Disclaimer: I dont own .

A/N. So this is a short chapter to introduce you to my next story. Its about a little journey Syd takes post- resurrection. I will start putting longer chapters up in early august. Kate (it would be nice if you could review).

Oh, and this is dedicated to the song More Than Words Can Say by Alias! I have a habit of strangely associating S and V with this song and then I get all emotional.

Chapter 1

She lay back on the beach towel, soaking up the rays of sun on a typical Los Angeles afternoon. Her eyes were closed as she tried to relax and forget all the events that had happened over the past week. With the crash of each wave, a new memory threatened to come forward and every time she tried to repress it. Not now. All she wanted was one afternoon where she did nothing, no analysing, no talking, no working, nothing. It worked for a while, amongst the noise of the children playing, the dogs barking, the parents scolding and the seagulls calling, the warmth of the sun allowed her to drift off into a sleep.

An hour later however, things changed dramatically as they usually did. Although she had turned her phone off, she had left her pager on so she could be bleeped in an emergency. It was the bleeping of her pager that pulled her from her sleep. At first she had some trouble adjusting to her surroundings, as was typical when you woke up somewhere different due to a stimuli of some sort, but also because the sun was very bright and assaulting her eyes. She sat up and rummaged around in her beach bag looking for her pager. Her hand came across a small black object, but upon closer inspection she realised it wasn't her pager, it was an box she didn't particularly want to see as so many emotions stemmed from it. However it comforted her to carry it around with her wherever she went, regardless of it being an object of so much uncertainty. She sighed, knowing she would have to breach the subject of its existence at some point that day, but for now she carefully placed it back in her bag and located the black object she was after, the one that had so rudely interrupted her from her sleep. This had better be good.

She read the name and the number on the screen and frowned. 'Devlin 845- 113' she muttered to herself in confusion. This was definitely unusual; she rarely got called to the Los Angeles Headquarters anymore, most of her work was managed through the JTF, and it was always through Dixon, her dad or even Kendall. 'What the hell does Devlin want' she muttered again, quietly, before getting up and packing her towel back into her bag. She stood up and dusted the sand of her clothes, realising she would have to wander into the sea to wash the sand off her feet before she could get her sandals on. Whilst she was walking along the shoreline, sandals in her hand, bag over her shoulder, she suddenly got a flashback of a time many years before when she had been doing exactly the same thing.

'Syd, I'm... I'm sorry I guess. It's just I need to remain professional at work. We both do. If I'd been nice to you then I would have been completely out of character, and Sloane would have sensed something was up. I didn't mean what I said. I promise. Please forgive me.'

Remembering this Sydney smirked. Noah was always so distant at work, he only seemed to get emotional when she was getting involved in something dangerous, and even then that was usually out of Sloane's earshot. That day, she recalled, Sloane had asked her to go and perform a recon on a particularly dangerous meeting, and Noah hadn't wanted her to do it, so he made her mad by saying that she was nowhere near ready. That Sloane needed to send a more experienced spy. In the end both of them went on the recon and made up in their usual way. Thinking about her relationship with Noah made her upset again. She had loved and lost him, just like she had loved and lost Danny.

Now someone was asking her to commit herself to loving them, and she wasn't so sure she could cope with that again. Not after what happened when she left, he got someone else, and it took Lauren's betrayal and death for him to leave her. He didn't show that he still had eternal commitment to their previous relationship. But she also knew that if she could forgive him over this, and she probably could eventually, she would get so involved with him that something terrible would happen to one of them. It always did. And then someone would be hurt so badly they wouldn't ever be able to survive a relationship ever again. She had been hurt three times; he had been hurt twice, if it happened once again to either of them, she knew that whoever it was would crumble. This is why she didn't know what to answer his question. This is why she had avoided him for the last couple of days.

She seemed to be avoiding quite a few people that week, Vaughn, her father, Marshall, through feelings of guilt, Dixon and Weiss because she just couldn't talk. She couldn't explain how she was feeling this time. Not to anyone.

She made her way back up the beach and started walking back to her apartment; glad she only lived two blocks away.