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Part 2 : Trapped in Wonderland
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She still smiled sometimes. He'd tell a joke and she'd grin, or she would hug him when he least expected it. He would catch her reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and he'd tease her about it. She'd laugh and tell him he shouldn't have bought it for her if he was going to whine about it.

A month ago he'd moved in, built a door on the den with help from Marshall and Jack and hauled in his stuff from across the street. She was quiet sometimes, but he'd only once heard her wake up and start screaming. Barnett told him Sydney was beginning to recover.

And she called him Eric. The first time she'd said it at the office, Mike had stopped dead and looked about ready to smash that damn smile right off Weiss's face. Mike had always been Vaughn to her. Dixon, Sloane, Derevko. And Sark, but that was his alias. She called Jack "Dad" and him "Eric." Everyone else was relegated to last-name basis only: Sloane, Derevko, Dixon, Sark.

Kendall had called a meeting, and confirmed to them the death of Simon Walker. No had shed a tear; Jack hadn't even blinked. Beside Eric, Sydney made faint a noise somewhere between a giggle and a sob.

One night she disappeared, again.

He had made her dinner. Spaghetti with meatballs and peanut butter on celery sticks, because he'd long ago given up being surprised by this woman and simply accepted that she was perfect, and flawed, and had the weirdest tastes in food that he'd ever encountered. She'd been happy that night, more her old self, joking and complaining with him all through the meal.

She'd kissed him on the cheek as she delivered the remaining dishes to the sink where he was posted. She'd dried the plates with a dishrag, taken tequila shots with him afterwards, and in the morning she'd been gone.

Two days later, Lauren Reed uncovered the identity of Andrian Lazarey's killer.

All Eric could think of was how he'd made her smile.

-

Wandering through the deserted church, all Sark could think of was Agent Sydney fucking Bristow. The woman haunted him; She'd killed his bloody father. For 2 damn years he'd had Boy Scout and the other Hardy Boys poking and prodding him for answers, when all he could tell them was where they could shove it. Not that they'd believed him. More importantly, not that he'd cared. All he knew was that everything in his entire damned life now led to Sydney Bristow.

Allison, for one. Doubtless she'd moved on to other men in his long absence, but now they were reunited, and all she could talk of was revenge against Sydney Bristow.

Irina. Her operation was in near shambles, of course, but he was technically still on her leash. And all she now cared about was finding her daughter and what had happened to her those two years.

Andrian Lazarey, his father. A man he'd never known and never would, care of the lovely Agent Bristow's assassination techniques.

The Covenant. They'd assigned him, their newest and most lethal asset, to track the bitch down and drag her back to them, preferably alive. Preferably.

Now the woman was even eating away at his precious free time. He'd trekked half-way around the globe at 4 in the morning just because she'd told him to, and because she'd looked at him without the disgust he was so accustomed to.

He'd spent 2 years in prison, and he'd spent them thinking of nothing but Sydney Bristow.

The church, he would admit, was remarkable. Bronze gold gilding and chalk-colored pillars, refurbished wooden doors - locked, of course, but only for a moment. The altar was grand and unadorned, and it was a kind of quiet he'd never heard before.

She sat in a pew far in the north corner. She held her face hidden in her hands, and she would have cried if she could remember how.

She let him approach, go so far as touch her shoulder, before she acknowledged him. "Didn't think you'd come," she whispered.

They both waited for the smirk, the cutting remark to snap from his lips. Nothing came, and Sark began to realize the one person he'd ever considered his equal was perhaps simply his better.

She gave him that dead smile, and she stood. When he followed her out, Sark found her rented Trailblazer parked on the street, his Mercedes gone instead.

Sydney fucking Bristow. In the end, everything led him back to her.

-

She laughed aloud when Metallica screamed at her from the speakers. Mozart, she would have guessed, but no. The Black Album pounded in her ears instead.

Sark had left a rather expensive coat, Armani she would guess, and a 9mm. in the glove box. Sydney would have revolted against petty theft 2 years ago, but everything was about image now, and if she wanted his car damnit she would take it.

When she'd woken up in Hong Kong, the world had gone from grey to black. Her first reaction was to find Simon; He would've come if she called him. Poor, stupid Simon. Dead because he'd had faith in her but not their love. Maybe because they'd never called it that; maybe it simply wasn't.

Sometimes breathing was harder for Sydney than lying was. Lies came naturally, twists in the truth, stories crafted on the suspicions and state of mind of the listener. Honesty was what killed her these days.

Honesty to Eric, for one. When she'd returned, when she couldn't handle the questions anymore, he'd asked her things she could answer truthfully. Like how she was feeling, was she hungry, tired, itching to break something - once he'd given her a tiny porcelain figurine and instructed her in all seriousness to hurl it against the wall. By the time it shattered in shards on the carpet, Sydney had been laughing again.

She missed her father, and god how she missed Vaughn. But they had neither of them seen her, talked to her, in more than 2 years. Not about anything true, anyway.

Finally she couldn't take it anymore. She'd come home as a last resort, when her body and resources had run out of defence from the Covenant. She'd let them find her in Hong Kong, waited until they were upon her to fight back. She let them hit her, once, right across the temple. It'd bled for hours, and when she'd finally beaten down the assault team she'd stumbled into an alleyway and very convincingly let her vision fade. It'd felt wonderful, that one forbidden time when she stopped fighting the darkness and let consciousness dissolve.

She didn't know why she'd gone to Sark. Her last orders from the Covenant were to spring him; maybe that's why she'd let him go that scorching afternoon in the Sonora desert. A voice in her head that day had told her to take up that M24 SWS laying inches from her feet and shoot that CIA scientist, snipe away at the Delta Force firing from that damned helicopter. Hearing to that voice, Sydney had been half inclined to turn the rifle on herself and blast away all the Covenant's hard work.

Gunning down the A71 at 80mph flat, Sydney wondered why in the hell she'd thrown away her last chance for happiness just to help a murdering psychopath. Maybe she thought she could save him, help him find redemption and all the glorious bullshit she herself didn't believe in anymore. Maybe they were too alike for her to simply let him fall.

She drove through the night, stopping at her forgotten safehouse in the heart of Etrelles. A neighbor was out in her bathrobe, waiting for her dog on the corner beside the secluded two-story sand-brick. She started with surprise when a Mercedes with no headlights on pulled into the overgrown driveway. "Bienvenue, Julia," she called out.

Sydney turned at the sound, "Merci. Je ne resterai pas longtemps," she answered. "Comment ca va, votre fille?"

The terrier began barking loudly, savagely, placing itself between its owner and Sydney. Sydney became Julia Thorne, and Julia smiled. The neighbor involuntarily shivered, and wished this cold, beautiful woman would leave and never come back to this quiet street where smiling families lived.

"Elle va bien, merci. Bonne nuit," she said hastily, and retreated into the comfortable brownstone across the road. Julia Thorne continued smiling, and watching, until the front door was closed. She almost laughed when she heard the deadlock sliding into place.

She shook away her thoughts, and she was Sydney again, a good person but made of stone. She tapped the bug killer on the dashboard twice, switching it off. The tracker she knew to be placed under the passenger seat immediately began broadcasting its signal.

-

His face was a shade lighter, perhaps, circles under his eyes a tad more pronounced, but the visible effects ended there. He worked to keep the confident efficiency in his step, the staring ice in his eyes. If anyone could tell he'd spent the last 16 hours traveling to France and back, well, kudos was in order.

Allison was there, waiting for him. "Where have you been?" she asked bluntly.

"A personal matter had to be attended to," he answered shortly. "Nothing that concerns you."

"And what about the Covenant?"

"I was referring to you as the Covenant," he said brutally.

She kissed him to show her control, and he let her, because she no longer had it. Merely 10 minutes talking with the infamous Agent Bristow had been enough to reinvent the vicious competitive streak Sark had lost those years in prison. He was Sark again, and he'd be damned if he would let the Covenant play him like a puppet. Mr. Sark worked only for himself.

As she teasingly led him to the bed, that same bed with the Sig Sauer hidden beneath it, Sark could have almost laughed. Oh, she was still enticing, still as sensual as ever, but now he was Sark on the hunt, Sark on the job, Sark doing anything to win. Yes, she was still Allison. But all Sark could think of was how to beat her, beat the Covenant, and of Sydney fucking Bristow.