lying, next to him

She didn't think of him that often, and not always with fondness or regret, but always with a sense of melancholy.

She had a picture of him, somewhere. But not one of them together, that hadn't been possible, while living a double life and walking a tightrope between SD-6 and the CIA. He'd been her handler and they had kept their meetings secret, their growing feelings secret, from everyone. Their relationship had been a direct contravention of CIA regulations.

They'd tried though, tried to love each other and carve out a life, after the Alliance was brought down.

Neither of them could shake free of the past though. How could they live normal lives, when they were who they were, what they were? The very things Sydney longed most to escape were what had brought Vaughn into her life, her into his. The Great Game, the Russians called it. It had ensnared them both before they were even born, drawn them into the same life that their parents had chosen.

When they were together, they always had to pretend. In time, the lies they told themselves grew so heavy the relationship simply crumpled.

It wasn't like that with Sark.

Sark had no past. He made no demands, had no expectations, and passed no judgments. Sark believed in nothing. He was smooth and cool and hard as a river stone. He was empty and he didn't hurt.

Sydney had had enough of hurting.

The first time she slept with him she'd cried later, in the bathroom, sitting on the cold tile floor, because there was no going back. She imagined their faces if they knew what she'd done: Vaughn, Will, Marshall, Dixon, her father. None of them would have understood that he took it all away. For that little while twined next to Sark's lithe body, she was just a body, feeling without thought, freed of guilt and sorrow, responsibility and revenge.

He hadn't asked any questions when she came to his hotel room.

Hadn't offered any protest when she left his bed afterward.

In the end there were no excuses.

She slept with Sark because she wanted him and he wanted her. They made no promises to one another. The next night might see them working against each other or with each other. Either way, the time spent in his bed was time out of their real lives. Nothing they did there effected anything else.

She didn't want it any other way.

She'd put the picture of Vaughn away. She couldn't look at him.

Weeks later she saw Sark again, on some mission for Irina. He'd been working for her mother's organization the first time they had clashed. But he'd always belonged to himself. He slipped away before she could turn her gunsight on him and she continued with her own mission.

In an airport hotel, waiting for the morning flight back to LA, he knocked on her door and she let him in. They didn't speak aloud, only with hands and lips and skin on skin. She loved the way he touched her, moved in her, looked at her and saw all of her.

She didn't love him.

She didn't.

They parted the next morning without words, only the slow trail of his fingers along her bare arm and neck and cheek. Then he was gone, while she took a shower before dressing and getting on her plane. During debrief, she conscientiously reported sighting Sark while in the course of her own mission and his escape. She didn't say anything else about him. She didn't say what she thought about the mission either, which had involved compromising a businessman in order to blackmail him into feeding classified information to the CIA. She hadn't liked it. There was nothing honorable about what she done and it left her feeling dirty.

Every day she worked for the CIA she found herself believing in it less and less.

She was risking her life on these missions and when she looked around her she wondered why.

Sark and she faced each other again in Macao, in a computer control room above a Triad controlled casino.

Sydney had been sent to covertly destroy the casino surveillance records that were saved on a separate, non-networked server. All she had to do was slip in a disc provided by Marshall, let it run, and take it away again afterward.

Sark was already there when she came in.

"I like the outfit," he said with deprecatory smile, of her ao dai with the sinuous golden dragons embroidered over scarlet silk. Then he tried to take her head off with a kick. Sydney spun away and slammed her elbow into his sternum.

"Armani always looks good on you," she joked back. Then they separated and considered each other, looking for weaknesses.

"You know," Sark observed, "the possibility exists that we are not even here for the same objective."

"Yeah, right," Sydney replied, but she couldn't help smiling as he raised an eyebrow, that cocky smile giving him the look of a devilish angel. He got off on the combat, the competition. When she was honest with herself, she knew she did too. No one matched her move for move the way Sark did, whether they were on a mission or in bed.

"No one could beat us if we worked together," he said.

Sydney looked at him, blond and lethal and laughing, and thought about it for the first time. Not the offer, he'd made it before, but suddenly saying yes wasn't unthinkable. Why did she stay with the CIA? They'd betrayed their promises to her, promises that she could return to a real life outside the shadows of the Game once SD-6 and the Alliance were destroyed. Kendall had roped her back in with threats and the prospect of catching Sloane. Her parents were no better; Irina, of course, was the master liar, but Jack Bristow came in a close second. And there was Vaughn, who lied to her without words, and was probably back with his little, innocent Alice. What loyalty did she really owe them? Even Will had become a stranger in the aftermath of Francie's death, immersing himself in his analyst's job and cleaving to the rules like they would save him, while Dixon didn't care about anything anymore.

Sark looked at her and his eyes widened. "You're really thinking about it, aren't you?"

"Why? Aren't you serious?"

He looked at her intently.

"Deadly serious, Agent Bristow, but some how I never dreamed you would genuinely consider this."

"I haven't said yes," Sydney said.

"Yet."

A boyish look of delight lit his blue eyes. Sydney didn't have any warning as he dived sidewise, one hand swiping up a CD from the desk. The door behind her slammed open and someone shouted in Chinese. Sark rolled behind the desk and away from Sydney’s leap after him, the disk disappearing into his suit and a matte black pistol appearing in his hand. Sydney ducked as the dark hollow of the muzzle tracked past her face and Sark fired twice. Two thuds behind her told her he'd hit his targets and that security was about to lock down the casino. They were out of time.

"Go," Sark said, with a nod toward the back exit.

Sydney went, palming a ball of C4 against the side of the server. She jabbed a pinhead sized detonator into the putty-like explosive. With a flick of her fingernail she armed and set the detonator, silently thanking Marshall for the back-up tech he'd provided for the mission. Shortly, the computer room would be reduced to rubble and the surveillance records destroyed.

"Three minutes," she said as she bolted out the door.

She didn't know how Sark would get out, but was confident the arrogant bastard had an exit strategy already mapped out.
She rendezvoused with Dixon on the casino floor, snuggling up to him at a roulette table, her hand on his biceps tapping out a warning in code. They ducked out in the screaming crowd that fled after the muffled explosion and subsequent fire. He gave her a worried look, asking if she was all right. Sydney flashed a smile a him and assured him everything had gone well. She didn't bother mentioning Sark's presence. She'd gone radio silent once she started for the surveillance room and Dixon had no way of knowing the mercenary had been there too. Later she didn't put it in her report either, though she knew he'd got what he wanted.

It wasn't her first lie. It was the first one she told for her own reasons.

A slip of paper in her jewelry box told her the name of another hotel and a room number that night. She found it when she took her earrings off. The thin, transparent paper dissolved under the acids of her skin oils after an instant, but she'd already memorized the number and name. Sark smiled at her when he opened the door. A moment later his hand was in her loose hair, carding through it with clear enjoyment. His eyes, his expression, his touch, all were gentle. Sydney leaned into him and they didn't say anything. They never spoke, as though any word would break the spell.

A week later she was in Hamburg, seducing a fat burgher and lifting the security codes to the research lab of an innovative electronics company. Within a few hours she had gone from prostitute chic and a blond wig to a black jumpsuit and balaclava as she slipped into the company's vault and copied the plans for a non-silicon based computer chip. The experimental model of the chip had been lifted only days before, but the CIA would be happy with just the plans. She wondered if Sark were the one who had stolen the chip, but it didn't matter much to her.

The explosion that tore the company's lab and factories to pieces put them out of business. It would have killed several people if Sydney hadn't disregarded her orders and phoned a warning to the police to evacuate the buildings. Collateral casualties, Kendall had said when she objected during briefing. Unfortunate but unavoidable and he didn't need to explain this to her again, did he? She was a professional. It was what she did.

She couldn't see any difference between what she did and Sark did, except who they did it for and how much they were paid.

The lines had been so clear once. Now everything was gray.

Vaughn never asked her what was wrong, though he watched her in the briefings sometimes, forehead wrinkling in that way she'd found so endearing. She thought he didn't ask because he didn't want to know that her disaffection with the CIA threatened to overwhelm her ideals. She'd learned to hide her disgust and contempt while acting as a double agent, pretending to like and respect Arvin Sloane while doing her utmost to see him brought down. It wasn't difficult to conceal how little she cared for any of the missions the CIA assigned her or the people who assigned them. Maybe Vaughn saw that, saw through her because he'd known her then, but he didn't ask.

She looked in his eyes across the table during the Hamburg debrief and omitted her call to the police. His eyes were still green and filled with regret when Kendall congratulated her on a job well done.

Her father was stone faced and stoic as always. Sydney couldn't match that locked down look and settled for mimicking one of Irina's knowing, mysterious smiles. She even batted her lashes coyly in order to keep from unsettling Kendall. Reminding any of them her mother was Irina Derevko, wanted terrorist, didn't seem wise. Her father gave her a hard look before leaving the conference room. His disapproval didn't touch her.

Sitting at a café within walking distance of her apartment, sipping a glass of wine and watching the passing traffic outside days later, she neared a decision. It should have been momentous, instead it was more like a recognition of something that has been eroding inside her for years. She had to make a choice now. She must either re-commit herself to the CIA or repudiate it and perhaps join Sark. The decision was hers alone. Only Sark even guessed she had it to make. No one else saw that.
He knew her.

Despite that, she acknowledged, he'd never tried to use that instinctual recognition between them to manipulate her. Fooled her, fought her, taunted and tempted her, but he hadn't played her. Not the way Sloane and later the CIA and her mother and father all played her, pulling her strings, using her trust in them against her. Sark never asked for trust and would probably laugh at the thought since he'd certainly never give it.

It was just another thing she liked about him.

Okay, she had to admit it. She liked Sark.

She didn't love him.

She didn't.

Only the way they were together, when they were silent and urgent and offering the only comfort their kind could accept, guarding hearts and giving bodies. She loved that.

He was right. They'd make a great team. Unbeatable. If only she could imagine some reason, some goal, some thing to fight for and win. She couldn't see much purpose to any of it, anymore. She was tired and she'd walk away if she could, but that's the only thing she'd never be allowed to do.

She was still thinking about that when he sat down across from her. He was a little more casual than usual, in a white linen shirt and tan pants, a sand colored jacket worn to hide a gun somewhere. No tie. His hair was more disarrayed than ever, the way it would look if he'd been driving in a convertible with the top down or in bed after her hands had been in it. The late afternoon sun, filtered through the LA pollution, tinted him in sepia and gold, the colors of a Byzantine icon.

The waitress arrived before either of them speak to each other and Sark ordered a glass of something expensive and exclusive, but not the deep red Petrus he often drank. This wine was pale, an autumnal color, with the late day's sun glowing through it and shattering through the crystal goblet. Sark had long fingers, they were graceful and deceptive; his hands were stronger than they look. He could have been a pianist or a painter. Sydney idly considered her own hands. They were deceptive too, slender, the nails of only modest length, clear polished. No sign of blood stained her hands, any more than it did Sark's.

Sark wasn't troubled by her silence. He savored his wine and considered the world beyond the café's window, much way the Sydney had earlier. People were leaving work, the traffic thickening. The smell of hot asphalt and baked concrete mixed with the dust-dry scent of grass covered hills beyond the city and the salted perfume of the Pacific to the west. A snatch of music escaped a passing car, something with a deep bass thud, while somewhere inside the café a piece of china shattered and someone cursed sharply. Some how these sounds only deepened the quiet between them.

She thought if she'd been sitting with Vaughn, he would have forced himself to say something, to make her say something. She preferred Sark's quiet.

A single tear wound down her cheek. Sark's eyes followed it. He didn't brush it away. Not even with a gesture would he offer false comfort. He was uncompromising in his view of the world and expected as much from her. Whatever ideals he had ever held, if he’d ever had them, he'd put away in favor of clear-headed survival. Anything less would have destroyed him as it had been slowly destroying her. Irina had told her to get out the Game after taking down SD-6. Good advice she should have taken, but it was too late now. What she was had devoured who she might have been; she'd become a stranger, unanchored from past or future.

Sark watched her with pale, predator's eyes, patiently waiting. Sark lived in the moment. He'd cut himself free. Sydney wanted to do that.

She took another sip of her wine, stared out the window. It was late enough now some of the cars on the street had their headlights on and when they passed shadows slid across her face. The sky to the west was still pale along the horizon, where the sea rolled away over the edge of the world. But that was another illusion. There was no edge, no dividing line, the world was round. There was no border between the Sydney who was loyal to her country and believed in the CIA and the one watching the sunset with an enemy of the state, a killer wanted internationally, a man who she slept with occasionally.

Curious, she asked, "Would you want me to continue working from within the CIA?"

Sark shrugged. "You don't want to, Sydney."

"No, I don't."

"Then that's the answer."

The answer to her question or his, she wondered? Both? She shrugged too.

"All right."

When the wine was gone, Sark rose and held out his hand. Sydney took it.

He had a car waiting, a black Mercedes sports coupe with an open top. He handed her into it with that careless courtesy he couldn't seem to shake even when he was pulling the trigger. Her smile made him raise an eyebrow.

"Have I amused you?"

She shook her head.

Once in the driver's seat, Sark inquired neutrally, "Anything you can't leave behind?"

"Let's just go."

It was night now, but the air still held the heat of the day. She liked the convertible though, liked the breath of the city more than the sterile air conditioning of the CIA. She held her hair in one hand to keep the wind from whipping it into tangles. Sark drove the way he did everything, with efficient flair. He had a passport for her with her face and another alias when they reached the airport. Their destination was Switzerland. Sydney knew they'd move on from there.

She wondered what Vaughn would look like when he learned she'd gone. She knew her father wouldn't show anything. It should have bothered her more that her defection would hurt them. She felt sorry it didn't, but it was better not feeling. It was what she wanted.

Sark surprised her when he touched her shoulder.

"Don't look back."

She didn't.

She thinks of him sometimes though, Vaughn; thinks of his face.

She had a picture of him somewhere, but she left it behind. She doesn't miss him. Even thinking of him seems wrong. She doesn't love him any more. She doesn't love anyone. Lying beside her lover, she dismisses the past, and reaches for Sark. He meets her, wordless.

She doesn't love him.