MIRROR IMAGE
Rating: R
Timeline:
Mid-season 3, after "Blowback."
Part V, Act 3
He awoke alone, and irritated. Irritated because he was alone, and alone because the woman who had shared his bed had left him like a thief in the night. Literally like a thief in the night, he discovered soon after, but at the moment of waking he had been merely annoyed at her absence.
Most likely she was feeling ashamed, he had mused, and though it was a bit of an affront to his ego, it was something at least which he understood of her. Agent Sydney Bristow was about loyalty, and honesty—but only after a point. Until she reached that point—that breaking point at which one proved oneself divine or demonic, human or monster, and at which her humanity, her innate decency, always shone through and his failed to pass measure—she was a master of denial. Sleeping with him in her own body, he suspected, with no way to distance herself from the act or her memory of it, had shocked her back into her characteristic repression.
The CIA taught its agents to compartmentalize all too well, in his opinion. There was much to be said for a clear mind, free of partitions. It had taken him years to cultivate a passive indifference towards life and its inhabitants, and along the way, he allowed, there was much of what was good and lovable and real in him that had been sacrificed, but in the end his was a more reliable technique: there was no chance of the constructed barriers between personal and professional, emotional and intellectual, breaking down at inopportune moments, because there were none. Simply himself, and all he entailed.
So when he discovered the gun missing, and then his ID card gone from the pocket in which he had left it, he simply nodded slowly, thoughtfully, taking in the alteration in his situation.
His suspicions the evening before had been correct: Sloane must have contacted her. He felt a twinge of pity for her, of regret at the situation—the same emotions that had driven him to such tenderness that night, holding her in his arms. He thought if he had it to do over again, he might tell her what he knew the moment he saw her in the doorway of his bedroom , a lean shadow, all in black, hair loose and dark chestnut in the regrettable lack of light. But then he wouldn't have the memory of having her—all of her—in his bed, in his arms . . . of the way she shuddered at his demanded, "Come. Now," and gave herself to him. (It was, he believed, the only time Sydney Bristow had ever taken an order from him, and it would not surprise him if it were also the last.) He revised his thought. He should have told her afterward, immediately afterward—taken advantage of her weakened, sated state—but he had been too sated, too languid, too oddly content himself. A few moments, he'd thought as he drifted off, Sydney's warm, heavy-limbed body a soporific against his own. He'd allowed it to lull him more thoroughly than he would have in any other bed, with nearly any other woman, and instead of ten minutes later he woke three-quarters of an hour after, disgruntled by the loss of her heat almost even before he surfaced from sleep.
It was too late now, however, to revise their past. He could only look to their future. Which looked far bleaker now that he had discovered the missing gun than it had mere moments before.
She would have gone to Irina, he decided, and shook his head. Nothing for it now. If only she'd thought to ask him.
He pulled on slim boxers, trousers, an equally slim dark shirt, liberated a second gun from the case beneath the bed, and followed after her.
Outside Irina's study he paused and pressed one ear to just the right point on the heavy door.
"Thank you," he heard Sydney say, voice muffled through the wood, and found himself mildly impressed despite himself.
He slipped into the shadows barely in time to evade her notice as she exited the room, pulling the door closed tightly behind her. He waited until she had passed into another hall before easing the door open and slipping inside.
Irina's head whipped up, a panicked look in her expressive eyes, her hair in utter disarray. She'd been working her wrists from their steel prison, he realized, and somewhat frantically, at that. It was delicious, really: For once, he had some power here, some control. It was exhilarating.
"Julian, thank God," she said. "Get me out of these."
"Mother-daughter tiff?" he asked in mock-sympathy, then hardened at her withering glare. "No, I don't believe I will."
"What?" The shock on her face was entirely genuine. She had misjudged him. It gave him a surge of sheer power he knew he must be cautious with, lest it cost him what he hoped to achieve with it.
"Not this time, Irina," he said, crouching down to her level. Then, neatly, he reached out, gripped her hair with ruthless efficiency, and slammed her head against the desk he'd given her.
So much for that bridge, he mused as he stood, glad to have it done with if slightly uneasy, still, about the potential consequences down the road. Irina was a dangerous enemy to have.
A trickle of blood graced her forehead, but she was still. It would give him the time he needed; it would give Sydney the time she needed to rescue her precious boy scout.
The thought irritated him more than it should have.
As he turned to leave, a glint of light caught his eye. What was this? He leaned down to pick it up: a disc—flat, silver, with a bright finish. A perfect inch and a quarter in diameter, it caught the light from Irina's desk lamp and reflected it dispassionately, neither amplifying it nor dimming it. A disk. Sydney' s disk. The Covenant records she'd been so desperate to procure.
His smile was almost malicious as he tucked it safely into the inside pocket of his trousers. Sydney must have lost it in her struggle with Irina. Perhaps if she asked nicely enough, he would return. After reading it himself, of course. Knowledge was always an asset.
He closed the study door behind him and moved quickly, but silently, down to the holding cells. If Sydney was as good as he knew her to be, she'd be nearly to his storage facility in the left wing by now. He had a very limited amount of time.
Jack Bristow was seated on the narrow bench in the darkened cell as if he had been awaiting Sark's visit. His face registered no surprise, no gratitude, no annoyance, nothing, as Sark released the door's locks and swung it open.
"Well?" he asked of the older man, brow raised in cool disregard, when he didn't move.
Nodding shortly, Jack stood and, though obviously stiff, walked evenly—nearly menacingly—towards where Sark stood. Not that Sark was in the habit of allowing himself to be menaced.
Sark turned before Jack could speak, taking long strides down the hallway, and the sound of Jack's government-issue shoes on the floor behind him assured Sark the man was following.
"Where are we going?" Jack asked a few terse moments later, as they took another of several impossible turns. The halls here were purposefully serpentine, nearly impossible to navigate unless you already knew them intimately. And he did: he preferred to know the things with which he dealt intimately.
"To find your daughter," Sark replied neutrally. "We have, however, a brief detour to make."
"Why are you helping her?"
Her. Sydney, not Jack. A curious choice; a telling assumption. Sark wondered briefly what it must be like to have a father like Jack: one who, for all his flaws, placed his child at the center of his universe.
"It's not a selfless act, I assure you, Mr. Bristow."
"I never," Jack said, "assumed it was."
He didn't say anything else, and Sark preferred it that way.
Lauren's cell was several turns out of their way, but not so far that it jeopardized his chances of intercepting Sydney. He opened her door in much the same way he had Jack's, but Lauren—young, still emotional, less schooled—snapped her head up, surprise plain and flattering on her sweetly-featured face.
"Did I not promise you that you would leave this place unharmed?" he asked her lightly, an undercurrent of emotion in his voice that he failed to conceal.
Jack was watching him closely; Sark ignored him.
He extended a hand to assist Lauren from her seat, and she took it. He pressed a generous fold of bills into her pale slender hands, leaving his pockets empty but for the disk. "Disappear," he recommended, and felt a surge of satisfaction when she nodded.
Smart girl, he thought.
"Two rights, and your third left. A back entrance. The way should be clear."
"I can handle myself," she told him, chin lifted.
It was his turn to nod, and with one last look into his eyes—what, he wondered, was she hoping to see there?—she turned and headed for the exit, hips swaying.
He watched after her a moment, sure that there should have been more to their parting—but they'd said their farewells the night before, really. This was simply clean up, a resolution that had dragged on past the story's end.
Jack cleared his throat, and, allowing himself the luxury of a slight grimace, Sark turned.
"Sydney," Jack reminded him. There was something speculative in his eyes of which Sark was instantly wary. Had he learned that from Irina, or she from him?
Sark indicated his agreement with a stiff nod of his head. Time was short, after all; he couldn't afford to waste it dwelling on a woman he really barely knew.
A woman, he reflected with a surprisingly healthy degree of self-deprecation, and a slight curve to his lips, who, as she left, hadn't even deigned to look back.
Sydney was quick, and clean; he gave her that. His guards had been summarily dispatched—they lay breathing shallowly at each checkpoint. Some bled, but not fatally. Others appeared merely to be sleeping. If he were her father, he would have felt proud; Jack looked grim.
Sark wondered briefly, severely, with a measure of distaste, what precisely Irina saw in him. It certainly wasn't a variety of expression. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he had been meant as a sort of replacement for Jack: "The son I never had," Irina used to say, a hint of self-mockery rich in her voice. He found himself apprising the man with new eyes. There were worse things, he concluded, than being like Jack Bristow. But Sark was not Irina's any longer, and Jack Bristow was not the man he wished to be.
"Well?" Jack said, a bitten-off, effective mockery of Sark's earlier inquiry.
"She'll be in there." He indicated the door before them with an inclination of his chin. No sound emerged from the interior of the room, nor had he expected there to. "There's no other exit."
"How do you know she hasn't already come and gone?"
Fair question. "I don't," Sark said. "For certain."
"It's remarkable that you've lived this long," Jack muttered, to Sark's mild amusement. Impatience was one of his favorite weaknesses, most likely because it was one he rarely felt the need to give in to.
Still, it behooved him to reach for the door ahead of Jack. Neither of them, however, succeeded. Sark had just enough time to step back before the door flew open and the room's occupant, Sydney Bristow herself, nearly slammed bodily into him.
Her reflexes, at times, left something to be desired.
There was hesitation on her face—could it be she regretted leaving him as she had?—which turned to shock when she saw Jack.
He couldn't help the hint of smugness as he greeted her. "Good. You already have it." As if this was what he had intended all along. He felt satisfaction at the stung look in eyes that had held, if not affection, deep sympathy and mutual understanding mere hours before, but he did not lie to himself, he did not try to tell himself that satisfaction was the uncomplicated pleasure of a man who has bested his adversary. This was something more complex, barbed, deeper: this was something about them, Julian Sark and Sydney Bristow, not the roles they chose to play.
"You took my favorite gun," he told her, and it broke the tension, told her she had nothing here to fear. He rather wished he had the time to drag to out longer.
She folded her arms. Coolly, she responded, "Didn't my mother ever teach you not to play favorites?"
Jack grunted from behind him, possibly in amusement.
"Let's skip the pleasantries, shall we?" he drawled. "I've a car waiting." He paused to savor the moment. "Where does Sloane want you to meet him?"
He wasn't disappointed. Sydney's exquisite face paled, then flushed. With fury? With shame? He really was immensely fond of her.
"You knew. You knew that son of a bitch had Vaughn."
"You never asked me where I disappeared to that night after the club, the night we—"
"Perhaps," Jack suggested at his most deadpan, "one of you ought to explain to me precisely what is going on."
"Of course," Sark said smoothly. "However, may I suggest we do so en route?" His tone shifted, skimmed the line between sincerity and farce. "A man's life is on the line here, after all."
Sydney's eyes held a boiling anger, and however much he enjoyed pushing her buttons, so to speak, her hatred, directed at him, was not something he'd ever wanted from her.
He caught her arm as she moved to brush past. "Sydney," he said, gently, "I won't endanger him. I'm here to help you."
"Forgive me," she said testily, and he was relieved to see the heat had gone frosty, her hatred for the moment released, "if I find it a little hard to believe you."
"I released your father," he told her. "Does that not earn me some measure of trust?"
"Not trust," she said, and her eyes echoed, Never trust. Which was acceptable to him; he'd never gone looking for her trust.
"Then what?"
"Time to explain," she said, her eyes hard, and he—wisely, he thought—let her pass.
