Haunting Memories

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hours later, Sydney found herself sitting on the floor of the empty room with no idea how to get out of it without hurting any chance she had of deciding whether or not Connelly had any knowledge that she wanted to have. The twisty-ness of her predicament was starting to make her head hurt.

“And I am so alone on this one,” she murmured, standing up and brushing the dirt off the back of her pants. She took a quick, visual sweep of the room for the hundredth time and saw that nothing had changed. There was no way out unless someone unlocked that door for her. As much as she hoped and prayed, there was little chance of that happening.

Almost on cue, the door lock clicked open. “Connelly,” Sydney said, nodding to her captor.

“How are you holding up?” he asked patronizingly.

She shrugged. “All things considered.”

“Are you ready to give me your answer?” he asked.

She shot him a blank look. “And what answer would that be?”

“I want you and me to become colleagues in the workforce. That was what you were supposed to be mulling over in your time in this room.”

“I must have forgotten. Sorry.” Sydney sat back down on the ground with her legs crossed beneath her. “So, what do we do now? Are you going to abandon me for a longer, seemingly more excruciating length of time while I contemplate your offer again? Or are you going to physically pummel me into agreement? I just want to know if I should be bracing myself for pain or not.”

Connelly leaned his body up against the open doorway. “Are you trying to think up a way to distract me and get free?”

Sydney smirked. “Is it working?”

“Obviously not. Listen, Sydney. This is a good offer. I‘m offering you job security and a purpose that you can fight for. The Rambaldi descendent holds the power in almost every political equation.”

“If I have the power, then why should I work with you? Nothing’s in it for me.”

“No, from my point of view, you’re pretty much untouchable. But your friends? Your family? Dear Julian? They aren’t so safe.”

Sydney sent him a hurt look. “That was not very original. I would have thought you could do better, Peter. I mean, you were the one that taught Julian all he knew, and he always came up with very unique and effective threats to send my way. I‘m surprised that you can’t seem to do the same. ”

“There’s one thing you’re missing.” Connelly pulled a packet out of his suit coat and threw it in front of her. “My threat is not an empty one.”

Sydney’s heart froze as she stared at the envelope lying in front of her. Suddenly, she was quite afraid to reach out and grab it. Connelly wanted her to. She could tell that without even looking at him. “Why should I play your game?”

“Because you don’t have an option, Miss Bristow.”

Sydney reached forward and picked up the envelope. It felt incredibly light and yet way too heavy at the same time. She slid her hand along the edge and ripped one side open. A photo fell out in front of her and made her freeze. Licking her lips, she leaned down to get a closer look at the woman in the photo. “Carrie?” she choked out.

“It looks like your friend Marshall will have to raise that young boy all on his lonesome.”

It chilled her blood to hear Connelly talk in such a cold, calculating voice about being responsible for the murder of an innocent person. Knowing that having an emotional breakdown would not help anything, Sydney rubbed her eyes to stop the stinging pain of tears forming. “You are one sick bastard,” she finally managed to hiss out, flinging the envelope at the man standing in the doorway.

“I admit that you were never close with Mrs. Flinkman there. But I just wanted to prove that I’m serious in telling you that there’s really no option. And now that you know I’m serious, we can move on with our next plan.”

“There is no us.” Sydney stood up abruptly and rushed at the door.

“I don’t negotiate, little girl.” The door slammed shut in her face.

“Prick,” she screamed, punching the door hard.

The throbbing in her hand did nothing to sooth the anger and pain she felt inside of her. It was true what Connelly had meant when he said that Carrie’s death would not hit her as hard as some of the others, but she still was deeply upset by the completely unnecessary loss.

It might be slightly selfish, but the thought ringing through her head that was causing so much pain focused more on Sydney than on Marshall and his family. She was certain that this was all because of Carrie’s connection to her. Her life always seemed to be putting others in danger. It left her with feelings of self-pity that she knew shouldn’t be going through her head at a time like this.

Frustrated, she punched the wall again even though it caused more pain to ring through her body. The physicality of it cleaned out her head and let her focus. She just needed to compartmentalize the hurt raging inside her for just a little longer until she could get away.

Again she scanned the room for something, anything, to use to escape.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Connelly only waited half an hour before coming back. Obviously, he wanted the pain of being responsible for someone’s death to stay fresh in her mind. Sydney really was surprised at how much he underestimated her. If he had done the research he claimed that he had, he would know that she had a resounding ability to work through pain to get the job done.

When the door opened, she punched him hard in the face before he realized it was her fist coming at his face. She went running past where he had doubled over in pain and straight down the corridor, praying that his bearings took an abnormally long time to regain. She needed to put as much distance between herself and Connelly as she could.

Deciding that she had to get out of the building as soon as possible to send word to her family and friends that they might be in danger, she tried to acclimate how Connelly lead her to that torture cell of a room in the first place. She could remember taking a couple rights and then a left, but from there, the memories were hazy.

“Story of my life,” she muttered, continuing to run down the hallways in search of escape. The worst thing she could do was stop moving. She knew that for sure.

After a couple minutes of running and only one or two stops to try to figure out where she currently was and where she was hoping to go, she found herself in front of an open door. It was the door to the very room she had just escaped from. There was no sign of Connelly where she had left him a few minutes earlier.

It was at that moment that she realized this penthouse apartment was really very much like a maze. Every turn she made seemed to lead her back to where she was before. She wouldn’t put it past Connelly to have made specific renovations to make it exactly that way.

“He really wants me to stay,” she said, turning around and going back the way she came. Again, the only thing that made sense was keeping in motion.

As she turned the corner, a fist connected to her face. “An eye for an eye, Sydney,” Connelly whispered into her ear as he picked her up off the ground by her hair. She managed to bite back the gasp of pain. “Now, let’s get down to business.”

Even though her head was ringing from both the punch and the tug on her scalp, she could comprehend that Connelly was not returning her to small windowless room she had been calling home for hours. They were going somewhere else.

“Sit down,” Connelly said after leading her into yet another sparsely dressed room. He shoved her forcefully onto a couch.

Sydney glared at him as he threw another envelope at her which hit her squarely on the chest. “What is this? Did you kill another person for me, Connelly? You really shouldn‘t have.”

“You sound prettied hardened to the fact that Carrie Flinkman’s death sits solely on your shoulders.”

“Newsflash. My life has hardened me to the point of not caring,” she lied rather convincingly. “Death does not hurt anymore.”

“Your death would hurt.”

“You can’t kill me. You need me on your side,” Sydney reminded him, leafing through the material. “What is this stuff?”

“This is your assignment.”

“You want me to kill this man?” Sydney held up a photo of the newly elected leader of Lithuania. “I hate being an assassin for hire. I did that for two years against my will. I’ve pretty much moved past that chapter in my life.”

“I don’t want you to kill him, Sydney. I just want you to go talk with him. He has information that he said he would only give to the Rambaldi descendent.”

She leaned back on the couch. “How important is this information?”

“It should answer all of your questions and most of mine.”

“So it has something to do with Julian’s rationale in wanting to kill me all those years ago?”

“Yes. You can leave in the morning. Once this is done, I won’t be bothering you for a long while. Not until I need you again.”

Sydney flung the papers at where Connelly stood. “I never said I was going to work for you, you ***hole. I just wanted to get some information. Seems like you just told me where I can find all the answers I‘ve been looking for the past couple mouths, you arrogant bastard.”

“When will you stop calling me names? We have a job to do, and it’s the only way you can stay alive in this scenario. So stop fighting and let’s get down to business.” Connelly smirked at her. “And before you start arguing again, you won’t be able to get any of those answers without my say so. You need me as much as I need you.”

Sydney rolled her eyes and got up off the couch, intending to walk out of the room. Connelly grabbed her forcefully by the arms and flung her back down. “You’re starting to irritate me, Sydney.”

She kicked him hard in the jaw with her right foot. “How’s that for irritating?”

Connelly pulled a gun out of his pocket. “Effective. You’re alone in this game now. I don’t understand why you keep fighting me, your only ally.”

“I have many more allies than you.”

“None that can help you now. I’m the only one.”

“You’re not helping me. You’re just threatening those I love. That’s not helping.”

Connelly grabbed her forcefully up off the couch and pushed her against the wall, pressing the gun into her side. “When will you get this through your thick skull? I am the only thing keeping you alive. You can’t just banter and argue with me forever. My temper is going to get the best of me, and then you’re dead. I’m going to give you ten seconds. If you haven’t made a decision on whether you want to live or die by then, I’m going to shoot you. And you will bleed to death here, all alone, knowing that no one you cared about was smart enough to find you.”

Sydney stiffened as his words bit into her. There was really nothing she could do. She was either going to have to compromise her integrity and agree to work with him or he would really shoot her on the spot.

Before she could answer, she heard the closed door burst open, and footsteps indicated that someone had come barreling inside. Connelly’s body was pushed into hers hard, and she felt the gun break one of her ribs as the weight of his body flattened her into the wall. She slid to the ground when the pressure alleviated and tried to compartmentalize the pain and focus on what was going on around her. She could hear scuffling and struggling, but her eyes just wouldn’t focus. Everything was blurry. Her head must have slammed into the wall a little harder than she had first realized.

After repeated blinking and under-breath swearing for a few minutes, she heard the struggle end abruptly. “Connelly?” she asked hesitantly.

She felt someone’s hand grasp hers and lift her up off the ground. Reaching out with all her sense, she touched an all too familiar cheek. “Julian?”

“I’m here, Syd. Just focus on my face.”

Sydney tried to do as she was told and was surprised to see everything clear up within seconds. Some of the blurriness must have been due to her being over stressed and excited. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

Before Sark could answer, there was some movement over in the corner of the room. Connelly was slumped against the wall with a gaping head wound. “Excuse me,” Sark said. He pulled a gun out of his pants and cold cocked Connelly upside the face. “Hurts to see the student surpass the master, doesn’t it, Peter?”

“We’ll see about that,” Connelly said, kicking Sark in the kneecap.

Sark fell hard to the floor, and Sydney stared in shock halfway across the room as the two men engaged in a fist fight. She silently prayed that both men wouldn’t realize that it would be a lot easier and quicker to just start shooting one another rather than punching the living daylights out of each other.

Watching them tussle, she wondered if maybe she should do something. But then, in her mind, there was no real debate about who would win, which is why she didn’t move to help her fiancé. What she didn’t expect was all the pent-up rage Sark seemingly had. Once he gained the advantage, the fight turned into him straddling Connelly’s body and repeatedly punching him as hard as he could in the face without pause.

“Stop it!” Sydney screamed running over to try to pull Sark off of his old mentor.

“Why?” Sark said, shrugging off her attempts and continuing to punch Connelly hard in the jaw. “Why shouldn’t I just kill him right now? He tried to blackmail you into ruining your life for him. And you better believe if you had said no or tried to stall him any longer, he would have killed you. So give me one good reason why that shouldn‘t be a good enough reason to end his miserable, pathetic existence.”

Sydney stood up and crossed her arms in front of her. “Because it wouldn’t serve any purpose except to give your bloodlust some reinforcement. You haven‘t hurt someone for your personal satisfaction in so long. I thought you had gotten over that phase in your life, Julian.”

Sark paused in mid-punch. He looked down and saw that Connelly had been knocked unconscious by his fists a long time earlier. “You want me to spare him?”

“He’ll be useful to us in some way. And you’re not a murderer anymore, Julian. You can’t tell me that you wouldn’t feel guilty killing him.” Shifting positions, she put her hands on her hips and stared him down. “And you know that there was no way I would be going as far as you are if I were in your position, Julian.”

He sighed and stood up off of Connelly. Looking at her, he shook his head, “I get all my bad habits from watching you.”

“You consider showing mercy a bad habit?”

“The worst.” He held out his hand to her. “How are you holding up?”

“Let me see. Connelly killed Marshall’s wife in his attempts to prove to me his threats are not empty. I have a broken rib from you shoving him into me and therefore shoving his gun into my side.” She pulled his hands up to take a closer look at them. “And my fiancé’s hands look like they’ve been through a meat grinder.”

“They’ll heal.”

“How did you find me? Wait. No. How did you know that I needed you?”

“I just got tired of pretending that you and I were on rocky terms. When I went to find you and no one knew where you were, I got worried.”

“And how did you know I was being held hostage here?”

“I’m the best at what I do.”

“And what is that?”

“Rescuing you.” He pulled her towards the door. “It’s time for us to make our exit.”

“What about Connelly?”

“I let your friend Weiss know what I was about to do. My guess is the CIA will be sending a task force in any minute now.”

“I should call them and let them know they shouldn’t mention Nadia.”

“You’re too tired and beat up to be on the job right now,” Sark corrected her. As her words sank in, he couldn’t help but ask, “Why shouldn’t they mention your sister?”

“Because as smart as Connelly is, he doesn’t know that I have a sister. He thinks that I’m the only descendent of Rambaldi. I’d like to keep it that way as long as possible.”

“Understood. If you promise you’ll get some medical help for that broken rib and the bruises, I promise to let the CIA know they shouldn’t mention her.”

“Agreed.” Sydney let herself be lead down the hall. “You realize you eventually do have to tell me the truth about how you knew I needed your help.”

“I know. I promise I will once you get some care for those ribs. Now lean on me.”

Smiling, she did as she was told without arguing. She let Sark direct the way out while she thought of how wrong Connelly had been. He had told that her personal rescuer would not be saving her this time. “Never doubted it,” she whispered to herself.

“What did you say?” Sark asked her.

She smiled up at him. “Nothing at all. Let‘s go home.”
 
Darn, both chaps were great!

Im starting to really hate Connelly. Hes just annoying :rolleyes:

Aww... Sydney was saved again by her Prince! Yay! :lol:

Fantastic updates, thanks for the PM's :smiley:
 
I love your update! :D I think it's so great Sark came for her, he's so sweet. Just one thing, you forgot to pm me, again.... :( Would you mind not forgetting it next time. :P
 
Author’s note: Sorry it took me so long to update. I know I was on a role for a while there. But the excellence that is Battlestar Galactica took over, and I had to get my Lee/Kara shippyness out. BTW - if anyone wants a link to that story (‘cause I’m so proud of having churned it out in one week), I’d be happy to PM it to you if you let me know.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Sydney sat down at their kitchen table with a cup of coffee grasped in her hands. She had been on the phone with Marshall for the past two hours, telling him why his wife had been killed and explaining why all the blame should rest on her shoulders alone. There must have been an apology coming out of her mouth every other second. Marshall, as she knew he would be, was understanding, although she could tell he was crumbling on the inside.

Eventually, she told him that he should get back to his son and start to heal his wounds. She didn’t want o keep him from Mitchell. The only reason he agreed to hang up was that Weiss had just arrived at his house. That was Sark’s doing.

He had somehow had the smarts to call Weiss once they had returned to their house. He made sure that Connelly was safe in the CIA’s custody and then explained what had happened to Carrie Flinkman. Weiss immediately agreed with his idea that Marshall should not be alone and handed the Connelly situation over to Vaughn. It reassured Sydney to know that Marshall would not be alone for quite a while.

After taking another small sip of her coffee, she set it down and stared at the man sitting across from her. “All right, handsome. Talkie talk talk.”

“You want to know how I knew you needed me?”

“Yes. And don’t give me that connection mumbo jumbo.”

“I think my memories are coming back. I remember the meeting I had with Connelly when I asked him to run surveillance on you right after you got abducted by the Covenant. He knew who you were.”

“I’m sure he did. I was quite popular back in the day.”

“The funny thing is my memory proceeded past the moment that I left the meeting. I heard things that I never should have been privy to.”

“Have you been smoking the evil marijuana again?” she teased.

“I wouldn’t be telling you this if it wasn’t important, Syd.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll be serious. What did you hear?”

“Connelly wanted me to fall for you so that he could hit me where it hurts. Once I had let you in, he was planning on killing you. All in an attempt to get me to work for him once more.”

“See, he kept telling me the opposite when I was kidnapped. He seems to be interested in having me work for him. The descendent of Milo Rambaldi is a valuable commodity these days.”

“Only two of its kind,” Sark joked.

“And you’ve only tainted one.” Sydney got a funny look on her face. “Oh have you? Did you ever meet my sister?”

Sark just grinned at her.

“I am going to kill you,” she said, moving to get up. Sark beat her to the punch and rounded the table, pulling her into his arms. Sensing something was wrong, she asked, “Why so serious?”

“We can’t be bantering back and forth right now, Syd. There’s a lot we have to get to the bottom of, and I think that between the two of us, we have the information to do it.”

“Okay,” she said, shrugging out of his arms. “Who do you think Connelly told the truth to?”

“I’m not sure. I wouldn’t doubt that he was using me to establish a connection to you.”

“But you also wouldn’t doubt that he was using me to destroy your life and effectively turn you back to the dark side?”

“Exactly.”

She paused and bit her lip. “Thought. What if he was telling both of us the truth?”

“How do you mean?”

“Go with me here. He gets you to fall in love with me, the ‘evil’ Covenant agent. That effectively lowers both of our strongly erected emotional barriers. We’re weakened. Without your knowledge, he goes to Julia Thorne to let her know that the man she’s sleeping with is actually intent on killing her. I decided that he must be right because you are aloof and distant with me every time I ask you questions. Connelly is supportive and lets me know that he’s there to help. After planting some fake evidence of your intent to kill, he tells me that he’d be happy to whisk me away from the Covenant in return for my services as Rambaldi descendent. I agree because you are so shady that I can’t trust you even to check up on Connelly’s credentials. I do whatever job he needs and then BAM! He whacks me. Your life is destroyed. He’s again supportive and comforting, and you go back to the man who is familiar to you like a father.”

“Crazy plan. But it does have Connelly written all over it. He has a flare for the supportive and comforting angle.”

“So, what do we do now?”

“Beats me.”

“Do you think I should tell Nadia’s what’s going on? She might be in danger if Connelly figures out that she exists.”

“I don’t know. You have only talked to your sister a handful of times since you yourself found out she existed. I’m not sure if it’s the easy thing to keep calling her up and telling her that her life is in danger because she belongs to a family she never knew.”

“It’s tough, being my mother’s child,” Sydney pointed out. She took a long, deep breath before looking back at Sark. “So do you think I should contact her?”

“I don’t know.” Sark paced for a few seconds before turning back to her. “I don’t think you should. At least not yet. Don’t contact her until you know if there really is something going down that could affect. And there is the favor that Connelly was going to force you to do.”

“The meeting with the President of Lithuania? You actually want me to go through with that.”

“It might give us some much needed information and let us know if you have to talk with your sister about Connelly. Worst case scenario, it would at least give us leverage against Peter. I mean, all you would have to do is talk with this guy, right?”

“That’s what it seemed like. Of course, you’d come with me under some silly guise of being my bodyguard. The information I find out will affect you just as much as me.”

“And I do need to protect you in case Connelly gives the CIA the slip.”

“I can protect myself.”

Sark rolled his eyes and sat down at the table again. “And that’s how you ended up in an inescapable room with no way out.”

“Hey! I was escaping when you kindly stepped in to break my rib.”

“How is your rib doing?”

“Hurts like hell, but I’ve had worse. You’ve done worse to me yourself.”

“Back at you.” Sark reached across the table to pick up her mug and looked at the bottom. “Want me to get you more?”

“No. I probably shouldn’t be hopped up on caffeine right now. It throws off my senses.”

“Planning on getting abducted again?”

“It’s a pattern that I choose to not ignore. I’m kidnapable.” She shrugged her shoulders.

They both returned to silence as they thought over whether this was the right move to make. Losing their heads and rushing straight into something might be the worst choice they’ve made so far, and there had already been a few bad ones.
 
“Planning on getting abducted again?”

“It’s a pattern that I choose to not ignore. I’m kidnapable.” She shrugged her shoulders.

LOL :rolleyes:

I wonder why that is... *thinks very hard* :P

And poor Marshall! :( Now he has to raise Mitchell up all on his own :cry:

Great update, thanks for the PM ;)
 
Author’s Note: I think this story is winding down. My level of free time has been diminishing more and more as I gear up to graduate college. Not to mention that I’m not really getting much Sarkney inspiration from the show… so I think maybe one or two more chapters. Just to warn you guys!

Chapter Thirty

“Rainy season,” Sydney grumbled stepping out of the plane. “Why did it have to be rainy season?”

“The way I hear it, it’s always rainy season in Lithuania,” Weiss said, following her out into the airport terminal. He pulled Sydney close to his side, knowing that she tended to have a habit of either running off when you weren’t looking or being kidnapped when you weren’t looking.

“I can’t believe you insisted on coming,” she said as she tried to pull back from his grip slightly.

Weiss didn‘t loosen his hold at all. “You have to have some sort of CIA back-up on this one. We do still employ you, don’t we?”

“Officially, yes.” She reached up to turn on her earpiece. “Are you there, Julian?”

“Just call me the little devil on your shoulder telling you that your skirt is definitely not too short.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let’s get this over with. I really want to go home and smack him around a little.”

“I think that’s a dream of a lot of people.”

Sydney rolled her eyes, this time at Weiss. Then she stopped and thought about it, finally giving him a smug smile. “But it’s only my reality.”

“Some people have all the luck.”

“Would you two stop flirting with one another? I can hear you,” Sark’s voice reminded her in her ear. “Plus it sounds disgusting like you’re both flirting at me and not each other.”

“Flirting is the way I operate on a mission. Get used to it.” Sydney smiled at Weiss as they exited the airport. There was a government marked car waiting for her right outside on the curb.

“Now that’s service,” Weiss said with a grin. “How far until we met that Lithuanian guy?”

“President Danelus is at his private offices which are about ten minutes from here.” Sydney smiled at the man holding open the left rear door for them. “Your services are not needed. We’re going to drive ourselves.”

“That was not in the agreement,” the man grunted out in choppy English.

“Doesn’t matter, man,” Weiss said, tapping the man supportively on the shoulder. “When she gets an idea in her head, there’s not reasoning with her.”

The man nodded and took a step back from the care. “That was a lot easier than I thought,” Sydney admitted to her partner as they entered the car.

“Be sure she drives on the proper side of the road,” Sark’s voice echoed into both of their ears.

“I thought we turned him off,” Sydney commented, steering the car onto the road in front of the airport. Weiss let out a polite laugh before taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. “Is something the matter, Eric?”

“No. I was just thinking how odd this was. You’ve been going nonstop, in and our of the CIA’s jurisdiction for years now. It just seems like things have changed.”

“Like they’re winding down?”

“Maybe,” he said, turning to stare out the window. “Maybe.”

“It does feel like things are a lot less hectic with Connelly being in custody and my missing two years having mostly returned.”

“It’s eerie.”

She took a hand off the steering wheel and touched Weiss’s shoulder gently. “Think of it this way, Eric. Nothing’s really changing. We might just be finally closing this crazy chapter in my life and moving on to something else.”

“That’s a fairly optimistic perspective you have there.”

“Thing of it as a hope that I might actually have time to use my vacation time. I think it’s been adding up for quite a while now.”

The rest of the drive was in moderate silence. Sarcasm could really only take them so far in avoiding the idea that they really didn’t have any idea what they were getting into even if things felt like they were slowing down. This appointment with the Lithuanian president had been set up by Connelly. Granted, Sydney and the CIA had shifted the time and date to a little earlier than Connelly had expected, but there was really no reason that they would avoid trouble because of that.

“Well, this is certainly a private office,” Weiss said, pointing to the massive wrought-iron gates and the burly looking security man waving them over.

Sydney drove the car up to the gates and gave one of her infamous smiles. “Sydney Bristow, here to meet the President.”

The man looked over his list. “You’re not on there.”

“Try Julia Thorne,” she said with a smile. “I have aliases. A girl can never be too careful.”

“How do I know you’re this Miss Thorne?” he asked her.

Sydney reached into her purse and pulled out a passport. She handed it over to the man. “Because that’s my name. Sydney Bristow is the alias I use when things get a little too close for comfort.”

The security guy handed her back the passport and clicked open the gate. Sydney gave him one last smile and, after flinging her passport at Weiss, drove the car forward.

“How did you get a passport with Julia Thorne’s name on it?” Weiss asked her.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Sark added through the earpieces.

“I keep it around just in case. My old aliases seem to come in handy at the most random times. Since Connelly was going to use me while I was working with the Covenant as Julia Thorne, it only makes sense that he would set up this whole assignment under that alias. A girl has to be prepared for everything if she wants to get anywhere.”

Sydney parked the car at the top of the driveway in front of a rather intimidating looking mansion. “Something tells me that this is more of a private residence than a place of business.”

“Maybe the President was really impressed with Julia Thorne’s reputation,” Weiss added, slipping out of the car.

“We’re going to have to go radio silent for now, Julian. There might be some sort of surveillance that will pick up the frequency you’re transmitting on. I don‘t want to chance screwing this up in any way.”

“If any thing goes wrong, no matter how small, you open the channel back up. I don’t want to be cut off from this.”

“Got it,” Sydney said before turning her ear piece off. “Weiss, you should wait out here.”

“You conveniently wait to tell me that until your little loverboy can’t hear you.”

“Yeah, I did that on purpose.” She walked around the car to look Weiss in the eye. “I think the President might be a little skittish. Julia Thorne isn’t the type of agent to run around with an entourage. He’ll probably only want to talk if it’s me listening. I didn’t tell Julian this because I knew he would worry.”

“All right. I’ll stay at the car. But you be careful. Any slip-up at all, you get Sark on that radio.” She nodded and started up the stairs to the front door. “Sark is going to kill me.”

Electing not to knock since she was expected, Sydney pushed the large oak door open and entered the main foyer, trying to feel as confident as she looked. “Definitely not a normal place of business,” she whispered.

“Miss Thorne,” said a voice from above her.

She looked up to the landing above her. “President Danelus. Pleasure to meet you.”

“The same here, Miss Thorne.” The President descended the stairs to stand next to her.

“Call me Julia. It makes this all feel a lot less formal.”

“And you can call me Derek.” The president made the motions as if he was going to continue talking but stopped himself. Instead, he grasped her left arm lightly and led her up the stairs and into a private office. “I guess we should start with me asking how your work for the Covenant is going.”

The question only fazed her for a fraction of a second. “Good. It’s hard most of the time, not knowing who’s issuing the orders for me to carry out. It pays the bills, though, and keeps me out of government custody.”

“That’s what I thought you would say, Julia.” He smiled at her, and she could tell that he had something painful to tell her by his sympathetic gaze. This was not going to be fun. “I don’t want to beat around the bush. I know you’re a very talented and busy agent for the Covenant, but there are things you need to know. To start with, your name is not really Julia Thorne.”

Sydney faked a laugh before sobering. “What do you mean, President?”

“Again, call me Derek. I’m about to upend your life. We should at least be on a first name basis.”

“Fine. What do you mean, Derek?”

“Your real name is Sydney Bristow, and you work for the United States Central Intelligence Agency. You are not really an agent of the Covenant.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, trying to appear as if she was the hardened spy that she had pretended to be for two years of her life.

“I have been waiting too long for you to agree to a meeting. Sydney, you have to get out of your present situation before you get killed. The Covenant isn’t the only organization who wants you dead.”

“I’ve grown up with multiple sources trying to kill me. Your information is not new.”

“There is a man who has been manipulating you like a puppet on a string.”

She tried to think fast. “Julian Lazarey, I know. I have been wise to his ways since he first made contact with me.”

“No, not Julian Lazarey. In fact, just the opposite. Julian has been helping you out at every turn of the road.”

“What do you mean?”

“Julian has been working for me since the Covenant stole you away from your life in the United States.”
 
Chapter Thirty-One

“Huh?” That was all Sydney could force out of her mouth. The President of Lithuania had just told her that the man she loved had never lied to her when they worked with the Covenant. Sark had always been there to help her and get her through the whole ordeal. It is what she had been blindly believing and hoping since she first came to understood how much she loved and needed Julian. And now someone was finally telling her that it was true.

“I’m sorry to just be spring these things on you. I wish there had been a simpler, gentler way of telling you the truth.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t even know why you’ve let me get this far. But I’m telling the truth.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because the man who’s been manipulating you has been manipulating me also.” President Derek Danelus pulled his glasses off and set them on the desk. “Peter Connelly has been blackmailing me for information I had on the descendents of Rambaldi for years. He has viciously destroyed every inch of a life that I once had before assuming this office. I used to have a wife, children, grandchildren who loved me and were a part of my life. Now my family has been reduced to just a façade, only there so that I won’t appear to be a weak leader. The second I step down, they are gone.”

“What did Connelly do to you?”

“Nothing that you wouldn’t do if you really wanted something, Julia.”

“Call me Sydney.” She gave him a weak smile when he looked at her in shock. He hadn’t expected her to admit that she believed him so easily. But then he didn’t know that she already knew she wasn’t Julia Thorne. “I know who I am, Derek. You didn’t have to tell me.”

To his credit, he contained his surprise rather quickly. He was obviously as good of a politician as everyone claimed. “Then why did you make me? If you already knew, why have me explain it to you?”

“I had to find out your reasons. People have been trying to kill me my whole life. I don’t take unnecessary chances.” Making a split second decision, she gave him another grin, hoping it appeared as reassuring as she wanted it to. “Would you hold on a second?”

After his nod of affirmation, she reached up and pressed her ear piece back on. “Weiss, I’m all right. Julian, you should stop lurking around the perimeter and pretending like you didn’t follow me to this location. Come inside. The President has some things you might want to hear.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Julian smiled at Weiss as he made his way past the parked car. Weiss simply rolled his eyes and resumed talking on his cell phone. Sark guessed that he must be relaying the new developments in Sydney’s assignment. Unlike Sydney, Weiss seemed to actually care that he kept his job with the US government.

He entered the foyer to see Sydney and President Danelus waiting for him. “Hello, President,” he said, crisply looking to Sydney for confirmation. When she smirked at him and winked, he let his last few reservations go. “What is this I hear about information I need to know?”

“Connelly has been blackmailing the President for information about Rambaldi’s descendents. Derek told him that there was only one remaining descendent.”

“That was why Connelly doesn’t know about your sister.”

“And the evidence of Nadia’s existence as a descendent was hidden.”

“How does this man know about your sister?” Sark asked. He was still trying to figure out what was going on. This was way too easy for his liking. Usually it took a near-death experience for him to figure out the truth. “No one knew of her existence until a year ago.”

“I can explain that one,” the president interjected. “Nadia has been doing a few freelance assignments for me while working for the Argentine government. She had run into a situation with one of the fugitive groups in the country and need some money fast. I was there to offer her aid in that way, and I got to do what I felt needed to be done. You see, someone had to watch over Nadia in case Connelly found out that she existed. It couldn’t be you or anyone you knew, Sydney. Otherwise I might have told you sooner that she was in Argentina.”

“It seems like you think you know Sydney very well even though you two have never met,” Sark pointed out, shifting a little where he stood. Maybe it was just the fact that he had a life where anyone and everyone might stab you in the back at any moment, but he did not trust this guy. At least, not yet.

“My life has been Rambaldi for so long. Rambaldi equals the Derevko bloodline. So, therefore, I do know her well.”

“Why don’t we stop trying to attack the president, Julian, and let him talk?” Sydney looked over at the man in question. “Tell him about the evidence of my sister’s existence being hidden.”

“That would be the disk that Miss Bristow tells me the two of you jointly stole from CyroTech a little while back. CyroTech Corporation is one of my holdings that I had before I took office here. I have to admit that I lost track of what they were doing at that complex. I didn’t realize how bad the situation had become.”

“Everything’s connecting so conveniently,” Sark said sarcastically. “Isn’t that nice!”

“I understand your hesitation, Julian. It took me months to get your trust the first time around.” The president paused a moment before continuing on, “Things are only clicking into place right now because I’m through with hiding from the people. Connelly wanted you to come here to find out if I was going to crack. He wanted to know if I could come face to face with a woman who has been used by so many people and if I could lie to her myself. It was like his final test for me.”

Sydney bit her lip. No matter what the president said, it was hard to accept that things were actually working out. Luckily she didn‘t have to respond to him. Sark chose to instead. “I don’t understand why Connelly would have gone to so much trouble to get Sydney to meet with you. What was his goal?”

“Sydney was telling me while we waited for you to come inside that you had a theory about that of your own.”

“We thought that Connelly wanted to get his hands on a Rambaldi descendent to get some information.”

“He wanted information on a weapon. Put together the knowledge that you have, Sydney, that Julian has, and that I have, and he would have his answer. Our lives have been leading up to this point.”

Sydney looked over at her fiancé. He was nodding his head, but she could still see him hesitate. “Well, you have had your hands in a good portion of our lives without our knowledge, haven’t you, Mr. President?”

“I would have told you all this sooner if I thought it would have helped and if it had been a realistic option.”

“His family was threatened by Connelly,” Sydney explained.

“That’s the oldest trick in the book.”

“It worked,” the president said. “I kept silent for way too long. I let Connelly believe that he could get what he desired with a little pushing and prodding of your life, Sydney. For that, again, I’m sorry.”

“So what changed your mind about keeping silent?” Sark asked. He seemed to be warming up to the idea that the president was telling the truth.

“It wasn’t until I received a message from Julia Thorne through one of my private channels that she wanted a meeting that I figured it was time to come clean.”

“It was Connelly setting up the meeting. The bastard didn’t even wait to kidnap me before putting the wheels in motion.”

“He was always extremely cocky.”

“Now I know where you get it from,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“What else is there that I need to know?” Sark asked as he turned his attention back to the president.

The president shot him a strange look before continuing. “I expected Sydney’s spotty memory, but yours I was unprepared for.”

“I wiped my memory clean along with Sydney’s,” he explained simply. “Sorry if it causes you any extra work.”

“You were working with me to determine the descendents of Rambaldi for a few months before the Covenant’s plans caused Sydney to be ripped from her life in Los Angeles. You were pulling double duty, working for me and doing your normal freelance jobs. You seemed really determined at keeping the ruse going.”

Sydney smiled at him. “You agreed to work with the Covenant to protect me, Julian. It looks like I was right, and you always did have a crush on me. You followed me to the Covenant and protected me just like we always thought. You didn‘t want to kill me.”

“You were protecting Sydney so that Connelly’s plan would at least partially work. You couldn’t let him fail if you were going to figure out what he was trying to do, but you also wouldn’t compromise Sydney’s safety.”

Sark slunk down into a nearby chair and set his head into his hands. “All this thinking is making my head hurt. I don’t think I can see straight.”

“Stop being dramatic,” Sydney scolded. “I’ll put it in simple, easy to understand wording. You were working with Danelus before he took power as the president of Lithuania to help find the descendents of Rambaldi. When you two discovered that the Derevko line was involved, you agreed to help keep me safe. The President started to be threatened by Connelly, and together you two figured out what he had planned. However, that was too late to keep the Covenant from kidnapping me, and you were forced to play along with Connelly and the Covenant’s plans in order to keep me safe. At the first possible moment, you were going to return me to my life as Sydney. But I beat you to it and saved myself. As a precaution, you erased both our memories, thinking we would just shift back to our normal roles as mortal enemies. It didn’t work out that way. We remembered. We got into a lot of trouble trying to figure out the pieces that didn’t come back so easily. And here we are.”

He looked up at her and gave her a nasty look. “Head. Hurts. Words. Hurt.”

“Grow. Up,” she answered, her teeth ground together in anger and frustration. “I thought you were supposed to be a super spy. Try to act like it.”

“I don’t understand why you two are still working together if you no longer think you’re Julia Thorne,” the president asked, trying to calm the situation down. There was too much tension in the air.

“Contrary to what it looks like, I actually love this pain in my ass,” Sydney said.

Sark gave the president an uncharacteristic goofy grin. “She’s spending the rest of her life with me.”

“Okay.”

“So, now he’s told us what he knows. What do we do now?”

Sydney thought a moment before nodding and walking out the front doors. “Eric? Is Connelly still in your custody?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Make sure he stays there. And tell Dixon that Sark and I are heading in with some information that should keep him there indefinitely. He‘s been playing most of the world in order to get some sort of Rambaldi weapon. This whole thing reminds me too much of what the Sloane situation was. We need to keep a close eye on him. We should be in L.A. and at the CIA headquarters within nine hours.”

“You and Sark?”

“Yes. We’re both coming in, and he will not be blindfolded. Tell Marcus and my father they’re just going to have to deal with that.”
 
Epilogue

Sydney sat at the small café across the street from Argentina’s main intelligence offices. She readjusted the sunglasses on her face as she watched her sister walk down the front stairs. She was beginning to regret going against what her father and Dixon had told her. This was going to be hard.

Standing up and walking across the fairly deserted road, she smiled and waved at her sister. Nadia paused in her steps and began to walk towards her. “Hi.”

“What are you doing here, Sydney?”

“There are a few things I wanted to tell you.”

Nadia narrowed her eyes. “Am I in danger?”

“No! Nothing like that. Well, there was this one thing, but we’re handling it.”

“What?” Nadia knew she probably shouldn’t even ask what was going on, but she couldn’t help herself. Call it an act of self preservation.

“There was a man involved in my missing two years. He wanted to get his hands on a descendent of Rambaldi, and he didn’t seem to know of your existence. It’s been handled. He’s in CIA custody where he’ll be staying for a long, long time.”

“Peter Connelly?”

Sydney stared at her sister in shock. “You know about him?”

“I keep tabs on you, too. Our paths seem to intersect a lot.”

“But you didn’t know about him before?”

“Not in connection to you, no. I would have told you immediately when I found out I had a family in the United States if I had known. Everyone assumes that I’m hiding things from you just because my life is straightforward and simple. I’m not an evil agent hell bent on screwing with you life, Sydney.”

“I know.” Sydney reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope. “This is the real reason I tracked you down.”

Nadia hesitantly took the envelope from her and slid her finger along the crease. “This isn’t going to explode or anything, is it?”

“Nope. It’s just paper and ink.”

She looked down at the paper in her hand. “A wedding invitation?”

“I’m getting married in a few months. I wanted to ask you to come to the ceremony. We might not be close, but we’re still family.”

“Julian Lazarey?”

Sydney‘s mind flashed back to a moment a few days earlier when Sark hinted at having known her sister before he met her. “You know him, don’t you?”

“We worked together when I started working for the Argentine government. He helped me learn some of the ropes. I didn’t realize you were involved with him.”

Sydney started to say something and then paused. “What?” Nadia asked.

“Have you ever been involved with him?”

“No. He’s not my type,” she answered simply.

“All right. I just had to get that one out of the way.” They stood there in silence for a moment. “So, will you come?”

Nadia stared at her big sister for a moment. “If I can get away, I’ll try. It would be nice to see Julian again.”

Sydney narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Are you sure you weren’t involved?”

She just smiled and gave a small wave before walking back the way she came. When she reached the end of the street, she turned back to face Sydney. “I’ll try,” she yelled.

“That’s all I’m asking,” Sydney called back.

She watched her sister turn the corner and disappear from view. Her father had told her that she shouldn’t try to make Nadia Santos a part of her life. That it would be better for everyone if she just kept their lives separate like they had been for years. But something inside her told her that this had been the right thing to do. Nadia was her half-sister, and she should be at the most important day in Sydney’s life.

Sydney started to walk in the opposite direction to where a car was waiting to take her back to the airport and her life in the States. She still couldn’t believe she was marrying Julian Sark. Actually, she could believe she was doing it. What she couldn’t believe was the fact that there weren’t many protests. Once she had decided that it was now or never and told everyone that she was going to marry him within the year, everything had moved so fast.

There were still things about the two years she was missing that she was unsure of. She didn’t think she would ever know every moment that she had lost. But there was a sense of closure to the situation. She had been searching for that for so long that it felt eerie to actually have it. Her life had been turned end on end for what seemed like forever, but for once, it was calm. She didn’t think that would be changing anytime soon either. It was refreshing.

Sydney slid into the car and felt the car shift into drive. She still had quite a lot of questions in her life. She still had issues she had to work out with both her parents, and she still had to figure out how her sister is supposed to fit into her life. She wasn’t sure if her job at the CIA would be able to work now that she was marrying the enemy. She didn’t know if Julian would be changing his way of life to allow for them to be together if she didn’t leave, and she didn’t know how she could possibly ask him to do that so she could stay.

If she knew anything at all, though, she knew that she could finally sleep without having her memories haunt her every move. Through all the pain and through all the questions in the past year, Sark had made sure of that.

Smiling, she thought of the man she had fought so hard to love and watched the buildings pass by.





Author’s Note: Thanks for sticking around with this one for so long! I apologize for being so busy and not being to update as frequently as I would have liked. I hope you enjoyed it… :eek:)
 
Terrific ending. I thought you done a great job. I always enjoy reading your stories. If it weren't for you I would never have known sarkney even existed. I'll be for in debt to you for introducing me to the wonderful world and fanfic. hehe

Amber
 
what an awesome ending to such a great story........u can write better than some of the authors of the books i read........keep it up......

thx for the pm ^_^
 
This has been a fantastic story im sad thats its finished. Oh well.

Excellent finish, hope to see more stories from you in the future! :smiley:

Thanks for the PM's
 
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