"Sydney," Dixon said to her for the tenth time. He had been standing in front of her desk for a couple minutes now trying to get her attention. "Sydney, can you hear me?"
"What?" she finally answered turning to him. She looked at him strangely. "When did you get here?"
"You seem to have been staring at your father too intently to notice that I've been calling your name for quite a while."
"I have to have a word with him again." She clicked her computer off. "And I have to have a word with you. But that can wait until later. What do you need?"
"We believe that the Covenant is making an attempt to steal the nuclear warheads that were recently "misplaced" by the Korean government. I'm sending you, Vaughn, and Weiss in to try to intercept the deal."
"I just got back from a mission," she pointed out stubbornly.
Dixon gave her a funny look. "That never stopped you before. The only time you ever want a break between missions is when something went down that shook you up. Since there wasn't any evidence of that in your report on the mission to capture Sark, I assume that's not the case."
"No, you're right," she covered quickly. "I'll be ready to leave within the hour."
Dixon nodded and walked back to his office. Sydney watched his back disappear behind the closed door. It was hard to believe that this man had been lying to her for the past year. He had been the one person she trusted implicitly throughout her time as a double agent for SD-6 and the CIA. Dixon had been the only good thing that came out of Credit Dauphine.
And now he was one of the people that she was disgusted with. He was one of the people who were lying to her on a daily basis for no reason that she could foresee. If there was something about her missing two years that she didn't know about, they had an obligation to tell her.
Taking one last look at where her father was standing, she sighed and got up. Her head hurt too much to keep thinking about what had just happened, and she was too tired to have the conversations she knew would need to be had at some point. Plus, she had a mission to prepare for.
"Vaughn, are you there?" Sydney said into her earpiece. She was happy to hear his voice respond immediately.
"Yes, I'm here, Syd." He paused, and she could tell that he was thinking something over before continuing. "Can I ask you something?"
Sydney grabbed a hold onto a particularly strong looking crack in the massive wall of rock she was climbing. "This might not be the best time."
"It's the only time. Weiss has taken a bathroom break, so he's not monitoring the channels. Listen, Syd. I need to know why you requested that both of us stay behind in the communications center instead of me providing you the usual back up that you need."
"I don't trust Weiss," she said bluntly. Realizing that this wasn't going to be a quick conversation, she began to climb again as she talked. "I remembered something about my missing two years. Or at least I think it's from my missing two years. You see, I'm not sure if it's my imagination trying to create memories I know I could never had or if I'm actually seeing the truth."
"Are you trying to tell me that you're not going to elaborate any further?"
"No." She grunted and hefted herself up a few more feet. "But I will tell you that if what I'm remembering is true, most of my friends at the CIA have been hiding some crucial information from me for way too long."
"Weiss being one of them?"
"To start, yeah. At this moment, I don't have much trust for anyone." She paused in her climbing to catch her breath. "Except for you. You can say that Lauren did at least one thing worthwhile. You being with her and quitting the CIA, there's no way you could be a part of what I'm remembering. I still have you to rely on."
"That's good to know." She could hear the sound of door opening on the other end of the channel. "Okay, Syd. Are you almost to the top?"
"Yeah."
"Then we'll go radio silent until you've emerged with the cores of the warheads."
"Got it. See you in a little while." The channel clicked closed.
Sydney sighed and started to climb again. This mission should be about as easy as it came which gave her an uneasy feeling. Whenever she had an easy mission to go on, she usually ended getting shot or worse.
The rock face was starting to smooth out, giving her less and less hand and foot holds to choose from. She tried to push the non-mission related thoughts out of her head and focus on the increasingly more difficult task at hand.
Ten minutes later as she was almost at the top, she took a second to breathe and wipe the sweat out of her eyes. She was so tired mentally and physically that she didn't jump when she heard gunshots being fired from above her. She plastered herself as close to the rock as she could manage and hoped the men firing at her would give up soon.
It took her a little while to realize that there were no way the gunshots were being directed at her. She had heard them coming from above and there was definitely no sign of bullets whizzing past her head. So, there was some confrontation happening above her.
She smiled, realizing her luck. This would be the perfect diversion to use to get herself up and into the facility without being noticed. In the back of her head, she wondered if this was something that the CIA had set up to help her.
As she made a move to grab the edge of the rock where it turned from a straight vertical into a horizontal plane, the noises of gunshots stopped abruptly. It threw her off, and she almost wasn't surprised when her hand slipped completely off the rock.
The fingers on her other hand, the one still connected to the wall of rock, gripped it as tightly as they could while she tried to use her feet to give her enough purchase to fling her dangling hand back up over the edge. This was her only option. There was no way she could turn her earpiece back on to tell Vaughn she needed assistance. If she didn't get up this rock wall by herself and soon, she was dead meat. It was all on her to get out of this predicament.
The first try was not hard enough and took a little out of the hand that was holding most of her weight. She realized that she probably only have one more shot in her. If she missed this time, the force of the try would make her lose her grip completely.
"Well, this is it," she whispered. Taking a deep breath, she flung her hand up into the air. For some reason, it didn't surprise her when it hit the wall and couldn't find anything to grip onto to. She had resigned herself to what was about to happen just about the moment her other hand let go of the wall.
Which was why she was so confused when she didn't fall more than a few inches. As she worked her feet back into a couple notches in the rock, she felt a hard pressure on her left wrist. Looking up, she found herself face to face with Sark.
He was leaning over the edge, face gritted in determination, as he held her left wrist in both of his hands. With a groan, he used his leverage to drag her up and over the edge, safely depositing her on the ground next to him.
When she had caught her breath, she looked over at him. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same thing, Agent Bristow. But it's not really necessary. We're both here to get those warheads."
"You're the agent the Covenant sent in to negotiate for the warheads."
Sark shook his head and stood up. "No. I'm the agent the Covenant is paying on the sly to steal the warheads while the appointed designate is trying to negotiate for them."
"So when the warheads are stolen, the Covenant can't be blamed. Their operative never left the sight of the negotiations. That's a good plan."
Before he could register the shift in dynamic, Sydney had stopped talking admirably about the Covenant's smart plans and was holding a gun to his face. "Is this the thank you that I get for keeping you from plummeting to your death? Because if it is, I'd rather had a nice head nod while you walk away to go do your job."
She clicked her safety of. "I'm not in the mood. There's a lot of shit I'm going through right now, and you seem to be at the middle of all of it."
"And pointing a gun at me is going to fix all of it? I don't think so." He smirked. "I never thought you would be one to take the easy way out."
She was about to respond to him when she registered his fist coming in fast at her face. There wasn't time to block his blow, so she just grounded herself and took the punch. He hadn't pulled it at all Therefore, the force of it threw her down to the ground and launched the gun out of her hands at the exact same time.
Cursing, she dragged herself up and was greeted with a boot to the stomach. "I didn't want to do this, Bristow. But I have a job to do."
She growled and pushed him hard so that he hit the side of the rocks with a smack. The sound of the air being forced out of his lungs was extremely noticeable, and she saw him gasp for air. With a smile, she punched him hard in the face.
He immediately snapped back. "Not hard enough," he taunted, having managed to catch his breath again. He grabbed her arm and flung her against the wall, effectively switching their positions.
Sydney bent down to dodge his next blow. She was satisfied to see his face wrench in pain as his fist connected with solid rock. If she was correct, there may even have been the satisfying sound of bone breaking. While she was bent down, she grabbed a rock.
As Sark turned, shaking off the pain in his hand, she wound up and launched the rock at him. It hit on the left side of his head. The blow didn't seem to phase him that much. What actually phased him was holding his hand up to his temple and pulling it back to see blood. "You bitch," he hissed with anger, flinging himself at where she stood.
She felt herself being tackled, and as they hit the ground, she felt him punch her hard in the side of the face. It would have hurt a lot more if she hadn't chosen that moment to roll, his blow then falling a little off the mark. She rolled back up onto her feet and swore. Her lip was bleeding pretty badly where his blow had split it open. "Didn't anyone ever teach you not to hit a girl?"
Sark dragged himself to his feet. "Who ever said you were a woman?" he sneered.
Things had gotten ugly rather quick between the two of them. Sydney couldn't believe that this was the same man who had let her sit on his doorstep and talk about her problems. He had even offered for her to come back if the nervousness and constant worrying returned.
Maybe he had a good twin out there to match his normal evil twin self.
Having caught her breath as much as she could, she threw a kick at his head, which he dodged. She used the momentum of her swinging leg to crouch herself down in order to throw her other leg around at ground level. Sark felt his legs go out from under him before he registered what she was doing.
Sydney threw herself on top of him and started pummeling him with punch after punch. "Why the hell aren't you fighting back?" she screamed when he didn't even shield his face from her. This wasn't their normal protocol.
Sark blocked her next blow and rolled her over so that she was lying below him. He just stared down at her without saying a word or making a move to hurt her again. His weight was keeping her from getting out from under him and away from his unsettling stare.
Before she could figure out what exactly had changed, there was the sound of a number of gun safeties being clicked off. Sark and Sydney both turned to see a handful of guards with firearms trained on them. If they weren't so tired, they probably would have killed the guards just for looking at them with disgusting sneers on their faces.
A short, balding men stepped out from behind them. "You spies never learn. Especially you, Julian. If you would just work with one another, you'd never be caught. But no, you always have to stage some epic battle during the middle of your mission. That is how you always get caught!"
"Who the hell are you?" Sydney hissed.
"I'm the man who has a few warheads that want to be sold without interruption." He turned to the men with the guns. "Throw them somewhere they can't get out of until we are far, far from here."
Sydney had planned to put up a good fight. With both her and Sark working together, there probably wasn't any group of goons in the world that could keep them under their control. As she thought up her fist move, she chanced a look at Sark, hoping to see what he was planning on doing. What she saw threw her strategy off completely.
He looked defeated, almost resigned to let this anonymous man take him into his custody.
In the whole time she had known him, he had never looked defeated. He was always defiant of whoever was trying to oppress him. It was a constant.
That was when she realized the situation they had gotten into was worse then she thought. For some reason, Sark wasn't going to put up a fight. Something was really wrong.
Once the thugs had brought them inside, they were split up. Sydney was questioned, but when they realized she wasn't going to reveal anything, she was thrown into an empty cell. She hadn't been frightened by the situation at all. The mysterious bald man had clearly said that she and Sark were just to be held under his business was finished. That meant no killing.
The part of all this that had actually frightened her was Sark's reactions to everything. When one of the guards said that he was happy to be in a position in which he could kill Julian, he made no move to attack him or even sneer.
The only sign of life he gave was when the same guard mentioned that Sydney was too pretty to be in this line of work and maybe he should spend some time with her alone while they waited for the boss to be done. Sark had reacted instantaneously and without thinking. He slammed the guard up against the wall and whispered something in his ear that Sydney didn't hear. The guard didn't say a word for the rest of their walk down to the prison level.
She sat alone in the cell with her thoughts until, ten minutes later, Sark was thrown into the cell with her.
She watched in silence as he picked himself off the floor, wincing in pain, and took a seat on one of the rather sad looking cots they had been provided with. He didn't look good. One of his eyes was closed to being swollen shut, and she could tell the way he was favoring his ride sight that some of his left ribs might be broken.
"They really worked you over, didn't they?" she said with a laugh. He didn't respond. He didn't even look over at her.
She tried again. "Who was that guy?"
There was still no response or recognition that she was even in the room. "What the hell is his problem?" she thought to herself. Not wanting to dig through whatever psychological reason was behind his silence, she sighed and lay down on the other cot. She put her hands over her eyes and tried to think of ways she could get out of this horrible situation.
After a few minutes, the silence got to her. She decided as much as it hurt her, she was going to ask him his opinion. At least she would get some sarcastic comment back about how she wasn't a good enough spy to deduce it on her own. A sarcastic comment would be better than the current state of silence. "So, how are we going to get out of this one?"
He didn't respond.
She stood up and stomped over to where he sat. Standing in front of him, she put one hand on her hip and used the other to grab his chin and tip his head so that he was looking at her. "Okay. I'm getting a little tired of this ignoring bullshit. We're stuck in a cell together. You're going to have to talk to me sometime if we're going to get out of this."
She took a deep breath. Maybe anger wasn't the best way to get through to him. She decided to try a little sarcasm. "So, what fantastically awful and off-the-wall plan have you come up with?"
"I don't know," he said shortly.
She waited for him to elaborate and when he didn't, she returned to the angry method. "Listen. You need to tell me what you know that I don't since you don't seem in a hurry to help me get out of here."
"You'll get out of here," he said knowingly.
"And how do you know that?"
"Because number one, I know you. You're not here alone. I'm sure that very soon your precious little boyfriend will realize that you've gotten yourself into another bind, and he'll come barreling in here to rescue his damsel in distress. Number two, it's not you they really want to antagonize. It's me."
"And how do you know that?" Sydney said, taking a seat back on the other cot. She was slightly proud of actually goading him into talking. Maybe she really was as good at getting what she wanted as people always told her.
"The man who captured us is an old acquaintance of mine."
He really wasn't going to tell her more than he had to. She realized that now. "And what do you mean by old acquaintance? That could mean anything."
"He was the man who taught me to be the person I am today."
"And what do mean by that? Did he teach you how to shoot a gun? How to kill people without feeling? How to always come up with a snarky retort? You're going to have to elaborate."
He just stared at her.
She got up and walked over to sit next to him on the same cot. "Why are you being so distant?" He looked over at her, and she could see a flicker in his eyes signaling that he was teetering on the edge of something. He only needed a little push, and she had a feeling just what would do that. "Is there something I did to make you mad?"
Just as she thought, that comment sent him over the edge. "No, Sydney, you've done nothing to make me mad, except be completely oblivious to the situation we're in."
He got up and started pacing, wincing in pain the whole time. After a moment, he turned back to her. "Do you want me to answer your question from before? The one about what exactly they did to me to put me in such pain?"
She didn't even want to nod. He was really scaring her. She watched as he stalked over to her as fast as his aching body could allow.
"They didn't lay a finger on me." She looked at him in confusion. He sat down on the cot next to her. "I know what you're thinking. Someone must have done this to me. Well, someone did. You."
She let his words sink in. It hadn't occurred to her what she had been doing to him on that rock ledge until just that second. She hadn't been pulling her punches at all, like she normally did. She had let herself go completely. She had lost control. That was something that had never happened.
"I'm sorry" were the only words she could think of to say.
He smirked at her, and for some reason this familiar gesture of his made her feel even more uncomfortable. She crossed her arms and inched away from where he had sat down.
"Do you know what the funny part is? It isn't even the physical pain of it that bothers me. It isn't the fact that you seem to be capable of doing things I never thought you could. Don't think I didn't notice the brutal way you were hitting me." He paused, making sure that he didn't meet her eye. "The most distressing part of all this is the fact that I would let you beat the crap out of me every day of the week as long as I could see you."
She looked at him in shock at his words to her. "What do you mean?"
He took a deep breath. "It's a long story."
He seemed to be retreating back into his shell. She couldn't let him do that. "Then, start from the beginning. We don't have anywhere to be at this moment."
"My life is not the same as yours, Sydney. It never has been, and it never will be. We come from different worlds. Every time I talk to you, that's painfully clear. I get through every single day by living with the pain. Over the years, I've learned to tolerate it mostly."
"I don't understand," she interrupted. "You seem to be pretty content with your lifestyle. And in my opinion, you don't have such a painful life."
"Then I've done a good job of hiding it. But if you think about it, I'm sure you can see what I'm talking about. People like me have don't live happy lives. We don't get married and raise a family. Our lives are lonely from the moment we're born to the moment we die. You see, someone like me can't let anyone get close to them if they're going to make it through another day. And in the end, we die alone because of this. It's something to look forward to, I guess. When I'm gone, there will be no one to mourn me. No one to say how much I mattered to them. No one to visit my grave and be saddened for a brief moment. I have no one, and I need no one. That's the only way to live if I want to survive this personal hell I call my life."
He looked at her and when she didn't say anything, he continued, "But you see there's one problem with that. I lived like that once. I thrived on the loneliness and the hollowness of each day. But now I just can't get myself to go back to the way things were. I've tried with all my might. It's just not happening."
"What changed?" Sydney asked in barely a whisper.
"You," he said with a sad smile. "It's painful for me to know that I let you in once. During that one brief period, you were my whole world. It doesn't change what I knew it then, and it doesn't change what I know it now. It's not the natural course of events for you and me to happy with one another."
"How do you know that you let me in once?"
"Because I remember doing it. I remember cursing myself every night at how easy I had been on you, how I had let you walk all over me. At the time, I couldn't think of one reason why I seemed to be acting that way."
"And now?"
"Now I know why I was acting that way." He looked over at her. "I've only had one real weakness in my whole life. And that is you, Sydney Bristow."
She sat in silence staring down at her hands.
Sark stood up and kneeled down on the floor in front of her, making it impossible for Sydney to keep from meeting his eyes. "God help me, but I love you so much, Syd. And it's going to be the death of me. I know it, but I don't care."
She was about to respond when there was a loud thud on the door to their prison cell. Sark stood up and walked over to the other side of the room just as the door burst open and Vaughn walked in.
"Sydney! I didn't know what had happened to you when you didn't check in. I thought you might be dead." He paused as he saw her eyes staring over at something behind him. He turned and met eyes with Sark.
"Vaughn," Sydney said as she saw him reach for his gun. "Where's Weiss?"
"He's back in the van, waiting for me to return with you."
She put her hand on his gun and forced it down away from Sark. "We need to get going then. If we're not back soon, he'll probably send a whole assault team in to get us. And then everything will be ruined." She got up and winced in pain as the movement reminded her of the injuries she had sustained from her fight with Sark.
"Are you all right?" Vaughn said, rushing over to put his arm around her.
She nodded, and he began to lead her out of the room. As they reached the doorway, she saw him hesitate and look back at where Sark stood."Don't," she said softly meeting eyes with Sark. "He's in enough pain already. Just leave him."
Vaughn looked at Sydney for a moment in confusion and then nodded.
She had to talk with Dixon and her father. Her eyes locked with Sark's for one last moment before Vaughn led her out of the room.
She had to talk with them now.
