Sydney sat in a rather uncomfortable black chair waiting for the man in front of her to verify her clearance. On the plane, this had seemed like a good option and really the only course of action she had. By the time she had gotten off the plane, she realized that this might be a little more complicated than she thought.
Sighing, she thought back to the flight as she watched the agent in front of her getting nowhere on the phone. She had warned-- no, pleaded-- with Vaughn to not let her fall asleep. His cell phone rang halfway through the flight with an urgent call from Kendall that he had to take.
"Which explains why he's not here with me for this," she said. The agent on the phone was beginning to get impatient and yell with whomever was on the other end.
She had fallen asleep within minutes of Vaughn leaving her side. And her dream was just as unsettling as she would have guessed."
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
"I know where I am," Sydney said as she stared at her surroundings. "This was a mission I was on a few months ago to Queenstown, New Zealand."
Usually, when she reported on her missions, no one could really understand how things had worked out the way they did. S he always seemed to get away in some feat of amazing luck. This was one of the few missions that not even she was sure how she had gotten out of trouble.
SD-6 had sent her on a mission to retrieve a Rambaldi artifact. Her CIA counter-mission was rather simple. Steal the artifact and give it to them while telling SD-6 that the mission was a failure. Sydney had done exactly that, but no one had counted on the silent alarm. When she stole the Rambaldi box, the alarm alerted the guards who came rushing to eliminate her. She remembered fighting for her life, and then there was just darkness.
She woke up in a gutter a few miles away with the box safely in her bag. How she got there, she never really figured out.
Looking around, she began to walk through the hallway in search of an exit. Halfway down the hall, she tripped over a lump and was floored to realize that the lump was here.
"I must be having an out of body experience," she whispered as she stared at her unconscious self. A noise at the end of the corridor made her jump back.
A man in a ski mask came rushing towards her and knelt down in front of the unconscious Sydney. He checked her pulse and then lifted her up into his arms.
She followed the man carrying her down the hallway and out a door into the cold New Zealand air. The man set her down on the ground and checked the wound that was on her head. Swearing lightly, he whipped off his mask.
Sydney gasped when she realized that it was Sark who had taken her out of the building. She didn't recall him being there that night.
"What am I going to do with you, Sydney? I can't be protecting you all the time," he said. "Not if I'm going to successfully keep up this ruse of being intrigued yet hating you." He pulled out his cell phone, and she heard him request a cover-up for the actions he was planning on taken.
Sydney frowned. That explained why she thought Sark wasn't in New Zealand that night. He must have gotten fake traveling records to make it seem like he was on another continent or something to that effect. "When did I start taking my dreams for the truth?" she asked herself.
Sark flipped his phone shut and walked back over to the unconscious Sydney. Seeing her begin to stir, he put his mask back on.
"Where am I?" she heard herself ask groggily.
"I'm going to get you out of here," Sark replied. He was talking in a rather convincing native New Zealander accent.
Sydney saw Sark help her to her feet and lead her to an open spot near a few trees. There was a motorcycle stashed there which Sark promptly helped her onto. They took off into the distance.
"This is unbelievable," Sydney muttered. She blinked her eyes and found she was in another spot. This one looked familiar. It was where she had woken up and where the CIA had tracked her to.
She saw Sark lay her down on the ground. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a hypodermic needle. "I'm sorry for this," he apologized in his New Zealand accent. "But I can't chance you remembering any of this."
Before she could reply, he had stuck the needle into her arm
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
And that's when Sydney had woken up. Vaughn was shaking her and apologizing for letting her drift off. She lied to him and told him that it was all right and she hadn't had an upsetting dream.
In reality, she was still confused as to why she would have add such a fictional twist to something that had actually occurred to her. There was no way that Sark would have voluntarily helped her unless it was profitable for him. She knew for a fact that if what she had dreamed were the truth, there would have been no personal profit. He would have done it just to keep her safe.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the agent slamming down the phone and instructing her that she could go ahead into the hallway.
Sydney couldn't believe she was doing this. The metal door of bars clicked shut behind her as she made her way down the hallway. Sighing, she took in empty cell after empty cell. It looks like the CIA was holding true to their promise of complete isolation. She took a deep breath and stopped in front of the one occupied cell.
"Hello. I've been expecting you."
She looked at her mother's cool, almost aloof demeanor. It was times like these that she really wished her mother weren't so much of a spy. "As much as it pains me to admit this, I need you to go over something that happened when I was little."
"I thought you made it clear that we weren't too discuss anything that had to do with the life I led as Laura Bristow."
"I guess I wasn't clear enough then. You don't have the right to mention anything that happened when you were posing as my mother. You're not the woman I know as Laura Bristow. Therefore, you have no right to talk to me about her. However, if I need information, you're going to give it to me, and you're going to give it freely without contestation."
"Is this about the dreams you've been having?"
"How the hell do you know about that?"
"Mothers know when something is bothering their children."
"That's bullshit. You and I have no real connection. If we did, you wouldn't have faked your death and left me to be raised by my father, a man incapable of caring for and raising anything. So, how did you find out? How did you know about my dreams?"
"The same way I know that you aren't going to walk out of here no matter how many times you threaten to. You want answers, just like everyone else who's ever come to see me. I might have the ones you're looking for. I might not. Just relax a little, and we will see." Irina looked meaningfully at her daughter. "Your Agent Vaughn was talking about you to his friend earlier today. I believe his name is Eric Weiss. He was concerned for you. He cares for you."
"New rule. You're not allowed to discuss Agent Vaughn's feelings for me."
Her mother sighed and took a seat on the cot in the cell. "So, how can I help you?"
Sydney's eyes widened in surprise. "I want to know why I'm having these dreams. And I want to know up front if you have anything to do with them."
"I have nothing to do with them. But I still don't have any idea how I can be of help to you."
"Start with a conversation you had with me right before you left. The one about me having a soul mate somewhere out there."
Irina took a deep breath. "There's a lot that I'm about to say that you won't believe or accept. But you need to take my words for what they are. Like I said before, they might not give you the answers you want, but they'll give you a base for you to make your own conclusions off of. Hopefully, that will be enough to satisfy you."
Thinking about it, Sydney couldn't believe the situation she had put herself in. If someone had told her yesterday she would be standing in front of her mother's CIA cell after having spent the day before in downtime Chicago with her handler, she would have called them crazy.
"Are you familiar with the term soul mate? And what exactly is means?" Irina asked as she smiled. "I think I mentioned this before, didn't I?"
Sydney took a seat on a bench facing the glass wall of Irina's cell and crossed her arms. "Honestly, I always thought it was a little more bullshit than it was reality. The idea that there's one person out there for you and that's it. Sorry if that breaks your heart."
"That's a very narrow definition of soul mate. A soul mate is, indeed, the one person out there that fits with you in this lifetime."
"Don't sound so smug," Sydney interrupted. "It's very annoying, that I-know-something-better-than-you-do tone."
Irina looked at her daughter for a moment and then continued. "The part that everyone forgets is that a soul mate isn't limited to just your current lifetime. It's a common belief when you eventually finally find your soul mate, you spend lifetime after lifetime with them. Death is too small a concept in comparison with a soul mate. Nothing is stronger than finding the one you're meant to be with."
Sydney moved to get up. "I don't think I can do this."
"Don't go. You're uncomfortable with the idea that soul mates meet each other over and over again through each of their lifetimes. Why is that?"
"It's a little far-fetched, don't you think?"
"Don't hide behind your discomfort. You always do that."
"I do not. And don't pretend like you know me."
"You're not upset by how absurd it is. You're upset because you actually think what I'm saying might be true, and it might pertain to you. Not everyone has a soul mate. It's a very unique, special thing. Which is why it transcends death." Irina paused to take another look at her daughter. "You look good. Tired, but good."
Sydney gave up on trying to sound cold and distant with her mother. She was too exhausted to pretend like this whole conversation didn't have that large of a meaning for her. "These dreams are pretty much keeping me up all day and night. When I finally do get to sleep, the sleep is the worst I've ever gotten. It's not rejuvenating at all. In fact, I think I wake up more tired than when I began."
Irina walked up to the glass wall and rested her hand on it. "I know it's a lot to ask of you, but can you tell me a little more about your dreams?"
"Well, for starters, you seem to be the manifestation of my subconscious. I don't even want to begin analyzing that one. My dreams started out as alternating between Vaughn--"
"Michael Vaughn? Your handler?" Irina interrupted.
"Yes, my handler. I was having dreams from another time period, it seemed like."
"Seems to me that supports the soul mates for more than one lifetime part of the theory. What was the other dream you were alternating with those of your forbidden love affair?"
Sydney wasn't quite sure she wanted to tell her mother this part of the story, but she figured she had no choice. "Sark."
"You were having dreams about my former employee?"
"Yes," she hesitantly admitted. "I don't what that means. I hate Sark like I've never hated any man or woman before. He disgusts me."
"And yet, you are having dreams about him." She paused. "Can I ask what's so upsetting about these dreams?"
"It's not those dreams that are bothering me. They were annoying, sure, because I couldn't understand where they were coming from. But then a different kind of dream started. I had a dream that I was blissfully happy with Vaughn, but I was in a mutual partnership with Sark."
"This sounds like a dream," Irina said with a laugh.
Sydney smiled. Surprisingly, she was beginning to loosen up around her mother. "It gets worse. Vaughn figured out that I was still in a partnership with Sark even after he asked me to stop. And I admitted that I was sleeping with him. It was a complete bizarre world. It was my happiest dream gone completely wrong."
"I can see how that would upset you." Irina turned away from the glass cell wall and took a seat on the CIA-issue cot.
"And then I had another dream in which I had run away from my life in the United States with the CIA. I had gone on a whirlwind trip with Sark, and he had fallen in love with me."
"He always said to me that if he ever met my daughter, he would snatch her up for himself."
"He proposed to me in my dream. But I told him that Vaughn had left his wife and wanted to see if the relationship we had always wished for through the years might actually work. I left Sark, knowing that I was making the wrong decision." Sydney looked at her mother. "What the hell does all the mean?"
"Well, you seem to have a little predicament. It seems to me that you just might have two soul mates," Irina said simply.
"That statement contradicts itself. If a soul mate is the one person you're meant to spend lifetime after lifetime with, how can I have two soul mates?"
Irina stood up and smiled at her. "I wish there was more I could tell you, but that's all. You need to figure out the rest for your own. It's always better when you figure out things on your own."
"I don't know if I can figure this one out on my own," Sydney admitted as she stood up.
Irina smiled at her daughter. "Then my only advice to you is to give both men a shot. Don't let your mind close your eyes and ears to what they're trying to tell you. They should help you figure things out even without trying."
Sydney took one last look at her mother and then began to make her way out of the prison block. "My mother is insane," she whispered. "Imagine having two soul mates. That makes no sense. No sense at all."
She looked around the main floor and couldn't see one familiar face. Vaughn had promised her that he would be done with his numerous meetings by one o'clock so they could meet for lunch. They hadn't seen each other since they parted presences from their return trip from Chicago.
Looking down at her watch, she realized that it was already ten minutes past one. "What am I still doing here?" she muttered as she grabbed her purse.
She drove herself as fast as legally possible to the small little restaurant that Vaughn had suggested. He promised her that there was a convenient parking garage next to the restaurant that would cover up their meeting. Sydney understood the risks they were both taking, but at this point, she had really stopped caring. It was time she started doing things for her own sake for a change.
As she stepped out of her parked car, she noticed a black car out of the corner of her eye. It seemed highly out of place. Her spy senses kicked in a second too late, though.
A man grabbed her from behind and put his hand over her mouth so she couldn't scream. She bit down hard on his hand, but he refused to pull it away. Kicking and wiggling weren't helping matters either. In fact, she guessed that her fighting might have been the reason the man shoved her head into the wall forcefully.
Bells went off, and she felt herself dip in and out of consciousness a few times. The man picked her up off the ground with ease and brought her over to the car. The back driver's side door opened, and Sydney found herself being shoved into the car.
She landed hard on the floor which kept her dazed enough that she couldn't recover before the doors clicked locked. A hand to her head came back stained red with blood. Sitting up, she noticed that she wasn't alone.
"Hello, Agent Bristow," Sark said from his comfortable position opposite her. "Consider yourself kidnapped."