mirror shards // matthew fairchild {1}

twenty-two // timeout

After that, it's chaos. They're lucky. Everything came through – Thomas pulled some kind of miracle at the Grosvenor Square laboratory, and if the textbooks are to be believed, Cordelia dealt a wound to Sydney's demonic grandfather that will leave him out of commission for weeks.

Sydney learns all of this in between choking down the cure herself and taking healing runes for her bleeding hand and collecting her scattered paperwork, and by the time the confusion is all cleared up, Sydney is back at the Institute, forcibly bundled into blankets in a chair by the drawing room fire, drinking hot chocolate out of a mug.

"You were sitting out in the cold and the dark without a coat for hours, Sydney," had been Will's stern admonition. "We need to make sure you don't get hypothermia."

"You sound like Christopher," Sydney had muttered, staring into the flames.

Now, for the second time, she considers taking her research from Romania and throwing it into the flames. But no. This goes too deep for that, now. She is as she has always feared – up to her ears in it, with no way out.

But in some ways, it's also the biggest dead end she's ever encountered. She'll never get her answers until she goes back to the Library of Bats, and she knows it. She knows also that regardless of what those ancient scholars want with her, going back to the Library of Bats would be the worst possible step she could take. She doesn't want to say that it ends here, but until she finds another way to get answers, it does end here.

And it's amazing, thinking that, to see how much she's changed. The version of her that returned from Romania two, three weeks ago would have turned around the moment she figured it out and stormed right back to the Library of Bats. Now, she knows better. She has people to stop her and she has people she does not want to lose by going back to that place. When she makes a decision now, she thinks of those people, too.

"Sydney?"

Sydney looks up.

James sits down beside her, and together they look into the fireplace.

"So," James says, "after the gala, at the very beginning of all this, you confronted me in front of this fireplace and you told me you knew I'd been into the shadow-realm, and you asked what I saw there." He meets Sydney's eyes. "I'm turning it back on you now. Something happened to you while Cordelia and I were fighting the Mandikhor, and Belial. You figured something out. What do you know? What did you find?"

"I suppose I'd better tell you," Sydney says, "shouldn't I?" And so she explains the entire thought process, from the fox and the bear onwards, through ego death and her theory about the psychic telephone.

"I'm afraid I have to agree with Matthew," says James. "I think you jumped to a conclusion somewhere in there."

"With the information I have, it's the only conclusion I could come to."

"But that thing...'take the hands of the fox and the bear.' Belial delivered that line. Our demonic grandfather, not an agent of the Library of Bats."

"Synchronicity," Sydney dismisses him. "He wants me to start employing my powers, obviously, likely for the same reasons he wants to possess you – so he can use me in whatever his planet-conquering plans are. He just happened to touch on something the Library of Bats was guiding me toward, too."

"Sydney..."

"James."

"Sydney, do you realize how ludicrous that sounds? How unreasonable you're being? You've found what you're absolutely sure is the conclusion and now you're trying to pick out the pieces of your research to emphasize, that force it to fit your theory."

"Isn't that what all research is?"

"And if you're wrong? And it's something else?"

"With the information I have I can't possibly draw another conclusion!"

"Then maybe you need to let it rest. You've done more than enough. You found Belial before any of the rest of us. You got so far. Maybe what you need to do is step back and let the rest of the information come to you."

"'You found Belial before any of the rest of us.' Is that what this is about, Jamie? Are you jealous, that I found him first? That I had that opportunity? I know you were looking for him –"

"Sydney you kicked off to Romania for ten months and never sent a letter back! How do you think I felt about that, Sydney? How do you think Lucie felt about that? And even before that, you were distant, you hardly spent time with us you were off in your own world..." James shakes his head. "And now...I don't want you doing that to Math, too. You seemed so good for each other but he doesn't deserve that."

Sydney sits down hard on the sofa. "I know. I...I don't have an excuse. I keep saying, this is it, just one more of these nights, just a little later to stay up, just one more map, one more book. And I get so absorbed in my work and I tune everything else out. And I'm trying and I keep slipping, slipping back." She sighs. "I know you never liked me, out of all the other Thieves we got along least...I always thought it was just because I was the older sister but now, knowing this...I'm sorry, and I know that's not enough, but I am."

"But see, that's the problem," James says. "You weren't an older sister. You weren't a sister at all." He blinks the tears away, gets to his feet. "You came back from Romania talking about this Zmeul Zmeilor and the Library of Bats and it was like the last shreds of the old Sydney had gone and I was looking at someone completely knew. I know that Matthew likes this new version of you, he told me that. But I don't. I don't like this new version of you at all."

James scoops up the box of research Sydney's left by the fireplace, turns around, and heads for the door.

"James," Sydney asks, "where are you going with that?"

"Upstairs."

"You're taking my research?"

James looks down at the box. He sighs. He looks at Sydney. He sighs again. "This – this is your silver flask, Sydney. You saw it in Matthew, I'm disappointed you couldn't see it in yourself." With that, James closes the door and leaves Sydney alone in the drawing room.

Sydney puts her feet up, lying down on her back on the sofa, staring the ceiling.

James is right. He's right and she knows it.

Sydney just wishes she hadn't been so stupid to not listen to him, to not see it in herself before.

_____________
Author's Notes:
Yeah, just 'cause you're good at yelling doesn't make you right.

P.S. I'mma just let y'all know, the next chapter does get a bit spicy. Just for anybody who did not come here for that. It also includes the last of Sydney's 'days past' segments, and it's a past segment that gets reasonably dark. Be aware of that, also.