Title: A Second Chance

Summery: S/V had an affair and as a result, Sydney became pregnant. So alone and pregnant, Sydney leaves L.A. Will Vaughn ever come for her?

Ship: Let me think about it...S/V, as always.

A/N: Yay! another syd running away story, sorta...it's not really like my other one but that's what makes it cool. Like I said, Syd and Vaughn had an affair (bad syd and vaughn, tasting the forbidden fruit, tsk, tsk). And I really don't have much to add except that the affair happened sometime before North Korea.

Disclaimer: I dontownvaughnoraliasbutidoownthetwinsandanythingyoudontrecognize. Happy now you meanie butt lawyers? you better be!

We did an awful thing. A horrible, terrible thing. It was forbidden and quite possibly the worst thing we had ever done and that includes all the crap we did in our line of work. We couldn't help ourselves. It just happened. I'm not sure how, it just did. It was raining, he came to my place, soaked and sorry, and then it just happened. We both knew it was wrong, but we didn't stop. We couldn't stop. We didn't want to stop. His ring was flung off sometime in the process and it took us hours to find it. He almost had to buy a new one because we couldn't locate the damned thing. We did find it, hurdled under the stove. I was amazed at how far that thing went and at the same time, it sank in what we had done.

We had an affair. He was married, supposedly happily. And I wasn't his wife. She was. She was his wife, not me. I wasn't allowed to kiss him and hold him and love him. That was her job and privilege. We committed adultery. I said I would never deduce what we had to an affair and I let it happen anyway.

I felt dirty. No matter how many showers I took, the countless hours of scrubbing my skin raw, I still carried that dirty feeling. I was ashamed. I was sick to my stomach. Food, any kind of food, looked awful, like I didn't deserve it. I was unclean. He was unclean. I made him unclean. I couldn't stand to be in the same room with him or her, knowing what we had done and how incredibly wrong it was.

At first, I thought it was just a bug, the flu or something like that. Then as the days past and a certain visitor wasn't showing its ugly head, I started to panic. I checked my calendar, several times, counting and recounting the days. It couldn't be. There was no way.

I ran to the nearest drug store and I mean ran. When I got there, I was sweating and not just because I had been running. I was sweating because of what I knew was going to happen. I bought at least a dozen home pregnancy tests and took them into the nearest bathroom I could find. I couldn't wait until I got home. I needed to know right then and there.

I used every test. I waited the two minutes or the minute and a half or the two and a half minutes, one even took three minutes and they all told me the same thing. They were positive. Every fucking one of them was positive. Each and every one of them told me the God-awful truth.

I was pregnant.

With a married man's baby.

A married man that was not my husband.

I didn't know what to do. I thought of telling him immediately about the baby, our baby, but that idea quickly went out the window. I couldn't tell him. He was married and happy. I couldn't ruin that. I thought of staying in L.A. That idea was quickly dismissed as well. I couldn't stay. I would start to show and people would ask questions. Questions like who was the father and where was the father and why wasn't the father with me? I couldn't tell them the truth. I couldn't tell them that Michael Vaughn and I had an affair and I was pregnant with his baby and that he wasn't with me because he was married.

So I did the only thing I knew to do. I left. I left L.A. I left my dad, my few friends, I left the agency, I left him, everything. I cut off ties with all people.

I didn't tell anyone of my plans. Instead I left a letter, several in fact, one to each of the people I was leaving behind. My dad, Eric, Dixon, Marshall and Carrie, Kendell, though I have no idea why I left him a letter, the few friends I still talked to on occasion, even Donovan, Vaughn's dog. I left a letter for a dog.

I don't remember much of what I said in the letters, most were just repeating what I said in the others. They only one I do remember was the one that I left him. It took me the longest to write and was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

I sat down at my computer, after finishing all the others and stared at the blank document. Vaughn...backspace, backspace, backspace, Mr. Vaughn, delete, Agent Vaughn, backspace, Michael Vaughn, delete, Michael. I stared at that word before deciding that was the word to use.

Michael,

You have no idea how hard it is to write this letter to you. It took me several tries just to write your name. I couldn't decide if I should address you as Vaughn or Agent Vaughn or Michael Vaughn, and then I remembered that morning long ago. You asked me why I never called you Michael and I said I did sometimes and then called you Vaughn. Do you remember that morning? Of course you don't. I don't expect you to remember anything from our time together. And I'm okay with that. I really am.

Are you reading this alone? Are you sitting at your desk, opening this letter and reading it plain view of everyone or are you at your home, on the couch or at the kitchen table, reading this in the midnight hours because you want some privacy? I ask that if you are reading this in public, that no one can see what I have written to you. At least not before you do and then you can show everyone you want. I don't give a damn. Just as long as you read it first.

I don't know the easiest way to say this, so I'll just be frank and leave it at that. I'm pregnant. That's right, I'm having a baby. Now I suppose, you're wondering who the father is and if you've met him. I'll stop your questions now. Yes, you have met him, because he is you. You're the father. You.

Do you remember that night a couple months ago? You came to my apartment, soaked to the bone like a drowned rat and you said that you were sorry. You said that you were so incredibly sorry for everything that had happened between us and what my life had become as a result of it. Do you remember what happened after? I'm not going to write it down because you know. You were there. You had a part in it. You helped create the life that grows inside me.

I know this is a shock, believe me I do. I used at least a dozen different tests just to be sure. And they call came back positive. I'm pregnant. With your baby. Our baby.

I'm not asking you to leave Lauren. Really, I'm not. I want you to work on your marriage. I want you to be happy. I don't want you to divorce her and marry me because I'm pregnant. Marriage shouldn't be like that. It should be because you love the person that you're marrying. I have no doubt that you love me, that much was made clear to me the night that our baby was conceived. But I don't want to be the cause of your marriage failing. I don't want you to leave her because of me.

In fact, I'm ordering you not to leave her. If you leave her because of me and the life that grows inside of me, you will never see me or our baby again. Ever. You probably think that I'm kidding, that I wouldn't really do that. I'm not and I would. I mean it. You stay with your marriage and if you two do divorce, if, it had better be because of your own Goddamn problems and have nothing to do with me.

I ask you not to try and come after me. Don't try to find me. Your life is in L.A. or England or wherever the fucking hell the two of you decide to settle down. My life isn't there. It's with my child, wherever we end up. I can't say because I don't know.

I have no idea what's going to happen to me. I have to admit that that thought scares me. More than you could ever know. What if we end up on the streets begging for food? What if something happens to me or our baby? Where will we live? Where will I get a job? Every single thing that could go wrong, I keep thinking about and I can't stop. I don't want you to worry. God knows, you've done enough of that already. I'll think of something. I just have to have faith that everything will turn out for the better. Because if I don't have faith, then what do I have? Nothing.

I meant it when I said that if you came after me because I'm pregnant and you leave Lauren because of our baby, you will never see me or our child. And if you do decide to make things work with Lauren, I don't think you'll be coming after us because of obvious reasons. The truth of the matter is, you'll never get to know the life that you helped create. And you need to accept that.

I don't have much else to say except for two things. I wish you a lifetime of happiness with whatever you decide.

And two, I love you. Til the day that I die, I will always love you.

Love,

Sydney

I have no idea why I remembered that letter so perfectly. Maybe it was because I was telling him about our baby. Maybe it was because of what I said in it or didn't say. Maybe it was because I wanted to stay with him more than anything.

I found a small town in Montana, of all places, to settle down in. I got a job at a local middle school teaching English to all three grades. Studying to become a teacher was the only thing that I did that actually came in handy for life in River Falls. Before I started to show, even a little bit, I told people that my husband left me the day after we found out that I was pregnant. I got a lot of "What a jerk" and "That asshole" and one woman even said, "Do you want me to go kick his ass?" I felt bad for letting them call him things like that but I had to play the aggrieved abandoned wife whose husband was an uncommitted dirt bag.

As it turned out, Michael and I didn't create one life but two. Twins. Fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. A son and a daughter. At first, I wasn't sure if God was blessing me or taunting me. But the second I held my children in my arms, I knew that I had been giving the greatest gift I had ever received and that included the frame Michael gave me years ago. As luck would have it, Anya inherited her father's green eyes and sandy blonde hair while Christian inherited my brown eyes and brown hair.

The moment I got home with the twins, I took a picture of them, several in fact. I couldn't stop taking pictures of them. I used up six disposable cameras before I finally stopped taking pictures and settled the twins into life at my small but cozy home.

When I got the pictures back, fully developed, I couldn't put them down. I always had one in my hand even when I was caring for the twins. Being a single parent to two babies wasn't easy. Not that anything I had ever done could have been classified as easy.

For a while, the majority of the pictures sat on my living room table. I wanted to send some to the people back in L.A. but I wasn't sure how that would go over. What would I write? "Hey everybody, these are my children, you know the ones that were conceived by my affair with Vaughn." Yeah, that would have gone over well. Instead, I decided just to send one picture. I took the best picture I could find, which ended up being the one that a nurse took of me and the twins in the hospital. On the back I simply wrote, "Anya, Christian and Sydney. 7/24" I mailed it to Michael in an unmarked envelope with nothing else, no note, no explanation, no greeting, nothing. I didn't need to write any of that. If he really wanted to know their birthday, which was the day before the date on the picture, he could look it up. I didn't change my name. I didn't make any move to hide where I was. I wasn't running. I was starting over.

Everyone deserves a second chance.

Right?