Sydney did not even bother to take a shower or change her clothes before charging through the CIA facility. No one paid attention to her anyway. They were used to people running or storming around, especially her. It seemed like there was a new crisis every week that sent her rushing from one room to the next demanding answers and getting none. The fact that it was Friday and the end of a "normal" workweek was in sight did not help the cause.
This time, however, it was more of a personal crisis than a matter of national security. Therefore, she took time to smile politely at people as she was rushing past.
"Dad," Sydney said coldly once she had made her way over to stand before his desk. "I need to talk with you. Now."
"That's a new development, Sydney, considering you haven't spoken a word to me in three months, and the last time you spoke to me was to make sure I was clear that you didn't want to see me ever again."
"And you wonder why I did that when you treat me so warmly. Good parenting, Dad." If she didn't really need to hear some explanations from him, then this was the point where she probably would have thrown something in the direction of his head.
"What do you need, Sydney?"
"Answers. Why did you never tell me that Sark was out of CIA custody during the years I went missing with the Covenant?"
Jack didn't flinch at all at her words. "I didn't think it was necessary for you to know."
"Not necessary?" She looked at her father in disgust. They had had a falling out, true. But she really didn't think he would revert back to the cold, distant father figure she had known before they both got entangled in the lives of double agents. "How do you deem that information unnecessary?"
"It didn't affect you in anyway."
She found herself laughing, mostly out of pure exhaustion. "Sure, it didn't affect me. Do you want to know how much it didn't affect me? Every day that Sark was out of the CIA's custody, he was by my side. We spent my whole missing two years together. He was probably the only real reason that I was able to make it through that time with my life. Not the thought of returning home to you and Vaughn. Not the thought of avenging whoever wronged me by stealing away two years of my life. Sark."
Sydney let her words sink in for both herself and her father. She hadn't meant to say some of those things. They had just come out of her mouth, leaving her wondering about why all the sudden she was so sure that Sark had helped her through the two years she was in hell. The newly returned memories were still fresh in her brain, and she hadn't processed their exact meaning.
It made sense to her that Sark had offered her aid. The way he had sounded when they were locked up in that Korean prison cell... he would have done anything and everything for her. It was a tone she was familiar with, a tone she had always associated with Vaughn in the past.
The fact Sark had slipped so easily into the role Vaughn had always filled was amazing to her. If she had to make a split second decision on who to go to with a problem, she wouldn't be able to. There would be hesitation. Her mind was in such a haze. She didn't know what to do. The only logical thing left to do was try to focus and get to the bottom of how much her father and Dixon knew.
Snapping herself out of this stunning new development, she asked her father, "What do you have to say?"
"You lied to the CIA."
"What?" she hissed. Her father's logic was escaping her at the moment.
"You've seen Sark, and he's been feeding you lies. You told the CIA that he evaded you in Pamplona. That must have been a lie."
"Just so you know, I might have lied to the CIA about that but only because they lied to me in the first place. I remembered parts of my missing two years when I was in Spain, the parts that involved Sark. It threw me off. I mean, if Sark had been missing during the two years I was gone, I think I would have known about it. Turns out I was wrong to assume any of you would tell me." She paused and looked at her father, desperate to make him understand the underlining meaning to her next sentence. "And I've seen him two times since then."
"And you haven't told anyone. Is he blackmailing you into silence? Is he holding something important over your head to get you to comply?"
"No. He's actually telling me the truth. And that simple action is making me have faith in him. He's not going to hurt me."
"I never thought your mother would hurt me."
"Oh don't try to mold this into another thing you can blame on Mom. Not everything goes wrong because of what she did to you. A lot of the things can be strictly attributed to your own personal screw-ups. Learn to take some responsibility for your actions." She looked at him in disgust. "And while you're at it, you might as well learn to stop trying to protect me. It's not your government-sanctioned mission anymore."
"No, it's just my duty as your father." Both of them looked down as the phone began to ring. "If you excuse me, Sydney, I need to take this."
For a moment, she was horrified at him and his inconsideration. After that moment, anger was the only thing left.
She reached out and yanked the phone as hard as she could. Then, she launched it across the room. "We aren't done yet, Dad," she said through her teeth. "You have a little more explaining to do. So, if you thought that my knowing Sark wasn't in the CIA's custody was unnecessary, why did you hide it from me when I returned?"
"We didn't hide it from you."
"Oh, I beg to differ. Many times after I returned, you told me of moments where Sark wouldn't give you intel you need during my two missing years."
"He didn't give us intel because he wasn't here," Jack explained.
"That's incredibly shady, and you know it. You lied to me. You crafted your sentences specifically to keep me from knowing. What was so important that you couldn't let me know?" She practically screamed the last sentence. The people who hadn't looked at them when she chucked the phone were now staring.
They stared each other down for a moment, neither one willing to let their pride go. Eventually, they were broken up by Dixon who had been making his way over to where they stood. "What is going on here? Jack? Sydney?"
Sydney didn't take her eyes of her father. "Good. You're here. I need to talk to you, too, Dixon, and I might as well do it now."
"Did something happen, Sydney?"
She turned to him, hate written across her face. "Oh, nothing new for you. Something new did happen for me. Why was it deemed unnecessary to tell me that Sark wasn't in CIA custody during my two missing years?"
Dixon exchanged a look with Jack. "You weren't supposed to find out."
"My father made that clear." She sent a dirty glance his way. "But as we know, my father isn't so good at keeping secrets from me. And still, that is nowhere near a good enough reason for me. I need more."
"Honestly, Sydney, we didn't do it to hurt you."
"Then why did you do it?"
After a moment of hesitation, Dixon sighed. "Sark requested it. One of the questions you should be asking yourself is how did we get him back into our custody. How is it possible that a man who evaded our custody so many times was just brought back in a few days before you woke up in that alley? The answer is he just showed up one day. There was a messenger who said that he had a prisoner transfer that was top level security. I went out to take a look at it. There was Sark, unconscious, strapped to a gurney."
"He just turned himself in?"
"There was a note saying that if the messenger had strict instructions that if I didn't sign an agreement, Sark's body would be taken back to where it came from. The agreement was that if I took Sark back into custody, no one had to be aware that he had ever left it. We covered up his disappearance when he first broke himself out of custody."
Sydney held up her hand to stop him. "We?"
"Your father, Agent Weiss, Marshall, and I."
"Exactly who I thought was in on this," she said. "Continue."
"When Sark first disappeared, we figured if no one knew he was out there, he might be easy to pick up off the street. We didn't find him. By the time we were ready to give up our top secret search, it was too late to tell everyone that he wasn't in our custody anymore. It would have destroyed any faith the government had in the CIA."
"So you were just going to pretend like he was still here for the rest of his life? That's absurd."
"You don't understand," Jack said. "He didn't pop up on anyone's radar. The man wasn't doing anything. He stole nothing. He contacted no one. He traveled nowhere. It was like he virtually didn't exist."
"The first we heard of him was when he showed up unconscious on our doorstep," Dixon added. "Like I said, all he wanted was for no one to know that he was gone."
Something clicked in Sydney's head, and his request suddenly made sense. "That self-sacrificing bastard," she muttered.
"What?" Dixon said, his brow furrowed in confusion.
She looked up at him. "By every right, I shouldn't tell you what I just realized. You never showed me the same consideration." She sighed. "But I will. Sark's request was because of me. He didn't want me to know that he might have been with me for my missing years."
"Why would he not want you to know?' Jack asked.
"Because I might remember how much I meant to him."
"I always knew that bastard had his eyes on you. It wasn't healthy the way he seemed fixated on foiling every one of your missions."
Sydney looked at her father. "The other reason he wanted to keep his whereabouts a secret was because he thought I would remember how much he meant to me. Because he was my world by the time I was done working for the Covenant. He was the only person I had in my life. He was my rock."
"You sound as if you worked with him intimately during your time missing," Jack said rather coldly.
She looked over at the man she had once trusted with her life. "He was my partner. So you can say I worked with him intimately. On and off the field."
Jack's reaction was instantaneous. "Are you saying you had a relationship with that murderer?" he screamed as he grabbed her hard by the shoulders.
"I loved him," she said defiantly. Inside, she knew the comment threw her off as much as it did her father and Dixon. Outside, the two men were the only one to show a reaction.
Dixon took stock of the situation and decided to intervene. "Do you still love him, Sydney?"
She was about to tell him she didn't know when she felt her father release her shoulders. "She can't," Jack said to Dixon.
"What do you mean I can't?"
"It's not acceptable for your job or for you personally to be affiliated with that man. And that's the end of this discussion."
"You call this a discussion?" Sydney looked at Dixon. "Is that how you feel, too?"
"As an agent of the CIA, you cannot be affiliated with Julian Sark. He is an enemy of the state and one of the top names on our most wanted list. There is no way you could continue whatever was started between the two of you during those two years."
"So, both of you are forbidding me to talk to him again? To try to figure out what exactly happened between the two of us?" She looked at them both in shock. "I don't believe it."
"Believe it," Dixon said. "It might seem hard for you right now. But I think it would be better if you never found out what happened between you two. Just put it behind you and move on."
"And if I don't put it behind me? What will happen then?"
Jack smirked. "I'll personally see to it that you get assigned to a desk job that will keep you as far away from Sark as you could possibly be. Continued interaction with that man is not permitted."
"Who the hell made you boss?"
"I stand by this decision," Dixon said. "You can't see him."
Sydney just looked at them once more and walked away. She couldn't take arguing with them anymore, not when they were being so irrational. Didn't they see how important it was to her to figure out what exactly was going on? Sark seemed to be the missing piece to where she had been and what she had been doing working for the Covenant. He was all she had.
She ignored Dixon's calls for her to come back. The CIA couldn't help her make sense of the situation. That was clear. Stopping quickly at her desk, she grabbed her keys and made her way out of the facility. She needed to go somewhere where she could think a little more clearly because the only thought running through her head was how much she wanted to run to Sark.
By all rights, Vaughn's apartment should have been empty for her to return to and a great place to try to clear her head without anyone trying to find her. Vaughn was away on a mission to India, and Weiss would have gotten word that she had found out about the secret they had been hiding from her so he would stay away from any place she might be until she made contact. The rest of the people who had once been important in her life weren't in her life at all anymore.
The apartment wasn't as empty as she thought, though.
She opened the door to see candles lit scattered throughout the room. The dining room table had been brought into the middle of the room, and there were two place settings prepared on it. Flower petals were scattered intermittingly throughout the room, and she could hear soft jazz playing in the background.
"Hello?" she called out hesitantly.
Vaughn popped his head out of the kitchen. "You weren't supposed to get my note for another forty-five minutes," he scolded.
"What note?"
"The one I left for you at your apartment."
"I left work early and came straight here," she said as she shrugged out of her coat. "I needed some time alone where no one could find me." She looked around at the setting she was in. "What is all this?"
"A surprise. You and I haven't had an opportunity to do something like this since..." The thought of Lauren and what she had done raced through both of their minds. "...well, we haven't done this in a long time."
"It's nice to come home to," Sydney admitted, sitting down at the table. "Did you order Chinese?"
"No, I cooked you some exciting French cuisine."
"You cooked?"
"It shouldn't be so shocking. I do know a few recipes that my mother taught me when I was little."
Sydney smiled and took a sip from her full wineglass.
"So, why did you leave early?" Vaughn asked as he set a plate down in front of her.
"I had a rather loud argument with my father and Dixon," she said. In the back of her mind, she knew that this was the time she had been dreading for days. She'd have to tell Vaughn about all the things she had been holding back from him.
"Okay. I can understand you arguing with your father, but Dixon?"
"They have both been hiding something from me. Weiss and Marshall, too."
"Weiss and Marshall?"
"Yeah, I didn't believe it at first either." Sydney took another long drink of wine. "Turns out that Sark wasn't in CIA custody for the two years I was missing."
"Where was he?"
"He was with me. We were partners working for the Covenant." She looked across the table at him. "He was there for me when I didn't have anyone."
Vaughn laughed. "Don't forget who he is, Sydney. I'm sure he was just doing it to further whatever was his plan at the time. Either that or he was doing it just to mess with your head."
Her gut reaction was to defend Sark to Vaughn, but she caught herself before she actually did it. She wasn't ready to explain to Vaughn how much Sark had meant to her during her time with the Covenant. He wouldn't understand. "It's hard. They lied to me about something that turned out to be really important. Like normal, I feel betrayed. It feels likes someone is always betraying me."
Sensing the mood darken, Vaughn smiled at her. "Then let's not talk about."
"Good idea." Sydney took a bite of her food. "So, what's the special occasion?"
"Does there have to be one?" he asked with a smile.
"Not necessarily, but I have a feeling that there is. You usually only order dinner from a restaurant as a surprise, not cook it yourself and then decorate the whole apartment. Something's up."
"Fine." He stood up. "I didn't want to do this until we were through with dinner, but I'm actually getting antsy, too. And I'm sure you'll just keep pestering me until I tell you why I set this whole thing up."
He kneeled down on one knee in front of her and reached into his pocket.
"What are you doing?" she asked, thinking she already knew the answer.
"I love you, Sydney. And I don't want to lose any more time than we already have. I want to spend the rest of my life with you." He opened the ring box. "Will you marry me?"
Her eyes widened at the sight of the diamond ring. She couldn't get herself to form the words to respond even though she was trying really hard. It seemed like her voice had failed her, and her mind was just racing with a multitude of thoughts and scenarios.
"Sydney?" he said hesitantly while taking the ring out of the box. "Are you going to say something?"
"There are things you need to know before I answer you," she said when she finally managed to get her wits back about her.
Vaughn looked at her funny and stood up. "That's an interesting response. What things do I need to know?"
"I've been remembering things from the time I went missing. And I've been keeping them from you. At the time, I thought they would just upset you. Now, though, I realize that I was holding them back for the same reasons that Dixon and the rest were lying to me. I thought it was unnecessary information. I thought that it would be better if you just didn't know. But I'm so confused right now. I just can't go on without giving it more thought."
Vaughn put his hand lightly on her shoulder in comfort. "Jesus, Syd. What's shaken you up so much?"
She shrugged away from him. What she was about to say was going to hurt him, but she didn't know what else to do. "Sark wasn't only my business partner during my two missing years. We had a relationship that went past the work field. We were lovers." She could feel Vaughn stiffen next to her at the last comment. Maybe she had been a little too blunt.
After a moment, he carefully asked, "And how exactly is that relevant at this moment? How is it relevant to me proposing? Explain that."
"I told you that there were things I had to give thought to. These new memories have shook me up pretty bad. I just don't think I'm in the right state of mind to be deciding on whether or not to accept a proposal."
"What's going through your head is not real memories, Sydney. They can't be."
"And why is that?"
"There's no way you would get involved with a man like Sark. The Sydney Bristow I know would kill herself first before lowering herself to his level."
"He's not a monster," she said, practically screaming as Vaughn's words rubbed her the wrong way.
He was noticeably taken aback. "I never thought I would hear you defend him."
Sydney sighed and covered her face with her hands. "I'm sorry. What you said just rubbed me the wrong way. You see, that's exactly what my father said. But I know what's in my head. I did get involved with Sark. It was my choice, and I chose to get involved with him. And at the time, he was the only sane thing in my life. No one I loved was there for me, to help me get through the pain the Covenant was putting me through."
He looked at her, disgusted. "Are you still blaming me for moving on with Lauren?"
"No. For once, this is not about Lauren. I know I blamed you at first. But I know why you did it now. You couldn't hold on to some small hope that I was alive. It would have been ridiculous. I'm just saying that I saw you with her, and it unnerved me. I was rushing home to be at your side, and there was someone already there."
"If I had known you were alive, I would have broken off anything I had with Lauren. My life was only about you from the moment that you stepped into the CIA offices five years ago."
"I know that you would have. And that's the problem. I don't know if that's what I would have wanted you to do by the time my two years of being missing from the CIA were up. I can't say that I would have still wanted you to leave Lauren for me."
"What happened to change that?"
"When I was with the Covenant, I didn't know where I was going or what I was doing. Sark was there to help me sort it out. I was lost, cut off from everything I knew."
"You sound like you remember a lot about your time with him."
"It's less specific moments and details and more a general feeling."
"Of love?"
She couldn't look him in the eye. "It might have been love," she lied. She knew that it was love, but it just didn't seem right to tell Vaughn that.
Vaughn walked away to the other side of the room and stared out the window. "I just don't understand this, Sydney. Two days ago you were fine."
"That isn't exactly true. This has been going on for a few weeks," she admitted. "Since you and I went after Sark in Pamplona, to be exact."
"You've been struggling with this for that long and you didn't tell me?"
"I just couldn't. I don't know why."
"You didn't trust me enough to be able to handle it."
"It's not that. I do trust you." She walked over to him. "I guess I had a feeling that you might react in this way, and I was scared."
"Is it wrong of me to feel a little betrayed? I feel like you have been carrying on this secret affair." He closed his eyes and held his hands up to his temples. After a few minutes, he looked over at Sydney. "You shouldn't let these memories effect your happiness. I want you to marry me, no matter what you did in the past. What went on between you and Sark is the past." He paused to let her say something. But she didn't say a word or even look at him.
Something dawned on him. "Unless this isn't in the past. You still love him, don't you?"
"I don't know," she said through the steady line of tears that had threatening to fall for the past few minutes. "I'm just at such a complete loss. I've handled so much in my life, but I just don't know how to handle this. I don't know what to do to make this right."
"I'll leave you to your thoughts then." He grabbed his coat off the hook on the wall and opened the door.
"Why are you leaving?" she asked quietly as he paused in the open doorway.
He turned back to her and shut the door quietly. "Because I'm as confused as you are. I thought that you loved me completely, Sydney. I think I might have been wrong."
"I loved you just as completely as you loved me. Once. We aren't the same as we were, though. This whole relationship is new again. It's different than it used to be. Everything's... new."
"And it hasn't felt right to you. I've known that. I just didn't want to admit it. I didn't want to admit that after so long you didn't want me anymore. I didn't want to believe that I had missed my opportunity for a second chance with you. "
"You haven't missed anything. This might not feel right at this very moment, but it could be," Sydney pointed out, walking over to where he stood. "In time."
Vaughn looked down to the ring that was still in his hand. "This ring was supposed to give us that time, Syd. I really thought this was what you wanted. I thought you wanted to take this step with me."
"A diamond ring doesn't represent everything I want from you," she said. "All I've ever wanted is just to have someone beside me who I know is there for the right reasons."
"And you don't think that's me."
"I think that, at this point, you and I are just here because it's easy and because it's the thing that everyone expected. We still have to talk through a lot of what happened with Lauren and with us. I don't think I'm ready to get engaged until we get that huge elephant out of the room."
"I bet if Sark was asking you, you wouldn't hesitate." She looked hurt and disgusted at the same time. It didn't go unnoticed by Vaughn. "Shrink away from me all you want. You haven't had to hear yourself talking about him. It's damn clear that you feel something for him. You talk about him like you used to talk about me. You just said that you loved him once. Love doesn't just disappear because it isn't convenient."
"Exactly," she said, looking at him intently. "Our love wouldn't disappear even when you were married. The feelings I have for you aren't just going to disappear because I find them inconvenient or because they have a few kinks in them still."
"Your feelings for Sark aren't just going disappear either."
"Can't we just forget about him for a moment? I love you, Vaughn. I do. So I don't see why you should be pulling away from me now."
"I'm not the one pulling away, Sydney."
"I'm not pulling away. I'm just trying to sort things out. These feelings are so new to me. All of the sudden I have all these feelings I didn't know I had. I love Sark." She froze, realizing what she had just said. "I mean, I loved him. I loved Sark once."
It was just too much for Vaughn to handle. "That's not what you said. You can deny it all you want. You still love him. And if that's the truth, I don't think I should be the one leaving."
Sydney looked at him in horror. "Are you kicking me out of your apartment?"
He opened up the door. "I think you should leave. If you can be in love with a man like Sark, then you should leave." Turning, he looked her straight in the eyes. "And don't come back."
The words stung her worse than anything she had ever gone through. His harshness was so uncharacteristic of the person she believed him to be. She didn't know what to say to make him change his mind, so she just left.
The door closed with a bang behind her, leaving her out in the cold by herself.
It was going to rain, she realized as she began to walk down the street.
Almost on cue, it started to pour down on her. She had left her jacket back at Vaughn's apartment. There was no possibility of going back for it. Her car keys happened to be in the jacket's left pocket.
"Looks like I'm walking home in the rain."
About two blocks later, the full extent of what had happened that day finally hit her.
Everyone who claimed to care for her was suddenly deserting her. She had been issued ultimatums and promises that day which told her that there was no one she could trust enough to talk with about the thoughts rushing through her head.
At the time she most needed someone, everyone had abandoned her.
"Everyone," she muttered, trying to wipe the raindrops and tears out of her eyes.
