* * * * Sark and Dixon had returned from their Kendall-authorized assignment several hours before Jack had gotten back from North Korea. He had missed their debriefing, but he intended to get a review of his own. As he watched Sark sleeping off the effects of the anesthesia he noticed a few more patches of white gauze than could be accounted for by the removal of the poison capsule. The blanket that was usually pulled up to the boy’s ears lay midway down his back and Jack could see bruises that he suspected would darken even more before they began to fade. When Sark shifted restlessly Jack could also see the ugly swelling over his cheekbone and the split lip.
“Thought you might be down here,” Dixon said quietly when he entered the small observation room.
“You don’t seem to be much the worse for wear,” Jack noted. “What happened out there?”
Dixon shrugged. “Seems that Kendall’s new golden boy isn’t as popular as he’d like to believe. When we got to Trincomalee we discovered that Deccan Rajkot was under the impression that the LTTE’s latest problems have a very specific cause - namely one notoriously treacherous young Irishman. Not everyone is buying the fiction of Sark’s absence from the field last year. Rajkot had thought that he turned informant.”
“Had thought?”
“Past tense. He doesn’t think so any more,” Dixon grinned. “I may not like working with Sark now any more than I did when he was playing SD-6, but I have to admit that kid does seem to have a silver tongue. Even while Rajkot’s men were beating the shit out of him, he never stopped talking. Had me half-convinced that he was innocent by the end too, and I was on one of the missions we ran against the Tigers based on his intel.”
“So he persuaded them that someone else was to blame for their difficulties?”
“He’s still alive, isn’t he? I almost believe he could talk his way out of just about anything.”
“He’s still here, isn’t he?” Jack said dryly.
Dixon shrugged. “Theoretically.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Theoretically?”
“He’s only our prisoner in theory. He has already talked his way out of that cell half a dozen times in the last three months alone. Sooner or later he’s going to figure out a way around that poison pellet, assuming he hasn’t done so already. That boy is only here as long as he wants to be here. When he decides that it’s no longer in his best interest to be in CIA custody, that’ll be the last day we see him.”
Jack was intrigued by Dixon’s analysis. “What makes you think that it’s in his best interest to be here now?”
“He’s flipped on a lot of people in the past year. Rajkot can’t be the only one who has started to wonder why certain organizations have had such abysmally bad luck recently and begun looking for the common element. He’s using us for protection just as much as we’re using him for information.”
“That’s probably true,” Jack agreed. “Doesn’t look like we protected him too well this time though.”
“He’s still alive, isn’t he?” Dixon said again. “You know, it’s interesting,” he said after a moment. “Before things went south, Sark was asking some unusual questions of Rajkot, things not covered in our mission parameters. I was about ready to think he was trying to freelance right under our noses… until I realized where his questions were leading. You still have him searching for Sydney, don’t you?”
“What’s so ‘interesting’ about that? Just because the official inquiry has ended doesn’t mean I’m going to stop looking for her.”
“I know,” Dixon said gently. “And I’m not surprised by that in the least. What I find unusual is that Sark is still helping you. I’m just curious about his motivation. What’s in it for him?”
“He knows that humoring me by promising to find Sydney is the best way to get out of that cell,” Jack replied, but Dixon was already shaking his head.
“Was the best way, maybe, but not anymore. At this point, Kendall doesn’t need a recommendation from you before considering the use of Sark in the field. He’s already taken with the idea. Even if you began recommending that we keep the boy locked up, Kendall would probably keep sending him out. You’re not the one Sark needs to humor anymore. So the question becomes - why is he?”
It was a question that Jack didn’t have a good answer for. Dixon’s assessment of the situation was accurate enough. Under the “public” circumstances, it was clearly in Sark’s better interest to please Kendall rather than Jack. Even given the private circumstances, there was little to suggest that the boy would feel obligated to honestly continue his unofficial investigation into Sydney’s disappearance when there was relatively little Jack could do now if he decided to stop. Though Jack knew that Sark had harbored a great deal of respect for Sydney as an agent, he sincerely doubted that there was any real fraternal sentiment there. If Sark wasn’t continuing the search based on any personal attachment to Sydney or on the expectation that his relative illusion of freedom would be curtailed if he failed to uphold his end of the deal he’d struck with Jack, then what was inducing him?
Jack could come up with a handful of credible incentives. Perhaps Sark believed that Jack wielded enough influence to have him permanently confined to his cell regardless of Kendall’s intentions to the contrary. It was a valid concern despite Dixon’s underestimation, but not particularly likely. Sark also knew that Jack valued his fieldwork for Kendall’s assignments nearly as much as Kendall himself did.
Then there was the possibility that Sark or his erstwhile employers still had a hidden agenda which involved Sydney’s presence, if not her cooperation. A week ago Jack might have still considered this to be a reasonable option, but after meeting with Irina, he doubted both that she was behind Sydney’s disappearance and that she had any ulterior motives for finding their daughter. He also doubted that Sark had had time in the past few years to locate any other potential employers to whom he would show that sort of loyalty. If Irina hadn’t retained him in this particular endeavor, he wasn’t working for anyone else.
Which left two alternative suggestions that Jack wasn’t certain how to evaluate. Either Sark was still engaged in an active search for Sydney to oblige Irina personally… or to oblige Jack himself. As he had told her in Pyongyang, he really didn’t have any idea how the boy currently regarded his mother. Would he try to find Sydney in an attempt to prove his own value to Irina once again? Or was he trying to win Jack’s approval? A thought nagged at the edges of his mind but refused to let Jack grasp it. He had to admit that he simply didn’t know why Sark was still searching anymore.
* * * * “I’m not doing this anymore.”
Jack stared down at the battered boy in surprise. Sark had pulled the blankets high on his shoulders once again so that all Jack could see was a mop of disheveled blond hair, a pair of steely blue eyes, and the purpling bruise on his cheek. Jack had to imagine the tight set of his jaw and stubborn line of his mouth, but he had no doubt about how the rest of the boy’s face appeared. The sudden obstinacy startled him.
“Have you seen the transcripts?” Sark asked, his voice slightly muffled but still clearly annoyed. “They debated,” he said as Jack shook his head. “The bastards actually had to debate whether or not to come get me. They wouldn’t have done that to one of their own. I know I’m expendable, but I don’t like knowing I’m that expendable and I most definitely do not like having my fate so dependent on people who have no long-term interest in my well-being whatsoever. If they’d waited another few hours to extract me there wouldn’t have been any point anyway. I could have dealt with Rajkot on my own if I’d had the time, but because of that damned pill I’d have been dead regardless of whether he decided to kill me if Kendall hadn’t authorized a retrieval. I would prefer not to die at all, but if I must, I’d really prefer to be killed for something I’m actually responsible for than be inadvertently poisoned because some government bureaucrat still thinks I can’t be trusted.”
He had lifted his head from the cot during the course of his low-toned yet intense tirade and his eyes flashed angrily. Jack could now see the shadow of another bruise along his jaw and a raw scrape across his neck that all too readily suggested a variety of unpleasant causes.
“So I’m not doing this anymore,” Sark repeated stubbornly as he leaned against the wall. “Not until you find a more acceptable means of reassuring yourselves.”
Jack searched for signs of anxiety beneath the fury, but was startled by what he saw instead. The anger ran deeply but under it was hurt, not fear. The boy was too infuriated to be afraid for his life, but something else about the situation was bothering him. The debate, he realized. “They wouldn’t have done that to one of their own” was what Sark had said. What he had meant was - they wouldn’t have debated if it had been Sydney. The nagging thought that had troubled Jack earlier abruptly crystallized.
Sark believed that both Jack and Irina valued Sydney’s life above his own. It was not an invalid assumption, Jack had to admit. Neither of them had been in a position to bond with him in those early formative years as they both had with Sydney. They had not heard his first words, seen his first steps. They had not nursed him through fevers, calmed him during thunderstorms, or sent him off to his first day of school. They had not been there for the million tiny things that bound them both so strongly to Sydney. There was a distance that would always be between them because of that lack which nothing would be able to bridge, Jack realized. And for the first time in his life, the boy could see exactly what he had missed.
A sibling rivalry, albeit extremely one-sided, that had never before existed had suddenly flared to life. Sark had gone in an instant from being alone in the world to being part of an extraordinarily dysfunctional family whose members he already knew in entirely different capacities. His adjustment apparently hadn’t been quite as effortless as Jack had once believed. It was no wonder, Jack mused, that he was reacting a little erratically - cool and rational in some instances, obstinate and immature in others. It couldn’t be easy to realize how much his parents were willing to do for their daughter while knowing that neither of them was quite certain of how to deal with him now. Once again Jack was reminded of how nearly equal Sark saw himself with Sydney - how alike he had seen them even before knowing of their relationship. Coping with the reality of everyone else’s view was undoubtedly frustrating.
“Stephen,” Jack said quietly and was strangely gratified to see the sharp crease between the boy’s eyebrows ease somewhat. There was still an aggravated spark in his eyes, but some of the ferocity faded. Reaching out to touch that dark blond head was more difficult under the full glare of the fluorescents than it had been in the darkness, but Jack did it nonetheless. “Didn’t they let you have a shower when you got back?” he asked as his fingers ran across the dried blood still in his hair.
Sark blinked at him, the irritability in his expression replaced by confusion, which was in turn supplanted by a flash of momentary humor at the clumsy non sequitur. There was also an underlying recognition that Jack didn’t know how to handle the sheer awkwardness any better than he did. The wrenchingly familiar sardonic grin reappeared.
“Go away, athair,” the boy said as he dropped back onto the cot. “I’m tired. Tell Kendall that you have to find another way.”
Jack nodded although Sark’s eyes were already closed. He was beginning to understand why the boy chose the moments he did to use that word. It was a paradoxical attempt to unsettle Jack when he seemed to be getting too close, while at the same time ensuring that he didn’t push him too far away. Sark wanted the familiarity but only on his own terms. It was a hard line to walk, Jack thought. But something he realized that he was willing to tolerate.
* * * *
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