MIRROR IMAGE

Rating: R (annnnd it needs it here)
Timeline: Mid-season 3, after "Blowback."

Part V, Act 1

Sydney fumbled blindly for the phone ringing on the bedside table, her eyes swollen from crying herself to sleep. It was Lauren's NSA cell phone, she remembered, and felt the bile rise once again in the back of her throat—but the realization came too late: she had already found the answer key, and managed a hoarse hello.

She wished to God she hadn't.

"Sydney." Sloane's voice was smooth, serpentine, in her ear. It was the voice that whispered still through her fevered, panicked dreams, taunting her with her failures, with the fallibility of her judgment. With the sheer idiocy of her trust. She'd put up a good show in his office, but it never failed to make her skin crawl.

"Your mission, I take it, was a success."

"What do you want now?"

She forced herself to affect a bored tone; disinterest was hardly the most difficult alias she'd ever had to take on, and yet it was, as always, a struggle to keep her hate tamped down.

"I want what I have always wanted," he said, and several sarcastic responses leapt to mind as to what, precisely, that was, but she didn't have the chance to voice them, because he continued, "I want the disk. You're with your mother; I presume she has it."

Her mother. Her mother, who had held her hair back as she vomited, and held her while she cried. Might have cried with her, though Sydney had felt only numb in her arms. Her own sobs had been wracked with grief, with self-disgust; they had overwhelmed her, sapped her of her ability to maintain control, to maintain her composure. But at least she hadn't broken down in front of Lauren. She didn't think she could have survived that.

"The disk," Sloane repeated. "You'll get it for me."

"And why exactly," Sydney demanded, "would I do that?"

"Because I have Michael Vaughn. And if you fail to bring me the disk, I will kill him."

She was wide and painfully awake now, and the fury and the panic coursing through her was almost too much for her to bear.

"You bastard."

"I had hoped, Sydney, that we would not have to do this the hard way. But you didn't listen." She could almost feel his faint, oily faux-paternal smile over the telephone line. "You never listen. It's one of the things I admire most about you."

He meant it, was the sick thing. No, the sick thing was that meaning it would not stop him from destroying her, if he had to. It wasn't stopping him from using her now. From using Vaughn.

Sydney closed her eyes. And she had been the one to leave him there, at Sloane's mercy.

She couldn't take this, not . . . . She couldn't. She was going to break in two. She'd been so stupid. In everything she'd done as Lauren, she'd been blind, and stupid, so driven by her need to know, and her need for revenge, that she hadn't thought. She wished more than anything to take back the last seventy-two hours. To be able to start over. But she knew better than anyone that was impossible; she'd erased two years of her life to return herself to a state of grace, of blissful innocence, to do just that, start over fresh—and her life had been nothing but a nightmare ever since.

She had to focus. She had to get Vaughn back. Because she loved him, the feeling as always like a cancer inside of her she couldn't stop and couldn't cut out, and Sloane would kill him. The way he'd killed Danny. "No, Agent Bristow, you killed him," he reminded her endlessly in her worst nightmares—and it may have been her choice that led to Danny's death, but Sloane had been the one that put her in a situation in which she'd had to make that choice. Sloane had set the rules, and forced her to play his game. And now he had done it again. It was a game she couldn't opt out of; the price was too high. "If you'd only listened to me, Sydney," she imagined him saying, standing over Vaughn's still, cold body, shaking his head sadly.

She realized in horror that her hand was shaking.

"We'll make the exchange at dawn, in front of the market in the main square. It should be busy, that time of day. Agent Vaughn and I will be expecting you." A pause, another sickening, condescending smile. "Good luck, Sydney."

It wasn't hard to find his rooms. Some part of her had known that this was where she could end up the moment she'd pulled the phone from ear, jabbing viciously at the disconnect button though Sloane had already broken the connection—an attempt at control, at authority, where she had none—but she was still surprised to find herself here, picking the lock, pushing open the door, making her way instinctively to the bedroom, where she now stood in the doorway, staring helplessly at the light that fell across his relaxed features and the cool expanse of chest above the blanket. He lay on his back, head resting to the left, hair tufting out at ludicrous angles.

Not so tough without the grooming, she decided. He looked ridiculously young like this, his expression unguarded, mouth soft.

Very soft, she remembered, and shivered, and wondered again exactly what it was she had hoped to accomplish here.

He turned his head, and his face was illuminated. His brow was deeply, deeply furrowed; it struck her that his life was a kind of nightmare too. As she watched, his lips pulled back into a grimace—and then stilled. It was as if he knew she was standing there—which nearly made her shiver once again.

Better that he's asleep, she thought. I can just—

His eyes opened. His expression remained calm, but his hand, she saw, was already closed over the hand of the gun beneath his pillow.

"I'm . . . unarmed," she said, and he released his grip, slowly, deliberately, on the weapon. The control of his facial features followed; he blinked a few times, sat up. The covers pooled around his hips.

"Is everything all right?"

"I ran out of towels," she quipped, reaching for an explanation for her presence; her voice trembled, broke, against her will. Her shoulders hunched. This was a mistake. Oh God, what was she doing here? For Vaughn, she told herself, and it was enough to get her to straighten.

Slowly, as if afraid she'd bolt, he pulled back the blankets, swung his legs off the side of the bed, and moved towards where she stood, gaze never leaving hers.

Earlier she had looked into his eyes with her own instead of Lauren's for the first time since they started this whole mess, and seen the reflection of all her recent misdeeds. She had seen judgment. She had seen the worst of herself, of what she was capable of: the anger, the hate, the calculation. Now she saw only compassion, only softness and acceptance, and . . . gratitude? . . . and she wanted to damn him for it, but she couldn't. Not when he was looking at her like that. Not when he hesitantly lifted his hand to smooth a wayward lock of hair behind her ear and breathed her name with such reverence.

"Sydney," he said, "what are you doing here?"

"I needed someone," she said, and her eyes filled, finally, with hot tears.

"Then by all means, please," he said. "Allow me."

The palm of his hand curved around her cheek. She knew when his thumb encountered her tears; his skin slid against hers. She wished she had it in her to feel ashamed.

"Don't cry," he murmured, and touched his mouth to hers.

She clung to him as he opened up the kiss, deepening it. She hung on.

This wasn't what she'd come here expecting. She thought it, distantly, as his lips slid down her neck, as she tilted her head to let them, as the palms of her hands molded over the muscle of his shoulders: corded, rippling as his bent to suck on her collarbone, as he let out a sound like a groan that only stirred her to her own.

"Beautiful," he mumbled against her breast, through the black lycra she'd pulled on to replace Lauren's choice of leather vest, and as she arched she wondered if he was maybe mistaking her for someone else, because this wasn't the Sark she knew, wasn't the Sark she'd been in bed with the night before (though in defense, the other night she had hardly been herself, either). Maybe waking him in the middle of the night always had this effect: made him slow, and gentle, and oddly needy.

When his teeth fixed over her nipple, through the fabric, she didn't care.

She'd felt dirty before: soiled, irreparably unclean. But something about this was putting all her pieces back together, however temporarily, washing the last two days' regrets from her mind. It erased their previous encounter in a way she didn't understand—and didn't think she wanted to. She helped him pull her shirt over her head, felt his sigh shiver through her body. She just wanted to feel it. She just wanted to feel clean.

Kissing her again, he guided her back to the bed, one arm banded across her lower back, holding her now-bare torso to him. He was solid, warm, strong against her; he made her feel . . . not small, never small, but absurdly fragile, bendable, on the very edge of breaking. She wanted to speak, she tried to, but she'd barely gotten out his name before he tenderly covered her mouth with one hand and lowered her to the mattress. Crouching over her, he licked her rib cage, traced the fragile bones there, spanned her with his long fingers.

"It would have been a shame," he murmured, running his fingertips across her belly, "for me to have ever broken a single lovely bone in your body."

She gasped as he pressed a kiss above her navel, then managed, "You fractured my wrist once."

"This wrist?" He delicately encircled her left one and brought it to the thickening bulge at the front of his cotton pants.

She let her hand close around it, fluttering her fingers along the side. He sighed, and pushed against her palm in a gratifying way. He really did want her, and it surprised her, though she knew it shouldn't—not with his attitude these last few days, not with the time he must have spent (the times they'd faced each other in the field) crafting innuendo to use against her. His professional persona was cool, even, politeness on the edge of menace. But his eyes had always sparked with something extra where she was concerned. He'd always been plain about his enjoyment of her as an adversary; it shouldn't have been this unsettling for him to be so open about his enjoyment of her in his bed.

"No, the other one," she told him, and was rewarded with his low chuckle. She found herself almost feeling like smiling. Then her breath caught as he pressed the pad of his thumb against her, through the thin layer of her pants; he took her lower lip into his mouth and she got a little bit lost.

One of his thighs pressed between hers, and he began to move it, slightly, a rocking motion against her center. She moaned, low, an expression of approval, and his answering laugh was warming rather than offensive.

"Sydney, sweet," he said, and she lifted her face to kiss him, lifted her hands to hold his mouth to her own. His hair was a luxury where it rubbed between her fingers: soft, just beginning to rethicken. She tilted her hips up, trying to increase the pressure.

"More?" he asked against her mouth, and she thrust against him in response.

"You'll have to remove your trousers." His breath danced across the sensitized, swollen flesh of her lips. She nodded, and helped him ease them from her hips, down her thighs. His fingers tangled with hers as they tugged the fabric down, and their eyes met again. He smiled at her, faintly, in such a genuine way that her chest felt tight.

"Thank you," he said, "for allowing me the opportunity to do this the way your deserve."

He brushed his lips over the clutch of curls between her legs, and inhaled. His eyes closed, as if he was breathing her in, and as she watched, choked with need, he slowly lowered his mouth and slid his tongue over her already slickened flesh.

She arched, and gave herself over to him. She hadn't intended to—she'd never intended any of this—but it had been so long since she'd been touched with any kind of real tenderness. He brought her slowly, leisurely, to places she had thought she'd forgotten, until she was grasping at his shoulders, pulling him up, needing every bit of his skin she could get in contact with her own. He shed his clothing on the way up, reached her mouth just as she heard his pants hit the carpet, and kissed her.

"Wait," she demanded hoarsely, pushing him onto his back, "I need—"

He didn't question her, just laid back, let her have her way. Her hands spanned his chest, stroked the firm plane of his stomach, slid over his hipbones, parted his thighs. He was beautiful; she'd never really let herself see that before. She'd never seen so much of him, before—in any sense.

He let her touch him, his own hands resting supportively on top of her thighs, and when she cupped him again, skin to warm skin, his fingers tightened on her.

Bruises, she thought. There are going to be bruises.

And before she could think, before she could remind herself why this was a bad idea, she leaned her body forward and slid him into her in one smooth, long stroke.

The sound he made was something between her name and a plea to God. She began to move, head already feeling light, hands braced on his chest, hair falling around her face. Her belly pressed against the soft, light fur of his, hipbones rubbing, the sweat they'd worked up easing the motion. It was unbelievably erotic; the way they were lined up against each other, the sensation of his skin on hers.

He was watching her, she realized, and once she met his eyes she couldn't look away. He reached out one hand and cupped her face; then, infinitely gently, he trailed his fingers down her throat, along her chest, delicately across one nipple, and the other. She shuddered, and shuddered, her hips pistoning faster and harder, and then his hands were there, helping her, guiding her hips, a regular, feather-light brush with both thumbs on the sensitive insides of her thighs, and she peaked, a gasp of pleasure just sufficient to send her writhing above him but not completely satisfy her, and with one quick movement he rolled them, bringing her, still pulsing around him, beneath him, and began a slow, even thrust inside her. She wrapped her legs around him and held on.

There was a freedom here she hadn't known in Lauren's body—hadn't known in her own, lately—and it spread through her like an aphrodisiac. Sark groaned, hands curling around her hips, nuzzling into her neck, and she threw her head back and let her eyes close. He was pushing her further towards a second climax with every rise of her hips, and she felt the pleasure of it suffusing her, spreading to her fingertips and stretching into her toes.

She felt his mouth brush against her ear, his breath hot. "Come," he suggested in a low tone. "Now."

She came.

A few thrusts later he came as well; his slim body tensed above her, and he gave a long, satisfied sigh. He lowered his mouth to hers, and she should have been alert for some sort of double cross, but she couldn't bring herself to it, not yet. He kissed her, and kissed her again, as she lay bonelessly underneath him, warmed through, aching emotionally, feeling on the razor edge of some kind of fulfillment. His mouth was as yielding as hers, his breath as deep and slow.

"You're amazing," he murmured, and she summoned up a smile for him: small, but sincere.

Stretching out beside her, he ran one hand over the planes of her naked body. Then, pressing one last kiss on her shoulder, he slid an arm across her stomach and descended back into the sleep she'd woken him from.

She waited, hardly daring to take in breath.

When his breathing evened, she slipped out of bed and back into her clothes, took the gun from beneath the pillow and his access card from his jacket pocket, and, after checking the weapon's clip to ensure it was full, went to find her mother.

A/N: Hi all, sorry for the delay! I had an issue getting switched over to wireless with my ancient mac and, well, it was rough. :) So, fic not abandoned, it's moving along on schedule and should be finished up in three or four more chapters. I should have another two up this weekend (if you want to read ahead, there's one extra chapter up on SD-1, in the general R/NC-17 forum).

Thank you for reading, and for your comments!