Title: 3 Things I Meant to Say

Author: wolfish

Rating: PG

Time: Sometime in that forgotten two years ('The Telling')

Disclaimer: Alias belongs to J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot, and ABC.

Summary: Jack Bristow mourns the love of his life.

A/N: This could possibly be a companion piece to 3 Nights in Santa Barbara (notice the similarity in titles?) But that's up to you to decide. I was just feeling idle and I had absolutely no inspiration, so I decided to check in on Jack.

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I'm so alone and I feel just like somebody else

Man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same

But somewhere here in between these city walls of dyin' dreams

I think her death, it must be killin' me

--One Headlight, The Wallflowers

~~~~

My hand did not shake as I laid the bunch of flowers on her empty grave--a mishmash of a dozen kinds of wildflowers, because, in my mind, that was a fitting tribute. My hand never shakes, so why should that moment have been any different? I was no more and no less the man I had been on that night she disappeared. And somehow, I still managed to feel as if I had lost some irreplaceable part of myself.

Because I had.

She had been mine once, before the rest of the world found her. She had been mine before Arvin Sloane and the CIA ever laid eyes on her, before handsome men lured her out with sweet words, back before puberty and pigtails and playgrounds, long before she even had a name to speak. I liked to think she had been mine before the world began. I also like to think she would be mine again some day, but I had started to doubt that in recent times.

I am a man who has known miracles. Miracles, I have learned, rarely come with complimentary thunderstorms, or blinding flashes of light, or booming voices from heaven. More often than not, they come when your back is turned--or in my case, when it is against the wall. Most miracles pass you by.

She was the one miracle I never saw coming.

I was late of course, the day she was born, working on something I have long ago forgotten, but something so imperative that I couldn't even take the phone call heralding the arrival of a healthy baby girl--my healthy baby girl. I didn't meet her until late that evening, long after Laura had dropped off into exhausted slumber, so I was alone that first time I held her, with absolutely no idea as to what I was expected to do. The nurses had made an exception in my predicament, rousting the sleeping newborn from her bed after I begged them to let me see her closer, but as they had wandered off down the hall, murmuring about coffee and long nights to each other, I had felt caught, weighted down and unsure of the small body nestled in the crook of my arm. Then she had yawned, her whole being involved in that simple action, and opened her hazy eyes to gaze sagely at me, her extraordinarily tiny red fist curling around my shirt. This, I was sure, was love at first sight.

I don't cry. Ever. After so much time believing crying to be a signal of defeat, the mark of a weak man, it becomes a physical impossibility. You just forget how to go about it. But if I had been anyone else at that instant, the prickling in the back of my eyes would have become true tears of joy.

I promised her then what any other father promises: that I would never, ever let anything hurt her. It was promise that was made to be broken, but I could not have foreseen on that night, with her a warm pocket of life against my chest and a growing ache of tenderness swelling in every cell, that I would not only be the one to break that promise, but that I would shatter it completely.

From the very beginning, I wasn't the father I had hoped I would be. There was always work, calling me away. I tried to make up for it the best I could, showering her with useless trinkets whenever I was absent a significantly lengthy period of time, and still I always felt during those first hours back home that she was punishing me for leaving her. But despite my flaws and my failings, in her child's eyes I was an easy person to forgive because she had yet to understand that not all fathers acted like I did. Inevitably, by the time dark had fallen over the house, she would be on the couch beside me, one of my arms wrapped around her even as the other picked precariously at the re-heated remnants of dinner, the two of us watching the evening news together. It was times like that I knew how it felt to be infallible.

I set aside the mundane chores for Laura, too, the diapers and the feedings and the story times and the late night ailments. I can kill without flinching and survive torture without cracking and diffuse bombs with a steady hand, but little girls were an utter mystery to me. I was so terribly frightened that I would do the wrong thing, that I did nothing at all. I was so careful to hold her at an arm's length, that I'm still not quite sure how she managed to wiggle into my daily routines, and deeper still into my affections, past all the barriers I set up against her.

Her first word was Daddy. It too, I think, was another of her desperate ploys to gain my attention. Laura had solicited me to look after for a few hours so that she could have some time to herself, and I was keeping an eye on her, or more accurately, turning an eye to her whenever I was reminded of her presence. She must have broken the toy she was playing with because the object suddenly clinging to my leg was sniffling quite piteously. She had tilted her face to look up at me, her long hair flowing back--long because Laura liked it that way, no matter how many times I argued she would get less odds and ends and tangles in it if we just cut it short--her eyes large and over-bright with a barrage of tears, her lips forming the one word I had never expected. One word that held the greatest condemnation for my disregard. Daddy. I yelled for Laura. She must have heard the urgency in my voice because she came tearing across the house, only to find me trying to coax our daughter into a repeat performance. "Say it again, sweetheart. You can do it. Dad-dee. Daaa-dee." Sydney had only wrapped her sticky hands tighter around my neck and gurgled babyish nonsense in my ear, triumphant in the fact that she at last had captured my full concentration. Laura had laughed at me then and told me to patient, soon enough I would be tired of listening to her talk. She was wrong. I never got tired of it.

As a child, Sydney had an almost paralyzing fear of the dark. After she graduated to her own full-sized bed, she would plead for me to stay with her when I came into her room to say goodnight. "Only until I fall asleep," she would promise with her bravest face on. I always had some excuse to say no, some vital matter that couldn't wait. She would widen her eyes then--her damnable eyes--and her lower lip would tremble just the slightest bit. I never refused the second time she asked. Screw life and death matters; this was my daughter.

The hardest part of the whole affair was leaving when the time came. How many nights did I linger long after she had drifted off into slumber, neglecting my other duties just to listen to her breathe, watching her sides rise and fall constant like the ocean, the warmth and closeness of the room like heaven's cradle, like peace? Peace--something I knew so little of. And how many of those nights led to mornings where I woke groggy and confused in the wrong room with the wrong person by my side, her small body curled against my chest like a kitten, like the day she was born? Countless.

There is only one of those occasions that I have ever wanted to erase from my memory, and it is the only one that remains mockingly intact as the others wither and fade, every detail preserved. The last night I was ever allowed to stay with her until she slept. The night after Laura died. She had sobbed herself into exhaustion, her breath sickly hot on my neck, making small, helpless sounds in the back of her throat as even the energy to weep left her. I held her, my eyes dry and death a distant shadow, something I would not permit myself to deal with--especially not in front of my child. Grief was a luxury I could not give myself. I knew sorrow only because I was discovering, as I whispered soothing phrases to her with no response, that I could no longer slay the monsters that inhabited the dark corners of her mind, not this night or any other.

We were never before so close as we were that night, when I was her only link left in the world, and we were never that close afterwards. Life, it seems, conspired against us. What followed was weeks of pain and denial and lies as I tried to hide the ongoing investigation from her, and six more months of lies in solitary confinement, promising her every time I was awarded a call that I would be home soon, until she finally stopped believing anything I said. I hated myself for doing that to her, and I hated the CIA and the FBI even more for reducing me to deceiving the one person I had promised not to hurt.

When I did turn up on our doorstep, tired and bitter, there was no welcome. With no one there to correct her, she had twisted the events until she found a way to blame me for everything. She blamed me for her mother's death, and she blamed me for abandoning her. She could barely be in the same room with me without spraying tears or throwing a tantrum, or, so much worse, drawing into herself, silent as a stone wall. And I let her. I looked at her, but I didn't see her anymore. She had Laura's eyes and Irina's ability to shred my heart. So, I passed on her care to the best nannies I could buy, and I sat up late at night in my study with the latest snapshots--picnics, school outings, birthday parties, all the occasions I had been absent for--spread across my desk, convincing myself time and time again that it was for the best. After so many missed events, she would eventually stop expecting anything from me. Eventually, I would cease to hurt her.

But that was a lie. No child was better off without a father, even if I was that father. I never stopped hurting her.

Perhaps there was another miracle that escaped my attention, so many years later, but at the time it had seemed to be something so much worse than what it was. My daughter, a spy, pulled into the life I had kept hidden for so long by the man I had once thought I would always be friends with. Arvin had been so smug when he admitted to recruiting Sydney, I could have killed him without blinking. He had done much more than betray my trust, though; he had given me a second chance at a relationship with my daughter.

There were hundreds of times, over and over again, working with the CIA and SD-6, that I could have told her the one thing I wanted her so urgently to know through everything: that I loved her. But I stepped back from every one--maybe because I was afraid, but more because it would have changed nothing. You cannot undo nearly a quarter-century of pain and neglect with a few words. Words, in a business such as ours, mean nothing, are not to be trusted, even when spoken with the most intense of emotions. Everyone speaks as if what they say is the truth, and everyone lies.

I did my best, without the I-love-you's, to show her exactly that. I tried to spare Danny's life, because she loved him. I tried to warn away Will, because she cared for him as well. I watched discretely over all of her missions, because, despite my grudgingly developing respect for Agent Vaughn, I did not have confidence in anyone but myself when it came to her safety. And I undermined her mother's attempts, because I could not be a bystander as she suffered the loss of another person she loved. I was certain that Irina would leave again--no matter what feelings she professed to--to attend to her own agenda. Feelings hadn't stopped her the first time, and I would have done anything to avert a repeat of the desertion that led to the night Sydney cried herself to sleep in my arms.

I did do everything I could, none of which I regret--though I would be blind not see how it only served to drive the two of us farther apart. I would have told her I was sorry when I realized what I was doing, anything to wipe away my crimes, but I looked into her eyes and only saw the monster I had become. I saw how she struggled with herself in her need to defend her lingering, instinctive affection for someone like me. I was not worthy of her forgiveness. I had squandered my second chance in my selfish battle to be right about Irina. I swore to myself then that I would transform myself for her, everything I had refused to do before, if it would give me back my daughter.

Very few men are afforded second chances. No one gets a third.

A wind herded the grass in the cemetery in sweeping lines. My gaze traveled the horizon, which was devoid of even the last stains of dawn. I had stayed longer than I had intended. It was easy to pick out a familiar shape silhouetted against the open blue sky. A graying headstone, edges rounded by years in the elements, a silent angel hovering at the top, and the words, which I couldn't see, I already knew would read in large, neat print: Laura Bristow. The ground in its shadow was just as empty as that under my feet.

I would have happily thrown all of Laura's belongings into the ocean, but I had had appearances to keep up with the small circle of friends we had moved within, with my daughter, and with myself. I had buried them here instead, on a morning not so unlike this one, with a small girl at my side cloaked in dark cloth, clutching my hand. Burying her was a way of putting the past behind me.

I wondered, not for the first time, if Irina knew, wherever she was, what had happened to our child. Our only child. Rage and grief burned and flickered; neither did me any good.

No parent should ever outlive their child.

The wind was cooling what should have been an oppressively humid morning. I felt as if it was blowing straight through me, right through the hole in my chest. It would have been so simple to lay down on that gloriously perfect new day, collapse on the new grass, still damp with dew, and close my eyes for good, to be as empty as either of their graves.

But I couldn't surrender. This was my punishment for failing to protect my one gift, the one person I had promised to always cherish and defend, the one person who had held my heart, even when I was sure I didn't have one. I had to live out the rest of my days, right some of the wrongs I had put into this world before it was over. Sydney would expect that of me. I would not fail her again.

A stiffness was stealing into my muscles from kneeling on the damp, chilly ground, and the physical refused to be ignored in favor of my thoughts for much longer. I pressed one hand against her tombstone, using it to anchor me to my feet. I reached my free hand down to brush at invisible dirt on my knees, but kept the other where it was for the moment. I could feel it stretching in my throat, the words I had meant to say all along, from her first smile to her high school graduation to her last mission. I dug my fingers harder into the stone, the harsh scrape of it on my palm frighteningly real, but if I screwed my eyes shut tight enough I could imagine it turning to warm flesh, could imagine her hand once again dwarfed in mine. I could almost believe that she could hear me somehow, somewhere, someday…

"I'm so proud of you, sweetheart."

There were no miracles. Silence threw back its answer. Too late. A single tear scorched a path across my cheek, tumbling to the earth below.

Maybe you don't forget after all.

END.