"Someone's watching me," Sydney thought to herself as she slowly woke up the next morning. She wasn't surprised to find Sark standing in the doorway of her bedroom staring at her position on the bed. "What do you want?" she mumbled.
"We need to define a few things, Sydney," he said seriously. He entered the room and took a seat on the bed.
"I thought we did all the defining last night," she said as she threw a pillow over her head.
"I never knew you to be so grumpy in the morning." Sark pried the pillow off her head and out of her hands. "Seriously. We need to talk about us."
"What us? There is no us. You've made that clear on multiple occasions. So there's no need for you to disturb my sleep cycle to go over that again."
"I may have tried to define it, but you never did."
"I still have completely uncharacteristic feelings for you every once in a while. But I think I'm getting better."
"You're scrunching your eye again. Don't lie to me. For the first time ever, we actually need to have an honest conversation."
"We've had honest conversations many times before. You remember every time I told you I wanted to kill you? I was being pretty damn honest." When Sark didn't saw anything in return, she figured that he wasn't going to let her try to veer their conversation over to a more emotionally safe topic. "Listen. I told you before that I thought I was falling in love with you. Against my will, that's for sure. But all the same, it's still falling in love. I haven't worked that all out yet."
"As my business partner, we couldn't have the same relationship we had that last week when you stayed with me in London. It's not good for business."
"Really? I've never known you to be a man who liked to keep business and pleasure separately. Which is one of the benefits of our little tryst. I'm both business and pleasure."
"Yes, you are. But I can't get involved with you, Sydney. I can't. If I did, you would just end up getting hurt."
"Don't pull the I hurt everyone I touch angle on me. You're talking to the queen of that angle. I'd like you to name one person that I didn't hurt in some way." Sydney sat up in bed as she was starting to wake up and get enraged. "I shot my mother. I almost got Vaughn killed numerous times, and then I died on him. Francie's dead. Will's in Witness Protection, as I'm sure you know. I got my father put in jail when he tried to prove I wasn't dead. I turned Marshall and Dixon's worlds upside down when I helped take down SD-6. And I turned in the one friend I had left as a traitor to the US government."
"You never hurt me," Sark said quietly. "Not once."
Sydney was taken aback. For the first time ever, she couldn't form words to respond to Sark.
He decided to repeat himself to nail the fact home. "You never hurt me, and you probably never will. So that gives me one more hurt person than you have. Because I can guarantee that this partnership we're starting will probably end badly. The less you care for me, the easier it will be on you."
"I care for you already, so that shouldn't be a factor."
Sark stood up and walked to the other half of the room, preparing to leave. At the last second, he turned back to her. "I have one more question for you."
"Shoot."
"Is this really the place you want to be? Truly?" Sark held up his hand to keep her from answering right away. "Because from today on, I have to place all my trust in you. And I really don't want to find out somewhere down the line that you've been lying to me in an elaborate scheme to set me up to take a fall."
"You know you can trust me, Sark," Sydney said as she stood up. "This is the one place I had left to go, and honestly, I think this path would still be the one I had chosen even if I had other options. Right now, there's nowhere else I can think of to be."
Sark nodded and turned to leave. Sydney's voice held him back. "Can I ask you a question?"
He turned to tell her she could ask him anything she wanted but didn't have time to say a word before her lips were on his. The spark between them immediately flared up, and he admitted that he had vaguely missed the feelings she stirred up in him. He had almost forgotten how natural this felt.
Sydney kept the kiss light and innocent compared to the others they had shared. After a minute, she released the strong hold she had gotten on the front of his suit. She shoved him lightly so that he was standing in the hallway and grasped the door. As she shut it in his face, she stated, "Don't tell me that you don't feel anything for me."
Sark just stared at the door as it slammed and wondered what exactly he had just gotten into.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Sydney didn't see or hear from Sark for the rest of the day. Which was why she was so glad to hear a knock on her door around eleven o'clock that night.
"Thought you'd stay mad at me forever," she said as she opened the door to someone other than Sark. "Oh! Sorry. I was expecting someone else."
"I know. He sent his apologies that he couldn't keep your date tonight."
'Date?!?' Sydney thought to herself. 'When did he mention a date?"
The man continued. "He left this note for you at the front desk, and since you didn't come down to get it, my manager thought it would be prudent of us to deliver it to you."
Sydney could feel the man's disgust of having to play messenger boy. She whipped the note of his hand and sneered "If you think you're getting a tip for that, you're dead wrong" before she shut the door in his face.
She settled down on the bed and opened the note. It simply stated that Sark was taking his private jet out of Mexico at midnight and he wanted her to come with him. She almost panicked when she realized there was only an hour to pack and get to the airfield.
Sighing, she looked down at the ragged sweats she was wearing. There was a voice in the back of her head nagging her to change out of them and into a rather slinky, sexy looking dress. But with the way her earlier conversation with him had gone, she doubt he would appreciate the effort she was making.
"Sweats, it is," she muttered as she began to the little amount of stuff she had with her into a bag.
When she arrived at the airstrip, it was practically deserted. She chuckled to herself. Mexico had always seemed like a place where there would be constant traffic at night, legal or illegal. The car Sark had left for her in front of the hotel pulled her straight up to a rather sleek looking jet.
"The man travels in style," she commented lightly to the driver.
"Mr. Sark is one of our classiest customers."
"I'll bet," she muttered as she grabbed her bag and slid out of the car. "Thank you."
Taking a deep breath, she walked the few yards to the plane and quietly boarded.
Sark looked up from his laptop and greeted her. "Glad to see you got my note and could join me."
Sydney scowled at him. "Next time, I expect the courtesy of a telephone call instead of just a note. It was kind of rude."
"Which is exactly the kind of person I am, Sydney," Sark said, keeping his eyes glued to his laptop screen. "You should know that."
"What are you working on?" she asked as she took a seat next to him on the couch.
"A very interesting development in our mission provided by that wonderful little disk." He turned the laptop so that she could read what was on the screen.
"Taylor Cummings? I thought he was wrapped up in the Kindred, not the Covenant."
Sark wanted to laugh as he watched her scrunch up her face. "What's the matter?"
"Why does my life always sound like it's straight out of a comic book?"
"No, I don't think it's straight out of a comic book. I think it's more of a made for TV movie... you know my mother is a Russian spy and my boyfriend married another woman kind of thing."
"Honestly, I always thought of it more as a blockbuster movie in the theaters." She turned her attention back to the information on the screen. "I take it you want me to analyze him for weaknesses."
"It's one of your strong points, so I won't advise against it."
"So, what's with this guy then? He's a part of the Covenant?"
"Yeah. Turns out that he started out with the Covenant. He detached himself from that affiliation and formed the Kindred, as we both know. But he funded the formation of that organization with the Covenant's money. Therefore, it was my money that started the Kindred."
"And why does this affect our goal of taking down the Covenant?"
"Because Taylor Cummings is one of the main financial backers of the Covenant now. It seems that my 800 million can't take the Covenant as far as they want to go. We take care of Cummings, we deal the Covenant a nasty blow. After that point, they should almost self-destruct without much further effort."
Sydney nodded and pulled the laptop over to herself. After a few minutes of typing, she turned to Sark. "Do you think I can get one of these for my own?"
"That is yours. Do you think I would allow you such open access to my personal laptop and files?"
"We're partners. You should trust me."
"Give me time, Sydney. This whole situation is new to me." Sydney stared at him intently for a minute. "What?" he asked finally.
"You're not just talking about trusting me with your business dealings, are you?"
"I thought we were finished talking about that topic. We can't have any sort of romantic relationship if we're going to successfully bring down the Covenant. We both know that."
"No, that was your theory. Mine isn't like that at all. But then again you haven't really considered anything I've said in terms of this whole state of affairs. Which isn't surprising since most of the time I only see you as an arrogantly cocky bastard. And the times I'm not I consider you a pathetic excuse for a man who would do anything to avoid feeling."
"Rightfully so. I am all that and then some."
"Then there are those few times where I feel I get a glimpse into who you really are, or at least who you were before this life sucked you in. Those are what keep me coming back for more emotional punishment."
"You're wrong."
"No, I'm not. And you're scared because of it. I guess I should have seen this coming. I'm a glutton for punishment. I seem to love torturing myself with hopeless cases of love. My heart's been broken into a million pieces so many times. But unlike you, I can't keep it locked up inside me with no room to breathe."
"That's your Achilles' Heel, Sydney. You need to eliminate that emotion if you're going to stay alive while you work with me."
Sydney shut the laptop and turned to give him all her attention. She wanted him to understand that what she was about to say was important. "The emotion you think I should eliminate has gotten me through some tough times as well as put me into tough situations. I've come to rely on it as the one signal that I have that I'm still alive. And right now, the emotions that let me know I'm alive are mixed up with you. So you're just going to have to forgive me when I say there's no way in hell I'm going to give that up. I'm in love with you, Sark. Accept it or not. You need to get past it."
"Wow."
"Sorry. I get the tendency to lecture from my father. It's a nasty genetic thing."
"You can be just as scary as Jack sometimes."
"I'll take that as a compliment." Sydney felt herself yawning. "I'm going to get some sleep. I got through most of my profile of Cummings if you want to take a look at it later. I don't think I can successfully finish it without making at least part of it incoherent right now. I didn't get much sleep last night. Too much uncertainty in my life."
Without asking permission, she snuggled up to his side. Sark would have normally shrugged her off, but he was actually too tired to start up another argument. Sydney was exhausting him. And, somewhere, in the back of his head, a little voice was quick to admit that it wasn't such a horrible thing that she was showing concern for him.
He made sure to silence that voice rather quickly. But Sydney still slept in his arms.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
The jet landed at Heathrow Airport in record time. Sark found himself unwilling to wake Sydney from her deep sleep. So he scooped her up in his arms and deposited her in the passenger seat of the BMW he had waiting for them at the airport.
He did the same thing to get her into his home and into the bedroom she had spent weeks living in earlier. Originally, he hadn't intended to bring her back here, but he wasn't sure if she would appreciate any of the other houses he kept around the world. At least not in the way he realized she had come to appreciate this house that was so close to Hyde Park.
For some odd reason, he found himself wanting her to be comfortable. He wasn't willing to admit that he really wanted her to stick around for as long as was possible. That was just too large a step for him to make in twenty-four hours.
He flipped off the light switch and left her to sleep away some of her worries and concerns.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Sydney yawned while she took in her new surroundings, or rather familiar surroundings. She couldn't believe that Sark had actually brought her back to this place which held so many memories for them. Memories that he had been adamantly denying for the past few days.
Sighing, she rolled out of bed and looked through the drawers of the dresser in the room. It wasn't surprising to see that Sark had somehow found the time to provide her with the type of clothing she preferred. She slipped out of the clothes she had worn the day before and into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.
The walk down to the kitchen was like riding a bike. She thought that the maze of a house would confuse her a little again like it had when she first stayed here, but it really wasn't that confusing.
"Do you always look so domestic in the morning?" she asked Sark, who happened to be sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee and looking at the morning edition.
"I'm still currently sleeping," he muttered without looking up. "Don't bother me."
"Mr. Grumpy," she said as she poured herself some coffee and sat down beside. She waited until he looked up at her before continuing. "I can respect that."
He gave her a small smirk and returned his attention to the paper. Sydney sat in silence, drinking her coffee and watching the outside world from the window next to the table. After twenty minutes of silence, Sark folded the paper and turned his attention back to his new partner.
"I'm awake. Is there something you wanted?"
"Yeah," she said seriously. She held up her cup of coffee and smiled. "But I guess I'll take a little conversation with my coffee."
"Do you want to know the mission I'm currently planning?"
Sydney grimaced. "Rule number one, no business talk before nine in the morning."
"Agreed." Sark began to shuffle through the paper again.
Sydney put her hand on the front of the paper and pushed it down onto the table. "I said no business talk. I didn't mean no talk at all."
"So what do we have to talk about that doesn't deal with business?" he asked.
"We're going to have to trust each other. So that means I might actually have to know who you are. You and I can just go on claiming we know each other so well, but I doubt that either one of us really believes that. Our business dealings have been too good to let personal information slip out to the enemy so easily. So, I suggest you and I spend some time trying to get a handle on each other."
"Okay. As long as it doesn't get too personal."
"Have you not been listening to what I've been saying? The point of this is to get personal."
"I don't do personal." Sark leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms defiantly.
"I know that. But you do personal now."
"Really?"
Sydney knew that he wasn't really getting mad at her. In fact, if she guessed right, she was probably amusing him. "If this is going to work, you need to give me the benefit of the doubt that this will be good for us in the long run."
"I don't do personal, Sydney, no matter what you say."
Sydney sighed. She knew a losing battle when she heard one. "Listen. I promise to limit my personal questions to one a day. The rest of my inquiries will be about harmless matters that don't make you uncomfortable. How's that?"
"I never said personal matters made me uncomfortable."
"Bullshit," Sydney said straight to his face. "We both know they make you uncomfortable."
"True." He sighed and sat up. "I agree to your terms. Let's get this personal question out of the way for today."
"Well, I was going to let you ease into the day a little more before dropping this on you, but, okay, if you insist. I want to know if you've ever had a serious relationship with a woman."
"Yes, I have," he replied simply.
"And what made it work?"
"You said only one personal question, Sydney."
"One personal discussion would have been more accurate. Sorry. Now answer my question."
"She could outthink me."
"That's it?" Sydney said, astonished at the simplicity of his answer.
"No one has ever gotten the better of me."
"I have. Numerous times."
"I've let you believe that, sure. This woman we're talking about knew my weaknesses and played out them to get what she wanted. She knew what buttons to push. She was smart. I respected her."
"A woman that was cunning and intelligent. One who was good at what she did," Sydney said verbally recapping and trying to commit his answers to memory. "She could outsmart you easily."
"Without batting an eye."
"And respect's a big thing for you?"
"What does this have to do with our new partnership?"
"Everything, Sark. Everything." Sydney smiled at him and stood up from the table. "That's enough for today, I think. I'm going to go get changed. And then you can tell me about this mission you're planning."
