disclaimer: I definitely don't own Alias…

-past all that-

Weiss.

He makes her laugh. And when the days are hectic and the nights are long, that's all that really matters. She doesn't care that he isn't as ruggedly handsome as Vaughn, or as pretty as Sark. It doesn't bother her that he's about five sizes rounder than the men she's previously dated, nor does it irritate her that he hides his worries and anxieties behind wisecracks.

Because, when it comes down to it, he makes her laugh.

And that's all she cares about anymore.

Bellyaching laughs. They come so easily when she's with him. With Vaughn the humor was drier, more mature, less fun. Vaughn, she knows, never made her laugh so hard that she could forget her stress, forget her anger. When she's with him, he makes her forget the hours she's logged in at the office. He makes her forget that jerk who groped her in the nightclub on her last mission in the field.

He makes her forget Vaughn, and that horribly empty feeling she gets whenever she remembers that she was never really given a chance to say goodbye to him and their relationship.

Things aren't easy, of course. With Sydney, things are never easy. He is, after all, Vaughn's best friend. They visit each other every game night, driving her up the wall. And although she wants to shield herself from it, she knows it annoys Lauren too. Not because they're acting like typical males, drooling over men in pads and helmets, but because the "girls" are not allowed into their male bonding sessions involving pork rinds and beer.

They're invited over every other week for barbecues and dinners. They invite the Vaughns over for fondue on Saturday evenings. Seeing each other is something they can't get around. But it gets easier every time, because he knows what she's going through, knows what she needs to hear.

She loves him for it.

He's so much more than she could hope for. She used to be content just to have something stable in her life, someone stable. Vaughn was stable, until two years went by without her knowledge.

He, of course, is just as stable as Vaughn once was. He even loves her as Vaughn once did. But he gives her even more than Vaughn ever did. He gives her freedom and unconditional love, things that have always been stolen from her.

With Vaughn she played a role. Over two years ago she would have denied it, but looking back she can see it. Vaughn saw her as the tormented Sydney, the Sydney who dealt with a traitorous mother and an uncaring, untouchable father. Briefly he would catch glimpses of her lighter side—the side that laughed at immature, perverted jokes and could burp the alphabet. But seeing that side of her, she knew, disturbed him, unsettled some internal balance he had himself teetered on. And even if those two years hadn't happened, she knew that she couldn't throw off that balance, because it would have meant his destruction. And even though she's moved past that seeking, desperate, doomed love she used to feel for him, she cares and cared too much for him to ever wish him ill.

But with him, with Weiss, things are easy. He can be serious, he can be sad, he can even be angry as hell. He knows, somehow, when she needs a shoulder to cry on. He can tell when she needs to hear a lewd joke, and he never tells them when he knows she wants to hear intelligent humor. He even knows when she needs to be yelled at, to be berated for being stupidly noble. How he knows these things she doesn't understand, but she knows that she no longer wants to go through life without him.

She hates herself for it, but she finds herself comparing him to Vaughn every once in a while. Once she even caught herself comparing his eating habits to Danny's. She placates herself, however, by rationalizing that Weiss always seems to come out on top anyway.

"Michael Vaughn is just a boy who was never good enough for you anyway."

She didn't want to believe what her father had said. It had smashed the perfect image of Vaughn into bits and pieces of unrecognizable rubble. But now, now that she understands, she knows what her father had said was the truth. Because Vaughn is still just a boy, and he is still not good enough for her.

One thing that she has learned is that no one is good enough. But some people come pretty darn close.

-end-