Fic Part Deux
Here's the rest of the Sarkney. If you're still with me at this point, I give you my deepest thanks.
Chapter#: At the Door
In the seventh week, she finds the gun he keeps under his pillow.
The expression that comes to her face would have sent any lesser of a man fleeing. Instead, Sark shrugs philosophically. “It’s a firearm, Sydney. It’s not like you haven’t seen one before.”
“In. The. Bed.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re so upset about. Don’t you always keep one close at hand? In our line of work, it’s an unfortunate fact that nothing lasts as long as the memories of one’s adversaries. In the drawer would be too awkward. Under the nightstand would be impractical. Under the mattress would be too slow. Really, Sydney. Don’t you think you’ll ever have days where you wished your gun was right next to you?”
She faintly remembers a best friend’s face twisted in hate, and how the struggle to reach a gun on time changed her entire world. She doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t try to move his weapon.
In the seventh month, she finds out what prompts him to have it there.
The beach house in the Caribbean is borrowed from an associate. The hot, sticky summer days end in long, hot summer nights. Their room in contrast is a cool paradise. The windows are flung wide, open to the breeze off the water, and moonlight pours through. The overhead fan emits a low hum, the only sound in the otherwise silent room. They try not to turn on the lights, forgoing the extra heat generated to opt for candlelight instead. The four-poster they sleep in is hung with soft, white mosquito netting, and usually they pull it closed and she can imagine herself locked away in a protective cocoon. Tonight, however, they are too distracted by each other to remember. Which ends up just as well.
She has to give the men credit - they were as silent as any agency could have wished. She doesn’t sense them until the first one is right outside the bedroom door. Even then, she’s not sure she would have known if so many years of sleepless nights hadn’t conditioned her so. But all it takes is the sigh of a single floorboard, and she’s awake. She curls herself into the shadows on her side of the bed, hand reaching for the glass lantern beside her. The man slips into the room, gun at the ready, eyes hunting for Sark in the night. Sydney wishes she could have woken Sark up, but there’s simply no chance that wouldn’t alert the men as well. She has to trust that he’ll be with her momentarily. She hurls the small lantern at the first operative, hearing the shattering of the glass against his flesh, and his soft scream of anguish as a shard pierces his eye. The slight hitch of a breath is her only warning that Sark’s definitely awake now, before he and Sydney are rolling off her side of the bed, away from the team. Even before they hit the ground, Sark’s firing, and the grunts and yells prove to her that even in moonlight, his sense of aim is formidable. She snatches their clothing from the heap on the floor beside her, and is relieved when she feels the shape of her gun still tangled with her pants. She works the cold metal free, then slides backwards to press herself against the wall by the window. Peering out, she can see that the attack team left no cover squad outside. Their mistake. She throws the clothes out the window, then throws herself after them. Once outside, she lays down the cover fire for Sark to follow her through the opening. She wonders how many men were on the team. In the faint light, she’s sure she can count at least six bodies, and there are three more still standing. She squeezes off another shot, muscles absorbing the snap of her wrist with the ease of long years of practice. Two still standing.
She grins. This is a piece of cake. She steadies her arm on the window ledge, and aims her Beretta. The count is part of her now, so ingrained she doesn’t even feel it. One, two, breathe, three. It should have been a clean head shot. Instead, the bullet goes wide, buries into the nearest bed-post, splintering the wood. What? she thinks. She realizes that Sark has her by the hand and is pulling her towards the shelter of the palm grove by the water. She stops and yanks her hand back. He turns. “Sydney, we really must remove ourselves from the area.”
“I almost had them! I could have taken them both, you know that. What the hell were you thinking? Now they’re going to get away, or come after us, or send others after us instead! Dammit, Sark, what if they - ”
His voice cuts her off. “I took care of it.” She glares at him, opens her mouth to reply, and right on cue, the beach house goes up in a pillar of flame. Her mouth closes again with a snap. She spins, shoves him for good measure, and then pauses as she feels a low hum begin to fill her body. She remembers the first time they watched a burning building from the shelter of trees. And from the darkening awareness in his eyes, she knows he’s remembering too. She goes to push him away again, but can’t. “Damn you,” she says softly. “I had the mark.”
“I know it, Sydney.” Her fingers curl into his bare shoulders, and he backs her up to brace her against the nearest tree. “I know it.” And the rest is nothing but the fire.
Interlude #: Surrealism Revisited
The faint schiiiiik of a blade scraping skin wakes her from her sleep. She stumbles out of bed, squinting in the faint excuse for light that fills the bedroom. She runs a hand through her hair, mindlessly tucking a strand behind her ear. What the hell is that noise? She follows the faint sound, threading her way around armoires and chairs, fingers gently stroking the butt of the gun she doesn’t even realize she’s picked up. Finally, there. An open door, spilling more faint light into the room to meld with the rest of the timelessness. She steps up, peers in, and realizes that this is just one more of those moments in her life that was never have supposed to happen. She leans lightly against the door frame, and watches Sark shave.
She admits to some surprise. She would have imagined him to have had the latest in blade technology - god knows all his knives are state-of-the-art. She would have thought something electric, maybe, or with multiple flexing blades and strips of aloe, vitamin E, and whatever the hell else they put on those things these days. She really couldn’t say. Instead, however, his lithe fingers are wrapped around the handle of an old-fashioned straight-edge. She watches the blade, curving, gleaming, and swallows appreciatively as he moves it with easy, practiced precision over the vulnerable flesh of his throat. A dangerous thing, that type of razor, capable of creating great amounts of damage with just a little carelessness. His eyes meet hers in the mirror. Blue eyes, curving, gleaming. Of course, she thinks. For him, that would be the appeal. She gives him a faint smile, then turns, and she and her gun go back to bed.
Chapter #: Asphyxiation.
“I do wonder, you know.”
“About what?”
“Why you keep me around. Why I’m still alive, even knowing what I know about you. Why, when no one in the world would miss me, you haven’t simply… removed… the liability I represent.”
He’s wondered the same thing himself. “It pleases me to have you here. My motives are my own.” He turns back to his papers. She sighs then, and almost lets it go. But…
“That’s not good enough.”
His eyes raise again, and they look almost - amused - though his face is still a blank slate. That’s okay, she thinks. He can play that all he likes. She’s learning to read him anyway. Ignore the mask, focus on the eyes… “How’s that, then?” he asks.
“It’s not enough. I need a reason.”
“A reason?”
“A reason, an excuse, a lie. I don’t care! Something, anything, to help me explain to myself what exactly it is that I’m doing here. With you.”
“You’re not enjoying it here? We could go somewhere else, that’s easily arranged. Monaco’s really quite lovely this…” Her hand slams down on his desk, ending his sentence abruptly.
“Dammit, Sark, this is not a joke!” Her voice is the hiss of a whip lash. His eyes narrow infinitesimally, and she could swear the room is 5 degrees cooler than it was a second ago. She tenses, slightly. He’s not amused anymore.
“No,” he says. “Quite apparently it’s not. Explain to me how, precisely, your moral dilemma is any concern of mine.” He drops his pen, and spreads his hands wide in an atypically spontaneous gesture. “There are no bars, here, Sydney. I did not force you to come with me. If you’ll recall, I didn’t even ask. Though I do not wish to appear… unappreciative… of your companionship - on the contrary I assure you I appreciate it immensely - the fact remains that I’ve exacted no promises from you, nor have I tried to ensure your continued presence here by offering any sort of recompense. I did not ask you to stay. Whatever demons you’re facing, Sydney, are entirely of your own design.”
Damn it. That isn’t the answer she’s looking for. “A reason, Sark.” Please.
“You’re an intelligent woman, Sydney. I think reiterating all the thoughts I hold regarding our respective skills as operatives and our potential as a team” You are so good, you know that? “would simply be an insult to that intelligence. I won’t say anything you haven’t already considered.”
“Sark, maybe I’m not making myself clear enough here. I did what I had to do to get us out of Sloane’s compound alive. I don’t regret that. But the motivations for my previous actions are now irrelevant. I should not be here with you, like this, for absolutely no purpose.” She takes a deep breath, and tells her heart rate to slow down. “But neither do I want to leave.” His eyes flicker. “Do you hear me? I. don’t. want. to. go. But without a reason... So what am I supposed to do, huh? Tell me, Sark, what exactly am I supposed to do, when I can’t find the middle ground?”
There’s nothing but silence. His face is so smooth, so controlled, but she thinks she can see his heart breaking in his eyes. Or maybe that’s her heart.
Sark sits, quiet, wanting so much for this not to happen. Can’t she see it? he wonders. Doesn’t she know? He wants her to be the one that bends. Wants her to be the one to put away the rules she’s lived her whole life by. Wants her to be the one to remake her soul. Needs her to be the one to do it, because he’s not sure he’d survive the process. But not this time. This time, she has to have the words. Words he doesn’t know how to give. The seconds stretch on, eternities in a heartbeat, and then she abruptly turns and heads for the door, heels making no sound on the carpet.
For one wildly panicked second, Sark’s absolutely certain he’s simply going to asphyxiate, right there in his mahogany and green velvet office, and that’ll be an end to it. In the next second, he’s up out of his chair, over his desk, and across the room before he can think about it. Somewhere in his mind, a much more analytical Sark is chanting Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid… But he can’t stop to listen.
To her credit, Sydney doesn’t flinch when Sark’s hand slams against the wood paneling of the door, not inches from her face. “Damn you, Sydney.” The carving on this door is really quite exquisite. Vines and leaves and teeny tiny flowers, all lovingly carved and polished to a warm glow. She waits. Finally, “You mustn’t go.”
She slowly turns to face him. And damned if there isn’t a man under that mask after all. His eyes are hunted and lost, his body seems to tremble, and the twisting of confusion and despair on his face is painful to see. Painful, she knows, because she feels it. Like there’s a stone fist poised around her heart, ready to squeeze, and squeeze, and break her utterly if these next words aren’t exactly right. It’s okay though, she thinks, because the door is right in front of her and she can still get out. Briefly, she wonders how they got to this point. She tries to remember what changed between that day in Sloane’s office and now, but the more she tries, the more it’s all a blur, and she knows she’ll find no answers in the past.
He says it again, and it almost sounds like he’s trying to convince himself this time. “You mustn’t go.”
When she speaks, she speaks softly, for she doesn’t want the demons hunting him to turn on her. “Why?”
“Because - ” he chokes on the word, and she notices he seems to be struggling to draw breath. Fighting with his body, fighting with his soul. She wonders if, for him, the battles ever stop. Stop? Maybe not. But a temporary truce seems to be called, because suddenly his body stills, and the steel comes back into his eyes. When he speaks again, his voice drips with self-mockery, but the words are steady and clear. “You mustn’t go,” he says one last time, “because apparently, I can’t breathe without you.”
The stone fist squeezes, once, then shatters into dust, and she remains unbroken. “Oh,” she says. And she turns away from the door.
Interlude #: Not Quite Fairy-tale
It isn’t sudden, the love that comes to her. There are no thunderbolts, no heavenly choirs proclaiming the news, not even the flash-bang attraction she’d felt with Vaughn. Instead it’s quiet, gentle. A slow drugging slide that takes her past the point of no return before she even knows she’s started. No, it’s no quick, brutal slap, this love. It’s smooth, insidious, unassuming… and it never gives her a chance to fight back.
Their love isn’t good. It isn’t light, and laughter, and innocence. It’s dark, and evasive, and crushingly painful. But it’s real, and it’s strong, and it’s even pure, in its own tainted way.
They never speak of it, of course. Never say the words that will put the final seal on their bond. Words can be dangerous things - after all, you never can be sure who’s listening. But even if that wasn’t their reality, they wouldn’t have said the words. Him, because to admit to such a weakness out loud is beyond comprehension. Her, because she’s been a victim of emotional blackmail a few too many times. They will not take the chance of being used against each other.
And they know that no one would ever guess it. They work, side by side, in silence. Quick, efficient, and utterly merciless. The people they see, and the rarer ones they speak to, are always left with the same sense of pervading chill. She hears one man say, “How can they be so… I mean, they don’t even like each other!” She laughs silently to herself at that. No doubt Sark does the same.
Do they like each other? she muses. A dry chuckle. Maybe not. But they need each other, want each other. Burn and freeze for each other. They love each other. And that, she discovers, is more than enough.
Chapter#: Watch this.
One morning, she wakes up feeling slightly groggy. The birds are chirping, and a single beam of sunlight has managed to slip through the crack in the curtains. It slants its way down and across, right in front of her face, and ends on the bed beside her. She can see the tens of hundreds of miniscule dust motes, whirling and sliding and bouncing off each other. It looks, she imagines, like the 405 Freeway would, if they turned it into bumper car lanes. She turns to wake Sark, but the bed beside her is empty. But it’s Saturday…
Suddenly, the sunlight is too bright, and her eyes beg for relief. She rolls out of bed and runs to yank the curtains shut. The darkness is immediate, and she sighs in gratitude. Now, she thinks, if only those damn birds would shut up. She turns and makes her way from the room, the hand-woven silk of her lingerie fluttering gently about her limbs. Sometimes she remembers the flannel pajamas she used to wear. And she laughs.
She finds Sark in the office, blond head bent over his computer, typing away furiously at god-knows-what. Randomly, she’s reminded of an old cartoon she used to see occasionally. Something about two mice struggling for world domination against all odds. She draws a few disturbing parallels, and then lets it go.
As soon as she steps through the doorway, his head snaps up. His eyes are clouded, stormy. Somewhere in her mind she thinks she can hear the screaming and crashing of furious waves on a tormented shore. She tilts her head to the side. “Everything alright?”
A blink, and the clouds are gone. She hears the krreeeee of a gull. Calm seas again. “Yes,” he says. “I rather imagine it is.” She wonders momentarily at this, then forgets it in the next second.
“You’re working.”
“True.”
”But it’s Saturday.”
He shuts his laptop, and holds his hands out to her. She moves to him, and he pulls her into his lap. Knees up, head down, and now she’s tucked under his chin. If she could, she thinks, she’d purr. He inhales, deeply, and lets it out on a gentle sigh. She thinks he sounds like a man savoring air after too long without a proper breath. And she smiles, because she remembers why he asked her to stay. She starts fiddling with the ends of his sleeves.
“So,” he says, “it’s Saturday. Was there something you had in mind?”
“I don’t know. What city are we in?”
“Venice.”
“How about we hijack a gondola, blow up a bank, and run away with all their money. Is it correct to use the word hijack when referring to a water vessel?”
“I believe the term commandeer would be more appropriate. And we can, of course, take a bank at your pleasure. The fireworks, however, will have to wait until we’re done with this current assignment.”
“Alright, boat yes, bank yes, big explosion no. Two outta three ain’t bad. Why does your watch say it’s Tuesday?”
A beat. “Does it? It must be broken.” Sark strips the offending piece of jewelry from his wrist and drops it into the trash. “Now,” he says, “I believe we were discussing a bank robbery. Did you have a particular establishment in mind, or will any one do?”
As she begins to outline her plans, Sark listens with rapt attention. In the darkness of a trash-can underneath the desk, a watch ticks away in perfect time. Ignored.
Chapter #: Winterscape.
The crack of her palm hitting his cheek echoes through the room like a gunshot. His head snaps back from the force of the blow, but in the next second swings back around, and he pins her with his gaze. She tries to read his expression, but his eyes have iced over, windows shuttered and dark. Oh God… her mind manages to spit out. I slapped Sark! She doesn’t know why it should seem like such a big deal. She’s hit him before - uppercuts to the jaw and low, strong blows to the kidneys. They’ve traded kicks, knife wounds, gunshots, and one infamous pick-ax to the leg. But this? A slap? It seems so much more offensive. A gesture not meant to injure or incapacitate, but instead expressing derision, and contempt. Not things Sark is accustomed to accepting lightly.
Sark does nothing, and for one hopeful second, she thinks maybe she imagined it. But between the burning tingling of her palm and the steadily darkening marks on his cheek, she knows she’s not so lucky. Abruptly, Sark straightens from where he’s leaning against the desk, and she finds herself taking an automatic step backwards in retreat. Oh God… I slapped him…
She tries and tries again to gauge him, but he’s shut her out completely. It suddenly occurs to her that he’s been letting her read him this entire time - opening himself up to her through no skill of her own. The thought almost reassures her. The idea that a little familiarity was all it took to be able to know him seemed a dangerous thing, and a disappointing one. She would be glad to know that she was wrong, that he had never lost control. Would be glad except for now, when she thinks she would give most anything to be able to guess his next move.
“It would seem to me,” he says slowly, “that an apology is in order.”
“Sark, I-” he holds up his hand, and her words die.
“Let me clarify that.” She tries to force the knot in her throat to go away. “It would seem, Sydney, that I owe you an apology.”
“Sark, I swear I… What?”
The ice melts - deliberately now, she knows - and she sighs to see his eyes dancing and alive once again. “I apologize, Sydney.” She tries to scrape her jaw off the floor. “I was not sure how to broach the topic of my discoveries, so I left the documents for you to appraise on your own. Obviously,” and he rubs a hand over his cheek, “this was not as well thought-out as one could wish.”
“So… what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m sorry.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I discovered Kevornyakov’s duplicity three days ago. It would appear that our speculations regarding coordinated, simultaneous hits carried out on Irina and ourselves were correct. But while your fortuitous presence allowed us to survive, Irina was not so lucky.” He shakes his head. “I rechecked with all the contacts at the European meeting, Sydney. Kevornyakov made a power grab, plain and simple. I wish I could say that there was an ulterior motive, some sort of retribution or personal vendetta. But there wasn’t. He was simply eliminating the competition.” He pauses to judge her reaction, and isn’t overly pleased by what he sees. She’s too still, too quiet. Too unemotional. Bloody hell, he thinks. Now I’ve gone and done it. He sits back, and waits for the aftermath he knows will come.
She’s never known such rage. Didn’t even know it was possible, really. Her vision is actually going slightly red around the edges. But it’s not a hot rage, no. She’s had those before, the fires that flash, consume and devour, and all too soon burn out and leave nothing but desolate ash and exhaustion in their wake. No this is something beyond that, something biting, and cold. A great shard of ice that pierces her brain, and travels down through her sternum to pervade the entire length of her body. A winter landscape, twisted, barren, with every shade of white and gray, endlessly stretching out to the horizon. And there, wait! Yes, just there. Can you sense it? The predator, crouching, rippling furs of white and gray, waiting. Death, ever patient. Waiting.
And she’s calm. So calm. She thinks she should be shaking from the force of her emotions. But she’s not. And she wishes, with all her soul, that something be done about it. She looks up, and blue eyes are watching, waiting. Knowing.
“I wish…” that I could pin him down and pull out his intestines, handful by handful, as he is forced to watch! “I wish…” that black terror would come for him in the night, and be so horrible, so complete , that he perishes of it. I don’t know if that’s even possible, but I wish it done! “I wish…”
The blue eyes are steady, and taunting. Say it, they say. “Say it,” he says. So she does.
“I wish you’d kill him for me.” The eyes flash, once, burning blue ice in a predator’s winterscape.
And he smiles.
Interlude #: Leashes
She notices the ring upon waking. A solitaire diamond, glittering up at her from an intricate bed of platinum, wrapped around her left ring finger. She knows it can’t be a wedding ring. Marriage would be a mockery of what they share, they both know that. Not to mention it would make them both too vulnerable. Okay, so not married. Then… what? Marked? Tagged? Owned? Surprisingly okay with any and all of the above?
She twists the band once around her finger, the cool metal sliding silkily over her skin. She knows she can only begin to imagine the gadgetry in the thing. A tracking device, most definitely. Audio bug, most likely, and video possibly, too. What else? she wonders. A monitor on her vitals? A hidden cache of bio-agent, for those times she just needs a little extra defense? The rock winks at her. Lone, cold, hard, beautiful, and in the right circumstances, lethal. Sounds like a certain couple she knows.
She thinks it’s the sweetest gift she’s ever received.
Chapter #: Finality
It doesn’t happen the next day. Not the next week, nor even the next month. But she’s patient. Winter waits, because it can. Its dominance is absolute, simply given enough time. And time, she knows, is necessary, if you want these things done well. So she waits.
And one day, rather sooner than later, she strolls down the hall to their office. The rug under her bare feet is think, sensuous. Every step is like a mini-massage, and she wonders briefly which city they’re in this time. It has to be a new place, because she knows she’d never forget this rug. It’s Zurich, she thinks. Or maybe Prague. Not that it matters. They won’t stay long anyway. Which is a shame, because she could grow awfully fond of this rug.
She finds Sark in the office. The room’s dark, the heavy floor to ceiling curtains drawn, blocking out all light and making it impossible to tell what city, what country they’re in now. Impossible to know whether it’s day or night. Impossible to even care. The lighting in their house Zurich? Prague? Rome? Lisbon? is always kept soft. Perpetual twilight. Or perpetual dawn, she thinks, if you’re a glass-half-full kind of person. But she’s not.
Twilight. Such an indistinct and fleeting time. Time… She finds herself glancing around briefly for a clock, to once more pit herself against her demons. But she doesn’t see one, anywhere. That’s right, she thinks, it’s been that way for a while now. She’s not sure what happened, but some way, some how, Sark found out her secret - how she’s nothing but time’s plaything, subject to the whims and caprices of… something. His discovery was months ago. Months ago. Years ago? She hasn’t seen a single clock since.
She’s not sure how he does it. She imagines he’s got a watch; a single time-keeping device kept hidden by a sleeve or tucked into a pocket. She knows he had one, once. But, no, wait, that’s right. That one was broken - he said so. And she remembers him throwing it away. She hasn’t seen a watch since. So either he’s hiding it, or he doesn’t have one. Him? Not have a watch? Well then, it’s hiding.
It’s certainly hiding now, for his sleeves are rolled up to mid-forearm, and both wrists are bare. He sits, his back to the door, watching silent flickering images on the flat screen on the wall. His left hand is curled loosely about the base of a half-empty glass tumbler. Scotch, she’d guess, but she’s not sure. With his right hand, he controls the remote. Watching, rewinding, rewatching. She doesn’t know how he knows she’s there, but he does.
“Tragedy, this,” he says. Rewind, play. “Some poor fellow got caught in a car fire.” She moves forward to stand beside him, and places a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes turn to the glowing screen, and she’s really not at all surprised to see Kevornyakov’s eyes staring back at her. It’s a terrible wreck. She counts three… no make that four cars, now just so much twisted, torn metal and shattered glass. What does surprise her, however, is that she can see all the other victims fleeing the wreckage. Only one man stays, caged. She watches Kevornyakov struggle to escape the car, then freeze as the first small flame erupts. There’s no sound, but she finds her imagination is quite adequate to supply all the violent swear words she’s sure must be spewing from his mouth. He renews his struggles with more vigor.
“Apparently,” comes Sark’s wry voice beside her, “his seatbelt jammed.”
“Hmmm,” she says. “Isn’t that a pity?”
“Quite.”
She watches as the flames encroach on the man. There’s the blistering, she thinks. And the screaming. A close up, briefly, of wide, panic and pain stricken gray eyes, and then nothing but a fireball, shooting flames into the endless reaches of the sky.
She knows that no newsman in the world could shoot such footage. No this is Sark’s camera. Sark’s kill.
The TV turns off.
She turns to him, and he’s watching her. Waiting, waiting. Waiting for the recriminations and the disgust. Waiting for the self-righteous fury that, once upon a time, she would have made an impressive display of. Waiting for her to realize that now she’s used him, made him do her bidding, she can leave - just like everyone else who’s ever mattered. Waiting.
But oh no, she’s not going anywhere. She’s not leaving - where would she go, without him? He’s her anchor, her avenger, her protector. He’s her partner, her friend, her blue-eyed boy. Her stone-cold killer. Her own true love. Of course, she wouldn’t ever say that to him. But she feels it.
She smiles, and plucks the glass from his fingers to set it on the desk. He tenses, slightly, a tightening of muscles that would be imperceptible, maybe, to anyone but her. She who has had… eternity… to learn his body language until she knows it better than her own. She sees it, there, in the slight line that marks his shoulders, and the utter stillness he radiates. His eyes fastened to her face. Waiting.
She bends down to him, and embraces him, twining her arms about his neck. He has just enough time to toss the remote to the side before she’s sliding into his lap, tucking her legs up under her and curling herself against his chest. Her head lifts, slowly, trailing small kisses from his collarbone, up his neck, around the underside of his jawbone, until her lips rest right by his ear.
“Thank you,” she whispers. And just like that, the tension is gone. He leans back in the chair, and his arms lock around her, holding her fiercely to him. And that was it, she knows. That was her last chance to leave. To accept the gift he’d given her and twist it into the desperate, warped actions of the masterless dog she’d once called him. To make her escape with a clear conscience, because really, she wasn’t the one who caused the fire now was she? But she didn’t, she didn’t, and now it’s too late, forever. Now she’s his, and he’ll never let her go. And this time, they both smile.
So they sit, quiet and still, locked together in their perpetual twilight. And outside, she can hear birds singing.
Chapter #: New Endings.
She still keeps her back turned on the passing of the world, and has her conversations with dead men, because she finds that it’s easy. He still goes out and kills people, ostensibly just to stay in practice, but mostly because he finds that it’s easy. They still never make any formal commitment; never say to each other what is plainly written for all the world to see. But this time, it really doesn’t matter. His ring is on her finger, their child at her side, and all she ever has to do is turn, and she can find his eyes.
And she knows, she knows, what is supposed to be meant when they say, “’Till death do us part’,” because they really are forever.
She imagines, every now and then, the myriad of ways it all could go. Sometimes she allows herself the vision of two rocking chairs, side by side in front of a crackling fire. A beautiful cabin in the snow-covered woods, and nothing but peace. Two harmless elderly people, living out the rest of their existence, until one night their hearts simply stop and they bow out gracefully, together.
The only problem with this, though, is that when she tries to put their faces on the old bodies - she can’t. She’s never able to see them getting much older than they already are. So she tries not to imagine the cabin in the woods, because inevitably it leads to the other option.
She sees them, fleeing in the night, feet pounding the ground as they seek the escape this alley is not providing. Suddenly, gunfire. Then one is down, never to rise again, and the other keeps running, running. Doesn’t stop, never looks back. Training is training, after all, and there’s still work to be done. Then come the months of waiting, planning, hunting. Sleepless nights and endless days, until, finally, vengeance is exacted. She’d like to say it’s justice. Justice is a very pretty word. But that’s just sugar-coating the truth, and there’s no room left for pretty lies anymore. So vengeance. Bloody, satiating vengeance. And when it’s all over, there’s a dark room, and a vein slit open in quiet despair.
Either way, whether it be generic cabin or nameless alley, it will only end with death. But that’s alright and that’s all to the good, she thinks. Because, after all, it began the same way.
~FIN~
Okay, folks, that's it. Questions? Comments? Burning desires to throw me through windows? Lemme know.
Chapter#: At the Door
In the seventh week, she finds the gun he keeps under his pillow.
The expression that comes to her face would have sent any lesser of a man fleeing. Instead, Sark shrugs philosophically. “It’s a firearm, Sydney. It’s not like you haven’t seen one before.”
“In. The. Bed.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re so upset about. Don’t you always keep one close at hand? In our line of work, it’s an unfortunate fact that nothing lasts as long as the memories of one’s adversaries. In the drawer would be too awkward. Under the nightstand would be impractical. Under the mattress would be too slow. Really, Sydney. Don’t you think you’ll ever have days where you wished your gun was right next to you?”
She faintly remembers a best friend’s face twisted in hate, and how the struggle to reach a gun on time changed her entire world. She doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t try to move his weapon.
In the seventh month, she finds out what prompts him to have it there.
The beach house in the Caribbean is borrowed from an associate. The hot, sticky summer days end in long, hot summer nights. Their room in contrast is a cool paradise. The windows are flung wide, open to the breeze off the water, and moonlight pours through. The overhead fan emits a low hum, the only sound in the otherwise silent room. They try not to turn on the lights, forgoing the extra heat generated to opt for candlelight instead. The four-poster they sleep in is hung with soft, white mosquito netting, and usually they pull it closed and she can imagine herself locked away in a protective cocoon. Tonight, however, they are too distracted by each other to remember. Which ends up just as well.
She has to give the men credit - they were as silent as any agency could have wished. She doesn’t sense them until the first one is right outside the bedroom door. Even then, she’s not sure she would have known if so many years of sleepless nights hadn’t conditioned her so. But all it takes is the sigh of a single floorboard, and she’s awake. She curls herself into the shadows on her side of the bed, hand reaching for the glass lantern beside her. The man slips into the room, gun at the ready, eyes hunting for Sark in the night. Sydney wishes she could have woken Sark up, but there’s simply no chance that wouldn’t alert the men as well. She has to trust that he’ll be with her momentarily. She hurls the small lantern at the first operative, hearing the shattering of the glass against his flesh, and his soft scream of anguish as a shard pierces his eye. The slight hitch of a breath is her only warning that Sark’s definitely awake now, before he and Sydney are rolling off her side of the bed, away from the team. Even before they hit the ground, Sark’s firing, and the grunts and yells prove to her that even in moonlight, his sense of aim is formidable. She snatches their clothing from the heap on the floor beside her, and is relieved when she feels the shape of her gun still tangled with her pants. She works the cold metal free, then slides backwards to press herself against the wall by the window. Peering out, she can see that the attack team left no cover squad outside. Their mistake. She throws the clothes out the window, then throws herself after them. Once outside, she lays down the cover fire for Sark to follow her through the opening. She wonders how many men were on the team. In the faint light, she’s sure she can count at least six bodies, and there are three more still standing. She squeezes off another shot, muscles absorbing the snap of her wrist with the ease of long years of practice. Two still standing.
She grins. This is a piece of cake. She steadies her arm on the window ledge, and aims her Beretta. The count is part of her now, so ingrained she doesn’t even feel it. One, two, breathe, three. It should have been a clean head shot. Instead, the bullet goes wide, buries into the nearest bed-post, splintering the wood. What? she thinks. She realizes that Sark has her by the hand and is pulling her towards the shelter of the palm grove by the water. She stops and yanks her hand back. He turns. “Sydney, we really must remove ourselves from the area.”
“I almost had them! I could have taken them both, you know that. What the hell were you thinking? Now they’re going to get away, or come after us, or send others after us instead! Dammit, Sark, what if they - ”
His voice cuts her off. “I took care of it.” She glares at him, opens her mouth to reply, and right on cue, the beach house goes up in a pillar of flame. Her mouth closes again with a snap. She spins, shoves him for good measure, and then pauses as she feels a low hum begin to fill her body. She remembers the first time they watched a burning building from the shelter of trees. And from the darkening awareness in his eyes, she knows he’s remembering too. She goes to push him away again, but can’t. “Damn you,” she says softly. “I had the mark.”
“I know it, Sydney.” Her fingers curl into his bare shoulders, and he backs her up to brace her against the nearest tree. “I know it.” And the rest is nothing but the fire.
Interlude #: Surrealism Revisited
The faint schiiiiik of a blade scraping skin wakes her from her sleep. She stumbles out of bed, squinting in the faint excuse for light that fills the bedroom. She runs a hand through her hair, mindlessly tucking a strand behind her ear. What the hell is that noise? She follows the faint sound, threading her way around armoires and chairs, fingers gently stroking the butt of the gun she doesn’t even realize she’s picked up. Finally, there. An open door, spilling more faint light into the room to meld with the rest of the timelessness. She steps up, peers in, and realizes that this is just one more of those moments in her life that was never have supposed to happen. She leans lightly against the door frame, and watches Sark shave.
She admits to some surprise. She would have imagined him to have had the latest in blade technology - god knows all his knives are state-of-the-art. She would have thought something electric, maybe, or with multiple flexing blades and strips of aloe, vitamin E, and whatever the hell else they put on those things these days. She really couldn’t say. Instead, however, his lithe fingers are wrapped around the handle of an old-fashioned straight-edge. She watches the blade, curving, gleaming, and swallows appreciatively as he moves it with easy, practiced precision over the vulnerable flesh of his throat. A dangerous thing, that type of razor, capable of creating great amounts of damage with just a little carelessness. His eyes meet hers in the mirror. Blue eyes, curving, gleaming. Of course, she thinks. For him, that would be the appeal. She gives him a faint smile, then turns, and she and her gun go back to bed.
Chapter #: Asphyxiation.
“I do wonder, you know.”
“About what?”
“Why you keep me around. Why I’m still alive, even knowing what I know about you. Why, when no one in the world would miss me, you haven’t simply… removed… the liability I represent.”
He’s wondered the same thing himself. “It pleases me to have you here. My motives are my own.” He turns back to his papers. She sighs then, and almost lets it go. But…
“That’s not good enough.”
His eyes raise again, and they look almost - amused - though his face is still a blank slate. That’s okay, she thinks. He can play that all he likes. She’s learning to read him anyway. Ignore the mask, focus on the eyes… “How’s that, then?” he asks.
“It’s not enough. I need a reason.”
“A reason?”
“A reason, an excuse, a lie. I don’t care! Something, anything, to help me explain to myself what exactly it is that I’m doing here. With you.”
“You’re not enjoying it here? We could go somewhere else, that’s easily arranged. Monaco’s really quite lovely this…” Her hand slams down on his desk, ending his sentence abruptly.
“Dammit, Sark, this is not a joke!” Her voice is the hiss of a whip lash. His eyes narrow infinitesimally, and she could swear the room is 5 degrees cooler than it was a second ago. She tenses, slightly. He’s not amused anymore.
“No,” he says. “Quite apparently it’s not. Explain to me how, precisely, your moral dilemma is any concern of mine.” He drops his pen, and spreads his hands wide in an atypically spontaneous gesture. “There are no bars, here, Sydney. I did not force you to come with me. If you’ll recall, I didn’t even ask. Though I do not wish to appear… unappreciative… of your companionship - on the contrary I assure you I appreciate it immensely - the fact remains that I’ve exacted no promises from you, nor have I tried to ensure your continued presence here by offering any sort of recompense. I did not ask you to stay. Whatever demons you’re facing, Sydney, are entirely of your own design.”
Damn it. That isn’t the answer she’s looking for. “A reason, Sark.” Please.
“You’re an intelligent woman, Sydney. I think reiterating all the thoughts I hold regarding our respective skills as operatives and our potential as a team” You are so good, you know that? “would simply be an insult to that intelligence. I won’t say anything you haven’t already considered.”
“Sark, maybe I’m not making myself clear enough here. I did what I had to do to get us out of Sloane’s compound alive. I don’t regret that. But the motivations for my previous actions are now irrelevant. I should not be here with you, like this, for absolutely no purpose.” She takes a deep breath, and tells her heart rate to slow down. “But neither do I want to leave.” His eyes flicker. “Do you hear me? I. don’t. want. to. go. But without a reason... So what am I supposed to do, huh? Tell me, Sark, what exactly am I supposed to do, when I can’t find the middle ground?”
There’s nothing but silence. His face is so smooth, so controlled, but she thinks she can see his heart breaking in his eyes. Or maybe that’s her heart.
Sark sits, quiet, wanting so much for this not to happen. Can’t she see it? he wonders. Doesn’t she know? He wants her to be the one that bends. Wants her to be the one to put away the rules she’s lived her whole life by. Wants her to be the one to remake her soul. Needs her to be the one to do it, because he’s not sure he’d survive the process. But not this time. This time, she has to have the words. Words he doesn’t know how to give. The seconds stretch on, eternities in a heartbeat, and then she abruptly turns and heads for the door, heels making no sound on the carpet.
For one wildly panicked second, Sark’s absolutely certain he’s simply going to asphyxiate, right there in his mahogany and green velvet office, and that’ll be an end to it. In the next second, he’s up out of his chair, over his desk, and across the room before he can think about it. Somewhere in his mind, a much more analytical Sark is chanting Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid… But he can’t stop to listen.
To her credit, Sydney doesn’t flinch when Sark’s hand slams against the wood paneling of the door, not inches from her face. “Damn you, Sydney.” The carving on this door is really quite exquisite. Vines and leaves and teeny tiny flowers, all lovingly carved and polished to a warm glow. She waits. Finally, “You mustn’t go.”
She slowly turns to face him. And damned if there isn’t a man under that mask after all. His eyes are hunted and lost, his body seems to tremble, and the twisting of confusion and despair on his face is painful to see. Painful, she knows, because she feels it. Like there’s a stone fist poised around her heart, ready to squeeze, and squeeze, and break her utterly if these next words aren’t exactly right. It’s okay though, she thinks, because the door is right in front of her and she can still get out. Briefly, she wonders how they got to this point. She tries to remember what changed between that day in Sloane’s office and now, but the more she tries, the more it’s all a blur, and she knows she’ll find no answers in the past.
He says it again, and it almost sounds like he’s trying to convince himself this time. “You mustn’t go.”
When she speaks, she speaks softly, for she doesn’t want the demons hunting him to turn on her. “Why?”
“Because - ” he chokes on the word, and she notices he seems to be struggling to draw breath. Fighting with his body, fighting with his soul. She wonders if, for him, the battles ever stop. Stop? Maybe not. But a temporary truce seems to be called, because suddenly his body stills, and the steel comes back into his eyes. When he speaks again, his voice drips with self-mockery, but the words are steady and clear. “You mustn’t go,” he says one last time, “because apparently, I can’t breathe without you.”
The stone fist squeezes, once, then shatters into dust, and she remains unbroken. “Oh,” she says. And she turns away from the door.
Interlude #: Not Quite Fairy-tale
It isn’t sudden, the love that comes to her. There are no thunderbolts, no heavenly choirs proclaiming the news, not even the flash-bang attraction she’d felt with Vaughn. Instead it’s quiet, gentle. A slow drugging slide that takes her past the point of no return before she even knows she’s started. No, it’s no quick, brutal slap, this love. It’s smooth, insidious, unassuming… and it never gives her a chance to fight back.
Their love isn’t good. It isn’t light, and laughter, and innocence. It’s dark, and evasive, and crushingly painful. But it’s real, and it’s strong, and it’s even pure, in its own tainted way.
They never speak of it, of course. Never say the words that will put the final seal on their bond. Words can be dangerous things - after all, you never can be sure who’s listening. But even if that wasn’t their reality, they wouldn’t have said the words. Him, because to admit to such a weakness out loud is beyond comprehension. Her, because she’s been a victim of emotional blackmail a few too many times. They will not take the chance of being used against each other.
And they know that no one would ever guess it. They work, side by side, in silence. Quick, efficient, and utterly merciless. The people they see, and the rarer ones they speak to, are always left with the same sense of pervading chill. She hears one man say, “How can they be so… I mean, they don’t even like each other!” She laughs silently to herself at that. No doubt Sark does the same.
Do they like each other? she muses. A dry chuckle. Maybe not. But they need each other, want each other. Burn and freeze for each other. They love each other. And that, she discovers, is more than enough.
Chapter#: Watch this.
One morning, she wakes up feeling slightly groggy. The birds are chirping, and a single beam of sunlight has managed to slip through the crack in the curtains. It slants its way down and across, right in front of her face, and ends on the bed beside her. She can see the tens of hundreds of miniscule dust motes, whirling and sliding and bouncing off each other. It looks, she imagines, like the 405 Freeway would, if they turned it into bumper car lanes. She turns to wake Sark, but the bed beside her is empty. But it’s Saturday…
Suddenly, the sunlight is too bright, and her eyes beg for relief. She rolls out of bed and runs to yank the curtains shut. The darkness is immediate, and she sighs in gratitude. Now, she thinks, if only those damn birds would shut up. She turns and makes her way from the room, the hand-woven silk of her lingerie fluttering gently about her limbs. Sometimes she remembers the flannel pajamas she used to wear. And she laughs.
She finds Sark in the office, blond head bent over his computer, typing away furiously at god-knows-what. Randomly, she’s reminded of an old cartoon she used to see occasionally. Something about two mice struggling for world domination against all odds. She draws a few disturbing parallels, and then lets it go.
As soon as she steps through the doorway, his head snaps up. His eyes are clouded, stormy. Somewhere in her mind she thinks she can hear the screaming and crashing of furious waves on a tormented shore. She tilts her head to the side. “Everything alright?”
A blink, and the clouds are gone. She hears the krreeeee of a gull. Calm seas again. “Yes,” he says. “I rather imagine it is.” She wonders momentarily at this, then forgets it in the next second.
“You’re working.”
“True.”
”But it’s Saturday.”
He shuts his laptop, and holds his hands out to her. She moves to him, and he pulls her into his lap. Knees up, head down, and now she’s tucked under his chin. If she could, she thinks, she’d purr. He inhales, deeply, and lets it out on a gentle sigh. She thinks he sounds like a man savoring air after too long without a proper breath. And she smiles, because she remembers why he asked her to stay. She starts fiddling with the ends of his sleeves.
“So,” he says, “it’s Saturday. Was there something you had in mind?”
“I don’t know. What city are we in?”
“Venice.”
“How about we hijack a gondola, blow up a bank, and run away with all their money. Is it correct to use the word hijack when referring to a water vessel?”
“I believe the term commandeer would be more appropriate. And we can, of course, take a bank at your pleasure. The fireworks, however, will have to wait until we’re done with this current assignment.”
“Alright, boat yes, bank yes, big explosion no. Two outta three ain’t bad. Why does your watch say it’s Tuesday?”
A beat. “Does it? It must be broken.” Sark strips the offending piece of jewelry from his wrist and drops it into the trash. “Now,” he says, “I believe we were discussing a bank robbery. Did you have a particular establishment in mind, or will any one do?”
As she begins to outline her plans, Sark listens with rapt attention. In the darkness of a trash-can underneath the desk, a watch ticks away in perfect time. Ignored.
Chapter #: Winterscape.
The crack of her palm hitting his cheek echoes through the room like a gunshot. His head snaps back from the force of the blow, but in the next second swings back around, and he pins her with his gaze. She tries to read his expression, but his eyes have iced over, windows shuttered and dark. Oh God… her mind manages to spit out. I slapped Sark! She doesn’t know why it should seem like such a big deal. She’s hit him before - uppercuts to the jaw and low, strong blows to the kidneys. They’ve traded kicks, knife wounds, gunshots, and one infamous pick-ax to the leg. But this? A slap? It seems so much more offensive. A gesture not meant to injure or incapacitate, but instead expressing derision, and contempt. Not things Sark is accustomed to accepting lightly.
Sark does nothing, and for one hopeful second, she thinks maybe she imagined it. But between the burning tingling of her palm and the steadily darkening marks on his cheek, she knows she’s not so lucky. Abruptly, Sark straightens from where he’s leaning against the desk, and she finds herself taking an automatic step backwards in retreat. Oh God… I slapped him…
She tries and tries again to gauge him, but he’s shut her out completely. It suddenly occurs to her that he’s been letting her read him this entire time - opening himself up to her through no skill of her own. The thought almost reassures her. The idea that a little familiarity was all it took to be able to know him seemed a dangerous thing, and a disappointing one. She would be glad to know that she was wrong, that he had never lost control. Would be glad except for now, when she thinks she would give most anything to be able to guess his next move.
“It would seem to me,” he says slowly, “that an apology is in order.”
“Sark, I-” he holds up his hand, and her words die.
“Let me clarify that.” She tries to force the knot in her throat to go away. “It would seem, Sydney, that I owe you an apology.”
“Sark, I swear I… What?”
The ice melts - deliberately now, she knows - and she sighs to see his eyes dancing and alive once again. “I apologize, Sydney.” She tries to scrape her jaw off the floor. “I was not sure how to broach the topic of my discoveries, so I left the documents for you to appraise on your own. Obviously,” and he rubs a hand over his cheek, “this was not as well thought-out as one could wish.”
“So… what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m sorry.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I discovered Kevornyakov’s duplicity three days ago. It would appear that our speculations regarding coordinated, simultaneous hits carried out on Irina and ourselves were correct. But while your fortuitous presence allowed us to survive, Irina was not so lucky.” He shakes his head. “I rechecked with all the contacts at the European meeting, Sydney. Kevornyakov made a power grab, plain and simple. I wish I could say that there was an ulterior motive, some sort of retribution or personal vendetta. But there wasn’t. He was simply eliminating the competition.” He pauses to judge her reaction, and isn’t overly pleased by what he sees. She’s too still, too quiet. Too unemotional. Bloody hell, he thinks. Now I’ve gone and done it. He sits back, and waits for the aftermath he knows will come.
She’s never known such rage. Didn’t even know it was possible, really. Her vision is actually going slightly red around the edges. But it’s not a hot rage, no. She’s had those before, the fires that flash, consume and devour, and all too soon burn out and leave nothing but desolate ash and exhaustion in their wake. No this is something beyond that, something biting, and cold. A great shard of ice that pierces her brain, and travels down through her sternum to pervade the entire length of her body. A winter landscape, twisted, barren, with every shade of white and gray, endlessly stretching out to the horizon. And there, wait! Yes, just there. Can you sense it? The predator, crouching, rippling furs of white and gray, waiting. Death, ever patient. Waiting.
And she’s calm. So calm. She thinks she should be shaking from the force of her emotions. But she’s not. And she wishes, with all her soul, that something be done about it. She looks up, and blue eyes are watching, waiting. Knowing.
“I wish…” that I could pin him down and pull out his intestines, handful by handful, as he is forced to watch! “I wish…” that black terror would come for him in the night, and be so horrible, so complete , that he perishes of it. I don’t know if that’s even possible, but I wish it done! “I wish…”
The blue eyes are steady, and taunting. Say it, they say. “Say it,” he says. So she does.
“I wish you’d kill him for me.” The eyes flash, once, burning blue ice in a predator’s winterscape.
And he smiles.
Interlude #: Leashes
She notices the ring upon waking. A solitaire diamond, glittering up at her from an intricate bed of platinum, wrapped around her left ring finger. She knows it can’t be a wedding ring. Marriage would be a mockery of what they share, they both know that. Not to mention it would make them both too vulnerable. Okay, so not married. Then… what? Marked? Tagged? Owned? Surprisingly okay with any and all of the above?
She twists the band once around her finger, the cool metal sliding silkily over her skin. She knows she can only begin to imagine the gadgetry in the thing. A tracking device, most definitely. Audio bug, most likely, and video possibly, too. What else? she wonders. A monitor on her vitals? A hidden cache of bio-agent, for those times she just needs a little extra defense? The rock winks at her. Lone, cold, hard, beautiful, and in the right circumstances, lethal. Sounds like a certain couple she knows.
She thinks it’s the sweetest gift she’s ever received.
Chapter #: Finality
It doesn’t happen the next day. Not the next week, nor even the next month. But she’s patient. Winter waits, because it can. Its dominance is absolute, simply given enough time. And time, she knows, is necessary, if you want these things done well. So she waits.
And one day, rather sooner than later, she strolls down the hall to their office. The rug under her bare feet is think, sensuous. Every step is like a mini-massage, and she wonders briefly which city they’re in this time. It has to be a new place, because she knows she’d never forget this rug. It’s Zurich, she thinks. Or maybe Prague. Not that it matters. They won’t stay long anyway. Which is a shame, because she could grow awfully fond of this rug.
She finds Sark in the office. The room’s dark, the heavy floor to ceiling curtains drawn, blocking out all light and making it impossible to tell what city, what country they’re in now. Impossible to know whether it’s day or night. Impossible to even care. The lighting in their house Zurich? Prague? Rome? Lisbon? is always kept soft. Perpetual twilight. Or perpetual dawn, she thinks, if you’re a glass-half-full kind of person. But she’s not.
Twilight. Such an indistinct and fleeting time. Time… She finds herself glancing around briefly for a clock, to once more pit herself against her demons. But she doesn’t see one, anywhere. That’s right, she thinks, it’s been that way for a while now. She’s not sure what happened, but some way, some how, Sark found out her secret - how she’s nothing but time’s plaything, subject to the whims and caprices of… something. His discovery was months ago. Months ago. Years ago? She hasn’t seen a single clock since.
She’s not sure how he does it. She imagines he’s got a watch; a single time-keeping device kept hidden by a sleeve or tucked into a pocket. She knows he had one, once. But, no, wait, that’s right. That one was broken - he said so. And she remembers him throwing it away. She hasn’t seen a watch since. So either he’s hiding it, or he doesn’t have one. Him? Not have a watch? Well then, it’s hiding.
It’s certainly hiding now, for his sleeves are rolled up to mid-forearm, and both wrists are bare. He sits, his back to the door, watching silent flickering images on the flat screen on the wall. His left hand is curled loosely about the base of a half-empty glass tumbler. Scotch, she’d guess, but she’s not sure. With his right hand, he controls the remote. Watching, rewinding, rewatching. She doesn’t know how he knows she’s there, but he does.
“Tragedy, this,” he says. Rewind, play. “Some poor fellow got caught in a car fire.” She moves forward to stand beside him, and places a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes turn to the glowing screen, and she’s really not at all surprised to see Kevornyakov’s eyes staring back at her. It’s a terrible wreck. She counts three… no make that four cars, now just so much twisted, torn metal and shattered glass. What does surprise her, however, is that she can see all the other victims fleeing the wreckage. Only one man stays, caged. She watches Kevornyakov struggle to escape the car, then freeze as the first small flame erupts. There’s no sound, but she finds her imagination is quite adequate to supply all the violent swear words she’s sure must be spewing from his mouth. He renews his struggles with more vigor.
“Apparently,” comes Sark’s wry voice beside her, “his seatbelt jammed.”
“Hmmm,” she says. “Isn’t that a pity?”
“Quite.”
She watches as the flames encroach on the man. There’s the blistering, she thinks. And the screaming. A close up, briefly, of wide, panic and pain stricken gray eyes, and then nothing but a fireball, shooting flames into the endless reaches of the sky.
She knows that no newsman in the world could shoot such footage. No this is Sark’s camera. Sark’s kill.
The TV turns off.
She turns to him, and he’s watching her. Waiting, waiting. Waiting for the recriminations and the disgust. Waiting for the self-righteous fury that, once upon a time, she would have made an impressive display of. Waiting for her to realize that now she’s used him, made him do her bidding, she can leave - just like everyone else who’s ever mattered. Waiting.
But oh no, she’s not going anywhere. She’s not leaving - where would she go, without him? He’s her anchor, her avenger, her protector. He’s her partner, her friend, her blue-eyed boy. Her stone-cold killer. Her own true love. Of course, she wouldn’t ever say that to him. But she feels it.
She smiles, and plucks the glass from his fingers to set it on the desk. He tenses, slightly, a tightening of muscles that would be imperceptible, maybe, to anyone but her. She who has had… eternity… to learn his body language until she knows it better than her own. She sees it, there, in the slight line that marks his shoulders, and the utter stillness he radiates. His eyes fastened to her face. Waiting.
She bends down to him, and embraces him, twining her arms about his neck. He has just enough time to toss the remote to the side before she’s sliding into his lap, tucking her legs up under her and curling herself against his chest. Her head lifts, slowly, trailing small kisses from his collarbone, up his neck, around the underside of his jawbone, until her lips rest right by his ear.
“Thank you,” she whispers. And just like that, the tension is gone. He leans back in the chair, and his arms lock around her, holding her fiercely to him. And that was it, she knows. That was her last chance to leave. To accept the gift he’d given her and twist it into the desperate, warped actions of the masterless dog she’d once called him. To make her escape with a clear conscience, because really, she wasn’t the one who caused the fire now was she? But she didn’t, she didn’t, and now it’s too late, forever. Now she’s his, and he’ll never let her go. And this time, they both smile.
So they sit, quiet and still, locked together in their perpetual twilight. And outside, she can hear birds singing.
Chapter #: New Endings.
She still keeps her back turned on the passing of the world, and has her conversations with dead men, because she finds that it’s easy. He still goes out and kills people, ostensibly just to stay in practice, but mostly because he finds that it’s easy. They still never make any formal commitment; never say to each other what is plainly written for all the world to see. But this time, it really doesn’t matter. His ring is on her finger, their child at her side, and all she ever has to do is turn, and she can find his eyes.
And she knows, she knows, what is supposed to be meant when they say, “’Till death do us part’,” because they really are forever.
She imagines, every now and then, the myriad of ways it all could go. Sometimes she allows herself the vision of two rocking chairs, side by side in front of a crackling fire. A beautiful cabin in the snow-covered woods, and nothing but peace. Two harmless elderly people, living out the rest of their existence, until one night their hearts simply stop and they bow out gracefully, together.
The only problem with this, though, is that when she tries to put their faces on the old bodies - she can’t. She’s never able to see them getting much older than they already are. So she tries not to imagine the cabin in the woods, because inevitably it leads to the other option.
She sees them, fleeing in the night, feet pounding the ground as they seek the escape this alley is not providing. Suddenly, gunfire. Then one is down, never to rise again, and the other keeps running, running. Doesn’t stop, never looks back. Training is training, after all, and there’s still work to be done. Then come the months of waiting, planning, hunting. Sleepless nights and endless days, until, finally, vengeance is exacted. She’d like to say it’s justice. Justice is a very pretty word. But that’s just sugar-coating the truth, and there’s no room left for pretty lies anymore. So vengeance. Bloody, satiating vengeance. And when it’s all over, there’s a dark room, and a vein slit open in quiet despair.
Either way, whether it be generic cabin or nameless alley, it will only end with death. But that’s alright and that’s all to the good, she thinks. Because, after all, it began the same way.
~FIN~
Okay, folks, that's it. Questions? Comments? Burning desires to throw me through windows? Lemme know.