Chapter 12: First Blood - a duel that is fought only to the first sight of drawn blood as opposed to "to the death" or to the opponent "yielding".
Having arrived back in L.A., Sydney still reflected upon the incidents in Switzerland – upon the rescue of the Caplan hostages and of the business surrounding the theft of the magnetometer.
She was in her kitchen at night, occasionally catching her reflection in the darkened window as she washed the dishes. She hadn't been able to get her mind off Switzerland since she had returned to L.A. She felt a deep discomfort at it. It was as though she wanted to forget about it but couldn't, as though she was having to fend off some part of herself, some deep hidden part that was about to … pounce? She caught her reflection in the glass again: she looked furtive. Pensive, she admitted to an uncomfortable truth: she wasn't thinking about what had happened in Switzerland so much as she was thinking about Sark's role in it.
She recalled her recent conversation with Irina where she'd come out thinking of herself as a jerk and had thus resolved to be more straight with herself. She glanced up again at the woman in the window and frowned crossly at her: oh cut the crap lady and just be honest!
She cut the crap and got honest. She wasn't thinking about Sark's role in Switzerland so much as she was thinking about Sark.
She heard a noise come from the lounge as Vaughn switched on the TV and she started with guilt at the mundane homely comfort of it: she bent over the sink again, angrily scrubbing away at a stain she'd decided was just being plain stubborn. Ordinarily she and Vaughn washed up together, or they just loaded up the dish-washer and then moved to the sofa in the lounge where they could snuggle up. Tonight was different. She'd made the excuse of washing the dishes, saying he should go and watch the game on TV, knowing that she had wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Francie – Christ but Francie had been so distant lately - and Will were away for the night.
Rinsing a cup, her troubled memories of Switzerland flooded her again, and for the umpteenth time her photographic memory replayed the incident of Sloane's extraction in her head. She saw Sark's face watching her from his own speeding vehicle as he trained his pistol on her from mere feet away. She saw his gaze hold hers as they both knew he had a clear and annihilating kill-shot straight to her head. And then she saw him deliberately dip his aim and shoot her off the road by hitting the hood of her car instead.
It hadn't been like that time at FAPSE Headquarters where he'd held a gun to her head, but not pulled the trigger. It hadn't even been like that time in Paldiski where he'd trapped her under that shower of acid, but given her the option to deal her way out. No, those were incidents where Sark had gotten at least some advanced warning, where he'd had the fractional time needed to plan his tactics, to gain control of himself before the game began. Switzerland was different. Switzerland had been an on the fly, hot blooded conflict. And okay, so her mom had probably drilled it into him how important Sydney was to her when he'd worked for her in the past, and Sloane disgustingly regarded her as almost 'family', but was that why Sark had stayed his hand? It had been an adrenalin pumping show-down. In such a 'split second decisions' and 'no time to rationalise' environment she knew from experience that all previous orders from some far off Handler went out the window. At such times pure instinct took over. She could not evade the fact that Sark's over-riding instinct toward her had been: Don't Kill.
Standing in the kitchen, part of her started screaming at herself. Why was she even thinking about Sark? She was in a relationship with Vaughn! They'd waited for over a year! She was betraying Vaughn by just even dwelling on Sark in her mind!
And that, of course, was why she knew she needed to be alone right then, because she couldn't even begin to examine her feelings if she were lying in Vaughn's arms, she'd be too busy silently raging at herself that she shouldn't even try to untangle her thoughts.
Two speeding vehicles on a road in Switzerland – and a man who hadn't shot her.
She slammed her hands down into the soapy water, causing splashes to rise up. Stop thinking about him! Stop it! Stop thinking about Sark!
She took a deep, almost sobbing breath.
Yeah, why should I stop? - another side of her spoke up defiantly - why shouldn't I think of him? It's not a crime just to think!
Sydney forced herself to steady, bravely acknowledging that her anger at herself for even thinking about Sark was just another one of her decoys, yet another one of her excuses to go round in a circle again, anything to avoid going through that mental door that had lain straight ahead of her now for a year.
Her hands slammed down rigidly into the kitchen sink, palms beating against the steel, her face screwed up almost to the point of furious tears as one part of her fought the other. One part wanted to mentally stay where she was, the other insisted on moving forward. Moving forward won.
She broke through the door in her mind.
A little cry escaped her throat as she entered the place where she kept something so dark that she'd tried to hide it even from herself: the fact that she had feelings for Sark.
Finally she had admitted it.
With a stifled little cry she slumped forward over the sink, arms up to the elbows in water. Oh God, please don't let this be, don't let me care about him. I won't. I can't! If I care about him then I can't go on! But even as she knew the pain of fumbling towards what she felt, she experienced something else as well, a terrible relief that she was at last allowing herself to feel at all.
Hanging over the kitchen sink, Sydney Bristow - American Princess, true blue girl-scout, honour bright - finally gave herself permission to drop her mask of High School Cheerleader Perfection and just be human. She finally bestowed the mercy upon herself which she regularly showered upon others, she allowed herself to be just as weak as anyone else.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every prolonged strenuous effort to restrain an emotion, the eventual release is all the more overwhelming. Sydney's release was cataclysmic. She couldn't even try to control the sobs that broke from her. Her legs weakened and buckled and she hung over the countertop for support. She moved blindly away from the sink like a wounded animal. She was crying so hard and so deep that it was almost soundless.
She couldn't care about him, she couldn't – he was the bad guy!
Some time passed, time enough for Sydney to cry out her stifled sobbing and to gather together her few remaining damp scraps of self-possession. As Vaughn still watched the game in the other room, she sat in the kitchen before a calming cup of tea, relatively composed but her breath still shaky and her face raw and red from crying.
Tea! – she thought to herself - She should have known what she was about when she'd bought a packet of the vile stuff. She'd only bought it because she'd heard Brits drank it!
She put her hand over her mouth to stifle an unsteady, half-laughing breath at the thought.
Thank God Vaughn hadn't heard her crying earlier, but then again, maybe it would have been a mercy if he had? If he had come in and demanded to know why she was so helplessly sobbing, to know what was going on, she would have had to tell him. There would have been no time to think of excuses, no time to fear the consequences of telling the truth and thus invent evasions, she would have had to come clean. But he hadn't come in. Instead, engrossed in the game, Vaughn had merely called through a vague hello, one of those casual contacts that couples make, not really interested in the response, just an acknowledgement of their togetherness. She'd gotten herself together enough to be able to fob him off with a few similarly meaningless noises of her own and had managed to squeeze out the words 'reading' and 'book' from her swollen throat. In the other room Vaughn had nodded absently and had sunk back into the match.
She had bought herself time to think, and so she sat at the breakfast counter, almost serene in comparison to what had gone before, as composed as she could be in the circumstances. She was determined that she was no longer going to run from her real feelings, she was going to open them up and look at them properly.
When had it all gotten so fucked up between she and Sark?
Sitting in the kitchen Sydney had made a deal with herself. She'd taken a jar of coffee beans down from a shelf, and every time she told herself a lie, or evaded the true issue, she was going to take one out and put it in a pile. That way, at the end of it, she could see just how big a liar she really was. She took a bean from the jar and started the pile.
She'd been evading the issue, it hadn't gotten fucked up between she and Sark, she'd gotten fucked up about Sark. Saying it had gotten fucked up between them was implying that he shared the blame for the mess she was in. And that was a deception, just another way of hiding another truth from herself: that the mess she was in was all of her own making.
Sark, she suspected, had never gotten fucked up about her, at S-D6 and even before he had always been unafraid to show his attraction. That was the mess really. Not that she was deeply fascinated by a known assassin who was an enemy of the nation and the personal enemy of almost everyone she knew - no, she could have handled that - the mess was that she had unremittingly lied to herself about what she had felt.
Oh God, why hadn't I just reached out to him at SD-6?
He'd given her so many chances while he'd been there, he'd taken all the rejections and slaps she'd given him and had just kept holding his hand out to her. He had metaphorically held his hand out to her time and again, and she had knocked him back at every single instant. And she hadn't even wanted to! Why had she been so afraid to let him in? She had wanted to get to know him and be his friend. She had wanted to let him take her into that emotional safe harbour she sensed he was capable of providing, but she'd been too scared of what people might say even to try for it!
And he'd been so polite to her all the way through. Held out his hand towards her so many times, and she'd been such a relentless bitch to him … With his endless self-confidence and social poise he could have faced down any difficulties that might have arisen for them. Unafraid of what others thought of him he was above the common care of what 'people' might think.
He would have hacked out a space for them, he would have made it happen!
Sydney gave way to quiet sobbing again as for the first time she saw all her lost chances strewn behind her.
That time he'd made her a 'comprehensive offer'? She should have made him one, that he join her working for the good-guys instead of she join him working for the bad. Her father would have helped her, he would have forced a government pardon for him!
And the last time she'd seen him, just yesterday on that road in Switzerland when he'd stared straight at her and not shot her? The worst part of it was the expression on his face. Underlying the professional impassivity there had been a vague smudge of hurt and disappointment, as though some deep and hidden part of him, hidden even from himself, had felt injured by her, as though she'd somehow let him down.
Sydney wiped her tearstained face with the flat of her hand and tried to control her ragged, shaky breathing.
If only she'd been more brave. If she had just claimed her courage and reached out to Sark when she'd had the chance, then their lives could have now been totally different.
At the recognition of it she broke down again. Stifled sobs wracked her. Parts of her mind crumbled. All the defensive architectures she'd built up over the years, all her righteous strictures and certainties, fractured.
When finally unbound, love takes no prisoners.
