kidblink83
Cadet
Read the story I wrote for a challenge and then get started on the sequel!
The Safety of His Arms
Title: Haunting Memories
Rating: somewhere from PG-13 to R
Summary: Sydney knows that there was something missing from the explanation she got of her two years with the Covenant as Julia Thorne. She didn’t think she cared to know what that was. At least, until the memories started coming back to haunt her.
Disclaimer: Don’t own any of it! And that’s my disclaimer!
Timeline: Post-Season 3. All the events of the show happened exactly as we saw them.
Sydney cursed her luck as she ran up her twentieth flight of stairs. Running to the top of this building in Pamplona, Spain and chasing after the one man she would have paid money to never see again was not what she wanted to be doing. What she wanted to be doing was snuggling up to Vaughn on his couch, watching the latest Kings game, like old times.
It had been approximately one week since she and Vaughn had shared that kiss in Palermo. One week since the death of Lauren Reed. And one week since she realized that her whole life was a sham.
The day she found the papers explaining that her father had known that all the tragedy, all the pain she had felt, all the suffering, had to happen to her was still fresh in her mind. He had tried to explain that it was for her benefit that he let her go through all that, but she didn’t want to listen then. She still didn’t want to listen now.
That didn’t stop Jack from pleading with her to hear what he was saying the whole plane ride back to Los Angeles. The words he said did not come close to sinking in until later that night when she was home and had time to process it. From that point to the present time, they rang through her head, never lightening up. She was always trying to comprehend what her father had done to her.
He let Danny die, knowing that the pain she got from that tragedy would make her become a double agent and affiliate herself with the real CIA. The pain would make her strong and put her beyond the reach of grief.
He knew that her mother was a KGB spy sent there to trick him into giving away national secrets. The whole time he was dating her, he knew. He let Irina Derevko use him. He let her carry his child so that Sydney would be born for him to shape into what he needed, into what he thought the world needed.
He knew that one of Sydney’s best friends would betray her one day. It explained why he had been hesitant to trust or even acknowledge the existence of Will Tippin. In retrospect, Jack realized that Tippin wasn’t the threat to Sydney. It had been Francine Calfo. He had realized it too late to change the course of events, even if it had been possible for him to do so.
Her father knew she was abducted by the Covenant and held their prisoner for two years until she chose to escape. He knew that she was alive, and he did nothing to stop it. When she finally asked him why, the answer was simple. To rid her of her attachments to people that weren’t supposed to be closed to her.
Namely, Vaughn. Jack wanted to give Vaughn a chance to realize that Sydney was gone forever and move on. He played as if he was searching for Sydney and coming up empty so that Vaughn would accept the fact that she was dead. He went as far as allowing the US government to imprison him in his attempts to control Sydney’s fate. Jack would never have allowed Vaughn to move on from Sydney to a spy for the Covenant. He assured Sydney if he hadn’t been in prison he would not have let that happen.
When Sydney finally got up the courage to ask him why he had been messing with her life since the day she was born, he said it had to do with Rambaldi. Everything in her life seemed to revert back to Rambaldi. Milo Rambaldi knew that one day there would arise two sisters from the same mother. Both sisters would be powerful in their own right, but they were destined to be on opposite sides of the fight. One would come forth of two pure, good parents, and the other would be made in secret by the darkest of parents.
Jack hadn’t understood the prophecy until he met his soon-to-be wife. He recognized her potential, the goodness and the evil inside of her. It was at that moment that he realized he would have a child with this woman. And that child would be marked for the fight of her life. He couldn’t change that.
He knew that Sydney would grow up and have to face her half-sister in a fight to the death. He spent his whole life making sure that she grew to be as tough and strong as she would need to be to win. He let the pain and suffering that was foretold for her happen. He made sure she didn’t make attachments that would hurt her.
In short, he played puppeteer to her life.
Sydney wasn’t sure she could ever forgive him.
The one happy point to all this was realizing that not even her father was powerful enough to keep her and Vaughn apart. Since the moment that he shot his wife dead to save Sydney’s life, she and Vaughn hadn’t been apart. He had apologized a million and a half times for letting them get so far off track, for losing hope in their love.
She hadn’t wasted a moment in punishing him. The forgiveness was there for him instantly.
And now she was stuck doing the only thing she seemed to be good at. Well, besides losing the men she loved.
Her greatest talent was hunting down Sark and bringing him back into CIA custody.
The slimy bastard had escaped from the CIA once more. If her greatest skill was the ability to track him down, his greatest skill was to get away from whomever tried to imprison him. This time, no one was really sure how he had gotten out. There were no signs of an infiltration and no signs of his tampering with the security. He had just disappeared like always.
And she was tired of it. This time, even though her assignment was to capture him and bring him back to the States, she intended to kill him and put an end to their nonstop struggle. She knew that if anyone else knew her plan, they would say that murder is not something she should be doing. Murder can change a person, they would say.
Sydney knew that and she didn’t care. She had gotten into enough trouble at the hands of Julian Lazarey. She was damn worn-out by it.
So she had done her job and tracked him to this building in Spain. It appeared to be one of his many hideouts. He kept a charming little penthouse on the top floor, which appeared to be where he was running off to at the moment.
It all started in the lobby. By accident, she had physically run into him. She had been scanning the building for any signs that he was there at the time. He was leaving the building to go meet a business contact for lunch. For some reason, neither one noticed the other until it was too late to try to be stealthy and spy-like. They had both stared in horror at the other as they lay on the lobby floor, knocked down completely from their sudden contact.
“Sydney,” Sark said, almost as if he had been expecting her to show up the whole time.
“I’d run if I was you,” she warned him.
“I’m not scared,” he said, delivering the first smirk of their witty banter. Both he and she knew that this little repartee was a staple in their confrontations. Both wanted to seem like the party in control, and both wanted the other one to know they didn’t stand a chance in hell of beating them.
“Your little girlfriend is dead, Sark. Did you know that?” She hoped that mention of Lauren would throw him off enough for her to be able to make a move.
He didn’t flinch. “No, I didn’t. But it explains why she hasn’t been in contact with me since I escaped.”
“Death will break the lines of communication. It‘s a proven fact.” She had expected him to be fazed at least a little by the news. This coolness was unsettling her. “Don’t you care?”
“I never really cared about Lauren Reed that much. She was a way to poke some silent fun at your little boy toy. While he was at home, trying to not think of you, trying to be faithful to his wife, I was causing her to commit adultery. It had a nice poetic ring to it. Plus, I knew if you ever found out, it would drive you mad. I take so much pleasure in driving you mad, Agent Bristow.”
Sydney picked herself up off the floor at the exact same second that Sark did. They both slowly circled each other, expecting their opponent to make the first move.
Sark’s watch caught the rays of Spanish sunlight and temporarily blinded Sydney. He took the small window of opportunity that flash opened and ran towards the stairwell.
And twenty flights later, here she was, chasing after Sark for what she hoped would be the last time.
She guessed he was only a flight or two above her and fired off a few more gunshots. When there was no sound except the continued footsteps up the stairs, she cursed. This wasn’t her lucky day. She heard a door open above her and took the stairs two at a time to catch up.
Her body skidded to a halt when she realized that the stairwell had ended. Sark had chosen not to retreat to the home turf of his penthouse. Instead, he had let himself out onto the roof of the building. Where he planned to go from there was anyone’s guess.
Slowly, she took out the half-used clip from her gun and popped in a full one. There wouldn’t be time to reload once this skirmish began. She stepped hesitantly out onto the roof and scanned the area. There was no movement and no sound. The roof was flat with no places to hide. Wherever he had gone, Sark was no longer up there on the roof.
“Great,” she muttered. She lowered her gun realizing that he had managed to give her the slip. “How the hell did he do that?”
The sound of a gun’s safety being released made her jump and immediately point her own gun in the direction of the sound.
“Do what?” Sark asked as he stepped out from behind where the door to the roof had swung open.
“Nothing.” She glared at him. And then without warning, she took a swing at his head and narrowly missed.
He used the momentum of her blow to twist her around and wrap her arm around her neck, where he held it securely. “Are we destined to do this dance forever?”
“Yes,” she growled head bunting him hard. “I guess the burden of kicking your ass is something I’m going to have carry for a long time. But someone has to do it.” She punched him hard in the face before he could recover. “And I have to admit, I enjoy it a lot.”
Instead of retaliating, Sark threw himself to where her gun had fallen. He didn’t make it in time. Instead of feeling the gun in his hand, he felt her boot come down on his wrist roughly. She leaned in, foot still on his arm, and picked up her gun.
Knowing it was a rather barbaric move, but probably his only option, he bit her leg.
She screamed in pain and backed off. “What are you? Six?” she yelled.
He stood up and pointed his gun at her. She hadn’t lost a beat and was also pointing her weapon at his chest.
“What do we do now, Sydney? You can’t shoot me. The government you’ve sworn your life away to wants me alive and in their custody.” He smirked at her. “I know what you’re thinking. I could shoot you in an instant. Well, I’m going to tell you right now. I don’t really feel like killing. Plus, I don’t want to give you any reason to think you’ll get an opportunity to shoot me dead.”
“There’s one thing you don’t understand,” she said, smiling wickedly.
Sark was thrown off for a moment. He had never seen her look like that. Something had changed with her since he had last seen her. She was acting like she had nothing to live for. “I think I understand you pretty well,” he answered, covering his confusion to the best of his ability.
“You were right about me not being able to shoot you if I want to succeed in my mission. But the thing is I didn’t come to Spain in order to succeed. I plan on failing my mission horribly.” She smiled at him wickedly again. “You see, I intend to kill you.”
Sark smiled right back at her. “I think I finally understand why we’re always fighting, Agent Bristow.”
“Why is that?” She didn’t lower her gun for a second even though his tone had switched from taunting to something more friendly. Realizing she might be standing for a while, she did switch the majority of her weight over to the leg he hadn’t bitten.
“I don’t fit into your life. The life you want for yourself. You just can’t justify how I fit in. Am I your enemy? Not really. I’ve never done anything to purposefully hurt you.”
“You’ve shot at me more times than I can count.”
“You’ve shot at me, too.” He went back to his explanation. “I’m not your friend, either. I’ve offered to be your partner and friend before. You refused. And friends don’t usually shoot at each other. Though, come to think of it, the friends you have might.”
She fired a quick shot over his right shoulder, dangerously close to his ear.
“Now why didn’t you just shoot me in the heart, Sydney? Why are you hesitating?”
“Because this whole cold-hearted killing thing is new to me.”
“Right,” he said hesitantly. “And your time as Julia Thorne taught you nothing about that.”
“How would you know anything about my time as Julia Thorne?”
“People talk. You forget that I worked with Simon Walker for a while. He told me that you’re a tiger in bed.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t understand. Do you want me to shoot you?”
He shrugged. “But you understand what I’m saying. I am who I am. And right now, that doesn’t fit into your life. Maybe someday down the road it will. I’ll be waiting for then.”
His words chilled Sydney to the bone, and she couldn’t understand why. It was like she had heard them before, a long time ago. Her head pounded slightly and her vision blurred. She could hear a distant noise but couldn’t get her head to turn. She was frozen in place as random images popped into her head.
Her holding a knife to Sark’s throat, taunting him.
Her throwing a shot glass in his direction and it shattering as it hit the wall.
Simon Walker staring down at her, naked in bed. And there was someone beside her.
Her pointing a gun at Allison Doren with Sark by her side.
Sark carrying her in his arms away from a car wreck.
And the most disturbing of all, her lying in Sark’s arms feeling perfectly content with where she was.
Shaking her head, she looked back up at the man she had been trying to shoot. She raised her gun back up at him. “What did you do to me?”
“Nothing,” he practically stammered. She could tell that he was being truthful. He seemed thrown off by her reaction.
If Sydney had had all her wits about her, she would have realized that it wasn’t her reaction that was throwing him off. The words he had said to her had also made him pale. Something had happened to him, too. The same images she had seen were running through his head.
She stepped toward him and poked the barrel of her gun roughly to his throat. “You did something to me, and I want to know what it was.”
He continued to hold his hands out, pointing his gun away from where she stood. After a moment, he found a strong enough voice to respond. “I have no idea what just happened to you, Sydney. We were doing our usual I’m-going-to-kill-you routine and then you just got paled and seemed to drift off.”
“You did something to my head.” She stepped back and shook her head again. The gun went back into her holster. Both she and Sark knew that their battle was taking a time out. They didn’t fight when they were both not up for it. It was a strange, unspoken rule between them.
Sark also holstered his weapon. “I did nothing to you.”
“Images flashed through my head,” she hissed at him. “Memories of things that didn’t happen.”
“What... kind of memories?” he asked hesitantly. It intrigued him that the same thing seemed to happen to the both of them. Though how those images could be memories was beyond him.
“Like I’m going to tell you!”
“They were about me, weren’t they?” he said with a smirk.
“No,” she said a little too quickly.
“So what were they like? Were you ravaging me in bed?” He was joking with her, but the smirk was wiped off his face when he saw her cheeks redden. “You were fantasizing about me in bed, Bristow? Priceless!”
“We weren’t having sex,” she screamed, her patience finally hitting its end at the idea of Sark knowing that the images she had seen definitely implied that they were intimate. “You were holding me. And fighting Allison Doren with me. Most of it seemed typical. Except for the holding part. That was not typical.” She knew she was rambling, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I mean, I was trying to slit your throat. That’s normal interaction between us. And I was throwing things at your head. That sounds like something I’d do. The rest of it must have just been bulls***.”
“Have you convinced yourself that already?” Sark goaded her. She drew her gun out of her holster just as he raised his again. “We’re back to this place, huh?”
“It seems like this is where we always end up.”
“Well, it’s been fun. You might as well kill me now.” He paused for dramatic purposes. “But then you’ll never get a full explanation of what just happened to you.”
“I knew you were behind it, you stupid--” Her insults were cut off as Sark pushed her up against the wall near the door to the stairwell.
She was caught off guard as he crushed his lips to hers in a searing kiss. There was no way to explain her reaction. Instead of shooting him in the chest, which was where her gun was conveniently placed, she felt her grip loosen and her gun slid to the concrete. Her empty hands then slid up Sark’s body until she felt them pulling him closer. She could feel him groan in pleasure.
After a minute, Sark pulled back and broke contact. He leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “You weren’t the only one remembering things that don’t make sense, Sydney. I remember all those things, too.”
Before she could react, he was out the door and running down the stairwell.
She made no move to follow him, instead choosing to slide down the wall and to the ground. Her mind was racing with the events of the past few minutes. Whatever had flashed through her head earlier, it had felt as real as anything she had ever encountered. It felt like real memories.
She shook her head. They couldn’t be real memories. Kendall had told her the whole of what had occurred during her missing two years. That was the only length of time during her whole life that she wasn’t sure of. If these images were real, they would have happened then.
And that was just ridiculous. Sark had been in the CIA custody during the whole two years she was gone. There was no way he could have been by her side at any point. No way.
But that didn’t explain why he claimed that he had the same images in his mind.
She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t explain it. All she knew was that she wanted to get home to the familiarity she yearned for. The life that she was so sure she wanted ten minutes ago. The life that suddenly seemed a little hollow, and she didn’t know why.
The Safety of His Arms
Title: Haunting Memories
Rating: somewhere from PG-13 to R
Summary: Sydney knows that there was something missing from the explanation she got of her two years with the Covenant as Julia Thorne. She didn’t think she cared to know what that was. At least, until the memories started coming back to haunt her.
Disclaimer: Don’t own any of it! And that’s my disclaimer!
Timeline: Post-Season 3. All the events of the show happened exactly as we saw them.
Sydney cursed her luck as she ran up her twentieth flight of stairs. Running to the top of this building in Pamplona, Spain and chasing after the one man she would have paid money to never see again was not what she wanted to be doing. What she wanted to be doing was snuggling up to Vaughn on his couch, watching the latest Kings game, like old times.
It had been approximately one week since she and Vaughn had shared that kiss in Palermo. One week since the death of Lauren Reed. And one week since she realized that her whole life was a sham.
The day she found the papers explaining that her father had known that all the tragedy, all the pain she had felt, all the suffering, had to happen to her was still fresh in her mind. He had tried to explain that it was for her benefit that he let her go through all that, but she didn’t want to listen then. She still didn’t want to listen now.
That didn’t stop Jack from pleading with her to hear what he was saying the whole plane ride back to Los Angeles. The words he said did not come close to sinking in until later that night when she was home and had time to process it. From that point to the present time, they rang through her head, never lightening up. She was always trying to comprehend what her father had done to her.
He let Danny die, knowing that the pain she got from that tragedy would make her become a double agent and affiliate herself with the real CIA. The pain would make her strong and put her beyond the reach of grief.
He knew that her mother was a KGB spy sent there to trick him into giving away national secrets. The whole time he was dating her, he knew. He let Irina Derevko use him. He let her carry his child so that Sydney would be born for him to shape into what he needed, into what he thought the world needed.
He knew that one of Sydney’s best friends would betray her one day. It explained why he had been hesitant to trust or even acknowledge the existence of Will Tippin. In retrospect, Jack realized that Tippin wasn’t the threat to Sydney. It had been Francine Calfo. He had realized it too late to change the course of events, even if it had been possible for him to do so.
Her father knew she was abducted by the Covenant and held their prisoner for two years until she chose to escape. He knew that she was alive, and he did nothing to stop it. When she finally asked him why, the answer was simple. To rid her of her attachments to people that weren’t supposed to be closed to her.
Namely, Vaughn. Jack wanted to give Vaughn a chance to realize that Sydney was gone forever and move on. He played as if he was searching for Sydney and coming up empty so that Vaughn would accept the fact that she was dead. He went as far as allowing the US government to imprison him in his attempts to control Sydney’s fate. Jack would never have allowed Vaughn to move on from Sydney to a spy for the Covenant. He assured Sydney if he hadn’t been in prison he would not have let that happen.
When Sydney finally got up the courage to ask him why he had been messing with her life since the day she was born, he said it had to do with Rambaldi. Everything in her life seemed to revert back to Rambaldi. Milo Rambaldi knew that one day there would arise two sisters from the same mother. Both sisters would be powerful in their own right, but they were destined to be on opposite sides of the fight. One would come forth of two pure, good parents, and the other would be made in secret by the darkest of parents.
Jack hadn’t understood the prophecy until he met his soon-to-be wife. He recognized her potential, the goodness and the evil inside of her. It was at that moment that he realized he would have a child with this woman. And that child would be marked for the fight of her life. He couldn’t change that.
He knew that Sydney would grow up and have to face her half-sister in a fight to the death. He spent his whole life making sure that she grew to be as tough and strong as she would need to be to win. He let the pain and suffering that was foretold for her happen. He made sure she didn’t make attachments that would hurt her.
In short, he played puppeteer to her life.
Sydney wasn’t sure she could ever forgive him.
The one happy point to all this was realizing that not even her father was powerful enough to keep her and Vaughn apart. Since the moment that he shot his wife dead to save Sydney’s life, she and Vaughn hadn’t been apart. He had apologized a million and a half times for letting them get so far off track, for losing hope in their love.
She hadn’t wasted a moment in punishing him. The forgiveness was there for him instantly.
And now she was stuck doing the only thing she seemed to be good at. Well, besides losing the men she loved.
Her greatest talent was hunting down Sark and bringing him back into CIA custody.
The slimy bastard had escaped from the CIA once more. If her greatest skill was the ability to track him down, his greatest skill was to get away from whomever tried to imprison him. This time, no one was really sure how he had gotten out. There were no signs of an infiltration and no signs of his tampering with the security. He had just disappeared like always.
And she was tired of it. This time, even though her assignment was to capture him and bring him back to the States, she intended to kill him and put an end to their nonstop struggle. She knew that if anyone else knew her plan, they would say that murder is not something she should be doing. Murder can change a person, they would say.
Sydney knew that and she didn’t care. She had gotten into enough trouble at the hands of Julian Lazarey. She was damn worn-out by it.
So she had done her job and tracked him to this building in Spain. It appeared to be one of his many hideouts. He kept a charming little penthouse on the top floor, which appeared to be where he was running off to at the moment.
It all started in the lobby. By accident, she had physically run into him. She had been scanning the building for any signs that he was there at the time. He was leaving the building to go meet a business contact for lunch. For some reason, neither one noticed the other until it was too late to try to be stealthy and spy-like. They had both stared in horror at the other as they lay on the lobby floor, knocked down completely from their sudden contact.
“Sydney,” Sark said, almost as if he had been expecting her to show up the whole time.
“I’d run if I was you,” she warned him.
“I’m not scared,” he said, delivering the first smirk of their witty banter. Both he and she knew that this little repartee was a staple in their confrontations. Both wanted to seem like the party in control, and both wanted the other one to know they didn’t stand a chance in hell of beating them.
“Your little girlfriend is dead, Sark. Did you know that?” She hoped that mention of Lauren would throw him off enough for her to be able to make a move.
He didn’t flinch. “No, I didn’t. But it explains why she hasn’t been in contact with me since I escaped.”
“Death will break the lines of communication. It‘s a proven fact.” She had expected him to be fazed at least a little by the news. This coolness was unsettling her. “Don’t you care?”
“I never really cared about Lauren Reed that much. She was a way to poke some silent fun at your little boy toy. While he was at home, trying to not think of you, trying to be faithful to his wife, I was causing her to commit adultery. It had a nice poetic ring to it. Plus, I knew if you ever found out, it would drive you mad. I take so much pleasure in driving you mad, Agent Bristow.”
Sydney picked herself up off the floor at the exact same second that Sark did. They both slowly circled each other, expecting their opponent to make the first move.
Sark’s watch caught the rays of Spanish sunlight and temporarily blinded Sydney. He took the small window of opportunity that flash opened and ran towards the stairwell.
And twenty flights later, here she was, chasing after Sark for what she hoped would be the last time.
She guessed he was only a flight or two above her and fired off a few more gunshots. When there was no sound except the continued footsteps up the stairs, she cursed. This wasn’t her lucky day. She heard a door open above her and took the stairs two at a time to catch up.
Her body skidded to a halt when she realized that the stairwell had ended. Sark had chosen not to retreat to the home turf of his penthouse. Instead, he had let himself out onto the roof of the building. Where he planned to go from there was anyone’s guess.
Slowly, she took out the half-used clip from her gun and popped in a full one. There wouldn’t be time to reload once this skirmish began. She stepped hesitantly out onto the roof and scanned the area. There was no movement and no sound. The roof was flat with no places to hide. Wherever he had gone, Sark was no longer up there on the roof.
“Great,” she muttered. She lowered her gun realizing that he had managed to give her the slip. “How the hell did he do that?”
The sound of a gun’s safety being released made her jump and immediately point her own gun in the direction of the sound.
“Do what?” Sark asked as he stepped out from behind where the door to the roof had swung open.
“Nothing.” She glared at him. And then without warning, she took a swing at his head and narrowly missed.
He used the momentum of her blow to twist her around and wrap her arm around her neck, where he held it securely. “Are we destined to do this dance forever?”
“Yes,” she growled head bunting him hard. “I guess the burden of kicking your ass is something I’m going to have carry for a long time. But someone has to do it.” She punched him hard in the face before he could recover. “And I have to admit, I enjoy it a lot.”
Instead of retaliating, Sark threw himself to where her gun had fallen. He didn’t make it in time. Instead of feeling the gun in his hand, he felt her boot come down on his wrist roughly. She leaned in, foot still on his arm, and picked up her gun.
Knowing it was a rather barbaric move, but probably his only option, he bit her leg.
She screamed in pain and backed off. “What are you? Six?” she yelled.
He stood up and pointed his gun at her. She hadn’t lost a beat and was also pointing her weapon at his chest.
“What do we do now, Sydney? You can’t shoot me. The government you’ve sworn your life away to wants me alive and in their custody.” He smirked at her. “I know what you’re thinking. I could shoot you in an instant. Well, I’m going to tell you right now. I don’t really feel like killing. Plus, I don’t want to give you any reason to think you’ll get an opportunity to shoot me dead.”
“There’s one thing you don’t understand,” she said, smiling wickedly.
Sark was thrown off for a moment. He had never seen her look like that. Something had changed with her since he had last seen her. She was acting like she had nothing to live for. “I think I understand you pretty well,” he answered, covering his confusion to the best of his ability.
“You were right about me not being able to shoot you if I want to succeed in my mission. But the thing is I didn’t come to Spain in order to succeed. I plan on failing my mission horribly.” She smiled at him wickedly again. “You see, I intend to kill you.”
Sark smiled right back at her. “I think I finally understand why we’re always fighting, Agent Bristow.”
“Why is that?” She didn’t lower her gun for a second even though his tone had switched from taunting to something more friendly. Realizing she might be standing for a while, she did switch the majority of her weight over to the leg he hadn’t bitten.
“I don’t fit into your life. The life you want for yourself. You just can’t justify how I fit in. Am I your enemy? Not really. I’ve never done anything to purposefully hurt you.”
“You’ve shot at me more times than I can count.”
“You’ve shot at me, too.” He went back to his explanation. “I’m not your friend, either. I’ve offered to be your partner and friend before. You refused. And friends don’t usually shoot at each other. Though, come to think of it, the friends you have might.”
She fired a quick shot over his right shoulder, dangerously close to his ear.
“Now why didn’t you just shoot me in the heart, Sydney? Why are you hesitating?”
“Because this whole cold-hearted killing thing is new to me.”
“Right,” he said hesitantly. “And your time as Julia Thorne taught you nothing about that.”
“How would you know anything about my time as Julia Thorne?”
“People talk. You forget that I worked with Simon Walker for a while. He told me that you’re a tiger in bed.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t understand. Do you want me to shoot you?”
He shrugged. “But you understand what I’m saying. I am who I am. And right now, that doesn’t fit into your life. Maybe someday down the road it will. I’ll be waiting for then.”
His words chilled Sydney to the bone, and she couldn’t understand why. It was like she had heard them before, a long time ago. Her head pounded slightly and her vision blurred. She could hear a distant noise but couldn’t get her head to turn. She was frozen in place as random images popped into her head.
Her holding a knife to Sark’s throat, taunting him.
Her throwing a shot glass in his direction and it shattering as it hit the wall.
Simon Walker staring down at her, naked in bed. And there was someone beside her.
Her pointing a gun at Allison Doren with Sark by her side.
Sark carrying her in his arms away from a car wreck.
And the most disturbing of all, her lying in Sark’s arms feeling perfectly content with where she was.
Shaking her head, she looked back up at the man she had been trying to shoot. She raised her gun back up at him. “What did you do to me?”
“Nothing,” he practically stammered. She could tell that he was being truthful. He seemed thrown off by her reaction.
If Sydney had had all her wits about her, she would have realized that it wasn’t her reaction that was throwing him off. The words he had said to her had also made him pale. Something had happened to him, too. The same images she had seen were running through his head.
She stepped toward him and poked the barrel of her gun roughly to his throat. “You did something to me, and I want to know what it was.”
He continued to hold his hands out, pointing his gun away from where she stood. After a moment, he found a strong enough voice to respond. “I have no idea what just happened to you, Sydney. We were doing our usual I’m-going-to-kill-you routine and then you just got paled and seemed to drift off.”
“You did something to my head.” She stepped back and shook her head again. The gun went back into her holster. Both she and Sark knew that their battle was taking a time out. They didn’t fight when they were both not up for it. It was a strange, unspoken rule between them.
Sark also holstered his weapon. “I did nothing to you.”
“Images flashed through my head,” she hissed at him. “Memories of things that didn’t happen.”
“What... kind of memories?” he asked hesitantly. It intrigued him that the same thing seemed to happen to the both of them. Though how those images could be memories was beyond him.
“Like I’m going to tell you!”
“They were about me, weren’t they?” he said with a smirk.
“No,” she said a little too quickly.
“So what were they like? Were you ravaging me in bed?” He was joking with her, but the smirk was wiped off his face when he saw her cheeks redden. “You were fantasizing about me in bed, Bristow? Priceless!”
“We weren’t having sex,” she screamed, her patience finally hitting its end at the idea of Sark knowing that the images she had seen definitely implied that they were intimate. “You were holding me. And fighting Allison Doren with me. Most of it seemed typical. Except for the holding part. That was not typical.” She knew she was rambling, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I mean, I was trying to slit your throat. That’s normal interaction between us. And I was throwing things at your head. That sounds like something I’d do. The rest of it must have just been bulls***.”
“Have you convinced yourself that already?” Sark goaded her. She drew her gun out of her holster just as he raised his again. “We’re back to this place, huh?”
“It seems like this is where we always end up.”
“Well, it’s been fun. You might as well kill me now.” He paused for dramatic purposes. “But then you’ll never get a full explanation of what just happened to you.”
“I knew you were behind it, you stupid--” Her insults were cut off as Sark pushed her up against the wall near the door to the stairwell.
She was caught off guard as he crushed his lips to hers in a searing kiss. There was no way to explain her reaction. Instead of shooting him in the chest, which was where her gun was conveniently placed, she felt her grip loosen and her gun slid to the concrete. Her empty hands then slid up Sark’s body until she felt them pulling him closer. She could feel him groan in pleasure.
After a minute, Sark pulled back and broke contact. He leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “You weren’t the only one remembering things that don’t make sense, Sydney. I remember all those things, too.”
Before she could react, he was out the door and running down the stairwell.
She made no move to follow him, instead choosing to slide down the wall and to the ground. Her mind was racing with the events of the past few minutes. Whatever had flashed through her head earlier, it had felt as real as anything she had ever encountered. It felt like real memories.
She shook her head. They couldn’t be real memories. Kendall had told her the whole of what had occurred during her missing two years. That was the only length of time during her whole life that she wasn’t sure of. If these images were real, they would have happened then.
And that was just ridiculous. Sark had been in the CIA custody during the whole two years she was gone. There was no way he could have been by her side at any point. No way.
But that didn’t explain why he claimed that he had the same images in his mind.
She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t explain it. All she knew was that she wanted to get home to the familiarity she yearned for. The life that she was so sure she wanted ten minutes ago. The life that suddenly seemed a little hollow, and she didn’t know why.
Can I get a PM if you are planning to continue? 
