GRACE SEQUENCE
Once Was Lost - Toils and Snares - How Sweet the Sound - Safe Thus Far - Lead Me Home
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ONCE WAS LOST
--
She left the agency when Michael died. After all, he'd done the same for her.
The agency, however, had trouble leaving her. She'd tried staying in L.A.-- the idea of being any further in any way from her father than she already was emotionally was almost physically abhorrent-- but being in sight put her in mind, and any time they need something for which her specific expertise or knowledge would be helpful, they called her in, sent Weiss to talk to her (Weiss, to whom she could never say no) and she went. Freelancer was her code name again, and it fit her like a glove. She found herself readjusting, forgetting, smiling again. She and her father had dinner once or twice a week. She drank with Weiss most Friday nights, had Sunday dinners with Marshall and Carrie and Mitchell-- Mitchell, who was starting to talk in full sentences, cherubic baby face settling into the image of the little person he would soon become. She found herself almost happy again.
She didn't want to be.
Two months after the July anniversary of his death, she packed a suitcase-- her two engagement rings, Alice in Wonderland, a few passports (none of them hers), and enough clothing to get her to her final destination-- and disappeared. The note she left read: Don't follow me.
Of course they did anyway. Not the CIA-- they forgot her quickly enough once she was no longer a viable asset. No, it was individuals who took it upon themselves to root her out: Weiss (halfheartedly, out of obligation, still suffering from his best friend's death himself), among others. Others like her father. But Jack Bristow was getting older, or she was getting smarter. She settled down in the hills of some anonymous countryside, in an abandoned monastery thirty miles from the nearest town, and made herself invisible. Still, they kept trying.
It was the following December before anyone succeeded. That person was Sark.
"Merry Christmas, Sydney," he said to her, coming upon her mid-meditation.
She slammed his face into a wall.
She locked him in one of the cells below ground that once held religious texts, sacred things, and waited for him to come to.
"A 'bah humbug' would have sufficed," he commented, rolling onto his back.
She stood on the other side of the door, arms crossed, lips tight, watching him through the window cut in the rock. Metal bars formed two crosses, bisecting her face, bisecting his body.
"Who sent you?" she demanded.
"No one," he said.
"It's never no one with you, Sark."
"I heard you'd left your precious CIA. I wanted to see it for myself."
He hadn't yet moved off the floor. He might have been badly injured. Without proper medical attention, he might die.
"I was," he grimaced, "concerned."
She didn't care.
Two days later she returned. He was sitting in the center of the makeshift cell, on the ground, and looked up as her presence cast a shadow over him. Silently, she handed him a slender jug of water, and a bag of rolls, an apple. He took them through the bars, light eyes steady and eerie in the patchy light.
He wouldn't eat until she left.
-
In the room she chose for meditation she hung, her first week, a print of a painting, Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." She liked to focus on it as she sat, legs folded, the backs of her hands resting loosely on her knees, and let her attention drift. Sometimes she would imagine the Sunday park-goers' lives. Each speck of color had a back story, a name. She felt secure in her distance from them, from the lives they led; parks were not for her. Neither were children, sailboats, picnics.
-
After Sark arrived, they made her uncomfortable. The second day, she took the painting down.
"How long are you going to keep me here?" he asked her when she came to bring him a new jug of water. "I only ask," he added, "as it's beginning to smell."
She ignored him.
"I can accustom myself to it," he went on, "only frankly, I'd rather not."
She turned and walked back down the hall.
When she returned, three days later, she brought him an onion, some carrots, a cup of tepid tomato soup. And--
"What is it?" he asked, holding it at a safe distance, between two fingers that had pulled more triggers than picked flowers. "Is this mistletoe?"
"It's some kind of evergreen. Just a branch. It's not-- it's just a branch."
He continued to regard her, expression pained. She offered him peace and he took it as poison.
She clarified, "For the smell."
"Ah."
Frustrated with herself, she turned to leave.
"There goes my hope of receiving a kiss for New Year's."
She whirled back, incensed. "I don't know what your game is, Sark. But I'm going to find out."
"Is it so very difficult for you to believe I care for you?"
"Yes."
His smile was bleak. "Yes. Well. I'm familiar with the reaction. I recall having had it myself."
A shriek escaped from her throat; she felt as shocked as Sark looked. Stumbling, she made blindly for the stairs.
-
Early the next morning she left for town on bicycle. The gears hissed, the belt pinched where it met the wheel, squealing out her passage. She abandoned it two miles outside the city, changed into tourist garb and folded herself into the crowds that filled the open-air bazaar to bursting. She bought a new cake of soap; a sack of corn meal; goat feed; fertilizer. She passed a pay phone. She didn't call home.
She stayed in town a night, and did not think of Sark. She took a long, scalding bath, and slept on the floor.
She rode back the next day.
-
It was almost a week before she went down again, two more jugs in hand. He was waiting, the gleam in his eyes almost feral. She pressed him the water and he sucked it down, greedily.
"You'll make yourself sick," she cautioned, and he paused long enough to glare at her, fiercely enough that she was nearly taken aback.
"Sorry," she said lamely, after he had finished one jug and begun, more slowly, on the next.
"'Sorry'?" he rasped. "'Sorry'?!"
She opened her mouth but nothing came out.
He lunged at her. The bars rattled, and she flinched.
"Bitch," he snarled.
"You came after me," she reminded him, her voice steadier, more righteous than she felt. "You should be grateful I let you live."
"And for the accommodations as well, I presume? The fine cuisine?" His words bit into her. "Surely I could not have asked for a more generous host."
She put her hands to the door, curled her fingers over the ledge. Closed her eyes. "Stop it."
His breath was hot and shameful on the skin of her knuckles. "Wasn't this what you wanted, Sydney? To be found?"
She flung the door open and pulled him through it by the collar of his shirt. His hair was long again, she noted as her fingers dug into the tangled mass of it and the hot, rancid taste of his mouth shut everything else out.
He harangued her with his hands, pushed at her clothes with an animalism she would not have expected from him. He was impatient, inpentinent.
"You kind of stink," she gasped as he jerked her hips up to his waist and pressed her to the wall.
"You've kept me locked up in a cellar for two and a half weeks."
"Shut up," she said, and bit down on his ear.
"Gladly."
Then he was pushing into her, zipper of his pants drawing blood off her thigh, stone bruising her hips. She bent her forehead to his shoulder; it was rank with old sweat, too-smooth shirt fabric smeared with grime. He hissed out her name, and the tension that had been building inside her for the last two weeks ripped through her like machine gun fire, or sobs, and she jerked helpless, over and over, in his arms. He released her thighs; she slid down his body.
And then he was heading up the stairs as if he did so daily, pulling her along carelessly by the hand, calling back, "Do you have anything resembling a shower in this godforsaken place?"
Later she sat behind him, his body between her legs as she pulled a brush through his hair, softening the matted curls into the looser waves to which she was accustomed.
"This is a horrible way to live," he chastised her, leaning back his head into the welcome custody of her hands.
"I don't need much," she said, abandoning the brush in favor of her fingers.
"None of us needs much," he countered with muted distaste. His eyes were closed; his lashes delicate, translucent against his cheek. His brows sketched softly across the even plain of his forehead.
She insisted, "It's what I want," and he murmured, "Is it?" He turned his head, looked back at her. His expression was open, concerned.
"Are you hungry?" she asked, getting nimbly to her feet.
"Actually I've adjusted to a rather less robust diet," he said, following her at a more leisurely pace. "But I suppose if you're cooking. . . ."
He stood behind her at the counter as she silently chopped potatoes, carrots, celery. She cut mercilessly into the vegetables with the knife as his fingers caressed her knuckles, stroked her wrists.
"You don't have to do this for me," he murmured against the skin of her shoulder.
"I want to," she said.
"Sydney--"
She turned, abandoning the knife, and kissed him. Caught by surprise, he hesitated; she pursued.
"I want to." Her voice was a whisper. "Please--"
He groaned as she pressed against him, and she felt something come alive inside of her. Anticipation. His hands were on her waist; she wanted chocolate ice cream and creme brulee, and red wine and curry. She settled for his mouth.
He pushed her back against the counter, lean and long against her body. She thought of having him on a bed; she thought of satin sheets, dozens of feather pillows, the textured flicker of candlelight. She trembled in his grip.
Her fingers fumbled for the tie of the sweat pants he'd taken from her room, and when it stuck she ripped the string.
"No dinner, then?" he asked, hands smooth along her back.
"No dinner." She reached up to pull his lips to hers.
-
She called for a cab and took it into town, where she exchanged her cotton lycra for linen pants and a silk halter. She ate outside in the falling light, and savored the sunset.
Then she called in. She answered all their questions. She said she was ready for active field duty again. She asked for her father; he wasn't there. She asked for Weiss.
"Syd?" he asked.
"It's me," she said. "I'm coming in."
She caught the next flight out. On the plane, eating stale pretzels and sipping her drink, she looked out the window and smiled. Sark was going to be annoyed when he woke up, but she had the feeling he'd also be glad.
She was going home.