* * *
* * *
Day FiveShe woke slowly, lazily - content with the weight of the head against her shoulder, the warmth of another body sprawled beside her. Her fingers twined through his short hair, curved softly around his skull. He moved then, arm tightening around her waist, face nuzzling closer to her own. She really could get used to this, she thought as she listened to the light rain drumming on the roof.
"You're not asleep," she said as Sark stirred lethargically, brushing his nose against her jaw.
"No point getting up just to watch it rain."
"We should have done something else yesterday when we had the chance."
"I liked what we did yesterday."
"That's because you're a lazy bastard."
"Some of it took energy."
"Most of it didn't actually require you to get out of bed, though."
"I've nothing against continuing that trend."
She smiled and ran her fingers through his hair again, wishing absently that it was long enough to dishevel. He sighed and nestled closer.
"I have to go home tomorrow," she said at last.
"No, you don't."
"I'm going home tomorrow," she amended and wasn't surprised
when he failed to disagree a second time.
"I suppose then everything will be back to normal."
"This isn't normal?" She snorted at his
overly-innocent tone.
"No, Marty, it isn't. For instance, calling you Marty is just unnatural."
"I've always thought so."
"Do you know how insane they'd think I was if I ever called you that in a briefing? Especially when it isn't a name that shows up in your dossier."
"Really? How negligent of your researchers."
"You know, we never have discussed why you lied to me." She nudged him off her shoulder and rolled over to frown down at him.
"I contravened the letter of your requirement, not the spirit of it," he said, grinning wryly. "You didn't really want to know what name was on my birth certificate. You wanted to know who I was."
"And this is who you are?"
"You know me better than anyone." The impishness seeped out of his expression as he reached up to twist a wayward strand of her hair around his fingers.
* * *
"How is this supposed to work?" she asked. "How are we supposed to pretend nothing has changed?"
They were both lying on their backs, though Sydney's head rested in the hollow of his shoulder. The rain was still beating down on the tile roof, so they'd gone back to bed after breakfast. She wasn't inclined to complain.
"Nothing has changed," he told her. "I still think of you exactly the same way I always have."
"Always?" Something he'd said long ago rose in her memory. "My mother's surveillance photos… The first time you saw them. What did you think then?"
"You were Irina's daughter." She heard a faint echo of lingering fondness in his voice. "I thought you were beautiful and brilliant and deadly. SD-6 had already recruited you by then. Not long before, but long enough that I knew you'd probably be able to kill me if you tried hard enough."
"You have a serious kink in your system," she couldn't help noting.
"You can blame that on your mother, too. She set a very high… and uncommon standard for all other women in my life. Very few have measured up. You've managed tolerably well."
"Tolerably?"
"Clearly you're not quite the genius I'd been informed you were. And since you haven't managed to kill me yet, you aren't as lethal as one might have expected, given your training. Possibly you just haven't been properly motivated yet, though, so I'll withhold judgment on that for the time being." He traced the rim of her ear, the edge of her jaw. "I must admit, however, that you are just as beautiful now as you were then. Perhaps more so. I knew you'd be a challenge," he continued. "You always looked so stubborn in those pictures. Determination -your mother called it- but it was stubbornness nonetheless. I can't imagine which of your parents you got that from. And I knew you'd be fiercely passionate. You never do anything half-heartedly. You throw yourself completely into whatever cause you choose - regardless of how unwise or undeserving it might actually be."
"You decided all that when you were fifteen?"
"It's been refined a bit over the years - but essentially, yes."
"And did you ever think that you and I might one day end up… here?"
"It crossed my mind occasionally. We live in a very small world," he said. "People like us don't fit in just anywhere. I suppose I hoped that should our paths ever cross, you'd see something that fit."
It was more than a little disconcerting, she thought. He had admired her for nearly a decade, considered a relationship with her, and yet was still capable of holding a gun to her head if the situation demanded it. She wasn't certain she would be able to do the same. She wasn't certain she wanted to be someone who could.
"You don't belong in my world."
"No," he agreed. "But you don't exactly belong there anymore either, do you?"
"All I ever wanted was a normal life."
"Normal is just a habit. Wouldn't you rather wish to be happy - whatever the circumstances?"
She laughed weakly at that. "You think you could make me happy?"
"No one can make you happy, Sydney. That's entirely up to you. Until you decide what it is you really want, you're not going to be happy with me… or with anyone else."
It was an annoyingly insightful comment. "Where'd you pick up the psycho-babble?"
"Oprah," he replied. "There's very little else on American television in the afternoons. The Agency let me have a small set for a while - until I decided that I really would rather stare at cement walls than watch that drivel."
* * *
"What are we going to do if it ever comes down to me or you?"
"May the best man win," Sark quipped easily.
"I'm being serious." She propped her chin on his shoulder and scowled.
"So am I. If you insist on going back to the CIA, anything less than business-as-usual in the field is going to make all the wrong people suspicious."
"You've been deliberately screwing up missions to help me ever since the Covenant sprang you," she protested.
"I've been screwing them up to help me," he corrected her firmly. "Any benefit to you has been entirely incidental. Don't sentimentalize the situation. You know I haven't changed. What would happen if you had the opportunity to stop me from doing something that you fundamentally disapprove of, but you didn't because you were afraid of hurting me?" He fixed her with a steady gaze. "You'd hate me - which I'm quite accustomed to. But you'd hate yourself as well."
"You think it would be better for me to hurt you?"
"No," he laughed. "Not for me. But I'd respect you more if you tried. If you're not going to be the best partner I've ever had, I'll have to demand that you be my best opponent." He gave her a wry grin and kissed the tip of her nose. "Do you really want to know what would happen if it ever comes down to me or you?"
"That was the question."
"Fine. Should that day ever come," he said. "We'll have three options. One, I kill you because I'm better and faster and you let your guard down." Sydney shivered at his words and felt him shrug. "Should that occur, however, you can take what comfort you will from the fact that I'd likely not long survive you. There's a ridiculously long list of people who would be more than eager to usher me into the afterlife for that particular transgression." He shifted to settle his arms about her more securely.
"Two," he continued. "You get extremely lucky and manage to kill me."
"Lucky, my ass. I clean your clock every time we fight."
"You win when it suits me. Stop interrupting. So, I have a very bad day and you kill me - with no regrets for having actually been better than me in that one instance."
"Does the word 'arrogant' mean anything to you at all?" she teased, trying not to read too much into his eccentric attempt at easing her potential guilt over his hypothetical death.
"It's only arrogant if it's unfounded," he replied blithely. "And then there's option number three… When the time comes, we both put down our weapons, say 'fuck 'em all', buy ourselves an island in the South Pacific, and raise little blue-eyed children to be pearl divers."
"Pearl divers?" she repeated in startled amusement at his unexpected whimsy.
Sark stared thoughtfully at the whitewashed ceiling. "No, perhaps not. The images of Grandpa Jack and Grandma Irina are just too frightening to contemplate. On second thought, we should just go back to the epic Rambaldi-bashing plan. I really don't have much use for children."
Sydney dissolved into laughter at her own mental image of her parents as grandparents. The prospect of having to explain to either of them who the father was brought on a second fit of giggles. "They'd kill you," she snickered.
"Who? Jack and Irina? Undoubtedly," he grinned back at her. "I'd like to think they'd spend long enough arguing about who'd get to do the honors, however, that I might manage to escape in all the chaos."
"And that's the most serious answer I'm going to get out of you about this?"
"That's the most serious answer there is." His expression sobered. "If there really is no other choice, Sydney, fight your hardest… or tell me you want to move to the beach."
"You know, you're not the first assassin to offer me a Pacific island," she said, looking away from him.
"So, what happened to the other fellow?"
She picked at the edge of the sheet. "I killed him."
"I see." He tugged the sheet out of her grip. "How do you feel about the Mediterranean, then? Because I'm not set on the Pacific."
* * *
"Where do you live?"
"We are not doing this again."
"It's a simple question."
"And you haven't thought any further about it, have you?" he asked. "I tell you where I live and the next time your director asks if anyone has intel on my current whereabouts… you'll say what?"
"Dixon asked me two weeks ago if I had any idea where you were. If I were going to turn you in like that, I would have sent a retrieval team down here in my place." She threaded her fingers through his short hair and gave his head a gentle shake. "I'm not a Girl Scout, Marty. You're a very bad influence."
He chuckled lightly. "I have a safe-house on every continent. I don't like any one of them better than the others. If you can find them, you're welcome to visit, but I'm not telling you where they are. After all, I had to find your flat on my own."
"Like that was difficult? I'm in the damn phonebook." She pushed him over as he snorted with strangled laughter.
* * *
They finally crawled out of bed late in the afternoon. Sark stoutly refused to cook, so they made sandwiches for dinner. He eyed her potato chips with distaste; she mocked his insistence on separate knives for the mayonnaise and mustard. The meal miraculously concluded without bloodshed.
It was still overcast outside and the humidity was relentless, so they remained indoors as the evening tide receded. Sydney found an old movie on the satellite television. The badly dubbed French made it even more amusing than the original had been - although perhaps not intentionally. Sark lay with his head in her lap, kept semi-conscious by her fingers playing idly through his hair. It felt absurdly normal, she thought - this oddly domestic scene. When the movie was over, she flicked off the television with the remote. Sark opened his eyes and smiled up at her lazily.
"Walk with me," she said, nodding toward the door that led to the beach.
"Outside?" he grimaced. "It's stifling."
"It's better now.
The local weather station just said so."
"What do they know? They're on the opposite side of the island."
"So, they're five miles away at the most? I never realized until recently that you're such a whiner. I guess we could just sit here and watch another movie."
"You are terribly manipulative," he complained as he sat up.
"Blame it on the company I keep. I think you're rubbing off on me."
"One can only hope."
Neither of them bothered to put on shoes before they headed out to walk along the strand. Sark seemed resigned to the fact that he was probably going to end up with wet feet. Sydney took his hand, this time more intentionally than she had the night before. He didn't even look surprised, just folded his fingers around hers as comfortably as if he'd expected it.
The sky was beginning to darken and stars winked through the thinning cloud cover. Ships' lights bobbed out in the harbor and the lights from the resorts and various beach bars gave them more than enough illumination. Other couples were out strolling as well. Each time a besotted pair passed them, Sydney found herself drawing closer to Sark in unconscious imitation. He gave her an understanding smile as their shoulders brushed together.
It hit Sydney suddenly that the man holding her hand was not Sark. This man beside her didn't exist anywhere outside this island, this moment. It was frightening to realize that he could remain this person if she wanted him to… And that he could vanish for exactly the same reason and she might never see him again. He was not the Covenant's errand boy or Sloane's unpredictable ally or even her mother's erstwhile director of operations. He more than just Sark the killer and Julian the not-so-dutiful son. Even Marty was just a splinter of who he really was. She had seen every aspect he had and the sum of all the parts. And she knew him.
He was a pace ahead when he realized that she had stopped moving. She hadn't realized it herself until she felt his tug on her arm and he turned back to face her. She couldn't read his expression, but hers must have been clear to him. He raised his hand to her cheek. She hadn't realized that there were tears either until his fingers brushed over them.
They walked slowly back to the villa in silence, though she chuckled softly when they turned around and he offered her his other hand to avoid wading in the deeper water himself.
* * *
"Sydney," he sighed before covering her mouth with his own. His kiss was gentle and sweet, full of promise and regret, and unlike anything she had tasted from him before.
This was not fucking Sark or even having sex with Marty. There was none of the reckless playfulness that had always been between them; not selfish lust that they had sated or thoughtless comfort that they had taken from one another. There was, instead, a deliberateness to every movement, a world of unspoken meaning in every touch. Every kiss, every caress, every thrust was memorized, for Sydney didn't know when -or even if- this could ever happen again.
"Martin," she cried against his shoulder.
* * *
She lay in his arms, too tired to move - though whether her fatigue was more physical or emotional, she couldn't have said. Her exhaustion was irrelevant, though. She had no desire to change her position, more than content to remain in his sleepy, possessive embrace.
"Dushen'ka," he murmured. "Dusha moya."
The endearment was so quietly breathed that she almost wasn't certain she'd heard it, wasn't certain she might have misheard it. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and hoped that the tears didn't leak onto his chest. He was either talking in his sleep once again or he had assumed she was the one asleep.
My darling. My heart, my soul.
The incentives he'd said he could never offer as inducement to stay.
It didn't change anything. She had already made up her mind.
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