"I never thought I'd say this," Sark said, chucking a pillow at where Sydney lay on his bed, "but you need to go to work."
She caught the pillow with a laugh. "I never thought you'd say that either."
"So what did Michael Vaughn have to say about your mission with him in Quebec?"
Sydney was thrown off a little by his sudden shift to this more serious topic which they had been systematically avoiding since she showed up on his doorstep earlier that night. "Not a lot." Her face wrinkled in both concentration and frustration. "I would have expected him to grill me about the extra long length of time it took me to meet him, but he didn't. I'm starting to worry about him."
He sighed and took a seat down next to her. "The lapses in memory?"
"Do you think it has anything to do with our little missing memory problem?"
"I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than just you and I wrapped up in this mess. However, the connecting link between Agent Vaughn and myself isn't really clear."
"Besides me."
"Besides you."
"And my mother."
"And Irina."
"And the whole growing up without a father thing."
"And that."
With a groan, Sydney rolled over and out of the bed. "My head hurts."
"Poor baby." Sark stood up to grab a women's suit out of the closet. "You left this last time you were here. I had it cleaned."
She smiled. "Thanks. That was extremely considerate of you."
After taking a quick shower and changing into her fresh work clothes, compliments of one evil spy, it occurred to her that she hadn't told Sark the whole story of what she had done before coming over to his house the night before. In fact, she hadn't even mentioned that she had made a small pit stop at the CIA facility before heading over to his home. "This should be fun," she thought as she walked into the kitchen.
He paused halfway into lowering his glass of orange juice away from his mouth as he immediately caught sight of her and picked up on her shift in mood. "What are you grinning at?" He took another sip of his drink.
"I told my father that I was sleeping with you."
The orange juice he had just drank sprayed from his mouth. "What did you do?"
"My father and I were arguing again. I guess my temper flared a little bit."
"I'd say." He chucked to himself, imagining the look on Jack Bristow's face when Sydney told him what she had been up to. Then a realization hit him. "You do understand that your father is going to kill me the next time he lays eyes on me?"
She poked him lightly in the side. "Well, we'll just have to keep you hidden away for the rest of our lives then."
Sark paused and gave her an odd look. "Are you planning on being with me for that long? You and me for the rest of our lives?"
Her heart stopped. She hadn't realized what she had just implied until he called her on it. Humor seemed to be her only option in getting out of this one without running the one good thing she had going for herself currently. "As if you could stay with a girl for that long."
"I might if it was you, Syd."
"You're full of crap," she said with a laugh. She quickly snatched the piece of toast out of his hand and began to eat it. "So what are you up to today?"
"More digging into the past, trying to figure out this mess."
"Same old, same old."
"Exactly. What do you have on your agenda, Agent Bristow?"
For a second, Sydney hesitated, wondering if she should tell him the truth. Then she realized if they were going to develop any sort of trust in their relationship they'd both have to start making a few leaps of faith. "A new contact, actually."
"Contact for what?"
"I'm not really sure. Dixon said he was working with a CIA-affiliated office in Chicago on developing a new analysis of this whole Rambaldi mess. They're sending one of their agents out to talk to me firsthand about my part in it."
"Sounds like you have one interesting day ahead of you," he said, pulling her into his arms.
She rested her head against his chest and sighed. "I wish I could just stay here with you. Is that weird for me to say?""Taking into account our history, yes, that is definitely not the most normal thing you've ever said." He smiled down at her. "Now, go. Your father might put two and two together and realize you're with me. And then I'd have to start worrying about if someone's been hired to kill me."
"Party pooper," she said, shrugging out of his arms. "I'll see you later."
"Not if I see you first, love." Sark turned his attention back to the paper until he heard her car start up and pull out of the driveway. He had meant to spend the day tracking down Peter Connelly. "Damn bastard," he muttered folding up the paper.
When his old mentor had surface that day he had been fighting with Sydney on the cliff in North Korea, he hadn't been prepared. At the time, his focus was completely on the woman in front of him and inventing a way to get her to admit that they were meant for one another. It also didn't help that he thought Peter had died in a fire five years earlier.
"Looks like that plan is shot to hell," he said, grabbing his cell phone. If Sydney was going to be working with some new agent at the CIA, he was bound and determined to check out who it was. It had taken enough energy for him to get her to the place she was at. He wasn't going to let some new player in the game screw up the dynamic.
"What's up?" Sydney asked Weiss. "You've been paging me for the last ten minutes."
"Your contact is here. Dixon wants you to meet her now."
"Her?"
Weiss wiggled his eyebrows at her. "I know. Are you excited as I am?""You're just hoping for a chick fight."
"Aren't we all?" Vaughn said, entering the conversation. "Enough talking, Syd. You're half an hour late. Dixon's not happy. The sooner you get in there, the better it would be."
"Dixon owes me one and then some," she said with a shrug. "He'll get over it."
She gave Weiss and Vaughn a small wave goodbye before walking in the direction of Dixon's office. Her eyes caught with her father's on her way over, but she didn't stop to talk with him. A fight was definitely not what she needed right now.
"Dixon, I'm here," she said, entering the office. "Sorry I'm late. Traffic, you know."
Her eyes caught on the woman with long blonde hair and familiar blue eyes who was sitting in the couch next to Dixon.
Dixon held out his hand in the woman's direction. "Agent Sydney Bristow, this is--"
"Stephanie Harling," Sydney finished. "We've met."
"You have?" Dixon asked."Hello, Sydney," the blonde woman said.
"She used to work for SD-2 in Chicago," Sydney explained. "I'm surprised you didn't know that. Isn't that the type of thing that usually comes up in a background check?""My previous affiliation with the Alliance and the SD cells isn't a secret, Director Dixon. I assure you that," Stephanie said, standing up. "My current office just doesn't like to broadcast the fact. And seeing as how you both are products of that organization, I don't think it should make much of a difference to you. We were all lied to at some point."
"Could someone explain to me how you two got to know each other? I don't recall you working with the Chicago branch during the time we were partners," Dixon asked.
"That's because it was before we got matched up together."
"We met on one of the instruction retreats that the Alliance was always planning to keep their agents sharp. Sydney helped me get rid of a nuisance."
"Again with the riddles."Sydney would have been hurt by Dixon words if she didn't know he meant well. She would always feel bad about the years she had to keep him in the dark about her activity with the real CIA. At least, she didn't have to lie to him about work related things anymore. "Just personal issues," she thought to herself.
Realizing that Dixon was still waiting for an explanation, she smiled at him and started to explain again. "Stephanie was seeing an agent from SD-2. As we all know, that was against agency policy. He was on the retreat, and she didn't want me to know that they were involved."
"But she figured it out," Stephanie pointed out. "One thing I can say for Arvin Sloane, he was smart to recruit her into his division."
"That's about the only thing I give Sloane credit for," Dixon admitted."
"When we were at the retreat, Stephanie told me about what had happened between her and Paul. SD-2 was suspicious of Paul. On the retreat, she managed to finally get the intel to prove that he was really working for K-Directorate."
Dixon nodded, having heard enough of the explanation. "Well, since you two know each other, it shouldn't be a hard transition for you to work together again." He held out a folder to each woman. "This is the information that we have compiled from the intel Agent Harling brought us from Chicago and what we already knew here in the LA branch. You two should go over it and see if there are any discrepancies."
"Got it," Stephanie said, standing up. "Why don't you show me where I can set up shop here in LA, Sydney?"
Sydney nodded at Dixon and moved to leave the room. As soon as they were out of hearing distance, Stephanie leaned in. "So, tell me how you and Noah are doing. Are you two married yet?"
It threw Sydney for a moment before she remembered. At the time they first met, Stephanie had been the first person she had ever told about the relationship she was having with fellow agent Noah Hicks. That had been right when she and Noah were first starting their affair. Since Stephanie was from another branch, she obviously wouldn't be privy to the information on what had happened with Noah which meant she didn't have a clue about what Sydney was forced to do.
"Noah died four and a half years ago," Sydney said slowly.
"In the line of duty?" Stephanie asked.
"Yeah. And it was my duty that killed him." When Stephanie looked back in confusion, she elaborated. "Noah was doing some freelance work that interfered with both my CIA mission and the mission SD-6 gave me. He and I fought, and I ended up stabbing him with a kitchen knife."
"Oh my god. I can't imagine."
Now it was Sydney's turn to look at her in confusion. "Can't you? I mean, you saw Paul fall to his death when we were fighting on under Niagara Falls. The man you loved died in front of your eyes."
"It's been so long since I thought of Paul. It didn't occur to me that you'd make that comparison."
She looked at Stephanie skeptically. Something wasn't right there. "Right. So what have you been up to in the past few years?"
"Probably the same as you."
"Have you been abducted by an enemy agency and forced to forget two years of your life shortly after shooting a woman who was wearing your best friend's face three times in the chest?"
"Not exactly."
"Then it isn't the same."
Stephanie laughed. "You were always one for the excitement of the job. Like most agents with clean backgrounds, I was offered a job with the real CIA when all the SD cells were taken down. I guess I have you to thank for that. I can't imagine if I was still working for an agency that lied to me like that."
"No problem. I take down evil agencies all the time when I have a spare second."
"That's about as exciting as my life gets, though. Since I was involved rather heavily in SD-2 operations, the CIA has lassoed me to a desk job. It's better than nothing, though." She shrugged. "I was never one for the freelance work."
"And you made a few reports on Rambaldi during your time in front of your desk."
"Which is why I was picked to go to L.A." Stephanie sat down at the desk Sydney had led her to. "So, I can imagine after the whole situation with Noah, you learned to keep your foot out of the work pool when searching for a boyfriend."
"Not exactly," Sydney said, looking over at where Vaughn stood.
"That's your boyfriend? Nice." She gave her a wink.
"Actually, Vaughn's an ex-boyfriend. I managed to keep out of a relationship with him for the first two years I was here because of my work as a double agent and my previous experience with Noah. When we took down the Alliance, there was nothing standing in our way." Sydney looked over at her new contact. "Why do I find it so easy to tell you things that I haven't really talked about with anyone before?"
"That's one of the qualities that got me recruited. So what happened with this Vaughn guy?"
"To make a long story short, I disappeared for two years, he got married, and then he ended up shooting his wife to save my life. Needless to say, we were both different people than when we first fell in love."
"And…" Stephanie prodded. She could tell there was more to this story.
"And I fell in love with another one of the people I encountered on the job."
"Girl, you have a problem. I think you need to find some help."
Sydney smiled. "This is the last one, I swear."
"Oh, it's like that?" Stephanie smiled. It wasn't every day that a government agent actually found someone who could make them shift their focus from the here and now to thoughts about the distant future. "I take it then that you're still with him then?"
"Yes, but no one really knows about it. When I said I encountered him on the job, I didn't mean that he was my partner on a mission. In fact, he was usually working on the other side."
"You fell in love with the enemy? How Hollywood!"
"I think a book of our relationship would be a best-seller. A real page turner, if you get my drift." Sydney bit her bottom lip. "Now I think you and I have to stop gossiping and start working on this project Dixon gave us."
Stephanie nodded. "It's good seeing you again, Sydney."
"Yeah." Sydney brushed away the small nagging feeling that this was just too easy and convenient and picked up the file folder of information.
Author's note: For those of you who haven't read Alias: Free Fall (one of the prequel books), Stephanie Harling was an agent of SD-2. She was aware that she was not working for the real CIA. In fact, on the retreat that she met Syd, she was sent there to figure out if Sydney was suspicious of the lies SD-6 had told her and to find out if she was involved with Agent Noah Hicks. On a side note, the fellow agent Stephanie was seeing, Paul, was actually a double agent for the CIA and not for K-Directorate.
