Chapter Twenty-two: Die Trying

Michael gripped the steering wheel, doing his best to stare straight ahead. It wasn't so hard. The only alternative was looking at Sydney, and when he looked at her, it was difficult to see anything but her betrayal.

Their escape had been harried, frenzied, bits and pieces of the events of the last year relayed as they packed. The children had been the most difficult thing to deal with. Seeing their presumed dead father after all this time was hardly an every day occurrence, and there hadn't been a lot of time to explain. Four hours into their drive, though, the two of them had finally calmed down and drifted off to sleep. Michael had gruffly told Sydney that she should do the same, but she merely sat, staring, like him, straight ahead, occasionally stealing glances at him when she thought he wasn't looking.

"Mike?" she asked after what seemed like an eternity of silence, her voice soft, tentative.

He didn't answer, didn't, in fact, acknowledge that she had spoken. He just stared ahead at the road, gripping the steering wheel even more tightly.

"Mike, how did you find me? My apartment, I mean."

"Banning," Michael muttered. She'd jotted Sydney's address down on a slip of paper and pressed it into his hand, kissing his cheek before she'd left him to do what she'd known he was going to do. She really could be quite sweet when she wanted to be. Maybe they'd have even had a future together, if Sydney didn't have such a tight hold on his heart.

"Oh." The tone of Sydney's voice was strained, surprised, jealous even. "Banning. Were you and she--"

"Doing what you and Sark had been doing for the last six months?" Michael snapped. "That's none of your damned business, Sydney."

Sydney's eyes widened, and she sat back against her seat, stunned. That's right, Sydney, Michael thought nastily. Think the worst. Picture us doing all of the things I've pictured you and Sark doing. Go ahead and wonder whether I told her she was beautiful, whether she moaned my name, whimpered it, screamed it. Wonder whether I enjoyed her like I enjoyed you. "Was he good?" he blurted.

Sydney's eyes grew even wider. "Excuse me?"

"Sark," Michael spat. He felt the anger as acutely as he had the moment Irina had given him the news. "Was he good enough to make you forget me?"

Sydney's eyes filled with tears, and for once, Michael didn't feel the urge to brush them away. "Don't be cruel," she said.

"Was he?" Michael demanded. He was being cruel, and he knew it, and he liked it. He wanted to hurt her as badly as she'd hurt him, make her suffer for her transgressions. "How did he worm his way into your bed, Sydney?"

"Michael--"

"Or did you seduce him?" he continued. "How did it start, Syd? Did you come up behind him at his desk after a rough meeting and start massaging his shoulders? Did you end up on his lap, wrapping your--"

"You don't want to do this, Michael," Sydney cut in, snapping her head to stare out the window.

"I think I do," Michael said roughly. "I think I need to know how you could-- replace me. Fuck him in a bed right down the hall from my children." He glanced quickly to the backseat to make sure they were still asleep. They were.

"I needed someone, okay?" A lone tear rolled down Sydney's cheek. "I needed someone who was everything you're not."

Michael wasn't quite sure what to say to that. She needed. There it was again, that phrase that was supposed to make everything all right, everything excusable.

"What about you?" Sydney asked harshly. "Did Brooke Banning's years of whoring for my mother turn her into a goddess in the bedroom?"

"I wouldn't know," Michael shot back. "I never slept with her."

A long silence from Sydney. "Oh."

"Oh, I wanted to," Michael assured her. "I just-- couldn't. Even after I learned what you'd been doing with Sark, I just couldn't bring myself to do it."

"Saint Michael," Sydney whispered.

Michael looked at her sharply. "Would you be happier if I said I had slept with her?"

Sydney sighed. "Of course not," she said, running a hand back through her hair. "It's nice that one of us could survive the other's death without completely destroying himself."

A long silence hung between them. "Why did you want me with you, Michael?" Sydney asked after a long moment. "You obviously find what I did completely inexcusable, why didn't you just snatch up the kids and take off?"

Almost in spite of himself, Michael took one hand from the wheel to take her hand. "I still love you, Syd," he said, almost regretfully. "I'm still angry and I'm going to do horrible things to you. I'm going to make you feel guilty and act as if I'm doing you a favor for taking you back. But I still love you." He locked eyes with her for one brief moment. "Need you."

She unlocked her seatbelt and slid up next to him on the bench seat, resting her head on his shoulder. He didn't pull away. "I need you too, Michael," she whispered. "So much."

He let one arm slip around her shoulders, needing her close to him even as he wished he didn't.

"My mother's going to find us, Michael," she whispered.

"I know," he responded. "But we have to try, Syd. We have to try to get out from under her thumb."

"Oh, Michael," she said woefully. "We know that's not possible."

He wanted to disagree with her, to tell her that somehow, some way, they would be free from Irina Derevko. Deep down he knew it wasn't true, though.

They'd died trying the first time.