4.
Willow Branches
-
Boredom was creeping in, banishing her half-formed strategy. Out of idleness she moved her knight, H5 to F6.
Sark castled, something she should have seen and probably had, his king to F8 and his rook to F7.
She took his rook. He moved his king to capture the knight.
"Either you're letting me win or you have the concentration of an apathetic Valium addict at a Quantum Theories lecture," he complained.
"Talk, talk. You're going down like a French border gate."
She built a defensive pawn wall as he repositioned his offense.
"Who, Sark?" she asked.
"It doesn't matter."
Around them, children screamed and birds sang, early morning in a city park, cool and calm as the two sat around the concrete table. They'd stopped here to rest, to make a plan, to argue. They played chess on a quaint granite board by a quaint neighborhood playground.
Sydney shook her head, still-damp hair flying in tangled waves. "It does matter. If you won't tell me, it matters."
"You know me so well," he murmurmed, and added, "Check."
She moved her king to safety without taking her eyes from his face.
"If you want my help, you'll have to start talking, Destiny Boy," she said.
"I swear to God, Sydney, where have your linguistic skills gone? I haven't heard such lame insults since Vaughn... well, since Vaughn said anything, really."
"Chitchat," she muttered. "Your empty past that, aren't you?"
"Telling you who Sloane hired me to assassinate won't accomplish anything. It's irrelevant," Sark insisted.
"Not so. Telling me who it is will help me figure what the hell I'm supposed to do with you," she snapped.
"It's you, love," he said calmly. "Checkmate."
She hesitated, looking blankly down at the board. "Damnit," she noted.
Sark leaned back, examining her critically as she clumsily rearranged things in her mind.
He waited.
Click.
"Sloane put a hit out on me!" she repeated, indignant. Then, "And you're just now telling me!"
"Please, Sydney. Every backwater arms smuggler from here to Oslo has a contract out on your life."
"Say what?"
"Why should this one be any different? There was no reason to tell you. You didn't trust Sloane anyway." Lazily, he began resetting the chesspieces for a rematch.
"Why? Why would Sloane want me dead? He's been pulling the Let's Be Friends crap for four frickin' years!"
"Don't ask me. I'm just the help," he said easily, smirking as he aligned the pawns.
Petulant, she swept the chesspieces onto the ground.
"I don't know why Sloane hired me to kill you, Sydney," Sark said suddenly, meeting her eyes. "All I know is that I won't let it happen."
She faltered, turning unsure to stare at a frail willow tree creaking in the soft breath of wind. "So we're both on the chopping block?"
"So it would seem."
Sydney laughed humorlessly. "Tell me you have a dastardly plan, Mr. Sark."
He shrugged. "Keep running, I suppose."
She glanced behind him, expressionless.
"No. Duck," she replied.
He jumped sideways as Sydney rolled under the stone table. Gunshots from twenty feet away rent the air, bullets raking the chair Sark had just vacated, the granite tabletop, the inlaid tiles of the black and white chessboard. A lone figure, dressed in Kevlar and a ski mask and wielding a submachine gun, fired from the cluster of willow trees beside the playground seesaw.
The neighborhood park exploded in frantic screaming.
Joggers and soccer moms fled in confused terror, running everywhere, running in circles, pushing their children into danger in their haste to protect. On his feet, Sark dodged around frightened children as he darted toward the gunman.
Weaponless, a bullet grazed his forearm as he weaved through the trees. Hastily Sark seized the wrist of a fleeing toddler, eliciting a splitting shriek, and wrestled away the neon yo-yo fastened to the boys finger.
The gunman spoke into his cuff. "All teams, all teams, target aquired. 32nd Drive, southwest, target aqui –"
A swinging mace of lime plastic struck him forcefully in the mouth.
Sark advanced ruthlessly, spinning the yo-yo in tight circles as he struck the guman again, and again, and again – mouth, jaw, knuckles, kneecap. Spitting blood and teeth, the assassin fired wildly, missing by a mile as he crumlped to the ground with a shattered knee from the brutal force of the makeshift flail.
Instantly Sark whipped the thin rope leash around the man's throat and pulled it taut. "Who do you work for?" he growled.
"We already know who he works for!" Sydney shouted, heralding children to their parents.
Sark blinked.
"Right. Habit," he muttered, and slammed the assassin's face into a tree.
"We have to get out of here," Sydney hissed, seizing his hand and tugging.
In a haze, Sark tossed the sobbing child back his yo-yo, unseeing of the dripping blood contaminating the toy. They fled.
-
Sydney unfastened his necktie, gently tugging it free from his collar. "Hold still," she breathed.
He stared at her through the darkness, and leaned in closer. Blatantly, languidly, Sark kissed her.
After a long moment she slapped him. "That's not holding still," she corrected, and bound the necktie tightly around his wounded forearm.
"Opportunist," he explained. "You're the one who's sitting on my lap."
"Space considerations, Sark. You're the one who signed the contract."
"You're truly going to use that in every argument, aren't you?"
"Every damn time."
The dank, dark alley engulfed them. Slices of sunlight shot through the ancient crates they hid behind, an unused loading zone for a forgotten boutique in the maze of a hundred other forgotten businesses. This was New York, after all, fantastic and filthly, larger than life, a city of forgiveness and short memory. Disappearance was easy.
There they hid.
Space considerations, indeed; In the narrow crevice they'd holed themselves up in (wise, covered from all angles, a direct line of sight to the entrance of the alley) there was barely enough room for one. Sydney sat folded against Sark with her knees tucked around his waist.
She was close enough to taste. A deity's sense of humor is lost on those mortal.
A sudden shadow passed the alley, eclipsing the sunlight. The two tensed, ready for battle. If discovered they were defenseless, without weapons and without escape – a paltry obituary for their legendary careers.
The shadow passed. Silence remained.
"At what point are we just hiding from ghosts?" Sydney murmured.
"Give it another hour. It'll take them all afternoon to comb the gridlock, and we can't outrun all of them. Besides, this is the most comfortable I've been in years."
He gave her his trademark smirk, unaware of the flashing memories it evoked of cruelty and massacre and smoke and betrayal. Sydney closed her eyes, shifting back, and never told him a stray bullet had gone through a toddler's chest that morning among the willow trees. He ran his hands along her folded legs.
"Stop it," she breathed.
"In a moment," he replied, kissing her jawline.
She laughed, hollow, whispering. "Still so selfish."
Sark froze. He wanted more than this, clumsy touches in a darkened alleyway. He wanted a fairytale, sunlight and satin sheets, and hidden things he'd never experienced. He was pushing for it, clawing, trying to force create something out of a dream that had never been reality – Sydney.
Sark wanted forgiveness, and it was admirable. But he was asking her to grant him salvation at the expense of everything she believed. He was asking her for trust when he hadn't earned it, love when he'd done nothing to warrant it. It would take time that he didn't have, and both of them were caught.
Grimacing, he turned away from her (ineffectual; she was seated on his damn lap) and stared through the narrow slits between the squalid crates they hid behind.
"Julian…"
"Leave it. I'm sorry," he said shortly.
Sydney had thought she had found Vaughn and it would be forever. So here, with Sark, was a slow death. And, for the record, he wasn't the least bit sorry.
"Why did you even accept the contract if you thought we were destined for eachother?" she murmured.
He closed his eyes. "Because I'd lost my faith," he answered.
She waited, staring at him with an expression of curious compassion. He let out an exaggerated sigh.
"Don't you get enough heartfelt confessions at home? Does everything have to be an overemotional overture?"
"Yes, because inviting someone to a baseball game 2,796.56 miles from home just to pontificate over a hypothetical is not at all overwrought," she snapped.
"Hissy, are we?"
Sydney fixed him with a Bristow glare.
"Sloane offered an embarrassing amount of money to have you killed. I accepted it because…" He avoided her eyes, a rarity for the remoteness of Mr. Sark. He started again.
"When I met you… God, Sydney, it was unbearable. I'd met my match and I wanted you so badly. Only it was the wrong time, the wrong side, the wrong life. I spent years waiting, waiting for aliances to shift, wounds to heal, scars to fade – but they never did. There was nothing left for me. Hope didn't exist for executioners... I wanted it over with. So when Sloane offered, I signed away my future."
He smiled, briefly. "And I want it back."
Quietly, Sydney answered his earlier question : "I think I could, Julian."
A figure stepped cautiously into the alleyway, firearm raised. Any thoughts of playing possum dissolved when he sidestepped the surrounding crated and aimed stiffly at Sark's forehead. "Stand up!" he commanded.
Sark groaned, infuriated at the ill timing of their executioner. Too many breakthroughs had been interrupted by assassins in recent days.
The heavy crates that had shielded them now caged them in. The only exit was blocked by the gunman, and weaponless, a Sundance shootout was not an option. They'd been forced to hide here because Sark had refused Sydney's government aid, and scorned his own contacts. The past had caught up rather faster than he'd expected.
Slowly, Sydney stood, and she was afraid. Dimly Sark realized that it was a sentiment he should mirror, a feeling left dormant after a lifetime of close-calls and spitting in the face of Fate. At that moment he craved fear, a basic emotion made primal. Inane, but he wanted to die human.
The masked assassin touched the trigger. "Any last wishes?"
Sydney let out a shaky breath, and narrowed her eyes. "There are so many sarcastic answers to that, it's hard to chose just one."
"Down on your knees."
Sark ignored the gunman, watching Sydney as if a trance as she angrily complied. It seemed perverse that she should die here, when escape had been her specialty way back when they had been adversaries.
Way back, he thought. Two days ago she'd hated him. He shouldn't have asked her to love him.
A hiss sounded from a distance, somewhere from the mouth of the alley, and a dart burried itself in the assassin's throat. With a direct flow to the bloodstream, the narcotic took hold quickly; The gunman collapsed after a moment of incoherent stumbling.
Sark glanced at Sydney, bemused. "How do these things keep working out for you?"
Presently their rescuer stepped into the view, tranquilizer gun held ready. Instinctively Sark seized hold of Sydney and spun her sideways, trapping her body between his and the wall.
The newcomer again fired. A small needle buried itself in Sark's bicep.
Suddenly Sydney was pushing against Sark, shoving him out of the way. She was smiling. "Jim? Jim, is that you?"
Sydney's most recent guardian angel was a tall, hawkish man dressed in casual civillian clothes. He accepted Sydney's hug briefly, never taking his eyes off of Sark. He brusquely issued commands. "Syd! Are you alright? C'mere, get behind me. Hands where I can see them, Sark."
Sark had been inspecting the dart in his arm critically. He glanced up at the mention of his name, blinking slowly.
"Oh God, Jim. You shot Julian," Sydney exclaimed, still clutching the agent's hand.
"I thought he was attacking you. You're working with him?" was the surprised reply.
Sark took a shaky step forward, uneven on his feet. "I'm fine… bloody… tranquilizer…"
Sydney rushed to Sark's side, catching him as he swayed dangerously. Frowning, she mercilessly ripped the dart from his bicep and cast it away.
"Ow… I'm fine… who the hell…?" Sark muttered.
"This is Jim Lennox. He's a friend," she soothed. "He's one of the good guys, Julian."
"Bloody marvellous… saves us with tranquilizers… bloody… girl."
With that hissed epithet, the anesthetic took final hold. Sark's legs gave out and he collapsed, dragging Sydney with him to the ground.