She scrunched her eyes closed and sniffed as hard as she could. She couldn't even move her arms to wipe the snot where it was gushing from her nose.
"Because there is no 'else' for people like us," Sark concluded.
Eyes still closed, she shook her head back and forth slowly, not willing to agree with him.
"Sydney," his voice softened a little then, "I… Sometimes I'm not so good with…"
"I said, SHUT UP!" she yelled then. She couldn't, wouldn't hear his apology. He wasn't sorry. She knew he wasn't sorry. He was probably getting off on hurting her feelings.
The silence in the tiny room was broken only by her occasional sniffling.
When she could finally trust her voice, she said, "All this time, I thought if only I'd known that SD-6 weren't the CIA, that I would never have taken the entrance exam. If I'd have known who I'd be working for, if I'd have known it would cost me the lives of so many people I've… loved," her voice broke as she said it, "I would've walked away."
He just looked at her, his head cocked to the side.
"But hindsight is always 20-20, isn't it," she said, bitterly.
"If not SD-6, it would've been someone else," Sark said. "We were destined for it long before we made a conscious decision to follow this path."
She refused to admit, out loud, that he was right. It was like the dream she had where she was following someone around a curved hallway, and just as she'd catch up to them, they'd get out of sight again. The truth kept slipping away just as she'd grab at it.
"It's not destiny," she sighed, "It's predetermination."
"I think we're arguing semantics," Sark offered, trying to smooth over her ruffled feathers. He'd apparently hit a nerve.
"No," she insisted, finally raising her head. "Destiny implies something good at the end, predetermination just implies a lack of choices. "
Sark considered her assertion without meeting her eyes.
"This really is it, isn't it," she nodded, like she'd made up her mind. "It's going to be like this forever."
"It's going to be like what?"
"I'm going to be a spy forever," she whispered, her lips trembling again, and then she pursed them as big, fat tears started rolling down her cheeks. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears and the need for him to say something, make some comment on her revelation.
He glanced at the floor, at a curious brown spot that appeared to be old blood, before glancing back at her. He felt very low for forcing her to this point. It wasn't a moment he had cared to share with anyone. Several years of near solitary confinement had driven him to the realization at a much earlier stage than her, apparently.
"Yes," he said simply.
Irina left the library and hailed a cab in a rush. She had the license plate number of the car Wells and Sark had left the library in several hours before. The police would do a trace, for a small fee.
Her cab squealed to a halt at the curb outside the police department and she threw some money over the seat at the cabbie.
Inside, the clerk on duty took one look at her and said, sullenly, "Yeah? Whaddya want?"
"Hello, Bela," she read his nametag and smiled coyly at him, like he was the best-looking man she'd ever seen. He was 50 pounds overweight and in bad need of a haircut, crumbs decorating the front of his uniform. "I need your help."
"You'll have to wait for the chief."
"Oh, no," she said, "That won't be necessary—I'm sure he's a busy man, why don't you just run this plate for me and I'll be on my way?"
"Can't." Bela shook his head and continued flipping through his magazine. Irina caught sight of a girl with breasts as big as a cow's on one page.
"Of course you can," Irina pleaded with him, "It'll only take a second. I just need to know who owns the car."
"Sorry, lady," Bela said, unapologetic. "Rules are rules."
"You know," Irina said slowly, as though the thought were just occurring to you, "I do have some extra cash on me… If that would help."
"Nope, not no way, not no how," Bela didn't even look up from the Asian twins he was staring at.
"Enough to buy lot more magazines like that one," Irina said, slowly. "On the black market of course."
Bela glanced up from his reading. "Show me."
Irina produced a wad of 10,000 lei bills and counted off ten. She knew it was too little. A hundred thousand lei wouldn't buy a pack of bubble gum.
"Sweetheart," Bela said, "Stop wasting my time."
"I have dollars, if you prefer," she said, producing a twenty from inside the lump of bills.
She flicked the twenty onto the counter along side the lei.
"That's more like it," he snatched the bills greedily and folded them into his breast pocket. "Now, what is this plate number?"
"Here," she passed him a slip of paper.
Bela searched with flourish, as if he were really doing her a favor. She ignored his theatrics and wondered how different Romania might have been if Nicolae Ceauşescu hadn't been in charge for twenty-odd years.
"Alright," he pronounced, "The car in question has a business license, to an AMS Industries, Inc. You want the address?"
"Yes, that would be wonderful," Irina smiled sweetly, wondering at the lack of creativity on Anastasia's part, to name her front company for her own initials.
Bela scribbled the building number and street name on the same scrap of paper as the license plate number and gave it back to her. "Take care, now," he said, returning to his magazine before she even moved away from the counter.
They sat in relative silence, save for the occasional sniffle on her part to try to stem the flow of snot from her nose. Her head throbbed from the blow to the back, her hangover, and now the clogged sinuses from her tears. She hadn't had a headache this bad since she'd woken up in Hong Kong and found out Vaughn had married another woman. That day, along with this one, could perhaps go on her list of Top Ten, All-Time Worst Days Ever. Better add the day she found Danny shot in the bathtub to that as well. That might actually be ahead of Hong Kong.
As bad as their predicament was, she felt oddly endeared to Sark in this moment. At least he was consistent. Consistently sociopathic, she smiled.
"Are you feeling better?" he asked, ducking his head to try to meet her eyes.
"No," she smiled, not raising her head, "I feel fucking awful."
"Then why are you smiling—I certainly don't find this particularly amusing."
She smiled even bigger then, thinking of the day they'd released him in the Mexican desert in exchange for one of their own agents.
"I assure you, this organization, the Covenant, is as much a mystery to me as it is to the CIA," he said as she undid his leg shackles inside the van. "I can't imagine why they'd want to make this trade."
"You're about to find out," she said, nearly glib to be rid of him.
He stared down at her, unsmiling. "My life's in danger—isn't it."
She met his eyes, but didn't say anything. It was obvious what she thought, and that she didn't care what happened to him i
Truth be told, she would've been slightly disappointed if he'd been killed that day. He was her only remaining link to her life, the one she had before she had disappeared. Everyone else was gone—Francie dead, Will in witness protection in Wisconsin, her dad only just released from custody. Irina had disappeared. Dixon had been promoted to director. And Vaughn... she had never, even to this day, really forgiven him for giving up on finding her and marrying Lauren. She admitted it was illogical, the idea of his maintaining hope of finding her when her remains had been identified; but it didn't seem, at least to her, like someone could move on from 6 months of searching and grieving over their supposed soul mate's death and being married within the span of little more than 12 months.
Yes, Sark had stayed the same, when everyone else had changed, had spent the same two years in CIA custody, in a bubble, isolated and untouched by the world around them.
"You and I, we're destined to work together—I truly believe that," he'd said, and she was beginning to believe it herself.
Irina directed the taxi to drop her off several blocks from the address Bela had given her. They were a good distance outside of the city, in what could only be construed as the wrong side of the tracks. It was an industrial area, but a run-down, shady one at that.
"Do you want me to wait?" the cabbie eyed her suspiciously. "I could come with you, maybe."
"No," Irina shook her head, "This will be fine, thank you."
"Alright, lady," the driver said, and peeled off.
Coward, Irina thought.
She crept cautiously to the end of the street named on the slip of paper before drawing her gun. She sank down on one knee and peered around the corner. Outside the entrance to one building, there were two heavy-set guards toting semi-automatics. Steadying her elbow on her bent knee, she shot the first guard in the throat.
She heard him go down like a sack of garbage and his partner yelling his name. Quickly, she peeked around the corner and took out the second guard with a shot to the temple where he bent over his friend. She had to be quick- she was certain there were surveillance cameras in the area.
Over to the pile of bodies she ran, gun drawn, and grabbed the security access card from the top guard's breast pocket. She swiped the magnetic card in the reader on the doorframe and smiled just a little as it hummed and clicked open the lock of the door.
She was in.
Episodes:
i Succession. Season 3, Episode 2. Written by Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman-Counter
Ok... everybody keep their shorts on. I have to re-write the next section, but I'll post it as soon as I'm happy with it. :) Happy holidays!