When his cab pulled up in front of his home, Sark realized that he wasn't ready to face Sydney. She would be full of questions about where he had been and what he had been doing. He wasn't sure if he could answer them right now. At least, not without thinking.

He had to figure out why he had done what he did and why it felt so right.

Stepping out of the cab, he gave the driver a few bills and began to walk down the street. He needed to clear his head. After all, he had just severed the few remaining business ties he had that did not concern Sydney. If he was wrong about what he was feeling, he had pretty much destroyed his life for a woman he thought he had once loved.

After he had walked five blocks, it began to rain down on him hard, but he barely noticed. His mind was racing trying to put together the missing pieces of the past three years. He believed almost everything Sydney had told him, but he still couldn't fathom the sacrifices he made. The connection was just not there to be made.

It hit him rather suddenly and completely unexpected as he recalled something she had said to him earlier. She had said that the horrible feelings he had been trying to identify were part of the scariness of being in love. He had wanted to laugh at her when she said that. It was ridiculous, the notion that such horrible feelings could be associated with love.

Love was never portrayed as being full of fear. No one ever said how much he or she hated being in love while they were actually in it. It just didn't make any sort of sense.

But it was at that moment that he realized she was speaking the truth. Love wasn't all sunshine and puppies. There was a fear one accepted in choosing to put one's heart on the line and love another fully. It was a fear he had never thought he would experience, a fear that he had trained himself to keep from experiencing. But he now realized that he had been living with this fear welled up inside of him for what seemed like his whole life.

He wasn't scared of being in love with Sydney. He was scared of love in general. Love was something he had always been scared of, which could explain why he had never let anyone in. It was a kind of self-preservation.

Standing in the middle of Manhattan with the rain pouring down on him, he realized the solution to getting rid of this fear. It was something he had been unconsciously doing since that one moment in a Paris nightclub which had ended up changing his whole life. It was so simple he wanted to punch himself for not realizing it earlier.

It explained how he had been able to have the two years of happiness he was slowly remembering.

Being with Sydney Bristow, having her by his side, took all the fear and anxiety away.

Before he knew what was happening, he felt his feet begin to move back towards the direction of the penthouse. He was racing down the streets as fast as he could manage, paying no mind to the busy traffic or other people in his way.

Now that he knew what he had to do, home was the only place he wanted to be.

Sydney woke up with a start when she heard the elevator doors rush open and the sounds of someone running through her home. She sat up and saw the silhouette of a man standing in the doorway to her bedroom. For a second, she felt a small tug of fear grip her stomach, but that was quickly erased when she recognized the man as Sark.

"What's the matter?" she asked groggily, trying to take in his appearance. His clothes were soaked through and sticking to his body like a second skin, and his hair was smoothed back off of his face.

He walked over and sat down on the bed next to her. She was pleased to see a smile light up his face as he reached to touch his palm gently to his cheek. "I missed you, Sydney. More than I can possibly say."

"I missed you, too, Julian. Is everything all right?"

"No. And it hasn't been all right for a while now." He took his hand away from her. "It's my fault, really. I can't blame anyone else for this."

She just nodded and looked at him in the moonlight. The way it bathed him in a gentle light that she hadn't seen him in since he had disappeared in Miami... if he didn't sound so serious, she would be tempted to seduce him right then and there. But at this moment, she couldn't push away the fear of what he might be trying to tell her. "Are you leaving me?" she asked hesitantly, putting her fear into words.

He smiled at her, trying his best to reassure her of just how wrong she was to ask that question of him. "No. But I think when I'm done here, you might want to leave me."

"I don't think that's possible."

Sark suddenly understood that he wouldn't be able to face her as he admitted his mistake. For the first time in his whole life, he couldn't take seeing the pain he was about to cause. With a sigh and a silent hope to whoever was listening that she would understand, he started in on his explanation. "I haven't been honest with you, Syd. I have been remembering bits and pieces of the two years I thought were missing. Turns out that you were telling me the truth. I was here with you."

"What made you finally believe me?"

"I remembered the day I killed Lina. And I remembered seeing you lying on the ground, not moving. I remembered how hard my heart broke realizing that you weren't going to come back to me. I remember loving you." He chanced a look up at her, and his heart broke to see her eyes welling up with tears. "I didn't connect the memories with emotions at first. In fact, it didn't really happen until a few minutes ago when I was walking in the rain."

"So you really do love me?"

"I've never loved anyone or anything as much as I love you, Syd."

She reached up and kissed him softly. When he didn't kiss her back, she pulled away in confusion.

"I... I haven't been honest with you about other things, too. You asked me if I had been in contact with the Covenant since you took me from Tokyo. I said I hadn't."

"You lied?"

He nodded. "The story you told me was so crazy that I couldn't allow myself to believe it right away. It just wasn't a feasible or rational option. I've always been a man who wanted to work a situation to my advantage. Even though my priorities have changed considerably, I don't think anything could change that personality trait of mine. So, I got in contact with the Covenant and told them I might be in a position to help them."

"You didn't..." she said, shaking her head in disbelief. She looked up at him in horror. "Amy?"

"No, I wasn't involved in that. I can say that much. I didn't end up helping the Covenant at all. I wasn't about to help them if they couldn't offer me proof of my service to them during the past two years. They failed to do that, mainly because they were lying to me. So I failed to help them."

"And you think that I'm going to be mad at you for not telling me?" She smiled at him again, and it made his heart break. "I'm not mad at you for doing something that I fully would have expected you to do. You reverted back to your old self. I'm well aware that I wasn't a priority to you back then."

She reached out for his hand, but he pulled it out of her grasp. "I'm not done, Sydney. You've been searching for this mole within your group of friends since you and Vaughn stumbled on the proof of his existence. You still haven't figured it out yet. That bothered me at first. I always thought you were sharper than that."

Sydney looked at him in disgust. "It's not easy trying to figure out which one of the people you've trusted with your life is actually trying to kill you."

"I know that. You see, that's what I realized. It was your love that was blinding you, keeping you from figuring out who it was."

"So, my love for the mole isn't going to let me believe who their identity is?"

"No. Not your love for the mole. Your love for me is what's been blinding you to the one definite clue you had to the mole's identity."

She stared at him in confusion, which he slowly saw change into realization. "You've known who it was this whole time, haven't you?"

"I didn't want to tell you because it didn't seem like the best option for me. I'm sorry, Sydney. If I had realized how much you meant to me, I wouldn't have hesitated to tell you."

"Tell me."

Sark flinched at the coldness in her voice. "It would be easier if you just let me handle this without you knowing."

"Tell me now, Julian."

He took a deep breath and grabbed her hand, hoping that she would be able to forgive him for the pain he was about to cause her. "It's Will Tippin. He's your mole."