Her apartment is full of boxes, but empty of a certain feeling—the one of home. It's been weeks since she moved in, and Weiss came by to drain her tequila bottle with her on the floor of her living room. He insists Lauren is nice, and that Vaughn loves her.
That makes her resent Lauren even more—that her friends like her, too.
Tonight, a week after returning from Spain, she sits by the window and watches the daylight fading outside. Marshall and Carrie invited her to dinner, but she declined, preferring instead to come home and sit alone, not having to make awkward catch-up talk. Besides, she sensed that Carrie was tired, being in her last weeks of pregnancy and all. She had caught sight of Vaughn and Lauren leaving work as she had sat in her car in the garage, and much to her shame, had followed them a considerable distance in their car before turning off down a side street. Stupid crazy, she told herself. You're being ridiculous.
The doorbell chimes, and she goes to it, half-expecting and half-hoping that it is her father, who had looked grimly pleased to see her back after Madrid, but who hadn't commented on her unholy alliance with Sark. She knew he and Dixon had likely endlessly dissected it, strategizing and agonizing over her choice.
But when she opens the door, it is Sark who is standing on the other side. His sunglasses are hanging from the neck of his v-necked grey t-shirt, and his leather jacket is open despite the chilly early autumn air.
"Oh," is all she can managed, and then, "What are you doing here, come inside before someone sees you!"
"I thought you'd never ask," he replies smoothly, stepping inside the foyer and down into her kitchen. She closes the door after a quick glance outside to see if Weiss is home. His living room light is dark, and she feels a momentary pang of uneasiness to think that he might be out with Lauren and Vaughn. Without her.
She pads softly down the stairs and stands across from him, safely separated by the peninsula counter. "Can I get you something to drink?" She mentally kicks herself; it's too easy, too casual. But he replies before she can revise: "No, that's quite alright—thank you, though."
He takes in her place, his face impassive, before turning to her and saying, "This is rather nice. Certainly nicer than your previous flat."
She tips her head, partially in agreement and partly because she doesn't know what to say, wondering if he was ever actually in her apartment with Allison Doren. The thought that he was sleeping with her even as she seduced Will sickens her. "What do you want?"
"I thought you might like to know the outcome of our little venture from last week," he begins. "As predicted, the Covenant's people sussed out the fake agent rather quickly."
"And then?" She can picture a map with a dot on it where the tracker went hot: just outside Prague, in the Czech countryside.
"And then, they went back to the source," he lifts an eyebrow at her. "I think you know what happened."
"What did Walker say," she asks, hoping he kept to business in his last moments.
Sark breaks her gaze, and purses his lips before continuing: "I attempted to glean whatever information he had about you before he met his end, but he was… unhelpful."
"Unhelpful," she repeats in disbelief. "What does that mean?"
Sark pulls out one of the bar stools at the peninsula and perches lightly on it, looking at her. "He merely suggested that you'd been… partners, and that you—or Julia Thorne, I suppose—had taken off without a trace several months ago."
"That's not all he told you," her tone is accusatory. "What are you not telling me?"
"It seems your specialty was assassinations," Sark says, his voice low. "And unless you're a completely different Sydney Bristow than the one I knew, I imagine that news comes as a shock."
She hesitates, thinking of the grainy surveillance video tape of her drawing a blade across a man's throat. And of Walker's taunt: What's the matter, Julia, no future in murder? She brushes past him to the living room, sinks down on her couch and looks at her hands. "But how did I get there," she wonders out loud. "The last thing I remember is fighting Francie in our apartment, and then I wake up in Hong Kong and it's was two years later and Vaughn is marr—" She breaks off before a sob can cut her off. The tears that have welled to the edges of her eyelids teeter stubbornly, burning but refusing to fall.
"I'm afraid that's not intel I have at the moment," Sark's voice is surprisingly gentle, "But that doesn't mean we can't find out."
"Sark?" she asks, her voice quavering, "Did I—I mean, did Walker say if he and I… were, uh, you know."
"I don't think you need me to tell you that," Sark replies, "I think you know the answer to your own question."
She hangs her head and sighs, nodding. Her back is to him, but she can hear him come up behind her. So, there it is; Julia Thorne apparently has terrible taste in men as well as being a murderess.
The cushion of the couch shifts as he sits down behind her. "Sydney, look," he begins, but she turns to him and says, "No—it's alright, you don't have to say anything."
Their knees are almost touching, and though the thin material of her pajama pants she can feel the heat radiating from his leg, under his jeans. She notices that this is a more casual Sark than the manchild who worked for her mother. Still, the easy uniform make him seem more masculine, more in control than he did as Irina's righthand man.
"So, uh," she stalls, "How's prison food?" A weak attempt at humor, but he chuckles and places his hand over hers. His palm is very warm against her knuckles, and he strokes the side of her wrist with his thumb. He doesn't answer the question, but instead rubs a small circle against the bone of her wrist. She is unsurprised when he leans towards her and nuzzles her sharp jawline with his nose and lips. His scent is warm, vaguely heady, like man's cologne, though not in the obnoxious, overpowering way that so many men around the agency wear it. "Sark," she whispers as he begins kissing her neck, "Stay with me." It is not a question, and he whispers against her neck, "Yes."