Eyes Without a Face

Title: Eyes Without a Face
Rating: 18+ (sexual situations, violence)
Summary: After Sydney’s disappearance and Sark’s imprisonment at the end of S2, Sark desperately tries to recall their “relationship” from his cell—the only thing keeping him sane in his glass cage.

Timeline: Obviously, AU in S3. This story supposes that Sark and Sydney were previously involved in S2, before Sydney disappeared.

Disclaimer: Don’t own these characters and never have; they are the exclusive property of J.J. and Bad Robot.

Author commentary: I thought I'd post this somewhere, because...why not? And while I've written stuff for other fandoms, I've never written anything for Alias. You don't have to be gentle, though. Critques, criticisms, and feedback are always, always appreciated.


Prologue: Sympathy for the Devil

For in the sleep of death what dreams may come…?

She had nervous hands. A pretty, expressive face, but nervous and twitchy hands that were continually in motion—much like the woman herself. Maybe not a woman, though. Not in so many words.

He studied her in the sweet, whispering light of dusk—his Scottish nanny, he remembered, had always called it ‘the gloaming’—and thought that, no, she was still a girl really. In thoughts and feelings and ideas, she was so pitifully naïve; she was an exposed neck in a world full of cutthroats and the best part was that she didn’t realize it. Her unrelenting innocence in a world full of destruction and evil was refreshing to him, though he wasn't sure he would be able to admit that to anyone.

Sydney Bristow. Beautiful, unsophisticated, terribly young.

She caught him looking at her, even though he had been positive he was being smooth in his observation of her. She swept her hair out of her face probably just so she could move her hands again. A slight blush tinted the top of her rounded cheekbones before her eyes slid away from him again, an anxious set curling around her mouth. It was unnatural for her face, that look. She had a face that deserved laughter and smiles and lazy Sunday mornings.

“Stop it.” Her voice was soft, almost disembodied from her, but there was no real bite to the words.

“Why? Am I making you nervous?” His smile in return was quick, a flashing and winking diamond held up to the light.

He’d dragged out the words until they were a parody of themselves, just to see what she would say. He thought he already knew, was anticipating a slicing, ripping sartorial comeback that would signify their usual exchange—the eternal battle. He light, she dark.

But that was… No, not right. That was wrong. It was the other way around, wasn’t it? She light, he dark.

He was just about to make a comment about it when she opened her mouth—rosebud pink and sweet—and her eyes fixed themselves on him, a dark, drenched brown in the shadowy light.

“No, you were right.” Her hand made vague, fluttering motions towards him. And it was then that he noticed the blood that spilled over the cream white of her skin, like a scarlet brand upon otherwise untainted flesh.

“It’s dark where they keep me.” She leaned in, close enough for him to see every inch of her face as pure as day. Her mouth brushed his, once. “Can’t you see?”

“I don’t…”

She grabbed his hand. It was glacier cold, even the blood against his hand was old and long dried. The longing came over him for it to still be wet and sticky, so he could do something to stop the bleeding, though he was too late. He was always too late, it seemed. Through his desperation, he could hear the tremulous heartbeat beneath her fragile chest; even though she was bleeding (had bleed), holding her was vaguely erotic—all those old feelings coming back to the surface.

“Can’t you see?” Her voice was a pleading whisper and she gripped his hand tighter. The skin around her eyes was gone, leaving darkened, empty sockets; blood seeped out of the corners of her mouth.

The world outside degenerated into absolute darkness. The hand that held his was skeletal, fleshless fingers.

“Sark?”

The train car vanished. He saw her face, staring up at him from the middle of pitch-black water with her hair swirling all around her pale, corpse still body; her falling back against a wall, blood all over her and a gun still in her hand; him watching her walk down a white hallway, but her face was different and her hair was lighter, harshly unnatural.

When she turned to look at him, her eyes were dead and blank and huge, dominating her angular face. Her voice, when she spoke, was a husky, slow murmur that sent little chills of unease down his spine.

“You think this is the end.”

The wide expanse of desert opened up before him, suddenly. It was a desolate sea of sand and wind and harsh sun that stretched out as far as the eye could see. In the distance, she stood whole and wildly familiar, though different. There was something in the way she stood, the slight droop of shoulders and tilt of head…

Her face was hidden in shadow, even though there were no trees or clouds to give shade.

He felt, rather than heard, her voice this time.

But you’ve only just begun.

When he woke, writhing and gasping for breath in the dark, he wasn’t alone. The moment he opened his eyes he could feel the watchful guards staring at him through the glass; they were the judges, constantly looking, weighing and, ultimately, finding him wanting.

“Sydney.” Still, the whisper tore from his throat. It was a ragged plea, a supplication to any god who might be listening and the same name that’d been screaming inside his head ever since they’d told him that she was dead.

Dead. Swallowed by the earth as if she had never, ever been.

“Sydney."

The guards would hear that, of course. Their ears and eyes were everywhere when it concerned him, so jealous of his time and anxious for his attempted escape were they. But desperation kept watch over him like a raven on his shoulder in the dark, marking time.

He didn’t care who heard. After all, she was gone.

*~*~*
 
Excelent beginning. I'm completely intrigued. Please add me to the PM list...and write your little heart out, I can't wait for more. ^_^ (y)
 
Thanks to all who replied: SydnVaughn4eva, Secret agent SJ, toxic karma, winter_snow, Spu023, sexcivaughn14, & acting_chica. You all deserve plenty of Sark and/or Sarkney loving in your lives--your comments make my day. :D

Thanks again to Vona, whose great help and additions are are absolutely priceless.

Chapter One: The Serpent’s Eye

You'll never touch - these things that I hold
The skin of my emotions lies beneath my own
You'll never feel the heat of this soul
My fever burns me deeper than I've ever shown - to you.


He remembered the first time: the first time that he’d seen her and it had mattered.

With the perfect sort of clarity that punctuated a solitary, restrictive existence, Sark had learned to hone his senses to a keen, fine edge that could keep his mind as sharp and dangerous as the business edge of a razor. It was useful for life in a cage; they didn’t allow him books or television or conversation; he had his mind and imagination to sustain him for the long forever that he was here.

And if he thought of her more than anything else…could one blame him?

He could think of his parents, those casually cruel early memories that made an Irish boarding school look like heaven placed on earth. He could think of his years with an equally cruel, capricious parent figure who’d easily betrayed him when it had suited her—and had left him to rot in CIA custody on a whim, with no thought to his well-being. He could think of his business dealings and associates, the complex tangle of politics that made up the international crime scene.

Should it be a surprise then that he thought almost exclusively of her? They were the most horrible, beautiful memories he had, like the intricate designs that cracks in the ice made. Eventually, they’d cause the ice to break to pieces, to shatter, but…

Despair caught him, its grip alternately black and desperately sweet. His fingers curled into his palm; he could feel the dull bite of future cuts and didn’t even care. After all, he had more scars than he could count, so why would a few more matter?

A simple truth, but he had to have something to keep him from the dull, daily humiliations of captivity—and it was indeed the little things that scarred and ripped through dignity the worst. His showers were witnessed daily by no less than a cotillion of five guards and he wasn’t allowed to shave himself; a thin, dour old man came in to do the job and buzz his hair to the quick. The man’s hand shook the entire time; last year, he’d very nearly succeeded in slitting Sark’s throat from ear to ear.

Forks and knives were forbidden. Every piece of food he was given could be eaten by hand.

Occasionally, they had music. It was always classical—Bach or Beethoven or Mozart or, sometimes, that dreamy, sensual lullaby of Pachlebel’s. One time it had been Handel, around Christmas time, and Sark had secretly wanted to scream in joy at the sheer change of it all.

And all the while, he had never forgotten how far he had fallen. He wasn’t allowed to forget. There were daily barrages of degradation; he was more a creature of despair and hell now than he’d been at his morally depraved worst.

He curled into the one, threadbare blanket they allowed him and knew that this was the worst feeling in the world: that he deserved every second of this exile from Eden and that, try as he might; he had forgotten the exact timbre of her voice.

He was losing her.

The eternal problem: the more he forgot, the more he needed to hold on.

Two years earlier, London

The sky was a smudged, faded gray of a hazy London morning in December. SD-6 still breathed through its poisoned lungs and next to him in the hotel bed was a woman with whom he was finding himself falling steadily in love with , far beyond the trappings of ‘maybe’ and the carelessness of lust.

She had a husky, slow voice that was full of coldness—for him. “I don’t know.”

Her tone was a razorblade of disinterest. Trust, love and the fact that she seemingly felt neither for him was a constant source of frustration. He’d been so careful to invite her in, to let her utterly dominate him and she treated him as carelessly as a toy.

She left him out in the rain. She left him outside for weeks at a time to rust, to rot.

“It’s not permanent. They wouldn’t have you do it if it was.” An untruth, maybe, but he kissed her shoulder; let his fingers trail gently down her arm. “I wouldn’t have you do it if it was dangerous.”

“She’s not very pretty. I don’t like the look of her.”

The words were petulant but she was not—she had a clinical tone to her voice that brooked no emotions whatsoever. He couldn’t help but thinking: any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. It was maddening and erotic at the same time; it was truly disgusting how much her indifference turned him on.

“Allison,” he said her name only because he knew she loved the sound of it, “it’s not as if I won’t take care of you.”

He wanted to shake her. “You know that.”

She looked at him then, the sheets tucked primly over her breasts. “Do I? And would you, Julian? Would you protect me?”

Her whisper, so soft and jagged, under her breath, “Unto death?”

He flinched, slightly. God, the implications of it all. She knew it, too, which gave her a pleasure that would make most label her ‘sadistic’.

“You know I would.”

He knew for a fact she wasn’t asking for a sentimental or romantic notion—that wasn’t Allison at all. It had to be for a practical reason. Allison possessed one of the most subtle and shard-sharp minds he’d ever encountered. Her blood was ice and her manipulations hidden behind vacuous eyes that revealed nothing.

He’d even joked about it once with her. Animal eyes, he’d called them.

He couldn’t tell if she’d been amused, but she rarely was.

“That’s nice.” The blankets fell away from her; she was up and in the bathroom. He could hear the muted strains of water from the shower.

He waited there until she came out; he watched her dress. She had a slow, sensual style that had nothing to do with him watching. She took little notice of him, regarding him with the same calculating indifference that she afforded everyone—that she tolerated him simply because she couldn’t afford to kill him.

She took out a cigarette, lit it, and managed to make it look graceful. Her hair was loose, long and her face was like something Boticelli might have painted: beautifully smooth, coffee skin with the most gorgeous features Sark had ever seen in a woman, bar none. Her cat-slanted eyes were dark and heavy-lidded, full of half-repressed shadows.

“I’ll do it.”

She waited a beat; they watched each other. Her hand movements—flicking ash—were liquid, reptilian.

Her voice, dead.

“If you want me to.”

*~*~*

He traveled to Los Angeles to do business.

Watching Francine Calfo was just one of the trip’s interesting, little benefits.

She was in her restaurant, sitting at one of the tables in the front window. A candle, red as the blood she would soon bleed, was lit in front of her and she was eating something sloppily; spaghetti, maybe, but he couldn’t tell for certain being too far away.

She was alone.

Standing on the sidewalk, under the pretext of waiting for a bus, he studied her with a critical eye. Allison had said she wasn’t pretty and she had been right, as usual. Francine Calfo wasn’t pretty at all or beautiful or any of those desirable adjectives society likes to attach to its chosen children.

She was interesting at best; she had the sort of face that could become uniquely attractive with a smile. She wasn’t ugly, but Sark couldn’t begin to imagine Allison wearing this face. It was too charming and innocent by half; Sark found himself at loathing to imagine Allison’s hard, brittle eyes staring out of such a sweet, unsuspecting face.

The one thing about Francine that was beautiful: her smile.

He was almost sorry, then, that she had to die. Because the smile that was so heartbreakingly lovely would never show again and the Francine Calfo innocence would be gone.

Almost. He watched her for a few more moments and had resolved to turn away when…

She brushed by him, from the other side. He ducked his head in reflex and half-turned away, but she didn’t appear to notice him anyway. She was already in the restaurant when he dared turn back, putting herself as deftly on display in the window as her naïve, little friend.

Look at me, look at me.

She didn’t see him. She didn’t expect to, he understood. But that was what separated spies from the rest of the free world—spies were never off guard or surprised by something not quite in its place. They were vigilant and they knew and if she was a born-and-breed spy like everyone seemed to think, she would have picked him out of a crowd of millions.

But he knew what Sydney Bristow didn’t know. She had a life. She wasn’t bitter and chained to her desk like her father or obsessed to the point of fanaticism like her mother. She had friends who adored her and worshipped her every move. She had a favorite television show and she shopped at the grocery store. She had soft edges that she thought were hard but were barely even scratched.

Was it wrong of him to want to be the one who she cut herself on? He couldn’t help the cat-like smile of satisfaction that curled over his mouth. The thought was like a drug and he knew that if he had his way, he would be the one to sear those soft edges away. He would be the one to make her a weapon, a keen-edged blade that glittered in the light for show but was killer underneath it all.

Like Allison. Allison had no soft edges. She never had.

He moved to the shadows and watched them. They were adorable together; he could recognize that and still plot their downfall in I-Max, Technicolor glory. And even though watching them was like looking at an exhibit in a museum (The Perfect Bonding Moment Captured), he could still appreciate the sophistication of his employer’s plans.

It took an hour and three glasses of wine, but they left together in a flurry of frilly winter coats and feminine laughter.

Sark, still in the half-light of an alley, watched them go. He rather thought this one moment was like something on the television: he knew, without a doubt, that this was the last time he would ever see Francine Calfo alive.

Over the din and out of cursory interest, he was able to pick out bits of their conversation.

“I just wish he wouldn’t…you know? It’s like he purposely tries…Sydney?”

She looked back for a second, playfully and abstractly. Faint traces of amusement lined the flush of her cheeks and, with the sort of irresistible quality of coincidence, her eyes found his in the night-time crowd.

Time stopped. The blood drained out of her face. Some lanky-haired businessman jostled him roughly, but Sark barely even felt it.

I’ll see you later, he mouthed the words to her and knew that even with the distance she could see perfectly what he’d said. In response, her arm wrapped protectively around Francine and her eyes narrowed in the sort of subtle warning he doubted she’d recognize as inherited from her mother.

He raised an eyebrow—elegantly, he hoped—and watched her turn away to keep walking.

He didn’t follow her. He’d seen what was in her eyes.

The thin, quavering light of fear.

*~*~*

It was much later that he’d concluded his business and ended up tucked snugly at the Beverly Wilshire, dreams of ambition and that elusive something more dancing in his head. He’d taken his tie off, his coat, and was staring blankly at the ceiling waiting for morning when the phone rang beside his bed.

He picked up, with disinterest.

“Hello?”

“Did you see her?” Her voice was slight, breathless, and purely Allison.

“Yes.” He wondered how much to tell her. They’d discussed the possibility of him spying of Francine back in London and Allison had actually shown more emotion in that five-minute exchange than in the entire time he’d known her.

“She’s prettier in real life than in pictures. I think you’d approve.”

“But will you?”

He stared at one of hands and unconsciously stroked the scar at the base of his thumb. Her question was filled with trembling trepidation. If he hadn’t known her, he wouldn’t have been able to detect anything in that enigmatic voice but, because he did, he heard the slight tinge of fear in her that he’d never noticed before.

Either she was finally beginning to break down for him or she was playing him brilliantly.

It annoyed him to discover that he didn’t know which and, more disturbing, that he almost didn’t care.

“They’ll give you papers, histories. You won’t lack for knowledge on Francine Calfo.”

A pause, then, on the line so palpable that he could have sliced it in thirds.

“That wasn’t what I asked. Julian.”

He hung up before he could stop himself and, minutes later, when the phone began to ring again, he ignored it.

He thought of Sydney staring back at him through the thick L.A. crowd, those huge eyes on his as if waiting for him to try something, anything.

She hadn’t done anything. She’d just kept walking.

He didn’t know it then—it’d be much later before he could pinpoint that exact event—but it would cost all of them everything.

*~*~*
 
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You have such a unique writing style. I can't even begin to elocute how amazed I am by your writing. You describe everything so vividly, I feel like I'm actually with the characters experiencing the scenes firsthand. *sigh* So lovely....Great chapter, Though I have to say from the beginning...god, I hope you eventually give this story a happy ending. Until then, I like that you took us back to the beginning and gave us some perspective on Sark's relationship with Alison. You really capture Sark's personality well, very similar to the way I view him. I love this story, can't wait for more.
daisy.gif
 
Youre definitely a good writer. (y)

The way you set this fic out is really interesting. It makes you feel.

:smiley:

Thanks for the PM and update soon ^_^
 
:P this is awesome. the next time you update could you please IM me. thankx. i really want to know Sark and Sydneys relationship start. :D
 
All right... I suppose some thanks are in order?? :lol: :D

sexcivaughn14: Yes, definitely some Sarkney. I am a S/S lover until death or, at least, until the end of the Alias. Thanks for the feedback and I hope you enjoy this chapter, as well.

toxic karma: :blush: Awww, thanks. *am blushing* I invariably end up loathing everything that I write, so feedback regarding that is priceless. :smiley: And...a happy ending? Well... I have about three different endings I can't decide between for this story. Hopefully, it will be the happiest that prevails...

And, would you happen to be the same toxic_karma girl from SD-1? 'Cuz, if so, I have one of your wallpapers on my desktop. Awesome stuff. :cool:

winter_snow: Thank you. :smiley: I wanted to make a fic that was slightly trippy and flashback-y and different. I'm so glad you like it!! :D

cattyline: Of course, the *beginning* of the S/S relationship is...in this chapter, sort of. I will definitely get you a PM and thanks ever so much for the feedback.

acting_chica: Thanks. :smiley: This chapter is even more...dark, I guess you could say. I hope you like it...


Chapter Two: An Ending in Disguise

At the tips of feathers there is air and at their base: blood. I hold up bones; I wish like broken glass they could court light...still I try to place these pieces back together, to set them firm, to make a murdered girl live again.

Time passed slowly.

It was a nebulous, slow haze through which Sark moved day in and out; he remembered every second of every day because each moment was the exact same as the one proceeding it. The wan, anxious faces never changed; the walls were achingly, boringly familiar; the food never varied. The sights, touches and the unbearable roughness of this place was one long corridor through which he traveled blind and naked, all the other doors forever locked.

Her face became his world, the way he resurrected and revived it in his mind’s eye like it could be made whole again by just the thought.

Wide eyes, a mouth that could be, at turns, sunshine personified if induced to smile, hard jaw, curving, rounded cheekbones that still looked just the faintest bit girlish when she blushed…

The weeks rolled away into months.

The seasons changed outside, not that he was given the pleasure of discovering that, he only felt the cell grew cold and damp at night and the music they sometimes played through old, tired speakers grew heavier and more somber: Fugue in C Minor, Beethoven's Symphony Number Nine. In October, they shaved his head completely and the rumbling amongst the guards (admittedly, always there) grew heavier and more dissonant as fall dragged into winter.

In November, they started torturing him for petty information. He practically lived submerged in water with electrolytes strapped to his head; he came to love the fine and sweet dance of electricity that shivered up his spine and shook his bones. Perhaps it was a type of insanity; he'd grown intimate with the dull ache in his head and the shooting currents that burned down his bloodstreams to the point that it hardly registered in his mind.

He suffered blackouts and loss of appetite. He grew so thin that his clothes hung on him, pathetically: a flesh sack filled with bones. His fingers shook, all the time. He suffered memory loss too for, by December, he could no longer remember her smile, exactly, or her middle name.

*~*~*

Los Angeles

Sark was right. The next time he saw Francine Calfo, she had Allison's glittering, dark eyes. All the gene conditioning in the world couldn't quench that spiteful, little double-edged tone of voice or that pleasantly blank expression underneath which hid the most sinister of her intentions.

It was a wonder that no one else noticed; Allison had done what Francine in life could not. She'd made Francine's face beautiful. What before had been a cheery, sweet sort of attractiveness had turned dark and mysterious and divine. Her mouth seemed larger and more mobile; her eyes huge and inaccessible. Her voice had a thin thread of contempt and falseness that ran through it like loosened stitching, making her all the more unattainable.

But her smile was ugly. It was the only thing wrong with her; that singular act of happiness on Francine's face had turned into a horror. She'd smiled at him, once, before she was dispatched to Los Angeles and Sark had felt the skin crawl over his bones. He watched her now, lounging on the sofa like she meant to stay there forever, and felt the same sort of sinking terror that only the truly damned can appreciate.

And remorse, just a flicker of it, as she spoke to him with Francine's mouth.

"She makes me sick, all f***ing self-righteous like some soon-to-be marytr." She rolled hooded eyes. "I just want to kill her. I want to sew her little, b**** mouth shut and shoot her in the head, if only to stop that 'kicked puppy dog' look in her eyes."

He was only half-listening, instead watching the way she used Francine's body. She was casual about it, casual in the way that she had forsaken all of Francine's natural movements for her own. Again, he wondered how no one could notice that Francine was no more.

And he decided he loathed her for it, the small changes that pressed herself over Francine like a the curling edges of an over-exposed photograph.

Every time she moved or breathed or smiled thatf***ing smile, she killed Francine all over again.

"Everything in good time, love."

She regarded him carefully, taking a small sip of her wine before she spoke with the barest traces of amusement hidden in the folds of her words. "I suppose. It depends on what kind of chase I feel like, when the opportunity finally arises."

Her look, her eyes... If he'd cared, he would have feared for Sydney Bristow in that moment. She was going to suffer--Irina's pretty look-alike--more than death.

"Do you think you could? Take her down, I mean."

"That's the wonderful thing about life, Julian. The world is vast. Everything's a possibility." She shrugged slim, straight shoulders and slid her gaze over to the licking red and orange flames fanning in the fireplace.

"But in the interest of now and our current goals, I've discovered something that may be of particular use to us. Michael Vaughn, her C.I.A. handler." She stopped, smiled that toothy, jackal's grin. "She's having an affair with him. On a personal note, it's sickening, truly, and not because he's a boring sack of s*** who will almost certainly cheat on her the second another, more appealing skirt crosses his line of vision."

Her eyes never left his, as if to gauge a reaction. "It's also hilarious because he's in love with her and she's not even close to tripping. She's f***ing the memory of her dead fiancée. She's using this Vaughn to bring him back to life. I find that particularly...sweet, I suppose you could say."

He felt an unexpected twist of...something. Regret? Sadness? "I wasn't aware that Ms. Bristow had a fiancee--dead or otherwise. And while that's a fascinating psychological analysis that I'm sure Ms. Bristow herself would no doubt appreciate, I must inquire... Do you have the proof that Sloane will want after such an accusation?"

Laughter was splashed across her face, full of malice like she was drunk on her own secrets. "The best in the world. Sex, lies...and videotape."

"How delightful." But his voice sounded strangled and foreign to his own ears, leeched of all color and meaning.

"Not really. He seemed much more into it than her. And who's to blame her? From what I saw, he's really an uninventive lover."

She put down her wine glass. Every movement seemed to be a slow seduction designed especially to ensare him. It was a sad state of affairs to realize that if he didn't know any better, he might have fallen for it.

"Not like you." She was so direct, so perfectly candid in her sexuality. There was no pretense when Allison wanted something. And from the way she was advancing toward him--a predator catching sight of easy prey--what she wanted now was him.

Now being the operative word. He wanted to believe it was more, but the reason that he'd called her here, despite the personal risk, drove itself home like the proverbial knife to the heart.

He downed the rest of his wine; he needed alcohol tonight like he needed breath. "Better than Will Tippin?"

She froze; her determined sensuality fled and the bitterness that radiated around her like a tarnished halo deepened, smoldered. He didn't feel sorry for her; he wanted a f***ing explanation. She hadn't told him that she and the boy were engaged in an affair; she hadn't even mentioned it at all. It annoyed him; he knew that Francine was not cold and that she was a faithful believer in open affection. Allison, affecting that to which she never showed him, was cold; her show of love, even pretend, for someone else was a hooked barb in his side.

"I couldn't help that." The low light from the fire behind her enveloped her in an eerie afterglow that threw dim shadows across her face, the only thing luminous being her eyes. "That started with Francine, before I ever met him."

His fingers curled around his empty glass. It was the answer he'd been dreading. "Hiding behind a dead girl, Allison?"

Her eyes heated up to an ominous black--hot, liquid, and furious. Every muscle in her body was tense, arched. "I don't need to hide behind anyone, Julian. He's an oblique part of the C.I.A. and, therefore, very useful. More useful to squeeze information from him if I'm f***ing him, as well. And need I remind you that I'm merely playing the game that you helped set in motion?"

The most dangerous of games. The room was silent. The unsaid words hung between them like ugly, bloody swipes on the wall.

Perhaps she was playing a game. Perhaps she was lying. The real question was, who was she playing with? He stared at her while the seconds passed and tried to divine some motive, some genuine feeling from her face but was left with what she always gave him: nothing.

"You never stop, do you?" Her voice was so soft that he might not have heard it, but for the sharp undertone that raked over the words like hot coals. "You just don't get it, do you, Julian?"

He remembered a saying, something out of a song, perhaps, or a line in a movie. Love equals pain.

He half-turned and didn't look at her. Instead, he tugged aimlessly on a curl of hair near his ear.

"Maybe, if you told me something, for once-"

"I don't belong to you!" She screamed; it was raw terror and humiliation and fury wrapped into one sentence. "I'm not exclusively yours; I'm not a broken doll you can fix and dress you to your liking!"

Her breathing was shallow. Her chest rose and fell so quickly he thought she might hyperventilate. "Don't you know by now? Are you really that blind?"

"If you would just-"

"I would never let you." Her voice degenerated into a gravely, ragged whisper. "Don't try."

Another saying: you always hurt the one you love. But she didn't love him. She'd never love him. It was a fatal wound--so deep and perfect, it was only just beginning to bleed with realization.

He didn’t mean anything to her.

He should have realized it before he knelt at her feet and said, I am yours. He should run the moment she’d first fixed her eyes on him. He should have known he was just an object to pass the time before she could move on to bigger, grander, more beautiful things.

"Get out." The words came quickly and he felt deathly tired of it all--her, his life, their world.

"A pleasure." Her voice dripped honey, slow and sweet. She moved with grace, nearly brushing his face with her fingers, on her way towards the door. "Correction, 'love'. My pleasure."

The slam of the door echoed throughout the apartment. Inside, stillness prevailed; he didn't move. On the coffee table, her wine glass was still precariously perched on the edge, a thin red mouth imprint marring the Waterford crystal. Pretty, pouty, and purely Allison.

Violence leapt up in him, unexpectedly. He felt like smashing the glass and carving out his heart on the shards. He felt like inhaling smoke, like eating fire. He felt like screaming until his voice gave out. He felt like taking life and digging a grave, inch by inch.

Outside, it started raining. The somber slap of rain drops against the paned glass of the living room echoed, everywhere, inside of him. It stayed in perfect tune with the frantic, animal wild beating of his heart and he tried to ignore it as he picked up Allison’s discarded glass between thumb and forefinger, tracing the careless lipstick mark.

He wanted to destroy her. It was very simple. He wanted to destroy her because it would never be the same again; she would never be the same. Her voice would be infinitely colder when she was forced by circumstances to speak with him and her eyes, in those unreadable, black depths, would tabulate the days until she could kill him without fear of repisal.

She would never let them f*** again. She would never beckon him again with that curling, satisfied smile on her mouth and say, come over here.

He sat alone, slumped in the love seat like a rejected schoolboy and staring into the dying embers of the fire.

So fragile, these relationships, and so fickle was the cruel twist of love.

*~*~*

Two months later, Sark had the second chance meeting that would eventually shape the course of the rest of his life. Before then, it wasn't definite. It was gray and undefined; if the near-miss on the street had piqued his interest, then Brueker Biotech walled him in—alive.

If not for that, he might not be wasting in a cell. He might not be obsessed with a dead girl.

She might still be alive.

But he was clever enough to realize these were pointless speculations, the subject of idle and electro-therapy induced dreams. There was the then and the had-been and the actuality of the matter: that he and Allison had been at murderous odds when he'd come face to face with another equally frustrating woman in the most unlikely of places: Sydney Bristow, in empty stairwell in Germany. For his part, he'd just finished stripping and planting a bomb at the Brueker firm, where a recently escaped Irina had orchestrated a daring plan to gain access to their one-of-a-kind genetic database.

The purpose, he could barely remember. The day, the faces, the events—forever.

It was the end of that botched day that he remembered so well: he was advancing for the murder of Agent Vaughn--something satisfying to take the place of Tippin--and feeling none-too-giddy about the prospect of a fresh, decent kill.

For her part, Sydney was a figure running down the hall, ghost-like and graceful, waiting for the opportune moment to save the day. Like always. Later, he would wounder if it was possible for her to not swoop in for the rescue, to not be the brilliant and proper saint that everyone openly worshipped.

He wasn’t a saint, though; he was going to pull the trigger. He wanted to, itched to. He wanted to embrace badness and wear it like a badge; he wanted to save that pissing, little-girl expression of fear on Agent Vaughn's face and carry it with him through the long nights of boredom.

But, of course, fate wasn't that kind.

He was a half of pound of pressure away from putting a gaping, blood-soaked hole in Vaughn's skull when he felt the sharp bite of bullet ricochet off the knuckle of his index finger. Blood spurted on his face; shock burned over his skin, like a brand.

Well, f***.

There was a split second when he looked up, just to see who the hell had dared...

The florescent lights made her long, loose curls look almost brassy, boldly blonde. Her face seemed as pale as a winter’s overcast sky and the harsh, black smudges of liner under her eyes made her look sick, emaciated. She was staring at him from above with this apathetic, wondrously indifferent expression on her face.

It seemed foreign on her, having eyes that didn’t care and a mouth that refused even the hint of a smile.

Still, he ran. What he didn't count on, what he really didn't plan on, was that Sydney might give chase.

"Sark!"

He remembered her voice, how angry and scathing. Just like Irina, to the exact pitch of fury on every syllable. He remembered looking over his shoulder to see her leave Agent Vaughn discarded where he lay, like some broken doll she was tired of playing with lying crumpled in the corner.

He heard Vaughn call out her name, twice and full of aching alarm and fear. He could have told Vaughn not to surprised; he could have told Vaughn that he could give lessons on the type of woman Sydney was becoming: shrouded by darkness and feeding off of revenge.

He could have, but, as it was, he was too busy running for his life to say a damned thing.

"Sark!"

He could hear her voice, still behind him. The parking garage he'd run into was long and wide and she wasn't all that far behind him. And he didn't have his gun. Which, he was still lucid enough to remember, was very, very, very bad.

"Sark! f***ing SARK!" A bullet narrowly missed his neck and his leg in rapid fire succession; with all the instinct of someone who evaded death for a living, he swung around a granite column in front of him, flinging himself into the low ceiling hallway that led out to afternoon sunlight and, with any luck, freedom.

Sydney was just steps away from him; he could hear the shallow rasps of her breathing, could feel the near brush of air as her arm came up towards him.

Then, an explosion: bright, pin-wheeling colors and loud, crashing sounds.

Behind them, it rippled and roared through the main building. Even the ever sturdy parking garage swayed and groaned on its supports before settling, ominously, back down. In the distance, a few lonely yellow and red licks of flames burned, where he and Sydney had been just been a moment ago.

It was only then, in this curious sort of aftermath, that he realized the force of the explosion had knocked Sydney into him, her entire body pressed and curled into his. She'd dropped the gun when the blast had thrown them together; it lay innocently, harmless a few yards away.

She was shaking and one of her hands was around his neck, pulling on the ends of his hair. Her face was close to his and her hair fell over him, nearly obscuring his vision. Her open mouth was brushing his cheek.

Her scent was faint, but distinct; like lavender and sherry, an interesting combination.

With a single-minded type of clarity, he didn't think he'd ever been so close to her before. Or would be again. And before she could and despite the unexpected loveliness of the moment, he grabbed for the gun. It was too bad that she chose the same moment to mimic him, both of them trying to push the other away in a vain struggle for the just-out-of-reach weapon.

"Stop it!" Her voice was panicked, but muffled against his shoulder. It's so petty the way she said it, like they were in grade school on the playground tussling in the sandbox over a toy. He was tempted to say, "you first", but was slightly afraid for his sanity.

Instead, he gave into trying to get her out of the way without hurting her over much. She was strong for a girl, maybe, but if he really wanted her out of the way, he would have it done in a heartbeat.
And then, of course, he realized what the *hell* he was thinking.

"Get off me." He elbowed her viciously in the stomach and, when she was distracted, rolled out from underneath her by wrenching her hair up and pulling her away from him. "I said..."

He got the gun while she was writhing on the floor next to him, trying to regain her balance. He stumbled up and leveled the gun at her as she lifted her head to reveal a bruised and swollen mouth, with blood trickling forlornly down one corner. Her curls clung marvelously in damp tendrils to the side of her face and she held her chin up at a slight angle as if to say f*** you.

But her eyes were open wounds and her mouth was trembling as if she couldn't control it. Her hands were unsteady and she kept staring behind him as if there were something back there that she'd left behind and was deeply regretting in the aftermath.

He knew who she was looking for, so desperately. He’d be an idiot not to know.

“Shoot me or get out of my way.”

Her voice was low and quietly dangerous; she was already moving to a crouch position as if she was getting ready to lunge at him.

“You’re full of bravado today, Agent Bristow.” He was breathing hard—God, he felt like a f***ing moron—and detested the way things had gotten so horribly out of control. “But you and I both know you’re not willing to get shot in the face… Now matter what way your ideaology goes.”

Her eyes steadied, were still. They held a depth and an all-consuming bitterness that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen her.

“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” she said at last, her mouth a tightened, stained crimson. But there was something else there, just behind the self-righteous cliché, in the darkness that flickered slyly across her eyes. “You don’t know me at all.”

The icy shadows that bounced off her face gave him pause. They made her so utterly tragic; he wanted to know she had gotten so broken down and so used in between the time he’d seen her on the street and now. He opened his mouth and started to speak, to unfurl words that had long wanted out.

“How did you…”

Voices in the distance cut him off. They were fell shadows of a threat that moved and breathed and pulsated closer; if he stayed, he’d surely get caught. Impatience skittered across his skin, and an old longing so skillfully repressed—nothing nice or sweet, but a deep desire to bury his hands in her thick hair and pull...until she screamed.

“You deserve what’s coming to you. You…and her.” Irina, that’s who she was talking about. But she didn’t say her mother’s name; she bit her lip and blood spilled across her paper-white skin, little rivulets of red. Her hand, elegance itself, reached up to brush at them, smearing them across her chin like a vampire’s kiss.

Her voice was soft, almost devoid of the loathing he was used to in it. “But, for what’s it worth, I...”

The other voices were close now; he could hear the thin, high screams of agony that must be Agent Vaughn. They’d be on the pair of them soon and he was spy enough, criminal enough to know she’d tell them, surely; she’d help chase him, no matter what.

He was wrong. She started backing away, then. Her hands were balled into fists at her side, at the ready, and her expression was simply wretched, dull pain turned to the sharp barb of hate. “I won’t forget.”

He watched her run, calling out another man’s name.

His only coherent thought: I should have killed her when I had the chance.

*~*~*
 
In November, they started torturing him for petty information. He practically lived submerged in water with electrolytes strapped to his head; he came to love the fine and sweet dance of electricity that shivered up his spine and shook his bones. Perhaps it was a type of insanity; he'd grown intimate with the dull ache in his head and the shooting currents that burned down his bloodstreams to the point that it hardly registered in his mind.

He suffered blackouts and loss of appetite. He grew so thin that his clothes hung on him, pathetically: a flesh sack filled with bones. His fingers shook, all the time. He suffered memory loss too for, by December, he could no longer remember her smile, exactly, or her middle name.

That... was intense... just wow.

It sounds a bit like Alison has gone a bit twisted...

Sark and Syd sound a bit awkward/weird... lol.

Thanks for the PM :smiley:
 
shadowlass said:
toxic karma:  :blush:  Awww, thanks.  *am blushing*  I invariably end up loathing everything that I write, so feedback regarding that is priceless.  :smiley:  And...a happy ending?  Well...  I have about three different endings I can't decide between for this story.  Hopefully, it will be the happiest that prevails...

And, would you happen to be the same toxic_karma girl from SD-1?  'Cuz, if so, I have one of your wallpapers on my desktop.  Awesome stuff.  :cool:

Why yes indeed I am toxic karma from SD-1, you used one of my wallpapers?! That makes me feel really good, because whenever I make Sarkney manips, I get lots of great feedback, but whenever I make wallpapers, usually only one person responds, which has left me thinking that perhaps my wallpapers suck. But now that I know that you like them, I don't feel so bad anymore. Which one did you use? The one with the film strip at the bottom of the screen? (I'm most proud of that one...) Anyway, enough about me, let's talk about you. :D Loved the update, the beginning was very disturbing, but it works well to draw out your readers emotions. And the stuff with Sark and Allison, very good. As I've said before, you really seem to view Sark the same way that I do. I always imagine that his character is secretly wishing to find someone who will care about him, and never betray him. Because I get the impression that he's been being betrayed his whole life. (I was so upset at the end of Season 2 when Irina turned him over to the C.I.A...especially since he once told Sydney he considers Irina to be a "like a mother" to him.) And yes, Sark betrays others all the time on the show...but I really do believe that it's all just a reaction of bitterness to never being truly accepted by anyone in his entire life. And the interaction with Sydney at the end was phenominal.

But she didn’t say her mother’s name; she bit her lip and blood spilled across her paper-white skin, little rivulets of red. Her hand, elegance itself, reached up to brush at them, smearing them across her chin like a vampire’s kiss.
Very eloquently written. I'm glad that you're now starting to delve into the relationship between Sark and Syd. I can't wait for your next update. (y)
 
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