Author's Note: I come with excuses. I rock like that.
In the months since I've updated, I have buried my father, studied string theory physics, and gone to rehab to kick a meth habit.
…Yeah. I know.
To everybody who has reviewed and asked politely for an update, thank you so much for even reading what few chapters there are and know that I sincerely do apologize for the delay.
To everyone who wrote me up and cussed me out for not updating, maybe you should clear your head a little to get a sense of perspective. I suggest a long walk down a short pier. Idle threats and four letter words do not induce me to write faster. But thanks.
Happy belated new year. Cheers.

(Please note the timeline and rating of this story. It would benefit you to remember Nadia isn't comatose here and that this is rated M for graphic violence. Okay then? Ginchy.)

For the faithful:

6. Even Superman Shot Himself
---

It was Monday morning and the end of the world.

Soft sunlight filtered through the thin curtains, the room shaded in a gold pallor, and Sydney lay still, unblinking, barely breathing. She was propped up on one elbow, glossy hair spilling over her bare shoulders, watching… a man? A monster? (A fragment of a boy left for dead.) He slept deeply, arms fastened insistantly at her waist. He was beautiful.

And he would absolutely murder her if she ever said that out loud.

The clock on the nightstand had been chiding her for hours; It was well past dawn and last night's dream had been broken the moment she opened her eyes. This was, easily, the most momentous mistake she'd made in years. She cared little. Sark was so sure that she could love him, and the man could be damn persuasive.

The more she thought on it, the less Sydney missed the life she had forfeited when she kissed the mouth of a murderer.

But still. She'd left a lot of holes in her life with the cookie-cutter slices she'd devoted to normality. Friends, family, a home. Clumsy pieces that would no longer fit if she kept on this path.

It was time.

Sydney slid from Sark's grasp, careful not to wake him. She dressed quickly (her shirt torn in two different places; impatience, impatience) and paused only to fold his discarded clothes and leave them in a neat pile on the nightstand. She padded into the empty kitchen and boiled water, rightfully assuming he would disdain of coffee.

They were assuredly, irrevocably, screwed.

She wondered what Lennox must think of her – or, critical, who he must have told. She'd been careless last night, allowing Sark to have his way when he wanted nothing more than to tear her cleanly from the pretty webbing that bound her to her life in Los Angeles. Sark wanted her for himself, wholly, solely, and he'd known damn well that Lennox would return in the night and find her tangled in satin sheets and Sark's arms.

Opportunist. He was always upfront about his propensity for dastardly deeds.

Sydney saw him through the glass wall separating the balcony and the livingroom. Lennox stood against the railing in the sliver of sun breaking the sky, eyes darting down to follow the ceaseless movement of the street down.

He made no sign of having heard her. The marble-painted cement was cold to the touch of her bare feet.

"Good morning, Jim," Sydney said, because, okay, what else was there to say?

"Hey, sleepyhead," he answered, eyes never leaving the tangle of traffic twenty floors below.

This didn't fit. Sydney tried to break Lennox down, compartmentalize, box and bow and label him solved. It didn't work. Jim Lennox had been static on her radar since the word Go. Something about it didn't fit. He didn't fit.

"So how long have you been sleeping with the infamous blond sociopath?" he asked.

Timid, Sydney reached out to grasp his shoulder. He made no move, no attempt to turn his gaze to her.

"If Emma had asked you to leave everything and run with her, what would you have done?" she whispered.

No response. It hit her again. This didn't fit.

"I don't know what this is, this thing I have with Sark. I just don't know, Jim. But it's real. It feels… like life and death. Like stealing the bomb with the guards just one door away. Adrenaline. It's wrong but I don't care. If it were Emma – god, Jim, if it were Emma!"

"It's not Emma," he answered lowly. Still his eyes were focused below. Still he spoke without so much as a tremor in his voice. "It's not a soft-hearted CIA field analyst we're talking about. It's Julian Sark. What I wanna know is how a good girl like you can sleep at night with a killer keeping you warm."

Tears sprung to Sydney's eyes. This is what she had expected. "You should never have come, Jim."

Suddenly he spun to meet her. Eyes that had avoided her were cold and alive. "You should never have gone with Sark," he said.

The static that had clouded Sydney's internal radar now snapped, shouted, crystal clear. She had ignored her instincts and it was fatal. There was a knife in his sleeve and now it was in his hand. With his free hand his yanked her by the hair and now, now the knife was in her stomach.

"You should never have gone with Sark," he said, and, brutally, kissed her mouth. "He's going straight to hell."

It was a switchblade. Short, ridged, a slight leverage curve at the end. Lennox gave the knife one sharp twist before wrenching it (dripping) from her body.

"You trust people too easily, Syd."

She was still standing. Lennox watched, laughing, as the immortal Sydney Bristow stood trembling on her feet, one hand against her stomach as blood slipped through her fingers like so many grains of sand. Her brain had yet to catch up to her body (a deathblow like that, shock, locking off the nerve endings momentarily while her circuits took stock of the damage) but still, those eyes of hers. Black, they saw Lennox smile and even then they betrayed not a scintilla of fear.

"Markovic," she said. "Liar."

That was all. She fell against the railing and lay there. Blood ran down her stomach, down her chest, trickled down her dangling arms and dripped from her fingertips onto the windshields of the cars a hundred feet below.

-

He awoke with a smile on his face.

The bed was still warm. The air clung to him, thick, scents of Sydney and sex and sunlight. She was gone, but that didn't worry him unduly. He'd never expected to fall asleep with her beside him and thus wouldn't push his luck to wake up so. She'd folded his clothes. And straightened the blankets over him. He'd put money down that she'd even made him tea.

He had the sneaking suspicion that he'd finally got the girl.

Sark resisted the temptation to call up Michael Vaughn just to laugh at the son of a bitch.

He stared at the ceiling, half-awake and feeling reflective. This was likely the best his life had been (and would be) in a long time. A hunted man, wanted jailed by his enemies and wanted dead by his peers. He searched for a better word than peers and found none. Blackmailers, killers, thieves. Sark wondered at the day he could legitimately call them anything but kin.

Seeking out Sydney had been an act of desperation. One last shot at happiness before he resigned himself to misery. It was beginning to look like the most brilliant strategy he'd conceived in years.

He'd take her to Galway. Then Paris. Madrid. They'd spend their lives running. They'd call it a vacation. It was a twisted way for Sark to achieve his happiness.

He thought it best not to interrogate destiny.

Sark heard voices down the hall, faint, distorted by walls and distance. Sark had been awake at dawn to hear the bedroom door open, watching through shielded eyes as the CIA agent took in the sight of Jack Bristow's daughter in bed with a criminal.

Paroled. The pricetag of that word went untold.

He'd give her some space. Some time to talk it out with Lennox. Jim was her friend, Sark reminded himself, and it would be deadly to push her too hard.

He dressed to the waist, stretching, muscles stiff from the swift change from the dormancy of prison to the exertion of combat. The flight from the hotel room. The ambush in the the park. The bruises and cuts, the wash of the dissolved tranquillizer. And Sydney was no kitten. So Sark stretched, and grimaced.

The apartment was entirely still now. Tossing his shirt of his shoulder, Sark moved to the bathroom.

Lennox watched as the assassin bent to splash water over his face. Slowly, gun raised, he stepped passed the open doorway.

Sark didn't even glance at the mirror. The slight whisper of Lennox's foot passing from carpet to tile was enough to alert him.

He lifted a cloth to his face, giving no sign of havng noticed the intruder. A quick scan of the countertop gave him no further options. Unless Sydney made a habit of sharpening her toothbrush, there were no weapons at hand.

Without so much as a sigh Sark folded the cloth and replaced it before turning to face the 9-milimeter aimed at his face.

"Hello," he said mockingly. "I didn't see you there."

Sark had never met James Lennox before yesterday and had no feelings either way about his sudden treachery. It had been thought of and half-suspected, but Sark had trusted him on the strength of Sydney's faith.

An assassin you knew was better than one you didn't. A calculated risk, and Sark saw that it had gotten them killed after all.

"Sloane sent you, then?" Sark observed, shrugging into his shirt and casually fastening the buttons. Four were missing. Sydney's slight revenge for his carnage.

He'd asked for a memory. It was a good one.

Lennox smiled, but nobody could match the smirk of Julian Sark in his heyday. This one was sarcastic, gloating, unrefined. Sark would enjoy killing this man. "That's right. Sloane offered me a job and I took it. Kinda like you, only I follow through."

Sark asked this once : "Where is Sydney?"

Lennox ignored him. There was a speech locked up in the hitman's head, waiting to be let free, but Sark was a disapassionate listener. "What makes you think you're above this all now? That you're a better man than me because you feel really bad? You sicken me, Lazarey. You wax poetic about saving your soul but you're still just a goddamn murderer."

Lennox had forgotten that Derevko's famed wolfhound never played games. "I am better than you. Unfairness does not translate into unreality." Sark paused, and looked him in the eye. "I won't ask you again."

"I put a knife in her gut," Lennox spat. "Such a sweet thing, never saw it coming. I didn't think the legendary Sydney Bristow would go down that easy. But then loyalty always was her weakness. I left her bleeding on the balcony."

Sark never batted an eye. Never caught a breath. "I suggest you pull the trigger," he said.

"She trusted you," Lennox continued. "You've got nobody to blame but yourself, Lazarey. You're the one who dragged her into all of this."

Sark tried to maintain his calm. Tried to hold his composure seamless. He couldn't help it. He scoffed. "Sloane put a contract out on her life, you wretched ass. She was in this whether I was involved or not."

"She's dead by now."

"So are you."

Sark had him against the wall and by the throat before Lennox could squeeze the trigger.

Lennox fired, twice, shattering the mirror and gauging the ceiling. Sark seized hold of the assassin's head and pressed down with his thumb. Shrieking, unbearable and endless, rang out through the apartment as Sark's thumbnail penetrated the sclera, through the vitreous and into the optical nerve of Lennox's left eye.

The trail of gloating had ceased from Lennox's throat. Now all that sounded was the piercing, indistinct wail of unendurable pain. It was cacophonous, repulsive, the dispicable pain, and his face (a stolen face, but nonethless…) was eclipsed by a stream of blood and ichor.

Sark wiped his hand on the cloth laying folded beside the sink. As suddenly as they'd come, the screams faded.

He stepped over Lennox, who lay fallen on the bathroom tile. "Kill me," Lennox rasped. "Make it… stop."

There were few things more painful than having your eye put out. Sark had known this. Though he'd never done it with his bare hands.

"Please," Lennox whispered.

"You'd better pray she's still alive," he answered. "Or you will be. For a very long time."

He tore out of the bedroom, leaving the traitor immobile on the floor.

Sark realized he couldn't remember the sound of Sydney's laughter. All he heard were screams.

-

She awoke with a siren in her ear.

The room was cool, dark, empty. Leather straps bound her wrists to the hospital bed. Flashes of the Covenant – brainwashing, torture, a tollbridge and a left turn from a goddamn labotamy – replayed in her mind, and the monitor linked to her heartbeat jittered like a jackrabbit.

Jack and Nadia came running. Outside the hospital room window, a wailing ambulence passed.

"Sydney," he father gasped, and touched her face. "Sydney."

Nadia circled around. With quaking hands she hastily undid the bindings on her half-sister's wrists. "You're awake," she said, and barely believed it.

Sydney had one word to say and could manage no more. "Julian?"

-

Author's Note (by RitaX's insistence I know nothing makes sense yet. That's just the kind of annoying f---er I am.

Lord, I need a beta.