the way we'll go

Everything is different. Everything. Even these offices, the new headquarters of the Joint Task Force. The old Ops Center was dark as a cave. Dixon's office is all light, brushed steel, glass blocks, windows. Somewhere, someone makes sure the zoning commission never allows any buildings to be put up with line of sight on the windows. Sydney knew that her thoughts were going off on tangents like that because she didn't want to face up to what had happened. She kept focussing on the little things, to block out the big ones.

Dixon's office, not that Dixon was director of operations now.

Not how all this could have happened in what felt like overnight to her.

"I want to see my father."

"Your father is in Federal prison, in isolation, Sydney," Dixon said quietly.

She stared at him in complete disbelief. "He's what—?"

Dixon's mouth tightened and he shot a look of pure dislike at the DoJ representative, Lindsay. "Shall I take over, Mr. Dixon?" Lindsay asked, a gleam of anticipation in his eyes. Something about him told Sydney this man had a taken down Jack Bristow and now had someone else in his sights. Marcus Dixon, perhaps. Or Sydney, herself.

"Why don't you do that," Dixon said evenly. Sydney could still read her old partner's eyes and she could see the distrust and wariness there. It told her to tread carefully, to hold her temper and her tongue, that she was dealing with a snake.

Suddenly, she wished for Kendall back from wherever he'd gone.

"Your father is a traitor to this agency, Ms. Bristow," Lindsay said. A thread of pleasure ran through his words. "A traitor to this country. He collaborated with an enemy of the state, aided and abetted the release of a known terrorist."

Sydney shook her head in confusion. "I don't understand. He didn't help my mother escape custody. He wouldn't work with her. That doesn't make any sense." She said it softly, not so much defying Lindsay as expressing bewilderment.

The man had the gall to smile.

Sydney already hated him.

He reminded her of Arvin Sloane.

"It wasn't Derevko, Sydney," Dixon said quietly.

"Then who?"

"Sark."

Sydney looked from one man to the other. Sark? She was waiting for The Twilight Zone theme to start playing.

"Sark works for my mother," she said slowly.

Dixon shook his head. "Four months ago they had a falling out, apparently. She attempted to kill him. Slightly over a week later, he succeeded where she had failed. Your mother's dead, Sydney."

"That bastard," she spat.

"Sydney," Dixon snapped. "All our evidence indicates that Irina Derevko was directly involved in your disappearance and captivity." He shot a glance at Lindsay. "Your father was there. According to his debrief, Sark shot to Derevko. She'd already shot your father and meant to kill him."

Sydney took in a deep breath, staring just past Dixon's shoulder at the wall. She couldn't close her eyes, it would be showing how much this affected her. She didn't want to give this guy Lindsay that much. Her knees were locked. No one could see how weak she suddenly felt.

God. Her mother was dead. Her father was in prison. Her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend, she corrected herself bitterly—had moved on and married. Her best friend was dead and Will—-they said he was alive but no one was saying where he was. Gone. What the hell had happened to her life?

"Why?" she choked out. "Why was my father working with Sark? Why was Sark doing anything for him?"

Lindsay shrugged. "A power play. Sark's assumed control of Derevko's assets and operations, everything we weren't able to shut down."

"And my father?"

"Refused to provide an adequate explanation, leading to his present situation."

Sydney squared her shoulders. "I still want to see him."



He looked older, worn, and that beard was horrid. They had him in manacles, much as they'd once had her mother. She remembered what that felt like from her own experience. Sark would know too, she thought, what a strange thing to have in common with anyone. Chained to a chair? Prisoner of the CIA? Interrogated and tortured? Been there done that and wore out the T-shirt in the wash.

His expression barely shifted.

"Dad."

"Sweetheart."

The warmth was in his voice. Relief and concern in his eyes.

She stood before the glass, not lifting her hand to touch. He couldn't, so she wouldn't.

"They said you worked with Sark."

"It was a calculated risk."

"I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get you out of here. My memory—"

"Sydney, don't worry about me. Take care of yourself," her father interrupted. "You can trust Dixon."

They both knew this meeting was being monitored and analyzed. Experts in kinaesthetics would be reading their facial expressions, their body movements. Others would pick apart every word they said for any secret message passed between them. Psychiatrists would study every inflection, every pause. And they would still miss what Jack had just told her.

She could trust Dixon.

She couldn't trust anyone else.



"Sydney," Dixon said, bending over where she sat at her new desk. She glanced up and smiled at him.

"How are you settling in?"

"Fine," she said. "Marshall's been showing me some of his new gadgets. It's still strange, but I know everyone's doing everything they can...to help me fit back in. Weiss has been great."

She glanced over to where Eric was working at his desk. He'd been a rock since her return, when everything else in her life had dissolved into a maelstrum that threatened to drown her. She didn't want to start relying on him, she couldn't afford to do that, but she was grateful for his presense most of the time. Sometimes, it was just his company, because she had no one else left.

It didn't even matter that she thought he'd been assigned to do this for her. He might be under orders to observe her, even babysit her, but he still was real, a connection to her old life. And Weiss wasn't that good an actor. His concern and friendship were real, even in the context of working for the Agency.

The Agency was a different prospect. No one trusted her. Too many questions, too much history, being a Bristow had abruptly become no more respectable within the agency than being the daughter of Irina Derevko had ever been. She'd been a double in SD-6, maybe she was doubling for someone else now. Intelligence agencies don't like big mysteries, particularly ones surrounding their agents.

She had a desk, briefings, regular counselling sessions meant to 'help' her regain her memories, but she wasn't on the inside anymore.

The only reason the Agency kept her around was to keep an eye on her.

"Good, good," Dixon said, patting her shoulder. "I want you to know, we will find out what happened to you, Sydney. I'm sorry I haven't been able to be there for you as much as I'd have liked to be."

"It's okay. I understand," Sydney said, maintaining her smile. "It's the job."

Director of the Division. It looked good on him, even if the title was only pro tem. She'd at least found out what had happened to Kendall. Her old boss had been cycled out of the Joint Task Force and back to the FBI after sticking his neck out trying to cover for her father. The Glasgow raid that ended in her mother's death had been the last straw. There had been no way to deny Sark's presence and her father's collaboration with him after that. That was when Lindsay showed up, hunting heads.

She'd been right about the man being after Dixon, too.

Which explained why Dixon had stayed away from her since her return. No use providing the snake with fresh ammunition. She'd let everyone assume she accepted that they'd locked her father up. She let them think she saw him as a traitor or that she couldn't forgive that he'd played some part in her mother's death. Slowly, she was persuading everyone to trust her again. She'd thrown a hissy fit at Vaughn in middle of a public corridor, which had been deeply satisfying, and more importantly proved to everyone Sydney Bristow was too messed up to be hiding anything.

Last week, they had discontinued the twenty-four hour a day surveillance. Now, they just had a bug and tracer on her car, which she had modified to send a false signal using one of Marshall's toys, carefully palmed during his happy show and tell tour of his new lab and later returned.

Dixon smiled back, but the look in his eyes was serious.

"Listen, after your father was 'detained', I had to accompany an Agency search team when they went through his apartment. They left a mess. I salvaged a box of family photographs, along with your high school year book," Dixon said. "There were some pictures of your grandparents. I saved them. If you'd like them, I brought them in with me."

"I'd like that." Truth. She had nothing of her life two years ago, no personal belongings, no mementos. The fire that destroyed the home she'd shared with Francie had wiped all that away. Nothing left, not a knick-knack, not a book, none of her clothes, not even the stupid spider plant she'd bought when she first moved away from home to her first year college dorm. Home, the house where she had been a child was gone too, even her father's apartment was gone. It had been another shock, realizing she had no place to actually live, suddenly. For now, she was rooming with Weiss, using his spare bedroom, which satisfied the CIA's desire to keep tabs on her, but at least got her out of the only other alternative, a bugged safehouse.



She'd thought maybe that Dixon had more for her than the photographs, but apparently not. Leafing through the yearbook had been embarrassing and painful after a while. She'd laughed a few times with Weiss, but settled into silence as she looked at the pictures of her childhood that her father had saved.

Weiss was kind enough to let her alone. He switched on the television to ESPN and began watching something, leaving Sydney alone on the couch.

The pain was worse when she found the wedding photos. She would have stopped then if she hadn't still been hoping Dixon had left something for her with the pictures.

The pictures on the bottom were of her grandparents. Nothing else except for some shots of relatives she'd never met, dead before her birth. She almost put them away unexamined. Then a uniform in a black and white picture caught her eye.

Sydney didn't lift it out of the box. She didn't want to draw Weiss' attention from the basketball game. Her stillness made Weiss look up though.

"You okay?"

She managed a shaky smile. "Yeah, sure. It's just—-you know—their wedding pictures."

Weiss frowned then flushed, realizing she meant her father and Irina Derevko and all the freight of that history.

"Sorry."

"They looked so happy," Sydney murmured, lowering her eyes, looking at the picture that wasn't of her parents at all. Weiss went back to his game, embarrassed. The best lies were the truth.

She didn't know who the man in the picture was, just who he looked like. Blond hair, blue eyes, mischief in his smile, she knew that face entirely too well. She flipped the photo over. A faded copperplate hand had inscribed on the back Captain Alan Bristow, RAF and the date of his death.

Below that, fresh ink in a scrawl she recognized as Dixon's, was the old SD-6 code for a rendezvous location and a time.



Slipping Weiss hadn't been hard. He didn't share the rest of the Agency's paranoia over her. She just told him she needed to go out to the drug store and get some things with an embarrassed smile and he backed right off. It always worked. Men would be more comfortable finding out you were shot than that you had your period.

The meeting with Dixon was hardly more than a brush pass, as he handed her a thick, battered file and said, "You wanted to know why they worked together. I don't know if the phone number is still good."



She read the file from start to finish, sitting at a booth in the back of a Denny's, ignoring the food she'd ordered to keep the waitress from bothering her, and steadily drinking too much coffee.

All that coffee on an empty stomach, that was why she felt sick.

Not the revelation that her father had been involved with someone after her mother's 'death'.

Not that her mother had killed that someone.

Not that Sark been as used and manipulated as she had been.

Not the details of his childhood in the Kiev Project School.

Not that he was her half-brother.

Dixon had scrawled a phone number on blank business card. She held it in her hand and stared at it.

After a while, it seemed stupid not to try it.



She hadn't believed he would show.

She hadn't needed to slip any tails, just told Weiss she was going to check out a couple of apartments after lunch, and programmed the tracer on her car to reflect that, before driving the the rendezvous point. Lindsay might still be suspicious of her, but the Agency wasn't wasting manpower and hours on watching her regularly anymore. She thought Sark had picked the public venue because he knew she wouldn't do anything too violent with witnesses around.

"Ms. Bristow."

"Sark."

Nothing displayed on his handsome face except that damnable amusement. They were standing along the edge of the beach in the middle of the afternoon, as obvious as two ravens in the middle of a snow field, in their dark suits, sunglasses, and attitude.

She was already sweating. Sark managed to look like he had ice-water in his veins. She wanted to shake him.

"Should I call you Alexander?"

He took off his sunglasses.

"Since I doubt your father told you anything from the cell he's currently occupying, I have to assume Director Pro Tem Dixon provided you with that information," he said. He was watching her carefully, probably wondering if she meant to shoot him for killing her mother. His eyes were still the blue of glacier ice, but darker than she remembered, most of the laughter gone.

"He gave me the file."

Sark sighed and turned to look out over the Pacific. He twirled the ear piece of his sunglasses absently. "I wasn't aware he had—"

"The one Sloane gave my—" Sydney stopped. My father.

Your father.

Ours.

Cue someone to step in and say this was all a tremendously bad practical joke.

Sark cocked his head. "So you know," he said thoughtfully.

Sydney nodded and a lock of her hair fell loose. She shoved it behind her ear in irritation. Something in Sark's expression flinched and for the first time she saw a resemblance to her—their father. She'd seen that reaction in his eyes when she was a child. Only after meeting her mother did she understand that that move reminded him of 'Laura'.

It obviously reminded Sark of Irina, too. He wasn't untouched by events, no matter how he tried to act like it.

She took her sunglasses off, folded them, and put them in her purse.

"Let's walk," she said, stepping out of her shoes.

Sark raised an eyebrow, then followed suit.

The sand was hot beneath her feet, gritty between her toes, as they wandered down the beach. Down closer to the tide line, the air was cooler, a sea breeze fluttered at them. An unspoken agreement kept them silent until they stopped as one and faced each other again.

"I can't believe you're my brother," Sydney said.

Sark laughed softly.

"I find it rather disconcerting, myself," he admitted. He looked at her directly. "I thought you would be more...disturbed...by this revelation."

Sydney shrugged.

"Two years ago, maybe, but—" she shrugged again and gave him a weak smile, "a half-brother isn't so bad in the scheme of things compared to the rest of my life, you know?" Even if he is a cold-blooded terrorist presently number eight on the CIA's most wanted list. Not as high as her mother had been; she wondered if he'd be insulted if she mentioned that. There had actually been more than just the file Sloane had given her father in the package Dixon passed to her. He'd included the debriefing and mission reports on missions in Stockholm and Glasgow.

Maybe part of her still thought she should hate him, but lately she hadn't been able to summon any strong emotions. He'd shot her mother. So what? Her mother had been directly responsible for shaping Sark into someone who could and would do just that. She'd shot Irina once herself, as well as been shot by her.

There was really something wrong about her family life. Mom's dead. No, Mom's alive and a spy. Mom's in prison. I'm dead. No, I'm back. Now Mom's dead again and Dad's in prison. Never mind the Rambaldi prophecy crap. Sark had probably wanted to run screaming into the night when he found out he was related to her.

She watched a pair of gulls wheel and float out beyond the breakwater for a moment.

It was horribly ironic that Sark, who had been her enemy, had gone on looking for her, believing she must be alive, when Vaughn, her ally and lover, had given up so damn easily. She wasn't going to think abou that, though. Thinking about Vaughn was something she tried not to do, since coming back from the dead.

"Maybe I just hit overload already," she said. "And, it could be worse."

Sark shook his head. "How?"

Sydney laughed raggedly and offered, "We could have slept together."

Sark shuddered and took a step back.

"Hey, what—"

"Irina ordered me to seduce you, did you know that?" Sark said fast, in low, tight voice. "You were already involved with your handler though, so I never really tried it on."

Sydney swallowed hard. "Well," she said slowly, "there's one good thing."

"Yes," Sark agreed quickly.

They both stared out at the ocean, coming to terms with that little revelation. In a very weird way, it made Sydney feel closer to Sark. He'd been just a manipulated as she had. Perhaps under all the cool armor, he was just as angry and confused and hurt as she was.

"Alexander."

"Sydney."

Sark turned and watched her steadily.

She met his eyes.

"He got you out."

Of course, he knew exactly who she meant.

"Yes."

Sydney licked her lips. She didn't have any contacts, any pull left anywhere. All she had was Sark and the hope that he felt more than amusement for their situation. Dixon couldn't help her; Lindsay was watching him too closely. Sending her to Sark was all her old partner had been able to do.

God, she was screwed.

"Help me get him out."

She watched him, looking for some clue to what he thought. Sark's blue eyes gave nothing away as he thought about it. At least, she hoped he was thinking about it. It wasn't hard to see him as a Bristow anymore. Their father hid his thoughts behind the same reserved mask.

Abruptly, Sark nodded once.

"Yes."

"Yes?"

Sark offered her a quirky smile. Sydney found herself smiling back widely at him, suddenly exhilarated.

"I told you we were destined to work together."

Sark shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, the smile on his lips widening. That wicked light she remembered flared in his eyes. It invited her to share his amusement and pleasure at the turn events had taken. Despite herself, Sydney did.

Fate's a bitch.