Disclaimer: JJ owns (my soul) Alias. I don't. Crap.
A/N: This fic is somewhat AU in terms of timeline – suffice to say Sark is working for Irina and Sydney is aware Irina is her mother. So, combine season 1 and 2 and there you are.
Bulletproof
Chapter One
The sun setting over the Mexican horizon turned the sky a deep, bleeding red melting into foam clouds, the evening settling in across the shadowy peaks of the distant mountaintops. Sydney found the color disturbingly appropriate, seeing as the stain of Irina Derevko's blood splattered the front of Sydney's suit and her mother's body lay crumpled on the dusty ground before her. Sydney had been waiting for the backup team for nearly an hour now, and she shielded her eyes briefly as the last of the glaring light of day disappeared behind the tiny stone building, the crumbling four walls that had served as Irina's hideout for the past eight months. The house was nearly overgrown with thick, waxy leaves and trusses of blackened flowers, once the rusted orange color of the sky as it faded away into night. Now they more resembled the shade of Sydney's hands, tinted with reddened copper, dark across her fingertips.
Sydney hadn't look down at Irina's body since the bullets had screamed from the gun almost an hour ago. The sound of the shots, crackles of life being sucked from the tiny marks where the bullets had exited her body. Her eyes widening with initial shock before seeming to narrow with snakelike pride, a silent hiss of satisfaction passing as an unspoken understanding between mother and daughter. Sydney remembered every second of it in crystal frame-by-frame motion.
Falling;
Irina's body hadn't collapsed, but rather, fallen with a fluid grace releasing all her limbs.
Contorting;
Her eyes had closed. Not shut, but closed, her eyelashes swept across her strong cheekbones, her features struggling to stay livened.
Exhaling.
Her eyes had finally deadened as breath seemed to whisper through her, shivering away.
Sydney closed her eyes, the first cool breeze of the evening brushing her cheeks and loosening a few stray wisps of hair to tickle her face, but she couldn't feel it. A numbness spreading from her shoulder, up the stiff muscles of her neck and down her spine began to set in fully, and she thought she couldn't feel herself breathing.
Somehow Sydney became dimly aware of a clipping sound in the distance, creeping into the distance of the death scene previously so perfectly constructed. The sound grew louder as it neared, and it wasn't until the jacket of her suit began to blow back from her shoulder, provoking a sharp impulse of pain rocketing down her arm that she looked up and squinted at the dark mass hovering in the sky. She now recognized the blades of the helicopter deafening the silence of the desert as the chopper touched down a few feet away, a black shine outlining the interior as a familiar figure stepped out, pressed suit and sunglasses evidently tailored even in the waning light. His gait was purposeful with the slightest air of arrogance, something she could pick out in a crowd, as he made his way over to her, and she could feel his icy blue eyes boring into her, even from here. A team of men in standard black outfits dispensed from the helicopter as well to examine the scene, but Sydney ignored all of them and instead concentrated on the horizon as the man strode towards her.
"Not exactly the backup I was hoping for," she commented as he neared, and when he reached her he whipped off his sunglasses and his youthful features hardened, making him, ironically enough, all the less threatening when he demanded, "What happened?" His eyes scanned the bodies strewn across the ground, most recently, that of his late employer.
"You were right," Sydney replied. She turned to him and looked at him fully for the first time, her face void of the slightest hint of emotion.
He glared at her. "I didn't mean for you to—"
"This is what it came down to," Sydney said, her eyes resting on the lifeless forms before her, and she felt for a moment as though it was her the team was kneeling over, feeling for a pulse that had long since ceased into the stillness of the earth beneath her feet. "Somehow, I always knew it would," she said softly.
Sark sighed, running a hand over his face, and Sydney thought he looked tired, too tired, she thought, to be dealing and dealing with death all in one day. She reached up and touched his face, and he turned in slight surprise. He met her eyes, searching them for a trace of the fragility he knew rested right below the stubborn streak she'd inherited, but jerked away when he noticed her stained fingers. "Whose blood is this?" he said, taking her hand in his and dropping it just as quickly. His eyes ran up the rest of her body, rigid with absorption of the day behind her, and he reached forward. "You're bleeding—"
Sydney turned away before his fingers could brush her shoulder, where a deep stain had spread in a blot across the fabric of her jacket.
"Don't touch me," she murmured. Sark sighed and turned his attention the team examining the bodies. They worked like machines; they had to, Sydney thought, to touch death without a second thought.
"You need to get that taken care of," Sark said, indicating her shoulder. He rubbed his eyes before replacing his sunglasses and fixing Sydney with a thousand-yard stare.
She stared out at the horizon, not really seeing the spread of dark across the endless sky, casting deep shadows across the desert and beginning to reveal the first flecks of stars against the background of a velvet void. "It's just a graze," she said, her eyes focused on a fixed point of nothing across the mountaintops.
"Sydney, I can see the bullet from here." His British accent made the remark all the more biting.
Sydney didn't bother to respond, instead folding her arms across her chest and studying the team shining the flashlights in her mother's eyes, taking blood samples, the same blood dried on her own hands – the thought startled Sydney, and she briefly felt sick, her stomach twisting at the glimpse of the face that had attended her first dance recital when she was three years old. Sydney's eyes narrowed at the memory cropping up, at how easy it was to recall being swept into waiting arms as a little girl backstage, her face shining with exhaustion and excitement from the lights of the stage and the roaring of the audience. Sydney shut her eyes, willing away the memory of happiness and caring and the scent of her mother's perfume when she had buried her head in her neck, Irina's arms holding her, her fairy wings attached to the hot costume getting in the way.
Sark noticed the change passing over her features, and when he took her arm and she tried to pull away, his grip remained tight enough to keep her in place, though not enough to hurt her. Yet.
"Come on. The team is ready to go." He nodded to the men, who had replaced the bodies of Irina and her surrounding officers with dark zippered bags on the ground, nothing more than long shapes in the darkness. He led her toward the helicopter wordlessly, and she didn't protest, though something in the back of her mind told her that she probably shouldn't be getting into a helicopter with a man whose boss she had just killed. That was who Irina Derevko was, she reminded herself, Sark's boss. Enemy of the United States. Not Sydney's mother.
Never that.
The bed, she thought, was the softest thing she had ever felt when she sunk onto it upon entering the hotel room. Sydney made her way blindly to the bed, shrugging out of her jacket and crawling atop the bed, laying on her stomach and resting her head on her arms as she watched the city lights winking in the distance. The night air drifting in from the open window was cool, and the deep blue background dotted with buildings and billboards illuminating Mexico City created a stillness in the room. Sark moved behind her, taking off his jacket and tossing it on the chair, setting his gun on the dresser – Sydney knew his movements so well, she could pinpoint exactly where he was in the room at any given movement, even when she closed her eyes and breathed in the first quiet she'd experienced all day. While she was waiting for the backup team alone with her mother's body, that hadn't been quiet – it had been deafening silence, nearly too much to bear. This was something else entirely, a sort of serenity, despite the ache in her shoulder and the exhaustion settled in her muscles.
The bed sunk a few inches with his weight as he sat down beside her. She ignored the feeling that seemed to creep up when he neared, one that could make her aware of his presence before sound or sight. Sydney didn't flinch when he touched her shoulder, barely feeling his fingers brushing skin through her thin shirt, but he spoke quietly anyway. "Don't move," he said, and a hot pain electrified her skin when his hands moved across the tender area of her injured shoulder. Sydney bit her lip so hard she tasted blood in her mouth, like bitter silk on her tongue. Sark made no effort to be gentle, nor was he careless: he simply did what needed to be done. It was a way of doing things Sydney knew they had all learned over years in the field, over hundreds of bullets and even more bodies; it was a way to survive. Get in the job, do the job, get out. Do what needs to be done.
She knew Sark couldn't have been born this way; some people were, but the fluidity of his movements, the crystal calm in his eyes, wouldn't allow it. Not only that, but they predisposed him to learn it easily, how to live a whole new way, a whole new life. It came easy to him, like many things, it seemed: the confident stare, the way his shoulders set when he walked, strong and leaned back, as if about to take a bullet. The smirk tugging on the corner of his lips, however, let you know you wouldn't get a bullet by him before he had planted three in your head.
Now he moved with the same assurance, caution always present, but never manifesting itself. He wore gloves; she wondered briefly where he'd gotten them, then remembered that of course he'd have everything he needed to cover his tracks wherever he went. Sark lifted the torn fabric embedded in the wound, and she gasped; it was a like a new layer of skin being peeled away. Sark made no acknowledgement. He simply pressed the fabric back and finally said, "This is going to hurt." He reached into her shoulder and pulled out the bullet lodged in her flesh, and Sydney thought he might have ripped off her entire arm. A shock of white-hot pain exploded in her shoulder with the bullet's removal and proceeded to dart down her arm and behind her eyes. She fought down the cry threatening to escape her throat.
It was just a job, after all.
The darkness seemed to envelop the room further when the pain erupted in Sydney's shoulder; she let her eyes adjust to the new darkness as she felt Sark press a warm, wet cloth to her skin, wiping away the blood. He covered the hole in the skin once he had finished cleaning the wound, taping a bandage across it across her tender shoulder. She shuddered involuntarily, and thought she saw his shadow leaning over her on the bedspread. His lips brushed across her skin, and she struggled to keep the shiver from creeping up her back.
Sydney felt him rise and leave the bed to move to the armchair near the sliding glass door to the balcony. The moonlight cast unusual shapes on some of his features, and sharply angled shadows on others. He looked barely human, so stiff in the chair, the darkness of the room surrounding his slim figure. Sydney started to ease up off the bed, but the dangerously soft click of a gun being cocked stopped her just as the first spark of agony shot through her shoulder in sharp threads.
Sydney's mind began to race. The exits of the room sprang to mind – the front door, the sliding glass door a few feet away, the window in the bathroom. She searched in her mind for her gun, but remembered it rested in her jacket pocket on the chair. Damn.
"You'll rip it open again if you move too much," Sark said in a bored voice, as though explaining to a small child why they couldn't jump off the swings. Sydney closed her eyes in determination; she couldn't stay with her back turned, completely vulnerable to the unpredictability that was Sark. She pushed up off the bed and tested her balance, still leaning on the edge of the bed.
"I do wish you'd follow directions, Ms. Bristow. I will be highly unamused if you force me to pull this trigger and I'd have to bandage you up all over again." Sark sounded annoyed with her disobedience, like shooting her was simply another irritant he had to deal with. Sydney wheeled around to face him, gripping the bedpost unsteadily, finding the gun resting on his knee, pointed at her lazily. She looked at him, trying to read the expression behind his eyes, the color a mix of moonlight and night sky, dissolved in shadows. He simply stared back, his face emotionless.
"You won't do it." Sydney asserted the statement with bated breath, watching him carefully, every inch of her alert.
"Really." Sark's eyes swept over her, and she felt her blood drop a few degrees. "You're awfully confident for someone who can't even stand up."
Sydney raised her chin in defiance. "I can stand," she countered, hating how her voice sounded, arguing an aimless point. Sark looked at her, and Sydney got the impression that if he could put forth the effort, he would raise an eyebrow at her. Her features hardened, and she let go of the bedpost, taking a shaky step forward. The masses in the room resembling furniture shifted a little, and Sydney closed her eyes briefly and swayed. She felt her shoulder spiraling with a burning sensation, and a hand closed over her arm in an iron grip. Sydney opened her eyes and found Sark's face close to hers, his features displaying disdain and something that, if she hadn't been so woozy, she might've thought could have been construed as concern.
"You've lost a lot of blood. Sit down," Sark said, exasperated. She obeyed without the energy to put forth reluctance, and Sark released her arm after a moment. Sydney rubbed it unconsciously, trying to ignore the different kind of burning she felt when he backed away from her and settled into the chair again. Sydney refused to meet his eyes, staring at the carpet illuminated in the moonlight shining from the balcony through the sliding glass door. The gun had resumed its place on Sark's knee, and he frowned as he looked at her. She glanced up, noticing the expression he wore.
"What?" she said, returning the frown and turning it to more of a glare.
Sark opened his mouth to reply with another snarky comment, but to Sydney's surprise, he closed it after a moment, instead choosing to shake his head and close his eyes, resting back against the chair. "Nothing," he muttered, running a hand over his face and looking out to the balcony, his features exhausted. Exhausted, and so worn, she thought, for someone so young.
She couldn't even begin to comprehend what all that was supposed to mean; Sark was never someone to be at a loss for words. Perhaps he was simply too tired to deal with her anymore, making her feel more and more like nothing more than an annoyance he kept having to put up with, a role she found not to her liking. Sydney hesitated for a moment, then swiftly stood up, regretting it as soon as her feet hit the floor, having to grab the bedpost tightly to prevent herself from falling backwards. Sark turned back, and his eyebrows narrowed as he stood from the chair quickly. "For goodness sake, Sydney, do you not understand—"
But Sydney never got to find out what she didn't understand, for she reached to him and pulled him forward, her hand on the back of his neck, and pressed her lips to his urgently in a fierce kiss. He tensed up for only a moment before responding, parting his lips and exploring her mouth with his, his hands sliding to her waist, a support Sydney was grateful for in her current state. His fingers brushed her stomach lightly as her tongue flicked into his mouth briefly, and she moaned into his lips as the kiss intensified. Sark's hands dipped under the thing material of her shirt, brushing across her stomach running electric lines across the warmth of her skin. Sydney kissed him harder, aching to feel him against her, needing every inch of her body to be touching his, and the way his hands stroked lightly right beneath her breast, never touching it, threatened to drive her mad. Her mind spun with the loss of blood and the rush of it to her head as Sark broke the kiss the trace her jaw line with his mouth, and all of a sudden the dizziness amplified until she could barely see the room lined around her. Sark pulled away.
"Sydney." He sounded annoyed, though his eyes were round with an icy sympathy he was obviously trying to hide. Still holding her waist, her hands gripping his shoulders for support, she noticed somewhere back of her mind that his shoulders were broader than she would've expected, delicate sinew and stretches of masculinity. He frowned at her. "Lay down. You need some rest."
She glanced at the bed, a queen-sized that looked massively larger in the shadows of the moonlight beneath her swimming vision. She looked back at him, her eyes narrowing. "If you think for one second I'm going to let you—"
"Shut up," he said, not unkindly, "and lay down."
She did. The wooziness finally took over as her muscles seem to virtually sink into her skin, crawling onto the bed. With some difficulty, she managed to pull back the covers and clamber under, shivering when her tender shoulder brushed the sheets. The room grew dim, the silhouettes of night and distant buildings shifting over the balcony edge, and with Sark's eyes on her, she turned to face away from him. Lowering her eyes to the lines of the bed jutting out against the darkness of the floor won't fool him, and with a sigh she closes her eyes, unsettled at the thought of her enemy watching her with no way to defend herself unless she sensed him coming for her, which, in any other state, she might have been able to do. Now, however, she listened with every inch of her worn body tensed, listened to him stride across the room and slide out of his clothes, listened to the handle of the gun palmed and set on the bedside table. Finally, she listened to him slip under the sheets beside her, almost able to feel the heat radiating from him even then, but it could've just been the fever flowing under her skin.
Sark turned to lie opposite her, facing his own edge of the bed, and Sydney almost felt herself relax the slightest bit. She shifted carefully, trying to stay alert, but her bones seem to scream for the softness of the bed and she found herself unable to hold back the deep waves of sleep that threatened to overcome her at any moment, and finally she acquiesced.
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