The three bottles of wine she had picked up on her way home were the best purchase she had made in months. She had off half of them drank before she was home an hour. It was the only thing she could think of to deal with all the thoughts racing through her brain. She had never dreamed when she returned to L.A. that she would be told the CIA didn't have room for her anymore.
"Me! Sydney Bristow!" she yelled at no one as she marched around her apartment. "I'm the sole reason that they're still making progress on the whole Covenant thing. How dare they fire me?"
There was a soft tap at her front door. She ran over and whipped the door open.
"What are you doing here, Marshall?" she asked through squinted eyes. "Have they sent you to spy on me?"
"You know they would never let me spy on people. I'm not good at it," Marshall said as he entered her home. "I heard the news and wanted to check on you."
"Oh, I'm fine. Wine?" she asked.
He shook his head no. Sydney shrugged and chucked the empty glass at the wall.
"I always wanted to do that," she said with a laugh as she flung herself on the coach. "It's what they do in the movies. What are you doing here, Marshall?"
"I came to see how you were doing," Marshall said. "And obviously you're not doing that well. Maybe I should call your father to come get you and take you back to his house."
"I don't need my father," Sydney said forcefully. "What are you dong here Marshall?"
"Listen, Syd. I really think you need to go to sleep. I'll stay with you tonight and I can explain what I'm doing here in the morning." Marshall stood Sydney up and gently helped her into her bedroom. She smiled at him and patted his head.
"Good Marshall," she murmured before she fell asleep.
"Yeah, good Marshall," he said as he shut off the light. He walked back into the front room and sat down. "What just happened?"
He had intended to pop in to see Sydney really quickly and make sure she was all right. He never thought that she might actually not be all right. The Sydney he knew wouldn't have been thrown off too much by what the CIA had done to her. She would have just quickly come up with a plan to prove how much they needed her.
He sighed as he lay down on the couch. Thank god Carrie was at her mother's for the night or else he didn't know what he would do to explain why he had been roped into sleeping on Sydney Bristow's couch.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Sydney woke up to an ear-splitting headache. "Too much wine," she muttered as she threw a pillow over her face. She told herself that drinking might not have been the best solution to her problem as her ears keep buzzing in pain. Suddenly the last few events of the previous night came into focus in her mind. "Marshall?" she called as loud as she could manage with her headache.
"I'm right here, Syd," Marshall called from the kitchen. Within seconds he was by her side with a yellow greenish brownish looking drink.
"What is that?" she asked as she peeked from underneath her pillow.
"This is a special Flinkman recipe. Guaranteed to cure hangovers and mild arthritic pain."
Sydney grabbed the glass and sipped it hesitantly. She smiled at her friend who looked quite scared of what her reaction may be. "Looks like crap, but it doesn't taste that bad. Thank you, Marshall." She sat up and motioned for him to sit next to her. "So, I think I'm sober enough for you to explain your visit last night."
"I was worried that the whole being fired thing wasn't sitting well with you."
"Which is obviously wasn't," she said with a laugh.
"And I wanted to let you know that the CIA took Eric Weiss into custody for questioning. They're acting on the intel you gave them yesterday. It looks like you were right about him."
"Of course I was right. When am I wrong?"
Marshall smiled at her in admiration. "Never."
The two sat in silence while Sydney finished her drink. She motioned for Marshall to stay put as she grabbed a change of clothes and went into the bathroom to take a shower.
When she returned a few minutes later, she saw that Marshall was still sitting on her bed but now he was obviously fidgeting. "What's the matter?" she asked.
"Well, I was wondering what you were going to do now that you're no longer with the CIA." Marshall pulled some papers out of his back pocket. "I picked you up some information. There are a few openings in the National Security Council or the FBI. I was hoping you would take a look at that. You might even find a job like Lauren's and then you'll still be working with the CIA."
Sydney smiled at him. She knew he was trying so hard to keep her future looking optimistic. "Don't worry about me, Marshall. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I know I'll be okay."
He smiled at her and then suddenly paled. "Carrie's going to kill me!" he yelled. "I was supposed to be at work five minutes ago. She'll worry herself half to death."
"Go ahead, Marshall."
He smiled at her. "You know my number, Syd. Feel free to call me if you need anything."
Sydney waved at him from the front doorway as she watched him bumble his way to the car. "I doubt Carrie will be that worried about you, Marshall," Sydney said to herself with a laugh. She shut the door, silently thanking him for cheering her up just a little bit.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
For hours after Marshall left, Sydney tried to weigh her options. She knew that it would be quite easy to follow his suggestion and get another job with a different US agency. But for some reason, she didn't really have a passion for any job except the one she had just been promptly dismissed from. So, that eliminated over half of her options.
She briefly thought about getting in touch with her mother. But she knew that route would never lead to anything productive. If her mother's organization were as dangerous as Irina always made it out to be, her mother would never dream of giving her a job.
A job as an English professor wasn't completely horrendous. But it wasn't her dream anymore. It hadn't been since she realized that her mother wasn't really an English professor but a KGB spy. Changes like that really tended to kill one's dreams.
Asking her father for help was an option but not really one she wanted to take. Her father would tell her to leave the CIA life behind and just move on. To push it all in her past. She couldn't do that. The work she had done with the CIA was one of the few things she could count on.
"Well, there is Sark..." she trailed off as she realized what she was suggesting to herself. "No. There's no way I can even consider that option. It's crazy."
She shook her head and tried to get back to the train of thought she had been on. But her mind kept coming back to idea of approaching Sark.
"There's no common sense to it," she murmured to herself as she watched the sun set outside her bedroom window. "Everyone in my life would be so mad when they found out I was working with Sark."
She stopped as she suddenly realized something. Most of the people that had previously been in her life were probably going to have little or no contact with her anymore. She wasn't a member of the CIA so they would probably choose to keep her out of their life for everyone's protection.
For the next hour she debated all the pros and cons of becoming involved with Sark professionally. True, she would never really be able to trust him. But he hadn't let her down yet. Everything he ever promised her, he came through with. He was a man of his word.
But the man he was happened to be the kind that wouldn't hesitate to kill you if you got in his way. Which wasn't really a positive thing. She had a feeling that he wouldn't ever really harm her. However, he was pretty good at putting on an act. For all she knew, the Sark that she had spent the last couple months with was all just another one of his aliases.
"This is the only option I have," she admitted to herself. "I have to take it. But it's not going to be as easy as calling him up. The CIA doesn't think I'm field ready. I have to prove that notion wrong if I'm ever going to get him to agree to this."
Sighing, she picked up her cell phone and made two calls. She had set the wheels in motion, and now she was fairly sure there was no way of stopping what she had started. It was almost nice to know she couldn't back out of it.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Jack Bristow knocked on his daughter's front door the next morning. He had received the voicemail she left on his phone only an hour earlier, having just returned from a mission in Atlanta. She had sounded almost frantic which didn't surprise him. He couldn't believe that Marcus Dixon had actually told Sydney the CIA didn't have room for her on the active agent roster. It was almost preposterous.
Sydney opened the door with her usual polite smile.
"It's nice to see that you're not too upset with the situation that Dixon put you in," Jack commented as he took off his coat.
"You should have seen me last night, Dad. I was a drunken mess. But I weighed out my options today. And the outlook seems pretty good." She led her father into the kitchen.
"What did you decide to do?" he asked as he took the offered cup of coffee.
"I'm going to go to work with Sark."
Jack was proud of the fact that he didn't spit his coffee out in surprise. "You are not going to work with that monster."
"Hear me out, Dad. I'm going to work with Sark to take down the Covenant. It's common knowledge now that is his current objective. So I won't be doing anything morally compromising. I don't think I could work with any other organization as every one I know is working on taking down the Covenant. Working with you or Mom on the sly isn't even an option. It would be too dangerous for you and for me. I can't freelance myself out. That would just be ridiculous. So working with Sark is the best option I have."
"That idea is the only thing ridiculous I hear in your explanation. The man is on the FBI's Most Wanted List."
"Which I seem to recall has been a place that both you and my mother have found yourselves throughout the years."
"Let's not drum up your mother and my past indiscretions. This is about you, Sydney."
"I'm going to work with Sark, Dad. You can't convince me otherwise. I just thought you would want to know. I don't intend to disappear off the face of the earth. Although you can't let the CIA know where I'm going. They'll never trust me again if they find out. Though they were the ones that pushed me into this whole thing."
"Agreed," Jack said. "What happens if you do work with Sark and the Covenant is destroyed? Will you just shift over to helping him on his other agendas?"
"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."
"And what makes you so sure that Sark will be willing to accept your help?" Jack asked.
"Because he knows how good I am. Something that I think the CIA has forgotten. He knows how good I am in the field and he now knows my skills as an analyst. Seems to me that he would have to be stupid to refuse the offer I'm going to give him."
"What offer are you going to give him?"
"I haven't really decided yet. I was hoping you might help me figure that out."
Jack's cell phone began to ring. Sydney motioned for him to answer it and sat by herself in the kitchen while he yelled at whomever had called him for a few minutes. When he returned to the kitchen, she knew what he was going to say before he even looked at her.
"You have to go into work. It's all right. I've figured out this much on my own. I can figure out the rest." She stood up and followed him back into the front room. She stuck her hands in her pockets and smiled at him. "This is probably it, Dad."
"What do you mean?" he asked as he slid his coat back on.
"I don't think I'll be spending another night in this house. Now that I've decided on a plan of action, I'm going to have to get working on it as soon as possible. Which means that I'm going to have to get to England as soon as possible." Sydney hoped that her father couldn't pick out the small lie she was telling him.
"Give me a call whenever you can. I want to be informed of everything that's going on. I'll keep it to myself unless it's a matter of your safety."
Sydney nodded and hugged her father. It was painfully obvious that he really cared about her, but she knew that there was no way she could stay as much in contact with him as he wished. It just wouldn't work.
She only had to wait ten minutes before there was another knock on her door. Smiling knowingly, she opened the door to a rather bewildered looking Marshall who was holding a box.
"That was the most bizarre phone call I've ever gotten, Syd. And believe me. I've gotten some weird ones."
Sydney laughed and offered a seat to Marshall. He threw the box he was holding onto the coffee table and relaxed back onto the couch. She sat down next to him and began to sift through the box, finally lifting out a stack of papers.
"So what is all this stuff for?" he asked her. "You owe me an explanation considering I just stole CIA property for you. Why are you so intrigued with Sark's current position?"
"I wish I could tell you, Marshall. I really do. I mean, you've been so great, getting all this stuff without any explanation and all. But I can't. It's for your own good, more so than mine. You could get in a lot of trouble if anyone found out you had any prior knowledge of what I'm about to do."
"Sounds dangerous. Maybe you should rethink whatever you came up with. It sounds way too reckless, and I was here two nights ago. I saw Reckless Sydney and it wasn't a fun sight."
Sydney laughed. "Trust me, Marshall. What I'm doing may be dangerous and reckless, but I have complete control over it. You know me. I can handle anything."
"That's true. Except maybe wine. You might not be able to handle wine."
Sydney smacked him on the arm. "Very funny, Mr. Flinkman." Sighing she stood up. "I hate to do this to you. I have to kick you out now. I have a lot of preparations that need to be made, none that you can be present for."
She pulled Marshall into a quick hug. "You've been a real friend to me. Always. Through everything. Don't think I don't know that."
Marshall blushed. He opened the door and stepped out onto the front stoop. "When will I see you again?" he asked.
"I don't know," she answered honestly. "Don't worry about me. I'm a tough girl. I can take care of myself. I'll be fine. Besides, I think you'll figure out what I'm up to rather quickly once I get it going. I'll pop up."
"You're scaring me slightly."
"I'm sorry for that, Marshall. To be honest, I'll probably scare you a lot more in the days to come. I'm going to have to do some things that you wouldn't expect me to do."
"Maybe I shouldn't be leaving you alone," he said as he made a move to step back into the house.
Sydney blocked his path. "I'll be fine. Please just leave before I change my mind and send all this stuff back with you."
"Good luck, Syd."
"Thank you," she said as she watched one of her last friends walked down the front sidewalk, get into his car, and drive away.
She was fully aware what she was about to do would alienate her from him and everyone else she had ever been close to, with the exception of her father. It was a price she had to pay to keep herself doing the very thing she had come to love so much.
"Once a spy, always a spy," she whispered to herself as she shut the door.
