A/N: It been so long I know, I'm so sorry! Well here it is, alright! Here a new music group I have to introduce…T.A.T.U. It's this Russian pop duo, there really great. Look them up, they are a mix of pop and techno, something to be seen during Syd's crazy dance club missions.
A/N2: To SUSAN! Luv you honey!
Sydney awoke in a hospital room full of sweet smelling mixture of lilacs and roses. She had smelled that aroma before, a perfume that only captivated all her senses in one stir of emotion. She didn't think it thoroughly as she pulled herself to sit up and saw the artificial light from the hallway and the windows open to the California's cool breeze.
As her vision got clearer, she saw the room filled with flowers that her friends must have given her. Lilacs by the window, roses at her side, daisies on her dresser, and other sorts of wild flowers she couldn't name by heart.
Ring…Ring…Ring
Sydney saw the little convertible flap phone and flipped it open letting it rest by her ear.
"Darling, you really should be resting." His thick British accent held sarcasm and concern, which surprised Sydney since only Sark could address her with such a mix of sentiment.
"Too late." Sydney's voice cracked since she hadn't received her coffee to arouse her senses fully. She began to take her IV out since she thought it held no purpose.
"I wouldn't advise on doing that love." She let her hands rest on her lap as her head tilted to the side. She knew he was around, his voice was too warm to be far away. She smiled as she looked around the room.
"Get in here." Sydney spoke, he was standing with a bouquet of white roses leaning against the frame of the doorway with his own flip cell phone and dressed in the regular Armani suit. He smiled and walked in giving the roses to her and kissing her forehead.
"I was worried about you." He smiled as he sat on the bed, placing a lock of hair behind her ear. She smiled at the affection he showed her and she smelled the roses.
"You don't have to be." She smiled up at her handler who held her waist, clenching her curve as if it was protecting her. She didn't see it as breakage of protocol since Sark seemed in the run of things, people loved him, feared him, and got what he wanted. He always got what he desired. "They smell nice."
"Well, Sydney that is what I do with my possessions." Sark said saying it as sweet as he could. "You know I care about you." He said moving his hand to rest on her stomach and rubbed his thumb back and forth in a circular motion.
"I do Ethan, I care about you too. Yet your discernment for protocol isn't as impressive as your affection for your asset is." Her tongue lathered in intelligence and sophistication made him laugh. She looked around the room among the flowers and her eyebrow raised. "Who sent all the lilacs?" The lilacs smelled of French perfume that was far too recognizing. She analyzed the scent as she remembered and the emotion she was feeling.
"What is it?" Sydney stood from the blankets and walked to the vases of lilacs and started to go through all the flowers looking for a card. He sat calmly and let her smell the flowers she received.
"I know that perfume…it was discontinued in the late seventies, my mother loved that smell." She investigated the flowers searching for a card; Sark hesitantly stood up and came to her side guiding her back to the bed. "My mother never liked the smell of flowers so she put this very rare and potent perfume in the vase and even after the lilacs died out the scent made the house smell so beautiful." She smelled the flowers letting her eyes close in the memory.
"I…I bought the flowers," he said hesitantly. Sydney turned around and raised an eyebrow.
"I thought you brought those flowers." She looked backed at the white roses on the bed; Sark scratched his head and smiled.
"I didn't know if you like lilacs, and I know every woman loves roses." He explained, covering up for the mess, she wasn't allowed to know, not yet, that wasn't the plan.
"You did…but what about the perfume? I don't recall telling you." She stared at him waiting for an answer.
"I have no idea? Maybe it just the way lilacs are to you." She shrugged and let him guide her back to the bed.
"I'm sorry I wasn't able to get the disk to you, the guards caught me by the rose garden almost sprained my ankle on those rocks." her face fell to disappointment to surprise. He shrugged and smiled at the same time.
"We acquired the disk from your father." Her face fell to disappointed to surprise.
"You knew?" She hissed.
"Apparently the agency did, though I didn't." It was an obvious lie Sydney could have spotted if her emotions weren't caught up with this Mr. Sark.
"Oh," her mouth dropped and as she leaned her head back. "For years I had an impression of a man who took care of business, put my interest first, after I saw him in Berlin I know everything I had designed in my mind was false. He badgered me for the disk to go to damn CIA; he didn't care about what happened to me! He wanted it just for the CIA. And you say the agency knew!" She hissed taking in a pleasure of seeing Sark unpleased.
"I'm so sorry that had to happen like that." He was now totally confused with his employer's plans.
"Why? Why did he have to do that? This changes everything, I saw a father not a CIA agent. Just a common man trying to get by with a daughter." He placed his palm on top of her head and felt the warm radiating. He leant in to kiss her, their real first kiss. But his cell phone beeped and he knew his time was over, he moved to the side of her cheek and kissed Sydney softly.
"I have to go to Moscow tonight to analyze the disk, I'll see you tomorrow night? I have a nice dinner set up for us?" He figured.
"I would like that." He smiled and walked out of the door.
As soon as he did, Sydney's father came in, cold and detached. He offered her the flowers of daisies by holding it out in his hand; she smiled warmly and placed them aside of her with the white roses.
"I wanted to say…" He started; she reached her hand and dismissed his words.
"Dad, you have your secrets and I have mine. I want to be loyal to you, and I will but I will never tell anyone." She reassured him, he nodded knowing what she would and wouldn't do. He knew so much of her life was destroyed by her mother's death. She knew that his death would take more of a toll on Sydney than it did as a child. "But I am very displeased with you right now…" She hissed. He swallowed and knew that it wasn't going to be pleasant kisses and hugs.
"I want you to know Sydney, what ever you do, I love you." He looked to his daughter's eyes and he caught sight of what he did not want to see. "I always believe we have choices, it was always a choice to go into SD-6 or not. But sometimes you can be mislead or tricked, and I'm not blaming you but Arvin Sloane. No matter what Sydney, there is a choice in any decision now I'm giving you a choice of erasing that choice, I'm offering a place in witness protection." He sat inaudibly waiting for an acceptance or a denial.
"I…I can't do that dad." She chokes out, oh how she wanted to escape the spy life. How she wanted to escape her friends, wanted to even escape her love for Ethan, wanted to escape everything because it felt so fake, it felt wrong. But then she would have been killed if she went without word.
Jack nodded and kissed Sydney goodbye on the cheek. She didn't want the discussion to end so soon but there was no way of Jack coming back to her. It was just the way things were.
***
During the following weeks, she was on vacation but she knew it wouldn't last; she was called in the office again. Sark had missed their date due to the fact that the disk had fallen out of their hands, he didn't want to worry her, telling her with a very bad flu had no result. No, she didn't worry but instead wracked her brains out trying to get a hold of Sark for an update more so what the hell was on that disk.
She returned to work with a fabricated smile, nothing more nothing less.
Sydney Bristow walked into Credit Dauphine with her purse in hand. It seemed like the purse went with anything so she carried it around everywhere. A bit dangerous but she loved that bag; she walked in smiling like any other day. She went to her desk and put her coffee on the table.
She walked into the conference room and there was her father, sitting and waiting patiently. She smiled down on him and walked to her seat across from Dixon. Sloane came in with the folders and sat down in his ill-tempered mood.
"We have a situation, when Agent Bristow was in Berlin the disk traveled though FTL communications. They're about to sell it off tonight through many Russian government officials that had KGB connections."
"If they had it so long, why are they now auctioning it off?" She asked him taking the folders that were being handed down the table.
"We didn't know they had it until two nights ago when message came though the one of our SD cells in Sicily." She opened the folder up and saw what to be known as FTL's entire apparent meetings warehouse where the auction will take place. She smiled wryly as she closed the folder on the table and looked up.
"There more, there is a rumor going around that these FTL agents are reconstructing the KGB council. Sydney, you and Dixon will travel to Moscow tonight have to record the meeting and see where the disk goes, it a threat to national security."
Sydney smiled as she got the kick out of Sloane's insincere and untrue quotes when this information would go to the destruction of not only the United States but also the entire humanity.
"When do we leave?" Sydney asked.
"Tonight." Her father told her, she nodded as the meeting was dismissed but she never left her seat so did her father. He waited and pulled out his pen and alarmed it, and Sydney questioned his action.
"We have one minute safe." He told her, she smiled in irony and looked down knowing he was going to do the talking.
"Here," He reached and gave her a small card of white. Her face frowned, as she knew it was a recruiting number, he couldn't take a clue. "When ever you have a problem or a situation, call this number, and we have it fixed. Anything you want." He offered. She denied the offer by sliding it back to Jack on the table.
"I couldn't…I can't accept this." She said if she was referring to a diamond necklace or a large tip.
"Take it, Sloane has many of his agents terminated just by a slip. Call this number whenever you think you're in danger. Please take it…from father to daughter." He passed the card back as the pen beeped with a red light, she sat dumbfounded as he sat up and left. She quickly took the card and placed it in her purse.
***
"A business trip! Sydney you just got out of the hospital!" Francie yelled as Sydney started to pack, but not much since she was staying for only a night to record this apparent auction. She packed only the things she could take along so Francie wouldn't be so suspicious. She nodded at Francie comment as she zipped up her little case after adding her toothbrush and mint flavored paste.
"And tell me again how come when ever you go on a business trip you end up with some kind of sprained ankle or bruise?" Will ask.
"Because I'm a spaz." Sydney figured, Will took that into consideration but Francie didn't buy it. "Come on you know how I always fall down the stairs or forget to tie my shoe laces. It just when ever when I'm on a business trip it happens at the same time. You know how I act when I'm in a new surrounding." She gave out for them to buy it.
"Look all I'm saying is that it doesn't sound like you Sydney, you always the great, smart, unbelievable sweet and innocent girl who comes home like she just competed in the woman's national roller derby. You know? I'm just think this isn't the right job for you. First you're an Insurance Accountant, then you're a International Banker, but you won't quit but yet you still want to be a teacher." Sydney felt a little hurt and turned around to fumble with things that had nothing to do with packing. Francie knew she hit a nerve and Will knew it too.
"Sydney just quit, for us? You can be so much more than a boring banker, you're so smart, you could be so much more to this world." Will pressured her. If only they knew I really am doing so much for the world, if they only knew. Sydney ignored the pressure to tell them.
"You don't get it guys, this is what I crave to go to different countries and see new people that I would never meet in America. This is my time…my opportunity to do something so great that it can change the world. We help so many people guys, so many people. Just let me do what I want to do right now because it makes me happy…it makes me happy."
Though she had just lied to herself, before it was glamour and excitement now it was to the point she was scared to wake up in the morning, scared to go to sleep at night. Scared to breathe or blink for one second because she knew if her cover had been blown she knew that last second could be her last. It was not the fear of the last second; it was the fear of that last second not lasting long enough.
Will and Francie looked at each other ashamed of their behavior, they knew Sydney was shunned by her Father never being ever accepted or loved fully. Now they knew they saw her happy, accepted, and most of all fulfilled. Sydney didn't truly wanted to be an English teacher but just to keep her mother's memory alive, this was the really Sydney, the true Sydney. But how they were misled.
"I have to go guys, I'll see you tomorrow hopefully." She exited out of the house kissing Will and Francie on the cheek without them saying goodbye as she backed out of the driveway.
She kept on trying to call Sark to inform him of her mission and to receive her counter mission. But the phone kept on ringing; now Sydney was fully pissed off.
***
She sat down next to Dixon on the plane to Moscow, calm and relaxed. Ever since that argument of some sorts happened that evening she was battling all the possibilities of Francie and Will knowing of her status. Sark would yell at her to tears for something so irresponsible but what if Sark saw it in her point of view. She just wondered what if?
So she started the conversation on that topic she knew he could relate to.
"Have you ever thought about…you know about telling your family about being CIA?" Sydney spoke he quickly responded by narrowing his eyes and questioning why Sydney would come up with something so negligent.
"Of course not, they think I'm a normal banker and that the way it should stay…for their safety Sydney." He told her.
"It's hard living a lie, it so hard to tell your best friend that you fell down a flight of stairs for that broken arm that you received fighting off a sniper."
She spoke about herself in a third person, he nodded understand but not fully indulging in her worries.
"Syd, hey kiddo, think of what your doing for your country. So what if you have to live a secret? Think of what you're doing? Think of all the good, what a little lie going to do?"
She swallowed and wanted to shake him until his head cleared, a life of a lie was unreal. He was working for the enemy and that qualified him to be an enemy. She wanted him to realize that lying your life away wasn't a way to live. She smiled walking into K- Directorate, because she knew they wouldn't lie to her. They all cared about her.
Her employer cared. Every holiday, every birthday was a present just for her. On her twentieth birthday she received a beautiful ring from the twenties with a garnet stone in sterling silver engraved with an art deco design. Her next birthday was a small vase of dark red roses, which had lasted over an unbelievable three months and had a strong scent of French perfume that sunk in her whole apartment. Her nineteenth Christmas she had a large present shipped from Moscow, which inside had an antique gold box garnished with green jewels which Will swears was real emeralds. She disagreed though; who would send a real gold antique music box with real emeralds?
They spent an hour trying to find a way to open this mysterious round box. A little button on the back popped open the top and two dancing figures of Nicholas and Alexandra, the last Tsar, came from the bottom of the small box and danced and played a song she subconsciously knew. Will did a little investigating and found it was made during the turn of the century, to celebrate the wedding of the Tsar. Few were made and most of them went to the imperial guests of the wedding, only five were known today including hers.
She always wondered why she was given these gifts but it was hard to send them back, since the rare things amazed her. She got mostly Russian things though. But no gift could compare to the little porcelain Galena doll in Russian attire that her mother gave her when she was three. She could still remember opening that box at the hospital she when she had pneumonia, her mother stayed everyday grading papers or reading to her.
"Sydney we're here."
Dixon called out from her thoughts and left the airport to the warehouse.
***
Sydney started down by hanging on the fourth floor of this old industrial warehouse where all she could smell were thick pollution by the factories and the heavy sent of cigars. She felt like she was going to get sick from her wire being twisted from her harness and at the same time watching a couple of men auction off a disk that had no value to her personally, but so many people wanted that disk she couldn't help but wonder.
If it weren't for these communist who wanted to resurrect the KGB, she wouldn't be here. She would be home resting like the doctor told her to, not one person that knew of her job told her to rest…except Sark.
That what made Sark different, he was totally infatuated with her and a part of Sydney knew it. She thought it was just as another emotion he added to her double agent status, nothing that was going to end up serious.
She held the camera to the window as steady as she could. But she felt her stomach drop as he made his way beautifully into the room. This mysterious man stood in front of the five men who were interested in this disk.
"Gentlemen have a seat." He offered the chairs behind the old broken wooden table but they refused.
"Get down to business Sark." Sydney swallowed hard as she kept it steady; she didn't know what was going on. Why was Sark here with these men?
"My employer received the disk unsatisfied with the codes, and since you worked with The Man the agency agreed to allow a special bidding." He explained, Sydney kept her eye on Sark not blinking as she waiting for an explanation in his words.
"What does I-" Sark raised his hand and Sydney distinguish a Glock 85 with silencer. Before she could blink in disorientation the man was shot flying backward over the table and on the floor where crimson could be seen, thick and dark. She was set back in awe and felt her harness uncomfortably shifted but she didn't pay attention. Her attention was on the one she fell in love with, her handler, a murderer.
"I was requested that my employer name stay strictly between your own souls, and only be spoken The Man. If you cannot keep it to yourselves my employer would go as far as to ruin your social standing as it is today." He explained. Sydney was taken back again, not the person who lovingly sent her flowers when the holidays arrived. She didn't know what to think anymore. Totally confused she listened closer to the conversation.
"That can be followed Mr. Sark, what is so special about this disk and these codes?" One of them asked calmly.
"These codes go to different men who could be used at your own disposal such as Colonel Winters, Mister Layette, and Senator Peterson." It seemed like the eyebrows came up closer and smiles appeared.
"What would we exchange in this…trade?"
"Your piece of the Rambaldi's artifact that you acquired during the year." Sark said calmly.
"You crazed." One of the man's thick accent took a hold of his English.
"No, just convinced that you would want these men for your own."
"And the chance of being caught exchanging with the lead directors of a Communist intelligence agency? You have to get us proof that these codes do belong to those men." He said, soon he fell back with a hit by one of Sark's bullets. Sydney squinted in pain and jerked back and before she knew it she was falling into a glass window in the building next door. Scared and shocked she got up and began running avoiding being seen.
She began to call Dixon when she learned her earpiece must have fell out. She knew was on her own. She began running still with part of her harness on and the tape in one hand running down the cold alleyways behind factories. She couldn't stop running finding out the truth, she still could have heard them wrong, but she doubted it. She didn't know what to do, she was lonely, and she never felt this lonely before.
As she was turning on a corner and found her way to a pay phone, she pulled out the card she had in her pocket and dialed the numbers that her father gave her earlier that day. Before she knew it she was being picked up in two minutes and soon she was back home being held in her Father's arms tightly.