MIRROR IMAGE
Rating: R.
Timeline: Mid-season 3,
after "Blowback."
Part IV, Act 6
The first thing Irina did when Sark and Sydney joined her in her study was embrace her. Sydney slanted her eyes toward Sark— Sydney wondered what she was looking for—but he studiously refused to meet her eyes. Gingerly, she lifted her hands and lay them on her mother's back. Closing her eyes, she breathed her in, relaxed into her arms, and remembered, painfully, how good it felt to be held.
"I'm sorry," Irina said throatily, pulling back until she only gripped Sydney's arms. Sydney felt the loss immediately, in ways she thought she'd gotten over years before. It was an effort, but she kept the surfeit of emotion from her eyes. Irina smiled sadly before releasing her entirely and taking a step back. "Welcome back, Mr. Sark."
"Irina," he returned evenly. Irina ignored his tone; maybe she was used to his moods. If he even had moods. She'd never have suspected he did before, but this afternoon was changing her mind.
Irina circled back around the heavy desk. "I trust you both were successful?"
"Naturally," Sark responded as Sydney unfastened the pouch from her waist and passed it over to her mother before stepping back beside Sark.
If Irina noticed she didn't comment. Instead, she observed, "You'll be wanting to return to your own body and the CIA."
"Yes," Sydney said, only the force of her will keeping her from looking over at the still eerily subdued Sark.
"It's late. I hope you'll stay here the night at least. The switch . . . may have adverse effects."
"I'll have a room made up," Sark spoke up, and before Sydney could open her mouth to object, he added, "In the event you do decide to take your mother and I up on our offer." He smiled carelessly. "Better to be safe than sorry."
Safe, Sydney thought cynically, and swallowed her pride, her misgivings. "All right," she assented; then, difficultly, "Thank you."
Sark's nod was crisp; he'd changed on the plane, into the familiar suit and tie, and his manner had shifted with his clothing. He was her mother's, now, and it galled her that she cared.
"Have Lauren brought up," Irina instructed him, and they shared a look that Sydney couldn't interpret—and frankly, didn't have the energy to. Her mother looked at her as Sark passed silently though the door. "Sydney. I'm so glad you're back safe."
"Me too." Sydney gave her the beginning of a smile.
"I have space prepared," Irina told her. "I'll take you there."
Sydney was conscious of the distance between them, and how carefully Irina preserved it. It was a fragile barrier, but a pointed reminder of their relationship. As always in her mother's presence, Sydney had to fight against blurting out her questions, which always seemed endless in their detail but so simple in their general thrust: why? If Irina was the question, then perhaps Sydney was to be the answer. But that didn't fit, not quite. What Sloane had told her, however, did, and Sydney wanted nothing more at that moment than to confront Irina with it, to brandish her new knowledge like a weapon.
Instead, she said, "Thank you."
With another of those soft, infinitely sad smiles, Irina touched Sydney's arm just lightly. Sydney ducked her head and followed her out of the room.
The "space" Irina had referred to was another below ground room, this one less well lit. "What I've learned about the disk makes me believe it to be sensitive to light," she explained as she opened the door.
"And that's why the switch happened at night, while Lauren and I slept, instead of earlier," Sydney inferred.
"Yes."
"M-mom?" Sydney stuttered on the word, and then gritted her teeth to steady herself. "Do you know—I mean, why Lauren?"
"I was hoping," Irina said, "that you would be able to tell me."
Sydney studied her mother's face: the deceptive openness, the earnest furrow of her forehead, the soft set of her mouth. Was she always this calm? Sydney wondered, awed again by how little she really knew about the woman who'd given birth to her. Irina tilted her head slightly under Sydney's scrutiny, but didn't speak.
"I have no idea," Sydney said finally., turning her head away. The only thing she could think of was that it was secretly what she wanted, that it had been Sydney's desire—for Vaughn, for her old life back, for everything it felt like Lauren had taken away from her—that had done it. But to say so . . . . The guilt was suffocating. And the concept was ridiculous. She hadn't swapped bodies with Lauren because she'd wanted to.
Then she remembered. "No, wait. On the plane, on the way back from Budapest. Vaughn and I, we . . . ."
Irina's eyebrows raised.
"We shared a water bottle," Sydney finished on a hard note. "I mean, I drank from his. And he and Lauren . . . . Do you know what the disk was intended for? Is there any chance it could have something to do with genetic material?"
"Then why swap with Lauren?" Irina asked. "Why not Vaughn? And the amount of DNA in saliva, Sydney—"
"Is almost nothing, I know." Sydney's brow creased. "But is it—possible?"
"We'll have you and Lauren drink from the same container," Irina said. "We should replicate the original circumstances as closely as possible."
"If that doesn't work?"
"We'll try other things until it does. Don't worry, sweetheart. I'd never let anything happen to you."
No, Sydney reflected, Irina was rarely passive when it came to the things that disrupted Sydney's life. Irina never "let" things happen; she usually engineered them.
Lauren's muffled curses reached the room before she did.
Irina broke her gaze from Sydney's in order to oversee the process of securing Lauren. "Tie her to the chair," Irina instructed the two men who half-carried Sydney's body into the room. "I want her hands in front, where I can see them. Legs bound separately."
Lauren glared from underneath Sydney's dark, matted hair, but she was silent. Her resentment, her hatred, her anger, filled the room more surely than her voice ever could. Her shoulder, Sydney noted, was cleanly bandaged, and her shirt had been changed to something loose, cotton and sleeveless.
Irina caught the direction of her gaze. "It's healing cleanly," she said gently. "She's been given enough to let you sleep comfortably through the night."
The pain wasn't what concerned her; it was her ability to fight. But she'd escaped her mother's compound with a gunshot wound before. She could certainly escape Sark's, if it became necessary, now. With her father. Everything was under control.
"Rest," Irina suggested. "I'll bring back everything we need."
Sydney nodded, and wrapped her arms around her body, unsteady, insecure, oddly on the edge of tears. Irina wanted her to rest?
It was then that Lauren spoke, and Sydney remembered with a jolt that she wasn't alone. "You're worried about being able to leave this place." She said it quietly, without lifting her head.
Sydney didn't answer, but Lauren must have felt Sydney's eyes on her, because she continued.
"You need an ally."
"You?"
Lauren made a sound like a snort, and irritation burned behind Sydney's eyes. "Please."
"Not my mother."
"Of course not," Lauren snapped. As if Sydney were stupid.
Sydney pressed her lips together, and wondered what game Lauren was playing now. "Sark."
"He's not perfect, you know." She fixed Sydney with Sydney's own eyes, and the words coming out of her own mouth, Lauren's though they might have been, made them feel true, made them feel like her own thoughts. They were too close to her own thoughts for comfort. But there was a reason for her to be having them. Lauren had nothing to gain from this, not unless it was the knowledge that following Lauren's advice would cause Sydney pain.
"He can be used," Lauren said. "You can use him."
"Maybe I already have."
Lauren laughed, and the sound had a bitter tinge. "Michael was right. We're not as different as either of us would like to believe."
"Not at the moment."
"That's right." It was surreal to see the self-righteous sneer twisting her own mouth. It was ugly. "Hide behind sarcasm and pathetic one-liners."
"I'm sorry, I don't have serious conversations with terrorists."
"But you'll sleep with them for information?" Lauren replied sweetly. "I'm not blaming you, Sydney. What do you think I've been doing for the past two years?"
Sydney slapped her.
Lauren laughed again, and spit blood. "Everything you do to me, Sydney," she said, and her tone was mocking, "you're only doing to yourself." She ran her tongue almost suggestively along the split in her lip, licking the blood from the seam. She drawled, "Hit me again, Sydney."
Sydney might have; she wanted to. The violence in her was frightening, the way it tingled beneath her skin. She wanted to hurt Lauren, for everything she'd done to Vaughn—for everything she'd done to her, to Sydney. For playing on her emotions. For making her care whether or not Lauren thought well of her. For making her feel guilty for still wanting Vaughn.
Sydney Bristow was used to betrayal. But only from people she loved. Not from people she barely knew. In most of her interactions—meeting men, stealing vault codes—she was the one who deceived.
"Why are you telling me this?" Sydney asked, pulling herself in with difficulty, flattening her voice of affect. Thinking of her father, of its unruffled, threatening calm.
"I'm angry with him," Lauren said plainly. "He deserves to be hurt the way he hurt me. I believe you're capable of it. And I want something from you."
Sydney stared at her.
"A favor," Lauren said. "I need you to give Michael a message for me." She was trembling, just slightly: her fingers, her lips.
"What makes you think I would do that?"
"Because of what the message is." Lauren swallowed visibly, and her voice dropped, became rough. "I want you to tell Michael how much I loathed him. How every morning I woke up next to him it was all I could do to keep from suffocating him with his own pillow. How—I want you to make it clear to him precisely how difficult it was to pretend to be in love with him. How utterly sickening."
Oh God. "I couldn't hurt him like that," Sydney whispered, squeezing her eyes shut, remembering that she had, remembering how she had.
Lauren's eyes widened, then began to gleam. The twist of her mouth was malicious. "You saw him."
She knew it was damning, but Sydney couldn't bring herself to answer. What did it matter if Lauren knew? It didn't change what she did, or why.
"That's far better," Lauren laughed, "than anything I could have asked you to say to him."
It was funny to her: Sydney's pain, Vaughn's.
"Do let me know what he says when he discovers it was you in my body, won't you?"
Something in her snapped. "You had better hope," Sydney hissed, "that my mother doesn't let you go. Because I will kill you."
"Why don't you do it now?" Lauren taunted, her grin almost nightmarish as she through Sydney's own words back at her. "Isn't that what you're good at, Julia?"
"Isn't this a cozy scene," Sark remarked as he closed the door behind him. Sydney hadn't heard him open it. Why hadn't she heard him open it?
"Don't worry, darling, we weren't arguing over you," Lauren sneered. "You're all hers."
"Generous of you," he replied neutrally. "Sydney, I suggest you take a moment to regain some measure of control, as Irina will be here shortly."
She hated that she felt ashamed. "I'm fine."
He inclined his head. "Have it your way. If you'll sit down in the chair, and place your hands in front of you."
"If I'll—what?"
Patiently, he explained, "We can't have Lauren free once the switch has been made. We need to keep you both restrained until we are sure the desired effect has taken place. Then you'll be released."
She searched his eyes for some sort of emotion—some hint of assurance, or its lack—but they were entirely blank. Slowly, she moved to the chair, sat, and offered up to him her wrists.
"Idiots," Lauren muttered, but Sark merely knelt before her, looped the rope gently around her wrists and knotted it. She watched him as he bent his head and fastened her ankles to the legs of the chair with the same rope. He looked older from this angle, the curve of his cheek, the contour of his mouth. He finished with the last knot and looked up at her—and this time there was something in his eyes. Her cheeks burned. She wished his eyes had just stayed blank.
He might have said something—she was sure he was going to—but it was at that moment that Irina returned, a bottle of water and a small bag of dark dust.
"If you're ready. . . ."
