"Where have you been all week?" Jack Bristow asked his daughter as he glanced at the work she was doing over her shoulder.

"I've been here every day, choosing not to talk with you," Sydney said, not even rewarding him a glance up.

"I mean, where have you been going after work? I know that you haven't spent a night in your home, and you haven't been at any of your friends. So, where have you been?"

She finally looked up at him with a glare on her face. "Have you been having me followed? You know, most fathers would just trust their children to tell them if there's something going on that they need to know. They don't hire men to compile a folder of information on their offspring."

Jack crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked at his daughter seriously. "You're being a little to obvious to necessitate hiring someone to tail you. Weiss, Vaughn, even Marshal is upset because you're holding things back from them. Dixon and myself are both concerned for you."

"Your concern is duly noted. Now, would you excuse me? I have work to do so that I can get out of her on time."

"But where will you be going once you leave?" Jack pressed. "I'm not going to relent until you tell me. Most daughters tell their fathers when they make life-altering decisions."

"You no longer have the right to know." She took a deep breath, accepting that it might be time to let her father know what she was feeling. "What you and Dixon said to me really hurt. That, coupled with the fight I had with Vaughn, practically forced me into having an emotional breakdown. I'm not saying this so that you will feel guilty or angry in any way."

"I don't feel guilty."

"Of course you don't. That's a whole other problem that you and I have. I'm not dealing with it right now." She stood up and grabbed her jacket. "In case you were wondering, I do have somewhere to go where I don't have to keep up this constant guard of my emotions. And that's where I've been. When you give me a little respect, I might let you know where that is."

Jack watched in awe as his daughter walked away from him. It was starting to worry him how much she had begun to act like her mother. "If Irina knew, she would be so proud," he muttered.


Sydney swore to herself as she pulled into the driveway of her house. She had wanted to prepare a little more before confronting her father. Her emotions always had a bad habit of taking control of her mouth and body when she was dealing with her father. If there was one time she didn't want that to happen, it was when she confronted her father about his lack of respect.

In the end, she figured she had brought up the main points she had wanted to make without too much emotion getting into the way. She wanted her father to be forced to think about the way he was treating her. It was time that he had to do the thinking and contemplating, not her.

Sighing, she unlocked her front door and stepped inside. It was the first time she had gone straight home after work in a week. She had spent every evening and night at Sark's home, soaking in the comfort that he was willingly offering to her. For herself more than anything else, she wanted to show she had the strength to get through a night without him by her side.

Since the night she told Sark she was in love with him, they hadn't discussed Vaughn or her current life upheaval. They existed almost as if they were in a bubble, secluded from the outside world. It was a happy pretend world that she knew she couldn't let herself live in for too long. Otherwise, it would hurt too much when she was forced to leave it, hence her determination to keep herself away from him, at least partially.

It was part of who she was, this need to prove that she wasn't dependent on anyone. Her relationship with Sark had escalated so quickly that she couldn't put the normal distance on it that she did in most other relationships. It had hit her full on, and she wasn't prepared for it.

"So, here I am, suffering," she scolded as she slipped off her shoes and entered her bedroom.

In the back of her head, she was so mad at herself for needing to prove this. She had always been labeled as the strong one when she was growing up. There was never once a time that she cried because all the other little girls had mothers and fathers who came to their ballet recitals and tee ball games. She hadn't let the fact that she didn't go to her senior prom because her father was never around to lend her money to buy a dress phase her for a minute.

"Bobby Kincaid spiked the punch, and everyone had to be evacuated anyway," she muttered, slipping into a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top.

She flopped herself down onto her bed and pulled her briefcase onto her lap. There were quite a few files she still needed to go through concerning the whole fiasco in Palermo and the supposed death of Lauren Reed. The exact events of that night weren't clear to anyone.

The first thing she decided to look through is the file explaining why Lauren's body was never recovered from the shaft it fell into. The CIA blamed it on the uncooperative nature of the Italian government and the fact that the shaft was mysteriously filled with water at the bottom. Lauren's body was not on the surface of the standing water, and the government of Palermo refused to let the US government send in any sort of team to pump the water out.

"Smells like government conspiracy." Sydney shook her head and pushed that file to the side. It was upsetting to know that there was still a possibility that one day Lauren may pop up to mess with her life once more. She knew that Lauren never really cared for her husband so revenge for Sydney and Vaughn's love for one another wouldn't send Lauren back into her life. It would be the pure fact that Sydney screwed with each and every one of her plans that would make her out for blood.

She was not looking forward to that day.

The next file dealt with Vaughn and his agenda for revenge that almost killed him multiple times. When she had returned to the States with him earlier that year, he had faced the consequences for what he had sacrificed to take down Lauren.

Sydney didn't hesitate to push this file aside. Now was not the time to dwell on any aspect of Vaughn. He had tried to talk with her every day at the CIA facility, but she had stayed true to her word in saying that their conversation was over.

In the back of her mind, she knew there would be a day soon where she wouldn't mind talking with him. She didn't hate him at all. In her first few years working with the real CIA, he had been her cornerstone. They would always be friends, no matter what happened.

With a small sigh of frustration, she pushed her work to the side. This was not what she wanted to be doing. What she wanted to be doing was watching a movie curled up on Sark's couch with his arms around her.

"Stop thinking about him," she screamed in partially in frustration and partially in desperation.

She was suddenly reminded of the days before she had taken SD-6 down. What she was going through right at this moment was so similar to what she had been going through then. In fact, it was the exact same thing minus an innate desire to ruin the plans of an evil man in charge of an evil organization that was posing as the real thing.

"Damnit," she screamed.

Now that she had placed the feeling, she didn't like it at all. She, Sydney Bristow, was sexually frustrated by Julian Lazarey, the one man who she couldn't say one kind word about one month earlier.

They had been dancing around the issue all week long. She could remember the many times in her two missing years that she had been intimate with Sark, and his continual hinting would make it seem like he remembered, too. However, both of them seemed hesitant to go back to that high level of closeness they had once relished.

The closest they had come to dealing with this buzzing energy between them was a few nights earlier. Sydney had slipped into Sark's home when he had seemingly been out on business. She had let herself into the bathroom and was taking a shower when he finally came home.

Not surprisingly, it didn't occur to him that the noises coming from the bathroom were probably Sydney until he had busted the door open and come charging in, gun in hand.

Sydney had just stared at him in shock through the clear shower door while his expression changed from seriousness to surprise to appreciation and finally to a look that made her shake in excitement. That was the moment that she realized it must have been killing him, not to touch her and be with her in every sense of the word.

That was also the moment that she realized she wanted to be in that close place with him, too.

She shook her head at the images that were suddenly flashing through her head. They were distant memories of what it had felt like to be in bed with a man like Sark, and she didn't want to dwell on them. At least she didn't want to dwell on them when he was not there to help her work out her frustration in the way her body was wanting.

"Okay," she said, standing up and clasping her hands together. "Time to do something to calm yourself down, Syd."

The first thing that popped into her head was physically attacking something. As good at that sounded at the moment, she really didn't have anything destructible just lying around.

So, she opted for her other method of expending energy fast. Grabbing her tennis shoes off the floor, she slipped them on.

The air outside her home was brisk and cooled down her thoughts almost immediately. With a small grin to herself, she began running around the block. She was going to work out some of the problems in her life if it killed her during the next few blocks.

Purposely turning at the first corner she encountered, she made sure that she would not unconsciously end up on Sark's doorsteps. That would not help her reason out her thoughts.

First and foremost in her mind was the problem of where Sark fit in to her life. She now knew that she had a love for him in her heart that rivaled, if not exceeded, what she once felt for Vaughn. He definitely had a place in her life, but she still wasn't sure of where exactly that was.

If it were up to her, she would walk straight into the CIA and tell them that she was going to be spending a lot of her free time with Sark, no matter what they said. But she was pretty sure that option led to her losing her job or being banned from the country. The CIA was always a little too melodramatic.

What really hurt was that was what she wanted to do. Things would be so much easier if she could forget that their relationship was forbidden and just surrender to it fully.

"Okay. We're making headway." She mumbled to herself, making another left turn. "Sark will be having a role in my life. I just have to decide how much I'm willing to give up to make that happen."

She now knew that she was once ready to leave her whole life in Los Angeles behind for him. There was so many times in her two years away from the CIA that she had doubted where her home was, if it was in L.A. or if it was with Sark. She was now in the same position, only both options were in L.A.

Turning around so that she could head back home, she moved on to another issue. Her father and Dixon wouldn't accept anything she told them, and Vaughn would back them up fully. She had to figure out a way to cut them out of her decision making process without cutting them out of her life completely. She loved all three men. That would never change.

Passed on past experience, Sydney hoped that showing them Sark was what she really wanted would be enough. She had made crazy decisions in the past without much explanation, and they had eventually saw the logic in them. It could happen again.

"And hell is going to freeze over," she said with a laugh.

Dixon would be the easiest one to concur. He usually went along with her crazy plans without much protest because he loved her so much. When she took down SD-6, they had almost lost their closeness, and she didn't think either one of them would chance that again.

Vaughn should only be moderately hard to convince if she could get past his heart with she had single-handedly squashed. With good reason, for sure, but all the same she knew she had hurt him almost as much as he had hurt her. He would be livid for the first few weeks, but then he'd come around in what he would assume was proof that he trusted her. He would be determined to prove the accusations she made about him wrong, and that would be her opening to use.

Her father would probably never come around.

She growled to herself in frustration as she pounded up her front steps and unlocked the door. After slamming it behind herself and relocking it, she kicked off her shoes and flung herself on the couch. The run hadn't helped that much except to make her realize that her problems were a lot deeper than whether she should get intimate with Julian Sark again.

Sydney was almost on the verge of sleep when she heard a floorboard creak. She fought her automatic reaction to switch into fight mode and instead, stayed motionless on the couch. Hopefully, it was just the house settling. She didn't feel like killing anyone tonight.

When she heard a very familiar chuckle, she let herself relax. "I thought we were supposed to stay away from one another, Julian."

Sark sat down on the couch next to her and pulled her feet into his lap. "Not exactly. You were supposed to stay away from me. There was no rule about me staying away from you."

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. "If anyone stops by my house, they will shoot you on sight."

"A chance I'm willing to take." He touched her face lightly. "I missed you."

"We've only been apart two hours longer than normal."

"It felt like an eternity, though, didn't it?"

"Yes," she said, smiling. She flung herself into his arms. "We need to figure this out soon before it kills us both."

"We'll come up with something," he said reassuringly, settling her into his lap.

"You do know we're going to meet up in the field one of these days. What if I'm put in the situation where I have to shoot you?"

"Sydney, first off, we'll deal with that when it actually happens." He squeezed her hand. "And secondly, I don't think we're working for different ideals any longer. You and I are both different people then we were before both of us disappeared from the face of the earth for two years. We've changed each other."

"So, you wouldn't make me shoot you?"

"Not unless you wanted to."

"But what if it compromised my job?"

"That would be a decision you would have to make." He grinned at her. "But I promise you, if you shot me, I wouldn't stay mad for long. At least as long as it wasn't fatal."

They sat in each other's arms without saying a word for a long time. Sydney knew that they were both thinking about the same thing, but neither one of them wanted to breech the topic first. There was another elephant in the room, and this time it wasn't Michael Vaughn.

"What are we playing at?" she finally asked.

"What do you mean?" He looked genuinely puzzled. She would have laughed if she weren't sure that it was all an act.

"Exactly. You and I are both wondering about the same thing, but we both pretend like we're not."

"It's a hard topic to speak about, Syd. I mean, how do you discuss whether or not you're ready to take the relationship you cherish so much to a level that's completely familiar and completely foreign at the exact same time?"

Sydney looked down at her hands, unable to meet his eye. "I want to…" Her voice trailed off. She didn't think he could do this.

Sark pushed her off his lap gently. "God knows, Sydney, all I think about day in and day out is making love to you. It's been that way since I first starting getting my memories back. I know what heaven feels like now, and I miss it desperately."

"Me, too," she said, surprised and a little shocked at his candidness.

"So what's stopping us?"

"Me," she said softly. "I'm the one thing holding us back."

He looked at her forcefully. "I will not push myself on you physically, Sydney. You have to believe that."

"That's not what I was implying." She took a deep breath. "I just mean, that you've always been such a free person. You've chosen where your loyalties are, and you've decided who you love."

He held up his hand to stop her. "I've always admired the fact that you never found yourself in the positions that I did. You've always known that you were one of the good guys. I've spent over half my life wondering if what I was doing really mattered and if I was even doing any good for anyone."

"You weren't," she said shortly.

"I know."

They returned to silence for a moment. "Let's just go to sleep," Sark said, standing up. "We're both exhausted with all this damn thinking."

She nodded and let him lead her into her bedroom, though in the back of her mind she did notice the fact that he seemed to know exactly where that room was. That was a question for a later time when she wasn't about to pass out.

"Thank you for coming," she said as he tucked her in.

"I could feel that you needed me."

She smiled in her half-sleep. "I know you don't believe in that telepathy, emotional connection mumbo jumbo."

"Damn right." He settled himself in next to her. "Like I said before, I just missed you. It's as simple as that."