* * * * Two days later Jack was still trying to determine exactly what had occurred on the airplane that night. Based on all that he knew of Sark, putting up a struggle over the handcuffs would have been extremely uncharacteristic. Ordinarily he would have expected sardonic compliance from the boy. Perhaps a condescending smirk; a hint of arrogant amusement at their presumed fear of him. Fighting with the guard over something so small and ultimately pointless was a futile gesture, immature and unproductive. Efficiency had always been one of Sark’s most distinguishing characteristics, along with impassivity and level-headedness. There were only three reasons that Jack had been able to come up with to explain such aberrant behavior. Either there had been a strategic purpose for the struggle that Jack could not see, confinement was beginning to wear on Sark far more than he had imagined, or there was something deeper going on.
He didn’t believe the first and had seen no other evidence of the second. It was the third alternative that concerned Jack the most. Immature, he thought again. It had been a childish impulse that had prompted the sudden stubborn desire to refuse a quiet submission to the handcuffs. Jack had a suspicion that all childish impulses had been suppressed in Sark even while he had still actually been a child. That they would begin to surface again now was disturbing. Jack wondered if the boy’s own subconscious was betraying him.
For the first time in his life, Sark knew that he was someone’s child - not abstractly, but specifically. He now knew exactly who his parents were. Was he beginning to think of himself as their child, Jack wondered? Had that realization unconsciously loosened some long-stifled inhibitions within him? Was Sark acting like a child because suddenly, unexpectedly, finally… he was one?
And that brought Jack back to the implications that he had been trying ineffectively to ignore. Although intellectually he had accepted the indisputable findings that Marshall had uncovered, he hadn’t believed that his emotional view of the situation had altered much at all. Regardless of his heritage, the boy was simply the most valuable operative he currently had at his disposal to help him find Sydney. He was cold-blooded, hardnosed, and indifferent. He was Sark.
Except that Jack had called him Stephen.
He had called the boy by his given name in a tone and manner that had demanded and expected instinctive obedience. It had not been a directive from a senior agent to a subordinate. It had been the unmistakable command of a father to a son and it had been evident that despite having never heard it before, Sark had clearly recognized it for what it was. With that name, spoken in that tone, Jack had acknowledged their relationship more explicitly than he’d ever done before.
They had agreed from the outset that their awareness of their connection changed nothing. Yet somehow, somewhere… something had.
* * * * In the wake of the successful mission - both in terms of reestablishing Sark’s credibility and in testing the poison capsule - Kendall had grown a bit more comfortable with the concept of Sark in the field and more confident of their ability to control him. A second mission was authorized within weeks. Jack was not surprised to discover at the briefing that Kendall had realized just how useful the boy could be to them in this capacity. He was only surprised at how little time it had taken the director to warm to the idea.
Superficially the new assignment would serve to increase Sark’s visibility in the right circles. For the CIA, however, it was an opportunity to gain intelligence that might otherwise have been much more difficult to obtain. In the two years prior to his American incarceration, Sark had begun to establish a formidable reputation. Enigmatic though his motives and true loyalties might be, it had become a widely known fact this charmingly harmless-looking young man was not a player to be taken lightly. Doors would be opened for him that not even an agent as skilled as Sydney would easily have been allowed to pass through. Now that Kendall had the means to exploit this break, he seemed intent on using it to the fullest extent possible.
“And all for the price of room, board, and the occasional minor surgery,” Sark observed dryly. “I used to get paid quite a lot for this, you know.” His tone was carefully flippant and Jack knew he was assiduously trying to avoid any sort of interaction which would recall that uncomfortable moment of connection to mind. The boy’s toughest walls had been resurrected and only Sark, the hardened spy, spoke through them.
“I thought it wasn’t about the money,” Jack said, not any more willing to push the boundaries again either.
“Well, it isn’t. But if I’m going to be perforated every time we do this, I think I ought to get some sort of compensation. That last scar still itches.”
“How about for compensation we don’t ship you to Camp Harris when you get back?” Kendall growled through the satellite link.
“So nice to see that everyone’s sense of humor is still intact. You do remember that I’m cooperating willingly, don’t you?”
Sark didn’t seem to expect an answer and Kendall didn’t bother to reply. In the silence that ensued Jack studied the boy seated across from him on the plane once again. Sark didn’t fidget, he realized. Instead, he seemed to settle into a meditative trance curiously similar to what Jack had occasionally observed Irina employ while in their custody. Or perhaps not so curiously. Sark had been with her for half his life. It was only natural that he had picked up some of her practices. Or been taught them. Jack reminded himself that this boy was not merely a precociously talented operative. Sark had been explicitly trained for this job from the time he was nine years old. He already had as much field experience as many agents Jack knew who were twice his age. His apparent youth was still unnervingly deceptive.
“What about another blanket?” Sark said suddenly. “If you’re going to persist in keeping me in that ice box, could I at least leverage another blanket out of this mission?”
“We’ll discuss that option later, Goldilocks,” came the terse, crackling response.
Jack barely heard the soft mutter as Sark prepared to slip back into his meditation. “Goldilocks… Perverse bastards.”
As Jack continued his observation he recalled another time when the boy had complained of his cell’s frigidity. As if abruptly remembering the same event, Sark’s eyes opened once more. The boy met his gaze without the defensive screening that had been there for the past few weeks. Now there was simply a weariness in his expression that made him look older than Jack had ever seen him. Suddenly one corner of his mouth twitched upward in a wry, crooked grin and a little of the tiredness seemed to lift.
“I just want another blanket, athair. It doesn’t mean anything.”
* * * * “I just want another blanket, athair. It doesn’t mean anything.”
One little word tucked in among a few simple phrases and their nonexistent relationship had shifted once again.
It was only later that Jack fully realized just how much he had underestimated the boy. Not until the mission was over and he had retreated to the sanctuary of his empty house had he allowed himself to begin analyzing all the implications of what had occurred on the plane this time.
One surely intentional consequence had been to unsettle him, Jack was certain. Much as he had attempted to avoid thinking too much about the significance of Sark’s new vocabulary, he knew that he had been subtly off-balance for the remainder of their mission. For nearly two days the ghost of an infuriatingly mischievous grin had flickered across the boy’s face, vanishing every time Jack looked at him directly. This had the familiarity of the old Sark; the twisted humor of his pre-internment. But there was something jarringly new in it as well; a bit of humor not so dark. The nearest sentiment Jack could assign to it was good-natured teasing and that alone would have been disconcerting enough without its more complicated subtext.
Apart from the shock value, however, and the minor amusement Sark had derived from his reaction, Jack knew that there was a more serious undertone to the incident. Upon reflection, he was impressed with the elegant simplicity of what the boy had managed to convey with a single word - not in English, nor in Russian, but in Irish Gaelic. Its meaning indicated an acceptance of who Jack was to him, but its language was an assertion of his own status. He might be Jack and Irina’s son, but he was neither a Bristow nor a Derevko. It was as much a declaration of non-alignment as it was an acknowledgement of his parentage.
It was interesting, Jack thought almost off-handedly, how adaptable both of his children were to monumental revelations. It was apparent that sometime in the past few weeks his persistently self-reliant son had managed to come to terms with this unusual situation without any further input from Jack at all. His casual use of the term “athair” and his new easy manner during the rest of the mission indicated that he had made his own peace with his father. It made him wonder precisely how Sark currently saw their relationship. He was fairly certain that the boy no longer viewed him as the opposition. Did he now see them as allies? Was there any sort of trust between them - or merely truce? If Sark was professing neutrality, had Jack’s standing been raised in his mind, Irina’s lowered, or something of both?
* * * * “Is now a bad time?”
Jack looked up from his computer to see Marshall standing in the doorway of his office. He nodded toward the empty chair, suspecting that he already knew what this visit was about.
“I know that technically this isn’t any of my business,” Marshall began. “But I just wanted a little clarification on who’s supposed to know what now. Because the last time I checked, you’d decided not to tell Sark or Kendall about… well, Sark. But clearly Sark does know about Sar… er, who he is, and if he keeps saying things like he did on this last mission then Kendall is going to figure it out too. Then he’ll start with the ‘who knew first’ and the ‘who told who’ and the ‘why didn’t anybody tell him’ and when it eventually gets back to me, I’d like to know what I’m supposed to say.”
“To Kendall?” Jack asked, hoping he’d followed the train of thought correctly.
“Yeah.”
“Nothing.”
“To Kendall?”
“Yes. If Kendall asks you anything about Sark, direct him to me.”
“Okay, good, because I wasn’t sure if I should explain or be like ‘Database? What database?’ or maybe just…”
“Just direct him to me.”
“Right. Direct him to you.” Marshall nodded, repeating the instruction as if to reassure himself. “But he’s not going to find out, right?” he couldn’t seem to help adding. “I mean, Sark is going to stop doing things like calling you ‘Dad’ when he knows you’re being broadcast and/or recorded, right? Because he really needs to stop doing that. Although,” he continued. “I don’t suppose ‘a-hir’ sounds like much of anything if you’re not listening for it. Maybe a sneeze or a cough or something. It’s not like anybody else is expecting him to call you ‘father’ in Irish… or in any other language. You don’t really even look alike. Except when you’re making that face. Yeah, that one - the ‘Marshall, stop talking now’ face. Oh.”
“It was a one-time indiscretion, I’m sure,” Jack said. “He’s made the point he intended to make with it. I doubt it will happen again. Was there anything else?”
“No, that was it…. Except… It’s just that I thought you’d decided not to tell him - Sark,” he clarified once again. “I was just wondering why you changed your mind.”
“I didn’t,” Jack said after an uncomfortably long silence. “He had already come to that conclusion by the time I confirmed it.”
“But aren’t you worried now that he’ll try to use that somehow?”
Jack smiled grimly. “He already is. But I believe he recognizes that we’re even in that respect.”
Marshall nodded slowly in understanding. "He plays you to get out of that cell. You use him to find Sydney. You know,” he said thoughtfully. “Some days I’m really glad that I’m just a Flinkman.”
* * * *
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