MIRROR IMAGE

Rating: R
Timeline: Mid-season 3, after "Blowback."

Part V, Act 5

The wind whipped loose hairs across Sydney's face as she stood, squinting into the sunrise. Sark stood at her left, hands tucked elegantly into his pockets and eyes hidden behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. She felt underdressed, under-prepared. But she wouldn't let it show.

Her father had them under surveillance from the vehicle a block to the north; better, they had all agreed, that Sloane believe he was only dealing with Sark and Sydney. Sydney hated that it almost felt like professional courtesy.

"He's late," Sydney said.

"He has the upperhand."

"He's still late."

Sark made a noise that sounded almost like a snort. "And have you been involved in espionage long?"

She brushed an errant lock out of her eyes, still scanning the streets for Sloane's arrival. "Shut up."

The square was beginning to awake: bakeries opening, stalls setting up for business. Women called out to each other in pleasantly familiar greetings; young men raced by on bicycles. Sydney wondered if her mother ever came here, or somewhere like here, to shop, but doubted it. She could picture Laura doing so, but not Irina. She tried to picture it of her, and couldn't, and wondered what that meant.

"We look suspicious," Sydney sighed.

"Better suspicious than dead."

It had been discussed: the more people noticed them, the more difficult it would be for Sloane to try anything too visible. "Even Arvin Sloane," Sark had said, "would hesitate to destroy the lives of so many over something so small." (Though Sydney was not, after hearing her mother's words, convinced that this was something small at all.) It was paltry protection, this being out in the open, but it was all they had.

Playing by Sloane's rules again, Sydney thought. All she ever did was play by someone else's rules.

She shot a brief glance at Sark. She knew him as little more than a trumped up errand boy, but he was obviously making his own rules now, setting the parameters. She was envious, she realized. The game he played wasn't one she'd ever choose, but at least it was his own.

But what had it cost him to get to that point? He'd just cut the few ties he'd had: Lauren, the Covenant, Irina. Was that what making your own rules meant in the end? Being alone?

She was distracted by the sound of a car pulling up. Black, sleek, longer than Sark's.

Sloane's.

"And the game begins," Sark murmured, tension threaded through his voice.

The game's been on for awhile, Sydney disagreed.

A car door opened and Sloane stepped out, cool and garbed in a light beige suit and crisp white dress shirt that nearly glowed in the morning light. The bottom of his suit rippled in the wind. On his face was a pleasant, welcoming half-smile . . . that could not quite conceal the chill in his eyes.

"Sydney," he greeted her warmly, and would have, she thought, embraced her if he thought she would have let him. "And Mr. Sark! Excellent work; you have my thanks."

Sark tilted his head; a dangerous look with which Sydney was well familiar. "And you have my codes."

Sloane's smile turned amused, and Sydney was surprised he didn't chuckle. Two bodyguards flanked him, hefty weapons in their hands. The bustle around the group of them had paused, as if noticing the tension in the center of the square for the first time.

"If Sydney will kindly show that she has the disk, I will give you the other half of your access codes."

Sydney pulled the slim plastic case from her waistband and held it up. "Where," she asked, "is Vaughn?"

Sloane lifted a hand and the limo door opened again. Two more guards emerged, carrying Vaughn between them. His head bowed low; his body sagged. He looked dejected, defeated . . . but not harmed.

"He's taken the news about his wife rather hard," Sloane commented, and Sydney wanted nothing more than to slam her fist through his snotty, squirrelly, smug little face. "Not as hard as your father did, of course. But hard."

"Let's just get this over with," she said, low, terse, and Sloane inclined his head.

"As you wish," he said, and his tone hardened, rose to reach his men. "Bring him."

They half-escorted, half-dragged Vaughn forward. He lifted his head—saw her. Mouthed her name half with heartbreak, half with desperation.

"Leave him," Sloane instructed.

Vaughn staggered, but pulled himself up. He was pale, sweating with the effort, but he remained standing. Sydney's heart swelled.

Sloane gestured one of the men who had brought Vaughn out of the limo forward. The man extended a plain, letter-sized envelope to Sark, who took it. Sloane remained several feet away, out of easy range. "Your codes have been placed in a safety deposit box is the south of France. The information you need is in that envelope."

Sark's head cocked to the side. "How do I know they'll truly be there?"

"You'll just have to trust me, Mr. Sark," Sloane said. "I'm hoping we'll be able to work together again in the future, and my deceiving you would be an unfavorable start to what could be a profitable business arrangement."

"You obviously know how to contact me," Sark said, tucking the envelope into his jacket pocket. Sydney suspected that the comment did not come out as lightly as Sark had wanted it to. But then, she couldn't claim to have any kind of privileged position when it came to Sark's intent.

"The disk?" Sloane returned his attention to Sydney.

"Vaughn first," she said neutrally.

Sloane shook his head. "Don't make this difficult, Sydney."

"I'm not the one making it difficult," she said. But she held the disk out to him.

He reached out to retrieve it himself, and for a moment they stood on either side of the disk, a hand each on the plastic case, connected, as they had always been, by the specter of Rambaldi. And now the specter of Sydney's sister, Sloane's daughter. Nadia.

"Don't—" She struggled to verbalize, struggled to find something she could say that would ensure he wouldn't hurt her. But there was nothing she could say. Both of them knew it.

Sloane stepped back, with the disk. "I've missed you, Sydney," he said. "Give Jack my best."

And then he was returning to the car, leaving Sydney and Sark standing there, leaving Vaughn standing there, nearly dead on his feet he was so weak.

Sloane's car peeled away in a small cloud of dust and gravel and Sydney ran to him, catching his weight just before his legs gave way.

"Vaughn," she breathed, clutching him to her. "Michael." He was solid, and warm (almost too warm, almost feverish). But safe. Alive. Real. And shaking.

"Sydney," he said hoarsely. He choked, "Lauren—"

"I know," she said. The sorrow was a palpable thing between them, and for a moment he was the only thing that existed for her.

The touch of a hand on her shoulder brought Sydney back to her surroundings. She looked at the hand's owner: a woman, just past middle-aged.

"Doctor?" the woman said, gesturing to Vaughn. The word was in English: guttural, delivered with effort. The woman's face was drawn with trepidation, but that she had come to them, interlopers, dangerous, at all spoke of a sincere need to help. Something genuine, unsullied, in the midst of all this betrayal and second-guessing, this mess.

Then she realized who should have been standing in her eyeline, but was not. Sark was gone.

She remembered his words earlier when she, for reasons she had yet to untangle, warned him against crossing her mother's path again.

"Irina will understand," he had said, and his lips had curved. As if they had some secret game that Sydney was too slow to play. "She won't like it, but she'll understand."

Not this time, Sydney had thought.

But she didn't have the concern to waste, and even if she had, he wasn't the kind of person one wasted it on, whether he deserved it or not. Better that he was gone. Better that this whole thing was over with.

"Thank you," she said to the woman, "but no." She shook her head, and made herself a smile. "Thank you," she said again, and the woman nodded, and stepped back. She looked relieved.

Looking over her shoulder one last time at the spot where Sark had once stood, Sydney wrapped her arm around Vaughn's waist, draped his over her shoulder, and slowly began to cross the distance between them and the car in which her father waited.

The provincial morning scene they had interrupted had already returned to normal, as if terrorists did blatant, messy business there every other day. Sydney wished that she had the same luxury.

A/N: I was trying to go back and, you know, say some stuff in response to some of the really lovely comments you guys have been leaving, but I couldn't remember which I'd already responded to with the recent craziness, so I'm just going to say thank you, again, with one side note to Running, which is: I'm glad to be doing my part in the fight against pedantic-ness. ?

Let me also leave you with a link to a book about Alias that's coming out end of the summer—I've actually got an essay in it, which is exciting to me, but the book as a whole should be exciting to everybody:

http/