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Seven weeks.
That’s how long Irina has waited. Waited for this moment. Waited, as it turns out, for her to be metaphorically stabbed in the back.
The sun is at its zenith over the arid landscape. The air is hot and dry. Yet Irina – Russian spy, The Man, The Devil in High Heels – finds enough moisture and enough emotion to cry.
Earlier
Irina saw it happen, but was not quick enough to prevent it.
Sydney, stupidly out here alone in the desert. Sark, chasing her for something. Irina doesn’t know what, although it’s important enough that she heard the CIA were looking for it. Possibly a Rambaldi artefact. She doesn’t care right now, because neither Sydney nor Sark found the item in question.
They ran into trouble with a third party, a man with a steady aim who ordered Sydney to hand “it” over; impossible since she hadn’t retrieved it yet.
Sark, trying to reason with the man to this effect, trying to offer some sort of deal. All the time trying to find a way to disarm him. Sydney looking to do the same. Irina, a second away from the range at which she could shoot accurately with her hand gun.
The argument gets louder, and Sark edges toward the man, so when the gun goes off, it is easy for him to move and take the bullet meant for Sydney.
“No!” Sydney’s voice pierces the ensuing silence. She draws her weapon but Irina has already pulled the trigger. Good thing too. Sydney would have screwed it up. Irina doesn’t hesitate to take a head shot.
Irina looks calm as she approaches the body, kicks it for good measure. Sydney glances at her, already on her knees at Sark’s side now the danger has passed.
“What are you doing here?” she snaps, tugging at his blood stained shirt.
“Saving your life.” Irina kneels too. “Although it seems Sark beat me to that.”
“I don’t know why,” Sydney says. “Why he would do that? It’s not as if he has a decent bone in his body.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Breathing. I guess that’s something.” She finds the wound, such a small looking mark on his chest. She stares at Irina. “Help me.”
They both hold the unconscious man as Sydney tries to find an exit wound, which she does. A little higher than the entry wound, impossible to know exactly how serious the injury is, but at least the bullet isn’t still in there. A small mercy that it hasn’t bounced around and lodged in a vital organ.
“I’ll call for help,” Sydney says. She’s tugging at her clothing, tearing off strips to use as makeshift field dressings. Her hands are bloody, Sark’s blood, but she doesn’t seem to care.
“No.” Irina reaches for her gun again.
“What, you’re going to shoot me now?” Sydney demands.
“Think what you’re doing!” Irina gestures. “The CIA will lock him up again. What kind of reward would that be for his saving you?”
“Then what do you suggest?” Sydney asks. “If we stay here he dies.”
Irina has favours owed all over the globe. It takes a couple of encrypted phone calls but soon two men she trusts arrive to help transport all three of them to what seems like an oasis, a villa out in the desert. Something she arranged years back, somewhere to come for peace and solitude when her quest for global domination and Rambaldi artefacts got too much.
Dusty from lack of use the building is otherwise secure and self-contained. There’s a solar power generator, an underground food store, a water pump, clothes and toiletries. They could live out here for months.
She lets Sydney clean up a little while she makes more calls.
Not going to die. Irina hopes for his sake the doctor was right with his diagnosis. The wound has been cleaned and dressed, and an IV line ensures a supply of saline. He’s breathing unassisted, yet Sark is still unconscious. It will just take time; besides, there’s nothing else to be done without more specialist equipment.
Irina doesn’t have much faith in modern medicine anyway. Tests that diagnose diseases that don’t have cures, machines that prolong life past the point it has any quality. The body heals itself or not at all.
Sydney’s polishing a table in the dining area. She’s keeping busy, making the place look homely. Irina tells her that Sark’s not in any immediate danger.
“You can go now.”
Yet Sydney’s response is surprising. She’s defiant. She has made her choice, or so she tells Irina. “He saved my life. If nothing else I want to know why. I’ll stay. Just until he regains consciousness. Then I’m out of here. You’ve then got five days to get out of here before I tell the CIA about this place.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Sydney gives a humourless laugh. “It’s the last thing I want. But I need to do this. I just need to make one call first.”
Who to?” Irina demands, knowing the answer.
Sydney shrugs casually. “The CIA.” She brushes back a strand of hair, a nervous habit she has. Irina simply holds her gaze. “I just don’t want them to think I’m dead!” Sydney snaps. “Again!”
Irina bows her head, conceding the possibility. She holds her tongue, trying to bite back the urge to remind Sydney not to tell the CIA of their whereabouts. Yet for Sarks’s sake, she says, “He’d rather die than be imprisoned again, Sydney.”
The look on her daughter’s face is a mixture of rage and pain. “I know,” she hisses, and leaves. She’s gone maybe an hour. When she returns they don’t talk of it. Just drink cool glasses of water to quench the unending thirst, and fall into a cycle of eating, sleeping, keeping vigil.
Being thought dead by friends, family, colleagues. It’s something else mother and daughter have in common now, an unwanted similarity, an unspoken bond.
It’s hard to talk, to open up. The fragile trust built up during Irina’s incarceration has long been destroyed. Yet with Sark still comatose and the unspoken “need-to-know” arrangement with the nurse they’ve hired, Irina and Sydney have only each other for company. So they talk, and the topics of conversation stay neutral. As before, during that brief period of trust, there are good times to be recalled, times when the Bristows were a family.
They take it in turns to sit at Sark's beside in the hours he’s otherwise unattended. They read every book and newspaper in the villa. Irina rises early and practises Tai Chi, Hatha Yoga, auto-circadian meditation. These are her escapes from the world, and also her strength for living in the world. Sydney practises too, for Irina watches her from Sark’s window. Nothing as graceful as her own martial arts, but practical and skilful, mostly kickboxing but some karate moves, followed by a brief period of meditation.
Irina knows Sydney talks to Sark, has overheard her on occasion. Mostly ramblings about their shared past, some attempts to get his attention by chiding him for perceived wrongdoings. Irina has her own ways to spend the time. Talking softly, sometimes in English, sometimes in Russian, asking him to come back to her. It has no effect. She perseveres. Irina is not one to give up.
She likes to touch him, to take his hand in hers, hoping the physical contact will stir him. By mutual consent she and Sydney have been letting his hair grow again, and Irina likes to run her fingers through it. They keep him clean-shaven though, and she often strokes his face, even pressing her lips to his cheeks and lips. It’s to no avail, even when she holds his limp hand and cups it to her breast.
Three weeks pass.
The agency nurse does her job well. Irina demanded someone used to long term care, someone who could not only take care of the bullet wound, but would make sure he was bathed and turned to prevent bed sores, someone who would help them exercise his muscles gently to reduce atrophy. Things she and Sydney are vaguely aware of, both having had injured colleagues, potential complications that could reduce his chances of recovering, or prolong it indefinitely.
Sydney can’t understand why this is happening. Two years of her life missing, like waking from a dreamless sleep only to find the world has irreparably changed for the worse. Why does she still play at being a good girl, playing fetch for the CIA? Her association with them has brought her nothing but pain. Yet, robbed first of Danny and then Francie and finally Will; separated from her father; replaced in Vaughn’s affections, Sydney has no-one, nothing left without the Agency. At least there she can rely on Marshall to say something sweet, at least there she can interact with Vaughn on some level.
Then came this mission, for an artefact that probably doesn’t exist. A mission Vaughn should have been on with her except his wife forced him not to come. An old trick. Lauren told him to go, that the mission was important, that Sydney needed him. Being so reasonable that Vaughn felt guilty about being alone on a mission with Sydney in case he forgets himself and they end up making out in the dunes. If she’d told him not to go, he would have defied her. Smart woman. Lauren knows Vaughn as well as Sydney does. Bitch. Whore. Unkind thoughts but why shouldn’t Sydney have them?
So now she’s sitting with Sark, the last place in the world she would have imagined herself. There are moments she wants to kill him. It would be easy, too easy, while he lies so vulnerable. Yet for reasons she can’t comprehend he saved her, and she feels compelled to not only let him live, but to protect him until he recovers.
He heals fast, she knows, recalling a time she threw an ice-pick at him, where it embedded itself in his knee. It should have put him out of action for a couple of weeks but he just kept chasing her all over the globe, still kicking ass. How is this so different to such an injury? She runs her fingers over the bruising surrounding the entry wound and the shudder that runs through her at this contact isn’t one of disgust.
Six weeks. They’ve kept count, easy to do when each day drags in the heat. Each day that goes by lessens Sark’s chances for recovery. Irina knows this, and worse, knows that the longer he is unconscious the more chance there is that he’s been damaged irreparably, that there’s nerve damage or brain damage. That he might wake with missing memories, or unable to walk, or with the mind of a child…
Irina shakes her head, once, firmly. He’ll die at her hands if he’s no longer the Sark she knew and loved. He’d want it that way.
Almost seven weeks. Sydney finds herself pouring out her emotions to Sark, bitching about Vaughn who betrayed her. Who couldn’t wait more than a couple of months before believing her dead, and few enough after that before jumping into bed with Lauren. Sydney hates him for his haste. For her it was different. She spent a year grieving for Danny, twelve months slowly building up a relationship with Vaughn. Besides, she knew for sure Danny was dead. She found him in her bathtub. The tears still come when she remembers it. She doesn’t want to cry in front of Sark, not even while he’s comatose.
So she thinks of other times and tells Sark stories, tales she stars in, reminding him how he offered for her to come and work for him and she told him, “You’re cute. But I’ll pass.”
She's less inclined now to pass on the offer, to pass on him. Despite everything, she's developed an unexpected, unwanted, yet undeniable affection for him.
It's again Irina’s turn to sit vigil. She’s thinking that they can’t stay here indefinitely. They have to face the fact that Sark may never recover. Longer-term, she’s going have to find a facility to take him to where he can be watched over, and she and Sydney are going to have to go back to their own lives. This limbo cannot last.
“Sydney!” The call rouses her from her mediation. Sydney’s on her feet in seconds, heart racing, reaching for a weapon. Are they under attack?
“Sydney!” Irina calls again. And it’s not fear in her voice, Sydney realises. It’s delight, and disbelief. So she hurries to Sark’s side, where, some sort of miracle, he stirs.
And the first word he speaks, more of a whisper from a throat sore from lack of use and water, is her name.
Now
“Sydney.”
Irina’s joy fades. Blind with shock, for she cannot focus on anything, she reaches desperately behind her and takes Sydney’s hand. She pulls her daughter forward and gets to her feet, gesturing for Sydney to sit in the chair, to take her place.
For all her love for Sark, for all she’s done for him, this is what she gets? Mistaken for Sydney, replaced in his affections by her own daughter.
Sydney. The word like a knife made of ice in her gut.
She stumbles from the room and heads for the outdoors. Far enough from the house, she sinks onto the hard packed sand.
She cried with joy when she first held Sydney in her arms, her first and only child. She wept the night before leaving Sydney and Jack. It’s mostly for Sydney she weeps in her infrequent outpourings of emotion. It’s somewhat to do with Sydney now that she weeps, her heart broken. It’s mostly to do with Sark.
Sark, the only man besides Jack she has ever cared for.
Sark, stolen by Sydney, her own daughter, the only woman besides her grandmother she has ever loved.
The sun beats down on her and the tears flow.
Yet she cannot cry for long.
Irina wipes her shameful tears on her black sleeves. Sark lives, Sydney is fine, Jack is okay. Look at the silver lining.
Screw the silver lining.
She sits there for some time until Sydney joins her. They sit for a moment, unspeaking.
“Sark wants to see you,” Sydney says at last.
Irina holds herself in check, giving nothing away. “In time.”
Sydney shrugs. “Whenever you’re ready,” she says tightly. “Just remember, I said I would stay until he came to. I leave in the morning.”
What Sydney doesn’t tell Irina is what happened after her mother left the room. How, angry at Vaughn, indebted to Sark, having found her affection shifting from Vaughn to Sark, she felt relief and willingly took Sark's hand in hers. How she told him it was okay now, that he was safe, that she and Irina would take care of him for as long as he needed. How joy flared in his sapphire eyes.
“Irina is here?” he asked weakly, confused but clearly delighted by the prospect.
That’s when she realized the relationship between Sark and Irina went much deeper than she had ever imagined. The knowledge was almost insufferable. Somehow she forced a smile and said she would fetch Irina. Compartmentalising automatically, another feeling, another memory, to be locked away. Another wall in her psyche. What’s one more emotional barrier amongst the landscape of shattered illusions and betrayals of her soul?
Sark remembers his willing sacrifice to save Sydney, partly because he cares for her, partly because she's Irina's beloved daughter and he loves Irina. He didn't put that much thought into it at the time, acting by instinct. Thankfully he remembers little since and is relieved he didn't wake up in a prison. That he's somewhere safe, that this isn't a hospital, is a good sign.
He's still barely conscious, vision blurry, when he manages to form the single word, "Sydney?"; he needs to know she's alive, that he didn't take the bullet in vain. A few moments later she comes to his side and holds his hand, affection in her voice as she promises she and Irina will continue to look after him.
"Irina is here?" That is unexpected. She found him— found Sydney, perhaps, but she stayed to take care of him? That is more than he might ever have hoped for from the woman he has such a confused tangle of feelings for, a mother figure, a sometime lover.
Sydney promises to fetch Irina but even in his weakened state he catches something off in her tone, as if he'd hurt her somehow. He waits for Irina but after a few minutes he drifts back into sleep, still healing, still tired, unaware of how two simple sentences he's uttered have hurt both women.
So now Sydney kicks the hell out of an undeserving palm tree in the guise of marital arts practice while Irina stares unseeing as the sun descends toward the horizon.
Each locked in their own misunderstandings and thwarted dreams.
Not speaking of them because to admit their feelings would be unbearable.