"I'm taking some time off," Sydney informed Vaughn later when they had both discretely left each other's companies and driven to work. "Just so you know. There are a few things I have to sort out. Maybe a clue or two to where I've been the last two years."

"I know that's been bothering you a lot lately," he said sincerely. "I can't say I won't miss you. You're the source of excitement in my life."

"If you only knew how tame I could really be."

"I'm looking forward to finding out, Syd."

She smiled at him and walked over to Kendall's office. All she had to do was turn in a few reports, and she was off for two whole, glorious weeks. She couldn't comprehend how she had convinced Kendall to give her so much time off. It must have something to do with a lull in SD-6 and Covenant activities.

After the reports had been turned in, she made her way back to her desk, being careful to avoid the area where Vaughn was talking to some other agents. She didn't want to have to speak to him again for fear that she would decide leaving him for two weeks was too much and cancel her vacation time. "And there's things I have to do," she said to herself.

She grabbed her jacket and keys and made her way to the parking garage below the facility. The parking garage always scared her slightly. It was always deserted, no matter what time of day, and so freezing cold. The only good thing was she wasn't afraid of being attacked or kidnapped like she always was in the SD-6 parking garage. The CIA parking garage was creepy, but no in a dangerous way.

Fumbling with her keys only somewhat, she popped open the locks on the car and slid into the driver's seat. The locks were relocked and she was on her way down a road that she wasn't sure she wanted to be taking.

Lying next to her on the passenger's side front seat was the business card Sark had left her. She didn't know what was at 59 Stanler Ave, but she was about to find out.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

This was not what she had expected. An abandoned warehouse, yes. An old business, sure. An apartment complex, fine. A used car lot, even that was possible. But this… this had not been expected.

In front of Sydney was the most beautiful house she had ever seen. It wasn't a mansion or anything that rich. It was just a simple little brick house that had a garden of lilies blooming in the front. That was her favorite type of flower. There was a small stone sidewalk leading up to the front door. The house had an eagle's nest on top of it, a property she had always admired in a house.

She parked her car a little ways down the street and grabbed the business card off the front seat. As she made her way to the stone path, she checked the address on the card with the one on the mailbox. She was in the right place. This was 59 Stanler Ave.

There were no cars in the driver, she noticed. And no lights were on in the house. Sark hadn't said that she would need to tell anyone she was coming here. He just told her that it was part of her missing two years. Pocketing her car keys, she walked up to the front door and went to knock on it.

The first knock pushed the door open silently. She debated it for a moment and then stepped into the house, closing the door behind her softly. If whomever lived her wasn't smart enough to lock their doors, it wasn't her fault. The house had a very homey feel to it. Nothing was familiar to her, though. "How does this fit in with me?" she asked herself quietly.

She walked around the front room stopping every once in a while to look closer at or pick up an object. The most intriguing item in the room was sitting on the coffee table. It was a leather-bound copy of Emma by Jane Austen. This was her favorite book of all time, which was something she had never told anyone. Most of her colleagues would probably laugh in her face if they knew her hidden love of "silly, sentimental, romantic" books. She had never seen such a beautiful looking copy of the book in print.

Intrigued, she picked it up and looked on the inside cover. In a rather small, sharp, slanted print was an inscription.

"I know you would never admit to me how much you adore this book, but you never have had to use words to tell me what you're thinking or feeling. I adore you twice as much as you love this book. I dream of the day when I can call you mine in front of the whole world."

Sydney felt a little twing in her chest. This book and its inscription seemed familiar, but her memory wasn't being jogged that much. She set the book down and moved to the next room.

The kitchen was exactly as she would have pictured it. Everything had a very metallic, cool feeling, but as a whole, it didn't lose its comfortable home atmosphere. She decided to pass the majority of the kitchen over. She could always come back to it. And there was a beautiful wooden spiraling staircase in the corner of the kitchen that she was dying to climb.

The staircase was made of a dark cherry wood, and the banister has words engraved all the way up it.

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite."

Sydney was surprised to realize that she recognized the quote. It was from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. "Act Two, Scene One," she whispered. She had taken a class in Shakespeare in high school, and this was her favorite quote. This staircase was a work of art in itself. She ran her hand up and down the bumps of the wood engraving and read the words aloud again softly to herself.

Trying to push back the eeriness of this new development and harness how much it intrigued her, she stepped off the staircase into a small hallway.

There were only two doors in the hallway. Sydney realized that this house was just as small and quaint as it appeared from the outside. The walls looked like they had had pictures on them at one time. The paint was dull around square shaped areas in the hall. "Odd. Why would someone take down all the pictures?" she asked out loud. Pushing that thought out of her mind, she chose the door on the left and pushed it open.

It was a bedroom. She immediately began to investigate. If any room in the house would give her clues as to who lived here, this would be the one. The walls were painted a dark blue that matched the ambiance of the room perfectly. Whoever lived here, they weren't in to flowery, pretty things.

Sydney would have immediately guessed that it was a man's bedroom if she didn't notice a few key items. There was a bottle of rather feminine smelling perfume sitting on the dresser. Sniffing it, she wasn't surprised to realize that she liked it quite a bit. The closet wasn't any help. There was nothing in it except for a couple t-shirts and a pair of male sweatpants.

She turned to walk back over to the bed and look through the nightstand next to it. A sudden noise made her stop. Or rather a sudden lack of noise. She hadn't realized it when she had first entered the room, but there had been the sound of a steady stream of water. Almost as if someone was taking… a… shower…

Before she could process what had just happened and what was about to happen, the door on the wall opposite where she was standing opened. She stared in shock as Sark emerged from the bathroom in nothing but a hastily fastened towel around his hips.

He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw her. It almost made Sydney want to laugh as she witnessed the first crack she had ever seen in his ever-present cool exterior. "I didn't expect you to follow my advice so soon, Sydney," he managed to say after a moment. She wasn't surprised to see his guarded exterior restore itself as a smirk played across his face.

"You told me that part of my missing two years was here. So I decided to check it out." She broke her eyes away from him hesitantly and looked down at her feet. "Does this really have anything to do with my missing two years? Or did you just want to find a way to get me to come to where you lived?"

Sark walked over to her and gently brought her chin up so that she was looking him in the eyes again. "Let me show you something."

Sydney felt him slip his hand into hers and guide her over to the nightstand she had been about to search. She tried to focus on the feeling of his hand in hers and not on the fact that there was just a thin layer of terrycloth covering up his body. He opened the small drawer and began to riffle around for something.

"Don't you want to get dressed?" she blurted out. Realizing that she probably shouldn't have let him know how uncomfortable his half-nakedness was making her, she cursed silently.

He grabbed something out of the drawer and looked up at her. "Do I make you nervous, Sydney?"

"No. I just thought that you might be a little uncomfortable."

"You've seen me in a lot less," he said with a laugh as he handed the found object over to her.

She stared at the picture frame in shock. It was a simple wood picture frame with the words engraved on it. Inside the frame was a picture of herself and Sark sitting on the couch she had seen in the front room of the house. She was laughing at the camera as Sark softly kissed her neck.

Not knowing what to say, she looked up at him in confusion.

"If I know what love is, it is because of you," he said the words that were engraved below the picture. "It's Herman Hesse. Those were the words you said to me every night right before you fell asleep. You gave me this picture right before you left. It used to hang with a lot more in the hall. I took them down because I couldn't stand the fact that you weren't here with me anymore. You see, this isn't just my house, Sydney. This was our home."

She still couldn't form the words she needed to ask him the questions that were flying through her mind. He put his hands softly on her shoulders and made her sit down on the bed. Not saying a word, he went over to the closet and threw on one of the t-shirts. He grabbed the pair of sweatpants and went to put them on. Pausing, he turned to her. "You might want to turn away since I seem to make you uncomfortable."

Sydney's eyes widened and she did as she was told. For her own good, she turned her attention back to the photo. After a moment, she felt the slight shift in the bed's mattress as Sark sat down next to her. She looked up at him. "I look so happy."

"I like to think that you were," he said sincerely.

"That book downstairs?" she asked.

"I gave that to you on our one year anniversary."

"The inscription?"

"I meant every word of it." He placed his hand on top of hers. "I still do, even if you don't remember." He noticed her getting slightly uncomfortable. "I'm sorry if you find this odd."

"I just can't get used to the fact that you're treating me with such respect and kindness."

"I always treated you with respect, Sydney. Even when we were enemies. And it's hard for me now not to treat you with kindness and love. I know that I seem completely out of character to you, but it's who I am now. You weren't around to see me change for you, at least not that you can remember."

"But you seemed to act pretty normal when you woke me up in the airport and on the plane ride back home. You were the normal, cocky bastard I've come to loathe."

"I was only doing what you asked me to. I was pretending like our relationship had never changed. And, anyway, no matter what we do, I think we'll always have our witty banter to fall back on."

"I always did have something to argue about with you. I'll give you that."

Sighing, he stood up. "This is weird for you, I can tell. I'm going to leave. I didn't plan on being here when you finally checked out the address anyway. I don't want to scare you away, Syd. I just wanted you to remember how happy you were here. I wanted to see if maybe I could get a second chance with you. I apologize if that was wrong for me to want."

He felt her hand grasped his arm as he moved to step away from the bed. "Don't go," she whispered. "I don't think I'll be able to understand what this house meant to me without you here to explain it. As much as I find this situation unfamiliar, I really do want to understand what happened between us in the two years I can't remember. I want to know."

Sydney knew that inviting him to stay was not going to make the situation she found herself in any easier. But for some reason, she wanted him here. "Maybe I'm remembering a little," she thought. "Maybe I'm starting to believe that he is telling me the truth."

Sark grasped the hand that was holding his arm and pulled Sydney up off the bed. "Will you let me show you something else?"

She nodded her head. Inside she couldn't believe that she was acting so civil to the one man she thought she was despise no matter what happened. It was as if she was walking around in a haze. She partly blamed the effect her strange dreams were having on her, and partly she realized that being civil to Sark had become almost natural. Another reason why she was starting to believe that this wasn't an elaborate ruse to get to her, but it might actually be the truth.

Sark led her out into the hallway and through the other door. It opened up straight into a staircase. With a slight mischievous smile back her way, he led her up the stairs. It was a large, open room that must have been the eagle's nest she saw from the outside. Each wall contained a bay window protruding out from it. One wall had small window seat built into it. In the middle of the room were a mattress and a large number of pillows.

"What is this place?" she asked looking around. She walked over to the window seat and lightly fingered the pile of well-worn paperbacks that were sitting on it.

"I built this for you," he said simply.

"You built this for me?" she asked incredulously as she turned to look at him. She laughed. "I want to believe that all this is true. But everything that you're saying doesn't sound a thing like the Sark I know."

He grinned at her. "I changed a lot in the two years you can't seem to remember. You taught me a lot about the person I really am. Yes, I am that cold-hearted man you encountered so many times in the field. But for some reason, I have this soft spot for you that makes me do things that I would otherwise find mushy and foolish."

Sydney said down on the mattress in the middle of the floor and after a moment, Sark joined her. "Will you tell me what's wrong with you?" he asked.

Looking into his eyes, she saw that he appeared to be really concerned. "What do you mean?"

"You might now remember it, Sydney, but I know you well enough to know when something's bothering you. Please. Tell me."

"This is all too weird," she said, trying to stand up. Sark grabbed her arm and pulled her back down beside him gently. Sighing, she gave in. "I've been having these weird dreams. At first I thought they were just that. But it seems that a few of them were actually memories. I remember you saving me in Queenstown. And I think I remember you proposing. Or least one of my dreams seemed to have the general idea of how you proposed."

"And you're bothered by the fact that you actually felt something for me in your dreams?" She nodded. "I know how much this is probably killing you, then."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I know that you just started a relationship with your CIA handler, Sydney."

"Yes, I did," she said matter-of-factly.

"When you first recovered from your amnesia, I had taken you to Paris. You told me how you dreamed of being able to bring him to a restaurant in the Latin Quarter. You told me how much you thought you were in love with him."

"I was really free with the information when I was with you, wasn't I?"

"You trusted me, Sydney. And that was why I was able to trust you so much. For some reason, you trusted me blindly, and I'd never experienced that before."

"The sun set a little bit ago," she commented. "I should get back."

"To what? Didn't you take my suggestion and get some time off from the CIA?"

"Yes."


"Well, then why do you have to go?" She had no answer, so he just kept talking. "Lean back."

"I am not laying down on this mattress with you."

"I'm not going to take advantage of you." A devilish grin came over his face. "Unless you want me to."

"I don't trust you."

Sighing, Sark laid down on his back and pulled Sydney next to him. "Why do you always have to be so difficult?"

"I keep forgetting that you actually know me. I feel like we're strangers. Strangers who are supposed to hate each other with a passion," she added.

"The passion part is right." He winked at her.

"Why am I laying down next to you again?"

He didn't answer her. He just pointed up at the ceiling. Looking up, she gasped.

When she had entered the room, it didn't even occur to her to look up at the ceiling. If she had, she would have noticed there wasn't one, at least not in the strictest sense. There was only a massive skylight. And at this moment, she could see a million stars through it.

She sat in silence and gazed up at them. In the back of her head, she probably realized that this was another thing Sark had done for her during the time they had called this place home. He had mentioned that he built this beautiful room for her.

Sark turned to look at Sydney's face as she continued to star up at the stars. She could feel his eyes on her, but she chose to ignore it. It was making her feel both slightly uneasy and all tingly inside at the same time. He slipped his hand into hers and whispered, "I think we dream so that we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other dreams, we can be together all the time."

She turned to face him. "I love Michael Vaughn," she whispered.

"I know that," he replied softly.

"Then why am I here?" she asked, more to herself than to him. She could feel herself leaning in towards him slightly.

"I don't know."

"Me either."

She knew what she was doing was a direct contradiction to what she had just said, but she couldn't stop herself. Letting go of all the boundaries she had built, she pressed her lips to his.

His lips tasted sweet. Shockingly sweet.

And so familiar. Strangely familiar.

She wasn't surprised to realize that it felt almost familiar. What she was surprised to realize was that it not only felt familiar, it felt almost right. And she couldn't help herself. She wanted more.

The feeling of his hands as they ran light touches up and down her arms were causing goose bumps. And the urgency of his kisses was making her heart beat faster. She didn't even realize that she had started to bite gently on his bottom lip until she heard him groan.

After a moment, Sark pulled away to look at her. He reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "Stay with me. Please. I'll take you for as long as I can get you, Sydney."

She knew that the best thing for her to do was say no, get up, and walk out of the home she never knew she had. That was what her head was telling her to do. But instead, she smiled at the man she had once considered her worst enemy and whispered "okay".