warm on your hands, you seek answers that you already know from whom you now regard as the lowliest being on the earth. Your search was fruitless; you knew it would be. It only served to heighten you hatred for Sloane. And that is the driving force in nearly all of your actions from this point forward.
Blink.
It’s three months later, and you find yourself on the run. The scum of the earth couldn’t stop with the killing of one innocent. Now, he’s on to you. You fight and flee desperately, and you are aided by the one person you least expected.
Your father.
You discover that he is part of this secret, dark recess of the world too. Now, after some twenty years of remaining at an uncaring distance, he wants to be the father he was before your mother died. You don’t buy it.
You have too much to worry about at the moment than all of a sudden trying to reconcile with your father. Because, you weren’t whom you thought you were. You didn’t work for the CIA. You had never worked for the CIA.
You knew what you had to do to set things right. It would be double the work and triple the stress, but it had to be done. Because you had even more reason now to see that conniving bastard whom you still had to call your boss go down.
And that’s when you met him. He seemed warm and friendly enough, but you were not ready to trust anyone just yet, so you remained guarded and distant. It was all still a deadly game for you, and everyone was a player. You had to be prepared to make the right move.
But still, there was something about him that made you want to put your faith in him. There was something in his eyes… Whatever it was, it stopped your heart, and you stopped his watch.
It wasn’t easygoing together at first. You had to butt heads and establish the ground rules and your expectations of each other. Initially, you weren’t very open to the idea that you wouldn’t be the one with all the cards, that he was going to be the one in charge of you. But somehow, deep down, you realized you could trust him.
Blink.
It’s a cool, quiet night. Water gently laps at the pier. The reflection of a nearby Ferris wheel glows magnificently in the water. Despite the peace that surrounds you, your head is ringing with raw emotion. Pain, devastation, frustration, loneliness, helplessness bombard you until you feel weak. So you go to the only person left to call.
He stands quietly as you vent and sob. And then he says everything you needed to hear. He is there for you. He lets you know that he will always be there whenever you need him. It was as if he wrapped you in a warm blanket of comfort, fighting your fears away, easing your pain. That was the moment when you realized that he was the only person in the world whom you could trust with all of your heart. He was the only person who would stay faithful to his word. He was the only one who would really understand. You came to understand him too, and something grew between the two of you – something greater than the relationship of a handler and his asset, some stronger, loving bond.
But there were so many things that still stood between you.
Blink.
The memory of your murdered fiancé returns with a painful vengeance. Not only do you meet the man who killed him, but you have to help that man as well. The stinging flash of pain is too much for you. You have to get out of there. You sprint away aimlessly, seeking only to distance yourself from the programmed killer, who ironically enough is also the victim in this case. You scream and wail at the injustice of it all, and curse the fact that the dark underworld of espionage is so interconnected that it could have brought you to that man. When you finally returned to some of your senses, you knew you couldn’t hold anything against that man. He had had no knowledge of what he did. As usual, it all went back to Sloane. It was some web he had woven to have his assassins be the victims. Now more than ever, you were driven to bring an end to his crimes against humanity. And so, you let the pain over Danny fade, and you forged ahead.
Blink.
You’re a fugitive. Some insane prophet’s words from hundreds of years ago are the only reason that you’re on the run. Your surroundings are all too familiar. The minute your car hits the water, you know what you have to do to survive. And suddenly you realize that that is exactly what she would have done. Your mother is alive.
Blink.
An old lover returns. You find that you still harbor some feelings for him. A night of passion rekindles the once dead flame. You thought that that night was only the beginning again. But you didn’t realize until too late what he had become. He wants you to run away with him, to let all the past go to hell and start anew, fresh, free from the secrets, the lies, the heartache. An offer so tempting, that you couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to accept it. Living on a beach in the middle of nowhere, learning how to surf, and not having locks on the doors, not having to constantly worry about danger or death; you could see yourself doing it all, but only in imagination. The reality was that you had too many things keeping you here; finding your mother, relationships with your friends, your duty to your country were all too important to leave behind.
But in the end, you wished that you had left. Because of you, Noah was dead. Another person you loved was stricken down, and this time in actuality by your own hand. It seemed like some force enjoyed ripping your heart apart at every chance it could get. And each time it was through, you heart was that much more tattered, more darkened. But this time, Vaughn was there for you. He picked up the pieces for you and helped you put them back together. He was your heart’s source of rejuvenating light. Would it always be this way? You fervently hoped so.
Blink.
It had always been people keeping you and Vaughn from each other – terrorists, old boyfriends – but now there was something even more tangible.
A door. And he was on the wrong side.
You could only watch as the water crushed his form to the window on the door that had closed too soon. You couldn’t just let him die. You had to do something. You pounded on the door with the fire extinguisher with all of your might, even when he motioned for you to save yourself. You didn’t listen. You couldn’t leave him. Suddenly he was gone from your view; you couldn’t help him. You were captured.
Blink.
You taste blood in your mouth when you wake and there is a resonating ache in your head. Within minutes, you are greeted by the sight of someone whom you haven’t seen in almost thirty years. The Man. Your mother.
It’s a short, hateful conversation until she shoots you. From that range, it feels like a ton of bricks was dropped onto your shoulder. But even that pales to the intensity of your anger that you could have ever loved this woman, this traitor.
It was easier than you would have thought to escape. Almost too easy… You didn’t have the time to ponder that idea any longer. You had to get back. You had to find Vaughn.
Not even presumable death could keep you apart. You were in France (really) when you found him. Half naked with his face battered, he couldn’t have been a more beautiful sight. You saved his life. It was as simple as that. No more words were needed. Only wide, bright smiles as you parted until the next time.
Blink.
It’s just after the goodbye to the closest mother figure you had since you were a child when you hear the news. Your mother wanted to cooperate. She turned herself in.
And just like that, she was thrusted back into your life. You tried to establish boundaries to keep things from getting any more personal, but that effort was fruitless. What Irina Derevko wants, she gets, and she wanted to get close to her daughter. There was no way you could stop her from stealing a part of your heart back; she was your mother, after all.
You were confident that you could take care of yourself when it came to your mother. It was your father that you had to worry about. Especially when you found out what he did to you.
The puzzles, the exercises, the tests, all of the training is what he programmed you with and what he made you forget. Everything he did was his own way of protecting you, of making sure you could take care of yourself. But that is not at all what you feel about what he did for you.
It was a rainy night when you confronted him, voice laced with rapprochement, the pain of betrayal pouring from your eyes. Afterward, you tried to walk it off, and your feet led you to your trusted savior again. Drenched with rain, face streaked with tears, you melted into his inviting arms, and he just held you, no questions asked. The air was too thick with emotion for words at that moment, and he respected that. When you finally pulled back to look at him, he dried your face with a gentle sweep of his thumb and drove you home.
It was his simple actions and his simply being there that saved you that night. Soon the tables were turned, and it was up to you to save him again.
Discovering he was infected with a deadly virus, you turned to its maker. Your mother assured you there was a cure, but getting it was another matter. Your time with Vaughn at the hospital was too brief for your liking. He reached for your hand, his only source of comfort in his time of pain. But suddenly, alarms were blaring and doctors were rushing him into surgery. And that’s when you met the one person you never expected to exist in this world – Vaughn’s girlfriend.
There was someone else in the place of where you not-so-secretly wanted to be. You didn’t want explanations because you didn’t think you could take them. There was something between you and him that you hadn’t felt with anyone else before, and there was nothing like lies and secrecy to affect the bond. Everything was out in the open, everything but your confession of love for each other. You didn’t want to say it because there was no way you could act on it, not now. But, you’re still hurt that he had seemed to disregard that bond. However, he must have known that there was something important between the two of you or he wouldn’t have even tried to explain himself.
He had a girlfriend. You left it at that. You go for a drive to clear your head. Soon, you somehow find yourself back at the pier, the place where he helped you discover he was your only ally. You look up at the night sky, the moon and the stars illuminating the water below, and you come to an understanding. If your relationship with Vaughn had to remain platonic for now, then so be it. If you were meant to be together, your time would come in the end. All it would take is a little patience. You breathe deep and feel rejuvenated by this revelation. Your time would come.
TBC