Sark paused at the door for a second and then turned the handle. He could still see the woman he loved lying silently on the bed. With a sigh, he let the door click shut behind him.
"What was that all about?" Sydney said, her eyes still closed.
"Nothing. A little unfinished business. I'm tired. Let's just go back to sleep."
"Fine by me," she said, without another thought.
Sark slipped in and pulled in close to her. He could feel her drift into sleep almost immediately. That was always one of her qualities that left him in awe. Her ability to compartmentalize was astounding. He knew that he was nowhere near that good at detaching. It wouldn't be easy for him to stop thinking and surrender to the unknown.
Plus, it wasn't every day that you had to deal with the fact that you once strove to kill the only person you would die for.
He hadn't slept for one second during the night. There was too much to try to figure out.
The idea that he had actively tried to kill Sydney Bristow didn't sit right to him. On one hand, it made sense. She was his worst enemy and the only person he ever met who had the potential to screw with his plans. On the other hand, she was the only person he would never dream of killing.
That little fact got him to thinking. Was it only now that he wouldn't think of killing her? Or had that sensibility always been there?
It took him two and a half hours. But he finally decided that there was never a moment in his time with Sydney that he would have killed her. Sure, he thought of it every second that she was promising him that same thing out loud. However, he had never delighted in killing. He had let people believe that the thirst for blood was what drove him to do what he did so well. But really it was just the fear of inactivity that kept him going all those years.
This took him back to square one. What would possess him to want to kill Sydney? Had she done something to him in those few critical days between the last thing he can fully remember after being taken into CIA custody and his first memory of being in the employment of the Covenant?
"You look like shit," Sydney said, pulling him out of his train of thought. He had been so immersed that he hadn't even noticed her waking up.
"I've had a lot to think about," he said, still caught up in his quest to figure out his past intentions.
"Do you want your ring back?" she said softly.
Realizing what his words must be implying to her, he shook his head emphatically and pulled her close to him. "That's not what I meant, Sydney. That ring is yours for as long as you want to wear it. If that's every day for the rest of our lives, all the better."
She smiled. "I'm already getting attached to it."
"Good."
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Sydney continued the train of thought she had started before. "So, if it's not our possible engagement that's kept you up all night thinking, then what? It was that phone call you got, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. It was a little unnerving. You know how that can be."
"Tell me what it was about." Seeing him hesitate, she added, "That is, only if you want to."
"No. I shouldn't start this whole thing by holding things back." He chuckled lightly to himself. "I'm going to have to get used to this, I guess. I never thought I'd be striving so hard for honesty. I think you're making a decent man out of me, Bristow."
"Good to know. Now stop changing the subject and tell me what that phone call was about."
"I had an important meeting to go to with Marek Romanowsky that night I found you on my doorstep in the pouring rain. I had been trying to figure out what made me start working for the Covenant in the first place. There was no way I would let them blackmail me into employment. There had to have been some reason that I found it personally advantageous to be there."
"Naturally." She was trying to keep her responses short so that he wouldn't pull back into his self-sufficient shell until the whole story was out.
"Romanowsky called me last night to let me know that he was still going to give me the information he had even though I'd screwed up the opportunity to meet at least twice. Seems he found the whole reason I worked with the Covenant."
"And that was?"
Sark pulled his eyes away from hers and bit his lip in a nervous habit. "You're not going to like what I have to say. If it were up to me, I wouldn't tell you until I had more information. But you deserve to know."
"Enough with the riddles. Spit it out."
"I was there to kill you, Sydney."
She burst out laughing but quickly stopped when she saw the look on his face. "You're serious, aren't you?"
"Completely. Romanowsky said that I wanted to hurt the Covenant by killing their top assassin. That assassin was going to be you as soon as you were taken through the brainwashing process."
"So if you wanted to kill me, why did you end up helping me?"
"I'm not really sure. I know if I had set my conviction to kill you, I wouldn't have gone back on it no matter what."
"Well, there's the obvious answer to that point."
"And that would be?"
She smiled at him and shrugged innocently. "You were in love with me. We've talked about it before. Our relationship bridged the thin line between love and hate. We were teetering on the edge for years before we worked together for the Covenant, Julian. Luckily, we ended up on the love side of the line. Because you and I would have killed each other if all we had was hate."
"I still wanted to kill you when we worked for the Covenant, even if it was love I was leaning towards," he pointed out.
"Yeah. That doesn't really make sense."
"I was thinking about it all night. There's no way I would have wanted to kill you. Not once when you were threatening my life was I seriously contemplating taking you out. Not once."
"Romanowsky must be lying, then."
Sark shook his head. "I really don't think he is. For some reason, I feel like something happened to make me want to hurt the Covenant. Something so big that I didn't even care that the best way to hurt them was killing you."
"Maybe you just pitied what I was going to be put through and you wanted to end my pain."
"That's the worst explanation I've heard so far. There's no way I would have thought you were weak enough to be destroyed by what the Covenant threw at you. Didn't I tell you all the time that you were strong enough to get past it in our two years together?"
"Every day."
"It doesn't add up."
They lapsed into silence, both trying to come up with new reasons why Sark would have wanted to do such an unexplainable thing. Finally, Sydney sighed and stood up. She slipped into a bathrobe that was at the end of the bed. "Let's look on the bright side for now."
"I'm not really seeing a bright side to this."
"You trusted me enough to tell me what happened. You could have easily have lied or just told me that it was silly business details. I wouldn't have doubted you. But you trusted me enough to know that I wouldn't go running when I found out your life goal was once to murder me."
Sark rolled his eyes at her. "Only you would start joking at such a serious time."
"If you can't laugh, what can you do?"
"I could come up with something," he said, winking at her.
"You need to settle those hormones down. We have work to do if we're going to figure out what's the truth and what's lies in this whole thing."
"Why are you being so understanding?" he asked.
He noticed her sober slightly and realized he might be asking questions that he really didn't want to hear the answers to. In the back of his head, a scenario played out in which she told him that the only reason she was being so understanding was she was afraid he might still be a danger to her. If she said that, he truly believed he would be crushed. That would be like a sharp stab straight to his heart.
"Do you really want to know?" Deciding knowing was better than ignorance, he nodded. "It was something you said to me that night I showed up on your doorstep in the rain. The same night you chose to miss your important meeting with Romanowsky for me."
"I don't recall saying anything that would keep you so loyal to me," he admitted.
"You did. It was when you thought I was asleep, though. I had a crick in my neck, and I stretched slightly against you. You reached out to brush the hair off my neck, and I could feel you lightly kiss me."
"I remember doing that."
"Then you let out a breath and said probably the kindest thing I've ever heard come out of your lips." The corners of her mouth perked into a slight smile.
"I don't remember that. What did I say?"
"You said 'Tell me everything you need and I will try to be that.' That's it. That's all you said, and my heart just froze. No one had ever said anything like that to me before."
"I probably got it from a song."
She reached over and smacked him hard. "Don't mock the moment."
"Oh, I would never dream of mocking the moment." He grabbed her hand as she went to smack him again and yanked her into his lap. "You are one amazing woman, Sydney Bristow."
"I always thought so."
"Now let's just forget about the dilemma our lives have fallen face first into and just enjoy our vacation together."
"Agreed," she said with a smile, leaning into his kiss.
