Title by Paramore, quote by Matchbox Twenty.

VII. Here We Go Again

I want you to be unleashed. I want you to remember.
I want you to believe in me.
I want you on my side.

Sydney stayed awake until almost four in the morning and didn't get out of bed the next day until almost noon, whereupon she stumbled into the shower and wondered how the hell she was going to get her sleep schedule back to normal. In a more frivolous part of her mind, she also wondered if Sark always kept the extra rooms so well stocked with fancy-looking European soap and shampoo. Probably. She resolved to keep an eye out for potpourri.

Her contentment over being well-rested and clean was short-lived; when Sydney returned to the bedroom, wrapped in a large white towel, she processed for the first time that the space next to the door was empty. When she'd closed the door earlier, the significance of this had escaped her. Now she realized that the suitcase containing all her clothing was nowhere to be found.

She was going to strangle the smug little bastard with her bare hands.

"Sark!" she bellowed, resisting the urge to take the steps two at a time. "Where are you?!"

Rather than answer, he emerged from the study with a leather-bound book in his hand. When he saw Sydney, a rare stunned expression flashed across his face before he more or less regained his look of unflappable calm. "Miss Bristow. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"What did you do with my clothes?" Sydney demanded.

Sark blinked once. Twice. It was a simple question, but it seemed to have thrown him for a loop. "I . . . washed them," he finally replied, "and folded them, and put them away."

Which meant that if she'd just checked the drawers before stomping off in a snit, Sydney could have avoided making a scene in the foyer of Sark's safehouse dressed in nothing but a damp towel. "You cleaned my clothes," she said in disbelief, tucking a piece of wet hair behind her ear.

"Yes."

"Oh." She couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. "How . . . domestic of you."

An awkwardly prolonged pause followed in which Sark tugged on the cuff of his shirt. Sydney couldn't help noticing it, in her quest to look everywhere but into the storm-colored eyes she was certain were silently mocking her.

"Well," he finally said, in the strained, final tones of one determined to put an end to an uncomfortable situation, "if that was all . . ."

"Right— yeah. I'll be going," Sydney agreed hastily, and made her escape up the stairs.

Sark's eyes followed her—or more specifically, her legs—until she was once again out of sight. It was truly bizarre, having that woman around. This safehouse was one of his favorites, for reasons of nostalgia. Usually when he stayed at here, he appreciated a few stolen days of rest before being hired for yet another dangerous, illegal job. Though a trusted (and closely surveilled) employee maintained the entire house, no one else had ever made use of the spare rooms upstairs—until now.

It certainly made life more interesting.

He sighed softly and scratched the back of his neck. Sark had no use for self-deception, and he made it a policy to be completely honest with himself, even if he didn't particularly appreciate the truth. And the truth was that, for some reason, he actually enjoyed having Sydney around.

Rather than dissect the reasons behind this unsettling predilection, he opted to return to the safety of his study, to his favorite dark suede armchair and his copy of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

Honesty was one thing. Self-immolation was entirely another.

About half an hour later, Sydney entered the room, more appropriately dressed in pants (the hems of which pooled on the floor) and a tank top. Her hair was still damp, and she still smelled of raspberries and soap, courtesy of her shower. To a lesser man, the scent might have been quite intoxicating. She had toast on a plate in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. Sark usually kept food out of the study, but he refrained from mentioning it.

"Hi," she said. The greeting, and the small smile she offered with it, were surprisingly meek. For her, at least.

His mouth curved slightly in response. It seemed they were starting the day over. "Hello, Sydney."

"Thanks for, um, doing my laundry."

"It wasn't any trouble." Some of us do get out of bed before noon, he was tempted to add, but had no intention of starting an argument right now.

Sydney only nodded in response, and bit into her toast.

"Did you make any progress last night?" he asked.

"I think so," she replied after briefly considering the question. "It's kind of hard to tell."

Sark wasn't sure how to respond to that, but before he could formulate something acceptable, Sydney spoke again.

"It was the Covenant."

"I . . . beg your pardon?"

Her face was set in determined lines, as if she had to steel herself just to have this conversation. "The people who kidnapped me, the people who faked my death, the people who tried to brainwash me. It was the Covenant. They tried to make me believe I was this . . . person, this assassin. Julia Thorne."

"But it didn't work," said Sark. "And I'm sure that once you gained their trust, you lost no time in contacting the CIA."

"What makes you think I gained their trust?" Sydney asked, eyebrows raised.

He tilted his head and gave her a let's-not-be-coy look. "Two years later, you're still alive. So . . . you contacted the CIA."

"Yes. I spoke to Kendall—"

"I don't suppose his disposition has improved."

"—and started to work with him," she continued as if he hadn't spoken. She gave him a rough outline of what had happened over the next fifteen months, ending in a very vague description of why she had chosen to her erase her memories. For the moment, he was uninclined to press the matter.

"And now here you are," he said with only a trace of skepticism.

"Here I am." She looked at him for a second or two and then half-smiled.

Rather than ask the question, he merely raised an eyebrow and waited for her to elucidate.

"I was thinking . . . do you remember the first time we met? In Denpasar? Trading diamonds for that ampule of Rambaldi solution?"

He laughed—a single, soft chuckle. "I'm unlikely to ever forget. Having the blade of a latajang directed at one's throat tends to focus one's attention wonderfully. Your proficiency was admirable, by the way. I had no idea it was you behind that veil."

"That was the general idea," she pointed out, sipping her tea. She wrapped her hands around the mug so her long fingers interlaced in the front. "The plan was to give you a fake ampule with a tracker and follow your movements. Instead, you were captured by SD-6."

"It was a clever trick, really," Sark mused. "Pity it all went wrong in the end, for both of us."

"Yeah." Staring off into space, Sydney smiled her real smile—wide and bright and dimpled. For a few surreal moments, Sark wasn't sure whether or not he was still breathing. "I don't know why I was even thinking about that," she admitted. "I guess it's just . . . looking back, it helps to remember all the little incidents. I keep thinking of it like a puzzle—I have to fit together all the pieces."

"Well, in that case . . . what was the next time we saw each other? Think of it as a memory exercise," he added when she gave him a dubious look.

It took a moment, but when she answered, she did so with confidence. "That restaurant in Paris." Sydney's eyebrows drew together. "You knew who I was then—didn't you?"

"I wasn't certain at first, even knowing the basics of the operation, but my suspicions were confirmed when you lingered so long over Khasinau." His own memory, blissfully unfragmented, called to mind Sydney's hand trailing across his shoulder and up his neck, her fingertips tracing the line of his jaw before moving on to Khasinau. The woman's talent for covert ops was nothing short of fantastic.

"And that," she said, voice harsh and forbidding, "was right before you abducted my friend and had him tortured." In moments like these, her features no longer mirrored the natural, self-assured shrewdness of her mother. The resemblance to Irina Derevko remained, but every muscle of Sydney's face displayed the implacable stoicism that was purely Jack Bristow. "And let's be clear on one thing, Sark. I may be accepting your help, and I might not be completely capable right now, but let me tell you this. The one thing I will not forget is what you have done to the people I love."

"Sydney—"

"I will never forgive you." She spoke over him effortlessly, and her dark eyes held nothing but absolute truth.

She watched him, waiting to gauge his response. He had listened to her with an expression she'd seen from him many times—eyes slightly narrowed, mouth set, his thoughts never betrayed by so much as a twitch. Finally, he gave that nod, more a tilt of his head than anything else. "But?" he prodded, because evil or no, he was a perceptive son of a bitch.

"But," Sydney acknowledged reluctantly, "I don't see any reason to make this . . . this temporary association any more unpleasant than it has to be. And as much as it bothers me to admit it, I could use your help right now, not to mention the place to stay. I mean . . ." She frowned and set the mug down next to the unfinished toast. "Call it pride, if you want," she conceded, "but I don't want to go back to the CIA anything less than whole."

Sark shrugged his eyebrows. "It's entirely your decision," he said, and she had no idea which part of the conversation he was referring to. The man was well on his way to redefining the word 'inscrutable.' "If it helps even the score between us, however . . ."

"What?" she asked, utterly suspicious, and was surprised to see a glint of humor in the steel blue of Sark's eyes.

"I believe our next encounter took place in a Siberian ice cavern."

And somehow, unbelievably, he had managed to drag levity back into their exchange. Sydney barely kept the corners of her mouth from turning up as she rolled her eyes and said, "Don't tell me this is about the ice pick! You were going to kill me!"

"No," he countered immediately. "I only said there was no room for you in the submersible, which to my mind is not exactly provocation for putting a sharp object through my leg." By now, he had placed his book on the table between his chair and her couch and forgotten about it.

"Well, sorry if my injuring you threw off your machine gun fire!" Sydney exclaimed in disbelief.

His retort was cut off by a loud buzz emanating from the small spare bedroom he had converted into a room full of monitors. Someone was at the gate.

"Excuse me," he told Sydney, and went out into the hall. He unlocked the room and closed the door behind him. It was really very unfortunate timing, he reflected, because the next time he and Sydney had crossed paths was in the library in Moscow. When she'd told him he was 'cute.'

A cursory examination of the screens revealed no activity other than the green sedan waiting at the front gate. He switched the feed to the camera pointed right at the driver . . . and suppressed a groan with the ease of long practice. This could get very complicated very quickly. He pressed the intercom.

"Just a moment."

"You got it, pal," was the upbeat reply.

He re-entered the study with a tense singularity of purpose that immediately set Sydney on edge. "What is it?" she asked.

"Cole. Get in the wine cellar."

"What?!"

"There's a door to the right of the kitchen entrance." Sark collected her mug and plate and left the room so quickly she had to bolt after him. "There," he said shortly, pointing to the wine cellar door. "Lock it behind you." He threw the toast into the trash can and poured the rest of her tea into the sink, where he left the dishes. "Sydney!" he snapped when he turned around and saw she was still there. "There is no time! Get in the wine cellar, now!"

There was no time to argue, so she obeyed, hoping that she wasn't making the biggest mistake of her life. Sark's last words to her before he went to the control room to open the gates were "There's a loaded 9mm under the third stair from the bottom." To a more normal person, this might have been even more cause for alarm, but Sydney found it immensely comforting. The first thing she did after locking the door was pry out the gun and check the clip.

Waiting there in the dark was nerve-wracking. She hadn't felt so much adrenaline in quite a while.

Cole entered the building just a few minutes later. Thanks to the poor soundproofing of old houses, she could hear everything. "Mr. Sark!"

"McKenas Cole," Sark replied. It was impossible to tell that he'd been frantically—or at least hurriedly—concealing Sydney's presence prior to this conversation. He sounded, as always, calm and collected.

Cole, who wouldn't know calm and collected if they shot him at point-blank range, was less reserved. "Your hair, man!" he enthused. "That's cool!"

"I prefer not to receive visitors to my safehouses, for reasons of concealment," Sark told him. "A fact of which I'm sure you are aware. Would you mind telling me what warranted the intrusion?"

"Yeah, yeah! Mind if I sit down somewhere?"

"At the counter should suffice," said Sark. It wasn't until Sydney heard the familiar frosty tone in his voice that she realized how relatively relaxed he had been with her less than five minute earlier. This put an uncomfortably squidgy feeling in her stomach, so she used her expert compartmentalization to shove it firmly away.

"All right, man, whatever you say." She heard one of the kitchen stools scrape across the floor.

"Champagne?"

"Right on!" For a violent man who'd been more than a little unhinged by his ordeal in Russia, Cole sure could sound like a teenager when he was of a mind to. "So about why I'm here. You're probably wondering how you got sprung outta prison, right? Courtesy of the big C, my friend—your kind benefactors."

Sydney clutched the gun so tightly her hand ached. She felt like she was going to throw up.

"You're the man behind the Covenant," Sark hazarded.

"I'm the man in front of the man," Cole corrected him, and Sydney thought that if she heard him call another superior "the man" she would have to hunt him down and kill him just for his spectacular lack of creativity. And that whole champagne-bottle-backwash incident. Disgusting. "When'd you cut your hair?" he asked Sark, hopping topics again.

"It wasn't a matter of choice. I was in US custody—as I thought you were. When were you released?"

"That's a good story," acknowledged Cole, then followed it up with: "To your hair!" Sydney could only assume he was proposing a toast. Deranged little freak. "I'll be the seniormost Covenant representative that you'll be dealing with," he continued. "Anything you have to say to the big boss, you can say to me."

"And what, exactly, would I have to say to the . . . big boss?"

"Well, y'see, we've got a bit of a business proposition for you, Mr. Sark. You've always been up for grabbing a piece of the action, and Covenant could really use that eight hundred million dollars that just got tossed your way. Congrats on that," Cole added, as a sidenote. "If you're gonna have an absent parent, they oughta at least leave you a couple hundred mil when they kick it, right?"

Sark said nothing. She couldn't tell, of course, if he was actually speechless or just responding with a gesture or facial expression.

"It's amazing, the stuff I know, isn't it?" gloated Cole. The man was an archetypal slimeball. "I mean, also, just for another example . . . and I think a lot of it's in the details, don't you? Just little things. Details like— like this hair, here on the counter. Now, if you ask me, it's a little too—I don't know. Long? Brown? To be yours. Kinda makes you wonder."

"I—I have neither the time nor the inclination to sit here and—"

"Julian, don't do that. I can see right now that you're scared, but you don't need to be scared of me. In fact," Cole added, "I have a present for you." Sydney was so intrigued by the notion of Sark actually showing fear that she was barely paying attention to the rest, but her good training prevailed.

". . . A watch," Sark said flatly.

"Not just any watch, my friend. This watch—" He paused, and she imagined him tapping it for emphasis. "—is worn by the six cell leaders of the Covenant. But you see, we're looking to expand, spread our boundaries, that sort of thing. New territory. And you are gonna head up our new North American cell."

She could have sworn she heard Sark snicker, but the arrogant expression she pictured was probably dead-on. "That sounds just about right."

"You're cockier than I am. I love that about you," Cole told him.

"Pardon my being blunt," said Sark, "but I believe that what you love about me is my eight hundred million dollars."

Rather than sound offended, Cole seemed even more cheerful. "Every little bit helps! So, whaddaya say, Mr. Sark? You in?"

Yeah, Sark, Sydney thought grimly, pulling back the action with a crisp double-snap. Tell us. Whaddaya say?