Title from Rent, quote from Star Trek. :) I'm not a huge fan of this chapter, but it was unavoidable, narrative-wise. Promise it'll get more interesting soon!

XI. Without You

We all have scars. Of one kind or another.

Sydney knew there was no reason for the house to feel different. Sark had left her alone once before, and aside from the conspicuous lack of infuriating smirks, the effect of his absence had been rather minimal. Still, as she meandered through the rooms of the safehouse, it was hard not to feel as if her every move was an affront to the deathly silence in the air. She ate an apple, and decided it was the loudest article of food she'd ever encountered.

The chocolate chips were quickly stored in the pantry, because looking at them had the unfortunate effect of reminding her of what an unexpectedly thoughtful gesture it was, which in turn prompted an inappropriately warm and melty feeling. The gesture itself was, she adamantly told herself, unacceptable. There was only one man in the entire world whom she had ever allowed to take care of her that way, and his name was Michael Vaughn. Even Danny and Noah had known never to cross the line between their relationship and her self-sufficiency, but she'd let Vaughn in so close that the line got blurrier every day.

Yeah, she thought as her apple core thunked to the bottom of the trash can. And look how well that turned out.

She'd researched Lauren Reed as soon as she saw her with Vaughn, the night Sydney tried to go back to him. It had all been as covert as possible, since Julia Thorne couldn't have cared less about Vaughn, but the information had been pretty readily available. She was, after all, a senator's daughter, and a member of the NSC in her own right. Sydney was able to find out Lauren's age, background, the details of her career—even the one thing she had honestly never wanted to know: the wedding date.

Julia Thorne had a mission in Aconcagua that day. She didn't leave behind a single survivor.

After that, she threw herself into every aspect of her job with an almost obsessively single-minded devotion. She also began to work more frequently with Simon on her assignments for the Covenant. Initially, she requested the pairing, but the quality of their work was such that their partnership became status quo.

Sydney wandered into the room containing the TV and stereo system for the first time. She privately considered it the living room, but she really doubted that Sark did much living there. He seemed to favor his study over all other rooms in the house. The TV, of course, was pristine and expensive-looking, but she couldn't find a single DVD—not that she was terribly surprised. In Sark's world, watching movies was probably something that happened to other people.

Then again, it wasn't as if she was much different. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd sat down to watch anything—and that wasn't because of the memory-scrambling fiasco. Life had always been so incredibly busy. Even meals and sleeping took a backseat to her persistently ringing cell phone.

She managed to unearth a few CDs, and took the top one at random. Anything to banish the silence.

As it loaded in the stereo, she studied the case. Серёга. It probably should have surprised her to find Russian hip-hop in Sark's collection, instead of a compilation of Chopin's nocturnes, but there were times when Sydney's shock response utterly failed her. One of the many effects of having seen too much.

On the other hand, she couldn't help grinning when the rapping began, so at least she hadn't lost her sense of humor.

After a brief moment of consideration, she cranked up the music to near-deafening levels and went upstairs to find some workout clothes. Just like being a teenager again, she mused, except with an absent captor rather than an absent father. Also, if she were her sixteen-year-old self, she would probably be ordering a pizza, not preparing for an exercise regime intended to maintain her ass-kicking powers for future use.

Exercise pants, tank top, sports bra. Oh, it was glorious to have her clothes back. On second thought, she discarded the tank top. It wasn't as if anyone was going to be around to see her sweat, inasmuch as she'd be able to get a decent workout without breaking any furniture.

She moved the dining room table out of the way, shook out her limbs, and began. The enclosed space basically limited her options to muscle exercises and shadowboxing, so she devoted herself to those for nearly an hour and a half, trying to ignore the little voice inside her head that insisted she wanted to run, thank you very much. She doubted Sark would ever unleash her in Galway for a daily jog.

After a quick break to get a drink of water and replace the Russian rap with some loud rock music she didn't recognize, Sydney went back to her routine. She didn't stop until every single muscle in her body was burning wretchedly. It reminded her of the old days, training at SD-6.

Now, as she had back then, she eventually dragged herself off the floor to run a warm bath. Her own bedroom only had a shower, but the other spare room had an adjacent bathroom with a big, tempting tub. As soon as it was full, she sank blissfully into the water and laid her head back. She could handle this for a few days. In fact, it would probably be good for her, and when Sark got back, she would see him clearly for the ruthless criminal he was.

The second CD had ended, she noted with irritation, leaving the oppressive silence in its wake. How could this house be so damn quiet?

Since it was getting cold anyway, she emerged from her bath and watched the water drain away. Then, impulsively, feeling somehow like a disobedient child, she filled it again. She washed her hair, shaved, exfoliated, then got out and trimmed her fingernails, plucked her eyebrows, and availed herself of some lovely spruce-scented lotion. If only she had some nail polish, she could really put a finishing touch on all this excessive pampering.

As she looked through her drawers, Sydney had to laugh at herself. Was this it? Was this really what she would have ended up doing if she'd had the luxury of free time at some point in the last ten years? Well, probably not. She probably would have spent a lot of that time reading books, and enjoying uninterrupted time with Will and Francie. But it did feel . . . nice, really, to do things just for herself.

I should have gone to that spa with Francie when I had the chance. She pressed her lips together to stave off the pang of guilt and sadness. There were times when it was hard not to feel like a plague, descending on the people she loved and robbing them of their lives, their choices, their happiness.

No. Sydney took a deep, steadying breath. She was going to enjoy this day, not wander down the path of those dark thoughts.

And to that end, she was going to need some food.

The second part of the day was considerably more low-key than the first. After constructing and consuming another colossal sandwich, Sydney retreated to the study, where she picked up a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray and curled up in the suede armchair. The chair smelled a little bit like him. She still couldn't figure out the scent, but being nestled there was—well, it was sort of comforting, in a way. It served as a reminder that the outside world did exist, and it was not as empty or unbearably quiet as this vacant shell of a house. And certain people in that world smelled very nice.

She moaned and buried her face in the suede cushion. Couldn't she just get regular old Stockholm Syndrome, and start sympathizing with the enemy's agenda—in this case, she supposed, the agenda of doing whatever paid the most money? No. Of course not. That would be too simple.

And many adjectives could be attributed to Sydney's life, but 'simple' was not one of them. So of course, she had to have a crush on the enemy.

It wasn't fair. It really wasn't. It shouldn't even have been possible, because—aside from all the other reasons—she was still deeply, desperately, irrevocably in love with Michael Vaughn, and it seemed completely insupportable that her hormones would form a second ill-advised attachment while her heart was still being shredded into pieces by Vaughn's marriage to Lauren Reed. It was as if someone had set her emotions to self-destruct as violently as possible.

But it didn't matter, because she was better than her hormones, and she could rise above whatever madness it was that made her want to kiss Sark. Yes, her life had been destroyed. There was no way around that; she couldn't control it. What she could control was how she dealt with it.

She finished the book before seven o'clock, and started perusing the shelves for another story to occupy her time. The well-kept old copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland made her pause. She took it out and studied the cover, and for the first time felt a weighty, sad sense of nostalgia for what she had lost in the fire. Even after everything Irina Derevko had put her and her father through, Sydney had cherished her first edition of this book. It was like a small, tenuous portal to a time when Laura Bristow was just a literature professor and a loving mother. A time when they were all so happy.

More than her old round box of photographs, or even the antique silver frame on her bedside table, Sydney had loved that book. She leaned forward to rest her forehead on the edge of the bookshelf, wishing herself back to two years ago for the forty-seven millionth time and counting.

The doors of the study slammed shut.

Her reaction was instantaneous. She whirled around, hands ready to strike, surging with adrenaline, ready to fight off any and all attackers. Except there was no one there. The room was every bit as empty and tranquil as it had been, with only that one obvious exception. Could intruders have entered the house and trapped her inside the study without her being aware of their presence? She'd like to think it was impossible.

She dug her bare toes into the rug, trying to devise a strategy, but it was a little complicated when she had no weapon and no insight into who might be breaking into the safehouse—if that was, in fact, what was happening. What had happened to Sark's Fence of Death and armed-to-the-teeth, shoot-to-kill guards?

In her heightened state of awareness, it was easy to hear the front door open and shut. There was no way Sark could be returning so soon. Belatedly, with all the force of an idea held at bay until it can no longer be ignored, she realized—it could be the Covenant, coming to get her back.

She wasn't going to let them. She would find something in this room that could be used as a bludgeon, and she would—

"Sydney?"

As the doors swung back open, she racked her tangled memories, all the more difficult to access under stress, trying to place that voice. She knew it, could recognize the inflection perfectly. It was there, hovering just out of reach, like a landmark she'd seen every day but had never really stopped to look at.

"You can come out now, Sydney. Sorry about locking you in. We've got a strict protocol to follow. Mr. Sark's orders."

Oh my god. "Gonzales?" she said in utter disbelief, striding quickly out of the study and into the main downstairs area. "Is that you?"

"I knew you'd remember me!" The former elevator security guard of Credit Dauphine—or, more accurately, SD-6—beamed at her. The joy on his face was belied by the highly modified M16 Gonzales had trained on her chest.

"How—? what are you—? you're working for Sark?"

"Just this time," Gonzales explained cheerfully, the rifle never wavering. "I don't usually like to leave the States, but for what he's paying . . ."

"Whatever it is, if you help me escape, I'll triple it," she offered without hesitation.

He just laughed. "Sorry, Sydney. You couldn't pay me enough to double-cross him. I gotta put my son through college, you know."

Zachery, she recalled, faintly but surely. This conversation had gone from surreal to certifiably insane. "And . . . how is he?"

"Oh, great, great. Chip off the old block," said Gonzales, then looked down at his gun and reconsidered. "Well, sorta."

"Jim . . . why are you pointing that at me?"

"Like I said, orders." His tone was only vaguely apologetic. "Mr. Sark wanted me to check on you every evening. Is there anything you need?"

There were about a thousand things she needed. Freedom, privacy, a friend, some decent music, an erasure of the last two years, Sark's head on a platter. To feel safe, to feel sane, to feel Vaughn's arms around her. It would also be nice if the barrel of that gun could be pointed somewhere else. She was willing to bet good money that Gonzales could provide none of these things.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"You sure?"

Sydney straightened her shoulders and fixed Gonzales with her best Jack Bristow glare. No one in the world could imitate her father like she could, and she saw Gonzales start to take a step back, then catch himself. "As I said—I'm fine," she repeated. Her tone was icy, unforgiving, sharp as obsidian.

"Right, um. See you tomorrow, then. If you'll get back in the study, please."

She obeyed just to get him out of her sight. Also, she carefully studied the doors as they swung shut again, trying to figure out how the system worked. In all likelihood, the guards had been given some kind of heat-signature detection technology to determine her whereabouts inside the house at all times. If every single door was linked into an electrical security system, it would be possible to trap her in a room to keep her from ever getting near the open front door. That way Gonzales could come and go without worrying about her attacking him in a bid for escape.

It made sense, and worse, she could see no way around it. Whatever system had been rigged into the doors, there was no visible evidence of it left in the open to be tampered with. The hinges were unnaturally bulky, she noted, but also custom-made, with no access points for removal by a screwdriver.

She doubted that Sark had ever held anyone hostage here before, or had ever planned to, but that hadn't stopped him from making arrangements for the possibility. If it wasn't making things so damn inconvenient for her, she would have admired his forward-thinking precautions. Then again, if he wasn't a ruthlessly opportunistic murderer, she might admire his kissing ability. Such was the nature of hypotheticals.

Dinner was slightly overcooked spaghetti and the rest of that baguette. Sydney was feeling exhausted from her workout, so she just left all the dishes on the counter, telling herself that she would load the dishwasher in the morning. And if the tomato sauce got dried on, at least they weren't her dishes. Olaf Svensson could just replace them if he had to.

Before she got into bed, she went to the bathroom, turned on the light, and then closed the door almost completely. A faint glow was cast into the bedroom, which was all she needed. Memories of her days spent starving in sensory deprivation made it hard for her to sleep in a completely dark room. She wished she had some soothing music to play, but Sark's limited collection didn't seem to offer anything of the sort.

Despite how tired she was, it took her a long time to fall asleep. The sheer looming emptiness of the house set her on edge, and no matter how firmly she reminded herself that it was entirely psychological, that it would be just as quiet even if Sark were there, her body refused to relax.

This is pathetic. It's as if I'm still five years old and afraid of the dark.

Her last coherent thought before drifting off was that it was never the dark she'd been afraid of. It was the things that might hide in that darkness.

When sleep did come, it was marked by nightmares. Some were only flashes of memory, impressions of past or imagined terror, or empty scenes she couldn't escape from. Once she was trapped in a hospital room that was flooding with blood, pounding on the door. She writhed helplessly in her sleep, but did not wake, her mind jumping seamlessly from dream to dream. The last few were longer, clearer, and felt horrifyingly real.

She found herself at the scene of Francie's murder, only to look down and find Vaughn's corpse at her feet.

She was in her pitch-black cell, sobbing, trying to eat the bowl of dog food, and she vomited, but pieces of Rambaldi artifacts came up, cutting up her insides, clattering to the floor covered in blood.

The Covenant was testing her loyalty. McKenas Cole looked on with glee, but the duct tape encircled her body, gagged her mouth, and she struggled uselessly to escape as Sark smiled and stabbed the blade into her heart.

She woke up screaming.