Author’s Note: I hadn’t considered writing a sequel to “Innocence” until a few readers asked for one. This is dedicated to those ladies – I hope they (and all of you) enjoy it! The story picks up just after Sark leaves Jessi in France, so the timeline is still pre-Season-Two-finale.

Part One

Muscle and sinew

Velvet and stone

This vessel is haunted

It creaks and moans

My bones call to you

In their separate skin

I make myself translucent

To let you in, for

I am wanting

And I am needing you here

Inside the absence of fear

“The Absence of Fear,” Jewel

Regret does not come naturally to Sark.

Regret has complications, and he does his best to keep life simple. Despite the duties Irina has handed him since Khasinau’s death, he still considers himself essentially an assassin. And the life of an assassin is blessedly straightforward: Acquire target. Study target. Destroy target.

He knows that Sydney Bristow and her friends at the CIA consider him a machine. They believe he kills blithely. Sark would not describe himself this way; he was trained to kill, taught to compartmentalize empathy until it ceased to exist, instructed to approach relationships with the same cold detachment as an assassination.

Most of these things he learned from Irina. Loneliness, she once told him, is a survival skill – one he has internalized and perfected, even more so than his teacher.

He thrives on simplicity. He dislikes complications, personal or professional.

What he feels for Jessi is not simple.

After leaving France, Sark accepted the guilt that accompanies the needless degradation of an innocent. He expected it to end there, only to find himself haunted by memories of trusting dark eyes, petal-soft ivory skin, and delicate, sensuous sighs.

She is the second woman to plague his sleepless nights, to intensify the hollow void inside of him. She is the second woman to make him wish he were a different sort of man.

The first he has never tasted, supposes he never will. He should have been equally stoic with Jessi – but then again, Sydney Bristow never came to his hotel room and asked him to make love to her.

When he tracks her to New York two weeks later, he tells himself it is prudence that drives him. Few people in his life are what they seem: She could be an agent.

He knows before he arrives, of course, that she isn’t. But it’s how he consoles himself that he isn’t interested in how she is faring.

The regret surfaces when he sees she isn’t faring too well – not inwardly, anyway, where it matters.

On that first trip he stays less than 48 hours – just long enough to walk by her apartment while she’s in class, to follow her across the NYU campus, to take note of her favorite art galleries, bookshops and markets.

Melting into an alley across the street from her building, he watches her leave for a late dinner with her parents. She wears a simple black dress that does wonderful things for her slim figure and not such good things for his determination to forget about her.

As she climbs into the cab she glances his way. For one heart-stopping second he thinks she sees him.

The grim determination in her dark eyes betrays the emotional evisceration behind her bouncy step and bright smile.

She ducks into the taxi and disappears into the nighttime traffic. He doesn’t follow her.

Instead he flies to Madrid and spends 17 days planning the assassination of Diego Martiez, patriarch of an affluent crime family. The Martiez clan deals in guns, prostitution, and drugs; lately they have been stepping all over Irina’s turf, believing The Man to be out of the picture and her young protégé to be incompetent.

Sark catalogued their infractions while Irina was in custody, presented the list to her after her extraction without actually expecting her to care, and shrugged when she told him to make an example of Martiez.

He is mildly surprised only because he thought the Rambaldi quest was all that concerned her now, that the organization she spent so many years building existed solely to supply her with the resources to complete his work, that since she had allied with Sloane and successfully cornered the market on Rambaldi artifacts the organization itself no longer mattered.

But he doesn’t, as a rule, analyze Irina’s motives. She is his employer; she chooses when to explain and when to just give orders.

And truthfully, he is too glad for the distraction from Jessi to care.

Martiez has eyes and ears all over Madrid. Sark enjoys the danger. He keeps to the shadows and tracks Martiez personally instead of hiring a local asset to do the legwork. He switches cars daily and hotels nightly.

Every bed he sleeps in seems empty without her light, reassuring weight beside him.

On Day 17 he comes out of hiding. He dons a new black Armani suit, drives his Mercedes to the private club where Martiez dines with his sons every weekday, and guns the white-haired old man down in the parking lot. He knows the surviving bodyguards recognize him – Irina’s message has been delivered.

He flies to Cyprus and toys with the idea of returning to France, to their inn. That would be safer than going back to New York.

* * * *

On his second trip to New York, Sark has occasion to be in the city – hunting a Rambaldi artifact held by a private collector in Manhattan.

Irina insisted she should handle it herself but he indicated he could use a little action so she relented, warned him not to disappoint her. It has been 22 days since his last visit to the city.

He easily purchases the artifact from a pleasant old man who has no clue about the antique vase’s real value. Sark knows he should return to Cyprus straightaway – the vase is a treasure he can’t risk losing, though he has no idea how it fits into the complex Rambaldi puzzle – but at the airport he decides following up on Jessi is harmless.

Irina sounds strained when he phones to say he’ll be a day later than expected. Lying to her is dangerous so he doesn’t offer an explanation. She doesn’t ask for one, but he realizes he has to control this obsession before her patience wears thin.

It is late autumn and a chill afternoon rain is falling. Sark picks up Jessi’s trail at the library and follows 20 paces behind as she strolls lazily home, splashing in puddles and discarding her umbrella. Her long dark hair is soon plastered to her scalp, her gray wool sweater and jeans molded to her body. She must be freezing but doesn’t appear to mind.

He thinks for a moment that she must be fine now – the rain doesn’t seem to affect her, to remind her of the storm howling outside the night they made love, as it does him.

When she climbs the steps to her building he ducks around a corner to avoid being seen. He peeks out for a glimpse of her face as she unlocks the door, and the regret clenches around his heart again.

The grim determination he noted in her eyes on his last visit has been replaced by guardedness. The worldly cynicism doesn’t match her childlike joy at playing in the rain, doesn’t track with the open, vibrant woman he met in France.

As he watches her turn her tiny heart-shaped face up to the cold droplets, he hates himself for destroying her innocence. He wants to call out to her, to watch her eyes widen in surprise as he rushes along the flooded sidewalk toward her, to silence her protests with kisses when he sweeps her up and carries her inside.

Suddenly he knows seeing her isn’t harmless.

He vows not to look in on her again.

* * * *

Sark pays an asset in New York to keep tabs on Jessi. The man is freelance, small-time, yet competent. He knows enough to accept the $10,000 a month without asking why a wanted terrorist cares about an NYU art student.

Sark doesn’t ask himself that, either.

Irina treats him coolly when he presents the artifact to her. He apologizes for the delay and spends the next 31 days taking care of business so efficiently that she seems to forget his strange behavior.

Only the shadows under his eyes belie his continuing turmoil.

Sleep stopped coming easily to Sark years ago. He has learned to function on five hours a night, sometimes less. But now his nights are filled with restless pacing – the ceaseless, edgy prowling of a confined creature who belongs in the wild.

Jessi haunts his footfalls, the memory of her hovering over his shoulder, waiting to pounce on him when exhaustion defeats him and he collapses onto the bed.

He considers seducing Irina to distract himself. She probably wouldn’t mind. With the lights off and the curtains closed, she could resemble her daughter enough to drive Jessi out of his mind.

But that would be another complication he doesn’t need.

His New York asset sends him emails through an encrypted server once a week. They’re brief, terse summaries of Jessi’s weekly activities: Class Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Dinner with parents Thursday, 8pm. Gallery opening Friday, 7pm, attended with 3 female friends.

The schedule varies week to week. Sark reads the emails over and over again, picturing her at each event, wishing his asset would provide more detail – what she was wearing, if she seemed happy, who she talked with – but too proud to request it.

Sark has dealt with infatuation before. If he were active, he believes the yearning for Jessi would recede. All those months walking the same halls as Sydney Bristow, he barely had time to consider the possibilities because he was too busy balancing Irina’s agenda and Sloane’s ambitions; now he’s cooling his heels, waiting for Sloane to resurface or Irina to move forward alone, and the downtime is giving him too much opportunity to think.

He asks Irina if she has anything that needs taking care of. She acidly responds that if he’s bored, he can go “amuse” himself until she calls for him.

He retreats to his room before he can take her up on that and buy a ticket to New York.

* * * *

His cell phone rings and Sark climbs out of the indoor pool to answer it.

“Yes?” He rubs an oversized towel through his curls.

He freezes when he hears his New York asset’s voice, hesitant and apologetic.

“Uh, hi. You said only to call this number in an emergency and, uh…Well, I think this could be one.”

Aware that Irina’s security cameras are recording him – every inch of the grounds, except for his bedroom (which he personally scoured of surveillance equipment), are monitored 24 hours a day – Sark allows his voice and his expression to give nothing away. Inside, however, his heart plummets into his toes.

“Yes?”

“Well, uh, somebody broke into my apartment last night. They took all the files I have on your…target.”

Sark’s mouth goes dry. “I see. Anything else?”

“Yeah, uh, yeah there is…something else. This morning I saw Pedro Martiez sitting out front of her apartment.”

Fucking retribution. Fucking connections. Fucking regret.

His asset is asking, “Do you want me to do anything?”

“Leave town,” Sark says crisply, dripping water onto the expensive carpet as he hurries upstairs, no longer heedful of the cameras. “Don’t go home, don’t pack, don’t take money out of the bank, just leave.”

Honestly he couldn’t care less whether his asset is executed. What he doesn’t want is the man being captured and tortured into telling everything he knows about Jessi.

“Uh…okay. What are you gonna do?”

Sark hangs up without answering and calls the airline to book a flight to New York.

* * * *

In the darkness of her apartment, he waits.

The assassin Pedro Martiez (the slain Diego Martiez’s eldest son) sent for her lies in a crimson puddle behind the couch, 10 feet to Sark’s left. The cloying scent of blood fills the room.

Sark has not bothered to clean up the evidence of their brutal fight, though he did exchange his gore-spattered black jumpsuit for jeans and a blue oxford.

The curtains are drawn. Night fell two hours ago – not long after his arrival – but he hasn’t turned on a light, in case more of Martiez’s men are watching from somewhere.

Once she arrives they will have to move swiftly. If the apartment is being watched, and he assumes it is, their enemies will quickly grow suspicious when the assassin doesn’t call to report his success.

Sark is prepared. He holds a Sig Sauer in one hand and a syringe filled with sedative in the other. He will not have time for explanations; later he will submit to her questions, her accusations, but tonight he has to spirit her out from under the shadow of death.

He admits to himself that he is afraid to face the hatred in her eyes.

When he hears the front door open, he stands and walks soundlessly to the door, backs against the wall, out of sight from the foyer.

The entryway fills with light when she flips the switch. Her keys clatter to the oak endtable beside the door, where she always deposits her mail and her purse; her footsteps move toward him, soft and swishing on the hardwood floor, but slow to a stop before she reaches the living room.

He knows she is taking in the overturned recliner, the broken lamp, the blood-stained couch – the aftermath of his battle with her would-be murderer.

She turns to run for the front door, as anyone would. Sark is silent and swift; she never hears him come up behind her, doesn’t have time to twist away before he inserts the needle in her arm and injects her with the sedative.

With a frightened cry Jessi pivots in his grasp. He slips his arms around her waist and supports her – the drug acts almost instantly, clouding the flicker of disbelieving recognition in her wide dark eyes.

“Ethan?” she gasps, and collapses.

* * * *

Sark owes Irina explanation. He gives her the truth, not out of loyalty – he has deceived her when it suits his purposes – but out of necessity.

He needs her help to protect Jessi.

He drives all night with Jessi asleep in the passenger’s seat of the rental car. In Boston he pulls into a Holiday Inn, places his sleeping companion on the king-sized bed and phones Cyprus on his cell.

Irina listens silently to his tale. When he finishes, she instructs, “Take her to my villa in Sorrento. I’ll work on getting her a new identity.”

He sits in a chair beside the bed and thinks again how innocent Jessi looks while she’s asleep.

“I can’t be certain she’ll go willingly – or quietly,” he explains, keeping his voice low. “Traveling publicly could be a problem.”

“I’ll have the jet ready for you in six hours,” Irina replies.

Her voice gives away none of her thoughts, not a hint of whether she approves or disapproves of this sudden revelation that her second-in-command has been keeping secrets.

“Call me when you get to Italy.”

* * * *

Mostly because he can’t bring himself to face her yet, Sark keeps Jessi sedated until they reach the villa. He knows she regrets making love to him. He just doesn’t want to hear her say it, needs time to steel himself for it.

Irina owns properties across the globe. He has never been to this villa before but like all of her homes it is magnificent and, more importantly, well-protected.

He contacts an associate in Rome who lost his wife and daughter to a car bomb planted by Diego Martiez’s men. The associate gladly sends him a security detail and servants for the villa.

He calls Irina and she says Jessi’s new identity will be ready in a week. He tells her he’s staying in Sorrento until then; afterwards, he’ll be going to Madrid, to finish up matters with the Martiez clan.

“All right,” is all she says, but Sark hears the tension in her voice and knows she wants to say more.

While Jessi sleeps off the lingering effects of the sedative, he sits in the chair beside her bed, struggling to keep his burning eyes open. He has not slept in almost 30 hours.

What he really wants is to crawl in beside her, to curve the front of his body to the back of hers, to sleep with his cheek resting against her hair. He thinks, as he did in France, that he wants to know this woman – wants to wake up beside her, to come home to her, to share his victories and defeats, his hopes and his fears, with her. He wants this connection.

He remains in the chair and fights sleep.

Even with the Martiez organization destroyed – and Sark fully intends to destroy it, right down to the family operation’s last distant cousin – Jessi could never return to her life. She has been marked as precious to Mr. Sark; the CIA, NSA, FBI, MI-6, every enemy he or Irina have ever made, they’ll all be interested in her now.

The only way to keep her alive is to make her disappear.

One solution to this situation, of course, is to make her his own. He could bring her into this life, shower her with enough money and affection to make up for what he is and what he has to do, treat her with that idolatrous reverence undeserving men bestow upon the incredible women who love them.

He doesn’t prod his feelings deep enough to find out if he’s in love with her. It would be enough simply to have her, to not be alone anymore.

Of course he won’t do that – not to Jessi, not to himself. He has seen what connections do to people in this life, to the people they drag along with them. He thinks of Sydney and all she has suffered because of her parents and knows he doesn’t want that for Jessi. He thinks of Irina and all she has risked because of her daughter and Jack and knows he doesn’t want that for himself.

He wishes he could wish none of this ever happened: that he’d never met Jessi, never stopped to talk to her, never opened the door when she knocked, never caved in to his desire for a human connection.

But he doesn’t wish that, selfish as it is. He only wishes he could make this easier for her – that he could offer some meaningful solace when she wakes up to find her whole world has turned upside down and he’s the one responsible.

Again.