Summary: Two years after leaving APO, Sydney is somewhere she never thought she'd be. Set in the same universe as Mirror Image and Seven Years, which branched out from cannon mid-season 3; you don't have to have read those to understand this one, but be forewarned, this'll definitely ruin the others' endings. :)
Pairing: Syd/Sark
Author's Note: After Seven Years was over, bluebear_74 said, "You can't end it there! No babies? Not even one?" And then, even though it's been a long time since Alias was on the air, one day this happened.
. . .
Three days a week, Sydney teaches English to the children of Italian government employees. Her time in the CIA qualifies her to act as both teacher and security for the two hours a day her students are under her care, and the expediency of killing those two birds with a single still-deadly stone is no doubt the reason she was hired despite her—as her employers put it—"unsavory associations."
She enjoys her work. She likes the children, can't help but get caught up in their enthusiasm for the challenges she puts to them, their everyday victories; she almost always spends her drive home smiling.
Today, however, she's off-balance, distracted. It could be any number of things. She catalogues the options in her head: She slept poorly the night before. She missed lunch. But she doesn't like to lie to herself, not anymore.
She's spent most of her life between bursts of adrenaline, the time zone she's in a blur, days running together, so she's rarely bothered to keep track of the date. Her body's always been whip-thin, corded with muscle; stress and training always burned away the body fat she would have needed for proper menstruation. She had sex for the first time late, her second year of college, and after that she had the shots, once a quarter. So she's never thought about it before: what not getting her period would feel like, what being late could mean.
But since she's been out of the game (two years now, since Nadia was put to rest, Milo Rambaldi along with her), she's gained a little weight, and her body's regulated; she's been like clockwork. Except this time. Except yesterday, when she should have started, but didn't.
It doesn't mean anything. It's just one day. One day could just mean she's been pushing herself too hard this month (no matter how ridiculous that sounds, even in her own head; she's never had it easier than she does right now).
But technically, it's possible. Technically, they only took half her eggs along with those two years of her life; she has scarring only on her right side. Her left ovary is intact, the doctor reported, at the same appointment where he confirmed her right one was not. She's always thought of it as a long shot, though, bringing any of those remaining eggs to fruition. She doesn't know why. She just always has.
Which is why she hasn't said anything yet to Sark.
Sark, who was the reason that, hands and heart trembling, she turned her resignation into her father two years ago almost to the day.
Sark, who is waiting for her like always when she arrives at their terraced house, parks the quietly expensive sedan on the street, and feels the same rush of gratitude she always does when she returns home.
Sark, who greets her, "Your father wanted to know," as she comes into the kitchen, "if we were interested in a job."
He's looking at the computer, not her. Fondness washes over her at the curve of his cheek, the intent set of his jaw; the faint glow of the screen reflects in his eyes, but she can read the distracted excitement in them all the same. Then his words register. A job.
She lays a hand over her stomach instinctively. But her father wouldn't ask unless it was something he thought they could handle, the two of them. He also wouldn't ask unless he couldn't find anyone else.
"When?" she asks, and he looks up at her, quirks his mouth into smile.
"Tonight."
She smiles back, shakes her head. "Tell him yes. If you haven't already."
He laughs, holds a hand out to her, and she goes to him, lets him pull her against him. She can feel his body stir, as much anticipation of the job as of her. He says he's enjoying retirement, but she knows it isn't as true as he wants her to believe. It's something they'll have to address eventually, but not tonight. Tonight they can both pretend they're only doing this as a favor to Jack.
"I hope it's something that requires a wig," he murmurs into her neck, and she tilts her head to give him access as she says, "Only if you're the one wearing it." He nips at her skin in retaliation.
"How was your class?" he asks as he kisses beneath her chin, mouth warm and wet.
"Went well," she reports, letting her hands slide absently down his sides, feeling the bunch of his muscles beneath the cotton shirt. "They're learning fast. We're doing conditional verb conjugation."
His hands are at her spread thighs, thumbs lazy along the inner seams of her work pants. She shifts, spreads her legs further, is rewarded by a feather-light brush against the heat that's building there between them. She arches up.
"There's time," he tells her, breathing gone shallow, lips against hers, "before we have to leave."
"Good," she says, as she slides her fingers through the wiry mess of his hair, and takes his mouth with her own.
-.-
When he shows her the specs, she sees why her father came to them for this.
Sometimes she suspects that, had the events two years previous never happened, she would have ended up with the agency indefinitely, working her way up to director. She would have been good at it; she's mellowed with age, become less impulsive, learned to bank her temper, and with that has come a clarity that lends itself to mission design, operative management. She would have been good at it, but she doesn't think she would have been happy.
What she does now, it makes her happy. Sark makes her happy.
The mission is just a tap on a feed; nothing she hasn't done a thousand times before. The hard part isn't the tap itself, or even the location of the feed, but the timing. They have to remain undetected, in place to complete the tap within 45 seconds of the call the CIA is interested in hearing: the security on the line turns over every 1:15, and the program takes 30 seconds to upload. The margin for error is small.
It's a two-man job: one to infiltrate and initiate the tap, one to monitor and confirm access to the feed. They flip a coin. Sydney's the one going in. They both know Sark is disappointed, but it's not as if she'll get all the action; while she plays her part in the manor, he'll be splicing wires behind the building to take control of the security cameras, orchestrating the timing. It's a role more suited to him than to her anyway, more technical, though she could have done it if she'd needed to. It's the complementary nature of their skills, the overlap in their proficiencies, that makes them such a good match for the job.
Working with Sark like this always reminds her how much has changed in the last three and a half years—in the last six, even, since the time before she was taken by the Covenant. Somehow it is the difference in her relationship to Sark that has the power to affect her most, still, heedless of the more seismic changes that have occurred in the interim: her amnesia, and Julia Thorne; finding Nadia, and then losing her. It all seems fantastic, a dream, far outside the bounds of reality. But this—loving a man who once lodged an ice pick in her leg—is what gives the unexpected directions her life has taken startling clarity. The place she is now, she never would have guessed she'd ever be.
-.-
Their first stop is a bar.
Sydney's hair is pulled into a low ponytail; she's getting too old to play college girl, she realizes with a distant pang, more annoyance than dismay (it means she'll have to start getting more creative, without youth to fall back on), but she can still pass for twenty-something in low light. She's wearing dark denim and ridiculous stilettos and a strapless top constructed (and she uses the term "constructed" loosely) from draped, gauzy, deep purple fabric. She isn't letting Sark pick out her mission clothing anymore.
She does blend, though, sitting at the bar where a few other young women are nursing drinks; the others are more scantily dressed, but she's neither so buttoned up nor so buttoned down that she's obvious. She looks a little older, a little wiser, than these other girls. Than the girl they're here for.
Sark is outside, waiting for her signal. The girl is a dozen seats down from Sydney at the long bar, sipping at a beer. It's her second; Sydney would rather she be just a little more unfocused, so she kills a little more time appreciating her (virgin) cocktail, appraising the girl's shifty eyes, awkward stance. She feels sympathy—she remembers being an awkward 18, 19, 20, when it was just meeting boys that was hard, not meeting boys who didn't lead dangerous double lives. Not that it's worked out too badly for her, lately.
She presses send on the text message she typed up and saved in advance: "Home 9. Bring dinner?"
Sark's response comes quickly; the phone vibrates in her hand. "Please."
The bar door opens, and she slips the phone back into her purse. Then she watches Sark's progress out of the corner of her eye.
He's leaning over the bar, signaling the bartender for a beer. When he gets it, he hands over a few bills in exchange, and then leans, casually, on the bartop as he cuts his eyes to the girl sitting there. The girl's been sizing him up covertly—or what passes for covertly in the non-espionage population—and as Sark's mouth curves into a satisfied smile and his eyes light up, Sydney imagines the girl likes what she sees.
Sydney hides a smile in her drink as Sark slides into the stool next to the girl, gesturing for the bartender to bring her another beer. He's turned his body into hers, bending his head to speak to her, and she ducks hers as well, re-crossing her legs so her knee almost brushes his thigh. He's good; Sydney thinks she should probably be jealous but she's just pleased to be able to watch him work.
Sydney knows the moment the conversation turns: the girl's back stiffens, and Sark's hand touches, then fixes onto, her wrist.
Sydney palms the tablet from her purse and slams her glass down hard on the top of the bar. Everyone stares at her, the girl—and Sark—included. And Sark widens his eyes, pulls his lips back in a sneer, as he sees her. She pushes back from the bar and stalks toward them.
"Marcus, you shit," she rails as she reaches them. Though she hasn't used it in months, the language rolls off her tongue like she's spoken it her whole life. She turns to the girl. "Is this asshole bothering you?"
"Mind your business, Raquel," Sark snaps, "and leave us alone." His hand tightens on the girl's wrist, though the girl tries to jerk it back.
"Give her back her hand, Marcus," Sydney says, low and threatening, "or you can kiss the feeling in your balls good-bye."
"I'd rather you kiss my balls," he spits back, but shoves the girl's hand away. Giving them both dirty looks, he slides off his stool and vindictively he knocks his hand against the girl's nearly full bottle.
Sydney grabs it, stabilizes it, slips the tablet into the bottle as she snipes, "Not even if you actually washed them for once!"
The door falls closed behind him and she sits down, letting her breath out with a theatrical puff. "Seriously," she says to the girl, who is staring at her wide-eyed, "he's cute, but he's a major sleaze. I'm Raquel."
"Gerta," the girl says, still looking overwhelmed, and Sydney gets her first good look at her up close. Pretty but plain, hair shoulder-length and straight, small frame knobby at the wrists and shoulders. She looks sweet. She looks like easy prey.
Sydney picks the beer up and sets it down again closer to Gerta's hands. "No point in wasting the drink," Sydney says. "Anyway, you look like you could use it."
Gerta nods, grabs the bottle, and takes a long hard couple of swallows. Sydney's grateful; this won't be hard at all.
While she waits, she entertains herself making up horrible stories about "Marcus," her baby sister's asshole ex-fiancé, who "Raquel" had found entangled in the bathroom with their ex-model great aunt and the aunt's new husband in the middle of the rehearsal dinner. Gerta makes all the appropriate noises of horror, finishing the beer "Marcus" bought her and ordering another. A few minutes into the fresh bottle, Gerta's lids begin to droop. When she declares she has to go home, and almost falls as she stands to do it, unsteady on her feet, Sydney is quick to help her out of the bar, promising to help hail a taxi. Gerta is out cold after just a few steps.
Sark emerges from the shadows beyond the bar door as Gerta's body sags. He looks amused. "'Not even if you actually washed them for once'? Sydney."
"You can criticize my insults later. A little help?"
Smiling, he ducks underneath Gerta's other arm and curves his own around Gerta's waist, taking some of her weight off Sydney's shoulders. With his other hand, he brushes Sydney's hair back tenderly from her forehead. Gerta is slumped unconscious between them.
"My Sydney," he murmurs. "So honorable. Taking the girl she's drugged home and tucking her into bed."
She likes to think he would do the same, now, even without her there. It's something she'll never know for sure.
She closes her eyes and presses her cheek briefly into his palm before resettling Gerta's weight. Silently, they walk her to the car parked two blocks down. At the girl's apartment, Sydney uses her landline to call her in sick to work.
-.-
It's just three hours later, the sun not yet risen, when Sydney pulls up to the expansive manor grounds. It's still dark out. Beside her, Sark is carefully packing supplies into the case he'll carry strapped at his waist. They're both in black: Sark for stealth, Sydney for her alias.
When she drops Sark off around the back, he takes her chin in one hand and kisses her. "Be careful," he says.
"You too," she says. Her chest feels momentarily tight.
He smiles, pulls the black mask down over his head, and fades back into the dark.
Ten minutes later she pulls up to the gate in a different car, a champagne-colored twelve-year-old two-door, and hands over her identification.
"Gerta's replacement?" the man asks, and instead of Yes, she murmurs, "They didn't tell me her name."
Sydney tilts her face up at him demurely, hesitantly, the wispy dark blond hair that covers her own falling back to reveal her eyes, unmade and soft, and he waves her through.
Inside she lets herself be directed by the household head, a heavy-set thin-lipped man around her father's age, until Sark's voice comes, smooth and dark, over the unit nestled in her ear.
"Freelancer, do you copy?" She has to duck her head to hide her smile. "It's time."
"Emilie!" the thin-lipped man snaps at her, and she clenches her face into an expression of shock and pain and cries out, "I feel—my stomach—" and once she's sure of the disgust on his face, she runs toward the bathroom, passes it, turns down the hall as she drops the ruse.
"I copy," she says quietly as she moves carefully in her low chunky heels toward the second floor office, up the servants' stairs. She can hear the sounds of the luncheon guests still arriving in the distance.
"You're clear. No movement en route."
She's into the office and through the firewalls easily; picking locks is like riding a bicycle, and the program her father uploaded to them earlier works quickly. She pulls up the correct screen, types in the necessary code.
"Freelancer," Sark's voice says sharply, "company approaching in the right hallway."
"Almost done," she says, and he snaps, "All right, but hurry."
"Done," she reports after a few tense seconds.
"Checking transmission now." Sark's tone is terse.
The door opens, and the man with the thin lips is pointing a gun at her.
"Gerta is not, I think, sick," the man says, "and you do not take orders well enough to be an agency girl."
Depends on the agency, she thinks.
For show she stutters out, "I wasn't—"
In her ear, Sark says, "It's worked. I'm coming for you."
"Step away from the computer," the man instructs. "Put your hands where I can see them."
Sydney does. His grip is not sure, his experience clearly limited, and she should go for the gun. Her heels are within arms length on the desk. But she's paralyzed. What if a bullet were to hit her stomach? What if there is something there to hit?
If she throws up now, she thinks, at least it will cement her cover.
"Please," she says, "please don't hurt me," the way she's been trained. But it's too suspicious, her being here—halls away from where she's supposed to be, on the inside of a locked office—for maintaining her cover to create any doubt in him that she could take advantage of.
"On your knees," he says, and a flash of genuine panic leaves her shivering. She hears Sark cursing in her ear.
She lowers slowly, lets her eyes fill with tears. "Please," she says again, and the honesty in it surprises them both. She blurts, "Please, I'm pregnant."
It's the first time she's even dared think the word, much less say it. But it does the trick, the guard's eyes widen, he hesitates just long enough for Sark to hit him with the butt of a gun.
The man goes down hard, and she's left with Sark's face. She sees the shock flash quick across it, then everything shuts down: eyes smooth and hard, mouth even.
"Our window is narrow," he says, clipped, then turns on his heel.
Compared to this tension in him she cannot interpret, slipping back out undetected is simple. Clean. They abandon the champagne sedan, and Sark's movements are sharp, economical, with an edge of violence, as he reverses the car they came in, rips off silently into the night. She pulls off her wig.
As they drive, her hand curls protectively against her belly without her thinking about it; Sark glances over, sees it. And something dark flickers in his eyes that makes her, for the first time in more than two years, afraid of him.
He barely looks at her. His movements are still too tightly reigned, not the controlled violence she is used to in him, but something else. She feels sick, and furious; she tamps down hard on the flare of temper that threatens to overwhelm her. They're driving to a hangar he owns outside of town, there's still a helicopter flight to make after that, and she can't handle this the whole way. But this isn't the kind of mood in which she can get him to talk; he's turned whatever he is feeling in on himself. She's seen it before but not—never—because of her.
The hangar door opens outward as they approach, and they're inside, surrounded by dull gray concrete, track lighting at the seams where the ceiling meets the walls. The door lowers behind them as Sark steers the car silently into a spot in the row along the right wall, third from the end. In the dim light, all the cars look black.
He turns and snaps open her seatbelt without touching her, releases his own.
She pushes the door open and herself out, the bottom of her feet registering the chilled floor through her hose, already ripped at the heel. The heels she wore earlier are back in the manor office, on the desk by the paperweight. There's nothing that can be used to trace them back to her, but even so she feels vulnerable now, feet bare, without them.
He's already nearly rounded the front of the car, movement stiff as he heads toward the door that leads out to the helicopter, when her temper sparks again and before she can stop it she's biting out, "Damn it, Sark, if you're angry—"
He turns his face fully toward her for the first time since they left the office, the man with the thin lips unconscious on the floor between them.
"Angry?" His voice is incredulous and hoarse.
She stares, shocked, as heat fills his eyes and she only has time to think, Oh, before the wall behind her is against her back, and his body is hard against her own, long fingers tight in her hair, yanking her head back.
"Sydney," he hisses, hot, into her neck, and her stomach rolls, her hips buck into him, and she moans.
He crushes his mouth to hers, and the way his tongue seeks hers is different—open, desperate, new. She grips his shoulders, to stay upright. His leg is pressing between hers, driving the prim black skirt up her thighs but not enough, not far enough.
"Skirt," she forces into words, "Sark, my—" and he lets out a strangled laugh that sounds almost like a sob as his hand moves from her hair to push it up, force it to her hips. His thigh presses hard then up against her, and she rides the muscle, hose rasping against her flesh. She's leaving a damp spot on his slacks.
The buttons pop from her shirt as he pulls it open, falling to skitter noisily across the concrete floor. She hears her own breath, harsh, shaky, as he releases her breasts to his hands and drops his mouth to suck. She curls around his head, presses her mouth to his hair and breathes in his shampoo and sweat, and muffles a moan. One of his hands is beneath her skirt; he hooks his fingers in the waistband of her hose and wrenches it down roughly, far enough to thrust his fingers inside her. She cries out and he buries his face in her throat, working his fingers deeper.
She feels exposed, the hangar so wide and tall around her, around them, and she lets her head fall forward, her eyes fall closed. Sark's fingers slide from her body as he laves her collarbone, presses his mouth to the shell of her ear.
"Turn around."
She's barely turned when she feels his body hot and close again, feels the hose rip, then his hands pulls apart her thighs as he moves between them, bumping up against her, pressing inside. She braces her hands on the cold concrete walls, arches her low back up; his movement inside her is stuttered, harsh, like his breath at the back of her neck, already fast, and she's jerked along with him in his desperation until she's on her tiptoes, keening, as he thrusts into her as hard as she can take.
One arm is banded across her chest, anchoring her to him, thumb hooked in her mouth, sour against her tongue. His other hand slides over her hips, her bottom, her thighs beneath the bunched fabric of her skirt, over her belly like he's searching for the swell that won't show for months. For a child. Their child.
Her head drops back, his thumb slipping from her mouth and rubbing across her lips, wet on her cheek. He mouths her ear, her cheek, the side of her jaw, damp, hot, maddening. His zipper, the fabric fold of his open fly, is pressing into her. His fingers slide between her thighs and she's gone, spinning out of control, and when she comes back to herself the first things she feels are the concrete rough beneath her palms and Sark hot against her back as he spends himself inside her, fingers still pressed into her flesh.
Her knees are weak but she makes it to the helicopter—they make it to the helicopter. She rests her head on his shoulder as he lifts them from the ground, exhausted, grateful for the handkerchief Sark produced, which is now tucked between her thighs.
When they're up in the air, the countryside spread dark and peaceful out below them, he asks her, softly, "Why didn't you tell me?"
She closes her eyes and takes a breath, two. Her head still rests on his shoulder. "It's not—I'm not even sure. I'm only a few days late."
He's quiet in response but his hand finds hers and squeezes it. "Sleep if you need to," he says finally, pulling her hand to his lips.
-.-
She dreams about bassinets. She dreams about baby powder and alphabet blocks.
She dreams about pain that cramps through her middle in hot rolling waves.
She dreams about a river of blood and when she wakes, helicopter descending, she's stained Sark's handkerchief rust and brown.
-.-
"I want children with you, Sydney," Sark says quietly, back in their own bed, back in their own home. He's curled around her body, spooned against her, his hand light on her bare stomach beneath her white whisper-thin tank, above the line of her cotton underwear, their fingers threaded together.
She's worn out and wrung out, still damp in places from the shower she took to clean herself up; she spent too long under the spray, trying to wash away her irrational sense of loss. She shifts in his arms until she can see his face over her shoulder. His eyes are grave, and they stay that way as she studies them.
He reaches past her to the nightstand and then hands her a small, dark object. As her hand closes over it she recognizes the material as leather; it's a wallet. Furrowing her brow, she opens it. Inside is a photo—a girl, around six or seven, with blond hair. It takes her a few moments, but she realizes she recognizes it, from a plane ride more than two years ago. Robert Hiddlestone's niece.
Her stomach knots; she's not sure she wants to hear what he will say next.
"She isn't mine," he says, but even so there's something heavy still within her chest. "Her mother thought she might be. I believe I was the best of the likely prospects, alarmingly enough. I was nineteen, and Irina was furious with me for being so careless. She had it checked, of course, the moment the child was born. The results were negative." He falls silent, and she lets him. "But I'd already spent nearly six months, believing—"
"Believing you were responsible," she finishes for him, softly. Tears sting in her eyes.
"It was more than that," he corrects her. "Sydney—I became . . . attached. And even once I knew the truth it was . . . difficult to let go."
She finds his hand with her own again and her fingers tighten on his convulsively; she's still holding the wallet open with her other hand.
"Irina noticed, naturally. She brought me into her private study, and she told me about you, and about Nadia. What it had been like to hold you. How it had felt to leave you. How Nadia had been taken from her. It changed the way I saw her. To her, love was a strength—even though she knew she'd given up the right to love you. She . . . suggested I consider adopting a similar attitude toward the child." He moves their linked hands, touches a finger to the plastic covering the photo.
"What happened to her?" Sydney asks, because it's easier than talking about Irina. If Sark had been nineteen, the girl would be older than this now. Twelve, thirteen nearly.
"She grew up. She's wanted for nothing, she nor her mother; I ensured they were satisfactorily fed, clothed, and housed. And there's a fund set aside for her secondary schooling should she choose to avail herself of it."
"And you keep her picture."
"I used to. Her mother sent me letters, with school photos. They were—Ella and her mother were what I imagined, the rare moments in which I imagined a family of my own." He lifts her fingers to his lips, presses them briefly, meeting her eyes. "Now I have you."
She lets her breath out slowly, releasing the tension she's been holding for the last two days. "I'm glad," she manages through the emotion that's closed her throat tight in its place.
"You'd make a wonderful mother, Sydney," he murmurs against her ear, and she laughs, shakily, looking away, and wonders, "Would I?"
She hadn't thought that far ahead in a long time, not since back when things between her and Vaughn were simple, not since before she'd died and lost two years of her life. Settling down, having children—they hadn't seemed like things she'd had the option of for so long. And now Sark was telling her she'd been wrong, that she could have that, that they could have that. That he wanted it.
"We could turn the study into a nursery." His mouth is soft, urgent on her neck. "We could argue about who has to change the diapers."
She threads her fingers even more tightly through his as she turns to look at him again. "Okay," she says softly.
The look on his face is awed, wariness battling with delight. "Truly?"
She nods, smiles shakily—"Yes"—and turns, laying the wallet back on the nightstand and pulling him closer in behind her.
"I love you," he tells her as she closes her eyes and lets the tears slip from beneath her lids, wetting her cheeks, still, unexpectedly, smiling.
-.-
When their daughter is born a year later, it is after fourteen hours of labor; nothing ever did come easy to them. They name her Nadia.
She is, after all, the reason they came together in the first place.