Chapter 5: Truth

You wish you could say that you had some deep realization or that you had some sort of epiphany. But you didn't. You didn't suddenly realize that you can't live without him. You have lived without him. And you can do it again, although you wouldn't recommend it. You didn't suddenly come to the conclusion that he will always be the person you always thought he was, no matter what his name is. You don't think that. You wish you did. But you don't. The truth is, you were curious. Really. That's it. You were just too curious to stay away.

And that's the reason you're standing in front of his door right now, freaking out, wondering what form of insanity this is. You ring the doorbell with a shaking finger. You wait a few seconds and when he doesn't answer, you let out a breath you didn't realize you were holing. You turn to leave, but his voice stops you.

"Sydney?" You turn around and see the confusion on his face, in the way he's standing at his door, clinging to it, as if it were a damn lifeline. He didn't expect this. And apparently, neither did you.

"Oh," you say. "I-I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm doing here, what I thought I was doing here..." You turn to leave again and his voice stops you, again. By now, you feel like you're just turning in circles.

"You came because you want to know the truth."

If he hadn't been right, you would have laughed. If he hadn't been looking at you the way he was, you would have cried.

You still think that you might do both, at the same time. And then you'll know what form of insanity this is. It's the broken heart kind, where you have to laugh to keep from crying and you have to cry to keep from laughing and you end up doing both because there's no way that you can stop it from happening.

"Maybe I did," you finally say.

He opens the door wider, an obvious indication that you should come in. But you're glued to the spot.

"No," you say. "I don't want to go inside and exchange pleasantries and have you stall by asking me if I want coffee. I want you to tell me right here, right now."

He doesn't object, maybe he thinks he doesn't have the right to.

"Okay," he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He begins.

"After my dad died, I couldn't accept the fact that I didn't know how he died."

This sounds like the beginning of a speech to you. But that's okay, you think, he's good at those.

He goes on to explain how he thought that he would do anything to find out what happened to his dad. This included joining the Order of Rambaldi (although he was young and didn't really know what, or who, Rambaldi was) and agreeing to protect a girl.

"The girl," he says, with a faint smile, "was you."

"I was ordered to protect you. And at first, I resisted. I mean, you walked into my office with bozo red hair and a bloody mouth, for God's sake."

You almost smile at this. And even though the smile does not reach your lips, it somehow reaches your eyes. And he sees it, you know he does.

"You were stubborn and you were always arguing with me about missions and I...I thought you hated me," he admits.

"But then, that night, at the pier...I knew that you didn't, you didn't hate me. That's when I decided that it didn't matter anymore. None of it mattered. I decided that I would protect you, yes. But not because someone told me to, because I wanted to, I needed to."

You're staring at him in awe, and maybe, still, anger.

You allow yourself to speak, carefully hiding the remaining bits and pieces of hurt and anger that are residing in your heart, your throat, your eyes.

"Why then? At the pier?"

"Because," he says, "because that's the night I...I loved you."

This takes you by suprise, you never thought that he had had those feelings for you so soon. And you wonder why you never considered this. It was, after all, the same night you fell in love with him, you realize. You had hidden those feelings, thinking that they were just fleeting thoughts of how handsome he looked that day or how much you needed to hear the words he had said to you. But it was more than that. It's always been more than that.

You smile at him now, the first sign of forgiveness.

He continues and you instantly snap back into reality, to a doorstep, not a pier.

"They hadn't contacted me in a while. It was more than a year, maybe two. I thought that maybe I was doing a good job. That maybe I was doing what I was suppose to. I didn't even care about the information they had on my father. I knew the truth by then, anyway. But then, a couple of weeks before we were suppose to go to Santa Barbara, they contacted me."

He takes a deep breath and you can tell that the worst is yet to come.

"They told me that they needed you, that I should hand you over. I didn't know what they would do to you, but I had a pretty good idea. I couldn't do that to you. I couldn't let them treat you like some...science experiment. They threatened me, but at that point, I didn't care. All I cared about was you. I thought they were empty threats, but I had to play it safe. So...I came up with the Santa Barbara idea. I knew that if they were going to try to do something, it would be sooner rather than later."

"So, Santa Barbara was just..." You can't even finish your sentence.

"No. No, no. Oh, Syd, no. I wanted to go to Santa Barbara with you. More than anything. But I also wanted to keep you safe."

He looks down at his shoes, your shoes, the pavement, you don't know.

When he finally looks up, you can see the tears glisten in his eyes.

"But I was too late."

You begin to shake your head, to ask him what he's talking about, but then it hits you.

"Oh, my God," you say, the tears beginning to sting your eyes as well.

"I lost you, Syd. I lost you and it was all my fault."

You find yourself moving into his arms, wanting to comfort him somehow, reassure him that it wasn't his fault, that it would have happened anyway.

But you don't know that.

"It wasn't...it wasn't your fault. You tried to save me." Your voice dissolves into a whisper. "You always try to save me."

"When we got this second chance, so to speak, I knew that I had to tell you the truth. I tried to tell myself that I wasn't lying to you, that it was in the past, that it didn't matter. But it did. And I just, I couldn't stand lying to you anymore."

You smile against the fabric of his shirt, wet from your tears.

You look down and lace his fingers with yours.

"So, what is your name?"

He tells you and you laugh, saying, "I think I like Vaughn better."

"Yeah," he says, kissing the top of your head, "I think I do too."

In the beginning of this whole catastrophe, it felt like you had a double memory. You could remember the way things were, the way you saw everything at the time. But then, you would go back into these memories and look for clues that you had been decieved, that you had been betrayed. And sometimes, you would get these two memories confused and think that things were there that really weren't. But now, everything is clear and you know that everything you thought at first, before all of this, was true. He was true.

End