Click.
A light snapped on in front of her.
Her head throbbed, dull and thick, where he'd pistol whipped her. She willed herself to raise her head and look up, but her head was heavy, so heavy. She was seated in a chair, her arms and legs tied to the arms and feet. A fairly nice chair, she noticed. A sturdy chair.
"Agent Bristow," Sark said, accenting the 's' in the middle of her name like a hissing snake. "You've been napping on the job again."
His hand slid under her chin, forcing it up so she had to look him in the eye. He'd changed out of his riding clothes, into some khakis and a black button down. "To what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you here?"
"None of your damn business," she mumbled, but she wasn't sure it was really coherent.
"Oh, but it is!" he smiled, "I'm afraid your spying on me while at my home makes it very much my business."
He held her chin still, stoking her throat with his forefinger. "Sorry for the immediate violence," he said insincerely, "But I have been known to shoot intruders on sight. This was your lucky day, I suppose."
"Hm," he made the small noise in his throat, "You appear to be alone."
She stared defiantly at him and pressed her lips together. She could taste blood- her lip felt a little swollen.
"You are alone," he concluded. "Not even your precious husband to back you up? Do you still go out on missions together?" he chuckled. "I would think the Agency would have a rule against that. They have so many irritating rules."
He circled her chair, slowly, like a cat playing with a frog in the weeds. She could feel his presence behind her, even though she couldn't hear his steps. It was like her body had a force field around it that had been invaded.
"You don't wear your wedding bands, I see- that's probably wise. The stone might weigh you down in the field.
"So…." He said slowly, hissing again the 's', "How is it, then?"
"How is what?" She stared straight ahead without blinking.
"You know…" He said it like she was playing dumb with him, "The married life."
"I'm sure you didn't tie me up to talk about this," she said evenly. She felt a little weird, realizing that the last time they'd seen each other they'd both been single.
"Well, what else are we going to talk about?" Sark stepped around in front of her and smiled, his eyes nearly Curacao blue in the lamplight. He was very tan. "Married people tend to be boring that way."
"This is how I've imagined it," he started, "You. Michael Vaughn. A house in LA. Cars… two?" he guessed, "Probably domestic ones. A…." he pressed his lips together like he was forming a 'b', "…a dog- Vaughn seems the Labrador Retriever type, don't you think?"
"There's no dog."
"Ah!" he breathed. "But you'd like one."
She shrugged as much as her bonds would allow.
"Or perhaps… not a dog..."
Don't say it, you asshole, don't you dare.
"A baby?"
"That's even less of your business than what I'm doing here," she said, trying not to let irritation creep into her voice.
He smiled, a slow smile that caused dimple to form in the center of his left cheek. "You're not the only one who spies on old friends, Sydney," and he clicked off the light.
She sat in the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She was inside the house now, and he'd closed and locked the door behind him after turning off the light.
Asshole, evil asshole, she thought, he'd been spying on her and Vaughn?
Nothing is private, she'd hissed at Vaughn that day in the shady little bar in LA five years ago, when she'd hunted him down, to warn him he was being investigated as a rogue agent. Little had she known he was trying to protect her, figure out her mother's endgame before they fell victim to it. Even Vaughn's exhaustive search hadn't been able to turn up the plan Irina had devised a year ahead of time, with Sark and Sloane to aid her.
She had never been sure what relationship her mother had had to Sark, prior to Irina's surrender to the CIA. He was her associate, certainly, but was he her protégé? Her lover? She shivered. Sark would've been a teenager when her mother took him under her wing. Totally statutory.
She hated it that she knew so little about him, when he seemed to be able to read her thoughts like that. He was so… right. The way he'd drawn out their little suburban life in LA. He had it all right, down to the dog they kept putting off and the baby they couldn't seem to have.
Well…that was half-truth, and she knew it.
So much for secrets between husband and wife, she thought sourly. Everyone at the Agency knew what had happened, Nigel knew, even SARK knew, for God's sake. She needed to ask Marshall to put stronger encryption on the report cache.
Her eyes didn't seem to be getting any better in the darkness. There was no outside light in the room.
The shit had hit the fan on the plane back from Chechnya, four weeks back. The mission had gone well- they were in and out of the prison they'd raided to extract a political prisoner. There had been a scuffle with a guard, and he'd been able to land a solid punch to her gut. It had knocked the wind out of her, but she'd gritted her teeth and knocked him out with her pistol, then shot him with a tranq for good measure.
Hours later, she'd been curled in the seat of the plane, dozing next to Vaughn, across from Weiss, when she first felt a twinge.
The twinge turned into an outright ache below her belly button, one that seemed to go through her to her spine, almost, but she'd squeezed her eyelids shut and tried to zen herself out of it.
She was about to take some ibuprofen when she first felt the wetness in her underwear. Uh oh.
She'd staggered up from the plane seat, and lurched towards the tiny plane bathroom—there was some turbulence—and had nearly vomited as the pain worsened, seeming to go down her inner thighs to her knees, almost, making them so weak she barely made it to the bathroom and shut the door behind her.
She had doubled over, sitting on the toilet, trying not to stare at the bright red blood dripping from her. It was so heavy it had already soaked through her jeans- she wondered, dimly, in an embarrassed 7th grade 'I just got my period' kind of way, if the guys had seen it as she stood up - and tried not to shudder as the pain worsened. Then the plane pitched, and she pitched forward with it, knocking her head on the door and passing out.
When she woke, she was in a hospital gown and she felt weak, so weak. There was an IV drip of blood into her left arm- the nurse had done a shitty job with the needle, she would be bruised for sure- and Vaughn was at her side.
"Syd," he breathed, "Are you awake?"
She had blinked once, twice. Yes.
"You're going to be OK."
He looked so worried, and so tired. How long had it been since she'd passed out on the plane? She noticed the pain in her abdomen had subsided.
"Syd, we're in Maryland," he had explained slowly, "We couldn't make it all the way back to LA without getting you medical attention. Do you remember passing out?"
She blinked again. Yes.
"You…" his brow furrowed into its characteristic four wrinkles, "You had a miscarriage."
Yes.
A long moment, more than a moment--probably minutes--of silence had stretched out between them then. He wouldn't meet her eyes, instead rubbing her limp fingers with his own. He was rubbing them a bit too hard, but she didn't flinch or move them away.
"Michael," she'd croaked when she couldn't stand the horrible pregnant silence any longer, "I was going to tell you."
"Really?" his voice was surprisingly strong when he was angry. "When, when it was born?"
He'd stood suddenly then, and left her alone.
She hadn't meant to hurt him like that- really. Really. It was just… the uncertainty of it all. Their entire situation, the pregnancy, she'd only been two and a half months along, she didn't want to give up her field work. Not so soon. It wasn't like it was a baby, not yet; at least, not to her. It was more like an annoying stomach flu that she couldn't shake.
The only way a secret could be kept, anyway, was if only she knew.
It was after that incident that everything had gotten so… weird between her and Vaughn, she had decided. They hadn't been actively trying—yet-- to get pregnant, she'd forgotten to take her birth control a time or two in the previous month and by some kind of miracle, one of her remaining eggs and his sparse swimmers had hooked up for a little party.
She thought, as she hung her head in the darkness, about the episode of Sex & the City where Miranda gave her ex, Steve, a mercy fuck and had managed to get pregnant despite his only having one testicle and her having a lazy ovary.
They were 50-50, too.
Nice job, Syd, she abused herself.
There was, she had observed, a darkness about her that Vaughn didn't possess. She liked to be secretive, and not just about little things.
Little things… like being pregnant, she thought sarcastically.
She liked having secrets. And since everything else was public, the only one she could keep secrets from was him. It wasn't a new thing; ever since she was a little kid, she'd had secrets.
Like when they'd learned about The Danger of Guns in grade school, and she resisted the urge to shout to everyone how her dad had taught her to assemble a handgun with a blindfold on.
It was their secret game. Just she and Jack. Her Spy Daddy, she smiled in the dark, wincing as her lip puffed up even further.
The violence in their bed—that was her doing, not his-- his gentleness held no currency in her world. Everything around her was brutal. How did he expect her to enjoy him when his touch was so light she could barely feel it?
She remembered, dimly through her headache, the first time she'd schooled him. They were in her apartment, rolling around on her bed. That was before they'd discovered the bug in the VCR, the one that Allison Doren had planted there.
Shit, she realized, Sark had probably seen the tapes too. Allison had been working for him. Sicko! Sure, so she did like it rough, but she wasn't a voyeur. That, she told herself, was beneath her. She got it enough not to need to watch someone else.
They had been tickling each other, and although she was laughing, she was growing steadily more frustrated at how unaroused she was by the whole episode. She was straddling him, her powerful legs doubled up, when he had sat up and tried to kiss her breasts through her t-shirt. She'd curled her forefinger under his chin, raised his face to hers, and kissed his mouth- but wouldn't let go of his bottom lip until he'd jerked back in pain and surprise.
"Syd!" he'd exclaimed, touching his lower lip with his fingers in disbelief, "You drew blood."
When he'd looked up, she'd met his gaze, steadily and insistently, pleading with her eyes, hit me. You know you want to. Go on.
He'd slapped her bottom then, lightly, playfully, like he thought she was kidding.
No, like this, she'd thought, and she slapped him full across the face.
He'd lain with his face turned to his right for a second, stunned, before he met her eyes again. Then he'd grabbed her and pinned her down.
Yes, yes! Good boy, she thought as he'd ripped her shirt off and ravished her.