Title by Weezer, quote from Saiyuki Reload.
XVII. The World Has Turned and Left Me Here
Welcome back. Reality's a bitch.
Sydney didn't sleep well, and it was because Sark wasn't there. As much as she wanted to complicate (or completely deny) the causality of it, that was the pure and simple truth. All night long, she woke up wondering why she couldn't feel his arm around her waist or his breath on her neck.
It was driving her to distraction, and finally she gave up and slid out of bed. She put on the clothes from the day before, wondering if she would, at some point, stop losing everything she owned on a regular basis. Jeans and a tank top weren't quite what she'd imagined wearing on her return to the Rotunda office, to say the least, but there as nothing to be done. Before long, a van pulled into the driveway to take her and her father in, and they exited the safehouse together.
As she'd suspected, Jack had been reinstated to his former status as a CIA agent, his record wiped clean. Apparently the Rotunda's NSC liaison, a man named Robert Lindsay, was none too pleased about this, but her father seemed thoroughly unconcerned about Lindsay's dissenting opinion. No surprise there.
Jack had filled her in on the rest of what she'd missed in a tone so dry it couldn't possibly be mistaken for gossip. Vaughn had left the CIA after her apparent death, only to return a little more than a year later, about a month after his and Lauren's wedding. Dixon had been promoted to head of the task force about a year ago, when Kendall became increasingly involved in his responsibilities with the DSR. Agent Weiss—the only one of their small group of field agents who was there for the entire two-year stretch—had fared well, all things considered. Marshall and Carrie, to Sydney's delight, were expecting a baby.
It was strange to think that after so many changes, the old team would be back together upon her return—her, Dixon, Vaughn, Weiss, Jack and Marshall. She wondered how the others were coping with the news of her being alive. According to her father, Vaughn and Weiss and Marshall had been told only a few days before the exchange, for security reasons. Were they relieved? Hurt? Angry about the CIA and DSR's willful concealment of the truth?
She still recognized the streets as if she hadn't gone a day without seeing them, and she knew they were getting close. Instead of following her old protocol, they drove straight to the broken pay phone. The agent in the van's passenger seat, a security guard, punched in the code and escorted them into the building.
The impulse to grab on to her father's arm was strong, but she resisted. Instead, she clenched her hands tightly and tried to think calm thoughts. Beaches. Candlelight. Soothing music. Hot baths. Sark's fingers trailing across her bare spine.
On the second thought, perhaps that last one was better put as far out of mind as humanly possible.
The CIA's resident technical genius was the first to cross their path, and he immediately stopped in his tracks. "Syd!" Marshall exclaimed, wide eyed with excitement. As soon as she held out her arms, he hugged her with all his might.
"It's great to see you, Marshall," she told him warmly. She remembered how incredibly boring op-tech had been without his colorful explanations of her latest gadgets. Kendall could never be bothered for more than a basic explanation and a brusque set of instructions.
"You too! And of course, you too, Mr. Bristow," he added as he let go of Sydney and looked at Jack. "Would you, uh, like a hug, or — ?"
"That won't be necessary." Jack's expression clearly implied that any kind of hugging activity would directly provoke loss of life and limb.
"Right. Uh, they're waiting for you in the briefing room— I was just there too, actually— I'm running an analysis on this biohazard toxin for Mister—uh, Director Dixon— really cool stuff, by the way, if you're ever interested I could… explain it… for you…" There was an inverse correlation between the speed of Marshall's words and the intensity of Jack's glare, and soon Marshall just pointed towards the briefing room. "In there."
"Thank you," said Jack, stolid as always, and headed towards the room. In his wake, Marshall visibly gulped and shot Sydney a wan half-smile she'd become accustomed to seeing when mere mortals crossed paths with Jack Bristow. Before following her father, she allowed her eyes to roam across the loud, bustling room, searching out familiar faces and half-hoping she wouldn't see any. She caught sight of Weiss, but he was on the phone across the room, facing away.
She sighed quietly to herself and went into the briefing room, mentally rehearsing her story as she walked. As she'd anticipated, it was only a matter of minutes before she was called upon to recite that story for Kendall, Dixon, her father, and an unpleasant-looking man introduced as Robert Lindsay.
The first part of her explanation was addressed to Kendall. "After I sent you that video, I went to see a neurologist named Carlo Galvani. As I said, he had developed a technique for erasing memories that seemed promising— risky, but promising. Now, I don't know if my brain somehow rejected the procedure, or if Galvani was just incompetent, but next thing I knew I was out on the street and I couldn't remember anything. That's how Sark found me."
"He knocked me out with a sedative and took me hostage. I'm not sure where we were—the room he held me in was pretty nondescript—but I was kept comfortable. We didn't really have much interaction." Sydney interlaced her fingers on the table and wove together facts and lies with the artful skill of a professional. "He kept me apprised of the negotiations with the CIA, but that was about it. I got the impression that I was just a means to an end for him," she concluded, hoping none of them were perceptive enough to see how badly she wanted that assessment to be inaccurate.
"Were you aware of Sark having any visitors?" asked Dixon.
One thing she'd learned well as a double agent: if information won't hurt your story or your cover, share it. Details can provide a foundation of credibility to support a complex web of lies. "Just one. McKenas Cole. How did he get out, by the way?" she asked as her audience reacted. "I thought he was in custody."
"That's a… complicated story," said Kendall, clearly unwilling to divulge details at the moment. "You said he visited Mr. Sark? Do you have any idea why?"
"I heard most of the conversation, actually; the walls were pretty thin. He wanted Sark to work for the Covenant. He claimed they were responsible for getting Sark out of jail— and how did that happen?" she demanded, interrupting herself. "Is there anybody left in custody, or did they all just—"
"Sydney," Jack muttered on her left. A reprimand and a warning. It had been a long time since she'd had to act like an agent in any normal sense of the word.
"We still don't know how that happened," Kendall admitted with a frustrated shrug. "One day he's here in your mother's old cell, the next morning he's disappeared, everything still locked up tight. All the security guards swore they didn't see a thing."
"Half of them could be in league with the Covenant," snapped Lindsay. "If it was up to me, I would have ordered enhanced interrogation for all of them."
"That wasn't your decision to make," said Dixon, leveling a baleful look at Lindsay that advised him to keep his mouth shut.
Ah, inter-agency politics. This was something she hadn't missed even on her worst days. "Cole offered to let him head the North American cell, but Sark turned him down," she told them, hoping that a return to her story would quell the bickering at least temporarily. "He said he wanted to keep working freelance."
She wasn't imperceptive enough to miss the look that passed between Kendall and Dixon, but she still didn't know what it meant. Perhaps they were as surprised as she had been that Sark would turn down a chance to be a well-placed subordinate, as it was a position in which he'd thrived often enough before.
"You said you couldn't remember anything," said Kendall. "I'm assuming that changed?"
"Yes. My memories came back pretty quickly. I think, more than anything, Galvani's procedure just confused me. There don't seem to be any lasting effects."
"All right, good. You should get checked out later today, just to be safe; they'll be expecting you."
Great. More people poking around in her brain. "Okay."
Dixon picked up the conversation from there, moving smoothly into the CIA's side of the transaction. "Aside from your father's release, Sark's demands were pretty straightforward: a full pardon and a million dollars in ransom."
"Wait," she said immediately, utterly confused. "That doesn't make any sense. Sark just inherited eight hundred million dollars after his father's death. Why would he be asking for more money from the CIA?"
"Who was his father?" asked Dixon. His forehead was creased in consternation.
"Andrian Lazarey."
"A Russian diplomat," her father explained to the room at large. "And a descendant of the Romanovs, which explains the size of Sark's inheritance. I received unconfirmed reports that Lazarey had been assassinated before I was . . . detained."
"So you're saying that Sark inherited nearly a billion dollars?" Dixon repeated. "Is it possible that he arranged for Lazarey to be killed?"
"My guess would be that it was the Covenant," said Sydney, vaguely uncomfortable with the way that all eyes were once more on her. "Cole wanted Sark to give them the money; if they assassinated Lazarey in the first place and got Sark out of custody, it could be they just want to get their hands on the inheritance."
"And what better way than to play on Sark's tendency to shift allegiances to the highest bidder," her father mused.
"Exactly."
The briefing continued from there as it had begun— long, dull, and incredibly frustrating. The last thing she wanted to do was rehash the last month, trying to keep track of her carefully crafted lies while simultaneously staving off memories she had no intention of sharing.
It was nearly two hours before she was dismissed, and the drawn-out debrief combined with her lack of sleep the night before—and even the night before that, for a very different reason—had Sydney feeling as if she'd just taken on a freight train and been utterly defeated. She trudged over to the desk where she'd seen Weiss before, and her mind blearily noted that he was talking to another agent—then jolted her into full awareness with the realization that it was Vaughn.
She had a moment to compose herself before he noticed Weiss' half-joyful, half-worried expression and turned his head, and she tried to brace herself for what was coming. It didn't make the slightest bit of difference.
It didn't matter that they looked at each other across an irreparable chasm of lost time, separated not just by years, but by Lauren and Simon and Sark and even Julia herself. Her pounding heart seemed to have forgotten that he had forsaken and replaced her, forced her to spend the most difficult two years in her life without her anchor—her guardian angel—supposedly, her soul mate. Even the fact that she didn't want to love Michael Vaughn anymore didn't feel important.
Just looking into those shocked, wounded green eyes was like a knife between her ribs, piercing and deep. It was a large jumping of emotional tracks, going straight from mentally exhausted listlessness to the verge of tears, but being highly emotional gave her a special skill for things like that. Goddammit.
Weiss made an excuse that neither of them really heard and hightailed it into Marshall's office.
"Vaughn," she whispered without thinking.
What did he see when he looked at her? Did he feel the slightest twinge of guilt, or was she simply a painful part of his past, freshly resurrected?
"Syd."
His arms around her body, his face tucked into her shoulder—the familiar touch burned like a corrosive acid, and if she had been stronger, she would have screamed. Pushed him away. Slammed her knee into his stomach. Not hugged him back as if he had the right to hold her.
They separated and looked at each other again, wordlessly. There was nothing to say. He knew what he'd done. He either cared or he didn't.
"Kendall said that you . . . that you tried to come back. To see me."
"Yes." Even on that one syllable, her voice cracked, high and immeasurably pained.
"Syd, I'm—"
"Don't." She shook her head so fiercely that the tears she'd tried to blink back spilled down her face. "Don't you dare."
It was too much. It was too damn much. She'd lost Francie, Will, Vaughn, her entire life for god's sake and after two years they expected her to come back to the CIA and be Agent Sydney Bristow again. As if she could ever be the same person she'd been before, after all she'd been through.
"All this time… I thought you were dead." His eyes, imploring her to understand, were full of long-buried pain.
Sydney just looked at him, her jaw clenched, wrapped in the protective shield she called Julia Thorne.
"And I thought you loved me."
There was no point in saying anything else. Whether she said six words or six thousand, he would either understand what he had put her through or he would continue to wallow in his own self-pity, willfully oblivious to what he'd done. Because of that, and because she just couldn't stand to look at him for one more second, Sydney turned on her heel and left. She didn't actually leave the building, since she didn't know where she lived just yet. She did, however, get the hell out of the rotunda in favor of the offices on the lower floors. One office in particular, which she hoped had retained its former occupant over the past two years.
She made eye contact with no one as she navigated the hallways, holding on to the shredded remnants of her control by a thread. Her hand trembled as she pulled open the door and entered without knocking.
Dr. Barnett looked up from her desk, and her blue eyes widened. She didn't look shocked; in all likelihood she'd already been apprised of the situation. After Sydney's ordeal, it made sense that the CIA would want her to visit their top psychologist. Couldn't be too careful. Even the best agents can crack.
Feeling absolutely overwhelmed and long past her breaking point, Sydney practically hurled herself onto the couch. She slid out of her shoes and curled her legs beneath her, long past caring about acting mature or dignified. All she wanted was her mother—not Irina Derevko, but Laura Bristow, the devoted and loving and safe woman of her childhood who would never, ever let anything hurt her. How fitting, that the one thing she needed now had never even been real.
"It's good to see you, Sydney."
Barnett smiled gently, her eyes crinkling generously at the corners. Clearly, she meant it. She was truly happy to have her back, which Sydney found both touching and surprising. It was easier, seeing that, to accept her kindness without searching it for traces of condescension.
Sydney didn't have her mother. She didn't have Vaughn. She didn't have Will, or Francie . . . or Sark. But there were still people who cared about her.
Perhaps that would be enough.
She tried to speak, but choked, her eyes brimming with moisture yet again.
"I need to talk," she managed, attempting a feeble smile, and then burst into tears.
x
When she was finally escorted to her new apartment, Sydney stood just inside the door for a while, trying to absorb this new living space. It was fully furnished down to the knick-knacks on the tables, a few of which were lightly damaged and painfully familiar—relics from her old home, survivors of the fire.
She went into the bedroom first, as was only fitting. All kitchens were basically alike to her, and it wasn't as if she'd have a lot of time to spend lounging on the couches. The bed, on the other hand, was going to become her friend from day one. She hopped experimentally onto the mattress and found it acceptably comfortable—not so firm that she'd be unable to sleep on it, and not so soft that she'd rather shoot her alarm clock than get out of bed.
It was very tempting to flop into a prone position and take a nice, long nap, given her recent lack of sleep and a morning that had utterly drained her, but she was forestalled by the sight of a small white envelope on her dresser. It was unassuming and inconspicuous, lying there and waiting politely to be noticed, but something about that little envelope had her on her feet in an instant. She knew that people had been in and out of the house dozens of times, delivering furniture and probably even putting food in the kitchen, but she also knew, with perfect certainty, that this envelope was separate from all of that.
She approached it carefully, as if it might explode. Stranger things had happened. There was a name written on the outside in slightly extravagant script.
Mrs. Maria Svensson.
Appallingly, Sydney laughed out loud at this, covering her mouth with one hand, like a delighted child discovering hidden treasure. She immediately snatched up the envelope and slit it open with a fingernail—she'd kept them long, the evidence of which was probably still visible on Sark's body.
The elaborate font continued on the note within, but she looked past the curlicues and began to read:
My darling Maria—
I cannot bear the thought of separation from you, though the reasons might be compelling. I like it very much to think that we have, if nothing else, these memories of our best days together, memories of love our good luck brought us. So until your sister's recovery, we will wait to see what tomorrow brings. Each night, no dream other than holding you again shall I dream. The days will seem empty without you.
Sydney hadn't even finished before she recognized the absurdly simple pattern—every fourth word—and began to translate mentally. I thought you might like to have these . . . best of luck until we see each other again . . . the . . . empty? "The empty?" What the hell was that supposed to mean?
She flipped over the note, but there was nothing else. And no matter how many times she rechecked, the last part simply didn't fit.
It couldn't be that she'd been wrong about the first part— the note wasn't even that well done, the language stilted and strange. The revealed message, on the other hand, was entirely like Sark, and made perfect sense, all things considered. Presumably, he'd found some way of returning her things. But… the empty?
She had no idea what to make of it. Using one of her father's more obscure ciphers, it turned into a phrase involving meatballs, but that seemed like a bit of a reach. After making the rest of the note so incredibly easy to decode, why would the last sentence be so fiendishly complicated? Could he possibly have hidden some aspect of his endgame in this innocuous little note—and if so, did he intend for her to figure it out herself, or take it to the CIA?
For the time being, she set the note down, planning to subject it to much more intense scrutiny later. Perhaps Marshall could help out, if sworn to secrecy.
Sydney looked through the closet and drawers to confirm what she already knew, and sure enough, there was Julia Thorne's clothing, neatly folded and immaculate. God only knew how he'd managed to transport it all yet again. She was just browsing through the assortment of leather jackets and coats when the doorbell rang. After carefully closing everything and slipping the note into a convenient drawer, she went to answer it.
Weiss was standing on her welcome mat, holding a six-pack of beer and beaming at her.
"Hi!" she exclaimed, and couldn't help smiling widely in response. "I'm sorry— I didn't get a chance to say hello back at—"
"Oh, it's totally fine," he assured her, waving away the apology. "I could tell you had some, uh, stuff to deal with."
"Great to see you again." Sydney stepped over the threshhold and hugged him, beers and all. "I've missed you."
"Yeah! Same here, except . . . well, you know," he concluded, simultaneously acknowledging and dismissing the fact that he'd grieved for her in the belief that she'd died in the fire. Holding a grudge had never been one of Weiss' foremost talents, to say the least, and she was grateful for that now.
At that point it occurred to her that he probably didn't want to just stand in the doorway. "Come on in!" she said, stepping aside.
Weiss examined her new apartment with the cheerfully complacent air he brought to most things when he was off-duty. "Nice place. I mean, granted, I was the one who picked out most of the furniture, but—"
"Really?" It wasn't that the furniture was something truly spectacular. It just felt better, somehow, knowing that a friend had done it.
"Yeah. Why, is it awful?" He looked around at his handiwork with an expression of exaggerated worry.
"No, it's great. Thank you."
"Hey, no problem. I just figured you can always replace stuff if you want. I tried asking Mike for advice but— um." Looking painfully aware of how badly he'd just lodged his foot in his mouth, Weiss cleared his throat loudly and attempted to press on. "So, I figured you could use some beer right about now."
"Absolutely," she agreed immediately, and took the bottle he offered her without hesitation.
"By the way—it is great to have you and your dad back," he told her as they settled into their respective pieces of Weiss-picked furniture. "The replacement agents they brought in were a complete nightmare."
Sydney laughed at the earnestness of his dismay. "Really? What were they like?"
"Oh, this really nervous blond girl and this guy— he just walked around looking . . . sullen. All the time. Which, I mean, works for your dad, but totally did not work for this guy. Seriously, the less said about those two, the better."
"Good to know I'm not so easily replaced," she said with a grin.
An expresson passed over Weiss' face somewhere between discomfort and pain. "Syd . . ."
Oh. Crap. "Eric, I— I didn't mean it like that." She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked down at her beer for a few seconds, until she knew her smile would look genuine. "I'm fine, really. I mean . . . I will be. It was just . . ." she ruthlessly swallowed down the lump in her throat. "It was just hard, is all."
"Yeah. I know," he muttered. His entire face was lined with sympathy, and as much as she wanted to believe she didn't need it, she loved him for it.
"But everybody gets their heart broken sometime, right?" Every ridge on the bottle was pressed into her fingers as her hand did its best to clench into a fist. Beads of condensation were squeezed out from between her skin and the glass, and her joints began to ache with the strain.
"Right." Weiss drained a fair percentage of his beer in one large gulp, then regarded Sydney with a clear spark of inspiration in his bright somber eyes.
"Let me tell you," he said, "about Sally Benson."
x
They found out the next morning, when Dixon called everyone into the briefing room. Sydney sat with Marshall and her father at one long table, facing Lindsay, Vaughn, and Weiss. Kendall wasn't around, presumably because he'd served his purpose and was back to the DSR. She found herself wishing she'd had the chance to thank him properly before he returned to his world of secrets more carefully guarded than even the CIA's most covert operations.
Dixon stood and hesitated, for a moment, staring down at the remote in his hand as if unsure what purpose it might serve. The moment passed, he pressed a button, and the large monitor in the room sprang to life, displaying a grainy shot of a man on a cell phone.
"You all recognize Mr. Sark," he said, and Sydney's gut twisted violently. "Sources spotted him in London the day before yesterday, when this picture was taken. He proceeded to enter a building we believe to be owned by the Covenant. Later that evening, he accessed and withdrew the entirety of his inheritance—eight hundred million in gold bouillon."
She was going to throw up. This wasn't possible, this wasn't real.
"I don't understand," she interruped. It wasn't until she saw the others' faces that she realized how terrible her voice sounded. "Are you saying that Sark is working for the Covenant now? After all that?"
Dixon's face could have been carved from stone. "It would seem so."
"It's possible that he was blackmailed," said Jack, always the strategist. "The Covenant might not be inclined to take no for an answer."
"That would certainly fit in with everything we've seen from them before," said Vaughn.
"There's another possibility." Dixon was sitting down again, his fingers tightly interlaced on his desk. "As one of the conditions of Sydney's release, Sark demanded a Rambaldi artefact from the DSR storage facility. An hourglass. He might have used that to solidify his position within the Covenant."
"Wait, what?" Weiss asked, speaking for everyone. "This is the first I've heard about this."
Sydney bit down on one of her knuckles and tried not to go stark raving mad in front of everyone. Now was not the time to scream.
"The details of the exchange were being kept confidential, until now."
"Well, do we have any idea why the Covenant might be interested in this hourglass?" asked Vaughn, glancing unintentionally at Sydney, his forehead furrowed.
"That's what we're trying to figure out. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of information. It looks like we'll have to consult an expert on this one."
"Sloane," Jack realized almost immediately.
"I don't like it," said Dixon, "but there aren't many other options."
"I'll do it," she said, making eye contact with no one, and her voice was just as broken and harsh as before. "I'll talk to him."
"Not alone. I'm going with you."
Dixon nodded at her father's demand. "You'll both go. You're the two people he's most likely to talk to."
"Ms. Reed is Sloane's handler," Lindsay snapped, speaking up for the first time that morning. "She can ask any questions about this artefact you need to—"
"The matter is decided, Bob," Dixon told him levelly. "Sydney, Jack—wheels up in five hours."
Lindsay stayed behind to argue, but the rest of the agents dispersed. Sydney exited the briefing room with the rest, and made her way slowly, aimlessly, over to one of the rotunda's massive round columns. She tried very hard not to feel so . . . used. So utterly betrayed.
It made perfect sense—this was Sark, after all. He'd seen an opportunity for profit and he'd taken it. And after a dry spell of two years, of course he'd jumped at the chance to sleeping with her when she threw herself at him. The great part was that he had actually convinced her there might be anything more to it than that. And she had bought it, hook, line, and sinker— had believed that he might, in some small way, give a damn about her. Now that was rich.
A pardon and a hefty reward from the CIA. A prominent position within the Covenant. A few rolls in the sack with Sydney Bristow. If there was one thing Sark had always known how to do, it was how to play the field to his advantage by manipulating all the key players—a trick he'd probably picked up from her mother.
Could he possibly want revenge? Had he been so attached to Allison that he still harbored a grudge against her killer? It didn't seem plausible, but why else go through the elaborate deception of feigning affection, unless to inflict as much pain as possible?
"Hey, Syd?"
She turned and saw, to her surprise, Marshall standing behind her, wringing his hands a little in one of his typical nervous tics. "Hey," she replied, and wondered how many smiles she'd had to force or fake in the last seventy-two hours. Here was another for the tally.
"Look, about this whole, uh, Sark thing . . ." His forehead creased in sympathy. "I wouldn't take it too hard, if I were you. I mean . . . Sark, y'know, you can never tell which way he's gonna . . . and besides, I . . ." He glanced back and forth, then stepped closer. "I think you should know th—"
"Marshall!" Jack's voice, clear and sharp, cut through both Marshall's sentence and his air of confidentiality. Her father was holding a case file and looking, unsuprisingly, impatient.
"I should go," said Marshall regretfully, but he was on the move before he'd even finished speaking. "Yes, Mr. Bristow?"
Oh, well. It wasn't a big deal; she knew what he'd been trying to say anyway. Having been so utterly deceived by Sloane, whom he'd trusted as a beloved employer—perhaps even a friend—Marshall naturally could sympathize with her sense of betrayal. She appreciated the sentiment, but this kind of betrayal was beyond what had happened at SD-6. To face this from Sark, who had played his part so flawlessly, who had—
She couldn't even think of it. All she knew was that when she found Sark, he would have no mercy. And whether she killed him on sight, or if she kept him around long enough for the bastard to feel every inch of the agony he was putting her through . . . well, that would probably depend on what mood she happened to be in at the time. She was going to bring the Covenant crashing down around itself, and if she could help it, Julian Sark would be the very first casualty.