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Part 17 : Gingersnap
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"What people never understand is that my father loved me. Yeah - past tense. I'm still getting used to that.


I have a lot of memories of my dad. Vague ones, distinct ones, good ones and a many, many bad ones. From my 6th birthday right up until two days ago, I can remember every single hug, every conversation, every argument we ever shared.


Part of that is his fault. I'm programmed to forget until I need to remember.


He was a good man and a bad father. The first lesson he taught me is that the best things in life breed sacrifice."


-

He called Dixon, quickly demanding details the director didn't have.

Sydney sat behind the wheel, tearing through red lights like they were Yield signs.

"They'll meet us there," he said softly, putting away the cell phone.

She didn't bother to answer. Her eyes were dry. At the next intersection, she braked on a yellow light.

"We're too late anyway," she whispered.

Strapped in the passenger seat of Sark's pirated Mercedes, Eric desperately wished she would cry, beat her fists against the dashboard and scream for her father. But she wouldn't, and she didn't. Her eyes took on the eerie look of granite he'd witnessed that static night when she'd told them she had killed Allison Doren.

Blasphemy. No one gets a second chance.

-

They kept her carefully away, took turns standing beside her as she looked out into the clouded ocean. The ambulance came in silence, its siren mute, angry red lights and windshield wipers scraping across slick glass.

They kept her away from Jack, away from the corpse eagled across the cement floor, away from the chaos of a crime scene. Away from the knife removed from the victim's chest and hastily placed in a ziplock bag.

Dixon said something but she wasn't sure what. His coat was suddenly around her shoulders but she didn't know how. Eric was arguing with an NSC agent but she couldn't see why.

Her father was dead. It could happen to anybody, really.

Eric approached and she wanted to tell him "Run" in one and a dozen different languages. She wanted to scream the name of Jack Bristow's murderer but she wouldn't. Revenge is all there is when you have nothing.

A heavy shape under a white sheet being carted into the ambulance bay. Eric wished she would cry.

"He's gone," she whispered.

"I'm here, Syd," he told her. "I'm always here."

"I know,"

The paramedics closed the metal doors.

"But that's not enough," she said. Her hand fell empty to her side.

-

"It was December 24th. I decided to stay awake until midnight to see if I could catch Santa before he left and maybe wrangle an extra present or two. I was 7 years old, and inquisitive as hell. I knew St. Nick didn't actually exist. I knew it was my Dad, placing a couple colored boxes under the sparsely decorated tree, almost as an after-thought, before he retreated to his study to get some work done before he - well, before he went to work. I knew all this, but I had to see it with my own eyes. Hard proof, he always told me. Never act out of passion.


I crawled out of bed, down the corridor - vaulted low over the railing on the staircase because the first four steps creaked. Barefoot, because slippers could get caught on nails and leave a trace of soft pink fuzz.


Dad wasn't there. The den was lit by the polluted white glow of the Christmas lights sparking off the red ornaments. The lamp by the desk was off, papers scattered across the tabletop. Dad wasn't there, but he had been, and would be soon.


Warring instincts told me to run and to stay. The latter won out, and I climbed into the leather-bound desk chair. I picked up the 9mm. Beretta placed by his silver pen.


I disassembled it quickly, first the barrel, then the safety, then the chamber and trigger guard until there was only a skeleton.


Then I put it back together again.


Dad was standing in the doorway. I think he was smiling."

-

It was surprising, how many people showed up. Most of them, she guessed, just wanted to be sure he was really dead.

Vaughn was there, clutching his side and out of breath. She avoided him like the plague. She'd loved him, once, but she'd hurt him, too. The victims of her misery rarely lived.

By default she was expected to speak. There was no priest; Jack hadn't had the time for religion. There were no friends. Arvin Sloane had been the closest he'd had to a pal.

So she separated the Secret words and the Speaking words - everything she'd like to say packaged and pushed into the back of her mind, leaving a pastel void of suitably impersonal adjectives she could use to describe an unapproachable man she'd loved without meaning to.

Sydney stood at the foot of the open grave. Watched with emotionless eyes as the pallbearers - Dixon, Marshall, Weiss, a few others she recognized and didn't care about - lowered the coffin into the crumbling ground.

They waited with a sickening eagerness for what she would say. Her father brutally murdered, the fingerprints on the weapon leading to the mother that had disappeared nearly 3 years ago. It held the queasy appeal of a car wreck.

She opened her mouth and recited.

-

"I hated my dad for the longest time. And for a while, I think, he hated me too.


The worst part was that we loved each other so damned much."

-

She stooped and gathered a handful of loose earth. Without blinking she cast it onto the glossy wooden coffin.

"Goodbye, Dad," she said carefully.

Five days, a quick procession of loose threads and dead ends. No one quite knew what to think. They looked in his daughter's eyes and saw violence. Against all hope, she was what her parents had made her.

It was a clear day, dry January, in a quiet graveyard littered with yellow leaves. The service over, mourners stepped forward to offer condolences, and they fell on deaf ears. Julia Thorne didn't waste tears for the dead.

Sydney accepted hugs, tears, kisses with a laconic grace she couldn't bother to hide. When Vaughn stepped forward, she merely shook her head and continued on.

Class dismissed.

Eric cautiously walked her through the graveyard, moving slowly between headstones. He grasped her hand while he still had the chance.

She stopped at the gates, staring out at the nearly empty parking lot.

"I'm so sorry, Eric," she said, and meant it.

"Don't be," he replied quickly. He hesitated, staring at her fingers tangled within his. "It was her, wasn't it? She came back."

Sydney nodded slowly, gazing through the black metal gates spanning before her. "I always knew she would."

One breath, two, short, frustrated gasps hissing through his teeth. "Let me come with you," he begged.

She let out an involuntary laugh. "Where I'm going, nobody can follow."

And Sark would be there to meet her.

Another rending pause. "I wish it was me," Eric confessed, staring down into her face. "I know - I know we can't choose who we love, but God, I wish it could have been me."

"It would have been," she answered with conviction.

Would haves and should haves. Her life was full of them.

Acute agony, worsened when she leaned upward and kissed him, lightly, on the corner of his mouth. This was what she should have had, warmth and sunlight and freedom to be afraid. Homage to what should have been and never was.

"He'd better take good care of you," Eric whispered bitterly.

A half-smile, a hug, and she stepped away. He watched her walk calmly down the path, through the gates, up to the Mercedes that had disappeared from their garage two days ago. She slid into the passenger seat and, for an instant, Eric met his eyes - cold, emotionless blue from behind the steering wheel. Sark nodded to him, once, acknowledging a battle well fought. Sark got the girl while Eric got the memories. Unfair to all involved.

-

'Whither is God, I shall tell. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are murderers... God is dead.'

-

They didn't speak until he pulled into the parking lot of a roadside motel, a flat pink building with a rotting pool built half a mile off the highway heading north.

"There's no going back, Sydney," he said as he switched off the engine.

"That's the point, Sark," she answered, and climbed out of the car.

Waiting inside the cool, smoke-scented motel room was a small arsenal of op tech - weapons, surveillance gear, and a neat suitcase filled with snug black clothing. She didn't bother considering how Sark knew her correct size. Less than a week ago she'd been packing to move to Honolulu. Today she was leaving everything behind.

"Irina killed your father for a reason," he continued, coolly, efficiently. He leaned against the plaster wall, hands in his pockets, while Sydney stood distractingly near, her arms crossed over her chest and her jaw clenched. "I'm ready and willing to devote any and all resources to taking her down, but we must be cautious."

"100 million," she said.

"Pardon?"

"100 million. I have enough to worry about without you offering me charity out of the goodness of your heart."

Unexpected, he grinned. "How nice of you. You'll give me 12 percent of my stolen inheritance if I help you inflict vigilante justice on your murdering mother." A beat. "I love America."

She snorted with indifference. "Who said anything about your inheritance? It's Sloane's money. He left me a little gift in his will. So what if I forged a couple zeros on the end? It's not like he'll be using it for his retirement."

He laughed delightedly. "You do realize that you stole a large sum of money that was to go to children's charities?" Sark was incredulously. Standing before him was, quite possibly, the woman of his dreams.

She shrugged. "It's blood money, they wouldn't want it. Beside, since when did you become moral?"

"I didn't," he answered wryly, "you became a manipulative shrew."

Ruby lips quirked into an amused smile, thinly hiding a wall of blackened grief. "So," she said briskly, "the hardest part will be finding her. She's got a disappearing act that would piss of Houdini. I'm guessing you must have some idea -"

"That can wait," Sark interrupted.

"For what?" she snapped.

He looked her steadily in the eye, harsh and unwavering. "Your father is dead, Sydney," he stated.

She took a step back. "Thanks for the heads up, Sark. I know."

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, sliding a hand behind her head.

He kissed her with a foreign tenderness, soft, comforting and motiveless. An obscure sort of challenge.

In immediate response she slammed him against the wall.

She bit, scratched, the same sort of primal heresy that drew them together like moths to flame. This time, he grabbed hold of her wrists when she dragged her nails across his chest.

"Your father is dead," he repeated, and kissed her again with the same maddening sweetness.

"Stop it!" Sydney hissed, rearing back.

"You can still feel it," he insisted, holding her fast. "You're not like me, Sydney. So I beg of you don't try."

She tried to protest, tried to hide, but he stared at her with sorrow in his eyes until she broke.

Her face cracked, her eyes clouded. Before she could begin fighting it Sark pulled her against him into a consoling embrace. Her shattered tears fell onto his shoulder and he comforted her, something he had little practice with in a lifetime of wreaking devastation.

"I didn't know," she whispered in his ear. "I'm so sorry, Julian. If I'd known I never would have - I never meant to -"

He understood without having to ask.

"I never knew Andrian Lazarey," he soothed. "He was nothing to me."

She buried her face into the collar of his jacket. He wrapped his arms around her waist in silence.

When her tears subsided he lifted her onto the creaking, tattered bed, and took advantage of her vulnerability without remorse. Love or hate him, he was a hired killer; He gave nothing for nothing.

As Sark's mouth left hers, traveled down her neck, her stomach, her thighs, Sydney cried the very last of her tears. She was a millions miles from happiness, but the journey alone was worth fighting for.