Chapter Text
“So, you want to tell me how you pulled it off?”
The woman doesn’t jump when Eric comes up behind her, just turns her head almost languidly towards him. She doesn’t move from her perch in the sand, instead turns her face back towards the water, the calm blue beyond. The brief glance he got of her face, shadowed by the setting sun, showed a calm, impassive visage, save for the almost imperceptible tilt at the edge of her lips. It’s slight, so slight that if he hadn’t spent hours upon hours with the woman he might not have noticed it.
He has to give it to her: Sara Sidle has one very good poker face.
“You want to tell me how you found me?”
The fact that she’s talking to him and not actually killing him bolsters Eric’s courage, and he moves around so that he’s standing beside her. “I figured you’d come to the last place that anyone would ever look for you.” He’d known she was going to disappear, had figured that there was something almost poetic about it, returning to the place where all her nightmares had begun before she banished them from her life forever.
She chuckles, a sound he’s heard before, but this sounds slightly different, and he can’t place why. He’s still trying when he’s distracted by her voice. “I could kill you, you know.”
“But you won’t.” He doesn’t know why he’s so sure, just that he is. “I could arrest you, you know.”
“But you won’t.”
She sounds just as sure as he is, and it strikes him suddenly that something is different about her voice, the same thing that’s different about her laugh.
There’s genuine amusement there.
Genuine amusement, and an aura of genuine peace about her, which is not something that he’s ever associated with Sara in the past.
“But I won’t,” he concedes, dropping down to the sand beside her.
They sit in companiable silence for a long time, in identical poses, knees drawn up, hands draped loosely over them, each staring straight ahead lost in thought. To Eric’s surprise, it’s Sara who breaks the silence. “Why did you come here, Eric?”
He looks over at her, finds her looking at him with furrowed brow. “To say goodbye,” he says honestly. “And to find out how the hell you did what you did.”
He injects some humour of his own into the second part, and she responds with a shrug and a smile. “Arvin Sloane wanted to believe that I was the prodigal child, returning to the fold. Sark wanted to believe that he’d turned me against Sloane… that I was… his.” There’s a barely repressed shudder in that pause, and Eric’s suddenly very sure he didn’t want to know anything about that particular relationship. “I used both to my advantage.”
“And you killed them. Both of them.”
He’s not sure why he’s saying that, if he’s asking a question, looking for confirmation or denial of what he already knows. But she meets his gaze without flinching. “Yes.”
“And blew up an entire warehouse full of Rambaldi artefacts?”
“Yes.” Again, that same unflinching gaze. “Sorry if it upset the CIA.”
Eric thinks that upset might just be the understatement of the millennium, because when Kendall found out about what had gone on in one twenty-four hour period, he’d been nothing short of apoplectic. Eric had undergone one of the more unpleasant debriefings he’d ever partaken of, and by the end of it, he’d been thankful for two things. First, that whatever Sara had done, she’d taken great pains to leave him completely out of it. Second, that Kendall wasn’t wearing his gun.
“Upset?” he laughs now. “Kendall scorched paint off the walls.”
For the first time, her face clouds in worry, her eyes darken, and he regrets his words. He likes Peaceful Sara better than Sad and Angsty Sara, and the fact that the latter has returned because of his words doesn’t sit well with him. “Did I get you in trouble?”
“No… no, not trouble. I’m not gonna be anyone’s handler for a while, that’s for sure… course, I’m not sure I mind that so much…”
She’s frowning. “Yeah?”
He nods. “Yeah… I mean, come on… if they’re all like you, I’m going to need the rest.”
Her jaw drops as the words register, and a laugh springs unbidden from her lips. Eric finds himself laughing too, and then he surprises himself – and her too, judging by her expression – by slinging an arm around her shoulders and pulling her into a quick hug. He’s surprised when she neither pulls away nor breaks his arm, instead rests her head against his shoulder for a few moments before he lets her go.
“I would have told you,” she tells him quietly then. “But you couldn’t know… it was better for you.”
“Bullshit,” he says flatly. “You didn’t tell me because you thought I’d stop you.”
Their eyes meet, the silent truth there clear for both to see. “Maybe,” she allows. “Would you have?”
“Honestly?” She nods, and he sighs, looking down. “Honestly… yeah, I would have. I would have stopped you.”
“And now? Knowing what you know?”
“Now?” He blinks at the question, as he realises that she’s actually asking him if he thinks she did the right thing. “Sara, in one day, you solved the problems of Julian Sark, Arvin Sloane and Milo Rambaldi once and for all… something we’ve had no luck at for years. Knowing what I know now? I’d give you a fucking medal if I could.”
Sara smiles, the same kind of smile she gave him the very first time that they met, but brighter somehow. More relaxed? No, more real… and if the first type had made his heart quicken, this one seems to stop it in its tracks.
“I have something for you.”
He’s dimly aware of her words, and by the time he processes them, she’s already reached up around her neck, is unfastening the necklace she’s wearing. “A necklace? You think it’s going to suit…” His voice trails off when he sees what’s on the end of the chain. It’s a key, one that looks like it belongs to a safe deposit box. “Is that…”
“I promised you… the first day we met. Everything I knew about SD6, the Alliance, Sark’s accomplices…. There’s enough information in that box to keep you busy for a long time… should keep Kendall off your back. You can tell them you found it here… there’s even a note on the kitchen table for you.”
She looks backward as she says it, and he follows her gaze, looks at the B&B where she grew up, the place where her father trained her as a part of Project Christmas, the place where her mother killed him when she found out.
The place where it all began.
“You had it all planned,” he hears himself murmur, and she shakes her head.
“Not all of it… not from the start. I thought my handler would be some old guy in a suit with a stick up his ass… I never thought I’d find someone like you.” Her eyes fill with tears suddenly, and she swallows hard, jaw clenched tight. “I’ve only ever had one other person be there for me like that.”
He knows who she’s talking about, doesn’t need to hear her say the name. Instead, he places a hand on her shoulder, squeezes it gently. “I’m honoured.”
She glances over at him and smiles, swiping at her eyes impatiently. “I’m glad you came.”
“Me too.” Another long pause, looking out over the sunset. “So, what do you do now?”
“Disappear.” The word doesn’t surprise him. Disappoints him a little, maybe, but he’s not surprised. After all, the CIA are very interested in talking to her, and Kendall’s muttering something about warrants for murder (most of Eric’s contemporaries, like him, are thinking more along the lines of Congressional Medals of Honour) so there’s no way Sara Sidle can stick around. Even if he’d really like her to. “New name, new life… away from all of this.”
“What you always wanted. Congratulations.” He means it too. He might have some issues with what she did, how she did it, but he can’t begrudge her any happiness that might come her way. She’s earned it.
“I’m going to miss you.” Those words do surprise him, and he blinks once, then twice, sure he’s misheard her.
When he realises he hasn’t, he smiles. “Yeah… me too.”
She holds his gaze for a long time, face inscrutable. Then she stands, holds out a hand to him. “Coming?”
He takes it, is half pulled, half self-propelled up. “Where?” he wonders, and then he stops asking – not to mention thinking, and possibly breathing – when she kisses him. He kisses her back after a second – hey, he’s not an idiot – and when she pulls away, he’s waiting for the knife to his heart.
It never comes.
“This is my last night in this place,” she tells him, face serious. “I’d like one good memory before I leave.” They stand facing one another for what seems a long time as he tries to figure out if she’s serious, if this is what she really wants – he already knows it’s what he wants.
“This is a bad idea,” he tells her, and if he expects her to disagree, once more he’s surprised by her answer.
“Probably. But you know where I’ll be.”
With that, she turns on her heel and head back towards the B&B.
It takes all of two seconds for him to follow her.