Carousel by Celli Lane Feedback: Yes, please.celli@fanfic101.com Category: Humor, Romance Rating: PG Pairing: Syd/Weiss, with implied others Spoilers: Through "Remnants." Disclaimer: Alias belongs to JJ Abrams, ABC, and various other people with lawyers. Summary: Weiss is visited by the Ghosts of Sydney's Love Interests Past. Notes: Written for Slodwick's 1000 Words Challenge. Thanks to Jayne and Shelley for the immensely helpful betas.

"I can't believe you made it," Sydney said.

"Impressed?" Eric panted beside her.

"Shocked is closer." She ran smoothly, not even sweating. Showoff.

"Hey, a bet's a bet."

"Never play Scrabble with an English major."

"Next time," pant, "Monopoly."

She just grinned and sped up.

They took a break at the pier. Syd pretended it was to check out the place. Weiss accepted the polite lie gratefully. He leaned against the closed snack bar and watched her explore. She seemed captivated by the carousel.

"That's what I loved most about her."

Weiss jumped. "The hell?"

Will was standing next to him, wearing a Bruins T-shirt, his hands shoved in his back pockets. "Look at her. Always exploring things."

Sydney was checking out the carousel horses, patting their noses as if they were real. She looked over and waved; from the corner of his eye, he saw Will waving back.

"Okay, this is a hallucination. Too many endorphins or something," Weiss said. "You're in Wisconsin."

Will kept watching Sydney. "She doesn't just look, you know? She holds things and tries them out and reads about them. That's how she knows so much. She's always trying to learn more."

Syd was jogging back to them--to him, damn it, he was the only one there. "Sorry," she said. "I've never seen one when it wasn't running."

"See?" Will said in his ear.

"No prob," Weiss said. "Next, let's take the skeeball booth apart and see how--"

She thwapped him in the chest. "Just for that, we're racing home."

He groaned and started after her. He didn't look back.

***

It was Marshall's part of the briefing. Weiss tuned out a monologue on the history of the lipstick camera and looked over at Sydney. Her "notes" were a collection of stick figures.

He drew a question mark by the biggest doodle. She wrote "horses" under it, then drew a blob that might be a carousel. He was contemplating adding a stick Sydney when Dixon called her name. She was instantly all business, suggesting refinements for the mission.

"That's what I admire," Sark murmured in Weiss's ear. "That focus, that concentration. Not to mention her inherent sex appeal, which she uses to such advantage in her work."

Weiss stared at the paper in front of him. He could pretend to take notes too.

"She's amazing in the field. She took down the Alliance. Hell, she even beat me once or twice. Not even the infamous Derevko--" Weiss' pen gouged into the paper. "--could do more."

"Weiss?" He looked up; everyone was filing out, and Syd's hand was on his arm. "You okay?"

"Absolutely." He forced a smile. "Just thinking about, uh, carousels."

***

"Let me show--"

"Weiss! Stop!"

"Just--"

She brandished the knife at him. "My salad. Go back to your pasta."

He mock-glared at her. "Fine, you want to choke on radish chunks, you go right ahead."

"Fine."

Sydney's cell phone rang during the lettuce argument. Weiss saw the tension ease as she read the Caller ID.

"Carrie, hi. No, I was just making dinner. I can--" She motioned at Weiss, and he shooed her away. "Don't touch the salad," she mouthed at him.

He waited until she was deep into the conversation before reaching for the salad bowl. Since Sydney hadn't gone far, he eavesdropped shamelessly. Something about raising children in today's world, and how not marrying Marshall would affect the kid's social standing in third grade. He stopped listening, though, when childbirth was mentioned.

"That's what first drew me to her," Danny said.

"Really?" Weiss prided himself on being pretty blasé about this by now. He kept chopping.

"She's got such empathy." Danny brushed his fingers over his heart. "When she listens, it's with her whole body." His accent wavered a bit, somewhere between Spike and Harry Potter, but since Weiss had never met him, that made sense. "She loves people. You can tell it just from watching her."

Weiss considered saying something about other things you should be able to tell about Sydney, like the fact that she was a big fat secret agent. "Radish?" he asked cheerfully.

"No thanks, and you're chopping my vegetables when I told you not to," Sydney said from his blind spot.

"Ah!" She snickered. "Oh, shut up."

She snagged a carrot from under his knife. "What do you want to do tonight? Mission tomorrow, so we should probably avoid tequila."

***

Weiss stumbled off his horse.

"Again?" Sydney asked, her face red from laughing.

"You go. I need to regain my horse legs. Or something."

He leaned against the snack bar--dude, he was a spy, this was embarrassing--and waited for a glimpse of Sydney as the carousel came around again. She waved at him, but she seemed...sad. Maybe it was just the lighting.

"That's what I found so compelling about her," Vaughn said.

Weiss ignored him.

"No matter how happy she is, there's always that bit of melancholy about her. She never quite forgets what's been done to her. It makes you want to do anything in your power to make her happy again."

"Mike, I shouldn't be saying this to you, because you're my best friend and also because you're imaginary. But you sound like a bad romance novel."

"You don't see it?"

"It never occurred to any of you people that you're melancholy, that Danny liked people, that Sark's a good spy and Will's naturally curious? She's a person, not a mirror."

Vaughn just stared at him.

"And don't wrinkle your forehead at me. I'm not the one hung up on her."

Vaughn raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, shut up." Weiss stalked back to the carousel and hopped up on it, ignoring the yell from the ticket taker. "Hey, Syd," he said as he weaved his way through the horses, "you know what I like best about you?"

"My amazing equestrian skills?"

"Everything." He heard applause when he kissed her. Four distinct sets of it.

--the end--

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