* * * * Sydney stifled her startled cry of recognition almost before it began and stared wide-eyed as Jack drew Irina a chair from a nearby table to add to their own. Both women gave Jack expectant, slightly hesitant looks and he wearily nodded his permission as Irina hugged her daughter.
"Mom, what are you doing here?"
Jack felt a twinge that he reluctantly identified as resentment at the warm expression on Sydney's face as her mother sat down beside her. Her capacity for forgiveness -or optimism- never ceased to amaze him.
"We've spent so long searching for you. I had to see you for myself." She paused to thank the waitress who brought them a third cup of tea. "And I have a proposal."
Jack stiffened immediately and scowled at the semi-apologetic and knowing smile Irina gave him.
"I know that the Agency hasn't had much success in discovering what happened to you," she continued, turning back to Sydney. "I wanted to make another collaborative offer. It seemed to work well before."
"Circumstances were different before," Jack said.
"Not so different," she replied coolly. "In fact, I believe that the... resources at our disposal are almost exactly the same. Only the goal now is slightly altered."
It was true, Jack grudgingly admitted to himself. Substituting Sydney for Sark in this new proposed triangle made relatively little change in both the skills and the limitations of the alliance. He found it difficult, however, to equate his current desire to find out what had happened to Sydney with his earlier need to simply have her home safely. The latter was worth far more risk than the former, he thought. But his certainty wavered as he looked at her. Sydney needed to know what had happened to her. She needed to be actively doing something about it, more than just dredging through foggy memories a sliver at a time. For the first time in months he could see a spark of hope in her eyes.
Irina placed a small card on the table. "Contact me when you've made a decision." She brushed her hand across Sydney's hair as she rose to leave and Sydney grasped at her fingers.
"Before you go," she asked, a curious look on her face. "Who is Stephen?"
For a moment, Jack and Irina both resisted the compulsion to glance at one another, staring instead at their daughter and her hardening expression.
"I can read lips, you know," she chided them. "And I've heard Dad on the phone. I guess the question isn't really who is Stephen, is it? It's why are neither of you calling him Sark anymore?"
There was no need to exchange glances then. Irina sat back down, her gaze as compassionate as Jack's was impassive.
"Stephen is my son," she said at last. "Our son."
"That arrogant British bastard is not my brother," Sydney denied flatly.
Irina smiled softly. "Arrogant I'll give you, but he's not British."
"And he's only a bastard in the colloquial sense," Jack added unexpectedly, earning him a startled but approving look from Irina. Sydney merely gaped at him before snapping.
"Of course," she hissed at them sarcastically, still ever-mindful of the patrons and wait staff around them. "Because technically you two are still married. Which means that technically Sark is a Bristow. Which means that technically this family is the most screwed up bunch of dysfunctional lunatics on the planet. I swear I wish my amnesia covered all of this too. How long have you known?" she demanded, glaring at Jack.
"A little over two years," he admitted. "How long have you suspected?"
"You know there's always been speculation at both SD-6 and the Agency that he was Irina Derevko's son, so the suspicion has always been there. Then I thought it was weird how defensive of him you've been ever since I got back, trying to make sure that I didn't hate him or blame him for anything that's happened." If she caught Irina's quick glance at Jack, she gave no indication. "I've read all the files that the CIA compiled on Sark while he was in custody, so I know his name and when he was born and I can do the math. When I was reading that book it was clear that Tom's problems all began the day he was born - when his mother passed him off as a foundling to protect her own reputation. That point wasn't for anyone but you, was it, Dad? I've heard you on the phone when you've thought I was asleep - asking about Stephen and talking about me with exactly the same amount of concern in your voice. When were you going to tell me?"
"When I thought you were ready," he said.
"And when was that going to be? Before or after one of us shot the other?"
"Preferably before it happens again."
"You shot him in Hong Kong," Irina said at her blank look. "He's fine now, though."
"That's so reassuring. How do you know I didn't do it in self-defense?"
"Stephen would never harm you."
"Why not? Because he adores his big sister so much?"
Irina's expression chilled as she held Sydney's gaze firmly. "Because he knows that hurting you is the one thing I could never forgive him for."
"And if he doesn't care about your forgiveness?"
"He cares."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I know him. He may be a little uncertain of precisely how he fits into this family, but he knows that he's part of it and that he needs it."
"He's uncertain?" Sydney repeated incredulously. "Mom, the word you're looking for isn't 'uncertain'. It's 'unstable'. And that's hardly a wonder after you've been screwing with his head for twenty years and you," she scowled at her father. "You've probably been confusing the hell out him trying to bond with him these past couple of years. And if I got all of that conversation correctly, neither of you has any idea where he is or what he's up to right now. How could you let this happen? How could you do this to us?"
Jack wasn't entirely sure which of them their daughter was speaking to... or who she was including in her "us". Did she mean how could Irina have abandoned Sydney and Jack only to add this new unforeseen complication to their lives now? Did she mean how could Jack and Irina have knowingly driven their children into their current roles? It disturbed him to realize that he couldn't tell where her sympathies lay anymore. Perhaps the problem was that Sydney didn't know either.
She glared at them both, anger and tears making her eyes bright. When she saw that neither of them had any answers for her, she stood and gave them each a long, searching look before heading toward the door. Jack rose quickly to follow her.
"No, Dad," she stopped him. He could see that she was still angry, but it was not a reckless fury. She had it under control though it was tempered with pain and disappointment. "I just... I need to walk for a while. I'll get a cab home."
"No." He shook his head gently as he handed her his keys. "Keep the car. I'll take the cab."
A brief, grateful expression flickered across her face at his gesture. She tucked the keys into her pocket and he watched her walk out the door. When he returned to the table, Irina was already gone. He picked up the card that Sydney had left behind and waited, almost unconscious of the passage of time as their uneaten meal was packed into carry-out boxes by the attentive, unobtrusive waitress.
* * * * It was late when Jack heard the faint clatter of keys on the kitchen countertop and his daughter moving quietly through the house. She stood hesitantly at the edge of the living room before finally crossing to sit in her customary chair. She eyed Jack speculatively but said nothing for some time.
“I hate him,” she said at last, without any particular passion. It was an admission in a tired tone, reminiscent of another weary observation Jack had heard nearly two years ago. “But I understand him.”
She’d always been good at adapting, he thought. He watched her pick at the piping on the chair’s armrest and could see a hint of remorse in her eyes. It was a small indication that she almost regretted her hasty exit from the restaurant. She still had questions and knew that her mother would probably have had more answers than he did.
“Mom really did a number on him, didn’t she?” Sydney said. “Raising him… letting him be raised the way he was, to turn out the way he is.” Her tone wasn’t quite sympathetic, but it was softer than he would have expected. Then again, her own childhood had been less than ideal. “How did you find out?”
“Marshall discovered it in the Stuttgart database and brought it to me.”
“And you confronted Sark about it,” she continued for him when he didn’t go on. “Why did you do that?”
Jack doubted she’d be able to understand his primary motivation. Parenthood was outside her experience, still. “I wanted to know if Irina had told him,” he said instead.
Sydney smiled faintly at his hedged answer. “You know she didn’t. If he’d known earlier he would have been even cockier around us. He would have loved knowing something like that when we didn’t and he’d have been even more of a smug bastard - so to speak - than he was.”
“Probably.”
“So I’m guessing this isn’t exactly common knowledge at the Agency?”
“No.”
She laughed then and he was surprised to hear genuine amusement in it. “Wouldn’t Kendall have a stroke if he found out? He’d probably fire both of us just on general principles. It really would be the last straw for the amazing Bristow spy family.” She chuckled again at the thought of the director’s apoplectic reaction.
Then she shook her head, shifting focus, and became more serious. “What do you see when you look at him?” There was a curious note to her voice, as if she wasn’t quite certain that she wanted to know but still felt compelled to ask. “You spent over a year with him after you learned who he was. Did it make him seem… different?”
“No,” he said eventually. “And yes.” As he studied her earnest expression he decided to try being as honest as he could. “When he first appeared on our radar, almost four years ago, analysts in both the CIA and SD-6 started trying to dissect him. For him to be so young and yet as high in The Man’s organization as he was, it was suspected that he’d been trained for his position from a relatively early age. While it was clear that his technical education had been extensive, it was equally clear that his ethical instruction had been severely neglected,” he continued, ignoring Sydney’s snort at the minor understatement. “They had created an essentially amoral operative, one who would base all his decisions in the field on expediency, not ethics. Professionally, I was impressed… and intrigued. He is, after all, the unintentional byproduct of Project Christmas corrupted and carried to the extreme.”
He paused then, unable to look directly at his daughter. He didn’t know if she had ever taken her knowledge of his involvement in that operation to its logical conclusion. He didn’t know if she had ever confronted the fact that so much of what had happened in the past few years could be traced not only to her mother’s treacherous actions but to his own research gone disastrously awry.
“You’re not the one who did this to him, Dad,” Sydney said quietly.
“No,” he shook his head. “Maybe not directly, but I did make it possible.”
“So that’s what you see in him? Your own guilt?” Her tone was more inquisitive than accusatory.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly. “But that’s not all. I still see potential in him too. That’s something I don’t think I saw -or ever looked for- until I knew who he was. He’s not inherently evil, Sydney.”
“I know what amoral means, Dad,” she said with an attempt at a wry smile. “He doesn’t have any idea what good is either - or he doesn’t care. He just does whatever anybody bigger and stronger tells him to do, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong.”
“Yes. One thing that he particularly excels at is following orders and he will do almost anything to please his superiors - no matter who they might be.”
“And if that superior were you instead of Mom?” she asked.
“Then I think that he has the potential to be a different person.”
“You really think it’s not too late to change him?”
“He’s my son,” he said, meeting her gaze openly at last. “Just as much as you are my daughter. I have to believe that there is still something worth saving in him.”
She looked away from him, gnawing her lower lip as she retreated into uneasy contemplation of his words. He wondered whether she would be able to absorb these revelations as well as she had so many others. Finally she looked up at him again, a resigned expression on her tired face.
“I’m not calling him Stephen.”
* * * *
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