MIRROR IMAGE
Rating: R
Timeline:
Mid-season 3, after "Blowback."
Part IV, Act 7
Sark stood behind Irina, in the most shadowed part of the room, both Sydney and Lauren clearly within his line of sight. The three women formed a triangle, with him a single, external point. Unrelated. Without relation. Normally, he preferred it that way.
He disagreed with Irina's choice to keep this between the four of them. True, it involved the artifact, and there were many in his employ he didn't yet trust, but he also did not underestimate either of the women with whom they were currently dealing, and would have felt far more at ease with a few heavily armed guards present. Irina, however, was calling the shots here—and it was crucial that he prevent the weight of her nearly preternatural suspicion from falling on him.
Both Sydney and Lauren had drunk from the glass Irina had provided—Sydney first, as Irina held the glass, then Lauren, from his hand—and then Irina had injected them both with a mild sedative mixed with dust she'd brushed carefully off of the Rambaldi disk. Now they waited. Sydney's head had lolled on her neck, falling to the right. He walked over to Lauren's side—her head had tipped back into the top of the chair—and smoothed her hair back from her forehead.
"How long will they be out?"
Irina wrapped her arms around herself, and it should have made her appear vulnerable. On anyone else, it would have. She only looked tired, pensive. There were fine lines around her eyes that were unfamiliar to him. She never looked old, but tonight . . . tonight she looked worn.
"Not long." Her smile was as much a mystery as ever. "Which one are you waiting for to wake up?"
"Irina, will this work?" he asked, disregarding her question. She hadn't expected him to answer, or she wouldn't have asked.
"It should."
She tucked her hair behind her ears in a manner reminiscent of Sydney, and Sark wondered who Irina might have been, what she might have been like, had she defected, had she chosen to remain with Sydney, with Jack. But that didn't bear thinking of for long, because of what it would have meant for him, both for good and for ill. He didn't have the luxury of might-have-beens, not for himself. Nor did he want them. He did wonder, however, why Irina had left—her cover had been intact, as far as he had been able to discern. Orders? She never spoke of that time, the months surrounding her extraction. As often as she spoke of her family—Sydney, and Katya and Yelena—her interactions with them during that time remained unspoken. It was a blank space in his understanding of her, and something about the very profoundness of the gap made him believe that he was therefore missing something crucially important.
But then, Irina was a woman of many secrets, and he did not profess to know even half of them. He wondered who she trusted, if anyone. At least he could see by her expressions, its softness as she gazed upon her sleeping daughter, who she loved.
"I do wish you would tell me what the disk is for," Sark murmured, stroking Lauren's cheek once more—she'd forgive him, eventually, but his bed would be the colder for it until then (he didn't deceive himself that he'd see Sydney there again—before turning to his former mentor.
The only discernable change in her was the slight steeling of her spine, a tension he had from necessity learned long ago to detect. "I've asked you not to press me, Julian."
"And I assure you, I have kept your request firmly in mind. I mention it again only because the disk's intended use would be a helpful piece of information at this juncture, considering the circumstances. You've no call to reprimand me, Irina." He let amusement settle lightly across his features. "May I remind you of our current professional relationship?"
"You're in a mood this afternoon," she observed, lips curving in a way that could be called affectionately or dangerously. Her change of subject, and her tone, did not fool him; he remained wary, on-guard.
She didn't disappoint; her head cocked to the side, and she asked, "Did you really manage to secure your inheritance?"
A dangerous question.
"Nearly," he responded smoothly. "There is one vital piece of information I will need to obtain after our work here is concluded." His response was carefully constructed to explain his current temper while giving away as little information as possible. It was also the truth. "You're welcome to use this building for awhile, if you have need of it."
"And wait for Jack to return with the CIA?" True amusement colored her words—a sense of irony, with a tad of yearning.
"You are intending to release him, then?"
"Of course." She turned her gaze to her daughter. "I promised Sydney."
"And Lauren?" he pressed.
She looked over her shoulder at him. "You care about her."
Weighing the possible ramifications of his response, he said carefully, "I do."
To his surprise, Irina smiled—genuinely. "That's good. I wondered, after Allison . . . . I know how close you two were. How much you loved her."
You don't, actually, he thought, and let the words lie there, unspoken, in his mouth like the first taste of wine. Intoxicating in its power. Ripe with potential.
"I thought about you, when I heard."
He hummed, just slightly. "Do you mean recently? Or the first time, when I was rotting away in the CIA holding cell you had arranged? Your CIA holding cell, I was told."
"The first time. And congratulations, Mr. Sark, on warranting the infamous glass cell." Her mouth quirked, her eyes crinkled, and for perhaps the first time, he hated her. Which would only make this easier. He nursed the feeling.
"How did they tell you? Or did they tell you?"
He looked away, towards the darkest corner of the room. Two years, and the pain could still take him unawares. The uniformity, the evenness, of the dark calmed him enough to answer. "They used the information as part of an interrogation technique." His voice was steady. "They were attempting to extract from me Sydney's whereabouts, but of course I did not know. The news wasn't welcome. Mr. Vaughn was particularly harsh." He allowed himself a smile, tight and grim. He did not allow himself to relive the memory of the man's treatment, though his sinuses ached, the scars on the insides of his arms and legs twinged, simply at the mention of his name. "I must say, it was particularly gratifying, fucking his wife."
Irina's soft laugher was musical, and knowing. Her sympathy was an instrument she played with consummate skill, and he'd told her more than he'd meant to—but that was better. Let her believe he was dancing to her tune, that he wished only revenge. He wasn't after revenge, not anymore; nothing so heated as that. He was after justice. Reparation for the position in which he'd been put.
But he had little time to dwell on it—because Sydney was stirring.
He could almost feel the tension in Irina's lithe, reedy body: go to her or not? How would she react? And more importantly, who, precisely, was she?
Sydney's eyes fluttered open, and the look in them, the sheer agony, was something Lauren could never replicate. "Mom?"
Irina sank to her knees in front of her daughter. He hoped, when he had been in much the same position earlier, that he had not appeared so subservient, so much at Sydney's mercy, but he must have. The idea set uncomfortably on his shoulders, and he resisted the urge to physically shrug it off.
"You're all right," Irina was murmuring. "It's all right now."
Sydney's head was bowed, her mouth barely parted and her throat working. She looked vulnerable, and stunning, the sheet of her hair shadowing her face and parting over the smooth spheres of her sleekly muscled shoulders.
It was then that Lauren moaned. He moved to her side immediately, grateful for the excuse to tear his eyes from her body's previous occupant. he pulled her hair back with one hand, stroked his thumb along her jaw. "Lauren, love," he said urgently, when her eyes did not open and her brow creased in pain.
"I'm fine," she said steadily, as if she were concentrating on the feeling. "Don't touch me."
Irina was loosening the knots at Sydney's wrist and ankles. She looked . . . anxious, Sark realized. It was an expression he had never associated with Irina before; to him she had always appeared unceasingly serene. Sydney looked ill.
Sydney turned her head, and their eyes met. She blanched; her cheeks went sickly pale, and her eyes were nearly wrenching in the depths of their pain.
Curious, he thought, almost unbearably drawn to her, as Irina pulled the last piece of rope from her wrists—and as Sydney ran for the door. Irina followed. He heard sounds of retching outside the door—presumably Sydney—and winced. He'd have to have someone clean that up. Hesitantly, he glanced over at Lauren, whose eyes were open now. She was breathing steadily, if somewhat shallowly.
Her mouth twisted at the question in his eyes in its familiar and oddly endearing way. "I haven't done anything in the last few days to make myself ill."
He nodded in acknowledgement—of what she knew, and her response to it. "Is there anything I can do to make you less uncomfortable?"
"You could let me go."
"You know I can't."
"Won't."
"Not until Sydney has returned safely to the CIA. You would jeopardize Irina's objective."
Lauren's eyebrows raised in disdain. "But doesn't she have what she wants already? She has the disk now."
"Consider it a precaution for all of our safeties," he suggested. "How do I know you wouldn't go straight back to the Covenant with news of my deceit?"
It was his objective she would compromise—her loyalties were naively fixed, and utterly predictable—but she needn't know that. better, in fact, that she did not. She knew too much already.
He'd hoped, initially, to be able to use her to further his aims; he had engineered their first encounter with that very thing in mind, with her willingness to work with him against her employer as a test. He hadn't anticipated the rush of desire her scent had given him, or the heady pleasure of caressing the wife of the man he had, during his time in custody, learned to, if not hate, at least wish some manner of revenge upon. Her craftiness, her very betrayal of him to Cole, had paradoxically only endeared her to him further. Here was a woman who could match him at last, he had thought, but his confidence in its accuracy had already begun to fade. Even Sydney Bristow—and something dark and dormant in him stirred at the very thought of her name—had proved to be a more worthy ally: challenging, gratifying, consummately professional. It had been there in the brief look they had shared only moment before . . . but its bedmates had been revulsion, and fear.
He needn't worry about working with her again; the likelihood of that was nil. She would return to her beloved CIA. He would take his money and retire somewhere—take freelance work on the side, perhaps. He'd grown tired of working for an organization; he'd grown tired of pretending to feel allegiance towards things which he did not. He'd been loyal to Irina, and that had gotten him little but an extended stay in US custody—because she had a greater allegiance, one to her daughter. He couldn't blame her, precisely, but he also refused to put himself in the same position twice. He worked only for himself, now.
And yet, he'd been true to Lauren—in his fashion. And he would, because he cared for her, ensure she was released.
No matter how trying she was being at the moment. "And why shouldn't I go straight to the Covenant?" she asked, mouth pursed.
"Lauren, darling," he said patiently, "I would expect nothing less of you."
Her eyes narrowed in a way he'd always found fetching, but was, at the moment and considering the circumstances, merely tiresome.
Brusquely, because she could respond in the scathing manner to which they'd both become accustomed, he informed her, "I'll send someone to remove you to a more comfortable location for the time being." Then, more gently, "I promised you that you would leave this place alive."
Scorn. "And you are if nothing else a man of your word."
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I am a man of many words, quite a few of them true. This is one of those."
Lauren cocked her head to the side, studying him. He wondered what she saw. Something she understood, he presumed, because her expression quieted, softened—grew nearly nostalgic. "If so—thank you, Julian."
He bowed his head, and regretted once again, and rather painfully, the circumstances in which they found themselves. He could have loved her, he realized. For all her faults, he could have come to want her as he wanted for breath, given a little time. But that was impossible now. He'd been deceiving himself before; his betrayal was something she could never forgive. Not his intimacies with Sydney, but his willingness to put her into a situation she may not have been able to get out of, without her knowledge, without her consent. He had imprisoned her, and she was a woman, he now saw more clearly than he wished, who could not abide imprisonment—not after her marriage to Michael Vaughn. Some part of him had known that, but had not cared enough to sacrifice his inheritance, his sense of justice, and with them his dignity. That he would not abandon for any woman.
"Where will you go?" Lauren asked as he reached the door.
"To bed, presumably."
"No—after that. After this."
Would you want to follow me? he thought whimsically, with a sad smile.
"Somewhere no one will ever be able to find me," he said without turning.
"Good luck," she said, and, brow furrowing, he returned, "Good luck to you as well."
