Sark knew that what he was about to do was completely irrational. He wasn't at the point yet where he fully believed Sydney. True, it seemed evident that he had spent some time with her the past three years, and they must have been happy together. But he couldn't trust that he'd be so willing to sacrifice everything for love. That went against everything he had ever known, everything he was.
He was not the type of man to risk anything for some measly little feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Which was why he couldn't figure out the reasons behind his boarding a plane to Tokyo.
He didn't know what the Covenant was playing at, but he knew their blatant attempt to kill Sydney was not sitting right with him.
Things hadn't been sitting right with him for a while now. He had pinpointed it to when Amy Tippin had been stabbed. Something felt wrong about the whole situation, like something was being kept secret from him. And he did not tolerate secrets when he was not the one withholding information.
That was why the first place he went after placing Sydney safe in her bed at their home and turning on the security system was Will Tippin's apartment. He knew there was a reason why he had grabbed Amy's keys off the counter at the last moment.
When he let himself in, he silently thanked Sydney for insisting that Will not return to his apartment until Amy was doing better. It wasn't that he was concerned for Will's mental health. Far from it. It was just a lot easier to search the apartment for clues without having to worry about waking up the master of the house.
It didn't take him long to find what he wanted. It was painfully obvious to a man with his knowledge that there hadn't been out of the ordinary with Amy Tippin's stabbing. It was done by the Covenant's new mole. Sark hadn't thought the mole had it in them, but obviously, some things had changed while he was having his memories wiped.
Images of the scene he had Sydney had witnessed flashed through his head, and he forced himself to sit down on the floor of the bedroom. It wasn't Amy Tippin's attempted murder that was affecting him. It was the whole realization that his sister must have looked the same way when he stabbed her.
Sighing, he put his head in his hands and leaned back against the wall. It was hard to believe that he had actually killed Lina. Sydney didn't seem to be lying when she told him the whole story, but he just couldn't let himself accept what she said as truth. His sister was the one person who meant more to him than anything in the world. He would never kill her.
What he couldn't figure out was why would Sydney lie about something like that.
There was no logical reason. But there was also no logical reason why he would find himself stabbing the only woman he ever loved.
"That's not necessarily true," he had said to himself. "According to Sydney, you loved her an awful lot."
He couldn't figure out the truth. The whole incident a few nights earlier had definitely unnerved him. There was something familiar in the insistent need he had felt in the pit of his stomach to touch her, to stay in constant contact with her somehow. It was an emotion he had never felt before, something he had never dreamed of wanting.
And most of the emotions he felt for her weren't tied up in that one night of passion they had. He kept getting these little twangs in his heart when he watched her at work. The simple fact was she could reassure him and steady him with the simple brush of a hand, no need for words. The realization that he could probably tell her anything about his past, present, or future and she wouldn't run out the door screaming blew his mind away.
He couldn't comprehend how Sydney Bristow, the tough CIA agent, had ever let herself fall for a scoundrel like him. In his mind, he had always imagined that she was secretly in love with him. The tension between them on missions fueled this little fantasy. But he had never dreamed that what he felt between them would ever be real.
It was incredibly real. He had come to realize that in the few days he had spent beside her.
It was the one thing that he knew he would never want or need.
But somehow it had become the only thing he wanted and the one thing he needed more than anything else.
She had told him that their love was so strong that he had killed her sister to save her life. He knew that he shouldn't believe her, but he did. It was illogical and one of the most emotion drive conclusions he had ever come to. But he believed her.
Because as he was sitting on that floor of Amy Tippin's apartment, his mind flashed again with the familiar humming of what he had come to identify as another memory returning to his brain. And this one happened to be the one thing he both desperately wanted to remember and desperately wanted to never come back. It was the one thing he had needed to remember if he was ever going to get on with his life.
He could hear his sister saying that she loved him and embracing him. Next was the cold feel and sound of steel entering flesh. The look of pain and betrayal on Lina's eyes, which reflected back the determination he could feel was in his. Then, he felt himself turn and look to where Sydney was lying on the floor, unmoving.
And his heart broke.
The plane touched down, breaking him away from his thoughts. He flipped his cell phone open. Sydney picked up on the fourth ring.
"Hello?" she said groggily."Hey. How are you feeling?"
"Like someone was trying to kill me. Oh wait. That might be right."
"What did the doctor I sent to the penthouse say?"
"That I should try to avoid getting shot. Turns out it's not good for my health. Where are you, Julian?"
"I had to clear up some things. Business related, you know. I called your mother. She should have gotten there by now."
"I think I hear her in the kitchen. You sound strange."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he lied. Of course he knew why he sounded strange. He had just remembered the moment he had stabbed his own sister and the reasons behind it.
"When are you coming home?"
"I should be back by tomorrow. You rest up."
"It was just a light graze."
"That was a little more than a light graze, Sydney."
"Okay. But still. It's not life threatening. I've gone through worse."
"Just rest. Try to relax. I'll be home as soon as I take care of what needs to be done." He hung up the phone before she could tell him she loved him. It was hard to hear her say those words when he knew he couldn't say them back.
It didn't surprise him that he was barely off of the docking bay before a Covenant employee had picked him up and offered to drive him to the facility. He couldn't help but wonder how confused Stephanie Conway must be. The last time they talked, he had given her the ultimatum of providing proof of his having been with the Covenant for the past three years. She hadn't done that, and he hadn't spoken to any of their agents since.
"Come to think of it," he said to himself, "I haven't even thought about the Covenant since Sydney made me pancakes that night. I really must be going soft."
Stepping in the car, he hoped that he wouldn't end up doing anything he would regret later.
He could remember all the twists and turns to the Covenant's Tokyo facility as if he had been working there for years. He knew now that was a lie. The claims Sydney had been making finally rang true to him. The memory of killing his own sister cemented that in his mind.
The only problem was he still couldn't connect the emotions to the memories. He wasn't looking forward to telling Sydney that he remembered her, but he still didn't love her.
Within minutes of being in the off-limits corridors, he was picked up by a few agents he recognized as Weiss and Stephanie's bodyguards.
"The bosses want to see me, huh?" he said with a smirk. "Not too happy that I've been out of contact."
The agents didn't say anything just pushed him forward down the hall. It only took them minutes to arrive at the office where the two heads operated. Sark was happy to see that both of them were waiting for him. What he was about to do wouldn't work if one was missing.
"Mr. Sark," Weiss said, leaning back in his chair. "It's nice to see you again. Things not going too well with Bristow?"
"That's a matter of opinion. From your perspective, no, I would say things are not going as well as you would have liked." Sark sat down in one of the chairs in front of Weiss's desk. "Could you send your goons away? And make Stephanie sit down. She looks like she's about to explode."
Weiss humored him and waved the guards away. Stephanie took a seat on the corner of the desk.
"I asked you to provide me with some information, Stephanie. You didn't come through."
"Information like that isn't the easiest to dig up. I knew you would want solid proof that you had been where we said you were. Stuff like that isn't produced in an hour. I'm sorry, Julian."
"And I suppose you have it now?"
"Would it help?" Stephanie asked, skeptically.
"Not at all. I wanted to see how good a job your men did in altering proof of my working for the Covenant. What can I say? I'm an extremely curious man."
"Let's not go down that road, Sark," Weiss said from his seat behind the desk.
Sark turned towards him. "Oh. So you didn't actually go through with faking the proof? That is a sloppy mistake. You might have been able to change my mind if you had. Convincing proof could have tipped the scales in your favor."
"You really expect us to believe that you're that important a player in all of this?" Stephanie asked. "That's just pathetic. You're nothing but a pawn."
"A pawn?" Sark acted offended. "The best agent you supposedly had is just a pawn?"
He stood up and trained his gaze on Weiss as the man's hand reached below his desk. "I wouldn't press that panic button if I were you. First off, both of you would be dead before you even got close. Second, real men don't need outside help to solve their problems."
Weiss relaxed back in his chair. "Fine. Let's cut this bullshit. Why are you here, Julian?"
"I'll get to that in my own time. First, I wanted to let you know that the Covenant's brainwashing isn't as good as it once was. You played a part in the fact that Sydney forgot two years of her life. That was some good head messing. The job you did on me didn't last that long. In fact, it didn't even last a month."
"So, you remember where you've been?" Stephanie asked.
"I remember. I don't feel, but I remember." Sark smiled at her wickedly. "And you'll see just how unhappy I am about that in a moment.""You're wasting our time," Weiss said.
"No. This meeting is not wasting your time at all."
Weiss didn't have time to react at all as Sark shifted from his cool business man mode to lethal killer. In the blink of an eye, he had shoved Stephanie off the side of the desk and face first into the carpeting while jumping onto the desk and down beside Weiss chair. Suddenly there was a gun trained on his neck.
"I thought you might have a strict 'no guns' policy," Sark said as he watched Stephanie pick herself up from off the floor. "Turns out you're a little lax on that criteria. Just pointing out a weakness. Showing I care and all."
"Put the gun down before someone gets annoyed and kills you, Sark," Weiss said.
"Aren't you afraid I'm going to shoot you and your little evil agenda will be over?"
"Not at all. Stephanie would never allow this to get that far."
"Aw. You have a lot of faith in your woman." Sark clicked the safety off. "But I also have a lot of faith in mine. Which is why I'm going to tell you that you have nothing to worry about." He paused and turned to where Stephanie was wiping the blood of her face. "She, on the other hand, might want to run while she has the chance."
Stephanie scowled at him. He answered her scowl with a nice, big smirk. "Oh, I'm sorry, darling. Did I break your nose? Plastic surgery can fix that, no problem."
Sark shift the gun in his hand so that he was holding it by the barrel. Before Stephanie knew what was happening, he threw the gun hard at her head, hitting her in the right temple. "That, on the other hand, might cause some permanent damage."
Sighing, he punched Weiss as hard as he could, causing the man's eyes to roll up into his head as he lost consciousness. "That won't cause permanent damage. It will just hurt like hell when you wake up."
Sark began searching the cabinets behind Weiss's desk until he found what he was looking for. "Something I've learned over the years," he said to the two unconscious bodies, "you can always rely on your enemy to keep a rope handy. I've been doing this for years, and that has never failed to be true."
He began to tie Weiss to the chair he was sitting in. When that was done, he fastened Stephanie's hands loosely to the chair he had been sitting in a few moments earlier. "Now we wait."
Thankfully, he didn't have to wait for long. As much as he had begun to look forward to what he was about to do, he couldn't deny that he was worried about Sydney and wanted to return home to make sure she was doing all right. Irina was fully capable of taking care of her daughter, but it would reassure him to know firsthand that she was fine.
Almost as if he had planned it, he heard both Weiss and Stephanie begin to regain consciousness. Smirking to himself, he watched them try to get their bearings and realize they weren't going anywhere.
Weiss struggled to get out of his bindings to no avail. "You're not getting out, Eric," Sark informed him. He walked over to Stephanie and pulled the rope loose from her wrists. "You, on the other hand, I only tied up in case you woke up before your boyfriend. Didn't think I could time it as perfectly as I did."
Stephanie rubbed her hands and immediately backed towards the door.
"Trying to run away?" he asked as she tried the doorknob and realized the door wasn't budging.
"What do you want, Sark?" she hissed.
"I have a simple message for Weiss. I do not appreciate the little attempt you made on taking Sydney's life. And I don't appreciate what you've been turning trying to ruin her life with the whole Amy Tippin incident."
"You're going soft, Sark," Weiss said. "I never thought a woman would get to you this way."
"Then you obviously don't know Sydney. That woman could make any man in the world want to reform himself."
"You sound like a horrible romance novel," Stephanie said, walking back to the middle of the woman. " 'She makes me want to be a better man'. What the hell did she do to you?"
Sark ignored her jab at him. "Like I said, I don't remember the emotions or feelings behind the last few years of my life, but I do remember the major plot points. That makes me understand why I've been feeling these weird urges to protect Sydney at all costs. That's why I'm here."
"Why are you here?" Weiss asked.
"To give you a simple message." Sark grabbed Stephanie by her hair and threw her into the nearest wall. "You hurt mine, I hurt yours."
He took his gun out of his jacket and smiled at Stephanie as he clicked the safety off again. Taking aim, he fired the gun and was pleased to see the bullet grazed her left side. She collapsed in pain.
"Hurts like a bitch, doesn't it?" he said, putting the gun away. "I just wanted to let you know that if either one of you lifts another finger to hurt Sydney, I will not show the amazing amount of self-restraint I had here today. And I always want you to realize that you're not safe from me. You can try as hard as you want, but you will never be safe from me."
Sark walked over to Stephanie and punched her hard in the face. "That was just for fun," he said with a wink as he let himself out of the office.