Chapter 37: Cob's Traverse - retreating indefinitely (running away).
"Honey, it's alright. We'll just get through this. These days, they can fix anything."
"Shit, in that case I must look really bad." Her jaw had been deliberately fractured with an almost surgical precision and was swollen beyond belief, she could barely speak, her words almost indecipherable.
Jack got a vicious grip on himself. His throat was thick with unvoiced howls, his eyes stinging with unshed tears but he refused to allow himself the release of grief, to show any fractured weakness that would cause Irina to lose heart. "Honey, admittedly you look slightly worse than those times when you had to get up extra early in the morning for class - before you had your usual Hoover Dam's worth of black coffee - but that's all."
"Worse than that? There's no hope."
Jack was still strapped hopelessly to the gurney, he could not move, neither could Irina, still tied to her chair away from him. In his extremity, Jack didn't realize she was only joking. "Irina, there's - "
Irina could still see him from out of her damaged face. Jack caught a glittering glance that slid its way out from under a single, hopelessly puffed up lid. She spoke. "It doesn't hurt." She saw him look at her from out of a world of his own pain. They hadn't touched him, but he was in agony for her. "It doesn't hurt Jack." From her dislocated, broken mouth it came out: i usn urt ack … "I've got a mental-lock. I can't feel it."
"Irina," Jack's voice almost cracked, "the CIA are going to be looking for me. It's just a matter of time before they find me." He projected every ounce of confidence he had, privately believing that there was no reason at all why the CIA should even know where to start looking, but he had to give Irina hope. "All we have to do is keep them talking. Just tell them what they want to know. Tell them anything. When help gets here we can pick them up anyway so there won't have been any spilled intel."
Irina gave one of her catty, snarking half-grins. Well, she hoped it looked like that. She doubted that her face still retained its ability to express the way it had been able to just hours earlier. She was laughing because if Jack was that desperate, well, she knew she must look really fucked.
"Irina, tell them. Whatever it is, it's not worth it. We can deal our way out. I can deal a way out for both of us!"
With her limited, battered vision Irina gave Jack the quelling look she used to reserve for students arriving late to lectures. With one of her few fingers that wasn't yet broken she began tapping out a Morse message against the side of the chair she was still shackled to, so Sloane couldn't see or hear it if it were on surveillance.
i. c.a.n.t. t.e.l.l. i.t.s. s.y.d.n.e.y.
With a mounting horror Jack knew then that Irina was doomed. Because whatever had gone on between he and she, whatever they had done to each other, he had never truly believed that Irina would endanger Sydney's life. He had lied about it and said that she would, he had tried to turn Sydney against her mother, but deep down, he had never believed it. He knew Irina was doomed, because if Irina hadn't broken yet, then this must be about the safety of Sydney's very life. And if this was about Sydney's very life, then Irina was not going to let herself break.
The sound he had come to dread with ever fiber in him announced itself. The quiet, mundane squeak of the door opening. It meant they were coming for her again.
"Whatever you want, ask me!" He shouted it out before Sloane was even half way across the floor. State secrets? They were nothing. Right then, Jack was a man prepared to sell his very soul if it could stop Sloane.
Sloane's voice was it's usual smooth, sibilant self.
"I would Jack, but the information I want, you just don't have."
"Then I can get it for you!"
"Come along Irina." Gripping the back of her chair, ready to move her back to 'the conversation room', Sloane was almost a kindly carer speaking to an invalid they were about to take to the park. Almost. "We're ready for you now …"
Jack twisted against his bonds in ways the human body was probably never meant to move.
"Get. Off. My. WIFE!" It was an almighty roar. But it had no effect. Sloane simply moved Irina out anyway.
As they moved down the corridor, they could hear Jack's roaring voice, issuing out all that was left to him, threats which right then he could not carry out.
"SLOANE, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU FOR THIS!"
WHAM!The bike lurched under the impact of the car behind it.
Sark was seriously wishing he hadn't wasted time initially going left when he should have gone right. Like changing leads on a dance floor, it had just fucked everything up. The delay had given Allison's convoy of cars time to close the gap coming up the driveway. The cars had hit the road, turning right after Sark, just as Sark had passed the gates.
The bike had acceleration and manoeuvrability but the cars had just as much top speed, and on the long straight road, manoeuvrability and acceleration weren't helping him pull ahead. He couldn't even go flat-out. At the speeds he was pulling, even with the Oakleys on his eyes were still watering. Any faster and he just wouldn't be able to see.
WHAM!The bike lurched again. One of the big Mercedes was simply walloping into them from behind. Slamming into the back wheel. Trying to kill them by getting them to crash. Part of him wondered why their assailants weren't just shooting them, presumably killing them this way was just more fun. It wouldn't take long after all, a few more crunches like that and they would be sent spinning wildly off the road, killed by a long scrape across a hundred yards of tarmac. With his gun on his ankle, he couldn't even reach it to shoot at them.
He could hear James' scream of panic every time the car hit them. Her arms wrapped around him, body tucked tight against him, almost trying to burrow into his back. She was screaming again … but this time it sounded like - what the fuck? - words? She was trying to say something? He didn't dare slow down the bike to hear, he just tried to snatch the sounds out of the high-speed windstream that ripped them away. But it wasn't working, because all he could hear was something like: go faster. And that was just crazy.
And then he heard it again. This time bellowing, angry, right into his ear.
"I said GO FASTER!"
Uh?He glanced at the speedo, they were already right at the edge of his ability in the circumstances, and she wanted to go faster? And then he shrugged to himself. Well why not? What difference did it make? They were going to die anyway. Might as well go out, flat out. He twisted the throttle and sent every dial flicking into the red. The bike leapt forward, pulling ahead of the car, but Sark knew it wouldn't be for long, and at this speed the next smack into their rear tyre would kill them.
He then felt something that, even in these circumstances, made him blurt with a crazy laughter. James' small hand shoving deep inside his hip pocket, moving against his groin. Delving.
Sark's gleeful howls were ripped away on the wind as he kept the throttle wide open.
"Deeper and a little to the left, please!"
"Oh for fuck's sake, will you be serious!" He heard her scream of outrage.
Sark was grinning madly, throwing his head back and roaring with laughter. This was a truly great way to die!
And then she yanked her hand out. Puzzled, Sark checked her grip in the rear-side mirror and saw a handful of loose change …
… be released from her grip.
She didn't even throw it, she just let it go.
Straight into the path of the windscreen of the car belting up at an insane speed behind them.
Pure physics.
At these speeds the loose change wasn't loose change anymore, velocity had converted it into something else: ammunition. The shotgun blast of cents, dimes and quarters punched through the windscreen glass and then punched through the driver.
Sark had always wondered why in Brit-slang loose change was called 'shrapnel'; now he had as good an explanation as any.
The car behind them lurched, slowed slightly, swerved, carved rubber into the road, and then lost it. It rolled over itself, end to end, like a toy flung by an angry child. The car behind it clipped into it and was sent barrelling off into the trees that lined the road.
Two down one to go.
Sark slowed the bike enough to get his gun, shoving it into the front of his waistband. And then ramped up the speed again. The third car had swerved round the other two and was still on them.
He let it get to within twenty yards and then slowed slightly, allowing himself to half turn in the saddle as the bike rushed forward at what was still a mad pace. He heard James gasp behind him as she realised that now he wasn't even properly looking where he was going. He was looking back at the car instead. Aiming at it. Aiming at who was inside.
He saw he was aiming at Allison.
Shit!
He saw her shocked face and felt a jolt of disbelief himself. Mentally he screamed at himself. Pull the fucking trigger! Just do it! Uncertainty. Indecision. She'd kill you if the positions were reversed! She's trying to kill you now! But I can't do it! Just fucking do it Sarkey, and then she'll be dead and you won't even have to explain to Sydney about the cloning! No-one will ever know! The evidence will be dead!
He pulled the trigger.
And shot the car safely off the road by deliberately clipping the bonnet and letting it fly up, blocking the windscreen. The occupants were unharmed.
"Whoah! Cool shot!" James screamed, despite herself.
Sark turned his gaze forward, blasting the bike down into Los Angeles as James' arms and thighs wrapped close around him.
Knowing he'd let Allison go, he hoped against hope that the old adage wouldn't turn out true … no good deed goes unpunished …
Sydney slammed the accelerator to the floor as she headed towards Simon Walker's co-ordinates. The CIA point-troop were already assaulting the building.
Everything in her told her she was going in the right direction, in all ways.
She had been right to trust Sark.
She been wrong about a lot of things concerning Sark, and not just the shape of his hands.
He hadn't been the driving force behind that bugging of my house … And the sex tapes? He didn't even watch them properly! He fast-forwarded so he wouldn't have to see!
Sark had committed enormities, she knew that, but there were also things he hadn't done. And that which he was still capable of doing? … well he was capable of changing.
He can change … I know he can.
He'll come into the CIA. It might take time and persuasion and all sorts of deals will have to be struck, but he'll come.
He had the capacity for change, and although it caused the ache of fury and sadness within her, she knew why he now had that capacity: James Dodgson.
Whether she knew it or not, James Dodgson, a freak genius thrown up from the genetic lucky bag of dirt poor white trash, had cracked the code to the human equivalent of the Enigma cipher: she'd translated Sark into something like normality. She seemingly hated him, but that didn't matter, because Sark didn't hate her. James Dodgson had in some way presented Sark with an alternative to who he was: the alternative of who he could be.
Even in an extreme such as this, Sydney felt a spasm of jealousy.
She gave herself a severe telling-off.
Well, if you hadn't kicked him back twenty-eight times in a row she wouldn't have been his girl, you would have! IT'S ALL YOUR OWN FAULT!
Gritting her teeth and gripping the wheel, she focussed her thoughts ahead of her and hurtled on.
Swooping toward the sound of gunfire she was seized by an utter certainty. She was going to make it. She was going to make this turn out. Dad, Sark … everything. If there was such a thing as destiny … then hers was to rescue.
Sark felt the bike skid under him in a slide as they rocketed across the marble-flagged plaza. They were headed straight at the vacant 'To Let' office tower block that the Wand told them the bomb was in. James had located it by using the Wand almost as a direction finder, picking up on key frequencies. Lead by it they had roared across town leaving a trail of near chaos in their wake: red lights run, lanes of fast-moving traffic left in a jumble as they powered the wrong way up one-way streets.
James had lost count of the car crashes they'd caused.
"It's on about the fifth or sixth floor!" she screamed. "I'll know more when we get in!"
They had minutes left.
Sark slowed, idling the engine, standing up slightly in the saddle to get a view. The building was lit but empty, it's sliding-glass entrance doors locked. The doors sat regally at the head of a rise of wide, imposing marble steps, a portico of columns differentiating the plate glass door area. There was almost the air of a temple about it.
No-wonder Sloane picked this place, the theatrical bastard.
"We're running out of time! We have to get in!" That was James.
Sark knew it was his imagination, but just then he felt he could hear the long dead, but somehow very present, Rambaldi darkly chuckling in his ear, taunting them to Bring It On.
He revved the bike, aimed straight at the steps, accelerated up them, shot-out the plate glass doors, and lunged straight through the ready-made gap into the foyer, still on the bike.
You want us to Bring It, Rambaldi? Fine. We're bringing it.
A fanfare of burglar alarms erupted around them, announcing their entrance.
"Shit. The police'll come!"
"Not for a good ten minutes James. And by that point we've either dealt with the bomb and we're out of here or it won't matter because no-one in this part of Los Angeles will ever have to worry about anything ever again."
At the far end of the foyer were the elevators – Sark had called them 'lifts'. Sark had ridden the bike into one, curving an s-swerve backwards as they slid across the tiled floor to land neatly inside it, facing towards the elevator doors as they rode up.
Tinkly muzak played.
Sark looked down at James' hand holding the wand, it was guiding them to the exact spot.
"What is that?"
"Not sure." She looked up around her as the muzak jingled about them, thinking. "I think it's The Girl From Ipanema."
The building was rocked by explosions and gunfire. Jack felt a grim determination and a dark glinting certainty. He didn't give a damn who was assaulting the place, whoever they were, he was on their side! They could be from hell itself and he would be on their team, so long as they would stop Sloane from hurting Irina.
All his training told him to keep quiet, to not draw attention to himself in case it jogged Sloane's men to remember his existence and use him as a hostage, or just plain shoot him. But instead he was roaring like a mighty, trapped beast. Attracting as much attention to himself as he could. Desperately hoping to fetch help in time to save Irina.
And with a mad jolt of hope he saw the door open.
It was Sloane.
Jack jerked against his unyielding bonds, instinctively launching at him. And then felt that mad, crazy hope again. Sloane had Irina with him. She was slumped, shackled to the chair, seemingly totally unconscious, horribly battered, but he could see her breathing, she was still alive!
His game-playing kicked in and he immediately moved to tactics.
"Leave us here. Get out now Sloane. Whoever's assaulting the building, they're coming after you. And you can move much faster without the two of us!"
Jack hoped to whatever gods were listening that Sloane did not pick up on the obvious logic flaw: that he could use Irina and Jack as hostages.
"I know Jack. Ordinarily I would use you as hostages. But time is of the essence, and with Irina so," he looked down at her slumped form, seemingly wondering what word he should choose, "damaged … and you would hardly be co-operative … so I think it best to leave without either of you."
Jack felt that wild flare of hope again, and tried to ignore the tiny sliver of disquiet that had just formed in his thumping heart: this is too easy.
"However," Sloane's sibilant, friendly tones reeked of insanity, "I can't afford to let either of you fall into the hands of the CIA. Irina knows too much. And if you two have formed an alliance during this," he waved his hand idly at the room, indicating their circumstances, as though airily feeling for the words, " 'joint experience', then Irina may decide to side with elements of the CIA. And I can't have that."
Jack went cold. Unblinking. Glaring. As though if he could just stare hard enough at the crazy bastard, he could stop him dead by sheer willpower. He couldn't.
"So, unfortunate though it is, I'm afraid we shan't be meeting ever again."
It was Sloane's euphemism for 'I'm going to kill you both now'.
He was a man who could order any enormity, and yet he could never quite manage to use the brute words for what he did. Maybe he thought he could hide his actions from himself if he just called them something else.
Jack heaved, twisting, on the gurney.
"It will be quick," said Sloane. "I'm testing a new device, for low range but maximum impact explosions. Should ensure complete erasure. There'll be no evidence that you were ever here. Better than bullets really. It won't hurt. It will be total, almost instant, vaporisation." He said it as though that somehow made it all better. "Goodbye Jack." He reached forward to the slumped Irina and flicked a switch on a small device strapped to her chest.
Jack wondered why he didn't just shoot them first, and then he knew why. Sloane wasn't a man who could bear to get his hands dirty, to carry the psychological weight of the up-front acceptance of his actions. That was why he always needed to be at one remove, to not be the man who inflicted the actual torture, to not be the one who actually pulled the trigger. Jack knew that in Sloane's mind, by blowing them up rather than shooting them, he could tell himself that he hadn't been the one to kill them, the bomb had.
He was quite mad.
Sloane left with Jack roaring after him. He scurried away so fast that he didn't hear Jack's shouts abruptly stop before they should have, before Sloane's little device went off.
Jack went silent because he'd seen something Sloane had not: he'd seen Irina move. She was not unconscious.
Irina never had been unconscious. She knew perfectly well the situation she and Jack were in and was determined to do something about it. She looked down at her chest, showing the little toy Sloane had strapped to her, with it's red countdown LED.
She knew from it that Jack had less than twenty seconds to live. She didn't include herself in that calculation because there was no point. She could not plan a way out for herself. She knew she was dead no matter how she cut the cake. But Jack was not. She flexed her legs. Sloane had been in such a hurry that for once he had not chained them to the chair legs. She was badly damaged and she was sure one ankle was broken, but with her legs free she could still make herself move. Irina was physically wrecked, but she was still quite lucid.
She could see Jack struggling like a madman.
"Irina, hold on! I can still do it!"
And could hear his words and knew that he was wrong. He couldn't do it. All he could do was die trying. And she knew that he would die trying. Because with seconds of her life left she had finally realised something: that no matter what she had ever said or done, that no matter what he had ever said or done, that Jack Bristow would never give up on her.
He would die first.
And then she heard a sound that clarified her thoughts and left her knowing what to do. Sydney. In the corridor. Running toward them in the gunfire. Running into range of the blast.
"Daddy hold on. I'm coming!"
Less than ten seconds.
Irina knew there was only one chess move remaining, so she took it. Badly wounded but just functioning, she picked herself up and, bent double, ran on her damaged legs straight at the window. Fifteen stories up. She would go through it and fall through the air, the warm night wind in her hair, and laughing inside, because her husband and child would be safe.
And then some deity came through for them from somewhere, and with a mighty tearing sound Jack was up and across the room as though he were flying, ripping the device off Irina's chest as she stumbled toward the window and hurling it away from them through the glass.
"Why do we have to have code-names, even though we're right next to each other and we don't even have comms?"
"Because it amuses me."
"Sure it's not because you just like calling me 'Guttersnipe'?"
"Well, that too."
James and Sark crouched over the bomb, working furiously but talking as though they were at a tea party.
"Is there something between you and her?"
"Who?"
"Wolf-Wrestler? Who do you think?"
"Wolf-Wrest? – her name is Sydney." Sark gave James a sly glance. "What's the matter, don't you like her?"
He was rewarded by the slight, annoyed jut of her jaw.
"Well at least she was one up from that Doren thing." James ground out.
Sark compressed a blurt of laughter.
"Standing there with that nasty little leather mini skirt on," James continued, "eyeliner all over her face and smoking her cigarettes all over the house. That skank! I mean, Jesus!" she slammed down the Wand, "you dated a girl who smokes?"
"James, remember now," Sark held up an admonishing finger, "L.A is about to be turned into a pot-roast."James snatched up the Wand again, teeth gritted.
"Anyway," drawled Sark, "you could hardly afford to call Alison a," he stumbled with the word, "a skank. Is that actually a word by the way? Because as I recall you were certainly taking full opportunity to grope me on that bike."
"What?" The Wand got slammed down again.
"Ah-ah!" reproved Sark. "Attention now, 'pot roast'!"
"Grope you?" she squealed, snatching up the Wand again and working with it. "You mean 'grope you' as in saving our lives with your loose change and then clinging on for dear life as we broke Mach 1? Do you mean 'grope you' as used to define the alternative to Falling Off and Getting Killed?"
Sark smoothly changed the subject. "Well, as to the Wolf-Wrestler – I mean Sydney – was there anything between us?" Despite himself he felt a faint flush of … something. He wasn't sure what though. Irked? Uncomfortable at thinking abut it? He swept it aside. "No there wasn't … Well, yes there was. Once. Maybe." He shook his head, speaking briskly, "but it's all irrelevant now." He decided to gloss over it. "I mean, I did once threaten to douse her in a shower of acid, but it got no further than that."
"Doused … acid? Douse her with acid?"
Sark raised an eyebrow, "Focus now James, remember, the city is depending on you."
The Wand was wielded again.
"Acid dousing is your definition of a romantic gesture? Hell, makes me feel so much better about only getting shot in the leg!"
Sark slammed down the angle-grinder he'd been holding.
"Oh! God! You are going to fling that subject at me forever, aren't you? I mean, even in twenty years time the subject of that leg is going to come up, isn't it?"
"You shot me. And worse - you were mean to me! What? - you think I can just forgive you? And stop looking all cute! You think I can't tell when you're doing the 'looking up at me from under your eyebrows' cute thing? You think I don't know you're doing it?"
Sark pushed his bottom lip out.
"Well, looking cute works. Gets me out of practically anything."
There was a silence as James concentrated angrily on disrupting the magnetic fields of the bomb by using the Wand to alter the structure of the very metals the firebomb was made of. Using Rambaldi's own toy to destroy his own weapon.
Fitting.
Sark saw that she was not going to yield.
He closed his eyes.
"Oh God … You want an apology don't you?" He took on an almost aggrieved note. "Look, I don't do apologies!"
James' face still held grim determination.
"If I apologise … well it'll be like Dorothy throwing the bucket of water over the wicked witch – I'll melt!"
Still grim.
"You don't want to see me turned into a nasty puddle of goo in the corner, do you?"
A flashing resentment. "Don't tempt me!"
"But I … er …" Sark's voice dwindled down into a small blurred noise and then rose again in great shriek. "Oh alright … I'm sorry! Okay? I'M SORRY! … I'M SORRIER THAN I'VE EVER BEEN! IN FACT I'M SO SORRY, I'M THE SORRIEST BASTARD IN SORRYSHIRE! OKAY?"
There was a silence.
"Well there's no need to shout," she announced, "I can hear you."
James bubbled with a sly, unvoiced laughter. Sark's jaw moved silently with the puzzlement of a man who knows he's just been out-foxed but doesn't quite know how. He diverted himself. He pointed at the bomb, which showed as having twenty seconds to run.
"That thing actually going to be okay now?"
"Oh no, it's gonna blow up."
"What?"
"Well I said I could stop the burn, and I just have." She rose to her feet. "Job done. But, c'mon, I never said I could stop it from exploding! I mean, what? – you think I can do everything? Be reasonable."
Sark grabbed her, shot-out the nearest window, sprinted toward it, rappelled them from a rip-cord hidden in his belt, and hurled them out into space.
"Mom? Dad? Oh my god – MOM!" Sydney started screaming as she saw the fractured human tied to the chair. Her scream went unheard outside the room as the building was raked by gunfire.
"Sydney! Shut up! We haven't got time for this now!" Jack bodily picked the whole chair up, with Irina still in it. "Your mother's told me what to do! I need to get to a room five doors down. Now MOVE! If anyone stops us, SHOOT THEM!"
Sydney and Jack bounced out the room, Irina in the chair Jack carried. Sydney skipped backwards following her parents: gun in each hand, firing at any movement. She clipped one man full in the chest and watched him hurtle backwards as though he'd been jerked on a wire.
Oh God, I hope that's not one of our guys!She kept firing wildly.
She felt rather than saw her father and mother go into the room. She caught a glimpse inside of something that looked like medical equipment, I.V.s, bags of blood-serum … but it couldn't be blood serum because it was … green?
Her dad back-heeled the door shut on her with a shout of, "Keep everybody out!"
She leapt for cover in a doorway opposite, firing ferociously the length of the corridor, keeping it clear. She knew perfectly well the team of people she was single-handedly keeping pinned down, just around the corner at the far end, were CIA. She even thought one of them was Weiss.
She didn't know how long she kept it up for. Until all her ammunition ran out really.
She held her hands up as the ops team rounded the corner, guns trained.
"Jesus Christ! - " Weiss' explosion filled the air. It had been him after all. He abruptly lowered his weapon, screaming 'stand down!' to the men behind him. "Jesus Syd! I nearly shot you! What were you thinking?"
"I didn't know it was you! Hey, you didn't know it was me, right? Friendly fire."
The explanation seemed to hold water.
A sound came from the room opposite Sydney. Weiss immediately swivelled toward it, gun raised.
"No! – I - " but her cry came too late, Weiss had kicked the door in.
NO! Mom! They'll jail her!She forced past him and barged into the room not knowing what she would do next. Force everybody out? Hold herself hostage whilst she bought time for Dad to pull his plan? Hey, because Dad always has a plan!
And then she didn't have to. And Weiss looked at her puzzled, vaguely suspicious as a slight smile played about her lips, vaguely suspicious because although Syd was acting suspiciously, there was nothing to be suspicious of. The room was empty, there was no-one there.
Sydney felt a jolt of shock, and gradually something else building up within her, a wild, tumultuous wave of disbelieving relief and … happiness.
Her parents were … gone.
They fell through the air, the warm night wind in their hair, rappelling safely in a series of long controlled falls down the side of the building to the ground below. The bomb exploded high above them, carrying its debris far over their heads, flinging it to land at a distance which could not harm them.
Sark and James were safe.
They'd landed in an empty plaza. Startled by the blast, pigeons flocked into the air. Sark found himself wondering, for no particular reason he could think of, whether he had a few stray crumbs he could feed them upon their return.
Although it was unnecessary, he still held her tightly, one of his arms across her back, gripping her to him, her heartbeat thumping painfully against him, his other hand pressing her head into his shoulder. Anchoring her to him.
He was terrified. Scared that if he let go, she would never leave.
If I just hold her like this, just stay here forever, she can't go.
Like two dancers standing too close, their feet and knees knocked as they stumbled against each other. Sark could feel his own heartbeat pounding in his chest.
If I let go, she'll leave and never come back.
Words were blocked in his throat that nothing could have dragged out, he was afraid that if he made a sound he would startle her into jerking away from him.
There wasn't an inch gap between them, no gap at all.
And then she kissed him.
Her face moving against his neck, her lips smooth against his throat. Astounded, he felt an electric thrill and then felt as though he were floating. Her mouth slid up the long, lean curve of his throat. She had to rise slightly on tip-toe to catch the underside of his jaw, running her tongue there, nipping slightly.
In one rush of movement Sark had her up off both feet, their faces pushing and sliding together, mouths feeling for each other and then meeting. One long, mad, burning kiss. Her hand trapped in his hair. His arm wrapped tight about her, lifting her up off her feet, his other hand fiercely clutching at the back of her neck, pulling her in to him. Their bodies locked together.
She broke away, panting for breath, laughing as she spoke. "Jeez, were gonna be on police camera: When Criminals Go Wild." She gasped with laughter. "There's probably some poor security guy watching us now, pleading at the monitor, oh please, get a room."
Holding tight against each other, they shook with laughter. Sark had his eyes closed, almost crying with hilarity. "James, you are completely mad!"
And then her arms went round him, and he knew it was going to be alright. And she tugged at him, getting him moving. "C'mon," she laughed, "let's find that room."
They walked away into the protective dark, into the anonymity of the night.
After some minutes they had cleared the area, close together, her arm tight about his waist, his about her shoulders, pushing unnoticed through an increasing flow of people all going the other way, all called to the commotion they had left behind. She whispered up to him.
"You have got it in you, you know."
He looked down at her, puzzled.
She explained, "The capacity to change. You can be a better person. All you have to do is want to be."
He felt something slacken within him, something that had been wound up too tight but which had finally started to relax. He whispered down into her hair. "Well, I'm going to start tomorrow. I'm going to walk in to the CIA."
She jerked to a halt.
"What? Are you NUTS?"
He sounded almost injured. "Well, I thought you'd like it. At least if I'm affiliated to the CIA, then when I meet your family you can at least say I've got a steady job."
There was a splutter of conflicting gasps and half-starts before she could get the words out. "You seriously think that the same organisation that hired that 'I speak French' screamer we left behind at the villa is gonna cut you a break?"
"James, I am eventually going to have to deal with them."
"Yeah? Well the definition of 'eventually' is 'not now'. What we are going to do instead is think about it."
Sark thrilled at her use of the word 'we'.
She looked up a the night sky, considering eagerly. "We're going to have a nice, long holiday … somewhere with beaches and … Mai Tais."
Sark winced. "Mai Tais are green. They're sugary. They have paper umbrellas in them. Wouldn't you prefer wine?"
She thought about it, face screwed up in concentration, seriously considering it. "No."
He seemed to struggle with something within himself. "But, I gave Sydney my word about releasing you to your old life tomorrow."
"Yeah? You gave her your word? Well I never gave her mine. And I vote: holiday. And if you're worried about Wolfie we can tell her later, when it's safe."
Sark smirked. "Well, if you absolutely insist on leaving. If you're going to make me do it … Well I do have this little place on Crete … "
"I'll take it!"
Sark gasped with laughter again. She was so easy. So utterly free of angst.
James leant up as they went, whispering half-muffled into the hollow of his jaw. "I won't leave, you know. I'm not going to run out on you."
Sark hitched a breath, felt that thing which had slackened within him slacken further, and then find ease. Some small but vital part of him woke up, like a watch spring after years of rusted disuse and abuse which had suddenly sprung to life. He didn't know what it was … he wasn't sure … and then he identified it. He was feeling … happy.
He buried his face into her hair as they went, gripping her tightly, whispering back. "I'm not worried."
They picked up speed as they walked along. His arm wrapped about her, she close against his side. He felt his sureness and confidence return with every fresh step. He knew who he was. He was Sark, the man who only pretended to be Mr. Sark. He spoke, chin up, smug, exuding a faint air of self-congratulation.
"Did I ever tell you that I'm descended from the Romanovs?"
The woman next to him gave a Bayou-accented drawl.
"Nope, but it explains plenty. Royalty huh? - a better class of sarcasm."
The End.
Author's notes: joke taken from Stephen Sommers' film, Deep Rising. A great B-movie!
Writing on 21 March 2005.
This is the first book in a series of two or three books (depending on how many it takes to finish the story).
As a Sark fangirl I want completion on the Sark, Sydney, Sarkney, Rambaldi, Jack and Irina plotlines. As of right now, the way things are going with the TV show I think we Sark fans are going to have to provide that completion for ourselves. I'm certainly going to provide mine.
If you've read this far and are interested in more, then I'm working on Book 2 now (just started it today – they day I finished Book 1). The events in Book 2 pretty much take off from the end of Book 1 and continue the tale. There will be far more Sarkney in the next book than there was in this one, although of course there will be many rivers to cross along the way.
If you liked this book then you may have to wait a while for Book 2. Although I've started writing it, I don't publish a chapter at a time, rather I compile the whole book (as I did with this one), editing as I go, and then I publish it in one hit. It's much easier for me to write that way, and I think produces a much better read. Come on, wouldn't you prefer to have the whole box of chocolates to eat at once rather than be lead on with one stingy little chocolate at a time?
Off and on it took me 6 months to write this book – but a lot of that time was spent 'learning to write' so hopefully the next one won't take quite so long! So, if you enjoyed this book and are looking forward to Book 2, then wish me luck!
Oh, and the title of Book 2 will be - The Man Who Was Mr. Sark: A Dark Angel
You want spoilers for what's coming up next? Well here's just a few. I am completely moving away from the TV plot and will be following my own. Rambaldi will take a bow, that nasty man 'The Tutor' will be back (come on, you can guess who he is, can't you?) and just what did you think was going to happen with all those children who escaped Project Christmas? You didn't think I mentioned them for nothing, now did you?
Directdial
P.S. Oh, and I swear to you, there's going to be NO COW!
